Johnny Ludlow, Second Series

There was the blight. His prospects were over from that day. The little money she had was soon spent: he must provide a living how he could. Instead of qualifying himself for a surgeon, he took a situation as a chemist and druggist’s assistant: and, later, set up for himself in the shop at Timberdale. For the first ten years of his married life, he was always intending to pass the necessary examinations: each year saying it should be done the next. But expenses came on thick and fast; and that great need with every one, present wants, had to be supplied first. He gave up the hope then: went on in the old jog-trot line, and subsided into an obscure rural chemist and druggist.

The son, Benjamin, was intended for a surgeon. As a preliminary, he was bound apprentice to his father in order to learn the mysteries of drugs and chemicals. When out of his time, he was transferred to a chemist and druggist’s at Tewkesbury, who was also in practice as a medical man. There, Mr. Benjamin fell in with bad companions; a lapse that, in course of time, resulted in his coming home, changing the note in our letter for the stolen one, and then decamping from Timberdale. What with the blow the discovery itself was to Rymer, and what with the concealing of the weighty secret—for he had to conceal it: he could not go and inform against his own son—it pretty nearly did for him. Rymer tried to make reparation in one sense of the word—by the bringing of that five-pound bank-note to the Squire. For which the Squire, ignorant of the truth, thought him a downright lunatic.

For some months, after that evening, Thomas Rymer was to be seen in his shop as usual, growing to look more and more like a ghost. Which Darbyshire, the Timberdale doctor, said was owing to liver, and physicked him well.

But the physic did not answer. Of all obstinate livers, as Darbyshire said, Rymer’s was about the worst he had ever had to do with. Some days he could not go into the shop at all, and Margaret, his daughter, had to serve the customers. She could make up prescriptions just as well as he, and people grew to trust her. They had a good business. It was known that Rymer’s drugs were genuine; had direct from the fountain-head. He had given up the post-office, and the grocer opposite had taken to it—Salmon, who was brother to Salmon of South Crabb. In this uncertain way, a week ill, and a week tolerably well, Rymer continued to go on for about two years.

Margaret Rymer stood behind the counter: a neat little girl in grey merino. Her face was just like her father’s; the same delicate features, the sweet brown eyes, and the look of innate refinement. Margaret belonged to his side of the house; there was not an atom of the Brummagem Bateses in her. The Squire, who remembered her grandfather the clergyman, said Margaret took after him. She was in her nineteenth year now, and for steadiness you might have trusted her alone right across the world and back again.

She stood behind the counter, making up some medicine. A woman in a coarse brown cloak with a showy cotton handkerchief tied on her head was waiting for it. It had been a dull autumn day: evening was coming on, and the air felt chilly.

“How much be it, please, miss?” asked the woman, as Margaret handed her the bottle of mixture, done up in white paper.

“Eighteenpence. Thank you.”

“Be the master better?” the woman turned round from the door to inquire, as if the state of Mr. Rymer’s health had been an afterthought.

“I think he is a little. He has a very bad cold, and is lying in bed to-day. Thank you for asking. Good-night.”

When dusk came on, Margaret shut the street-door and went into the parlour. Mrs. Rymer sat there writing a letter. Margaret just glanced in.

“Mother, can you listen to the shop, please?”

“I can if I choose—what should hinder me?” responded Mrs. Rymer. “Where are you off to, Margaret?”

“To sit with my father for a few minutes.”

“You needn’t bother to leave the shop for that. I dare say he’s asleep.”

“I won’t stay long,” said Margaret. “Call me, please, if any one comes in.”

She escaped up the staircase, which stood in the nook between the shop and the parlour. Thomas Rymer lay back in the easy-chair by his bit of bedroom fire. He looked as ill as a man could look, his face thin and sallow, the fine nose pinched, the mild brown eyes mournful.

“Papa, I did not know you were getting up,” said Margaret, in a soft low tone.

“Didn’t you hear me, child?” was his reply, for the room was over the shop. “I have been long enough about it.”

“I thought it was my mother moving about.”

“She has not been here all the afternoon. What is she doing?”

“I think she is writing a letter.”

Mr. Rymer groaned—which might have been caused by the pain that he was always feeling. Mrs. Rymer’s letters were few and far between, and written to one correspondent only—her son Benjamin. That Benjamin was random and must be getting a living in any chance way, or not getting one at all, and that he had never been at home for between two and three years, Margaret knew quite well. But she knew no worse. The secret hidden between Mr. and Mrs. Rymer, that they never spoke of to each other, had been kept from her.

“I wish you had not got up,” said Margaret. “You are not well enough to come down to-night.”

He looked at her, rather quickly; and spoke after a pause.

“If I don’t make an effort—as Darbyshire tells me—it may end in my becoming a confirmed invalid, child. I must get down while I can.”

“You will get better soon, papa; Mr. Darbyshire says so,” she answered, quietly swallowing down a sigh.

“Ay, I know he does. I hope it will be so, please God. My life has been only a trouble throughout, Margaret; but I should like to struggle with it yet for all your sakes.”

Looking at him as he sat there, the firelight playing upon his worn face with its subdued spirit, you might have seen it was true—that his life had been a continuous trouble. Was he born to it? or did it only come upon him through marrying Susannah Bates? On the surface of things, lots seemed very unequally dealt out in this world. What had been the lot of Thomas Rymer? The poor son of a poor curate, he had known little but privation in his earlier years; then came the long drudgery of his apprenticeship, then his marriage, and the longer drudgery of his after-life. An uncongenial and unsuitable marriage—and he had felt it to the backbone. From twenty to thirty years had Rymer toiled in a shop late and early; never taking a day’s rest or a day’s holiday, for some one must always be on duty, and he had no help or substitute. Even on Sundays he must be at hand, lest his neighbours should be taken ill and want drugs. If he went to church, there was no certainty that his servant-maid—generally a stout young woman in her teens, with a black face and rough hair—would not astonish the congregation by flying up to his pew-door to call him out. Indeed the vision was not so very uncommon. Where, then, could have been Rymer’s pleasure in life? He had none; it was all work. And upon the work came the trouble.

Just as the daughter, Margaret, was like her father, so the son, Benjamin, resembled his mother. But for the difference of years, and that his red hair was short and hers long, he might have put on a lace cap, and sat for her portrait. He was the eldest of the children; Margaret the youngest, those between had died. Seven years between children makes a difference, and Margaret with her gentleness had always been afraid of rough Benjamin.

But whether a child is ugly or handsome, it’s all the same to the parents, and for some years the only white spot in Thomas Rymer’s life had been the love of his little Benjamin. For the matter of that, as a child, Ben was rather pretty. He grew up and turned out wild; and it was just as great a blow as could have fallen upon Rymer. But when that horrible thing was brought home to him—taking the bank-note out of the letter, and substituting the stolen one for it—then Rymer’s heart gave in. Ever since that time it had been as good as breaking.

Well, that was Thomas Rymer’s lot in life. Some people seem, on the contrary, to have nothing but sunshine. Do you know what Mrs. Todhetley says?—that the greater the cloud here, the brighter will be the recompense hereafter. Looking at Thomas Rymer’s face as the fire played on it—its goodness of expression, almost that of a martyr; remembering his prolonged battle with the world’s cares, and his aching heart; knowing how inoffensive he had been towards his fellow-creatures, ever doing them a good turn when it lay in his power, and never an ill one—one could only hope that his recompense would be of the largest.

“Had many people in this afternoon, Margaret?”

“Pretty well, papa.”

Mr. Rymer sighed. “When I get stronger–”

“Margaret! Shop.”

The loud coarse summons was Mrs. Rymer’s. Margaret’s spirit recoiled from it the least in the world. In spite of her having been brought up to the “shop,” there had always been something in her innate refinement that rebelled against it and against having to serve in it.

“A haperth o’ liquorish” was the extensive order from a small child, whose head did not come much above the counter. Margaret served it at once: the liquorice, being often in demand, was kept done up in readiness. The child laid down the halfpenny and went out with a bang.

“I may as well run over with the letter,” thought Margaret—alluding to an order she had written to London for some drug they were out of. “And there’s my mother’s. Mother,” she added, going to the parlour-door, “do you want your letter posted?”

“I’ll post it myself when I do,” replied Mrs. Rymer. “Ain’t it almost time you had the gas lighted? That shop must be in darkness.”

It was so, nearly. But the gas was never lighted until really needed, in the interests of economy. Margaret ran across the road, put her letter into the post in Salmon’s window, and ran back again. She stood for a moment at the door, looking at a huge lumbering caravan that was passing—a ménage on wheels, as seen by the light within its small windows. “It must be on its way to Worcester fair,” she thought.

“Is it you, Margaret? How d’ye do?”

Some great rough man had come up, and was attempting to kiss her. Margaret started back with a cry. She would have closed the door against him; but he was the stronger and got in.

“Why, what possesses the child! Don’t you know me?”

Every pulse in Margaret Rymer’s body tingled to pain as she recognized him. It was her brother Benjamin. Better, than this, that it had been what she fancied—some rude stranger, who in another moment would have passed on and been gone for ever. Benjamin’s coming was always the signal for discomfort at home, and Margaret felt half-paralyzed with dismay.

“How are the old folk, Maggie?”

“Papa is very ill,” she answered, her voice slightly trembling. “My mother is well as usual. I think she was writing to you this afternoon.”

“Governor ill! So I’ve heard. Upstairs a good deal, is he not?”

“Quite half his time, I think.”

“Who attends here?”