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‘You’ll say (at least many a one does), they’n
(#ulink_71ae31de-7c47-59db-82a1-23182a1b965b) getten capital an’ we’n getten none. I say, our labour’s our capital, and we ought to draw interest on that. They get interest on their capital somehow a’ this time, while ourn is lying idle, else how could they all live as they do? Besides there’s many on ’em has had nought to begin wi’; there’s Carsons, and Duncombes, and Mengies, and many another, as comed into Manchester with clothes to their back, and that were all, and now they’re worth their tens of thousands, a’ getten out of our labour; why, the very land as fetched but sixty pound twenty year agone is now worth six hundred, and that, too, is owing to our labour; but look at yo, and see me, and poor Davenport yonder; whatten better are we? They’n screwed us down to th’ lowest peg, in order to make their great big fortunes, and build their great big houses, and we, why we’re just clemming, many and many of us. Can you say there’s nought wrong in this?’
‘Well, Barton, I’ll not gainsay ye. But Mr Carson spoke to me after th’ fire, and says he, “I shall ha’ to retrench, and be very careful in my expenditure during these bad times, I assure ye”; so yo see th’ masters suffer too.’
‘Han they ever seen a child o’ their’n die for want o’ food?’ asked Barton, in a low deep voice.
‘I donnot mean,’ continued he, ‘to say as I’m so badly off. I’d scorn to speak for myself; but when I see such men as Davenport there dying away, for very clemming, I cannot stand it. I’ve but gotten Mary, and she keeps herself pretty much. I think we’ll ha’ to give up housekeeping; but that I donnot mind.’
And in this kind of talk the night, the long heavy night of watching, wore away. As far as they could judge, Davenport continued in the same state, although the symptoms varied occasionally. The wife slept on, only roused by the cry of her child now and then, which seemed to have power over her, when far louder noises failed to disturb her. The watchers agreed, that as soon as it was likely Mr Carson would be up and visible, Wilson should go to his house, and beg for an Infirmary order. At length the grey dawn penetrated even into the dark cellar; Davenport slept, and Barton was to remain there until Wilson’s return; so, stepping out into the fresh air, brisk and reviving, even in that street of abominations, Wilson took his way to Mr Carson’s.
Wilson had about two miles to walk before he reached Mr Carson’s house, which was almost in the country. The streets were not yet bustling and busy. The shopmen were lazily taking down the shutters, although it was near eight o’clock; for the day was long enough for the purchases people made in that quarter of the town, while trade was so flat. One or two miserable-looking women were setting off on their day’s begging expedition. But there were few people abroad. Mr Carson’s was a good house, and furnished with disregard to expense. But, in addition to lavish expenditure, there was much taste shown, and many articles chosen for their beauty and elegance adorned his rooms. As Wilson passed a window which a housemaid had thrown open, he saw pictures and gilding, at which he was tempted to stop and look; but then he thought it would not be respectful. So he hastened on to the kitchen door. The servants seemed very busy with preparations for breakfast; but good-naturedly, though hastily, told him to step in, and they could soon let Mr Carson know he was there. So he was ushered into a kitchen hung round with glittering tins, where a roaring fire burnt merrily, and where numbers of utensils hung round, at whose nature and use Wilson amused himself by guessing. Meanwhile, the servants bustled to and fro; an outdoor man-servant came in for orders, and sat down near Wilson. The cook broiled steaks, and the kitchen-maid toasted bread, and boiled eggs.
The coffee steamed upon the fire, and altogether the odours were so mixed and appetising, that Wilson began to yearn for food to break his fast, which had lasted since dinner the day before. If the servants had known this, they would have willingly given him meat and bread in abundance; but they were like the rest of us, and, not feeling hunger themselves, forgot it was possible another might. So Wilson’s craving turned to sickness, while they chatted on, making the kitchen’s free and keen remarks upon the parlour.
‘How late you were last night, Thomas!’
‘Yes, I was right weary of waiting; they told me to be at the rooms by twelve; and there I was. But it was two o’clock before they called me.’
‘And did you wait all that time in the street?’ asked the housemaid, who had done her work for the present, and come into the kitchen for a bit of gossip.
‘My eye as like! you don’t think I’m such a fool as to catch my death of cold, and let the horses catch their death too, as we should ha’ done if we’d stopped there. No! I put th’ horses up in th’ stables at th’ Spread Eagle, and went mysel, and got a glass or two by th’ fire. They’re driving a good custom, them, wi’ coachmen. There were five on us, and we’d many a quart o’ ale, and gin wi’ it, to keep out th’ cold.’
‘Mercy on us, Thomas; you’ll get a drunkard at last!’
‘If I do, I know whose blame it will be. It will be missis’s, and not mine. Flesh and blood can’t sit to be starved to death on a coach-box, waiting for folks as don’t know their own mind.’
A servant, semi-upper-housemaid, semi-lady’s-maid, now came down with orders from her mistress.
‘Thomas, you must ride to the fishmonger’s, and say missis can’t give above half-a-crown a pound for salmon for Tuesday; she’s grumbling because trade’s so bad. And she’ll want the carriage at three to go to the lecture, Thomas; at the Royal Execution, you know.’
‘Ay, ay, I know.’
‘And you’d better all of you mind your P’s and Q’s, for she’s very black this morning. She’s got a bad headache.’
‘It’s a pity Miss Jenkins is not here to match her. Lord! how she and missis did quarrel which had got the worst headaches; it was that Miss Jenkins left for; she would not give up having bad headaches, and missis could not abide any one to have ’em but herself.’
‘Missis will have her breakfast upstairs, cook, and the cold partridge as was left yesterday, and put plenty of cream in her coffee, and she thinks there’s a roll left, and she would like it well buttered.’
So saying, the maid left the kitchen to be ready to attend to the young ladies’ bell when they chose to ring, after their late assembly the night before.
In the luxurious library, at the well-spread breakfast-table, sat the two Mr Carsons, father and son. Both were reading – the father a newspaper, the son a review – while they lazily enjoyed their nicely prepared food. The father was a prepossessing-looking old man; perhaps self-indulgent you might guess. The son was strikingly handsome, and knew it. His dress was neat and well appointed, and his manners far more gentlemanly than his father’s. He was the only son, and his sisters were proud of him; his father and mother were proud of him: he could not set up his judgment against theirs; he was proud of himself.
The door opened, and in bounded Amy, the sweet youngest daughter of the house, a lovely girl of sixteen, fresh and glowing, and bright as a rosebud. She was too young to go to assemblies, at which her father rejoiced, for he had little Amy with her pretty jokes, and her bird-like songs, and her playful caresses all the evening to amuse him in his loneliness; and she was not too much tired, like Sophy and Helen, to give him her sweet company at breakfast the next morning.
He submitted willingly while she blinded him with her hands, and kissed his rough red face all over. She took his newspaper away after a little pretended resistance, and would not allow her brother Harry to go on with his review.
‘I’m the only lady this morning, papa, so you know you must make a great deal of me.’
‘My darling, I think you have your own way always, whether you’re the only lady or not.’
‘Yes, papa, you’re pretty good and obedient, I must say that; but I’m sorry to say Harry is very naughty, and does not do what I tell him; do you, Harry?’
‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean to accuse me of, Amy; I expected praise and not blame; for did I not get you that eau de Portugal from town, that you could not meet with at Hughes’, you little ungrateful puss?’
‘Did you? Oh, sweet Harry; you’re as sweet as eau de Portugal yourself; you’re almost as good as papa; but still you know you did go and forget to ask Bigland for that rose, that new rose they say he has got.’
‘No, Amy, I did not forget. I asked him, and he has got the rose, sans reproche: but do you know, little Miss Extravagance, a very small one is half-a-guinea?’
‘Oh, I don’t mind. Papa will give it me, won’t you, dear father? He knows his little daughter can’t live without flowers and scents.’
Mr Carson tried to refuse his darling, but she coaxed him into acquiescence, saying she must have it, it was one of her necessaries. Life was not worth having without flowers.
‘Then, Amy,’ said her brother, ‘try and be content with peonies and dandelions.’
‘Oh, you wretch! I don’t call them flowers. Besides, you’re every bit as extravagant. Who gave half-a-crown for a bunch of lilies of the valley at Yates’, a month ago, and then would not let his poor little sister have them, though she went on her knees to beg them? Answer me that, Master Hal.’
‘Not on compulsion,’ replied her brother, smiling with his mouth, while his eyes had an irritated expression, and he went first red, then pale, with vexed embarrassment.
‘If you please, sir,’ said a servant, entering the room, ‘here’s one of the mill people wanting to see you; his name is Wilson, he says.’
‘I’ll come to him directly; stay, tell him to come in here.’
Amy danced off into the conservatory which opened out of the room, before the gaunt, pale, unwashed, unshaven weaver was ushered in. There he stood at the door sleeking his hair with old country habit, and every now and then stealing a glance round at the splendour of the apartment.
‘Well, Wilson, and what do you want to-day, man?’
‘Please, sir, Davenport’s ill of the fever, and I’m come to know if you’ve got an Infirmary order for him?’
‘Davenport – Davenport; who is the fellow? I don’t know the name.’
‘He’s worked in your factory better nor three years, sir.’
‘Very likely; I don’t pretend to know the names of the men I employ; that I leave to the overlooker. So he’s ill, eh?’
‘Ay, sir, he’s very bad; we want to get him in at the Fever Wards.’
‘I doubt if I’ve an in-patient’s order to spare at present; but I’ll give you an out-patient’s and welcome.’
So saying, he rose up, unlocked a drawer, pondered a minute, and then gave Wilson an out-patient’s order.
Meanwhile, the younger Mr Carson had ended his review, and began to listen to what was going on. He finished his breakfast, got up, and pulled five shillings out of his pocket, which he gave to Wilson as he passed him, for the ‘poor fellow.’ He went past quickly, and calling for his horse, mounted gaily, and rode away. He was anxious to be in time to have a look and a smile from lovely Mary Barton, as she went to Miss Simmonds’. But to-day he was to be disappointed. Wilson left the house, not knowing whether to be pleased or grieved. They had all spoken kindly to him, and who could tell if they might not inquire into Davenport’s case, and do something for him and his family. Besides, the cook, who, when she had had time to think, after breakfast was sent in, had noticed his paleness, had had meat and bread ready to put in his hand when he came out of the parlour; and a full stomach makes every one of us more hopeful.
When he reached Berry Street, he had persuaded himself he bore good news, and felt almost elated in his heart. But it fell when he opened the cellar door, and saw Barton and the wife both bending over the sick man’s couch with awe-struck, saddened look.
‘Come here,’ said Barton. ‘There’s a change comed over him sin’ yo left, is there not?’
Wilson looked. The flesh was sunk, the features prominent, bony, and rigid. The fearful clay-colour of death was over all. But the eyes were open and sensitive, though the films of the grave were setting upon them.
‘He wakened fra’ his sleep, as yo left him in, and began to mutter and moan; but he soon went off again, and we never knew he were awake till he called his wife, but now she’s here he’s gotten nought to say to her.’
Most probably, as they all felt, he could not speak, for his strength was fast ebbing. They stood round him still and silent; even the wife checked her sobs, though her heart was like to break. She held her child to her breast, to try and keep him quiet. Their eyes were all fixed on the yet living one, whose moments of life were passing so rapidly away. At length he brought (with jerking convulsive effort) his two hands into the attitude of prayer. They saw his lips move, and bent to catch the words, which came in gasps, and not in tones.
‘O Lord God! I thank thee, that the hard struggle of living is over.’
‘O Ben! Ben!’ wailed forth his wife, ‘have you no thought for me? O Ben! Ben! do say one word to help me through life.’
He could not speak again. The trump of the archangel would set his tongue free; but not a word more would it utter till then. Yet he heard, he understood, and, though sight failed, he moved his hand gropingly over the covering. They knew what he meant, and guided it to her head, bowed and hidden in her hands, when she had sunk in her woe. It rested there with a feeble pressure of endearment. The face grew beautiful, as the soul neared God. A peace beyond understanding came over it. The hand was a heavy stiff weight on the wife’s head. No more grief or sorrow for him. They reverently laid out the corpse – Wilson fetching his only spare shirt to array it in. The wife still lay hidden in the clothes, in a stupor of agony.
There was a knock at the door, and Barton went to open it. It was Mary, who had received a message from her father, through a neighbour, telling her where he was; and she had set out early to come and have a word with him before her day’s work; but some errands she had to do for Miss Simmonds had detained her until now.
‘Come in, wench!’ said her father. ‘Try if thou canst comfort yon poor, poor woman, kneeling down there. God help her!’ Mary did not know what to say, or how to comfort; but she knelt down by her, and put her arm round her neck, and in a little while fell to crying herself so bitterly that the source of tears was opened by sympathy in the widow, and her full heart was, for a time, relieved.
And Mary forgot all purposed meeting with her gay lover, Harry Carson; forgot Miss Simmonds’ errands, and her anger, in the anxious desire to comfort the poor lone woman. Never had her sweet face looked more angelic, never had her gentle voice seemed so musical as when she murmured her broken sentences of comfort.
‘Oh, don’t cry so, dear Mrs Davenport, pray don’t take on so. Sure he’s gone where he’ll never know care again. Yes, I know how lonesome you must feel; but think of your children. Oh! we’ll all help to earn food for ’em. Think how sorry he’d be, if he sees you fretting so. Don’t cry so, please don’t.’
And she ended by crying herself as passionately as the poor widow.
It was agreed the town must bury him; he had paid to a burial club as long as he could, but, by a few weeks’ omission, he had forfeited his claim to a sum of money now. Would Mrs Davenport and the little child go home with Mary? The latter brightened up as she urged this plan; but no! Where the poor, fondly loved remains were, there would the mourner be; and all that they could do was to make her as comfortable as their funds would allow, and to beg a neighbour to look in and say a word at times. So she was left alone with her dead, and they went to work that had work, and he who had none took upon him the arrangements for the funeral.
Mary had many a scolding from Miss Simmonds that day for her absence of mind. To be sure Miss Simmonds was much put out by Mary’s non-appearance in the morning with certain bits of muslin, and shades of silk which were wanted to complete a dress to be worn that night; but it was true enough that Mary did not mind what she was about; she was too busy planning how her old black gown (her best when her mother died) might be sponged, and turned, and lengthened into something like decent mourning for the widow. And when she went home at night (though it was very late), as a sort of retribution for her morning’s negligence, she set to work at once, and was so busy and so glad over her task, that she had, every now and then, to check herself in singing merry ditties, which she felt little accorded with the sewing on which she was engaged.
So when the funeral day came, Mrs Davenport was neatly arrayed in black, a satisfaction to her poor heart in the midst of her sorrow. Barton and Wilson both accompanied her, as she led her two elder boys, and followed the coffin. It was a simple walking funeral, with nothing to grate on the feelings of any; far more in accordance with its purpose, to my mind, than the gorgeous hearses, and nodding plumes, which form the grotesque funeral pomp of respectable people. There was no ‘rattling the bones over the stones’, of the pauper’s funeral. Decently and quietly was he followed to the grave by one determined to endure her woe meekly for his sake. The only mark of pauperism attendant on the burial concerned the living and joyous, far more than the dead, or the sorrowful. When they arrived in the churchyard, they halted before a raised and handsome tombstone; in reality a wooden mockery of stone respectabilities which adorned the burial-ground. It was easily raised in a very few minutes, and below was the grave in which pauper bodies were piled until within a foot or two of the surface; when the soil was shovelled over, and stamped down, and the wooden cover went to do temporary duty over another hole.
(#ulink_eb80da8f-3f06-587c-896e-7d70bff0286b) But little recked they of this who now gave up their dead.
(#ulink_27a8ca3e-186a-5376-a4f8-dc6a0419eaa0) ‘Don’ is constantly used in Lancashire for ‘do’; as it was by our older writers. ‘And that may non Hors don.’ – sir j. mandeville. ‘But for th’ entent to don this sinne.’ – chaucer.
(#ulink_27a8ca3e-186a-5376-a4f8-dc6a0419eaa0) ‘Cowd’, cold. Teut. kaud. Dutch, koaud.
(#ulink_04049f77-607a-57ec-a27f-91a211a8dfd5) ‘Mither’, to trouble and perplex. ‘I’m welly mithered’ – I’m well-nigh crazed.
(#ulink_9a2dc6e6-6d87-5086-8753-9e5151fca13e) Wickliffe uses ‘childre’ in his Apology, page 26.
(#ulink_c822c6ea-de87-5230-85bc-2cf1938da68e) ‘What concord han light and dark.’ – spenser.
(#ulink_4dd68325-f840-5895-833d-a199dc93e097) And they soupe the brothe thereof.’ – sir j. mandeville.
(#ulink_9b8c5621-4957-5de2-ac5d-baba6c0ac1ff) ‘They’n’, contraction of ‘they han’, they have.
(#ulink_3c7fd1f9-ffbc-55b3-b436-e3c95a01942a) The case, to my certain knowledge, in one churchyard in Manchester. There may be more.
CHAPTER 7 (#ulink_cede4b5d-e31e-5405-931a-f4bd13397430)
Jem Wilson’s Repulse (#ulink_cede4b5d-e31e-5405-931a-f4bd13397430)
‘How infinite the wealth of love and hope
Garnered in these same tiny treasure-houses!
And oh! what bankrupts in the world we feel,
When Death, like some remorseless creditor,
Seizes on all we fondly thought our own.’
‘THE TWINS’
The ghoul-like fever was not to be braved with impunity, and balked of its prey. The widow had reclaimed her children; her neighbours, in the good-Samaritan sense of the word, had paid her little arrears of rent, and made her a few shillings beforehand with the world. She determined to flit from that cellar to another less full of painful associations, less haunted by mournful memories. The board, not so formidable as she had imagined, had inquired into her case; and, instead of sending her to Stoke Claypole, her husband’s Buckinghamshire parish, as she had dreaded, had agreed to pay her rent. So food for four mouths was all she was now required to find; only for three she would have said; for herself and the unweaned child were but reckoned as one in her calculation.
She had a strong heart, now her bodily strength had been recruited by a week or two of food, and she would not despair. So she took in some little children to nurse, who brought their daily food with them, which she cooked for them, without wronging their helplessness of a crumb; and when she had restored them to their mothers at night, she set to work at plain sewing, ‘seam, and gusset, and band’, and sat thinking how she might best cheat the factory inspector, and persuade him that her strong, big, hungry Ben was above thirteen. Her plan of living was so far arranged, when she heard, with keen sorrow, that Wilson’s twin lads were ill of the fever.
They had never been strong. They were like many a pair of twins, and seemed to have but one life divided between them. One life, one strength, and in this instance, I might almost say, one brain; for they were helpless, gentle, silly children, but not the less dear to their parents and to their strong, active, manly, elder brother. They were late on their feet, in talking, late every way; had to be nursed and cared for when other lads of their age were tumbling about in the street, and losing themselves, and being taken to the police-office miles away from home.
Still want had never yet come in at the door to make love for these innocents fly out of the window. Nor was this the case even now, when Jem Wilson’s earnings, and his mother’s occasional charings, were barely sufficient to give all the family their fill of food.
But when the twins, after ailing many days, and caring little for their meat, fell sick on the same afternoon, with the same heavy stupor of suffering, the three hearts that loved them so each felt, though none acknowledged to the other, that they had little chance for life. It was nearly a week before the tale of their illness spread as far as the court where the Wilsons had once dwelt, and the Bartons yet lived.
Alice had heard of the sickness of her little nephews several days before, and had locked her cellar door, and gone off straight to her brother’s house, in Ancoats; but she was often absent for days, sent for, as her neighbours knew, to help in some sudden emergency of illness or distress, so that occasioned no surprise.
Margaret met Jem Wilson several days after his brothers were seriously ill, and heard from him the state of things at his home. She told Mary of it as she entered the court late that evening; and Mary listened with saddened heart to the strange contrast which such woeful tidings presented to the gay and loving words she had been hearing on her walk home. She blamed herself for being so much taken up with visions of the golden future that she had lately gone but seldom on Sunday afternoons, or other leisure time, to see Mrs Wilson, her mother’s friend; and with hasty purpose of amendment she only stayed to leave a message for her father with the next-door neighbour, and then went off at a brisk pace on her way to the house of mourning.
She stopped with her hand on the latch of the Wilsons’ door, to still her beating heart, and listened to the hushed quiet within. She opened the door softly: there sat Mrs Wilson in the old rocking-chair, with one sick, death-like boy lying on her knee, crying without let or pause, but softly, gently, as fearing to disturb the troubled, gasping child; while behind her, old Alice let her fast-dropping tears fall down on the dead body of the other twin, which she was laying out on a board placed on a sort of sofa-settee in a corner of the room. Over the child, which yet breathed, the father bent, watching anxiously for some ground of hope, where hope there was none. Mary stepped slowly and lightly across to Alice.
‘Ay, poor lad! God has taken him early, Mary.’
Mary could not speak, she did not know what to say; it was so much worse than she had expected. At last she ventured to whisper –
‘Is there any chance for the other one, think you?’
Alice shook her head, and told with a look that she believed there was none. She next endeavoured to lift the little body, and carry it to its old accustomed bed in its parents’ room. But earnest as the father was in watching the yet-living, he had eyes and ears for all that concerned the dead, and sprang gently up, and took his dead son on his hard couch in his arms with tender strength, and carried him upstairs as if afraid of wakening him.
The other child gasped longer, louder, with more of effort.
‘We mun get him away from his mother. He cannot die while she’s wishing him.’
‘Wishing him?’ said Mary, in a tone of inquiry.
‘Ay; donno’ ye know what “wishing” means? There’s none can die in the arms of those who are wishing them sore to stay on earth. The soul o’ them as holds them won’t let the dying soul go free; so it has a hard struggle for the quiet of death. We mun get him away fra’ his mother, or he’ll have a hard death, poor lile
(#ulink_aaa24fd9-cb13-5030-9e79-02436f8ada8b) fellow.’
So without circumlocution she went and offered to take the sinking child. But the mother would not let him go, and looking in Alice’s face with brimming and imploring eyes, declared, in earnest whispers, that she was not wishing him, that she would fain have him released from his suffering. Alice and Mary stood by with eyes fixed on the poor child, whose struggles seemed to increase, till at last his mother said, with a choking voice:
‘May happen
(#ulink_2a3efd09-06fd-51d3-acca-a2569b9e0cd6) yo’d better take him, Alice; I believe my heart’s wishing him a’ this while, for I cannot, no, I cannot bring mysel to let my two childer go in one day; I cannot help longing to keep him, and yet he sha’n’t suffer longer for me.’
