MR. DUNN'S PIGS BROUGHT TO MARKET.
Daffodil's Delight and its environs were in a state of bustle--of public
excitement, as may be said. Daffodil's Delight, however low its
condition might be, never failed to seize hold upon any possible event,
whether of a general public nature, or of a private local nature, as an
excuse for getting up a little steam. On that cold winter's day, two
funerals were appointed to take place: the one, that of Mrs. Hunter; the
other, of little William Darby: and Daffodil's Delight, in spite of the
black frost, turned out in crowds to see. You could not have passed into
the square when the large funeral came forth so many had collected
there. It was a funeral of mutes and plumes and horses and trappings and
carriages and show. The nearer Mr. Hunter had grown to pecuniary
embarrassment, the more jealous was he to guard all suspicion of it from
the world. Hence the display: which the poor unconscious lady they were
attending would have been the first to shrink from. Mr. Hunter, his
brother, and Dr. Bevary were in the first mourning-coach: in the second,
with two of the sons of Henry Hunter, and another relative, sat Austin
Clay. And more followed. That took place in the morning. In the
afternoon, the coffin of the boy, covered by something black--but it
looked like old cloth instead of velvet--was brought out of Darby's
house upon men's shoulders. Part of the family followed, and pretty
nearly the whole of Daffodil's Delight brought up the rear. There it is,
moving slowly down the street. Not over slowly either; for there had
been a delay in some of the arrangements, and the clergyman must have
been waiting for half an hour. It was a week since Darby resumed work; a
long while to keep the child, but the season was winter. Darby had paid
part of the expense, and had been trusted for the rest. It arrived at
the burial place; and the little body was buried, there to remain until
the resurrection at the last day. As Darby stood over the grave, the
regret for his child was nearly lost sight of in that other and far more
bitter regret, the remorse of which was telling upon him. He had kept
the dead starving for months, when work was to be had for the asking!
'Don't take on so,' whispered a neighbour, who knew his thoughts. 'If
you had gone back to work as soon as the yards were open, you'd only
have been set upon and half-killed, as Baxendale was.'
'Then it would not, in that case, have been my fault if he had starved,'
returned Darby, with compressed lips. 'His poor hungry face 'll lie upon
my mind for ever.'
The shades of evening were on Daffodil's Delight when the attendants of
the funeral returned, and Mr. Cox, the pawnbroker, was busily
transacting the business that the dusk hour always brought him. Even the
ladies and gentlemen of Daffodil's Delight, though they were common
sufferers, and all, or nearly all, required to pay visits to Mr. Cox,
imitated their betters in observing that peculiar reticence of manner
which custom has thrown around these delicate negotiations. The
character of their offerings had changed. In the first instance they had
chiefly consisted of ornaments, whether of the house or person, or of
superfluous articles of attire and of furniture. Then had come
necessaries: bedding, and heavier things; and then trifles--irons,
saucepans, frying-pans, gowns, coats, tools--anything; anything by which
a shilling could be obtained. And now had arrived the climax when there
was nothing more to take--nothing, at least, that Mr. Cox would
speculate upon.
A woman went banging into the shop, and Mr. Cox recognised her for the
most troublesome of his customers--Mrs. Dunn. Of all the miserable
households in Daffodil's Delight, that of the Dunns' was about the
worst: but Mrs. Dunn's manners and temper were fiercer than ever. The
non-realization of her fond hope of good cheer and silk dresses was
looked upon as a private injury, and resented as such. See her as she
turns into the shop: her head, a mass of torn black cap and entangled
hair; her gown, a black stuff once, dirty now, hanging in jags, and
clinging round her with that peculiar cling which indicates that few, if
any, petticoats are underneath; her feet scuffling along in shoes tied
round the instep with white rag, to keep them on! As she was entering,
she encountered a poor woman named Jones, the wife of a carpenter, as
badly reduced as she was. Mrs. Jones held out a small blanket for her
inspection, and spoke with the tears running down her cheeks.
Apparently, her errand to Mr. Cox had been unsuccessful.
'We have kept it till the last. We said we could not lie on the sack of
straw this awful weather, without the blanket to cover us. But to-day we
haven't got a crumb in the house, or a ember in the grate; and Jones
said, says he, "There ain't no help for it, you must pledge it."'
'And Cox won't take it in?' shrilly responded Mrs. Dunn. The woman shook
her head, and the tears fell fast on her thin cotton shawl, as she
walked away. 'He says the moths has got into it.'
'A pity but the moths had got into him! his eyes is sharper than they
need be,' shrieked Mrs. Dunn. 'Here, Cox,' dashing up to the counter,
and flinging on it a pair of boots, 'I want three shillings on them.'
Mr. Cox took up the offered pledge--a thin pair of woman's boots, black
cloth, with leather tips; new, they had probably cost five shillings,
but they were now considerably the worse for wear. 'What is the use of
bringing these old things?' remonstrated Mr. Cox. 'They are worth
nothing.'
'Everything's worth nothing, according to you,' retorted Mrs. Dunn.
'Come! I want three shillings on them.'
'I wouldn't lend you eighteen-pence. They'd not fetch it at an auction.'
Mrs. Dunn would have very much liked to fling the boots in his face.
After some dispute, she condescended to ask what he would give. 'I'll
lend a shilling, as you are a customer, just to oblige you. But I don't
care to take them in at all.' More dispute; and she brought her demand
down to eighteen-pence. 'Not a penny more than a shilling,' was the
decisive reply. 'I tell you they are not worth that, to me.' The boots
were at length left, and the shilling taken. Mrs. Dunn solaced herself
with a pint of half-and-half in a beer-shop, and went home with the
change.
Upon no home had the strike acted with worse effects than upon that of
the Dunns: and we are not speaking now as to pecuniary matters. _They_
were just as bad as they could be. Irregularity had prevailed in it at
the best of times; quarrelling and contention often; embarrassment, the
result of bad management, frequently. Upon such a home, distress, long
continued bitter distress, was not likely to work for good. The father
and a grown-up son were out of work; and the Misses Dunn were also
without employment. Their patronesses, almost without exception,
consisted of the ladies of Daffodil's Delight, and, as may be readily
conjectured, they had no funds just now to expend upon gowns and their
making. Not only this: there was, from one party or another, a good bit
of money owing to the sisters for past work, and this they could not
get. As a set-off to this--on the wrong side--_they_ were owing bills in
various directions for materials that had been long ago made up for
their customers, some of whom had paid them and some not. Any that had
not been paid before the strike came, remained unpaid still. The Miss
Dunns might just as well have asked for the moon as for money, owing or
not owing, from the distressed wives of Daffodil's Delight. So, there
they were, father, mother, sons, daughters, all debarred from earning
money; while all, with the younger children in addition, had to be kept.
It was wearying work, that forced idleness and that forced famine; and
it worked badly, especially on the girls. Quarrelling they were
accustomed to; embarrassment they did not mind; irregularity in domestic
affairs they had lived in all their lives; but they could not bear the
distress that had now come upon them. Added to this, the girls were
unpleasantly pressed for the settlement of the bills above alluded to.
Mrs. Quale had from the first recommended the two sisters to try for
situations: but when was advice well taken? They tossed their heads at
the idea of going out to service, thereby giving up their liberty and
their idleness. They said that it might prevent them getting together
again their business, when things should look up; they urged that they
were not fitted for service, knowing little of any sort of housework;
and, finally, they asked--and there was a great deal in the plea--how
they were to go out while the chief portion of their clothes was in
pledge.
For the past few days certain mysterious movements on the part of Mary
Ann Dunn had given rise to some talk (the usual expression for gossiping
and scandal) in Daffodil's Delight. She had been almost continually out
from home, and when asked where, had evaded an answer. Ever ready, as
some people are, to put a bad construction upon things, it was not
wanting in this case. Tales were carried home to the father and mother,
and there had been a scene of attack and abuse, on Mary Ann's presenting
herself at home at mid-day. The girl had a fierce temper, inherited
probably from her mother; she returned abuse for abuse, and finally
rushed off in a passion, without having given any satisfactory defence
of herself. Dunn cared for his children after a fashion, and the fear
that the reports must be true, completely beat him down; cowed his
spirit, as he might have put it. Mrs. Dunn, on the contrary, ranted and
raved till she was hoarse; and then, being excessively thirsty, stole
off surreptitiously with the boots to Mr. Cox's, and so obtained a pint
of half-and-half.
She returned home again, the delightful taste of it still in her mouth.
The room was stripped of all, save a few things, too old or too useless
for Mr. Cox to take; and, except for a little fire, it presented a
complete picture of poverty. The children lay on the boards crying; not
a loud cry, but a distressed moan. Very little, indeed, even of bread,
got those children; for James Dunn and his wife were too fond of beer,
to expend in much else the trifle allowed them by the Trades Union.
James Dunn had just come in. After the scene with his daughter, when he
had a little recovered himself, he went out to keep an appointment. Some
of the workmen, in a similarly distressed condition to himself, had been
that day to one of the police courts, hoping to obtain pecuniary help
from the magistrates. The result had been a complete failure, and Dunn
sat, moody and cross, upon a bench, his depression of spirit having
given place to a sort of savage anger; chiefly at his daughter Mary Ann,
partly at things altogether. The pint of half-and-half upon an empty
stomach had not tended to render Mrs. Dunn of a calmer temper. She
addressed him snappishly. 'What, you have come in! Have you got any
money?' Mr. Dunn made no reply; unless a growl that sounded rather
defiant constituted one. She returned to the charge. 'Have you got any
money, I ask? Or be you come home again with a empty pocket?'
'No; father hasn't got none: they didn't get any good by going there,'
interposed Jemima Dunn, as though it were a satisfaction to tell out the
bad news, and who appeared to be looking in all sorts of corners and
places, as if in search of something. 'Ted Cheek told me, and he was one
of 'em that went. The magistrate said to the men that there was plenty
of work open for them if they liked to do it; and his opinion was, that
if they did not like to do it, they wanted punishment instead of
assistance.'
'That's just my opinion,' returned Mrs. Dunn, with intense aggravation.
'There!'
James Dunn broke out intemperately, with violent words. And then he
relapsed into his gloomy mood again.
'I can't think what's gone with my boots,' exclaimed Jemima.
'Mother took 'em out,' cried a little voice from the floor.
'What's that, Jacky?' asked Jemima.
'Mother took 'em out,' responded Jacky.
The girl turned round, and stood still for a moment as if taking in the
sense of the words. Then she attacked her mother, anger flashing from
her eyes. 'If you have been and took 'em to the pawnshop, you shall
fetch 'em back. How dare you interfere with my things? Aren't they my
boots? Didn't I buy 'em with my own money?'
'If you don't hold your tongue, I'll box your ears,' shrieked Mrs. Dunn,
with a look and gesture as menacing as her tone. 'Hold your tongue! hold
your tongue, I say, miss!'
'I shan't hold my tongue,' responded Jemima, struggling between anger
and tears. 'I will have my boots! I want to go out, I do! and how can I
go barefoot?'
'Want to go out, do you!' raved Mrs. Dunn. 'Perhaps you want to go and
follow your sister! The boots be at Cox's, and you may go there and get
'em. Now, then!'
The words altogether were calculated to increase the ire of Jemima;
they did so in no measured degree. She and her mother commenced a mutual
contest of ranting abuse. It might have come to blows but for the
father's breaking into a storm of rage, so violent as to calm them, and
frighten the children. It almost seemed as if trouble had upset his
brain.
Long continued hunger--the hunger that for weeks and months never gets
satisfied--will on occasion transform men and women into demons. In the
house of the Dunns, not only hunger but misery of all sorts reigned, and
this day seemed to have brought things to a climax. Added to the trouble
and doubt regarding Mary Ann, was the fear of a prison, Dunn having just
heard that he had been convicted in the Small Debts Court. Summonses had
been out against him, hopeless though it seemed to sue anybody so
helplessly poor. In truth, the man was overwhelmed with misery--as was
many another man in Daffodil's Delight--and did not know where to turn.
After this outburst, he sat down on the bench again, administering a
final threat to his wife for silence. Mrs. Dunn stood against the bare
wooden shelves of the dresser, her hair on end, her face scarlet, her
voice loud enough, in its shrieking sobs, to alarm all the neighbours;
altogether in a state of fury. Disregarding her husband's injunction for
silence, she broke out into reproaches. 'Was he a man, that he should
bring 'em to this state of starvation, and then turn round upon 'em with
threats? Wasn't she his wife? wasn't they his children? If _she_ was a
husband and father, she'd rather break stones till her arms rotted off,
but what she'd find 'em food! A lazy, idle, drunken object! There was
the masters' yards open, and why didn't he go to work? If a man cared
for his own family, he'd look to his interests, and set the Trades Union
at defiance. Was he a going to see 'em took off to the workhouse? When
his young ones lay dead, and she was in the poorhouse, then he'd fold
his hands and be content with his work. If the strike was to bring 'em
all this misery, what the plague business had he to join it? Couldn't he
have seen better? Let him go to work if he was a man, and bring home a
few coals, and a bit of bread, and get out a blanket or two from Cox's,
and her gownds and things, and Jemimar's boots----'
Dunn, really a peacefully inclined man by nature, and whose own anger
had spent itself, let it go on to this point. He then stood up before
her, and with a clenched fist, but calm voice of suppressed meaning,
asked her what she meant. What, indeed! In the midst of Mrs. Dunn's
reproaches, how was it she did not cast a recollection to the past? To
her own eagerness, public and private, for the strike? how she had urged
her husband on to join it, boasting of the good times it was to bring
them? She could ignore all that now: perhaps really had almost forgotten
it. Anyway, her opinions had changed. Misery and disappointment will
subdue the fiercest obstinacy; and Mrs. Dunn, casting all the blame upon
her husband, would very much have liked to chastise him with hands as
well as tongue.
Reader! if you think this is an overdrawn picture, go and lay it before
the wives of the workmen who suffered the miseries induced by the
strike, and ask them whether or not it is true. Ay, and it is only part
of the truth.
'I wish the strike had been buried five-fathom deep, I do!' uttered
Dunn, with a catching up of the breath that told of the emotion he
strove to hide. 'It have been nothing but a curse to us all along. And
where's to be the ending?'
'Who brought home all this misery but you?' recommenced Mrs. Dunn. 'Have
you done a day's work for weeks and months? No you haven't; you know you
haven't! You have just rowed in the same boat with them nasty lazy
Unionists, and let the work go a begging.'
'Who edged me on to join the Unionists? who reproached me with being no
man, but a sneak, if I went to work and knuckled down to the masters?'
demanded Dunn, in his sore vexation. 'It was you! You know it was you!
You was fire-hot for the strike: worse than ever the men was.'
'Can we starve?' said Mrs. Dunn, choking with passion. 'Can we drop into
our coffins with famine? Be our children to be drove, like Mary Ann----'
An interruption--fortunately. Mrs. Cheek came into the room with a
burst. She had a tongue also, on occasions.
'Whatever has been going on here this last half hour?' she inquired in a
high voice. 'One would think murder was being committed. There's a
dozen listeners collected outside your shutters.'
'She's a casting it in my teeth, now, for having joined the strike,'
exclaimed Dunn, indicating his wife. 'She! And she was the foremost to
edge us all on.'
'Can one clam?' fiercely returned Mrs. Dunn, speaking at her husband,
not to him. 'Let him go to work.'
'Don't be a fool, Hannah Dunn,' said Mrs. Cheek. 'I'd stand up for my
rights till I dropped: and so must the men. It'll never do to bend to
the will of the masters at last. There's enough men turning tail and
going back, without the rest doing of it. I should like to see Cheek
attempting it: I'd be on to him.'
'Cheek don't want to; he have got no cause to,' said Mrs. Dunn. 'You get
the living now, and find him in beer and bacca.'
'I do; and I am proud on it,' was Mrs. Cheek's answer. 'I goes washing,
I goes chairing, I goes ironing; nothing comes amiss to me, and I
manages to keep the wolf from the door. It isn't my husband that shall
bend to the masters. He shall stand up with the Unionists for his
rights, or he shall stand up against me.' Having satisfied her curiosity
as to the cause of the disturbance, Mrs. Cheek went out as she came,
with a burst and a bang, for she had been bent on some hasty errand when
arrested by the noise behind the Dunn's closed shutters. What the next
proceedings would have been, it is difficult to say, had not another
interruption occurred. Mrs. Dunn was putting her entangled hair behind
her ears, most probably preparatory to the resuming of the attack on
her husband, when the offending Mary Ann entered, attended by Mrs.
Quale.
At it she went, the mother, hammer and tongs, turning her resentment on
the girl, her language by no means choice, though the younger children
were present. Dunn was quieter; but he turned his back upon his daughter
and would not look at her. And then Mrs. Quale took a turn, and
exercised _her_ tongue on both the parents: not with quite as much
noise, but with better effect.
It appeared that the whispered suspicions against Mary Ann Dunn had been
mistaken ones. The girl had been doing right, instead of wrong. Mrs.
Quale had recommended her to a place at a small dressmaker's, partly of
service, chiefly of needlework. Before engaging her, the dressmaker had
insisted on a few days of trial, wishing to see what her skill at work
was; and Mary Ann had kept it secret, intending a pleasant surprise to
her father when the engagement shall be finally made. The suspicions
cast on her were but a poor return for this; and the girl, in her
temper, had carried the grievance to Mrs. Quale, when the day's work was
over. A few words of strong good sense from that talkative friend
subdued Mary Ann, and she had now come back in peace. Mrs. Quale gave
the explanation, interlarding it with a sharp reprimand at their
proneness to think ill of 'their own flesh and blood,' and James Dunn
sat down meekly in glad repentance. Even Mrs. Dunn lowered her tone for
once. Mary Ann held out some money to her father after a quick glance at
Mrs. Quale for approval. 'Take it, father. It'll stop your going to
prison, perhaps. Mrs. Quale has lent it me to get my clothes out, for I
am to enter for good on my place to-morrow. I can manage without my
clothes for a bit.'
James Dunn put the money back, speaking softly, very much as if he had
tears in his voice. 'No, girl: it'll do you more good than it will me.
Mrs. Quale has been a good friend to you. Enter on your place, and stay
in it. It is the best news I've heard this many a day.'
'But if the money will keep you out of jail, father!' sobbed Mary Ann,
quite subdued.
'It wouldn't do that; nor half do it; nor a quarter. Get your clothes
home, child, and go into your place of service. As for me--better I was
in jail than out of it,' he added with a sigh. 'In there, one does get
food.'
'Are you sure it wouldn't do you good, Jim Dunn?' asked Mrs. Quale,
speaking in the emergency he seemed to be driven to. Not that she would
have helped him, so improvident in conduct and mistaken in opinions,
with a good heart.
'Sure and certain. If I paid this debt, others that I owe would be put
on to me.'
'Come along, Mary Ann,' said Mrs. Quale. 'I told you I'd give you a bed
at my house to-night, and I will: so you'll know where she is, Hannah
Dunn. You go on down to Cox's, girl; get out as much as you can for the
money, and come straight back to me: I'm going home now, and we'll set
to work and see the best we can do with the things.' They went out
together. But Mrs. Quale opened the door again and put in her head for
a parting word; remembering perhaps her want of civility in not having
given it. 'Good night to you all. And pleasant dreams--if you can get
'em. You Unionists have brought your pigs to a pretty market.'