Part 19

“Dear! To be sure! I didn’t know you had visitors here, Bethia, my dear. Won’t you sit i’ the armchair, Mr. Fowler? Do ’ee now. I’m sure ’tis very kind o’ ye to come a-visitin’ o’ we in our trouble.”

Bethia marched past her mother, removed the pot from the fire, and carried it over to the table.

“Could you make a little room, if you please?” she inquired tartly.

Jacob chuckled and rubbed his hands as he slowly removed his ponderous frame; then the remembrance of his former grievance returned to him, and he gazed at the widow loweringly.

“You don’t like this here notion, Mrs. Masters, I hope?” he inquired severely.

“What notion, sir?” returned the poor woman, startled.

“Why, this here notion o’ your daughter a-gaddin’ about lookin’ arter the rates.”

“Well, you see, we be so hard pressed, we be,” faltered she. “My daughter do try to do her best to earn a little, all ways she can. I’m sorry as you’ve a-got objections, Mr. Fowler.”

“It doesn’t in the least matter if he’s got objections or not,” put in Bethia tartly. “It’s no concern of Mr. Fowler’s. So long as he pays up regularly he need not trouble himself.”

Jacob got out of the armchair and once more approached the table.

“Look ’ee here,” he said threateningly; “this here’s past a joke. I do forbid ye for to do it--do ye hear?”

Bethia looked at him steadily. “I hear, and I can only repeat what I said before. Now, Mr. Fowler, will you please go away? I’m going to dish up.”

“Bethia, my dear!” protested Mrs. Masters feebly. “There, she’ve a-got sich a spirit, Mr. Fowler, you must excuse her. She be a bit vexed, you see, wi’ you findin’ fault wi’ her. I’m sure, the longer you stay, Mr. Fowler, the better we’m pleased. We’ve nothin’ much fit to offer ye, but if ye’d like to sit down and take a bit wi’ us you’re truly welcome.”

Bethia shot an indignant glance towards her parent, and Jacob stood hesitating for a moment; then with a laugh he drew up his chair to the table.

“I’ll not refuse a good offer,” he said.

Bethia fetched a plate, knife and fork, and glass, setting each before him with somewhat unnecessary clatter. Then she served up the vegetables, brought out a roll of butter and a small piece of cheese from the buttery, and took her place in silence.

“I’m sorry,” began Mrs. Masters regretfully, “we’ve got nothing better to offer ye, Mr. Fowler. My daughter and me seldom eats meat of a week day.”

“Don’t make excuses, Mother,” interrupted Bethia, with asperity. “Mr. Fowler knows very well that we are poor.”

The meal proceeded in silence for the most part, Mrs. Masters making an occasional remark, to which Jacob responded by a gruff monosyllable. Bethia did not speak once, but had never looked prettier in her life; the angry sparkle still lingered in her eyes, and her cheeks were flushed. Whenever she glanced at the visitor her countenance took on an additional expression of haughtiness.

At the end of the repast Jacob stood up. “I’d like a word wi’ ye private, Miss Masters.”

“Oh, I beg pardon, I’m sure,” apologised the poor old mother, hastening to efface herself.

As soon as her heavy footsteps were heard in the room upstairs the farmer turned to Bethia.

“I’ve a-come to see ye friendly like,” he remarked, “and I’ll come again. I ax ye, as a friend, my maid--will ye gie this notion up?”

Bethia looked if possible more indignant than before.

“No, Mr. Fowler,” she returned promptly, “I tell you--as a friend--I won’t.”

“Then you’ll ha’ trouble wi’ I, I warn ’ee,” responded he, almost with a groan.

Jacob Fowler kept his word, and gave the poor little rate-collector an inconceivable amount of trouble.

He took no notice whatever of her demand-notes and official reminders; and when she called to see him in person, though he received her with civility and even undisguised pleasure, he resolutely refused to part with a farthing. The friendliness with which he hailed her advent, and entered into conversation on indifferent subjects, gave place to a rigid silence as soon as she touched on the motive of her visit, and he would shake his head fiercely as often as she reverted to the point.

One day she found him in what she took to be a softened mood. It was in the spring, and the consciousness that it was grand weather for potato-setting, added to the recollection of a long and successful day’s work, had put Jacob in an unusually good humour. He was smoking in his porch when she drew near, and at once invited her to sit down and rest.

“You do look a bit tired, my maid,” he remarked; “tired and worried.”

“I am tired and worried too,” said Bethia, looking up at him appealingly. “I’m afraid of getting into trouble, Mr. Fowler.”

“Oh,” said Jacob, “how’s that?”

“They will be down on me for not sending in the money regularly,” returned the girl tremulously; “I’ve got it all in except yours.”

Jacob, instead of immediately becoming wooden of aspect, as was his wont, gazed at her searchingly. “You’d be all right if you was to get mine?” he inquired.

“Yes--oh, yes, Mr. Fowler. Couldn’t you pay up and have done with it?”

Jacob shook his head, but this time apparently more in sorrow than in anger.

“Can’t be done, my maid. I’ve a-passed my word, d’ye see, and I be forced to stick to it.”

“I think you are very unkind,” said Bethia; “you are trying to force me to give up one of the few ways I have of making a living.”

“E-es,” said Jacob, “’tis true; ’tis the very thing I be a-doin’. You said if I didn’t pay up you’d make me--well, how be you a-goin’ for to make me?”

“Oh, I suppose I’ll have to send you a summons,” cried she, with gathering anger. “’Tis my duty and I must do it.”

Jacob’s face changed. The colour mounted in his brown cheeks, and when he spoke his voice was unsteady with surprise and wrath.

“You don’t mean that,” he said quickly. “You’d never do it.”

“I’ll have to do it,” said Bethia, “if you force me to proceed to extremes. Oh, Mr. Fowler,” she added, almost passionately, “can’t you be sensible; can’t you make an end of it once and for all? If I’d been a man instead of a girl you wouldn’t persecute me like this. You’d think it quite natural for me to want to take my father’s place, wouldn’t you? What difference does it make? I can keep the accounts, and make the applications, just as well as any man. Why should you try to bully me?”

“Now look ’ee here, my maid,” said Jacob, “if you come to that, ’tis you what be a-tryin’ for to bully I. I’ve a-set my face again this ’ere notion. No respectable young ’ooman did ought to go a-trapesin’ fro’ one house to t’other, a puttin’ herself for’ard and a-coaxin’ folks out o’ their money, whether it be for the Government or whether it bain’t. ’Tis a question between us two which can hold out longest. Now if you was to give in to I----”

“Well,” said Bethia, bending forward with unconscious eagerness, “what would happen if I were to give in to you?”

Jacob took out his pipe and stared at her, and then he got up and paced about the little flagged path.

“What would happen?” she repeated sharply. “What would you advise me to do?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” returned Jacob confusedly. “I haven’t had time for to think o’ that.”

It was now Bethia’s turn to spring to her feet. “I think you are hard, and obstinate, and cruel! Yes, cruel, to try and put upon my poor mother and me! But I’ll have an end of this shilly-shally work; you shall be forced to pay, sir.”

She hastened down the path. Jacob, after delaying a moment to lay his pipe carefully in a corner of the seat, strode after her and opened the garden gate, holding it for a moment so that she could not pass through.

Bethia glanced at him. He did not look angry, but resolute; his jaw was firmly set and his eyes steady. It struck her forcibly that he had a good face--honest, open, manly--and she realised with a little pang that it was probably turned towards her for the last time in friendship.

“I’ll give you a month,” she said waveringly.

“Ye mid as well say a year,” returned Jacob. “’Twill be all the same.”

Thereupon he opened the gate and she went away.

The allotted time of grace passed very slowly, and though Bethia continued to post a little demand-note every week, no notice was taken either of her appeal or of herself.

Late on the last day of the month she was making her way back from the town with a very melancholy face, when, at a turn in the road, she suddenly encountered Jacob; Jacob in holiday attire, carrying a large nosegay of monthly roses and lilac.

“Hullo, my maid,” he cried genially, “well met! I were just a-goin’ to see you.”

“Were you?” returned Bethia, in a very small constrained voice.

“E-es, I was a-bringin’ you these here flowers. I seed ’em i’ th’ garden just now, and I thought you’d like ’em.”

“Oh, Mr. Fowler, you shouldn’t give them to me!” cried the girl with a catch in her voice. “I’ve--I’ve just been and taken out a summons against you.”

“Oh, and have you?” said Jacob staring at her. “Well, that’s summat.”

“Yes,” returned Bethia desperately. “I waited till the end of the month, and then I had to do it; it was my duty. Oh, dear; oh, dear!”

“Well, to think on’t,” said Jacob, still apparently more surprised than angry. “Lard ha’ mercy! That be a pretty thing for a maid to do.”

“So you’d best take back your flowers,” broke out Bethia. “I know everything’s at an end between us. I’ve quite made up my mind to it.”

“Ah,” said Jacob, eyeing her thoughtfully; “’tis queer once folks makes up their minds how a notion will stick i’ their heads. Now all this month I’ve been a-thinkin’ and a-thinkin’--I never was one to do a thing in a hurry--but at last I reckoned I’d got it settled. ‘I’ll do it,’ I says, ‘I’ll ax the maid to marry I--that’ll be the best way out of it. She’ll not want to go again’ I then,’ I says. And you go and summons me.”

Bethia burst out crying. “Oh, Jacob,” she cried, “why couldn’t you have done it before? If you had asked me kindly--if you had told me to give up for your sake, I--I--I----”

She broke off, sobbing bitterly.

“’Tis true,” said Jacob regretfully, “I mid ha’ axed ye a bit softer--I mid ha’ spoke a bit more kind--but you did go and put my back up with stickin’ to the notion so obstinate. Says I to myself, ‘So soon as ever she gives in I’ll ax her--but she must give in’--and you wouldn’t. So then I thought--‘Dally! I’ll ax her first and then we’ll see.’ And then you go and put the law on me afore I’ve time to open my mouth.”

“Oh, Jacob! I waited a whole month,” protested Bethia, almost inarticulately; “and you never said anything, and I thought you didn’t care about me, and it seemed to be my duty.”

She covered her face with her hands. Jacob stared at her for a moment, and then suddenly slapped his thigh and burst into a roar of laughter.

“I d’ ’low the maid done it out o’ pique,” he cried ecstatically, “I d’ ’low she did! She did do it along of her feelin’s bein’ hurt with me a-holdin’ back so long. That’s a different story, my dear--a different story altogether! I bain’t one to bear malice along o’ that; ’twas but nat’ral arter all. E-es, I d’ ’low I be a terrible slow-coach; but, ye see, I’d a-got set i’ my bachelor ways, and it did take I a long time for to make up my mind; and then, as I do tell ’ee, I wur a-waitin’ and expectin’ for you to give in. But I’ve spoke now, and if you’ll say the word, my dear, all can be forgive and forgot.”

Bethia presumably did speak the word, for she resigned her post as tax-collector that very evening, and she and her Jacob were “asked in church” on the following Sunday.

As for that matter of the summons, it was settled “out of court”.

THE SPUR OF THE MOMENT.

Daniel Chaffey stood poised on a step-ladder nailing up the fine Gloire de Dijon rose which was trailed over the wall of his house. He had already performed the same operation for the jessamine which grew over the porch and for the purple clematis on the right of it. He had tied his dahlias so tightly and firmly to a variety of newly cut stakes, that each individual scarlet bloom reminded one in some measure of a choleric old gentleman suffering from a tight and high shirt-collar. He had scraped the little path till the cobble-stones of which it was composed stood revealed each almost in its entirety. From his exalted position he could survey the whole frontage of his own roof--a sight in which an artist would have revelled, for not only was the thatch itself mellowed by time and weather to the most exquisite variety of tones, but on its mouldering surface had sprung up a multitude of blooms, vying in brightness with those of the garden beneath--not merely your common everyday mosses and lichens, though patches of these were to be found in every shade of emerald and topaz and silver, but flowers, real flowers, seemed to thrive there; saxifrages, toad-flax, snap-dragon, and, just where the bedroom gable jutted out, a flaming bunch of poppies. It will be seen from this that Daniel Chaffey’s house was an old one; it bore a date over the door, cut roughly in the weather-beaten stone--1701. It had mullioned windows with diamond panes, and an oaken door studded with nails. It had indeed once been the village schoolhouse, though the Chaffey family had been in possession of it now for many generations, and had farmed, more or less successfully, the small holding attached to it.

Daniel, himself, looked prosperous enough as he stood hammering and whistling, and occasionally pausing with his head on one side, and his mouth screwed up but emitting no sound, to survey his handiwork. He was a bullet-headed young man of about four or five-and-twenty, with twinkling blue eyes, and a face, the natural ruddy tone of which was overlaid by such a fine veneer of sunburn that it was now of a uniform brick-colour. His expression was jovial, not to say jocular; his mouth wore an habitual grin when it was not whistling, and on this particular occasion some inward source of jollity appeared to entertain him, for he not only frequently chuckled but winked to himself.

Having inserted the last tack into the crumbling wall, he paused, removing his hat and scratching his head meditatively; for the first time his face wore a somewhat serious, not to say puzzled expression, and his eyes travelled dubiously over the flaunting array of blossoming weeds on the roof.

“I wonder,” quoth Daniel to himself, “if ’twould look better if I was to scrape out them there. Maybe the thatch wouldn’t hold together, though--it’s a-been agrowed over sich a-many year, I d’ ’low I’ll let ’em bide--they do look well enough where they be.”

And, after coming to this decision, he was preparing to descend from the ladder when he was suddenly hailed by a chorus of voices from the lane on the other side of his garden-hedge.

“Hello, Dan’l!”--“Hallo, old cock!”--“Well, bwoy, bist getten’ all to rights afore weddin’?”

Daniel put on his hat and turned slowly round on his rung.

“E-es,” he said, grinning sheepishly, “that’s about it. The job’s to be done the day arter to-morrow.”

A party of young men had halted just outside his little gate; it was Saturday and, though only five o’clock, their field-work was over and they were now on their way to the allotments; a rough, sunburnt, merry-looking group, most of them bearing the marks of the day’s toil on heated face and earth-stained apparel; one or two of them with spade and fork on shoulder, others with dangling empty sacks. September was drawing to a close and potato-getting was in full swing. It was observable that as they addressed Chaffey, each man assumed a knowing and jocular air; this one nudged his neighbour, that one winked at Daniel himself.

“You’m to be called home for last time to-morrow, bain’t ye, Dan’l?” inquired Abel Bolt, elbowing himself to the front.

“E-es,” responded Daniel, “we be to be called last time to-morrow an’ tied-up o’ Monday.”

Abel threw back his head and laughed uproariously.

“I should like to come to your weddin’, Dan!” he cried ecstatically, “I d’ ’low I should.”

“Ye won’t, though,” retorted Chaffey. “Ye’ll be jist in the thick o’ your ploughin’--I thought o’ that. I axed the Reverend to fix time a-purpose. No, we’ll be wed on the quiet, Phœbe an’ me--I settled that.”

“There, ’tis real ill-natured o’ you, Dan,” cried one of the youths, looking archly at his comrades. “Sich a pretty sight as ’twill be. Sure it will! And your missus, sich a beauty!”

“Haw, haw, haw!” came the chorus again.

“Her eyes, now,” giggled Abel, “’twill be sich a convenience for the man to have a missus what can keep one eye on the dinner an’ t’other on the garden.”

“An’ her figure,” said Jarge Vacher, “did ye have to make the gate anyways larger, Dan?”

“No, there’d be no need for that,” returned Abel, before Daniel could open his mouth. “The woman could get in very nicely sideways, more pertick’ler since she can see all round her like.”

Chaffey’s complexion had been gradually deepening from crimson to purple, and from purple to a fine rich mahogany, his smile had widened to an extent that was positively painful, but he spoke with unimpaired good humour.

“Neighbours, you may laugh, but I do know what I’m about. I do know very well Phœbe Cosser bain’t a beauty, but she’s good, and I d’ ’low she’ll make I comfortable--an’ that’s the main p’int to look to. She mid be a bit older nor what I be----”

Here the irreverent group in the road began to nudge each other and chuckle afresh; Chaffey sat down suddenly on the top of his ladder.

“What I d’ say, neighbours, is,” he began, “what my notion be--if ye’d give over sniggering for a moment,” he cried with gathering ire, “I could make it plain to ye.”

But they wouldn’t give over; the merriment increased instead of diminishing, and at last Daniel, exclaiming that he would be dalled if he stood it any longer, leaped to the ground, and, dashing into his house, bolted the door behind him.

His friends, trooping into the little garden, serenaded him with a ballad which they thought suitable to his case, and having goaded him into declaring he would come out in a minute and break their heads for them, withdrew in good order and pursued their interrupted course to the allotments.

Daniel waited until the last heavy footfall had died away, the last battered hat brim disappeared, and then came forth with a vengeful expression on his usually good-tempered face. He picked up the hammer and nails which he had scattered in his flight, shouldered his ladder and carried it round to the little shed in the rear, and then came back slowly to resume his labours in the garden.

“She be a good ’un,” he muttered to himself, “let ’em say what they like, she be.”

He paused to uplift and secure a tuft of golden rod which had fallen across the path.

“I never did take so mich notice of her eyes,” he said to himself. “They bain’t so crooked as that comes to--they can see well enough, and that’s the p’int.”

He plucked out a tuft of groundsel which had hitherto escaped his vigilant eye.

“There’s nothin’ so much amiss wi’ her shape neither--I d’ ’low I’d sooner have a nice little comfortable round-about woman nor a great gawky faymale like a zowel or a speaker. If she’s pluffy, she’s sprack, an’ that’s the p’int.”

Whenever Daniel uttered this last phrase he seemed to pluck up courage, and a momentary cheerfulness returned to his face, which, nevertheless, speedily became overcast again. Dall it all, he thought, why couldn’t folks keep their tongues quiet. What was it to them what kind of missus Daniel chose, that they must come tormenting and ballyragging him? He didn’t meddle wi’ nobody, and didn’t want nobody to meddle wi’ he, but there, even the lord’s roughrider stopped him on the road to deliver, as his opinion, that he, Daniel, had chosen a plain-headed one. Old Mrs. Inkpen of the shop had laughed at him for marrying a woman so many years older than himself. Well, she’d be all the more sensible.

“Let ’em laugh if they do have a mind to; it’ll not hurt Phœbe and I. We’ll soon show ’em who’s in the right.”

And with that, he heaved a sigh and went indoors.

Next day he went to call for Phœbe, whom he had promised to escort to afternoon church. She stood awaiting him in her own doorway, which she filled up pretty well it must be owned--a little ball of a woman with the ugliest, merriest face it was possible to conceive. She wore a very fine purple hat with a feather in the middle and two red roses on each side, and this arrangement of headgear seemed to accentuate the somewhat roving propensities of her eyes. Pinned to her jacket was a bunch of natural roses that vied with these in hue, and in one stout hand she waved a posy, similar in colour and almost equal in size, which was intended for her swain.

At sight of her bright face Daniel forgot all his troubles, and after bestowing a sounding salute on her hard red cheek, stood straight and stiff to be decorated, then, “Come along, my dear,” said he, and they set forth arm-in-crook, entirely satisfied with each other.