Clouds and sunshine. : And Art: a dramatic tale.

Front matter

UTA RUPE i i

PPPOE RPSOUROSOLESOSOOASAIALOSAI AL

HUI iy

Chapter I

Ir is the London Season! Come into the country! It is hot, and dusty, and muddy here; and this opening of all the drains, which is to bridle all the disorders by and by, poisons us dead meanwhile, O Board of Health! Come into the country!

In Oxfordshire, about two miles from the Thames, and on the skirts of the beech forest that lies between Wallingford and Hendley, stands an irregular farm-house; it looks like two houses forced to pass for one; for one part of it is all gables, and tile, and chimneycorners, and antiquity; the other is square, slated, and of the newest cut outside and in. The whole occupies one entire side of its own:

farm-yard, being separated from the straw only by a small rubicon of gravel and a green railing; though at its back, out of the general _ view, is a pretty garden.

In this farm-house, and its neighborhood, the events of my humble story passed, a very few years ago.

Mrs. Mayfield, proprietor of the farm, had built the new part of the house for herself, though she did little more than sleep in it. In the antique part lived her cousin, old Farmer Hathorn, with his wife and his son Robert. Hathorn was himself proprietor of a little land two miles off, but farmed Mrs. Mayfield’s acres upon some friendly agreement, which they contrived to understand, but few else could, least of all a shrewd lawyer.

The truth is, the inmates, like the house, were. a little behind their age: they had no relations that were not contained within these four walls, and the feeling and tie of blood was very strong between them all.

The Hathorns had one son, Robert, a character; he was silent, and passed with some for sulky ; but he was not sulky, only reserved and thoughtful; he was, perhaps, a little more devoid of all levity than becomes a young man. He had great force and weight of character; you might see that in his brow, and his steady manner, free from flourishes. "With the Hathorns lived Mr. Casenower, a retired London tradesman. This gentleman had been bought out of a London firm for his scientific way of viewing things: they had lost such lots of money by it.

He had come to the Hathorns for a month, and had now been with them a year, with no intention, on either side, of parting yet awhile. This good accord did not prevent a perpetual strife of opinions between Casenower and old Hathorn. Casenower, the science-bitten, had read all the books chemists wrote on agriculture, and permitted himself to believe every word. Hathorn read nothing on agriculture, but the sheep, the soil, the markets, and the clouds, &c., and sometimes read them wrong, but not so very often.

Rose Mayfield was a young widow, fresh, free, high-spirited, and jovial; she was fond of company, and its life and soul wherever she was. She loved flirtation, and she loved work; and when she could not combine them she would take them by turns; she would leave the farm every now and then, go to a friend at Oxford, Reading, or Abingdon, and flirt like wild-fire for a fortnight; then she would return to the farm, and men, boys, horses, and work would seem to go more lively before she had been back an hour.

Mrs. Mayfield was a grazier. ‘Though she abandoned her arable land to her cousin’s care, she divided with him her grass acres, and bred cattle, and churned butter, and made cheeses, and showed a working arm bare till dinner-time (one o’clock) six days in the week.

This little farm-house then held a healthy, happy party; but one was not quite content. Parents are matrimonial schemers ; they cannot help it; it’s no use talking. Old Hathorn wanted Rose Mayfield to marry his son Robert, and so make all sure. The farmer was too wise to be always tormenting the pair to come together, but he secretly worked towards that end whenever he could without being seen through by them.

Their ages were much the same; and finer specimens of rustic stature and beauty in either sex were not to be seen for miles. But their dispositions were so different, that when, upon a kind word or a civility passing between them, old Hathorn used to look at Mrs. Hathorn, Mrs. Hathorn used to shake her head, as much as to say, “ May be, but I doubt it.”

One thing the farmer built on was this; that though Mrs. Mayfield was a coquette, none of her beaus followed her to the farm. “ She won’t have them here,” argued Hathorn, “and that shows she has a respect for Robert at bottom.”

The good farmer’s security was shaken by a little circumstance. Bix Farm, that lay but a mile from our ground, was to let, and, in course of time, was taken by a stranger from Berkshire. Coming into a farm is a business of several months; but the new tenant, a gay, dashing young fellow, came one day to look over his new farm; and, to Hathorn’s surprise, called on him, and inquired for Mrs. Mayfield. At sight of the new-comer, that lady colored up to the eyes, and introduced him to her cousin as Mr. Hickman. The name, coupled with her manner, struck Hathorn, but he said nothing to Rose. He asked his wife who this Hickman was. “ He is a stranger to me,” was the reply, “ask Rose; I hear he was her beau out Abingdon way.”

Here was a new feature. The good farmer became very uneasy ; but country-folks have plenty of tact. He said little,—he only warned Robert (who did not seem dismayed by the intelligence), and held himself on his cuard.

That same evening the whole family party were seated together towards sundown, in Hathorn’s dining-room, — the farmer smoking a clay pipe, Mrs. Hathorn sewing, Mrs. Mayfield going in and out, making business; but Robert was painfully reading some old deeds he had got from Mrs. Mayfield the week before. ‘This had been the young man’s occupation for several evenings, and Mrs. Mayfield had shrugged her shoulders at him and his deeds more than once.

On the present occasion, finding the room silent and reposeful, a state of things she abhorred, she said to Mrs. Hathorn, in a confidential whisper, so bell-like, that they all heard it, as she meant them, “ Has your Robert any thoughts of turning lawyer at present ?”

The question was put so demurely, that the old people smiled and did not answer, but looked towards Robert to answer. The said Robert smiled, and went on studying the parchment.

“ He does n’t make us much the wiser, though ; does he?” continued Mrs. Mayfield. “ Silence!” cried the tormentor, the next moment, “he is going to say something. He is only waiting till the sun goes down.”

“ He is only waiting till he has got something to say,” replied Robert, in his quiet way.

“ Ah!” was the reply; “ that is a trick you have got. I say, Jane, if I was to wait for that, what would become of the house ? ”

“ It would not be so gay as it is, I dare say, Rose.”

“ And that would be a pity, you know. Well, Bob, when do you look to have something to say? to-morrow night, —if the weather holds?”

“T think I shall have something to say as soon as I have read this through.” He examined the last leaf,—then laid it down. “I have something to say.”

Mrs. Hathorn laid down her work.

“ Cousin Mayfield,’ said Robert, “what do you think of Uxmoor Farm?”

Cousin Mayfield, who had been all expectation, burst into a fit of laughter that rang through the room like a little peal of bells. Mrs. Hathorn looked vexed, and Robert colored for a moment; but he resumed coolly: “ Why, it is two hundred acres, mostly good soil, and it marches with your up-hill land. Squire Phillips, that has just got it, counts it the cream of his estate.”

« And what have I to do with Squire Phillips and Uxmoor ?”

“ Why, this, Rose. I think Uxmoor belongs to you.”

“ Nonsense, —is the boy mad? Why, Squire Phillips got it along with Hurley, and Norton, and all the Lydalls’ farms. Of course they are all mine by right of blood, if every one had their own; but they were all willed away from us fifty years ago. Who does n’t know that? No: Squire Phillips is rooted there too fast for us to take him up.”

“Tt does not belong to Squire Phillips,” was the cool reply.

“'T'o whom, then?”

“To you, Rose; or, if not to you, to father yonder, — but, unless [am much mistaken, it belongs to you. I am no great discourser,” continued Robert; “so I have written it down to the best of my ability, here. I wish you would look at this paper, and you might read it over to father and mother, if you will be so good. I am going my rounds,”— and out strolled Mr. Robert, to see that every cow was foddered, and every pig had his share of the trough.

Mrs. Mayfield took Robert’s paper, and read what he had written,—some score of litile dry sentences, each of them a link in a chain of fact, —and this was the general result : — Fifty years ago Mrs. Mayfield’s father’s father had broken off all connection with his son, and driven him out of his house and disinherited him, and adopted in his stead the father of Squire Phillips. The disinherited, being ‘supplied with money by his mother, had got on in the world, and consoled himself for the loss of his father’s farms by buying one or two of his own. He died before his father, and bequeathed all he possessed to his daughter Rose. At last the old fellow died at an immense age, and under his will Squire Phillips took all his little estates: but here came in Robert’s discovery. Of those four little estates, one had come into the old fellow’s hands from his wife’s father, and through his wife; and a strict settlement, drawn so long ago that all, except the old fellow who meant to cheat it, had forgotten it, secured the Uxmoor estate, after his parents’ death, to Rose Mayfield’s father, who by his will had unconsciously transferred it to Rose.

This, which looks clear, had been patiently disentangled from a mass of idle words by Robert Hathorn, and the family began to fall gradually into his opinion. The result was, Mrs. Mayfield went to law with Squire Phillips, and the old farmer’s hopes revived; for he thought, and with reason, that all this must be another link between Robert and Rose ;— and so the months glided on. The fate of Uxmoor was soon to be tried at the Assizes. Mr. Hickman came over now and then, preparatory to settling on Bix. Mrs. Mayfield made no secret that she found him “ very good company,’—that was her phrase, — and he courted her openly. Another month brought the great event of the agricultural year, “the harvest.” This part of Oxfordshire can seldom get in its harvest without the assistance of some strange hands, and Robert agreed with three Irishmen and two Hampshire lads the afternoon before the wheat harvest. “ With these and our own people we shall do well enough, father,” said he.

Just before the sun set, Mrs. Hathorn was seated outside her own door with her work, when two people came through the farm-yard to speak to her; a young woman and a very old man. ‘lhe former stood a little in the rear; and the old man came up to Mrs. Hathorn, and, taking off his hat, begged for employment in the fields. 2 *

“ Our number is made up, old man,” was the answer.

The old man’s head drooped ; but he found courage to say, “ One more or one less won’t matter much to you, and it is the bread of life to us.”

“ Poor old man,” said Mrs. Hathorn, “ you are too old for harvest work, I doubt.”

“ No such thing, dame,” said the old man, testily.

“ What is it, mother?” cried Robert from the barn.

“ An old man and his daughter come for harvest work. They beg hard for it, Robert.”

“ Give them their supper, mother, and let . them go.” |

“ Twill, Robert; no doubt the poor things are hungry and weary and all”: and she put down her work to go to the kitchen, but the old man stopped her.

“We are here for work, not for charity,” said he; “and won’t take anything we don’t earn.”

Mrs. Hathorn looked surprised, and a little affronted. The girl stepped nearer.

“ No need to speak so sharp, grandfather,” said she, in a clear, cold, but winning voice ; “ charity is not so common. We thank you, dame. He is an old soldier, and prouder than becomes the like of us. Good even, and good luck to your harvest!”

They turned to go.

“Stop, girl!” said Mrs. Hathorn. “ Robert,” cried she, “ I wish you would come here.”

Robert put on his coat and came up.

“It is an old soldier, Robert; and they seem decent folk, the pair of them.”

“ An old soldier!” said Robert, looking with some interest at the old man, who, though stiff in the joints, was very erect.

“ Ay! young man,” said the other boldly, “ when I was your age I fought for the land ; and now, you see, I must not work upon it!”

Robert looked at his mother.

“Come, Robert,” said she, “we may all live to be old if it pleases God.”

“ Well,” said Robert, “it seems hard to refuse an old soldier; but he is very old, and the young woman looks delicate; I am sure I don’t know how to bargain with them.”

“ Count our two sickles as one, sir,’ said the girl, calmly.

“So be it,’ said Robert; “any way, we will give you a trial”: and he returned to his work. And Corporal Patrick, for that was the old soldier’s name, no longer refused the homely supper that was offered him, since he could work it out in the morning. :

The next morning at six o’clock the men and women were all in the wheat: Robert Hathorn at the head of them, for Robert was one of the best reapers in the country-side.

Many a sly jest passed at the expense of Patrick and his grand-daughter Rachael. The old man often answered, but Rachael hardly ever. At the close of the day they drew apart from all the rest, and seemed content when they were alone together.

In the course of a day or two the reapers began to observe that Rachael was very handsome; and then she became the object of much coarse admiration. Rachael was as little affected by this as by their satire. She evaded it with a cold contempt which left little more to be said: and then her rustic admirers took part with the women against her.

Rachael was pale; and perhaps this was one reason why her beauty did not strike the eye all at once; but when you came to know her face, she was beautiful. Her long eyelashes were heavenly; her eye was full of soul; her features were refined, and her skin was white and transparent, and a slight blush came readily to it, at which moment she was lovely. It must be owned she did not appear to advantage in the field among the reapers ; for there she seemed to feel at war; and her natural dignity degenerated into a certain doggedness. After a while Mrs. Hathorn took a fancy to her; and when she was beside this good, motherly creature, her asperity seemed to soften down, and her coldness turned to a not unamiable pensiveness.

Mrs. Hathorn said one evening to Robert: “ Robert, look at that girl. Do try and find out what is the matter with her. She is a. good girl as ever broke bread; but she breaks my heart to look at her, she is like a marble statue. It is not natural at her years to be so reserved.”

“ Oh!” answered Robert, “ let her alone, there are talkers enough in the world. She is a modest girl,—the only one in the field, I should say,—and that is a great ornament to all women, if they would but see it.”

“ Well, Robert, at all events, have your eye on them; they are strangers, and the people about here are vulgar behaved to strangers, you know.”

“T’ll take care; and as for Rachael, she knows how to answer the fools, —I noticed that the first day.”

Sunday evening came; the villagers formed in groups about the ale-house, the stocks, and the other points of resort, and their occasional laughter fell discordantly upon the ear, so holy and tranquil seemed the air and the sky. Robert Hathorn strolled out at the back of the house to drink the Sabbath sunset after a week of toil: at the back of the largest barn was a shed, and from this shed, as he drew near to it, there issued sounds that seemed to him as sweetly in unison with that holy sunset as the villagers’ rude mirth was out of tune. He came to the back of the shed, and it was Rachael reading the Bible aloud to her grandfather. The words were golden, and fell like dew upon all the spirits within their reach,— upon Robert, who listened to them unseen ; upon Patrick, whose testy nature was calmed and soothed; and upon Rachael herself, who seemed at this moment more hopeful, and less determined to shrink within herself. Her voice, always sweet and winning, became richer and mellower as she read; and when she closed the book, she said, with a modest fervor one would hardly have suspected her of, “ Blessed be God for this book, grandfather! I do think it is the best thing of all the good things he has given the world, and it is very encouraging to people of low condition like us.”

“ Ay,” said the old man, “ those were bold words you read just now, ‘ Blessed are the poor.’ ”

“Let us take them to heart, old man, since, strange as they sound, they must be true.”

Corporal Patrick pondered awhile in silence, then said he was weary: “Let us bless the good people, whose bread we have eaten this while, and I will go to sleep; Rachael, my child, if it was not for you, I could wish not to wake again.”

Poor old man, he was aweary; he had seen better days, and fourscore years is a great age; and he had been a soldier, and fought in great battles head erect, and now, in his feeble days, it was hard to have to bow the back and bend over the sickle among boys and girls who jeered him, and whose peaceful grandsires he had defended against England’s enemies.

Corporal Patrick and his granddaughter went into the barn to sleep, as heretofore, on the straw. Robert Hathorn paced thoughtfully home, and about half an hour after this a cowboy came into the barn to tell Corporal Patrick there were two truckle-beds at his service in a certain loft, which he undertook to show him. So the old soldier and Rachael bivouacked no longer in the barn.

“ Who sent you?” said Rachael to the boy.

“ Mistress.”

After this Robert Hathorn paid considerable attention both to Patrick and Rachael, and she showed by degrees that she was not quite ice to a man that could respect her; not that her manner was inviting even to him, but at least it was courteous, and once or twice she even smiled on him, and a beautiful smile it was when it did come; and, whether from its beauty or its rarity, made a great impression on all who saw it.

It was a fine harvest time, upon the whole, and with some interruptions the work went meirily on; the two strangers, in spite of hard labor, improved in appearance. Mrs. Hathorn set this down to the plentiful and nourishing meals which issued twice a day from her kitchen, and as they had always been her favorites, she drew Robert’s attention to the bloom that began to spread over Rachael’s cheek and the old soldier’s brightening eye, as her work in a great measure.

Mrs. Mayfield was away, and during her absence Hickman had not come once to visit his farm or Hathorn’s. This looked ugly.

“ Wife,’ said the farmer one day, “ what makes our Robert so moody of late?”

“ O, you have noticed it, have you? Then I am right; the boy has something on his mind.”

“That is easy to be seen, and I think I know what it is.”

“Do you, John; what?”

“ Why, he sees this Hickman is in a fair way to carry off Rose Mayfield.”

“Tt is not that.”

“ Why, what else can it be?”

“It is a wonder to me,” said Mrs. Hathorn, “that a man should n’t know his own son better than you seem to know Robert. They are very good friends; but what makes you think Robert would marry her? Have you forgotten how. strict he is about women? Why did he part with Lucy Blackwood, the only sweetheart he ever had?”

“ Hanged if I remember.”

‘“ Because she got herself spoken of flirting at Oxford races once in a way; and Rose does mostly nothing else. And they do say, that once or twice since her husband died, ahem! —”?

“She has kicked over the traces altogether? Fiddlestick !”

“ Fiddlestick be it! She is a fine, spirity woman, and such are apt to set folk talking more than they can prove. Well, Robert would n’t marry a woman that made folk talk about her.”

“QO, he is not such a fool as to fling the farm to a stranger. When does Rose come home?”

“ Next week, as soon as the Assizes are over, and the Uxmoor cause settled one way or other.”

“ Well, when she comes back, you will see him clear up directly, and then I shall know what to do. They must come together, and they shall come together; and if there is no other way, I know one that will bring them together, and I’ll work that way if I’m hanged for it.”

“ With all my heart,’ said Mrs. Hathorn, calmly. “ You can but try.”

“T will try all I know.”

Will it be believed, that while he was in this state of uneasiness about his favorite project, Mr. Casenower came and invited him to a friendly conference ; announced to him that he admired Mrs. Mayfield beyond measure, and had some reason to think she was not averse to him, and requested the farmer’s co-operation ?

“ Confound the jade,’ thought Hathorn ; “she has been spreading the net for this one, too, then; she will break my heart before I have done with her.”

He answered demurely, “that he did not understand women; that his mind was just now in the harvest; and he hoped Mr. C. would excuse him, and try his luck himself —along with the rest,” said the old boy, rather bitterly.

The harvest drew towards its close; the barns began to burst with the golden crops, and one fair rick after another rose behind them, like a rear-guard, until one fine burninghot day in September there remained nothing but a small barley-field to carry.

In the house Mrs. Hathorn and the servants were busy preparing the harvest-home dinner ; in the farm-yard, Casenower and old Hathorn were arguing a point of husbandry; the warm haze of a September day was over the fields; the little pigs toddled about contentedly in the straw of the farm-yard, rooting here and grunting there; the pigeons sat upon the barn tiles in flocks, and every now and then one would come shooting down, and settle, with flapping wings, upon a bit of straw six inches higher than the level; and every now and then was heard the thunder of the horses’ feet as they came over the oak floor of a barn, drawing a loaded wagon into it. Suddenly a halloo was heard down the road; Mr. Casenower and Hathorn looked over the wall, and it was Mrs. Mayfield’s boy Tom, riding home full pelt, and hurrahing as he came along.

“ We have won the day, farmer,” shouted he; “you may dine at Uxmoor if you like. La bless you, the judge wouldn’t hear a word against us. Hurrah! here comes the mistress; hurrah!” And sure enough, Mrs. Mayfield was seen in her hat and habit, riding her bay mare up at ahand gallop on the grass by the road-side. Up she came; the two men 3 * waved their hats to her, which salute she returned on the spot, in the middle of a great shy, which her mare made as a matter of course; but before they could speak, she stopped their mouths. “ Where is Robert? Not a word till he is by. I have not forgot to whom I owe it.” She sprang from the saddle, and gave a hand to each of the men; but before they could welcome her, or congratulate her, she had the word again. “ Why of course you are; you are going to tell me you have been as dull as ditch-water since I went, as if I didn’t know that; and as for Uxmoor, we will all go there together in the afternoon, and I’ll kiss your Robert then and there; and then he will faint away, and we'll come home in the cool of the evening. Is barley cart done yet?” ~ “ No, you are just in time; they are in the last field.”

“ Well, I must run in and cuddle Jane, and help them on with the dinner a bit.”

“ Ay, do, Rose; put a little life into them.”

In about ten minutes Mrs. Mayfield joined them again; and old Hathorn, who had spent that period in a brown study, began operations upon her like a cautious general as he was.

His first step might be compared to reconnoitring the ground; and here, if any reader of mine imagines that country people are simple and devoid of art, for heaven’s sake let him resign that notion, which is entirely founded on pastorals written in metropolitan garrets. .

Country people look simple; but that is a part of their profound art. ‘They are the square-nosed sharks of terra firma. ‘Their craft is smooth, plausible, and unfathomable. You don’t believe. me, perhaps. Well, then, my sharp cockney, go, live, and do business in the country, and tell me at the year’s end whether you have not found humble unknown Practitioners of Humbug, Flattery, Overreaching, and Manceuvre, to whom thieves in London might go to school.

We hear much, from such as write with the but-end of their grandfather’s flageolet, about simple swains and downy meads; but when you get there, you find the natives are at least as downy as any part of the concern.

“JT thought you would be home to-day, Rose.”

“Did you? Why?”

“ Because Richard Hickman has been here twice this morning.”

“ Richard Hickman! what was his business here???’

“ Well, they do say you and he are to go to church together one of these days, — the pair of you.”

“ Well, if the pair of us go to church, there will be a pair of weddings that day.”

“ How smooth a lie do come off a woman’s tongue, to be sure!” thought Mr. Hathorn.

Mr. Casenower put in his word. “I trust I shall not offend you by my zeal, madam, but I hope to see you married to a better man than Hickman.” |

“With all my heart, Mr. Cas— hem! You find me a better man, and I won’t make two bites at him,—ha! ha! ha!”

“ He bears an indifferent character, — ask the farmer here.”

“QO,” said the farmer, with an ostentation of candor, “I don’t believe all I hear.”

CLOUDS AND SUNSHINE. Bs

“ | don’t believe half, nor a quarter,” said Mrs. Mayfield; “but, for Heaven’s sake, don’t fancy 1am wrapped up in Richard Hickman, or in any other man; but he is as good company as here and there one, and he has a tidy farm nigh hand, and good land of his own out Newbury way, by all accounts.”

“ Good land,” shouted the farmer; “ did you ever see it?”

“Not I”

“ Rose,” said Hathorn, solemnly, (he had never seen it either,) “it is as poor as death! covered with those long docks, I hear, and that is a sure sign of land with no heart in it, just as a thistle is a good sign. Do your books tell you that?” said he, suddenly turning to Casenower.

“ No,” said that gentleman, with incredulous contempt.

“ And it is badly farmed ; no wonder, when the farmer never goes nigh it himself, trusts all to a sort of bailiff. Mind your eye, Rose. Why does he never go there? tell me that.”