Five thousand pounds

by Agnes Giberne

TROUBLE.

So father borrowed from Mr. Simmons, and paid off the bills owing, and everything seemed straight again—only of course there was the interest to be paid to Mr. Simmons, making our income smaller.

I did think father and mother would learn wisdom from the past, but it was not so. Almost as soon as ever the thing was settled, father seemed to forget his anger, and mother seemed to forget her fear, and both went on just in the old way. I had no power, girl as I was, to check them. How should I have had? I saw things wrong, without the means of setting them right.

Months again went by—I do not know how many, for my memory is not quite cleat as to dates, but I know that as spring and summer passed we were getting afresh deeper and deeper into debt. I know that again and again father borrowed from Mr. Simmons, always at the same heavy rate of interest, and I know that the payment of this interest was becoming more and more of a drag upon us. Father never seemed to have money in hand for anything. He used to say, "Tell them to put it down to me, and I'll set it right next week."

But the tradespeople were gradually becoming a little shy of putting things down to father's name. I think it is likely they knew more than we did how father was going on, and how likely it was they might never get their money at all. Once when I wanted it done I was refused point blank, and when I told father he was quite in a fury. He said he should go to the shop and give them his mind; but I suppose he thought better of this, for he did not go. I found in time that there were a good many shops which father did not like to go near, and they were shops where he had heavy bills unpaid.

But still he and mother never drew in. It was always, "Oh, we must have this," "Oh, we can't do without that."

Father and Mr. Simmons were a great deal together. Father had nothing to do, and time often hung heavily on his hands; and yet he had taken such a hatred to work that he never would hear a word of doing any. But of course a man cannot spend his life in doing nothing, and so it came to pass that Mr. Simmons took to finding amusement for him. There were not many things that father could do, but he began to be more and more at the public-house and billiard-room.

Indeed, as months went by, we saw less and less of father. He was always with Mr. Simmons, and seldom came home except to dine and sleep. I think Mr. Simmons had the sort of mastery over him that a strong mind has over a weak one. Now and then they came in together, and I used to think of grannie's dread of Mr. Simmons, when I saw his smooth silky manners, and the sort of way in which he managed father, and made him do and say and even think just what he liked. But I could not venture on a word. Mother always seemed pleased to see Mr. Simmons. She did not in the least understand the harm he was doing.

Father had quite left off going to Church, and mother was seldom to be seen there either. They often laughed at me for being so regular, but I am thankful to say I never was even tempted to give it up. My chief comfort those days was in religion. I had nothing else. It was a life of hard slaving, with no love to cheer me in my work. Father was never satisfied, whatever I did.

It was through Mrs. Raikes that the whisper of how things really were first reached mother and me. She and mother were always trying still which could outdo the other, and they were in a sort of way at daggers drawn, if one may use the expression, though they didn't call themselves enemies.