The Old Pastures. A story of the woods and fields

Front matter

BY THE SAME AUTHOR. THE PEVTON ROMANCE. 3 vols., crown 8vo, £t us. 6d. "The quaint humour of her village characters reminds us forcibly of George Ehot." — Literary Review. NEW BOOKS. THE STORY OF ROSINA, and Other Poems. By Austin Dobson. With 49 Illustrations by Hugh Thomson. Crown 8vo, 55. Also Large-Paper Edition, limited to 250 copies, £1 is. net. POEMS ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS. By Austin Dobson. With 7 full-page Etchings by Adolphe Lalauze, and Portrait of the Author by William Strang. Limited to 100 copies on Holland paper, with every plate a remarque proof, 2 vols., post 8vo, 3J. net ; and 250 copies on deckle edge paper, with the Etchings on Whatman paper, 2 vols., crown 8vo, £1 5.$. net. A WALK FROM LONDON TO FULHAM. By the late Thomas Crofton Croker, F.S.A. Edited by Beatrice Horne. With nearly 200 Woodcuts.

Fcap. 8vo, 6s. net. London KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER, & CO. Ltd. A Story of the Woods and Fields EY Mrs. LEITH-ADAMS \ (Mrs. R. S. DE COURCY LAFFAN) Author of '" Aunt Hefsy's Foundling," " My Land of Beulah,'' "Madelon Lemoine," "Bonnie Kates "Louis Draycot:," " Geoffrey Stirling," "Colour-Sergeant No. I Company" " The Peyton Romance" "A Garrison Romance," " Cosmo Gordon," "Lady Deane," " My Brother Sol," " Winstowe" etc., etc. LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO. Ltd. Paternoster House, Charing Cross Road 189S H>eotcateJ> BY PERMISSION TO THOMAS HARDY; WHO, TAKING US BY THE HAND, LEADS US ALL AMONG " THE WOODS AND FIELDS " AND GIVES US THOSE WHO BECOME OUR FRIENDS AND LIFE-COMPANIONS DEAR TO US AS LP7ING, BREATHING MEN AND WOMEN. Montpellier Lodge, Cheltenham, Sept., 1895. CONTENTS. X

CHAPTER X. PAGE

Chapter I. By Verdant Mead

The Old Pastures— at first the quaintness of the name struck you as somewhat far-fetched. Then you gazed and gazed again, and realized that it must indeed have taken time to per fect those wonderful stretches of green, and the mighty elms that here and there in grand majestic groups formed shade and shelter for the canny cattle in the noontide of the sum mer days, or the slow, straight rain of the autumn shower. It is all very well to call the elm the Warwickshire Weed ; but it is withal a pleasant weed, and its hop-like flowers are taking to the eye. Besides, our village of Greylings is in the very innermost heart of leafy Warwickshire, ergo the Warwickshire Weed may well flourish there exceedingly. In Greylings an impression prevailed that there was only one village in all England worth mentioning, and that was — Greylings.

This is a very sustaining form of belief either for individuals or communities : though apt, sometimes, to sudden over-topplings and rank disaster. Greylings was proud of the farmstead called the Old Pastures, and had cause to be. The hedges that bordered the rippling meadows were looked upon as works of art ; the wedder ot twigs that bound the great stakes together being neat and fine as basket-work, and known as the craftiness of one Amos Digger — called also Granny Digger, though why, it was given to no man to know, since never child or grand child had he. Granny Digger stood on the pinnacle of age, and scoffed at the young ones down below in the smiling, sunlit plains of youth, since none could plait and twist the wedder as he could. Wasn't he sent for six-and-twenty miles — in a cart, too, with side-springs and a hooded top — to fettle the hedges at Farmer Gough's, out Betcherley way, and driven home again in the same kingly conveyance even to his very own door ?

" Lardy, lardy, don't tell him ! Young fingers had no cunnin'. It was all larnin', nowadays — crammin' 'eds wi' words and fancies — an' hands no more use than a bundle o' twigs. Lassies taught to play the pianny, and couldn't sew a button on to save their lives — 'lectric telegraphies goin' to and fro i' the earth, an' runnin' up an' down it, same as one of old, which was no good, and best not spoken of — an' beastisses climbing through fences because knowledgable hedgers and ditchers were dying out." The world was going very ill then, according to Granny Digger. When people asked Amos Digger if he had ever been married, he was wont to reply that " thank the Lord, he had never been such a fool ! " in conse quence of which habitual remark, his character for gal lantry did not stand high. Then Amos would go on to explain that the conduct of the children of the village had been one cause of his solitary existence.

"I'd ha' thought it a sin to be answerable for more o' the varmints, sir, ony way, for they be the scram o' the earth, so be they, a-climbing up my ash-trees, an' messin' the boughs shameful, an' cryin' out : ' A bunch o' keys — d'ye see 'em, Granny ? ' wi' their hands full o' the tags as dangles from the branches. ' Yer legs is old and spindle ' ; shouts they, ' ye conna kitch us now.' Oh, Lord be thanked as He conna lay ony o' them soart to my charge — as the sayin' goes." So there was war between Amos and the juvenile popula tion of Greylings. The mothers also hated him, because he hated their offspring — this is the fashion of mothers, and will be world without end— and the sly maids hated him, because he railed at sweethearting and marryings, and all such-like ; while the men said he was " a gran' sort of an ould chap, but a bit warpit," and consulted him in all anxious cases, whether of beast or field ; but Amos belonged by feudal right to Farmer Thomas Goldie of the Old Pas tures, and was as much a fixture as the land itself ; yet from age taking nowadays somewhat of the honorary position of a consulting physician, save and except in the matter ofthe wedder.

Truly, the farm-house owned by Thomas Goldie was a pleasant place to dwell in, and pleasant to the eye. It was all barred black and white, the mellow oak showing darkly, ringing like iron if you tapped it, and hard enough to turn the teeth of a dozen saws. The gables of the house were deeply eaved, and in spring and summer harboured many families of swallows, whose sweet twitterings made morn and eve alike tuneful. On the golden thatch grew clumps of stone-wort and great bosses of velvet moss ; while below, clematis and eglantine, and the pale pink climbing rose made a pretty tangle by the windows, so that you could gather a posy for yourself without going out into the garden at all. Moving down the white-cobbled pathway to the gate of the sweet old garden, lo ! a great beautiful arch, square and smooth as though built of blocks of jade.

This wonderful structure was formed by the meeting of two yew-trees overhead, and cut and carved and daintily fashioned — need it be said ? — by the cunning fingers of Amos Digger. He would pass his hand lovingly over its smooth, green sides, and say to an admiring bystander, — " That's a moniment, that is ; an' the birds be that used to it by now, they're of a mind to think it grew that way. I wur a young man when fust I begun to clippit them trees, so I wur ; an' now we be growed old together, so we be. Young folk is nowt bo' figgerheads these days ; not one on 'em could fashion a moniment same as that — not one of all the darned lot ! " And Amos would take himself off muttering, his hands clasped behind his back — his poor old back that was bowed almost double by the weight of years, and needed no bending to reach the weddering.

The " moniment " was assuredly a great achievement, and made a lovely frame for the picture of the Old Pastures, a rural landscape by the Master Hand, beautiful exceedingly. At one side of the farm-house the fir-trees clustered thickly, and the ground was carpeted with their aromatic spines, with here and there great cones like fallen crowns. Here were some delicious nooks, where nature had been allowed to queen it all her own way, and, in very wantonness of gene rosity, had mingled the colours in her posies till they showed like the tints of rainbows, backed by spreading fern and massive dock. The wood spread for a while along the lea, leading in a gentle slope towards the village, seen as cottages clustering in groups and streets, and further on ahead, a b squat-towered, ivy-mantled church, just peeping above the trees.

Greylings was at once primitive and yet self-opinion ated ; and, when a young man or woman left the place for good and all, it was looked upon as a daring step, and one that, unless under very exceptional circumstances, showed anything but a nice spirit. If harm came to the wanderer, then with lifted eyebrows they said : " What would you ? What could you look for ? Folk as didna know when they were well off mostly did get a fall ; ay, that did they, an' a nasty one at that, too, now and agen ; 'twas only to be looked for. Why, there was Jane Calvert's girl, Mary — Mrs. Gilbert as now is, a lone an' lorny widow-woman. She must needs go a-wandering ; seein' of foreign parts and such-like, maid to my lady of the Towers, and much thought on ; an' what came on 't ? Wh}', back come she, scare't like, an' withered oop, same as a flower that's blighted, wi' a ring on her hand, an' sorrer in her eyes, an' a face that the tears had worn i' lines, and washed the youth on't away.

Happen if Jane Calvert's Alary had stayed hoam, and married a dacent Greylings mon, he'd never ha' deed an' left her a lone and lorny widdy." It was in a far-off time that " Jane Calvert's Mary " had left Greylings, in the service of the beautiful Lady Cardew, wife of Sir Ughtred Cardew, of the Towers. In a way it was thought an honour that the postmistress's daughter should be at the great house, and own maid to my lady ; but the journeyings in foreign parts caused some shaking of heads. London was bad enough — a sort of Babylon, full of strange snares and " flightsome " ways — but " to go amang all they heathen ! Well, well, 'Jane knew her own business best ; an' none could deny she kep' a good holt on the letters, an' could write most same as printin' — let alone the butter, an' eggs, an' sweetstuffyo' could get t'other side the shop bein' ofthe best ; bo' it was a sorry matter for a young wench to go across the sea — a sorry, sorry matter, look at it which side up you might."

When, two years later, they saw her come back widowed and lone, with a strange, scared look in her dark, deep-set eyes, and never a smile on her poor, drawn face, they said it was a sorrier matter still. Mrs. Gilbert lived in a tiny cottage just at the turn of the lane, a sort of picture-cottage, very attractive to wanderin" artists. It had a porch with a round thatched roof, as if it were trying to pass itself off as a gigantic beehive, and a tiny window that nestled under the eaves like a bird's-nest, and was bordered with ivy, like a Christmas card. The cottage had only two rooms : a double one below, looking out side ways, and one above, lighted by the wee window, but it sufficed for Mary, and had done so for more than twenty years. There were silver lines in her wavy black hair now ; but her lithe figure was not bowed, and she was still slender as a reed.

A silent woman, making and needing no friends, and with strange, solitary ways about her, that gradually, in the passing of years, made for her an uncanny reputation. It was surmised that the man Gilbert — of whom no living soul had ever heard her speak — had left her a small independence. It was known that she added to this by dainty toil at fine embroideries and such-like ; things much thought of by the county ladies ; known, also, that the lady of the Towers held her in estimation, and might be seen at times passing through the gate that led, through a wilderness of flowers, to the little porch. Mary Gilbert thought much of her flowers ; and, in deed, the garden was one gigantic posy. Had not Sir Ughtred himself, and his bonnie young son, Master Bernard, more than once stopped by the low hedge to gaze at the massed blossoms ?

Nay, had not Mary once gathered a budding rose, white as milk, and offered it with a timid look to the golden-haired stripling, who, with a charming smile of pleasure, bade her set it in the button-hole of his shooting coat ? Oh, yes, that was true enough ; for was not Mrs. Pomfret — a plump and buxom personage of unimpeachable veracity — just passing the corner of the lane and a witness to the whole matter ? Did she not, indeed, say to a neighbour presently encountered, — " Now, didn't the quality think a mighty lot of Mary Gilbert ? And her makin' so free as to place a posy in Master Bernard's boosom ! " But yet Mrs. Gilbert was not a popular woman in Grey lings. There were notions abroad about her ; and notions of a kind that meant — to a certain extent — isolation. She had the gentlest, tenderest heart, and yet it had been known that the mother of a sick and suffering child should stand between her and the steep and crooked stair that led to the sick chamber, like a ruffled, clucking hen on the defensive for her threatened brood.

Sadly and with quiet dignity would Mary Gilbert turn away, and the tall, black, slim figure would go out into the quiet of the night. If tears started to her eyes they would be driven back, for she never showed resentment or whimpered under injustice. When a wretched girl, maddened by her burthen of shame, tried to end the weary battle of life in the dark pool above the weir gates, just where the river Cresset lurked most treacherously under the willows — it was to Mary Gilbert's cottage that the poor dripping, sodden form was carried ; it was on the bed beneath the little window that that poor battered specimen of humanity was laid ; it was on Mary's bosom that the poor head rested as light came into the filmy eyes ; it was Mary's hand that held and warmed the lifeless fingers ; her lips that kissed the dank brow from which the drenched hair fell back so piteousiy, her voice that whispered loving words of hope and cheer, as the tortured soul awoke once more to the realities of life and shame.

Nay, more : it was Mary Gilbert whose pleading led to the making the girl an " honest woman," as the saying goes. " It wur strange bewitchments as she used to make the man wed his light-o'-love. Warlocks be like that — so they be," said Greylings ; " they can mak' ony creature do ony mortal thing, my sakes ! " That was just the long and short of it — Mary Gilbert's best deeds were "bewitchments"; her kindnesses what might be looked for from that uncanny thing, or witch woman. In the good old times she would have been bound hand-and-foot, and, with faggots neatly piled about her, expiated her sin by a cruel death in the market-place. There is, in that terrible chamber of torture at Nurem berg, the pictured face of a woman of the same type as Mary Gilbert : a face gentle and strong, with sombre dark eyes, and a patient mouth— the portrait of the last witch burned in that cruel and beautiful city.

And eerie tales were told under the breath at Greylings —told over peat fires in winter-time, and under the sunny, flower-gay hedges that edged the fields in haying-time. More than one had met the inmate of the lonely cottage wandering in the fir wood when all good people were asleep in bed. One could swear to a bat — a terrible beast with wings a yard across— hovering over her head ; another had heard Farmer Goldie's big dog howl as she passed, and didn't the dun cow, Daisy, fall into a pit not long after and break her fore-leg ? Could any evidence be more direct ? Worst of all — Jem Thistledown, a trusty man and true, had come upon her on her knees, beating her breast, and her face streaming with tears, same as a pane of glass in an April shower, lifted to the sky. Had he not nigh come to falling in his terror, and only recovered himself after saying the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments right through from end to end as he scuttled home, crying to those of his own household that he was " a blighted bein' from that on, for he had seen a warlock weeping " ?

" Give a dog a bad name, and you may as well hang him," goes the old saying ; and assuredly if a woman is suspected of witchcraft, every act of her life, every aspect of her moods, is coloured by that suspicion — and it is a suspicion that grows, and a river that none can stem. Not far from the smithy, on the other side, the Holly Bush Inn, lived one Isaac Turnover, a dowser. Now, a dowser must of necessity be a magic-man, else would not the divining-rod become within his hands a living thing, drawing him this way and that, and — so 'twas said — bending him nigh double, when the secret lurking water " drew " it ? But with your dowser, you knew where you were, and where his magic began and ended. Your dowser might be a tame man enough in the ordinary routine of domestic life. No one would object to Isaac Turnover handling a babe, if he should see fit to develop such abnormal ten dencies.

And as to sick folk, was it not a fact that when Mrs. Pomfret's husband was first said to be dropsical in the legs, he gutturally murmured : " Had ye not best get t' dowser to tak' a luke at 'em, missus, an' harken till what he says about t' watter ? " Speaking of the smithy reminds us that it was well worth describing, being perhaps the most picturesque place of the kind in all the length and breadth of England. The entrance to the forge was through an archway, and this archway formed of a gigantic horse-shoe, carved in oak and clamped with iron — was at once a sign and " a lucky bit " — for we all know the significance of the horse-shoe. Nothing could be more picturesque than the great cart horses, with their flowing manes and tails, and heavily feathered heels, standing under the shadow of this mighty horse-shoe, with John Strong, blacksmith, bending his brawny back to raise now one great hoof and now another ; while click ! click ! click ! went the hammers at the anvil, and showers of dancing sparks flew up the wide, iow chimney, into the grey-blue sky above.

Greylings was a charming village altogether, and had that glamour of rural completeness and beauty that will soon be rare, even in our most picturesque places. No steam implements had as yet disfigured the fields when ripe to harvest, but all was done by the honest labour of men's hands, and " The reapers reaped till the sun went down." No one was out of work in Greylings unless he was a sot or a good-for-nought, and even this last kind had been known to be hustled into something like industry by the united efforts and outspoken resolve of his family and friends, to find him no food until he " earnt it." Hunger then turned schoolmaster to bring him to the feet of duty. It was a not uncommon device to souse a sot at the village pump, such a liberal supply of cold water being entirely alien to his principles ; but your sot is a more incorrigible animal than your loafer, and cures were not so frequent.

This village pump, by the way, cannot be passed over with a mere casual allusion. It was the most delicious pump, standing on the side of what was called The Green, and from the constant dripping — almost like a dropping well — from its white leaden mouth, the grass grew lushly in its neighbourhood, and little ferns uncurled them selves in the niches and crevices of the low wall that ran round three sides of it. They cherished their pump in Greylings, and when the ice-time came, behold it tenderly swathed in a neckcloth of hay-bands, and looking as warm and cosy as an old gentleman in a muffler. In mild weather the pump wall became, naturally enough, a fashionable resort. Neat ankles were seen as the girls sat there, water jars set lazily on the low, broad coping. Towards evening a swain or two would linger round in hope of the favourite of the hour coming to fetch water fresh for the late meal.

Then an old man would dodder along the narrow pathway, prop himself up on his sturdy staff, and give tongue generally to the effect that nobody was so good in these days as they had been in the days of his own youth ; while, as for the girls — " Wheu ! ye' should ha' seen my missis when her be'd of seventeen years or so. Lord, Lord ! you canna hold a candle to her ; not one of ye-s." And the girls, thinking of the missus — with wrinkled face, nose and chin striving their best to meet, — giggled, and made sly eyes at the attendant swains, as who should say : " Hark till his nonsense now ! Did you ever hear the like ? " It seems so impossible to the young that they should ever grow old ! The sun shines so brightly, and the air is so sweet and balmy, the hearts in their bosoms are so light — surely, surely, they can never grow old !

Sometimes they never do ; and then the limber form and the bonnie face lie still beneath the coverlet of daisies. As you stood by the pump wall, you could just see the square, squat tower of the church above the grand old yew trees that canopied its lych-gate. But Greylings churchyard calls for a chapter to itself.

Chapter II. And Sylvan Stream

What a deliriously shady place on a hot summer Sunday was the lych-gate of Greylings church — the church that bore the name St. Mary's-in-the-Meads, and deserved it so well ! On either side this gate, and near enough to share the shelter and the shade from the branches above, were two low rustic seats, most inviting to the weary loiterer, or the tired pedestrian who had carried her basket of new laid golden-brown eggs all the way from some outlying farm on market-day. On summer's Sunday evenings it was the custom for a gathering to take place about these rest-places, where the most aged and infirm would sit — Amos Digger king among them all — surrounded by groups of lads and lassies, not innocent of making droll eyes at each other, while listening to the yarns of their elders. Then the rector, the Honour able and Reverend Charles Dacre, and the curate, the Reverend Hercules Pinhorn, would likely pass out, and a general rising, together with curtseys from the women and much pulling of forelocks from the men, would result.

The Reverend Pinhorn, as he was familiarly called, was a very fine specimen of a militant young English divine, with his curly hair growing to a tuft on the top of his head, and a gracious smile that seemed to say, " Though I am a clergyman, I am perfectly affable, you see ; I can assure you there is not the least reason to be afraid of me." Poor Mr. Pinhorn had had one or two bad moments since he came to Greylings as a fledgling deacon. One was when that mighty man yclept the verger, hearing the clock chime, and thinking the gentleman somewhat slow in his movements, said tartly : " You'd ought to be in your box, sir, by now, that yo'd ought ! our people be mighty partic'lar that way, for the clock itself ain't no straighter than the reverend the honourable rector." In his " box " ! What an expression !

His inconceivable dignity was ruffled indeed ; but when he heard of the saying, the rector only smiled. "My dear Pinhorn," he said, "the people here are built that way. They mean no disrespect : not a bit." And sure enough, not long afterwards, Mr. Pinhorn heard the same individual say to the rector : " You were i' the box a bit longer than custom last Sunday, sir, so the folk were saying at the gate ; bo' it was a fine discarnment, and pointed for them as needed it." Again the rector only smiled. It was such a pleasant smile, that there could not very well be too much of it. It did your heart good, cheering you in sorrow, and helping you like a gleam of light as you stumbled by the way. Yet behind and underlying all the gentleness and tenderness, you were conscious of strength and firmness, of high resolve, and possible sternness of judgment.

There was a twinkle, too, in the rector's eye at times ; a point of light that came and went, like the sparkle of light in water, that told of a boyish love of fun, and a heart still fresh and buoyant in spite of the fifty years' journeying along the pathway of life. Pass on through the lych-gate, and into the quiet of God's Acre — surely the very home of peace — with its grassy hillocks, flecked by the gently stirring shadows of the leaves overhead ; with its square-towered church, ivy wreathed, with the soft-falling sound of three mellow bells, sad and sweet, as they vibrate on the sunlit air ! The churchyard falls gently from the line of the church, as if stooping in love towards the silver streak that runs through the shallow valley, and of which the shimmer and glitter can be seen through the plane-trees that grow by the low mossy wall.

That silver streak is the river Cresset ; and on a still evening, as you sit on the bench by the lych-gate, you can hear the murmur of the water as it slips by the rushes and loosestrife on its banks, and you think that it sings a lullaby to the sleepers so near at hand. There is one headstone in the churchyard that all strangers go to see. It is very, very old, and doubtless tells the story of a life of which all trace has long since passed from earth away. Yet the quaint words cut so deep in the arms of the rugged cross that towers high above the other headstones are significant, and we feel that we know something of the struggle and triumph of a soul : — " Lyf but labour and sorrow is, And litil reste ; He that hymself the least doth love, God pleaseth beste." The labour and the sorrow borne in patience : the love, that in happier times might have been self-centred, given to lighten the burthens and dry the tears of others.

Hundreds of years ago the river sang to the sleeper beneath that rugged cross ; still it sings on and on, and the story is repeated in the lives of men. One of the great sources of that pride which characterized the inhabitants of Greylings was this same river Cresset. And little wonder, for a lovelier stream never ran between green flower-pied banks, trickling shallow and bright over snow-white stones, or swinging with swift, relentless flow in flood-time. Innocent and sportive as it passed through the meadow-lands of the Old Pastures, it deepened and widened below the church ; while further down stream, where you could just see the sloping tiled roof of the old mill, were sullen depths, overhung by great boulders and brawling whirlpools, rising to greater and greater fury, like the growing wrath of an angry woman.

Here the big wheel churned the water that fell to the lower level in showers of snowy spray, and so into the mill-pool. Strange tales were told of a little child's dead face, with floating golden hair, and wide, blue, sightless eyes, that was seen floating in this mill-pool on moonlight nights, its white limbs showing with faint lambent gleam through the veil of the water. No mortal hand could clutch that floating figure ; no drag made of man could tear it from the oozy bed below. They called it the Elf-Child, and its appearance was said to be a sign of bitter calamity to the house of Cardew, the great land-owners of the neighbourhood. Strange stories were told of this apparition— this boder of evil. Once, one Dan'l Strong, brother of him of the horse-shoe forge, returning — maybe a wee bit overcheered by the cups that he had sampled at the Holly Bush, — saw the boggart, and it looked so pitiful, or, as Dan'l put it, " so tur'ble naturell," that off went his coat, and in with a mighty splash went he.