JOHN BURRILL, PLEBEIAN.
It is night, late and lowering; especially gloomy in that quarter of
W---- where loom the great ugly rows of tenements that are inhabited by
the factory toilers; for the gloom and smoke of the great engines brood
over the roofs night and day, and the dust and cinders could only be
made noticeable by their absence.
In a small cottage, at the end of a row of larger houses, a woman is
busy clearing away the fragments of a none too bountiful supper. A small
woman, with a sour visage, and not one ounce of flesh on her person,
that is not absolutely needed to screen from mortal gaze a bone. A woman
with a long, sharp nose, two bright, ferret-like brown eyes, and a
rasping voice, that seems to have worn itself thin asking hard questions
of Providence, from sunrise till dark.
The table has been spread for two, but the second party at the banquet,
a gamin son aged seven, has swallowed his own and all he could get of
his mother's share, and betakened himself to the streets, night though
it be.
The woman moves about, now and then muttering to herself as she works.
The room is shabbily furnished, and not over neat, for its mistress
spends her days in the great mill hard by, and housekeeping has become
a secondary matter. Only the needs of life find their demands honored in
this part of W----. Too often needs get choked and die of the smoke and
the cinders.
It is late, for the woman has been doing extra work; it is stormy, too,
blustering and spattering rain. Yet she pauses occasionally and listens
to a passing footfall, as though she expected a visitor.
At last, when the final touch has made the room as tidy as it ever is,
or as she thinks it need be, there comes a shuffling of feet outside,
and a tremendous thump on the rickety door. After which, as if he was
sufficiently heralded, in comes a man, a big man, muffled to the eyes in
a huge coat, which he slowly draws down and draws off, disclosing to the
half curious, half contemptuous gaze of the woman the auburn locks and
highly tinted countenance of Mr. John Burrill.
"So," she says, in her shrillest voice, "It's _you_, is it? It seems one
is never to be rid of you at any price."
"Yes, it's me--all of me," the man replies, as if confirming a doubtful
statement. "Why, now; you act as if you didn't expect me."
"And no more I did," says the woman sullenly and most untruthfully.
"It's a wonder to me that you can't stay away from here, after all
that's come and gone."
"Well, I can't," he retorts, amiably rubbing his hands together.
"Anyhow, I won't, which means about the same thing. Where's the little
duffer?"
"He's where you were at his age, I expect," she replies grimly.
"Well, and if he only keeps on as I have, until he gets up to my present
age, he won't be in a bad boat, eh, Mrs. Burrill the first."
"He's got too much of his mother's grit to be where _you_ are, John
Burrill, livin' a lackey among people that despise you because you have
got a hand on 'em somewhere. I want to know if you don't think they will
choke you off some day when they are done using you?"
John Burrill seated himself astride a low wooden chair, and propelling
it and himself forward by a movement of the feet and a "hitch" of the
shoulders, he leaned across the chair back in his most facetious manner,
and addressed her with severe eloquence.
"Look here, Mrs. Burrill number one, don't you take advantage of your
position, and ride the high horse too free. It's something to 'ave been
Mrs. J. Burrill once, I'll admit; but don't let it elevate you too much.
You ain't quite so handsome as the present Mrs. Burrill, neither are you
so young, consequently you don't show off so well in a tantrum. Now the
present Mrs. Burrill--"
"Oh, then she does have tantrums, the present Mrs. Burrill," sneered the
woman, fairly quivering with suppressed rage. "One would think she would
be so proud of you that she could excuse all your little faults. Brooks
says that they all talk French up there, so that you can't wring into
their confabs, John."
"Does he?" remarked Burrill, quietly, but with an ominous gleam in his
ugly eyes. "Brooks must be careful of that tongue of his. You may
reckon that they all stop their French when _I_ begin to talk. Now,
don't be disagreeable, Nance; it ain't every man that can take a rise in
the world like me, and _I_ don't put on airs, and hold myself above my
old friends. Do you think that every man could step into such a family
as _I_ belong to, Mrs. Burrill? No one can say that John Burrill's a
common fellow after that feat."
"No, but a great many can say that John Burrill's a mean fellow, too
mean to walk over. Do you think the men as you worked along side of, and
drank and supped with, don't know what you are, John Burrill! Do you
think that they don't all know that your outrageous vanity has made a
fool of you? Chance threw into your hands a secret of the Lamottes; you
need not stare, we ain't fools down here at the factories. Maybe I know
what that secret is, and maybe I don't. It's no matter. I know more of
your doings than you give me credit for, John Burrill. Now, what must
you do? Blackmail would have satisfied a sensible man; but straightway
you are seized with the idea that you were born to be a gentleman. You!
Then you form your plan; and you force, by means of the power in your
hands, that beautiful young lady to marry you."
"Seems to me," interrupts the man who has been listening quite
contentedly, "that you are getting along too fast with your story."
"Yes, I am too fast. When you first hatched out this plan, you came to
me and put a pistol to my head, and swore that if I didn't apply for a
divorce from you at once, you would blow my brains out. I had swore
more than once to have a divorce; and Lord knows I had cause enough;
what, with the drunkenness and the beatings, and the idleness, and the
night prowlin', and all the rest; but I never expected that."
The woman paused for a moment, and then resumed her tirade of mixed
eloquence and bad grammar.
"I didn't expect to be drove into the divorce court at the point of a
pistol, but that's how it ended, and you was free to torment Miss
Lamotte, poor young thing! Don't you let yourself think that I envied
_her_! Lord knows I had had enough of you, and your meanness, but I
pitied her; and if I had knocked out your brains, as I've been tempted
to do a dozen times, when you have rolled in here blind drunk, I'd have
done her a good turn, and myself too. The time was when Nance Fergus was
your equal, and more too; but you left England with the notion that here
you would be the equal of anybody, and you've never got clear of the
idea. I've tried to make you understand that there's a coarse breed of
folks, same's there is of dogs, and that you are of a mighty coarse
breed. I've lived out with gentle folks over the water, and they were
none of your sort. But, go on John Burrill, the low women you are so
fond of, and the girls at the factory, have called you good lookin',
until your head is turned with vanity. You have got yourself in among
the upper class, no matter how, and I suppose you expect your good looks
to do the rest for you. I mind once when I was at service in
Herefordshire, the Squire had a fine young beast in his cattle yard,
black an' sleek, an' handsome to look at, and the young ladies came down
from the big house and looked at it through the fence, and called it a
'beautiful creature,' but all the same they led it away to the slaughter
house with a ring in its nose, and the young ladies dined off it with a
relish."
John Burrill stroked his nasal organ fondly, as if discerning some
connection between that protuberance and the aforementioned ring; but he
made no attempt to interrupt her.
"You was bad enough in England, John Burrill; what with your poaching
and your other misdeeds, and sorry was the day when I left a good place
to come away from the country with you, because it was gettin' too hot
for you to stay there. You couldn't get along without me then; and you
can't get along now it seems, for all your fine feathers, without you
come here sometimes to brag of your exploits, and pretend you are
lookin' after the boy."
"Nance," said Burrill, "you're a fine old bird! 'Ow I'd like to set you
at my old father-in-law, blarst him, when he rides it too rough
sometimes, and, what a sociable little discourse you could lay down for
the ladies too, Nance; but, are you about done? You've been clean over
the old ground, seems to me, tho' I may have dozed a little here and
there. Have you been over the old business, and brought me over the
water, by the nape of the neck; because, if you haven't--no, I see you
have not, so here's to you, Nance, spin on;" and he took from his
pocket a black bottle, and drank a mighty draught therefrom.
"No, I'm _not_ done," screamed the woman. "You've come here to-night, as
you have before, for a purpose; one would think that such a fine
gentleman could find better society, but it seems you can't. You never
come here for nothing; you never come for any good; you want something?
What is it?"
He laughed a low, hard laugh.
"Yes," he said, taking another pull at the black bottle; "I want
something."
"Umph! I thought so."
"I want to tell you," here he arose, and dropping his careless manner,
laid a threatening hand upon her arm. "I want to tell you, Nance
Burrill, that you have got to bridle that tongue of yours; d'ye
understand?"
She shook off his hand, and retired a few paces eyeing him closely as
she said:
"Oh! I thought so. Something has scared ye already."
"No, I'm not scared; that thing can't be done by you, Nance; but you
have been blowing too much among the factory people, and I won't have
it."
"Won't have what?"
"Won't have any more of this talk about going to my wife with stories
about me."
"Who said I threatened?"
"No matter, you don't do much that I don't hear of, so mind your eye,
Nance. As for the women at the bend, you let them alone, and keep your
tongue between your teeth."
"Oh! I will; one can't blame you for seeking the society of your equals,
after the snubbing you must get from your betters up there. But that
don't satisfy you; you must drag that poor fellow, Evan Lamotte, into
their den; as if he were not wild enough, before you came where you
could reach him."
John Burrill took another pull at the black bottle.
"Evan's a good fellow," he said somewhat thickly. "He knows enough to
appreciate a man like me, and we both have larks, now let me tell you."
"Well, have your larks; but don't sit and drink yourself blind before my
very eyes. Why don't you go?"
"Cause I don't want'er--," growing more and more mellow, as the liquor
went fuming to his head, already pretty heavily loaded with brandy and
wine. "Where's the little rooster, I tell yer."
"In the streets, and he's too much like his father to ever come home,
'till he's gone after, and dragged in."
"Well, go and drag him in then, I'm goin' ter see 'im."
"I won't!" shrieked the woman, now fairly beside herself with rage; "go
home to your lady wife, and take her my compliments; tell her that I
turned you out."
John Burrill staggered to his feet, uttering a brutal oath.
"You'll turn me out, will you? You say _won't_ to me; you are forgetting
my training, Mrs. Nance; I'll teach you that John Burrill's yer master
yet; go for the boy."
But the woman did not stir.
"You won't, eh!" clutching her fiercely, and shaking her violently, "now
will you?"
"No, you brute."
"Then, take that, and that, and that!"
[Illustration: "Then take that, and that."]
A rain of swift blows; a shriek ringing out on the stillness of the
night; then a swift step, the door dashed in, and John Burrill is
measuring his length upon the bare floor.
The woman reels, as the clutch of the miscreant loosens from her arm,
but recovers herself and turns a bruised face toward the timely
intruder. It is Clifford Heath.
"Are you badly hurt?" he asks, anxiously.
She lifts a hand to her poor bruised face, and aching head, and then
sinking into a chair says, wearily:
"It's nothing--for me. Look out, sir!"
This last was an exclamation of warning, John Burrill had staggered to
his feet, and was aiming an unsteady blow at the averted head of Doctor
Heath.
The latter turned swiftly, comprehending the situation at a glance, and
once more felled the brute to the floor.
By this time others had appeared upon the scene,--neighbors, roused by
the cry of the woman.
Doctor Heath bent again to examine her face. He had scarcely observed
the features of the man he had just knocked down; and he now asked:
"Is--this man you husband, madam?"
The woman reddened under her bruises.
"He _was_ my husband," she said, bitterly. "He is--John Burrill."
Clifford Heath started back, thinking, first of all, of Sybil, and
realizing that there must be no scandal, that could be avoided, for her
sake. He had never seen Burrill, save at a distance, but had heard, as
had every one in W----, of his divorced wife.
Turning to one of the neighbors, he said: "I was passing on my way home
from Mrs. Brown's, when I heard this alarm. I think, good people, that
we had better let this fellow go away quietly, and attend to this woman.
Her face will be badly swollen by and by." Then he turned once more
toward Burrill.
Once more the miscreant was struggling to his feet, and at a command
from Doctor Heath, he hastened his efforts. Hitherto, he had had only a
vision of a pair of flashing dark eyes, and an arm that shot out
swiftly, and straight home.
Now, however, as he gained an erect posture, and turned a threatening
look upon his assailant, the onlookers, who all knew him, and all hated
and feared him, saw a sudden and surprising transformation. The red all
died out of his face, the eyes seemed starting from their sockets, the
lower jaw dropped abjectly and suddenly, and, with a yell of terror,
John Burrill lowered his head and dashed from the house, as if pursued
by a legion of spectres.