Colonel Quaritch, V.C.: Chapter 34

Chapter 34

GEORGE'S DIPLOMATIC ERRAND

George carried out his intention of going to London. On the second
morning after the day when Mr. Quest had driven the auctioneer in the
dog-cart to Honham, he might have been seen an hour before it was
light purchasing a third class return ticket to Liverpool Street.
Arriving there in safety he partook of a second breakfast, for it was
ten o'clock, and then hiring a cab caused himself to be driven to the
end of that street in Pimlico where he had gone with the fair
"Edithia" and where Johnnie had made acquaintance with his ash stick.

Dismissing the cab he made his way to the house with the red pillars,
but on arriving was considerably taken aback, for the place had every
appearance of being deserted. There were no blinds to the windows, and
on the steps were muddy footmarks and bits of rag and straw which
seemed to be the litter of a recent removal. Indeed, there on the road
were the broad wheelmarks of the van which had carted off the
furniture. He stared at this sight in dismay. The bird had apparently
flown, leaving no address, and he had taken his trip for nothing.

He pressed upon the electric bell; that is, he did this ultimately.
George was not accustomed to electric bells, indeed he had never seen
one before, and after attempting in vain to pull it with his fingers
(for he knew that it must be a bell because there was the word itself
written on it), as a last resource he condescended to try his teeth.
Ultimately, however, he discovered how to use it, but without result.
Either the battery had been taken away, or it was out of gear. Just as
he was wondering what to do next he made a discovery--the door was
slightly ajar. He pushed it and it opened--revealing a dirty hall,
stripped of every scrap of furniture. Entering, he shut the door and
walked up the stairs to the room whence he had fled after thrashing
Johnnie. Here he paused and listened, thinking that he heard somebody
in the room. Nor was he mistaken, for presently a well-remembered
voice shrilled out:

"Who's skulking round outside there? If it's one of those bailiffs
he'd better hook it, for there's nothing left here."

George's countenance positively beamed at the sound.

"Bailiffs, marm?" he called through the door--"it ain't no varminty
bailiffs, it's a friend, and just when you're a-wanting one seemingly.
Can I come in?"

"Oh, yes, come in, whoever you are," said the voice. Accordingly he
opened the door and entered, and this was what he saw. The room, like
the rest of the house, had been stripped of everything, with the
solitary exceptions of a box and a mattress, beside which were an
empty bottle and a dirty glass. On the mattress sat the fair Edithia,
/alias/ Mrs. d'Aubigne, /alias/ the Tiger, /alias/ Mrs. Quest, and
such a sight as she presented George had never seen before. Her fierce
face bore traces of recent heavy drinking and was moreover dirty,
haggard and dreadful to look upon; her hair was a frowsy mat, on some
patches of which the golden dye had faded, leaving it its natural hue
of doubtful grey. She wore no collar and her linen was open at the
neck. On her feet were a filthy pair of white satin slippers, and on
her back that same gorgeous pink satin tea-gown which Mr. Quest had
observed on the occasion of his visit, now however soiled and torn.
Anything more squalid or repulsive than the whole picture cannot be
imagined, and though his nerves were pretty strong, and in the course
of his life he had seen many a sight of utter destitution, George
literally recoiled from it.

"What's the matter?" said the hag sharply, "and who the dickens are
you? Ah, I know now; you're the chap who whacked Johnnie," and she
burst into a hoarse scream of laughter at the recollection. "It was
mean of you though to hook it and leave me. He pulled me, and I was
fined two pounds by the beak."

"Mean of /him/, marm, not me, but he was a mean varmint altogether he
was; to go and pull a lady too, I niver heard of such a thing. But,
marm, if I might say so, you seem to be in trouble here," and he took
a seat upon the deal box.

"In trouble, I should think I was in trouble. There's been an
execution in the house, that is, there's been three executions, one
for rates and taxes, one for a butcher's bill, and one for rent. They
all came together, and fought like wild cats for the things. That was
yesterday, and you see all they have left me; cleaned out everything
down to my new yellow satin, and then asked for more. They wanted to
know where my jewellery was, but I did them, hee, hee!"

"Meaning, marm?"

"Meaning that I hid it, that is, what was left of it, under a board.
But that ain't the worst. When I was asleep that devil Ellen, who's
had her share all these years, got to the board and collared the
things and bolted with them, and look what she's left me instead," and
she held up a scrap of paper, "a receipt for five years' wages, and
she's had them over and over again. Ah, if ever I get a chance at
her," and she doubled her long hand and made a motion as of a person
scratching. "She's bolted and left me here to starve. I haven't had a
bit since yesterday, nor a drink either, and that's worse. What's to
become of me? I'm starving. I shall have to go to the workhouse. Yes,
me," she added in a scream, "me, who have spent thousands; I shall
have to go to a workhouse like a common woman!"

"It's cruel, marm, cruel," said the sympathetic George, "and you a
lawful wedded wife 'till death do us part.' But, marm, I saw a public
over the way. Now, no offence, but you'll let me just go over and
fetch a bite and a sup."

"Well," she answered hungrily, "you're a gent, you are, though you're
a country one. You go, while I just make a little toilette, and as for
the drink, why let it be brandy."

"Brandy it shall be," said the gallant George, and departed.

In ten minutes he returned with a supply of beef patties, and a bottle
of good, strong "British Brown," which as everybody knows is a
sufficient quantity to render three privates or two blue-jackets drunk
and incapable.

The woman, who now presented a slightly more respectable appearance,
seized the bottle, and pouring about a wine-glass and a half of its
contents into a tumbler mixed it with an equal quantity of water and
drank it off at a draught.

"That's better," she said, "and now for a patty. It's a real picnic,
this is."

He handed her one, but she could not eat more than half of it, for
alcohol destroys the healthier appetites, and she soon went back to
the brandy bottle.

"Now, marm, that you are a little more comfortable, perhaps you will
tell me how as you got into this way, and you with a rich husband, as
I well knows, to love and cherish you."

"A husband to love and cherish me?" she said; "why, I have written to
him three times to tell him that I'm starving, and never a cent has he
given me--and there's no allowance due yet, and when there is they'll
take it, for I owe hundreds."

"Well," said George, "I call it cruel--cruel, and he rolling in gold.
Thirty thousand pounds he hev just made, that I knows on. You must be
an angel, marm, to stand it, an angel without wings. If it were my
husband, now I'd know the reason why."

"Ay, but I daren't. He'd murder me. He said he would."

George laughed gently. "Lord! Lord!" he said, "to see how men play it
off upon poor weak women, working on their narves and that like. He
kill you! Laryer Quest kill you, and he the biggest coward in
Boisingham; but there it is. This is a world of wrong, as the parson
says, and the poor shorn lambs must jamb their tails down and turn
their backs to the wind, and so must you, marm. So it's the workhus
you'll be in to-morrow. Well, you'll find it a poor place; the skilly
is that rough it do fare to take the skin off your throat, and not a
drop of liquor, not even of a cup of hot tea, and work too, lots of it
--scrubbing, marm, scrubbing!"

This vivid picture of miseries to come drew something between a sob
and a howl from the woman. There is nothing more horrible to the
imagination of such people than the idea of being forced to work. If
their notions of a future state of punishment could be got at, they
would be found in nine cases out of ten to resolve themselves into a
vague conception of hard labour in a hot climate. It was the idea of
the scrubbing that particularly affected the Tiger.

"I won't do it," she said, "I'll go to chokey first----"

"Look here, marm," said George, in a persuasive voice, and pushing the
brandy bottle towards her, "where's the need for you to go to the
workhus or to chokey either--you with a rich husband as is bound by
law to support you as becomes a lady? And, marm, mind another thing, a
husband as hev wickedly deserted you--which how he could do so it
ain't for me to say--and is living along of another young party."

She took some more brandy before she answered.

"That's all very well, you duffer," she said; "but how am I to get at
him? I tell you I'm afraid of him, and even if I weren't, I haven't a
cent to travel with, and if I got there what am I to do?"

"As for being afeard, marm," he answered, "I've told you Laryer Quest
is a long sight more frightened of you than you are of him. Then as
for money, why, marm, I'm a-going down to Boisingham myself by the
train as leaves Liverpool Street at half-past one, and that's an hour
and a bit from now, and it's proud and pleased I should be to take a
lady down and be the means of bringing them as has been in holy
matrimony togither again. And as to what you should do when you gets
there, why, you should just walk up with your marriage lines and say,
'You are my lawful husband, and I calls on you to cease living as you
didn't oughter and to take me back;' and if he don't, why then you
swears an information, and it's a case of warrant for bigamy."

The woman chuckled, and then suddenly seized with suspicion looked at
her visitor sharply.

"What do you want me to blow the gaff for?" she said; "you're a leery
old hand, you are, for all your simple ways, and you've got some game
on, I'll take my davy."

"I a game--I----!" answered George, an expression of the deepest pain
spreading itself over his ugly features. "No, marm--and when one hev
wanted to help a friend too. Well, if you think that--and no doubt
misfortune hev made you doubtful-like--the best I can do is to bid you
good-day, and to wish you well out of your troubles, workhus and all,
marm, which I do according," and he rose from his box with much
dignity, politely bowed to the hag on the mattress, and then turning
walked towards the door.

She sprung up with an oath.

"I'll go," she said. "I'll take the change out of him; I'll teach him
to let his lawful wife starve on a beggarly pittance. I don't care if
he does try to kill me. I'll ruin him," and she stamped upon the floor
and screamed, "I'll ruin him, I'll ruin him!" presenting such a
picture of abandoned rage and wickedness that even George, whose
feelings were not finely strung, inwardly shrank from her.

"Ah, marm," he said, "no wonder you're put about. When I think of what
you've had to suffer, I own it makes my blood go a-biling through my
veins. But if you is a-coming, mayhap it would be as well to stop
cursing of and put your hat on, and we hev got to catch the train."
And he pointed to a head-gear chiefly made of somewhat dilapidated
peacock feathers, and an ulster which the bailiffs had either
overlooked or left through pity.

She put on the hat and cloak. Then going to the hole beneath the
board, out of which she said the woman Ellen had stolen her jewellery,
she extracted the copy of the certificate of marriage which that lady
had not apparently thought worth taking, and placed it in the pocket
of her pink silk /peignoir/.

Then George having first secured the remainder of the bottle of
brandy, which he slipped into his capacious pocket, they started, and
drove to Liverpool Street. Such a spectacle as the Tiger upon the
platform George was wont in after days to declare he never did see.
But it can easily be imagined that a fierce, dissolute, hungry-looking
woman, with half-dyed hair, who had drunk as much as was good for her,
dressed in a hat made of shabby peacock feathers, dirty white shoes,
an ulster with some buttons off, and a gorgeous but filthy pink silk
tea-gown, presented a sufficiently curious appearance. Nor did it lose
strength by contrast with that of her companion, the sober and
melancholy-looking George, who was arrayed in his pepper-and-salt
Sunday suit.

So curious indeed was their aspect that the people loitering about the
platform collected round them, and George, who felt heartily ashamed
of the position, was thankful enough when once the train started. From
motives of economy he had taken her a third-class ticket, and at this
she grumbled, saying that she was accustomed to travel, like a lady
should, first; but he appeased her with the brandy bottle.

All the journey through he talked to her about her wrongs, till at
last, what between the liquor and his artful incitements, she was
inflamed into a condition of savage fury against Mr. Quest. When once
she got to this point he would let her have no more brandy, seeing
that she was now ripe for his purpose, which was of course to use her
to ruin the man who would ruin the house he served.

Mr. Quest, sitting in state as Clerk to the Magistrates assembled in
Quarter Sessions at the Court House, Boisingham, little guessed that
the sword at whose shadow he had trembled all these years was even now
falling on his head. Still less did he dream that the hand to cut the
thread which held it was that of the stupid bumpkin whose warning he
had despised.

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