Profit And Glory

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Title:     Profit And Glory
Author: Caradoc Evans [More Titles by Evans]

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]
Caradoc Evans's short story: Profit And Glory

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