Cassell's Family Magazine/A Missing Witness/Chapter 5

AMES REDMOND pulled off his glove, threw the pair in his hat, set his hat on the side-table and himself in a chair by the open window, where he sat with his thumbs hooked in the armholes of his waistcoat and the assurance of one who felt himself quite at home with us, discoursing all the time chiefly about himself and the wonderful success that attended every enterprise he undertook.

“Some men,” said he, “some men, when they find themselves faced by a strong opposition, turn tail at once and go for something where the runnin's easier. I don't. Now, look at this contract I've just taken on. Everyone said I couldn't do it. Well, just for the sake of principle I said I would: and what's the result?. I've got the contract, signed and sealed, in my pocket, and to-morrow morning I'll have fifty men on digging the foundation's for those new rubber works at Hornsey. I might have made more money taking little jobs nearer home, and this may keep me hangin' about here off and on for three months; but I don't mind that, especially as I can drop in and spend an hour or so with you when I feel a bit dullish. Lucky thing I followed up little missy. Well, it's like as if it was to be, ain't it?”

I think little mother regarded this event from the same fatalist point of view, the expression in her face was so hopeless and despondent; but indeed the prospect of this man being a constant visitor filled me with apprehension. I dreaded him already, though I scarcely knew why. But as I was setting the tea-things in the kitchen something like a presentiment of the truth flashed upon me which explained my latent dread and doubled my fear and dislike of Mr. Redmond.

“What if he has resolved already to make Elsie his wife?” I asked myself, stopping with the bread-plate in my hand as if a sudden spell had been cast upon me. The suspicion was not so preposterous as it may seem at first sight. That Elsie's beauty had excited his admiration to an extraordinary degree was evident, and that he had decided upon making some kind of conquest was not less clear from the persistency with which he pursued her to her very door. I could not believe that her resemblance to my mother, whom lie had not seen for ten years, was the real cause of that pursuit; had it been, he would certainly have come at once to the house, instead of passing first upon the other side of the road to reconnoitre. No; that was a pretext—the result of a possibility suggested to his imagination by the name upon our door. Sitting in the tram leering at Elsie, he might very well have thought “That is the sort of girl I should like to make my wife.” Many others might have thought so and have abandoned the idea, seeing her reserve and finding no sort of response to their advances. But her obvious aversion and the rebuffs she had given him might serve only to change a passing idea to a fixed purpose in the mind of a man with James Redmond's character—a man whose vaunt it was to triumph over obstacles, and who chose by preference those objects which seemed the most impossible to achieve.

It seemed to me, then, that no power on earth would prevail to make Elsie give up Phil to marry this coarse and vulgar man, who was old enough to be her father; but I foresaw more trouble in store for little mother, with the instinctive feeling that it was through her James Redmond would bring pressure to bear upon Elsie, if he really had conceived the idea that haunted me. Her manner betrayed fear; it was only too obvious that for some unexplained reason she dared not offend the unwelcome visitor—that she was compelled, in deed, to assume a conciliatory attitude. Had past experience shown her the folly of making him an enemy, I wondered. The possibility that even at this moment he might be terrorising poor little mother urged me to carry in the tea-things at once, and leave my speculations for a fitter time.

He was talking volubly as I turned the handle of the door, but he broke off abruptly as I entered the room. His elbows were on his knees, his square protuberant chin in the palm of his thick hand, and he was leaning forwards towards my mother, with his heavy eyebrows straightened over his little blue eyes emphasising the stubborn determination of his face. Little mother's position was unchanged; she sat holding one hand within the other as if to restrain its trembling, her head bowed to escape the shrewd searching of Redmond's small quick eyes.

“'Stro'nary weather for the time of year, as I was sayin',” said he, drawing himself up and linking his thumbs in his waistcoat as before.

Mother's silence showed how irrelative this observation was, and there was no sound for a minute or two save the clink of the tea-things as I set them on the table. James Redmond cast a sidelong glance at me, and having quickly decided that I was an insignificant kind of nonentity, doubtless, he returned, I imagine, to his former theme, he being a man who at all times liked to hear himself talk.

“Po'r George. Him and me was always the best of friends. More like brothers, you may say, than anything else, as I showed plainly enough at the” a quick movement of little mother's arrested him, and with a cough he changed the form of his sentence—“as I have owned up to everyone. Why, if it hadn't been for him I might have starved—suttinly I shouldn't 'a been what I am now, a man good for forty or fifty thousand pounds. It was him got me into the works, and glad I was to earn five shillings a week turning a grindstone, while he was getting ten pound a week in the pattern-shop. And he stuck to me, helping me up like a brick, till I got to be higher than him—foreman of the works, and actually givin' him his orders. No wonder we was such pals. If I hadn't felt like that towards him you'd never 'a been his wife. Why, there, if any other but him had cut me out, I'd 'a—I'd a killed him, I would.”

He said these last words with such bitter emphasis through his clenched teeth that I could not doubt the truth of the assertion.

Little mother turned to me and bade me, in a faltering voice, tell Elsie that tea was ready.

“If we had only pulled together, him and me, in business as we did in friendship, what a pile of money we might 'a made by this time. But he was always for working with his hands and I for working with my head, which from the very first I see was the more paying game,” he was saying as I left the room.

Elsie was seated in her room re-reading, for the hundredth time, Phil's last letter.

“Tea's ready, dear,” I said,

“Is that horrid man gone?” she asked.

“No; but”

“Then I shan't come down.”

“But you must think, dear, of little mother,” I urged gently.

“I do. That's what vexes me. She ought not to be civil to a man of that kind—a man who insults a helpless girl”

“If he was a friend of father's.”

“That's no recommendation, seeing what kind of a friend father was to us.”

“Elsie, dear!”

“I oughtn't to have said that, I know. But it's horrible to think that father was no better than this wretch—if we are to judge a man by the society he keeps.”

“Ought we to judge anyone upon slight grounds, dear? Mr. Redmond may have good qualities to compensate for the mere absence of good manners, which may be due to ignorance. He must have been a good workman to have risen from nothing by his own exertions to such a position as he holds now. He says he has forty or fifty thousand pounds.”

“He might have made ten times as much, and it would only prove that he is ten times as bad as he is. I know he's a bad man; and if mother chooses to tolerate him, I won't. I don't want any tea.”

I tried to persuade her as tenderly as I could, but it only made Elsie more angry and impatient.

“You're a little hypocrite,” she said in conclusion. “You know the man's a detestable wretch, only you're afraid of him. You're as weak as mother, and I won't hear another word. Get out of my room, you miserable mouse!”

Going downstairs I tried to invent some plausible excuse for Elsie, but my imagination failing me, I had—reluctantly and with much hesitation—to tell the truth, and say that she would not come down to tea.

I expected Mr. Redmond to look vengeful and black; on the contrary, he seemed delighted by this additional proof of Elsie's aversion.

“Won't come down, eh?” he said, his great mouth widening in a huge grin. “Sooner go without tea than give me the pleasure of her society. That's the sort of character I admire. Can't abide your angelic tempers”—a supercilious glance at me indicated that I might take the compliment to myself if I chose—“gals like lumps of putty, for anyone to dump into shape at the first touch. Warrant she wouldn't come down if I stayed here till midnight. It's you all over again, Olive—when you was twenty years younger; just how you used to treat me when I was fooling after you—before George—po'r George—cut me out.”

He stopped and turned to the window in silence, as if this recollection had induced a train of thought which he did not care to reveal. What were those thoughts? I asked myself as I got a glimpse of his face, in which the grin was now superseded by a look of brutal tenacity and crafty cunning. as his lower lip rose over the upper, and his little eyes with their yellow lashes narrowed to mere sandy slits under his heavy brows. Was he calculating how he might compensate that past defeat, how he might subdue Elsie to his indomitable will, and triumph in the breaking of that spirit which now opposed him? Or, now that my father was no longer to be reckoned with, was he planning some humiliation for little mother to avenge the slights he had received from her?—those slights I felt were even now not only unforgotten but unforgiven, despite the lapse of twenty years.

Cutting short his speculations, whatever they were, he cast his eye round the window, and tapping the wall with his knuckle, said—

“Ain't bought this house have you, Olive?”

“No, I—I haven't bought it.”

“Thinking o' buying it, eh?” he cried, observing the hesitation in her reply. “'Most everyone does when they feel 'emselves comfortable and get a few pounds in hand. As a friend, I advise you not to. Jerry-built. Not a bit of sound stuff or good workmanship in the whole lot. I've run up thousands of 'em, so I know. Traps to catch flats, I call 'em.” Then, seating himself at the table and running his calculating eye over little mother, he observed, “'Stro'nary how you've changed, Olive. All the pluck, seems knocked out of you. Not a spark of what you was.”

“I'm not so young.”

“Don't look much older, neither. Kep' your good looks in spite of po'r George and everything,” he continued, stirring his tea reflectively, and doubtless asking himself at the same time how this anomaly was to be explained. More than once this question recurred to his mind during tea-time, I think, by the furtive regard he threw on her from the corner of his eye.

Her obvious agitation betrayed a secret fear of him that might be turned to his advantage. Certainly she could not fear him without cause. What that cause was he must find out. But he must open his attack with caution, however inferior the skill of his antagonist might be; he must calculate every possible reply before he ventured on a single move; and, above all, he must not provoke little mother to desperation, lest she should find the courage of despair to openly declare her dislike to him, and decline to admit him again within our house as a friend. These possible conclusions on his part were suggested to my mind, quickened by my own suspicious apprehension, by the effusive protestations of friendship with which he left my mother the moment we had finished tea.

Were those conclusions justified? I shall show.

Poor little mother! When she returned from closing the door after Mr. Redmond, she sank down upon the first chair she came to with a deep sigh, and sat there bent with dejection, as if strength and courage were alike exhausted and she had no more force to cope with adversity.

And now Elsie came flying downstairs, wroth with being kept in her room so long, and prepared to make things still more unpleasant for all of us, especially little mother, as the chief offender. I knew that by the very sound of her footfall before I saw her face white with anger and her eyes flashing with indignation.

“Where's mother?” she asked imperatively, as she flung open the door.

I glanced across to where she sat screened from Elsie by the open door. Elsie turned quickly, and seeing her in that pitiful attitude of despair, every harsh feeling melted instantly from her good heart; and, with nothing but tender commiseration in her face, she dropped on her knees by mother's side, and clasping the folded hands within her own, she said gently—

“Dear little mother! have I hurt you?”

Mother kissed the upturned face that pleaded for forgiveness, and shook her head.

“Tell me I have done wrong, mother—that it's only that,” said Elsie.

“It's I, dear, who have done wrong, not you,” replied mother. “I was taken by surprise and lost my presence of mind. If I had only seen who it was before I went to the door, if I had been given only a minute for reflection,. I should have acted differently; he should not have entered the house, and perhaps we should never have seen him again.”

She spoke now with such energy that Elsie's eyes opened wide with astonishment, for she could not perceive the deeper significance of this confession.

“Why, you poor little mother,” said she, smiling, “there's no need to take the matter so seriously. After all, it was only a little mistake, and I'm not sure now that it was even that. When you saw who he was you couldn't shut the door in his face.”

“Oh, if I had!” mother exclaimed in a tone of bitter regret.

“But you couldn't,” Elsie urged, as eager now to excuse as before she had been to inculpate. “It would have been rude—horridly rude—quite unworthy of our dear little mother, eh, Dol? If he is an old friend—or, at least, if he was a friend of father's”

“The greater reason for treating him as an enemy!” exclaimed mother, seeming to forget us for the moment; and starting to her feet, she added passionately, “What shall I do?”

“No, no, little mother,” said Elsie, clinging to her hands. “Sit down again here, and let us talk it all out. Is it reasonable, dear, to make such a very big mountain out of a little tiny molehill? It's all over—this tiresome visit. He*s gone now.”

“But he will come again—I had not the courage—I didn't know how to forbid him to come again.”

“Well, supposing he comes again, dear, what then? What have we to fear from this very ordinary sort of vulgar man?” “Ah, you do not know!”

“I think I've as much reason as anyone to know, from the indication he has already been pleased to give me. He will probably come again, and try to make love to me. Well, I shan't be afraid to meet him. I will meet him, and I am sure I shall be able to keep him at arms' length. Do you know,” she added archly, not from any disposition to levity, but with the view of making mother take a lighter aspect of the case, “I feel tempted to lead this terrible Mr. Redmond on till Phil comes back. What a lot of him there would be for Phil to thrash!”

“Philip must not see him!” mother cried, still in that tone of dread. “He must not know of your engagement—of anything that concerns us.”

“Phil won't be back, unhappily, for months and months to come, ana then we shall be hundreds of miles from Wood Green—at Great Farleigh.”

Again mother started up, as if by some uncontrollable impulse, raising her finger and looking around her in alarm, as though she feared even the walls to hear us.

“Elsie!” she exclaimed under her breath, as Elsie rose to her feet, catching the inexplicable terror in mother's face. “You must not speak of that place—no, not even when we think we are alone. Have you told any one where we are going?”

“No one, dear.”

“Not anyone?”

“No one, except Phil, and my letter will not reach him for weeks.”

“Nor you, dear?” she asked, turning to me.

“I have told no one at all, mother.”

“If I thought that he—James Redmond—might follow us there, I could never go. It is that which terrified me and took away my self-possession.”

“Why, dear?” asked Elsie innocently.

“I cannot, may not, tell you, dears. Only believe me, that if James Redmond follows us there my only hope of happiness may be lost for ever.”

“Sooner than risk that, we'll stay on and on here, mother dear, much as I hate the place; we'll stay on till Phil comes home, and then” Elsie concluded the sentence with sundry significant nods, rubbing her hands cheerfully, as if in her mind's eye she saw her hero horsewhipping that detestable Mr. Redmond the whole length of our street.

“That must not be,” said mother reflectively. “Philip and that man must not meet.”

Elsie looked disappointed.

“If we tell no one of our intention,” I suggested; “if we make all our preparations quietly, go out one morning, give up the keys to our landlord, and never return, who is to know where we are gone?”

“Some trifles I must take,” said mother, looking round the room with returning courage; “and we might find a purchaser for the rest. We have still three or four weeks before us. Perhaps Mr. Redmond will tire of coming.”

“We will do our best to tire him, at any rate,” said Elsie, with a malicious twinkle in her eye, as if already she had conceived a means of achieving that end. “Oh, that will be all right, little mother. If Sindbad, who was only a sailor, managed to shake off the old man of the sea, surely we three women can find wit enough to be a match for such a thing as that Mr. Redmond. And now, dear, as I've had no tea, and you've eaten nothing either, by the look of your plates, let us clear all these things away, have fresh cups and the other tea-pot, and begin all over again with fresh thoughts, as if there were no such horror in existence as that fat sandy man.”