Hard Cash

He added that even talent was not saleable unless it got into the Great Grooves; and then looked at Mrs. Dodd, she replied that unfortunately those Grooves were not always accessible. The City firm had received her stiffly, and inquired for whom she had worked. "Children, my heart fell at that question. I was obliged to own myself an amateur and beg a trial. However, I gave Madame Blanch's card: but Mr.--I don't know which partner it was--said he was not acquainted with her: then he looked a little embarra.s.sed, I thought, and said the Firm did not care to send its stuff to ladies not in the business. I might cut it to waste, or--he said no more; but I do really think he meant I might purloin it."

"Why wasn't I there to look him into the earth? Oh, mamma, that you should be subjected to all this!"

"Be quiet, child; I had only to put on my armour; and do you know what my armour is? Thinking of my children. So I put on my armour, and said quietly, we were not so poor but we could pay for a piece of cloth should I be so unfortunate as to spoil it; and I offered in plain terms to deposit the price as security. But he turned as stiff at that as his yard measure; 'that was not Cross and Co.'s way of doing business,' he said. But it is unreasonable to be dejected at a repulse or two; and I am not out of spirits; not much:" with this her gentle mouth smiled; and her patient eyes were moist.

The next day, just after breakfast, was announced a gentleman from the City. He made his bow and produced a parcel, which proved to be a pattern cloak. "Order, ladies," said he briskly, "from Cross, Fitchett, and Co., Primrose Lane. Porter outside with the piece. You can come in, sir." Porter entered with a bale. "Please sign this, ma'am." Mrs. Dodd signed a receipt for the stuff, with an undertaking to deliver it in cloaks, at 11 Primrose Lane, in such a time. Porter retreated. The other said, "Our Mr. Fitchett wishes you to observe this fall in the pattern.

It is new."

"I will, sir. Am I to trouble you with any money--by way of deposit, sir?"

"No orders about it, ma'am. Ladies, your most obedient. Good morning, sir."

And he was away.

All this seemed like a click or two of City clock-work: followed by rural silence. Yet in that minute Commerce had walked in upon genteel poverty, and left honest labour and modest income behind her.

Great was the thankfulness, strange and new the excitement. Edward was employed to set up a very long deal table for his mother to work on, Julia to go and buy tailors' scissors. Calculations were made how to cut the stuff to advantage, and in due course the heavy scissors were heard snick, snick, snicking all day long.

Julia painted zealously, and Edward, without saying a word to them, walked twenty miles a day hunting for a guinea a week; and finding it not. Not but what employment was often bobbed before his eyes: but there was no grasping it. At last he heard of a place peculiarly suited to him; a packing foreman's in a warehouse at Southwark; he went there, and was referred to Mr. A.'s private house. Mr. A. was in the country for a day. Try Mr. B. Mr. B. was dining with the Lord Mayor. Returning belated, he fell in with a fire; and, sad to say, life was in jeopardy: a little old man had run out at the first alarm, when there was no danger, and, as soon as the fire was hot, had run in again for his stockings, or some such treasure. Fire does put out some people's reason; clean. While he was rummaging madly, the staircase caught, and the smoke cut off his second exit, and drove him up to a little staircase window at the side of the house. Here he stood, hose in hand, scorching behind and screeching in front. A ladder had been brought: but it was a yard short: and the poor old man danced on the window-ledge and dare not come down to a gallant fireman who stood ready to receive him at great personal peril. In the midst of shrieks and cries and shouts of encouragement, Edward, a practised gymnast, saw a chance. He ran up the ladder like a cat, begged the fireman to clasp it tight; then got on his shoulders and managed to grasp the window-sill. He could always draw his own weight up by his hands: so he soon had his knee on the sill, and presently stood erect. He then put his left arm inside the window, collared the old fellow with his right, and, half persuasion, half force, actually lowered him to the ladder with one Herculean arm amidst a roar that made the Borough ring. Such a strain could not long be endured; but the fireman speedily relieved him by seizing the old fellow's feet and directing them on to the ladder, and so, propping him by the waist, went down before him, and landed him safe. Edward waited till they were down: then begged them to hold the ladder tight below; he hung from the ledge, got his eye well on the ladder below

said Edward. The other thought he was joking, but laughed and said, "Then you should talk to our head man after the business; there is a vacancy, you know."

Edward saw the fire out, and rode home on the engine. There he applied to the head man for the vacancy.

"You are a stranger to me, sir," said the head man. "And I am sure it is no place for you; you are a gentleman."

"Well; is there anything ungentlemanly in saving people's lives and property?"

"Hear! hear!" said a comic fireman.

The compliment began to tell, though. Others put in their word. "Why, Mr. Baldwin, if a gentleman ain't ashamed of us, why should we be ashamed of him?"

"Where will ye get a better?" asked another; and added, "He is no stranger; we've seen him work."

"Stop a bit," said the comic fireman: "what does the dog say? Just call him, sir, if you please; his name is Charlie."

Edward called the fire-dog kindly; he came and fawned on him; then gravely snuffed him all round, and retired wagging his tail gently, as much as to say, "I was rather taken by surprise at first, but, on the whole, I see no reason to recall my judgment."

"It is all right," said the firemen in chorus; and one that had not yet spoken to Edward now whispered him mysteriously, "Ye see that there dog--he knows more than we do."

After the dog, a biped oracle at head-quarters was communicated with, and late that very night Edward was actually enrolled a fireman; and went home warmer at heart than he had been for some time. They were all in bed; and when he came down in the morning, Julia was reading out of the _'Tiser_ a spirited and magniloquent description of a fire in Southwark, and of the heroism displayed by a young gentleman unknown, but whose name the writer hoped at so much the line would never be allowed to pa.s.s into oblivion, and be forgotten. In short, the _'Tiser_ paid him in one column, for years of devotion. Now Edward, of course, was going to relate his adventure; but the journal told it so gloriously, he hesitated to say, "I did all that." He just sat and stared, and wondered, and blushed, and grinned like an imbecile.

Unfortunately looks seldom escaped the Doddesses. "What is that for?"

inquired Julia reproachfully. "Is that sheepish face the thing to wear when a sister is reading out an heroic action? Ah, these are the things that make one long to be a man, to do them. What are you thinking about, dear?"

"Well, I am thinking the _'Tiser_ is pitching it rather strong."

"My love, what an expression!"

"Well, then, to be honest, I agree with you that it is a jolly thing to fight with fire and save men's lives; and I am glad you see it in that light; for now you will approve the step I have taken. Ladies, I have put myself in the way of doing this sort of thing every week of my life.

I'm a fireman."

"You are jesting, I trust?" said Mrs. Dodd anxiously.

"No, mamma. I got the place late last night, and I'm to enter on my duties and put on the livery next Monday. Hurrah!"

Instantly the admirers of fiery heroes at a distance overflowed with grief and mortification at the prospect of one in their own family. They could not speak at all at first: and, when they did, it was only "Cruel!

cruel!" from Julia; and "Our humiliation is now complete," from Mrs.

Dodd.

They soon dashed Edward's spirits, and made him unhappy; but they could not convince him he had done wrong. However, in the heat of remonstrance, they let out at last that they had just begun to hope by dint of scissors and paint-brush to send him back to Oxford. He also detected, under a cloud of tender, loving, soothing, coaxing and equivocating expressions, their idea of a Man: to wit, a tall, strong, ornamental creature, whom the women were to c.o.c.ker up, and pet, and slave for; and be rewarded by basking, dead tired, in an imperial smile or two let fall by their sovereign _protege_ from his arm-chair. And, in fact, good women have often demoralised their idols down to the dirt by this process; to be sure their idols were sorryish clay, to begin.

Edward was anything but flowery, so he paraded no manly sentiments in reply; he just bluntly ridiculed the idea of his consenting to prey on them; and he said humbly, "I know I can't contribute as much to our living as you two can--the petticoats carry the brains in our family--but, be a burden to you? Not if I know it."

"Pride! pride! pride!" objected Julia, lifting her grand violet orbs like a pensive Madonna.

"And such pride! The pride that falls into a fire-bucket," suggested prosaic mamma.

"That is cutting," said Edward: "but, _soyons de notre siecle;_ flunkeyism is on the decline. I'll give you something to put in both your pipes:

'Honour and rank from no condition rise.

Act well thy part; in that the honour lies.'"

"Yes, yes," said Mrs. Dodd, "only first choose your part; and let your choice be reasonable."

"Mine was Hobson's, and he never chooses wrong. Come, come," said he, and appealed calmly to their reason, by which means he made no impression at all. Then he happened to say, "Besides, I must do something. I own to you I am more cast down than I choose to show.

Mother, I feel like lead ever since she died." Now on this, their faces filled with sympathy directly. So encouraged he went on to say: "But when I got my hand on that old duffer's collar, and lowered him to the ladder, and the fire shot roaring out of the window after him, too late to eat him, and the crowd cheered the fireman and me, I did feel warm about the waistcoat, and, for the first time this ever so long, life seemed not quite ended. I felt there was a little bit of good left, that even a poor dunce like me could do, and she could approve--if she can look down and see me, as I hope she can."

"There, there," said Mrs. Dodd tearfully, "I am disarmed, But, my darling, I do not know what you are talking about: Stay; why, Edward, surely--I hope--you were not the young gentleman in the paper, the one that risked his life so n.o.bly, so foolishly--if it was you.

"Why, mother, didn't I tell you it was me?" said Edward, colouring.

"No, that you did not," said Julia. "Was it? was it? oh do be quick and tell one. There, it was."

"Well, it was: ah, I remember now; that splendiferous account shut me up. Oh, I say, didn't the _'Tiser_ pitch it strong?"

"Not at all," cried Julia; "I believe every word, and ever so much more.

Mamma, we have got a hero, and here he is at breakfast with us, like an ordinary mortal." She rose suddenly with a burst of her old fire and fell upon him and kissed him, and said earnestly how proud she was of him; "And so is mamma. She may say what she likes."

"Proud of him! ah, that I am; very proud, and very unhappy. _Heroes are my horror._ How often, and how earnestly have I prayed that my son might not be brave like his father, but stay quietly at home out of harm's way."

Here remonstrance ended; the members of this family, happy by nature, though unhappy by accident, all knew when to yield to each other.

Unfortunately, in proportion as all these excitements great and small died, and her life became quiet and uniform, the depth of Julia's wound showed itself more and more. She never sang nor hummed, as she used to do, going about the house. She never laughed. She did burst out with fervid sentiments now and then, but very rarely; on the whole, a pensive languor took the place of her lovely impetuosity. Tears rushed in a moment to her eyes with no visible cause. She often stole to the window, and looked all up and down the street; and when she was out of doors, she looked down every side street she pa.s.sed; and sometimes, when a quick light step came behind them, or she saw a tall young gentleman at a great distance, her hand twitched her mother's arm or trembled on it.

And, always, when they came home, she lingered a moment at the door-step and looked all round before she went in.

At all these signs one half of Mrs. Dodd's heart used to boil with indignation, and the other half melt with pity. For she saw her daughter was looking for "the Wretch." Indeed Mrs. Dodd began to fear she had done unwisely in ignoring "the Wretch." Julia's thoughts dwelt on him none the less; indeed all the more as it seemed; so the topic interdicted by tacit consent bade fair to become a barrier between her and Mrs. Dodd, hitherto her bosom friend as well as her mother. This was intolerable to poor Mrs. Dodd: and at last she said one day, "My darling, do not be afraid of me; rob me of your happy thoughts if you will, but oh, not of your sad ones."