by Ellen Wood
“Oh, William! tell me what is thought! Tell me, I implore thee! Thee cannot leave me in this trouble. Where is it thought he was?”
He took her hands; he bent over her as tenderly as any brother could have done; he read all too surely how opposite to the truth had been her former assertion to him — that she did not care for Herbert Dare.
“Anna, child, you must not agitate yourself in this way: there is no just cause for doing so. I assure you I do not know where it is thought Herbert Dare may have been that night; neither, so far as can be learnt, does any one else know. It is the chief point — where he was — that is puzzling the town.”
She laid her head down on the gate again, closing her eyes, as in very weariness. William’s heart ached for her.
“He may not be guilty, Anna,” was all the consolation he could find to offer.
“May not be guilty!” she echoed in a tone of pain. “He is not guilty. William, I tell thee he is not. Dost thee think I would defend him if he could do so wicked a thing?”
He did not dispute the point with her; he did not tell her that her assumption of his innocence was inconsistent with the facts of the case. Presently Anna resumed.
“Why must he remain in gaol till the trial? There was that man who stole the skins from Thomas Ashley — they let him out, when he was taken, until the sessions came on, and then he went up for trial.”
“That man was out on bail. But they do not take bail in cases so grave as this.”
“I may not stay longer. There’s Hester coming to call me in. I rely upon thee to tell me anything fresh that may arise,” she said, lifting her beseeching eyes to his.
“One word, Anna, before you go. And yet, I see how worse than useless it is to say it to you now. You must forget Herbert Dare.”
“I shall forget him, William, when I cease to have memory,” she whispered. “Never before. Thee wilt keep my counsel?”
“Truly and faithfully.”
“Fare thee well, William; I have no friend but thee.”
She ran swiftly into their own premises. William turned to pursue his way to Mr. Ashley’s, the thought of Henry Ashley’s misplaced attachment lying on his mind as an incubus.
CHAPTER VI.
ONE DYING IN HONEY FAIR.
Mrs. Buffle stood in what she called her “back’us,” practically superintending a periodical wash. The day was hot, and the steam was hot, and, as Mrs. Buffle rubbed away, she began to think she should never be cool again.
“Missis,” shrieked out a young voice from the precincts of the shop, “Ben Tyrrett’s wife says will you let her have a gill o’ vinegar? Be I to serve it?”
The words came from the small damsel who was had in to help on cleaning and washing days. Mrs. Buffle kept her hands still in the soapsuds, and projected her hot face over the tub to answer.
“Matty, tell Mary Ann Tyrrett as she promised faithful to bring me something off her score this week, but I’ve not seen the colour of it yet.”
“She says as it’s to put to his head,” called back Matty, alluding to the present demand. “He’s bad a-bed, and have fainted right off.”
“Serve him right,” responded Mrs. Buffle. “You may give her the vinegar, Matty. Tell her as it’s a penny farthing. I heered he had been drinking again,” she added to herself and the washing tub, “and laid hisself down in the wet road the night afore last, and was found there in the morning.”
Later in the day, it happened that William Halliburton was passing through Honey Fair, and met Charlotte East. She stopped him. “Have you heard, sir, that Tyrrett is dying?” she asked.
“Tyrrett dying!” repeated William in amazement. “Who says he is?”
“The doctor says it, I believe, sir. I must say he looks like it. Mary Ann sent for me, and I have been down to see him.”
“Why, what can be the matter with him?” asked William. “He was at work the day before yesterday!”
“He was at work, sir, but he could not speak, they tell me, for that illness that has been hanging about him so long, and had settled on his chest. That night, after leaving work, instead of going home and getting a basin of gruel, or something of that sort, he went to the Horned Ram, and drank there till he couldn’t keep upright.”
“With his chest in that state!”
“And that was not the worst,” resumed Charlotte. “It had been a wet day, if you remember, sir, and he somehow strayed into Oxlip Lane, and fell down, and lay there till morning. What with drink, and what with exposure to the wet, his chest grew dangerously inflamed, and now the doctor says he has not many hours to live.”
“I am sorry to hear it,” cried William. “Is he sensible?”
“Too sensible, sir, in one sense,” replied Charlotte. “His remorse is dreadful. He is saying that if he had not misspent his life, he might have died a good man, instead of a bad one.”
William passed on, much concerned at the news. His way led him past Ben Tyrrett’s lodgings, and he turned in. Mary Ann was sobbing and wailing, in the midst of as many curious and condoling neighbours as the kitchen would contain. All were in full gossip — as might be expected. Mrs. Cross had taken home the three little children, by way of keeping the place quiet; and the sick man was lying in the room above, surrounded by several of his fellow-workmen, who had heard of his critical state.
Some of the women sidled off when William entered, rather ashamed of being caught chattering vehemently. It was remarkable the deference that was paid him, and from no assumption of his own — indeed, the absence of assumption may have partially accounted for it. But, though ever courteous and pleasant with them all, he was a thorough gentleman: and the working classes are keen to distinguish this.
“Why, Mrs. Tyrrett, this is sad news!” he said. “Is your husband so ill?”
“Oh, he must die, he must die, sir!” she answered in a frantic tone. Uncomfortably as they had lived together, the man was still her husband, and there is no doubt she was feeling the present crisis; was shrinking with dread from the future. A widow with three young children, and the workhouse for an asylum! It was the only prospect before her. “He must die, anyways; but he might have lasted a few hours longer, if I could have got what the doctor ordered.”
William did not understand.
“It was a blister and some physic, sir,” explained one of the women. “The doctor wrote it on a paper, and said it was to be took to the nearest druggist’s. But when they got it there, Darwin said he couldn’t trust the Tyrretts, and they must send the money if they wanted the things.”
“It was not Mr. Parry, then, who was called in?”
“It were a strange doctor, sir, as was fetched. There was Tyrrett’s last bout of illness owing for to Parry, and so they didn’t like to send for him. As to them druggists, they be some of ’em a cross-grained set, unless you goes with the money in your hand.”
William asked to see the prescription. It was produced, and he read its contents — he was as capable of doing so and of understanding it as the best doctor in Helstonleigh. He tore a leaf from his pocket-book, wrote a few words in pencil, folded it with the prescription, and desired one of the women to take it to the chemist’s again. He then went up to the sick room.
Tyrrett was lying on a flock mattress, on an ugly brown bedstead, the four posts upright and undraped. A blanket and a checked blue cotton quilt covered him. His breathing was terribly laboured, his face painfully anxious. William approached him, bending his head, to avoid contact with the ceiling.
“I’m a-going, sir,” cried the man, in tones as anxious as his face. “I’m a-going at last.”
“I hope not,” said William. “I hope you will get better. You are to have a blister on your chest, and — —”
“No he ain’t, sir,” interrupted one of the men. “Darwin won’t send it.”
“Oh yes, he will, if he is properly asked. They have gone again to him. Are you in much pain, Tyrrett?”
“I’m in an agony of pain here, sir,”
pointing to his chest. “But that ain’t nothing to my pain of mind. Oh, Mr. Halliburton, you’re good, sir; you haven’t nothing to reproach yourself with; can’t you do nothing for me? I’m going into the sight of my Maker, and He’s angry with me!”
In truth, William knew not what to answer. Tyrrett’s voice was as a wail of anguish; his hands were stretched out beseechingly.
“Charlotte East were here just now, and she told me to go to Christ — that He was merciful and forgiving. But how am I to go to Him? If I try, sir, I can’t, for there’s my past life rising up before me. I have been a bad man: I have never once in all my life tried to please God.”
The words echoed through the stillness of the room; echoed with a sound that was terribly awful. Never once to have tried to please God! Throughout a whole life, and throughout all its blessings!
“I have never thought of God,” he continued to reiterate. “I have never cared for Him, or tried to please Him, or done the least thing for Him. And now I’m going to face His wrath, and I can’t help myself!”
“You may be spared yet,” said William; “you may indeed. And your future life must atone for the past.”
“I shan’t be spared, sir; I feel that the world’s all up with me,” was the rejoinder. “I’m going fast, and there’s nobody to give me a word of comfort! Can’t you, sir? I’m going away, and God’s angry with me!”
William leaned over him. “I can only say as Charlotte East did,” he whispered. “Try and find your Saviour. There is mercy with Him at the eleventh hour.”
“I have not the time to find Him,” breathed forth Tyrrett, in agony. “I might find Him if I had time given me; but I have not got it.”
William, shrinking in his youth and inexperience from arguing upon topics so momentous, was not equal to the emergency. Who was? He did what he could; and that was to despatch a message for a clergyman, who answered the summons with speed.
The blister also came, and the medicine that had been prescribed. William went home, hoping all might prove as a healing balm to the sick man.
A fallacious hope. Tyrrett died the following morning. When William went round early on his mission of inquiry, he found him dead. Some of the men, whom he had seen with Tyrrett the previous night, were assembled in the kitchen.
“He is but just gone, sir,” they said, “The women be up with him now. They have took his wife round screeching to her mother’s. He died with that there blister on his chest.”
“Did he die peacefully?” was William’s question.
“Awful hard, sir, toward the last; moaning, and calling, and clenching his hands in mortal pain. His sister, she come round — she’s a hard one, is that Liza Tyrrett — and she set on at the wife, saying it was her fault that he’d took to go out drinking. That there parson couldn’t do nothing with him,” concluded the speaker, lowering his voice.
William’s breath stood still. “No!”
The man shook his head. “Tyrrett weren’t in a frame o’ mind for it, sir. He kep’ crying out as he had led a bad life, and never thought of God — and them was his last words. It ain’t happy, sir, to die like that. It have quite cowed down us as was with him: one gets thinking, sir, what sort of a place it may be, t’other side, where he’s gone to.”
William lifted his head, a sort of eager hope on his countenance, speaking cheerily. “Could you not let poor Tyrrett’s death act as a warning to you?”
There was a dead silence. Five men were present; every one of them leading careless lives. Somehow they did not much like to hear of “warning,” although the present moment was one of unusual seriousness.
“Religion is so dreadful dull and gloomy, sir.”
“Religion dull and gloomy!” echoed William. “Well, perhaps some people do make a gloomy affair of it; but then I don’t think theirs can be the right religion. I do not believe people were sent into the world to be gloomy: time enough for that when troubles come.”
“What is religion?” asked one of the men.
“It is a sort of thing that’s a great deal better to be felt than talked about,” answered William. “I am no parson, and cannot pretend to enlighten you. We might never come to an understanding over it, were we to discuss it all day long. I would rather talk to you of life, and its practical duties.”
“Tyrrett said as he had never paid heed to any of his duties. It were his cry over and over again, sir, in the night. He said he had drunk, and swore, and beat his wife, and done just what he oughtn’t to ha’ done.”
“Ay, I fear it was so,” replied William. “Poor Tyrrett’s existence was divided into three phrases — working, drinking, quarrelling: dissatisfaction attending all. I fear a great many more in Honey Fair could say the same.”
The men’s consciences were pricking them; some of them began to stand uncomfortably on one leg. They tippled; they quarrelled; they had been known to administer personal correction to their wives on provocation.
“Times upon times I asked Tyrrett to come round of an evening to Robert East’s,” continued William. “He never did come. But I can tell you this, my men; had he taken to pass his evenings there twelve months ago, when the society — as they call it — was first formed, he might have been a hale man now, instead of lying there, dead.”
“Do you mean that he’d have growed religious, sir?”
“I tell you we will put religion out of the discussion: as you don’t seem to like the word. Had Tyrrett taken to like rational evenings, instead of public-houses, it would have made a wonderful difference in his mode of thought, and difference in conduct would have followed. Look at his father-in-law, Cross. He was living without hope or aim, at loggerheads with his wife and with the world, and rather given to wishing himself dead. All that’s over. Do you think I should like to go about with a dirty face and holes in my coat?”
The men laughed. They thought not.
“Cross used to do so. But you see nothing of that now. Many others used to do so. Many do so still.”
Rather conscience-stricken again, the men tried to hide their elbows. “It’s true enough,” said one. “Cross, and some more of ‘em, are getting smart.”
“Smart inside as well as out,” said William. “They are acquiring self-respect; one of the best qualities a man can find. They wouldn’t be seen in the street now in rags, or the worse for drink, or in any other degrading position; no, not if you bribed them with gold. Coming round to East’s has done that for them. They are beginning to see that it’s just as well to lead pleasant lives here, as unpleasant ones. In a short time, Cross will be getting furniture about him again, towards setting up the home he lost. He — and many more — will also, as I truly believe, be beginning to set up furniture of another sort.”
“What sort’s that, sir?”
“The furniture that will stand him in need for the next life; the life that Tyrrett has now entered upon,” replied William in deeper tones. “It is a life that must come, you know; our little span of time here, in comparison with eternity, is but as a drop of water to the great river that runs through the town; and it is as well to be prepared for it. Now, the next five I am going to get round to East’s are you.”
“Us, sir?”
“Every one of you; although I believe you have been in the habit of complimenting your friends who go there with the title of ‘milksops.’ I want to take you there this evening. If you don’t like it, you know you need not repeat the visit. You will come, to oblige me, won’t you?”
They said they would. And William went out satisfied, though he hardly knew how Robert East would manage to stow away the new comers. Not many steps from the door he encountered Mrs. Buffle. She stopped him to talk of Tyrrett.
“Better that he had spent his loose time at East’s than at the publics,” remarked that lady.
“It is the very thing we have been saying,” answered William. “I wish we could get all Honey Fair there; though, indeed there’s no room for more than we have now. I cast a longing eye somet
imes to that building at the back, which they say was built for a Mormon stronghold, and has never been fitted up, owing to a dispute among themselves about the number of wives each elder might appropriate to his own share.”
“Disgraceful pollagists!” struck in Mrs. Buffle, apostrophizing the Mormon elders. “One husband is enough to have at one’s fireside, goodness knows, without being worried with an unlimited number.”
“That is not the question,” said William, laughing. “It is, how many wives are enough? However, I wish we could get the building. East will have to hold the gathering in his garden soon.”
“There’s no denying that it have worked good in Honey Fair,” acknowledged Mrs. Buffle. “It isn’t alone the men that have grown more respectable, them as have took to go, but their wives too. You see, sir, in sitting at the public-houses, it wasn’t only that they drank themselves quarrelsome, but they spent their money. Now their tempers are saved, and their money’s saved. The wives see the benefit of it, and of course try to be better-behaved theirselves. Not but what there’s plenty of room for improvement still,” added Mrs. Buffle, in a tone of patronage.
“It will come in time,” said William.
“What we must do now, is to look out for a larger room.”
“One with a chimbley in it, as’ll draw?” suggested Mrs. Buffle.
“Oh yes. What would they do without fire on a winter’s night? The great point is, to have things thoroughly comfortable.”
“If it hadn’t been for the chimbley, I might have offered our big garret, sir. But it’s the crankiest thing ever built, is that chimbley; the minute a handful of fire’s lighted, the smoke puffs it out again. And then again — there’d be the passing through the shop, obstructing the custom.”
“Of course there would,” assented William. “We must try for that failure in the rear, after all.”
CHAPTER VII.