The Trail of the Serpent/Book 1/Chapter 5
Chapter V.
The Healing Waters.
The Sloshy is not a beautiful river, unless indeed mud is beautiful, for it is very muddy. The Sloshy is a disagreeable kind of compromise between a river and a canal. It is like a canal which (after the manner of the mythic frog that wanted to be an ox) had seen a river, and swelled itself to bursting in imitation thereof. It has quite a knack of swelling and bursting, this Sloshy; it overflows its banks and swallows up a house or two, or takes an impromptu snack off a few outbuildings, once or twice a year. It is inimical to children, and has been known to suck into its muddy bosom the hopes of divers families; and has afterwards gone down to the distant sea, flaunting on its breast Billy's straw hat or Johnny's pinafore, as a flag of triumph for having done a little amateur business for the gentleman on the pale horse.
It has been a soft pillow of rest, too, this muddy breast of the Sloshy; and weary heads have been known to sleep more soundly in that loathsome, dark, and slimy bed than on couches of down.
Oh, keep us ever from even whispering to our own hearts that our best chance of peaceful slumber might be in such a bed!
An ugly, dark, and dangerous river—a river that is always telling you of trouble, and anguish, and weariness of spirit—a river that to some poor impressionable mortal creatures, who are apt to be saddened by a cloud or brightened by a sunbeam, is not healthy to look upon.
I wonder what that woman thinks of the river? A badly-dressed woman carrying a baby, who walks with a slow and restless step up and down by one of its banks, on the afternoon of the day on which the murder of Mr. Montague Harding took place.
It is a very solitary spot she has chosen, on the furthest outskirts of the town of Slopperton; and the town of Slopperton being at best a very ugly town, is ugliest at the outskirts, which consist of two or three straggling manufactories, a great gaunt gaol—the stoniest of stone jugs—and a straggling fringe of shabby houses, some new and only half-built, others ancient and half fallen to decay, which hang all round Slopperton like the rags that fringe the edges of a dirty garment.
The woman's baby is fretful, and it may be that the damp foggy atmosphere on the banks of the Sloshy is scarcely calculated to engender either high spirits or amiable temper in the bosom of infant or adult. The woman hushes it impatiently to her breast, and looks down at the little puny features with a strange unmotherly glance. Poor wretch! Perhaps she scarcely thinks of that little load as a mother is apt to think of her child. She may remember it only as a shame, a burden, and a grief. She has been pretty; a bright country beauty, perhaps, a year ago; but she is a faded, careworn-looking creature now, with a pale face, and hollow circles round her eyes. She has played the only game a woman has to play, and lost the only stake a woman has to lose.
"I wonder whether he will come, or whether I must wear out my heart through another long long day.—Hush, hush! As if my trouble was not bad enough without your crying."
This is an appeal to the fretful baby; but that young gentleman is engaged at fisticuffs with his cap, and has just destroyed a handful of its tattered border.
There is on this dingy bank of the Sloshy a little dingy public-house, very old-fashioned, though surrounded by newly-begun houses. It is a little, one-sided, pitiful place, ornamented with the cheering announcements of "Our noted Old Tom at 4d. per quartern;" and "This is the only place for the real Mountain Dew." It is a wretched place, which has never seen better days, and never hopes to see better days. The men who frequent it are a few stragglers from a factory near, and the colliers whose barges are moored in the neighbourhood. These shamble in on dark afternoons, and play at all-fours, or cribbage, in a little dingy parlour with dirty dog's-eared cards, scoring their points with beer-marks on the sticky tables. Not a very attractive house of entertainment this; but it has an attraction for the woman with the baby, for she looks at it wistfully, as she paces up and down. Presently she fumbles in her pocket, and produces two or three halfpence—just enough, it seems, for her purpose, for she sneaks in at the half-open door, and in a few minutes emerges in the act of wiping her lips.
As she does so, she almost stumbles against a man wrapped in a great coat, and with the lower part of his face muffled in a thick handkerchief.
"I thought you would not come," she said.
"Did you? Then you see you thought wrong. But you might have been right, for my coming was quite a chance: I can't be at your beck and call night and day."
"I don't expect you to be at my beck and call. I've not been used to get so much attention, or so much regard from you as to expect that, Jabez."
The man started, and looked round as if he expected to find all Slopperton at his shoulder; but there wasn't a creature about.
"You needn't be quite so handy with my name," he said; "there's no knowing who might hear you. Is there any one in there?" he asked, pointing to the public-house.
"No one but the landlord."
"Come in, then; we can talk better there. This fog pierces one to the bones."
He seems never to consider that the woman and the child have been exposed to that piercing fog for an hour and more, as he is above an hour after his appointment.
He leads the way through the bar into the little parlour. There are no colliers playing at all-fours to-day, and the dog's-eared cards lie tumbled in a heap on one of the sticky tables among broken clay-pipes and beer-stains. This table is near the one window which looks out on the river, and by this window the woman sits, Jabez placing himself on the other side of the table.
The fretful baby has fallen asleep, and lies quietly in the woman's lap.
"What will you take?"
"A little gin," she answers, not without a certain shame in her tone.
"So you've found out that comfort, have you?" He says this with a glance of satisfaction he cannot repress.
"What other comfort is there for such as me, Jabez? It seemed at first to make me forget. Nothing can do that now—except———"
She did not finish this sentence, but sat looking with a dull vacant stare at the black waters of the Sloshy, which, as the tide rose, washed with a hollow noise against the brickwork of the pathway close to the window.
"Well, as I suppose you didn't ask me to meet you here for the sole purpose of making miserable speeches, perhaps you'll tell me what you want with me. My time is precious, and if it were not, I can't say I should much care about stopping long in this place; it's such a deliciously lively hole and such a charming neighbourhood."
"I live in this neighbourhood—at least, I starve in this neighbourhood, Jabez."
"Oh, now we're coming to it," said the gentleman, with a very gloomy face, "we're coming to it. You want some money. That's how this sort of thing always ends."
"I hoped a better end than that, Jabez. I hoped long ago, when I thought you loved me"
"Oh, we're going over that ground again, are we?" said he; and with a gesture of weariness, he took up the dog's-eared cards on the sticky table before him, and began to build a house with them, such as children build in their play.
Nothing could express better than this action his thorough determination not to listen to what the woman might have to say; but in spite of this she went on—
"You see I was a foolish country girl, Jabez, or I might have known better. I had been accustomed to take my father and my brother's word of mouth as Bible truth, and had never known that word to be belied. I did not think, when the man I loved with all my heart and soul—to utter forgetfulness of every other living creature on the earth, of every duty that I knew to man and heaven—I did not think when the man I loved so much said this or that, to ask him if he meant it honestly, or if it was not a cruel and a wicked lie. Being so ignorant, I did not think of that, and I thought to be your wife, as you swore I should be, and that this helpless little one lying here might live to look up to you as a father, and be a comfort and an honour to you."
To be a comfort and an honour to you! The fretful baby awoke at the words, and clenched its tiny fists with a spiteful action.
If the river, as a thing eternal in comparison to man—if the river had been a prophet, and had had a voice in its waters wherewith to prophesy, I wonder whether it would have cried—
"A shame and a dishonour, an enemy and an avenger in the days to come!"
Jabez' card-house had risen to three stories; he took the dog's-eared cards one by one in his white hands with a slow deliberate touch that never faltered.
The woman looked at him with a piteous but tearless glance; from him to the river; and back again to him.
"You don't ask to look at the child, Jabez."
"I don't like children," said he. "I get enough of children at the Doctor's. Children and Latin grammar—and the end so far off yet,"—he said the last words to himself, in a gloomy tone.
"But your own child, Jabez—your own."
"As you say," he muttered.
She rose from her chair and looked full at him—a long long gaze which seemed to say, "And this is the man I loved; this is the man for whom I am lost!" If he could have seen her look! But he was stooping to pick up a card from the ground—his house of cards was five stories high by this time. "Come," he said, in a hard resolute tone, "you've written to me to beg me to meet you here, for you were dying of a broken heart; that's to say you have taken to drinking gin (I dare say it's an excellent thing to nurse a child upon), and you want to be bought off. How much do you expect? I thought to have a sum of money at my command to-day. Never you mind how; it's no business of yours." He said this savagely, as if in answer to a look of inquiry from her; but she was standing with her back turned to him, looking steadily out of the window.
"I thought to have been richer to-day," he continued, "but I've had a disappointment. However, I've brought as much as I could afford; so the best thing you can do is to take it, and get out of Slopperton as soon as you can, so that I may never see your wretched white face again."
He counted out four sovereigns on the sticky table, and then, adding the sixth story to his card-house, looked at the frail erection with a glance of triumph.
"And so will I build my fortune in days to come," he muttered.
A man who had entered the dark little parlour very softly passed behind him and brushed against his shoulder at this moment; the house of cards shivered, and fell in a heap on the table.
Jabez turned round with an angry look.
"What the devil did you do that for?" he asked.
The man gave an apologetic shrug, pointed with his fingers to his lips, and shook his head.
"Oh," said Jabez, "deaf and dumb! So much the better."
The strange man seated himself at another table, on which the landlord placed a pint of beer; took up a newspaper, and seemed absorbed in it; but from behind the cover of this newspaper he watched Jabez with a furtive glance, and his mouth, which was very much on one side, twitched now and then with a nervous action.
All this time the woman had never touched the money—never indeed turned from the window by which she stood; but she now came up to the table, and took the sovereigns up one by one.
"After what you have said to me this day, I would see this child starve, hour by hour, and die a slow death before my eyes, before I would touch one morsel of bread bought with your money. I have heard that the waters of that river are foul and poisonous, and death to those who live on its bank; but I know the thoughts of your wicked heart to be so much more foul and so much bitterer a poison, that I would go to that black river for pity and help rather than to you." As she said this, she threw the sovereigns into his face with such a strong and violent hand, that one of them, striking him above the eyebrow, cut his forehead to the bone, and brought the blood gushing over his eyes.
The woman took no notice of his pain, but turning once more to the window, threw herself into a chair and sat moodily staring out at the river, as if indeed she looked to that for pity.
The dumb man helped the landlord to dress the cut on Jabez' forehead. It was a deep cut, and likely to leave a scar for years to come.
Mr. North didn't look much the better, either in appearance or temper, for this blow. He did not utter a word to the woman, but began, in a hang-dog manner, to search for the money, which had rolled away into the corners of the room. He could only find three sovereigns; and though the landlord brought a light, and the three men searched the room in every direction, the fourth could not be found; so, abandoning the search, Jabez paid his score and strode out of the place without once looking at the woman.
"I've got off cheap from that tiger-cat," he said to himself; "but it has been a bad afternoon's work. What can I say about my cut face to the governor?" He looked at his watch, a homely silver one attached to a black ribbon. "Five o'clock; I shall be at the Doctor's by tea-time. I can get into the gymnasium the back way, take a few minutes' turn with the poles and ropes, and say the accident happened in climbing. They always believe what I say, poor dolts."
His figure was soon lost in the darkness and the fog—so dense a fog that very few people saw the woman with the fretful baby when she emerged from the public-house, and walked along the river-bank, leaving even the outskirts of Slopperton behind, and wandered on and on till she came to a dreary spot, where dismal pollard willows stretched their dark and ugly shadows, like the bare arms of withered hags, over the dismal waters of the lonely Sloshy.
O river, sometimes so pitiless when thou devourest youth, beauty, and happiness, wilt thou be pitiful and tender to-night, and take a poor wretch, who has no hope of mortal pity, to peace and quiet on thy breast?
O merciless river, so often bitter foe to careless happiness, wilt thou to-night be friend to reckless misery and hopeless pain?
God made thee, dark river, and God made the wretch who stands shivering on thy bank: and may be, in His boundless love and compassion for the creatures of His hand, He may have pity even for those so lost as to seek forbidden comfort in thy healing waters.