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CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
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ESTABLISHED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, 1832
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NO. 123.—VOL. III. SATURDAY, MAY 8, 1886. PRICE 1½_d._]
COTTAGE IDEAS.
BY RICHARD JEFFERIES.
Passing by the kitchen-door, I heard Louisa, the maid, chanting to a
child on her knee:
Feyther stole th’ Paason’s sheep;
A merry Christmas we shall keep;
We shall have both mutton and beef—
_But we won’t say nothing about it_.
To rightly understand this rhyme, you must sing it with long-drawn
emphasis on each word, lengthening it into at least two syllables; the
first a sort of hexameter, the second a pentameter of sound:
Fey-ther sto-ole th’ Paa-son’s sheep.
The last line is to come off more trippingly, like an ‘aside.’ This
old sing-song had doubtless been handed down from the times when the
labourers really did steal sheep, a crime happily extinct with cheap
bread. Louisa was one of the rare old sort—hard-working, and always
ready; never complaining, but satisfied with any food there chanced
to be; sensible and sturdy; a woman who could be thoroughly depended
on. Her boxes were full of good dresses, of a solid, unassuming kind,
such as would wear well—a perfect wardrobe. Her purse was always well
supplied with money; she had money saved up, and she sent money to her
parents: yet her wages, until late years, had been small. In doing her
duty to others, she did good to herself. A duchess would have been glad
to have her in her household. She had been in farmhouse service from
girlhood, and had doubtless learned much from good housewives; farmers’
wives are the best of all teachers; and the girls, for their own sakes,
had much better be under them than wasting so much time learning
useless knowledge at compulsory schools.
Freckles said, when he came in,
He never would enter a tawny skin,
was another of her rhymes. Freckles come in with summer, but never
appear on a dark skin, so that the freckled should rejoice in these
signs of fairness.
Your father, the elderberry,
Was not such a gooseberry
As to send in his bilberry
Before it was dewberry.
Some children are liable to an unpleasant complaint at night; for this,
there is a certain remedy. A mouse is baked in the oven to a ‘scrump,’
then pounded to powder, and this powder administered. Many ladies still
have faith in this curious medicine; it reminds one of the powdered
mummy, once the great cure of human ills. Country-places have not
always got romantic names—Wapse’s Farm, for instance, and Hog’s Pudding
Farm. Wapse is the provincial for wasp.
Country girls are not all so shrewd as Louisa; we heard of two—this was
some time since—who, being in service in London, paid ten shillings
each to Madame Rachel for a bath to be made beautiful for ever. Half a
sovereign out of their few coins! On the other hand, town servants are
well dressed and have plenty of finery, but seldom have any reserve
of good clothing, such as Louisa possessed. All who know the country,
regret the change that has been gradually coming over the servants and
the class from which they are supplied. ‘Gawd help the pore missis as
gets hold of _you_!’ exclaimed a cottage-woman to her daughter, whose
goings-on had not been as they should be: ‘God help the poor mistress
who has to put up with you!’ A remark that would be most emphatically
echoed by many a farmer’s wife and country resident. ‘Doan’t you stop,
if her hollers at ’ee,’ said another cottage-mother to her girl, just
departing for service—that is, don’t stop if you don’t like it; don’t
stop if your mistress finds the least fault. ‘Come along home, if you
don’t like it.’ Home to what? In this instance, it was a most wretched
hovel, literally built in a ditch; no convenience, no sanitation; and
the father a drunkard, who scarcely brought enough money indoors to
supply bread.
You would imagine that a mother in such a position would impress upon
her children the necessity of endeavouring to do something. For the
sake of that spirit of independence in which they seem to take so much
pride, one would suppose they would desire to see their children able
to support themselves. But it is just the reverse; the poorer folk are,
the less they seem to care to try to do something. ‘You come home if
you don’t like it;’ and stay about the hovel in slatternly idleness,
tails bedraggled and torn, thin boots out at the toes and down at
the heels, half-starved on potatoes and weak tea—stay till you fall
into disgrace, and lose the only thing you possess in the world—your
birthright—your character. Strange advice it was for a mother to give.
Nor is the feeling confined to the slatternly section, but often
exhibited by very respectable cottagers indeed.
‘My mother never would go out to service—she _wouldn’t_ go,’ said a
servant to her mistress, one day talking confidentially.
‘Then what did she do?’ asked the mistress, knowing they were very poor
people.
‘Oh, she stopped at home.’
‘But how did she live?’
‘Oh, her father had to keep her. If she wouldn’t go out, of course he
had to somehow.’
This mother would not let her daughter go to one place because there
was a draw-well on the premises; and her father objected to her
going to another because the way to the house lay down a long and
lonely lane. The girl herself, however, had sense enough to keep in
a situation; but it was distinctly against the feeling at her home;
yet they were almost the poorest family in the place. They were very
respectable, and thought well of in every way, belonging to the best
class of cottagers.
Unprofitable sentiments! injurious sentiments—self-destroying; but I
always maintain that sentiment is stronger than fact, and even than
self-interest. I see clearly how foolish these feelings are, and how
they operate to the disadvantage of those whom they influence. Yet I
confess that were I in the same position, I should be just as foolish.
If I lived in a cottage of three rooms, and earned my bread by dint
of arm and hand under the sun of summer and the frost of winter; if I
lived on hard fare, and, most powerful of all, if I had no hope for the
future, no improvement to look forward to, I should feel just the same.
I would rather my children shared my crust, than fed on roast-beef
in a stranger’s hall. Perhaps the sentiment in my case might have a
different origin, but in effect it would be similar. I should prefer to
see my family about me—the one only pleasure I should have—the poorer
and the more unhappy, the less I should care to part with them. This
may be foolish, but I expect it is human nature.
English folk don’t ‘cotton’ to their poverty at all; they don’t eat
humble-pie with a relish; they resent being poor and despised. Foreign
folk seem to take to it quite naturally; an Englishman, somehow or
other, always feels that he is wronged. He is injured; he has not
got his rights. To me, it seems the most curious thing possible
that well-to-do people should expect the poor to be delighted with
their condition. I hope they never will be—an evil day that—if it
ever came—for the Anglo-Saxon race. There always seemed to me to be
something peculiarly repulsive in the doctrine of the old Catechism,
once so studiously worked into the minds of the villagers by dint of
constant repetition, teaching them to be satisfied ‘To do their duty
in the station to which it had pleased God to call them’—that is, to
hedge and ditch and wash greasy plates all their lives, according
as they were male or female, handmaids or man-jacks. To touch hats
and forelocks, to bob courtesies (not out of courtesy as equals, but
in sign of low degree). To be lowly of spirit before clay clad in
broadcloth—a species of idolatry—to beat down and destroy those inward
feelings of independence natural to all. Anything more opposed to that
onward movement in which the hopes of the human race are bound up, it
would be impossible to conceive.
One girl prided herself very much upon belonging to a sort of club
or insurance—if she died, her mother would receive ten pounds. Ten
pounds, ten golden sovereigns, was to her such a magnificent sum, that
she really appeared to wish herself dead, in order that it might be
received. She harped and talked and brooded on it constantly. If she
caught cold, it didn’t matter, she would say, her mother would have ten
pounds. It seemed a curious reversal of ideas, but it is a fact that
poor folk in course of time come to think less of death than money.
Another girl was describing to her mistress how she met the carter’s
ghost in the rickyard; the wagon-wheel went over him; but he continued
to haunt the old scene, and they met him as commonly as the sparrows.
‘Did you ever speak to him?’
‘Oh no. You mustn’t speak to them; if you speak to them, they’ll fly at
you.’
In winter, the men were allowed to grub up the roots of timber that
had been thrown, and take the wood home for their own use; this kept
them in fuel the winter through without buying any. ‘But they don’t get
_paid_ for that work.’ She considered it quite a hardship that they
were not paid for taking a present. Cottage people do look at things in
such a curious crooked light! A mother grumbled because the vicar had
not been to see her child, who was ill. Now, she was not a church-goer,
and cared nothing for the Church or its doctrines—that was not it—she
grumbled so terribly because ‘it was his place to come.’
A lady went to live in a village for health’s sake, and having heard
so much of the poverty of the farmer’s man, and how badly his family
were off, thought that she should find plenty who would be glad to
pick up extra shillings by doing little things for her. First, she
wanted a stout boy to help to draw her Bath-chair, while the footman
pushed behind, it being a hilly country. Instead of having to choose
between half-a-dozen applicants, as she expected, the difficulty was
to discover anybody who would even take such a job into consideration.
The lads did not care about it; their fathers did not care about it;
and their mothers did not want them to do it. At one cottage there were
three lads at home doing nothing; but the mother thought they were too
delicate for such work. In the end, a boy was found, but not for some
time. Nobody was eager for any extra shilling to be earned in that way.
The next thing was somebody to fetch a yoke or two of spring-water
daily. This man did not care for it, and the other did not care for
it; and even one who had a small piece of ground and kept a donkey and
water-butt on wheels for the very purpose, shook his head. He always
fetched water for folk in the summer when it was dry, never fetched
none at that time of year—he could not do it. After a time, a small
shopkeeper managed the yoke of water from the spring for her—_his_ boy
could carry it; the labourers could not. He was comparatively well to
do, yet he was not above an extra shilling.
This is one of the most curious traits in the character of cottage
folk—they do not care for small sums; they do not care to pick up
sixpences. They seem to be _afraid of obliging people_—as if to do so,
even to their own advantage, would be against their personal honour and
dignity. In London, the least trifle is snapped up immediately, and
there is a great crush and press for permission to earn a penny, and
that not in very dignified ways. In the country, it is quite different.
Large fortunes have been made out of matches; now your true country
cottager would despise such a miserable fraction of a penny as is
represented by a match. I heard a little girl singing—
Little drops of water, little grains of sand.
It is these that make oceans and mountains; it is pennies that make
millionaires. But this the country-man cannot see. Not him alone
either; the dislike to little profits is a national characteristic,
well marked in the farmer, and indeed in all classes. I, too, must
be humble, and acknowledge that I have frequently detected the same
folly in myself, so let it not be supposed for an instant that I set
up as a censor; I do but delineate. Work for the cottager must be
work to please him; and to please him, it must be the regular sort to
which he is accustomed, which he did beside his father as a boy, which
_his_ father did, and _his_ father before him; the same old plough or
grub-axe, the same milking, the same identical mowing, if possible in
the same field. He does not care for any newfangled jobs: he does not
recognise them, they have no _locus standi_—they are not established.
Yet he is most anxious for work, and works well, and is indeed the best
labourer in the world. But it is the national character. To understand
a nation, you must go to the cottager.
The well-to-do are educated, they have travelled, if not in their
ideas they are more or less cosmopolitan. In the cottager, the
character stands out in the coarsest relief; in the cottager, you
get to ‘bed-rock,’ as the Americans say; there’s the foundation.
Character runs upwards, not downwards. It is not the nature of the
aristocrat that permeates the cottager, but the nature of the cottager
that permeates the aristocrat. The best of us are polished cottagers.
Scratch deep enough, and you come to that; so that to know a people,
go to the cottage, and not to the mansion. The labouring man cannot
quickly alter his ways. Can the manufacturer? All alike try to go in
the same old groove, till disaster visits their persistence. It is
English human nature.
IN ALL SHADES.
CHAPTER XXV.
They had reached the top of the stone steps, when two voices were borne
upon them from the two ends of the corridor opposite. The first was
Mr Dupuy’s. ‘Where is she?’ it said.—‘Mrs Pereira, where’s Nora? You
don’t mean to say this is true that Tom tells me—that you’ve actually
gone and let her sit out a dance with that conceited nigger fellow, Dr
Whitaker? Upon my word, my dear madam, what this island is coming to
nowadays is really more than I can imagine.’
The second voice was a louder and blander one. ‘My son, my son,’ it
said, in somewhat thick accents, ‘my dear son, Wilberforce Clarkson
Whitaker! Where is he? Is he in de garden? I want to introduce
him to de governor’s lady. De governor’s lady has been graciously
pleased to express an interes in de inheritor of de tree names most
closely bound up wit de great social revolution, in which I have had
de honour to be de chief actor, for de benefit of millions of my
fellow-subjecks.—Walkin’ in de garden, is he, wit de daughter of my
respected friend, de Honourable Teodore Dupuy of Orange Garden? Ha, ha!
Dat’s de way wit de young dogs—dat’s de way wit dem! Always off walkin’
in de garden wit de pretty ladies. Ha, ha, ha! I doan’t blame dem!’
Dr Whitaker, his face on fire and his ears tingling, pushed on rapidly
down the very centre of the garden, taking no heed of either voice in
outward seeming, but going straight on, with Nora on his arm, till he
reached the open window-doors that led directly into the big ballroom.
There, seething in soul, but outwardly calm and polite, he handed over
his partner with a conventional smile to Captain Castello, and turning
on his heel, strode away bitterly across the ballroom to the outer
doorway. Not a few people noticed him as he strode off in his angry
dignity, for Tom Dupuy had already been blustering—with his usual
taste—in the corridors and refreshment room about his valiant threat
of soundly horsewhipping the woolly-headed mulatto. In the vestibule,
the doctor paused and asked for his dust-coat. A negro servant, in
red livery, grinning with delight at what he thought the brown man’s
discomfiture, held it up for him to put his arms into. Dr Whitaker
noticed the fellow’s malevolent grin, and making an ineffectual effort
to push his left arm down the right arm sleeve, seized the coat angrily
in his hand, doubled it up in a loose fold over his elbow, and then,
changing his mind, as an angry man will do, flung it down again with
a hasty gesture upon the hall table. ‘Never mind the coat,’ he said
fiercely. ‘Bring round my horse! Do you hear, fellow? My horse, my
horse! This minute, I tell you!’
The red-liveried servant called to an invisible negro outside, who soon
returned with the doctor’s mountain pony.
‘Better take de coat, sah,’ the man in livery said with a sarcastic
guffaw. ‘Him help to proteck your back an’ sides from Mistah Dupuy, him
horsewhip!’
Dr Whitaker leapt upon his horse, and turned to the man with a face
livid and distorted with irrepressible anger. ‘You black scoundrel,
you!’ he cried passionately, using the words of reproach that even a
mulatto will hurl in his wrath at his still darker brother, ‘do you
think I’m running away from Tom Dupuy’s miserable horsewhip? I’m not
afraid of a hundred fighting Dupuys and all their horsewhips.—You
black image, you! how dare you speak to me? How dare you?—how dare
you?’ And he cut out at him viciously in impotent rage with the little
riding-whip he held in his fingers.
The negro laughed again, a loud hoarse laugh, and flung both his
hands up with open fingers in African derision. Dr Whitaker dug his
spurless heel deep into his horse’s side, sitting there wildly in his
evening dress, and turned his head in mad despair out towards the outer
darkness. The moon was still shining brightly overhead, but by contrast
with the lights in the gaily illuminated ballroom, the path beneath the
bamboo clumps in the shrubbery looked very gloomy, dark, and sombre.
Two or three of the younger men, anxious to see whether Tom Dupuy
would get up ‘a scene’ then and there, crowded out hastily to the
doorway, to watch the nigger fellow ride away for his life for fear
of a horsewhipping. As they stood in the doorway, peering into the
darkness after the retreating upright figure, there came all at once,
with appalling suddenness, a solitary vivid flash of lightning, such
as one never sees outside the tropics, illuminating with its awful
light the whole length of the gardens and the gully beneath them. At
the same second, a terrific clap of thunder seemed to burst, like
innumerable volleys of the heaviest artillery, right above the roof of
the governor’s bungalow. It was ghastly in its suddenness and in its
strength. No one could say where the lightning struck, for it seemed to
have struck on every side at once: all that they saw was a single sheet
of all-pervading fire, in whose midst the mulatto and his horse stood
silhouetted out in solid black, a statuesque group of living sculpture,
against the brilliant fiery background. The horse was rearing, erect
on his hind-legs; and Dr Whitaker was reining him in and patting
his neck soothingly with hand half lifted. So instantaneous was the
flash, indeed, that no motion or change of any sort was visible in the
figures. The horse looked like a horse of bronze, poised in the air on
solid metal legs, and merely simulating the action of rearing.
For a minute or two, not a soul spoke a word, or broke in any way
the deathless silence that succeeded that awful and unexpected
outburst. The band had ceased playing as if by instinct, and every
person in the whole ballroom stood still and looked one at another
with mute amazement. Then, by a common impulse, they pressed all out
slowly together, and gazed forth with wondering eyes upon the serene
moonlight. The stars were shining brightly overhead: the clap had
broken from an absolutely clear sky. Only to northward, on the very
summits of the highest mountains, a gathering of deep black clouds
rolled slowly onward, and threatened to pass across the intervening
valley. Through the profound silence, the ring of Dr Whitaker’s horse’s
hoofs could be heard distinctly down below upon the solid floor of the
mountain pathway.
‘Who has left already?’ the governor asked anxiously of the negro
servants.
‘Dr Whitaker, your Excellency, sah,’ the man in red livery answered,
grinning respectfully.
‘Call him back!’ the governor said in a tone of command. ‘There’s an
awful thunderstorm coming. No man will ever get down alive to the
bottom of the valley until it’s over.’
‘It doan’t no use, sah,’ the negro answered. ‘His horse’s canterin’
down de hillside de same as if him starin’ mad, sah!’ And as he spoke,
Dr Whitaker’s white shirt-front gleamed for a second in the moonlight
far below, at a turn of the path beside the threatening gully.
Almost before any one could start to recall him, the rain and thunder
were upon them with tropical violence. The clouds had drifted rapidly
across the sky; the light of the moon was completely effaced; black
darkness reigned over the mountains; not a star, not a tree, not
an object of any sort could now be discerned through the pitchy
atmosphere. Rain! it was hardly rain, but rather a continuous torrent
outpoured as from some vast aërial fountain. Every minute or two, a
terrific flash lighted up momentarily the gloomy darkness; and almost
simultaneously, loud peals of thunder bellowed and re-echoed from
peak to peak. The dance was interrupted for the time at least, and
everybody crowded out silently to the veranda and the corridors, where
the lightning and the rain could be more easily seen, mingling with the
thunder in one hideous din, and forming torrents that rushed down the
dry gullies in roaring cataracts to the plains below.
And Dr Whitaker? On he rode, the lightning terrifying his little
mountain pony at every flash, the rain beating down upon him
mercilessly with equatorial fierceness, the darkness stretching in
front of him and below him, save when, every now and then, the awful
forks of flame illumined for a second the gulfs and precipices that
yawned beneath in profoundest gloom. Yet still he rode on, erect and
heedless, his hat now lost, bareheaded to the pitiless storm, cold
without, and fiery hot at heart within. He cared for nothing now—for
nothing—for nothing. Nora had put the final coping-stone on that grim
growth of black despair within his soul, that palace of nethermost
darkness which alone he was henceforth to inhabit. Nay, in the heat and
bitterness of the moment, had he not even sealed his own doom? Had he
not sunk down actually to the level of those who despised and contemned
him? Had he not been guilty of contemptuous insolence to his own
colour, in the words he had flung so wildly at the head of the negro in
livery? What did it matter now whatever happened to him? All, all was
lost; and he rode on recklessly, madly, despairingly, down that wild
and precipitous mountain pathway, he knew not and he cared not whither.
It was a narrow track, a mere thread of bridle-path, dangerous enough
even in the best of seasons, hung half-way up the steep hillside, with
the peak rising sheer above on one hand, and the precipice yawning
black beneath on the other. Stones and creepers cumbered the ground;
pebbles and earth, washed down at once by the violence of the storm,
blocked and obliterated the track in many places; here, a headlong
torrent tore across it with resistless vehemence; there, a little chasm
marked the spot where a small landslip had rendered it impassable. The
horse floundered and reared and backed up again and again in startled
terror; Dr Whitaker, too reckless at last even to pat and encourage
him, let him go whatever way his fancy led him among the deep brake of
cactuses and tree ferns. And still the rain descended in vast sheets
and flakes of water, and still the lightning flashed and quivered among
the ravines and gullies of those torn and crumpled mountain-sides.
The mulatto took no notice any longer; he only sang aloud in a wild,
defiant, half-crazy voice the groaning notes of his own terrible
Hurricane Symphony.
So they went, on and down, on and down, on and down always, through
fire and water, the horse plunging and kicking and backing; the rider
flinging his arms carelessly around him, till they reached the bend
in the road beside Louis Delgado’s mud cottage. The old African was
sitting cross-legged by himself at the door of his hut, watching
the rain grimly by the intermittent light of the frequent flashes.
Suddenly, a vivider flash than any burst in upon him with a fearful
clap; and by its light, he saw a great gap in the midst of the path,
twenty yards wide, close by the cottage; and at its upper end, a horse
and rider, trembling on the very brink of the freshly cut abyss. Next
instant, the flash was gone, and when the next came, Louis Delgado saw
nothing but the gap itself and the wild torrent that had so instantly
cut it. The old man smiled an awful smile of gratified malevolence.
‘Ha, ha!’ he said to himself aloud, hugging his withered old breast
in malicious joy; ‘I guess dat buckra lyin’ dead by now, down, down,
down, at de bottom ob de gully. Ha, ha; ha, ha, ha; him lyin’ dead at
de bottom ob de gully; an’ it one buckra de less left alive to bodder
us here in de island ob Trinidad.’ He had not seen the mulatto’s face;
but he took him at once to be a white man because, in spite of rain and
spattered mud, his white shirt-front still showed out distinctly in the
red glare of the vivid lightning.
UNPOPULAR RELATIONSHIPS.
Historians for the most part recount only the great events of the
world; though, by brief anecdotes and familiar illustrations, they
sometimes glance at the manners and morals of a particular period.
But, in reality, human happiness depends far more on harmonious social
relations than on changes of dynasties or the aggrandisement of
empires; and a philosophical consideration of the weaknesses of human
nature in connection with home-life may be as profitable to us as
poring over a description of those striking events which apparently led
to the rise and fall of nations. We say apparently, for the causes of
most things which happen are a good deal more remote than we may fancy
them.
We see how individual characters and interests and public events
act and react on one another; but our reason is very apt to play at
cross-purposes and mistake cause for effect. One thing, however, is
certain, that the family life of a nation is the greatest of all
factors in its ill or well being. A happy well-ordered home is, as a
rule, the nest in which wise men and good women are most likely to be
reared. Yet the ideal patriarchal life is not certain to be realised,
even by those most fitted to lead it. The happiest of married couples
do not always live to see their children grown up, much less to
behold their children’s children to the third and fourth generation.
Undoubtedly, the loss of a wise and loving mother is one of the
greatest misfortunes which can befall a family. This truth is in all
its bearings so much a truism that it is needless to dilate on it.
What we are about to consider is the prejudice which so often prevails
against Step-mothers.
Let us picture to ourselves a middle-class household, with perhaps four
or five children of tender age, suddenly deprived of a mother’s care.
Happy is it in one respect for the father, that his business avocations
are imperative, and so in some measure distract him from his grief; but
they at the same time prevent his supervision of home affairs, even if
he be one of those effeminate men—happily few—who love to meddle in
domestic matters. With the best of servants, and even with some female
relative to ‘manage’ for him, the chances are very great that many
things go wrong—that children are either spoiled or neglected, and that
daily incidents so remind him of his loss, that his sorrow even after
a long interval remains unassuaged. Surely, under such circumstances
to marry again is often the wisest thing a widower can do. As he has
had experience of married life, it is presumable that he knows the
qualities in a woman which will make him happy, and is less likely to
make an imprudent marriage than a young bachelor is. In point of fact,
second wives are often very admirable women, and second marriages very
happy ones.
Yet it cannot be denied that the step-mother is, as a rule, looked on
with suspicion by the relatives of the children who pass into her care.
It seems to be of no account that hitherto she has been noted for good
sense and kindness of heart—it is taken for granted that she cannot
exercise these qualities in reference to the little creatures intrusted
to her charge. The cruel thing is that children are often absolutely
set against their father’s wife by foolish people, who think they thus
do homage to the memory of the dead.
‘Ah,’ sighs perhaps an aunt; ‘of course, my dear, you must call her
“mother” if your father wishes it; but you must not expect her to love
you as darling mamma did.’
‘But, auntie,’ the child may respond, ready with tears at the mention
of the dead—‘but, auntie, she says she loves us, and kisses us as if
she did.’
Upon which the auntie moans again, and with an expressive shake of the
head, ejaculates: ‘I hope she does’—in a tone that implies, ‘I don’t
believe it.’
Children are wonderfully quick at interpreting tones, looks, and
gestures.
Children are by no means all little angels, whatever certain poets
may have written in laudation of them. Ingrained characteristics show
themselves very early; and when the fire of rebellion to authority is
kindled in their young hearts—smoulder as it may—it makes the task of
governing them terribly difficult. How much wiser and kinder would it
be if friends and relatives played the part of cheerful peacemakers,
instead of grave-faced watchers and doubters! How really sensible
it would be to teach the children that they ought to be grateful to
her who comes to console their father, and to take upon herself the
dead mother’s duties. In a multitude of cases, this truth ought to be
emphatically inculcated; for we suppose there are few women whose ideal
of happiness is marrying a widower with children.
When the second marriage takes place comparatively late in life, and
when children are grown up, the trials are of a different sort. Sons
already away from home, and making for themselves careers in the world;
and daughters of twenty years old, likely to marry within the next
few years, have often but little feeling for the loneliness of their
father’s declining years. Of course, elderly men sometimes do foolish
things, as well as young ones; but even if the second marriage be in
every respect a suitable one, the children are in too many instances
jealous of the step-mother, and inclined to carp at all she does.
Really, a great deal of this ill-feeling is a bad habit of thought, the
result of a popular prejudice which falls in with the weak side of
human nature.
But if we demur against the prevailing idea of step-mothers, what shall
we say against the yet more absurd notions which abound concerning
Mothers-in-law! Unjustly and, one may say, stupidly satirised as they
are by pen and pencil in the comic papers, they still, as a rule,
maintain the even tenor of their way, far more often as a beneficent
influence than anything else. Represented as a synonym for everything
that is meddling and mischief-making, we confess that in a pretty long
experience we have seen but few very nearly approaching this type. But
we have known many a mother who has taken the husband of a daughter to
her heart as if he were indeed a son, he requiting her affection with
reverential regard. Nor is this at all an unnatural thing to happen
between right-minded sensible people.
The mother of grown-up sons and daughters is not generally the vulgar,
ill-favoured shrew that caricaturists love to paint her; on the
contrary, she is often a woman in the prime of life, very probably
an influence in society, and with the wisdom that ought to come with
experience of the world. She has not forgotten her own youth, and she
sympathises with the young more than they quite believe. Whether it be
the daughter’s husband or the son’s wife that has to be considered,
so long as the choice be tolerably prudent, she is sure to rejoice at
the prospect of happiness, and be grateful that the perils of unwise
likings are over. If, unhappily, the choice has not been prudent, and
yet she is unable to avert its consequences, the mother is in many
cases the one to be peacemaker and make the best of everything. If
it be a son’s wife who needs culture, she tries to give it; if it be
a daughter’s husband of small means, she ekes out income by personal
sacrifices; or if she herself be too poor to do this, we have known her
to help with the needle, or in some other efficient manner, when she
cannot do so with the purse.
Suppose the mother-in-law does sometimes suggest or advise, is this to
be considered an unpardonable offence? In point of fact, her error is
often on the other side, and through a dread of seeming to interfere,
she refrains from speaking the wise word in due season. Carlyle says
somewhere that ‘experience teaches like no other,’ but takes terribly
high ‘school-wages’ in the process. Most of us can remember occasions
when we might have been spared some of the ‘school-wages,’ if we would
have accepted, as a loving gift to profit by, the experience of our
elders. How often in illness does the mother-in-law aid in nursing her
grandchildren; how often, in some inevitable absence of the parents,
does she prove their most trustworthy guardian!
We are afraid, however, that it is mainly when she is a widow and poor,
that the mother-in-law becomes the butt of inconsiderate satirists, who
fail to see the pathetic side of her position. Yet, to the honour of
human nature, it may be said that there are multitudes of households in
which the wife or husband’s mother, wholly dependent on her children,
is treated with the respect and affection proper to the circumstances,
and without any associations that can recall the paltry witticisms
of the comic writers. We wonder if young mothers, with their children
still around them, speculate on the swiftly passing years which will
change the scene! In a single decade, what alterations may there not be
in the domestic circle, and how naturally may it come to pass that the
daughter-in-law of to-day shall become the mother-in-law of the future.
There is another unpopular personage for whom we desire to say a good
word; not that, as a rule, she is immaculate, or even as nearly so as
we should like to see her—we mean the Lodging-house Keeper. She, too,
has long been a favourite theme of the caricaturist, and no doubt her
vocation leads up to many humorous incidents. What a life it is, if
we think of it seriously for a moment! Homely but shrewd women who
let lodgings often acquire a surprising knowledge of character; and
indeed, if they do not, they are likely to be wofully deceived. It is
as great a mistake to suppose that all tenants are true and just in
their dealings, as that all landladies are grasping and untrustworthy.
Imagine a small furnished house being let to a middle-aged couple for
three years at a low rent, mainly because there were no children to add
to the wear and tear of furniture. But events proved that there were
little grandchildren who paid lengthened visits, on which occasions a
perambulator was ruthlessly wheeled about the new dining-room carpet,
and similar reckless destruction of property went on in many other
ways. This is a true story, and we do not much wonder that the landlady
lost temper, and not being able to turn out her tenants, tried to
recoup herself by all legitimate methods—especially as she was wholly
dependent on her house for the means of existence.
It ought to be remembered that people do not let lodgings for pleasure;
receiving inmates is always more or less a matter of business, and
there should be justice and the doing as you would be done by on both
sides. Sometimes the lodging-house keeper is a decayed gentlewoman,
but more generally she belongs to a class socially inferior to that
of her tenants. In either case, a little kindly consideration for the
feelings and interests of the householder will often be amply requited.
The decayed gentlewoman will keenly appreciate a manner of speaking and
bargaining which seems to recognise her true position; and the ordinary
lodging-house keeper is quick to distinguish ‘real gentlefolks’ from
‘stuck-up people,’ by signs which the latter rarely comprehend.
People of position resorting to the seaside for a few weeks never
expect the luxuries and elegances they enjoy at home; but as they
generally pay liberally for the accommodation they receive, they do
require ordinary comforts. It would be greatly to the interest of all
parties if lodging-house keepers would bear this in mind. Not only
should bedding be faultless in point of purity, but as men do exist of
six feet high and upwards, provision should be made to receive a tall
inmate who could sleep without doubling himself up like a carpenter’s
rule. White curtains are decidedly countrified and clean-looking; but
unless there are also shutters to the bedroom windows, woe betide the
light sleeper who is wakened by the early dawn. Lodging-house pillows
should be more ample, and blankets more numerous than they generally
are; easy-chairs should deserve their name; footstools should be
discoverable; and windows and blinds should be easily manageable. The
lodging-house cooking is also often capable of improvement, though,
if people are content with what is called ‘good plain cooking,’ they
frequently have little reason to complain; especially is this the case
when the lodging-house keepers are retired servants who have lived in
good families.
In return for the essential comforts described, the tenant would
generally be willing to dispense with the ancestral portraits which so
often decorate the walls of furnished lodgings. Staring likenesses,
no doubt they are, of departed worthies; but they always seem to
stare at the tenant with something like reproach at his presence; and
if, as is often the case, they are veritable daubs, they become at
last absolutely irritating. Also most people would rather have space
for their own odds and ends, than see tables and shelves occupied by
heirlooms in the shape of cracked vases incapable of holding water for
flowers, but filled with dusty feathers, paper roses, or dried seaweed.
Not that we despise simple ornaments; happily, many very common things
are very pretty, and quite capable of pleasing the most artistic eye;
it is incongruity which really offends.
But with all their shortcomings, we do not believe that, as a class,
lodging-house keepers deserve the hard things which comic writers,
for the sake of a joke, have said of them. Many a lodging-house
keeper has a pathetic past, and a present that is a severe struggle
for existence; and sometimes their worth is so appreciated that they
make influential friends of their tenants. It is pleasant to hear a
landlady say that she has little need to advertise; she lets her rooms
on the recommendation of people who have occupied them, and often has
the same family over and over again. Where this is the case, we may
be pretty sure that at parting there are none of the mean squabbles
about cracked china or a chipped chair-back which leave a sting of
ill-feeling behind. On the contrary, there is perhaps the recollection
of kind assiduity in illness, or of little services beyond the bond on
one side; and on the other a pleasant consciousness that such services
have been recognised.
It is possible that the tenant sometimes forgets his duties as well as
the landlady hers. It is as grasping to overreach on one side as on
the other. Not long ago an inquiry for lodgings was made in a popular
district—they were to be perfect in a sanitary point of view, and with
householders where valuable property would be safe—but because the
would-be tenant would often be away, the fair applicant hoped to obtain
them for an ‘infinitesimal’ rent. We believe she has not yet quite
succeeded in her search. There are certainly unprincipled as well as
inconsiderate lodgers, besides untrustworthy landladies. We fear there
are quite as many people who, convalescent after infectious diseases,
take apartments in the country or at the seaside without apprising the
householders of their condition; as there are lodging-house keepers
who receive fresh tenants after having housed fever patients without
having taken due precautions against the propagation of disease. In
short, lodgers and tenants belong to the same human nature that is
corrupted by evil influences, and falls but too often, each individual
under his own special temptations.
SPIRITED AWAY.
IN THREE CHAPTERS.—CHAP. II.
I awoke suddenly and with a start, having, while in the act of
stretching myself, brought my foot into violent contact with one of
the rails of the bed. The pain arising from the blow was so acute as
to put sleep out of question for a time, so I sat up in bed and stared
about me; not that there was anything to be seen, not even the outlines
of the window. Everything was intensely still; some hours had probably
elapsed since my coming to bed, and no doubt the inmates of the house
had retired long ago. The neighbourhood was a quiet one, apparently
some distance removed from any main thoroughfare, as not even the noise
of a passing cab or vehicle of any kind broke the silence—nothing, in
fact, save the footsteps of some belated pedestrian, or, it might be,
those of a policeman going his rounds.
When my foot became somewhat easier, I lay down again; but my brain was
in full activity by this time, and I fell to musing over what I had
seen of London during my after-dark ramble, and to building castles
in the future. I was as wide awake as ever I had been in my life. As
I lay thus, the black silence was broken by the faint creaking of a
door, apparently that of the room next my own. Was it merely one of
those unaccountable noises with which all watchers during the night
season are more or less familiar, or was it caused by human agency? It
was probably the _cafetier_ or Jean stealing quietly up-stairs to bed.
I had no means of even guessing the time, and instead of being asleep
for hours, as I had imagined, it might not yet be much past midnight.
Burglars would hardly care to visit so poor a domicile; still, it was
just as well I had shot the bolt of my door before getting into bed.
But, hush! what was that? Footsteps passing my door, and then softly
ascending the upper flight of stairs. Some one was certainly moving
about the house. But for what purpose? And now, there was the sound of
more footsteps following the first. Dead silence for a few moments, and
then footsteps again, but so hushed and stealthy, that it was only by
holding in my breath and listening with all my might, that I could hear
them at all.
What could be the meaning of proceedings so mysterious? While I was
still puzzling over this question and debating with myself whether my
wisest plan would not be to go to sleep and trouble myself no further
in the matter, the door of some room overhead seemed suddenly to be
burst open, followed immediately by a heavy trampling of feet, then
a loud, sharp, inarticulate cry, a pistol-shot, the sound as it were
of a brief struggle, and then nothing but the low stern tones of some
one who seemed to be giving orders or instructions, and after that, a
minute later, silence again the most profound. But I was out of bed
by this time; and groping my way to the door, I pushed back the bolt
and turned the handle, expecting, of course, that the door would open
without difficulty; but it refused to yield to my efforts, and a moment
or two sufficed to convince me that it was fastened from the outside.
I pulled at it with all my strength, and then made out that it was
held merely by a rope, which, yielding slightly to my efforts, left a
space of a couple of inches between the door and the jamb. Planting one
foot firmly against the wall, and pulling open the door with one hand
as far as I could, I felt in my pocket with the other hand, found my
knife, and opened it with my teeth; then, pushing the long sharp blade
through the space between the door and the jamb, I cut through the rope
that held me prisoner. A moment later, I had bounded up the stairs and
had burst into one of the upper rooms, guided by a narrow fringe of
light which shone from under the door. The sight that met my gaze was a
strange one. The room was of considerable size; and seated on the edge
of the bed, and only partially dressed, but bound and gagged, was the
_cafetier_, while no great distance away stood a group of five men, in
one of whom I at once recognised the stranger with the gold spectacles,
although he wore no spectacles now; while another was Jean the waiter.
The other three men I had never to my knowledge seen before. In the
middle of the floor a revolver lay unheeded.
The eyes of all present turned on me like lightning, as I burst into
the room. There was a moment or two of dead silence, then the stranger,
whom for the future I will call M. Legros, in order to distinguish
him from the others—although he was certainly not a Frenchman—strode
towards me with a frown, and demanded by what right I had intruded
there.
‘By the right which every man has to intrude when he hears a cry for
help and believes there’s villainy afloat.’
‘Ah, bah! you talk like a child,’ he answered. ‘There is no villainy
afloat here, young sir—of that you may rest assured. We are neither
thieves nor assassins. What we are in nowise concerns you. Since you
have chosen to intrude here, where your presence was certainly not
required, you have only left one course open to me. You must take the
consequences of your folly.’
He spoke a few words rapidly to the three strangers in a language
unknown to me, and before I knew what was about to happen, I found
myself seized, gagged, bound, and strapped down to a chair, as helpless
as a new-born babe.
‘I am somewhat grieved to have to treat you thus,’ said M. Legros to
me as soon as I had in some measure recovered my breath; ‘but your own
rashness has put it out of my power to do otherwise. I may, however,
tell you this for your comfort: no harm shall befall you, provided you
obey implicitly the orders that may be imposed upon you. But should you
make the slightest effort to escape before the time comes when I shall
be prepared to bid you adieu, or should you endeavour to attract the
attention of any one, you may rest assured that that moment will be the
last of your life. I pray you to take my words in all seriousness. We
are here to do a certain thing, and not a dozen lives will be allowed
to stand in the way of our doing it.’
His tones were low, but very stern; his keen steel-gray eyes seemed
to pierce me through. I never saw a face on which determination and
strength of will were more clearly impressed. He was evidently a man
who, whether for good or ill, would keep his word.
I glanced at Karavich. He was deathly pale, but his eyes glowed in
their cavernous orbits with a sort of gloomy fire, and there was
nothing of dismay or craven fear in the deep-seated gaze he bent now
and again on his captors. Who and what was he? What was his crime? What
had he done that he should be thus seized and gagged in the middle
of the night in his own house and in the heart of London? Then, too,
who and what were Legros and his confederates? I almost forgot my own
predicament for a little while in asking myself these and similar
questions.
Legros and the others were talking in tones that were scarcely raised
above a whisper. When thus conversing among themselves both then and
afterwards, they employed a language with which I had no acquaintance.
It may have been Russian, or Polish, or Hungarian. I have little doubt
it was one of the three, but which one I did not know then, and I do
not know to this day. Suddenly, Legros, after glancing at his watch,
held up a warning finger, and silence at once fell on the group. They
all stood as if listening for some expected sound. A minute later it
came—the slow, heavy tramp of some one passing down the street. Could
it be the night policeman going his rounds? Just as the man, whoever
he might be, was passing, Legros glanced at the window, and my eyes
involuntarily followed the direction of his. The window was shaded with
heavy curtains, now closely drawn; the room was dimly lighted by a
single candle only; from the street, even if the night had been a clear
one, the house must have seemed wrapped in darkness. The silence in
the room remained unbroken till the last faint echoes of the footsteps
outside had died away.