by Ellen Wood
“A grand procession, is it not, Mrs. Mapping?” cried her companion, gazing after it with admiring eyes.
“Very,” said Dolly. “I wonder — Good gracious!” she broke off, with startling emphasis, “there’s my husband!”
“Where?” asked Mrs. Turk, her eyes bent on the surging crowd below.
“There,” said Dolly, pointing with her finger; “there! He is arm-in-arm with two others; in the middle of them. How very strange! It was only yesterday I had a letter from him from Bradford, saying he should be detained there for some time to come. How I wish he had looked up at this window!”
Mrs. Turk’s sight had failed to single him out amongst the moving crowd. And as Mr. Mapping did not make his appearance at home that evening, or for many evenings to come, she concluded that the young wife must have been mistaken.
When Mr. Mapping did appear, he said the same, telling Dolly she must have “seen double,” for that he had not been in London. Dolly did not insist, but she felt staggered and uncomfortable; she felt certain it was her husband she saw.
How long the climax would have been postponed, or in what way it might have disclosed itself, but for something that occurred, cannot be conjectured. This wretched kind of life went on until the next spring. Dolly was reduced to perplexity. She had parted with all the pretty trinkets her mother left her; she would live for days together upon bread-and-butter and tears: and a most unhappy suspicion had instilled itself into her mind — that the nest-egg no longer existed. But even yet she found excuses for her husband; she thought that all doubt might still be explained away. Mrs. Turk was very good, and did not worry; Dolly did some plain sewing for her, and made her a gown or two.
On one of these spring days, when the sun was shining brightly on the pavement outside, Dolly went out on an errand. She had not gone many steps from the door when a lady, very plainly dressed, came up and accosted her quietly.
“Young woman, I wish to ask why you have stolen away my husband?”
“Good gracious!” exclaimed the startled Dolly. “What do you mean?”
“You call yourself Mrs. Mapping.”
“I am Mrs. Mapping.”
The stranger shook her head. “We cannot converse here,” she said. “Allow me to go up to your room” — pointing to it. “I know you lodge there.”
“But what is it that you want with me?” objected Dolly, who did not like all this.
“You think yourself the wife of Alick Mapping. You think you were married to him.”
Dolly wondered whether the speaker had escaped from that neighbouring stronghold, Bedlam. “I don’t know what it is you wish to insinuate,” she said. “I was married to Mr. Mapping at St. Martin’s Church in Worcester, more than eighteen months ago.”
“Ay! But I, his wife, was married to him in London seven years ago. Yours was no marriage; he deceived you.”
Dolly’s face was turning all manner of colours. She felt frightened almost to death.
“Take me to your room and I will tell you all that you need to know. Do not fear I shall reproach you; I am only sorry for you; it has been no fault of yours. He is a finished deceiver, as I have learnt to my cost.”
Dolly led the way. Seated together, face to face, her eyes strained on the stranger’s, she listened to the woeful tale, which was gently told. That it was true she could not doubt. Alick Mapping had married her at St. Martin’s Church in Worcester, but he had married this young woman some years before it.
“You are thinking that I look older than my husband,” said she, misinterpreting Dolly’s gaze. “That is true. I am five years older, and am now approaching my fortieth year. He pretended to fall in love with me; I thought he did; but what he really fell in love with was my money.”
“How did you come to know about me? — how did you find it out?” gasped Dolly.
“It was through Mrs. Turk, your landlady,” answered the true wife. “She has been suspecting that something or other was wrong, and she talked of it to a friend of hers who chances to know my family. This friend was struck with the similarity of name — the Alick Mapping whose wife was here in the Blackfriars Road, and the Alick Mapping whose wife lived at Hackney.”
“How long is it since he left you?” asked poor Dolly.
“He has not left me. He has absented himself inexplicably at times for a year or two past, but he is still with me. He is at home now, at this present moment. I have a good home, you must understand, and a good income, which he cannot touch; he would think twice before giving up that. Had you money?” continued the lady abruptly.
“I had three hundred pounds. He told me he had placed it in the Bank of England; I think he did do that; and that he should never draw upon it, but leave it there for a nest-egg.”
Mrs. Mapping smiled in pity. “You may rely upon it that there’s not a shilling left of it. Money in his hands, when he can get hold of any, runs out of them like water.”
“Is it true that he travels for a wine house?”
“Yes — and no. It is his occupation, but he is continually throwing up his situations: pleasure has more attraction for him than work; and he will be a gentleman at large for months together. Yet not a more clever man of business exists than he is known to be, and he can get a place at any time.”
“Have you any children?” whispered Dolly.
“No. Shall you prosecute him?” continued the first wife, after a pause.
“Shall I — what?” cried Dolly, aghast.
“Prosecute him for the fraud he has committed on you?”
“Oh dear! the exposure would kill me,” shivered the unhappy girl. “I shall only hope to run away and hide myself forever.”
“Every syllable I have told you is truth,” said the stranger, producing a slip of paper as she rose to depart. “Here are two or three references by which you can verify it, if you doubt me. Mrs. Turk will do it for you if you do not care to stir in it yourself. Will you shake hands with me?”
Dolly assented, and burst into a whirlwind of tears.
Nothing seemed to be left for her, as she said, but to run away and hide herself. All the money was gone, and she was left penniless and helpless. By the aid of Mrs. Turk, who proved a good friend to her, she obtained a situation in a small preparatory school near Croydon, as needle-woman and companion to the mistress. She called herself Mrs. Mapping still, and continued to wear her wedding-ring; she did not know what else to do. She had been married; truly, as she had believed; and what had come of it was surely no fault of hers.
A little good fortune fell to her in time; a little bit. For years and years she remained in that school at Croydon, until, as it seemed to herself, she was middle-aged, and then the mistress of it died. Having no relatives, she left her savings and her furniture to Dolly. With the money Dolly set up the house in Gibraltar Terrace, put the furniture into it, and began to let lodgings. A young woman, who had been teacher in the school, and whom Dolly regarded as her sister, and often called her so, removed to it with her and stayed with her until she married.
Those particulars — which we listened to one evening from her own lips — were gloomy enough. The Squire went into an explosion over Alick Mapping.
“The despicable villain! What has become of him?”
“I never saw him after his wife came to me,” she answered, “but Mrs. Turk would get news of him now and then. Since Mrs. Turk’s death, I have heard nothing. Sometimes I think he may be dead.”
“I hope he was hung!” flashed the Squire.
Well — to hasten on. That was Dorothy Grape’s history since she left Worcester; and a cruel one it was!
We saw her once or twice again before quitting London. And the Squire left a substantial present with her, for old remembrance sake.
“She looks as though she needed it, Johnny,” said he. “Poor thing! poor thing! And such a pretty, happy little maiden as she used to be, standing in her pinafore amongst the yellow roses in the porch at Islip! Johnny, lad, I hope that vagabon
d came to be hanged!”
II.
It was ever so long afterwards, and the time had gone on by years, when we again fell into the thread of Dorothy Grape’s life. The Squire was in London for a few days upon some law business, and had brought me with him.
“I should like to see how that poor woman’s getting on, Johnny,” he said to me one morning. “Suppose we go down to Gibraltar Terrace?”
It was a dull, damp, misty day at the close of autumn; and when the Squire turned in at No. 60, after dismissing the cab, he stood still and stared, instead of knocking. A plate was on the door, “James Noak, carpenter and joiner.”
“Has she left, do you think, Johnny?”
“Well, sir, we can ask. Perhaps the carpenter is only lodging here?”
A tidy young woman, with a baby in her arms, answered the knock. “Does Mrs. Mapping live here still?” asked the Squire.
“No, sir,” she answered. “I don’t know the name.”
“Not know the name!” retorted he, turning crusty; for he disliked, of all things, to be puzzled or thwarted. “Mrs. Mapping lived here for ten or a dozen years, anyhow.”
“Oh, stay, sir,” she said, “I remember the name now. Mapping; yes, that was it. She lived here before we came in.”
“Is she dead?”
“No, sir. She was sold up.”
“Sold up?”
“Yes, sir. Her lodging-letting fell off — this neighbourhood’s not what it was: people like to get further up, Islington way — and she was badly off for a long while, could not pay her rent, or anything; so at last the landlord was obliged to sell her up. At least, that’s what we heard after we came here, but the house lay empty for some months between. I did not hear what became of her.”
The people at the next house could not tell anything; they were fresh-comers also; and the Squire stood in a quandary. I thought of Pitt the surgeon; he was sure to know; and ran off to his surgery in the next street.
Changes seemed to be everywhere. Pitt’s small surgery had given place to a chemist’s shop. The chemist stood behind his counter in a white apron. Pitt? Oh, Pitt had taken to a practice further off, and drove his brougham. “Mrs. Mapping?” added the chemist, in further answer to me. “Oh yes, she lives still in the same terrace. She came to grief at No. 60, poor woman, and lodges now at No. 32. Same side of the way; this end.”
No. 32 had a plate on the door: “Miss Kester, dressmaker,” and Miss Kester herself — a neat little woman, with a reserved, not to say sour, face and manner, and a cloud of pins sticking out of her brown waistband — answered the knock. She sent us up to a small back-room at the top of the house.
Mrs. Mapping sat sewing near a fireless grate, her bed in one corner; she looked very ill. I had thought her thin enough before; she was a shadow now. The blue eyes had a piteous look in them, the cheeks a hectic.
“Yes,” she said, in answer to the Squire, her voice faint and her cough catching her every other minute, “it was a sad misfortune for me to be turned out of my house; it nearly broke my heart. The world is full of trouble, sir.”
“How long is it since?”
“Nearly eighteen months, sir. Miss Kester had this room to let, and I came into it. It is quiet and cheap: only half-a-crown a-week.”
“And how do you get the half-crown?” questioned the Squire. “And your dinner and breakfast — how do you get that?”
Mrs. Mapping passed her trembling fingers across her brow before she answered —
“I’m sorry to have to tell of these things, sir. I’m sorry you have found me out in my poverty. When I think of the old days at home, the happy and plentiful days when poor mother was living, and what a different life mine might have been but for the dreadful marriage I made, I — I can hardly bear up against it. I’m sure I beg your pardon, gentlemen, for giving way.”
For the tears were streaming down her thin cheeks. The Squire set up a cough on his own account; I went to the window and looked down at some grimy back-gardens.
“When I am a little stronger, and able to do a full day’s work again, I shall get on, sir, but I’ve been ill lately through going out in the wet and catching cold,” she said, mastering the tears. “Miss Kester is very good in supplying me with as much as I can do.”
“A grand ‘getting on,’” cried the Squire. “You’d be all the better for some fire in that grate.”
“I might be worse off than I am,” she answered meekly. “If it is but little that I have, I am thankful for it.”
The Squire talked a while longer; then he put a sovereign into her hand, and came away with a gloomy look.
“She wants a bit of regular help,” said he. “A few shillings paid to her weekly while she gets up her strength might set her going again. I wonder if we could find any one to undertake it?”
“You would not leave it with herself in a lump, sir?”
“Why, no, I think not; she may have back debts, you see, Johnny, and be tempted to pay them with it; if so, practically it would be no good to her. Wish Pitt lived here still! Wonder if that Miss Kester might be trusted to —— There’s a cab, lad! Hail it.”
The next morning, when we were at breakfast at the hotel — which was not the Tavistock this time — the Squire burst into a state of excitement over his newspaper.
“Goodness me, Johnny! here’s the very thing.”
I wondered what had taken him, and what he meant; and for some time did not clearly understand. The Squire’s eyes had fallen upon an advertisement, and also a leading article, treating of some great philanthropic movement that had recently set itself up in London. Reading the articles, I gathered that it had for its object the distribution of alms on an extensive scale and the comprehensive relieving of the distressed. Some benevolent gentlemen (so far as we could understand the newspaper) had formed themselves into a band for taking the general welfare of the needy into their hands, and devoted their lives to looking after their poverty-stricken brothers and sisters. A sort of universal, benevolent, set-the-world-to-rights invention.
The Squire was in raptures. “If we had but a few more such good men in the world, Johnny! I’ll go down at once and shake their hands. If I lived in London, I’d join them.”
I could only laugh. Fancy the Squire going about from house to house with a bag of silver to relieve the needy!
Taking note of the office occupied by these good men, we made our way to it. Only two of them were present that morning: a man who looked like a clerk, for he had books and papers before him; and a thin gentleman in spectacles.
The Squire shook him by the hand at once, breaking into an ovation at the good deeds of the benevolent brotherhood, that should have made the spectacles before us, as belonging to a member of it, blush.
“Yes,” he said, his cool, calm tones contrasting with the Squire’s hot ones, “we intend to effect a work that has never yet been attempted. Why, sir, by our exertions three parts of the complaints of hunger, and what not, will be done away with.”
The Squire folded his hands in an ecstasy of reverence. “That is, you will relieve it,” he remarked. “Bountiful Samaritans!”
“Relieve it, certainly — where the recipients are found to be deserving,” returned the other. “But non-deserving cases — impostors, ill-doers, and the like — will get punishment instead of relief, if we can procure it for them.”
“Quite right, too,” warmly assented the Squire. “Allow me to shake your hand again, sir. And you gentlemen are out every day upon this good work! Visiting from house to house!”
“Some of us are out every day; we devote our time to it.”
“And your money, too, of course!” exclaimed the Squire. “Listen, Johnny Ludlow,” he cried, turning to me, his red face glowing more and more with every word, “I hope you’ll take a lesson from this, my lad! Their time, and their money too!”
The thin gentleman cleared his throat. “Of course we cannot do all in the way of money ourselves,” he said; “some of us, indeed, ca
nnot do anything in that way. Our operations are very large: a great deal is needed, and we have to depend upon a generous public for help.”
“By their making subscriptions to it?” cried the Squire.
“Undoubtedly.”
The Squire tugged at an inner pocket. “Here, Johnny, help me to get out my cheque-book.” And when it was out, he drew a cheque for ten pounds there and then, and laid it on the table.
“Accept this, sir,” he said, “and my praises with it. And now I should like to recommend to your notice a case myself — a most deserving one. Will you take it in hand?”
“Certainly.”
The Squire gave Mrs. Mapping’s address, telling briefly of her present distress and weakly state, and intimated that the best mode of relief would be to allow her a few shillings weekly. “You will be sure to see to her?” was his parting injunction. “She may starve if you do not.”
“Have no fear: it is our business to do so,” repeated the thin gentleman. “Good-day.”
“Johnny,” said the Squire, going up the street sideways in his excitement, “it is refreshing to hear of these self-denying deeds. These good men must be going on straight for heaven!”
“Take care, sir! Look where you are going.”
The Squire had not been going on straight himself just then, and had bumped up against a foot-passenger who was hurrying along. It was Pitt, the surgeon. After a few words of greeting, the Squire excused his flurry by telling him where he had come from.
“Been there!” exclaimed Pitt, bursting into a laugh. “Wish you joy, sir! We call it Benevolence Hall.”
“And a very good name, too,” said the Squire. “Such men ought to be canonized, Pitt.”
“Hope they will be?” answered Pitt in a curious kind of tone. “I can’t stop now, Mr. Todhetley; am on my way to a consultation.”