CHRONOLOGY.--The Hard Cash sailed from Canton months before the boat
race at Henley recorded in Chapter I., but it landed in Barkington a
fortnight after the last home event I recorded in its true series.
Now this fortnight, as it happens, was fruitful of incidents, and must
be dealt with at once. After that, “Love” and “Cash,” the converging
branches of this story, will flow together in one stream.
Alfred Hardie kept faith with Mrs. Dodd, and, by an effort she
appreciated, forbore to express his love for Julia except by the pen. He
took in Lloyd's shipping news, and got it down by rail, in hopes there
would be something about the _Agra;_ then he could call at Albion Villa.
Mrs. Dodd had given him that loophole: meantime he kept moping for an
invitation, which never came.
Julia was now comparatively happy, and so indeed was Alfred; but
then the male of our species likes to be superlatively happy, not
comparatively; and that Mrs. Dodd forgot or perhaps had not observed.
One day Sampson was at Albion Villa, and Alfred knew it. Now, though
it was a point of honour with poor Alfred not to hang about after Julia
until her father's return, he had a perfect right to lay in wait for
Sampson and hear something about her; and he was so deep in love that
even a word at second-hand from her lips was a drop of dew to his heart.
So he strolled up towards the villa. He had nearly reached it, when
a woman ran past him making the most extraordinary sounds: I can only
describe it as screaming under her breath. Though he only saw her back,
he recognised Mrs. Maxley. One back differeth from another, whatever
you may have been told to the contrary in novels and plays. He called
to her: she took no notice, and darted wildly through the gate of Albion
Villa. Alfred's curiosity was excited, and he ventured to put his head
over the gate. But Mrs. Maxley had disappeared.
Alfred had half a mind to go in and inquire if anything was the matter:
it would be a good excuse.
While he hesitated, the dining-room window was thrown violently up, and
Sampson looked out. “Hy! Hardie! my good fellow! for Heaven's sake a
fly, and a fast one!”
It was plain something very serious had occurred: so Alfred flew towards
the nearest fly-stand. On the way, he fell in with a chance fly drawn up
at a public-house; he jumped on the box and drove rapidly towards Albion
Villa. Sampson was hobbling to meet him--he had sprained his ankle or
would not have asked for a conveyance--to save time he got up beside
Alfred, and told him to drive hard to Little Friar Street. On the way he
explained hurriedly: Mrs. Maxley had burst in on him at Albion Villa to
say her husband was dying in torment: and indeed the symptoms she
gave were alarming, and, if correct, looked very like lockjaw. But her
description had been cut short by a severe attack, which choked her and
turned her speechless and motionless, and white to the very lips.
“'Oho,' sis I, 'brist-pang!' And at such a time, ye know. But these
women are as unseasonable as they are unreasonable. Now, angina pictoris
or brist-pang is not curable through the lungs, nor the stomick, nor the
liver, nor the stays, nor the saucepan, as the bunglintinkerindox of the
schools pretind, but only through that mighty mainspring the Brain; and
instid of going meandering to the Brain round by the stomick, and so
giving the wumman lots o' time to die first, which is the scholastic
practice, I wint at the Brain direct, took a puff o' chlorofm put m' arm
round her neck, laid her back in a chair--she didn't struggle, for, when
this disorrder grips ye, ye cant move hand nor foot--and had my lady
into the land of Nod in half a minute; thin off t' her husband; so
here's th' Healer between two stools--spare the whipcord, spoil the
knacker!--it would be a good joke if I was to lose both pashints for
want of a little unbeequity, wouldn't it--Lash the lazy vagabin!--Not
that I care: what interest have I in their lives? they never pay: but ye
see custom's second nature; an d'Ive formed a vile habit; I've got to
be a Healer among the killers: an d'a Triton among--the millers. Here we
are at last, Hiven be praised.” And he hopped into the house faster than
most people can run on a good errand. Alfred flung the reins to a cad
and followed him.
The room was nearly full of terrified neighbours: Sampson shouldered
them all roughly out of his way, and there, on a bed, lay Maxley's gaunt
figure in agony.
His body was drawn up by the middle into an arch, and nothing touched
the bed but the head and the heels; the toes were turned back in the
most extraordinary contortion, and the teeth set by the rigour of the
convulsion, and in the man's white face and fixed eyes were the horror
and anxiety, that so often show themselves when the body feels itself in
the grip of Death.
Mr. Osmond the surgeon was there; he had applied a succession of hot
cloths to the pit of the stomach, and was trying to get laudanum down
the throat, but the clenched teeth were impassable.
He now looked up and said politely, “Ah! Dr. Sampson, I am glad to
see you here. The seizure is of a cataleptic nature, I apprehend. The
treatment hitherto has been hot epithems to the abdomen, and----”
Here Sampson, who had examined the patient keenly, and paid no
more attention to Osmond than to a fly buzzing, interrupted him as
unceremoniously--
“Poisoned,” said he philosophically.
“Poisoned!!” screamed the people.
“Poisoned!” cried Mr. Osmond, in whose little list of stereotyped
maladies poisoned had no place. “Is there any one you have reason to
suspect?”
“I don't suspect, nor conject, sir: I know. The man is poisoned, the
substance strychnine. Now stand out of the way you gaping gabies, and
let me work. Hy, young Oxford! you are a man: get behind and hold both
his arms for your life! That's you!”
He whipped off his coat laid hold of Osmond's epithems, chucked them
across the room, saying, “You may just as well squirt rose-water at a
house on fire;” drenched his handkerchief with chloroform, sprang upon
the patient like a mountain cat and chloroformed him with all his might.
Attacked so skilfully and resolutely, Maxley resisted little for so
strong a man; but the potent poison within fought virulently: as a
proof, the chloroform had to be renewed three times before it could
produce any effect. At last the patient yielded to the fumes and became
insensible.
Then the arched body subsided and the rigid muscles relaxed and turned
supple. Sampson kneaded the man like dough by way of comment.
“It is really very extraordinary,” said Osmond.
“Mai--dearr--sirr, nothing's extraornary t' a man that knows the reason
of iverything.”
He then inquired if any one in the room had noticed at what intervals of
time the pains came on.
“I am sorry to say it is continuous,” said Osmond.
“Mai--dearr--sirr, nothing on airth is continuous: iverything has
paroxysms and remissions--from a toothache t' a cancer.”
He repeated his query in various forms, till at last a little girl
squeaked out, “If--_you_---please, sir, the throes do come about every
ten minutes, for I was a looking at the clock; I carries father his
dinner at twelve.”
“If you please, ma'am, there's half a guinea for you for not being such
an' ijjit as the rest of the world, especially the Dockers.” And he
jerked her half a sovereign.
A stupor fell on the assembly. They awoke from it to examine the coin,
and see if it was real, or only yellow air.
Maxley came to and gave a sigh of relief. When he had been insensible,
yet out of pain, nearly eight minutes by the clock, Sampson chloroformed
him again. “I'll puzzle ye, my friend strych,” said he. “How will ye get
your perriodical paroxysms when the man is insensible? The Dox say y'
act direct on the spinal marrow. Well, there's the spinal marrow where
you found it just now. Act on it again, my lad! I give ye leave--if ye
can. Ye can't; bekase ye must pass through the Brain to get there: and
I occupy the Brain with a swifter ajint than y' are, and mean to keep y'
out of it till your power to kill evaporates, being a vigitable.”
With this his spirits mounted, and he indulged in a harmless and
favourite fiction: he feigned the company were all males and medical
students, Osmond included, and he the lecturer. “Now, jintlemen,” said
he, “obsairve the great Therey of the Perriodeecity and Remitteney
of all disease, in conjunckshin with its practice. All diseases have
paroxysms and remissions, which occur at intervals; sometimes it's a
year, sometimes a day, an hour, ten minutes; but whatever th' interval,
they are true to it: they keep time. Only when the disease is retirin,
the remissions become longer, the paroxysms return at a greater
interval, and just the revairse when the pashint is to die. This,
jintlemen, is man's life from the womb to the grave: the throes that
precede his birth are remittent like ivery thing else, but come at
diminished intervals when he has really made up his mind to be born (his
first mistake, sirs, but not his last); and the paroxysms of his mortal
disease come at shorter intervals when he is really goon off the hooks:
but still chronometrically; just as watches keep time whether they go
fast or slow. Now, jintlemen, isn't this a beautiful Therey?”
“Oh, mercy! Oh, good people help me! Oh, Jesus Christ have pity on me!”
And the sufferer's body was bent like a bow, and his eyes filled with
horror, and his toes pointed at his chin.
The Doctor hurled himself on the foe. “Come,” said he, “smell to this,
lad! That's right! He is better already, jintlemen, or he couldn't howl,
ye know. Deevil a howl in um before I gave um puff chlorofm. Ah! would
ye? would ye?”
“Oh! oh! oh! oh! ugh!----ah!”
The Doctor got off the insensible body, and resumed his lecture calmly,
like one who has disposed of some childish interruption. “And now to
th' application of the Therey: If the poison can reduce the tin minutes'
interval to five minutes, this pashint will die; and if I can get the
tin minutes up t' half hour, this pashint will live. Any way, jintlemen,
we won't detain y' unreasonably: the case shall be at an end by one
o'clock.”
On hearing this considerate stipulation, up went three women's aprons to
their eyes.
“Alack! poor James Maxley! he is at his last hour: it be just gone
twelve, and a dies at one.”
Sampson turned on the weepers. “Who says that, y' ijjits? I said the
case would end at one: a case ends when the pashint gets well or dies.”
“Oh, that is good news for poor Susan Maxley; her man is to be well by
one o'clock, Doctor says.”
Sampson groaned, and gave in. He was strong, but not strong enough to
make the populance suspend an opinion.
Yet, methinks it might be done: by chloroforming them.
The spasms came at longer intervals and less violent, and Maxley got so
fond of the essence of Insensibility, that he asked to have some in his
own hand to apply at the first warning of the horrible pains.
Sampson said, “Any fool can complete the cure;” and, by way of practical
comment, left him in Mr. Osmond's charge; but with an understanding that
the treatment should not be varied; that no laudanum should be given;
but, in due course, a stiff tumbler of brandy and water, or two. “If
he gets drunk, all the better; a little intoxication weakens the body's
memory of the pain it has endured, and so expedites the cure. Now off we
go to th' other.”
“The body's memory!” said Mr. Osmond to himself: “what on earth does the
quack mean?”
The driver _de jure_ of the fly was not quite drunk enough to lose his
horse and vehicle without missing them. He was on the look out for the
robber, and as Alfred came round the corner full pelt, darted at the
reins with a husky remonstrance, and Alfred cut into him with the whip:
an angry explanation--a guinea--and behold the driver sitting behind
complacent and nodding.
Arrived at Albion Villa, Alfred asked Sampson submissively if he might
come in and see the wife cured.
“Why, of course,” said Sampson, not knowing the delicate position.
“Then ask me in before Mrs. Dodd,” murmured Alfred coaxingly.
“Oo, ay,” said the Doctor knowingly: “I see.”
Mrs. Maxley was in the dining-room: she had got well of herself, but
was crying bitterly, and the ladies would not let her go home yet; they
feared the worst and that some one would blurt it out to her.
To this anxious trio entered Sampson radiant. “There, it's all right.
Come, little Maxley, ye needn't cry; he has got lots more mischief to do
in the world yet; but, O wumman, it is lucky you came to me and not to
any of the tinkering dox. No more cat and dog for you and him but for
the Chronothairmal Therey. And you may bless my puppy's four bones too:
he ran and stole a fly like a man, and drove hilter-skilter. Now, if I
had got to your house two minutes later, your Jamie would have lairned
the great secret ere this.” He threw up the window. “Haw you! come away
and receive the applause due from beauty t' ajeelity.”
Alfred came in timidly, and was received with perfect benignity and
self-possession by Mrs. Dodd, but Julia's face was dyed with blushes,
and her eyes sparkled the eloquent praise she was ashamed to speak
before them all. But such a face as her scarce needed the help of a
voice at such a time. And indeed both the lovers' faces were a pretty
sight and a study. How they stole loving glances, but tried to keep
within bounds, and not steal more than three per minute! and how
unconscious they endeavoured to look the intervening seconds! and what
windows were the demure complacent visages they thought they were
making shutters of! Innocent love has at least this advantage over
melodramatic, that it can extract exquisite sweetness out of so small
a thing. These sweethearts were not alone, could not open their hearts,
must not even gaze too long; yet to be in the same room even on such
terms was a taste of Heaven.
“But, dear heart!” said Mrs. Maxley, “ye don't tell me what he ailed.
Ma'am, if you had seen him you would have said he was taken for death.”
“Pray what _is_ the complaint?” inquired Mrs. Dodd.
“Oh, didn't I tell ye? Poisoned.”
This intelligence was conveyed with true scientific calmness, and
received with feminine ejaculations of horror. Mrs. Maxley was indignant
into the bargain: “Don't ye go giving my house an ill name! We keeps no
poison.”
Sampson fixed his eyes sternly on her: “Wumman, ye know better: ye keep
strychnine, for th' use and delectation of your domestic animal.”
“Strychnine! I never heard tell of it. Is that Latin for arsenic?”
“Now isn't this lamentable? Why, arsenic is a mital; strychnine a
vigitable. N'hist me! Your man was here seeking strychnine to poison
his mouse; a harmless, domistic, necessary mouse. I told him mice were a
part of Nature as much as Maxleys, and life as sweet tit as tim: but he
was dif to scientific and chrisehin preceps; so I told him to go to the
Deevil: 'I will,' sis he, and went t' a docker. The two assassins have
poisoned the poor beastie between 'em; and thin, been the greatest miser
in the world, except one, he will have roasted his victim, and ate her
on the sly, imprignated with strychnine. 'I'll steal a march on t'other
miser,' sis he; and that's you: t' his brain flew the strychnine: his
brain sint it to his spinal marrow: and we found my lorrd bent like a
bow, and his jaw locked, and nearer knowin the great secret than any man
in England will be this year to live: and sairves the assassinating old
vagabin right.”
“Heaven forgive you, Doctor,” said Mrs. Maxley, half mechanically.
“For curin a murrderer? Not likely.”
Mrs. Maxley, who had shown signs of singular uneasiness during Sampson's
explanation, now rose, and said in a very peculiar tone she must go home
directly.
Mrs. Dodd seemed to enter into her feelings, and made her go in the fly,
taking care to pay the fare and the driver out of her own purse. As
the woman got into the fly, Sampson gave her a piece of friendly and
practical advice. “Nixt time he has a mind to breakfast on strychnine,
you tell me; and I'll put a pinch of arsenic in the salt-cellar, and
cure him safe as the bank. But this time he'd have been did and stiff
long before such a slow ajint as arsenic could get a hold on um.”
They sat down to luncheon, but neither Alfred nor Julia fed much, except
upon sweet stolen looks; and soon the active Sampson jumped up, and
invited Alfred to go round his patients. Alfred could not decline, but
made his adieux with regret so tender and undisguised, that Julia's
sweet eyes filled, and her soft hand instinctively pressed his at
parting to console him. She blushed at herself afterwards, but at the
time she was thinking only of him.
Maxley and his wife came up in the evening with a fee. They had put
their heads together, and proffered one guinea. “Man and wife be one
flesh, you know, Doctor,” said the rustic miser.
Sampson, whose natural choler was constantly checked by his humour,
declined this profuse proposal. “Here's vanity!” said he. “Now do you
really think your two lives are worth a guinea? Why, it's 252 pence!
1008 farthings!”
The pair affected disappointment--vilely.
At all events, he must accept this basket of gudgeons Maxley had brought
along. Being poisoned was quite out of Maxley's daily routine, and had
so unsettled him, that he had got up, and gone fishing--to the amazement
of the parish.
Sampson inspected the basket. “Why, they are only fish,” said he;
_“I was in hopes they were pashints._” He accepted the gudgeons, and
inquired how Maxley got poisoned. It came out that Mrs. Maxley, seeing
her husband set apart a portion of his Welsh rabbit, had “grizzled,” and
asked what that was for; and being told “for the mouse,” and to “mind
her own business,” had grizzled still more, and furtively conveyed a
portion back into the pan for her master's own use. She had been
quaking dismally all the afternoon at what she had done, but finding
Maxley--hard but just--did not attack her for an involuntary fault, she
now brazened it out, and said, “Men didn't ought to have poison in the
house unbeknown to their wives. Jem had got no more than he worked
for,” &c. But, like a woman, she vowed vengeance on the mouse: whereupon
Maxley threatened her with the marital correction of neck-twisting if
she laid a finger on it.
“My eyes be open now to what a poor creature do feel as dies poisoned.
Let her a be: there's room in our place for her and we.”
Next day he met Alfred, and thanked him with warmth, almost with
emotion. “There ain't many in Barkington as ever done me a good turn,
Master Alfred; you be one on 'em: you comes after the Captain in my book
now.”
Alfred suggested that his claims were humble compared with Sampson's.
“No, no,” said Maxley, going down to his whisper, and looking, monstrous
wise: “Doctor didn't go out of his business for me: you did.”
The sage miser's gratitude had not time to die a natural death before
circumstances occurred to test it. On the morning of that eventful day
which concluded my last chapter, he received a letter from Canada. His
wife was out with eggs; so he caught little Rose Sutton, that had more
than once spelled an epistle for him; and she read it out in a loud
and reckless whine: “'At -- noon -- this -- very -- daie -- Muster
--Hardie's a-g-e-n-t, aguent -- d-i-s dis, h-o-n -- honour_ed_
--dis-honour_ed_--a--bill; and sayed.'” Here she made a full stop. Then
on to the next verse.
“'There -- were no -- more -- asses.'”
“Mercy on us! but it can't be asses, wench: drive your spe-ad into't
again.”
“'A-s-s-e-t-s. Assets.'”
“Ah! Go an! go an!”
“'Now -- Fatther -- if -- you -- leave -- a s-h-i-l-l-i-n-g, shilling
--at --Hardie's -- after -- this -- b-l-a-m-e, ble-am -- your -- self
--not-- me -- for -- this -- is -- the -- waie -- the r-o-g-u-e-s,
rogews -- all-- bre-ak -- they -- go -- at -- a-- d-i-s-t-a-n-c-e,
distance --first-- and -- then -- at -- h-o-m-e, whuoame. -- Dear --
fatther' --Lawk o' daisy, what ails you, Daddy Maxley? You be as white
as a Sunday smock. Be you poisoned again, if _you_ please?”
“Worse than that--worse!” groaned Maxhey, trembling all over.
“Hush!--hold your tongue! Give me that letter! Don't you never
tell nobody nothing of what you have been a reading to me, and
I'll--I'll--It's only Jem's fun: he is allus running his rigs--that's a
good wench now, and I'll give ye a halfpenny.”
“La, Daddy,” said the child, opening her eyes, “I never heeds what I
_re-ads:_ I be wrapped up in the spelling. Dear heart, what a sight of
long words folks puts in a letter, more than ever drops out of their
mouths; which their fingers be longer than their tongues, I do suppose.”
Maxley hailed thus information characteristically. “Then we'll say no
more about the halfpenny.”
At this, Rose raised a lamentable cry, and pearly tears gushed forth.
“There, there!” said Maxley, deprecatingly; “here's two apples for ye;
ye can't get them for less: and a halfpenny or a haporth is all one
to you, but it is a great odds to me. And apples they rot; halfpence
don't.”
It was now nine o'clock. The bank did not open till ten; but Maxley went
and hung about the door, to be the first applicant.
As he stood there trembling with fear lest the bank should not open at
all, he thought hard, and the result was a double resolution: he would
have his money out to the last shilling; and, this done, would button up
his pockets and padlock his tongue. It was not his business to take care
of his neighbours; nor to blow the Hardies, if they paid him his money
on demand. “So not a word to my missus, nor yet to the town-crier,” said
he.
Ten o'clock struck, and the bank shutters remained up. Five minutes
more, and the watcher was in agony. Three minutes more, and up came
a boy of sixteen whistling, and took down the shutters with an
indifference that amazed him. “Bless your handsome face!” said Maxley
with a sigh of relief.
He now summoned up all his firmness, and, having recourse to an art
in which these shrewd rustics are supreme, made his face quite
inexpressive, and so walked into the bank the every-day Maxley
externally, but within a volcano ready to burst if there should be the
slightest hesitation to pay him his money.
“Good morning, Mr. Maxley,” said young Skinner.
“Good morning, sir.”
“What can we do for you?”
“Oh, I'll wait my turn, sir.”
“Well, it is your turn now, if you like.”
“How much have you got of mine, if you please, sir?”
“Your balance? I'll see. Nine hundred and four pounds.”
“Well, sir, then, if _you_ please, I'll draa _that._”
(“It has come!” thought Skinner.) “What, going to desert us?” he
stammered.
“No,” said the other, trembling inwardly, but not moving a facial
muscle: “it is only for a day or two, sir.”
“Ah! I see, going to make a purchase. By-the-bye, I believe Mr. Hardie
means to offer you some grounds he is buying outside the town: will that
suit your book?”
“I dare say it will, sir.”
“Then perhaps you will wait till our governor comes in?”
“I have no objection.”
“He won't be long. Fine weather for the gardens, Mr. Maxley.”
“Moderate, sir. I'll take my money if you please. Counting it out, that
will help pass the time till Muster Hardie comes. You han't made away
with it?”
“What d'ye mean, sir?”
“Hardies bain't turned thieves, be they?”
“Are you mad or intoxicated, Mr. Maxley?”
'Neither, sir; but I wants my own, and I wool have it too: so count out
on this here counter, or I'll cry the town round that there door.”
“Henry, score James Maxley's name off the books,” said Skinner with cool
dignity. But when he had said this, he was at his wits' end: there were
not nine hundred pounds of hard cash in the bank, nor anything like it.