CHAPTER XXXNANNIE SEES HER DUTYALTHOUGHthe Pig-driver, as he sat in his cart at Llangarth Fair, was mainly concerned with the prospective beef, mutton, and pork collected before him, he found time to notice other things. One of these was George Williams, steering his way through the crowd with Mary Vaughan’s arm in his.He looked after them as they passed, all unconscious of his eyes, and, when they were lost in the mass of human beings and had disappeared from the range of his vision, he still remained in so pre-occupied a state that his bargains were in danger of suffering.It was evident that his former dependent “had a young woman”; a result, no doubt, of his prosperity at Great Masterhouse; perhaps he would soon be setting up a home of his own, perhaps he was even buying things at the fair for his wedding.For years James Bumpett had known no shame, but the nearest approach to it assailed him as he saw Williams, well-dressed, happy, and evidently with his private affairs on hand, a living witness to the limits of his own power.The thought hit him in a spot in which most of us are vulnerable. People who love power may be sublime, to others as well as to themselves, so long as they are able to get it; when they are not, they become ridiculous, principally to others. His business done, he drove away, plunged in his own thoughts. How he wished that the high-and-mighty mistress of Great Masterhouse had been in the fair to see her favourite servantwalking about with the girl who had led her only son astray. Not that the Pig-driver thought much of such deviations from the straight path as Rhys had made, but he knew that Mrs. Walters did. The idea of her at a fair was so impossible that he smiled at his own futility; but she should know of it, and the next time he met Nannie Davis he would take care that she heard of George’s doings.Nannie did not like Williams, her admiration being given to more lively characters. Her own youth had been cheerful, to say the least of it, and she despised those who lost their opportunities in that way. His gravity and quietness annoyed her, and the high place he had taken in Mrs. Walters’ estimation made her jealous. Her personal devotion was not given so much to her mistress as to the family she had served so long, but she could not away with the notion of any one else being important to it.This did not escape Bumpett; he had known Nannie all her life, and they had always been on friendly terms; besides which, their common knowledge of Rhys’ presence in the country had brought them a good deal together.But chance happened to keep them apart at this moment, and the neighbourhood of the farm had become so abhorrent to him ever since his errand there, that he hesitated to go near the place. Rhys was the only person to whom he had related the affair; he hated even to think of it, and when he at last met the old woman casually in Crishowell village, the news he longed to impart had been burning within him for three weeks.To do him justice, the Pig-driver’s methods in the matter were not coarse. He did not suggest that Nannie should tell Mrs. Walters straight out, but he worked so adroitly upon her feeling that he left her well assured of success. It was clear by her face that she was aching and longing to have a fling at Williams, that upstart, that interloper, and—worst of all sinners to the uneducated mind—that man who kept himself to himself.The two women stood by the duck-pond. The birds were collected round the brink, waddling and gobbling in the soft bits of mud, and Mrs. Walters was pointing out those she had selected for killing. A large white drake straddled cumbrously about among the members of his family. Inside Nannie’s apron, which she had gathered with one hand into a kind of sack, a fat one, predestined to death, quacked and complained in a voice so lamentable that the mistress had to shout her directions in order to make the servant understand.“Can’t ’ear ye!” bawled Nannie, “so long as this ’ere thief do go on as he do!”“Take up the brown one there—no, no—that one by the stone!” cried Anne, pointing to a young mallard who stood motionless, his dully critical eye staring, unconscious of wrath to come, upon his companions.The old woman stooped and made a dive with her hand towards the mallard, and the duck in her apron lifted up its voice and floundered with all its strength.“Drat ye!” exclaimed Nannie, giving it a vicious pinch and missing her prey, which, with a calm look, sailed into the water, wagging its tail.“Tut, tut,” said Mrs. Walters, coming nearer, “give the bird to me and you go and try to drive the mallard back on to the grass. I must have him.”Nannie’s eye fell on an old wooden box lying open near, and thrusting the duck into it, she turned it over with her foot. The air rang with its outcries. Then she picked up a branch and advanced along the brink to the spot nearest to her quarry. He took little apparent interest until she came level with him, when, with a twirl of his leg, he put an extra yard or so between them.“Shoo! shoo!” cried Mrs. Walters from the shore.“That ain’t no good, mum!” exclaimed Nannie, pushing back her sunbonnet with a large gesture; “if ye’d let fly at ’im wi’ that gob o’ mud beside ye ’e might take more notice o’ ye.”Anne picked up a clod and threw it into the pond. The duck merely turned upside down and became a simple cone in the water with three small feathers in the apex. The attitude had a suggestion of insult.Nannie beat the branch up and down on the surface of the pond, muttering words under her breath which, had they reached her mistress, would have done her no good. The effect it had was that of disquieting the others, and they began to steal away across the grass in a solemn string, protest in every line of their feathers and every movement of their ungainly feet. The mallard looked after them for a moment and began to swim round and round the pool.“I have no more time to waste,” said Anne Walters impatiently; “you had better call Williams; I see him in the garden.”George was very cheerful; he was whistling at his work, and he had a pleasant sense of things being all right. The clouds rode along over his head, white masses of packed snow, cut sharp against the blue, and steering their course through the endless ether like great galleons advancing, unconquered and unconquerable. A lark was losing itself in a tremor of melody, a little vanishing spot. It struck him that the world was good.He had seen Mary once or twice since the fair, and, though his heart burned within him at keeping silence from the words he might not speak, he felt he was gaining ground; at least, he had got her respect again, and he had seen, entering the shop a few days since, a look of unmistakable pleasure in her face as she greeted him. Yes, things were looking up, and the garden, into which he had put so many hours of steady work, was beginning to repay him.George was in his element in a garden, though he was himself unconscious of the fact. He had an intense sympathy with growth and life, vegetable and animal, and a large sense of protectorship. As he paused a moment, looking critically at a lush corner where the scarlet-runners had engulfed the fence, he might have stood for the modern version of the originalAdam, the natural culmination of the Spirit of Life, moving, not on the waters, but on the fields. All he wanted was Eve; Eve, who, at that moment, was standing in a similar environment, behind the little stack of green vegetables piled on the counter before her. Her surroundings were a little more complicated, that was all, but when were a woman’s otherwise?Williams left the garden at Nannie’s call, and she watched him with a sour face as Mrs. Walters directed him to catch the mallard.“I’ll get ’im easy enough,” said he; “there’s no use in driving ’im. Them ducks always follow their own kind. Go we a bit out o’ the way, an’ I’ll be bound he’ll be on dry land afore we’ve got far.”They retreated from the pond, and the bird ceased his gyrations, only fixing a wary eye on their departing figures. After consideration, he made for the spot where the rest had landed, and set out on their track, the violence of his efforts causing him to roll from side to side like a ship in a storm. When he was well out on his course, the old woman pounced upon him and bore him struggling to the box.“Williams is a sensible man,” observed Anne, as she looked after George’s disappearing back. “I did well when I took him. There is a Providence over all our acts, little as we think it sometimes.”Nannie looked sarcastic.“Under God, I may have done a good work,” continued her mistress, who was unused to having her words disregarded. The leavening of self in them took nothing from their sincerity.“That’s as may be,” replied Nannie, with her nose in the air.Mrs. Walters looked at her as one might look at a child who has pitted its opinion against that of an elder.“Williams is leading a new life. He has put the old man from him.”“Yes, he! he! And he’ve taken a young woman in ’isplace,” leered Nannie, whose flippancy occasionally got the better of her awe of Anne.“What do you mean?” inquired her companion.“Ye can’t see everything that happens in the world from Masterhouse,” she replied enigmatically.“I don’t know what you mean by talking like that,” said Anne, drawing herself up.“There’s some that’s mighty different to what they look. I could tell a thing or two about that Williams if I liked. Not that it’s formeto speak,” said the old woman.Anne was not without curiosity.“What do you know against him?” she asked, after a pause.“He’s a soft one, is Williams; but I know ’im. It’s ‘yes, mum’ here and ‘yes, mum’ there up this way, but down at Llangarth ’tis another story. Rollin’ about at fairs with a hussy that’s no better than she should be. I can’t do wi’ they mealy-mouthed chaps; they’ve always got the devil’s tail tucked away somewhere in their breeches.”Mrs. Walter’s face darkened. Nannie went on, encouraged.“As proud as Punch he was, too. An’ she goin’ about without shame, holding his arm like the gentry.”“Who told you this?”It was on the tip of Nannie’s tongue to say, “The Pig-driver,” but she suddenly bethought her of the one occasion on which he had come to the farm. She had hovered about at the kitchen-door that day and had heard the scene enacted inside it. She knew very well that her mistress had but scant respect for James Bumpett.Anne repeated her question.“Oh, I heard in Crishowell about his goings-on. Fine talk he’s made there, an’ no mistake.”“You are much too fond of gossip,” said Mrs. Walters judicially.“’Tis no gossip. ’Tis my plain duty, an’ no more. If folks down Crishowell way be sayin’ what a mawk you be to havepicked up such a bad bit o’ stuff, I’ll let ye know it, an’ no more than Christian too. Not that I wasn’t ashamed to hear them speakin’ such low words about ye, knowin’ that ’twas a holy act ye thought to do. But we’re all deceived sometimes.”And Nannie stooped, sighing, to take up the imprisoned ducks.Anne stood contemplating the mixture of fiction and truth served up to her. She wished to dismiss it all with contempt, but the thought of her acts being criticized was too much for her. Criticism spelt outrage to her temperament.She turned away towards the house, internally fevered. The ducks squalled in Nannie’s grasp as they were carried to the outhouse which was to be their condemned cell. Their jailer hurried along; she had no idea of leaving her work half done.“Where be I to put them?” she cried above the din.Mrs. Walters pointed to a door without stopping. The old woman flung it open and deposited her burden. As she shut them up, Anne turned round.“Come in,” she said stiffly. “I must know who it is that has spoken about Williams.”“Crishowell folk, mum.”“How many people?”“A sight o’ them.”Nannie’s evasions began to rouse her suspicions. “I suppose Bumpett told you,” she said, turning suddenly on her servant.Nannie’s jaw dropped.“Answer me!” cried Mrs. Walters, with rising voice; “was it Bumpett?”“Well, now I think on it, ’ewasone o’ them.”“I thought so,” said Anne, smiling grimly.“And who is this—this loose woman you were speaking of? You haven’t told me that.”“Lawk! mum, I wouldn’t so much as name her afore ye,” replied Nannie, drawing down her mouth.“Let me have no more nonsense,” exclaimed Mrs. Walters,with justifiable warmth; “if you did not mean to speak out, you had no business to say anything at all. I am waiting to hear.”Nannie shuffled from one foot to the other.“Well, ’tis Mary Vaughan, the toll-keeper’s wench.”Anne stood staring at her. “I do not believe it,” she exclaimed, turning her back. “If it were true, it would be a direct disrespect to me.”From her point of view this was a charge hardly to be faced.“It’s Gospel, for all that,” said the old woman.Mrs. Walters’ eyes rested searchingly on her companion; the look was returned, and held all the difference between the two women’s characters.“I shall ask him myself,” she said; “I shall soon find out if it is true.”Having sent off her shaft, Nannie held her peace, and followed her mistress indoors, a little nervous, but auguring well from the cloud on Anne’s brow; a cloud accumulating, pregnant with storm.
ALTHOUGHthe Pig-driver, as he sat in his cart at Llangarth Fair, was mainly concerned with the prospective beef, mutton, and pork collected before him, he found time to notice other things. One of these was George Williams, steering his way through the crowd with Mary Vaughan’s arm in his.
He looked after them as they passed, all unconscious of his eyes, and, when they were lost in the mass of human beings and had disappeared from the range of his vision, he still remained in so pre-occupied a state that his bargains were in danger of suffering.
It was evident that his former dependent “had a young woman”; a result, no doubt, of his prosperity at Great Masterhouse; perhaps he would soon be setting up a home of his own, perhaps he was even buying things at the fair for his wedding.
For years James Bumpett had known no shame, but the nearest approach to it assailed him as he saw Williams, well-dressed, happy, and evidently with his private affairs on hand, a living witness to the limits of his own power.
The thought hit him in a spot in which most of us are vulnerable. People who love power may be sublime, to others as well as to themselves, so long as they are able to get it; when they are not, they become ridiculous, principally to others. His business done, he drove away, plunged in his own thoughts. How he wished that the high-and-mighty mistress of Great Masterhouse had been in the fair to see her favourite servantwalking about with the girl who had led her only son astray. Not that the Pig-driver thought much of such deviations from the straight path as Rhys had made, but he knew that Mrs. Walters did. The idea of her at a fair was so impossible that he smiled at his own futility; but she should know of it, and the next time he met Nannie Davis he would take care that she heard of George’s doings.
Nannie did not like Williams, her admiration being given to more lively characters. Her own youth had been cheerful, to say the least of it, and she despised those who lost their opportunities in that way. His gravity and quietness annoyed her, and the high place he had taken in Mrs. Walters’ estimation made her jealous. Her personal devotion was not given so much to her mistress as to the family she had served so long, but she could not away with the notion of any one else being important to it.
This did not escape Bumpett; he had known Nannie all her life, and they had always been on friendly terms; besides which, their common knowledge of Rhys’ presence in the country had brought them a good deal together.
But chance happened to keep them apart at this moment, and the neighbourhood of the farm had become so abhorrent to him ever since his errand there, that he hesitated to go near the place. Rhys was the only person to whom he had related the affair; he hated even to think of it, and when he at last met the old woman casually in Crishowell village, the news he longed to impart had been burning within him for three weeks.
To do him justice, the Pig-driver’s methods in the matter were not coarse. He did not suggest that Nannie should tell Mrs. Walters straight out, but he worked so adroitly upon her feeling that he left her well assured of success. It was clear by her face that she was aching and longing to have a fling at Williams, that upstart, that interloper, and—worst of all sinners to the uneducated mind—that man who kept himself to himself.
The two women stood by the duck-pond. The birds were collected round the brink, waddling and gobbling in the soft bits of mud, and Mrs. Walters was pointing out those she had selected for killing. A large white drake straddled cumbrously about among the members of his family. Inside Nannie’s apron, which she had gathered with one hand into a kind of sack, a fat one, predestined to death, quacked and complained in a voice so lamentable that the mistress had to shout her directions in order to make the servant understand.
“Can’t ’ear ye!” bawled Nannie, “so long as this ’ere thief do go on as he do!”
“Take up the brown one there—no, no—that one by the stone!” cried Anne, pointing to a young mallard who stood motionless, his dully critical eye staring, unconscious of wrath to come, upon his companions.
The old woman stooped and made a dive with her hand towards the mallard, and the duck in her apron lifted up its voice and floundered with all its strength.
“Drat ye!” exclaimed Nannie, giving it a vicious pinch and missing her prey, which, with a calm look, sailed into the water, wagging its tail.
“Tut, tut,” said Mrs. Walters, coming nearer, “give the bird to me and you go and try to drive the mallard back on to the grass. I must have him.”
Nannie’s eye fell on an old wooden box lying open near, and thrusting the duck into it, she turned it over with her foot. The air rang with its outcries. Then she picked up a branch and advanced along the brink to the spot nearest to her quarry. He took little apparent interest until she came level with him, when, with a twirl of his leg, he put an extra yard or so between them.
“Shoo! shoo!” cried Mrs. Walters from the shore.
“That ain’t no good, mum!” exclaimed Nannie, pushing back her sunbonnet with a large gesture; “if ye’d let fly at ’im wi’ that gob o’ mud beside ye ’e might take more notice o’ ye.”
Anne picked up a clod and threw it into the pond. The duck merely turned upside down and became a simple cone in the water with three small feathers in the apex. The attitude had a suggestion of insult.
Nannie beat the branch up and down on the surface of the pond, muttering words under her breath which, had they reached her mistress, would have done her no good. The effect it had was that of disquieting the others, and they began to steal away across the grass in a solemn string, protest in every line of their feathers and every movement of their ungainly feet. The mallard looked after them for a moment and began to swim round and round the pool.
“I have no more time to waste,” said Anne Walters impatiently; “you had better call Williams; I see him in the garden.”
George was very cheerful; he was whistling at his work, and he had a pleasant sense of things being all right. The clouds rode along over his head, white masses of packed snow, cut sharp against the blue, and steering their course through the endless ether like great galleons advancing, unconquered and unconquerable. A lark was losing itself in a tremor of melody, a little vanishing spot. It struck him that the world was good.
He had seen Mary once or twice since the fair, and, though his heart burned within him at keeping silence from the words he might not speak, he felt he was gaining ground; at least, he had got her respect again, and he had seen, entering the shop a few days since, a look of unmistakable pleasure in her face as she greeted him. Yes, things were looking up, and the garden, into which he had put so many hours of steady work, was beginning to repay him.
George was in his element in a garden, though he was himself unconscious of the fact. He had an intense sympathy with growth and life, vegetable and animal, and a large sense of protectorship. As he paused a moment, looking critically at a lush corner where the scarlet-runners had engulfed the fence, he might have stood for the modern version of the originalAdam, the natural culmination of the Spirit of Life, moving, not on the waters, but on the fields. All he wanted was Eve; Eve, who, at that moment, was standing in a similar environment, behind the little stack of green vegetables piled on the counter before her. Her surroundings were a little more complicated, that was all, but when were a woman’s otherwise?
Williams left the garden at Nannie’s call, and she watched him with a sour face as Mrs. Walters directed him to catch the mallard.
“I’ll get ’im easy enough,” said he; “there’s no use in driving ’im. Them ducks always follow their own kind. Go we a bit out o’ the way, an’ I’ll be bound he’ll be on dry land afore we’ve got far.”
They retreated from the pond, and the bird ceased his gyrations, only fixing a wary eye on their departing figures. After consideration, he made for the spot where the rest had landed, and set out on their track, the violence of his efforts causing him to roll from side to side like a ship in a storm. When he was well out on his course, the old woman pounced upon him and bore him struggling to the box.
“Williams is a sensible man,” observed Anne, as she looked after George’s disappearing back. “I did well when I took him. There is a Providence over all our acts, little as we think it sometimes.”
Nannie looked sarcastic.
“Under God, I may have done a good work,” continued her mistress, who was unused to having her words disregarded. The leavening of self in them took nothing from their sincerity.
“That’s as may be,” replied Nannie, with her nose in the air.
Mrs. Walters looked at her as one might look at a child who has pitted its opinion against that of an elder.
“Williams is leading a new life. He has put the old man from him.”
“Yes, he! he! And he’ve taken a young woman in ’isplace,” leered Nannie, whose flippancy occasionally got the better of her awe of Anne.
“What do you mean?” inquired her companion.
“Ye can’t see everything that happens in the world from Masterhouse,” she replied enigmatically.
“I don’t know what you mean by talking like that,” said Anne, drawing herself up.
“There’s some that’s mighty different to what they look. I could tell a thing or two about that Williams if I liked. Not that it’s formeto speak,” said the old woman.
Anne was not without curiosity.
“What do you know against him?” she asked, after a pause.
“He’s a soft one, is Williams; but I know ’im. It’s ‘yes, mum’ here and ‘yes, mum’ there up this way, but down at Llangarth ’tis another story. Rollin’ about at fairs with a hussy that’s no better than she should be. I can’t do wi’ they mealy-mouthed chaps; they’ve always got the devil’s tail tucked away somewhere in their breeches.”
Mrs. Walter’s face darkened. Nannie went on, encouraged.
“As proud as Punch he was, too. An’ she goin’ about without shame, holding his arm like the gentry.”
“Who told you this?”
It was on the tip of Nannie’s tongue to say, “The Pig-driver,” but she suddenly bethought her of the one occasion on which he had come to the farm. She had hovered about at the kitchen-door that day and had heard the scene enacted inside it. She knew very well that her mistress had but scant respect for James Bumpett.
Anne repeated her question.
“Oh, I heard in Crishowell about his goings-on. Fine talk he’s made there, an’ no mistake.”
“You are much too fond of gossip,” said Mrs. Walters judicially.
“’Tis no gossip. ’Tis my plain duty, an’ no more. If folks down Crishowell way be sayin’ what a mawk you be to havepicked up such a bad bit o’ stuff, I’ll let ye know it, an’ no more than Christian too. Not that I wasn’t ashamed to hear them speakin’ such low words about ye, knowin’ that ’twas a holy act ye thought to do. But we’re all deceived sometimes.”
And Nannie stooped, sighing, to take up the imprisoned ducks.
Anne stood contemplating the mixture of fiction and truth served up to her. She wished to dismiss it all with contempt, but the thought of her acts being criticized was too much for her. Criticism spelt outrage to her temperament.
She turned away towards the house, internally fevered. The ducks squalled in Nannie’s grasp as they were carried to the outhouse which was to be their condemned cell. Their jailer hurried along; she had no idea of leaving her work half done.
“Where be I to put them?” she cried above the din.
Mrs. Walters pointed to a door without stopping. The old woman flung it open and deposited her burden. As she shut them up, Anne turned round.
“Come in,” she said stiffly. “I must know who it is that has spoken about Williams.”
“Crishowell folk, mum.”
“How many people?”
“A sight o’ them.”
Nannie’s evasions began to rouse her suspicions. “I suppose Bumpett told you,” she said, turning suddenly on her servant.
Nannie’s jaw dropped.
“Answer me!” cried Mrs. Walters, with rising voice; “was it Bumpett?”
“Well, now I think on it, ’ewasone o’ them.”
“I thought so,” said Anne, smiling grimly.
“And who is this—this loose woman you were speaking of? You haven’t told me that.”
“Lawk! mum, I wouldn’t so much as name her afore ye,” replied Nannie, drawing down her mouth.
“Let me have no more nonsense,” exclaimed Mrs. Walters,with justifiable warmth; “if you did not mean to speak out, you had no business to say anything at all. I am waiting to hear.”
Nannie shuffled from one foot to the other.
“Well, ’tis Mary Vaughan, the toll-keeper’s wench.”
Anne stood staring at her. “I do not believe it,” she exclaimed, turning her back. “If it were true, it would be a direct disrespect to me.”
From her point of view this was a charge hardly to be faced.
“It’s Gospel, for all that,” said the old woman.
Mrs. Walters’ eyes rested searchingly on her companion; the look was returned, and held all the difference between the two women’s characters.
“I shall ask him myself,” she said; “I shall soon find out if it is true.”
Having sent off her shaft, Nannie held her peace, and followed her mistress indoors, a little nervous, but auguring well from the cloud on Anne’s brow; a cloud accumulating, pregnant with storm.