Cassell's Family Magazine/A Missing Witness/Chapter 1

E lived at Wood Green then. Ours was quite a small house in a new road lined with small houses, all so precisely alike that you could not distinguish one from the other, except by its bearing a more or less imposing name than its neighbour. Our house was called Hawthorndene, which looked very nice as an address, but was deceiving to the visitor, for there are no left in Wood Green, and the nearest  is at Old Hornsey. To make it quite clear that we were not such grand folks as the name of our house might imply, little mother had a brass plate fixed on our gate with her name and occupation upon it—“Mrs. Heatherly, dressmaker.” Indeed, we were very poor, and had to work hard at all seasons to make ends meet and keep a respectable appearance, but this being Christmas time, we had so much to do that it seemed impossible to get through it all by the time promised, which was Christmas morning “at the very latest,” though we worked day and night.

Dear little mother sat in the small bay-window, bending over the machine, and Elsie and I sat in the corners on each side to get as much light as the winter afternoon afforded, all as silent as mutes, for the rattle of the machine made conversation impossible. Only when a new seam had to be taken up one would make an observation to which another replied, and then the Singer beginning again its “tac, tac, tac, tac,” compelled us to follow our thread of reflection in silence.

“How nice it would be to have a good run,” thought I, “if it were only to the end of the street and back. I should love to hear the frosty ground ring under my feet. I'd like to trundle a hoop with those children”—the clang of the stick upon the iron reaching my ears above the ceaseless “tac, tac, tac, tac,” of the machine. “I'd rather be the muffin-man than sit here eternally over this smelly lining. At least he can stretch his limbs, and breathe the fresh air. It's hard to sit here hour after hour while other girls are running about to look at the shops and buy good things for Christmas Day. One thing, we must have a day off then. Phil promised to spend the whole day with us, and he's not one to break his word—though I dare say he could find more entertaining society than that of three poor dressmakers. We must get something in for dinner besides the plum-pudding”—that was already hanging in its cloth in the scullery—“I wonder whether mother could afford a chicken. Dear little mother, it's harder for her than for me.” Taking a fresh length of cotton, I glanced at her as I bit off the end and knotted it.

There were signs of fatigue in her pale face, and a strenuous expression as if she were resolved not to give in. But for all that, it was the sweetest and prettiest face in the world. Who would have thought that she was nearly forty, and our mother? I could understand people mistaking her for Elsie's elder sister. They never mistook her for mine, because I am so dull and plain, and she so bright and pretty. Her courage and buoyant hopefulness were the secret of her youthfulness, I think—those qualities and the sweetness of her disposition. You could see her gentleness and goodness in every feature, in the softness of her dark eyes, in the delicacy of her nose, in the sweet full curves of her lips, and the pure outline of her cheek and chin. She scarcely looked thirty, dear little mother; in that light one could not see the little lines in the angles of her eyes, nor the silvery threads that we could no longer conceal in the ripple of her hair, when we dressed it for her. Looking at her lingeringly, I wondered how my father could ever have left her, even for all the gold in Africa; how, thinking of her, he could have stayed there all these years—ten years fully now; or how, looking back upon the past, when he used to romp with us children, and turn from us to take our mother in his arms and kiss her, he could become so utterly indifferent to the welfare of us all. “Someone,” I said to myself, “someone must have estranged him,and worked upon his weaker nature with terrible power to render him so unfeeling and selfish.” For it needed little wisdom on my part to see that he must be both. Why should he stay in Africa if the mining works he went there to conduct failed to bring him the fortune he expected; or if it yielded money, why should he send my mother none? If he had sent her the meanest little present, she would have treasured it, talked of it to us, made much of it. For she loved him still, and would hear no hint of any ill-advised acquaintance to his disadvantage. No, she would fire up with resentment, she who was so habitually gentle and self-controlled, if a word about him could be construed to a suggestion of misdoing on his part. A letter once a month or so was all she ever had from him, and she dared not show us that, for fear we thought that it might betray his lack of kindness, though she never failed to tell us that our father had sent us his dear love. Dear love, indeed! If he had sent us only a few shillings for boots or gloves!

Elsie dropped her cotton, and the reel rolling to my feet, I picked it up and handed it to her. She nodded her thanks with such a weary smile that it turned my reflections into a new channel.

“Poor Elsie,” thought I, “perhaps this life is more wearisome to her than it is even for little mother—ten times harder to bear than I find it. Mother and I do not dislike the work: she hates it. We are contented with our occupation, because we can do nothing better; but it's otherwise with Elsie. The organist declared that with her wonderful voice and fine ear for music, she could earn more in a week as a public singer than all three of us could gain in a year by dress-making. He said that a brilliant future was before her—fame and fortune within her reach, if she chose to take it. I wonder if she would have taken it if little mother from the very first had not been so averse? I think she would if she had not loved us so deeply. With her talent and beauty it seems down right cruel to make her sit from morning till night in this dull room with the incessant rattle of the machine irritating her nerves. And they talk about her being spoilt! So she is, maybe, but not in the manner ill-natured and unthinking people mean. They can't spoil Elsie: she's too good at heart. All the flattery and praise in the world has not made her ashamed of her position. It's natural she should love to receive compliments on her beauty. She must know when she looks in the glass that she deserves them. Aren't we, little mother and I, pleased when anyone says a kind word for our work? She's as brave and good as little mother even. All of us lose our temper sometimes, and revolt against the order of things. But how much more reason has she to revolt against this cramped existence, to whom the larger life is possible. Once a dressmaker, always a dressmaker. She knows that. Some of us may escape by marriage, but who in our sphere of life is good enough for Elsie?”

Just then a Pickford's van, loaded with hampers and boxes, pulled up right in front of our window, and we all stopped work to wonder, for the driver jerked his whip at our brass-plate, as he spoke to the lad who was examining the labels on the baskets.

“He can't have anything for us,” said little mother, but with a hopeful inflection in her tone of doubt.

“No such luck, dear,” said Elsie. “Who would send us a Christmas hamper?”

“But it is for us!” cried I, starting up, as the lad, with a big hamper on his back, swung open our little gate.

And it was, too. There was mother's name and address written in bold capital letters on the label, as Elsie and I read whilst mother with a trembling hand was signing her name in the carman's way-book. We dragged the hamper into the kitchen with the wild excitement of children, for such an event had never happened to us before in our recollection, and there we cut the strings that fastened the lid and tore away the straw from the top, disclosing the contained treasure. The first thing we found was a splendid turkey, and next to it a ham, and below a box of lovely grapes, and under that another box marked, “Don't shake 'em, please” (still in the same capital letters), and containing half-a-dozen bottles of port. Just as if the sender had known that our doctor had told us we ought to drink it. Then right at the bottom was a box addressed to me, in which I found six pairs of gloves—just my number—and all of the very finest quality, and another box addressed to mother, from which we brought out a most lovely lace Marie Antoinette, which we put at once on her dear little shoulders, and in which she looked so sweetly pretty that we were obliged to kiss her.

“That's all,” said I, turning the hamper upside down and shaking out the straw.

“No letter to say who sent us all these good things?” inquired little mother.

“Not even a card,” said Elsie, again raking over the straw.

“And nothing—nothing for you, dear,” said little mother in a tone of regret.

“Why, yes,” said she with a forced little laugh. “It's evident all the rest are for me since your particular presents are addressed—the turkey and the ham, and especially the port.”

She made light of it, but we could see she was a little disappointed—as well she might be by the omission. But I am sure mother and I were every bit as sorry as she. It damped our pleasure, and we went back to work when we had lit the lamp and drawn the blinds with a feeling of constraint, and for my part I could almost have wished there had been no gloves for me.

“Tac-tac-lac-lac,” went the machine again, and we all fell to wondering who could have sent us that wonderful hamper.

“Can it be the doctor?” I asked when the cotton broke and little mother stopped to re-thread her needle.

“What an absurd suggestion, Molly!” laughed Elsie. “Why, he can't find enough money to buy himself a pair of new shirt-cuffs.”

“Poor Phil!” sighed little mother. “He'd think of our wants before his own if he had the means.”

“Besides” added Elsie, and she stopped; but we knew she was thinking. “He would never have forgotten me.”

“Rattle-rattle-tac-lac-lac-lac,” said the Singer impatiently, as if to bid us guess again.

But I preferred to think of Dr. Fairfield—Phil, as we had come to call him after two years of intimate friendship. He was dear to us all as if he had been our brother; to one of us he might have been dearer still, but that his poverty compelled him to maintain a certain degree of self-restraint which in itself was a testimony to his manly strength and good feeling. At least, I thought so, feeling sure that he loved Elsie with more than a brother's affection, hide it how he might. Had he loved her less or lacked that fine consideration which distinguishes a gentleman, I believe he would have yielded to the impulses of his heart regardless of what might follow; but he was too poor to think of marriage, and too good to indulge himself in an idle flirtation which might have brought unhappiness to Elsie and broken up our friendship.

He had few friends—intimate friends us only—and no expectations, he told us. His father, after leading him to expect a fortune, died a bankrupt, his family turned their back upon him as a possible incumbrance, and at five-and-twenty, just a few months before we came to know him, he was thrown upon the world with nothing but the diploma he had won for himself. For two years he had been trying in vain to find a practitioner who would take him as a working partner. He was too young and too poor, and, maybe, too good-looking for the position he wanted.

“A family doctor must be a married man,” he told us, “and how am I to get a wife while I've not enough to keep myself?” He did just manage to keep himself by writing articles for a medical journal: without that he would have been obliged to take a situation as a chemist's assistant—a position naturally repugnant to a young man who had enjoyed absolute liberty all his life, and who felt that his capabilities were of a higher kind.

Little mother broke her thread, and took the piece of work I had been tacking for the machine.

“You don't think it could be papa, do you, mother?” asked Elsie thoughtlessly.

Little mother looked round with a start, it was so unusual for us to speak of our father—so habitual, indeed, with us to avoid any reference to him as being likely to pain her. Then she shook her head in silence and hurriedly setting the machine in motion, bent low over it, as if the stitches were hard to see. Presently she stopped, and without turning her face, found her handkerchief and used it, brushing her eyes furtively, and putting the handkerchief back in her pocket with a quick little movement of resolution, as if she had said to herself, “I won't be silly again.”

Than on went the machine once more, “tac-tac-lac-lac,” more impatiently than ever. Elsie glanced at me with contrition in her face.

Why had the tears sprung at this reference to our father? Was it the consideration of his heartless selfishness, I wondered; regret that he should be parted from us and so estranged that we could not talk openly about him. “It's more probable,” thought I, reflecting on her sympathetic and generous disposition, “that she is pitying him, regretting that she can send nothing to make him happier in his loneliness.”

There was no trace of sadness in her dear face when we broke off to have tea. Elsie had set the tray in the kitchen because our little parlour was so encumbered with work, and she had arranged all the treasures of our Christmas hamper symmetrically upon the dresser that we might look at them and thresh out thoroughly the vexed question of our unknown benefactor whilst we sat at table. And our speculations were not yet ended when a good long, hard rap sounded on our street door.

“That's Phil!” cried Elsie, jumping up with alacrity; “only he knocks like that,” and she ran down the passage arranging her hair as she went.

It was he, looking so big and handsome in his old frieze ulster. He took off his knitted gloves, and we shook hands heartily, all laughing and talking at once.

“I am doing duty for a man who has run down to spend Christmas with his friends in Kent,” he explained, taking off his coat, “but I've run away for an hour—I wanted a cup of tea so badly. And here I am just in the nick of time.”

“But you will spend Christmas Day with us all the same?” said mother.

“Oh, I made that stipulation with Watson: I shall be here to breakfast, and won't be turned out before midnight.”

“Look what we've got for dinner, Phil,” said I, pointing to the dresser.

He professed to be perfectly amazed; but the only solution he could offer was that Santa Claus himself had sent the hamper. But as he seated himself at the table Elsie cried—

“Why, Phil, you have a gold chain!”

“And a gold watch at the other end of it,” said he, pulling it out and looking at it affectionately. “It was the old dad's—the only bit of wreckage I could save.”

“But we have never seen it before,” said I.

“No; I have been lending it—to a relative. The only one whose door was never closed to me: mine uncle.”

We knew what he meant; but it shocked us a little to think he should have had to pawn his watch. How poor he must have been to have had recourse to such means of raising a little money!

“Another cup of tea, mamma, please,” said he, “and more bread and butter, Elsie. Don't cut it too thin,” he pleaded; “remember it's Christmas.”-

Elsie cutting the bread and butter, stopped short suddenly, and looking at the doctor with twinkling eyes, cried—

“Phil, it was you who sent us the hamper—I am sure of it.”

“I!” he exclaimed. “All those hams and things. Do you think I stole 'em?”

“No; you bought them. You couldn't have got back your watch without money. And it's not Dr. Philip Fairfield who would think of himself before he remembered his friends.”

“Well, it must come out, I suppose,” said he. “I didn't mean to tell you till after Christmas, but you're too many for me. I've found a fortune—a small one; but, oh, it shall grow, if human energy can make it grow. On the tram last night I heard two men talking about the extraordinary rise in the value of mining shares; and remembering that my father's misfortunes came through speculation in these matters, I looked among his papers when I got home, and found a pile of shares that at his death were absolutely worthless. I took them this morning to Blake and Rowe in Throgmorton Street, and in less than a quarter of an hour Rowe handed me a cheque for fifteen hundred pounds, the price realised in the open market for paper I might have lit my pipe with yesterday morning.”

“Oh, Phil!” from all three of us.

“Why, you can buy a practice for yourself now,” added little mother.

“And I mean to,” said he. “You are not the only one who shall have a fine brass plate on the gate.”

“But I thought, Phil, you said that a family doctor must be” Elsie stopped in embarrassment. “Married,” she would have added, but she had some secret reason for not liking to say it.

“Must be old,” Phil suggested, purposely to relieve her. “Well, I shall grow old enough, perhaps, before my practice is soundly established.”

“I want you to tell me one thing, Phil,” said Elsie, as he held her hand: “I want you to tell me why you would have concealed this good news from us till after Christmas?

“That needs explanation,” said he, holding her hand and looking warmly down into her pretty face.

“If little mother will let me run as far as the tram with you, will you tell me? I wouldn't be ten minutes, mother—and, oh, I'll work so well when I come back. Will you tell me, Phil?”

He hesitated a moment, not relinquishing her hand, and still smiling down into her pleading eyes, and then he said huskily, “Yes, I will tell you, Elsie.”

She ran off for her hat without waiting for mother's consent, and presently they left us, she holding tightly to his arm, and seeming as if she could scarcely control her nimble feet to a walking pace; and mother and I went back to our work, and the “tac-tac-lac-lac” once more made our tongues silent.

It was more than ten minutes—more than half an hour—before Elsie came back. Then she was breathless with the haste she had made and with excitement; her cheeks and eyes were aflame with joy, and pulling her hand out of her muff, she cried—

“Look, look! He had not forgotten me after all. Dear Phil!”

And she put her fingers to her lips and kissed the diamond ring passionately that Phil had given her.

“Why, what does it mean?” asked little mother, turning quite white. “It's on that finger.”

“My engaged finger. Why it means, dear, that he has asked me to be his wife, and I am engaged to him.”

And with that she threw her arms round little mother's neck and began to cry from sheer joy. Then, presently recovering herself, she said with a hysterical laugh:

“And think, little mother—the dear, dear fellow didn't mean to tell me till after Christmas, for fear I might refuse him and so spoil our holiday.”

“Oh, my poor Elsie!” cried mother, sinking in a chair. Why didn't I think of what might happen in time to save you this!—You cannot be his wife!”