Part 6

Had the woman replied, “From the butcher,” that would have been fairly incriminating, because, of course, we don’t require more than one sheep a week for home consumption in the village, and, as everybody knows, each sheep has only two legs, and it wouldn’t require a Sherlock Holmes to track those two legs any week in the year. As it happened, this week’s other leg had gone to my house. Had Mrs. Price claimed it as her own, she would have been undone.

But she was too shrewd for that; she promptly replied, with a look of surprised innocence at such a strange question being asked by Miss Bretherton at such a time—

“That leg of mutton, do you mean, miss?” (as though there was a meat market to choose from!) “Yes; ain’t it a fine one; it weighs seven pound, if it weighs an ounce.” (Miss B. knew that; she had studied the butcher’s ticket only that morning.) “I couldn’t get it into the oven, so we had to roast it afore the fire. I expect you find the kitchen a bit ’ot. But as I was saying” (Miss B. had to press her lips together very hard), “it ain’t often as I get a windfall like this, but my brother-in-law come up to see us yesterday from Penglyn, and he brought it me for a birthday present; that’s why I had to send ’Sm’ralder round to the rectory in the afternoon to fetch my pudding basin as she’d left behind—the one she brought round that day with some new-laid eggs in, what I give her for a present for cook’s mother who were bad.”

Miss Bretherton pressed her lips still tighter, and walked out. She knew the brother-in-law wouldn’t speak to “that Jane” if he met her in the same lane—such was the love between the two families—much less bring her a leg of mutton; besides, he had none too many joints for his own family. She also knew that cook’s mother had not been ill, and if she had, it wouldn’t have been Mrs. Price who would have supplied the new-laid eggs.

But she also knew the futility of attempting to circumvent a woman of this type, and she hated to have her stand there and tell still more untruths, the children hovering round.

So she returned silently, and served the ham and eggs, and listened while the Archdeacon explained the difference between Plain Cree and Swampy Cree (which, he was surprised to find, she had hitherto confused in her mind, or at best regarded as one and the same language) with all the Christian grace and forbearance she could muster.

Only once did this nearly give out, and that was when, after she had apologised to their guest for such frugal fare and had briefly outlined the reason for the same, the Rector looked with his usual absent-minded benignity through his glasses at his plate, and said—

“Well, my dear, I hadn’t noticed any difference: I thought this was what we usually have for dinner on Sundays.”

Just think of it! And for the Archdeacon to go home and tell his wife! So like a man!

* * * * *

This much as a general survey of Mrs. Price’s characteristics. She doesn’t make an idyllic picture, I admit, nor seem likely to be in the running for a stained glass window in the Parish Room. But then villages no less than towns are made up of varied assortments of human nature—and don’t forget we are none of us perfect.

Nevertheless, making all allowances for human frailty, you don’t wonder that I wasn’t anxious for Mrs. Price to have the free run of my kitchen, and Abigail, remembering that she had left her purse on the dresser, hurried back.

I finished the letter I was writing, and then went out to see her. As I approached, I could hear her:

“‘Sally,’ he says, ‘don’t let the kids fergit me,’ and then ’e was gone. It’s this new disease they’ve got from America—the ‘germs,’ they calls it—and they do say as ’e makes a beautiful corpse, though I shouldn’t never have thought it of ’e, the Prices being none of them pertickerlelly well favoured, even if he was me own pore husband’s brother. But thur, thur, I say speak nothing but good of them what’s gone.”

She rose when I appeared, and, with a good deal of side-tracking on to irrelevant matters, chiefly connected with the excellence of her own children, she explained that her late husband’s brother had just died “over to Penglyn,” a little town fifteen miles away across the hills, and in a most un-get-at-able corner of the county.

The funeral was to-morrow, and neither she nor the family of the deceased had a scrap of black, “leastways, exceptin’ this bonnet, which don’t look really respeckful to ’im as is gone, being me own husband’s own brother.” I admit the item that had been placed upon her head—whether for use or adornment it was hard to decide—resembled a jaded hen’s nest more than anything else! The rest of her attire consisted of a green skirt, a crimson blouse, and a very light fawn coat (portions of costumes that had started life in considerably higher social circles in the village), and a purple crochet scarf.

Dimly it occurred to me that I had not seen Mrs. Price in bright colours before, for although she never wore the conventional widow’s weeds, she was usually in something black or dark; the matrons in our village haven’t gone in for skittish skirts or glaring colour-combinations as yet! I concluded, however, that her black clothes were too shabby. She was saying—

“And I didn’t know where to turn, m’m. Everybody saying they hadn’t none when I called, and there didn’t seem to be a soul left to go to, and that pore dear sister-in-law of mine—leastways same as, being me poor husband’s brother’s wife—with not a scrap to put on ’cept his best overcoat what she’s cuttin’ down for one of the boys.

“And then I bethought me of you, it come to me all of a suddint. I put down the pan of ’taters I was peeling and come straight up. ’Sm’ralder says to me, ‘But, mother, you can’t wear that ole bonnet up to _that_ house!’ But I says to her, ‘It’s certain I can’t wear what I haven’t got, and the Queen haven’t sent me one of her done-with crowns yet.’ So I just come as best I could.”

I was a little surprised to hear that she had been refused at every door, for, irrespective of personal reputation, the better-off residents are always very good to any of the villagers who may be in want or in trouble; indeed, we have only one mean woman among us, she who once remarked to a paid lady-companion, newly-arrived from a freezingly cold journey, and badly in need of a cup of tea to eke out her skimpy cold-mutton-bone lunch: “I’m sure you will enjoy a glass of water. We have really _beautiful_ water here. Pray help yourself when_ever_ you like.”

* * * * *

Still, it was possible no one had had any black.

I meditated a moment on my own wardrobe and Mrs. Price’s capacious waist-measure! Virginia’s things would be still less use, as she is the size of a sylph.

“I’m afraid I haven’t anything that would fit you in the way of a skirt,” I began, “but I’ve a large winter jacket if you don’t think it will be too warm for June.”

“Oh, thank you, m’m. It’s only the first week in June. I’m a _very_ chilly person” (no one looking at her buxom proportions would have thought so!), “and a thick jacket is just what I’m needin’ terrible bad. And if you had a skirt, it ’ud be jest the size for my pore dear sister-in-law. Ah, I can feel for her, being a widow myself, and left with them children. She said to me on’y yesterday, ‘Jane, do try to get me a black skirt from anywhere, if on’y you can.’ She says——”

“But you told me just now that you hadn’t seen her since before her husband died,” blurted in Abigail, forgetful of her usual good manners, and begrudging to see the family wardrobe being disbursed in this way, as she rather regarded my coats and skirts as her perquisites.

Mrs. Price turned full upon Abigail that look of surprised innocence that stood her in such good stead. “She said it in a letter she writ me yesterday,” she replied with dignified composure.

Finally I told her I would look her out something if she sent Esmeralda up for it in the evening. Mrs. Price lingered to recite further tales of woe to Abigail, till she, kind girl, in spite of her private estimate of the lady, bestowed on her a pair of black lisle thread gloves, as she spoke so pathetically about having to go to the funeral with bare hands and not being able to afford any gloves.

* * * * *

When Virginia came in from “sticking” sweet peas in the garden, I told her about Mrs. Price.

“Well, I don’t consider her a worthy object for charity as a rule,” she remarked. “But at the same time, if Fate kindly supplies me with an opportunity to get rid of that big black hat of mine that I’ve never liked and never intend to wear again, I’m not the one to disregard it, especially as it will save my carrying that huge hat-box back to town. But whether she or the ‘sister-in-law-same-as’ wears it, either will find it good weight for the money.”

So we left the winter jacket, and the hat, and a black blouse Ursula added to the parcel, and my black cloth skirt for the sister-in-law, against Esmeralda should come for them. And then we started out to make some calls.

* * * * *

Passing Miss Primkins’ house, we just stopped to leave a book I had promised to lend her. Miss Primkins is a pleasant middle-aged lady, of very small independent means, who lives in a cottage by herself. The door stood open as usual. She looked over the stairs when I knocked, then explained that she would be down in a moment if we would go in.

“I’ve been turning out things in the box-room—in order to find a little black for that Mrs. Price. Her husband’s brother has just died, and the funeral is to be to-morrow, and she says no one in the place has any black in hand. So she came and asked me if I would mind _lending_ her a black mantle!—_lending_ it to her indeed!

“I asked her what she had done with that black dolman I gave her not three months ago—you remember that dolman trimmed with black lace that I was rather fond of? I bought it—oh, it must be at least ten years ago—for my uncle’s funeral. It was trimmed with two bands of crêpe, one about four inches deep, and the other three inches, or perhaps two-and-three-quarters; very stylish it looked, too. Then I had the crêpe taken off and some black silk put on it—very good ottoman silk it was—that had originally been part of a black silk dress belonging to my sister. Next I had it covered with fancy net with velvet appliqué for a change—not that I liked it, or would have thought of having it done had I known what it was going to cost. But they do take you in so at those town shops; why, I could have got a new dolman for what it cost to cover that one! And then it lasted no time, used to catch in everything, so I had next to no wear out of that.

“I had it taken off, and the dolman _thoroughly_ turned—every bit; and the dressmaker put on some fringe, a sort of wavy fringe; but I had to have it taken off, because that Gladys Price, when she came home for a holiday, had on a silk coat trimmed with fringe exactly like it, so there again I got taken in, as you might say.

“After that, I put my brown fur trimming on it, but for the winter only; and then for the summer I put on some deep black lace. I hadn’t had that lace on more than six months when I gave her the dolman. (I remember quite well sitting up late that night to pick the lace all off it.) Altogether, you can’t say I had so much wear out of any of it, and it was a constant expense. And yet, would you _credit_ it, when I asked her what she had done with it, she said it had ‘wored out’! Why, _I_ could have had it another ten years in good use, without its being ‘wored out.’ She’s a thriftless woman, that’s what she is. Still, I suppose it isn’t for us to judge her.”

* * * * *

We had to hurry on. I wanted to call on Miss Bretherton, who had sprained her ankle and needed commiseration. We found her in that state of suppressed and bottled-up-in-a-Christian-manner irritation that is common to very active women who are suddenly tied to a chair with some of their machinery out of gear; and, like most other women under similar conditions, she was trying to do ten times as much as she ought to have done, in order to prove to everybody that there was nothing the matter with her.

“You’ll just have to come into the midst of all this muddle,” she sighed, “for I can’t move myself into another room.”

“Sorting things for a jumble sale?” I inquired, looking at sundry piles of garments strewn about her.

“It almost amounts to that; though I really started out to get a few things together for a woman in the village who seems to be rather needy at the moment, that Jane Price. Her brother-in-law has just died—you remember Zebadiah Price, who lived at Briar Bush Cottage before they took a little place at Penglyn? We lost sight of them after they left here—it’s such a cross-country place they’ve gone to. I’m rather surprised they haven’t asked the Rector to bury him, he thought a good deal of Zebadiah; but all the same I’m glad they haven’t, for it takes you the best part of a day to cover that fifteen miles, and he has a slight cold. It seems she’s going to the funeral to-morrow.

“I admit there are several women in the parish I should feel a greater pleasure in helping—she does try my patience at times—but I felt I ought to do what I can in this particular case, as she doesn’t seem able to get any black from anyone else. Everybody says they gave theirs to the last jumble sale, she tells me, though _I_ didn’t see any of it!

“She is wanting some for Zebadiah’s family too; they are left in bad straits, she says. I was only too glad to find that she and her sister-in-law have buried the hatchet at last; they’ve been at loggerheads for years; she really spoke very nicely about it. She said the older she got the more she felt life was too short to spend it in quarrelling, and at a time like this she thought bygones should be bygones. I don’t like to misjudge the woman,” Miss Bretherton continued with a sigh. “Sometimes she seems so anxious to do right. Her bringing up was against her. And yet——” And then the Rectoress closed her lips firmly determined to say no uncharitable thing, even about “that Jane Price.”

I’m afraid I didn’t think too highly of Mrs. Price at that moment. I remembered the parcels of black garments waiting at my house and again at Miss Primkins’. Moreover, Mrs. Price’s occasional lapses into fervent piety annoyed me very much, because I suspected they were developed for my benefit. She always gave me a long recital of woes and financial difficulties whenever she saw me, and invariably finished up with, “But thur, thur, I don’t let it worry me, for I always say, ‘The Lord will provide.’” I much objected to her taking the Name in vain in this manner, more especially as it generally happened that she gave Providence every assistance in the matter by helping herself to anything that lay within reach of her hand!

* * * * *

We did not stay long at the rectory, as I wanted to call on the lady of the manor. She kept us waiting a few minutes before she appeared; but explained, as she apologised for the delay, “I’ve just turned out five trunks, two cupboards, and four chests of drawers—and goodness knows how many more I should have set upon if you hadn’t come! It’s a pastime that seems to grow upon one like taking to drink or gambling—the more you have the more you want!

“I only meant to look through one chest for a black bonnet I thought I had put there—I’m trying to find some funeral wear for that Mrs. Price. Her husband’s brother has died, Zebadiah Price; they live over the hills at Penglyn. While he was alive, she hadn’t a good word to say for his wife; but now he’s gone, her conscience seems to worry her, and she says she feels the very least she can do is ‘to show respeck to the remains,’ and she wants to help his family. So I’ve been going over a good deal of ancient history in my search for garments calculated to show a sufficiency of respect. She said she was afraid that what she had on might give a wrong impression.”

“If she wore the same set of glad rags that she had on when she came to see us, likewise asking for mourning,” Virginia interpolated, “she’d give the impression of a ragged rainbow gone wrong and turned inside out, rather than a funeral.”

“Oh, she’s been to you, has she? She told me she couldn’t think of making so bold as to intrude her troubles on other people, and only came to me because she knew I had been so kind to Zebadiah years ago when he was ill; and added that my clothes always suited her so well!”

When we got outside, Virginia suggested with a twinkle that we should call on a few more people. We did, and at every house we were met with the sad intelligence of Zebadiah Price’s death and his sister-in-law’s quest for suitably respectful apparel.

Surely Royalty could not have been more universally mourned—in our village, at any rate!

* * * * *

Next Sunday we were rather puzzled on entering the church to see an ample lady clad in the most resplendent of widow’s weeds, sitting in solitary state in the very front row—a seat usually patronised only by the halt and maimed.

Her dress and mantle were of dull black silk trimmed with crêpe about a quarter of a yard in depth. True, it was not quite new, but its cut and style were unmistakable; anyone who possessed such a dress could afford to wear it even after its first newness had worn off; it stamped the wearer as a lady of means. A long weeper, black kid gloves, and a black-bordered handkerchief completed all we could see of the lady. We could only conclude that the distinguished stranger must be very deaf indeed, to take the front seat.

By this time all the congregation as it came in was interested. Such a stylish stranger would naturally attract attention. She kept her head devoutly bent, and used the handkerchief frequently; we couldn’t see her face. She might have been a peeress-in-waiting, judging by the dignity and decorum of her bearing.

It was just as the Rector was repeating the opening sentences that the resplendent one turned round to see the effect she was making on the congregation, and behold—that Mrs. Price!

I am afraid I only just saved myself from making the time-honoured remark, “_Did_ you EVER!”

* * * * *

“But what I want to know is this,” said Miss Primkins (as several of us walked together along the high road after church, leaving Mrs. Price giving details of the funeral, and the innumerable wreaths, to her friends). “Where did she get those weeds from? There isn’t a widow among us, nor a relative of a widow, so far as I know. Now who gave them to her?”

But we none of us knew. It certainly looked suspiciously as though Mrs. Price had used the poor late Zebadiah as an excuse for dragging the whole county!

I wasn’t surprised that she herself had donned fresh weeds, for as we are remarkably healthy upon these hills, we are apt to make the most of a funeral when it chances our way, and the opportunity to wear mourning, carrying with it, as it does, a certain personal distinction, is not to be passed over lightly.

On one occasion I remember meeting a farmer’s wife on Sunday morning in deep black (that had done duty for several previous family bereavements), weeping into her handkerchief as she went along the road to church. We stopped to inquire about her trouble.

“My poor old mother’s gone at last,” she sobbed. We were truly sorry for her grief, and asked when she had died.

“Well, I ’spect it would be about three or four this morning; that’s the time they usually go. I had a letter last night saying as how they didn’t reckon she’d live the night. So she’ll be gone by now. My poor mother! I’ll never see her again!” and she wept afresh.

I’m glad to say the mother is still alive, and very flourishing.

* * * * *

It was about a fortnight later that Virginia gave me the wildly-exciting information, culled from the local paper, that some Roman remains had just been excavated. I murmured “Oh!” in that absent-minded way people will do when their thoughts are called off the subject of What shall we have for the midday meal? to higher things.

I was thinking like this: “I did intend to have steak and kidney pudding, but as the butcher is late, there won’t be time to cook it; there isn’t enough cold tongue—at least, that knobbly end part is no use—we have plenty of eggs in the house, so we must just make out with that soup left over from yesterday and omelettes; or we might easily have——”

“Either a viaduct or an amphitheatre or a villa; they aren’t sure as yet which it is,” went on Virginia. “You read about it yourself; it’s awfully interesting. There; in that column—see? ‘Roman Remains at Penglyn.’”

“At Penglyn? It can’t be Zebadiah,” I commented; “he wasn’t as old as _that_!”

Nevertheless, we aren’t particular to a few hundred years in our village. For I remember last year an old woman telling me, “Have you heard, m’m, of the great news in the village? The Black Prince is staying at the Inn! Yes, to be sure! And he seems to understand our language beautiful, he do; though they say he does speak the foreign to a gentleman what’s staying there with him. The only thing I was surprised about was to see how young he do look, considering of his age. Why, I remember hearing tell about him when I was at school!” Later on I found the historic potentate was a harmless Indian law-student.

Virginia kept on about the Roman excavations, and announced her intention of going to see them. I protested that I wasn’t going to be hauled across a stony mountainous region in a wagonette, and then change twice by slow train, an hour or so to wait at each change, and ditto to get back, all to see a few brick walls, when the garden so badly needed weeding.

She was indignant, said she should prefer to go alone to having unsympathetic and uninformed society; reminded me of the histories of nations that had been found embedded in brick walls, waxed eloquent on the subject of the Egyptian hieroglyphics and the Rosetta Stone, skipped lightly from the pointed apex of the Pyramids to the significance of the flat roofs of Thibet, examined the walls of the buried cities in central Asia, and before I had fully realised that I was really travelling in the East, I found that she was examining the designs on the Aztec pottery of ancient Mexico.

Fearing that we should have this sort of thing straight on end for a week, I said we would go next day, weather permitting, if only she would help me decide whether to have the omelette plain, or a cheese omelette, or would they prefer macaroni cheese? I have found in the past that the crystallisation of thought necessary to follow Virginia, when she is in an informing mood, creates a vacuum, and then I get a cold in my head.

I also inquired whether she would prefer to drive all the way, or go by train.

She replied, still with her eyes glued to the interesting newspaper treatise on antiquarian relics, that she would rather I settled these minor details, adding that she always liked to leave the arrangement of everything to me, as it gave her such opportunities to point out to me the feebleness of my methods and ideas.

I decided to go with her, simply because I knew that unless she had some firm, restraining force beside her, she would go and buy that Roman viaduct, amphitheatre, or villa, and order it to be sent home; and, for all I knew, she might give _my_ address in a fit of wandering-mindedness, and what should _I_ do with it when it arrived? You can’t pack an amphitheatre away in the empty pigsty, and all the other space was occupied with seedlings and things!