Friends I Have Made

“Yes, he’s asleep now.”

That woke me up of course, and if I didn’t lie there shamming and heard all they said in a whisper!

“How came you to make him more vexed than he was, Luke?” says the wife; and he told her.

“I couldn’t do it, mother,” he said, excitedly. “It was heart-breaking. She’s living in a wretched room there with her daughter; and, mother, when I saw her I felt as if – there, I can’t tell you.”

“Go on, Luke,” she said.

“They’re half-starved,” he said in a husky way. “Oh, mother! it’s horrible. Such a sweet, beautiful girl, and the poor woman herself dying almost with some terrible disease.”

The wife sighed.

“They told me,” he went on, “how hard they had tried to live by ordinary needlework, and failed, and that as a last resource they had tried to get the machine.”

“Poor things!” says the wife; “but are you sure the mother was a lady?”

“A clergyman’s widow,” says Luke hastily; “there isn’t a doubt about it. Poor girl! and they’ve got to learn to use it before it will be of any use.”

“Poor girl, Luke?” says the wife softly; and I saw through my eyelashes that she laid a hand upon his arm, and was looking curiously at him, when if he didn’t cover his face with his hands, rest his elbows on the table, and give a low groan! Then the old woman got up, stood behind his chair, and began playing with and caressing his hair like the foolish old mother would.

“Mother,” he says suddenly, “will you go and see them?”

She didn’t answer for a minute, only stood looking down at him, and then said softly —

“They paid you the first money?”

“No,” he says hotly. “I hadn’t the heart to take it.”

“Then that money you paid was yours, Luke?”

“Yes, mother,” he says simply; and those two stopped looking one at the another, till the wife bent down and kissed him, holding his head afterwards, for a few moments, between her hands; for she always did worship that chap, our only one; and then I closed my eyes tight, and went on breathing heavy and thinking.

For something like a new revelation had come upon me. I knew Luke was five-and-twenty, and that I was fifty-four, but he always seemed like a boy to me, and here was I waking up to the fact that he was a grown man, and that he was thinking and feeling as I first thought and felt when I saw his mother, nigh upon eight-and-twenty years ago.

I lay back, thinking and telling myself I was very savage with him for deceiving me, and that I wouldn’t have him and his mother laying plots together against me, and that I wouldn’t stand by and see him make a fool of himself with the first pretty girl he sets eyes on, when he might marry Maria Turner, the engineer’s daughter, and have a nice bit of money with her, to put into the business, and then be my partner.

“No,” I says; “if you plot together, I’ll plot all alone,” and then I pretended to wake up, took no notice, and had my supper.

I kept rather gruff the next morning, and made myself very busy about the place, and I dare say I spoke more sharply than usual, but the wife and Luke were as quiet as could be; and about twelve I went out, with a little oil-can and two or three tools in my pocket.

It was not far to Bennett’s Place, and on getting to the right house I asked for Mrs Murray, and was directed to the second-floor, where, as I reached the door, I could hear the clicking of my sewing machine, and whoever was there was so busy over it that she did not hear me knock; so I opened the door softly, and looked in upon as sad a scene as I shall ever, I dare say, see.

There in the bare room sat, asleep in her chair, the widow lady who came about the machine, and I could see that in her face which told plainly enough that the pain and suffering she must have been going through for years would soon be over; and, situated as she was, it gave me a kind of turn.

“It’s no business of yours,” I said to myself roughly; and I turned then to look at who it was bending over my machine.

I could see no face, only a slight figure in rusty black; and a pair of busy white hands were trying very hard to govern the thing, and to learn how to use it well.

“So that’s the gal, is it?” I said to myself. “Ah! Luke, my boy, you’ve got to the silly calf age, and I dare say – ”

I got no farther, for at that moment the girl started, and turned upon me a timid, wondering face, that made my heart give a queer throb, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

“Hush!” she said softly, holding up her hand; and I saw it was as thin and transparent as if she had been ill.

“My name’s Smith,” I said, taking out a screwdriver. “My machine: how does it go? Thought I’d come and see.”

Her face lit up in a moment, and she came forward eagerly.

“I’m so glad you’ve come,” she said, “I can’t quite manage this.”

She pointed to the thread regulator, and the next minute I was showing her that it was too tight, and somehow, in a gentle timid way, the little witch quite got over me, and I stopped there two hours helping her, till her eyes sparkled with delight, as she found out how easily she could now make the needle dart in and out of some hard material.

“Do you think you can do it now?” I said.

“Oh, yes, I think so; I am so glad you came.”

“So am I,” says I gruffly; “it will make it all the easier for you to earn the money, and pay for it.”

“And I will work so hard,” she said earnestly.

“That you will, my dear,” I says in spite of myself, for I felt sure it wasn’t me speaking, but something in me. “She been ill long?” I said, nodding towards her mother.

“Months,” she said, with the tears starting in her pretty eyes; “but,” she added brightly, “I shall have enough with this to get her good medicines and things she can fancy;” and as I looked at her, something in me said —

“God bless you, my dear! I hope you will;” and the next minute I was going downstairs, calling myself an old fool.

They thought I didn’t know at home, but I did. There was the wife going over and over again to Bennett’s Place; and all sorts of little nice things were made and taken there. I often used to see them talking about it, but I took no notice; and that artful scoundrel, my boy Luke, used to pay the half-crown every week out of his own pocket, after pretending to go and fetch it from the widow’s.

And all the time I told myself I didn’t like it, for I could see that Luke was changed, and always thinking of that girl – a girl not half good enough for him. I remembered being poor myself, and I hated poverty, and I used to speak harshly to Luke and the wife, and feel very bitter.

At last came an afternoon when I knew there was something wrong. The wife had gone out directly after dinner, saying she was going to see a sick woman – I knew who it was, bless you! – and Luke was fidgeting about, not himself; and at last he took his hat and went out.

“They might have confided in me,” I said bitterly, but all the time I knew that I wouldn’t let them. “They’ll be spending money – throwing it away. I know they’ve spent pounds on them already.”

At last I got in such a way that I called down our foreman, left him in charge, and took my hat and went after them.

Everything was very quiet in Bennett’s Place, for a couple of dirty dejected-looking women, one of whom was in arrears to me, had sent the children that played in the court right away because of the noise, and were keeping guard so that they should not come back.

I went up the stairs softly, and all was very still, only as I got nearer to the room I could hear a bitter wailing cry, and then I opened the door gently and went in.

Luke was there, standing with his head bent by the sewing machine; the wife sat in a chair, and on her knees, with her face buried in the wife’s lap, was the poor girl, crying as if her little heart would break; while on the bed, with all the look of pain gone out of her face, lay the widow – gone to meet her husband where pain and sorrow are no more.

I couldn’t see very plainly, for there was a mist-like before my eyes; but I know Luke flushed up as he took a step forward, as if to protect the girl, and the wife looked at me in a frightened way.

But there was no need, for something that wasn’t me spoke, and that in a very gentle way, as I stepped forward, raised the girl up, and kissed her pretty face before laying her little helpless head upon my shoulder, and smoothing her soft brown hair.

“Mother,” says that something from within me, “I think there’s room in the nest at home for this poor, forsaken little bird. Luke, my boy, will you go and fetch a cab? Mother will see to what wants doing here.”