Part 9

“She have,” agreed his wife with a sigh. “I d’ ’low ’tis a hard struggle for she. There, she were a-tellin’ me she be often put to it to find a bit to put in little Abel’s mouth—them was her very words. ‘An’ I do often go hungry myself,’ says she, ‘an’ it bain’t so very good for me or baby.’”

Farmer Bolt removed his pipe and glowered fiercely at his wife, as though she were responsible for this pitiable state of affairs.

“An’ what could she expect,” he demanded, “when she took up wi’ that dalled chap? She threw herself away on en—wouldn’t hear a word again’ him, an’ he can’t so much as keep her. What’s the chap good for if he can’t earn enough to keep his wife an’ childer.”

“He’s a good worker, ye know,” said Mrs Bolt tentatively; “ye did never have no fault to find wi’ en when he were wi’ us.”

“I find fault wi’ en now, though,” shouted her lord. “Why don’t he do summat? Why don’t he turn his hand to summat? He’s all my daughter have got to look to now. I says to her when she took en, ‘Alice,’ I says, ‘ye must choose between Ned Blanchard an’ me.’ An’ she chose Ned Blanchard. Well, let him do summat, then.”

“He be just a-thinkin’ o’ doin’ summat, my dear,” returned Mrs Bolt mildly. “Alice were tellin’ I to-day he were goin’ to emmygrate.”

“What!” exclaimed the farmer aghast. “He be goin’ out abroad—he be goin’ to tole our Alice an’ them two little bits o’ childern out across the sea? Well, mother, how ye can sit lookin’ at me—”

“Nay now, my dear, it bain’t so bad as that,” said Mrs Bolt, in the same meek and ingratiating tone. “He be a-goin’ to look for work, that’s what he be a-goin’ to do; an’ so soon as he’ve a-found it an’ have a-got a comfortable home ready, then he’ll send for our Alice an’ the childern to j’ine en. That’s the notion.”

“Oh,” said her husband, staring at her hard. “That’s the notion, be it?”

He sucked at his pipe for a moment or two, still fixing his unwinking gaze upon her; finally, he enquired in a stern and disapproving tone what she supposed would become of their daughter and her children in the meantime.

“Well, that’s just it,” said Mrs Bolt gently. “’Tis that what brought our Alice here to-day.”

The farmer grunted without speaking.

“The journey to Ameriky ’ull take every single shillin’ Ned Blanchard can scrape together,” she continued.

“He be a-goin’ to send Alice an’ the childern to the workhouse I d’ ’low,” remarked Mr Bolt, hitching his chair a little nearer to the hearth and holding up one foot to the blaze. “He be a-goin’ to scuttle off wi’ hisself to Ameriky an’ leave his wife an’ family on the rates.”

“Nay now, nay now,” protested Mrs Bolt in a soothing tone. “You’d never be the one to allow that, Bolt, you know you wouldn’t.”

“Me!” said Bolt, turning round with an expression of great surprise. “What have I got to do wi’ it?”

“Why, ye know very well, my dear, you’d be the last to let sich shame overtake your own flesh an’ blood. If Ned was once away, you wouldn’t ha’ no objections to your own daughter a-comin’ back here for a while, an’ your own grandchildern, would ye? They’d bring a bit o’ life about this place, an’ it ’ud be nice to have our Alice goin’ about the house again.”

There was a silence; Mr Bolt stirred up the contents of his pipe with the end of a match and lit it again.

“Little Abel be wonderful like his mother in his ways,” went on Mrs Bolt; “the very moral o’ what she used to be at his age. There’s her little chair in the corner, look-see. He found it out to-day an’ fetched it over aside o’ your chair, an’ sat hisself down in it—there, I declare for a minute I thought our Alice was a child again.”

Mr Bolt squinted round at the chair, but did not commit himself by speech. He was not an imaginative man, nevertheless the vision rose before him of the curly-headed child who used to sit in that chair, and whom he had loved as the apple of his eye. His wife put his thoughts into words.

“Ye mind our Alice, how pleased she used to be when ye called her over of an evening? Dear to be sure, what a bonny little maid she was, and what a pride we used to take in her. And now to think that poor creetur’ what come here to-day is her. There, I could ha’ cried to see her in that wold patched dress—’ees, an’ I did cry when she did tell I how she do often go hungry.”

“Well, I’m dalled if she shall go hungry while she bides wi’ us,” cried the farmer, sitting suddenly upright in his chair. “Let Master Ned emmygrate so soon as he pleases, an’ let the poor maid come to us—an’ the brats too. She’ll know what ’tis for a while, to eat wi’out stintin’. Let her come an’ bide so long as she likes—the longer the better, say I—the longer she’s shut o’ that n’er-do-weel o’ a husband the better pleased I’ll be.”

The following week Alice and her children took up their abode at her old home. Alice was pale and nervous at first, but soon regained her self-possession. The farmer was almost boisterous in his welcome.

After tea Mrs Bolt, with a wink at her daughter, installed the little boy in the chair before referred to, at his grandfather’s side, an arrangement in which the latter acquiesced silently, yet with evident pleasure. Abel watched him with round inquisitive eyes while he filled and lit his pipe, and leaning back in his chair, crossed his legs luxuriously. Presently, possessing himself of a bit of stick which lay beside the hearth, the child wedged it in a corner of his own small mouth, and trotting back to his chair, settled himself in it, in as close an imitation of his grandfather’s attitude as the differences of age and size, and a slight difficulty in distinguishing his right leg from his left, would admit of. Abel the elder stared for a moment, and then, realising the state of affairs, nudged his wife with a delighted chuckle.

“Look at that,” he exclaimed. “He be a sharp little chap if ever there was one. Ye shall have a better pipe nor that to smoke, sonny.”

The farmer was as good as his word, and on the next day purchased a supply of sugar-sticks, one of which he gravely handed to his grandson every evening before lighting his own pipe.

Whether it was because the little fellow was won over by this practical proof of consideration and regard, or whether the affinity which the women-folk were so fond of talking about, really existed, it is certain that before the Blanchard family were a week in the house, the two Abels were practically inseparable. Whether toddling along a furrow in his grandfather’s wake, or riding one of the farm horses, or perched on top of a pile of mangolds, the child was his grandfather’s constant companion.

Alice almost insensibly fell back into the ways of her girlhood, and, as the days passed, her youth itself seemed to return to her. She grew plump and rosy, sang as she went about her work, played with her little ones as though she were a child herself. Had it not been for the presence of the children, indeed, Mrs Bolt often declared she could have fancied old times were back again, and their maid had never left them. The good food, the freedom from petty anxieties, had no doubt much to do with this happy change, but it was chiefly brought about by the new hope in her heart which grew and brightened day by day.

One morning, however, Mr Bolt, coming back unexpectedly from the field where he had been ploughing, and happening to take a short-cut through the orchard, came upon Alice who was hanging out clothes to dry. Now it was Mrs Bolt’s custom to let the world know that she had been washing, by setting the linen to dry in front of the house; the larger articles being draped on clothes-lines that ran from the corner of the milk-house wall to the post by the wood-shed, while the smaller were neatly spread upon the hedge. But here was Alice setting up a private clothes-line of her own, and hanging garments on it—not her own, or her children’s garments, as her father first supposed, but socks and shirts, even a pair of nankeen trousers.

“What mid ye be doin’ here?” he enquired, at the top of his voice, and so suddenly that poor Alice dropped her basket.

“Dear, to be sure, father, how you frightened me!” she exclaimed, stammering.

“Who gave ye leave to make a dryin’-ground o’ my archard?” resumed the farmer, striding up to her. “These here apple-trees wasn’t made to hang clothes on. Whose clothes be these?”

All the pretty bloom fled from Alice’s face; for a moment she stood gaping, unable to find an answer; then all at once she laughed—or tried to laugh.

“Why, what a to-do,” she cried. “Whose clothes be they? Well, they be man’s clothes, as ye can see—an’ you be the only man about this here place, bain’t ye?”

An ominous pause ensued, during which Farmer Bolt, turning to the clothes-line, closely examined the garments thereon.

“I’d be sorry to wear that shirt,” he remarked; “and when did ye ever see me in trousers like them? They’m your ’usband’s—that’s what they be; an’ what be tellin’ lies about ’em for?”

Alice, who had always been known as a “spiritty maid,” fired up at this.

“I think it ’ud be a queer thing if I was to name my husband to ye,” she responded. “Ye can never find a good word to say for him. ’Tis natural enough for me to be unwillin’ to let his name pass my lips.”

“What be doin’ washin’ his clothes? I thought he’d emmygrated?” pursued the father suspiciously.

“They are his clothes, then,” said Alice, with flashing eyes. “There, they are his clothes; I’ll not deny it. I’ve a-washed ’em in the water what the Lard gave us all free, an’ I be a-dryin’ of ’em in the air what belongs so much to him as to you, father. An’ this here bit o’ rope’s what was tied round my own box, so I d’ ’low he bain’t beholden to ye.”

Mr Bolt, slightly abashed, moved a few steps away, and then paused again.

“Be ye a-goin’ to send his washin’ out to Ameriky to en every week?” he enquired.

His daughter made no answer, and Mr Bolt was obliged to go indoors to seek for further information.

“When did Ned Blanchard emmygrate,” he enquired abruptly entering the kitchen.

Mrs Bolt was stooping over the fire, and it was perhaps on this account that her face became so red.

“Thursday was a fortnight, warn’t it?” she enquired. “Yes, Thursday was a fartnight he shifted.”

“Ah,” said Farmer Bolt. “Them ships which goes back’ards and for’ards to Ameriky must travel martal fast. Our Alice be a-hangin’ up his clothes to dry in the archard now.”

“There, don’t talk sich nonsence, Bolt!” cried his wife sharply. “She be but a-washin’ a few o’ the things what he left behind, o’ course.”

“That’s it, be it?” said Mr Bolt with a keen glance.

“That’s it,” rejoined Mrs Bolt, making a great rattle with the poker between the bars of the grate. Mr Bolt eyed her for a moment or two in silence, and then went slowly out again, jamming his hat firmly on his head. Several times that day his wife and daughter encountered his fixed gaze, but he asked no further questions.

On the following day, chancing to look backwards at his snug house in the hollow, from the uplands where he was at work, he observed a white streamer dangling from his own gate.

“They’ve tied a towel to the gate,” he murmured to himself. “What can they be wantin’ carrier to call for?”

For by this simple expedient the carrier, journeying on the high road above, became aware of the fact that the dwellers in the lane needed his services. Farmer Bolt went on wondering all the way up that furrow and all the way down again, and presently caught sight of the carrier’s van turning down the lane. He continued to speculate while the green-hooded vehicle turned into his own yard, emerged again, and finally came crawling up the stony incline to the high road. Then Farmer Bolt, unable any longer to restrain his curiosity, brought his horses to a standstill, and leaving them to their own devices, hastened across the field to the corner which the van must pass.

“That parcel what my wife gived ye just now, Jan,” he panted, as he approached; “let’s have a look at it. I want to make sure it’s addressed right. My wold ’ooman bain’t no great hand with the pen.”

“’Twas your daughter wrote the address,” returned the carrier. “I d’ ’low it’ll be right enough.”

He produced the parcel, nevertheless, and the farmer hastily examined it. The address was certainly set forth in a clear, legible hand:—

Mr EDWARD BLANCHARD, c/o The Black Inn, Sturminster.

To be left till called for.

He spelt it out slowly, thrusting out his underlip the while, with a puzzled look.

“To be left till called for,” he repeated. “It do seem a queer thing that. How be the man a-goin’ to call for it when he’ve emmygrated to Ameriky.”

“Oh, and ’ave ’ee?” enquired the carrier, much interested.

“Ees, a fartnight ago.”

“Well, ’tis funny too; but I d’ ’low I must obey arders. Hand over that parcel, farmer. I did ought to be gettin’ on; we’m a bit late as it is.”

Mr Bolt handed him the parcel, and the carrier whipped up his horse; but the van had hardly rattled on a few yards before its driver was again hailed.

“Hi! bide a bit!”

“Well?” said the carrier, turning.

Mr Bolt came alongside, red and breathless.

“Ye mid just ask the folks at the Black who they expects to call for that there parcel,” he said. “I be a bit puzzled in my mind about it.”

“I will,” agreed the other; “but let me go now, good man, else I’ll never get to Sturminster to ask about no parcels at all.”

Mr Bolt was in a stern and silent mood during the whole of that day, and after tea, instead of settling down to his pipe with little Abel in his chair beside him, strolled out Branston way to meet the carrier. He had not long to wait before he heard the familiar creaking and rattling of the rickety van, and presently the solitary light of its swinging lantern came bobbing along between the hedges. The farmer repeated the procedure of the morning:—

“Hi, bide a bit!”

“Hullo, be it you, Mr Bolt? Ah, I axed that there question.”

“Did ye?” said the farmer, planting himself in front of the horse on the wet roadway.

“Ees. I d’ ’low there’s some mistake about Ed’ard Blanchard emmygrating. He be to call for that parcel hisself.”

“Be he?” enquired Mr Bolt with starting eyes.

“He be. There was never no talk of his emmygrating, the folks at the Black d’ say. He be a-workin’ under the same measter, an’ a-drivin’ o’ the same cart. He have shifted from the house he had to a lodging i’ the town, but that’s all the emmygration he did do.”

“I see,” said the farmer, “Thank ’ee.”

“’Twas a funny thing as ye didn’t know, warn’t it?” remarked the carrier as he gathered up the reins. “Blanchard’s your daughter’s husband, bain’t he?”

“Ees, that’s right,” agreed Bolt. “I d’ ’low it be a funny thing.” He turned away, and the van jingled past him and soon disappeared into the darkness. Mr Bolt went slowly homewards, revolving this astonishing discovery in his mind. He’d been tricked—that was what had happened. They were all in it, Ned and Alice, and even his wife. They thought they could fool him just as if he were a child. He knew what they were at. They thought that once Alice and her children were established at the farm he could never find it in his heart to turn them out again; but he would soon show them whether he could or not. No doubt Master Ned intended to come marching in by and by, expecting to be received with open arms. They thought him, Farmer Bolt, a regular sammy, did they? He’d let them know what sort of a sammy he was! Perhaps he could make fools of them just as easily as they had made a fool of him. He stood stock-still in the road all at once—an idea had flashed across him, a scheme of vengeance quite as subtle as the offence, and moreover appropriate. They—those deceivers—should find themselves caught in their own trap!

He strode on now and presently burst impetuously into the family living-room. Alice and his wife were sitting on either side of the fire; little Abel had fallen fast asleep in his tiny chair, his curly head drooping at a most uncomfortable angle over the arm. The farmer stopped abruptly at sight of him.

“What’s that child doing here at this time o’ the evening?” he enquired, roughly.

“He did beg so hard to sit up till granfer come back,” explained Mrs Bolt, “we had to let en bide. There, nothin’ ’ud satisfy him. I give him his sugar-stick, but that wouldn’t do. He said he must stop up an’ smoke his pipe wi’ granfer. He’s been a-savin’ it till ye come—there’s but just the leastest little corner bit off, look-see.”

But granfer did not look. He sat heavily down in his chair and glared at Alice, who was knitting a woollen comforter.

“What be doin’?” he enquired, savagely.

She glanced up with a smile. “You mustn’t look,” she said. “It’s a Christmas present.”

“Ye be a-goin’ to send it out to Ned in Ameriky, I suppose,” he suggested sarcastically.

“It’s not for Ned,” returned Alice quickly, and Mrs Bolt added in a reproachful tone:—

“The poor maid be a-makin’ it for you, father.”

There was a pause, during which the farmer recalled his injury and resolved not to be mollified.

“Christmas,” he said slowly. “Christmas. I d’ ’low Ned ’ull feel hisself a bit lonely spendin’ Christmas in Ameriky. Ye’d best write an’ tell en to come back an’ spend it wi’ us.”

This was the scheme which the farmer had elaborated during his ireful descent of the lane. He would tell Alice to send for her husband, and she, carrying out her former plan of action, would pretend to write to America and invite him to return, but as soon as Ned appeared he would find he had met his match. Farmer Bolt would desire him and his family to emmygrate out o’ that house, and never set foot in it again.

“That’ll surprise ’em all a bit, I d’ ’low,” said Mr Bolt vengefully to himself.

He did not look at Alice as he spoke, half fearful of prematurely betraying his anger; but after a moment, finding she did not reply, he wheeled in his chair with an enquiring glance.

Alice had dropped her work on her lap and was leaning forward, gazing at him with eyes that were full of tears.

“Well?” he asked impatiently. Before he realised what she was about she had risen from her chair and thrown her arms round his neck.

“Oh, father,” she cried. “Oh, father, I can’t bear it! You’re so good—so good to me, an’ I’ve been that wicked and deceitful!”

As she uttered the last word, the farmer, who at first had struggled to free himself, became suddenly passive in her embrace.

“I have, I have,” she went on, sobbing. “There, mother, I be a-goin’ to tell en everything. I couldn’t go on actin’ lies when he be so kind. Oh, father, I’ve deceived ye shameful. Ned isn’t in Ameriky at all—he never emmygrated. ’Twas jist a made-up story.”

Shaking with sobs she clung closer to her father, who still sat immovable and looking straight before him.

“I don’t wonder ye can scarce believe it,” she wept. “I could never ha’ believed it o’ myself, but we was so wretched, Ned an’ me, an’ so terr’ble bad off, an’ I thought if ye once had me back i’ my wold place ye’d maybe get fond o’ me again—ye used to be so fond o’ me, father. I thought ye’d maybe take to the childern—an’ that by-and-by ye’d maybe forgive Ned, an’ gie en the carter’s place.”

“Oh,” said Mr Bolt, “that was it, was it?”

“Ye know ’twould be only nat’ral, my dear,” put in Mrs Bolt meekly. “Ye wouldn’t be out o’ pocket by it, an’ ye’d be pervidin’ for your own flesh an’ blood.”

Mr Bolt’s countenance changed; his wife’s suggestion was eminently practical, and he could not help being struck by it. Nevertheless the share she had taken in the recent plot was still too fresh in his memory to admit of his parleying with her.

“There, wold ’ooman,” he cried, screwing himself round in his chair, “ye needn’t be a-puttin’ your oar in. Ye’d better keep quiet. I wonder ye dare look me in the face,” he added sternly.

“’Twasn’t mother’s fault—’twas me thought of it,” cried Alice quickly. “’Twas me planfned it—”

“An’ ’twas very well planned too,” commented her father. “I only wonder ye should ha’ thought I’d ever change my mind. Ye do know I be a man o’ my word, don’t ye?”

“I do, I do,” sobbed she, “but still—oh dear, father, haven’t we been happy together these last few weeks, and haven’t ye got fond o’ little Abel, an’ wouldn’t it be nice for us all to be friends? Ye did use to say Ned was a terr’ble good worker,” she added wistfully.

Mr Bolt looked at first severe and then dubious; this was evidently an aspect of the case which had not before presented itself. The rigidity of his form relaxed in some degree, and for the first time since Alice’s confession he cast on her a glance which, though reproachful, was not unfriendly.

“’Tis true, that,” he said in a meditative tone, “’ees, ’tis true. Ye be a truth-tellin’ maid as a rule, my dear. I wonder how you came to make up such a lyin’ tale about the emmygration.”

As Alice hid her face he continued more kindly.

“There, we’ll say no more about that since ye owned up at the last. I mid own up about summat too, as maybe ye wouldn’t like.”

Alice raised her head quickly, and Mrs Bolt dropped the poker, and turned round. Little Abel, disturbed by the clatter, moved uneasily in his sleep. The farmer looked from the women’s scared faces to that of the child, and all at once smoothed the waving hair from his daughter’s forehead and kissed her.

“I don’t know as I will, though,” he said. “Nay, some things is best forgot. I d’ ’low I’ll forget this.”

“An’ ye’ll forgive as well as forget?” said Alice. Mr Bolt disengaged himself gently, rose, and took a hurried turn about the room.

“I bain’t one what likes to go again’ my word,” he said after a moment’s hard thinking. “I said I’d never let your husband cross my door—” Both the anxious women exclaimed simultaneously; the farmer threw out his hand to command silence.

“Bide a bit,” he said, “it’ll work out all right. When I said that about your husband, Alice, I didn’t know he were going to be my carter. That’s a different story, bain’t it? I shouldn’t wonder but what my carter mid have to come in and out of the house for arders.”

As Alice went quickly towards him, her eyes shining and her bosom heaving, he burst into a roar of laughter; and then, becoming suddenly serious, caught her in his arms.

“There, write to your husband, love,” he said. “Write to en so soon as ye like. Tell him”—he paused, and then began to laugh again, but unsteadily, “tell him he can emmygrate back again, an’ while he be waitin’ for Jim to give up the carter’s place, we’ll make shift to spend a merry Christmas together.”

FARMER BARNES’ DILEMMA

FARMER BARNES stirred his tea vigorously and continuously for some minutes, raised the cup to his lips, with the spoon still in it, paused, tasted again, glancing severely over the edge at his daughter Maimie, and then remarked, in somewhat stern tones:—

“You haven’t put no brandy in!”

“Nay, feyther; I clean forgot to tell ye as there was scarce a drop left in bottle yesterday. I put the little drain that was left in tea-pot, but I’m afeared there weren’t enough to make mich difference.”

“The tay bain’t drawed at all, lass—it makes all that difference. Ye should ha’ towd me when I was goin’ to town yesterday as bottle were nigh empty.”

“Ah, that I should; but I forgot.”

And Maimie wrinkled up her forehead until her eyebrows nearly touched her fair fluffy fringe. Her father set down his cup with a kind of groan, and looked at her with eyes that seemed puzzled, well nigh tearful, in spite of their severity.

“Yigh, you’re a good hand at forgettin’, Maimie—ye met tak’ a prize for’t. There weren’t a bit o’ sauce wi’ the cowd pork to-day, and the taters was as hard as hard.”