Chapter 10

AN ENGLISH COTTAGE

Kingsleigh is the station for Byestry, which is eight miles from it. It is a small town, not much larger than a mere village, lying, as its name designates, on the shores of the estuary, which runs from the sea up to Kingsleigh. Chorley Old Hall stands on high wooded land, about a mile from the coast, having a view across the estuary, and out to the sea itself.

It was a grey day, with a fine mist of a rain descending, when Antony, with Josephus at his heels, stepped on to Kingsleigh platform. In the road beyond the station, a number of carts and carriages, and a couple of closed buses, were collected. The drivers of the said vehicles stood by the gate through which the passengers must pass, ready to accost those by whom they had been already ordered, or pounce upon likely fares.

"Be yue Michael Field?" demanded a short wiry man, as Antony, carrying an old portmanteau, and followed by Josephus, emerged through the gate.

For a moment Antony stared, amazed. Then he remembered.

"I am," he replied.

"That's gued," responded the man cheerfully. "'It the first nail, so to speak. T'Doctor sent I wi' t'trap. Coom along. Got any more baggage?"

Antony replied in the negative. Three minutes later he was seated in the trap, Josephus at his feet. He turned up the collar of his mackintosh, and pulled down his tweed cap over his eyes.

"Bit moist-like," said the man cheerfully, whipping up his horse.

Antony assented. He was feeling an amazing sense of amusement. The adventurous side of the affair had sprung again to the fore, after a week of business-like detail,--writing letters of instruction to Riffle to carry on with the farm till further notice, an office he was fully qualified to fulfil; making certain arrangements with Lloyd's bank regarding monies to be sent out to him; buying garments suitable for the part he himself was about to play; and having one or two further interviews with Messrs. Parsons and Glieve, in which the absolute necessity of his playing up to his role in every way was further impressed upon him.

The one difficulty that had presented itself to his mind, was his speech. He spent several half hours conversing with himself in broadest Devonshire, but finally decided that, it being the speech of the natives, he might sooner or later betray himself by some inadvertent lapse. Next he attempted a Colonial accent. James Glieve, however, being consulted on the subject, it was firmly negatived as likely to prove unpopular. In the end he fell back on a strong Irish accent. It came to him readily enough, the nurse of his childhood having hailed from the Emerald Isle. Possibly his actual phraseology would not prove all it might be, but the Devonians were not likely to be much the wiser. Anyhow Antony admired his own prowess in the tongue quite immensely.

"Sure, 'tis the foine country ye have here," quoth he presently, as, mounting a hill, they came out upon a road crossing an expanse of moorland. Gorse bushes bloomed golden against a background of grey sky and atmosphere, seen through a fine veil of rain.

"'Tis gued enuff," said the man laconically. And Antony perceived that the beauties of nature held no particular interest for him.

He looked out at the wide expanses around him. Mist covered the farther distances, but through it, afar off, he fancied he could descry the grey line of the sea. To the right the moorland gave place to a distant stone wall, beyond which was a wheat field; to the left it stretched away into the mist, through which he saw the dim shapes of trees.

The man jerked his head to the left.

"'Tis over yonder is t'old Hall. Yue'm to be under-gardener there I heerd t'Doctor say. What they'll want wi' keeping up t'gardens now I doant knoaw, and t'old Squire gone. Carried off mighty suddint 'e was. Us said as t'journey tue Lunnon ud be the death o' he. Never outside t'doors these fifteen year and more, and then one fine day Doctor takes he oop to Lunnon to see one o' they chaps un calls a speshulist. Why t'speshulist didn't come to he us can't tell. Carried on a stretcher he was from t'carriage to t'train, for all the world like a covered corpse. Next thing Doctor coom home alone, and us hears as t'old Squire be dead. I doant rightly knoaw as who 'twas was the first to tell we, for Doctor, 'e doant like talking o' the business. But there 'tis, and t'Lord only knows who'll have t'old place now, seeing as 'ow 'e never 'ad no wife to bear un a son. Us _heerd_ as 'twould be a chap from foreign parts. 'Twas Jane Ellen from Doctor's as put that around, but us thinks her got the notion in a way her shouldn't, for her's backed out o' the sayin' o't now. Says her never said nowt o' the kind. But her did. 'Twas Jim Morris's wife her told. S'pose Mr. Curtis'll run t'show till t'heir turns oop. 'Twont make much difference to we. He's run it the last ten year and more, and run it _hard_, I tell 'ee that. Doant yue go for to get the wrong side o' Spencer Curtis, I warns 'ee. George Standing afore 'e worn't much to boast on, but Spencer Curtis be a fair flint."

"Will he be the agent?" demanded Antony, as the man paused.

"'Tis what 'e's _called_. 'Tis master he _is_. T'old Squire oughtn't never to have got a chap like 'e to do 'is jobs. 'Tis cast iron 'e is. And 'twasn't never no use going to Squire for to stand between him and we. 'E'd never set eyes on nobody, 'e wouldn't. If I'd my way I'd give every gentry what owns property a taste o' livin' on it same's we. 'E'd know a bit more aboot the fair runnin' o' it then."

Antony started. An idea, quick-born, presented itself before him. Was it possible, was it conceivable, that this very thought had been in the old Squire's mind when he drew up those extraordinary conditions? Antony nearly laughed aloud. Verily it was an absurdity, though one that Nicholas Danver most assuredly could not have guessed. Yet that he--Antony--should require a further year's enlightenment as to the shifts to which the poor were put to make both ends meet, as to the iron hand of agents and over-seers! Truly it was laughable!

He'd had experience enough and to spare,--he smiled grimly to himself,--experience such as an English farm-labourer earning a pound a week, even with a wife and children to keep, and all odds against him, could never in the remotest degree aided by the wildest flights of imagination, conceive. In England water at least is always obtainable. Antony had visions of the jealous husbanding of a few drops of hot moisture in a sunbaked leather bottle. In England the law at least protects you from bodily ill-treatment at the hands of agent or overseer. Antony had visions--But he dismissed them. There was a chapter or two in his life which it was not good to recall.

They were descending now, driving between the high banks and hedges of a true Devonshire lane. Primroses starred the banks, though in less profusion than they had been a fortnight earlier; bluebells and pink campion grew among them, and the feathery blossom of the cow-parsley. Turning to the left at the foot of the lane, the hedge on the right was lower. Over it, and across an expanse of sloping fields dotted here and there with snow-white hawthorn bushes, Antony saw the roofs of houses and cottages, and, beyond them, the sea. It lay grey and tranquil under an equally grey sky. A solitary fishing smack, red-sailed, made a note of colour in the neutral atmosphere of sea and sky. To the right was a gorse-crowned cliff; to the left, and across the estuary, a headland ran far out into the water.

"Byestry," said the man, nodding in the direction of the roofs. "Us doant go down into t'place. Yue'm to have Widow Jenkins's cottage, her as died back tue Christmas. 'Tis a quarter o'mile or so from t'town, and 'twill be that mooch nearer t'old Hall. Yue see yon chimbleys by they three elms yonder? 'Tis Doctor's house. Yue'm tue go there this evenin' aboot seven o'clock 'e bid me tell 'ee. Where was yue working tue last?"

The question came abruptly. For one brief second Antony was non-plussed. Then he recovered himself.

"'Tis London I've just come from," he replied airily enough. "I've been doing a bit on my own account lately."

"Hmm," replied the man. "I reckon if I'd been workin' my own jobs, I'd not take an under post in a hurry. But yue knoaws your own business best. T'last chap as was underest gardener oop tue t'Hall got took on by folks living over Exeter way. He boarded wi' t'blacksmith and his wife. Maybe yue'm a married man?"

"I am not," said Antony smiling.

"Not got a maid at all?" queried the other.

Antony shook his head.

The man opened his eyes. "Lord love 'ee, what do un want wi' a cottage, then! Yue'd best be takin' oop wi' a wife. There's a sight of vitty maids tue Byestry, and 'tis lonesome like comin' home to an empty hearth and no supper. There's Rose Darell, her's a gued maid, and has a bit o' money; or Jenny Horswell, her's a bit o' a squint, but is a fair vitty maid tue t'cleanin'; or Vicky Mathers, her's as pretty as a picter, but her's not the money nor the house ways o' Rose or Jenny," he ended with thoughtful consideration.

Antony laughed, despite the fact that inwardly he was not a trifle dismayed. He had no mind to have the belles of Byestry thus paraded for his choice. Work, he had accepted with the conditions, but a wife was a very different matter.

"Sure, I'm not a marryin' man at all, I am not," he responded, a hypocritical sigh succeeding to the laugh.

"Crossed?" queried the man. "Ah, well, doan't 'ee go for to get down on your luck for one maid. There's as gued blackberries hangin' on t'bushes as ever was plucked from them. And yue'm tue young a chap tue be thinkin' o' yuerself as a sallybat, and so I tells 'ee."

Antony smothered a spasm of laughter.

"It's not women folk I'm wanting in my life," responded he, still with hypocritical gloom.

"Tis kittle cattle they be, and that's sartain, sure," replied the other, shaking his head. "But 'twas a rib out o' the side o' Adam the first woman was, so t'Scripture do tell we, and I reckon us men folk do feel the lack o' that rib nowadays, till us gets us a wife."

Antony was spared an answer, a fact for which he sent up devout thanks. They had made another leftward turn by now, and come upon a cottage set a little way back from the road,--a cottage with a wicket gate between two hedges, and a flagged path leading up to a small porch, thatched, as was the cottage.

"Here us be," said the man.

Antony's heart gave a sudden big throb of pleasure. The little place was so extraordinarily English, so primitive and quaint. True, the garden was a bit dilapidated looking, the apple trees in the tiny orchard to the left of the cottage quite amazingly old and lichen grown; but it spelled England for him, and that more emphatically than any other thing had done since his arrival in the Old Country.

Antony dismounted from the trap, then lifted Josephus and his bag to the ground. This done, he began to feel in his pocket for some coins. The man saw the movement.

"That bain't for yue," he replied shortly, "t' Doctor will settle wi' I."

And Antony withdrew his hand quickly, feeling he had been on the verge of a lapse.

"Here's t'key," remarked the man. "And if yue feel like a pipe one o' these evenin's, yue might coom down tue t'village. My place is over opposite t'post office. I be t'saddler. Yue'll see t'name Allbut George over t'shop."

Antony thanked Mr. Albert George, and then watched the patriotically named gentleman turn his horse, and drive off in the direction of the coast. When the trap had vanished from sight, he heaved a sigh of relief.

"Josephus," he remarked, "it will need careful practice and wary walking, but I fancy I did pretty well." And then he opened the garden gate.

He walked up the little path, and fitted the key with which Allbut George had provided him, into the lock. He turned it, and pushed open the door. It gave at once into a small but cheerful room, brick-floored, with a big fireplace at one side. An oak settle stood by the fireplace; a low seat, covered with a somewhat faded dimity, was before the window; there was a basket-chair, two wooden chairs, a round table, a dresser with some highly coloured earthenware crockery on it, a corner cupboard, and a grandfather's clock. There was a door behind the settle to the right of the fireplace, and, in the opposite corner, stairs leading to a room or rooms above.

Antony put his bag down on the table and went to investigate the door. It led into a tiny scullery or kitchen, provided solely with a small range, a deal table, a chair, a sink, and a pump. In one corner was a box containing some pieces of wood. In another corner was a galvanized bucket, a broom, and a scrubbing-brush. He glanced around, then came back into the sitting-room, and made his way to the stairs.

They led direct into a bedroom, a place furnished with a camp bed covered with a red and brown striped blanket; a small, somewhat rickety oak chest of drawers, a rush-bottomed chair, a small table, a corner washstand, and a curtain, which hid pegs driven into the wall. A door led into a small inner room over the kitchen scullery. Antony opened the door. The room was empty. Widow Jenkins had had no use for it, it would appear. Or, so Antony suddenly thought, perhaps all Widow Jenkins's furniture had been removed, and what at present occupied the place had been put there solely on his account.

He crossed to the window, and pushed it back. It looked on to a tiny vegetable garden, in much the same state of neglect as the front garden, and was separated from a field yellow with buttercups by a low hawthorn hedge. Beyond the field was a tiny brook; and, beyond that again, a copse. There was not a sound to break the silence, save the dripping of the rain from the roof of the cottage, and, in the distance, the low sighing note of the sea. The silence was emphasized by the fact that for the last week Antony had had the hum of traffic in his ears, and had but this moment come from the noise of trains and the rattle of a shaky dog-cart.

He still leaned there looking out. It was even more silent than the veldt. There were no little strange animal noises to break the silence. Nothing but that drip, drip of the rain, and that soft distant sighing of the sea.

A curious sense of loneliness fell upon him, a loneliness altogether at variance with the loneliness of the veldt. He could not have defined wherein the difference lay, yet he was well aware that there was a difference. It was one of those subtle differences, exceedingly apparent to the inner consciousness, yet entirely impossible to translate into terms of speech. The nearest approach he could get to anything like a definition of it, was that it was less big, but more definitely poignant. Beyond that he did not, or could not, go. For some five minutes or so he leant at the little casement window, gazing at the gold of the buttercups seen through a blurred mist of rain. Then he pulled the window to, and came down into the parlour.

The hands of the grandfather's clock pointed to ten minutes to five. Antony, remembering the box of wood in the scullery, bethought himself of a cup of tea. His bag contained all the requirements. Long practice had taught him to provide himself with necessities, and also, on occasions, to substitute lemon for milk, as a complement to tea.

He was just about to go and fetch a handful of sticks, preparatory to lighting a fire, when he heard the click of his garden gate. Turning, and looking through the window, he saw a big man coming up the path.