I WOKE UP a little before my usual hour.
It was a Saturday morning, the last day of the old year. The atmosphere was dull, the skies grey and cloudy, the naked trees standing out somewhat grimly in clusters of bare branches against the vague whiteness yet darkness of space — a true English winter day of the duller kind, not bright and crisp, with a lively sunshine and keen air, such as is our northern ideal of the beauty of winter, but grey, quiet, still, the earth lying in a chilled suspense, not tragical, scarcely even melancholy, aware that this was her worst moment, waiting for better to come. I have a fancy for light, even while I sleep, and there were no curtains drawn or shutters closed over my window, through which I liked, on waking, whether in the middle of the night, whether in the legitimate opening of the morning, to see the sky. The sky on this occasion was nothing more than a grey whiteness, without any lines of cloud or indications of the hidden blue. The trees stood up dark against it, without any break of leaf or bud, straight, yet in a confusion of mingled twigs and branches. In summer it was a delight to look into the heart of the big trees, each in itself a mimic forest, with profound depths of green and infinitudes of shade; but at present all was naked, denuded, nothing sweeter about them than a steady patience, biding their time.
The moment of waking is seldom delightful, save to the very young or very happy, which perhaps means the same thing. Those who have come to the manifold experiences of life seldom salute the new day without a consciousness of care behind the curtain, at the bedside, awake before they are awake. Few are the happy souls to whom that first opening of eyes to the new light is a cheerful moment It is always more or less a new imagination, realisation of the world around, which is a world full not of joy but trouble. After a little while one reconciles one’s self, one rises up to the work, the bustles, the distractions of every day. It is only the first moment which is abstract, which brings one, as it were, freshly in contact with all that is abstract in one’s fate, with that profound underlying failure, disappointment, disenchantment, which is life.
On this particular morning, however, I woke without any immediate realisation of care — with a curious new emotion in my mind exceedingly hard to describe as it was hard to realise. It was as if something sweet, delightful, had happened to me overnight, and yet I was sorry, full of tender compunction, ashamed and happy all at once. What a strange combination! Lying still there, looking at the wintry firmament, I tried after awhile to make out this curious, sweet confusion of ideas in which I found myself. The impression on my mind was such as sometimes comes after a quarrel with those whom we love best, when we have made it all up, and kissed, and been forgiven. There is the sweetness of knowing that it is all over; one understands for the first time how wrong one was, how unkind, how foolish, missing every simple explanation, determined to be miserable. Shame and repentance, and even remorse, spring up within us; but, above all, the sense that it is over — that such a stupid, miserable mistake can never occur again. ‘The falling out of faithful friends renewing is of love.’ And then comes a profound sense of the faithfulness of love behind all; that which many waters cannot quench, that which nothing indeed can alter, either in our own erring bosom or in that of the other who has forgiven, swells upward with a sweetness which is overwhelming, which carries every other confused and uneasy sentiment away. That we could ever have doubted that! ever been able to persuade ourselves into such disastrous folly! but never again would it be possible, never any more.
The peculiarity in my present feelings was that I had not quarrelled with anybody, or made it up, or in any way, so far as I was aware, brought myself within the reach of this so agitated yet so harmonious state. I was sorry for I knew not what, glad for I knew not what, full of compunctions and delightful surprises, and a low-toned exquisite happiness; though had you asked me I should have said that there were circumstances in my life that made it impossible for me to be, happy — and yet I was so, and also miserable, not knowing why. I lay reluctant to disturb this sweet, incomprehensible influx. of feeling, enjoying it timidly, wondering what it was. Sometimes the influence of a lovely morning will produce something like it in an elastic mind — a lovely morning, a great deliverance, a piece of good fortune. But the morning was far from lovely, and nothing had happened to make me happy: but yet so I was.
I was roused out of my own personal sensations by a slight noise, and, looking round, I saw my maid standing near my bed with a look on her face which she puts on when she has a statement to make. My maid was not, as the name suggests, a young woman, but middle-aged like myself; and she often had statements to make. When she came upon me thus, in the utterly defenceless position, not able to get-up and move away, of a person in bed, I knew what their general purport was. They concerned in general the bad behaviour of other members of the household — of the cook, who made herself objectionable in many ways as a sort of rival power, and leader of the government downstairs, while Dawson represented the opposition; or the gardener, who was sometimes rude; or the indoor man, who accused her of telling everything that went on to her mistress. Dawson’s countenance and the set of her lips made me quite clear as to her purpose, and I made a doleful instantaneous calculation, on the data of previous experiences, as to how long it might be before I should be permitted to get up — unless perhaps she meant to give me notice, which was a ceremony which took place from time to time without any particular result.
‘I should like to speak a word, if it’s quite convenient,’ Dawson said.
‘Oh yes,’ I replied with a sigh, ‘as convenient as any other time; but I hope nothing is very wrong.’
‘I don’t know as anything is wrong at all, ma’am,’ replied Dawson, ‘except me.’
This alarmed me more than any other beginning, for when Dawson began by assuring me that it seemed she was a person nobody could get on with, and, if all was true that was said of her, not fit to live, I knew I was going to have what the Americans call a bad time, and that the domestic storm would want more smoothing down than usual.
‘I hope we shall get over that, I said, with what I fancy was rather a hypocritical smile; ‘tell me, at any rate, what it is.’
‘Madam,’ said Dawson, ‘I hope as you’ll hear me all through, and not cry out and stop my mouth. Oh, I’ve been a bad woman! — that’s what I wanted to say. I have come day after day disturbing your rest, me that you’ve always been so kind to, though it was my business to keep you comfortable, and see that you wasn’t bothered. I’ve been a wicked, insulting, selfish woman, never satisfied, always quarrelling and finding fault, and thinking as I was slighted, and moving high and low to take my part Oh, don’t say anything, ma’am, for I know as it’s all true.’
‘Dawson!’ I cried, as soon as I could get out a word. Astonishment took away my breath. It was true, perhaps; but when a sinner thus discriminates, the judge before whom he or she brings the accusation is ready in most cases to take the culprit’s part. ‘Stop a moment; you are going too far. I am sure you never meant—’
‘No, ma’am, begging your pardon, I’m not saying too much,’ Dawson said, with a glimmer in her eyes that looked like tears.
‘You don’t think I’ve let myself be brought to this without being quite sure in my own mind. Oh, no — it’s all true: I’ve made mischief in the house. I know I have. I’ve told you things as was never meant bad till I went and put a motive to them. I have been that cross and cankered myself that nobody could put up with me, and then I’ve said it was their blame. It’s all come back upon me now.’
‘But, Dawson,’ I said, ‘I don’t allow quite all you say. But perhaps there is some truth in it, not without blame on my part, too; for I have been amused with your stories and encouraged you to talk. But what has made you think of all this now?’
‘I don’t know, ma’am,’ said my maid, crying. ‘I don’t know a bit, any more than the babe unborn — unless it was the grace of God,’ she added after an interval in a very low tone amid her sobs.
I held out my hands and drew her close to me. ‘I think it must be so, my dear,’ I said. ‘We are both the same; we have done a great deal that is wrong.’
‘Oh, ma’am, not you, not you!’ she cried, falling down on her knees, grasping my hands, with the same impulse which I had felt to prevent her from blaming herself: but perhaps stronger because I was her mistress, and she had not the habit, in my own presence at least, of finding fault with me.
‘But we will try,’ I said, feeling the tears come into my eyes, and that sweet compunction, pain, pleasure, misery, happiness swelling up within me; ‘we will try, like two sisters, to do so no more.’
That was the first incident of the morning, and it was a strange one — such as I never could have anticipated — for Dawson was by nature one of the women who are always certain, whatever happens, that they themselves are in the right I went downstairs, wondering a little that there had been no call for me, no impatience at my tardiness, for my husband was a very punctual man, and I was late. He was not in the dining room, however, though breakfast was on the table. I went to look for him in his library, surprised at this departure from his usual habits. I found him at his writing-table with a mass of papers before him. There was a curve of anxiety which I knew very well on his forehead. He scarcely looked up as I came in, but answered me as if I had called him.
‘Don’t wait for me,’ he said; ‘I know I am very late. As soon as I have done this I will come in.’
‘What is it, John. Nothing wrong, I hope?’
He looked up at me with a doubtful smile, ‘Well, my dear, I don’t know that I ever felt it wrong before. It occurred to me last night to look over our bills for that Moreton will case before sending them in—’
‘Well, John?’
He began to shake his head with an abashed look, as if he had found himself out in something. ‘I never thought of it before,’ he said. ‘We have always gone on the usual lines and done just as other people did. Letty, don’t you know the common saying that lawyers are rogues all?’
‘I stop it very easily by saying that my husband is a lawyer, John: for everybody knows that he is a just man.’
He shook his head again. ‘I should be wretched indeed if you did not think so; but besides all my personal shortcomings — which I never before knew to be so many — Letty, Letty, here is this against me. I should have looked into this before,’
‘But what is it?’
‘We have been living upon plunder,’ he said, with something between a laugh and a groan. ‘If you saw what charges I have been making the hair would stand on end upon your honest head. Go and take your breakfast, dear. I don’t deserve any till I have set my accounts right.’
‘It is I who have spent those charges, so I must be in it, too. Let me help you to set them right,’ I said. However, presently I persuaded him to breakfast first, since the good order of the house, and the maintenance of ordinary rules, demanded this.
He was, like myself, in a strangely subdued condition, very tender about the children, very kind — but he was always kind to me. I had intended to amuse him with my little story about Dawson, but somehow the joke faded out before I made it. I had a feeling that he would not see it. He was so much in earnest about his own business: I felt that he had no leisure of mind to be amused. He could not keep from talking of it while we were at table.
‘There is one honest thing about us,’ he said; ‘we never advise anybody to go to law. I think I can say that for myself. But when they do, poor people, how they pay for it! According to the estimate of each little scrap of my time it ought to be like the drugs the apothecaries weigh out in drachms and pennyweights. Nobody’s time could be worth so much a minute as mine is represented to be.’
‘But it is not only time,’ I said. ‘You could not reckon it as we do the gardener’s time, John, so much a day. In your case there is knowledge, there is education: and your cultivated judgment, and all your professional reading.’
He shook his head, his face had a smile on it, he was almost amused, as well as overwhelmed, by his discovery. Afterwards we went back and worked for an hour or two, going over the matter. I was not quite so much convinced on the subject as he was, but there was nothing that I could say.
Presently I was called away to my housekeeping work. The butcher had brought a little note when he came for his orders, which the cook brought me when I went down to the kitchen. I observed that there was a little stir and confusion downstairs, but as it was Saturday, and the end of the year, and myself also a little disorganised, I made no remark on the subject. We had our consultation over the dinner before I opened the greasy little note which she had put into my hands.
‘I don’t know what the butcher can be writing to me about,’ I said, ‘there have been no complaints to make, I think, this week.’
‘The complaints don’t lie with him, ma’am,’ said cook, making a little curtsey and beginning to fold a hem upon her apron, with her head bent over it as if it were an affair of great importance. ‘Nor complaints there wasn’t none, not last week. I’ve been a-saying that to myself, and it’s ‘most made me hold my tongue — but I can’t, I can’t.’
‘Oh, cook!’ I said with alarm, ‘I hope you are not going to bring me any more stories of Ellen or Mary Jane—’
‘Ellen or Mary Jane!’ she said in a tone of melancholy contempt, ‘that’s only playing like at finding fault The likes of them, they’re like children; I grumble at ‘em, but I don’t mean no harm. No, far more serious than that ma’am — it’s me—”
‘What is the matter with you? I thought we had settled everything quite comfortably. You are improving very much in your entries. I always said your ideas were good: to take a little more trouble is all you want.’
She stopped to give me a little, a very slight glance, which would have been indignant had she been less near tears.
‘If I was as good a Christian as I am a cook!’ she cried, then broke off and fell to weeping. ‘It ain’t entries that are on my mind. Oh! I wish as that was all — it’s the perquisites and the Christmas-boxes, and the dripping, and all I’ve got to answer for. Oh, ma’am! you’ve always been a good mistress, and as little onreasonable as a lady knows how to be — but if you were to look into my book, and just see all as I’ve got there in them boxes. Lord bless you, I’ve kep’ my sister’s family all the winter through, and you never knowed it, out of the scraps.’ She said this with a certain mixture of penitence and pride. ‘I thought the Lord wouldn’t look into it, seeing it was for them and not for me. And then there’s the dripping!’ she added after a moment with a burst of sobbing.
There was more of the comic than the tragic in cook’s repentance. She held her little account book very tightly in one hand, while she wiped her tears with the other. On the table before her were a great array of tins, biscuit-boxes, and other receptacles of plunder, I suppose. Her nose was red, and her apron damp with tears. It was necessary that I should receive all these self-accusations with gravity; but it cost me an effort not to laugh.
‘I have thought the bills were rather high,’ I said, with assumed seriousness, ‘for some weeks past.’
‘Oh, bless you, weeks!’ cried cook; there was contempt in her tone mingled with compunction, and with a certain professional superiority. ‘You might say years: you might say since ever you took up housekeeping, and you wouldn’t be far wrong. But something’s come to me as I can’t bear it no longer. I — can’t — bear it! I’m bad here at my heart. It’s — it’s the dripping, ma’am!’ she cried.
I tried my best to soothe her, for the woman was becoming hysterical. ‘We have all done a great many things we ought not to have done,’ I said; ‘and the only thing I can think of is that we should do better in the future; come, put your boxes away like a good soul.’
She cried out, protesting that she was not a good soul, that she couldn’t put them away, that she would like to melt it all down, to throw it all out, to cut off her hand as took it, to cut out this pain (which was chiefly the dripping) which she thumped upon her breast. Doing better in future did not satisfy the sudden outburst of her compunction. She wanted to do something at once to mark her abhorrence of her evil doings, to destroy either the result or the cause. I don’t know if she would have gone to the length of sacrificing to me her bank book with all her savings, but she was not indisposed to make over to me the gratifications she had received by way of Christmas-boxes.
‘Come,’ I said at length, ‘have you no curiosity to know what the butcher has to say?’
I did it by way of distracting her attention from the enormities of her own conduct, and I was myself a little curious about the butcher. His letter was greasy, not because he was a greasy person or defective in any accomplishment. He was, on the contrary, quite a magnificent individual, looking like a guardsman, riding to hounds, on a hunter which would not have disgraced a duke. It was only the hand of the bearer which had soiled his epistle. This was what the butcher wrote: —
‘MADAM, —
‘I am sorry to find, upon making up my books and comparing the prices which for the last few years I have been charging you and others of my most esteemed customers with those which I have been paying to the farmers for meat, that a considerable overcharge has unfortunately been made. I do not attempt to excuse myself for this, though the custom of the trade might be pleaded, and the principle which has always been considered sound in business of selling in the dearest market and buying in the cheapest I will only express my sorrow that it should have occurred. As it would be almost impossible to calculate the amount of this overcharge and return it to my several customers, I hope you will consider the necessities of the case to be met by the sum which I have placed in our excellent rector’s hands, for the benefit of the poor of the parish. And for the future I beg to enclose corrected price-list, and, by constant attention to orders and an unremitting desire to give satisfaction, to deserve in the future the same kind patronage which has been extended to my late father and myself in the past With great respect, Madam, ‘Your obedient servant,
‘R. J. BLAYDS.’
‘Cook,’ said I, ‘other people besides ourselves are finding out their faults. Listen to the price-list Mr. Blayds has sent over.’ When I say that it began with ‘Sirloins, 7d,’ it will, to the knowledgeable reader, be unnecessary to say more; my heart beat as I read.
‘Is not that delightful?’ I cried. ‘The days of cheap dinners are coming back.’
‘Goodness gracious me!’ cried cook. Astonishment dried her tears as all my reasoning had not sufficed to do. But after a moment, she added, with great feeling, ‘He’ll be sorry now as he gave me that Christmas-box.’
I carried off the letter to my husband, whose brows were getting graver and graver over his papers. ‘You are like the butcher, or the butcher is like you,’ I said; ‘you have both repented of your ill-gotten gains.’
‘By Jove!’ said John. He was tickled to find himself in the same box,’ as he said, with Mr. Blayds. ‘The fellow is an oracle,’ he cried. ‘I have just been thinking that to give back one’s gains for years would be ruin, but in abstract justice it ought to be done. Do you think we can follow Mr. Blayds’s example, and stop the mouths of indignant clients with an offering to the poor?’
I had to go out shortly after, leaving him very busy about this work. Our house is in a town so near London that something of the character of a suburb is in the place. It is situated on the bank of the river, with a background of woods which adds greatly to its picturesque aspect. As it happens, however, it is only the little streets that approach the river. We who inhabit the superior part of the town keep it at a distance. But there is much that is venerable and attractive in the appearance of the High Street, where there are old red houses and tiled roofs of every variety of pitch, as well as a town-hall which was built by Sir Christopher Wren, and many other good things. The shops are excellent We think them, on the whole, superior to Bond Street. To be sure there are great bargains to be had occasionally in town when you know exactly where to go for them. But one does not always do that; whereas at home there they are under your hand, and Carey is always to be relied upon. That’ is our opinion in a general way. The town was in an unusual commotion on this particular day. It was Saturday; it was the last day of the year; but I did not think this quite accounted for it. There were a great many people about the streets; a number of groups at the comers; people walking with each other whom you would not have expected to see walking together, as for instance, Mr. Wellman, the saddler, and Terridge, the oilman, who were known to have quarrelled so bitterly. At the door of Mr. Blayds’ there was a great placard up with the new prices, and a statement in very large print, something to the same effect as the letter he had sent to me. The look of the place altogether was like that of a town in which something very strange had just taken place. There was an air of general excitement. The first person to whom I talked said that it was the change of the weather which restored everybody to good spirits; but there seemed to me more in it than that. I was joined as I went along by Mrs. Randall, a young woman who was a neighbour, and with whose family I had some communication, but whom I did not quite approve of. As she came up, a bright-eyed little woman, very neat and active, I asked myself why it was I did not approve of her? and I was obliged to acknowledge to myself that it was chiefly because she was very much less well off than the rest of us, and was supposed to have some difficulty in making her ends meet Not that it had ever before occurred to me to state the matter in those words. What I had blamed her for was for having young, inexperienced servants who did not keep everything in such perfect order as my own expensive ones did; for living, as people say, from hand to mouth; having her things in small quantities; wearing dresses that were rather flimsy; making use of none of the expedients of economy. For instance, instead of filling her cellars with coal while they were comparatively cheap, as I did, she kept getting them a few tons at a time all through the worst of the winter, when they were at their dearest These were I ways’ of which I disapproved. When I came to think of it as I did suddenly to-day, without any special reason for doing so, I perceived that this was what I disliked in her, and not anything in herself. Such a revelation (if it was a revelation) made me ashamed of myself, and this, perhaps, made me more cordial than usual when she came up to me. She had some of her housekeeping books in her hands, and I said (meaning to be kind) that I saw she was, like myself, unwilling to let any little bills fun over into the new year.
‘Ah, not like you, I fear,’ she said, ‘I have to do it as I can; it would be too great happiness to be able to pay one’s bills all at once. It would be like a little corner of heaven.’ She was laughing, but there was little laughter in her mind, as any one could see.
‘My dear,’ said I, ‘if you will let me say it, I am a much older woman than you are — paying bills is the very best use to make of your money. You never can have perfect ease of mind so long as you have bills to pay,’
She laughed again, with something that sounded like mockery.
‘Dear Mrs. Bertram, you are older than I am; but do you really think you know half or a quarter so much of the misery of bills unpaid as I do? How should you? for you can pay your bills whenever you please,’
‘My dear!’ I said, for I was startled and did not know how to reply.
‘Oh, no, not the quarter, nor the tenth part,’ she said. ‘Don’t be vexed because I laugh. I laugh because of trouble, because of the hardness of it, and because at the bottom I suppose it must be a little my fault. I ought to be as stem as a Spartan, and do without things for the children, but even then — oh, it is not a nice thing to be unable to pay your bills! One would not choose it for pleasure. I am going to tell old Mr. Norton I will give him his money as soon as ever we can, but not to-day,’
I was much abashed by what she said, thinking of all my strictures upon her, and followed her meekly into Mr. Norton’s shop, for I also had a little account to settle there. A little colour came to her face, but she walked up to the counter where the old gentleman stood, very bravely. ‘I have come to tell you that I will pay you something — as much as I can — in about a fortnight, Mr. Norton. I hope it will not make any difference.’
‘Oh, Mrs. Randall! oh, ladies!’ said the apothecary. He was an amiable old man, with white hair. He pushed his spectacles up on his forehead, and held up his hand to stop her. ‘Just when you please, just when it is convenient,’ he said. ‘Oh, my dear young lady, you oughtn’t to have so much to pay. That is the truth, though, perhaps I shouldn’t say it. Those draughts and things, the doctors oughtn’t to order them. It doesn’t become me to go against the doctors. I oughtn’t to make them up. I wouldn’t if I was the honest man I have always considered myself to be. Half what you pay is for water and ingredients that are no good. I’ve often wanted to tell you, but I never had courage till to-day.’
‘It’s distilled water,’ said a voice from the other counter, I and you have got to pay for that,’ just as (it occurred to me) I have said to John about’ his education and his cultivated judgment; was it not all the same?
‘Hold your tongue, Robert! hold your tongue, Robert! And what are you making that dust for, to put out customers’ eyes?’
‘It’s all adulterated,’ said Robert. ‘I won’t have it another moment in the shop.’
We did not stop to see what this was, for the dust was pungent. I pushed the money for my bill, which was not much, across the counter, and followed Mrs. Randall out. We had scarcely time to do more than say to each other that adulteration, though no doubt very bad, was less unpleasant so long as one didn’t know of it, than to be choked by a too-zealous vendor of drugs in the act of pouring it away, when we reached the door of Saunders, the grocer, where we both had business too. Saunders and his man were very busy, almost too busy to notice us at first. They were carrying out what seemed to be all the butter in the shop, and loading with it a cart which stood before the door, surrounded by a group of gaping children glad of something to stare at. The grocer observed us at last, and, as I suppose I was a very good customer, stopped in his occupation to attend to me. ‘But first,’ I said, ‘tell me what you are doing? You seem to me to be sending away all your butter out of the shop.’
Saunders was very hot and red with the exertions he had been making. He put up his apron and wiped his forehead.
‘I’m ashamed to tell you, ma’am,’ he said, ‘not as I ever served you or any of my best customers with that there confounded stuff.’
‘The butter, Mr. Saunders!’
‘You have served me with it, I am sure,’ said Mrs. Randall by my side.
Upon which Saunders grew redder and redder, ‘I don’t know, ma’am, what that assistant o’ mine may have done. He’s got no discrimination. It have long been a trouble to me. Butter! bless you, that ain’t butter. It’s all a made-up stuff. I don’t say as it’s bad or good, but it ain’t butter. I’ve done nothing but what all the trade does; but somehow I took a thought this morning, or more like it was the thought that took me, for I couldn’t find no strength in myself to struggle against it. “Are you doing your duty?” I kep’ asking myself; is that doing as you’d be done by? Selling a thing for butter as ain’t butter no more nor I’m butter. I wouldn’t eat it myself, not if you were to pay me,’ said Saunders, with a look of disgust.
‘But I have eaten it,’ said Mrs. Randall with a little grimace. ‘I thought it very bad butter, and so I told you. How dare you sell me things for my children that you would not eat yourself if you were paid?’
‘It shan’t happen no more,’ said the penitent grocer. ‘It have cost me a deal of money, and I’ll never get a shilling out of it: but the peace of one’s conscience is worth a deal of money. Sam, if you’ve got them all in, jump up and be off — I won’t have anything like it in my shop. Though it pleased them well enough as knew no better, and I never heard as it was unwholesome,’ he added, with a tinge of regret ‘What are you going to do with it, if it is not unwholesome, and the people that know no better like it? Why should not you tell diem that it is not butter, and sell it for what it is worth?’
‘Oh, ma’am, don’t put temptation in my way! That’s all in the Act of Parliament, that is. But oleo-margarine’s a long word, and if you put up a name like that, nobody will buy it. But call it butter, and they takes it fast enough. It’s too much of a temptation for a man in my trade. Drive away, Sam, and let the railway have it for greasing the wheels or something. Quick, quick, in case I should change my mind!’
We had scarcely left the shop, both of us in some agitation, but half amused all the same, when we were joined by the rector, who was marching along with considerable excitement, the two churchwardens after him. He is a large man, of the kind that was called muscular Christian in my day — a large, strong, man, once very athletic, but now in the course of nature becoming a little broad — broad, perhaps, in two senses — in person and belief, and with a little innocent pride, as such men will have, in his comprehension of human nature and power of sympathising with men of very different ways of thinking. He was a very communicative man, and, though he was evidently in a hurry, would not pass without a talk. ‘Things are in the strangest state,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what is coming over us, Mrs. Bertram; I must have your help. Money is pouring in on me. I don’t know what to do with it ‘That is an unusual difficulty indeed.’
‘Isn’t it? On ordinary occasions I might put it aside for the new organ, or to restore the chancel, or some such pious work; but not now. You must help me to think; it is to be for the good of the poor.’
‘Oh, give them a little,’ cried Mrs. Randall. ‘To have something when you have nothing is the greatest treat. Coals are pleasant, and roast beef is delightful, but a little money all to yourself, to spend as you please, is the best of all.’
The rector looked at me and I at him. Of all things in this world to trust our poor people with money was the last. Our principle was that it did them harm. Coals and roast beef, and flannels and blankets where they were necessary, but money! ‘I am afraid it would be said to be demoralising and pauperising, and I don’t know what beside,’ he said.
‘But it would be happiness for once in a way; or as near happiness as the poor things could have.’
‘My dear lady,’ said the rector, ‘happiness is not counted in any charity organisation. It isn’t in our power. Fortunately for us, we have not the responsibility of giving or withholding that. Money can’t buy it.’
My little friend turned away from us a moment with a faraway look in her pretty eyes. ‘Oh, no,’ she said, clasping her hands, ‘but a little money will sometimes make all the difference.’
‘Sir,’ said one of the churchwardens, ‘not to interrupt you, I think we must be moving on. Here’s a man says destruction’s going on wholesale. Perhaps if the ladies would step along with us they might be of use.’
‘Yes, I think you might be of use,’ said the rector, with an apologetic laugh; and we walked on with a little excitement, for what we had already seen gave us an idea as to what was meant. He led us away quickly through the little streets, where a great many poor people were out at their doors, and children running about, and a general air of confusion, to the meadow on the river-side, which is close to the ferry. Here we found a crowd of people, all in high excitement, with a kind of desperation of purpose about them tempered by hesitation and doubt, and the want of any leader or daring person who would take the first step. Carts laden with cans of milk, great barrels of beer.
Mr. Saunders’ kegs of butter, and I don’t how many things besides — eggs, stale fish which tainted the air, even meat. It was as if a great market had been opened by the river-side. But all the people were standing about with a curious, excited hesitation. Some had carried their milk cans to the very edge of the stream, and some had run down their beer barrels to the gravel at the ferry. But there was a pause, as if all these had been cannons, and the gunners were waiting the signal to fire.
As we came out upon the damp grass there suddenly arrived behind us, with a furious jolting and jarring, driven at full speed, and almost upset where the field rose a little from the level of the road, a light cart driven by a man standing up in it, and urging on his horse with shouts and all the fervour of that communicable excitement by which a generous animal can be quickened as well as a human creature. The horse was evidently fully conscious of the master’s passion, and flew with a speed and vivacity, a sort of wild exaggeration of the man’s purpose, which was impressive to behold. But yet it would have been difficult to exaggerate the almost fury of the man. He stood up shouting, shaking the bridle, swaying himself in his whole person, as if the impulse in him would accelerate the speed. His appearance and that of his excited horse was so startling that all the crowd paused, with a gasp of suspended energy, and that yielding of the timid to the bold which is nowhere so marked as in a crowd. The man was well enough known to all of them. He was one of the most noted characters in our town. He was the keeper of a low drinking-place in one of the worst quarters. He had in his cart several barrels of beer, along with kegs and other vessels, which rattled and jolted with a sound of liquid contents as he darted along. The man was clearly almost beyond himself with passionate feeling. ‘Make way, make way!’ he shouted as he went along, jolting over every obstruction, down to the river. Here he drew up his horse with a force that brought the animal on its haunches, and, vaulting out of the cart, seized one of the smaller kegs first, and with furious force pulled out its bung, and flung the open mouth outward to the stream. Another and another and another without a pause! Then there was a loud murmur among the throng. The impulse was given. The men who had been standing waiting, afraid to take the first step, flung themselves upon their cans and barrels, and in a moment there ensued the most wonderful scene. Shouting, shrieking in their excitement, both men and women rushed to the margin of the river, and streams of milk, of beer, of more potent spirit, began to roll and tumble — white, brown, foaming, mingling together in a sort of carnival of waste and destruction — along the bosom of the stream.
For my part, I took little heed of the rest; but when the milk began to flow I rushed forward, imploring, ‘Oh, why destroy the milk? Oh, stop, stop. Don’t destroy it; what harm can there be in the milk?’ I cried, hearing myself shriek in the impossibility of stopping the destruction. I ran from one to another in despair, while the poor women and the children followed close upon me, some trying to catch it as it poured out, in the empty cans that lay about I had no time to see anything in my excitement, and yet I saw like a little picture, which has never disappeared from my eyes, two little children on the very edge of the river, one kneeling down catching the white flood as it streamed out from the can in its little joined hands, the other with its little face close trying to drink, the strangest little pathetic picture against the background of the strangely streaked river, and the dark trees and misty whiteness of the atmosphere beyond.
I had no time to see what my friends were doing. There was a harsh sound of voices in my ears, all talking together; but in the meanwhile I had got hold violently of one man.
‘Why the milk? why the milk? why the milk?’ I heard myself saying over and over, again and again.
‘Because it isn’t milk. It’s half water; it’s a cheat. Let me alone!’ cried the man.
He was our own milkman, and always civil, but he shook off my hand on his arm, and when I seized the can to save it, turned round fiercely upon me.
‘Do you want me to be a cheat? to sell what’s a lie? Go along, lady, go along!’ he cried, pushing me away.
I am neither young enough nor strong enough for personal struggles, but I kept my hold on the can. I heard myself giving shriek after shriek, of which I scarcely knew the sense, standing thus struggling. He could have pitched me into the river along with the can, but he did not, he only tried to get it out of my hands.
‘Look there,’ I cried, ‘look there; look at the children! it may be bad for you, but it’s still some good for the children! Look at the children!’
Somehow with my cries I got him to stop, and then the others paused to see what it was. The two little things were still there, one with his little face all splashed with the milk, which it tried to drink as from a fountain, the other making a little piteous vessel in which to catch it of its little chubby hands.
This stopped them somehow in the very act of pouring it away; they came round me to hear what I was saying; perhaps it went to their hearts to see all the milk running away.
‘What’s the lady saying? what is she saying? what is she pointing at?’
For my part, I lost all my modesty. I never remembered that a woman has no right to speak in public. I got up on a cart without knowing what I was doing, and made my first speech.
‘Oh!’ I said, ‘good people, it was wicked to put the water in the milk. I understand why you want to pour it away. But though it is not so good as it ought to be, it is still good for something; don’t destroy it while there are so many poor neighbours that would be glad of it There is some good in it still. Let the children have it Look at them yonder. Give it to the children, and promise that you will never more, so long as you live, spoil it with water again!’
I never stopped to think whether I had any right to speak to them, or how I was to do it. I just did it with the tears running down my face; and some of them cried too, in the strength of the feeling that had seized upon them, and ran and gave the milk away to whoever would bring a jug or a bowl to fetch it And as soon as the poor people understood, they came from all sides with their bowls, some with a penny or a half-penny, understanding they were to have a bargain, yet honest still; some eager to take whatever they could get But some of the milk people still stood doubtful, more ready to pour it away, which was a sacrifice they could understand, than to give it for little or nothing, so that others should be the better, though by-and-by they yielded to the general impulse; and by degrees the rector and the others who had come to help him began to get the upper hand. I stood on my cart like a revolutionary heroine (as I thought afterwards) and looked over the field. Further down the river at the ferry, where there was a dry track, stood a dark cloud of men looking on. They were men of the roughest sort, in their working dress, hanging together, eyeing; with sombre faces the stream that foamed and bubbled with the strange contributions poured into it. They watched all the contents of those barrels running away with a moody silence which contrasted with the noise and commotion in the meadow. They did not say a word. They did nothing to help the gentlemen who came forward remonstrating, trying to save what was good for use.
‘Send it to the hospitals if you like — don’t destroy it There is plenty of use for it in the world without abusing it,’ I heard some of my own friends cry, almost struggling, as I had done, about the milk. But the men only stood and looked on. If they had liked they were strong enough to have seized it all, to have made an orgie such as never had been seen. No one could have resisted them. There were so many of them that they might have taken everything into their own hands; but they only stood and stared, with a certain gloom upon their faces — a gloom of self-restraint and self-denial, not impassioned like the impulse of the others, yet giving passive consent to the destruction of so much that meant luxury and enjoyment to them.
After a while the people’s excitement yielded to the influence which we could bring upon them. It was harder to get them to consent to allow us to dispose of that part of their goods which, though not quite genuine, was still fit for food, than to destroy it in a wild, unanimous rush of renunciation, which was what they wished. The lighting of a large bonfire, in which the stale food which was unfit for consumption should be burned, gave, however, a little diversion, and occupied them for a time, all throwing themselves into this work with grim enjoyment; and we managed to secure the grocer’s false butter, the watered milk, the brandy and other adulterated liquors in a considerable quantity. The drugged beer, with all its deleterious ingredients, nobody attempted to save. The whole town was in a tumult, surging about the riverside, but there were no quarrels, no attempts to take anything, no pilfering or fighting. The two children who tried to secure a little milk as it ran away were the only offenders, and these so innocent The poor people turned out from the most wretched dens of the town, where they lived from hand to mouth, glad if the day’s work would secure a day’s living — stood about and touched nothing. They could have seized all, but attempted nothing — not even the worst, those who had sunk far below improvidence, the reckless, the almost lost. They came to us after a while to buy, when we had explained to them how worthless our goods were. It was like a fair upon the river bank; the great bonfire blazed, consuming all that was useless; a great ring of people surrounding it, throwing in new contributions — a bonfire of something more than vanities. The red flames leapt up into the astonished daylight, and glared in the river in fierce reflection, reddening that rolling turbid stream, all mixed with evil things. Beyond the circle of the dense mass which surrounded the fire we kept up our fair. The brandy was ordered to the hospitals; and by the time the bonfire began to burn low, all our wares were disposed of, and not ours alone. It was market day in the town, and gradually, as our sales went on, all sorts of vehicles came hurrying down to be in the midst of the tumult, in the midst of the opportunity. It went on, I believe, all the rest of the day, the most unusual sight. A band of people who were better off had collected along with the rector. I believe the most of them did, like me, what we all thought so imprudent, what Mrs. Randall had suggested. I know for my part that I emptied my purse with a kind of abandon, an impulse I could not resist, bidding the poor women do the best they could, lay in what store was possible. ‘To-morrow will be New Year’s Day,’ we all said to each other; a new world, a new life was to begin with the New Year.
The rest of that day passed as in a wonderful dream. All sorts of people, some whom I had never known before, came to me to beg my pardon, to ask me to make peace between them and offended friends, to confide money to me for the poor, to ask me to arrange for them the education of children — every kind of good work. It was not one class, but all classes, to whom this impulse had come. The wife of the greatest man in the neighbourhood came running in with tears in her eyes to kiss me and tell me that she was going to town with her husband’s consent — nay at his desire — to seek out a prodigal whom he had turned from his house, almost breaking the mother’s heart She had snatched a moment on her way to the railway to tell me this news. Everywhere there was a melting and softening, a turning of people’s hearts.