Johnny Ludlow First Series Part 72

Mrs. Stockleigh did not see her way clear to turn this lady from the house, though she would have liked to do it. She made a show of hospitality, and ordered wine and cake to be put on the table. Of which wine, Mrs. Marks noticed with surprise, she drank _four_ gla.s.ses. "Now and then we used to suspect her of drinking in the kitchen!" ran through Mrs. Marks's thoughts. "Has it grown upon her?"

The garden gate opened, and Mr. Stockleigh came through it. He was so bowed and broken that his daughter scarcely knew him. She hastened out and met him in the path.

"Caroline!" he exclaimed in amazement. "Is it really you? How much you have changed?"

"I came down to speak to you, papa. May we stay and talk here in the garden?"

He seemed glad to see her, rather than not, and sat down with her on the garden bench in the sun. In a quiet voice she told him all: and asked him to help her. Mrs. Stockleigh had come out and stood listening to the treason, somewhat unsteady in her walk.

"I--I would help you if I could, Caroline," he said, in hesitation, glancing at his wife.

"Yes, but you can't, Stockleigh," she put in. "Our own expenses is as much as iver we can manage, Mrs. Marks. It's a orful cost, living out here, and our two servants is the very deuce for extravigance. I've changed 'em both ten times for others, and the last lot is always worse than the first."

"Papa, do you see our position?" resumed Mrs. Marks, after hearing the lady patiently. "It will be a long time before James is able to do anything again--if he ever is--and we have not been able to save money.

What are we to do? Go to the workhouse? I have four little children."

"You know that you can't help, Stockleigh," insisted Mr. Stockleigh's lady, taking up the answer, her face growing more inflamed. "You've not got the means to do anything: and there's an end on't."

"It is true, Caroline; I'm afraid I have not," he said--and his daughter saw with pain how tremblingly subject he was to his wife. "I seem short of money always. How did you come down, my dear?"

"By the train, papa. Third cla.s.s."

"Oh dear!" cried Mr. Stockleigh. "My health's broken, Caroline. It is, indeed, and my spirit too. I am sure I am very sorry for you. Will you come in and take some dinner?"

"We've got nothing but a bit of 'ashed beef," cried Mrs. Stockleigh, as if to put a damper upon the invitation. "Him and me fails in our appet.i.tes dreadful: I can't think what's come to 'em."

Mrs. Marks declined dinner: she had to get back to the children. That any sort of pleading would be useless while that woman held sway, she saw well. "Good-bye, papa," she said. "I suppose we must do the best we can alone. Good morning, Mrs. Stockleigh."

To her surprise her father kissed her; kissed her with quivering lips.

"I will open the gate for you, my dear," he said, hastening on to it.

As she was going through, he slipped a sovereign into her hand.

"It will pay for your journey, at least, my dear. I am sorry to hear of your travelling third cla.s.s. Ah, times have changed. It is not that I won't help you, child, but that I can't. She goes up to receive the dividends, and keeps me short. I should not have had that sovereign now, but it is the change out of the spirit bill that she sent me to pay.

Hus.h.!.+ the money goes in drink. She drinks like a fish. Ah, Caroline, I was a fool--a fool! Fare you well, my dear."

"Fare _you_ well, dear papa, and thank you," she answered, turning away with br.i.m.m.i.n.g eyes and an aching heart.

After resting for some days and getting no better, James Marks had to give it up as a bad job. He went to the City house, saw Mr. Brown, and told him.

"Broken down!" cried old Brown, hitching back his wig, as he always did when put out. "I never heard such nonsense. At your age! The thing's incomprehensible."

"The work has been very wearing to the brain, sir; and my application to it was close. During the three-and-twenty years I have been with you I have never had but one week's holiday: the one last spring."

"You told me then you felt like a man breaking down, as if you were good for nothing," resentfully spoke old Brown.

"Yes, sir. I told you that I believed I was breaking down for want of a rest," replied Marks. "It has proved so."

"Why, you had your rest."

"One week, sir. I said I feared it would not be of much use. But--it was not convenient for you to allow me more."

"Of course it was not convenient; you know it could not be convenient,"

retorted old Brown. "D'you think I keep my clerks for play, Marks? D'you suppose my business will get done of itself?"

"I was aware myself, sir, how inconvenient my absence would be, and therefore I did not press the matter. That one week's rest did me a wonderful amount of service: it enabled me to go on until now."

Old Brown looked at him. "See here, Marks--we are sorry to lose you: suppose you take another week's change now, and try what it will do. A fortnight, say. Go to the sea-side, or somewhere."

Marks shook his head. "Too late, sir. The doctors tell me it will be twelve months before I am able to work again at calculations."

"Oh, my service to you," cried Mr. Brown. "Why, what are you going to do if you cannot work?"

"That is a great deal more than I can say, sir. The thought of it is troubling my brain quite as much as work ever did. It is never out of it, night or day."

For once in his screwy life, old Brown was generous. He told Mr. Marks to draw his salary up to the day he had left, and he added ten pounds to it over and above.

During that visit I paid to Miss Deveen's in London, when Tod was with the Whitneys, and Helen made her first curtsey to the Queen, and we discovered the ill-doings of that syren, Mademoiselle Sophie Chalk, I saw Marks. Mrs. Todhetley had given me two or three commissions, as may be remembered: one amongst them was to call in Pimlico, and see how Marks was getting on.

Accordingly I went. We had heard nothing, you must understand, of what I have told above, and did not know but he was still in his situation.

It was a showery day in April: just a twelvemonth, by the way, since his visit to us at d.y.k.e Manor. I found the house out readily; it was near Ebury Street; and I knocked. A young lad opened the door, and asked me to walk into the parlour.

"You are Mr. Marks's son," I said, rubbing my feet on the mat: "I can tell by the likeness. What's your name?"

"William. Papa's is James."

"Yes, I know."

"He is ill," whispered the lad, with his hand on the door handle.

"Mamma's downstairs, making him some arrowroot."

Well, I think you might have knocked me down with a feather when I knew him--for at first I did not. He was sitting in an easy-chair by the fire, dressed, but wrapped round with blankets: and instead of being the James Marks we had known, he was like a living skeleton, with cheek-bones and hollow eyes. But he was glad to see me, smiled, and held out his hand from the blanket.

It is uncommonly awkward for a young fellow to be taken unawares like this. You don't know what to say. I'm sure I as much thought he was dying as I ever thought anything in this world. At last I managed to stammer a word or two about being sorry to see him so ill.

"Ay," said he, in a weak, panting voice, "I am different from what I was when with your kind people, Johnny. The trouble I foresaw then has come."

"You used sometimes to feel then as though you would not long keep up,"

was my answer, for really I could find nothing else to say.

He nodded. "Yes, I felt that I was breaking down--that I should inevitably break down unless I could have rest. I went on until February, Johnny, and then it came. I had to give up my situation; and since then I have been dangerously ill from another source--chest and lungs."

"I did not know your lungs were weak, Mr. Marks."

"I'm sure I did not," he said, after a fit of coughing. "I had one attack in January through catching a cold. Then I caught another cold, and you see the result: the doctor hardly saved me. I never was subject to take cold before. I suppose the fact is that when a man breaks down in one way he gets weak in all, and is more liable to other ailments."

"I hope you will get better as the warm weather comes on. We shall soon have it here."