Nothing was too base
to be laid to the charge of the scoundrel who had run away. At the end of
a few weeks the wretch and his family returned, looking very healthy and
well supplied with money, having been picking in a distant hop-garden. It
was common for people to shut their houses and do this at that season of
the year, but their blind malice was too eager to remember this. Another
person by continually dunning a poor debtor to pay him half a sovereign
had driven him to commit suicide! So ran their bitter tongues. Backbiting
is the curse of village life, and seems to keep people by its effects
upon the mind far more effectually in the grip of poverty than the
lowness of wages. They become so saturated with littleness that they
cannot attempt anything, and have no enterprise. To transplant them to
the freer atmosphere of a great city, or of the Far West, is the only
means of cure. At this particular village they were exceptionally given
to backbiting, perhaps because everybody was more than usually related to
everybody; they hated each other and vilified each other with pre-eminent
energy. The poorest man, half starving, would hardly do a job for a
farmer because--because--because he did not know why, except that nothing
was too bad to be said of him; the poorest washerwoman with hungry
children would not go and do a day's work for Mrs. So-and-so, because
'she beant nobody, she beant no better than we; beant a-going to work for
her.' This malice was not directed towards strangers, against whom it is
natural to heave half a brick, but against their own old neighbours.
Pages:
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91