TWO: PLOUGH MONDAY
Thesound of voices came again, men and boys singing, one out of tune with the others, but all ringing with the same fresh gaiety and purity through the frosty air, reminding the hearer of the sharp notes of the blacksmith’s hammer raining on the anvil, and giving him the same assurance that the very texture of man’s ordinary life is a beautiful and joyous fabric.
This time Anne could hear the words of the song.
One morning very early,The ploughboy he was seenAll hastening to the stableHis horses for to clean.
One morning very early,The ploughboy he was seenAll hastening to the stableHis horses for to clean.
One morning very early,
The ploughboy he was seen
All hastening to the stable
His horses for to clean.
She ran to the window and, looking out into the whiteness, she was blinded for the first moment by the sun shining on to the dazzling field of snow, but in the next instant she perceived three great chestnut horses standing just below her immediately in front of the door. They were harnessed to a plough, at the handles of whichstood a labourer, whilst at the head of each of the horses was a young carter, and on the foremost of the horses were two little boys riding. It was the voices of these little boys which were so oddly out of tune.
Anne was astonished to see them with their plough and horses so close to the doorstep, and was filled with a sense of strangeness even before she saw what was most strange about these visitors. That a plough should be standing so close to the house was strange, and even for the moment seemed to her shocking, for one of the horses was standing on a flower-bed, but this was nothing to the appearance of the men, for all of them had their faces blacked and their shoulders and their caps were white with snow. The black faces against the whiteness of the snow frightened her; for a moment she caught her breath with fear, which turned almost instantly to wonder and delight.
With chaff and cornHe did them bait,Their tails and manesHe did comb straight.
With chaff and cornHe did them bait,Their tails and manesHe did comb straight.
With chaff and corn
He did them bait,
Their tails and manes
He did comb straight.
What was it? What was it? Something strange, something beautiful, the thing perhapsshe had always wanted, and half guessed at, but which she had never before met face to face.
The tune changed:
Come all you lads and lassesSee a gay ploughboy.
Come all you lads and lassesSee a gay ploughboy.
Come all you lads and lasses
See a gay ploughboy.
Gay, yes, they were gay; the snow was falling, and the sun was shining, and they had blacked their faces and come to her doorstep, and one black face with an open pink mouth was looking up at her in the window.
Please can you spare a halfpennyFor an old ploughboy?A bit of bread and cheeseIs better than nothing.
Please can you spare a halfpennyFor an old ploughboy?A bit of bread and cheeseIs better than nothing.
Please can you spare a halfpenny
For an old ploughboy?
A bit of bread and cheese
Is better than nothing.
The song was over; one of the young carters came to the door and gave a knock which echoed through the house. Anne started, woken from her rapt contemplation of the horses and the men, and still repeating under her breath: “Beautiful, they are beautiful!” she ran downstairs to open the door. Mr. Dunnock, however, was there before her, and from the hall she could see nothing of the men with their black faces, nor of the plough, nor the horses with their satin coats, their manes flecked with snow, andtheir tails twisted up in plaits of straw; her father’s back blocked the doorway, and she could hear his voice in anger.
“That’s enough of this foolery. You should know better than to trample down the lawn and the flower-bed.”
Give us a shilling and we shall be glad,Give us a penny and we shall go home,
Give us a shilling and we shall be glad,Give us a penny and we shall go home,
Give us a shilling and we shall be glad,
Give us a penny and we shall go home,
piped the two little boys from the horse’s back. “Please, Sir, it’s Plough Monday, we like to keep it up.”
“I have nothing for you,” said her father. “I have quite enough deserving objects for my charity.” He shut the door, and found himself face to face with his daughter.
“Some village clod-hoppers have come begging,” said the clergyman, throwing back his head and giving vent to a cough of irritation. “They actually brought three horses and a plough over the flower-beds and up to the door.”
“They won’t have hurt the flower-beds, father, in this weather, with so much snow on the ground,” said Anne.
“Perhaps not,” he answered, “but they have made a great mess of the snow in front of the house; besides I had wished to measure the footprints of the birds.”
“You might have given them something, they seemed so jolly.”
“Jolly?” Mr. Dunnock’s cough became almost a bark. “It is not my idea of jollity, nor I should have hoped yours, for yokels to black their faces in imitation of Christie minstrels, and come begging for money simply because they are given a day’s holiday on account of the weather.”
“But, father, I think that it is an old custom, and that they expect to be given money.”
Mr. Dunnock gazed at his daughter with real surprise.
“I won’t hear of it. I most strongly disapprove. They may try other people. I am not going to be victimized, or imposed on. Old custom? Remember what the midshipman said in his letter to his mother: ‘Manners they have none, and their customs are beastly.’” The clergyman recovered himself sufficiently to laugh at his own joke, but when his daughter moved towards the door, he said angrily: “I forbid you to encourage them, Anne; the incident is closed and I have sent them away.”
The local Christie minstrels, however, had not gone away, and as Mr. Dunnock spoke a loud knock resounded on the door.
“You had better go upstairs, Anne. Kindly leave me to deal with them.”
Anne ran upstairs, trembling with rage, and rushed into her father’s bedroom, where, by looking out of window, she was able to see what was going on and overhear most of what was being said.
When Mr. Dunnock opened the door he found all the ploughmen gathered in a group on the doorstep.
“It’s Plough Monday, Sir, and we have come to keep it, and ask you for a piece of money for our song.”
“I have told you already to go away,” said the clergyman, coughing with exasperation. “I don’t give money to beggars.”
There was a silence, then one of the young men at the back laughed and said: “He doesn’t tumble to it; tell the parson that it is Plough Monday.”
“Where would you be if there weren’t no ploughmen, or no ploughing done?” asked the spokesman of the group. “You wouldn’t get no tithes if it weren’t for the plough.”
There was a chorus of approval at that.
“No, that you wouldn’t!”
“He can’t answer that, Fred.”
They shouted, but at the wordtithesMr.Dunnock had slammed the door in their faces. The ploughmen knocked again, and for some minutes the sound echoed through every room in the house. Anne could see that they were puzzled, and in some doubt what to do next. One or two of them were laughing, another scratched his head while he said: “Called us beggars, did he? Reckon we work as hard as he.” Presently they retreated to one corner of the garden and remained talking together for some little while, until Maggie appeared from round the corner of the kitchen and called out to them.
“You had best go away,” she said. “The parson he says you are a lot of lazy louts. I heard him. He won’t give you naught. You won’t get nothing if you do plough his doorstep up.” The ploughmen did not answer her, nor did they appear to pay any attention to her words, but slowly went back to their horses’ heads. “What must be, must be,” said the oldest of the company, laying hold of the handles of the plough. “I’ld as lief keep the custom. Come on, boys!” he shouted. At these words Anne could see that they all suddenly recovered their good humour, and a moment after they began joking among themselves.
“Parson will have to wipe his feet on his mat before we have done with him,” said one lad.
“There won’t be anyone shy of paying us our pennies after this,” added another.
“Let him preach what sermon he likes next Sunday; there won’t be no one but his daughter and our Maggie to hear him swearing.”
“Hey, my beauties!” shouted the ploughman at the handles.
The great horses strained and began to move; the young carters at their heads shouted and led the team in a wide circle across the untouched snowfield which was the lawn; the plough sidled and circled through the snow, and the men began arguing with the horses.
“Hold back, can’t you!”
“Steady there, whoa.”
At last, after one horse had nearly put its head through the window of Mr. Dunnock’s study, and another had trampled down a rose bush, the plough was got into position at the far corner of the house. After that they all waited while the ploughman left the handles and began to hammer at part of his plough.
The fear which Anne had felt when she first looked out returned to her, and the sense of strangeness persisted. Was she waking or dreaming, was she afraid or was she glad? Suddenly she heard Maggie’s voice saying in excited tones:
“You are never going to plough up Mr. Dunnock’s doorstep!” and hearing these words Anne began to tremble.
At last the ploughman straightened his back and said:
“Calls us idle beggars, does he? And too busy to speak with us; we’ll mark Plough Monday in his prayer-book. Get up there....”
The horses strained, and the plough sank through the snow into the soft earth of a flower-bed, the traces tightened and the three horses pulled; a wrinkle or two showed itself in their haunches, and the share of the plough threw up a broad streak of raw earth.
“Steady, boys, steady by the doorstep,” called the ploughman, and the carters edged the horses nearer in to the wall of the house. In a moment the plough reached the door, and Anne, gazing down from above, saw the flagstone lift and topple, while the plough ran swiftly on, and the earth streamed out upon the snow.
“I must stop them,” she whispered, but she did not move, or take her eyes off the scene. Watching from above, the girl was fascinated and horrified by every detail; the swift and irresistible progress of the hidden ploughshare running through the earth delighted her; the strength of the three stalwart Suffolk Punches,and the lean, sinewy wrists of the ploughman guiding the handles, and the gay young men, all thrilled her. While watching, she could not have told what were her emotions: yet she knew that the scene was beautiful, the plough slipping so easily in the rich earth had the grace and lissom strength of a snake. Once again the horses turned, sweeping down and halting beside the hedge of laurel, and there was another pause while the plough was got into position, and then the team swept round and strained forward again to cut the second furrow, and, that finished, to draw the plough out into the roadway in front of the vicarage, while the ploughman threw the handles on one side and held them down so that the share skidded through the snow over the grass.
The men did not call out, nor even appear to speak or to laugh among themselves; having cut their two furrows, they went away swiftly, pausing only for a moment on the road to adjust the ploughshare, and then hurrying on to sing their songs under other windows.
Only when the plough had turned the corner of the lane and the last of the horses’ heads had vanished down the avenue of elm trees, did Anne Dunnock leave her position at the window, and only then did she burst into a flood of tears. “Icannot live after such an insult,” she said to herself. “How could they do such a thing to our house? But why is it that it seemed to me so beautiful as well as so cruel?” and as she asked herself this question she noticed that though she had dried her tears her hands were still trembling. “The lawn of virgin snow has been torn up by the plough, the naked earth exposed, and the garden trampled over by the iron shoes of the horses and the hobnails of the labourers,” she said. “And our doorstep has been overturned; my father’s fault, for he was in the wrong. I feel now as if I could never forgive him for bringing this shame on us, yet if it had not been him it might have been me, for the same fault of character is in both of us. We are rejected everywhere, unable to share in the life around us, or to understand it. Enid taught me that at Ely, but to-day it has been recognized by the ploughmen, and this broad gash in the earth and the uprooted doorstep proclaim it to our neighbours. I shall never dare show my face in the village after this.”
So saying, Anne Dunnock found herself sobbing again. “This is too silly,” she told herself, yet the tears continued to flow, until she gave up resisting them and lay down on the bed in her own room. She thought of Enid, to whom shehad written so many poems and so many passionate letters, only to discover that they had been shown to all the girls in the school, that they had been borrowed and read aloud in every bathroom where there were girls talking before going to bed. “I could have killed Enid; she made all the girls in Ely think that I was perfectly ridiculous.” And all the bitter experiences of her life came back into her mind and were confused with her present unhappiness.
“Why should we suffer from this?” she asked herself, after a few moments of weeping. “For I know father suffers from it as much as I do, though he has never spoken of it to me, and perhaps not even to himself. Is it because he is a clergyman, or is it because we are in some way superior, cleverer, or better than our neighbours? No,” she answered herself, “it cannot be that, for though I am intelligent, perhaps even remarkably intelligent, father is terribly stupid. In fact he is almost deficient in some respects, and I am sure neither he nor I are superior morally. We are both too emotional and too ready to lose our tempers. All our troubles spring from the fact that father is a clergyman, for whether they recognize it or not, ordinary people have a contempt for the clergy, and clergymen are always ill at ease with their fellowmen. Thank God father isn’t one of the hearty sort; in his own way he is an honest man and a religious one, but he has ruined my life. It is Ibsen’sGhostsover again,” for Anne had been reading Ibsen lately. Then a phrase from another book she had been reading, De Quincey’sOpium-eater, came into her mind: “Unwinding the accursed chain.”
“How can I unwind the accursed chain?” she asked herself. “I must begin soon, for I am twenty-three, and the best part of my life is gone.”
“It is no good crying over spilt milk,” she said, and went on: “At all events I am glad that they did not go away when father told them to go; I am glad that they tore up our garden with that narrow snake-like plough wobbling a little as it ran through the earth. I am glad of it, though I shall find it hard to face our neighbours after this, for they will have changed. Everyone will know of our disgrace.”
She rose from her bed and tidied her hair before the glass; as usual all the hairpins had fallen. Then turning to the window she looked out over the untouched snowfield at the back of the house where not even a dog had run as yet. Everything was covered, even the winter jessamine on the summer-house was concealed, andthe black poplars beyond the pond had every twig laden with snow.
“All will be forgotten as soon as the snows are melted,” she said to herself suddenly, with the certainty that her words were true. “All my emotion is nonsense. To me everything seems changed, but it is only a joke to the carters; they will laugh about it over a pint of beer to-day, but in a week’s time they will have forgotten it; the fact that some dog has killed a rat will seem more important. My life is not changed: to-morrow the mason will come to lay the doorstep in its old place, and I shall say: ‘It’s a fine day,’ when I go to the grocer’s shop, and: ‘Very seasonable weather,’ when I take the loaves from the baker. That is the nearest that I shall ever get to contact with my fellows; why should they care how we live, what we do, or whether we disgrace ourselves or not? We mean nothing to them.”
And Anne Dunnock, who only a few moments before had been weeping because the world was changed, began suddenly to weep again because it appeared to her that it had not changed and that it would always remain the same. This time the tears were not so readily checked, for one tear brings the next after it, and Anne remained hidden in her bedroom until Maggie knocked atthe door to say that lunch was on the table. But by then she herself had forgotten what had so much moved her less than two hours before, for she had taken upPeer Gynt, and as she went downstairs she was thinking not of the carters with their black faces and the snow on their caps, but of the trolls.