The Great House. Weyman Stanley John
was so loth to use it; and a hundred times Mary wondered what was behind that reticence. Sometimes she thought that the girl was merely stupid. Sometimes she yoked her with her father in the suspicions she entertained of him. More often, moved by the girl's meek eyes, she felt only a vague irritation. She was herself calm by nature, and reserved by training, the last to gossip with a servant, even with one whose refinement appeared innate. But Etruria's dumbness was beyond her.
One day in a research which she was making she fancied that she had hit on a discovery. It happened that Etruria came into the room at the moment, and in the fulness of her heart Mary told her of it. "Etruria," she said, "I've made a discovery all by myself."
"Yes, Miss."
"Something that no one has known for hundreds of years! Think of that!"
"Indeed, Miss."
Provoked, Mary took a new line. "Etruria," she asked, "are you happy?"
The girl did not answer.
"Don't you hear me? I asked if you were happy."
"I am content, Miss."
"I did not ask that. Are you happy?"
And then, moved on her side, perhaps, by an impulse towards confidence, Etruria yielded. "I don't think that we can any of us be happy, Miss," she said, "with so much sorrow about us."
"You strange girl!" Mary cried, taken aback. "What do you mean?"
But Etruria was silent.
"Come," Mary insisted. "You must tell me what you mean."
"Well, Miss," the girl answered reluctantly, "I'm sad and loth to think of all the suffering in the world. It's natural that you should not think of it, but I'm of the people, and I'm sad for them."
Balaam when the ass spoke was scarcely more surprised than Mary. "Why?" she asked.
The girl pointed to the open window. "We've all we could ask, Miss-light and air and birds' songs and sunshine. We've all we need, and more. But I come of those who have neither light nor air, nor songs nor sunshine, who've no milk for children nor food for mothers! Who, if they've work, work every hour of the day in dust and noise and heat. Who are half clemmed from year's end to year's end, and see no close to it, no hope, no finish but the pauper's deals! It's for them I'm sad, Miss."
"Etruria!"
"They've no teachers and no time to care," Etruria continued in desperate earnest now that the floodgates were raised. "They're just tools to make money, and, like the tools, they wear out and are cast aside! For there are always more to do their work, to begin where they began, and to be worn out as they were worn out!"
"Don't!" Mary cried.
Etruria was silent, but two large tears rolled down her face. And Mary marvelled. So this mild, patient girl, going about her daily tasks, could think, could feel, could speak, and upon a plane so high that the listener was sensible of humiliation as well as surprise! For a moment this was the only effect made upon her. Then reflection did its part-and memory. She recalled that glimpse of the under-world which she had had on her journey from London. She remembered the noisome alleys, the cinder wastes, the men toiling half-naked at the furnaces, the pinched faces of the women; and she remembered also the account which Lord Audley had given her of the fierce contest between town and country, plough and forge, land-lord and cotton-lord, which had struck her so much at the time.
In the charms of her new life, in her new interests, these things had faded from her mind. They recurred now, and she did not again ask Etruria what she meant. "Is it as bad as that?" she asked.
"It is not as bad as it has been," Etruria answered. "Three years ago there were hundreds of thousands out of work. There are thousands, scores of thousands, still; and thousands have no food but what's given them. And charity is bitter to many," she added, "and the poorhouse is bitter to all."
"But what has caused things to be so bad?"
"Some say one thing and some another. But most that machines lower wages, Miss, and the bread-tax raises food."
"Ah!" Mary said. And she looked more closely at the girl who knew so much that was at odds with her station.
"Others," Etruria continued, a faint color in her cheeks, "think that it is selfishness, that every one is for himself and no one for one another, and-"
"Yes?" Mary said, seeing that she hesitated.
"And that if every one thought as much of his neighbor as of himself, or even of his neighbor as well as of himself, it would not be machines nor corn-taxes nor poorhouses would be strong enough to take the bread out of the children's mouths or the work out of men's hands!"
Mary had an inspiration. "Etruria," she cried, "some one has been teaching you this."
The girl blushed. "Well, Miss," she said simply, "it was at church I learned most of it."
"At church? What church? Not Riddsley?" For it was to Riddsley, to a service as dull as it was long, that they proceeded on Sundays in a chaise as slow as the reader.
"No, Miss, not Riddsley," Etruria answered. "It's at Brown Heath on the Chase. But it's not a real church, Miss. It's a room."
"Oh!" Mary replied. "A meeting-house!"
For some reason Etruria's eyes gleamed. "No, Miss," she said. "It's the curate at Riddsley has a service in a room at Brown Heath on Thursdays."
"And you go?"
"When I can, Miss."
The idea of attending church on a week-day was strange to Mary; as strange as to that generation was the zeal that passed beyond the common channel to refresh those whom migrations of population or changes in industry had left high and dry. The Tractarian movement was giving vigor not only to those who supported it, but to those who withstood it.
"And you've a sermon?" Mary said. "What was the text last Thursday, Etruria?"
The girl hesitated, considered, then looked with appeal at her mistress. She clasped her hands. "'Two are better than one,'" she replied, "'because they have good reward for their labor. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow, but woe to him that is alone when he falleth, for he hath not another to lift him up.'"
"Gracious, Etruria!" Mary cried. "Is that in the Bible?"
Etruria nodded.
"And what did your preacher say about it?"
"That the employer and the workman were fellows, and if they worked together and each thought for the other they would have a good reward for their labor; that if one fell, it was the duty of the other to help him up. And again, that the land and the mill were fellows-the town and the country-and if they worked together in love they would have a good return, and if trouble came to one the other should bear with him. But all the same," Etruria added timidly, "that the bread-taxes were wrong."
"Etruria," Mary said. "To-morrow is Thursday. I shall go with you to Brown Heath."
CHAPTER X
NEW THINGS
Mary Audley, crossing the moor to a week-day service, was but one of many who in the 'forties were venturing on new courses. In religion there were those who fancied that by a return to primitive forms they might recapture the primitive fervor; and those again who, like the curate whom Mary was going to hear, were bent on pursuing the beaten path into new places. Some thought that they had found a panacea for the evils of the day in education, and put their faith in workmen's institutes and night schools. Others were satisfied with philanthropy, and proclaimed that infants of seven ought not to toil for their living, that coal-pits were not fit places for women, and that what paid was not the only standard of life. A few dreamt of a new England in which gentle and simple were to mix on new-old terms; and a multitude, shrewd and hard-headed, believed in the Corn Law League, whose speakers travelled from Manchester to carry the claims of cheap bread to butter crosses and market towns, and there bearded the very landlord's agent.
The truth was that the country was lying sick with new evils, and had perforce to find a cure, whether that cure lay in faith, or in the primer, or in the Golden Rule, or in Adam Smith. For