NURSE BUNDLE FINDS A VOCATION--RAGGED ROBIN'S WIFE--MRS. BUNDLE'S
IDEAS ON HUSBANDS AND PUBLIC-HOUSES
I was very happy under Mr. Clerke's sway, and yet I was glad to go to
school.
The tutor himself, who had been "on the foundation" at Eton, had
helped to fill me with anticipations of public-school life. It was
decided that I also should go to Eton, but as an oppidan, and becoming
already a partisan of my own part of the school, I often now disputed
conclusions or questioned facts in my tutor's school anecdotes, which
commonly tended to the sole glorification of the "collegers."
I must not omit to mention an interview that about this period took
place between my father and Mrs. Bundle. It was one morning just after
the Eton matter had been settled, that my nurse presented herself in
my father's library, her face fatter and redder than usual from being
swollen and inflamed by weeping.
"Well?" said my father, looking up pleasantly from his accounts. But
he added hastily, "Why, bless me, Mrs. Bundle, what is the matter?"
"Asking your pardon for troubling you, sir," Nurse Bundle began in a
choky voice, "but as you made no mention of it yourself, sir, your
kindness being what it is, and the young gentleman as good as gone to
school, and me eating the bread of idleness ever since that tutor
come, I wished to know, sir, when you thought of giving me notice."
"Give you notice to do what?" asked my father.
"To leave your service, sir," said Mrs. Bundle, steadily. "There's no
nurse wanted in this establishment now, sir."
My father laid one hand on Mrs. Bundle's shoulder, and with the other
he drew forward a miniature of my mother which always hung on a
standing frame on the writing-table.
"It is like yourself to be so scrupulous," he said; "but you will
never again speak of leaving us, Mrs. Bundle. Please, for her sake,"
added my father, his own voice faltering as he looked towards the
miniature. As for Nurse Bundle, her tears utterly forbade her to get
out a word.
"If you have too much to do," my father went on, "let a young girl be
got to relieve you of any work that troubles you; or, if you very much
wish for a home to yourself, I have no right to refuse that, though I
wish you could be happy under my roof, and I will see about one of
those cottages near the gate. But you will not desert me--and
Reginald--after so many years."
"The day I do leave will be the breaking of my heart," sobbed Nurse
Bundle, "and if there was any ways in which I could be useful--but
take wages for nothing, I could not, sir."
"Mrs. Bundle," said my father, "if your wages were a matter of any
importance to me, if I could not afford even to pay you for your work,
I should still ask you to share my home, with such comforts as I had
to offer, and to help me so far as you could, for the sake of the
past. I must always be under an obligation to you which I can never
repay," added my father, in his rather elaborate style. "And as to
being useful, well, ahem, if you will kindly continue to superintend
and repair my linen and Master Reginald's ----"
"Why, bless your innocence, sir, and meaning no disrespect," said Mrs.
Bundle, "but there ain't no mending in _your_ linen. There was some
darning in the tutor's socks, but you give away half-a-dozen pair last
Monday, sir, as hadn't a darn in 'em no bigger than a pea."
I think it was the allusion to "giving away" that suggested an idea to
my father in his perplexity for employing Nurse Bundle.
"Stay," he exclaimed, "Mrs. Bundle, there is a way in which you could
be of the greatest service to me. I often feel that the loss of a lady
at the head of my household must be especially felt among the poor
people around us--additionally so, as Mr. Andrewes is not married, and
there is no lady either at the Rectory or here to visit the sick and
encourage the mothers and children. I fear that when I do anything for
them it is often in a wrong way, or for wrong objects."
"Well, sir," said Mrs. Bundle, an old grievance rushing to her mind,
"I had thought myself of making so bold as to speak to you about that
there Tommy Masden as you give half-crowns to, as tells you one big
lie on the top of another, and his father drinks every penny he earns,
and his mother at the back-door all along for scraps, and throwed the
Christmas soup to the pig, and said they wasn't come to the workus
yet; and a coat as good as new of yours, sir, hanging out of the door
of the pawnshop, and giving me such a turn I thought my legs would
never have carried me home, till I found you'd given it to that Tommy,
who won't do a hand's turn for sixpence, but begs at every house in
the parish every week as comes round, and tells everybody, as he tells
yourself, sir, that he never gets nothing from nobody."
"Well, well," said my father, laughing, "you see how I want somebody
to look out the real cases of distress and deserving poverty. Of
course, I must speak to Mr. Andrewes first, Mrs. Bundle, but I am sure
he will be as glad as myself that you should do what we have neither
of us a wife to undertake."
I know Nurse Bundle was only too glad to reconcile her honest
conscience to staying at Dacrefield; and I think the allusion to the
lack of a lady head to our household decided her at all risks to
remove that reason for a second Mrs. Dacre. Moreover, the duties
proposed for her suited her tastes to a shade.
Mr. Andrewes was delighted. And thus it came about that, though my
father would have been horrified at the idea of employing a Sister of
Mercy, and though Bible-woman and district visitor were names not
familiar in our simple parochial machinery, Mrs. Bundle did the work
of all three to the great benefit of our poor neighbours.
Not, however, to the satisfaction of those who had hitherto leant most
upon the charity of the Hall. A certain picturesquely tattered man,
living at some distance from the village, who was in the habit of
waylaying my father at certain points on the estate, with well-timed
agricultural remarks and a cunning affectation of half-wittedness and
good-humour, got henceforward no half-crowns for his pains.
"Mrs. Bundle has knocked off all my pensioners," my father would
laughingly complain. But he was quite willing that the half-crowns
should now be taken direct to the man's wife and children, instead of
passing from his hands to the public-house. "Though really the good
woman--for I understand she is a most excellent person--is singularly
hard-favoured," my father added, "and looks more as if she thrashed
old Ragged Robin than as if he beat her, as I hear he does."
"Nothing inside, and the poker outside, makes a many women as they've
no wish to sit for their picter," said Mrs. Bundle, severely, in reply
to some remark of mine, reflecting, like my father's, on the said
woman's appearance. "And when a woman has children, and their father
brings home nothing but kicks and bad language, in all reason if it
isn't the death or the ruin of her, it makes her as she 'asn't much
time nor spirits to spare for dropping curtseys and telling long tales
like some people as is always scrap-seeking at gentry's back-doors.
But I knows a clean place when I takes it unawares, and clothes with
more patch than stuff, and all the colour washed out of them, and
bruises hid, and a bad husband made the best of, and children as knows
how to behave themselves."
The warmth of Mrs. Bundle's feelings only prompted me to tease her;
and it was chiefly for "the fun of working her up" that I said--
"Ah, but, Nurse, you know we heard she went after him one night to the
public-house, and made a row before everybody. I don't mean he ought
to go to the public-house, but still, I'm sure if I'd a wife who came
and hunted me up when she thought I ought to be indoors, I'd--well,
I'd try and teach her to stay at home. Besides, women ought to be
gentle, and perhaps if she were sweeter-tempered with him, he'd be
kinder to her."
"Do you know what she went for, Master Reginald?" said Nurse Bundle.
"Not a halfpenny does he give her to feed the children with, and
everything in that house that's got she gets by washing. And the rich
folk she washed for kept her waiting for her money--more shame to 'em;
there was weeks run on, and she borrowed a bit, and pawned a bit, and
when she went the day they said they'd pay her, he'd been before and
drawed the money, and was drinking it up when she went to see if she
could get any, and then laughed at her, and sent her back to the
children as was starving, and the neighbour she'd borrowed of as
called her a thief and threatened to have her up. Gentle! why, bless
your innocence, who ever knowed gentleness do good to a drunkard? She
should have stood up to him sooner, and he'd never have got so bad.
She's kept his brute ways to herself and made his home comfortable
with her own earnings, till he thinks he may do anything and never
bring in nothing. She did lay out some of his behaviour before him
that day, and he beat her for it afterwards. But if it had been me,
Master Reginald, I'd have had money to feed them children, or I'd have
fought him while I'd a bit of breath in my body."
And with all my respect for Nurse Bundle, I am bound to say that I
think she would have been as good as her word.
"Go to your tutor, my dear," she continued, "and talk Latin and Greek
and such like, as you knows about; but don't talk rubbish about
pretty looks and ways for a woman as is tied to a drunkard, for I
can't abear it. I seed enough of husbands and public-houses in my
young days to keep me a single woman and my own missis. Not but what
I've had my feelings like other folk, and plenty of offers, besides a
young cabinet-maker as had high wages and the beautifullest complexion
you ever saw. But he was overfond of company; so I went to service,
and cried myself to sleep every night for three months; and when next
I see him he was staggering along the street, and I says, 'I'm sorry
to see you like this, William,' and he says, 'It's your doing, Mary;
your No's drove me to the glass.' And I says, 'Then it's best as it
is. If one No drove you to the glass, you and married life wouldn't
suit, for there's plenty of Noes there.' So I left him wiping his
eyes, for he always cried when he was in beer. And I says to myself,
'I'll go back to place, where I knows what I'm working for, and can
leave it if we don't suit.' And it was always the same, my dear. If it
was a nice-looking footman, he'd have his evening out and come home
fresh; and if it was an elderly butler as had put a little by, he
wanted to set up in the public line. So I kept myself to myself, my
dear, for I'm short-tempered at the best, and could never put up with
the abuse of a man in liquor."
I was so thoroughly converted to the side of Ragged Robin's wife, that
I at once pressed some of my charity money on Mrs. Bundle for her
benefit; but I tried to dispute my nurse's unfavourable view of
husbands by instancing her worthy brother-in-law at Oakford.
"Ah, yes, Buckle," said Mrs. Bundle, in a tone which seemed to do
less justice to the saddler's good qualities than they deserved. "He's
a good, soft, easy body, is Buckle."
Whence I concluded that Mrs. Bundle, like some other ladies, was not
altogether easy to please.
I think it was during our last walk through the village before Mr.
Clerke left us, that he and I called on Ragged Robin's wife. She was
thankful, but not communicative, and the eyes, deep set in her bony
and discoloured face, seemed to have lost the power of lighting up
with hope.
"My dear Regie," said Mr. Clerke, as we turned homewards, "I never saw
anything more pitiable than the look in that woman's eyes; and the
tone in which she said, 'There be a better world afore us all,
sir--I'll be well off then,' when I said I hoped she'd be better off
and happier now, quite went to my heart. I'm afraid she never will
have much comfort in this world, unless she outlives her lord and
master. Do you know, Regie, she reminds me very much of an ill-treated
donkey; her bones look so battered, and there's a sort of stubborn
hopelessness about her like some poor Neddy who is thwacked and tugged
this way and that, work he never so hard. Poor thing, she may well
look forward to Heaven," added my tutor, whose kind heart was very
sore on this subject, "and it's a blessed thought how it will make up,
even for such a life here!"
"What will make it up to the donkeys?" I asked, taking Mr. Clerke at a
disadvantage on that standing subject of dispute between us--a "better
world" for beasts.
But my tutor only said, "My dear Regie, you _do_ say _the_ most
_sin_gular things!" which, as I pointed out, was no argument, one way
or another.
Meanwhile, through Mrs. Bundle, we did our best for Robin's wife and
certain other ill-treated women about the place. Mrs. Bundle could be
very severe on the dirt and discomfort which "drove some men to the
public as would stay at home if there was a clean kitchen to stay in,
and less of that nagging at a man and screaming after children as
never made a decent husband nor a well-behaved child yet." Yet in
certain cases of undeserved brutality, like Robin's, I fear she
sometimes counselled resistance, on the principle that it "couldn't
make him do worse, and might make him do better."
I am sure that my father had never thought of Mrs. Bundle acting as
sick nurse in the village; but matters seemed to develop of
themselves. She was so experienced and capable that she could hardly
fail to smoothe the disordered bed-clothes, open the window, clear the
room of the shiftless gossips who flocked like ravens to predict
death, and take the control of mismanaged sick-rooms. It came to be a
common thing that some wan child should present itself at our door
with the message that "Missis Bundle she wants her things, for as
mother be so bad, she says she'll see her over the night."
As for herself, I doubt if she had ever been happier in her life. Her
conscience was at ease, for she certainly worked hard enough for her
wages, and it was good to see the glow of pleasure that an
oft-repeated remark of my father's never failed to bring over her
honest face.
"Don't overwork yourself, Mrs. Bundle. What should we do if you were
laid up?"