Mary Barton. Элизабет Гаскелл
had only a disheartening and gloomy effect; the streets were wet and dirty, the drippings from the houses were wet and dirty, and the people were wet and dirty. Indeed, most kept within doors; and there was an unusual silence of footsteps in the little paved courts.
Mary had to change her clothes after her walk home; and had hardly settled herself before she heard some one fumbling at the door. The noise continued long enough to allow her to get up, and go and open it. There stood – could it be? yes it was, her father!
Drenched and wayworn, there he stood! He came in with no word to Mary in return for her cheery and astonished greeting. He sat down by the fire in his wet things, unheeding. But Mary would not let him so rest. She ran up and brought down his working-day clothes, and went into the pantry to rummage up their little bit of provision while he changed by the fire, talking all the while as gaily as she could, though her father’s depression hung like lead on her heart.
For Mary, in her seclusion at Miss Simmonds’, – where the chief talk was of fashions, and dress, and parties to be given, for which such and such gowns would be wanted, varied with a slight-whispered interlude occasionally about love and lovers, – had not heard the political news of the day; that Parliament had refused to listen to the working-men, when they petitioned, with all the force of their rough, untutored words, to be heard concerning the distress which was riding, like the Conqueror on his Pale Horse, among the people; which was crushing their lives out of them, and stamping woe-marks over the land.
When he had eaten and was refreshed, they sat for some time in silence; for Mary wished him to tell her what oppressed him so, yet durst not ask. In this she was wise; for when we are heavy-laden in our hearts it falls in better with our humour to reveal our case in our own way, and our own time.
Mary sat on a stool at her father’s feet in old childish guise, and stole her hand into his, while his sadness infected her, and she ‘caught the trick of grief, and sighed’, she knew not why.
‘Mary, we mun speak to our God to hear us, for man will not hearken; no, not now, when we weep tears o’ blood.’
In an instant Mary understood the fact, if not the details, that so weighed down her father’s heart. She pressed his hand with silent sympathy. She did not know what to say, and was so afraid of speaking wrongly, that she was silent. But when his attitude had remained unchanged for more than half-an-hour, his eyes gazing vacantly and fixedly at the fire, no sound but now and then a deep-drawn sigh to break the weary ticking of the clock, and the drip-drop from the roof without, Mary could bear it no longer. Anything to rouse her father. Even bad news.
‘Father, do you know George Wilson’s dead?’ (Her hand was suddenly and almost violently compressed.) ‘He dropped down dead in Oxford Road yester morning. It’s very sad, isn’t it, father?’
Her tears were ready to flow as she looked up in her father’s face for sympathy. Still the same fixed look of despair, not varied by grief for the dead.
‘Best for him to die,’ he said, in a low voice.
This was unbearable. Mary got up under pretence of going to tell Margaret that she need not come to sleep with her to-night, but really to ask Job Legh to come and cheer her father.
She stopped outside the door. Margaret was practising her singing, and through the still night air her voice rang out, like that of an angel:
‘Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God.’
The old Hebrew prophetic words fell like dew on Mary’s heart. She could not interrupt. She stood listening and ‘comforted’, till the little buzz of conversation again began, and then entered and told her errand.
Both grandfather and grand-daughter rose instantly to fulfil her request.
‘He’s just tired out, Mary,’ said old Job. ‘He’ll be a different man to-morrow.’
There is no describing the looks and tones that have power over an aching, heavy-laden heart; but in an hour or so John Barton was talking away as freely as ever, though all his talk ran, as was natural, on the disappointment of his fond hope, of the forlorn hope of many.
‘Ay, London’s a fine place,’ said he, ‘and finer folk live in it than I ever thought on, or ever heerd tell on except in th’ story-books. They are having their good things now, that afterwards they may be tormented.’
Still at the old parable of Dives and Lazarus! Does it haunt the minds of the rich as it does those of the poor?
‘Do tell us all about London, dear father,’ asked Mary, who was sitting at her old post by her father’s knee.
‘How can I tell yo a’ about it, when I never see’d one-tenth of it. It’s as big as six Manchesters, they telled me. One-sixth may be made up o’ grand palaces, and three-sixths o’ middling kind, and th’ rest o’ holes o’ iniquity and filth, such as Manchester knows nought on, I’m glad to say.’
‘Well, father, but did you see the Queen?’
‘I believe I didn’t, though one day I thought I’d seen her many a time. You see,’ said he, turning to Job Legh, ‘there were a day appointed for us to go to Parliament House. We were most on us biding at a public-house in Holborn, where they did very well for us. Th’ morning of taking our petition we had such a spread for breakfast as th’ Queen hersel might ha’ sitten down to. I suppose they thought we wanted putting in heart. There were mutton kidneys, and sausages, and broiled ham, and fried beef and onions; more like a dinner nor a breakfast. Many on our chaps though, I could see, could eat but little. Th’ food stuck in their throats when they thought o’ them at home, wives and little ones, as had, maybe at that very time, nought to eat. Well, after breakfast, we were all set to walk in procession, and a time it took to put us in order, two and two, and the petition, as was yards long, carried by th’ foremost pairs. The men looked grave enough, yo may be sure; and such a set of thin, wan, wretched-looking chaps as they were!’
‘Yourself is none to boast on.’
‘Ay, but I were fat and rosy to many a one. Well, we walked on and on through many a street, much the same as Deansgate. We had to walk slowly, slowly, for th’ carriages an’ cabs as thronged th’ streets. I thought by-and-by we should maybe get clear on ’em, but as the streets grew wider they grew worse, and at last we were fairly blocked up at Oxford Street. We getten across at after a while though, and my eyes! the grand streets we were in then! They’re sadly puzzled how to build houses though in London; there’d be an opening for a good steady master builder there, as know’d his business. For yo see the houses are many on ’em built without any proper shape for a body to live in; some on ’em they’ve after thought would fall down, so they’ve stuck great ugly pillars out before ’em. And some on ’em (we thought they must be th’ tailors’ sign) had getten stone men and women as wanted clothes stuck on ’em. I were like a child, I forgot a’ my errand in looking about me. By this it were dinner-time, or better, as we could tell by the sun, right above our heads, and we were dusty and tired, going a step now and a step then. Well, at last we getten into a street grander nor all, leading to th’ Queen’s palace, and there it were I thought I saw th’ Queen. Yo’ve seen th’ hearses wi’ white plumes, Job?’
Job assented.
‘Well, them undertaker folk are driving a pretty trade in London. Well nigh every lady we saw in a carriage had hired one o’ them plumes for the day, and had it niddle noddling on her head. It were th’ Queen’s drawing-room, they said, and th’ carriages went bowling along toward her house, some wi’ dressed-up gentlemen like circus folk in ’em, and rucks* o’ ladies in others. Carriages themselves were great shakes too. Some o’ th’ gentlemen as couldn’t get inside hung on behind, wi’ nosegays to smell at, and sticks to keep off folk as might splash their silk stockings. I wonder why they didn’t hire a cab rather than hang on like a whip-behind boy; but I suppose they wished to keep wi’ their wives, Darby and Joan like. Coachmen were little squat men, wi’ wigs like th’ oud-fashioned parsons’. Well, we could na get on for these carriages, though