Our Mutual Friend
off. The weather had been hard and the roads had been bad, and her
spirit was up. A less stanch spirit might have been subdued by such
adverse influences; but the loan for her little outfit was in no part
repaid, and it had gone worse with her than she had foreseen, and she
was put upon proving her case and maintaining her independence.
Faithful soul! When she had spoken to the Secretary of that ‘deadness
that steals over me at times’, her fortitude had made too little of it.
Oftener and ever oftener, it came stealing over her; darker and ever
darker, like the shadow of advancing Death. That the shadow should
be deep as it came on, like the shadow of an actual presence, was in
accordance with the laws of the physical world, for all the Light that
shone on Betty Higden lay beyond Death.
The poor old creature had taken the upward course of the river Thames as
her general track; it was the track in which her last home lay, and of
which she had last had local love and knowledge. She had hovered for a
little while in the near neighbourhood of her abandoned dwelling, and
had sold, and knitted and sold, and gone on. In the pleasant towns of
Chertsey, Walton, Kingston, and Staines, her figure came to be quite
well known for some short weeks, and then again passed on.
She would take her stand in market-places, where there were such things,
on market days; at other times, in the busiest (that was seldom very
busy) portion of the little quiet High Street; at still other times she
would explore the outlying roads for great houses, and would ask leave
at the Lodge to pass in with her basket, and would not often get it. But
ladies in carriages would frequently make purchases from her trifling
stock, and were usually pleased with her bright eyes and her hopeful
speech. In these and her clean dress originated a fable that she was
well to do in the world: one might say, for her station, rich. As making
a comfortable provision for its subject which costs nobody anything,
this class of fable has long been popular.
In those pleasant little towns on Thames, you may hear the fall of
the water over the weirs, or even, in still weather, the rustle of the
rushes; and from the bridge you may see the young river, dimpled like a
young child, playfully gliding away among the trees, unpolluted by the
defilements that lie in wait for it on its course, and as yet out of
hearing of the deep summons of the sea. It were too much to pretend that
Betty Higden made out such thoughts; no; but she heard the tender river
whispering to many like herself, ‘Come to me, come to me! When the cruel
shame and terror you have so long fled from, most beset you, come to me!
I am the Relieving Officer appointed by eternal ordinance to do my work;
I am not held in estimation according as I shirk it. My breast is softer
than the pauper-nurse’s; death in my arms is peacefuller than among the
pauper-wards. Come to me!’
There was abundant place for gentler fancies too, in her untutored mind.
Those gentlefolks and their children inside those fine houses, could
they think, as they looked out at her, what it was to be really hungry,
really cold? Did they feel any of the wonder about her, that she felt
about them? Bless the dear laughing children! If they could have seen
sick Johnny in her arms, would they have cried for pity? If they could
have seen dead Johnny on that little bed, would they have understood it?
Bless the dear children for his sake, anyhow! So with the humbler houses
in the little street, the inner firelight shining on the panes as the
outer twilight darkened. When the families gathered in-doors there, for
the night, it was only a foolish fancy to feel as if it were a little
hard in them to close the shutter and blacken the flame. So with the
lighted shops, and speculations whether their masters and mistresses
taking tea in a perspective of back-parlour—not so far within but that
the flavour of tea and toast came out, mingled with the glow of light,
into the street—ate or drank or wore what they sold, with the greater
relish because they dealt in it. So with the churchyard on a branch of
the solitary way to the night’s sleeping-place. ‘Ah me! The dead and
I seem to have it pretty much to ourselves in the dark and in this
weather! But so much the better for all who are warmly housed at home.’
The poor soul envied no one in bitterness, and grudged no one anything.
But, the old abhorrence grew stronger on her as she grew weaker, and
it found more sustaining food than she did in her wanderings. Now, she
would light upon the shameful spectacle of some desolate creature—or
some wretched ragged groups of either sex, or of both sexes, with
children among them, huddled together like the smaller vermin for
a little warmth—lingering and lingering on a doorstep, while the
appointed evader of the public trust did his dirty office of trying to
weary them out and so get rid of them. Now, she would light upon some
poor decent person, like herself, going afoot on a pilgrimage of
many weary miles to see some worn-out relative or friend who had been
charitably clutched off to a great blank barren Union House, as far from
old home as the County Jail (the remoteness of which is always its worst
punishment for small rural offenders), and in its dietary, and in
its lodging, and in its tending of the sick, a much more penal
establishment. Sometimes she would hear a newspaper read out, and would
learn how the Registrar General cast up the units that had within the
last week died of want and of exposure to the weather: for which that
Recording Angel seemed to have a regular fixed place in his sum, as if
they were its halfpence. All such things she would hear discussed, as
we, my lords and gentlemen and honourable boards, in our unapproachable
magnificence never hear them, and from all such things she would fly
with the wings of raging Despair.
This is not to be received as a figure of speech. Old Betty Higden
however tired, however footsore, would start up and be driven away
by her awakened horror of falling into the hands of Charity. It is a
remarkable Christian improvement, to have made a pursuing Fury of the
Good Samaritan; but it was so in this case, and it is a type of many,
many, many.
Two incidents united to intensify the old unreasoning
abhorrence—granted in a previous place to be unreasoning, because the
people always are unreasoning, and invariably make a point of producing
all their smoke without fire.
One day she was sitting in a market-place on a bench outside an inn,
with her little wares for sale, when the deadness that she strove
against came over her so heavily that the scene departed from before
her eyes; when it returned, she found herself on the ground, her head
supported by some good-natured market-women, and a little crowd about
her.
‘Are you better now, mother?’ asked one of the women. ‘Do you think you
can do nicely now?’
‘Have I been ill then?’ asked old Betty.
‘You have had a faint like,’ was the answer, ‘or a fit. It ain’t that
you’ve been a-struggling, mother, but you’ve been stiff and numbed.’
‘Ah!’ said Betty, recovering her memory. ‘It’s the numbness. Yes. It
comes over me at times.’
Was it gone? the women asked her.
‘It’s gone now,’ said Betty. ‘I shall be stronger than I was afore.
Many thanks to ye, my dears, and when you come to be as old as I am, may
others do as much for you!’
They assisted her to rise, but she could not stand yet, and they
supported her when she sat down again upon the bench.
‘My head’s a bit light, and my feet are a bit heavy,’ said old Betty,
leaning her face drowsily on the breast of the woman who had spoken
before. ‘They’ll both come nat’ral in a minute. There’s nothing more the
matter.’
‘Ask her,’ said some farmers standing by, who had come out from their
market-dinner, ‘who belongs to her.’
‘Are there any folks belonging to you, mother?’ said the woman.
‘Yes sure,’ answered Betty. ‘I heerd the gentleman say it, but I
couldn’t answer quick enough. There’s plenty belonging to me. Don’t ye
fear for me, my dear.’
‘But are any of ’em near here?’ said the men’s voices; the women’s
voices chiming in when it was said, and prolonging the strain.
‘Quite near enough,’ said Betty, rousing herself. ‘Don’t ye be afeard
for me, neighbours.’
‘But you are not fit to travel. Where are you going?’ was the next
compassionate chorus she heard.
‘I’m a going to London when I’ve sold out all,’ said Betty, rising with
difficulty. ‘I’ve right good friends in London. I want for nothing. I
shall come to no harm. Thankye. Don’t ye be afeard for me.’
A well-meaning bystander, yellow-legginged and purple-faced, said
hoarsely over his red comforter, as she rose to her feet, that she
‘oughtn’t to be let to go’.
‘For the Lord’s love don’t meddle with me!’ cried old Betty, all her
fears crowding on her. ‘I am quite well now, and I must go this minute.’
She caught up her basket as she spoke and was making an unsteady rush
away from them, when the same bystander checked her with his hand on
her sleeve, and urged her to come with him and see the parish-doctor.
Strengthening herself by the utmost exercise of her resolution, the poor
trembling creature shook him off, almost fiercely, and took to flight.
Nor did she feel safe until she had set a mile or two of by-road between
herself and the marketplace, and had crept into a copse, like a hunted
animal, to hide and recover breath. Not until then for the first time
did she venture to recall how she had looked over her shoulder before
turning out of the town, and had seen the sign of the White Lion hanging
across the road, and the fluttering market booths, and the old grey
church, and the little crowd gazing after her but not attempting to
follow her.
The second frightening incident was this. She had been again as bad, and
had been for some days better, and was travelling along by a part of
the road where it touched the river, and in wet seasons was so often
overflowed by it that there were tall white posts set up to mark the
way. A barge was being towed towards her, and she sat down on the bank
to rest and watch it. As the tow-rope was slackened by a turn of the
stream and dipped into the water, such a confusion stole into her
mind that she thought she saw the forms of her dead children and dead
grandchildren peopling the barge, and waving their hands to her in
solemn measure; then, as the rope tightened and came up, dropping
diamonds, it seemed to vibrate into two parallel ropes and strike her,
with a twang, though it was far off. When she looked again, there was no
barge, no river, no daylight, and a man whom she had never before seen
held a candle close to her face.
‘Now, Missis,’ said he; ‘where did you come from and where are you going
to?’
The poor soul confusedly asked the counter-question where she was?
‘I am the Lock,’ said the man.
‘The Lock?’
‘I am the Deputy Lock, on job, and this is the Lock-house. (Lock or
Deputy Lock, it’s all one, while the t’other man’s in the hospital.)
What’s your Parish?’
‘Parish!’ She was up from the truckle-bed directly, wildly feeling about
her for her basket, and gazing at him in affright.
‘You’ll be asked the question down town,’ said the man. ‘They won’t let
you be more than a Casual there. They’ll pass you on to your settlement,
Missis, with all speed. You’re not in a state to be let come upon
strange parishes ’ceptin as a Casual.’
‘’Twas the deadness again!’ murmured Betty Higden, with her hand to her
head.
‘It was the deadness, there’s not a doubt about it,’ returned the man.
‘I should have thought the deadness was a mild word for it, if it had
been named to me when we brought you in. Have you got any friends,
Missis?’
‘The best of friends, Master.’