The shock was so sudden that Sam staggered as if he had received a heavy blow, and fell on the floor. He did not quite lose his senses, for he felt Ann trying to lift him up, and heard her asking what ailed him. In a minute or two he managed to get up and sit down on the foot of the bed, but still he found himself giddy and stunned.
‘Where is it?’ he cried, bursting into tears and sobs, like a child; ‘where is it?’
‘The old waistcoat?’ she asked, thinking he was gone out of his mind.
‘Yes!’ he said. ‘There was nine five-pound notes in it; forty-five pounds in Bank of England notes!’
At first Ann thought his head had been hurt by his fall, and he was rambling; but as he kept on moaning over his loss, and confessing how he had concealed the notes from her, she began to believe him, and all the sooner when he pulled out the three sovereigns he had saved towards the tenth note and flung them on the floor in angry despair.
‘And I don’t know the man from Adam!’ cried Ann. ‘I never saw him before; and he’ll take very good care I never see him again. Oh, Sam! how could you? how could you keep it a secret all these years, when I never bought as much as a yard of ribbon or a collar on the sly? I can’t forgive it, or forget it either.’
She felt it very hard that Sam should not have trusted her. The loss of the money was hard, and she could not help thinking what a large sum it was, and what it might have done for Johnny. But the loss of faith in her husband was ten times worse. How could she ever believe in him again? or how could she ever be sure again that he really loved and trusted her?
It was a very miserable evening. Sam bewailed his money so bitterly that Ann began to fancy he would rather have lost her or his child. She sat silent and indignant, whilst he, unlike himself, was almost raving with angry sorrow. She did not speak to him the next morning before he set off to the yard, though she knew he had lain awake all night like herself, and had not swallowed a morsel of breakfast. It was a cold, wintry day, with a drizzling mist filling the air. Sam was wet through before he reached his work, and there was no chance of drying his clothes. He was wet through when he came home, but there were no dry, warm things laid out for him. He might wait upon himself, thought Ann; it would be well for him to see the difference between a good wife and a bad one. He would not condescend to find a change of clothing for himself, and he sat shivering on the hearth all night, in spite of the warm, cheerful blaze of the bright fire.
By the time the week was ended, Sam Franklin was compelled to knock off work. Severe rheumatic fever had set in, and the doctor said he must not expect to get back to the yard for three months or more. Perhaps it was the best thing that could have befallen him, for it brought back all the old warm love for him to his wife’s heart, which had been grieved and estranged by his closeness and want of trust in her. She nursed him tenderly, never saying a word to blame him now he could not get out of her way, as many wives would have done. Before his illness was half over she was forced to pawn all her own best clothing, as well as his, to buy the mere necessaries of life. Never had Sam Franklin thought his wife would have to go day after day to the pawn-shop; but she did it so cheerfully that half of the sting of it was taken away.
‘Nancy,’ he said, one morning, ‘all night long I’ve had a text ringing in my head, ‘You cannot serve God and mammon,’ ‘You cannot serve God and mammon!’ Why, I used to think I was doing God a service when I put on my Sunday clothes and went to church of a Sunday morning with you. As if He’d think that were serving Him! And then all the week I was worshipping that old waistcoat of mine hanging behind the door, as much as any poor heathen worships blocks of wood and stone. I begin to think it was God who put it in your heart to sell it to the old-clothesman. But how can I serve Him now, Nancy, my girl? I can’t do anything save lie in this bed and be a burden to you.’