it was pretty late when we went to bed the night that mr. saxon got telling stories, because after everybody had gone he sat on with harry, and he and the swedish gentleman didn’t seem to be inclined to go to bed at all, till at last i had to say it was long past twelve o’clock, and we should all lose our beauty sleep, and at last i got them to take their candles and go up to bed.
there weren’t any letters for mr. saxon next morning, so they both went out for a walk, asking me the nicest walk to go.
they were quite jolly, mr. saxon being full of jokes, and insisting upon going behind the bar before they started and pretending to serve the customers, and asking questions about everything he saw; and when i told him anything, the swedish gentleman had to put it down in the little black book he carried in his pocket, and i noticed he was always making notes in it—whenever mr. saxon thought of anything the other having to put it down for him. if a customer came in with a curious manner, mr. saxon would say, “put that down;” and out came the book. if harry told about something that had happened to him on a voyage, it was, “put that down;” and i noticed the swedish gentleman always pulled out about a dozen papers before he found the book. it seems mr. saxon picked up handbills, and cut things out of the paper, and wrote things on bits of paper, and everything had to go into the swedish gentleman’s pocket, till he looked quite bulged out.{100}
mr. saxon, when he came in, wrote till dinner-time, and the swedish gentleman had to copy all he wrote, and when he couldn’t read the words mr. saxon went on at him and said his common sense ought to tell him what they were, but there wasn’t anything to attract attention till they had their dinner. they had a very good dinner, and the air had evidently given them an appetite; but mr. saxon kept chaffing all the time, and saying the swedish gentleman would have to be lifted out of his chair by a steam-crane if he ate any more, and begging him not to make us bankrupt, because we were young beginners.
and he told me while they were travelling abroad they had gone to an hotel where the meals were fixed price, and after staying two days the landlord came and offered them a pound to go somewhere else because the swedish gentleman was ruining him. but i noticed that mr. saxon ate quite as much as the other; perhaps not so much meat, but he ate nearly all the apple-pie and three-quarters of a cold jam tart, and the swedish gentleman didn’t touch the pastry at all.
and after mr. saxon had eaten all the pastry, if he didn’t tell me never to put such things on the table again for him, as they were poison; so the next day i only made a milky pudding, and then, if he didn’t say, “what, no pastry! oh dear me! here, mrs. beckett, go and make us half-a-dozen pancakes.”
what are you to do with a man like that?
the second day, in the morning, i saw that mr. saxon had got out of bed the wrong side.
he was groaning when i went to lay the breakfast, and he said his liver was bad, and his life was a burden to him; and certainly he did look green and yellow. and he was looking at himself in the glass, and going on because his hair wouldn’t lie down; and he kept banging it and saying he looked like a death’s-head, and he should be glad when he was in his grave.
i had put his letters—a dozen, i should say—on the table; but just as he was going to open them the swedish gentleman came in and snatched them away.
“no, sir,” he said; “you have your breakfast first. i see how you are this morning; and there’s sure to be{101} something in the letters to annoy you, so have your breakfast first. i know you won’t eat any if you open them.”
he was right, for when i went to clear the things away mr. saxon was walking up and down the room in a dreadful rage, and the perspiration was streaming down his face.
“the wretches, the fiends!” he said, “to dare to say this to me! the scoundrels! but i’ll teach them a lesson; i’ll tell them what i think of them.”
and directly the cloth was off he seized the pen and ink and began writing page after page on letter-paper, and then tearing it up and groaning, and then beginning again.
“there!” he said, “that’s the sort of thing to say to wretches like that. take that to the post at once.”
the swedish gentleman took it and put it in his pocket, and went outside the door.
i followed him with the crumb-brush, and i said, “shall i send the boy to the post with it, sir?”
he said, “oh no; it’s all right. i sha’n’t post it at all.”
“what!” i said; “not post it?”
“no, bless you; if i were to post all the letters he writes to people when he’s in a rage he wouldn’t have a friend left in the world. i burn them instead. why, when he’s put out like he is now he writes the most awful things to people. they don’t understand him, and might think he meant it; but i do understand him, and i don’t post the letters.”
“but don’t you tell him?”
“oh yes; when he’s cooled down a bit, and had time to think; and then he’s very glad. he’s made no end of enemies through writing in a rage when i haven’t been by to stop the letters going; but he sha’n’t make any more if i can help it.”
“what a pity it is he has such a hasty temper,” i said.
“it is, because it gives people a wrong impression of him. but he can’t help it; it’s nervous irritability, and rages and furious letter-writing are only the symptoms.”
“ah,” i said, “i know. he used to be like that when i was with him; but he’s all right when you know him.{102}”
“yes,” he said, “he’s like the gentleman in the song—
‘he’s all right when you know him;
but you’ve got to know him fust.’”
when i told harry about the bromide and about the letters that weren’t posted, he said—
“i say, missis, do you think he’s all right?”
“what do you mean, harry, by ‘all right’?”
“why, all right here,” and he touched his forehead.
“why, of course he is. it’s only his curious way.”
“well,” said harry, “if you say so, i suppose it’s right. you know more about him than i do; but if i’d met him without being introduced i should have said that he was a lunatic, and the big foreigner was his keeper.”
that was a nice idea, wasn’t it? but, of course, a character like mr. saxon isn’t met with every day; and perhaps it’s a good job it isn’t. too many of them would make things uncomfortable.
all that day mr. saxon was very excited, and i could see it was his liver by the look of him; and he kept groaning and saying his head ached, and he felt as if he’d been beaten black and blue.
he said he couldn’t write and he couldn’t read, and he couldn’t sit still, and so he came downstairs into our parlour and made harry come and sit and talk with him. but he talked so much himself, harry never had a chance. harry did manage to say once what a fine thing it must be to be able to make money, and have your name stuck about the hoardings; and that was enough—that started him.
“a fine thing!” he said; “why, i’m the most miserable wretch that ever trod the earth! for twenty years i haven’t known what it is to be well for a single day. i’m always doubled up, i’m always in pain, i can’t go anywhere, i shun society, and i can’t eat anything without being ill for a week.”
“but you manage to write a good deal,” said harry.
“ah! i used to, but that faculty’s gone now. i’m too ill. i shall have to give up soon. then i shall be ruined, and die in the workhouse. it’s an awful thing, beckett, after working hard all your life, to die in the workhouse.{103}”
“can’t say, sir,” said harry jokingly; “i never tried it.”
but mr. saxon wouldn’t joke. he kept on talking in such a melancholy way that at last we all began to feel miserable. he said that life was all a mistake—that it was no good trying to be anything in the world, because death was sure to come, and that misery and trouble were our portions from the cradle to the grave. then he began to tell the most dreadful stories about people he’d known, and the awful things that had happened to them; and harry, who wasn’t used to that sort of thing, got up and said, “excuse me, mr. saxon, i’ll go and get a little fresh air. if i listen to you much longer i shall begin to believe that i’d better take the missis and the baby and tie them round my neck and jump into the canal, before anything worse happens to us.”
“oh, don’t mind me,” said mr. saxon; “i’m always like that when i’ve got dyspepsia—and i’ve got it awfully this afternoon.”
“well,” said harry, “the best thing for that is exercise. come and have a good walk.”
they went out, harry and mr. saxon and the swedish gentleman, and when they came back they were all roaring with laughter. mr. saxon had forgotten all about his ailments, and harry told me mr. saxon and the swedish gentleman had been pretending that they were two agents from london, who were down to look for the next heir to a john smith, who had died in australia worth a hundred thousand pounds, and they’d been into all the cottages making inquiries and questioning the people about their great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers, and harry said that they’d set the whole village agog, and that half the people in it had tried to make out that they once had a relative named smith. harry laughed when he told me, because it was so droll, the way all the people began to tell mr. saxon their family histories, the swedish gentleman taking it all down, as grave as a judge, in his note-book.
he said it was as good as a play. but it was an awful nuisance when people kept coming in and wanting to see the two gentlemen, and leaving bits of paper with the names of their ancestors written on, and old samplers, and{104} i don’t know what. and one old gentleman from the almshouses, who hadn’t been out of his room for three months, was brought down in a wheelbarrow, with his family bible to show his mother’s maiden name was smith; and he was so disappointed not to find the hundred thousand pounds waiting for him, that harry had to give him a shilling and a bit of tobacco to comfort him.
it really was too bad of mr. saxon to have played a joke like that, because people in a country place always have an idea that they are “next of kin,” or whatever you call it, to rich people, and that there is unclaimed money waiting for them.
you have only to mention that somebody of their name is advertised for or inquired for, and they are certain that they are coming into a fortune. almost every old lady in a country place believes that there is a fortune left to her somewhere, if she only knew where to look for it.
but mr. saxon got nicely paid out for his joke. there was an old lady who lived in the village, a regular character, called mrs. croker, though her real name was mrs. smith—croker having been the name of her first husband and smith of her second; but she went back to her first husband’s name when her second ran away. she was an awful tartar if all they say of her was true, and no wonder the first one died and the second ran away. she was married from the village, her family living there for centuries, and that’s how her history was so well known.
she married a very quiet, middle-aged man first, and went to live in london with him, where he worked at his trade; but she was the master, it seems, from the first. they had a little house over lambeth way. she made him scrub the stairs and clean the steps, and do all the house-work that a woman generally does, before he went to his work and after he came home from it; and he had to give her all his money, and she allowed him so much a day, just enough for his fare and his dinner that he had to get out. and woe betide him if he didn’t come home to his tea to the minute he ought to be home!
he was due home at half-past five from his work, and{105} at five-and-twenty minutes to six the tea was all cleared away, and he had to go without for being late. then she used to set him to do cleaning or whatever had to be done, and she always found him a job, because she said it wasn’t good for a man to be idle.
once a friend called to see poor mr. croker, i was told, but she answered the door and gave the friend a bit of her mind. she said when a man came home he belonged to his wife, and she wasn’t going to have any dissolute companions coming there after him luring him into bad ways.
you can guess what a nice sort of woman she was; perhaps being over forty when she married had something to do with it.
poor mr. croker was a very mild little man who daren’t say his soul was his own, and he obeyed like a lamb, and was very kind to her with it all, and i dare say loved her very much—for i’ve heard, and i dare say it’s true, that men do love women like that sometimes much better than women who let themselves be trodden on.
on sunday mr. croker had to work harder than ever, because his wife went to church in the morning, and left him at home to do the cooking and get the dinner ready, and when she came home she sat down and let him dish it up, and a nice to-do there was if everything wasn’t quite right.
on sunday afternoon she used to have a nap, and to keep croker out of mischief she used to give him the sunday-school books that she had had when a little girl to read, and, to make sure he didn’t go to sleep or get lazy, she used to make him learn the collect for the day and a hymn while she was asleep, and he had to say them when she woke up.
it seems hardly possible that a man would lead such a life, but poor croker did, and i know that it is true, for i can judge by her goings-on now, when i see her very often; and all the people who knew about her married life tell the same story, and poor croker’s “mates” in his workshop told what they had heard from him when he died, and there was an inquest on him.
but i must not anticipate.
to show how she treated her husband, it was a fact{106}—and she confessed it herself—that she didn’t even let him have what she had in the way of crockery. she had nicer things, china and that sort of thing, which she used for herself, but poor croker had his tea in a big yellow mug, and had a common cracked old plate to have his dinner on, and had his beer in the same old yellow mug, while she had hers in a glass; and even the beer was different, he having to fetch her a pint of the best, while he was only allowed half a pint of the common.
it was one sunday afternoon that mr. croker came to his end, and it was really through his being so afraid of his wife.
it seems she never allowed him to smoke, because she said it was a wasteful habit; but he used to keep a pipe at the shop, and smoke it secretly till he got near his home, and then call at a friend’s house and leave it for fear she should search his pockets and find it on him.
he had some way of not smelling of tobacco by having a chronic cough, which made him always take a coughdrop that hid the smell of tobacco; and that was enough, because i shouldn’t suppose that mrs. croker ever so far unbent her dignity as to kiss the poor man.
sunday was his great trial, because he was never allowed out till evening, and then she always went with him for a short stroll. not being able to get a smoke that day made him want it all the more—which is only human nature, and always has been.
at last, noticing that she used to sleep very soundly of an afternoon, he got artful, and would learn his collect beforehand in his dinner-hour at the shop, and, when she was asleep and snoring, creep out of the room with his hymn-book, and learn that over a pipe down in the shed that was at the bottom of the yard, where the coals were always kept, they having no underground coal-cellar in the little house they lived in. he was afraid to smoke in the garden, for fear the neighbours should see him and by chance let her know he had been smoking. so he used to crawl into the shed, and had made himself a comfortable corner there, and a seat on an old basket turned upside down, and he had a candle, which he stuck up to read by; and that was his most enjoyable half-hour on sunday.{107}
he always managed to go in with some coals, so that, if she woke up and missed him, he could say, when he came in, he had been to the coal-shed. he had to work the kitchen fire in the summer very carefully, so as to make it always want coals just at that time.
his end was very awful. it seems that mrs. croker, who was always one to drive a bargain, and had bought no end of things cheap, which she hoarded away, being a miser, as you may guess, had been offered a big can of oil, that is burned in lamps, cheap by a neighbour who had the brokers in, and been sold up or something of the sort, and she had bought it and had it taken into this shed.
one dark sunday afternoon, poor croker, knowing nothing about the oil, went into the coal-shed and lit his candle, and sat down to learn his hymn and have his pipe, when, in settling himself down, he knocked over the can that he didn’t know was there, and it made him jump, and in his fright down he came and the candle too, and he and the candle fell into a pool of the oil, and everything was in a blaze in a minute.
his screams brought assistance, and he was got out, but not before he was so burned that he never got over it, but died a little while after.
it was at the inquest that it came out why he was there smoking, one of his mates volunteering and giving off a bit of his mind before the coroner could stop him.
mrs. croker, after she got over the shock, said it was a judgment, and it all happened through men deceiving their wives; but other people who knew all about her put it differently.
two years after mr. croker’s quiet sunday pipe had caused his end, mrs. croker, who must have had a tidy bit of money, because she had saved a good deal out of croker’s wages, and was always thrifty, and had his club and insurance money, married again. this time she married a younger man, a man in good work, named dan smith. i suppose mr. smith thought she had a bit of money, and didn’t know what a character she was.
at any rate, mrs. croker became mrs. smith, and she tried the same game on with daniel as she had with the other.{108}
but daniel didn’t take it quite in the same way. he humoured her at first, and cleaned the steps and cooked the dinner; but they say it was over the collect and the hymn on sunday afternoon that they fell out.
he said if she went out sunday mornings he should go out sunday afternoons, and he should smoke his pipe out of doors and in the house, too. he wouldn’t give up his baccy for the best woman breathing.
they had awful quarrels about it, and neither would give way; and, what’s more, mr. smith wouldn’t hand over all his wages every week as mr. croker had done.
she must have led him a pretty life in consequence, for one saturday morning mr. smith went out, and he didn’t come home to dinner, and he didn’t come home to tea. mrs. smith worked herself up into an awful rage, and was getting ready to make it warm for him when he did come in—but he didn’t come in to supper, and he didn’t come in all night.
then she got awfully frightened, and the next morning, sunday, she went down to the works and found out where the foreman lived, and went to see if he could tell her anything. the foreman told her that dan had left his employment, having given a week’s notice the saturday before, and had wished them all good-bye; and then she knew that her husband hadn’t meant to come home—in fact, that he had run away from her.
she went on anyhow about him then, and called him dreadful names, and said he was a villain, and vowed she would find him, if she went to the end of the world after him, and have him up for deserting her.
she didn’t get much sympathy from anybody, because people knew how she’d treated her first husband, and they said she didn’t deserve to have another; but some of the mischievous people played jokes on her. one would come to her and say, “oh, mrs. smith, your husband was seen last night with a young woman in a public-house at bow.”
off she would go to the place, and insist on seeing the landlord, and make a fine to-do, accusing him of harbouring her husband. wherever people told her her husband had been seen she would go, till she had been half over{109} london, and she began to be known as “the old gal who was looking for her husband.”
but at last she gave up the search and sold up her home, and came back to live in her native village near where our house is; and then she pretended to be very poor, and used to ask herself out to tea to different people’s houses as often as she could, and would come in and talk about her wrongs, till people used to have to make all sorts of excuses to get rid of her.
she was said to wear all her clothes one set on top of the other, and she certainly looked very bulky always; and whenever she called and people were at tea, she’d have a cup, and manage to take a lump or two of sugar extra and put in her pocket, and was always asking to be obliged with a stamp, which she didn’t pay for, and all that sort of thing.
she managed to make friends with us somehow soon after we came, and when we weren’t at tea or dinner when she came in, she would have an awful attack of the spasms, and, of course, at first i used to say, “have a little brandy, or a little gin,” and she never said “no.”
i had managed to stop her calling so often when mr. saxon started that story about the mr. smith who had died in australia. she heard of it, and she was certain it was her husband, and down she came to our place and insisted on seeing the agents.
we tried to get rid of her, saying they weren’t in, but she said she’d stay till they did come in, and at last mr. saxon had to see her to try and get rid of her.
but once she got in his room, there she stuck. it was no good his saying the man smith had been in australia fifty years—she knew better. for everything he said she had an argument ready, and she demanded the name of his employers, and i don’t know what; and as he had some writing to do he got out of temper, and then she slanged him, and said he was in the conspiracy, and at last he put her out of his room and locked the door.
we got her away after she’d shouted at him outside his door for a quarter of an hour; but when he went out the next morning for a walk she was waiting for him, and she followed him and the swedish gentleman through the{110} village, shouting at them, till everybody came out of their doors, and mr. saxon had to run fast to get away from her, because she couldn’t run far with three or four complete sets of clothes on.
when mr. saxon returned he came in the back way and sat down in a chair.
“good heavens, mary jane,” he said, “that old woman will drive me mad! can’t she be put in the pound?”
i said it was a pity he had put that story about, because it would never do to say there was no mr. smith—all the other people would be so indignant. he must think of something to persuade mrs. smith it wasn’t her husband.
“i know,” said the swedish gentleman; “we must show her a photograph of the real mr. smith, and say that’s the man. then she can’t say it’s her husband.”
“but i don’t carry photographs about with me,” said mr. saxon. then he asked me if i had one.
“no,” i said, “not that she wouldn’t recognize, because she’s looked through my album over and over again, and i can’t borrow one of anybody in the village, because she’d recognize that too. she knows everybody’s business.”
“oh, leave it to me, sir,” said the swedish gentleman; “i’ll manage to get one.”
so he went out and got a photograph, and i heard afterwards how he got it. he certainly was very clever at scheming and planning, seeming to like it.
he went to the photographers in the nearest town to us and asked if they had any photographs of celebrities, and they said, “no; there was no demand for them.” then he asked if they had any photographs of anybody who didn’t live in the place or near the place. the photographer thought a minute, and then said, “yes; he thought he had.” he went to a drawer, and brought out a photograph of a man.
“i’m sure that is a stranger,” he said; “you can have this.” the swedish gentleman had said he wanted an old photograph to do a conjuring trick with, but didn’t want anybody who was an inhabitant.
he paid a shilling for the photo, and brought it back. when he got near our house he met mr. saxon, who had gone out for a stroll, and that blessed mrs. croker{111} was watching for him, and was on to him again demanding particulars of her husband’s death in australia and of her fortune. she wasn’t going to let a lot of people that had no claim on him get it.
mr. saxon asked the swedish gentleman in german if he’d got a photo. “yes,” he said.
then mr. saxon turned to mrs. croker and said, “madam, i suppose you would know your husband’s photograph?”
“yes, i should,” she said.
“then, madam, my friend will show you the photograph of our mr. smith, and you will see it is not your husband.”
the swedish gentleman took out his pocket-book and took the photograph he had bought from it.
“there, madam,” he said, “that is the mr. smith.”
“ah!” shouted the woman; “i knew it. that is my husband!”
and it was. the photographer had given the swedish gentleman a copy of the photograph of daniel smith. when mrs. croker came to the village she had had a dozen taken to send about, in case she ever heard of any clue in distant parts. the photographer had taken more than had been ordered—she wouldn’t pay for them, and he had to keep them. he had given one to the swedish gentleman.
that evening mr. saxon packed up and fled. he went away in a close carriage, and drove to a station four miles off, to elude the vigilance of mrs. croker.
she used to go to london about once a week regularly to look for him, and she was quite convinced that some day she would receive the hundred thousand pounds that her husband left in australia. she was convinced that she had been hoaxed at last by receiving news of the death of the real daniel smith. he had died at——
* * * * *
what’s that smell of burning? it’s from the kitchen. why, cook, what are you thinking of? you know how particular no. 7 is, and these cutlets are burned to a cinder. you—— why, good heavens, the woman’s drunk!
