You’ll never reach it. You’d better stop at the next village.”
“Ay, sir, it’s easy stopping for those that have money.”
“And you’ve none, eh?”
“As God lives, sir, I’ve a sixpence, and that’s all.”
Mr. Spires put his hand in his pocket, and held out to her the next
instant half-a-crown.
“There stop, poor thing--make yourself comfortable--it’s quite out of
the question to reach Stockington. But stay--are your friends living in
Stockington--what are you?”
“A poor soldier’s widow, sir. And may God Almighty bless you!” said the
poor woman, taking the money, the tears standing in her large brown eyes
as she curtsied very low.
“A soldier’s widow,” said Mr. Spires. She had touched the softest place
in the manufacturer’s heart, for he was a very loyal man, and vehement
champion of his country’s honor in the war. “So young,” said he, “how
did you lose your husband?”
“He fell, sir,” said the poor woman; but she could get no further; she
suddenly caught up the corner of her gray cloak, covered her face with
it, and burst into an excess of grief.
The manufacturer felt as if he had hit the woman a blow by his careless
question; he sat watching her for a moment in silence, and then said,
“Come, get into the gig, my poor woman; come, I must see you to
Stockington.”
The poor woman dried her tears, and heavily climbed into the gig,
expressing her gratitude in a very touching and modest manner. Spires
buttoned the apron over her, and taking a look at the child, said in a
cheerful tone to comfort her, “Bless me, but that is a fine thumping
fellow, though. I don’t wonder you are tired, carrying such a load.”
The poor woman pressed the stout child, apparently two years old, to her
breast, as if she felt it a great blessing and no load: the gig drove
rapidly on.
Presently Mr. Spires resumed his conversation.
“So you are from Stockington?”
“No, sir; my husband was.”
“So: what was his name?”
“John Deg, sir.”
“Deg?” said Mr. Spires. “Deg, did you say?”
“Yes, sir.”
The manufacturer seemed to hitch himself off towards his own side of the
gig, gave another look at her, and was silent. The poor woman was
somewhat astonished at his look and movement, and was silent too.
After awhile Mr. Spires said again, “And do you hope to find friends in
Stockington? Had you none where you came from?”
“None, sir, none in the world!” said the poor woman, and again her
feelings seemed too strong for her. At length she added, “I was in
service, sir, at Poole, in Dorsetshire, when I married; my mother only
was living, and while I was away with my husband, she died. When--when
the news came from abroad--that--when I was a widow, sir, I went back to
my native place, and the parish officers said I must go to my husband’s
parish, lest I and my child should become troublesome.”
“You asked relief of them?”
“Never; oh, God knows, never! My family have never asked a penny of a
parish. They would die first, and so would I, sir; but they said I might
do it, and I had better go to my husband’s parish at once--and they
offered me money to go.”
“And you took it, of course?”
“No, sir; I had a little money, which I had earned by washing and
laundering, and I sold most of my things, as I could not carry them, and
came off. I felt hurt, sir; my heart rose against the treatment of the
parish, and I thought I should be better among my husband’s
friends--and my child would, if anything happened to me; I had no
friends of my own.”
Mr. Spires looked at the woman in silence. “Did your husband tell you
anything of his friends? What sort of a man was he?”
“Oh, he was a gay young fellow, rather, sir; but not bad to me. He
always said his friends were well off in Stockington.”
“He did!” said the manufacturer, with a great stare, and as if bolting
the words from his heart in a large gust of wonder.
The poor woman again looked at him with a strange look. The manufacturer
whistled to himself, and giving his horse a smart cut with the whip,
drove on faster than ever. The night was fast settling down; it was
numbing cold; a gray fog rose from the river as they thundered over the
old bridge; and tall engine chimneys, and black smoky houses loomed
through the dusk before them. They were at Stockington.
As they slackened their pace up a hill at the entrance of the town, Mr.
Spires again opened his mouth.
“I should be sorry to hurt your feelings, Mrs. Deg,” he said, “but I
have my fears that you are coming to this place with false expectations.
I fear your husband did not give you the truest possible account of his
family here.”
“Oh, Sir! What--what is it?” exclaimed the poor woman; “in God’s name,
tell me!”
“Why, nothing more than this,” said the manufacturer, “that there are
very few of the Degs left here. They are old, and on the parish, and can
do nothing for you.”
The poor woman gave a deep sigh, and was silent.
“But don’t be cast down,” said Mr. Spires. He would not tell her what a
pauper family it really was, for he saw that she was a very feeling
woman, and he thought she would learn that soon enough. He felt that her
husband had from vanity given her a false account of his connections;
and he was really sorry for her.
“Don’t be cast down,” he went on, “you can wash and iron, you say; you
are young and strong; those are your friends. Depend on them, and
they’ll be better friends to you than any other.”
The poor woman was silent, leaning her head down on her slumbering
child, and crying to herself; and thus they drove on, through many long
and narrow streets, with gas flaring from the shops, but with few people
in the streets, and these hurrying shivering along the payment, so
intense was the cold. Anon they stopped at a large pair of gates; the
manufacturer rung a bell, which he could reach from his gig, and the
gates presently were flung open, and they drove into a spacious yard,
with a large handsome house, having a bright lamp burning before it, on
one side of the yard, and tall warehouses on the other.
“Show this poor woman and her child to Mrs. Craddock’s, James,” said Mr.
Spires, “and tell Mrs. Craddock to make them very comfortable; and if
you will come to my warehouse to-morrow,” added he, addressing the poor
woman, “perhaps I can be of some use to you.”
The poor woman poured out her heartfelt thanks, and following the old
man servant, soon disappeared, hobbling over the pebbly pavement with
her living load, stiffened almost to stone by her fatigue and her cold
ride.
We must not pursue too minutely our narrative. Mrs. Deg was engaged to
do the washing and getting up of Mr. Spire’s linen, and the manner in
which she executed her task insured her recommendations to all their
friends. Mrs. Deg was at once in full employ. She occupied a neat house
in a yard near the meadows below the town, and in those meadows she
might be seen spreading out her clothes to whiten on the grass, attended
by her stout little boy. In the same yard lived a shoemaker, who had two
or three children of about the same age as Mrs. Deg’s child. The
children, as time went on, became play-fellows. Little Simon might be
said to have the free run of the shoemaker’s house, and he was the more
attracted thither by the shoemaker’s birds, and by his flute, on which
he often played after his work was done.
Mrs. Deg took a great friendship for this shoemaker; and he and his
wife, a quiet, kind-hearted woman, were almost all the acquaintances
that she cultivated. She had found out her husband’s parents, but they
were not of a description that at all pleased her. They were old and
infirm, but they were of the true pauper breed, a sort of person, whom
Mrs. Deg had been taught to avoid and to despise. They looked on her as
a sort of second parish, and insisted that she should come and live with
them, and help to maintain them out of her earnings. But Mrs. Deg would
rather her little boy had died than have been familiarized with the
spirit and habits of those old people. Despise them she struggled hard
not to do, and she agreed to allow them sufficient to maintain them on
condition that they desisted from any further application to the parish.
It would be a long and disgusting story to recount all the troubles,
annoyance, and querulous complaints, and even bitter accusations that
she received from these connections, whom she could never satisfy; but
she considered it one of her crosses in her life, and patiently bore it,
seeing that they suffered no real want, so long as they lived, which was
for years; but she would never allow her little Simon to be with them
alone.
The shoemaker neighbor was a stout protection to her against the greedy
demands of these old people, and of others of the old Degs, and also
against another class of inconvenient visitors, namely, suitors, who saw
in Mrs. Deg a neat and comely young woman with a flourishing business,
and a neat and soon well-furnished house, a very desirable acquisition.
But Mrs. Deg had resolved never again to marry, but to live for her boy,
and she kept her resolve in firmness and gentleness.
The shoemaker often took walks in the extensive town meadows to gather
groundsell and plantain for his canaries and gorse-linnets, and little
Simon Deg delighted to accompany him with his own children. There
William Watson, the shoemaker, used to point out to the children the
beauty of the flowers, the insects, and other objects of nature; and
while he sate on a stile and read in a little old book of poetry, as he
often used to do, the children sate on the summer grass, and enjoyed
themselves in a variety of plays.
The effect of these walks, and the shoemaker’s conversation on little
Simon Deg was such as never wore out of him through his whole life, and
soon led him to astonish the shoemaker by his extraordinary conduct. He
manifested the utmost uneasiness at their treading on the flowers in the
grass; he would burst with tears if they persisted in it; and when asked
why, he said they were so beautiful, and that they must enjoy the
sunshine, and be very unhappy to die. The shoemaker was amazed, but
indulged the lad’s fancy. One day he thought to give him a great treat,
and when they were out in the meadows, he drew from under his coat, a
bow and arrow, and shot the arrow high up in the air. He expected to see
him in an ecstacy of delight; his own children clapped their hands in
transport, but Simon stood silent, and as if awestruck. “Shall I send up
another?” asked the shoemaker.
“No, no,” exclaimed the child, imploringly. “You say God lives up there,
and he mayn’t like it.”
The shoemaker laughed, but presently he said, as if to himself, “There
is too much imagination there. There will be a poet, if we don’t take
care.”
The shoemaker offered to teach Simon to read, and to solidify his mind,
as he termed it, by arithmetic, and then to teach him to work at his
trade. His mother was very glad; and thought shoemaking would be a good
trade for the boy; and that with Mr. Watson she should have him always
near her. He was growing now a great lad, and was especially strong, and
of a frank and daring habit. He was especially indignant at any act of
oppression of the weak by the strong, and not seldom got into trouble by
his championship of the injured in such cases amongst the boys of the
neighborhood.
He was now about twelve years of age; when, going one day with a basket
of clothes on his head to Mr. Spires’s for his mother, he was noticed by
Mr. Spires himself from his counting-house window. The great war was
raging; there was much distress amongst the manufacturers; and the
people were suffering and exasperated against their masters. Mr. Spires,
as a staunch tory, and supporter of the war, was particularly obnoxious
to the work-people, who uttered violent threats against him. For this
reason his premises were strictly guarded, and at the entrance of his
yard, just within the gates, was chained a huge and fierce mastiff, his
chain allowing him to approach near enough to intimidate any stranger,
though not to reach him. The dog knew the people who came regularly
about, and seemed not to notice them, but on the entrance of a stranger,
he rose up, barked fiercely, and came to the length of his chain. This
always drew the attention of the porter, if he were away from his box,
and few persons dared to pass till he came.
Simon Deg was advancing with the basket of clean linen on his head,
when the dog rushed out, and barking loudly, came exactly opposite to
him, within a few feet. The boy, a good deal startled at first, reared
himself with his back against the wall, but at a glance perceiving that
the dog was at the length of his tether, he seemed to enjoy his
situation, and stood smiling at the furious animal, and lifting his
basket with both hands above his head, nodded to him, as if to say,
“Well, old boy, you’d like to eat me, wouldn’t you?”
Mr. Spires, who sate near his counting-house window at his books, was
struck with the bold and handsome bearing of the boy, and said to a
clerk, “What boy is that?”
“It is Jenny Deg’s,” was the answer.
“Ha! that boy! Zounds! how boys do grow! What that’s the child that
Jenny Deg was carrying when she came to Stockington; and what a strong,
handsome, bright-looking fellow he is now!”
As the boy was returning, Mr. Spires call him to the counting-house
door, and put some questions to him as to what he was doing and
learning, and so on. Simon, taking off his cap with much respect,
answered in such a clear and modest way, and with a voice that had so
much feeling and natural music in it, that the worthy manufacturer was
greatly taken with him.
“That’s no Deg,” said he, when he again entered the counting-house, “not
a bit of it. He’s all Goodrick, or whatever his mother’s name was, every
inch of him.”
The consequences of that interview was, that Simon Deg was very soon
after perched on a stool in Mr. Spires’ counting-house, where he
continued till he was twenty-two. Mr. Spires had no son, only a single
daughter; and such were Simon Deg’s talents, attention to business, and
genial disposition, that at that age Mr. Spires gave him a share in the
concern. He was himself now getting less fond of exertion than he had
been, and placed the most implicit reliance on Simon’s judgment and
general management. Yet no two men could be more unlike in their
opinions beyond the circle of trade. Mr. Spires was a staunch tory of
the staunch old school. He was for Church and King, and for things
remaining forever as they had been. Simon, on the other hand, had
liberal and reforming notions. He was for the improvement of the people,
and their admission to many privileges. Mr. Spires was, therefore, liked
by the leading men of the place, and disliked by the people. Simon’s
estimation was precisely in the opposite direction. But this did not
disturb their friendship; it required another disturbing cause--and that
came.
Simon Deg and the daughter of Mr. Spires, grew attached to each other;
and, as the father had thought Simon worthy of becoming a partner in the
business, neither of the young people deemed that he would object to a
partnership of a more domestic description. But here they made a
tremendous mistake. No sooner was such a proposal hinted it, than Mr.
Spires burst forth with the fury of all the winds from the bag of
Ulysses.
“What! a Deg aspire to the hand of the sole heiress of the enormously
opulent Spires?”
The very thought almost cut the proud manufacturer off with an
apoplexy. The ghosts of a thousand paupers rose up before him, and he
was black in the face. It was only by a prompt and bold application of
leeches and lancet, that the life of the great man was saved. But there
was an end of all further friendship between himself and the expectant
Simon. He insisted that he should withdraw from the concern, and it was
done. Simon, who felt his own dignity deeply wounded too, for dignity he
had, though the last of a long line of paupers--his own dignity, not his
ancestors’--took silently, yet not unrespectfully, his share--a good,
round sum, and entered another house of business.
For several years there appeared to be a feud and a bitterness between
the former friends; yet it showed itself in no other manner than by a
careful avoidance of each other. The continental war came to an end; the
manufacturing distress increased exceedingly. There came troublous
times, and a fierce warfare of politics. Great Stockington was torn
asunder by rival parties. On one side stood pre-eminent, Mr. Spires; on
the other towered conspicuously, Simon Deg. Simon was grown rich, and
extremely popular. He was on all occasions the advocate of the people.
He said that he had sprung from, and was one of them. He had bought a
large tract of land on one side of the town; and intensely fond of the
country and flowers himself, he had divided this into gardens, built
little summer-houses in them, and let them to the artisans. In his
factory he had introduced order, cleanliness, and ventilation. He had
set up a school for the children in the evenings, with a reading-room
and conversation-room for the work-people, and encouraged them to bring
their families there, and enjoy music, books, and lectures. Accordingly,
he was the idol of the people, and the horror of the old school of the
manufacturers.
“A pretty upstart and demagogue I’ve nurtured,” said Mr. Spires often to
his wife and daughter, who only sighed and were silent.
Then came a furious election. The town, for a fortnight, more resembled
the worst corner of Tartarus than a Christian borough. Drunkenness,
riot, pumping on one another, spencering one another, all sorts of
violence and abuse ruled and raged till the blood of all Stockington was
at boiling heat. In the midst of the tempest were everywhere seen,
ranged on the opposite sides, Mr. Spires, now old and immensely
corpulent, and Simon Deg, active, buoyant, zealous, and popular beyond
measure. But popular though, he still was, the other and old tory side
triumphed. The people were exasperated to madness; and when the chairing
of the successful candidate commenced, there was a terrific attack made
on the procession by the defeated party. Down went the chair, and the
new member, glad to escape into an inn, saw his friends mercilessly
assailed by the populace. There was a tremendous tempest of sticks,
brick-bats, paving-stones, and rotten eggs. In the midst of this, Simon
Deg, and a number of his friends, standing at the upper window of a
hotel, saw Mr. Spires knocked down, and trampled on by the crowd. In an
instant, and, before his friends had missed him from among them, Simon
Deg was then darting through the raging mass, cleaving his way with a
surprising vigor, and gesticulating, and no doubt shouting vehemently to
the rioters, though his voice was lost in the din. In the next moment
his hat was knocked off, and himself appeared in imminent danger; but,
another moment, and there was a pause, and a group of people were
bearing somebody from the frantic mob into a neighboring shop. It was
Simon Deg, assisting in the rescue of his old friend and benefactor, Mr.
Spires.
Mr. Spires was a good deal bruised, and wonderfully confounded and
bewildered by his fall. His clothes were one mass of mud, and his face
was bleeding copiously; but when he had had a good draught of water, and
his face washed, and had time to recover himself, it was found that he
had received no serious injury.
“They had like to have done for me though,” said he.
“Yes, and who saved you?” asked a gentleman.
“Ay, who was it? who was it?” asked the really warm-hearted
manufacturer; “let me know? I owe him my life.”
“There he is!” said several gentlemen, at the same instant pushing
forward Simon Deg.
“What, Simon!” said Mr. Spires, starting to his feet. “Was it thee, my
boy?” He did more, he stretched out his hand; the young man clasped it
eagerly, and the two stood silent, and with a heartfelt emotion, which
blended all the past into forgetfulness, and the future into a union
more sacred than esteem.
A week hence and Simon Deg was the son-in-law of Mr. Spires. Though Mr.
Spires had misunderstood Simon, and Simon had borne the aspect of
opposition to his old friend in defence of conscientious principle, the
wife and daughter of the manufacturer had always understood him, and
secretly looked forward to some day of recognition and re-union.
Simon Deg was now the richest man in Stockington. His mother was still
living to enjoy his elevation. She had been his excellent and wise
house-keeper, and she continued to occupy that post still.
Twenty-five years afterwards, when the worthy old Spires was dead, and
Simon Deg had himself two sons attained to manhood; when he had five
times been mayor of Stockington, and had been knighted on the
presentation of a loyal address; still his mother was living to see it;
and William Watson, the shoe-maker, was acting as the sort of orderly at
Sir Simon’s chief manufactory. He occupied the Lodge, and walked about,
and saw that all was safe, and moving on as it should do.
It was amazing how the most plebeian name of Simon Peg had slid, under
the hands of the Heralds, into the really aristocratical one of Sir
Simon Degge. They had traced him up a collateral kinship, spite of his
own consciousness, to a baronet of the same name of the county of
Stafford, and had given him a coat of arms that was really astonishing.
It was some years before this that Sir Roger Rockville breathed his
last. His title and estate had fallen into litigation. Owing to two
generations having passed without any issue of the Rockville family
except the one son and heir, the claims, though numerous, were so
mingled with obscuring circumstances, and so equally balanced, that the
lawyers raised quibbles and difficulties enough to keep the property in
Chancery, till they had not only consumed all the ready money and
rental, but had made frightful inroads into the estate itself. To save
the remnant, the contending parties came to a compromise. A neighboring
squire, whose grandfather had married a Rockville, was allowed to secure
the title, on condition that the rest carried off the residuum of the
estate. The woods and lands of Rockville were announced for sale!
It was at this juncture that old William Watson reminded Sir Simon Degge
of a conversation in the great grove of Rockville, which they had held
at the time that Sir Roger was endeavoring to drive the people thence.
“What a divine pleasure might this man enjoy,” said Simon Deg to his
humble friend, “if he had a heart capable of letting others enjoy
themselves.”
“But we talk without the estate,” said William Watson, “what might we do
if we were tried with it?”
Sir Simon was silent for a moment; then observed that there was sound
philosophy in William Watson’s remark. He said no more, but went away;
and the next day announced to the astonished old man that he had
purchased the groves and the whole ancient estate of Rockville!
Sir Simon Degge, the last of a long line of paupers, was become the
possessor of the noble estate of Sir Roger Rockville of Rockville, the
last of a long line of aristocrats!
The following summer, when the hay was lying in fragrant cocks in the
great meadows of Rockville, and on the little islands in the river, Sir
Simon Degge, Baronet of Rockville,--for such was now his title--through
the suggestion of a great lawyer, formerly recorder of the borough of
Stockington to the crown--held a grand fête on the occasion of his
coming to reside at Rockville Hall, henceforth the family seat of the
Degges. His house and gardens had been restored to the most consummate
order. For years Sir Simon had been a great purchaser of works of art
and literature, paintings, statuary, books, and articles of antiquity,
including rich armor and precious works in ivory and gold.