Jabez Gum had his thorn, as a great many more of us have ours, if the outside world only knew it. And Jabez, at odd moments, when the thorn pierced him very sharply, had been wont to compare his condition to St. Paul's, and to wonder whether the pricks inflicted on that holy man could have bled as his own did. He meant no irreverence when he thought this; neither do I in writing it. We are generally wounded in the most vulnerable spot about us, and Jabez Gum made no exception to the rule. He had been assailed in his cherished respectability, his self-esteem. Assailed and scarred. How broad and deep the scar was Jabez never told the world, which as a rule does not sympathise with such scars, but turns aside in its cruel indifference. The world had almost forgotten the scar now, and supposed Clerk Gum had done the same. It was all over and done with years ago.
Jabez Gum's wife—to whom you will shortly have the honour of an introduction, but she is in her bedroom just now—had borne him one child, and only one. How this boy was loved, how tenderly reared, let Calne tell you. Mrs. Gum had to endure no inconsiderable amount of ridicule at the time from her gossiping friends, who gave Willy sundry endearing names, applied in derision. Certainly, if any mother ever was bound up in a child, Mrs. Gum was in hers. The boy was well brought up. A good education was given him; and at the age of sixteen he went to London and to fortune. The one was looked upon as a natural sequence to the other. Some friend of Jabez Gum's had interested himself to procure the lad's admission into one of the great banks as a junior clerk. He might rise in time to be cashier, manager, even partner; who knew? Who knew indeed? And Clerk Gum congratulated himself, and was more respectable than ever.
Better that Willy Gum had remained at Calne! And yet, and again—who knew? When the propensity for ill-doing exists it is sure to come out, no matter where. There were some people in Calne who could have told Clerk Gum, even then, that Willy, for his age, was tolerably fast and forward. Mrs. Gum had heard of one or two things that had caused her hair to rise on end with horror; ay, and with apprehension; but, foolish mother that she was, not a syllable did she breathe to the clerk; and no one else ventured to tell him.
She talked to Willy with many sighs and tears; implored him to be a good boy and enter on good courses, not on bad ones that would break her heart. Willy, the little scapegrace, was willing to promise anything. He laughed and made light of it; it wasn't his fault if folks told stories about him; she couldn't be so foolish as to give ear to them. London? Oh, he should be all right in London! One or two fellows here were rather fast, there was no denying it; and they drew him with them; they were older than he, and ought to have known better. Once away from Calne, they could have no more influence over him, and he should be all right.
She believed him; putting faith in the plausible words. Oh, what trust can be so pure, and at the same time so foolish, as that placed by a mother in a beloved son! Mrs. Gum had never known but one idol on earth; he who now stood before her, lightly laughing at her fears, making his own tale good. She leaned forward and laid her hands upon his shoulders and kissed him with that impassioned fervour that some mothers could tell of, and whispered that she would trust him wholly.
Mr. Willy extricated himself with as little impatience as he could help: these embraces were not to his taste. And yet the boy did love his mother. She was not at all a wise woman, or a clever one; rather silly, indeed, in many things; but she was fond of him. At this period he was young-looking for his age, slight, and rather undersized, with an exceedingly light complexion, a wishy-washy sort of face with no colour in it, unmeaning light eyes, white eyebrows, and ragged-looking light hair with a tawny shade upon it.
Willy Gum departed for London, and entered on his engagement in the great banking-house of Goldsworthy and Co.
How he went on in it Calne could not get to learn, though it was moderately inquisitive upon the point. His father and mother heard from him occasionally; and once the clerk took a sudden and rather mysterious journey to London, where he stayed for a whole week. Rumour said—I wonder where such rumours first have their rise—that Willy Gum had fallen into some trouble, and the clerk had had to buy him out of it at the cost of a mint of money. The clerk, however, did not confirm this; and one thing was indisputable: Willy retained his place in the banking-house. Some people looked on this fact as a complete refutation of the rumour.
Then came a lull. Nothing was heard of Willy; that is, nothing beyond the reports of Mrs. Gum to her gossips when letters arrived: he was well, and getting on well. It was only the lull that precedes a storm; and a storm indeed burst on quiet Calne. Willy Gum had robbed the bank and disappeared.
In the first dreadful moment, perhaps the only one who did not disbelieve it was Clerk Gum. Other people said there must be some mistake: it could not be. Kind old Lord Hartledon came down in his carriage to the clerk's house—he was too ill to walk—and sat with the clerk and the weeping mother, and said he was sure it could not be so bad as was reported. The next morning saw handbills—great, staring, large-typed handbills—offering a reward for the discovery of William Gum, posted all over Calne.
Once more Clerk Gum went to London. What he did there no one knew. One thing only was certain—he did not find Willy or any trace of him. The defalcation was very nearly eight hundred pounds; and even if Mr. Gum could have refunded that large sum, he might not do so, said Calne, for of course the bank would not compound a felony. He came back looking ten years older; his tall, thin form more shadowy, his nose longer and sharper. Not a soul ventured to say a syllable to him, even of condolence. He told Lord Hartledon and his Rector that no tidings whatever could be gleaned of his unhappy son; the boy had disappeared, and might be dead for all they knew to the contrary.
So the handbills wore themselves out on the walls, serving no purpose, until Lord Hartledon ordered them to be removed; and Mrs. Gum lived in tears, and audibly wished herself dead. She had not seen her boy since he quitted Calne, considerably more than two years before, and he was now nearly nineteen. A few days' holiday had been accorded him by the banking-house each Christmas; but the first Christmas Willy wrote word that he had accepted an invitation to go home with a brother-clerk; the second Christmas he said he could not obtain leave of absence—which Mrs. Gum afterwards found was untrue; so that Willy Gum had not been at Calne since he left it. And whenever his mother thought of him—and that was every hour of the day and night—it was always as the fair, young, light-haired boy, who seemed to her little more than a child.
A year or so of uncertainty, of suspense, of wailing, and then came a letter from Willy, cautiously sent. It was not addressed directly to Mrs. Gum, to whom it was written, but to one of Willy's acquaintances in London, who enclosed it in an envelope and forwarded it on.
Such a letter! To read it one might have thought Mr. William Gum had gone out under the most favourable auspices. He was in Australia; had gone up to seek his fortune at the gold-diggings, and was making money rapidly. In a short time he should refund with interest the little sum he had borrowed from Goldsworthy and Co., and which was really not taken with any ill intention, but was more an accident than anything else. After that, he should accumulate money on his own score, and—all things being made straight at home—return and settle down, a rich man for life. And she—his mother—might rely on his keeping his word. At present he was at Melbourne; to which place he and his mates had come to bring their acquired gold, and to take a bit of a spree after their recent hard work. He was very jolly, and after a week's holiday they should go back again. And he hoped his father had overlooked the past; and he remained ever her affectionate son, William Gum.
The effect of this letter upon Mrs. Gum was as though a dense cloud had suddenly lifted from the world, and given place to a flood of sunshine. We estimate things by comparison. Mrs. Gum was by nature disposed to look on the dark side of things, and she had for the whole year past been indulging the most dread pictures of Willy and his fate that any woman's mind ever conceived. To hear that he was in life, and well, and making money rapidly, was the sweetest news, the greatest relief she could ever experience in this world.
Clerk Gum—relieved also, no doubt—received the tidings in a more sober spirit; almost as if he did not dare to believe in them. The man's heart had been well-nigh broken with the blow that fell upon him, and nothing could ever heal it thoroughly again. He read the letter in silence; read it twice over; and