A Poor Man's House Part 3

IV

PRINCE TOWN, _August_.

1

When I took leave of the Widgers, there was the question of payment for my board and lodging. We were just finishing breakfast; the children had been driven out, Mrs Widger was resting awhile, and the table, the whole kitchen, was in extreme disorder.

I asked Mrs Widger what I owed, and, as I had expected, she replied only: "What you'm minded to pay."

"Three and six a day," I suggested.

"Not so much as that," said Mrs Widger. "'Tisn't like as if us could du for 'ee like a proper lodging house."

"Don' 'ee think, Missis," said Tony, "as we might ask 'en jest to make hisself welcome."

It was out of the question, of course. The mackerel season has been so bad. Mrs Widger shot at Tony a look he failed to see. Otherwise, she did not let herself appear to have heard him.

The discussion hung.

"Say three shillings, then," I suggested again.

"That 'll du," returned Mrs Widger, allowing nothing of the last few minutes' brain-work to show itself in her voice.

[Sidenote: _HOTEL LIFE_]

Mrs Widger knows what it is to have to keep house and feed several hungry children on earnings which vary from fairly large sums (sums whose very largeness calls for immediate spending) to nothing at all for weeks together.

As I was setting out, Jimmy said to his mother: "Don' 'ee let Mister Ronals go, Mam 'Idger." He followed me to the end of the Gut; would have come farther had I not sent him back. That, and Tony's desire to make me welcome, brightened the bright South Devon sunshine. I kept within sight of the sea as long as possible. The little sailing boats on it looked so nimble. I have a leaning to go back, a sort of hunger....

2

[Sidenote: _DAWDLING v. WALKING_]

I don't think I can remain here. To-morrow I shall move on, and tramp around the county back to Seacombe. The Moor is as splendid as ever, but this hotel life, following so soon on the life of Under Town....

Though the good, well-cooked food, neither so greasy nor so starchy as Mrs Widger's, is an agreeable change, I sit at the table d'hote and rage within. I am compelled to hear a conversation that irritates me almost beyond amus.e.m.e.nt at it. These people here are on holiday. Most of them, by their talk, were never on anything else. They chirp in lively or bored fashion, as the case may be, of the things that don't matter, of the ornamentations, the superfluities and the relaxations of life. At Tony Widger's they discuss--and much more merrily--the things that do matter; the means of life itself. Here, they say: "Is the table d'hote as good as it might be? Is the society what it might be? Is it not a pity that there is no char-a-banc or a motor service to Cranmere Pool and Yes Tor?" There, the equivalent question is: "Shall us hae money to go through the winter? Shall us hae bread and sc.r.a.pe to eat?"

Here, a man wonders if in the strong moorland air some slight non-incapacitating ailment will leave him: illness is inconvenient and disappointing, but not ruinous. There, Tony wonders if the exposure and continual boat-hauling are not taking too much out of him; if he is not ageing before his time; if he will not be past earning before the younger children are off his hands. Here, they laugh at trifles, keeping what is serious behind a veil of conventional manners, lest, appearing in broad daylight, it should damp their spirits. There, they laugh too, and at countless trifles; but also courageously, in the face of fate itself. By daring Nemesis, they partially disarm her. With a laugh and a jest--no matter if it be a raucous laugh and a coa.r.s.e jest--they a.s.sert: "What will be, will be; us can't but du our best, for 'tis the way o'it." Here, they skate over a Dead Sea upon the ice of convention; but there, they swim in the salted waters, swallow great gulps, and nevertheless strike out manfully, knowing no more than anyone else exactly where the sh.o.r.e lies, yet possessing, I think, an instinct of direction. Here, comfort is at stake: there, existence.

Coming here is like pa.s.sing from a birth and death chamber into a theatre, where, if the actors have lives of their own, apart from mummery, it is their business not to show them. It is like watching a game from the grand stand, instead of playing it; betting on a race instead of running it. The transition hither is hard to make. Retired athletes, we know, suffer from fatty degeneration of the heart; retired men of affairs decay. I have walked lately at five miles an hour with the Widgers, and I do not relish dawdling at the rate of two with these people here. Better risk h.e.l.l for heaven than lounge about paradise for ever.

V

UNDER TOWN, SEACOMBE, _September_.

1

A fine tramp from Totnes--and such a welcome back! Jimmy met me three-quarters of a mile up the road, very much farther than he usually strays from the beach. "I thought as yu was coming this way 'bout now, Mister Ronals. Dad's been out hooking an' catched five dozen mackerel before breakfast. Mam's sick. I be coming out wiv yu t'morrow morning.

Dad couldn't go out after breakfast, 'cause it come'd on to blow. I've 'schanged my pencil, what yu give'd me, for a knife wi' two blades." So anxious was he to take me in house that he scarcely allowed me time to go down to the Front and look at the sea and at the boats lying among a litter of nets and gear the length of the sunny beach.

Mrs Widger hastened to bring out the familiar big enamelled teapot, flung the cloth over the table and began to cut bread and b.u.t.ter.

"Coo'h! tay!" exclaimed Jimmy. "That's early, 'cause yu be come, Mister Ronals."

"Be yu glad Mr Ronals 's come back?" his mother asked.

[Sidenote: _THE CHILDREN_]

"Iss...."

"What for?" I asked jocularly.

"'Cause yu gives us bananas--an' pennies sometimes."

"'Sthat all yu'm glad for?" said Mrs Widger. "Pennies an' bananas?"

"No vear!" said Jimmy; and he meant it.

All the while, Tommy (Jimmy's younger brother, about five years old) was sitting up to table, looking at the jam-jar with one eye and at me with the other. He squints most comically, and is a more self-contained young person than Jimmy. Four of the children are at home; Bessie, Mabel, Jimmy and Tommy; George and the eldest girl are away. Bessie and Mabel, too, are out the greater part of the day, either at school, or else helping their aunts, or minding babies (poor little devils!), or running errands for the many relatives who live hereabout. Both of them are more featureless, show less of the family likeness, than the boys.

One cannot so easily forecast their grown-up appearance. At times, during the day, they come in house with a rush, but say little, except to blurt out some (usually inaccurate) piece of news, or to tell their step-mother that: "Thic Jimmy's out to baych--I see'd 'en--playin' wi'

some boys, an' he's got his boots an' stockings so wet as...."

"Jest let 'en show his face in here! _He_ shan't hae no tea! He shall go straight to bed!" shouts Mrs Widger, confident that hunger will eventually drive Jimmy into her clutches.

The two girls, in fact, do not seem to enter so fully as the boys into the life of the household, though they are always very ready to take up the responsibility of keeping the boys in order.

"Jimmy! Tommy--there! Mother, look at thic Jimmy! Mother, Tommy's fingering they caakes!"

"I'll gie thee such a one in a minute! Let 'lone.... Ther thee a't, Mabel, doin' jest the same, 's if a gert maid like yu didn't ought to know better."

"Did 'ee ever hear the like o'it?" asks Tony. "Such a buzz! Shut up, will 'ee, or _I'll_ gie thee summut to buzz for! Wher's thic stick?"

The children merely laugh at him.

2

[Sidenote: _TONY'S WEDDING_]

At supper to-night, Tony was talking about his second wedding and about his children, who, dead and alive, number twelve. "Iss, 'tis a round dozen, though I'd never ha' thought it," he said reckoning them up on his fingers. "Ther be six living an' four up to the cementry, an' two missing, like, what n.o.body didn' know nort about, did they, Annie?

Janie--that's my first wife, afore this one,--her losted three boys when they was two year an' ten months old, an' one year an' seven months, an' nine months old. An' her died herself when Mabel here was six months old, didn' 'er, Annie? An' yu've a-losted Rosie, an' the ones what never appeared in public. Our last baby, after Tommy, wer two boys, twinses. One wer like George an' one like Tommy most; one wer my child an' t'other wer yours, Annie. Six on 'em dead! Aye, Tony've a see'd some trouble, I can tell 'ee, an' he ain't so old as what some on 'em be for their age, now, thru it all. But it du make a man's head turn like."

Mrs Widger's gaze at him while he talked about the dead children was wonderful to see--wide-eyed, soft, unflinching--wifely and motherly at once.

"John," Tony continued, speaking of his youngest brother who has only two children, "John du say as a man what's got seven or eight childern be better off than a man what's got on'y two, like he, 'cause he don't spend so much on 'em. 'Tis rot, I say! Certainly, he du spend so much on each o' his as us du on two o' ours p'raps; but I reckon a hundred pounds has to be wrenched an' hauled out o' these yer ol' rheumaticy arms o' mine for each child as us rears up."