Chapter Eight.
Tantalising.
A few days after the disclosure of Jane Bradly’s trouble to the vicar, he met her brother Thomas in the evening hurrying away from his house.
“Nothing amiss at home, I hope, Thomas?” he inquired.
“Nothing amiss, thank you, sir, in my home, but a great deal amiss in somebody else’s. There’s nearly been an accident this afternoon to a goods train, and it’s been owing to Jim Barnes having had too much drink; so they’ve just paid him off, and sent him about his business.”
“I’m afraid,” said the vicar, “there has been too much cause for such a strong measure. Poor James has been a sad drunken fellow, and it is a wonder they have kept him on so long.”
“So it is, indeed, sir; for it’s risking other people’s lives to have such as him about a station. I suppose they have not liked to turn him off before partly because he’s got such a lot of little ’uns to feed, and partly because it ain’t often as he’s plainly the worse for liquor when he’s at his work. But when a man’s as fond of the drink as Jim Barnes is, it ain’t possible for him to keep off it always just when it suits his interests. And then there’s another thing which makes chaps like him unfit to be trusted with having to do with the trains—who’s to be sure that he ain’t so far the worse for drink as to be confused in his head, even when he shows no signs of being regularly tipsy?”
“Who, indeed, Thomas? I am very sorry for poor James and his family; but I am sure he is not the man, while he keeps his present habits, to be trusted with work on the line, which requires a steady hand and a cool head.”
“Well, sir, I hope he’ll begin to see that himself. Now’s the time to get at him, and so I’m just going down to try what I can do with him. Jim’s never been one of my sort, but he’s not been one of the worst of the other sort neither. He’s a good-natured fellow, and has got a soft heart, and I’ve never had a spiteful word from him since I’ve knowed him.”
“Yes, Thomas, I believe that’s true of him,” said Mr Maltby; “he has been always very civil and obliging to me. But, as you know, I have tried more than once to draw him out of the slough of intemperance on to firm ground, but in vain. I trust, however, that God may bless your loving endeavours to bring him now over to the right side.”
“I trust so too, sir.”
The house where Barnes lived was in one of the worst and dirtiest parts of Crossbourne; and as some of the inhabitants, whose temperament inclined to the gloomy, declared Crossbourne to be the dirtiest town in England, the situation of Jim’s dwelling was certainly not likely to be favourable to either health or comfort. There are streets in most towns of any considerable size which persons who are fortunate enough to live in more agreeable localities are quite content with just looking down, and then passing on, marvelling, it may be, to themselves how such processes as washing and cooking can ever be carried on with the slightest prospect of success in the midst of such grimy and unsavoury surroundings. It was in such a street that James Barnes and his family existed, rather than lived; for life is too vigorous a term to be applied to the time dragged on by those who were unfortunate enough to breathe so polluted an atmosphere. There are some places which, in their very decay, remind you of better times now past and gone. It was not so with the houses in these streets; they looked rather as if originally built of poverty-stricken and dilapidated materials. And yet none of them were really old, but the blight of neglect was heavy upon them. Nearly at the bottom of one of these streets was the house inhabited by the dismissed railway porter, and to this Thomas Bradly now made his way.
Outside the front door stood a knot of women with long pipes in their mouths, bemoaning Jim’s dismissal with his wife, and suggesting some of those original grounds of consolation which, to persons in a higher walk of life, would rather aggravate than lessen the trial. Two of the youngest children of the family, divested of all superfluous clothing, were giving full play to their ill-fed limbs in the muddy gutter, dividing their time between personal assaults on each other, and splashings on the by-standers from the liquid soil in which they were revelling, being occasionally startled into a momentary silence by a violent cuff from their mother when they became more than ordinarily uproarious.
The outer door stood half-open, and disclosed a miserable scene of domestic desolation. The absence of everything that could make home really home was the conspicuous feature. There was a table, it is true; but then it was comparatively useless in its disabled state—one of the leaves hanging down, and just held on by one unbroken hinge, reminding you of a man with his arm in a sling. There were chairs also, but none of them perfect; rather suggesting by their appearance the need of caution in the use of them than the prospect of rest to those who might confide their weight to them. A shelf of crockery ware was the least unattractive object; but then every article had suffered more or less in the wars. Nothing was clean or bright, few things were whole, and fewer still in their proper places. The two or three dingy prints on the walls, originally misrepresentations in flaring colours of scriptural or other scenes, hung in various degrees of crookedness; while articles of clothing, old and new, dirtier and less dirty, were scattered about in all directions, or suspended, just where necessity or whim had tossed them. There was on the available portion of the table part of a loaf of bread, a lump of butter still half-wrapped in the dirty piece of newspaper which had left some of its letters impressed on its exposed side, a couple of herrings, a mug half-full of beer, and two or three onions. And in the midst of all this chaos, on one side of the grate, which was one-third full of expiring ashes, and two-thirds full of dust, sat James Barnes in his railway porter’s dress and cap, looking exceedingly crestfallen and unhappy.
“Good evening, Jim,” said Thomas Bradly, making his way to the fire-place, and taking a seat opposite to Barnes; “I was sorry to hear bad news.”
“Yes, bad indeed, Thomas—you’ve heard it, I see. Yes, they’ve given me the sack; and what’s to be done now, I’m sure I don’t know. Some people’s born to luck; ’tain’t my case.”
“Nay, Jim,” cried the other, “you’re out there: there’s no such thing as luck, and no one’s born to good luck. But there’s an old proverb which comes pretty near the truth, and it’s this, ‘Diligence is the mother of good luck.’ I don’t believe in luck or chance myself, but I believe in diligence, with God’s blessing. It says in the Bible, ‘The hand of the diligent maketh rich.’”
“Well, and I have been diligent,” exclaimed Jim: “I’ve never been away from my work a day scarcely. But see what a lot of children I’ve got, and most of them little ’uns; and now they’ve gone and turned me off at a moment’s notice. What do you say to that? Isn’t that hard lines?”
“It ain’t pleasant, certainly, Jim; but come, now, what’s the use of fencing about in this way? Jim Barnes, just you listen to me. There’s not a pleasanter chap in the town than yourself when you’re sober—everybody says so, from the vicar down to Tommy Tracks. Now it’s of no use to lay the blame on the wrong shoulders. You know perfectly well that if you’d have let the drink alone things would never have come to this, and you wouldn’t have been living now in such a dirty hole. But I’m not come down here, Jim, to twit you with what’s done, and can’t be undone now. If you’ve done wrong, well, there’s time to turn over a new leaf and do better; and now’s your time. You see what the drink’s brought you to; and if you was to get another place to-morrow, you wouldn’t keep it long. There’s no business as ever I heard of where the masters advertise in the papers, ‘So many drunkards wanted for such a work.’ No, no, Jim; just you think the matter over, and pray to the Lord to show you the right way. You know my ‘Surgery’ at the back of my house: you come up there to-night and have a talk with me; it’s no use trying to have it here. I think I’ll show you a door as’ll lead to better ways, and better times; and you shan’t want a good friend or two, Jim, to give you a helping hand, if you’ll only try, by God’s help, to deserve them.”
Poor Jim’s head had become bowed down on to his hands during this plain speech, and the tears began to make their way through his fingers. Then he stretched out one hand towards his visitor without lifting up his head, and said, in a half-choked voice, “Thank you, Thomas; I’ll come, that I will,—I’ll come; and thank you kindly for coming to look after me.”
And he kept his word. Just as it was getting dark a tap was heard at Bradly’s “Surgery” door, and James Barnes was admitted into a bright and cheery room—such a marvellous contrast, in its neatness, order, and cleanliness, to his own miserable dwelling. When the two men were seated, one on either side of the fire-place—which was as brilliant as Brunswick black and polishing could make it—Bradly began:—
“James Barnes, this night may be the turning-point for good and for happiness, for you and yours, both for this world and the next. I want you to sign the pledge and keep it. You’ve tried for a good long time how you can do with the drink—and a poor do it has been; now try how you can do without it. Never mind what old mates may say; never mind what such as Will Foster and his set may say; never mind what your wife may say,—she’ll come round and join you if you’re only firm,—just you sign, and then we’ll ask God to bless you, and to enable you to keep your pledge.”
“Thomas, I will,” said James Barnes, much moved; “all as you’ve said’s perfectly true—I know it. The drink’s been my curse and my ruin; it’s done me and mine nothing but harm; and I can see what doing without it has been to you and yours. Give me the pen; I’ll sign.”
The signature was made, and then, while both men knelt, Thomas Bradly poured out his heart in prayer to God for a blessing on his poor friend, and that he might truly give his heart and life to the Lord. “And now, James,” said Bradly, “I’ll find you a job to go on with, and I’ll speak to the vicar, and you and yours shan’t starve till we can set you on your feet again.”
James Barnes thanked his new friend most warmly, and was turning to the door, but still lingered. Then he came back to the fire and sat down again, and said, “Thomas, I’ve summat to tell you which I’ve been wanting to mention to you for more nor a week, and yet I ain’t had the courage to come and say it like a man.”
“Well, Jim, now’s the time.”
“Thomas,” said the other sorrowfully, “I’ve done you a wrong, but I didn’t mean to do it; it’s that drink as was at the bottom of it.”
“Well, Jim,” replied Bradly, smiling, “it can’t have been much of a wrong, I doubt, as I’ve never found it out.”
“I don’t know how that may be, Thomas, but you shall hear. You remember the morning when poor Joe was found cut to pieces on the line just below the foot-bridge?”
“Yes, Jim, I remember it well; it was the day before Christmas-day.”
“Well, Thomas, it were the day before that. I was on the platform in the evening, waiting for the half-past five o’clock train to come in from the north. It were ten minutes or more late, as most of the trains was that day. When it stopped at our station, a gent wrapped up in a lot of things, with a fur cap on his head, a pair of blue spectacles over his eyes, and a stout red scarf round his neck, jumps out of a third-class carriage like a shot, and lays hold of my arm, and takes me on one side, and says, ‘I want you to do a job for me,’ and he puts a florin into my hand; then he says, ‘Do you know Thomas Bradly?’ ‘Ay,’ says I; ‘I know him well.’ ‘Then take this bag,’ says he, ‘and this letter to his house as soon as you’re off duty. Be sure you don’t fail. You knows the man I mean; he’s got a sister Jane as lives with him.’ ‘All right,’ says I. There weren’t no more time, so he jumps back into the carriage, and nods to me, and I nods back to him, and the train were gone. It were turned six o’clock when I left the station yard, and the hands was all turning, out from the mills, so I takes the bag—it were a small carpet-bag, very shabby-looking—and the letter in my pocket. Now, I ought, by rights, to have gone with it at once to your house, and I shouldn’t have had any more trouble about it. But as I was passing the Railway Inn, I says to myself, ‘I’ll just step in and have a pint;’ but I wouldn’t take the bag in with me, as perhaps some one or other might be axing me questions about it, and it weren’t no business of theirs, so I just sets it down on the step outside, and goes in and changes my florin and gets my pint of ale. Well, I got a-gossiping with the landlady, and had another pint, and when I came out the bag were gone. I couldn’t believe my eyes at first, for I’ve often left things on benches and steps outside the publics, and never knowed ’em touched afore this; for they’re as honest a people in Crossbourne as you’ll find anywhere. Howsomever, the bag were gone; there were no mistake about that. I went round into the yard and axed the hostler, but he hadn’t seed nobody about. I looked up and down, but never a soul could I see as had a bag in his hand, so what to do I couldn’t tell. Then I thought, ‘Maybe some one’s carried it back to the station by mistake.’ So I went back, but it weren’t there. I can tell you Thomas, I were never more mad with myself in all my life; for though I haven’t been one of your sort, I’ve always respected you, and I’d rather have lost almost any one else’s things than yours. I only hope it ain’t of much consequence, as it were a very shabby bag, and didn’t seem to have much in it, for it were scarcely any weight at all.”
“Well, James, don’t fret about it,” said the other; “you meant no harm. As to the value of the bag, I know nothing more than you’ve told me, for I haven’t been expecting anything of the sort. I only trust it’ll be a warning to you, and that you’ll stick firm to your pledge, and keep on the outside of the beer-shops and publics for the future.”
“I will, Thomas; I will. But you know I told you as that gent who put the bag in my keeping gave me a letter besides. Well, I ain’t lost the letter, but I’ve really been ashamed to bring it you, as I couldn’t bring the bag too. And the devil said to me, ‘You’d better throw the letter behind the fire, and there’ll be an end of all bother;’ but I couldn’t do that, though I’ve never had the courage yet to give it you. But here it is;” and he took from his pocket a discoloured envelope, and handed it to Bradly. It was directed in a crabbed hand, with the writing sloping down to the corner—“Miss Jane Bradly, Crossbourne.”
“Stop here a minute or two, Jim,” said his friend, “and I shall be able perhaps to set your mind at ease about the bag;” and he left the room.
“Jane,” he said, addressing his sister, who was seated in her usual place by the kitchen fire, “I’ve a letter for you, and it has come in rather an odd way;” and he then repeated to her James Barnes’s story.
Much puzzled, but with no great amount of curiosity or interest, Jane took the letter from her brother’s hand. From whom could it have come? There was of course no postmark, as it had been sent by messenger; and she knew nothing of the handwriting. When she had opened it she found only one small leaf, and but very few words on that; but these words, few though they were, seemed to take her breath away, and to overwhelm her with overpowering emotion. She sat staring at the miserable scrawl as though the letters were potent with some mighty spell, and then, throwing the paper on the table by her, gave way to a passionate outburst of weeping.
“Jane, Jane dear, what’s amiss?” cried her brother in great distress. “The Lord help us! What has happened?”
She did not look up, but pushed the letter towards him, and he read as follows:—
“Dear Jane,—I am sorry now for all as I’ve done at you. Pray forgive me. You will find a letter all about it in the bag; and I’ve put your little marked Bible, and the other br—t with it, into the bag. So no more at present from yours—JH.”
Slowly the facts of the case dawned on Thomas Bradly’s mind. John Hollands was trying to make amends for the cruel wrong he had done to poor Jane, and had sent her a written statement which would wipe off the stain he had himself cast on her character; and with this he had sent Jane’s dearly-prized Bible and the companion bracelet to the one seen by Lady Morville in Jane’s hand, and given up by her to her mistress on that unhappy morning. And what of John Hollands himself? No doubt he was making the best of his way, under fear of detection and punishment, to some foreign country; and had left the bag through a feeling of remorse, that he might clear Jane’s character. Both brother and sister saw this clearly; and that the means of relief for poor Jane had been just within their grasp, but now, by the cruel carelessness of James Barnes, had slipped away from them, and perhaps for ever. Where was the bag which had in it what would set all things straight? Who could tell?
“I see it all,” said Bradly, sadly, to his sister. “It’s very trying and very tantalising; but the Lord knows best how to deal with his own.”
“O Thomas,” exclaimed his sister, “this seems almost more than I can bear!”
“I know it, I know it, Jane; and yet remember the promise, ‘He will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.’ Nay, cheer up, darling! ‘the Lord does not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men.’ He’ll never let his people be vexed a moment longer than’s good for them. I feel certain now as the bag’ll be found sooner or later. Whether we can find it or no, one thing’s certain,—the Lord knows where it is he’s got his eye upon it; and it’ll turn up just at the right time. Now, my dearest sister, just take this for your comfort. The Lord’s sent you this letter just to show you that deliverance is on the road; it’ll come, I’ll be bound, afore so very long. Just you help yourself along by the light of his promises, and by my two walking-sticks, ‘Do the next thing’—‘One step at a time.’ The next thing for you now is to wait his time in faith and patience. Remember those precious words of the psalm: ‘Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass. And he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday. Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him!’” Jane dried her tears, and held out her arms to her brother, who drew her tenderly to his heart, and again bade her take comfort. “And now,” he said, “I must go to poor Jim.”
“Well, Thomas,” said Barnes, on the return of his friend, “I hope there’s nothing very bad come of my losing the bag?”
“James,” replied the other, gravely, “I can’t say that; I wish I could. The loss of the bag is a serious business to us; but we must do our best to try and find it, and you must help us.”
James looked very sad and crestfallen. “Thomas,” he said, “I wish I’d only knowed as that bag were of so much consequence. But then that’s nothing to do with it; I ought to have brought it to you at once—I know that. I’ll do my very best, however, to find it; and, come what will, I’ve had a lesson as I shan’t easily forget. The inside of the public has seen the last of me.”
“Stick to that, Jim,” said the other, “and put a prayer to it to the Lord to keep you; and that’ll do more to make up for the loss of the bag than anything you can possibly do for us. Good-night, Jim. Keep firm to your pledge, and you’ll not want friends here and above.”
“Good-night, Thomas; and the Lord bless you for your kindness!”
And now, what was to be done? It was quite clear that the bag contained the means of a triumphant establishment of Jane’s innocence with Lady Morville, and consequent freedom from all stain or slur on her character. But was it possible to find the bag? The circumstances connected with the bag’s loss were communicated to the vicar, who helped Bradly to institute every possible inquiry after it in a quiet way, for they did not wish, especially on Jane’s account, to make the matter a nine days’ wonder in Crossbourne by advertising. But all was in vain; not the faintest clue could be got by which to trace it. Of course, it might have been possible for Jane to ascertain through her brother whether John Hollands had really left Monksworthy Hall, and whether or no any of his evil practices had come to light since his departure. And, supposing such discoveries to have been made, she might have produced the letter signed “JH,” and have shown its contents to Lady Morville. But then Jane would naturally be expected to produce the bag alluded to in the letter, or, at any rate, the companion bracelet which was said to be in it; and the having to tell what would look like a roundabout story concerning its loss would not be likely to leave a thoroughly favourable impression on the mind of her late mistress.
Poor Jane! She felt that without the bracelet she could not hope to claim a full and frank acknowledgment from her ladyship that her innocence was completely vindicated. She must therefore wait, trust, and be patient.
“Light has begun to dawn on your trouble, Jane,” said the vicar; “and be sure brighter light will follow. We must do our best, and leave it to the Lord to carry out his own purposes in his own wise and gracious way. Sure I am of this, that you will find the fuller light come in due time; and, more than that, that you will see that good has all the while been working out, through this trial, to others as well as to yourself.”
“I’m sure you’re right, sir,” said Bradly; “she’ll have cause in the end even to bless the Lord for this affliction. And, after all, I don’t see why we shouldn’t try and find out Hollands’ whereabouts through some of his old companions, when he’s been a little while in foreign parts; and if we write and tell him about the loss of the bag, I don’t doubt, if he’s truly sorry for what he’s done to Jane,—and it seems likely as he is,—he’ll write her back such a letter as will clear up all with Lady Morville. But the next step is just to leave all in the Lord’s hands for the present.”
And so it was left.