“Well, she took it mighty cool at first. When I told ’er I knew where ’er ’usband was, she told me I might keep my knowledge to myself, for she didn’t want ’im. Very cool she was, till I told ’er ’e’d married again, an’ at that she shut ’er jaw with a snap, an’ glared at me. So I just told ’er what I knew, an’ ’ow it ’ud be a charity to give ’im a scare on the quiet, an’ send ’im away from ’ere, an’ ‘All right,’ she says. ‘Jest you show me where they live,’ she says; ‘I’ll give ’im a scare!’ ‘Right,’ says I, but I made conditions. She wus to wait at the street-corner, an’ I was to send in a message for ’im to come out. Then we was to give ’im ten minutes to go an’ git ’is clo’es, if ’e wanted any, make any excuse ’e liked, an’ clear out; so as to do it all quiet an’ peaceable, an’ nobody the wiser. ‘All right,’ she says, ‘jest you show me the place, that’s all!’ So I brought ’er. But when we got to the corner an’ I told ’er which ’ouse, auf she went at a bolt, an’—an’ set up all that row ’fore I could stop ’er! Who’d ’a’ thought of ’er actin’ contradictory like that?”
It was not altogether so dense a mystery to Johnny as it was to the simpler Hicks, twice his age, though more a boy than himself. But he assured Hicks that after all he had done a good turn, and no price was too high for riddance of Butson. “Mother’ll be grateful to you, too, when she’s a bit quieter, an’ knows about it,” he said. And presently he added thoughtfully, “I think I ought to have guessed something o’ the sort, with his sneaking in an’ out so quiet, an’ being afraid o’ the p’lice. There’s lots o’ things I see through now, that I ought to have seen through before: not wantin’ the new name over the door, for one!”
. . . . .
Till the shutters were up that night, and the door well bolted, Nan May was urgent that that horrible woman must be kept out. And when at last she slept, in mere exhaustion, she awoke in a fit of trembling and choking, beseeching somebody to take the woman away.
Bessy, like Johnny, had a sense of relief, though she slept not at all, and dreaded vaguely. But withal she was conscious of some intangible remembrance of that red-faced woman with the harsh voice; and it was long—days—ere it returned to her that she had heard the voice high above the shouts of the beanfeasters in the Forest on the day when Uncle Isaac had brought Butson to the cottage.
XXXIII.
Mr. Dunkin’s notice to quit arrived early the next morning. The service of that notice was a duty he owed to society, morality, conscience, virtue, propriety, religion, and several other things, which he enumerated without hesitation. He could not have sat in his pew the next day with any comfort, knowing that such a duty remained unperformed; he would have felt a hypocrite.
The notice might have come before, for the trade had been good and steady; but Mr. Dunkin also had heard the whispers that the ship-yard might be shut, and he had hesitated long. Now, however, there was no alternative—if Mrs. May were left to flaunt her infamy the trade must decline under the scandal, and the place fall worthless again. More, her expulsion at this time would seem less a seizure of the new branch than a popular vindication of righteousness.
Johnny was at home when the notice came. He had sent a message to Mr. Cottam, pleading urgent family affairs.
“Might have expected it,” Johnny said, giving the paper to Hicks, whom he had called into counsel. “Anyway mother swears she can’t show her face in the shop again. She seems almost afraid to come out of her bedroom, talks wild about disgracing her children, an’ wishes she was dead. She’s pretty bad, an’ as to the shop—that’s done up. Question is what to do now.”