Part 10

‘Oh, mother, a great deal,’ said Mab eagerly; ‘don’t discourage him: a little money is such a help. I know people who could be made so happy with just a little. There are the old Lloyds, who will have to go to the workhouse if their son does not send them something, and he is out of work. And there is George, who can’t go fishing any longer for his rheumatism, and poor dear Lizzie Minns, who is so afflicted, and won’t live to be a burden on her people. Oh, don’t tell him no, mother! Mr. Swinford, people say it is wrong to give money,’ said Mab, turning to him, always across the figure of Lady William, who was between, with her eyes, which were not pretty eyes, swimming in tears, ‘but I don’t think so; not in these kind of cases, where a few shillings a week would make all the difference: and we haven’t got it to give them, mother and I.’

‘They shall not go to the workhouse, nor die of their rheumatisms,’ cried Leo. He was so moved that the water stood in his eyes too. ‘Tell me how much it needs, or take my purse, or give me your orders. I was a fool! I was a fool! thinking the angels shouldn’t know.’

Mab stared a little across her mother, not in the least comprehending this address, or that she was the angel on behalf of whom Leo upbraided himself. She understood herself to be stigmatised as a little girl, but she was not aware that the higher being had anything to do with her. At the same time she perceived that his heart was touched, and that to the old Lloyd’s, etc., the best results possible might accrue. As for Lady William, she was half touched, half amused by the incident; pleased that her little girl had come out so well, and pleased with Leo’s enthusiasm, yet ready to laugh at them both. She put up a subduing hand between.

‘Don’t beg in this outrageous way, Mab; and don’t give in to her in that perfectly defenceless manner, Leo. I shall be compelled to interfere and stop both of you. But here is somebody coming who knows all about it, better than Mab, better than I do, far better even than the parson of the parish. Here is not only the head of all the charities, but Charity herself embodied. Look at her coming along, that you may know her again when you see her, one of the great Christian virtues in flesh and blood.’

Leo winked the tear out of his eye, though he was not ashamed of it, as a man all English might have been, and laughed in response to this new appeal, in which he did not know that there might not be a little satire. He said, ‘I see no white wings nor shining robes. I see a very small woman in the dress of a--no, I will not say that--but it’s a little droll, isn’t it? scanty, to say the least, and perhaps shabby.’

‘Oh, if you want an appropriate dress! It ought to be white, with blazons of gold: but it is only an old black merino, worn rusty in the service of the poor. Miss Grey, Mr. Leo Swinford wants you to remember him. He was only a little boy when you saw him last, and he wants to speak to you about the poor.’

‘Of course I should not have known you again,’ said Miss Grey, ‘for I don’t know that I ever saw you nearer than in the carriage with your mamma. But I am very glad to know you, Mr. Swinford, though not much worth the trouble--and especially to tell you anything I can about the poor.’

‘He has views,’ said Lady William, ‘of abolishing them off the face of the earth.’

‘Oh, you’ll never do that,’ said little Miss Grey, with a flash of her beautiful brown eyes. ‘The poor ye have always with you; never, till you can make the race perfect, will you get rid of the poor.’

‘He thinks money will be able to do it: and Mab rather agrees with him.’

‘Money!’ said Miss Grey, with a disdain which no words could express. She turned not to Lady William, who spoke, but to Leo, when she replied, ‘Money is of use, no doubt: but to sow it about and give it to everybody is downright ruin.’

‘Not to good honest old people, Miss Grey, like the Lloyds and old Riverside George.’

‘Pensions?’ said the little lady, with her head on one side like a bird. ‘Well, there may be something in that. Come into my house and sit down, and we can argue it out.’

Miss Grey’s cottage was a smaller cottage even than Lady William’s. It was lopsided--a house with only one window beside the door; one little sitting-room with a little kitchen behind.

The little parlour looked as if it could not by any means contain the party which its little mistress ushered in. ‘Step in, step in,’ she said, ‘don’t be afraid. There is far more room than you would think. I have had ten of the mothers here at once, and not so much as a saucer broken. The ladies know where they can find places, but Mr. Swinford, as you are a stranger, you shall sit here.’

Here was a large easy-chair, the largest piece of furniture in the room, which stood almost in the centre, with a small table beside it. And there was a big old-fashioned sofa against the wall, occupying the whole side from door to window. It was the wonder of all the Watcham people how that sofa had been got into the room which it blocked up. But Miss Grey’s response always was that she could not part with her furniture; and that the old Chesterfield, which was what she called the sofa, was a cherished relic of her dear home. But the most remarkable thing about this little room was the manner in which it was lined and garlanded with china. Miss Grey was poor, but the china was not poor. It was of every kind that could be described, and it was everywhere, on little shelves and brackets against the wall, on the mantelpiece, on every table. There was scarcely anything in the room except the Chesterfield which did not support a row of dishes, or vases, or plates. Lady William and Mab, being closely acquainted with the place, managed to seat themselves without damaging any of these treasures: but to an unaccustomed visitor the entrance was one full of perils. It went to Miss Grey’s heart that Mr. Swinford made his entrance as gingerly as if all these riches had been his own.

‘Never mind,’ she said, as something rattled down from a corner, ‘it’s only a very common delft dish; or is it the majolica? Only the yellow majolica, it doesn’t matter at all; and besides, it isn’t broken, or chipped, or anything. Oh, that’s an accident that happens every day: but my ten mothers didn’t even knock down that plate, and some of them were big bouncing women.’

‘You are a collector, Miss Grey?’

‘Oh, I am not good enough for that; they are all old things, and I am fond of them; most of them, Mr. Swinford, came from my dear home; the things that were in one’s home are never like anything else; and a few I have picked up, but very few, not enough to make any difference. The majolica, I daresay you think nothing of it, you that know what is really good. And neither do I, but not from that reason, because I only bought it myself at a sale. It is not from my dear home.’

‘And may I ask,’ said Leo, with polite attention, ‘what it means, your ten mothers? You must understand that I am very ignorant of many things.’

‘Oh, that is easily explained,’ said little Miss Grey; ‘ten members of my mothers’ meeting, that’s what they are; they meet in the schoolroom once a week, and now and then I have them here to tea.’

‘Mothers,’ said Leo, ‘of children? I understand.’ He was perfectly serious in his polite attention. ‘And they meet every week, and consult, perhaps upon education?’

‘Oh no,’ said Miss Grey, ‘poor things, they are not much up to that. They cut out things for their children, little petticoats, and so forth, and work at them; and one of us reads aloud; and they pay only a little for the material, just enough to feel that they have bought it; and the schoolroom is nice and warm and bright, and it’s a little society for them.’

Leo’s face was very grave; there was not even a ghost of a smile upon it. ‘I should never have thought of that,’ he said, ‘but it is good, very good. But why not give them the material to make things for their children? I understand the women love it, and it does them good to work at it. But I will buy the stuff for you, all you want, with pleasure. Would not that be the simplest way?’

‘I think so too, often,’ said Mab, whose whole soul was in the question, and who understood nothing at all of the amusement with which her mother was looking on.

‘Not at all,’ said Miss Grey, ‘for then it would look like charity; now they buy everything, it is very cheap, but it is no charity, it is their very own.’

‘But charity is no bad thing; charity is to give what one has to those who have not.’

‘I think so, too, often,’ said Mab again. She added, nodding her head, ‘It is in the Bible just like that.’

‘But we must not pauperise them,’ said Miss Grey; ‘we must help them to keep their self-respect.’

‘There is nothing about self-respect in the Bible,’ said Mab quickly.

‘Oh, Mab, you are only a child. I am not against giving; sometimes it is the only way; and it’s a great pleasure. But it isn’t good for the people; we must think first what is good for them. We must not demoralise them; we mustn’t----’ The little woman hurried her argument till her cheeks grew like two little dark roses, with excitement and perplexity.

‘It is this,’ said Leo; ‘everything has been neglected by me for many years. First I was a child and did not understand, and then I was a young man, taken up by follies. I have come back. I wish now to do my duty to my people. I will put into your hands money, as much as you want, a hundred or a thousand pounds, as much as is wanted, to make happy whom you can, if they can be brought to be happy; and to make clean, and plentiful, and good. Hush! dear lady, don’t laugh at me. I would like to pull down those frightful houses, and put all the poor people in pleasant, bright rooms, where they could breathe.’

‘What frightful houses?’

‘He means Riverside, Miss Grey.’

‘He means Riverside! But they are not bad houses; the people are not unhappy there. Oh, I could show you some! But at Riverside they are only ugly. The people are not badly off; they get on well enough. One helps them a little sometimes, but they rarely come on the rates, or even apply to the Rector. Why, Mr. Swinford, you mustn’t only look at the outside of things.’

‘I know,’ said Leo, repeating himself (but this was part of his excited state), ‘that I am housed like a prince, and they--not so well as the horses in the stables.’

Little Miss Grey kept her eyes on him as he spoke, as if he were a madman, with a mixture of extreme curiosity and anxiety, to know if there was method in his madness. ‘Well!’ she cried, ‘that is not your fault. You are not--what do you call it, Emily? for I am not clever--anything feudal to them. You are not their chief, like a Scotch clan. What makes them poor (and they’re not so very poor) is their own fault. They’re as independent as you are. If they drink and waste their wages they’re badly off; if they don’t they’re comfortable enough; if they’re dirty, it’s because they don’t mind. Bless me, Mr. Swinford, it isn’t your fault. If you pulled down the houses, they would make an outcry that would be heard from here to London. Besides, I don’t think they belong to you!’ said Miss Grey triumphantly. ‘They were all built by White, the baker. I know they don’t belong to you!’

Leo Swinford sat and gazed at her with a rising perception that there was something ludicrous in the attitude he had assumed, which, at the same time, was so entirely sincere and true.

‘And as for the stables being better--some stables are ridiculous--sinful luxury, as if the poor dumb brutes were not just as happy in the old way. Why, my little house,’ said Miss Grey, looking round, ‘is not all marble and varnish, like your stables. And you think, perhaps, it is a poor little place for me to live in, while you live in your palace like a prince, as you say?’

He did not make any reply. This little woman took away his breath. But he did cast a look round him at the minuteness of the place; a kind of wistful look, as if he could not deny the feeling she imputed to him, and would have liked nothing so much as to build her a palace, too.

‘Well!’ said Miss Grey, ‘and I would not give it for Windsor Castle. I like it ten thousand times better than your palace; and the poor folk in Riverside are just like me.’

‘Dear lady,’ said Leo, in his perplexity, ‘it is not the same thing; but you take away my breath.’

Here Lady William came to his aid, yet did not fail to point a moral. ‘You see,’ she said, ‘you must not follow a hasty impulse even to do good. There are two reasons against making a desert of Riverside; first, because the people there don’t find it dreadful, as you do; and next, my dear Leo, because you’re not their feudal lord, as Miss Grey says, and the houses don’t belong to you.’

He shrugged his shoulders, as a man discomfited has a right to do. But Miss Grey burst in before he had time to say a word: ‘If that is what you want, Mr. Swinford, I can show you a place!’

XIII

While Leo Swinford was making his first attempt to revolutionise, or perhaps pauperise, the parish under the irregular and unofficial guidance of Miss Grey and Mab, who had, of course, no public standing at all, though he would have been a bold Rector indeed who had disowned the abounding services and constant help of Miss Grey--other incidents were going on of still more importance to the conduct of this history. Notwithstanding the indignation with which she had received the suggestion that money was strong enough to unlock all doors and solve all problems, it was astonishing how soon that unauthorised and unofficial Providence of the parish found ways and means to disembarrass Leo of a considerable sum of money, and to produce a list of requirements for which that vulgar dross would be very useful. She adopted all Mab’s suggestions as to the Lloyd couple and old George, permitting that little weekly allowances should be given them to keep them in life and comfort; and she pronounced and sealed the doom of a group of cottages which, though they were not ugly, like Riverside, rather the contrary, a picturesque group, making quite a feature in the level country, were not fit to live in, as Mr. Swinford was reluctantly brought to allow. He did not like pulling to pieces the venerable walls and high-pitched roofs, with their growths of lichen, which were a picture in themselves, and struggled long in the name of art against that dire necessity. Indeed, the case was a parable, since we are all but too willing to pull down the ugly but not uncomfortable tenements of White the baker, though it costs us a pang to do away with the unwholesome prettiness of our own. But while Leo’s education in the duties of a proprietor was thus progressing, there was another young man whose training was going on in a very different way. Jim’s Sophocles became more and more hard upon him as the spring days grew longer, and the east winds blew themselves out, and the sun grew warm. What was the good of all that Greek? he asked himself, and there was reason in the question. If he were to be sent out to a ranch it would not help him much to know about Electra and Antigone. Less tragic heroines, and lore less elevated, would serve the purpose of the common day; or if he went into a merchant’s office, there is no commercial correspondence in Greek, even if modern Greek was the least like the classic. What, then, was the use of it? And yet the Rector would hear no reason, but kept grinding on and on. Jim had some cause for his dissatisfaction: and he could not have understood the reluctance of his father, once a scholar in his time, to resign for his son all hope of the honours which Jim neither wished for nor prized. But the Rector could not wind himself up to the point of deciding that what he fondly hoped were his boy’s talents should be hidden either in a ranch or in an office. He kept hoping, as we all hope, that fate would take some turn, that some opening would come which would still permit of a happier conclusion. And nothing was settled from day to day, and nothing done except that Sophocles, that sop to anxiety, that poor expedient to occupy the lad who hated it. It is a commonplace to add that if the vexed and unhappy Rector had contrived a means to make his son’s prospects worse and his life more untenable, he could scarcely have hit upon a better. To send him away had a hope in it, though it might have been destruction, but to keep him unwilling and embittered at home, held in this treadmill of forced and unprofitable labour, was the destruction made sure and without hope.

Jim was too sore and vexed with this fate from which there seemed no escape, yet too well assured that it was his own fault, and that nothing he could do was likely to restore him to the old standing-ground in which everything that was good was hoped and believed of him--to make any manly protest against it. There was no such power in him, poor boy. It was his nature to drift, and to resent the drifting, but to take no initiative of his own. When he was upbraided, as he was so often for his idleness and uselessness, he would make angry retorts now and then, that he would work fast enough if he had anything to do except that beastly Greek: but these retorts were growled out under his breath, or flung over his shoulder as he escaped, and the angry father paid no attention to them, and did not perceive the reason that lay underneath this angry folly. Even when the Rector adjured him, as he did sometimes, to say what he would do, to strike out some path of his own, poor Jim had nothing to say. He had no path of his own; he had only an angry perception that the one upon which he was now drifting was the worst: but if they would only let him alone, Jim did not care otherwise much about it. What he proposed was to do nothing at all except a little boating and lawn tennis, or skating in winter. He did not think of the future, nor ask anything of it. If they would but let him alone.

When a young man in the country is what he calls bullied at home, work demanded of him which he hates, aims and purposes insisted upon which he does not possess, it is an infinite relief to him to escape to the society of those who will flatter and soothe, and make him feel himself a fine fellow and a gentleman in spite of all. Such was the company in the ‘Blue Boar’ where the Rector’s son was thought much of, and his opinions greatly looked up to, notwithstanding a conviction on the part of the honest tradespeople who frequented the parlour that it was a thousand pities he ever came there. They asked themselves why didn’t his father look to it, and see that Mr. Jim had summut to do, and friends of his own kind--in the same breath with which they flattered him as the nicest young gentleman, and considered it a pleasure to hear what he thought of things; but it was a long time before any one among them could make up his mind to utter the words which were on all their lips, and to tell Mr. Jim that the parlour of the ‘Blue Boar,’ though it was so respectable, was not the place for a young gentleman; and in the meantime the incense of their admiration and pride in his companionship was balm to the youth, notwithstanding his own knowledge that he ought not to be there.

And there was another place which was becoming still more agreeable to poor Jim. Since that first visit when she called him in, in the darkening, he had paid many visits at the schoolroom to Mrs. Brown. He could not go anywhere without passing the door, and in the evening, when it was not very easy to see who went or came, she was almost always there, looking out, breathing the air as she said, after the day’s work, and keeping a watch for Jim. He was flattered by this watch for him even more than by the admiration of the shopkeepers, and yet at the same time half ashamed. For there was no depravity about the boy, and these attentions on the part of a woman who was no longer young embarrassed him greatly, and gave him a sense of danger which, however, in her presence was entirely soothed and smoothed away. There was a sense of danger but still more a sense of ridicule, which seized him whenever he left her, and made him resolve with a blush never to go near her again. And, yet again, there was safety too. Had Mrs. Brown had a daughter, a girl whom he might have fallen in love with, whom people might have talked about, Jim felt that the circumstances would have been quite different; then, indeed, it would have been a duty to have stayed away: but a woman who might be his mother! If she liked to talk to him it was ridiculous, but it couldn’t be any harm. Nobody thought it anything wrong that Osborne the curate should pay long visits to Miss Grey, and take tea with her, and all that; and why not Jim to Mrs. Brown who was much more amusing, and who had no society? She was a capital one to talk; she had been a great deal about the world; she knew hundreds of people: and there was always a comfortable chair ready for him, and she had an art in manufacturing drinks which nobody Jim knew was equal to. It never occurred to him to inquire why she looked out for him in the evenings, and made those exquisite drinks for him. It was ridiculous, but it was not disagreeable, and in the evening as he prowled along, unwilling to go into the dull familiar house, where there was reproach more or less veiled in every eye, where even Florry, who stood by him the most, would rush out unexpectedly with an ‘Oh, Jim! why can’t you do something and please papa?’--there was a wonderful seduction in the sight or half-sight, for it was generally dark, of Mrs. Brown’s handsome head looking out from the door. ‘Good evening, Mr. Plowden; I hope you are coming in a little to cheer me up.’ It was said so low that, supposing somebody else to be passing, which was very rare, it could reach no other ear but Jim’s. Sometimes he resisted the call; sometimes when she was not at the door he went in of himself. It was all quite easy and irregular, and out of the way. The entrance to Mrs. Brown’s house was close to a lane which led to the Rectory, and thus it was easy for him to dart in without being observed. Once, he felt sure, Osborne passing had turned half-back to stare, and saw where he was going. Confound that fellow! but, what did it matter what Osborne saw? He had never been friendly with Jim, never showed any relish for his society, which had rankled in the young man’s breast, though he was too proud ever to have breathed a consciousness of the fact. But, whatever he was, the curate was not a sneak who would go off to the Rectory and betray what he had seen. Jim dived into the doorway, however, with an accelerated pace of which he was ashamed; and the ridicule of it came over him with a keener heat and flush. A woman old enough to be his mother! But what was the difference? That fellow Osborne would go off all the same to little Nelly Grey.

‘Oh, Mr. Jim, what a pleasure to see you!’ cried Mrs. Brown. ‘I had almost given up hope: for it is near the Rectory dinner, isn’t it, and you will be wanted at home----’

‘Oh, I am not such a good little boy as all that,’ said Jim, with an uneasy laugh; ‘I am not so afraid of being late.’

‘That’s very bad, very bad,’ said Mrs. Brown. ‘I am sure the young ladies are always in time and punctual; they come to see me sometimes, you know, and they always recommend punctuality. It’s a great virtue. I have all the ladies to come to see me, but I sometimes think, Mr. Jim, if they were to know----’

‘I don’t know what, I am sure,’ said Jim, growing very red, yet looking at her steadily; ‘there is nothing I could tell that would make them less respectful to you, Mrs. Brown--only that you were once in a better position, and better off than you are now; my mother and the rest may be a little narrow, but they would never think the less of you for that.’