Part 130 (1/2)

There was no opportunity for further colloquy. Bessy came in, carrying the laughing truant; and Margery, with a tart word to the young lady, attended the Miss G.o.dolphins down the garden path to throw open the gate for them. In her poor way, in her solitary self, Margery strove to make up for the state they had been accustomed to, when the ladies called from Ashlydyat.

Maria, lying motionless on the sofa, where on being left alone she had thrown herself in weariness, heard Margery's gratuitous remark about Mrs. Pain, through the unlatched door, and a contraction arose to her brow. In her hand lay the four sovereigns left there by Janet. She looked at them musingly, and then murmured, ”I can afford to give her half.” When Margery returned indoors, she called her in, and sent her for Mrs. Bond.

A little while, and Mrs. Bond, on her meekest and civilest behaviour, stood before Maria, her thin shawl and wretched old gown drawn tightly round her, to protect her from the winter's cold. Maria put two sovereigns into her hand.

”It is the first instalment of my debt to you, Mrs. Bond. If I live, I will pay it you all, but it will be by degrees. And perhaps that is the best way that you could receive it. I wish I could have given you some before.”

Mrs. Bond burst into tears. Not the crocodile's tears that she was somewhat in the habit of favouring the world with when not quite herself, but real, genuine tears of grat.i.tude. She had given up all hope of the ten pounds, did not expect to see a penny of it; and the joy overcame her. Her conscience p.r.i.c.ked her a little also, for she remembered sundry hard words she had at one time liberally regaled her neighbours' ears with, touching Mrs. George G.o.dolphin. In her grateful repentance she could have knelt at Maria's feet: hunger and other ills of poverty had tended to subdue her spirit.

”May the good Lord bless and repay you, ma'am!--and send you a safe journey to the far-off place where I hear you be going!”

”Yes, I shall go, if I am well enough,” replied Maria. ”It is from thence that I shall send you home some money from time to time if I can do so. Have you been well, lately?”

”As well as pretty nigh clamming will let me be, ma'am. Things has gone hard with me: many a day I've not had as much as a crust to eat. But this 'll set me up again, and, ma'am, I'll never cease to pray for you.”

”Don't spend it in--in--you know, Mrs. Bond,” Maria ventured timidly to advise, in a lowered voice.

Mrs. Bond shook her head and turned up her eyes by way of expressing a very powerful negative. Probably she did not feel altogether comfortable on the subject, for she hastened to quit it.

”Have you heard the news about old Jekyl, ma'am?”

”No. What news?”

”He's dead. He went off at one o'clock this a'ternoon. He fretted continual after his money, folks says, and it wore him to a skeleton. He couldn't abear to be living upon his sons; and Jonathan don't earn enough for himself now, and the old 'un felt it.”

Some one else was feeling it. Fretting continually after his money!--that money which might never have been placed in the Bank but for her! Miss Meta came flying in, went straight up to the visitor, and leaned her pretty arm upon the snuffy black gown.

”When shall I come and see the parrot?”

”The parrot! Lawks bless the child! I haven't got the parrot now, I haven't had him this many a day. I couldn't let _him_ clam,” she continued, turning to Maria. ”I was clamming myself, ma'am, and I sold him, cage and all, just as he stood.”

”Where is he?” asked Meta, looking disappointed.

”He's where he went,” lucidly explained Mrs. Bond. ”It were the lady up at t'other end o' the town, beyond the parson's, what bought him, ma'am.

Leastways her daughter did: sister to her what was once to have married Mr. G.o.dolphin. It's a white house.”

”Lady Sarah Grame's,” said Maria. ”Did she buy the parrot?”

”Miss did: that cross-looking daughter of her'n. She see him as she was going by my door one day, ma'am, and she stopped and looked at him, and asked me what I'd sell him for. Well, on the spur o' the moment I said five s.h.i.+lling; for I'd not a halfpenny in the place to buy him food, and for days and days he had had only what the neighbours brought him; but it warn't half his worth. And miss was all wild to buy him, but her mother wasn't. She didn't want screeching birds in her house, she said, and they had a desperate quarrel in my kitchen before they went away.

Didn't she call her mother names! She's a vixen that daughter, if ever there were one. But she got her will, for an hour or two after that, a young woman come down for the parrot with the five s.h.i.+lling in her hand.

And there's where he is.”

”I shall have twenty parrots when I go to India,” struck in Meta.

”What a sight of food they'll eat!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mrs. Bond. ”That there one o' mine eats his fill now. I made bold one day to go up and ask after him, and the two young women in the kitchen took me to the room to see him, the ladies being out, and he had his tin stuffed full o' seed.

He knowed me again, he did, and screeched out to be heerd a mile off.