XVII
After passing the old mill and the deep, dark pool, she turned aside from her homeward path, and crossed to a cottage by the roadside. She entered the garden by a wicket in the hedge; oak-trees spread their broad boughs above the thatched roof, and the border of the garden was gaudy with tulips, wallflowers, and parti-coloured daisies. Every inch of the enclosed ground was green with some vegetable or other; a minute and microscopic care had evidently been spent on every spadeful of earth the garden contained. One would hardly believe that so small a plot could produce so great a variety.
The flagstones before the door were white and clean; there was no porch, and the door was open. Felise looked in, but there was no one within; she sat down, however, on a stool outside the door, and soon noticed something moving behind the screen of green which concealed the small extent of the garden.
An aged man, much bowed, supporting himself with a hoe and a walking-stick, slowly came towards her; he had been weeding.
“She bean’t at home, she bean’t,” he said, alluding to his wife. “I was a-trying to do a little bit of weeding. And how do Abner do, miss? Do he do now? A’ was a sprack boy. I hope he suits Mr. Goring.”
This hope he had expressed every time Felise had called these four years, during which his son, who was still a boy in his eyes, had assisted Mr. Goring in the garden. Felise petted the old people; Godwin, the estate-agent or land-steward, had been heard to say that she spoiled the whole village.
“Sit down,” said Felise, offering him the stool; but the old man, with trembling eagerness, refused it, and brought himself out another, upon which he crouched, his elbows on his knees.
“You didn’t have much luck a-fishing, now, did you?” he said. “Bless you, miss, there bean’t half the fish there was in the brook when I was a boy, and they bean’t so eager for the fly. As I was a-saying, I hopes Abner be useful now; I don’t know what we should do if it weren’t for he, for I can’t do no work, nor my old missus neither. She be gone to get some wood to bile the kettle; hope as Mr. Godwin won’t catch her. He be a hard man, Miss Goring; ’tis amazing how he can be so hard.”
“You are not allowed to gather the dead wood now, then?”
“Not since Lady Day, miss. No; Mr. Godwin he came round and give them all notice that he should summon any of them as took the wood. There was something I wanted to tell you, miss—didn’t Abner tell ’ee? Maybe you haven’t seen him today. But as I was saying, I hoped to get about and do a bit of hoeing this spring—but bless you, I can’t do it. I got out in the road, and I was obliged to sit down on the flint-heap. ’Tis hard to be old, miss, and be twisted with the rheumatism. Perhaps my missus will recollect what it was when she comes in, if you will wait a moment, miss.”
“The garden looks very nice,” said Felise.
“What a lot of trouble you take with it!”
“Ah, that I do,” said the old man brightly. “I bides in un a’most all the day, and I thinks about un most of the night—I kind o’ lives by he. They will never take me away from my garden, will they, miss? They couldn’t do that now, surely.”
“I should think not, indeed.”
“How be the barley looking, miss? Did you notice as you was agoing along. There be generally some barley at the foot of the hill on Mr. Barnard’s land. A’be a likely young man, but they do say the farm bean’t looked after as it should be. Young blood is young blood, and what with riding about and sporting—let me see, what was I going to say? You knows the barley, miss; it have got black knots on the stalk. Bless you, I could use to do everything with the barley—I was a barleycorn man in my time. I could plough, that was the first thing; and sow the seed, miss; and hoe it, don’t you see, when it came up—it be a pretty plant now the barley, bean’t it? And I could reap it, and thrash it when we used to have the flails, and malt it—that’s what a-many couldn’t do. Many’s a winter I’ve spent a-malting—there’s always a good fire. And I could brew the beer, and drink it too, afterwards—ha! ha!”
The barleycorn man chuckled at the thought of his exploits with the beer.
“Have you got any ale for your dinner?” said Felise.
“Bless ’ee now, where should we get any ale from? Abner don’t bring any home, except what he carries in hisself.”
Felise opened her purse; there was a solitary half-crown in it. The coin had been there this month past, while she deliberated what she should do with it. Coins were very scarce at Beechknoll.
She gave the old man the silver, and told him to buy a pound or so of beefsteak and a little ale.
The poor old fellow was dried up for lack of blood in his veins; his stiffened joints cracked as he moved; his cheeks were a dull yellow like creased parchment; he was alive, but there was scarcely a drop of blood in him. Good juicy meat and the ale to which he had been accustomed in his youth was what he needed. He thanked her, but very quietly, with a subdued voice, very different to the high squeaky treble in which he had been talking; and, after thanking her, he remained silent. His chatter came from his head, which was growing feeble; his silence from his heart, which was yet alive.
“What is it they say about Mr. Barnard’s farm?” said Felise.
“He be young blood, you see,
