CHAPTER XXII
ABOUT THE PINCH
Only well-to-do people, those who have many changes of raiment and can afford to poke the fire expensively, are happy in the winter. For others there are various degrees of the pinch; lack of fuel pinch, want of food pinch, insufficient clothes pinch, or the pinch of desolation and dreariness. To those who dwell in lonely places winter pays no dividends in the way of amusement, and increases the expense of living at the rate of fifty per cent. No wonder they tumble down in adoration when the sun comes. The smutty god of coal, and the greasy deity of oil are served in winter; there is the lesser divinity of peat also. Each brings round a bag and demands a contribution; and those who cannot pay are pinched remorselessly.
Mrs. Bellamie sat in her drawing-room, and the fire burnt expensively, and she spread her fragile feet towards it, without worshipping because it was too common, and around her were luxuries on the top of luxuries; and yet she was being pinched. It was not the horrid little note, rather blurred and blotted, lying upon her lap which was administering the pinch directly, but the thoughts brought on by that note. Mrs. Bellamie was opening her secret drawer and turning out the rubbish. She was thinking of the past which had been almost forgotten until that small voice had come from Dartmoor. She had only to turn to the window to see the snow-capped tors. The small voice was crying there and saying: "I am only eighteen, and I am going to try and make a living by letting lodgings. I promise you I will not write to Aubrey again." Those words were so many crabs, pinching horribly; and at the bottom of the secret drawer was a story, not written, because the drawer was the lady's mind, and the story was about a little girl whose father had fallen on evil days; a very respectable father, and a proud gentleman who would not confess to his friends that his position had become desperate, but his family knew all about it for they had to be hungry, and a very hard winter came, and the coal-god sent his bag round as usual and they had nothing to put into it. The father said he didn't want a fire. It was neither necessary nor healthy. He preferred to sit in his cold damp study with a greatcoat on and a muffler round his neck, and shiver. As long as there was a bit of cold mutton in the house he didn't care, and he talked about his ancestors who had suffered privations on fields where English battles had been won, and declared that people of leisure had got into a disgraceful way of coddling themselves; but he kept on coughing, and the little girl heard him and it made her miserable. At last she decided to wrap her morals up, and put them away in the secret drawer, and forget all about them until the time of adversity was over. There was a big house close by, belonging to wealthy friends of theirs, and it was shut up for the winter. After dark the little girl climbed over the railing, found her way to the coal-shed, took out some big lumps, and threw them one by one into her father's garden. It made her dreadfully dirty, but she didn't care, for she had put on her oldest clothes. The next day her father found a fire burning in his study, and he didn't seem angry. Indeed, when the little girl looked in, to tell him it was cold mutton time, he was sitting close to it as if he had forgotten all about the ancestors who had been frozen upon battlefields. She did the same wicked thing that night, and the night after; and her father lost his cough and became cheerful again. This robbery of the rich went on for some time, until one night the little girl slipped while climbing the railing and cut her knee badly, which kept her in bed for some days, while she heard her father grumbling because he had no fire; but he didn't grumble for long, because fine weather came, and his circumstances improved, and a young gentleman came along and said he wanted to be a robber too, and went off with the little coal-thief. It was all so long ago that Mrs. Bellamie found herself wondering if it had ever happened; but there was still a small mark upon her knee which seemed to suggest that she ought to have known a good deal about the little girl who had stolen coals during the days of the great pinch.
Some of the wintry mist from Dartmoor had got into the room, and had settled between the lady and the fire, which suddenly became blurred and looked like a scarlet waterfall. Part of the origin of the mist tickled her cheek, and she put up her handkerchief to wipe it away; but the voices went on talking. "I am only eighteen, and I am going to try and make a living by letting lodgings," said the voice from the moor. "Mother, I know I'm young, but I shall never change. I love her with my whole heart." That was a voice from the sea. Mrs. Bellamie rose and went to find her husband. She came upon him engrossed upon the characteristics of Byzantine architecture.
"How are you going to answer this?" she said, dropping the note before him like a cold fall of snow.
"Does it require any answer?" he said, looking up with a frown. "She must struggle on. She is one out of millions struggling, and her case is only more painful to us because we know of it. We will help her as much as we can, indirectly."
"I should like to go and see her. I want to have her here for Christmas," said the lady.
"It would be foolish," said Mr. Bellamie. "It would make her unsettled, and more dissatisfied with her lot. She might also get to look upon this house as her home."
"I am miserable about her. I wish I had never kissed her. She has kissed me every day since," said the lady. "She is always on my mind, and now," she went on, glancing at the note, "I think of her alone, absolutely alone, a child of eighteen, in a dreary cottage upon the moor, among those savage people."