"Who lives in the old house behind the plantation?"
"Old Gammer Martin, my lady, and her grandson."
"He has neither father nor mother, then?"
"Not a single one, my lady."
"Where was he educated?"
"At Warborne,--a place where they draw up young gam"sters" brains like rhubarb under a ninepenny pan, my lady, excusing my common way. They hit so much larning into en that "a could talk like the day of Pentecost; which is a wonderful thing for a simple boy, and his mother only the plainest ciphering woman in the world. Warborne Grammar School--that"s where "twas "a went to. His father, the reverent Pa"son St. Cleeve, made a terrible bruckle hit in "s marrying, in the sight of the high. He were the curate here, my lady, for a length o" time."
"Oh, curate," said Lady Constantine. "It was before I knew the village."
"Ay, long and merry ago! And he married Farmer Martin"s daughter--Giles Martin, a limberish man, who used to go rather bad upon his lags, if you can mind. I knowed the man well enough; who should know en better! The maid was a poor windling thing, and, though a playward piece o" flesh when he married her, "a socked and sighed, and went out like a snoff!
Yes, my lady. Well, when Pa"son St. Cleeve married this homespun woman the toppermost folk wouldn"t speak to his wife. Then he dropped a cuss or two, and said he"d no longer get his living by curing their twopenny souls o" such d--- nonsense as that (excusing my common way), and he took to farming straightway, and then "a dropped down dead in a nor"-west thunderstorm; it being said--hee-hee!--that Master G.o.d was in tantrums wi"en for leaving his service,--hee-hee! I give the story as I heard it, my lady, but be dazed if I believe in such trumpery about folks in the sky, nor anything else that"s said on "em, good or bad. Well, Swithin, the boy, was sent to the grammar school, as I say for; but what with having two stations of life in his blood he"s good for nothing, my lady.
He mopes about--sometimes here, and sometimes there; n.o.body troubles about en."
Lady Constantine thanked her informant, and proceeded onward. To her, as a woman, the most curious feature in the afternoon"s incident was that this lad, of striking beauty, scientific attainments, and cultivated bearing, should be linked, on the maternal side, with a local agricultural family through his father"s matrimonial eccentricity. A more attractive feature in the case was that the same youth, so capable of being ruined by flattery, blandishment, pleasure, even gross prosperity, should be at present living on in a primitive Eden of unconsciousness, with aims towards whose accomplishment a Caliban shape would have been as effective as his own.
II
Swithin St. Cleeve lingered on at his post, until the more sanguine birds of the plantation, already recovering from their midwinter anxieties, piped a short evening hymn to the vanishing sun.
The landscape was gently concave; with the exception of tower and hill there were no points on which late rays might linger; and hence the dish- shaped ninety acres of tilled land a.s.sumed a uniform hue of shade quite suddenly. The one or two stars that appeared were quickly clouded over, and it was soon obvious that there would be no sweeping the heavens that night. After tying a piece of tarpaulin, which had once seen service on his maternal grandfather"s farm, over all the apparatus around him, he went down the stairs in the dark, and locked the door.
With the key in his pocket he descended through the underwood on the side of the slope opposite to that trodden by Lady Constantine, and crossed the field in a line mathematically straight, and in a manner that left no traces, by keeping in the same furrow all the way on tiptoe. In a few minutes he reached a little dell, which occurred quite unexpectedly on the other side of the field-fence, and descended to a venerable thatched house, whose enormous roof, broken up by dormers as big as hayc.o.c.ks, could be seen even in the twilight. Over the white walls, built of chalk in the lump, outlines of creepers formed dark patterns, as if drawn in charcoal.
Inside the house his maternal grandmother was sitting by a wood fire.
Before it stood a pipkin, in which something was evidently kept warm. An eight-legged oak table in the middle of the room was laid for a meal.
This woman of eighty, in a large mob cap, under which she wore a little cap to keep the other clean, retained faculties but little blunted. She was gazing into the flames, with her hands upon her knees, quietly re- enacting in her brain certain of the long chain of episodes, pathetic, tragical, and humorous, which had const.i.tuted the parish history for the last sixty years. On Swithin"s entry she looked up at him in a sideway direction.
"You should not have waited for me, granny," he said.
""Tis of no account, my child. I"ve had a nap while sitting here. Yes, I"ve had a nap, and went straight up into my old country again, as usual.
The place was as natural as when I left it,--e"en just threescore years ago! All the folks and my old aunt were there, as when I was a child,--yet I suppose if I were really to set out and go there, hardly a soul would be left alive to say to me, dog how art! But tell Hannah to stir her stumps and serve supper--though I"d fain do it myself, the poor old soul is getting so unhandy!"
Hannah revealed herself to be much nimbler and several years younger than granny, though of this the latter seemed to be oblivious. When the meal was nearly over Mrs. Martin produced the contents of the mysterious vessel by the fire, saying that she had caused it to be brought in from the back kitchen, because Hannah was hardly to be trusted with such things, she was becoming so childish.
"What is it, then?" said Swithin. "Oh, one of your special puddings." At sight of it, however, he added reproachfully, "Now, granny!"
Instead of being round, it was in shape an irregular boulder that had been exposed to the weather for centuries--a little sc.r.a.p pared off here, and a little piece broken away there; the general aim being, nevertheless, to avoid destroying the symmetry of the pudding while taking as much as possible of its substance.
"The fact is," added Swithin, "the pudding is half gone!"
"I"ve only sliced off the merest paring once or twice, to taste if it was well done!" pleaded granny Martin, with wounded feelings. "I said to Hannah when she took it up, "Put it here to keep it warm, as there"s a better fire than in the back kitchen.""
"Well, I am not going to eat any of it!" said Swithin decisively, as he rose from the table, pushed away his chair, and went up-stairs; the "other station of life that was in his blood," and which had been brought out by the grammar school, probably stimulating him.
"Ah, the world is an ungrateful place! "Twas a pity I didn"t take my poor name off this earthly calendar and creep under ground sixty long years ago, instead of leaving my own county to come here!" mourned old Mrs. Martin. "But I told his mother how "twould be--marrying so many notches above her. The child was sure to chaw high, like his father!"
When Swithin had been up-stairs a minute or two however, he altered his mind, and coming down again ate all the pudding, with the aspect of a person undertaking a deed of great magnanimity. The relish with which he did so restored the unison that knew no more serious interruptions than such as this.
"Mr. Torkingham has been here this afternoon," said his grandmother; "and he wants me to let him meet some of the choir here to-night for practice.
They who live at this end of the parish won"t go to his house to try over the tunes, because "tis so far, they say, and so "tis, poor men. So he"s going to see what coming to them will do. He asks if you would like to join."
"I would if I had not so much to do."
"But it is cloudy to-night."
"Yes; but I have calculations without end, granny. Now, don"t you tell him I"m in the house, will you? and then he"ll not ask for me."
"But if he should, must I then tell a lie, Lord forgive me?"
"No, you can say I"m up-stairs; he must think what he likes. Not a word about the astronomy to any of them, whatever you do. I should be called a visionary, and all sorts."
"So thou beest, child. Why can"t ye do something that"s of use?"
At the sound of footsteps Swithin beat a hasty retreat up-stairs, where he struck a light, and revealed a table covered with books and papers, while round the walls hung star-maps, and other diagrams ill.u.s.trative of celestial phenomena. In a corner stood a huge pasteboard tube, which a close inspection would have shown to be intended for a telescope. Swithin hung a thick cloth over the window, in addition to the curtains, and sat down to his papers. On the ceiling was a black stain of smoke, and under this he placed his lamp, evidencing that the midnight oil was consumed on that precise spot very often.
Meanwhile there had entered to the room below a personage who, to judge from her voice and the quick pit-pat of her feet, was a maiden young and blithe. Mrs. Martin welcomed her by the t.i.tle of Miss Tabitha Lark, and inquired what wind had brought her that way; to which the visitor replied that she had come for the singing.
"Sit ye down, then," said granny. "And do you still go to the House to read to my lady?"
"Yes, I go and read, Mrs. Martin; but as to getting my lady to hearken, that"s more than a team of six horses could force her to do."
The girl had a remarkably smart and fluent utterance, which was probably a cause, or a consequence, of her vocation.
""Tis the same story, then?" said grandmother Martin.
"Yes. Eaten out with listlessness. She"s neither sick nor sorry, but how dull and dreary she is, only herself can tell. When I get there in the morning, there she is sitting up in bed, for my lady don"t care to get up; and then she makes me bring this book and that book, till the bed is heaped up with immense volumes that half bury her, making her look, as she leans upon her elbow, like the stoning of Stephen. She yawns; then she looks towards the tall gla.s.s; then she looks out at the weather, mooning her great black eyes, and fixing them on the sky as if they stuck there, while my tongue goes flick-flack along, a hundred and fifty words a minute; then she looks at the clock; then she asks me what I"ve been reading."
"Ah, poor soul!" said granny. "No doubt she says in the morning, "Would G.o.d it were evening," and in the evening, "Would G.o.d it were morning,"
like the disobedient woman in Deuteronomy."
Swithin, in the room overhead, had suspended his calculations, for the duologue interested him. There now crunched heavier steps outside the door, and his grandmother could be heard greeting sundry local representatives of the ba.s.s and tenor voice, who lent a cheerful and well- known personality to the names Sammy Blore, Nat Chapman, Hezekiah Biles, and Haymoss Fry (the latter being one with whom the reader has already a distant acquaintance); besides these came small producers of treble, who had not yet developed into such distinctive units of society as to require particularizing.
"Is the good man come?" asked Nat Chapman. "No,--I see we be here afore him. And how is it with aged women to-night, Mrs. Martin?"
"Tedious traipsing enough with this one, Nat. Sit ye down. Well, little Freddy, you don"t wish in the morning that "twere evening, and at evening that "twere morning again, do you, Freddy, trust ye for it?"
"Now, who might wish such a thing as that, Mrs Martin?--n.o.body in this parish?" asked Sammy Blore curiously.
"My lady is always wishing it," spoke up Miss Tabitha Lark.
"Oh, she! n.o.body can be answerable for the wishes of that onnatural tribe of mankind. Not but that the woman"s heart-strings is tried in many aggravating ways."