by Ellen Wood
Eliza, Mrs. Danesbury, had about as much notion of this sort of training as the man in the moon. She was certainly anxious for the welfare of her children, but all in a temporal point of view; she hoped they would be grand and rich men, and rise to eminence in the world. She was very fond of them, and indulged them much, but she took no pains, except wrong ones, to correct their tempers; pampered and indulged, they would be often passionate and naughty, Robert especially; sometimes she did not check them at all, and sometimes, if she was in an ill humour herself, she would punish them with inexcusable harshness, beating them with severity. She never impressed upon them that they had duties to perform to themselves and to others, children though they were; she never spoke of the necessity of self-restraint, or taught them when to exercise it. As to their religious obligations, they were taught their prayers, and would repeat them to the nurse who had succeeded Glisson, hurrying them over at railroad speed, and they were made to learn the Catechism, and were taken to church, all in a genteel, orthodox sort of way, very well for show, but very unserviceable for use. If the boys did pick up a glimmer of any thing better, they got it from Mr. Danesbury, who would often gather them around him on a Sunday evening, read to them and talk seriously to them. But the duty of implanting serious lessons lies with a mother far more than with a father, and Mrs. Danesbury did not attempt them. She was fidgety about their appearance — that their dress should be handsome, always in order; she was anxious that they should be polite in manner, and there it ended. William, of course, is included in these remarks, though he did not come in for much indulgence; but William had one advantage not enjoyed by Robert and Lionel — he was often at Mrs. Philip Danesbury’s. And that lady, suspecting, or rather knowing, the state of affairs at home, strove to supply to him the part of a mother. Still it was not like regular watchfulness, uninterrupted progress, for what was done at Mrs. Philip Danesbury’s, was undone at home. Mrs. Danesbury very much disliked Mrs. Philip, and would not suffer her own boys to go there, except for a formal visit now and then. You will gather from these remarks, that the young Danesburys were growing up without acquiring any moral safeguard within themselves, to keep them from the evil temptations of the world, with which they must some time be brought into contact.
One day when Arthur was at home, he took William to his room, talked to him, and told him he wished he would confine his drink to water.
“I don’t like water, Arthur. Beer is nicer.”
“But you are aware — you have heard — that our own mamma wished us to drink it: and you would so very much oblige me by doing so.”
Truth to say, the last argument had most weight with William; for he was very fond of Arthur, and wished to do what he desired. So the next day at dinner, he requested the servant to give him water, not beer. He made a face over it, however, and put it down as soon as tasted, upon which Mrs. Danesbury said some mocking words to him, which set him still more against the water; and she actually, positively, told her own two children that they might that day have a double portion of beer if they wished it, to “teach Arthur sense.” After dinner, William whispered to Arthur that he was very sorry, but he never should be able to drink the “nasty water” with dinner. Of course he could not; the child had never been accustomed to drink it; Mrs. Danesbury had given him the taste for stronger things.
On this Sunday, as they sat at dinner, Arthur was describing to them his university life. He appeared to have formed a close friendship there: it was with a young man of his own age, who had matriculated at the same time as himself, the Honourable Richard Dacre.
“Those college friendships do not continue in after life, Arthur,” observed Mr. Danesbury.
“Mine with Dacre will not, I dare say,” replied Arthur, “for our paths will lie far apart. He will be a peer of the realm; I, but Arthur Danesbury of the iron works. But it is very pleasant, while it does last. I like him excessively, and keep him out of mischief: but for me, he would be over head and ears in it.”
“You keep him out of mischief!” laughed Mr. Danesbury.
Arthur laughed also, “It is true though, sir.”
On the afternoon of the following day, Monday, Mr. Danesbury was walking along a somewhat unfrequented path at the back of his factory, when a woman all in rags, a beggar apparently, came in view. He took no notice of her; he was deep in thought; but the beggar halted as he passed.
“Master!”
It was Glisson! Mr. Danesbury was shocked when he recognized her. She leaned against the wall, and broke out into wails and sobs.
“Oh, master! my dear master!”
“Glisson, what has happened? How is it that you are like this?”
“I’m just a beggar on the face of the earth, sir. I have no home and no food; and nobody in the wide world to give me shelter. I was coming to the old familiar home-place, to sit myself down in the fields and to die”
“You appear to be ill, almost helpless!”
“That’s what the rheumatic fever has left me. I caught it, and the parish doctor says I shall never have the proper use of my hands and arms again, and my legs totter under me.”
“What have you been doing since you left us?”
“Ah! what have I been! When Mrs. Danesbury turned me out — and most cruelly she behaved to me; ay, master, I must say it, though she is your wife, and may the Lord help the poor children when they fall under her temper! — I went to London. Not direct; for I staid here and there upon my road; I was almost mad, what with one wretched thought or other. All at once I thought I’d go off to London and find out my brother and his wife. Well, sir, I did; and a fine state I found them in. Oh, sir, those that live in the country have need to be thankful, for they don’t know what some parts of London is! It’s just a hell upon earth.”
“You drew out your money, Glisson.”
“Yes, sir; I lent it to them to set up again — a hundred pounds of it — the odd thirty I kept myself; and he took a green-grocer’s shop, and I lived with ‘em. That’s eight years ago. And how long did the fine shop last? Not four years; the profits were swallowed up, and they are all gone to the dogs again.”
“But what have you been doing?”
“Nothing. I have just grubbed on with ’em in their vice and wretchedness; selling my clothes, and starving till I can starve no longer, so I resolved to come home here to die. I have been six days walking it, Master John.”
Master John! the old familiar title of his boyhood.
“Glisson,” he resumed, in a tone of deep commiseration, “have you relinquished that unfortunate habit which they tell me you took to?”
She shook her head. “No, sir.”
“No!”
“The craving for drink has grown upon me. My odd pounds went in it. It’s more to me now than food.”
“Oh, Glisson!”
“As long as I was in your house, sit, I kept it under: I should have kept it under still, for I knew I must do it. I did drink a drop at times, but not much to harm me. What possessed me to take so much the night Mrs. Danesbury found me, I can’t tell. But, up in that dreadful London, in the midst of bad example, with nothing but poverty, and ruin, and rags, and famine around me, and flaring gin-shops at every turn of a step, which make the best drink when they would not — that did for me. It does for thousands. My brother might have been sober enough but for them enticing places, and his business would have gone on.”
“Glisson, what could have been your inducement to fall into such a habit?” inquired Mr. Danesbury. “What was the commencement?”
“Do you remember a cook you once had, sir? — a fat, red-faced woman; Dolly we used to call her in the kitchen; one of the best cooks that ever came into the house. She left just after William was born.”
“Yes, I do remember her,” said Mr. Danesbury, who had been casting back his thoughts.
“She taught me. She drank gin; a great deal of it. As soon as ever my mistress had been into the kitchen in a morning to give orders, she’d begin; an
d she never left off throughout the day. Yet she would send up her dinner properly, and do her work well, and never show it. There was no baby then, for little John had died, and I took to steal down stairs at night, and sit with her in the kitchen after the servants had gone to bed, and drink some with her.
I got a liking for it. Master John, and it stuck to me: and I could not leave it off.”
“Glisson,” he uttered, after a pause, a sharp pang striking him like a dart, “could it be that this was the cause of your giving the child the laudanum — and so leading to the death of your mistress?”
“Too true; too true!” she shrieked. “And I have had my dear mistress’s face before me ever since, and I have drank worse, to drown it. Fare ye well, sir; fare ye well forever.”
She turned off, sobbing and moaning; and Mr. Danesbury saw her sink down behind a tree at some distance.
What should he do with her? He could not let her starve. Painful as had been the last revelation to him, he yet felt that he must’ give her succour. He was a considerate, benevolent man, and he would have been so to an enemy. Thomas Harding approached, and Mr. Danesbury informed him of what had occurred.
“It never was that object I saw pass round, as I was waiting at the gate to give the signal for the bell!” he exclaimed. “A bundle of rags, sir; bent, as if with age, with a stick in her hand to lean upon!”
“The same,” answered Mr. Danesbury; “that was Glisson. Harding, I must get somebody to take her in. Do you think any will be found to have her?”
“Plenty, sir, if only from the respect they owed your late mother, whose servant she was. Let it once be known that it is your wish, and twenty will come forward.”
“I will pay a weekly sum for her support Do you arrange it for me. Let her be comfortable.”
“I’ll see about it at once, sir.”
“Ay; she must be got in somewhere: look at her there, under that tree.”
Before an hour had elapsed, a home was found for Glisson, and she was conveyed to it, sobbing bitterly.
CHAPTER VII.
THE DANESBURY OPERATIVES.
How got on Jessy Gould? We had better see. She would have got on very well but for the public-houses; but Richard had learnt to like them much. When her friends consented to her marrying Richard Gould, they looked forward to the prospect of his rising to a good position in the establishment of Mr. Danesbury, otherwise they would not have considered him a suitable match for her. And as yet, Richard, though more comfortably off than many, was not advancing as quickly as he might have done. They had four or five children, who were kept as clean and neat as their mother.
It was half past seven o’clock, and Saturday night, and the bell rang at the Danesbury Works for the men to go in and be paid. Though so large a number of them, the arrangements were well ordered and systematic, and by eight o’clock most of them were ready to depart.
They passed into the yard, out at the great iron gates. A few proceeded to their homes, but the greater portion was hastening to the public-houses and beer-shops. A group of eight or ten, Richard Gould being one, halted in consultation as to which house should be favoured with their company, and finally it was decided to honour the Pig and Whistle, down by the new bridge.
“Ay; let’s. Jones said, last night, as they have got a famous tap on at the Pig. Come along, Gould, what be you stopping for?”
Richard Gould was hesitating. It occurred to his memory that he had promised Jessy to bring his wages home the minute he received them, for she said she wanted a few shillings for something particular, and told him what it was.
“I must step home first,” said he. “I’ll come after ye. My wife’s waiting for some money.”
“That’s a shuffle, Gould. Your wife gets her marketings on credit on the Saturday mornings.”
“It isn’t marketing: it’s something else. I promised I’d be home.”
‘‘Bother! You don’t go for to think as she’ll trapse out to-night. It’s a-pelting cats and dogs. No woman won’t leave her fireside to-night except them as can’t help it, and your wife ain’t one. Come along.”
Richard Gould yielded — an easy, good-natured soul he was, swayed with the wind — and away the lot went, through the rain and mud, to the Fig and Whistle.
The Pig and Whistle received them with due respect. It had got a blazing fire and a warm, light room to welcome them; and once ensconced in it with their pipes and drink, they were as oblivious of homes, wives, children, and weekly marketings, as if such things existed not. A few, who “used” the house regularly, called for their scores on entering, and settled up for the past seven days. The Pig and Whistle was a flourishing house now, for the workmen, who had for a long while been engaged erecting the new bridge in place of the dangerous old one, had patronized it extensively.
Meanwhile Richard Gould’s wife was sitting at home, in all hope. They occupied one of the cottages in Prospect Row, neat dwellings of three rooms and a detached back kitchen; or, as it was called, in local phraseology, a brew-house. The men inhabiting these cottages were ail employed at the Works; but there was a wide difference in their conduct, and, consequently, in their homes. Some drank their wages away, and then huddled with their wives and families into the down-stairs room and the brew-house, letting the two upper ones. Some of the wives were slatternly, some tidy; but, as a general rule, though it did not apply in every instance, the slatternly wife and the drinking husband went together. Some made, of these cottages, complete, pleasant dwellings, converting the brew-house into a kitchen for the rough work — the washing and cooking — and the front room into a parlour. Jessy Gould, smart and nice in all things, was one who had done the last, fitting it up with a carpet and glass, and pretty ornaments. Richard spent a good deal more in drink than he could afford, and this kept them poor; but Mrs. Gould’s friends often helped them, so that they were better off than most of the workmen of his grade.
She eat at home in the parlour, busy at work finishing a child’s frock, and expecting Richard. Her children were in bed, and a small sauce-pan stood on the hob by the fire containing some Irish stew for his supper. She had bought her marketings in the day — it was her custom to do so, and to pay on the Monday. Too many a poor wife could not obtain even this short credit, and had to get in every thing on the Saturday night, if her husband and his wages came home in time.
The clock struck nine, and Jessy Gould laid down her work with a sigh of despair.
“He is off with the men again! I am certain of it! He might have come home this night, when he knew what I wanted with the money.” And her work went on again, but more heavily.
In the next cottage to theirs lived a man of the name of Reed, an inferior workman. Mrs. Reed was in tribulation more dire than Jessy’s, and was audibly lamenting that this was Saturday night, and that Reed had gone a-drinking again. She knew to her cost the propensity he had to “go a-drinking,” not only on Saturday nights, but on others. The first step was to go after him, and try to get him home before he was too far gone, and half his week’s money spent. She threw a shawl over her gown, put on her bonnet, blew out the candle, left the bit of fire safe, and opened the door. But she hesitated on the threshold, for the wind and the rain came beating against her, threatening to wet her through and through. Turning her thin cotton shawl over her arms, bared to the elbows, for she had been hard at work, she locked the door, took out the key, and knocked at Richard Gould’s.
“Come in.”
“Good evening, Mrs. Gould. I’m come to ask you to let me leave my key here.”
She left her pattens at the door, and went in. “Ain’t it a shame?” she began. “Here’s that drunken brute of mine never come home again! He’s off, as usual, with the rest; and he knows I have not got bit or drop in the house for to-morrow, neither candles, nor coals, nor even a bit of soap, I hadn’t, to wash the poor children with — so I had to put ’em to bed dirty.”
“Ay; it is a shame,” said Mrs. Gould. “They are all alike,
I think. My husband promised to come home, and he has never come. We are invited to Mr. Harding’s to dinner to-morrow, children and all, and I wanted to buy new shoes for the two eldest, for I’m not going to take them there in their shabby old ones, which are off their feet, and Richard knows the new shoe-shop won’t give an hour’s credit. The men are all alike.”
“No, they are not all alike; I wish they were, if it was like your Gould. If he do go out of a night, he don’t get drunk, and drink all his money away, as that sot of a Reed of mine do.”
Jessy thought to herself that he drank away far more than he ought of it, but she did not say so.