A DAMP DWELLING.
ONE gets used, more or less, to almost any sort of state; and by the
time we had been seven or eight months in the house, I remember how
things looked quite natural, and the old life in the cottage seemed
almost like a dream to me. I don't know whether it did to the others. I
am not saying that I liked the new life, or would have chosen it: but
there it was, and one had to go through with it.
We had a great deal of pleasuring that summer. Everybody was very
friendly; and I must say this for father, that having more money did
not make him want to throw off old acquaintances, as some in his place
might have done. It turned his head enough, but not in that way.
Father did not take to work again, and it is quite certain he was none
the happier for being idle. It wasn't as if he had anything else to
take the place of what he was used to do. I never saw any man change
as he changed, month by month. The old brisk ways and pleasant look
quite disappeared, and in their stead came a slouching sort of manner,
and a lazy discontented expression. He was always grumbling and never
satisfied; and he went to bed early, and got up late, and did not seem
to know what to do with himself when he was up: and as for eating and
drinking, they were getting to be the chief business of his life. I
hope it isn't unkind to write all this, for how could I help seeing it?
Mother fretted sometimes about the change in him, though she dearly
liked being able to wear smart caps and dresses, and to show off before
the neighbours how much money we had. She and Mrs. Raikes got into a
sort of race, as it were, to see which should be the smartest. Each
wanted to have the best parlour and the gayest clothes. Father laughed
sometimes in a gruff sort of way, and said it was "folly," but he did
not check it.
So for many months things went pretty smoothly. I had a sort of
feeling, girl as I was, that all was not right: and yet I could
not have told why, or have said where the wrong lay. Money seemed
plentiful; or, if at times father ran short, he told us just to order
things at the shops, and "next week" he would "make all square." I used
to see mother getting all sorts of things for herself and Asaph and the
house, but she seldom took me with her to the shops, and I could not
tell what was paid for and what was not.
With the coming of autumn there seemed to come a dawning of trouble.
The last half of the winter before had been very mild and very dry—two
things not often seen together in an English winter—and we had not felt
the dampness of our new house so as to be really inconvenienced. But
this second winter came in quite differently. From very early autumn
we had heavy rains, and cold winds, and sharp frosts, taking turns one
with another. Water seemed to ooze in everywhere throughout the house,
and rooms were damp, and cold could not be kept out.
Mother was the first to suffer. She had a desperately bad cold, which
she could not shake off, and it came back again and again. She was
very low-spirited about herself, and she said the clamp of the house
was killing her. She wanted father to have workmen in to put it all to
rights. Father answered her quite roughly, and said he had no money
to waste on such rubbish. That was the first time I heard him talk of
being short of money.
Mother's cough grew worse, and the doctor had to be called in. He
thought her in a bad way, and he said so pretty plainly, to mother's
great terror. I don't know whether father would have taken warning then
or not, but all at once he had a chill himself, and bad rheumatism came
on in his back and arms, so sharp as well-nigh to cripple him for the
time.
Father had not thought so much of mother's cough, but he thought a good
deal of his own rheumatism, and he sent for the workmen in a hurry. A
pretty mess they made, and a long while they were, opening walls, and
pulling up flooring, and laying down pipes. And after all, the mischief
was not cured. The very week after we got rid of them we had a day of
pelting rain, and almost every wall in the house was running down again
with damp. Mother could not sleep at night for her cough, and father
was worse than before.
So the workmen came back, and I suppose they did their best; but the
best was not much. Father said it was a downright badly built house,
and he took to blaming mother for making him take it. Mother would
cry and defend herself, and there was quite a bickering. Father had
never been used to bicker in old days, but we had enough of it now. He
was so often vexed and peevish that we did not know what to do with
him—partly, perhaps, with the pain of his rheumatism, and partly with
having nothing to do.
Mother found that an extra glass of beer sometimes made him more
good-humoured for a little while, and she took to giving it him now and
then. It was not her way to see dangers ahead, and father was easily
persuaded. I did beg her not, but she said there was no harm, and she
would not listen to me. It grew to be quite a common thing, when he was
kept indoors by his rheumatism, to see him sitting with the tankard
by his side, between meals. Mother never seemed to think that she was
doing the Tempter's work. She just wanted to have things easy, and not
to have him scolding her.
Christmas came, and I found it hard to believe that only one year had
gone by since grannie's death. The time seemed so very much longer, and
the months between had been so dreary.
And yet they were not altogether dreary. For it had been with me as Mr.
Scott said,—the very fact that I had not grannie to look to had made me
look more to God. I suppose that if she had lived I should just have
gone on leaning upon her, instead of leaning upon God. I did feel this
Christmas that I had got on in the twelve months past,—that I seemed to
know Christ more as my own Saviour, and that I cared more for doing His
will, and that prayer was more of a needs-be in my life, or at least
that I had learnt it to be so, and that my Bible was more dear to me.
And it was not so hard, as once it had been, to keep from jealousy of
Asaph and from impatience with others.
So Christmas came and passed away, and after Christmas the weather
became fine and dry, and father and mother both seemed better in
health. Father sat less indoors with his ale beside him; but I was
afraid things were not really any more as they should have been. He
found his way to the public-house oftener than he had ever been used
to do; and sometimes he came home with a look in his face which I had
seen, and shrunk from, many a time in other men.