Sandboys, seeing that he had no longer any hope in Postlethwaite, was now awakened to the necessity of making a personal exertion. His wife, overpowered by this addition of the loss of dinner to the loss of tea, did not hesitate to suggest to him, that perhaps it might be as well, if they consented to do like the rest of the world, and betake themselves for a few days to London. For her own part, she was ready to make any sacrifice, even to face the London dirt. But Sandboys would listen to no compromise, declared that greatness showed itself alone in overcoming circumstances,—and talked grandly of his forefathers, who had held out so long in these self-same mountain fastnesses. Mrs. Sandboys had no objection to make to the heroism, but she said that really Elcy’s complexion required fresh meat; and that although she herself was prepared to give up a great deal, yet her Sunday’s dinner was more than she was inclined to part with, and as for sacrifices, she had already sacrificed enough in the loss of her tea. Mr. Sandboys upon this bethought him of John Banks, the pig-butcher at Lorton, and having a young porker just ready for the knife, fancied he could not do better than despatch Postlethwaite with the animal to Lorton to be slaughtered. This, however, was sooner decided upon than effected; for Postlethwaite, on being summoned, made his appearance in slippers, and declared he had worn out, in his several foraging excursions about the country, the only pair of shoes he had left. Whereupon his master, though it was with some difficulty he admitted the excuse,—and this not until Postlethwaite, with a piteous gravity, had brought out a pair of calkered boots in the very worst possible condition,—began to foresee that there was even more necessity for Postlethwaite to be shod than Paddy, for that unless he could be got over to Cockermouth, they might be fairly starved out. Accordingly, he gave his son Jobby instructions to make the best of his way to the two shoemakers who resided within five miles of Hassness, for he made sure that one of the cobblers at least could be prevailed upon to put Postlethwaite in immediate travelling order.
It was long after nightfall, and Mrs. Sandboys had grown very uneasy as to the fate of her dear boy, when Postlethwaite was heard condoling over the miserable plight of Master Jobby. His mother rushed out to see what had happened, and found the bedraggled youth standing with one shoe in the hall, the other having been left behind in a bog, which he had met with in his attempt to make a short cut home on the other side of the lake by Melbrake.
Nor was the news he brought of a more cheerful nature. John Jackson the shoemaker was nowhere to be found. He had not been heard of since the departure of the train; and John Coss, the other shoemaker, had turned post-boy again, and refused to do any cobbling whatsoever. Coss had told him he got a job to take some gentlefolks in a car over to Carlisle, to meet the train for London, and he was just about to start; and if Jobby liked, he would give him a lift thus far on t’ road to Girt ’Shibition.
This was a sad damper for Sandboys, for with John Jackson the shoemaker seemed to vanish his last hope. Postlethwaite had worn out his boots, Jobby had lost his shoes, and John Jackson and John Coss, the only men, within ten miles, who could refit them, were both too fully taken up with the Great Exhibition to trouble their heads about the destitution of Hassness.
Postlethwaite almost smiled when he heard the result of Jobby’s twelve-mile walk, and drily remarked to the servant-maid, who already showed strong symptoms of discontent—having herself a sweetheart exposed, without her care, to the temptations and wickedness of London—that the whole family would be soon barefoot, and going about the countryside trying to get one another shod.
Sandboys consulted with his wife as to what was to be done, but she administered but little consolation; for the loss of her tea, and the prospect of no Sunday’s dinner, had ruffled her usual equanimity. The sight of her darling boy, too, barefoot and footsore, aroused every passion of her mother’s heart. Jobby had no other shoes to his feet, she told her husband, for the rate at which that boy wore his things out was quite terrible to a mother’s feelings; but Mr. Sandboys had no right to send the lad to such a distance, after such weather as they had just had. He might have known that Jobby was always taking short cuts, and always getting up to his knees in some mess or other; and he must naturally have expected that Jobby would have left both his shoes behind him instead of one—and those the only shoes he had. She should not wonder if Mr. Sandboys had done it for the purpose. Who was to go the errands now, she should like to know? Mr. Sandboys, perhaps, liked living there, in that out of the way hole, like a giant or a hermit. Did he expect that she or Elcy were going to drive that pig to Lorton?—And thus she continued, going over and over again every one of the troubles that their absence from London had brought upon them, until Sandboys was worried into excitement, and plumply demanded of her whether she actually wished to go herself to the Exhibition? Mrs. Sandboys was at no loss for a reply, and retorted, that what she wanted was her usual meals, and shoes for her children; and if she could not get them there, why, she did not care if she had to go to Hyde Park for them.
Sandboys was little prepared for this confession of hostilities on the part of his beloved Aggy. He had never known her address him in such a tone since the day she swore at Lorton to honour and obey him. He jumped from his chair and began to pace the room—now wondering what had come to his family and servants, now lamenting the want of tea, now sympathizing with the absence of ale, now biting his thumb as he contemplated the approximating dilemma of a dinnerless Sunday, and now inwardly cursing the Great Exhibition, which had not only taken all his neighbours from him, and deprived him of almost all the necessaries of life, but seemed destined to estrange his wife and children!
For a moment the idea passed across his mind, that perhaps it might be better to give way; but he cast the thought from him immediately, and as he trod the room with redoubled quickness and firmness of step, he buttoned his grey coat energetically across his breast, swelling with a resolution to make a desperate effort. He would drive the pig himself over to John Banks, the pig-butcher’s, at Lorton! But, as in the case of Postlethwaite, Mr. Cursty Sandboys soon found that resolving to drive a pig was a far different thing from doing it. Even in a level country the pig-driving art is none of the most facile acquirements,—but where the way to be traversed consists at every other yard of either a fell, a craig, a gill, a morass, a comb, a pike, a knot, a rigg, a skar, a beck, a howe, a force, a syke, or a tarn, or some other variety of those comfortable quarters into which a pig, with his peculiar perversity, would take especial delight in introducing his compagnon de voyage—the accomplishment of pig-driving in Cumberland partakes of the character of what aesthetic critics love to term “High Art.”
Nor did Mr. Sandboys’ pig—in spite of the benevolence and “sops” administered during his education by the gentle Elcy, who shed tears at his departure—at all detract from the glories of his race. Contrary to the earnest advice of Postlethwaite, founded on the experience of ages, who exhorted his master to keep the string loose in his hand—Sandboys, who had a theory of his own about pig-driving, and who was afraid that if the animal once got away from him in the hills, he would carry with him the family’s only chance of fresh meat for weeks to come—made up his mind to keep a safe hold of him, and so, twisted the string which he had attached to the porker’s leg two or three turns round his own wrist.
Scarcely had Elcy petitioned her brother for the gentle treatment of her pet “piggy,” than, crack! Jobby, who held the whip at the gate, while his father adjusted the reins, sent a flanker on the animal’s hind-quarters. Away went “piggy,” and we regret to say, away went the innocent Sandboys, not after, but with him—and precisely in the opposite direction to what he had intended. “Cwoley,” the dog, who had been dancing round the pig at the gate, no sooner saw the animal start off at score, than entering into the spirit of the scene, he gave full chase, yelping, and jumping, and snapping at him, so that the terrified porker fetched sharp round upon Sandboys, and bolted straight up the mountain side.