Part 6

“You must give him something, mates, first with which to pay,” said Evans. “Or, hold! he will give you all round a swig at his bottle.”

“His bottle! You have brought that with you?”

“Certainly,” said Evans, and produced a feeder. “Who will have a smack? Drink to the health of the new hand!”

“Not I,” said one, “in milk and water!”

“We would not deprive him of the least taste!” said another.

Instinctively, and at once, these rough men understood and appreciated Shone’s conduct; he might have to, and he did, encounter good-natured jokes—he was called “Mammy Shone,” but nothing was said in ridicule that could wound. In every heart there sprang up great respect for Shone; and as to the babe, he became the pet of the coalpit.

Thenceforth, whether Evans were on day or night shift, when he went down to his work the child went with him, lodged between his shoulder-blades. When he reached his place where he had to work, he unfolded the sheet—often grimy, it could not be other—made up a nest of it among lumps of coal, and placed the little creature in the folds, with its feeding-bottle accessible. And as he toiled he turned his head over his shoulder every now and then to say an endearing word, and to soothe the child should it begin to cry.

When the men assembled for a meal, there were consultations held as to what was suitable for the stomach if griped, or the gums, should there appear a rash about the chin and lips; also as to whether the proportions of milk and sugar and water were correct; and a lively and heated discussion broke out relative to a suggestion made by one collier that he had known a drop of gin added with the best possible effects—not, of course, regularly, but when there was stomach-ache. Moreover, in the relaxation from work, the babe was passed round and dandled and fondled, admired and remarked upon by the colliers, and fulsome expressions of admiration were lavished upon it, which may or may not have been appropriate; but seeing that the infant succeeded in begriming its face and entire body with coal-dust after the first few minutes that it had been below, it was not possible for any one to pronounce a well-balanced and justified opinion on its personal appearance.

However, affection sees not with ordinary eyes, and as the child was loved by every man and boy in the pit, its beauties were accepted as absolutely beyond dispute.

Now although every collier set himself up to be an authority on baby-culture, and pumped his wife for information which he might retail as his own, acquired experimentally, when next he was below, yet there was an elderly man named Ebenezer Llewellyn who had been the father of fourteen children, ten of which were living, and who was, therefore, by common consent, regarded as a principal authority on the management of babies; and when Ebenezer pronounced an opinion, all bowed to it, whether on the constitution of milk or the adoption of fuller’s earth. Llewellyn did not hold by violet powder; he said coal-dust was better, if sufficiently fine.

On one occasion, in a panic, Shone rushed after Ebenezer to another portion of the pit to bid him come to his assistance—the child was strangling. According to his account it had got a lump of coal into its mouth twice as big as its head, and Shone could not get it out.

“There is no room in the mouth for my finger to be inserted so as to whisk it out. Come quick, Llewellyn, or the child will be dead—it is black in the face.”

“But it always is,” said Ebenezer.

“I mean turning black between the coal grains and where its tears have washed the face. Come at once.”

The father of fourteen, that man of wide experience, obeyed. He sat down, took the infant on his lap, and dexterously with his little finger worked the piece of coal out of the mouth; whereupon the babe set up a howl that rang down the passages of the mine.

“I will tell you what is in prospect,” said Llewellyn sententiously. “This kid is getting to use his hands. He will lay hold of everything he can touch, and he will put whatever he grips into his mouth. They all do it. I have had fourteen and have raised ten, so I ought to know. This is the most critical period in the lives of little ones, and if you don’t mind, he’ll eat up all your output every day—truckloads of coals he’ll put away, if you let him.”

“But I will not allow him.”

“Then you must sit over him and watch his every movement.”

“I cannot do that.”

“There it is that women come in to be of some use in the world. They can look after male babies when they are in the grabbing and devouring age—that’s about teething time. You see how he dribbles. That,” pursued Ebenezer gravely—“that comes of the gums being strained and painful. Babes, at this period, must bite—it’s a necessity. They will bite anything. I’ve had fourteen, so I ought to know. This is a terribly critical time.”

Shone left the pit that day depressed and meditative. As it happened, he encountered the doctor, who hailed him—

“What, Evans! still nursing your baby?”

“Yes, sir,” answered the collier gravely. “I had a bit of difficulty with him to-day; he shovelled about half a ton of coals into his mouth, and Ebenezer Llewellyn and I had a sight of trouble in getting him to disgorge.”

“You take my advice as a sensible man,” said the surgeon. “It is, first, if you value the child, to give it more sun and air; it wants it. Sun and air are more than beef and bread. If the little chap were not as black as a hedgehog, curled up there at your back, I should say it was bleached like sea-kale. It won’t do, Shone. The child now must be brought up upon another system; that is, if you desire it to live and be healthy and happy—unless you have insured its life, and want to get it under ground altogether, so as to pocket the insurance money.”

Evans turned as blank as he could, considering the grime on his face. His jaw dropped.

“But wherever am I to put him?” he asked.

“Now, I have been wanting to see you about this for some while,” said the surgeon, who was a thoroughly good-hearted man, and who valued and admired Shone. “There is Shian Thomas, the dressmaker, as good and steady a wench as I know. She is very badly off. She has been caring for her poor little crippled sister for several years. Now the child is dead, and she has had heavy expenses, what with doctor’s bill—mine, you know——”

“Ah!” said Evans, “I know better than that. You were never hard on the widow or the orphan. What is hard, is to get you to take anything for your trouble when folks are in need themselves.”

“Well, well! there was the funeral and the mourning,” said the doctor, laughing and colouring at the same time. “Now Shian [Jane] mopes for the loss of her sister, and I am sure—I am as sure of this as of anything—that if you confided the young shaver to her, it would be good for her, good for the child, and”—he said the last words as he turned away—“in the end might be good for you.”

Evans walked on his way meditatively. He did not act at once. He waited a day or two. But as the acquisitiveness of the babe became more pronounced, he resolved to put it beyond temptation, where it could not devour coals; and so he arranged with Shian Thomas that she should look after his child at such time, day and night, as he was at work. But as soon as ever he returned from the pit, whether in the very early morning before dawn, or whether in the afternoon, he was to reclaim the child and carry it home with him. He would not be in the house without it; but he brought himself to admit that now it was advisable, if not necessary, that it should no longer go down the pit with him till, as he said, “he comes of age and takes it upon himself.”

He undertook to make a small payment to Shian for her trouble, which was of assistance to her in her then straitened circumstances.

“And you may reckon on this, Shone,” said she, “I’ll take every bit as much care of him as if he were my own. There is an empty place in my house, and in my heart, since I have lost Bessie, and I will put the little man there.”

A couple of weeks under the care of Shian told on the child. He put on fat, became more merry, crowed, chirped, and waxed rosy.

It was a delight to his father to see him, and he did not always return from the pit alone. One day he brought with him Ebenezer Llewellyn to criticise the babe and judge whether the improvement was real or fictitious. He, a father of fourteen children, ten of whom he had reared, after weighing the little one and turning down his lips to see if the colour were red, gave verdict that was favourable. Then came what Shian called “the committee,” a body of workmen on the shift with Shone, to see with their own eyes that all was going on well with the “shaver.” He belonged to the pit, and all the men felt an interest in him, and all wanted to be satisfied that the child was flourishing. All wished to have their say about him, and to give Shian advice as to how he was to be dieted and clothed.

More critical than the rest was Shone, and the dressmaker was obliged to be forbearing with him, for his criticism became at times captious. As, for instance, on one occasion when he came to resume the child and found she had cut out for its amusement a score of dancing men and women, the latter with tall Welsh hats, holding hands, capering vigorously—she had cut them with her scissors out of a sheet of folded paper—Shone put on a grave face.

“I think you should not have encouraged levity in the boy,” said he. “I wouldn’t have the idea put into his head that men and women are created to dance.”

“But, Shone, they are only paper.”

“Paper or flesh and blood is all the same. They are dancing. I don’t like it. You can’t be too careful with a child. It’s just when they’re young that they take in ideas, as they do nourishment—they suck it in in buckets.”

“How would you have me cut them out?—walking to chapel?”

“That would be better.”

“Shone, if I do that, I must make them prance. One cannot cut out these paper men and women without giving them high action. You would not have a whole train of them prancing to church like war-horses!”

The fact of the case was that Shone was slightly jealous. His child had taken to Shian, he clung to her, dabbed his little mouth over her cheek—in kisses, and was distinctly more happy with her than with his father.

Shone was conscious of it, and fought against it. He reasoned with himself; but could not reason himself out of his jealousy.

Had his child not put on fat, not gained in colour—had it become peevish, he would have blamed the young woman, and taken it away. But when not only Ebenezer, but also the “committee,” and his own consciousness assured him that all was well with the infant—better than it had been when it lived half its time underground—then he could not withdraw it from Shian, save for those hours when he was free from work.

So matters went on for a while, and then the situation became aggravated, for the child began to cry when he took it in his arms to remove it, and stretched forth its little hands to Shian, and sobbed, and would not be comforted by the father. It fretted when at home, it screamed, moaned, was restless. Shone thought it must be ill, and consulted a doctor; he battled against the assurance that nothing ailed the child, save its temporary separation from the woman who was as a mother to it.

He worked himself into excitement against Shian; she was stealing his child’s heart from him. But his good sense returned. She was not willingly doing this. It was due to the irresistible. The natural nurse of a babe is a woman, and not a man, and the child instinctively clings to the nurse.

“I pay her six shillings for it,” grumbled Shone. “He ought to understand that she is a hireling and not his mother.”

This he said to the doctor, to whom, perhaps unguardedly, he had let out what embittered his heart.

“Quite so, Evans,” answered the surgeon. “But as the child has not as yet reached the age of reason in which it can draw such distinctions, why do you not make Shian its mother?”

Shone opened his eyes, stared at his adviser, turned his back, and walked away.

But the advice stuck.

Here was a solution to the difficulty, yet not one very pleasing to the collier. He brooded over his wrong, and also over the redress that lay open to him. Not a word could be said against Shian. She was a quiet, hard-working, steady girl.

Shone had taken to her stockings to be darned, garments to be mended, and had paid her for her work. He was obliged occasionally to call in the aid of a charwoman to do his washing, and also to clean up his house. As to his bit of cooking, he did that himself, but was not skilful at the fire and oven. He fared poorly, and was not infrequently out of sorts—the cause, his own bad cooking. Now all these inconveniences would be rectified had he a wife—and yet—and yet——Shone shook his head.

Then an epidemic of scarlet fever broke out in the Dulais Valley. Shone was frightened. For the sake of his child he considered what was to be done. Some provision must be made. If the little one sickened, who was to attend to it?—and attention it would need day and night. The proper person would be Shian—a stranger would never do. But Shian—he could not bid her nurse the child in his house, and to have it throughout the long sickness in hers, and he not with it—that would never do. Besides, she was a dressmaker. She could not take in needlework when there was risk of infection in her house. Shone stamped. What was to be done?

“How is it?” he asked, as he came back from the pit.

“Very well, Shone. As usual, very cheerful.”

“No signs of a sore throat? Have you looked?”

“None at all.”

“But suppose he were to get it?”

“Get what?”

“The scarlatina.”

“You need not suppose it. He is quite well.”

“We must provide against the worst.”

“The worst, Shone!”

“Oh!” with a shiver, “I do not mean the worst at all—God forbid; but against his catching the fever.”

“Well, what will you do?”

“Do, Shian? There is nothing else to be done but for you to marry me. You see—I do it for the babe’s sake, and because of the infection.”

She was surprised—a little amused.

“And,” put in Shone, a little apologetically, “there are my stockings want mending. But, really, for the child’s sake, I wish it.”

“I suppose, Shone, if the poor little chap were to be taken ill, he’d be removed from here?”

“No doubt of it. The sanitary officer wouldn’t allow it here.”

“Nor could I nurse it?”

“Certainly not.”

“Well, then, Shone, for the scarlatina’s sake I don’t mind if I do take you.”

“Then,” said Shone, “we must look sharp. Let me see his throat. He might have it come on sudden. I’ll get a license.”

It was certainly an odd proposal and a queer acceptance, and no expense was spared.

“Bless me,” said Shone, “for the child’s sake, and because of the scarlet fever, I will stump up a guinea for the license.”

So Shone and Shian were married; and the child did not get scarlatina—so that all this trouble and expense were, in Shone’s eyes, thrown away.

“Might just as well have chucked it all down a disused coalpit!” said he.

Positively he became grumpy and querulous because his child showed no signs of drowsiness, sore throat, and eruption. Not that he wished it to be ill, but he wanted a justification of his marriage.

Shian did her utmost to make him comfortable. She brought the cottage to a condition of scrupulous cleanliness; she took in hand all his clothes, she mended them, and made some that he had discarded as neat as new. She did the washing in a manner very different from that of the charwoman. Above all, she cooked really-appetising meals that made Shone’s face relax.

No sooner did he return from the pit than at once she put the child in his arms. She made no attempt to stand between it and the father. On the contrary, she talked to the little creature of its daddy when he was away, and encouraged it to look out for his return. Indeed, as he came up the street every day, he could see Shian at the door holding up the child; he could see its arms extended, and the hands clapping with pleasure at his appearance.

Shian felt that she was an accessory, not a prime factor in the house and in the well-being of Shone—the baby was the monarch, engrossing all his affection, occupying all his thoughts. She was accepted as a necessity, as conducing to the health and happiness of the child—one who could be and would be dispensed with unless needed for the child’s sake. But she was a patient, sweet, and uncomplaining woman. She was not a little sad at heart, and the tears often filled her eyes. She coveted some of the kisses, some of the endearing terms lavished on the child—some, also, of the glow of love that lit up the father’s eyes as he watched his babe. Oh, if only, as he returned from the pit, he had looked at her a little—just a little—instead of fixing his eyes, from the first moment he saw it till he had it in his arms, on the child. But she had been taken into the house, had become Shone’s wife, for the sake of the child; and she submitted to be regarded with just so much consideration as behoved a dutiful servant to the little one.

Time went on. Shone began to mend in spirits. He looked more respectable on Sundays; his digestion was better; he had no more unpleasant attacks after a meal of what might have been beef, but was leather, which had troubled him at one time. He had now Yorkshire pudding dipped in gravy; he had not that in the days of his widowership.

He began to have words for Shian relative to other topics than the baby. She caught him, by the firelight—as he smoked in the evening and she knitted—observing her attentively.

Then came Christmas Day.

Now there were sprigs of holly stuck in the windows and about the mantelpiece. The fire blazed, and was reflected in the burnished Bristol ware that shone on the dresser as though real copper. And there was a savoury smell in the house.

“Goose!” exclaimed Shone. “By the powers—goose! And sage and onions,” said he, after a pause—“I smell them. Goodness me, I wish the boy were old enough to enjoy it all.”

“Here, father,” said Shian, as she laid the dinner—“here you are—goose, yes; onion and sage—yes. You would not have goose alone, surely?”

“Well,” said Shone, and his face beamed with peace and goodwill, “well—to—be—sure.”

“And”—when the first course was over—“I have another pleasure in store for you.”

“That is——”

“See!” Shian introduced a little Christmas tree, manufactured out of a branch of fir, and to it were hung two—just two—articles: a cap lined with swansdown, and trimmed with cherry ribbons, and a long pair of newly-knitted stockings. “There,” said Shian, “for baby and you—your Christmas presents. I bring it now, whilst he is awake, that he may enjoy it with us.”

“Well,” gasped Shone, “this is delightful! How lovely the child will look in such a glorious bonnet. And how warm my legs will be in these beautiful stockings.”

“That is not all,” said Shian.

“What more can there be?”

“This!” And she dished up a real Christmas plum-pudding.

When Shone saw this the tears came into his eyes.

“Why, Shian!” he said, and felt a pinch of the heart, “you have thought for every one but yourself!”

“No, no, father,” said she. “I have had some of the goose, and shall of the plum-pudding.”

“Some—some!” said he impatiently. “But there is nothing for yourself particularly.”

Then he jumped up, ran behind her at table, caught her head in his arms, pressed her face to his heart, and covered brow and lips with kisses.

“O Shian! You have my love—my very heart!”

“Because of—baby?”

“No, not only; because——”

“Of the goose?”

“No—no, not only; because——”

“Of the plum-pudding?”

“No—no; I mean——”

“Because of the long stockings?”

“No, Shian; because of yourself, your own dear, sweet self—the best in the world!”

“That is my Christmas box, Shone! You could not have given me a better.”

HENRY FROST

HENRY FROST

There is no myth relative to the manners and customs of the English that in my experience is more tenaciously held by the ordinary Frenchman, than that the sale of a wife in the market-place is an habitual and an accepted fact in English life.

It is—so far as my experience goes—quite useless to assure a Frenchman that such transfer of wives is not a matter of every-day occurrence and is not legal; he replies, with an expression of incredulity, that of course English people endeavour to make light of, or deny a fact that is “notorious.”

In a book by the antiquary Colin de Plancy, on Legends and Superstitions connected with the Sacraments, he gives up some pages to an account of the prevalent English custom.

When I was in France a few years ago, in a town church in the south, I heard an abbé once preach on marriage, and contrast its indissolubility in Catholic France with the laxity in Protestant England, where “any one, when tired of his wife, puts a halter round her neck, takes her to the next market town and sells her for what she will fetch.” I ventured to call on this abbé and remonstrate, but he answered me he had seen the fact stated in books of the highest authority, and that my disputing the statement did not prove that his authorities were wrong, but that my experience was limited, and he asked me point-blank whether I had never known such cases. There, unhappily, he had me on the hip. And when I was obliged to confess that I _did_ know of one such case, “Mais, voilà, mon Dieu,” said he, and shrugged his shoulders with a triumphant smile.

Now it must be allowed that such sales have taken place, and that this is so is due to rooted conviction in the rustic mind that such a transaction is legal and morally permissible.

The case I knew was this.

There lived a tall, thin man in the parish when I was a boy, who was the village poet. Whenever an event of any consequence took place within the confines of the parish, such as the marriage of the squire’s daughter, he came down to the manor-house with a copy of verses he had composed on the occasion, and was then given his dinner and a crown. Now this man had actually bought his wife for half-a-crown. Her husband had led her into Okehampton and had sold her there in the market. The poet purchased her for half the sum he had received for one of his poems, and led her home with him, a distance of twelve miles, by the halter, he holding it in his hand, she placidly, contentedly, wearing the loop about her neck.

The report that Henry Frost was leading home his half-crown wife preceded the arrival of the couple, and when they entered the village all the inhabitants turned out to see the spectacle.

Now this arrangement was not very satisfactory to either squire or rector, and both intervened. Henry Frost maintained that Anne was his legitimate wife, for “he had not only bought her in the market, but had led her home, with the halter in his hand, and he’d take his Bible oath that he never took the halter off her till she had crossed his doorstep and he had shut the door.”

The parson took down the Bible, the squire “Burn’s Justice of Peace,” and strove to convince Harry that his conduct was warranted by neither Scripture nor the law of the land. “I don’t care,” he said, “her’s my wife, as sure as if we was spliced at the altar, for and because I paid half-a-crown, and I never took off the halter till her was in my house; lor’ bless yer honours, you may ask any one if that ain’t marriage, good, sound, and Christian, and every one will tell you it is.”

Mr. Henry Frost lived in a cottage that was on lives, so the squire was unable to bring compulsion to bear on him.

When I call the man Frost, I am not employing his real name, because his relatives are alive, and I know them very well.