Читать книгу 1851 - Henry Mayhew - Страница 5

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“Heaste, Jenny! put the bairns to bed,

And mind they say their prayers.

Sweet innocents! their heads yence down,

They sleep away their cares!

But gi’ them first a butter-shag;

When young, they munnet want,—

Nor ever sal a bairn o’ mine

While I’ve a bit to grant.”

The Happy Family.

The younger Sandboys took the departure of the villagers more to heart than did their mother; though, true to her woman’s nature, had the trip been anywhere but to London, she would have felt hurt at not making one of the pleasure party. On reaching home, she and Mr. Sandboys congratulated one another that they were not on their way to suffer the miseries of a week’s residence amidst either the dirt or the wickedness of the metropolis; but Elcy and Jobby began, for the first time, to feel that the retirement, which they heard so much vaunted every day, and which so many persons came from all parts of the country to look at and admire, cut them off from a considerable share of the pleasures which all the world else seemed so ready to enjoy, and which they began shrewdly to suspect were not quite so terrible as their father was in the habit of making out.

Thus matters continued at Hassness till the next Tuesday evening, when Mrs. Sandboys remarked that it was “very strange” that “Matthew Harker, t’ grocer, had not been to village” with his pony and cart that day; and what she s’ud do for t’ tea, and sugar, and soft bread, she didn’t know.

Now, seeing that the nearest grocer was ten miles distant, and that there was no borrowing this necessary article from any of their neighbours, as the whole village was then safely housed in London, such a failure in the visit of the peripatetic tea-man, upon whom the inhabitants of Buttermere and Crummock Water one and all depended for their souchong, and lump, and moist, and wheaten bread, was a matter of more serious importance than a townsman might imagine.

It was therefore arranged that Postlethwaite their man should take Paddy t’ pony over to Keswick the next day, to get the week’s supply of grocery, and learn what had happened to Harker, in whom the Sandboys took a greater interest from the fact of their having subscribed, with others of the gentry, when Harker lost his hand by blasting cobbles, to start him in the grocery business, and provide him with a horse and cart to carry his goods round the country.

Postlethwaite—a long, grave, saturnine-looking man, who was “a little” hard of hearing, was, after much shouting in the kitchen, made to comprehend the nature of his errand. But he had quitted Hassness only a short hour, when he returned with the sad intelligence—which he had picked up from Ellick Crackenthorpe, who was left in charge of Keskadale, while the family had gone to town,—that Harker, finding all the folk about Keswick had departed for the Great Exhibition, and hearing that Buttermere had done the same, had put his wife and his nine children inside his own van, and was at that time crawling up by easy stages to London.

Moreover, Postlethwaite brought in the dreary tidings that, in coming down from the top of the Hause, just by Bear’s fall, Paddy had cast a shoe, and that it was as much as he could do to get him down the Moss side. This calamity was a matter of as much delight to the youngsters as it was of annoyance to the elder Sandboys; for seeing that Bob Beck, the nearest blacksmith, lived six miles distant, and that it was impossible to send either to Cockermouth or Keswick for the necessaries of life, until the pony was armed against the rockiness of the road, it became a matter of considerable difficulty to settle what could be done.

After much serious deliberation, it was finally arranged that Postlethwaite should lead the pony on to the “smiddy,” at Loweswater, to be shod, and then ride him over to Dodgson’s, the grocer’s, at Cockermouth.

Postlethwaite, already tired, and, it must be confessed, not a little vexed at the refusal of Mr. Sandboys to permit him to accompany his fellow-villagers on this London trip—the greatest event of all their lives—started very sulky, and came back, long after dusk, with the pony lamed by a stone in his foot, and himself savage with hunger, and almost rebellious with fatigue; for, on getting to the “smiddy,” he found that Beck the blacksmith had ruddled on his door the inscription—

“Geane to Lunnon for to see t’ Girt ’Shibition!”

and, worse than all to Postlethwaite, he discovered, moreover, on seeking his usual ale at Kirkstile, that Harry Pearson, the landlord, had accompanied the Buttermere travellers’ train up to town; and that John Wilkinson, the other landlord, had followed him the day after; so that there was neither bite nor sup to be had in the place, and no entertainment either for man or beast.

In pity to Paddy, if not in remembrance of the farmer’s good cheer, Postlethwaite, on his way back, turned down to Joe Watson’s, at Lanthwaite, and there found it impossible to make anybody hear him, for the farmer and his six noble-looking sons—known for miles round as the flower of the country—had also joined the sight-seers on their way to the train at Cockermouth.

This was sad news to the little household. It was the first incident that gave Mrs. Sandboys an insight into the possible difficulties that their remaining behind, alone, at Hassness, might entail upon the family. She, and Mr. Sandboys, had hitherto only thought of the inconveniences attending a visit to London, and little dreamt that their absence from it, at such a time, might force them to undergo even greater troubles. She could perhaps have cheerfully tolerated the abdication of the Cockermouth milliner—she might have heard, without a sigh, that Mr. Bailey had put up the shutters of his circulating library, and stopped the supply of “Henrietta Temples,” “Emilia Wyndhams,” and “The Two Old Men;” she might not even have complained had Thompson Martin, the draper, cut short her ribbons and laces, by shutting up his shop altogether—but to have taken away her tea and sugar, was more than a lady in the vale of years, and the valley of Buttermere, could be expected to endure, without some outrage to philosophy!

The partiality of the sex in general for their morning and evening cup of souchong and “best refined,” is now ranked by physiologists among those inscrutable instincts of sentient nature, which are beyond the reach of scientific explanation. What oil is to the Esquimaux, what the juice of the cocoa-nut is to the monkey, what water is to the fish, what dew is to the flower, and what milk is to the cat—so is tea to woman! No person yet, in our own country, has propounded any sufficient theory to account for the English washerwomen’s all-absorbing love of the Chinese infusion—nor for the fact of every maid-servant, when stipulating the terms of her engagement, always making it an express condition of the hiring, that she should be provided with “tea and sugar,” and of every mistress continually declaring that she “would rather at any time go without her dinner than her tea.”

What sage has yet taught us why womankind is as gregarious over tea as mankind over wine? Sheridan has called the Bottle the sun of the table; but surely the Teapot, with its attendant cups, may be considered as a heavenly system, towards which all the more beautiful bodies concentre, where the piano may be said to represent the music of the spheres, and in which the gentlemen, heated with wine, and darting in eccentric course from the dining-room, may be regarded as fiery comets. We would ask any lady whether Paradise could have been a garden of bliss without the tea-plant; and whether the ever-to-be-regretted error of our first mother was not the more unpardonable from the fact of her having preferred to pilfer an apple rather than pluck the “fullest flavoured Pekoe.” And may not psychology here trace some faint transcendental reason for the descendants of Adam still loving to linger over their apples after dinner, shunning the tea-table and those connected with it. Yet, perhaps, even the eating of apples has not been more dangerous to the human family than the sipping of tea. If sin came in with pippins, surely scandal was brought into the world with Bohea! Adam fell a victim to his wife’s longing for a Ribston, and how many Eves have since fallen martyrs to the sex’s love of the slanderous Souchong.

Mrs. Sandboys was not prepared for so great a sacrifice as her tea, and when she first heard from Postlethwaite the certainty of Harker’s departure, and saw, by the result of this second journey, that there was no hope of obtaining a supply from Cockermouth, there was a moment when she allowed her bosom to whisper to her, that even the terror of a bed in London would be preferable to a tea-less life at Hassness.

Mr. Sandboys, however, no sooner saw that there was no tea or sugar to be had, than he determined to sweeten his cup with philosophy; so, bursting out with a snatch of the “Cumberland Lang Seyne,” he exclaimed, as cheerily as he could under the circumstances—

“Deuce tek the fuil-invented tea;

For tweyce a day we that mun’ hev;”

and immediately after this, decided upon the whole family’s reverting to the habits of their ancestors, and drinking “yale” for breakfast. This was by no means pleasant, but as it was clear she could do nothing else, Mrs. Sandboys, like a sensible woman, turned her attention to the contents of the ale-cask, and then discovered that some evil-disposed person, whom she strongly suspected to be Master Jobby—for that young gentleman began to display an increasing enjoyment in each succeeding catastrophe—had left the tap running, and that the cellar floor was covered three inches deep with the liquid intended to take off the dryness and somewhat sawdusty character of the oat-cake, which, in the absence of any wheaten bread, now formed the staple of their morning meal.

Now it so happened, that it wanted a fortnight of the return of Jennings’ man, the brewer, whose periodical circumgyrations with the beer, round about Buttermere, gave, like the sun, life and heat to the system of its inhabitants. In this dire emergency, Postlethwaite, whose deafness was found to increase exactly in proportion to the inconvenience of the journeys required of him, was had out, and shaken well, and bawled at, preparatory to a walk over to Lorton Vale, where the brewery was situated—only six miles distant.

But his trip on this occasion was about as successful as the last, for on reaching the spot, he found that the brewer, like the grocer, the farrier, and the publicans, had disappeared for London on the same pleasurable mission.

The family at Hassness was thus left without tea, beer, or bread, and, consequently, reduced to the pure mountain stream for their beverage, and oaten cakes and bacon for their principal diet. Their stock of fresh meat was usually procured from Frank Hutchison, the butcher of Cockermouth, but to go or send thither, under their present circumstances, appeared to be impossible. So that Mrs. Sandboys began to have serious alarms about two or three pimples that made their appearance on Cursty’s face, lest a continued course of salt meat and oat-cake should end in the whole family being afflicted with the scurvy. She would immediately have insisted on putting them, one and all, under a severe course of treacle and brimstone, with a dash of cream of tartar in it, to “sweeten their blood;” only, luckily, there was neither treacle nor brimstone, nor cream of tartar, to be had for twenty miles, nor anybody to go for it, and then, probably, nobody at Mr. Bowerbank’s to serve it.

Sandboys, seeing that he had no longer any hope in Postlethwaite, was now awakened to the necessity of making a personal exertion. His wife, overpowered by this addition of the loss of dinner to the loss of tea, did not hesitate to suggest to him, that perhaps it might be as well, if they consented to do like the rest of the world, and betake themselves for a few days to London. For her own part, she was ready to make any sacrifice, even to face the London dirt. But Sandboys would listen to no compromise, declared that greatness showed itself alone in overcoming circumstances,—and talked grandly of his forefathers, who had held out so long in these self-same mountain fastnesses. Mrs. Sandboys had no objection to make to the heroism, but she said that really Elcy’s complexion required fresh meat; and that although she herself was prepared to give up a great deal, yet her Sunday’s dinner was more than she was inclined to part with, and as for sacrifices, she had already sacrificed enough in the loss of her tea. Mr. Sandboys upon this bethought him of John Banks, the pig-butcher at Lorton, and having a young porker just ready for the knife, fancied he could not do better than despatch Postlethwaite with the animal to Lorton to be slaughtered. This, however, was sooner decided upon than effected; for Postlethwaite, on being summoned, made his appearance in slippers, and declared he had worn out, in his several foraging excursions about the country, the only pair of shoes he had left. Whereupon his master, though it was with some difficulty he admitted the excuse,—and this not until Postlethwaite, with a piteous gravity, had brought out a pair of calkered boots in the very worst possible condition,—began to foresee that there was even more necessity for Postlethwaite to be shod than Paddy, for that unless he could be got over to Cockermouth, they might be fairly starved out. Accordingly, he gave his son Jobby instructions to make the best of his way to the two shoemakers who resided within five miles of Hassness, for he made sure that one of the cobblers at least could be prevailed upon to put Postlethwaite in immediate travelling order.

It was long after nightfall, and Mrs. Sandboys had grown very uneasy as to the fate of her dear boy, when Postlethwaite was heard condoling over the miserable plight of Master Jobby. His mother rushed out to see what had happened, and found the bedraggled youth standing with one shoe in the hall, the other having been left behind in a bog, which he had met with in his attempt to make a short cut home on the other side of the lake by Melbrake.

Nor was the news he brought of a more cheerful nature. John Jackson the shoemaker was nowhere to be found. He had not been heard of since the departure of the train; and John Coss, the other shoemaker, had turned post-boy again, and refused to do any cobbling whatsoever. Coss had told him he got a job to take some gentlefolks in a car over to Carlisle, to meet the train for London, and he was just about to start; and if Jobby liked, he would give him a lift thus far on t’ road to Girt ’Shibition.

This was a sad damper for Sandboys, for with John Jackson the shoemaker seemed to vanish his last hope. Postlethwaite had worn out his boots, Jobby had lost his shoes, and John Jackson and John Coss, the only men, within ten miles, who could refit them, were both too fully taken up with the Great Exhibition to trouble their heads about the destitution of Hassness.

Postlethwaite almost smiled when he heard the result of Jobby’s twelve-mile walk, and drily remarked to the servant-maid, who already showed strong symptoms of discontent—having herself a sweetheart exposed, without her care, to the temptations and wickedness of London—that the whole family would be soon barefoot, and going about the countryside trying to get one another shod.

Sandboys consulted with his wife as to what was to be done, but she administered but little consolation; for the loss of her tea, and the prospect of no Sunday’s dinner, had ruffled her usual equanimity. The sight of her darling boy, too, barefoot and footsore, aroused every passion of her mother’s heart. Jobby had no other shoes to his feet, she told her husband, for the rate at which that boy wore his things out was quite terrible to a mother’s feelings; but Mr. Sandboys had no right to send the lad to such a distance, after such weather as they had just had. He might have known that Jobby was always taking short cuts, and always getting up to his knees in some mess or other; and he must naturally have expected that Jobby would have left both his shoes behind him instead of one—and those the only shoes he had. She should not wonder if Mr. Sandboys had done it for the purpose. Who was to go the errands now, she should like to know? Mr. Sandboys, perhaps, liked living there, in that out of the way hole, like a giant or a hermit. Did he expect that she or Elcy were going to drive that pig to Lorton?—And thus she continued, going over and over again every one of the troubles that their absence from London had brought upon them, until Sandboys was worried into excitement, and plumply demanded of her whether she actually wished to go herself to the Exhibition? Mrs. Sandboys was at no loss for a reply, and retorted, that what she wanted was her usual meals, and shoes for her children; and if she could not get them there, why, she did not care if she had to go to Hyde Park for them.

Sandboys was little prepared for this confession of hostilities on the part of his beloved Aggy. He had never known her address him in such a tone since the day she swore at Lorton to honour and obey him. He jumped from his chair and began to pace the room—now wondering what had come to his family and servants, now lamenting the want of tea, now sympathizing with the absence of ale, now biting his thumb as he contemplated the approximating dilemma of a dinnerless Sunday, and now inwardly cursing the Great Exhibition, which had not only taken all his neighbours from him, and deprived him of almost all the necessaries of life, but seemed destined to estrange his wife and children!

For a moment the idea passed across his mind, that perhaps it might be better to give way; but he cast the thought from him immediately, and as he trod the room with redoubled quickness and firmness of step, he buttoned his grey coat energetically across his breast, swelling with a resolution to make a desperate effort. He would drive the pig himself over to John Banks, the pig-butcher’s, at Lorton! But, as in the case of Postlethwaite, Mr. Cursty Sandboys soon found that resolving to drive a pig was a far different thing from doing it. Even in a level country the pig-driving art is none of the most facile acquirements,—but where the way to be traversed consists at every other yard of either a fell, a craig, a gill, a morass, a comb, a pike, a knot, a rigg, a skar, a beck, a howe, a force, a syke, or a tarn, or some other variety of those comfortable quarters into which a pig, with his peculiar perversity, would take especial delight in introducing his compagnon de voyage—the accomplishment of pig-driving in Cumberland partakes of the character of what aesthetic critics love to term “High Art.”

Nor did Mr. Sandboys’ pig—in spite of the benevolence and “sops” administered during his education by the gentle Elcy, who shed tears at his departure—at all detract from the glories of his race. Contrary to the earnest advice of Postlethwaite, founded on the experience of ages, who exhorted his master to keep the string loose in his hand—Sandboys, who had a theory of his own about pig-driving, and who was afraid that if the animal once got away from him in the hills, he would carry with him the family’s only chance of fresh meat for weeks to come—made up his mind to keep a safe hold of him, and so, twisted the string which he had attached to the porker’s leg two or three turns round his own wrist.

Scarcely had Elcy petitioned her brother for the gentle treatment of her pet “piggy,” than, crack! Jobby, who held the whip at the gate, while his father adjusted the reins, sent a flanker on the animal’s hind-quarters. Away went “piggy,” and we regret to say, away went the innocent Sandboys, not after, but with him—and precisely in the opposite direction to what he had intended. “Cwoley,” the dog, who had been dancing round the pig at the gate, no sooner saw the animal start off at score, than entering into the spirit of the scene, he gave full chase, yelping, and jumping, and snapping at him, so that the terrified porker fetched sharp round upon Sandboys, and bolted straight up the mountain side.

Now, to the stranger it should be made known, that climbing the fells of Cumberland is no slight task—even when the traveller is allowed to pick his steps; but, with a pig to lead, no choice but to follow, and a dog behind to urge the porker on, the operation becomes one of considerable hardship, if not peril. Moreover, the mountain over which Mr. Sandboys’ pig had chosen to make his course, was called “the Moss,” or “Morass,” from its peculiar swampy character. Up went the pig, through bracken, and furze, and holly-bush, and up by the stunted oaks, and short-cut stumps, and straight on, up through the larches, over the rugged clump above Hassness; and up went Mr. Sandboys, over and through every one of the same obstacles, making a fresh rent in his trousers at every “whin-bush”—scratched, torn, panting, slipping, and—if we must confess it—swearing; now tumbling, now up again, but still holding on to the pig, or the pig holding on to him, for grim death.

But if it were difficult to ascend a Cumberland fell with a pig in front, how much more trying the descent! No sooner had “Cwoley” turned the pig at the top, than Sandboys, as he looked down the precipitous mountain up which his porker had dragged him, “saw his work before him.” It required but a slight momentum to start him; then, away they all three went together—in racing technology “you might have covered them with a sheet”—-the dog barking, and the pig squeaking, and dragging Mr. Sandboys down the hill at a rate that promised to bring him to the bottom with more celerity than safety. Unfortunately, too, the pig took his course towards the beck formed by the torrent at the “Goat’s Gills;” and no sooner did it reach the ravine, than, worried by the dog, it precipitated itself and Mr. Sandboys right down into the foaming, but luckily not very deep, waters.

But, if it were not deep, the bottom of the beck was at least stony; and there, on his back, without breath to cry out, lay the wretched Sandboys, a victim to his theory, his coat skirtless, his pantaloons torn to shreds, and the waters curling white about him, with the driving string in his hand, cut by the sharp craigs in his fall—while the legs, the loin, the griskin, and the chine—that were to have consoled the family for weeks, were running off upon the pettitoes which he had privately set aside for his own supper on some quiet evening.

Elcy, who, throughout the whole chase, had been bewailing the poor “piggy’s” troubles, and exclaiming to her father not to hurt it, screamed with terror, as, from the gate, she saw the plunge and splash; while the wicked Jobby, who had been rendered powerless by laughter, and the want of shoes, and Postlethwaite, who also had been inwardly enjoying the scene, now rushed forward to the rescue, in company with the whole household, and dragged out from the beck the bruised, tattered, bedraggled, bespattered, bedrenched, and wretched Sandboys—the more annoyed, because the first inquiry addressed to him by Mrs. Sandboys, in a voice of mingled terror and tenderness, was, “Whatever has become of the pig?”

That was a mystery which took some hour or two to solve; for it was not until Elcy and Jobby, in Postlethwaite’s old shoes, had explored both Robinson and the Moss, that they caught sight of “Cwoley” on the slope beside the foot of Buttermere Lake, dancing, in wild delight, round the shaft of a deserted mine, known as “Muddock,” where, as became evident from the string twisted round the bushes, the pig, like Curtius, had plunged suicidally into the gulf, and was then lying, unbaked, unroasted, and unboiled, in twelve foot water!

Sandboys, when the news was brought him, was, both metaphorically and literally, in hot water. He sat with his two feet in a steaming pail, and wrapped in a blanket, with a basin of smoking oatmeal gruel in his hand, Mrs. Sandboys by his side, airing a clean shirt at the fire, and vowing all the while, that she would not wonder if his obstinacy in stopping down there, starving all the family, and denying them even the necessaries of life, to gratify his own perversity, were not the death of herself and the dear children. If he caught his death, he would only have himself to blame; for there was not a Dover’s Powder within twenty miles to be had for love or money; and as for tallowing his nose, it was more than she could afford to do, for the candles were running so short, and there was not a tallow-chandler remaining in the neighbourhood, so that in a few days she knew that, all through his fine management, they would be left not only tealess, beerless, meatless, and, she would add, her dear boy shoeless, but also in positive darkness.

This second outbreak on the part of the generally placid and anti-metropolitan Mrs. Sandboys was superinduced by a discovery she had made that morning, when about to give out the soap for the next day’s monthly wash. She then remembered that the stock which she had ordered of Harker had not come to hand; and there being no opportunity of getting to Dodgson or to Herd—supposing either of them to be at Cockermouth—or of reaching any other oilman or tallow-chandler—even if such a character existed in the neighbourhood within a circuit of fifty miles—she began to see that by remaining at Hassness, she and her children would positively be reduced to a more horrible state of dirtiness than the metropolis could possibly emulate, even taking for granted the truth of all the reports concerning the Thames water, which Mr. Sandboys delighted in reading to her from the newspapers.

Scarcely had Mrs. Sandboys given vent to this “bit of her mind,” than the forms of long Postlethwaite and little Ann Lightfoot appeared at the door, to give the miserable Cursty “warning.” Ann Lightfoot begged to state, that the coals were beginning to run so short, and the large fire Mr. Sandboys had just made up to dry his clothes and shoes had so reduced their small stock, that they would be left without a spark in the range below stairs; and they had made up their minds to leave the very next day, for the kitchen was so damp, that, without a fire, they knew it would be the death of them.

Sandboys remonstrated, saying, that some of the slate-carts from the quarries at Honister would be sure to be passing the house on their way to Cockermouth, and they might order them to bring him a return cargo of coals from Great Southern. But Postlethwaite, with a pertinacity the reverse of pleasant, replied, that he had thought of all this before, if his master had not; and had watched two days consecutively, without seeing a single cart; Master Jobby, besides, had told him he knew there was no one working at the quarries, for he had not heard the sound of the blasting during the last fortnight. Without beer, without meat, without tea, without sugar, without coals, and, what was more, without tobacco—as he had been for the last ten days—Postlethwaite observed, he thought it was hard his master should expect him and Ann to stop, when the lassie was almost starved; it would be far better that they should leave the family to share amongst them the few provisions remaining.

Here Ann Lightfoot began to wipe the tears from her eyes with the corner of her apron—an action that produced a series of sympathetical sobs from Mrs. Sandboys, who hysterically gurgled out, that it was impossible to tell what would become of them all in that dreadful lonely, damp place,—without medicine—or doctor—or dinner—or even the means of warming, or lighting, or cleaning themselves.

It was at this juncture that Elcy entered the room, her blue eyes bathed in a flood of tears, to pour into her father’s bosom the fate of her beloved “piggy!” Overpowered with this battery of hysterics, and the accumulated distresses and disaffection of his united household, Sandboys would have rushed from the apartment—and, indeed, did make an effort to do so; but remembering the paucity of his attire, he plumped rapidly down again, wrapping his blanket round him with the dignity of an Indian chief.

It was impossible, however, after a fortnight’s low living, to maintain for a length of time anything like grandeur of soul, so Sandboys soon got to participate in that depression of spirits which, owing to the spare diet, had begun to pervade the whole household at Hassness. In a few minutes the would-be stoical Cursty was melted, like the rest of them, into tears. Now blubbering, now snivelling, now sobbing, he proceeded to appeal to the generosity of Postlethwaite and the feelings of Ann Lightfoot, he spoke of their long services, and how the affection between the master and the servant was the pride of their native county, and imploringly besought them not to leave him in his present position, but to wait only a few days longer, when their friends and neighbours could not fail of returning; for he was convinced London wickedness must pall, after a brief experience, upon the pure and simple minds of the people of Buttermere; and he wound up by pointing to his children, and begged of them not to force him to drag those dear innocents into the foul contamination of a London life.

This appeal had not the desired effect. Postlethwaite, although he had been with Sandboys since a boy, and looked upon Jobby, from long association, almost as a child of his own,—and although in the most lively period of the village, he had never been known to take part in the festivities, nor had made his appearance at a “Merry Night,” for the last fifteen years—nevertheless, felt himself, after the departure of the Excursion train of his fellow villagers, lonely and ill-used, in not being allowed to participate in the general holiday. The consequence was, that Mr. Sandboys’ eloquence was utterly lost upon the surliness that had usurped the place of his usual regard and respect for his master.

Moreover, Ann Lightfoot had been unable to get over the loss of her “Jwohnny,” whom, with a jaundiced eye, she saw clattering away, in calkered boots, at all the merry nights of London, now standing up in many a square-eight reel, or now kneeling at the feet of some “fause-feaced fair,” in the sly vagaries of the Cushion-dance. Under these circumstances, she had passed her evening unusually lonely, even for Buttermere; and having no lover to sit up for at night, she had usually spent her leisure time with Postlethwaite, mutually grumbling by the kitchen fire, and filling his mind with ideas and desires for London enjoyments, to which he would otherwise have been an entire stranger. Accordingly, Ann Lightfoot was as little inclined as Deaf Postlethwaite, and Deaf Postlethwaite as little inclined as Ann Lightfoot—for the grumblings of the one were echoed in the growlings of the other—to be in any way mollified by their master’s appeal to their feelings. So Postlethwaite murmured out that they had made up their minds to go the next day, without further warning.

Sandboys, shuddering, saw the coming desolation of his home, and for a moment had serious thoughts of calling in the constable to make them fulfil their engagements. But, alas, his next remembrance was that the constable, like the grocer, and the blacksmith, and the cobblers, had gone up to London to see the Great Exhibition.

The wretched Cursty resigned himself to his fate. But Fate had still something worse in store for him. No sooner had the servants discharged themselves, than Mrs. Sandboys unmasked a new grievance, and opened a full battery upon him, as he sat dismal and desponding, in the blanket, sipping his gruel in deep despair. She told him, as she handed him the clean shirt she had been airing, that she would advise him to take great care of it—that was the last their stock of soap would allow him to have—it might be for months—and she would advise him to do, as he had read to her from the newspaper the other day, as the nasty, filthy Russians did—and grease it all over well, so that he might wear it until it dropped off his body, for she could tell him he wouldn’t have another until he went to fetch that Harker from the Great Exhibition. She did not mind, she told him, so much about the loss of her tea—severe trial as that was to her, and requiring all her Christian fortitude to bear—the want of beer was little or no privation to her—it was the servants—the poor, hardworking servants that she felt for. The dearth of fresh meat did not affect her—it was her dear Elcy’s complexion that she looked at; she could have gone barefoot all her life herself, but the idea of her children going about the earth shoeless, realized a wretchedness that she never could have imagined when she left her father’s home.

Still this was nothing—wretchedness was nothing—starvation was nothing—shoelessness was nothing, compared with the want of soap—she could bear anything but dirt. It was the terror of that had kept her from going to London, and now she saw that, in spite of all her efforts, Mr. Sandboys’ obstinacy about his trumpery wickedness would bring upon her those very horrors which she had made so many sacrifices to avoid. She did not care about any of his Great Exhibitions, only all she knew was, that she would rather go through any wickedness than live in the dirt that she could see he was forcing her into. Stay in Hassness she would not; and she had made up her mind, as Mr. Sandboys would not leave it, that she would throw herself on Messrs. Brag and Steal, and trust to them—for they were her father’s lawyers—to make him provide her with a separate and comfortable maintenance. Dearly as she once had loved him, she loved cleanliness more, and it remained for him to say whether they were to continue any longer together in the same wholesome state in which they had lived for thirty long years. And having given vent to her feelings, she seized the bed candlestick and marched indignantly into Elcy’s room, where she declared her resolution to pass the night.

Sandboys, in the enthusiasm of his excited feelings and the sad prospect of his threatened widowerhood, would have jumped up and followed her; but again remembering the paucity of his attire, sank back into his chair. In a few minutes it struck him that he had been sitting with his feet in the pail until the water had become as cold as that of the brook into which he had tumbled, and he began to think that, by remaining in his present position, he was perhaps adding another cold to the one he had already caught, in his fatal attempt at theoretical and practical pig-driving.

For the first time since his wedding-day, Cursty Sandboys was left to monopolize the amplitude of the matrimonial feather-bed, and no sooner had he rested his nightcap on his pillow, than there began to pass before his mind a dismal diorama of all the incidents of the day. As he looked upon the picture of the destitution, and desolation, and devastation, and denudation of his home, he half-relented of his stern resolve. For himself and Mrs. Sandboys he feared not the infection of the Great Metropolis; but it was the young and trusting Elcy, and the too-adventurous Jobby—that caused the trepidation of his soul. First he thought of the sufferings and the privations around him—and then he asked himself whether he were making his children and his household suffer these for what was a mere whim on his own part. Was not the sacrifice he required too much for youthful minds, and was he not once young himself? The reply of experience was, that he certainly had been young, but that he never had felt any wish to travel further than ten miles from his native valley. And as the conflict of affection and determination went on in his brain, he now felt assured it was all selfishness on his part to keep his children locked up in abstemious solitude—and the next moment was declaring that he should be a woman and worse than a woman, if he were weak enough to allow them whom he loved best in all the world to be exposed to the vicious allurements of the Great Metropolis. Now he was all ice—and now the ice was thawing with the brine of his tears—now he was rock—and now, like Hannibal, he was cutting a way towards London through his bosom with the vinegar of repentance.

The first thing that met Mr. Sandboys’ eyes in the morning was the pair of trousers in which he had driven the pig on the previous day. Again and again he gazed upon the ruins, for, until that moment, he had no definite idea as to the tatterdemalion state of his nether garments. The legs hung in long strips down the chair-back, more like shreds of list than human pantaloons; and, as he looked at them, he bethought him, for the first time, that his other pair, which he had just had made of his own grey, had been sent a fortnight previously to Johnson, the Loweswater tailor, to be altered, by Mrs. Sandboys, who took a great pride in her Cursty’s appearance, and found fault with the cut of them, declaring they were not sufficiently tight at the knees, or wide enough over the boot, for the last new fashion.

Sandboys felt it was in vain for a man to talk of independence who was destitute of pantaloons, and fearing even to speak of the subject to his wife, lest a repetition of the previous night’s scene might be enacted, sent a private message to his son Jobby, requesting his attendance to a conference in the bed-room.

Jobby, when informed of the primitive and paradisiacal condition of his parent, chuckled inwardly as he foresaw the dilemma in which the disclosure he had to make would place the nether half of the old gentleman. Accordingly, when Sandboys confidentially solicited him to put on his father’s shoes, and make the greatest possible haste over to Johnson for his father’s best trousers, it was with some difficulty that his son could inform him, with that respect which is due to a parent, that, on his last fruitless visit to Brackenthwaite, John Coss had told him he was going to call at Loweswater, on his way to Carlisle, and take up all the Johnsons, both uncle and nephew, for the mail train to London.

This was more than poor Sandboys expected, and a heavy blow to him, for he foresaw that the proprieties of life would compel him to keep between the sheets, until such time as he could venture to broach the subject of his denuded and destitute state to his better half. To lie in bed was his only resource; but to lie in bed was to make him more and more sensible of the utter destitution in which he was involved. He had received no newspapers for a fortnight, and of all things he loved his newspapers the dearest. The loss of them in such a state, at such a time, he felt more than all. He might, perhaps, have borne the absence of his pantaloons with all the pride of martyrdom; but to be cut off from connexion with the outer world of wickedness, in which he took such extreme interest, was more than human philosophy or mountain stoicism could bear—for what is solitude without a newspaper! Here was he, three hundred and one miles from London, in a lonely house, without a single “daring robbery” to comfort him, or a “diabolical murder” to put life into him! All the “successful swindling” of the metropolis was going on without his knowledge; and the excursionists from his native county were, he felt satisfied, being plundered, one and all, without his being, as he longed to be. in any way privy to it!

In this situation, thus contemplating, Mr. Sandboys passed the day—a Zimmerman between the blankets. At last, as the shades of night began to shut out Melbrake from before his bed-room window, and when Mrs. Sandboys came to his bedside for the basin which had contained his thin meal of gruel, as he sat up to receive her he humbly petitioned her, with a melancholy shake of the tuft on the top of his white cotton night-cap, to allow him one of the old newspapers and a light, so that he might relieve his mind by perusing some of the trials at the Central Criminal Court? if he might be allowed to choose, he would prefer that Observer and supplement which contained those charming twenty columns of the last frightful London murder.

But to make the request was to open afresh the vials of Mrs. Sandboys’ wrath; for she gave him plainly to understand that, coal-less as they were below, Postlethwaite had been obliged to fell some of the trees, and that the holly was so green that she had been forced to burn every newspaper in the house in her struggles to make a fire. Indeed, were it not that they had mustered all hands, and taken turn and turn about at the bellows, every fifteen minutes, all the day through, the family would not have been able to have had a mouthful of anything warm to eat; and now that the last double Times had gone, she had left Postlethwaite and Ann and Elcy and poor Jobby seated round a fireless grate, in the circular drawing-room, partaking of oatmeal mixed in cold water by way of tea.

Bitterly conscious of his deficiency as regarded pantaloons, and feeling acutely the privation as well as the destruction of his newspapers, the otherwise benevolent soul of Sandboys reverted for a moment into the primitive selfishness of savage life; and, seeing no other sorrows but his own, he angrily glared on Mrs. Sandboys, and burst out, “How dar’sta, Aggy, burn t’ papers?”

Mrs. Sandboys recoiled! It was the first time she had ever heard her dear Cursty address her in such a tone. Her woman’s heart fell, and she whimpered out, as she threw herself on the bed, “I cuddent help it, Cursty, an if I cud, thar was nae a candle in t’ house for tha to read by.”

Cursty fell back upon his pillows, and putting his hands over his eyes, saw vividly pass before his imagination, his house without candle, his servants without fire, his wife without soap, his boy without shoes, and himself without breeches!

In that one moment he perceived that it was useless to think of holding out any longer—London lost its horrors compared with the privations of Hassness; so gulping down the cup of bitterness, he told his wife he had made up his mind to be off to the metropolis the next morning.

The words were scarcely out of his mouth, when there again rose up before his eyes the direful gashes of his inexpressibles—the barefooted state of his boy! But Mrs. Sandboys soon put an end to all suggested difficulties, and that evening saw the happy Aggy sitting by the bedside of her beloved Cursty, and, by the light of a lamp made out of fat bacon and darning-cotton, sewing away at one of the lacerated legs of the trousers, with a light heart, and the strongest black thread; while Elcy was taking the bows off a pair of her mother’s shoes, which, at a family consultation, it had been arranged would serve to equip Jobby, at least for the walk to Cockermouth, where he and his father might, perhaps, be able to provide themselves with necessaries for the voyage to London.

Previous to leaving Hassness the next morning, Mr. Sandboys summoned the whole of his family together into the dining-room, and addressed them in a cheerful though solemn manner, saying he regretted to see that, under their late trials, they had evinced an unphilosophical want of vivacity, which he considered to be utterly unworthy of the hardy natives of Cumberland. He wished it, therefore, to be distinctly understood, that he accompanied them to London upon a single condition only, and that was—that they one and all made up their minds, come what might, to enjoy themselves.

How the Sandboys got to Town—the misadventures that happened to them on the road—the difficulties that the family experienced in obtaining shelter when they reached the metropolis—how they were glad to accept of any wretched hole to lay their heads in for the night; and when they did obtain a bed, the trouble that Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys found in their endeavours to get their two selves fairly into it—the dire calamity that befel them while reposing in it, and how excessively hard they found it under these, and many other circumstances, to carry out the principle of enjoying themselves,—all this, and much more, remains to be told in the succeeding chapters of this eventful history.