The frankness of Polly"s flatteries, and the exuberance of her whole personality, ended by producing a certain stiffness in Laura. Every now and then, in the intervals of Polly"s questions, when she ceased to be inquisitive and became confidential, Laura would wonder to herself. She would half shut her eyes, trying to recall the mental image of her cousins and of the farm, with which she had started that morning from Bannisdale; or she would think of her father, his modes of life and speech--was he really connected, and how, with this place and its inmates? She had expected something simple and patriarchal. She had found a family of peasants, living in a struggling, penurious way--a grim mother speaking broad dialect, a son with no pretensions to refinement or education, except perhaps through his music--and a daughter----
Laura turned an attentive eye on Polly, on her high and red cheek-bones, the extravagant fringe that vulgarised all her honest face, the Sunday dress of stone-coloured alpaca, profusely trimmed with magenta ribbons.
"I will--I _will_ like her!" she said to herself--"I am a horrid, sn.o.bbish, fastidious little wretch."
But her spirits had sunk. When Polly left her she leant for a moment upon the sill of the open window, and looked out. Across the dirty, uneven yard, where the manure lay in heaps outside the byre doors, she saw the rude farm buildings huddled against each other in a mean, unsightly group. Down below, from the house porch apparently, a cracked bell began to ring, and from some doors opposite three labourers, the "hired men,"
who lived and boarded on the farm, came out. The first two were elderly men, gnarled and bent like tough trees that have fought the winter; the third was a youth. They were tidily dressed in Sunday clothes, for their work was done, and they were ready for the afternoon"s holiday.
They walked across to the farmhouse in silence, one behind the other. Not even the young fellow raised his eyes to the window and the girl framed within it. Behind them came a gust of piercing easterly wind. A cloud had covered the sun. The squalid farmyard, the bare fell-side beyond it, the distant levels of the marsh, had taken to themselves a cold forbidding air. Laura again imagined it in December--a waste of snow, with the farm making an ugly spot upon the white, and the little black-bearded sheep she could see feeding on the fell, crowding under the rocks for shelter.
But this time she shivered. All the spell was broken. To live up here with this madwoman, this strange youth--and Polly! Yet it seemed to her that something drew her to Cousin Elizabeth--if she were not so mad. How strange to find this abhorrence of Mr. Helbeck among these people--so different, so remote! She remembered her own words--"I am sure I _shall_ hate him!"--not without a stab of conscience. What had she been doing--perhaps--but adding her own injustice to theirs?
She stood lost in a young puzzle and heat of feeling--half angry, half repentant.
But only for a second. Then certain phrases of Augustina"s rang through her mind--she saw herself standing in the corner of the chapel while the others prayed. Every pulse tightened--her whole nature leapt again in defiance. She seemed to be holding something at bay--a tyrannous power that threatened humiliation and hypocrisy, that seemed at the same time to be prying into secret things--things it should never, never know--and never rule! Yes, she did understand Cousin Elizabeth--she _did_!
The dinner went sadly. The viands were heavy: so were the faces of the labourers, and the air of the low-raftered kitchen, heated as it was by a huge fire, and pervaded by the smell from the farmyard. Laura felt it all very strange, the presence of the farm servants at the same table with the Masons and herself--the long silences that no one made an effort to break--the relations between Hubert and his mother.
As for the labourers, Mason addressed them now and then in a bullying voice, and they spoke to him as little as they could. It seemed to Laura that there was an alliance between them and the mother against a lazy and incompetent master; and that the lad"s vanity was perpetually alive to it. Again and again he would pull himself together, attempt the gentleman, and devote himself to his young lady guest. But in the midst of their conversation he would hear something at the other end of the table, and suddenly there would come a burst of fierce unintelligible speech between him and the mistress of the house, while the labourers sat silent and sly, and Polly"s loud laugh would break in, trying to make peace.
Laura"s cool grey eyes followed the youth with a constant critical wonder. In any other circ.u.mstances she would not have thought him worth an instant"s attention. She had all the supercilious impatience of the pretty girl accustomed to choose her company. But this odd fact of kinship held and hara.s.sed her. She wanted to understand these Masons--her father"s folk.
"Now he is really talking quite nicely," she said to herself on one occasion, when Hubert had found in the gifts and accomplishments of his friend Castle, the organist, a subject that untied his tongue and made him almost agreeable. Suddenly a question caught his ear.
"Daffady, did tha turn the coo?" said his mother in a loud voice. Even in the homeliest question it had the same penetrating, pa.s.sionate quality that belonged to her gaze--to her whole personality indeed.
Hubert dropped his phrase--and his knife and fork--and stared angrily at Daffady, the old cowman and carter.
Daffady threw his master a furtive look, then munched through a mouthful of bread and cheese without replying.
He was a grey and taciturn person, with a provocative look of patience.
"What tha bin doin wi" th" coo?" said Hubert sharply. "I left her mysel n.o.bbut half an hour sen."
Daffady turned his head again in Hubert"s direction for a moment, then deliberately addressed the mistress.
"Aye, aye, missus"--he spoke in a high small voice--"A turned her reet enoof, an a gied her soom fresh straa for her yed. She doin varra middlin."
"If she"d been turned yesterday in a proper fashion, she"d ha" bin on her feet by now," said Mrs. Mason, with a glance at her son.
"Nowt o" t" soart, mother," cried Hubert. He leant forward, flushed with wrath, or beer--his potations had begun to fill Laura with dismay--and spoke with a hectoring violence. "I tell tha when t" farrier cam oop last night, he said she"d been managed first-rate! If yo and Daffady had yor way wi" yor fallals an yor nonsense, yo"d never leave a poor sick creetur alone for five minutes; I towd Daffady to let her be, an I"ll let him knaa who"s measter here!"
He glared at the carter, quite regardless of Laura"s presence. Polly coughed loudly, and tried to make a diversion by getting up to clear away the plates. The three combatants took no notice.
Daffady slowly ran his tongue round his lips; then he said, again looking at the mistress:
"If a hadna turned her I dew believe she"d ha" gien oos t" slip--she was terr"ble swollen as "twos."
"I tell tha to let her be!" thundered Hubert. "If she deas, that"s ma consarn; I"ll ha" noa meddlin wi" my orders--dost tha hear?"
"Aye, it wor thirrty poond thraan awa la.s.st month, an it"ll be thirrty poond this," said his mother slowly; "thoo art fine at shoutin. Bit thy fadther had need ha" addlet his bra.s.s--to gie thee summat to thraw oot o"
winder."
Hubert rose from the table with an oath, stood for an instant looking down at Laura,--glowering, and pulling fiercely at his moustache,--then, noisily opening the front door, he strode across the yard to the byres.
There was an instant"s silence. Then Mrs. Mason rose with her hands clasped before her, her eyes half closed.
"For what we ha" received, the Lord mak" us truly thankful," she said in a loud, nasal voice. "Amen."
After dinner, Laura put on an ap.r.o.n of Polly"s, and helped her cousin to clear away. Mrs. Mason had gruffly bade her sit still, but when the girl persisted, she herself--flushed with dinner and combat--took her seat on the settle, opposite to old Daffady, and deliberately made holiday, watching Stephen"s daughter all the time from the black eyes that roved and shone so strangely under the s.h.a.ggy brows and the white hair.
The old cowman sat hunched over the fire, smoking his pipe for a time in beatific silence.
But presently Laura, as she went to and fro, caught s.n.a.t.c.hes of conversation.
"Did tha go ta Laysgill last Sunday?" said Mrs. Mason abruptly.
Daffady removed his pipe.
"Aye, a went, an a preeched. It wor a varra stirrin meetin. Sum o" yor paid preests sud ha" bin theer. A gien it "em strang. A tried ta hit "em all--baith gert an lile."
There was a pause, then he added placidly:
"A likely suden"t suit them varra weel. Theer was a mon beside me, as pooed me down afoor a"d hofe doon."
"Tha sudna taak o" "paid preests," Daffady," said Mrs. Mason severely.
"Tha doosna understand nowt o" thattens."
Daffady glanced slyly at his mistress--at the "Church-pride" implied in the att.i.tude of her capacious form, in the shining of the Sunday alpaca and black silk ap.r.o.n.
"Mebbe not," he said mildly, "mebbe not." And he resumed his pipe.
On another occasion, as Laura went flitting across the kitchen, drawing to herself the looks of both its inmates, she heard what seemed to be a fragment of talk about a funeral.
"Aye, poor Jenny!" said Mrs. Mason. "They didna mak" mich account on her whan t" breath wor yanst oot on her."
"Nay,"--Daffady shook his head for sympathy,--"it wor a varra poor set-oot, wor Jenny"s buryin. Nowt but tay, an sic-like."
Mrs. Mason raised two gaunt hands and let them drop again on her knee.
"I shud ha" thowt they"d ha" bin ashamed," she said. "Jenny"s bra.s.s ull do "em noa gude. She wor a fule to leave it to "un."
Daffady withdrew his pipe again. His lantern-jawed face, furrowed with slow thought, hung over the blaze.
"Aye," he said, "aye. Wal, I"ve buried three childer--an I"m n.o.bbut a labrin mon--but a thank the Lord I ha buried them aw--wi" ham."