Kitabı oku: «Sybil, Or, The Two Nations», sayfa 10
Book 2 Chapter 13
It was a cloudy, glimmering dawn. A cold withering east wind blew through the silent streets of Mowbray. The sounds of the night had died away, the voices of the day had not commenced. There reigned a stillness complete and absorbing.
Suddenly there is a voice, there is movement. The first footstep of the new week of toil is heard. A man muffled up in a thick coat, and bearing in his hand what would seem at the first glance to be a shepherd’s crook, only its handle is much longer, appears upon the pavement. He touches a number of windows with great quickness as he moves rapidly along. A rattling noise sounds upon each pane. The use of the long handle of his instrument becomes apparent as he proceeds, enabling him as it does to reach the upper windows of the dwellings whose inmates he has to rouse. Those inmates are the factory girls, who subscribe in districts to engage these heralds of the dawn; and by a strict observance of whose citation they can alone escape the dreaded fine that awaits those who have not arrived at the door of the factory before the bell ceases to sound.
The sentry in question, quitting the streets, and stooping through one of the small archways that we have before noticed, entered a court. Here lodged a multitude of his employers; and the long crook as it were by some sleight of hand seemed sounding on both sides and at many windows at the same moment. Arrived at the end of the court, he was about to touch the window of the upper story of the last tenement, when that window opened, and a man, pale and care-worn and in a melancholy voice spoke to him.
“Simmons,” said the man, “you need not rouse this story any more; my daughter has left us.”
“Has she left Webster’s?”
“No; but she has left us. She has long murmured at her hard lot; working like a slave and not for herself. And she has gone, as they all go, to keep house for herself.”
“That’s a bad business,” said the watchman, in a tone not devoid of sympathy.
“Almost as bad as for parents to live on their childrens’ wages,” replied the man mournfully.
“And how is your good woman?”
“As poorly as needs be. Harriet has never been home since Friday night. She owes you nothing?”
“Not a halfpenny. She was as regular as a little bee and always paid every Monday morning. I am sorry she has left you, neighbour.”
“The Lord’s will be done. It’s hard times for such as us,” said the man; and leaving the window open, he retired into his room.
It was a single chamber of which he was the tenant. In the centre, placed so as to gain the best light which the gloomy situation could afford, was a loom. In two corners of the room were mattresses placed on the floor, a check curtain hung upon a string if necessary concealing them. In one was his sick wife; in the other, three young children: two girls, the eldest about eight years of age; between them their baby brother. An iron kettle was by the hearth, and on the mantel-piece, some candles, a few lucifer matches, two tin mugs, a paper of salt, and an iron spoon. In a farther part, close to the wall, was a heavy table or dresser; this was a fixture, as well as the form which was fastened by it.
The man seated himself at his loom; he commenced his daily task.
“Twelve hours of daily labour at the rate of one penny each hour; and even this labour is mortgaged! How is this to end? Is it rather not ended?” And he looked around him at his chamber without resources: no food, no fuel, no furniture, and four human beings dependent on him, and lying in their wretched beds because they had no clothes. “I cannot sell my loom,” he continued, “at the price of old firewood, and it cost me gold. It is not vice that has brought me to this, nor indolence, nor imprudence. I was born to labour, and I was ready to labour. I loved my loom and my loom loved me. It gave me a cottage in my native village, surrounded by a garden of whose claims on my solicitude it was not jealous. There was time for both. It gave me for a wife the maiden that I had ever loved; and it gathered my children round my hearth with plenteousness and peace. I was content: I sought no other lot. It is not adversity that makes me look back upon the past with tenderness.
“Then why am I here? Why am I, and six hundred thousand subjects of the Queen, honest, loyal, and industrious, why are we, after manfully struggling for years, and each year sinking lower in the scale, why are we driven from our innocent and happy homes, our country cottages that we loved, first to bide in close towns without comforts, and gradually to crouch into cellars, or find a squalid lair like this, without even the common necessaries of existence; first the ordinary conveniences of life, then raiment, and, at length, food, vanishing from us.
“It is that the Capitalist has found a slave that has supplanted the labour and ingenuity of man. Once he was an artizan: at the best, he now only watches machines; and even that occupation slips from his grasp, to the woman and the child. The capitalist flourishes, he amasses immense wealth; we sink, lower and lower; lower than the beasts of burthen; for they are fed better than we are, cared for more. And it is just, for according to the present system they are more precious. And yet they tell us that the interests of Capital and of Labour are identical.
“If a society that has been created by labour suddenly becomes independent of it, that society is bound to maintain the race whose only property is labour, from the proceeds of that property, which has not ceased to be productive.
“When the class of the Nobility were supplanted in France, they did not amount in number to one-third of us Hand-Loom weavers; yet all Europe went to war to avenge their wrongs, every state subscribed to maintain them in their adversity, and when they were restored to their own country, their own land supplied them with an immense indemnity. Who cares for us? Yet we have lost our estates. Who raises a voice for us? Yet we are at least as innocent as the nobility of France. We sink among no sighs except our own. And if they give us sympathy—what then? Sympathy is the solace of the Poor; but for the Rich, there is Compensation.”
“Is that Harriet?” said his wife moving in her bed.
The Hand-Loom weaver was recalled from his reverie to the urgent misery that surrounded him.
“No!” he replied in a quick hoarse voice, “it is not Harriet.”
“Why does not Harriet come?”
“She will come no more!” replied the weaver; “I told you so last night: she can bear this place no longer; and I am not surprised.”
“How are we to get food then?” rejoined his wife; “you ought not to have let her leave us. You do nothing, Warner. You get no wages yourself; and you have let the girl escape.”
“I will escape myself if you say that again,” said the weaver: “I have been up these three hours finishing this piece which ought to have been taken home on Saturday night.”
“But you have been paid for it beforehand. You get nothing for your work. A penny an hour! What sort of work is it, that brings a penny an hour?”
“Work that you have often admired, Mary; and has before this gained a prize. But if you don’t like the work,” said the man quitting his loom, “let it alone. There was enough yet owing on this piece to have allowed us to break our fast. However, no matter; we must starve sooner or later. Let us begin at once.”
“No, no, Philip! work. Let us break our fast come what may.”
“Twit me no more then,” said the weaver resuming his seat, “or I throw the shuttle for the last time.”
“I will not taunt you,” said his wife in a kinder tone. “I was wrong; I am sorry; but I am very ill. It is not for myself I speak; I want not to eat; I have no appetite; my lips are so very parched. But the children, the children went supperless to bed, and they will wake soon.”
“Mother, we ayn’t asleep,” said the elder girl.
“No, we aynt asleep, mother,” said her sister; “we heard all that you said to father.”
“And baby?”
“He sleeps still.”
“I shiver very much!” said the mother. “It’s a cold day. Pray shut the window Warner. I see the drops upon the pane; it is raining. I wonder if the persons below would lend us one block of coal.”
“We have borrowed too often,” said Warner.
“I wish there were no such thing as coal in the land,” said his wife, “and then the engines would not be able to work; and we should have our rights again.”
“Amen!” said Warner.
“Don’t you think Warner,” said his wife, “that you could sell that piece to some other person, and owe Barber for the money he advanced?”
“No!” said her husband shaking his head. “I’ll go straight.”
“And let your children starve,” said his wife, “when you could get five or six shillings at once. But so it always was with you! Why did not you go to the machines years ago like other men and so get used to them?”
“I should have been supplanted by this time,” said Warner, “by a girl or a woman! It would have been just as bad!”
“Why there was your friend Walter Gerard; he was the same as you, and yet now he gets two pound a-week; at least I have often heard you say so.”
“Walter Gerard is a man of great parts,” said Warner, “and might have been a master himself by this time had he cared.”
“And why did he not?”
“He had no wife and children,” said Warner; “he was not so blessed.”
The baby woke and began to cry.
“Ah! my child!” exclaimed the mother. “That wicked Harriet! Here Amelia, I have a morsel of crust here. I saved it yesterday for baby; moisten it in water, and tie it up in this piece of calico: he will suck it; it will keep him quiet; I can bear anything but his cry.”
“I shall have finished my job by noon,” said Warner; “and then, please God, we shall break our fast.”
“It is yet two hours to noon,” said his wife. “And Barber always keeps you so long! I cannot bear that Barber: I dare say he will not advance you money again as you did not bring the job home on Saturday night. If I were you, Philip, I would go and sell the piece unfinished at once to one of the cheap shops.”
“I have gone straight all my life,” said Warner.
“And much good it has done you,” said his wife.
“My poor Amelia! How she shivers! I think the sun never touches this house. It is indeed a most wretched place!”
“It will not annoy you long, Mary,” said her husband: “I can pay no more rent; and I only wonder they have not been here already to take the week.”
“And where are we to go?” said the wife.
“To a place which certainly the sun never touches,” said her husband, with a kind of malice in his misery,—“to a cellar!”
“Oh! why was I ever born!” exclaimed his wife. “And yet I was so happy once! And it is not our fault. I cannot make it out Warner, why you should not get two pounds a-week like Walter Gerard?”
“Bah!” said the husband.
“You said he had no family,” continued his wife. “I thought he had a daughter.”
“But she is no burthen to him. The sister of Mr Trafford is the Superior of the convent here, and she took Sybil when her mother died, and brought her up.”
“Oh! then she is a nun?”
“Not yet; but I dare say it will end in it.”
“Well, I think I would even sooner starve,” said his wife, “than my children should be nuns.”
At this moment there was a knocking at the door. Warner descended from his loom and opened it.
“Lives Philip Warner here?” enquired a clear voice of peculiar sweetness.
“My name is Warner.”
“I come from Walter Gerard,” continued the voice. “Your letter reached him only last night. The girl at whose house your daughter left it has quitted this week past Mr Trafford’s factory.”
“Pray enter.”
And there entered SYBIL.
Book 2 Chapter 14
“Your wife is ill?” said Sybil.
“Very!” replied Warner’s wife. “Our daughter has behaved infamously to us. She has quitted us without saying by your leave or with your leave. And her wages were almost the only thing left to us; for Philip is not like Walter Gerard you see: he cannot earn two pounds a-week, though why he cannot I never could understand.”
“Hush, hush, wife!” said Warner. “I speak I apprehend to Gerard’s daughter?”
“Just so.”
“Ah! this is good and kind; this is like old times, for Walter Gerard was my friend, when I was not exactly as I am now.”
“He tells me so: he sent a messenger to me last night to visit you this morning. Your letter reached him only yesterday.”
“Harriet was to give it to Caroline,” said the wife. “That’s the girl who has done all the mischief and inveigled her away. And she has left Trafford’s works, has she? Then I will be bound she and Harriet are keeping house together.”
“You suffer?” said Sybil, moving to the bed-side of the woman; “give me your hand,” she added in a soft sweet tone. “‘Tis hot.”
“I feel very cold,” said the woman. “Warner would have the window open, till the rain came in.”
“And you, I fear, are wet,” said Warner, addressing Sybil, and interrupting his wife.
“Very slightly. And you have no fire. Ah! I have brought some things for you, but not fuel.”
“If he would only ask the person down stairs,” said his wife, “for a block of coal; I tell him, neighbours could hardly refuse; but he never will do anything; he says he has asked too often.”
“I will ask,” said Sybil. “But first, I have a companion without,” she added, “who bears a basket for you. Come in, Harold.”
The baby began to cry the moment a large dog entered the room; a young bloodhound of the ancient breed, such as are now found but in a few old halls and granges in the north of England. Sybil untied the basket, and gave a piece of sugar to the screaming infant. Her glance was sweeter even than her remedy; the infant stared at her with his large blue eyes; for an instant astonished, and then he smiled.
“Oh! beautiful child!” exclaimed Sybil; and she took the babe up from the mattress and embraced it.
“You are an angel from heaven,” exclaimed the mother, “and you may well say beautiful. And only to think of that infamous girl, Harriet, to desert us all in this way.”
Sybil drew forth the contents of the convent basket, and called Warner’s attention to them. “Now,” she said, “arrange all this as I tell you, and I will go down stairs and speak to them below as you wish, Harold rest there;” and the dog laid himself down in the remotest corner.
“And is that Gerard’s daughter?” said the weaver’s wife. “Only think what it is to gain two pounds a-week, and bring up your daughters in that way—instead of such shameless husseys as our Harriet! But with such wages one can do anything. What have you there, Warner? Is that tea? Oh! I should like some tea. I do think tea would do me some good. I have quite a longing for it. Run down, Warner, and ask them to let us have a kettle of hot water. It is better than all the fire in the world. Amelia, my dear, do you see what they have sent us. Plenty to eat. Tell Maria all about it. You are good girls; you will never be like that infamous Harriet. When you earn wages you will give them to your poor mother and baby, won’t you?”
“Yes, mother,” said Amelia.
“And father, too,” said Maria.
“And father, too,” said the wife. “He has been a very good father to you all; and I never can understand why one who works so hard should earn so little; but I believe it is the fault of those machines. The police ought to put them down, and then every body would be comfortable.”
Sybil and Warner re-entered; the fire was lit, the tea made, the meal partaken. An air of comfort, even of enjoyment, was diffused over this chamber, but a few minutes back so desolate and unhappy.
“Well,” said the wife, raising herself a little up in her bed, “I feel as if that dish of tea had saved my life. Amelia, have you had any tea? And Maria? You see what it is to be good girls; the Lord will never desert you. The day is fast coming when that Harriet will know what the want of a dish of tea is, with all her fine wages. And I am sure,” she added, addressing Sybil, “what we all owe to you is not to be told. Your father well deserves his good fortune, with such a daughter.”
“My father’s fortunes are not much better than his neighbours,” said Sybil, “but his wants are few; and who should sympathise with the poor, but the poor? Alas! none else can. Besides, it is the Superior of our convent that has sent you this meal. What my father can do for you, I have told your husband. ‘Tis little; but with the favour of heaven, it may avail. When the people support the people, the divine blessing will not be wanting.”
“I am sure the divine blessing will never be wanting to you,” said Warner in a voice of great emotion.
There was silence; the querulous spirit of the wife was subdued by the tone of Sybil; she revolved in her mind the present and the past; the children pursued their ungrudged and unusual meal; the daughter of Gerard, that she might not interfere with their occupation, walked to the window and surveyed the chink of troubled sky, which was visible in the court. The wind blew in gusts; the rain beat against the glass. Soon after this, there was another knock at the door. Harold started from his repose, and growled. Warner rose, and saying, “they have come for the rent. Thank God, I am ready,” advanced and opened the door. Two men offered with courtesy to enter.
“We are strangers,” said he who took the lead, “but would not be such. I speak to Warner?”
“My name.”
“And I am your spiritual pastor, if to be the vicar of Mowbray entitles me to that description.”
“Mr St Lys.”
“The same. One of the most valued of my flock, and the most influential person in this district, has been speaking much of you to me this morning. You are working for him. He did not hear of you on Saturday night; he feared you were ill. Mr Barber spoke to me of your distress, as well as of your good character. I came to express to you my respect and my sympathy, and to offer you my assistance.”
“You are most good, sir, and Mr Barber too, and indeed, an hour ago, we were in as great straits—.”
“And are now, sir,” exclaimed his wife interrupting him. “I have been in this bed a-week, and may never rise from it again; the children have no clothes; they are pawned; everything is pawned; this morning we had neither fuel, nor food. And we thought you had come for the rent which we cannot pay. If it had not been for a dish of tea which was charitably given me this morning by a person almost as poor as ourselves that is to say, they live by labour, though their wages are much higher, as high as two pounds a-week, though how that can be I never shall understand, when my husband is working twelve hours a day, and gaining only a penny an hour—if it had not been for this I should have been a corpse; and yet he says we were in straits, merely because Walter Gerard’s daughter, who I willingly grant is an angel from heaven for all the good she has done us, has stepped into our aid. But the poor supporting the poor, as she well says, what good can come from that!”
During this ebullition, Mr St Lys had surveyed the apartment and recognised Sybil.
“Sister,” he said when the wife of Warner had ceased, “this is not the first time we have met under the roof of sorrow.”
Sybil bent in silence, and moved as if she were about to retire: the wind and rain came dashing against the window. The companion of Mr St Lys, who was clad in a rough great coat, and was shaking the wet off an oilskin hat known by the name of a ‘south-wester,’ advanced and said to her, “It is but a squall, but a very severe one; I would recommend you to stay for a few minutes.”
She received this remark with courtesy but did not reply.
“I think,” continued the companion of Mr St Lys, “that this is not the first time also that we have met?”
“I cannot recall our meeting before,” said Sybil.
“And yet it was not many days past; though the sky was so very different, that it would almost make one believe it was in another land and another clime.”
Sybil looked at him as if for explanation.
“It was at Marney Abbey,” said the companion of Mr St Lys.
“I was there; and I remember, when about to rejoin my companions, they were not alone.”
“And you disappeared; very suddenly I thought: for I left the ruins almost at the same moment as your friends, yet I never saw any of you again.”
“We took our course; a very rugged one; you perhaps pursued a more even way.”
“Was it your first visit to Marney?”
“My first and my last. There was no place I more desired to see; no place of which the vision made me so sad.”
“The glory has departed,” said Egremont mournfully.
“It is not that,” said Sybil: “I was prepared for decay, but not for such absolute desecration. The Abbey seems a quarry for materials to repair farm-houses; and the nave a cattle gate. What people they must be—that family of sacrilege who hold these lands!”
“Hem!” said Egremont. “They certainly do not appear to have much feeling for ecclesiastical art.”
“And for little else, as we were told,” said Sybil. “There was a fire at the Abbey farm the day we were there, and from all that reached us, it would appear the people were as little tendered as the Abbey walls.”
“They have some difficulty perhaps in employing their population in those parts.”
“You know the country?”
“Not at all: I was travelling in the neighbourhood, and made a diversion for the sake of seeing an abbey of which I had heard so much.”
“Yes; it was the greatest of the Northern Houses. But they told me the people were most wretched round the Abbey; nor do I think there is any other cause for their misery, than the hard hearts of the family that have got the lands.”
“You feel deeply for the people!” said Egremont looking at her earnestly.
Sybil returned him a glance expressive of some astonishment, and then said, “And do not you? Your presence here assures me of it.”
“I humbly follow one who would comfort the unhappy.”
“The charity of Mr St Lys is known to all.”
“And you—you too are a ministering angel.”
“There is no merit in my conduct, for there is no sacrifice. When I remember what this English people once was; the truest, the freest, and the bravest, the best-natured and the best-looking, the happiest and most religious race upon the surface of this globe; and think of them now, with all their crimes and all their slavish sufferings, their soured spirits and their stunted forms; their lives without enjoyment and their deaths without hope; I may well feel for them, even if I were not the daughter of their blood.”
And that blood mantled to her cheek as she ceased to speak, and her dark eye gleamed with emotion, and an expression of pride and courage hovered on her brow. Egremont caught her glance and withdrew his own; his heart was troubled.
St Lys. who had been in conference with the weaver, left him and went to the bedside of his wife. Warner advanced to Sybil, and expressed his feelings for her father, his sense of her goodness. She, observing that the squall seemed to have ceased, bade him farewell, and calling Harold, quitted the chamber.
