The Carbonels Part 14

"I could not do it, ma'am! I am sorry, sorry to the heart, to seem ungrateful for her kindness; but, indeed, I could not do it. I cannot leave my sister and the children."

"You would be so much more comfortable--so much better looked after."

"Yes, ma'am, I know that. Mrs Gregg is one of the best of women, and so kind. It is very good of her to be willing to take me in; but--"

"You need not be afraid of the journey. Mrs Barnard will come for you."

"Oh yes, ma'am, I know; but there's my sister, ma'am, and her children.

I could not leave them."

"I was afraid they did not know how to take care of you, and that your brother-in-law was rough with you."

"My sister have been much better of late, since you have been here, ma'am; and the poor children, ma'am, I can do something for them."

"I see that John and Judy seem to respond to your care; but is it right to give up all your comfort and peace, and even your health, for so little as you are enabled to do for them? It would be better if there were some appreciation of your care, or some attention paid--"

"Molly is generally good to me. Yes, she is, ma'am; and poor little Johnnie, there ain't nothing he would not do for me. I'm greatly obliged to Mrs Barnard and the dear young ladies. I would dearly like to see them again; but Molly is my sister, and my sister is my sister, and I can't feel it right to leave her."

"I honour you, Judith. It is a right feeling. But when they neglect you, and prey upon you, can it be inc.u.mbent on you to give up all for their sakes?"

"I don't know, ma'am; but my poor sister, she has a hard life, and I think her husband would be worse to her if I went away. I couldn't have no comfort in thinking of them if I did."

"Do they know of this? Have they been persuading you?"

"No, ma'am; I did not say a word. Molly was out, and I wanted to think it out without being worried and terrified."

"Quite right, Judith. I am glad they do not know," said Mary, who had learned that "terrified" did not mean frightened, but "tormented." "I can well believe you have decided in true unselfishness, and in the fear of G.o.d. But if you see reason to change your mind, let me know in the course of the week."

Dora and Sophy were really quite angry at Judith's refusal, especially Dora, who had taken all the trouble of representing her condition to the Barnards.

"I should call it ungrateful," she said, "only I believe it is pure weakness and folly. Those people have been bullying her and tormenting her out of consenting."

"You are wrong, Dora," said her sister, "they know nothing about it!

This is all her own doing."

"And," said Edmund, "if you were older, Dora, you would know how to appreciate a very n.o.ble act of self-denial."

Dora did not at all like Edmund to talk of her being older; but what he had said gave her something to think about, and she began to reverence the feeling that made Judith Grey choose the rough and ungenial life with the Hewletts, to comfort and sympathy with her friends.

Mrs Carbonel and Judith were mistaken in thinking the transaction could pa.s.s unknown to the rest of the family. Polly was near at hand, but had hidden herself, on the lad's approach, for fear of being called to account for not being at school, and she reported to her mother that "Madam Gobbleall had been ever so long with aunt, a-trying to persuade her to go away, and live with them fine folks as she was in service with."

Molly had a certain real affection for her sister; but to both her and Dan, the removal would be like the loss of the goose that laid the golden eggs, and there is no saying what poor Judith had to go through.

Molly came and cried torrents of tears, taking it for granted that Judith meant to go, and must be frightened out of it. It was of no use to declare that she had refused the lady. Molly was so much in the habit of semi-deception, that she could not believe the a.s.surance; and to hear her lamentations over her dear sister, for whom no one could do like a blood-relation, and her horror at the idea of strangers being preferred to herself, one would have thought--as indeed she believed herself--that she was Judith's most devoted and indefatigable nurse.

And to think of them Gobblealls being so sly, such snakes in the gra.s.s, as to try to get her away, unknownst! She would not have them prying about her house again.

Dan declared it was all the cunning of them, for fear Judith should become chargeable to the parish, and there! her fine friends would die, or give her up, or she would just be thrown on the parish, and pa.s.sed on to a strange workhouse, and then she would see what she got by leaving her kin. It was just like their sly tricks!

In point of fact, if Judith had become chargeable to the parish, Dan's remarks would have been equally true of Uphill, whence she would have been handed to the place where her father had lived, and it was the object of every place to dispose of all superfluous paupers. But Dan and Molly wished her to imagine them willing to keep her freely, in case of a failure of the supplies!

Poor thing! They really thought that their opposition had induced her to drop the idea, and that it was for their own ease, or the good of the rates, that the Carbonel ladies had tried to persuade her to leave them.

Molly did not forbid the ladies the house--there was too much to be made out of the pickings from their presents--so Judith did not lose the cheerfulness and comfort they brought her; but Dan laid up the proposal in his mind as another cause of hatred and ill-will to Captain Carbonel.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

SCALES OF JUSTICE.

"Thou hast appointed justices of peace to call poor men before them for matters they were not able to answer."--_Shakespeare_.

When the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares was spoken, the Blessed and only Wise foresaw the extreme difficulty of rooting out the tares without injuring the wheat, when the work is done by the ignorant or hasty hands of the servants.

So it was at Uphill. Captain Carbonel was made a county magistrate, and thus had more power in his hands, and his most earnest wish and prayer was to use it for the good of the parish. But things were very difficult. At the vestry, the farmers agreed with him that Barton and Morris ought not to have additional parish relief, great strong men as they were, who had both refused extra hours of labour offered by farmers, of a kind they did not like, and now demanded help on the score of their large families. In fact, it had become the custom to demand relief for every fresh child that was born, and the men were often idle in consequence. There were men with many children who had never come on the parish, because they were trustworthy and sober, and their wives were thrifty. Each magistrate could point to several of these, and each knew how the small and struggling ratepayers were oppressed. Nor could it be fair that these men should be maintained in idleness or dawdling at the expense of the hard-working small shopkeepers.

Every gentleman on the bench who had weakly yielded before, and had given an order to whoever tramped over to ask for it, was very glad to have some one who would speak out, and take the burthen of unpopularity.

So the order was not given, and Barton and Morris walked home disappointed, but not till they had each taken a pint or two of beer at the "Blue Lion" on their way home, uttering many curses on "that there Gobbleall." Captain Carbonel did not hear those same curses, but as he rode home he saw the two men stagger out of the "Blue Lion," refreshed not only by their own pints, but by those of sympathisers. And the sight did not make him sorry for what he had done, knowing well that George Hewlett, c.o.x the cobbler, and Mrs Holly, the widow with a small shop, were almost borne down with the rates, and not seeing why they should toil that Billy and Nanny Barton should lounge and drink.

Billy Barton, however, did more. He joined an expedition which Dan Hewlett was already organising with Joe Todd, as much for revenge as profit, to have a night of poaching in Mr Selby's woods, in which there were a number of fine pheasants, not so many as at present where preserves are strictly kept, but poaching was more profitable in some ways, since in those days poulterers were not allowed to sell game openly, but gave a higher price to men who could contrive to convey it to them, and then sold it at a great profit to pretentious people, who had no friends to give it to them, but who wanted to show it at their dinner-parties. Tirzah Todd, as usual, was the means of disposing of most of these gains. Her lively ways made poulterers and servants inclined to further her dealings.

She was a great deal too sharp to carry any save her lawful wares to Greenhow Farm; but in the last year since the Carbonels had come, especially since the captain had been a magistrate, the trade had been less prosperous and required more caution. Once Captain Carbonel had found a wire for a hare in his hedge, and had made it known that he should prosecute any one whom he caught out. He was no eager sportsman himself, but he had a respect for the law.

The poachers arranged a raid upon the Selby woods, in which Joe Todd, Dan Hewlett, and Billy Barton all took part. The first of these was too sharp to be caught by the keepers. He had all the litheness and cunning of his gipsy blood, and was actually safe in the branches of a tree overhead, while Dan, having put his foot into a rabbit-hole, was seized by one keeper, with his gun and a bag of spoil, and Billy Barton, in his bewilderment, ran straight into the arms of another, with a pheasant's tail poking up his short smock-frock as it stuck out of his pocket.

Of course Mr Selby could not commit for an offence against himself, so Hewlett and Barton were hauled off to Captain Carbonel, while their wives begged to see madam, and they were conducted to the verandah, for the justice business was going on in the large kitchen. No doubt they expected, though Nanny had read no novels, that the magistrate would sit enthroned in the most public place in the house, that the women would weep, that the ladies, with softened hearts, would throw themselves before him, like Queen Philippa at Calais, and beg off the victims. Of what could, should, or ought to be done, they had no notion; and of course they were both in terrible distress, Nanny crying pa.s.sionately into her ap.r.o.n, and protesting--whenever she could get voice between her sobs, that if the good lady would get the good gentleman to forgive him this time--he would never, never do so no more. While Molly Hewlett, who had some remnants of old respectability about her, was trying her utmost to induce Mrs Carbonel to intercede.

It was the first time. He was led to it. It was for sport. He had never done it before. To be sure madam would not let 'em be hard on poor Judith's brother. No Hewlett--no, nor any Grey--had ever been in prison before! He was just drove to it, because that there George would give him no work! She and her poor children would have to come to the workhouse, and poor Judith! Nanny, too, began to cry out about her poor children and the parish.

Meanwhile Mrs Carbonel had been trying to get in a word to make them understand that the matter did not rest with the captain, and that he had no choice at all in the question but to commit them to gaol to take their trial. He had no power to let them off, and she could do nothing, though she was sincerely sorry for the wives; but they neither heard nor tried to hear, and as the cart was driven up by Master Pucklechurch, the keeper, and the constable c.o.x, to the back door for the handcuffed prisoners, weeping and wailing of the loudest arose, and the women darted round to embrace their husbands, evidently expecting Mrs Carbonel to a.s.sure them that she would charge herself with the support of their families while they were in prison.

She was so much distressed, and so pitiful, that she was just going to do something of the kind, but her husband's gesture stopped her. Billy Barton howled more loudly than his wife, and, as he could not raise his hands to his face, presented a terrible spectacle, though the captain declared there were no tears to be seen. Dan stood grim, stolid, and impa.s.sive, and if he spoke at all, it was in a muttered oath at the noise his wife was making. It was a great relief when the cart was driven off, followed by the two women, and Captain Carbonel exclaimed--

"Poor creatures! That Barton is a fool, but Mr Dan is something worse."

"Oh, those poor women! Why would you not let me speak, Edmund, and promise that they should not starve?"

"The parish will take care of that, Mary; you need not be afraid."

"It sounds so hard-hearted," said Dora and Sophy to each other.

But Edmund did not prevent, nor wish to prevent, their going to see Judith, nor taking with them much more solid food than she was in the habit of eating. Thick sandwiches and lumps of cold pudding were likewise conveyed to the Barton children at school, so that probably they fared much better than was their usual habit.

Judith said she was sorry that Dan should go for to do such a thing, but she was less indignant than Dora expected, and she cried, though more quietly than her sister, when he was sentenced to three months'

imprisonment. It was to be said for Molly Hewlett, that enough of her old training remained about her to keep her a sober woman, but Captain Carbonel saw Nanny Barton reeling out of the "Blue Lion" on the day of the conviction, much the worse for the treatings she had enjoyed by way of consolation.

If George Hewlett had any strong feelings about his brother's disaster, he did not communicate them; he went about his work just as usual, and whistled as much as ever. But he took Johnnie, who was only eleven years old, into his workshop, and gave him eighteenpence a week for doing what he could; and he turned out handy, diligent, and trustworthy, so as to be fully worth the money, and thus to stay on when his father came out of prison.

Dan was much the same man as when he went into gaol, save that his hatred to Captain Carbonel had increased.