|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 1
But man and woman want something more than mere material comfort,
much as that is valued by the Buntings of this world. So, on the
walls of the sitting-room, hung neatly framed if now rather faded
photographs--photographs of Mr. and Mrs. Bunting's various former
employers, and of the pretty country houses in which they had
separately lived during the long years they had spent in a not
unhappy servitude.
But appearances were not only deceitful, they were more than
usually deceitful with regard to these unfortunate people. In
spite of their good furniture--that substantial outward sign of
respectability which is the last thing which wise folk who fall
into trouble try to dispose of--they were almost at the end of
their tether. Already they had learnt to go hungry, and they were
beginning to learn to go cold. Tobacco, the last thing the sober
man foregoes among his comforts, had been given up some time ago
by Bunting. And even Mrs. Bunting--prim, prudent, careful woman
as she was in her way--had realised what this must mean to him.
So well, indeed, had she understood that some days back she had
crept out and bought him a packet of Virginia.
Bunting had been touched--touched as he had not been for years by
any woman's thought and love for him. Painful tears had forced
themselves into his eyes, and husband and wife had both felt in
their odd, unemotional way, moved to the heart.
Fortunately he never guessed--how could he have guessed, with his
slow, normal, rather dull mind?--that his poor Ellen had since
more than once bitterly regretted that fourpence-ha'penny, for they
were now very near the soundless depths which divide those who dwell
on the safe tableland of security--those, that is, who are sure of
making a respectable, if not a happy, living--and the submerged
multitude who, through some lack in themselves, or owing to the
conditions under which our strange civilisation has become organised,
struggle rudderless till they die in workhouse, hospital, or prison.
Had the Buntings been in a class lower than their own, had they
belonged to the great company of human beings technically known to
so many of us as the poor, there would have been friendly neighbours
ready to help them, and the same would have been the case had they
belonged to the class of smug, well-meaning, if unimaginative, folk
whom they had spent so much of their lives in serving.
There was only one person in the world who might possibly be brought
to help them. That was an aunt of Bunting's first wife. With this
woman, the widow of a man who had been well-to-do, lived Daisy,
Bunting's only child by his first wife, and during the last long two
days he had been trying to make up his mind to write to the old lady,
and that though he suspected that she would almost certainly retort
with a cruel, sharp rebuff.
As to their few acquaintances, former fellow-servants, and so on,
they had gradually fallen out of touch with them. There was but
one friend who often came to see them in their deep trouble. This
was a young fellow named Chandler, under whose grandfather Bunting
had been footman years and years ago. Joe Chandler had never gone
into service; he was attached to the police; in fact not to put too
fine a point upon it, young Chandler was a detective.
When they had first taken the house which had brought them, so they
both thought, such bad luck, Bunting had encouraged the young chap
to come often, for his tales were well worth listening to--quite
exciting at times. But now poor Bunting didn't want to hear that
sort of stories--stories of people being cleverly "nabbed," or
stupidly allowed to escape the fate they always, from Chandler's
point of view, richly deserved.
But Joe still came very faithfully once or twice a week, so timing
his calls that neither host nor hostess need press food upon him
--nay, more, he had done that which showed him to have a good and
feeling heart. He had offered his father's old acquaintance a loan,
and Bunting, at last, had taken 30s. Very little of that money
now remained: Bunting still could jingle a few coppers in his pocket;
and Mrs. Bunting had 2s. 9d.; that and the rent they would have to
pay in five weeks, was all they had left. Everything of the light,
portable sort that would fetch money had been sold. Mrs. Bunting
had a fierce horror of the pawnshop. She had never put her feet in
such a place, and she declared she never would--she would rather
starve first.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|