by Ellen Wood
But you may easily see how all this, besides the sorrow, told upon Lee. Fourteen shillings a week for a man and his wife to exist upon cannot be called much, especially if they have seen better days and been used to better living. When the first grandchild, poor little orphan, arrived to be kept, Lee and his wife both thought it hard, though quite willing to take him; and now they had Mamie and another grandchild. This young one was named Jemima, for Mamie had called her after her faithless husband. Five people and fourteen shillings a-week, and provisions dear, and house-rent to pay, and Lee’s shoes perpetually wanting to be mended! One or two generous individuals grew rather fond of telling Lee that he would be better off in the union.
It was November weather. A cold, dark, biting, sharp, drizzly morning. Andrew Lee got up betimes, as usual: he had to be out soon after seven to be ready for his letter delivery. In the kitchen when he entered it, he found his daughter there before him, coaxing the kettle to boil on the handful of fire, that she might make him his cup of tea and give him his breakfast. She was growing uncommonly weak and shadowy-looking now: a little woman, still not much more than a girl, with a shawl folded about her shivering shoulders, a hacking cough, and a mild, non-resisting face. Her father had lately told her that he would not have her get up in the morning; she was not fit for it: what he wanted done, he could do himself.
“Now, Mamie, why are you here? You should attend to what I say, child.”
She got up from her knees and turned her sad brown eyes towards him: bright and sweet eyes once, but now dimmed with the tears and sorrow of the last three years.
“I am better up; I am indeed, father. Not sleeping much, I get tired of lying: and my cough is worse in bed.”
He sat down to his cup of tea and to the bread she placed before him. Some mornings there was a little butter, or dripping, or mayhap bacon fat; but this morning he had to eat his bread dry. It was getting near the end of the week, and the purse ran low. Lee had a horror of debt, and would never let his people run into it for the smallest sum if he knew it.
“It’s poor fare for you this morning, father; but I’ll try and get a morsel of boiled pork for dinner, and we’ll have it ready early. I expect to be paid to-day for the bit of work I have been doing for young Mrs. Ashton. Some of those greens down by the apple-trees want cutting: they’ll be nice with a bit of pork.”
Lee turned his eyes in the direction of the greens and the apple-trees; but the window was misty, and he could only see the drizzle of rain-drops on the diamond panes. As he sat there, a thought came into his head that he was beginning to feel old: old, and worn, and shaky. Trouble ages a man more than work, more than time; and Lee never looked at the wan face of his daughter, and at its marks of sad repentance, but he felt anew the sting which was always pricking him more or less. What with that, and his difficulty to keep the pot boiling, and his general state of shakiness, Lee was older than his years. Timberdale had fallen into the habit of calling him Old Lee, you see; but he was not sixty yet. He had a nice face; when it was a young face it must have been like Mamie’s. It had furrows in it now, and his scanty grey locks hung down on each side of it.
Putting on his top-coat, which was about as thin as those remarkable sheets told of by Brian O’Linn, Lee went out buttoning it. The rain had ceased, but the cold wind took him as he went down the narrow garden-path, and he could not help shivering.
“It’s a bitter wind to-day, father; in the north-east, I think,” said Mamie, standing at the door to close it after him. “I hope there’ll be no letters for Crabb.”
Lee, as he pressed along in the teeth of the cruel east wind, was hoping the same. Salmon the grocer, who had taken the post-office, as may be remembered, when the late Thomas Rymer gave it up, was sorting the letters in the room behind the shop when Lee went in. Spicer, a lithe, active, dark-eyed man of forty-five, stood at the end of the table waiting for his bag. Lee went and stood beside him, giving him a brief good-morning: he had not taken kindly to the man since West ran away with Mamie.
“A light load this morning,” remarked Mr. Salmon to Spicer, as he handed him his appropriate bag. “And here’s yours, Lee,” he added a minute after: “not heavy either. Too cold for people to write, I suppose.”
“Anything for Crabb, sir?”
“For Crabb? Well, yes, I think there is. For the Rector.”
Upon going out, Spicer turned one way, Lee the other. Spicer’s district was easy as play; Lee’s was a regular country tramp, the farm-houses lying in all the four points of the compass. The longest tramp was over to us at Crabb. And why the two houses, our own and Coney’s farm, should continue to be comprised in the Timberdale delivery, instead of that of Crabb, people could never understand. It was so still, however, and nobody bestirred himself to alter it. For one thing, we were not often at Crabb Cot, and the Coneys did not have many letters, so it was not like an every-day delivery: we chanced to be there just now.
The letter spoken of by Salmon, which would bring Lee to Crabb this morning, was for the Reverend Herbert Tanerton, Rector of Timberdale. He and his wife, who was a niece of old Coney’s, were now staying at the farm on a week’s visit, and he had given orders to Salmon that his letters, during that week, were to be delivered at the farm instead of at the Rectory.
Lee finally got through his work, all but this one letter for the parson, and turned his steps our way. As ill-luck had it — the poor fellow thought it so afterwards — he could not take the short and sheltered way through Crabb Ravine, for he had letters that morning to Sir Robert Tenby, at Bellwood, and also for the Stone House on the way to it. By the time he turned on the solitary road that led to Crabb, Lee was nearly blown to smithereens by the fierce north-east wind, and chilled to the marrow. All his bones ached; he felt low, frozen, ill, and wondered whether he should get over the ground without breaking down.
“I wish I might have a whiff at my pipe!”
A pipe is to many people the panacea for all earthly discomfort; it was so to Lee. But only in the previous February had occurred that damage to Helen Whitney’s letter, when she was staying with us, which the authorities had made much of; and Lee was afraid to risk a similar mishap again. He carried Salmon’s general orders with him: not to smoke during his round. Once the letters were delivered, he might do so.
His weak grey hair blowing about, his thin and shrunken frame shivering and shaking as the blasts took him, his empty post-bag thrust into his pocket, and the Rector of Timberdale’s letter in his hand, Lee toiled along on his weary way. To a strong man the walk would have been nothing, and not much to Lee in fairer weather. It was the cold and wind that tired him. And though, after giving vent to the above wish, he held out a little while, presently he could resist the comfort no longer, but drew forth his pipe and struck a match to light it.
How it occurred he never knew, never knew to his dying day, but the flame from the match caught the letter, and set it alight. It was that thin foreign paper that catches so quickly, and the match was obstinate, and the wind blew the flame about. He pressed the fire out with his hands, but a portion of the letter was burnt.
If Timbuctoo, or some other far-away place had been within the distance of a man’s legs, Lee would have made straight off for it. His pipe on the ground, the burnt letter underneath his horrified gaze, and his hair raised on end, stood he. What on earth should he do? It had been only a pleasant young lady’s letter last time, and only a little scorched; now it was the stern Rector’s.
There was but one thing he could do — go on with the letter to its destination. It often happens in these distressing catastrophes that the one only course open is the least palatable. His pipe hidden away in his pocket — for Lee had had enough of it for that morning — and the damaged letter humbly held out in his hand, Lee made his approach to the farm.
I chanced to be standing at its door with Tom Coney and Tod. Those two were going out shooting, and the Squire had sent me running across the road with a message to them. Lee came up
, and, with a face that seemed greyer than usual, and a voice from which most of its sound had departed, he told his tale.
Tom Coney gave a whistle. “Oh, by George, Lee, won’t you catch it! The Rector — —”
“The Rector’s a regular martinet, you know,” Tom Coney was about to add, but he was stopped by the appearance of the Rector himself.
Herbert Tanerton had chanced to be in the little oak-panelled hall, and caught the drift of the tale. A frown sat on his cold face as he came forward, a frown that would have befitted an old face better than a young one.
He was not loud. He did not fly into a passion as Helen Whitney did. He just took the unfortunate letter in his hand, and looked at it, and looked at Lee, and spoke quietly and coldly.
“This is, I believe, the second time you have burnt the letters?” and Lee dared not deny it.
“And in direct defiance of orders. You are not allowed to smoke when on your rounds.”
“I’ll never attempt to smoke again, when on my round, as long as I live, sir, if you’ll only be pleased to look over it this time,” gasped Lee, holding up his hands in a piteous way. But the Rector was one who went in for “duty,” and the appeal found no favour with him.
“No,” said he, “it would be to encourage wrong-doing, Lee. Meet me at eleven o’clock at Salmon’s.”
“Never again, sir, so long as I live!” pleaded Lee. “I’ll give you my word of that, sir; and I never broke it yet. Oh, sir, if you will but have pity upon me and not report me!”
“At eleven o’clock,” repeated Herbert Tanerton decisively, as he turned indoors again.
“What an old stupid you must be!” cried Tod to Lee. “He won’t excuse you; he’s the wrong sort of parson to do it.”
“And a pretty kettle of fish you’ve made of it,” added Tom Coney. “I wouldn’t have minded much, had it been my letter; but he is different, you know.”
Poor Lee turned his eyes on me: perhaps remembering that he had asked me, the other time, to stand his friend with Miss Whitney. No one could be his friend now: when the Rector took up a grievance he did not let it drop again; especially if it were his own. Good-hearted Jack, his sailor-brother, would have screened Lee, though all the letters in the parish had got burnt.
At eleven o’clock precisely the Reverend Herbert Tanerton entered Salmon’s shop; and poor Lee, not daring to disobey his mandate, crept in after him. They had it out in the room behind. Salmon was properly severe; told Lee he was not sure but the offence involved penal servitude, and that he deserved hanging. A prosperous tradesman in his small orbit, the man was naturally inclined to be dictatorial, and was ambitious of standing well with his betters, especially the Rector. Lee was suspended there and then; and Spicer was informed that for a time, until other arrangements were made, he must do double duty. Spicer, vexed at this, for it would take him so much the more time from his legitimate business, that of horse doctor, told Lee he was a fool, and deserved not only hanging but drawing and quartering.
“What’s up?” asked Ben Rymer, crossing the road from his own shop to accost Lee, as the latter came out of Salmon’s. Ben was the chemist now — had been since Margaret’s marriage — and was steady; and Ben, it was said, would soon pass his examination for surgeon. He had his hands in his pockets and his white apron on, for Mr. Ben Rymer had no false pride, and would as soon show himself to Timberdale in an apron as in a dress-coat.
Lee told his tale, confessing the sin of the morning. Mr. Rymer nodded his head significantly several times as he heard it, and pushed his red hair from his capacious forehead.
“They won’t look over it this time, Lee.”
“If I could but get some one to be my friend with the Rector, and ask him to forgive me,” said Lee. “Had your father been alive, Mr. Rymer, I think he would have done it for me.”
“Very likely. No good to ask me — if that’s what you are hinting at. The Rector looks upon me as a black sheep, and turns on me the cold shoulder. But I don’t think he is one to listen, Lee, though the king came to ask him.”
“What I shall do I don’t know,” bewailed Lee. “If the place is stopped, the pay stops, and I’ve not another shilling in the world, or the means of earning one. My wife’s ailing, and Mamie gets worse day by day; and there are the two little ones. They are all upon me.”
“Some people here say, Lee, that you should have sent Mamie and her young one to the workhouse, and not have charged yourself with them.”
“True, sir, several have told me that. But people don’t know what a father’s feelings are till they experience them. Mary was my own child that I had dandled on my knee, and watched grow up in her pretty ways, and I was fonder of her than of any earthly thing. The workhouse might not have taken her in.”
“She has forfeited all claim on you. And come home only to break your heart.”
“True,” meekly assented Lee. “But the Lord has told us we are to forgive, not seven times, but seventy times seven. If I had turned her adrift from my door and heart, sir, who knows but I might have been turned adrift myself at the Last Day.”
Evidently it was of no use talking to one so unreasonable as Lee. And Mr. Ben Rymer went back to his shop. A customer was entering it with a prescription and a medicine-bottle.
One morning close upon Christmas, Mrs. Todhetley despatched me to Timberdale through the snow for a box of those delectable “Household Pills,” which have been mentioned before: an invention of the late Mr. Rymer’s, and continued to be made up by Ben. Ben was behind the counter as usual when I entered, and shook the snow off my boots on the door-mat.
“Anything else?” he asked me presently, wrapping up the box.
“Not to-day. There goes old Lee! How thin he looks!”
“Starvation,” said Ben, craning his long neck to look between the coloured globes at Lee on the other side the way. “Lee has nothing coming in now.”
“What do they all live upon?”
“Goodness knows. Upon things that he pledges, and the vegetables in the garden. I was in there last night, and I can tell you it was a picture, Mr. Johnny Ludlow.”
“A picture of what?”
“Misery: distress: hopelessness. It is several weeks now since Lee earned anything, and they have been all that time upon short commons. Some days on no commons at all, I expect.”
“But what took you there?”
“I heard such an account of the girl — Mamie — yesterday afternoon, of her cough and her weakness, that I thought I’d see if any of my drugs would do her good. But it’s food they all want.”
“Is Mamie very ill?”
“Very ill indeed. I’m not sure but she’s dying.”
“It is a dreadful thing.”
“One can’t ask too many professional questions — people are down upon you for that before you have passed,” resumed Ben, alluding to his not being qualified. “But I sent her in a cordial or two, and I spoke to Darbyshire; so perhaps he will look in upon her to-day.”
Ben Rymer might have been a black sheep once upon a time, but he had not a bad heart. I began wondering whether Mrs. Todhetley could help them.
“Is Mamie Lee still able to do any sewing?”
“About as much as I could do it. Not she. I shall hear what Darbyshire’s report is. They would certainly be better off in the workhouse.”
“I wish they could be helped!”
“Not much chance of that,” said Ben. “She is a sinner, and he is a sinner: that’s what Timberdale says, you know. People in these enlightened days are so very self-righteous!”
“How is Lee a sinner?”
“How! Why, has he not burnt up the people’s letters? Mr. Tanerton leads the van in banning him, and Timberdale follows.”
I went home, questioning whether our folk would do anything to help the Lees. No one went on against ill-doings worse than the Squire; and no one was more ready than he to lend a helping hand when the ill-doers were fainting for want of it.
It chanced tha
t just about the time I was talking to Ben Rymer, Mr. Darbyshire, the doctor at Timberdale, called at Lee’s. He was a little, dark man, with an irritable temper and a turned-up nose, but good as gold at heart. Mamie Lee lay back in a chair, her head on a pillow, weak and wan and weary, the tears slowly rolling down her cheeks. Darbyshire was feeling her pulse, and old Mrs. Lee pottered about, bringing sticks from the garden to feed the handful of fire. The two children sat on the brick floor.
“If it were not for leaving my poor little one, I should be glad to die, sir,” she was saying. “I shall be glad to go; hope it is not wrong to say it. She and I have been a dreadful charge upon them here.”
Darbyshire looked round the kitchen. It was almost bare; the things had gone to the pawnbroker’s. Then he looked at her.
“There’s no need for you to die yet. Don’t get that fallacy in your head. You’ll come round fast enough with a little care.”
“No, sir, I’m afraid not; I think I am past it. It has all come of the trouble, sir; and perhaps, when I’m gone, the neighbours will judge me more charitably. I believed with all my heart it was a true marriage — and I hope you’ll believe me when I say it, sir; it never came into my mind to imagine otherwise. And I’d have thought the whole world would have deceived me sooner than James.”
“Ah,” says Darbyshire, “most girls think that. Well, I’ll send you in some physic to soothe the pain in the chest. But what you most want, you see, is kitchen physic.”
“Mr. Rymer has been very good in sending me cordials and cough-mixture, sir. Mother’s cough is bad, and he sent some to her as well.”
“Ah, yes. Mrs. Lee, I am telling your daughter that what she most wants is kitchen physic. Good kitchen physic, you understand. You’d be none the worse yourself for some of it.”