“I ain’t got half a bundle,” she grunted. “Thaay won’t let a pore old body glean when a-can’t rip.”
“Well, it’s beautiful weather for the harvest.”
“Aw, eez—the het (heat) makes um giddy: our ould Bill fell down; the gearden be a-spoiling for rain.”
“The farmers pay good wages now, don’t they?”
“Um pays what um be obliged to.”
“You have a good landlord here—Squire Thorpe.”
“He! Drotted ould skinvlint! You go and look at thaay cottages: thaay be his’n. The rain comes drough the thatch, and he won’t mend it. I be forced to put a umberella auver my bed nights when it rains.”
“At all events, the farmers like him.”
“Do um? Never heard say zo. His rabbits yeats their crops like a flock of sheep.”
“The vicar—Mr. Basil—is kind to the poor, is he not?” asked Valentine, forgetting for the moment his own ill-temper in the old woman’s bitterness and abuse of everybody and everything. He was most surprised at her venomous spite against the squire, who he knew was of a kindly disposition. She perfectly hissed at the mention of the vicar.
“Our paason! ould varmint—a gives all the coals and blankets at Christmas to thaay as goes to church, and narn to thaay as be chapel-volk. What have he done with the widders’ money, I wants to knaw?”
“What money was that?”
“Why, that as was left to us widders of this yer parish forever: you med see it stuck up in the chancel. I never seed none of it, nor anybody else as ever I heard tell on.”
“But you get wine and luxuries, no doubt, when ill?”
“A vine lot: it bean’t for such as we.”
“You seem to have some industrious people in the village, however: now, that little grocer’s shop where they sell—”
“You means Betsy Warren, what sells tobacco and snuff and lollipops and whipcord. Her buys hares and birds from the poachers—her will get notice to quit zum o’ these yer days.”
“But the blacksmith works hard. I always hear his hammer when I go by.”
“What—he! The justices fined he a pound a bit ago for fighting Mathew the cobbler. Mathew lives with Thompson’s wife—he as was transported for firing Farmer Ruck’s rick-barken. That be a vine thing—her be as bad as he.”
“The new school will set you to rights.”
“Aw, will a’? The schoolmaster kissed one of the wenches, and got sent away; but them Timothy wenches bean’t no better than um should be.”
“Who’s Timothy?”
“Doan’t you knaw ould Timothy? He be a mower—a’ will drink dree gallons a day. That young Sam’l lodges with he: he be a shepherd, a’ be a new chap. I doan’t knaw much about he, but I’ve hearn as a’ had six weeks for stealing lambs.”
“H’m!” said Valentine, smiling. “They all seem a bad lot.”
“Zo um be.”
“But surely Mrs. Estcourt is good to the poor: you don’t know anything against her?”
“Aw, doan’t I? What be her daughter up to? What wur her a-doing on the Down thuck night with thuck gurt lanky chap from the squire’s as goes arter her? Mebbe you knaws un.”
“When was it?” asked Valentine, with sudden interest, all his annoyance and bitterness returning. “What do you mean?”
“Miss Margaret—a vine miss she be; zo grand. Lord, I minds when farmers’ daughters was Molly and Marjory, and no vine Miss about it. That ould Jane, the housekeeper at Fisher’s—warn you knaws her?—her tould zum on um, and zum on um told Mathew, as tould Betsy, as tould I.”
“Told what?” sharply.
“What I ses, to be zure. Miss and he wur out thegither amain bit thuck night. ’Tain’t no use caddling I—I can’t tell ee no more. What, bean’t you going to carry that basket no furder?”
For as they reached the top of the hill, Valentine, angry now, handed it back to her; she barely took it, and made no sign of thanks.
“Mebbe you’ll give I a bit of snuff?” she said. He gave her a shilling and strode on swiftly, full of furious thoughts, the more so because all these innuendoes afforded nothing by which an open quarrel could be fixed on Geoffrey.
“This is intolerable,” he said to himself, “that he should make Margaret a common talk among these people. What on earth did the old woman allude to, and how came that earring lost?”
It was a pity that the Down adventure had been kept secret; and yet it was natural enough that it should be. The old woman, as Valentine walked rapidly on in the dusk, put the shilling in her pocket, readjusted her burden, and tottered on, muttering to herself, “The gurt chattering fool to come a’ hindering I!”
IX
Gleaning
Once more Andrew Fisher, aged ninety years, sat in his beehive chair facing the western window in Warren House. The sun was sinking, and seemed to hang over the distant vale, towards which the old man’s countenance was turned. Once more the sickle had done its work, and the golden grain was garnered. For the shadow of the days had gone forward upon the dial, whose ancient graven circles, dimmed with green rust, timed the equinox and the march of the firmament. The merry barley was laid low; and the acorns—first green, then faintly yellow—were ripening brown in their cups upon the oaks.
On the ledge of the chimney, where the level rays came warmest, and stone and tile radiated heat, the last lingering swallows twittered a long farewell. For the oxen had already felt the drag of the heavy plough. The ivy flowered on the wall, blossoming for winter, and there was a buzz of flies gathering on the pane towards the sun. As a ripe pear that waited but the rude shock of the wind, the full year was bending to its fall. Overhead the rooks were floating idly home down towards Thorpe Wood. The long files of the black army streaked the sky with streaming thousands far as the eye could see, and filled the air with the strange rush and creaking of their
