'We shall have very little uninterrupted time, Eph,' she said; 'awful things have happened here. Mr. Griswold has been murdered in England--you must have seen all about it in the papers?'
'No, I didn't; I should have known the meaning if I had, on account of Warren as well as on account of you, Bess; for I haven't forgot, and I don't mean to, how kind Mrs. Griswold has been to you. Poor thing, she is awfully cut up, I suppose.'
'She's just heartbroken, Eph, and the police are coming here presently to make her tell all she knows, poor soul; and as I was saying to Nelly--to Clara, I mean--just now, that's not much, for they do say Mr. Griswold was the closest man in New York about his affairs; and I must leave you then and go to her; so you must tell me as much as you can as quick as you can. Take off that great heavy coat, Eph, and that hat, and sit down.'
'No, no; I mustn't do that, Bess,' replied Jenkins, drawing the coat still more closely round him, and ramming the hat still further down over his eyes by a blow on the crown. 'Whatever are you thinking about? They know Warren perfectly well here, and if they either took me for him, and found out I'm somebody else, or else if they discovered that there's anybody about so uncommon like him as I am, they might have their suspicions roused, and set to look for him directly. And that would not pay, Bess, my dear, neither on his account nor on my own; for though I don't suppose they could do me much harm, and for certain they couldn't make me out to be up to any--deliberate harm, I mean--of course, it ain't altogether on the square, this lay I'm on for Warren. And, then, if he should be up to anything out-of-the-way-fishy, which I'm sometimes tempted to suspect, and they find out that he is not at Chicago while he's pretending to be there, even suppose they couldn't molest me at all, they certainly could stop his little game; and in our present circumstances, Bess, my girl, we must remember that stopping his little game means stopping our rations.'
'Yes, yes,' said Mrs. Jenkins mournfully, twisting the end of her apron about in her fingers in a way habitual to her in perplexity. 'I know that, Eph; and yet I cannot tell you how uneasy and wretched I am feeling, and have been feeling ever since we parted, and you went to undertake this dark and dirty business for Warren. Dark we know it is, and dirty I cannot but suspect it to be. O Eph, could you but give it up? If you only would be satisfied to stick regularly to some kind of fixed work, and let us live respectable, however poor!'
'We couldn't easily be poorer than we've been when we lived disrespectable,' said Jenkins, with a kind of surly good humour; 'and I think I could stick to work if only the pay would stick to me,--but where is it to be had? You can't have forgotten, Bess, how hard I have had to work in this place, and how I never got any for a constancy--yes, yes, I know what your shake of the head means, and you've good right to shake it, I'm not going for a moment to deny that--and how, then, Warren was always giving me, or getting somebody else to get me, odd jobs. Well, one can't work steadily at odd jobs; it ain't in the nature of things, nor yet in one's own nature. If one's business is unsteady, one must be unsteady with it; and where any thing except odd jobs is to come from, especially if I vex Warren, and he shunts me off in earnest, I cannot guess. Can you?'
'I think, Eph--indeed I am sure--Mrs. Griswold would be a good friend to us, if you would let me tell her the truth--I don't mean about Warren, of course, but about our difficulties. I think she would get you a fixed place somewhere, through Mr. Carey's influence--and Warren would never hear of it; or if he did hear of it, he would know, by her ignorance of your being his brother, that you had not betrayed his secret. And, after all, he would then be effectually rid of us, Ephraim, and I think he would be very glad to be rid of us--or I should say of you, because he does not know of my existence--at the price of having his pride hurt by Mrs. Griswold or Mr. Carey observing that there is a strong likeness between him and the husband of her baby's nurse. Do think of it, Ephraim, and let me ask her, when she has got over her great trouble a little, and can look beyond it for the sake of other people. It will not be long first, for she is the most unselfish woman, I do believe, in all the world. Will you let me speak to her, Eph, when I can get an opportunity?'
'Well,' replied Ephraim Jenkins, with a little reluctance in his tone, as of an instinctive, irrepressible shrinking from the burden of a threatened respectability in the future, combined with regular hours and regular work, 'I don't mind--only, you know, I must see this piece of business through to the end; and now, Bess, I must tell you what has brought me here; you were awfully anxious to know a few minutes ago, until you went off at a tangent all about Mrs. Griswold, and a fixed occupation and what not, and now you seem to have forgotten all about it.'
'No, I haven't, Ephraim dear,' replied his wife, as she put her arm round his neck, and looked earnestly into his face; 'only the first feeling of fright has gone off in the pleasure of seeing you again so unexpected--for it did give me a shock of fright as well as a shock of joy. I suppose it was some business of Warren's?'
'I suppose it is too,' he said; 'but I only suppose, for I don't know--and you have thrown more light on it since I came than it has had on it all through the journey, and before I started; for I came off in such a desperate mortal fright about you, my girl, that I never remembered, until I was hours on my way, that the telegram was intended for Warren, and not for me at all.'