The Watchmaker's Daughter, and other tales

Front matter

MRS. BANKS'S NOVELS. UNIFORM SERIES. THE WATCHMAKER'S DAUGHTER. THE BUESTISG OF THE STOBM. Page 11. THE WATCHMAKER'S DAUGHTER, AND OTHER TALES. BY Mrs. G. LINNÆUS BANKS, Author of "God's Providence House," "The Manihester Man' " Through the Night," &c Illustrated by FRANK LADD and G. C. BANKS THE OLD MILL WHEEL. fflanrijestcr: ABEL HEYWOOD & SON, 56 & 58, OLDHAM STREET ILonBon : SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO., STATIONERS' HALL COURT 1882. PRICE HALF-A-CROWN. CONTENTS. :o: PAGE I. THF. WATCHMAKER'S DAUGHTER .... 1 II. THE SKELETON UNDER THE SKIRT ... 42 HI. THE PURITAN'S WILL ...... 85 TV. THE TWO VALENTINES ..... 108 V. JOE'S FIRST MARRIAGE ...... 121 VI. THE OLD MILL-WHEEL ..... 133 VII. LOVE ME, LOVE MY DOG ..... 147 Vin. THE HOUSE JAMES SUTTON BUILT FOR HIMSELF . 178 IX. THE QUILTED PETTICOAT ..... 197 X. THE INDIAN SCARF . . . . . . 217 XI. THE RUNAWAY . . ..... 246 }__; THERESA TREVOR'S WEDDING DRESS . . . 267 XIH. — A WIFE'S EXTRAVAGANCE .....

Part I. Under One Roof

Gerhard Vaudubon was a peculiar man. He was a Swiss, the son of a Swiss, who, when the boy was little more than fifteen, had settled in this country, and, in the face of many difficulties, by dint of perseverance, parsimony, and obsequiousness, had con trived, not only to establish a solid business, but to amass a con siderable sum of money, to both of which Gerhard had succeeded by natural inheritance, when he was within the shade of his fortieth year. Then, and not until then, did he take a wife, and then not so much for a wife as a housekeeper. Servants scoffed at the meagre fare he prescribed for them as well as for himself, so he cast his eyes on a fair, but portionless girl, whose father had died in his debt. This circumstance, and her utter friendlessness, were both artfully employed to wring from her a reluctant con sent, and one who had been born to better fortune passed as mistress into that dreary house in Northampton-square, Clerken well, which was marked out by a large brass plate, inscribed, " Gerhard Vaudubon, Watchmaker."

This calculating watchmaker had chosen well for himself ; ill for the Christian gentlewoman brought into contact with his worldliness and parsimony. His cry was ever of pressing creditors and losses in business, necessitating frugality and retrenchment — frugality and retrenchment, that is, until a marvellous watch he was inventing was completed ; a model watch that was to bring a fortune to the inventor. Schooled in adversity, and lacking firmness to resist, her care was ever to bring her moderate wants down to his narrow and narrowing requirements ; and he requited her patient endurance with fresh exactions. Fitted for something better than a menial without a menial's pay, without sympathy, without society, B without even the dumb companionship of books, scantily clad, imperfectly nourished, she pined, drooped, and though her first born infant lived, the second died, and the third — and she with it — all victims of a miser's greed.

Brooding over an atom of fire in the neglected parlour which Mrs. Vaudubon had kept so neat and orderly without a servant, he mourned her loss after a manner peculiar to himself — that is, mourned for the comfort, the order, the cleanliness, the care ful management that had gone with his wife, mourned for the patient listener to his calculations and his complaints. In an upstairs room his little daughter Emily, forgotten by him, clung tenaciously to the undertaker's skirts, and — unacquainted with death or its grim concomitants — cried piteously in childish agony— " Oh ! do not, do not shut my mamma up in that long box ; she will wake soon, and then how can she get out ? " " I must close the coffin, my poor little dear. Your mother is dead — she will never wake again," was all the man, in dolorously perplexed tones, could say.

" She will — I know she will — and baby too. She never slept so long before. Mamma, do get up — get up ! " "Marm, will you please to take this little one away and com fort her, somehow. She don't seem to understand things rightly. There was no need to appeal to the motherly woman who entered as he spoke, drawn thither by Emily's cries. With a word or two of homely sympathy, which went straight to the child's heart, she loosened the persistent clasp of the small fingers, gathered the slight form in her arms, permitted a last kiss of cold lips which could not kiss again, laid the fair head on her broad shoulder, and bore the weeping orphan away. Not, ho-wever, to her father's side. Mrs. Avery instinctively knew better than that. True, she was only Gerhard Vaudubon's lodger, between whose family and his there had been no inter course until the universal leveller entered, and broke down all harriers of prejudice or policy.

But she had been summoned hastily to the bedside of his expiring wife, and had overheard the surgeon's words to the widower when all was over. " Mr. Vaudubon, this is your doing. I warned you when the last infant died what would be the consequence of insufficient nourishment to the mother. Mrs. Vaudubon had no strength left to meet the demands of nature. It is a case of semi-starvation You are morally answerable for the deaths of both mother and son. I feel that I should be almost justified in bringing the case before a magistrate." She had heard, too, Vaudubon's faltered excuse that the deceased had "never complained," they "had all fared alike," together with the doctor's indignant response, "Never complained ! Then the greater fool she, and the greater scoundrel you ! See you don't starve the child she has left behind !

" Bearing this conversation in mind, and judging the doctor's accuracy by many trivial circumstances, Mrs. Avery not only ■doubted the depth of the widower's sorrow, but his sympathy with the grief of his child, and so carried the real mourner to her •own room. " Here, Ted," said she to her son, a well-grown boy of eleven. ■" I have brought you a companion. She is in great trouble, poor thing ; you must do your best to amuse her. I am wanted downstairs." So saying she left the two together, first, however, putting a good slice of currant cake into the weeping child's passive hand. The boy, albeit unused to girls, and shy at first, compassionated the poor little motherless thing whose fair hair contrasted so sadly with her black dress, and whose tears moistened the very cake as she ate it. Silently he brought his treasures — ninepins, white mice, and guinea-pigs — in succession before her.

It was not in childhood to resist novelties so rare ; but her curiosity was soon exhausted, and she turned abstractedly away. " Comfort " was not there. The ice was, however, broken. Emily ventured to put a question or two to her young companion respecting the mystery downstairs. Death had made blanks in the Avery household, and what the boy knew of death and burial, as he had seen them, he imparted, not learnedly mayhap, but with an adaptation to the inquirer's comprehension no older person could have mastered ; and raising in the little mind an anxious desire to know more of that wonderful Heaven to which he told her that her good mother had gone, and where she would follow in time if she were as good, and loved God. Meanwhile the meagre funeral went its way. The doctor had decidedly refused to attend, so that, besides the widower, mourners there were none but his foreman, Robert Jekyl, and his lodger, Mr. Avery ; and they could not be much more seriously affected than by the abstract suggestiveness of mortality in the close proximity of the coffined dead.

Even here Gerhard's pinching fingers might be felt. Hearse and mourning-coach had been economically compressed into one vehicle. The dead and the living travelled side by side. It was less a solemn than a sombre funeral. There was a heavy fog, through which the houses and trees on the route loomed like ghostly shadows. Jekyl and Mr. Avery shivered once or twice, and whispered something about " cold " and th& "rawness of the atmosphere," but otherwise there was silence. The doctor was absent, but Vaudubon's conscience filled the vacant seat — filled it with his wife and sons. Remorse was busy, the remorse of defeated calculation. He had craved a son, and two had been vouchsafed — could it be that he had nipped the undeveloped buds with the frost of untimely frugality ! (You see his conscience did not smite very painfully, since he still called penuriousness — "frugality.") His thrifty wife had saved him so much per annum in housekeeping alone.

He feared he had insisted too stringently on retrenchment — had lost, not saved — and he ground his teeth as he thought of his folly, and groaned as he contemplated future levies on his purse for wages and waste, and then the meek face of his dead wife reproached him for his sordid reckoning, with her yet unburied body so close beside him. No ! Gerhard Vaudubon did not occupy the coachseat alone. Remorse shaped the fog into tangibility, sat by his side, kept pace with him to the open grave, moistened his handkerchief, wrung forth sobs as the mould rattled on the coffin-plate, and, clutching his arm, held him fast even to his own hearth ; where, coiled on the rug before the fire which Mrs. Avery had presumed to replenish in his absence, lay in sobbing sleep another reminder of his loss. He had parted from his companions at the door, without any pretence of hospitality, and now sat down to cogitate, thrusting his lean fingers through his black hair, and resting both elbows on his knees. • His gaze was fixed on the unconscious child, whose face, smeared alike with tears and dye from her common black frock, was half buried in a mass of tangled flaxen curls, all too like her dead mother's. Listen to the thoughts which, as he sat there, hammered at his heart, yet found no egress through the closed portcullis that kept his tongue in check.

" So, it is all over — nothing remains of my married life but an encumbrance — a qirl — helpless, useless ! And to think — two sons and both dead dead, while the girl lives — lives to mock me with my frustrated plans. And Spencer dared to say, / killed them ; starved wife and babes to death. What should I know of woman's wants and needs ? Wine and dainties forsooth ! / take no wine it is heating, and too dear — and so much butcher's meat is bad for digestion. Yet, oh, I would have given wine or anything to have saved my boy — a boy to hand my name and invention down to future generations ! What will my paragon of a watch be to a girl ? — there seems a curse upon me — always something wrong in the moment of success ; and now a second boy gone ! stay ! may not a girl be made useful in time ?

Ah ! the old Syndic Vaudubon has a son — the last of the patrician race — who knows — purse may weigh down pride — may pay for a noble marriage contract — we will see — we will see. She is very pretty! Poor thing ! She looks tired," and he bent over her as she lay there upon the faded rug. At last the watchmaker's heart had softened towards his child ; his feelings warmed as he meditated future possibilities ; and when, at length, Emily unclosed her eyes, crying, " Mamma ! Mamma !" he opened his arms and his shrivelled heart, and took her to their shelter. A cold shelter it would have proved had not the dingy house in Northampton-square held other inmates. Hitherto Mrs. Avery's notice of the child had been restricted to a passing salutation, or a pat on the fair curls, as they met in the hall or on the staircase.

She was but a homely woman, the wife of a Birmingham watch -engraver who had migrated to London, with no more education than sufficed for a common-place life amongst common-place people. What culture might have made of her it is useles to speculate ; but she was brimful of womanly feeling ; her motherly instincts had been roused into action by the peculiar orphanage of Emily, and now that Vaudu bon himself had invited her neighbourly intervention, she gave those sympathies full play, and, unsought, rendered many kindly offices for the sake of the desolate child. Vaudubon thanked her for such voluntary service ; thanks •cost only breath, and that he could spare. The Vaudubons were a long-lived race — he had full forty years' breath in him, or he thought so. Voluntarily, this kind friend took charge of Emily until the widower was provided with a housekeeper, and by a little clever diplomacy diverted his choice from a vinegarish spinster to a cheerful widow, whose sympathies with childhood had not been frozen at the fountain, and whose sense of duty had a higher source than self-interest.

Then before Dr. Spencer's stern admonition had lost its force, his lodger struck a still vibrating «hord, and by an apparently casual observation that " growing girls required good food and plenty of it," obtained for the child a more generous dietary than would have fallen to her lot, or been accorded to the mere request of his new housekeeper, Mrs, Johnson, though she did quiet battle with his parsimony. A little later, with equal tact, Mrs. Avery took advantage of the watchmaker's temporary remorseful liberality to suggest that " schooling " was a necessity ; but the suggestion fell on deaf ears, or was answered with, " Time enough for that, quite time enough." Board schools to educate one man's children at the cost of another had not been thought of then. No one had thought of picking A's pocket to save the better-filled pocket of B. the cost of " all the arts and ologies" for his youngsters.

No, the impatient system for contaminating the purer minds of respectably and decently conducted children by contact with the gutter Arab — before Lord Shaftesbury's wiser scheme had done all its work had not dawned ; or Gerhard Vaudubon would have been sure,. like others, to save his purse at the cost of his child. And it might have been "time enough" for ever, had not Gerhard Vaudubon been haunted by nightly dreams of his dead wife bearing two puny infants in her arms, and adjuring him, as he hoped for eternal peace, to see that the girl she had left behind was better fed and cherished. And who knows that the day dreams he secretly conjured up were not more effectual than those which made his pillow painful. In either case, some months elapsed before Mrs. Avery's kindly efforts met with success.

At length, on promising to find a good and inexpensive school in the vicinity, and volunteering her son's guardianship^ for Emily to and fro, Gerhard reluctantly consented. Yet if an idea of qualifying his daughter for the future he had mapped out as hers had anything to do with it, his tight lips never let the secret out — supposing he had one. Mrs. Avery had to win her way through obstacles. Master Ted was almost as difficult to manage as the watchmaker. His guardianship was easier promised than obtained. He had a will of his own had Edward Avery, and he argued the point. "Now, look you, mother," said he, "I don't care to have a girl always at my heels. I don't mind it much in the house, but then she's such a little thing — and how can a fellow play at ring-taw, or rounders, or leap-frog, with a ghl to mind ?

" Nevertheless, even he was won over by his good-hearted mother to take pity on the solitary orphan ; and, having under taken the charge, had no more notion of crying off because there' were difficulties to be encountered than she had. Hers was a practical religion, and she had trained him never to look back when he had once put his hand to the plough. It is true the lads jeered at him, but after one or two pitched battles with young scamps who saluted him as " Polly, our nurse ! " ho constituted himself the child's sworn protector, and before many months had passed away Emity and he were sworn friends. A want of self-reliance had been Mrs. Vaudubon's chief characteristic, and in that, as well as in personal appearance, Emily closely resembled her mother. Her father, whom she seldom saw, except at their homely repasts, was not a man to invite a child's confidence, although, after a secret fashion of his own, all the stray tendrils of his closed heart began to twine around her.

The child, however, saw nothmg of this, There was no invitation held out to her own expanding affections ; the calculating machine repelled her advances, and it was only in the benign circle of Mrs. Avery's hearth that love for God or humanity reached her. With no better home companion, there fore, than housewifely Mrs. Johnson, no wonder that she clung to Edward Avery with all a child's faith. He was the depository of all her little secrets, her counsellor in dilemmas ; he smoothed the rough road of learning ; raked up from unsuspected corners the hoarded playthings of the household, mutilated or perfect ; taught her to spin a top, bowl a hoop — and many like accomplishments. In short, he petted and patronised her, boy fashion ; and, moreover, played the tyrant in very orthodox boy fashion too, she obeying his orders and behests with scarcely an objection.

Could either have foreseen all that was to spring from this habit of submission to habitual command, how their young hearts would have been troubled, though the friendship might not have been otherwise disturbed — human nature is so perverse. Years were more threatening than prescience ; the youth left school, and having no liking for the jeweller's bench, entered a warehouse in the city, Miss Vauduhon being at the same time old enough to go to school without a protector. Still, in Edward's absence, she took charge of his rabbits and guinea pigs, and on his return in the evenings, reported progress in all matters of mutual interest, to which he listened with about as much attention as could be expected from one at that transition age, when the youth is more than half-ashamed to own he still cares for the sports of the boy.

But, when an incipient down made its appearance on Edward's upper lip, as the down became palpable and finally demanded a razor, the distance between the two perceptibly widened. There is a broad gulf between twelve and eighteen. The young man, already in favour with his employers, had other pursuits, other associates, and regarded his former playmate much as an elder brother regards a favourite little sister. When his rabbits and guinea-pigs were parted with, he bought a canary in a fanciful cage to console her for their loss, and she cried over the bird without well knowing why, except that she was lonely ; and so she moped and fretted for her boy friend, a boy no longer, much as an older damsel might have done, deserted by her lover. By-and-bye another change was wrought ; the awkward and ungainly girl developed into a maiden of rare beauty.

The blue eyes deepened into full violet ; the abundant flaxen hair, no longer a hoydenish tangle, added a shade to its tint, just sufficient to give expression to eyebrows and eyelashes ; a delicate tinge warmed the once pale cheeks and lips, the tiny ears curved like graceful shells. She was like her mother in her palmy days ; so fair, her father felt her beauty something glorious to possess, something to brighten up the dull room when he came from the workshop at the back to his frugal meals. But of Christian graces, or beauty of soul, he knew little, and cared less. He took religion for granted, as he took air and light, and, but for Mrs. Avery and his housekeeper, she might have grown up as much a heathen as one of the ancient dwellers of the Swiss lakes. More than one rich customer (Gerhard was an importer, as well as a watchmaker), catching a glimpse of Emily, requested an introduction, and congratulated Gerhard on the possession of a daughter so lovely; whereat he bowed, smiled, intertwisted his lean fingers, and felt that his schemes for Emily, and himself were going on swimmingly.

One day about this time Gerhard said, " Make yourself as nice as you can and come with me, Emily." A request so unwonted caused her to look up in wonderment. " With you, father ? Where are we going ? " " You will see." She did see, and that was all. Their walk ended at a photo grapher's where, more than ever puzzled, she obeyed instructions mechanically, the result, to her surprise, being her own portrait. On her way home she ventured to ask, " Why have you had my likeness taken, father ? " "For a relative in Switzerland," was his curt reply; and there the matter dropped. Beyond that brief glimpse in the photographer's room, she saw no more of the sun-picture. He never encouraged questions, and she and Mrs. Johnson waited in vain for its exhibition at home ; discussing with no small wonderment the possible motive he could have had to part with his money for a mere likeness and that for someone abroad.

And so the incident deepened into a mystery. You see, Gerhard Vaudubon never relaxed the grip of his gold to adorn her beauty in befitting robes. Her garments were of common texture ; and if becomingly shaped, that cost him nothing. With Mrs. Johnson's help she fabricated her own clothes — when she could get the materials. The old man was an enigma to all around him. No hint of his ever gave a clue to his wealth, he worked late and early as though he were so necessitated ; but constantly harping on the jpoverty-string had almost worn it out (the model-watch shared the same fate for the same reason). Yet Emily, who lived poorly, and dressed poorly, gave him the fullest credence ; and so, rather than trouble him for pocket-money, which he possibly might not be able to afford, at Mrs. Johnson's suggestion, she asked her old friend upstairs how she might best earn for herself sufficient to make additions to her wardrobe unknown to him.

Mrs. Avery approved her independence. Accustomed to work in her young days, she saw nothing out of course in a struggling wat hmaker's daughter doing so likewise. " That's right, Emily," she said. " One girl that can earn her living is worth two would-be fine ladies. If you can only make enough to clothe yourself respectably, your father will have one care the less, and you too. I was a pen-stamper at Gillott's factory before I married Avery. The bread of idleness is apt to turn sour." "Mine has been sour for a long while," said Emily, "but what can I do?" " You can net, can't you? " "Oh, yes!" " Well, I think I know where work is to be had, so put on your bonnet and come with me." And good Mrs. Avery put down her own work and " tidied herself up," as she called it, " to show her the way to go about it, business like."

In a few days Emily was industriously plying netting-needle and mesh in the production of chenille hair-nets, for which fashion had created a demand. Soon little niceties were added to her attire, and her observant father hugged himself in the belief that she had eked out bis paltry allowance very satisfactorily! Not a woman to do things by halves, Mrs. Avery, taking Emily's beauty and inexperience into consideration, offered to share with the good housekeeper the duty of going to and from the warehouse with her protegee's work. This caused Emily to ■be once more a frequent visitant upstairs. She again came in contact with Edward ; she a shy girl verging on seventeen, he a man of full twenty-three summers. Not now did she bound to meet him with a shout of delight, as in the old school days, when she was almost as boyish as himself, but hesitatingly, and with a maidenly reserve, which would have been sufficiently attractive had her face been cast in a plainer mould.

Nor was young Avery as self-possessed as formerly. He was taken by surprise, and did not all at once recover himself. With an apology he extinguished the cigar he was smoking, on the first occasion, and somehow forgot an appointment for the evening. Thenceforward his masculine friends missed him from their midst. A reading mania seized him : he was always intent upon a book when Emily had occasion to visit his mother, and of course it was put down on her entrance. Sometimes he volunteered a loan of the volume, and not unfrequently thought it necessary to escort her downstairs, where he was apt to linger if the old man did not chance to be there. Soon Mrs. Avery was informed that close rooms were not good for the health, and that a key, giving admission to the Square's central garden called the Green, was at the disposal of herself and Miss Vaudubon.

In short, within an incredibly brief space of time — almost unconsciously on Emily's part — the old relations were established between the two — with a difference. The subtle essence, known as love, had penetrated to their souls, sparkled in their eyes, kindled on their cheeks, found utterance in sighs. Ere long the lips interpreted the mute language of the heart, and the pair lived an ideal life, in which the world had no share. All the hours not actually devoted to business Edward spent by Emily's side, whether in the Green or in the house ; she with no thought of impropriety, and no knowledge of conventionalities ; he because it was his pleasure. He looked forward to make her his wife at no distant period, when a promised advance in his salary would enable him to maintain her ; nothing doubting that the niggardly old watchmaker (who seemed to care more for his mythical watch than for his blooming daughter) would gladly rid himself of an incumbrance.

Of any marked disparity in their relative positions he never dreamed, any more than of opposition. Accustomed to see the two together as children, Gerhard expressed no surprise when he found Edward reading by his daughter's side now and then in an evening, whilst she plied her needle; and but for a meddlesome woman, the wife of his fore man, matters had gone on quietly enough. But Mrs. Jekyl, with a laudable zeal for the reputation of others, threw herself in old Vaudubon's way, and with many protestations of her disinterestedness, and the purity of her motives, proceeded to enlighten him as, to certain " goings-on as was the talk of the neighbourhood." "Anybody as likes, sir, may see them a walkin' and whisperin' in the Green night after night, or sittin' in your parlour on the sofy, with their heads close together, as anyone may see as passes, by the shadder on the blind."

The watchmaker's dark eyes expanded, his teeth set, his breath came with a rush through his nostrils, he gripped his long lean hands until the sharp nails pierced the palms ; but when the busybody had concluded her narrative, turned on his heel, and left her without a word of either thanks or rebuke. As a light to a slow match over a powder magazine was Mrs. Jekyl's unexpected revelation. Yet Vaudubon did not rush home to explode in wrath at once, but set himself in wait for confirmation. He had not long to wait. From behind the wire blind, himself unseen, he beheld the pair strolling under the trees in the twilight, then leave the Green, and, arm-in-arm, cross the Square towards the house, to which Avery 's latch-key gave admission. Then his sharpened ears detected a rapturous kiss, and words of endearment.

He rose to his feet, confronted them as they opened the parlour door, and, notwithstanding the dim light, they saw his thin lips work, and his eyes gleam like some beast of prey. Involuntarily Emily clutched her lover's arm ; the arm which as hastily drew her within its shelter as one which had a right to defend her. Before a word was spoken, she old man plucked her thence with passionate force, and whirled her across the room, where she sank into a chair in terrified silence. Then the storm burst. Invectives, abuse, accusations were huddled upon each other in inexplicable confusion. Foam stood upon the writhing lips of the distempered man, as he charged his astounded lodger with a design to rob him of his daughter. Edward was not slow to defend himself. He crossed the room to the side of the now weeping girl, again placed his arm around her shoulder, as if to reassure her, drew himself up, and whilst Vaudubon's skinny fingers twisted and writhed like knotted snakes, and his agonised tongue refused further utterance, exclaimed — " Rob you of your daughter !