“Why, curse his impudence!” said the man, with a faint sickly laugh; “I’m blest if he hasn’t been and boned my mug. I hope it’ll do him more good than it’s done me,” he added, bitterly.
“I can’t make out the meaning of this,” mumbled the old woman. “It’s all dark to me. I saw where the other one was put myself. I saw it done, and safely done too. Oh, yes of course—”
“What do you mean by ‘the other one’?” asked the man, while Jabez listened intently for the answer.
“Why, my deary, that’s a part of the secret you’re to know some of these days. Such a secret. Gold, gold, gold, as long as it’s kept; and gold when it’s told, if it’s told at the right time, deary.”
“If it’s to be told at the right time to do me any good, it had better be told soon, then,” said Jim, with a dreary shiver. “My bones ache, and my head’s on fire, and my feet are like lumps of ice. I’ve walked twenty miles today, and I haven’t had bite nor sup since last night. Where’s Sillikens?”
“At the factory, Jim deary. Somebody’s given her a piece of work—one of the regular hands; and she’s to bring home some money tonight. Poor girl, she’s been a fretting and a crying her eyes out since you’ve been gone, Jim.”
“Poor lass. I thought I might do some good for her and me both by going away where I did; but I haven’t; and so I’ve come back to eat her starvation wages, poor lass. It’s a cowardly thing to do, and if I’d had strength I should have gone on further, but I couldn’t.”
As he was saying these words a girl came in at the half-open door, and running up to him, threw her arms round his neck.
“O Jim, you’ve come back! I said you would; I knew you’d never stop away; I knew you couldn’t be so cruel.”
“It’s crueller to come back, lass,” he said; “it’s bad to be a burden on a girl like you.”
“A burden, Jim!” she said, in a low reproachful voice, and then dropped quietly down amongst the dust and rubbish at his feet, and laid her head caressingly against his knee.
She was not what is generally called a pretty girl. Hers had not been the delicate nurture which nourishes so frail an exotic as beauty. She had a pale sickly face; but it was lighted up by large dark eyes, and framed by a heavy mass of dark hair.
She took the man’s rough hand in hers, and kissed it tenderly. It is not likely that a duchess would have done such a thing; but if she had, she could scarcely have done it with better grace.
“A burden, Jim!” she said—“a burden! Do you think if I worked for you day and night, and never rested, that I should be weary? Do you think, if I worked my fingers to the bone for you, that I should ever feel the pain? Do you think, if my death could make you a happy man, I should not be glad to die? Oh, you don’t know, you don’t know!”
She said this half-despairingly, as if she knew there was no power in his soul to fathom the depth of love in hers.
“Poor lass, poor lass,” he said, as he laid the other rough hand gently on her black hair. “If it’s as bad as this. I’m sorry for it—more than ever sorry tonight.”
“Why, Jim?” She looked up at him with a sudden glance of alarm. “Why, Jim? Is anything the matter?”
“Not much, lass; but I don’t think I’m quite the thing tonight.” His head drooped as he spoke. The girl put it on her shoulder, and it lay there as if he had scarcely power to lift it up again.
“Grandmother, he’s ill—he’s ill! why didn’t you tell me this before? Is that gentleman the doctor?” she asked, looking at Jabez, who still stood in the shadow of the doorway, watching the scene within.
“No; but I’ll fetch the doctor, if you like,” said that benevolent personage, who appeared to take a wonderful interest in this family group.
“Do, sir, if you will be so good,” said the girl imploringly; “he’s very ill, I’m sure. Jim, look up, and tell us what’s the matter?”
The man lifted his heavy eyelids with an effort, and looked up with bloodshot eyes into her face. No, no! Never could he fathom the depth of this love which looks down at him now with more than a mother’s tenderness, with more than a sister’s devotion, with more than a wife’s self-abnegation. This love, which knows no change, which would shelter him in those entwining arms a thief or a murderer, and which could hold him no dearer were he a king upon a throne.
Jabez North goes for a doctor, and returns presently with a gentleman, who, on seeing Jim the labourer, pronounces that he had better go to bed at once; “for,” as he whispers to the old woman, “he’s got rheumatic fever, and got it pretty sharp, too.”
The girl they call Sillikens bursts out crying on hearing this announcement, but soon chokes down her tears—(as tears are wont to be choked down in Blind Peter, whose inhabitants have little time for weeping)—and sets to work to get ready a poor apology for a bed—a worn-out mattress and a thin patchwork counterpane; and on this they lay the bundle of aching bones known to Blind Peter as Jim Lomax.
The girl receives the doctor’s directions, promises to fetch some medicine from his surgery in a few minutes, and then kneels down by the sick man.
“O Jim, dear Jim,” she says, “keep a good heart, for the sake of those who love you.”
She might have said for the sake of her who loves you, for it never surely was the lot of any man, from my lord the marquis to
