CHAPTER VIII.
Mrs. Boyce wrote her note to Miss Raeburn, a note containing cold thoughcivil excuses as to herself, while accepting the invitation forMarcella, who should be sent to the Court, either in the carriage orunder the escort of a maid who could bring her back. Marcella found hermother inclined to insist punctiliously on conventions of this kind. Itamused her, in submitting to them, to remember the free and easy ways ofher London life. But she submitted--and not unwillingly.
On the afternoon of the day which intervened between the Maxwells' calland her introduction to the Court, Marcella walked as usual down to thevillage. She was teeming with plans for her new kingdom, and could notkeep herself out of it. And an entry in one of the local papers hadsuggested to her that Hurd might possibly find work in a parish somemiles from Mellor. She must go and send him off there.
When Mrs. Hurd opened the door to her, Marcella was astonished toperceive behind her the forms of several other persons filling up thenarrow space of the usually solitary cottage--in fact, a tea-party.
"Oh, come in, miss," said Mrs. Hurd, with some embarrassment, as thoughit occurred to her that her visitor might legitimately wonder to find aperson of her penury entertaining company. Then, lowering her voice,she hurriedly explained: "There's Mrs. Brunt come in this afternoon tohelp me wi' the washin' while I finished my score of plait for the womanwho takes 'em into town to-morrow. And there's old Patton an' hiswife--you know 'em, miss?--them as lives in the parish houses top o' thecommon. He's walked out a few steps to-day. It's not often he's able,and when I see him through the door I said to 'em, 'if you'll come inan' take a cheer, I dessay them tea-leaves 'ull stan' another wettin'. Ihaven't got nothink else.' And there's Mrs. Jellison, she came in alongo' the Pattons. You can't say her no, she's a queer one. Do you knowher, miss?"
"Oh, bless yer, yes, yes. She knows me!" said a high, jocular voice,making Mrs. Hurd start; "she couldn't be long hereabouts without makkin'eeaste to know me. You coom in, miss. We're not afraid o' you--Lor'bless you!"
Mrs. Hurd stood aside for her visitor to pass in, looking round her thewhile, in some perplexity, to see whether there was a spare chair androom to place it. She was a delicate, willowy woman, still young infigure, with a fresh colour, belied by the grey circles under the eyesand the pinched sharpness of the features. The upper lip, which waspretty and childish, was raised a little over the teeth; the wholeexpression of the slightly open mouth was unusually soft and sensitive.On the whole, Minta Hurd was liked in the village, though she wasthought a trifle "fine." The whole family, indeed, "kept theirsels totheirsels," and to find Mrs. Hurd with company was unusual. Her name,of course, was short for Araminta.
Marcella laughed as she caught Mrs. Jellison's remarks, and made her wayin, delighted. For the present, these village people affected her likefigures in poetry or drama. She saw them with the eye of the imaginationthrough a medium provided by Socialist discussion, or by certain phasesof modern art; and the little scene of Mrs. Hurd's tea-party took forher in an instant the dramatic zest and glamour.
"Look here, Mrs. Jellison," she said, going up to her; "I was just goingto leave these apples for your grandson. Perhaps you'll take them, nowyou're here. They're quite sweet, though they look green. They're thebest we've got, the gardener says."
"Oh, they are, are they?" said Mrs. Jellison, composedly, looking up ather. "Well, put 'em down, miss. I dare say he'll eat 'em. He eats mostthings, and don't want no doctor's stuff nayther, though his mother dokeep on at me for spoilin' his stummuck."
"You are just fond of that boy, aren't you, Mrs. Jellison?" saidMarcella, taking a wooden stool, the only piece of furniture left in thetiny cottage on which it was possible to sit, and squeezing herself intoa corner by the fire, whence she commanded the whole group. "No! don'tyou turn Mr. Patton out of that chair, Mrs. Hurd, or I shall have to goaway."
For Mrs. Hurd, in her anxiety, was whispering in old Patton's ear thatit might be well for him to give up her one wooden arm-chair, in whichhe was established, to Miss Boyce. But he, being old, deaf, andrheumatic, was slow to move, and Marcella's peremptory gesture bade herleave him in peace.
"Well, it's you that's the young 'un, ain't it, miss?" said Mrs.Jellison, cheerfully. "Poor old Patton, he do get slow on his legs,don't you, Patton? But there, there's no helping it when you're turnedof eighty."
And she turned upon him a bright, philosophic eye, being herself a youngthing not much over seventy, and energetic accordingly. Mrs. Jellisonpassed for the village wit, and was at least talkative and excitablebeyond her fellows.
"Well, _you_ don't seem to mind getting old, Mrs. Jellison," saidMarcella, smiling at her.
The eyes of all the old people round their tea-table were by now drawnirresistibly to Miss Boyce in the chimney corner, to her slim grace, andthe splendour of her large black hat and feathers. The new squire'sdaughter had so far taken them by surprise. Some of them, however, wereby now in the second stage of critical observation--none the lesscritical because furtive and inarticulate.
"Ah?" said Mrs. Jellison, interrogatively, with a high, long-drawn notepeculiar to her. "Well, I've never found you get forrarder wi' snarlin'over what you can't help. And there's mercies. When you've had a husbandin his bed for fower year, miss, and he's took at last, you'll _know_."
She nodded emphatically. Marcella laughed.
"I know you were very fond of him, Mrs. Jellison, and looked after himvery well, too."
"Oh, I don't say nothin' about that," said Mrs. Jellison, hastily. "Butall the same you kin reckon it up, and see for yoursen. Fower year--an'fire upstairs, an' fire downstairs, an' fire all night, an' soomthin'allus wanted. An' he such an objeck afore he died! It do seem like aholiday now to sit a bit."
And she crossed her hands on her lap with a long breath of content. Alock of grey hair had escaped from her bonnet, across her wrinkledforehead, and gave her a half-careless rakish air. Her youth of longago--a youth of mad spirits, and of an extraordinary capacity forphysical enjoyment, seemed at times to pierce to the surface again, eventhrough her load of years. But in general she had a dreamy, sunny look,as of one fed with humorous fancies, but disinclined often to thetrouble of communicating them.
"Well, I missed my daughter, I kin tell you," said Mrs. Brunt, with asigh, "though she took a deal more lookin' after nor your good man, Mrs.Jellison."
Mrs. Brunt was a gentle, pretty old woman, who lived in another of thevillage almshouses, next door to the Pattons, and was always ready tohelp her neighbours in their domestic toils. Her last remainingdaughter, the victim of a horrible spinal disease, had died some nine orten months before the Boyces arrived at Mellor. Marcella had alreadyheard the story several times, but it was part of her social gift thatshe was a good listener to such things even at the twentieth hearing.
"You wouldn't have her back though," she said gently, turning towardsthe speaker.
"No, I wouldn't have her back, miss," said Mrs. Brunt, raising her handto brush away a tear, partly the result of feeling, partly of along-established habit. "But I do miss her nights terrible! 'Mother,ain't it ten o'clock?--mother, look at the clock, do, mother--ain't ittime for my stuff, mother--oh, I do _hope_ it is.' That was her stuff,miss, to make her sleep. And when she'd got it, she'd _groan_--you'dthink she couldn't be asleep, and yet she was, dead-like--for two hours.I didn't get no rest with her, and now I don't seem to get no restwithout her."
And again Mrs. Brunt put her hand up to her eyes.
"Ah, you were allus one for toilin' an' frettin'," said Mrs. Jellison,calmly. "A body must get through wi' it when it's there, but I don'thold wi' thinkin' about it when it's done."
"I know one," said old Patton, slily, "that fretted about _her_ darterwhen it didn't do her no good."
He had not spoken so far, but had sat with his hands on his stick, aspectator of the women's humours. He was a little hunched man, twistedand bent double with rheumatic gout, the fruit of seventy years of fieldwork. His small face was almost lost, dog-l
ike, under shaggy hair andovergrown eyebrows, both snow-white. He had a look of irritableeagerness, seldom, however, expressed in words. A sudden passion in thefaded blue eyes; a quick spot of red in his old cheeks; these Marcellahad often noticed in him, as though the flame of some inner furnaceleapt. He had been a Radical and a rebel once in old rick-burning days,long before he lost the power in his limbs and came down to be thankfulfor one of the parish almshouses. To his social betters he was now aquiet and peaceable old man, well aware of the cakes and ale to be gotby good manners; but in the depths of him there were reminiscences andthe ghosts of passions, which were still stirred sometimes by causes notalways intelligible to the bystander.
He had rarely, however, physical energy enough to bring anyemotion--even of mere worry at his physical ills--to the birth. Thepathetic silence of age enwrapped him more and more. Still he could gibethe women sometimes, especially Mrs. Jellison, who was in general tooclever for her company.
"Oh, you may talk, Patton!" said Mrs. Jellison, with a little flash ofexcitement. "You do like to have your talk, don't you! Well, I dare sayI _was_ orkard with Isabella. I won't go for to say I _wasn't_ orkard,for I _was_. She should ha' used me to 't before, if she wor took thatway. She and I had just settled down comfortable after my old man went,and I didn't see no sense in it, an' I don't now. She might ha' let themen alone. She'd seen enough o' the worrit ov 'em."
"Well, she did well for hersen," said Mrs. Brunt, with the same gentlemelancholy. "She married a stiddy man as 'ull keep her well all hertime, and never let her want for nothink."
"A sour, wooden-faced chap as iver I knew," said Mrs. Jellison,grudgingly. "I don't have nothink to say to him, nor he to me. He thinkshissen the Grand Turk, he do, since they gi'en him his uniform, and madehim full keeper. A nassty, domineerin' sort, I calls him. He's allusmakin' bad blood wi' the yoong fellers when he don't need. It's the wayhe's got wi' 'im. But _I_ don't make no account of 'im, an' I let 'imsee 't."
All the tea-party grinned except Mrs. Hurd. The village was wellacquainted with the feud between Mrs. Jellison and her son-in-law,George Westall, who had persuaded Isabella Jellison at the mature age ofthirty-five to leave her mother and marry him, and was now one of LordMaxwell's keepers, with good pay, and an excellent cottage some littleway out of the village. Mrs. Jellison had never forgiven her daughterfor deserting her, and was on lively terms of hostility with herson-in-law; but their only child, little Johnnie, had found the softspot in his grandmother, and her favourite excitement in life, now thathe was four years old, was to steal him from his parents and feed him onthe things of which Isabella most vigorously disapproved.
Mrs. Hurd, as has been said, did not smile. At the mention of Westall,she got up hastily, and began to put away the tea things.
Marcella meanwhile had been sitting thoughtful.
"You say Westall makes bad blood with the young men, Mrs. Jellison?" shesaid, looking up. "Is there much poaching in this village now, do youthink?"
There was a dead silence. Mrs. Hurd was at the other end of the cottagewith her back to Marcella; at the question, her hands paused an instantin their work. The eyes of all the old people--of Patton and his wife,of Mrs. Jellison, and pretty Mrs. Brunt--were fixed on the speaker, butnobody said a word, not even Mrs. Jellison. Marcella coloured.
"Oh, you needn't suppose--" she said, throwing her beautiful head back,"you needn't suppose that _I_ care about the game, or that I would everbe mean enough to tell anything that was told me. I know it _does_cause a great deal of quarrelling and bad blood. I believe it doeshere--and I should like to know more about it. I want to make up my mindwhat to think. Of course, my father has got his land and his ownopinions. And Lord Maxwell has too. But I am not bound to think likeeither of them--I should like you to understand that. It seems to meright about all such things that people should enquire and find out forthemselves."
Still silence. Mrs. Jellison's mouth twitched, and she threw a slyprovocative glance at old Patton, as though she would have liked to pokehim in the ribs. But she was not going to help him out; and at last theone male in the company found himself obliged to clear his throat forreply.
"We're old folks, most on us, miss, 'cept Mrs. Hurd. We don't hear talko' things now like as we did when we were younger. If you ast Mr. Hardenhe'll tell you, I dessay."
Patton allowed himself an inward chuckle. Even Mrs. Jellison, hethought, must admit that he knew a thing or two as to the best way ofdealing with the gentry.
But Marcella fixed him with her bright frank eyes.
"I had rather ask in the village," she said. "If you don't know how itis now, Mr. Patton, tell me how it used to be when you were young. Wasthe preserving very strict about here? Were there often fights, with thekeepers--long ago?--in my grandfather's days?--and do you think menpoached because they were hungry, or because they wanted sport?"
Patton looked at her fixedly a moment undecided, then her strongnervous youth seemed to exercise a kind of compulsion on him; perhaps,too, the pretty courtesy of her manner. He cleared his throat again, andtried to forget Mrs. Jellison, who would be sure to let him hear of itagain, whatever he said.
"Well, I can't answer for 'em, miss, I'm sure, but if you ast _me_, Ib'lieve ther's a bit o' boath in it. Yer see it's not in human natur,when a man's young and 's got his blood up, as he shouldn't want terhave 'is sport with the wild creeturs. Perhaps he see 'em when ee'sgoing to the wood with a wood cart--or he cooms across 'em in theturnips--wounded birds, you understan', miss, perhaps the day after thegentry 'as been bangin' at 'em all day. An' ee don't see, not for thelife of 'im, why ee shouldn't have 'em. Ther's bin lots an' lots for therich folks, an' he don't see why _ee_ shouldn't have a few arter they'veenjoyed theirselves. And mebbe he's eleven shillin' a week--an'two-threy little chillen--you understan', miss?"
"Of course I understand!" said Marcella, eagerly, her dark cheekflushing. "Of course I do! But there's a good deal of game given away inthese parts, isn't there? I know Lord Maxwell does, and they say LordWinterbourne gives all his labourers rabbits, almost as many as theywant."
Her questions wound old Patton up as though he had been a disused clock.He began to feel a whirr among his creaking wheels, a shaking of all hisrusty mind.
"Perhaps they do, miss," he said, and his wife saw that he was beginningto tremble. "I dessay they do--I don't say nothink agen it--thoughtheer's none of it cooms my way. But that isn't all the rights on itnayther--no, that it ain't. The labourin' man ee's glad enough to get ahare or a rabbit for 'is eatin'--but there's more in it nor that, miss.Ee's allus in the fields, that's where it is--ee can't help seein' thehares and the rabbits a-comin' in and out o' the woods, if it were iverso. Ee knows ivery run ov ivery one on 'em; if a hare's started furthestcorner o' t' field, he can tell yer whar she'll git in by, because he'sallus there, you see, miss, an' it's the only thing he's got to take hismind off like. And then he sets a snare or two--an' ee gits very sharpat settin' on 'em--an' ee'll go out nights for the sport of it. Therisn't many things _ee's_ got to liven him up; an' ee takes 'is chanceso' goin' to jail--it's wuth it, ee thinks."
The old man's hands on his stick shook more and more visibly. Bygones ofhis youth had come back to him.
"Oh, I know! I know!" cried Marcella, with an accent half ofindignation, half of despair. "It's the whole wretched system. It spoilsthose who've got, and those who haven't got. And there'll be no mendingit till the _people_ get the land back again, and till the rights on itare common to all."
"My! she do speak up, don't she?" said Mrs. Jellison, grinning again ather companions. Then, stooping forward with one of her wild movements,she caught Marcella's arm--"I'd like to hear yer tell that to LordMaxwell, miss. I likes a roompus, I do."
Marcella flushed and laughed.
"I wouldn't mind saying that or anything else to Lord Maxwell," she saidproudly. "I'm not ashamed of anything I think."
"No, I'll bet you ain't," said Mrs. Jellison, withdrawing her hand. "Nowthen, Patton, you say what _you
_ thinks. You ain't got no vote nowyou're in the parish houses--I minds that. The quality don't trouble_you_ at 'lection times. This yoong man, Muster Wharton, as is goin'round so free, promisin' yer the sun out o' the sky, iv yer'll only votefor 'im, so th' men say--_ee_ don't coom an' set down along o' you an'me, an' cocker of us up as ee do Joe Simmons or Jim Hurd here. But thatdon't matter. Yur thinkin's yur own, anyway."
But she nudged him in vain. Patton had suddenly run down, and there wasno more to be got out of him.
Not only had nerves and speech failed him as they were wont, but in hiscloudy soul there had risen, even while Marcella was speaking, theinevitable suspicion which dogs the relations of the poor towards thericher class. This young lady, with her strange talk, was the newsquire's daughter. And the village had already made up its mind thatRichard Boyce was "a poor sort," and "a hard sort" too, in his landlordcapacity. He wasn't going to be any improvement on his brother--not ahaporth! What was the good of this young woman talking, as she did, whenthere were three summonses as he, Patton, heard tell, just taken out bythe sanitary inspector against Mr. Boyce for bad cottages? And not afarthing given away in the village neither, except perhaps the bits offood that the young lady herself brought down to the village now andthen, for which no one, in truth, felt any cause to be particularlygrateful. Besides, what did she mean by asking questions about thepoaching? Old Patton knew as well as anybody else in the village, thatduring Robert Boyce's last days, and after the death of his sportsmanson, the Mellor estate had become the haunt of poachers from far andnear, and that the trouble had long since spread into the neighbouringproperties, so that the Winterbourne and Maxwell keepers regarded ittheir most arduous business to keep watch on the men of Mellor. Ofcourse the young woman knew it all, and she and her father wanted toknow more. That was why she talked. Patton hardened himself against thecreeping ways of the quality.
"I don't think nought," he said roughly in answer to Mrs. Jellison."Thinkin' won't come atwixt me and the parish coffin when I'm took. I'veno call to think, I tell yer."
Marcella's chest heaved with indignant feeling.
"Oh, but, Mr. Patton!" she cried, leaning forward to him, "won't itcomfort you a bit, even if you can't live to see it, to think there's abetter time coming? There must be. People can't go on like thisalways--hating each other and trampling on each other. They're beginningto see it now, they are! When I was living in London, the persons I waswith talked and thought of it all day. Some day, whenever the peoplechoose--for they've got the power now they've got the vote--there'll beland for everybody, and in every village there'll be a council tomanage things, and the labourer will count for just as much as thesquire and the parson, and he'll be better educated and better fed, andcare for many things he doesn't care for now. But all the same, if hewants sport and shooting, it will be there for him to get. For everybodywill have a chance and a turn, and there'll be no bitterness betweenclasses, and no hopeless pining and misery as there is now!"
The girl broke off, catching her breath. It excited her to say thesethings to these people, to these poor tottering old things who had livedout their lives to the end under the pressure of an iron system, and hadno lien on the future, whatever Paradise it might bring. Again thesituation had something foreseen and dramatic in it. She saw herself, asthe preacher, sitting on her stool beside the poor grate--she realisedas a spectator the figures of the women and the old man played on by thefirelight--the white, bare, damp-stained walls of the cottage, and inthe background the fragile though still comely form of Minta Hurd, whowas standing with her back to the dresser, and her head bent forward,listening to the talk while her fingers twisted the straw she plaitedeternally from morning till night, for a wage of about 1s. 3d. a week:
Her mind was all aflame with excitement and defiance--defiance of herfather, Lord Maxwell, Aldous Raeburn. Let him come, her friend, and seefor himself what she thought it right to do and say in this miserablevillage. Her soul challenged him, longed to provoke him! Well, she wassoon to meet him, and in a new and more significant relation andenvironment. The fact made her perception of the whole situation themore rich and vibrant.
Patton, while these broken thoughts and sensations were coursing throughMarcella's head, was slowly revolving what she had been saying, and theothers were waiting for him.
At last he rolled his tongue round his dry lips and delivered himself bya final effort.
"Them as likes, miss, may believe as how things are going to happen thatway, but yer won't ketch me! Them as have got 'ull _keep_"--he let hisstick sharply down on the floor--"an' them as 'aven't got 'ull 'ave togo without and _lump it_--as long as you're alive, miss, you mark mywords!"
"Oh, Lor', you wor allus one for makin' a poor mouth, Patton!" said Mrs.Jellison. She had been sitting with her arms folded across her chest,part absent, part amused, part malicious. "The young lady speaksbeautiful, just like a book she do. An' she's likely to know a dealbetter nor poor persons like you and me. All _I_ kin say is,--if there'sgoin' to be dividin' up of other folks' property, when I'm gone, I hopeGeorge Westall won't get nothink ov it! He's bad enough as 'tis.Isabella 'ud have a fine time if _ee_ took to drivin' ov his carriage."
The others laughed out, Marcella at their head, and Mrs. Jellisonsubsided, the corners of her mouth still twitching, and her eyes shiningas though a host of entertaining notions were trooping throughher--which, however, she preferred to amuse herself with rather than thepublic. Marcella looked at Patton thoughtfully.
"You've been all your life in this village, haven't you, Mr. Patton?"she asked him.
"Born top o' Witchett's Hill, miss. An' my wife here, she wor born justa house or two further along, an' we two bin married sixty-one year comenext March."
He had resumed his usual almshouse tone, civil and a little plaintive.His wife behind him smiled gently at being spoken of. She had a longfair face, and white hair surmounted by a battered black bonnet, a mouthset rather on one side, and a more observant and refined air than mostof her neighbours. She sighed while she talked, and spoke in a delicatequaver.
"D'ye know, miss," said Mrs. Jellison, pointing to Mrs. Patton, "as shekep' school when she was young?"
"Did you, Mrs. Patton?" asked Marcella in her tone of sympatheticinterest. "The school wasn't very big then, I suppose?"
"About forty, miss," said Mrs. Patton, with a sigh. "There was eighteenthe Rector paid for, and eighteen Mr. Boyce paid for, and the rest paidfor themselves."
Her voice dropped gently, and she sighed again like one weighted with aneternal fatigue.
"And what did you teach them?"
"Well, I taught them the plaitin', miss, and as much readin' and writin'as I knew myself. It wasn't as high as it is now, you see, miss," and adelicate flush dawned on the old cheek as Mrs. Patton threw a glanceround her companions as though appealing to them not to tell stories ofher.
But Mrs. Jellison was implacable. "It wor she taught _me_," she said,nodding at Marcella and pointing sideways to Mrs. Patton. "She had aqueer way wi' the hard words, I can tell yer, miss. When she couldn'ttell 'em herself she'd never own up to it. 'Say Jerusalem, my dear, andpass on.' That's what she'd say, she would, sure's as you're alive! I'veheard her do it times. An' when Isabella an' me used to read the Bible,nights, I'd allus rayther do 't than be beholden to me own darter. Itgets yer through, anyway."
"Well, it wor a good word," said Mrs. Patton, blushing and mildlydefending herself. "It didn't do none of yer any harm."
"Oh, an' before her, miss, I went to a school to another woman, as livedup Shepherd's Row. You remember her, Betsy Brunt?"
Mrs. Brunt's worn eyes began already to gleam and sparkle.
"Yis, I recolleck very well, Mrs. Jellison. She wor Mercy Moss, an' agoodish deal of trouble you'd use to get me into wi' Mercy Moss, allalong o' your tricks."
Mrs. Jellison, still with folded arms, began to rock herself gently upand down as though to stimulate memory.
"My word, but Muster Maurice--he wor the clergyman h
ere then, miss--worset on Mercy Moss. He and his wife they flattered and cockered her up.Ther wor nobody like her for keepin' school, not in their eyes--till onemidsummer--she--well she--I don't want to say nothink onpleasant--_butshe transgressed_," said Mrs. Jellison, nodding mysteriously,triumphant however in the unimpeachable delicacy of her language, andlooking round the circle for approval.
"What do you say?" asked Marcella, innocently. "What did Mercy Moss do?"
Mrs. Jellison's eyes danced with malice and mischief, but her mouth shutlike a vice. Patton leaned forward on his stick, shaken with a sort ofinward explosion; his plaintive wife laughed under her breath till shemust needs sigh because laughter tired her old bones. Mrs. Brunt gurgledgently. And finally Mrs. Jellison was carried away.
"Oh, my goodness me, don't you make me tell tales o' Mercy Moss!" shesaid at last, dashing the water out of her eyes with an excitedtremulous hand. "She's bin dead and gone these forty year--married andburied mos' respeckable--it 'ud be a burning shame to bring up talesagen her now. Them as tittle-tattles about dead folks needn't look tolie quiet theirselves in their graves. I've said it times, and I'll sayit again. What are you lookin' at me for, Betsy Brunt?"
And Mrs. Jellison drew up suddenly with a fierce glance at Mrs. Brunt.
"Why, Mrs. Jellison, I niver meant no offence," said Mrs. Brunt,hastily.
"I won't stand no insinooating," said Mrs. Jellison, with energy. "Ifyou've got soomthink agen me, you may out wi' 't an' niver mind theyoung lady."
But Mrs. Brunt, much flurried, retreated amid a shower of excuses,pursued by her enemy, who was soon worrying the whole little company, asa dog worries a flock of sheep, snapping here and teasing there,chattering at the top of her voice in broad dialect, as she got more andmore excited, and quite as ready to break her wit on Marcella as onanybody else. As for the others, most of them had known little else forweeks than alternations of toil and sickness; they were as much amusedand excited to-night by Mrs. Jellison's audacities as a Londoner is byhis favourite low comedian at his favourite music-hall. They playedchorus to her, laughed, baited her; even old Patton was drawn againsthis will into a caustic sociability.
Marcella meanwhile sat on her stool, her chin upon her hand, and herfull glowing eyes turned upon the little spectacle, absorbing it allwith a covetous curiosity.
The light-heartedness, the power of enjoyment left in these old folkstruck her dumb. Mrs. Brunt had an income of two-and-sixpence a week,_plus_ two loaves from the parish, and one of the parish or "charity"houses, a hovel, that is to say, of one room, scarcely fit for humanhabitation at all. She had lost five children, was allowed two shillingsa week by two labourer sons, and earned sixpence a week--about--bycontinuous work at "the plait." Her husband had been run over by a farmcart and killed; up to the time of his death his earnings averaged abouttwenty-eight pounds a year. Much the same with the Pattons. They hadlost eight children out of ten, and were now mainly supported by thewages of a daughter in service. Mrs. Patton had of late years sufferedagonies and humiliations indescribable, from a terrible illness whichthe parish doctor was quite incompetent to treat, being all through asingularly sensitive woman, with a natural instinct for the decorous andthe beautiful.
Amazing! Starvation wages; hardships of sickness and pain; horrors ofbirth and horrors of death; wholesale losses of kindred and friends; themeanest surroundings; the most sordid cares--of this mingled cup ofvillage fate every person in the room had drunk, and drunk deep. Yethere in this autumn twilight, they laughed and chattered, andjoked--weird, wrinkled children, enjoying an hour's rough play in aclearing of the storm! Dependent from birth to death on squire, parson,parish, crushed often, and ill-treated, according to their own ideas,but bearing so little ill-will; amusing themselves with their owntragedies even, if they could but sit by a fire and drink a neighbour'scup of tea.
Her heart swelled and burned within her. Yes, the old people were pasthoping for; mere wreck and driftwood on the shore, the spring-tide ofdeath would soon have swept them all into unremembered graves. But theyoung men and women, the children, were they too to grow up, and growold like these--the same smiling, stunted, ignobly submissive creatures?One woman at least would do her best with her one poor life to rousesome of them to discontent and revolt!