save and except one more house;
But I haven’t come to that, and I hope I never shall,
and that’s the village Poor House.”
T. Hood1.
Cottage visiting turned out to be a much chequered affair. One of the first places to which the sisters made their way was the Widow Mole2’s. They found it, rather beyond the church, down a lane, where it was hidden behind an overgrown thorn hedge, and they would scarcely have found it at all, if a three-year-old child had not been clattering3 an old bit of metal against the bar put across to prevent his exit. He was curly and clean, except with the day’s surface dirt, but he only stared stolidly4 at the question whether Mrs Mole lived there. A ten-year-old girl came out, and answered the question.
“Yes, mother do live here, but her be out at work.”
“Is that your grandfather?” as they caught sight of a very old man on a chair by the door, in the sun.
“Yes, ma’am. Will you come in and see him?”
He was a very old man, with scanty5 white hair, but he was very clean, and neatly6 dressed in a white smock, mended all over, but beautifully worked over the breast and cuffs7, and long leather buskins. He was very civil, too. He took off his old straw hat, and rose slowly by the help of his stout8 stick, though the first impulse of the visitors was to beg him not to move. He did not hear them, but answered their gesture.
“I be so crippled up with the rheumatics, you see, ma’am,” and he put his knotted and contracted hand up to his ear.
Mrs Carbonel shouted into his ear that she was sorry for him. She supposed his daughter was out at work.
“Yes, ma’am, with Farmer Goodenough—a charing9 to-day it is.”
“Washing,” screamed the little girl.
“She was off at five o’clock this morning,” he went on. “She do work hard, my daughter Bess, and she’s a good one to me, and so is little Liz here. Thank the Lord for them.”
“And her husband is dead?”
“Yes, ma’am. Fell off a haystack three years ago, and never spoke10 no more. We have always kept off the parish, ma’am. This bit of a cottage was my poor wife’s, and she do want to leave it to the boy; but she be but frail11, poor maid, and if she gave in, there’d be nothing for it but to give up the place and go to the workhouse; and there’s such a lot there as I could not go and die among.”
He spoke it to the sympathising faces, not as one begging, and they found out that all was as he said. He had seen better days, and held his head above the parish pay, and so had his son-in-law but the early death of poor Mole, and the old man’s crippled state, had thrown the whole maintenance of the family on the poor young widow, who was really working herself to death, while, repairs being impossible, the cottage was almost falling down.
“Oh, what a place, and what a dear old man!” cried the ladies, as they went out. “Well, we can do something here. I’ll come and read to him every week,” exclaimed Dora.
“And I will knit him a warm jacket,” said Mary, “and surely Edmund could help them to prop12 up that wretched cottage.”
“What a struggle their lives must have been, and so patient and good! Where are we going now?”
“I believe that is the workhouse, behind the church,” said Mary. “That rough-tiled roof.”
“It has a bend in the middle, like a broken back. I must sketch13 it,” said Dora.
“Why, there’s Edmund, getting over the churchyard stile.”
“Ay, he can’t keep long away from you, Madam Mary.”
“Were you going to the workhouse?” said Captain Carbonel, coming up, and offering an arm to each lady, as was the fashion in those days.
“We thought of it. All the poorest people are there, of course.”
“And the worst,” said the captain. “No, I will not have you go there. It is not fit for you.”
For besides that he was very particular about his ladies, and had no notion of letting them go to all the varieties of evil where they could hope to do good, like the ladies of our days, the workhouse was an utterly14 different place from the strictly15 disciplined union houses of the present Poor Law. Each parish had its own, and that of Uphill had no master, no order, but was the refuge of all the disorderly, disreputable people, who could not get houses, or pay their rent, who lived in any kind of fashion, on parish pay and what they could get, and were under no restraint.
While the captain was explaining to them what he had heard from Farmer Goodenough, a sudden noise of shouting and laughing, with volleys of evil words, was heard near the “Fox and Hounds.”
“What is that?” asked Dora, of a tidy young woman coming her way.
“That’s only the chaps at old Sam,” she answered, as if it was an ordinary sound. And on them exclaiming, she explained. “Samson Sanderson, that’s his name, sir. He be what they calls non-compos, and the young fellows at the ‘Fox and Hounds’ they have their fun out of he. They do bait he shameful16.”
Violent shouts of foul17 words and riotous18 laughter could be distinguished19 so plainly, that Captain Carbonel hastily thrust his wife and sister into the nearest cottage, and marched into the group of rough men and boys, who stood holloaing rude jokes, and laughing at the furious oaths and abuse in intermittent20 gasps21 with which they were received.
“For shame!” his indignant voice broke in. “Are you not ashamed, unmanly fellows, to treat a poor weak lad in this way?”
There was a moment’s silence. Then a great hulking drover called out, “Bless you, sir, he likes it.”
“The more shame for you,” exclaimed the captain, “to bait a poor innocent lad with horrid22 blasphemy23 and profanity. I tell you every one of you ought to be fined!”
The men began to sneak24 away from the indignant soldier. The poor idiot burst out crying and howling, and the ostler came forward, pulling his forelock, and saying, “You’ll not be hard on ’em, sir. ’Tis all sport. There, Sammy, don’t be afeared. Gentleman means you no harm.”
Captain Carbonel held out some coppers25, saying, “There, my poor lad, there’s something for you. Only don’t let me hear bad words again.”
Sam muttered something, and pulled his ragged26 hat forward as he shambled off into some back settlements of the public-house, while the ostler went on—
“’Tis just their game, sir! None of ’em would hurt poor Sam! They’d treat him the next minute, sir. All in sport.”
“Strange sport,” said the captain, “to teach a poor helpless lad, who ought to be as innocent as a babe, that abominable27 blasphemy.”
“He don’t mean nought28, sir! All’s one to he!”
“All the worse in those who do know better, I tell you; and you may tell your master that, if this goes on, I shall certainly speak to the magistrates29.”
There was no need to tell the landlord, Mr Oldfellow. The captain was plainly enough to be heard through the window of the bar. The drovers had no notion that their amusement was sinful, for “it didn’t hurt no one,” and, in fact, “getting a rise” out of Softy Sam was one of the great attractions of the “Fox and Hounds,” so that Mr Oldfellow was of the same mind as Dan Hewlett, who declared that “they Gobblealls was plaguey toads31 of Methodys, and wasn’t to think to bully32 them about like his soldiers.”
They had another drink all round to recover from their fright, when they treated Softy Sam, but took care not to excite him to be noisy, while the captain might be within earshot.
The two ladies had meanwhile taken refuge in what proved to be no other than Mrs Daniel Hewlett’s house, a better one, and less scantily33 provided with furniture, than the widow Mole’s, but much less clean and neat. The door stood open, and there was a tub full of soap-suds within. The captain gave a low whistle to intimate his presence, and stood at the entrance. Unwashed dinner things were on a round table, a dresser in confusion against the wall, on another Moore’s Almanack for some years past, full of frightful34 catastrophes35, mixed with little, French, highly-coloured pictures of the Blessed Virgin36.
His wife and her sister were seated, the one on a whole straw chair, the other on a rickety one, conversing37 with a very neat, pale, and pleasant-looking invalid38 young woman, evidently little able to rise from her wooden armchair. Molly Hewlett, in a coarse apron39, and a cap far back amid the rusty40 black tangles41 of her hair, her arms just out of the wash-tub, was in the midst of a voluble discourse42, into which the ladies would not break.
“You see, ma’am, she was in a right good situation, but she was always unlucky, and she had the misfortune to fall down the attic43 stairs with the baby in her arms.”
“The baby was not hurt,” put in the invalid.
“Not it, the little toad30, but ’twas saving he as ricked her back somehow, and made her a cripple for life, as you see, ma’am; and she was six months in the hospital, till the doctor, he say as how he couldn’t do nothing more for her, so Hewlett and me we took her in, as she is my own sister, you see, and we couldn’t let her go to the workhouse, but she do want a little broth44 or a few extrys now and then, ma’am, more than we poor folks can give her.”
“My mistress is very good, and gives me a little pension,” put in the invalid, while her sister looked daggers45 at her, and Mrs Carbonel, in obedience46 to her husband’s signal, took a hasty leave.
“There now! That’s the way of you, Judith,” cried Molly Hewlett, banging the door behind them. “What should you go for to tell the ladies of that pitiful pay of yours but to spile all chance of their helping47 us, nasty, mean skin-flints as they be!”
“I couldn’t go for to deceive them,” humbly48 replied Judith, meek49, but cowering50 under the coming storm.
“Who asked you to deceive? Only to hold your tongue for your own good, and mine and my poor children’s, that you just live upon. As if your trumpery51 pay was worth your board and all the trouble I has with you night and day, but you must come in and hinder these new folk from coming down liberal with your Methody ways and your pride! That’s it, your pride, ma’am. Oh, I’m an unhappy woman, between you and Dan! I am!”
Molly sank into a chair, put her apron over her face and cried, rocking herself to and fro, while Judith, with tears in her eyes, tried gentle consolations52 all in vain, till Molly remembered her washing, and rose up, moaning and lamenting53.
Meantime Mrs Carbonel and her sister were exclaiming in pity that this was a dear good girl, though Edmund shook his head over her surroundings.
“I wonder how to make her more comfortable,” said Dora. “She seemed so much pleased when I promised to bring her something to read.”
“I am afraid those Hewletts prey54 on her,” said Mary.
“And patronising her will prove a complicated affair!” said the captain.
He wanted them to come home at once, but on the way they met Nanny Barton, who began, with low curtsies, a lamentable55 story about her girls having no clothes, and she would certainly have extracted a shilling from Miss Carbonel if the captain had not been there.
“Never accept stories told on the spur of the moment,” he said.
Then Betsy Seddon and Tirzah Todd came along together, bending under heavy loads of broken branches for their fires. Tirzah smiled as usual, and showed her pretty teeth, but the captain looked after her, and said, “They have been tearing Mr Selby’s woods to pieces.”
“What can they do for firewood?” said his wife.
“Let us look out the rules of your father’s coal store and shoe club,” he said.
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1
hood
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| n.头巾，兜帽，覆盖；v.罩上，以头巾覆盖 | |
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2
mole
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| n.胎块；痣；克分子 | |
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3
clattering
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| 发出咔哒声（clatter的现在分词形式） | |
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4
stolidly
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| adv.迟钝地，神经麻木地 | |
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5
scanty
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| adj.缺乏的，仅有的，节省的，狭小的，不够的 | |
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6
neatly
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| adv.整洁地，干净地，灵巧地，熟练地 | |
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7
cuffs
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| n.袖口( cuff的名词复数 )v.掌打，拳打( cuff的第三人称单数 ) | |
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9
charing
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| n.炭化v.把…烧成炭，把…烧焦( char的现在分词 )；烧成炭，烧焦；做杂役女佣 | |
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10
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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11
frail
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| adj.身体虚弱的；易损坏的 | |
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12
prop
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| vt.支撑；n.支柱，支撑物；支持者，靠山 | |
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13
sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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14
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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15
strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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16
shameful
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| adj.可耻的，不道德的 | |
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17
foul
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| adj.污秽的；邪恶的；v.弄脏；妨害；犯规；n.犯规 | |
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18
riotous
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| adj.骚乱的；狂欢的 | |
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19
distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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20
intermittent
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| adj.间歇的，断断续续的 | |
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21
gasps
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| v.喘气( gasp的第三人称单数 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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22
horrid
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| adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的 | |
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23
blasphemy
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| n.亵渎，渎神 | |
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24
sneak
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| vt.潜行(隐藏,填石缝)；偷偷摸摸做；n.潜行；adj.暗中进行 | |
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25
coppers
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| 铜( copper的名词复数 )； 铜币 | |
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26
ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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27
abominable
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| adj.可厌的，令人憎恶的 | |
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28
nought
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| n.／adj.无，零 | |
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29
magistrates
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| 地方法官，治安官( magistrate的名词复数 ) | |
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30
toad
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| n.蟾蜍，癞蛤蟆 | |
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toads
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| n.蟾蜍，癞蛤蟆( toad的名词复数 ) | |
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32
bully
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| n.恃强欺弱者，小流氓；vt.威胁，欺侮 | |
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33
scantily
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| adv.缺乏地；不充足地；吝啬地；狭窄地 | |
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34
frightful
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| adj.可怕的；讨厌的 | |
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35
catastrophes
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| n.灾祸( catastrophe的名词复数 )；灾难；不幸事件；困难 | |
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36
virgin
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| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
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37
conversing
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| v.交谈，谈话( converse的现在分词 ) | |
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38
invalid
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| n.病人，伤残人；adj.有病的，伤残的；无效的 | |
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39
apron
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| n.围裙；工作裙 | |
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40
rusty
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| adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的 | |
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41
tangles
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| （使）缠结， （使）乱作一团( tangle的第三人称单数 ) | |
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42
discourse
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| n.论文，演说；谈话；话语；vi.讲述，著述 | |
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43
attic
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| n.顶楼，屋顶室 | |
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44
broth
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| n.原(汁)汤(鱼汤、肉汤、菜汤等) | |
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45
daggers
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| 匕首，短剑( dagger的名词复数 ) | |
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46
obedience
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| n.服从，顺从 | |
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47
helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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48
humbly
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| adv. 恭顺地，谦卑地 | |
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49
meek
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| adj.温顺的，逆来顺受的 | |
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50
cowering
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| v.畏缩，抖缩( cower的现在分词 ) | |
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51
trumpery
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| n.无价值的杂物；adj.（物品）中看不中用的 | |
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52
consolations
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| n.安慰，慰问( consolation的名词复数 )；起安慰作用的人（或事物） | |
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53
lamenting
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| adj.悲伤的，悲哀的v.（为…）哀悼，痛哭，悲伤( lament的现在分词 ) | |
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54
prey
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| n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨 | |
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55
lamentable
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| adj.令人惋惜的，悔恨的 | |
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