Hard Cash Part 54

Friday was club day; the clubsmen met at the "Greyhound" and talked over their losses. Maxley sat smoking complacently; and when his turn came to groan, he said drily: "I draad all mine a week afore. (Exclamations.) I had a hinkling: my boy Jack he wrote to me from Canada as how Hardie's was rotten out there; now these here bankers they be like an oak tree; they do go at the limbs first and then at the heart."

The club was wroth. "What, you went and made yourself safe and never gave any of us a chance? Was that neighbourly? was that--clubbable?"

To a hailstorm of similar reproaches, Maxley made but one reply, "'Twarn't _my_ business to take care o' _you._" He added, however, a little sulkily, "I was laad for slander once: scalded dog fears lue-warm water."

"Oh," said one, "I don't believe him. He puts a good face on it but his nine hundred is gone along with ourn."

"'Taiu't gone far, then." With this he put his hand in his pocket, and, after some delay, pulled out a nice new crisp note and held it up. "What is that? I ask the company."

"Looks like a ten-pun note, James."

"Welt the bulk 'grees with the sample; I knows where to find eightscore and nine to match this here."

The note was handed round: and on inspection each countenance in turn wore a malicious smile; till at last Maxley, surrounded by grinning faces, felt uneasy.

"What be 'e all grinning at like a litter o' Chessy cats? Warn't ye ugly enough without showing of your rotten teeth?"

"Haw! Haw!"

"Better say 'tain't money at all, but only a wench's curl paper:" and he got up and s.n.a.t.c.hed it fiercely out of the last inspector's hand. "Ye can't run your rigs on me," said he. "What an if I can't read words, I can figures; and I spelt the ten out on every one of them, afore I'd take it."

A loud and general laugh greeted this boast.

Then Maxley s.n.a.t.c.hed up his hat in great wrath and some anxiety, and went out followed by a peal.

In five minutes he was at home; and tossed the note into his wife's lap.

She was knitting by a farthing dip. "Dame," said he, controlling all appearance of anxiety, "what d'ye call that?"

She took up the note and held it close to the candle.

"Why, Jem, it is a ten-pound note, one of Hardie's--_as was._"

"Then what were those fools laughing at?" And he told her all that had happened.

Mrs. Maxley dropped her knitting and stood up trembling. "Why, you told me you had got our money all safe out!"

"Well, and so I have, ye foolish woman; and he drew the whole packet out of his pocket and flung them fiercely on the table. Mrs. Maxley ran her finger and eye over them, and uttered a scream of anger and despair.

"These! these be all Hardie's notes," she cried; "and what vally be Hardie's notes when Hardie's be broke?"

Maxley staggered as if he had been shot.

The woman's eyes flashed fury at him. "This is your work, ye born idiot: 'mind your own business,' says you: you _must_ despise your wedded wife, that has more brains in her finger than you have in all your great long useless carease: you _must_ have your secrets: one day poison, another day beggary: you have ruined me, you have murdered me: get out of my sight! for if I find a knife I'll put it in you, I will." And in her ungovernable pa.s.sion, she actually ran to the dresser for a knife: at which Maxley caught up a chair and lifted it furiously, above his head to fling at her.

Luckily the man had more self-command than the woman; he dashed the chair furiously on the floor, and ran out of the house.

He wandered about half stupid, and presently his feet took him mechanically round to his garden. He pottered about among his plants, looking at them, inspecting them closely, and scarce seeing them.

However, he covered up one or two, and muttered, "I think there will be a frost to-night: I think there will be a frost" Then his legs seemed to give way. He sat down and thought of his wedding-day: he began to talk to himself out loud, as some people do in trouble. "Bless her comely face," said he, "and to think I had my arm lifted to strike her, after wearing her so low, and finding her good stuff upon the whole. Well, thank my stars I didn't We must make the best on't: money's gone; but here's the garden and our hands still; and 'tain't as if we were single to gnaw our hearts alone: wedded life cuts grief a two. Let's make it up and begin again. Sixty come Martinmas, and Susan forty-eight: and I be a'most weary of turning moulds."

He went round to his front door.

There was a crowd round it; a buzzing crowd with all their faces turned towards his door.

He came at their backs, and asked peevishly what was to do now. Some of the women shrieked at his voice. The crowd turned about; and a score of faces peered at him: some filled with curiosity, some with pity.

"Lord help us!" said the poor man, "is there any more trouble a foot to-day? Stand aside, please, and let me know."

"No! no!" cried a woman, "don't let him."

"Not let me go into my own house, young woman?" said Maxley with dignity: "be these your manners?"

"Oh, James: I meant you no ill. Poor man!"

"Poor soul!" said another.

"Stand aloof!" said a strange man. "Who has as good a right to be there as he have?"

A lane was made directly, and Maxley rushed down between two rows of peering faces, with his knees knocking together, and burst into his own house. A scream from the women inside as he entered, and a deep groan from the strong man bereaved of his mate, told the tragedy. Poor Susan Maxley was gone.

She had died of breast-pang within a minute of his leaving her; and the last words of two faithful spouses were words of anger.

All these things, and many more less tragic, but very deplorable, came to Alfred Hardie's knowledge, and galled and afflicted him deeply. And several of these revelations heaped discredit high upon Richard Hardie, till the young man, born with a keen sense of justice, and bred amongst honourable minds, began to shudder at his own father.

Herein he was alone; Jane, with the affectionate blindness of her s.e.x, could throw her arms round her father's neck, and pity him for his losses--by his own dishonesty--and pity him most when some victim of his unprincipled conduct died or despaired. "Poor papa will feel this so deeply," was her only comment on such occasions.

Alfred was not sorry she could take this view, and left her unmolested to confound black with white, and wrong with right, at affection's dictates; but his own trained understanding was not to be duped in matters of plain morality. And so, unable to cure the wrongs he deplored, unable to put his conscience into his pocket like Richard Hardie, or into his heart like Jane, he wandered alone, or sat brooding and dejected: and the attentive reader, if I am so fortunate as to possess one, will not be surprised to learn that he was troubled, too, with dark mysterious surmises he half dreaded, yet felt it his duty to fathom. These and Mrs. Dodd's loss by the bank combined to keep him out of Albion Villa. He often called to ask after Captain Dodd, but was ashamed to enter the house.

Now Richard Hardie's anxiety to know whether David was to die or live had not declined, but rather increased. If the latter, he was now resolved to fly to the United States with his booty, and cheat his alienated son along with the rest: he had come by degrees down to this.

It was on Alfred he had counted to keep him informed of David's state; but, on his putting a smooth inquiry, the young man's face flushed with shame, or anger, or something, and he gave a very short, sharp, and obscure reply. In reality, he did not know much, nor did Sarah, his informant; for of late the servants had never been allowed to enter David's room.

Mr. Hardie, after this rebuff, never asked Alfred again; but having heard Sampson's name mentioned as Dodd's medical attendant, wrote and asked him to come and dine next time he should visit Barkington.

"You will find me a fallen man," said he; "to-morrow we resign our house and premises and furniture to the a.s.signees, and go to live at a little furnished cottage not very far from your friends the Dodds. It is called 'Musgrove Cottage.' There, where we have so little to offer besides a welcome, none but true friends will come near us; indeed, there are very few I should venture to ask for such a proof of fidelity to your broken friend,

"R. H."

The good-hearted Sampson sent a cordial reply, and came to dinner at Musgrove Cottage.

Now all Hardie wanted of him in reality was to know about David; so when Jane had retired and the decanter circulated, he began to pump him by his vanity. "I understand," said he, "you have wrought one of your surprising cures in this neighbourhood. Albion Villa!"

Sampson shook his head sorrowfully: Mr. Hardie's eyes sparkled. Alfred watched him keenly and bitterly.

"How can I work a great cure after these a.s.s-a.s.s-ins Short and Osmond?

Look, see! the man had been wounded in the hid, and lost blood: thin stabbed in the shoulder, and lost more blood."--Both the Hardies uttered an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of unfeigned surprise.--"So, instid of recruiting the buddy thus exhausted of the great liquid material of all repair, the profissional a.s.s-a.s.s-in came and exhausted him worse: stabbed him while he slept; stabbed him unconscious, stabbed him in a vein: and stole more blood from him. Wasn't that enough? No! the routine of profissional a.s.s-a.s.s-ination had but begun; nixt they stabbed him with cupping-needles, and so stole more of his life-blood. And they were goen from their stabs to their bites, goen to leech his temples, and so hand him over to the sixton."

"But you came in and saved him," cried Alfred.