A Life's Secret: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

'If you and your circumventions and your tongue was all at the bottom of the Thames, 'twouldn't be no loss, for all the good they does above it,' sobbed Mrs. Shuck, whose anger generally ended in tears. 'Here's me and the children a clemming for want o' bread, and you can waste your time over a idle good-for-nothing meeting. Ain't you ashamed, not to work as other men do?'

'Bread!' loftily returned Sam, with the air of a king, ''tisn't bread I shall soon be furnishing for you and the children: it's mutton chops. My fortian's made, I say.'

'Yah!' retorted Mrs. Sam. 'It have been made forty times in the last ten year, to listen to you. What good has ever come of the boast? I'd shut up my mouth if I couldn't talk sense.'

Sam nodded his head oracularly, and entered upon an explanation. But for the fact of his being a little 'overcome'—whatever may have been its cause—he would have been more guarded. 'I've had overtures,' he said, bending forward his head and lowering his voice, 'and them overtures, which I accepted, will be the making of you and of me. Work!' he exclaimed, throwing his arms gracefully from him with a repelling gesture, 'I've done with work now; I'm superior to it; I'm exalted far above that lowering sort of toil. The leaders among the London Trade Union have recognised eloquence, ma'am, let me tell you; and they've made me one of their picked body—appointed me agitator to the firms of Hunter. "You get the meeting together, and prime 'em with the best of your eloquence, and excite 'em to recognise and agitate for their own rights, and you shall have your appointment, and a good round weekly salary." Well, Mrs. S., I did it. I got the men together, and I have primed 'em, and some of 'em's a busting to go off; and all I've got to do from henceforth is to keep 'em up to the mark, by means of that tongue which you are so fond of disparaging, and to live like a gentleman. There's a trifling instalment of the first week's money.'

Sam threw a sovereign on the table. Mrs. Shuck, with a grunt of disparagement still, darted forward to seize upon it through her tears. The children, uttering a wild shriek of wonder, delight, and disbelief, born of incipient famine, darted forward to seize it too. Sam burst into a fit of laughter, threw himself back to indulge it, and not being just then over steady on his legs, lost his equilibrium, and toppled over the fender into the ashes.

Leaving Mrs. Shuck to pick him up, or to leave him there—which latter negative course was the one she would probably take—let us return to Austin Clay.

At Peter Quale's gate he was standing a moment to speak to the man before proceeding onwards, when Mrs. Quale came running down the garden path.

'I was coming in search of you, sir,' she said to Austin Clay. 'This has just been brought, and the man made me sign my name to a paper.'

Austin took what she held out to him—a telegraphic despatch. He opened it; read it; then in the prompt, decisive manner usual with him, requested Mrs. Quale to put him up a change of things in his portmanteau, which he would return for; and walked away with a rapid step.