Works of Ellen Wood, page 139
It aroused his anger. He accused her of wanting to get him out of the house by stratagem, that she might lock him out; and he flung the pence back amongst them. Janey screamed, and Gar burst out crying. As Patience had said, he was not a pleasant inmate. Jane ran upstairs, and the children followed her.
“Where is he to sleep?” inquired William.
It is a positive fact that, until that moment, Jane had forgotten all about the sleeping. Of course he must sleep there, though she had not thought of it. Amidst the poor in her father’s parish in London, Jane had seen many phases of distress; but with this particular annoyance she had never been brought into contact. However, it had to be done.
What a night that was for her! She paced her room nearly throughout it, with quiet movement, Janey sleeping placidly — now giving way to all the dark appearances of her position, to uncontrollable despondency; now kneeling and crying for help in her heartfelt anguish.
Morning came; the black frost had gone, and the sun shone. After breakfast Jane put on her shawl and bonnet.
Mr. Ashley’s residence was very near to them — only a little higher up the road. It was a large house, almost a mansion, surrounded by a beautiful garden. Jane had passed it two or three times, and thought what a nice place it was. She repeatedly saw Mr. Ashley walk past her house as he went to or came from the manufactory: she was not a bad reader of countenances, and she judged him to be a thorough gentleman. His face was a refined one, his manner pleasant.
She found that she had gone at an untoward time. Standing before the hall door was Mr. Ashley’s open carriage, the groom standing at the horse’s head. Even as Jane ascended the steps the door opened, and Mr. and Mrs. Ashley were coming forth. Feeling terribly distressed and disappointed, she scarcely defined why, Jane accosted the former, and requested a few minutes’ interview.
Mr. Ashley looked at her. A fair young widow, evidently a lady. He did not recognise her. He had seen her before, but she was in a different style of dress now.
Mr. Ashley raised his hat as he replied to her. “Is your business with me pressing? I was just going out.”
“Indeed it is pressing,” she said; “or I would not think of asking to detain you.”
“Then walk in,” he returned. “A little delay will not make much difference.”
Opening the door of a small sitting-room, apparently his own, he invited her to a seat near the fire. As she took it, Jane untied the crape strings of her bonnet and threw back her heavy veil. She was as white as a sheet, and felt choking.
“I fear you are ill,” Mr. Ashley remarked. “Can I get you anything?”
“I shall be better in a minute, thank you,” she panted. “Perhaps you do not know me, sir. I live in your house, a little lower down. I am Mrs. Halliburton.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon, madam; I did not remember you at first. I have seen you in passing.”
His manner was perfectly kind and open. Not in the least like that of a landlord who had just put a distress into his tenant’s house.
“I have come here to beseech your mercy,” she began in agitation. “I have not the rent now, but if you will consent to wait until the middle of February, it will be ready. Oh, Mr. Ashley, do not oppress me for it! Think of my situation.”
“I never oppressed any one in my life,” was the quiet rejoinder of Mr. Ashley, spoken, however, in a somewhat surprised tone.
“Sir, it is oppression. I beg your pardon for saying so. I promise that the rent shall be paid to you in a few weeks: to force my furniture from me now, is oppression.”
“I do not understand you,” returned Mr. Ashley.
“To sell my furniture under the distress will be utter ruin to me and my children,” she continued. “We have no resource, no home; we shall have to lie in the streets, or die. Oh, sir, do not take it!”
“But you are agitating yourself unnecessarily, Mrs. Halliburton. I have no intention of taking your furniture.”
“No intention, sir!” she echoed. “You have put in a distress.”
“Put in a what?” cried he, in unbounded surprise.
“A distress. The man has been in since yesterday morning.”
Mr. Ashley looked at her a few moments in silence. “Did the man tell you where he came from?”
“It was Mr. Dare who put him in — acting for you. I went to Mr. Dare, and he kept me waiting nearly five hours in his outer office before he would see me. When he did see me, he declined to hear me. All he would say was, that I must pay the rent or he should take the furniture: acting for Mr. Ashley.”
A strangely severe expression darkened Mr. Ashley’s face. “First of all, my dear lady, let me assure you that I knew nothing of this, or it should never have been done. I am surprised at Mr. Dare.”
Could she fail to trust that open countenance — that benevolent eye? Her hopes rose high within her. “Sir, will you withdraw the man, and give me time?”
“I will.”
The revulsion of feeling, from despair and grief, was too great. She burst into tears, having struggled against them in vain. Mr. Ashley rose and looked from the window; and presently she grew calmer. When he sat down again she gave him the outline of her situation; of her present dilemma; of her hopes — poor hopes that they were! — of getting a scanty living through letting her rooms and doing some sewing, or by other employment. “Were I to lose my furniture, it would take from me this only chance,” she concluded.
“You shall not lose it through me,” warmly spoke Mr. Ashley. “The man shall be dismissed from your house in half an hour’s time.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you!” she breathed, rising to leave. “I have not been able to supply him with great things in the shape of food, and he uses very bad language in the hearing of my children. Thank you, Mr. Ashley.”
He shook hands with her cordially, and attended her to the hall door. Mrs. Ashley, a pretty, lady-like woman, somewhat stately in general, stood there still. Well wrapped in velvet and furs, she did not care to return to the warm rooms. Jane said a few words of apology for detaining her, and passed on.
Mr. Ashley turned back to his room, drew his desk towards him, and began to write. His wife followed him. “Who was that, Thomas?”
“Mrs. Halliburton: our widowed tenant, next door to Samuel Lynn’s. You remember I told you of meeting the funeral. Two little boys were following alone.”
“Oh, poor little things! yes. What did she want?”
Mr. Ashley made no reply: he was writing rapidly. The note, when finished, was sealed and directed to Mr. Dare. He then helped his wife into the carriage, took the reins, and sat down beside her. The groom took his place in the seat behind, and Mr. Ashley drove round the gravel drive, out at the gate, and turned towards Helstonleigh.
“Thomas, you are going the wrong way!” said Mrs. Ashley, in consternation. “What are you thinking of?”
“I shall turn directly,” he answered. There was a severe look upon his face, and he drove very fast, by which signs Mrs. Ashley knew something had put him out. She inquired, and he gave her the outline of what he had just heard.
“How could Anthony Dare act so?” involuntarily exclaimed Mrs. Ashley.
“I don’t know. I shall give him a piece of my mind to-morrow more plainly than he will like. This is not the first time he has attempted a rascally action under cover of my name.”
“Shall you lose the rent?”
“I think not, Margaret. She said not, and she carries sincerity in her face. I am sure I shall not lose it if she can help it. If I do, I must, that’s all. I never yet added to the trouble of those in distress, and I never will.”
He pulled up at Mrs. Halliburton’s house, which she had just reached also. The groom came to the horse, and Mr. Ashley entered. The “man” was comfortably stretched before the study fire, smoking his short pipe. Up he jumped when he saw Mr. Ashley, and smuggled his pipe into his pocket. His offensive manner had changed to humble servility.
“Do you know me?” shortly inquired Mr. Ashley.
The man pulled his hair in token of respect. “Certainly, sir. Mr. Ashley.”
“Very well. Carry this note to Mr. Dare.”
The man received the note in his hand, and held it there, apparently, in some perplexity. “May I leave, sir, without the authority of Mr. Dare?”
“I thought you said you knew me,” was Mr. Ashley’s reply, haughty displeasure in his tone.
“I beg pardon, sir,” replied the man, pulling his hair again, and making a movement of departure. “I suppose I bain’t a-coming back, sir?”
“You are not.”
He took up a small bundle tied in a blue handkerchief, which he had brought with him and appeared excessively careful of, caught at his battered hat, ducked his head to Mr. Ashley, and left the house, the note held between his fingers. Would you like to see what it contained?
“Dear Sir, — I find that you have levied a distress on Mrs. Halliburton’s goods for rent due to me. That you should have done so without my authority astonishes me much; that you should have done so at all, knowing what you do of my principles, astonishes me more. I send the man back to you. The costs of this procedure you will either set down to me, or pay out of your own pocket, whichever you may deem the more just; but you will not charge them to Mrs. Halliburton. Have the goodness to call upon me to-morrow morning in East Street.
“Thomas Ashley.”
“He will not trouble you again, Mrs. Halliburton,” observed Mr. Ashley, with a pleasant smile, as he went out to his carriage.
Jane stood at her window. She watched the man go towards Helstonleigh with the note; she watched Mr. Ashley step into his seat, turn his horse, and drive up the road. But all things were looking misty to her, for her eyes were dim.
“God did hear me,” was her earnest thought.
CHAPTER XVIII.
HONEY FAIR.
Helstonleigh abounded with glove manufactories. It was a trade that might be said to be a blessing to the localities where it was carried on, since it was one of the very few employments that furnished to the poor female population easy, clean, and profitable work at their own homes. The evils arising to women who go out to work in factories have been rehearsed over and over again; and the chief evil — we will put others out of sight — is, that it takes the married woman from her home and her family. Her young children drag themselves up in her absence, for worse or for better; alone they must do it, for she has to be away, toiling for daily bread. There is no home privacy, no home comfort, no home happiness; the factory is their life, and other interests give way to it. But with glove-making the case was different. Whilst the husbands were at the manufactories pursuing their day’s work, the wives and elder daughters were earning money easily and pleasantly at home. The work was clean and profitable; all that was necessary for its accomplishment being common skill as a seamstress.
Not five minutes’ walk from Mrs. Halliburton’s house, and nearer to Helstonleigh, a turning out of the main road led you to quite a colony of workwomen — gloveresses, as they were termed in the local phraseology. It was a long, wide lane; the houses, some larger, some smaller, built on either side of it. A road quite wide enough for health if the inhabitants had only kept it as it ought to have been kept: but they did not do so. The highway was made a common receptacle for refuse. It was so much easier to open the kitchen door (most of the houses were entered at once by the kitchen), and to “chuck” things out, pêle-mêle, rather than be at the trouble of conveying them to the proper receptacle, the dust-bin at the back. Occasionally a solitary policeman would come, picking his way through the dirt and dust, and order it to be removed; upon which some slight improvement would be visible for a day or two. The name of this charming place was Honey Fair; though, in truth, it was redolent of nothing so pleasant as honey.
Of the occupants of these houses, the husbands and elder sons were all glove operatives; several of them in the manufactory of Mr. Ashley. The wives sewed the gloves at home. Many a similar colony to Honey Fair was there in Helstonleigh, but in hearing of one you hear of all. The trade was extensively pursued. A very few of the manufactories were of the extent that was Mr. Ashley’s; and they gradually descended in size, until some comprised not half a score workmen, all told; but whose masters alike dignified themselves by the title of “manufacturer.”
There flourished a shop in the general line in Honey Fair kept by a Mrs. Buffle, a great gossip. Her husband, a well-meaning, steady little man, mincing in his speech and gait, scrupulously neat and clean in his attire, and thence called “the dandy,” was chief workman at one of the smallest of the establishments. He had three men and two boys under him; and so he styled himself the “foreman.” No one knew half so much of the affairs of their neighbours as did Mrs. Buffle; no one could tell of the ill-doings and shortcomings of Honey Fair as she could. Many a gloveress girl, running in at dusk for a halfpenny candle, did not receive it until she had first submitted to a lecture from Mrs. Buffle. Not that her custom was all of this ignoble description: some of the gentlemen’s houses in the neighbourhood would deal with her in a chance way, when out of articles at home. Her wares were good; her home-cured bacon was particularly good. Amidst other olfactory treats indigenous to Honey Fair was that of pigs and pig-sties, kept by Mrs. Buffle.
Occasionally Mrs. Halliburton would go to this shop; it was nearer to her house than any other; and, in her small way, had been extensively patronised by her. Of all her customers, Mrs. Halliburton was the one who most puzzled Mrs. Buffle. In the first place, she never gossiped; in the second, though evidently a lady, she would carry her purchases home herself. The very servants from the very large houses, coming flaunting in their smart caps, would loftily order their pound of bacon or shillingsworth of eggs sent home for them. Mrs. Halliburton took hers away in her own hand; and this puzzled Mrs. Buffle. “But her pays ready money,” observed that lady, when relating this to another customer, “so ‘tain’t my place to grumble.”
During the summer weather, whenever Jane had occasion to walk through Honey Fair, on her way to this shop, she would linger to admire the women at their open doors and windows, busy over their nice clean work. Rocking the cradle with one foot, or jogging the baby on their knees, to a tune of their own composing, their hands would be ever active at their employment. Some made the gloves; that is, seamed the fingers together and put in the thumbs, and these were called “makers.” Some welted, or hemmed the gloves round at the edge of the wrist; these were called “welters.” Some worked the three ornamental lines on the back; and these were called “pointers.” Some of the work was done in what was called a patent machine, whereby the stitches were rendered perfectly equal. And some of the stouter gloves were stitched together, instead of being sewn: stitching so beautifully regular and neat, that a stranger would look at it in admiration. In short, there were different branches in the making and sewing of gloves, as there are in most trades.
It now struck Jane that she might find employment at this work until better times should come round. True, she had never worked at it; but she was expert with her needle, and it was easily acquired. She possessed a dry, cool hand, too; a great thing where sewing-silk, sometimes floss silk, has to be used. What cared she for lowering herself to the employment only dealt out to the poor? Was she not poor herself? And who knew her in Helstonleigh?
The day that Mr. Ashley removed the dreaded visitor from her house, Jane had occasion to speak to Elizabeth Carter, her young servant’s mother. At dusk, putting aside the frock she was making for Anna, Jane proceeded to Honey Fair, in which perfumed locality Mrs. Carter lived. An agreement had been entered into that Betsy should still go to Mrs. Halliburton’s to do the washing (after her own fashion, but Jane could not afford to be fastidious now), and also what was wanted in the way of scouring — Betsy being paid a trifle in return, and instructed in the mysteries of reading and writing.
“‘Taint no profit,” observed Mrs. Carter to a crony, “but ‘taint no loss. Her won’t do nothing at home, let me cry after her as I will. Out her goes, gampusing to this house, gampusing to that; but not a bit of work’ll her stick to at home. If these new folks can keep her to work a bit, so much the better; it’ll be getting her hand in; and better still, if they teaches her to read and write. Her wouldn’t learn nothing from the school-missis.”
Not a very favourable description of Miss Betsy. But, what the girl chiefly wanted was a firm hand over her. Her temper and disposition were good; but she was an only child, and her mother, though possessing a firm hand, and a firm tongue, too, in general — none more so in Honey Fair — had spoilt and indulged Miss Betsy until her authority was gone.
After her business was over this evening with Mrs. Carter, Jane, who wanted some darning cotton, turned into Mrs. Buffle’s shop. That priestess was in her accustomed place behind the counter. She curtseyed twice, and spoke in a low, subdued tone, in deference to the widow’s cap and bonnet — to the deep mourning altogether, which Mrs. Buffle’s curiosity had not had the gratification of beholding before.
“Would you like it fine or coarse, mum? Here’s both. ‘Taint a great assortment, but it’s the best quality. I don’t have much call for darning cotton, mum; the folks round about is always at their gloving work.”
“But they must mend their stockings,” observed Jane.
“Not they,” returned Mrs. Buffle. “They’d go in naked heels, mum, afore they’d take a needle and darn ’em up. They have took to wear them untidy boots to cover the holes, and away they go with ’em unlaced; tongue hanging, and tag trailing half a mile behind ‘em. Great big slatterns, they be!”
