TIMOTHY SLOUCH

“Mother,” said John French, “you say that everybody has his place in the world, and his mission. I’d precious like to know what is Tim Slouch’s place and what his mission. It seems to me there never was such a chap for tumbling out of his place when he has got one, and bless’d if I know what good he can or does do, put him where you will.”

John French was a fine young fellow, the only son of a small farmer lately deceased, unmarried, who carried on the farm and was the pride of his mother.

Very much about the same time the Squire, who was riding round his estate to see how the planting was going on, what cottagers wanted repairs done to their roofs, torn by a late gale, what farmers needed additional sheds—for he was a man to see to these things himself—encountered the parson, who had been parishing. He drew rein.

“How d’ye do, rector? I say, I say. There is that Timothy Slouch out of work again. Upon my soul, I don’t know how the man could get on, were it not for Sela; and what the woman was thinking of when she took such a fellow—that beats my comprehension. They say that to every man there is a hole in the world into which he may be pegged, but that hole has not yet been found by Slouch.”

“I beg your pardon, Squire, he has found too many holes, and has never remained pegged into any one of them.”

“True, true. But, I say, I say. They must not starve. Though, bless my soul, a little starving might drive Timothy home into the first peg-hole that offers; but Sela—my wife has a great regard for her. So I have set the fellow a job.”

“And—what is that?”

“Well, I have given him the rhododendrons on the roadside and along the drives to peg down. It must be done, and now is the time. Surely he can do that. Fifteen shillings a week; and Sela picks up something.”

“I hear he has had notice to leave his cottage.”

“Yes—it is not mine, and—well, my agent has been peremptory with me. He says, ‘Give him work if you will, but I forewarn you it is throwing good money away; but do not get him rooted in the parish, or you will never be rid of him.’”

“Well,” said the rector, “he is not one of my sheep. He is in another parish, but Sela was—and why she married him——”

“Just what I say. But I say, I say—she was a poor girl, an orphan, and, I suppose, thought the man must find work, and would labour to maintain her.”

“And now she has to maintain him. Whatever can be the meaning of heaven in sending such men into the world?”

It was the rector who said that, and next moment he reproached himself for having said it.

Timothy—Slouch was not his surname, it was Luppencott, but every one called him Slouch, as expressive of the man, his walk and way, not only on the road and at his work, but throughout life’s course—Timothy had been brought up as a blacksmith, but had never advanced beyond blowing the bellows and hammering. He could do both, but not make a screw or bend a bar into a crook. All his experience had had no other effect than to convince his masters of his incapacity.

He lamed every horse he attempted to shoe, so that he was at once dismissed by the farrier to whom he offered his services. For a while he held a place as bellows-blower, at twelve shillings, but the blacksmith saw that he could get a boy at six who could do as well, and when Tim had the impudence to demand a full wage of fifteen the master dismissed him. “Tim,” said he, “I only took you on because I thought I might get some work out of you at the anvil. Why, confound you, you cannot even make a nail!”

Then Slouch heard that there was a new line being made at a distance, and he offered his services on that. As blacksmith he was not needed, but he was engaged as a navvy. But he did not remain long there; he was speedily dismissed. He did not arrive in time of a morning, he loitered over his work, and made other men loiter. What work he did, he did so badly that it had to be undone. So he came back, and brought no accumulation of wage in his pocket.

Next he offered himself to a blacksmith in a town distant ten miles, and was engaged. He kept the place about four months, returning to his wife every Saturday, and going back to his lodgings in the town on Sunday evenings. Then he was again out of work. He asked the Squire of the adjoining parish to give him employment. The reason why he was out of work was, said he, that what with the heavy rent he had to pay for his lodgings in the town, and what with the shoe-leather he wore out in his trudges to and fro, and on account of a sore foot, caused by an ingrowing nail on one of his toes, he was obliged to abandon his situation. Very likely this was all true, but it is also just as likely that the situation was closed up against him. His allegation was not inquired into. The Squire gave him his rhododendrons to peg.

“My dear,” said the Squire to his wife, “I think he cannot go wrong there—and for Sela’s sake we will give him the chance.”

Sela had been a poor girl who had attended to her mother, a widow confined for six years to her bed, or to a chair, and who had been maintained by the parish and such alms as were sent from the rectory and the hall.

When, finally, the mother died and Sela was left alone, she went into service at a farmhouse, where the mistress was somewhat of a termagant.

She did not long remain there, for Timothy Luppencott offered her his hand, his heart, and his hearth, and she accepted him. Sela had always been accustomed to poverty, and therefore did not shrink from the prospect of being the wife of a poor man. She had attended to a helpless mother; she found, when wedded, that she was tied to an almost helpless man.

Sela had been a good daughter, she was a good wife, and, in time, also a good mother. She had first one child and then another, and one of these proved rickety; very probably this was due to insufficiency of food. For Timothy when in work, and earning good wage, could not be relied upon to bring home a sufficiency for the support of his family. He was not a drunken man, but he went to the public-house, and he liked to enjoy himself. If there were a ploughing match, a harvest festival, a cricket match, a wild-beast show, a bazaar, Tim would be there. The work might go hang, he said, he must see the fun.

If Sela had seven shillings a week on which to clothe and feed herself and the children, she thought herself in luck’s way. When she was able she went out charing; but when the children arrived she could not do this, and then dire distress came on her.

She had been a particularly pretty girl, and she was a very sweet-looking woman, with great, soft brown eyes; but there was firmness about her lips.

Every one pitied Sela. She was as one born to trouble. She had a patient, suffering look about her brow and temples that told a tale of years of endurance and privation. But she did not murmur. She did not scold Tim. There was not the excuse for him, if he stayed at the tavern, that he was “jawed” at home.

“Really,” said the rector’s wife, “it is a satisfaction to give Sela any of the children’s old garments. She is wonderful with her needle. I did feel almost ashamed to let her have little Mary’s old school-dress, it was so frayed, so spotted, and so untidy. And will you believe it—her child was at church on Sunday in that identical gown! She had turned it, and contrived it in such a manner, that I could hardly believe my eyes. That is a woman to help, because every little help is put out to usury. But Timothy; oh, what a man he is!”

One Sunday, after service, the Squire awaited the rector as he left the church.

No sooner had the latter descended the avenue and the churchyard steps, than the Squire—without any other salutation than, “I say! I say!”—plunged into the matter that occupied his mind, and of which he desired to disburden himself.

“Rector, that Timothy Slouch.”

“Well, Squire?”

“I say—I say, you know that I set him the rhododendrons to pin down.”

“I know it.”

“Will you believe me—he has made a mess of the job.”

“I can believe a good deal of Slouch.”

“He has actually split them so as to get the refractory branches down, and where he has pegged, and not torn asunder, has done it so inefficiently that when his work is effected, in twenty-five minutes they have slipped their pegs out, and are erect as before.”

“How tiresome!”

“Yes, and he has half-ruined some of my choicest and most expensive varieties. He has riven and wrenched them about and knocked off the flowering buds. I was so angry I dismissed him. Not another day’s work shall he have from me. I am sorry—for Sela’s sake. But it cannot be helped.”

For three weeks Tim lounged about, said he was looking for work; but if he did, looked for it in the wrong quarters. Then he appeared before the rector—not of his own parish, but the parson whose wife had befriended Sela, and said that he had heard of work in South Wales. He had a cousin there who was in a colliery, and who wrote that there was always a place for a handy man, and above all for a blacksmith.

“Well,” said the rector hesitatingly—he saw what Tim was aiming at—“but exactly, are you the handy man?”

“I can turn my hand to anything. I have been in so many different situations. I have been blacksmith, and I have done farm-work, and recently, I may say, I have been a gardener.”

“I daresay you can turn your hand to anything, but can you keep it where turned?”

“One can but try. Luck so far has been against me. My notion is, sir, if you would draw me up a brief, I will try to collect money to take me to Wales, and when there and have got a situation, I will send for my wife and children to live there with me; one must first have a nest into which to put one’s doves.”

“Quite so. Well, we will give you one chance more.”

So the rector drew out a brief. It was cautiously worded; it contained a statement in accordance with Timothy’s representations.

Then he headed the subscription list with a pound. The Squire was next approached, and he gave thirty shillings, and his wife another ten.

Timothy spent a fortnight in rambling about the country asking for money, and he probably collected something like ten pounds.

Then off he started and was not heard of for a month. Inquiries were made about him from Sela. She had received no letter from him. Moreover, it leaked out that Slouch had carried away with him in his pocket all the money subscribed, and had not left a penny with his wife.

This made the neighbourhood very angry, the most angry were those who had not subscribed. Those who had, began to fear they had been hoaxed, but kept quiet; because no man likes to have it thought he has been imposed upon.

Presently, however, up turned Timothy. Work was slack in South Wales, he had been unable to find employ. The rector, very irate, sent for him, questioned him, and was convinced that the fellow had not been to Wales at all. He may have started with the intention of going there, that was all. The rector taxed him with it. Slouch was obliged, at last, to admit that he had not reached his destination. “You see, sir,” said he, “I got half-way and then heard such bad accounts, as hands was bein’ dismissed—that I thought it would be wasting money to go on.”

“Then you have brought some money back?”

“Well, no, sir, I can’t say I have. It comes very expensive travelling. But if your honour would be so good as to draw me up another brief——”

Then the parson flushed very red and bade the man be gone. Not another scrap of help should Slouch have from him.

And, indeed, Timothy found the whole district up in arms against him, and ready to kick him out of it, and would have done so—only that it pitied and respected Sela.

“Out he must go,” said the Squire. “He had notice to quit at Lady Day, and on Lady Day he goes and into no cottage of mine shall he come.”

Whither did he go? He wandered seeking shelter; every house was refused, till he came to John French.

A few hours later, Mrs. French exclaimed: “John! you don’t mean to tell me that you have let those good-for-naughts—the Slouches—into your cottage?”

“I have, mother, they cannot lie in the road under a hedge, and they were turned out to-day. Timothy has, at last, found an occupation—he is taken on to break stones for the road. He cannot go wrong in that. It is what any fool can do. As to the cottage, it is unoccupied, and has been for a twelvemonth. I have let him move his few sticks of furniture into it, and he is to pay me a weekly rent of a shilling. There is a bit of garden——”

“Which he will neglect.”

“Sela kept the garden where they were before, and she will attend to this. She has poultry.”

“Well—may you not regret it.”

So Sela and Tim and the children were admitted into French’s cottage, and with them moved a great number of cocks and hens, geese and ducks. Sela was a clever woman with fowls. Indeed, it was through her poultry that she had maintained herself and children, and had paid the rent. She sold eggs to the regrater every week, and spring chickens were readily purchased by the gentry around.

When it was known that the Luppencotts were given a new spell of occupation in the neighbourhood, that neighbourhood sighed, and said with one voice, “Well, we did think we were quit of Slouch, but we should have been sorry to lose Sela.”

Now it might have been supposed that on the roads, cleaning water-tables, scraping, in winter breaking stones, in autumn spreading them, gave work that it was not possible for Slouch to fail to execute satisfactorily. In fact, he was seen for one entire winter engaged on stone heaps, with a long-handled hammer cracking stones.

But then the heaps knew him no more. He was again out of work. He had thrown it up in a fit of spleen, because an old man was employed as well, to save his “coming on the parish,” and this Timothy regarded as a slight. Added to this, he heard that a new blacksmithery was being started in an adjoining parish, and, sanguine that he could obtain occupation there, he threw up his engagement on the roads before he had secured that at the forge.

And, naturally, he did not get the place on which he had calculated. He was too well known to be given it. Then ensued the familiar ramble in quest of employment, but no farmer, no landowner would give him any.

The family would have starved, but for Sela and her poultry. She did not make much by her fowls, as corn was dear, but they had, and were allowed, the run of the fields and arishes of John French. Then, also, she got plenty of skimmed milk from the farm, that was only a halfpenny per quart, and with milk none can starve. Sela had gleaned at harvest, and gleaned sufficient wheat to make bread for herself and children.

Mrs. French often saw her—sent for her to assist in cleaning the house, gave her a spare-rib when she killed a pig—showed her many little kindnesses. But the old woman had, as she said, no patience with Tim, and with him would not change a word.

Sela had a cool and clean hand, and was invaluable in butter-making. That Mrs. French ascertained; so in this new cottage the Slouches got on well, but no credit attached to Tim for that.

One day Tim was climbing along a rafter of an old outhouse in quest of eggs, as one of his wife’s hens had stolen a nest, when the rafter snapped—it was rotten—and down fell Tim on his head, and broke his neck. He was taken up dead.

The entire neighbourhood at once rushed to one conclusion: “It is just as well. He never was of any use to any one when alive.”

And once again John French said to his mother: “There’s an end of him, and I’d precious like to know what was Tim’s place in the world, and what his mission?”

And the rector said to the Squire, after the funeral, “Well, at last poor Slouch has found the hole in which he must stick. I have wondered, and do wonder still, what he was sent here for.”

A year passed, and to the surprise of most people, John French married Sela Luppencott.

“It’s a wonderful lift in life for her,” said some.

“But it is such a come down for him,” said others.

What John French said of it was this. He said it to his mother: “Do you mind what I asked some time agone about that Tim Slouch; whatever could have been his work and mission in the world? It often puzzled me. But I have found it out. He was the making of Sela. His very helplessness made her industrious, his thriftlessness made her saving, his dreadfully trying ways made her patient and enduring, his imprudence made her foreseeing. I do believe the work and mission of that fellow was just this—to make for me the very model and perfection of a farmer’s wife, and then to break his neck.”

“Aye,” said Mrs. French; “and the way he shifted about till he’d settled down close by us. ’Twere all ordained, I believe.”

“Upon my word,” said the rector one day to the Squire, “the proper thing to do, Tim has done at last: to break his neck and leave his widow to John French.”

“Aye,” replied the Squire, “and Tim has found his hole at last into which he will remain pegged.”