Mary Barton Page #37

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

								

had gone up to London on his vain errand, he had been working short
time. But in the hopes of speedy redress by means of the interference
of Parliament, he had thrown up his place; and now, when he asked
leave to resume work, he was told they were diminishing their number
of hands every week, and he was made aware by the remarks of fellow
workmen, that a Chartist delegate, and a leading member of a Trades'
Union, was not likely to be favoured in his search after employment.
Still he tried to keep up a brave heart concerning himself. He knew
he could bear hunger; for that power of endurance had been called
forth when he was a little child, and had seen his mother hide her
daily morsel to share it among her children, and when he, being the
eldest, had told the noble lie, that "he was not hungry, could not
eat a bit more," in order to imitate his mother's bravery, and still
the sharp wail of the younger infants. Mary, too, was secure of two
meals a day at Miss Simmonds'; though, by the way, the dress-maker,
too, feeling the effect of bad times, had left off giving tea to her
apprentices, setting them the example of long abstinence by putting
off her own meal until work was done for the night, however late that
might be.

But the rent! It was half-a-crown a week--nearly all Mary's
earnings--and much less room might do for them, only two.--(Now came
the time to be thankful that the early dead were saved from the evil
to come.)--The agricultural labourer generally has strong local
attachments; but they are far less common, almost obliterated, among
the inhabitants of a town. Still there are exceptions, and Barton
formed one. He had removed to his present house just after the last
bad times, when little Tom had sickened and died. He had then thought
the bustle of a removal would give his poor stunned wife something to
do, and he had taken more interest in the details of the proceeding
than he otherwise would have done, in the hope of calling her forth
to action again. So he seemed to know every brass-headed nail driven
up for her convenience. One only had been displaced. It was Esther's
bonnet nail, which, in his deep revengeful anger against her, after
his wife's death, he had torn out of the wall, and cast into the
street. It would be hard work to leave that house, which yet seemed
hallowed by his wife's presence in the happy days of old. But he
was a law unto himself, though sometimes a bad, fierce law; and
he resolved to give the rent-collector notice, and look out for a
cheaper abode, and tell Mary they must flit. Poor Mary! she loved the
house, too. It was wrenching up her natural feelings of home, for it
would be long before the fibres of her heart would gather themselves
about another place.

This trial was spared. The collector (of himself), on the very Monday
when Barton planned to give him notice of his intention to leave,
lowered the rent threepence a week, just enough to make Barton
compromise and agree to stay on a little longer.

But by degrees the house was stripped of its little ornaments. Some
were broken; and the odd twopences and threepences wanted to pay for
their repairs, were required for the far sterner necessity of food.
And by-and-bye Mary began to part with other superfluities at the
pawn-shop. The smart tea-tray and tea-caddy, long and carefully kept,
went for bread for her father. He did not ask for it, or complain,
but she saw hunger in his shrunk, fierce, animal look. Then the
blankets went, for it was summer time, and they could spare them; and
their sale made a fund, which Mary fancied would last till better
times came. But it was soon all gone; and then she looked around
the room to crib it of its few remaining ornaments. To all these
proceedings her father said never a word. If he fasted, or feasted
(after the sale of some article), on an unusual meal of bread and
cheese, he took all with a sullen indifference, which depressed
Mary's heart. She often wished he would apply for relief from the
Guardian's relieving office; often wondered the Trades' Union did
nothing for him. Once when she asked him as he sat, grimed, unshaven,
and gaunt, after a day's fasting over the fire, why he did not get
relief from the town, he turned round, with grim wrath, and said, "I
don't want money, child! D----n their charity and their money! I want
work, and it is my right. I want work."

He would bear it all, he said to himself. And he did bear it, but
not meekly; that was too much to expect. Real meekness of character
is called out by experience of kindness. And few had been kind to
him. Yet through it all, with stern determination he refused the
assistance his Trades' Union would have given him. It had not much
to give, but with worldly wisdom, thought it better to propitiate
an active, useful member, than to help those who were unenergetic,
though they had large families to provide for. Not so thought John
Barton. With him need was right.

"Give it to Tom Darbyshire," he said. "He's more claim on it than me,
for he's more need of it, with his seven children."

Now Tom Darbyshire was, in his listless, grumbling way, a backbiting
enemy of John Barton's. And he knew it; but he was not to be
influenced by that in a matter like this.

Mary went early to her work; but her cheery laugh over it was now
missed by the other girls. Her mind wandered over the present
distress, and then settled, as she stitched, on the visions of the
future, where yet her thoughts dwelt more on the circumstances of
ease, and the pomps and vanities awaiting her, than on the lover
with whom she was to share them. Still she was not insensible to the
pride of having attracted one so far above herself in station; not
insensible to the secret pleasure of knowing that he, whom so many
admired, had often said he would give any thing for one of her sweet
smiles. Her love for him was a bubble, blown out of vanity; but it
looked very real and very bright. Sally Leadbitter, meanwhile, keenly
observed the signs of the times; she found out that Mary had begun to
affix a stern value to money as the "Purchaser of Life," and many
girls had been dazzled and lured by gold, even without the betraying
love which she believed to exist in Mary's heart. So she urged young
Mr. Carson, by representations of the want she was sure surrounded
Mary, to bring matters more to a point. But he had a kind of
instinctive dread of hurting Mary's pride of spirit, and durst not
hint his knowledge in any way of the distress that many must be
enduring. He felt that for the present he must still be content
with stolen meetings and summer evening strolls, and the delight of
pouring sweet honeyed words into her ear, while she listened with
a blush and a smile that made her look radiant with beauty. No,
he would be cautious in order to be certain; for Mary, one way or
another, he must make his. He had no doubt of the effect of his own
personal charms in the long run; for he knew he was handsome, and
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