by Ellen Wood
“Oh, father, is it true? — is it true?”
“Why — Polly!” cried the man, looking at her, in astonishment. “What’s this?”
She hid her face on his waistcoat, her hands clinging round him. Polly had awakened and heard the comments outside. She was too nervous and excitable for Crabb Lane.
“They are saying you have killed Kitty Bowen’s father. It isn’t true, father! Go out and tell them that it isn’t true!”
His own nerves were unstrung; his strength had gone out of him; it only needed something of this kind to finish up Lease; and he broke into sobs. Holding the child to him with a tight grasp, they cried together. If Lease had never known agony before in his life, he knew it then.
The days went on. There was no longer any holding-out on Lease’s part on the matter of points: all the world said he had been guilty of neglecting to turn them; and he supposed he had. He accepted the fate meekly, without resistance, his manner strangely still, as one who has been utterly subdued. When talked to, he freely avowed that it remained a puzzle to him how he could have forgotten the points, and what made him forget them. He shrank neither from reproach nor abuse; listening patiently to all who chose to attack him, as if he had no longer any right to claim a place in the world.
He was not spared. Coroner and jury, friends and foes, all went on at him, painting his sins in flaring colours, and calling him names to his face. “Murderer” was one of the least of them. Four had died in all; Roberts was not expected to live; the rest were getting well. There would have been no trouble over the inquest (held at the Bull, between Crabb Lane and the station), it might have been finished in a day, and Lease committed for trial, but that one of those who had died was a lawyer; and his brother (also a lawyer) and other of his relatives (likewise lawyers) chose to make a commotion. Mr. Massock helped them. Passengers must be examined; rails tried; the points tested; every conceivable obstacle was put in the way of a conclusion. Fifteen times had the jury to go and look at the spot, and see the working of the points tested. And so the inquest was adjourned from time to time, and might be finished perhaps something under a year.
The public were like so many wolves, all howling at Lease; from the aforesaid relatives and Brickfield Massock, down to the men and women of Crabb Lane. Lease was at home on bail, surrendering himself at every fresh meeting of the inquest. A few wretched malcontents had begun to hiss him as he passed in and out of Crabb Lane.
When we got home for the Christmas holidays, nothing met us but tales of Lease’s wickedness, in having sent one train upon the other. The Squire grew hot in talking of it. Tod, given to be contrary, said he should like to have Lease’s own version of the affair. A remark that affronted the Squire.
“You can go off and get it from him, sir. Lease won’t refuse it; he’d give it to the dickens, for the asking. He likes nothing better than to talk about it.”
“After all, it was only a misfortune,” said Tod. “It was not wilfully done.”
“Not wilfully done!” stuttered the Pater in his rage. “When I, and Lena, and her mother were in the train, and might have been smashed to atoms! When Coney, and Massock (not that I like the fellow), and scores more were put in jeopardy, and some were killed; yes, sir, killed. A misfortune! Johnny, if you stand there grinning like an idiot, I’ll send you back to school: you shall both pack off this very hour. A misfortune, indeed! Lease deserves hanging.”
The next morning we came upon Lease accidentally in the fields. He was leaning over the gate amongst the trees, as Tod and I crossed the rivulet bridge — which was nothing but a plank or two. A couple of bounds, and we were up with him.
“Now for it, Lease!” cried Tod. “Let us hear a bit about the matter.”
How Lease was altered! His cheeks were thin and white, his eyes had nothing but despair in them. Standing up he touched his hat respectfully.
“Ay, sir, it has been a sad time,” answered Lease, in a low, patient voice, as if he felt worn out. “I little thought when I last shut you and Master Johnny into the carriage the morning you left, that misfortune was so close at hand.” For, just before it happened, we had been at home for a day’s holiday.
“Well, tell us about it.”
Tod stood with his arm round the trunk of a tree, and I sat down on an opposite stump. Lease had very little to say; nothing, except that he must have forgotten to change the points.
And that made Tod stare. Tod, like the Pater, was hasty by nature. Knowing Lease’s good character, he had not supposed him guilty; and to hear the man quietly admit that he was excited Tod’s ire.
“What do you mean, Lease?”
“Mean, sir?” returned Lease, meekly.
“Do you mean to say that you did not attend to the points? — that you just let one train run on to the other?”
“Yes, sir; that is how it must have been. I didn’t believe it, sir, for a long time afterwards: not for several hours.”
“A long time, that,” said Tod, an unpleasant sound of mockery in his tone.
“No, sir; I know it’s not much, counting by time,” answered Lease patiently. “But nobody can ever picture how long those hours seemed to me. They were like years. I couldn’t get the idea into me at all that I had not set the points as usual; it seemed a thing incredible; but, try as I would, I was unable to call to mind having done it.”
“Well, I must say that is a nice thing to confess to, Lease! And there was I, yesterday afternoon, taking your part and quarrelling with my father.”
“I am sorry for that, sir. I am not worth having my part taken in anything, since that happened.”
“But how came you to do it?”
“It’s a question I shall never be able to answer, sir. We had a busy day, were on the run from morning till night, and there was a great deal of confusion at the station: but it was no worse than many a day that has gone before it.”
“Well, I shall be off,” said Tod. “This has shut me up. I thought of going in for you, Lease, finding every one else was dead against you. A misfortune is a misfortune, but wilful carelessness is sin: and my father and his wife and my little sister were in the train. Come along, Johnny.”
“Directly, Tod. I’ll catch you up. I say, Lease, how will it end?” I asked, as Tod went on.
“It can’t end better than two years’ imprisonment for me, sir; and I suppose it may end worse. It is not that I think of.”
“What else, then?”
“Four dead already, sir; four — and one soon to follow them, making five,” he answered, his voice hushed to a whisper. “Master Johnny, it lies on me always, a dreadful weight never to be got rid of. When I was young, I had a sort of low fever, and used to see in my dreams some dreadful task too big to be attempted, and yet I had to do it; and the weight on my mind was awful. I didn’t think, till now, such a weight could fall in real life. Sleeping or waking, sir, I see those four before me dead. Squire Todhetley told me that I had their lives on my soul. And it is so.”
I did not know what to answer.
“So you see, sir, I don’t think much of the imprisonment; if I did, I might be wanting to get the suspense over. It’s not any term of imprisonment, no, not though it were for life, that can wash out the past. I’d give my own life, sir, twice over if that could undo it.”
Lease had his arm on the gate as he spoke, leaning forward. I could not help feeling sorry for him.
“If people knew how I’m punished within myself, Master Johnny, they’d perhaps not be so harsh upon me. I have never had a proper night’s rest since it happened, sir. I have to get up and walk about in the middle of the night because I can’t lie. The sight of the dawn makes me sick, and I say to myself, How shall I get through the day? When bed-time comes, I wonder how I shall lie till morning. Often I wish it had pleased God to take me before that day had happened.”
“Why don’t they get the inquest over, Lease?”
“There’s something or other always brought up to delay it, sir. I don’t
see the need of it. If it would bring the dead back to life, why, they might delay it; but it won’t. They might as well let it end, and sentence me, and have done with it. Each time when I go back home through Crabb Lane, the men and women call out, ‘What, put off again!’ ‘What, ain’t he in gaol yet!’ Which is the place they say I ought to have been in all along.”
“I suppose the coroner knows you’ll not run away, Lease.”
“Everybody knows that, sir.”
“Some would, though, in your place.”
“I don’t know where they’d run to,” returned Lease. “They couldn’t run away from their own minds — and that’s the worst part of it. Sometimes I wonder whether I shall ever get it off mine, sir, or if I shall have it on me, like this, to the end of my life. The Lord knows what it is to me; nobody else does.”
You cannot always make things fit into one another. I was thinking so as I left Lease and went after Tod. It was awful carelessness not to have set the points; causing death, and sorrow, and distress to many people. Looking at it from their side, the pointsman was detestable; only fit, as the Squire said, to be hanged. But looking at it side by side with Lease, seeing his sad face, his self-reproach, and his patient suffering, it seemed altogether different; and the two aspects would not by any means fit in together.
Christmas week, and the absence of a juror who had gone out visiting, made another excuse for putting off the inquest to the next week. When that came, the coroner was ill. There seemed to be no end to the delays, and the public steam was getting up in consequence. As to Lease, he went about like a man who is looking for something that he has lost and cannot find.
One day, when the ice lay in Crabb Lane, and I was taking the slides on my way through it to join Tod, who had gone rabbit-shooting, a little girl ran across my feet, and was knocked down. I fell too; and the child began to cry. Picking her up, I saw it was Polly Lease.
“You little stupid! why did you run into my path like that?”
“Please, sir, I didn’t see you,” she sobbed. “I was running after father. Mother saw him in the field yonder, and sent me to tell him we’d got a bit o’ fire.”
Polly had grazed both her knees; they began to bleed just a little, and she nearly went into convulsions at sight of the blood. I carried her in. There was about a handful of fire in the grate. The mother sat on a low stool, close into it, nursing one of the children, and the rest sat on the floor.
“I never saw such a child as this in all my life, Mrs. Lease. Because she has hurt her knees a bit, and sees a drop of blood, she’s going to die of fright. Look here.”
Mrs. Lease put the boy down and took Polly, who was trembling all over with her deep low sobs.
“It was always so, sir,” said Mrs. Lease; “always since she was a baby. She is the timorest-natured child possible. We have tried everything; coaxing and scolding too; but we can’t get her out of it. If she pricks her finger her face turns white.”
“I’d be more of a woman than cry at nothing, if I were you, Polly,” said I, sitting on the window-ledge, while Mrs. Lease washed the knees; which were hardly damaged at all when they came to be examined. But Polly only clung to her mother, with her face hidden, and giving a deep sob now and then.
“Look up, Polly. What’s this!”
I put it into her hand as I spoke; a bath bun that I had been carrying with me, in case I did not get home to luncheon. Polly looked round, and the sight dried the tears on her swollen face. You never saw such a change all in a moment, or such eager, glad little eyes as hers.
“Divide it mother,” said she. “Leave a bit for father.”
Two of them came flocking round like a couple of young wolves; the youngest couldn’t get up, and the one Mrs. Lease had been nursing stayed on the floor where she put him. He had a sickly face, with great bright grey eyes, and hot, red lips.
“What’s the matter with him, Mrs. Lease?”
“With little Tom, sir? I think it’s a kind of fever. He never was strong; none of them are: and of course these bad times can but tell upon us.”
“Don’t forget father, mother,” said Polly. “Leave the biggest piece for father.”
“Now I tell you all what it is,” said I to the children, when Mrs. Lease began to divide it into half-a-dozen pieces, “that bun’s for Polly, because she has hurt herself: you shall not take any of it from her. Give it to Polly, Mrs. Lease.”
Of all the uproars ever heard, those little cormorants set up the worst. Mrs. Lease looked at me.
“They must have a bit, sir: they must indeed. Polly wouldn’t eat all herself, Master Ludlow; you couldn’t get her to do it.”
But I was determined Polly should have it. It was through me she got hurt; and besides, I liked her.
“Now just listen, you little pigs. I’ll go to Ford’s, the baker’s, and bring you all a bun a-piece, but Polly must have this one. They have lots of currants in them, those buns, for children that don’t squeal. How many are there of you? One, two, three, —— four.”
Catching up my cap, I was going out when Mrs. Lease touched me. “Do you really mean it, sir?” she asked in a whisper.
“Mean what? That I am going to bring the buns? Of course I mean it. I’ll be back with them directly.”
“Oh, sir — but do forgive me for making free to ask such a thing — if you would only let it be a half-quartern loaf instead?”
“A half-quartern loaf!”
“They’ve not had a bit between their lips this day, Master Ludlow,” she said, catching her breath, as her face, which had flushed, turned pale again. “Last night I divided between the four of them a piece of bread half the size of my hand; Tom, he couldn’t eat.”
I stared for a minute. “How is it, Mrs. Lease? can you not get enough food?”
“I don’t know where we should get it from, sir. Lease has not broken his fast since yesterday at midday.”
Dame Ford put the loaf in paper for me, wondering what on earth I wanted with it, as I could see by her inquisitive eyes, but not liking to ask; and I carried it back with the four buns. They were little wolves and nothing else when they saw the food.
“How has this come about, Mrs. Lease?” I asked, while they were eating the bread she cut them, and she had taken Tom on her lap again.
“Why, sir, it is eight weeks now, or hard upon it, since my husband earned anything. They didn’t even pay him for the last week he was at work, as the accident happened in it. We had nothing in hand; people with only eighteen shillings a week and five children to feed, can’t save; and we have been living on our things. But there’s nothing left now to make money of — as you may see by the bare room, sir.”
“Does not any one help you?”
“Help us!” returned Mrs. Lease. “Why, Master Ludlow, people, for the most part, are so incensed against my husband, that they’d take the bread out of our mouths, instead of putting a bit into them. All their help goes to poor Nancy Bowen and her children: and Lease is glad it should be so. When I carried Tom to Mr. Cole’s yesterday, he said that what the child wanted was nourishment.”
“This must try Lease.”
“Yes,” she said, her face flushing again, but speaking very quietly. “Taking one thing with another, I am not sure but it is killing him.”
After this break, I did not care to go to the shooting, but turned back to Crabb Cot. Mrs. Todhetley was alone in the bow-windowed parlour, so I told her of the state the Leases were in, and asked if she would not help them.
“I don’t know what to say about it, Johnny,” she said, after a pause. “If I were willing, you know Mr. Todhetley would not be so. He can’t forgive Lease for his carelessness. Every time Lena wakes up from sleep in a fright, fancying it is another accident, his anger returns to him. We often hear her crying out, you know, down here in an evening.”
“The carelessness was no fault of Lease’s children, that they should suffer for it.”
“When you grow older, Johnny, you will find that the co
nsequences of people’s faults fall more on others than on themselves. It is very sad the Leases should be in this state; I am sorry for them.”
“Then you’ll help them a bit, good mother.”
Mrs. Todhetley was always ready to help any one, not needing to be urged; on the other hand, she liked to yield implicitly to the opinions of the Squire. Between the two, she went into a dilemma.
“Suppose it were Lena, starving for want of food and warmth?” I said. “Or Hugh sick with fever, as that young Tom is? Those children have done no more harm than ours.”
Mrs. Todhetley put her hand up to her face, and her mild eyes looked nearly as sad as Lease’s.
“Will you take it to them yourself, Johnny, in a covered basket, and not let it be seen? That is, make it your own doing?”
“Yes.”
“Go to the kitchen then, and ask Molly. There are some odds and ends of things in the larder that will not be particularly wanted. You see, Johnny, I do not like to take an active part in this; it would seem like opposing the Squire.”
Molly was stooping before the big fire, basting the meat, in one of her vile humours. If I wanted to rob the larder, I must do it, she cried; it was my business, not hers; and she dashed the basting spoon across the table by way of accompaniment.
I gave a good look round the larder, and took a raised pork-pie that had a piece cut out of it, and a leg of mutton three parts eaten. On the shelf were a dozen mince-pies, just out of their patty-pans; I took six and left six. Molly, screwing her face round the kitchen-door, caught sight of them as they went into the basket, and rushing after me out of the house, shrieked out for her mince-pies.
The race went on. She was a woman not to be daunted. Just as we turned round by the yellow barn, I first, she raving behind, the Squire pounced upon us, asking what the uproar meant. Molly told her tale. I was a thief, and had gone off with the whole larder, more particularly with her mince-pies.