Mad: A Story of Dust and Ashes

by George Manville Fenn

“So young, so pure-looking! But who could wonder, living in this atmosphere of misery? But what is it to me?” he cried angrily; for strange thoughts and fancies came upon him, and his mind was whispering of a wild tale. The thoughts of the past, too, came—of the happy days when, in early manhood, he had loved one as fair and bright—one whom another bridegroom had claimed, as having been betrothed to him from her birth. The cold earth had been her nuptial-bed, and he, the lover, became the gloomy retired student until his appointment to a city curacy, and the devotion of his life to the sorrows of the poor. But again he bit his lip angrily, at making the comparison between the dead and the living. What connection was there between them, and of what had he been dreaming? What indeed! After years upon years of floating down life’s stream,—a calm and sad, but placid journey, unruffled but by the sorrows of others,—he now awoke to the fact that unwittingly he had halted by a pleasant spot, where he had been loitering and dreaming of something undefined—something fraught with memories of the past; and now he had been rudely awakened and recalled to the duties he had chosen.

He passed into the court, and stood for a few moments gazing at where there was a cellar opened, with half a score of children collected to drop themselves or their toys down; while, being a fresh arrival upon the scene, a cluster of the little ones began to get beneath his feet, and run against him, or give themselves that pleasant cramp known as “a crick in the neck,” by staring up in his face; but he freed himself from his visitors by hastily entering the opposite house.

More than one door was opened, and more than one head thrust out, as Mr Sterne ascended the staircase; but in every instance there was a smile and a rude curtsey to greet him, for he had that happy way of visiting learned by so few, and his visits always seemed welcome. Those who, moved by curiosity, appeared, were ladies, who directly after became exceedingly anxious concerning their personal appearance. Aprons, where they were worn, were carefully stroked down; hair was smoothed or made less rough; sundry modest ideas seemed to rise respecting a too great freedom of habit where a junior was partaking of nourishment; but everywhere the curate met with cordial glances, till he once more stood in front of an attic and entered.

Mr Sterne had so far only encountered females; for “the master” of the several establishments was out at work, or down in the country after the birds, or at the corner of some street where there was a public-house, at whose door he slouched, in the feeble anticipation that work would come there to find him, or that the landlord or a passing friend would invite him to have “a drain;” but Mr William Jarker was, as has been seen, at home, though, with the exception of his legs, invisible; for he was among his pigeons, emulating the chimneys around by the rate at which he smoked—chimneys smoking here the year round, since in most cases one room formed the mansion of a family.

But Mr Sterne had not come to see Jarker, but at the summons of his wife, in whom some eighteen months had wrought a terrible change. She sat wrapped in an old shawl, shivering beside the few cinders burning in the rusty grate—shivering though burned up with fever, the two or three large half-filled bottles of dispensary medicine telling of a long and weary illness. The wide windows admitted ample light, but only seemed to make more repulsive the poverty-stricken place, with its worn, rush-bottomed chairs, rickety table, upon which stood the fragments of the last meal; the stump bedstead, with its patched patchwork counterpane; the heaped-up ashes beneath the grate; the battered and blackened quart-pot from the neighbouring public-house standing upon the hob to do duty as saucepan; while here and there stood in corners the stakes and nets used by Mr Jarker in his profession of birdcatcher. A few cages of call-birds hung against the wall; but Mr Jarker’s custom was, when he had captured feathered prey, to dispose of it immediately—pigeons being his “fancy.”

A sad smile lit up the woman’s face as the curate entered,—a face once doubtless pleasing, but now hollow, yellow, and ghastly; where hung out flauntingly were the bright colours which told of the enemy that held full sway in the citadel of life.

“I knew you would come, sir,” she whispered, letting her thin white fingers play amongst the golden curls of a little head, but half-concealed in her lap, where one bright round eye as peeping timidly out to watch the stranger; and then, as the curate took one of the broken chairs and sat beside the sick woman, whenever she spoke it was in a whisper, and with many a timid glance at the ladder and open trap in the roof, where her master stood, as though she feared to call down punishment upon her head,—“I knew you would come; and Bill was easy to-day, and come and fetched you, though he came back and said you were busy, and would not stop.”

“Look alive, there, and get that over!” cried Mr Jarker from the trap. “I ain’t a-goin’ to stand here all day;” and by way of giving effect, or for emphasis, this remark was accompanied by a kick at the ladder, and a shake of the trap. Then followed an interval of peace, during which the presence of the domestic tyrant was made known only by the fumes of his tobacco, which floated down into the room, and made the poor woman cough terribly.

Once Mr Sterne was about to tell the fellow to cease, but the look of horror in the woman’s face, and the supplicating joining of her hands, made him pause, for he knew that he would be but adding to her suffering when his back was turned. The open trap seemed to act as a sort of retiring-room for Mr Jarker when anyone was in the attic that he did not wish to see; but every now and then during the earnest conversation with the suffering woman, there came a kick and a growl, and a shake of the ladder, which made Mr Sterne frown, and the poor woman start as if in dread. And so, during the remainder of the curate’s stay, the consolatory words he uttered were again and again interrupted; while at last the voice came growling down as if in answer to a statement Mrs Jarker had just made:

“Don’t you tell no lies, now, come, or I shall make it hot for yer!” When in the involuntary shudder the woman gave, there was plainly enough written for the curate’s reading the long and cruel records of how “hot” for her it had often been made.