"Now I've gone through all the village, from end to end,
save and except one more house;
But I haven't come to that, and I hope I never shall,
and that's the village Poor House."
_T. Hood_.
Cottage visiting turned out to be a much chequered affair. One of the
first places to which the sisters made their way was the Widow Mole's.
They found it, rather beyond the church, down a lane, where it was
hidden behind an overgrown thorn hedge, and they would scarcely have
found it at all, if a three-year-old child had not been clattering an
old bit of metal against the bar put across to prevent his exit. He was
curly and clean, except with the day's surface dirt, but he only stared
stolidly at the question whether Mrs Mole lived there. A ten-year-old
girl came out, and answered the question.
"Yes, mother do live here, but her be out at work."
"Is that your grandfather?" as they caught sight of a very old man on a
chair by the door, in the sun.
"Yes, ma'am. Will you come in and see him?"
He was a very old man, with scanty white hair, but he was very clean,
and neatly dressed in a white smock, mended all over, but beautifully
worked over the breast and cuffs, and long leather buskins. He was very
civil, too. He took off his old straw hat, and rose slowly by the help
of his stout stick, though the first impulse of the visitors was to beg
him not to move. He did not hear them, but answered their gesture.
"I be so crippled up with the rheumatics, you see, ma'am," and he put
his knotted and contracted hand up to his ear.
Mrs Carbonel shouted into his ear that she was sorry for him. She
supposed his daughter was out at work.
"Yes, ma'am, with Farmer Goodenough--a charing to-day it is."
"Washing," screamed the little girl.
"She was off at five o'clock this morning," he went on. "She do work
hard, my daughter Bess, and she's a good one to me, and so is little Liz
here. Thank the Lord for them."
"And her husband is dead?"
"Yes, ma'am. Fell off a haystack three years ago, and never spoke no
more. We have always kept off the parish, ma'am. This bit of a cottage
was my poor wife's, and she do want to leave it to the boy; but she be
but frail, poor maid, and if she gave in, there'd be nothing for it but
to give up the place and go to the workhouse; and there's such a lot
there as I could not go and die among."
He spoke it to the sympathising faces, not as one begging, and they
found out that all was as he said. He had seen better days, and held
his head above the parish pay, and so had his son-in-law but the early
death of poor Mole, and the old man's crippled state, had thrown the
whole maintenance of the family on the poor young widow, who was really
working herself to death, while, repairs being impossible, the cottage
was almost falling down.
"Oh, what a place, and what a dear old man!" cried the ladies, as they
went out. "Well, we can do something here. I'll come and read to him
every week," exclaimed Dora.
"And I will knit him a warm jacket," said Mary, "and surely Edmund could
help them to prop up that wretched cottage."
"What a struggle their lives must have been, and so patient and good!
Where are we going now?"
"I believe that is the workhouse, behind the church," said Mary. "That
rough-tiled roof."
"It has a bend in the middle, like a broken back. I must sketch it,"
said Dora.
"Why, there's Edmund, getting over the churchyard stile."
"Ay, he can't keep long away from you, Madam Mary."
"Were you going to the workhouse?" said Captain Carbonel, coming up, and
offering an arm to each lady, as was the fashion in those days.
"We thought of it. All the poorest people are there, of course."
"And the worst," said the captain. "No, I will not have you go there.
It is not fit for you."
For besides that he was very particular about his ladies, and had no
notion of letting them go to all the varieties of evil where they could
hope to do good, like the ladies of our days, the workhouse was an
utterly different place from the strictly disciplined union houses of
the present Poor Law. Each parish had its own, and that of Uphill had
no master, no order, but was the refuge of all the disorderly,
disreputable people, who could not get houses, or pay their rent, who
lived in any kind of fashion, on parish pay and what they could get, and
were under no restraint.
While the captain was explaining to them what he had heard from Farmer
Goodenough, a sudden noise of shouting and laughing, with volleys of
evil words, was heard near the "Fox and Hounds."
"What is that?" asked Dora, of a tidy young woman coming her way.
"That's only the chaps at old Sam," she answered, as if it was an
ordinary sound. And on them exclaiming, she explained. "Samson
Sanderson, that's his name, sir. He be what they calls _non-compos_,
and the young fellows at the `Fox and Hounds' they have their fun out of
he. They do bait he shameful."
Violent shouts of foul words and riotous laughter could be distinguished
so plainly, that Captain Carbonel hastily thrust his wife and sister
into the nearest cottage, and marched into the group of rough men and
boys, who stood holloaing rude jokes, and laughing at the furious oaths
and abuse in intermittent gasps with which they were received.
"For shame!" his indignant voice broke in. "Are you not ashamed,
unmanly fellows, to treat a poor weak lad in this way?"
There was a moment's silence. Then a great hulking drover called out,
"Bless you, sir, he likes it."
"The more shame for you," exclaimed the captain, "to bait a poor
innocent lad with horrid blasphemy and profanity. I tell you every one
of you ought to be fined!"
The men began to sneak away from the indignant soldier. The poor idiot
burst out crying and howling, and the ostler came forward, pulling his
forelock, and saying, "You'll not be hard on 'em, sir. 'Tis all sport.
There, Sammy, don't be afeared. Gentleman means you no harm."
Captain Carbonel held out some coppers, saying, "There, my poor lad,
there's something for you. Only don't let me hear bad words again."
Sam muttered something, and pulled his ragged hat forward as he shambled
off into some back settlements of the public-house, while the ostler
went on--
"'Tis just their game, sir! None of 'em would hurt poor Sam! They'd
treat him the next minute, sir. All in sport."
"Strange sport," said the captain, "to teach a poor helpless lad, who
ought to be as innocent as a babe, that abominable blasphemy."
"He don't mean nought, sir! All's one to he!"
"All the worse in those who do know better, I tell you; and you may tell
your master that, if this goes on, I shall certainly speak to the
magistrates."
There was no need to tell the landlord, Mr Oldfellow. The captain was
plainly enough to be heard through the window of the bar. The drovers
had no notion that their amusement was sinful, for "it didn't hurt no
one," and, in fact, "getting a rise" out of Softy Sam was one of the
great attractions of the "Fox and Hounds," so that Mr Oldfellow was of
the same mind as Dan Hewlett, who declared that "they Gobblealls was
plaguey toads of Methodys, and wasn't to think to bully them about like
his soldiers."
They had another drink all round to recover from their fright, when they
treated Softy Sam, but took care not to excite him to be noisy, while
the captain might be within earshot.
The two ladies had meanwhile taken refuge in what proved to be no other
than Mrs Daniel Hewlett's house, a better one, and less scantily
provided with furniture, than the widow Mole's, but much less clean and
neat. The door stood open, and there was a tub full of soap-suds
within. The captain gave a low whistle to intimate his presence, and
stood at the entrance. Unwashed dinner things were on a round table, a
dresser in confusion against the wall, on another _Moore's Almanack_ for
some years past, full of frightful catastrophes, mixed with little,
French, highly-coloured pictures of the Blessed Virgin.
His wife and her sister were seated, the one on a whole straw chair, the
other on a rickety one, conversing with a very neat, pale, and
pleasant-looking invalid young woman, evidently little able to rise from
her wooden armchair. Molly Hewlett, in a coarse apron, and a cap far
back amid the rusty black tangles of her hair, her arms just out of the
wash-tub, was in the midst of a voluble discourse, into which the ladies
would not break.
"You see, ma'am, she was in a right good situation, but she was always
unlucky, and she had the misfortune to fall down the attic stairs with
the baby in her arms."
"The baby was not hurt," put in the invalid.
"Not it, the little toad, but 'twas saving he as ricked her back
somehow, and made her a cripple for life, as you see, ma'am; and she was
six months in the hospital, till the doctor, he say as how he couldn't
do nothing more for her, so Hewlett and me we took her in, as she is my
own sister, you see, and we couldn't let her go to the workhouse, but
she do want a little broth or a few extrys now and then, ma'am, more
than we poor folks can give her."
"My mistress is very good, and gives me a little pension," put in the
invalid, while her sister looked daggers at her, and Mrs Carbonel, in
obedience to her husband's signal, took a hasty leave.
"There now! That's the way of you, Judith," cried Molly Hewlett,
banging the door behind them. "What should you go for to tell the
ladies of that pitiful pay of yours but to spile all chance of their
helping us, nasty, mean skin-flints as they be!"
"I couldn't go for to deceive them," humbly replied Judith, meek, but
cowering under the coming storm.
"Who asked you to deceive? Only to hold your tongue for your own good,
and mine and my poor children's, that you just live upon. As if your
trumpery pay was worth your board and all the trouble I has with you
night and day, but you must come in and hinder these new folk from
coming down liberal with your Methody ways and your pride! That's it,
your pride, ma'am. Oh, I'm an unhappy woman, between you and Dan! I
am!"
Molly sank into a chair, put her apron over her face and cried, rocking
herself to and fro, while Judith, with tears in her eyes, tried gentle
consolations all in vain, till Molly remembered her washing, and rose
up, moaning and lamenting.
Meantime Mrs Carbonel and her sister were exclaiming in pity that this
was a dear good girl, though Edmund shook his head over her
surroundings.
"I wonder how to make her more comfortable," said Dora. "She seemed so
much pleased when I promised to bring her something to read."
"I am afraid those Hewletts prey on her," said Mary.
"And patronising her will prove a complicated affair!" said the captain.
He wanted them to come home at once, but on the way they met Nanny
Barton, who began, with low curtsies, a lamentable story about her girls
having no clothes, and she would certainly have extracted a shilling
from Miss Carbonel if the captain had not been there.
"Never accept stories told on the spur of the moment," he said.
Then Betsy Seddon and Tirzah Todd came along together, bending under
heavy loads of broken branches for their fires. Tirzah smiled as usual,
and showed her pretty teeth, but the captain looked after her, and said,
"They have been tearing Mr Selby's woods to pieces."
"What can they do for firewood?" said his wife.
"Let us look out the rules of your father's coal store and shoe club,"
he said.