Kitabı oku: «The Carbonels», sayfa 6
Chapter Eleven.
An Unprofitable Crop
“My mother bids me bind my hair.”
—Old Ballad.
“Oh Mary, Mary, what is to be done about the hair?” cried Sophy, one Sunday after church.
“Isn’t it dreadful?” said Dora. “Those fearful curl-papers sticking out with rolls of old newspapers! I told them it was not fit to be seen last Sunday, but there were even Elizabeth and Jane Hewlett in them to-day.”
“Yes,” said Mary, “they said that mother’s aunt was coming to tea, so she had curled them before they came out. I told them I would excuse it for this once, but that I should send any one home who came such a figure on Sunday.”
Elizabeth and Jane, be it observed, were George Hewlett’s daughters, the most civilised, if the dullest-witted, of the flock. Polly, Betsy, and Judy were the children of Dan Hewlett. As a rule, all the old women of the parish were called Betty, all the middle-aged Lizzie, and the girls Elizabeth.
“It is worse on week-days,” said Dora. “One would think it was a collection of little porcupines!”
“And so dirty,” began Sophy, but she was hushed up, for Edmund was seen approaching, and Mary never allowed him to be worried with the small, fretting details of school life.
It was a time when it was the fashion for young ladies up to their teens to have their hair curled in ringlets round their heads or on their shoulders. Sophy’s hair curled naturally, and had been “turned up” ever since she had come to live at home in the dignity of fourteen, but she and both her sisters wore falls of drooping ringlets in front, and in Mary’s case these had been used to be curled in paper at night, though she would as soon have been seen thus decorated by day as in her night-cap. But there was scarcely another matron in the parish who did not think a fringe of curl-paper the proper mode of disposing of her locks when in morning désabillé, unless she were elderly and wore a front, which could be taken off and put on with the best cap.
Maid-servants wore short curls or smooth folds round side-combs under net caps, and this was the usual trim of the superior kind of women. The working women wore thick muslin white caps, under which, it was to be hoped, their hair was cut short, though often it straggled out in unseemly elf-locks. Married women did not go bareheaded, not even the younger ladies, except in the evening, when, like their maiden sisters, they wore coils of their back hair round huge upright ornamental combs on the summit of their heads.
But the children’s heads were deservedly pain and grief to the Carbonel senses, and Mary was impelled to go and make a speech in school, desiring that no more curl-papers should appear there on Sundays, and recommending that all hair should be kept short, as her own and her sister’s had been, till the fit age for the “turning up” was attained. She called up Susan Pucklechurch and Rachel Mole, who had nice smooth hair neatly parted in the middle, and declared them to be examples of the way that heads ought to appear.
That afternoon the women stood out at their gates. “So the lady told you to take pattern by Widdy Mole’s child, did her?” said Nanny Barton, loud enough for all her neighbours to hear.
“Ay, mother, by Rachel Mole and Susie Pucklechurch.”
“As if I’d go out of my way to follow after a mean creeper and low thing like Widow Mole,” exclaimed Mrs Barton.
“She knows which way her bread is buttered. A-making favourites!” exclaimed Nancy Morris.
“Getting in to work in the garding away from Farmer Goodenough, as her man had worked for for years, ay, and his before un,” chimed in Nanny Barton.
“And if you could see the platefuls and cupfuls as the ladies carries out to her,” added Betsy Seddon. “My word and honour! No wonder she is getting lively enough just to bust some day.”
“That’s the way she comes over them,” said Nanny Barton.
“That’s what them gentlefolks likes, and Bessy Mole she knows it,” observed Nancy Morris; at which they all laughed shrilly.
“As though I’d take pattern by her,” exclaimed Nanny Barton. “I’d liefer take pattern by Softy Sam, or Goodenough’s old scarecrow.”
“Whatever’s that?” demanded Tirzah, coming out of the “Fox and Hounds.” “What have they been after now?”
“Just the lady’s been a preachin’ down at that there school, how that she don’t want no curl-papers there, and that all the poor children’s heads is to be clipped like boys, and setting up that there Rachel Mole’s bowl-dish of a poll to set the fashion.”
“There! As I telled you,” said Tirzah. “That’s the way gentry always goes on if they gets their way.”
“They just hates to see a curl or a bit of ribbon,” added Betsy Seddon.
“Or to see one have a bit of pleasure,” added Nancy Morris. “Pucklechurches and Mole, they never durst send their poor children to the fair—”
“And to hear the lady run out agin’ me for just having a drop of beer,” exclaimed Nanny Barton. “Nothing warn’t bad enough for me! As if she hadn’t her wine and all the rest of it, and a poor woman mayn’t touch one draught, if it is ever so—”
“Well, you know, Nan, you’d had a bit more than enough,” said Tirzah.
“Well, and what call to that was hern or yourn?” cried Nancy, facing upon her.
“A pretty job I had to get you home that night,” said Tirzah; and they all laughed. “And you wouldn’t be here now if Tom Postboy hadn’t pulled up his horses in time.”
“And was it for her to cast up to me if I was a bit overtaken?” demanded Nanny.
It may be supposed that after such a conversation as this there was not much chance of the bowl-dish setting the fashion. There was not the same ill-temper and jealousy of Susan Pucklechurch being held up as an example, for her family were the natural hangers-on of Greenhow, and were, besides, always neater and better dressed than the others; but Mrs Mole was even poorer than themselves, and had worked with them, even while “keeping herself to herself,” a great offence in their eyes. Thus nobody was inclined to follow the clipped fashion, except one or two meeker women, who had scarcely seen that their girls’ hair was getting beyond bounds. It is to be remembered that seventy years ago, long hair could hardly be kept in respectable trim by busy mothers working in the fields, and with much less power of getting brushes and combs than at present; so that the crops were almost the only means of securing cleanliness and tidiness, and were worn also by all the little daughters of such gentry as did not care for fashion, nor for making them sleep on a ring of lumps as big as walnuts. So that Mrs Carbonel and her sisters really wished for what was wholesome and proper when they tried to make the children conform to their rules, if the women could only have seen it so, instead of resenting the interference.
Sunday brought George Hewlett’s two girls with their hair fastened up in womanly guise, and their cousins becurled as before; but there was nothing particularly untidy, and Mary held her peace.
However, the war was not over, and one day, when, after a short absence, Dora and Sophy went into the school, they found five or six girls bristling with twists of old newspapers, and others in a still more objectionable condition, with wild unkempt hair about their necks, and the half-dozen really neat ones were on the form around Mrs Thorpe, who proceeded to tell Dora that she was quite in despair, the more she spoke to the girls about tidy heads, the worse they were, and she was really afraid to let her own children or the clean ones sit near the dirty ones.
Dora’s spirit was roused. “Very well,” she said, “Mrs Carbonel and I will not be disobeyed. Come here, Lizzie Barton. Your head is disgraceful. Lend me your scissors, Mrs Thorpe.”
Lizzie Barton began to cry, with her knuckles in her eyes, and would not stir; but Dora was resolute. One child made a rush for the door; but Dora desired Sophy to stand by the door and bar the passage, and called Mrs Thorpe to hold Lizzie Barton, who certainly was a spectacle, with half-a-dozen horns twisted out of old advertisement papers, but the rest of her hair flying in disgusting elf-locks. She was cowed, however, into standing quiet, till her appendages had been sheared off by the determined scissors. “There, I am sure you must be much more comfortable,” Dora assured her. “Get your mother to wash your head, and you will look so nice to-morrow. Now then, Betsy Hewlett.”
Betsy cried, but submitted; but the next victim, Sally French, howled and fought, and said, “Mammy would not have it done.” But Dora sternly answered, “Then she should keep your head fit to be seen.” And Mrs Thorpe held down her hands, with whispers of “Now, my dear, don’t.”
And so it went on through nineteen girls, the boys sniggering all the time. Some cried and struggled, but latterly they felt it was their fate, and resisted no longer. Even Mary Cox, who had a curly head by nature, stood still to be clipped. Dora’s hands were in a dreadful state, and her mind began to quail a little; but, having once started, she felt bound to go on and complete her work, and when she finally dismissed the school, there was a very undesirable heap of locks, brown, black, and carroty, interspersed with curl-papers, on the floor. The girls looked, to her mind, far better, and Mrs Thorpe, a little doubtful, gave her a basin of water to wash her hands.
Home the two sisters went, their spirits rising as they laughed over their great achievement, and looked forward to amusing Mary with the account of the various behaviour of the victims.
So they burst upon her, as she was planting bulbs in the garden, and Edmund helping her by measuring distances.
“Oh, Mary, such fun!” cried Sophy. “We have been cutting all the children’s hair.”
“What do you mean, Sophy?”
“They had their heads worse than ever,” said Dora, “so I took Mrs Thorpe’s scissors and clipped them all round.”
“My dear Dora, I wish you had not been so hasty,” Mary was gently saying; but Edmund was standing up, looking quite judicial.
“Did you get their parents’ permission?” he demanded.
“No, of course I never should.”
“Then what right had you to meddle with the children?”
“They were quite horrid. My hands! They’ll never recover,” said Dora, spreading out her fingers.
“Very likely; but the children were not your slaves. You have a perfect right to forbid them to enter your school except on certain conditions, but not to tyrannise over them when there. You have done more harm than you will undo in a hurry.”
“I am afraid so,” murmured Mary.
Dora had a temper, and answered angrily, “Well, I’m sure I did it for the best.”
“I don’t approve of opinionative young ladies,” said Edmund, who was really from old habit quite like an elder brother.
“Oh, Dora,” sighed Mary, “don’t!”
Dora felt impelled to argue the matter out on the spot, but something in Mary’s look withheld her. She went away, stepping high and feeling stately and proud; but when she had walked up and down her own room a few times, her better sense began to revive, and she saw that she had acted in anger and self-will quite as much as from a sense of propriety, and she threw herself on her bed and shed some bitter tears.
They would have been still more bitter if she could have heard the exclamations of the mothers over their gates that evening.
“Well, to be sure, that a young lady should have treated my poor like that!”
“Her father says, says he, ‘I’ll have the law of she.’”
“My Jenny, she come home looking like a poor mad woman. ‘Whatever has thee been arter?’ says I. ‘’Tis the lady,’ says she.”
“Lady! She ought to be ashamed on herself, a-making such Betties of the poor children.”
“Ah! didn’t I tell you,” gibed Tirzah, “what would come of making up to the gentlefolk, with their soft words and such. They only want to have their will of you, just like the blackamoors.”
“You’ll not find me a sending my Liz and Nan,” cried Mrs Morris, “no, not if her was to offer me a hundred goulden guineas.”
“I don’t let my gal go to be made into a guy!” was the general sentiment; and Mrs Verdon, in her bed, intensified it by warning her neighbours that the cropping their heads was “a preparation for sending them out to them foreign parts where they has slaves.”
And on Sunday, there were only ten of the female pupils at school, and poor Dora and Sophia both cried all church time. They thought their hasty measures had condemned their poor girls to be heathens and good-for-nothings for ever and ever.
Tirzah Todd laughed at them all. The Todds had gipsy connections; Todd himself was hardly ever visible. He was never chargeable to the parish, but he never did regular work except at hay and harvest times, or when he was cutting copsewood. Then old Pucklechurch’s brother, Master Pucklechurch of Downhill, who always managed the copse cutting, used to hire him, and they and another man lived in a kind of wigwam made of chips, and cut down the seven years’ growth of underwood, dividing it into pea-sticks from the tops, and splitting the thicker parts to be woven into hurdles, or made into hoops for barrels. They had a little fire, but their wives brought them their food, and little Hoglah, now quite well only with a scarred neck, delighted to toddle about among the chips, and cry out, “Pitty! pitty!” at the primroses.
Copse cutting over, Joe Todd haunted fairs and drove cattle home, or did anything he could pick up. He lived in a mud hovel which he and Tirzah had built for themselves on the border land, and where they kept a tall, thin, smooth-haired dog, with a grey coat, a white waistcoat, a long nose and tail, and blue eyes, which gave him a peculiarly sinister expression of countenance, and he had a habit of leaping up and planting his fore feet on the gate, growling, so that Dora and Sophy were very much afraid of him, and no one except Mr Harford had ever attempted to effect an entrance into the cottage. It was pretty well understood that Joe Todd and his lurcher carried on a business as poachers, and Tirzah going about with clothes’-pegs, rush baskets, birch brooms, and in their season with blackberries, whortleberries, or plovers’ eggs, was able to dispose of their game to the poulterers at Minsterham, with whom she had an understanding. Her smiling black eyes, white teeth, and merry looks, caused a great deal of business to be done through her, and servants were not unwilling to carry in her stories about rabbits knocked down unawares by a stick, and pheasants or partridges killed by chance in reaping. Indeed, she had a little trade in dripping and other scraps with sundry of these servants, which rendered them the more disposed to receive her.
Chapter Twelve.
Prizes
“Miss Jenny and Polly
Had each a new dolly,
With rosy red cheeks and blue eyes,
Dressed in ribbons and gauze;
And they quarrelled because
The dolls were not both of a size.”
The Daisy.
Nobody offered a hundred golden guineas to bring Elizabeth and Anne Morris to school, nevertheless they appeared there at the end of the second week. They were heartily tired of home, where there was washing to be done, and their eldest sister Patty banged them about, and they had no peace from the great heavy baby. Besides, there had been a talk of prizes at Christmas, and they weren’t going to let them Moles and Pucklechurches get the whole of them. Moreover, others were going back, so why should not they?
Yes, Nanny Barton’s children “did terrify her so, she had no peace.” And Betsy Seddon’s Janie had torn her frock as there was no bearing, and even the Dan Hewletts were going back. Little Judy had cried to go, and her Aunt Judith had trimmed up the heads of her sisters, for Dora Carbonel had not been a first-rate hair-cutter, and it was nearly the same with every one, except the desperate truant, Ben Shales, and the cobbler’s little curly girl, who was sent all the way to Downhill to Miss Minifer’s genteel academy, where she learnt bead-work and very little besides.
The affair seemed to have done less harm than Captain Carbonel had expected, yet, on the other hand, the motives that brought most of the scholars back were not any real desire for improvement, but rather the desire of being interested, and the hope of rewards. It would take a long time to make the generality of the people regard “they Gobblealls” as anything but curious kind of creatures to be humoured for the sake of what could be got out of them.
Of the positive love of God and their neighbour, and the strong sense of duty that actuated them, few of the Uphill inhabitants had the least notion. It would be much to say that if these motives were always present with Edmund and Mary, it was so in the same degree with Dora and Sophy; but to them the school children were the great interest, occupation, and delight, and their real affection and sympathy, so far as they understood, were having their effect.
They were hard at work at those same prizes, which filled almost as much of their minds as they could those of the expectant recipients, and occupied their fingers a good deal. And, after all, what would the modern scholar think of those same prizes? The prime ones of all, the Bible and Prayer-book, were of course, in themselves as precious then as now, but each was bound in the very plainest of dark-brown calf, though, to tell the truth, far stronger than their successors, and with the leaves much better sewn in. There was only one of each of these, for Susan Pucklechurch and Johnnie Hewlett, who were by far the foremost scholars in the Sunday School.
Then followed two New Testaments and two Psalters, equally brown, for the next degree. Sophy had begged for stories, but none were to be had within the appointed sum, except Hannah More’s Cheap Repository Tracts, really interesting, but sent forth without wrappers in their native black and white. Then there was a manufacture by the busy fingers, frocks made of remnants of linsey and print, of sun-bonnets of pink or blue spotted calico, of pinafores, and round capes, the least of all these being the list tippet, made of the listing of flannel, sewn on either in rays upon a lining, or in continued rows from the neck, leaving rather the effect of a shell. There were pin-cushions, housewives, and work-bags too, and pictured pocket-handkerchiefs, and Sophy would not be denied a few worsted balls for the very small boys, and sixpennyworth of wooden dolls for the lesser girls, creatures with painted faces, and rolls of linen for arms, nailed on to bodies that ended in a point, but all deficiencies were concealed by the gay print petticoats which she constructed, and as neither toys, nor the means of buying them were plentiful, these would be grand rewards.
The Christmas-tree had not yet begun to spring in England, magic lanterns were tiny things only seen in private, and even such festivities as the tea had not dawned on the scholastic mind. So, on the afternoon of Christmas Day, all the children were assembled in school before Mr Harford, the ladies, and the schoolmistress, while the table was loaded with books and garments, and beside it stood a great flasket brimming over with substantial currant buns, gazed on eagerly by the little things, some of whom had even had a scanty Christmas dinner. Such a spectacle had never been seen before in Uphill, and their hungry eyes devoured it beforehand.
Mr Harford made them a short speech about goodness, steadiness, and diligence, and then the distribution began with the two prime Sunday scholars, and went on in due order of merit, through all degrees, down to the mites who had the painted dolls, and figured handkerchiefs with Aesop’s fables in pink or in purple, and then followed the distribution of buns, stout plum buns, no small treat to these ever hungry children, some of whom were nibbling them before they were out of school, while others, more praiseworthy, kept them to share with “our baby” at home.
Johnnie Hewlett received a Bible, his sister Polly a warm cape, Lizzie a petticoat, little Judy a doll, but on the very last Sunday, Jem, always a black sheep, had been detected in kicking Jenny Morris at church over a screw of peppermint drops which they had clubbed together to purchase from Goody Spurrell. The scent and Jenny’s sobs had betrayed them in the thick of the combat, and in the face of so recent and so flagrant a misdemeanour, neither combatant could be allowed a prize, though the buns were presented to them through Mary’s softness of heart.
These stayed the tears for the moment, but a fresh shower was pumped up by Jem for the sympathetic reception of his mother. “It was a shame! it was; but they ladies always had a spite at the poor little lad. He should have some nice bull’s-eyes to make up to him, that he should! What call had they to be at him when it was all along of that there nasty little Jenny.”
Nevertheless, at the gate she shared her wrath with Jenny’s mother. What call had they to want to make the poor children to be like parsons at church? Jem shouldn’t be there no more, she could tell them.
Then Nanny Barton chimed in. “And look what they did give! Just a twopenny-halfpenny handkercher that her Tom would be ashamed to wear!”
He wasn’t, for it was thick and warm, and had been chosen because his poor little neck looked so blue. But Molly went on. “Ladies did ought to know what became ’em to give. There was my Lady Duchess, she gave ’em all scarlet cloaks, and stuff frocks, as there was some warmth in. That was worth having—given to all alike! No talk of prizes, for what I’d not demean myself to pick up out of the gutter.”
“And look at mine,” proceeded Molly. “My Johnnie’s got a Bible, as if there wasn’t another in the house, let alone Judith’s. His father, he did say he’d pawn it; but Johnnie he cried, and Judith made a work, and hid it for him. But his father, he says he wouldn’t have Johnnie made religious, not for nothing—Judith she’s quite bad enough.”
“Oh! our Polly—she got a little skimping cape, what don’t come down to her poor little elbows. If I went for to be a lady, I’d be ashamed to give the like of that.”
Happily every one did not receive the gifts in this spirit. There was much rejoicing over the Testament, frock, and Psalter of the little Moles, and their grandfather observed, “Well, you did ought to be good children, there were no such encouragements when I was young.”
“Except your big old Bible, granfer,” put in Bessy.
“That was give me by our old parson when me and your granny was married. Ay, he did catechise we in church when we was children, but we never got nothing for it.”
“Only the knowing it, father, and that you have sent on to us,” put in the widow.
“Ay, and that’s the thing!” said the old man, very gravely.
