you look as if you had employment.’
‘Yes, sir, I have, I am thankful to say, though it brings me in but little; at any rate, I earn enough to keep me off the parish. Perhaps, gentlemen, you would like to walk in.’
They did so.
‘How neat! how clean!’ said the Vicar, as he looked admiringly around. ‘What a view you have! Positively good; quite commands the place.’
‘Yes, sir, but the chimneys give me a little more smoke than I care for. It is rarely I dare open my window, for fear of the blacks.’
‘Ah, my good woman, it is so with all of us! There is always something amiss – something we should like to get rid of – a fly in the ointment,’ as Solomon says. ‘Now, there are my curates: they are happy young men, but I have no doubt they would like to be in my shoes’ – a remark so true that the curates could not contradict it, only by a deprecatory smile and shake of the head. ‘Dear me!’ continued the Vicar, as he turned from the window to the interior. ‘Why, you have a sofa here, with an antimacassar!’
‘Pardon, sir, that is my bed.’
‘Ah, well, it is quite a model – quite a model. Why, we could dine here off the floor. What a nice little bit of carpet! What a nice little looking-glass! Oh, woman, how strong is the ruling passion! And bless me!’ he said, turning, as he made a still longer inspection, ‘why, here are flowers – positively flowers – and flowers cost a deal of money at this season of the year!’
‘Excuse me, sir, they are artificial.’
‘What! ah, yes, I see they are; but artificial flowers cost money.’
‘They cost me but very little. I made them myself, to sell, if possible, but I could not get a customer, and so I kept them to make the room a bit cheerful.’
‘Ah, I see you are one of the better class of workpeople – what I may call the aristocracy. I am awfully sorry. I should really have liked to have helped you, but our funds are small, and the amount of distress in the town is so large that we are obliged to be very particular – very particular indeed. It is a duty we owe to the parish and to the kind friends who have subscribed the money. They have the greatest confidence in us, and we must not abuse that confidence.’
‘Pray, sir, don’t think of it. If there are any poor people much worse off than myself, why, I pity ’em,’ said the poor woman.
‘Worse off, my good woman! Oh, the town is full of such! Look at your poor neighbours in the next room – a most shocking case; yet, in all their poverty, taking charge of a little waif that, somehow or other, came into their hands.’
The woman said nothing. She could have said a good deal, but she knew the family, and she also knew the value of peace and quietness.
‘Perhaps you will like to accept of this little tract,’ said the Vicar, who wished to show his sympathy, but who did not exactly know how. ‘It is prettily got up, and I rejoice to say it has been found greatly useful. You will, perhaps, read it with more interest as it was written by myself. And here is another, by my daughter, “On the Blessings of Poverty.”’
‘On what, sir?’
‘“On the Blessings of Poverty.”’
‘Well, I never heard of them. I am sure I shall like to read that.’
‘Here they are, then,’ said the Vicar, handing them smilingly. ‘And now we must wish you good-morning; our time is precious, and we have a good deal to do yet.’
‘Had you better not give her something to eat?’ said one of the curates in a low voice as they were turning away.
‘Oh dear no!’ said the Vicar; ‘that would be very wrong – very wrong indeed.’ Then in an undervoice he added: ‘Our intrusion here is quite a mistake. This is not a case in which we can interfere. But we wish you a good-morning, with the compliments of the season; and I will get my daughter to call with a few more tracts, and perhaps she might like to buy some of your artificial flowers.’
‘I am sure I should be glad to see her.’
‘Well, well, we shall see. You know me, of course; I am the Vicar of the parish. Of course, you have often seen me at church.’
‘Well, I can’t say that I have.’
‘Why, you don’t mean to say you don’t go to a place of worship? You are not a heathen, are you?’
‘I hope not, sir; but I have to work so hard all the week that I am thankful for a little more rest on a Sunday, and when I go out I go to chapel.’
‘To chapel! How is that?’ said the Vicar, in a by no means pleased tone. ‘Don’t you know all Dissenters are schismatics? My good woman, I am sorry for you.’
‘Well, sir, I go to chapel because I was brought up to it, and it seems more homelike.’
‘Well, then, the chapel people must look after you. You are not in my charge at all. It is a pity, and I am sorry for it. Perhaps, if we saw you at church we could help you a little, if ever you did require any aid. But we can’t discuss that question. It is clear we have no further business here, have we, Mr. Jones?’
The curate with that uncommon name replied to his reverend superior, ‘Certainly not.’
‘Certainly not,’ replied the poor woman, with a shade of disappointment over her pale face, and a little more of pardonable acidity in her tone; ‘certainly not. I am no beggar.’
‘Just so, my good woman,’ said the Vicar, as he tripped with his curate downstairs. ‘Just so; as I have said, we have to exercise the utmost care in the disposal of our funds.’
More of a Samaritan than the Vicar, the poor woman kept the door open till she had heard the last of his steps down the creaking stairs, or he might have had a fall, a not uncommon circumstance on that dilapidated staircase, and then she turned away to her loneliness and misery with her broken heart. The lamp flickered in the socket, the end was very near; life for her had no charm, death no terror.
That night was one of extra jollity as far as the inhabitants of Parker’s Piece were concerned. The police had not had so much trouble in the place for a long while, nor had the publicans and pawnbrokers done such a roaring trade. No one couple in all that squalid district was more drunk that night than Carroty Bill and his better-half.
That night was one of intense cold – the coldest, in feet, of the year, the coldest of many years – and, as such, noted by distinguished meteorologists. The cold was everywhere; in the palace of the prince, as well as in the hut of the peasant. It crept into Belgravian homes, where the lord and master lined himself with extra good cheer, and warmed himself with extra fires; it made dainty maidens and high-born matrons wrap themselves in extra fur as they drove home from dinner-party or theatre, or concert or ball. In railway carriages there was an extra demand for foot-warmers, and at every refreshment bar there was an incessant demand for a glass of something hot. It was the same in all the publics and gin-palaces; and it was a curious fact, the poorer the people were, the more eager was their consumption of potent fluids; and how they lingered around the places where they were sold, even when their money and their credit were gone, as if loath to do battle with the cold without as it pinched their gloveless hands or shoeless feet, or as it found its way into their cheerless garret or cellar as the case might be! In the homes of the well-to-do how the fires
