^^
IN A QUIET VILLAGE
First Edition, April 1900
Reprinted, May 1900
IN A QUIET VILLAGE
BY
SCARING GOULD
AUTHOR OF "MEUALAH "PERPETUA" ETC. ETC.
LONDON
ISBISTER AND COMPANY LIMITED
15 & 1 6 TAVISTOCK STREET CO VENT GARDEN
1900
Printed by BALLANTTNE, HANSON & Co.
At the Ballantvne Press
CONTENTS
PAGE
DAN'L COOMBE 7
TIMOTHY SLOUCH . . . . .19
DOBLE DREWE 35
MARY TREMBATH 47
THE OLD POST-BOY 57
AUNTIE 67
BROTHER AUGUSTINE .87
HAROUN THE CARPENTER 97
SHONE EVANS 109
HENRY FROST 13*
MILK-MAIDS 145
THE BRIDE'S WELL 157
JACK HANNAFORD 171
FROM DEATH TO LIFE 187
CICELY CROWE 207
THE WEATHERCOCK 231
A PLUM-PUDDING 249
A CHRISTMAS TREE 267
FOLK-PRAYERS . . . . . .285
CRAZY JANE 301
314
DAN'L COOMBE
DAN'L COOMBE
OLD DAN'L was a character indeed, and for many
years a mystery as well. He was a man of one
object in life, and what that object was no one knew
for thirty-five years.
He was by trade a tailor, and throughout the
hours of daylight he sat cross-legged on his table
near a very large window, viewed by all who passed
along the road, but scarce looking away from his
work to exchange a nod with a passer-by.
He shaved his face clean, that is to say he shaved
it occasionally clean, but this was once a week
only, on Saturday, and during the ensuing week a
dusky shadow stole over cheek and chin that
made Dan'l look anything but clean-shaved. He
wore his hair short, but had thick and very pro-
truding eyebrows.
He was a reticent man.
The tailor's shop is often a place where many
villagers congregate to have a chat, and the tailor
is able to go on with his needlework in a mechani-
cal fashion whilst conversing. But Daniel Coombe
did not affect gossip and prattle; what he under-
took he carried through with an almost grim per-
sistency.
io IN A QUIET VILLAGE
As the gamekeeper said : "Bless you, old Coombe,
he do lay hold on and stick to a job just as a
ferret do to a rabbit. There ain't no gettin' him to
quit it."
Coombe had a wife the ugliest woman he could
have picked up, but they lived contentedly enough
together. They had no children. Had they pos-
sessed a family, a little more brightness and
laughter would have entered into the household.
Mrs. Coombe was a grumbler; she grumbled over
her husband, over her house, over her work, over
every thing and every person with which and with
whom she was brought in contact. But Dan'l did
not appear to mind it. He lived in a world of his
own his thoughts, his aspirations ; and the mutter
of discontent rumbled around him and rolled over
his head, almost without his hearing it, certainly
without his being moved by it.
No sooner was the sun set, and Dan'l could no
longer ply his needle, than he put up his shutters.
In these were two round orifices, and till late at
night lamplight streamed forth into the road through
these holes, that were as a pair of eyes glaring down
the village street. What was he doing in his work-
shop at night ? Certainly he was not cutting out
and sewing. It was a well-known saying of his
that with the set of sun was the set aside of work.
" I ain't a-going to try my eyes and wear 'em out
with needlework by lamplight," said he.
Then what was his occupation after nightfall?
Into his workshop he retired and bolted the door
DAN'L COOMBE 11
from within as soon as he had taken his evening
meal.
Did he read ? Was he a student of English
literature ? Was he a politician ? He was no buyer
of books, and subscribed to no other paper than the
local weekly gazette.
It puzzled the parish. It roused curiosity.
Then some boys climbed up outside the window to
peer in through the holes in the shutters, but the
noise of their scrambling, perhaps the appearance of
their visages in the openings, showed Dan'l that he
was having his privacy peered into, and before the
urchins were able to observe what his occupation
was, out went the lamp. He had extinguished it.
The married women of the parish endeavoured to
extract the secret from Mrs. Coombe ; but she was
either ignorant or uncommunicative.
" How should I know ? " said she. " He has his
megrims. I don't meddle wi' they. All I know is,
he ain't doing nothin' as is good to nobody. But
if it keeps him out o' mischief and away from the
public-house, naught I'll say."
Then the idea took hold that Dan'l was a wise
man and could charm, stanch blood by his blessing,
drive away warts, cure milk that would not turn to
butter, and counteract ill wishes.
And to this he lent himself. He had not sought
it. It was forced upon him. It might do good, he
argued; it could do no harm. So his fame grew,
and he was regarded with reverential awe. Whether
he believed in his own efficacy as a healer, I cannot
12 IK A QUIET VILLAGE
say; his gifts of healing were bruited about, his
failures passed into the limbo of oblivion. He did
not set store on his reputed powers, he rather dis-
paraged them, or shrugged his shoulders and pro-
fessed scepticism over them, and he always said :
" Well, if good comes of it, it is not from me you
must know that but from the great Healer of all.
Some cures wi' drugs, and some wi' their touch.
There are differences of administration."
Dan'l Coombe was a regular churchgoer.
Woe betide the parson if, in preaching without
a book, he quoted Scripture inaccurately. He be-
came in time accustomed to find the tailor standing
at the foot of the church steps awaiting him after
service. Then would come the familiar touch of
the hat, and, " I beg your pardon, sir, but did you
not put in a the where there oughtn't to be, in that
there text from St. Paul to the Corinthians ? "
Or else : " Please, sir, did you use the right word
in that there quotation from the Acts ? "
"Dear Mr. Coombe, I took the marginal rendering."
" Oh, the margin. I don't hold by that."
Mr. Coombe was very much perplexed when the
new version of the Scriptures was issued. It
happily was not read in the parish church. I verily
believe it would have driven him from it. " Nasty,
lumpy thing," he said; "it is like eatin' bad-made
porridge. Nothin' smooth about it. Bits come in
your mouth and teeth at every moment."
He resented it as an immoral thing. "And to
think," said he, "that Christian money should ha'
DAN'L COOMBE 13
been spent by Government out of our pockets to
put this here stumbling-block in the way of the
blind ! It's wicked, and I'll vote against Govern-
ment next 'lection."
As already said, there had been an attempt made
by scaling to peer in at the holes in Coombe's
shutter, to see him at his nightly occupation. It
had failed. After that he pasted two pieces of
oiled paper over the openings, and thus prevented
any further observations being made.
So time went on, and his neighbours became
accustomed to the two yellow eyes, and no longer
actively concerned themselves about his doings,
though still a good deal of puzzlement remained
about his nightly doings.
"To my knowing," said Mrs. Bacon to Mrs.
Jones, "he had his lamp burning till half-past ten
at night. Now he don't burn a lamp all that time
for the sake of wasting oil."
" I'll tell you something more," said Mrs. Jones ;
"it isn't oil only as he consumes, it is ink as
well. He has bought ten penny ink-pots, and one
wi' red ink, at Miss Buck's shop in a twelvemonth.
What do he want wi' so much ink ? He can't
drink it."
" He is writing a book. Take my word for it."
"A book ! What about? He don't know nothing."
" Poetry, perhaps. A man may write that with
his head empty. Every fool knows that."
" He don't look like a poet not when he's un-
shaved."
14 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
" I'll tell you what it may be his cures, and the
way to strike wounds and white swellings."
"Ah! there, that is more likely."
And this purchase of penny pots of ink continued
for thirty-five years. At the rate of ten a year,
that would be three hundred and fifty pots of black
ink. It was amazing. For what could he want so
much ink ? It was also ascertained that he sent by
the carrier periodically to the market town for copy-
books, and had them out in packets of a dozen at
a time. What could he be putting into all those
copy-books ?
At last the mystery came out not indeed to the
whole parish, but into the ear of the rector was it
revealed.
One Saturday evening the parson was informed
that Mr. Coombe desired to speak with him very
privately. The tailor was shown into the study.
He brought with him a huge parcel strapped to
his back.
Of this he relieved himself and placed it on the
table.
" There, sir," said he, " my life's labour is accom-
plished. Now it is for the world."
"What is it, Mr. Coombe ? "
"You shall see, sir, you shall see. For thirty-
five years have I been engaged on it every night.
I have gone over the work most carefully three and
four times, and I am quite certain that there is not
an error in it. It has been my great labour to be
strictly correct. I do not believe there is a the
DAN'L COOMBE 15
wrong. I began it thirty-five years agone last
Friday, and last Friday I concluded it. Every man
has his proper vocation and work to do. I found
mine thirty-five years ago, and I have laboured at
it unflaggingly since. It is done, and when the
Lord pleases to call me, I shall be ready to go.
But, sir I don't mean to deny it I should ha'
been terrible sorry to ha' submitted to be called
away before I'd done the job."
" I congratulate you on having accomplished
what I am sure is a useful task. But what is it,
Mr. Coombe ? "
" You shall see, sir. You shall see."
He went to his parcel and undid the string.
There appeared an enormous pile of copy-books.
He took from the heap two of them, and brought
them to the rector.
"There, sir," said he, "if you'd had this you
would not have made you'll excuse my saying it
such a terrible lot o' mistakes in quoting Scripture.
It is, sir IT IS IT IS" he raised himself and
rubbed his hair up, then smoothed his fresh-shaven
chin "it is, sir, a dictionary of every word in
Scripture, so that you have but to look out the
word, and then you find where it comes in any
book of the whole Bible."
His face glowed with triumph.
"Just think, sir, what a boon to ministers of the
Gospel ! Just think what a help to teachers ! How
ever can English folk have got along for all this
time without such an aid as this ? It is better, sir,
16 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
this, than conquering the Russians and taking of
Sebastopol. It is grander this than Columbus dis-
covering the New World. Now, what do you think,
sir ? "
" But, my dear Mr. Coombe ! "
"One moment, sir, and I shall have done. I
intend to get it printed. It shall be 'Coombe's
Dictionary of Bible Words,' and will become a
handbook in every library of God-fearing and
Scripture-loving men and women. As for any
profits from the sale, of that I care not that's no
odds to me. It is the good it will do that I
think of."
" But, my dear Mr. Coombe "
The rector rose and went to his shelf.
" The thing has already been done. Here it is :
1 Cruden's Concordance to the Holy Scriptures.' It
was published in 1761, and has gone through in-
numerable editions since."
The old man stood as though turned to stone.
" The thing already done ! " he gasped.
The rector had no heart to say more. He
bitterly regretted that he had blurted out the truth
so abruptly.
" The thing already done ! Thirty-five years
spent for naught."
Then he did up his packet again. But the tears
dropped on it. This was to him a blow more
crushing than he could bear.
He hoisted his parcel on his back, touched his
forehead, but held the parson's hand and wrung
DAN'L COOMBE 17
it, as speechlessly he left the house. His heart
was too full for mere words.
The old man broke down rapidly after that. The
object of his life was gone. The great ambition of
his days was extinguished.
One day when he was being visited by the rector,
as he lay on his death-bed, he said
" Sir, I ha' been thinking and worriting over my
work o' thirty-five years, and axing of myself
whether it were all labour lost and time thrown
away. It have fretted me terrible. But I seems
to see now as it was not lost not to me anyhow,
for I got the Scriptur' that into me that it became
to me like the blood in my veins and the marrow
in my bones and it is my stand-by now."
TIMOTHY SLOUCH
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
22 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
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."
TIMOTHY SLOUCH 23
"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 black-
smith, 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
24 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
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
TIMOTHY SLOUCH 25
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, wjren 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
26 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
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 satis-
faction 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 with-
out 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."
TIMOTHY SLOUCH 27
" I know it."
"Will you believe me he has made a mess ot
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 ! "
11 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 flower-
ing 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 black-
28 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
smith, 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,
TIMOTHY SLOUCH 29
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 destina-
tion. " 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.
30 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
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 neighbour-
hood, 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."
TIMOTHY SLOUCH 31
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 engage-
ment 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.
32 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
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 invalu-
able in butter-making. That Mrs. French ascer-
tained ; 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.
TIMOTHY SLOUCH 33
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."
DOBLE DREWE
DOBLE DREWE
DOBLE DREWE was plumber, glazier, paperhanger,
and house-painter; chiefly plumber, but also a
most excellent house-painter.
Whatever Doble undertook in his profession he
executed in the very best manner. If any fault
appeared, it was in the quality of the material used,
not in his use of it ; and, consciously, he never
would employ for his work any material but what
he believed to be the very best. He spared himself
no pains, he cut no time short over his work. The
work he undertook, he undertook to do as well as
it was possible for him to execute it, and I really
believe he had not his superior in his own line in
England, and if not in England then certainly not
in Europe, and if not in Europe then it goes
without saying not in the round world.
But he took, it must be conceded, a very long
time over his task. Most persons who employed
him lost patience because he was so slow. But
slow he was not when one considered the quality
of his workmanship. He scamped nothing. When
he painted even a railing, he took infinite pains
to holystone the wood till he had cleaned off every
particle of old paint and had got the wood perfectly
37
38 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
smooth. And each coat of paint was laid on with
the greatest nicety. There was a carved oak table
that once stood in our drawing-room. The fashion
had set in for satin-wood, so the room was done
up, doors, cabinets, tables, all to look like satin-
wood. And all was done by Doble Drewe.
Most lovely make-believe satin-wood he produced.
That was before the days of the " Seven Lamps of
Architecture," when Mr. Ruskin turned his bull's-
eye on shams, and showed that they were morally
wrong. At the period of which I write everything
must be a sham or it was not fashionable. Wood
was painted to look like marble, and cement to
imitate wood.
Well about this carved table.
The other day I sent it to a furniture-dealer to
remove the paint and develop the oak.
After a while it returned to me, and with it came
the bill.
" Really, sir," said the dealer, " I am ashamed at
having asked so much, but it is incredible what
labour it has taken my men to clean that table.
Never saw nothing like it before. The paint simply
wouldn't come off. It was like taking the skin off
a living man."
"Ah !" said I, "Doble Drewe's work."
But if Doble was slow over his tasks, he was
slower in sending in his bills. Why he did not
make them out and transmit them to his customers
till three, four, even six years had elapsed, I cannot
tell, but it is a fact. And this lost him customers
DOBLE DREWE 39
who could pay, because they did not relish having
to give out money over items every one of which
had passed from their memories. The only custo-
mers he gained were those thriftless creatures who
did not want to pay there and then, and who hoped
they might be more flush of money in a few years'
time than they were in the present. And some of
his customers died, others became bankrupt, or left
the neighbourhood without leaving their addresses,
before Doble Drewe's bills were ready. I know
that mine came in for work done for my father five
years after my father was dead, and I had thought
all had been settled, probate paid, with deductions
for bills, and Doble's, of course, not deducted be-
cause I did not know it was due.
Now although scrupulously conscientious over
his plumbing and glazing, his paper-hanging and
painting, and though whilst on his work he had all
his faculties engaged upon it, yet Doble had a soul
for something very much above lead and paint and
putty.
I found it out one day in this wise.
My mother had a marvellously lovely voice, and
she was sitting in the drawing-room that had been
satin-wooded, at the piano playing and singing,
whilst Drewe was in the hall labouring at painting
the panels to look like pollard willow, stippling,
brushing, graining, putting in plenty of knots where
no knots really were, and running the grain across
the direction where its course by nature lay.
I happened to be in another part of the hall to
40 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
that where was the painter on his knees engaged
at his work. He did not know that I was there
so quiet was I, engaged on Captain Maryatt's
" Snarley Yow, or the Dog Fiend."
If I remember aright my mother was singing
Haynes Bayley's " We met, 'twas in a crowd."
It was not a song for a soprano or for a woman,
and though she went through with it, seemed un-
satisfied, put the book away and was for a while
engaged in finding another piece.
I thought I heard a sound from the corner where
the painter was. I looked up from " Snarley Yow,"
but seeing nothing particular, looked again at the
entrancing book.
Then my mother broke out in the song from the
"Creation," "With verdure clad."
Before she had got half-way through I was sure
that I heard something from Doble. It was a sob.
I stood up but he put back his hand to stay me
as I approached.
I waited till my mother's singing and the chords
of the piano had ceased to vibrate, and then I said
to him :
" Are you unwell, Mr. Drewe ? Is there any-
thing I can get for you ? "
He had a choke in his voice, and I saw as he
turned that his cheeks were wet with tears.
" Excuse me, young gentleman," said he. " Don't
mind me. I cannot help it. Indeed, indeed, I
cannot refrain. When I hear music, good, beautiful
music, it makes me cry like a woman like a woman.
DOBLE DREWE 41
You'll excuse me. Go on with your book and don't
mind me."
I had many a talk with the plumber after this,
and I found that it was so with him. When he
heard good music he passed into a transport, an
ecstasy. But then, how seldom it was that he did
hear and could hear good music ! He lived in a
little village some ten miles from a town, and that
a sleepy, stagnant country town, and no railway
within thirty miles.
Nowadays we have in our little centres all over
England good choral societies, and concerts are
given not only by amateurs, that may sing well, but
often only think that they do so, but also by touring
professionals.
It was not so when I was a boy. Then there
were no such things as choral unions and concerts,
out of the capital of the county, that was accessible
only by coach.
Then locomotion was not easy; and the utmost
length of a villager's journey was to the market
town and that only on a market day.
At that time the parish church indeed had its
orchestra and its choir, but oh ! what appalling,
agonising productions were the concerted pieces
there produced.
Poor Doble Drewe suffered acutely when an
instrument was out of tune, and a piece played out
of time ; and when were all the instruments in the
west gallery either in tune or in time the one with
the other ?
42 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
Doble's sole ambition was to obtain a piano, and
he did purchase one out of the savings of many
years, to discover that he was powerless to play it,
that his ardent musical soul could not relax his stiff
fingers and enable them to play even a simple piece.
He had not learned as a boy, and now it was too
late. " Now look you here," said Doble. "This is
a terrible disappointment to me, but I'll not be beat.
I'll have good music in my house somehow. I'll
marry a wife, and get a little boy or girl ; it don't
matter which, and I'll have that there child taught
so soon as ever it has the sense to know its notes ;
and when I'm an old man I'll just sit by the fire
and listen, and my lad or my little maid shall play
to me by the hour. I'll have Handel, and Haydn,
and Bishop, and Mozart. Ah ! them will be times
worth living for. I'll go about it at once."
And he did. He married a young woman, not
because she could play a piano, for at that period
there were none to be had in his walk of life who
could finger an instrument, but with the prospect
of becoming a parent of one who could be educated
into a skilful player.
"You see," said he, "there is the piano. All
it wants is some one to play on it. It is only a
matter of waiting some fifteen or eighteen years,
and then then my time of enjoyment will have
come. Then then I shall have music."
But no. Again ne encountered disappointment.
No child was given to him, and the wife he had
selected, instead of producing harmony in the home,
DOBLE DREWE 43
was a fruitful source of discord. She had a tongue
and she had a temper, and she was no idealist, and
could not abide just those two things which made
Doble what he was a' painstaking, scrupulous work-
man, and withal a dreamer.
" Why, Doble," she would say, " what's the good
of your doing your jobs so slow and so fine?
There's other chaps get twice the work you do by
just slurring along."
" I cannot do other. It would go against my
conscience."
"And as to your dratted music. You ain't got
none, and you can't have none, so just lump it and
be joyful."
To that he made no reply. No answer he could
have made would have been comprehensible by her.
So time went on.
Doble's back became bent. His look became
more abstracted. His was an earnest face, with a
questioning, craving, seeking look upon it.
Then came a chance.
In the cathedral city the " Messiah " was to be
performed, and the choir of the minster were to
take part, also sundry amateurs, and Formes and
Albani were to sing.
I gave myself a treat. I went up, and took the
plumber with me.
I do not think that Drewe had any conception
of what massive chorus singing could be, or what
cultured voices could effect in solos. Remember,
he never had heard good music in his own village ;
44 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
only direful failures to achieve something that was
supposed to be music. His only I really believe
his only previous acquaintance with good singing
was his hearing my mother sing.
As to describing how Doble looked through that
concert, I cannot. He was as one not himself, rigid,
rapt, not of this earth, with the great tears rolling
down his thin, worn cheeks ; he sat with his hands
folded between his knees and never moved no
more than had he been of stone.
Nor did Doble speak much after it ; he went back
to his lodging as in a dream.
And as we returned by coach next day he was
reticent. I knew what was passing within the man,
and did not tease him with questions, but as he left
the coach at his door, he squeezed my hand and
said : " Sir, I shall live on that all the rest of my
days."
In after years I have often pondered over Doble.
It has seemed to me one of those unfathomable
mysteries of life that there should be in a poor little
country village a man created by God, endowed by
God with high-strung musical faculties, yet abso-
lutely incapacitated by position and circumstances
for making any use of his great gift, for deriving
any enjoyment from it. Why was not Doble placed
somewhere else ? Why was Doble given a faculty
he could not use ?
Many years passed, and I was cast into a far
distant portion of England, yet I may say that this
problem continually troubled me.
DOBLE DREWE 45
Once I came across a farmer's wife in a low and
peculiarly ugly portion of the East coast of England,
and she had the same sort of craving soul after
beautiful scenery. " I feel," she said to me once,
" as though I would like to look on the Alps and
die."
It is the same throughout the world of men. It
must have been so through countless ages. There
must have been Mozarts and Purcells in the ages
that were before musical instruments were made,
and the laws of harmony laid down and concerted
music was made possible. Hundreds and thousands
of Doble Drewes over all the earth and in all time.
A mystery ! A perplexing problem I could not
solve. It haunted me. It distressed me.
A few years ago I was at my old home, and I
was talking to the curate of the parish in which
Doble Drewe had lived.
" So," said I, " poor old Drewe is dead."
"Yes, and buried."
I W i s h
"You were not in this neighbourhood then?"
" No. Tell me something about the old fellow."
" I really do not think I have anything to tell."
" Was his wife a little less nagging as he grew
older and faded away ? "
He shook his head. "Tongues grow sharper
the more they are used."
" And at the last ? Had he much pain ? "
" I was with him when he died. The woman
was quiet then. He lay for some hours as though
46 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
insensible, and I thought the end might be at any
moment. All at once he moved, held up his hand,
assumed a listening attitude, a wonderful light and
smile broke out over his face; he seemed to be
hearkening attentively. Then he said, ' Now,' laid
his head on the pillow, and was dead."
That night, after the curate was gone, I rocked
in my chair, musing, looking into the fire. I
muttered, " Poor old Doble ! " then after a pause,
said, "Happy Doble!" and then, "Now I also
understand."
Thereupon I took down a little book I had of
Dr. Alexander's poems, and read :
" Down below, a sad mysterious music,
Wailing through the woods and on the shore,
Burdened with a grand majestic secret,
That keeps sweeping from us evermore.
Up above, a music that entwineth
With eternal threads of golden sound,
The great poem of this strange existence,
All whose wondrous meaning hath been found."
MARY TREMBATH
MARY TREMBATH
THIS is a sketch no more of a woman who was
to me, and is still, a problem for a casuist to solve.
How so, you shall hear in the sequel. But, to
begin, you must know her life's story.
Mary was, when a young married woman in a
Cornish fishing-village, occupying a cottage at some
little distance from the harbour. She must have
been a fine woman then, she is fine in her old age.
" Ah ! " said she, " you have been to Maker ?
Did you go about in a boat there ? "
" Yes." I had boated whilst staying in the place.
" And did you see the Lady Rock ? "
"Yes, it was pointed out to me."
" And the Dead Man's Rock ? "
" I think so."
"Well, it is all along of the Lady Rock that I
was a widow."
" How so ? "
"You have heard tell about the Lady?"
I had. The Lady is a little piece of white feldspar
in a cliff that rises out of the sea, with a shelf
before it, and this piece of quartz or feldspar bears
a singular resemblance to the shape of a woman
draped in white. Whenever the fishermen return
49 D
50 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
with their trawls, they cast a few of the mackerel
or herring they have caught on to the shelf before
the White Lady, and, unless this be done, this
oblation made, ill-luck will attend the fishermen
on their next expedition ; their nets will be caught
and torn as by invisible hands in the deep, or no
fish will enter the seines, or, worse still, the boat
will capsize and possibly the fishermen on board
will be drowned. The Dead Man's Rock is another
portion of cliff nearly horizontal, sometimes washed
by the waves, and on this lies a mass of the same
white spar, bearing something approaching the form
of a corpse. But it demands more fancy to distin-
guish the corpse than the Lady.
" I will tell you the whole story, sir," said Mary.
" My husband, Thomas Trembath, was a fine stand-
ing-up man as you'd see anywhere. He was a
fisherman, and a daring fellow. I don't say he did not
do a bit of smuggling now and then, but, lor', sir !
they all did, and if they didn't, more shame to them,
with their opportunities. Well, sir, I don't say he
was a Free-thinker, because he wasn't, but he was
a sort of no-thinker no ways, if you can understand
me. Well then, one day, as they was coming in after
there had been a shoal, there was a lot of boats out
that day, and as the boats went by, all the cap'ns
threw a few whiting on to the ledge afore the Lady.
But my Thomas he was a daring unconsiderate
chap, and they'd caught a young dog-fish that day
the fishermen sometimes bring 'em home and
gets a few pence by showing 'em, for they're terrible
MARY TREMBATH 51
mischievous beasts, and eat a lot of mackerel and
whiting and just anything they can. Well, sir,
will you believe it, when Thomas comes along-
side of the Lady Rock, what did he do, in a fit o'
daring, but heave the dog-fish on to the shelf
afore her!"
Mary paused and looked at me, expecting me to
appear aghast at such an outrage.
"The other men, they was astounded and afraid
after that no man would go in the boat with him.
And next time he wanted to go, they shook their
heads, and said they weren't going to court ill-luck.
So Thomas he was that reckless and regardless
he said he would go alone. And go alone he did.
There was no wind and the sea was smooth but
he never came back. I reckon he alone couldn't
manage the boat and something went wrong. What
it was I can't tell but he never came back. That's
what followed chucking of a dog-fish at the White
Lady."
After her husband's death, Mary took to peddling.
She was a middle-aged woman when I knew her,
stoutly built, broad shouldered, with a hale and
ruddy face; she wore short skirts, a man's long
greatcoat over her back, and a man's hat on her
head. Slung across her shoulder by a strap was
a case that contained needles, thread, pins, and tape.
She carried a staff, some four feet long, in her hand,
not of bamboo but of ash, and she strode along the
roads faster than a horse could walk.
There was not a farm, not a cottage within miles
52 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
around, in which Mary was not known, and where
she did not do business.
How she picked up a living on the things she
sold was a marvel to me. The profits on each
item can have been only small, and the amount of
country she travelled over to sell these little articles
was so great, that she must have worn out much
shoe-leather.
She was abroad in all weathers and at all hours.
I said to her one day: "Why, Mary, are not
you afraid in the lone lanes, at night ? "
"Lor", sir, not I. If there were a man as were
imperent, I'd lay my stick across him, and he'd bite
the dust. And as to spirits, I never meddles with
them, and so they don't meddle with me."
"Spirits! Why, you never have the chance of
interfering with their little games."
She shook her head. " I won't say that, sir,"
she answered. "There's queer things about at
night, but I always gives 'em a good word and a
text of Scriptur', and they don't hurt me."
It used to be thought that a comet presaged
war, that its tail tickled all the elements of irritation
in the world and sent nations and kingdoms flying
at one another. But this human comet, Mary
Trembath, revolving in her elliptical orbits through
the country, left peace and goodwill after her. She
was an inveterate gossip, a chatterbox. She loved,
when she had sold a paper of pins or a knot of
tape, to sit and have a dish of tea and a bit of cake
and talk, but never, so far as I am aware, did evil
MARY TREMBATH 53
spring from what she said; on the contrary, she
left those she had been with better disposed towards
one another than they had been before.
A somewhat singular instance of this occurs to
my memory.
There were two old ladies, spinsters both, who
lived within a mile and a half of each other. One
was the housekeeper to her brother, a farmer, who
was a widower, and the other resided in a pleasant
cottage of her own, surrounded by trees, smothered
in laurels and snowberries that cut off sun and air,
and made garden and house smell of mildew and
moth. Now this old lady had a sharp tongue and
a lively imagination, and had the credit of being a
mischief-maker.
All at once a tremendous feud broke out between
these spinsters. It involved more than themselves,
their relations, their acquaintances also, in the village.
Miss Spindle had said something very nasty and
galling of Miss Shank that was absolutely untrue,
but so injurious that Miss Shank vowed she would
have the law of her.
Hearing of this, and finding the entire village
agitated by the controversy, I tried to discover the
truth whether Miss Spindle really had spoken
such cruel things of Miss Shank. I tracked the
story from one to another, and found that gradually
every objectionable expression and statement fell
off en route as an assertion, and that what had
actually been said was entirely harmless, for it was
not said of Miss Shank at all, but of the shank-bone
54 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
of mutton on which Miss Spindle had been making
her meal. In fact, all this good lady had said was,
that the shank had been served so often that it
was becoming high and discoloured, and had best
be hashed. Out of this a mountain of malignant
insinuation and defamatory assertion had been
evolved.
When I had got to the bottom of the story, I
rushed off to Miss Shank to explain that the whole
thing was a misunderstanding, and ought to be
put aside, and peace made. But the lady was
furious ; she turned on me as a mischief-maker and
a meddlesome person for having dared to interfere.
She knew that what Miss Spindle meant was to
cast slurs at her, and she employed the mutton-
bone as a subterfuge so as to avoid prosecution.
There it was, worse than ever. I was out with
one. I went to Miss Spindle. She was exasperated
because Miss Shank had dared to believe that what
she had spoken about the mutton applied to her,
and she broke into a torrent of abuse of me for
interfering in the matter.
There it was ; I was out with the other.
As I retired disconsolately, I ran across Mary
Trembath, and somehow, for my heart was full, I
told her of my ill success.
" Leave it to me," said Mary.
What was my amazement next Sunday to see
Miss Spindle and Miss Shank embracing in the
churchyard after service, and walking off arm-in-
arm and chatting affectionately together !
MARY TREMBATH 55
How had this transformation in the women, this
change in the situation, been brought about ? Only
with difficulty did I get at the bottom of it. Mary,
whilst selling a hank of coloured wool to Miss
Spindle, had contrived to hint to her that Farmer
Shank, the widower, was terribly concerned over
the quarrel, as he was actually much enamoured
of the fair spinster who lived in the bower of
laurels.
Then, Mary Trembath had gone to the farm of
the Shanks, and had let out in confidence that
Miss Spindle's conscience so pained her over the
mischief done, that she was sending for the lawyer
to alter her will and make over Laurel Cottage
and her few hundreds in the Three per Cents, to
the woman she had so grievously injured.
When I learned this, I thought I would have it
out with Mary. She pulled a face as I reproached
her.
" Please, sir, I didn't say it was so ; I merely
hinted such a thing might be. They jumped at the
conclusion, and turned what might be into it is so."
" But, Mary, it was not true."
"How do you know that, sir? all things are
possible."
That was Mary Trembath 's secret way of making
smooth water wherever she went. She was not a
deliberate liar, even for a good purpose; but she
managed somehow to create impressions that served
to bring quarrels to an end, to make people once
indifferent to each other become fast friends, and
56 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
to dispel pretty nearly every cloud that hung over
a parish in which she peddled.
And now you will see how it is that, as I said,
she provided me with a problem only a casuist can
solve. Of course, it is never right to speak an
untruth even for a good end. Mary was too con-
scientious to say straight out what was false, but
she had a clever, subtle manner of bewildering
people through her hints and suggestions, till she
induced them to deceive themselves, and that always
with a good object in view.
She was a peacemaker, eminently a peacemaker,
but was she justified in the method she employed
to make peace ?
THE OLD POST-BOY
THE OLD POST-BOY
ONE of the most characteristic and interesting fea-
tures of old English life has passed away beyond
recall the post-boy. Whatever his age he was
always a boy, for he always wore the short jacket
His confrere the postillion has lasted on somewhat
longer on the Continent, but he also is nearly gone.
He was a picturesque feature, very different from
the dapper English post-boy.
The latter figures in most old English romances.
He took a part in all elopements, and was concerned
in the conveyance of Queen's Messengers with
despatches; he was suspected of affording infor-
mation to and furnishing opportunities for high-
waymen.
Who does not remember the flight of Jingle with
Miss Rachel, in " Pickwick," and the pursuit by
Mr. Wardle and Mr. Pickwick ?
But the post-boy has taken more than a sub-
sidiary part in a story, he is the hero in Smollett's
"Humphry Clinker," and he figures as a leading
part in the opera of " Le Postilion de Longjumeau."
His place now knows him no more. He is as ex-
tinct an animal as the dodo or the great auk.
The last I knew was fallen from his old estate
59
60 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
a slim, grey-haired man, who drove a hired carriage,
but no longer mounted one of a pair of post-horses.
At weddings the post-boy made his final appearance,
with a white beaver hat, a yellow jacket and white
breeches and top-boots, a showy individual, and poor
old George Spurle, whom I knew, had appeared in
his proper character on many such occasions before
leaving the saddle altogether to mount the box.
His jacket was of a buttercup yellow, but other
colours were indulged in by these servants of the
public. Humphry Clinker wore "a narrow-brimmed
hat with gold cording, a cut bob [wig], a decent
blue jacket, leather breeches, and a clean linen
shirt, puffed above the waistband."
Old George, like every other post-boy I have
known, loved his horses. In his old age he loved
them too well, spared them so much as to annoy
those whom he was conveying, and who proved
impatient at his walking them up the least hill, and
at his frequent dismounting to ease his brute.
There was a grey mare he was specially fond of,
and one night the grey got her halter twisted about
her neck and was found strangled. George Spurle
sat down and fairly cried. The landlord seeing him
so cut up endeavoured to comfort him.
" George," said he, "do not take on so. After all
it is only a horse, and that an old one. If you had
lost a wife, that would have been a different matter
altogether, and there would have been some ex-
cuse for tears, but a horse " "Ah, maister," re-
plied the post-boy, " wives ! one has but to hold
THE OLD POST-BOY 61
up the finger, and they'd come flying to you from
all sides more than you can accommodate; but
an 'oss and such a mare as this booh ! " and he
burst into tears again. " Such a mare as this is
not to be found again in a hurry." When a little
subdued, he explained himself: "You see, maister,
'osses cost money, good 'osses cost a power of
money, but wimen wifes they don't cost you a
ha'penny piece."
George Spurle kept a list of all the great persons
he had ridden before, and his list is before me as I
write. Unhappily he has not dated his several
stages, and his spelling makes his MS. sometimes
hard to unravel.
For instance, " Druv the Duck of Dangle'em "
apparently means le Due d'Angouleme, and "the
Count D. Parry" is le Comte de Paris. After a
long list beginning with royalty, he winds up,
"Members of the American legation and Van
Amburgh's lions and tigers in American vans.
Lunatics and hospital patients with fractured limbs,
gold bullion, convicts in vans, also naturalists and
gaiests [sic] to be married, the junior of springs [sic]
two months old and an aged person living ninety-
four years, the oldest to the grave a hundred years
and six months. Adventurers, photographers, ex-
plorers of Mont Blanck [sic] and Africa. Com-
ercials [sic], astronomers and philosophers and
popular auctioneers, Canadian rifles, American mer-
chants, racehorses in vans with gold caps. Mackeral
[sic] fish and several deans and bankers. Paupers
62 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
to onions [stc], some idjots and Sir H. Scale Hayne
Bart."
The old post-boy was never married. Before the
days of railways he was in constant request, but
the whirligig of time brought about its changes that
touched George Spurle to the quick, and thrust him
from his seat.
He had begun life as a little urchin perched on
the back of the waggon horse that had brought in
the wheat at harvest, and this had so raised his
ambition that nothing would content the child but
becoming a postboy. The scarlet of the Queen's
livery presented no attraction to him, nor the blue
jacket of the navy. Nothing would do but the stable
with the anticipation of wearing at some time the
yellow jacket and white beaver. When not in the
stable, he was to be found in the bar, where he told
many a yarn. Here is one. " Gentlemen I cannot
tell you precisely the year, but it was at the very
beginning of the century that there was a rather re-
markable robbery of the mail, going from Exeter to
Plymouth, near Haldon. A party of fellows with
black over their faces sprang out of the bushes,
and were all armed with pistols. They stayed the
coach, and they got the letter-bags and carried them
off. Now I was here some fifteen miles away and
somehow I saw it all take place; I saw and counted
the men that is, in my dream, for I was sleepin' in
the little chamber over the stable; and I saw the
men take the bags off to a quarry and there they
ripped 'em open, and searched and took away some
THE OLD POST-BOY 63
of the letters, and left the rest. I see'd it all dis-
tinct as daylight, though it took place in the night.
Well, when I came down in the mornin' and had
washed at the pump, I went into the bar and I told
Mary Foale about it ; she was maid there then, and
I was a bit sweet upon her. She laughed and
thought nought on it. Then I went on and told
the mistress of the inn, but, bless you ! she gave
no heed. Well gentlemen, you may believe me
or not, as you please; but it's true enough, the
mail had been robbed during the night, on Haldon,
just as I had described, and we didn't hear the
news till the afternoon of the day and I told all
about it in the morning early. But that is not all.
The mail-bags were not found for ten or twelve
days, and they were in the old quarry just where I
had seen the chaps cutting them open. That is a
coorious story, ain't it ? "
" Indeed it is, George. It almost looks as if you
had been riding that night and had been in it."
"Ah! I'm not that sort of chap. Now there
was a sequel to it."
" What was that ? "
"Why, a day or two arter I asked Mary Foale
if she'd condescend to be Mrs. Spurle."
"'No thank y', George/ sez she; 'you see too
much to make it comfortable for me/ And she
didn't take me, she took Jeremiah Ancker; and
that just shows she didn't see enough, for he turned
out a drunken lout as whacked her."
"Were you ever robbed on the road, George?"
64 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
" I've been stopped, but on that occasion things
didn't turn out as was intended."
"How so?"
"I'll just tell y, gentlemen. There was some
bullion to be sent up to London from India. It had
been landed at Falmouth. Now the authorities had
some suspicion, and so they didn't send it the way
as was intended. I had orders quite independent
I knowed nothing about it to go to Chudleigh ;
I reckon there was a gentleman there as wanted me
to drive him across the moors to Tavistock, and he
knowed he could rely on me. He was to start
early in the morning, so I drove in the direction in
the evening before, with a close conveyance, as I
knew there might be rough weather and rain next
day going over the moors.
" I hadn't got half-way when I was stopped by
a man on horseback with his face blackened. He
held a pistol and levelled it at my head ; I had no
mind to be shot, so I pulled up. In a rough voice
he asked me who was in the chaise. ' No one/ said
I. 'But there is something,' said he. 'Nothing
in the world but cushions,' I replied. ' Get down,
you rascal,' he ordered. ' You hold my horse, whilst
I search the chaise.' ' I'm at your service,' said I,
and I took his horse by the bridle, and as I passed
my hand along I felt that there were saddle-bags.
Well, that highwayman opened the chaise door and
went in to overhaul everything. I had made up
my mind what to do. So while he was thus en-
gaged I undid the traces of my 'osses with one
THE OLD POST-BOY 65
hand, holding the highwayman's 'oss with the
other.
" Presently he put his head out, and said, 'There
is nothing within I must search behind.' ' Search
where you will,' said I, ' you've plenty o' time at
your disposal.' And so saying I leaped into his
saddle. Then I shouted, 'Gee up and along,
Beauty and Jolly Boy ! ' and struck spurs into the
flanks of the horse, and away I galloped on his
steed with my two chaise horses galloping after me;
and we never stayed till we came to Chudleigh."
"And the saddle-bags ?"
" There was a lot of money in them but there's
my luck. That fellow had robbed a serge-maker
the same night, and this serge-maker came and
claimed it all."
" But you were handsomely rewarded ? "
" He gave me a guinea and the highwayman's
'oss, and that same 'oss is the old grey mare,
gentlemen, as folks ha' laughed at me for weeping
over when she were hanged. Now it is a coorious
sarcumstance that so far as I know that there
highwayman went scot free to his grave, and the
poor innocent grey were hanged."
George Spurle lived to an advanced age, but he
was one of those men whose age it is hard to
determine: his face was always keen and his eye
bright, he had a ruddy cheek, was always closely
shaven, and his grey hair cut short. Till he died
he drove a conveyance belonging to the inn; he
could not be induced to drive the 'bus to the
E
66 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
station. To that, "No, sir!" he said; "an old
post-boy can't go to that. There be stations and
callin's, and the station and callin' of a post-boy is
one thing, and the station and callin' of a 'bus
man is another. You can't pass from the one to
the other."
He fell ill very suddenly and died almost before
any one in the town where he was well known
suspected that he was in danger.
But he had no doubt in his own mind that his
sickness would end fatally, and he asked to see
the landlady of the inn.
" Beg pardon, ma'am ! " he said from his bed,
touching his forelock, "very sorry I han't shaved
for two days and you should see me thus. But
please, ma'am, if it's no offence, be you wantin'
that there yellow jacket any more ? It seems to me
post-boys is gone out altogether."
"No, George, I certainly do not want it."
" Nor these ? you'll understand me, ma'am, if I
don't mention 'em."
" No, George ; what can you require them for ? "
" Nor that there old white beaver ? I did my
best, but it is a bit rubbed."
" I certainly do not need it."
" Thank y', ma'am, then I make so bold might I
be buried in 'em as the last of the old postboys ? "
AUNTIE
AUNTIE
No one would suppose that Auntie had once been
pretty. Yet Mrs. Estcourt, the Squire's wife, said
that she was so at one time, and Mrs. Estcourt had
known her from a girl and ought to be an authority.
No one without a moment's thought would sup-
pose that she had once been young. Of course,
when you considered, you knew that in the order of
nature young she must have been; but her entire
appearance and cut of figure and dress seemed to
proclaim that she had been born old, and had
remained at a standstill whilst the world moved on.
She was short, carried little curls like beer barrels
arranged on each side of her forehead, had mild
benevolent eyes of no particular colour, wore an
old-fashioned bonnet, and gowns still older in
fashion, for they were leg-of-mutton sleeved.
When tight sleeves came in, Auntie continued to
wear her old-fashioned full sleeves. "My dear,"
she would say to one who objected that they were
antiquated, "my dear, leg-o'-muttons will come in
again."
Come in they have, but after Auntie had closed
her eyes and could not see her prediction verified.
Her skirts, flounced and full, saw the crinoline
69
70 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
come in and go out, saw the tight straight skirt,
and saw fulness again become fashionable.
Auntie's gowns were mostly of dark grey, but
she had one for the evening of good silk that was
silver-grey, and in that, at night, Auntie looked
quite presentable. But Auntie rarely wore it. She
could not dine out, as she had no carriage or
conveyance of any sort, and the risk of marring her
one silk evening dress, by going on foot in such an
unsettled climate as is ours in England to the
house where the festive board was spread, that was
too serious to be undertaken. But she did, once,
dine in it at the Hall, without having been fetched.
Then she had hired a farmer's butter-cart, that in
which he sent some of the home produce to market.
It was without springs, it was without seats, and
it was sans steps. The cob that drew it was white
and ungroomed, brought in for the occasion from
the field in which it lay and rolled. Auntie's maid
had put a chair in the cart and a chair beside the
cart. By this means the old lady mounted into it,
without the necessity of scrambling up the spokes
of the wheel, or leaping on to the shaft, and thence
somersaulting into the cart.
But this conveyance of two wheels so shook up
Auntie internally that she had no appetite for her
dinner, and no enjoyment of the social evening.
Mrs. Estcourt, after that, sent the carriage for her,
but Auntie could rarely be prevailed on to accept
it. She was poor in pocket and large in heart, and
she tipped the coachman on such occasions half-a-
AUNTIE 71
crown, and half-a-crown to Auntie was a sum of
money that she could ill afford to miss.
No one in the parish, rich or poor, secular or
clerical, thought of calling the old lady by other
name than "Auntie," yet was she aunt to no single
person there, nor indeed remotely connected with
any. Those who wished to be respectful called
her Miss Jane, or Miss Auntie. Yet was there a
tie, not of blood, that bound her to all and all to
her, a tie even stronger than that of blood the
tie of infinite charity.
Never was there a woman with a kinder, more un-
selfish heart than old Auntie. Her mind was ever
active, but occupied only with thought of others.
Unhappily we know by experience that this
world of ours is full of selfishness, that among a
hundred persons we meet, scarce one is not in-
fected with this vice ; nevertheless there is a salt
of fresh unselfishness to be discovered. But among
the many of these elect, the very crown and acme
of all was, I verily believe, Auntie.
The parish knew her story, yet no one ventured
on an allusion to it in her hearing, except possibly
Mrs. Estcourt, who had been her schoolfellow, and
with whom she did sometimes speak of the past,
and open that old, but unwithered, heart.
The story was this.
When Auntie was young and pretty and little,
for a little body she had ever been, she had been
engaged to a handsome young fellow in the service
of the East India Company. He had come to
72 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
England for a holiday, happened to see her, had
been attracted by her, as well, perhaps, as by the
fact that she had some money of her own, and he
proposed to her to accept him and go out with him
to India.
She certainly was greatly attached to Mr. Warn-
acre. She had never cared for any man previously,
never had gone into a gentle flirtation even.
Her younger sister was at school, finishing her
education, but when the day of the marriage was
fixed, she was brought home that she might serve
as bridesmaid to her sister.
Emily this schoolgirl was far prettier than Jane
who was to be married, and what money there
was, left by the mother, went equally in shares to
each sister.
The cares of trousseau weighed heavily on Miss
Jane, and were undertaken with that thoroughness
that characterised all she did. So occupied was
she over the preliminaries, so necessarily occupied
was she, as her mother was dead and she had no
elder sister, that she could not be as much as she
wished with her intended, and was constrained to
leave him to walk and talk and lounge about with
Emily.
On the day before the marriage, bridegroom and
sister had disappeared. They had eloped together
and were married before it was discovered whither
they had gone.
The blow was acutely felt, how acutely no one
knew. Mrs. Estcourt, who was not Mrs. Estcourt
AUNTIE 73
then, hastened to her friend to show sympathy and
love.
"My dear," said Jane, with her eyes full, "it
was only natural. I ought not to have thought of
keeping him. Emily is so beautiful. He naturally
only cared for me till he saw her. I hope, please
God, they will be happy together."
Mr. Warnacre did not venture back to the village,
but carried off his wife at once to India.
After a while Auntie's friend became Mrs.
Estcourt, and then this latter lady insisted on Jane
taking a cottage on her husband's estate, so as to
be near her. She desired to befriend her, and
befriend her she did. But the condition of life of
a great country squire's wife, the wife of a man
who aimed at becoming representative of his county
in Parliament, and that of a solitary lady with
moderate means, in a cottage, and without connec-
tions in the place, were so diverse, that much as
Mrs. Estcourt desired to see a great deal of her
friend, she was not able to do so.
As time went on, and the Squire was elected,
and a large part of Mrs. Estcourt's life was spent
in town, the opportunities for social intercourse
with Auntie became less, and when the family was
at the Hall there were so many visitors, friends
made in London, and political allies and acquaint-
ances, who crowded the house, who were there to
dine, and dance, and shoot, and attend political
meetings, that even whilst in the country, Mrs.
Estcourt could not see much of her old school
74 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
friend. Moreover, when Jane did dine at the Hall,
it was with persons whom she did not understand,
who belonged to another order of existence to
herself, persons with whom she had no common
topics of conversation, consequently she declined
invitations and remained at home.
As yet she had not acquired the title of Auntie ;
that accrued to her in this way.
Before many years had elapsed Mrs. Warnacre
sent home her only child, a little boy, to be brought
up in England, as the Indian climate is fatal to
growing European children. And to whom else
could she confide her treasure but to Jane? She
must have been an easy-going, shallow creature,
this Emily, unable to understand the wrong she
had done to her sister, and without an expression
of regret, without a word of apology, sent her the
child ; and easy-going, unscrupulous must Warnacre
have been, for he sent remittances for his son's
clothing and education but rarely, so that the cost
of the maintenance of the child fell on Jane. Then
Emily died of cholera, and after that no more
money was sent, no inquiries were made; she
found herself burdened with this nephew and then
it was that the title of Auntie attached itself to
her never to be lost.
Young John Warnacre grew up under Auntie's
eye, and at her charge. She was obliged then to
deprive herself of many little comforts and pleasures.
Hitherto she had kept a pony-chaise, and a useful
man who attended to her cob and the garden.
AUNTIE 75
Now she did without, abandoned the drives that
once afforded her so much pleasure and had given
such a healthy glow to her cheek, and reduced her
garden to a couple of flower-beds that could be
attended to by an occasional man.
As young John Warn acre grew up, he proved
wayward, headstrong, and selfish. She yielded to
him too much, but it was in her nature to yield.
She had neither the moral nor physical strength to
control a turbulent, self-willed boy.
When he was too old and too ungovernable for
her, he was sent to school, and schooling, if good,
is costly. Auntie was too conscientious not to
send the boy to a school for gentlemen, and one
that was expensive, and might therefore be sup-
posed to furnish a thorough education.
So matters rubbed on. In his holidays John
was with his aunt, tormenting her cat and dog,
running over her flowers, breaking her windows,
making for his aunt boobie-traps and apple-pie
beds; in a word, leading her such a life that she
sighed for the holidays to come to an end, but was
too tender at heart to admit, even to herself, that
she wished them over.
At last the Squire was obliged to complain.
John had been laying snares in his preserves, and
was getting into association with some of the worst
characters in the place. After a struggle he was
sent back to school for the rest of the holiday,
but he never arrived at the tutor's : he ran away, and
was heard of no more. Many tears did Auntie shed
76 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
over the prodigal, and bitterly did she reproach her-
self for having been so severe as to send him away.
It was ascertained at last that he had gone to
sea, with the intention, if possible, of getting to
India to his father.
But, if he ever got to India, he did not find Mr.
Warnacre there, for this gentleman arrived at
Auntie's and quartered himself upon her. He had
left the service of John Company, as he saw no
prospect of advancement, and he believed he could
better himself elsewhere, with his capacity for
business, his knowledge of the world, and his
faculty of speaking several languages.
Auntie was pleased rather than the contrary
that Mr. Warnacre should come to her. It showed
that he had forgotten the past and bore her no
grudge. Alas ! poor humble soul, it did not occur
to her that it was she who should resent his conduct,
not he hers, and that his throwing himself upon
her showed singular moral insensibility.
He was very desirous that his sister-in-law should
see the Squire, who as M.P. might be able to use
influence to obtain him a post under Government.
Auntie was shy of asking a favour. Shy and
retreating, she would have asked nothing for herself,
but for another she would do a great deal. After a
battle with her timidity, she did go to the Hall, and
had an interview with Mr. Estcourt, who valued and
admired the dear old lady, and he readily promised
to see what could be done for Mr. Warnacre. All he
desired were the testimonials of that gentleman.
AUNTIE 77
But here precisely arose a difficulty. He could
not produce them, and when inquiry was made into
his antecedents, it was discovered that Mr. Warnacre
had been dismissed from the service oi the Com-
pany. This, Mr. Estcourt did not tell Auntie, but
with many apologies expressed his regret at being
unable to serve her.
Somehow it is hard to say how the rumour
circulated that Auntie was about to sell out of the
stocks so as to set up Mr. Warnacre in some busi-
ness he had in view, in which great profits were
certain to be made.
The rumour came to the ears of Mrs. Estcourt,
and without ado that good, somewhat peremptory
lady called on Auntie, and happily found her alone.
The Squire's wife proceeded at once to attack
the old lady on the topic. Was it true that she
was about to place her little fortune in the hands of
this brother-in-law ? For if Jane meditated doing
this, Mrs. Estcourt said it would be her painful duty
to inform Auntie of certain matters concerning Mr.
Warnacre that in kindness had been kept from her.
Auntie coloured and trembled, and raised her
bemittened hands in deprecation of the interference
and the revelation. Then she began to explain :
" Mr. Warnacre really was a surprisingly clever
man. He had met with misfortunes, he had made
enemies, who had not scrupled to blacken his
character. It was too sad to see a man of his
ability and acquirements without an opening in
which to display his activity."
78 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
" But, my dear Jane, he has been dishonest ! "
"O Maria, we are all guilty of doing wrong
sometimes, and I am sure we ought not to be hard
on those who have. Even supposing he has made a
mistake, we ought to give him the helping hand, and
put him in a position where he can make amends."
" My dear Jane," said Mrs. Estcourt, and she set
her lips. " Excuse me if I speak unpleasant truths.
How do you know, how does Mr. Warnacre know,
that what he proposes to undertake will be success-
ful ? There is many a slip between the cup and the
lip. With the very best and most honourable in-
tentions, he may miscarry. Then what will become
of you?"
"Oh, my dear Maria, he is certain to succeed.
He has shown it me so very plainly."
" He may not. Always be prepared for a not."
"But for his sake I must risk something. He
was my dear Emily's husband, remember that. And
he has had such trials and troubles he has lost
her, and does not know where poor John is."
" Jane, it won't do. Excuse my bluntness. Sup-
pose the whole thing fails. Where would you be ?
If your little income is gone, then you will be penni-
less in your old age. Now that means " Mrs.
Estcourt moved uncomfortably in her chair. She
was going to say a harsh thing, but did it only
because she believed that nothing else could save
Auntie. "That means, Jane, that you will come
upon me. I will not see you turned out of your
cottage to starve. When all your income is gone,
AUNTIE 79
I shall have to furnish you with an annuity. Now,
mind, I should not object to that, if the result of an
accident, a bad investment, or failure of a bank.
But that you should deliberately and with your eyes
open throw this upon me is not fair ; no, it is not
fair to me."
Poor little Auntie crimsoned to her temples. She
tried to speak, but could not. Then she broke
down, covered her face with her kerchief and wept.
Mrs. Estcourt held to her point.
" I have promised it him," sobbed Auntie.
" You may, if you will, give him something. But I
insist I insist for my own sake as well as for yours
that you do not give him all. Reserve to yourself
so much as you can live on. Say, keep as much as
was expended on yourself when you were sending
that boy to school. That alone will satisfy me."
At length Mrs. Estcourt carried her point. She
extorted a solemn reluctant promise to that effect
from the old lady, and that she would not go
beyond her word Mrs. Estcourt knew very surely.
And well was it for the little Auntie that this
interview had taken place, for within a twelvemonth
all she had given to Mr. Warnacre was gone, and
gone without return of interest or principal. With
it also Mr. Warnacre had disappeared. Then she
lived on, in the same house, on her shrunken means,
doing good to all around knitting crossovers for
old women, making mittens for children, warm
woollen caps and mufflers that she sent to the
engine-drivers on the line to keep them comfortable
8o IN A QUIET VILLAGE
on a winter's night, busy before Christmas in con-
triving presents for all around, forgetful of no birth-
day, visiting and sitting with the sick and aged, and
although her gifts were never costly, yet they were
always valued highly by the recipients, for the love
and kindly thought that was worked into them.
She manufactured little book-markers, with crosses
on them, of perforated card ; she did embroidery for
the church ; she painted little pin-cushions, and her
flower-painting was tasteful. These she was glad
to sell, and Mrs Estcourt came to her assistance
and disposed of an astonishing number at sixpence
each. They were so useful for gentlemen, would
go into a breast pocket, and gentlemen were always
wanting pins. But Auntie would use none of the
money thus acquired upon herself; it was spent in
the purchase of material for making her little gifts
to the poor, or for the church.
The parson had his daily service, but the most
constant of his congregation, certainly in the morn-
ings, was Auntie, who never failed.
Mrs. Estcourt brought visitors from the Hall to
see her, not such as were unable to appreciate the
goodness and sweetness of the old lady, but kindly-
hearted ladies and gentlemen, and somehow these
visitors afterwards in town, or wherever else they
met the Squire, always inquired after Auntie. They
felt they were the better for having seen and
spoken with her.
To some it was a revelation that there were, in
this self-seeking and somewhat coarse world, some
AUNTIE 81
highly-refined, unselfish spirits, the violets of the
moral world.
As already said, every one in the place knew her
story, but to her face no one alluded to it. Among
the English peasantry there is a wonderful and
beautiful delicacy of feeling such as often puts to
shame those who belong to highly-cultured grades.
The utmost done was to ask, " Please, miss, have
you heard anything of Master John ? "
Then a quiver would pass over the old face, the
lip would tremble, and the eye fall, and she would
shake her head, unable to give the denial in words.
Often and often did Mrs. Estcourt send to her
grapes or peaches or melons from the conserva-
tories at the Hall, and yet she knew that most of
these good things were at once distributed by the
old lady among the children as they swarmed out
of school, or given to some sick body with a
capricious appetite.
The farmers also or their wives sent her poultry,
the children picked for her watercress, the poor
women gave her eggs, and then Auntie had no rest
until she had proclaimed to the parson and his
wife, to the squiress, to all she knew, how good
and generous these poor bodies had been to her.
And every day she sat at her window painting
her pin-cushions or making the little crosses for
book-markers, or setting them up on little card
stands, or illuminating texts, and nodding and
smiling to all passers-by in the road, and to the
children as they came to school. Between school
F
82 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
hours in wet weather many a little girl found a
refuge in Auntie's kitchen, there to eat her dinner
and have warm milk or tea.
It was a sad prospect to Auntie when her sight
began to fail. Resigned to the will of Heaven she
ever was, but she regretted the inability into which
she would fall of manufacturing comforting articles
for the poor.
So years passed.
Nothing was heard of Warnacre, nothing of John.
No word of reproach passed her lips. I believe no
resentful thought arose in her mind against her
brother-in-law, and I am sure that both he and
John were daily mentioned in her prayers.
Then, one stormy evening, a knock came at the
door, and she heard some one coughing without.
The little maid opened, and a wretched, wet, and
draggled man staggered in. It was Warnacre,
returned, but returned destitute, a wreck in health,
and a beggar.
The little maid who had gone to the door at the
rap was frightened, and thought that the man was
drunk she had never seen Mr. Warnacre, and her
exclamations of distress and alarm brought the old
lady to the passage.
Warnacre had thrown himself into a chair, the
rain had sodden his battered hat, and his shapeless
and napless greatcoat, and ran over the floor.
The man was grey in face, his scanty hair dishev-
elled, and his eyes dull and sunk in his head.
A fit of coughing prevented him from speaking.
AUNTIE 83
" Oh, please, miss, what shall we do ? It's a
tipsy, it is. Shall I run for the police ? "
" No, Kate, no, the gentleman is ill." Auntie had
not as yet recognised him, but she brought the light
near, and with an exclamation of pain and surprise
cried, " O William ! William ! you here again ? "
"What," said he, "are you like the rest, ready
to turn against me ? It is a bad and selfish world ;
no one has a hand to hold out for a fellow who is
down on his luck. I've walked "
Again the cough overtook him, and he put a
soiled handkerchief to his mouth.
" I have walked, I suppose, fourteen miles in this
cursed weather haven't had anything to eat. I'd
turn out my pockets and prove to you I have not a
stiver, but my hands are too cold, and my clothes
cling to me with wet."
" O William ! how have you come to this ? "
" Ill-health breakdown overmuch brain-work.
And the world is dishonest ; cursed cheats men are.
It is no place for a man of genius and integrity."
" But what will you do ? "
He coughed again, and sank back, looking deadly
in his exhaustion.
" It is a shame, my troubling you with questions.
Kate, Kate, get hot water, and bread and meat, and
a tumbler, and I will unlock my cellaret."
Then, as the little maid bustled about fulfilling
commands : " O William ! I am so sorry, and why,
why did you walk so far ? "
" Because I wasn't going to the workhouse.
84 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
No, thank you, / am a gentleman. I thought you
would give me food and a shake-down."
" O William, how good of you to think of me.
Oh, this is kind, and like a brother-in-law. Of
course you could not go to the Union. I would
have died of shame to think that you had, and of
self-reproach to think you had not come on to me.
But you forgive all that is past. That is dear of
you, William."
She took him in ; of course she did.
She opened to him her heart as well as her home.
And there he remained. He made no movement
to leave. Perhaps he perceived that nowhere else
would he be so kindly and forgivingly dealt with.
Not one word of reproach came from her.
Then it became clear that his stay would not be
for long, not that he desired and purposed leaving,
but that a hand was pointing sternly to him to
move on, to move on from a world in which he had
done no worthy act, into another in which he would
have to account for his worthlessness.
Auntie fought against the conviction that he was
dying. She sent for the best doctors, she provided
the most nourishing diet she could procure for him.
Her great sorrow was that her means would not
allow her to send him to Davos or to some other
place of cure.
Warnacre was not a pleasant person to have in
the house and as a patient. He grumbled at the
wine provided it came from the grocer, he said;
it was without bouquet, mere made-up stuff. He
AUNTIE 85
grumbled at his meat, it was tough and overdone or
underdone. He bragged about the great people
with whom he had dined, whom he had known
familiarly; or he whined over the ingratitude and
heartlessness of the world, or murmured against
that Providence which had thwarted him in all he
had taken in hand.
Yet, through all, patiently, lovingly, cheerfully,
the old maid ministered to him, bore with his mean-
ness, turned aside his sarcasms, apologised for his
ungraciousness when visited by any from the Hall
or rectory.
She treasured up every imaginary sign of return-
ing health and shut her eyes to the tokens of
decline. At length he was dead, and was laid in
the churchyard, unlamented save by Auntie.
Of his son he professed to know nothing. He
had not run across him in his meanders through
the shady world in which he had moved. But in
the heart of Auntie there was still a root of love
and expectation that concerned John.
Above Mr. Warnacre's grave, Auntie, by stinting
herself, was able to erect a costly monumental stone,
on which was represented a broken lily, the symbol
of Warnacre's stainless life. The inscription re-
corded his merits in somewhat fulsome terms that
were, however, not unreal and untrue to Auntie, or
she would not have sanctioned them, for over that
wretched creature still hung some of the halo of her
first love and idealisation.
And after that her sight failed, and happily not
86 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
long after that, gently, without pain, old Auntie's
eyes closed altogether.
But then Mrs. Estcourt was gone. Her husband
had predeceased her, and at the Hall reigned a
nephew, a man of sport, who knew not Auntie.
A year later there appeared a stranger in the
place, who after some inquiries went to the church-
yard and asked the sexton to point out to him
where Auntie was buried. There was no head-
stone, only a green mound. But there were flowers
strewn on it ; the poor whom she had loved and to
whom she had ministered had not forgotten her.
The stranger signed to the sexton to leave him.
Then he stood, with folded hands and bowed head,
looking at the little heap. He was a young man,
but with a seamed face. Presently the tears came
into his eyes and rolled down his cheeks. " Poor,
dear Auntie," he said in a whisper, "imposed on,
ill-treated only appreciated by me and that too
late."
He drew out of his pocket a little cross made
of perforated cardboard. It had been given years
before to young John.
Then he went to a monumental stone-cutter and
said : " Make me a marble cross, just like this."
" And, sir, what shall I cut on it ? "
"Only this AUNTIE."
BROTHER AUGUSTINE
BROTHER AUGUSTINE
IN 1866 I was appointed to the perpetual curacy
of Dalton, near Thirsk in Yorkshire. It was a new
parish, cut out of Topcliffe ; the church was not
built at the time, but an old barn had been con-
verted into a school-chapel, and a little red brick
house had been erected, intended eventually to be
a schoolmaster's house, which I was given as
parsonage. It was small containing one sitting-
room only, and three bedrooms upstairs. When I
went to see the place, the outgoing incumbent said
to me, " Would you like to take on Mills ? "
" Mills ! Who is Mills ? "
" I mean Brother Augustine."
" Brother Augustine ! " I echoed ; " and who the
dickens is Brother Augustine ? "
"Well," replied my friend, "that is not so easy
to answer. What he is now is my valet and
sacristan. He is a man who can make your
clothes, mend anything, wait on you, and be most
serviceable in church."
"What! that fellow who sang in the choir
through his nose as though there had been a
vibrating metallic tongue in it ? "
"The same: very useful, but odd."
8 9
90 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
"Where did you pick him up ? "
" I advertised for him."
I took on Brother Augustine or Mr. Mills. Some
called him one, some the other, and rightly, for he
had two aspects, very distinct.
When I engaged him he was aged, I suppose,
thirty-five, but it was impossible to say what his
age really was : he was one of those men who look
old when twenty, and never alter. He did not tell
me his age. He was as coy as an old maid about
that, but he was very ready to tell me his story,
and it was an odd one.
He had been given when quite a little boy by his
father, in Colchester, to the Roman Catholic priest
there, who brought him up, and made him serve
him daily at the altar, black his boots, and help the
old housekeeper to make the beds, and dust the
rooms, and clean the dishes. He also brought in
the meals.
This went on till, as Mr. Mills said to me, "the
dear old priest got so very old that he was fit for
nothing but to be chaplain to a convent, so he was
moved away, and then I had to be put somewhere.
So I was put with Hyams, the tailor."
How long Mills was with Hyams I do not know,
but the swirl of life in freedom after the even and
quiet of a parsonage was more than he could bear,
and he took it into his head to become a monk.
He entered on his novitiate, "And," said he,
"they shaved my head, and I have been a martyr
to neuralgia ever since."
BROTHER AUGUSTINE 91
After a while he was sent to Rome. I cannot
now recall what the Order was into which he had
entered.
" I got into trouble there," said Brother Augustine.
"You must know that I am passionately fond of
cats, and I had not had a cat to pat and coax ever
since I had become a monk. Well, one day we
were walking in procession down the long street in
Trastevere, when I saw a white cat, with one paw
black and one ear black, sitting in a doorway of a
house. I could not help myself. The sight of that
puss was too much for my pent-up feelings there
was a sort of void in me that only a cat could fill.
Well, I broke out of the procession and ran to the
cat to catch it up. But it was frightened, and made
a bolt and was gone. That set all the monks off
laughing to see me after the cat. We had been
singing a psalm, and they could not get on with it.
I was put on bread and water for a week, all
because of that cat."
Brother Augustine was not happy in Rome, and
was teased with neuralgia. After a twelvemonth
he was sent back to England, and he had made
up his mind not to take the vows. So on landing
at London he gave the slip to the monk who was
sent along with him, and found his way into some
sort of refuge for runaway monks and nuns that
had been set up, just as there are refuges for stray
cats and dogs.
There he made acquaintance with Miss Headly
Vicars, who was most kind to him, and of her he
92 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
spoke with deep regard. By her advice he became
a Scripture reader, or if not by her advice, with her
consent.
He remained for some little while drawing a
salary and doing some off-and-on work, very much
against his taste, as Scripture reader, for it was a
position for which he was totally unqualified. At
last he became uneasy in his conscience, he felt he
was earning money he did not deserve, and the
work was uncongenial. Then he saw an advertise-
ment from my predecessor at Dalton for a young
man to act as man-servant, sing in the choir
("Bray, rather," said I to myself) and attend to
the church.
This was exactly what he wanted. He answered,
was accepted ; and I found him at Dalton, and kept
him on.
I have said that Mr. Mills, or Brother Augustine,
wore two different aspects.
Usually, about the house and at church he wore
a cassock, and a little black square cap set on the
back of his head.
When not engaged about the church, he was
generally to be seen seated cross-legged on the
kitchen table, making a suit for me, or mending or
making clothes for himself.
But, when Mr. Mills was dressed to go to Thirsk,
the market town, he was as though he had walked
out of a bandbox dapper, spick and span in every-
thing; a masher one would call him now, but in
1866 the word was not invented.
BROTHER AUGUSTINE 93
A most disinterested fellow he was. I did not
pay him any wage. He had his food and room
with me, and nothing else. If he wanted to go to
York or Ripon, I gave him his fare, and a shilling
to spend as he liked. He never had more whilst
with me for two years. His mind was like that of
a child. He was happy over the merest trifles, and
upset also by trifles. A good-hearted fellow with
a limited education, very fond of puss, and devotedly
attached to animals. Every one laughed at him,
but every one liked him. He would do anything
that I asked him to do, and go anywhere.
I had an old housekeeper, a worthy woman who
was a widow, and she and Mills were always laugh-
ing, and, when not laughing, he was singing. The
kitchen was immediately opposite my one sitting-
room, and as the door was generally open, they
made a good deal of noise, to which I had to become
accustomed.
One morning Mr. Mills appeared in lavender
small-clothes, a black frock coat, white waistcoat,
straw-coloured kid gloves, and a silk hat that shone
as if it had been oiled. In his button-hole he wore
a stephanotis. His face was twinkling with smiles.
He appeared before me flourishing a Malacca cane.
" Why Brother Augustine ! what are you about ?"
I exclaimed.
" I have walked through the village," he replied,
" and I want to go into Thirsk."
"What for?"
" Only to get a rise out of the Daltonians. You
94 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
should have seen the round eyes they made as I
walked past their houses. And I have just been
into the school to show myself to the mistress and
the children. I really am curious to know to whom
they will have married me for they will all jump
to the conclusion that I have gone into Thirsk to be
married."
My predecessor had been accustomed to have the
chorister boys go to the parsonage after the Litany,
which was sung in the afternoon, and have tea
there, and hang about the garden till evensong
at half-past six. I found this a burden more than
I could bear, and I announced that I was regretfully
obliged to discontinue the usage.
After having made the announcement, I was
breathing free, when Mills came to me with a blank
face.
"They have struck," he said.
" Struck what ? struck you ? " I asked.
"They will not put on their cassocks and sur-
plices and go into the choir this evening."
"Well, Mr. Mills, then we will manage without
them."
So we did. One, faithful among the faithless
found, did put on his surplice. A little fellow who
could not read. However, we sang the whole ser-
vice, psalms, responses, Magnificat, Nunc Dimittis,
hymns, just as though we had a full choir. I do
not think there was any musician in the congrega-
tion that evening, for I do not recall any one being
carried out fainting.
BROTHER AUGUSTINE 95
There was one peculiarity about Mills that I could
not break him of. He had learned the Apostles'
Creed in the Roman version, which differed slightly
from our form, and he would always bray forth
that " form of sound words " which he had acquired
in his childhood.
In 1868 there was about to be a change in my
domestic arrangements in fact, I was about to be
married consequently I was forced, much to my
regret, to get rid of Mills.
After a little inquiry and some letter-writing, it
was settled that he should go to Christ Church and
become valet to Dr. Pusey, at that time getting old
and infirm.
In the event of sickness, I knew that no one
could be a more tender and devoted nurse than
Brother Augustine. There was something feminine
in his delicacy of touch and in his sweetness of
manner. And he would give up his time in the
most unselfish manner possible to the doctor. Of
that I was quite confident.
So Brother Augustine departed, with tears in his
eyes, and there was not a person in the parish who
was not sorry to lose him. For although they had
laughed at him, all appreciated his goodness and
his kindness; and I am not sure but that what
they laughed at most was his absolute guilelessness,
his utter unworldliness, and that, to a Yorkshire-
man, is indeed astonishing. I heard next of him
as installed at Christ Church, where he figured in
the quad in just the same extraordinary costume
96 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
as he had worn with me; and his funny ways,
his old-fashioned politeness, and his simplicity
vastly tickled the young students. I believe sundry
tricks were played on him, but I never heard any
particulars.
That he was very happy I did learn from himself.
He was given a room near Dr. Pusey's quarters
in Christ Church, that adjoined or was under
another in which one of the men of the college was
lodged.
Now, Brother Augustine had the way of singing
the psalms in his discordant bray every night, and
one evening the young fellow who was near him,
unable to endure the noise, went to his door,
knocked, and Brother Augustine appeared at his
door half-undressed for bed. The Christ Church
man complained really he could not work he was
going in for his examination, and with that singing
he he was distracted.
"I beg your pardon humbly! I really am most
sorry," said the poor brother, covered with con-
fusion. " I had no idea certainly, certainly you
shall not be troubled again."
So with a bow he saw his visitor depart, shut his
door, and with his psalm unfinished went to bed.
He was found next morning dead. He had died
apparently painlessly of heart complaint gone off
in his sleep, to finish his psalm where his voice
would give no offence.
HAROUN THE CARPENTER
HAROUN THE CARPENTER
HAROUN, bien entendu, was not his name, but it
was that by which some called him among them-
selves. The reason will appear in the sequel. He
lived in a low house of one storey, with a door in
the middle, and a window on each side, a typical
Welsh cottage, with a thatched roof, and the roof
drawn down over the gables, also in a peculiarly
Welsh style.
He had his yard and workshop behind the house.
In front was a bit of garden, of which he took great
care, and which was bright with flowers from earliest
spring to latest fall.
" Aaron," the squire's wife would say, "how do
you manage to get your bulbs to bloom before
mine ? "
" My lady," he would reply, " I hold they like the
smell of the wood."
Aaron was, in fact, his Christian name. The
reason why, in the rectory and in the Hall, he
was called Haroun was this :
Aaron was a man of one book, and that book was
the " Arabian Nights."
Many years ago a copy was given to the lending
library of the village, and was taken out by Aaron
99
ioo IN A QUIET VILLAGE
Price, the carpenter. He had not read three pages
before his mind was in the grip of the narrator.
He read, he did not sleep, he did not work, or
worked badly, he went to church, but did not pray
his mind had been carried up and away from the
present, away from the green Welsh valley in
which he lived, away, over the russet mountains to
the gorgeous East, and to the times when Jinns
were all-powerful unless controlled by Solomon's
seal, and magicians were as common as blackberries
and as mischievous as kittens.
Aaron very nearly fell into disrepute as a carpenter
on account of that book, so badly was his work
done when under the spell. But he rallied. He
became active, industrious, skilful once more, yet
never, thenceforth, was the witchery of the " Arabian
Nights " off his mind. He had no rest to his soul
till he had purchased a copy for himself, and from
that precious volume he read daily. He never
wearied of it ; he never wanted another book.
" Lord, sir, it is meat and drink to me ! " he
said once when questioned about it. He was
advised to give it up. " I couldn't do it," was his
reply. "Beside what would be the good? It's
in me, all over me, in every fibre. I know it from
one cover to the other."
"Then why not part with it if so familiar ?"
"Why don't you part with your wife because
you know her face and voice and thoughts ? I
couldn't do it. I love the book because so familiar
to me every tale, every word."
HAROUN THE CARPENTER 101
One day a note from the Hall told the rector that
the squiress had got a real treat for Haroun. She
was going to give him as a Christmas present
" Tales of the Genii."
The rector laid down his daily paper, took his hat
and stick, and pushed down to the Hall at once.
" My dear lady ! I implore you, do nothing of
the kind. Give him a book on practical carpenter-
ing or a dictionary of gardening. But another book
of Jinns and necromancers will turn poor Haroun
mad altogether."
Now and then, on a Sunday evening, the rector
would say to his wife, "Look here, Rosie, I could
read Haroun's mind to-day as he sat under the
pulpit, as though it were a book in large primer
type, open before me. He was very attentive when
I began my sermon, and he followed me some way,
but by degrees his eye became vacant, abstracted,
his expression of face altered, and I knew that he
was away with the Three Calenders, hearing why
Zobeide whipped the hounds."
"Harry," responded the rectoress, "you have
only yourself to blame. Try to be more interesting
when you preach."
" My dear Rosie," exclaimed the parson, " I do
my level best, but what pulpit discourse could ever
compete with ' Sindbad's Voyages ' or ( The Hunch-
back ' ? "
The good lady sighed and said, " Whatever will
Haroun do for a wife ? We have no Fatimas and
Zobeides in this village."
102 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
"I wish with all my heart that Haroun would
weave his own web of romance, fall in love, and
then he'd forget the ' Arabian Nights.' "
" In time this infatuation will wear off."
" I doubt it. This has now been going on for
years, and that book only works its way deeper
into his soul. Upon my word, Rosie, I believe
the Bible interests him only because of the wonders
that are in it."
"Then, my dear, I am sure you judge him wrong.
He is a good man, and God-fearing."
" Yes but oh ! so fantastical."
Aaron Price did not keep his treasury of stories
bottled up in his own breast. He was great at
retailing them, but he transferred the scenery to
Wales, translated Camaralzaman and Badoura into
David Jones and Sheena Williams, located every
incident in some well-known spot, and thoroughly
bewildered his hearers, who could not make out
whether he were poking fun at them or narrating
facts.
Perhaps the climax was reached when he con-
verted Ganem the slave of Love, into the amiable,
somewhat corpulent, and eminently respectable
squire, Sir John Vaughan, at Llanselyf. The whole
tale was told with so much circumstance and
such actuality, that next Sunday, when the squire
came to church, he found himself the object of in-
tense interest, observation, and private whispered
comment.
It may be remembered that in the original tale
HAROUN THE CARPENTER 103
Ganem was up a tree overhanging a cemetery
when he saw some slaves bury a chest, at the
dead of night, in the earth. When they were gone
he descended from the tree, dug down to and
opened the chest, when he found it contained a
lady of incomparable beauty who " as soon as she
was released from her confined situation, and ex-
posed to the open air began to sneeze, and half-
opening her eyes and rubbing them exclaimed,
'Zohorob Bostan (Flower of the Garden), Schagrom
Marglan (Branch of Coral), Cassabos Souccar
(Sugar-cane), Nouronnihar (Light of Day), Nag-
matos Sohi (Star of the Morning), Nouzhetos
Zaman (Delight of the Season), speak, where
are you ? ' "
This, as related by the carpenter, took a very
local and personal complexion. The incident was
transferred to the churct^ard of his own parish,
and to a certain elm tree that grew there; it was
Sir John Vaughan who climbed the tree, and the
lady when released from the box exclaimed, " Mary
Jones, my housemaid, Flower of the Garden, and
you, Susanna Rees, scullery-maid, Branch of Coral ;
and you also, Elizabeth Thomas, tweenie maid
and Sugar-cane; and you, Margaret Cole, the
lady's-maid, Light of Day, and under housemaid
Joan, Star of the Morning, and third housemaid
Wilmot, Delight of the Season, speak, my dear
tried servants, where are you ? "
Now, on this particular Sunday morning, not
only was Sir John an object of great interest, but so
io 4 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
was Lady Vaughan, and when, during the service,
she sneezed, it produced a general agitation ; so
also were the maid-servants of the family. On
their arrival there were nudgings, " Here comes
Branch of Coral, and there is Light of the Day.
But where is Flower of the Garden ? " To which
an answer came in a whisper, " Got a bad cold in
her head, and can't come to church."
Now, a remarkable occurrence in the parish took
place. Aaron, alias Haroun, fell in love, and Ibok
to courting Elizabeth Thomas, alias Sugar-cane,
alias Cassabos Souccar, the tweenie maid. It took
the whole parish by surprise, for Elizabeth was not
beautiful ; she had not the eyes or the frame, or
the svelte movements or the elastic tread of the
light gazelle. She was a somewhat heavily formed,
broad-shouldered, pudding-faced damsel, who could
not cross a room without rattling all the chimney
ornaments, and who had no more imagination and
genius than has a duck. And in what did the
attraction consist ? Why had Aaron not become
enamoured of the lady's-maid, a most willowy
person with a very sweet and refined face ? Why
not with the kitchen-maid, the Sprig of Coral, who
had indeed coralline lips, and who in time would
know how to boil a potato and do a chop so as
not to be done to leather. But a tweenie ! and
such a tweenie ! The whole parish discussed it
for a month. It was most astounding that the man
who romanced about every one and everything and
every place, should make such dead prose of his
HAROUN THE CARPENTER 105
own love affair. However, after this had been de-
bated in the servants' hall, at the forge, in the
stable, at the tavern, each such debate ended with
some one remarking sententiously, " After all, it is
his affair and not mine."
It is, however, a mistake to say that Aaron's
courtship was prosaic. That it was not so was
proved by one of his letters to Elizabeth Thomas,
which the girl carelessly left about; and it got
reJB, copied, and distributed through the village,
and excited much admiration at the splendour of
the style, till some one detected the original, of
which it was but a copy, in the story of Abdul
Hassan and Schemselnihar. Here is the epistle
"AARON PRICE, carpenter, to ELIZABETH
THOMAS, tweenie maid.
"Deprived of your presence, I seek to continue
the illusion, and converse with you by means of
these ill -formed lines, which afford me some
pleasure, while I am prevented the happiness of
speaking to you.
" Patience, they say, is the remedy of all evils ;
yet those I suffer are increased instead of relieved
by it. Although your image is indelibly engraven
on my heart, my eyes nevertheless wish again to
behold the original.
" These sentiments, which my fingers trace, and
in expressing which I feel such inconceivable
pleasure that I cannot repeat them too often,
io6 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
proceed from the bottom of my heart, from that
incurable wound you have made in it; a wound
which I bless a thousand times, notwithstanding
the cruel sufferings I endure in your absence.
" Do not imagine that my words convey more
than I feel. Alas ! whatever expressions I may
use, I shall still think much more than I can ever
say. My eyes, which never cease looking for you,
and incessantly weep till they shall behold you
again ; my afflicted heart, which seeks but you ; my
sighs, which escape my lips whenever I think on
you, and that is continually ; my imagination which
never reflects any object but my beloved prince
tweenie-maid ; the complaints I offer to heaven of
the rigour of my fate; in short, my melancholy,
my uneasiness, my sufferings, from which I have
had no respite since I lost sight of you, are all-
sufficient pledges of the truth of what I write. I
pray that we may be granted an opportunity of
telling each other, without restraint, the tender
affection we feel, and that we will never cease to
love. Farewell.
" I salute Lady Vaughan, to whom we each have
so many obligations."
Not to make too long a story of this. The course
of true love ran smoothly enough. The adored
tweenie took it all very calmly, very much as a
matter of course, and in due time they were
married.
No one supposed that they could be happy
HAROUN THE CARPENTER 107
together, so opposite were they to each other. Yet
never did the parish see a more affectionate and
devoted couple. Aaron "yarned" to his Bessie,
telling her his marvellous tales. She knitted or
darned listening with a stolid face, and when he
had done said, " Aaron, get along with your non-
sense, I don't believe in any of your marvels."
He took her unbelief in good part. If she did
not relish his tales, it was her misfortune and not
her fault. He was soul, she was body, and each
has its proper place in the economy of nature.
He was everything that was imaginative, she
was wholly commonplace, and the mixture in one
household produced not ferment, but peace.
" I wish," said Aaron, " I wish, Lizzie, I could
see wonders. I read of them, I think of them, I
tell of them, and yet I have never seen one."
Suddenly, to the amazement of every one, Aaron
died. He caught a chill that settled on his lungs,
and he was dead in three days. His wife attended
to him with devotion and unflagging solicitude.
One night he turned his bright feverish eyes on
her and said
" Liz ! kiss me. I'm going at last to see
wonders, and you won't say to me there, where
I am going : ' Get along with your nonsense.' "
He did not say another word, but passed in this
eager, expectant attitude of soul into the World
of Wonders.
Every one respected Haroun, though he had
perplexed all, and all had laughed at him. His
io& IN A QUIET VILLAGE
death was felt by all, and the entire parish attended
his funeral. Sir John Vaughan forgave having
been converted into Ganem, the slave of Love, and
he was there.
And when Aaron was gone, all said
" We can't, for certain, have a more pleasant and
romancing carpenter in his place, even if we get
which is doubtful a better workman."
And now I come to another singular fact, and
fact it is. The widow, Bessie Price, that dull,
inanimate, prosaic body soul none thought to call
her moped and drooped after his death. Nothing
roused her, nothing interested her, she seemed to
have lost everything when the earth closed over the
dear, rodomontading carpenter. Folk said at first,
" Bless you, she's not one to feel her loss. She
has not the depth in her."
But they were mistaken. She felt her loss so
deeply, so intensely, that without any apparent
malady, she drooped, faded, and from no perceptible
physical cause sank, and within twelve months,
this bit of putty or dough was laid by the quick-
silver of her husband.
And so, even in this dull, heavy creature there
was the poetry of love, the romance of a life
devoted to one man. Where Love is there is
the Spirit of Poesy.
SHONE EVANS
SHONE EVANS
SHONE, that is to say John, Evans was a miner
in the Dulais Valley, in South Wales, and a man
nearer forty than thirty.
The Dulais Valley had been solitary, with a
brawling mountain stream flowing between great
ridges of brown heathery moss-land, on which the
sheep had browsed and shone white in the sun.
But of late years there had come a transformation
of the scene. Coalpits had been opened. Plain,
ugly rows of houses had been run up. Tall
chimneys had been erected, chapels and churches,
public-houses, factories as well. What sheep still
fed on the hilltops were grey, if not black, for the
air was heavy with smoke, and the soot settled
everywhere, and not the sweetest herb could avoid
a flavour of soot, nor the fairest flower escape a
film of "smuts."
As for the sparkling, laughing Dulais, it had
turned to a sullen, dirty stream, of which nothing
was required but that it should carry off the scum
and sewage of the dense population that clogged
the valley and dug into the hills. In long-gone-by
days the stream had acquired its name of Black-
water, for so Dulais may be interpreted, from the
ii2 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
lyns and pools of bottle-green deeps, formed after
its leaps over the barriers of rocks. Now it merited
its name more truly, so sombre was it, in the midst
of heaps of coal refuse, and so soiled were its waters
with every sort of defilement.
"Man makes the town, God made the country,"
is a saying ; but it is only half true. God makes
the town, for He it is who has laid the beds of coal,
and run into the rock the veins of ore that draw
men to excavate them, and without which men
would hunger, and civilisation could not progress.
Beautiful on the hills of old were the harebells,
beautiful in the evening the glory of light that lit
up the russet hills ugly, maybe, is now the
mining settlement; and yet there is a loveliness
above that of harebell and bracken and heather
and foaming mountain rill in the lives of the men
and women who have invaded and displaced the
rude natural charms of the Dulais Valley. And
I am going to tell you of one of these beauties, and
thus I introduce you to Shone Evans.
The man himself was not comely. A broad-
shouldered, plain man, with a stoop such as is
often seen in colliers a reserved, a serious man,
and somewhat shy. Perhaps in this he was a
typical Welshman that he was full of tenderness
of heart and deep feeling, but at the least token
of ridicule or superciliousness, he closed like a
flower against rain, brooded over any injury his
feelings may have received, but he said nothing.
Centuries of isolation and of wrong done to the
SHONE EVANS 113
Welsh race have had this effect on them. They have
been sneered at, swaggered over by domineering
Saxons or tyrannical Normans, then exploited by
speculative North -countrymen; they have been
treated as men to be employed for the advantage
of others, and when useless, to be cast aside as
broken tools. Their idiosyncrasies have been the
subject of joke and scoff; their language has been
derided; their aspirations, national and individual,
disregarded. This has bred in them a sensitive-
ness that is foreign to the coarser Saxon a re-
serve that forms a crust about the manner that
is repellent to the stranger, if in that stranger there
be the smallest assumption of superiority. Yet
underneath lies the richest, deepest, purest vein of
golden love and goodwill that God, who formed
the mountains and made man, ever buried in the
human heart.
Shone had not married till he was some way
past thirty, and then, perhaps, more for convenience
than that passion which whirls most men into
matrimony; and about a year after his marriage
his wife gave him a little son, but did not recover
the confinement, and died.
Shone was left alone in the cottage with a baby,
and he had his daily work to accomplish in order
that he and his baby might live. He could not
neglect his work, and he would not neglect his
baby. Some neighbours offered to relieve him of
the child, but to this Shone was averse. The baby
was his; it was almost the only living being that
H
n 4 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
was absolutely, indisputably his own. And now it
was that the fountains of love in that closed and
sealed heart opened and gushed forth. He loved
that child with a love such as only a mother, one
might have supposed, could entertain for a poor
little, feeble, wailing lump of flesh.
Shone considered what he should do. He would
not commit the child to Martha Rees, who had
volunteered to take it, for she was a slovenly
person, and he could not be sure that she would
keep the little creature clean. Nor to Rachel Price,
for she was violent tempered when put out: she
might lose patience if the child cried, and maltreat
it, though usually she was a most good-natured
woman. Nor to Alice Tooker, for she was an
Englishwoman, and he would not have his child
reared save to the sound of the Welsh tongue, and
sung to sleep with Welsh lullabies.
Then Shone formed his resolve and to this he
adhered for many, many months.
One morning Shone appeared among the men of
his shift, presenting an aspect so surprising, that
at first his mates were silent with astonishment,
and then broke into laughter.
Shone had taken a sheet, and had cast it over
his left shoulder, then wound it round him, thrown
it over the right shoulder, and bound it about his
waist like a plaid, and between his shoulders, safely
bedded in the wraps, was his babe.
" Why, Shone, what have you brought the little
kid here for ? " was the general exclamation.
SHONE EVANS 115
"To make a collier of him," answered Evans
good-humouredly. He expected some chaff, and
did not take it amiss from his mates. But chaff
would not deter him from carrying out his purpose.
And here it must be observed that throughout
this story the conversation must be understood to
be translated from the Welsh, and will be, accord-
ingly, free from those colloquialisms or dialectic
terms that would be natural had it been carried on
by English speakers.
" Shone, you are not going to take the child
down the pit, surely ? "
"Yes, lam."
"Then he must pay his footing ! "
" You must give him something, mates, first with
which to pay," said Evans. " Or, hold ! he will
give you all round a swig at his bottle."
" His bottle ! You have brought that with you ? "
" Certainly," said Evans, and produced a feeder.
"Who will have a smack? Drink to the health of
the new hand ! "
" Not I," said one, "in milk and water ! "
" We would not deprive him of the least taste ! "
said another.
Instinctively, and at once, these rough men under-
stood and appreciated Shone's conduct; he might
have to, and he did, encounter good-natured jokes
he was called " Mammy Shone," but nothing was
said in ridicule that could wound. In every heart
there sprang up great respect for Shone; and as
to the babe, he became the pet of the coalpit.
ii6 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
Thenceforth, whether Evans were on day or
night shift, when he went down to his work the
child went with him, lodged between his shoulder-
blades. When he reached his place where he had
to work, he unfolded the sheet often grimy, it
could not be other made up a nest of it among
lumps of coal, and placed the little creature in the
folds, with its feeding-bottle accessible. And as
he toiled he turned his head over his shoulder
every now and then to say an endearing word, and
to soothe the child should it begin to cry.
When the men assembled for a meal, there were
consultations held as to what was suitable for the
stomach if griped, or the gums, should there appear
a rash about the chin and lips ; also as to whether
the proportions of milk and sugar and water were
correct; and a lively and heated discussion broke
out relative to a suggestion made by one collier
that he had known a drop of gin added with the
best possible effects not, of course, regularly, but
when there was stomach-ache. Moreover, in the
relaxation from work, the babe was passed round
and dandled and fondled, admired and remarked
upon by the colliers, and fulsome expressions of
admiration were lavished upon it, which may or
may not have been appropriate ; but seeing that the
infant succeeded in begriming its face and entire
body with coal-dust after the first few minutes that
it had been below, it was not possible for any one
to pronounce a well-balanced and justified opinion
on its personal appearance.
SHONE EVANS 117
However, affection sees not with ordinary eyes,
and as the child was loved by every man and boy
in the pit, its beauties were accepted as absolutely
beyond dispute.
Now although every collier set himself up to be
an authority on baby-culture, and pumped his wife
for information which he might retail as his own,
acquired experimentally, when next he was below,
yet there was an elderly man named Ebenezer
Llewellyn who had been the father of fourteen
children, ten of which were living, and who was,
therefore, by common consent, regarded as a prin-
cipal authority on the management of babies ; and
when Ebenezer pronounced an opinion, all bowed
to it, whether on the constitution of milk or the
adoption of fuller's earth. Llewellyn did not hold
by violet powder; he said coal-dust was better, if
sufficiently fine.
On one occasion, in a panic, Shone rushed after
Ebenezer to another portion of the pit to bid him
come to his assistance the child was strangling.
According to his account it had got a lump of coal
into its mouth twice as big as its head, and Shone
could not get it out.
" There is no room in the mouth for my finger
to be inserted so as to whisk it out. Come quick,
Llewellyn, or the child will be dead it is black
in the face."
" But it always is," said Ebenezer.
" I mean turning black between the coal grains and
where its tears have washed the face. Come at once."
u8 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
The father of fourteen, that man of wide experience,
obeyed. He sat down, took the infant on his lap, and
dexterously with his little ringer worked the piece of
coal out of the mouth ; whereupon the babe set up a
howl that rang down the passages of the mine.
" I will tell you what is in prospect," said
Llewellyn sententiously. " This kid is getting to
use his hands. He will lay hold of everything he
can touch, and he will put whatever he grips into
his mouth. They all do it. I have had fourteen
and have raised ten, so I ought to know. This is
the most critical period in the lives of little ones,
and if you don't mind, he'll eat up all your output
every day truckloads of coals he'll put away, if
you let him."
"But I will not allow him."
"Then you must sit over him and watch his
every movement."
" I cannot do that."
" There it is that women come in to be of some
use in the world. They can look after male babies
when they are in the grabbing and devouring age
that's about teething time. You see how he
dribbles. That," pursued Ebenezer gravely "that
comes of the gums being strained and painful.
Babes, at this period, must bite* it's a necessity.
They will bite anything. I've had fourteen, so I
ought to know. This is a terribly critical time."
Shone left the pit that day depressed and medi-
tative. As it happened, he encountered the doctor,
who hailed him
SHONE EVANS 119
" What, Evans ! still nursing your baby ? "
"Yes, sir," answered the collier gravely. "I
had a bit of difficulty with him to-day ; he shovelled
about half a ton of coals into his mouth, and
Ebenezer Llewellyn and I had a sight of trouble
in getting him to disgorge."
"You take my advice as a sensible man," said
the surgeon. " It is, first, if you value the child,
to give it more sun and air ; it wants it. Sun and
air are more than beef and bread. If the little
chap were not as black as a hedgehog, curled up
there at your back, I should say it was bleached
like sea-kale. It won't do, Shone. The child now
must be brought up upon another system; that is,
if you desire it to live and be healthy and happy
unless you have insured its life, and want to get
it under ground altogether, so as to pocket the
insurance money."
Evans turned as blank as he could, considering
the grime on his face. His jaw dropped.
" But wherever am I to put him ? " he asked.
" Now, I have been wanting to see you about
this for some while," said the surgeon, who was
a thoroughly good-hearted man, and who valued
and admired Shone. "There is Shian Thomas, the
dressmaker, as good and steady a wench as I know.
She is very badly off. She has been caring for
her poor little crippled sister for several years.
Now the child is dead, and she has had heavy
expenses, what with doctor's bill mine, you
know "
120 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
"Ah!" said Evans, "I know better than that.
You were never hard on the widow or the orphan.
What is hard, is to get you to take anything for
your trouble when folks are in need themselves."
" Well, well ! there was the funeral and the
mourning," said the doctor, laughing and colouring
at the same time. "Now Shian [Jane] mopes for
the loss of her sister, and I am sure I am as sure
of this as of anything that if you confided the
young shaver to her, it would be good for her, good
for the child, and" he said the last words as he
turned away " in the end might be good for you."
Evans walked on his way meditatively. He did
not act at once. He waited a day or two. But as
the acquisitiveness of the babe became more pro-
nounced, he resolved to put it beyond temptation,
where it could not devour coals ; and so he arranged
with Shian Thomas that she should look after his
child at such time, day and night, as he was at
work. But as soon as ever he returned from the
pit, whether in the very early morning before dawn,
or whether in the afternoon, he was to reclaim the
child and carry it home with him. He would not
be in the house without it ; but he brought himself
to admit that now it was advisable, if not necessa^,
that it should no longer go down the pit with him
till, as he said, " he comes of age and takes it upon
himself."
He undertook to make a small payment to Shian
for her trouble, which was of assistance to her in
her then straitened circumstances.
SHONE EVANS 121
"And you may reckon on this, Shone," said she,
" I'll take every bit as much care of him as if he
were my own. There is an empty place in my
house, and in my heart, since I have lost Bessie,
and I will put the little man there."
A couple of weeks under the care of Shian told
on the child. He put on fat, became more merry,
crowed, chirped, and waxed rosy.
It was a delight to his father to see him, and he
did not always return from the pit alone. One day
he brought with him Ebenezer Llewellyn to criticise
the babe and judge whether the improvement was
real or fictitious. He, a father of fourteen children,
ten of whom he had reared, after weighing the little
one and turning down his lips to see if the colour
were red, gave verdict that was favourable. Then
came what Shian called " the committee," a body of
workmen on the shift with Shone, to see with their
own eyes that all was going on well with the
" shaver." He belonged to the pit, and all the men
felt an interest in him, and all wanted to be satis-
fied that the child was flourishing. All wished to
have their say about him, and to give Shian advice
as to how he was to be dieted and clothed.
More critical than the rest was Shone, and the
dressmaker was obliged to be forbearing with him,
for his criticism became at times captious. As, for
instance, on one occasion when he came to resume
the child and found she had cut out for its amuse-
ment a score of dancing men and women, the latter
with tall Welsh hats, holding hands, capering
122 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
vigorously she had cut them with her scissors
out of a sheet of folded paper Shone put on a
grave face.
" I think you should not have encouraged levity
in the boy," said he. " I wouldn't have the idea
put into his head that men and women are created
to dance."
"But, Shone, they are only paper."
" Paper or flesh and blood is all the same. They
are dancing. I don't like it. You can't be too
careful with a child. It's just when they're young
that they take in ideas, as they do nourishment
they suck it in in buckets."
11 How would you have me cut them out ?
walking to chapel ? "
"That would be better."
" Shone, if I do that, I must make them prance.
One cannot cut out these paper men and women
without giving them high action. You would not
have a whole train of them prancing to church like
war-horses ! "
The fact of the case was that Shone was slightly
jealous. His child had taken to Shian, he clung
to her, dabbed his little mouth over her cheek in
kisses, and was distinctly more happy with her
than with his father.
Shone was conscious of it, and fought against it.
He reasoned with himself; but could not reason
himself out of his jealousy.
Had his child not put on fat, not gained in colour
had it become peevish, he would have blamed the
SHONE EVANS 123
young woman, and taken it away. But when not
only Ebenezer, but also the "committee," and his
own consciousness assured him that all was well
with the infant better than it had been when it
lived half its time underground then he could not
withdraw it from Shian, save for those hours when
he was free from work.
So matters went on for a while, and then the
situation became aggravated, for the child began to
cry when he took it in his arms to remove it, and
stretched forth its little hands to Shian, and sobbed,
and would not be comforted by the father. It
fretted when at home, it screamed, moaned, was
restless. Shone thought it must be ill, and con-
sulted a doctor; he battled against the assurance
that nothing ailed the child, save its temporary
separation from the woman who was as a mother
to it.
. He worked himself into excitement against Shian ;
she was stealing his child's heart from him. But
his good sense returned. She was not willingly
doing this. It was due to the irresistible. The
natural nurse of a babe is a woman, and not a man,
and the child instinctively clings to the nurse.
" I pay her six shillings for it," grumbled Shone.
" He ought to understand that she is a hireling and
not his mother."
This he said to the doctor, to whom, perhaps
unguardedly, he had let out what embittered his
heart.
" Quite so, Evans," answered the surgeon. " But
i2 4 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
as the child has not as yet reached the age of
reason in which it can draw such distinctions, why
do you not make Shian its mother ? "
Shone opened his eyes, stared at his adviser,
turned his back, and walked away.
But the advice stuck.
Here was a solution to the difficulty, yet not one
very pleasing to the collier. He brooded over his
wrong, and also over the redress that lay open to
him. Not a word could be said against Shian.
She was a quiet, hard-working, steady girl.
Shone had taken to her stockings to be darned,
garments to be mended, and had paid her for her
work. He was obliged occasionally to call in the
aid of a charwoman to do his washing, and also to
clean up his house. As to his bit of cooking, he
did that himself, but was not skilful at the fire and
oven. He fared poorly, and was not infrequently
out of sorts the cause, his own bad cooking.
Now all these inconveniences would be rectified
had he a wife and yet and yet Shone shook
his head.
Then an epidemic of scarlet fever broke out in
the Dulais Valley. Shone was frightened. For the
sake of his child he considered what was to be
done. Some provision must be made. If the little
one sickened, who was to attend to it ? and at-
tention it would need day and night. The proper
person would be Shian a stranger would never
do. But Shian he could not bid her nurse the
child in his house, and to have it throughout the
SHONE EVANS 125
long sickness in hers, and he not with it that
would never do. Besides, she was a dressmaker.
She could not take in needlework when there was
risk of infection in her house. Shone stamped.
What was to be done ?
" How is it ? " he asked, as he came back from
the pit.
"Very well, Shone. As usual, very cheerful."
" No signs of a sore throat ? Have you looked ? "
" None at all."
" But suppose he were to get it ? "
"Get what?"
"The scarlatina."
"You need not suppose it. He is quite well."
" We must provide against the worst."
" The worst, Shone ! "
" Oh ! " with a shiver, " I do not mean the worst
at all God forbid; but against his catching the
fever."
" Well, what will you do ? "
" Do, Shian ? There is nothing else to be done
but for you to marry me. You see I do it for
the babe's sake, and because of the infection."
She was surprised a little amused.
"And," put in Shone, a little apologetically,
"there are my stockings want mending. But,
really, for the child's sake, I wish it."
" I suppose, Shone, if the poor little chap were
to be taken ill, he'd be removed from here ? "
" No doubt of it. The sanitary officer wouldn't
allow it here."
126 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
" Nor could I nurse it ? "
" Certainly not."
"Well, then, Shone, for the scarlatina's sake I
don't mind if I do take you."
"Then," said Shone, "we must look sharp. Let
me see his throat. He might have it come on
sudden. I'll get a license."
It was certainly an odd proposal and a queer
acceptance, and no expense was spared.
"Bless me," said Shone, "for the child's sake,
and because of the scarlet fever, I will stump up
a guinea for the license."
So Shone and Shian were married ; and the child
did not get scarlatina so that all this trouble and
expense were, in Shone's eyes, thrown away.
" Might just as well have chucked it all down a
disused coalpit ! " said he.
Positively he became grumpy and querulous be-
cause his child showed no signs of drowsiness, sore
throat, and eruption. Not that he wished it to be
ill, but he wanted a justification of his marriage.
Shian did her utmost to make him comfortable.
She brought the cottage to a condition of scrupulous
cleanliness; she took in hand all his clothes, she
mended them, and made some that he had dis-
carded as neat as new. She did the washing in
a manner very different from that of the charwoman.
Above all, she cooked really-appetising meals that
made Shone's face relax.
No sooner did he return from the pit than at
once she put the child in his arms. She made no
SHONE EVANS 127
attempt to stand between it and the father. On the
contrary, she talked to the little creature of its
daddy when he was away, and encouraged it to look
out for his return. Indeed, as he came up the
street every day, he could see Shian at the door
holding up the child; he could see its arms ex-
tended, and the hands clapping with pleasure at
his appearance.
Shian felt that she was an accessory, not a prime
factor in the house and in the well-being of Shone
the baby was the monarch, engrossing all his
affection, occupying all his thoughts. She was
accepted as a necessity, as conducing to the health
and happiness of the child one who could be and
would be dispensed with unless needed for the
child's sake. But she was a patient, sweet, and
uncomplaining woman. She was not a little sad
at heart, and the tears often filled her eyes. She
coveted some of the kisses, some of the endearing
terms lavished on the child some, also, of the glow
of love that lit up the father's eyes as he watched
his babe. Oh, if only, as he returned from the pit,
he had looked at her a little just a little instead
of fixing his eyes, from the first moment he saw it
till he had it in his arms, on the child. But she
had been taken into the house, had become Shone's
wife, for the sake of the child ; and she submitted
to be regarded with just so much consideration as
behoved a dutiful servant to the little one.
Time went on. Shone began to mend in spirits.
He looked more respectable on Sundays; his
128 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
digestion was better; he had no more unpleasant
attacks after a meal of what might have been beef,
but was leather, which had troubled him at one
time. He had now Yorkshire pudding dipped in
gravy ; he had not that in the days of his widower-
ship.
He began to have words for Shian relative to
other topics than the baby. She caught him, by the
firelight as he smoked in the evening and she
knitted observing her attentively.
Then came Christmas Day.
Now there were sprigs of holly stuck in the
windows and about the mantelpiece. The fire
blazed, and was reflected in the burnished Bristol
ware that shone on the dresser as though real
copper. And there was a savoury smell in the
house.
" Goose ! " exclaimed Shone. " By the powers
goose ! And sage and onions," said he, after a
pause "I smell them. Goodness me, I wish the
boy were old enough to enjoy it all."
" Here, father," said Shian, as she laid the dinner
" here you are goose, yes ; onion and sage
yes. You would not have goose alone, surely ? "
"Well," said Shone, and his face beamed with
peace and goodwill, " well to be sure."
" And " when the first course was over " I
have another pleasure in store for you."
"That is "
" See ! " Shian introduced a little Christmas tree,
manufactured out of a branch of fir, and to it were
SHONE EVANS 129
hung two just two articles: a cap lined with
swansdown, and trimmed with cherry ribbons, and
a long pair of newly-knitted stockings. " There,"
said Shian, "for baby and you your Christmas
presents. I bring it now, whilst he is awake, that
he may enjoy it with us."
" Well," gasped Shone, " this is delightful ! How
lovely the child will look in such a glorious bonnet.
And how warm my legs will be in these beautiful
stockings."
"That is not all," said Shian.
" What more can there be ? "
" This ! " And she dished up a real Christmas
plum-pudding.
When Shone saw this the tears came into his
eyes.
" Why, Shian ! " he said, and felt a pinch of
the heart, "you have thought for every one but
yourself!"
" No, no, father," said she. " I have had some of
the goose, and shall of the plum-pudding."
" Some some ! " said he impatiently. " But
there is nothing for yourself particularly."
Then he jumped up, ran behind her at table,
caught her head in his arms, pressed her face to
his heart, and covered brow and lips with kisses.
" O Shian ! You have my love my very
heart ! "
" Because of baby ? "
"No, not only; because "
"Of the goose?"
I
130 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
" No no, not only ; because
" Of the plum-pudding ? "
"No no; I mean "
" Because of the long stockings ?"
"No, Shian; because of yourself, your own dear,
sweet self the best in the world ! "
" That is my Christmas box, Shone ! You could
not have given me a better."
HENRY FROST
HENRY FROST
THERE is no myth relative to the manners and
customs of the English that in my experience is
more tenaciously held by the ordinary Frenchman,
than that the sale of a wife in the market-place is
an habitual and an accepted fact in English life.
It is so far as my experience goes quite use-
less to assure a Frenchman that such transfer of
wives is not a matter of every-day occurrence and
is not legal; he replies, with an expression of in-
credulity, that of course English people endeavour
to make light of, or deny a fact that is " notorious."
In a book by the antiquary Colin de Plancy,
on Legends and Superstitions connected with the
Sacraments, he gives up some pages to an account
of the prevalent English custom.
When I was in France a few years ago, in a
town church in the south, I heard an abb6 once
preach on marriage, and contrast its indissolu-
bility in Catholic France with the laxity in Pro-
testant England, where "any one, when tired of
his wife, puts a halter round her neck, takes her
to the next market town and sells her for what
she will fetch." I ventured to call on this abbe
and remonstrate, but he answered me he had seen
133
134 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
the fact stated in books of the highest authority,
and that my disputing the statement did not prove
that his authorities were wrong, but that my ex-
perience was limited, and he asked me point-blank
whether I had never known such cases. There,
unhappily, he had me on the hip. And when I
was obliged to confess that I did know of one
such case, "Mais, voila, mon Dieu," said he, and
shrugged his shoulders with a triumphant smile.
Now it must be allowed that such sales have
taken place, and that this is so is due to rooted
conviction in the rustic mind that such a transaction
is legal and morally permissible.
The case I knew was this.
There lived a tall, thin man in the parish when
I was a boy, who was the village poet. Whenever
an event of any consequence took place within the
confines of the parish, such as the marriage of the
squire's daughter, he came down to the manor-
house with a copy of verses he had composed on
the occasion, and was then given his dinner and a
crown. Now this man had actually bought his wife
for half-a-crown. Her husband had led her into
Okehampton and had sold her there in the market.
The poet purchased her for half the sum he had
received for one of his poems, and led her home
with him, a distance of twelve miles, by the halter,
he holding it in his hand, she placidly, contentedly,
wearing the loop about her neck.
The report that Henry Frost was leading home his
half-crown wife preceded the arrival of the couple,
HENRY FROST 135
and when they entered the village all the inhabitants
turned out to see the spectacle.
Now this arrangement was not very satisfactory
to either squire or rector, and both intervened.
Henry Frost maintained that Anne was his legiti-
mate wife, for "he had not only bought her in the
market, but had led her home, with the halter in
his hand, and he'd take his Bible oath that he
never took the halter off her till she had crossed
his doorstep and he had shut the door."
The parson took down the Bible, the squire
" Burn's Justice of Peace," and strove to convince
Harry that his conduct was warranted by neither
Scripture nor the law of the land. " I don't care,"
he said, "her's my wife, as sure as if we was
spliced at the altar, for and because I paid half-a-
crown, and I never took off the halter till her was
in my house ; lor' bless yer honours, you may ask
any one if that ain't marriage, good, sound, and
Christian, and every one will tell you it is."
Mr. Henry Frost lived in a cottage that was on
lives, so the squire was unable to bring compulsion
to bear on him.
When I call the man Frost, I am not employing
his real name, because his relatives are alive, and I
know them very well.
Frost, as already intimated, was village bard or
poet. I remember well his coming down to the
house with a poem on a transaction of ni}^ father's,
the advisability of which I now greatly doubt.
In our village, the "revel" was kept up every
136 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
year on the first Sunday after Trinity Sunday,
and the week following. A revel in Devonshire
is the equivalent of the wake in other parts of
England, and of the feast in Cornwall. It used to
be celebrated on the day of the saint to whom the
parish church is dedicated. But when the new
style came into use, the conservative rustic mind
resisted the change and adhered to the computation
according to the unrevised calendar. Accordingly,
in most places the feast or revel is eleven days after
the day of the patron saint. In some places, how-
ever, it is movable. Now our church is dedicated
to St. Peter, accordingly our revel ought to be on
the nearest Sunday after June 29. It is rare indeed
that the first Sunday after Trinity should fall so late,
and impossible, I believe, that it could synchronise
with old-style St. Peter's Day. In 1899 the first
Sunday after Trinity was on June 4 twenty-five
days before new-style St. Peter's Day, and thirty-six
before the feast reckoned by the old style.
There is, however, some reason to believe that
the earlier dedication was to St. Petrock, whose day is
June 4, and that the title of the church was altered
in 1261, when reconsecrated. The bishops of Exeter
always endeavoured to get rid of the patron saints
when belonging to the Celtic Church, and substitute
for them some who were in the Roman calendar.
The revel at Lew Trenchard agreed much more
closely with St. Petrock's Day than with that of St.
Peter the Apostle.
However, this is neither here nor there. The revel
HENRY FROST 137
was kept up with shows, a fair, and horse-races, and
it must be allowed there was some drunkenness.
My father, as squire, and in those days an
autocrat, disapproved of the revel and abolished it,
and substituted for it a cottage garden show, on
no very determined date. The revel has never
recovered, and the flower show, after living for two
years, died a natural death.
I do not myself believe in the destruction of
any ancient institution. Let it be reformed, but
never abolished.
Well, now to the point.
Henry Frost appeared on the occasion of the first
flower show with a poem composed to celebrate the
birth of the cottage garden exhibition and the
burial of the revel. It was very laudatory of my
father, and every verse concluded with the refrain
" For he had a most expansive mind."
He had used incredible effort to obtain suitable
rhymes. In one verse he had
" In laudable efforts he was not behind,
For, &c."
Another ran-
" To drunken abuses never was blind,
For, &c."
Another, in doubtful grammar, ran
" Among his comperes greatly he shined,
For, &c."
"Ah," said my father, "all Henry Frost thinks
138 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
of in his innermost mind is that I should have a
most expansive pocket, and that he may be able to
get drunk on what he draws from it in reward for
his poem."
When Anne died, then a difficulty arose : under
what name was she to be entered in the register ?
The parson insisted that he could not and he would
not enter her as Anne Frost, for that was not her
legal name. Then Henry was angry, and carried
her off to be buried in another parish, where the
parson was unacquainted with the circumstances. I
must say that Anne proved an excellent " wife." She
was thrifty, clean, and managed a rough-tempered
and rough-tongued man with great tact, and was
generally respected. She died in or about 1843.
Much later than that there lived a publican some
miles off, whom I knew very well; indeed he was
the namesake of and first cousin to a carpenter in my
constant employ. He bought his wife for a stone
two-gallon jar of Plymouth gin, if I was informed
aright. She had belonged to a stonecutter, but as
he was dissatisfied with her, he put up a written
notice in several public places to this effect
NOTICE.
This here be to hinform the publick as how
G C be dispozed to sell his wife by
Auction. Her be a dacent, clanely woman,
and be of age twenty- five ears. The sale be to
take place in the ... Inn, Thursday next at
seven o'clock.
HENRY FROST 139
In this case also I do not give the names, as the
woman is, I believe, still alive. I believe as I was
told that the foreman of the works remonstrated,
and insisted that such a sale would be illegal. He
was not, however, clear as to the points of law, and
he asserted that it would be illegal unless the
husband held an auctioneer's license, and if money
passed. This was rather a damper. However,
the husband was very desirous to be freed from his
wife, and he held the sale as he had advertised,
making the woman stand on a table, and he armed
himself with a little hammer. The biddings were
to be in kind and not in money. One man offered
a coat, but as he was a small man and the seller was
stout, when he found that the coat would not fit
him he refused it. Another offered a " phisgie," i.e.
a pick, but this also was refused, as the husband
possessed a "phisgie" of his own. Finally the
landlord offered a two-gallon jar of gin, and down
fell the hammer with "gone."
I knew the woman; she was not bad looking.
The new husband drank, and treated her very
roughly, and on one occasion when I was lunching
at the inn she had a black eye. I asked her how
she had hurt herself. She replied that she had
knocked her face against the door, but I was told
that this was a result of a domestic brawl. Now,
the remarkable feature in these cases is that it is
impossible to drive the idea out of the heads of
those who thus deal in wives that such a transaction
is not sanctioned by law and religion. In a parish
140 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
register in my neighbourhood is the following
entry
1756. Robert Elford was baptized, child of
Susanna Elford by her sister's husband; she
was married with the consent of her sister, the
wife, who was at the wedding.
In this instance there is no evidence of a sale,
but we may be sure that money did pass and that
the contractor of the new marriage believed it was
a right and proper union, although perhaps irregular;
and the first wife unquestionably believed that she
was acting in observance of a legal right in trans-
ferring her husband to her sister. There are in-
stances in which country people have gone before a
local solicitor and have had a contract of sale drawn
up for the disposal of their wives. The Birmingham
police court in 1853 had to adjudicate on such a case,
and the astounding thing in this instance was that a
lawyer could be found to draw up the contract. It
is no wonder that the magistrates administered a
very severe reprimand. But there was a far earlier
case than this that of Sir William de Paganel. The
lady stoutly and indignantly resisted the transfer,
and appealed against the contract to the law, which
declared the sale to be null and void.
In 1815 a man held a regular auction in the
market-place at Pontefract, offering his wife at a
minimum bidding of one shilling, but he managed
to excite a competition, and she was finally knocked
down for eleven shillings.
HENRY FROST 141
In 1820 a man named Brouchet led his wife, a
decent, pleasant-looking woman, but with a tongue
in her mouth, into the cattle-market at Canterbury
from the neighbouring village of Broughton. He
required a salesman to dispose of her, but the sales-
man replied that his dealings were with cattle only,
and not with women. Brouchet, not to be beaten,
thereupon hired a cattle-pen, paying sixpence for
the hire, and led his wife into it by the halter that
was round her neck. She did not fetch a high
figure, being disposed of to a young man of
Canterbury for five shillings.
In 1832, on 7th April, a farmer named Joseph
Thomson came into Carlisle with his wife, to whom
he had been married three years before; he sent
the bellman round the town to announce a sale,
and this attracted a great crowd. At noon the sale
took place. Thomson placed his wife on a chair,
with a rope of straw round her neck. He then said
according to the report in the " Annual Register,"
" Gentlemen, I have to offer to your notice, my
wife, Mary Anne Thomson, otherwise Williams,
whom I mean to sell to the highest and fairest
bidder. Gentlemen, it is her wish as well as mine
to part for ever. She has been to me only a born
serpent. I took her for my comfort, and the good
of my home; but she became my tormentor, a
domestic curse. Gentlemen, I speak the truth from
my heart when I say may God deliver us from
troublesome wives and frolicsome women ! Avoid
them as you would a mad dog, or a roaring lion, a
142 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
loaded pistol, cholera morbus, Mount Etna, or any
other pestilential thing in nature. Now I have
shown you the dark side of my wife, and told you
her faults and failings, I will introduce the bright
and sunny side of her, and explain her qualifications
and goodness. She can read novels and milk cows;
she can laugh and weep with the same ease that
you could take a glass of ale when thirsty. Indeed,
gentlemen, she reminds me of what the poet says
of women in general
' Heaven gave to women the peculiar grace
To laugh, to weep, to cheat the human race.'
She can make butter and scold the maid ; she can
sing Moore's melodies, and plait her frills and caps ;
she cannot make rum, gin, or whisky, but she is a
good judge of the quality from long experience in
tasting them. I therefore offer her with all her
perfections and imperfections for the sum of fifty
shillings."
That this sermon was spoken by Thomson is
most improbable it is doubtless put into his
mouth by the editor of the " Annual Register";
it was not to his interest to depreciate the article
he desired to sell. After about an hour the woman
was knocked down to one Henry Mears, for twenty
shillings and a Newfoundland dog. They then
parted company in perfect good - humour, each
satisfied with his bargain; Mears and the woman
went one way, and Thomson and the dog another.
In 1835 a man led his wife by a halter, in pre-
HENRY FROST 143
cisely the same way, into the market at Birmingham,
and sold her for fifteen pounds. She at once went
home with the purchaser. She survived both buyer
and seller, and then married again. Some property
came to her in the course of years from her first
husband; for notwithstanding claims put forth by
his relatives she was able to maintain in a court of
law that the sale did not and could not vitiate her
rights as his widow.
Much astonishment was caused in 1837 in the
West Riding of Yorkshire by a man being com-
mitted to prison for a month with hard labour for
selling or attempting to sell his wife by auction in
the manner already described. It was generally and
firmly believed that he was acting within his rights.
In 1858, in a tavern at Little Horton, near
Bradford, a man named Hartley Thomson put up
his wife, who is described by the local journals as
a pretty young woman, for sale by auction, and he
had the sale previously announced by sending
round the bellman. He led her into the market
with a ribbon round her neck, which exhibits an
advance in refinement over the straw halter; and
again in 1859, a man at Dudley disposed of his
wife in a somewhat similar manner for sixpence.
A feature in all these instances is the docility with
which the wife submits to be haltered and sold.
She would seem to have been equally imbued with
the idea that there was nothing to be ashamed of in
the transaction, and that it was perfectly legal.
If we look to see whence originated the idea, we
i 4 4 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
shall probably find it in the conception of marriage
as a purchase. Among savage races, the candidate
for marriage is expected to pay the father for his
daughter. A marriageable girl is worth so many
cows or so many reindeer. The man pays over a
sum of money or its equivalent to the father, and
in exchange receives the girl. If he desires to be
separated from her he has no idea of giving her
away, but receives what is calculated to be her
market value from the man who is disposed to
relieve him of her. In all dealings for cattle, or
horses, or sheep, a handsel is paid, half-a-crown to
clinch the bargain, and the transfer of coin con-
stitutes a legal transfer of authority and property
over the animal. This is applied to a woman, and
when a coin, even a sixpence, is paid over and
received, the receiver regards this as releasing him
from all further possession of the wife, who at once
passes under the hand of the purchaser. There
is probably no trace in our laws of women having
been thus regarded as negotiable properties, but
it is unquestionable that at an early period, before
Christianity invaded the island, such a view was
held, and if here and there the rustic mind is unable
to rise to a higher view of the marriage state, it
shows how extremely slow it is for opinions to alter
when education has been neglected.
MILK-MAIDS
MILK-MAIDS
IT is a sad subject for reflection that, among the
extinct animals, we should have to reckon the milk-
maids of Old England the theme of so much poetry,
the subject of such charming pictures.
The dodo exists now solely in a few specimens
preserved in glass cases in two or at the outside
three museums. The mammoth is discovered rarely
embedded in blocks of ice under the Arctic Circle.
The gigantic moa of New Zealand is recovered only
from its scattered bones. The Great Auk was last
seen off the coast of Waterford in 1834. Her
egg sells for about a hundred pounds. A species
of the English milk-maid is said to exist on the
High Alps, and is called the Sennerin, but is
so unlike the milk-maid of English picture and
story, that naturalists are disposed to dispute it as
a species, and regard it as belonging to a different
genus.
Again, those temperate and frugal beings who
frequent the A.B.C. establishments in London, and
get a drink of milk for a penny and sandwiches for
twopence, will see there very interesting and even
charming specimens of the modern milk-maid, but in
build, in plumage, and in habit, totally unlike the
147
148 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
milk-maid we knew from nursery rhyme, and from
illustrations. The old milk-maid save the mark!
the milk -maid was never old, her youth was
perennial I mean the milk-maid who lived and
flourished in Britain till about 1834, when she
disappeared along with the aka impennis was
fresh faced, rosy cheeked, strongly built, wore light
cotton gowns and white aprons ; carried her arms
bare, sang cheerily as she went about her work,
and had a tendency to become "bouncing." Her
habitat was a country farm, and she was to be
found frequenting the fields, the cowshed, and the
dairy.
The specimens exhibited by the Aerated Bread
Company, on the other hand, are pale com-
plexioned, somewhat lily faced, of a willowy build,
always with plumage that is black, except for a
white apron, the arms are clothed in black save
for neat white cuffs about the wrists; they move
silently, and are never seen in country pastures,
only in A. B.C. refreshment places in London, and
such large towns as can maintain these useful
establishments.
But the difference extends further. The milk-
maid of olden time was not exactly a wading,
web-footed being, but she had large feet and shoes
of the most solid, broad description, very necessary,
as she was constrained to make her way through
farm-yards over ankles in mud, or to go through
the task of milking cows in byres or linneys that
were well, the reverse of clean. As to the
MILK-MAIDS 149
modern milk-maid, it suffices to look at her feet
like those described by Sir John Suckling,
" Her feet beneath her petticoat,
Like little mice, steal in and out
As if they feared the light,"
to be quite satisfied that she is not descended
from, nor is a true variant of the milk-maid of
olden time. The same Sir John Suckling ad-
mirably portrays the latter
" No grape that's kindly ripe could be,
So round, so plump, so soft as she,
Nor half so full of juice."
It is obvious this does not describle the A.B.C. milk-
lass. The latter is a banana, the former an apple.
" Where are you going, my pretty maid ?
I'm going a-milking, sir, she said."
No maids now go a-milking, that is why there
are no true milk-maids. The old order changeth.
Nowadays in the country it is the men who
milk. Women cannot be found to do it. They
object to the trudge through the dirt, and the
planting of the three-legged peggy-stool, and their
feet in the oozy substance that forms the cushion
enveloping the floor of the cow stall. I do not
blame them. It is a dirty place.
But the milking of the cows in the byre was
itself a novelty. Formerly the operation took place
in the meadows, where it was clean enough, and
150 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
the feet were in the sweet grass. The milk-girl
filled her pails, adjusted a hoop that they might
not swing against and spill over her cotton dress,
and carried the pails to the dairy, singing as she
went. But the weather is not always bright, and
it was not only unpleasant, but unsafe, to milk out
of doors in the rain ; so the cattle were driven
under cover, and there the dirt speedily grew to be
deep, and presently the girls found it intolerable
to have to wade in mire, so the final stage was
that they abandoned the milking to the men.
Do the cows like it as well? I trow not.
Surely the woman's hand is best for the process.
A woman instinctively knows how to milk. All
men cannot acquire the art, and cows are well
aware as to which are skilful milkers and which
are not. A man may be a good milker, a woman
always is one. That is the difference. What a
charming sketch that is of Caldecott's of the " maid
who milked the cow with the crumpled horn," in
his illustrated story of the House that Jack Built !
When our children nowadays recite that nursery
doggerel, the words concerning that maid who
milked the cow are not understood by them.
They are an anachronism; for as soon as they
know anything they know that no maiden all
forlorn or all smiles, no maiden whatever, does
now milk cows. And to conceive the idea of a
"man all tattered and torn" approach and kiss
such a milk-maid as occupies a position in an
Aerated Bread Company's establishment, is to de-
MILK-MAIDS 151
mand of their young intelligences something too
preposterous.
Do you remember old Izaak Walton's account of
the milk-maid with her merry songs ? How he asked
her to sing to him. "What song was it?" she
inquired. " I pray was it ' Come, shepherds, deck
your heads ' ; or 'As at noon Dulcina rested J ; or
' Philida flouts me ' ; or ' Chevy Chace ' ; or ' Johnny
Armstrong ' ; or ' Troy Town ' ? " The memories of
the ancient milk-maids were storehouses of delight-
ful old English ballads ; now the only persons who
know any are ancient silver - headed topers in
taverns.
It was formerly the custom for the bonny milk-
maids to dance before the houses of their customers
in the month of May, to obtain a small gratuity ;
and there is a dear old English tune, " The merry
milk-maids in green," that was probably the one to
which they were wont to dance. To be a milk-maid
and to be merry were synonymous terms in the
olden time.
Pepys, in his diary, I3th October 1662, says,
"With my father took a melancholy walk to Port-
holme, seeing the country-maids milking their cows
there, they being there now at grass ; and to see
with what mirth they come all home together in
pomp with their milk, and sometimes they have
music go before them."
In Beaumont and Fletcher's play, "The Cox-
comb," printed in 1647, two milk-maids are intro-
duced, Nan and Madge, and the scene in which they
152 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
are on the stage is so charming, that I venture to
quote a good deal of it the authors have so happily
caught the kindliness, the simplicity, the joyousness
of the English milk-maid of yore.
But one word I must premise. Viola, the heroine
of the play is astray and wandering over the country
seeking to conceal whence she is and who she is.
Viola wearied and lost sighs
" The evening comes and every little flower
Droops now, as well as I."
Then enter Nan and Madge with milk pails.
"Nan. Good Madge,
Let 5 s rest a little ; by my troth, I'm weary.
This new pail is a plaguy heavy one.
Madge. With all my heart.
Viola (aside). What true contented happiness dwells here.
More than in cities ! Would to God my father
Had lived like one of these, and bred me up
To milk, and do as they do. Methinks 'tis
A life that I would choose.
Maids !
For charity, give a poor wench one draught of milk,
That weariness and hunger have nigh famished !
Nan. If I'd but one cow's milk in all the world
You should have some on't : There, drink.
Madge. Do you dwell hereabouts ?
Viola. No ; would I did.
Nan. Madge, if she does not look as like my cousin Sue
O' th' Moor Lane, as one thing can look like another.
Madge. Nay ; Sue has a hazel eye, I know Sue well ;
And, by your leave, not so trim a body, neither ;
This is a flat-bodied thing, I can tell you.
Nan. She laces close,
By the Mass, I warrant you ; and so does Sue too."
-ye?.
MILK-MAIDS 153
Then Viola entreats the two girls to find her
where she may not only lodge, but also find work.
"Nan. Uds me, our Dorothy went away but last week,
And I know my mistress wants a maid, and why
May she not be placed there ? This is a likely wench,
I tell you truly, and a good wench, I warrant her.
Madge. And 'tis a hard case if we, that have served
Four years apiece, cannot bring in one servant.
We will prefer her ... Can you milk a cow ?
And make a merry-bush ?
Viola. I shall learn quickly.
Nan. And dress a house with flowers ? and
This you must do, for we deal in the dairy
And make a bed or two ?
Viola. I hope I shall.
Nan. But be sure to keep the men out ; they will mar
All that you make else, I know that by myself;
For I have been so touz'd among 'em in
My days ! Come, you shall e'en home with us,
And be our fellow ; our house is honest,
And we serve a very good woman and a gentle woman,
And we live as merrily, and dance o' good days
After evensong. Our wake shall be on Sunday ;
Do you know what a wake is ? we have mighty cheer then,
And such a coil, \ would bless ye !
You must be our sister, and love us best,
And tell us everything : and when cold weather
Comes, we'll lie together : will you do this ?
Viola. Yes.
Nan. Then home again, o' God's name."
We learn that Princess Elizabeth, in Queen
Mary's reign, was closely guarded and only suffered
to walk in the gardens of the palace, and not
abroad. " In this situation," says Holingshed, " no
marvell if she, hearing upon a time out of her
154 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
garden at Woodstock, a certain milk-maid singing
pleasantlie, wished herself to be a milk-maid as she
was; saying that her case was better, and life
merrier."
Sir Thomas Overbury in his "Character of a
milk-maid/ 1 in the reign of James I., says, " She
dares go alone, and unfold her sheep in the night,
and fears no manner of ill, because she means none :
yet, to say truth, she is never alone, she is still
accompanied with old songs, honest thoughts, and
prayers, but short ones."
There is still a reminiscence of the milk-maid
that comes to us every spring, in the fresh flickering
cuckoo-flower of the delicate lilac, like the pale
cotton, of which the dresses of the girls were made.
It is the Cardamine pratensis that bears both the
name of " Milk-maids " and " Cuckoo-flower." The
latter name it obtains, says old Gerarde, because it
"doth flower in April and Maie, when the cuckoo
doth begin to sing her pleasant notes without
stammering." The same plant is also the " Lady's
Smock" of Shakespeare. I suppose it will retain
the name of cuckoo-flower, for the cuckoo is still
with us, but lose that of " milk-maids," for, alas
milk-maids are no more.
The Alpine representative of the class is quite
distinct. As soon as the high pastures are free
from snow, the cattle are driven up the mountains
and the women go with them. They remain at
these high altitudes all the summer till the first
frosts and snows come, when they, with the cattle,
MILK-MAIDS 155
return. On the high Alps they have to milk the
cows and make cheeses. They live in senn hute
(wooden hovels), and sleep in the lofts among the
hay. Here is a description by a native of the
Alps.
"The Sennerin is engaged through the summer
with tubs and churns; she attends to the milking
and the fodder. An Almbub, a little boy, is with
her, and he has to look after the herds, drive the
cattle to pasture, and bring them back at even.
Both live on the boiled milk and some lard out of
a pot. Then when darkness comes on they light
the kichspan, a bit of firwood dipped in pitch that
serves as a candle, and by its flare she mends his
torn garments which must be made to last till they
return in October; and the boy in turn takes
between his knees her shoes which have been torn
in the rocks, and sews the rents with waxed thread,
and tells tales or sings songs.
" For the most part the sennerin is not under
twenty. She is generally over forty, one who has
spent her life in making butter, and understands
the cows. And every summer she is aloft since
she became old enough to be trusted. Young
women, the farmer knows well, do not answer on
the Alpine pastures exposed to every sort of climate
and weather. And yet sometimes, a young one is
there aloft, and then romance steps in."
These sennerins, old, withered, for the most part,
in rusty and dark' dresses, with storm and sun-
tanned faces, wrinkled, eminently unpoetical objects,
156 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
how can we consider them as of the same race as
our recently extinct dairy-maids ?
I will end with a couple of verses of Martin
Parker's ballad on the Milk-maids, composed in the
reign of James I. or Charles I.
" The bravest lasses gay
Live not so merry as they ;
In honest civil sort
They make each other sport,
As they trudge on their way.
Come fair or foul weather,
They're fearful of neither
Their courages never quail :
In wet and dry, though winds be high,
And dark's the sky, they ne'er deny
To carry the milking pail.
Their hearts are free from care,
They never will despair ;
Whatever may befall,
They bravely bear out all,
And Fortune's frowns out-dare.
They pleasantly sing
To welcome the spring
'Gainst heaven they never rail ;
If grass will grow, their shanks they show ;
And, frost or snow, they merrily go
Along with the milking pail."
THE BRIDE'S WELL
THE BRIDE'S WELL
ON what is locally called a Ramp, that is to say
the refuse thrown out of a quarry, and left to decay
or become covered with mould, was, in our quiet
parish, a long white-washed cottage thatched. It
was planted in a peculiar position: its back was
against a dense oak wood, out of which shot up
Scotch firs, and the portion of ramp it occupied was
of very old standing, and was a good way from that
part of the quarry on which workmen were engaged.
In front of the cottage was a garden, always well
kept, and. on the farther side of the garden, the
inevitable pig-sty. But then what would the
garden have produced without the pig ?
When I said that the cottage was on the ramp,
I was not quite exact, it was on the slope of the
hill, but ramp had been thrown up before it even
to a level above the garden, so that the dwellers in
the cottage were almost as much shut in as was
Noah in his ark.
The ramp was not hideous, as new ramps are.
It was so ancient that it was overgrown with trees,
and moss, and fern. The crane's-bill loved to
ramble about it, and the wild strawberry covered
it in June with a network of rubies.
159
160 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
The cottage was so closed about that every wind
was shut out, but the sun flowed over it, frost
rarely smote and killed the vegetables in the garden,
and flowers came there earlier than elsewhere.
A great monthly rose was trained over the front
of the house, and I believe that there were flowers
on it all the year round.
Near the cottage stood a very ancient and wide-
spreading oak, stunted and contorted, because grow-
ing in a minimum of soil and a maximum of slate
rock. But in spite of disadvantages, the oak was
very aged and bore innumerable acorns. Under
the shade of the tree, rained over with shed acorns
at the fall of the year, was a slab of rock, and it
went by the name of the Conjuring Table. There
was a certain Lady who was fondly believed, though
dead for over a century, to haunt the parish. The
story went that Seven Parsons met at this natural
table to lay the Lady's ghost. They would have
succeeded but that one of the party was so tipsy
that he said the wrong words and forgot the right.
But that which haunted the ramp was not a
ghost, it was vipers, locally called "Long Cripples."
These creatures loved to lie in the sun on the hot
slates, and they became so comatose in the heat,
or perhaps with repletion from the number of flies
and beetles they ate, that they were easily killed
there by the village lads.
Now, although the cottage was in a lonely place,
and was shut in from wind and from the sight of
men, unless these latter came there purposely to
THE BRIDE'S WELL 161
see it, yet there was that in it which precluded its
being out of mind, however much out of sight, and
that was an uncommonly pretty girl who lived
in it with her father and mother.
Their name was Worden, and her Christian name
was Prue, that is to say, Prudence.
Not only was she vastly pretty, but she was one
of the happiest, brightest dispositioned girls in the
place. The sun that loved the cottage seems to
have been drunk in by her heart and to brim at
her eyes.
Prue managed the beehives, of which there was
a row in the garden, and she moved among the
winged creatures without their attempting to sting
her. " Talk to them, sing to them, and they become
your friends," she said.
They buzzed round her, as though she were a
flower, as though they would light on her laughing
lips, and she scolded them and away they flew it
was their fun, that was all, she explained. But it
was not bees only that came about Prue. Village
youths are not blind to female beauty, and hearts
open at once to a bright spirit, as celandines open
to the sun.
Prue had plenty of admirers, but her head was
not turned ; she laughingly kept them at a distance
that is to say, all but one, George Kennaway, and
it soon became an understood thing that George also
would not allow other young men to buzz about
Prue. That flower was for his own sipping, not
for another's.
L
i62 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
How this came about was as follows :
The plank on which stood the beehives had
become so rotten that Prue's father, Roger Worden,
purchased a good new Dantzic pine plank to replace
that which was decayed.
The substitution must be made at night. So
the plank was laid near the Conjuring Stone till
the occasion came for its use. There were also
there two or three short lengths of firbole, whereof
to make props for the plank ; as not only was
Worden about to renew the old stand, but also to
extend it, to sustain additional hives ; until wanted,
the plank was at Prue's disposal, and she thus
disposed it. She placed it across one of the logs
and endeavoured to play at see-saw on it. This
could only be effected by reducing the length of
plank on her side to a couple of feet, and giving the
other side a considerable extent. But this did not
answer satisfactorily; it gave very little sway to
the end on which Prue sat. She therefore tried
another experiment. She rolled a big stone on to
the farther end of the board, but here again the
success was not great, as the stone tumbled off.
So engaged was Prue in endeavouring to obtain
a ride by circumventing the difficulties that stood
in her way, that she did not observe George
Kennaway as he approached ; and he startled her
into dropping from the board when he said close to
her, "You are a silly child. It takes two to play
at see-saw."
"Then you sit at the other end," said Prue,
THE BRIDE'S WELL 163
picking herself up. She was flushed, and looked
prettier than ever under the white cotton field
bonnet.
"Certainly," said the lad, "but b'aint it rather
child's play?"
"I never had brothers and sisters to play see-
saw with me," explained she.
" And are you so terrible fond of it ? "
" I don't know. I haven't tried proper yet."
"Come you shall have a ride."
So the young man sat at one end astride, and the
girl at the other as on a chair, and up and down
they went. When he was aloft she was down, and
when she soared he was on the ground She laughed
for joy of heart then suddenly jumped off, and
down in an ignominious, precipitate, and ungrace-
ful manner fell George, sprawling on the ground.
" I had forgot," said Prue.
" I should think you had to give me such a
fall."
" I don't mean that I mean the water."
"What water?"
" Mother wanted the pitchers filled."
" Immediately ? "
"N n o, but I just remembered it, so sprang
off."
" And sent me down."
" I am sorry did I hurt you ?"
" You might have hurt me badly."
"Let me go fetch the water and then we'll see-
saw again."
1 64 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
"But understand there must be two together
always, for that."
The cottage was supplied from a well that was
some sixty to eighty feet below its level. From
the oak and the Conjuring Stone a path descended
to an old excavation, very deep, and so overhung
with trees, and so limited in extent, that the sun
never fell into it. At the bottom was deep bottle-
green water how deep none knew, and in it lived
so it was said one enormous trout, too wary
and well fed to allow himself to be caught. The
slate sides of this abyss were hung with moss
and fern and tendrils of creeping plants. A little
way from this tremendous chasm, but only a few
feet higher than the water's edge was a well, that is
to say a spring with the sides built up and a slab
of slate covering it, in which was the coolest,
most crystalline water. This spring never failed
in the hottest summer, and its overflow trickled
into the tarn that occupied the ancient, deserted
quarry. It was a long way to go to get water
for all requirements, but the water when got was
most refreshing and delicious.
At least twice a day Prue had to descend to the
well with empty pitchers, and toil up the ascent
with them laden.
"And mind this, Prue," said her mother re-
peatedly, "never you go no farther than the well,
for the slate rock beyond by the water is that
slippy you might fall in, and none ever hear you
cry out."
THE BRIDE'S WELL 165
The whole way down was so thick with crane's-
bill that the air was strong with its geranium
savour.
" No," said George. " For once, Prue, I will
fetch the water, and you bide here."
Then the young man caught up the brown
pitchers and descended the path. In ten minutes
he was back with them brimming over.
" Now," said Prue, " we will have another swing,
only I will sit nearer the middle. I do not want
to have a bad fall."
" Why should you have a bad fall ? "
''You might punish me for giving you one."
" I am not like to do that."
" I had rather not trust you."
So they swayed up and down.
Then said Prue : " Why do you sit nearer the
middle than I ? "
" Because I am three times as heavy as you and
must make the balance right."
" It is still rather too much."
" Then draw nearer."
" But you will draw nearer still ? "
" I must. I cannot help it. Now then try how
it feels in the middle." He put out his arm and
drew her to the midst above the fulcrum, and there
they sat, side by side, gently rocking. The least
displacement of balance set them swaying.
" Lovely, isn't it ? " asked George.
"Beautiful," answered Prue.
"And I don't see," said George, "why we
166 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
shouldn't see-saw for always like this. I mean you
and me together. It takes two, it does."
" I don't know."
" I do. I have fifteen shillings a week, we might
see-saw on that. And I've got strong arms, and
a good cottage, and a large garden. We might
see-saw on that. And I love you with all my
heart."
" But is there to be see-saw in that ? "
" None fast as a nail. Will you ? "
"Well, if it must be, it must."
That is how it came about.
The banns had been called and the marriage day
had arrived. The parson was to be at the church
at ten o'clock.
"Mother," said Prue the evening before. "There
is my white confirmation gown and the veil the
young ladies at the Hall gave me I will wear
that."
"And you must have flowers."
Yes white."
Now it so fell out that just before the time came
for going to church Mrs. Worden exclaimed
" Lor' a mussy ! The water be forgot. There
ain't a drop in the house, and there'll be folk
coming, and there must be tea for some, and, I
reckon, gin and water for others, and there is all
the washing up after, and, dear life, one can get
along without bread, but never without water.
Whatever shall I do?"
" I'll run to the well with the pitchers."
THE BRIDE'S WELL 167
" But, Prue, you'm in your white dress."
"I shall not stain it. It will not take me ten
minutes."
" I'd go myself but for my leg as is so bad/' said
Mrs. Worden.
Then Prue caught up the pitchers and tripped
away, past the old gnarled oak and the Conjuring
Rock, down the path to the old quarry pit.
Never shall I forget what ensued.
There was a cluster of people about the church
gate. These were friends ready to pelt with rice.
The parson was in waiting. The bridegroom and
his best man had arrived. Prue had been a
favourite at the Hall, and the squire's daughters
were there, all smiles, and they had brought with
them a present which was to be put into Prue's
hand as she went blushing like a June hedge-rose
down the church avenue. And the ringers were
all there, without their coats, in the tower, waiting
and not oblivious of the fact that after a merry
peal they would be called to the cottage to refresh
themselves.
The party waited, then became impatient. Some
ran along the road to see whether the bride were
coming in sight. But all they saw was a child
running. Presently the child came up breathless.
" Please Mrs. Worden says you're all to come
something has happened. She's in that state, she
couldn't say all." Still no suspicion of real evil
occurred. Some little misfortune perhaps.
"It's Prue. It's something to Prue," gasped the
1 68 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
child. Then the tidings ran like lightning through
all assembled. The last to hear it was George
Kennaway, who was in the church; but when he
did hear he ran and outstripped them all.
He first reached the cottage. Mrs. Worden was
then in a condition of terror and distress that almost
bereft her of her senses.
"Prue " she said, "went to the well after
water my poor legs I couldn't get down but
she went for the water two pitchers. I
have I "
George Kennaway waited to hear no more. He
ran down the steep descent, calling Prue. The
answer came from the rocks, in a lower note, " Prue !
Prue ! " A jackdaw rushed out from the ivy.
Then he came to the well. She was not there,
but he saw also at a glance why she was not there.
During the preceding night a portion of the over-
hanging slate rock had fallen, not much, but just
sufficient to crush in the top of the well, and render
access to the water impossible without assistance
from a crowbar.
The girl had consequently not been able to draw
water where accustomed, and she had gone forward
to the quarry pit. Here, as already said, the rock
was slaty, inclined at a steep angle, and it was moist
and slippery. She had stepped on to this, and had
stooped, careful not to stain her white gown, with
both pitchers in her hands, to dip for the water in
the tarn, cold and crystal clear.
She had overbalanced, her feet had slipped on
THE BRIDE'S WELL 169
the smooth sloping slate, and she had fallen in.
And there floating on the bottle-green water she
was seen like a dead white swan.
I feel that it is beyond my power with pen to
describe what followed, the despair of the poor
young man, the distraction of the mother, the sorrow
of the whole parish. And never was there such a
funeral in the memory of man as that of the bride,
her white pall borne by six girls all in white, and
wearing white posies and a whole parish every
one from the richest to the poorest, from the red-
faced, fox-hunting squire to the old stone-breaker
with a crippled leg in floods of tears.
The other day I went over the ramp to look at
the ruined cottage. Years had passed since this
took place, which I have described. After the
death of their only child, the Wordens had left the
cottage and it had fallen into ruin. None else
would take it, owing to the difficulty about the
water, the distance it had to be drawn, and the
tragedy connected with the well.
As I stood musing, looking at the crumbling
walls no flowers, no bees there now I noticed a
man of middle age come up the' steep path from
the well.
The quarry had of late been again in activity,
and the rubbish was being shot to fill up the old
workings, but as yet the very oldest pit, that where
the well was, had not been invaded.
170 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
I turned to speak to the man. He seemed a
stranger. At least I did not know him.
"A picturesque spot," said I, "to an artist quite
a study."
" I am not an artist," he replied. " This spot
is dear to me, inexpressibly dear through sad
remembrances."
I looked closer at him.
" Yes," said he, " my name is George Kennaway.
I you know me now I see well after that event I
could not bear to be here ; I went to Australia, and
have done well there. I have come back now, after
all these years and Well, sir, I have been to
see the captain of the slate quarry, and I said to
him : I will pay you almost what you like to ask,
if you will spare the well and the old pit. Do not
choke and bury them up not whilst I live for
God's sake I could not bear it. I saw that white
girl floating there no let it remain as it was.
Ask what you will."
JACK HANNAFORD
JACK HANNAFORD
IN one of the dips among the hills of the red land
stands a cobb cottage, thatched, and facing the sun.
The red land consists of rich loam of the colour of
what artists call Indian red, overlying sandstone of
the same warm colour. It is a soil of the most
remarkable fertility. You have but to stick into it
a slip of any shrub, and it starts growing at once
and does not desist till it is a tree ; sow in it any
seed you like, and it springs up, and, like the corn
in the Gospel, produces an hundredfold. For roses
there is simply nothing in the round world equal
to it. The grass that flourishes on it is the richest,
most succulent, and the most emerald to be found
and enjoyed anywhere. Indeed, the cows that con-
sume the herbage on it have grown red as the soil
itself, and if the sheep were not shorn annually they
would produce fleeces of flame. Even the streams
after rain run blood, so flush is this red land with
the juices of life.
When a man wishes to build a house, he takes
the clay, throws in straw, tramples it about for a
while, and then builds it up into a wall ; it sets, and
will out-endure a structure of stone, if only kept
covered on top. And a house thus constructed, for
173
174 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
warmth, for cosiness, for healthiness, and for home
comfort is simply not to be surpassed.
And, once again, on this red soil the cheeks of
the girls and their kissable lips are a temptation to
young men sheerly unavoidable.
The cottages on this red land and built of the red
clay are low, with the windows of the " chambers,"
i.e. bedrooms, peering out of the thatch, that is,
with the latter just lifted like a pretty eyebrow
arched over them, looking coquettishly, with a soft
languor in them at the passers-by in the lane.
In the lane ! and what lanes these are, deep
cut in the red rock, overarched with sycamores,
elms, oaks, the rich sides oozing with ripeness,
scrambled over by countless creepers, occupied
on every ledge by a thousand ferns, studded in
March with constellations first of golden celandine,
then of pale primroses, crested with dense blue
hyacinths intertwinkled with crimson robin, and
later towered over by a fringe of gorgeous, purple-
belled foxglove, with twenty, thirty, even to fifty
flowers on one rod.
In the midst of such beauty, such plenty, such
softness, humanity cannot be rough and harsh. It
is not so. The simplest peasant has the courtesy
of a noble, and the lowliest girl the grace of a
princess. In that warm, soft, crumbling soil hearts
are also warm, soft, and well, we must admit it
crumbling too.
Where Nature does so much for man, man is
perhaps not greatly inclined to do much for him-
JACK HANNAFORD 175
self, and this applies especially to his intellectual
faculties. What compulsory education may do I
cannot tell it may change all this ; but till of late
years allow it frankly there was astounding
ignorance in this favoured land. And with igno-
rance goes credulity.
Now I am going to tell of the inmates of one of
these cobb cottages in the paradisaical land of New
Redsandstone, in which also paradisaical ignorance
was to be found.
This cottage, the face of which was white-washed
and crept over with monthly roses, was occupied by
Richard Redlake and his wife Julia.
They were both young people. He between
thirty and forty, she half-way between twenty and
thirty. Julia had been quite the prettiest girl in a
village where not a girl lived who was not pretty.
She had dark hair, and the softest, largest, most
melting eyes, like rich agate, a complexion trans-
parent, pure, with the sweetest rose-flush in it ; and
her figure was slender and willowy.
Julia could neither read nor write. Possibly
because she could neither read nor write she was
a most neat and knowing housewife, who kept her
cottage in beautiful order, and whitened her hearth-
stone and threshold every day, and even twice a
day, and burnished pans and candlesticks and old
mustard tins on the chimney shelf till they shone
as gold and silver. Most labourers' wives possess
the alchemical art of transforming soft, succulent
meat over a fire into leather or indiarubber, and are
176 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
peculiarly skilful in destroying the digestions of
their husbands. But Julia, perhaps because unable
to read and write, turned out a bit of steak, or the
meat in a pasty, or a stew, soft and delicious.
I say that this was due to ignorance of the two
principal R's, because nowadays working-men's
wives are too much taken up with penny dreadfuls
and writing letters on parochial gossip to be able to
spare the time for such menial work as keeping
their houses neat, their own persons clean, and
cooking meals with all their attention devoted to the
task.
With these good qualities there was a draw-
back ignorance, abysmal ignorance. Although
Julia could not read, she believed in printed matter as
something indisputable. What stood, as she termed
it, " on the paper " was to be accepted as gospel.
For a couple of years after they were married,
old Jack Hannaford, her father, lived with the
young couple. And see here is another odd thing.
I am going to tell you about him after he was dead
and buried.
Hannaford had been a queer old file, cantanker-
ous, cute in his way, scheming, but doing nothing
with his plans, because he neither had the means
nor the vigour to carry them out. Julia had be-
lieved implicitly in him, and " Alack a jimminy ! "
said she, " vayther were a wun'nerful clever man ;
if he'd only not been crippled, and had had a penny
wi' which he could speckerlate, he'd ha' been a
gem 'man by now."
JACK HANNAFORD 177
Jack Hannaford had possessed a friend, a very
knowing man named Eli Rattenbury, who lived
about two miles off by himself. Eli had never
been married. He did little jobs off and on for
farmers, but was humorous, and at a word would
leave his task and sulk and starve, rather than
work for the man who had offended him. He was
said to poach. He certainly gained a living by
blessing wounds, " striking" tumours, and he pos-
sessed a " kenning stone," with which he touched
and healed inflamed and sore eyes. He was held
to be a bit of a rogue. He possessed unbounded
influence over the ignorant peasantry, even over
the farmers, who dreaded offending him; and it
was shrewdly suspected that, although he had no
regular vocation and occupation, he had amassed
a tidy sum of money. Food did not cost him much,
for he either, as was surmised, took a rabbit when
he wanted one, or if he coveted a duck or a piece of
pork, had only to ask for it, and no one dared deny
him what he desired, lest ill luck should befall the
denier.
Eli Rattenbury had a wonderful faculty for find-
ing out when a pig had been killed anywhere in
the district beyond earshot of its squeals, and so
surely as a porker had been slain and was being
scalded, he appeared on the scene, and did not
leave without a portion of the pig.
Now it happened that the Redlakes had been
fattening up one of these animals, but instead of
killing it, they sold it. They had a supply of
M
178 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
bacon that would last them through the winter, and
so did not require more for their personal consump-
tion. Very soon after, when Richard was out at
work, Eli Rattenbury appeared at the door, and
without knocking came in.
" I don't smell the pig in the sty," said he.
" No ; we'm rid us of him ? "
" Killed ? and not given me a spare-rib !"
"No, Eli; us sold V
" You don't mean to say so ! And what did he
fetch?"
She told him, and added, " But, Eli, you shall
have some nice salt bacon hanging yonder. We've
sold our calf as well."
" You're lucky folk to be able to keep a cow."
"Well, we are; and we can always dispose of
our butter."
" And you have fowls as well."
"Yes; and the regrader takes them also. I'll
put you up some eggs in a basket."
Old Eli considered.
" I thought you might have sent 'em, wi'out my
havin' to fetch 'em," was his ungracious comment.
" I am very sorry, Eli."
"You ort to be, considerin' your father and me
was like brothers. By the way, I ha' had dreams
that is to say, visions about he lately."
" No, never ! I hope all is well with old vayther."
" Middlin'," responded Eli.
Julia stood still, and some of her colour went.
" I hope he's not gone "
JACK HANNAFORD 179
" Oh, no fear o' that. He's all right, so far. But
you know, Julia, your poor vayther was never a
church nor a chapel goin' man."
" 'Cos o' his legs," explained Julia.
"Well, I don't say nothin' about the raysons,
but you know so well as I do, he were not one
as went to church or chapel."
" No," said the daughter.
"Well, then, how was he to find his way to
where he 'ort to ha' gone to when he left this world
of woe? As a fact, he lost his way and got into
Americay by mistake."
"Well, now, I never!" exclaimed Mrs. Redlake.
" Yes, true ; he told me so," said Eli Rattenbury.
" I don't see as you can expect any other. What'd
be your situation, missus, if you was to get sudden-
like out 'o the train, and be told to find your way to
Golconda or the Transvaal. You'd go wanderin"*
about, and ten to one find yourself in quite another
place. Twas so wi' your poor father. Hobblin'
on upon them there sticks, he came into the United
States o' North Americay. Well, I seed 'n there in
a vision. I thought I were carried there."
" You seed vayther ? "
" For sure I did," answered Rattenbury.
" Well, Eli, do tell me what he said, and how he
did look."
" ' Go and tell Julia,' sez he, ' that I seez my way
clear to realism' a tremenjous fortune. I've talked
it over with my Betsy.' "
"What is mother there ? "
i8o IN A QUIET VILLAGE
" Certain; her wasn't neither church nor chapel
goer, and her were just as lost as he about the road,
and so got to Americay."
" Dear, now, to think it ! "
"'Well,'" said he, 'tell my Julia that I'm goin'
to set up a bacon factory ; I'm goin' to grow pigs,
and mother'll salt'n her does it beautiful.' "
" But where's the money to come from ? " asked
the astonished woman.
"That's it. 'Julia,' sez he, 'will lend me the
money to start the pigs on.'"
"There's the money from the calf and the pig
we sold," mused Julia, "but Richard has put it
away quite safe."
"Where?"
"That I mayn't tell," she mused, and then said
slowly, " I can't do it wi'out axin' Richard."
" Your vayther laid it on me that you was on no
account to speak of it to he. ' Men,' sez he, ' have
such tongues. Talk of women, they're nothing to
men. When they gits together in a sunny hedge
eatin' of their lunch bless y', they talk of everything
you can think on.' "
" I don't like to do it."
" He said he will return it in double."
" How much does he want ? "
" Say ten pounds, just to make a start."
"And in a week "
"You'll have twenty, and Richard no wiser."
" And how is that ten pounds to go to dear old
vayther? '
JACK HANNAFORD 181
Eli Rattenbury hesitated, bethought himself, then
said, "Jack Hannaford said as how you should
have the money doubled. And he advised that you
should take the ten pounds, wrapped up in rag and
put in an old sardine tin, or an old jam pot, and if
you takes my advice you will bury it under the
headstone near the middle, no one observm 1 you,
four inches below the turf. And you was not to
go and look at it for a week, but if you did so
and found it gone, then don't wonder at it, Jack
Hannaford has took it and has laid it out in pigs.
But you may look for it in a week, or better still
a month, and sure as eggs be eggs, you'll find there
twenty pounds in gold."
"Are you to go with me ? "
"No. You do it yourself; folks might observe
and wonder if they seed me wi' you at the grave,
but if you go, that's nothin,' they'll think you've
gone to weed it, or put flowers."
" Well, I will do it," said Julia.
"When?"
"Today."
" And mind, not a word to Richard."
Then, precipitately, Eli Rattenbury departed, and
about an hour later, from a secret place in the
thatching, Julia drew some money, counted out
ten sovereigns, wrapped them in rag, put them in
a little pot, and hurried to the churchyard and
buried the store exactly at the place she had been
told by the old rogue to place it. Then she fled
home.
i82 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
Had she remained in hiding, and watched, she
would have seen Rattenbury creep out from behind
the church porch, go to the grave of Jack Hanna-
ford, dig up the money and pocket it.
That same evening, on Richard Redlake's return,
he clapped his wife on the back, and said " Julia!
news. I've arranged to take another field ; and I'm
going to buy another cow. I've seen her, half
Jersey ; ours runs dry at times, and we can't supply
our customers reg'lar as they likes. If we have
two, why, then one will be yieldin' whilst t'other's
dry. She'll cost twenty-five pound, and I've bought
her. I shall pay to-morrow. We have the money
in the thatch."
Here was a pretty kettle of fish ! If Dick
looked at the hoard he would discover that it was
diminished. So Julia made the best of a bad
business, and told him all.
" In a month when old vayther has turned it
over, you'll have it doubled," said she.
"You are a fool! That old rascal has befooled
you," said her husband. He was very angry, but
scolding would not bring back the money. He
strode to the churchyard and of course found the
gold gone. The jam pot was there not its con-
tents. What should Richard do ? If he went to
Rattenbury, the rogue would brazen it out. He
had not been to the churchyard, he would protest.
Let his pockets be turned out, his house searched,
the money was not with him. If any one had
taken the gold it must have been some one who
JACK HANNAFORD 183
had watched Julia surreptitiously, as she concealed
it. No ! there was nothing to be got that way.
However, instead of returning home, Dick marched
off to the cottage inhabited by Eli. The old fellow
was there, and seemed alarmed as young Redlake
came up.
" How do ? " said Richard.
"Very well, I thank y'," answered Eli in a re-
strained voice, and looked from side to side, as
though for a place of escape.
" Julia has told me all," said the young man,
"and I always did think Jack Hannaford was a
wun'nerful schemin' man. That there is a clever
idea of his. I'm sure he'll succeed."
Old Rattenbury breathed freely.
" Sure cock sure," said he.
" Now, look here, Eli," continued Dick ; " I ask
your advice. I've saved a bit o' money in all
some twenty-five pounds a little more or less.
Now, that wi' the ten pound Julia has lent to the
old gem'man makes thirty-five, and if it be doubled,
as you say, it will be forty-five. Now, if I'd a
matter of about a hundred pound, I'd take Yatton
Farm, and would stock it; it ain't a terrible big
place, and I could manage it. What say you?
would old Jack Hannaford double the twenty-five
as well as the ten ? "
" Sure he would."
"Then I'll risk it, and yet I'd like to be sure
first. I think I'll see if he doubles Julia's loan. If
he do that, then I'll trust him in the same way with
184 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
the rest twenty-five. But you say I must wait a
month."
"Oh dear no, two days suffice. Pigs fatten, as
dandelions blow, all of a night in Americay."
"Well, I can but try."
" Don't go to the grave till Thursday, and we'll
be there together. We'll see; maybe the money
may then be doubled, maybe it won't."
" Very well, Thursday ; I'd be afraid to go alone."
On the following Thursday Eli Rattenbury
appeared at the cottage door; Richard Redlake
was awaiting him.
"Look here," said he, pouring out a sack of gold
on the table, "twenty-five sovereigns. Won't some-
body be pleased ? "
" I believe you," said Eli, " let's make haste."
So the two men went to the churchyard. No one
was about no one observed them.
" I don't know where Julia put the money," said
Rattenbury.
"But I do," said Dick. "Here in the middle,
and sure enough, here is a jam pot, and something
in it, on my word ! Money gold Eli. Well,
now, they do turn cash over up there pretty smart.
How much is it? Twenty sovereigns, as I'm a
man. By George, Eli, all this mine ? "
" Certainly, it is the interest on the loan."
" But for three days ! "
"They're wun'nerful generous over yonder, to
Americay."
" And I can take it in all honest conscience ? "
JACK HANNAFORD 185
"To be sure you may. If not yours, whose
is it?"
"Then, Eli Rattenbury, I don't think I'll put any
more out to interest. I've done so well with this
that I'll bide content."
And Richard put the twenty sovereigns in with
the twenty-five. Then he looked up into Ratten-
bury's face.
"What's the matter, man? got a stomach ache?"
" I ain't well, I'll go home. Don't y' think now
'twould be fitty to share with me ? "
"Not at all, Eli; the loan was mine. The
interest accordin' is mine. Suppose you now go
and put a little money under the turf and see if
Jack Hannaford will treat you in the same way?
You don't look comfortable as I likes to see you,
Eli ; go home and sleep and dream again."
FROM DEATH TO LIFE
FROM DEATH TO LIFE
THE alteration of parochial boundaries by Act of
Parliament has done away with some curious
anomalies that had survived from the first forma-
tion of parishes in England that is to say, done
away with them so far as rating is concerned, but
not ecclesiastically.
The anomalies to which I refer are the odd,
outlying patches, like islets, belonging to one parish,
and yet surrounded by others. There are counties
in England that have their insulated portions ; and
the same is very general with regard to parishes.
How this came about is not difficult to discover.
It was due to the ancient holders of estates, who
liked to have their properties united ecclesiastically.
There was such a detached patch of parish at
Sugden. It was three miles from the parish
church ; it was encompassed on all sides by the
parish of Walmoden ; but as the story I am going
to tell relates to the time before the rectification of
parochial boundaries, the cottagers of this islet
were rated as Sugdenian, and for all matters
ecclesiastical looked to Sugden as their parish
church. If they wished to be married, their banns
were called at Sugden ; if they were to be buried,
190 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
double fees were demanded at Walmoden, and, as
the cotters were very poor, they went to lay the
dust of their kinsfolk at Sugden. Indeed, unless
they had been very poor, they would not have
lived at Woodman's Well, as the islet was called,
for it was away from the high-road, it was distant
from neighbours, it consisted of a hamlet containing
two houses and a half.
The half-house was a whole cottage whose roof
had fallen in, leaving, however, one end partially
covered, in which an old woman, who gathered
herbs, told fortunes, and charmed white swellings,
kept up a precarious existence under a tottering
chimney. She was not alone ; she had a daughter.
The two cottages were in partial collapse ; their
thatch was mouldy, rotten, but not broken through,
and the wooden casements were decayed, but not
in pieces. If the present tenants were to vacate
these houses, their owner believed that he would not
be able to find others who would take them and
give rent for them. They had been erected on
lives, and it was probable that when they fell in
to the landlord, they would fall in altogether. By
law, of course, he could insist on the holder of the
property keeping them in repair; but then, pre-
cisely, this holder was an old man living a hundred
miles away, and was impecunious ; consequently
his legal right was as good as no right at all.
Those who occupied the cottages were : in the
first, a mason and his wife; that is to say, the
mason was the tenant in the eye of the law, but
FROM DEATH TO LIFE 191
his occupancy was casual, and his wife saw but
little of him. She was a weakly woman, with one
child, a frail little creature of two years, a lovely
child with fair hair and blue eyes. The father was
fond, very fond of his little Rosie ; but he was
fonder of good company at the public-house.
In the second house lived a widow, with her
son, Jack Weldon ; a fine, strapping lad, with an
open face, honest brown eyes always on the twinkle,
and a flexible mouth that was ever on the quiver
with a laugh. His was an irresistible face. You
could not look at it without a smile. There was in
it nothing grotesque, certainly nothing deformed,
but it was inexpressibly comical. The eyes, the
mouth, and an upright jet of hair, like the crown
of a cockatoo, were mirth-provoking. Jack was
infinitely good-natured, very kind to his mother, and
a favourite in the hamlet that is to say, with his
neighbours, the mason's wife and the white-witch.
Owing to the temptation of living surrounded by
woods and downs, where rabbits multiplied, he was
a bit of a poacher, and he kept the two houses and
a half supplied with rabbit-meat. Ostensibly and
actually he was a ploughboy. His sporting was
done at night and on Sundays.
His good-humour, his drollery, would have made
Jack a popular man at the public-house ; but happily,
his tenderness to his mother and his love of sport
drew him home when the day's work was over, and
he preferred laying snares in the wood to sitting
boozing at the table in the tavern.
192 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
Thomas Leveridge was the mason. He was a
man good at heart, but weak weak as water fond
of politics and of argument. Election-time was
thought to be not far distant ; Thomas had not been
home for a fortnight. It is true his work was at
a distance of ten miles, and he walked to it on
Mondays and returned on Saturdays. But of late
he had not been home even for the Sundays ;
because well, it was a long trudge, and because
well, his wife was cranky, and because well, the
child had been fretting and crying all night, and
he had not enjoyed a good sleep when he was at
home.
Thomas Leveridge loved his wife, and he loved
his babe, loved his home, but he loved politics
better, loved his pleasure better, loved himself most
of all.
Now, unhappily, there was a serious and far-
reaching reason why the child had fretted and cried.
It was sickening for scarlet fever. This he did
not suppose was the case. "Children alway be
squealin' when they teeths," he said. " They sleeps
by day and 'owls o' nights. Tis their natur'. But
to me as has to work, it's discompoging."
So Thomas Leveridge departed with his bundle
on the Monday morning, whistling, went to his
work, heard that a dissolution was in the air, was
neglectful of his work, got dismissed, went about
canvassing throughout the district, and did not
receive the letter which had been sent to tell him
that his child was dangerously ill. No, nor the
FROM DEATH TO LIFE ~ 193
second letter to inform him that little Rosie was
dead; no, nor the third letter to entreat him to
return for the funeral.
What Mrs. Leveridge would have done without
the assistance of her neighbours I cannot say.
Little Rosie had been her mother's one joy, one
solicitude, one ambition. Neglected by her husband,
in a dilapidated house, delicate in health, and weak
of body, the poor woman had but one sunbeam to
enlighten her life ; and that sunbeam was her child,
and that light was now darkness.
She was wholly overcome, broken-hearted, de-
spairing. Jack Weldon's mother came to the aid
of the unhappy woman, and saw to everything, and
strove to comfort her. Jack ran to announce the
death to the relieving officer, ordered the coffin of
the carpenter at Sugden, and arranged with the
sexton about the grave. He did more: he went
to the town where Thomas Leveridge worked, in
hopes of finding him ; but could learn only that he
had been dismissed by his master, and was all over
the country drinking and canvassing. Unable to
trace him, he had to return to Woodman's Well.
At this very time Kate Westlake, the white-witch's
daughter appeared, a brown -faced, bright -eyed,
pleasant girl, for whom there was not accommoda-
tion in the collapsed cottage. She had been in
service in a farm; but owing to bad times the
farmer had thrown up his tenement, and she had
been obliged to leave and look out for a new
situation. Meanwhile she came home and found
N
194 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
the house she had left practically roofless. Diffi-
culties settle themselves somehow, and this difficulty
among others; and this is the way in which it
settled itself. Kate went into the cottage of the
Leveridges. Mrs. Leveridge needed to have some
one with her by night as well as by day, and was
very glad to accept the attention and help of the
good-natured young girl. Mrs. Weldon could not
be always with her; and not only were prepara-
tions to be made for the funeral, but also the poor
woman's health and spirits were so shaken that
the ordinary household duties were beyond her
powers.
The day of the funeral arrived. Little Rosie
was placed in her coffin of plain deal. She had
been so small, had become so light through sick-
ness, that the coffin was no weight to speak of.
The poor mother was without means, the father
was nowhere to be found ; he was in no club
that is to say, in no benefit club. He was a
member of three political clubs, that brought in no
benefit at all, but entailed payments. The funeral
must be carried out in the most economical manner.
Of neighbours there were only the inmates of
Woodman's Well. Owing to the insulated position
of this cluster, the population of the circumfluent
parish of Walmoden did not regard itself as re-
sponsible for sympathy. At a child's funeral it was
not etiquette for ardent spirits to be provided;
consequently the funeral arrangements were of the
most meagre description, and the number of sym-
FROM DEATH TO LIFE 195
pathisers few. Jack was to tuck the little coffin
under his arm and carry it to Sugden churchyard,
and of mourners there would be but Mrs. Weldon
and Kate Westlake. The old witch undertook
during their absence to keep company with the
bereaved mother, who had not the strength to
follow the corpse three miles to its last resting-
place.
On the way another woman would fall in, who
lived in an old octagonal, abandoned toll-gate, and
had a passion for funerals, and went to every inter-
ment, whoever it might be that was buried, an
acquaintance or a stranger.
The day was lovely. Wood-doves cooed in the
coppice, and blackbirds fluted; in the blue sky
compact white clouds drifted like icebergs in a still
ocean. Jack Weldon had done his best to assume
a mourner's appearance : he had put on a black
round cap with crape about it, a black coat, but
could not muster other than brown continuations.
His mother had hunted up his father's Sunday
pair; but his father had been a short and stout
man. These would not fit the length of Jack's
legs, and about the waist would have been double,
like a Jaeger jersey.
"We must do what we can," said the widow;
" nobody expects us to do more. I'll stitch a black
crape band round the leg above the knee. Gentle-
folks does it on the arm."
By this method the snuff-coloured continuations
of Jack were given a. suitably lugubrious ex-
196 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
pression. If they were not black, they tried to
look funereal.
" After all," said Mrs. Weldon, "you don't expect
for babies what you do for grown-ups."
So the procession started, and augmented itself
on the way by the contingent from the toll-gate.
The woman from the latter was of an age agree-
able with that of Mrs. Weldon. The way was
long. It comported with the occasion to move
slowly.
That two old women, both naturally prone to
gossip, should walk all the way in silence, was not
to be expected; and they were soon in full flow
of conversation, carried on in an undertone.
But if it was impossible for two old women to
walk three miles in silence, so was it impossible for
two young people to do so.
Jack ought to have led the way, followed by
Kate ; but Jack was burdened, and lagged ac-
cordingly, and Kate had an impulsive spirit, and
therefore forged ahead.
" I say, Jack," said Kate, " be Rosie terrible
heavy ? "
" Weighs no more than a feather," answered he.
" Poor mite, she wasted away to nothing at all."
" I asked because I thought you seemed tired."
" I tired ? "
"Well, you look hot."
" Hot I be it is the weather. I'm perspiring
wonderful, and can't get at my pocket-handkerchief
it is in the pocket next the coffin."
FROM DEATH TO LIFE 197
" If you don't mind, I'll wipe your face/' said the
girl. " But you must stand still and stoop."
Jack halted, bowed, and Kate passed her white
cambric pocket-handkerchief over his face.
" Thank y'," said the .bearer. "It's terrible re-
freshing, and smells beautiful."
"That's scent I put on it," explained the girl.
Meanwhile the old women were in lively converse.
The black strip round Jack's leg had started them;
they diverged to the scandal of Thomas Leveridge
being away when his child died, and not being
present at the funeral.
" I'll tell you what it, is," said Mrs. Weldon,
" men are monsters. They've no more feelings
than have traction engines. I wish we could get
along without them."
" But Jack?"
" Ah ! Jack is a good son. I'm not speaking of
lads, but of married men. There is poor Mrs.
Leveridge, left without a shilling ; and what-
ever she would have done had not Jack caught
her a rabbit, I do not know. It all comes of
politics."
" You're right there," said the woman from the
toll-gate ; " when they get politics into their heads,
it's worse than beer. They can get the better of
liquor with a good sleep, but of politics" she
shook her head and sighed. " I'll tell y' what it is,"
continued Mrs. Weldon. " It's our own faults that
the men get that rampageous. We give in to them
too much. My husband never went after ale or
198 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
politics; but then I taught him his duty from the
beginning."
"That's it it all comes of beginning well," said
the toll-gate mourner. " It's the same with dogs
and with poultry. Lor' bless you, if I didn't take
the stick to my cochin-china, he'd be all over the
kitchen."
"I'd never advise any girl to marry," said Mrs.
Weldon.
" Nor I neither," was the reply ; " it's a pity the}'
won't take advice they are that wilful."
Both couples were interrupted in their respective
conversations by a rattle of wheels, shouts, a waving
of colours, and up came a light cart occupied by a
couple of men, one driving, both vociferating, one
brandishing a whip, the other waving a parti-
coloured sheet attached to a stick. The cart was
drawn by a donkey with coloured rosettes, and was
urged forward by the whip, at the end of which was
a favour, accentuated with a bunch of thorns. The
donkey, stung by the thorns, frightened by the
yells, was galloping, and the banner was streaming
in the air.
" Hurrah ! Vote for Popjoy ! " yelled the man
with the flag as he flourished it over his head, and,
swinging round the corner, the donkey came almost
against the bearer with the coffin, and swerved so
suddenly that the banner-bearer lost his balance,
and was precipitated from the cart into the road,
and fell at the feet of Jack Weldon.
" What are you doing there ? " shouted the fallen
FROM DEATH TO LIFE 199
man. "I'll have a law passed to get the likes of
you transported for life ! "
He tried to rise, but found that he could not, and
began to swear.
Then Mrs. Weldon pushed forward.
"Thomas!" she cried, in a voice harsh with
indignation, " do you know where you be ? and to
whom you speak, you ill-conditioned tadpole ? "
"I know well enough. I'm on the road and
I've hurt my leg somehow."
" Do you know what you be ? " again exclaimed
Mrs. Weldon.
" I should think I did. I'm a free and enlightened
elector."
"Look up, Thomas Leveridge, from where you
lie, stopping your little Rosie on the way to her
grave."
" Ah ! " threw in the woman from the toll-gate,
"if you, her own father, won't come home to see
your own sick and dying child, we, who're no
relations, must bury her without consideration of
you."
Then up came the companion of the prostrate
man, who by this time had mastered the ass.
" I say, Thomas Leveridge ! what's to be done ? "
he asked.
The man on the road did not answer at once;
he looked with glazed eyes and quivering mouth
at the little chest. He tried to speak, but he
could not. He tried to raise himself, but was
powerless.
200 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
"Shall we get you into the cart?" asked his
comrade.
" Ay/' answered Leveridge ; " take me home. I
can't go nowhere else. Poor Marianne ! "
Some hours later the little funeral party returned
to Woodman's Well, without the deal chest, walking
at an accelerated pace or rather, let me say that
the old women walked fast; the young mourners
lagged. Eventually they got home, and Jack entered
the cottage of the Leveridges. Without a word he
ascended the rickety staircase. It was strewn with
scraps of coloured paper, on which were stray
letters of the exhortation, " Vote for Popjoy ! "
He might have been following a paper-chase ; for
at intervals along the road, down the lane, these
coloured scraps had shown the way to the cottage.
They had fallen from the hand of the injured man
as he had been conveyed home, and on his way had
torn the posters, and strewn them.
On the bed in the upper chamber lay Thomas
Leveridge. A surgeon had already been there, and
had pronounced the hip dislocated and a bone
broken. He had replaced the joint and had spliced
the bone. Leveridge was condemned to occupy his
bed for some weeks. Beside him sat his wife, with
red eyes and pale cheeks ; on the floor was a cradle,
empty ; and she, inadvertently, was rocking it with
her foot. Her heart was too full for words.
Jack looked at the man. Leveridge had turned
his face to the wall, and was breathing hard ; and
at intervals a convulsive movement interrupted his
FROM DEATH TO LIFE 201
long-drawn inspirations. He put up his hand to
lay hold of the coverlet and draw it over his
shoulder, and it shook he could catch hold of
nothing.
Jack did not speak. He thought: Let him cry,
it will do him good. Tears will wash out his fault ;
and a fault it was in him to neglect home, even for
his political party. Home claims first duties, then
come others. If we begin the other way on, we
are setting a steeple weathercock downwards, and
laying the foundations in the clouds.
Presently Leveridge turned his face round, but
would not let the light shine on his eyes ; therefore
he moved it on the pillow to where it was crossed
by the shadow of his wife. Then he sighed and
said, "Such a child as was my Rosie! There is
no angel in heaven like her. Dear me ! I was all
for patching of the Constitution, and never mended
up my own house. 1 am a mason, and did not put
a bit of plaster to that crack in the wall ; and the
wind blew in on my little Rosie, and the draught
killed her. I'm sure if I were dying "
"You are not dying," said his wife; "you are
only laid by for a bit."
"Ay," said Thomas, "I'm tied to home by my
leg, and serve me right; and now I can't go to the
poll." He began to kick about.
"You must not do that," said Mrs. Leveridge.
" The doctor said you were to lie still."
" I can't help it, Marianne," said the mason.
" I'm real hearty glad I can't go to the poll. It
202 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
just serves me right, and touches me where I'm
most tender. When I think of what I have done
in leaving you alone, and my Rosie ill, I feel that
ashamed as I'd like to dive under the bedclothes
and never come up no more. Now look here, Jack.
You are not a married man, nor thinking of it."
" No," said Jack, retreating a step ; " I'm rather
too young, thank you kindly."
" No offence, it was well meant," said the mason.
" What I was going to say to you But there, I
hear your name called below. Run and see who
wants you."
The young man descended the stairs. At the
foot stood Kate with a newspaper in her hand.
" Were you calling me ? " asked Jack.
"I wanted to know if you'd be so very good as
to go over the advertisements with me," said Kate
timidly. "I am a poor scholar ; and I want to
know if there is something in the paper that might
suit me."
"I'll do it," said Jack. He took the newspaper
and spread it out on the kitchen table under the
latticed window. " Let's see what do you want ? "
" Go right through, if you please."
" ' Messrs. Hampton will sell by auction this day
that desirable ' "
" No, Jack, I'm not going to stand that."
" ' Tenders are invited for new offices.' "
" That's hardly in my way."
" ' Three thousand gentlemen's cast-off suits, over-
coats, boots '"
FROM DEATH TO LIFE 203
" No, I shouldn't know what to do with them all."
" ' Electrical engineering. A vacancy for an
articled pupil.' "
Kate hesitated. " I don't quite understand. I
can feed pigs, bake, and milk. Is it anything to do
with that?"
"No; as far as I can make out, it has to do with
electioneering."
" Then I'll have nothing to say to it. Go on to
the next."
" ' Bake/ you said. Then here goes. ' Wanted
at once, a man well up in smalls. State salary.' "
" But I'm not a man. Is there nothing that will
suit me ? "
" Here is something new," said Jack, and he
began to laugh. " ' Matrimony. Bachelor, tall,
handsome, healthy, good social position, possessing
gold mines, and 2000 per annum, wishes to meet
with a lady with view to marriage. Send full
particulars. State age. Send photo. Thoroughly
genuine.' "
"That's the situation for me, to a hair! Do
answer, Jack. I'm twenty-one."
" But the photo ? "
" I have none."
" Then what is the good of answering ? There
will be such a run on this gentleman."
"You think so, Jack?"
" Sure of it."
11 But not such desirable females as me."
"There's no photo," said the young man sternly.
204 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
11 But I can get myself photygraphed."
"And by that time he will be caught up."
"You think so?"
" Sure of it."
" It is very hard to find a place.*'
" I don't quite know what you want. Here are
a pair of roller-skates advertised, and here is a light
phaeton."
"No," said Kate decidedly. "That's not matri-
monial, and it's matrimonial I like : read another."
"There is no other."
" Then read over the first again."
Jack did so. Kate mused.
"Look here, Jack," said she. "Write for me
and give a good description ; and say I'll be
photygraphed the first opportunity."
" That's no good he'll think you colour yourself
too high."
" But if you describe me, Jack."
" Well here goes. Bright eyes, rosy cheeks,
with a little dimple just at the corner of the mouth,
and dark hair that shines, and lips " Jack threw
down the paper on the floor, put his foot on it, and
burst forth with, " Drat it ! If it's matrimonial you
want, come along with me back to Sugden to the
parson, and we'll ask him to read the banns next
Sunday. But perhaps you're too tired ? "
"I I tired? Bless you, I could run all the way."
After a few weeks Thomas Leveridge was able
to get about ; and though he could not go at once
FROM DEATH TO LIFE 205
to a distance for work, he was able to do small
jobs near home. The squire came to Woodman's
Well. Complaints had been made by the sanitary
officer that the cottages were ruinous and unhealthy.
" I'll tell you what," said he to Leveridge, " I will
have them put into thorough repair and send the
bill to old Rumage, who's got the life-rights. If he
won't pay, then the cottages are mine."
u And may I do them up ? "
" Most assuredly."
" That is famous," said the mason ; " then I shall
have time to whitewash and make sweet before the
wedding."
"Wedding? What wedding? I thought there
had been a burial that the place was insanitary,
and that "
" Well, sir, out of Death cometh Life. A funeral
sometimes leads to a marriage."
A year and a day had passed since this conversa-
tion ; then there issued from two houses at Wood-
man's Well two little parties on their way to the
parish church.
But this time no little coffin was carried to the
graveyard ; on the contrary, two lusty little infants
were being conveyed to the baptismal font ; and the
parties issued respectively from the cottage of the
Leveridges and from that of the Weldons. And as
both parties arrived at the toll-gate, the woman who
inhabited the toll-house issued forth, to act as
sponsor to both babes.
206 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
And as she walked along she said to old Mrs.
Weldon, " Who ever would have thought it, last
time us two went this way ? "
" Who ever would ? " answered Mrs. Weldon ;
" but Jack might have gone far and fared worse."
" And then Thomas Leveridge ? "
" He's taken to caring for home first, and politics
come second only."
" Well, well ! The last time we were here
together it was to a burying; but it is true, that
sayin' of Scriptur', ' From Death we have passed to
Life.'"
CICELY CROWE
CICELY CROWE
I
OUR house is a long one; it takes two minutes to
walk from one end to the other, consequently by
the time one has gone from the principal staircase
at the east extremity to the kitchen at the west,
one is older by two minutes; whether one has
grown in the time I am unable to say, never having
taken measures before starting and on arriving. It
is satisfactory that the staircase and not the dining-
room occupies the extreme east, otherwise we should
always partake of cold meals.
But as if the main block of the house were not, in
all conscience, long enough, at some unknown period
since its first construction a back kitchen was added
beyond the kitchen, farther west, and then, a little
room only reached by a stair farther west still.
This little "prophet's chamber" was, however, one
used within my recollection for the keeping of the
feathers of geese and fowls that had been plucked,
where they accumulated till sufficient for the com-
position of a feather bed, when they were picked,
cleaned, baked, and made up.
Before this final process I well remember, as a
20Q
210 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
child of eight or nine, scrambling into this little
chamber, and then rolling and dancing among the
feathers, and making, as I believed, a snowstorm
about me. The after effects were not conducive
to comfort ; and I remember that the process of
scrubbing and cleansing me and my clothes after
this snowstorm was both irksome and lengthy.
That experience was never repeated, not only
because of the cleansing process, but also because
I was put across my father's knee, and the lesson
not to play with feathers and raise snowstorms
was impressed on me with a square ruler, till my
father got hot in the face, and I hot, elsewhere.
The same little stair that conducted to the feather
room, also gave admission to a low garret above
the back kitchen.
This garret contained all kinds of imaginable and
unimaginable lumber.
My dear father, who was an enthusiast for
novelties, bought every possible invention that con-
duced to the saving of time by cooks patent egg-
boilers, lemon-squeezers, apple-parers, digesting
pots, &c. These the cooks " chucked " up into
the lumber place with mighty disdain, and went
on in their old ways. Moreover, into it went all
the pans that they had left unsecured till rust had
eaten through them, all the kettles that began to
leak, by letting them fall on the stone floor; a
coffee roaster that the then reigning cook refused
to use, because it was less trouble to employ ready-
roasted coffee ; a mortar, the bottom of which had
CICELY CROW 211
been knocked out, because she would pound almonds
in it on her lap instead of on the table ; a tobacco
canister in which bird's-eye was kept for a lover
when he came on a visit. In fact, this garret was
an emporium of objects illustrative of kitchen
wastefulness, and indicative of my father's good-
nature.
No one ever visited this garret except the cook
when " chucking away " some of " master's new-
fangled nonsense," or when putting away some
damaged article out of reach of her mistress's eye,
consequently it was wholly given over to rats, that
raced about in it with a boldness only equalled by
that of cook when she looked straight into my
mother's eyes and said there never had been, so
long as she had been in the house, one of these
articles my mother missed, as the coffee-roaster, or
the china mortar, or the stewing pan, or the bronchitis
kettle ; or when my father sent inquiries about such
articles as the lemon-squeezer, or the apple-parer,
or the cream-whipper.
The rats got their pickings in this garret: they
licked out the dirty frying-pans in which was
grease, they consumed the contents of the pie-
dishes that had been burnt in the oven with crust
adhering to them, and nibbled at the rabbit-skins
that had been put away there to be sold to the
rag-and-bone man when he came round.
I knew of this garret, and loved it, loved it
almost as dearly as did the rats. My mother and
father did not like my visiting it, as I came away
212 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
from it very dirty in hands and face, and with
clothing often torn by nails ; and cook never would
endure that I should visit it for reasons of her own.
Consequently, visits to it were surreptitious, and
made at rare intervals.
We had, when I was about thirteen, a maid of
the name of Cicely Crowe ; she was an excellent
servant, with a passionate love of neatness, did her
work well and conscientiously, but had not the
most amiable disposition or the most gracious
manner. She was not a bad-tempered woman,
never violent, but, just as a diamond is said to be
off colour if the least lacking in absolute clearness,
so may she be said to have been off temper. She
was very kind-hearted, but it seemed to go against
her pride to do a kind thing in a kind way. She
never saw the good in anything, only the faults.
We all liked Cicely, but we all wished she would
try to be more pleasing. However, we have each
our blurs in this world, one in one way, one in
another, and had Cicely's mood been sunny, and
her manner sparkling, why she would have been
snapped up at once, and half the young men in
the village would have been quarrelling as to who
should have her. It was just this uncertainty in
her temper which deterred them, and kept her in
our service so many years.
She was a very pretty girl, was Cicely, with
brown hair, so neat that never was a hair out of
place, and with large hazel eyes, and such a com-
plexion ! cream and strawberry were nothing to
CICELY CROWE 213
it, and the colour palpitated under her transparent
skin like the flush of the evening sun on far-off
delicate clouds.
The lads of the village said to each other, " What
a lass that Cicely is, but " And our friends
said to my mother, " What a very nice, respectable
servant girl you have in Cicely." " Oh dear, yes,"
answered my mother, " she is everything that could
be desired, but " And her fellow-servants all
said, "We have nothing to say against Cicely,
but " And we children remarked to each other,
"Cicely is tremendously nice, but " No one
ever got any further than "but ," for no one
could bring it over the lips to say a word in
depreciation of Cicely.
Now it fell out all on a summer's day that cook
had gone off for a holiday, and the kitchenmaid
had sickened with measles and been sent home,
and with great trepidation, and with a tremulous
voice, and an appeal in her eyes, my mother had
asked Cicely if she would, under the circumstances,
boil the potatoes and the greens for the early dinner
on that Sunday. There was nothing to roast,
nothing to stew; cook had made cold pies and
shapes, and so on, to last till her return.
Cicely replied ungraciously that everything was
put on her, but she supposed she must do it, and
then turned her back on my mother and went
off to change her gown. As I have said, it was
Sunday. I had a sore throat, and so was not
allowed to go to church, and was bidden remain
214 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
at home, not go outside the doors, and keep myself
warm.
Now I had calculated on this, and had borrowed
a rat-trap from the gardener, and when Cicely was
upstairs putting on such garments as she deemed
suitable for peeling potatoes and shelling peas, and
cooking them, I slipped up the stairs into the garret,
hugging the trap, and holding a piece of cheese-
rind I had surreptitiously seized on and had roasted
over my candle. I was resolved on spending the
time whilst my parents were at church in catching
a rat. There was a loose slate in the roof and I
tilted this up, peeped out, and watched my father
and mother, brothers and sisters, and the governess
stalk away from the front door in their Sunday
suits, with prayer-books under their arms, and I
saw my dear mother pick off sundry bits of "fluff,"
ends of thread, &c., which her eye detected on the
children's clothes.
Then I heard a bustle of feet underneath, and
some tongues, and I knew that the domestics were
also off to church by the back door. Thereupon I
set my trap, and sat down behind a barrel in the
corner waiting to hear the rats come out, and to
watch them snuff at, then bite the bait, and, snap
be caught.
Whilst I waited, and, waiting, learned my collect
which had been set me as a task, I heard Cicely
come into the back kitchen, and with a sharp motion
pull the pan to her in which were the potatoes she
had to peel.
CICELY CROWE 215
Almost immediately after I heard the kitchen
door open, and a male voice exclaim, " Well, Cicely,
so here you are ? "
" I s'pose I be," was her answer.
Now the floor of the loft was of boards, and in
these boards were knots, and the centre of some of
these had fallen out. The back kitchen was not
ceiled. One of these peep-holes was close to me,
so very gently I lay down flat on the floor and
applied my eye to the hole, and then saw that a
young man had entered named Will Swan.
I knew him well. He had a boat, and was a
fisherman; an honest, cheerful fellow, with whom
I often went out on the sea. He was uncommonly
civil, and would insist on carrying the fish I caught,
or fancied I had caught, home for me.
Now only did it dawn on my infantile mind that
his carrying the fish was due not so much to a wish
to oblige me, as to have an excuse for coming into
our kitchen to see Cicely Crowe.
" What's brought you here ? " asked Cicely.
" I wanted to see you and have a bit of a talk."
" I'm busy," was her curt answer.
"Ciss, I want a good-bye before I go."
"Well, the door is open Good-bye."
He halted at the entrance, hesitated a while, and
then said : " You will be pleased to hear, Ciss, that
the good-bye I asked for is one for ever."
She dropped the potato she was peeling, but
did not look at him; she took up the potato
again.
2i6 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
" I'm thinking of leaving going to America."
She did not answer for a while, but as he waited
for an observation, she said, " Indeed. Hope you'll
enjoy yourself there."
" I am not going there to enjoy myself, but be-
cause well, Ciss I can't feel any joy here in the
old country."
" You seem merry enough."
" I am not. I've always something in me, gnaw-
ing at my heart."
" Swallowed a crab, I reckon, without having
him b'iled first."
" It's not that, Ciss. You know well it is not
that. If one can't get now what will make a fellow
happy, it's best to go, sez I."
"You'll get lots, lots over there," said she, and
pointed with the knife towards the sea, America,
the bed of the setting sun.
" I don't want lots only one."
" May you find that one. I hope you will."
" Do you ? " with a flash of happiness.
"Yes in America."
He hung his head.
" I suppose," said Will, "that I shall be forgotten
when I am far away."
" Those who go far away must reckon on that,"
was her answer. " Psha ! " she had cut her
finger. She quickly put a bit of potato rind over
the wound lest Will should observe it. But in-
deed, he was looking on the floor and saw
nothing.
CICELY CROWE 217
"And, Ciss, you have nothing more to say
to me ? "
" Of course I have Good-bye ! "
He looked up, took a step nearer to her, gazed
steadily into her face : " Cicely, do you mean it
in this way to say good-bye to one you have known
all these years ? It is not a light matter to cross
the ocean and go to the States. Who can tell what
may happen there? Some find there good luck,
others, wretchedness and ruin. To go there and
do well a chap must take a good heart with him.
I cannot do that. I shall bear but a heartache with
me, and have no hope whatever I do. Come,
Ciss what do you say ? "
"The parson don't like any one coming in late
for church. You'd best be off smart."
He raised himself to his full height. The angry
blood flew to his face and darkened it, fire leaped
from his eyes. I had never seen Will Swan like
that before.
" No Ciss no," he said, and he spoke hoarsely;
" I will not cross the water. No, that would con-
tent you. Who can say if things went contrary
here you might be willing to come across to me
there ? "
" If "
" Yes who can say ? But I will go where there
is no passage across. I will break down every
bridge between us. This has been going on too
long from one year to another and I can bear
it no further. I will get married to some other
218 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
wench, some one who will give a chap a good
word ; who, when one leaves only for a day will
say a good-bye, and her eyes will fill with tears.
She may never be to me all that you have been
and are, but she will be to me what it is not in your
nature to be kind and gracious."
"Oh, that that is it!" exclaimed Cicely. I
could see, through my peephole, how flames passed
through her face and then that she became deadly
white. I could see how her bosom heaved, how her
hands trembled as she tried to continue with the
potatoes, but was unable to do anything because of
her wounded finger.
Suddenly she took up the pan, thrust past Will,
and threw the contents into the pig-pail. " You have
made me spoil all," she said, and burst into tears.
"Crying! What for?"
"That is it. You have already lost your heart
to some other girl, and now you come to say "
" Yes, that I am going to the parson to have my
banns called."
" Who is it ? " she asked, looking at him, her
weeping arrested, and she as one of stone.
" If I say it shall be you, what will you say ?"
She tried to speak, could not, turned, put up her
hand against the wall, brushed it down once, twice,
again, impatiently. She could not bring the word
out that she wished to say.
Will remained waiting. No answer came.
" Ciss," he said, " it shall not be you. Any other
rather. No you, never ! "
CICELY CROWE 219
Then he turned and left the back kitchen.
She stood for a moment watching him as he
departed. Then she leaned her face in her wet
hands and burst into convulsive weeping.
Snap. Wee ! wee ! wee ! A rat was caught.
II
WILL SWAN did not go to America. What he
did was to find an engagement on a small boat
that went to and from Bristol, bringing groceries,
earthenware, timber, ovens from Bridgewater, and
which conveyed slates from the Cornish quarries
to that great mercantile city which goes on build-
ing, building without ceasing. He was away
sometimes for a week ; sometimes for a fortnight ;
now and then for over a month. America ! He
was not going to expatriate himself for a woman's
sake, when there was plenty of work to be found
in his native land, or rather, on the seas that
washed it.
The Bristol Channel looks upon the map as though
in it could be only calm water, as in the estuary of
the Thames. It is, however, not so. When the
wind blows from the west, how the great Atlantic
billows roll in, and with what fury do they recoil
and strike the faces of their brother waves also
seeking an entrance ! They tread one another down;
they overleap one another; they beat one another
about, and leave a long line of foam down the
220 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
centre of the Channel, the dust and wreckage of ten
thousand broken waves.
And then, without. When Hartland Point has
been turned, what a coast ! The iron-black frown-
ing cliffs stand up sheer from deep sea, and seem to
say, "We look on all passers-by as foes; let none
venture to approach us ! "
And how the Atlantic billows heave there ! It is
no exaggeration to say that they run mountains
high. Woe to the vessel, great or small, that enters
or attempts to cross the great loop between Hartland
and Trevose. It is a mouth to champ up and suck
the life out of every boat that falls into it when the
wind is inland.
Cicely heard that Will Swan had not gone to the
States. She saw him occasionally in church, but
when there he never looked her way. He stood up
straight as a post, sang with lungs like the bellows
of a blacksmith, in his blue jersey, his face brown
as a coffee-berry fresh roasted, but his eye, blue
as the summer sea, flashed and twinkled, but never
on her.
She heard talk of him too. He was much at the
Ship Inn ; and Kate Varcoe, the daughter of the
host, was a " likely lass," cheerful, fresh-faced, with
black dancing eyes. With Kate he chaffed and
made merry. Cicely listened every Sunday to hear
the banns called, but no called they were not.
Next, some one said that William had a sweetheart
in Bristol.
Oh, in Bristol ! Then why should not she show
CICELY CROWE 221
him that if he could be false she would be so also.
For a while she allowed herself to be walked out by
young Hannaway, a respectable youth, a carpenter
by trade, who made the coffins for all the neigh-
bourhood, and undertook in black for all the dead
in that and the neighbouring parishes.
When next she encountered Will she was at the
side of Hannaway. He was talking with some
chums, and a burst of laughter from them pealed out
after she had passed. Had he made some remark
relative to her that had caused this merriment?
Her cheeks burned. She was angry. She hated
him. She was dull as a companion, and after three
Sundays, as young Hannaway "got no forrarder"
with her, he gave her up and took to walking with
Kate Varcoe.
On the quay was a long bench, whereon the
sailors and fishermen were wont to sit and yarn.
There Will, when at home, sat and yarned also
now about ships, then about fish, about tobacco,
and last about girls. He was boastful, and laughed
and said that he had only to hold up his little finger
and whistle, and half-a-dozen would perch on it.
But this was so strange in Will, so different from
his wont, that an old pilot who had known him
from a child and now heard him, shook his head
and said, " He's not got that Ciss out of his head
yet, I'll swear."
Then the news came that Cicely was ill very ill ;
"something on the nerve," so it was said, and others
opined " her orgings were gone scatt."
222 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
Will Swan asked no questions about her, but
whistled " Black-eyed Susan " with his hands in his
pockets. It was obvious he cared nothing for her.
Then she began to mend. The disease, whatever
it was, went " off the nerve " again, or the " orgings "
got patched up with powders or plaster. Very
white and weak, Cicely sat at her window and
looked out. One day she saw Will Swan coming
along the way. " Is he about to ask after me ? "
she thought. No, he went by. He did not turn
in at the familiar at one time familiar kitchen
back entrance. He did not even look up at her
window.
Now, at last, Cicely left our service. Her mother
was dead, and some one was needed at home to
keep house for her father. She left us without a
word of regret. Indeed, she did not even say good-
bye to my father and mother. My dear mother, in
her sweet, gentle way, reproached her for it when
they met.
" I thought, ma'am," said Cicely, " if you'd wanted
to say good-bye, you'd ha' come to the kitchen to
say it to me. 'Twasn't for me to intrude."
" Oh ! Cicely, after so many years ! " my mother's
eyes filled. She really loved that girl, and from the
depth of my heart I believe Cicely loved her, but
she was too perverse to show it.
"Now," said Cicely to herself, "Til have no
more nonsense." By which she meant that she
would drive all thoughts of Will from her head.
But this is easier said and resolved on than ac-
CICELY CROWE 223
complished. And you, we will say, think that your
thoughts, or fancies, are in your own power, that
you can trifle with them, and, when you like, put
them aside. But when the day comes that you do
wish thus to be rid of them, then you find yourself
entangled, chained in the passion, and you cannot
break from it. So was it with Cicely. She thought
and worked for her old father more zealously and
lustily than she had for us, but only thought the
more continuously on, and suffered the keener for,
young Will Swan.
Summer was over; autumn harvests were gathered
in ; Martinmas summer had brooded over the land,
enveloping all in a warm, lovely haze; and then,
suddenly came the change. Without warning an
equinoctial gale burst on the coast, the summer was
over, the brightness past winter had come with
gloom and sadness.
On the evening after it had been blowing great
guns all day, the door was thrown open, and one of
the coastguard looked in.
" Jan Crowe ! " called he to Cicely's father, who
had charge over the lifeboat, "there's the Marianne
wrecked."
"The Marianne!"
Cicely uttered a cry. That was Will Swan's
vessel, or, rather, the vessel in which Will Swan
was. She ran down to the beach. The sea was
almost indistinguishable from the air, so lashed and
shaken together was wave with wind, so inter-
mingled were foam and rain. The air was filled
224 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
with sound. The sands trembled with the beating
of the surf on them. The whole sky was brown
and blurred with clouds sweeping along from the
west, inland, with screaming sea-birds peppered
against the vapour, and salt tears dripping out of it ;
now driving in rushes, then staying and drawing
up as a veil, and allowing the wind full play to riot
and rend between the clouds and the ocean.
All colour was gone out of land and sea and sky
gone as though melted together into one medley
of dull grey, never to be gathered together into pure
colour again. No outlines were clear. The bold
points of land that ran out into the sea were so
be-hazed with spoondrift and rain that they had
changed their appearance, they had lost their con-
sistency, they seemed to waver and threaten to
dissolve into the seething flood that beat about
them.
None but an experienced eye could distinguish the
Marianne in the haze and tossing mass of sea.
Men and women, in fluttering garments, were on
the beach, with their hands to their eyes screening
them, gazing seaward.
Cries rose for the boat to be launched. But in
such a sea it was not possible to do anything. The
Marianne was a wreck. No living being was on
her. The captain of the coast-guard put his glass
to his eye and looked steadily at the tossing now
seen, now obscured patch that was once the
Marianne. In the gathering darkness little could
be distinguished.
CICELY CROWE 225
"They've left her," he said. " There's none
aboard but a dog. Hark ! you can hear him bark."
Those near held their breath.
" I can't hear nothing," said a seaman.
" You can if you look through my glass," said the
captain, " you can then both see and hear the little
dog yapping. He wouldn't be yapping like that
unless he'd been left behind."
" But where be they ? There was Cap'n Thomas,
and Simon Feathers, and Joe Wilcock, and Bill
Swan."
"Aye," said another, "and there's Tony Graves;
his mother be here in a terrible take-on. 'Tis the
first time the boy has been so far to sea."
" Where be they ? " asked the captain. " I can't
see anything of a boat. They've took to it, sure
as I'm here, and just as certain she's capsized."
"Then they'll be washed ashore, dead or alive,"
said one.
" Of course they will. 'Tain't no use trying the
lifeboat when you know they're not in the vessel.
You don't know where to look for 'em."
So the shore was searched, and, first one, then
another was recovered ; the boy Tony first, alive
and not much the worse ; then Joe Wilcock dead,
or so near death that there seemed no chance
of recovering him. With the barbarous ignorance
then common, he was thrown across a barrel to let
the water run out of his lungs. He struggled,
gasped, and was still.
Captain Thomas, a large stout man, holding to
226 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
an oar, forged his way ashore, but he was much
bruised and cut by having been beaten against sharp
slate rocks like razors. He could not speak, but
his eyes were lively, black eyes under white bushy
brows. After a quarter of an hour he gasped out,
" Where's Tony? I stood my life to his mother I'd
bring him safe home."
" Safe he is," said some one near.
"Then that's right," said the captain. "Where's
the rest ? "
They could tell him only of Joe Wilcock. Feathers
and Swan had not been washed ashore.
By this time it was night. Lanterns were flash-
ing along the beach. Then up from the water came
some one ; it was Cicely, drenched to the skin, her
hair streaming, but wet as seaweed. She was
dragging in her arms a dark mass.
Some ran to her with lights. What she was
heaving was Will Swan, conscious, for he looked
at her, but speechlessly. The moment others drew
nigh the girl released her load and disappeared.
The night became clearer. The wind shifted to
the north, the clouds parted. Stars appeared in
the patches of dark sky. The rain ceased, but the
sea still thundered and gleamed white.
A knock at the cottage door of the old fellow who
had charge of the lifeboat. He was out still, but
Cicely opened and saw Will Swan before her with
both hands extended.
She drew her hand back and looked coldly at him.
He was staggered, and said : " Well, Ciss ! "
CICELY CROWE 227
"Well," she said, "what do you want here?"
Will stepped forward, and tried to put his arm
round her to take a kiss. She thrust him from her
impatiently.
For a moment he stood motionless, then he burst
forth : " It was you you who snatched me out of
the water."
" You are mistaken, it was Jacob Finch. I stood
by. I would have done that for any one."
Will became white as chalk ; then almost in fury,
as if he would have torn her, he cried : " Ciss ! you
be cruel to me and to yourself. I don't care, say
yes or no, fight or bite if you will, mine you shall
be, or I will carry you in these arms and throw you
and myself together over the cliff into the sea."
He seized her in his strong arms, clasped her to
his heart, and covered her face with kisses.
So, in a paroxysm of fury, was this courtship done.
And Cicely melted like wax against glowing iron.
But only for a moment, and then said : " Well, if
it must be, it must."
Fifty years have passed since that day.
There is now an old seaman sits smoking his
pipe on the bench, looking seaward, and he yarns
with his mates, and is looked up to and listened
to by the younger men. He has got strapping
sons of his own. They are seamen as was their
father. He has a daughter married, and the old
chap is fond of taking one of his grandchildren out
with him, to walk on the quay and sit on the old
bench beside him or else on his knee.
228 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
That old man is Will Swan.
The Crowe, by holy matrimony, had become a
Swan.
The pretty Cicely I remembered so long ago was
now dead ; and old Bill wore a black band round
his blue jersey arm.
A day or two ago I was sitting by him on the
bench.
He was silent for a long time, smoking and
blowing clouds.
Presently he turned his face to me. I saw there
was trouble in it.
" You knew my wife, sir ? " he said.
" Indeed I did, since I was a little child."
" I know you did."
Then again silence.
Presently again his face turned, and he drew his
pipe from his mouth and rested it on his knee.
" You're a minister now, sir ? "
" Yes ; I am a parson."
" Then pYaps you can tell me something."
" I will tell you what I can."
"You see, sir, Ciss was that won'erful sort of
a woman. Though us was married for fifty years
her never once in all that time would say as her
loved me."
Again a long pause ; another smoke. Then a
turn to me : " You are a parson ? "
" Yes. What do you want ? "
"Well, you can tell me. When I get into life
everlasting, do you think Ciss will meet me at the
CICELY CROWE 229
gates o' Paradise and say: 'What are you doin'
here now ? Don't you go bothering of me, / don't
want you ' ? "
"All that is left behind," said I, "all, all in the
soil and dross of the grave. Above, the bright
happy smile will break out, and the welcome, and
the hands will be stretched out "
" Thank you," he said slowly. Great tears were
in his eyes and rolling down his cheeks. " I hopes
the same, but I doubts it. There must be a terrible,
mirac'lous change for that to come about. But
things may happen past 'uman understanding, and
even onions turn to apples, and jerseys to pea-
jackets. No offence, sir," and he touched his
forehead.
THE WEATHERCOCK
THE WEATHERCOCK
LYDIA FRENCH had a shop opposite the church.
The little town or overgrown village had no market,
but there were fairs held in the space before the
church on one side and Lydia French's shop on
the other twice in the year. Both were cattle fairs,
frequented by farmers. On such occasions bullocks
ran about with tails lifted, yelling men and bark-
ing dogs behind and before them, and made either
for the churchyard wall or for Lydia French's
shop window. The Oddfellows, moreover, held
their annual feast there, and processionised behind
a band, and waved banners and wore sashes, and
ate and drank heartily at the " Peal of Bells." On
such occasions stalls were erected in the open
space, where nuts were shot for, and bar ley- sugar-
sticks and twisted peppermint rods and brandy-
balls were sold, also ginger-pop and lemonade.
On all these occasions Lydia French's shop was
full of customers. She, moreover, had a good
clientele in the entire parish, but experienced less
difficulty in disposing of her goods than in getting
her little bills paid.
But though there were defaulters, yet those who
liquidated were in the majority, or Lydia French
333
234 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
would not have been the prosperous woman she
was. Her aspect breathed a fulness of purse and
flush of comfort that were convincing. She could
afford herself, on occasion, a silk gown. She made
weekly expeditions to the bank to pay in heb-
domadal profits. She had recently repapered her
little parlour, and the paper was white and gold.
She was generous. When children put down
their pennies for acid drops or almond rock, she
always made the balance incline in their favour,
to their great admiration ; when their mothers
bought calico, she was not particular to a quarter
of a yard ; and she was large-hearted she sub-
scribed equally to the missionaries of Church and
Chapel.
Lydia French was a widow. She had been
married but for a twelvemonth to a commercial
traveller, who had in the brief year tried her for-
bearance and strained her means, and she had
now been a widow of three years, and was without
encumbrance.
Several had made advances to her, but she soon
let commercial travellers understand that none of
them need apply. There was one who trafficked
in a "Life of Wellington," with magnificent steel
engravings, issued in parts, who laid siege to her;
and when he would not take a " No " she refused
to receive any more numbers of the series. Where-
upon he threatened her with legal proceedings,
averring that she had bound herself to Wellington
from the cradle to the grave when she received
THE WEATHERCOCK 235
the first part. She paid up rather than go into
court, and nursed bitterness of heart against tra-
vellers thenceforth. The man whom she had
married was bad enough; this Wellingtonian man
was "wusser," as she expressed it. It really was
preposterous that such a woman, plump, prosperous,
comely, should not find her man.
But, indeed, there were plenty of men who
wanted her, only she was hard to please. A
young farmer she did not relish farm-work ; she
did not wish to give up the shop. The blooming
butcher she had an aversion for the trade. A
handsome drover he tippled. A Methodist class-
leader he was a teetotaller, and she liked her
drop of mild ale.
But, finally she seemed to hesitate between two
John Newbold, the mason, and Jack Westcott
or, as the children called him, Jackie Waistcoat, the
sailor.
Both were fine men, and both had good char-
acters ; the first was somewhat too heavy, the
latter somewhat too lively. But where is perfection
to be found? In woman, perhaps nay, certainly
not in man.
There was this advantage to whichsoever she
cast the kerchief, that he would not require her
to give up the shop. To the shop she was attached.
The shop made her a power in the parish, brought
her into relation with all, gave her consequence,
and drew to her a good deal of money. This,
then, was a sine qud non that she should keep
236 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
the shop after marriage as before. Besides, she
did not desire to have a husband always hanging
about her, like a fly in hot weather, that will not
be driven away. She was accustomed to indepen-
dence. A man on the premises all day implied in-
terference, and that she was determined not to
tolerate.
Lydia French sat in her shop ; no business was
doing this day. She had made up her account to
midsummer, and the balance was good ; it made
her feel good like a bracing sermon or a melting
hymn. She had taken stock roughly. Everything
was satisfactory. The little house was in excellent
condition, she owned it ; that is to say, on three
lives, and she had paid Newbold's bill for putting
it in thorough repair. The chimney had smoked;
that was cured by the new revolving cowl. The
drain from the sink had emitted smells; that was
rectified Newbold had put down a stink-trap.
Newbold was a useful man when any masoning
work was required. Could she put up with him for
always for better, for worse ?
She looked up, and looked out at her little win-
dow between the bottles of pink and pallid drops,
and the withered oranges that would no longer
sell, and the stay-laces, and the ginger-beer bottles,
and the can of mustard, and the tin of biscuits.
And she saw that which was to her a constant
worry the weathercock on the church spire.
In the great gale of the preceding November the
cock had been blown on one side, the spindle on
THE WEATHERCOCK 237
which for many years it had revolved had been bent
over, so that now the poor bird lay on his back in
mid-air, and could neither right himself nor turn
with the wind.
Mrs. French, neat in herself, orderly in her house,
above all, in the shop, could not endure to see what
was out of place, inverted, useless. She had liked
to know from which direction the wind blew. It
had provided her with conversation with her
customers. It had satisfied her sense of the fitness
of things that the spindle on the spire should be
upright, and that the vane should fulfil the object for
which it was ordained.
Now more than six months had passed, and the
cock was still reversed. She had remonstrated with
the parson.
"My dear Mrs. French," he had replied, "that
is the affair of the churchwardens. I have badgered
all my friends, and impoverished myself over the
restoration of the church I can do no more."
She complained to the churchwardens. " Lor'
bless y'," said they, " there be no levying o' church-
rates now, what can we do ? "
" It really is a scandal," said Lydia. " And now
the village feast is coming on, and the Oddfellows
will march about, and the cock will "
" Be an odd fellow, too, turned upside down, like
many of the heads after ale and punch."
" I don't like it," said Lydia. " I sees it with its
blessed feet turned up and its comb down helpless.
It is real unchristian and inhuman to let it bide so."
238 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
The churchwardens said, " Meddlin' with aught
on the steeple is darned expensive. Beside, 'taint
everywhere you can find a steeplejack."
So Lydia fidgeted and mused and schemed : that
vane became the trouble of her life.
In at the shop door came simultaneously, from
opposite directions, the builder and the mariner.
They had a curious knack, these men, of spying
on each other, and of denying each other the oppor-
tunity of having a few words in private with the
widow.
In this, however, the sailor had the advantage
over the mason, for he was not daily engaged, as
was the other. But Newbold so contrived that
when he was absent, should Westcott endeavour
to steal a march on him, his mother or his sister
should invade the shop and so prevent privacy.
Which was the favoured swain neither could de-
cide; but that was not wonderful, for Lydia had
not decided for herself.
" Good-morning, mem," said the mason. " I'll
just trouble you for an ounce of bird's-eye."
" And I'll have same of Virginia shag," said the
sailor.
" Fine day, mem," said Newbold.
"Which way is the wind ? " asked the widow.
" East by nor'-east," answered Westcott.
" Ah ! then we shall have fine weather, and last-
ing for the revel."
" Hope so," said the mason.
"It is really distressing I can now never tell
THE WEATHERCOCK 239
the way of the wind. It is as bad as having a
kitchen clock as won't work. That there church
stag- -"
Mrs. French never spoke of the weathercock, but
used the local term for a cock, which throughout
Devon is invariably a stag.
"Ah!" saidNewbold.
"Well, now," said Westcott.
" It really do seem a burnin' shame to have the
poor unfort'nate bird lyin j on his back and kickin' at
the clouds, and that, too, on the day of the parish
feast. What will folk say of us ? That we've no
public spirit left. The farmers might get up a
subscription. Would it be so amazin' expensive ?
Would they have to scaffold all the tower up, and to
the top of the spire ? "
"That's the way masons 'ud set about it," said
Jack Westcott contemptuously.
" And pray how 'ud sailors do it ? "
" Swarm up," said Jack.
" Get along ! That wouldn't do it."
"Yes, it would, I bet a guinea. I might, but
you " The sailor shrugged his shoulders.
" For the matter of that," observed the builder,
after musing a while, " I don't see but what it might
be done, and done at no terrible cost. There's a
sort of a window on each side of the spire, and I
suppose it would be possible to run out planks and
make a sort of a platform and set up a ladder agin
the steeple."
" Would it not be dangerous ? "
2 4 o IN A QUIET VILLAGE
"Oh, of course there's nothing in that way with-
out danger. But if it has to be done, it can be
done."
" I warrant I'd get up without any of your
arrangements," said the mariner.
" I daresay you might," responded the builder
slowly ; " but what good would that be ? You've
more to do than spike a Jacky Tar at the top;
you've got to remove the spindle, and that must
be roped and let down with caution. There's a
deal of things belonging to all things," said New-
bold sententiously, "and that's what escapes the
likes of you."
" I bet I'd do it ! " said the sailor.
" I bet so would I ! " said the mason.
"But," added the latter, "I ain't going to risk
my precious life and sacrifice time and labour for
nothin'."
" Now look here," said Westcott, " there be you
and me hoverin' round about this here lovely
creetur, each sunnin' of ourselves in her beamin'
eyes and neither on us gettin' no closer, and both
of us lusty fellows, one accustomed to masts and
other to scaffold-poles "
"I take you," interrupted the mason; "we be-
tween us is to set the weathercock to rights out of
love to this adorable female."
"Not just precisely that," said the mariner.
" Between us won't do. What if we each went
up the steeple simultaneous, and from opposite
sides ? Wouldn't the distance atween us be every
THE WEATHERCOCK 241
foot of ascent lessenin' and lessening till our faces
met at the top ? And I bet a guinea we wouldn't
kiss there; we'd come to a grapple."
" Really," said the widow, with a shudder, " this
is startling. A contest on the pinnacle of the spire
between you and all for me. I ain't worth it."
" Not worth it ! " exclaimed the mason, and was
about to fall on his knees, when the sailor pointed
to his boot, and brandished his foot menacingly.
" I can't allow that not in my presence."
" We will draw lots who is to go up and attempt
it," said the mason.
" And who is to have fair field and no interfer-
ence for courtin'," said the mariner.
" Done ! It shall be so ! " said Newbold.
" I agrees," said Westcott.
" Now there is one thing I bargain for," observed
the builder. " If he who first attempts it fails and
falls, and gets squelched, don't let the other take
advantage, and shirk doing of it in his turn. Let
him also venture like a man."
" Like a man ! " echoed the tar. " ( England
expects every man to do his dooty.' "
" Come, shall we draw matches ? "
11 Matches ! It's a match for one alone."
"Then toss up."
"Toss up you are. And the winner has fair
field and no just cause or impediment why these
two should not be joined together in holy matri-
mony."
" Here is a penny," said Newbold.
Q
242 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
"A penny! You ought to blush the colour of
the copper to suggest it. I will toss only gold for
such a bloomin' and lovely lady. Here is a
sovereign. Heads or Royal Arms which ? "
" Heads for me ! " said Newbold.
" And arms them extended arms for me," said
Jack Westcott, with a leer at the widow .
The sailor tossed the sovereign.
"Heads!" he exclaimed.
" Best of three," said the mason condescendingly.
" Tails ! " said Jack, after the second toss.
Now all paused and looked at each other. The
widow's face expressed anxiety.
Up went the gold piece once more, whisking high,
and Westcott caught it, but paused a moment before
opening his palms.
" Come, man ! Let us see our fate." said
Newbold.
The sailor raised his right hand, and the sovereign
in his left disclosed the reverse of the coin upper-
most.
" I've won ! " said the builder. " It is I who am
to have the first shot at the weathercock."
"And I bide below with the lady," said the
mariner.
" Let me consider," mused Newbold. " I have
a little job on hand for Squire Theobald ; it will
take me about a week, and my ladders be all
engaged. But I'll tell you what. Monday week
will suit me, and that will be time enough before
the feast."
THE WEATHERCOCK 243
" Oh, Mr. Newbold, do not be too rash," pleaded
the widow.
"Ma'am, I would dare anything for you," he
answered gravely.
The tidings that John Newbold was going to
ascend the spire and put the vane to rights pro-
duced lively satisfaction in the breasts of the
villagers, and awoke vast curiosity to know how
he would set to work to accomplish it.
The day was fine grey with occasional drifts of
fog, but nothing to signify, and there was happily
no wind. Nearly every parishioner was out to
observe proceedings. Nearly not all; there were
exceptions. Mrs. French did not quit her shop.
It neither comported with her ripe dignity to be
seen among the rabble staring up at the sky, nor
with her affairs, for a crowd on the green promised
customers for ginger-beer and lollipops.
To her came Jack Westcott.
" Good-morning, mem. I thought, with your
good favour, I'd fill my pouch with Virginia shag.
And I'd like if you have no objection to see how
that chap goes about it from within, on your
premises."
The widow bowed.
"Do you think, Mr. Westcott, there is real
danger ? I should never forgive myself "
" Lord bless you. That mason chap wouldn't do
nothing that would hurt the tip of his nose. You'll
see. He'll just run out some planks and nail a
strip o' wood across, and lash his ladders as well
244 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
as lean them agin the strip. Bless your angel face
and shining eyes, he'll make all secure for himself."
"But, Mr. Westcott, it really looks a most
perilous undertaking."
" Not more so than this," said the sailor, suddenly
swinging himself over the counter. " Excuse me,
lovely creature! But I can't well see what goes
on on the side of the shop door; there's all them
darned advertisements block it up. But here if I
may be so bold as to watch."
" You can take a chair, Mr. Westcott."
" Never ! unless you take one as well."
So, with a little complimenting and resistance,
it was settled : the widow and the suitor seated
themselves on her side of the counter on two chairs,
and looked out through the shop window at the
proceedings of the builder.
Now it was seen how he emerged from the lower
window of the spire, and how cautiously a short
ladder was set up against it, by which, when made
secure, he mounted, and placed himself astride the
gable. Then a larger ladder was advanced against
the incline of the steeple, and set so as to reach a
considerable way up. This the mason ascended,
and by some means he secured the ladder.
" It's as easy as telling lies," said the sailor. " I
believe there are iron crooks let into the steeple."
"But it looks dreadfully insecure," said the
widow. " Do see ! he is like a fly against a rod."
" More like a bumble-bee," said Jack.
" What if he was to lose his head ? "
THE WEATHERCOCK 245
"Not such a risk to him as to me," sighed the
mariner.
" What do you mean, Mr. Westcott ? "
" Only I never can see any man swarmin' up a
mast or so but I feel an itch in my palms to be
grapplin' of somethin'. You'll excuse me if I put
my arm round and lay hold of the back of your
chair."
"If it's any comfort to you, Mr. Westcott."
"I don't think that chair-back very firm," ob-
served Jack.
" Oh ! do, do look ! " exclaimed the widow. " He
is on one ladder, and thrusting up another hands
over head ! and, oh ! if his feet were to give way !
if he were to stagger ! if the ladder were to slip !
oh, I feel I feel quite giddy and faint."
"Lean on me," said Jack; "and drat that
chair-back! it is cracked. That's more substantial
and agreeable to both parties." He slipped his
arm round her waist. " England expects every
man to do his dooty."
" I really cannot bear to see poor dear Mr.
Newbold thus risk his precious life."
"Then don't," said Westcott; and rising, he
brought close together the bottles of mixed sweets
and almond-rock in the window. "There, now
you can't see nor be seen. Are you better, my
angel?"
"Rather," responded Lydia in a faint voice.
"And yet I'm all of a tremble. What if he was
to fall?"
246 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
" We'd mingle our tears over his grave," said the
sailor. " Now, look you here."
"I can't; I've such a swimming in my head.
O Jack ! I can still see something a fog has
swept over the top of the spire; or is it that my
eyes are deceived ? He's gone ! He's gone ! "
"It is so a passing drift of vapour. He's all
right. It will cool him. Now, Lydia, this won't
do. You'll fret yourself into a brain-fever if you
look at him even between the interstices of sweetie-
bottles and biscuit-tins. I must convey you where
you cannot see him at all; and there's no place
better than inside the church. And, by ginger!
there goes the parson. I'll call him; he will let
us in. And Lydia, I took the precaution to have a
license ; it cost me half-a-guinea here it is. You'd
never be so unreasonable as to have that chucked
away, so come along."
"O Jack! I wouldn't do anything as wasn't
right and honourable. He, up there" with her
chin she indicated the top of the spire, then en-
veloped in fog " he'll expect to have me if he
brings down the stag."
" Not a bit, my dear. Nothing was set down in
writing, but I call you to witness he who had the
choice was to go up the spire and leave the coast
clear for the other to propose, and to offer no just
cause or impediment. Was it not so ? "
" I did not quite understand it in that light."
" But I did."
"Will Mr. Newbold, though ? "
THE WEATHERCOCK 247
"My dear Lydia, he is up in a fog. England
expects every man to do his dooty. Here's the
license. Come along."
Two hours later, with a triumphant air and firm
stride, the builder entered the shop, dragging along
an immense battered weathercock detached from
the spindle. It had once been gilt, it was now in
a rusty, measly condition. Within he saw the
widow and sailor side by side.
" Done ! " shouted he. " I've got the cock ! "
" Done ! " replied the mariner. " I've won the
hen ! "
" I've been up in the clouds," said Newbold.
"And I am in the seventh heaven. Fve not
been in the clouds like you. Let me introduce
you to Mrs. Westcott ! "
A PLUM-PUDDING
A PLUM-PUDDING
AS far as man could suppose, every element that
goes to make up happiness was united to bless Mr.
and Mrs. Birdwood.
He was in easy circumstances ; that is to say, he
had earned enough money not to be obliged to work
any longer, and had his own little house, and could
keep a " slavey." He was inoffensive in his pur-
suits, being fond of flowers, especially of roses,
which he grafted; and what harm can there be in
a man who loves gardening ? Next to marrying a
curate, a woman has a good certainty of her
husband turning out amiable and orderly if he
grafts roses. Then, again, he was in the prime
of life, by no means bad-looking, amiable and
placid. You could not study his face and not see
that he was good-humoured. On the other hand,
Mrs. Birdwood was comely, a lively woman, neat
in shape, under thirty, and of a florid complexion
which ought to suit a man addicted to flowers.
She had made a good match, said her friends,
for she was one of fourteen, and had come penni-
less to his arms. She had been Eliza Gubbins, and
had dropped the Gubbins at the altar. No one
could deny that she was the gainer when she
351
252 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
acquired a name that carried with it a suggestion
of piping and tooting and whistling and jug-jugging
and cooing of all kinds of song-birds.
But there is a fly in every cup, a thorn to every
rose, some bone in every joint you get from the
butcher, a cloud in every sky.
Mr. Birdwood was of an over-placid and too easy-
going nature to satisfy Mrs. Birdwood, who was
impulsive, exacting, and sanguine.
He accepted connubial felicity as he did his
meals as something anticipated, necessary, and
ordinary. Instead of exhibiting an effusion of
gratitude to his wife for making him happy, he
budded his roses, and divided his bulbs, and
potted his tubers as though that were the main
object of his life, instead of falling down and
admiring that luminous transcendental being who
had condescended to come into Jessamine Villa to
be his happiness.
They had been married a twelvemonth rather
more. Eliza Gubbins had supposed that an
enamoured swain, after marriage, would grow in
love, like a conflagration, which increases as you
add fuel. But it was not so; he was warm and
approving, but never rose above blood-heat. More-
over, he had a provoking Christian name Josiah
that he could not alter. Eliza had fed on poetry
and romance in her maiden days, and the name,
Josiah, had in it nothing poetical, no romance.
"I can't call you Jos," she said, "for that is the
short for Joseph or Joshua."
A PLUM-PUDDING 253
"Then call me Siah."
" Sire. No, thank you ; it would seem as though
I regarded you as my sovereign."
As yet there was no child, nor prospect of one.
This fact might have been considered a reason why
they should have been more than ever devoted to
one another, as there was no distraction, no one
else in the house to love, except the slavey, and she
was, naturally, out of the question.
But it was not so. Mrs. Birdwood had nothing
else to think about except the lack of ardour in
Mr. Birdwood, and nothing else to do but fret
over it.
" My dear," said Josiah Birdwood one day at
table, "my dear, I think Maggie Finch is just
about your size and build."
" Maggie Finch ! and who is she ? "
" I mean the girl at Miss Thomas's, the dress-
maker's."
" Maggie Finch, indeed ! " exclaimed Eliza, turn-
ing first red, then white. "And pray, what do you
know about" witheringly " Maggie Finch ? "
"Oh, nothing, my dear, only she is in Miss
Thomas's shop."
"And what do you know of Miss Thomas's
shop?"
" Why not, my dear ? You go to Mr. Gardener's
Mr. Gardener the tailor, I mean."
" Of course, I do. I have tailor-made dresses."
"Then why should not I go to the milliner's to
have a milliner-made suit ? "
254 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
" It is preposterous. Maggie Finch, indeed !
How do you know she is a Maggie ? "
" Miss Thomas calls her so. Besides "
" Well ? " sternly eyeing him.
" I got her the situation."
" Oh ! I see ! you got her the situation."
"Yes. Her poor father
" I want to hear nothing of the poor father ; it is
poor Maggie you think of. I see all, clear as day-
light a Finch and a Birdwood match much better
than a Gubbins and a Birdwood." Then she burst
into tears.
" My dear, be reasonable, and kindly give me a
spoonful of gravy ; my bacon is dry."
" How can you ! How can you ! Heartless, cruel
man ! Oh that I had married a commercial
traveller ! "
" A bagman, my dear ! "
"You need not open your mouth, nostrils, and
eyes with such a snorting affectation of surprise.
I said it a commercial traveller."
" I did not know, my dear "
" No. You did not know that I had a a tender
corner in my heart, a general predilection for com-
mercials. They go about in flights, like humming-
birds in the Brazilian forests."
" Have you been in Brazil, dear ? "
" No, I have not ; but I have read of them.
Living animated jewels they are."
" Which ? The bagmen or the humming-birds ? "
"I won't speak to you any more. You pur-
A PLUM-PUDDING 255
posely misunderstand me to insult me, that you
may go off to your Maggie Finches."
11 There is only one, dear."
" And so much the worse. You focus, you con-
centrate, on that wretched object the admiration,
the love, of which I am bereaved. If you go
gallivanting and meandering round dressmakers'
assistants, I can do the same. I will not be left
out in the cold for any Maggie Finches, I can tell
you. There are plenty of bagmen, as you call
them commercials is their proper designation
who would be only too glad, too proud, to lick the
dust off my feet."
" My dear, you are hot."
" I have occasion to be hot."
" And my tea is cold."
" This is an outrage ! "
Mrs. Birdwood rose and flounced out of the
room. She rushed upstairs, casting at the slavey,
en passant ', a notice to quit, for no particular reason,
but as a vent to her wrath ; and she dashed into
the bedroom, where nothing had as yet been put
in order, and threw herself in the arm-chair and
burst into a flood of tears. She remained for some
time crying and fanning herself into a greater flame
of wrath. Then she rose and went to the window.
She saw her husband he had taken off his coat,
and he was digging in the garden. He had told
her, the previous evening, that he expected hard
frost, and would turn up the mould, that the slugs
might be killed. Actually, after that scene, after
256 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
those reproaches hurled at him, after that exposure,
he was placidly digging, that the frost might kill
the slugs.
Really the man was unendurable.
About an hour later he drew on his coat and
came in, and brushed down his trousers and
washed his hands.
Mrs. Birdwood lurked about watching. He
went out at the front door, passed into the street,
and disappeared. Mrs. Birdwood drew on her
cloak, adjusted a hat, and followed.
She had hardly reached the gate before she saw
Josiah turn in at a door to a shop some way up
the street, over which was inscribed : " Thomas :
Milliner and Dressmaker."
"The die is cast. Flaunting his vices in the
face of his wife ! I, too, can be vicious. If he
goes hunting dressmakers, I even I can seek
commercial travellers."
She set her lips. Her eyes glared. Her face
was terrible in its wrath.
She hastened to retrace her steps, gathered
together a few of her most valued and necessary
goods, and left the house.
" There ! " said she, slamming the iron gate after
her. " There ! Two can play at this game. If he
deserts me, I also can desert him. Good-bye to
Jessamine Villa! Oh that I had married a
commercial ! "
She took her way to the station. " Let me see,"
said she ; " I'll go a-junketing to the seaside and
A PLUM-PUDDING 257
enjoy myself. Happily I have money; he gave
me enough to pay the monthly bills. Won't he be
surprised when he conies back from Finching to
find me flown ! Yes I'll go to Sandbourne and
enjoy the sea breezes, and pick up shells and
seaweeds, and look at the visitors, and perhaps
a commercial or two may flit past my admiring
eyes. Their manners are so elegant; they have
such persuasive ways; their address is so en-
gaging ! "
Furnished with a ticket, she got into a second-
class carriage. She was about to enjoy herself, so
she would not go third and she had money to
spend.
There was a gentleman in the carriage. He had
been seeing a number of large black boxes put into
the luggage van. He took his seat after Mrs.
Birdwood had ensconced herself in a corner, hoping
to have a carriage to herself.
Off went the train.
As already said, Mrs. Birdwood was a comely
woman, and this the other traveller perceived, and
was unable to take his eyes off her. If a cat may
look at a king, then surely a commercial may gaze
on a pretty woman ! Mrs. Birdwood did not like
it, and put up her hand to let down her veil ;
unhappily, in her hurry at leaving, she had for-
gotten her veil.
"Christmas coming soon," said the gentleman;
"a time of holly and mince-pies and above all, ol
mistletoe ! I think I know some one who would like
R
258 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
to be under a mistletoe bush with somebody else,
unnamed."
"And I think," said Mrs. Birdwood, "I know
some one who would like to have a bunch of
holly with which to whack into somebody else
unnamed ! "
"Going any distance, miss?" asked the bagman.
" I don't quite know where I am going," in-
advertently replied the runaway wife. Then she
bit her tongue in vexation at having said what she
had.
" Let me recommend Sandbourne," said he con-
fidingly. "A charming place beautiful beach.
Excuse me, I think the ticket you hold ah ! it is
for Sandbourne. How happy a coincidence ! I am
going there as well. If I can be of any assistance
with your luggage, command me."
"I have none."
" Indeed ! Going to friends ? "
She was silent. Tears came into her eyes tears
of mortification and anger.
" My dear young lady," said the fellow-passenger,
" I trust I have not touched on any tender point.
When lovely woman stoops to conquer especially
with tears as her weapons she is irresistible."
" Really, sir," exclaimed Mrs. Birdwood, " I must
request you to desist from these impertinences and
this odious familiarity."
"A thousand pardons I am mute."
On reaching Sandbourne station Mrs. Birdwood
dismounted from the train, greatly relieved to be
A PLUM-PUDDING 259
able to shake off the gentleman who had annoyed
her. She sought out a modest inn, and then
walked down to the shore.
" A pretty pass Josiah will be in," thought she,
" when he finds that I am gone ! There will be
ructions in the house. Well, if he will run after
Finches, he must take the consequences. And
Christmas coming on as well, and no comforts, no
plum-pudding. I'll be bound that Jemima will
serve up the roast beef without any horse-radish
serve him right ; and as to Yorkshire pudding, she
can't make it ! very glad. He'll suffer where most
sensitive. Oh ! " She saw a large coloured poster.
"A circus! I have not seen one since I was a girl.
I will go."
But she did not enjoy herself at the horseman-
ship. Her mind reverted to Jessamine Villa, and
to a plum-pudding she had made a month ago, and
had put away in a tin to be ready for Christmas.
She wished she had brought it with her; but she
had left it behind, locked up. Her husband knew
nothing about it. The slavey was equally ignorant.
Now that costly and excellent plum-pudding would
be lost, for she would never go back to Jessamine
Villa never, never within the sound of the name
of Finch.
That plum-pudding had been made from an
excellent recipe given her by her mother
" 5 Ib. suet, 4lb. flour, 3lb. bread-crumbs, 4^ Ib.
raisins, 3lb. currants, ijlb. sugar, I Ib. mixed peel,
I pint old ale, I nutmeg, 6 teaspoonfuls salt, 2 quarts
26o IN A QUIET VILLAGE
milk, 1 2 eggs ; boiled 8 hours ; a sufficient quantity
for 9 puddings, 4 of which are large."
She could rehearse it by heart. Of course, in
the small establishment at Jessamine Villa nine
puddings four of which were large were not
required. But the late Mrs. Gubbins had been a
woman with a large family and a larger heart,
and she had been accustomed to send puddings to
her married sons and daughters. Mrs. Birdwood
had halved everything, and then had been able to
give a pudding to an aunt at Bandon, another she
had sent to a married brother in London, a small
one she had reserved for a poor old woman who
received her charities, and the rest were for
Jessamine Villa consumption. And now
" Dear, dear, dear ! " sighed Mrs. Birdwood, not
observing anything in the arena.
" I beg pardon did you mean me ? " asked a
voice. She turned, and saw the commercial traveller
beside her.
" No, sir ! " she retorted sharply. " I alluded to
the pudding; with raisins at fivepence, and only
nine eggs a shilling, it is dear, very dear, in-
expressibly dear."
"I beg your pardon again; I don't quite take
it in."
"The pudding was not for your consumption,
sir."
"You would confer on me, miss, a great favour
if you would give me your name. A thousand
apologies for asking."
A PLUM-PUDDING 261
" My name is " She choked ; should she
give her married or her maiden name ? " Never
mind."
" And mine is Fisher. I am in the hosiery and
haberdashery business. That is to say, I travel
for a firm in that line. I am now staying at the
'Woolpack.'"
" At the ' Woolpack ' ! So am I ! " she cried in
dismay. "This will never do no, never! "
She dashed out of the circus, went to the inn,
removed her trifling effects, paid her bill, and de-
parted to the "Red Lion."
Next morning she came down to the coffee-room,
and was dismayed to find there Mr. Fisher.
" Good gracious me ! " she exclaimed, " I thought
you were at the ' Woolpack ' ? "
"So I was; but as it seemed to offend you, and
I could not think of annoying a lady, I went back
when the performance was over, paid my account,
and departed to another inn the ' Red Lion.' "
"This will never do!" gasped Mrs. Birdwood.
" I shall leave immediately ! "
She hastened to the station and took the train
for Bandon ; she would go to her aunt. The plum-
pudding had preceded her; if she followed, it was
but like a player of bowls, who delivers his ball and
then runs after it.
Her aunt was pleased to see her, and asked what
occasioned this visit. Mrs. Birdwood made the
excuse that she wished to see her before Christmas,
and that she had friends in Bandon she also desired
262 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
to see. She had not visited them since her she
gulped her marriage. " I dare say, auntie, I may
remain here a few days."
"Delighted, my dear, to see you; but you do
not intend to remain long because Christmas is at
hand the day after to-morrow and of course you
will be back for that ? "
Mrs. Birdwood looked down, and did not answer.
Next morning she went to see friends. About
mid-day she returned, when she was encountered
by her aunt in the passage. "My dear dreadful
news ! Have you heard ? "
"Heard no. What?"
" It comes from Jemima's mother, your maid-of-
all-work as you took from here at my recommenda-
tion. She writ to her mother yesterday evening;
and it is shocking orful ! "
" What is it, aunt ? "
Mrs. Birdwood turned white ; that slavey had
written that her mistress had run away, and
doubtless with amplifications of her own run away
with a commercial in the hosiery and haberdashery
line, and had been seen with him at a circus at
Sandbourne.
" You must prepare yourself for the worst," said
the aunt.
" I know it I know it ! " gasped Mrs. Bird-
wood.
" I don't see how you can, as it only happened
yesterday," said the old lady.
"Well, tell me all hold back nothing ! "
A PLUM-PUDDING 263
" Your dear Josiah he's gone and scalded hisself
to death, in trying to bile a plum-pudding for his
Christmas dinner. The flesh is come off in collops
just like an over-boiled leg of veal with rice,
you know. Don't cling to th' bone. I had a rabbit
too, once "
Mrs. Birdwood uttered a cry; she did not stay
to hear about the rabbit, but flew to the station.
She was just in time to catch a train. She took her
ticket for she asked for one to Jessamine Villa,
but the clerk said there was no such station ; then
she recalled the name of the town in the outskirts
of which Jessamine Villa was situated.
Weeping, trembling, sick at heart, she sat in the
third-class carriage, as she was whirled home to
the home she had left, to the husband she had
deserted.
On reaching the station where she had to dis-
embark she flew to the villa. From a distance she
could see the blinds were drawn down ; but then
it was evening, and a lamp was alight within was
it where he was laid out in his bones ?
She burst in at the door, bathed in a dew of
anguish as well as heat, rushed into the sitting-
room, and found there Mr. Birdwood in an arm-
chair by the fire, his foot up, reading a catalogue
of horticultural structures.
"Well, my dear," said he, " back again ? "
11 And you you have been scalded ? "
"Yes; my foot."
" How ? "
264 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
"Jemima said she couldn't make a Christmas
plum-pudding, and I said we must have one, so I
tried my hand."
" But the flesh has it left the bone in collops ? "
"No; I am blistered, that is all. I spilt the
mess over my foot. It was not quite on the boil,
I believe."
" Goodness me ! And how did you make the
mess?"
"All right raisins and flour."
" No suet ? "
" No."
" No mixed peel ? "
" Never thought of it."
"Any old ale?"
" Of course not."
" Nor eggs ? "
" Did not suppose they were wanted."
"Then," said Mrs. Birdwood, "it was a mess.
I am glad it was all spilt." She heaved a sigh.
" Oh ; Josiah, how could you ? "
" I did my level best," he replied. " Now look
here. Do you see that parcel > Open it. It is
a silk gown my Christmas present to you, all
ready for you to wear to church to-morrow. It
was fitted on Maggie Finch, as she is your size
and shape."
With trembling fingers Mrs. Birdwood opened
the parcel and drew forth a really gorgeous silk
dress.
"Oh !" she said, "and that Finch "
A PLUM-PUDDING 265
" She served as dummy on which to fit it, you
know."
"And that was all that took you to Miss
Thomas's ? "
"What more do you want? Not an evening
dress also low-breasted and shoulder-straps ? "
" Oh ! oh ! oh ! Josiah, I have been so wicked.
I thought but never mind what I thought. I
intended to run away and desert you fancy ! for
ever."
" Pshaw ! you couldn't do it."
" And to take up with a commercial ! "
" My dear, you couldn't do it."
"And his name Fisher."
" Not a humming-bird, but a king-fisher, I
suppose."
" But in the hosiery and haberdashery line."
" You couldn't do it."
" I really believe you are right," said Mrs.
Birdwood, throwing herself on his neck and burst-
ing into tears.
"There, there, dear; that will suffice," said
Josiah.
"And," asked his wife, "what did you think
when I disappeared ? "
"I didn't think anything about it. I knew it
was all right."
" And what have you been doing without me ? "
" Well, I have been trying to make up my mind
whether to have a span or a lean-to conservatory."
"You are positively incorrigible."
266 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
" Then I tried my hand on the plum-pudding and
failed. So now we shall have to do without."
"No, ten thousand times no," replied Mrs.
Birdwood triumphantly. She went to a corner
cupboard, unlocked it, produced a tin, took off the
lid. " Here here is a real plum-pudding for our
happy Christmas dinner."
" And," said Mr. Birdwood, " I bought a sprig
of mistletoe at the door, and will kiss you
under it."
A CHRISTMAS TREE
A CHRISTMAS TREE
TOM MOUNTSTEPHEN was dressed in his very best
a black coat, a tie of blue satin studded with
veritable planets, and in it a new zodiacal sign a
fox in full career, that formed the head of a pin.
Tom's collar was so stiffly starched and so high that
to turn his head and look over the top of that Wall
of China was impossible. If he desired to see that
which lay to his right or left, he was compelled to
turn his entire body, as on a pivot.
Tom was unaccustomed to such a " rig out," and
therefore did not look happy in it. Tom in his
workaday suit, of the colour of the earth, with a
string tied under his knees, gathering the trouser
together, and with a dusty slouched wideawake
stuck at the back of his head, but on one side of
that, and with his great, honest, cheery face, ever
with a smile on the lips and a dancing light in his
eyes thus Tom was picturesque, delightful. But
Tom in his Sunday best did not look at his best.
The day was Christmas Eve, and there was to
be a supper with a dance at the Hall, given by the
squire to his workmen and their families. Tom
was on his way to this, with a face that shone with
yellow soap and the friction of a rough towel ; and
269
270 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
not only so, but he was to attend thither Isabella
Frowd, the belle of the village, and one with whom,
as every one said, he had made it up, and a handsome
couple they would be. " Bless y'," said Tom, when
folks asked him when it would be, " Lor' bless y',
you know more about it than me ! Go and ax
Bella. She, maybe, can fix it. Taint my place,
you know ! " And then he laughed, and thought he
had said a good thing.
Tom Mountstephen was an active, intelligent
young fellow, serving as under-gardener, getting a
respectable wage, and there was positively no reason
why he should not marry; but he was inert in just
this one particular, or unable to make up his mind.
Isabella was three years his junior, with a very
delicate skin and lovely rosy complexion, fair hair,
and forget-me-not blue eyes ; somewhat doll-like,
save in this, that a doll is never self-conscious, and
self-consciousness spoke out of every look of Bella's
eyes, every turn of her head, every motion of her
body. But was she to be blamed ? I think not.
The squire always had a pleasant word to give
her; the young ladies at the Hall made much of
her ; every one with one voice declared that she was
a beauty and the pride of the village. Under such
circumstances she must have been endowed with
unusual common-sense and strength of character
not to have become vain and self-satisfied.
Bella lived at the Lodge, and it was her practice
to open the gates when carriages drove up; and
on such occasions she was quite aware that the
A CHRISTMAS TREE 271
ladies, and above all the gentlemen, looked at her,
and when, immediately after passing, she saw them
turn to each other and say something, then she was
confident that they said : " What a pretty girl ! "
And being obliged to keep herself neat and nicely
dressed did much towards making her attractive.
It was understood, or half-understood, that Tom
would call at the Lodge on his way to the Hall and
pick up Isabella, and go on with her. It was in
this way. The day before, Tom had said to her :
"More wu'nerful things may hap, Bell, than that
I should come and fetch you away to the Hall to-
morrow, and then you'll give me the fust dance
and five arter."
"Well, I'm sure I don't mind," she had replied;
and so it was understood that he should go for her,
and that she should expect him.
" Why, whatever be you about, Polly ? " ex-
claimed Tom Mountstephen, as he came upon a tall,
pale girl with pick and spade over her shoulder.
That girl was Mary Mauduit, who lived with a
frail, suffering little sister in a cottage, and supported
herself by needlework and starching and washing.
She had been a teacher in the school, but had been
compelled to resign, owing to her sister's health.
These two were together, and they were orphans.
The child could not be left.
" Why, Tom, how fine you be ! Where be you
a-going to ? "
That is the way in the country : a question begets
another before it is answered.
272 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
"I be going to the Hall; there's grand goings
on there to-night."
"So I've heerd, but I didn't mind it. And I
reckon that Bella will be there too ? "
" For certain. But what are you after with pick
and shovel, I'd like for to know ? "
" If you must know everything, Tom, it's for
little Bess."
" Not going to dig her grave ? "
Tom could have bitten his tongue out he was
mad with himself for uttering such a question. It
had bounced out . of his mouth without thought,
and now he saw the colour rush into Mary's face,
her eyes fill, and her lips tremble.
"Hang me for an idjot!" said Tom; "I didn't
mean it ; it's just like my ways, Poll. I want to say
summut smart, and just say the wrong thing always.
But what be you about wi' them tools ? "
" It's this, Tom : I thought I'd give little Bessie
a Christmas tree. I've got a few trifles to hang
on it some oranges and nuts and a needle-case
and so ; and I got Mrs. Wonnacott to come in for
an hour and sit wi' she whilst I went to the planta-
tion after a tree ; the squire gave me leave," she
added in explanation and self-exculpation.
"But, dear heart alive! you don't want pick and
spade for gettin' up a young spruce ! You want the
chopper or a little handsaw."
" I don't wish to kill the tree. I thought if I get
her up by the roots I could plant her again in the
garden, and she'd grow up to a big tree, and it
A CHRISTMAS TREE 273
'ud be something to look at every year growin'
bigger."
"What sized tree do you want ? "
" Not such a terrible big one. Just middlin' like.
I can't have her too small, as I ain't got no tapers
like the tiny red and yaller and green 'uns they had
up to the Parsonage last Christmas. I've only got
bits o' common candle ends, and they'd be too heavy
for a mite of a tree."
" And how will you bring back your tree and the
mores (roots), Mary, wi' soil, and pick, and all
together ? "
" I reckon I can make two journeys."
" You can't make two for the tree ! "
Mary stood silent.
" I'll tell you what I'll do, Polly. I'll off with
this dratted collar and put aside my new coat, and
away with you to the plantation. If you go and
mistake and have up a deodara or a douglas instead
o' a spruce, the squire'll kick and scream."
" You're too kind, Tom ; but you'll be late for the
entertainment."
"Oh, that's nothing not two minutes! She'll
wait."
He did not explain, but Polly understood that
she signified Bella. But she did not know that it
had been understood that Tom was to fetch the
pretty girl from the Lodge.
"I daresay you'll let me put my coat and that
dratted collar in your cottage ? Lor', Polly, I'm like
a donkey in a pound when I've that there collar on,
s
274 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
jumpin' up and down and tryin' to look over the
wall and clear it if I can ! "
A couple of minutes later Tom, divested of collar
and coat, with pick and spade over his shoulder, was
attending Mary Mauduit, when the head-gardener
passed. He was a Scotchman, and a widower a
man of much self-confidence and independence.
"What off, Mr. Mountstephen ? "
The gardener addressed his subordinates with a
" mister." It made himself more important ; marked
the distance between them more emphatically.
"Yes, Mr. MacS weeny ; just to take up a young
spruce for she."
"Ta-ta!" said the Scotchman condescending!}',
and passed on.
" He's been a bit snuffy wi' me," said Tom con-
fidingly to his companion. "What it's all about
I can't tell. Perhaps he guesses I knows too much ;
but Lor' ! I'm not one to blab."
" Perhaps he's a little jealous," said Mary slily ;
"folk do say he has been thinking about Bella.
But there 'tain't no good dreaming of going against
you, Tom."
" I don't give no heed to them tales. People will
talk. Besides, if he were lookin' out for a Missus
MacSweeny, I reckon he'd go after widders. Ain't
he a widderer hisself ? "
"That don't follow," said Mary.
" Don't it ? Then it ort ! " retorted Tom.
"There don't be snuffy wi' me ! " said Mary.
The getting up of a suitable tree and its transport
A CHRISTMAS TREE 275
to the cottage of the Mauduits was not a matter of
two minutes, nor of half-an-hour.
Tom was aware that Isabella would have been
kept waiting, but he relieved his mind with the
consideration that she would take it for granted
that he was detained by some business, and would
walk on alone to the Hall ; the distance was trifling.
He could explain matters when he arrived, and she
would at once understand the circumstances.
" I don't see how you're going to stick them
candle ends on to the branches," said Tom.
" I shall heat hairpins and run 'em through."
"That's fine!" exclaimed Mountstephen de-
risively; "and when the candles be burnin' the
flame'll heat the hairpins red-hot, and they'll melt
the composite, and there'll be a pretty mess, and
the candle ends falling about on all sides and firing
everything ! I hope you're insured ! "
" I can manage it."
" No, you can't, excuse me, Polly. I reckon
mother at home has got some bits of tapers from
the Parsonage tree last year. Her was up there
helping, and they throwed the tree away when
done with; and her's a saving woman and can't
abide no waste, and I know her pulled off and kept
the remains of candles. They have wires for fasten-
ing of them on. If you don't mind my leaving that
collar here you won't let nothin' damage it, nor
let the cat get at it, will you, Polly ? I'll run home
and see what mother have got. I couldn't run in
that collar ; 'twould be sheer impossible ! "
276 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
So, instead of going on to the Hall, here was
another detention. But Tom was a good-natured
lad ; he was not needed at the Hall, and here at the
cottage he was of real assistance.
After the young man had been away nearly a
quarter of an hour, he returned with a small box
full of portions of tapers, and some entire, and
sundry little sparkling ornaments that had furnished
the tree the preceding Christmas, and had been cast
aside, but saved by the prudent and frugal Mrs.
Mountstephen.
" And here, Polly," said Tom, " here's a spotted
dog in china, as stood on my mantelshelf, that little
Bessie be welcome to. You can set it under the
tree. Now I'll clap the tree mores into a tub, and
then I'm off to the Hall."
When Tom, reinvested in collar and coat, arrived
at the Lodge and inquired for Isabella, he learnt,
which did not much surprise him, that she had
gone forward. So he went to the Hall by himself,
not greatly concerned at being late. He knew that
all who were invited would not be able to arrive
punctually. There would be two " sitting-downs "
to supper, and he would be in time for the second.
When he arrived, he looked about him for
Isabella, and saw her seated beside the Scotch
gardener, who was helping her to trifle.
With a little difficulty he made his way behind
the chairs, in and out among the servants who were
waiting on the guests, to where Isabella was dipping
into the trifle.
A CHRISTMAS TREE 277
" So sorry, Bella ; I couldn't help it," said he.
" De-li-ci-ous ! " said Bella.
" I beg your pardon ? "
" I was speaking to Mr. MacSweeny."
" I only want to say that I was unavoidably
detained."
" The jam is strawberry," said Bella.
''Whole strawberries, from our own garden,"
said MacSweeny.
" I'm very fond of strawberries," observed Bella.
"So am I," said the Scotch gardener. "Have
some more. I'll remember you in the strawberry
time and send you up the first dish I ripen. Of
course, I ripen 'em early in the greenhouse. You
shall have some as soon as they are fit to be
picked."
" How good of you, Mr. MacSweeny ! "
"Not at all; I live but to oblige, and you"
he looked round at her "for you I would do
anything."
" Bella," said Tom over her chair, " I really could
not help it."
"Will you please to move, Mr. Mountstephen ;
you are jogging my chair."
" Do you like grapes ? " asked MacSweeny. " I
rather flatter myself on my grapes. I am able to
keep them, too, so well. My large white Muscats
but there, you shall have some. I'll send you up
a really choice bunch. I think the second sitters
down are coming in now. Miss Isabella, if you
have done, we will rise and let the others take our
278 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
places. Here, you, Mountstephen, can have my
seat. If you have brought Mary Mauduit I have
no doubt she can have Miss Frowd's chair."
Poor Tom did not enjoy his supper, and that
over, when he sought Isabella to tender his excuses,
she deliberately turned her back on him. It was
clear MacSweeny had made mischief. He had told
her that for the sake of that pale Polly Mauduit
he had neglected to fulfil his engagement and keep
his appointment.
Dancing began, and Bella sat out with the Scotch
gardener, who was too serious a man to approve
of the light fantastic toe ; as he explained to Bella
it was against his principles " but don't let that
interfere with your enjoyment, if you wish to go
to Mr. Mountstephen."
" Oh ! not at all ! " said Miss Frowd.
Huffed, hurt, poor Tom withdrew. He slunk
away from the Hall. Among so many, he would
not be missed, and of enjoyment there was none
after his rebuff. It would madden him to see how
Bella " carried on " with the Scotchman.
He walked through the park, groaning, grumbling,
resentful. He was not angry with himself for not
keeping his appointment, nor with Polly for having
detained him ; but with Bella, whom he designated
as a minx, and with MacSweeny, whom he termed
a widdered Scottish rogue.
He left the park ; he walked hastily on. Then,
finding that in the agitation of his feelings he could
not keep his head in one position, and that he was
A CHRISTMAS TREE 279
consequently liable to cut his throat, he halted, and
took off his collar, and fastened it by the stud
round his left arm above the elbow.
Presently he reached the cottage of the Mauduits,
and he could see through the little window that
the tree was alight ; it twinkled through the panes.
The temptation to turn aside, rap at the door, and
enter was not to be resisted.
To his knock he received an answer, as he
opened the door. The answer came from an inner
room.
"It be I, Polly," called Tom. "Just passin',
and want to see how Bessie be enjoyin* of her-
self."
" Come in come in, Tom."
The young man strode through the kitchen into
the adjoining chamber. There lay, in her bed, the
sick girl, a lovely child, with large burning dark
eyes, and a hectic flame in her cheeks. She was
supported in the arms of her sister, and was looking
with delight at the little candles, at the oranges,
and the glittering tin ornaments.
"Tom," said Mary, "Bessie do thank you so for
the spotted dog."
"Yes, I do," said the sick child, striving to lift
herself and extend a hand to the young gardener.
"But, gracious me, Tom!" exclaimed Mary,
" whatever is the meaning o' that ? " pointing to
the white band round his arm. " It is like what
folks put on now when in mourning only it's
white."
a8o IN A QUIET VILLAGE
" He's going to be married," said the sick child.
"It is only that stiff collar; I couldn't abear it
no longer ! " explained Tom.
Then the child laughed, and laughed till she
coughed.
Suddenly Mary uttered a cry Tom saw a crimson
stream.
" Run, run, Tom ! For Heaven's sake run for
the doctor ! "
And Tom ran.
In half-an-hour he returned.
Polly was kneeling by the bed. On it lay the
child, the face almost white, but yet with a little
colour in the delicate cheek. Her hand held tightly
that of her sister.
The doctor had not come; he was out; would
not be back till morning.
Tom could not explain this ; and he knew,
moreover, that the surgeon could effect nothing.
Without a word he knelt also by the child's bedside.
The candles were quivering to extinction on the
Christmas tree. One was guttering, and sending
a stream of wax over the head of the spotted dog.
Then another fell twinkling through the boughs and
went out. And at the same time the light went
out in Bessie's eyes.
A few days later, when the earth had closed
over the child, Tom was speaking with Mary, and
she said to him : " Tom, I think now I should like
that Christmas tree to be planted on the little
maid's grave. Will you oblige me by doing it ? "
A CHRISTMAS TREE 281
Then, after wiping her eyes : " Tom, that is a Tree
of Death."
The head-gardener triumphantly carried away
Bella ; the marriage took place within six weeks
of the Christmas supper and dance. Isabella Frowd
had become Mrs. Sandy MacSweeny, and was
planted in the gardener's beautiful cottage. But
in all things human there comes a change. Within
a very short time certain matters started to light.
What these were you shall hear from the squire's
own lips, as he addressed Tom Mountstephen.
" Tom," said the squire, his broad, rosy face very
hot and agitated, "Tom, I've bundled MacSweeny
off. I don't see why I should have to buy the
fruit I grow from the greengrocer in our market
town. I don't see why, if I purchase bulbs and
greenhouse plants, they should invariably disappear,
and be reported to have died. I don't see why,
if I buy flower seeds, they should come up in other
folks' gardens. I have not been able to get fruit
for my table without sending to town to buy it. I
have been ruined in procuring vast supplies of
choice plants from nurserymen, and have not
enjoyed them. MacSweeny is off. Hang it ! you
may not be a professional, and Ai, and all that,
but you are honest as daylight. I feel I can
trust you, and dash my buttons ! there is the
situation vacant for you, if you choose to have it.
And there is the cottage the only disadvantage
282 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
is that it is too large for you, and you are un-
married."
" Oh, as to that, sir, that is easily remedied. I
be just now on my way to the pass'n to get him
to have Mary and me asked next Sunday."
"Mary Mary who?"
" Mary Mauduit, sir."
" Oh, oh ! I wish you joy. An excellent girl !
There it is for you the house, Tom ; you and
Mary shall go into it as soon as I have seen the
back of MacSweeny and his Bella, and have had
it whitewashed. And hang it ! Tom, here come
round to my study, and I'll give you a cheque for
ten pounds towards the furnishing."
" I thank you, sir ; I thank you with all my
heart."
" No need of thanks, Tom ! Bless my soul, when
a master has a trustworthy, honest servant, it is he
is to be counted lucky ; and unless he is an ass he
will keep him. There come round to the study."
And now nearly two years have passed. And
this time we see a little party coming out of the
church porch. As I live ! it is Tom with Mary
no longer Mauduit, but Mountstephen. But they
are not alone ; there is a baby in a long white robe
being brought forth a babe that had been carried
into church to be christened.
As Mary stood in the autumn sunlight outside
the porch, she touched Tom's arm, and said
A CHRISTMAS TREE 283
" Let us go to little Bessie's grave."
And they went, and the baby was taken there
also, over the drooping grass, wet with autumn
rains.
"The poor little Christmas tree," said Mary,
"although a Tree of Death, lives. See how
hearty it appears ! "
" It is no Tree of Death," answered Tom. " See
here is the first fir-cone; it is alive, and bears
seed. It is no Tree of Death, but a Tree of Life."
Then Tom laughed.
" Mary," said he, "I think for once in my life
I've said a good thing."
But Mary did not applaud.
"Tom, do you think the little fir-cone really has
life in it ? "
" Of course it has."
Mary picked it, and then put it into the tiny
hand of the baby.
" Look, Tom," she said. " t But for that Christmas
tree you and I would never have become what we
are to each other and now, in it is the seed of life,
and so on and on and on for evermore. Our baby
has it, and it shall be sown, and so really, Tom,
there seems to be no end to life ; it goes on for ever
and for ever ! "
" Amen," responded Tom.
FOLK-PRAYERS
FOLK-PRAYERS
IT is a singular fact, but fact it is, that very little
of what may be termed peculiarly Romish supersti-
tion lingers among the peasantry of England ; this
goes far to show how very little hold such supersti-
tion had on their minds or hearts. It may be
almost said that there is more of pre-Christian
paganism, of usages condemned by the Catholic
Church surviving, than of any practices recom-
mended by her.
I do know, indeed, of one instance of a Cornish
Methodist, who, when unable to attend his distant
chapel, resorted to a rude granite cross of Brito-
Roman date, and there said his praj^ers; but
even in this case one cannot be certain that there
did not linger on a reverence for the stone itself,
which had been a prehistoric menhir before it was
sanctified by being chipped into the sign of our
salvation.
In Yorkshire, Milly (my Lady) boxes are carried
about by children at Christmas: these are cradles
containing dolls, one to represent the Virgin Mother,
another the Divine Child ; and the grocers send
candles to their customers on Christmas Eve, for
288 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
the lights to be burned at the Midnight Mass. But
such usages are few, and have almost wholly lost
their meaning, were never more than folk customs,
and were never inculcated by the Church before
the Reformation. The midsummer bonfires, the
Yule log, the mumming at Christmas, the May-
pole, the November " soul-cakes," the "sin-eating"
at funerals, and a thousand other customs are
purely heathen survivals. The writer knew of a
case in Yorkshire of a man who was buried in his
coffin with a candle "to light him on his way to
Jerusalem " and a penny " to pay the toll," alto-
gether a pagan reminiscence; but has never in all
his experience come across any practice connected
with the doctrine of purgatory, one insisted upon
with immense emphasis before the Reformation, as
the saying of masses for the dead brought in a large
revenue for the clergy.
Superstition connected with holy wells is heathen,
and was given a reluctant sanction by the Roman
Church, because so deep-rooted that the people
could not be weaned from it.
The custom, so common in the time of our
youth, of drinking healths was a pagan one; the
dead were thus saluted silently, and the Bishop
of Cork in 1713 charged against it in an address
to his diocese. He was answered by " A Country
Curate of Ireland," and the bishop returned to the
charge in a pamphlet of two hundred and twenty
pages.
In Germany, to gloss the heathenism of the
FOLK-PRAYERS 289
custom, it was usual to drink the first cup to the
memory of some saint, usually St. Gertrude, the
patroness of the dead, who had stepped into the
place of the Goddess Holda or Perchta.
But it is chiefly in the prayers used by the
illiterate and poor among the peasantry that we
would expect to find some trace of Catholicism,
for the prayer employed in private and secret is
precisely where no interference could affect the
convictions and habits formed by ages, and com-
municated traditionally at the most impressible
age.
Now what do we find actually ? That the
only prayers used by tens of thousands, only
now very slowly being driven out by the Lord's
Prayer, or being abandoned because all prayer
is given up, are not a Catholic reminiscence at
all, but an heretical one condemned by the Papal
Church.
The reader will at once know what the form is
to which reference is made.
" Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
Bless the bed that I lie on.
Four posties to my bed.
Six angels are outspread,
Two to bottom^ two to head,
One to watch me whilst I pray,
One to bear my soul away."
This is the usual form; but there are verbal
variations. Sometimes it stands "four corners"
instead of "four posties," and "two at the feet,
290 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
and two at the head." After the first two lines
that are invariable, we have
" Four comers to my bed,
Four angels round my head,
One to read and one to write,
Two to guard my bed at night ; "
or
" One to watch and two to pray,
One to keep all fears away."
A much fuller form of the prayer comes from an
old woman of near ninety years at Tavistock :
" Monday morning a new week begin,
Christ deliver our souls from sin.
Tuesday morning nor curse nor swear,
Christ's body for it will tear.
Wednesday morning midst of the week.
Woe to the soul Christ does not seek.
Thursday morning Saint Peter wrote,
1 Joy to the soul that heaven hath bote.'
Friday Christ died on the Holy Tree,
To save other men as well as me.
Saturday six the evening dead.
Sunday the books are all outspread.
God is the Branch. I am the flower.
Pray God send me that blessed hour.
Whether I be by sea or by land,
The Lord, sweet Jesus, on my right hand.
I go to bed, my sleep to take,
The Lord doth know if I shall wake.
Sleep I ever, sleep I never,
God receive my soul for ever.
Four corners to my bed,
Four angels lie outspread,
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
Bless the bed that I lie on."
FOLK-PRAYERS 291
This is very curious. One may well ask where
St. Peter wrote the quotation given in the eighth
line. "That heaven hath bote" signifies "that
hath bid or prayed for heaven."
The prayer, or formula, is very old. In the
" Towneley Mysteries," belonging to the beginning
of the sixteenth century at the very latest date that
can be given, for they are sacred Mysteries which
ceased to be performed after the Reformation, in
the scene where the shepherds keep their watch by
night on the eve of the Nativity, the third shepherd
says
" For ferd we be fryght a crosse let us kest
Cryst crosse, benedyght, east and west,
For dreede
Jesus of Nazorous
Crucyefix us,
Marcus, Andreas,
God be our spede."
In the second scene of the Shepherds the second
pastor says
" I wylle lyg downe by
For I must slepe truly."
The third says :
" As good a man's son was I
As any of you,
Bot Mark, come heder, between shalle gin lyg downe."
Mark says
" Then myght I lett you bedene ; if that
you wold rowne.
No drede
292 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
Fro my top to my too,
Manus tuas commendo
Poncio Pilato
Cryst cross me spede."
Certainly a very odd form of commendation of the
soul, and a variant on that of the third shepherd.
Launcelot Sharpe, in his remarks on the " Towne-
ley Mysteries" (ArchczoL, 1838), gives "the rural
charm which, when a boy, I have often heard in
Kent :-
1 Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
Guard the bed that I lie on.
Four corners to my bed,
Four angels round my head.
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
Guard the bed that I lie on.' "
Ady, in his "Candle in the Dark, or Treatise
concerning the Nature of Witches and Witchcraft,"
Lond., 1656, says, "An old woman in Essex who
was living in my time, she had lived also in Queen
Mary's time, and had learned thence many popish
charms, one whereof was this : every night when
she lay down to sleep she charmed her bed, saying
' Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
The bed be blest that I lye on.'
And this she would repeat three times, reposing
great confidence therein, because (as she said) she
had been taught it when she was a young maid by
the churchmen of those times."
In a MS. collection of notes on superstitions
FOLK-PRAYERS 293
made by John Aubrey, which is in the British
Museum, Aubrey enters
"A PRAYER USED WHEN THEY WENT TO BED.
" Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
Bless the bed that I lie on,
And blessed guardian angels keep
Me safe from dangers whilst I sleep."
Aubrey adds, " I remember before the civil wars
people when they heard the clock strike were wont
to say, ' God grant that my last howre may be my
best howre.' "
Robert Chambers, in his " Popular Rhymes of
Scotland/' does not speak of this prayer as used
north of the Tweed at bed-time, but says : " A
curious instance of far-descended nonsense is to be
found in another puerile rhyme :
* Matthew, Mark, Luke, John,
Haud the horse till I loup on ;
Haud it fast, and haud it sure,
Till I get over the misty muir.'
Boys in Scotland say this in the course of their
rollicking sports."
This singular charm, rather than prayer, is given
in a mediaeval magical treatise, "The Enchiridion
of Pope Leo," which was printed at Rome in 1660.
It is there called "The White Paternoster," and
runs thus in French
" Petit Patenotre blanche que Dieu fit, que
Dieu dit, que Dieu mit en Paradis.
Au soir m'allant coucher, je trouves trois
Anges k mon lit couches, un aux pieds,
294 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
Deux au chevet, la bonne Vierge Marie au
Milieu, qui me dit que je me couchis,
Que rien ne doutes. . . .
Qui la dira trois fois au soir, trois fois au
Matin, gagnera le Paradise k la fin."
Under the name of " The White Paternoster " it is
referred to by Chaucer in the " Miller's Tale "
" Lord Jhesu Crist, and Seynte Benedyht,
Blesse this hous from every wikked wight,
Fro nyghtes verray, the White Paternoster,
Where wonestow now, Seynt Petre's soster."
"Nyghtes verray" is probably a night-were, the
hobgoblin. "Were" is an old Saxon word for
man, and the night-man is the ghost. In White's
"Way to the True Church," Lond., 1624, White
complains of " the prodigious ignorance " which
existed among his parishioners when he entered
upon his ministrations. He gives what he con-
siders to be the "White Paternoster," or a form of
prayer used before going to bed.
" White Paternoster, Saint Peter's brother,
What hast i the t'one hand ? White booke leaves.
What hast i th' t'other hand ? Heaven gate keys.
Open heaven gates, and streike hell gates,
And let every crysan child creepe to its own mother.
White Paternoster. Amen."
In the first edition of Wynkyn de Worde's
" Horae Beatae Mariae Virginis," 1502, a copy now
in the Gough Library at Oxford has on the margin,
written in a contemporary hand, " The Little Credo,"
"The White Paternoster," and "The White Bene-
FOLK-PRAYERS 295
dictus," another very curious magical formula. For
an account of this see Dibdin's " Decameron,"
second day.
The "White Paternoster" is as generally in use
among the peasants in France as in England. It
takes various forms. In Quercy, part of our English
possessions in Guyenne, it is recited nightly under
another name, the " Pater d'habitude." The patois
may be thus translated :
" Pater d'habitude,
Our Saviour salute us ;
He is at our head, he is at our feet,
He is now and he is after,
He is in the bed where I lie.
Five angels there I find,
Three at bottom, two at head,
And the mother of God in the midst.
She bids me sleep so sound,
Never fear, nor flames, nor fire,
Nor sudden death at all.
I take our Saviour as my father,
The Virgin Mary as my mother,
Saint John for my cousin,
Saint Michael for my sponsor.
There are god parents four.
Whatever haps, whatever befalls,
I shall go to Paradise."
There are, in fact, in Guyenne four Paternosters
the great one, the small one, the Pater of Nazareth,
and the Pater of Habit; and these make up one
complete formula. M. Daymard, who has collected
the folk-songs of Quercy, the present Department
of Lot, says, " Who has not heard some old woman
296 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
mutter her prayers in a monotonous voice, without
accent, with, however, a sort of rhythmic cadence,
like the reading of poetry by children in school ? " If
in the course of her prayers she be interrupted and
questioned relative to what she has said, and asked to
repeat it, it is rarely that one can be found to continue
her prayers without recommencing the recitation.
" Very often the old women do not understand
what they say. They repeat words which anciently
were in Latin, Romance, or French, and which,
passing from mouth to mouth, have become cor-
rupted till they cease to be comprehensible. Then
they have not, as an assistance to their memory,
the help of an air and of couplets; consequently
they slide away into the greatest confusion. Thus
it falls out that the majority of these prayers are
long, disconnected, made up of patches ill-stitched
together, and without affinity, without transition.
There are also set phrases and elements of prayer
which recur, and which each pious soul throws into
her common prayers without rhyme or reason."
One of the Quercy prayers deserves quotation,
because it also is akin to something that was
customary in England, the Lykewake Dirge, which
is found in Aubrey's MS., already quoted, and was
first published by Sir Walter Scott. The Quercy
prayer is called "La Barbe-Dieu," Le. Verbum-
Dei; barbe is a corruption. It runs thus:
" The Barbe of God who knows it, and says it
not, he will lose his soul. There behind thee lies a
FOLK-PRAYERS 297
plank, a little plank that's long, not broad. The
elect pass over it. The lost fall from it and cry and
groan, falling into the abyss of hell. Learn the
Barbe of God at seven years old. There is no time
for repentance when parted are body and soul."
In a book published at Toulouse in 1673 by the
Pere Amilha, in the Languedoc patois, entitled " Le
Tableau de la bido del parfait Chresten," a popular
book of Christian instruction in faith and morals, is
a caution against superstitious practices. Among
these are the following questions : " Have you tried
to make a denier float on the water, whereby to
detect the thief who has stolen your goods ? Have
you taken off the cross from the rosary, and said
the Little Pater and the White Pater ? "
These prayers, which were supposed to have a
power to save from everlasting death by mere reci-
tation of them, are mentioned by J. B. Thiers, in
his "Treatise on Superstition," as condemned by
the Church; and he names among them the Barbe
de Dieu as heretical.
Quenot, in his " Statistique de la Charente," in
1818, gives the form in which the White Paternoster
was said in that department of France
" Dieu 1'a fait, je la dit,
J'ai trouve' quatre anges couches dans mon lit,
Deux a la tete, deux aux pieds,
Et le bon Dieu au milieu."
The forms in which it is said throughout France
are infinitely varied, but the same ideas reign
298 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
throughout all, and all derived from a common
source. That source is apparently Albigensian
Manichaeism. It seems from the questions put to
these heretics that the " Perfect," the apostle of the
sect, taught a fourfold Paternoster, and taught it
as a sort of charm, with the assertion, which re-
peatedly occurs in all these folk rhymed Paters,
that they who recited it secured thereby their eternal
salvation.
It is certainly if this fourfold Albigensian Pater
be the origin of our " Matthew, Mark, Luke, and
John " a very curious instance of the underground
growth of the heresy throughout Europe, and the
hold it obtained on the poor and ignorant.
I give a remarkable instance from Lincolnshire
of the glossing over of pagan usage by Christianity.
I was furnished with it by the Rev. R. M. Heanley,
who wrote :
"THE VICARAGE,
UPTON GREY, WINCHFIELD,
Nov. 1 6, 1890.
" DEAR MR. BARING GOULD, I wonder if you
ever came across a case of the following strange
survival, which I met with in the Lincolnshire
marshes, as a cure for ague. It was in the autumn
of 1857 or 1858 that I had taken some quinine to a
lad who lived with his old grandmother. On my
next visit the old dame scornfully refused another
bottle, and said she ' knowed on a soight better cure
nor your mucky stuff.' With that she took me
round the bottom of the bed and showed me three
FOLK-PRAYERS 299
horse-shoes nailed there, with a hammer crosswise
upon them.
" On my expressing incredulity, she waxed wroth,
and said, ' Naay, lad, it's a charm. I takes t' mell
(hammer) i' my left haan, and I mashys they shoon
throice, and Oi sez
* Feyther, Son, and Holi Ghoast,
Naale the divil to this poast,
Throice I stroikes with holi crook,
Wun fur God, and wun fur Wod, and wun fur Lok. }
"Wod is of course Woden, and Lok is the evil-
god Loki of Scandinavian mythology."
To return to the White Paternoster. We may
well question whether the Manichaean White Pater-
noster was not a much earlier form of incantation
for blessing the bed, given a slightly Christian com-
plexion. For in the Anglo-Saxon laws, in the
" Codex Exoniensis," is a most curious formula for
blessing a field that has been blasted by witchcraft,
and this bears some analogy to the blessing of the
bed on which the sleeper is about to lie. According
to this Anglo-Saxon authority, all sorts of seeds are
cast out on the earth as an oblation to the plough.
Then turves of green grass from the four corners of
the field are cut in the name of Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John. These are carried to the church
and four masses said over them, and are replaced
at the four corners of the field before sunset, and
certain incantations recited over them. At the same
300 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
time that the four corners of the field are conse-
crated to the four evangelists the cross of Christ is
signed over the centre, just as in the French forms
of the prayer of the bed the Virgin or Christ occupies
the centre. One is inclined to suspect that in all
this there is a reminiscence of the sun and the four
quarters of the heavens, with the deities ruling
them.
CRAZY JANE
CRAZY JANE
IN Sussex a great bank of chalk downs stands
up as if set as a natural sea-wall against the
encroachments of the waves. Nothing can be con-
ceived more barren, more dreary than this bank on
its seaward slope. On the east coast of England,
in Essex, in Lincoln, in Suffolk and Norfolk, the
energy of man has reclaimed tracts of low-lying
land from the sea, and has held back the tide by
erecting sea-walls that have a long gradually-declin-
ing escarpment towards the water. Against these
the waves fling themselves, are broken, run up
them, lose their force, and sneak back discomfited.
On the land side these walls have an abrupt fall.
Now the south coast of Sussex seems by nature to
have been thus constructed as a great type after
which men should build and recover land. About
three or four miles inland perhaps a little more
begins what is called the Weald, a flat, rich, and
beautiful land, well wooded, full of sweet villages
and gentle pastures, with here and there an un-
dulation, like a fold in green velvet, and here and
there a pond occupying a deserted iron quarry.
From this Wealden district rises to the south the
abrupt scar of the South Downs, a mighty ram-
303
304 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
part of chalk, tilted up with its long easy slope
seawards.
Did that mighty primeval ocean rage against the
coast where now stand Brighton, Worthing, and
Shoreham ? Did that great natural sea-wall of
chalk restrain its waves and protect the Weald
from inundation ? We cannot say.
At one point in the summit of the chalk barrier
is a trench cut deep through the soft white rock,
and this is called the Devil's Dyke. The story
told of it is that the enemy of mankind, looking
down on the fertile Weald, envied its beauty and
richness, and set to work one night to dig through
the barrier, so as to let the ocean in, to submerge
the fair district. But he could do this only in one
night. His power to work evil was limited.
If he could make his canal before cock-crow, well ;
but he might on no account resume the work if
left incomplete in one night. Now there was a
cottage on the height, and in it lived an old Goodie,
who was roused by the sound of digging and
delving in the night. The night was dark, dark
as Erebus; she opened her casement and peeped
forth. Nothing was visible, but the earth quaked
under the efforts made by Mephistopheles. Then
the Goodie, being an old fool, lit a candle, held
it outside the window and screamed out, "Who's
there? What are you a-doing?" Now a cock
saw the candle, and thinking it was the first
glimmer of dawn, began to crow. Then the evil
one threw away his spade and fled in a rage. And,
CRAZY JANE 305
lo ! there in the dyke, is shown the half-finished
work and the unejected shovelful of earth.
Such is the legend. In reality, no doubt, the
dyke is a very ancient aboriginal fortification.
Now mark a wonderful provision of nature. All
the rain that falls along the range of chalk hills
sinks in, soaks down, and might sink away to
goodness knows where, but that, beneath the chalk
lies a bed of very dense clay, through which the
water cannot descend, and between the chalk and
the clay is strewn a narrow film of gravel, called
the greensand, there hardly thicker than your
hand. When the water has percolated through
the chalk hills and is stopped by the clay, out
it runs, on the inland scarp, through the green-
sand, in a thousand crystal-cool and beautiful
springs, thoroughly purified by this perfect natural
filter.
On the inland flank of the South Downs, in a
little coomb or valley scooped out of the chalk,
gushed nine of these springs and fed a tarn
or lake, not natural, but formed by an embank-
ment thrown up to form a reservoir for a mill.
Above this lake set in the lap of the Downs were
clumps of Scotch pines, and a wood of beech, in
spring full of the purple and the white scented
wood orchis ; on the Downs about grew the
quaintly beautiful bee-orchis, rare elsewhere save
on chalk.
In a solitary cottage under the hill, in a shady
spot where the sun rarely came, lived a widow and
306 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
her daughter. The widow was very infirm, crippled
with rheumatism, and was allowed eighteenpence
a week and a loaf by the parish. She was too
weak and helpless to earn anything for herself, and
she could not have subsisted, she and her child, on
eighteenpence and one loaf, had it not been for
certain means of acquiring money that the neigh-
bourhood afforded. The South Down chalk hills
abound in hedgehogs. They are to be found in
burrows in great numbers, and at evening, when
the dew is falling, the side of the down may be seen
alive with these little creatures scampering about
seeking their prey. The widow's girl, Jane, a young
girl uncouth in form, with low brow and dull un-
intelligent eyes, was clever in finding hedgehogs,
and these she carried about coiled up in a basket,
and sold them to people who were troubled with
slugs and snails in their gardens, or with cock-
roaches and black-beetles in their kitchens. She
got a shilling for each hedgehog, and could, had
the demand required it, have found a hedgehog
per diem, which would have brought her in 365
shillings in the year, or 18, 55. od. a handsome
income. But, unfortunately, the public were not
athirst for hedgehogs; and the market was soon
glutted. Consequently Jane had to seek other
means of earning money. She found dormice in
the woods, and as there were two large schools for
boys, Hurstpierpoint and Lancing, within a walk,
and in schools for boys the passion for the acquisi-
tion of dormice is insatiable, "Crazy Jane," as
CRAZY JANE 307
the dull-witted girl was called, found that she could
sell at 4d. each as many dormice as she could find.
But then the dormice were only to be caught when
hybernating. In summer they were too wide-awake
to allow themselves to be captured.
Another source of revenue was offered by the
orchis plants on the Downs. Crazy Jane dug up
the roots, collected bunches of the flowers, and
trudged with them to Worthing or Brighton, where
she was able to dispose of her flowers and of her
tubers. Thus, the widow and her daughter had
not merely eighteenpence and a loaf to live on, but
they lived also on dormice, hedgehogs, and orchis
bulbs. She had long distances to go to dispose of
her goods had Crazy Jane, but what mattered that
to her ? She was sturdily built, strong as a horse,
and disregarded all kinds of bad weather. Jane
had had no schooling. She had been forced to
attend the National School, but had been unable
to acquire her letters ; she could not write a pot-
hook on the slate, or do any calculations apart from
hedgehogs, dormice, and bulbs. In all particulars
relative to her business she was keen, keen in ex-
acting every penny, able to reckon up her gains;
but apart from hedgehogs, dormice, and bulbs she
could not count and sum. So she had been dis-
missed her school as mentally incapable of acquiring
knowledge. This permission to her to withdraw
was a great relief to Jane, for she had been the butt
of ridicule to the scholars. Every dunce could crow
over Jane as more stupid than himself. The witty
308 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
or would-be wags poked fun at her, the malicious
tortured and irritated her. Jane was usually good-
natured, but when angered flew into paroxysms
of mad fury that occasioned merriment to the ill-
conditioned, and often provoked the interference of
the master. Jane would have come off worse than
she did at school had it not been for Jim Thacker,
the miller's son at Ninewells, who constituted him-
self her protector, and thrashed the insolent boys
who tormented Crazy Jane, and screened her from
their gibes.
This protection he afforded her awoke on the
poor dull-witted girl's part the liveliest devotion,
a devotion that was irksome to the boy, for she
followed him like a dog, shrank behind him at the
least threat of annoyance, clung to him when in
trouble, and was uneasy when he was out of her
sight. This attracted notice in the school, and pro-
voked merriment. She was called Jim Thacker's
dog. And like a dog she seemed faithful, re-
gardful, a little too demonstrative of affection,
but exacting nothing for this fidelity but an occa-
sional nod and word. It was a relief to Jim when
Crazy Jane was excused school as mentally de-
ficient; and it was a relief to her, because thence-
forth she could wander unrestrained over the
Downs, hunting hedgehogs and dormice, and pick-
ing flowers.
One day it was in spring Jim Thacker was
walking near the mill pond, when he heard screams
of terror and pain, apparently, and saw Crazy Jane
CRAZY JANE 309
pursued and attacked by the male swan of a pair
that lived in the pond. In her search for orchis
bulbs she had approached too near where the
female swan was sitting on her eggs, and the male
in wild fury had flown to the protection of its mate,
and considering Jane as an enemy threatening his
mate and eggs, had rushed at her with flapping
wings and outstretched beak. An excited swan is
not a foe to laugh at, the strength of its wings is
so great that a blow of them has been known to
break the leg of a horse ; moreover, with its great
beak it can nip and hurt. The flap of the great
wings, the discordant notes that issued from the
long neck, the menacing bill, had paralysed Jane,
and in trying to flee she had stumbled over a root
and fallen.
Jim snatched up a pronged stick and ran to her
aid, calling to the swan. He reached her as the
bird was driving at her with his bill, and thrusting
the fork adroitly under the neck, held the angry
bird back.
"Now Jane," said he, "get up and run away
whilst I keep the swan at bay."
But she was so bewildered with her fright that
it was some time before she could understand
what to do, and when, finally, she did scramble
away, she had not the strength and breath to go
far, but sank among the old leaves at a little dis-
tance from the pool, sobbing, trembling, with her
black hair scattered about her shoulders and face.
Jim came to her and helped her to her feet,
310 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
brought her to the mill, and there his mother
soothed the fears of the frightened girl, gave her
milk and bread and honey, and finally dismissed
her with a sixpence in her pocket.
After this, Crazy Jane became somewhat of a
nuisance again, as she had been at the school.
She had come to regard Jim with a veneration that
almost reached adoration. He was the only person
who had ever stood up for her and defended her
against enemies. He had never laughed at her,
played tricks with her, teased her; but had ever
been ready to come to her aid when powerless to
protect herself. She hung about the mill, not for
milk and bread and honey, not for a sixpence, but
only that she might get a sight of Jim, and receive
a kind and cheery word from him. She would
have overwhelmed him with hedgehogs had he
been willing to have one, would have filled his
boxes with dormice had he expressed the desire
to have them. There was nothing she would not
to do for him to show her gratitude and regard.
And Jim's mother, Mrs. Thacker, made use of the
girl now and then to take messages or do com-
missions for her to Steyning, or to Hurst, or to
Brighton, or Worthing commissions which she
executed with fidelity, and for which she doggedly,
even sullenly, refused payment. It was reward
enough to her to be allowed to see Jim, and to
hear him say, "What an active girl you are,
Jane ! "
On Sundays, when Jim went to church, Jane
CRAZY JANE 311
was always to be seen hanging about in the neigh-
bourhood of the mill, waiting to follow him. She
was in her ragged, dingy week-day dress, for she
had no change of attire. And when he started, with
his book under his arm, she followed at a dis-
tance, and when he entered the sacred building
she remained outside, hidden behind one of the
gravestones, for she dared not stay seated on the
churchyard wall, lest she should be teased, and
perhaps pulled off, and have stones thrown at her
by those boys and young men who congregate
about churchyard gates, and do not enter the
church.
When service was over, and Jim returned home,
then, from her hiding-place, rose the crazy girl
also, and followed him back, never getting very
near, always maintaining a respectful distance, but
never allowing him to get out of her sight.
This, naturally, provoked comment, and caused
Jim annoyance. He spoke to Jane about it, re-
monstrated, and forbade her to pursue him in
this manner. This made her cry, but not abandon
the practice, and he was finally obliged to endure
what could not be altered, hoping that in course
of time she would herself tire of the dog-like
pursuit.
But he was mistaken. For her dull mind this
allegiance to Jim, expressed so uncouthly, had
become a sort of religion that bound her, and years
passed, and her conduct remained the same ; she
neither pressed further on his attention nor wearied
312 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
of her devotion. The habit of following him, of
hanging about the mill, had become part of her
life, with which she could not break. So time
passed. Jim had grown from boyhood to manhood,
and had become miller in the room of his father,
deceased ; and there had been changes in the
cottage also; the widow was dead, and Jane re-
mained there lonely, but content, pursuing her
usual avocations, and obtaining a small allowance
from the parish. She had grown from girlhood
into womanhood, but without any mental develop-
ment. She was as dull-witted as ever, and in
addition had acquired a jerky motion of her head
and shoulders whenever spoken to a nervous
agitation which was but St. Vitus' dance. A quiet
harmless girl she remained. There was a talk
about removing her to the workhouse, but the pro-
ject fortunately for her was never carried out. She
would have pined and died under the restraints and
routine of the Union.
In due time Jim Thacker was married. He had
fallen in love with a bright, sharp, pretty girl,
the daughter of a farmer. There was no im-
pediment on either side, and they were married.
Few were better pleased than Crazy Jane, who
went to the church, but did not enter it, and
looked on, laughing and clapping her hands from
behind a gravestone, when the bridal party left the
church.
" Oh fine ! fine ! " exclaimed Jane. " Now Jim
Thacker has got a pretty wife. Fine ! fine ! fine ! "
CRAZY JANE 313
And when Jim sent her some of the wedding
feast, cake and oranges and pie, she capered and
laughed and cried alternately, and then, all at once,
sat herself down in the wood, and a mood of sulki-
ness and sadness came over her, she knew not
wherefore, and she threw up the old brown beech
leaves over her head, and let them rain about her,
as though she were burying herself under the fallen
leaves.
This mood lasted for a day only, and then
passed. She remained as before, good-natured,
following Jim as a dog, but never intruding herself
on him and his young wife.
The latter did not take kindly to Jane. She was
annoyed at the persistent haunting of the neighbour-
hood of the mill, by her animal-like devotion to Jim,
and remonstrated with her husband.
"What can I do?" he asked; "the poor crazy
creature does no harm."
"It is absurd, it is scandalous," said the young
wife petulantly. " It makes you an object of ridicule
throughout the country."
Jim's mother, and after her death, Jim himself,
had often sent broken meat, a blanket, some little
comfort, perhaps a few bushels of coal to Crazy
Jane ; but the new mistress at the mill forbade these
charities. "Let her be starved out," she said.
" The creature is a nuisance. Who can be confident
with a mad woman so near ? She may set fire to
the mill, she may murder me, if I go alone into the
woods. And " she pouted " I should not be
3H IN A QUIET VILLAGE
surprised if she were to attempt it, as she is jealous
of me. She has hitherto engrossed so much of Jim's
attention, and now thinks I rob her of what should
be hers."
" How can you talk such trash ? " said Jim,
annoyed.
So Crazy Jane was the occasion of the first little
disagreement between Jim and his wife.
It is a satisfaction to some natures to have an
opportunity for grumbling, an excuse for venting
their vexation. Mrs. Thacker had a fretful, irritable
temper, and the presence of Crazy Jane furnished
her with an occasion for giving tongue to her
annoyance, and scolding and finding fault with her
husband. She knew perfectly that she had no real
grounds for her jealousy, and the fact that she
knew this excused her in her own mind for her
fretfulness towards her husband on the subject.
Some women regard their ebullitions of ill-temper
and jealousy as justified by the fact that they are
unreasonable. Jim was so good-natured that he did
not become angry, and his good-nature provoked
his wife.
So time passed, and Mrs. Thacker bore her
husband a little daughter ; and the child grew, and
as it grew became an object of intense, affectionate
regard to Crazy Jane. Indeed, it seemed as though
her devotion to Jim had been transferred to the
child. She hovered about the mill as before, but
now, so that she might watch the child, not the
father, and seemed quite pleased when she could
CRAZY JANE 315
offer the little girl a bunch of wild strawberries, or
a posy of lilies of the valley.
This also gave annoyance to Mrs. Thacker. She
did not like her child to be near the mad girl or
woman she was a girl no longer. " Who can say
what she might do? She might carry her off, as
the gipsies do ? "
" But where could she carry her to ? "
" I don't like her to touch the child ; she is not
clean/'
Time advanced. It seemed to stand still only
with Crazy Jane, who had settled into one fixed
type of face and figure that never altered ; and no
one looking at her could guess her age. Her face
was childlike, so simple; but her figure was too
formed for that of a child. Her black hair showed
no trace of change. In spite of the many vexations
occasioned her by Mrs. Thacker, she remained in
the cottage. The miller's wife went to the parish
guardians to complain, and urge that the creature
should be removed- to the Union. She went to the
police, to complain that the girl was a menace to
herself and the child. She visited the village
doctor, to insist that Jane was mad, and ought to
be in an asylum; she endeavoured to incite the
rector to take steps to get her put into some
charitable institution ; she had repeated squabbles
with her husband all in vain.
Time advanced, and when little Mabel, his child,
was twelve years old, Crazy Jane was still in the
cottage unmolested. One winter's day, Mabel had
316 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
been sent over the downs, a walk of three miles,
to her grandmother's house, the mother of Mrs.
Thacker. It was the old lady's birthday, and the
child had gone with congratulations and a present
from the miller's wife.
The day had been warm and fine, but towards
afternoon there ensued a sudden change, and un-
expectedly the wind shifted to the north-east, with
black and threatening clouds, and there fell a
blinding, dense snow.
A little uneasiness was felt by James and his
wife about the child, but not much, for they con-
cluded that Mabel had been detained by her grand-
mother. " Surely," said Mrs. Thacker, " my mother
would never let the child start when there was a
threat of a change."
"But the threat came with the change, at once;
no one could have looked for it."
" If that be the case, you or some one had better
go to my mother's and inquire."
Jim Thacker thought so as well. He drew on
his thick coat, tied a kerchief over his head to hold
on his cap, for the wind on the downs blew a gale,
and started.
Three hours later he returned, covered with
snow.
" Is Mabel home ? " he inquired as he entered
the room.
"No had she left?" Mrs. Thacker was near
on fainting. She saw by her husband's face that
he was alarmed.
CRAZY JANE 317
" Yes/' he answered gravely. " She left her
grandmother's before the change."
"O Jim! Jim!" The poor mother could say
no more, but burst into tears, and sank with her
head on the table.
There was no time to be wasted in lamentations.
Jim called to his man. A lantern was lighted, and
the two with sticks went forth again into the storm.
Meantime the darkness had become complete. The
wind raged, the snow fell in huge flakes against the
windows like dabs of plaster. It covered roof,
ground, walls. Mrs. Thacker was left alone in the
house with a maid only. Her agitation, her alarm,
were great. She loved her child passionately. How
could a child struggle through such a storm and
beat a way through the snow ? Every road was
deep buried, the landmarks obscured. The child
would stray on the Downs, perhaps sink with
weariness, and sleep the fatal sleep of death ; per-
haps in its wanderings come, blinded with snow,
to the edge of a chalk quarry, fall over, and be
dashed to pieces.
The night wore on. The father, with his man,
had gone over the ground again between the farm-
house where lived the mother of his wife and his
own mill, but had discovered no traces of his little
one. He called up men from a cottage or two that
he passed. He got help from the farm to which the
child had gone. As the hours passed he became
more hopeless. He expected one thing only to
find his child's body, for he deemed it impossible
318 IN A QUIET VILLAGE
for her to be alive under the circumstances. If she
had strayed on the Wold, there was no house
on the Downs into which she could have been re-
ceived.
The condition of mind of Mrs. Thacker was
worse than that of her husband. He was battling
with the storm, searching ; she was condemned to
inactivity, could only bow and pray, have hot water
ready, bricks heated, in the event of her child's
return, to bathe her, to place against her body to
restore heat.
Once she was frightened. She heard a crash
against the front door, a blow that near beat it
in, and then all was still. What was it? Dare
she open ? Then she supposed there had been a fall
of a mass of snow from the roof, and that this had
produced the sound. Ten minutes later she heard
voices her husband and the men returning and
she ran to the door to throw it open, and ask
news. As she did so, something a great heap
of snow, but something tender, something on which
the snow had heaped itself, fell inwards.
A cry ! Mrs. Thacker stooped, Jim ran up with
the lantern. It was Crazy Jane, with the child in
her arms. The child asleep, and Jane dead.
How and where the silly girl had found Mabel
was never known. All the child could remember
was, that Jane had discovered her as she rambled
about in the snow, and that Jane had carried her
till she fell asleep. How far Jane had wandered,
how far borne the heavy burden, could not be told,
CRAZY JANE 319
but it must have been far, for she had died of
over-exhaustion at the very moment when she had
reached the door of the house, the outside of which
she had watched for many years, the inside of
which she had not been allowed for long to enter.
And so faithful to the last the poor dull-
minded creature had repaid in good measure,
pressed down and running over, the little acts
of kindness shown her in years gone by, by Jim
at school, and Jim by the pool, and Jim at home,
defending her from children, from the swan, and
last, but not least, from his wife.
THE END
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