in the wrong by making my wife cry, when there was a knock at the door.
"Come in," I said, and a fellow-lodger put in his head.
"Are you good at works, Mr Smith?" he said.
"What works?" I said; "fireworks--gasworks?"
"No, no; I mean works of things as goes with wheels and springs."
"Middling," I said, for I was fond of pulling clocks to pieces, and
trying to invent.
"I wish you'd come and look at this sewing machine of mine, for I can't
get it to go."
Sewing machines were newish in those days, and I got up to have a look
at it, and after about an hour's fiddling about, I began to see a bit
the reason why--the purpose, you know, of all the screws and cranks and
wheels; I found out too why our neighbour's wife--who was a dressmaker,
and had just started one--could not get it to go; and before night, by
thinking, and putting this and that together, had got her in the way of
working it pretty steadily, though with my clumsy fingers I couldn't
have done it myself.
I had my bit of dinner and tea with those people, and they forced
half-a-crown upon me as well, and I went back feeling like a new man, so
refreshing had been that bit of work.
"There," said my wife, "I told you something would come."
"Well, so you did," I said; "but the something is rather small."
But the very next day--as we were living in the midst of people who were
fast taking to sewing machines--if the folks from the next house didn't
want me to look at theirs; and then the news spreading, as news will
spread, that there was somebody who could cobble and tinker machinery,
without putting people to the expense that makers would, if the jobs
didn't come in fast, so that I was obliged to get files and drills and a
vice--regular set of tools by degrees; and at last I was as busy as a
bee from morning to night, and whistling over my work as happy as a
king.
Of course every now and then I got a breakage, but I could generally get
over that by buying a new wheel, or spindle, or what not. Next we got
to supplying shuttles, and needles, and machine cotton. Soon after I
bought a machine of a man who was tired of it. Next week I sold it at a
good profit; bought another, and another, and sold them; then got to
taking them and money in exchange for new ones; and one way and the
other became a regular big dealer, as you see.
Hundred? Why, new, second-hand, and with those being repaired upstairs
by the men, I've got at least three hundred on the premises, while if
anybody had told me fifteen years ago that I should be doing this, I
should have laughed at him.
That pretty girl showing and explaining the machine to a customer?
That's Ruth, that is. No, not my daughter--yet, but she soon will be.
Poor girl, I always think of her and of bread thrown upon the waters at
the same time.
Curious idea that, you will say, but I'll tell you why.
In our trade we have strange people to deal with. Most of 'em are poor,
and can't buy a machine right off, but are ready and willing to pay so
much a week. That suits them, and it suits me, if they'll only keep the
payments up to the end.
You won't believe me, perhaps, but some of them don't do that. Some of
them leave their lodgings, and I never see them again: and the most
curious part is that the sewing machine disappears with them, and I
never see that again. Many a one, too, that has disappeared like that,
I do see again--perhaps have it brought here by some one to be repaired,
or exchanged for a bigger, or for one of a different maker; for if you
look round here, you'll see I've got all kinds--new and old, little
domestics and big trades--there, you name any maker, and see if I don't
bring you out one of his works.
Well, then I ask these people where they got the machine--for I always
know them by the number--it turns out that they've bought it through an
advertisement, or at a sale-room, or maybe out of a pawnbroker's shop.
But I've had plenty of honest people to deal with too--them as have come
straightforward, and told me they couldn't keep up their payments, and
asked me to take their machine back, when I'd allow them as much as I
thought fair, and 'twould be an end of a pleasant transaction.
The way I've been bitten though, by some folks, has made me that
case-hardened that sometimes I've wondered whether I'd got any heart
left, and the wife's had to interfere, telling me I've been spoiled with
prosperity, and grown unfeeling.
It was she made me give way about Ruth, for one day, after having had my
bristles all set up by finding out that three good sound machines, by
best makers, had gone nobody knew where, who should come into the shop
but a lady-like woman in very shabby widow's weeds. She wanted a
machine for herself and daughter to learn, and said she had heard that I
would take the money by instalments. Now just half-an-hour before, by
our shop clock, I had made a vow that I'd give up all that part of the
trade, and I was very rough with her--just as I am when I'm cross--and
said, "No."
"But you will if the lady gives security," says my wife hastily.
The poor woman gave such a woe-begone look at us that it made me more
out of temper than ever, for I could feel that if I stopped I should
have to let her have one at her own terms. And so it was; for, there,
if I didn't let her have a first-class machine, as good as new, she only
paying seven and six down, and undertaking to pay half-a-crown a week,
and no more security than nothing!
To make it worse, too, if I didn't send the thing home without charge!--
Luke going with it, for he was back at home now keeping my books, being
grown into a fine young fellow of five-and-twenty; and I sat and growled
the whole of the rest of the day, calling myself all the weak-minded
idiots under the sun, and telling the wife that business was going to
the dogs, and I should be ruined.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Tom," she said.
"So I am," says I. "I didn't think I could be such a fool."
"Such a fool as to do a good kind action to one who was evidently a lady
born, and come down in the world!"
"Yes," I says, "to living in Bennett's Place, where I've sunk no less
than ten machines in five years."
"Yes," says the wife, "and cleared hundreds of pounds. Tom, I'm ashamed
of you--you a man with twenty workmen busy upstairs, a couple of
thousand pounds' worth of stock, and in the bank--"
"Hold your tongue, will you!" I said roughly, and went out into the
shop to try and work it all off.
Luke came back just after, looking very strange, and I was at him
directly.
"Where's the seven and six," I said, angrily.
He didn't answer, but put three half-crowns down on the desk, took out
the book, made his entries--date of delivery, first payment, when the
other's due, and all the rest of it--and was then going into the house.
"Mind," I says, sharply, "those payments are to be kept up to the day;
and to-morrow you go to Rollys, who live nearly opposite to 'em, and
tell 'em to keep an eye on the widow, or we shall lose another machine."
"You needn't be afraid, father," he says coldly; "they're honest enough,
only poor."
I was just in that humour that I wanted to quarrel with somebody, and
that did it.
"When I ask you for your opinion, young man, you give it me; and when I
tell you to do a thing, you do it," I says, in as savage a way as ever I
spoke to the lad. "You go over to-morrow and tell Rollys to keep a
strict look-out on those people--do you hear?"
"Father," he says, looking me full in the face, "I couldn't insult them
by doing such a thing," when without another word he walked quietly out
of the shop, leaving me worse than ever.
For that boy had never spoken to me like that before, and I should have
gone after him feeling mad like, only some people came in, and I didn't
see him again till evening, and a good thing too, for I'm sure I should
have said all sorts of things to the boy, that I should have been sorry
for after. And there I was fuming and fretting about, savage with
everybody, giving short answers, snapping at the wife, and feeling as a
man does feel when he knows that he has been in the wrong and hasn't the
heart to go and own it.
It was about eight o'clock that I was sitting by the parlour fire, with
the wife working and very quiet, when Luke came in from the workshop
with a book under his arm, for he had been totting up the men's
piecework, and what was due to them; and the sight of him made me feel
as if I must quarrel.
He saw it too, but he said nothing, only put the accounts away and began
to read.
The wife saw the storm brewing, and she knew how put out I was, for I
had not lit my pipe, nor yet had my evening nap, which I always have
after tea. So she did what she knew so well how to do--filled my pipe,
forced it into my hand, and just as I was going to dash it to pieces in
the ashes, she gave me one of her old looks, kissed me on the forehead,
as with one hand she pressed me back into my chair, and then with the
other she lit a splint and held it to my tobacco.
I was done. She always gets over me like that; and after smoking in
silence for half-an-hour, I was lying back, with my eyes closed,
dropping off to sleep, when my wife said--what had gone before I hadn't
heard--
"Yes, he's asleep now."
That woke me up of course, and if I didn't lie there shamming and heard
all they said in a whisper!
"How came you to make him more vexed than he was, Luke?" says the wife;
and he told her.
"I couldn't do it, mother," he said, excitedly. "It was heart-breaking.
She's living in a wretched room there with her daughter; and, mother,
when I saw her I felt as if--there, I can't tell you."
"Go on, Luke," she said.
"They're half-starved," he said in a husky way. "Oh, mother! it's
horrible. Such a sweet, beautiful girl, and the poor woman herself
dying almost with some terrible disease."
The wife sighed.
"They told me," he went on, "how hard they had tried to live by ordinary
needlework, and failed, and that as a last resource they had tried to
get the machine."
"Poor things!" says the wife; "but are you sure the mother was a lady?"
"A clergyman's widow," says Luke hastily; "there isn't a doubt about it.
Poor girl! and they've got to learn to use it before it will be of any
use."
"Poor _girl_, Luke?" says the wife softly; and I saw through my
eyelashes that she laid a hand upon his arm, and was looking curiously
at him, when if he didn't cover his face with his hands, rest his elbows
on the table, and give a low groan! Then the old woman got up, stood
behind his chair, and began playing with and caressing his hair like the
foolish old mother would.
"Mother," he says suddenly, "will you go and see them?"
She didn't answer for a minute, only stood looking down at him, and then
said softly--
"They paid you the first money?"
"No," he says hotly. "I hadn't the heart to take it."
"Then that money you paid was yours, Luke?"
"Yes, mother," he says simply; and those two stopped looking one at the
another, till the wife bent down and kissed him, holding his head
afterwards, for a few moments, between her hands; for she always did
worship that chap, our only one; and then I closed my eyes tight, and
went on breathing heavy and thinking.
For something like a new revelation had come upon me. I knew Luke was
five-and-twenty, and that I was fifty-four, but he always seemed like a
boy to me, and here was I waking up to the fact that he was a grown man,
and that he was thinking and feeling as I first thought and felt when I
saw his mother, nigh upon eight-and-twenty years ago.
I lay back, thinking and telling myself I was very savage with him for
deceiving me, and that I wouldn't have him and his mother laying plots
together against me, and that I wouldn't stand by and see him make a
fool of himself with the first pretty girl he sets eyes on, when he
might marry Maria Turner, the engineer's daughter, and have a nice bit
of money with her, to put into the business, and then be my partner.
"No," I says; "if you plot together, I'll plot all alone," and then I
pretended to wake up, took no notice, and had my supper.
I kept rather gruff the next morning, and made myself very busy about
the place, and I dare say I spoke more sharply than usual, but the wife
and Luke were as quiet as could be; and about twelve I went out, with a
little oil-can and two or three tools in my pocket.
It was not far to Bennett's Place, and on getting to the right house I
asked for Mrs Murray, and was directed to the second-floor, where, as I
reached the door, I could hear the clicking of my sewing machine, and
whoever was there was so busy over it that she did not hear me knock; so
I opened the door softly, and looked in upon as sad a scene as I shall
ever, I dare say, see.
There in the bare room sat, asleep in her chair, the widow lady who came
about the machine, and I could see that in her face which told plainly
enough that the pain and suffering she must have been going through for
years would soon be over; and, situated as she was, it gave me a kind of
turn.
"It's no business of yours," I said to myself roughly; and I turned then
to look at who it was bending over my machine.
I could see no face, only a slight figure in rusty black; and a pair of
busy white hands were trying very hard to govern the thing, and to learn
how to use it well.
"So that's the gal, is it?" I said to myself. "Ah! Luke, my boy,
you've got to the silly calf age, and I dare say--"
I got no farther, for at that moment the girl started, and turned upon
me a timid, wondering face, that made my heart give a queer throb, and I
couldn't take my eyes off her.
"Hush!" she said softly, holding up her hand; and I saw it was as thin
and transparent as if she had been ill.
"My name's Smith," I said, taking out a screwdriver. "My machine: how
does it go? Thought I'd come and see."
Her face lit up in a moment, and she came forward eagerly.
"I'm so glad you've come," she said, "I can't quite manage this."
She pointed to the thread regulator, and the next minute I was showing
her that it was too tight, and somehow, in a gentle timid way, the
little witch quite got over me, and I stopped there two hours helping
her, till her eyes sparkled with delight, as she found out how easily
she could now make the needle dart in and out of some hard material.
"Do you think you can do it now?" I said.
"Oh, yes, I think so; I am so glad you came."
"So am I," says I gruffly; "it will make it all the easier for you to
earn the money, and pay for it."
"And I will work so hard," she said earnestly.
"That you will, my dear," I says in spite of myself, for I felt sure it
wasn't me speaking, but something in me. "She been ill long?" I said,
nodding towards her mother.
"Months," she said, with the tears starting in her pretty eyes; "but,"
she added brightly, "I shall have enough with this to get her good
medicines and things she can fancy;" and as I looked at her, something
in me said--
"God bless you, my dear! I hope you will;" and the next minute I was
going downstairs, calling myself an old fool.
They thought I didn't know at home, but I did. There was the wife going
over and over again to Bennett's Place; and all sorts of little nice
things were made and taken there. I often used to see them talking
about it, but I took no notice; and that artful scoundrel, my boy Luke,
used to pay the half-crown every week out of his own pocket, after
pretending to go and fetch it from the widow's.
And all the time I told myself I didn't like it, for I could see that
Luke was changed, and always thinking of that girl--a girl not half good
enough for him. I remembered being poor myself, and I hated poverty,
and I used to speak harshly to Luke and the wife, and feel very bitter.
At last came an afternoon when I knew there was something wrong. The
wife had gone out directly after dinner, saying she was going to see a
sick woman--I knew who it was, bless you!--and Luke was fidgeting about,
not himself; and at last he took his hat and went out.
"They might have confided in me," I said bitterly, but all the time I
knew that I wouldn't let them. "They'll be spending money--throwing it
away. I know they've spent pounds on them already."
At last I got in such a way that I called down our foreman, left him in
charge, and took my hat and went after them.
Everything was very quiet in Bennett's Place, for a couple of dirty
dejected-looking women, one of whom was in arrears to me, had sent the
children that played in the court right away because of the noise, and
were keeping guard so that they should not come back.
I went up the stairs softly, and all was very still, only as I got
nearer to the room I could hear a bitter wailing cry, and then I opened
the door gently and went in.
Luke was there, standing with his head bent by the sewing machine; the
wife sat in a chair, and on her knees, with her face buried in the
wife's lap, was the poor girl, crying as if her little heart would
break; while on the bed, with all the look of pain gone out of her face,
lay the widow--gone to meet her husband where pain and sorrow are no
more.
I couldn't see very plainly, for there was a mist-like before my eyes;
but I know Luke flushed up as he took a step forward, as if to protect
the girl, and the wife looked at me in a frightened way.
But there was no need, for something that wasn't me spoke, and that in a
very gentle way, as I stepped forward, raised the girl up, and kissed
her pretty face before laying her little helpless head upon my shoulder,
and smoothing her soft brown hair.
"Mother," says that something from within me, "I think there's room in
the nest at home for this poor, forsaken little bird. Luke, my boy,
will you go and fetch a cab? Mother will see to what wants doing here."
My boy gave a sob as he caught my hand in his, and the next moment he
did what he had not done for years--kissed me on the cheek--before
running out of the room, leaving me with my darling nestling in my
breast.
I said "my darling," for she has been the sunshine of our home ever
since--a pale, wintry sunshine while the sorrow was fresh, but spring
and summer now.
Why, bless her! look at her. I've felt ashamed sometimes to think that
she, a lady by birth, should come down to such a life, making me--well,
no, it's us now, for Luke's partner--no end of money by her clever ways.
But she's happy, thinking her husband that is to be the finest fellow
under the sun; and let me tell you there's many a gentleman not so well
off as my boy will be, even if the money has all come out of a queer
trade.
CHAPTER SIX.
A BIRD IN A CAGE.
My visits to Burt's Buildings resulted in others to the neighbourhood
where I made the acquaintance of Uncle Bill, as he was generally called
by the swarming children about the place; not from any relationship, in
fact for no reason at all that I could discover. One woman said it was
because he was lame; another thought he was like an uncle, but all the
same the little man often met me on my rounds, at first to look at me
very dubiously, but ever after to pull his pipe out of his mouth, tap
the bowl upon the pavement and thrust it into his pocket, out of
compliment to me as a lady who might not like smoke.
"'Taint in a woman's natur', mum, to like smoke," he said, when I hinted
that he need not put out his pipe, and no matter when we met I always
received from him this bit of politeness.
Rumour reached me one morning, after a short visit to the country, that
a dilapidated tenement or two, in this deplorable neighbourhood had
fallen down, and on making my way to the place, the first person I
encountered was Uncle Bill, pipe in mouth, and with a half-quartern loaf
in one hand, and a rasher of bacon in the other.
Before I could say a word the badly wrapped up rasher was thrust into
his coat pocket, the pipe extinguished, and thrust in after it, and a
smile and nod of recognition were awarded to me.
"Houses falling, mum? Oh! yes, it's as fact as fact. Come down without
a moment's warning, afore you know'd where you were, I can tell you. I
had a narrow escape."
"What, were you there?"
"To be sure I was. Where should I be if I warn't at home. It was at my
old house. I'm in here, now," he continued, pointing.
"There was the house up, as may be, lars night, and then, in the
morning, it was a tumble-down heap o' smash, with broken bedsteads, and
chairs, and chesties of drawers, and all sorts, tumbled together into a
mash, with bricks and mortar, and laths and plaster, and beams. It's a
mussy as no more wasn't killed; for there was, counting myself,
four-and-twenty people as lived in that house, and many had to run out
for their lives. People think that houses will stand for ever; and when
a house ain't fit for nothing else but pulling down, some one buys the
lease, puts a little whitewash on, and then lets all the rooms out at
four or five shillings a week to poor people, while the old house groans
and grumbles, and shakes on its pins awful. To-night, perhaps, Braggs,
the cobbler in the back room, will have a row with his wife, and they'll
be tearing about till the place shivers again. Night afore, perhaps it
was Dennis Murphy and his missus getting a bit excited over a quartern
of gin, and then they must get dancing up in their attic till other
people's heads get plastered with hits o' whitewash as falls off the
ceilings--only 'taint whitewash now, because it's turned t'other colour.
Then the old house begins to show its sore places, and you can see an
elbow shoving out here, and a crack there; first-floor winder sill's
down on one side, and Mrs Tibbs out of the second-floor back, when she
pays her rent, tells the landlord as her door sticks so that she can't
open and shet it; and then, as soon as Mrs Sykes in the second-floor
front knows as her neighbour has spoken, she tells the landlord as her
window won't move. Then the first-floors say as there's a crack across
their ceiling, and black dust falls out inter the bread and butter. And
then what d'yer think the landlord does--eh? Get it all seen to, and
shored up, and so on--eh? You'd think so, now, wouldn't you? But he
don't; for I'll tell you what he does--he swears, that's what he does,
and says as soon as ever people will pay up their rent and make all
square, he'll do the house up.
"That's a thing as he can promise safe enough, for there's no fear of
that coming to pass; for they're all more or less behind, bless you, and
he holds 'em as tight as wax. `Tell you what it is,' he says, one day,
`them as don't like the place had better leave it, and if I have any
more complaints I'll raise the rent.'
"That was a quieter directly, you see; for they were all more or less in
his power from being behindhand. Houses and lodgings for poor people
are dreadful scarce in London, and landlords and tenants knows it; and
folks will put up with anything sooner than have to move. And that's
just how it was in this house--people grumbled and bore it; till one
morning down it came with a rush, and three or four were killed dead,
and ever so many cut up all sorts of ways. But, there, that ain't
nothing new, bless you. We are used to that sort of thing in these
courts.
"It was about seven o'clock in the morning, I should say, and
fortunately some had got up and gone to work; but working at home on the
piece, I wasn't so particular to half an hour; but I was lying there
thinking of rousing out, when all at once I heard a sharp, loud crack,
and then another and another, followed by a curious rushing noise, and
by a shriek or two. For a moment or two I thought it was thunder, and I
lay quite still; then came a rattling down of rubbish, and I saw the end
wall of my room seem to bulge gently out, when there was a fierce
rumbling crash, and I was hanging to a broken beam sticking out of the
wall, clinging to it with bleeding hands, ready to drop each moment on
to the jagged pile of ruins underneath me--a good thirty feet, and from
which now came slowly up a thick cloud of dust, and from out of it every
now and then a shriek or a groan.
"I dare say, you know, at another time I could have hung there some
minutes, but now a terrible sort of fear came over me which made me
weak; and after looking about as well as I could for help, to see
nothing but the dust rising from the heap under me, as I hung over the
gap where the house had stood a few minutes before--after looking round
once or twice, I seemed to shudder like, and then down I went crash on
to the ruins, to be one of the first picked up.