The Carbonels

“Be they Gobblealls not coming home?” asked Nanny Barton, as she stood at her gate, while some of her neighbours came slowly out of church, about two years later.

“My man, he did ask Shepherd Tomkins,” said Betsy Seddon, “and all the answer he got was, ‘You don’t desarve it, not you.’ As if my man had gone out with that there rabble rout!”

“And I’m sure mine only went up to see what they were after, and helped to put out the fire beside.”

“Ay,” said Cox, behind her, “but not till the soldiers were come.”

“Time they did come!” said Seddon. “Rain comes through the roof, and that there Lawyer Brent won’t have nothing done to it till the captain comes home.”

“Yes,” added Morris, “and when I spoke to him about my windows, as got blown in, he said ‘cottages were no end of expense, and we hadn’t treated them so as they would wish to come back nohow.’”

“Think of their bearing malice!” cried Nanny Barton.

“I don’t believe as how they does,” responded the other Nanny. “They have sent the coals and the blankets all the same.”

“Bear malice!” said Mrs Truman, who had just walked up. “No, no. Why, Parson Harford have said over and over again, when he gave a shilling or so or a meat order, to help a poor lady that was ill, that ’twas by madam’s wish.”

“And Governess Thorpe, she has the bag of baby-linen and half a pound of tea for any call,” said Mrs Spurrell.

“But one looks for the friendly word and the time of day,” sighed Betsy Seddon.

“The poor children, they don’t half like their school without the ladies to look in,” said Mrs Truman. “It is quite a job to get them there without Miss Sophy to tell them stories.”

“I can’t get mine to go at all on Sundays,” said Nanny Morris.

“And,” added Betsy Seddon, “I’m right sure my poor Bob would never have ’listed for a soldier if the captain had been at home to make Master Pucklechurch see the rights of things, and not turn him off all on a suddent.”

“Master Pucklechurch, he don’t believe they are never coming back,” said Widow Mole, who had just come that way as an evening walk with her children. “He says little miss, and madam too, have their health so much better out there, that they won’t like to come home. And yet they have made the place like a picture. I was up there to help Sue Pucklechurch clean it up, and ’tis just a pleasure to see all the new outhouses and sheds, as you might live in yourself, and well off too.”

“And that it should all be for them Pucklechurches,” sighed Seddon.

“I heerd tell,” said Mrs Truman, “that Lawyer Brent was to come and live in the house, and that was why they are making it so nice.”

On this there arose a general wail of lamentation, and even of indignation. Nobody loved Lawyer Brent, who was a hard, if a just, man, anxious for his employer’s good, but inclined, in spite of all cautions, to grind the tenants. To hear of his coming to Greenhow was dismal news to all concerned, and there was such a buzz of doleful inquiries that Mr Harford stopped on his way home to ask what was the matter.

“Oh no,” he said, when he heard. “Captain and Mrs Carbonel are coming home in the spring, only they wished to travel slowly, so as to see something of foreign parts. You need not be afraid. We shall have them back again, and I hope nobody will be as foolish as before. I am sure they have quite forgiven.”

And, on a fine spring day, the bells were ringing at the church, and everybody stood out at the cottage doors, curtseying and bowing with delight and welcome; and Mrs Carbonel and Miss Sophia and Miss Mary, looking rosy, healthy, and substantial, and even little Master Edmund was laughing and nodding, and looking full of joy. While the captain walked up with Mr Harford, and greeted every one with kindly, hearty words. No one could doubt that they were glad to be at home again, and after all that had come and gone, that they felt that these were their own people whom they loved.

Chapter Twenty Eight.

Conclusion

“The work be Thine, the fruit Thy children’s part.”

    —Keble.

Look at Uphill Priors in the year 1880. Here are the mothers coming out of the mothers’ meeting. They look, in their neat hats and jackets, better on this week-day than any one would have done on Sunday sixty years ago. They are, many of them, the granddaughters, or grandsons’ wives, of the inhabitants in those old times; but they have not the worn, haggard faces that their parents had when far younger, except one or two poor things who have drunken husbands. Miss Carbonel (young Miss Carbonel) and the vicar’s wife have been working with them, and reading to them things that the Bettys and Nannys of those days would not have understood or cared for.

The white-haired lady, who stops her donkey-chaise to exchange some affectionate, kindly words, and give out a parcel or two—she is Miss Sophia; and those elderly women who cluster round for a greeting, they are her old scholars. Those black eyes are Hoglah’s; that neat woman is Judy! Yes, she has lived among them, and worked among them all her life, never forgetting that “no good work can be done without drudgery.” She has her Girls’ Friendly Society class still in her own little house, though she has dropped most of her regular out-of-door work of late years. For the vicar—there is a vicar now—and his daughters teach constantly in the schools. The children are swarming out now, orderly and nice, even superior in appearance to some of the mothers they run up to; and as to learning, the whole parish can read and write, and the younger ones can send out a letter that would be no disgrace to a lady or a gentleman.

There is a machine, with its long tail of spikes, coughing along as it blows off the steam at Farmer Goodenough’s. No one dreams of meddling with it to do any harm. Wages are better, food is cheaper, and there are comforts in the house of every one tolerably thrifty that the grandmothers look at as novelties. John and George Hewlett, carpenters and builders, have a handsome shop and large workshop in the street.

All this has come in the way of gradual change, brought about not by rioting, but by the force of opinion, and the action of those in authority.

But how have people been fitted to make a good use of these things—not to waste them, but to use them as God’s good gifts? There has been a quiet influence at work ever since “they Gobblealls” came up the roughness of the lanes, and “Mary’s approach” was given up.

Captain Edmund, and Mary his wife, lie in their quiet graves, but the work they did—by justice, by kindness, by teaching, by example—has gone on growing, and Miss Sophia looks at it, and is thankful, as she still gives her best in love and experience to the young generation who are with her and look up to her for help and counsel.

The church is beautiful now, not only to look at, nor merely in the well-performed music of the services, but in the number and devotion of the worshippers and communicants. Of course, all is not perfect in the place—never, never will it be so in this world; but the boys and youths can, and often are, saved from a fit of thoughtless heathenism by their clubs and their guilds, and the better families are mostly communicants. Blots there are, and the vicar sometimes desponds when some fresh evil crops up; but Miss Sophia always tells him to hope, and that—

“The many prayers, the holy tears, the nurture in the Word,
Have not in vain ascended up before the Gracious Lord.”

Finis