Читать книгу: «Mr. Poskitt's Nightcaps. Stories of a Yorkshire Farmer», страница 5

"Fun!" she said.

Then she sat down at the new piano and began to play the "Moonlight Sonata," and Mrs. Pringle went into the kitchen and slammed the parlour door – after which she wondered what John William would say next Sunday. On the previous Sunday he had been nastier than ever, and had expressed his determination to be dee'd at least six times.

But when the next Sunday came Miss Atteridge had departed. All Friday she had been very quiet and thoughtful – late in the afternoon she and Mr. Jarvis had gone out for a walk, and when they returned both were much subdued and very grave. They talked little during tea, and that evening Miss Atteridge played nothing but Beethoven and Chopin and did not sing at all. And when Mrs. Pringle went to bed, after consuming her toddy in the kitchen – Mr. Jarvis being unusually solemn and greatly preoccupied – she found the guest packing her portmanteau.

"I am going away to-morrow, after breakfast," said Miss Atteridge. "As I shall not be here on Sunday please say good-bye for me to Mr. John William."

John William, coming on Sunday in time for dinner, found things as they usually were at the Old Farm in the days previous to the advent of Miss Atteridge. Mr. Jarvis was in the parlour, amusing himself with a cigar, the sherry decanter, and the Mark Lane Express; Mrs. Pringle was in the front kitchen superintending the cooking of a couple of stuffed ducks. To her John William approached with questioning eyes.

"She's gone!" whispered Mrs. Pringle. "Went off yesterday. He's been grumpyish ever since – a-thinkin' over what it's cost him. Go in and make up to him, John William. Talk to him about pigs."

John William re-entered the parlour. Mr. Jarvis, who was of the sort that would show hospitality to an enemy, gave him a glass of sherry and offered him a cigar, but showed no particular desire to hear a grocer's views on swine fever. There was no conversation when Mrs. Pringle entered to lay the cloth for dinner.

"We've had no music this day or two," said Mrs. Pringle with fane cheerfulness. "Play the master a piece, John William – play the 'Battle of Prague' with variations."

John William approached the new piano.

"It's locked," he said, examining the lid of the keyboard. "Where's the key?"

Mr. Jarvis looked over the top of the Mark Lane Express.

"The key," he said, "is in my pocket. And'll remain there until Miss Atteridge – which her right name is Carter – returns. But not as Carter, nor yet Atteridge, but as Mrs. Stephen Jarvis. That'll be three weeks to-day. If John William there wants to perform on t' piano he can come then and play t' 'Wedding March'!"

Then John William sat down, and his mother laid the table in silence.

CHAPTER VI
BREAD CAST UPON THE WATERS

It was close upon sunset when the derelict walked into the first village which he had encountered for several miles, and he was as tired as he was hungry. On the outskirts he stopped, looked about him, and sat down on a heap of stones. The village lay beneath him; a typical English village, good to look upon in the summer eventide. There in the centre, embowered amongst tall elm-trees and fringed about with yew, rose the tower and roof of the old church, grey as the memories of the far-off age in which pious hands had built it. Farther away, also tree-embowered, rose the turrets and gables of the great house, manor and hall. Here and there, rising from thick orchards, stood the farmhouses, with their red roofs and drab walls; between them were tiny cottages, nests of comfort. There were pale blue wisps of smoke curling up from the chimneys of the houses and cottages – they made the weary man think of a home and a hearthstone. And from the green in the centre of the village came the sound of the voices of boys at play – they, too, made him think of times when the world was something more than a desert.

He rose at last and went forward, walking after the fashion of a tired man. He was not such a very bad-looking derelict, after all; he had evidently made an attempt to keep his poor clothes patched, and had not forgotten to wash himself whenever he had an opportunity. But his eyes had the look of the not-wanted; there was a hopelessness in them which would have spoken volumes to an acute observer. And as he went clown the hill into the village he looked about him from one side to the other as if he scarcely dared to expect anything from men or their habitations.

He came to a large, prosperous-looking farmstead; a rosy-cheeked, well-fed, contented-faced man, massive of build, was leaning over the low wall of the garden smoking a cigar. He eyed the derelict with obvious dislike and distrust. His eyes grew slightly angry and he frowned. Human wreckage was not to his taste.

But the man on the road was hungry and tired; he was like a drowning thing that will clutch at any straw. He stepped up on the neatly-trimmed turf which lay beneath the garden wall, touching his cap.

"Have you a job of work that you could give a man, sir?" he asked.

The rosy-faced farmer scowled.

"No," he said.

The man in the road hesitated.

"I'm hard pressed, sir," he said. "I'd do a hard day's work to-morrow in return for a night's lodging and a bit of something to eat."

"Aye, I dare say you would," said the farmer, scornfully. "I've heard that tale before. Be off – the road's your place."

The derelict sighed, turned away, half-turned again. He looked at the well-fed countenance above him with a species of appealing sorrow.

"I haven't had a bite to eat since yesterday morning," he said, and turned again.

As he turned he heard a child's piping voice, and, looking round, saw the upper half of a small head, sunny and curly, pop up over the garden wall.

"Daddy, shall I give the poor man my money-box? 'Cause it isn't nice to be hungry. Shall I, daddy?"

But the farmer's face did not relax, and the derelict sighed again and turned away. He had got into the road, and was going off when the big, masterful voice arrested him.

"Here, you!"

The derelict looked round, with new hope springing in his heart. The man was beckoning him; the child, on tiptoe, was staring at him out of blue, inquisitive eyes.

"Come here," said the farmer.

The derelict went back, hoping. The man at the wall, however, looked sterner than ever. His keen eyes seemed to bore holes in the other's starved body.

"If I give you your supper, and a night's lodging in the barn, will you promise not to smoke?" he said. "I want no fire."

The derelict smiled in spite of his hunger and weariness.

"I've neither pipe nor tobacco, sir," he said. "I wish I had. But if I had I'd keep my word to you."

The farmer stared at him fixedly for a moment; then he pointed to the gate.

"Come through that," he said. He strode off across the garden when the derelict entered, and led the way round the house to the kitchen, where a stout maid was sewing at the open door. She looked up at the sound of their feet and stared.

"Give this man as much as he can eat, Rachel," said the farmer, "and draw him a pint of ale. Sit you down," he added, turning to the derelict. "And make a good supper."

Then he picked up the child, who had clung to his coat, and lifting her on to his shoulder, went back to the garden.

The derelict ate and drank and thanked God. A new sense of manhood came into him with the good meat and drink; he began to see possibilities. When at last he stood up he felt like a new man, and some of the weary stoop had gone out of his shoulders.

The farmer came in with a clay pipe filled with tobacco.

"Here," he said, "you can sit in the yard and smoke that. And then I'll show you where you can sleep."

So that night the derelict went to rest full of food and contented, and slept a dreamless sleep amongst the hay. Next morning the farmer, according to his custom, was up early, but his guest had been up a good two hours when he came down to the big kitchen.

"He's no idler, yon man, master," said Rachel. "He's chopped enough firewood to last me for a week, and drawn all the water, and he's fetched the cows up, and now he's sweeping up the yard."

"Give him a good breakfast, then," said the farmer.

When his own breakfast was over he went to look for the derelict, and found him chopping wood again. He saluted his host respectfully, but with a certain anxiety.

"Now if you want a job for a day or so," said the farmer, with the curtness which was characteristic of him, "I'll give you one. Get a bucket out of the out-house there, and come with me."

He led the way to a small field at the rear of the farmstead, the surface of which appeared to be very liberally ornamented with stones.

"I want this field clearing," said the farmer. "Make the stones into piles about twenty yards apart. When you hear the church clock strike twelve, stop work, and go to the house for your dinner. Start again at one, and knock off again at six."

Whatever might have been his occupation before the derelict worked that day like a nigger. It was back-aching work, that gathering and piling of stones, and the July sun was hot and burning, but he kept manfully at his task, strengthened by the hearty meal set before him at noon. And just before six o'clock the farmer, with the child on his shoulder, came into the field and looked around him and stared.

"You're no idler!" he said, repeating the maid's words. "I'll give you a better job than that to-morrow."

And that night he gave the derelict some clothes and boots, and next morning set him to a pleasanter job, and promised him work for the harvest, and the derelict felt that however curt and gruff the farmer might seem his bark was much worse than his bite. And he never forgot that he had saved him from starvation. But the derelict's times were not all good. Country folk have an inborn dislike of strangers, and the regular workers on the farm resented the intrusion of this man, who came from nowhere in particular and had certainly been a tramp. They kept themselves apart from him in the harvest fields, and made open allusion to his antecedents. And the derelict, now promoted to a small room in the house, and earning wages as well as board, heard and said nothing.

Nor did the farmer go free of gibe and jest.

"So ye've taken to hiring tramp-labour, I hear," said his great rival in the village. "Get it dirt cheap, I expect?"

"You can expect what you like," said the derelict's employer. "The man you mean is as good a worker as any you've got, or I've got, either. Do you think I care for you and your opinion?"

In fact, the farmer cared little for anything except his child. He had lost his wife when the child was born, and the child was all he had except his land. Wherever he went the child was with him; they were inseparable. He had never left it once during the six years of its life, and it was with great misgivings that in the autumn following the arrival of the derelict he was obliged to leave it for a day and a night. Before he went he called the derelict to him.

"I've come to trust you fully," he said. "Look after the child till to-morrow."

If the farmer had wanted a proof of the derelict's gratitude he would have found it in the sudden flush of pride which flamed into the man's face. But he was in a hurry to be gone, and was troubled because of leaving the child; nevertheless, he felt sure that he was leaving the child in good hands.

"It's queer how I've taken to that fellow," he said to himself as he drove off to the station six miles away. "I wouldn't have trusted the child to anybody but him."

The man left in charge did nothing that day but look after the child. He developed amazing powers, which astonished Rachel as much as they interested the young mind and eyes. He could sing songs, he could tell tales, he could do tricks, he could play at bears and lions, and imitate every animal and bird under the sun.

"Lawk-a-massy!" said Rachel. "Why, you must ha' had bairns of your own!"

"A long time ago," answered the man. "A very long time ago."

He never left his charge until the charge was fast asleep – sung to sleep by himself. Then he went off to his little room in the far-away wing of the house. And in an hour or two he wished devoutly that he had stretched himself at the charge's door. For the farmstead was on fire, and when he woke to realize it there was a raging sea of flame between him and the child, and folk in the yard and garden were shrieking and moaning – in their helplessness.

But the man got there in time – in time for the child, but not for himself. They talk in all that countryside to this day of how he fought his way through the flames, how he dropped the child into outstretched arms beneath, safe, and then fell back to death.

Upon what they found left of him the farmer gazed with eyes which were wet for the first time since he had last shed tears for his dead wife. And he said something to the poor body which doubtless the soul heard far off.

"You were a Man!" he said. "You were a real Man!"

And then he suddenly remembered that he had never known the Man's name.

CHAPTER VII
WILLIAM HENRY AND THE DAIRYMAID

The trouble at Five Oaks Farm really began when Matthew Dennison built and started a model dairy, and found it necessary to engage the services of a qualified dairymaid. A good many people in the neighbourhood wondered what possessed Matthew to embark on such an enterprise, and said so. Matthew cared nothing for comment; he had in his pocket, he said (as he was very fond of saying), something that made him independent of whatever anybody might think or say. It was his whim to build the model dairy, just as it is the whim of some men to grow roses or to breed prize sheep at great cost, and he built it. It was all very spick and span when it was finished, and the countryside admired its many beauties and modern appliances without understanding much about them. And then came the question of finding a thoroughly expert dairymaid.

Somebody – probably the vicar – advised Matthew to advertise in one of the farming papers, and he and his wife and their only son, William Henry, accordingly spent an entire evening in drafting a suitable announcement of their wishes, which they forwarded next day to several journals of a likely nature. During the next fortnight answers began to come in, and the family sat in committee every evening after high tea considering them gravely. It was not until somewhere about fifty or sixty of these applications had been received, however, that one of a really promising nature turned up. This was from one Rosina Durrant, who wrote from somewhere in Dorsetshire. She described herself as being twenty-five years of age, thoroughly qualified to take entire charge of a model dairy, and anxious to have some experience in the North of England. She gave particulars of her past experience, set forth particulars of the terms she expected, and enclosed a splendid testimonial from her present employer, who turned out to be a well-known countess.

Matthew rubbed his hands.

"Now this is the very young woman we want!" he said. "I've always said from the very beginning that I'd have naught but what was first-class. I shall send this here young person my references, agree to her terms, and tell her to start out as soon as she can."

"I'm afraid she's rather expensive, love," murmured Mrs. Dennison.

"I'm not to a few pounds one way or another," answered Matthew. "I'm one of them that believe in doing a thing right when you do do it. Last two years with a countess – what? What'd suit a countess 'll suit me. William Henry, you can get out the writing-desk, and we'll draw up a letter to this young woman at once."

William Henry, who had little or no interest in the model dairy, and regarded it as no more and no less than a harmless fad of his father's, complied with this request, and spent half-an-hour in writing an elegant epistle after the fashion of those which he had been taught to compose at the boarding-school where he had received his education. After that he gave no more thought to the dairymaid, being much more concerned in managing the farm, and in an occasional day's hunting and shooting, than in matters outside his sphere. But about a week later his father opened a letter at the breakfast-table, and uttered a gratified exclamation.

"Now, the young woman's coming to-day," he announced. "She'll be at Marltree station at precisely four-thirty. Of course somebody'll have to drive over and meet her, and that somebody can't be me, because I've a meeting of the Guardians at Cornborough at that very hour. William Henry, you must drive the dog-cart over."

William Henry was not too pleased with the idea, for he had meant to go fishing. But he remembered that he could go fishing every afternoon if it pleased him, and he acquiesced.

"I've been wondering, Matthew," said Mrs. Dennison, who was perusing the letter through her spectacles; "I've been wondering where to put this young person. You can see from her writing that she's of a better sort – there's no common persons as writes and expresses themselves in that style. I'm sure she'll not want to have her meals with the men and the gels in the kitchen, and of course we can't bring her among ourselves, as it were."

Matthew scratched his head.

"Deng my buttons!" he said. "I never thought o' that there! Of course she'll be what they call a sort of upper servant, such as the quality have. Aye, for sure! Well, let's see now – I'll tell ye what to do, missis. Let her have the little parlour – we scarce ever use it – for her own sitting-room, and she can eat there. That's the sensiblest arrangement that I can think on. Then we shall all preserve our various ranks. What do ye say, William Henry?"

William Henry said that he was agreeable to anything, and proceeded to make his usual hearty breakfast. He thought no more of his afternoon expedition until the time for setting out came, and then he had the brown mare harnessed to a smart dog-cart, and set off along the roads for Marltree, five miles away. It was a pleasant afternoon in early April, and the land had the springtide's new warmth on it. And William Henry thought how happy he would have been with his fishing-rod.

Marltree is a junction where several lines converge, and when the train from the south came in several passengers alighted from it to change on to other routes. Amongst this crowd William Henry could not detect anything that looked like the new dairymaid. He scrutinized everybody as he sat on a seat opposite the train, and summed them up. There was a clergyman and his wife; there was a sailor; there were three or four commercial travellers; there were some nondescripts. Then his attention became riveted on a handsome young lady who left a carriage with an armful of books and papers and hurried off to the luggage-van – she was so handsome, so well dressed, and had such a good figure that William Henry's eyes followed her with admiration. Then he remembered what he had come there for, and looked again for the dairymaid. But he saw nothing that suggested her.

The people drifted away, the platform cleared, and presently nobody but the handsome young lady and William Henry remained. She stood by a trunk looking expectantly about her; he rose, intending to go. A porter appeared; she spoke to him – the porter turned to William Henry.

"Here's a lady inquiring for you, sir," he said.

The lady came forward with a smile and held out her hand.

"Are you Mr. Dennison?" she said. "I am Miss Durrant."

William Henry's first instinct was to open his mouth cavernously – his second to remove his hat.

"How do you do?" he said, falteringly. "I – I was looking about for you."

"But of course you wouldn't know me," she said. "I was looking for you."

"I've got a dog-cart outside," said William Henry. "Here, Jenkinson, bring this lady's things to my trap."

He escorted Miss Durrant, who had already sized him up as a simple-natured but very good-looking young man, to the dog-cart, saw her luggage safely stowed away at the back, helped her in, tucked her up in a thick rug, got in himself, and drove away.

"I'm quite looking forward to seeing your dairy, Mr. Dennison," said Miss Durrant. "It must be quite a model from your description."

William Henry turned and stared at her. She was a very handsome young woman, he decided, a brunette, with rich colouring, dark eyes, a ripe mouth, and a flashing smile, and her voice was as pleasing as her face.

"Lord bless you!" he said. "It isn't my dairy – I know nothing about dairying. It's father's."

Miss Durrant laughed merrily.

"Oh, I see!" she said. "You are Mr. Dennison's son. What shall I call you, then?"

"My name is William Henry Dennison," he replied.

"And what do you do, Mr. William?" she asked.

"Look after the farm," replied William Henry. "Father doesn't do much that way now – he's sort of retired. Do you know anything about farming?"

"I love anything about a farm," she answered.

"Do you care for pigs?" he asked, eagerly. "I've been going in a lot for pig-breeding this last year or two, and I've got some of the finest pigs in England. I got a first prize at the Smithfield Show last year; I'll show it you when we get home. There's some interest, now, in breeding prize pigs."

With such pleasant conversation they whiled the time away until they came in sight of Five Oaks Farm, on beholding which Miss Durrant was immediately lost in admiration, saying that it was the finest old house she had ever seen, and that it would be a delight to live in it.

"Some of it's over five hundred years old," said William Henry. "And our family built it. We don't rent our land, you know – it's our own. Six hundred acres there are, and uncommon good land too."

With that he handed over Miss Durrant to his mother, who was obviously as surprised at her appearance as he had been, and then drove round to the stables, still wondering how a lady came to be a dairymaid.

"And I'm sure I don't know, Matthew," said Mrs. Dennison to her husband that night in the privacy of their own chamber, "I really don't know how Miss Durrant ought to be treated. You can see for yourself what her manners are – quite the lady. Of course we all know now-a-days that shop-girls and such-like give themselves the airs of duchesses and ape their manners, but Miss Durrant's the real thing, or I'm no judge. Very like her people's come down in the world, and she has to earn her own living, poor thing!"

"Well, never you mind, Jane Ann," said Matthew. "Lady or no lady, she's my dairy-maid, and all that I ask of her is that she does her work to my satisfaction. If she's a lady, you'll see that she'll always bear in mind that her present position is that of a dairymaid, and she'll behave according. We'll see what the morrow brings forth."

What the morrow brought forth was the spectacle of the dairymaid, duly attired in professional garments of spotless hue, busily engaged in the performance of her duties. Matthew spent all the morning with her in the dairy, and came in to dinner beaming with satisfaction.

"She's a regular clinker, is that lass!" he exclaimed to his wife and son. "I've found a perfect treasure."

The perfect treasure settled down into her new life with remarkable readiness. She accepted the arrangements which Mrs. Dennison had made without demur. Mrs. Dennison, with a woman's keen observation, noted that she was never idle. She was in and about the dairy all day long; at night she worked or read in her own room. She had brought a quantity of books with her; magazines and newspapers were constantly arriving for her. As days went on, Mrs. Dennison decided that Miss Durrant's people had most certainly come down in the world, and that she had had to go out into it to earn her own living.

"Just look how well she's dressed when she goes to church on a Sunday!" she said to Matthew. "None of your gaudy, flaunting dressings-up, but all of the best and quietest, just like the Squire's lady. Eh, dear, there's nobody knows what that poor young woman mayn't have known. Very likely they kept their horses and carriages in better days."

"Doesn't seem to be very much cast down," said Matthew. "The lass is light-hearted enough. But ye women always are fanciful."

While Mrs. Dennison indulged herself in speculations as to what the dairymaid had been, in the course of which she formed various theories, inclining most to one that her father had been a member of Parliament who had lost all his money on the Stock Exchange, and while Matthew contented himself by regarding Miss Durrant solely in her professional capacity, William Henry was journeying along quite another path. He was, in fact, falling head over heels in love. He received a first impression when he saw Miss Durrant at Marltree station; he received a second, and much stronger one, next morning when he saw her in the spotless linen of the professional dairymaid. He began haunting the dairy until the fact was noticed by his mother.

"Why, I thought you cared naught about dairying, William Henry," she said, one day at dinner. "I'm sure you never went near it when your father was laying it out."

"What's the use of seeing anything till it's finished and in full working order?" said William Henry. "Now that it is in go, one might as well learn all about it."

"Well, ye couldn't have a better instructress," said Matthew. "She can show you something you never saw before, can Miss Durrant."

Miss Durrant was certainly showing William Henry Dennison something he had never seen before. He had always been apathetic towards young women, and it was with the greatest difficulty that he could be got to attend tea-parties, or dances, or social gatherings, at all of which he invariably behaved like a bear who has got into a cage full of animals whom it does not like and cannot exterminate. But it became plain that he was beginning to cultivate the society of Miss Durrant. He haunted the dairy of an afternoon, when Matthew invariably went to sleep; he made excuses to bring Miss Durrant into the family circle of an evening; he waylaid her on her daily constitutional, and at last one Sunday he deliberately asked her to walk to church with him at a neighbouring village. And at that his mother's eyes were opened.

"Matthew," she said, when William Henry and Miss Durrant had departed, "that boy's smitten with Miss Durrant. He's making up to her."

Matthew, who was disposed to a peaceful nap, snorted incredulity.

"Ye women take such fancies into your heads," he said. "I've seen naught."

"You men are so blind," retorted Mrs. Dennison. "He's always going into the dairy – he's been walks with her – he's always getting me to ask her in here to play the piano – "

"And uncommon well she plays it, too!" grunted Matthew.

" – and now he's taken her off to church!" concluded Mrs. Dennison. "He's smitten, Matthew, he's smitten!"

Matthew stirred uneasily in his chair.

"Well, well, my lass!" he said. "Ye know what young folks are – they like each other's company. What d'ye think I sought your company for? Not to sit and stare at you, as if you were a strange image, I know!"

"Well, it all went on and ended in the proper way," said his wife, sharply. "But how do you know where this'll end?"

"I didn't know that aught had begun," said Matthew.

Mrs. Dennison, who was reading what she called a Sunday book, took off her spectacles and closed the book with a snap.

"Matthew!" she said. "You know that it's always been a settled thing since they were children that William Henry should marry his cousin Polly, your only brother John's one child, so that the property of the two families should be united when the time comes for us old ones to go. And it's got to be carried out, has that arrangement, Matthew, and we can't let no dairymaids, ladies as has come down or not, interfere with it!"

Matthew, who was half asleep, bethought himself vaguely of something that had been said long ago, when Polly was born, or at her christening – when the right time came, she and William Henry, then six years old, were to wed. John, Matthew's younger brother, had gone in for trade, and was now a very well-to-do merchant in Clothford, of which city he had been mayor. Matthew woke up a little, made a rapid calculation, and realized that Polly must now be nineteen years of age.

"Aye, aye, my lass," he said, "but you've got to remember that whatever fathers and mothers says, children don't always agree to. William Henry and Polly mightn't hit it off. Polly'll be a fine young lady now, what with all them French governesses and boarding-schools in London and Paris, and such-like."

"Our William Henry," said Mrs. Dennison, with heat and emphasis, "is good enough for any young woman of his own class. And a man as owns six hundred acres of land is as good as any Clothford worsted merchant, even if he has been mayor! And now you listen to me, Matthew Dennison. I had a letter yesterday from Mrs. John saying that she believed it would do Polly good to go into the country, as she'd been looking a bit poorlyish since she came back from Paris, and asking if we could do with her for a few weeks. So to-morrow morning I shall go over to Clothford and bring her back with me – I've already written to say I should. We haven't seen her for five years – she was a pretty gel then, and must be a beauty by now, and we'll hope that her and William Henry'll come together. And if you take my advice, Matthew, you'll get rid of the dairymaid."

Matthew slowly rose from his chair.

"Then I'm denged if I do aught of the sort!" he said. "Ye can fetch Polly and welcome, missis, and naught'll please me better than if her and William Henry does hit it off, though I don't approve of the marriage of cousins as a rule. But I'm not going to get rid of my dairymaid for no Pollies, nor yet no William Henrys, nor for naught, so there!"

Then Mrs. Dennison put on her spectacles again and re-opened her Sunday book, and Mr. Dennison mixed himself a drink at the sideboard and lighted a cigar, and for a long time no sound was heard but the purring of the cat on the hearth and the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner.