Part 29 (2/2)
”It's a wonder to me that you can't stay away from here, after all that's come and gone.”
”Well, I can't,” he retorts, amiably rubbing his hands together.
”Anyhow, I won't, which means about the same thing. Where's the little duffer?”
”He's where you were at his age, I expect,” she replies grimly.
”Well, and if he only keeps on as I have, until he gets up to my present age, he won't be in a bad boat, eh, Mrs. Burrill the first.”
”He's got too much of his mother's grit to be where _you_ are, John Burrill, livin' a lackey among people that despise you because you have got a hand on 'em somewhere. I want to know if you don't think they will choke you off some day when they are done using you?”
John Burrill seated himself astride a low wooden chair, and propelling it and himself forward by a movement of the feet and a ”hitch” of the shoulders, he leaned across the chair back in his most facetious manner, and addressed her with severe eloquence.
”Look here, Mrs. Burrill number one, don't you take advantage of your position, and ride the high horse too free. It's something to 'ave been Mrs. J. Burrill once, I'll admit; but don't let it elevate you too much.
You ain't quite so handsome as the present Mrs. Burrill, neither are you so young, consequently you don't show off so well in a tantrum. Now the present Mrs. Burrill--”
”Oh, then she does have tantrums, the present Mrs. Burrill,” sneered the woman, fairly quivering with suppressed rage. ”One would think she would be so proud of you that she could excuse all your little faults. Brooks says that they all talk French up there, so that you can't wring into their confabs, John.”
”Does he?” remarked Burrill, quietly, but with an ominous gleam in his ugly eyes. ”Brooks must be careful of that tongue of his. You may reckon that they all stop their French when _I_ begin to talk. Now, don't be disagreeable, Nance; it ain't every man that can take a rise in the world like me, and _I_ don't put on airs, and hold myself above my old friends. Do you think that every man could step into such a family as _I_ belong to, Mrs. Burrill? No one can say that John Burrill's a common fellow after that feat.”
”No, but a great many can say that John Burrill's a mean fellow, too mean to walk over. Do you think the men as you worked along side of, and drank and supped with, don't know what you are, John Burrill! Do you think that they don't all know that your outrageous vanity has made a fool of you? Chance threw into your hands a secret of the Lamottes; you need not stare, we ain't fools down here at the factories. Maybe I know what that secret is, and maybe I don't. It's no matter. I know more of your doings than you give me credit for, John Burrill. Now, what must you do? Blackmail would have satisfied a sensible man; but straightway you are seized with the idea that you were born to be a gentleman. You!
Then you form your plan; and you force, by means of the power in your hands, that beautiful young lady to marry you.”
”Seems to me,” interrupts the man who has been listening quite contentedly, ”that you are getting along too fast with your story.”
”Yes, I am too fast. When you first hatched out this plan, you came to me and put a pistol to my head, and swore that if I didn't apply for a divorce from you at once, you would blow my brains out. I had swore more than once to have a divorce; and Lord knows I had cause enough; what, with the drunkenness and the beatings, and the idleness, and the night prowlin', and all the rest; but I never expected that.”
The woman paused for a moment, and then resumed her tirade of mixed eloquence and bad grammar.
”I didn't expect to be drove into the divorce court at the point of a pistol, but that's how it ended, and you was free to torment Miss Lamotte, poor young thing! Don't you let yourself think that I envied _her_! Lord knows I had had enough of you, and your meanness, but I pitied her; and if I had knocked out your brains, as I've been tempted to do a dozen times, when you have rolled in here blind drunk, I'd have done her a good turn, and myself too. The time was when Nance Fergus was your equal, and more too; but you left England with the notion that here you would be the equal of anybody, and you've never got clear of the idea. I've tried to make you understand that there's a coa.r.s.e breed of folks, same's there is of dogs, and that you are of a mighty coa.r.s.e breed. I've lived out with gentle folks over the water, and they were none of your sort. But, go on John Burrill, the low women you are so fond of, and the girls at the factory, have called you good lookin', until your head is turned with vanity. You have got yourself in among the upper cla.s.s, no matter how, and I suppose you expect your good looks to do the rest for you. I mind once when I was at service in Herefords.h.i.+re, the Squire had a fine young beast in his cattle yard, black an' sleek, an' handsome to look at, and the young ladies came down from the big house and looked at it through the fence, and called it a 'beautiful creature,' but all the same they led it away to the slaughter house with a ring in its nose, and the young ladies dined off it with a relish.”
John Burrill stroked his nasal organ fondly, as if discerning some connection between that protuberance and the aforementioned ring; but he made no attempt to interrupt her.
”You was bad enough in England, John Burrill; what with your poaching and your other misdeeds, and sorry was the day when I left a good place to come away from the country with you, because it was gettin' too hot for you to stay there. You couldn't get along without me then; and you can't get along now it seems, for all your fine feathers, without you come here sometimes to brag of your exploits, and pretend you are lookin' after the boy.”
”Nance,” said Burrill, ”you're a fine old bird! 'Ow I'd like to set you at my old father-in-law, blarst him, when he rides it too rough sometimes, and, what a sociable little discourse you could lay down for the ladies too, Nance; but, are you about done? You've been clean over the old ground, seems to me, tho' I may have dozed a little here and there. Have you been over the old business, and brought me over the water, by the nape of the neck; because, if you haven't--no, I see you have not, so here's to you, Nance, spin on;” and he took from his pocket a black bottle, and drank a mighty draught therefrom.
”No, I'm _not_ done,” screamed the woman. ”You've come here to-night, as you have before, for a purpose; one would think that such a fine gentleman could find better society, but it seems you can't. You never come here for nothing; you never come for any good; you want something?
What is it?”
He laughed a low, hard laugh.
”Yes,” he said, taking another pull at the black bottle; ”I want something.”
”Umph! I thought so.”
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