by Ellen Wood
“It’s Dick, lady.”
“Dick — what?”
“Dick Mitchel.”
“Dear me — I thought I had seen the face before,” said Mrs. Todhetley to me. “But there are so many boys about here, Johnny; and they all look pretty much alike. How old are you, Dick?”
“I’m over ten,” answered Dick, with an emphasis on the over. Children catch up ideas, and no doubt he was as eager as the parents could be to impress on the world his fitness to be a ploughboy.
“How is it that you have been gleaning, Dick?”
“Mother couldn’t, ‘cause o’ the babby. They give me leave to come on since four o’clock: and I’ve got all this.”
Dick looked at the stile and then at his bundle of wheat, so I took it while he got over. As we went on down the lane, Mrs. Todhetley inquired whether he wanted to be a ploughboy. Oh yes! he answered, his face lighting up, as if the situation offered some glorious prospect. It ‘ud be two shilling a week; happen more; and mother said as he and Totty and Sam and the t’others ‘ud get treacle to their bread on Sundays then. Apparently Mrs. Mitchel knew how to diplomatize.
“I’ll give him one of the rusks, I think, Johnny,” whispered Mrs. Todhetley.
But while she was taking it from the bag, he ran in with his wheat. She called to him to come back, and gave him one. His mother had taken the wheat from him, and looked out at the door with it in her hands. Seeing her, Mrs. Todhetley went up, and said Mr. Jacobson would not at present do anything. The next minute Mitchel appeared pulling at his straw hair.
“It is hard lines,” he said, humbly, “when the lad’s of a’ age to be earning, and the master can’t be got to take him on. And me to ha’ worked on the same farm, man and boy; and father afore me.”
“Mr. Jacobson thinks the boy would not be strong enough for the work.”
“Not strong enough, and him rising eleven!” exclaimed Mitchel, as if the words were some dreadful aspersion on Dick. “How can he be strong if he gets no work to make him strong, ma’am? Strength comes with the working — and nobody don’t oughtn’t to know that better nor the master. Anyhow, if he don’t take him, it’ll be cruel hard lines for us.”
Dick was outside, dividing the rusk with a small girl and boy, all three seated in the lane, and looking as happy over the rusk as if they had been children in a fairy tale. “It’s Totty,” said he, pausing in the work of division to speak, “and that ‘un’s Sam.” Mrs. Todhetley could not resist the temptation of finding two more rusks, which made one apiece.
“He is a good-natured little fellow, Johnny,” she remarked, as we went along. “Intelligent, too: in that he takes after his mother.”
“Would it be wrong to let him go on the farm as ploughboy?”
“Johnny, I don’t know. I’d rather not give an opinion,” she added, looking right before her into the moon, as if seeking for one there. “Of course he is not old enough or big enough, practically speaking; but on the other hand, where there are so many mouths to feed, it seems hard not to let him earn money if he can earn it. The root of the evil lies in there being so many mouths — as was said at Mr. Jacobson’s this afternoon.”
It was winter before I heard anything more of the matter. Tod and I got home for Christmas. One day in January, when the skies were lowering, and the air was cold and raw, but not frosty, I was crossing a field on old Jacobson’s land then being ploughed. The three brown horses at the work were as fine as you’d wish to see.
“You’ll catch it smart on that there skull o’ yourn, if ye doan’t keep their yeads straight, ye young divil.”
The salutation was from the man at the tail of the plough to the boy at the head of the first horse. Looking round, I saw little Mitchel. The horses stopped, and I went up to him. Hall, the ploughman, took the opportunity to beat his arms. I dare say they were cold enough.
“So your ambition is attained, is it, Dick? Are you satisfied?”
Dick seemed not to understand. He was taller, but the face looked pinched, and there was never a smile on it.
“Do you like being a ploughboy?”
“It’s hard and cold. Hard always; frightful cold of a morning.”
“How’s Totty?”
The face lighted up just a little. Totty weren’t any better, but she didn’t die; Jimmy did. Which was Jimmy? — Oh, Jimmy was after Nanny, next to the babby.
“What did Jimmy die of?”
Whooping cough. They’d all been bad but him — Dick. Mother said he’d had it when he was no older nor the babby.
Whether the whooping-cough had caused an undue absorption of Mitchel’s means, certain it was, Dick looked famished. His cheeks were thin, his hands blue.
“Have you been ill, Dick?”
No, he had not been ill. ’Twas Jimmy and the t’others.
“He’s the incapablest little villain I ever had put me to do with,” struck in the ploughman. “More lazy nor a fattened pig.”
“Are you lazy, Dick?”
I think an eager disclaimer was coming out, but the boy remembered in time who was present — his master, the ploughman.
“Not lazy wilful,” he said, bursting into tears. “I does my best: mother tells me to.”
“Take that, you young sniveller,” said Hall, dealing him a good sound slap on the left cheek. “And now go on: ye know ye’ve got this lot to go through to-day.”
He took hold of the plough, and Dick stretched up his poor trembling hands to the first horse to guide him. I am sure the boy was trying to do his best; but he looked weak and famished and ill.
“Why did you strike him, Hall? He did nothing to deserve it.”
“He don’t deserve nothing else,” was Hall’s answer. “Let him alone, and the furrows ‘ud be as crooked as a dog’s leg. You dun’ know what these young ‘uns be for work, sir. — Keep ’em in the line, you fool!”
Looking back as I went down the field, I watched the plough going slowly up it, Dick seeming to have his hands full with the well-fed horses.
“Yes, I heard the lad was taken on, Johnny,” Mrs. Todhetley said when I told her that evening. “Mitchel prevailed with his master at last. Mr. Jacobson is good-hearted, and knew the Mitchels were in sore need of the extra money the boy would earn. Sickness makes a difference to the poor as well as to the rich.”
I saw Dick Mitchel three or four times during that January. The Jacobsons had two nephews staying with them from Oxfordshire, and it caused us to go over often. The boy seemed a weak little mite for the place; but of course, having undertaken the work, he had to do it. He was no worse off than others. To be at the farm before six o’clock, he had to leave home at half-past five, taking his breakfast with him, which was chiefly dry bread. As to the boy’s work, it varied — as those acquainted with the executive of a busy farm can tell you. Besides the ploughing, he had to pump, and carry water and straw, and help with the horses, and go errands to the blacksmith’s and elsewhere, and so on. Carters and ploughmen do not spare their boys; and on a large farm like this they are the immediate rulers, not the master himself. Had Dick been under Mr. Jacobson’s personal eye, perhaps it might have been lightened a little, for he was a humane man. There were three things that made it seem particularly hard for Dick Mitchel, and those three were under no one’s control; his natural weakliness, his living so far from the farm, and its being winter weather. In summer the work is nothing like as hard for the boys; and it was a great pity that Dick had not first entered on his duties in that season to get inured to them before the winter. Mr. Jacobson gave him the best wages — three shillings a week. Looking at the addition it must have seemed to Mitchel’s ten, it was little wonder he had not ceased to petition old Jacobson.
The Jacobsons were kind to the boy — as I can affirm. One cold day when I was over there with the nephews, shooting birds, we went into the best kitchen at twelve o’clock for some pea-soup. They were going to carry the basins into the parlour, but we said we’d rather eat it there by the big blazing f
ire. Mrs. Jacobson came in. I can see her now, with a soft white woollen kerchief thrown over her shoulders to keep out the cold, and her net cap above her silver curls. We were getting our second basinfuls.
“Do have some, aunt,” said Fred. “It’s the best you ever tasted.”
“No, thank you, Fred. I don’t care to spoil my dinner.”
“It won’t spoil ours.”
She laughed a little, and stood looking from the window into the fold-yard, saying presently that she feared the frost was going to set in now in earnest, which would not be pleasant for their journey. — For this was the last day of the nephews’ stay, and she was going home with them for a week. There had been no very severe cold all the winter; which was a shame because of the skating; if the ponds had a thin coating of ice on them one day, it would all melt the next.
“Bless me! there’s that poor child sitting out in the cold! What is he eating? — his dinner?”
Her words made us look from the window. Dick Mitchel had put himself down by the distant pig-sty, and seemed to be eating something that he held in his hands. He was very white — as might be seen even from where we stood.
“Mary,” said she to one of the servants, “go and call that boy in.”
Little Mitchel came in; pinched and blue. His clothes were thin, not half warm enough for the weather; an old red woollen comforter was twisted round his neck. He took off his battered drab hat, and put his bread into it.
“Is that your dinner?” asked Mrs. Jacobson.
“Yes’m,” said Dick, pulling the forelock of his light hair.
“But why did you not go home to-day?”
“Mother said there was nothing but bread for dinner to-day, and she give it me to bring away with my breakfast.”
“Well, why did you sit out in the cold? You might have gone indoors somewhere to eat it.”
“I were tired, ‘m,” was all Dick answered.
To look at him, one would say the “tired” state was chronic. He was shivering slightly with the cold; his teeth chattered. Mrs. Jacobson took his hand, and put him to sit on a low wooden stool close to the fire, and gave him a basin of pea-soup.
“Let him have more if he can eat it,” she said to Mary when she went away. So the boy for once was well warmed and fed.
Now, it may be thought that Mrs. Jacobson, being a kind old lady, might have told him to come in for some soup every cold day. And perhaps her will was good to do it. But it would never have answered. There were boys on the farm besides Dick, and no favour could be shown to one more than to another. No, nor to the boys more than to the men. Nor to the men on this farm more than to the men on that. Old Jacobson would have had his brother farmers pulling his ears. Those of you who are acquainted with the subject will know all this.
And there’s another thing I had better say. In telling of Dick Mitchel, it will naturally sound like an exceptional or isolated case, because those who read have their attention directed to this one and not to others. But, in actual fact, Dick’s was only one of a great many; the Jacobsons had employed ploughboys and other boys always; lots of them; some strong and some weak, just as the boys might happen to be. For a young boy to be out with the plough in the cold winter weather, seems nothing to a farmer and a farmer’s men: it lies in the common course of events. He has to get through as he best can; he must work to eat; and as a compensating balance there comes the warmth and the easy work of summer. Dick Mitchel was only one of the race; the carter and ploughman, his masters, had begun life exactly as he had, had gone through the same ordeal, the hardships of a long winter’s day and the frost and snow. Dick Mitchel was as capable of his duties as many another had been. Dick’s father had been little and weakly in his boyhood, but he got over that and grew as strong as the rest of them. Dick might have got over it, too, but for some extraordinary weather that set in.
Mrs. Jacobson had been in Oxfordshire a week when old Jacobson started to fetch her home, intending to stay there two or three days. The weather since she left had been going on in the same stupid way; a thin coating of snow to be seen one day, the green of the fields the next. But on the morning after old Jacobson started, the frost set in with a vengeance, and we got our skates out. Another day came in, and the Squire declared he had never felt anything to equal the cold. We had not had it as sharp for years: and then, you see, he was too fat to skate. The best skating was on a pond on old Jacobson’s land, which they called the lake from its size.
It was on this second day that I came across Dick Mitchel. Hastening home from the lake after dark — for we had skated till we couldn’t see and then kept on by moonlight — the skates in my hand and all aglow with heat, who should be sitting by the bank on this side the crooked stile instead of getting over it, but little Mitchel. But for the moon shining right on his face, I might have passed without seeing him.
“You are taking it airily, young Dick. Got the gout?”
Dick just lifted his head and stared a little; but didn’t speak.
“Come! Why don’t you go home?”
“I’m tired,” murmured Dick. “I’m cold.”
“Get up. I’ll help you over the stile.”
He did as he was bid at once. We had got well on down the lane, and I had my hand on his shoulder to steady him, for his legs seemed to slip about like Punch’s in the show, when he turned suddenly back again.
“The harness.”
“The what?” I said.
Something seemed the matter with the boy: it was just as if he had partly lost the power of speech, or had been struck stupid. I made out at last that he had left some harness on the ground, which he was ordered to take to the blacksmith’s.
“I’ll get over for it, Dick. You stop where you are.”
It was lying where he had been sitting; a short strap with a broken buckle. Dick took it and we went on again.
“Were you asleep, just now, Dick?”
“No, sir. It were the moon.”
“What was the moon?”
“I were looking into it. Mother says God’s all above there: I thought happen I might see Him.”
A long explanation for Dick to-night. The recovery of the strap seemed to have brightened up his intellect.
“You’ll never see Him in this world, Dick. He sees you always.”
“And that’s what mother says. He sees I can’t do more nor my arms’ll let me. I’d not like Him to think I can.”
“All right, Dick. You only do your best always; He won’t fail to see it.”
I had hardly said the last words when down went Dick without warning, face foremost. Picking him up, I took a look into his eyes by the moonlight.
“What did you do that for, Dick?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is it your legs?”
“Yes, it’s my legs. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean it when I fell under the horses to-day, but Hall he beated of me and said I did.”
After that I did not loose him; or I’m sure he would have gone down again. Arrived at his cottage, he was for passing it.
“Don’t you know your own door, Dick Mitchel?”
“It’s the strap,” he said. “I ha’ got to take it to Cawson’s.”
“Oh, I’ll step round with that. Let’s see what there is to do.”
He seemed unwilling, saying he must take it back to Hall in the morning. Very well, I said, so he could. We went in at his door; and at first I thought I must have got into a black fog. The room was a narrow, poking place; but I couldn’t see across it. Two children were coughing, one choking, one crying. Mrs. Mitchel’s face, ornamented with blacks, gradually loomed out to view through the atmosphere.
“It be the chimbley, sir. I hope you’ll please to excuse it. It don’t smoke as bad as this except when the weather’s cold beyond common.”
“It’s to be hoped it doesn’t. I should call it rather miserable if it did.”
“Yes, sir. Mitchel, he says he thinks the chimbley must have frozed.”
> “Look here, Mrs. Mitchel, I’ve brought Dick home: I found him sitting in the cold on the other side of the stile, and my belief is, he thought he could not get over it. He is about as weak as a young rat.”
“It’s the frost, sir,” she said. “The boys all feel it that has to be out and about. It’ll soon be gone, Dick. This here biting cold don’t never last long.”
Dick was standing against her, bending his face on her old stuff gown. She put her arm about him kindly.
“No, it can’t last long, Mrs. Mitchel. Could he not be kept indoors until it gives a bit — let him have a holiday? No? Wouldn’t it do?”
She opened her eyes wide at this. Such a thing as keeping a ploughboy at home for a holiday, had never entered her imagination.
“Why, Master Ludlow, sir, he’d lose his place!”
“But, suppose he were ill, and had to stay at home?”
“Then the Lord help us, if it came to that! Please, sir, his wages might be stopped. I’ve heard of a master paying in illness, though it’s not many of ’em as would, but I’ve never knowed ’em pay for holidays. The biting cold will go soon, Dick,” she added, looking at him; “don’t be downhearted.”
“I should give him a cup of hot tea, Mrs. Mitchel, and let him go to bed. Good night; I’m off.”
I should have liked to say beer instead of tea; it would have put a bit of strength into the boy; but I might just as well have suggested wine, for all they had of either. Leaving the strap at the blacksmith’s — it was but a minute or two out of my road — I told him to send it up to Mitchel’s as soon as it was done.
“I dare say!” was what I got in answer.
“Look here, Cawson: the lad’s ill, and his father was not in the way. If you don’t choose to let your boy run up with that, or take it yourself, you shall never have another job of work from the Squire if I can prevent it.”
“I’ll send it, sir,” said Cawson, coming to his senses. Not that he had much from us: we chiefly patronized Dovey, down in Piefinch Cut.
Now, all this happened: as Duffham and others could testify if necessary; it is not put in to make up a story. But I never thought worse of Dick than that he was done over for the moment with the cold.