CHAPTER VII.
DARK DOINGS.
When Mr. Skinner had escorted Miss Pinckney home after their walk, he seated himself at supper with the air of one who was thoroughly at home and at his ease.
"He knows on which side his bread is buttered," Uncle Bobo's Susan said, as she had watched Miss Pinckney walking up the row with her tall, ungainly suitor.
For Uncle Bobo was right. Mr. Skinner had every intention of coming to the point; though, I need not say, it was not his custom to go straight to the point.
Mr. Skinner always preferred a circuitous route.
When they were seated at supper Mr. Skinner said—
"You have had no tidings of your runaway, I presume, Mrs. Harrison?"
This question was asked as Mr. Skinner looked at Jack's mother with that oblique glance Jack had boldly called a "squint."
Patience shook her head. She could not bring herself to talk of her boy to Mr. Skinner.
"Ah," he said, "what a home he has left, and what a friend! When I think of Miss Pinckney's generosity and nobility of temper, I grieve that they were expended on so unworthy an object."
The colour rose to Mrs. Harrison's cheeks.
"You will be so kind, Mr. Skinner," she said, "not to talk about my boy. It is not a matter I care to speak of to any one."
"True, true!" was the reply. "'Least said, soonest mended.' But I suppose I may be permitted to offer my humble tribute of admiration to my dear, kind friend, who always gives me a welcome to her hospitable board."
Here Mr. Skinner stretched out his long, thin fingers, and laid them gently on Miss Pinckney's, who was in the act of handing him another triangular cut from the pork pie, which had been the pièce de résistance of the supper-table.
"Oh! dear me, Mr. Skinner," Miss Pinckney exclaimed, "I don't look for gratitude—never! So I am not disappointed. Gratitude isn't a plant that grows in these parts. It doesn't flourish. The air doesn't suit it, I suppose."
This was said with a glance at poor Patience, who was well accustomed to such side-hits.
"It is a plant that has a deep root in my heart," said Mr. Skinner, "and I hope the flower is not unpleasing, and that the fruit will be satisfying."
This was a great flight of poetical rhetoric, and Miss Pinckney bridled and simpered like a girl of sixteen.
"You are kindly welcome surely to anything I have to give, Mr. Skinner, now and at all times. Those that don't care for what I provide, well, they may seek their fortune elsewhere, and the sooner the better."
Patience Harrison had long been disciplined to self-control, or she could never have borne the "quips" and "quirks" of her sister.
Thus she kept silence, determined not to wrangle with Miss Pinckney in the presence of witnesses; above all, not in the presence of the man whom she distrusted.
So she quietly cleared away the supper when the meal was concluded, and retired to the back premises to wash up the dishes, and put everything in order for the night.
It was about ten o'clock when Mr. Skinner—having sipped his glass of hot gin and water bid his hostess an affectionate adieu, and turned his steps homewards.
When he reached his own gate he exchanged a quiet greeting with two men, who were evidently waiting for him.
Then all three went softly round to the back of the house, and entered it by the door through which Bet and little Miss Joy had gone in that afternoon.
Mr. Skinner opened the door with a latch-key, and all three men passed silently into the little room with the big table, covered with the green cloth—the table which little Joy had said looked too big for the room.
"Well," one of the men said, "'Fortune favours the brave.' I am in for luck to-night. What have you got to drink? I dare say there's a bottle of rum in the cupboard, eh?"
"Well," Mr. Skinner said, "I don't drink anything myself. So, no doubt, what you left is to be had."
"Ah, ha! ah, ha!" laughed the other man. "You don't drink at your own expense; is that it? The old lady in the row finds you in toddy."
"Shut up!" said the elder of the two men; "don't talk all night, but let us to business."
Then two packs of cards were produced with the black bottle, and very soon the game began.
Ah me! that ruinous game, which so many, I fear, play, and thereby lose all sense of honour and right. Who shall say how long is the list of broken hearts for which gambling is responsible?
And not only the sordid gambling, such as that in which Mr. Skinner and his boon companions indulged, with dirty packs of cards, in a low room where the mice scampered about behind the loose boards, and the whole aspect was uninviting; but, alas! there is the same game going on amongst those who, from education and social position, should be the first to shun this crying evil.
It matters not whether the stakes be for a pound or a penny, the danger and the sin is the same.
The winner is always the winner at the expense of the loser. The success of one is the destruction and misery of the other. Deceit and fraud, with too often strong drink to silence the cry of remorse and the voice of conscience, follow in the gambler's train. No departure from the paths of honesty is single in its consequences, and there is no sin but may be compared to the throwing of a pebble into a still lake, when the circles which follow the fall of the stone widen and widen, and that indefinitely.
Gambling in all its forms is a grievous wrong; and whether from betting on horses, or speculating in stocks and shares, or descending to a shabby little room such as that where Mr. Skinner and his friends sat on this fair summer night, shuffling their cards, for what seemed by comparison insignificant sums, we are bound to protest against it with all our might, and to guard the young under our care from the first beginnings of what is indeed the cause of untold misery to many who, in thousands of cases, suffer for the sins of others.
The stakes for which Mr. Skinner and his companions played were small; but his usual good fortune seemed to have deserted him of late, for he had lost again and again.
One of the men, as he threw down the cards, said—
"I have a score against you for last Tuesday, Skinner. Do you want to run up further?" and he pulled out a bit of dirty paper from a pocket-book, and read from it sums which amounted to several pounds.
Mr. Skinner treated the matter with lofty indifference, saying—
"You needn't fear; I am going in for a prize, and I shall win!"
"Ah, well, win or lose, I must be paid. It is rather inconvenient to be out of pocket like this."
Mr. Skinner threw down another four shillings, and said—
"Try again."
Again, the stakes being trebled on a card, he lost—though the winner this time was the third man of the company.
Then a good deal of wrangling and quarrelling in an undertone followed, and Bet, in her room above, was awoke by it. She had been awoke before from the same cause; but to-night she sat up in bed and listened.
The joists that divided the room in this lean-to of Mr. Skinner's cottage, which could hardly be called a "wing," were very thin and far apart, and a knot in one of the boards of her room had been forced out and left a hole through which it was possible to get a peep into the room below.
Presently the voices ceased, and she heard the stealthy footsteps of the men retreating across the yard, and then, as they reached the deep soft sand, they were heard no longer.
Bet got up, and standing on tip-toe tried to look out of the little attic window that lighted her room. As she did so the hole in the floor attracted her, for she could see the light through it from the room below.
She lay down on the boards, and, looking through, could see her uncle at the table.
He had a small box before him, from which he took out some coins, and then he put a key attached to the box in the lock, and fastened it. Bertha watched, she hardly knew why, with deep interest her uncle's proceedings, and saw him rise from the table with the box in his hand and go out.
She climbed on the seat to bring her face on a level with the little window, and distinctly saw her uncle, with a lantern in one hand, which he set down by his side, and in the other a spade, with which he dug a hole in the soft, sandy mould by the strip of garden, where Mrs. Skinner cultivated some straggling cabbages, which went to stalk with but few leaves, in the poor soil of the little enclosure.
Presently he put something from his pocket into the hole, and then covering it with the soft soil, he returned to the house.
What did it all mean? Poor Bet felt something was wrong, and yet how could she help it?
"I wish there was any one I could tell," she thought; "but there is nobody. Little Miss Joy wouldn't care to hear, and nobody else would listen to me if I did tell them. And I suppose Uncle Joe has a right to bury his things if he likes; but it's very odd."
Then she crept back to her bed, and was soon asleep.
Bet went off to school the next morning with a lighter heart than usual, for she had received a convincing proof of little Joy's friendship, by her invitation to tea at the row.
The midsummer holidays were approaching, and she was determined to bear all the rebuffs she met with from her school-fellows with fortitude. What did anything matter if Joy loved her!
When Bet reached the gates of the garden before Miss Bayliff's school, she saw a knot of girls standing there. She came slowly towards them, shuffling her feet as usual in an awkward fashion, and not daring to draw too near the charmed circle, for her defender was not there.
"Little Joy is late this morning," one of the girls said. "But we must go indoors; Miss Bayliff is in a rage if we crowd outside. Here, Bet, do you know where little Miss Joy is?"
"How should she?" said another voice. "Here comes May Owen; let us ask her: she lives in Broad Row."
May Owen was the daughter of an ironmonger, whose premises were at the corner of the row, just above Uncle Bobo's shop.
"Well," she said, "have you heard about poor little Joy?"
"No; what's the matter?" asked a chorus of voices.
"She was out last evening with Mr. Boyd, and as they were coming home a horse came galloping along the Market Place, and Joy was knocked down. She has hurt her head, they say, or her back. The doctor has been there half the night, and Mr. Boyd is mad with grief. It has made a scene, I can tell you, in the row."
"Why, Bet!" one of the girls exclaimed, "don't do that!"
For poor Bet had seized the arm of the girl nearest her to support herself. Her heart beat wildly, her face was blanched with fear, as she gasped out—
"Oh, I must go to little Miss Joy! I must, indeed I must!"
"Nonsense! Don't squeeze my arm like that; you'll pinch me black and blue. You can't go to little Miss Joy; she wouldn't want you."
"No; I should think not!" said May Owen. "The notion of a scarecrow like you being a pleasant sight to Mr. Boyd in his trouble! Mrs. Harrison is with the child."
"Tell me—tell me," poor Bertha gasped; "will she get well? will she live?"
"I don't know. Let us hope so, for she is a darling, and every one loves her," said another voice. And then a bell rang, and the girls trooped up the steps into the house, and the business of the morning began.
Who shall tell the misery of those long hours in school to Bertha? She could only gaze at the white face of the clock, and count the minutes as the long hand passed over them. As to her lessons in class, she was, as the governess who taught her said, "Hopelessly muddled."
Vain were her efforts to get through her repetition of Cowper's lines on his mother's picture. She sat with a sum before her on a slate, and blurred it with tears; and finally had a long array of bad marks, and was sent by the assistant governess to Miss Bayliff to receive a lecture, and to be given a long column of the Dictionary to write out and learn by heart in addition to her usual lessons.
It did not strike Miss Bayliff that sorrow for Joy was the cause of Bet's woe-begone face. Miss Bayliff herself was really distressed at the news which had circulated through the school of Joy's accident, but she did not think Bet could feel as she did for little Miss Joy.
The moment school was over, Bet seized her hat from the peg in the passage, and set off to the row to learn the worst.
To her great relief she saw Mrs. Harrison coming from her own door to Uncle Bobo's. She clutched her arm pretty much as she had clutched her schoolfellow's; but she was not thrust away this time. Patience Harrison said kindly,
"My dear, our little Joy seems a trifle better. She has opened her eyes and smiled at Uncle Bobo."
"Will she get well? May I see her?"
"You must not see her; she has to be kept very quiet."
"Oh! what shall I do? what shall I do?" Bet exclaimed.
"Pray for her," was the reply, "and trust in God's love whichever way it goes with her." And then, moved to deep pity for poor Bet, Mrs. Harrison stooped and kissed her, and went into the little shop.