A Semi-Humourous Story.
by Mary L. Pendered.
Originally published in The Novel Magazine (C. Arthur Pearson, Ltd.) vol.3 #17 (Aug 1906).
The story of how a wife made a new man of her husband.
When David Brown, the builder, died, his old friend, Jabez Tite, genuinely tried to mourn, but his grief was tempered by a certain degree of hopeful expectation. That expectation was not fulfilled, and the temperate grief of Jabez gave place to intemperate bitterness and disappointment.
"Who would ha' thought," he lamented sadly to his wife, "that, after all these years, David would turn agen me and give his last order to a stranger? It's no good your telling me, Martha, as it's the family as are to blame. David was not the one to leave such an important matter to others, and you may depend upon it he arranged it all beforehand, like any sensible man. It was getting on and being made a Hurban Councillor as done it. He thought as I weren't good enough—that's what he thought. But I never would ha' believed it o' David—me and him having been old pals ever since we went to school together. It only shows what sinful pride and vainglory will do."
Jabez was a dumpy little man, with a chubby cast of features betokening a cheerful disposition. He lived in a small house on the Wainbridge Road, in Slowborough. Beneath his name, over the door, the words "Monumental Mason," advertised his line of life, if this were not sufficiently indicated by the variety of tombstones that decorated his front garden.
It was a very tiny garden, and the tombstones seemed to jostle each other, but to Jabez there was no domain in the world more worthy of pride, for he was one of those true artists who love their work and labour at it with never-ceasing enthusiasm. Nothing could make him happier than an order for a headstone, and if he were permitted to give his genius range in the matter of doves with spread wings, crosses, or fancy designs of any kind, his bliss was supreme.
It may be imagined, therefore, how great were the shock and pain his vaulting spirit suffered when he heard that the order for his old schoolfellow's gravestone had been given to another monumental mason.
At first his wife Martha, a chirpy, bustling little body, as cherub-faced as himself, but of stronger mind, thought the shock would soon pass off and that her man would presently recover his normal cheerfulness; but she was to find out her mistake.
Jabez brooded and brooded over his disappointment, till all peace and comfort fled the cottage, and the daily meals, to which she had always looked forward as pleasant little episodes between working hours, became, instead, silent and funereal repasts, grievous to be borne.
She rallied him, she lectured him, she begged him to throw off the mantle of gloom; but in vain. Jabez looked more glum after each of her attacks, and his appetite failed as she had never known it to fail before.
When, one evening, he refused to touch a delicious dish of pig's trotters that she had stewed for him to their tenderest point, the poor little woman was quite in despair. But the worst was to come.
She received a thrilling shock the next morning when she went into the back yard to hang out a few clothes she had been washing. For upon a new stone, facing her, she read the following inscription:—
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF
JABEZ TITE,
MONUMENTAL MASON,
WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE ON—
and there the wording ceased, as if waiting for the date to be filled in by a ghostly hand.
Mrs. Tite shuddered violently, and clutched at the clothes-line to support herself, for her knees began to tremble beneath her. Gathering herself together, she went into the house and sought her husband, who was gloomily munching his "ten o'clock" by the kitchen fire.
"Jabez!" she demanded excitedly, "whatever is the meaning of that thing I see outside in the yard?"
"What thing?" he muttered, not daring to meet her eyes.
"That gravestone with your name on it. Ain't you got more sense, at your time o' life, than to go tempting Providence like that? You ought to be ashamed of yourself—that you ought."
Jabez put a large chunk of bread and cheese into his mouth and did not answer for a few moments. Then he mumbled:
"In the midst of life we are in death," and went on munching.
Martha was quenched. She had positively no words to utter.
Jabez heaved a deep sigh, took a draught of beer, and added:
"There's nothing like being prepared, Martha, and I ain't long for this world. I've felt it a-coming on for some time, a sort o' weak feeling, and I don't mean as anybody shall give the order for my headstone to another man."
The concentrated bitterness of this remark showed the wormwood and gall in which his spirit still writhed.
Martha gazed at him piteously, helplessly. He did not look ill, his cheeks were ruddy as usual, though they had sunk a little with his constant frown; his voice was strong and rasping, and he showed no sign whatever of imminent decay. Yet, she felt, with the instinctive tact which even simple souls may possess, and which no woman is complete without, that it would lacerate his feelings frightfully if she exhibited any scepticism as to his delicate condition.
When she found speech, therefore, it was to say, in a subdued tone:
"I'm very sorry you feel that way, Jabez. Perhaps I'd better go for a doctor?"
He shook his head mournfully.
"No good, my woman. Physic won't cure me. I'm past that. After all, at my age, over sixty, a man can't be sure of anything in this life, and us Tites never was a long-lived family. I seem to be going the way of old Uncle Ben, and nobody ever knowed just exactly what was the matter with him. It's as well to be on the safe side, and I don't want you to have no worry after I'm gone, old gal."
This last speech reduced the little woman to tears.
"It's too bad to talk like that, Jabez!" she sobbed; "you didn't ought to do it—that you didn't. And I don't care what you say—it's downright wicked and sinful to carve your own name on a tombstone while you're alive; it's tempting Providence, that it is—and if the Lord takes you it will be your own fault, not His—so I tell you—for you've as good as asked to go. Oh dear! oh, dear!"
Jabez had not seen her cry for many years, not since their child died, in fact, and he moved in his seat uncomfortably; yet the sight elated him a little within, and cheered the gloom of his soul. Here was someone who valued him, if David Brown did not, someone who appreciated his sterling qualities.
He comforted her by saying that he really felt a little better, and promised faithfully not to add another word to the tombstone, though he had thought of a beautifully appropriate text to put at the foot of it, namely:--
"Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men."
But in spite of his promise, Martha remained uneasy in her mind all day, and at night, as she lay awake in bed, the thought of that gravestone haunted her. At last she could bear it no longer, and a definite resolution shaped itself in her mind. She determined to efface those dangerous words which had for her a superstitious terror. So at one o'clock a.m. she rose stealthily, dressed herself partially in the dark, and stole downstairs. There was an old horn lantern in the scullery which she lighted, and, unbolting the back door, crept out into the yard.
It was with a great shrinking that she approached the stone, which looked at her gruesomely menacing in the bluish light of the moon's last quarter. But with heroic effort she lifted the lantern till its yellow gleam fell upon the obnoxious words; and she heaved a great sigh of relief to find the date still unfilled in. For strange fancies had preyed upon her soul. She had more than half-expected to find that an invisible hand had carved the date of her husband's death in the stone.
After hunting in the tool-shed for chisel and hammer, she set her lantern on the low wall that divided the yard from that of her left hand neighbour's, and, glancing about her fearfully to see that no one witnessed her deed of darkness, she began to scrape gently at her husband's name. The Tites had no neighbours on the right, and their yard, which should have been a garden, was flanked by a side street running down to the main road and bounded by a low wall. The street led, at its other end, to a large private house, standing in its own grounds, and from this house, at just upon two o'clock, a dark form came swiftly running towards the town, past the Tites' cottage.
At the low wall the dark form stopped abruptly, arrested by the light of the lantern, and stood still to gasp:
"Is that you, Mrs. Tite?"
Martha gave a suppressed scream and instinctively hid the chisel behind her back, without answering. To think of anybody being down that way so late! Such a thing was almost unprecedented, for the people who lived at the big house, an old gentleman and his daughter, were early birds, and generally locked up for the night at nine o'clock.
"Oh, Mrs. Tite, is that you? Do come here a minute. I'm in such distress."
The word "distress" brought the kind-hearted soul to the wall instantly.
"What is it, ma'am, what is it!" she asked, in alarm.
"My father has had a seizure. I heard him fall and ran in. My cook is on her holiday, and the other girl is almost frightened to death. I came out to see if I could find a policeman, or anyone, to fetch a doctor. Oh, he may be dead before I can get aid."
"My gracious!" exclaimed Martha, in horror. "Here, you just go straight back, ma'am, and I'll go for the doctor. Get some water hot for his feet at once. I'll send up anyone I meet."
She did not stop to fetch her bonnet, but fled down the road as if pursued by fiends, while the lady of the big house returned to her stricken father. For Martha Tite was a neighbourly, kind soul, and all thought of her own anxiety and her husband's sinful tempting of Providence had vanished, lost in her sympathy with a fellow-creature in distress.
It was three in the morning before she crept back into bed and lay on the brink of it, fearing to wake Jabez, who was snoring healthily. She had fetched the doctor to old Mr. Massom and rendered what assistance she could to the lady. Now she shivered with the chill that death casts, for death hovered over the big house, and its owner could not live to see another sunset.
"There's someone been scraping at my headstone," said Jabez, coming in from his work next morning with a purple face, "and using my tools to do it. One o' them brats next door, I expect. Just let me get at him!"
"It wasn't no brat, Jabez; it was me," declared Martha valiantly. "And I done it to save your life, and maybe your immortal soul. If you ain't got no proper sense o' religion and decency, I have, and so I tell you. If you want to carve anybody's tombstone, for practice, you'd better do mine. It 'ud only be murder instead o' suicide, and it wouldn't fret me half so much. But I tell you plain, as fast as you carve it, I'll scrape it out."
Jabez was so unaccustomed to any show of authority or temper on the part of his cheery little wife, that he gasped in amazement and could not utter a word. But he punished her in a way of his own that was quite successful. He sulked for a whole day, and then took to symptoms, which he called "symtims."
He had a "symtim" of heart complaint in the morning, a "symtim " of lung complaint in the afternoon, and grave "symtims" of liver complaint at night.
Each time one of these came on he lay on the horsehair sofa and groaned till he nearly rent the heart out of her body. And the next day he declared himself too ill to get up and work.
She fetched the doctor, who, clearly perceiving there was nothing the matter with Jabez, declared he had got a chill, and a few days in bed would not hurt him. For he knew his patient pretty well, and was therefore aware that to assure him of being in sound health would probably throw him into a fever through sheer opposition.
So poor Martha coddled him and purred over him, as loving wives will, and Jabez began to think he really was not long for this world.
But then something occurred to change the whole aspect of affairs.
It happened that Martha, on her way down to the town a couple of days later, met Miss Massom, in deep mourning, coming up.
"Oh, Mrs. Tite," she said, stopping and holding out her hand, "I am so glad to meet you, for I've been quite ashamed of myself. I've never yet thanked you for your great kindness and assistance that night—that dreadful night when my poor father—" she struggled with her emotion and went on—"when I was in such dire need of help. I don't know what I should have done without you, and I do hope, if ever I can do anything for you in return, you will let me know at once."
Martha gave a gasp, overpowered by the force of an idea that had been germinating in her mind ever since she had stood, with the whole town, watching the obsequies of the late Mr. Massom. Now was her time, she thought, now or never, and, being a brave little body, she seized her moment.
"Oh, ma'am," she cried, clasping her hands nervously under her well-worn black mantle, "if I only might—but I don't like to mention it so soon after—though it's seasonable, in a way of speaking-and yet—"
"Don't be afraid," said the spinster lady kindly; "tell me what it is, if I can do anything for you?"
Then Martha plunged.
"It's just this, ma'am,"—she spoke quickly—"your poor father will want a headstone, and Jabez 'ud do it as reasonable as anybody, and better than most. He's a splendid stone-cutter, though I say it, and it hurts him fearful when folks don't patronise him. And though I've no business to speak of it, ma'am, to you as knows what's best, still, if you should see fit to let Jabez have the job, I'm sure he'd give every satisfaction and be proud to do it. I hope you'll pardon my mentioning it, but, as you asks me, I must tell the truth, though I don't need no reward for doing as I'd be done by in the matter of that night."
She stopped from shortness of breath.
Miss Massom reflected a moment, and a fleeting smile crossed her sad face.
"I don't think there will be any difficulty about that, Mrs. Tite," she answered; "though, of course, I shall have to consult the rest of my family. I had thought of Mr. Tite, and I am glad you reminded me of him. It will not be my fault if he doesn't get the order."
Martha thanked her warmly, and went on her way feeling as if she had won a battle.
Jabez came down next day. He was soon tired of lying in bed, and declared himself a trifle better, though he still complained of "symtims," and indulged in extremely funereal conversation.
His capacity in this respect was almost unlimited, as he had attended a great number of burials and knew the details of many mortal illnesses. But Martha bore up cheerfully, nursing a hope in her heart that lent her courage; and one day that hope was fulfilled.
They were sitting over breakfast in her kitchen, and she was putting a few stitches in a coat of his that needed mending, when a servant brought a note from Miss Massom to Jabez. He put on his spectacles to read it, without relaxing from the gloomy expression that had become his habitual one.
Martha watched his face furtively, with anxious eyes. Presently the gloomy expression vanished in a look of cherubic joy. He read the letter through, and through again. Then he handed it over to her.
"Read this, missus," he said, with something between a sob and a chuckle. "It'll make you sit up."
Martha read it, her hands trembling as she held the paper. It was an order from Miss Massom for a handsome marble monument to grace her father's tomb, and concluded by saying that no expense was to be spared.
"Well, I never!" she exclaimed, with well-feigned astonishment. "You are a-getting on, Jabez, and no mistake, with orders from the gentry like this here. I should ha' thought they'd ha' sent to London at least."
Jabez rose and stood with his back to the fireplace, his two thumbs in the armholes of his coat, his chest expanded with pride, and his chubby face glowing.
"It all comes," he said magnificently, "of having a repitation for good work: Haven't I told you so over and over again? It's that as done it. I shouldn't wonder if the old gentleman put it in his will as I were to have the job. I remember one day, as he was passing by, he stops and says to me: 'You take a great pride in your work, Mr. Tite, and I'm not surprised neither, as you do it so well.' Them were his very words. You may depend upon it, Martha, my gal, he left instructions."
"I shouldn't wonder, Jabez," responded the wise little woman, putting the end of her thread into her mouth to hide a slight twitching at the corners, "I shouldn't wonder at all, Jabez."
* * * * *
They are living very happily together again now. Trade has improved, and so has the health of Jabez. He no longer indulges in "symtims," and seems to have entirely forgotten that he will ever want a tombstone.