Volume Three – Chapter Eight.
Jared’s Trouble
“And the box not been touched since,” muttered Jared Pellet, – “not been touched since;” and he repeated the words which he had heard from Mr Timson but a few days before, as he stood in the porch of the old church, looking straight before him in a hopeless dreamy way. He had had no occasion to be there, no business to be there; for he had conducted the service for the last time, and on the next or the following day he would be called upon to give up his key. But that organ seemed to draw him there, so that he dreamed over it, clung to it, as he recalled that he must so soon give up his duties, and in such a fashion.
They knew nothing, suspected nothing at home; they only said that he practised oftener than ever, – that he hurried through little jobs to get to the church, where he spent long hours gazing in the reflector, and dreaming of the past and future, or making the passengers in the street pause and listen to the grand old strains. At times, he could scarcely bring himself to believe that it was true; but the inexorable crept on, till he could feel that he was only there upon sufferance, and blamed his want of pride in not giving up before.
The Reverend John had ceased to preach monetary discourses, and bowed austerely when once he encountered Jared, who shrank back, although he had fully determined to address him. Mr Timson, too, gave him no further opportunities for conversation, but passed him at a half-trot, with both hands under his coat-tails, giving him short, sharp, defiant nods. Even old Purkis grew strange and constrained, backing away from him, and bursting forth into a dew of perspiration which entailed no end of mopping and wiping. As for Mrs Ruggles, she never had been in the habit of bending to sociability, so that her stiff formality was passed unnoticed.
No; there was no keeping away from the old place now; and day after day, Ichabod grew richer with the many coppers he earned as Jared tortured the instrument into the giving forth of wondrous wails and groans; no jubilant strains, but all sorrowful, and in harmony with his broken spirit.
Twelve o’clock! Ichabod dismissed, and the hour just struck by the old church clock in a halting broken-winded manner, as if the job was too much for it, while an ordinary listener would have been tired out before it reached half-way. But Jared listened, and shivered and shuddered too, as, after beating laboriously its heaviest task, it set in motion certain hammers which knocked “Adeste Fidelis” out of the bells, beaten out notes that came in a jerky, disjointed fashion, and muddled up with their rests – now one in its place, now three or four blundered together, as if in a hurry to finish a performance of which they were heartily ashamed.
But Jared stood it out, telling himself that most likely it was for the last time. Then he tried the church-door to make sure that it was fast, and afterwards slunk off slowly, and apparently believing that people could read the crime of which he was accused branded upon his forehead. Perhaps that was why he crushed his hat down over his eyes, and bent his head so as to encounter neither scowl of avoidance nor pitying glance.
In Duplex Street at last! and pausing to pull his face three or four different ways so as to get upon it a pleasant expression before inserting his latch-key; and, entering, to stand rubbing his feet upon the worn old mat, which had to be held steady with one foot while the other was cleaned, and had been so affected by time that, hydra-fashion, it was fast turning itself into two mats of a smaller size. Then, it took some time, to take off the old black kid-gloves, which Jared had cut down into mittens in consequence of finger dilapidations, or, as he said, to keep his hands warm when playing in the fireless church.
But there were cheery voices ascending the stairs, so putting away his last sigh, like his umbrella in a corner, he descended to the kitchen, and tried to enter, but the door handle only turned round and round, and would not move the latch. Directly after, though, there came the sound as of some one wriggling it back with a knife-blade.
“There, don’t touch me,” cried Patty, “or I shall flour you all over.”
The warning came too late, for Jared had already taken her in his arms to place a couple of kisses upon her blooming cheeks.
“There, I knew I should,” she continued; “and if I touch it I shall make it worse. But, father dear, I’d have that lock mended, or we shall all be fastened in some day.”
“Ah!” said Jared. “Now, if it could be repaired with glue, I might manage it myself.”
But as that seemed impossible, Jared began to hum a tune, his thoughts the while hanging upon the subject of his dismissal, as he wondered whether they had yet any inkling of the secret which oppressed him.
“Time enough for them to know when all is over, and I’ve given up the keys,” he muttered; “for even yet something may be found out. If not,” he thought, bitterly, “we must starve.”
“Has the vicar been or sent?” he said, in husky tones, but assuming all the indifference possible.
“No,” said Mrs Jared; “I’ve been thinking about him all the morning. Isn’t he late?”
Jared thought he was, and said so. But all the same, he had not expected him, only a cheque for his last quarter’s salary – money always heretofore paid to the day, though it was not likely that upon this occasion the vicar would follow out his old pleasant custom and bring the cheque himself. But Jared tried to persuade himself that even that was possible, for drowning men are said to clutch at straws, and Jared was drowning fast. He had kept his head above water a long time, but now all seemed at an end, and the waters of tribulation appeared about to close over him.
Mrs Pellet and her daughter continued to be occupied in domestic affairs, while now, as if Jared’s misery were not great enough, the straw seemed to be snatched from the drowning man as there came the terrible thought – Suppose that the vicar should not send at all? suppose that, taking into consideration how he had refrained from prosecuting, he should consider the quarter’s salary as forfeited?
Not a heavy sum certainly, but to Jared the want of it would be ruin piled upon ruin, a cruel heel crushing the head already in the dust.
“They told me to clear myself, to prove that they were wrong – and what have I done? But, there! absurd! They could not keep back the money; it would not be legal.”
But suppose that, legal or illegal, they kept it back to make up for the missing money, how then? The vicar would not do such a thing, he was too kind-hearted; but Timson might prompt him – Timson, who had always been so ready with his suspicions. He would go and tell him to his face of his cruelty to a wronged man. He dared meet him, though he now shrank from encountering the vicar. But no; he was too hasty; the money was not legally due until he had formally given up the organ-key. But if they did keep it back – that twelve pounds ten – could he not take legal proceedings for its recovery? How, when they had been so lenient to him?
“Lenient!” his brow grew wrinkled as the word flashed over his mind. Was he not innocent, unless indeed he had committed the theft in his sleep – walked to the church from sheer habit? But absurd! he was innocent. “Prove it, sir – prove it,” rang in his ears, and he seemed to see before him the stiff figure of the little churchwarden, with his hands stuck beneath the tails of his coat. “Prove it, sir – prove it,” and how was he to prove it?
Jared Pellet was a good actor, schooled in adversity; but on that day he was about worn out, and a less shrewd person than his wife would have seen that something was wrong. She noted it before he had been in long, and attributed it to the fact that they had not a penny in hand. He tried to laugh and be cheery, but his attempts were of so sorry a nature that Mrs Jared looked hard at him, when he seemed so guilty of aspect, that he was glad to call in the aid of a pocket-handkerchief, and make a feeble attempt at a sneeze.
“You won’t mind a makeshift dinner to-day?” said Patty, intent upon her task of preparing the repast.
Needless question to one who had practised the art of making shift for so many years, and to whom a good dinner was an exception to the rule.
“Been wanted while I was out?” said Jared, after declaring that he should enjoy the makeshift above all things. “Been wanted?” for it was a pleasant fiction with Jared that he did a large business in the musical instrument line, and that it was not safe for him to be away for a minute, though it was not once in a hundred absences that he was required; but the question sounded business-like, and he asked it regularly.
The answer was just what he expected – in the negative; but it came in so dreary a tone that Jared stared.
The reason was plain enough: Mrs Jared had caught his despondent complaint, and was rocking the baby over the fire as she counted up the holes that the expected cheque was to stop in connection with unpleasant demands for money, which she would have to answer meekly and with promises. The tears rose to her eyes as she thought of it all – tears reflected the next moment in those of Patty.
“What would they say if they knew all?” groaned Jared to himself as he saw the tears. But he felt that he must stave it off a little longer, as he planted a child on either knee so as to have something to do, and then declared himself to be ravenous for want of food.
Poor Patty finished her preparations. She brought out the scrap of cold mutton, and took up the potatoes and plain boiled rice-pudding, but her merry smile was gone. She too had her troubles, and it took but little to upset her. As she caught sight of her mother’s sad face, she had hard work to keep her own tears back; for the chill that seemed to have come upon their home had struck to her heart, schooled as it had lately been to trouble.
Volume Three – Chapter Nine.
Expectancy
It was a bitter day without, and now it seemed as cold within. The very fire in the bright little grate appeared to have turned duller, and the air more chill. As to the cold scraps of mutton, they were perfectly icy, and the fat flew off in chips and splinters. A cloud had settled down upon the house, so that there were even great tears round the potato-dish. As to piercing the cloud, all Jared’s efforts were in vain, for as fast as he tried to shine in a warm and genial manner to disperse this oppressive mist of adversity, he encountered one of Mrs Jared’s looks, which he interpreted to be suspicious – doubtful; and, one way and another, the meal was cold, not merely to a degree, but to many.
There was no work to do that afternoon; no musical cripples to doctor orthopaedically; no cracked instruments to solder, putty, or wax-end; no bellows to mend, hammers to refit, or false notes to tune in accordion or concertina. Trade was at a standstill, and Jared wondered how he should get through the afternoon till the hour when he had appointed Ichabod to meet him at the church for a last long evening practice at the old organ.
But the dinner was hardly over before the postman came by. Jared knew his legs as they passed the area grating, and ran up-stairs to see if he were coming there. For a wonder, he was, and as may be supposed, he left a letter.
Strange hand, and yet familiar. It must be from the vicar. But no; it was not his hand, Jared knew that too well to be mistaken, and his fingers involuntarily felt in his breastpocket for the missive which contained the key – a missive that he had of late told himself he ought to have taken to a good solicitor for advice, instead of quietly sitting down beneath the slur.
But perhaps, under the circumstances, the vicar had felt disposed to let some one else write to him. It must be the cheque; there could not be a doubt about it. No one else would write to him unless – unless —
Jared’s brow grew moist, as, in the ignorance of such matters, he stood trembling with the letter in his hand. Might not the vicar have taken legal proceedings, and sent him a summons, now that his time had expired?
That was a dreadful thought, and embraced innumerable horrors – the felon’s dock, police-van, cells, convicts, servitude, and worse, infinitely worse than all – a starving wife and children. Jared had a hard fight to recover his composure before going down again to the kitchen, where he tore open the letter.
Mr McBriar, the landlord, had sent his compliments, and a reminder, that though the rent for the quarter ending at Christmas would be due in a few days, that for the quarter ending at Michaelmas had not yet been paid.
Jared doubled the letter again very carefully, so as to hit the right folds, replaced it in the envelope, and handed it to his wife, who had the pleasure of taking it out and reading it, when Jared saw a tear fall upon the paper, and make a huge blot, turning the sheet of a darker colour as it soaked in.
Tears breed tears, and two bright drops sprang to Patty’s eyes as she thought of her own sorrows, of the troubles overhanging the Brownjohn Street house, and the way in which poor Janet was suffering. Then came thoughts of Harry Clayton; at times soft tender thoughts, at times those of indignation; and she told herself that he could not love her, or he would never have been ashamed to own her before his friends.
Did she love him? She asked herself the question, and replied to it with burning cheeks that she thought she did; – no, she was sure that she loved him very, very much. Oh I how gladly would the poor girl have gone up-stairs, and thrown herself upon her bed, to have a long, long, girlish cry.
“Would not Richard lend you a few sovereigns?” said Mrs Jared to her husband in a whisper.
“No, no; don’t, please,” cried Jared, in a supplicating voice. “Anything but that.” For in an instant he had conjured up the figure of his angry brother, and his disgrace. That brother calling him villain, thief, and scoundrel; upbraiding him once more for bringing disgrace upon the name so honoured amongst the money-changers of the great temple of commerce. “You know how I have asked him before, and what has been his reply. I can’t do it again. But there!” he said, in as cheerful a tone as he could command, “don’t fidget; things will come right. They always do, if you give them time enough; only we are such a hurried race of beings, and we get worse now there are steam-engines and telegraphs to work for us.”
To have seen Jared then, it might have been supposed that he was in the best of spirits, for he began to hum scraps of airs, beginning with “Pergolesi,” and ending with “Jim Crow.”
Having no work of his own, he attended to the fire, to clear away its dulness; but he never well succeeded, for the coals were small, and the stock very low.
Then he nursed the baby for ten minutes; in short, he tried every possible plan to raise the bitter temperature of the place. “Let it come in its own good time,” he muttered; “there’s no occasion for them to meet the trouble half-way.”
Six different times, though, was Jared at that window, watching, with beating heart, figures dimly seen through the grating bars – figures which had slackened pace, or stopped, as if about to call. Once Jared turned with a deceptive smile, declaring that an old gentleman had passed, so like the vicar that he was not even sure that it was not he gone by in mistake.
“Nonsense!” said Mrs Jared, sadly, rejecting the comfort intended for her. And no one called at Jared’s house, while he felt that it would be impossible for him to ask for the money. Had he been differently circumstanced, he would have refused it altogether; but with a wife and large family, debts, and no regular income, it would have been madness.
Once he had decided that he would tell all, and be out of his miserable state of suspense; but the next minute, with a shiver, he had again put off the disclosure, and moodily began to think over the treatment he had received where he had asked counsel and advice, the hot blood rising to his cheeks as he recalled the manner in which the behaviour of his child had been interpreted.
Five o’clock, and no vicar, no money; and Jared to some extent rejoiced, for he dreaded the vicar’s coming, lest the reason of his leaving should be mentioned. And now he brightened up with the thought that it might be possible to conceal the true cause of his leaving the church from those at home, for, instead of looking there for advice and comfort, he shivered with dread lest it should come to their ears. As to Purkis, and the Ruggleses, he would move – go somewhere where he was not known, and where his friends could not find him, making what excuse he could.
“Business could not be worse,” muttered Jared to himself; and then he turned to the social meal, resting his hand for a moment upon the head of Patty, who was deepening the hue of her cheeks by making toast, half sitting, half reclining upon the little patchwork hearthrug, in an attitude which bespoke strait-waistcoats and padded rooms for any artists who might have seen her. For, if Patty’s face was not beautiful, the same could not be said of her figure, wrapped by the fire in a rich warm glow, which caressed the smooth long braids of her rich brown hair, and flashed again from her eyes. And all this ready to be Harry Clayton’s for the asking. Well might Patty sigh that there was no Harry there to ask.
“There’s some one now,” cried Jared, excitedly, as the scraping of feet was heard upon the bars of the grating, and then a footstep stopped at the door, followed directly by a heavy knock which reverberated through the little house. “Here, Patty, show a light.”
But before Patty could get half-way up the kitchen-stairs, she heard the front door opened, and a gruff voice exclaimed —
“For Mr Morrison, and wait for an answer.”
“Next door,” said Jared, in a disappointed tone.
“Why don’t you get yer numbers painted over again, then?” grunted the voice, which seemed to consider an apology as a work of supererogation. “Who’s to tell eights from nines, I should like to know?”
“No message for any one of the name of Pellet, eh?” said Jared.
The visitor muttered something inaudible, and then came the noise of a heavy thump on the door of the next house, when Jared sighed, closed his own door, and turned to meet Patty.
“I would not have that man’s unpleasant disposition for a trifle, my child, that I would not,” said Jared; and then he descended to find his wife in tears, Patty trying hard the while to keep her own back; and, do what he could, Jared Pellet, organist of St Runwald’s, could not pull out a stop that should produce a cheerful strain where all seemed sadness and woe.
The tea was fragrant, though weak; the toast just brown enough without being burned; while the children ate bread and dripping, just as if – Mrs Jared said – it grew upon the hedges.
But the social meal was now unsocial to a degree. Mrs Pellet hardly spoke, while Jared drank his tea mechanically – three cups – and would have gone on pouring it down for any length of time, if a reference to the Dutch clock had not shown the time to be a quarter to six.
Jared hurriedly rose, to keep his appointment at the church, and prepared to start.
“If – if,” he said, “the vicar, or a messenger, should come, don’t let him in, but send him to me at the church.”
Volume Three – Chapter Ten.
In the Church
Out into the keen night air went Jared Pellet; but as soon as he was outside his own door, his heart seemed to sink down, heavy, heavier, heaviest, for he was going for his last practice. The old church was to peal with chords from his hands for the very last time; and, filled with bitterness, he strode on, thinking of the day of his triumph, when, in preference to so many, he was chosen organist; of the bright visions of prosperity he had then conjured up, all now faded away, leaving nothing but desolation. There had been a heavy fall of snow, and the streets were hushed and still, even the wheels of the few vehicles seemed muffled.
He shivered with the cold, and at the silence, which seemed oppressive. There were few people about, and though, as he saw them coming, the sight was welcome, Jared Pellet shrank away lest they might divine his misery. He could hardly believe in such sorrow as now seemed his lot; while he was ready to utter maledictions upon the head of his brother, who heeded them not, but upon whom he laid the blame of making him flinch from telling his wife and daughter the whole story. Was he not now a suspected thief – a beggar? and should he not soon be looked upon at home as a hypocrite and deceiver? Well might he, in his abstraction, be hustled and jostled by those he met, for at times his gait was almost that of a drunken man.
Six o’clock was striking as he reached St Runwald’s, but there was no Ichabod waiting, neither was he overing the little fat tombstone that had sunk so far into the earth, nor making snowballs in the path; so Jared kicked the snow from his boots, unlocked the great door, walked in, and, in an absent fit, locked himself into the great gloomy church. Not that it mattered, for Ichabod Gunnis had forgotten the practice, and at this time, in company with three or four birds of a feather, he was lying in ambush in a cour at a little distance, whence he could throw snowballs at the drivers and conductors of the various ’buses.
So Jared Pellet told himself that it was for the last time that he was standing in the gloomy edifice; and rapping his teeth with the key, he slowly made his way to the organ-loft, where, after five minutes’ fumbling, he found his match-box, and lit the single candle by which he practised, abstaining from touching the blower’s dip, till such time as that functionary should arrive.
And there sat, with bended head, the desolate man, the centre of a halo of light, which dimly displayed his music, the reflector, and the keys and stops. Above him towered the huge, gilt pipes; while from every corner looked down the carven cherubim, here and there one with a flush of light upon its swollen cheeks. The building was very dark, for the light from street lamp or shop shone but faintly through the windows. The snow from without sent in a ghastly glimmer, sufficient to show the black beams and rafters high up in the open roof, where dust and cobwebs ruled supreme. The tall aisle pillars stood in two ghostly rows; while upon the funereal hatchments between, lay here and there a streak of light, shot through some coloured pane, to lend a bar sinister never intended by the heraldic painter. Now it was the tablet-supported napkin, draped over a carved angel, that caught the light, and stood out strangely from the surrounding darkness, while all below was black, deep, and impenetrable – a sea of shadows, with pew-like waves and a holland-covered pulpit and reading-desk for vessels, to stand out dimly from the surrounding gloom.
Patchy and ill diffused was the light; as if tired and worn with its efforts to struggle through the wire-protected, stained-glass windows, it rested where it fell, to peer down grimly upon the darkness in the nave.
Four times over, eight times over, times uncounted, had the chimes rung out the quarters, and stroke by stroke the hours were told, vibrating heavily through the church, and still Jared sat in the organ-loft in his old position. He was alone, for no Ichabod had come to rattle the handle and kick the big oaken door. But Jared thought not of cold or gloom, for his soul was dead within him as he mourned, in the sadness of his heart, for the poverty and misery which clung to him, and his inability to ward them off. He could tell himself that he had struggled manfully, hiding his sorrows from those who were dear to him; but now he felt that he was beaten, conquered – that the hard fight had gone against him, and that he must give up.
But where had that money gone? Who had taken it? Had they still watched and tried to find the thief, or rested satisfied with their discovery? He knew not, though strenuous efforts had been made by more than one; but, excepting in a single case, the money marked and left in the boxes had not been taken – a fact which vicar and churchwarden interpreted to mean that the guilty party was found. They had now therefore ceased watching, believing that the treasure was no longer interfered with; though had they once more examined the money, they would have found that two marked half-crowns and a florin had been extracted, as if the thief had seized his last chance of appropriating a portion of the little store.
“What will become of me? Where are we to go?” muttered Jared; and then he wrung his hands, and pressed them to his aching head. “And if they prosecute, what then?”
Jared Pellet shivered as he asked himself the question, while in fancy he could see reflected in the mirror before him every horror with which for days past he had been torturing himself, beginning with the bar of a police court, and ending with masked convicts in prison yards, toiling at some bitter task, and, like him, dreaming – dreams within dreams – of wives and children shivering at a workhouse door. He knew that he was making the worst of it, but he excused himself upon the plea that it was the first time that he had done so, and that never until now had he given up, for he was very miserable, and he again wrung his hands until the bones cracked.
“What – what shall I do?” groaned the wretched man. “The cheque will not come now; and if they should have sent to arrest me now upon this last day!” And then again in that reflector he conjured up before him the summons at his own door, the eager step of Patty, expecting a messenger from the vicar, and then the poor girl’s horror to find the police were upon her father’s track. He could see it all plainly enough in that old mirror, and he covered his face with his hands, and groaned again – “What shall I do? What shall I do?” in a helpless, childish fashion.
“Curse God and die,” seemed hissed in his ears; and Jared started and roused himself. He had read and heard of men being tempted into rebellion against their Maker; he had known of those who, in their despair, had been seized by some horrible impulse which had led them to rush headlong into the presence of the Judge – men rich in this world’s goods, high in the opinion of their fellows – men to whom high honours had been awarded in the temple of fame, – and yet unaccountably attacked by that dread horror which so often tempts the wretched prisoner to shorten the term of his punishment. Might not this be akin? Was not this some temptation? Oh! that wandering imagination – that too faithful mirror! Jared shuddered as in it he pictured more than one fearful termination of his career, and saw his wretched wife upon her knees beside something – something against which he closed his eyes, and upon whose horrors he dared not gaze.
Yes, this was some such temptation; but he was a man who could defy it; and starting forward, he seized two or three stops on either side of the instrument, and dragged them out, before running his fingers rapidly along the keys; but the next instant he paused and shuddered, for in place of the organ’s swelling tones came the low dull rattling bone-like sound of the keys, to rise and fall and go floating through the silent nave of the old church in a strangely weird, dumb cadence.
He gazed before him into his mirror, but it was a black depth, which gave but one reflection – his own ghastly face. Again he leaned forward and swept his fingers over the keys, as if engaged in playing one of his favourite voluntaries; but he ran through only a few lines, for the low soft rattle again floated through the church, and then he shuddered as he drew back his hands, for the scrap of candle in the sconce fell through, darting up one sharp blue flame, by whose rays the keys of the instrument seemed to grin at him like the teeth of some huge monster. Then all was silence and gloom, suited to his morbid imaginings, and the visions seemed to float before him once more in the mirror – old dreams – new dreams – old dreams with fresh incidents – dreams of his brother, mocking and jeering at his poverty, and in his prosperity ever crushing him down – dreams of misery – dreams of happiness, wooing and wedding, and joy-bells clashing out jubilant and merry – dreams – dreams – dreams pictured in the depths of that old mirror, and then darkness – a blank.
Cold and shuddering, he started up, for it seemed that a cold breath of air passed across his brow; then he was listening to a noise as of a closing door; then there was the soft pat as of footsteps – a rustling – the creak of a pew-door turning upon its hinges; and slowly turning his head, Jared Pellet sat with dilated eyes, there in the darkness and silence of the old church – listening.