Cobwebs and Cables

by Hesba Stretton

The district on which his vicar directed Felix to concentrate his efforts was by no means a neglected one. It was rather suffering from the multitude of laborers, who had chosen it as their part of the great vineyard. Lying close to a wealthy and fashionable neighborhood, it had long been a kind of pleasure-ground, or park for hunting sinners in, to the charitable and religious inhabitants of the comfortable dwellings standing within a stone's throw of the wretched streets. There was interest and excitement to be found there for their own unoccupied time, and a pleasant glow of approbation for their consciences. Every denomination had a mission there; and the mission-halls stood thickly on the ground. There were Bible-women, nurses, city missionaries, tract distributors at work; mothers' meetings were held; classes of all sorts were open; infirmaries and medical mission-rooms were established; and coffee-rooms were to be found in nearly every street. Each body of Christians acted as if there were no other workers in the field; each was striving to hunt souls into its own special fold; and each distributed its funds as if no money but theirs was being laid out for the welfare of the poor district. Hence there were greater pauperism and more complete poverty than in many a neglected quarter of the East End, with all its untold misery. Spirit-vaults flourished; the low lodging-houses were crowded to excess; rents rose rapidly; and the narrow ill lighted streets swarmed with riff-raff after nightfall, when the greater part of the wealthy district-visitors were spending their evening hours in their comfortable homes, satisfied with their day's work for the Lord.

But Felix began his work in the evenings, when the few decent working men, who still continued to live in the Brickfields, had come home from their day's toil, and the throng of professional beggars and thieves, who found themselves in good quarters there, poured in from their day's prowling. It was well for him that he had an athletic and muscular frame, well-knitted together, and strengthened by exercise, for many a time he had to force his way out of houses, where he found himself surrounded by a crew of half-drunken and dangerous men. Presently they got to know and respect him both for his strength and forbearance, which he exercised with good temper and generosity. He could give a blow, as well as take one, when it was necessary. At one time his absence from church was compulsory, because he had received a black eye when defending a querulous old crone from her drunken son; he was seen about the wretched streets of the Brickfields with this too familiar decoration, but he took care not to go home until it was lost.

With the more decent inhabitants of the district he was soon a great favorite; but he was feared and abhorred by the others. Felix belonged to the new school of philanthropic economy, which discerns, and protests against thoughtless almsgiving; and above all, against doles to street beggars. He would have made giving equally illegal with begging. But he soon began to despair of effecting a reformation in this direction; for even Phebe could not always refrain from finding a penny for some poor little shivering urchin, dogging her steps on a winter's day.

"You do not stop to think how cruel you are," Felix would say indignantly; "if it was not for women giving to them, these poor little wretches would never be sent out, with their naked feet on the frozen pavement, and scarcely rags enough to hide their bodies, blue with cold. If you could only step inside the gin-shops as I do, you would see a drunken sinner of a father or a mother drinking down the pence you drop into the children's hands. Your thoughtless kindness is as cruel as their vice."

But still, with all that fresh ardor and energy which is sneered at in the familiar proverb, "A new broom sweeps clean," Felix swept away at the misery, and the ignorance, and the vice of his degraded district. He was not going to spare himself; it should be no sham fight with him. The place was his first battlefield; and it had a strong attraction for him.

So through the pleasant months of spring, which for the last four years had been spent at Oxford, and into the hot weeks of summer, Felix was indefatigably at work, giving himself no rest and no recreation, besides writing long and frequent letters to Mrs. Pascal, or rather to Alice. For would not Alice always read those letters, every word of them? would she not even often be the first to open them? it being the pleasant custom of the Pascal household for most letters to be in common, excepting such as were actually marked "private." And Mrs. Pascal's answer might have been dictated by Alice herself, so exactly did they express her mind. They did not as yet stand on the footing of betrothed lovers; but neither of them doubted but that they soon would do so.

It was not without a sharp pang, however, that Felix learned that the Pascals were going to Switzerland for the summer. He had an intense longing to visit the land, of which his grandmother had so often spoken to him, and where his father's grave lay. But quite apart from his duty to the district placed under his charge, there was an obstacle in the absolute interdiction Felicita laid upon the country where her husband had met with his terrible death. It was impossible even to hint at going to Switzerland whilst she was in her present state of health. She had only partially recovered from the low, nervous fever which had attacked her during the winter; and still those about her strove their utmost to save her from all worry and anxiety.

The sultry, fervid days of August came; and if possible the narrow thoroughfares of the Brickfields seemed more wretched than in the winter. The pavements burned like an oven, and the thin walls of the houses did not screen their inmates from the reeking heat. Not a breath of fresh air seemed to wander through the low-lying streets, and a sickly glare and heaviness brooded over them. No wonder there was fever about. The fields were too far away to be reached in this tiring weather; and when the men and women returned home from their day's work, they sunk down in silent and languid groups on their door-steps, or on the dirty flag-stones of the causeway. Even the professional beggars suffered more than in the winter, for the tide of almsgiving is at its lowest ebb during the summer, when the rich have many other and pleasanter occupations.

Felix walked through his "parish," as he called it, with slow and weary steps. Yet his holiday was come, and this was the last evening he would work thus for the present. The Pascals were in Switzerland; he had had a letter from Mrs. Pascal, with a few lines from Alice herself in a postscript, telling him she and her father were about to start for Engelberg to visit his father's grave for him. It was a loving and gracious thing to do, just suited to Canon Pascal's kindly nature; and Felix felt his whole being lifted up by it to a happier level. Phebe and Hilda were gone to their usual summer haunt, Phebe's quaint little cottage on the solitary mountain-moor; where he was going to join them for a day or two, before they went to Mr. Clifford, in the old house at Riversborough. His mother alone, of all the friends he had, was remaining in London; and she had refused to leave until Phebe and Hilda had first paid their yearly visits to the old places.

He reached his mission-room at last, through the close, unwholesome atmosphere, and found it fairly filled, chiefly with working men, some of whom had turned into it as being a trifle less hot and noisy than the baking pavements without, crowded with quarrelsome children. It was, moreover, the pay-night for a Providence club which Felix had established for any, either men or women, who chose to contribute to it. There was a short and simple lecture given first; and afterwards the club-books were brought out, and a committee of working men received the weekly subscriptions, and attended to the affairs of the little club.