CHAPTER THE SECOND.NO ONE KNOWS.
WHEN the scurrying water, thick with sand and mud, and discoloured with dye stuffs, which floated in brightly-tinted patches on its surface, filled the arch of Scotland Bridge, and left only the rails of Tanners’ Bridge visible, the inundation reached its climax; but a couple of days elapsed before the flood subsided below the level of the unprotected tannery-yard, and until then neither Simon Clegg nor his mates could resume their occupations.
There was a good deal of lounging about Long Millgate and the doors of the “Queen Anne” and “Skinners’ Arms,” of heavily-shod men, in rough garniture of thick hide—armoury against the tan and water in which their daily bread was steeped.
But in all those two days no anxious father, no white-faced mother, had run from street to street, and house to house, to seek and claim a rescued living child. No, not even when the week had passed, though the story of his “miraculous preservation” was the theme of conversation at the tea-tables of gentility and in the bar-parlours of taverns; was the gossip of courts and alleys, highways and byways; and though echo, in the guise of a “flying stationer,” caught it up and spread it broadcast in catchpenny sheets, far beyond the confines of the inundation.
This was the more surprising as no dead bodies had been washed down the river, and no lives were reported “lost.” Had the child no one to care for it?—no relative to whom its little life was precious? Had it been abandoned to its fate, a waif unloved, uncared for?
The house in which Simon Clegg lived was situated at the very end of Skinners’ Yard, acul-de-sac, to which the only approach was a dark covered entry, not four feet wide. Thepavement of the yard was natural rock, originally hewn into broad flat steps, but then worn with water from the skies, and from house-wifely pails, and the tramp of countless clogs, to a rugged steep incline, asking wary stepping from the stranger on exploration after nightfall. Gas was, of course, unknown, but not even an oil-lamp lit up the gloom.
In the sunken basement a tripe-boiler had a number of stone troughs or cisterns, for keeping his commodities cool for sale. The three rooms of Simon Clegg were situated immediately above these, two small bed-rooms overlooking the river and pleasant green fields beyond; the wide kitchen window having no broader range of prospect than the dreary and not too savoury yard. Even this view was shut out by a batting frame, resembling much a long, narrow French bedstead, all the more that on it was laid a thick bed of raw (that is, undressed) cotton, freckled with seeds and fine bits of husky pod. Bess was a batter, and her business was to turn and beat the clotted mass with stout lithe arms and willow-wands, until the fibres loosened, the seeds and specks fell through, and a billowy mass of whitish down lay before her. It was not a healthy occupation: dust and flue released found their way into the lungs, as well as on to the floor and furniture; and a rosy-cheeked batter was a myth. Machinery does the work now—but this history deals withthen!
During the week dust lay thick on everything; even Bessy’s hair was fluffy as a bursting cotton pod, in spite of the kerchief tied across it; but on the Saturday, when she had carried her work to Simpson’s factory in Miller’s Lane, and came back with her wages, broom and duster cleared away the film; wax and brush polished up the oak bureau, the pride and glory of their kitchen; the two slim iron candlesticks, fender and poker were burnished bright as steel; the three-legged round deal table was scrubbed white; and then, mounted on tall pattens, she set about with mop and pail, and a long-handled stone, to cleanse the flag floor from the week’s impurities.
She had had a good mother, and, to the best of her ability, Bess tried to follow in her footsteps, and fill the vacant place on her father’s hearth, and in his heart. Her mother had been dead four years, and Bess, now close upon twenty, had since then lost two brothers, and lamented as lost one dearer than a brother—the two former by death, the other by the fierce demands of war. She had a pale, interesting face, with dark hair and thoughtful, deep grey eyes, and was, if anything, tooquiet and staid for her years; but when her face lit up she had as pleasant a smile upon it as one would wish to see by one’s fireside, and not even her dialect could make her voice otherwise than low and gentle.
Both her brothers had been considerably younger than herself; and possibly the fact of having stoodin loco parentisto them for upwards of two years had imparted to her the air of motherliness she possessed. Certain it is that if a child in the yard scalded itself, or cut a finger, or knocked the bark off an angular limb, it went crying to Bessy Clegg in preference to its own mother; and she healed bruises and quarrels with the same balsam—loving sympathy. She was just the one to open her arms and heart to a poor motherless babe, and Simon Clegg knew it.
Old Simon, or old Clegg, he was called, probably because he was graver and more serious than his fellows, and had never changed his master since he grew to manhood; certainly not on account of his age, which trembled on the verge of fifty only. He was a short, somewhat spare man, with a face deeply lined by sorrow for the loved ones he had lost. But he had a merry twinkling eye, and was not without a latent vein of humour. The atmosphere of the tannery might have shrivelled his skin, but it had not withered his heart; and when he handed the child he had saved to his daughter, he never stopped to calculate contingencies.
The boy, apparently between two and three months’ old, was dressed in a long gown of printed linen, had a muslin cap, and an under one of flannel, all neatly made, but neither in make nor material beyond those of a respectable working-man’s child; and there was not a mark upon anything which could give a clue to its parentage.
The painted wooden cradle, which had been to it an ark of safety, was placed in a corner by the fireplace; and an old bottle, filled with thin gruel, over the neck of which Bess had tied a loose cap of punctured wash-leather, was so adjusted that the little one, deprived of its mother, could lie within and feed itself whilst Bess industriously pursued her avocations.
These were not times for idleness. There had been bread-riots the previous winter; food still was at famine prices; and it was all a poor man could do, with the strictest industry and economy, to obtain a bare subsistence. So Bess worked away all the harder, because there were times when babydom was imperative, and would be nursed.
She had put the last garnishing touches to her kitchen on Saturday night, had taken off her wrapper-brat,4put on a clean blue, bedgown,5and substituted a white linen cap for the coloured kerchief, when her father, who had been to New Cross Market to make his bargains by himself on this occasion, came into the kitchen, followed by Cooper, who having helped to save the child, naturally felt an interest in him.
The iron porridge-pot was on the low fire, and Bess, sifting the oatmeal into the boiling water with the left hand, whilst with the other she beat it swiftly with her porridge-stick, was so intent on the preparation of their supper, she did not notice their entrance until her father, putting his coarse wicker market-basket down on her white table, bade Cooper “Coom in an’ tak’ a cheer.”
Instead of taking a chair, the man walked as quietly as his clogs would let him to the cradle, and looked down on the infant sucking vigorously at the delusive bottle. Mat Cooper was theunhappy father of eight, whose maintenance was a sore perplexity to him; and it may be supposed he spoke with authority when he exclaimed—
“Whoy, he tak’s t’ th’ pap-bottle as nat’rally as if he’n ne’er had nowt else!”
And the big man—quite a contrast to Simon—stooped and lifted the babe from the cradle with all the ease of long practice, and dandled it in his arms, saying as he did so,
“Let’s hey a look at th’ little chap. Aw’ve not seen the colour o’ his eyen yet.”
The eyes were grey, so dark they might have passed for black; and there was in them more than the ordinary inquiring gaze of babyhood.
“Well, thah’rt a pratty lad; but had thah bin th’ fowest6i’ o’ Lankisheer, aw’d a-thowt thi mammy’d ha’ speered7fur thi afore this,” added he, sitting down, and nodding to the child, which crowed in his face.
“Ah! one would ha’ reckoned so,” assented Bess, without turning round.
“What ar’ ta gooin’ to do, Simon, toward fandin’ th’ choilt’s kin?” next questioned their visitor.
Simon looked puzzled
“Whoy, aw’ve hardly gi’en it a thowt.”
But the question, once started, was discussed at some length. Meanwhile the porridge destined for two Bess poured intothree bowls, placing three iron spoons beside them, with no more ceremony than, “Ye’ll tak’ a sup wi’ us, Mat.”
Mat apologised, feeling quite assured there was no more than the two could have eaten; but Simon looked hurt, and the porridge was appetising to a hungry man; so he handed the baby to the young woman, took up his spoon, and the broken thread of conversation was renewed at intervals. What they said matters not so much as what they did.
The next morning being Sunday, Cooper called for Clegg just as the bells were ringing for church; and the two, arrayed in their best fustian breeches, long-tailed, deep-cuffed coats, knitted hose, three-cornered hats, and shoes, only kept for Sunday wear, set out to seek the parents of the unclaimed infant, nothing doubting that they were going to carry solace to sorrowing hearts.
Their course lay in the same track as the Irk, now pursuing its course as smilingly under the bright August sun as though its banks were not strewed with wreck, and foul with thick offensive mud, and the woeful devastation were none of its doing. There were fewer houses on their route than now, and they kept close as possible to the course of the river, questioning the various inhabitants as they went along. They had gone through Collyhurst and Blakely without rousing anyone to a thought beyond self-sustained damage, or gaining a single item of intelligence, though they made many a detour in quest of it. At a roadside public-house close to Middleton they sat down parched with heat and thirst, called for a mug of ale each, drew from their pockets thick hunks of brown bread and cheese, wrapped in blue and white check handkerchiefs, and whilst satisfying their hunger, came to the conclusion that no cradle could have drifted safely so far, crossing weirs and mill dams amongst uprooted bushes, timber, and household chattels and that it was best to turn back.
In Smedley Vale, where the flood seemed to have done its worst, and where a small cottage close to the river lay in ruins, a knot of people were gathered together talking and gesticulating as if in eager controversy. As they approached, they were spied by one of the group.
“Here are th’ chaps as fund th’ babby, an’ want’n to know who it belungs to,” cried he, a youth whom they had interrogated early in the day.
To tell in brief what Simon and his companion learned by slow degrees—the hapless child was alone in the world,orphaned by a succession of misfortunes. The dilapidated cottage had been for some fifteen months the home of its parents. The father, who was understood to have come from Crumpsall with his young wife and her aged mother, had been sent for to attend the death-bed of a brother in Liverpool, and had never been heard of since. The alarm and trouble consequent upon his prolonged absence prostrated the young wife and caused not only the babe’s premature birth, but the mother’s death. The care of the child had devolved upon the stricken grandmother, who had him brought up by hand, as Matthew’s sagacity had suggested. She was a woman far advanced in years, and feeble, but she asked no help from neighbours or parish, though her poverty was apparent. She kept poultry and knitted stockings, and managed to eke out a living somehow, but how, none of those scattered neighbours seemed to know—she had “held her yead so hoigh” (pursued her way so quietly).
She had been out in her garden feeding her fowls, when the flood came upon them without warning, swept through the open doors of the cottage, and carried cradle and everything else before it, leaving hardly a wall standing. In endeavouring to save the child she herself got seriously hurt, and was with difficulty rescued. But between grief and fright, bruises and the drenching, the old dame succumbed, and died on the Thursday morning, and had been buried by the parish—from which in life she had proudly kept aloof—that very afternoon, and no one could tell other name she had borne than Nan.
Bess sobbed aloud when she heard her father’s recital which lost nothing of its pathos from the homely vernacular in which it was couched.
“An’ what’s to be done neaw?” asked Cooper, as he sat on one of the rush-bottomed chairs, sucking the knob of his walking-stick, as if for an inspiration. “Yo canno’ think o’ keeping th’ choilt, an’ bread an’ meal at sich a proice!”
“Connot oi? Then aw conno’ think o’ aught else. Wouldst ha’ me chuck it i’ th’ river agen? What dost thah say, Bess?” turning to his daughter, who had the child on her lap.
“Whoi, th’ poor little lad’s got noather feyther nor mother, an’ thah’s lost boath o’ thi lads. Mebbe it’s a Godsend, feyther, after o’, as yo said’n to me,” and she kissed it tenderly.
“Eh, wench!” interposed Matthew, but she went on without heeding him.
“There’s babby clooas laid by i’ lavender i’ thoase drawers as hasna seen dayleet sin ar Joe wur a toddler, an’ they’ll just come handy. An’ if bread’s dear an’ meal’s dear, we mun just ate less on it arsels, an’ there’ll be moore fur the choilt. He’ll pay yo back, feyther, aw know, when yo’re too owd to wark.”
“An’ aw con do ’bout ’bacca, lass. If the orphan’s granny wur too preawd to ax help o’ th’ parish, aw’ll be too preawd to send her pratty grandchoilt theer.”
An so, to Matthew Cooper’s amazement, it was settled. But the extra labour and self-denial it involved on the part of Bess, neither Matthew nor Simon could estimate.
In the midst of the rabid scepticism and Republicanism of the period, Simon Clegg was a staunch “Church and King” man, and, as a natural consequence, a stout upholder of their ordinances. Regularly as the bell tolled in for Sunday morning service, he might be seen walking reverently down the aisle of the old church, to his place in the free seats, with his neat, cheerful-looking daughter following him sometimes, but not always—so regularly that the stout beadle missed him from his seat the Sunday after the inundation, and meeting him in the churchyard a week later, sought to learn the why and wherefore.
The beadle of the parish church was an important personage in the eyes of Simon Clegg; and, somewhat proud of his notice, the little tanner related the incidents of that memorable flood-week to his querist, concluding with his adoption of the child.
The official h’md and ha’d, applauded the act, but shook his powdered head, and added, sagely, that it was a “greeat charge, a varry greeat charge.”
“Dun yo’ think th’ little un’s bin babtised?” interrogated the beadle.
“Aw conno’ tell; nob’dy couldn’t tell nowt abeawt th’ choilt, ’ut wur ony use to onybody. Bess an’ me han talked it ower, an’ we wur thinkin o’ bringin’ it to be kirsened, to be on th’ safe soide loike. Aw reckon it wouldna do th’ choilt ony harm to be kirsened twoice ower; an’ ’twoud be loike flingin’ th’ choilt’s soul to Owd Scrat gin he wur no kirsened at o’. What dun yo’ thinken’?”
The beadle thought pretty much the same as Simon, and it was finally arranged that Simon should present the young foundling for baptism in the course of the week.