‘Same way with Jim an’ his mother,’ Jesse went on. ‘There was talk betwixt ’em after a few years o’ not takin’ any more weekend money for Mary; but let alone she never passed a farden in the mire ‘thout longin’s, Jim didn’t care, like, to push himself forward into the Society’s remembrance. So naun came of it. The weekend money would ha’ made no odds to Jim – not after his uncle willed him they four cottages at Eastbourne an’ money in the bank.’
‘That was true, too, then? I heard something in a scadderin’ word-o’-mouth way,’ said Jabez.
‘I’ll answer for the house property, because Jim he reequested my signed name at the foot o’ some papers concernin’ it. Regardin’ the money in the bank, he nature-ally wouldn’t like such things talked about all round the parish, so he took strangers for witnesses.’
‘Then ‘twill make Mary worth seekin’ after?’
‘She’ll need it. Her Maker ain’t done much for her outside nor yet in.’
‘That ain’t no odds.’ Jabez shook his head till the water showered off his hat-brim. ‘If Mary has money, she’ll be wed before any likely pore maid. She’s cause to be grateful to Jim.’
‘She hides it middlin’ close, then,’ said Jesse. ‘It don’t sometimes look to me as if Mary has her natural rightful feelin’s. She don’t put on an apron o’ Mondays ‘thout being druv to it – in the kitchen or the hen-house. She’s studyin’ to be a school-teacher. She’ll make a beauty! I never knowed her show any sort o’ kindness to nobody – not even when Jim’s mother was took dumb. No! ‘Twadn’t no stroke. It stifled the old lady in the throat here. First she couldn’t shape her words no shape; then she clucked, like, an’ lastly she couldn’t more than suck down spoon-meat an’ hold her peace. Jim took her to Doctor Harding, an’ Harding he bundled her off to Brighton Hospital on a ticket, but they couldn’t make no stay to her afflictions there; and she was bundled off to Lunnon, an’ they lit a great old lamp inside her, and Jim told me they couldn’t make out nothing in no sort there; and, along o’ one thing an’ another, an’ all their spyin’s and pryin’s, she come back a hem sight worse than when she started. Jim said he’d have no more hospitalizin’, so he give her a slate, which she tied to her waist-string, and what she was minded to say she writ on it.’
‘Now, I never knowed that! But they’re valley-folk,’ Jabez repeated.
“Twadn’t particular noticeable, for she wasn’t a talkin’ woman any time o’ her days. Mary had all three’s tongue…Well, then, two years this summer, come what I’m tellin’ you. Mary’s Lunnon father, which they’d put clean out o’ their minds, arrived down from Lunnon with the law on his side, sayin’ he’d take his daughter back to Lunnon, after all. I was working for Mus’ Dockett at Pounds Farm that summer, but I was obligin’ Jim that evenin’ muckin’ out his pig-pen. I seed a stranger come traipsin’ over the bridge agin’ Wickenden’s door-stones. ‘Twadn’t the new County Council bridge with the handrail. They hadn’t given it in for a public right o’ way then. ’twas just a bit o’ lathy old plank which Jim had throwed acrost the brook for his own conveniences. The man wasn’t drunk – only a little concerned in liquor, like – an’ his back was a mask where he’d slipped in the muck comin’ along. He went up the bricks past Jim’s mother, which was feedin’ the ducks, an’ set himself down at the table inside – Jim was just changin’ his socks – an’ the man let Jim know all his rights and aims regardin’ Mary. Then there just about was a hurly-bulloo? Jim’s fust mind was to pitch him forth, but he’d done that once in his young days, and got six months up to Lewes jail along o’ the man fallin’ on his head. So he swallowed his spittle an’ let him talk. The law about Mary was on the man’s side from fust to last, for he showed us all the papers. Then Mary come downstairs – she’d been studyin’ for an examination – an’ the man tells her who he was, an’ she says he had ought to have took proper care of his own flesh and blood while he had it by him, an’ not to think he could ree-claim it when it suited. He says somethin’ or other, but she looks him up an’ down, front an’ backwent, an’ she just tongues him scadderin’ out o’ doors, and he went away stuffin’ all the papers back into his hat, talkin’ most abusefully. Then she come back an’ freed her mind against Jim an’ his mother for not havin’ warned her of her upbringin’s, which it come out she hadn’t ever been told. They didn’t say naun to her. They never did. I’d ha’ packed her off with any man that would ha’ took her – an’ God’s pity on him!’
‘Umm!’ said Jabez, and sucked his pipe.
‘So then, that was the beginnin’. The man come back again next week or so, an’ he catched Jim alone, ‘thout his mother this time, an’ he fair beazled him with his papers an’ his talk – for the law zws on his side – till Jim went down into his money-purse an’ give him ten shillings hush-money – he told me – to withdraw away for a bit an’ leave Mary with ’em.’
‘But that’s no way to get rid o’ man or woman,’ Jabez said.
‘No more ‘tis. I told Jim so. “What can I do?” Jim says. “The law’s with the man. I walk about daytimes thinkin’ o’ it till I sweats my underclothes wringin’, an’ I lie abed nights thinkin’ o’ it till I sweats my sheets all of a sop. ‘Tisn’t as if I was a young man,” he says, “nor yet as if I was a pore man. Maybe he’ll drink hisself to death.” I e’en a’most told him outright what foolishness he was enterin’ into, but he knowed it – he knowed it – because he said next time the man come ‘twould be fifteen shillin’s. an’ next time ‘twas. Just fifteen shillin’s!’
‘An’ was the man her father?’ asked Jabez.
‘He had the proofs an’ the papers. Jim showed me what that Lunnon Childern’s Society had answered when Mary writ up to ’em an’ taxed ’em with it. I lay she hadn’t been proper polite in her letters to ’em, for they answered middlin’ short. They said the matter was out o’ their hands, but – let’s see if I remember – oh, yes – they ree-gretted there had been an oversight. I reckon they had sent Mary out in the candle-box as a orphan instead o’ havin’ a father. Terrible awkward! Then, when he’d drinked up the money, the man come again – in his usuals – an’ he kept hammerin’ on and hammerin’ on about his duty to his pore dear wife, an’ what he’d do for his dear daughter in Lunnon, till the tears runned down his two dirty cheeks an’ he come away with more money. Jim used to slip it into his hand behind the door, but his mother she heard the chink. She didn’t hold with hush-money. She’d write out all her feelin’s on the slate, an’ Jim ’ud be settin’ up half the night answerin’ back an showing that the man had the law with him.’
‘Hadn’t that man no trade nor business, then?’
‘He told me he was a printer. I reckon, though, he lived on the rates like the rest of ’em up there in Lunnon.’
‘An’ how did Mary take it?’
‘She said she’d sooner go into service than go with the man. I reckon a mistress ’ud be middlin’ put to it for a maid ‘fore she put Mary into cap an’ gown. She was studyin’ to be a schoo-ool-teacher. A beauty she’ll make!…Well, that was how things went that fall. Mary’s Lunnon father kep’ comin’ an’ comin’ ‘carden as he’ drinked out the money Jim gave him; an’ each time he’d put up his price for not takin’ Mary away. Jim’s mother, she didn’t like partin’ with no money, an’ bein’ obliged to write her feelin’s on the slate instead o’ givin’ ’em vent by mouth, she was just about mad. Just about she was mad!
‘Come November, I lodged with Jim in the outside room over ‘gainst his hen-house. I paid her my rent. I was workin’ for Dockett at Pounds – gettin’ chestnut-bats out o’ Perry Shaw. Just such weather as this be – rain atop o’ rain after a wet October. (An’ I remember it ended in dry frostes right away up to Christmas.) Dockett he’d sent up to Perry Shaw for me – no, he comes puffin’ up to me himself – because a big corner-piece o’ the bank had slipped into the brook where she makes that elber at the bottom o’ the Seventeen Acre, an’ all the rubbishy alders an’ sallies
which he ought to have cut out when he took the farm, they’d slipped with the slip, an’ the brook was comin’ rooshin’ down atop of ’em, an’ they’d just about back an’ spill the waters over his winter wheat. The water was lyin’ in the flats already. “Gor a-mighty, Jesse!” he bellers out at me, “Get that rubbish away all manners you can. Don’t stop for no fagottin’, but give the brook play or my wheat’s past salvation. I can’t lend you no help,” he says, “but work an’ I’ll pay ye.’”
‘You had him there,’ Jabez chuckled.
‘Yes. I reckon I had ought to have drove my bargain, but the brook was backin’ up on good bread-corn. So ‘cardenly, I laid into the mess of it, workin’ off the bank where the trees was drownin’ themselves head-down in the roosh – just such weather as this – ‘an the brook creepin’ up on me all the time. ‘Long toward noon, Jim comes mowchin’ along with his toppin’ axe over his shoulder.
‘“Be you minded for an extra hand at your job?” he says.
‘“Be you minded to turn to?” I ses, an’ – no more talk to it – Jim laid in alongside o’ me. He’s no bunger with a toppin’ axe.’
‘Maybe, but I’ve seed him at a job o’ throwin’ in the woods, an’ he didn’t seem to make out no shape,’ said Jabez. ‘He haven’t got the shoulders nor yet the judgment – my opinion – when he’s dealin’ with full-girt timber. He don’t rightly make up his mind where he’s goin’ to throw her.’
‘We wasn’t throwin’ nothin’. We was cuttin’ out they soft alders, an’ haulin’ ’em up the bank ‘fore they could back the waters on the wheat. Jim didn’t say much, ‘less it was that he’d had a postcard from Mary’s Lunnon father, night before, sayin’ he was comin’ down that mornin’. Jim, he’d sweated all night, an’ he didn’t reckon hisself equal to the talkin’ an’ the swearin’ an’ the cryin’, an’ his mother blamin’ him afterwards on the slate. “It spiled my day to think of it,” he ses, when we was eatin’ our pieces. “So I’ve fair cried dunghill an’ run. Mother’ll have to tackle him by herself. I lay she won’t give him no hush-money,” he ses. “I lay he’ll be surprised by the time he’s done with her,” he ses. an’ that was e’en a’most all the talk we had concernin’ it. But he’s no hunger with the toppin’ axe.
‘The brook she’d crep’ up an’ up on us, an’ she kep’ creepin’ upon us till we was workin’ knee-deep in the shallers, cuttin’ an’ pookin’ an’ pullin’ what we could get to o’ the rubbish. There was a middlin’ lot comin’ downstream, too – cattle-bars an’ hop-poles and odds-ends bats, all poltin’ down together; but they rooshed round the elber good shape by the time we’d backed out they drowned trees. Come four o’clock we reckoned we’d done a proper day’s work, an’ she’d take no harm if we left her. We couldn’t puddle about there in the dark an’ wet to no more advantage. Jim he was pourin’ the water out of his boots – no, I was doin’ that. Jim was kneelin’ to unlace his’n. “Damn it all, Jesse,” he ses, standin’ up; “the flood must be over my doorsteps at home, for here comes my old white-top bee-skep!’”
‘Yes. I alius heard he paints his bee-skeps,’ Jabez put in. ‘I dunno paint don’t tarrify bees more’n it keeps ’em dry.’
‘“I’ll have a pook at it,” he ses, an’ he pooks at it as it comes round the elber. The roosh nigh jerked the pooker out of his hand-grips, an’ he calls to me, an’ I come runnin’ barefoot. Then we pulled on the pooker, an’ it reared up on eend in the roosh, an’ we guessed what ‘twas. ‘Cardenly we pulled it in into a shaller, an’ it rolled a piece, an’ a great old stiff man’s arm nigh hit me in the face. Then we was sure. “Tis a man,” ses Jim. But the face was all a mask. “I reckon it’s Mary’s Lunnon father,” he ses presently. “Lend me a match and I’ll make sure.” He never used baccy. We lit three matches one by another, well’s we could in the rain, an’ he cleaned off some o’ the slob with a tussick o’ grass. “Yes,” he ses. “It’s Mary’s Lunnon father. He won’t tarrify us no more. D’you want him, Jesse?” he ses.
‘“No,” I ses. “If this was Eastbourne beach like, he’d be half-a-crown apiece to us ‘fore the coroner; but now we’d only lose a day havin’ to ‘tend the inquest. I lay he fell into the brook.”
‘“I lay he did,” ses Jim. “I wonder if he saw mother.” He turns him over, an’ opens his coat and puts his fingers in the waistcoat pocket an’ start laughin’. “He’s seen mother, right enough,” he ses. “An’ he’s got the best of her, too. She won’t be able to crow no more over me ‘bout givin’ him money. I never give him more than a sovereign. She’s give him two!” an’ he trousers ’em, laughin’ all the time. “An’ now we’ll pook him back again, for I’ve done with him,” he ses.
‘So we pooked him back into the middle of the brook, an’ we saw he went round the elber ‘thout balkin’, an’ we walked quite a piece beside of him to set him on his ways. When we couldn’t see no more, we went home by the high road, because we knowed the brook ‘u’d be out acrost the medders, an’ we wasn’t goin’ to hunt for Jim’s little rotten old bridge in that dark – an’ rainin’ Heavens’ hard, too. I was middlin’ pleased to see light an’ vittles again when we got home. Jim he pressed me to come insides for a drink. He don’t drink in a generality, but he was rid of all his troubles that evenin’, d’ye see? “Mother,” he ses so soon as the door ope’d, “have you seen him?” She whips out her slate an’ writes down – “No.” “Oh, no,” ses Jim. “You don’t get out of it that way, Mother. I lay you have seen him, an’ I lay he’s bested you for all your talk, same as he bested me. Make a clean breast of it, Mother,” he ses. “He got round you too.” She was goin’ for the slate again, but he stops her. “It’s all right, Mother,” he ses. “I’ve seen him sense you have, an’ he won’t trouble us no more.” The old lady looks up quick as a robin, an’ she writes, “Did he say so?” “No,” ses Jim, laughin’. “He didn’t say so. That’s how I know. But he bested you, Mother. You can’t have it in at me for bein’ soft-hearted. You’re twice as tender-hearted as what I be. Look!” he ses, an’ he shows her the two sovereigns. “Put ’em away where they belong,” he ses. “He won’t never come for no more; an’ now we’ll have our drink,” he ses, “for we’ve earned it.”
‘Nature-ally they weren’t goin’ to let me see where they kep’ their monies. She went upstairs with it – for the whisky.’
‘I never knowed Jim was a drinkin’ man – in his own house, like,’ said Jabez.
‘No more he isn’t: but what he takes he likes good. He won’t tech no publican’s hogwash acrost the bar. Four shillin’s he paid for that bottle o’ whisky. I know, because when the old lady brought it down there wasn’t more’n jest a liddle few dreenin’s an’ dregs in it. Nothin’ to set before neighbours, I do assure you.
‘“Why, ’twas half-full last week, Mother,” he ses. “You don’t mean,” he ses, “you’ve given him all that as well? It’s two shillin’s worth,” he ses. (That’s how I knowed he paid four.) “Well, well, Mother, you be too tender-’earted to live. But I don’t grudge it to him,’ he ses. “I don’t grudge him nothin’ he can keep.” So, ‘cardenly, we drinked up what little sup was left.’
‘An’ what come to Mary’s Lunnon father?’ said Jabez, after a full minute’s silence.
‘I be too tired to go readin’ papers of evenin’s; but Dockett he told me, that very week, I think, that they’d inquested on a man down at Robertsbridge which had polted and polted up agin’ so many bridges an’ banks, like, they couldn’t make naun out of him.’
‘An’ what did Mary say to all these doin’s?’
‘The old lady bundled her off to the village ‘fore her Lunnon father come, to buy weekend stuff (an’ she forgot the half o’ it). When we come in she was upstairs studyin’ to be a school-teacher. None told her naun about it. ‘Twadn’t girls’ affairs.’
“Reckon she knowed?’ Jabez went on.
‘She? She must have guessed it middlin’ close when she saw her money come back. But she never
mentioned it in writing so far’s I know. She were more worritted that night on account of two-three her chickens bein’ drowned, for the flood had skewed their old hen-house round on her postes. I cobbled her up next mornin’ when the Brook shrinked.’
‘An’ where did you find the bridge? Some fur downstream, didn’t ye?’
‘Just where she allus was. She hadn’t shifted but very little. The Brook had gulled out the bank a piece under one eend o’ the plank, so’s she was liable to tilt ye sideways if you wasn’t careful. But I pooked three-four bricks under her, an’ she was all plumb again.’
‘Well, I dunno how it looks like, but let be how ‘twill,’ said Jabez, ‘he hadn’t no business to come down from Lunnon tarrifyin’ people, an’ threatenin’ to take away children which they’d hobbed up for their lawful own – even if ’twas Mary Wickenden.’
‘He had the business right enough, an’ he had the law with him-no gettin’ over that,’ said Jesse. ‘But he had the drink with him, too, an’ that was where he failed, like.’
‘Well, well! Let be how ‘twill, the Brook was a good friend to Jim. I see it now. I allus did wonder what he was gettin’ at when he said that, when I talked to him about shiftin’ the stack. “You dunno everything’,” he ses. “The Brook’s been a good friend to me,” he ses, “an’ if she’s minded to have a snatch at my hay, I ain’t settin’ out to withstand her.”’
‘I reckon she’s about shifted it, too, by now,’ Jesse chuckled. ‘Hark! That ain’t any slip off the bank which she’s got hold of.’
The Brook had changed her note again. It sounded as though she were mumbling something soft.
THE LAND
When Julius Fabricius, Sub-Prefect of the Weald,
In the days of Diocletian owned our Lower River-field,
He called to him Hobdenius – a Briton of the Clay,
The Wish House and Other Stories Page 42