Pippany Webster, handy-man and only labourer to Abel Perris, the small farmer who dragged a bare living out of Cherry-trees, the little holding at the top of the hill above Martinsthorpe, came lazily up the road from the village one May afternoon, leading a horse which seemed as fully inclined to laziness as Pippany himself. Perris had left home for a day or two, and had apportioned his man a certain fixed task to accomplish by the time of his return: Pippany, lid it so pleased him, might have laboured steadily at it until that event happened. And for the whole of the first day and half of the next he had kept himself to the work, but at noon on that second day it was borne in upon him that one of the two horses, which formed the entire stable of the establishment, required shoeing, and after eating his dinner, he had led it down the hill to the smithy near the cross-roads in Martinsthorpe. There, and in the kitchen of the Dancing Bear, close by, where there was ale and tobacco and gossip, he had contrived to spend the greater part of the afternoon. He would have stayed longer amidst such pleasant surroundings, but for the fact that supper-time was approaching.
It was difficult, looking at man and horse, to decide as to which most suggested helplessness and incompetence. The horse showed itself to be a poor man's beast in every line and aspect of its ill-shaped, badly-fed body, in the listless droop of its head, in its ungroomed, rough-haired coat, in the very indecision with which it set down its oversized, sprawling feet. It had a dull, listless eye, the eye of an equine outcast; there was an evident disposition in it to stop on any provocation, to crop the fresh green of the grass from the broad stretches of turf on the wayside, to nibble at the tender shoots of the hedgerows, to do anything that needed little effort. It breathed heavily as it breasted the hill, following the man who slouched in front, his head drooping from his bent shoulders, his lips, still moist and sticky from the ale he had drunk, sucking mechanically at a foul clay pipe. He was a little more fully attired than the scarecrows in the neighbouring fields, but there was all over him the aimlessness, the ineptitude, the purposelessness of the unfit. His old hat, shapeless and colourless, shaded a face which suggested nothing but dull stupidity, and was only relieved from utter vacancy by a certain slyness and craftiness of expression. He shambled in his walk, and his long arms, the finger-tips of which reached below his knees, wagged and waved in front of him as he forged ahead, as though they were set loose in their sockets, his small, pig-like eyes fixed on the few inches of high-road which lay immediately before his toes. From the foot of the hill to its crest those eyes were never lifted.
And yet, the crest of the hill once gained, a landscape presented itself over which most folk would have gazed with pleasure and appreciation. On all sides the country stretched away in a great plateau, thickly wooded, and just then smiling in the clear light and fresh, unsullied tints and colours of spring-tide. The place to which the unkempt man was leading the unkempt horse was in itself a picture. It stood, a small but very old farmhouse, with a high sloping roof, dormer windows, and tall chimneys, in t he angle made by the meeting of two roads; before i t lay a flower-garden, in one corner of which rose an ancient cedar-tree; behind it stretched a wide-spreading orchard, filled, for the most part, with cherry-trees, just then in the full glory of pink and white blossom. I immediately in front of it, on the opposite side of the highway, rose a great grove of chestnut-trees; they, too, were in bloom, and the wax-like clusters made little pyramids of light against the, glossy green of the widespreading leaves. And over everything was the clear blue of the May sky, and in the hedgerows and the coppices were the first signs of the flowering of the hawthorn.
Pippany Webster saw nothing of all this. He shambled slowly round the corner of the high-road into the lane which led towards the woods, and made a boundary on that side to Perris's farmstead, into which he let himself by a ramshackle door that opened on a range of dilapidated buildings. These buildings stood between the old house and the cherry orchard; the lane ran at the back of them; a farm-fold lay in front of them, fenced off from the rear of the house by a low stone wall. Against this wall, on the fold side, was a stone trough; above it a leaden spout projected through the wall; on the other, the house side of the wall, was a pump, which communicated with the well below. The human animals in the house and the brute animals in the field both drank water from a spring thirty feet beneath them, into which the runnings of fold and byre and stable percolated in some indefinite degree about which neither ever speculated.
The range of buildings into which Pippany Webster dragged the newly-shod horse was characteristic of what is usually seen on a small holding when the holder is poor and more or less shiftless. Between it and the house stood a dilapidated Dutch barn, empty of aught but a mess and litter of straw on the earth flooring almost as empty was the range of buildings itself when entered and inspected. The lower part was stable, cow-house, piggery so far as one-half was concerned; above these offices was a granary, and next it a chamber wherein wool might be stored; the other half of the range, unfloored from earth to roof face, made a barn which was nearly as destitute of straw as its Dutch substitute outside. Two horses in the stable, three cows in the byre, a few pigs in the sty, constituted Perris's live stock; but outside in the fold, and in the adjoining orchard, his wife kept a pretty good establishment of poultry—fowls, ducks, and geese—and at various times made a little money out of it. It was well that she had some such stand-by, for the evidences of prosperity at Cherry-trees were few. An observer, skilled in matters of farming, having taken due stock of the animals, the condition of the fold, the emptiness of barns and granary, the poor bits of dead stock, ploughs, harrows, and the like, which lay rusting and woe-begone of appearance in a lean-to shed, would have sniffed and turned up his nose with a remark as to the folly of trying to work even fifty acres without capital.
Pippany Webster unceremoniously turned the horse into a stable as destitute of straw on the bouldered floor as it was empty of aught to eat in the broken mangers. The horse looked into the manger, and at the rack fixed in the wall above it, and turning its head gazed at Pippany. It knew as well as Pippany knew that it and its stable companion would presently be cast forth for the night into the adjoining grass meadow, and that as the spring nights were still nipping cold it was only right and just that something more warming to the belly than buttercups and daisies should be served up before the casting forth took place. And Pippany recognised the look and wagged his head.
"Then ye mun wait till I can cut some o' yon owd clover," he said. "Theer's none so much left, and when it's done wi' ye'll hev' to depend on what ye can pick up—if so be as ye're alive. There's nowt much of owt left about this here place."
As if in proof of this assertion he lifted the lid of the old stable-chest in which the horse-corn was kept, and gazed meditatively at its contents. In the depths of the chest lay two or three bushels of meal: Pippany remembered that there was none left in the granary above the stable; he remembered, too, that he had only enough pig-meal left wherewith to feed the pigs that night. He scratched his head dubiously.
"This is a bonny come-up!" he soliloquised. "If t' maister doesn't come home to-morrow and bring soome brass wi' him these here animals 'll go fro' bad to worse—if such is possible! Howsomever, I mun cut some o' yon clover for t' hosses and t' cows."
From a nook behind the corn-chest Pippany brought forth a hay-cutting knife, and proceeded to put an edge on it with a whetstone which he took from a hole in the wall. And at last, armed with this and with a stable fork whereupon he meant to impale the chunk of dried clover which he intended to carve out of the old stack at the end of the orchard, he went forth into the fold and crossed over to the orchard gate.
In the orchard, amidst the pink and white of the cherry-trees, two women were hanging out the last results of a day's family washing. The lines to which they suspended the various articles of clothing, drawn wet and heavy from the wicker basket which they had just set down on the grass, were fastened here and there to the trunks or branches of the trees, here and there to certain ancient posts which were shaky in their foundations, and looked as if a little extra weight on the lines would pull them down altogether. There was scarcely any movement of air in the orchard; the lighter garments stirred but feebly when they were safely pinned to the line, the heavy ones hung straight down, motionless and inert.
Of the two women thus employed when Pippany entered the orchard, one, the elder, Tibby Graddige, general odd-job woman to the parish, was a tall, spare, athletic female whose every action indicated energy and strength. When she moved, every muscle and sinew of her body seemed to be brought into play; hands moved in unison with feet, and elbows with knees. Just as active were the motions of her thin, straight lips and her coal-black eyes; the way in which her hair, equally black, was drawn in straight, severe fashion from her forehead and hidden behind an old cap fashioned from the remains of some shred of funeral crape indicated her views of life and of a day's work, which were to keep going at both until both were over. She passed now from basket to line and from line to basket as if everything of importance in the world depended upon the swiftness with which the wet linen was hung out to dry.
The other and younger woman, Rhoda Perris, wife of Pippany's absent master, was of a different order of femininity. She looked to be about two-and-twenty years of age; the print gown which she wore did little to hide a figure which sculptors would have had nothing to find fault with had it been suggested to them as a model for the statue of something between a Venus and a Diana. Above the medium height, generous of bosom and hip, there was yet a curious suggestion of lissom slenderness about her which was heightened by the print gown. Her uncovered hair, catching the glint of the westering sun, revealed tints of gold and red and brown accordingly as her head was turned; it fell away to her ears in natural undulations from a centre parting, and was carelessly bound up into a heavy coil at the nape of her neck. Beneath the low, square forehead which the ripples of this elusively-tinted hair shaded were a pair of large eyes, the colour of which was as elusive as the hair—at times they seemed to be violet, at times grey, at times green. Always there was in them a strange sleepy seductiveness and a curious steadiness of gaze when they fixed themselves upon the object of their possessor's thoughts. The nose was in the slightest degree retrousse, the mouth inclining to largeness but perfectly shaped, the chin firm and rounded. As for the woman's colour it was that of the healthy, full-blooded human animal whose surroundings from infancy have been those of the woods and fields, and into whom the spirit of free air and the strength of the earth has entered with all the stirring nourishment of mother's milk.
Rhoda Perris, idly hanging a garment on the clothesline, looked round as Pippany shambled through the rickety gate. She took a clothes-peg from between her strong, white teeth, and smiled sideways at Tibby Graddige.
"Seems to me it takes a nice long time to put one shoe on a horse nowadays, Pippany Webster," she remarked. "You took that horse down to the crossroads at one o'clock, and it's past five now."
"T' smith weren't theer when I landed," said Pippany sullenly. "He were away up to Mestur Spink's about summat or other. An' when he came back theer wor another man afore me 'at had browt two hosses—leastways a hoss an' a mare. Ye can't shoe a beast i' five minutes. An' I worn't going down there to wait all that time for nowt."
"No, and I'll warrant you didn't!" remarked Tibby Graddige. "T' Dancing Bear mek's a good waiting-room for such-like as ye when ye go to t' smith's!"
"Ye ho'd yer wisht!" retorted Pippany. "Nobody's given ye onny right to order my goings and comings, Mistress Graddige. I know when a hoss wants its shoes seeing to as weel as onny man."
"We'll see what your master says when he comes home," said Rhoda. "You'd no need to take the horse to-day—it was naught but an excuse to go and drink."
"I care nowt for what t' maister says nor what nobody else says," retorted Pippany, lurching forward past the women. "If Mestur Perris has owt to say to me he can pay me mi wage and let me go. I'm stalled o' this job—there's nowt left about t' place, and t' animals 'll be starvin' afore to-morrow neet. I'm none a fooil, and I can see how things is goin' wi' Mestur Perris—so theer!"
Tibby Graddige shot a swift look out of her black eyes in Rhoda's direction.
"There's imperence for yer!" she said softly. "But he allus were a bad un wi' his tongue, were that there Pippany Webster—used to miscall his poor mother, as were bedridden, shameful. Eh, dear—when the cat's away the mice will play, as it says in the Good Book. If I were Mestur Perris I should show t' way to the back door to yon theer."
Pippany shambled on to the old clover-stack, which stood at the end of the orchard. There was little of it left: what little there was made a dusky tower which rose some eighteen or twenty feet in air from a base of two square yards. It was already shored up on three sides with stack props; on the fourth a ladder led to the particular elevation at which Pippany on the previous day had cut sufficient provender out of the tightly compressed mass to serve for the animals' supper. Round the base of this remnant many inroads had been made upon the clover by the depredations of the cattle which had been allowed to pull at it; when Pippany, carrying his hay-knife and the stable fork, proceeded slowly to climb the ladder, the stack began to tremble and to sway; it was obvious that it would have tottered over but for the support which it received from the poles. But Pippany gave no heed to these signs; he steadily mounted to the top, plunged his fork into the side, and kneeling down proceeded to drive his knife into the edges of the portion which he desired to cut out.
To drive an imperfectly edged cutting-knife into the compressed mass of an old clover-stack which has been standing, as this stack had, for at least three years, and had accordingly become almost solid, requires no small expenditure of might and strength. At every downward thrust which Pippany gave to his knife the stack shook and tottered on its insecure base, and if he had not been muttering threats and anathemas against Tibby Graddige to himself, he might have heard an ominous cracking and crunching below him. Pippany, however, heard nothing but the harsh voice of his knife crunching through the clover. And suddenly one of the supporting poles, already rotten when it was put up, snapped off short, the reeling stack gave way, and flinging Pippany, knife still in hand, headlong from it, heeled over after him and enveloped him in the debris of its destruction.
The two women looked round from the clotheslines with scared faces.
"God ha' mercy on us, missis!" exclaimed Tibby Graddige. "What's yon atomy done now? Oh, Lord, Lord, that owd stack's fallen on him! And us wi'out a man about the place!"
When they reached the scene of disaster there was no sign of Pippany. The fine dust caused by the fall of the stack was clearing away, but neither leg nor arm protruded from it.
"He's buried under it!" whispered Tibby Graddige. "Oh, Lord, whatever mun we do?"
Rhoda was already silently tearing at the clover, seizing great heaps of it in her powerful arms and casting it aside. The elder woman joined her, but ever and anon loudly lamented the absence of a man. And suddenly she looked up, listening.
"There's somebody a-horseback riding past the corner!" she said. "Eh, I mun call to him, whoever he is!"
She ran swiftly through the cherry-trees to the low hedge which separated the orchard from the lane, and craned her neck above the green branches. The next instant Rhoda heard her voice, shrill and insistent.
"Hi, mestur! Mestur Taffendale! Mestur Taffendale!"
The man thus hailed, who was slowly riding along the highway at the end of the lane, drew rein, and, turning in the saddle, looked in Tibby Graddige's direction. Seeing that she was frantically waving her bare arm to him, he turned his horse's head, and rode towards her.
"What is it, missis?" he said as he drew near. "Anything wrong?"
Tibby Graddige panted out her reply.
"Oh, Mestur Taffendale, sir, th' owd clover-stack's fallen on Pippany Webster, and he's buried under it, and there's nobody about but me and the missis. Come over and help us wi' it, if you please, sir!"
Taffendale's first thought was that if the clover-stack had buried Pippany Webster once and for all the Martinsthorpe community would have experienced no great loss. But without making audible reply to Tibby Graddige's supplication, he forced his horse through one of the many gaps which abounded in the hedge of Perris's orchard, dismounted, and tied the bridle to the lower branch of a cherry-tree.
"Where is he?" he said, speaking in the tones of a man who is asked to do something in which he has no personal concern and about which he is utterly indifferent.
"This way, sir; the missis and me's pulled some of it offen him already," replied Tibby Graddige. "But there's more on it than you'd think."
When they turned the corner of the hedgerow behind which the fallen clover-stack lay piled in a shapeless mass, Taffendale saw Rhoda Perris for the first time. He himself lived on his farmstead a mile and a half away across the plateau behind the woods; he rarely visited the village or passed Cherry-trees, and though he had heard of Perris's wife as what the country-folk called a bit of a beauty, he had never seen her since she and her husband had come to the place two years before. Now, as she stood up, flushed and panting from her exertions, he gave her one swift glance and as swiftly looked away. He had not been prepared for what he had seen.
By that time Rhoda had torn away a good deal of the fallen clover, and had uncovered the handle of the stable fork. Taffendale threw off his coat and seized the fork, at the same time jerking his head at the two women.
"Stand aside!" he said half-roughly.
He went to work carefully and systematically, but with sureness and swiftness. Tibby Graddige volubly gave forth her fears for Pippany and her admiration for Mr. Taffendale's cleverness and strength; Rhoda, her hands planted on her hips, stood by, watching in silence.
"Here he is!" said Taffendale at last, throwing aside the fork and resorting to his hands. "And, by George, he looks like a goner!"
He turned the crumpled-up Pippany over on his back, swiftly untied his neckcloth, and moved his head. Pippany's throat gurgled, and his lips emitted a long breath.
"He's alive, but he's unconscious," said Taffendale quickly. "We'll carry him into the house. Here, Mrs. Graddige, get hold of his legs and I'll take his shoulders. Have you got any brandy?" he continued, turning and looking squarely at Rhoda.
"No, but there's some whisky," answered Rhoda.
"Whisky will do," said Taffendale. "Now then, Mrs. Graddige, come on. He's no weight."
Rhoda ran on before them to the house, and was ready with the whisky bottle when they arrived and laid Pippany on the settle in the house-place. Taffendale took the bottle from her, poured some of its contents into a saucer which he caught up from the table, and some into a teacup. He handed the saucer to Tibby Graddige.
"Here, rub that on his forehead," said he. "Have you got a spoon handy, Mrs. Perris?"
Rhoda gave him a teaspoon, and he slowly poured small quantities of the raw spirit between Pippany's lips. Pippany began to stir and to moan; in a few minutes and under the influence of the whisky he opened his eyes. He gazed vacantly around him.
"Where—what—?" he began. "Where—?"
"Hold your tongue!" said Taffendale. "You're all right. You've saved your neck this time. Here, drink this, and then let's see if you've broken any bones."
A generous dose of whisky-and-water enabled Pippany to move his four limbs and to convince his interested helpers that he had not broken his back. Taffendale smiled grimly, and turned to Rhoda.
"He's all right, Mrs. Perris," he said. "Let him rest a bit and then send him home."
And again he smiled, looking at her inquisitively behind the smile.
Rhoda, in her turn, looked at Taffendale. She, too, was seeing him for the first time. She had often heard of him as the rich farmer and lime-burner across at the Limepits, but she had never met him. Now she viewed him with curiosity. He was a tall, loosely-built man, evidently about thirty or thirty-two years of age, dark of hair, eye, and complexion; there was a curiously reserved, self-reliant air about him which unconsciously impressed her. Just as unconsciously the sense of his masculinity was forced upon her; she was sensible of it just as she was sensible of his good clothes, his polished boots and fine cloth Newmarket gaiters, his white stock with the gold horseshoe pin carelessly thrust into its folds. And she compared him, scarcely knowing that she did so, with her husband, Abel Perris, and something in the comparison aroused a curious and subtle feeling in her.
"I'm much obliged to you, Mr. Taffendale," she said. "And so ought you to be, Pippany. You'd have been dead by now if Mr. Taffendale hadn't chanced to be riding by."
"I'm deeply obligated to Mestur Taffendale," mumbled Pippany, eyeing the whisky bottle. "I'm allus obligated to them as does good to me. But I'm worth a good many dead 'uns yet, and if Mestur Taffendale theer ever wants a friend—"
Taffendale gave Rhoda another grim smile, and moved towards the door. He had bestowed a swift circular glance on his surroundings, and he was marvelling at their poverty. The house-place in which they stood was little superior in its furnishing to any day-labourer's cottage; through an open door he caught a glimpse of a parlour that looked cold and bare. It seemed to him a poor setting for a woman as good-looking as he had found Perris's wife to be.
"Well, good-day," he said. "You go home, Webster, and get to bed."
Rhoda made a motion of her hand towards the whisky bottle.
"Won't—won't you take anything, Mr. Taffendale?" she said diffidently.
"No, no, nothing, thank you," replied Taffendale hurriedly. "I'm pressed for time. Good-day, Mrs. Perris."
He walked quickly through the fold, observing things to right and left of him without turning his eyes in either direction. And he saw the evident poverty of the place, and mentally appraised its value, and when he had got his coat and mounted his horse, and was riding away, he shook his head to the accompaniment of another of his sardonic smiles.
"That looks to be in a poorish state!" he thought. "And it's rent-day next week. I wonder how Perris stands for that? It's a pity for that wife of his—a fine woman!"
Rhoda and Tibby Graddige went back to the orchard to finish hanging out the clothes. Both were in meditative mood, brought about by the event of the afternoon.
"So that's Mr. Taffendale, is it?" said Rhoda. "For all we've been here two years I never saw him before. Well off, isn't he, Tibby?"
Tibby Graddige jerked her head.
"Well off!" she exclaimed. "I'll warrant! What with his big farm, and his lime-kilns, I should think he were well off, yon! Why, his father, old Mestur Taffendale, left him thirty thousand pound. An' isn't it fair shameful?—he's never yet shown sign o' tekkin' a wife to share it wi' him!"
Rhoda made no answer. She was wondering what so wealthy a man had thought of the palpable poverty of Cherry-trees.
About the time that Mark Taffendale and Tibby Graddige carried Pippany Webster into the house-place, Abel Perris got out of a train at the little railway station, Somerleigh, which stood four miles away along the high-road to the north of Martinsthorpe. A tallish, bony man, somewhat uncertain at his knees and rounded of shoulder, with a sharp, thin face, a weak chin, and a bit of sandy whisker cropping out in front of each over-large ear, he looked almost pathetically desolate as he stood on the platform, mechanically feeling in one pocket after another in the effort to find his ticket. His attire gave no force to his naturally colourless personality.' Having been on a visit to his relations he had worn his best clothes—garments rarely brought out of the chest which had been their place of repose for several years. The sleeves of the black coat were too short, and exposed the prominent, fleshless bones of the wearer's wrists; the legs of the grey trousers had been shortened by much creasing and bagging at the knees, and revealed the rough grey stockings which terminated in unpolished lace-up boots; the waistcoat, loose and baggy, was crossed by a steel watch-chain, bought in youth, a great bargain, at some forgotten statute-hiring fair. A much frayed collar, dirty and crumpled by its two days' wearing, and at least a size too small for the neckband of the coarse shirt on which it had with difficulty been fastened, formed a striking contrast to the gaudy necktie of blue satin, which was wound about it and had worked itself out of place until its knot lay beneath the wearer's left ear. The necktie, like the watch-chain, was the result of a visit to some fair or other; it expressed Perris almost as eloquently as the useless switch of ashplant which he carried aimlessly in his great raw hand—a switch that was of no use for anything in a pedestrian's hand but to snick off the heads of the flowers and weeds by the wayside.
Perris was the only person who left the train; a solitary porter was the only person who emerged from the station buildings to greet and speed it. The train went on slowly, and Pen-is made for the exit at the end of the platform with equal leisureliness. He found and gave up his ticket, and went out on the high-road. Opposite the station stood a wayside inn, meagre and poor of aspect, but dignified with the title of Railway Hotel; Perris, having moved a few yards in the homeward direction, paused and looked at its open door uncertainly. His feet began to shuffle towards it; eventually he crossed the road with shambling gait and bent head.
"I may as well take an odd glass," he muttered. "There's nowt 'twixt here and our house, and it's a good four mile."
The parlour into which he turned on entering the inn was close and heavy with the smell of rank tobacco and stale beer. Sawdust, strewn about three days before, and now littered and foul with the accumulations brought in from the road outside, covered the floor; the rough tables of unpolished wood were marked with the rings made by the setting down upon them of overflowing pots and mugs; the walls, originally washed in some indefinite tint of yellow or drab, and now stained and discoloured by damp and neglect, were relieved from sheer bleakness by framed advertisements of ales and spirits, and here and there by a grocer's fly-blown almanack. One side of the room was filled up by a bar, covered over with zinc sheeting, out of which projected three beer-pulls standing up like ninepins; behind it, on shelves ranged against the walls, were displayed a few bottles of spirits, an ancient cigar-box or two, and some rows of cloudy glasses. The whole place was down at heel and disconsolate: Perris, however, noticed nothing of its shabbiness: his eyes were no more offended by the squalor and the untidiness than his nose was vexed by the unpleasant atmosphere. He sat down heavily at the table nearest to the bar, and tapped on its surface with his ash switch.
A man emerged lazily from an inner apartment—a gross-habited, bloated man, about whose thickly-jowled face coarse black hair grew in sparse tufts. The silence with which he advanced to the bar was due to the fact that although the afternoon was merging towards eventide, he still retained the slippers into which he had thrust his feet on rising; it needed no particular observation to see that so far he had performed no ablutions nor made his toilet. His trousers were kept in place by a single suspender; between them and his open waistcoat, almost destitute of buttons and greasy from much spilling of fat meats, large rolls of coarse linen forced themselves and suggested that he considered an allowance of one shirt a week ample for his requirements. He wore neither collar nor necktie: his unbuttoned shirt revealed a thick bull neck, and beneath it a chest covered as with the pelt of an animal.
"Day," said Perris, nodding mechanically. "I'll take a drop of Irish, if you please."
He reached up to the counter and laid a sixpenny-piece on it, and the landlord turned to a bottle behind him and poured some of its muddy-looking contents into a glass.
"Happen you'll take a drop o' summat yourself, like?" suggested Perris generously.
"Well, I'll just take a twopennorth o' gin," replied the landlord, helping himself from another bottle. "Here's my best respects."
"Best respects," murmured Perris. He picked up the penny which the landlord pushed across the counter, and dropped it into his pocket. "Quietish about here, isn't it?" he said.
The landlord leaned across the counter and stroked his sparse beard.
"Aye, there's naught much doing," he said. "This place is over far out o' the village, and them as comes by train doesn't turn in here very oft. It's naught to me—I was only put in to manage it, like: it's a tied house. Which way might you be going?"
"Nay, I come fro' Martinsthorpe yonder," answered Perris, nodding his head towards the south. "Least-ways, fro' Cherry-trees Farm—I been farming there this last two year. I don't oft come this way—it isn't in my direction for anywhere."
"How's things out your way, like?" asked the landlord.
"Middlin', middlin'," answered Perris, tapping his switch on the floor. "There's naught much to be made at it. It's naught but scrattin' a livin' out o' t' land."
"Why, it's summat to do that," observed the landlord. "There's some as can't scrat that much. And there's some as can. I'll lay yon neighbour o' yours at Martinsthorpe Limepits scrats more nor a livin'."
"Mestur Taffendale?" said Perris, looking up. "Ah, yes, but he were one o' them 'at's born wi' silver spoons i' their mouths, accordin' to what I understand. Yes, I understand that he's part brass, has Mestur Taffendale."
The landlord held out his hand for Perris's glass and replenished it and his own.
"Aye, he has so!" he observed. "And them that has aught, always gets more to put to it. I'll lay Taffendale could buy up all t' farmers i' Martinsthorpe."
Perris sipped his whisky and laughed feebly and foolishly.
"I'll lay he could buy me up!" he said. "It's our rent-day next week, and I'm sure a body's hard put to it to raise t' rent nowadays. There'll have to be some reductions or abatements, or summat, or else us little farmers 'll be sore tried."
The landlord made no reply to these remarks. He glanced the caller up and down, and drew his own conclusions. And Perris presently drank off his whisky, and rising to his feet looked indefinitely about him.
"Well, I must be off," he said. "It's four mile to my place. I think I'll take a sup o' whisky in a bottle, like, as there's no callin' place on t' way."
"Shillingsworth?" asked the landlord.
"Aye, shillingsworth or eighteenpennorth, it makes no difference," replied Perris, fumbling in his pocket and producing a florin. "Here, there's two shilling—make it eighteenpennorth, and we'll have another glass out o' t' change. And there's another penny, and I'll have a twopenny smoke."
With a rank cigar between his teeth, and a small bottle of bad whisky in the tail of his coat, Perris set out homeward along the highway. He had pushed his last coin across the zinc-covered counter, and his purse and pockets were now empty, yet he laughed as he shambled on beneath the wayside trees and the high hedgerows, carelessly swishing at weed or flower with his ashplant. But when he had gone a mile he paused, and leaning over a gate he drew out and took a long pull at his bottle and shook his head.
"I mun tell Rhoda how things is," he muttered. "She's a sharp un, is Rhoda; she'll happen be able to make out a bit. She might be for sellin' t' cows, and very like she's gotten a bit put away out o' them cocks and hens—women contrives to save a shillin' or two here and there where us men can't. Aye, I mun hev' a word or two wi' Rhoda."
Rhoda was alone when Perris came slowly in at the side gate and shambled along the cobble-paved path which lay between the fold and the house. He had drunk all his whisky and had thrown away the bottle, but the stump of his twopenny cigar still remained between his teeth, and he smiled weakly around it as he turned the door.
"I've corned, ye see, my lass," he said, dropping into the nearest chair. "Aye, and I didn't aim at gettin' back till to-morrow, but there were naught no more to do over yonder, so I thought I might as well be steppin', like. I could do wi' a bit o' supper, Rhoda, my lass."
Rhoda, who had got rid of Pippany, and having just seen Tibby Graddige depart, was trying to reduce the untidy house-place to something like order, turned from the hearth, looking at her husband with anything but a friendly glance. She instinctively compared his careless and forlorn appearance, his weak and fatuous face, with the vastly different impression which Mark Taffendale had left upon her, and she was suddenly conscious of an intense dislike, a fierce loathing of something which was not exactly Abel Perris, but with which he was somehow inextricably mixed up. Her glance lighted on the bright blue satin necktie, and she felt an almost insane impulse to snatch it from Perris's long, thin neck and stamp on it.
"How do you expect me to have any supper ready, or likely to be ready, when I didn't know you were coming?" she exclaimed. "You should come home when you say you're coming—there isn't so much as even a bone in the larder—yon there Pippany finished up what there was for his supper."
Perris, who was making vain attempts to relight the sucked and soddened stump of his cigar, looked up to where the shrunk shank of what had been a ham dangled from the rafters. There was little flesh left on it, but from the adjacent hooks hung a respectable piece of a flitch of bacon.
"Ye could fry a bit o' that bacon, my lass," he suggested. "And happen a egg or two wi' it."
"I can't spare any eggs," said Rhoda. "I want all the eggs I have for market. And if you must have some tea, you'd better go and fill that kettle. I wish you'd stopped away till to-morrow."
Perris took the kettle out to the pump, filled it, came back and placed it on the fire, and having reseated himself again tried to induce the cigar to burn.
"I didn't see no use i' stoppin' away when I'd done mi business," he remarked suddenly. "When business is done, it is done, and so there's an end on 't."
"And I hope you did whatever it was you set off to do," said Rhoda, who, mounted on a chair, was cutting slices off the flitch of bacon and tossing them into the frying-pan which she had placed on top of the oven. "And if it's aught to do with money I hope you've brought some home, for if ever there was a place where it was wanted, this is it! There was Mr. Taffendale here this afternoon, and I'm sure I was fair ashamed that he should see such a starved looking hole!"
Perris looked up with a faint gleam in his pale grey eyes.
"What might Mestur Taffendale be wantin' on my premises?" he asked.
"Your premises? Lord, you talk as if the place was a castle or a hall!" exclaimed Rhoda. "What did he want? Why, yon fool of a Pippany Webster pulled that old clover stack over on himself, and Mr. Taffendale happened to be passing, and helped Tibby Graddige to carry him in here—he'd have been suffocated if it hadn't been for Mr. Taffendale."
Perris slowly rose, and going to the door craned his long neck in the direction of the orchard.
"Ah, I see t' clover stack's down," he said, coming back. "Did he bre'k any bones, Pippany?"
"No, he didn't break any bones, nor his neck neither," replied Rhoda. "A good job if he had—idle good-for-naught! He'd been down at the Dancing Bear all the afternoon. It's worse nor a puzzle to me that you keep such a shiftless gawpy about the place. Why don't you go and clean yourself?" she suddenly burst out, turning upon him from the fire, where she was endeavouring to accommodate both kettle and frying-pan. "You look as if you'd never been washed since you went out of that door. And for goodness' sake take that necktie off—you look like one of those country joskins that's used to naught decent."
"Mi Aunt Maria, over yonder, thought it were a very fine tie," said Perris, unconsciously fingering the adornment. "She remarked that it were, as soon as ever she set eyes on it."
"Then your Aunt Maria's a fool!" remarked Rhoda. "Go and wash yourself, do!"
Perris went into a scullery beyond the house-place; when he returned, the dirty, crumpled collar and the blue necktie had disappeared, and his face shone with brown soap, and his neutral-tinted, damp hair was smoothly plastered over his forehead. He hung up his coat on a peg that projected from the end of the tall dresser, and sat down in his shirt-sleeves. Rhoda had cleared a place for him at the deal table, and had set out a cup and saucer, a plate, and bread on the hare board. While the bacon frizzled in the pan she folded the damp clothes which lay piled about, sorting them into heaps against the morrow's ironing.
"And what did you go away for?" she asked suddenly, glaring at Perris, who sat awaiting his supper, with his hands folded under his baggy waistcoat.
"I weern't talk no business till I've had mi supper," he answered. "I've had neither bite nor sup since I left yon place, and I'm none goin' to talk business on an empty belly."
Rhoda gave him another swift glance.
"You mayn't have bitten, but you'll none make me believe you haven't supped," she retorted. "You were stinking of spirits when you came in."
"That's neither here nor there," said Perris. "I might have taken an odd glass or two on t' way—all travellers does that. But I want summat to eat, and I'll none talk till I've had it."
Rhoda gave no further attention to him. When the bacon was cooked she set it before him, made him a pot of tea, and went on with her work. In the silence that ensued she was increasingly conscious of a growing dislike to her husband's presence; it seemed to her that the mere fact of his being there was setting up in her some sort of nausea which she could not explain. And once more she thought of Mark Taffendale, of his good clothes, his fine linen, his suggestion of power and prosperity and money, and a certain uneasiness grew and stirred to increasing activity within her.
Perris ate up every scrap of the food which his wife had set before him, and finished his supper by cleaning the grease off his plate with a piece of bread, which he then swallowed with evident satisfaction. He turned his chair to the fire with a grunt of animal contentment, and proceeded to light his pipe. Rhoda whisked away the earthenware he had used into the scullery, and washed it up; having come back to the house-place she silently went on with her work amongst the clothes. For a time Perris sat and smoked, silent as she was, but at last, after some preliminary scraping of his feet and clearing of his throat, he addressed her.
"There's a matter that I think we'd best have a bit o' talk about, Rhoda, my lass," he said diffidently. "It's gotten to be talked about some time or other, and we may as well table it and have done wi' it."
"Well?" she said.
"Ye're aware, my lass, ye're aware that the rent-day's close at hand," continued Perris. "Early next week it is."
"Well?" she said again.
"Aye, well, the fact is, my lass, that I'm not ready for it," he said. "I've nowt i' hand!"
Rhoda put down the garment which she was just then folding and looked round at her husband.
"You don't mean to say that you can't pay your rent?" she demanded in sharp tones.
"I've nowt i' hand," Perris repeated stolidly. "Nowt! Times has been that there bad that I haven't been able to make no provision. It made a deal o' difference to me losing that young horse last back-end, and ye know as well as I do, my lass, that I made nowt out o' what bit o' stuff I had to sell all winter. No, I've nowt i' hand for no rent-days."
Rhoda was still standing idle, still gazing at him as if she scarcely comprehended what he was telling her.
"What did you go away for?" she asked suddenly. Perris shook his head.
"I went to see if so be as I could raise t' rent money among mi relations," he answered. "I went to see mi brother John William, and mi Uncle George. I considered that they were t' likeliest people to make application to, ye see, my lass. Howsomever, they could do nowt, for times is as bad wi' them as what they are wi' me. Mi Uncle George has had sad losses, and our John William's suffered a deal o' sickness in his family, and now his wife's been thowtless enough to go an' have twin bairns on t' top on it. No! they couldn't do nowt to help, howsoever willin' they might ha' been. An' so, of course, that's where I'm sittiwated, Rhoda."
Rhoda had neglected the contents of the clothes baskets ever since Perris began to talk. She was leaning over the table at which he had eaten his supper, her knuckles resting on the ledge, her body bent slightly forward as if she wanted to meet every word that came from him. Her eyes, hard, cold, questioning, never left his face.
"Where's the five hundred pound you said you had when we got married two year ago?" she demanded suddenly.
Perris looked up quickly, and as quickly looked away again. He shuffled his feet uneasily on the stone floor.
"Why, why, my lass!" he answered deprecatingly. "Five hundred pounds is none so much to start housekeepin' and farmin' on. There were furniture to buy and stock to buy, and there's been rent to pay, and—"
"Then it's all gone?" she said. "There's naught in the bank?"
"Aw, there's naught in t' bank," he admitted. "At least, nowt much—not beyond a pound or two. Ye see, I've made nowt o' this farm. What I've scratted out on it's just about kept us, my lass."
"Fine keeping!" she exclaimed scornfully. She turned to the clothes-basket again, and began to sort out the garments with nervous, spasmodic movements. "And what's to come if you don't pay that rent next week?" she demanded again, pausing in her work. "What's going to happen, I say?"
Perris shook his head.
"Nay!" he replied. "I don't know, my lass. T' steward's none over friendly inclined, as it is. Last time he were round this way he threw out some hints about me not having over and above much amount o' stock. Happen he'll sell us up. There's about enough on t' place to pay t' rent, anyway."
"And we should go out on the road—beggars!" said Rhoda.
Perris rubbed the end of his chin and stared about him.
"It's a poor game, bein' a little farmer," he observed. "I never had enough capital, as they call it. If I had a hundred pound now I could pull things round. But as mi Uncle George and our John William says—"
"I want to hear naught about your Uncle George nor your John William neither!" said Rhoda. "What's going to be done! You sit there, and do naught but talk."
"Happen I could persuade t' steward to wait a piece," suggested Perris. "He's given other men time to pay. I can happen talk him round."
"And happen you can't! He knows as well as you do that there's naught about the place," said Rhoda. "Where he does give time to pay, it's where a man has something to show. You've naught to show."
Perris hung his head and blinked at the fire.
"I can sell t' beasts and t' pigs," he said. "That 'ud make summat towards t' rent."
"And leave the place barer than what it is! You'll not do aught of the sort. What's wanted," Rhoda continued, "isn't taking stuff off this place, but putting stuff on."
"I could soon put some stuff on if I'd brass to do it with," said Perris. "But I've never had no luck. I expect ye haven't a bit o' money put aside out o' them cocks and hens, my lass?"
Rhoda darted a look at him which made him shrink instinctively into his chair. She vouchsafed no answer to his question, but went on mechanically folding and wrapping. Suddenly she turned on Perris and snapped out a command.
"Off you get to bed!" she said. "If all's as bad as you say it is, you'll have to stir yourself to-morrow, so you may as well get your rest. It's past nine o'clock now."
Perris obeyed this order at once. He slipped off his boots and lumbered heavily up the chamber stairs. Hours after he had gone his wife worked at her task, her face clouded and her eyes sombre with thought. It was near midnight when she turned out the lamp, wrapped herself up, fully dressed, in an old rug, and lying down on the settle, fell instantly fast asleep.
Rhoda wasted no words on her husband next morning until he had finished his breakfast, which meal he took in company with Pippany Webster, sitting at the same table, and making no distinction or difference between his man and himself. But that over, she drove Pippany out of the house-place with a look and a word, and turned on Perris, who, if she had not been between himself and the door, would have slipped away and escaped her for the rest of the morning.
"Now, then, what're you going to do?" she demanded.
Perris looked at her furtively.
"Why, there's a bit o' fencin' wants attendin' to away i' yon five-acre," he answered. "I were thinking that you could happen give as a bit o' dinner to carry along wi' us, and then we'd make a full day's job on it."
"You'll get your dinner here, and at the proper time," said Rhoda. "And you answer my question. I say—what're you going to do?"
"Do about what, then?" Perris asked sullenly.
"This rent. You're got to do something," she said. "I'm not going to be turned out like a beggar, if you are!"