“I couldn’t expect thee to see me when tha hed a new dress on. I’ll tell thee, howiver, I doan’t like it as well as I liked thy last suit.”
“The little shepherd plaid? Oh, that has become quite common! This is the thing now. What do you say, mother?”
“I think it is all right. Put it on in the morning. We leave at seven o’clock.”
“Oh, delightful! I am so glad! Life is all in a mess here and I hate a tossed-up house.”
At this point the Reverend Mr. Yates entered. He had called to bid the squire and his family good-bye, but the ladies quickly left the room. They knew some apology was due the curate for placing the money intended for relieving the suffering in the village in the preacher’s care, and at his disposal. But the curate was reasonable, and readily acknowledged that “nearly all needing help were members of Mr. Foster’s church, and would naturally take relief better from him than from a stranger.”
The journey as far as Leeds was a very sad one, for the squire stopped frequently to speak to groups of despairing, desperate men and women: – “Hev courage, friends!” he said cheerfully to a gathering of about forty or more on the Green of a large village, only fourteen miles south of Annis. “Hev courage a little longer! I am Antony Annis, and I am on my way to London, with many more gentlemen, to see that the Reform Bill goes through the Lords, this time. If it does not then it will be the duty of Englishmen to know the reason why. God knows you hev borne up bravely. Try it a bit longer.”
“Squire,” said a big fellow, white with hunger, “Squire, I hevn’t touched food of any kind for forty hours. You count hours when you are hungry, squire.”
“We’re all o’ us,” said his companion, “faint and clemmed. We hevn’t strength to be men any longer. Look at me! I’m wanting to cry like a bairn.”
“I’m ready to fight, squire,” added a man standing near by; “I hev a bit o’ manhood yet, and I’d fight for my rights, I would that! – if I nobbnd hed a slice or two o’ bread.”
At the same time a young woman, little more than a child, came tottering forward, and stood at the side of Mistress Annis. She had a little baby in her arms, she did not speak, she only looked in the elder woman’s face then cast her eyes down upon the child. It was tugging at an empty breast with little sharp cries of hungry impatience. Then she said, “I hev no milk for him! The lile lad is sucking my blood!” Her voice was weak and trembling, but she had no tears left.
Madam covered her face, she was weeping, and the next moment Katherine emptied her mother’s purse into the starving woman’s hand. She took it with a great cry, lifting her face to heaven – “Oh God, it is money! Oh God, it is milk and bread!” Then looking at Katherine she said, “Thou hes saved two lives. God sent thee to do it” – and with the words, she found a sudden strength to run with her child to a shop across the street, where bread and milk were sold.
“It’s little Dinas Sykes,” said a man whose voice was weak with hunger. “Eh! but I’m glad, God hes hed mercy on her!” and all watched Dinas running for milk and bread with a grateful sympathy. The squire was profoundly touched, his heart melted within him, and he said to the little company with the voice of a companion, not of a master, “Men, how many of you are present?”
“About forty-four men – and a few half grown lads. They need food worse than men do – they suffer more – poor lile fellows!”
“And you all hev women at home? Wives and daughters?”
“Ay, squire, and mothers, too! Old and gray and hungry – some varry patient, and just dying on their feet, some so weak they are crying like t’ childer of two or four years old. My God! Squire, t’ men’s suffering isn’t worth counting, against that of t’ women and children.”
“Friends, I hev no words to put against your suffering and a ten pound note will be better than all the words I could give you. It will at least get all of you a loaf of bread and a bit of beef and a mug of ale. Who shall I give it to?”
“Ben Shuttleworth,” was the unanimous answer, and Ben stepped forward. He was a noble-looking old man just a little crippled by long usage of the hand loom. “Squire Annis,” he said, “I’ll gladly take the gift God hes sent us by thy hands and I’ll divide it equally, penny for penny, and may God bless thee and prosper thy journey! We’re none of us men used to saying ‘thank’ee’ to any man but we say it to thee. Yes, we say it to thee.”
Kindred scenes occurred in every village and they did not reach Leeds in time for the mail coach they intended to take. The squire was not troubled at the delay. He said, “he hed a bit of his awn business to look after, and he was sure Katherine hed forgotten one or two varry necessary things, that she could buy in Leeds.”
Katherine acknowledged that she had forgotten her thimble and her hand glass, and said she had “been worrying about her back hair, which she could not dress without one.”
Madam was tired and glad to rest. “But Antony,” she said, “Dick will meet this coach and when we do not come by it, he will have wonders and worries about us.”
“Not he! Dick knows something about women, and also, I told him we might sleep a night or two at some town on the way, if you were tired.”
The next day they began the journey again, half-purposing to stop and rest at some half-way town. The squire said Dick understood them. He would be on hand if they loitered a week. And Madam was satisfied; she thought it likely Dick had instructions fitting his father’s uncertainty.
Yet though the coach prevented actual contact with the miserable famine sufferers, it could not prevent them witnessing the silent misery sitting on every door step, and looking with such longing eyes for help from God or man. Upon the whole it was a journey to break a pitiful heart, and the squire and his family were glad when the coach drew up with the rattle of wheels and the blowing of the guard’s horn at its old stand of Charing Cross.
The magic of London was already around them, and the first face they saw was the handsome beaming face of Dick Annis. He nodded and smiled to his father, who was sitting – where he had sat most of the journey – at the side of the driver. Dick would have liked to help him to the street, but he knew that his father needed no help and would likely be vexed at any offer of it, but Dick’s mother and sister came out of the coach in his arms, and the lad kissed them and called them all the fond names he could think of. Noticing at the same time his father’s clever descent, he put out his left hand to him, for he had his mother guarded with his right arm. “You did that jump, dad, better than I could have done it. Are you tired?”
“We are all tired to death, Dick. Hev you a cab here?”
“To be sure, I have! Your rooms at the Clarendon are in order, and there will be a good dinner waiting when you are ready for it.”
In something less than an hour they were all ready for a good dinner; their faces had been washed, Katherine’s hair smoothed and Madam’s cap properly adjusted. The squire was standing on the hearthrug in high spirits. The sight of his son, the touch of the town, the pleasant light and comfort of his surroundings, the prospect of dinner, made him forget for a few minutes the suffering he had passed through, until his son asked, “And did you have a pleasant journey, father?”
“A journey, Dick, to break a man’s heart. It hes turned me from a Tory into a Radical. This government must feed the people or – we will kick them back – ”
“Dear father, we will talk of that subject by ourselves. It isn’t fit for two tired women, now is it?”
“Mebbe not; but I hev seen and I hev heard these last two or three days, Dick, what I can niver forget. Things hev got to be altered. They hev that, or – ”
“We will talk that over after mother and Kitty have gone to sleep. We won’t worry them to-night. I have ordered mother’s favorite Cabinet pudding for her, and some raspberry cream for Kitty. It wouldn’t be right to talk of unhappy things with good things in our mouths, now would it?”
“They