‘Everywhere, sir.’
‘And when?’
‘Always, sir.’
Lancelot burst out laughing. The man looked up at him slowly and seriously.
‘You wouldn’t laugh, sir, if you’d seen much of the inside of these cottages round.’
‘Really,’ said Lancelot, ‘I was only laughing at our making such very short work of such a long and serious story. Do you mean that the unhealthiness of this country is wholly caused by the river?’
‘No, sir. The river-damps are God’s sending; and so they are not too bad to bear. But there’s more of man’s sending, that is too bad to bear.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Are men likely to be healthy when they are worse housed than a pig?’
‘No.’
‘And worse fed than a hound?’
‘Good heavens! No!’
‘Or packed together to sleep, like pilchards in a barrel?’
‘But, my good fellow, do you mean that the labourers here are in that state?’
‘It isn’t far to walk, sir. Perhaps some day, when the May-fly is gone off, and the fish won’t rise awhile, you could walk down and see. I beg your pardon, sir, though, for thinking of such a thing. They are not places fit for gentlemen, that’s certain.’ There was a staid irony in his tone, which Lancelot felt.
‘But the clergyman goes?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And Miss Honoria goes?’
‘Yes, God Almighty bless her!’
‘And do not they see that all goes right?’
The giant twisted his huge limbs, as if trying to avoid an answer, and yet not daring to do so.
‘Do clergymen go about among the poor much, sir, at college, before they are ordained?’
Lancelot smiled, and shook his head.
‘I thought so, sir. Our good vicar is like the rest hereabouts. God knows, he stints neither time nor money—the souls of the poor are well looked after, and their bodies too—as far as his purse will go; but that’s not far.’
‘Is he ill-off, then?’
‘The living’s worth some forty pounds a year. The great tithes, they say, are worth better than twelve hundred; but Squire Lavington has them.’
‘Oh, I see!’ said Lancelot.
‘I’m glad you do, sir, for I don’t,’ meekly answered Tregarva. ‘But the vicar, sir, he is a kind man, and a good; but the poor don’t understand him, nor he them. He is too learned, sir, and, saving your presence, too fond of his prayer-book.’
‘One can’t be too fond of a good thing.’
‘Not unless you make an idol of it, sir, and fancy that men’s souls were made for the prayer-book, and not the prayer-book for them.’
‘But cannot he expose and redress these evils, if they exist?’
Tregarva twisted about again.
‘I do not say that I think it, sir; but this I know, that every poor man in the vale thinks it—that the parsons are afraid of the landlords. They must see these things, for they are not blind; and they try to plaster them up out of their own pockets.’
‘But why, in God’s name, don’t they strike at the root of the matter, and go straight to the landlords and tell them the truth?’ asked Lancelot.
‘So people say, sir. I see no reason for it except the one which I gave you. Besides, sir, you must remember, that a man can’t quarrel with his own kin; and so many of them are their squire’s brothers, or sons, or nephews.’
‘Or good friends with him, at least.’
‘Ay, sir, and, to do them justice, they had need, for the poor’s sake, to keep good friends with the squire. How else are they to get a farthing for schools, or coal-subscriptions, or lying-in societies, or lending libraries, or penny clubs? If they spoke their minds to the great ones, sir, how could they keep the parish together?’
‘You seem to see both sides of a question, certainly. But what a miserable state of things, that the labouring man should require all these societies, and charities, and helps from the rich!—that an industrious freeman cannot live without alms!’
‘So I have thought this long time,’ quietly answered Tregarva.
‘But Miss Honoria—she is not afraid to tell her father the truth?’
‘Suppose, sir, when Adam and Eve were in the garden, that all the devils had come up and played their fiends’ tricks before them—do you think they’d have seen any shame in it?’
‘I really cannot tell,’ said Lancelot, smiling.
‘Then I can, sir. They’d have seen no more harm in it than there was harm already in themselves; and that was none. A man’s eyes can only see what they’ve learnt to see.’
Lancelot started: it was a favourite dictum of his in Carlyle’s works.
‘Where did you get that thought, my friend’
‘By seeing, sir.’
‘But what has that to do with Miss Honoria?’
‘She is an angel of holiness herself, sir; and, therefore, she goes on without blushing or suspecting, where our blood would boil again. She sees people in want, and thinks it must be so, and pities them and relieves them. But she don’t know want herself; and, therefore, she don’t know that it makes men beasts and devils. She’s as pure as God’s light herself; and, therefore, she fancies every one is as spotless as she is. And there’s another mistake in your charitable great people, sir. When they see poor folk sick or hungry before their eyes, they pull out their purses fast enough, God bless them; for they wouldn’t like to be so themselves. But the oppression that goes on all the year round, and the want that goes on all the year round, and the filth, and the lying, and the swearing, and the profligacy, that go on all the year round, and the sickening weight of debt, and the miserable grinding anxiety from rent-day to rent-day, and Saturday night to Saturday night, that crushes a man’s soul down, and drives every thought out of his head but how he is to fill his stomach and warm his back, and keep a house over his head, till he daren’t for his life take his thoughts one moment off the meat that perisheth—oh, sir, they never felt this; and, therefore, they never dream that there are thousands who pass them in their daily walks who feel this, and feel nothing else!’
This outburst was uttered with an earnestness and majesty which astonished Lancelot. He forgot the subject in the speaker.
