"Pshaw!" exclaimed Grice. "What bi that! I'll tell you what it is, mi lad – yon lass were never after you. I'll lay owt there's never been much o' what they call love-makin' between you! She were after my brass, d'yer see? Now, if it had been me 'at had gone broke, i'stead o' Farnish, what then? D'ye think she'd ha' stucken to you? Nowt o' t'sort!"
Albert sat reflecting. It was quite true that there had been little love-making between him and Jeckie. Jeckie was neither sentimental nor amorous. She and Albert had gone to church together; occasionally he had spent the evening at Farnish's fireside; once or twice he had taken her for an outing, to a statutes-hiring fair, or a travelling circus. And he was beginning to wonder.
"I know she's very keen on money, is Jecholiah," he said at last.
"Aye, well, she's goin' to have none o' mine!" affirmed old Grice. He was quick to see that Albert was as wax in his hands, and he accordingly brought matters to a climax. "I'll tell you what it is, mi lad!" he continued, replenishing his son's glass, and refilling his own. "We mun have done wi' that lot – it 'ud never do for you, a rising young feller, to wed into a broken man's family. It mun end, Albert!"
"She'll have a deal to say," murmured Albert. "She's an awful temper, has Jecholiah, if things doesn't suit her, and – "
"Now then, you listen to me," interrupted Grice. "We'll give her no chance o' sayin' – leastways, not to you, and what she says to me's neither here nor there. Now it's high time you were wed, mi lad, but you mun get t'right sort o' lass. And I'll tell you what – you know 'at I went last year to see mi brother John, 'at lives i' Nottingham – keep's a draper's shop there, does John, and he's a warm man an' all, as warm as what I am, and that's sayin' a bit! Now John has three rare fine lasses – your cousins, mi lad, though you've never seen 'em – and he'll give a nice bit wi' each o' 'em when they wed. I'll tell you what you shall do, mi lad – you shall take a fortnight's holiday, and go over there and see 'em; I'll write a letter to John to-night 'at you can take wi' you. And if you can't pick a wife o' t'three – why, it'll be a pity! – a good-lookin' young feller like you, wi' money behind you. Get your best things packed up to-night, and you shall drive into Sicaster first thing i' t'mornin' and be off to Nottingham. I'll see 'at you have plenty o' spendin' brass wi' you, and you can go and have your fling and make your choice. I tell yer there's three on 'em – fine, good-looking, healthy lasses – choose which you like, and me and her father'll settle all t'rest. And Nottingham's a fine place for a bit of holidayin'."
Old Grice sat up two hours later than usual that night, writing to his brother, the Nottingham draper, and Albert went away before seven o'clock next morning with all his best clothes and with fifty pounds in his pocket. His father told him to do it like a gentleman, and Albert departed in the best of spirits. After all, he had no tender memories of Jeckie, and he remembered that once, when he had taken her to Cornchester Fair, and wanted to have lunch at the "Angel," she had chided him quite sharply for his extravagance and had made him satisfy his appetite on buns and cocoa at a cheap coffee-shop. It was a small thing, but he had smarted under it, for like all weak folk he had a vein of mulish contrariness in him, and it vexed him to know that Jeckie, when she was about, was stronger than he was.
Grice, left to run the business with the aid of his small staff, was kept to the shop during Albert's absence. But he had compensations. The first came in the shape of a letter from his brother, the draper, the contents of which caused George Grice to chuckle and to congratulate himself on his diplomacy; he was, in fact, so pleased by it that he there and then put up £25 in Bank of England notes, enclosed them in a letter to Albert, bidding him to stay in Nottingham a week longer, and went out to register the missive himself. The second was that Bartle came to him and took charge of the horses and carts and lost no time in proving himself useful beyond expectation. And the third lay in knowing that the Farnish Family had gone out of the village. Just as the grocer had prophesied, Farnish had been sold up within a week of the execution which the money-lenders had levied on his effects. Not a stick had been left to him of his household goods, not even a chicken of his live stock, and on the morning of the sale he and his daughters had risen early, and carrying their bundles in their hands had gone into Sicaster and taken lodgings.
"And none such cheap uns, neither!" said the blacksmith, who gave Grice all this news, and to whom Farnish owed several pounds and odd shillings. "Gone to lodge i' a very good house i' Finkle Street, where they'll be paying no less nor a pound a week for t'rooms. Don't tell me! I'll lay owt yon theer Jecholiah has a bit o' brass put by. What! She used to sell a sight o' eggs and a vast o' butter, Mestur Grice! And them owin' me ower nine pounds 'at I shall niver see! Such like i' lodgins at a pound a week! They owt to be i' t'poorhouse!"
Old Grice laughed and said nothing; it mattered nothing to him whether the Farnishes were lodged in rooms or in the wards of the workhouse, so long as Jeckie kept away from Savilestowe until all was safely settled about Albert. He exchanged more letters with John, the draper; John's replies yielded him infinite delight. As he sat alone of an evening, amusing himself with his cigars and his gin and water, he chuckled as he gloated over his own state-craft; once or twice, when he had made his drink rather stronger than usual, he was so impressed by his own cleverness that he assured himself solemnly that he had missed his true vocation, and ought to have been a Member of Parliament. He thought so again in a quite sober moment, when, at the end of three weeks, Albert returned, wearing lemon-coloured kid gloves, and spats over his shoes. There was a new atmosphere about Albert, and old George almost decided to take him into partnership there and then when he announced that he had become engaged to his cousin Lucilla, and that her father would give her two thousand pounds on the day of the wedding. Instead, he signalised his gratification by furnishing and decorating, regardless of cost, two rooms for the use of the expected bride.
CHAPTER V
The Shakespeare Line
The Savilestowe blacksmith had been right when he said to George Grice that Jeckie Farnish had probably put money by. Jeckie had for some time foreseen the coming of an evil day, and for three years she had set aside a certain amount of the takings from her milk, butter, and eggs sales, and had lodged it safely in the Penny Bank at Sicaster in her own name. Her father knew nothing of this nest-egg; no one, indeed, except Rushie, knew that she had it; not even Rushie knew its precise amount. And when Jeckie turned away from watching George Grice's broad back disappear down the lane, and knew that her father's downfall was at last inevitable, she at once made up her mind what to do. She knew a widow woman in Sicaster who had a roomy house in one of the oldest thoroughfares, Finkle Street; to her she repaired on the day following the levying of the Clothford money-lender's execution, and bargained with her for the letting of three rooms. On the morning of the forced sale she routed Farnish and Rushie out of their beds as soon as the sun rose; before six o'clock all three, carrying their personal effects in bundles, were making their way across the fields towards Sicaster; by breakfast time they were settled in their lodgings. And within an hour Jeckie had found her father a job, and had told him that unless he stuck to it there would be neither bite nor sup for him at her expense. It was not a grand job, and Jeckie had come across it by accident – Collindale, the greengrocer and fruit merchant in the Market Place, with whom she had done business in the past, selling to him the produce of the Applecroft orchard in good years, happened to want an odd-job man about his shop, and offered a pound a week. Jeckie led her father to Collindale and handed him over, with a few clearly-expressed words to master and man; by noon Farnish was carrying potatoes to one and cauliflowers to another of the greengrocer's customers. Nor was Jeckie less arduous in finding work for her sister and herself. They were both good needlewomen, and she went round the town seeking employment in that direction, and got it. Before she went to her bed that first night in the hired lodgings, she was assured of a livelihood, and of no need to break into the small hoard in the Penny Bank.
Over the interminable stitching which went on in the living-room of this new abode, Jeckie brooded long and heavily over the defection of Albert Grice. She had believed that Albert would hasten up to Applecroft when he heard the bad news, and while her father and the man in possession drank up the last beer in the barrel, and Rushie and Doadie Bartle finished the mangling of the linen, she went out into the gloom of the falling night and listened for his footsteps coming up the lane. Hard enough though her nature was, it was unbelievable to her that