Chapter V

       The Healing Waters

       Table of Contents

      The Sloshy is not a beautiful river, unless indeed mud is beautiful, for it is very muddy. The Sloshy is a disagreeable kind of compromise between a river and a canal. It is like a canal which (after the manner of the mythic frog that wanted to be an ox)had seen a river, and swelled itself to bursting in imitation thereof. It has quite a knack of swelling and bursting, this Sloshy; it overflows its banks and swallows up a house or two, or takes an impromptu snack off a few outbuildings, once or twice a year. It is inimical to children, and has been known to suck into its muddy bosom the hopes of divers families; and has afterwards gone down to the distant sea, flaunting on its breast Billy’s straw hat or Johnny’s pinafore, as a flag of triumph for having done a little amateur business for the gentleman on the pale horse.

      It has been a soft pillow of rest, too, this muddy breast of the Sloshy; and weary heads have been known to sleep more soundly in that loathsome, dark, and slimy bed than on couches of down.

      Oh, keep us ever from even whispering to our own hearts that our best chance of peaceful slumber might be in such a bed!

      An ugly, dark, and dangerous river—a river that is always telling you of trouble, and anguish, and weariness of spirit—a river that to some poor impressionable mortal creatures, who are apt to be saddened by a cloud or brightened by a sunbeam, is not healthy to look upon.

      I wonder what that woman thinks of the river? A badly-dressed woman carrying a baby, who walks with a slow and restless step up and down by one of its banks, on the afternoon of the day on which the murder of Mr. Montague Harding took place.

      It is a very solitary spot she has chosen, on the furthest outskirts of the town of Slopperton; and the town of Slopperton being at best a very ugly town, is ugliest at the outskirts, which consist of two or three straggling manufactories, a great gaunt gaol—the stoniest of stone jugs—and a straggling fringe of shabby houses, some new and only half-built, others ancient and half fallen to decay, which hang all round Slopperton like the rags that fringe the edges of a dirty garment.

      The woman’s baby is fretful, and it may be that the damp foggy atmosphere on the banks of the Sloshy is scarcely calculated to engender either high spirits or amiable temper in the bosom of infant or adult. The woman hushes it impatiently to her breast, and looks down at the little puny features with a strange unmotherly glance. Poor wretch! Perhaps she scarcely thinks of that little load as a mother is apt to think of her child. She may remember it only as a shame, a burden, and a grief. She has been pretty; a bright country beauty, perhaps, a year ago; but she is a faded, careworn-looking creature now, with a pale face, and hollow circles round her eyes. She has played the only game a woman has to play, and lost the only stake a woman has to lose.

      “I wonder whether he will come, or whether I must wear out my heart through another long long day.—Hush, hush! As if my trouble was not bad enough without your crying.”

      This is an appeal to the fretful baby; but that young gentleman is engaged at fisticuffs with his cap, and has just destroyed a handful of its tattered border.

      There is on this dingy bank of the Sloshy a little dingy public-house, very old-fashioned, though surrounded by newly-begun houses. It is a little, one-sided, pitiful place, ornamented with the cheering announcements of “Our noted Old Tom at 4d. per quartern;” and “This is the only place for the real Mountain Dew.” It is a wretched place, which has never seen better days, and never hopes to see better days. The men who frequent it are a few stragglers from a factory near, and the colliers whose barges are moored in the neighbourhood. These shamble in on dark afternoons, and play at all-fours, or cribbage, in a little dingy parlour with dirty dog’s-eared cards, scoring their points with beer-marks on the sticky tables. Not a very attractive house of entertainment this; but it has an attraction for the woman with the baby, for she looks at it wistfully, as she paces up and down. Presently she fumbles in her pocket, and produces two or three halfpence—just enough, it seems, for her purpose, for she sneaks in at the half-open door, and in a few minutes emerges in the act of wiping her lips.

      As she does so, she almost stumbles against a man wrapped in a great coat, and with the lower part of his face muffled in a thick handkerchief.

      “I thought you would not come,” she said.

      “Did you? Then you see you thought wrong. But you might have been right, for my coming was quite a chance: I can’t be at your beck and call night and day.”

      “I don’t expect you to be at my beck and call. I’ve not been used to get so much attention, or so much regard from you as to expect that, Jabez.”

      The man started, and looked round as if he expected to find all Slopperton at his shoulder; but there wasn’t a creature about.

      “You needn’t be quite so handy with my name,” he said; “there’s no knowing who might hear you. Is there any one in there?” he asked, pointing to the public-house.

      “No one but the landlord.”

      “Come in, then; we can talk better there. This fog pierces one to the bones.”

      He seems never to consider that the woman and the child have been exposed to that piercing fog for an hour and more, as he is above an hour after his appointment.

      He leads the way through the bar into the little parlour. There are no colliers playing at all-fours to-day, and the dog’s-eared cards lie tumbled in a heap on one of the sticky tables among broken clay-pipes and beer-stains. This table is near the one window which looks out on the river, and by this window the woman sits, Jabez placing himself on the other side of the table.

      The fretful baby has fallen asleep, and lies quietly in the woman’s lap.

      “What will you take?”

      “A little gin,” she answers, not without a certain shame in her tone.

      “So you’ve found out that comfort, have you?” He says this with a glance of satisfaction he cannot repress.

      “What other comfort is there for such as me, Jabez? It seemed at first to make me forget. Nothing can do that now—except——”

      She did not finish this sentence, but sat looking with a dull vacant stare at the black waters of the Sloshy, which, as the tide rose, washed with a hollow noise against the brickwork of the pathway close to the window.