Dashing up to Dallory Hall, just a week and a day after the wedding, came Mrs. North. Madam had learnt the news. Whilst she was reposing in all security in Paris, amidst a knot of friends who had chosen to be there at that season, Matilda North happened to take up aTimesnewspaper of some two or three days old, and saw the account of the marriage: "Oliver Rane, M.D., of Dallory Ham to Bessy, daughter of John North, of Dallory Hall, and of Elizabeth, his first wife." Madam rose up, her face flaming, and clutched the journal: she verily believed Miss Matilda was playing a farce upon her. No: the announcement was there in plain black and white. Making her hasty arrangements to quit the French capital, she came thundering home: and arrived the very day that Dr. and Mrs. Rane returned.
A letter had preceded her. A letter of denouncing wrath, that had made her husband shake in his shoes. Poor Mr. North looked tremblingly out for the arrival, caught a glimpse of the carriage and of madam's face, and slipped out by the back-door into the fields. Where he remained wandering about for hours.
So madam found no one to receive her. Richard was at the works, Captain Bohun had been out all the afternoon.
Nothing increases wrath like having no object to expend it on; and madam foiled, might have sat for a picture of fury. The passion that had been bubbling higher and higher all the way from Paris, found no escape at boiling point.
One of the servants happened to come in her way; the first housemaid, who had been head over Molly Green. Madam stopped her; bit her lips for calmness, and then inquired particulars of the wedding with a smooth face.
"Was it a runaway match, Lake?"
"Goodness, no, madam!" was Lake's answer, who was apt to be outspoken, even to her imperious mistress. "Things were being got ready for a month beforehand; and my master would have gone to church to give Miss Bessy away himself, but for not being well. All us servants went to see it."
Little by little, madam heard every detail. Captain Bohun was best man; Mr. Richard took out Miss Adair, who was bridesmaid, and looked lovely. The bride and bridegroom drove right away from the church-door. Captain Bohun went back in the carriage with Miss Adair; Mr. Richard went off on foot to the works. Miss Bessy--leastways Mrs. Oliver Rane now--had had some furniture sent to her new home from the Hall, and Molly Green was there as housemaid. That Lake should glow with intense gratification at being enabled to tell all this, was only in accordance with frail humanity: she knew what a dose it was for madam; and madam was disliked in the household more than poison. But Lake was hardly prepared for the ashy, tint that spread over madam's features, when she came to the part that told of the homeward drive of her son with Ellen Adair.
The girl was in the midst of her descriptions when Arthur Bohun came in. Madam saw him sauntering lazily up the gravel-drive, and swept down in her fine Parisian costume of white-and-black brocaded silk, lappets of lace floating from her hair. They met in the Hall.
"Why! is it you, mother?" cried Arthur in surprise--for he had no idea the invasion might be expected so soon. "Have you come home?"
He advanced to kiss her. Striving to be as dutiful as she would allow him to be, he was willing to observe all ordinary relations between mother and son: but of affection there existed none. Mrs. North drew back from the offered embrace, and haughtily motioned him to the drawing-room. Matilda sat there, sullen and listless: she was angry at being brought away summarily from Paris.
"Why did I assist at Bessy's wedding?" replied Arthur, parrying the attack with light good humour, as he invariably strove to do on these occasions. "Because I liked it. It was great fun. Especially to see Rane hunting in every pocket for the ring, and turning as red as a salamander."
"What business had you to do such a thing?" retorted madam, her face dark with the passion she was suppressing. "How dared you do it?"
"Do what, madam?"
Madam stamped a little. "You know without asking, sir; personally countenance the wedding."
"Was there any reason why I should not do so? Bessy stands to me as a sister: and I like her. I am glad she is married, and I hope sincerely they'll have the best of luck."
"I had forbidden the union with Oliver Rane," stamped madam. "Do you hear?--forbidden it. You knew that as well as she did."
"But then, don't you see, mother mine, you had no particular right to forbid it. If Matilda, there, took it into her head to marry some knight or other, you would have a voice in the matter, for or against; but Bessy was responsible to her father only."
"Don't bring my name into your nonsense, Arthur," struck in Matilda, with a frown.
Madam, looking from one to the other, was biting her lips.
"They had the wedding whilst you were away that it might be got over quietly," resumed Arthur, in his laughing way, determined not to give in an inch, even though he had to tell a home truth or two. "For my part, mother, I have never understood what possible objection you could have to Rane."
"That is my business," spoke Mrs. North. "I wish he and those Cumberland people were all at the bottom of the sea. How dared you disgrace yourself, Arthur Bohun?"
"Disgrace myself?"
"You did. You, a Bohun, to descend to companionship withthem!Fie upon you! And you have been said to inherit your father's pride."
"As I hope I do, in all proper things. I am unable to understand your distinctions, madam," he added, laughingly. "Rane is as good as Bessy, for all I see. As good as we are."
Madam caught up a hand-screen, as if she would have liked to throw it at him. Her hand trembled, with emotion or temper.
"There's some girl living with them. They tell me you went home with her in the carriage!"
Arthur Bohun suddenly turned his back upon them, as if to see who might be coming, for distant footsteps were heard advancing. But for that, madam might have seen a hot flush illumine his face.
"Well? What else, mother? Of course I took her home--Miss Adair."
"In the face and eyes of Dallory!"
"Certainly. And we had faces and eyes out that morning, I can tell you. It is not every day a Miss North gets married."
"How cameyouto take her home?"
"Dick asked me to do so. There was no one else to ask, you see. Mrs. Gass cheered us in going by, as if we had been an election. She had a shining yellow gown on and white bows in her cap."
His suavity was so great, his determination not to be ruffled so evident, that Mrs. North felt partly foiled. It was not often she attacked Arthur; he always met it in this way, and no satisfaction came of it. She could have struck him as he stood.
"What is the true tale about the ring, Arthur?" asked Matilda, in the silence come to by Mrs. North. "Lake says Oliver Rane really lost it."
"Really and truly, Matty."
"Were they married without a ring?"
"Some one present produced one," he replied carelessly, in his invincible dislike to mention Ellen Adair before his mother and sister: a dislike that had ever clung to him. Did it arise from the reticence that invariably attends love, this feeling?--or could it have been some foreshadowing, some dread instinct of what the future was to bring forth?
"How came Dr. Rane to lose the ring?"
"Carelessness, I suppose. We found it in the carriage, going home. He must have dropped it accidentally."
"Peace, Matilda! Keep your foolish questions for a fitting time," stormed madam. "How dare you turn your back upon me, Arthur? What money has gone out with the girl?"
Arthur turned to answer. In spite of his careless manner, he was biting his lips with shame and vexation. It was so often he had to blush for his mother.
"I'm sure I don't know, if you mean with Bessy; it is not my business that I should presume to ask. Here comes Dick: I thought it was his step. You can inquire of him, madam."
Richard North looked into the drawing-room, unconscious of the storm awaiting him. Matilda sat back in an easy-chair tapping her foot discontentedly; Arthur Bohun toyed with a rose at the window; madam, standing upright by the beautiful inlaid table, her train sweeping the rich carpet, confronted him.
But there was something about Richard North that instinctively subdued madam; she had never domineered over him as she did over her husband, and Bessy, and Arthur; and at him she did not rave and rant. Calm always, sufficiently courteous to her, and yet holding his own in self-respect, Richard and madam seldom came to an issue. But she attacked him now: demanding why this iniquity--the wedding--had been allowed to be enacted.
"Pardon me, Mrs. North, if I meet your question by another," calmly spoke Richard. "You complain of my sister's marriage as though it were a wrong against yourself. What is your reason?"
"I said it should not take place."
"Will you tell me why you oppose it?"
"No. It is sufficient that, to my mind, it did not present itself as suitable. I have resolutely set my face against Dr. Rane and his statue of a mother, who presumes to call the Master of Dallory Hall John! And I forbade Bessy to think of him."
"But--pardon me, Mrs. North--Bessy was not bound to obey you. Her father and I saw no objection to Dr. Rane."
"Was it right, was it honourable, that you should seize upon my absence to marry her in this indecent manner?--before Edmund was cold in his grave?"
"Circumstances control cases," said Richard. "As for marrying her whilst you were away, it was done in the interests of peace. Your opposition, had you been at home, would not have prevented the marriage; it was therefore as well to get it over in quietness."
A bold avowal. Richard stood before madam when he made it, upright as herself. She saw it was useless to contend: and all the abuse in the world would not undo it now.
"What money has gone out with her?"
It was a question that she had no right to put. Richard answered it, however.
"At present, not any. To-morrow I shall give Rane a cheque for two hundred pounds. Time was, madam, when I thought my sister would have gone from us with twenty thousand."
"We are not speaking of what was, but of what is," said madam, an unpleasant sneer on her face. "Mr. North--to hear him speak--cannot spare the two hundred."
"Quite true; Mr. North has it not to spare," said Richard. "It is I who give it to my sister. Drained though we constantly are for money, I could not, for very shame, suffer Bessy to go to her husband quite penniless."
"She has not gone penniless," retorted madam, brazening the thing out. "I hear the Hall has been dismantled for her."
"Oh, mother!" interposed Arthur in a rush of pain.
"Hold your tongue; it is no affair ofyours," spoke Mrs. North. "A cartload of furniture has gone out of the Hall."
"Bessy's own," said Richard. "It was her mother's; and we have always considered it Bessy's. A few trifling mahogany things, madam, that you have never condescended to take notice of, and that never, in point of fact, have belonged to you. They have gone with Bessy, poor girl; and I trust Rane will make her a happier home than she has had here."
"I trust they will both be miserable," flashed madam.
Equable in temper though Richard North was, there are limits to endurance; he found his anger rising, and quitted the room abruptly. Arthur Bohun went limping after him: in any season of emotion, he was undeniably lame.
"I would beg your pardon for her, Dick, in all entreaty," he whispered, putting his arm within Richard's, "but that my tongue is held by shame and humiliation. It was an awful misfortune for you all when your father married her."
"We can only make the best of it, Arthur," was the kindly answer. "It was neither your fault nor mine."
"Where is the good old pater?"
"Hiding somewhere. Not a doubt of it."
"Let us go and find him, Dick. He may be the better for having us with him to-day. If she was not my mother--and upon my word and honour, Richard, I sometimes think she is not--I'd strap on my armour and do brave battle for him."
The bride and bridegroom were settling down in their house. Bessy, arranging her furniture in her new home, was busy and happy as the summer day was long. Some of the mahogany things were terribly old-fashioned, but the fact never occurred to Bessy. The carpet was bright; the piano, Richard's present, and a great surprise, was beautiful. It was so kind of him to give her one--she who was only a poor player at best, and had thought of asking madam to be allowed to have the unused old thing in the old schoolroom at Dallory Hall. She clung to Richard with tears in her eyes as she kissed and thanked him. He kissed her again, and gave his good wishes for her happiness, but Bessy thought him somewhat out of spirits. Richard North handed over two hundred pounds to them: a most acceptable offering to Dr. Rane.
"Thank you, Richard," he heartily said, grasping his brother-in-law's hand. "I shall be getting on so well shortly as to need no help for my wife's sake or for mine." And Richard knew that he was anticipating the period when the other doctor should have left, and the whole practice be in his own hands.
It was on the third or fourth morning after their return, that Dr. Rane, coming home from seeing his patients, met his fellow-surgeon, arm-in-arm with a stranger. Mr. Alexander stopped to introduce him.
"Mr. Seeley, Rane," he said. "My friend and successor."
Had a shot been fired at Dr. Rane, he could scarcely have felt more astounded. In the moment's confused blow, he almost stammered.
"Your successor? Here?"
"My successor in the practice. I have sold him the goodwill, and he has come down to be introduced."
Dr. Rane bowed. The new doctor put out his hand. That same day Dr. Rane went over to Mr. Alexander's and reproached him.
"You might at least have given me the refusal had you wanted to sell it."
"My good fellow, I promised it to Seeley ages ago," was the answer. "He knew I had a prospect of the London appointment: in fact, helped me to get it."
What was to be said? Nothing. But Oliver Rane felt as though a bitter blow had again fallen upon him, blighting the fair vista of the future.
"Don't be down-hearted, Oliver," whispered Bessy, hopefully, as she clung around him when he went in and spoke of the disappointment. "We shall be just as happy with a small practice as a large one. It will all come right--with God's blessing on us."
But Oliver Rane, looking back on a certain deed of the past, felt by no means sure in his heart of hearts that the blessing would be upon them.
Bessy Rane sat at the large window of her dining-room in the coming twilight. Some twelve months had elapsed since her marriage, and summer was round again. Her work had dropped on her lap: it was that of stitching some wristbands for her husband: and she sat inhaling the sweet scent of the flowers, and watching Jelly's movements in Mrs. Cumberland's dining-room, facing her. Jelly had a candle in her hand, apparently searching for something. Bessy leaned forward to pluck a sprig of sweet verbena, and sat on tranquilly.
At the table behind her sat Dr. Rane, writing as fast as the waning light would permit him. Some unusual and peculiar symptoms had manifested themselves in a patient he had been recently attending, and he was making them and the case into a paper for a medical publication, in the hope that it would bring him back a remunerative guinea or two.
"Oliver, I am sure you can't see," said Bessy presently, looking round.
"It is almost blindman's holiday, dear. Will you ring for the lamp?"
Mrs. Rane rose. But, instead of ringing for the lamp, she went up to him, and put her hand on his shoulder persuasively.
"Take a quarter-of-an-hour's rest, Oliver. You will find all the benefit of it; and it is not quite time to light the lamp. Let us take a stroll in the garden."
"You are obstructing what little light is left, Bessy; standing between me and the window."
"Of course I am. I'm doing it on purpose. Come, Oliver! You ought to know a great deal better than I do that it is bad to try the eyes, sir.Please, Oliver."
Yielding to her entreaties, he pushed the paper from him with a sigh of weariness, and they stepped from the window into the garden. Bessy passed her hand within his arm; and, turning towards the more secluded paths, they began to converse with one another in low tones.
Many a twilight half-hour had they thus paced together of late, talking together of what was and of what might be. The first year of their marriage had not been one of success in a pecuniary point of view; for Dr. Rane's practice did not improve. He earned barely sufficient for their moderate wants. Bessy, as cash-keeper, had a difficulty in making both ends meet. But the fact was not known; never a syllable of it transpired from either of them. Dr. Rane was seen out and about a great deal, going to and fro amongst his patients; and the world did not suspect that his returns were so small.
The new surgeon, Seeley, had stepped into all Mr. Alexander's practice, and was flourishing. Dr. Rane's, as before, was chiefly confined to the lower classes, especially those belonging to the North Works; and from certain circumstances, these men were not so supplied with funds as they had been, and consequently were not so well able to pay him. That Dr. Rane was bitterly mortified at not getting on better, for his wife's sake as well as his own, could not be mistaken. Bessy preached of hope cheerfully; of a bright future yet in store; but he had lost faith in it.
It seemed to Dr. Rane that everything was a failure. The medical book he had been engaged upon with persevering industry at the time of his marriage, from which he had anticipated great things both in fame and fortune, had not met with success. He had succeeded in getting it published; but as yet there were no returns. He had sacrificed a sum of money towards its publication; not a very large sum, it is true, but larger than they could afford, and no one but themselves knew how it had crippled them. Bessy said it would come back some day with interest; for the present they had only to keep up a good heart and live frugally.
Poor Bessy herself had one grief that she never spoke of even to him--the want of offspring. There had been no prospect of it whatever; and she so loved children! As week after week, month after month went by, her disappointment was very keen. She was beginning to grow a little reconciled to it now; and became only the more devoted to her husband.
Mrs. Rane was an excellent manager in the household, spending the smallest fraction that she could, consistently with comfort. It had not yet come to the want ofthat. At the turn of the previous winter old Phillis became ill and had to leave; and Bessy had since kept only Molly Green. By a fortunate chance Molly understood cooking; she had become a really excellent servant. At the small expense they lived at now, Dr. Rane might perhaps have managed to continue to meet it whilst he waited patiently for better luck; but he did not intend to do anything of the sort. His only anxiety was to remove to another place, as far away from Dallory Ham as possible.
Whether this thirst for migration would have arisen had his practice become successful, cannot be told. We can only record things as they were. With the disappointment--and other matters--lying upon him, the getting away from Dallory had grown into a wild, burning desire, that never left him by night or day. That one fatal mistake of his life seemed to hang over him like a curse. It is true that when he penned the letter so disastrous in its result, he had no more intention in his heart of slaying or killing than had the paper he wrote on; he had only thought of putting Alexander into disfavour at Dallory Hall; but it had turned out otherwise, and Dr. Rane felt that he had a life to answer for. He might have borne this; and at any rate his running away from Dallory would neither lessen the heart's burden nor add to it; but what he could not bear was the prospect of detection. Not a day passed but he saw some one or other whose face tacitly reminded him that such discovery might take place. He felt sure that Mrs. Gass still suspected him of having written the letter; he knew that his mother doubted it; he gathered a half suspicion of Jelly; he had more than half one of Richard North; and how many others there might be he knew not. Ever since the time when he had returned from his marriage trip, he thought there had been an involuntary constraint in Richard's manner to him; it could not be fancy. As to Jelly, the way he sometimes caught her green eyes observing him, was enough to give the shivers to a nervous man, which Dr. Rane was not. How he could have committed the fatal mistake of putting that copy of the miserable letter into his pocketbook, he never knew. He had tried his writing and his sentences on two or three pieces of paper, but he surely thought he had torn all up and burnt the pieces. Over and over again, looking back upon his carelessness, he said to himself that it was Fate. Not carelessness, in one sense of the word. Carelessness if you will, but a carelessness that he could not go from in the arbitrary dominions of Fate. Fate had been controlling him with her iron hand, to bring his crime home to him; and he could not escape it. Whatever it might have been, however--Fate, or want of caution--it had led to his being a suspected man by some few around him; and continue to live amongst them he would not. Dr. Rane was a proud man, liking in an especial degree to stand well in the estimation of his fellows; to have such a degradation as this brought publicly home to him would well-nigh kill him with shame. Rather than face it he would have run away to the remotest quarter of the habitable globe.
And he had quite imbued Bessy with the wish for change. She only thought as he thought. Never suspecting the true reason of his wish to get away and establish himself elsewhere, she only saw how real it was. Of this they talked, night after night, pacing the garden paths. "There seems to have been a spell of ill-luck attending me ever since I settled in this place," he would say to her; "and I know it won't be lifted whilst I stop here." He was saying it this very night.
"I hate the place, Bessy," he observed, looking up at the bright evening star that began to show itself in the clear blue sky. "But for my mother and you I should never have stayed in it. I wish I had the money to buy a practice elsewhere. As it is, I must establish one."
"Yes," acquiesced Bessy. "But where? The great thing is--what other place to decide upon."
Of course that was the chief thing. Dr. Rane looked down and kept silence, pondering various matters in his mind. He thought it had better be London. A friend of his, one Dr. Jones, who had been a fellow-student in their hospital days, was doing a large practice as a medical man in the neighbourhood of New York: he wanted assistance, and had proposed to Dr. Rane to go over and join him. Nothing in the world would Dr. Rane have liked better; and Bessy was willing to go where he went, even to quit her native land for good; but Dr. Jones did not offer this without an equivalent, and the terms he named, five hundred pounds, were quite beyond the reach of Oliver Rane. So he supposed it must be London. With the two hundred pounds that he hoped to get for the goodwill of his own practice in Dallory Ham--at this very moment he was trying to negociate with a gentleman for it in private---he should set up in London, or else purchase a small share in an established practice. Anything, anywhere, to get away, and to leave the nightmare of daily-dreaded discovery behind him!
"Once we are away from this place, Bessy, we shall get on. I feel sure of it. You won't long have to live like a hermit, from dread of the cost of entertaining company, or to look at every sixpence before you lay it out."
"I don't mind it, Oliver. You know how sorry I should be if you thought of giving up our home here for my sake."
"But I don't; it's for my own as well," he hastily added. "You can't realize what it is, Bessy, for a clever medical man--and I am that--to be beaten back for ever into obscurity; to find no field for his talents; to watch others of this generation rising into note and usefulness. I have not got on here! Madam has schemed to prevent it. Why she should have patronized Alexander; why she should patronize Seeley; not for their sakes, but to oppose me; I have never been able to imagine. Unless it was that my mother, when Fanny Gass, and Mr. North were intimate as brother and sister in early life."
"And madam despises the Gass family and ours equally. It was a black-letter day for us all when papa married her."
"That is no reason why she should have set her face againstme. It has been a fatal blight on me: worse than you and the world think for, Bessy."
"I am sure you must have felt it so," murmured Bessy. "And she would have stopped our marriage if she could."
"Whoever succeeds me here will speedily make a good practice of it. You'll see. She has kept me from doing it. There's one blessed thing--her evil influence cannot follow us elsewhere."
"I should like to become rich and have a large house, and get poor papa to live with us," said Bessy hopefully. "Madam is worrying him into his grave with her cruel temper. Oh, Oliver, I should like him to come to us!"
"I'm sure I wouldn't object," replied Dr. Rane good-naturedly. "How they will keep up the expenses at Dallory Hall if this strike is prolonged, I cannot think. Serve madam right!"
"Do you hear much of the trouble, Oliver?"
"Much of it! Why, I hear nothing else. The men are fools. They'll cut their own throats as sure as a gun. Your brother Richard sees it coming."
"Sees what?" asked Bessy, not exactly understanding.
"Ruin," emphatically replied Dr. Rane. "The men will play at bo-peep with reason until the trade has left them. Fools! Fools!"
"It's not the poor men, Oliver. I have lived amongst them--some of them at any rate--since I was a child, and I don't like to hear them blamed. It is that they are misled. Misled by the Trades' Unions."
"Nonsense!" replied Dr. Rane. "A man who has his living to earn ought not to allow himself to be misled. There's his work to hand; let him do it. A body of would-be autocrats might come down on me and say, 'Oliver Rane, we want you to join our society: which forbids doctors to visit patients except under its own rules and regulations.' Suppose I listened to them?--and stayed at home, and let Seeley, or any one else, snap up my practice, and awoke presently to find my means of living irrevocably gone?--nothing left for me but the workhouse? Should I deserve pity? Certainly not."
Bessy laughed a little. They were going in, and she--still keeping her hand within his arm--coaxed him yet for another moment's recreation into the drawing-room. Sitting down to the piano in the fading light--the piano that Richard had given her--she began a song that her husband was fond of, "O Bay of Dublin." That sweet song set to the air of "Groves of Blarney," by the late Lady Dufferin. Bessy's voice was weak and of no compass, but it was true and rather sweet; and she had that, by no means common, gift of rendering every word as distinctly heard as though it were spoken: so that her singing was pleasant to listen to. Her husband liked it. He leaned against the window-frame, now as she sang, in a deep reverie, gazing out on Dallory Ham, and at the man lighting the roadside lamps. Dr. Rane never heard this song but he wished he was the emigrant singing it, with some wide ocean flowing between him and home.
"What's this, I wonder?"
Some woman, whom he did not recognize, had turned in at his gate and was ringing the door-bell. Dr. Rane found he was called out to a patient: one of the profitless people as usual.
"Piersons want me, Bessy," he looked into the room to say. "The man's worse. I shall not be long."
And Bessy rose when she heard the street-door closed.
Taking a duster from the drawer, she carefully passed it over the keys before closing her piano for the night. Very much did Bessy cherish her drawing-room and its furniture. They did not use it very much: not from fear of spoiling it, but because the other room with its large bay window seemed the more cheerful; and people feel more at ease in the room they usually sit in. Bessy took as much pride in her house as though it had been one of the grandest in all Dallory: happy as a queen in it, felt she. Stepping lightly over the drawing-room carpet--fresh as the day when it came out of Turtle's warehouse--touching, with a gentle finger, some pretty thing or other on the tables as she passed, she opened the door and called to the servant.
"Molly, it is time these shutters were shut."
Molly Green, in an apology of a cap tilted on her hair, and a white muslin apron, came out of the kitchen. Molly liked to be as smart as the best of them, although she had all the work to do. Which all was not very much when aided by her mistress's good management.
"You had better light the hall-lamp," added Mrs. Rane, as she went upstairs.
It was tolerably light still. Bessy often did what she was about to do--namely, draw down the window-blinds; it saved Molly trouble. The wide landing was less bare than it used to be; at the time of Dr. Rane's marriage he had covered it with some green drugget, and put a chair and a book-shelf there. It still looked too large, still presented a contrast to the luxuriously furnished landing of Mrs. Cumberland's opposite, especially when the two wide windows happened to be open; but Bessy thought her own quite good enough. Of the two back-rooms, one had been furnished as a spare bedchamber; the other had not much in it besides Bessy's boxes that had come from the Hall. Richard had spoken kindly to her about this last chamber. "Should any contingency arise; sickness, or other; that you should require its use, Bessy," he said, "and Rane does not find it quite convenient to spare money for furniture, let me know, and I'll do it for you." She had thanked him gratefully: but the contingency had not come yet.
Into this back-room first went Bessy, passed by her boxes, closed the window, and drew the white blind down. From thence into the next chamber--a pretty room with chintz curtains to the window and the Arabian bed. Dr. Rane was very particular about having plenty of air in his house, and would have every window open all day long. Next, Bessy crossed the landing again to her own chamber. She had to pass through the drab room (as may be remembered) to get to it. The drab room was in just the same state that it used to be; Dr. Rane's glass jars and other articles used in chemistry lying on one side its bare floor. Formerly they were strewed about anywhere: under Bessy's neat rule they were gathered into a small space. Sometimes Bessy thought she should like to make this her own sitting and work-room: its window looked towards the fields beyond Dallory Ham. Often, when she first came to the house, she would softly say to her heart, "What a nice day-nursery it would make!" She had left off saying it now.
Taking some work from a drawer in her own room, which was what she went up for--for she knew that Oliver would tell her to leave off if she attempted to stitch the wristbands by candle-light--she stood for a minute at the window and saw some gentleman, whom she did not recognize, turn out of Mr. Seeley's, and go towards Dallory.
"A fresh patient," she thought to herself, with a sigh very like envy. "He gets them all. I wish a few would come to Oliver."
As she watched the stranger up the road, something in his height and make put her in mind of her dead brother, Edmund. All her thoughts went back to the unhappy time of his death, and to the letter that had led to it.
"It's very good of Oliver to comfort me, saying he could not in any case have lived long--and I suppose it was so," murmured Bessy; "but that does not make it any the less shocking. He was killed. Cut off without warning by that wicked, anonymous letter. And I don't believe the writer will be ever traced now: even Richard seems to have cooled in the pursuit, since he discovered it was not the man he had suspected."
Close upon the return of Dr. and Mrs. Rane after their marriage, the tall, thin stranger who had been seen with Timothy Wilks the night before the anonymous letter was sent, and whom Richard North and others fully believed to have been the writer, was discovered. It proved to be a poor artist, travelling the country to take sketches--who was sometimes rather too fond of being a boon companion with whatever company he might happen to fall into. Hovering here some days, hovering there, in pursuit of his calling, he at length made his headquarters at Whitborough. Hearing he was suspected, he came forward voluntarily, and convinced Richard North that he at least had had nothing to do with the letter. Richard's answer was that he quite believed him. And perhaps it was Richard North's manner at this time, coupled with a remark he made to the effect that "it might be better to allow all speculation on the point to rest," that first gave Dr. Rane the idea of Richard's suspicion of himself. Things had been left at rest since then: and oven Bessy, as we see, thought her brother was growing cold.
Turning from the window with a sigh, given to the memory of her dead brother, she passed through the ante-room to the landing on her way downstairs. Mrs. Cumberland's landing opposite gave forth a brilliant light as usual--for that lady liked to burn many lamps in her hall and staircases--and Ann, the housemaid, was drawing down the window blind. Mrs. Rane's window had never had a blind.
Molly Green was taking the supper-tray into the dining-room when she went down. Bessy hovered about it, seeing that things were as her husband liked them. She put his slippers ready, she drew his arm-chair forward; ever solicitous for his comfort. To wait on him and make things pleasant for him was the great happiness of her life. After that she sat down and worked by lamplight, awaiting his return.
Whilst Dr. Rane, walking forth to see his patient and walking home again, was buried in an unpleasant reverie, like a man in a dream. That one dreadful mistake lay always with heavier weight upon him at the solitary evening hour. Now and again he would almost fancy he should see Edmund North looking out at him from the roadside hedges or behind trees. At any sacrifice he must get away from the place, and then perhaps a chance of peace might come to him: at least from this ever-haunting dread of discovery. He would willingly give the half of his remaining life to undo that past dark night's work.
There was trouble amongst the Dallory workpeople. It had been looming in the distance for some time before it came. No works throughout the kingdom had been more successfully carried on than the North Works. The men were well paid; peace and satisfaction had always reigned between them and their employers. But when certain delegates, or emissaries, or whatever they may please to call themselves, arrived stealthily at Dallory from the Trades' Unions, and took up stealthy abode in the place, and whispered stealthy whispers into the ears of the men, peace was at an end.
It matters not to trace the working of these insidious whispers, or how the poison spread. Others have done it far more effectively and to the purpose than I could do it. Sufficient to say that the Dallory workpeople caught the infection prevailing amongst other bodies of men--which the public, to its cost, has of late years known too much of--and they joined the ranks of the disaffected. First there had been doubt, and misgiving, and wavering; then agitation; then dissatisfaction; then parleying with their master, Richard North; thendemandsto be paid more and do less work. In vain Richard, with his strong sense, argued and reasoned: showing them, in all kindness, how mistaken was the course they were entering on, and what must come of it. They listened with respect, for he was liked and esteemed; but they would not give in. It had been privately told Richard that much argument and holding-out had been carried on with the Trades' Union emissaries, some of whom were ever hovering over Dallory like birds of prey: the workmen wanting to insist on the sense of Richard North's views of things, the others speciously disproving it. But it came to nothing. The workmen yielded to their despotic rulers as submissively as others have done, and Richard's words were set at nought. They were like so many tame sheep blindly following their leader. The agitation, beginning about the time of Bessy North's marriage, continued for many months; it then came to an issue; and for several weeks now, the works had been shut up.
For the men had struck. North and Gass had large contracts on hand, and they could not be completed. Unless matters took a speedy turn, masters and men would alike be ruined. The ruin of the first involved that of the last.
Mrs. Gass took things more equably than Richard North. In one sense she had less need to take them otherwise. Her prosperity did not depend on the works. A large sum of hers was certainly invested in them; but a larger was in other and safe securities. If the works and their capital went to ruin, the only difference it would make to Mrs. Gass was, that she would have so much the less money to leave behind her when she died. In this sense therefore Mrs. Gass could take things calmly: but in regard to the men's conduct she was far more outspoken and severe than Richard.
Dallory presented a curious scene. In former days, during work time not an idle man was to be found: the village had looked almost deserted, excepting for the children playing about. Now the narrow thoroughfares were blocked with groups of men; talking seriously, or chaffing with each other, as might be; most of them smoking, and all looking utterly sick of the passing hours. Work does not tire a man--or woman either--half as much as idleness.
At first the holiday was an agreeable novelty; the six days were each a Sunday, as well as the seventh; and the men and women lived in clover. Not one family in twenty had been sufficiently provident to put by money for a rainy day, good though their wages had been; but the Trades' Unions took care of their new protégés, and supplied them with funds. But as the weeks went on, and Richard North gave no sign of relenting--that is, of taking the men on again at their own terms--the funds did not come in so liberally. Husbands, not accustomed to being stinted; wives, not knowing how to make sixpence suffice for a shilling, might be excused if they felt a little put out; and they began to take things to the pawnbroker's. Mr. Ducket, the respectable functionary who presided over the interests of the three gilt balls at Dallory, rubbed his hands complacently as he took the articles in. Being gifted with a long sharp nose, he scented the good time coming.
One day, in passing the shop, Mrs. Gass saw three women in it. She walked in herself; and, without ceremony, demanded what they were pledging. The women slunk away, hiding their property under their aprons, and leaving their errand to be completed another time. That Mrs. Gass or their master, Richard North, should see them at this work, brought humiliation to their minds and shame to their cheeks. Richard North and Mrs. Gass had both told them (to their utter disbelief) that it would come to this: and to be detected in the actual fact of pledging, seemed very like defeat.
"So you've began, have you, Ducket?" commenced Mrs. Gass.
"Began what, ma'am?" asked Ducket; a little, middle-aged man with watery eyes and weak hair; always deferent in manner to the wealthy Mrs. Gass.
"Began what! Why, the pledging. I told 'em all they'd come to the pawnshop."
"It's them that have begun it, ma'am; not me."
"Where do you suppose it will end, Ducket?"
Ducket shook his head meekly, intimating that he couldn't suppose anything about it. He was naturally meek in disposition, and the brow-beating he habitually underwent in the course of business from his customers of the fairer sex had subdued his spirit.
"It'll just end in their pawning every earthly thing inside their homes, leaving them to the four naked walls," said Mrs. Gass. "And the next move 'll be into the work'us."
In the presence of Mrs. Gass, Ducket did not choose to show any sense of latent profit this wholesale pledging might bring to him. On the contrary, he affected to see nothing but gloom in the matter.
"A nice prospect for us rate-payers, ma'am, that 'ould be! Taxes be heavy enough, as it is, in Dallory parish, without having all these workmen and their families throw'd on us."
"If the taxes was of my mind, Ducket, they'd let the men starve, rather than help 'em. When able-bodied artisans have plenty of work to do, and won't do it, it's time they was taught a lesson. As sure as you and I are standing here, them misguided men will come to want a crust."
"Well, I'd not wish 'em as bad as that," said Ducket, who, apart from the hardness induced by his trade, was rather softhearted. "Perhaps Mr. Richard North 'll give in."
"Mr. Richard North give in!" echoed Mrs. Gass. "Don't upset your brains with perhapsing that, Ducket. Who ought to give in--looking at the rights and wrongs of the question--North and Gass, or the men? Tell me that."
"Well, I think the men are wrong," acknowledged the pawnbroker, smoothing down his white linen apron. "And foolish too."
Mrs. Gass nodded several times, a significant look on her pleasant face. She wore a top-knot of white feathers, and they bowed majestically with the movement.
"Maybe they'll live to see it, too. They will, unless their senses come back to 'em pretty quickly. Look here, Ducket: what I was about to say is this--don't be too free to take their traps in."
Ducket's face assumed a mournful cast, but Mrs. Gass was looking at him, evidently waiting for an answer.
"I don't see my way clear to refusing things when they are brought to me, Mrs. Gass, ma'am. The women 'ould only go off to Whitborough and pledge 'em there."
"Then they should go--for me."
"Yes, ma'am," rejoined the man, not knowing what else to say.
"I'm not particular squeamish, Ducket; trade's trade; and a pawnbroker must live as well as other people. I don't say but what the money he lends does sometimes a world of good to them that has no other help to turn to--and, maybe, through no fault of their own, poor things. But when it comes to dismantling homes by the score, and leaving families as destitute as ever they were when they came into this blessed world, that's different. And I wouldn't like to have it on my conscience, Ducket, though I was ten pawnbrokers."
Mrs. Gass quitted the shop with the last words, leaving Ducket to digest them. In passing North Inlet, she saw a group of the disaffected collected together, and turned out of her way to speak to them. Mrs. Gass was quite at home, so to say, with every one of the men at the works; more so than a lady of better birth and breeding could ever have been. She found fault with them, and commented on their failings as familiarly as though she had been one of themselves. Of the whole body of workpeople, not more than three or four had consistently raised their voices against the strike. These few would willingly have gone to work again, and thought it a terrible hardship that they could not do so; but of course the refusal of the majority to return practically closed the gates to all. Richard North could not keep his business going with only half-a-dozen pairs of hands in it.
"Well," began Mrs. Gass, "what's the time o' day with you men?"
The men parted at the address, and touched their caps. The "time o' day" meant, as they knew, anything but the literal question.
"How much longer do you intend to lead the lives of gentlefolk?"
"It's what we was a-talking on, ma'am--how much longer Mr. Richard North 'll keep the gates closed again' us," returned one whose name was Webb, speaking boldly but respectfully.
"Don't you put the saddle on the wrong horse, Webb; I told you that the other day. Mr. Richard North didn't close the gates again' you: you closed 'em again' yourselves by walking out. He'd open them to you tomorrow, and be glad to do it."
"Yes, ma'am, but on the old terms," debated the man, looking obstinately at Mrs. Gass.
"What have you to say again' the old terms?" demanded that lady of the men collectively. "Haven't they kept you and your families in comfort for years and years? Where was your grumblings then? I heard of none."
"But things is changed," said Webb.
"Not a bit of it," retorted Mrs. Gass. "It's you men that have changed; not the things. I'll put a question to yon, Webb--to all of you--and it won't do you any harm to answer it. If these Trade Union men had never come amongst you with their persuasions and doctrines, should you, or should you not, have been at your work now in content and peace? Be honest, Webb, and reply."
"I suppose so," confessed Webb.
"You know so," corrected Mrs. Gass. "It is as Mr. Richard said the other day to me--the men are led away by a chimera, which means a false fancy, Webb; a sham. There's the place"--pointing in the direction of the works--"and there's your work, waiting for you to do it. Mr. Richard will give you the same wages that he has always given; you say you won't go to work unless he gives more: which he can't afford to do. And there it rests; you, and him, and the business, all at a standstill."
"And likely to be at a standstill, ma'am," returned Webb, but always respectfully.
"Very well; let's take it at that," said Mrs. Gass, with equanimity. "Let's take it that itlasts, this state of things. What's to come of it?"
Webb, an intelligent man and superior workman, looked out straight before him thoughtfully, as if searching a solution to the question. Mrs. Gass, finding he did not answer, resumed:
"If the Trades' Unions can find you permanently in food and drink, and clothes and firing, well and good. Let 'em do it: there'd be no more to say. But if they can't?"
"They undertake to keep us as long as the masters hold out."
"And the money--where's it had from?"
"Subscribed. All the working bodies throughout the United Kingdom subscribe to support the Trades' Unions, ma'am."
"I heard," said Mrs. Gass, "that you were not getting quite as liberal a keep from the Trades' Unions as they gave you to begin upon."
"That's true," interrupted one named Foster, who very much resented the shortening of supplies.
Mrs. Gass gave a toss to her lace parasol. "I heard, too--I've seen, for the matter of that--that your wives had begun to spout their spare crockery," said she. "What'll you do when the allowance grows less and less till it comes to nothing, andallyour things is at the pawnshop?"
One or two of them laughed slightly. Not at her figures of speech--the homely language was their own--but at the improbability of the picture she called up. It was a state of affairs impossible to arise, they answered, whilst they had the Trades' Unions at their backs.
"Isn't it," said Mrs. Gass. "Those that live longest 'll see most. There's strikes agate all over the country. You know that, my men."
Of course the men knew it. But for the general example set by others, they might never have struck themselves.
"Very good," said Mrs. Gass. "Now look here. You can see out before you just as well as I can, you men; your senses are as sharp as mine. When nearly the whole country goes on the strike, where are the subscriptions to come from for the Trades' Unions? Don't it stand to common reason that there'll be nobody to pay 'em? Who'll keep you then?"
It was the very thing wanted--that all the country should go on strike; for then the masters must give in, was the reply. And then the men stood their ground and looked at her.
Mrs. Gass shook her head; the feathers waved. She supposed it must be as Richard North had said--the men in their prejudice really could not foresee what might be looming in the future.
"It seems no good my talking," she resumed; "I've said it before. If you don't come to repent, my name's not Mary Gass. I'm far from wishing it; goodness knows; and I shall be heartily sorry for your wives and children when the misery comes upon 'em. Not foryou; because you are bringing it deliberate on yourselves."
"We don't doubt your good wishes for us and our families, ma'am," spoke Webb. "But, if you'll excuse my saying it, you stand in the shoes of a master, and naturally look on from the masters' point of view. Your interests lie that way, ours this, and they're dead opposed to each other."
"Well, now, I'll just say something," cried Mrs. Gass. "As far as my own interest is concerned, I don't care one jot whether the works go on again, or whether they stand still for ever. I've as much money as will last me my time. If every pound locked up in the works is lost, it'll make no sort of difference to me, or my home, or my comforts--and you ought to know this yourselves. I shall have as much to leave behind me, too, as I care to leave. But, if you come to talking of interests, I tell you whose I do think of, more than I do of my own--and that's yours and Mr. Richard North's. I am as easy on the matter, on my own score, as a body can be; but I'm not so on yours or his."
It was spoken with simple earnestness. In fact Mrs. Gass was incapable of deceit or sophistry--and the men knew it. But they thought that, in spite of her honesty, she could only be prejudiced against the workmen; and consequently her words had no more weight with them than the idle wind.
"Well, I'm off," said Mrs. Gass. "I hope with all my heart that your senses will come to you. And I say it for your own sakes."
"They've not left us--that we knows on," grumbled a man in a suppressed, half-insolent tone, as if he were dissatisfied with things in general.
"I hear you, Jack Allen. If you men think you know your own business best, you must follow it," concluded Mrs. Gass. "The old saying runs, A wilful man must have his way. One thing I'd like you to understand: that when your wives and children shall be left without a potater to their mouths or a rag to their backs, you needn't come whining to me to help 'em. Don't you forget to bear that in mind, my men."
Waiting for her at home, Mrs. Gass found Richard North. That this was a very anxious time for him, might be detected by the thoughtful look his face habitually wore. It was all very well for Mrs. Gass, so amply provided for, to take existing troubles easily; Richard was less philosophical. And with reason. His own ruin--and the final closing of the works would be nothing less--might be survived. He had his profession, his early manhood, his energies to fall back upon; his capacity and character both stood pre-eminent: he had no fear of making a living for himself, even though it might be done in the service of some more fortunate firm, and not in his own. But there was his father. If the works were permanently closed, the income Mr. North enjoyed from them could no longer be paid to him. All Mr. North's resources, whether derived from them or from Richard's generosity, would vanish like the mists of a summer's morning.
"What's it you, Mr. Richard?" cried Mrs. Gass when she entered, and saw him standing near the window of her dining-room. "I wouldn't have stopped out if I'd known you were here. Some of the men have been hearing a bit of my mind," she added, sitting down behind her plants and untying her bonnet-strings. "It's come to pawning the women's best gowns now."
"Has it?" replied Richard North, rather abstractedly, as if buried in thought. "Of course it must come to that, sooner or later."
"Sooner or later it would come to pawning themselves, if hey could do it," spoke Mrs. Gass. "If this state of things is to last, they'll have nothing else left to pawn."
Richard wheeled round and took a chair in front of Mrs. Gass. He had come to make a proposition to her; one he did not quite approve of himself; and for that reason his manner was perhaps a little less ready than usual. Richard North had received from Mrs. Gass, at the time of her late husband's death, full power to act on his own responsibility, just as he had held it from Mr. Gass; but in all weighty matters he had made a point of consulting them: Mr. Gass whilst he lived, Mrs. Gass since then.
"It is a question that I have been asking myself a little too often for my own peace--how long this state of things will last, and what will be the end," said Richard in answer to her last words, his low tone almost painfully earnest. "The longer it goes on, the worse it will be; for the men and for ourselves."
"That's precisely what I tell 'em," acquiesced Mrs. Gass, tilting her bonnet and fanning her face with her handkerchief. "But I might just as well speak to so many postesses."
"Yes; talking will not avail. I have talked to them; and find it only waste of words. If they listen to my arguments and feel inclined to be impressed with them, the influences of the Trades' Union undo it all again. I think we must try something else."
"And what's that, Mr. Richard?"
"Give way a little."
"Give way!" repeated Mrs. Gass, pushing her chair back some inches in her surprise. "What! give 'em what they want?"
"Certainly not. That is what we could not do. I said give way alittle."
"Mr. Richard, I never would."
"What I thought of proposing is this: To divide the additional wages they are standing out for. That is, offer them half. If they would not return to work on those terms, I should have no hope of them."
"And my opinion is, they'dnot. Mr. Richard, sir, it's them Trade Union people that upholds 'em in their obstinacy. They'll make 'em hold out for the whole demands or none. What do the leaders of the Union care? It don't touch their pockets, or their comforts. So long as their own nests are feathered, the working man's may get as bare as boards. Don't you fancy the rulers 'll let our men give way half. It's only by keeping up agitation that agitators live."
"I should like to put it to the test. I have come here to ask you to agree to my doing it."
"And what about shortening the time that they want?" questioned Mrs. Gass.
"I should not give way there. It is impracticable. They must return on the usual time: but of the additional wages demanded I would offer half. Will you assent to this?"
"It will be with an uncommon bad grace," was Mrs. Gass's answer.
"I see nothing else to be done," said Richard North. "If only as a matter of conscience I should like to propose it. When it ends in a general ruin--which seems only too certain, for we cannot close our eyes to what is being enacted all over the country in almost all trades--I shall have the consolation of knowing that it is the men's own fault, not mine. Perhaps they will accept this offer. I hope so, though it will leave us little profit. If we can only make both ends meet, just to keep us going during these unsettled times, we must be satisfied. I am sure I shall be doing right, Mrs. Gass, to make this proposal."
"Mr. Richard, sir, you know that I've always trusted to your judgment, and shall do so to the end: anything you thought well to do, I should never dissuade you from. You shall make this offer if you please: but I know you'll be opening out a loophole for the men. Give 'em an inch, and they'll want an ell."
"If they come back it will be a great thing," argued Richard. "The sight of the works standing still; the knowledge that all it involves is standing still also, almost paralyzes me."
"Don't go and take it to heart at the beginning now," affectionately advised Mrs. Gass. "There's not much damage done yet."
Richard bent forward, painfully earnest. "It is of my father that I think. What will become of him if all our resources are stopped?"
"I'll take care of him till better times come round," said Mrs. Gass, heartily. "And of you, too, Mr. Richard; if you won't be too proud to let me, sir."
Richard laughed; a slight, genial laugh; partly in amusement, partly in gratitude. "I hope the better times will come at once," he said, preparing to leave. "At least, sufficiently good times to allow business to go on as usual. If the men refuse this offer of mine, they are made of more ungrateful stuff than I should give them credit for."
"Theywillrefuse it," said Mrs. Gass, emphatically. "As is my belief. Not them, Mr. Richard, but the Trades' Unions for 'em. Once get under the thumb of that despotic body, and a workman daredn't say his soul is his own."
And Mrs. Gass's opinion proved to be correct. Richard North called his men together, and laid the concession before them; pressing them to accept it in their mutual interests. The men requested a day for consideration, and then gave their answer: rejection. Unless the whole of their demands were complied with, they unequivocally refused to return to work.
"It will be worse for them than for me in the long run," said Richard North.
And many a thoughtful mind believed that he spoke in a spirit of prophecy.