Chapter Five.
Ruth’s Stepfather.
I feel a shrinking—a strange kind of hesitation in narrating some of these adventures lest the reader should think me full of egotism, and that I told of my little charities as if proud of what I had done. Pray chase any such idea from your minds, for I can honestly say that no feeling of vanity ever existed in mine. I am merely relating the pleasures of my life, my rambles amongst weeds and flowers—the weeds and sad lined blossoms of our town.
I was much troubled in my mind as to how I could most help the widow of Burt’s Buildings, and I knew that I could best assist her by helping her to help herself. One of her great troubles was that she had to leave her little ones so long, and a strange sense of pain had shot through me as she spoke of finding them huddled together as they had cried themselves to sleep. What could I do then?
The thought came: A sewing machine! that which had been her enemy to be now her friend; and the next morning I was in one of our busiest streets in front of a large establishment within whose plate-glass doors I saw a pretty lady-like young woman, busy winding thread upon one of some dozen of the ingenious little pieces of mechanism, and upon stating my wants she led me up to a bluff, sharp-looking, grey man whose face seemed to soften as she spoke before returning to her task.
“Sewing machine ma’am, eh?” he said, eyeing me very sharply. “Own use?”
“No,” I said, “I want it for a poor woman to enable her to earn her living.”
“Instalments, ma’am,” he said sharply.
“I beg your pardon.”
“Want to pay for it by instalments?” he said.
“Oh! no, I will pay for it at once, and you can deliver it to her.”
“Oh,” he said smiling, “that’s twenty per cent, discount.”
I looked at him wonderingly, for I did not know what twenty per cent discount might be.
“I always take twenty per cent discount off these machines,” he said, and I left pleasurably impressed by his ways and those of the young girl he introduced to me as his daughter, and that little new machine was the first of several in which I had Mr Smith’s kind co-operation and advice in what were doubtful cases.
The result was a warm intimacy, in the course of which he told me his little history and that of his daughter—stepdaughter he called her—Ruth.
“Mine’s a curious trade to have taken to,” he said, “and I had plenty of up-hill work, but it has grown to be profitable. Things were at a low ebb with me when I took it up, while now—”
There, I won’t boast, only say that I’m thankful for it. Poverty comes in at the door, and love flies out of the window, so they say; but that’s all nonsense, or else your poor people would be always miserable, while according to my experience your poor man is often more lighthearted than the man with thousands.
I was at my wits’ end for something to do, and sat nibbling my nails one day, and grumbling horribly.
“Don’t go on like that, Tom,” says my wife; “things might be worse.”
“How?” I said.
“Why, we might have Luke at home, and he is doing well.”
Luke’s our boy, you know, and we had got him into a merchant’s office, where he seemed likely to stay; but I was in a grumbling fit then, and there was a clickety-click noise going on in the next room which fidgeted me terribly.
“Things can’t be worse,” I said angrily; and I was going to prove myself in the wrong by making my wife cry, when there was a knock at the door.
“Come in,” I said, and a fellow-lodger put in his head.
“Are you good at works, Mr Smith?” he said.
“What works?” I said; “fireworks—gasworks?”
“No, no; I mean works of things as goes with wheels and springs.”
“Middling,” I said, for I was fond of pulling clocks to pieces, and trying to invent.
“I wish you’d come and look at this sewing machine of mine, for I can’t get it to go.”
Sewing machines were newish in those days, and I got up to have a look at it, and after about an hour’s fiddling about, I began to see a bit the reason why—the purpose, you know, of all the screws and cranks and wheels; I found out too why our neighbour’s wife—who was a dressmaker, and had just started one—could not get it to go; and before night, by thinking, and putting this and that together, had got her in the way of working it pretty steadily, though with my clumsy fingers I couldn’t have done it myself.
I had my bit of dinner and tea with those people, and they forced half-a-crown upon me as well, and I went back feeling like a new man, so refreshing had been that bit of work.
“There,” said my wife, “I told you something would come.”
“Well, so you did,” I said; “but the something is rather small.”
But the very next day—as we were living in the midst of people who were fast taking to sewing machines—if the folks from the next house didn’t want me to look at theirs; and then the news spreading, as news will spread, that there was somebody who could cobble and tinker machinery, without putting people to the expense that makers would, if the jobs didn’t come in fast, so that I was obliged to get files and drills and a vice—regular set of tools by degrees; and at last I was as busy as a bee from morning to night, and whistling over my work as happy as a king.
Of course every now and then I got a breakage, but I could generally get over that by buying a new wheel, or spindle, or what not. Next we got to supplying shuttles, and needles, and machine cotton. Soon after I bought a machine of a man who was tired of it. Next week I sold it at a good profit; bought another, and another, and sold them; then got to taking them and money in exchange for new ones; and one way and the other became a regular big dealer, as you see.
Hundred? Why, new, second-hand, and with those being repaired upstairs by the men, I’ve got at least three hundred on the premises, while if anybody had told me fifteen years ago that I should be doing this, I should have laughed at him.
That pretty girl showing and explaining the machine to a customer? That’s Ruth, that is. No, not my daughter—yet, but she soon will be. Poor girl, I always think of her and of bread thrown upon the waters at the same time.
Curious idea that, you will say, but I’ll tell you why.
In our trade we have strange people to deal with. Most of ’em are poor, and can’t buy a machine right off, but are ready and willing to pay so much a week. That suits them, and it suits me, if they’ll only keep the payments up to the end.
You won’t believe me, perhaps, but some of them don’t do that. Some of them leave their lodgings, and I never see them again: and the most curious part is that the sewing machine disappears with them, and I never see that again. Many a one, too, that has disappeared like that, I do see again—perhaps have it brought here by some one to be repaired, or exchanged for a bigger, or for one of a different maker; for if you look round here, you’ll see I’ve got all kinds—new and old, little domestics and big trades—there, you name any maker, and see if I don’t bring you out one of his works.
Well, then I ask these people where they got the machine—for I always know them by the number—it turns out that they’ve bought it through an advertisement, or at a sale-room, or maybe out of a pawnbroker’s shop.
But I’ve had plenty of honest people to deal with too—them as have come straightforward, and told me they couldn’t keep up their payments, and asked me to take their machine back, when I’d allow them as much as I thought fair, and ’twould be an end of a pleasant transaction.
The way I’ve been bitten though, by some folks, has made me that case-hardened that sometimes I’ve wondered whether I’d got any heart left, and the wife’s had to interfere, telling me I’ve been spoiled with prosperity, and grown unfeeling.
It was she made me give way about Ruth, for one day, after having had my bristles all set up by finding out that three good sound machines, by best makers, had gone nobody knew where, who should come into the shop but a lady-like woman in very shabby widow’s weeds. She wanted a machine for herself and daughter to learn, and said she had heard that I would take the money by instalments. Now just half-an-hour before, by our shop clock, I had made a vow that I’d give up all that part of the trade, and I was very rough with her—just as I am when I’m cross—and said, “No.”
“But you will if the lady gives security,” says my wife hastily.
The poor woman gave such a woe-begone look at us that it made me more out of temper than ever, for I could feel that if I stopped I should have to let her have one at her own terms. And so it was; for, there, if I didn’t let her have a first-class machine, as good as new, she only paying seven and six down, and undertaking to pay half-a-crown a week, and no more security than nothing!
To make it worse, too, if I didn’t send the thing home without charge!—Luke going with it, for he was back at home now keeping my books, being grown into a fine young fellow of five-and-twenty; and I sat and growled the whole of the rest of the day, calling myself all the weak-minded idiots under the sun, and telling the wife that business was going to the dogs, and I should be ruined.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Tom,” she said.
“So I am,” says I. “I didn’t think I could be such a fool.”
“Such a fool as to do a good kind action to one who was evidently a lady born, and come down in the world!”
“Yes,” I says, “to living in Bennett’s Place, where I’ve sunk no less than ten machines in five years.”
“Yes,” says the wife, “and cleared hundreds of pounds. Tom, I’m ashamed of you—you a man with twenty workmen busy upstairs, a couple of thousand pounds’ worth of stock, and in the bank—”
“Hold your tongue, will you!” I said roughly, and went out into the shop to try and work it all off.
Luke came back just after, looking very strange, and I was at him directly.
“Where’s the seven and six,” I said, angrily.
He didn’t answer, but put three half-crowns down on the desk, took out the book, made his entries—date of delivery, first payment, when the other’s due, and all the rest of it—and was then going into the house.
“Mind,” I says, sharply, “those payments are to be kept up to the day; and to-morrow you go to Rollys, who live nearly opposite to ’em, and tell ’em to keep an eye on the widow, or we shall lose another machine.”
“You needn’t be afraid, father,” he says coldly; “they’re honest enough, only poor.”
I was just in that humour that I wanted to quarrel with somebody, and that did it.
“When I ask you for your opinion, young man, you give it me; and when I tell you to do a thing, you do it,” I says, in as savage a way as ever I spoke to the lad. “You go over to-morrow and tell Rollys to keep a strict look-out on those people—do you hear?”
“Father,” he says, looking me full in the face, “I couldn’t insult them by doing such a thing,” when without another word he walked quietly out of the shop, leaving me worse than ever.
For that boy had never spoken to me like that before, and I should have gone after him feeling mad like, only some people came in, and I didn’t see him again till evening, and a good thing too, for I’m sure I should have said all sorts of things to the boy, that I should have been sorry for after. And there I was fuming and fretting about, savage with everybody, giving short answers, snapping at the wife, and feeling as a man does feel when he knows that he has been in the wrong and hasn’t the heart to go and own it.
It was about eight o’clock that I was sitting by the parlour fire, with the wife working and very quiet, when Luke came in from the workshop with a book under his arm, for he had been totting up the men’s piecework, and what was due to them; and the sight of him made me feel as if I must quarrel.
He saw it too, but he said nothing, only put the accounts away and began to read.
The wife saw the storm brewing, and she knew how put out I was, for I had not lit my pipe, nor yet had my evening nap, which I always have after tea. So she did what she knew so well how to do—filled my pipe, forced it into my hand, and just as I was going to dash it to pieces in the ashes, she gave me one of her old looks, kissed me on the forehead, as with one hand she pressed me back into my chair, and then with the other she lit a splint and held it to my tobacco.
I was done. She always gets over me like that; and after smoking in silence for half-an-hour, I was lying back, with my eyes closed, dropping off to sleep, when my wife said—what had gone before I hadn’t heard—
“Yes, he’s asleep now.”
That woke me up of course, and if I didn’t lie there shamming and heard all they said in a whisper!
“How came you to make him more vexed than he was, Luke?” says the wife; and he told her.
“I couldn’t do it, mother,” he said, excitedly. “It was heart-breaking. She’s living in a wretched room there with her daughter; and, mother, when I saw her I felt as if—there, I can’t tell you.”
“Go on, Luke,” she said.
“They’re half-starved,” he said in a husky way. “Oh, mother! it’s horrible. Such a sweet, beautiful girl, and the poor woman herself dying almost with some terrible disease.”
The wife sighed.
“They told me,” he went on, “how hard they had tried to live by ordinary needlework, and failed, and that as a last resource they had tried to get the machine.”
“Poor things!” says the wife; “but are you sure the mother was a lady?”
“A clergyman’s widow,” says Luke hastily; “there isn’t a doubt about it. Poor girl! and they’ve got to learn to use it before it will be of any use.”
“Poor girl, Luke?” says the wife softly; and I saw through my eyelashes that she laid a hand upon his arm, and was looking curiously at him, when if he didn’t cover his face with his hands, rest his elbows on the table, and give a low groan! Then the old woman got up, stood behind his chair, and began playing with and caressing his hair like the foolish old mother would.
“Mother,” he says suddenly, “will you go and see them?”
She didn’t answer for a minute, only stood looking down at him, and then said softly—
“They paid you the first money?”
“No,” he says hotly. “I hadn’t the heart to take it.”
“Then that money you paid was yours, Luke?”
“Yes, mother,” he says simply; and those two stopped looking one at the another, till the wife bent down and kissed him, holding his head afterwards, for a few moments, between her hands; for she always did worship that chap, our only one; and then I closed my eyes tight, and went on breathing heavy and thinking.
For something like a new revelation had come upon me. I knew Luke was five-and-twenty, and that I was fifty-four, but he always seemed like a boy to me, and here was I waking up to the fact that he was a grown man, and that he was thinking and feeling as I first thought and felt when I saw his mother, nigh upon eight-and-twenty years ago.
I lay back, thinking and telling myself I was very savage with him for deceiving me, and that I wouldn’t have him and his mother laying plots together against me, and that I wouldn’t stand by and see him make a fool of himself with the first pretty girl he sets eyes on, when he might marry Maria Turner, the engineer’s daughter, and have a nice bit of money with her, to put into the business, and then be my partner.
“No,” I says; “if you plot together, I’ll plot all alone,” and then I pretended to wake up, took no notice, and had my supper.
I kept rather gruff the next morning, and made myself very busy about the place, and I dare say I spoke more sharply than usual, but the wife and Luke were as quiet as could be; and about twelve I went out, with a little oil-can and two or three tools in my pocket.
It was not far to Bennett’s Place, and on getting to the right house I asked for Mrs Murray, and was directed to the second-floor, where, as I reached the door, I could hear the clicking of my sewing machine, and whoever was there was so busy over it that she did not hear me knock; so I opened the door softly, and looked in upon as sad a scene as I shall ever, I dare say, see.
There in the bare room sat, asleep in her chair, the widow lady who came about the machine, and I could see that in her face which told plainly enough that the pain and suffering she must have been going through for years would soon be over; and, situated as she was, it gave me a kind of turn.
“It’s no business of yours,” I said to myself roughly; and I turned then to look at who it was bending over my machine.
I could see no face, only a slight figure in rusty black; and a pair of busy white hands were trying very hard to govern the thing, and to learn how to use it well.
“So that’s the gal, is it?” I said to myself. “Ah! Luke, my boy, you’ve got to the silly calf age, and I dare say—”
I got no farther, for at that moment the girl started, and turned upon me a timid, wondering face, that made my heart give a queer throb, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
“Hush!” she said softly, holding up her hand; and I saw it was as thin and transparent as if she had been ill.
“My name’s Smith,” I said, taking out a screwdriver. “My machine: how does it go? Thought I’d come and see.”
Her face lit up in a moment, and she came forward eagerly.
“I’m so glad you’ve come,” she said, “I can’t quite manage this.”
She pointed to the thread regulator, and the next minute I was showing her that it was too tight, and somehow, in a gentle timid way, the little witch quite got over me, and I stopped there two hours helping her, till her eyes sparkled with delight, as she found out how easily she could now make the needle dart in and out of some hard material.
“Do you think you can do it now?” I said.
“Oh, yes, I think so; I am so glad you came.”
“So am I,” says I gruffly; “it will make it all the easier for you to earn the money, and pay for it.”
“And I will work so hard,” she said earnestly.
“That you will, my dear,” I says in spite of myself, for I felt sure it wasn’t me speaking, but something in me. “She been ill long?” I said, nodding towards her mother.
“Months,” she said, with the tears starting in her pretty eyes; “but,” she added brightly, “I shall have enough with this to get her good medicines and things she can fancy;” and as I looked at her, something in me said—
“God bless you, my dear! I hope you will;” and the next minute I was going downstairs, calling myself an old fool.
They thought I didn’t know at home, but I did. There was the wife going over and over again to Bennett’s Place; and all sorts of little nice things were made and taken there. I often used to see them talking about it, but I took no notice; and that artful scoundrel, my boy Luke, used to pay the half-crown every week out of his own pocket, after pretending to go and fetch it from the widow’s.
And all the time I told myself I didn’t like it, for I could see that Luke was changed, and always thinking of that girl—a girl not half good enough for him. I remembered being poor myself, and I hated poverty, and I used to speak harshly to Luke and the wife, and feel very bitter.
At last came an afternoon when I knew there was something wrong. The wife had gone out directly after dinner, saying she was going to see a sick woman—I knew who it was, bless you!—and Luke was fidgeting about, not himself; and at last he took his hat and went out.
“They might have confided in me,” I said bitterly, but all the time I knew that I wouldn’t let them. “They’ll be spending money—throwing it away. I know they’ve spent pounds on them already.”
At last I got in such a way that I called down our foreman, left him in charge, and took my hat and went after them.
Everything was very quiet in Bennett’s Place, for a couple of dirty dejected-looking women, one of whom was in arrears to me, had sent the children that played in the court right away because of the noise, and were keeping guard so that they should not come back.
I went up the stairs softly, and all was very still, only as I got nearer to the room I could hear a bitter wailing cry, and then I opened the door gently and went in.
Luke was there, standing with his head bent by the sewing machine; the wife sat in a chair, and on her knees, with her face buried in the wife’s lap, was the poor girl, crying as if her little heart would break; while on the bed, with all the look of pain gone out of her face, lay the widow—gone to meet her husband where pain and sorrow are no more.
I couldn’t see very plainly, for there was a mist-like before my eyes; but I know Luke flushed up as he took a step forward, as if to protect the girl, and the wife looked at me in a frightened way.
But there was no need, for something that wasn’t me spoke, and that in a very gentle way, as I stepped forward, raised the girl up, and kissed her pretty face before laying her little helpless head upon my shoulder, and smoothing her soft brown hair.
“Mother,” says that something from within me, “I think there’s room in the nest at home for this poor, forsaken little bird. Luke, my boy, will you go and fetch a cab? Mother will see to what wants doing here.”
My boy gave a sob as he caught my hand in his, and the next moment he did what he had not done for years—kissed me on the cheek—before running out of the room, leaving me with my darling nestling in my breast.
I said “my darling,” for she has been the sunshine of our home ever since—a pale, wintry sunshine while the sorrow was fresh, but spring and summer now.
Why, bless her! look at her. I’ve felt ashamed sometimes to think that she, a lady by birth, should come down to such a life, making me—well, no, it’s us now, for Luke’s partner—no end of money by her clever ways. But she’s happy, thinking her husband that is to be the finest fellow under the sun; and let me tell you there’s many a gentleman not so well off as my boy will be, even if the money has all come out of a queer trade.