"I knew old Tom Spring--he's only dead this two years past. I s'pose that was The Tun, near by Piccadilly, I've heard you speak on."
"... That was where I see him, Mo, worse luck for the day! The One Tun Inn. They called him the gentleman from Australia. He was for me and him to go to Brighton by the coach, and find the Parson there. But I stopped him at that, and we was married in London, quite regular, and we went to Brighton, and then he took me to Doncaster, to be at the races. There's where he left me, at the Crown Inn we went to, saying he'd be back afore the week was out. But he never came--only letters came with money--I'll say that for him. Only no address of where he was, nor scarcely a word to say how much he was sending. But I kep' my faith towards him; and the promise I made, I kep' all along. And I've never borne his name nor said one word to a living soul beyond one or two of my own folk, who were bound to be quiet, for their sake and mine. Dolly's mother, she came to know in time. But the Court's called me Aunt M'riar all along."
A perplexity flitted through Uncle Mo's reasoning powers, and vanished unsolved. Why had he accepted "Aunt M'riar" as a sufficient style and title, almost to the extent of forgetting the married name he had heard assigned to its owner five years since? He would probably have forgotten it outright, if the post had not, now and then--but very rarely--brought letters directed to "Mrs. Catchpole," which he had passed on, if he saw them first, with the comment:--"I expect that's meant for you, Aunt M'riar"; treating the disposition of some person unknown to use that name as a pardonable idiosyncrasy. When catechized about her, he had been known to answer:--"She ain't a widder, not to my thinking, but her husband he's as dead as a door-nail. Name of Scratchley; or Simmons--some such a name!" As for the designation of "Mrs. Wardle" used as a ceremonial title, it was probably a vague attempt to bring the household into tone. Whoever knows the class she moved in will have no trouble in recalling some case of a similar uncertainty.
This is by way of apology for Uncle Mo's so easily letting that perplexity go, and catching at another point. "What did he make you promise him, M'riar? Not to let on, I'll pound it! He wanted you to keep it snug--wasn't that the way of it?"
"Ah, that was it, Mo. To keep it all private, and never say a word."
Then Aunt M'riar's answer became bewildering, inexplicable. "Else his family would have known, and then I should have seen his mother. Seein'
I never did, it's no wonder I didn't know her again. I might have, for all it's so many years." It was more the manner of saying this than the actual words, that showed that she was referring to a recent meeting with her husband's mother.
Uncle Mo sat a moment literally open-mouthed with astonishment. At length he said:--"Why, when and where, woman alive, did you see his mother?"
"There now, Mo, see what I said--what a bad one I am at telling of things! Of course, Mrs. Prichard upstairs, she's Ralph Daverill's mother, and he's the man who got out of prison in the _Mornin' Star_ and killed the gaoler. And he's the same man came down the Court that Sunday and Dave see in the Park. That's Ralph Thornton Daverill, and he's my husband!"
Uncle Mo gave up the idea of answering. The oppression of his bewilderment was too great. It seemed to come in gusts, checked off at intervals by suppressed exclamations and knee-slaps. It was a knockdown blow, with no one to call time. But then, there were no rules, so when a new inquiry presented itself, abrupt utterance followed:--"Wasn't there any?... wasn't there any?..." followed by a pause and a difficulty of word-choice. Then in a lowered voice, an adjustment of its terms, due to delicacy:--"Wasn't there any consequences--such as one might expect, ye know?"
Aunt M'riar did not seem conscious of any need for delicacies. "My baby was born dead," she said. "That's what you meant, Mo, I take it?" Then only getting in reply:--"That was it, M'riar," she went on:--"None knew about it but mother, when it was all over and done with, later by a year and more. I would have called the child Polly, being a girl, if it had lived to be christened.... Why would I?--because that was the name he knew me by at The Tun."
Uncle Mo began to say:--"If the Devil lets him off easy, I'll ..." and stopped short. It may have been because he reflected on the limitations of poor Humanity, and the futility of bluster in this connection, or because he had a question to ask. It related to Aunt M'riar's unaccountable ignorance throughout of Daverill's transportation to Norfolk Island, and the particular felony that led to it. "If you was not by way of seeing the police-reports, where was all your friends, to say never a word?"
"No one said nothing to me," said Aunt M'riar. She seemed hazy as to the reason at first; then a light broke:--"They never knew his name, ye see, Mo." He replied on reflection:--"Course they didn't--right you are!" and then she added:--"I only told mother that; and she's no reader."
A mystery hung over one part of the story--how did she account for herself to her family? Was she known to have been married, or had popular interpretation of her absence inclined towards charitable silence about its causes--asked no questions, in fact, giving up barmaids as past praying for? She seemed to think it sufficient light on the subject to say:--"It was some length of time before I went back home, Mo," and he had to press for particulars.
His conclusion, put briefly, was that this deserted wife, reappearing at home with a wedding-ring after two years' absence, had decided that she would fulfil her promise of silence best by giving a false married name. She had engineered her mother's inspection of her marriage-lines, so as to leave that good woman--a poor scholar--under the impression that Daverill's name was Thornton; not a very difficult task. The name she had chosen was Catchpole; and it still survived as an identifying force, if called on. But it was seldom in evidence, "Aunt M'riar"
quashing its unwelcome individuality. The general feeling had been that "Mrs. Catchpole" might be anybody, and did not recommend herself to the understanding. There was some sort o' sense in "Aunt M'riar."
The eliciting of these points, hazily, was all Uncle Mo was equal to after so long a colloquy, and Aunt M'riar was not in a condition to tell more. She relit another half-candle that she had blown out for economy when the talk set in, and called Uncle Mo's attention to the moribund condition of his own:--"There's not another end in the house, Mo," said she. So Uncle Mo had to use that one, or get to bed in the dark.
He had been already moved to heartfelt anger that day against this very Daverill, having heard from his friend the Police-Inspector the story of his arrest at The Pigeons, at Hammersmith; and, of course, of the atrocious crime which had been his latest success with the opposite sex.
This Police-Inspector must have been Simeon Rowe, whom you may remember as stroke-oar of the boat that was capsized there in the winter, when Sergeant Ibbetson of the river-police met his death in the attempt to capture Daverill. Uncle Mo's motive in visiting the police-station had not been only to shake hands with the son of an old acquaintance. He had carried what information he had of the escaped convict to those who were responsible for his recapture.
If you turn back to the brief account the story gave of Maisie Daverill's--or Prichard's--return to England, and her son's marriage, and succeed in detecting in Polly the barmaid at the One Tun any trace of the Aunt M'riar with whom you were already slightly acquainted, it will be to the discredit of the narrator. For never did a greater change pass over human identity than the one which converted the _beaute de diable_ of the young wench just of age, who was serving out stimulants to the Ring, and the Turf, and the men-about-town of the late twenties, to that of the careworn, washtub-worn, and needle-worn manipulator of fine linen and broidery, who had been in charge of Dolly and Dave Wardle since their mother's death three years before. Never was there a more striking testimony to the power of Man to make a desolation of the life of Woman, nor a shrewder protest against his right to do so. For Polly the Barmaid, look you, had done nothing that is condemned by the orthodox moralities; she had not even flown in the face of her legal duty to her parents. Was she not twenty-one, and does not that magic numeral pay all scores?
The Australian gentleman had one card in his pack that was Ace of Trumps in the game of Betrayal. He only played it when nothing lower would take the trick. And Polly got little enough advantage from the sanction of the Altar, her marriage-lines and her wedding-ring, in so far as she held to the condition precedent of those warrants of respectability, that she should observe silence about their existence. The only duplicity of which she had been guilty was the assumption of a false married name, and that had really seemed to her the only possible compromise between a definite breach of faith and passive acceptance of undeserved ill-fame. And when the hideous explanation of Daverill's long disappearance came about, and _eclaircissement_ seemed inevitable, she saw the strange discovery she had made of his relation to Mrs. Prichard, as an aggravation to the embarrassment of acknowledging his past relation to herself.
There was one feeling only that one might imagine she might have felt, yet was entirely a stranger to. Might she not have experienced a longing--a curiosity, at any rate--to set eyes again on the husband who had deserted her all those long years ago? And this especially in view of her uncertainty as to how long his absence had been compulsory? As a matter of fact, her only feeling about this terrible resurrection was one of shrinking as from a veritable carrion, disinterred from a grave she had earned her right to forget. Why need this gruesome memory be raked up to plague her?
The only consolation she could take with her to a probably sleepless pillow was the last charge of the old prizefighter to her not to fret.
"You be easy, M'riar. He shan't come a-nigh _you_. I'll square _him_ fast enough, if he shows up down this Court--you see if I don't!" But when she reached it, there was still balm in Gilead. For was not Dolly there, so many fathoms deep in sleep that she might be kissed with impunity, long enough to bring a relieving force of tears to help the nightmare-haunted woman in her battle with the past?
As for Mo, his threat towards this convicted miscreant had no connection with his recent interview with his police-officer friend--no hint of appeal to Law and Order. The anger that burnt in his heart and sent the blood to his head was as unsullied, as pure, as any that ever Primeval Man sharpened flints to satisfy before Law and Order were invented.
CHAPTER XXVII
HOW UNCLE MO MADE THE DOOR-CHAIN SECURE, AND A SUNFLOWER LOOKED ON THE WHILE. HOW AUNT M'RIAR STOPPED HER EARS. A BIT OF UNCLE MO'S MIND. HOW DOLLY KISSED HIM THROUGH THE DOOR-CRACK, BUT NOT MRS.
BURR. CONCERNING RATS, TO WHICH UNCLE MO TOOK THE OPPOSITE VIEW. OF ONE, OR SOME, WHICH TRAVELLED OUT TO AUSTRALIA WITH OLD MRS.
PRICHARD. HOW DAVE MET THREE LADIES IN A CARRIAGE, NONE OF WHOM KISSED HIM. HOW UNCLE MO WENT UPSTAIRS WITH THE CHILDREN, IN CONNECTION WITH THE RATS HE HAD DISCREDITED, AND STAYED UP QUITE A TIME. HOW HE INTERVIEWED MR. BARTLETT ABOUT THEM
"You're never fidgeting about _him_?" said Aunt M'riar to Uncle Mo, one morning shortly after she had told him the story of her marriage. "He's safe out of the way by now. You may rely on your police-inspectin'
friend to inspect _him_. Didn't he as good as say he was took, Mo?"
"That warn't precisely the exact expression used, M'riar," said Uncle Mo, who was doing something with a tool-box at the door that opened on the front-garden that opened on the Court. Dolly was holding his tools, by permission--only not chisels or gouges, or gimlets, or bradawls, or anything with an edge to it--and the sunflower outside was watching them. Uncle Mo was extracting a screw with difficulty, in spite of the fact that it was all but out already. He now elucidated the cause of this difficulty, and left the Police Inspector alone. "'Tain't stuck, if you ask me. I should say there never had been no holt to this screw from the beginning. But by reason there's no life in the thread, it goes round and round rayther than come out.... Got it!--wanted a little coaxin', it did." That is to say, a few back-turns with very light pressure brought the screw-head free enough for a finger-grip, and the rest was easy. "It warn't of any real service," said Uncle Mo. "One size bigger would ketch and hold in. This here one's only so much horse-tentation. Now I can't get a bigger one through the plate, and I can't rimer out the hole for want of a tool--not so much as a small round file.... Here's a long 'un, of a thread with the first. He'll ketch in if there's wood-backin' enough.... That's got him! Now it'll take a Hemperor, to get _that_ out." Uncle Mo paused to enjoy a moment's triumph, then harked back:--"No--the precise expression made use of was, they might put their finger on him any minute."
"Which don't mean the same thing," said Aunt M'riar.
"No more it don't, M'riar, now you mention it. But he won't trust his nose down this Court. If he does, and I ain't here, just you do like I tell you...."
Aunt M'riar interrupted. "I couldn't find it in me to give him up, Mo.
Not for all I'm worth!" She spoke in a quick undertone, with a stress in her voice that terrified Dolly, who nearly let go a hammer she had been allowed to hold, as harmless.
"Not if you knew what he's wanted for, this time?"
"Don't you tell me, Mo. I'd soonest know nothing.... No--no--don't you tell me a word about it!" And Aunt M'riar clapped her hands on her ears, leaving an iron, that she had been trying to abate to a professional heat, to make a brown island on its flannel zone of influence. All her colour--she had a fair share of it--had gone from her cheeks, and Dolly was in two minds whether she should drop the hammer and weep.
Uncle Mo's reassuring voice decided her to do neither, this time. "Don't you be frightened, M'riar," said he. "I wasn't for telling you his last game. Nor it wouldn't be any satisfaction to tell. I was only going to say that if he was to turn up in these parts, just you put the chain down--it's all square and sound now--and tell him he'll find me at The Sun." He closed the door and put the chain he had been revising on its mettle; adding as he did so, in defiance of Astronomy:--"'Tain't any so far off, The Sun." Dolly's amusement at the function of the chain, and its efficacy, was so great as to cause her aunt to rule, as a point of Law, that six times was plenty for any little girl, and that she must leave her uncle a minute's peace.
Dolly granting this, Aunt M'riar took advantage of it, to ask what course Uncle Mo would pursue, if she complied with his instructions. "If you gave him up to the Police, Mo," she said, "and I'd sent him to you, it would be all one as if I'd done it."
"I'll promise not to give him to the Police, if he comes to me off of your sending, M'riar. In course, if he's only himself to thank for coming my way, that's another pair of shoes."
"But if it was me, what'll you do, Mo?" Aunt M'riar wasn't getting on with those cuffs.
"What'll I do? Maybe I'll give him ... a bit of my mind."
"No--what'll you do, Mo?" There was a new apprehension in her voice as she dropped it to say:--"He's a younger man than you, by nigh twenty years."
The anticipation of that bit of Uncle Mo's mind had gripped his jaw and knitted his brow for an instant. It vanished, and left both free as he answered:--"You be easy, old girl! I won't give him a chance to do _me_ no harm." Aunt M'riar bent a suspicious gaze on him for a moment, but it ended as an even more than usually genial smile spread over the old prizefighter's face, and he gave way to Dolly's request to be sut out only dest this once more; which ended in a Pyramus and Thisbe accommodation of kisses through as much thoroughfare as the chain permitted. They were painful and dangerous exploits; but it was not on either of those accounts that Mrs. Burr, coming home rather early, declined to avail herself of Dolly's suggestion that she also should take advantage of this rare opportunity for uncomfortable endearments; but rather in deference to public custom, whose rules about kissing Dolly thought ridiculous.
The door having to be really shut to release the chain, its reopening seemed to inaugurate a new chapter, at liberty to ignore Dolly's flagrant suggestions at the end of the previous one. Besides, it was possible for Uncle Mo to affect ignorance; as, after all, Dolly was outside. Mrs. Burr did not tax him with insincerity, and the subject dropped, superseded by less interesting matter.
"I looked in to see," said Aunt M'riar, replying to a question of Mrs.
Burr's. "The old lady was awake and knitting, last time. First time she'd the paper on her knee, open. Next time she was gone off sound."
"That's her way, ma'am. Off and on--on and off. But she takes mostly to the knitting. And it ain't anything to wonder at, I say, that she drops off reading. I'm sure I can't hold my eyes open five minutes over the newspaper. And books would be worse, when you come to read what's wrote in them, if it wasn't for having to turn over the leaves. Because you're bound to see where, and not turn two at once, or it don't follow on."
Aunt M'riar and Uncle Mo confirmed this view from their own experience.
It was agreed further that small type--Parliamentary debates and the like--was more soporific than large, besides spinning out the length and deferring the relaxation of turning over, when in book-form. Short accidents, and not too prolix criminal proceedings were on the whole the most palatable forms of literature. It was not to be wondered at that old Mrs. Prichard should go to sleep over the newspaper at her age, seeing that none but the profoundest scholars could keep awake for five minutes while perusing it. The minute Dave came in from school he should take Dolly upstairs to pay the old lady a visit, and brighten her up a bit.
"Very like she's been extra to-day"--thus Mrs. Burr continued--"by reason of rats last night, and getting no sleep."
"There ain't any rats in your room, missis," said Uncle Mo. "We should hear 'em down below if there was."