MAT
'Sympathy or no sympathy, a man's love should no more fail towards
his fellows than that love which spent itself on disciples who
altogether misunderstood it, like the rain which falls on just and
unjust alike.'--MARK RUTHERFORD.
Vineyard Cottage, where the retired corn-chandler had elected to spend
the remnant of his days, was no pretentious stucco villa; it was a real
old-fashioned cottage, with a big roomy porch well covered with
honeysuckle and sweet yellow jasmine, and a sitting-room on either side
of the door, with one small-paned window, which was certainly not filled
with plate-glass. It was a snug, bowery little place, and the fresh
dimity curtains at the upper windows, and the stand of blossoming plants
in the little passage, gave it a cheerful and inviting aspect. The tiny
lawn was smooth as velvet, and a row of tall white lilies, flanked with
fragrant lavender, filled up the one narrow bed that ran by the side of
the privet hedge.
As Audrey unlatched the little gate she had a glimpse of Mr. O'Brien in
his shirt-sleeves. He was smoking in the porch, and so busily engaged in
reading his paper that Audrey's light tread failed to arouse him, until
a plaintive and fretful voice from within made him turn his head.
'Father, aren't you ashamed to be sitting there in your shirt-sleeves
when Miss Ross has come to call? And it is 'most four o'clock,
too--pretty near about tea-time.'
'Miss Ross--you don't say so, Prissy!' returned Mr. O'Brien, thrusting
an arm hastily into the coat that his daughter was holding out in an
aggressively reproachful manner. 'How do you do, Miss Ross? Wait a
moment--wait a moment, until I can shake hands with you. Now, then, the
other arm, Prissy. You are as welcome as flowers in May--and as blooming
too, isn't she, Prissy?' and Mr. O'Brien enforced his compliment with a
grasp of the hand that made Audrey wince.
'I expected a scolding--I did indeed,' laughed Audrey, 'instead of this
very kind welcome. It is so long since my last visit; is it not, Mr.
O'Brien?'
'Well, ma'am, tell the truth and shame the devil; that's my motto. I'll
not deny that Prissy and I were wondering at your absence. "What's
become of Miss Ross?" she said to me only to-day at dinner, "for she has
not been near us for an age."'
'And I was right, father, and it is an age since Miss Ross honoured us
with a visit,' replied his daughter in the plaintive tone that seemed
natural to her. 'It was just five weeks ago, for Susan Larkins had come
up about the bit of washing her mother wished to have, so I remember the
day well.'
'Five weeks!' responded Audrey with a shake of her head; 'what a memory
you have, Mrs. Baxter, and, dear me, how ill you are looking; is there
anything the matter?' looking from one to the other with kindly
scrutiny.
Mr. O'Brien and his daughter were complete contrasts to each other. He
was a stout, gray-haired man with a pleasant, genial countenance, though
it was not without its lines of care. Mrs. Baxter, on the contrary, had
a long melancholy face and anxious blue eyes. Her black gown clung to
her thin figure in limp folds; her features were not bad, and a little
liveliness and expression would have made her a good-looking woman; but
her dejected air and want of colouring detracted from her comeliness,
and of late years her voice had grown peevish as well as plaintive, as
though her troubles had been too heavy for her. Audrey had a sincere
respect for her; but she certainly wished that Mrs. Baxter took a less
lugubrious view of life. At times she would try to infuse a little of
her own cheerfulness; but she soon found that Mrs. Baxter was too
closely wrapped in her melancholy. In her own language, she preferred
the house of mourning to the house of feasting.
'Oh, I hope there is nothing fresh the matter!' repeated Audrey, whose
clear-sighted sympathy was never at fault.
She thought that Mr. O'Brien's genial face looked a shade graver than
usual.
'Come and sit down, Miss Ross, and I will be hurrying the girl with the
tea,' observed Mrs. Baxter mournfully, for she was never too lachrymose
to be hospitable, and though she shed tears on slight occasions, she was
always disposed to press her hot buttered cakes on her guests, and any
refusal to taste her good cheer would have grievously wounded her
bruised sensibilities. 'Father, take Miss Ross into the best parlour
while I help Hannah a bit.'
And as Mr. O'Brien laid aside his pipe and led the way into the house,
Audrey followed him, nothing loath.
'Joe's been troubling Priscilla again,' he observed, as Audrey seated
herself on the little horsehair sofa beside the open window, and Buff, a
great tortoise-shell cat, jumped uninvited on her lap and began purring
loudly.
'Joe!' repeated Audrey in a shocked voice; she knew very well who was
meant. Joe was the ne'er-do-well of a son-in-law whose iniquities had
transformed the young and comely Priscilla into the meagre and
colourless Mrs. Baxter. 'He has no right to trouble her!' she went on
indignantly.
'He has been worrying for money again,' returned Mr. O'Brien, ruffling
up his gray hair in a discontented fashion; 'he says he is hard up. But
that is only one of Joe's lies; he tells lies by the peck. He had a good
coat on, and looked as thriving as possible, and I know from Atkinson,
who has been in Leeds, that he is a traveller to some house in the wine
trade. And yet he comes here, the bullying rascal! fretting the poor
lass to skin and bone with pretending he can take the law of her for not
living with him, and that after all his ill-usage.'
'I am so sorry,' returned Audrey, and her tone said more than her words.
'He is a bad man, a thoroughly heartless and bad man--everyone knows
that; and she must never go back to him. I hope you told him so.'
'Ay, I did,' with a touch of gruffness; 'I found him bullying, and poor
Prissy crying her eyes out, and looking ready to drop--for she is afraid
of him--and I just took down my big stick. "Joe," I said, as he began
blustering about her being his true and lawful wife, "you just drop that
and listen to me: if she is your wife, she is my daughter, our only
one--for never chick nor child had we beside Priscilla--and she is going
to stop along with me, law or no law."
'"I'll claim my own. There's two to that bargain, father-in-law," he
says, with a sneer; for, you see, he was turning a bit nasty.
'"And you'll claim something else as well, son-in-law!" I replied,
getting a good grip of the stick; for my blood was up, and I would have
felled him to the ground with all the pleasure in life, only the girl
got between us.
'"No, father--no violence!" she screeches out. "Don't make things worse
for poor, unhappy me. Joe is not worth your getting into trouble on his
account. Go along with you, Joe, and Heaven forgive you; but horses
wouldn't drag me under your roof again after the way you have treated
me."
'Well, I suppose we made it too hot for him, ma'am, for he soon beat a
retreat. Joe was always a coward. I would have hurried him out with a
kick, but I thought it better to be prudent; and Priscilla went and had
a fit of hysterics in her own room, and she has been looking mortal bad,
poor lass! ever since.'
'I wish we could save her these trying scenes, Mr. O'Brien; they get on
her nerves.'
'Ah, that is what her mother said! "Prissy will never have a day's
health if we can't hinder Joe from coming to plague her"--I remember my
Susan saying that. Why, it was half for Prissy's sake we gave up the
shop. "What is the good of filling our purse, Tom, when we have plenty
for ourselves and Priscilla!" she was always saying to me. But there, I
was fond of the shop--it is no use denying it--and it takes a special
sort of education to fit one for idleness. Even now--would you believe
it, ma'am?--I have a sort of longing to finger the oats and peas again.'
'But you are very fond of your cottage and your garden, Mr. O'Brien.
Captain Burnett says it is the prettiest little place about here.'
'Ah, I have been forgetting my manners, and I have never asked after the
Captain, though he is a prime favourite of mine. Oh yes, he always has
his little joke. "What will you sell it for, O'Brien, just as it stands?
Name your own price." Well, it is a snug little place; and if only my
little woman were here and I had news of Mat----' And here Mr. O'Brien
pushed his hand through his gray hair again, and sighed as he looked out
on his row of lilies.
Audrey sat still in sympathising silence. She knew how her old friend
loved to unburden himself. He talked to no one else as he did to this
girl--not even to the Captain. He liked to enlarge in his simple way on
his old happy life, when Prissy was young and he and his wife thought
handsome Joe Baxter a grand lover for their girl, with his fine figure
and soft, wheedling tongue.
'But we were old enough to know better--we were a couple of fools, of
course; I know that now,' he would say. 'But he just talked us over--Joe
is a rare hand at talking even now. He can use fine words; he has
learnt it in his business. I think our worst time was when Prissy's baby
died and she began to droop, and in her weakness she let it all out to
her mother. I remember my little woman coming into the shop that day,
with the tears running down her face. "Tom," she says, "what have we
ever done to be so punished? Joe is treating Prissy like a brute, and my
poor girl's heart is broken." Dear, dear! how I wanted Mat then!'
Audrey knew all about this Mat--at least, the little there was to know.
One day, soon after Mr. O'Brien had lost his wife, and she had found him
sitting alone in the porch, he had begun talking to her of his own
accord of a young brother whom he called Mat, but to no one else had he
ever mentioned his name. Audrey had been much touched and surprised by
this confidence, and from time to time Mr. O'Brien had continued to
speak of him, until she was in possession of the main facts.
Thomas O'Brien had lost his parents early, and his brothers and sisters
had died in infancy, with the exception of the youngest, Matthew, or
Mat, as he was generally called. There was so much difference between
their ages that Mat was quite a plaything and pet to his elder brother.
From all accounts, he was a bright, engaging little fellow, and
developed unusual capacity.
'He was a cut above us, and people took notice of him, and that spoiled
him,' observed Mr. O'Brien one day.
Audrey, piecing the fragments of conversation together, could picture
the clever, handsome lad learning his lessons in the little back
parlour, while honest Tom served in the shop. But Mat was not always so
studious: he would be sliding with the Rector's boys, or helping them to
make a snow man; sometimes he would be having tea at the Rectory, or
with his master, or even with the curates. One of the curates was
musical, and Mat had an angelic voice. One could imagine the danger to
the precocious, clever boy, and how perhaps, on his return, he would
gibe a little in his impertinent boyish fashion at thickheaded, clumsy
Tom among his cornbins and sacks of split peas.
Mat did not wish to be a corn-chandler. When Tom married the daughter of
a neighbouring baker, Mat was heard to mutter to one of his intimates
that Tom might have looked higher for a wife. He grew a little
discontented after that, and gave the young couple plenty of trouble
until he got his way--a bad way, too--and went off to seek his fortunes
in London.
Tom missed the lad sadly; even his Susan's rosy cheeks and good-humour
failed to console him for a while. Not until Prissy made her
appearance--and in clamorous baby fashion wheedled her way into her
father's affections--did his sore heart cease to regret the young
brother.
Susan used to talk to her husband in her sensible way.
'It is no use your fretting, Tom,' she would say; 'boys will be boys,
and anything is better for Mat than hanging about here with his hands in
his pockets and doing nothing but gossip with the customers. He was
growing into idle ways. It was a shame for a big fellow like Mat to be
living upon his brother; it is far better for him to be thrown on
himself to work for his bread,' finished Susan, rocking her baby, for
she was a shrewd little person in her way.
'I don't like to think of Mat alone in London,' returned Tom slowly; but
as he looked into his wife's innocent eyes he forbore to utter all his
thoughts aloud. Tom was old enough to know something of the world; he
could guess at the pitfalls that stretched before the lad's unwary feet.
Mat was young, barely eighteen, his very gifts of beauty and cleverness
might lead him into trouble.
'I wish I had him here,' muttered Tom, as he went off to serve a
customer. 'Peterborough is a better place for him than London;' for they
were living at Peterborough then.
Tom cheered up presently, when Mat wrote one of his flourishing letters;
he was a fine letter-writer. He was in luck's way, he told Tom, and had
fallen on his feet; at his first application he had obtained a clerkship
in some business house, and his employer had taken a fancy to him.
'I feel like Dick Whittington,' wrote Mat, in his happy, boastful way;
'all night long the bells were saying to me, "Turn again, turn again,
Mat O'Brien, for fortune is before you." I could hear them in my
dreams--and then the next morning came a letter from Mr. Turner. Dear
old chap, you won't bother about me any more, for I mean to stick to my
work like a galley slave. Give my love to Susan, and kiss the little
one--couldn't you have found a better name than that Puritan Priscilla,
you foolish Tom?'--and so on. Audrey once read that letter, and a dozen
more of the same type; she thought them very affectionate and clever.
Every now and then there were graphic descriptions of a day's amusement
or sight-seeing. What was it they lacked? Audrey could never answer
that question, but she laid them down with a dim feeling of
dissatisfaction.
Mat used to run down for a day or two when business permitted, and take
possession of his shabby little room under the roof. How happy honest
Tom would be on these occasions! how he would chuckle to himself as he
saw his customers--female customers especially--cast sidelong glances at
the handsome dark-haired youth who lounged by the door!
'Old Mrs. Stevenson took him for a gentleman,' Tom remarked to Susan
once, rubbing his hands over the joke. 'Mat is so well set up, and wears
such a good coat; just look at his boots!--and his shirts are ever so
much finer than mine; he looks like a young lord in his Sunday best,'
went on Tom, who admired his young brother with every fibre of his
heart.
Mat was quite aware of the sensation he made among his old friends and
neighbours; he liked to feel his own importance. He came pretty
frequently at first; he was tolerant of Susan's homeliness and sisterly
advice, he took kindly to Prissy, and brought her a fine coral necklace
to wear on her fat dimpled neck; but after a year or two he came less
often.
'Leave him alone,' Susan would say when Tom grumbled to her over his
pipe of an evening; 'Mat has grown too fine for the shop; nothing
pleased him last time. He wanted napkins with his food because of his
moustache, and he complained that his bed was so hard he could not sleep
on it. It is easy to see that our homely ways do not suit him. I wish
your heart were not set on him so much, Tom; it is thankless work to
cling to a person who wants to get rid of his belongings.'
'Nay, Susan, you are too hard on the lad,' her husband remonstrated;
'Mat will never cut us--he has an affectionate heart. He is only having
his fling, as lads, even the best of them, will at times. By and by he
will settle down, and then we shall see more of him.'
But in spite of Tom's faith, that time never came. By and by Mat wrote
with a greater flourish than ever.
'Wish me joy, my dear Susan and Tom,' he wrote, 'for I am going to be
married, and to the prettiest and the dearest girl in the world. Just
fancy, Tom, her uncle is a Dean! what do you think of your brother Mat
now? "Turn again, turn again, Mat O'Brien"--that is what the bells said
to me, and, by Jove! they were right. Haven't I had a rise this
Christmas?--and now my dear little Olive has promised to take me for
better or worse. Oh, Tom, you should just see her--she is such a
darling! and I am the luckiest fellow in the world to get her! I can see
Susan shaking her head and saying in her wise way that I am young to
take the cares of life on my shoulders; but when a fellow is head over
heels in love, he cannot stop to balance arguments. And after all, we
are not so imprudent, for when the Dean dies, and he is an old man,
Olive will have a pretty penny of her own. So wish me joy, dear Tom, and
send me your blessing.'
Tom fairly wept over this letter; he carried it about with him and read
it at intervals during the day.
'If only she makes the lad happy!' he said to Susan. 'To think of our
Mat marrying a gentlewoman, for of course a Dean's niece is that;' and
Susan, whose knowledge of the world was small, supposed so too.
Tom was hoping that Mat would bring his young wife down to receive his
brotherly congratulations in person; but there was always some excuse
for the delay. Olive was delicate; she could not travel; Mat could not
leave her to come himself, and so on. Tom never doubted these excuses;
he even made his little joke about the lad becoming a family man; but
Susan, who was sharper than her husband, read between the lines. Mat was
ashamed of bringing the Dean's niece down to see the shop; it was
possible, but here Susan almost shuddered at the awfulness of the
thought, that he might not have told his wife that he had a brother.
'Mat is as weak as water, with all his cleverness,' she said to herself;
'if he has not told her yet, he will put it off from day to day. There
is nothing easier than procrastination if you once give in to it. Few
people speak the truth like my Tom, bless him!'
Susan would not grieve her husband by hinting at these suspicions,
though they grew stronger as time went on. Mat never brought his wife to
see them; he seldom wrote, unless to tell them of the birth of a child,
and then his letters were brief and unsatisfactory. Tom once wrote and
asked him if he were happy, 'for somehow Susan and I have got into our
heads that things are not quite square,' wrote the simple fellow. 'Do
come and let us have a chat together over our pipes. Prissy is getting
quite a big girl; you would hardly know her now.'
Perhaps Mat was touched by this persistent kindness on his brother's
part, for he answered that letter by return of post.
'One must not expect too much happiness in this crooked old world,' he
wrote; 'but you and Susan are such old-fashioned people. Olive and I
have as much enjoyment of life as ordinary folk. We quarrel sometimes
and make it up again. I was never a very patient mortal--eh, old
chap?--and one's temper does not improve with age.' And then after a
little talk about the children, who had been ill with scarlatina, the
letter wound up by begging the loan of a five-pound note.
Tom did not show this letter to Susan. For the first time in his life he
kept a secret from the wife of his bosom. He put two five-pound notes in
an envelope, and sent them with his love to Olive and the children. A
pang of remorse must have crossed Mat's heart at this fresh act of
kindness; but though he acknowledged the gift with the utmost gratitude,
he neither came nor wrote again for a long time.
Some time after that Tom took an odd notion in his head: he would go up
to London and see Mat and his wife and children; he was just hankering
for a sight of the lad, as he told Susan. To be sure, Mat had never
invited him--never hinted at such a thing in his letters; he could not
be sure of his welcome. Susan tried to dissuade him, but to no purpose;
for once Tom was deaf to his little woman's advice. He left her in
charge of the shop one fine spring morning and started for London and
Bayswater, where Mat lived.
He came back earlier than Susan expected, and there was a sad look in
his eyes as he sat down and filled his pipe. Susan forbore to question
him at first; she got him some supper and a jug of the best ale, and
presently he began to talk of his own accord:
'There were other people living in No. 23 Mortimer Terrace. The O'Briens
had left more than a year ago, and no one knew where they were. Fancy
Mat leaving and never giving me his address!' finished Tom with an air
of deep depression.
He was evidently much wounded at this want of brotherly confidence.
'But surely you know his business address, dear?' Susan asked quietly.
No; Tom did not know even that. He reminded her that Mat had long ago
left his old employers, and had set up for himself; but Tom did not know
where his office was.
'I always wrote to his private address, you know, Susan,' he went on.
'Mat told me that no one ever opened his letters but himself; but how
am I to find him out now if he chooses to hide himself from his only
brother?'
And though Tom said no more, he moped for many a day after that
fruitless expedition.
By and by the truth leaked out--Mat was in trouble, and in such trouble
that no fraternal help could avail him. One awful day, a day that turned
Tom's hair gray with horror and anguish, he heard that Mat--handsome,
brilliant Mat--was in a felon's cell, condemned to penal servitude for a
long term of years. In a moment of despair he had forged the name of one
of his so-called friends, and by this terrible act had obtained
possession of a large sum of money.
Tom's anguish at this news was not to be described; he cried like a
child, and Susan vainly tried to comfort him.
'My father's name,' he kept repeating--'he has disgraced our honest
name! I will never forgive him; I will have nothing more to do with
him--he has covered us all with shame!'
And then the next moment he relented at the thought of Mat, beaten down
and miserable, and perhaps repentant, in his wretched cell.