Mary Barton Page #24

Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life is the first novel by English author Elizabeth Gaskell, published in 1848. The story is set in the English city of Manchester between 1839 and 1842, and deals with the difficulties faced by the Victorian working class.

• Novel

								

   When Death, like some remorseless creditor,
   Seizes on all we fondly thought our own!"

   "THE TWINS."


The ghoul-like fever was not to be braved with impunity, and baulked
of its prey. The widow had reclaimed her children; her neighbours,
in the good Samaritan sense of the word, had paid her little arrears
of rent, and made her a few shillings beforehand with the world.
She determined to flit from that cellar to another less full of
painful associations, less haunted by mournful memories. The board,
not so formidable as she had imagined, had inquired into her case;
and, instead of sending her to Stoke Claypole, her husband's
Buckinghamshire parish, as she had dreaded, had agreed to pay her
rent. So food for four mouths was all she was now required to find;
only for three she would have said; for herself and the unweaned
child were but reckoned as one in her calculation.

She had a strong heart, now her bodily strength had been recruited by
a week or two of food, and she would not despair. So she took in some
little children to nurse, who brought their daily food with them,
which she cooked for them, without wronging their helplessness of a
crumb; and when she had restored them to their mothers at night, she
set to work at plain sewing, "seam, and gusset, and band," and sat
thinking how she might best cheat the factory inspector, and persuade
him that her strong, big, hungry Ben was above thirteen. Her plan of
living was so far arranged, when she heard, with keen sorrow, that
Wilson's twin lads were ill of the fever.

They had never been strong. They were like many a pair of twins,
and seemed to have but one life divided between them. One life, one
strength, and in this instance, I might almost say, one brain; for
they were helpless, gentle, silly children, but not the less dear
to their parents and to their strong, active, manly, elder brother.
They were late on their feet, late in talking, late every way; had to
be nursed and cared for when other lads of their age were tumbling
about in the street, and losing themselves, and being taken to the
police-office miles away from home.

Still want had never yet come in at the door to make love for these
innocents fly out at the window. Nor was this the case even now, when
Jem Wilson's earnings, and his mother's occasional charrings were
barely sufficient to give all the family their fill of food.

But when the twins, after ailing many days, and caring little for
their meat, fell sick on the same afternoon, with the same heavy
stupor of suffering, the three hearts that loved them so, each felt,
though none acknowledged to the other, that they had little chance
for life. It was nearly a week before the tale of their illness
spread as far as the court where the Wilsons had once dwelt, and the
Bartons yet lived.

Alice had heard of the illness of her little nephews several days
before, and had locked her cellar door, and gone off straight to her
brother's house, in Ancoats; but she was often absent for days, sent
for, as her neighbours knew, to help in some sudden emergency of
illness or distress, so that occasioned no surprise.

Margaret met Jem Wilson several days after his brothers were
seriously ill, and heard from him the state of things at his home.
She told Mary of it as she entered the court late that evening; and
Mary listened with saddened heart to the strange contrast which such
woeful tidings presented to the gay and loving words she had been
hearing on her walk home. She blamed herself for being so much taken
up with visions of the golden future, that she had lately gone but
seldom on Sunday afternoons, or other leisure time, to see Mrs.
Wilson, her mother's friend; and with hasty purpose of amendment she
only stayed to leave a message for her father with the next-door
neighbour, and then went off at a brisk pace on her way to the house
of mourning.

She stopped with her hand on the latch of the Wilsons' door, to
still her beating heart, and listened to the hushed quiet within.
She opened the door softly: there sat Mrs. Wilson in the old
rocking-chair, with one sick, death-like boy lying on her knee,
crying without let or pause, but softly, gently, as fearing to
disturb the troubled, gasping child; while behind her, old Alice let
her fast-dropping tears fall down on the dead body of the other twin,
which she was laying out on a board, placed on a sort of sofa-settee
in a corner of the room. Over the child, which yet breathed, the
father bent, watching anxiously for some ground of hope, where hope
there was none. Mary stepped slowly and lightly across to Alice.

"Ay, poor lad! God has taken him early, Mary."

Mary could not speak; she did not know what to say; it was so much
worse than she expected. At last she ventured to whisper,

"Is there any chance for the other one, think you?"

Alice shook her head, and told with a look that she believed there
was none. She next endeavoured to lift the little body, and carry it
to its old accustomed bed in its parents' room. But earnest as the
father was in watching the yet-living, he had eyes and ears for all
that concerned the dead, and sprang gently up, and took his dead son
on his hard couch in his arms with tender strength, and carried him
upstairs as if afraid of wakening him.

The other child gasped longer, louder, with more of effort.

"We mun get him away from his mother. He cannot die while she's
wishing him."

"Wishing him?" said Mary, in a tone of inquiry.

"Ay; donno ye know what wishing means? There's none can die in the
arms of those who are wishing them sore to stay on earth. The soul o'
them as holds them won't let the dying soul go free; so it has a hard
struggle for the quiet of death. We mun get him away fra' his mother,
or he'll have a hard death, poor lile [20] fellow."


   [Footnote 20: "Lile," a north-country word for "little."
                 "Wit leil labour to live."--Piers Ploughman.]


So without circumlocution she went and offered to take the sinking
child. But the mother would not let him go, and looking in Alice's
face with brimming and imploring eyes, declared in earnest whispers,
that she was not wishing him, that she would fain have him released
from his suffering. Alice and Mary stood by with eyes fixed on the
poor child, whose struggles seemed to increase, till at last his
mother said with a choking voice,

"May happen [21] yo'd better take him, Alice; I believe my heart's
wishing him a' this while, for I cannot, no, I cannot bring mysel to
let my two childer go in one day; I cannot help longing to keep him,
and yet he sha'not suffer longer for me."


   [Footnote 21: "May happen," perhaps.]


She bent down, and fondly, oh! with what passionate fondness, kissed
her child, and then gave him up to Alice, who took him with tender
care. Nature's struggles were soon exhausted, and he breathed his
little life away in peace.

Then the mother lifted up her voice and wept. Her cries brought her
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