"Look here," said the Squire: "suppose you take French leave, and stay?"
"In that case my discharge would doubtless arrive by the first post."
"Look here again: suppose in a month or two you break down and have to leave? What then?"
"Brown and Co. would appoint a fresh clerk in my place."
"Why don"t Brown and Co. keep another clerk or two, so as to work you all less?"
Marks smiled at the very idea. "That would increase their expenses, Mr.
Todhetley. They will never do that. It is a part of the business of Brown"s life to keep expenses down."
Well, Marks had to go. The Squire was very serious in thinking more rest absolutely needful--of what service _could_ a week be, he reiterated.
Down he sat, wrote a letter to Brown and Co., telling them his opinion, and requesting the favour of their despatching James Marks back for a longer holiday. This he sent by post, and they would get it in the morning.
"No, I"ll not trust it to you, Marks," he said: "you might never deliver it. Catch an old bird with chaff!"
To this letter there came no answer at all; and Mr. Marks did not come back. The Squire relieved his mind by calling Brown and Co. thieves and wretches--and so it pa.s.sed. It must be remembered that I am writing of past years, when holidays were not so universal for any cla.s.s, clerk or master, as they are at present. Not that I am aware whether financiers"
clerks get them now.
The next scene in the drama I can only tell by hearsay. It took place in London, where I was not.
It was a dull, rainy day in February, and Mrs. Marks sat in her parlour in Pimlico. The house was one of a long row, and the parlour just about large enough to turn in. She sat by the fire, nursing a little two-year-old girl, and thinking; and three other children, the eldest a boy of nine, were playing at the table--building houses on the red cloth with little wooden bricks. Mrs. Marks was a sensible woman, understanding proper management, and had taken care to bring up her children not to be troublesome. She looked about thirty, and must have been pretty once, but her face was faded now, her grey eyes had a sad look in them. The chatter at the table and the bricks fell unheeded on her ear.
"Mamma, will it soon be tea-time?"
There was no answer.
"Didn"t you hear, mamma? Carry asked if it would soon be tea-time. What were you thinking about?"
She heard this time, and started out of her reverie. "Very soon now, w.i.l.l.y dear. Thinking? Oh, I was thinking about your papa."
Her thoughts were by no means bright ones. That her husband"s health and powers were failing, she felt as sure of as though she could foresee the ending that was soon to come. How he went on and did his work was a marvel: but he could not give it up, or bread would fail.
The week"s rest in the country had set Mr. Marks up for some months.
Until the next autumn he worked on better than he had been able to do for some time past. And then he failed again. There was no particular failing outwardly, but he felt all too conscious that his overtaxed brain was getting worse than it had ever been. He struggled on; making no sign. That he should have to resign part of his work was an inevitable fact: he must give up the evening book-keeping to enable him to keep his more important place. "Once let me get Christmas work over,"
thought he, "and as soon as possible in the New Year, I will resign."
He got the Christmas work over. Very heavy it was, at both places, and nearly did for him. It is the last straw, you know, that breaks the camel"s back: and that work broke James Marks. Towards the end of January he was laid up in bed with a violent cold that settled on his chest. Brown and Co. had to do without him for eleven days: a calamity that--so far as Marks was concerned--had never happened in Brown and Co."s experience. Then he went back to the city again, feeling shaken; but the evening labour was perforce given up.
No one knew how ill he was: or, to speak more correctly, how unfit for work, how more incapable of it he was growing day by day. His wife suspected a little. She knew of his sleepless nights, the result of overtaxed nerves and brain, when he would toss and turn and get up and walk the room; and dress himself in the morning without having slept.
"There are times," he said to her in a sort of horror, "when I cannot at all collect my thoughts. I am as long again at my work as I used to be, and have to go over it again and again. There have been one or two mistakes, and old Brown asks what is coming to me. I can"t help it.
The figures whirl before me, and I lose my power of mind."
"If you could only sleep well!" said Mrs. Marks.
"Ay, if I could. The brain is as much at work by night as by day. There are the figures mentally before me, and there am I, adding them up."
"You should see a clever physician, James. Spare the guinea, and go. It may be more than the guinea saved."
Mr. Marks took the advice. He went to a clever doctor; explained his position, the kind of work he had to do, and described his symptoms.
"Can I be cured?" he asked.
"Oh yes, I think so," said the doctor, cheerfully, without telling him that he had gone on so far as to make it rather doubtful. "The necessary treatment is very simple. Take change of scene and perfect rest."
"For how long?"
"Twelve months, at least."
"Twelve months!" repeated Marks, in a queer tone.
"At least. It is a case of absolute necessity. I will write you a prescription for a tonic. You must live _well_. You have not lived well enough for the work you have to do."
As James Marks went out into the street he could have laughed a laugh of bitter mockery. Twelve months" rest for _him_? The doctor had told him one thing--that had he taken rest in time, a very, very much shorter period would have sufficed. "I wonder how many poor men there are like myself in London at this moment," he thought, "who want this rest and cannot take it, and who ought to live better and cannot afford to do it!"
It was altogether so very hopeless that he did nothing, except take the tonic, and he continued to go to the City as usual. Some two or three weeks had elapsed since then: he of course growing worse, though there was nothing to show it outwardly: and this was the end of February, and Mrs. Marks sat thinking of it all over the fire; thinking of what she knew, and guessing at what she did not know, and her children were building houses at the table.
The servant came in with the tea-things, and took the little girl. Only one servant could be kept--and hardly that. Mrs. Marks had made her own tea and was pouring out the children"s milk-and-water, when they heard a cab drive up and stop at the door. A minute after Mr. Marks entered, leaning on the arm of one of his fellow-clerks.
"Here, Mrs. Marks, I have brought you an invalid," said the latter gaily, making light of it for her sake. "He seems better now. I don"t think there"s much the matter with him."
Had it come? Had what she had been dreading come--that he was going to have an illness, she wondered. But she was a trump of a wife, and showed herself calm and comforting.
"You shall both of you have some tea at once," she said, cheerfully.
"w.i.l.l.y, run and get more tea-cups."
It appeared that Mr. Marks had been, as the clerk expressed it, very queer that day; more so than usual. He could not do his work at all; had to get a.s.sistance continually from one or the other, and ended by falling off his stool to the floor, in what he called, afterwards, a "sensation of giddiness." He seemed fit for nothing, and Mr. Brown said he had better be taken home.
That day ended James Marks"s work. He had broken down. At night he told his wife what the physician had said; which he had not done before. She could scarcely conceal her dismay.
A twelvemonth"s rest for him! What would become of them? Failing his salary, they would have no means whatever of living.
"Oh, if my father had only acted by us as he ought!" she mentally cried.
"James could have taken rest in time then, and all would have been well.
Will he help us now it has come to this? Will _she_ let him?--for it is she who holds him in subjection and steels his heart against us."
Mr. Stockleigh, the father, lived at Sydenham. She, the new wife, had taken him off there from his residence in Pimlico as soon as might be after the marriage; and the daughter had never been invited inside the house. But she resolved to go there now. Saying nothing to her husband, Mrs. Marks started for Sydenham the day after he was brought home ill, and found the place without trouble.
The wife, formerly the cook, was a big brawny woman with a cheek and a tongue of her own. When Mrs. Marks was shown in, she forgot herself in the surprise; old habits prevailed, and she half dropped a curtsey.
"I wish to see papa, Mrs. Stockleigh."
"Mr. Stockleigh"s out, ma"am."
"Then I must wait until he returns."