“Not I,” said Tom, poising his wooden bowl for a fresh effort, and, irritated by his failure, bursting forth upon his wife. “How can I leave these gentlemen in their game to attend to you? Come, let’s have no nonsense; be off! be off!” he repeated, clenching his fist, and raising his voice to a pitch that called forth from the large man the admonitory remark that “easy does it,” whilst the little Jew’s eyes glittered at the prospect of winning his game.
But Gingham was roused, and she went at him fiercely and at once: “Shame—shame on ye!” she exclaimed, in a low, hoarse voice, gradually rising, as she got more excited, and her pale features worked with passion, “with the child cryin’ at home, and me obliged to come and look for you in such a place as this; me that slaves and toils, and works my fingers to the bone,” holding up her needle-scarred hands to the by-standers, who were already collecting, as they always do when there is a prospect of a row. “Call yourself a man!—a man, indeed!—and let your wife and child starve whilst you are taking your diversion, and enjoying of yourself here? And you too,” she added, attacking the large man and the Jew with a suddenness which much startled the former, “you ought to be ashamed of yourselves, you ought; keeping of him here, and making of him as bad as yourselves—though perhaps you’re not husbands and fathers, and don’t know no better. Ay, do, you coward! strike a woman if you dare! Was it for this I left my place and my missus? Oh dear, oh dear, whatever shall I do?” and Gingham, throwing her apron over her head, sank upon a bench in a passion of weeping, supported by a phalanx of matrons who had already collected, and who took part in the altercation, as being to all intents and purposes a Government question.
Tom Blacke was furious, of course. Had it not been for the large man, he would have struck his wife to the ground—alas! not the first time, we fear, that she had felt the weight of a coward’s arm; but that ponderous champion interposed his massive person, and recommended his friend strongly “not to cross the missus.” Truth to tell, Mr. Fibbes had a little shrew of a black-eyed wife at home, who ruled the roast, and kept her great husband in entire subjection; besides which, like most square, powerful men, he was a good-natured fellow, though not very respectable; and having won as much beer as he wanted from Tom, willingly lent his good offices to solder up the quarrel, which ended, as such disturbances generally do, in a sort of half-sulky reconciliation, and the wife marching off in triumph with her captured husband. The women, as usual, had formed the majority of the crowd, and of course sided with the injured lady; so Tom Blacke, after a few ineffectual threats, and an oath or two, left the ground with his still sobbing wife, promising himself an ample revenge if she should dare to cross him at home, when there was no one by to take her part.
When they arrived at the desolate room which served them for home, “baby” was awake, and crying piteously to find its little self alone. On what trifles do the moods and tempers of the human mind depend! The child set up a crow of delight to see its father, instead of the hideous howl in which it had been indulging, and stretched out its little arms with a welcome that went straight to the drunkard’s heart. In another moment he was dancing the little thing up and down in perfect good humour; and poor Gingham, thoroughly overcome, was leaning her head against his shoulder in a paroxysm of reconciled affection, and going through that process of relief known to ladies by the expressive term of “having a good cry.”
How many a matrimonial bicker has been interrupted and ended by the innocent smile of “one of these little ones”! How many an ill-assorted couple have been kept from separation by the homely consideration of “what should be done with the children”! How many an evil desire, how many an unkind thought, has been quenched at its very birth by the pure, open gaze of a guileless child! The stern, severe man, disgusted with the world, and disappointed in his best affections, has a corner in his heart for those whom he prizes as his own flesh and blood; the passionate, impetuous woman, yearning for the love she seeks in vain at home, her mind filled with an image of which it is sin even to think, and beset by the hundred temptations to which those are exposed who pass their lives in wedded misery, pauses on the very threshold, and is saved from guilt when she thinks of her darlings. Sunshine and music do they make in a house, with their bright, happy faces, the patter of their little feet, and the ringing echoes of their merry laugh. Grudge not to have the quiver full of them. Love and prize them whilst you may; for the hour will come at last, and your life will be weary and your hearth desolate when they take wing and fly away.
So Tom Blacke and his wife are reconciled for the time, and would be comparatively happy, were it not for the grinding anxiety ever present to their minds of how to “make both ends meet”—that consideration which poisons the comfort of many a homely dwelling, and which in their case is doubtless their own fault, or at least the fault of the “pater familias,” but none the less bitter on that account.
“There is the baker to pay, and the rent,” sighed Gingham, enumerating them on her fingers; “and the butcher called this morning with his account; to be sure it is but little, and little there is to meet it with. I shall be paid to-day for the plain-work, and I got a bit of washing yesterday, that brought me in sevenpence-halfpenny,” she proceeded, immersed in calculation; “and then we shall be three-and-eightpence short—three-and-eight-pence! and where to get it I don’t know, if I was to drop down dead this minute!”
“I must have a little money to-day, too, missus,” said Tom, in a hoarse, dogged voice; “can’t ye put the screw on a little tighter? A man may as well be starved to death as worried to death; and I can’t face ‘The Feathers’ again without wiping off a bit of the score, ye know.” Gingham’s eye glanced at the Sunday gown, hanging on a nail behind the door—a black silk one, of voluminous folds and formidable rustle, the last remnant of respectability left—and she thought that, too, must follow the rest to the pawnbroker’s, to that receptacle of usury with which, alas! she was too familiar, and from which even now she possessed sundry mocking duplicates, representing many a once-prized article of clothing and furniture.
Tom saw and interpreted the hopeless glance. “No, no,” said he, relenting, “not quite so bad as that, neither; I wouldn’t strip the gown off your back, Rachel, not if it was ever so; I couldn’t bear to see you, that was once so respectable, going about all in rags. We might get on, too,” added he, brightening up, with an expression of desperate cunning in his bad eye—“we might get money—ay, plenty of it—if you were only like the rest: you’re too mealy-mouthed, Mrs. Blacke, that’s where it is.”
“O Tom, what would you have me do?” exclaimed his wife, bursting afresh into tears; “we’ve been honest as yet through it all, and I’ve borne and borne because we were honest. I’d work upon my bare knees for you and the child—I’d starve and never complain myself, if I hadn’t a morsel in the cupboard; but I’d keep my honesty, Tom, I’d keep my honesty, for when that’s gone, all’s gone together.”