by Ellen Wood
“It is a pity girls should be at them at all — drawing on the young men! I am speaking generally, Mrs. Dyke.”
“It is a pity the young men should be so soft as to be drawn on by them — if you’ll excuse my saying it, sir,” she returned, quickly. “But there — what would you? Human nature’s the same all the world over: Jack and Jill. The young men like to talk to the girls, and the girls like very much to talk to the young men. Of course these barmaids lay themselves out to the best advantage, in the doing of their hair and their white frills, and what not, which is human nature again, sir. Look at a young lady in a drawing-room: don’t she set herself off when she is expecting the beaux to call?”
Mrs. Dyke paused for want of breath. Her tongue ran on fast, but it told of good sense.
“The barmaids are but like the young ladies, sir; and the young fellows that congregate there get to admire them, while sipping their drops at the counter; if, as I say, they are soft enough. When the girls get hold of one softer than the rest, why, perhaps one of them gets over him so far as to entrap him to give her his name — just as safe as you hook and land a fish.”
“And I suppose it has a different termination sometimes?”
Honest Mrs. Dyke shook her head. “We won’t talk about that, sir: I can’t deny that it may happen once in a way. Not often, let’s hope. The young women, as a rule, are well-conducted and respectable: they mostly know how to take care of themselves.”
“I should say Miss Panken does.”
Mrs. Dyke’s broad face shone with merriment. “Ain’t she impudent? Oh yes, sir, Polly Panken can take care of herself, never fear. But it’s not a good atmosphere for young girls to be in, you see, sir, these public bars; whether it may be only at a railway counter, or at one of them busy taverns in the town, or at the gay places of amusement, the manners and morals of the girls get to be a bit loose, as it were, and they can’t help it.”
“Or anybody else, I suppose.”
“No, sir, not as things are; and it’s just a wrong upon them that they should be exposed to it. They’d be safer and quieter in a respectable service, which is the state of life many of ’em were born to — though a few may be superior — and better behaved, too: manners is sure to get a bit corrupted in the public line. But the girls like their liberty; they like the free-and-easy public life and its idleness; they like the flirting and the chaffing and the nonsense that goes on; they like to be dressed up of a day as if they were so many young ladies, their hair done off in bows and curls and frizzes, and their hands in cuffs and lace-edgings; now and then you may see ’em with a ring on. That’s a better life, they think, than they’d lead as servants or shop-women, or any of the other callings open to this class of young women: and perhaps it is. It’s easier, at any rate. I’ve heard that some quite superior young people are in it, who might be, or were, governesses, and couldn’t find employment, poor young ladies, through the market being so overstocked. Ah, it is a hard thing, sir, for a well-brought-up young woman to find lady-like employment nowadays. One thing is certain,” concluded Mrs. Dyke, “that we shall never have a lack of barmaids in this country until a law is passed by the legislature — which, happen, never will be passed — to forbid girls serving in these places. There’d be less foolishness going on then, and a deal less drinking.”
These were Pitt’s ideas over again.
A loud laugh outside, and Lizzie came running in. “Why, Aunt Dyke, are you there! — entertaining Mr. Johnny Ludlow!” she exclaimed, as she threw herself into a chair. “Well, I never. And what do you two think I am going to do to-morrow?”
“Now just you mind your manners, young woman,” advised the aunt.
“I am minding them — don’t you begin blowing-up,” retorted Lizzie, her face brimming over with good-humour.
“You might have your things stole; you and the girl out together,” said Mrs. Dyke.
“There’s nothing to steal but chairs and tables. I’m sure I’m much obliged to you both for sitting here to take care of them. You’ll never guess what I am going to do,” broke off Lizzie, with shrieks of laughter. “I am going to take my old place again at the Bell-and-Clapper, and serve behind the counter for the day: Mabel Falkner wants a holiday. Won’t it be fun!”
“Your husband will not let you; he would not like it,” I said in my haste, while Mrs. Dyke sat in open-mouthed amazement.
“And I shall put on my old black dress; I’ve got it yet; and be a regular barmaid again. A lovely costume, that black is!” ironically ran on Lizzie. “Neat and not gaudy, as the devil said when he painted his tail pea-green. You need not look as though you thought I had made acquaintance with him and heard him say it, Mr. Johnny; I only borrowed it from one of Bulwer’s novels that I read the other day.”
If I did not think that, I thought Madam Lizzie had been making acquaintance this afternoon with something else. “Drops!” as Mrs. Dyke called it.
“There I shall be to-morrow, at the old work, and you can both come and see me at it,” said Lizzie. “I’ll treat you more civilly, Mr. Johnny, than Polly Panken did.”
“But I say that your husband will not allow you to go,” I repeated to her.
“Ah, he’s in bed,” she laughed; “he can’t get out of it to stop me.”
“You are all on the wrong tack, Lizzie girl,” spoke up the aunt, severely. “If you don’t mind, it will land you in shoals and quicksands. How dare you think of running counter to what you know your husband’s wishes would be?”
She received this with a louder laugh than ever. “He will not know anything about it, Aunt Dyke. Unless Mr. Johnny Ludlow here should tell him. It would not make any difference to me if he did,” she concluded, with candour.
And as I felt sure it would not, I held my tongue.
By degrees, as the days went on, Roger got about again, and when I left London he was back at St. Bartholomew’s. Other uncanny things had happened to me during this visit of mine, but not one of them brought with it so heavy a weight as the thought of poor Roger Bevere and his blighted life.
“His health may get all right if he will give up drinking,” were the last words Pitt said to me. “He has promised to do so.”
The weather was cold and wintry as we began our railway journey. From two to three years have gone on, you must please note, since the time told of above. Mr. Brandon was about to spend the Christmas with his sister, Lady Bevere — who had quitted Hampshire and settled not far from Brighton — and she had sent me an invitation to accompany him.
We took the train at Evesham. It was Friday, and the shortest day in the year; St. Thomas, the twenty-first of December. Some people do not care to begin a journey on a Friday, thinking it bodes ill-luck: I might have thought the same had I foreseen what was to happen before we got home again.
London reached, we met Roger Bevere at the Brighton Station, as agreed upon. He was to travel down with us. I had not seen him since the time of his illness in London, except for an hour once when I was in town upon some business for the Squire. Nothing had transpired to his friends, so far as I knew, of the fatal step he had taken; that was a secret still.
I cannot say I much liked Roger’s appearance now, as he sat opposite me in the railway-carriage, leaning against the arm of the comfortably-cushioned seat. His fair, pleasant face was gentle as ever, but the once clear blue eyes no longer looked very clear and did not meet ours freely; his hands shook, his fingers were restless. Mr. Brandon did not much like the signs either, to judge by the way he stared at him.
“Have you been well lately, Roger?”
“Oh yes, thank you, Uncle John.”
“Well, your looks don’t say much for you.”
“I am rather hard-worked,” said Roger. “London is not a place to grow rosy in.”
“Do you like your new work?” continued Mr. Brandon. For Roger had done with St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, and was outdoor assistant to a surgeon in private practice, a Mr. Anderson.
“I like it
better than the hospital work, Uncle John.”
“Ah! A fine idea that was of yours — wanting to set up in practice for yourself the minute you had passed. Your mother did well to send the letter to me and ask my advice. Some of you boys — boys, and no better — fresh from your hospital studies, screw a brass-plate on your door, announcing yourselves to the world as qualified surgeons. A few of you go a step further and add M.D.”
“Many of us take our degree as physician at once, Uncle John,” said Roger. “It is becoming quite the custom.”
“Just so: the custom!” retorted Mr. Brandon, cynically. “Why didn’t you do it, and modestly call yourself Dr. Bevere? In my former days, young man, when some ultra-grave ailment necessitated application to a physician, we went to him in all confidence, knowing that he was a man of steady years, of long-tried experience, whose advice was to be relied upon. Now, if you are dying and call in some Dr. So-and-so, you may find him a young fellow of three or four and twenty. As likely as not only an M.B. in reality, who has arrogated to himself the title of Doctor. For I hear some of them do it.”
“But they think they have a right to be called so, Uncle John. The question — —”
“What right?” sharply demanded Mr. Brandon. “What gives it them?”
“Well — courtesy, I suppose,” hesitated Roger.
“Oh,” said Mr. Brandon.
I laughed. His tone was so quaint.
“Yes, you may laugh, Johnny Ludlow — showing your thoughtlessness! There’ll soon be no modesty left in the world,” he continued; “there’ll soon be no hard, plodding work. Formerly, men were content to labour on patiently for years, to attain success, whether in fame, fortune, or for a moderate competency. Now they must take a leap into it. Tradespeople retire before middle-age, merchants make colossal fortunes in a decade, and (to leave other anomalies alone) you random young hospital students spring into practice full-fledged M.D.’s.”
“The world is changing, Uncle John.”
“It is,” assented Mr. Brandon. “I’m not sure that we shall know it by-and-by.”
From Brighton terminus we had a drive of two or three miles across country to get to Prior’s Glebe — as Lady Bevere’s house was named. It was old-fashioned and commodious, and stood in a large square garden that was encircled by a thick belt of towering shrubs. Nothing was to be seen around it but a huge stretch of waste land; half a-mile-off, rose a little church and a few scattered cottages. “The girls must find this lively!” exclaimed Roger, taking a comprehensive look about him as we drove up in the twilight.
Lady Bevere, kind, gentle, simple-mannered as ever, received us lovingly. Mr. Brandon kissed her, and she kissed me and Roger. It was the first Christmas Roger had spent at home since rushing into that mad act of his; he had always invented some excuse for declining. The eldest son, Edmund, was in the navy; the second, George, was in the Church; Roger was the third; and the youngest, John, had a post in a merchant’s house in Calcutta. Of the four girls, only the eldest, Mary, and the youngest were at home. The little one was named Susan, but they called her Tottams. The other two were on a visit to their aunt, the late Sir Edmund Bevere’s sister.
Dinner was waiting when we got in, and I could not snatch half a word with Roger while making ready for it. He and I had two little rooms opening to each other. But when we went upstairs for the night we could talk at will; and I put my candle down on his chest of drawers.
“How are things going with you, Roger?”
“Don’t talk of it,” he cried, with quite a burst of emotion. “Things cannot be worse than they are.”
“I fancy you have not pulled up much, as Pitt used to call it, have you, old friend? Your hands and your face tell tales.”
“How can I pull up?” he retorted.
“You promised that you would.”
“Ay. Promised! When all the world’s against a fellow, he may not be able to keep his promises. Perhaps may not care to.”
“How is Lizzie?” I said then, dropping my voice.
“Don’t talk of her,” repeated Bevere, in a tone of despair; despair if I ever heard it. It shut me up.
“Johnny, I’m nearly done over; sick of it all,” he went on. “You don’t know what I have to bear.”
“Still — as regards yourself, you might pull up,” I persisted, for to give in to him, and his mood and his ways, would never do. “You might if you chose, Bevere.”
“I suppose I might, if I had any hope. But there’s none; none. People tell us that as we make our bed so we must lie upon it. I made mine in an awful fashion years ago, and I must pay the penalty.”
“I gather from this — forgive me, Bevere — that you and your wife don’t get along together.”
“Get along! Things with her are worse than you may think for. She — she — well, she has not done her best to turn out well. Heaven knows I’d have tried my best; the thing was done, and nothing else was left for us: but she has not let me. We are something like cat-and-dog now, and I am not living with her.”
“No!”
“That is, I inhabit other lodgings. She is at the old place. I am with a medical man in Bloomsbury, you know. It was necessary for me to be near him, and six months ago I went. Lizzie acquiesced in that; the matter was obvious. I sometimes go to see her; staying, perhaps, from Saturday to Monday, and come away cursing myself.”
“Don’t. Don’t, Bevere.”
“She has taken to drink,” he whispered, biting his agitated lips. “For pretty near two years now she has not been a day sober. As Heaven hears me, I believe not one day. You may judge what I’ve had to bear.”
“Could nothing be done?”
“I tried to do it, Johnny. I coaxed, persuaded, threatened her by turns, but she would not leave it off. For four months in the autumn of last year, I did not let a drop of anything come into the house; drinking water myself all the while — for her sake. It was of no use: she’d go out and get it: every public-house in the place knows her. I’d come home from the hospital in the evening and find her raving and rushing about the rooms like a mad woman, or else lying incapable on the bed. Believe me, I tried all I could to keep her straight; and Mrs. Dyke, a good, motherly woman, you remember, did her best to help me; but she was too much for both of us, the demon of drink had laid too fast hold of her.”
“Does she come bothering you at your new lodgings?”
“She doesn’t know where to come,” replied Bevere; “I should not dare to tell her. She thinks I am in the doctor’s house, and she does not know where that is. I have told her, and her Aunt Dyke has told her, that if ever she attempts to come after me there, I shall stop her allowance. Scott — you remember Richard Scott!”
“Of course.”
“Well, Scott lives now near the Bell-and-Clapper: he is with a surgeon there. Scott goes to see her for me once a-week, or so, and brings me news of her. I declare to you, Johnny Ludlow, that when I first catch sight of his face I turn to a cold shiver, dreading what he may have to say. And you talk about pulling up! With such a wife as that, one is thankful to drown care once in a way.”
“I — I suppose, Roger, nothing about her has ever come out here?”
He started up, his face on fire. “Johnny, lad, if it came out here — to my mother — to all of them — I should die. Say no more. The case is hopeless, and I am hopeless with it.”
Any way, it seemed hopeless to talk further then, and I took up my candle. “Just one more word, Roger: Does Lizzie know you have come down here? She might follow you.”
His face took a look of terror. The bare idea scared him. “I say, don’t you invent impossible horrors,” gasped he. “She couldn’t come; she has never heard of the place in connection with me. She has never heard anything about my people, or where they live, or don’t live, or whether I have any. Good-night.”
“Good-night, Roger.”
III.
People say you can never sleep well in a strange bed. I know I did not sleep well, but
very badly, that first night at Lady Bevere’s. It was not the fault of the bed, or of its strangeness; it was Roger’s trouble haunting me.
He did not seem to have slept well either, to judge by his looks when I went into his room in the morning. His fair, pleasant face was pale; his lips trembled, the blue eyes had torment in their depths.
“I have had a bad dream,” he said, in answer to a remark I made. “An awful dream. It came to me in my last sleep this morning; and morning dreams, they say, come true. I’m afraid I have you to thank for it, Johnny.”
“Me!”
“You suggested last night, startling me well-nigh out of my senses by it, that Lizzie might follow me down here. Well, I dreamt she did so. I saw her in the dining-room, haranguing my mother, her red-gold hair streaming over her shoulders and her arms stretched wildly out. Uncle John stood in a corner of the room, looking on.”
I felt sorry, and told him so: of course my speaking had prompted the dream. He need not fear. If Lizzie did not know he had come down here, or that his family lived here, or anything about them, she could not follow him.
“You see shadows where no shadows are, Roger.”
“When a man spoils his life on its threshold, it is all shadow; past, present, and future.”
“Things may mend, you know.”
“Mend!” he returned: “how can they mend? They may grow worse; never mend. My existence is one long torment. Day by day I live in dread of what may come: of her bringing down upon herself some public disgrace and my name with it. No living being, man or woman, can imagine what it is to me; the remorse for my folly, the mortification, the shame. I believe honestly that but for a few things instilled into me at my mother’s knee in childhood, I should have put an end to myself.”
“It is a long lane that has no turning.”
“Lanes have different outlets: bad as well as good.”
“I think breakfast must be ready, Roger.”
“And I started with prospects so fair!” he went on. “Never a thought or wish in my heart but to fulfil honestly the duties that lay in my way to the best of my power, to God and to man. And I should have done it, but for —— Johnny Ludlow,” he broke off, with a deep breath of emotion, “when I see other young fellows travelling along the same wrong road, once earnest, well-meaning lads as I was, not turning aside of their own wilful, deliberate folly, but ensnared to it by the evil works and ways they encounter in that teeming city, my soul is wrung with pity for them. I sometimes wonder whether God will punish them for what they can hardly avoid; or whether He will not rather let His anger fall on those who throw temptations in their way.”