Morning, noon and night, whenever the small body of fresh workmen had to pass to and from the works, they were accompanied by the two policemen specially engaged to protect them, whilst others hovered within call. North Inlet, the ill-feeling of its old inhabitants increasing day by day, had become dangerous. It was not that all the men would have done violence. Ketler, for instance, and others, well-disposed men by nature, sensible and quiet, would not have lifted a hand against those who had, in one sense of the word, displaced them. But they did this: they stood tamely by, knowing quite well that some of their comrades only waited their opportunity to kill, or disable--as might be--Richard North's new followers. North Inlet was not quite so full as it used to be: for some of the old inhabitants, weary and out of patience with hope deferred: hope they hardly knew of what, unless for the good time promised by the Trades' Union: had departed on the tramp, with their wives and little ones, seeking a corner of the earth where work sufficient to give them a crust of bread and a roof, might be found. Others had decamped without their wives and children: and were in consequence being sought by the parish. North Inlet, taken on the whole, was in a sore plight. The men and women, reduced by want and despair to apply for parish relief, found none accorded them. They had brought themselves to this condition; had refused work when work was to be had; and to come and ask to be supported in idleness by the parish was a procedure not to be tolerated or entertained; as one resolute guardian, sitting at the head of a table, fiercely told them. Not as much as a loaf of bread would be given them, added another. If it came to the pass that they were in danger of dying of hunger--as the applicants urged--why they must come into the house with their wives and families: and a humiliating shame that would be for able-bodied men, the guardian added: but they would receive no relief out-of-doors. So North Inlet, not choosing to go into that unpopular refuge for the destitute, kept out of it. And to terrible straits were they reduced!
Looking back upon their past life of plenty, and their present empty homes and famished faces, little wonder that this misguided body of men grew to find that something of the old Satan was in them yet. A great deal of it, too. Perhaps remorse held its full share with them. They had intended that it should be so entirely for the better when they threw up work; and it had turned out so surprisingly for the worse. They had meant to return to work on their own terms; earning more and toiling less: they had been led to believe that this result lay in their own hands, and was as safe and certain as that the sun shone overhead at noonday. Instead of that--here they were, in as deplorable a condition as human beings could well be; Time had been, not very long ago either, that the false step might have been redeemed; Richard North had offered them work again on the old terms. Ay, and he had once conceded a portion of their demands--as they remembered well. But that time and that offer had gone by for ever. Fresh men (few though they were) had taken their places, and they themselves were starving and helpless.
The feeling against these new men was bitter enough; it was far more bitter against the small number of old workmen who had gone back again. We are told that the heart of man is desperately wicked: our own experience shows us that it is desperately selfish. They saw the employed men doing the work which once was theirs; they saw them wearing good coats, eating good food. They themselves had neither one nor the other; and work they had rejected. It would not have seemed quite so hard had the work altogether left the place: but to see these others doing it and living in comfort was more than mortal temper could brook.
This was not all. The men unreasonably held to it that these others having taken work again, was the cause why they themselves were kept out of it. Richard North would ha' come-to, they said, if these curs hadn't went sneaking back again to lick his hand. If all had held out, Dick North must ha' given in. And this they repeated so constantly, in their ire, one to another, that at last they grew to believe it. It was quite wrong, and they were wholly mistaken: for had Richard North not begun again cautiously as he did, and on the old terms, he would not have recommenced at all: but the men refused to see this, and held to their idea, making it a greater grievance than the want of food. It is so convenient to have something substantial on which to throw blame: and unlimited power and permission to punch the obnoxious head would have afforded intense gratification. Oh, it was very hard to bear. To see this small knot of men re-established in work, and to know that it was their own work once, and might have been theirs still! Peeping through hedges, hiding within doorways, standing sulkily or derisively in the open ground, they would watch the men going to and fro, guarded by the two policemen. Many a bitter word, many a silent threat was levelled at the small band. Murder had been done from a state of mind not half as bad as they were cherishing.
"What be you looking at, with those evil frowns on your faces?"
A group of malcontents, gazing from a corner of North Inlet at the daily procession, found this question suddenly sounding on their ears. Mrs. Gass had stepped out of a dwelling close by, and put it to them. Their eyes were following the escorted men coming home to their twelve-o'clock dinner, so that they had not observed her.
They turned to her, and dropped their threatening expression. A man named Poole, not too much respected in the most prosperous times, and one of the worst of the malcontents, answered boldly too.
"We was taking the measure o' that small lot o' convic's. Wishing we could brand 'em."
"Ah," said Mrs. Gass. "It strikes me some of you have been wishing it before to-day. I should like to give you a bit of advice, my men; and you, especially, Poole. Take care you don't become convicts yourselves."
"For two pins, I'd do what 'ud make me one," was the rejoinder of Poole, who was in a more defiant mood than even he often dared exhibit. He was a large, thick-set man, with shaggy light hair and a brick-dust complexion. His clothes, originally fustian, had been worn and torn and patched until they now hardly held together.
"You are a nice jail-bird, Poole! I don't think you ever were much better than one," added Mrs. Gass. To which candid avowal Poole only replied by a growl.
"These hard times be enough to make jail-birds of all of us," interposed another, Foster; but speaking civilly. "Why don't the Government come down and interfere, and prevent our work being took out of our hands by these rascals?"
"You put the work out of your own hands," said Mrs. Gass. "As to interference, I should have thought you'd had about enough of that, by this time. If you had not suffered them fine Trades' Unionists to interfere with you, my men, you'd have been in full work now, happy and contented as the day's long."
"What we did, we did for the best."
"What you did, you did in defiance of common sense, and of the best counsels of your best friends," she said. "How many times did your master show you what the upshot would be if you persisted in throwing up your work?--how much breath did I waste upon you, as I'm doing now, asking you all to avoid a strike--and after the strike had come, day after day begging you to end it?--could any picture be truer than mine when I said what you'd bring yourselves to?--rags, and famine, and desolate homes. Could any plight be worse than this that you've dropped into now?"
"No, it couldn't," answered Foster. "It's so bad that I say Government ought to interfere for us."
"If I was Government, I should interfere on one point--and that's with them agitating Unionists," bravely spoke Mrs. Gass. "I should putthemdown a bit."
"This is a free country, ma'am," struck in Ketler, who made one of the group.
"Well, I used to think it was, Ketler," she said; "but old ways seem to be turned upside down. What sort of freedom do you enjoy just now?--how much have you had of it since you bound yourselves sworn members of the Trades' Unions? You have wanted to work and they haven't let you: you'd like to be clothed and fed as you used to be and to clothe and feed your folks at home, and they prevent your exercising the means by which you may do it. What freedom or liberty is there in that?--Come, Ketler, tell me, as a reasonable man."
"If the Trades' Unions could do as they wish, there'd be work and comfort for all of us."
"I doubt that, Ketler."
"But they can't do it," added Ketler. "The masters be obstinate and won't let 'em."
"That's just it," said Mrs. Gass. "If the Trades' Unions held the world in their hands, and there were no such things as masters and capital, why then they might have their own way. But the masters have their own interests to look after, their business and capital to defend: and the two sides are totally opposed one to the other, and squabbling is all that comes of it, or that ever will come of it. You lose your work, the masters lose their trade, the Unionists fight it out fiercer than ever--and, between it all, the commerce of the country is coming to an end. Now, my men, that is the bare truth; and you can't deny it if you talk till midnight."
"'Twouldn't be no longer much of a free country, if the Government put down the Trades' Unions," spoke a man satirically; one Cattleton.
"But it ought to put down their arbitrary way of preventing others working that want to work," maintained Mrs. Gass. "The Unionists be your worst enemies. I'm speaking, as you know I have been all along, of the heads among 'em who make laws for the rest; not of poor sheep like yourselves who have joined the society in innocence. If the heads like to live without work themselves, and can point out a way by which others can live without it, well and good; there's no law against that, nor oughtn't to be; but what I say Government ought to put down is this--their forcing you men to reject work when it's offered you. It's a sin and a shame that, through them, the country should be brought to imbecility, and you, its once free and brave workmen, to beggary."
"The thought has come over me at times that under the new state of things we are no better than slaves," confessed Ketler, his eyes wearing an excited look.
"Now you've just said it, Ketler," cried Mrs. Gass, triumphantly. "Slaves. That's exactly what you are; and I wish to my heart all the workmen in England could open their eyes to the truth of it. You took a vow to obey the dictates of the Trades' Union; it has bound you hand and foot, body and soul. If a job of work lay to your hand, you dare not take it up; no, not though you saw your little ones dying of famine before your eyes. It's the worst kind of slavery that ever fell on the land. Press-gangs used to be bad enough, but this beats 'em hollow."
There was no reply from any of the men. Mrs. Gass had been a good friend to their families even recently; and the old habits of respect to her, their mistress, still held sway. Perhaps some of them, too, silently assented to her reasoning.
"It's that that I'd have put down," she resumed. "Let every workman be free to act on his own judgment, to take work or to leave it. Not but what it's too late to say so: as far as I believe, the mischief has gone too far to be remedied."
"It be mighty fine for the masters to cry out and say the Trades' Unions is our enemies! Suppose we choose to call 'em our friends?" spoke Poole.
"Put it so, Poole, if you like," said Mrs. Gass equably. "The society's your friend, let's say. How has it showed its friendship? what has it done for you?"
Mr. Poole did not condescend to say.
"It's not hard to answer, Poole. The proofs, lie on the surface; not one of you but may read 'em off-hand. It threw you all out of good work that you had held for years under a good master, that you might probably have held, to the last day of your lives. It dismantled your homes and sent your things to the pawnshop. It has reduced you to a crust of bread, where you used to have good joints of beef; it has taken your warm shoes and coats, and sent you abroad half naked. Your children are starving, some of them are dead; your wives are worn out with trouble and discontent. And this not for a time, but for good: for, there's no prospect open to you. No prospect, that I can see, as I am a living woman. That's what your friends, as you call 'em, have done for you; and for thousands and thousands beside you. I don't care what they meant: let it be that they meant well by you, and that you meant well--as I'm sure you did--in listening to 'em: the result is as I've said. And you are standing here this day, ruined men."
Mr. Poole looked fierce.
"What is to become of you, and of others ruined like you, the Lord in heaven only knows. It's a solemn question. When the best trade of the country's driven from it, there's no longer any place for workmen. Emigration, suggest some of the newspapers. Others say emigration's overdone for the present. We don't know what to believe. Any way, it's a hard thing that a good workman should find no employment in his native land, but must be packed off, very much as if he was transported, to be an exile for ever."
Poole, not liking the picture, broke into an oath or two. The other men looked sad enough.
"You have been drinking, Poole," said Mrs. Gass with dignity, "Keep a civil tongue in your head before me if, you please."
"I've not had no more than half-a-pint," growled Poole.
"And that was half-a-pint too much," said Mrs. Gass. "When people's insides are reduced by famine, half-a-pint is enough to upset their brains in a morning."
"What business have Richard North to go and engage them frogs o' Frenchmen?" demanded Poole who had in truth taken too much for his good. "What business have them other fellows, as ought to have stuck by us, to go back to him? It's Richard North as wants to be transported."
"Richard North was a good master to you. The world never saw a better."
"He's a rank bad man now."
"No, no--hold th' tongue!" put in Ketler. "No good to abusehim."
"If you men had had a spark of gratitude, you'd have listened to Mr. Richard North, when he prayed you to go back to him," said Mrs. Gass. "No, you wouldn't; and what has it done for him? Why, just ruined him, my men: almost as bare as you are ruined. It has took his hopes from him; wasted what little money he had; played the very dickens with his prospects. The business he once had never will and never can come back. If once you break a mirror to pieces, you can't put it together again. Mr. Richard has a life of work to look forward to; he may earn a living, but he won't do much more. You men have at least the satisfaction of knowing that whilst you ruined your own prosperity, you also ruined his."
They had talked so long--for all that passed cannot be recorded--that it was close upon one o'clock, and the small band of workmen and the two policemen were seen coming back again towards the works. The malignant look rose again on Poole's face: and he gave forth a savage growl.
"There'll be mischief yet," thought Mrs. Gass, as she turned away.
Sounds of a woman's sobbing were proceeding from an open door as she went down North Inlet, and Mrs. Gass stepped in to see what might be the matter. They came from Dawson's wife. Dawson had been beating her. The unhappy state to which they were reduced tried the tempers of the men--of the women also, for that matter--rendering some of them little better than ferocious beasts. In the old days, when Dawson could keep himself and his family in comfort, never a cross word had been heard from him: but all that was changed; and under the new order of things, it often came to blows. The wife had now been struck in the eye. Smarting under ills of body and ills of mind, the woman enlarged on her wrongs to Mrs. Gass, and displayed the mark; all of which at another time she would certainly have concealed. The home was miserably bare; the children, wan and thin, were in tatters like their mother; it was a comprehensive picture of wretchedness.
"And all through those idiots having thrown up their work at the dictates of the Trades' Union!" was the wrathful comment of Mrs. Gass, as she departed. "They've done for themselves in this world: and, to judge by the unchristian lives they are living, seem to be in a fair way of doing for themselves in the next."
As she reached her own house, the smart housemaid was showing Miss Dallory out of it. That young lady, making a call on Mrs. Gass, had waited for her a short time, and was departing. They now went in together. Mrs. Gass, entering her handsome drawing-room, began recounting the events of the morning; what she had heard and seen.
"There'll be mischief, as sure as a gun," she concluded. "My belief is, that some of them would kill Mr. Richard if they had only got the chance."
Mary Dallory looked startled. "Killhim!" she cried. "Why, he has always been their friend. He would have been so still, had they only been willing."
"He's a better friend to them still than they are aware of," said Mrs. Gass, nodding her head wisely. "Miss Mary, if ever there was a Christian man on earth, it is Richard North. His whole life has been one long thought for others. Who else has kept up Dallory Hall? Who would have worked and slaved on, and on, not for himself, but to maintain his father's home, finding money for madam's wicked extravagance, to save his poor father pain, knowing that the old man had already more than he could bear. At Mr. Richard's age, he ought, before this, to have been making a home and marrying: he would have done so under happier circumstances: but he has had to sacrifice himself to others. He has done more for the men than they think for; ay, even at the time that they were bringing ruin upon him--as they have done--and ever since. Richard North is worth his weight in gold. Heaven, that sees all, knows that he is; and he will sometime surely be rewarded for it. It may not be in this world, my dear; for a great many of God's own best people go down to their very graves in nothing but disappointment and sorrow: but he'll find it in the next."
Miss Dallory made no reply. All she said was, that she must go. And Mrs. Gass escorted her to the front-door. They had almost reached it, when Miss Dallory stopped to ask a question, lowering her voice as she did so.
"Have you heard any rumour about Dr. Rane?"
Mrs. Gass knew what must be meant as certainly as though it had been spoken. She turned cold, and hot, and cold again. For once language failed her.
"It is something very dreadful," continued Miss Dallory. "I do not like to give utterance to it. It--it has frightened me."
"Law, my dear, don't pay no attention to such rubbish as rumours," returned Mrs. Gass, heartily. "Idon't. Folk say all sorts of things of me, I make little doubt; just as they are ready to do of other people. Let 'em! We shan't sleep none the worse for it. Goodbye. I wish you'd have stayed and taken some dinner with me--as lovely a turkey-poult as ever you saw, and a jam dumpling."
Pacing the shrubbery walk at Dallory Hall, a grey woollen shawl wrapped closely round her flowing black silk dress, her pale, sweet, sad face turned up to the lowering sky, was Ellen Adair. The weather, cold and dull, gave signs of approaching winter. The last leaves left on the trees fell fluttering to the earth; the wind, sighing through the bare branches, bore a melancholy sound. All things seemed to speak of death and decay.
This ungenial weather had brought complication with it. Just as Sir Nash Bohun was about to quit Dallory Hall, taking Arthur with him, the wind caught him in an unguarded moment, and laid him up with inflammation of the chest. Sir Nash took to his bed. One of the results was, that Arthur Bohun must remain at the Hall, and knew not how long he might be a fixture there. Sir Nash would not part with him. He had come to regard him quite as his son.
Ellen Adair thought Fate was cruel to her, taking one thing with another. And so it was; very cruel. Whilst they were together, she could not begin to forget him: and, to see him so continually with Mary Dallory, brought her the keenest pain. She was but human: jealousy swayed her just as it sways other people.
Another thing was beginning to trouble her--she did not hear from Mr. Adair. It was very strange. Not a letter had come from him since that containing the permission to marry Arthur Bohun;--as Mrs. Cumberland had interpreted it--received at Eastsea. Ellen could not understand the silence at all. Her father had always written so regularly.
"He ought not to remain here," she murmured passionately as she walked, alluding to Arthur Bohun. "Icannot help myself; I have nowhere else to go: but he ought to leave, in spite of Sir Nash."
A greyer tinge seemed to creep over the sky. The shrubbery seemed to grow darker. It was only the first advent of twilight, falling early that melancholy evening.
"Will there ever be any brightness in my life again?" she continued, clasping her hands in pain. "Is this misery to last for ever? Did any one, I wonder, ever go through such a trial and live? Scarcely. I am afraid I am not very strong to bear things. But oh--who could bear it?"
She sat down on one of the benches, and bent her aching brow on her hands. What with the surrounding gloom, and her dark dress, some one who had turned into the walk, came sauntering on without observing her. It was Arthur Bohun. He started when she raised her head: his face was every whit as pale and sad as hers; but he could not help seeing how ill and woebegone she looked.
"I fear you are not well," he stopped to say.
"Oh--thank you--not very," was the confused answer.
"This is a trying time. Heaven knows I would save you from it, if I could. I would have died to spare you. I would die still, if by that means things for you could be made right. But it may not be. Time alone must be the healer."
He had said this in a somewhat hard tone, as if he were angry with some one or other; perhaps with Fate; and went on his way with a quicker step, leaving never a touch of the hand, never a loving word, never a tender look behind him; just as it had been that day in Dallory Churchyard. Poor girl! her heart felt as though it were breaking there and then.
When the echo of his footsteps had died away, she drew her shawl closer round her slender throat and passed out of the shrubbery. Hovering in a side walk, unseen and unsuspected, was madam. Not often did madam allow herself to be off the watch. She had seen the exit of Captain Bohun; she now saw Ellen's; and madam's evil spirit rose up within her, and she advanced with a dark frown.
"Have you been walking with Captain Bohun, Miss Adair?"
"No, madam."
"I--thought--I heard him talking to you."
"He came through the shrubbery when I was sitting there, and spoke to me in passing."
"Ah," said madam. "It is well to be careful. Captain Bohun is to marry Miss Dallory: the less any other young woman has to say to him, the better."
To this speech--remarkable as coming from one who professed to be a gentlewoman--Ellen made no reply, saving a bow as she passed onwards, with erect head and self-possessed step, leaving madam to her devices.
She seemed to be tormented on every side. There was no comfort, no solace anywhere. Ellen could have envied Bessy Rane in her grave.
And the farce that had to be kept up before the world. That very evening, as fate had it, Captain Bohun took Miss Adair in to dinner and sat next her, through some well-intentioned blundering of Richard's. It had pleased madam to invite seven or eight people; it did not please Mr. North to come in to dinner as he had been expected to do. Richard had to be host, and to take in a stout lady in green velvet, who was to have fallen to his father. There was a moment's confusion; madam had gone on; Richard mixed up the wrong people together, and finally said aloud, "Arthur, will you take in Miss Adair?" And so they sat, side by side, and no one observed that they did not converse together, or that anything was wrong. It is curious how long two people may have lived estranged from each other in a household, and the rest suspect it not. Have you over noticed this?--or tried it? It is remarkable, but very true.
After dinner came the drawing-room; and the evening was a more social one than had been known of late. Music, cards, conversation. Young Mr. Ticknell, a relative of the old bankers' at Whitborough, was there; he had one of the sweetest voices ever given to man, and delighted them with his unaffected singing. One song, that he chose after a few jesting words with Ellen, in allusion to her name, two of them at least had not bargained for. "Ellen Adair." Neither had heard it since that evening at Eastsea; so long past now, in the events that had followed, that it seemed to be removed from them by ages.
They had to listen. They could not do otherwise. Ellen sat at the corner of the sofa in her black net dress with its one white flower, that Mr. North had given her, in the middle of the corsage, and nothing, as usual, in her smooth brown hair;hewas leaning against the wall, not far from her, his arms folded. And the verses went on to the last one.
"But now thou art cold to me,Ellen Adair:But now thou art cold to me,Ellen my dear.Yet her I loved so well,Still in my heart shall dwell,Oh! I shall ne'er forgetEllen Adair."
"But now thou art cold to me,
Ellen Adair:
But now thou art cold to me,
Ellen my dear.
Yet her I loved so well,
Still in my heart shall dwell,
Oh! I shall ne'er forget
Ellen Adair."
She could not help it. Had it been to save her life, she could not have helped lifting her face and glancing at him as the refrain died away. His eyes were fixed on her, a wistful, yearning expression in their depths; an expression so sad that in itself it was all that can be conceived of pain. Ellen bent her face again; her agitation at that moment seeming greater than she knew how to suppress. Lifting her hand to shade her eyes, the plain gold ring, still worn on it, was conspicuously visible.
"You look as though you had all the cares of the nation on your shoulders, Arthur."
He started at the address, which came from Miss Dallory. She had gone close up to him. Rallying his senses, he smiled and answered carelessly. The next minute Ellen saw them walking across the room together, her hand within his arm.
The next morning, Jelly made her appearance at the Hall, with two letters. They were from Australia, and from Mr. Adair. One was addressed to Mrs. Cumberland, the other to Ellen. Dr. Rane had desired Jelly to take both of them to Miss Adair, whom he now considered the most proper person to open Mrs. Cumberland's. Ellen carried it to Mr. North, asking if she ought to open it. Certainly, Mr. North answered, confirming Dr. Rane's view of the matter.
Ellen carried the letters to a remote and solitary spot in the garden, one that she was fond of frequenting, and in which she had never yet been intruded upon. She opened her own first: and there read what astonished her.
It appeared that after despatching his last letter to Mrs. Cumberland: the one already alluded to, that she had read with so much satisfaction to Arthur Bohun at Eastsea: Mr. Adair had been called from his station on business, and had remained absent some two or three months. Upon his return he found other letters awaiting him from Mrs. Cumberland, and learnt, to his astonishment, that the gentleman proposing for Ellen was Arthur Bohun, son of the Major Bohun with whom Mr. Adair had once been intimate. (The reader has not forgotten how Mrs. Cumberland confused matters in her mind, or that in her first letter she omitted to mention any name.) In a few peremptory lines written to Ellen--these that she was now reading--Mr. Adair retracted his former consent. He absolutely forbade her to marry, or ever think of marrying, Arthur Bohun: a union between them would be nothing less than a calamity for both, he wrote, and also for himself. He added that in consequence of an unexpected death he had become the head of his family, and was making preparations to return to Europe.
Wondering, agitated, Ellen dropped the letter, and opened Mrs. Cumberland's. An enclosure fell from it: a draft for a sum of money, which, as it appeared, Mrs. Cumberland was in the habit of receiving every half-year for her charge of Ellen. Mr. Adair wrote in still more explicit terms on the subject of the proposed marriage to Mrs. Cumberland--almost in angry terms.She, of all people, he said, ought to know that a marriage between his daughter and the late Major Bohun's son would be unsuitable, improper, and most distasteful to himself. He did not understand how Mrs. Cumberland could have laid such a proposal before him, or have permitted herself to entertain it for a moment: unless indeed she had never been made acquainted with certain facts of the past, connected with himself and Major Bohun and Major Bohun's wife, which Cumberland had known well. He concluded by saying, as he had said to Ellen, that he hoped shortly to be in England. Both letters had evidently been written in haste and in agitation: all minor matters being accounted as nothing, compared with the distinct and stern embargo laid upon the marriage.
"So it has happened for the best," murmured Ellen to her breaking heart, as she folded the letters and put them away.
She took the draft to Mr. North's parlour. He put on his spectacles, and mastered its meaning by the help of some questions to Ellen.
"A hundred and fifty pounds!" exclaimed he. "But surely, my dear, Mrs. Cumberland did not receive three hundred a-year with you! It's a large sum--for so small a service.
"She had two hundred, I think," said Ellen. "I did not know the exact sum until to-day: Mrs. Cumberland never talked to me about these matters. Papa allows me for my own purse fifty pounds every half-year. Mrs. Cumberland always gave me that."
"Ah," said Mr. North. "That's a good deal, too."
"Will you take the draft, sir; and let me have the fifty pounds at your convenience?"
Mr. North looked up as one who does not understand.
"The money is not for me, child."
"But I am staying here," she said, deprecatingly.
He shook his head as he put back the paper.
"Give it to Richard, my dear. He will know what to do about it, and what's right to be done. And so your father is coming home! We shall be sorry to lose you, Ellen. I am getting to love you, child. It seems as if you had come in the place of my poor lost Bessy."
But Ellen was not sorry. The arrival of Mr. Adair would at least remove her from her present position, where every hour, as it passed, could only bring fresh pain to her.
It was a warm and sunny day in Dallory. Mrs. Gass threw open her window and sat behind the geraniums enjoying the sunshine, exchanging salutations and gossip with as many of her acquaintances as happened to pass her windows.
"How d'ye do, doctor? Isn't this a lovely day?"
It was Dr. Rane who was hurrying past now. He turned for an instant to the window, his brow clearing. For some time now a curious look of care and perplexity had sat upon it.
"Indeed it is," he answered. "I hope it will last. Are you pretty well, Mrs. Gass?"
"I'm first-rate," said that lady. "A fine day, with the wind in the north, always sets me up. Doctor, have they paid you the tontine money yet?"
"No," said Dr. Rane, somewhat angrily. "There are all sorts of forms to be gone through, apparently; and the Brothers Ticknell do not hurry for any one. The two old men are past business, in my opinion. They were always slow and tiresome; it is something more than that now."
"Do you stir 'em well up?" questioned Mrs. Gass.
"When I have the chance of doing it; but that's very rarely. Go when I will, I can scarcely ever see any one except the confidential clerk, old Latham; and he is as slow and methodical as his master. I suppose the money will come sometime, but I am tired of waiting for it."
"And what about your plans when you get it, doctor? Are they all cut and dried?"
"Time enough to decide on them when I do get the money," replied the doctor, shortly.
"But you still intend to leave Dallory Ham?"
"Oh yes, I shall do that."
"You won't be going to America?"
"I think I shall. It is more than likely."
"Well, I wouldn't banish myself from my native country for the best practice that ever shoes dropped into. You might be getting nothing but Red Indians for patients."
Dr. Rane laughed a little; and there was an eager sort of light in his eyes that seemed to speak of anticipation and hope. Only he knew how thankful he would be to get to another country and find himself clear of this.
"I wonder," soliloquized Mrs. Gass, as he walked on his way, "whether it is all straight-for'ard about that tontine money? Have the Ticknells heard any of these ugly rumours that's flying about; and are they keeping it back in consequence? If not, why it ought to have been paid over to him before this. The delay is odd--say the least of it. How d'ye do, sir? A nice day."
A gentleman, passing, had raised his hat to Mrs. Gass. She resumed her reflections.
"The rumours be spreading wider and getting uglier. They'll go up presently, like a bomb-shell. I'm heartily sorry for him; for I don't believe--no, Idon't--that he'd do such a frightful thing. If it should turn out that he did--why, then I shall blame myself ever after for having procrastinated my intentions."
Mrs. Gass paused, and began to go over those intentions, with a view, possibly, to seeing whether she was very much to blame.
"Finding Oliver and his wife couldn't get the tontine money paid to them--and a hard case it was!--I had it in my mind to say, 'I'll advance it to you. You'll both be the better for something in my will when I'm gone--the doctor being my late husband's own nephew, and the nearest relation left of him--and if two thousand pounds of it will be of real good to you now, you shall have it. But I didn't say it at once--who was to suppose there was such need for hurry--and then she died. If the man's innocent--and I believe he is--that Jelly ought to have her mouth sewn up for good. She---- Why, there you are! Talk of the dickens and he's sure to appear."
"Were you talking of me?" asked Jelly: for Mrs. Gass had raised her voice with surprise and brought it within Jelly's hearing. She carried a small basket on her arm, under her black shawl, and turned to the window.
"I was thinking of you," responded Mrs. Gass. "Be you come out marketing?"
"I'm taking a few scraps to Ketler's," replied Jelly, just showing the basket. "My mistress has given me general leave to give them any trifles not likely to be wanted at home. The cook's good-natured too.Thisis a jar of dripping, and some bones and bread."
"And how do you like the Beverages, Jelly?"
"Oh, very well. They are good ladies; but so serious and particular."
Mrs. Gass rose from her seat, pushed the geraniums aside, and leaning her arms upon the window-sill, brought her good-natured red face very near to Jelly's bonnet.
"I'll tell you what I was thinking of, girl: it was about these awful whispers that's flying round. Go where you will, you may hear 'em. Within dwelling-houses or at street corners, people's tongues are cackling secretly about Dr. Rane's wife, and asking what she died of. I knew it would be so, Jelly."
Jelly turned a little paler. "They'll die away again, perhaps," she said.
"Perhaps," repeated Mrs. Gass, sarcastically. "It's to be hoped they will, for your sake. Jelly, I wouldn't stand in your shoes to be made a queen tomorrow."
"I wouldn't stand in somebody else's," returned Jelly, irritated into the avowal. "I shall have pretty good proof at hand, if I'm forced to bring it out."
"What proof?"
"Well, I'd rather not say. You'd only ridicule it, Mrs. Gass, and blow me up into the bargain. I must be going."
"I guess it's moonshine, Jelly--like the ghost you saw. Good-morning."
Jelly went away with a hard and anything but a happy look, and Mrs. Gass resumed her seat again. Very shortly there came creeping by, following the same direction as Jelly, a poor shivering woman, with a ragged shawl on her thin shoulders, and a white, pinched, hopeless face.
"Is that you, Susan Ketler?"
Susan Ketler turned and dropped a curtsy. Some of the women of North Inlet were even worse off than she was. She did have help now and then from Jelly.
"Yes, ma'am, it's me."
"How long do you think you North Inlet people will be able to keep going--as things be at present?" demanded Mrs. Gass.
"The Lord above only knows," said the woman, looking upwards with a pitiful shiver. "Here's the winter a-coming on."
"What does Ketler think of affairs now?"
Ketler's wife shook her head. The men were not fond of disclosing what they might think, unless it was to one another. Ketler had never told her whathethought.
"Is he still in love with the Trades' Unions, and what they've done for him? My opinion is this, Susan Ketler," continued Mrs. Gass, after a pause: "that in every place where distress reigns, as it does here, and where it can be proved that the men have lost their work through the dictates of the society, the parish ought to go upon the society and make it keep the men and the families. If a law was passed to that effect, we should hear less of the doings of the Trades' Union people than we do now. They'd draw in a bit, Susan; they'd not give the gaping public quite so many of their procession-shows, and their flags, and their speeches. It would be a downright good law to make, mind you. A just one, too. If the society forbids men to work, and so takes the bread necessary for life out of their mouths, it is only fair they should find them bread to replace it."
An almost hopeful look came into the woman's eyes. "Ma'am, I said as good as this to Ketler only yesterday. Seeing that it was the society that had took the bread from us, and that the consequences had been bad instead of good, for we were starving, the society ought to put us into work again. It might bestir itself to do that: or else support us while we got into something."
Mrs. Gass smiled pityingly. "You must be credulous, Susan Ketler, to fancy the society can put 'em into work again. Where's the work to come from? Well, it's not your fault, my poor woman, and there's more people than me sorry for you all. And now, tell me," Mrs. Gass lowered her voice, "be any of the men talking treason still? You know what I mean."
Mrs. Ketler glanced over both her shoulders to see that no one was within hearing, before she whispered in answer.
"They be always a-talking it. I can see it in their faces as they stand together. Not Ketler, ma'am; he'd stop it if he could: he don't wish harm to none."
"Ah. I wish to goodness they'd all betake themselves off from the place. Though it's hard to say so, for there's no other open to them that I see. Well, you go on home, Susan. Jelly has just gone there with a basket of scraps for you. Stay a minute, though."
Mrs. Gass quitted the room, calling to one of her servants. When she returned she produced a half-pint physic bottle corked up.
"It's a drop of beer," she said. "For yourself, mind, not for Ketler. You want it, I know. Put it under your shawl. It will help down Jelly's scraps."
The woman went away with grateful tears in her eyes. And Mrs. Gass sat on and enjoyed the sunshine. Just then Mary Dallory came by in her little low pony-carriage. She often drove about in it alone. Seeing Mrs. Gass, she drew up. That lady, without any ceremony, went out in her cap and stood talking.
"I hear you have left the Hall, my dear," she said, when the gossip was coming to an end.
"Ages ago," replied Miss Dallory. "Frank is at home again, and wanted me."
"How did you enjoy your visit on the whole?"
"Pretty well. It was not very lively, especially after Sir Nash was taken ill."
"He is better, Mr. Richard tells me," said the elder lady.
"Yes; he sits up now. I went to see him yesterday."
"Captain Bohun looks but poorly still."
"His illness was a bad one. Fancy his having jaundice. I thought it was only old people who had that."
"My dear, it attacks young and old. Once the liver gets out of order, there's no telling. Captain Bohun was born in India; and they are more liable to liver complaint, it's said, than others. You are driving alone to-day, as usual," continued Mrs. Gass.
"I like to be independent. Frank won't show himself in this little chaise; he says it is no better than a respectable wheelbarrow; and I'm sure I am not going to be troubled with a groom at my side."
"If all tales told are true, you'll soon run a chance of losing your independence," rejoined Mrs. Gass. "People say a certain young lady, not a hundred miles at this moment from, my elbow, is likely to give her heart away."
Instead of replying, Mary Dallory blushed violently. Observant Mrs. Gass saw and noticed it.
"Then it is true!" she exclaimed.
"What's true?" asked Mary.
"That you are likely to be married."
"No, it is not."
"My dear, you may as well tell me. You know me well; I'll keep good counsel."
"But I have nothing to tell you. How can I imagine what you mean?"
"'Twasn't more than a hint I had: that Captain Bohun--Sir Arthur as he will be--was making up his mind to have Miss Dallory, and she to have him. Miss Mary, is it so?"
"Did madam tell you that?"
"Madam wouldn't be likely to tell me--all of us in Dallory are so much dust under her feet; quite beneath being spoken to. No: 'twas her maid, Parrit, dropped it to me. She had heard it through madam, though."
Mary Dallory laughed a little and flicked the ear of the rough Welsh pony. "I fancy madam would like it," she said.
"Who wouldn't?" rejoined Mrs. Gass. "I put the question to Richard North--Whether there was anything in it? He answered there might be; he knew it was wished for."
"Richard North said that, did he? Of course, so it might be--and may be--for anything he can tell."
"But, my dear Miss Mary, is it so?"
"Well--to tell you the truth, the offer has not yet been made. When it comes, why then--I dare say it will be all right."
"Meaning that you'll accept him."
"Meaning that--oh, but it is not right to tell tales beforehand, even to you, Mrs. Gass," she broke off, with a laugh. "Let the offer come. I wish it would."
"You would like it to come, child?"
"Yes, I think I should."
"Then be sure it will come. And God bless you, my dear, and bring you happiness whatever turns out. Though it is not just the marriage I had carved out in my own mind for one of the two of you."
She meant Arthur Bohun. Mary Dallory thought she meant herself; and laughed again as the pony trotted away.
The next friend to pass the window after Mrs. Gass had again resumed her seat, was Richard North. He did not stop at the window, but went in. Certain matters connected with the winding-up of the old firm of North and Gass, had arisen, rendering it necessary that he should see Mrs. Gass.
"Do as you think best, Mr. Richard," she said, after they had talked together for a few minutes. "Please yourself, sir, and you'll please me. We'll leave it at that: I know it's all safe in your hands."
"Then I will do as I propose," said Richard.
"I've had Miss Dallory here--that is, in her pony-chay before the door," observed Mrs. Gass. "I taxed her with what I'd heard about her and Captain Bohun; She didn't say it was, and she didn't say it wasn't: but Mr. Richard, I think there's truth in it. She as good as said she'd like him to make her an offer: and she did say madam wished it. So I suppose we shall have wedding cards before a year's gone over our heads. In their case--he next step to a baronet, and she rolling in money--there's nothing, to wait for."
"Nothing," mechanically-answered Richard North.
"But I did think, as to him, that it would have been Ellen Adair. Talking of that, Mr. Richard, what is it that's amiss with her?"
"With her?--with whom?" cried Richard, starting out of a reverie.
"With that sweet young lady, Ellen Adair?"
"There's nothing amiss with her that I know of."
"Isn't there! Thereis, Mr. Richard, if my judgment and eyes are to be trusted. Each time I see her, she strikes me as looking worse and worse. You notice her, sir. Perhaps now the clue has been given you'll see it too. I once knew a young girl, Mr. Richard, that was dying quietly under her friends' very eyes, and they never saw it. Never saw it at all, till an aunt came over from another country. She started back when she saw the child, and says: 'Why, what have yon been doing with her? She's dying.' They were took aback at that, and called in the first doctor: but it was too late. I don't say Ellen Adair is dying, Mr. Richard; 'tisn't likely; but I'm sure she is not all right. Whether it's the mind, or whether it's the body, or whether it's the nerves, I'm not prepared to say; but it's something."
"I will find out," said Richard.
"Anything fresh about the men, Mr. Richard?"
"Nothing. Except that my workmen are getting afraid to stir out at night, and the disaffection increases amongst the others. I cannot see what is to be the end of it," he continued. "I do not mean of this rivalry, but of the sad state to which the men and their families are reduced. I often wish I did not think of it so much: it is like a chain about me from which I cannot escape. I wish I could help them to find work elsewhere."
"Ah!" said Mrs. Gass, "work elsewhere is very nice to think about in dreamland; but I'm afraid it'll never be seen for them in reality. It's not as if work was going a-begging: it has broken up everywhere, Mr. Richard; and shoals and shoals of men, destitute as our own, are tramping about at this minute, like so many old ravens with their mouths open, ready to pick up anything that may fall."
Richard North went home, his mind full of what Mrs. Gass had said about Ellen Adair. Was she indeed looking so ill? He found her sitting in the open seat near what would be in spring the tulip bed. Mr. North had just left her and gone in. Yes: Richard saw that she looked very ill; the face was wan, the eyes were sad and weary. She was coughing as he went up to her: a short, hacking cough. Some time ago she had caught cold, and it seemed to hang about her still.
"Are you well, Ellen?" he asked, as he sat down beside her.
"Yes, I believe so," was her reply. "Why?"
"Because I don't think you look well."
A soft colour, like the pink on a sea-shell, stole over her face as Richard said this. But she kept silence.
"You know, Ellen, we agreed to be as brother and sister. I wish to take care of you as such: to shield you from all ill as far as I possibly can. Are you happy here?"
A moment's pause, and then Ellen took courage to say that she was not happy.
"I should like to go elsewhere," she said. "Oh, Richard, if it could only be managed!"
"But it cannot," he answered.
"I have sufficient money, Richard."
"My dear, it is not that. Of course you have sufficient. I fancy, by sundry signs, that you will be a very rich young lady," he added, slightly laughing. "But you have no near friends in England, and we could not entrust you to strangers."
"If I could go for a time into some clergyman's family, or something of that sort."
"Ellen!"
She raised her hand from beneath the grey shawl--her favourite outdoor covering, for the shawl was warm--and passed it across her brow. In every movement there was a languor that spoke weariness of body or of spirit.
"When Mr. Adair comes home, if he found you had gone into 'some clergyman's family,' what would he think and say of us, Ellen?"
"I would tell him I went of my own accord."
"But, my dear, you cannot be allowed to do things of your own accord, if they are not wise. I and my father are appointed to take charge of you, and you must remain with us, Ellen, until Mr. Adair returns to England."
It was even so. Ellen's better judgment acknowledged it, in the midst of her great wish to be away. A wish: and not a wish. To be where Arthur Bohun was, still brought her the most intense happiness; and this, in spite of the pain surrounding it, she would not willingly have relinquished: but the cruelty of his conduct--of their estrangement--was more than she knew how to bear. It was making her ill, and she felt that it was. There was, however, no help for it. As Richard said, she had no friends to whom they could entrust her. The lady in whose house she was educated had recently died, and the establishment was being broken up.
Ten times a-day she longed to say to Arthur Bohun, "You are ungenerous to remain here. I cannot help myself, but you might." But pride withheld her.
"It may be months before papa arrives, Richard."
"And if it should be! We must try to make you happier with us."
"I think I must go in," she said, after a pause. "The day has been very fine, but it is growing cold now."
Folding the shawl closer to her throat, as if she felt chilly, and coughing a little as she walked, Ellen went round to the hall-door and entered. Richard, occupied in watching her and busy with his own thoughts, did not perceive the almost silent approach of Arthur Bohun, who came slowly up from behind.
"Well, Dick, old fellow!"
"Why, where did you spring from?" asked Richard, as Arthur flung himself down in the place vacated by Ellen.
"I have been under yonder tree, smoking a cigar. It has a good broad trunk to lean against."
"I thought the doctors had forbidden you to smoke."
"So they have. Until I grew stronger. One can't strictly obey orders. I don't suppose it matters much one way or the other. You have been enjoying a confidential chat, Dick."
"Yes," replied Richard. He had not felt very friendly in his heart towards Arthur for some time past. What was the meaning of his changed behaviour to Ellen Adair?--what of the new friendship with Mary Dallory? Richard North could not forgive dishonour; and he believed Arthur Bohun was steeping himself in it to the backbone.
"Were you making love, Dick?"
Richard turned his eyes in silence on the questioner.
"She and I have had to part, Dick. I always thought you admired and esteemed her almost more, perhaps quite more, than you do any other woman. So if you are thinking of her----"
"Be silent," sternly interrupted Richard, rising in anger. "Are you a man?--are you a gentleman? Or are you what I have been thinking you lately--a false-hearted, despicable knave?"
Whatever Arthur Bohun might be, he was just then in desperate agitation. Rising too, he seized Richard's hands.
"Don't you see that it was but sorry jesting, Richard? Pretending to a bit of pleasantry, to wile away for a moment my weight of torment. I am all that you say of me; and I cannot help myself."
"Not help yourself?"
"As Heaven is my witness, No! If I could take you into my confidence--and perhaps I may do so one of these days, for I long to do it--you would see that I tell you the truth."
"Why have you parted from Ellen Adair?--she and youhaveparted? You have just said so."
"We have parted for life. For ever."
"You were on the point of marriage with her only a short time ago?"
"No two people could have been nearer marriage than she and I were. We were within half-an-hour of it, Dick; and yet we have parted."
"By your doing, or hers?"
"By mine."
"I thought so."
"Dick, I have beencompelledto do it. When you shall know all, you will acknowledge that I could not do otherwise. And yet, in spite of this, I feel that to her I have been but a false-hearted knave, as you aptly style me: a despicable, dishonourable man. My father fell into dishonour--or rather had it forced upon him by another--and he could not survive it; he shot himself. Did you know it, Dick?"
"Shot himself!" repeated Richard, in his surprise. "No, I never knew that. I thought he died of sunstroke."
"My father shot himself," cried Arthur. "He could not live dishonoured. Dick, old fellow, there are moments when I feel tempted to do as he did."
"What--because you have parted from Ellen?"
"No. That's bitter enough to bear; but I can battle with it. It is the other thing, the dishonour. That is always present with me, always haunting me night and day; I know not how to live under it."
"I do not understand at all," said Richard. "You are master of your own actions."
"In this case I have not been: my line of conduct was forced upon me. I cannot explain. Don't judge me too harshly, my friend. I am bad enough, Heaven knows, but not quite as bad, perhaps, as you have been thinking me."
And Arthur Bohun turned and went limping away, leaving Richard lost in wonder.
He limped away to indulge his pain where no mortal eye could see him. Parted from Ellen Adair, the whole world was to him as nothing. A sense of dishonour lay ever upon him, the shame of his conduct towards her was present to him night and day. With all his heart he wished James Bohun had not died, that there might have been no question of his succession. He would then have gone somewhere away with her, have changed his name, and been happy in obscurity. But there was no place unfrequented by man; he could not change his wife's face; and she might be recognized as the daughter of Adair the convict. Besides, would it not be an offence against Heaven if he wedded the daughter of the man who had caused the death of his father? No; happiness could never be his. Look where he would, there was nothing around him but pain and misery.