II.

"Just six shillings on it, Mr. Figg! That's all I want to-day, but I

can't do without that."

That so well-conducted and tidy a woman as George Reed's wife should be

in what the Cut called familiarly the "pawnshop," would have surprised

every one not in the secret. But she it was. Mr. Figg, a little man with

weak eyes and a few scattered locks of light hair, turned over the

offered loan with his finger and thumb. A grey gown of some kind of

woollen stuff.

"How many times have this here gownd been brought here, Mrs. Reed?"

asked he.

"I haven't counted 'em," she sighed. "Why? What's that got to do with

it?"

"'Cause it's a proof as it must be getting the worse for wear," was the

answer, given disparagingly.

"It's just as good as it was the day I had it out o' Jellico's pack,"

said Mrs. Reed, sadly subdued, as of late she had always seemed.

Mr. Figg held up the gown to the light, seeking for the parts in it most

likely to be worn. "Look here," said he. "What d'ye call that?"

There was a little fraying certainly in places. Mrs. Reed had eyes and

could see it. She did not answer.

"It don't stand to reason as a gownd will wear for ever and show no

marks. You puts this here gownd in of a Wednesday morning, or so, and

gets it out of a Saturday night to wear Sundays. Wear and tear _is_ wear

and tear."

Mrs. Reed could not deny the accusation. All the available articles her

home contained; that is, the few her husband was not likely to observe

the absence of; together with as much of her own wardrobe as she could

by any shift do without, were already on a visit to Mr. Figg; which

visit, according to the present look-out, promised to be permanent. This

gown was obliged to be taken out periodically. Had she not appeared

decent on Sundays, her husband would have demanded the reason why.

"You've gave me six shillings on it before," she argued.

"Can't again. Don't mind lending five; next week it'll be but four. It

wasn't never worth more nor ten new," added Mr. Figg loudly, to drown

remonstrances.

"Why, I gave Jellico double that for it! Where's the use of you running

things down?"

As Jellico was in one sense a friend of Mr. Figg's--for he was certainly

the cause of three parts of his pledges being brought to him--the

pawnbroker let the question pass. Mrs. Reed went home with her five

shillings, her eyes taking quite a wild look of distress and glancing

cornerwise on all sides, as if she feared an ambush.

It had not been a favourable year; weather had been bad, strikes were

prevalent, money was dear, labour scarce. Men were ready to snatch the

work out of each other's hands; some were quite unemployed, others less

than they used to be. Of course the homes in Piefinch Cut, and similar

small homes not in the Cut, went on short-commons. And if the women had

been scarcely able to get on before and stave off exposure, any one may

see that that was a feat impracticable now. One of them, Hester Reed,

thought the doubt and difficulty and remorse and dread would kill her.

Dread of her husband's discovering the truth, and dread of his being

called upon to answer for the debt. Unable to keep up her weekly

interest and payments to Mr. Jellico for some time now, the main debt

had only accumulated. She owed him two pounds nineteen shillings. And

two pounds nineteen shillings to a labourer's wife seems as a wide gulf

that can never be bridged over while life shall last. Besides this,

she had been obliged to go into debt at the general shop; _that_ had

added itself up now to eight-and-twenty shillings, and the shop was

threatening procedure. There were other little odds and ends of

liabilities less urgent, a few shillings in all. To those not acquainted

with the simple living of a rural district, this may not sound so very

overwhelming: those who are, know what it means, and how awful was the

strait to which Mrs. Reed (with other wives) had reduced herself.

She had grown so thin as hardly to be able to keep her clothes upon her.

Sleeping and waking, a dead wall crowded with figures, as a huge sum,

seemed to be before her eyes. Lately she had taken to dreaming of

hanging feet downwards over a precipice, held up only by the grasp of

her hands on the edge. Nearly always she awoke with the horror: and it

would seem to her that it was worse to wake up to life and its cares,

than to fall down to death and be at rest from them. Her husband,

perceiving that she appeared very ill, told her she had better speak to

Dr. Duffham.

Carrying home the five shillings in her hand, Mrs. Reed sat down in her

kitchen and wiped her face, damp with pallor. She had begun to ask--not

so much what the ending would be, but how soon it would come. With the

five shillings in her hand she must find food and necessaries until

Saturday night; there was no more credit to be had. And this was only

Wednesday morning. With credit stopped and supplies stopped, her husband

would naturally make inquiries, and all must come out. Hester Reed

wondered whether she should die of the shame--if she had to stay and

face it. Three of the shillings must be paid that afternoon to Ingram

the milkman; he would not be quiet any longer: and the woman cast her

aching eyes round her room, and saw nothing that it was possible to take

away and raise money on.

She had the potatoes on the fire when the children ran in, little

toddling things, from school. Some rashers of bacon lay on the table

ready to be toasted. Reed, earning pretty good wages, had been

accustomed to live well: with careful management he knew they might do

so still. Little did he suspect the state things had got into.

"Tatty dere, mov'er," began the eldest, who was extremely backward in

speaking.

"Tatty dere" meant "Cathy's there;" and the mother looked up from the

bacon. Cathy Parrifer (though nobody called her by her new name, but

Cathy Reed still) stood at the outer gate, in tatters as usual, talking

to some man who had a paper in his hand. Mrs. Reed's heart leaped into

her mouth: she lived in dread of everything. A stranger approaching the

place turned her sick. And now the terror, whose shadow had been so long

looming, was come in reality. Catherine came bounding up the garden to

tell the tale: the man, standing at the gate, was waiting to see her

father come home to dinner to serve him with a summons for the county

court. Mrs. Reed knew at once what it was for: the eight-and-twenty

shillings owing at the general shop. Her face grew white as she sank

into a chair.

"Couldn't you get him to leave the paper with me, Cathy?" she whispered,

insane ideas of getting up the money somehow floating into her brain.

"He won't," answered Cathy. "He means to give that to father personally,

he says, if he stays till night."

Just as many another has felt, in some apparently insurmountable

obstacle, that seemed to be turning their hair grey in the little space

of time that you can peel an apple, felt Mrs. Reed. Light seemed to be

closing, shame and misery and blackness to be opening. Her hands seemed

powerless to put the bacon into the Dutch oven.

But there ensued a respite. A very short one, but still a respite. While

the summons-server was loitering outside, Reed came in through the

back-garden, having got over the stile in Piefinch Lane. It was not

often he chose that way; accident caused him to do it to-day. Mrs. Reed,

really not knowing what she did or said, told Cathy there'd be a morsel

of dinner for her if she liked to stop and eat it. As Cathy was not in

the luck of such offers every day, she remained: and in her good-nature

talked and laughed to divert any suspicion.

But the man at the gate began to smell a rat; perhaps the bacon as well.

Dinner-hour almost over, and no George Reed had come home! He suddenly

thought of the back-entrance, and walked up the front-path to see. Paper

in hand, he gave a thump at the house-door. Reed was about to leave

then: and he went down the path by the man's side, opening the paper.

Mrs. Reed, more like a ghost than a woman, took a glance through the

window.

"I can't face it, Catherine. When I'm gone, you'd better come home here

and do what you can for the children. Tell him all; it's of no good

trying to hide it any longer."

She took her worn old shawl from a press and put her bonnet on; and then

stooped to kiss her children, saying good-bye with a burst of grief.

"But where are you going?" cried the wondering Cathy.

"Anywhere. If I am tempted to do anything desperate, Cathy, tell father

not to think too bad of me, as he might if I was living."

She escaped by the back-door. Catherine let her go, uncertain what to

be at for the best. Her father was striding back to the house up the

garden-path, and the storm was coming. As a preliminary van-guard,

Cathy snatched up the youngest girl and held her on her lap. The

summons-server was calling after Reed, apparently giving some

instructions, and that took up another minute or two; but he came in at

last.

Cathy told as much of the truth as she dared; her father was too angry

for her to venture on all. In his passion he said his wife might go and

be hanged. Cathy answered that she had as good as said it was something

of that she meant to go and do.

But talking and acting are two things; and when it came to be put to

the test, Hester Reed found herself no more capable of entering upon

any desperate course than the rest of us are. And, just as I had been

brought in accidentally to see the beginning, so was I accidentally

brought in at the ending.

We were at home again for the holidays, and I had been over for an

afternoon to the Stirlings'. Events in this world happen very strangely.

Upon setting out to walk back in the cool of the late summer's evening,

I took the way by Dyke Brook instead of either of the two ordinary

roads. Why I chose it I did not know then; I do not now; I never shall

know. When fairly launched into the fields, I asked myself why on earth

I had come that way, for it was the loneliest to be found in the two

counties.

Turning sharp round the dark clump of trees by Dyke Brook (which just

there is wide enough for a pond and as deep as one), I came upon

somebody in a shabby grey straw bonnet, standing on its brink and

looking down into the water.

"Halloa, Mrs. Reed! Is that you?"

Before I forget the woe-stricken face she turned upon me, the start she

gave, I must lose memory. Down she sat on the stump of a tree, and burst

into sobs.

"What is it?" I asked, standing before her.

"Master Johnny, I've been for hours round it, round and round, wanting

the courage to throw myself in; and I haven't done it."

"Just tell me all about the trouble," I said, from the opposite stump,

upon which I took my seat.

And she did tell me. Alone there for so many hours, battling with

herself and Death (it's not wrong to say so), my coming seemed to unlock

all the gates of reticence, and she disclosed to me what I've written

above.

"God knows I never thought to bring it to such a pass as this," she

sobbed. "I went into it without any sense of doing harm. One day, when

I happened to be at Miles Dickon's, Jellico came in with his pack, and

I was tempted to buy some ribbon. I said he might come and show me his

things the next week, and he did, and I bought a gownd and a shawl. I

know now how wrong and blind I was: but it seemed so easy, just to pay

a shilling or two a-week; like having the things for nothing. And from

that time it went on; a'most every Tuesday I took some trifle of him,

maybe a bit o' print for the little ones, or holland for pinafores; and

I gave Cathy a cotton gownd, for she hadn't one to her back. I didn't

buy as some of 'em did, for the sake of show and bedeckings, but useful

things, Master Johnny," she added, sobbing bitterly. "And this has come

of it! and I wish I was at rest in that there blessed water."

"Now, Mrs. Reed! Do you suppose you would be at _rest_?"

"Heaven have mercy on me! It's the thought o' the sin, and of what might

come after, that makes me hold back from it."

Looking at her, shading her eyes with her hand, her elbow on her lap,

and her face one of the saddest for despair I ever saw, I thought of the

strange contrasts there are in the world. For the want of about five

pounds this woman was seeking to end her life; some have done as much

for five-and-twenty thousand.

"I've not a friend in the whole world that could help me," she said.

"But it's not that, Master Johnny; it's the shame on me for having

brought things to such a pass. If the Lord would but be pleased to take

me, and save me from the sin of lifting a hand against my own life!"

"Look here, Mrs. Reed. As to what you call the shame, I suppose we all

have to go in for some sort or another of that kind of thing as we jog

along. As you are _not_ taken, and don't seem likely to be taken, I

should look on that as an intimation that you must live and make the

best of things."

"Live! how, sir? I can't never show myself at home. Reed, he'll have to

go to jail; the law will put him there. I'd not face the world, sir,

knowing it was all for my thoughtless debts."

Could I help her? Ought I to help her? If I went to old Brandon and

begged to have five pounds, why, old Brandon in the end would give it

me, after he had gone on rather hotly for an hour. If I did not help

her, and any harm came to her, what should I----

"You promise me never to think about pools again, Mrs. Reed, except in

the way of eels, and I'll promise to see you through this."

She looked up, more helpless than before. "There ain't nothing to be

done for me, Master Johnny. There's the shame, and the talkin' o' the

neighbours----"

"Yes, you need mind _that_. Why, the neighbours are all in the same

boat!"

"And there's Reed, sir; he'd never forgive me. He'd----"

Of all cries, she interrupted herself with about the worst: something

she saw behind me had frightened her. In another moment she had darted

to the pond, and Reed was holding her back from it.

"Be thee a born fool?" roared Reed. "Dost think thee'st not done enough

harm as it is, but thee must want to cap it by putting theeself in

there? That would mend it, that would!"

She released herself from him, and slipped on the grass, Reed standing

between her and the pond. But he seemed to think better of it, and

stepped aside.

"Jump in, an' thee likes to," said he, continuing to speak in the

familiar home manner. "I once see a woman ducked in the Severn for

pocket-picking, at Worcester races, and she came out all the cooler and

better for't."

"I never thought to bring trouble on you or anybody, George," she

sobbed. "It seems to have come on and on, like a great monster growing

bigger and bigger as you look at him, till I couldn't get away from it."

"Couldn't or wouldn't, which d'ye mean?" retorted Reed. "Why you women

were ever created to bother us, hangs me. I hope you'll find you can

keep the children when I and a dozen more of us are in jail. 'Twon't be

my first visit there."

"Look here, Reed; I've promised to set it right for her. Don't worry

over it."

"I'll not accept help from anybody; not even from you, Master Johnny.

What she has done she must abide by."

"The bargain's made, Reed; you can't break it if you would. Perhaps a

great trouble may come to me some time in my life that I may be glad to

be helped out of. Mrs. Reed will get the money to-morrow, only she need

not tell the parish where she found it."

"Oh, George, let it be so!" she implored through her tears. "If Master

Johnny's good enough to do this, let him. I might save up by little and

little to repay him in time. If you went to jail through me!--I'd rather

die!"

"Will you let it be a lesson to you--and keep out of Jellico's clutches

in future?" he asked, sternly.

"It's a lesson that'll last me to the end of my days," she said, with a

shiver. "Please God, you let Master Johnny get me out o' this trouble,

I'll not fall into another like it."

"Then come along home to the children," said he, his voice softening a

little. "And leave that pond and your folly behind you."

I was, of course, obliged to tell the whole to Mr. Brandon and the

Squire, and they both pitched into me as fiercely as tongues could

pitch. But neither of them was really angry; I saw that. As to the

five pounds, I only wish as much relief could be oftener given with as

little money.