Classic Works from Women Writers

by Editors of Canterbury Classics

  “Come on Friday, if you can,” were her last words as she stood at the curate-door, shading her eyes from the sinking sun with her hand. Inside the house sate cousin Phillis, her golden hair, her dazzling complexion, lighting up the corner of the vine-shadowed room. She had not risen when I bade her good-by; she had looked at me straight as she said her tranquil words of farewell.

  I found Mr. Holdsworth down at the line, hard at work superintending. As soon as he had a pause, he said, “Well, Manning, what are the new cousins like? How do preaching and farming seem to get on together? If the minister turns out to be practical as well as reverend, I shall begin to respect him.”

  But he hardly attended to my answer, he was so much more occupied with directing his work-people. Indeed, my answer did not come very readily; and the most distinct part of it was the mention of the invitation that had been given me.

  “Oh, of course you can go—and on Friday, too, if you like; there is no reason why not this week; and you’ve done a long spell of work this time, old fellow.” I thought that I did not want to go on Friday; but when the day came, I found that I should prefer going to staying away, so I availed myself of Mr. Holdsworth’s permission, and went over to Hope Farm some time in the afternoon, a little later than my last visit. I found the “curate” open to admit the soft September air, so tempered by the warmth of the sun, that it was warmer out of doors than in, although the wooden log lay smouldering in front of a heap of hot ashes on the hearth. The vine-leaves over the window had a tinge more yellow, their edges were here and there scorched and browned; there was no ironing about, and cousin Holman sate just outside the house, mending a shirt. Phillis was at her knitting indoors: it seemed as if she had been at it all the week. The manyspeckled fowls were pecking about in the farmyard beyond, and the milk-cans glittered with brightness, hung out to sweeten. The court was so full of flowers that they crept out upon the low-covered wall and horse-mount, and were even to be found self-sown upon the turf that bordered the path to the back of the house. I fancied that my Sunday coat was scented for days afterwards by the bushes of sweetbriar and the fraxinella that perfumed the air. From time to time cousin Holman put her hand into a covered basket at her feet, and threw handsful of corn down for the pigeons that cooed and fluttered in the air around, in expectation of this treat.

  I had a thorough welcome as soon as she saw me. “Now this is kind—this is right down friendly,” shaking my hand warmly. “Phillis, your cousin Manning is come!”

  “Call me Paul, will you?” said I; “they call me so at home, and Manning in the office.”

  “Well, Paul, then. Your room is all ready for you, Paul, for, as I said to the minister, “I’ll have it ready whether he comes on Friday or not.” And the minister said he must go up to the Ashfield whether you were to come or not; but he would come home betimes to see if you were here. I’ll show you to your room, and you can wash the dust off a bit.”

  After I came down, I think she did not quite know what to do with me; or she might think that I was dull; or she might have work to do in which I hindered her; for she called Phillis, and bade her put on her bonnet, and go with me to the Ashfield, and find father. So we set off, I in a little flutter of a desire to make myself agreeable, but wishing that my companion were not quite so tall; for she was above me in height. While I was wondering how to begin our conversation, she took up the words.

  “I suppose, cousin Paul, you have to be very busy at your work all day long in general.”

  “Yes, we have to be in the office at half-past eight; and we have an hour for dinner, and then we go at it again till eight or nine.”

  “Then you have not much time for reading.”

  “No,” said I, with a sudden consciousness that I did not make the most of what leisure I had.

  “No more have I. Father always gets an hour before going a-field in the mornings, but mother does not like me to get up so early.”

  “My mother is always wanting me to get up earlier when I am at home.”

  “What time do you get up?”

  “Oh!—ah!—sometimes half-past six: not often though”; for I remembered only twice that I had done so during the past summer.

  She turned her head and looked at me.

  “Father is up at three; and so was mother till she was ill. I should like to be up at four.”

  “Your father up at three! Why, what has he to do at that hour?”

  “What has he not to do? He has his private exercise in his own room; he always rings the great bell which calls the men to milking; he rouses up Betty, our maid; as often as not he gives the horses their feed before the man is up—for Jem, who takes care of the horses, is an old man; and father is always loth to disturb him; he looks at the calves, and the shoulders, heels, traces, chaff, and corn before the horses go a-field; he has often to whip-cord the plough-whips; he sees the hogs fed; he looks into the swill-tubs, and writes his orders for what is wanted for food for man and beast; yes, and for fuel, too. And then, if he has a bit of time to spare, he comes in and reads with me—but only English; we keep Latin for the evenings, that we may have time to enjoy it; and then he calls in the men to breakfast, and cuts the boys’ bread and cheese; and sees their wooden bottles filled, and sends them off to their work;—and by this time it is half-past six, and we have our breakfast. There is father,” she exclaimed, pointing out to me a man in his shirt-sleeves, taller by the head than the other two with whom he was working. We only saw him through the leaves of the ash-trees growing in the hedge, and I thought I must be confusing the figures, or mistaken: that man still looked like a very powerful labourer, and had none of the precise demureness of appearance which I had always imagined was the characteristic of a minister. It was the Reverend Ebenezer Holman, however. He gave us a nod as we entered the stubble-field; and I think he would have come to meet us but that he was in the middle of giving some directions to his men. I could see that Phillis was built more after his type than her mother’s. He, like his daughter, was largely made, and of a fair, ruddy complexion, whereas hers was brilliant and delicate. His hair had been yellow or sandy, but now was grizzled. Yet his grey hairs betokened no failure in strength. I never saw a more powerful man—deep chest, lean flanks, well-planted head. By this time we were nearly up to him; and he interrupted himself and stepped forwards; holding out his hand to me, but addressing Phillis.

  “Well, my lass, this is cousin Manning, I suppose. Wait a minute, young man, and I’ll put on my coat, and give you a decorous and formal welcome. But—Ned Hall, there ought to be a water-furrow across this land: it’s a nasty, stiff, clayey, dauby bit of ground, and thou and I must fall to, come next Monday—I beg your pardon, cousin Manning—and there’s old Jem’s cottage wants a bit of thatch; you can do that job tomorrow while I am busy.” Then, suddenly changing the tone of his deep bass voice to an odd suggestion of chapels and preachers, he added. “Now, I will give out the psalm, ‘Come all harmonious tongues,’ to be sung to ‘Mount Ephraim’ tune.”

  He lifted his spade in his hand, and began to beat time with it; the two labourers seemed to know both words and music, though I did not; and so did Phillis: her rich voice followed her father’s as he set the tune; and the men came in with more uncertainty, but still harmoniously. Phillis looked at me once or twice with a little surprise at my silence; but I did not know the words. There we five stood, bareheaded, excepting Phillis, in the tawny stubble-field, from which all the shocks of corn had not yet been carried—a dark wood on one side, where the woodpigeons were cooing; blue distance seen through the ash-trees on the other. Somehow, I think that if I had known the words, and could have sung, my throat would have been choked up by the feeling of the unaccustomed scene.

  The hymn was ended, and the men had drawn off before I could stir. I saw the minister beginning to put on his coat, and looking at me with friendly inspection in his gaze, before I could rouse myself.

  “I dare say you railway gentlemen don’t wind up the day with
singing a psalm together,” said he; “but it is not a bad practice—not a bad practice. We have had it a bit earlier today for hospitality’s sake—that’s all.”

  I had nothing particular to say to this, though I was thinking a great deal. From time to time I stole a look at my companion. His coat was black, and so was his waistcoat; neckcloth he had none, his strong full throat being bare above the snow-white shirt. He wore drab-coloured knee-breeches, grey worsted stockings (I thought I knew the maker), and strong-nailed shoes. He carried his hat in his hand, as if he liked to feel the coming breeze lifting his hair. After a while, I saw that the father took hold of the daughter’s hand, and so, they holding each other, went along towards home. We had to cross a lane. In it were two little children, one lying prone on the grass in a passion of crying, the other standing stock still, with its finger in its mouth, the large tears slowly rolling down its cheeks for sympathy. The cause of their distress was evident; there was a broken brown pitcher, and a little pool of spilt milk on the road.

  “Hollo! Hollo! What’s all this?” said the minister. “Why, what have you been about, Tommy,” lifting the little petticoated lad, who was lying sobbing, with one vigorous arm. Tommy looked at him with surprise in his round eyes, but no affright—they were evidently old acquaintances.

  “Mammy’s jug!” said he, at last, beginning to cry afresh.

  “Well! and will crying piece mammy’s jug, or pick up spilt milk? How did you manage it, Tommy?”

  “He” (jerking his head at the other) “and me was running races.”

  “Tommy said he could beat me,” put in the other.

  “Now, I wonder what will make you two silly lads mind, and not run races again with a pitcher of milk between you,” said the minister, as if musing. “I might flog you, and so save mammy the trouble; for I dare say she’ll do it if I don’t.” The fresh burst of whimpering from both showed the probability of this.

  “Or I might take you to the Hope Farm, and give you some more milk; but then you’d be running races again, and my milk would follow that to the ground, and make another white pool. I think the flogging would be best—don’t you?”

  “We would never run races no more,” said the elder of the two.

  “Then you’d not be boys; you’d be angels.”

  “No, we shouldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  They looked into each other’s eyes for an answer to this puzzling question. At length, one said, “Angels is dead folk.”

  “Come; we’ll not get too deep into theology. What do you think of my lending you a tin can with a lid to carry the milk home in? That would not break, at any rate; though I would not answer for the milk not spilling if you ran races. That’s it!”

  He had dropped his daughter’s hand, and now held out each of his to the little fellows. Phillis and I followed, and listened to the prattle which the minister’s companions now poured out to him, and which he was evidently enjoying. At a certain point, there was a sudden burst of the tawny, ruddy-evening landscape. The minister turned round and quoted a line or two of Latin.

  “It’s wonderful,” said he, “how exactly Virgil has hit the enduring epithets, nearly two thousand years ago, and in Italy; and yet how it describes to a T what is now lying before us in the parish of Heathbridge, county ——, England.”

  “I dare say it does,” said I, all aglow with shame, for I had forgotten the little Latin I ever knew.

  The minister shifted his eyes to Phillis’s face; it mutely gave him back the sympathetic appreciation that I, in my ignorance, could not bestow.

  “Oh! this is worse than the catechism,” thought I; “that was only remembering words.”

  “Phillis, lass, thou must go home with these lads, and tell their mother all about the race and the milk. Mammy must always know the truth,” now speaking to the children. “And tell her, too, from me that I have got the best birch rod in the parish; and that if she ever thinks her children want a flogging she must bring them to me, and, if I think they deserve it, I’ll give it them better than she can.” So Phillis led the children towards the dairy, somewhere in the back yard, and I followed the minister in through the “curate” into the house-place. “Their mother,” said he, “is a bit of a vixen, and apt to punish her children without rhyme or reason. I try to keep the parish rod as well as the parish bull.”

  He sate down in the three-cornered chair by the fire-side, and looked around the empty room.

  “Where’s the missus?” said he to himself. But she was there in a minute; it was her regular plan to give him his welcome home—by a look, by a touch, nothing more—as soon as she could after his return, and he had missed her now. Regardless of my presence, he went over the day’s doings to her; and then, getting up, he said he must go and make himself “reverend,” and that then we would have a cup of tea in the parlour. The parlour was a large room with two casemented windows on the other side of the broad flagged passage leading from the rector-door to the wide staircase, with its shallow, polished oaken steps, on which no carpet was ever laid. The parlour-floor was covered in the middle by a home-made carpeting of needlework and list. One or two quaint family pictures of the Holman family hung round the walls; the firegrate and irons were much ornamented with brass; and on a table against the wall between the windows, a great beau-pot of flowers was placed upon the folio volumes of Matthew Henry’s Bible. It was a compliment to me to use this room, and I tried to be grateful for it; but we never had our meals there after that first day, and I was glad of it; for the large house-place, living room, dining-room, whichever you might like to call it, was twice as comfortable and cheerful. There was a rug in front of the great large fire-place, and an oven by the grate, and a crook, with the kettle hanging from it, over the bright wood-fire; everything that ought to be black and polished in that room was black and Polished; and the flags, and window-curtains, and such things as were to be white and clean, were just spotless in their purity. Opposite to the fire-place, extending the whole length of the room, was an oaken shovel-board, with the right incline for a skilful player to send the weights into the prescribed space. There were baskets of white work about, and a small shelf of books hung against the wall, books used for reading, and not for propping up a beau-pot of flowers. I took down one or two of those books once when I was left alone in the house-place on the first evening—Virgil, Caesar, a Greek grammar—oh, dear! ah, me! and Phillis Holman’s name in each of them! I shut them up, and put them back in their places, and walked as far away from the bookshelf as I could. Yes, and I gave my cousin Phillis a wide berth, as though she was sitting at her work quietly enough, and her hair was looking more golden, her dark eyelashes longer, her round pillar of a throat whiter than ever. We had done tea, and we had returned into the house-place that the minister might smoke his pipe without fear of contaminating the drab damask window-curtains of the parlour. He had made himself “reverend” by putting on one of the voluminous white muslin neckcloths that I had seen cousin Holman ironing that first visit I had paid to the Hope Farm, and by making one or two other unimportant changes in his dress. He sate looking steadily at me, but whether he saw me or not I cannot tell. At the time I fancied that he did, and was gauging me in some unknown fashion in his secret mind. Every now and then he took his pipe out of his mouth, knocked out the ashes, and asked me some fresh question. As long as these related to my acquirements or my reading, I shuffled uneasily and did not know what to answer. By-and-by he got round to the more practical subject of railroads, and on this I was more at home. I really had taken an interest in my work; nor would Mr. Holdsworth, indeed, have kept me in his employment if I had not given my mind as well as my time to it; and I was, besides, full of the difficulties which beset us just then, owing to our not being able to find a steady bottom on the Heathbridge moss, over which we wished to carry our line. In the midst of all my eagerness in speaking about this, I could not help being struck with the extreme pertinence of his questions. I do not mean that he di
d not show ignorance of many of the details of engineering: that was to have been expected; but on the premises he had got hold of; he thought clearly and reasoned logically. Phillis—so like him as she was both in body and mind—kept stopping at her work and looking at me, trying to fully understand all that I said. I felt she did; and perhaps it made me take more pains in using clear expressions, and arranging my words, than I otherwise should.

  “She shall see I know something worth knowing, though it mayn’t be her dead-and-gone languages,” thought I.

  “I see,” said the minister, at length. “I understand it all. You’ve a clear, good head of your own, my lad—choose how you came by it.”

  “From my father,” said I, proudly. “Have you not heard of his discovery of a new method of shunting? It was in the Gazette. It was patented. I thought every one had heard of Manning’s patent winch.”

  “We don’t know who invented the alphabet,” said he, half smiling, and taking up his pipe.

  “No, I dare say not, sir,” replied I, half offended; “that’s so long ago.” Puff—puff—puff.

  “But your father must be a notable man. I heard of him once before; and it is not many a one fifty miles away whose fame reaches Heathbridge.”

  “My father is a notable man, sir. It is not me that says so; it is Mr. Holdsworth, and—and everybody.”

  “He is right to stand up for his father,” said cousin Holman, as if she were pleading for me.

  I chafed inwardly, thinking that my father needed no one to stand up for him. He was man sufficient for himself.

  “Yes—he is right,” said the minister, placidly. “Right, because it comes from his heart—right, too, as I believe, in point of fact. Else there is many a young cockerel that will stand upon a dunghill and crow about his father, by way of making his own plumage to shine. I should like to know thy father,” he went on, turning straight to me, with a kindly, frank look in his eyes.