For The Widow And The Fatherless

At the initiative of George Boult a subscription was opened for "the widow and children of the late William Day, who had left them without any means of support."

This sad and irrefutable statement was made in an advertisement in the local newspaper, and was written, in Mr. Boult's own round and clerkly hand, on the top of the list of subscribers hanging in conspicuous places in the Banks, the Public Library, the principal shops of the town.

It was said by those competent to form an opinion that the engineering of this scheme to help poor Mrs. Day and her children should have been in other hands. That George Boult's social position in the town did not entitle him to head the list. A banker's name should have figured there, or the name of the M. P. for Brockenham, or Sir Francis Forcus's name. With such an influential person to lead the way it was argued that the smaller fry would have been more willing to follow suit. It was also whispered that one of such persons of wealth and note would have led off with at least a hundred pounds. George Boult's name was down for fifty.

It was a large amount for him to give—not because he could not well have afforded more, but because he was all unaccustomed to giving. He had been known to be the unhappy man's friend, and because he headed the list with his fifty pounds it was said that no one liked to outdo that donation. Sir Francis Forcus, in order to avoid hurting those sensitive feelings with which Mr. Boult was accredited, had the happy thought to put his own name down for fifty pounds, and those of his wife and his young brother, each for the same amount.

There were two more names down for like sums, after which came a few for ten pounds, a few more for five pounds; there were numerous donations of one pound; after which the subscriptions dropped to ten shillings, to five—

Poor Mrs. Day, casting a sick eye down the list as it continued to appear, once a week, in the local paper, felt ashamed by the paltriness of the amounts which were being amassed in her behalf. "Collected by a well-wisher, six and nine." Several people, modestly content that their initials only should appear, presented two and six.

"Sympathy" was down for a shilling. How degraded she felt as she read! Though, why a gift of a shilling should have hurt her more than the gift of fifty pounds she could not have explained.

When, after dragging on far several weeks, the subscription list was closed the sum collected only amounted to a little over six hundred pounds.

George Boult had been ready to pledge himself that it would have risen to a thousand. He had spared no trouble in the collection of the sum. The list of subscribers hung in a conspicuous place in his shop. He never failed to call to it the attention of his well-to-do customers. A case more needing help was never before the public of Brockenham, he would point out to them.

But the public of Brockenham, severely shocked by the tragic circumstances of William Day's death, recovered quickly from the blow, to say that the death had been the best thing which could happen to the family. To be rid of such a man, to have no more attaching to them the reproach of a father and husband in prison, removed half the woeful load of misfortune from the case. That the children were mostly of an age to earn their own livings, their mother still fairly young and strong, were facts also remembered. Then the word began to be passed about from mouth to mouth—spoken in a whisper at first, but presently a word which might be spoken without fear of rebuke in any ear—that the Day family had always been eaten up with pride, and that the lawyer's troubles had come about through the extravagance of his wife.

The sum of six hundred and forty-nine pounds being collected, what to do with it was the next thing to decide.

The day after the subscription list was closed Mrs. Day went to an interview with George Boult in order to set before him a proposition, the result of the unanimous conclusion to which she and her children after many tearful consultations had come.

"Of course I must have some plan to put before him," the mother had said, pathetically conscious that however helpless she felt she must by no means appear to be so. "It would not do for us to have made no plans, after the interest Mr. Boult has taken; and his fifty pounds."

"I wish we could chuck it in his face," Bernard said; he was well on his way, poor boy, to exemplify the truth of the proverb that scornful dogs eat dirty puddings.

"Of all the people who have given, Mr. Boult is the one I would most love to send his money back to," Bessie agreed. "We may be able to wipe the rest off our minds in time, but we shall never be allowed to forget the fifty pounds of the detestable Boult."

"He was poor papa's friend—the only one. He was good to papa," Deleah said, but to herself alone. For in that unhappy household was a law, unwritten, unspoken, but binding none the less, that the name of the husband and father should never be spoken.

"We must remember that the fifty pounds seems a great deal to him," Mrs. Day reminded them. "The least we can do is to pay him the compliment of telling him what we intend to do with the money."

However, she found, on interviewing George Boult, that no such delicate attention was expected from her. The money he had raised was money for him to handle—for the benefit of Mrs. Day and her children of course, but without reference to what might be their feelings in the matter.

He was not a man to doubt his own wisdom, or to seek to confirm an opinion with the approval of others, or to hesitate in the pursuit of a course which to his perceptions appeared desirable. Also, having mapped out his plan or set out on his chosen path he never afterwards allowed to himself that there were others. A simple method which reduced to nothing for him the chances of regret or mental worry.

He was an eminently successful tradesman. His draper's business, which had been on a par with the businesses of half a dozen drapers when he had originally started in Brockenham, was now easily the first of its kind, not only in the town but in the county. It was natural that he should believe in trade—natural that he should fix his faith to nothing else as a means of money-making.

"There's nothing like business," he said to Mrs. Day.

She was seated in his private counting-room on the upper floor of the big shop—it was half a dozen shops joined into one now. To reach that room she had to pass through an ante-room full of entering clerks, busy at their desks. They lifted their heads from their quill-driving to look at the poor woman as she went by. She went with hanging head, her thick widow's veil over her face, the thought in her mind, "Perhaps among the poor clerks that collection of six shillings and ninepence had been made." Perhaps one of the chilblain-fingered girls behind the counters down below had been the "Sympathiser" to whom she had been indebted for a shilling.

She was humbled to the earth. It was so she would have described her condition, as she walked to her interview with George Boult. If she had been told that her heart, on the contrary, was filled with pride, and beating high with rebellion, and that it was just the want of humility within her, who yet contrived to present a humble bearing, which made everything so unnecessarily painful, she would not have believed.

When, seated opposite to him at the small square leather-covered writing-table in the draper's counting-house, she turned back her veil, he noticed at once the ravages which grief and shame and anxiety had made in her face. He was quick to notice, because, practical, hard-working, hard-headed widower as he was, he had an eye for female beauty, and the handsome dark face of his friend's wife—the woman who, in the days of her haughtiness, had turned her back on him and kept him at arm's length—he had unwillingly admired.

The face of Lydia Day now was that of a woman who had been plump but was so no longer. The cheeks which had been firm and full were pendulous, the healthily pale but brunette complexion was of a leaden pallor; in the darkened skin beneath the deep-set, large dark eyes, little puckers showed. Her figure, too, had fallen away. She had lost her proud, self-assured carriage.

"It's finished her off, as far as looks go," George Boult said to himself, not entirely without satisfaction. He was one of those who firmly believed his friend's ruin lay at her door. William Day had robbed to minister to his wife's extravagance and pride. It was well that she should be humbled.

"There is nothing like business," he repeated. "And I have decided to invest the little capital of six hundred and forty-nine pounds and a few odd shillings I have raised for you, in a business which will yield a good return, and enable you to make a living for your two younger children. A groshery business, in short."

"Grocery?" repeated Mrs. Day, gazing blankly at him.

"Groshery," he said shortly, and looked hardily at her with his lips set, his chin stuck out, and his quick observant eyes on her face.

"Grocery?" she reiterated faintly, at a loss for anything else to say.

"You know that nice bright little business in Bridge Street? Carr's. Old Jonas Carr's. He is retiring, you know—or perhaps you don't know—it's been kept secret for business purposes. I am glad to have got hold of it in the nick of time, and I am putting your little capital into the business."

"Indeed!"

"It's a stroke of wonderful luck, I consider—its falling in, just now."

"But I do not quite understand. Will someone who is taking the shop allow a good interest, do you mean?"

"Not exactly that, ma'am." He gave a sound that might have been caused by a smothered chuckle, or have been meant for a snort of contempt, and going from the table, placed himself upon the hearthrug, where he paused, making a prayer perhaps for patience to be given him to deal with this fool in her untrained, untaught folly.

"Not exactly," he went on. "I am taking the business for you to work, ma'am. Jonas Carr is an old man now, but he has lived out of the business, and brought up his children out of it, and this with only antiquated methods. With new life put into the concern, and with altogether up-to-date management, there is the making there, in my opinion—and I think I may say my opinion on such a matter is of value—of an excellent little business."

"For me to work?" Mrs. Day asked in feeble protest. "Me? A grocery business?"

"Why not?" He eyed her relentlessly, biting his finger nails. "What did you think you were going to do with the money which I have collected for you? Spend it? And collect again?"

"Not that, Mr. Boult. Certainly not that." She looked down at the black-gloved hands which lay in her lap. They trembled; to keep them steady she caught them one in the other. "I have been talking it over with my children, and we have decided, if you approve, to take a good-sized house by the sea, where we could all live together, and take in lodgers. That would be a way of making a living which would come easier to my girls and me than any other."

"Easier? Yes. The misfortune is, ma'am, that the things which are easier in the beginning are always difficult to finish up. We'll begin the other way round, if you please." He bit the nail a minute longer, looked at it, put it out of sight behind his coat tails. "Ah no; that scheme won't do at all," he said, quite pleasantly. "I know these lodgings, and the miserable women who keep them, and can only make ends meet by thieving the lodgers' mutton. The groshery line is altogether on another shelf. You and your daughters can not only make a living at it, you can make money. Make money."

Mrs. Day lifted her head, tried to capture something of her old bearing, tried to get a note of firmness into her voice. "I do not really think I could keep a shop," she said. "Above all, a grocery shop. I could not undertake it, Mr. Boult; and I am sure the girls would not like it at all; nor my son."

"What then?" he asked her, very quiet.

"I think my own plan. The house by the sea. We should escape from Brockenham, which we much wish to do; we should begin again where we—where our story—is not known. For the children's sake it would be best. For us all it would be more—suitable."

"But I have told you, ma'am, the plan is out of the question." He turned from her and kicked the coal in the grate, working off his irritation in that harmless fashion. Then, facing the poor lady again he adopted a tone intended to show her he was not to be trifled with. "Understand at once, Mrs. Day, I will be no party to the money subscribed on the tacit understanding that it is to be properly invested for you and your children, being thrown away in any such hopeless, silly fashion. Your husband asked me to stand your friend; to do my best for you. As I understand the position, you have no one else to look to?"

He paused, but she said nothing. William Day's relatives had been poorer, less well placed than he. As he had risen he had left them behind, forgotten them. Mrs. Day had been the only child of parents long since dead.

"Since there is no one else, I am willing to be your friend—within limits, of course. I have been instrumental in securing for you this sum of money—many fortunes have been made with less. To begin with I did not have half the capital. In doing so I made myself responsible for its being put to a proper use. I intend to see that it is done."

Mrs. Day was mute. The eyes looking out from their dark-stained orbits were hopeless.

Mr. Boult having paused for the reply which did not come, went on in a lighter tone. "There is a very good-sized house over Carr's shop. I went over it, and in deed into everything before deciding. There are six bed-rooms and a living room of unusual size. This gives you the opportunity of taking a lodger. I have already spoken to my new buyer about it. My Manchester man. He is anxious to board with a pleasant family, he tells me. So there you have a lodger ready to your hand, ma'am; since you fancy lodgers."

Mrs. Day had a feeling of oppression in the breathless air of the counting-house, of being smothered by George Boult. She untied the broad strings of ribbon and crape of her widow's bonnet, and looked round anxiously for a window. There was none, the counting-house being lighted by a sky-light. Two big tears rolled down her cheeks, she drew a long breath like a great sigh.

"I am giving my Manchester man a good salary," the draper went on. "He would easily be able to spare you thirty shillings a week for board and lodging, and I should not advise you to take a penny less."

Mrs. Day with an effort pulled herself together. "The man who is to manage the shop would want a room in the house, I suppose?" she suggested.

"Manage the shop? What shop?"

"The shop you have been speaking of—the grocer's shop."

"You yourself will manage it," Boult said. "Nice bright little concern as it is, the business won't keep a man; you will manage it, assisted on busy days by your eldest daughter."

But although Mrs. Day could not fight for herself, she was capable of defending her children. "To that I could not consent," she said; "I would never allow Bessie—Bessie!—to wait in a grocer's shop."

"It would not hurt her, ma'am. It would do her good."

Mrs. Day was silent, but her silence was eloquent. With shaking fingers she tied her bonnet strings—the wide black strings that wanted pulling out, the narrow white ones which must be arranged above them.

Boult, seeing that she was preparing to depart, assumed a more friendly tone. "You must not feel that you are being hustled into this thing," he said. "The money is, of course, in a sense, yours, although I have had to decide what to do with it."

Mrs. Day rose to go, Boult came forward with his hand extended.

"Anything that has to do with the people's food or drink pays," he said encouragingly. "If I had my time over again I would take up with the groshery line instead of the drapery. People must have food, ma'am. They must have it, even before frocks and furbelows."

"About Bernard?" Mrs. Day asked, waiving, not without dignity, the other subject.

"I have thought of sending Bernard to Ingleby. I have opened a branch there. It is not a big concern at present, of course, but the boy can learn the business there, and if he has anything in him—I shall keep my eye on him—he can come to us later."

Then he grasped the hand she unwillingly extended.

"You see I promised poor William," he told her, by way of explaining his kind interest in her affairs. "And however thankless the task may be, I shall keep my word."

She could not answer him, but when he released her hand she bowed her head and went away.

Before Mrs. Day betook herself home she turned her feet in the direction of Bridge Street. It was situated in a busy part of the town, but was only a short and not by any means prosperous thoroughfare connecting two of the principal streets. Standing on the opposite pavement Mrs. Day contemplated the grocer's shop from which Mr. Jonas Carr was retiring. His name in small white letters was painted on the black lintel of the door: "Jonas Carr, licensed to sell tobacco and snuff." A dingy-looking little shop; not such a shop as any of those on which the wife of William Day had bestowed her custom, and she had never been within its door.

The three windows above the shop looked dirty, and closely over them were stretched dirty lace curtains. The windows on the higher floor were dirtier still, and in place of the lace curtains were crooked-hanging blinds.

Poor Mrs. Day set her lips tightly as she looked. Then she crossed the street and entered the shop. Mr. Carr, behind the counter, a toothless, unpleasant-looking old man, was exhibiting in an apathetic manner a piece of fat bacon to a customer.

"You can have the streaky if you prefer it," he said.

The customer did prefer the streaky, and took it, half wrapped, under her shawl, and went.

"And what for you, pray?"

Mrs. Day asked for a quarter of a pound of tea, and while he served her looked about at the dark little dirty shop with its mingled odours.

When she left the establishment of Jonas Carr her spirits had risen. The whole thing was ludicrous. Imagine the name of Lydia Day, "licensed to sell tobacco and snuff," painted over the door! Imagine her—her!—behind the counter of that squalid little shop! Imagine Bessie, and her exquisite young Deleah passing their lives in that upper room behind the net curtains! It was ridiculous, grotesque, impossible, and could not be.

But she was to find with astonishingly small waste of time that it could be.

And it was.