Meanwhile Josh Horrotian pursued his march, but without the cheerful
whistling accompaniment, decapitating the more aggressive weeds and
thistles growing by the roadside with such tremendous slashes of the
stout riding-whip as to leave no doubt that he executed in imagination
condign punishment upon certain individuals unnamed. Indeed, so far
did his annoyance carry him, that, disturbed beyond measure by the
incessant chattering of the frosty wind amidst the crisp dry leaves
of an elm-hedge he was passing, he bade the tameless element hold its
noise, in what was for him a surly tone.
But, coming to a hog-backed stile, breaking the hedge and leading,
by a narrow right-of-way over some clayey wheatlands, where the
first faint green blush of the young corn lay in the more sheltered
hollows, together with a powdering of fine unmelted snow, his bent
brows relaxed, and the shadow that darkened his handsome sunbrowned
face vanished. He whistled again as he threw a long blue leg, with a
white stripe down the side of the tight trouser strapped down over the
spurred Wellington boot, across the iron-bound log. For on the high
bleak ridge of the sixty-acre upland, stood his mother’s farm, facing
away from him to the west; where the fall of the clay-lands upon the
other side sloped to the deep and muddy Drowse, spanned by an ancient
stone bridge that had rude carvings of tilting knights in plate-armor,
upon some of the coping-stones of its parapet. The bridge crossed,
a mile of country road dotted with farmhouses and cottages led to
the small and sleepy borough-town of Market Drowsing, in the shadow
of whose square Anglo-Norman church-tower many tall Horrotians had
moldered into dust....
The sight of the low, irregular brown-and-red-tiled roof of the old
home building, with its paled-in patch of garden at the southern
gable-end, its great thatched barn sheltering it on the north side,
and its rows of beehive-shaped ricks, each topped with a neatly
plaited ball of grass, tarred to resist weather and impaled upon
a wooden spike, warmed the man’s heart, not for the reason that a
somewhat cheerless boyhood had been passed beneath those mossy-green,
lichen-yellowed, old red tiles, but because they sheltered Nelly.
“I wonder if she sees me?” he questioned with himself, as the path
took a curve and the great church-shaped barn reared up its gray and
ancient bulk between him and the homestead. “The little dairy-window at
the house-back--this being about the time o’ day she’s drawing off the
skimmings for the pigs--ought, if so be as she’s on the look-out, to
have given her a view”--his smile broadened--“of the approaching enemy.”
Of course it had, long happy minutes back.... Even as the image of her
rose smiling in his mind, she came running down the pathway straight
into his arms, and with the joyful shock and the warm contact of her,
vexations fled away, and he snatched her, not at all objecting, to his
beating heart, and they took a long, sweet kiss--rather an experienced
kiss, if one may say it, and more suggestive of the full-orbed
sweetness of the honeymoon than of the wooing-time that goes before.
“Now, do ’e give over, Josh!” she said at last, and emerged all rosy
with love and happiness from his strong embrace, and straightened her
pink quilted sunbonnet, pouting a little. “Bain’t you ashamed?”
“I’d like to see myself!” declared Josh stoutly, and had another kiss
of her upon the strength of it, and then held her off at arm’s length
for a long, satisfying look.
She was very pretty, this Nelly, orphan daughter of a small freehold
farmer named John Pover, who had borrowed money upon a mortgage from
the great Thompson Jowell, and had, unhappy wretch, once the suckers
of that greedy octopus were fairly fastened on him, been drained dry
by means of extortionate interest, until he cut his throat--an absurd
thing to do, seeing how little blood was left in him--leaving his
freehold, farm, and stock to be gulped down, and his girl to take
service as dairymaid with that grim Samaritaness, Sarah Horrotian.
She had sweet, soft, shy, dark eyes, had Nelly, and a sweet round face,
the tops of its rosy cheeks dusted with golden freckles. There were
some more on her little nose, a feature of no known order of facial
architecture, but yet distracting to male wits, taken in conjunction
with the rest; and a powdering of yet more freckles was on her darling
upper lip, and the underlip pouted, as though it were jealous at having
been overlooked. Her dark hair had a gleam of yellow gold on the edges
of the curls that had escaped the control of the sunbonnet that now
hung back upon her shoulders; and she had the round neck and plump
breast of a dove, or of a lovely young woman, full of the vigor of
fresh life and the glow of young hope, and the joy and the promise and
the palpitating, passionate fulfillment of Love, without a bitter drop
in the cup--until you came to Sarah Horrotian.
Josh came to Sarah, when the first edge had been taken off his appetite
for kisses. He asked, unconsciously dropping back into his broad native
accent, as he stood under the lee-side of the big barn, with his strong
arm round Nelly’s yielding waist, and her curls scattered on the broad
breast covered by the tight blue jacket:
“Well, and how be mother?”
“I reckon much about the same. Throwing Scripture at a body,” said
Nelly, with a grimace that only produced a dimple, “whenever her be
wopsy.”
“And that’s all round the clock,” said Sarah Horrotian’s son decidedly.
He added: “Hard texts break us bones, Pretty. I learned that when I was
a lad. And how’s old Blueberry? Proper? That’s right. He takes me back
to-morrow--starting early so as not to overdo him, good beast!”
“I believe you love him better than poor Nelly,” she said, with tears
crowding on her long dark lashes at the thought of losing her love so
soon.
“I’ll show poor Nelly whether I love her or not.” He pretended to bite
a pink finger of the soft hand he cherished in his own. “Let’s just
forget to-morrow till it’s here.” His tongue broadened insensibly into
the Sloughshire dialect as he went on: “And how be my old dog Roger?
And Jason Digweed? Does he still take off his boots to clean pigsty,
and then put ’em on again over all the muck? And wear no clothes at
all to-house, and answer a knock at door naked as my hand; and scare
expecting females into the straw, weeks before their time might be
looked for? O’ course he do! It wouldn’t be Jason else. There’s nobody
can tell me anything new about _him_!”
“Med-be I might!”
He took her by the chin, and turned the coquettish face to him, and
looked into the dancing eyes with a twinkle in his own.
“Now then, what is it? Speak up, you teasing witch!”
Nelly dimpled and blushed, and finally burst out laughing, smothering
her mirth against Josh’s blue sleeve in a very endearing way.
“Hurry up, or I shall guess!” Josh’s florid face broadened in a smile,
and his blue eyes twinkled knowingly. “I doubt but I do guess, though,
all the same. Still, tell!”
She shunned his eyes with provoking coyness.
“I don’t half like to say it out loud!”
“Whisper, then,” he said gayly, “and give a man a chance to kiss a
pretty neck!”
“Behave yourself! But stoop down. You be so tall.”
He stooped, and she whispered, and the whisper sent him off into a
guffaw of laughter.
“Ha, ha, ha! Well, to-be-sure!” He slapped his thigh and roared himself
red in the face, and she laughed with him, though in demurer fashion.
“Whew! that beats all! So Jason be in love, after all his cursing o’
females, and wishing as the Almighty had seen fit to people the world
without the help of petticoats. But who’s the maid, if it be a maid,
and what’s her mind to him, seemingly? Will she swallow the mortal
down, with a hold on her nose? or turn it up, and bid him get to
windward with that mug of his, as a New Zealand idol might be jealous
of? Come, give her a name! or I’ll say you grudge her her good fortune!”
“You gave her your own, not so long back!”
“You don’t mean yourself?”
Convinced by Nelly’s blushes as by her laughter that she did mean
herself; a purple hue swamped the trooper’s florid countenance and
a weakness took him in the knees. He rocked awhile, holding his
blue-cloth-covered ribs, and then his laughter broke away with him,
and wakened echoes that the barrack-room knew, but that the blackened,
cobwebbed rafters of the ancient barn had not echoed to since a roaring
bachelor squire of the soldier’s name had held Harvest Home there in
the dead old days when the Second George was King.
Nelly checked him when he reached the climax of gasping speechlessly
and mopping his overflowing eyes. He crowed out:
“Well, that bangs the best! And what did you do when he made up to ’e?
Comb his hair wi’ a muck-fork or curtsey and thank him kindly for his
damned presumption?”
“Use proper talk, else I’ll tell ’e nowt,” she threatened.
“I will, I vow! From now I’m the best boy in the Sunday-school,--mild
as a dish o’ milk, and as mealy-mouthed as Old Pooker--not that he’s a
bad sort, as the white-chokered corps go!”
“See you keep your word! Well then.... Says my customer to I....”
“Meaning Jason?...”
“Meaning Jason. Says he, smirking all over his face, as how I be a main
pretty maid; and he have wrestled in prayer upon the matter, and med-be
if I looked out wi’ my bright eyes sharp enough, I should see myself
standin’ up before the Minister to Market Drowsing Baptist Chapel,
being preached into one flesh wi’ he--he--he!”
Josh drew a deep breath, inflating his broad chest to the utmost of its
lung-capacity and bellowed:
“And this is the man as down-cries all women. Why, he got round mother
that way, cussing of the female sex for traps and snares and Babylonish
harlots, though why that kind o’ talk should tickle her, hang me if I
know! her being a woman herself, by way of!... But how did you meet the
bold wooer?...”
“Tossed up my chin like so”--she furnished a distracting example--“and
telled ’n as no living minister should mold me into one flesh wi’ any
mortal man!”
“Having been regularly tied up in the matrimony-knot by a parson--my
blessings on his tallow face!” said Josh, with a triumphant hug, “that
snowy day in January when you met me at the little iron church down the
Stoke Road near Dullingstoke Junction, wi’ the license buttoned in the
pocket of my borrowed suit o’ plain clothes, and the ring jammed on my
little finger so precious tight--for fear of losing it!--that it took
you and me and the beadle to get it off again!”
Upon the strength of these reminiscences he did some more hugging. She
freed herself from the enclosing girdle of warm, muscular flesh and hot
blood, pouting:
“Behave, and let a body finish! To that about the minister, and me
never marrying, Jason he tells I as all young maids be ’ockerd at
axing. ‘But a’ll gi’ thee another chance,’ says he. ‘’Oolt thee or
’ootent thee? Cry ‘beans’ when I cry ‘peas,’ and it’s a bargain!’ Wi’
that, he offers to kiss me!”
“The--frowsy son of a gun! Don’t say you ever----”
“Likely!... I fetched ’n a smack in the face....”
“Bravo!”
“Following up with the promise that I’d rather die than wed ’n, and all
the same so if he were hung wi’ gold and di’monds....”
“There’s my girl! What more?”
“Oh, Jason, he were cruel casted down. Quite desperate-like, and
threatened me he’d ’list for a soger.... ‘_Why, they would wash ’e!_’ I
tells ’n; and he bundled away in a girt hurry, and haven’t come athirt
I since.... But your mother must ha’ heard, her looks be so mortal
glum.”
“Never mind her looks! Tell her I’ve got a better husband for her
pretty dairymaid than her pigman comes to, dang his dratted impudence!”
She rallied him in rude country fashion, its homeliness redeemed by the
beauty of the speaking mouth and the dancing hazel eyes.
“You be jealous!”
“Jealous, am I?” He rapped out the fashionable oath, caught from his
officers: “Egad! you rogue, I’ll punish you for that!”
She seemed to like the punishment rather than not. And as she gasped,
crimson under his kisses, there was a rustling inside the barn, near
the great doors of which the lovers stood. One of these swung open,
affording to the view of those without, had their absorbed faces but
been turned that way, a segment of the vast churchlike interior,
with its noble raftered roof upheld by kingposts at the gable-ends,
and only lighted by the gleams of cold wintry sunshine that found
entrance by the partly open door, and by the cracks between the ancient
side-boards, and here and there where birds or rats had tunneled holes
in the ancient brown thatch. Mounds of recently-threshed wheat occupied
the granary at the higher end; with bales of sacks, cord-tied, destined
to receive the hard, sound, golden grain. The lower threshing-floor
was ankle-deep with the chaff of beans, and stout bags of these, newly
tied, stood in rows against the opposite wall, while a great mound of
the straw rose in the background. The wooden thail that had been used
in the bean-threshing lay upon the floor. The man who had wielded it
had yielded to the desire for a snooze, a weakness of Jason Digweed’s
when the beer was working in his muddy brain....
When the lovers had jested about him and his unlucky wooing, there
had been a stirring in the heart of the mound of the bean-straw, and
a dirty finger shod with a black nail had worked a spying-hole for an
unwashed face, embedded in a matted growth of dirty hair, to rest in.
Thus, unobserved, Mrs. Sarah Horrotian’s pigman, fogger, cow-keeper,
and general factotum, favored by the widow on account of his Dissenting
principles and avowed and sturdy misogyny, could see what took place,
and be entertained by the conversation.
It had fallen to fitful whispers. The man was urgent, and the damsel
coy. The experience of the ambushed hater of the sex had to be drawn
upon for the context of the broken sentences that reached the dingy
ears under the dirty hair-thatch.
“Miss Impudence!” Josh called his sweetheart after some retort of hers.
“‘_Miss!_’” she breathed, so softly that even her lover barely heard
her.
“Miss Nelly Pover to the world as yet, and in the hearing of folks
to-home here. But Mrs. Joshua Horrotian in snug corners when there’s
none to listen or pry. Eh, my beauty?” he said, hugging her.
“I don’t know how I durst ha’ married you!” she panted, “and me that
afraid o’ your mother....”
“Let me but get bought out of the Army and settled in my proper place
as master of this farm,” said Josh in a loud, ringing voice of cheerful
hope, “and there’s no one on earth you need hang your pretty head for,
or ever shall, my darling!”
She turned to him then with all her coyness gone, and put both arms
about his neck, and so clung to him, kissing the cloth of his jacket,
the rough embroidery of his stiff collar, the hard, manly neck gripped
by the leather stock, until the strong man quivered and grew pale, and
leaned against the stout tarred timbers of the barn behind him, holding
her to his breast. Thus he whispered with his lips at the rosy island
of ear that showed among her curls, and his eyes seeking the desired
haven revealed by the high partly-opened door. But she shook her head,
with her face still hidden against him, and he was fain to wait and
curb his passion, lest he should scare this shy and tender thing. He
said, and his voice was not quite steady:
“As my girl pleases, be it. I’m hers for life or death! You know that,
don’t you, Nell?”
She pressed against the blue jacket, nibbling a bright brass button.
“Speak up and answer!”
No answer.
“Nelly!”
She vibrated at the low, persuasive call. You could see the waves of
roseate color chasing each other from the edge of the print neckerchief
upwards to the creamy nape of the soft dove’s neck, where the silky
little curls clustered under the sunbonnet. And then she yielded to
him all at once, and he led her in under the high lintel of the great
barn-door, and the wedded lovers vanished in the kindly, fragrant
hay-scented gloom of the upper threshing-floor, where were the great
golden mounds of tenfold wheat that Zeus and Demeter might have couched
on.