The Coopers introduced them to the children as Mr and Mrs Talbot, and they were asked all sorts of invasive questions, but also received a lot of unwanted information about the little patients. Lizzie laughed more than she had in weeks, and Colin also found himself relaxing slightly. He intellectually struggled with the ludicrous idea of enjoying his afternoon in this cesspit of disease and suffering, and yet he did.
They then moved over to the consumption wing, which mostly held elderly paupers and was likely the culprit for the large portion of the smell.
The duke’s kind made sure not to cross paths with the unseemly underbelly that, behind the scenes, performed the backbreaking labour that made their way of life possible. Some men of his father’s generation or slightly younger, who had gone to the war, had mingled with and seen the humanity of those other people, but Colin’s generation never had.
But was he to blame that their society was one that didn’t allow people to rise above their birth station?Most people, he amended mentally. He was curious about Mrs. Mary Cooper, whose speech and comportment with the prostitutes had hinted at very low origins, and yet now she was a gentleman’s wife.
To Colin’s astonishment, the Coopers, once again, knew and addressed everyone by name, extending them the kindness, courtesy, and respect one habitually reserved for friends or peers, and not for a group of unwashed homeless people who were waiting to die.
Dear Lord, thank you that this is not my lot in life,Colin thought gratefully.
Mrs Cooper took one look at Elizabeth’s face and said, “I believe that’s quite enough for one day. Why don’t you take Her Grace out while Dr. Cooper and I finish up with Hettie here?”
“Don’t take the good-looking man away,” the woman who was, apparently, Hettie, said between rough coughs that shook her entire body.
Her hair was matted and dirty, and the skin on her face looked coarse.
There is so much squalor in the world,Talbot thought, but what he said was, “I thank you for the kind compliment, Miss. Don’t let my wife hear you.”
The old woman threw her head back and laughed heartily, which ended up turning into more coughing.
“You don’t happen to have any cheroot on you?” She asked with a wink, and Talbot found the entire situation utterly ridiculous.
“I do not,” he said and glanced at Lizzie, who was pressing her lips together to stifle a laugh, at his expense, most likely.
“It was lovely meeting you, Hettie,” he said, and offered Elizabeth his arm to escort her out.
“Why are there so many paupers in this parish?” Lizzie said after her first deep breath of (somewhat) clean air when they stood in front of the hospital.
Talbot felt unclean and feared that the stench had contaminated his insides as well.
“I think all cities are heading for this,” he said despondently. “Just look at the last ten years, the wars,the Year Without a Summer, the population keeps increasing, but the economic landscape keeps changing, so people have no work…”
“Isn’t there something the government can do? The King?” She looked like she was about to cry, and he really didn’t want to break her heart any further.
“Maybe,” he said with a shrug.
In the carriage, Lizzie asked Mrs Cooper, “What made the two of you devote your Wednesdays to such noble work? And how do you manage not to fall into desperation due to all the horrors and sadness you witness?”
Mrs Cooper pressed her lips together and nodded solemnly. “We have both always believed that every life is valuable. The circumstances of one’s birth don’t define a man; his behaviour does.”
The words cause goose-flesh to erupt all over Colin’s arms.
“I view it as my own little game,” Doctor Cooper said mischievously. “Our social system is extremely flawed and incredibly unjust, and it works very hard to keep the people who were born into disadvantaged families from changing their position in life. I like to do whatever I can to even out the scales even a little bit.”
“So, you are righting the wrongs in this world? How very quixotic of you.” Talbot smiled, amused by the Doctor’s views.
“What I considerquixotic,” Cooper said, emphasising the word mockingly, “is this determination of the men belonging to our set to go through life without ever acknowledging that it is shameful how the majority of people around us live, through no fault of their own! I frequent the same club as you and I am technically part of polite society, but through my profession, and other things, I’ve been exposed to the other side of humanity, and I remain forever unable to look away from it. I hope thatis going to happen to you too, my friend, because having your determination on my side would help me even out the scales a lot more,” the Doctor concluded with a smile.
Talbot raised his eyebrow and said nothing, turning over Cooper’s words in his mind together with the events of the day. He suddenly remembered a parliamentary debate from years ago, about child labour in cotton factories. He vaguely recalled someone arguing that “those poor children” were compelled to work 15 hours every day at the age of six or seven years old.
Yes, this was around 1816,he realised.
Talbot had been a young duke with a struggling estate back then, and the debate surrounding the children and the factories had seemed to him so abstract (In my mind, they weren’t even real people, he realised with a frown), so removed from himself, and now that he had seen the stump where Samuel’s hand was supposed to be was horrified.
Good God!He shuddered and felt Elizabeth’s eyes on him.
Colin remembered his own carefree childhood spent playing with the boys in Norwich, for the first time considering the possibility that the only thing standing between him and the fate of the workhouse boys was the accident of birth. If some cradle robber had taken him from his parents’ house, he could have ended up like them, bloodline or not. He remembered what Elizabeth had said about grace being the unmerited favour of God, and for the rest of the drive, he wondered what he truly merited as a man, not as a duke.
