Marcella Part 30

They went first to Mrs. Jellison's, to whom Marcella wished to unfold her workshop scheme.

"Don't let me keep you," she said to Wharton coldly, as they neared the cottage; "I know you have to catch your train."

Wharton consulted his watch. He had to be at a local station some two miles off within an hour.

"Oh! I have time," he said. "Do take me in, Miss Boyce. I have made acquaintance with these people so far, as my const.i.tuents--now show them to me as your subjects. Besides, I am an observer. I 'collect' peasants.

They are my study."

"They are not my subjects, but my friends," she said with the same stiffness.

They found Mrs. Jellison having her dinner. The lively old woman was sitting close against her bit of fire, on her left a small deal table which held her cold potatoes and cold bacon; on her right a tiny window and window-sill whereon lay her coil of "plait" and the simple straw-splitting machine she had just been working. When Marcella had taken the only other chair the hovel contained, nothing else remained for Wharton but to flatten himself as closely against the door as he might.

"I'm sorry I can't bid yer take a cheer," said Mrs. Jellison to him, "but what yer han't got yer can't give, so I don't trouble my head about nothink."

Wharton applauded her with easy politeness, and then gave himself, with folded arms, to examining the cottage while Marcella talked. It might be ten feet broad, he thought, by six feet in one part and eight feet in another. The roof was within little more than an inch of his head. The stairway in the corner was falling to pieces; he wondered how the woman got up safely to her bed at night; custom, he supposed, can make even old bones agile.

Meanwhile Marcella was unfolding the project of the straw-plaiting workshop that she and Lady Winterbourne were about to start. Mrs.

Jellison put on her spectacles apparently that she might hear the better, pushed away her dinner in spite of her visitors' civilities, and listened with a bright and beady eye.

"An' yer agoin' to pay me one a sixpence a score, where I now gets ninepence. And I'll not have to tramp it into town no more--you'll send a man round. And who is agoin' to pay me, miss, if you'll excuse me asking?"

"Lady Winterbourne and I," said Marcella, smiling. "We're going to employ this village and two others, and make as good business of it as we can. But we're going to begin by giving the workers better wages, and in time we hope to teach them the higher kinds of work."

"Lor'!" said Mrs. Jellison. "But I'm not one o' them as kin do with changes." She took up her plait and looked at it thoughtfully.

"Eighteen-pence a score. It wor that rate when I wor a girl. An' it ha'

been dibble--dibble--iver sense; a penny off here, an' a penny off there, an' a hard job to keep a bite ov anythink in your mouth."

"Then I may put down your name among our workers, Mrs. Jellison?" said Marcella, rising and smiling down upon her.

"Oh, lor', no; I niver said that," said Mrs. Jellison, hastily. "I don't hold wi' shilly-shallyin' wi' yer means o' livin'. I've took my plait to Jimmy Gedge--'im an' 'is son, fust shop on yer right hand when yer git into town--twenty-five year, summer and winter--me an' three other women, as give me a penny a journey for takin' theirs. If I wor to go messin' about wi' Jimmy Gedge, Lor' bless yer, I should 'ear ov it--oh!

I shoulden sleep o' nights for thinkin' o' how Jimmy ud serve me out when I wor least egspectin' ov it. He's a queer un. No, miss, thank yer kindly; but I think I'll bide."

Marcella, amazed, began to argue a little, to expound the many attractions of the new scheme. Greatly to her annoyance, Wharton came forward to her help, guaranteeing the solvency and permanence of her new partnership in glib and pleasant phrase, wherein her angry fancy suspected at once the note of irony. But Mrs. Jellison held firm, embroidering her negative, indeed, with her usual cheerful chatter, but sticking to it all the same. At last there was no way of saving dignity but to talk of something else and go--above all, to talk of something else before going, lest the would-be benefactor should be thought a petty tyrant.

"Oh, Johnnie?--thank yer, miss--'e's an owdacious young villain as iver I seed--but _clever_--lor', you'd need 'ave eyes in yer back to look after _'im_. An' _coaxin'_! ''Aven't yer brought me no sweeties, Gran'ma?' 'No, my dear,' says I. 'But if you was to _look_, Gran'ma--in both your pockets, Gran'ma--iv you was to let _me_ look?' It's a sharp un Isabella, she don't 'old wi' sweet-stuff, she says, sich a pack o'

nonsense. She'd stuff herself sick when she wor 'is age. Why shouldn't _ee_ be happy, same as her? There ain't much to make a child 'appy in _that_ 'ouse. Westall, ee's that mad about them poachers over Tudley End; ee's like a wild bull at 'ome. I told Isabella ee'd come to knockin' ov her about _some_ day, though ee did speak so oily when ee wor a courtin'. Now she knows as I kin see a thing or two," said Mrs.

Jellison, significantly. Her manner, Wharton noticed, kept always the same gay philosophy, whatever subject turned up.

"Why, that's an old story--that Tudley End business--" said Marcella, rising. "I should have thought Westall might have got over it by now."

"But bless yer, ee says it's goin' on as lively as iver. Ee says ee knows they're set on grabbin' the birds t'other side the estate, over beyond Mellor way--ee's got wind of it--an' ee's watchin' night an' day to see they don't do him no bad turn _this_ month, bekase o' the big shoot they allus has in January. An' lor', ee do speak drefful bad o'

_soom_ folks," said Mrs. Jellison, with an amused expression. "You know some on 'em, miss, don't yer?" And the old woman, who had begun toying with her potatoes, slanted her fork over her shoulder so as to point towards the Hurds' cottage, whereof the snow-laden roof could be seen conspicuously through the little lattice beside her, making sly eyes the while at her visitor.

"I don't believe a word of it," said Marcella, impatiently. "Hurd has been in good work since October, and has no need to poach. Westall has a down on him. You may tell him I think so, if you like."

"That I will," said Mrs. Jellison, cheerfully, opening the door for them. "There's n.o.body makes 'im 'ear the treuth, n.o.bbut me. I _loves_ naggin' ov 'im, ee's that masterful. But ee don't master _me_!"

"A gay old thing," said Wharton as they shut the gate behind them. "How she does enjoy the human spectacle. And obstinate too. But you will find the younger ones more amenable."

"Of course," said Marcella, with dignity. "I have a great many names already. The old people are always difficult. But Mrs. Jellison will come round."

"Are you going in here?"

"Please."

Wharton knocked at the Hurds' door, and Mrs. Hurd opened.

The cottage was thick with smoke. The chimney only drew when the door was left open. But the wind to-day was so bitter that mother and children preferred the smoke to the draught. Marcella soon made out the poor little bronchitic boy, sitting coughing by the fire, and Mrs. Hurd busied with some washing. She introduced Wharton, who, as before, stood for some time, hat in hand, studying the cottage. Marcella was perfectly conscious of it, and a blush rose to her cheek while she talked to Mrs.

Hurd. For both this and Mrs. Jellison's hovel were her father's property and somewhat highly rented.

Minta Hurd said eagerly that she would join the new straw-plaiting, and went on to throw out a number of hurried, half-coherent remarks about the state of the trade past and present, leaning meanwhile against the table and endlessly drying her hands on the towel she had taken up when her visitors came in.

Her manner was often nervous and flighty in these days. She never looked happy; but Marcella put it down to health or natural querulousness of character. Yet both she and the children were clearly better nourished, except Willie, in whom the tubercular tendency was fast gaining on the child's strength.

Altogether Marcella was proud of her work, and her eager interest in this little knot of people whose lives she had shaped was more possessive than ever. Hurd, indeed, was often silent and secretive; but she put down her difficulties with him to our odious system of cla.s.s differences, against which in her own way she was struggling. One thing delighted her--that he seemed to take more and more interest in the labour questions she discussed with him, and in that fervid, exuberant literature she provided him with. Moreover, he now went to all Mr.

Wharton's meetings that were held within reasonable distance of Mellor; and, as she said to Aldous with a little laugh, which, however, was not unsweet, _he_ had found her man work--_she_ had robbed his candidate of a vote.

Wharton listened a while to her talk with Minta, smiled a little, unperceived of Marcella, at the young mother's docilities of manner and phrase; then turned his attention to the little hunched and coughing object by the fire.

"Are you very bad, little man?"

The white-faced child looked up, a dreary look, revealing a patient, melancholy soul. He tried to answer, but coughed instead.

Wharton, moving towards him, saw a bit of ragged white paper lying on the ground, which had been torn from a grocery parcel.

"Would you like something to amuse you a bit--Ugh! this smoke! Come round here, it won't catch us so much. _Now_, then, what do you say to a doggie,--two doggies?"

The child stared, let himself be lifted on the stranger's knee, and did his very utmost to stop coughing. But when he had succeeded his quick panting breaths still shook his tiny frame and Wharton's knee.

"Hm--Give him two months or thereabouts!" thought Wharton. "What a beastly hole!--one room up, and one down, like the other, only a shade larger. Damp, insanitary, cold--bad water, bad drainage, I'll be bound--bad everything. That girl may well try her little best. And I go making up to that man Boyce! What for? Old spites?--new spites?--which?--or both!"

Meanwhile his rapid skilful fingers were tearing, pinching, and shaping; and in a very few minutes there, upon his free knee, stood the most enticing doggie of pinched paper, a hound in full course, with long ears and stretching legs.

The child gazed at it with ravishment, put out a weird hand, touched it, stroked it, and then, as he looked back at Wharton, the most exquisite smile dawned in his saucer-blue eyes.

"What? did you like it, gra.s.shopper?" cried Wharton, enchanted by the beauty of the look, his own colour mounting. "Then you shall have another."

And he twisted and turned his piece of fresh paper, till there, beside the first, stood a second fairy animal--a greyhound this time, with arching neck and sharp long nose.

"There's two on 'em at Westall's!" cried the child, hoa.r.s.ely, clutching at his treasures in an ecstasy.

Mrs. Hurd, at the other end of the cottage, started as she heard the name. Marcella noticed it; and with her eager sympathetic look began at once to talk of Hurd and the works at the Court. She understood they were doing grand things, and that the work would last all the winter.

Minta answered hurriedly and with a curious choice of phrases. "Oh! he didn't have nothing to say against it." Mr. Brown, the steward, seemed satisfied. All that she said was somehow irrelevant; and, to Marcella's annoyance, plaintive as usual. Wharton, with the boy inside his arm, turned his head an instant to listen.

Marcella, having thought of repeating, without names, some of Mrs.

Jellison's gossip, then shrank from it. He had promised her, she thought to herself with a proud delicacy; and she was not going to treat the word of a working man as different from anybody else's.

So she fastened her cloak again, which she had thrown open in the stifling air of the cottage, and turned both to call her companion and give a smile or two to the sick boy.