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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
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RGL e-Book Cover
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IT was in Brick-lane that I first heard her name mentioned.
"What is the matter, Dick?" remarked the stout proprietress of a pot-herb stall to a dilapidated costermonger, whose hands, thrust deep into his trousers' pockets, denoted that he had little or nothing else there. "You look about as happy as a pup in a pie-shop."
"I am stoney broke; that's what's the matter," growled Dick dejectedly.
"Then why don't you call on Mrs. Nethersole?"
"Ah, why don't I? You know well enough why I don't."
The pot-herb woman chuckled to herself, and as Dick scowlingly turned away she winked at the little heap of carrot, turnip, and onions she was piling for a penn'orth as though not altogether unaware of the reason of the stoney-broke one's objection to pay the visit suggested.
Again, but a few days afterwards, in Shoreditch High-street:
"What! all the lot gone wrong in a single night?" said one barrowman to another; "two bushel of 'em?"
"Every blessed plum so bad he daren't show 'em. Nice bit of luck for him, isn't it?"
"'Tis so. Is he square with Mother Nethersole, I wonder?"
Who, then, was "Mother Nethersole," and what was the reason that the pot-herb woman had chuckled and winked as knowing why Dick dare not seek her assistance in his distress?
I noted the matter for inquiry, and the next time I chanced to pass through Brick-lane I paused at the stout woman's stall and questioned her. Could she give me the address of a person named Nethersole? The smile that was natural to it vanished from her jolly round face, and she eyed me suspiciously.
"Who has been putting you on to her?"
"No one has. Why do you ask?"
"Well, it isn't likely you would want her in the regler way, you know. Therefore, what do you want with her, come now?"
"How can you tell that I don't want her in the 'regular way,' as you term it?" I asked with my pleasantest smile.
"Get out; you don't look as though you wanted to borrow a few bob. That isn't it. I know. You have heard that she is a witch."
"You are quite mistaken, I assure you."
"A fortune-teller, then. One is as big a lie as the other. Though, mind you, there are plenty that believe otherwise. A superstitious lot of fools I call them. But they better be that than rogues; and that is what many of 'em would be if they wasn't afraid of her. So she would tell you herself, fair and free, if you was to talk to her. If you wish particularly to know where she lives, take the fifth turning to the right and the third to the left, and you'll find Hambone-yard, and it is No. 5."
Putting this and that together, as the saying is, I came to the conclusion that Mrs. Nethersole was a money-lender in a small way, though whether she supplemented this source of income by pretending to the gifts of divination and prophecy could be ascertained only by personal investigation, So I proceeded at once to Hambone-yard. It was after dark when I arrived there, and at No. 5 I was directed to the second-floor back, and, knocking at the door at that apartment, was bade, "Come in."
A reputed witch, Mrs. Nethersole should at least have presented something of the appearance of one according to ancient tradition. She should have been aged and ugly, with a bent back and bleared eyes, and a nose and chin in close proximity. The room should have been dirty, and there should have been a pot, containing some unheavenly brew, simmering on a charcoal fire, and a black cat should have arched its back as I entered, and snarlingly resented the intrusion. But not one of these necromantic signs was in evidence. As for Mrs. Nethersole, she was a singularly neat and prim old lady, wearing a dark stuff dress with white cuffs and collar, and her room, by no means ill-furnished, was a pattern of tidiness. Her cat was a tabby, and in comfortable converse with a fat kitten on the hearthrug. On one hob was a shining little copper kettle, and on the other Mrs. Nethersole's teapot in readiness for her by the time she had toasted the crumpet she held in her hand impaled on a toasting-fork.
"So you have come again to see me, sir," Mrs. Nethersole remarked, before I could say a word, but, checking herself when she had got thus far, she continued tartly, "Oh, I beg your pardon; catching sight of your black coat I was sure it was the parson. But perhaps you are a friend of his, and he has sent you to try and convince me of the wickedness of my ways."
I hastened to assure her that I had no acquaintance with the clerical gentleman she alluded to, and that the only excuse I had for taking the liberty of calling on her was that I had heard it whispered that she was a witch, and felt curious on the subject.
"Curious on the subject of witchcraft?" Mrs. Nethersole asked, with a queer little laugh.
"Nothing so nonsensical, ma'am," I replied, "the puzzle to me is that in these enlightened times there should be a lingering belief in such absurd superstitions."
"My very words to them, sir!" and brisking round she took my hand and shook it with much cordiality; "I am constantly trying to hammer that common sense into their numskulls, but they won't have it."
"Who won't?"
"My clients; the street-market people who come to borrow stock money of me when they are run aground. You have heard that I do a little in that line of business, I suppose?—Oh, it is no secret," she continued pleasantly, observing that I hesitated, "I am no usurer, understand that. All that I charge 'em is penny in a shilling for a week, which, you will agree with me, is small interest enough."
"It would pay tolerably well on a large capital so invested."
"Aye, but I have not got a large capital. Say I lend twenty shillings in a week. Twenty pence does not amount to much."
"Well, taking the risks of loss into account, probably it does not."
Mrs. Nethersole had turned her attention to toasting the crumpet, and her back was towards me. But my last remark caused her to turn her head towards me with a sidelong glance, that lent what certainly was a strikingly peculiar expression to her eyes, that were black as jet beads.
"Exactly," she remarked, "but you need not take that into account, because there is none."
"No what?"
"No loss, no bad debts. No promising to pay and shirking it when the time comes. He, he!" and her chuckling implanted a tremulous motion to the crumpet. "I am safe enough on that score."
"You find it necessary to be sharp on defaulters, no doubt? You have a written acknowledgment of their indebtedness, and sue them promptly?"
"I never sued man or woman for a shilling all the many years I've been their friend; and, excepting a few that died a trifle in my debt, I never was a pound out o' pocket by 'em, and am never likely to be."
"I am both surprised and pleased at their honesty."
"No doubt they themselves are surprised at it," returned Mrs. Nethersole, as she buttered the crumpet, "but they can't help it, you see."
"How is that?"
"Because they are such numskulls as to believe that it is in my power to do them harm if they don't act square by me," and she laughed outright. "It is no use me telling them different. They have got it into their heads and there it sticks."
"But it must make you feel very uncomfortable knowing that they have such an opinion of you?"
"Why should it, if it keeps 'em honest?" and there was again the uncanny twinkle in her eyes I had observed before, "That's what I said to the new young parson when he came here. 'So that they are made to do honestly,' says I, 'what odds whether it is brought about by hook or by crook?' But he wouldn't have it. 'But you can't draw fair water from a foul stream,' says the young parson; 'it isn't honesty at all.' 'It answers the same purpose, anyhow,' says I."
AND at that moment came a knock at Mrs. Nethersole's room-door, and a stout young fellow in corduroys and fustian, and unmistakably a barrowman, put in an appearance. He had taken off his cap before he entered the room, but, seeing me, would have retreated, muttering something about 'looking in again,' had she not checked him.
"It is only a friend of mine, Brockilow. You can say what you wish to."
"Well, it would save time, mum, if you wouldn't mind. Six shillings, if you'd be so good, Mrs. Nethersole."
She took a small leather bag from her bosom and told down the money without demur.
"Till Sunday, of course?" she remarked.
"That's it, mum," replied Mr. Brockilow, respectfully, "Sunday morning, if so be I sell out. Sunday arternoon if I'm so unlucky as to have a lot left over on Saturday night, and which must be disposed of before I can settle. But sometime or other on Sunday certain, unless Monday morning would be equally convenient to you, mum!"
"Ah! but it wouldn't," returned Mrs. Nethersole. "You might be tempted to break into it, and then something unpleasant would be sure to happen."
"Not with me, mum. No fear. I know myself too well, I hope, for that."
"You know me too well, pr'aps you mean, Brockilow?"
She seemed to be able at will to call that peculiar look into her piercingly black eyes, and she did so now, and the big fellow unmistakably cowered before it.
"Speaking as I find, Mrs. Nethersole," he made answer, as he fidgeted uneasily with his cap and was evidently anxious to be off, "you never act otherways than fair by them as act fair by you."
"They try it on sometimes, though, don't they, Brockilow?" said Mrs. Nethersole with, I thought, a half glance towards me. "Regarding me as a lone woman, with nobody to see me righted, they think to cheat me sometimes. You have known them try it?"
"I have so, mum," returned the barrowman with an emphatic wag of his head, "and I've known 'em to get very much the worst of it. The odds are far too heavy agin 'em, mum."
I believe that she was manoeuvring for him to make some such remark, for she took him up sharply.
"What do you mean, Jack Brockilow, as to the odds being heavy against them—in what way?"
Mr. Brockilow rubbed his ponderous chin as though at a loss for an answer at once suitable and inoffensive, at the same time edging towards the room-door.
"Well, I warn't speaking of any ways in partickler. mum, because they are what you might call warious, and measured out, very likely, according to the deservings of it. That's all I meant, mum."
"Measured out! measured by whom?"
"Hah!" ejaculated Mr. Brockilow meaningly, and, instantly afterwards repenting, was seized with a dry cough and could in consequence say no more. By the time he reached the outer landing he had recovered sufficiently to remark, "I'll pay up on Sunday, mum, without fail," and then he hurried coughing down the stairs.
Mrs. Nethersole snuffed her candle, and the brightened flame twinkled, reflected in her eyes, and made her appear as though she could hardly refrain from laughing; but otherwise she was quite serious.
"That is it," she remarked; "he is about a fair sample of them all. If I had argued for an hour with the ignorant blockhead it would not have altered his opinion."
"Perhaps," I ventured, as I rose to take my leave, "between this and Sunday he may alter it. In which case he may not pay up."
But Mrs. Nethersole was placidly confident on that point. "I wish I felt as sure of going to Heaven."
And as she uttered the words the witch-look was in her beady eyes, and the muscles of her mouth quivered with a covert grin. Of course there can be no shadow of a doubt that Mr. Brockilow and his friends are blockheads for believing in Mrs. Nethersole's supernatural power, but, all the same, were I hard up for a little money I would prefer not to borrow it of her.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.