Mrs. Halliburton's Troubles Part 56

Before Brumm could answer, or had well gathered himself up, there was another visitor--Mr. Abbott, the landlord of at least a third of Honey Fair. He had come on his usual Monday's errand. Jacob Cross put down his pipe and touched his hat, which, in the manners of Honey Fair, was worn indoors. It was not often that the landlord and the men came into contact with each other.

"Are you ready for me, Mrs. Cross?"

"We are not ready to-day, sir," interposed Jacob. "You must please to give us a little grace these hard times, sir. The moment I be in work again, I'll think of you, before I think of ourselves."

"I have given all the grace I can give," replied Mr. Abbott, a hard, surly man. "You must either pay, or turn out: I don't care which."

"I'll pay you as soon as I am in work, sir; you may count upon it. As to turning out, sir, where could I turn to? You'd not let me take out my furniture, and we can't sit down in the street, as Fisher's wife is doing."

Mr. Abbott turned to the door. When he came back, a man was with him. "I must trouble you to give this man house-room for a few days. As you won't go out, he must stop in, to see that your goods stop in."

Cross's spirit rose within him. "It's a hard way to treat a man, sir! I have lived under you for years, and you have had your rent regular."

"Regular!" exclaimed the landlord. "I have had more trouble to get it from your wife, since Bankes's came to Helstonleigh, than from anybody else in Honey Fair."

Cross did not understand this. He was too much absorbed by the point in question to ask an explanation. "There's only three weeks owing to you, sir, and----"

"Three weeks!" interrupted Mr. Abbott; "there are nine weeks owing to me. Nine weeks to-day."

Jacob Cross stood confounded. "Who says there's nine weeks?" asked he.

"I say so. Your wife can say so. Ask her."

But Mrs. Cross, with a scared face and white lips, whisked through the door and hurried down Honey Fair. The explosion had come.

Mr. Abbott, wasting no more words, departed, leaving the unwelcome visitor behind him. Andrew Brumm came in again from outside, where he had stood, out of delicacy, feeling thankful that _his_ rent was all right. It was pinching work; but Andrew was beginning to learn that debt pinches the mind, more than hunger pinches the body.

"Comrade," whispered he, grasping Cross's hand, "it's all along of them Bankes's. The women buy their fal-lals and their finery, and the weekly payments to 'em must be kept up, whether or no, for fear Bankes's should let out on't to us, and ask us for the money. Of course the rent and other things gets behind. Half the women round us are knee-deep in Bankes's books."

"Why couldn't you have told me this before?" demanded Cross, in his astonishment.

"It's not my province to interfere with other men's wives," was Brumm's sensible answer.

"Where's she got to?" cried Jacob, looking round for his wife. "I'll come to the bottom of this. Nine weeks' rent owing; and her salving me up that it was only three!"

Jacob might well say, "Where's she got to?" Mrs. Cross had glided down Honey Fair into the first friendly door that happened to be open. That was Mrs. Carter's. "For mercy's sake, let's stop here a minute, Elizabeth Carter!" exclaimed she. "We have got the b.u.ms in!"

Mrs. Carter was rubbing up some bra.s.s candlesticks. Work ran short with her that week, and therefore she spent it in cleaning, which was her notion of taking holiday; scrubbing and scouring from morning till night. She turned round and stared at Mrs. Cross, who, with white face and gasping breath, had sunk down upon a chair.

"What on earth's the matter?"

"Abbott has brought it out to my husband that I owes nine weeks' rent, and he's telling him about Bankes's, and now he has gone and put a b.u.m into the house!"

"More soft you, to have had to do with Bankes's!" was the sympathy offered by Mrs. Carter. "You couldn't expect nothing less."

"That old skinflint, Abbott----"

Mrs. Cross stopped short. She opened the staircase door about an inch, and humbly twisted herself through the aperture. Who should be standing there to hear her, having followed her in, but Mr. Abbott himself.

He had no need to say, "Ready, Mrs. Carter?" Mrs. Carter always was ready. She paid him weekly, and asked no favour. The payment made, he departed again, and Mrs. Cross emerged from her retreat.

"_You_ can pay him!" she exclaimed, with some envy. "And Timothy's out o' work, too; and you be slack. How do you manage it?"

"I'm not a fool," was the logical response of Mrs. Carter. "If I spent my earnings when they are coming in regular, or let Tim keep his to his own cheek, where should we be in a time like this? I have my understanding about me."

Mrs. Carter did not praise her understanding without cause. Whatever social virtues she may have lacked, she was rich in thrift, in forethought. Had Timothy remained out of work for a twelvemonth, they would not have been put to s.h.i.+fts.

"I'm afraid to go back!" cried Mrs. Cross.

"So should I be, if I got myself into your mess."

The offered sympathy not being consolatory to her present frame of mind, Mrs. Cross departed. Home, at present, she dared not go. She went about Honey Fair, seeking the gossiping pity which Elizabeth Carter had declined to give, but which she was yearning for. Thus she spent an hour or two.

Meanwhile the news had been spreading through Honey Fair, "Crosses had the b.u.ms in;" and Mary Ann, hearing it, flew home to know whether it was correct. She--partly through fear, partly in the security from paternal correction, imparted to her by the feeling that she was Mary Ann Tyrrett, and no longer Mary Ann Cross--yielded to her father's questions, and made full confession. Debts here, debts there, debts everywhere. Cross was overwhelmed; and when his wife at length came in, he quietly knocked her down.

The broker advanced to the rescue. "If you dare to come between man and wife," raved Cross, lifting his arm menacingly, "I'll serve you the same." He was a quiet-tempered man, but this business had terribly exasperated him. "You'll come to die in the work'us," he uttered to his wife. "And serve you right! It's your doings that have broke up our home."

"No," retorted she pa.s.sionately, as she lifted herself from the floor; "it's your squanderings in the publics o' nights, that have helped to break up our home."

It was a little of both.

The quarrel was interrupted by a commotion outside, and Mrs. Cross darted out to look--glad, perhaps, to escape from her husband's anger.

An official from the workhouse had come down with an order for the admission of Susan Fisher instanter. Timothy Carter, in his meek and humane spirit, had so enlarged upon the state of affairs in general, touching Mrs. Fisher, that the workhouse bestirred itself. An officer was despatched to marshal them into it at once. The uproar was caused by her resistance: she was still sitting in the road.

"I won't go into the work'us," she screamed; "I won't go there to be parted from my children and my husband. If I'm to die, I'll die out here."

"Just get up and march, and don't let's have no row," said the officer.

"Else I'll fetch a wheel-barrer, and wheel ye to it."

She resisted, shrieking and flinging her arms and her wild hair about her, as only a foolish woman would do; the children, alarmed, clung to her and cried, and all Honey Fair came out to look. Mr. Joe Fisher also staggered up, in a state not to be described. He had been invited by some friend, more sympathizing than judicious, to solace his troubles with strong waters; and down he fell in the mud, helpless.

"Well, here's a pretty kettle of fis.h.!.+" cried the perplexed workhouse man. "A nice pair, they are! How I am to get 'em both there, is beyond me! She can walk, if she's forced to it; but he can't! They spend their money in sotting, and when they have no more to spend they come to us to keep 'em! I must get an open cart."

The cart was procured somewhere and brought to the scene, a policeman in attendance; and the children were lifted into it one by one. Next the man was thrown in, like a clod; and then came the woman's turn. With much struggling and kicking, with shrieks that might have been heard a mile off, she was at length hoisted into it. But she tumbled out again: raving that "no work'us shouldn't hold her." The official raved in turn; and Honey Fair hugged itself. It had not had the gratification of so exciting a scene for many a day; to say nothing of the satisfaction it derived from hearing the workhouse set at defiance.

The official and the policeman at length conquered. She was secured, and the cart started at a snail's pace with its load--Mrs. Fisher setting up a prolonged and dismal lamentation not unlike an Irish howl: and Honey Fair, in its curiosity, following the cart as its train.

CHAPTER X.

A STRAY s.h.i.+LLING.

"Whose s.h.i.+lling is this on my desk?" inquired Mr. Ashley of Samuel Lynn, one morning towards the close of the summer.

"I cannot tell thee," was the reply of the Quaker. "I know nothing of it."