The Carbonels

“Hush! not so loud, my dear,” said Dora, getting out of the back seat, and Edmund, being busy in telling the groom to attend to something in the harness, did not heed at first.

“Did you know, Dora?” asked Sophy, in a lower voice, being struck by something in her repressive manner.

“Yes; but I did not tell, because Edmund was so much vexed, and it was of no use now.”

Dora really hoped no one had heard, as Mary was busy with her parcels, and she was too fond of Judith not to wish to shield her family; but it was too late. The captain came in with, “What’s this about the drawing-room paper?”

Sophy was delighted to pour out the history of her discovery, and tell how it appeared on the screen that sheltered poor Judith Grey.

“Exactly as I supposed,” said Captain Carbonel. “I always believed that fellow was a thief.”

“But it is not poor Judith’s fault,” exclaimed the sisters, with one voice.

“She knew nothing about it. She wanted to pay the shilling for it,” said Sophia.

The captain laughed a little.

“And she is going to search for a bit to go up there!” continued the girl more vehemently; and he laughed again.

“Yes,” said Mary, “if you only saw something of her, you would be convinced that her whole character is very different from that of the rest of the family.”

“Don’t you be taken in by plausibility,” said the captain. “I know that fellow Dan is a thief. I meant to tell his relation, George, that I won’t allow him to be employed on the new schoolroom. I shall do so now.”

“Would it not be better to forget what happened so long ago?” Mary ventured to say.

“And suppose Judith restores it,” added Sophia.

“Pshaw!” said the captain; but Mary followed him to the study, and what she did with him there her sisters did not know, but it resulted in his allowing that Dan might have another trial, with a sharp eye over him.

So unused was Uphill to the visits of ladies, that when the piece of French paper was sold to Judith, no one had thought of her being sought out in her bedroom. Molly came home with the children in the evening, tired out but excited—for all had had rather more beer than was good for them, and the children a great many more sweets. Jem and Judy were quarrelling over a wooden horse covered with white spots, but whose mane had already disappeared, Lizzie was sick, cross, and stupid, Polly had broken the string of her new yellow necklace, and was crying about it, and nobody had recollected the aunt except Johnnie, who presented her with a piece of thin gingerbread representing King George the Fourth, in white, pink, and gilt! Molly herself was very tired, though she said it was all very fine, and she had seen a lot of people, and the big sleeves they wore were quite a wonder. Then she scolded Polly with all her might for crying and never setting the tea, nor boiling the kettle; and, after all, it was Johnnie who made up the fire, fetched water, and set the kettle boiling. They all wrangled together over their purchases, and the sights they had seen, or not seen, while Judith was glad to be out of the way of seeing, though not of hearing. Then the girls trailed themselves upstairs. Judy slept with her aunt, Polly and Lizzie had a kind of shake-down on a mattress of chaff or hulls, as she called it, by her side. Judith always insisted on their prayers, but they said they were much too tired to-night, and could not say anything but “Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,” which was all they knew except the Lord’s Prayer. Judith had taught them this, but they thought the repeating it a very difficult ceremony, far too hard when they were tired.

Their mother went to bed soon afterwards, taking Jem with her, and so did Johnnie, all being anxious to get what sleep they could before the dreaded moment of father’s return. Public-houses were not obliged to close at any special time in those days, and the home-coming, especially on a fair day, was apt to be a terrible affair. It was not till past one o’clock that shouts, broken bursts of singing, and howls of quarrelling announced the break-up of the riotous party, and presently the door bounced open, and with oaths at the darkness, though there was bright moonlight, Dan stumbled in and staggered upstairs, overturning the unlucky screen upon Polly as he did so, cursing and swearing at them all, and ordering his wife to get up and open the door, which he was past finding. He did not attack Judith, though he almost fell over her bed, and the two girls lay trembling, not daring to lift off the screen till the door of the bedroom was shut on them; and then came the only too well-known sound of their mother scolding and crying, and his swearing and beating her.

They were only too much used to such disturbance, and were asleep again before it was over; but Judith could only lie on, shaking with terror—not personal—but at the awful words she heard, and praying that they might not be visited on that unhappy household, but that God would forgive.

It was not till the next day when the house was tolerably quiet, and Molly, rather fretful and grumbling, had helped Judith down to her place by the fire, that she ventured the question, “Molly, you have not a bit more of that pretty wall-paper you gave me for my screen?”

“Did it get broke last night in Dan’s drunken tantrums?”

“Not more than I can mend, but little Miss Sophia, she says that the paper in the Greenhow drawing-room is quite spoilt for want of a piece to cover up a bit that was put on wrong.”

“My patience! And how did Miss Sophia come to know anything about it?”

“She came up to see me, and bring those cutlets that you are warming up now.”

“Bless me! Well, Dan will be vexed,” said Molly. “Such mean folk as they are, a-peeping and a-prying after everything! They knows how to look after whatever they chooses to say is their own; and the captain, he made a row before about that there trumpery yard or two of paper that was the parkisit of them that hung it.”

“Miss Sophy says it spoilt the room.”

“Sp’ilt it! They’ve little to vex ’em that is terrified about that!”

“But have you got the bit, Molly?”

“I never had it! Dan kept it in the outhouse. He may have a scrap left, that he used to make caps for the Christmas boys when he used the rest to paper Mrs Hunter’s closet with down at Downhill. Your piece was left over of that, and may be there was half-a-yard more; but he locks that there workshop of his, so as one can’t get in to get a bit of shavings to light the fire. So you must ask him. I am sure I dare not do it. He’s that angry if one does but look into his shop.”

“I must try and get it!” said Judith.

“Not now, I wouldn’t,” entreated Molly. “What is it to the ladies? And father, he will be fit to tear the place down if he hears of it! Them Gobblealls is set again him already, and ’tis just taking away our bread to say a bit more about it to them folks. George Hewlett is particular enough already, without having a work about this.”

Poor Judith, she felt as if she could never be at peace with her conscience, while she had those yellow laburnums in sight in her room, and she did not see how restitution and confession could injure her brother-in-law; but her code of right and wrong was very different from that of either husband or wife.

Molly went on maundering about the hardship of having taken in a poor helpless thing, and having stood between her and the workhouse, only that she should turn a viper and a spy, and take her poor children’s bread out of their mouths, forgetting that Jem was at the very moment eating up the piece of apple-pie that had come with the cutlets.

Judith tried to get her thoughts together, and decided that, however much she might dread Dan’s anger, and care for his interest and family peace, it was her duty to do her best to recover whatever remnant was possible of his booty. So when he came home to dinner she ventured to ask him if he had a piece left of that paper of her screen.

“Why?” he asked, turning on her as if he hoped to make more of whatever he had.

She told him timidly, and it was as she had feared. He began abusing her violently for letting spies up into her room, and turning against him, that let her have her house-room, and “worriting” them all with her hypocritical ways. He could tell her there was nothing between her and the workhouse, and all was interspersed with oaths, terrible to hear.

Molly began taking her part, and declaring that Judith could not help it if little miss would come into her room; but Dan, who had qualified last night’s revel with another mug of ale, was quite past all reason, and declared that Judith called the girl up on purpose to bring him into trouble, and that nothing but harm had ever come of her canting, Methody ways, and he had a good mind to kick her out at once to the workhouse, and would do so, if she brought them Gobblealls down on him again. There had been nothing but plague ever since they came into the parish, and he wouldn’t have them come poll-prying about his house. No, he wouldn’t.

Judith knew this was a vain threat, for he was always out of the house when they came, and she also knew that he was the last man to give up the small payment that she was in the habit of making quarterly, or what was begged from her besides, so she was not afraid of any such measure; but she was much shaken, and felt quite ill afterwards, and Molly did not stint her blame and lamentations. Nothing happened in consequence, except that, from that time forward, Dan’s incipient dislike to “they Gobblealls” was increased, and they could do nothing which he did not find fault with; though his wife, grumbling at them all the time, was quite willing to get everything possible out of them.

Chapter Ten.

Innovations

“Timotheus placed on high
Among the tuneful choir,
With flying fingers touched the lyre.”

    Dryden.

On the first of October the new beginning was to be made. The new curate, Mr Harford, arrived, and spent his first few days at Greenhow, while looking out for a lodging at Downhill, for he was to be shared between the two parishes as before, and Mr Atkins still undertook to assist on Sundays. Mr Harford looked very young, almost a boy, and was small and thin, but not in the least delicate. He had only worked off his superfluous flesh in study and parish cares at Oxford, and he was likely to do the same in his new home. He looked on it as likely to be his residence for a long time, for, as the President had already told Mrs Carbonel, he was engaged to a young lady, whose father would not consent to her marriage till he had a living worth 500 pounds a year, and there were a good many fellows senior to him.

He seemed to have no fears of any amount of work, and the first thing he thought of was how to arrange for Uphill to have two services on Sunday, as he thought could be contrived by giving the Downhill people, who mostly lived near the church, their second service in the evening instead of the morning; and, as Mr Atkins would thus have more to do, he gave up to that gentleman the addition to his stipend, which the President had offered to himself. The boon was great to the Greenhow family, who had often been hindered by weather from getting to Downhill. Moreover, he had plans for one service and sermon in the week, and for a cottage lecture at a distant hamlet.

Also, in the first fortnight of his stay, he had called at every house, alike in Downhill and Uphill, to the great surprise of some of the families, who had not in the memory of man seen a parson cross their threshold. Some did not like it, such as old Dame Verdon, who, though she could hardly get out of bed, was very sore about the new school; and when her friends came to see her, told them wonderful stories which she had picked up—or Lizzie had from some hawker—that the gentlefolks thought there were too many children for the rates and taxes, and they were going to get them all into the school, and make an end of them. Sometimes she said it was by “giving of them all the cowpox,” as Dame Spurrell called vaccination as the fashion was in those parts, sometimes it was by sending them all out to Botany Bay.

And as Mrs Carbonel had prevailed on the new gardener’s wife to have her baby vaccinated, and George Hewlett’s and Mrs Mole’s children had been thence treated by her own hands, this was believed the more, although none of the children were visibly the worse for it after the first few days; but some of the women, and almost all the children believed the story, and many of the little ones were in fits of terror about the school, so that there was a falling off even with the Sunday School. The new school was only an additional room to a good-sized cottage, with a couple of windows and a brick floor, fitted with forms without backs, but which had at least good firm legs to stand upon, pegs for the cloaks and head-gear round the walls, and a single desk, likely to be quite sufficient for the superior few who were to learn writing and summing. The stock, obtained from the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, consisted of a dozen copies of Mrs Trimmer’s Abridgment of the Old Testament, the same number of the lady’s work on the New Testament, a packet of little paper books of the Sermon on the Mount, the Parables and the Miracles, and another packet of little books, where the alphabet led the way upwards from ba, bo, etcetera, to “Our cat can kill a rat; can she not?” Also the broken Catechism, and Sellon’s Abridgment of instruction on the Catechism. There were a housewife full of needles, some brass thimbles, and a roll of calico provided, and this was the apparatus with which most village schools would commence.

Mrs Thorpe arrived with her two little girls, the neatest of creatures, still wearing her weeds, as indeed widows engaged in any business used to do for life as a sort of protection. Under her crape borders showed the smoothest of hair, and her apron was spotlessly white. The two little girls were patterns, with short cut hair, spotted blue frocks and checkered pinafores in the week, lilac frocks on Sundays; white capes on that same day, and bonnets of coarse straw, tied down with green ribbon, over little bonnet caps with plain net frilling, the only attempt at luxury apparent in their dress. Their names were Jane and Mary, and they looked very pretty and demure, though there was a little mischief in Mary’s eyes. Nothing could look nicer or more promising in the eyes of the sisters when they took her to her cottage, nor could any one be better pleased than she to work under her own young ladies, and to have so peaceful a home for her little daughters. She was introduced to her future scholars on Sunday in the wash-house, and very shy and awkward did they look, nor were the numbers as large as usual.

Mr Harford came to open the school on Monday morning, and the ladies met him there. The room was in beautiful order, and presently the younger Moles, the George Hewletts, the Seddons, the Pucklechurch grandchildren, and about half-a-dozen more dropped in; but no one else appeared, and these stood handling their pennies and looking sheepish.

Mr Harford, after looking out to see whether any one else was coming, addressed them in words a little too fine for their comprehension, and then read a few prayers, after which he and Mrs Carbonel went away, taking the unwilling Sophy to her lessons, but leaving Dora to follow when she had heard the names called over, and inaugurated the work; and their journey was enlivened by meeting a child with flying hair and ragged garments rushing headlong, so as to have only just time to turn off short over a gap in a field where some men who were ploughing called out, “Run, little one, run; she’ll catch thee!” with a great shouting laugh, and at the same moment appeared, with a big stick in her hand, Nancy Morris in full chase, her cap on the back of her head, and looking not much less wild than her offspring.

However, she drew up at the sight of the clergyman and the lady, pulled her cap forward and her apron to the middle, curtsied low, and in a voice of conscious merit, though out of breath, explained that she was “arter Elizabeth,” who was that terrifying and contrary that she would not go to school.