IN that curious compound, the human heart, a respectable motive is sometimes connected with a criminal act. And it was so with Joseph Wylie.
He had formed an attachment to Nancy Rouse, and her price was two thousand pounds.
This Nancy Rouse was a character. She was General Rolleston's servant for many years; her place was the kitchen. But she was a woman of such restless activity, and so wanting in the proper pride of a servant, that she would help a house-maid, or a lady's maid, or do anything almost, except be idle. To use her own words, she was one as couldn't abide to sit mum-chance. That fatal foe to domestic industry, the _London Journal,_ fluttered in vain down her area, for she could not read. She supported a sick mother out of her wages, aided by a few presents of money and clothes from Helen Rolleston, who had a great regard for Nancy, and knew what a hard fight she had to keep a sick woman out of her twenty pounds a year.
In love, Nancy was unfortunate; her buxom looks and sterling virtues were balanced by a provoking sagacity, and an irritating habit of speaking her mind. She humbled her lovers' vanity, one after another, and they fled.
Her heart smarted more than once.
Nancy was ambitious; and her first rise in life took place as follows:
When the Rollestons went to Australia, she had a good cry at parting with Helen; but there was no help for it. She could not leave her mother.
However, she told Helen she could not stomach any other service, and, since she must be parted, was resolved to better herself. This phrase is sometimes drolly applied by servants, because they throw Independence into the scale. In Nancy's case it meant setting up as a washerwoman.
Helen opened her hazel eyes with astonishment at this, the first round in the ladder of Nancy's ambition; however, she gave her ten pounds, and thirty introductions, twenty-five of which missed fire, and with the odd five Nancy set up her tub in the suburbs, and by her industry, geniality and frugality, got on tolerably well. In due course she rented a small house backed by a small green, and advertised for a gentleman lodger. She soon got one; and soon got rid of him. However, she was never long without one.
Nancy met Joseph Wylie in company. And, as sailors are brisk wooers, he soon became her acknowledged suitor, and made some inroad into her heart, though she kept on the defensive, warned by past experience.
Wylie's love-making had a droll feature about it; it was most of it carried on in the presence of three washerwomen, because Nancy had no time to spare from her work, and Wylie had no time to lose in his wooing, being on shore for a limited period. And this absence of superfluous delicacy on his part gave him an unfair advantage over the tallow-chandler's foreman, his only rival at present. Many a sly thrust, and many a hearty laugh, from his female auditors, greeted his amorous eloquence. But, for all that, they sided with him, and Nancy felt her importance, and brightened along with her mates at the sailor's approach, which was generally announced by a cheerful hail. He was good company, to use Nancy's own phrase, and she accepted him as a sweetheart on probation. But, when Mr. Wylie urged her to marry him, she demurred, and gave a string of reasons, all of which the sailor and his allies, the subordinate washerwomen, combated in full conclave.
Then she spoke out: "My lad, the washtub is a saddle as won't carry double. I've seen poverty enough in my mother's house; it shan't come in at my door to drive love out o' window. Two comes together with just enough for two; next year instead of two they are three, and one of the three can't work and wants a servant extra, and by and by there is half a dozen, and the money coming in at the spigot and going out at the bung-hole."
One day, in the middle of his wooing, she laid down her iron, and said:
"You come along with me. And I wonder how much work will be done while my back is turned, for you three gabbling and wondering what ever I'm a going to do with this here sailor."
She took Wylie a few yards down the street, and showed him a large house with most of the windows broken. "There," said she, "there's a sight for a seafaring man. That's in Chancery."
"Well, it's better to be there than in H--," said Wylie, meaning to be sharper.
"Wait till you've tried 'em both," said Nancy.
Then she took him to the back of the house, and showed him a large garden attached to it.
"Now, Joseph," said she, "I've showed you a lodging-house and a drying-ground; and I'm a cook and a clear-starcher, and I'm wild to keep lodgers and do for 'em, washing and all. Then, if their foul linen goes out, they follows it. The same if they has their meat from the cook-shop.
Four hundred pounds a year lies there a waiting for me. I've been at them often to let me them premises. But they says no, we have got no horder from the court to let. Which the court would rather see 'em go to rack an' ruin for nothing, than let 'em to an honest woman as would pay the rent punctual, and make her penny out of 'em, and nobody none the worse.
And to sell them, the price is two thousand pounds, and if I had it I'd give it this minit. But where are the likes of you and me to get two thousand pounds? But the lawyer he says, 'Miss Rouse, from _you_ one thousand down, and the rest on mortgige at forty-five pounds the year,' which it is dirt cheap, I say. So now, my man, when that house is mine, I'm yours. I'm putting by for it o' my side. If you means all you say, why not save a bit o' yours? Once I get that house and garden, you needn't go to sea no more; nor you shan't. If I am to be bothered with a man, let me know where to put my finger on him at all hours, and not lie shivering and shaking at every window as creaks, and him out at sea. And if you are too proud to drive the linen in a light cart, why, I could pay a man." In short, she told him plainly she would not marry till she was above the world; and the road to above the world was through that great battered house and seedy garden in Chancery.
