SPRING OBLIGATIONS AT KERSHAW.

The arrangement which had domesticated Miss Gray at Redcot continued to work admirably. The children got on well with her, and were fond of her. Jane enjoyed the stimulus given by the neighbourhood of a kindred spirit, while the two girls studied late and early in the half sublime folly of youth, which is grandly spend-thrift of health and strength till the day of reckoning is forced upon the prodigal. Each pursued her own course of reading for the Oxford examination, comparing notes constantly on the progress the other made, and feeling spurred on by the comparison to attack with spirit a new authority.

Mrs. Prior liked to hear how busy the young people were, and to see how well and happy they looked in their abundance of work. In her secret mind she thought it was that which was really of consequence, and that it did not matter half so much what was the nature of the work--so that it was honest--whether it was shell grottos, or paper flowers, or ancient philosophy. Everything had its place and served its purpose in the great, wonderful, complicated economy of the world. There was a day for small things, as well as a day for great, and the first was not to be despised any more than the last was to be depreciated. She believed there was use for her quilts, while she greatly admired and respected the cleverness and depth of the new generation. She could hardly find words strong enough to express her satisfaction with Miss Gray--such a scholar, so unaffected, unassuming, kind-hearted, so wise with the children, so companionable for Jane, so little in Mr. Prior’s way, giving no more trouble than she could help to the servants, such a dear young friend for Mrs. Prior herself!

Even John Prior, though he took much less notice of Bennet than the other members of the family did, liked her and considered her, if such an addition to the establishment was necessary, in the light of an acquisition rather than a detriment. Miss Gray was a little despairing sometimes of her relations to the master of the house. She feared that after all her vain dreams she had made no way with him at all. But she was partly mistaken.

Susie Crabtree was gracious and caressing to the Redcot children’s governess every time the two women encountered each other. At the same time the popular matron tried to get as much out of the teacher as she could conveniently extract, in the shape of useful hints about lesson books and modes of employing them for the future benefit of Molly and Piers.

Lambert Crabtree stared Bennet Gray out of countenance with his great prominent light eyes, as he was in the habit of staring handsome young women down. He cried, ‘Hey! Miss Gray, ain’t you sick of grammars and spelling-books, and of little sinners wading through them? Now, how many times have you boxed the small Woods’ ears to-day? Tell me honestly,’ and sought to make game of her rather more rudely than he aimed at taking off the rest of his world.

Both husband and wife were profuse in their attentions, such as they were, to Bennet Gray, whom that hair-brained enthusiast and learned goose Jane had taken up to such an extent. She had established Miss Gray at Redcot as if she were on a perfect equality with her employers, and it was a great favour on her part to come and stay with them, and receive her board and pocket her salary for being not a quarter of the day in the schoolroom, giving a few elementary lessons to the little Woods, and for anything more, fooling Jane to the top of her bent. But, of course, Jane would resent furiously any interference with her paragon, any attempt however desirable and gone about with the greatest delicacy, to put her in her proper place. It would be better if it were even in old Rossiter’s place. Mam-ma, who deferred absurdly to Jane, had always been weak in her treatment of subordinates. Susie would not for the world be hard upon them--on the contrary she would load them with kindness, but it should always be kindness from the mistress of the house to the retainer. Mrs. Crabtree, in spite of her good-nature, disapproved entirely of professing to make the governess ‘one of the family’--which could never be, having her to dinner as well as to luncheon, giving her the run of the drawing-room when she was not professionally engaged in the schoolroom--her proper place, and so spoiling her for her line in life.

Both of the Crabtrees--Lambert, in his off-hand fashion; Susie, in her sugared sharpness--spoke disparagingly of Miss Gray behind her back between themselves, and that all the more because of Jane Prior’s championship. Husband and wife arrived on different grounds at the same conclusion. They considered Miss Gray, whom Mrs. Prior described as unaffected and unassuming, very much of a humbug, and decidedly pretentious for her circumstances. But the Crabtrees did not go out of their way to speak evil of their neighbours: so much might be said for the couple. His _rôle_ was that of a hail-fellow-well-met with everybody. She was too busy with her own concerns not to forget those of her fellow-creatures who did not cross her path. In that case her instinct was to cajole, and, if possible, win them over, never roundly to abuse them.

Time was passing; the winter had done its worst, and was going--well-nigh gone. The landmark of Christmas, kept very quietly at Redcot, was well rounded, and even February had waned. What poets and moralists call the harbingers of spring had been seen and heard. Snowdrops, yellow balls of aconite, pale buds of primroses, shrivelling up at their own audacity, had begun to show themselves on the flowerless earth. The catkins of the hazel and poplar had been before the primroses. Slender, erect twigs of snowberry bushes were forming miniature groves all by themselves, and vieing with the thick drooping branches of the tall larch trees, in bursting into vivid green. Sanguine crowing young cocks of blackbirds were singing down the faithful robins that had piped out the shortest day.

The transformation had begun in Redcot Quarry, to which John Prior still stalked, stumbling a little over the stones as the season wore on, and the protracted trial was telling on his bodily strength. He continued to go doggedly and by stealth to his post on the chill afternoons, at the period of the year when all the brightness departs with the morning, and the afternoon brings at best leaden clouds and cold winds. Notwithstanding that spring was yet early, and four o’clock saw the sun far on the decline, there was a swelling of sap-laden purple boughs and of down-tipped, glossy, brown buds. An ethereal powdering of green began to appear on all sides. There were stirrings and movings of reawakening plant and animal life eager to be free, exultant that the dispensation of death was ended and the resurrection at the door. It was already a time of vague, sweet promise, which mocked a hopeless man.

The most stay-at-home persons, who had hugged the winter as an excuse for remaining largely by the hearth, were impelled to speak of extending short, uncomfortable constitutional walks into long, voluntary, enjoyable rambles. People were called on to think of excursions and projects that had to do with the out-of-door world, which had been laid aside and metaphorically wrapped in cotton wool, while November hid his poverty and rags in a succession of white mists, and December and January alternately dripped in sullen tear-drops which did not even glitter in the gloom, or froze in fierce, black frosts, that held the world in an iron grip.

Redcot had its obligations in the fine weather, and Jane Prior had her share in these obligations. They were not necessarily confined to society in its ordinary claims. Neither was Jane selfish in her personal tastes. She would willingly have elevated the whole human race along with herself in her striving after higher issues. She did what she could. She was continually lending instructive ‘papers’ and books to the young house and table maids, even to the elderly cook. There would be the difficulty to get the recipients of these loans, without flat tyranny, to read enlightened explanations of how beds should be made and wineglasses dried. Camilla and Clara had quite enough of their work when they had done it. They desired other recreation than was to be found in reading about it at every spare moment. Miss Prior should try how she would like if she were not allowed to get a change, but had to consent to mattresses and washleathers being for ever poked at her and dangled before her eyes? Servants had a literature of their own, which was not dry and sermonising and tied down to service. On the contrary, the reading in Camilla’s and Clara’s weekly newspaper was highly imaginative. It transported the readers to a charmed region, in which they were not doomed to herd with fellow-servants alone, though they were worth a deal more than their mistresses guessed. In such literature servants could mix with grand ladies, to whom Miss Prior, with her crony the governess, could not hold the candle, and there were fine lords to match the ladies.

As for Martha, the cook, she vowed that if she sent up her roast joints and rabbit pies, and cabinet puddings, to please the master and mistress, she was not going to be worrited by none of Miss Jane’s printed fads about baking stealing the taste from a thing, and boiling being taken at the minute, and stewing having become a lost art. Lost indeed! as if she could not stew with an onion as well as any woman in her own Buckinghamshire. Had Miss Jane or her friends who printed cookery ever tried their hands at boiling or stewing? Well, till they did, they had better let a proper cook as knew her business alone.

Jane attacked the coachman and the gardener, but they were equally wedded to their ways, and unapproachable on the scores of driving and gardening.

‘Father,’ said Jane, one evening at dinner, ‘what about the sanitation in the pits?’

Now, as it happened, John Prior had come home that afternoon in deep depression, condemned to judge from the movements of the borers that the Kershaw pits and all connected with them were doomed. The sanitation, as Jane called it, would be of small account then. The question was decidedly ill-timed.

‘Sanitation,’ he drawled, as if a half-awake stupidity and absence of mind contended with his testiness. ‘Sanitation,’ he repeated, pausing upon the term as if he had never heard it before, and was chewing it previous to digesting it; ‘what do you mean by sanitation?’

‘Oh, you know; the health condition of the pits,’ explained Jane, staring.

‘Well, as I keep an agent, who is supposed to have learnt his trade, and as it is a matter of certainty that, if he and I fail, the Government inspector will be down upon us, I don’t think you need trouble your head about that,’ said Mr. Prior in weary sardonicalness. He added to himself, as he looked into his hock glass, ‘You may soon have more to do. I hope your lexicon and theses will put bread into your mouth.’

‘What made me inquire,’ persisted Jane, in her calm, judicial voice, utterly ignoring her mother’s warning glance, ‘was that I heard there was a good deal of typhoid fever at Kershaw last winter.’

‘Have you only found that out at this date?’ was her father’s retort.

‘Why, Jane, did you not hear,’ her mother interposed, ‘that the doctor at the works sent us word, and Martha prepared quantities of kitchen stuff? I don’t think we have sent such supplies to the Colliers’ Rows since the dreadful explosion in 1867, before you can recollect.’

Jane sat convicted of not having been quite aware either of what took place at the pits or of what was going on in the house. She was not to be let off with this exposure of her weak points. ‘Before you unhesitatingly associate typhoid fever with pit sanitation, as you call it,’ remarked John Prior with a parting snarl at the word, ‘you had better make yourself acquainted with the habits of the miners, the quantity and quality of their food and drink, for instance, the manner in which they manage to shirk the regulations against over-crowding their houses with lodgers, and introducing as many bull-dog puppies as infants into the rooms, before you throw all the blame on the unlucky coal-owners. One would think that a little _esprit de corps_ might come in and help to keep the balance level.’

‘I am sorry if I have appeared to reflect upon your arrangements, father,’ said Jane, who had really a great respect for her father, and was not beyond making reparation for a supposed wrong done to him. At the same time she was not going to give up her principles. ‘If the miners are more gluttonous and drunken than other working men, if they live more like brutes, with their amusements lower and more degrading than other men’s amusements, and if this has been true for centuries, I am afraid the proprietors have something to answer for. They may not have meant to wrong the men. The masters may not always have known better in the past, or been able to do better themselves. Still, I cannot see how they can have been without fault,’ said Jane, with an earnest desire to be fair.

Mr. Prior did not reply; he was sick of the subject. To twit a man with the sins of the coal-owners when he was on the verge of having no coal to own was worse than useless--it was the irony of fate. If he had ever been a passive instrument in suffering a great industry to grow without a corresponding provision for the wants and temptations of the labourers in that industry, retribution had come in the shape of the withdrawal of the power, and there was an end of it.

Jane’s next philanthropic movement was to offer, with Miss Gray’s concurrence--now that the weather was better, but before it had got so fine as to suggest unlimited football and cricket matches for the lads in the afternoons and evenings--to drive over twice a week to the colliery village of Kershaw on the moor, to help the Rector with his classes. The Rev. Herbert Haynes had exerted himself to open a kind of rough club-room for collier lads, with classes for such of them as had any open or smothered wish to improve themselves. But Mr. Haynes was getting up in years, and had a delicate wife, with neither son nor daughter at home. He had many irons in the fire, and he feared he must relinquish this particular iron from incapacity either to wield it regularly himself or to provide an available substitute in his absence. Then Miss Prior came to his aid and offered to go over regularly to Kershaw and teach any branch within her range. She was fired by the idea of hungry aspirants for knowledge being turned away empty from the inexhaustible stores.

Jane could not have done the thing by herself, but Miss Gray was there to keep her company. In addition, Mr. Haynes’s parish clerk, who was the secretary of the club, could play the part of one of the stewards at a ball--a sort of male chaperon, and help the young ladies to keep order among the somewhat difficult audience. Finally, Mr. Haynes would look in as often as he could to make the matter still simpler and more practicable.

Mr. and Mrs. Prior did not make any objection, even although the old phaeton had to take the road twice a week, and Jane and Miss Gray had to be absent from dinner on these occasions. John Prior was not a full-blown tyrant. There had been a time in his life when he might not only have been amused by the Amazonian enterprise, he might have applauded it heartily. His reign was all but over; it was as well that it should close with a feminine flourish of fifes rather than of trumpets. He only reserved to himself the right of growling and grumbling at the small inconveniences to which he nevertheless submitted.