Old Ocock failed in health that winter. He was really old now, was two
or three and sixty; and, with the oncoming of the rains and cold, gusty
winds, various infirmities began to plague him.
"He's done himself rather too well since his marriage," said Mahony in
private. "After being a worker for the greater part of his life, it
would have been better for him to work on to the end."
Yes, that, Mary could understand and agree with. But Richard continued:
"All it means, of course, is that the poor fellow is beginning to
prepare for his last long journey. These aches and pains of his
represent the packing and the strapping without which not even a short
earthly journey can be undertaken. And his is into eternity."
Mary, making lace over a pillow, looked up at this, a trifle
apprehensively. "What things you do say! If any one heard you, they'd
think you weren't very... very religious." Her fear lest Richard's
outspokenness should be mistaken for impiety never left her.
Tilly was plain and to the point. "Like a bear with a sore back that's
what 'e is, since 'e can't get down among his blessed birds. He leads
Tom the life of the condemned, over the feeding of those bantams. As if
the boy could help 'em not laying when they ought!"
At thirty-six Tilly was the image of her mother. Entirely gone was the
slight crust of acerbity that had threatened her in her maiden days,
when, thanks to her misplaced affections, it had seemed for a time as
if the purple prizes of life--love, offers of marriage, a home of her
own--were going to pass her by. She was now a stout, high-coloured
woman with a roar of a laugh, full, yet firm lips, and the whitest of
teeth. Mary thought her decidedly toned down and improved since her
marriage; but Mahony put it that the means Tilly now had at her
disposal were such as to make people shut an eye to her want of
refinement. However that might be, "old Mrs. Ocock" was welcomed
everywhere--even by those on whom her bouncing manners grated. She was
invariably clad in a thick and handsome black silk gown, over which she
wore all the jewellery she could crowd on her person--huge cameo
brooches, ear-drops, rings and bracelets, lockets and chains. Her name
topped subscription-lists, and, having early weaned her old husband of
his dissenting habits, she was a real prop to Archdeacon Long and his
church, taking the chief and most expensive table at tea-meetings, the
most thankless stall at bazaars. She kept open house, too, and gave
delightful parties, where, while some sat at loo, others were free to
turn the rooms upside-down for a dance, or to ransack wardrobes and
presses for costumes for charades. She drove herself and her friends
about in various vehicles, briskly and well, and indulged besides in
many secret charities. Her husband thought no such woman had ever
trodden the earth, and publicly blessed the day on which he first set
eyes on her.
"After the dose I'd 'ad with me first, 'twas a bit of a risk, that I
knew. And it put me off me sleep for a night or two before'and. But my
Tilly's the queen o' women--I say the queen, sir! I've never 'ad a
wrong word from 'er, an' when I go she gits every penny I've got. Why,
I'm jiggered if she didn't stop at 'ome from the Races t'other day, an'
all on my account!"
"Now then, pa, drop it. Or the doctor'll think you've been mixing your
liquors. Give your old pin here and let me poultice it."
He had another sound reason for gratitude. Somewhere in the background
of his house dwelt his two ne'er-do-well sons; Tilly had accepted their
presence uncomplainingly. Indeed she sometimes stood up for Tom,
against his father. "Now, pa, stop nagging at the boy, will you? You'll
never get anything out of 'im that way. Tom's right enough if you know
how to take him. He'll never set the Thames on fire, if that's what you
mean. But I'm thankful, I can tell you, to have a handy chap like him
at my back. If I 'ad to depend on your silly old paws, I'd never get
anything done at all."
And so Tom, a flaxen-haired, sheepish-looking man of something over
thirty, led a kind of go-as-you-please existence about the place, a
jack-of-all-trades--in turn carpenter, whitewasher, paper-hanger--an
expert fetcher and carrier, bullied by his father, sheltered under his
stepmother's capacious wing. "It isn't his fault 'e's never come to
anything. 'E hadn't half a chance. The truth is, Mary, for all they say
to the opposite, men are harder than women--so unforgiving-like. Just
because Tom made a slip once, they've never let 'im forget it, but tied
it to 'is coat-tails for 'im to drag with 'im through life.
Littleminded I call it.--Besides, if you ask me, my dear, it must have
been a case of six of one and half a dozen of the other. Tom as
sedoocer!--can you picture it, Mary? It's enough to make one split."
And with a meaning glance at her friend, Tilly broke out in a
contagious peal of laughter.
As for Johnny--well ... and she shrugged her shoulders. "A bad egg's
bad, Mary, and no amount o' cooking and doctoring 'll sweeten it. But
he didn't make 'imself, did 'e?--and my opinion is, parents should look
to themselves a bit more than they do."
As she spoke, she threw open the door of the little room where Johnny
housed. It was an odd place. The walls were plastered over with
newspaper-cuttings, with old prints from illustrated journals, with
snippets torn off valentines and keepsakes. Stuck one on another, these
formed a kind of loose wallpaper, which stirred in the draught. Tilly
went on: "I see myself to it being kept cleanish; 'e hates the girl to
come bothering round. Oh, just Johnny's rubbish!" For Mary had stooped
curiously to the table which was littered with a queer collection of
objects: matchboxes on wheels; empty reels of cotton threaded on
strings; bits of wood shaped in rounds and squares; boxes made of
paper; dried seaweed glued in patterns on strips of cardboard. "He's
for ever pottering about with 'em. What amusement 'e gets out of it,
only the Lord can tell."
She did not mention the fact, known to Mary, that when Johnny had a
drinking-bout it was she who looked after him, got him comfortably to
bed, and made shift to keep the noise from his father's ears. Yes,
Tilly's charity seemed sheerly inexhaustible.
Again, there was the case of Jinny's children.
For in this particular winter Tilly had exchanged her black silk for a
stuff gown, heavily trimmed with crepe. She was in mourning for poor
Jinny, who had died not long after giving birth to a third daughter.
"Died OF the daughter, in more senses than one," was Tilly's verdict.
John had certainly been extremely put out at the advent of yet another
girl; and the probability was that Jinny had taken his reproaches too
much to heart. However it was, she could not rally; and one day Mary
received a telegram saying that if she wished to see Jinny alive, she
must come at once. No mention was made of Tilly, but Mary ran to her
with the news, and Tilly declared her intention of going, too. "I
suppose I may be allowed to say good-bye to my own sister, even though
I'm not a Honourable?"
"Not that Jinn and I ever really drew together," she continued as the
train bore them over the ranges. "She'd too much of poor pa in 'er. And
I was all ma. Hard luck that it must just be her who managed to get
such a domineering brute for a husband. You'll excuse me, Mary, won't
you?--a domineering brute!"
"And to think I once envied her the match!" she went on meditatively,
removing her bonnet and substituting a kind of nightcap intended to
keep her hair free from dust. "Lauks, Mary, it's a good thing fate
doesn't always take us at our word. We don't know which side our
bread's buttered on, and that's the truth. Why, my dear, I wouldn't
exchange my old boy for all the Honourables in creation!"
They were in time to take leave of Jinny lying white as her pillows
behind the red rep hangings of the bed. The bony parts of her face had
sprung into prominence, her large soft eyes fallen in. John, stalking
solemnly and noiselessly in a long black coat, himself led the two
women to the bedroom, where he left them; they sat down one on each
side of the great fourposter. Jinny hardly glanced at her sister: it
was Mary she wanted, Mary's hand she fumbled for while she told her
trouble. "It's the children, Mary," she whispered. "I can't die happy
because of the children. John doesn't understand them." Jinny's whole
existence was bound up in the three little ones she had brought into
the world.
"Dearest Jinny, don't fret. I'll look after them for you, and take care
of them," promised Mary wiping away her tears.
"I thought so," said the dying woman, relieved, but without gratitude:
it seemed but natural to her, who was called upon to give up
everything, that those remaining should make sacrifices. Her fingers
plucked at the sheet. "John's been good to me," she went on, with
closed eyes. "But... if it 'adn't been for the children ... yes, the
children.... I think I'd 'a' done better--" her speech lapsed oddly,
after her years of patient practice--"to 'ave taken ... to 'a'
taken"--the name remained unspoken.
Tilly raised astonished eyebrows at Mary. "Wandering!" she telegraphed
in lip-language, forming the word very largely and distinctly; for
neither knew of Jinny having had any but her one glorious chance.
Tilly's big heart yearned over her sister's forlorn little ones; they
could be heard bleating like lambs for the mother to whom till now they
had never cried in vain. Her instant idea was to gather all three up in
her arms and carry them off to her own roomy, childless home, where she
would have given them a delightful, though not maybe a particularly
discriminating upbringing. But the funeral over, the blinds raised, the
two ladies and the elder babes clad in the stiff, expensive mourning
that befitted the widower's social position, John put his foot down:
and to Mary was extremely explicit: "Under no circumstances will I
permit Matilda to have anything to do with the rearing of my children
excellent creature though she be!"
On the other hand, he would not have been unwilling for Mary to mother
them. This, of course, was out of the question: Richard had accustomed
himself to Trotty, but would thank you, she knew, for any fresh
encroachment on his privacy. Before leaving, however, she promised to
sound him on the plan of placing Trotty as a weekly boarder at a Young
Ladies' Seminary, and taking the infant in her place. For it came out
that John intended to set Zara--Zara, but newly returned from a second
voyage to England and still sipping like a bee at the sweets of various
situations--at the head of his house once more. And Mary could not
imagine Zara rearing a baby.
Equally hard was it to understand John not having learnt wisdom from
his two previous failures to live with his sister. But, in seeking
tactfully to revive his memory, she ran up against such an ingrained
belief in the superiority of his own kith and kin that she was baffled,
and could only fold her hands and hope for the best.
"Besides, Jane's children are infinitely more tractable than poor
Emma's," was John's parting shot.--Strange, thought Mary, how attached
John was to his second family.
He had still another request to make of her. The reports he received of
the boy Johnny, now a pupil at the Geelong Grammar School, grew worse
from term to term. It had become clear to him that he was unfortunate
enough to possess an out-and-out dullard for a son. Regretfully giving
up, therefore, the design he had cherished of educating Johnny for the
law, he had resolved to waste no more good money on the boy, but to
take him, once he was turned fifteen, into his own business. Young
John, however, had proved refractory, expressing a violent antipathy to
the idea of office-life. "It is here that I should be glad of another
opinion--and I turn to you, Mary, my dear. Jane was of no use whatever
in such matters, none whatever, being, and very properly so, entirely
wrapped up in her own children." So Mary arranged to break her homeward
journey at Geelong, for the purpose of seeing and summing up her nephew.
Johnny--he was Jack at school, but that, of course, his tomfools of
relations couldn't be expected to remember--Johnny was waiting on the
platform when the train steamed in. "Oh, what a bonny boy!" said Mary
to herself. "All poor Emma's good looks."
Johnny had been kicking his heels disconsolately: another of these
wretched old women coming down to jaw him! He wished every one of them
at the bottom of the sea. However he pulled himself together and went
forward to greet his aunt: he was not in the least bashful. And as they
left the station he took stock of her, out of the tail of his eye. With
a growing approval: this one at any rate he needn't feel ashamed of;
and she was not so dreadfully old after all. Perhaps she mightn't turn
out quite such a wet blanket as the rest; though, from experience, he
couldn't connect any pleasure with relatives' visits: they were nasty
pills that had to be swallowed. He feared and disliked his father; Aunt
Zara had been sheerly ridiculous, with her frills and simpers--the boys
had imitated her for weeks after--and once, most shameful of all, his
stepmother had come down and publicly wept over him. His cheeks still
burnt at the remembrance; and he had been glad to hear that she was
dead: served her jolly well right! But this Aunt Mary seemed a horse of
another colour; and he did not sneak her into town by a back way, as he
had planned to do before seeing her.
Greatly as Mary might admire the tall fair lad by her side, she found
herself at a loss how to deal with him, the mind of a schoolboy of
thirteen being a closed book to her. Johnny looked demure and answered
"Yes, Aunt Mary," to everything she said; but this was of small
assistance in getting at the real boy inside.
Johnny had no intention, in the beginning, of taking her into his
often-betrayed and badly bruised confidence. However a happy instinct
led her to suggest a visit to a shop that sold brandy-snaps and
gingerbeer; and this was too much for his strength of mind. Golly,
didn't he have a tuck-in! And a whole pound of bull's-eyes to take back
with him to school!
It was over the snaps, with an earth-brown moustache drawn round his
fresh young mouth, the underlip of which swelled like a ripe cherry,
that he blurted out: "I say, Aunt Mary, DON'T let the pater stick me in
that beastly old office of his. I ... I want to go to sea."
"Oh, but Johnny! Your father would never consent to that, I'm sure."
"I don't see why not," returned the boy in an aggrieved voice. "I hate
figures and father knows it. I tell you I mean to go to sea." And as he
said it his lip shot out, and suddenly, for all his limpid blue eyes
and flaxen hair, it was his father's face that confronted Mary.
"He wouldn't think it respectable enough, dear. He wants you to rise
higher in the world, and to make money. You must remember who he is."
"Bosh!" said Johnny. "Look at Uncle Ned ... and Uncle Jerry ... and the
governor himself. He didn't have to sit in a beastly old hole of an
office when he was my age."
"That was quite different," said Mary weakly. "And as for your Uncle
Jerry, Johnny--why, afterwards he was as glad as could be to get into
an office at all."
"Well, I'd sooner be hanged!" retorted young John. But the next minute
flinging away dull care, he inquired briskly: "Can you play tipcat,
Aunt Mary?" And vanquished by her air of kindly interest, he gave her
his supreme confidence. "I say, don't peach, will you, but I've got a
white rat. I keep it in a locker under my bed."
A NICE FRANK HANDSOME BOY, wrote Mary. DON'T BE TOO HARD ON HIM, JOHN.
HIS GREAT WISH IS TO TRAVEL AND SEE THE WORLD--OR AS HE PUTS IT, TO GO
TO SEA. MIGHTN'T IT BE A GOOD THING TO HUMOUR HIM IN THIS? A TASTE OF
THE HARDSHIPS OF LIFE WOULD SOON CURE HIM OF ANY SUCH FANCIES.
"Stuff and nonsense!" said John the father, and threw the letter from
him. "I didn't send Mary there to let the young devil get round her
like that." And thereupon he wrote to the Headmaster that the screw was
to be applied to Johnny as never before. This was his last chance. If
it failed, and his next report showed no improvement, he would be taken
away without further ado and planked down under his father's nose. No
son of his should go to sea, he was damned if they should! For, like
many another who has yielded to the wandering passion in his youth,
John had small mercy on it when it reared its head in his descendants.