“I don’t think he’s ever very well off for shirts,” said Mr. Grimes.
“I wouldn’t be slow to give him one of yours, John, only I know he wouldn’t take it,” said Mrs. Grimes. “Well now, look here, Sir;—we’ve that feeling for him that our young woman there would draw anything for him he’d ask—money or no money. She’d never venture to name money to him if he wanted a glass of anything—hot or cold, beer or spirits. Isn’t that so, John?”
“She’s fool enough for anything as far as I know,” said Mr. Grimes.
“She aint no fool at all; and I’d do the same if I was there, and so’d you, John. There is nothing Mackenzie’d ask as he wouldn’t give him,” said Mrs. Grimes, pointing with her thumb over her shoulder to her husband, who was standing on the hearthrug;—“that is, in the way of drawing liquor, and refreshments, and suchlike. But he never raised a glass to his lips in this house as he didn’t pay for, nor yet took a biscuit out of that basket. He’s a gentleman all over, is Mackenzie.”
It was strong testimony; but still we had not quite got at the bottom of the matter. “Doesn’t he raise a great many glasses to his lips?” we asked.
“No he don’t,” said Mrs. Grimes—“only in reason.”
“He’s had misfortunes,” said Mr. Grimes.
“Indeed he has,” said the lady—“what I call the very troublesomest of troubles. If you was troubled like him, John, where’d you be?”
“I know where you’d be,” said John.
“He’s got a bad wife, Sir; the worst as ever was,” continued Mrs. Grimes. “Talk of drink;—there is nothing that woman wouldn’t do for it. She’d pawn the very clothes off her children’s back in midwinter to get it. She’d rob the food out of her husband’s mouth for a drop of gin. As for herself—she aint no woman’s notions left of keeping herself anyway. She’d as soon be picked out of the gutter as not;—and as for words out of her mouth or clothes on her back, she hasn’t got, Sir, not an item of a female’s feelings left about her.”
Mrs. Grimes had been very eloquent, and had painted the “troublesomest of all troubles” with glowing words. This was what the wretched man had come to by marrying a woman who was not a lady in order that he might escape the “conventional thraldom” of gentility! But still the drunken wife was not all. There was the evidence of his own nose against himself, and the additional fact that he had acknowledged himself to have been formerly a drunkard. “I suppose he has drunk, himself?” we said.
“He has drunk, in course,” said Mrs. Grimes.
“The world has been pretty rough with him, Sir,” said Mr. Grimes.
“But he don’t drink now,” continued the lady. “At least if he do, we don’t see it. As for her, she wouldn’t show herself inside our door.”
“It aint often that man and wife draws their milk from the same cow,” said Mr. Grimes.
“But Mackenzie is here every day of his life,” said Mrs. Grimes. “When he’s got a sixpence to pay for it, he’ll come in here and have a glass of beer and a bit of something to eat. We does make him a little extra welcome, and that’s the truth of it. We knows what he is, and we knows what he was. As for book learning, Sir;—it don’t matter what language it is, it’s all as one to him. He knows ’em all round just as I know my catechism.”
“Can’t you say fairer than that for him, Polly?” asked Mr. Grimes.
“Don’t you talk of catechisms, John, nor yet of nothing else as a man ought to set his mind to;—unless it is keeping the Spotted Dog. But as for Mackenzie;—he knows off by heart whole books full of learning. There was some furreners here as come from—I don’t know where it was they come from, only it wasn’t France, nor yet Germany, and he talked to them just as though he hadn’t been born in England at all. I don’t think there ever was such a man for knowing things. He’ll go on with poetry out of his own head till you think it comes from him like web from a spider.” We could not help thinking of the wonderful companionship which there must have been in that parlour while the reduced man was spinning his web and Mrs. Grimes, with her needlework lying idle in her lap, was sitting by, listening with rapt admiration. In passing by the Spotted Dog one would not imagine such a scene to have its existence within. But then so many things do have existence of which we imagine nothing!
Mr. Grimes ended the interview. “The fact is, Sir, if you can give him employment better than what he has now, you’ll be helping a man who has seen better days, and who only wants help to see ’em again. He’s got it all there,” and Mr. Grimes put his finger up to his head.
“He’s got it all here too,” said Mrs. Grimes, laying her hand upon her heart. Hereupon we took our leave, suggesting to these excellent friends that if it should come to pass that we had further dealings with Mr. Mackenzie we might perhaps trouble them again. They assured us that we should always be welcome, and Mr. Grimes himself saw us to the door, having made profuse offers of such good cheer as the house afforded. We were upon the whole much taken with the Spotted Dog.
From thence we went to the office of the “Penny Dreadful,” in
