Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell (page 3)

you could not help noticing that she had the groping walk of a blind person.

“Well, I must go, Mary,” said Sally. “And that’s your last word?”

“Yes, yes; good-night.” She shut the door gladly on her unwelcome visitor–unwelcome at that time at least.

“O Margaret, have ye heard this sad news about George Wilson?”

“Yes, that I have. Poor creatures, they’ve been so tried lately. Not that I think sudden death so bad a thing; it’s easy, and there’s no terrors for him as dies. For them as survives it’s very hard. Poor George! he were such a hearty-looking man.”

“Margaret,” said Mary, who had been closely observing her friend, “thou’rt very blind to-night, arn’t thou? Is it wi’ crying? Your eyes are so swollen and red.”

“Yes, dear! but not crying for sorrow. Han ye heard where I was last night?”

“No; where?”

“Look here.” She held up a bright golden sovereign. Mary opened her large grey eyes with astonishment.

“I’ll tell you all and how about it. You see there’s a gentleman lecturing on music at th’ Mechanics’, and he wants folk to sing his songs. Well, last night the counter got a sore throat and couldn’t make a note. So they sent for me. Jacob Butterworth had said a good word for me, and they asked me would I sing? You may think I was frightened, but I thought, Now or never, and said I’d do my best. So I tried o’er the songs wi’ th’ lecturer, and then th’ managers told me I were to make myself decent and be there by seven.”

“And what did you put on?” asked Mary. “Oh, why didn’t you come in for my pretty pink gingham?”

“I did think on’t; but you had na come home then. No! I put on my merino, as was turned last winter, and my white shawl, and did my hair pretty tidy; it did well enough. Well, but as I was saying, I went at seven. I couldn’t see to read my music, but I took th’ paper in wi’ me, to ha’ something to do wi’ my fingers. Th’ folks’ heads danced, as I stood as right afore ’em all as if I’d been going to play at ball wi’ ’em. You may guess I felt squeamish, but mine weren’t the first song, and th’ music sounded like a friend’s voice telling me to take courage. So, to make a long story short, when it were all o’er th’ lecturer thanked me, and th’ managers said as how there never was a new singer so applauded (for they’d clapped and stamped after I’d done, till I began to wonder how many pair o’ shoes they’d get through a week at that rate, let alone their hands). So I’m to sing again o’ Thursday; and I got a sovereign last night, and am to have half-a-sovereign every night th’ lecturer is at th’ Mechanics’.”

“Well, Margaret, I’m right glad to hear it.”

“And I don’t think you’ve heard the best bit yet. Now that a way seemed open to me, of not being a burden to any one, though it did please God to make me blind, I thought I’d tell grandfather. I only tell’d him about the singing and the sovereign last night, for I thought I’d not send him to bed wi’ a heavy heart; but this morning I telled him all.”

“And how did he take it?”

“He’s not a man of many words; and it took him by surprise like.”

“I wonder at that; I’ve noticed it in your ways ever since you telled me.”

“Ay, that’s it! If I’d not telled you, and you’d seen me every day, you’d not ha’ noticed the little mite o’ difference fra’ day to day.”

“Well, but what did your grandfather say?”

“Why, Mary,” said Margaret, half smiling, “I’m a bit loth to tell yo, for unless yo knew grandfather’s ways like me, yo’d think it strange. He was taken by surprise, and he said: ‘Damn yo!’ Then he began looking at his book as it were, and were very quiet, while I telled him all about it; how I’d feared, and how downcast I’d been; and how I were now reconciled to it, if it were th’ Lord’s will; and how I hoped to earn money by singing; and while I were talking, I saw great big tears come dropping on th’ book; but in course I never let on that I saw ’em. Dear grandfather! and all day long he’s been quietly moving things out o’ my way, as he thought might trip me up, and putting things in my way as he thought I might want; never knowing I saw and felt what he were doing; for, yo see, he thinks I’m out and out blind, I guess–as I shall be soon.”

Margaret sighed in spite of her cheerful and relieved tone.

Though Mary caught the sigh, she felt it was better to let it pass without notice, and began, with the tact which true sympathy rarely fails to supply, to ask a variety of questions respecting her friend’s musical debut, which tended to bring out more distinctly how successful it had been.

“Why, Margaret,” at length she exclaimed, “thou’lt become as famous, maybe, as that grand lady fra’ London as we see’d one night driving up to th’ concert-room door in her carriage.”

“It looks very like it,” said Margaret, with a smile. “And be sure, Mary, I’ll not forget to give thee a lift now and then when that comes about. Nay, who knows, if thou’rt a good girl, but may-happen I may make thee my lady’s maid! Wouldn’t that be nice? So I e’en sing to myself th’ beginning o’ one o’ my songs–

‘An’ ye shall walk in silk attire, An’ siller hae to spare.'”

“Nay, don’t stop; or else give me something rather more new, for somehow I never quite liked that part about thinking o’ Donald mair?”

“Well, though I’m a bit tired I don’t care if I do. Before I come I were practising well-nigh upon two hours this one which I’m to sing o’ Thursday. The lecturer said he were sure it would just suit me, and I should do justice to it; and I should be right sorry to disappoint him, he were so nice and encouraging like to me. Eh! Mary, what a pity there isn’t more o’ that way, and less scolding and rating i’ th’ world! It would go a vast deal further. Beside, some o’ th’ singers said, they were a’most certain that it were a song o’ his own, because he were so fidgety and particular about it, and so anxious I should give it th’ proper expression. And that makes me care still more. Th’ first verse, he said, were to be sung ‘tenderly, but joyously!’ I’m afraid I don’t quite hit that, but I’ll try.

‘What a single word can do!
Thrilling all the heart-strings through, Calling forth fond memories,
Raining round hope’s melodies,
Steeping all in one bright hue– What a single word can do !’

“Now it falls into th’ minor key, and must be very sad-like. I feel as if I could do that better than t’other.

‘What a single word can do!
Making life seem all untrue,
Driving joy and hope away,
Leaving not one cheering ray,
Blighting every flower that grew– What a single word can do!'”

Margaret certainly made the most of this little song. As a factory worker, listening outside, observed, “She spun it reet* fine!” And if she only sang it at the Mechanics’ with half the feeling she put into it that night, the lecturer must have been hard to please if he did not admit that his expectations were more than fulfilled.

When it was ended, Mary’s looks told more than words could have done what she thought of it; and partly to keep in a tear which would fain have rolled out, she brightened into a laugh, and said, “For certain th’ carriage is coming. So let us go and dream on it.”

*Reet; right; often used for “very.”

IX. BARTON’S LONDON EXPERIENCES.

“A life of self-indulgence is for us, A life of self-denial is for them;
For us the streets, broad-built and populous, For them unhealthy corners, garrets dim, And cellars where the water-rat may swim! For us green paths refreshed by frequent rain, For them dark alleys where the dust lies grim! Not doomed by us to this appointed pain– God made us rich and poor–of what do these complain?” –MRS. NORTON’S Child of the Islands.

The next evening it was a warm, pattering, incessant rain–just the rain to waken up the flowers. But in Manchester, where, alas! there are no flowers, the rain had only a disheartening and gloomy effect; the streets were wet and dirty, the drippings from the houses were wet and dirty, and the people were wet and dirty. Indeed, most kept within doors; and there was an unusual silence of footsteps in the little paved courts.

Mary had to change her clothes after her walk home; and had hardly settled herself before she heard some one fumbling at the door. The noise continued long enough to allow her to get up, and go and open it. There stood–could it be? yes it was, her father!

Drenched and wayworn, there he stood! He came in with no word to Mary in return for her cheery and astonished greeting. He sat down by the fire in his wet things, unheeding. But Mary would not let him so rest. She ran up and brought down his working-day clothes, and went into the pantry to rummage up their little bit of provision while he changed by the fire, talking all the while as gaily as she could, though her father’s depression hung like lead on her heart.

For Mary, in her seclusion at Miss Simmonds’,–where the chief talk was of fashions, and dress, and parties to be given, for which such and such gowns would be wanted, varied with a slight-whispered interlude occasionally about love and lovers–had not heard the political news of the day; that Parliament had refused to listen to the working-men, when they petitioned, with all the force of their rough, untutored words, to be heard concerning the distress which was riding, like the Conqueror on his Pale Horse, among the people; which was crushing their lives out of them, and stamping woe-marks over the land.

When he had eaten and was refreshed, they sat for some time in silence; for Mary wished him to tell her what oppressed him so, yet durst not ask. In this she was wise; for when we are heavy-laden in our hearts it falls in better with our humour to reveal our case in our own way, and our own time.

Mary sat on a stool at her father’s feet in old childish guise, and stole her hand into his, while his sadness infected her, and she “caught the trick of grief, and sighed,” she knew not why.

“Mary, we mun speak to our God to hear us, for man will not hearken; no, not now, when we weep tears o’ blood.”

In an instant Mary understood the fact, if not the details, that so weighed down her father’s heart. She pressed his hand with silent sympathy. She did not know what to say, and was so afraid of speaking wrongly, that she was silent. But when his attitude had remained unchanged for more than half-an-hour, his eyes gazing vacantly and fixedly at the fire, no sound but now and then a deep- drawn sigh to break the weary ticking of the clock, and the drip-drop from the roof without, Mary could bear it no longer. Anything to rouse her father. Even bad news.

“Father, do you know George Wilson’s dead?” (Her hand was suddenly and almost violently compressed.) “He dropped down dead in Oxford Road yester morning. It’s very sad, isn’t it, father?”

Her tears were ready to flow as she looked up in her father’s face for sympathy. Still the same fixed look of despair, not varied by grief for the dead.

“Best for him to die,” he said, in a low voice.

This was unbearable. Mary got up under pretence of going to tell Margaret that she need not come to sleep with her to-night, but really to ask Job Legh to come and cheer her father.

She stopped outside the door. Margaret was practising her singing, and through the still night air her voice rang out, like that of an angel–

“Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God.”

The old Hebrew prophetic words fell like dew on Mary’s heart. She could not interrupt. She stood listening and “comforted,” till the little buzz of conversation again began, and then entered and told her errand.

Both grandfather and grand-daughter rose instantly to fulfil her request.

“He’s just tired out, Mary,” said old Job. “He’ll be a different man to-morrow.”

There is no describing the looks and tones that have power over an aching, heavy-laden heart; but in an hour or so John Barton was talking away as freely as ever, though all his talk ran, as was natural, on the disappointment of his fond hope, of the forlorn hope of many.

“Ay, London’s a fine place,” said he, “and finer folk live in it than I ever thought on, or ever heerd tell on except in th’ storybooks. They are having their good things now, that afterwards they may be tormented.”

Still at the old parable of Dives and Lazarus! Does it haunt the minds of the rich as it does those of the poor?

“Do tell us all about London, dear father,” asked Mary, who was sitting at her old post by her father’s knee.

“How can I tell yo a’ about it, when I never see’d one-tenth of it. It’s as big as six Manchesters, they telled me. One-sixth may be made up o’ grand palaces, and three-sixths o’ middling kind, and th’ rest o’ holes o’ iniquity and filth, such as Manchester knows nought on, I’m glad to say.”

“Well, father, but did you see the Queen?”

“I believe I didn’t, though one day I thought I’d seen her many a time. You see,” said he, turning to Job Legh, “there were a day appointed for us to go to Parliament House. We were most on us biding at a public-house in Holborn, where they did very well for us. Th’ morning of taking our petition we had such a spread for breakfast as th’ Queen hersel might ha’ sitten down to. I suppose they thought we wanted putting in heart. There were mutton kidneys, and sausages, and broiled ham, and fried beef and onions; more like a dinner nor a breakfast. Many on our chaps though, I could see, could eat but little. Th’ food stuck in their throats when they thought o’ them at home, wives and little ones, as had, maybe at that very time, nought to eat. Well, after breakfast, we were all set to walk in procession, and a time it took to put us in order, two and two, and the petition, as was yards long, carried by the foremost pairs. The men looked grave enough, yo may be sure and such a set of thin, wan, wretched-looking chaps as they were!”

“Yourself is none to boast on.”

“Ay, but I were fat and rosy to many a one. Well, we walked on and on through many a street, much the same as Deansgate. We had to walk slowly, slowly, for th’ carriages an’ cabs as thronged th’ streets. I thought by-and-bye we should maybe get clear on ’em, but as the streets grew wider they grew worse, and at last we were fairly blocked up at Oxford Street. We getten across it after a while though, and my eyes! the grand streets we were in then! They’re sadly puzzled how to build houses though in London; there’d be an opening for a good steady master builder there, as know’d his business. For yo see the houses are many on ’em built without any proper shape for a body to live in; some on ’em they’ve after thought would fall down, so they’ve stuck great ugly pillars out before ’em. And some on ’em (we thought they must be th’ tailors’ sign) had getten stone men and women as wanted clothes stuck on ’em. I were like a child, I forgot a’ my errand in looking about me. By this it were dinner-time, or better, as we could tell by the sun, right above our heads, and we were dusty and tired, going a step now and a step then. Well, at last we getten into a street grander nor all, leading to th’ Queen’s palace, and there it were I thought I saw th’ Queen. Yo’ve seen th’ hearses wi’ white plumes, Job?”

Job assented.

“Well, them undertaker folk are driving a pretty trade in London. Well-nigh every lady we saw in a carriage had hired one o’ them plumes for the day, and had it niddle noddling on her head. It were the Queen’s Drawing-room, they said, and the carriages went bowling along towards her house, some wi’ dressed-up gentlemen like circus folk in ’em, and rucks* o’ ladies in others. Carriages themselves were great shakes too. Some o’ the gentlemen as couldn’t get inside hung on behind, wi’ nosegays to smell at, and sticks to keep off folk as might splash their silk stockings. I wonder why they didn’t hire a cab rather than hang on like a whip-behind boy; but I suppose they wished to keep wi’ their wives, Darby and Joan like. Coachmen were little squat men, wi’ wigs like the oud-fashioned parsons’. Well, we could na get on for these carriages, though we waited and waited. Th’ horses were too fat to move quick; they never known want o’ food, one might tell by their sleek coats; and police pushed us back when we tried to cross. One or two of ’em struck wi’ their sticks, and coachmen laughed, and some officers as stood nigh put their spy-glasses in their eye, and left ’em sticking there like mountebanks. One o’ th’ police struck me. ‘Whatten business have you to do that?’ said I.

*Rucks; a great quantity.

“‘You’re frightening them horses,’ says he, in his mincing way (for Londoners are mostly all tongue-tied, and can’t say their a’s and i’s properly, ‘and it’s our business to keep you from molesting the ladies and gentlemen going to her Majesty’s Drawing-room.’

“‘And why are we to be molested?’ asked I, ‘going decently about our business, which is life and death to us, and many a little one clemming at home in Lancashire? Which business is of most consequence i’ the sight o’ God, think yo, ourn or them grand ladies and gentlemen as yo think so much on?’

“But I might as well ha’ held my peace, for he only laughed.”

John ceased. After waiting a little, to see if he would go on himself, Job said–

“Well, but that’s not a’ your story, man. Tell us what happened when you got to th’ Parliament House.”

After a little pause, John answered–

“If you please, neighbour, I’d rather say nought about that. It’s not to be forgotten, or forgiven either, by me or many another; but I canna tell of our down-casting just as a piece of London news. As long as I live, our rejection of that day will abide in my heart; and as long as I live I shall curse them as so cruelly refused to hear us; but I’ll not speak of it no* more.”

*A similar use of a double negative is frequent in Chaucer; as in the “Miller’s Tale”:
“That of no wife toke he non offering For curtesie, he sayd, he n’old non.”

So, daunted in their inquiries, they sat silent for a few minutes.

Old Job, however, felt that some one must speak, else all the good they had done in dispelling John Barton’s gloom was lost. So after a while he thought of a subject, neither sufficiently dissonant from the last to jar on a full heart, nor too much the same to cherish the continuance of the gloomy train of thought.

“Did you ever hear tell,” said he to Mary, “that I were in London once?”

“No!” said she with surprise, and looking at Job with increased respect.

“Ay, but I were though, and Peg there too, though she minds nought about it, poor wench! You must know I had but one child, and she were Margaret’s mother. I loved her above a bit, and one day when she came (standing behind me for that I should not see her blushes, and stroking my cheeks in her own coaxing way), and told me she and Frank Jennings (as was a joiner lodging near us) should be so happy if they were married, I could not find in my heart t’ say her nay, though I went sick at the thought of losing her away from my home. However, she was my only child, and I never said nought of what I felt, for fear o’ grieving her young heart. But I tried to think o’ the time when I’d been young mysel, and had loved her blessed mother, and how we’d left father and mother, and gone out into th’ world together, and I’m now right thankful I held my peace, and didna fret her wi’ telling her how sore I was at parting wi’ her that were the light o’ my eyes.”

“But,” said Mary, “you said the young man were a neighbour.”

“Ay, so he were, and his father afore him. But work were rather slack in Manchester, and Frank’s uncle sent him word o’ London work and London wages, so he were to go there, and it were there Margaret was to follow him. Well, my heart aches yet at thought of those days. She so happy, and he so happy; only the poor father as fretted sadly behind their backs. They were married and stayed some days wi’ me afore setting off; and I’ve often thought sin’, Margaret’s heart failed her many a time those few days, and she would fain ha’ spoken; but I knew fra’ mysel it were better to keep it pent up, and I never let on what I were feeling. I knew what she meant when she came kissing, and holding my hand, and all her old childish ways o’ loving me. Well, they went at last. You know them two letters, Margaret?”

“Yes, sure,” replied his grand-daughter.

“Well, them two were the only letters I ever had fra’ her, poor lass. She said in them she were very happy, and I believe she were. And Frank’s family heard he were in good work. In one o’ her letters, poor thing, she ends wi’ saying, ‘Farewell, Grandad!’ wi’ a line drawn under grandad, and fra’ that an’ other hints I knew she were in th’ family way; and I said nought, but I screwed up a little money, thinking come Whitsuntide I’d take a holiday and go and see her an’ th’ little one. But one day towards Whitsuntide, comed Jennings wi’ a grave face, and says he, ‘I hear our Frank and your Margaret’s both getten the fever.’ You might ha’ knocked me down wi’ a straw, for it seemed as if God told me what th’ upshot would be. Old Jennings had gotten a letter, you see, fra’ the landlady they lodged wi’; a well-penned letter, asking if they’d no friends to come and nurse them. She’d caught it first, and Frank, who was as tender o’er her as her own mother could ha’ been, had nursed her till he’d caught it himsel; and she expecting her down- lying* everyday. Well, t’ make a long story short, old Jennings and I went up by that night’s coach. So you see, Mary, that was the way I got to London.”

*Down-lying; lying in.

“But how was your daughter when you got there?” asked Mary anxiously.

“She were at rest, poor wench, and so were Frank. I guessed as much when I see’d th’ landlady’s face, all swelled wi’ crying, when she opened th’ door to us. We said, ‘Where are they?’ and I knew they were dead, fra’ her look; but Jennings didn’t, as I take it; for when she showed us into a room wi’ a white sheet on th’ bed, and underneath it, plain to be seen, two still figures, he screeched out as if he’d been a woman.

“Yet he’d other children and I’d none. There lay my darling, my only one. She were dead, and there were no one to love me, no, not one. I disremember* rightly what I did; but I know I were very quiet, while my heart were crushed within me.

*Disremember; forget.

“Jennings could na’ stand being in the room at all, so the landlady took him down, and I were glad to be alone. It grew dark while I sat there; and at last th’ landlady came up again, and said, ‘Come here.’ So I got up, and walked into the light, but I had to hold by th’ stair-rails, I were so weak and dizzy. She led me into a room, where Jennings lay on a sofa fast asleep, wi’ his pocket- handkerchief over his head for a night-cap. She said he’d cried himself fairly off to sleep. There were tea on th’ table all ready; for she were a kind-hearted body. But she still said, ‘Come here,’ and took hold o’ my arm. So I went round the table, and there were a clothes-basket by th’ fire, wi’ a shawl put o’er it. ‘Lift that up,’ says she, and I did; and there lay a little wee babby fast asleep. My heart gave a leap, and th’ tears comed rushing into my eyes first time that day. ‘Is it hers?’ said I, though I knew it were. ‘Yes,’ said she. ‘She were getting a bit better o’ the fever, and th’ babby were born; and then the poor young man took worse and died, and she were not many hours behind.’

“Little mite of a thing! and yet it seemed her angel come back to comfort me. I were quite jealous o’ Jennings whenever he went near the babby. I thought it were more my flesh and blood than his’n, and yet I were afraid he would claim it. However, that were far enough fra’ his thoughts; he’d plenty other childer, and, as I found out after, he’d all along been wishing me to take it. Well, we buried Margaret and her husband in a big, crowded, lonely churchyard in London. I were loath to leave them there, as I thought, when they rose again, they’d feel so strange at first away fra’ Manchester, and all old friends; but it could na be helped. Well, God watches o’er their graves there as well as here. That funeral cost a mint o’ money, but Jennings and I wished to do th’ thing decent. Then we’d the stout little babby to bring home. We’d not overmuch money left; but it were fine weather, and we thought we’d take th’ coach to Brummagem, and walk on. It were a bright May morning when I last saw London town, looking back from a big hill a mile or two off. And in that big mass o’ a place I were leaving my blessed child asleep–in her last sleep. Well, God’s will be done! She’s gotten to heaven afore me; but I shall get there at last, please God, though it’s a long while first.

“The babby had been fed afore we set out, and th’ coach moving kept it asleep, bless its little heart! But when th’ coach stopped for dinner it were awake, and crying for its pobbies.* So we asked for some bread and milk, and Jennings took it first for to feed it, but it made its mouth like a square, and let it run out at each o’ the four corners. ‘Shake it, Jennings,’ says I; ‘that’s the way they make water run through a funnel, when it’s o’er full; and a child’s mouth is broad end o’ th’ funnel, and th’ gullet the narrow one.’ So he shook it, but it only cried th’ more. ‘Let me have it,’ says I, thinking he were an awkward oud chap. But it were just as bad wi’ me. By shaking th’ babby we got better nor a gill into its mouth, but more nor that came up again, wetting a’ th’ nice dry clothes landlady had put on. Well, just as we’d gotten to th’ dinner-table, and helped oursels, and eaten two mouthful, came in th’ guard, and a fine chap wi’ a sample of calico flourishing in his hand. ‘Coach is ready!’ says one; ‘Half-a-crown your dinner!’ says the other. Well, we thought it a deal for both our dinners, when we’d hardly tasted ’em; but, bless your life, it were half-a-crown apiece, and a shilling for th’ bread and milk as were possetted all over babby’s clothes. We spoke up again** it; but everybody said it were the rule, so what could two poor oud chaps like us do again it? Well, poor babby cried without stopping to take breath, fra’ that time till we got to Brummagem for the night. My heart ached for th’ little thing. It caught wi’ its wee mouth at our coat sleeves and at our mouths, when we tried t’ comfort it by talking to it. Poor little wench! it wanted its mammy, as were lying cold in th’ grave. ‘Well,’ says I, ‘it’ll be clemmed to death, if it lets out its supper as it did its dinner. Let’s get some woman to feed it; it comes natural to women to do for babbies.’ So we asked th’ chambermaid at the inn, and she took quite kindly to it; and we got a good supper, and grew rare and sleepy, what wi’ th’ warmth and wi’ our long ride i’ the open air. Th’ chambermaid said she would like t’ have it t’ sleep wi’ her, only missis would scold so; but it looked so quiet and smiling like, as it lay in her arms, that we thought ‘t would be no trouble to have it wi’ us. I says: ‘See, Jennings, how women folk do quieten babbies; it’s just as I said.’ He looked grave; he were always thoughtful-looking, though I never heard him say anything very deep. At last says he–

“‘Young woman! have you gotten a spare nightcap?’

“‘Missis always keeps nightcaps for gentlemen as does not like to unpack,’ says she, rather quick.

*”Pobbies,” or “pobs,” child’s porridge. **”Again,” for against. “He that is not with me, he is ageyn me.” –Wickliffe’s Version.

“‘Ay, but young woman, it’s one of your nightcaps I want. Th’ babby seems to have taken a mind to yo; and maybe in th’ dark it might take me for yo if I’d getten your nightcap on.’

“The chambermaid smirked and went for a cap, but I laughed outright at th’ oud bearded chap thinking he’d make hissel like a woman just by putting on a woman’s cap. Howe’er he’d not be laughed out on’t, so I held th’ babby till he were in bed. Such a night as we had on it! Babby began to scream o’ th’ oud fashion, and we took it turn and turn about to sit up and rock it. My heart were very sore for the little one, as it groped about wi’ its mouth; but for a’ that I could scarce keep fra’ smiling at th’ thought o’ us two oud chaps, th’ one wi’ a woman’s nightcap on, sitting on our hinder ends for half the night, hushabying a babby as wouldn’t be hushabied. Toward morning, poor little wench! it fell asleep, fairly tired out wi’ crying, but even in its sleep it gave such pitiful sobs, quivering up fra’ the very bottom of its little heart, that once or twice I almost wished it lay on its mother’s breast, at peace for ever. Jennings fell asleep too; but I began for to reckon up our money. It were little enough we had left, our dinner the day afore had ta’en so much. I didn’t know what our reckoning would be for that night lodging, and supper, and breakfast. Doing a sum always sent me asleep ever sin’ I were a lad; so I fell sound in a short time, and were only wakened by chambermaid tapping at th’ door, to say she’d dress the babby before her missis were up if we liked. But bless yo, we’d never thought o’ undressing it the night afore, and now it were sleeping so sound, and we were so glad o’ the peace and quietness, that we thought it were no good to waken it up to screech again.

“Well! (there’s Mary asleep for a good listener!) I suppose you’re getting weary of my tale, so I’ll not be long over ending it. Th’ reckoning left us very bare, and we thought we’d best walk home, for it were only sixty mile, they telled us, and not stop again for nought, save victuals. So we left Brummagem (which is as black a place as Manchester, without looking so like home), and walked a’ that day, carrying babby turn and turn about. It were well fed by chambermaid afore we left, and th’ day were fine, and folk began to have some knowledge o’ th’ proper way o’ speaking, and we were more cheery at thought o’ home (though mine, God knows, were lonesome enough). We stopped none for dinner, but at baggin-time* we getten a good meal at a public-house, an’ fed th’ babby as well as we could, but that were but poorly. We got a crust too for it to suck–chambermaid put us up to that. That night, whether we were tired or whatten, I don’t know, but it were dree** work, and th’ poor little wench had slept out her sleep, and began th’ cry as wore my heart out again. Says Jennings, says he–

“‘We should na ha’ set out so like gentlefolk a top o’ the coach yesterday.’

*Baggin-time; time of the evening meal. **Dree; long and tedious. Anglo-Saxon, “dreogan,” to suffer, to endure.

“‘Nay, lad! We should ha’ had more to walk if we had na ridden, and I’m sure both you and I’se* weary o’ tramping.’

*”I have not been, nor IS, nor never schal.”–Wickliffe’s Apology, p. I.

“So he were quiet a bit. But he were one o’ them as were sure to find out somewhat had been done amiss when there were no going back to undo it. So presently he coughs, as if he were going to speak, and I says to myself, ‘At it again, my lad.’ Says he–

“‘I ax pardon, neighbour, but it strikes me it would ha’ been better for my son if he had never begun to keep company wi’ your daughter.’

“Well! that put me up, and my heart got very full, and but that I were carrying HER babby, I think I should ha’ struck him. At last I could hold in no longer, and says I–

“‘Better say at once it would ha’ been better for God never to ha’ made th’ world, for then we’d never ha’ been in it, to have had th’ heavy hearts we have now.’

“Well! he said that were rank blasphemy; but I thought his way of casting up again th’ events God had pleased to send, were worse blasphemy. Howe’er, I said nought more angry, for th’ little babby’s sake, as were th’ child o’ his dead son, as well as o’ my dead daughter.

“Th’ longest lane will have a turning, and that night came to an end at last; and we were footsore and tired enough, and to my mind the babby were getting weaker and weaker, and it wrung my heart to hear its little wail! I’d ha’ given my right hand for one of yesterday’s hearty cries. We were wanting our breakfasts, and so were it too, motherless babby! We could see no public-houses, so about six o’clock (only we thought it were later) we stopped at a cottage, where a woman were moving about near th’ open door. Says I, ‘Good woman, may we rest us a bit?’ ‘Come in,’ says she, wiping a chair, as looked bright enough afore, wi’ her apron. It were a cheery, clean room; and we were glad to sit down again, though I thought my legs would never bend at th’ knees. In a minute she fell a noticing th’ babby, and took it in her arms, and kissed it again and again. ‘Missis,’ says I, ‘we’re not without money and if yo’d give us somewhat for breakfast, we’d pay yo honest, and if yo would wash and dress that poor babby, and get some pobbies down its throat, for it’s well-nigh clemmed, I’d pray for you till my dying day.’ So she said nought but gived me th’ babby back, and afore you could say Jack Robinson, she’d a pan on th’ fire, and bread and cheese on th’ table. When she turned round, her face looked red, and her lips were tight pressed together. Well! we were right down glad on our breakfast, and God bless and reward that woman for her kindness that day! She fed th’ poor babby as gently and softly, and spoke to it as tenderly as its own poor mother could ha’ done. It seemed as if that stranger and it had known each other afore, maybe in heaven, where folk’s spirits come from, they say; th’ babby looked up so lovingly in her eyes, and made little noises more like a dove than aught else. Then she undressed it (poor darling! it were time), touching it so softly; and washed it from head to foot; and as many on its clothes were dirty, and what bits o’ things its mother had gotten ready for it had been sent by th’ carrier fra’ London, she put ’em aside; and wrapping little naked babby in her apron, she pulled out a key, as were fastened to a black ribbon, and hung down her breast, and unlocked a drawer in th’ dresser. I were sorry to be prying, but I could na help seeing in that drawer some little child’s clothes, all strewed wi’ lavender, and lying by ’em a little whip an’ a broken rattle. I began to have an insight into that woman’s heart then. She took out a thing or two and locked the drawer, and went on dressing babby. Just about then come her husband down, a great big fellow as didn’t look half awake, though it were getting late; but he’d heard all as had been said downstairs, as were plain to be seen; but he were a gruff chap. We’d finished our breakfast, and Jennings were looking hard at th’ woman as she were getting the babby to sleep wi’ a sort of rocking way. At length says he, ‘I ha’ learnt th’ way now; it’s two jiggits and a shake, two jiggits and a shake. I can get that babby asleep now mysel.’

“The man had nodded cross enough to us, and had gone to th’ door, and stood there, whistling wi’ his hands in his breeches-pockets, looking abroad. But at last he turns and says, quite sharp–

“‘I say, missis, I’m to have no breakfast to-day, I s’pose.’

“So wi’ that she kissed th’ child, a long, soft kiss, and looking in my face to see if I could take her meaning, gave me th’ babby without a word. I were loath to stir, but I saw it were better to go. So giving Jennings a sharp nudge (for he’d fallen asleep), I says, ‘Missis, what’s to pay?’ pulling out my money wi’ a jingle that she might na guess we were at all bare o’ cash. So she looks at her husband, who said ne’er a word, but were listening with all his ears nevertheless; and when she saw he would na say, she said, hesitating, as if pulled two ways, by her fear o’ him, ‘Should you think sixpence over much?’ It were so different to public-house reckoning, for we’d eaten a main deal afore the chap came down. So says I, ‘And, missis, what should we gi’ you for the babby’s bread and milk?’ (I had it once in my mind to say ‘and for a’ your trouble with it,’ but my heart would na let me say it, for I could read in her ways how it had been a work o’ love). So says she, quite quick, and stealing a look at her husband’s back, as looked all ear, if ever a back did, ‘Oh, we could take nought for the little babby’s food, if it had eaten twice as much, bless it.’ Wi’ that he looked at her; such a scowling look! She knew what he meant, and stepped softly across the floor to him, and put her hand on his arm. He seem’d as though he’d shake it off by a jerk on his elbow, but she said quite low, ‘For poor little Johnnie’s sake, Richard.’ He did not move or speak again, and after looking in his face for a minute, she turned away, swallowing deep in her throat. She kissed th’ sleeping babby as she passed, when I paid her. To quieten th’ gruff husband, and stop him if he rated her, I could na help slipping another sixpence under th’ loaf, and then we set off again. Last look I had o’ that woman she were quietly wiping her eyes wi’ the corner of her apron, as she went about her husband’s breakfast. But I shall know her in heaven.”

He stopped to think of that long ago May morning, when he had carried his grand-daughter under the distant hedgerows and beneath the flowering sycamores.

“There’s nought more to say, wench,” said he to Margaret, as she begged him to go on. “That night we reached Manchester, and I’d found out that Jennings would be glad enough to give up babby to me, so I took her home at once, and a blessing she’s been to me.”

They were all silent for a few minutes; each following out the current of their thoughts. Then, almost simultaneously, their attention fell upon Mary. Sitting on her little stool, her head resting on her father’s knee, and sleeping as soundly as any infant, her breath (still like an infant’s) came and went as softly as a bird steals to her leafy nest. Her half-open mouth was as scarlet as the winter-berries, and contrasted finely with the clear paleness of her complexion, where the eloquent blood flushed carnation at each motion. Her black eye-lashes lay on the delicate cheek, which was still more shaded by the masses of her golden hair, that seemed to form a nest-like pillar for her as she lay. Her father in fond pride straightened one glossy curl, for an instant, as if to display its length and silkiness.

The little action awoke her, and, like nine out of ten people in similar circumstances, she exclaimed, opening her eyes to their fullest extent–

“I’m not asleep. I’ve been awake all the time.”

Even her father could not keep from smiling, and Job Legh and Margaret laughed outright.

“Come, wench,” said Job, “don’t look so gloppened* because thou’st fallen asleep while an oud chap like me was talking on oud times. It were like enough to send thee to sleep. Try if thou canst keep thine eyes open while I read thy father a bit on a poem as is written by a weaver like oursel. A rare chap I’ll be bound is he who could weave verse like this.”

*Gloppened; amazed, frightened.

So adjusting his spectacles on nose, cocking his chin, crossing his legs, and coughing to clear his voice, he read aloud a little poem of Samuel Bamford’s* he had picked up somewhere.

*The fine-spirited author of ‘Passages in the Life of a Radical’– a man who illustrates his order, and shows what nobility may be in a cottage.

God help the poor, who, on this wintry morn, Come forth from alleys dim and courts obscure. God help yon poor pale girl, who droops forlorn, And meekly her affliction doth endure; God help her, outcast lamb; she trembling stands, All wan her lips, and frozen red her hands Her sunken eyes are modestly downcast, Her night-black hair streams on the fitful blast; Her bosom, passing fair, is half revealed, And oh! so cold, the snow lies there congealed; Her feet benumbed, her shoes all rent and worn, God help thee, outcast lamb, who standst forlorn! God help the poor!

God help the poor! An infant’s feeble wail Comes from yon narrow gateway, and behold! A female crouching there, so deathly pale, Huddling her child, to screen it from the cold; Her vesture scant, her bonnet crushed and torn; A thin shawl doth her baby dear enfold. And so she ‘bides the ruthless gale of morn, Which almost to her heart hath sent its cold. And now she, sudden, darts a ravening look, As one, with new hot bread, goes past the nook; And, as the tempting load is onward borne, She weeps. God help thee, helpless one, forlorn! God help the poor!

God help the poor! Behold yon famished lad, No shoes, nor hose, his wounded feet protect; With limping gait, and looks so dreamy sad, He wanders onward, stopping to inspect Each window stored with articles of food. He yearns but to enjoy one cheering meal; Oh! to the hungry palate viands rude
Would yield a zest the famished only feel! He now devours a crust of mouldy bread; With teeth and hands the precious boon is torn Unmindful of the storm that round his head Impetuous sweeps. God help thee, child forlorn! God help the poor!

God help the poor! Another have I found– A bowed and venerable man is he;
His slouch-ed hat with faded crape is bound; His coat is grey, and threadbare too, I see. “The rude winds” seem “to mock his hoary hair”: His shirtless bosom to the blast is bare. Anon he turns and casts a wistful eye, And with scant napkin wipes the blinding spray, And looks around, as if he fain would spy Friends he had feasted in his better day: Ah! some are dead: and some have long forborne To know the poor; and he is left forlorn! God help the poor!

God help the poor, who in lone valleys dwell, Or by far hills, where whin and heather grow; Theirs is a story sad indeed to tell; Yet little cares the world, and less ‘t would know About the toil and want men undergo. The wearying loom doth call them up at morn; They work till worn-out nature sinks to sleep; They taste, but are not fed. The snow drifts deep Around the fireless cot, and blocks the door; The night-storm howls a dirge across the moor; And shall they perish thus–oppressed and lorn? Shall toil and famine, hopeless, still be borne? No! God will yet arise and help the poor!

“Amen!” said Barton, solemnly and sorrowfully. “Mary! wench, couldst thou copy me them lines, dost think?–that’s to say, if Job there has no objection.”

“Not I. More they’re heard and read and the better, say I.”

So Mary took the paper. And the next day, on a blank half-sheet of a valentine, all bordered with hearts and darts–a valentine she had once suspected to come from Jem Wilson–she copied Bamford’s beautiful little poem.

X. RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL.

“My heart, once soft as woman’s tear, is gnarled With gloating on the ills I cannot cure.” –ELLIOTT.

“Then guard and shield her innocence, Let her not fall like me;
‘T were better, oh! a thousand times, She in her grave should be.”
–The Outcast.

Despair settled down like a heavy cloud; and now and then, through the dead calm of sufferings, came pipings of stormy winds, foretelling the end of these dark prognostics. In times of sorrowful or fierce endurance, we are often soothed by the mere repetition of old proverbs which tell the experience of our forefathers; but now, “it’s a long lane that has no turning,” “the weariest day draws to an end,” etc., seemed false and vain sayings, so long and so weary was the pressure of the terrible times. Deeper and deeper still sank the poor. It showed how much lingering suffering it takes to kill men, that so few (in comparison) died during those times. But remember! we only miss those who do men’s work in their humble sphere; the aged, the feeble, the children, when they die, are hardly noted by the world; and yet to many hearts, their deaths make a blank which long years will never fill up. Remember, too, that though it may take much suffering to kill the able-bodied and effective members of society, it does NOT take much to reduce them to worn, listless, diseased creatures, who thenceforward crawl through life with moody hearts and pain-stricken bodies.

The people had thought the poverty of the preceding years hard to bear, and had found its yoke heavy; but this year added sorely to its weight. Former times had chastised them with whips, but this chastised them with scorpions.

Of course, Barton had his share of mere bodily sufferings. Before he had gone up to London on his vain errand, he had been working short time. But in the hopes of speedy redress by means of the interference of Parliament, he had thrown up his place; and now, when he asked leave to resume his work, he was told they were diminishing their number of hands every week, and he was made aware, by the remarks of fellow-workmen, that a Chartist delegate, and a leading member of a Trades’ Union, was not likely to be favoured in his search after employment. Still he tried to keep up a brave heart concerning himself. He knew he could bear hunger; for that power of endurance had been called forth when he was a little child, and had seen his mother hide her daily morsel to share it among her children, and when he, being the eldest, had told the noble lie, that “he was not hungry, could not eat a bit more,” in order to imitate his mother’s bravery, and still the sharp wail of the younger infants. Mary, too, was secure of two meals a day at Miss Simmonds’; though, by the way, the dressmaker too, feeling the effect of bad times, had left off giving tea to her apprentices, setting them the example of long abstinence by putting off her own meal till work was done for the night, however late that might be.

But the rent! It was half-a-crown a week–nearly all Mary’s earnings–and much less room might do for them, only two.–(Now came the time to be thankful that the early dead were saved from the evil to come.)–The agricultural labourer generally has strong local attachments; but they are far less common, almost obliterated, among the inhabitants of a town. Still there are exceptions, and Barton formed one. He had removed to his present house just after the last bad times, when little Tom had sickened and died. He had then thought the bustle of a removal would give his poor stunned wife something to do, and he had taken more interest in the details of the proceeding than he otherwise would have done, in the hope of calling her forth to action again. So he seemed to know every brass-headed nail driven up for her convenience. Only one had been displaced. It was Esther’s bonnet nail, which in his deep revengeful anger against her, after his wife’s death, he had torn out of the wall, and cast into the street. It would be hard work to leave the house, which yet seemed hallowed by his wife’s presence in the happy days of old. But he was a law unto himself, though sometimes a bad, fierce law; and he resolved to give the rent-collector notice, and look out for a cheaper abode, and tell Mary they must flit. Poor Mary! she loved the house, too. It was wrenching up her natural feelings of home, for it would be long before the fibres of her heart would gather themselves about another place.

This trial was spared. The collector (of himself), on the very Monday when Barton planned to give him notice of his intention to leave, lowered the rent threepence a week, just enough to make Barton compromise and agree to stay on a little longer.

But by degrees the house was stripped of all its little ornaments. Some were broken; and the odd twopences and threepences, wanted to pay for their repairs, were required for the far sterner necessity of food. And by-and-bye Mary began to part with other superfluities at the pawn-shop. The smart tea-tray and tea-caddy, long and carefully kept, went for bread for her father. He did not ask for it, or complain, but she saw hunger in his shrunk, fierce, animal look. Then the blankets went, for it was summer time, and they could spare them; and their sale made a fund, which Mary fancied would last till better times came. But it was soon all gone; and then she looked around the room to crib it of its few remaining ornaments. To all these proceedings her father said never a word. If he fasted, or feasted (after the sale of some article) on an unusual meal of bread and cheese, he took all with a sullen indifference, which depressed Mary’s heart. She often wished he would apply for relief from the Guardians’ relieving office; often wondered the Trades’ Union did nothing for him. Once, when she asked him as he sat, grimed, unshaven, and gaunt, after a day’s fasting, over the fire, why he did not get relief from the town, he turned round, with grim wrath, and said, “I don’t want money, child! D–n their charity and their money! I want work, and it is my right. I want work.”

He would bear it all, he said to himself. And he did bear it, but not meekly; that was too much to expect. Real meekness of character is called out by experience of kindness. And few had been kind to him. Yet through it all, with stern determination he refused the assistance his Trades’ Union would have given him. It had not much to give, but, with worldly wisdom, thought it better to propitiate an active, useful member, than to help those who were more unenergetic, though they had large families to provide for. Not so thought John Barton. With him, need was right.

“Give it to Tom Darbyshire,” he said. “He’s more claim on it than me, for he’s more need of it, with his seven children.”

Now Tom Darbyshire was, in his listless, grumbling way, a back- biting enemy of John Barton’s. And he knew it; but he was not to be influenced by that in a matter like this.

Mary went early to her work; but her cheery laugh over it was now missed by the other girls. Her mind wandered over the present distress, and then settled, as she stitched, on the visions of the future, where yet her thoughts dwelt more on the circumstances of ease, and the pomps and vanities awaiting her, than on the lover with whom she was to share them. Still she was not insensible to the pride of having attracted one so far above herself in station; not insensible to the secret pleasure of knowing that he, whom so many admired, had often said he would give anything for one of her sweet smiles. Her love for him was a bubble, blown out of vanity; but it looked very real and very bright. Sally Leadbitter, meanwhile, keenly observed the signs of the times; she found out that Mary had begun to affix a stern value to money as the “Purchaser of Life,” and many girls had been dazzled and lured by gold, even without the betraying love which she believed to exist in Mary’s heart. So she urged young Mr. Carson, by representations of the want she was sure surrounded Mary, to bring matters more to a point. But he had a kind of instinctive dread of hurting Mary’s pride of spirit, and durst not hint his knowledge in any way of the distress that many must be enduring. He felt that for the present he must still be content with stolen meetings and summer evening strolls, and the delight of pouring sweet honeyed words into her ear, while she listened with a blush and a smile that made her look radiant with beauty. No; he would be cautious in order to be certain; for Mary, one way or another, he must make his. He had no doubt of the effect of his own personal charms in the long run; for he knew he was handsome, and believed himself fascinating.

If he had known what Mary’s home was, he would not have been so much convinced of his increasing influence over her, by her being more and more ready to linger with him in the sweet summer air. For when she returned for the night her father was often out, and the house wanted the cheerful look it had had in the days when money was never wanted to purchase soap and brushes, black-lead and pipe-clay. It was dingy and comfortless; for, of course, there was not even the dumb familiar home-friend, a fire. And Margaret, too, was now very often from home, singing at some of those grand places. And Alice; oh, Mary wished she had never left her cellar to go and live at Ancoats with her sister-in-law. For in that matter Mary felt very guilty; she had put off and put off going to see the widow, after George Wilson’s death, from dread of meeting Jem, or giving him reason to think she wished to be as intimate with him as formerly; and now she was so much ashamed of her delay that she was likely never to go at all.

If her father was at home it was no better; indeed, it was worse. He seldom spoke, less than ever; and often when he did speak, they were sharp angry words, such as he had never given her formerly. Her temper was high, too, and her answers not over mild; and once in his passion he had even beaten her. If Sally Leadbitter or Mr. Carson had been at hand at that moment, Mary would have been ready to leave home for ever. She sat alone, after her father had flung out of the house, bitterly thinking on the days that were gone; angry with her own hastiness, and believing that her father did not love her; striving to heap up one painful thought on another. Who cared for her? Mr. Carson might, but in this grief that seemed no comfort. Mother dead! Father so often angry, so lately cruel (for it was a hard blow, and blistered and reddened Mary’s soft white skin with pain): and then her heart turned round, and she remembered with self-reproach how provokingly she had looked and spoken, and how much her father had to bear; and oh, what a kind and loving parent he had been, till these days of trial. The remembrance of one little instance of his fatherly love thronged after another into her mind, and she began to wonder how she could have behaved to him as she had done.

Then he came home; and but for very shame she would have confessed her penitence in words. But she looked sullen, from her effort to keep down emotion; and for some time her father did not know how to begin to speak. At length he gulped down pride, and said–

“Mary, I’m not above saying I’m very sorry I beat thee. Thou wert a bit aggravating, and I’m not the man I was. But it were wrong, and I’ll try never to lay hands on thee again.”

So he held out his arms, and in many tears she told him her repentance for her fault. He never struck her again.

Still, he often was angry. But that was almost better than being silent. Then he sat near the fireplace (from habit) smoking, or chewing opium. Oh, how Mary loathed that smell! And in the dusk, just before it merged into the short summer night, she had learned to look with dread towards the window, which now her father would have kept uncurtained: for there were not seldom seen sights which haunted her in her dreams. Strange faces of pale men, with dark glaring eyes, peered into the inner darkness, and seemed desirous to ascertain if her father was at home. Or, a hand and arm (the body hidden) was put within the door, and beckoned him away. He always went. And once or twice, when Mary was in bed, she heard men’s voices below, in earnest, whispered talk.

They were all desperate members of Trades’ Unions, ready for anything; made ready by want.

While all this change for gloom yet struck fresh and heavy on Mary’s heart, her father startled her out of a reverie one evening, by asking her when she had been to see Jane Wilson. From his manner of speaking, she was made aware that he had been; but at the time of his visit he had never mentioned anything about it. Now, however, he gruffly told her to go next day without fail, and added some abuse of her for not having been before. The little outward impulse of her father’s speech gave Mary the push which she in this instance required; and accordingly, timing her visit so as to avoid Jem’s hours at home, she went the following afternoon to Ancoats.

The outside of the well-known house struck her as different; for the door was closed, instead of open, as it once had always stood. The window-plants, George Wilson’s pride and especial care, looked withering and drooping. They had been without water for a long time, and now, when the widow had reproached herself severely for neglect, in her ignorant anxiety she gave them too much. On opening the door, Alice was seen, not stirring about in her habitual way, but knitting by the fireside. The room felt hot, although the fire burnt grey and dim, under the bright rays of the afternoon sun. Mrs. Wilson was “siding”* the dinner things, and talking all the time, in a kind of whining, shouting voice, which Mary did not at first understand. She understood, at once, however, that her absence had been noted, and talked over; she saw a constrained look on Mrs. Wilson’s sorrow-stricken face, which told her a scolding was to come.

*To “side,” to put aside, or in order.

“Dear! Mary, is that you?” she began. “Why, who would ha’ dreamt of seeing you! We thought you’d clean forgotten us; and Jem has often wondered if he should know you, if he met you in the street.”

Now, poor Jane Wilson had been sorely tried; and at present her trials had had no outward effect, but that of increased acerbity of temper. She wished to show Mary how much she was offended, and meant to strengthen her cause, by putting some of her own sharp speeches into Jem’s mouth.

Mary felt guilty, and had no good reason to give as an apology; so for a minute she stood silent, looking very much ashamed, and then turned to speak to Aunt Alice, who, in her surprised, hearty greeting to Mary, had dropped her ball of worsted, and was busy, trying to set the thread to rights, before the kitten had entangled it past redemption, once round every chair, and twice round the table.

“You mun speak louder than that, if you mean her to hear; she’s become as deaf as a post this last few weeks. I’d ha’ told you, if I’d remembered how long it were sin’ you’d seen her.”

“Yes, my dear, I’m getting very hard o’ hearing of late,” said Alice, catching the state of the case, with her quick glancing eyes. “I suppose it’s the beginning of the end.”

“Don’t talk o’ that way,” screamed her sister-in-law. “We’ve had enow of ends and deaths without forecasting more.” She covered her face with her apron, and sat down to cry.

“He was such a good husband,” said she, in a less excited tone, to Mary, as she looked up with tear-streaming eyes from behind her apron. “No one can tell what I’ve lost in him, for no one knew his worth like me.”

Mary’s listening sympathy softened her, and she went on to unburden her heavy-laden heart.

“Eh, dear, dear! No one knows what I’ve lost. When my poor boys went, I thought the Almighty had crushed me to th’ ground, but I never thought o’ losing George; I did na think I could ha’ borne to ha’ lived without him. And yet I’m here, and he’s”–A fresh burst of crying interrupted her speech.

“Mary,”–beginning to speak again,–“did you ever hear what a poor creature I were when he married me? And he such a handsome fellow! Jem’s nothing to what his father were at his age.”

Yes! Mary had heard, and so she said. But the poor woman’s thoughts had gone back to those days, and her little recollections came out, with many interruptions of sighs, and tears, and shakes of the head.

“There were nought about me for him to choose me. I were just well enough afore that accident, but at after I were downright plain. And there was Bessy Witter as would ha’ given her eyes for him; she as is Mrs. Carson now, for she were a handsome lass, although I never could see her beauty then; and Carson warn’t so much above her, as they’re both above us all now.”

Mary went very red, and wished she could help doing so, and wished also that Mrs. Wilson would tell her more about the father and mother of her lover; but she durst not ask, and Mrs. Wilson’s thoughts soon returned to her husband, and their early married days.

“If you’ll believe me, Mary, there never was such a born goose at housekeeping as I were; and yet he married me! I had been in a factory sin’ five years old a’most, and I knew nought about cleaning, or cooking, let alone washing and such like work. The day after we were married, he went to his work at after breakfast, and says he, ‘Jenny, we’ll ha’ th’ cold beef, and potatoes, and that’s a dinner for a prince.’ I were anxious to make him comfortable, God knows how anxious. And yet I’d no notion how to cook a potato. I know’d they were boiled, and know’d their skins were taken off, and that were all. So I tidied my house in a rough kind o’ way, then I looked at that very clock up yonder,”–pointing at one that hung against the wall–“and I seed it were nine o’clock, so, thinks I, th’ potatoes shall be well boiled at any rate, and I gets ’em on th’ fire in a jiffy (that’s to say, as soon as I could peel ’em, which were a tough job at first), and then I fell to unpacking my boxes! and at twenty minutes past twelve, he comes home, and I had the beef ready on th’ table, and I went to take the potatoes out o’ th’ pot; but oh! Mary, th’ water had boiled away, and they were all a nasty brown mess, as smelt through all the house. He said nought, and were very gentle; but oh! Mary, I cried so that afternoon. I shall ne’er forget it; no, never. I made many a blunder at after, but none that fretted me like that.”

“Father does not like girls to work in factories,” said Mary.

“No, I know he does not; and reason good. They oughtn’t to go at after they’re married, that I’m very clear about. I could reckon up,”–counting with her finger–“ay, nine men, I know, as has been driven to th’ public-house by having wives as worked in factories; good folk, too, as thought there was no harm in putting their little ones out to nurse, and letting their house go all dirty, and their fires all out; and that was a place as was tempting for a husband to stay in, was it? He soon finds out gin-shops, where all is clean and bright, and where th’ fire blazes cheerily, and gives a man a welcome as it were.”

Alice, who was standing near for the convenience of hearing, had caught much of this speech, and it was evident the subject had previously been discussed by the women, for she chimed in.

“I wish our Jem could speak a word to th’ Queen, about factory work for married women. Eh! but he comes it strong when once yo get him to speak about it. Wife o’ his’n will never work away fra’ home.”

“I say it’s Prince Albert as ought to be asked how he’d like his missis to be from home when he comes in, tired and worn, and wanting some one to cheer him; and maybe, her to come in by-and-bye, just as tired and down in th’ mouth; and how he’d like for her never to be at home to see to th’ cleaning of his house, or to keep a bright fire in his grate. Let alone his meals being all hugger-mugger and comfortless. I’d be bound, prince as he is, if his missis served him so, he’d be off to a gin-palace, or summut o’ that kind. So why can’t he make a law again poor folks’ wives working in factories?”

Mary ventured to say that she thought the Queen and Prince Albert could not make laws, but the answer was–

“Pooh! don’t tell me it’s not the Queen as makes laws; and isn’t she bound to obey Prince Albert? And if he said they mustn’t, why she’d say they mustn’t, and then all folk would say, oh, no, we never shall do any such thing no more.”

“Jem’s getten on rarely,” said Alice, who had not heard her sister’s last burst of eloquence, and whose thoughts were still running on her nephew, and his various talents. “He’s found out summut about a crank or tank, I forget rightly which it is, but th’ master’s made him foreman, and he all the while turning off hands; but he said he could na part wi’ Jem, nohow. He’s good wage now; I tell him he’ll be thinking of marrying soon, and he deserves a right down good wife, that he does.”

Mary went very red, and looked annoyed, although there was a secret spring of joy deep down in her heart, at hearing Jem so spoken of. But his mother only saw the annoyed look, and was piqued accordingly. She was not over and above desirous that her son should marry. His presence in the house seemed a relic of happier times, and she had some little jealousy of his future wife, whoever she might be. Still she could not bear any one not to feel gratified and flattered by Jem’s preference, and full well she knew how above all others he preferred Mary. Now she had never thought Mary good enough for Jem, and her late neglect in coming to see her still rankled a little in her breast. So she determined to invent a little, in order to do away with any idea Mary might have that Jem would choose her for “his right down good wife,” as Aunt Alice called it.

“Ay, he’ll be for taking a wife soon,” and then, in a lower voice, as if confidentially, but really to prevent any contradiction or explanation from her simple sister-in-law, she added–

“It’ll not be long afore Molly Gibson (that’s her at th’ provision shop round the corner) will hear a secret as will not displease her, I’m thinking. She’s been casting sheep’s eyes at our Jem this many a day, but he thought her father would not give her to a common working-man; but now he’s good as her, every bit. I thought once he’d a fancy for thee, Mary, but I donnot think yo’d ever ha’ suited, so it’s best as it is.”

By an effort Mary managed to keep down her vexation, and to say, “She hoped he’d be happy with Molly Gibson. She was very handsome, for certain.”

“Ay, and a notable body, too. I’ll just step upstairs and show you the patchwork quilt she gave me but last Saturday.”

Mary was glad she was going out of the room. Her words irritated her; perhaps not the less because she did not fully believe them. Besides, she wanted to speak to Alice, and Mrs. Wilson seemed to think that she, as the widow, ought to absorb all the attention.

“Dear Alice,” began Mary, “I’m so grieved to find you so deaf; it must have come on very rapid.”

“Yes, dear, it’s a trial; I’ll not deny it. Pray God give me strength to find out its teaching. I felt it sore one fine day when I thought I’d go gather some meadow-sweet to make tea for Jane’s cough; and the fields seemed so dree and still, and at first I could na make out what was wanting; and then it struck me it were th’ song o’ the birds, and that I never should hear their sweet music no more, and I could na help crying a bit. But I’ve much to be thankful for. I think I’m a comfort to Jane, if I’m only some one to scold now and then; poor body! It takes off her thoughts from her sore losses when she can scold a bit. If my eyes are left I can do well enough; I can guess at what folk are saying.”

The splendid red and yellow patch quilt now made its appearance, and Jane Wilson would not be satisfied unless Mary praised it all over, border, centre, and ground-work, right side and wrong; and Mary did her duty, saying all the more, because she could not work herself up to any very hearty admiration of her rival’s present. She made haste, however, with her commendations, in order to avoid encountering Jem. As soon as she was fairly away from the house and street, she slackened her pace, and began to think. Did Jem really care for Molly Gibson? Well, if he did, let him. People seemed all to think he was much too good for her (Mary’s own self). Perhaps some one else, far more handsome, and far more grand, would show him one day that she was good enough to be Mrs. Henry Carson. So temper, or what Mary called “spirit,” led her to encourage Mr. Carson more than ever she had done before.

Some weeks after this there was a meeting of the Trades’ Union to which John Barton belonged. The morning of the day on which it was to take place he had lain late in bed, for what was the use of getting up? He had hesitated between the purchase of meal or opium, and had chosen the latter, for its use had become a necessity with him. He wanted it to relieve him from the terrible depression its absence occasioned. A large lump seemed only to bring him into a natural state, or what had been his natural state formerly. Eight o’clock was the hour fixed for the meeting; and at it were read letters, filled with details of woe, from all parts of the country. Fierce, heavy gloom brooded over the assembly; and fiercely and heavily did the men separate, towards eleven o’clock, some irritated by the opposition of others to their desperate plans.

It was not a night to cheer them, as they quitted the glare of the gas-lighted room, and came out into the street. Unceasing, soaking rain was falling; the very lamps seemed obscured by the damp upon the glass, and their light reached but to a little distance from the posts. The streets were cleared of passers-by; not a creature seemed stirring, except here and there a drenched policeman in his oilskin cape. Barton wished the others good-night, and set off home. He had gone through a street or two, when he heard a step behind him; but he did not care to stop and see who it was. A little further, and the person quickened step, and touched his arm very lightly. He turned, and saw, even by the darkness visible of that badly-lighted street, that the woman who stood by him was of no doubtful profession. It was told by her faded finery, all unfit to meet the pelting of that pitiless storm; the gauze bonnet, once pink, now dirty white; the muslin gown, all draggled, and soaking wet up to the very knees; the gay-coloured barege shawl, closely wrapped round the form, which yet shivered and shook, as the woman whispered, “I want to speak to you.”

He swore an oath, and bade her begone.

“I really do. Don’t send me away. I’m so out of breath, I cannot say what I would all at once.” She put her hand to her side, and caught her breath with evident pain.

“I tell thee I’m not the man for thee,” adding an opprobrious name. “Stay,” said he, as a thought suggested by her voice flashed across him. He gripped her arm–the arm he had just before shaken off–and dragged her, faintly resisting, to the nearest lamp-post. He pushed the bonnet back, and roughly held the face she would fain have averted, to the light, and in her large, unnaturally bright grey eyes, her lovely mouth, half open, as if imploring the forbearance she could not ask for in words, he saw at once the long-lost Esther; she who had caused his wife’s death. Much was like the gay creature of former years; but the glaring paint, the sharp features, the changed expression of the whole! But most of all, he loathed the dress; and yet the poor thing, out of her little choice of attire, had put on the plainest she had, to come on that night’s errand.

“So it’s thee, is it? It’s thee!” exclaimed John, as he ground his teeth, and shook her with passion. “I’ve looked for thee long at corners o’ streets, and such like places. I knew I should find thee at last. Thee’ll maybe bethink thee o’ some words I spoke, which put thee up at th’ time; summut about street-walkers; but oh no! thou art none o’ them naughts; no one thinks thou art, who sees thy fine draggle-tailed dress, and thy pretty pink cheeks!” stopping for very want of breath.

“Oh, mercy! John, mercy! listen to me for Mary’s sake!”

She meant his daughter, but the name only fell on his ear as belonging to his wife; and it was adding fuel to the fire. In vain did her face grow deadly pale around the vivid circle of paint, in vain did she gasp for mercy,–he burst forth again.

“And thou names that name to me? and thou thinks the thought of her will bring thee mercy! Dost thou know it was thee who killed her, as sure as ever Cain killed Abel. She’d loved thee as her own, and she trusted thee as her own, and when thou wert gone she never held head up again, but died in less than a three week; and at her judgment-day she’ll rise, and point to thee as her murderer; or if she don’t, I will.”

He flung her, trembling, sinking, fainting, from him, and strode away. She fell with a feeble scream against the lamp-post, and lay there in her weakness, unable to rise. A policeman came up in time to see the close of these occurrences, and concluding from Esther’s unsteady, reeling fall, that she was tipsy, he took her in her half- unconscious state to the lock-ups for the night. The superintendent of that abode of vice and misery was roused from his dozing watch through the dark hours, by half-delirious wails and moanings, which he reported as arising from intoxication. If he had listened, he would have heard these words, repeated in various forms, but always in the same anxious, muttering way–

“He would not listen to me; what can I do? He would not listen to me, and I wanted to warn him! Oh, what shall I do to save Mary’s child! What shall I do? How can I keep her from being such a one as I am; such a wretched, loathsome creature! She was listening just as I listened, and loving just as I loved, and the end will be just like my end. How shall I save her? She won’t hearken to warning, or heed it more than I did: and who loves her well enough to watch over her as she should be watched? God keep her from harm! And yet I won’t pray for her; sinner that I am! Can my prayers be heard? No! they’ll only do harm. How shall I save her? He would not listen to me.”

So the night wore away. The next morning she was taken up to the New Bailey. It was a clear case of disorderly vagrancy, and she was committed to prison for a month. How much might happen in that time!

XI. MR. CARSON’S INTENTIONS REVEALED.

“O Mary, canst thou wreck his peace, Wha for thy sake wad gladly die?
Or canst thou break that heart of his, Whase only fault is loving thee?”
–BURNS.

“I can like of the wealth, I must confess, Yet more I prize the man though moneyless: I am not of their humour yet that can For title or estate affect a man;
Or of myself one body deign to make With him I loathe, for his possessions’ sake.” –WITHER’S Fidelia.

Barton returned home after his encounter with Esther, uneasy and dissatisfied. He had said no more than he had been planning to say for years, in case she was ever thrown in his way, in the character in which he felt certain he should meet her. He believed she deserved it all, and yet he now wished he had not said it. Her look, as she asked for mercy, haunted him through his broken and disordered sleep; her form, as he last saw her, lying prostrate in helplessness, would not be banished from his dreams. He sat up in bed to try and dispel the vision. Now, too late, his conscience smote him with harshness. It would have been all very well, he thought, to have said what he did, if he had added some kind words, at last. He wondered if his dead wife was conscious of that night’s occurrence; and he hoped not, for with her love for Esther he believed it would embitter heaven to have seen her so degraded and repulsed. For he now recalled her humility, her tacit acknowledgment of her lost character; and he began to marvel if there was power in the religion he had often heard of, to turn her from her ways. He felt that no earthly power that he knew of could do it, but there glimmered on his darkness the idea that religion might save her. Still, where to find her again? In the wilderness of a large town, where to meet with an individual of so little value or note to any?

And evening after evening he paced the same streets in which he had heard those footsteps following him, peering under every fantastic, discreditable bonnet, in the hopes of once more meeting Esther, and addressing her in a far different manner from what he had done before. But he returned, night after night, disappointed in his search, and at last gave it up in despair, and tried to recall his angry feelings towards her, in order to find relief from his present self-reproach.

He often looked at Mary, and wished she were not so like her aunt, for the very bodily likeness seemed to suggest the possibility of a similar likeness in their fate; and then this idea enraged his irritable mind, and he became suspicious and anxious about Mary’s conduct. Now hitherto she had been so remarkably free from all control, and almost from all inquiry concerning her actions, that she did not brook this change in her father’s behaviour very well. Just when she was yielding more than ever to Mr. Carson’s desire of frequent meetings, it was hard to be so questioned concerning her hours of leaving off work, whether she had come straight home, etc. She could not tell lies; though she could conceal much if she were not questioned. So she took refuge in obstinate silence, alleging as a reason for it her indignation at being so cross-examined. This did not add to the good feeling between father and daughter, and yet they dearly loved each other; and in the minds of each, one principal reason for maintaining such behaviour as displeased the other, was the believing that this conduct would insure that person’s happiness.

Her father now began to wish Mary was married. Then this terrible superstitious fear suggested by her likeness to Esther would be done away with. He felt that he could not resume the reins he had once slackened. But with a husband it would be different. If Jem Wilson would but marry her! With his character for steadiness and talent! But he was afraid Mary had slighted him, he came so seldom now to the house. He would ask her.

“Mary, what’s come o’er thee and Jem Wilson? You were great friends at one time.”

“Oh, folk say he is going to be married to Molly Gibson, and of course courting takes up a deal o’ time,” answered Mary, as indifferently as she could.

“Thou’st played thy cards badly, then,” replied her father, in a surly tone. “At one time he were desperate fond o’ thee, or I’m much mistaken. Much fonder of thee than thou deservedst.”

“That’s as people think,” said Mary pertly, for she remembered that the very morning before she had met Mr. Carson, who had sighed, and swore, and protested all manner of tender vows that she was the loveliest, sweetest, best, etc. And when she had seen him afterwards riding with one of his beautiful sisters, had he not evidently pointed her out as in some way or other an object worthy of attention and interest, and then lingered behind his sister’s horse for a moment to kiss his hand repeatedly. So, as for Jem Wilson, she could whistle him down the wind.

But her father was not in the mood to put up with pertness, and he upbraided her with the loss of Jem Wilson till she had to bite her lips till the blood came, in order to keep down the angry words that would rise in her heart. At last her father left the house, and then she might give way to her passionate tears.

It so happened that Jem, after much anxious thought, had determined that day to “put his fortune to the touch, to win or lose all.” He was in a condition to maintain a wife in comfort. It was true his mother and aunt must form part of the household: but such is not an uncommon case among the poor, and if there were the advantages of previous friendship between the parties, it was not, he thought, an obstacle to matrimony. Both mother and aunt, he believed, would welcome Mary. And, oh! what a certainty of happiness the idea of that welcome implied.

He had been absent and abstracted all day long with the thought of the coming event of the evening. He almost smiled at himself for his care in washing and dressing in preparation for his visit to Mary; as if one waistcoat or another could decide his fate in so passionately a momentous thing. He believed he only delayed before his little looking-glass for cowardice, for absolute fear of a girl. He would try not to think so much about the affair, and he thought the more.

Poor Jem! it is not an auspicious moment for thee!

“Come in,” said Mary, as some one knocked at the door, while she sat sadly at her sewing, trying to earn a few pence by working over hours at some mourning.

Jem entered, looking more awkward and abashed than he had ever done before. Yet here was Mary all alone, just as he had hoped to find her. She did not ask him to take a chair, but after standing a minute or two he sat down near her.

“Is your father at home, Mary?” said he, by way of making an opening, for she seemed determined to keep silence, and went on stitching away.

“No, he’s gone to his Union, I suppose.” Another silence. It was no use waiting, thought Jem. The subject would never be led to by any talk he could think of in his anxious, fluttered state. He had better begin at once.

“Mary!” said he, and the unusual tone of his voice made her look up for an instant, but in that time she understood from his countenance what was coming, and her heart beat so suddenly and violently she could hardly sit still. Yet one thing she was sure of; nothing he could say should make her have him. She would show them all WHO would be glad to have her. She was not yet calm after her father’s irritating speeches. Yet her eyes fell veiled before that passionate look fixed upon her.

“Dear Mary! (for how dear you are, I cannot rightly tell you in words.) It’s no new story I’m going to speak about. You must ha’ seen and known it long; for since we were boy and girl I ha’ loved you above father and mother and all; and all I’ve thought on by day and dreamt on by night has been something in which you’ve had a share. I’d no way of keeping you for long, and I scorned to try and tie you down; and I lived in terror lest some one else should take you to himself. But now, Mary, I’m foreman in th’ works, and, dear Mary! listen,” as she, in her unbearable agitation, stood up and turned away from him. He rose too, and came nearer, trying to take hold of her hand; but this she would not allow. She was bracing herself up to refuse him, for once and for all.

“And now, Mary, I’ve a home to offer you, and a heart as true as ever man had to love you and cherish you; we shall never be rich folk, I dare say; but if a loving heart and a strong right arm can shield you from sorrow, or from want, mine shall do it. I cannot speak as I would like; my love won’t let itself be put in words. But, oh! darling, say you’ll believe me, and that you’ll be mine.”

She could not speak at once; her words would not come.

“Mary, they say silence gives consent; is it so?” he whispered.

Now or never the effort must be made.

“No! it does not with me.” Her voice was calm, although she trembled from head to foot. “I will always be your friend, Jem, but I can never be your wife.”

“Not my wife?” said he mournfully. “O Mary, think awhile! you cannot be my friend if you will not be my wife. At least, I can never be content to be only your friend. Do think awhile! If you say No, you will make me hopeless, desperate. It’s no love of yesterday. It has made the very groundwork of all that people call good in me. I don’t know what I shall be if you won’t have me. And, Mary, think how glad your father would be! It may sound vain, but he’s told me more than once how much he should like to see us two married.”

Jem intended this for a powerful argument, but in Mary’s present mood it told against him more than anything; for it suggested the false and foolish idea that her father, in his evident anxiety to promote her marriage with Jem, had been speaking to him on the subject with some degree of solicitation.

“I tell you, Jem, it cannot be. Once for all, I will never marry you.”

“And is this the end of all my hopes and fears? the end of my life, I may say, for it is the end of all worth living for!” His agitation rose and carried him into passion. “Mary, you’ll hear, maybe, of me as a drunkard, and maybe as a thief, and maybe as a murderer. Remember! when all are speaking ill of me, you will have no right to blame me, for it’s your cruelty that will have made me what I feel I shall become. You won’t even say you’ll try and like me; will you, Mary?” said he, suddenly changing his tone from threatening despair to fond, passionate entreaty, as he took her hand and held it forcibly between both of his, while he tried to catch a glimpse of her averted face. She was silent, but it was from deep and violent emotion. He could not bear to wait; he would not hope, to be dashed away again; he rather in his bitterness of heart chose the certainty of despair, and before she could resolve what to answer, he flung away her hand and rushed out of the house.

“Jem! Jem!” cried she, with faint and choking voice. It was too late; he left street after street behind him with his almost winged speed, as he sought the fields, where he might give way unobserved to all the deep despair he felt.

It was scarcely ten minutes since he had entered the house, and found Mary at comparative peace, and now she lay half across the dresser, her head hidden in her hands, and every part of her body shaking with the violence of her sobs. She could not have told at first (if you had asked her, and she could have commanded voice enough to answer) why she was in such agonized grief. It was too sudden for her to analyse, or think upon it. She only felt that by her own doing her life would be hereafter blank and dreary. By- and-bye her sorrow exhausted her body by its power, and she seemed to have no strength left for crying. She sat down; and now thoughts crowded on her mind. One little hour ago, and all was still unsaid, and she had her fate in her own power. And yet, how long ago had she determined to say pretty much what she did, if the occasion ever offered.

It was as if two people were arguing the matter; that mournful desponding communion between her former self, and her present self. Herself, a day, an hour ago; and herself now. For we have every one of us felt how a very few minutes of the months and years called life, will sometimes suffice to place all time past and future in an entirely new light; will make us see the vanity or the criminality of the bygone, and so change the aspect of the coming time that we look with loathing on the very thing we have most desired. A few moments may change our character for life, by giving a totally different direction to our aims and energies.

To return to Mary. Her plan had been, as we well know, to marry Mr. Carson, and the occurrence an hour ago was only a preliminary step. True; but it had unveiled her heart to her; it had convinced her that she loved Jem above all persons or things. But Jem was a poor mechanic, with a mother and aunt to keep; a mother, too, who had shown her pretty clearly that she did not desire her for a daughter-in-law: while Mr. Carson was rich, and prosperous, and gay, and (she believed) would place her in all circumstances of ease and luxury, where want could never come. What were these hollow vanities to her, now she had discovered the passionate secret of her soul? She felt as if she almost hated Mr. Carson, who had decoyed her with his baubles. She now saw how vain, how nothing to her, would be all gaieties and pomps, all joys and pleasures, unless she might share them with Jem; yes, with him she had harshly rejected so short a time ago. If he were poor, she loved him all the better. If his mother did think her unworthy of him, what was it but the truth? as she now owned with bitter penitence. She had hitherto been walking in grope-light towards a precipice; but in the clear revelation of that past hour she saw her danger, and turned away resolutely and for ever.

That was some comfort: I mean her clear perception of what she ought not to do; of what no luring temptation should ever again induce her to hearken to. How she could best undo the wrong she had done to Jem and herself by refusing his love was another anxious question. She wearied herself by proposing plans, and rejecting them.

She was roused to a consciousness of time by hearing the neighbouring church clock strike twelve. Her father she knew might be expected home any minute, and she was in no mood for a meeting with him. So she hastily gathered up her work, and went to her own little bedroom, leaving him to let himself in.

She put out her candle, that her father might not see its light under the door; and sat down on her bed to think. But again, turning things over in her mind again and again, she could only determine at once to put an end to all further communication with Mr. Carson, in the most decided way she could. Maidenly modesty (and true love is ever modest) seemed to oppose every plan she could think of, for showing Jem how much she repented her decision against him, and how dearly she had now discovered that she loved him. She came to the unusual wisdom of resolving to do nothing, but strive to be patient, and improve circumstances as they might turn up. Surely, if Jem knew of her remaining unmarried, he would try his fortune again. He would never be content with one rejection; she believed she could not in his place. She had been very wrong, but now she would endeavour to do right, and have womanly patience, until he saw her changed and repentant mind in her natural actions. Even if she had to wait for years, it was no more than now it was easy to look forward to, as a penance for her giddy flirting on the one hand, and her cruel mistake concerning her feelings on the other. So anticipating a happy ending in the course of her love, however distant it might be, she fell asleep just as the earliest factory bells were ringing. She had sunk down in her clothes, and her sleep was unrefreshing. She wakened up shivery and chill in body, and sorrow-stricken in mind, though she could not at first rightly tell the cause of her depression.

She recalled the events of the night before, and still resolved to adhere to the determinations she had then formed. But patience seemed a far more difficult virtue this morning.

She hastened downstairs, and in her earnest, sad desire to do right, now took much pains to secure a comfortable though scanty breakfast for her father; and when he dawdled into the room, in an evidently irritable temper, she bore all with the gentleness of penitence, till at last her mild answers turned away wrath.

She loathed the idea of meeting Sally Leadbitter at her daily work; yet it must be done, and she tried to nerve herself for the encounter, and to make it at once understood, that having determined to give up having anything further to do with Mr. Carson, she considered the bond of intimacy broken between them.

But Sally was not the person to let these resolutions be carried into effect too easily. She soon became aware of the present state of Mary’s feelings, but she thought they merely arose from the changeableness of girlhood, and that the time would come when Mary would thank her for almost forcing her to keep up her meetings and communications with her rich lover.

So, when two days had passed over in rather too marked avoidance of Sally on Mary’s part, and when the former was made aware by Mr. Carson’s complaints that Mary was not keeping her appointments with him, and that unless he detained her by force, he had no chance of obtaining a word as she passed him in the street on her rapid walk home, she resolved to compel Mary to what she called her own good.

She took no notice during the third day of Mary’s avoidance as they sat at work; she rather seemed to acquiesce in the coolness of their intercourse. She put away her sewing early, and went home to her mother, who, she said, was more ailing than usual. The other girls soon followed her example, and Mary, casting a rapid glance up and down the street, as she stood last on Miss Simmonds’ doorstep, darted homewards, in hopes of avoiding the person whom she was fast learning to dread. That night she was safe from any encounter on her road, and she arrived at home, which she found, as she expected, empty; for she knew it was a club night, which her father would not miss. She sat down to recover breath, and to still her heart, which panted more from nervousness than from over-exertion, although she had walked so quickly. Then she arose, and taking off her bonnet, her eye caught the form of Sally Leadbitter passing the window with a lingering step, and looking into the darkness with all her might, as if to ascertain if Mary were returned. In an instant she repassed and knocked at the house-door; but without awaiting an answer, she entered.

“Well, Mary, dear” (knowing well how little “dear” Mary considered her just then); “it’s so difficult to get any comfortable talk at Miss Simmonds’, I thought I’d just step up and see you at home.”

“I understood, from what you said, your mother was ailing, and that you wanted to be with her,” replied Mary, in no welcoming tone.

“Ay, but mother’s better now,” said the unabashed Sally. “Your father’s out, I suppose?” looking round as well as she could; for Mary made no haste to perform the hospitable offices of striking a match, and lighting a candle.

“Yes, he’s out,” said Mary shortly, and busying herself at last about the candle, without ever asking her visitor to sit down.

“So much the better,” answered Sally; “for to tell you the truth, Mary, I’ve a friend at th’ end of the road, as is anxious to come and see you at home, since you’re grown so particular as not to like to speak to him in the street. He’ll be here directly.”

“O Sally, don’t let him,” said Mary, speaking at last heartily; and running to the door, she would have fastened it, but Sally held her hands, laughing meanwhile at her distress.

“Oh, please, Sally,” struggling, “dear Sally! don’t let him come here, the neighbours will so talk, and father’ll go mad if he hears; he’ll kill me, Sally, he will. Besides, I don’t love him–I never did. Oh, let me go,” as footsteps approached; and then, as they passed the house, and seemed to give her a respite, she continued, “Do, Sally, dear Sally, go and tell him I don’t love him, and that I don’t want to have anything more to do with him. It was very wrong, I dare say, keeping company with him at all, but I’m very sorry, if I’ve led him to think too much of me; and I don’t want him to think any more. Will you tell him this, Sally? and I’ll do anything for you, if you will.”

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” said Sally, in a more relenting mood; “I’ll go back with you to where he’s waiting for us; or rather, I should say, where I told him to wait for a quarter of an hour, till I seed if your father was at home; and if I didn’t come back in that time, he said he’d come here, and break the door open but he’d see you.”

“Oh, let us go, let us go,” said Mary, feeling that the interview must be, and had better be anywhere than at home, where her father might return at any minute. She snatched up her bonnet, and was at the end of the court in an instant; but then, not knowing whether to turn to the right or to the left, she was obliged to wait for Sally, who came leisurely up, and put her arm through Mary’s with a kind of decided hold, intended to prevent the possibility of her changing her mind and turning back. But this, under the circumstances, was quite different to Mary’s plan. She had wondered more than once if she must not have another interview with Mr. Carson; and had then determined, while she expressed her resolution that it should be the final one, to tell him how sorry she was if she had thoughtlessly given him false hopes. For, be it remembered, she had the innocence, or the ignorance, to believe his intentions honourable; and he, feeling that at any price he must have her, only that he would obtain her as cheaply as he could, had never undeceived her; while Sally Leadbitter laughed in her sleeve at them both, and wondered how it would all end–whether Mary would gain her point of marriage, with her sly affectation of believing such to be Mr. Carson’s intention in courting her.

Not very far from the end of the street, into which the court where Mary lived opened, they met Mr. Carson, his hat a good deal slouched over his face, as if afraid of being recognised. He turned when he saw them coming, and led the way without uttering a word (although they were close behind) to a street of half-finished houses.

The length of the walk gave Mary time to recoil from the interview which was to follow; but even if her own resolve to go through with it had failed, there was the steady grasp of Sally Leadbitter, which she could not evade without an absolute struggle.

At last he stopped in the shelter and concealment of a wooden fence, put up to keep the building rubbish from intruding on the foot- pavement. Inside this fence, a minute afterwards, the girls were standing by him; Mary now returning Sally’s detaining grasp with interest, for she had determined on the way to make her a witness, willing or unwilling, to the ensuing conversation. But Sally’s curiosity led her to be a very passive prisoner in Mary’s hold.

With more freedom than he had ever used before, Mr. Carson put his arm firmly round Mary’s waist, in spite of her indignant resistance.

“Nay, nay! you little witch! Now I have caught you, I shall keep you prisoner. Tell me now what has made you run away from me so fast these few days–tell me, you sweet little coquette!”

Mary ceased struggling, but turned so as to be almost opposite to him, while she spoke out calmly and boldly–

“Mr. Carson! I want to speak to you for once and for all. Since I met you last Monday evening, I have made up my mind to have nothing more to do with you. I know I’ve been wrong in leading you to think I liked you; but I believe I didn’t rightly know my own mind; and I humbly beg your pardon, sir, if I’ve led you to think too much of me.”

For an instant he was surprised; the next, vanity came to his aid, and convinced him that she could only be joking. He, young, agreeable, rich, handsome! No! she was only showing a little womanly fondness for coquetting.

“You’re a darling little rascal to go on in this way! ‘Humbly begging my pardon if you’ve made me think too much of you.’ As if you didn’t know I think of you from morning till night. But you want to be told it again and again, do you?”

“No, indeed, sir, I don’t. I would far liefer* that you should say you would never think of me again, than that you should speak of me in this way. For, indeed, sir, I never was more in earnest than I am, when I say to-night is the last night I will ever speak to you.”

*Liefer; rather.
“Yet had I LEVRE unwist for sorrow die.” –CHAUCER, Troilus and Creseide.

“Last night, you sweet little equivocator, but not last day. Ha, Mary, I’ve caught you, have I?” as she, puzzled by his perseverance in thinking her joking, hesitated in what form she could now put her meaning.

“I mean, sir,” she said sharply, “that I will never speak to you again, at any time, after to-night.”

“And what’s made this change, Mary?” said he, seriously enough now. “Have I done anything to offend you?” added he earnestly.

“No, sir,” she answered gently, but yet firmly. “I cannot tell you exactly why I’ve changed my mind; but I shall not alter it again; and, as I said before, I beg your pardon if I’ve done wrong by you. And now sir, if you please, good-night.”

“But I do not please. You shall not go. What have I done, Mary? Tell me. You must not go without telling me how I have vexed you. What would you have me do?”

“Nothing, sir, but” (in an agitated tone), “oh! let me go! You cannot change my mind; it’s quite made up. Oh, sir! why do you hold me so tight? If you WILL know why I won’t have anything more to do with you, it is that I cannot love you. I have tried, and I really cannot.”

This naive and candid avowal served her but little. He could not understand how it could be true. Some reason lurked behind. He was passionately in love. What should he do to tempt her? A thought struck him.

“Listen! Mary. Nay, I cannot let you go till you have heard me. I do love you dearly; and I won’t believe but what you love me a very little, just a very little. Well, if you don’t like to own it, never mind! I only want now to tell you how much I love you, by what I am ready to give up for you. You know (or perhaps you are not fully aware) how little my father and mother would like me to marry you. So angry would they be, and so much ridicule should I have to brave, that of course I have never thought of it till now. I thought we could be happy enough without marriage.” (Deep sank those words into Mary’s heart.) “But now, if you like, I’ll get a licence to-morrow morning–nay, to-night, and I’ll marry you in defiance of all the world, rather than give you up. In a year or two my father will forgive me, and meanwhile you shall have every luxury money can purchase, and every charm that love can devise to make your life happy. After all, my mother was but a factory girl.” (This was said to himself, as if to reconcile himself to this bold step.) “Now, Mary, you see how willing I am to–to sacrifice a good deal for you; I even offer you marriage, to satisfy your little ambitious heart; so now, won’t you say, you can love me a little, little bit?”

He pulled her towards him. To his surprise, she still resisted. Yes! though all she had pictured to herself for so many months in being the wife of Mr. Carson was now within her grasp, she resisted. His speech had given her but one feeling, that of exceeding great relief. For she had dreaded, now she knew what true love was, to think of the attachment she might have created; the deep feeling her flirting conduct might have called out. She had loaded herself with reproaches for the misery she might have caused. It was a relief to gather that the attachment was of that low despicable kind which can plan to seduce the object of its affection; that the feeling she had caused was shallow enough, for it only pretended to embrace self, at the expense of the misery, the ruin, of one falsely termed beloved. She need not be penitent to such a plotter! that was the relief.

“I am obliged to you, sir, for telling me what you have. You may think I am a fool; but I did think you meant to marry me all along; and yet, thinking so, I felt I could not love you. Still I felt sorry I had gone so far in keeping company with you. Now, sir, I tell you, if I had loved you before, I don’t think I should have loved you now you have told me you meant to ruin me; for that’s the plain English of not meaning to marry me till just this minute. I said I was sorry, and humbly begged your pardon; that was before I knew what you were. Now I scorn you, sir, for plotting to ruin a poor girl. Goodnight.”

And with a wrench, for which she had reserved all her strength, she flew off like a bolt. They heard her flying footsteps echo down the quiet street. The next sound was Sally’s laugh, which grated on Mr. Carson’s ears, and keenly irritated him.

“And what do you find so amusing, Sally?” asked he.

“Oh, sir, I beg your pardon. I humbly beg your pardon, as Mary says, but I can’t help laughing to think how she’s outwitted us.” (She was going to have said, “outwitted you,” but changed the pronoun.)

“Why, Sally, had you any idea she was going to fly out in this style?”

“No, I hadn’t, to be sure. But if you did think of marrying her, why (if I may be so bold as to ask) did you go and tell her you had no thought of doing otherwise by her? That was what put her up at last!”

“Why, I had repeatedly before led her to infer that marriage was not my object. I never dreamed she could have been so foolish as to have mistaken me, little provoking romancer though she be! So I naturally wished her to know what a sacrifice of prejudice, of–of myself, in short, I was willing to make for her sake; yet I don’t think she was aware of it after all. I believe I might have any