“Have him here a bit.”

“Oh! But would you like it?”

“Like it?” retorted the Squire. “I know this: if I were a hard-worked London clerk, ill for want of change and rest, and I had friends living in a nice part of the country, I should feel it uncommonly hard if they did not invite me.”

“I’m sure it is very kind of you to think of it,” said Mrs. Todhetley.

“Write at once and ask him,” said the Squire.

They were speaking of a Mr. Marks. He was a relation of Mrs. Todhetley’s; a second or third cousin. She had not seen him since she was a girl, when he used sometimes to come and stay at her father’s. He seemed not to have got on very well in life; was only a clerk on a small salary, was married and had some children. A letter now and then passed between them and Mrs. Todhetley, but no other acquaintanceship had been kept up. About a month before this, Mrs. Todhetley had written to ask how they were going on; and the wife in answering—for it was she who wrote—said her husband was killing himself with work, and she quite believed he would break down for good unless he had a rest.

We heard more about it later. James Marks was clerk in the great financial house of Brown and Co. Not particularly great as to reputation, for they made no noise in the world, but great as to their transactions. They did a little banking in a small way, and had mysterious money dealings with no end of foreign places: but if you had gone into their counting-house in London you’d have seen nothing to show for it, except Mr. Brown seated at a table-desk in a small room, and half-a-dozen clerks, or so, writing hard, or bending over columns of figures, in a larger one. Mr. Brown was an elderly little gentleman in a chestnut wig, and the “Co.” existed only in name.

James Marks had been thrown on the world when he was seventeen, with a good education, good principles, and a great anxiety to get on in life. He had to do it; for he had only himself to look to—and, mind you, I have lived long enough to learn that that’s not at all the worst thing a young man can have. When some friends of his late father’s got him into Brown and Co.‘s house, James Marks thought his fortune was made. That is, he thought he was placed in a position to work up to one. But no. Here he was, getting on for forty years of age, and with no more prospect of fortune, or competency either, than he had had at the beginning.

How many clerks, and especially bankers’ clerks, are there in that City of London now who could say the same! Who went into their house (whatsoever it may be) in the hey-day of youth, exulting in their good luck in having obtained the admission for which so many others were striving. They saw not the long years of toil before them, the weary days of close work, with no rest or intermission, except Sunday; they saw not the struggle to live and pay; they saw not themselves middle-aged men, with a wife and family, hardly able to keep the wolf from the door. It was James Marks’s case. He had married. And what with having to keep up the appearance of gentlepeople (at least to make a pretence at it) and to live in a decent-looking dwelling, and to buy clothes, and to pay doctors’ bills and children’s schooling, I’ll leave you to guess how much he had left for luxuries out of his two hundred a year.

When expenses were coming upon him thick and fast, Marks sought out some night employment. A tradesman in the neighbourhood—Pimlico—a butterman doing a flourishing business, advertised for a book-keeper to attend two or three hours in the evening. James Marks presented himself and was engaged. It had to be done in secrecy, lest offence should be taken at head-quarters. Had the little man in the chestnut wig heard of it, he might have objected to his clerk keeping any books but his own. Shut up in the butterman’s small back-closet that he called his counting-house, Mr. Marks could be as private as need be. So there he was! After coming home from his day’s toil, instead of taking recreation, the home-sitting with his wife, or the stroll in the summer weather, in place of throwing work to the winds and giving his brain rest, James Marks, after snatching a meal, tea and supper combined, went forth to work again, to weary his eyes with more figures and his head with casting them up. He generally managed to get home by eleven except on Saturday; but the day’s work was too much for any man. Better for him (could he have pocketed pride, and gained over Brown and Co.) that he had hired himself to stand behind the evening counter and serve out the butter and cheese to the customers. It would at least have been a relief from the accounts. And so the years had gone on.

A portion of the wife’s letter to Mrs. Todhetley had run as follows: “Thank you very much for your kind inquiries after my husband, and for your hope that he is not overworking himself. He is. But I suppose I must have said something about it in my last letter (I am ashamed to remember that it was written two years ago!) that induced you to refer to it. That he is overworking himself I have known for a long time: and things that he has said lately have tended to alarm me. He speaks of sometimes getting confused in the head. In the midst of a close calculation he will suddenly seem to lose himself—lose memory and figures and all, and then he has to leave off for some minutes, close his eyes, and keep perfectly still, or else leave his stool and take a few turns up and down the room. Another thing he mentions—that the figures dance before his eyes in bed at night, and he is adding them up in his brain as if it were daytime and reality. It is very evident to me that he wants change and rest.”

“And what a foolish fellow he must have been not to take it before this!” cried the Squire, commenting on parts of the letter, while Mrs. Todhetley wrote.

“Perhaps that is what he has not been able to do, sir,” I said.

“Not able! Why, what d’ye mean, Johnny?”

“It is difficult for a banker’s clerk to get holiday. Their work has to go on all the same.”

“Difficult! when a man’s powers are breaking down! D’ye think bankers are made of flint and steel, not to give their clerks holiday when it is needed? Don’t you talk nonsense, Johnny Ludlow.”

But I was not so far wrong, after all. There came a letter of warm thanks from Mr. Marks himself in answer to Mrs. Todhetley’s invitation. He said how much he should have liked to accept it and what great good it would certainly have done him; but that upon applying for leave he found he could not be spared. So there seemed to be an end of it; and we hoped he would get better without the rest, and rub on as other clerks have to rub on. But in less than a month he wrote again, saying he would come if the Squire and Mrs. Todhetley were still pleased to have him. He had been so much worse as to be obliged to tell Mr. Brown the truth—that he believed he must have rest; and Mr. Brown had granted it to him.

It was the Wednesday in Passion Week, and a fine spring day, when James Marks arrived at Dyke Manor. Easter was late that year. He was rather a tall man, with dark eyes and very thin hair; he wore spectacles, and at first was rather shy in manner.

You should have seen his delight in the change. The walks he took, the enjoyment of what he called the sweet country. “Oh,” he said one day to us, “yours must be the happiest lot on earth. No forced work; your living assured; nothing to do but to revel in this health-giving air! Forgive my freedom, Mr. Todhetley,” he added a moment after: “I was contrasting your lot with my own.”

We were passing through the fields towards the Court: the Squire was taking him to see the Sterlings, and he had said he would rather walk than drive. The hedges were breaking into green: the fields were yellow with buttercups and cowslips. This was on the Monday. The sun shone and the breeze was soft. Mr. Marks sniffed the air as he went along.

“Six months of this would make a new man of me,” we heard him say to himself in a low tone.

“Take it,” cried the Squire.

Mr. Marks laughed, sadly enough. “You might as well tell me, sir, to—to take heaven,” he said impulsively. “The one is no more in my power than the other.—Hark! I do believe that’s the cuckoo!”

We stood to listen. It was the cuckoo, sure enough, for the first time that spring. It only gave out two or three notes, though, and then was silent.

“How many years it is since I heard the cuckoo!” he exclaimed, brushing his hand across his eyes. “More than twenty, I suppose. It seems to bring back my youth to me. What a thing it would be for us, sir, if we could only go to the mill that grinds people young again!”

The Squire laughed. “It is good of you to talk of age, Marks; why, I must be nearly double yours,” he added—which of course was random speaking.

“I feel old, Mr. Todhetley: perhaps older than you do. Think of the difference in our mode of life. I, tied to a desk for more hours of the twenty-four than I care to think of, my brain ever at work; you, revelling in this beautiful, healthy freedom!”

“Ay, well, it is a difference, when you come to think of it,” said the Squire soberly.

“I must not repine,” returned Marks. “There are more men in my case than in yours. No doubt it is well for me,” he continued, dropping his voice, with a sigh. “Were your favoured lot mine, sir, I might find so much good in it as to forget that this world is not our home.”

Perhaps it had never struck the Squire before how much he was to be envied; but Marks put it strongly. “You’d find crosses and cares enough in my place, I can tell you, Marks, of one sort or another. Johnny, here, knows how I am bothered sometimes.”

“No doubt of it,” replied Marks, with a smile. “No lot on earth can be free from its duties and responsibilities; and they must of necessity entail care. That is one thing, Mr. Todhetley; but to be working away your life at high pressure—and to know that you are working it away—is another.”

“You acknowledge, then, that you are working too hard, Marks,” said the Squire.

“I know I am, sir. But there’s no help for it.”

“It is a pity.”

“Why it should begin to tell upon me so early I don’t know. There are numbers of other men, who work as long and as hard as I do, and are seemingly none the worse for it.”

“The time will come though when they will be, I presume.”

“As surely as that sun is shining in the sky.”

“Possibly you have been more anxious than they, Marks.”

“It may be so. My conscience has always been in my work, to do it efficiently. I fear, too, I am rather sensitively organized as to nerves and brain. Upon those who are so, I fancy work tells sooner than on others.”

The Squire put his arm within Marks’s. “You must have a bit of a struggle to get along, too, on your small salary.”

“True: and it all helps. Work and struggle together are not the most desirable combination. But for being obliged to increase my means by some stratagem or other, I should not have taken on the additional evening’s work.”

“How long are you at it, now, of an evening?”

“Usually about two hours. On Saturdays and at Christmas-time longer.”

“And I suppose you must continue this night-work?”

“Yes. I get fifty pounds a year for it. And I assure you I should not know how to spare one pound of the fifty. No one knows the expenses of children, except those who have to look at every shilling before it can be spent.”

There was a pause. Mr. Marks stooped, plucked a cowslip and held it to his lips.

“Don’t you think, Marks,” resumed the Squire, in a confidential, friendly tone, “that you were just a little imprudent to marry?”

“No, I do not think I was,” he replied slowly, as if considering the question. “I did not marry very early: I was eight-and-twenty; and I had got together the wherewithal to furnish a house, and something in hand besides. The question was mooted among us at Brown’s the other day—whether it was wiser, or not, for young clerks to marry. There is a great deal to be urged both ways—against marrying and against remaining single.”

“What can you urge against remaining single?”

“A very great deal, sir. I feel sure, Mr. Todhetley, that you can form no idea of the miserable temptations that beset a young fellow in London. Quite half the London clerks, perhaps more, have no home to go to when their day is over; I mean no parent’s home. A solitary room and no one to bear them company in it; that’s all they have; perhaps, in addition, a crabbed landlady. Can you blame them very much if they go out and escape this solitude?—they are at the age, you know, when enjoyment is most keen; the thirst for it well-nigh irrepressible——”

“And then they go off to those disreputable singing places!” exploded the Squire, not allowing him to finish.

“Singing places, yes; and other places. Theatres, concerts, supper-rooms—oh, I cannot tell you a tithe of the temptation that meets them at every turn and corner. Many and many a poor young fellow, well-intentioned in the main, has been ruined both in pocket and in health by these snares; led into them at first by dangerous companions.”

“Surely all do not get led away.”

“Not all. Some strive on manfully, remembering early precepts and taking God for their guide, and so escape. But it is not the greater portion who do this. Some marry early, and secure themselves a home. Which is best?—I put the question only in a worldly point of view. To commit the imprudence of marrying, and so bring on themselves and wives intolerable perplexity and care: or to waste their substance in riotous living!”

“I’ll be shot if I know!” cried the Squire, taking off his hat to rub his puzzled head. “It’s a sad thing for poor little children to be pinched, and for men like you to be obliged to work yourselves to shatters to keep them. But as to those others, I’d give ’em all a night at the treadmill. Johnny! Johnny Ludlow!”

“Yes, sir.”

“You may be thankful that you don’t live in London.”

I had been thinking to myself that I was thankful not to be one of those poor young clerks to have no home to go to when work was over. Some fellows would rather tramp up and down the streets, than sit alone in a solitary room; and the streets, according to Marks, teemed with temptations. He resumed.

“In my case I judged it the reverse of imprudence to marry, for my wife expected a fairly good fortune. She was an only child, and her father had realized enough to live quietly; say three or four hundred a year. Mr. Stockleigh had been a member of the Stock Exchange, but his health failed and he retired. Neither I nor his daughter ever doubted—no, nor did he himself—that this money must come to us in time.”

“And won’t it?” cried the Squire.

Marks shook his head. “I fear not. A designing servant, that they had, got over him after his daughter left—he was weak in health and weak in mind—and he married her. Caroline—my wife—resented it naturally; there was some recrimination on either side, and since then they have closed the door against her and me. So you see, with no prospect before us, there’s nothing for me but to work the harder,” he concluded, with a kind of plucked-up cheerfulness.

“But, to do that, you should get up your health and strength, Marks. You must, you know. What would you do if you broke down?”

“Hush!” came the involuntary and almost affrighted answer. “Don’t remind me of it, sir. Sometimes I dream of it, and cannot bear to awaken.”

We had got to like Marks very much only in those few days. He was a gentleman in mind and manners and a pleasant one into the bargain, though he did pass his days adding up figures and was kept down by poverty. The Squire meant to keep him for a month: two months if he would stay.

On the following morning, Tuesday, during breakfast-time, a letter came for him by the post—the first he had had. He had told his wife she need not write to him, wanting to have all the time for idle enjoyment: not to spend it in answering letters.

“From home, James?” asked Mrs. Todhetley.

“No,” said he, smiling. “It is only a reminder that I am due tomorrow at the house.”

“What house?” cried the Squire.

“Our house, sir. Brown and Co.‘s.”

The Squire put down his buttered roll—for Molly had graciously sent in hot rolls that morning—and stared at the speaker.

“What on earth are you talking of?” he cried. “You don’t mean to say you are thinking of going back?”

“Indeed I am-unfortunately. I must get up to London to-night.”

“Why, bless my heart,” cried the Squire, getting up and standing a bit, “you’ve not been here a week!”

“It is all the leave I could get, Mr. Todhetley: a week. I thought you understood that.”

“You can’t go away till you are cured,” roared the Squire. “Why didn’t you go back the day you came? Don’t talk nonsense, Marks.”

“Indeed I should like to stay longer,” he earnestly said. “I wish I could. Don’t you see, Mr. Todhetley, that it does not lie with me?”

“Do you dare to look me in the face, Marks, and tell me this one week’s rest has cured you? What on earth!—are you turning silly?”

“It has done me a great, great deal of good——”

“It has not, Marks. It can’t have done it; not real good,” came the Squire’s interruption. “One would think you were a child.”

“It was with difficulty I obtained this one week’s leave,” he explained. “I am really required in the office; my absence I know causes trouble. This holiday has done so much for me that I shall go back with a good heart.”

“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 passed. It must be remembered that I am writing of past years, when holidays were not so universal for any class, 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, Willy 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,............