The String of Pearls 122Shows How Mrs. Oakley Reconciled Herself to Everybody at Home
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Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
The String of Pearls 122
Shows How Mrs. Oakley Reconciled Herself to Everybody at Home
PrestEnglish
When Ben and Mrs. Oakley had thus disposed of Mr. Lupin, and left him to his solitary and not very pleasant reflections in a cell of the round-house, they found themselves together in the open street, and Ben, as he cast a woeful glance at her, said--
"Well, how does yer feel now? Easy does it! Oh, you aint a-been and behaved yourself properly lately--you is like the old bear as we calls Nosey. He's always a-doing what he shouldn't, and always a-never doing what he should."
"Ben?"
"Well, blaze away. What is yer going to say now?"
"I feel, Ben, that I am a very different woman from what I was--very different."
"Then you must have gained by the exchange, for you was, I will say it, anything but a pleasant bit o' goods. There's poor old Oakley a-making of spectacles all days, and a-wearing of his old eyes out--and there's Miss Johanna, bless her heart! as wise a little bit o' human nature as you'd wish to see, whether she's in petticoats or the other things; and yet you neglects 'em both, all for to run arter a canting snivelling wagabone like this Lupin, that we wouldn't have among the beasteses at the Tower, if so be he'd come and offer himself."
"I know it, Ben--I know it."
"You know it! Why didn't you know it before?"
"I don't know, Ben; but my eyes are open now. I have had a lesson that to my dying day I shall never forget. I have found that piety may only be a cloak with which to cover up the most monstrous iniquity."
"Oh, you have made that discovery, have you?"
"I have, indeed, Ben."
"Well, I knowed as much as that when I was a small baby. It only shows how back'ard some folks is in coming for'ard with their edication."
"Yes, Ben."
"Well, and what is you going to be arter now?"
"I wish to go home, and I want you to come with me, and to say a kind word for me; I want you to tell them how I now see the error of my ways, and how I am an altered woman, and mean to be a very--very different person than I was."
Here Mrs. Oakley's genuine feelings got the better of her, and she began to weep bitterly; and Ben, after looking at her for a few moments, cried out--
"Why, it's real, and not like our hyena that only does it to gammon us! Come, mother Oakley, just pop your front paw under my arm, and I'll go home with you; and if you don't get a welcome there, I'm not a beef-eater. Why, the old man will fly right bang out of his wits for joy. You should only see what a house is when the mother and the wife don't do as she ought. Mother O., you should see what a bit of fire there is in the grate, and what a hearth."
"I know it--I ought to know it."
"You ought to know it!" added Ben, putting himself into an oratorial attitude. "You should only see the old man when dinner time comes round. He goes into the parlour and he finds no fire; then he says--'Dear me!'"
"Yes--yes."
"Then he gives a boy a ha'penny to go and get him something that don't do him no sort of good from the cook's shop, and sometimes the boy nabs the ha'penny and the shilling both, and ain't never heard of again by any means no more."
"No doubt, Ben."
"Then, when tea comes round, it don't come round at all, and the old man has none; but he takes in a ha'porth of milk in a jug without a spout, and he drinks that up, cold and miserable, with a penny-loaf, you see."
"Yes--yes."
"And then at night, when there ought to be a little sort of comfort round the fireside, there ain't none."
"But Johanna, Ben--there is Johanna?"
"Johanna?"
"Yes. Is she not there to see to some of her father's comforts? She loves him--I know she does, Ben!"
Ben placed his finger by the side of his nose, and in an aside to himself, he said--
"Now I'll touch her up a bit--now I'll punish her for all she has done, and it will serve her right." Then, elevating his voice, he added--"Did you mention Johanna?"
"Yes, Ben, I did."
"Then I'm sorry you did. Perhaps you think she's been seeing to the old man's comforts a little--airing his night-cap, and so on--Eh? Is that the idea?"
"Yes, I know that she would do anything gladly for her father. She was always most tenderly attached to him."
"Humph!"
"Why do you say, Humph, Ben?"
"Just answer me one question, Mrs. O. Did you ever hear of a young girl as was neglected by her mother--her mother who of all ought to be the person to attend to her--turning out well?"
"Do not terrify me, Ben."
"Well, all I have got to say is, that Johanna can't be in two places at once, and as she isn't at home, how, I would ask any reasonable Christian, can she attend to the old man?"
"Not at home, Ben?"
"Not--at--home!"
"Oh, Heaven! why did I not stay in that dreadful man's house, and let him murder me! Why did I not tell him at once that I knew of his crime, and implore him to make me his next victim! Oh, Ben, if you have any compassion in your disposition you will tell me all, and then I shall know what to hope, and what to dread."
"Well," said Ben, "here goes then."
"What goes?"
"I mean I'm a-going to tell you all, as you seem as if you'd like to know it."
"Do! Oh, do!"
"Then of course Johanna being but a very young piece of goods, and not knowing much o' the ways o' this here world, and the habits and manners o' the wild beasteses as is in it, when she found as the old house wasn't good enough for her mother, she naturally enough thought it wasn't good enough for her, you know."
"Oh, this is the most dreadful stroke of all!"
"I should say it were," said Ben, quite solemnly. "Take it easy though, and you'll get through it in the course of time. Well then, when Johanna found as everything at home was sixes and sevens, she borrowed a pair of what do call 'ems of some boy, and a jacket, and off she went."
"She what?"
"She put on a pair of thingumys--well, breeches then, if you must have it--and away she went, and the last I saw of her was in Fleet Street with 'em on."
"Gracious Heaven!"
"Very likely, but that don't alter the facts of the case, you know, Mrs. O. On she had 'em, and all I can say is that you might have knocked me down flat to see her, that you might. I didn't think I should ever have got home to the beasteses in the Tower again, it gave me such a turn."
"Lost! Lost!"
"Eh? What do you say? What have you lost now?"
"My child! My Johanna!"
"Oh! Ah, to be sure. But then you know, Mrs. O, you ought to have staid at home, and gived her ever so much good advice, you know; and when you saw she was bent upon putting on the boy's things, you as a mother ought to have said, 'My dear, take your legs out of that if yer pleases, and if yer don't, I'll pretty soon make you,' and then staid and gived the affair up as a bad job that wouldn't pay, and took to morals."
"Yes--yes. 'Tis I, and I only, who am to blame. I have been the destruction of my child. Farewell, Ben. You will perhaps in the course of time not think quite so badly of me as you now do. Farewell!"
"Hold!" cried Ben as he clutched the arm of Mrs. Oakley only the more tightly in his own: "What are you at now?"
"Death is now my only resource. My child is lost to me, and I have driven her by my neglect to such a dreadful course. I cannot live now. Let me go, Ben. You will never hear of me again."
"If I let you go may I be--Well, no matter--no matter. Come on. It's all one, you know, a hundred years hence."
"But at present it is madness and despair. Let me go, I say. The river is not far off, and beneath its waters I shall at least find peace for my breaking heart. Let my death be considered as some sort of expiation of my sins."
"Stop a bit."
"No--no--no."
"But I say, yes. Things ain't quite so bad as you think 'em, only it was right o' me, you know, just to let you know what they might have been."
"What do you tell me?"
"Why that there ain't a better girl than Johanna in all the world, and that if all the mothers that ever was or ever will be, had neglected her and set her all their bad examples in the universal world, she would still be the little angel that she is now, and no mistake."
"Then she is not from home? It is all a fable?"
"Not quite, Mrs. O. just you trot on now comfortably by the side of me, and I will tell you the whole particulars, and then you will find that there ain't no occasion to go plumping into the river on Johanna's account."
Poor Mrs. Oakley, with delight beaming upon every feature of her face, now listened to Ben while he explained the whole matter to her, as far as he himself was cognisant of it; and if he did not offer to be very explicit in minor details, she at all events heard from him quite enough to convince her that Johanna was all that the tenderest mother could wish.
"Oh, Ben," she said, as the tears coursed each other down her cheeks, "how could you torture me as you have done?"
"All for your own good," said Ben. "It only lets you see what might have happened if Johanna had not been the good little thing that she is, that's all."
"Well, perhaps it is for the best that I should have suffered such a pang, and I only hope that Heaven will accept of it as some sort of expiation of my wickedness. If you had not held me, Ben, I should certainly have taken my life."
"Not a doubt about it," said Ben; "and a pretty kittle of fish you would then have made of the whole affair. However, that's all right enough now, and as for old Oakley, all you have got to do is to go into the shop and say to him. 'Here I am, and I am sorry for the past, which I hope you will forgive, and for the future I will strive to be a good wife.'"
"Must I say that, Ben?"
"Yes, to be sure. If you are ashamed to say what's right, you may depend upon it you haven't much inclination to do it."
"You have convinced me, Ben. I will humble myself. It is fit and proper that I should. So I will say as nearly as I can recollect just what you have told me to say."
"You can't do better; and here we are at the corner of the street. Now if you would rather go in by yourself without me, only say the word, and I'm off."
Mrs. Oakley hesitated for a moment and then she said--
"Yes, Ben, I would rather go alone."
"Very good. I think it's better too, so good-by; and I'll call to-morrow and see how you are all getting on."
"Do so, Ben. No one can possibly be more welcome than you will be. You will be sure to come to-morrow?"
"Rather."
With this Ben walked away, and Mrs. Oakley entered the house. What then passed we do not feel that we ought to relate. The humiliations of human nature, although for the best of purposes, and for the ultimate happiness of the parties themselves, are not subjects for the pen of the chronicler. Suffice it, that Mr. and Mrs. Oakley were perfectly reconciled, and were happy upon that day.
