“That wor right – that wor a good thought,” interposed the man.
“I went out then, and I came to a shop just close to the market, where I guessed as they’d know ’bout you. It wor a flower-shop; the man’s name is Thomson. And Thomson said, as good luck ’ud have it, he were just starting an empty waggon back into Kent, to be ready for a load of strawberries for Monday’s market. And ef I liked, he said, I could have a lift in it.
“So I spent the night in the waggon, Silas, and in the morning the waggon set me down nigh upon four miles off, and I walked the rest of the way.
“That’s all,” continued Jill, heaving a sigh, and sinking down into the old straw chair which had remained empty in Silas’s house since his mother’s death.
“There you be,” said Silas, clasping his hands in ecstasy. “You mind me o’ the lavender, as well as t’other and gayer flowers. There’s something wondrous subtle and sweet about yer – mignonette, too, you take arter, and I shouldn’t be a bit surprised ef I found cherry-pie flavour in yer before long. Verbeny and sweet-briar you air, and no mistake. But there, I must see and get yer a cup o’ tea, for you’re sore spent, my poor little cuttin’, and you won’t strike into this yere honest breast, ef I don’t see arter the watering.”
The members of the Wesleyan chapel to which Silas belonged would scarcely have known him this morning. The fact that he was expected to lead their choir was absolutely obliterated from his mind. It is very much to be doubted if he even remembered that the day on which Jill came to him was Sunday.
Jonathan, his factotum, and one servant, appeared presently on the scene, and nearly jumped when he saw his rough, fierce-looking master tenderly offering tea, minus milk and sugar, to the prettiest picture of a girl Jonathan’s eyes had ever rested on.
“You there!” shouted the master, “make yerself useful. Go round to Farmer Ladd’s, and bring in a pint o’ cream and a slab o’ butter, and ask ef the missis has a plump spring chicken ready plucked for roasting. And go on to Dawson’s in the village, and get a loaf of white bread. Quick! D’ye hear! Wot are ye staring at?”
“But it’s the Sawbath,” said Jonathan, dropping his jaws.
“Ef it’s fifty Sawbaths, go and do my biddin’. D’ye hear!”
Jonathan flew off, and strange whispers soon after began to circulate in the village with regard to that soberest and soundest of men, Silas Lynn.
But all the time Silas himself was in the Garden of Eden, for surely no Sunday like this had ever dawned before in his austere life.
“Ain’t the flowers purtty?” he said to Jill. “Never did I see anythink like ’em. Seems as if they knowed. Do look at the perky airs o’ them pansies! Sauce is no name for ’em – staring up at us two in that unblushing fashion. Eh, Jill, did you speak, my gel?”
“The flowers are like picters, Silas. I never see flowers like this all a-growin’ before. It’s very soothin’ to look on. They seem to still the ’eart.”
“Well, my ’eart’s a-bobbing and a-banging,” said Silas. “There’s no stilling o’ it to-day, nor for many another day, I guess. My word, wen you speak of yer ’eart being stilled, sounds as ef you were in pain of some sort.”
“No, Silas, I’m werry ’appy. But there’s a deal of pain in the world, you knows; and it’s comfortin’ to think as the flowers is meant for them as suffers. I must be asking yer for the money now, Silas, for I ha’ got to take the next train back to Lunnon.”
“I’ll come with yer, my gel.”
“No, please don’t. It’s a bargain that I am to give the money back to the one what gi’ it to me to keep, and no questions arsked. That’s a bargain, ain’t it, Silas Lynn?”
“To be sure, Jill. You don’t suppose as I doubts yer, my pretty little cuttin’? You come along to the ’ouse, and I’ll get the money out. ’Ow’ll yer take it? In silver or gowld?”
“I’d like five sovereigns best, Silas, ef you had ’em.”
“Well, we’ll see. You set there in the porch, and I’ll go and look.”
Silas presently returned with five new sovereigns, which he placed in Jill’s open palm. It was delightful to him to give. He had no idea that this gold was the price of freedom and of a girl’s first love.
“My word, how still she sets,” he muttered. “Breeding through and through. Wot flower is she most like now? The lavender, I’m thinking – so primily and shut-up like in its ways. She’ll make a wife in a thousand. I’m ’bout the luckiest feller in Christendom.”
Chapter Twelve
Quite early in the afternoon Jill returned to the humble little flat in Howard’s Buildings. She had felt nervous and excited until she got there. Nat might be waiting for her. Nat might have come and discovered her not there and gone away again, and the first suspicion of cold doubt might already have reached him. But when Jill discovered that Nat Carter had not yet arrived; when she questioned Mr Stanley, who assured her emphatically that that handsome young man, her sweet-heart, had not put in an appearance, she suddenly felt a strange quiet and almost apathy stealing over her.
She sat quietly in her mother’s chair and folded her hands on her lap.
She had got a task to perform, but the pain, the agony, which such work ought to cause her was not present at this moment. Nat should have his mate’s money back again, but Jill must tell him that she could never be his wife.
“There’s no help for it,” she muttered. “I must tell Nat as I can’t never wed him. I must make myself seem bad in his eyes. There ain’t nothing else for me to do. He’ll never know now, never to his dying day, that poor mother stole that ere money. The money part ’ull seem all right to him, but Jill – he’ll allers think o’ Jill as fickle and false. I must make him think that – there’s no help for me. I’ll wed Silas, and I’ll try to be good to him, and I must forget Nat wot I loves.”
Thoughts like these passed swiftly through the tired girl’s brain. She knew that she must soon speak cruel words. She must say good-bye to Nat.
“And I love him mor’n aught else in all the wide world,” she groaned. “I love mother – oh, I do love mother – but Nat – Nat comes first. If it were a case o’ choosing, perhaps I’d be mean enough to cling on to Nat, and let poor mother go, but it ain’t a case of choosing. Nat’s young and strong; he ha’ got a true, true heart, and an honest face, and he’s ’spectable – oh, he’s bitter ’spectable. There are lots of nice girls in the world, and Nat ’ull get his pick, and it’s best for him to have nothing to say to a girl what have a mother what drinks. Nat’s all right; he’ll comfort hisself soon; it’ll be easy for Nat to get another wife; but poor mother, she has no one but me, for the boys they don’t count. Mother suffers bad pain, and she’s nearly distraught with one sorrow and another. It ain’t a case o’ choice. I must cling to poor mother.”
When Jill came to this point in her reflections she rose and went into the inner room. Seeing her dishevelled and untidy appearance in the little square of looking-glass, her first instinct was to brush her black hair smooth, and wash her face, and bring her whole little person back to the absolute order and fresh neatness which was part of her beauty; but on second thoughts she refrained from doing this. Her object now was to put Nat against her.
“It’ll cut him much less to the ’art ef he sees for his own self that I ain’t the Jill he thought I were,” she murmured.
She threw off her shawl, therefore, and, with a sigh of physical discomfort, came back again to the kitchen.
She had scarcely done so before Nat’s knock was heard at the door. She went at once and opened it for him.
“Is that you?” she said. “You might ha’ come sooner. I were getting tired o’ waiting; it’s dull settin’ indoors on a fine Sunday. Come in ef you want to, though.”
Her tone was almost flippant. Nat opened his blue eyes in astonishment. He himself was in the most irreproachable Sunday go-to-meeting dress. He wore a button-hole of carnations. The sweet scent of that special flower gave Jill a sick, faint feeling for many a day afterwards. His hair was brushed from his broad white forehead. There was a fresh colour in his cheeks, and his happy eyes looked like a bit of the sky.
Jill’s untidy, almost slovenly, appearance distressed him nearly as much as her change of voice, but he determined to take no notice. He came in and sat down, therefore, and said after a very brief pause in a gentle voice:
“It wor Clara Williams wot kep’ me. The poor thing is nearly distraught with misery. It’s quite piteous to see her. And as to those four little orphans, wot is to come o’ them? I’m sorry I were late, Jill, but we can go out now and have a real jolly time. I can give you the rest of the day, sweet-heart. Ain’t yer mother home, Jill? Wor yer alone all the morning, my little love?”
“Indeed, no,” said Jill, “I had company, and fine company too, but it worn’t mother. Mother’s out. She ain’t very well, and she wants lots o’ air and exercise, but I hadn’t a dull time, so don’t you think it, Nat.”
“Well, I’m glad on it. You may be quite sure I were thinking on yer when I were doing things for Clara Williams. I’m right glad you worn’t dull. Shall we go out now, Jill?”
“No, thank yer, I’m dead beat. I have been out already for hours. I s’pose you has come for the money, Nat. Here it is back. You count it and see ef I ain’t stole none.”
Nat raised his eyes in astonishment. Jill, who was standing with her back slightly turned to him, held out the money in the identical brown-paper wrapper which he had given her the five sovereigns in.
“Here, take it, I’m well rid on it,” she said impatiently.
Nat held out his hand and took the little parcel.
“Open it,” she said; “count the sovereigns. You ’member as you give me five sovereigns. See for yerself that they are all there.”
“Why, what is come to you, Jill?” said Nat. “You speak queer. I don’t seem to know you to-day.”
Jill gave a short little laugh.
“I has many sides,” she said. “Sometimes I’m all honey, sometimes I’m all winegar. It’s best as the man what mates me should know me all round.”
“Yes,” said poor Nat, “and I thought I did know yer all round, Jill: I made sure on it. I allers said as I’d never marry in haste. It’s an orful thing, marriage. Once done it can’t be undone; and I said as the gel what I took for wife should be my friend for many and many a day first. You ’member when we wor at school together, Jill. How I took yer part, and how yer sat near me, and how straight you always wor, never skulking away from yer lessons and never shirking the truth. You wor a bit o’ tomboy, no doubt, but you wor true and sweet all round. You has growed up true and sweet, and more beautiful nor any picter. There’s no winegar in you, my own Jill, but there’s a cloud over yer. Come and tell me about it. Put yer head here on my breast and tell me all ’bout, it.”
“No, no, Nat,” said Jill; “I don’t say as there ain’t a cloud. I don’t want, even on this bitter day, to say words what ain’t true, but there’s no goin’ to you for comfort any more, for we must part.”
“Part!” said Nat, “part!” His lips fell apart, his blue eyes flashed an angry fire. Then he closed his mouth firmly, and a hard look settled down on his handsome face. “Do yer mean as you’re tired on me?” he said. “You ha’ spoke werry strange since I come in, and you ha’ looked werry strange. Do you repent o’ our bargain? Do you want not to be my mate? Why do you keep your back turned to me, Jill? Look into my face – look up into my face and tell me the truth.”
“It’s quite true as I can’t mate you, Nat.”
Jill turned swiftly as she spoke; out of her big beautiful eyes looked for a second an agonised soul; but Nat could not catch a glimpse of this frightened, steadfast, loving soul, in the cruel agony which her words gave him.
“You’re tired of our bargain?” he repeated.
“Yes, that’s it; I’m tired o’ it.”
“And you don’t want to wed me?”
“No.”
“Then I’d best be goin’,” said Nat.
He took up his hat and walked as far as the door. “Ha’ you counted the money – are you sure as it’s all right?” called Jill after him.
“’Course it’s all right; what matters the money? You go and break a chap’s ’eart, and you talk to him o’ money. You send a chap right away to the devil, and you talk to him o’ money. What’s money to me to-day! I say, curse all women, curse goodness. I say – oh, Jill, Jill, you don’t mean it. It’s a trick you’re playing on me. Jill, my little love, my little sweet-heart, come back to me – come back.”
Nat’s voice was broken. He flung his hat on the floor, and, rushing up to the young girl, clasped her tightly in a passionate embrace.
For just a quarter of a minute she yielded to it. She felt the strength of the arms she loved. She said to herself:
“I can’t go on. Even for mother’s sake, I can’t go on with this.”
But then the remembrance of Nat’s words of the night before, the remembrance of that cruel creed of his, which only believed in honesty, sobriety, and truth, came back like a cold wave to turn aside the warm impulses of nature.
“No, Nat,” she said, detaching herself from him, “you must believe wot I say. We ha’ got to part. I did think as I loved yer, and it did seem nice and beautiful to me, the thought of living with yer – but you’re too high – too high for the likes o’ Jill. Ef you wedded me, you’d turn bitter agen me, for I ain’t what you think; I must ha’ my fling. May be I don’t think them things wrong that you hold by. Wot’s a lie now and then, if it serves a good purpose, and wot’s jest not being too perticler ’bout change, and returning all the pennies you get, and selling withered flowers for fresh! There’s a lot of fuss made by some folks about that sort of thing – I know what you thinks; but I call that sort of thing soft. Poor folks has got to live, and they can’t be over perticler. And then, Nat – you holds a deal on to sobriety – mother, she has a horror even o’ a drop o’ beer; but me, when I’m werry tired, it’s comfortin’. I don’t go for to deny that it’s werry comfortin’. Wot’s the matter, Nat? How white you ha’ got. I’m up to the average gel, ain’t I, Nat? I’m not all white like an angel; but I ain’t black neither, am I, Nat?”
“I has got a blow,” said Nat Carter. “You’re right, Jill. I don’t know yer all round. I has promised to wed yer, and I’ll stick to it, if you’re o’ that mind. God forgive you, Jill, you’re not what I thought, but I’ll be a good husband to yer, if yer wishes it.”
“Do I wish it?” said Jill with sudden scorn and passion. “Let the righteous wed with the righteous, and the sinner with the sinner. I’m as God made me; I’m full of passion, and I’m full of weakness. You’re white, and I’m black; but, Nat, where I loves I don’t see the sin. Ef you were as black as a coal, Nat, and loved me, I’d love you back again. Oh me, me, my heart’s broke, but I can’t never, never be yer mate now, Nat Carter.”
“And yet it seemed all right last night,” said the young man.
“No. I had my doubts last night, and now they’re certainties. I doubted then as you was too high, and me too low for us to come together, now my doubts is turned to certainties. Good-bye, Nat, good-bye; choose a gel that never telled a lie, what would scorn to steal, and what wouldn’t touch a drop o’ beer to save her life; good-bye, Nat.”
“Good-bye,” said Nat. He took up his hat in earnest this time. Jill’s words had frozen him. There was a numbness all over him, which prevented his feeling the real agony of the parting; he turned the handle of the room door and went out. Jill listened to his footsteps going down the stairs, till they died away in the distance.
Chapter Thirteen
Susy Carter was one of those self-reliant people who are not over-troubled with conscience. Her nerves were in excellent order. She did not consider herself vain, but she was thoroughly satisfied with her life, with her ways, with her ideas. She utterly scorned the flower girls who did not live up to the high standard which she had set herself. Had Susy been born in a different station of life, she would have gone in for the education craze, for the women’s suffrage question, and for all those extreme ideas of so-called emancipation which agitated the breasts of the sterner members of her sex.
Susy was not lovable, nor did she greatly love anyone but herself. She was ambitious and intended to rise in the world. Even a London flower girl can have ambition. As in all other callings, that of the flower girl has many grades. Between the poor, little, sloppy, ragged victim, who hawks miserable, withered flowers, reeking with stale vegetation and the infection of badly ventilated rooms, and such a flower girl as Susy Carter, there is a very vast gulf fixed.
Susy heard of the Flower Girls’ Guild, she was one of the first to join this admirable band, she delighted in the sanitary conditions imposed upon her. She paid her shilling a week regularly, and enjoyed all the advantages of the room where the flowers were kept at night, and the nice wash which she could give herself there in the morning.
Nature had made Susy fair and pretty, and the becoming uniform of the Guild suited her to perfection. Since she had joined it she had become more popular as a flower girl than ever. Her flowers were better in quality, and the ladies who bought from her, finding this fact out, were only too glad to come to her again; week after week she was steadily putting away money. If this state of things went on Susy hoped that in a few years she might have saved enough either to marry a respectable costermonger or to start a barrow, or even a shop for herself. Susy had not the least idea of marrying for love, she was thoroughly satisfied with her present life, which had a certain amount of excitement without undue hardship.
Nat and Susy Carter had neither father nor mother, they were somewhat alike in appearance, and had certain traits of character in common. They were both ambitious, hard-working, honest, respectable, but where Susy’s soul was small and crabbed, shrinking indeed from its normal size from want of any due care or attention, Nat’s was strong and brave, for Nat’s soul was saved by the intense love which he had felt for some years now for Jill. Nat and Susy shared the same rooms, and these rooms were by no means to their taste. They were in a low part of the town, not exactly in Drury Lane, but in that poor neighbourhood. The situation was most convenient, not far from the market and in the very thick of the life which they were obliged to lead, but the rooms occupied by the brother and sister, though fairly clean in themselves, were by no means to the taste of either. Nat would not have stayed there but for the hope that he and Jill would soon set up housekeeping together, and Susy quite made her mind to share Nat’s home whenever he made it. She was sitting on this particular Sunday afternoon in their little kitchen, leaning somewhat discontentedly out of the window, and wishing that the long dull Sabbath would come to an end, when to her surprise the door of the room was suddenly opened and Nat came in. Susy could not help giving a start of astonishment. Nat had left her some hours ago with a distinct understanding that he would not return until night. Susy had given him a slightly contemptuous look when he had told her what his day’s work would be.
“Yes, yes,” she muttered, “don’t tell me no more; you’ll be a good Samaritan all the morning, and a lover all the arternoon. Each one to their taste, don’t tell me no more.”
“It ’ud do you good, Susy, to have a lover of your own,” said Nat, in reply to these bitter words; “a right good ’ansome feller as ’ud draw the ’eart out of yer, and make yer feel.”
“’Ow?” said Susy, looking at him with mocking eyes.
Nat reddened. A vision of Jill as she had looked the night before with the moonlight shining all over her passionate, tender face flashed before him.
“I can’t say,” he replied. “You wait and see.”
“No, I’ll never see that sight,” said Susy; “there ain’t a man living as ’ud make a fool on me. Give me a tidy bit of money, and I don’t mind what the man is like.”
Nat closed the door behind him with a faint sigh. It was the first touch of that depression which was to seize him in such a mighty clutch later in the day. Susy, in spite of herself, felt dull after he had left her. She wondered if she should go to church, but decided against this effort, and seating herself in the window began to unpick the trimming off an old hat, and to put it on again in a fresher style. She then warmed some tea for her dinner, and boiled an egg to eat with her stale bread and butter. Afterwards she took up a penny novelette which she had borrowed from her landlady, and tried to interest herself in the impossible story which it contained. The hero of the tale was of course a duke, and the heroine was in a very slightly more exalted position than Susy herself. The duke loved the maiden, and the romance ended in a brilliant wedding, in a shower of rice, and old satin slippers. Susy threw down the novelette with an impatient sigh. With all her faults she had plenty of sense, and the mawkish, impossible tale sickened her.
“I call it stuff,” she said to herself. “Dooks don’t marry gels like me. I’d a sight rayther read about a costermonger. A costermonger’s flesh and blood to me, a dook ain’t nothing but a sort of a sperit. Oh, my word, is that you, Nat? ’Ow you did startle me!”
“I come in quietly enough,” said Nat. “I suppose I needn’t come into my own room on tiptoe, need I?”
Susy gave her brother a long attentive stare.
“My, how crusty you’ve turned!” she exclaimed in her mocking voice. “Wot’s up with yer? ’As Jill been giving yer a spice of her mind? I allers said that gel ’ad the ’eart of a tiger.”
“Look here, Susy,” said Nat, “you stop that!” He came over and took the slim girl by her shoulders, and whirled her suddenly out into the centre of the room. “You and me,” continued Nat, “are brother and sister, ain’t we?”
“Yes, Nat, yes. Oh, my word; ’ow you sets my ’eart a-thumping.”
“Stop talking, and listen to me. I want to say something.”
“Well, well.”
“Will yer stop talking? I’ll shake the breath out of yer if yer don’t. Now, then, you listen. Oh, you poor good-for-nothing, you poor small good-for-nothing bit of a thin soul, you belong to me, I s’pose, and I must stick to yer. I’m yer brother, and I must hold on to yer till you gets a husband of some sort. But look yere, Susy, ef yer mentions Jill Robinson’s name agen to me, whether you speaks for Jill, or agen Jill, it’s all the same, I’ll leave yer. I’ll leave Lunnon and I’ll go where you can’t find me. I’ll tell you a thing about Jill now, and then she’ll be atween us not as ef she were dead, for we can speak of our dead, but as if she had never lived, and never died. That’s how Jill is to be atween you and me, in all the days that are to come. There never wor a Jill. That’s how things are to be. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Nat; you – you frighten me, Nat.”
“Wot’s a little fright to you? I’m nigh to hell with torture. Jill’s broke with me. We’ll never be wed, never. But that ain’t the worst. The worst is there never wor a Jill, ’twas but a dream I ’ad. I dreamt it all the time I were a-growing up, and all the years sence I come to manhood. And to-day I woke. There’s no Jill. Do you hear me, Susy? Do you understand?”
“Yes, Nat, I try to. And there’ll be no wedding, and no nice little flat, and no room for me at ’arf a crown a week, and the run of the kitchen thrown in? My word, the ways of some gels is past bearing.”
“Not another word, Susy. You know our bargain. Ef you breathe Jill’s name even once again, we part, and you may take care on yourself for all I care.”
“No, I’ll not speak on her no more,” said Susy. “You needn’t pinch me so ’ard, Nat, and you needn’t glare at me. I can’t help it ef I don’t go into big passions like other folk. I’m made quiet, and with control of my feelin’s, and I don’t see as I’m to be spurned for it. I’m quite willin’ to drop that gel; she worn’t never a mate for you, ’cordin’ to my way of thinkin’. Oh, for mercy’s sake don’t shake me agen, I expect my shoulders are black and blue as it is, from your pinches. Wot I want to know now is this. Are we to stay on in these loathsome rooms, or are we to move somewhere else? You and me could take that flat in Howard’s Buildings, and live there by ourselves – why not? Oh, good gracious, wot is the matter now, Nat?”
“I’m goin’ out,” said Nat. “You may expect me back when you see me, not afore.”
“Ain’t you coming back to-night?”
“No!”
The door of the room was banged to with a loud report. Susy waited until Nat’s footsteps ceased to sound. Then she threw herself into the nearest chair, and gave vent to a gentle sigh.
“Talk of tigresses! Why, Nat’s turned into a tiger,” she moaned. “Oh, my poor shoulders, how they does ache!”
The next morning Susy arrived in good time at the neat room in Westbourne Grove, where the flower girls who belonged to the Guild had the privilege of keeping their unsold flowers.
The room was arranged on the plan of a dairy, and was so thoroughly ventilated that even the flowers which were over from Saturday night were many of them still fresh and fit for sale.
Susy had bought a small supply of quite fresh flowers at Covent Garden, and she was not long in trimming up her basket and giving it a very presentable and tidy appearance. She did not possess Jill’s eye for colour nor her delicate touch. Everything Susy did was commonplace, but nevertheless when she started forth on her day’s work, refreshed by her good wash in the nice lavatory which adjoined the room where the flowers were stored, there was not a more presentable or trimmer-looking flower girl in London. Her fair hair was plaited up smooth and tight; the front portion of it being of course curled into a tight fringe. She wore the neat and serviceable costume of the Guild, having left her own clothes behind her at the rooms of the Institution.
A flower girl’s profits largely depend on the position where she can place her stand. These positions vary immensely in excellence, and the good ones, in the neighbourhood of railway stations, and certain street corners where the thoroughfare is large, are much prized and eagerly sought after.
Susy’s stand now, close to the Marble Arch, was one of the best in London. She had her regular customers, and it was not long before her basket was cleared of its contents, and her pockets were filled with substantial coins. Having nothing further to do in the way of business, she strolled quietly home, intending to go back to Westbourne Grove later in the day to change her costume, and get possession of her clothes.
She had nearly reached the low street where she and Nat lived, when a woman sprang suddenly from the shelter of a doorway where she was leaning, and clutched her by the arm. The woman was Poll Robinson.
So marked was the change in Poll since Susy had last seen her; so strong were the marks of suffering on her face, so untidy her dress, so unkempt her black hair, that the girl did not at first recognise her.
When she did, a sensation of repulsion came over her, and she shook Poll’s big hand from her shoulder.
“Well,” she said, “wot is it? I ’as got my orders to have nought to do with you and yourn. Oh, Mrs Robinson, you ’as been drinking; I can smell the gin on your breath.”
“Only a little drop, honey; the least drop – not more than two penn’orth. I ’ad a bad bout of pain, and the gin makes it easier. Susy, don’t walk so fast, for the love of heaven. My breath’s bitter short lately, and I can’t keep up with you.”
“But I said I were to have nought to do with yer; them were Nat’s orders, and I s’pose I has got to obey ’em.”
“Nat said you were to have nought to do with me?” said Poll. “Did Jill say that? Did she? You tell me that true.”
“I can’t, Mrs Robinson. I has nothing to do with Jill, nor with you, neither. Do let me go. It’s disgusting to smell sperits on a woman at this hour of the day.”
“It’s the pain, my dear; you’d take to sperits yourself ef you had my pain. And so Nat has found out! Oh, my God, and I thought to hide it from him! Oh, my God, this is bitter, bitter – this is cruel – this is too much! Oh, to think that arter all Nat has found out!”
“It’s a good thing he has,” said Susy, speaking at random, for she had not the least idea what Mrs Robinson meant. She liked, however, to show that she was quite mistress of the situation. “It’s a right good thing as Nat has found out,” she continued, “and a fine pepper he’s in, I can tell yer. I never in all my days seed him in sech a taking. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised ef Nat turned wicked, and he such a pattern as he allers were! There now, Mrs Robinson, I can’t be seen talking to yer any more. It’s as much as my life is worth. Good arternoon to you.”
Susy walked quickly away, and Poll turned down a side alley. Her sufferings and the irregular life she was now leading had weakened her, and she felt a queer trembling sensation running all over her frame.
She was accustomed to gin now, and the twopenn’orth she had indulged in this morning had little or no effect in disturbing her equilibrium. The gin warmed her, and eased the ceaseless, gnawing pain. It was not from the effects of the gin that Mrs Robinson was now shaking from head to foot. It was from the awful knowledge that her great sacrifice had been in vain; that she had given up Jill, and in giving her up had parted with all the sunshine, and all the love which life could offer, and yet had done it in vain.
Poll had gone away from the girl in order to save her from disgrace. She felt certain that Jill would fret for a little, that she would mourn for her and long to have her back again; but by-and-by Nat’s love would comfort her. She would marry Nat, and they would settle down in their comfortable and respectable home together. No need to tell Nat, who was so particular and so strict in his notions, that he had married the daughter of a woman who drank. He need never know that, for Jill would not tell. The secret, the dark, terrible secret would be safely buried and Jill would have a happy life. Poll. had gone away quite sure that this would be the case.