For that he could not provide all the blouses that were requested of
him, he rented a big house. That hour men were arrived to take thereto
his belongings, Millie said: "I'll throw the Paisley shawl over my arm.
I wouldn't lose it for anything"; and as she moved away the ten-pound
note fell on the ground. "Well, I never!" she cried in her dismay. "It
was there all the time."

Hugh seized the note from her hand.

"You've the head of a sieve," he said. Also he lamented: "All these
years we had no interest in him."




XIII

PROFIT AND GLORY


By serving in shops, by drinking himself drunk, and by shamming good
fortune, Jacob Griffiths gave testimony to the miseries and joys of
life, and at the age of fifty-six he fell back in his bed at his
lodging-house in Clapham, suffered, drew up his crippled knees and died.
On the morrow his brother Simon hastened to the house; and as he neared
the place he looked up and beheld his sisters Annie and Jane fach also
hurrying thither. Presently they three saw one another as with a single
eye, wherefore they slackened their pace and walked with seemliness to
the door. Jacob's body was on a narrow, disordered bed, and in the state
of its deliverance: its eyes were aghast and its hands were clenched in
deathful pangs.

Then Simon bowed his trunk and lifted his silk hat and his umbrella in
the manner of a preacher giving a blessing.

"Of us family it can be claimed," he pronounced, "that even the Angel do
not break us. We must all cross Jordan. Some go with boats and bridges.
Some swim. Some bridges charge a toll--one penny and two pennies. A toll
there is to cross Jordan."

"He'll be better when he's washed and laid out proper," remarked the
woman of the lodging-house.

"Let down your apron from your head," Simon said to her. "We are
mourning for our brother, the son of the similar father and mother. You
don't think me insulting if I was alone with the corpse. I shan't be
long at my religious performance. I am a busy man like you."

The woman having gone, he spoke at Jacob: "Perished you are now, Shacob.
You have unraveled the tangled skein of eternal life. Pray I do you will
find rest with the restless of big London. Annie and Jane fach,
sorrowful you are; wet are your tears. Go you and drink a nice cup of
tea in the cafe. Most eloquent I shall be in a minute and there's
hysterics you'll get. Arrive will I after you. Don't pay for tea; that
will I do."

"Iss, indeed," said Annie. "Off you, Jane fach. You, Simon, with her,
for fear she is slayed in the street. Sit here will I and speak to the
spirit of Shacob."

"The pant of my breath is not back"--Jane fach's voice was shrill. "Did
I not muster on reading the death letter? Witness the mud sprinkled on
my gown."

"Why should you muster, little sister?" inquired Simon.

"Right that I reach him in respectable time, was the think inside me,"
Jane fach answered. "What other design have I? Stay here I will. A boy,
dear me, for a joke was Shacob with me. Heaps of gifts he made me;
enough to fill a yellow tin box."

"Generous he was," Simon said. "Hap he parted with all. Full of feeling
you are. But useless that we loll here. No odds for me; this is my day
in the City. How will your boss treat you, Annie, for being away without
a pass? Angry will your buyer be, I would be in a temper with my young
ladies. Hie to the office, Jane. Don't you borrow borrowings from me if
you are sacked."

"You are as sly as the cow that steals into clover," Annie cried out.
She removed her large hat and set upright the osprey feathers thereon,
puffed out her hair which was fashioned in a high pile, and whitened
with powder the birth-stain on her cheek. "They daren't discharge me.
I'd carry the costume trade with me. Each second you hear, 'Miss
Witton-Griffiths, forward,' and 'Miss Witton-Griffiths, her heinness is
waiting for you.' In favor am I with the buyer."

"Whisper to me your average takings per week," Simon craved. "Not repeat
will I."

After exaggerating her report, Annie said: "You are going now, then."

Jane fach took from a chair a cup that had tea in it, a candlestick--the
candle in which died before Jacob--and a teapot, and she sat in the
chair. "Oo-oo," she squeaked. "Sorry am I you are flown."

"Stupid wenches you are," Simon admonished his sisters. "And curious.
Scandalous you are to pry into the leavings of the perished dead."

Jane fach, whose shoulders were crumped and whose nose was as the beak
of a parrot, put forth her head. "The reins of a flaming chariot can't
drag me from him. Was he not father to me? Much he handed and more he
promised."

"Great is your avarice," Simon declared.

"Fonder he was of me than any one," Annie cried. "The birthdays he
presented me with dresses--until he was sacked. While I was cribbing,
did he not speak well to my buyer? Fitting I stay with him this day."

"I was his chief friend," said Simon. "We were closer than brothers. So
grand was he to me that I could howl once more. Iss, I could preach a
funeral sermon on my brother Shacob."

Jacob's virtues were truly related. Much had the man done for his
younger brother and sisters; albeit his behavior was vain, ornamenting
his person garishly and cheaply, and comporting himself foolishly.
Summer by summer he went to Wales and remained there two weeks; and he
gave a packet of tea or coffee to every widow who worshiped in the
capel, and a feast of tea and currant bread and carraway-seed cake to
the little children of the capel.

Wheedlers flattered him for gain: "The watch of a nobleman you carry"
and "The ring would buy a field," said those about Sion; "Never seen a
more exact fact simily of King George in my life than you," cried
spongers in London public-houses. All grasped whatever gifts they could
and turned from him laughing: "The watch of the fob is brass"; "No more
worth than a play marble is the ring"; "Old Griffiths is the bloomin'
limit." Yet Jacob had delight in the thought that folk passed him rich
for his apparel and acts.

"Waste of hours very awful is this," Simon uttered by and by. He brought
out his order book and a blacklead pencil. "Take stock will I now and
put down."

He searched the pockets of Jacob's garments and the drawers in the
chest, and knelt on his knees and peered under Jacob's bed; and all that
he found were trashy clothes and boots. His sisters tore open the seams
of the garments and spread their fingers in the hollow places, and they
did not find anything.

"Jewellary he had," exclaimed Annie. "Much was the value of his diamond
ring. 'This I will to you,' he said to me. Champion she would seem on my
finger. Half a hundred guineas was her worth."

"Where is the watch and chain?" Jane fach demanded. "Gold they were.
Link like the fingers of feet the chain had. These I have."

"Lovely were his solitaires," cried Annie. "They are mine."

"Liar of a bitch," said Jane fach. "'All is yours,' mouthed Shacob my
brother, who hears me in the Palace."

Simon answered neither yea nor no. He stepped down to the woman of the
house. "I have a little list here of the things my brother left in your
keeping," he began. "Number wan, gold watch--"

The woman opened her lips and spoke: "Godstruth, he didn't have a bean
to his name. Gold watch! I had to call him in the mornings. What with
blacking his whiskers and being tender on his feet, which didn't allow
of him to run to say the least of it, I was about pretty early. Else
he'd never get to Ward's at all. And Balham is a long run from here."

"I will come back and see you later," Simon replied, and he returned to
his sisters. "Hope I do," he said to them. "You discover his affairs.
All belong to you. Tall was his regard for you two. Now we will prepare
to bury him. Privilege to bury the dead. Sending the corpse to the
crystal capel. Not wedded are you like me. Heavy is the keep of three
children and the wife."

"For why could not the fool have saved for his burying, I don't say?"
Annie cried. "Let the perished perish. That's equal for all."

"In sense is your speech," Simon agreed. "Shop fach very neat he might
have if he was like me and you."

"Throwing away money he did," Annie said. "I helped him three years ago
when he was sacked. Did I not pay for him to sleep one month in
lodgings?"

"I got his frock coat cleaned at cost price," Jane fach remembered, "and
sewed silk on her fronts. I lent him lendings. Where are my lendings?"

"A squanderer you were," Simon rebuked the body. "Tidy sums you spent
in pubs. Booze got you the sack after twenty years in the same shop.
Disgraced was I to have such a brother as you, Shacob. Where was your
religion, man? But he has to be buried, little sisters, or babbling
there'll be. Cheap funeral will suit in Fulham cematary. Reasonable your
share is more than mine, because the Big Man has trusted me with sons."

"No sense is in you," Annie shouted. "Not one coin did he repay me. The
coins he owed me are my share."

"As an infidel you are," said Simon. "Ach y fy, cheating the grave of
custom."

"Leaving am I." Jane fach rose. "Late is the day."

"Woe is me," Simon wailed. "Like the old Welsh of Cardigan is your
cunning. Come you this night here to listen to funeral estimates. Don't
you make me bawl this in your department, Annie, and in your office
laundry, Jane."

From the street door he journeyed by himself to Balham, and habiting his
face with grief, he related to Mr. Ward how Jacob died.

"He passed in my arms," he said; "very gently--willingly he gave back
the ghost. A laugh in his face that might be saying: 'I see Thy wonders,
O Lord.'"

"This is very sad," said Mr. Ward. "If there is anything we can do--"

"You speak as a Christian who goes to chapel, sir. It's hard to discuss
business now just. But Jacob has told he left a box in your keep."

"I don't think so. Still, I'll make sure." Mr. Ward went away, and
returning, said: "The only thing he left here is this old coat which he
wore at squadding in the morning. Of course there is his salary--"

"Yes, yes, I know. I'd give millions of salaries for my brother back."

"You are his only relative?"

"Indeed, sir. No father and mother had he. An orphan. Quite pathetic. I
will never grin again. Good afternoon, sir. I hope you'll have a
successful summer sale."

"Hadn't you better take his money?" said Mr. Ward. "We pay quarterly
here."

"Certainly it will save coming again. But business is business, even in
the presence of the dead."

"It's eighteen pounds. That's twelve weeks at one-ten."

"Well, if you insist, insist you do. Prefer I would to have my brother
Jacob back."

Simon put the coat over his arm and counted the money, and after he had
drunk a little beer and eaten of bread and cheese, he made deals with a
gravedigger and an undertaker, and the cost for burying Jacob was eight
pounds.

That night he was with his sisters, saying to them: "Twelve soferens
will put him in the earth. Four soferens per each."

"None can I afford," Jane fach vowed. "Not paid my pew rent in Capel
Charing Cross have I."

"Easier for me to fly than bring the cash," said Annie. "Larger is your
screw than me."

Simon smote the ground with his umbrella and stayed further words. "Give
the soferens, bullocks of Hell fire."

Annie and Jane fach were distressed. The first said: "The flesh of the
swine shall smell before I do." The second said: "Hard you are on a
bent-back wench."

Notwithstanding their murmurs, Simon hurled at them the spite of his
wrath, reviling them foully and filthily; and the women got afraid that
out of his anger would come mischief, and each gave as she was
commanded.

The third day Simon and Annie and Jane fach stood at Jacob's grave; and
Annie and Jane were put to shame that Simon bragged noisily how that he
had caused a name-plate to be made for Jacob's coffin and a wreath of
glass flowers for the mound of Jacob's grave.


THE END