“God knows I never thought to bring it to such a pass as this,” she sobbed. “I went into it without any sense of doing harm. One day, when I happened to be at Miles Dickon’s, Jellico came in with his pack, and I was tempted to buy some ribbon. I said he might come and show me his things the next week, and he did, and I bought a gownd and a shawl. I know now how wrong and blind I was: but it seemed so easy, just to pay a shilling or two a-week; like having the things for nothing. And from that time it went on; a’most every Tuesday I took some trifle of him, maybe a bit o’ print for the little ones, or holland for pinafores; and I gave Cathy a cotton gownd, for she hadn’t one to her back. I didn’t buy as some of ’em did, for the sake of show and bedeckings, but useful things, Master Johnny,” she added, sobbing bitterly. “And this has come of it! and I wish I was at rest in that there blessed water.”
“Now, Mrs. Reed! Do you suppose you would be at rest?”
“Heaven have mercy on me! It’s the thought o’ the sin, and of what might come after, that makes me hold back from it.”
Looking at her, shading her eyes with her hand, her elbow on her lap, and her face one of the saddest for despair I ever saw, I thought of the strange contrasts there are in the world. For the want of about five pounds this woman was seeking to end her life; some have done as much for five-and-twenty thousand.
“I’ve not a friend in the whole world that could help me,” she said. “But it’s not that, Master Johnny; it’s the shame on me for having brought things to such a pass. If the Lord would but be pleased to take me, and save me from the sin of lifting a hand against my own life!”
“Look here, Mrs. Reed. As to what you call the shame, I suppose we all have to go in for some sort or another of that kind of thing as we jog along. As you are not taken, and don’t seem likely to be taken, I should look on that as an intimation that you must live and make the best of things.”
“Live! how, sir? I can’t never show myself at home. Reed, he’ll have to go to jail; the law will put him there. I’d not face the world, sir, knowing it was all for my thoughtless debts.”
Could I help her? Ought I to help her? If I went to old Brandon and begged to have five pounds, why, old Brandon in the end would give it me, after he had gone on rather hotly for an hour. If I did not help her, and any harm came to her, what should I——
“You promise me never to think about pools again, Mrs. Reed, except in the way of eels, and I’ll promise to see you through this.”
She looked up, more helpless than before. “There ain’t nothing to be done for me, Master Johnny. There’s the shame, and the talkin’ o’ the neighbours——”