The Carbonels

Mary was very glad that he interrupted the subject by saying merrily, “You caught me in the midst of my Augean stable. I hope next time you are kind enough to visit us that the yard may be in a more respectable condition.”

Mr Selby observed that it was unpardonable not to have done the work beforehand, and the captain answered, “On the contrary, it was reserved as a fragrant bucket, or bouquet for a farmer’s wife.”

Whereat the visitors looked shocked, and Mary made haste to observe: “But we do hope to make a better road to the house through the fields.”

“There is a great deal to be done first,” said Dora, who thought the observation rather weak.

Nothing else that was interesting took place on this occasion. Mr Selby asked the captain whether he hunted, and gave him some information on the sport of all kinds in the neighbourhood. Miss Selby asked Dora if she liked archery, music, and drawing. Mrs Selby wanted to recommend a housemaid, and advised Mrs Carbonel against ever taking a servant from the neighbourhood. And then they all turned to talk of the evil doings of the parish thieves, poachers, idlers, drunkards, and to warn the Carbonels once more against hoping to improve them. The horses could be heard pawing and jingling outside, and, as the ladies rose to take leave, Captain Carbonel begged leave to hurry out and clear the coast. And it was well that he did so, for he had to turn back a whole procession of cows coming in to be milked, and sundry pigs behind them.

The farm court was finished, and never was so bad again, the animals being kept from spending their day there, except the poultry, in which Mary took great delight. Soon came more visitors, and it became a joke to the husband and sister that she always held out hopes of “the future drive” when they arrived, bumped or mired by the long lane. “Mary’s Approach,” as Edmund called it, had to be deferred till more needful work was done. The guests whom they best liked, Mr and Mrs Grantley, the clergyman and his wife from the little town of Poppleby, gave an excellent and hopeful account of their rector, Dr Fogram, who was, they said, a really good man, and very liberal.

Mrs Grantley was interested in schools and poor people, as it was easy to discover, and Mary and Dora were soon talking eagerly to her, and hearing what was done at Poppleby; but there were gentry and prosperous tradespeople there, who could be made available as subscribers or teachers; so that their situation was much more hopeful than that of the Carbonels, who had not the authority of the clergyman.

Poppleby was a much larger place than Downhill, on the post road to London. The mail-coach went through it, and thence post-horses were hired, and chaises, from the George Inn. The Carbonels possessed a phaeton, and a horse which could be used for driving or riding, and thus Captain Carbonel took the two ladies to return the various calls that had been made upon them. They found the Selbys not at home, but were warmly welcomed by the Grantleys, and spent the whole afternoon with them, and, at Dora’s earnest request, were taken to see the schools. So different was the taste and feeling of those days that, though Poppleby Church was a very fine old one—in grand architecture, such as in these days is considered one of the glories of the country—no one thought of going to look at it, and the effect of Mr Grantley’s excellent sermons had been the putting up of a new gallery right across the chancel arch.

It had a fine tower and steeple, and this Dora thought of as a delightful subject for a sketch from the Parsonage garden. She made great friends with Lucy Grantley, the eldest daughter, over their tastes in drawing, as well as in the Waverley novels and in poetry, and was invited to spend a long day at Poppleby and take a portrait of the steeple.

After the calls had been made and returned began the dinner-parties. Elmour Priory was so near Greenhow that it would have been easy to walk there across the fields, or to drive in the phaeton, especially as the hours were much earlier, and six or half-past was held to be a late dinner hour, but this would have been contrary to etiquette, especially the first time, with people who evidently thought much of “style,” and the Carbonels were not superior to such considerations, which were—or were supposed to be—of more importance in those days. So a chaise was ordered, and they went in state, and had a long, dull evening, chiefly enlivened by the Miss Selbys and Dora playing on the piano.

As they were going home, all round by the road, when they were near the top of the hill, before they came to the “Fox and Hounds,” the postilion first shouted and then came to a sudden stop. The captain, putting his head out at the window, saw by the faint light of a young moon, going down in the remains of sunset, that he was jumping off his horse, growling and swearing, but under his breath, when the captain sprang out. A woman was lying across the road, and had barely escaped being run over. Mary and Dora were both out in a moment.

“Poor thing, poor thing! Is it a fit? She is quite insensible.”

“A fit of a certain kind,” said the captain, who was dragging her into the hedge, while the post-boy held the horses. “Go back, Mary, Dora!”

“It is Nanny Barton!” said Dora in horror.

Mary took down one of the carriage lamps and held it to the face. “Yes, it is!” said she. “Can’t we take her home, or do anything?”

“No, no; nonsense!” said Edmund. “Don’t come near, don’t touch her. Don’t you see, she is simply dead drunk.”

“But we can’t leave her here.”

“The best thing to do! Yes, it is; but we will stop at the ‘Fox and Hounds,’ if that will satisfy you, and send some one out to see after her.”

They were obliged to be satisfied, for the tones were authoritative, and they had to accept his assurance that the woman was in no state for them to meddle with. She would come to no harm, he said, when he had put her on the bank, and it was only to pacify them that he caused the postilion to stop at the public-house, whence roaring, singing, and shouts proceeded. The landlord came out, supposing it was some new arrival, and when Captain Carbonel jumped out, and, speaking severely, desired that some one would go to look after the woman, who was lying in the road, and whom the horses had almost run over, he answered as if he had been doing the most natural and correct thing in the world.

“Yes, sir; I had just sent her home. They had been treating of her, and she had had a drop too much. She wasn’t in a proper state.”

“Proper state! No! I should think not! It is a regular shame and disgrace that you should encourage such goings on! Where’s the woman’s husband? Has no one got the humanity to come and take her home?”

Oldfellow called gruffly to some of the troop, who came reeling out to the door, and told them it was time to be off, and that some one, “You Tirzah had best see to that there Barton ’oman.”

Captain Carbonel wished to keep his ladies from the sight, but they were watching eagerly, and could not help seeing that it was Tirzah Todd, more gipsy-looking than ever, who came out. Not, however, walking as if intoxicated, and quite able to comprehend Captain Carbonel’s brief explanation where to find her companion.

“Ah, poor Nanny!” she said cheerfully. “She’s got no head! A drop is too much for her.”

The chaise door was shut, and they went on, Dora and Mary shocked infinitely, and hardly able to speak of what they had seen.

And they did not feel any happier when the next day, as Mary was feeding the chickens, Nanny came up to her curtseying and civil.

“Please, ma’am, I’m much obliged to you for seeing to me last night. I just went in to see if my husband was there, as was gone to Poppleby with some sheep, and they treated me, ma’am. And that there Tirzah and Bet Bracken, they was a-singing songs, as it was a shame to hear, so I ups and rebukes them, and she flies at me like a catamount, ma’am; and then Mr Oldfellow, he puts me out, ma’am, as was doing no harms as innocent as a lamb.”

“Well,” said Mrs Carbonel, “it was no place for any woman to be in, and we were grieved, I cannot tell you how much, that you should be there. You had better take care; you know drunkenness is a really wicked sin in God’s sight.”

“Only a little overtaken—went to see for my husband,” muttered Nanny. “I didn’t take nigh so much as that there Tirzah Todd, that is there with Bet Bracken every night of her life, to sing—”

“Never mind other people. Their doing wrong doesn’t make you right.”

“Only a drop,” argued Nanny. “And that there Tirzah and Bet—”

Mary was resolved against hearing any more against Tirzah and Bet, and actually shut herself into the granary till Nanny was gone. And there she sat down on a sack of peas and fairly cried at the thought of the sin and ignorant unconsciousness of evil all round her. And then she prayed a little prayer for help and wisdom for these poor people and themselves. Then she felt cheered up and hopeful.

Chapter Seven.

Sunday School

“She hastens to the Sunday School.”

     Jane Taylor.

Captain Carbonel had written to the President of Saint Cyril’s, and at once obtained his willing consent to the ladies attempting to form a little Sunday School. Dr Fogram said that he should come down himself on July 21, and should be very glad to take counsel with the Carbonels on the state of Uphill. He would be glad to assist if any outlay were needed.

The sisters were in high spirits. The only place they could find for the purpose was the wash-house and laundry. Once in five weeks two women, in high white muslin caps and checked aprons, of whom Betsy Seddon was one, Betty Pucklechurch the other, came to assist the maids in getting up the family linen—a tremendous piece of work. A tub was set on the Saturday, with ashes placed in a canvas bag on a frame above; water was poured on it, and ran through, so as to be fitted for the operations which began at five o’clock in the morning, and absorbed all the women of the establishment, and even old Pucklechurch, who was called on to turn the mangle.

Except during this formidable week, the wash-house and laundry were empty, and hither were invited the children. About twenty, of all ages, came—the boys in smocks, the girls in print frocks and pinafores, one in her mother’s black bonnet, others in coarse straw or sun-bonnets. All had shoes of some sort, but few had stockings, though the long frocks concealed the deficiencies, and some wore stocking-legs without feet.

They made very low bows, or pulled their forelocks, most grinned and looked sheepish, and a very little one began to cry. It did not seem very promising, but Mary and Dora began by asking all their names, and saying they hoped to be better friends. They, for the most part, knew nothing, with the exception of George Hewlett’s two eldest, Bessie Mole’s girls, and one sharp boy of Dan Hewlett’s, also the Pucklechurch grandchildren; but even these had very dim notions, and nobody but the Hewletts could tell a word of the Catechism.

To teach them the small commencement of doctrine comprised in the earliest pages of “First Truths” was all that could be attempted, as well as telling them a Bible story, to which the few intelligent ones listened with pleasure, and Johnnie Hewlett showed that he had already heard it—“from aunt,” he said. He was a sickly, quiet-looking boy, very different from his younger brother, Jem, who had organised a revolt among the general multitude before long. None of these had enough civilisation to listen or be attentive for five minutes together, and when Mrs Carbonel looked round on hearing a howl, there was a pitched battle going on between Jem and Lizzie Seddon over her little sister, who had been bribed into coming with a lump of gingerbread, which the boy was abstracting. He had been worked up enough even to lose his awe of the ladies, and to kick and struggle when Dora, somewhat imprudently, tried to turn him out.

The disturbance was so great that the sisters were obliged to dismiss their pupils at least a quarter of an hour sooner than they had intended, and without having tried to teach the short daily prayers that had been part of the programme.

Somewhat crestfallen they sped back to the house.

“Did you ever see such a set of little savages?” cried Dora.

“Come, there was a very fair proportion of hopeful ones,” was the reply.

These hopeful ones made one class under Dora, while Mary, who had more patience and experience, undertook the others, who, when once wakened, proved very eager and interested, in a degree new to those who are not the first lights in gross darkness. Johnnie Hewlett was the brightest among the children, for though his weekdays were occupied in what his mother called “keeping a few birds,” or, more technically, “bird-starving,” he spent most of his spare time beside his sick aunt, and had not only been taught by her to read, but to think, and to say his prayers.

As Dora gradually learnt, both Mary Hewlett and Judith Grey had been children of a little “smock-frock” farmer, and had not been entirely without breeding; but Molly had been the eldest, and had looked after the babies, and done much of the work of the farm, till she plunged into an early and most foolish marriage with the ne’er-do-well member of the old sawyer’s family, and had been going deeper into the mire ever since.

Judith, a good deal younger, and always delicate, had gone to the dame school when Mrs Verdon was rather less inefficient, and at ten years old had been taken into service by an old retired servant, who needed her chiefly as a companion, and thence she had been passed on to a family where the ladies were very kind to the servants, and the children brought them their books and their information of all kinds, so that she had much cultivation, religious and otherwise.

When her accident had sent her home to the only surviving member of her family, she hoped to be of use to her sister and the children; but, before long, she found it almost hopeless. Molly, indeed, was roughly kind to her, but Dan took no notice of her except to “borrow” her money, and any attempt to interfere with the management of the children was resented.

Johnnie, the eldest boy, was fond of his aunt, and soon became her best attendant when not out at the work that began at nine years old. He was willing that she should teach him, and when the ladies came to see her she was full of stories of what he had told her. She said no word of the rudeness of the girls or the tyranny of Jem, as she sat helpless by the fire. When all were out, these were pleasant peaceful visits to her, and she was grateful for the books Dora lent her, and the needlework Mrs Carbonel gave her when she was well enough to do it. Molly was not unwilling that her sister should be “a fav’rite,” as she called it, more especially as Jem was generally allowed to swallow any dainty brought by the ladies that was to his taste.