DIPWELL FARM
In rain or in sunshine this old farmhouse had a constant resemblance to
a wall-flower; and it had the same moist earthy smell, except in the
kitchen, where John and Martha Thresher lived, apart from their
furniture. All the fresh eggs, and the butter stamped, with three bees,
and the pots of honey, the fowls, and the hare lifted out of the hamper
by his hind legs, and the country loaves smelling heavenly, which used
to come to Mrs. Waddy's address in London, and appear on my father's
table, were products of Dipwell farm, and presents from her sister,
Martha Thresher. On receiving this information I felt at home in a
moment, and asked right off, 'How long am I to stay here?—Am I going
away tomorrow?—What's going to be done with me?' The women found these
questions of a youthful wanderer touching. Between kissings and
promises of hens to feed, and eggs that were to come of it, I settled
into contentment. A strong impression was made on me by Mrs. Waddy's
saying, 'Here, Master Harry, your own papa will come for you; and you
may be sure he will, for I have his word he will, and he's not one to
break it, unless his country's against him; and for his darling boy
he'd march against cannons. So here you'll sit and wait for him, won't
you?' I sat down immediately, looking up. Mrs. Waddy and Mrs. Thresher
raised their hands. I had given them some extraordinary proof of my
love for my father. The impression I received was, that sitting was the
thing to conjure him to me.
'Where his heart's not concerned,' Mrs. Waddy remarked of me
flatteringly, 'he's shrewd as a little schoolmaster.'
'He've a bird's-nesting eye,' said Mrs. Thresher, whose face I was
studying.
John Thresher wagered I would be a man before either of them reached
that goal. But whenever he spoke he suffered correction on account of
his English.
'More than his eating and his drinking, that child's father worrits
about his learning to speak the language of a British gentleman,' Mrs.
Waddy exclaimed. 'Before that child your _h_'s must be like the panting
of an engine—to please his father. He'd stop me carrying the
dinner-tray on meat-dish hot, and I'm to repeat what I said, to make
sure the child haven't heard anything ungrammatical. The child's
nursemaid he'd lecture so, the poor girl would come down to me ready to
bend double, like a bundle of nothing, his observations so took the
pride out of her. That's because he's a father who knows his duty to
the child:—“Child!” says he, “man, ma'am.” It's just as you, John, when
you sow your seed you think of your harvest. So don't take it ill of
me, John; I beg of you be careful of your English. Turn it over as
you're about to speak.'
'Change loads on the road, you mean,' said John Thresher. 'Na, na, he's
come to settle nigh a weedy field, if you like, but his crop ain't nigh
reaping yet. Hark you, Mary Waddy, who're a widde, which's as much as
say, an unocc'pied mind, there's cockney, and there's country, and
there's school. Mix the three, strain, and throw away the sediment.
Now, yon's my view.
His wife and Mrs. Waddy said reflectively, in a breath, 'True!'
'Drink or no, that's the trick o' brewery,' he added.
They assented. They began praising him, too, like meek creatures.
'What John says is worth listening to, Mary. You may be over-careful. A
stew's a stew, and not a boiling to shreds, and you want a steady fire,
and not a furnace.'
'Oh, I quite agree with John, Martha: we must take the good and the
evil in a world like this.'
'Then I'm no scholar, and you're at ease,' said John.
Mrs. Waddy put her mouth to his ear.
Up went his eyebrows, wrinkling arches over a petrified stare.
In some way she had regained her advantage. 'Art sure of it?' he
inquired.
'Pray, don't offend me by expressing a doubt of it,' she replied,
bowing.
John Thresher poised me in the very centre of his gaze. He declared he
would never have guessed that, and was reproved, inasmuch as he might
have guessed it. He then said that I could not associate with any of
the children thereabout, and my dwelling in the kitchen was not to be
thought of. The idea of my dwelling in the kitchen seemed to be a
serious consideration with Mrs. Martha likewise. I was led into the
rooms of state. The sight of them was enough. I stamped my feet for the
kitchen, and rarely in my life have been happier than there, dining and
supping with John and Martha and the farm-labourers, expecting my
father across the hills, and yet satisfied with the sun. To hope, and
not be impatient, is really to believe, and this was my feeling in my
father's absence. I knew he would come, without wishing to hurry him.
He had the world beyond the hills; I this one, where a slow full river
flowed from the sounding mill under our garden wall, through long
meadows. In Winter the wild ducks made letters of the alphabet flying.
On the other side of the copses bounding our home, there was a park
containing trees old as the History of England, John Thresher said, and
the thought of their venerable age enclosed me comfortably. He could
not tell me whether he meant as old as the book of English History; he
fancied he did, for the furrow-track follows the plough close upon; but
no one exactly could swear when that (the book) was put together. At my
suggestion, he fixed the trees to the date of the Heptarchy, a period
of heavy ploughing. Thus begirt by Saxon times, I regarded Riversley as
a place of extreme baldness, a Greenland, untrodden by my Alfred and my
Harold. These heroes lived in the circle of Dipwell, confidently
awaiting the arrival of my father. He sent me once a glorious letter.
Mrs. Waddy took one of John Thresher's pigeons to London, and in the
evening we beheld the bird cut the sky like an arrow, bringing round
his neck a letter warm from him I loved. Planet communicating with
planet would be not more wonderful to men than words of his to me,
travelling in such a manner. I went to sleep, and awoke imagining the
bird bursting out of heaven.
Meanwhile there was an attempt to set me moving again. A strange young
man was noticed in the neighbourhood of the farm, and he accosted me at
Leckham fair. 'I say, don't we know one another? How about your
grandfather the squire, and your aunt, and Mr. Bannerbridge? I've got
news for you.'
Not unwilling to hear him, I took his hand, leaving my companion, the
miller's little girl, Mabel Sweetwinter, at a toy-stand, while Bob, her
brother and our guardian, was shying sticks in a fine attitude. 'Yes,
and your father, too,' said the young man; 'come along and see him; you
can run?' I showed him how fast. We were pursued by Bob, who fought for
me, and won me, and my allegiance instantly returned to him. He carried
me almost the whole of the way back to Dipwell. Women must feel for the
lucky heroes who win them, something of what I felt for mine; I kissed
his bloody face, refusing to let him wipe it. John Thresher said to me
at night, 'Ay, now you've got a notion of boxing; and will you believe
it, Master Harry, there's people fools enough to want to tread that
ther' first-rate pastime under foot? I speak truth, and my word for 't,
they'd better go in petticoats. Let clergymen preach as in duty bound;
you and I'll uphold a manful sport, we will, and a cheer for Bob!'
He assured me, and he had my entire faith, that boxing was England's
natural protection from the foe. The comfort of having one like Bob to
defend our country from invasion struck me as inexpressible. Lighted by
John Thresher's burning patriotism, I entered the book of the History
of England at about the pace of a carthorse, with a huge waggon at my
heels in the shape of John. There was no moving on until he was filled.
His process of receiving historical knowledge was to fight over again
the personages who did injury to our honour as a nation, then shake
hands and be proud of them. 'For where we ain't quite successful we're
cunning,' he said; 'and we not being able to get rid of William the
Conqueror, because he's got a will of his own and he won't budge, why,
we takes and makes him one of ourselves; and no disgrace in that, I
should hope! He paid us a compliment, don't you see, Master Harry? he
wanted to be an Englishman. “Can you this?” says we, sparrin' up to
him. “Pretty middlin',” says he, “and does it well.” “Well then,” says
we, “then you're one of us, and we'll beat the world”; and did so.'
John Thresher had a laborious mind; it cost him beads on his forehead
to mount to these heights of meditation. He told me once that he
thought one's country was like one's wife: you were born in the first,
and married to the second, and had to learn all about them afterwards,
ay, and make the best of them. He recommended me to mix, strain, and
throw away the sediment, for that was the trick o' brewery. Every
puzzle that beset him in life resolved to this cheerful precept, the
value of which, he said, was shown by clear brown ale, the drink of the
land. Even as a child I felt that he was peculiarly an Englishman.
Tales of injustice done on the Niger river would flush him in a heat of
wrath till he cried out for fresh taxes to chastise the villains. Yet
at the sight of the beggars at his gates he groaned at the taxes
existing, and enjoined me to have pity on the poor taxpayer when I lent
a hand to patch the laws. I promised him I would unreservedly, with a
laugh, but with a sincere intention to legislate in a direct manner on
his behalf. He, too, though he laughed, thanked me kindly.
I was clad in black for my distant mother. Mrs. Waddy brought down a
young man from London to measure me, so that my mourning attire might
be in the perfect cut of fashion. 'The child's papa would strip him if
he saw him in a country tailor's funeral suit,' she said, and seemed to
blow a wind of changes on me that made me sure my father had begun to
stir up his part of the world. He sent me a prayer in his own
handwriting to say for my mother in heaven. I saw it flying up between
black edges whenever I shut my eyes. Martha Thresher dosed me for
liver. Mrs. Waddy found me pale by the fireside, and prescribed iron.
Both agreed upon high-feeding, and the apothecary agreed with both in
everything, which reconciled them, for both good women loved me so
heartily they were near upon disputing over the medicines I was to
consume.
Under such affectionate treatment I betrayed the alarming symptom that
my imagination was set more on my mother than on my father: I could not
help thinking that for any one to go to heaven was stranger than to
drive to Dipwell, and I had this idea when my father was clasping me in
his arms; but he melted it like snow off the fields. He came with
postillions in advance of him wearing crape rosettes, as did the
horses. We were in the cricket-field, where Dipwell was playing its
first match of the season, and a Dipwell lad, furious to see the
elevens commit such a breach of the rules and decency as to troop away
while the game was hot, and surround my father, flung the cricket-ball
into the midst and hit two or three of the men hard. My father had to
shield him from the consequences. He said he liked that boy; and he
pleaded for him so winningly and funnily that the man who was hurt most
laughed loudest.
Standing up in the carriage, and holding me by the hand, he addressed
them by their names: 'Sweetwinter, I thank you for your attention to my
son; and you, Thribble; and you, my man; and you, Baker; Rippengale,
and you; and you, Jupp'; as if he knew them personally. It was true he
nodded at random. Then he delivered a short speech, and named himself a
regular subscriber to their innocent pleasures. He gave them money, and
scattered silver coin among the boys and girls, and praised John
Thresher, and Martha, his wife, for their care of me, and pointing to
the chimneys of the farm, said that the house there was holy to him
from henceforth, and he should visit it annually if possible, but
always in the month of May, and in the shape of his subscription, as
certain as the cowslip. The men, after their fit of cheering, appeared
unwilling to recommence their play, so he alighted and delivered the
first ball, and then walked away with my hand in his, saying:
'Yes, my son, we will return to them tenfold what they have done for
you. The eleventh day of May shall be a day of pleasure for Dipwell
while I last, and you will keep it in memory of me when I am gone. And
now to see the bed you have slept in.'
Martha Thresher showed him the bed, showed him flowers I had planted,
and a Spanish chestnut tree just peeping.
'Ha!' said he, beaming at every fresh sight of my doings: 'madam, I am
your life-long debtor and friend!' He kissed her on the cheek.
John Thresher cried out: 'Why, dame, you trembles like a maid.'
She spoke very faintly, and was red in the face up to the time of our
departure. John stood like a soldier. We drove away from a cheering
crowd of cricketers and farm-labourers, as if discharged from a great
gun. 'A royal salvo!' said my father, and asked me earnestly whether I
had forgotten to reward and take a particular farewell of any one of my
friends. I told him I had forgotten no one, and thought it was true,
until on our way up the sandy lane, which offered us a last close view
of the old wall-flower farm front, I saw little Mabel Sweetwinter,
often my playfellow and bedfellow, a curly-headed girl, who would have
danced on Sunday for a fairing, and eaten gingerbread nuts during a
ghost-story. She was sitting by a furze-bush in flower, cherishing in
her lap a lamb that had been worried. She looked half up at me, and
kept looking so, but would not nod. Then good-bye, thought I, and
remembered her look when I had forgotten that of all the others.