WE had just set out together to begin our work. It was a raw winter day, damp and foggy, and the heavy haze fell white and stifling over our flat fields, but was not dense enough to hide the dreary line of road, nor the dull depths of distance round us. We were dressed in great cloaks and hoods of dark grey cloth, with small black bonnets under our hoods; and each of us carried a basket—while Miss Saville had a little leathern case, containing medicines, hanging from the girdle round her waist. She was a tall, stiff woman, with a frosty face, and angular, thin frame. I cannot tell how she looked in summer—very much out of place, I should think, for this dull, foggy, cold day seemed too gentle for her, and you could fancy a keen frosty wind constantly blowing in her face. Her manners were like her brother’s, very fine and elaborate at first; but by-and-by she forgot, as he never did, that she was talking to Mrs. Southcote of Cottiswoode, and began to tell me of her plans, as she might have told any ignorant girl, and showed no special respect for me. When she came to her natural tone, I could not help being better pleased with her. She was much more in my way than the Reverend Mr. Saville was. She did not say a word about charity or benevolence; but she told me how she intended to manage the old people, and how, with one servant and a lady coming to help her every day, she could keep a home for them all together, and keep them comfortable, if the means were provided for her.
“Extremely disagreeable work, I don’t doubt, for you dainty young folks,” said Miss Saville, who no longer thought it necessary to pick her language; “but I had my own old father to mind for long enough, and it’s nothing to me.”
“Disagreeable!” said I, “what does it matter? I wonder what right we have to agreeable things!”
“Well—I am glad you think so!” said Miss Saville, with a grim smile. “You will be the more thankful for what has fallen to your share; for very few people, I can tell you, have to provide disagreeables for themselves, as you have. They are almost all ready-made, and not very well liked when they come.”
I had nothing to say to this. Nor could I have expected that she would understand me. We were walking quickly, for it required no small exertion to keep up with Miss Saville, who strode along in her thick boots with a manly disregard of every obstacle—along the lane which led to the village. Just before we reached Cottisbourne, we passed the Rectory. Miss Saville looked up at it as she passed, and so did I. I was startled to see a face looking out from the window, which I recognised, or fancied I recognised. It was a weather-beaten face, unshaven and slovenly, and stooped forward with an inquisitive, sidelong glance. I tried to recollect where I had seen it. Could this be Saville—the Saville—the man who brought Edgar Southcote to Cottiswoode? I was disposed to think so. My companion gazed at him a moment, and then waved her hand impatiently, as if to bid the man go from the window. Yet I had been now three weeks at Cottiswoode, had frequently seen the clergyman and his sister, but had never heard of another. I wondered why they concealed him—I wondered if it was he; but Miss Saville never spoke.
We were close upon the village now. The first group of two or three houses stood by themselves upon the brown grass of the meadow-land around. They seemed to have no gardens, no trees, nothing to protect or shelter them; but stood apart among the grass, which pressed round their very walls and doorsteps, as if it grudged the little bit of ground they occupied. There were some plants in the window of almost every house, poor, shabby plants, crushed against the green gauze curtain suspended across the three lower panes, darkening the light; but doing little else by way of compensation. The want of gardens seemed to disconnect them strangely from the soil on which they stood. There was no beauty or sentiment about them; but only very poor, meagre, hungry poverty. Beyond them, a very small stream, which made no sound in the heavy, deadened atmosphere, wound through a field, with some low willows standing by, like a class of unkempt boys at school. A little further on, withdrawn into a grassy mass, was the village well, with its bucket and windlass; and then came Cottisbourne proper, a cluster of houses oddly placed, with strange little narrow lanes winding among them, as intricate as a child’s puzzle: some brown and dingy, with the thatched roof clinging upon them like a growth of nature—some brilliantly whitewashed, with great patches of damp, from the rain, upon their walls. One or two carts tilted up, stood in a corner of the bit of common which belonged to the village. About them, and in them, were a number of children, whose voices scarcely woke the sullen air to cheerfulness. The houses stood about in genuine independence, every one faring as it pleased him, and the wealthy cottager’s pig sniffed the same air as his master, and placidly meditated upon the doings of his master’s next neighbor, whose open cottage door was opposite the piggery. There surely was no want of work to do, for any one who cared to take in hand the reformation of the little commonwealth of Cottisbourne.
Miss Saville proceeded to business, while I looked on. She went forward to the children in the cart, and lugged down the reckless urchins who came clambering into it, just in time to prevent an accident, as the heavy body of the cart, high in the air, where they had been climbing, was suddenly thrown off its balance, and came down heavily, doing no harm, thanks to her exertion. “You little foolish things,” said the excited lady, “how often have I told you, you were not to go near these shocking things? you might all have been killed. I can’t be always looking after you, and if Jemmie Mutton had been killed when that cart fell, what do you think you would have done then?”
Not one of the little culprits was able to reply to this solemn question, and the lady continued, as they gaped at her, clustering together, stealing their hands underneath their pinafores, or putting finger in mouth, with awe and astonishment: “Depend upon it I shall make examples,” said Miss Saville, with solemnity. “Christmas is not so far off that I should forget what you are about now; and if I should hear of such a thing again, beware!”
Saying this in the tone of a Lord Chief-Justice, with an awful vagueness of expression, and penalties implied which only the threatened offenders knew the weight and import of, Miss Saville turned to enter a cottage. “I am obliged to keep them in awe of me, my dear,” she said, turning to me with complacent satisfaction, “and even to threaten them about their Christmas things. Some of them get quite an outfit of things when they attend school well, and say their catechisms; but children are a deal of trouble—the little good-for-nothings, they’re at it again!”
I was amused at Miss Saville’s contest with the children, yet somewhat disgusted withal. Like other visionaries, I was horrified when I descended to practise, or to see practised, what I had been dreaming. Your sweet docile children would have been out of my way, and unwelcome substitutes for the harder labors on which I had set my heart. But stupid children—children who gaped and curtsied—who folded their hands under their pinafores, and played in carts, and were held in terror of losing their annual dole at Christmas! this was quite a different martyrdom from what I had dreamed of. I had no vocation at all for this.
However, we had now entered the cottage. It was very poor, and had a sort of sofa or settle near the fire, on which was laid an old paralytic woman, whose shaking head and hand proclaimed at once how she was afflicted. A stout tall woman, the mistress of the cottage, went and came about the poor room, preparing the dinner, I suppose, but taking no notice of the invalid, that I could see, though her feeble half-articulate voice seemed to run on nevertheless in an unfailing stream, and there was an eagerness in her gray bleared eye, which testified that this old woman, at least, though she had lost everything else, had not lost her interest in the world. She assailed us with a flood of imperfect words, which I could scarcely make out, but which seemed easy to Miss Saville, and a craving for news, and restless curiosity, which seemed very dreadful to me in this old, old woman. “So, she’s com’d home!” she said, and I knew she referred to me, “does she know her own mind by this time? Ah, ah, ah! it do make poor folks laugh to see the ways of the quality, that never know when they’re well.”
“Hold your peace, Sally,” said Miss Saville, imperatively, “the lady herself has taken the trouble to come from Cottiswoode to see you, you ungrateful old woman; and to see what she can do for you to make you comfortable; do you hear? You ought to thank her and show some feeling; but I am sure you poor folks in Cambridgeshire are the most ungrateful in the world.”
“The old folks you mean, Miss,” said the younger woman.
“You will call her Miss, ye unmannerly wench,” said the mother-in-law, chuckling; “Madam Saville, I know you—I know naught of the young one. Make me comfortable! I’m an old poor crittur, past my work, and I’ve had a stroke; and I want rest to my old bones. But these young uns, that’s able to stir about and help themselves, they think aught’s good eno’ for me.”
She began to whimper as she spoke. Alas—alas! the heroism of my vocation had deserted me. I felt nothing but disgust for the miserable old woman. I could not endure to go near her or touch her—it sickened me to think of the proposed asylum, and of doing menial services with my own hands to such a creature as this.
But Miss Saville was unmoved. I suppose she had no elevated ideas of self-martyrdom.
“Well then, Sally, that is just what I came to speak about,” she said; “you’re in the way in your son’s house; and you feel you’re in the way.”
“Who said it? was’t Tilda there?” cried the old woman, firmly. “I’ll make him wallop her—that I will, when the lad comes home. Where is an old woman to be welcome but with her children? Oh! you sarpent! it’s all along o’ you.”
“Matilda never said a word about it,” said the peremptory Miss Saville; “she has a great deal of patience with you, poor thing; for you’re an ill-tempered old woman! Be quiet, Sally, and listen to me. How would you like to be taken to a new house, and have all your little comforts attended to, and a room to yourself, and ladies to take care of you, eh? I would have charge of you, you understand, and this good young lady from the Hall, and others like her, would come every day to help me. What would you say to that, Sally?”
The younger woman, with unequivocal tokens of interest, had drawn nearer to listen; and was standing leaning upon the table, with her face turned towards us. Sally did not answer at first, and I watched the eager gleam of her old bleared eyes, and the nodding of her palsied head in silence.
“I don’t knaew,” said the old woman, “she’d be glad, I dare say; but am I agwoin to be put out of my way, to please Tilda? I’ll not have no prison as long as my Jim has a roof over his head. I’m not agwoin to die. I wants to hear the news and the talk, as well as another. I wants none o’ your fine rooms to lie all by myself, and never see nought but ladies—ladies! You’re grand, and you think poor folks worship you; but I’d rather see old Betty Higgins to come and tell me the news.”
“If that is all you have to say, Sally, we had better leave you,” said Miss Saville. “You shocking old woman, do you think you will live for ever? You’ll soon get news from a worse place than this world, if you don’t mind.”
“I’ll send for the parson when I’ve made up my mind to it, that I’m agwoin to die,” said Sally; “but here, give it to me, lady; don’t give it to Tilda—she’ll spend it on her own, and never think on the old woman. Well, you’ve a soft hand: where’s your white bonnet and your white veil, and all your grandeur? What’s the good of coming to poor folks all muffled up like madam there? You’re no show, you’re not—you should have come like a picture. Now, Tilda, get me some brandy and a drop o’ tea, and tell Betty Higgins to come and sit by me while you’re gone.”
I retreated with a shudder when she dropped my hand. Her cold touch sickened me, and I could not bear the sharp twinkling of those half-closed eyes, and the palsied motion of her head, as she looked into my face, and spoke to me. I was very glad to escape from the cottage when poor ‘Tilda, a subdued, broken-hearted woman, not very tasty, went away to execute her commission. I was very much shocked on the borders of my new enterprise, very much disgusted, and almost staggered in my purpose. Yes! I had thought of nursing the sick and taking care of the aged; but I did not think of such sordid, selfish, wretched old age as this.
And yet, these were my own people—old retainers and dependants of the house. I had not been without acquaintances among the cottagers, when I was a girl at Cottiswoode; yet I recognised few of the blank faces which stared at me now. As we threaded the strange, narrow turnings, from cottage to cottage, I had to make no small effort to remind myself that it was clearly my business. Unpleasant! how I scorned the word and myself, for thinking of it—what was pleasant to me?
Miss Saville had not been silent all this time, though I paid no great attention to her. She was not disgusted; she had been accustomed to such scenes, and took them with perfect coolness; and I was astonished to find that she was not even displeased, nor inclined to shut out this wretched old Sally from the benefits of her asylum.
“You must not mind what that thankless old creature says,” said Miss Saville. “I know how to deal with them; and poor Matilda would be a happy woman if that old tyrant was away. You may trust to me to manage her. I promise you, she’ll not struggle long with me.”
I only shuddered with disgust. I could not anticipate very heroically my own promised assistance to wait upon this old Sally.
We were now at another cottage, where the door was closed, and we had to knock for admittance. It was opened by an elderly woman, fresh-complexioned, yet careworn, with scissors and pincushion hanging by her side, and some work in her hand. The furniture of the little room was very scanty, and not very orderly, but clean enough; and from the cuttings and thread upon the floor, the litter on the little deal table, and the work in the woman’s hand, I saw that she must be the village dressmaker. The lower part of the window, as usual, was screened by a coarse curtain of green gauze, and three flower-pots with dingy geraniums stood on the window-sill, with a prayer-book and a work-box, and a range of reels of cotton standing between. Here, as in the previous cottage, an old woman occupied the corner by the fire; but this one was placed in a large wooden elbow chair, gay with a cover of cotton print, which had been a gown before it came to its present preferment, and was tidily dressed, and had some knitting in her hands. A girl of twelve sat by the table helping her mother—a younger one was washing potatoes in a corner, while a little girl of three or four, sitting on the corner of the fender close to the fire, seemed to be exerting her powers for the general entertainment of the industrious family. When we entered, the mistress of the house, after her first greeting to Miss Saville, stepped aside to let us enter, and looked earnestly at me. The signs of her occupation helped me to a remembrance of her. I looked at her with a puzzled curiosity, trying to recall the changed face in its widow’s cap.
“Miss Hester,” she cried. “I humbly beg your pardon, ma’am, but I made sure it was you.”
She curtsied again and again, and seemed so unaffectedly glad, that my heart warmed in spite of myself. Miss Saville was quite thrown into the shade. The children made their little curtsies, the old woman endeavored to rise, a chair was carefully wiped by poor Mary’s apron, and placed between the window and the fire for me; and Granny made a moving explanation of “her rheumatiz, that made her unmannerly.” I was restored to satisfaction. I do not think I had been so much pleased since I came to Cottiswoode. Yes! these were my own people.
“We’ve had a deal of trouble, Miss—ma’am—a deal of trouble,” said Mary, putting the corner of her apron to her eyes. “There was first poor Tom fell ill and died, and all the little uns had the fever, and Granny took the rheumatiz so bad, that she never can move out of her chair. It’s been hard to get the bit and the sup for them all, lady. But now Alice gets a big wench; and little Jane goes of errands, and Farmer Giles gives ’em a day’s work now and again, weeding and gathering stones; and I’m a bit easier in my mind—but, oh! it’s been hard days in Cottiswoode since you and the good old Squire went away.”
I knew no reason Mary had to call my father the good old Squire: yet I was pleased with the appellation. “Come to the Hall, Mary, and Alice will see if there is anything for you,” I said; “and you must tell me what poor old Granny wants, and what I can do for her. Granny, do you recollect me?”
“I rechlet your grandmama, Miss,” said the old woman, “better than you—that was the lady, she stood for my Susan, next to Mary, that I buried fifty years come Whitsuntide. I kneawn all the family, I do. I rechlet the young gentlemen, and Mr. Brian, that never had his rights. This Squire is his son, they tell me. Well, you’ve com’d and married him, Miss, and I bless the day; everything’s agwoin on right now. The Southcote blood’s been kind to me and mine, and I wish well of it, wishing ye joy, Miss, and a welcome home.”
I bowed my head in silent bitterness. Wishing me joy! what a satire it seemed.
“Are you very busy, Mary?” said Miss Saville. “Now do you think, if Alice had not come to school, and been taught her duty, she would have sat there so quietly helping her mother. I don’t believe anything of the kind.”
“Thank you all the same, Ma’am, it done her a deal of good gwoing to school,” said Mary, with a submissive, yet resolute courtesy, “but she always was a good child.”
“I don’t say she’s a good child now—she’s doing no more than her duty,” said Miss Saville, with a peremptory little nod; “there’s nothing worse for children than to praise them to their faces. There’s that boy of yours, not half an hour ago, if I had not been at hand, he might have broken his neck, clambering into the cart on the edge of the common. I am sure, how these children escape with their lives, with nobody to look after them, is a constant wonder to me.”
“Providence is always a-minding after them,” said Mary, “poor folks’ children is not like rich folks; and my boy can take a knock as well as another—I’m not afraid.”
“Well, now I have something to tell you of,” said Miss Saville.
“Since Mrs. Southcote has come home, she wishes to do good to you all like a Christian lady; and I’m going to take a house, or have one built here at Cottisbourne, and live in it myself, and take care of the old people who are helpless, and a burden on their families. Mrs. Southcote, and other good ladies, will come to help me, and the old folks shall be well taken care of, and have comfortable rooms and beds, and be a burden to nobody. What do you say to that, Granny? Mary has plenty to do with her own family, and I dare say doesn’t always get much time to mind you, and you’d be off her hands, and make her easier in her mind, for I’m sure you know very well how much she’s got to do.”
A shrill hoohoo of feeble, yet vehement sobbing interrupted this speech. “I’m a poor old soul,” said the hysterical voice of Granny; “but I toiled for her and her children, when I had some strength left, and I do what I can in my old days—God help me! My poor bit o’ bread and my tater—a baby ‘ud eat as much as me. Lord help us! you don’t go for to say my own child would grudge me that?”
“Folks had best not meddle with other folks’ business,” said Mary, with an angry glance towards Miss Saville. “You mind your knitting, mother, and don’t mind what strangers say. You ladies is hard-hearted, that’s the truth—though you mean kind—begging your pardon, Ma’am,” she said, with a curtsey to me; “but I work cheerful for my mother—I kneaw I do. I no more grudge her nor I grudge little Polly, by the fire. She’s been a good mother to me, and never spared her trouble; and ne’er a one of the childer but would want their supper sooner than miss Granny from the corner. And for all so feeble as she is, there’s a deal of life in her,” said Mary, once more putting up to her eyes the corner of her apron. “She’ll tell the little uns’ doins, it’s wonderful to hear—and talks out o’ the Bible of Sundays, that the parson himself might be the better—and knits at her stocking all the week through. They kneaws little that says my mother’s a burden. Alice ‘ud break her heart if she hadn’t Granny to do for, every day.”
“Well! I must say I think it very ungrateful of you,” said Miss Saville, “when I undertake she should be well taken care of, and Mrs. Southcote would come to see her almost every day. You’re a thankless set of people in Cottisbourne. You do not know when people try to do you good. There’s old Sally—”
“You don’t name my mother with old Sally there?” cried Mary, with indignation. “You wouldn’t put the likes of her under a good roof! I won’t have you speak, Ma’am—I won’t indeed. My mother and old Sally! in one house!”
“I think it possible,” said Miss Saville, with a little asperity, “that God might choose to take even old Sally to Heaven. She’s a naughty old woman—a cross, miserable old creature—and what she’d do there, if she was as she is, I can’t tell. But God has never said, so far as I know, ‘Old Sally shan’t come to Heaven.’”
This rebuke cast poor Mary into silence. She continued in a tremulous, half-defiant, half-convinced state for a few minutes, and then wiped her eyes again, and answered in a low tone:
“I wouldn’t be unneighborly, nor uncharitable neither—and God knows the heart—but my mother and old Sally wouldn’t agree, no ways—and I’d work my fingers to the bone sooner than let Granny go.”
“You must take your own way, of course,” said Miss Saville. “I only wanted to befriend you, my good woman. No—I’m not offended, and I don’t suppose Mrs. Southcote is either. What we propose is real kindness both to Granny and you—but, oh no! don’t fear—there are plenty who would be glad of it.”
Mary turned to me with a troubled glance; she thought that perhaps her balked benefactor was angry with her too.
“Is there anything Granny would like—or you, Mary? Could I help you?” said I. “Is there anything I could do myself for you?”
Mary made a very humble, reverential curtsey.
“You’re only too good, Ma’am,” said Mary. “There’s always a many things wanted in a small family. I’d be thankful of work, Miss, if you could trust it to me, and do my best to please—and Alice is very handy, and does plain hemming and seaming beautiful. Show the lady your work, Alice. If there were any plain things, Ma’am, to do—”
“But, Mary, I am sure you have too much to do already. I would rather help you to do what you have, than give you more work,” said I.
Mary looked up at me with a startled glance, and then with a smile.
“Bless your kind heart, lady! work’s nat’ral to me—pleasure is for the rich, and labor’s for the poor, and I’m content, I’d sooner sit working than go pleasuring; but it’s another thing with the likes of you.”
Miss Saville was already at the door, and somewhat impatient of this delay, so I hurried after her, arranging with Mary that she was to come that afternoon to Alice at Cottiswoode. When we got out of the house, Miss Saville took me to task immediately.
“You don’t understand the people, my dear,” said Miss Saville. “Mary was very right about the work: it’s far better to give employment than to give charity—and that’s not to save your purse, but to keep up their honest feelings. They’re independent when they’re working for themselves, and they’re bred up to work all their life; and for you to speak of going to help them, it would only make them uneasy, and be unsuitable for you.”
“But I wish to help them—and giving work to Mary does not stand in the place of working myself,” said I, with a little petulance.
“Oh, of course, if you want to do it for pleasure that’s quite a different thing—but I really don’t understand that,” said Miss Saville, abruptly.
“I do not wish it for pleasure,” said I, growing almost angry; but I did not choose to explain myself to her, and it was a good thing that she should confess that she did not understand me.
We visited a number of poor houses after this, but I found nothing encouraging in any of them. There were one or two old people found, who were quite willing to be received into Miss Saville’s asylum—they were all poor stupid old rustics, all helpless with some infirmity, but I did not find that there was anything heroic now in the prospect of waiting upon and serving them. It was not courage nor daring, nor any high and lofty quality which would be required for such an undertaking, but patience—patience, pity, and indeed a certain degree of insensibility, qualities which I neither had nor coveted. I was much discontented with my day’s experience—I was known and recognised latterly wherever we went, and though I had no recollection of the majority of the claimants of my former acquaintance, I was very ready to give them money, and did so to the great annoyance of Miss Saville. As we threaded our way through the muddy turnings, she lectured me on the evils of indiscriminate almsgiving, while I, for my part, painfully pondered what I had to do with these people, or what I could do for them. Though I had read a good deal, and thought a little, I was still very ignorant. I had a vague idea, even now in my disappointment, when I found I could not do what I wanted, that I ought to do something—that these people belonged to us, and had a right to attention at our hands. But I could not lift these cottages and place them in better order. I could not arrange those encumbered and narrow bits of path. Could I do nothing but give them money? I was much discomfited, puzzled, and distressed. Miss Saville plodded along methodically in her thick boots, perceiving what she had to do, and doing it as everyday work should be done—but there was no room here for martyrdom—and I could not tell what to do.