At dusk that same evening the two had started for the village fair.
A velveteen shooting-jacket, a pair of corduroy trousers, and a
waistcoat, furnished by Tregarva, covered with flowers of every
imaginable hue, tolerably disguised Lancelot, who was recommended by
his conductor to keep his hands in his pockets as much as possible,
lest their delicacy, which was, as it happened, not very remarkable,
might betray him. As they walked together along the plashy turnpike
road, overtaking, now and then, groups of two or three who were out
on the same errand as themselves, Lancelot could not help remarking
to the keeper how superior was the look of comfort in the boys and
young men, with their ruddy cheeks and smart dresses, to the worn
and haggard appearance of the elder men.
'Let them alone, poor fellows,' said Tregarva; 'it won't last long.
When they've got two or three children at their heels, they'll look
as thin and shabby as their own fathers.'
'They must spend a great deal of money on their clothes.'
'And on their stomachs, too, sir. They never lay by a farthing; and
I don't see how they can, when their club-money's paid, and their
insides are well filled.'
'Do you mean to say that they actually have not as much to eat after
they marry?'
'Indeed and I do, sir. They get no more wages afterwards round
here, and have four or five to clothe and feed off the same money
that used to keep one; and that sum won't take long to work out, I
think.'
'But do they not in some places pay the married men higher wages
than the unmarried?'
'That's a worse trick still, sir; for it tempts the poor thoughtless
boys to go and marry the first girl they can get hold of; and it
don't want much persuasion to make them do that at any time.'
'But why don't the clergymen teach them to put into the savings
banks?'
'One here and there, sir, says what he can, though it's of very
little use. Besides, every one is afraid of savings banks now; not
a year but one reads of some breaking and the lawyers going off with
the earnings of the poor. And if they didn't, youth's a foolish
time at best; and the carnal man will be hankering after amusement,
sir--amusement.'
'And no wonder,' said Lancelot; 'at all events, I should not think
they got much of it. But it does seem strange that no other
amusement can be found for them than the beer-shop. Can't they
read? Can't they practise light and interesting handicrafts at
home, as the German peasantry do?'
'Who'll teach 'em, sir? From the plough-tail to the reaping-hook,
and back again, is all they know. Besides, sir, they are not like
us Cornish; they are a stupid pigheaded generation at the best,
these south countrymen. They're grown-up babies who want the parson
and the squire to be leading them, and preaching to them, and
spurring them on, and coaxing them up, every moment. And as for
scholarship, sir, a boy leaves school at nine or ten to follow the
horses; and between that time and his wedding-day he forgets every
word he ever learnt, and becomes, for the most part, as thorough a
heathen savage at heart as those wild Indians in the Brazils used to
be.'
'And then we call them civilised Englishmen!' said Lancelot. 'We
can see that your Indian is a savage, because he wears skins and
feathers; but your Irish cottar or your English labourer, because he
happens to wear a coat and trousers, is to be considered a civilised
man.'
'It's the way of the world, sir,' said Tregarva, 'judging carnal
judgment, according to the sight of its own eyes; always looking at
the outsides of things and men, sir, and never much deeper. But as
for reading, sir, it's all very well for me, who have been a keeper
and dawdled about like a gentleman with a gun over my arm; but did
you ever do a good day's farm-work in your life? If you had, man or
boy, you wouldn't have been game for much reading when you got home;
you'd do just what these poor fellows do,--tumble into bed at eight
o'clock, hardly waiting to take your clothes off, knowing that you
must turn up again at five o'clock the next morning to get a
breakfast of bread, and, perhaps, a dab of the squire's dripping,
and then back to work again; and so on, day after day, sir, week
after week, year after year, without a hope or a chance of being
anything but what you are, and only too thankful if you can get work
to break your back, and catch the rheumatism over.'
'But do you mean to say that their labour is so severe and
incessant?'
'It's only God's blessing if it is incessant, sir, for if it stops,
they starve, or go to the house to be worse fed than the thieves in
gaol. And as for its being severe, there's many a boy, as their
mothers will tell you, comes home night after night, too tired to
eat their suppers, and tumble, fasting, to bed in the same foul
shirt which they've been working in all the day, never changing
their rag of calico from week's end to week's end, or washing the
skin that's under it once in seven years.'
'No wonder,' said Lancelot, 'that such a life of drudgery makes them
brutal and reckless.'
'No wonder, indeed, sir: they've no time to think; they're born to
be machines, and machines they must be; and I think, sir,' he added
bitterly, 'it's God's mercy that they daren't think. It's God's
mercy that they don't feel. Men that write books and talk at
elections call this a free country, and say that the poorest and
meanest has a free opening to rise and become prime minister, if he
can. But you see, sir, the misfortune is, that in practice he
can't; for one who gets into a gentleman's family, or into a little
shop, and so saves a few pounds, fifty know that they've no chance
before them, but day-labourer born, day-labourer live, from hand to
mouth, scraping and pinching to get not meat and beer even, but
bread and potatoes; and then, at the end of it all, for a worthy
reward, half-a-crown a-week of parish pay--or the workhouse. That's
a lively hopeful prospect for a Christian man!'
'But,' said Lancelot, 'I thought this New Poor-law was to stir them
up to independence?'
'Oh, sir, the old law has bit too deep: it made them slaves and
beggars at heart. It taught them not to be ashamed of parish pay--
to demand it as a right.'
'And so it is their right,' said Lancelot. 'In God's name, if a
country is so ill-constituted that it cannot find its own citizens
in work, it is bound to find them in food.'
'Maybe, sir, maybe. God knows I don't grudge it them. It's a poor
pittance at best, when they have got it. But don't you see, sir,
how all poor-laws, old or new either, suck the independent spirit
out of a man; how they make the poor wretch reckless; how they tempt
him to spend every extra farthing in amusement?'
'How then?'
'Why, he is always tempted to say to himself, "Whatever happens to
me, the parish must keep me. If I am sick it must doctor me; if I
am worn out it must feed me; if I die it must bury me; if I leave my
children paupers the parish must look after them, and they'll be as
well off with the parish as they were with me. Now they've only got
just enough to keep body and soul together, and the parish can't
give them less than that. What's the use of cutting myself off from
sixpenny-worth of pleasure here, and sixpenny-worth there. I'm not
saving money for my children, I'm only saving the farmers' rates."
There it is, sir,' said Tregarva; 'that's the bottom of it, sir,--
"I'm only saving the farmers' rates. Let us eat and drink, for to-
morrow we die!"'
'I don't see my way out of it,' said Lancelot.
'So says everybody, sir. But I should have thought those members of
parliament, and statesmen, and university scholars have been set up
in the high places, out of the wood where we are all struggling and
scrambling, just that they might see their way out of it; and if
they don't, sir, and that soon, as sure as God is in heaven, these
poor fellows will cut their way out of it.'
'And blindfolded and ignorant as they are,' said Lancelot, 'they
will be certain to cut their way out just in the wrong direction.'
'I'm not so sure of that, sir,' said Tregarva, lowering his voice.
'What is written'? That there is One who hears the desire of the
poor. "Lord, Thou preparest their hearts and Thine ear hearkeneth
thereto, to help the fatherless and poor unto their right, that the
man of the earth be no more exalted against them."'
'Why, you are talking like any Chartist, Tregarva!'
'Am I, sir? I haven't heard much Scripture quoted among them
myself, poor fellows; but to tell you the truth, sir, I don't know
what I am becoming. I'm getting half mad with all I see going on
and not going on; and you will agree, sir, that what's happened this
day can't have done much to cool my temper or brighten my hopes;
though, God's my witness, there's no spite in me for my own sake.
But what makes me maddest of all, sir, is to see that everybody sees
these evils, except just the men who can cure them--the squires and
the clergy.'
'Why surely, Tregarva, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of
clergymen and landlords working heart and soul at this moment, to
better the condition of the labouring classes!'
'Ay, sir, they see the evils, and yet they don't see them. They do
not see what is the matter with the poor man; and the proof of it
is, sir, that the poor have no confidence in them. They'll take
their alms, but they'll hardly take their schooling, and their
advice they won't take at all. And why is it, sir? Because the
poor have got in their heads in these days a strange confused fancy,
maybe, but still a deep and a fierce one, that they haven't got what
they call their rights. If you were to raise the wages of every man
in this country from nine to twelve shillings a-week to-morrow, you
wouldn't satisfy them; at least, the only ones whom you would
satisfy would be the mere hogs among them, who, as long as they can
get a full stomach, care for nothing else.'
'What, in Heaven's name, do they want?' asked Lancelot.
'They hardly know yet, sir; but they know well what they don't want.
The question with them, sir, believe me, is not so much, How shall
we get better fed and better housed, but whom shall we depend upon
for our food and for our house? Why should we depend on the will
and fancy of any man for our rights? They are asking ugly questions
among themselves, sir, about what those two words, rent and taxes,
mean, and about what that same strange word, freedom, means. Eight
or wrong, they've got the thought into their heads, and it's growing
there, and they will find an answer for it. Depend upon it, sir, I
tell you a truth, and they expect a change. You will hear them talk
of it to-night, sir, if you've luck.'
'We all expect a change, for that matter,' said Lancelot. 'That
feeling is common to all classes and parties just now.'
Tregarva took off his hat.
'"For the word of the Lord hath spoken it." Do you know, sir, I
long at times that I did agree with those Chartists? If I did, I'd
turn lecturer to-morrow. How a man could speak out then! If he saw
any door of hope, any way of salvation for these poor fellows, even
if it was nothing better than salvation by Act of Parliament!'
'But why don't you trust the truly worthy among the clergy and the
gentry to leaven their own ranks and bring all right in time?'
'Because, sir, they seem to be going the way only to make things
worse. The people have been so dependent on them heretofore, that
they have become thorough beggars. You can have no knowledge, sir,
of the whining, canting, deceit, and lies which those poor miserable
labourers' wives palm on charitable ladies. If they weren't angels,
some of them, they'd lock up their purses and never give away
another farthing. And, sir, these free-schools, and these penny-
clubs, and clothing clubs, and these heaps of money which are given
away, all make the matter worse and worse. They make the labourer
fancy that he is not to depend upon God and his own right hand, but
on what his wife can worm out of the good nature of the rich. Why,
sir, they growl as insolently now at the parson or the squire's wife
if they don't get as much money as their neighbours, as they used to
at the parish vestrymen under the old law. Look at that Lord
Vieuxbois, sir, as sweet a gentleman as ever God made. It used to
do me good to walk behind him when he came over here shooting, just
to hear the gentle kind-hearted way in which he used to speak to
every old soul he met. He spends his whole life and time about the
poor, I hear. But, sir, as sure as you live he's making his people
slaves and humbugs. He doesn't see, sir, that they want to be
raised bodily out of this miserable hand-to-mouth state, to be
brought nearer up to him, and set on a footing where they can shift
for themselves. Without meaning it, sir, all his boundless
charities are keeping the people down, and telling them they must
stay down, and not help themselves, but wait for what he gives them.
He fats prize-labourers, sir, just as Lord Minchampstead fats prize-
oxen and pigs.'
Lancelot could not help thinking of that amusingly inconsistent,
however well-meant, scene in Coningsby, in which Mr. Lyle is
represented as trying to restore 'the independent order of
peasantry,' by making them the receivers of public alms at his own
gate, as if they had been middle-age serfs or vagabonds, and not
citizens of modern England.
'It may suit the Mr. Lyles of this age,' thought Lancelot, 'to make
the people constantly and visibly comprehend that property is their
protector and their friend, but I question whether it will suit the
people themselves, unless they can make property understand that it
owes them something more definite than protection.'
Saddened by this conversation, which had helped to give another
shake to the easy-going complacency with which Lancelot had been
used to contemplate the world below him, and look on its evils as
necessaries, ancient and fixed as the universe, he entered the
village fair, and was a little disappointed at his first glimpse of
the village-green. Certainly his expectations had not been very
exalted; but there had run through them a hope of something
melodramatic, dreams of May-pole dancing and athletic games,
somewhat of village-belle rivalry, of the Corin and Sylvia school;
or, failing that, a few Touchstones and Audreys, some genial earnest
buffo humour here and there. But there did not seem much likelihood
of it. Two or three apple and gingerbread stalls, from which
draggled children were turning slowly and wistfully away to go home;
a booth full of trumpery fairings, in front of which tawdry girls
were coaxing maudlin youths, with faded southernwood in their
button-holes; another long low booth, from every crevice of which
reeked odours of stale beer and smoke, by courtesy denominated
tobacco, to the treble accompaniment of a jigging fiddle and a
tambourine, and the bass one of grumbled oaths and curses within--
these were the means of relaxation which the piety, freedom, and
civilisation of fourteen centuries, from Hengist to Queen Victoria,
had devised and made possible for the English peasant!
'There seems very little here to see,' said Lancelot, half
peevishly.
'I think, sir,' quoth Tregarva, 'that very thing is what's most
worth seeing.'
Lancelot could not help, even at the risk of detection, investing
capital enough in sugar-plums and gingerbread, to furnish the
urchins around with the material for a whole carnival of stomach-
aches; and he felt a great inclination to clear the fairing-stall in
a like manner, on behalf of the poor bedizened sickly-looking girls
round, but he was afraid of the jealousy of some beer-bemuddled
swain. The ill-looks of the young girls surprised him much. Here
and there smiled a plump rosy face enough; but the majority seemed
under-sized, under-fed, utterly wanting in grace, vigour, and what
the penny-a-liners call 'rude health.' He remarked it to Tregarva.
The keeper smiled mournfully.
'You see those little creatures dragging home babies in arms nearly
as big as themselves, sir. That and bad food, want of milk
especially, accounts for their growing up no bigger than they do;
and as for their sad countenances, sir, most of them must carry a
lighter conscience before they carry a brighter face.'
'What do you mean?' asked Lancelot.
'The clergyman who enters the weddings and the baptisms knows well
enough what I mean, sir. But we'll go into that booth, if you want
to see the thick of it, sir; that's to say, if you're not ashamed.'
'I hope we need neither of us do anything to be ashamed of there;
and as for seeing, I begin to agree with you, that what makes the
whole thing most curious is its intense dulness.'
'What upon earth is that?'
'I say, look out there!'
'Well, you look out yourself!'
This was caused by a violent blow across the shins with a thick
stick, the deed of certain drunken wiseacres who were persisting in
playing in the dark the never very lucrative game of three sticks a
penny, conducted by a couple of gipsies. Poor fellows! there was
one excuse for them. It was the only thing there to play at, except
a set of skittles; and on those they had lost their money every
Saturday night for the last seven years each at his own village
beer-shop.
So into the booth they turned; and as soon as Lancelot's eyes were
accustomed to the reeking atmosphere, he saw seated at two long
temporary tables of board, fifty or sixty of 'My Brethren,' as
clergymen call them in their sermons, wrangling, stupid, beery, with
sodden eyes and drooping lips--interspersed with more girls and
brazen-faced women, with dirty flowers in their caps, whose whole
business seemed to be to cast jealous looks at each other, and
defend themselves from the coarse overtures of their swains.
Lancelot had been already perfectly astonished at the foulness of
language which prevailed; and the utter absence of anything like
chivalrous respect, almost of common decency, towards women. But
lo! the language of the elder women was quite as disgusting as that
of the men, if not worse. He whispered a remark on the point to
Tregarva, who shook his head.
'It's the field-work, sir--the field-work, that does it all. They
get accustomed there from their childhood to hear words whose very
meanings they shouldn't know; and the older teach the younger ones,
and the married ones are worst of all. It wears them out in body,
sir, that field-work, and makes them brutes in soul and in manners.'
'Why don't they give it up? Why don't the respectable ones set
their faces against it?'
'They can't afford it, sir. They must go a-field, or go hungered,
most of them. And they get to like the gossip and scandal, and
coarse fun of it, while their children are left at home to play in
the roads, or fall into the fire, as plenty do every year.'
'Why not at school?'
'The big ones are kept at home, sir, to play at nursing those little
ones who are too young to go. Oh, sir,' he added, in a tone of deep
feeling, 'it is very little of a father's care, or a mother's love,
that a labourer's child knows in these days!'
Lancelot looked round the booth with a hopeless feeling. There was
awkward dancing going on at the upper end. He was too much sickened
to go and look at it. He began examining the faces and foreheads of
the company, and was astonished at the first glance by the lofty and
ample development of brain in at least one half. There were
intellects there--or rather capacities of intellect, capable,
surely, of anything, had not the promise of the brow been almost
always belied by the loose and sensual lower features. They were
evidently rather a degraded than an undeveloped race. 'The low
forehead of the Kabyle and Koord,' thought Lancelot, 'is compensated
by the grim sharp lip, and glittering eye, which prove that all the
small capabilities of the man have been called out into clear and
vigorous action: but here the very features themselves, both by
what they have and what they want, testify against that society
which carelessly wastes her most precious wealth, the manhood of her
masses! Tregarva! you have observed a good many things--did you
ever observe whether the men with the large foreheads were better
than the men with the small ones?'
'Ay, sir, I know what you are driving at. I've heard of that new-
fangled notion of scholars, which, if you'll forgive my plain
speaking, expects man's brains to do the work of God's grace.'
'But what have you remarked?'
'All I ever saw was, that the stupid-looking ones were the greatest
blackguards, and the clever-looking ones the greatest rogues.'
Lancelot was rebuked, but not surprised. He had been for some time
past suspecting, from the bitter experience of his own heart, the
favourite modern theory which revives the Neo-Platonism of
Alexandria, by making intellect synonymous with virtue, and then
jumbling, like poor bewildered Proclus, the 'physical understanding'
of the brain with the pure 'intellect' of the spirit.
'You'll see something, if you look round, sir, a great deal easier
to explain--and, I should have thought, a great deal easier to cure-
-than want of wits.'
'And what is that?'
'How different-looking the young ones are from their fathers, and
still more from their grandfathers! Look at those three or four old
grammers talking together there. For all their being shrunk with
age and weather, you won't see such fine-grown men anywhere else in
this booth.'
It was too true. Lancelot recollected now having remarked it before
when at church; and having wondered why almost all the youths were
so much smaller, clumsier, lower-brained, and weaker-jawed than
their elders.
'Why is it, Tregarva?'
'Worse food, worse lodging, worse nursing--and, I'm sore afraid,
worse blood. There was too much filthiness and drunkenness went on
in the old war-times, not to leave a taint behind it, for many a
generation. The prosperity of fools shall destroy them!'
'Oh!' thought Lancelot, 'for some young sturdy Lancashire or Lothian
blood, to put new life into the old frozen South Saxon veins! Even
a drop of the warm enthusiastic Celtic would be better than none.
Perhaps this Irish immigration may do some good, after all.'
Perhaps it may, Lancelot. Let us hope so, since it is pretty nearly
inevitable.
Sadder and sadder, Lancelot tried to listen to the conversation of
the men round him. To his astonishment he hardly understood a word
of it. It was half articulate, nasal, guttural, made up almost
entirely of vowels, like the speech of savages. He had never before
been struck with the significant contrast between the sharp,
clearly-defined articulation, the vivid and varied tones of the
gentleman, or even of the London street-boy when compared with the
coarse, half-formed growls, as of a company of seals, which he heard
round him. That single fact struck him, perhaps, more deeply than
any; it connected itself with many of his physiological fancies; it
was the parent of many thoughts and plans of his after-life. Here
and there he could distinguish a half sentence. An old shrunken man
opposite him was drawing figures in the spilt beer with his pipe-
stem, and discoursing of the glorious times before the great war,
'when there was more food than there were mouths, and more work than
there were hands.' 'Poor human nature!' thought Lancelot, as he
tried to follow one of those unintelligible discussions about the
relative prices of the loaf and the bushel of flour, which ended, as
usual, in more swearing, and more quarrelling, and more beer to make
it up--'Poor human nature! always looking back, as the German sage
says, to some fancied golden age, never looking forward to the real
one which is coming!'
'But I say, vather,' drawled out some one, 'they say there's a sight
more money in England now, than there was afore the war-time.'
'Eees, booy,' said the old man; 'but ITS GOT INTO TOO FEW HANDS.'
'Well,' thought Lancelot, 'there's a glimpse of practical sense, at
least.' And a pedlar who sat next him, a bold, black-whiskered
bully, from the Potteries, hazarded a joke,--
'It's all along of this new sky-and-tough-it farming. They used to
spread the money broadcast, but now they drills it all in one place,
like bone-dust under their fancy plants, and we poor self-sown chaps
gets none.'
This garland of fancies was received with great applause; whereat
the pedlar, emboldened, proceeded to observe, mysteriously, that
'donkeys took a beating, but horses kicked at it; and that they'd
found out that in Staffordshire long ago. You want a good Chartist
lecturer down here, my covies, to show you donkeys of labouring men
that you have got iron on your heels, if you only know'd how to use
it.'
'And what's the use of rioting?' asked some one, querulously.
'Why, if you don't riot, the farmers will starve you.'
'And if we do, they'd turn sodgers--yeomanry, as they call it,
though there ain't a yeoman among them in these parts; and then they
takes sword and kills us. So, riot or none, they has it all their
own way.'
Lancelot heard many more scraps of this sort. He was very much
struck with their dread of violence. It did not seem cowardice. It
was not loyalty--the English labourer has fallen below the
capability of so spiritual a feeling; Lancelot had found out that
already. It could not be apathy, for he heard nothing but complaint
upon complaint bandied from mouth to mouth the whole evening. They
seemed rather sunk too low in body and mind,--too stupefied and
spiritless, to follow the example of the manufacturing districts;
above all, they were too ill-informed. It is not mere starvation
which goads the Leicester weaver to madness. It is starvation with
education,--an empty stomach and a cultivated, even though
miscultivated, mind.
At that instant, a huge hulking farm-boy rolled into the booth,
roaring, dolefully, the end of a song, with a punctuation of his own
invention--
'He'll maak me a lady. Zo . Vine to be zyure.
And, vaithfully; love me. Although; I; be-e; poor-r-r-r.'
Lancelot would have laughed heartily at him anywhere else; but the
whole scene was past a jest; and a gleam of pathos and tenderness
seemed to shine even from that doggerel,--a vista, as it were, of
true genial nature, in the far distance. But as he looked round
again, 'What hope,' he thought, 'of its realisation? Arcadian
dreams of pastoral innocence and graceful industry, I suppose, are
to be henceforth monopolised by the stage or the boudoir? Never, so
help me, God!'
The ursine howls of the new-comer seemed to have awakened the spirit
of music in the party.
'Coom, Blackburd, gi' us zong, Blackburd, bo'!' cried a dozen voices
to an impish, dark-eyed gipsy boy, of some thirteen years old.
'Put 'n on taable. Now, then, pipe up!'
'What will 'ee ha'?'
'Mary; gi' us Mary.'
'I shall make a' girls cry,' quoth Blackbird, with a grin.
'Do'n good, too; they likes it: zing away.'
And the boy began, in a broad country twang, which could not
overpower the sad melody of the air, or the rich sweetness of his
flute-like voice,--
'Young Mary walked sadly down through the green clover,
And sighed as she looked at the babe at her breast;
"My roses are faded, my false love a rover,
The green graves they call me, 'Come home to your rest.'"
'Then by rode a soldier in gorgeous arraying,
And "Where is your bride-ring, my fair maid?" he cried;
"I ne'er had a bride-ring, by false man's betraying,
Nor token of love but this babe at my side.
'"Tho' gold could not buy me, sweet words could deceive me;
So faithful and lonely till death I must roam."
"Oh, Mary, sweet Mary, look up and forgive me,
With wealth and with glory your true love comes home;
'"So give me my own babe, those soft arms adorning,
I'll wed you and cherish you, never to stray;
For it's many a dark and a wild cloudy morning,
Turns out by the noon-time a sunshiny day."'
'A bad moral that, sir,' whispered Tregarva.
'Better than none,' answered Lancelot.
'It's well if you are right, sir, for you'll hear no other.'
The keeper spoke truly; in a dozen different songs, more or less
coarsely, but, in general, with a dash of pathetic sentiment, the
same case of lawless love was embodied. It seemed to be their only
notion of the romantic. Now and then there was a poaching song;
then one of the lowest flash London school--filth and all--was
roared in chorus in presence of the women.
'I am afraid that you do not thank me for having brought you to any
place so unfit for a gentleman,' said Tregarva, seeing Lancelot's
sad face.
'Because it is so unfit for a gentleman, therefore I do thank you.
It is right to know what one's own flesh and blood are doing.'
'Hark to that song, sir! that's an old one. I didn't think they'd
get on to singing that.'
The Blackbird was again on the table, but seemed this time
disinclined to exhibit.
'Out wi' un, boy; it wain't burn thy mouth!'
'I be afeard.'
'O' who?'
'Keeper there.'
He pointed to Tregarva; there was a fierce growl round the room.
'I am no keeper,' shouted Tregarva, starting up. 'I was turned off
this morning for speaking my mind about the squires, and now I'm one
of you, to live and die.'
This answer was received with a murmur of applause; and a fellow in
a scarlet merino neckerchief, three waistcoats, and a fancy
shooting-jacket, who had been eyeing Lancelot for some time, sidled
up behind them, and whispered in Tregarva's ear,--
'Perhaps you'd like an engagement in our line, young man, and your
friend there, he seems a sporting gent too.--We could show him very
pretty shooting.'
Tregarva answered by the first and last oath Lancelot ever heard
from him, and turning to him, as the rascal sneaked off,--
'That's a poaching crimp from London, sir; tempting these poor boys
to sin, and deceit, and drunkenness, and theft, and the hulks.'
'I fancy I saw him somewhere the night of our row--you understand?'
'So do I, sir, but there's no use talking of it.'
Blackbird was by this time prevailed on to sing, and burst out as
melodious as ever, while all heads were cocked on one side in
delighted attention.
'I zeed a vire o' Monday night,
A vire both great and high;
But I wool not tell you where, my boys,
Nor wool not tell you why.
The varmer he comes screeching out,
To zave 'uns new brood mare;
Zays I, "You and your stock may roast,
Vor aught us poor chaps care."
'Coorus, boys, coorus!'
And the chorus burst out,--
'Then here's a curse on varmers all
As rob and grind the poor;
To re'p the fruit of all their works
In **** for evermoor-r-r-r.
'A blind owld dame come to the vire,
Zo near as she could get;
Zays, "Here's a luck I warn't asleep
To lose this blessed hett.
'"They robs us of our turfing rights,
Our bits of chips and sticks,
Till poor folks now can't warm their hands,
Except by varmer's ricks."
'Then, etc.'
And again the boy's delicate voice rung out the ferocious chorus,
with something, Lancelot fancied, of fiendish exultation, and every
worn face lighted up with a coarse laugh, that indicated no malice--
but also no mercy.
Lancelot was sickened, and rose to go.
As he turned, his arm was seized suddenly and firmly. He looked
round, and saw a coarse, handsome, showily-dressed girl, looking
intently into his face. He shook her angrily off.
'You needn't be so proud, Mr. Smith; I've had my hand on the arm of
as good as you. Ah, you needn't start! I know you--I know you, I
say, well enough. You used to be with him. Where is he?'
'Whom do you mean?'
'He!' answered the girl, with a fierce, surprised look, as if there
could be no one else in the world.
'Colonel Bracebridge,' whispered Tregarva.
'Ay, he it is! And now walk further off, bloodhound! and let me
speak to Mr. Smith. He is in Norway,' she ran on eagerly. 'When
will he be back? When?'
'Why do you want to know?' asked Lancelot.
'When will he be back?'--she kept on fiercely repeating the
question; and then burst out,--'Curse you gentlemen all! Cowards!
you are all in a league against us poor girls! You can hunt alone
when you betray us, and lie fast enough then? But when we come for
justice, you all herd together like a flock of rooks; and turn so
delicate and honourable all of a sudden--to each other! When will
he be back, I say?'
'In a month,' answered Lancelot, who saw that something really
important lay behind the girl's wildness.
'Too late!' she cried, wildly, clapping her hands together; 'too
late! Here--tell him you saw me; tell him you saw Mary; tell him
where and in what a pretty place, too, for maid, master, or man!
What are you doing here?'
'What is that to you, my good girl?'
'True. Tell him you saw me here; and tell him, when next he hears
of me, it will be in a very different place.'
She turned and vanished among the crowd. Lancelot almost ran out
into the night,--into a triad of fights, two drunken men, two
jealous wives, and a brute who struck a poor, thin, worn-out woman,
for trying to coax him home. Lancelot rushed up to interfere, but a
man seized his uplifted arm.
'He'll only beat her all the more when he getteth home.'
'She has stood that every Saturday night for the last seven years,
to my knowledge,' said Tregarva; 'and worse, too, at times.'
'Good God! is there no escape for her from her tyrant?'
'No, sir. It's only you gentlefolks who can afford such luxuries;
your poor man may be tied to a harlot, or your poor woman to a
ruffian, but once done, done for ever.'
'Well,' thought Lancelot, 'we English have a characteristic way of
proving the holiness of the marriage tie. The angel of Justice and
Pity cannot sever it, only the stronger demon of Money.'
Their way home lay over Ashy Down, a lofty chalk promontory, round
whose foot the river made a sudden bend. As they paced along over
the dreary hedgeless stubbles, they both started, as a ghostly 'Ha!
ha! ha!' rang through the air over their heads, and was answered by
a like cry, faint and distant, across the wolds.
'That's those stone-curlews--at least, so I hope,' said Tregarva.
'He'll be round again in a minute.'
And again, right between them and the clear, cold moon, 'Ha! ha!
ha!' resounded over their heads. They gazed up into the cloudless
star-bespangled sky, but there was no sign of living thing.
'It's an old sign to me,' quoth Tregarva; 'God grant that I may
remember it in this black day of mine.'
'How so!' asked Lancelot; 'I should not have fancied you a
superstitious man.'
'Names go for nothing, sir, and what my forefathers believed in I am
not going to be conceited enough to disbelieve in a hurry. But if
you heard my story you would think I had reason enough to remember
that devil's laugh up there.'
'Let me hear it then.'
'Well, sir, it may be a long story to you, but it was a short one to
me, for it was the making of me, out of hand, there and then,
blessed be God! But if you will have it--'
'And I will have it, friend Tregarva,' quoth Lancelot, lighting his
cigar.
'I was about sixteen years old, just after I came home from the
Brazils--'
'What! have you been in the Brazils?'
'Indeed and I have, sir, for three years; and one thing I learnt
there, at least, that's worth going for.'
'What's that?'
'What the Garden of Eden must have been like. But those Brazils,
under God, were the cause of my being here; for my father, who was a
mine-captain, lost all his money there, by no man's fault but his
own, and not his either, the world would say, and when we came back
to Cornwall he could not stand the bal work, nor I neither. Out of
that burning sun, sir, to come home here, and work in the levels, up
to our knees in warm water, with the thermometer at 85 degrees, and
then up a thousand feet of ladder to grass, reeking wet with heat,
and find the easterly sleet driving across those open furze-crofts--
he couldn't stand it, sir--few stand it long, even of those who stay
in Cornwall. We miners have a short lease of life; consumption and
strains break us down before we're fifty.'
'But how came you here?'
'The doctor told my father, and me too, sir, that we must give up
mining, or die of decline: so he came up here, to a sister of his
that was married to the squire's gardener, and here he died; and the
squire, God bless him and forgive him, took a fancy to me, and made
me under-keeper. And I loved the life, for it took me among the
woods and the rivers, where I could think of the Brazils, and fancy
myself back again. But mustn't talk of that--where God wills is all
right. And it is a fine life for reading and thinking, a
gamekeeper's, for it's an idle life at best. Now that's over,' he
added, with a sigh, 'and the Lord has fulfilled His words to me,
that He spoke the first night that ever I heard a stone-plover cry.'
'What on earth can you mean?' asked Lancelot, deeply interested.
'Why, sir, it was a wild, whirling gray night, with the air full of
sleet and rain, and my father sent me over to Redruth town to bring
home some trade or other. And as I came back I got blinded with the
sleet, and I lost my way across the moors. You know those Cornish
furze-moors, sir?'
'No.'
'Well, then, they are burrowed like a rabbit-warren with old mine-
shafts. You can't go in some places ten yards without finding
great, ghastly black holes, covered in with furze, and weeds, and
bits of rotting timber; and when I was a boy I couldn't keep from
them. Something seemed to draw me to go and peep down, and drop
pebbles in, to hear them rattle against the sides, fathoms below,
till they plumped into the ugly black still water at the bottom.
And I used to be always after them in my dreams, when I was young,
falling down them, down, down, all night long, till I woke
screaming; for I fancied they were hell's mouth, every one of them.
And it stands to reason, sir; we miners hold that the lake of fire
can't be far below. For we find it grow warmer, and warmer, and
warmer, the farther we sink a shaft; and the learned gentlemen have
proved, sir, that it's not the blasting powder, nor the men's
breaths, that heat the mine.'
Lancelot could but listen.
'Well, sir, I got into a great furze-croft, full of deads (those are
the earth-heaps they throw out of the shafts), where no man in his
senses dare go forward or back in the dark, for fear of the shafts;
and the wind and the snow were so sharp, they made me quite stupid
and sleepy; and I knew if I stayed there I should be frozen to
death, and if I went on, there were the shafts ready to swallow me
up: and what with fear and the howling and raging of the wind, I
was like a mazed boy, sir. And I knelt down and tried to pray; and
then, in one moment, all the evil things I'd ever done, and the bad
words and thoughts that ever crossed me, rose up together as clear
as one page of a print-book; and I knew that if I died that minute I
should go to hell. And then I saw through the ground all the water
in the shafts glaring like blood, and all the sides of the shafts
fierce red-hot, as if hell was coming up. And I heard the knockers
knocking, or thought I heard them, as plain as I hear that
grasshopper in the hedge now.'
'What are the knockers?'
'They are the ghosts, the miners hold, of the old Jews, sir, that
crucified our Lord, and were sent for slaves by the Roman emperors
to work the mines; and we find their old smelting-houses, which we
call Jews' houses, and their blocks of tin, at the bottom of the
great bogs, which we call Jews' tin; and there's a town among us,
too, which we call Market-Jew--but the old name was Marazion; that
means the Bitterness of Zion, they tell me. Isn't it so, sir?'
'I believe it is,' said Lancelot, utterly puzzled in this new field
of romance.
'And bitter work it was for them, no doubt, poor souls! We used to
break into the old shafts and adits which they had made, and find
old stags'-horn pickaxes, that crumbled to pieces when we brought
them to grass; and they say, that if a man will listen, sir, of a
still night, about those old shafts, he may hear the ghosts of them
at working, knocking, and picking, as clear as if there was a man at
work in the next level. It may be all an old fancy. I suppose it
is. But I believed it when I was a boy; and it helped the work in
me that night. But I'll go on with my story.'
'Go on with what you like,' said Lancelot.
'Well, sir, I was down on my knees among the furze-bushes, and I
tried to pray; but I was too frightened, for I felt the beast I had
been, sir; and I expected the ground to open and let me down every
moment; and then there came by over my head a rushing, and a cry.
"Ha! ha! ha! Paul!" it said; and it seemed as if all the devils and
witches were out on the wind, a-laughing at my misery. "Oh, I'll
mend--I'll repent," I said, "indeed I will:" and again it came
back,--"Ha! ha! ha! Paul!" it said. I knew afterwards that it was
a bird; but the Lord sent it to me for a messenger, no less, that
night. And I shook like a reed in the water; and then, all at once
a thought struck me. "Why should I be a coward? Why should I be
afraid of shafts, or devils, or hell, or anything else? If I am a
miserable sinner, there's One died for me--I owe him love, not fear
at all. I'll not be frightened into doing right--that's a rascally
reason for repentance." And so it was, sir, that I rose up like a
man, and said to the Lord Jesus, right out into the black, dumb
air,--"If you'll be on my side this night, good Lord, that died for
me, I'll be on your side for ever, villain as I am, if I'm worth
making any use of." And there and then, sir, I saw a light come
over the bushes, brighter, and brighter, up to me; and there rose up
a voice within me, and spoke to me, quite soft and sweet,--"Fear
not, Paul, for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles." And
what more happened I can't tell, for when I woke I was safe at home.
My father and his folk had been out with lanterns after me; and
there they found me, sure enough, in a dead faint on the ground.
But this I know, sir, that those words have never left my mind since
for a day together; and I know that they will be fulfilled in me
this tide, or never.'
Lancelot was silent a few minutes.
'I suppose, Tregarva, that you would call this your conversion?'
'I should call it one, sir, because it was one.'
'Tell me now, honestly, did any real, practical change in your
behaviour take place after that night?'
'As much, sir, as if you put a soul into a hog, and told him that he
was a gentleman's son; and, if every time he remembered that, he got
spirit enough to conquer his hoggishness, and behave like a man,
till the hoggishness died out of him, and the manliness grew up and
bore fruit in him, more and more each day.'
Lancelot half understood him, and sighed.
A long silence followed, as they paced on past lonely farmyards,
from which the rich manure-water was draining across the road in
foul black streams, festering and steaming in the chill night air.
Lancelot sighed as he saw the fruitful materials of food running to
waste, and thought of the 'over-population' cry; and then he looked
across to the miles of brown moorland on the opposite side of the
valley, that lay idle and dreary under the autumn moon, except where
here and there a squatter's cottage and rood of fruitful garden gave
the lie to the laziness and ignorance of man, who pretends that it
is not worth his while to cultivate the soil which God has given
him. 'Good heavens!' he thought, 'had our forefathers had no more
enterprise than modern landlords, where should we all have been at
this moment? Everywhere waste? Waste of manure, waste of land,
waste of muscle, waste of brain, waste of population--and we call
ourselves the workshop of the world!'
As they passed through the miserable hamlet-street of Ashy, they saw
a light burning in window. At the door below, a haggard woman was
looking anxiously down the village.
'What's the matter, Mistress Cooper?' asked Tregarva.
'Here's Mrs. Grane's poor girl lying sick of the fever--the Lord
help her! and the boy died of it last week. We sent for the doctor
this afternoon, and he's busy with a poor soul that's in her
trouble; and now we've sent down to the squire's, and the young
ladies, God bless them! sent answer they'd come themselves
straightway.'
'No wonder you have typhus here,' said Lancelot, 'with this filthy
open drain running right before the door. Why can't you clean it
out?'
'Why, what harm does that do?' answered the woman, peevishly.
'Besides, here's my master gets up to his work by five in the
morning, and not back till seven at night, and by then he ain't in
no humour to clean out gutters. And where's the water to come from
to keep a place clean? It costs many a one of us here a shilling a
week the summer through to pay fetching water up the hill. We've
work enough to fill our kettles. The muck must just lie in the
road, smell or none, till the rain carries it away.'
Lancelot sighed again.
'It would be a good thing for Ashy, Tregarva, if the weir-pool did,
some fine morning, run up to Ashy Down, as poor Harry Verney said on
his deathbed.'
'There won't be much of Ashy left by that time, sir, if the
landlords go on pulling down cottages at their present rate; driving
the people into the towns, to herd together there like hogs, and
walk out to their work four or five miles every morning.'
'Why,' said Lancelot, 'wherever one goes one sees commodious new
cottages springing up.'
'Wherever you go, sir; but what of wherever you don't go? Along the
roadsides, and round the gentlemen's parks, where the cottages are
in sight, it's all very smart; but just go into the outlying
hamlets--a whited sepulchre, sir, is many a great estate; outwardly
swept and garnished, and inwardly full of all uncleanliness, and
dead men's bones.'
At this moment two cloaked and veiled figures came up to the door,
followed by a servant. There was no mistaking those delicate
footsteps, and the two young men drew back with fluttering hearts,
and breathed out silent blessings on the ministering angels, as they
entered the crazy and reeking house.
'I'm thinking, sir,' said Tregarva, as they walked slowly and
reluctantly away, 'that it is hard of the gentlemen to leave all
God's work to the ladies, as nine-tenths of them do.'
'And I am thinking, Tregarva, that both for ladies and gentlemen,
prevention is better than cure.'
'There's a great change come over Miss Argemone, sir. She used not
to be so ready to start out at midnight to visit dying folk. A
blessed change!'
Lancelot thought so too, and he thought that he knew the cause of
it.
Argemone's appearance, and their late conversation, had started a
new covey of strange fancies. Lancelot followed them over hill and
dale, glad to escape a moment from the mournful lessons of that
evening; but even over them there was a cloud of sadness. Harry
Verney's last words, and Argemone's accidental whisper about 'a
curse upon the Lavingtons,' rose to his mind. He longed to ask
Tregarva, but he was afraid--not of the man, for there was a
delicacy in his truthfulness which encouraged the most utter
confidence; but of the subject itself; but curiosity conquered.
'What did Old Harry mean about the Nun-pool?' he said at last.
'Every one seemed to understand him.'
'Ah, sir, he oughtn't to have talked of it! But dying men, at
times, see over the dark water into deep things--deeper than they
think themselves. Perhaps there's one speaks through them. But I
thought every one knew the story.'
'I do not, at least.'
'Perhaps it's so much the better, sir.'
'Why? I must insist on knowing. It is necessary--proper, that is--
that I should hear everything that concerns--'
'I understand, sir; so it is; and I'll tell you. The story goes,
that in the old Popish times, when the nuns held Whitford Priors,
the first Mr. Lavington that ever was came from the king with a
warrant to turn them all out, poor souls, and take the lands for his
own. And they say the head lady of them--prioress, or abbess, as
they called her--withstood him, and cursed him, in the name of the
Lord, for a hypocrite who robbed harmless women under the cloak of
punishing them for sins they'd never committed (for they say, sir,
he went up to court, and slandered the nuns there for drunkards and
worse). And she told him, "That the curse of the nuns of Whitford
should be on him and his, till they helped the poor in the spirit of
the nuns of Whitford, and the Nun-pool ran up to Ashy Down.'"
'That time is not come yet,' said Lancelot.
'But the worst is to come, sir. For he or his, sir, that night,
said or did something to the lady, that was more than woman's heart
could bear: and the next morning she was found dead and cold,
drowned in that weir-pool. And there the gentleman's eldest son was
drowned, and more than one Lavington beside. Miss Argemone's only
brother, that was the heir, was drowned there too, when he was a
little one.'
'I never heard that she had a brother.'
'No, sir, no one talks of it. There are many things happen in the
great house that you must go to the little house to hear of. But
the country-folk believe, sir, that the nun's curse holds true; and
they say, that Whitford folks have been getting poorer and wickeder
ever since that time, and will, till the Nun-pool runs up to Ashy,
and the Lavingtons' name goes out of Whitford Priors.'
Lancelot said nothing. A presentiment of evil hung over him. He
was utterly down-hearted about Tregarva, about Argemone, about the
poor. The truth was, he could not shake off the impression of the
scene he had left, utterly disappointed and disgusted with the
'revel.' He had expected, as I said before, at least to hear
something of pastoral sentiment, and of genial frolicsome humour; to
see some innocent, simple enjoyment: but instead, what had he seen
but vanity, jealousy, hoggish sensuality, dull vacuity? drudges
struggling for one night to forget their drudgery. And yet withal,
those songs, and the effect which they produced, showed that in
these poor creatures, too, lay the germs of pathos, taste, melody,
soft and noble affections. 'What right have we,' thought he, 'to
hinder their development? Art, poetry, music, science,--ay, even
those athletic and graceful exercises on which we all pride
ourselves, which we consider necessary to soften and refine
ourselves, what God has given us a monopoly of them?--what is good
for the rich man is good for the poor. Over-education? And what of
that? What if the poor be raised above "their station"? What right
have we to keep them down? How long have they been our born thralls
in soul, as well as in body? What right have we to say that they
shall know no higher recreation than the hogs, because, forsooth, if
we raised them, they might refuse to work--FOR US? Are WE to fix
how far their minds may be developed? Has not God fixed it for us,
when He gave them the same passions, talents, tastes, as our own?'
Tregarva's meditations must have been running in a very different
channel, for he suddenly burst out, after a long silence--
'It's a pity these fairs can't be put down. They do a lot of harm;
ruin all the young girls round, the Dissenters' children especially,
for they run utterly wild; their parents have no hold on them at
all.'
'They tell them that they are children of the devil,' said Lancelot.
'What wonder if the children take them at their word, and act
accordingly?'
'The parson here, sir, who is a God-fearing man enough, tried hard
to put down this one, but the innkeepers were too strong for him.'
'To take away their only amusement, in short. He had much better
have set to work to amuse them himself.'
'His business is to save souls, sir, and not to amuse them. I don't
see, sir, what Christian people want with such vanities.'
Lancelot did not argue the point, for he knew the prejudices of
Dissenters on the subject; but it did strike him that if Tregarva's
brain had been a little less preponderant, he, too, might have found
the need of some recreation besides books and thought.
By this time they were at Lancelot's door. He bid the keeper a
hearty good-night, made him promise to see him next day, and went to
bed and slept till nearly noon.
When he walked into his breakfast-room, he found a note on the table
in his uncle's handwriting. The vicar's servant had left it an hour
before. He opened it listlessly, rang the bell furiously, ordered
out his best horse, and, huddling on his clothes, galloped to the
nearest station, caught the train, and arrived at his uncle's bank--
it had stopped payment two hours before.