Mildred Arkell Volume I Part 32

"Things as bad with the masters as they be with us!" derisively resumed the broad-shouldered old man. "Yah! Some on you would hold a candle to the devil himself, though he appeared among ye horned and tailed! Why, I mind the time--I'm older nor some o' you be--when there warn't folks wanting to defend Huskisson! And I mind," he added, dropping his voice, "the judgment that come upon him for what he done."

"It's of no good opening up that again," cried Thomas Markham. "What Huskisson did, he did for his country's good, and he never thought it would bring the ill upon us that it did bring. I have told you over and over again of an interview our head governor--who has now been dead these ten years, as you know--had with Huskisson in London. It was on a Sunday evening in summer; and when the governor went in, Huskisson was seated at his library table, with one of the pet.i.tions sent up from Westerbury to the House of Commons, spread out before him. It was the one sent up in the May of that year, praying that the ports might be closed again--some of you are old enough to recollect it, my friends--the one in which our sufferings and wrongs were represented in truer and more painful colours than they were, perhaps, in any other of the memorials that went up. It was reported, I remember, that Mr.

William Arkell had the chief hand in drawing out that pet.i.tion: but I don't know how that might have been. Any way, it told on Mr. Huskisson; and the governor said afterwards, that if ever he saw remorse and care seated on a brow, it was on his."

"As it had cause to be!" was echoed from all parts of the room.

"Mr. Huskisson began speaking at once about the pet.i.tion," continued the manager. "He asked if the sufferings described in it were not exaggerated; but the governor a.s.sured him upon his word of honour, as a resident in Westerbury and an eye-witness, that they were underdrawn rather than the contrary; for that no pen, no description, could adequately describe the misery and distress which had been rife in Westerbury ever since the bill had pa.s.sed. And he used to say that, live as long as he would, he should never forget the look of perplexity and care that overshadowed Mr. Huskisson's face as he listened to him."

"It was repentance pressing sore upon him," growled a deep ba.s.s voice.

"It's to be hoped our famished and homeless children haunted his dreams."

"The next September he met with the accident that killed him," continued Thomas Markham; "and though I know some of us poor sufferers were free in saying it was a judgment upon him, I've always held to my opinion that if he had foreseen the misery the bill wrought, he would never have brought it forward in the House of Commons."

"Here's Shepherd a coming in! I wonder how his child is? Last night he thought it was dying. Shepherd, how's the child?"

A care-worn, pale man made his way amid the throng. He answered quietly that the child was well.

"Well! why, you said last night that it was as bad as it could be, Shepherd! You was going off for the doctor then. Did he come to it?"

"One doctor came, from up there," answered Shepherd, pointing to the sky. "He came, and He took the child."

The words could not be misunderstood, and the room hushed itself in sympathy. "When did the boy die, Shepherd?"

"To-day, at one; and it's a mercy. Death in childhood is better than starvation in manhood."

"Could Dr. Barnes do nothing for him?" inquired a compa.s.sionate voice.

"He didn't try; he opened his winder to look out at me--he was undressing to go to bed--and asked whether I had got the money to pay him if he came."

"Hiss--iss--ss!" echoed from the room.

"I answered that I had not; but I would pay him with the very first money that I could sc.r.a.pe together; and I said he might take my word for it, for that had never been broken yet."

"And he would not come?"

"No. He said he knew better than to trust to promises. And when I told him that the boy was dying, and very precious to me, the rest being girls, he said it was not my word he doubted but my ability, for he didn't believe that any of us men would ever be in work again. So he shut down his winder and doused his candle, and I went home to my boy, powerless to help him, and I watched him die."

"Drink a gla.s.s of ale, Shepherd," said Markham, getting a gla.s.s from the landlord, and filling it from his own jug.

"Thank ye kindly, but I shall drink nothing to-night," replied Shepherd, motioning back the gla.s.s. "There's a sore feeling in my breast, comrades," he continued, sighing heavily; "it has been there a long while past, but it's sorer far to-day. I don't so much blame the surgeon, for there has been a deal of sickness among us, and the doctors have been unable to get their pay. Hundreds of us are nigh akin to starvation; there's scarcely a crust between us and death; we desire only to work honestly, and we can't get work to do. As I sat to-day, looking at my dead boy, I asked what we had done to have this fate thrust upon us?"

"What have we done? That's it!--what have we done?"

"But I did not come here to-night to grumble," resumed Shepherd, "I came for a specific purpose, though perhaps I mayn't succeed in it. I went down to Jasper, the carpenter, to-day, to ask him to come and take the measure for the little coffin. Well, he's like all the rest, he won't trust me; at last he said, if anybody would go bail he should be paid later, he'd make it; and I have come down to ye, friends, to ask who'll stand by me in this?"

A score of voices answered, each that he would--eager, sympathizing voices--but Shepherd shook his head. There was not one among them whose word the carpenter would take, for they were all out of work. In the silence that ensued, Shepherd rose to leave.

"Many thanks for the good-will, neighbours," he said. "And I don't grumble at my unsuccess, for I know how powerless many of ye are to aid me. But it's a bitter trial. I would rather my boy had never been born than that he should come to be buried by the parish. G.o.d knows we have heavy burdens to bear."

"Shepherd!" cried the clear voice of Thomas Markham, "I will stand by you in this. Tell Jasper I pa.s.s my word to see him paid."

Shepherd turned back and grasped the hand of Thomas Markham.

"I can't thank you as I ought, sir," he said; "but you have took a load from my heart. Though you were never repaid here, you would be hereafter; for I have come to feel a certainty that if our good deeds are not brought home to us in this world, they are only kept to speak for us in the next."

"I say, stop a minute, Shepherd," called out James Jones, as the man was again making his way to the door. "What made you go to Jasper? He's always cross-grained after his money, he is. Why didn't you go to White?"

"I did go to White first," answered Shepherd, turning to speak; "but White couldn't take it. He has got the job for all the new wooden chairs that are wanted for this concert at the town-hall, and hadn't time for coffins."

The mention was the signal for an outburst. It came from all parts of the room, one noise drowning another. Why couldn't a concert be got up for them? Weren't they as good as the Poles? Hadn't they bodies and souls to be saved as well as the Poles? Wasn't there a whole town of 'em starving under the very noses of them as had got up the concert? They could tell the company that French revolutions had growed out of less causes.

"And _I_'ll tell ye what," roared out the old man with the broad shoulders, bringing his fist down on the table with such force that the clatter amidst the cups and gla.s.ses caused a sudden silence. "Every gentleman that puts his foot inside that there concert room, is no true man, and I'd tell him so to his face, if 'twas the Lord Lieutenant.

What do our people want a fattening up of them there Poles, while we be starving? I wish the Poles was----"

"Hold your tongue, Lloyd," interposed Markham. "It's not the fault of the Poles, any more than it's ours; so where's the use of abusing them?"

"Yah!" responded Mr. Lloyd.

CHAPTER XVII.

A DIFFICULTY ABOUT TICKETS.

Amidst those who held a strong opinion on the subject of the concert--and it did not in any great degree differ from the men's--was Mr. Arkell. Mrs. Arkell knew of this, but never supposed it would extend to the length of keeping her away from it: or perhaps she wilfully shut her eyes to any suspicion of the sort.

On the morning preceding the concert, she was seated making up some pink bows, intended to adorn the white spotted muslin robes of her daughters, when the explanation came. She said something about the concert--really inadvertently--and Mr. Arkell took it up.

"You are surely not thinking of going to the concert?" he exclaimed.

"Indeed I am. I shall go and take Lottie and Sophy."

"Then, Charlotte, I desire that you will put away all thoughts of it,"

he said. "I could not allow my wife and daughters to appear at it."

"Why not? why not?" she asked in irritation.

"There is not the least necessity for my going over the reasons; you have heard me say already what I think of this concert. It is a gratuitous insult on our poor starving people, and neither I nor mine shall take part in it."

"All the influential people in the town are supporting it, and will be there."

"Not so universally as you may imagine. But at any rate what other people do is no rule for me. I should consider it little less than a sin to purchase tickets, and I will not do it, or allow it to be done."

Mrs. Arkell gave a flirt at the ribbon in her hand, and sent it flying over the table.

"What will Charlotte and Sophy say? Pleasant news this will be for them!