The Victory (74 page)

Father Rathbone looked at her affectionately, knowing he
could never make her understand that their sloth was a result
of the hopelessness that went with continual poverty. The
apathy of misery was something she had never experienced. Even when she had been personally acutely unhappy — and
he had known her long enough by now to have understood
something of her other life — it has always driven her to
action. She knew nothing of that despair which he had seen in
countless faces, in stinking, fly-teeming streets in India as
well as in the dank, rotting cellars of Manchester, that made a
man at last simply sit down and wait for death.

He couldn't, and didn't, expect her to understand. It was
enough that she cared, and helped. This year he had persuaded
her to try to involve some of the other ladies of position,
and with the help of Mrs Pendlebury, who didn't mind what a
committee was for, as long as she was at the head of it, they
had formed the Committee for the Promotion of Health and
Cleanliness amongst the Industrious Poor of Manchester.

It was not received with universal approval. There were
many who thought that such things were not their business,
and that it was not only unpleasant, but unseemly for ladies
to concern themselves with dirt and disease amongst the
lower orders. It was very difficult, however, when faced with
Mrs Morland in person, in a burgundy velvet pelisse and a hat
with a lace veil and long feathers that aroused one's deepest
envy, when regarding the queenly purity of her profile or the exquisite elegance of her manners, to tell her that her notions
bordered on the improper.

As Mrs Pendlebury and Mrs Morland, the undoubted
leaders of society, were involved in it, most of the smart ladies
of Manchester soon decided it would be too stupid to be left
out of things altogether, and the public meetings, at least,
became very popular. There were those held in the Exchange
Hall or the Concert Room, when John Ferriar and Father
Rathbone addressed the company with descriptions of
housing conditions, and predictions of dreadful plagues to
come, and gentlemen in the audience stood up and argued
with them, and there would sometimes be thrilling alter
cations, to be discussed afterwards in excited whispers in
drawing-rooms all over town. Even more popular were the
meetings at the private houses of various leading members of
the committee, with wine and cakes and usually only ladies
present, when the conversation would quickly veer away from
dull subjects like dirt and poverty, and the feathered hats
would incline closer together and nod more animatedly over
the favoured topics of new clothes, the iniquities of servants,
and the astonishing talents of one's children.

Talking was one thing, subscribing money another, and
taking action yet a third. Most of the ladies gave their
husband's unwillingness as the reason for their inability to
donate funds for the Relief of an Industrious Weaver Unable
to Work after an Unfortunate Accident, or for the Provision
of Soap to
Twenty
Families in Brock Street. So the committee
got up a subscription concert for the first, and an extremely
daring masquerade ball for the second, and the ladies had so
much enjoyment from organising and attending the
functions, that they were able quite to forget the charitable
purpose underlying them.

But when it came to visiting the homes of the poor
themselves, the ladies faded away like morning dew. Mrs
Pendlebury was quite open about it. 'Imagine me, my dear
Mrs Morland, walking about in those dreadful dirty streets,
with dear-knows-what underfoot, to say nothing of going into
the houses! I don't suppose I could even fit through the doors.' And Mary Ann, regarding her doubtfully, had to
admit that it wasn't likely. She was so very large, and her
draperies and turbans made her seem larger still.

Others like Mrs Ardwick fluttered in terror at the idea, and
invoked their husbands again. 'Mr Ardwick would never,
never allow it! Oh, dear Mrs Morland, pray do not mention it
again! I feel such flutterings and spasms all over me, I am
sure it will bring on the pains in my side!’

Mrs Spicer, whose youngest, about the same age as Henry,
had fallen off his hobby-horse in the park last Sunday just as
the Hobsbawn carriage was passing, and dirtied his lace collar
in full view of Mr Hobsbawn and Henry, said, 'I wonder, dear
Mrs Morland, if it is quite the
thing,
to go visiting these
places, and with only dear Father Rathbone for company?'
She leaned forward earnestly. 'I wonder Mr Hobsbawn
should not give you the hint, ma'am, for I must say, it does
present the most
peculiar
appearance, and your dear papa has
always been so very careful not to do anything in the least
sin
gular.'

‘
I don't know what you mean, ma'am,' Mary Ann said, so
sharply that the plums and cherries on Mrs Spicer's hat
quivered and withdrew an inch or two.

‘Why, ma'am, to be going to such places, such
low
places, accompanied only by a
man —'

‘
Father Rathbone is a priest,' Mary Ann said, the tone of
her voice descending like an axe on conversation's neck. Mrs
Spicer mottled uncomfortably, and soon afterwards took her
leave to go and visit Mrs Droylsden and explain to her with a
sweet smile that, 'Dearest Mrs Morland was quite the most
unworldly
creature,
with a
mind above such things as
ordinary respectability.’

So Mary Ann was left alone in her philanthropy, and she
found the visits very depressing. The smells in the streets were
so abominable, especially on hot days, only surpassed by the smells inside the houses. The rows and courts of badly-built,
mean, decaying tenements seemed to offer no comfort, barely any shelter, and no glimpse of beauty or propriety or order to
raise the spirits of the wretches who lived in them. Dirt was
everywhere, ground into the brick, the plaster, the clothes,
the very faces of the people.

‘
How can they keep clean?' Father Rathbone would say.
‘Even if you give them soap, they have no clean water.' The
water-supply was his principal concern, the cause for which
he used the platform of their public meetings, though with
little success. The wealthy citizens said that it was the busi
ness of the Board of Health; the Board of Health said they
had no funds, and that it was a matter for the wealthy citizens.

But the worst thing of all, as far as Mary Ann was
concerned, was the ignorance and apathy of the people. They
seemed to have no will to help themselves, and went on doing
the wrong things, even after she had explained their error,
because the mere effort of understanding seemed to be
beyond them. She would come home angry, frustrated, and
depressed, and sometimes not even Father Rathbone's tireless
strength and patience could convince her they were doing any
good. And then she would have to face her father's disappro
val.

Mrs Spicer had underestimated Mr Hobsbawn. He was
quite as well aware as she was of the odd appearance Mary
Ann's activities amongst the millworkers presented, especially
as he was a millmaster himself, although his labour force was
largely drawn from pauper apprentices.

‘
But it reflects on me all the same, love,' he said. 'There are bound to be those who see it as a criticism of me; and besides,
it isn't right for you to be going about to such places, what
with dirt and disease and — and other things. I don't like it,
and that's the truth.’

But Mary Ann stood firm by the rightness of what she was
doing, and he had been too little accustomed to denying her
anything she wanted, to insist on her abandoning her good works. Then came the day when she arrived home unexpec
tedly from the mill in the afternoon and found that not only
had 'Mrs Morland gone out in the carriage to visit poor folk'
but that she had taken Henry with her.

She returned at last, looking pale and fatigued, to find her
father waiting for her in an obvious state of suppressed fury.
Stripping off her soiled gloves, she touched Henry's cheek and told him, with a smile, but in a voice he would not disobey, to
go straight upstairs for his bath. As soon as he had left the
room, Mr Hobsbawn's anger boiled over.

‘
Bath? Aye, well may you tell him to bath! But will soap
and water wash him clean of the taint of where he's been?
Where
his mother
takes him behind my back? By God, Mary
Ann, I never thought to see the day when my own daughter
forgot herself and what's due to her family so far! To take my grandson to such places —!'

‘
You think them unfit for him, though I go there myself?'
she asked quietly.

‘
You know my feelings about that, too!' he bellowed, 'so
don't be putting on those mimsy airs with me, my girl! I
should have nipped this lot in the bud from the first minute,
and I would have, too, if I'd had a notion you'd be so
foolhardy! Well, it's happened for the last time, I can tell you
that. You'll not stir out of this house again, without I know
where you're going, and if you won't abide by my rules, why,
I'll have you locked in your bedchamber, until you come to
your senses! And that's my last word on it!'

‘
Perhaps it may be,' she said, still with that devastating
quietness, 'but it is not mine, Papa.' She took off her hat and laid it with her gloves on the nearest table, and stood where
she had come to rest, like a leaf with no more volition to move
until the wind should blow again. Neither of them at that
moment had any conception of how tired she was. 'I cannot
give up my work, and I will not. The condition of these
people is beyond description. If you had seen it, Papa —'

‘
I don't want to see it! It's not my business to see it! And
you would never have seen it, either, if it hadn't been for that damn' priest! Aye, and I tell you this, he'll not set foot in this
house again, my word on it!'

‘
He will come when I invite him!' Mary Ann said, flaring
up.

‘
Damn it, Mary,' he protested, a little pathetically, 'it's my
house!’

She bent her head. 'I'm sorry Papa. I should not have
spoken to you like that. You are my father, and I will obey
you in everything that's right. But not in this. I cannot agree
to stop doing what I am doing, because I am convinced that I
must not. What little help there is for these people in this
world comes from us. I cannot abandon them.'