by Samuel Sidney (uncredited).
Originally published in Household Words (Bradbury & Evans) vol.2 #47 (15 Feb 1851).
Scene the First.
In the year 1832, on the 24th December, one of those clear bright days, that sometimes supersede the regular snowy sleety Christmas weather, a large ship lay off Plymouth; the Blue Peter flying from her masthead, quarters of beef hanging from her mizzen-booms, and strings of cabbages from her stern rails; her decks crowded with coarsely-clad blue-nosed passengers, and lumbered with boxes, barrels, hen-coops, spars, and chain-cables. The wind was rising with a hollow, dreary sound. Boats were hurrying to and fro, between the vessel and the beach, where stood excited groups of old people and young children. The hoarse impatient voices of officers issuing their commands, were mingled with the shrill wailing of women on the deck and the shore.
It was the emigrant ship, "Cassandra," bound for Australia during the period of the "Bounty" system, when emigration recruiters, stimulated by patriotism and a handsome per centage, rushed frantically up and down the country, earnestly entreating "healthy married couples" and single souls of either sex to accept a free passage to "a land of plenty." The English labourers had not then discovered that Australia was a country where masters were many and servants scarce. In spite of poverty and poorhouse fare, few of the John Bull family could be induced to give heed to flaming placards they could not read, or inspiring harangues they could not understand. The admirable education which in 1832, at intervals of seven days, was distributed in homoeopathic doses among the agricultural olive branches of England, did not include modern geography, even when reading and writing were imparted. If a stray Sunday School scholar did acquire a faint notion of the locality of Canaan, he was never permitted to travel as far as the British Colonies.
To the ploughman out of employ, Canaan, Canada, and Australia, were all "furrin parts;" he did not know the way to them; but he knew the way to the poorhouse, so took care to keep within reach of it. Thus it came to pass that the charterers of the good ship "Cassandra," were grievously out in their calculations; and failing to fill with English, were obliged to make up their complement with Irish; who, having nothing to fall upon, but the charity of the poor to the poorer, are always ready to go anywhere for a daily meal.
The steamers from Cork had transferred their ragged, weeping, laughing, fighting cargoes; the last stray groups of English had been collected from the western counties; the Government officers had cleared and passed the ship. With the afternoon tide two hundred helpless, ignorant, destitute souls were to bid farewell to their native land. The delays consequent on miscalculating the emigrating tastes of England, had retarded until mid-winter, a voyage which should have been commenced in autumn
In one of the shore-boats, sat a portly man—evidently neither an emigrant nor a sailor—wrapped in a great coat and comforters; his broad brimmed beaver secured from the freezing blast, by a coloured bandanna tied under the chin of a fat whiskerless face. This portly personage was Mr. Joseph Lobbit, proprietor of "The Shop," farmer, miller, and chairman of the vestry of the rich rural parish of Duxmoor.
At Duxmoor, the chief estate was in Chancery, the manor house in ruins, the lord of it an outlaw, and the other landed proprietors absentees, or in debt; a curate preached, buried, married, and baptised, for the health of the rector compelled him to pass the summer in Switzerland, and the winter in Italy; so Mr. Lobbit was almost the greatest, as he was certainly the richest man in the parish.
Except that he did not care for anyone but himself, and did not respect anyone who had not plenty of money, he was not a bad sort of man. He had a jolly hearty way of talking and shaking hands, and slapping people on the back; and until you began to count money with him, he seemed a very pleasant liberal fellow. He was fond of money, but more fond of importance; and therefore worked as zealously at parish-business, as he did at his own farm, shop and mill. He centered the whole powers of the vestry in his own person, and would have been beadle, too, if it had been possible. He appointed the master and matron of the workhouse, who were relations of his wife; supplied all the rations and clothing for "the house;" and fixed the prices in full vestry (viz., himself, and the clerk, his cousin), assembled. He settled all questions of out-of-door relief, and tried hard, more than once, to settle the rate of wages too.
Ill-natured people did say that those who would not work on Master Lobbit's farm, at his wages, stood a very bad chance if they wanted anything from the parish, or came for the doles of blankets, coals, bread, and linsey-woolsey petticoats; which, under the provisions of the tablets in Duxmoor Church, are distributed every Christmas. Of course, Mr. Lobbit supplied these gifts, as chief shop-keeper, and dispensed them, as senior and perpetual churchwarden. Lobbit gave capital dinners: plenty smoked on his board, and pipes of negro-head with jorums of gin punch followed, without stint.
The two attorneys dined with him—and were glad to come, for he had always money to lend, on good security, and his gin was unexceptionable. So did two or three bull-frog farmers, very rich and very ignorant. The doctor and curate came occasionally; they were poor, and in his debt at "The Shop," therefore bound to laugh at his jokes—which were not so bad, for he was no fool—so that, altogether, Mr. Lobbit had reason to believe himself a very popular man. But there was—where is there not?—a black drop in his overflowing cup of prosperity.
He had a son, whom he intended to make a gentleman; whom he hoped to see married to some lady of good family, installed in the Manor House of Duxmoor, (if it should be sold cheap, at the end of the Chancery suit), and established as the squire of the parish. Robert Lobbit had no taste for learning, and a strong taste for drinking, which his father's customers did their best to encourage. Old Lobbit was decent in his private habits; but, as he made money wherever he could to advantage, he was always surrounded by a levee of scamps, of all degrees—some agents and assistants, some borrowers, and would-be borrowers. Young Lobbit found it easier to follow the example of his father's companions than to follow his father's advice. He was as selfish and as greedy as his father, without being so agreeable or hospitable. In the school-room he was a dunce, in the playground a tyrant and bully; no one liked him; but, as he had plenty of money, many courted him.
As a last resource his father sent him to Oxford; whence, after a short residence, he was expelled. He arrived home drunk, and in debt; without having lost one bad habit, or made one respectable friend. From that period he lived a sot, a village rake, the king of the tap-room, and the patron of a crowd of blackguards, who drank his beer and his health; hated him for his insolence, and cheated him of his money.
Yet Joseph Lobbit loved his son, and tried not to believe the stories good-natured friends told of him.
Another trouble, fell upon the prosperous churchwarden. On the north side of the parish, just outside the boundaries of Duxmoor Manor, there had been, in the time of the Great Civil Wars, a large number of small freehold farmers; each with from forty to five acres of laud; the smaller, fathers had divided amongst their progeny; the larger had descended to eldest sous by force of primogeniture. Joseph Lobbit's father had been one of these small freeholders. A right of pasture on an adjacent common was attached to these little freeholds; so, what with geese and sheep, and a cow or so, even the poorest proprietor with the assistance of harvest work, managed to make a living, up to the time of the last war. War prices made laud valuable, and the common was enclosed; though a share went to the little freeholders, and sons and daughters were hired, at good wages, while the enclosure was going on, the loss of the pasture for stock, and the fall of prices at the peace, sealed their fate. John Lobbit, our portly friend's father, succeeded to his little estate, of twenty acres, by the death of his elder brother, in the time of best war prices, after he had passed some years as a shopman in a great seaport. His first use ofit was to sell it, and set up a shop in Duxmoor, to the great scandal of his farmer neighbours. When John slept with his fathers, Joseph, having succeeded to the shop and savings, began to buy land and lend money. Between shop credit to the five-acred and mortgages to the forty-acred men, with a little luck in the way of the useful sons of the freeholders being constantly enlisted for soldiers, impressed for sailors, or convicted for poaching offences, in the course of years, Joseph Lobbit became possessed, not only of his paternal freehold, but, acre by acre, of all his neighbours' holdings, to the extent of something like five hundred acres. The original owners vanished; the stout and young departed, and were seen no more; the old and decrepit were received and kindly housed in the workhouse. Of course it could not have been part of Mr. Lobbit's bargain to find them board and lodging for the rest of their days at the parish expense. A few are said to have drunk themselves to death; but this is improbable, for the cider, in that part of the country, is extremely sour, so that it is more likely they died of colic.
There was, however, in the very centre of the cluster of freeholds which the parochial dignitary had so successfully acquired, a small barren plot of five acres with a right of road through the rest of the property. The possessor of this was a sturdy fellow, John Bodger by name, who was neither to be coaxed nor bullied into parting with his patrimony.
John Bodger was an only son, a smart little fellow, a capital thatcher, a good hand at cobhouse building—in fact, a handy man. Unfortunately, he was as fond of pleasure as his betters. He sang a comic song, till peoples' eyes ran over, and they rolled on their seats; he handled a single-stick very tidily; and, among the light weights, was not to be despised as a wrestler. He always knew where a hare was to be found; and, when the fox-hounds were out, to hear his view-halloo, did your heart good. These tastes were expensive; so that when he came into his little property, although he worked with tolerable industry, and earned good wages, for that part of the country, he never had a shilling to the fore, as the Irish say. If he had been a prudent man, he might have laid by something very snug, and defied Mr. Lobbit to the end of his days.
It would take too long to tell all Joseph Lobbit's ingenious devices—after plain, plump offers—to buy Bodger's acres had been refused. John Bodger declined a loan to buy a cart and horse: he refused to take credit for a new hat, umbrella, and waistcoat, after losing his money at Bidecot Fair. He went on steadily slaving at his bit of land, doing all the best thatching and building jobs in the neighbourhood, spending his money, and enjoying himself without getting into any scrapes; until Mr. Joseph Lobbit, completely foiled, began to look on John Bodger as a personal enemy.
Just when John and his neighbours were rejoicing over the defeat of the last attempt of the jolly parochial, an accident occurred which upset all John's prudent calculations. He fell in love. He might have married Dorothy Paulson, the blacksmith's daughter—an only child, with better than two hundred pounds in the Bank, and a good business—a virtuous, good girl, too, except that she was as thin as a hurdle, with a skin like nutmeg-grater, and rather a bad temper. But instead of that, to the surprise of every one, he went and married Carry Hutehins, the daughter of Widow Hutehins, one of the little freeholders bought out by Mr. Lobbit, who died, poor old soul, the day after she was carried into the workhouse, leaving Carry and her brother Tom destitute—that is to say, destitute of goods, money, or credit, but not of common sense, good health, good looks, and power of earning wages.
Carry was nearly a head taller than John, with a face like a ripe pear. He had to buy her wedding gown, and everything else. He bought them at Lobbit's shop. Tom Hutehins—he was fifteen years old—a tall spry lad, accepted five shillings from his brother-in-law, hung a small bundle on his bird's-nesting stick, and set off to walk to Bristol, to be a sailor. He was never heard of any more at Duxmoor.
At first all went well. John left off going to wakes and fairs, except on business; stuck to his trades; brought his garden into good order, and worked early and late, when he could spare time, at his two little fields, while his wife helped him famously. If they had had a few pounds in hand, they would have had "land and beeves."
But the first year twins came—a boy and girl; and the next another girl, and then twins again, and so on. Before Mrs. Bodger was thirty she had nine hearty, healthy children, with a fair prospect of plenty more; while John was a broken man, soured, discontented, hopeless. No longer did he stride forth eagerly to his work, after kissing mother and babies; no longer did he hurry home to put a finishing stroke to the potato patch, or broadcast his oat crop; no longer did he sit whistling and telling stories of bygone feats at the fireside, while mending some wooden implement of his own, or making one for a neighbour. Languid and moody, he lounged to his task with round shoulders and slouching gait; spoke seldom—when he did, seldom kindly. His children, except the youngest, feared him, and his wife scarcely opened her lips, except to answer.
A long, hard, severe winter, and a round of typhus fever, which carried off two children, finished him. John Bodger was beaten, and obliged to sell his bit of land. He had borrowed money on it from the lawyer; while laid up with fever, he had silently allowed his wife to run up a bill at "The Shop." When strong enough for work there was no work to be had. Lobbit saw his opportunity, and took it. John Bodger wanted to buy a cow, he wanted seed, he wanted to pay the doctor, and to give his boys clothes to enable them to go to service. He sold his land for what he thought would do all this, and leave a few pounds in hand. He attended to sign the deed and receive money; when, instead of the balance of twenty-five pounds he had expected, he received one pound ten shillings, and a long lawyer's bill receipted.
He did not say much; for poor countrymen don't know how to talk to lawyers, but he went towards home like a drunken man; and, not hearing the clatter of a horse behind him that had run away, was knocked down, run over, and picked up with his collar bone and two ribs broken.
The next day he was delirious; in the course of a fortnight he came to his senses, lying on a workhouse bed. Before he could rise from the workhouse bed, not a stick or stone had been left to tell where the cottage of his fathers had stood for more than two hundred years, and Mr. Joseph Lobbit had obtained, in auctioneering phrase, a magnificent estate of five hundred acres within a ring fence.
John Bodger stood up at length a ruined, desperate, dangerous man, pale, and weak, and even humble. He said nothing; the fever seemed to have tamed every limb—every feature—except his eyes, which glittered like an adder's when Mr. Lobbit came to talk to him. Lobbit saw it and trembled in his inmost heart, yet was ashamed of being afraid of a pauper!
About this time Swing fires made their appearance in the country, and the principal Insurance Companies refused to insure farming stock, to the consternation of Mr. Lobbit; for he had lately begun to suspect that among Mr. Swing's friends he was not very popular, yet he had some thousand pounds of corn stacks in his own yards and those of his customers.
John Bodger, almost convalescent, was anxious to leave the poor-house, while the master, the doctor, and every official, seemed in a league to keep him there and make him comfortable, although a short time previously the feeling had been quite different. But the old rector of Duxmoor having died at the early age of sixty-six, in spite of his care for his health, had been succeeded by a man who was not content to leave his duties to deputies; all the parish affairs underwent a keen criticism, and John and his large family came under investigation. His story came out. The new rector pitied and tried to comfort him; but his soothing words fell on deaf ears. The only answer he could get from John was, "A hard life while it lasts, Sir, and a pauper's grave, a pauper widow, pauper children: Parson, while this is all you can offer John Bodger, preaching to him is of no use."
With the wife, the clergyman was more successful. Hope and belief are planted more easily in the hearts of women than of men, for adversity softens the one and hardens the other. The rector was not content with exhorting the poor, he applied to the rich Joseph Lobbit on behalf of John Bodger's family, and as the rector was not only a truly Christian priest, but a gentleman of good family and fortune, the parochial ruler was obliged to hear and to heed.
Bland and smooth, almost pathetic, was Joseph Lobbit: he was "heartily sorry for the poor man and his large family; should be happy to offer him and his wife permanent employment on his Hill farm, as well as two of the boys and one of the girls."
The eldest son and daughter, the first twins, had been for some time in respectable service. John would have nothing to do with Mr. Lobbit.
While this discussion was pending, the news of a ship at Plymouth waiting for emigrants, reached Duxmoor.
The parson, and the great shopkeeper were observed in a long warm conference in the rectory garden, which ended in their shaking hands, and the rector proceeding with rapid strides to the poor-house.
The same day, the lately established girls' school was set to work sewing garments of all sizes, as well as the females of the rector's family. A week afterwards, there was a stir in the village; a waggon moved slowly away, laden with a father, mother, and large family, and a couple of pauper orphan girls. Yes, it was true; John and Carry Bodger were going to "Furrin parts," "to be made slaves on." The women cried, and so did the children, from imitation. The men stared. As the emigrants passed the Red Lion there was an attempt at a cheer from two tinkers; but it was a failure; no one joined in. So staring and staring, the men stood until the waggon crept round the turn of the lane and over the bridge, out of sight; then
bidding the "wives" go home and be hanged to 'em, their lords, that had two-pence, went in to spend it at the Red Lion, and those who had not, went in to see the others drink, and talk over John Bodger's "bouldness," and abuse Muster Lobbit quietly, so that no one in top boots should hear them;—for they were poor ignorant people in Duxmoor—they had had no one to teach them, or to care for them, and after the fever, and the long hard winter, they cared little for their own flesh and blood, still less for their neighbours. So John Bodger was forgotten almost before he was out of sight.
By the road-waggon which the Bodgers joined when they reached the highway, it was a three days' journey to Plymouth.
But, although they were gone, Mr. Lobbit did not feel quite satisfied; he felt afraid lest John should return and do him some secret mischief. He wished to see him on board ship, and fairly under sail. Besides, his negotiation with Emigration Brokers had opened up ideas of a new way of getting rid, not only of dangerous fellows like John Bodger, but of all kinds of useless paupers. These ideas he afterwards matured, and although important changes have taken place in our emigrating system, even in 1851, a visit to Government ships, will present many specimens of parish inmates converted, by dexterous diplomacy, into independent labourers.
Thus it was, that, contrary to all precedent, Mr. Lobbit left his shopman to settle the difficult case of credit with his Christmas customers, and with best horse made his way to Plymouth; and now for the first time in his life, floated on salt water.
With many grunts and groans he climbed the ship's side; not being as great a man at Plymouth as at Duxmoor, no chair was lowered to received his portly person. The mere fact of having to climb up a rope ladder from a rocking boat on a breezy, freezing day, was not calculated to give comfort or confident feelings to an elderly gentleman. With some difficulty, not without broken shins, amid the sarcastic remarks of groups of wild Irishmen, and the squeaks of barefooted children—who, not knowing his awful parochial character, tumbled about Mr. Lobbit's legs in a most impertinently familiar manner—he made his way to the captain's cabin, and there transacted some mysterious business with the Emigration Agent over a prime piece of mess beef and a glass of Madeira. The Madeira warmed Mr. Lobbit. The captain assured him positively that the ship would sail with the evening tide. That assurance removed a heavy load from his breast: he felt like a man who had been performing a good action, and almost cheated himself into believing that he had been spending his own money in charity; so, at the end of the second bottle, he willingly chimed in with the broker's proposal to go down below and see how the emigrants were stowed, and have a last look at "his lot."
Down the steep ladder they stumbled into the misery of a "bounty" ship. A long, dark gallery, on each side of which were ranged the berths; narrow shelves open to every prying eye; where, for four months, the inmates were to be packed, like herrings in a barrel, without room to move, almost without air to breathe; the mess table, running far aft the whole distance between the masts, left little room for passing, and that little was encumbered with all manner of boxes, packages, and infants, crawling about like rabbits in a warren.
The groups of emigrants were characteristically employed. The Irish "coshering," or gossiping; for, having little or no baggage to look after, they had little care; but lean and ragged, monopolised almost all the good-humour of the ship. Acute cockneys, a race fit for every change, hammering, whistling, screwing and making all snug in their berths; tidy mothers, turning with despair from alternate and equally vain attempts to collect their numerous children out of danger, and to pack the necessaries of a room into the space of a small cupboard, wept and worked away. Here, a ruined tradesman; with his family, sat at the table, dinnerless, having rejected the coarse, tough salt meat in disgust: there, a half starved group fed heartily on rations from the same cask, luxuriated over the allowance of grog, and the idea of such a good meal daily. Songs, groans, oaths: crying, laughing, complaining, hammering and fiddling combined to produce a chaos of strange sounds; while thrifty wives, with spectacle on nose, mended their husbands' breeches, and unthrifty ones scolded.
Amid this confusion, under the authoritative guidance of the second mate. Mr. Lobbit made his way, inwardly calculating how many poachers, pauper refractories, Whiteboys, and Captain Rocks, were about to benefit Australia by their talents, until he reached a party which had taken up its quarters as far as possible from the Irish, in a gloomy corner near the stern. It consisted of a sickly, feeble woman, under forty, but worn, wasted, retaining marks of former beauty in a pair of large, dark speaking eyes, and a well carved profile, who was engaged in nursing two chubby infants, evidently twins, while two little things just able to walk, hung at her skirts; a pale, thin boy, nine or ten years old, was mending a jacket; an elder brother, as brown as a berry, fresh from the fields, was playing dolefully on a hemlock flute. The father, a little round-shouldered man, was engaged in cutting wooden buttons from a piece of hard wood with his pocket-knife; when he caught sight of Mr. Lobbit he hastily pulled off his coat, threw it into his berth, and, turning his back, worked away vigorously at the stubborn bit of oak he was carving.
"Hallo, John Bodger, so here you are at last," cried Mr. Lobbit; "I've broken my shins, almost broken my neck, and spoilt my coat with tar and pitch, in finding you out. Well, you're quite at home, I see: twins all well?—both pair of them? How do you find yourself, Missis?"
The pale woman sighed and cuddled her babies—the little man said nothing, but sneered, and made the chips fly faster.
"You're on your way now to a country where twins are no object: your passage is paid, and you've only got now to pray for the good gentlemen that have given you a chance of earning an honest living." No answer.
"I see them all here except Mary, the young lady of the family. Pray has she taken rue, and determined to stay in England after all; I expected as much—"
As he spoke, a young girl, in the neat dress of a parlour servant, came out of the shade.
"Oh! you are there, are you, Miss Mary? So you have made up your mind to leave your place and Old England to try your luck in Australia; plenty of husbands, there, ha, ha!"
The girl blushed, and sat down to sew at some little garments. Fresh, rosy, neat, she was as great a contrast to her brother, the brown ragged ploughboy, as he was to the rest of the family, with their flabby, bleached complexions.
There was a pause: the mate having done his duty by finding the parochial dignitary's protegées, had slipped away to more important business; a chorus of sailors "yo heave ho-ing" at a chain cable had ceased, and for a few moments, by common, consent, silence seemed to have taken possession of the long dark gallery of the hold.
Mr. Lobbit was rather put out by the silence, and no answers; he did not feel so confident as when crowing on his own dung-hill, in Duxmoor; he had a vague idea that some one might steal behind him in the dark, knock his hat over his eyes, and pay off old scores with a hearty kick: but parochial dignity prevailed, and, clearing his throat with a "hem," he began again—"John Bodger, where's your coat?—what are you shivering there for, in your sleeves?—what have you done with the excellent coat generously presented to you by the Parish—a coat that cost, as per contract, fourteen shillings and fourpence—you have not dared to sell it, I hope?"
"Well, Master Lobbit, and if I did, the coat was my own, I suppose?"
"What, sir?"
The little man quailed; he had tried to pluck up his spirit, but the blood did not flow fast enough. He went to his berth and brought out the coat.
It was certainly a curious colour, a sort of yellow brown, the cloth shrunk and cockled up, and the metal buttons turned a dingy black.
Mr. Lobbit raved; "a new coat entirely spoiled, what had he done to it?" and as he raved, he warmed, and felt himself at home again, Deputy Acting Chairman of the Duxmoor Vestry. But the little man, instead of being frightened, grew red, lost his humble mien, stood up, and, at length, when his tormentor paused for breath, looked him full in the face, and cried, "Hang your coat!—hang you!—hang all the parochials of Duxmoor! What have I done with your coat? Why I've dyed it; I've dipped it in a tan-yard; I was not going to carry your livery with me. I mean to have the buttons off before I'm an hour older. Gratitude you talk of;—thanks you want, you old hypocrite, for sending me away. I'll tell you what sent me,—it was that poor wench and her twins, and a letter from the office, saying they would not insure your ricks, while lucifer matches are so cheap. Ay, you may stare—you wonder who told me that; but I can tell you more. Who is it that writes so like his father the Bank can't tell the difference?"
Mr. Lobbit turned pale.
"Be off!" said the little man; "plague us no more. You have eaten me up with your usury; you've got my cottage and my bit of land; you've made paupers of us all, except that dear lass, and the one lad, and you'd well nigh made a convict of me. But never mind. This will be a cold, drear Christmas to us, and a merry, fat one to you; but, perhaps, the Christmas may come when Master Joseph Lobbit would be glad to change places with poor, ruined John Bodger. I am going where I am told that sons and daughters like mine are better than 'silver, yea, than fine gold.' I leave you rich on the poor man's inheritance and poor man's flesh and blood. You have a son and daughter that will revenge me. 'Cursed are they that remove landmarks, and devour the substance of the poor!'"
While this, one of the longest speeches that John Bodger was ever known to make, was being delivered, a little crowd had collected, who, without exactly understanding the merits of the case, had no hesitation in taking side with their fellow-passenger, the poor man with the large family. The Irish began to inquire if the stout gentleman was a tithe-proctor or a driver? Murmurs of a suspicious character arose, in the midst of which, in a very hasty, undignified manner, Mr. Lobbit backed out, climbed up to the deck with extraordinary agility, and, without waiting to make any complaints to the officers of the ship, slipped down the side into a beat, and never felt himself safe, until called to his senses by an attempt on the part of the boat-man to exact four times the regular fare.
But a good dinner at the Globe (at parochial expense) and a report from the agent that the ship had sailed, restored Mr. Lobbit's equanimity; and by the time that, snugly packed in the mail, he was rattling along toward home by a moonlight Christmas, he began to think himself a martyr to a tender heart, and to console himself by calculating the value of the odd corner of Bodger's acres, cut up into lots for his labourers' cottages. The result, fifty per cent., proved a balm to his wounded feelings.
I wish I could say that at the same hour John Bodger was comforting his wife and little ones; sorry am I to report that he left them to weep and complain, while he went forward and smoked his pipe, and sang, and drank grog with a jolly party in the forecastle—for John's heart was hardened, and he cared little for God or man.
This old, fond love for his wife and children seemed to have died away. He left them, through the most part of the voyage, to shift for themselves—sitting forward, sullenly smoking, looking into vacancy, and wearying the sailors with asking, "How many knots to-day, Jack? When do you think we shall see land?" So that the women passengers took a mortal dislike to him; and it being gossipped about, that when his wife was in the hospital, he never went to see her for two days, they called him a brute. So "Bodger the Brute" he was called until the end of the voyage. Then they were all dispersed, and such stories driven out of mind by new scenes.
John was hired to go into the far interior, where it was difficult to get free servants at all; so his master put up with the dead-weight encumbrance of the babies, in consideration of the clever wife and string of likely lads. Thus, in a new country, he began life again in a blue jersey and ragged corduroys, but the largest money income he had ever known.
Scene the Second.
In 1842, my friend Mrs. C. made one of her marches through the bush with an army of emigrants. These consisted of parents with long families, rough country-bred single girls, with here and there a white-handed, useless young lady—the rejected ones of the Sydney hirers. In these marches she had to depend for the rations of her ragged regiment on the hospitality of the settlers on her route, and was never disappointed, although it often happened that a day's journey was commenced without any distinct idea of who would furnish the next dinner and breakfast.
On one of these foraging excursions—starting at day-dawn on horseback followed by her man Friday, an old lag (prisoner), in a light cart to carry the provender—she went forth to look for the flour, milk, and mullet, for the breakfast of a party whose English appetites had been sharpened by travelling at the pace of the drays all day, and sleeping in the open air all night.
The welcome smoke of the expected station was found; the light cart, with the complements and empty sack despatched; when musing, at a foot-pace, perhaps, on the future fortune of the half-dozen girls hired out the previous day, Mrs. C. came upon a small party which had also been encamping on the other side of the hills.
It consisted of two gawky lads in docked smock frocks, woolly hats, rosy sleepy countenances; fresh arrivals, living monuments of the care bestowed in developing the intelligence of the agricultural mind in England. They were hard at work on broiled mutton. A regular hard-dried Bushman, had just driven up a pair of blood mares from their night's feed, and a white-headed brisk kind of young old man, the master of the party, was sitting by the fire trying to feed an infant with some sort of mess compounded with sugar. A dray heavily laden with a bullock-team ready harnessed, stood ready to start under the charge of the bullock-watchman.
The case was clear to a colonial eye; the white-headed man had been down to the port from his Bush-farm to sell his stuff, and was returning with two blood mares purchased, and two emigrant lads hired; but what was the meaning of the baby? We see strange things in the bush, but a man-nurse is strange even there.
Although they had never met before, the white-headed man almost immediately recognised Mrs. C.—, for who did not know her, or of her, in the Bush?—so was more communicative than he otherwise might have been, and so he said,
"You see ma'am, my lady, I have only got on my own place this three years; having a long family, we found it best to disperse about where the best wages was to be got. We began saving the first year, and my daughters have married pretty well, and my boys got to know the ways of the country. There's three of them married, thanks to your ladyship; so we thought we could set up for ourselves. And we've done pretty tidy. So, as they were all busy at home, I went down for the first time to get a couple of mares and see about hiring some lads out of the ships to help us. You see I have picked up two newish ones; I have docked their frocks to a useful length, and I think they'll do after a bit; they can't read, neither of them—no more could I when I first came—but our teacher, (she's one my missis had from you,) will soon fettle them; and I've got a power of things on the dray; I wish you could be there at unloading; for it being my first visit, I wanted something for all of them. But about this babby is a curious job. When I went aboard the ship to hire my shepherds, I looked out for some of my own country; and while I was asking, I heard of a poor woman whose husband had been drowned in a drunken fit on the voyage, that was lying very ill, with a young babby, and not likely to live.
"Something made me go to see her; she had no friends on board, she knew no one in the colony. She started, like, at my voice; one word brought on another, when it came out she was the wife of the son of my greatest enemy.
"She had been his father's servant, and married the son secretly. When it was found out, he had to leave the country; thinking, that once in Australia, the father would be reconciled, and the business that put her husband in danger might be settled. For this son was a wild, wicked man, worse than the father, but with those looks and ways that take the hearts of poor lasses. "Well, as we talked, and I questioned her—for she did not seem so ill as they had told me—she began to ask me who I was, and I did not want to tell; when I hesitated, she guessed, and cried out, 'What, John Bodger, is it thee!'—and with that she screamed, and screamed, and went off quite light-headed, and never came to her senses until she died.
"So, as there was no one to care for the poor little babby, and as we had such a lot at home, what with my own children and my grandchildren, I thought one more would make no odds, so the gentleman let me take it, after I'd seen the mother decently buried.
"You see this feeding's a very awkward job, ma'am—and I've been five days on the road. But I think my missis will be pleased as much as with the gown I've brought her."
"What," said Mrs. C., "are you the John Bodger that came over in the 'Cassandra,'—the John B.?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"John, the Brute?"
"Yes ma'am. But I'm altered sure-ly."
"Well," continued John, "the poor woman was old Joseph Lobbit's daughter-in-law. Her husband had been forging, or something, and would have been lagged if he'd staid in England. I don't know but I might have been as bad if I had not got out of the country when I did. But there's something here in always getting on; and not such a struggling and striving that softens a poor man's heart. And I trust what I've done for this poor babby and its mother, may excuse my brutish behaviour. I could not help thinking when I was burying poor Jenny Lobbit (I mind her well, a nice little lass, about ten years' old); I could not help thinking as she lay in a nice cloth covered coffin, and a beautiful stone cut with her name and age, and a text on her grave; how different it is even for poor people to be buried here. Oh, ma'am! a man like me with a long family can make a-head here, and do a bit of good for others worse off. We live while we live; when we die, we are buried with decency. I remember, when my wife's mother died, the parish officers were so cross, and the boards of the coffin barely stuck together, and it was terrible cold weather, too. My Carry used to cry about it uncommonly all the winter. The swells may say what they like about it, but I'll be blessed if it be'ent worth all the voyage to die in it."
Not many days afterwards Mrs. C. saw John at home, surrounded by an army of sons and daughters; a patriarch, and yet not sixty years' old; the grandchild of his greatest enemy the greatest pet of the family.
In my mind's eye there are sometimes two pictures. John Bodger in the workhouse, thinking of murder and fire-raising in the presence of his prosperous enemy; and John Bodger, in his happy bush home, nursing little Nancy Lobbit.
At Duxmoor the shop has passed into other hands. The ex-shopkeeper has bought and rebuilt the manor-house. He is the squire, now, wealthier than ever he dreamed; on one estate a mine has been found; a railway has crossed and doubled the value of another; but his son is dead; his daughter has left him, and lives, he knows not where, a life of shame. Childless and friendless, the future is, to him, cheerless and without hope.