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 today. 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 today,” 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
