Volume Three—Chapter Eight.
Jared’s Trouble.
“And the box not been touched since,” muttered Jared Pellet,—“not been touched since;” and he repeated the words which he had heard from Mr Timson but a few days before, as he stood in the porch of the old church, looking straight before him in a hopeless dreamy way. He had had no occasion to be there, no business to be there; for he had conducted the service for the last time, and on the next or the following day he would be called upon to give up his key. But that organ seemed to draw him there, so that he dreamed over it, clung to it, as he recalled that he must so soon give up his duties, and in such a fashion.
They knew nothing, suspected nothing at home; they only said that he practised oftener than ever,—that he hurried through little jobs to get to the church, where he spent long hours gazing in the reflector, and dreaming of the past and future, or making the passengers in the street pause and listen to the grand old strains. At times, he could scarcely bring himself to believe that it was true; but the inexorable crept on, till he could feel that he was only there upon sufferance, and blamed his want of pride in not giving up before.
The Reverend John had ceased to preach monetary discourses, and bowed austerely when once he encountered Jared, who shrank back, although he had fully determined to address him. Mr Timson, too, gave him no further opportunities for conversation, but passed him at a half-trot, with both hands under his coat-tails, giving him short, sharp, defiant nods. Even old Purkis grew strange and constrained, backing away from him, and bursting forth into a dew of perspiration which entailed no end of mopping and wiping. As for Mrs Ruggles, she never had been in the habit of bending to sociability, so that her stiff formality was passed unnoticed.
No; there was no keeping away from the old place now; and day after day, Ichabod grew richer with the many coppers he earned as Jared tortured the instrument into the giving forth of wondrous wails and groans; no jubilant strains, but all sorrowful, and in harmony with his broken spirit.
Twelve o’clock! Ichabod dismissed, and the hour just struck by the old church clock in a halting broken-winded manner, as if the job was too much for it, while an ordinary listener would have been tired out before it reached half-way. But Jared listened, and shivered and shuddered too, as, after beating laboriously its heaviest task, it set in motion certain hammers which knocked “Adeste Fidelis” out of the bells, beaten out notes that came in a jerky, disjointed fashion, and muddled up with their rests—now one in its place, now three or four blundered together, as if in a hurry to finish a performance of which they were heartily ashamed.
But Jared stood it out, telling himself that most likely it was for the last time. Then he tried the church-door to make sure that it was fast, and afterwards slunk off slowly, and apparently believing that people could read the crime of which he was accused branded upon his forehead. Perhaps that was why he crushed his hat down over his eyes, and bent his head so as to encounter neither scowl of avoidance nor pitying glance.
In Duplex Street at last! and pausing to pull his face three or four different ways so as to get upon it a pleasant expression before inserting his latch-key; and, entering, to stand rubbing his feet upon the worn old mat, which had to be held steady with one foot while the other was cleaned, and had been so affected by time that, hydra-fashion, it was fast turning itself into two mats of a smaller size. Then, it took some time, to take off the old black kid-gloves, which Jared had cut down into mittens in consequence of finger dilapidations, or, as he said, to keep his hands warm when playing in the fireless church.
But there were cheery voices ascending the stairs, so putting away his last sigh, like his umbrella in a corner, he descended to the kitchen, and tried to enter, but the door handle only turned round and round, and would not move the latch. Directly after, though, there came the sound as of some one wriggling it back with a knife-blade.
“There, don’t touch me,” cried Patty, “or I shall flour you all over.”
The warning came too late, for Jared had already taken her in his arms to place a couple of kisses upon her blooming cheeks.
“There, I knew I should,” she continued; “and if I touch it I shall make it worse. But, father dear, I’d have that lock mended, or we shall all be fastened in some day.”
“Ah!” said Jared. “Now, if it could be repaired with glue, I might manage it myself.”
But as that seemed impossible, Jared began to hum a tune, his thoughts the while hanging upon the subject of his dismissal, as he wondered whether they had yet any inkling of the secret which oppressed him.
“Time enough for them to know when all is over, and I’ve given up the keys,” he muttered; “for even yet something may be found out. If not,” he thought, bitterly, “we must starve.”
“Has the vicar been or sent?” he said, in husky tones, but assuming all the indifference possible.
“No,” said Mrs Jared; “I’ve been thinking about him all the morning. Isn’t he late?”
Jared thought he was, and said so. But all the same, he had not expected him, only a cheque for his last quarter’s salary—money always heretofore paid to the day, though it was not likely that upon this occasion the vicar would follow out his old pleasant custom and bring the cheque himself. But Jared tried to persuade himself that even that was possible, for drowning men are said to clutch at straws, and Jared was drowning fast. He had kept his head above water a long time, but now all seemed at an end, and the waters of tribulation appeared about to close over him.
Mrs Pellet and her daughter continued to be occupied in domestic affairs, while now, as if Jared’s misery were not great enough, the straw seemed to be snatched from the drowning man as there came the terrible thought—Suppose that the vicar should not send at all? suppose that, taking into consideration how he had refrained from prosecuting, he should consider the quarter’s salary as forfeited?
Not a heavy sum certainly, but to Jared the want of it would be ruin piled upon ruin, a cruel heel crushing the head already in the dust.
“They told me to clear myself, to prove that they were wrong—and what have I done? But, there! absurd! They could not keep back the money; it would not be legal.”
But suppose that, legal or illegal, they kept it back to make up for the missing money, how then? The vicar would not do such a thing, he was too kind-hearted; but Timson might prompt him—Timson, who had always been so ready with his suspicions. He would go and tell him to his face of his cruelty to a wronged man. He dared meet him, though he now shrank from encountering the vicar. But no; he was too hasty; the money was not legally due until he had formally given up the organ-key. But if they did keep it back—that twelve pounds ten—could he not take legal proceedings for its recovery? How, when they had been so lenient to him?
“Lenient!” his brow grew wrinkled as the word flashed over his mind. Was he not innocent, unless indeed he had committed the theft in his sleep—walked to the church from sheer habit? But absurd! he was innocent. “Prove it, sir—prove it,” rang in his ears, and he seemed to see before him the stiff figure of the little churchwarden, with his hands stuck beneath the tails of his coat. “Prove it, sir—prove it,” and how was he to prove it?
Jared Pellet was a good actor, schooled in adversity; but on that day he was about worn out, and a less shrewd person than his wife would have seen that something was wrong. She noted it before he had been in long, and attributed it to the fact that they had not a penny in hand. He tried to laugh and be cheery, but his attempts were of so sorry a nature that Mrs Jared looked hard at him, when he seemed so guilty of aspect, that he was glad to call in the aid of a pocket-handkerchief, and make a feeble attempt at a sneeze.
“You won’t mind a makeshift dinner to-day?” said Patty, intent upon her task of preparing the repast.
Needless question to one who had practised the art of making shift for so many years, and to whom a good dinner was an exception to the rule.
“Been wanted while I was out?” said Jared, after declaring that he should enjoy the makeshift above all things. “Been wanted?” for it was a pleasant fiction with Jared that he did a large business in the musical instrument line, and that it was not safe for him to be away for a minute, though it was not once in a hundred absences that he was required; but the question sounded business-like, and he asked it regularly.
The answer was just what he expected—in the negative; but it came in so dreary a tone that Jared stared.
The reason was plain enough: Mrs Jared had caught his despondent complaint, and was rocking the baby over the fire as she counted up the holes that the expected cheque was to stop in connection with unpleasant demands for money, which she would have to answer meekly and with promises. The tears rose to her eyes as she thought of it all—tears reflected the next moment in those of Patty.
“What would they say if they knew all?” groaned Jared to himself as he saw the tears. But he felt that he must stave it off a little longer, as he planted a child on either knee so as to have something to do, and then declared himself to be ravenous for want of food.
Poor Patty finished her preparations. She brought out the scrap of cold mutton, and took up the potatoes and plain boiled rice-pudding, but her merry smile was gone. She too had her troubles, and it took but little to upset her. As she caught sight of her mother’s sad face, she had hard work to keep her own tears back; for the chill that seemed to have come upon their home had struck to her heart, schooled as it had lately been to trouble.