Mugby Junction and Other Stories Page 5

  “God bless you!” she replied with a burst of tears, and gave him her trembling hand.

  “Compose yourself. I cannot be composed if you are not, for to see you weep distresses me beyond expression. Speak freely to me. Trust me.”

  She shaded her face with her veil, and after a little while spoke calmly. Her voice had the ring of Polly’s.

  “It is not that my husband’s mind is at all impaired by his bodily suffering, for I assure you that is not the case. But in his weakness, and in his knowledge that he is incurably ill, he cannot overcome the ascendancy of one idea. It preys upon him, embitters every moment of his painful life, and will shorten it.”

  She stopping, he said again: “Speak freely to me. Trust me.”

  “We have had five children before this darling, and they all lie in their little graves. He believes that they have withered away under a curse, and that it will blight this child like the rest.”

  “Under what curse?”

  “Both I and he have it on our conscience that we tried you very heavily, and I do not know but that, if I were as ill as he, I might suffer in my mind as he does. This is the constant burden:- ‘I believe, Beatrice, I was the only friend that Mr. Jackson ever cared to make, though I was so much his junior. The more influence he acquired in the business, the higher he advanced me, and I was alone in his private confidence. I came between him and you, and I took you from him. We were both secret, and the blow fell when he was wholly unprepared. The anguish it caused a man so compressed must have been terrible; the wrath it awakened inappeasable. So, a curse came to be invoked on our poor, pretty little flowers, and they fall.’”

  “And you, Beatrice,” he asked, when she had ceased to speak, and there had been a silence afterwards, “how say you?”

  “Until within these few weeks I was afraid of you, and I believed that you would never, never forgive.”

  “Until within these few weeks,” he repeated. “Have you changed your opinion of me within these few weeks?”

  “Yes.”

  “For what reason?”

  “I was getting some pieces of music in a shop in this town, when, to my terror, you came in. As I veiled my face and stood in the dark end of the shop, I heard you explain that you wanted a musical instrument for a bedridden girl. Your voice and manner were so softened, you showed such interest in its selection, you took it away yourself with so much tenderness of care and pleasure, that I knew you were a man with a most gentle heart. Oh, Mr. Jackson, Mr. Jackson, if you could have felt the refreshing rain of tears that followed for me!”

  Was Phoebe playing at that moment on her distant couch? He seemed to hear her.

  “I inquired in the shop where you lived, but could get no information. As I had heard you say that you were going back by the next train (but you did not say where), I resolved to visit the station at about that time of day, as often as I could, between my lessons, on the chance of seeing you again. I have been there very often, but saw you no more until to-day. You were meditating as you walked the street, but the calm expression of your face emboldened me to send my child to you. And when I saw you bend your head to speak tenderly to her, I prayed to GOD to forgive me for having ever brought a sorrow on it. I now pray to you to forgive me, and to forgive my husband. I was very young, he was young too, and, in the ignorant hardihood of such a time of life, we don’t know what we do to those who have undergone more discipline. You generous man! You good man! So to raise me up and make nothing of my crime against you!”—for he would not see her on her knees, and soothed her as a kind father might have soothed an erring daughter—”thank you, bless you, thank you!”

  When he next spoke, it was after having drawn aside the window curtain and looked out awhile. Then he only said:

  “Is Polly asleep?”

  “Yes. As I came in, I met her going away upstairs, and put her to bed myself.”

  “Leave her with me for to-morrow, Beatrice, and write me your address on this leaf of my pocket-book. In the evening I will bring her home to you—and to her father.”

  *

  “Hallo!” cried Polly, putting her saucy sunny face in at the door next morning when breakfast was ready: “I thought I was fetched last night?”

  “So you were, Polly, but I asked leave to keep you here for the day, and to take you home in the evening.”

  “Upon my word!” said Polly. “You are very cool, ain’t you?”

  However, Polly seemed to think it a good idea, and added: “I suppose I must give you a kiss, though you ARE cool.”

  The kiss given and taken, they sat down to breakfast in a highly conversational tone.

  “Of course, you are going to amuse me?” said Polly.

  “Oh, of course!” said Barbox Brothers.

  In the pleasurable height of her anticipations, Polly found it indispensable to put down her piece of toast, cross one of her little fat knees over the other, and bring her little fat right hand down into her left hand with a business-like slap. After this gathering of herself together, Polly, by that time a mere heap of dimples, asked in a wheedling manner:

  “What are we going to do, you dear old thing?”

  “Why, I was thinking,” said Barbox Brothers, “—but are you fond of horses, Polly?”

  “Ponies, I am,” said Polly, “especially when their tails are long. But horses—n-no—too big, you know.”

  “Well,” pursued Barbox Brothers, in a spirit of grave mysterious confidence adapted to the importance of the consultation, “I did see yesterday, Polly, on the walls, pictures of two long-tailed ponies, speckled all over—”

  “No, no, NO!” cried Polly, in an ecstatic desire to linger on the charming details. “Not speckled all over!”

  “Speckled all over. Which ponies jump through hoops—”

  “No, no, NO!” cried Polly as before. “They never jump through hoops!”

  “Yes, they do. Oh, I assure you they do! And eat pie in pinafores-

  -“

  “Ponies eating pie in pinafores!” said Polly. “What a story-teller you are, ain’t you?”

  “Upon my honour.—And fire off guns.”

  (Polly hardly seemed to see the force of the ponies resorting to fire-arms.)

  “And I was thinking,” pursued the exemplary Barbox, “that if you and I were to go to the Circus where these ponies are, it would do our constitutions good.”

  “Does that mean amuse us?” inquired Polly. “What long words you do use, don’t you?”

  Apologetic for having wandered out of his depth, he replied:

  “That means amuse us. That is exactly what it means. There are many other wonders besides the ponies, and we shall see them all. Ladies and gentlemen in spangled dresses, and elephants and lions and tigers.”

  Polly became observant of the teapot, with a curled-up nose indicating some uneasiness of mind.

  “They never get out, of course,” she remarked as a mere truism.

  “The elephants and lions and tigers? Oh, dear no!”

  “Oh, dear no!” said Polly. “And of course nobody’s afraid of the ponies shooting anybody.”

  “Not the least in the world.”

  “No, no, not the least in the world,” said Polly.

  “I was also thinking,” proceeded Barbox, “that if we were to look in at the toy-shop, to choose a doll—”

  “Not dressed!” cried Polly with a clap of her hands. “No, no, NO, not dressed!”

  “Full-dressed. Together with a house, and all things necessary for housekeeping—”

  Polly gave a little scream, and seemed in danger of falling into a swoon of bliss.

  “What a darling you are!” she languidly exclaimed, leaning back in her chair. “Come and be hugged, or I must come and hug you.”

  This resplendent programme was carried into execution with the utmost rigour of the law. It being essential to make the purchase of the doll its first feature—or that lady would have lost the ponies—the toy-shop expedition took preceden
ce. Polly in the magic warehouse, with a doll as large as herself under each arm, and a neat assortment of some twenty more on view upon the counter, did indeed present a spectacle of indecision not quite compatible with unalloyed happiness, but the light cloud passed. The lovely specimen oftenest chosen, oftenest rejected, and finally abided by, was of Circassian descent, possessing as much boldness of beauty as was reconcilable with extreme feebleness of mouth, and combining a sky-blue silk pelisse with rose-coloured satin trousers, and a black velvet hat: which this fair stranger to our northern shores would seem to have founded on the portraits of the late Duchess of Kent. The name this distinguished foreigner brought with her from beneath the glowing skies of a sunny clime was (on Polly’s authority) Miss Melluka, and the costly nature of her outfit as a housekeeper, from the Barbox coffers, may be inferred from the two facts that her silver tea-spoons were as large as her kitchen poker, and that the proportions of her watch exceeded those of her frying-pan. Miss Melluka was graciously pleased to express her entire approbation of the Circus, and so was Polly; for the ponies were speckled, and brought down nobody when they fired, and the savagery of the wild beasts appeared to be mere smoke—which article, in fact, they did produce in large quantities from their insides. The Barbox absorption in the general subject throughout the realisation of these delights was again a sight to see, nor was it less worthy to behold at dinner, when he drank to Miss Melluka, tied stiff in a chair opposite to Polly (the fair Circassian possessing an unbendable spine), and even induced the waiter to assist in carrying out with due decorum the prevailing glorious idea. To wind up, there came the agreeable fever of getting Miss Melluka and all her wardrobe and rich possessions into a fly with Polly, to be taken home. But, by that time, Polly had become unable to look upon such accumulated joys with waking eyes, and had withdrawn her consciousness into the wonderful Paradise of a child’s sleep. “Sleep, Polly, sleep,” said Barbox Brothers, as her head dropped on his shoulder; “you shall not fall out of this bed easily, at any rate!”

  What rustling piece of paper he took from his pocket, and carefully folded into the bosom of Polly’s frock, shall not be mentioned. He said nothing about it, and nothing shall be said about it. They drove to a modest suburb of the great ingenious town, and stopped at the fore-court of a small house. “Do not wake the child,” said Barbox Brothers softly to the driver; “I will carry her in as she is.”

  Greeting the light at the opened door which was held by Polly’s mother, Polly’s bearer passed on with mother and child in to a ground-floor room. There, stretched on a sofa, lay a sick man, sorely wasted, who covered his eyes with his emaciated hand.

  “Tresham,” said Barbox in a kindly voice, “I have brought you back your Polly, fast asleep. Give me your hand, and tell me you are better.”

  The sick man reached forth his right hand, and bowed his head over the hand into which it was taken, and kissed it. “Thank you, thank you! I may say that I am well and happy.”

  “That’s brave,” said Barbox. “Tresham, I have a fancy—Can you make room for me beside you here?”

  He sat down on the sofa as he said the words, cherishing the plump peachey cheek that lay uppermost on his shoulder.

  “I have a fancy, Tresham (I am getting quite an old fellow now, you know, and old fellows may take fancies into their heads sometimes), to give up Polly, having found her, to no one but you. Will you take her from me?”

  As the father held out his arms for the child, each of the two men looked steadily at the other.

  “She is very dear to you, Tresham?”

  “Unutterably dear.”

  “God bless her! It is not much, Polly,” he continued, turning his eyes upon her peaceful face as he apostrophized her, “it is not much, Polly, for a blind and sinful man to invoke a blessing on something so far better than himself as a little child is; but it would be much—much upon his cruel head, and much upon his guilty soul—if he could be so wicked as to invoke a curse. He had better have a millstone round his neck, and be cast into the deepest sea. Live and thrive, my pretty baby!” Here he kissed her. “Live and prosper, and become in time the mother of other little children, like the Angels who behold The Father’s face!”

  He kissed her again, gave her up gently to both her parents, and went out.

  But he went not to Wales. No, he never went to Wales. He went straightway for another stroll about the town, and he looked in upon the people at their work, and at their play, here, there, every-there, and where not. For he was Barbox Brothers and Co. now, and had taken thousands of partners into the solitary firm.

  He had at length got back to his hotel room, and was standing before his fire refreshing himself with a glass of hot drink which he had stood upon the chimney-piece, when he heard the town clocks striking, and, referring to his watch, found the evening to have so slipped away, that they were striking twelve. As he put up his watch again, his eyes met those of his reflection in the chimney-glass.

  “Why, it’s your birthday already,” he said, smiling. “You are looking very well. I wish you many happy returns of the day.”

  He had never before bestowed that wish upon himself. “By Jupiter!” he discovered, “it alters the whole case of running away from one’s birthday! It’s a thing to explain to Phoebe. Besides, here is quite a long story to tell her, that has sprung out of the road with no story. I’ll go back, instead of going on. I’ll go back by my friend Lamps’s Up X presently.”

  He went back to Mugby Junction, and, in point of fact, he established himself at Mugby Junction. It was the convenient place to live in, for brightening Phoebe’s life. It was the convenient place to live in, for having her taught music by Beatrice. It was the convenient place to live in, for occasionally borrowing Polly. It was the convenient place to live in, for being joined at will to all sorts of agreeable places and persons. So, he became settled there, and, his house standing in an elevated situation, it is noteworthy of him in conclusion, as Polly herself might (not irreverently) have put it:

  “There was an Old Barbox who lived on a hill, And if he ain’t gone, he lives there still.”

  Here follows the substance of what was seen, heard, or otherwise picked up, by the gentleman for Nowhere, in his careful study of the Junction.

  CHAPTER III—THE BOY AT MUGBY

  I am the boy at Mugby. That’s about what I am.

  You don’t know what I mean? What a pity! But I think you do. I think you must. Look here. I am the boy at what is called The Refreshment Room at Mugby Junction, and what’s proudest boast is, that it never yet refreshed a mortal being.

  Up in a corner of the Down Refreshment Room at Mugby Junction, in the height of twenty-seven cross draughts (I’ve often counted ‘em while they brush the First-Class hair twenty-seven ways), behind the bottles, among the glasses, bounded on the nor’west by the beer, stood pretty far to the right of a metallic object that’s at times the tea-urn and at times the soup-tureen, according to the nature of the last twang imparted to its contents which are the same groundwork, fended off from the traveller by a barrier of stale sponge-cakes erected atop of the counter, and lastly exposed sideways to the glare of Our Missis’s eye—you ask a Boy so sitiwated, next time you stop in a hurry at Mugby, for anything to drink; you take particular notice that he’ll try to seem not to hear you, that he’ll appear in a absent manner to survey the Line through a transparent medium composed of your head and body, and that he won’t serve you as long as you can possibly bear it. That’s me.

  What a lark it is! We are the Model Establishment, we are, at Mugby. Other Refreshment Rooms send their imperfect young ladies up to be finished off by our Missis. For some of the young ladies, when they’re new to the business, come into it mild! Ah! Our Missis, she soon takes that out of ‘em. Why, I originally come into the business meek myself. But Our Missis, she soon took that out of ME.

  What a delightful lark it is! I look upon us Refreshmenters as ockipying the only proudly independent footing on the Line. There�
�s Papers, for instance,—my honourable friend, if he will allow me to call him so,—him as belongs to Smith’s bookstall. Why, he no more dares to be up to our Refreshmenting games than he dares to jump a top of a locomotive with her steam at full pressure, and cut away upon her alone, driving himself, at limited-mail speed. Papers, he’d get his head punched at every compartment, first, second, and third, the whole length of a train, if he was to ventur to imitate my demeanour. It’s the same with the porters, the same with the guards, the same with the ticket clerks, the same the whole way up to the secretary, traffic-manager, or very chairman. There ain’t a one among ‘em on the nobly independent footing we are. Did you ever catch one of them, when you wanted anything of him, making a system of surveying the Line through a transparent medium composed of your head and body? I should hope not.

  You should see our Bandolining Room at Mugby Junction. It’s led to by the door behind the counter, which you’ll notice usually stands ajar, and it’s the room where Our Missis and our young ladies Bandolines their hair. You should see ‘em at it, betwixt trains, Bandolining away, as if they was anointing themselves for the combat. When you’re telegraphed, you should see their noses all a-going up with scorn, as if it was a part of the working of the same Cooke and Wheatstone electrical machinery. You should hear Our Missis give the word, “Here comes the Beast to be Fed!” and then you should see ‘em indignantly skipping across the Line, from the Up to the Down, or Wicer Warsaw, and begin to pitch the stale pastry into the plates, and chuck the sawdust sangwiches under the glass covers, and get out the—ha, ha, ha!—the sherry,—O my eye, my eye!—for your Refreshment.

  It’s only in the Isle of the Brave and Land of the Free (by which, of course, I mean to say Britannia) that Refreshmenting is so effective, so ‘olesome, so constitutional a check upon the public. There was a Foreigner, which having politely, with his hat off, beseeched our young ladies and Our Missis for “a leetel gloss host prarndee,” and having had the Line surveyed through him by all and no other acknowledgment, was a-proceeding at last to help himself, as seems to be the custom in his own country, when Our Missis, with her hair almost a-coming un-Bandolined with rage, and her eyes omitting sparks, flew at him, cotched the decanter out of his hand, and said, “Put it down! I won’t allow that!” The foreigner turned pale, stepped back with his arms stretched out in front of him, his hands clasped, and his shoulders riz, and exclaimed: “Ah! Is it possible, this! That these disdaineous females and this ferocious old woman are placed here by the administration, not only to empoison the voyagers, but to affront them! Great Heaven! How arrives it? The English people. Or is he then a slave? Or idiot?” Another time, a merry, wideawake American gent had tried the sawdust and spit it out, and had tried the Sherry and spit that out, and had tried in vain to sustain exhausted natur upon Butter-Scotch, and had been rather extra Bandolined and Line-surveyed through, when, as the bell was ringing and he paid Our Missis, he says, very loud and good-tempered: “I tell Yew what ‘tis, ma’arm. I la’af. Theer! I la’af. I Dew. I oughter ha’ seen most things, for I hail from the Onlimited side of the Atlantic Ocean, and I haive travelled right slick over the Limited, head on through Jeerusalemm and the East, and likeways France and Italy, Europe Old World, and am now upon the track to the Chief Europian Village; but such an Institution as Yew, and Yewer young ladies, and Yewer fixin’s solid and liquid, afore the glorious Tarnal I never did see yet! And if I hain’t found the eighth wonder of monarchical Creation, in finding Yew and Yewer young ladies, and Yewer fixin’s solid and liquid, all as aforesaid, established in a country where the people air not absolute Loo-naticks, I am Extra Double Darned with a Nip and Frizzle to the innermostest grit! Wheerfur—Theer!—I la’af! I Dew, ma’arm. I la’af!” And so he went, stamping and shaking his sides, along the platform all the way to his own compartment.