“I’d never go out o’ nights, lass,” replies Tom—“never, if I wasn’t drove to it. But what’s a man to do?—this isn’t a country for a poor man to live in—there’s no liberty here. Ah, Rachel, you’re made for something better than this; stitching away day after day, and not a gown or a bonnet fit to put on. You’re losing your looks too—you that used to be so genteel every way.” Mrs. Blacke smiles through her tears; he has not spoken to her so kindly for many a long day. “There’s a country we might go to,” he adds, looking sideways at her, to watch the effect of his arguments, “where a man as is a man, and knows his right hand from his left, needn’t want a good house to cover him, nor good clothes to his back. We’d be there in six weeks at the farthest—what’s that?—why, it’s nothing; and the child all the better for the sea air. There’s a ship to start next Thursday, first class, and all regular. In two months from this day we might be in America; and they don’t keep a man down there because he is down. Rachel, I’d like to see you dressed as you used to be; I’d like to bring up the little one to be as good as its parents, at least. I’d like to be there now; why, the dollars come in by handfuls, and silk’s as cheap as calico.”
How could woman resist such an El Dorado? How could such an inducement fail to have its due weight? His wife feels that she could start forthwith, but there is one insuperable difficulty, and she rejoins—
“Ah, that’s all very well, Tom, and we might get our heads above water over there, it’s likely enough. But how are we to get to America?—people can’t travel nor do anything else without money; and where is it to come from?”
“You know,” replied Tom, with a meaning smile on his pale, anxious face; and while he speaks the clock of a neighbouring church strikes ten.
“Any way but that, Tom,” says his wife, with a shudder. “I’d do anything, and bear anything for you; but not that, Tom—not that, as you’ve a soul to be saved!”
“It must be that way, or no way at all, missus,” Tom hisses between his teeth, keeping down his anger and a rising oath with a strong effort. “I’ve done all I can; it’s time for you to take your share. Why, look ye here, Rachel; a hundred pound’s a vast of money—a hundred pounds is five hundred dollars. Oh, I’m not going blindly to work, you may depend. If we could begin life with half that, over the water, it would be the making of us. I’d leave off drinking—so help me heaven, I would!—take the pledge, and work like a new one. You’d have a house of your own, Rachel, instead of such a dog-hole as this; and I’d like to see one of them that would take the shine out of my wife on Sundays, when she was tidied up and dressed. Then we’d put the little one to school, when she’s old enough, and we’d keep ourselves respectable, and attend to business, and be a sight happier than we’ve ever been in this miserable country. And all just for the scratch of a pen; Rachel, d’ye think I’d refuse you a trifle like that, if you was to ask me?”
“O Tom, I never could do it,” says his wife; “good never would come of such a sin as that.”
“Well, Rachel,” rejoins her husband, “there’s some men would make ye. Well, you needn’t draw up so; I’m not going to come it so strong as all that. Let’s talk it over peaceably, any way. And first, where’s the harm? There’s Master Charlie, if ever he comes back from the wars, isn’t he to marry Miss Blanche? And so it’s six to one, and half-a-dozen to the other. And what’s a hundred pounds out of all their thousands? Besides, didn’t the old lady mean to leave you as much as that? and didn’t you deserve it? And if she had lived, wouldn’t she have signed her own name; and where’s the harm of your doing it for her? You can write like your old mistress, Rachel,” adds the tempter, with a ghastly smile; “there’s pen and ink yonder on the mantelpiece. Come!” Rachel wavers; but education and good principles are still too strong within her, and she assumes an air of resolution she does not feel, as she takes up her work, and replies—
“Never, Tom, never!—not if you was to go down upon your bended knees. O Tom, Tom! don’t ask me, and don’t look at me so, Tom. I’ve been a good wife to you; don’t ask me to do such a thing, Tom; don’t.”