Five thousand pounds

by Agnes Giberne

We had a great deal of pleasuring that summer. Everybody was very friendly; and I must say this for father, that having more money did not make him want to throw off old acquaintances, as some in his place might have done. It turned his head enough, but not in that way.

Father did not take to work again, and it is quite certain he was none the happier for being idle. It wasn't as if he had anything else to take the place of what he was used to do. I never saw any man change as he changed, month by month. The old brisk ways and pleasant look quite disappeared, and in their stead came a slouching sort of manner, and a lazy discontented expression. He was always grumbling and never satisfied; and he went to bed early, and got up late, and did not seem to know what to do with himself when he was up: and as for eating and drinking, they were getting to be the chief business of his life. I hope it isn't unkind to write all this, for how could I help seeing it? Mother fretted sometimes about the change in him, though she dearly liked being able to wear smart caps and dresses, and to show off before the neighbours how much money we had. She and Mrs. Raikes got into a sort of race, as it were, to see which should be the smartest. Each wanted to have the best parlour and the gayest clothes. Father laughed sometimes in a gruff sort of way, and said it was "folly," but he did not check it.

So for many months things went pretty smoothly. I had a sort of feeling, girl as I was, that all was not right: and yet I could not have told why, or have said where the wrong lay. Money seemed plentiful; or, if at times father ran short, he told us just to order things at the shops, and "next week" he would "make all square." I used to see mother getting all sorts of things for herself and Asaph and the house, but she seldom took me with her to the shops, and I could not tell what was paid for and what was not.

With the coming of autumn there seemed to come a dawning of trouble. The last half of the winter before had been very mild and very dry—two things not often seen together in an English winter—and we had not felt the dampness of our new house so as to be really inconvenienced. But this second winter came in quite differently. From very early autumn we had heavy rains, and cold winds, and sharp frosts, taking turns one with another. Water seemed to ooze in everywhere throughout the house, and rooms were damp, and cold could not be kept out.

Mother was the first to suffer. She had a desperately bad cold, which she could not shake off, and it came back again and again. She was very low-spirited about herself, and she said the clamp of the house was killing her. She wanted father to have workmen in to put it all to rights. Father answered her quite roughly, and said he had no money to waste on such rubbish. That was the first time I heard him talk of being short of money.

Mother's cough grew worse, and the doctor had to be called in. He thought her in a bad way, and he said so pretty plainly, to mother's great terror. I don't know whether father would have taken warning then or not, but all at once he had a chill himself, and bad rheumatism came on in his back and arms, so sharp as well-nigh to cripple him for the time.

Father had not thought so much of mother's cough, but he thought a good deal of his own rheumatism, and he sent for the workmen in a hurry. A pretty mess they made, and a long while they were, opening walls, and pulling up flooring, and laying down pipes. And after all, the mischief was not cured. The very week after we got rid of them we had a day of pelting rain, and almost every wall in the house was running down again with damp. Mother could not sleep at night for her cough, and father was worse than before.

So the workmen came back, and I suppose they did their best; but the best was not much. Father said it was a downright badly built house, and he took to blaming mother for making him take it. Mother would cry and defend herself, and there was quite a bickering. Father had never been used to bicker in old days, but we had enough of it now. He was so often vexed and peevish that we did not know what to do with him—partly, perhaps, with the pain of his rheumatism, and partly with having nothing to do.

Mother found that an extra glass of beer sometimes made him more good-humoured for a little while, and she took to giving it him now and then. It was not her way to see dangers ahead, and father was easily persuaded. I did beg her not, but she said there was no harm, and she would not listen to me. It grew to be quite a common thing, when he was kept indoors by his rheumatism, to see him sitting with the tankard by his side, between meals. Mother never seemed to think that she was doing the Tempter's work. She just wanted to have things easy, and not to have him scolding her.

Christmas came, and I found it hard to believe that only one year had gone by since grannie's death. The time seemed so very much longer, and the months between had been so dreary.