CHAPTER II

Polly Ducksacre was sitting in state behind the little counter, and opposite the gas–jet, upon her throne – a bushel basket set upside down on another. It was the evening of Boxing Day, and Polly was arrayed with a splendour that challenged the strictest appraisement; so gorgeous were her gilt earrings, cornelian necklace, sham cameo brooch – Cupid stealing the sword of Mars – and German–silver bracelets. The children who came in for “haʼporths of specked” forgot their errand and hopes of prigging, and, sucking their lips with wild admiration, cried “Lor now! Ainʼt she stunnin?” “Spexs her sweetheart in a coach and four,” exclaimed one little girl of great penetration; “oh give us a ride, miss, when he comes.”

That little girl was right, to a limited extent. Polly did expect her sweetheart; not in a coach and four, however, but in a smallish tax–cart, chestnut–coloured, picked out with white; on the panel whereof was painted, as the Act directs, “Robert Clinkers, Junior, Coal–merchant, Hammersmith.” Mr. Clinkers, whose first visit had been paid simply from pity for Cradock, and to acquit himself of all complicity in Hearty Wibrahamʼs swindle, had called again to make kind inquiries, after finding how ill the poor fellow was, and that his landlady sold coals. Nor was it long before he ventured to propose an arrangement, mutually beneficial, under which the Ducksacre firm should receive their supply from him. Two or three councils were held, but the ladies were obliged to surrender at last, because he was so complimentary, and had such nice white teeth, and spoke in such a feeling manner of his dear departed angel. On the other hand, their old wharfinger would come blustering about his sacks, loud enough to make the potatoes jump, and he kept such impudent men, and bit his nails without any manners, and called them both “Mrs. Acreducks.”

During this Clinkerian diplomacy, Polly showed such shrewdness, and such a nice foot and ancle, and had such a manner of rolling her eyes – blacker and brighter than best Wallsend – that the coals of love were laid, the match struck, the fire kindled, and drawing well up the hearth–place, before Robert Clinkers knew what he was at. And now he came every evening, bringing two sacks of coal with him, and sat on a bag of Barcelonas, and cracked, and gazed at Polly.

“Miss Ducksacre, you should sell lemonade,’” he had said only Saturday last, which was Christmas Eve, “it is such a genteel drink, you know, when a chap is consumed with internal fires, as the great poet says – him as wrote the operas, or the copperas, bless me, I never know which it is; likely you can tell, miss?”

“Lor, Mr. Clinkers, why, the proper name is hopperas; we shows the boards, and we gets a ticket, when nobody else wonʼt go.”

“Oh now! Do you, though? Ah, I was there, afore ever I knew what life was. A tricksome thing is life, Miss Polly, especially for a ‘andsome female, and no young fellow to be trusted with it. Valuable cargo on green wood. Sure to come to shipwreck.”

“Lor, Mr. Clinkers, you donʼt mean me! I am sure I am not at all handsome.”

“Then there isnʼt one in London, miss. Coals is coals, and fire is fire – oh, I should like some lemonade, with a drop of rum in it. Would you join me in it now, if I just pop round the corner? It would make you feel so nice now.”

“Do I ever feel anything else but nice?” Oh, Polly, what a leading question!

“I wishes it was in my province now, with the deepest respect, to try!” Here Polly flashed away, though nobody was pursuing her, got behind some Penzance broccoli, and seized a half–pottle to defend herself. Mr. Clinkers, knowing what he was about, appealed to a bunch of mistletoe, under which, in distracting distraction, the young lady had taken refuge.

“Now nobody else in all this London,” said the coal–merchant to the berries, “in all this mighty Baal, as the poet beautifully expresses it, especially if a young man, not over five–and–thirty, not so very bad–looking but experienced in life, and with great veneration for females, and a business, you may say, of three hundred a year clear of income–tax and increasing yearly, and a contract with the company, without no encumbrances, would ever go to think of letting that beautiful young lady enjoy the sweets of retirement in that most initing position, without plucking some of the pearls off, and no harm done or taken. And nothing at all pervents me, no consideration of the brockolo – could pay for it to–morrow morning – but my deepest respects, not having my best togs on, through a cruel haxident. Please pigs theyʼll come home to–morrow morning, and Iʼll do it on Monday, and lock up yard at four oʼclock, if tailor has made a job of it. Look nice indeed, and feel nice? I should like to know how she could help it!”

This explains why, when the wheels at the door proved to be not of the sprightly tax–cart, but a lumbering cab, Polly was disappointed. Neither was her displeasure removed when she saw a very pretty girl get out, and glide into the shop, with the loveliest damask spreading over the softest and clearest cheeks. Though Polly had made up her mind about Cradock as now a bad speculation, it was not likely that she should love yet any one who meant to have him.

Amy shrunk back as her nice clean skirt swept the grimy threshold. She was not by any means fidgety, but had a nervous dislike of dirt, as most upright natures have. Then she felt ashamed of herself, and coloured yet more deeply to think that a place good enough for Cradock should seem too sordid for her, indeed! And then her tears glanced in the gas–light, that Cradock should ever have come to this, and partly, no doubt, for her sake, though she never could tell how.

The little shop was afforested with Christmas–trees of all sorts and of every pattern, as large as ever could be squeezed, with a knuckle of root to keep them steady, into pots No. 32. The costermongers repudiate larger pots, because they take too much room on a truck, and involve the necessity of hiring a boy to push.

Aucuba, Irish yew, Portugal laurel, arbor vitæ, and bay–tree, but most of all – and for the purpose by far the most convenient, because of the hat–peg order – the stiff, self–confident, argumentative spruce. All these, when they have done their spiriting, and yielded long–remembered fun, will be fondly tended by gentle–hearted girls on some suburban balcony; they will be watered enough to kill lignum vitæ; patent compost will be bought at about the price of sugar; learned consultations will be held between Sylvia and Lucilla; and then, as the leaves grow daily more yellow, and papa is so provoking that he will only shake his head (too sagaciously to commit himself), an earnest appeal will be addressed to some of the gardening papers. Or perhaps the tree will be planted, with no little ceremony, in the centre of some grass–plot nearly as large as a counterpane; while the elder members of the family, though bland enough to drink its health, regard the measure as very unwise, because the house will be darkened so in a few short years.

Meanwhile the editorʼs reply arrives – “Possibly Sylviaʼs tree has no roots.” He is laughed to scorn for his ignorance, until little Charley falls to work with his Ramsgate spade unbidden. Factura nepotibus umbram! It has been chopped all round the bole with a hatchet, and is as likely to grow as a lucifer–match.

Through that Christmas Tabraca John Rosedew led his daughter, begging her at every step to be careful of the trees, whose claims upon her attention she postponed to those of her frock.

“Lor bless me, sir, is that you now, and your good lady along of you! How glad I am, to be sure!”

“Miss Ducksacre, this is my daughter, Miss Amy Rosedew, of whom you have heard me speak;” here John executed a flourish of great complacency with his hat; “my only child, but as good to me as any dozen could be. Will you allow her to stop here a minute, while I go up–stairs?”

Amy was trembling now, more and more every moment, and John would not ask how Cradock was, for fear of frightening his daughter.

“To be sure she can stay here,” said Polly, not over graciously; for if Mr. Clinkers should come in the while, it might alter his ideal.

“Ah, so very sad; so very sad, miss, ainʼt it now?”

“Yes,” said Amy, having no desire to pursue the subject with Polly. But Pollyʼs tongue could no more keep still than a frond of maiden–hair fern in the draught of a river archway.

“Ah, so very sad! To think of him go, quite young as he is, to one of them moonstruck smilems, where they makes rope–mats and tiger rugs! As ‘andsome a young man, miss, as ever I see off a hengine; and of course he must be such, being as he is your brother.”

Before poor Amy could answer, Mrs. Ducksacre came to fetch her, and frowned very hard at Polly, who began to look out of the window. In spite of all her faith and hope, the child could scarcely get up the stairs, till her father came to meet her.

“There is no one with him now, dear; Mrs. Jupp is in the sitting–room, so very kindly lent us by the good landlady. Only two more pairs of stairs, and there our Cradock lies, not a bit worse than he was; if anything, a little better; and his faithful little Wena with him: she wonʼt leave him, night or day, dear. Give me your hand, Amy. Why, I declare, it is rather dark, when you get too far from the windows! Madam, come in with us.”

But Eliza Ducksacre, though little versed in mintage, and taking pig–rings for halfpence, knew when her presence had better be absence, as well as a sleeping partner does at the associationʼs bankruptcy. So, after showing them up to the door, she slipped away into the side–cupboard which Mr. Rosedew had called a “sitting–room.”

Then John took Amyʼs bonnet off (after ruining the strings), and stroked her pretty hair down, and took her young cheeks in his hands, and begged her not to tremble so, because she would quite upset him. Only she might cry a little, if she thought it would do her good. But when she put her hand up, and gave a dry sob only, the father led her very tenderly into the little chamber.

It was a wretched little room, like a casual pauperʼs home, when he gets one, only much lower and smaller. Amy took all of it in at a glance, for in matters of that sort a womanʼs perception is, when compared to a manʼs, as forked lightning compared to a blunt dessert fork.

She even knew why the bed was awry; which her father could sooner have written ten scolia than discover. The bed was placed so because poor Cradock, jumping up all of a sudden in an early stage of illness, and before his head grew soft, had knocked a great piece of plaster away from the projecting hip–beam.

Now Craddy was looking away from them, sitting up in the sack–cloth bed, and trying with the sage gravity of fixed hallucination to read some lines which his fancy had written on the glazed dirt that served for a window. That window perhaps pronounced itself more by candlelight than by daylight, and the landlord had forbidden any attempt at cleaning it, because he knew that the frame would drop out. Two candles, the residue of two pounds which Mr. Rosedew had paid for, only helped to interpret the squalid room more forcibly.

While Amy stood there, shocked and frightened, and her father was thinking what to say, the poor sick fellow turned towards them, and his eyes met hers. She saw that the tint of her loverʼs eyes was gone from a beautiful deep grey to the tone of a withered oak–leaf, the pupils forthstanding haggardly, the whites dull and chased with blood veins, the sockets marked with a cloudy blue, and channeled with storms of sorrow; the countenance full of long suffering – gaunt, and wan, and weary.

Amy could not weep, but gazed, never thinking anything, with all the love and pity, devotion and faith eternal, which are sure to shine in a womanʼs eyes when trouble strikes its light there. How different from the shy maidʼs glance which, only a month or two ago, would have met his youthful overtures! And how infinitely grander! Something of the good All–Fatherʼs power and mercy in it.

She kept her eyes upon him. She had no power to move them. And they changed exactly as his did. The pale glance wandering into her gaze, with an appealing submissive motion, eager to settle somewhere, but too faint to ask for sympathy, began to feel its way and fasten, began to quiver with vibrant light and sense of resting somewhere, began to quicken, flush, and deepen – from what fountain God only knows – then to waver and suffuse (in feeble consciousness of grief), retire and return again, fluttering to some remembered home, as a bird in the dark comes to his nest; then to thrill, and beam, and sparkle with the light, the life, the love.

So with a weak but joyful cry, like a shipwrecked man at his hearth again, he stretched out both his wasted arms, and Amy was there without knowing it. She laid his white cheek on her shoulder, and let her hair flow over it; she held him up with her own pure breast, till his worn heart beat on her warm one. Then she sobbed, and laughed, and sobbed, and called him her world, and heart, and heaven, and kissed his nestling forehead, and looked, and asked, oh, where the love was. All she begged for was one word, just one little word, if you please, to know who was to come to comfort him. Oh, he must know her – of course he must – wouldnʼt she know him, that was all, though she hadnʼt a breath of life left? His own, his faith, his truth, his love – his own – let him say who, and she never would cry again. Only say it once, his own —

“Amy!”

“Yes, your Amy, Amy, Amy. Say it again, oh! say it again, my poor everlasting love!”

Suddenly the barriers of his frozen grief were loosened. With a feeble arm staying on her, although it could not cling to her, he burst into a flood of tears, from the fountain of great waters whose source and home is God.

Then John, who had stood at the door all the time, with his white head bowed on his coat–sleeve, came forward and took a hand of each, knelt by the bed, and gave thanks. They wanted not to talk of it, nor any doctor to tell them. Because they had an angelʼs voice, that God would be gracious to them.

“Darlings, didnʼt I tell you,” said Amy, looking up at them, with her rich curls tear–bespangled, like a young grape–leaf in the vinery; “donʼt you know that I was sure our Father would never forsake us; and that even a simple thing like me might fetch back my own blessing? Oh, you never would have loved me so; only God knew it was good for us.”

While she spoke, Cradock looked at her with a faint far–off intelligence, not entering into her arguments. He only cared to hear her voice; to see her every now and then; and touch her to make sure of it; then to dream that it was an angel; then to wake and be very glad that it was not, but was Amy.