AN EXPLOSION FOR MRS. CROSS.
The evil day, hinted at in the last chapter, was not long in coming. It
might not have fallen quite so soon but for a misfortune which overtook
Jacob Cross. The manufacturer for whom he worked died suddenly, and the
business was immediately given up--the made gloves being bought by up a
London house, and the stock in trade, leather machines, etc., sold by
auction. He had been a first-class manufacturer, doing nearly as large a
business as Mr. Ashley; and not only Jacob Cross, but many more men in
Honey Fair were thrown out of work--one of whom was Andrew Brumm;
another, Timothy Carter. This happened only a few months after Mary Ann
Cross's marriage.
It struck terror to the heart of Mrs. Cross. Though she had paid some of
her debts, she had incurred others: indeed, the very fact of her having
to pay had caused her to incur fresh ones. Her position was ominous. She
and Amelia had worked for this same manufacturer, now dead, and of
course they were at a standstill. Mary Ann Tyrrett had likewise worked
for him; but she had left the paternal home; and with her we have
nothing just now to do. The position of others was ominous, as well as
that of Mrs. Cross. It was the autumn season, and trade was flat. Winter
orders had gone in, and there was no necessity to hurry those for the
spring; so that the hands thrown out of work, both men and women, stood
every chance of remaining out.
A gloom overspread Honey Fair. In many a household the articles least
needed went, week after week, to the pawnbrokers, without being redeemed
on the Saturday night, as in more prosperous times. Upon the proceeds
the families had to exist. It was bad enough for those who were free
from debt; but for those already labouring under it--above all,
labouring under secret debt--it was something not to be told. Mrs.
Cross had nightmares regularly every night. Visions would come over her
now and again of running away, if she had only known where to run to.
The men would stand or sit at their doors all day, with pipes in their
mouths: money was sure to be found for tobacco, by hook or by crook.
There they would lounge in gloomy silence, varied by an occasional wordy
war with their wives, who wished them anywhere else; or they and their
pipes would saunter up and down the road, forming into groups to condole
with each other and to abuse the glove trade.
One Monday afternoon there was a small assemblage in the kitchen of
Jacob Cross--himself, Andrew Brumm, and Timothy Carter. Brumm and Carter
were, in one sense, more fortunate than Cross; inasmuch as that their
respective wives worked each for another house, not the one which had
closed; therefore they retained their employment. The fact, however,
appeared to afford little consolation to the two men, for they were
keeping up a chorus of grumbling, when Joe Fisher staggered in--if you
have not forgotten him.
Fisher had hitherto managed, to the intense surprise of every one, to
keep out of the workhouse. He would be taken on for a job of work now
and then; but manufacturers were chary of employing Joe Fisher. For one
thing, he gave way to drink. A disreputable-looking object had he
become: a tattered coat and waistcoat, pantaloons in rags, and not the
ghost of a shirt. People wondered how he found money for drink.
"Who'll give us house-room?" was his salutation, as he pushed himself
in, his eyes haggard, his legs unsteady, his face thin from incipient
famine. "Will nobody give us a corner to lie in?"
The men took their pipes from their mouths. "Turned out at last, Joe?"
"Turned out," replied Joe. "And my missis close upon her down-lying."
Mrs. Cross, who was at the back of the kitchen, washing out her potato
saucepan, of which frugal edible, seasoned with salt, the family dinner
had consisted, put in her word.
"You couldn't expect nothing else, Joe Fisher. There you have been, in
them folks' furnished room, paying nothing, and paying nothing, and you
drinking everlasting. They have threatened you long enough. Last week,
you know, they took a vow you should go this."
"Where's the wife and little 'uns?" asked meek Timothy Carter.
"You can look at 'em," responded Fisher. "They're not a hundred miles
off. They bain't out of view."
He gave a flourish of his hand towards the road, and the men and Mrs.
Cross crowded to the door to reconnoitre. In the middle of the lane,
crouched down in its mud, for the weather had been bad, and it was very
wet under foot, was untidy Sukey Fisher--a woman all skin and bone now,
her face hopeless and desperate. She wore no cap, and her matted hair
fell on to her gown--such a gown! all tatters and dirt. Several young
children huddled around her.
"Untidy creature!" muttered Mrs. Cross to herself. "She is as fond of a
drop as her lazy, quarrelsome husband; and this is what they have
brought it to between 'em! Them poor little objects of young 'uns 'ud be
as well dead as alive."
"Look at 'em!" began Fisher. "And they call this a free country! They
call it a country as is a pattern to others and a refuge for the needy.
Why don't Government, that opened our ports to them foreign French and
keeps 'em open, come down and take a look at my wife squatting
there?--turned out of our room without a place to put our heads into!"
"If you hadn't put quite as much inside your head, Joe Fisher, and been
doing of it for years, you might have had more for the outside on't
now," again spoke Mrs. Cross in her sharp tones. The woman was not
naturally sharp, as were some in Honey Fair; but the miserable fear she
lived in, added to their present privations, told upon her temper.
"Hold your magging," said Joe Fisher. "I never like to quarrel with
petticuts, one's own belongings excepted. All as I say, Mother Cross,
is, don't _you_ mag."
Mrs. Cross made no reply to this, and Fisher resumed.
"This comes of letting the Government and the masters have their own
way! If we had that there strike among us, that I've so often told ye
on, things would be different. Let a man sit down a minute, Cross."
Cross civilly pushed a chair towards him, concentrating his attention
afterwards upon Mrs. Fisher. A crowd had collected round her; and Mrs.
Buffle, with a feeling of humanity that few had given that lady credit
for possessing, sent out an old woollen shawl to the shivering woman,
and a basin of hasty pudding. The mother could not feed the whining
children fast enough with the one iron spoon.
A young man ran up to Cross's door. It was Adam Thorneycroft. He did not
live in Honey Fair, but often found his way to it, although Charlotte
had rejected him. "Is Joe Fisher here?" asked he. "Fisher, why don't you
go to the workhouse and tell them the state your wife is in? She can't
stop there."
"Her state is no concern of your'n, Master Thorneycroft," was the sullen
answer.
Thorneycroft turned on his heel, a scornful gesture escaping him at
Fisher's half-stupid condition. "I must be off to my work," he
observed; "but can't one of you, who are gentlemen at large, just go to
the workhouse and acquaint them with the woman's helplessness, and that
of her children around her?"
Timothy Carter responded to it. "I'll go," said he; "I haven't nothing
to do with myself this afternoon."
Timothy and Adam walked away together, Tim treading with gingerly feet
past his own door, lest his wife should recognise his step, bolt out,
and stop him. Charlotte East was standing at her door, and Adam halted.
Timothy walked on: he did not feel himself perfectly safe yet.
"What a life that poor woman's is!" exclaimed Charlotte.
"Ay," assented Adam; "and all through Fisher's not sticking to his
work."
Charlotte moved her face gravely towards him. "Say through his drinking,
Adam."
"Do you speak that as a warning, Charlotte?" he continued. "I think you
mean well by me, but you go just the wrong way to show it. If you wanted
me to keep steady, you should have come and helped me in it. Good-bye. I
am late."
"Gentlemen at large, young Thorney called us!" cried Jacob Cross to his
friend Brumm, as Fisher went off and they sat down again. "He's not far
out. What's to be the end on't?"
"Why, the work'us," responded Mrs. Cross, who rarely let an opportunity
slip of putting in her own opinion. "The work'us for us as well as for
the Fishers, unless things take a turn. When great, big, able-bodied men
is throwed out o' work, and yet has to eat and drink, and other folks at
home has to eat and drink, and nothing to stay their stomachs upon, the
work'us can't be far off."
"Never for me!" said Andrew Brumm. "I'll work to keep me and mine out on
it, if it is at breaking stones upon the road. I know one thing--if ever
I do get into certain work again, I'll make my missis be a bit
providenter than she was before."
"Bell Brumm ain't one of the provident sort," dissented Mrs. Cross. "How
do you manage to get along at all, Drew, these bad times? You don't seem
to get into trouble."
"Well, we manage somehow," replied Andrew. "But we have to pinch. My
missis sticks at her work, now I be out on't. She hardly looks off it;
and I does the house, and sees to the children. Nine shilling, all but
her silk, she earned last week. And finding that we _can_ exist on that
after a fashion, has set me thinking that when my good wages was added
to it we ought to have put by for a rainy day," he continued, after a
pause. "Just let me get the chance again!"
"It's surprising the miracles wages works when folks ain't earning
none!" put in Mrs. Cross in a tone of irony, who did not altogether like
the turn the conversation was taking. "When you get into work again,
Drew Brumm, your wife won't be more able to save than the rest of us."
"But she shall," returned Andrew. "And she sees for herself now that it
might be done."
"I was a-making a calkelation yesterday how long we might hold out on
our household things," observed Jacob Cross--a silent man, in general.
"If none of us can get work, they'll have to go, piecemeal. One can't
clam; one must live upon something."
"I'm resolved upon one point--that I won't have no underhand debt
again," resumed Brumm. "Last spring I found out the flaring trade my
missis was carrying on with them Bankes's--and the way I come to know of
it was funny: but never mind that. 'Bell,' says I to her, 'I'd rather
sell off all I've got and go tramping the country, than I'd live with a
sword over my head'--which debt is. And I went down to Bankes's and said
to 'em, 'If you let my wife get into debt again, I won't pay it, as I
now give you notice, and I'll have you up before the justices for a
pest.' I thought I'd make it strong, you see, Cross. And I paid off
their bill, so much a week, and got shut of 'em. Them Bankes's does more
mischief in Honey Fair than everything else put together."
"Why, what do Bankes's do?" asked Jacob, in happy ignorance.
"Do!" returned Brumm. "Don't you know----"
But at that critical moment, Mrs. Cross, in bustling behind Andrew
Brumm's chair, which was on the tilt, contrived to get her foot
entangled in it. Brumm, his chair, and his pipe, all came down together.
"Mercy on us!" uttered Jacob Cross, coming to the rescue. "How did you
manage that, Brumm?"
Before Brumm could answer, or had well gathered himself up, there was
another visitor--Mr. Abbott, the landlord of at least a third of Honey
Fair. He had come on his usual Monday's errand. Jacob Cross put down his
pipe and touched his hat, which, in the manners of Honey Fair, was worn
indoors. It was not often that the landlord and the men came into
contact with each other.
"Are you ready for me, Mrs. Cross?"
"We are not ready to-day, sir," interposed Jacob. "You must please to
give us a little grace these hard times, sir. The moment I be in work
again, I'll think of you, before I think of ourselves."
"I have given all the grace I can give," replied Mr. Abbott, a hard,
surly man. "You must either pay, or turn out: I don't care which."
"I'll pay you as soon as I am in work, sir; you may count upon it. As to
turning out, sir, where could I turn to? You'd not let me take out my
furniture, and we can't sit down in the street, as Fisher's wife is
doing."
Mr. Abbott turned to the door. When he came back, a man was with him. "I
must trouble you to give this man house-room for a few days. As you
won't go out, he must stop in, to see that your goods stop in."
Cross's spirit rose within him. "It's a hard way to treat a man, sir! I
have lived under you for years, and you have had your rent regular."
"Regular!" exclaimed the landlord. "I have had more trouble to get it
from your wife, since Bankes's came to Helstonleigh, than from anybody
else in Honey Fair."
Cross did not understand this. He was too much absorbed by the point in
question to ask an explanation. "There's only three weeks owing to you,
sir, and----"
"Three weeks!" interrupted Mr. Abbott; "there are nine weeks owing to
me. Nine weeks to-day."
Jacob Cross stood confounded. "Who says there's nine weeks?" asked he.
"I say so. Your wife can say so. Ask her."
But Mrs. Cross, with a scared face and white lips, whisked through the
door and hurried down Honey Fair. The explosion had come.
Mr. Abbott, wasting no more words, departed, leaving the unwelcome
visitor behind him. Andrew Brumm came in again from outside, where he
had stood, out of delicacy, feeling thankful that _his_ rent was all
right. It was pinching work; but Andrew was beginning to learn that debt
pinches the mind, more than hunger pinches the body.
"Comrade," whispered he, grasping Cross's hand, "it's all along of them
Bankes's. The women buy their fal-lals and their finery, and the weekly
payments to 'em must be kept up, whether or no, for fear Bankes's should
let out on't to us, and ask us for the money. Of course the rent and
other things gets behind. Half the women round us are knee-deep in
Bankes's books."
"Why couldn't you have told me this before?" demanded Cross, in his
astonishment.
"It's not my province to interfere with other men's wives," was Brumm's
sensible answer.
"Where's she got to?" cried Jacob, looking round for his wife. "I'll
come to the bottom of this. Nine weeks' rent owing; and her salving me
up that it was only three!"
Jacob might well say, "Where's she got to?" Mrs. Cross had glided down
Honey Fair into the first friendly door that happened to be open. That
was Mrs. Carter's. "For mercy's sake, let's stop here a minute,
Elizabeth Carter!" exclaimed she. "We have got the bums in!"
Mrs. Carter was rubbing up some brass candlesticks. Work ran short with
her that week, and therefore she spent it in cleaning, which was her
notion of taking holiday; scrubbing and scouring from morning till
night. She turned round and stared at Mrs. Cross, who, with white face
and gasping breath, had sunk down upon a chair.
"What on earth's the matter?"
"Abbott has brought it out to my husband that I owes nine weeks' rent,
and he's telling him about Bankes's, and now he has gone and put a bum
into the house!"
"More soft you, to have had to do with Bankes's!" was the sympathy
offered by Mrs. Carter. "You couldn't expect nothing less."
"That old skinflint, Abbott----"
Mrs. Cross stopped short. She opened the staircase door about an inch,
and humbly twisted herself through the aperture. Who should be standing
there to hear her, having followed her in, but Mr. Abbott himself.
He had no need to say, "Ready, Mrs. Carter?" Mrs. Carter always was
ready. She paid him weekly, and asked no favour. The payment made, he
departed again, and Mrs. Cross emerged from her retreat.
"_You_ can pay him!" she exclaimed, with some envy. "And Timothy's out
o' work, too; and you be slack. How do you manage it?"
"I'm not a fool," was the logical response of Mrs. Carter. "If I spent
my earnings when they are coming in regular, or let Tim keep his to his
own cheek, where should we be in a time like this? I have my
understanding about me."
Mrs. Carter did not praise her understanding without cause. Whatever
social virtues she may have lacked, she was rich in thrift, in
forethought. Had Timothy remained out of work for a twelvemonth, they
would not have been put to shifts.
"I'm afraid to go back!" cried Mrs. Cross.
"So should I be, if I got myself into your mess."
The offered sympathy not being consolatory to her present frame of mind,
Mrs. Cross departed. Home, at present, she dared not go. She went about
Honey Fair, seeking the gossiping pity which Elizabeth Carter had
declined to give, but which she was yearning for. Thus she spent an hour
or two.
Meanwhile the news had been spreading through Honey Fair, "Crosses had
the bums in;" and Mary Ann, hearing it, flew home to know whether it was
correct. She--partly through fear, partly in the security from paternal
correction, imparted to her by the feeling that she was Mary Ann
Tyrrett, and no longer Mary Ann Cross--yielded to her father's
questions, and made full confession. Debts here, debts there, debts
everywhere. Cross was overwhelmed; and when his wife at length came in,
he quietly knocked her down.
The broker advanced to the rescue. "If you dare to come between man and
wife," raved Cross, lifting his arm menacingly, "I'll serve you the
same." He was a quiet-tempered man, but this business had terribly
exasperated him. "You'll come to die in the work'us," he uttered to his
wife. "And serve you right! It's your doings that have broke up our
home."
"No," retorted she passionately, as she lifted herself from the floor;
"it's your squanderings in the publics o' nights, that have helped to
break up our home."
It was a little of both.
The quarrel was interrupted by a commotion outside, and Mrs. Cross
darted out to look--glad, perhaps, to escape from her husband's anger.
An official from the workhouse had come down with an order for the
admission of Susan Fisher instanter. Timothy Carter, in his meek and
humane spirit, had so enlarged upon the state of affairs in general,
touching Mrs. Fisher, that the workhouse bestirred itself. An officer
was despatched to marshal them into it at once. The uproar was caused by
her resistance: she was still sitting in the road.
"I won't go into the work'us," she screamed; "I won't go there to be
parted from my children and my husband. If I'm to die, I'll die out
here."
"Just get up and march, and don't let's have no row," said the officer.
"Else I'll fetch a wheel-barrer, and wheel ye to it."
She resisted, shrieking and flinging her arms and her wild hair about
her, as only a foolish woman would do; the children, alarmed, clung to
her and cried, and all Honey Fair came out to look. Mr. Joe Fisher also
staggered up, in a state not to be described. He had been invited by
some friend, more sympathizing than judicious, to solace his troubles
with strong waters; and down he fell in the mud, helpless.
"Well, here's a pretty kettle of fish!" cried the perplexed workhouse
man. "A nice pair, they are! How I am to get 'em both there, is beyond
me! She can walk, if she's forced to it; but he can't! They spend their
money in sotting, and when they have no more to spend they come to us to
keep 'em! I must get an open cart."
The cart was procured somewhere and brought to the scene, a policeman in
attendance; and the children were lifted into it one by one. Next the
man was thrown in, like a clod; and then came the woman's turn. With
much struggling and kicking, with shrieks that might have been heard a
mile off, she was at length hoisted into it. But she tumbled out again:
raving that "no work'us shouldn't hold her." The official raved in turn;
and Honey Fair hugged itself. It had not had the gratification of so
exciting a scene for many a day; to say nothing of the satisfaction it
derived from hearing the workhouse set at defiance.
The official and the policeman at length conquered. She was secured, and
the cart started at a snail's pace with its load--Mrs. Fisher setting up
a prolonged and dismal lamentation not unlike an Irish howl: and Honey
Fair, in its curiosity, following the cart as its train.