The trail of the serpent
in a little dingy parlour with dirty dog’s-eared cards, scoring their
points with beer-marks on the sticky tables. Not a very attractive
house of entertainment this; but it has an attraction for the woman
with the baby, for she looks at it wistfully, as she paces up and
down. Presently she fumbles in her pocket, and produces two or three
half-pence--just enough, it seems, for her purpose, for she sneaks
in at the half-open door, and in a few minutes emerges in the act of
wiping her lips.
As she does so, she almost stumbles against a man wrapped in a
great coat, and with the lower part of his face muffled in a thick
handkerchief.
“I thought you would not come,” she said.
“Did you? Then you see you thought wrong. But you might have been
right, for my coming was quite a chance: I can’t be at your beck and
call night and day.”
“I don’t expect you to be at my beck and call. I’ve not been used to
get so much attention, or so much regard from you as to expect that,
Jabez.”
The man started, and looked round as if he expected to find all
Slopperton at his shoulder; but there wasn’t a creature about.
“You needn’t be quite so handy with my name,” he said; “there’s no
knowing who might hear you. Is there any one in there?” he asked,
pointing to the public-house.
“No one but the landlord.”
“Come in, then; we can talk better there. This fog pierces one to the
bones.”
He seems never to consider that the woman and the child have been
exposed to that piercing fog for an hour and more, as he is above an
hour after his appointment.
He leads the way through the bar into the little parlour. There are no
colliers playing at all-fours to-day, and the dog’s-eared cards lie
tumbled in a heap on one of the sticky tables among broken clay-pipes
and beer-stains. This table is near the one window which looks out on
the river, and by this window the woman sits, Jabez placing himself on
the other side of the table.
The fretful baby has fallen asleep, and lies quietly in the woman’s lap.
“What will you take?”
“A little gin,” she answers, not without a certain shame in her tone.
“So you’ve found out _that_ comfort, have you?” He says this with
a glance of satisfaction he cannot repress.
“What other comfort is there for such as me, Jabez? It seemed at first
to make me forget. Nothing can do that now--except----”
She did not finish this sentence, but sat looking with a dull vacant
stare at the black waters of the Sloshy, which, as the tide rose,
washed with a hollow noise against the brickwork of the pathway close
to the window.
“Well, as I suppose you didn’t ask me to meet you here for the sole
purpose of making miserable speeches, perhaps you’ll tell me what you
want with me. My time is precious, and if it were not, I can’t say
I should much care about stopping long in this place; it’s such a
deliciously lively hole and such a charming neighbourhood.”
“I live in this neighbourhood--at least, I _starve_ in this
neighbourhood, Jabez.”
“Oh, now we’re coming to it,” said the gentleman, with a very gloomy
face, “we’re coming to it. You want some money. That’s how this sort of
thing always ends.”
“I hoped a better end than that, Jabez. I hoped long ago, when I
thought you loved me----”
“Oh, we’re going over that ground again, are we?” said he; and with a
gesture of weariness, he took up the dog’s-eared cards on the sticky
table before him, and began to build a house with them, such as
children build in their play.
Nothing could express better than this action his thorough
determination not to listen to what the woman might have to say; but in
spite of this she went on--
“You see I was a foolish country girl, Jabez, or I might have known
better. I had been accustomed to take my father and my brother’s word
of mouth as Bible truth, and had never known that word to be belied.
I did not think, when the man I loved with all my heart and soul--to
utter forgetfulness of every other living creature on the earth, of
every duty that I knew to man and heaven--I did not think when the man
I loved so much said this or that, to ask him if he meant it honestly,
or if it was not a cruel and a wicked lie. Being so ignorant, I did not
think of that, and I thought to be your wife, as you swore I should be,
and that this helpless little one lying here might live to look up to
you as a father, and be a comfort and an honour to you.”
To be a comfort and an honour to you! The fretful baby awoke at the
words, and clenched its tiny fists with a spiteful action.
If the river, as a thing eternal in comparison to man--if the river
had been a prophet, and had had a voice in its waters wherewith to
prophesy, I wonder whether it would have cried--
“A shame and a dishonour, an enemy and an avenger in the days to come!”
Jabez’ card-house had risen to three stories; he took the dog’s-eared
cards one by one in his white hands with a slow deliberate touch that
never faltered.
The woman looked at him with a piteous but tearless glance; from him to
the river; and back again to him.
“You don’t ask to look at the child, Jabez.”
“I don’t like children,” said he. “I get enough of children at the
Doctor’s. Children and Latin grammar--and the end so far off yet,”--he
said the last words to himself, in a gloomy tone.
“But your own child, Jabez--your own.”
“As _you_ say,” he muttered.
She rose from her chair and looked full at him--a long long gaze which
seemed to say, “And this is the man I loved; this is the man for whom I
am lost!” If he could have seen her look! But he was stooping to pick
up a card from the ground--his house of cards was five stories high by
this time. “Come,” he said, in a hard resolute tone, “you’ve written
to me to beg me to meet you here, for you were dying of a broken
heart; that’s to say you have taken to drinking gin (I dare say it’s
an excellent thing to nurse a child upon), and you want to be bought
off. How much do you expect? I thought to have a sum of money at my
command to-day. Never you mind how; it’s no business of yours.” He said
this savagely, as if in answer to a look of inquiry from her; but she
was standing with her back turned to him, looking steadily out of the
window.
“I thought to have been richer to-day,” he continued, “but I’ve had a
disappointment. However, I’ve brought as much as I could afford; so the
best thing you can do is to take it, and get out of Slopperton as soon
as you can, so that I may never see your wretched white face again.”
He counted out four sovereigns on the sticky table, and then, adding
the sixth story to his card-house, looked at the frail erection with a
glance of triumph.
“And so will I build my fortune in days to come,” he muttered.
A man who had entered the dark little parlour very softly passed behind
him and brushed against his shoulder at this moment; the house of cards
shivered, and fell in a heap on the table.
Jabez turned round with an angry look.
“What the devil did you do that for?” he asked.
The man gave an apologetic shrug, pointed with his fingers to his lips,
and shook his head.
“Oh,” said Jabez, “deaf and dumb! So much the better.”
The strange man seated himself at another table, on which the landlord
placed a pint of beer; took up a newspaper, and seemed absorbed in
it; but from behind the cover of this newspaper he watched Jabez with
a furtive glance, and his mouth, which was very much on one side,
twitched now and then with a nervous action.
All this time the woman had never touched the money--never indeed
turned from the window by which she stood; but she now came up to the
table, and took the sovereigns up one by one.
“After what you have said to me this day, I would see this child
starve, hour by hour, and die a slow death before my eyes, before I
would touch one morsel of bread bought with your money. I have heard
that the waters of that river are foul and poisonous, and death to
those who live on its bank; but I know the thoughts of your wicked
heart to be so much more foul and so much bitterer a poison, that I
would go to that black river for pity and help rather than to you.”
As she said this, she threw the sovereigns into his face with such
a strong and violent hand, that one of them, striking him above the
eyebrow, cut his forehead to the bone, and brought the blood gushing
over his eyes.
The woman took no notice of his pain, but turning once more to the
window, threw herself into a chair and sat moodily staring out at the
river, as if indeed she looked to that for pity.
The dumb man helped the landlord to dress the cut on Jabez’ forehead.
It was a deep cut, and likely to leave a scar for years to come.
Mr. North didn’t look much the better, either in appearance or temper,
for this blow. He did not utter a word to the woman, but began, in a
hang-dog manner, to search for the money, which had rolled away into
the corners of the room. He could only find three sovereigns; and
though the landlord brought a light, and the three men searched the
room in every direction, the fourth could not be found; so, abandoning
the search, Jabez paid his score and strode out of the place without
once looking at the woman.
“I’ve got off cheap from that tiger-cat,” he said to himself; “but it
has been a bad afternoon’s work. What can I say about my cut face to
the governor?” He looked at his watch, a homely silver one attached to
a black ribbon. “Five o’clock; I shall be at the Doctor’s by tea-time.
I can get into the gymnasium the back way, take a few minutes’ turn
with the poles and ropes, and say the accident happened in climbing.
They always believe what I say, poor dolts.”
His figure was soon lost in the darkness and the fog--so dense a fog
that very few people saw the woman with the fretful baby when she
emerged from the public-house, and walked along the river-bank,
leaving even the outskirts of Slopperton behind, and wandered on and on
till she came to a dreary spot, where dismal pollard willows stretched
their dark and ugly shadows, like the bare arms of withered hags, over
the dismal waters of the lonely Sloshy.
O river, sometimes so pitiless when thou devourest youth, beauty, and
happiness, wilt thou be pitiful and tender to-night, and take a poor
wretch, who has no hope of mortal pity, to peace and quiet on thy
breast?
O merciless river, so often bitter foe to careless happiness, wilt thou
to-night be friend to reckless misery and hopeless pain?
God made thee, dark river, and God made the wretch who stands shivering
on thy bank: and may be, in His boundless love and compassion for the
creatures of His hand, He may have pity even for those so lost as to
seek forbidden comfort in thy healing waters.
CHAPTER VI.
TWO CORONER’S INQUESTS.
THERE had not been since the last general election, when George
Augustus Slashington, the Liberal member, had been returned against
strong Conservative opposition, in a blaze of triumph and a shower of
rotten eggs and cabbage-stumps--there had not been since that great
day such excitement in Slopperton as there was on the discovery of the
murder of Mr. Montague Harding.
A murder was always a great thing for Slopperton. When John Boggins,
weaver, beat out the brains of Sarah his wife, first with the heel of
his clog and ultimately with a poker, Slopperton had a great deal to
say about it--though, of course, the slaughter of one “hand” by another
was no great thing out of the factories. But this murder at the Black
Mill was something out of the common. Uncommonly cruel, cowardly, and
unmanly, and moreover occurring in a respectable rank of life.
Round that lonely house on the Slopperton road there was a crowd and