"Nothing inside, and the poker outside, makes a many women as they've no wish to sit for their picter," said Mrs. Bundle, severely, in reply to some remark of mine, reflecting, like my father's, on the said woman's appearance. "And when a woman has children, and their father brings home nothing but kicks and bad language, in all reason if it isn't the death or the ruin of her, it makes her as she 'asn't much time nor spirits to spare for dropping curtseys and telling long tales like some people as is always scrap-seeking at gentry's back-doors. But I knows a clean place when I takes it unawares, and clothes with more patch than stuff, and all the colour washed out of them, and bruises hid, and a bad husband made the best of, and children as knows how to behave themselves."
The warmth of Mrs. Bundle's feelings only prompted me to tease her; and it was chiefly for "the fun of working her up" that I said—
"Ah, but, Nurse, you know we heard she went after him one night to the public-house, and made a row before everybody. I don't mean he ought to go to the public-house, but still, I'm sure if I'd a wife who came and hunted me up when she thought I ought to be indoors, I'd—well, I'd try and teach her to stay at home. Besides, women ought to be gentle, and perhaps if she were sweeter-tempered with him, he'd be kinder to her."
"Do you know what she went for, Master Reginald?" said Nurse Bundle. "Not a halfpenny does he give her to feed the children with, and everything in that house that's got she gets by washing. And the rich folk she washed for kept her waiting for her money—more shame to 'em; there was weeks run on, and she borrowed a bit, and pawned a bit, and when she went the day they said they'd pay her, he'd been before and drawed the money, and was drinking it up when she went to see if she could get any, and then laughed at her, and sent her back to the children as was starving, and the neighbour she'd borrowed of as called her a thief and threatened to have her up. Gentle! why, bless your innocence, who ever knowed gentleness do good to a drunkard? She should have stood up to him sooner, and he'd never have got so bad. She's kept his brute ways to herself and made his home comfortable with her own earnings, till he thinks he may do anything and never bring in nothing. She did lay out some of his behaviour before him that day, and he beat her for it afterwards. But if it had been me, Master Reginald, I'd have had money to feed them children, or I'd have fought him while I'd a bit of breath in my body."
And with all my respect for Nurse Bundle, I am bound to say that I think she would have been as good as her word.
"Go to your tutor, my dear," she continued, "and talk Latin and Greek and such like, as you knows about; but don't talk rubbish about pretty looks and ways for a woman as is tied to a drunkard, for I can't abear it. I seed enough of husbands and public-houses in my young days to keep me a single woman and my own missis. Not but what I've had my feelings like other folk, and plenty of offers, besides a young cabinet-maker as had high wages and the beautifullest complexion you ever saw. But he was overfond of company; so I went to service, and cried myself to sleep every night for three months; and when next I see him he was staggering along the street, and I says, 'I'm sorry to see you like this, William,' and he says, 'It's your doing, Mary; your No's drove me to the glass.' And I says, 'Then it's best as it is. If one No drove you to the glass, you and married life wouldn't suit, for there's plenty of Noes there.' So I left him wiping his eyes, for he always cried when he was in beer. And I says to myself, 'I'll go back to place, where I knows what I'm working for, and can leave it if we don't suit.' And it was always the same, my dear. If it was a nice-looking footman, he'd have his evening out and come home fresh; and if it was an elderly butler as had put a little by, he wanted to set up in the public line. So I kept myself to myself, my dear, for I'm short-tempered at the best, and could never put up with the abuse of a man in liquor."
I was so thoroughly converted to the side of Ragged Robin's wife, that I at once pressed some of my charity money on Mrs. Bundle for her benefit; but I tried to dispute my nurse's unfavourable view of husbands by instancing her worthy brother-in-law at Oakford.
"Ah, yes, Buckle," said Mrs. Bundle, in a tone which seemed to do less justice to the saddler's good qualities than they deserved. "He's a good, soft, easy body, is Buckle."
Whence I concluded that Mrs. Bundle, like some other ladies, was not altogether easy to please.
I think it was during our last walk through the village before Mr. Clerke left us, that he and I called on Ragged Robin's wife. She was thankful, but not communicative, and the eyes, deep set in her bony and discoloured face, seemed to have lost the power of lighting up with hope.