“Now I’ve gone through all the village, from end to end,
save and except one more house;
But I haven’t come to that, and I hope I never shall,
and that’s the village Poor House.”

T. Hood.

Cottage visiting turned out to be a much chequered affair. One of the first places to which the sisters made their way was the Widow Mole’s. They found it, rather beyond the church, down a lane, where it was hidden behind an overgrown thorn hedge, and they would scarcely have found it at all, if a three-year-old child had not been clattering an old bit of metal against the bar put across to prevent his exit. He was curly and clean, except with the day’s surface dirt, but he only stared stolidly at the question whether Mrs Mole lived there. A ten-year-old girl came out, and answered the question.

“Yes, mother do live here, but her be out at work.”

“Is that your grandfather?” as they caught sight of a very old man on a chair by the door, in the sun.

“Yes, ma’am. Will you come in and see him?”

He was a very old man, with scanty white hair, but he was very clean, and neatly dressed in a white smock, mended all over, but beautifully worked over the breast and cuffs, and long leather buskins. He was very civil, too. He took off his old straw hat, and rose slowly by the help of his stout stick, though the first impulse of the visitors was to beg him not to move. He did not hear them, but answered their gesture.

“I be so crippled up with the rheumatics, you see, ma’am,” and he put his knotted and contracted hand up to his ear.

Mrs Carbonel shouted into his ear that she was sorry for him. She supposed his daughter was out at work.

“Yes, ma’am, with Farmer Goodenough—a charing to-day it is.”

“Washing,” screamed the little girl.

“She was off at five o’clock this morning,” he went on. “She do work hard, my daughter Bess, and she’s a good one to me, and so is little Liz here. Thank the Lord for them.”

“And her husband is dead?”

“Yes, ma’am. Fell off a haystack three years ago, and never spoke no more. We have always kept off the parish, ma’am. This bit of a cottage was my poor wife’s, and she do want to leave it to the boy; but she be but frail, poor maid, and if she gave in, there’d be nothing for it but to give up the place and go to the workhouse; and there’s such a lot there as I could not go and die among.”

He spoke it to the sympathising faces, not as one begging, and they found out that all was as he said. He had seen better days, and held his head above the parish pay, and so had his son-in-law but the early death of poor Mole, and the old man’s crippled state, had thrown the whole maintenance of the family on the poor young widow, who was really working herself to death, while, repairs being impossible, the cottage was almost falling down.

“Oh, what a place, and what a dear old man!” cried the ladies, as they went out. “Well, we can do something here. I’ll come and read to him every week,” exclaimed Dora.

“And I will knit him a warm jacket,” said Mary, “and surely Edmund could help them to prop up that wretched cottage.”

“What a struggle their lives must have been, and so patient and good! Where are we going now?”

“I believe that is the workhouse, behind the church,” said Mary. “That rough-tiled roof.”

“It has a bend in the middle, like a broken back. I must sketch it,” said Dora.

“Why, there’s Edmund, getting over the churchyard stile.”

“Ay, he can’t keep long away from you, Madam Mary.”

“Were you going to the workhouse?” said Captain Carbonel, coming up, and offering an arm to each lady, as was the fashion in those days.

“We thought of it. All the poorest people are there, of course.”

“And the worst,” said the captain. “No, I will not have you go there. It is not fit for you.”

For besides that he was very particular about his ladies, and had no notion of letting them go to all the varieties of evil where they could hope to do good, like the ladies of our days, the workhouse was an utterly different place from the strictly disciplined union houses of the present Poor Law. Each parish had its own, and that of Uphill had no master, no order, but was the refuge of all the disorderly, disreputable people, who could not get houses, or pay their rent, who lived in any kind of fashion, on parish pay and what they could get, and were under no restraint.

While the captain was explaining to them what he had heard from Farmer Goodenough, a sudden noise of shouting and laughing, with volleys of evil words, was heard near the “Fox and Hounds.”

“What is that?” asked Dora, of a tidy young woman coming her way.

“That’s only the chaps at old Sam,” she answered, as if it was an ordinary sound. And on them exclaiming, she explained. “Samson Sanderson, that’s his name, sir. He be what they calls non-compos, and the young fellows at the ‘Fox and Hounds’ they have their fun out of he. They do bait he shameful.”

Violent shouts of foul words and riotous laughter could be distinguished so plainly, that Captain Carbonel hastily thrust his wife and sister into the nearest cottage, and marched into the group of rough men and boys, who stood holloaing rude jokes, and laughing at the furious oaths and abuse in intermittent gasps with which they were received.

“For shame!” his indignant voice broke in. “Are you not ashamed, unmanly fellows, to treat a poor weak lad in this way?”

There was a moment’s silence. Then a great hulking drover called out, “Bless you, sir, he likes it.”

“The more shame for you,” exclaimed the captain, “to bait a poor innocent lad with horrid blasphemy and profanity. I tell you every one of you ought to be fined!”

The men began to sneak away from the indignant soldier. The poor idiot burst out crying and howling, and the ostler came forward, pulling his forelock, and saying, “You’ll not be hard on ’em, sir. ’Tis all sport. There, Sammy, don’t be afeared. Gentleman means you no harm.”

Captain Carbonel held out some coppers, saying, “There, my poor lad, there’s something for you. Only don’t let me hear bad words again.”

Sam muttered something, and pulled his ragged hat forward as he shambled off into some back settlements of the public-house, while the ostler went on—

“’Tis just their game, sir! None of ’em would hurt poor Sam! They’d treat him the next minute, sir. All in sport.”

“Strange sport,” said the captain, “to teach a poor helpless lad, who ought to be as innocent as a babe, that abominable blasphemy.”

“He don’t mean nought, sir! All’s one to he!”

“All the worse in those who do know better, I tell you; and you may tell your master that, if this goes on, I shall certainly speak to the magistrates.”

There was no need to tell the landlord, Mr Oldfellow. The captain was plainly enough to be heard through the window of the bar. The drovers had no notion that their amusement was sinful, for “it didn’t hurt no one,” and, in fact, “getting a rise” out of Softy Sam was one of the great attractions of the “Fox and Hounds,” so that Mr Oldfellow was of the same mind as Dan Hewlett, who declared that “they Gobblealls was plaguey toads of Methodys, and wasn’t to think to bully them about like his soldiers.”

They had another drink all round to recover from their fright, when they treated Softy Sam, but took care not to excite him to be noisy, while the captain might be within earshot.

The two ladies had meanwhile taken refuge in what proved to be no other than Mrs Daniel Hewlett’s house, a better one, and less scantily provided with furniture, than the widow Mole’s, but much less clean and neat. The door stood open, and there was a tub full of soap-suds within. The captain gave a low whistle to intimate his presence, and stood at the entrance. Unwashed dinner things were on a round table, a dresser in confusion against the wall, on another Moore’s Almanack for some years past, full of frightful catastrophes, mixed with little, French, highly-coloured pictures of the Blessed Virgin.

His wife and her sister were seated, the one on a whole straw chair, the other on a rickety one, conversing with a very neat, pale, and pleasant-looking invalid young woman, evidently little able to rise from her wooden armchair. Molly Hewlett, in a coarse apron, and a cap far back amid the rusty black tangles of her hair, her arms just out of the wash-tub, was in the midst of a voluble discourse, into which the ladies would not break.

“You see, ma’am, she was in a right good situation, but she was always unlucky, and she had the misfortune to fall down the attic stairs with the baby in her arms.”

“The baby was not hurt,” put in the invalid.

“Not it, the little toad, but ’twas saving he as ricked her back somehow, and made her a cripple for life, as you see, ma’am; and she was six months in the hospital, till the doctor, he say as how he couldn’t do nothing more for her, so Hewlett and me we took her in, as she is my own sister, you see, and we couldn’t let her go to the workhouse, but she do want a little broth or a few extrys now and then, ma’am, more than we poor folks can give her.”

“My mistress is very good, and gives me a little pension,” put in the invalid, while her sister looked daggers at her, and Mrs Carbonel, in obedience to her husband’s signal, took a hasty leave.

“There now! That’s the way of you, Judith,” cried Molly Hewlett, banging the door behind them. “What should you go for to tell the ladies of that pitiful pay of yours but to spile all chance of their helping us, nasty, mean skin-flints as they be!”

“I couldn’t go for to deceive them,” humbly replied Judith, meek, but cowering under the coming storm.

“Who asked you to deceive? Only to hold your tongue for your own good, and mine and my poor children’s, that you just live upon. As if your trumpery pay was worth your board and all the trouble I has with you night and day, but you must come in and hinder these new folk from coming down liberal with your Methody ways and your pride! That’s it, your pride, ma’am. Oh, I’m an unhappy woman, between you and Dan! I am!”

Molly sank into a chair, put her apron over her face and cried, rocking herself to and fro, while Judith, with tears in her eyes, tried gentle consolations all in vain, till Molly remembered her washing, and rose up, moaning and lamenting.

Meantime Mrs Carbonel and her sister were exclaiming in pity that this was a dear good girl, though Edmund shook his head over her surroundings.

“I wonder how to make her more comfortable,” said Dora. “She seemed so much pleased when I promised to bring her something to read.”

“I am afraid those Hewletts prey on her,” said Mary.

“And patronising her will prove a complicated affair!” said the captain.

He wanted them to come home at once, but on the way they met Nanny Barton, who began, with low curtsies, a lamentable story about her girls having no clothes, and she would certainly have extracted a shilling from Miss Carbonel if the captain had not been there.

“Never accept stories told on the spur of the moment,” he said.

Then Betsy Seddon and Tirzah Todd came along together, bending under heavy loads of broken branches for their fires. Tirzah smiled as usual, and showed her pretty teeth, but the captain looked after her, and said, “They have been tearing Mr Selby’s woods to pieces.”

“What can they do for firewood?” said his wife.

“Let us look out the rules of your father’s coal store and shoe club,” he said.

Chapter Six.
The Neighbourhood

“Through slush and squad,
When roads was bad,
But hallus stop at the Vine and Hop.”

Tennyson.

Through all Pucklechurch’s objections and evident contempt for his fancies, and those of young madam, Captain Carbonel insisted on the clearance of the yard. He could not agree with the old man, who made free to tell him that, “Such as that there muck-heap was just a bucket to a farmer’s wife, if she was to be called a farmer’s wife—was that it.”

With some reflection, Captain Carbonel decided that a bucket might mean a bouquet, and answered, “Maybe she might have too much of a good thing. When I went down to Farmer Bell’s the other day, they had a famous heap, and I was struck with the sickly look of his wife and daughters.”

“His missus were always a poor, nesh ’ooman,” returned Pucklechurch.

“And I don’t mean mine to be like her if I can help it,” said the captain.

But he did not reckon on the arrival of a prancing pair of horses, with a smart open carriage, containing two ladies and a gentleman, in the most odorous part of the proceedings, when he was obliged to clear the way from a half-loaded waggon to make room for them, and, what was quite as inconvenient, to hurry up the back stairs to his dressing-room to take off his long gaiters, Blucher boots (as half high ones were then called) and old shooting coat, and make himself presentable.

In fact, when he came into the room, Dora was amused at the perceptible look of surprised approval of the fine tall soldierly figure, as he advanced to meet Mr and Mrs Selby and their daughter, the nearest neighbours, who were, of course, in the regular course of instruction of the new-comers in the worthlessness and ingratitude of Uphill and the impossibility of doing anything for the good of the place.

Mary was very glad that he interrupted the subject by saying merrily, “You caught me in the midst of my Augean stable. I hope next time you are kind enough to visit us that the yard may be in a more respectable condition.”

Mr Selby observed that it was unpardonable not to have done the work beforehand, and the captain answered, “On the contrary, it was reserved as a fragrant bucket, or bouquet for a farmer’s wife.”

Whereat the visitors looked shocked, and Mary made haste to observe: “But we do hope to make a better road to the house through the fields.”

“There is a great deal to be done first,” said Dora, who thought the observation rather weak.

Nothing else that was interesting took place on this occasion. Mr Selby asked the captain whether he hunted, and gave him some information on the sport of all kinds in the neighbourhood. Miss Selby asked Dora if she liked archery, music, and drawing. Mrs Selby wanted to recommend a housemaid, and advised Mrs Carbonel against ever taking a servant from the neighbourhood. And then they all turned to talk of the evil doings of the parish thieves, poachers, idlers, drunkards, and to warn the Carbonels once more against hoping to improve them. The horses could be heard pawing and jingling outside, and, as the ladies rose to take leave, Captain Carbonel begged leave to hurry out and clear the coast. And it was well that he did so, for he had to turn back a whole procession of cows coming in to be milked, and sundry pigs behind them.

The farm court was finished, and never was so bad again, the animals being kept from spending their day there, except the poultry, in which Mary took great delight. Soon came more visitors, and it became a joke to the husband and sister that she always held out hopes of “the future drive” when they arrived, bumped or mired by the long lane. “Mary’s Approach,” as Edmund called it, had to be deferred till more needful work was done. The guests whom they best liked, Mr and Mrs Grantley, the clergyman and his wife from the little town of Poppleby, gave an excellent and hopeful account of their rector, Dr Fogram, who was, they said, a really good man, and very liberal.

Mrs Grantley was interested in schools and poor people, as it was easy to discover, and Mary and Dora were soon talking eagerly to her, and hearing what was done at Poppleby; but there were gentry and prosperous tradespeople there, who could be made available as subscribers or teachers; so that their situation was much more hopeful than that of the Carbonels, who had not the authority of the clergyman.

Poppleby was a much larger place than Downhill, on the post road to London. The mail-coach went through it, and thence post-horses were hired, and chaises, from the George Inn. The Carbonels possessed a phaeton, and a horse which could be used for driving or riding, and thus Captain Carbonel took the two ladies to return the various calls that had been made upon them. They found the Selbys not at home, but were warmly welcomed by the Grantleys, and spent the whole afternoon with them, and, at Dora’s earnest request, were taken to see the schools. So different was the taste and feeling of those days that, though Poppleby Church was a very fine old one—in grand architecture, such as in these days is considered one of the glories of the country—no one thought of going to look at it, and the effect of Mr Grantley’s excellent sermons had been the putting up of a new gallery right across the chancel arch.

It had a fine tower and steeple, and this Dora thought of as a delightful subject for a sketch from the Parsonage garden. She made great friends with Lucy Grantley, the eldest daughter, over their tastes in drawing, as well as in the Waverley novels and in poetry, and was invited to spend a long day at Poppleby and take a portrait of the steeple.

After the calls had been made and returned began the dinner-parties. Elmour Priory was so near Greenhow that it would have been easy to walk there across the fields, or to drive in the phaeton, especially as the hours were much earlier, and six or half-past was held to be a late dinner hour, but this would have been contrary to etiquette, especially the first time, with people who evidently thought much of “style,” and the Carbonels were not superior to such considerations, which were—or were supposed to be—of more importance in those days. So a chaise was ordered, and they went in state, and had a long, dull evening, chiefly enlivened by the Miss Selbys and Dora playing on the piano.

As they were going home, all round by the road, when they were near the top of the hill, before they came to the “Fox and Hounds,” the postilion first shouted and then came to a sudden stop. The captain, putting his head out at the window, saw by the faint light of a young moon, going down in the remains of sunset, that he was jumping off his horse, growling and swearing, but under his breath, when the captain sprang out. A woman was lying across the road, and had barely escaped being run over. Mary and Dora were both out in a moment.

“Poor thing, poor thing! Is it a fit? She is quite insensible.”

“A fit of a certain kind,” said the captain, who was dragging her into the hedge, while the post-boy held the horses. “Go back, Mary, Dora!”

“It is Nanny Barton!” said Dora in horror.

Mary took down one of the carriage lamps and held it to the face. “Yes, it is!” said she. “Can’t we take her home, or do anything?”

“No, no; nonsense!” said Edmund. “Don’t come near, don’t touch her. Don’t you see, she is simply dead drunk.”

“But we can’t leave her here.”

“The best thing to do! Yes, it is; but we will stop at the ‘Fox and Hounds,’ if that will satisfy you, and send some one out to see after her.”

They were obliged to be satisfied, for the tones were authoritative, and they had to accept his assurance that the woman was in no state for them to meddle with. She would come to no harm, he said, when he had put her on the bank, and it was only to pacify them that he caused the postilion to stop at the public-house, whence roaring, singing, and shouts proceeded. The landlord came out, supposing it was some new arrival, and when Captain Carbonel jumped out, and, speaking severely, desired that some one would go to look after the woman, who was lying in the road, and whom the horses had almost run over, he answered as if he had been doing the most natural and correct thing in the world.

“Yes, sir; I had just sent her home. They had been treating of her, and she had had a drop too much. She wasn’t in a proper state.”

“Proper state! No! I should think not! It is a regular shame and disgrace that you should encourage such goings on! Where’s the woman’s husband? Has no one got the humanity to come and take her home?”

Oldfellow called gruffly to some of the troop, who came reeling out to the door, and told them it was time to be off, and that some one, “You Tirzah had best see to that there Barton ’oman.”

Captain Carbonel wished to keep his ladies from the sight, but they were watching eagerly, and could not help seeing that it was Tirzah Todd, more gipsy-looking than ever, who came out. Not, however, walking as if intoxicated, and quite able to comprehend Captain Carbonel’s brief explanation where to find her companion.

“Ah, poor Nanny!” she said cheerfully. “She’s got no head! A drop is too much for her.”

The chaise door was shut, and they went on, Dora and Mary shocked infinitely, and hardly able to speak of what they had seen.

And they did not feel any happier when the next day, as Mary was feeding the chickens, Nanny came up to her curtseying and civil.

“Please, ma’am, I’m much obliged to you for seeing to me last night. I just went in to see if my husband was there, as was gone to Poppleby with some sheep, and they treated me, ma’am. And that there Tirzah and Bet Bracken, they was a-singing songs, as it was a shame to hear, so I ups and rebukes them, and she flies at me like a catamount, ma’am; and then Mr Oldfellow, he puts me out, ma’am, as was doing no harms as innocent as a lamb.”

“Well,” said Mrs Carbonel, “it was no place for any woman to be in, and we were grieved, I cannot tell you how much, that you should be there. You had better take care; you know drunkenness is a really wicked sin in God’s sight.”

“Only a little overtaken—went to see for my husband,” muttered Nanny. “I didn’t take nigh so much as that there Tirzah Todd, that is there with Bet Bracken every night of her life, to sing—”

“Never mind other people. Their doing wrong doesn’t make you right.”

“Only a drop,” argued Nanny. “And that there Tirzah and Bet—”

Mary was resolved against hearing any more against Tirzah and Bet, and actually shut herself into the granary till Nanny was gone. And there she sat down on a sack of peas and fairly cried at the thought of the sin and ignorant unconsciousness of evil all round her. And then she prayed a little prayer for help and wisdom for these poor people and themselves. Then she felt cheered up and hopeful.