THE FARM-LABORER.—THE SON.
BY HARRIET MARTINEAU.
It has been told that Susan Banks found herself well placed, after the death of her insane aunt obliged her to look for a home and a maintenance. As I am not telling her story, I will pass over the account of the efforts she made to be a schoolmistress, and the instruction she had as a dressmaker. She was in poor health (reduced by hunger) and in debt £3 to her uncle, and nervous and anxious, when she heard that a lady from the North, then visiting in the neighborhood, wanted just such a maid as Susan thought she could become with a little teaching. She obtained the place, took pains to learn to wait at table, &c., and within a year had paid her debt to her uncle, and spared £2 besides to her family; and all this, though her box had had but few clothes in it when she went to her new home.
At the end of a year, her employer, Miss Foote, began to think of cultivating the small portion of land about the house which had hitherto been let off for grazing, and which was deteriorating in quality from the mismanagement of the tenant. Not approving of the methods of tillage in the neighborhood, and knowing that there were no spare hands there, Miss Foote wrote to a parish officer in Susan's and her own native county, to ask if a laborer of good character and sound qualifications could be sent to her by the parish, on her engaging to pay him twelve shillings a week for a year and a half, while her experiment of cultivation was under trial; and longer, if it should be found to answer. This was all she could undertake, as she could not afford to carry on the scheme at a loss. The answer was some time in coming. When it came, it told that pauper laborers could not be recommended; but a better sort of laborer might be sent, and his place in the parish would be filled, only too easily, by some of the young men from the workhouse. The proposal was to send the very best man of his class known to the parish officers. He and his wife had money enough in the savings' bank to pay their journey, and they were willing to make the venture. The man's name was Harry Banks. Miss Foote took the letter into the kitchen, and read it to Susan and her fellow-servant. When Susan heard the name, she started as if she had been shot, and screamed out, "Why, that's my brother!" Thus far, far away from home, she was to have a brother and his wife beside her, living in the pretty little cottage which was building behind the oak copse for the new laborer. Miss Foote inquired about the wife, but could learn little. Susan told nothing but that she was a respectable woman, but so old, and otherwise unsuitable, that it was a vexation to the family that Harry had made such a marriage. Harry never seemed to see a single fault in her; but his father and mother did not like Dinah at all.
When Miss Foote afterward came to know the whole, she thought this marriage the most terribly significant part of the whole family history of the Bankses. At thirty years of age Harry was a pattern of a farm-laborer; yet he had no prospect in life but of earning a precarious nine shillings a week, till he should be too old to earn so much. He worked for a rich, close-fisted Dissenting gentleman, who had always pious sayings on his lips and at the point of his pen, but never took off his eye for an instant from his money gains and savings. His wife was like him, and their servants grew like them—even the warm-hearted, impetuous Harry, and much more Dinah, their worn out maid-of-all-work. Dinah always said that the register of her birth was unfortunately lost, and she could not tell precisely how old she was; and she called herself "upwards o' forty." Most people supposed her about sixty when she married. She used to tell Harry that she was the prettiest girl in the city when she was young, and Harry did not ask how long ago that was, nor look too much at the little wizened face, not more marked by small-pox than by signs of over-exhausting toil. Whatever might be her age, she was worn out by excessive work. When Harry's father heard that she and Harry were going before the registrar to be married, he kindly and seriously asked Harry if he had considered what he was about; and Harry's reply was enough to make any heart ache.
"Yes, father, I have. I'm not so very much set on it; but I think it will be most comfortable. You see, there's no use in people like us thinking of having children. Children would only starve us downright, and bring us to the Union. You see, none of us are married, nor likely to be, except me with Dinah. She's clean and tidy, you see, and she has some wages laid by, and so have I; and so nobody need find fault. And I shall be more comfortable like, with somebody to do for me at home; and—"
And he was going on to tell how Dinah would cook his dinner and mend his clothes, but his father could not bear to hear him, and finished off with saying that it was his own affair, and he wished them well.
It was within a year after their marriage that Harry was engaged, by Miss Foote. In great glee he made haste to prepare himself for his important new place in every way he could think of. He learned to trim a vine, not knowing that the place he was going to was too far north for vine-growing. He made interest with a butcher to learn how to kill a pig. He made a little collection of superior cabbage and turnip seeds, seed potatoes, &c., thus proving to Miss Foote at the outset that he had plenty of energy and quickness. She found, too, that he had courage. His employers, vexed to lose two servants whom they had trained to excessive economy, as well as hard work, did every thing that was possible, while there was any chance of success, to frighten them from moving northward. They told Dinah, with mournful countenances, that they should certainly die—that it was all the same as being transported—that it was cruelty in the parish officers to let them be tempted. Dinah repeated all this to Harry; and it staggered him at first; but he presently remembered that Susan wrote that her health had improved; and her letters had not only contained post-office orders, but plain signs that she was very happy. Harry determined to proceed; and when he had once made up his mind, his employers showed themselves very kind—helping their preparations, and having them to dinner on the last day.
By their own account their journey must have been a curious affair. Their heads were so full of notions of thieves and sharpers, that they did every thing in the slyest way, and wrapped themselves in mystery, and pretended to despise their boxes, while in one continued agony about them. When met by a kind gentleman who was to see them through London, Dinah pretended not to be the right person, lest the gentleman should not be the right; so that it was lucky they did lose his help altogether. Miss Foote was disagreeably impressed by their account of their great slyness, and not less by the suspicious temper—natural, perhaps, to Dinah, but not at all so to Harry—in which they began their new mode of life. Dinah was no servant of hers; so she had nothing to do with Dinah's ways, but to check the jealousy and suspicion she showed of her young sister-in-law and the young cook. On occasion of leaving home for some weeks, the lady took the opportunity of intimating to the people at the cottage that there was a perfect understanding between the girls and herself, as perfect a confidence as there can be between mother and daughters; that their acquaintances came by her permission, and so forth. Harry promised to be attentive and sociable with his sister, and not to grow hot with the cook about how to feed the fowls and manage the churn. That was the time when Dinah left off peeping through the laurels to see who went to the back door, and looking mysterious and sympathetic when holding forth to Miss Foote about young people. Still it was long before she left off locking her door and hiding the key, if she turned her back for a minute, and taking every body she did not know for a thief. She was left to her own notions; but with Harry a serious remonstrance was necessary, more than once, within the first year of his new service. Miss Foote was as much annoyed as amused with his higgling ways, all in zeal for her interests. She feared that she should have the reputation in the neighborhood of being a perfect miser, so wonderful were Harry's stories of the bargains he attempted to drive. She told him she hoped he would never succeed in any one such bargain as the many he told her of; and she laid her positive commands upon him never, in her name, to beat down the seller of any article she sent him to buy. As she supposed, she found he had caught up the trick from example, and had not the knowledge whereby to remedy it. When she told him it was not the way of the place to cheat in making charges he shook his head, and very nearly put his tongue in his cheek; but when she explained to him how prices came to be, and how an article can not properly be bought for less than it took to make or grow it, he was convinced at once, and his higgling method was softened down into a mere excessive strictness and vigilance in buying and selling transactions. There never was any real meanness about the man. In a few months he sent his father ten shillings; in a few months more he sent him £1. A small anecdote will show better than this, that money is not naturally the first object with him. When his employer kills a pig he is allowed to take a quarter at wholesale price, and Dinah cures the ham so well that by selling it they get their bacon for next to nothing. One autumn, when two pigs were killed, there was such a scramble for them, and so many neighbors would be "hurt in their feelings" if they could not have a portion, that Miss Foote found herself left with two gammons, but no ham. Harry heard this in the kitchen. He kept silence till his ham was finely cured, and then, touching his hat as if asking a favor, he told his employer that she had done good things for him, and he had never been able to do any for her, and he should be much pleased if she would take the ham for what he gave for it. Though not agreeing to this exactly, Miss Foote found herself obliged to take the ham very cheap.
Another small incident showed the same gentlemanly spirit. At the time when his whole soul was engrossed with the desire to make "the experiment" answer, he had a request to present, as often during a whole winter as he could edge it in. There was a certain long, ugly hedge, pernicious in every way, which divided the field from a neighbor's. The hedge belonged to the neighbor; and it appeared that he would be heartily glad to give it away to any body who would take it down and put up some fence which would cover less ground and harbor less vermin. Harry was so eager to be allowed to remove the hedge, that Miss Foote at last told him that she should never have dreamed of his undertaking such a job in addition to his regular work; but that he might please himself. She would put up a new fence if he chose to make way for it. He did it with no help but in felling some pollards. One afternoon, when wheeling up hill an enormous load of wood from the hedge, he heard himself laughed at from the next field. Now, no man winces more under a laugh than Harry; yet he bore it well this time. Some men called out mockingly that he was doing horse's work and man's work at once, and they would not do that to please any body. "No," said Harry, turning full round toward them, "nor, I neither. Miss Foote never asked me to do this. I do it to please myself."