Mary Barton (18 page)

The little action awoke her, and, like nine out of ten people in similar circumstances, she exclaimed, opening her eyes to their fullest extent—

"I'm not asleep. I've been awake all the time."

Even her father could not keep from smiling, and Job Legh and Margaret laughed outright.

"Come, wench," said Job, "don't look so gloppened* because thou'st fallen asleep while an oud chap like me was talking on oud times. It were like enough to send thee to sleep. Try if thou canst keep thine eyes open while I read thy father a bit on a poem as is written by a weaver like oursel. A rare chap I'll be bound is he who could weave verse like this."

*Gloppened; amazed, frightened.

So adjusting his spectacles on nose, cocking his chin, crossing his legs, and coughing to clear his voice, he read aloud a little poem of Samuel Bamford's* he had picked up somewhere.

*The fine-spirited author of 'Passages in the Life of a Radical'—a man who illustrates his order, and shows what nobility may be in a cottage.

God help the poor, who, on this wintry morn,

Come forth from alleys dim and courts obscure.

God help yon poor pale girl, who droops forlorn,

And meekly her affliction doth endure;

God help her, outcast lamb; she trembling stands,

All wan her lips, and frozen red her hands

Her sunken eyes are modestly downcast,

Her night-black hair streams on the fitful blast;

Her bosom, passing fair, is half revealed,

And oh! so cold, the snow lies there congealed;

Her feet benumbed, her shoes all rent and worn,

God help thee, outcast lamb, who standst forlorn!

God help the poor!

God help the poor! An infant's feeble wail

Comes from yon narrow gateway, and behold!

A female crouching there, so deathly pale,

Huddling her child, to screen it from the cold;

Her vesture scant, her bonnet crushed and torn;

A thin shawl doth her baby dear enfold.

And so she 'bides the ruthless gale of morn,

Which almost to her heart hath sent its cold.

And now she, sudden, darts a ravening look,

As one, with new hot bread, goes past the nook;

And, as the tempting load is onward borne,

She weeps. God help thee, helpless one, forlorn!

God help the poor!

God help the poor! Behold yon famished lad,

No shoes, nor hose, his wounded feet protect;

With limping gait, and looks so dreamy sad,

He wanders onward, stopping to inspect

Each window stored with articles of food.

He yearns but to enjoy one cheering meal;

Oh! to the hungry palate viands rude

Would yield a zest the famished only feel!

He now devours a crust of mouldy bread;

With teeth and hands the precious boon is torn

Unmindful of the storm that round his head

Impetuous sweeps. God help thee, child forlorn!

God help the poor!

God help the poor! Another have I found—

A bowed and venerable man is he;

His slouch-ed hat with faded crape is bound;

His coat is grey, and threadbare too, I see.

"The rude winds" seem "to mock his hoary hair":

His shirtless bosom to the blast is bare.

Anon he turns and casts a wistful eye,

And with scant napkin wipes the blinding spray,

And looks around, as if he fain would spy

Friends he had feasted in his better day:

Ah! some are dead: and some have long forborne

To know the poor; and he is left forlorn!

God help the poor!

God help the poor, who in lone valleys dwell,

Or by far hills, where whin and heather grow;

Theirs is a story sad indeed to tell;

Yet little cares the world, and less 't would know

About the toil and want men undergo.

The wearying loom doth call them up at morn;

They work till worn-out nature sinks to sleep;

They taste, but are not fed. The snow drifts deep

Around the fireless cot, and blocks the door;

The night-storm howls a dirge across the moor;

And shall they perish thus—oppressed and lorn?

Shall toil and famine, hopeless, still be borne?

No! God will yet arise and help the poor!

"Amen!" said Barton, solemnly and sorrowfully. "Mary! wench, couldst thou copy me them lines, dost think?—that's to say, if Job there has no objection."

"Not I. More they're heard and read and the better, say I."

So Mary took the paper. And the next day, on a blank half-sheet of a valentine, all bordered with hearts and darts—a valentine she had once suspected to come from Jem Wilson—she copied Bamford's beautiful little poem.

"My heart, once soft as woman's tear, is gnarled

With gloating on the ills I cannot cure."

 
—ELLIOTT.

"Then guard and shield her innocence,

Let her not fall like me;

'T were better, oh! a thousand times,

She in her grave should be."

—The Outcast.

Despair settled down like a heavy cloud; and now and then, through the dead calm of sufferings, came pipings of stormy winds, foretelling the end of these dark prognostics. In times of sorrowful or fierce endurance, we are often soothed by the mere repetition of old proverbs which tell the experience of our forefathers; but now, "it's a long lane that has no turning," "the weariest day draws to an end," etc., seemed false and vain sayings, so long and so weary was the pressure of the terrible times. Deeper and deeper still sank the poor. It showed how much lingering suffering it takes to kill men, that so few (in comparison) died during those times. But remember! we only miss those who do men's work in their humble sphere; the aged, the feeble, the children, when they die, are hardly noted by the world; and yet to many hearts, their deaths make a blank which long years will never fill up. Remember, too, that though it may take much suffering to kill the able-bodied and effective members of society, it does NOT take much to reduce them to worn, listless, diseased creatures, who thenceforward crawl through life with moody hearts and pain-stricken bodies.

The people had thought the poverty of the preceding years hard to bear, and had found its yoke heavy; but this year added sorely to its weight. Former times had chastised them with whips, but this chastised them with scorpions.

Of course, Barton had his share of mere bodily sufferings. Before he had gone up to London on his vain errand, he had been working short time. But in the hopes of speedy redress by means of the interference of Parliament, he had thrown up his place; and now, when he asked leave to resume his work, he was told they were diminishing their number of hands every week, and he was made aware, by the remarks of fellow-workmen, that a Chartist delegate, and a leading member of a Trades' Union, was not likely to be favoured in his search after employment. Still he tried to keep up a brave heart concerning himself. He knew he could bear hunger; for that power of endurance had been called forth when he was a little child, and had seen his mother hide her daily morsel to share it among her children, and when he, being the eldest, had told the noble lie, that "he was not hungry, could not eat a bit more," in order to imitate his mother's bravery, and still the sharp wail of the younger infants. Mary, too, was secure of two meals a day at Miss Simmonds'; though, by the way, the dressmaker too, feeling the effect of bad times, had left off giving tea to her apprentices, setting them the example of long abstinence by putting off her own meal till work was done for the night, however late that might be.

But the rent! It was half-a-crown a week—nearly all Mary's earnings—and much less room might do for them, only two.—(Now came the time to be thankful that the early dead were saved from the evil to come.)—The agricultural labourer generally has strong local attachments; but they are far less common, almost obliterated, among the inhabitants of a town. Still there are exceptions, and Barton formed one. He had removed to his present house just after the last bad times, when little Tom had sickened and died. He had then thought the bustle of a removal would give his poor stunned wife something to do, and he had taken more interest in the details of the proceeding than he otherwise would have done, in the hope of calling her forth to action again. So he seemed to know every brass-headed nail driven up for her convenience. Only one had been displaced. It was Esther's bonnet nail, which in his deep revengeful anger against her, after his wife's death, he had torn out of the wall, and cast into the street. It would be hard work to leave the house, which yet seemed hallowed by his wife's presence in the happy days of old. But he was a law unto himself, though sometimes a bad, fierce law; and he resolved to give the rent-collector notice, and look out for a cheaper abode, and tell Mary they must flit. Poor Mary! she loved the house, too. It was wrenching up her natural feelings of home, for it would be long before the fibres of her heart would gather themselves about another place.

This trial was spared. The collector (of himself), on the very Monday when Barton planned to give him notice of his intention to leave, lowered the rent threepence a week, just enough to make Barton compromise and agree to stay on a little longer.

But by degrees the house was stripped of all its little ornaments. Some were broken; and the odd twopences and threepences, wanted to pay for their repairs, were required for the far sterner necessity of food. And by-and-bye Mary began to part with other superfluities at the pawn-shop. The smart tea-tray and tea-caddy, long and carefully kept, went for bread for her father. He did not ask for it, or complain, but she saw hunger in his shrunk, fierce, animal look. Then the blankets went, for it was summer time, and they could spare them; and their sale made a fund, which Mary fancied would last till better times came. But it was soon all gone; and then she looked around the room to crib it of its few remaining ornaments. To all these proceedings her father said never a word. If he fasted, or feasted (after the sale of some article) on an unusual meal of bread and cheese, he took all with a sullen indifference, which depressed Mary's heart. She often wished he would apply for relief from the Guardians' relieving office; often wondered the Trades' Union did nothing for him. Once, when she asked him as he sat, grimed, unshaven, and gaunt, after a day's fasting, over the fire, why he did not get relief from the town, he turned round, with grim wrath, and said, "I don't want money, child! D—n their charity and their money! I want work, and it is my right. I want work."

He would bear it all, he said to himself. And he did bear it, but not meekly; that was too much to expect. Real meekness of character is called out by experience of kindness. And few had been kind to him. Yet through it all, with stern determination he refused the assistance his Trades' Union would have given him. It had not much to give, but, with worldly wisdom, thought it better to propitiate an active, useful member, than to help those who were more unenergetic, though they had large families to provide for. Not so thought John Barton. With him, need was right.

"Give it to Tom Darbyshire," he said. "He's more claim on it than me, for he's more need of it, with his seven children."

Now Tom Darbyshire was, in his listless, grumbling way, a back- biting enemy of John Barton's. And he knew it; but he was not to be influenced by that in a matter like this.

Mary went early to her work; but her cheery laugh over it was now missed by the other girls. Her mind wandered over the present distress, and then settled, as she stitched, on the visions of the future, where yet her thoughts dwelt more on the circumstances of ease, and the pomps and vanities awaiting her, than on the lover with whom she was to share them. Still she was not insensible to the pride of having attracted one so far above herself in station; not insensible to the secret pleasure of knowing that he, whom so many admired, had often said he would give anything for one of her sweet smiles. Her love for him was a bubble, blown out of vanity; but it looked very real and very bright. Sally Leadbitter, meanwhile, keenly observed the signs of the times; she found out that Mary had begun to affix a stern value to money as the "Purchaser of Life," and many girls had been dazzled and lured by gold, even without the betraying love which she believed to exist in Mary's heart. So she urged young Mr. Carson, by representations of the want she was sure surrounded Mary, to bring matters more to a point. But he had a kind of instinctive dread of hurting Mary's pride of spirit, and durst not hint his knowledge in any way of the distress that many must be enduring. He felt that for the present he must still be content with stolen meetings and summer evening strolls, and the delight of pouring sweet honeyed words into her ear, while she listened with a blush and a smile that made her look radiant with beauty. No; he would be cautious in order to be certain; for Mary, one way or another, he must make his. He had no doubt of the effect of his own personal charms in the long run; for he knew he was handsome, and believed himself fascinating.