Part 31 (1/2)

It was a lovely soft spring morning at the end of March, and unusually balmy for the time of year; even Ernest's melancholy was relieved for a while by the look of spring that pervaded earth and sky; but it soon returned, and smiling sadly he said to himself: ”It may bring hope to others, but for me there can be no hope henceforth.”

As these words were in his mind he joined the small crowd who were gathered round the railings, and saw that they were looking at three sheep with very small lambs only a day or two old, which had been penned off for shelter and protection from the others that ranged the park.

They were very pretty, and Londoners so seldom get a chance of seeing lambs that it was no wonder every one stopped to look at them. Ernest observed that no one seemed fonder of them than a great lubberly butcher boy, who leaned up against the railings with a tray of meat upon his shoulder. He was looking at this boy and smiling at the grotesqueness of his admiration, when he became aware that he was being watched intently by a man in coachman's livery, who had also stopped to admire the lambs, and was leaning against the opposite side of the enclosure. Ernest knew him in a moment as John, his father's old coachman at Battersby, and went up to him at once.

”Why, Master Ernest,” said he, with his strong northern accent, ”I was thinking of you only this very morning,” and the pair shook hands heartily. John was in an excellent place at the West End. He had done very well, he said, ever since he had left Battersby, except for the first year or two, and that, he said, with a screw of the face, had well nigh broke him.

Ernest asked how this was.

”Why, you see,” said John, ”I was always main fond of that la.s.s Ellen, whom you remember running after, Master Ernest, and giving your watch to.

I expect you haven't forgotten that day, have you?” And here he laughed.

”I don't know as I be the father of the child she carried away with her from Battersby, but I very easily may have been. Anyhow, after I had left your papa's place a few days I wrote to Ellen to an address we had agreed upon, and told her I would do what I ought to do, and so I did, for I married her within a month afterwards. Why, Lord love the man, whatever is the matter with him?”--for as he had spoken the last few words of his story Ernest had turned white as a sheet, and was leaning against the railings.

”John,” said my hero, gasping for breath, ”are you sure of what you say--are you quite sure you really married her?”

”Of course I am,” said John, ”I married her before the registrar at Letchbury on the 15th of August 1851.

”Give me your arm,” said Ernest, ”and take me into Piccadilly, and put me into a cab, and come with me at once, if you can spare time, to Mr Overton's at the Temple.”

CHAPTER LXXVII

I do not think Ernest himself was much more pleased at finding that he had never been married than I was. To him, however, the shock of pleasure was positively numbing in its intensity. As he felt his burden removed, he reeled for the unaccustomed lightness of his movements; his position was so shattered that his ident.i.ty seemed to have been shattered also; he was as one waking up from a horrible nightmare to find himself safe and sound in bed, but who can hardly even yet believe that the room is not full of armed men who are about to spring upon him.

”And it is I,” he said, ”who not an hour ago complained that I was without hope. It is I, who for weeks have been railing at fortune, and saying that though she smiled on others she never smiled at me. Why, never was anyone half so fortunate as I am.”

”Yes,” said I, ”you have been inoculated for marriage, and have recovered.”

”And yet,” he said, ”I was very fond of her till she took to drinking.”

”Perhaps; but is it not Tennyson who has said: ''Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have lost at all'?”

”You are an inveterate bachelor,” was the rejoinder.

Then we had a long talk with John, to whom I gave a 5 pound note upon the spot. He said, ”Ellen had used to drink at Battersby; the cook had taught her; he had known it, but was so fond of her, that he had chanced it and married her to save her from the streets and in the hope of being able to keep her straight. She had done with him just as she had done with Ernest--made him an excellent wife as long as she kept sober, but a very bad one afterwards.”

”There isn't,” said John, ”a sweeter-tempered, handier, prettier girl than she was in all England, nor one as knows better what a man likes, and how to make him happy, if you can keep her from drink; but you can't keep her; she's that artful she'll get it under your very eyes, without you knowing it. If she can't get any more of your things to p.a.w.n or sell, she'll steal her neighbours'. That's how she got into trouble first when I was with her. During the six months she was in prison I should have felt happy if I had not known she would come out again. And then she did come out, and before she had been free a fortnight, she began shop-lifting and going on the loose again--and all to get money to drink with. So seeing I could do nothing with her and that she was just a-killing of me, I left her, and came up to London, and went into service again, and I did not know what had become of her till you and Mr Ernest here told me. I hope you'll neither of you say you've seen me.”

We a.s.sured him we would keep his counsel, and then he left us, with many protestations of affection towards Ernest, to whom he had been always much attached.

We talked the situation over, and decided first to get the children away, and then to come to terms with Ellen concerning their future custody; as for herself, I proposed that we should make her an allowance of, say, a pound a week to be paid so long as she gave no trouble. Ernest did not see where the pound a week was to come from, so I eased his mind by saying I would pay it myself. Before the day was two hours older we had got the children, about whom Ellen had always appeared to be indifferent, and had confided them to the care of my laundress, a good motherly sort of woman, who took to them and to whom they took at once.

Then came the odious task of getting rid of their unhappy mother.

Ernest's heart smote him at the notion of the shock the break-up would be to her. He was always thinking that people had a claim upon him for some inestimable service they had rendered him, or for some irreparable mischief done to them by himself; the case however was so clear, that Ernest's scruples did not offer serious resistance.

I did not see why he should have the pain of another interview with his wife, so I got Mr Ottery to manage the whole business. It turned out that we need not have harrowed ourselves so much about the agony of mind which Ellen would suffer on becoming an outcast again. Ernest saw Mrs Richards, the neighbour who had called him down on the night when he had first discovered his wife's drunkenness, and got from her some details of Ellen's opinions upon the matter. She did not seem in the least conscience-stricken; she said: ”Thank goodness, at last!” And although aware that her marriage was not a valid one, evidently regarded this as a mere detail which it would not be worth anybody's while to go into more particularly. As regards his breaking with her, she said it was a good job both for him and for her.

”This life,” she continued, ”don't suit me. Ernest is too good for me; he wants a woman as shall be a bit better than me, and I want a man that shall be a bit worse than him. We should have got on all very well if we had not lived together as married folks, but I've been used to have a little place of my own, however small, for a many years, and I don't want Ernest, or any other man, always hanging about it. Besides he is too steady: his being in prison hasn't done him a bit of good--he's just as grave as those as have never been in prison at all, and he never swears nor curses, come what may; it makes me afeared of him, and therefore I drink the worse. What us poor girls wants is not to be jumped up all of a sudden and made honest women of; this is too much for us and throws us off our perch; what we wants is a regular friend or two, who'll just keep us from starving, and force us to be good for a bit together now and again. That's about as much as we can stand. He may have the children; he can do better for them than I can; and as for his money, he may give it or keep it as he likes, he's never done me any harm, and I shall let him alone; but if he means me to have it, I suppose I'd better have it.”--And have it she did.