by George Moore
“Thirty pounds is no more to me than two-pence-halfpenny if you wish it, Esther.”
“I haven’t been an extravagant wife, have I?” she said, getting into bed and taking him in her arms. “I never asked you for money before. She’s my friend — she’s yours too — we’ve known her all our lives. We can’t see her go to prison, can we, Bill, without raising a finger to save her?”
She had never called him Bill before, and the familiar abbreviation touched him, and he said —
“I owe everything to you, Esther; everything that’s mine is yours. But,” he said, drawing away so that he might see her better, “what do you say if I ask something of you?”
“What are you going to ask me?”
“I want you to say that you won’t bother me no more about the betting. You was brought up to think it wicked. I know all that, but you see we can’t do without it.”
“Do you think not?”
“Don’t the thirty pounds you’re asking for Sarah come out of betting?”
“I suppose it do.”
“Most certainly it do.”
“I can’t help feeling, Bill, that we shan’t always be so lucky as we have been.”
“You mean that you think that one of these days we shall have the police down upon us?”
“Don’t you sometimes think that we can’t always go on without being caught? Every day I hear of the police being down on some betting club or other.”
“They’ve been down on a great number lately, but what can I do? We always come back to that. I haven’t the health to work round from race-course to race-course as I used to. But I’ve got an idea, Esther. I’ve been thinking over things a great deal lately, and — give me my pipe — there, it’s just by you. Now, hold the candle, like a good girl.”
William pulled at his pipe until it was fully lighted. He threw himself on his back, and then he said —
“I’ve been thinking things over. The betting ‘as brought us a nice bit of trade here. If we can work up the business a bit more we might, let’s say in a year from now, be able to get as much for the ‘ouse as we gave…. What do you think of buying a business in the country, a ‘ouse doing a steady trade? I’ve had enough of London, the climate don’t suit me as it used to. I fancy I should be much better in the country, somewhere on the South Coast. Bournemouth way, what do you think?”
Before Esther could reply William was taken with a fit of coughing, and his great broad frame was shaken as if it were so much paper.
“I’m sure,” said Esther, when he had recovered himself a little, “that a good deal of your trouble comes from that pipe. It’s never out of your mouth…. I feel like choking myself.”
“I daresay I smoke too much…. I’m not the man I was. I can feel it plain enough. Put my pipe down and blow out the candle…. I didn’t ask you how Sarah was.”
“Very bad. She was half dazed and didn’t tell me much.”
“She didn’t tell you where she had pledged the plate?”
“No, I will ask her about that to-morrow morning.” Leaning forward she blew out the candle. The wick smouldered red for a moment, and they fell asleep happy in each other’s love, seeming to find new bonds of union in pity for their friend’s misfortune.
XXXIX
“SARAH, YOU MUST make an effort and try to dress yourself.”
“Oh, I do feel that bad, I wish I was dead!”
“You must not give way like that; let me help you put on your stockings.”
Sarah looked at Esther. “You’re very good to me, but I can manage.” When she had drawn on her stockings her strength was exhausted, and she fell back on the pillow.
Esther waited a few minutes. “Here’re your petticoats. Just tie them round you; I’ll lend you a dressing-gown and a pair of slippers.”
William was having breakfast in the parlour. “Well, feeling a bit poorly?” he said to Sarah. “What’ll you have? There’s a nice bit of fried fish. Not feeling up to it?”
“Oh, no! I couldn’t touch anything.” She let herself drop on the sofa.
“A cup of tea’ll do you good,” said Esther. “You must have a cup of tea, and a bit of toast just to nibble. William, pour her out a cup of tea.”
When she had drunk the tea she said she felt a little better.
“Now,” said William, “let’s ‘ear all about it. Esther has told you, no doubt, that we intend to do all we can to help you.”
“You can’t help me…. I’m done for,” she replied dolefully.
“I don’t know about that,” said William. “You gave that brute Bill Evans the plate to pawn, so far as I know.”
“There isn’t much more to tell. He said the horse was sure to win. He was at thirty to one at that time. A thousand to thirty. Bill said with that money we could buy a public-house in the country. He wanted to settle down, he wanted to get out of — I don’t want to say nothing against him. He said if I would only give him this chance of leading a respectable life, we was to be married immediately after.”
“He told you all that, did he? He said he’d give you a ‘ome of your own, I know. A regular rotter; that man is about as bad as they make ’em. And you believed it all?”
“It wasn’t so much what I believed as what I couldn’t help myself. He had got that influence over me that my will wasn’t my own. I don’t know how it is — I suppose men have stronger natures than women. I ‘ardly knew what I was doing; it was like sleep-walking. He looked at me and said, ‘You’d better do it.’ I did it, and I suppose I’ll have to go to prison for it. What I says is just the truth, but no one believes tales like that. How long do you think they’ll give me?”
“I hope we shall be able to get you out of this scrape. You got thirty pounds on the plate. Esther has told you that I’m ready to lend you the money to get it out.”
“Will you do this? You’re good friends indeed…. But I shall never be able to pay you back such a lot of money.”
“We won’t say nothing about paying back; all we want you to do is to say that you’ll never see that fellow again.”
A change of expression came over Sarah’s face, and William said, “You’re surely not still hankering after him?”
“No, indeed I’m not. But whenever I meets him he somehow gets his way with me. It’s terrible to love a man as I love him. I know he don’t really care for me — I know he is all you say, and yet I can’t help myself. It is better to be honest with you.”
William looked puzzled. At the end of a long silence he said, “If it’s like that I don’t see that we can do anything.”
“Have patience, William. Sarah don’t know what she’s saying. She’ll promise not to see him again.”
“You’re very kind to me. I know I’m very foolish. I promised before not to see him, and I couldn’t keep my promise.”
“You can stop with us until you get a situation in the country,” said Esther, “where you’ll be out of his way.”
“I might do that.”
“I don’t like to part with my money,” said William, “if it is to do no one any good.” Esther looked at him, and he added, “It is just as Esther wishes, of course; I’m not giving you the money, it is she.”
“It is both of us,” said Esther; “you’ll do what I said, Sarah?”
“Oh, yes, anything you say, Esther,” and she flung herself into her friend’s arms and wept bitterly.
“Now we want to know where you pawned the plate,” said William.
“A long way from here. Bill said he knew a place where it would be quite safe. I was to say that my mistress left it to me; he said that would be sufficient…. It was in the Mile End Road.”
“You’d know the shop again?” said William.
“But she’s got the ticket,” said Esther.
“No, I ain’t got the ticket; Bill has it.”
“Then I’m afraid the game’s up.”
“Do be quiet,” said Esther, angrily. “If you want to get out of lending the money say so
and have done with it.”
“That’s not true, Esther. If you want another thirty to pay him to give up the ticket, you can have it.”
Esther thanked her husband with one quick look. “I’m sorry,” she said, “my temper is that hasty. But you know where he lives,” she said, turning to the wretched woman who sat on the sofa pale and trembling.
“Yes, I know where he lives — 13 Milward Square, Mile End Road.”
“Then we’ve no time to lose; we must go after him at once.”
“No, William dear; you must not; you’d only lose your temper, and he might do you an injury.”
“An injury! I’d soon show him which was the best man of the two.”
“I’ll not hear of it, Sarah. He mustn’t go with you.”
“Come, Esther, don’t be foolish. Let me go.”
He had taken his hat from the peg. Esther got between him and the door.
“I forbid it,” she said; “I will not let you go — perhaps to have a fight, and with that cough.”
William was coughing. He had turned pale, and he said, leaning against the table, “Give me something to drink, a little milk.”
Esther poured some into a cup. He sipped it slowly. “I’ll go upstairs,” she said, “for my hat and jacket. You’ve got your betting to attend to.” William smiled. “Sarah, mind, he’s not to go with you.”
“You forget what you said last night about the betting.”
“Never mind what I said last night about the betting; what I say now is that you’re not to leave the bar. Come upstairs, Sarah, and dress yourself, and let’s be off.”
Stack and Journeyman were waiting to speak to him. They had lost heavily over old Ben and didn’t know how they’d pull through; and the whole neighbourhood was in the same plight; the bar was filled with gloomy faces.
And as William scanned their disconcerted faces — clerks, hair-dressers, waiters from the innumerable eating houses — he could not help thinking that perhaps more than one of them had taken money that did not belong to them to back Ben Jonson. The unexpected disaster had upset all their plans, and even the wary ones who had a little reserve fund could not help backing outsiders, hoping by the longer odds to retrieve yesterday’s losses. At two the bar was empty, and William waited for Esther and Sarah to return from Mile End. It seemed to him that they were a long time away. But Mile End is not close to Soho; and when they returned, between four and five, he saw at once that they had been unsuccessful. He lifted up the flap in the counter and all three went into the parlour.
“He left Milward Square yesterday,” Esther said. “Then we went to another address, and then to another; we went to all the places Sarah had been to with him, but no tidings anywhere.”
Sarah burst into tears. “There’s no more hope,” she said. “I’m done for; they’ll come and take me away. How much do you think I’ll get? They won’t give me ten years, will they?”
“I can see nothing else for you to do,” said Esther, “but to go straight back to your people and tell them the whole story, and throw yourself on their mercy.”
“Do you mean that she should say that she pawned the plate to get money to back a horse?”
“Of course I do.”
“It will make the police more keen than ever on the betting houses.”
“That can’t be helped.”
“She’d better not be took here,” said William; “it will do a great deal of harm…. It don’t make no difference to her where she’s took, do it?”
Esther did not answer.
“I’ll go away. I don’t want to get no one into trouble,” Sarah said, and she got up from the sofa.
At that moment Charles opened the door, and said, “You’re wanted in the bar, sir.”
William went out quickly. He returned a moment after. There was a scared look on his face. “They’re here,” he said. He was followed by two policemen. Sarah uttered a little cry.
“Your name is Sarah Tucker?” said the first policeman.
“Yes.”
“You’re charged with robbery by Mr. Sheldon, 34, Cumberland Place.”
“Shall I be taken through the streets?”
“If you like to pay for it, you can go in a cab,” the police-officer replied.
“I’ll go with you, dear,” Esther said. William plucked her by the sleeve. “It will do no good. Why should you go?”
XL
THE MAGISTRATE OF course sent the case for trial, and the thirty pounds which William had promised to give to Esther went to pay for the defence. There seemed at first some hope that the prosecution would not be able to prove its case, but fresh evidence connecting Sarah with the abstraction of the plate was forthcoming, and in the end it was thought advisable that the plea of not guilty should be withdrawn. The efforts of counsel were therefore directed towards a mitigation of sentence. Counsel called Esther and William for the purpose of proving the excellent character that the prisoner had hitherto borne; counsel spoke of the evil influence into which the prisoner had fallen, and urged that she had no intention of actually stealing the plate. Tempted by promises, she had been persuaded to pledge the plate in order to back a horse which she had been told was certain to win. If that horse had won, the plate would have been redeemed and returned to its proper place in the owner’s house, and the prisoner would have been able to marry. Possibly the marriage on which the prisoner had set her heart would have turned out more unfortunate for the prisoner than the present proceedings. Counsel had not words strong enough to stigmatise the character of a man who, having induced a girl to imperil her liberty for his own vile ends, was cowardly enough to abandon her in the hour of her deepest distress. Counsel drew attention to the trusting nature of the prisoner, who had not only pledged her employer’s plate at his base instigation, but had likewise been foolish enough to confide the pawn-ticket to his keeping. Such was the prisoner’s story, and he submitted that it bore on the face of it the stamp of truth. A very sad story, but one full of simple, foolish, trusting humanity, and, having regard to the excellent character the prisoner had borne, counsel hoped that his lordship would see his way to dealing leniently with her.
His Lordship, whose gallantries had been prolonged over half a century, and whose betting transactions were matters of public comment, pursed up his ancient lips and fixed his dead glassy eyes on the prisoner. He said he regretted that he could not take the same view of the prisoner’s character as learned counsel had done. The police had made every effort to apprehend the man Evans who, according to the prisoner’s story, was the principal culprit. But the efforts of the police had been unavailing; they had, however, found traces of the man Evans, who undoubtedly did exist, and need not be considered to be a near relative of our friend Mrs. Harris. And the little joke provoked some amusement in the court; learned counsel settled their robes becomingly and leant forward to listen. They were in for a humorous speech, and the prisoner would get off with a light sentence. But the grim smile waxed duller, and it was clear that lordship was determined to make the law a terror to evil-doers. Lordship drew attention to the fact that during the course of their investigations the police had discovered that the prisoner had been living for some considerable time with the man Evans, during which time several robberies had been effected. There was no evidence, it was true, to connect the prisoner with these robberies. The prisoner had left the man Evans and had obtained a situation in the house of her present employers. When the characters she had received from her former employers were being examined she had accounted for the year she had spent with the man Evans by saying that she had been staying with the Latches, the publicans who had given evidence in her favour. It had also come to the knowledge of the police that the man Evans used to frequent the “King’s Head,” that was the house owned by the Latches; it was probable that she had made there the acquaintance of the man Evans. The prisoner had referred her employers to the Latches, who had lent their sanction to the falsehood regarding the year she was supposed to
have spent with them, but which she had really spent in cohabitation with a notorious thief. Here lordship indulged in severe remarks against those who enabled not wholly irreproachable characters to obtain situations by false pretences, a very common habit, and one attended with great danger to society, one which society would do well to take precautions to defend itself against.
The plate, his Lordship remarked, was said to have been pawned, but there was nothing to show that it had been pawned, the prisoner’s explanation being that she had given the pawn-ticket to the man Evans. She could not tell where she had pawned the plate, her tale being that she and the man Evans had gone down to Whitechapel together and pawned it in the Mile End Road. But she did not know the number of the pawnbroker’s, nor could she give any indications as to its whereabouts — beyond the mere fact that it was in the Mile End Road she could say nothing. All the pawnbrokers in the Mile End Road had been searched, but no plate answering to the description furnished by the prosecution could be found.
Learned counsel had endeavoured to show that it had been in a measure unpremeditated, that it was the result of a passing but irresistible temptation. Learned counsel had endeavoured to introduce some element of romance into the case; he had described the theft as the outcome of the prisoner’s desire of marriage, but lordship could not find such purity of motive in the prisoner’s crime. There was nothing to show that there was any thought of marriage in the prisoner’s mind; the crime was the result, not of any desire of marriage, but rather the result of vicious passion, concubinage. Regarding the plea that the crime was unpremeditated, it was only necessary to point out that it had been committed for a distinct purpose and had been carried out in conjunction with an accomplished thief.
“There is now only one more point which I wish to refer to, and that is the plea that the prisoner did not intend to steal the plate, but only to obtain money upon it to enable her and the partner in her guilt to back a horse for a race which they believed to be—” his Lordship was about to say a certainty for him; he stopped himself, however, in time— “to be, to be, which they believed him to be capable of winning. The race in question is, I think, called the Cesarewitch, and the name of the horse (lordship had lost three hundred on Ben Jonson), if my memory serves me right (here lordship fumbled amid papers), yes, the name is, as I thought, Ben Jonson. Now, the learned counsel for the defence suggested that, if the horse had won, the plate would have been redeemed and restored to its proper place in the pantry cupboards. This, I venture to point out, is a mere hypothesis. The money might have been again used for the purpose of gambling. I confess that I do not see why we should condone the prisoner’s offence because it was committed for the sake of obtaining money for gambling purposes. Indeed, it seems to me a reason for dealing heavily with the offence. The vice among the poorer classes is largely on the increase, and it seems to me that it is the duty of all in authority to condemn rather than to condone the evil, and to use every effort to stamp it out. For my part I fail to perceive any romantic element in the vice of gambling. It springs from the desire to obtain wealth without work, in other words, without payment; work, whether in the past or the present, is the natural payment for wealth, and any wealth that is obtained without work is in a measure a fraud committed upon the community. Poverty, despair, idleness, and every other vice spring from gambling as naturally, and in the same profusion, as weeds from barren land. Drink, too, is gambling’s firmest ally.”
