Parson Dale and Squire Hazeldean parted company; the latter to inspect his
sheep, the former to visit some of his parishioners, including Lenny
Fairfield, whom the donkey had defrauded of his apple.
Lenny Fairfield was sure to be in the way, for his mother rented a few
acres of grass land from the Squire, and it was now hay-time. And Leonard,
commonly called Lenny, was an only son, and his mother a widow. The
cottage stood apart, and somewhat remote, in one of the many nooks of the
long green village lane. And a thoroughly English cottage it was—three
centuries old at least; with walls of rubble let into oak frames, and duly
whitewashed every summer, a thatched roof, small panes of glass, and an
old doorway raised from the ground by two steps. There was about this
little dwelling all the homely rustic elegance which peasant life admits
of: a honeysuckle was trained over the door; a few flower-pots were placed
on the window-sills; the small plot of ground in front of the house was
kept with great neatness, and even taste; some large rough stones on
either side the little path having been formed into a sort of rockwork,
with creepers that were now in flower; and the potato-ground was screened
from the eye by sweet peas and lupine. Simple elegance all this, it is
true; but how well it speaks for peasant and landlord, when you see that
the peasant is fond of his home, and has some spare time and heart to
bestow upon mere embellishment. Such a peasant is sure to be a bad
customer to the ale-house, and a safe neighbor to the Squire’s preserves.
All honor and praise to him, except a small tax upon both, which is due to
the landlord!
Such sights were as pleasant to the Parson as the most beautiful
landscapes of Italy can be to the dilettante. He paused a moment at the
wicket to look around him, and distended his nostrils voluptuously to
inhale the smell of the sweet peas, mixed with that of the new-mown hay in
the fields behind, which a slight breeze bore to him. He then moved on,
carefully scraped his shoes, clean and well polished as they were—for Mr.
Dale was rather a beau in his own clerical way—on the scraper without the
door, and lifted the latch.
Your virtuoso looks with artistical delight on the figure of some nymph
painted on an Etruscan vase, engaged in pouring out the juice of the grape
from her classic urn. And the Parson felt as harmless, if not as elegant a
pleasure, in contemplating Widow Fairfield brimming high a glittering can,
which she designed for the refreshment of the thirsty hay-makers.
Mrs. Fairfield was a middle-aged, tidy woman, with that alert precision of
movement which seems to come from an active orderly mind; and as she now
turned her head briskly at the sound of the Parson’s footsteps, she showed
a countenance prepossessing, though not handsome—a countenance from which
a pleasant hearty smile, breaking forth at that moment effaced some lines
that, in repose, spoke “of sorrows, but of sorrows past;” and her cheek,
paler than is common to the complexions even of the fair sex, when born
and bred amidst a rural population, might have favored the guess that the
earlier part of her life had been spent in the languid air and
“within-doors” occupation of a town.
“Never mind me,” said the Parson, as Mrs. Fairfield dropped her quick
courtesy, and smoothed her apron; “if you are going into the hayfield, I
will go with you; I have something to say to Lenny—an excellent boy.”
WIDOW.—“Well, sir, and you are kind to say to it—but he is.”
PARSON.—“He reads uncommonly well, he writes tolerably; he is the best lad
in the whole school at his catechism and in the Bible lessons; and I
assure you, when I see his face at church, looking up so attentively, I
fancy that I shall read my sermon all the better for such a listener!”
WIDOW, wiping her eyes with the corner of her apron.—“’Deed, sir, when my
poor Mark died, I never thought I could have lived on as I have done. But
that boy is so kind and good, that when I look at him sitting there in
dear Mark’s chair, and remember how Mark loved him, and all he used to say
to me about him, I feel somehow or other as if my goodman smiled on me,
and would rather I was not with him yet, till the lad had grown up, and
did not want me any more.”
PARSON, looking away, and after a pause.—“You never hear any thing of the
old folks at Lansmere?”
“’Deed, sir, sin’ poor Mark died, they han’t noticed me, nor the boy;
but,” added the widow, with all a peasant’s pride, “it isn’t that I wants
their money; only it’s hard to feel strange like to one’s own father and
mother!”
PARSON.—“You must excuse them. Your father, Mr. Avenel, was never quite
the same man after that sad event—but you are weeping, my friend, pardon
me:—your mother is a little proud; but so are you, though in another way.”
WIDOW.—“I proud! Lord love ye, sir, I have not a bit of pride in me! and
that’s the reason they always looked down on me.”
PARSON.—“Your parents must be well off, and I shall apply to them in a
year or two on behalf of Lenny, for they promised me to provide for him
when he grew up, as they ought.”
WIDOW, with flashing eyes.—“I am sure, sir, I hope you will do no such
thing; for I would not have Lenny beholden to them as has never given him
a kind word sin’ he was born!”
The Parson smiled gravely and shook his head at poor Mrs. Fairfield’s
hasty confutation of her own self-acquittal from the charge of pride, but
he saw that it was not the time or moment for effectual peace-making in
the most irritable of all rancors, viz., that nourished against one’s
nearest relations. He therefore dropped that subject, and said, “Well,
time enough to think of Lenny’s future prospects: meanwhile we are
forgetting the hay-makers. Come.”
The widow opened the back door, which led across a little apple orchard
into the fields.
PARSON.—“You have a pleasant place here, and I see that my friend Lenny
should be in no want of apples. I had brought him one, but I have given it
away on the road.”
WIDOW.—“Oh, sir, it is not the deed—it is the will; as I felt when the
Squire, God bless him! took two pounds off the rent the year he—that is,
Mark—died.”
PARSON.—“If Lenny continues to be such a help to you, it will not be long
before the Squire may put the two pounds on again.”
“Yes, sir,” said the widow simply; “I hope he will.”
“Silly woman!” muttered the Parson. “That’s not exactly what the
schoolmistress would have said. You don’t read nor write, Mrs. Fairfield;
yet you express yourself with great propriety.”
“You know Mark was a schollard, sir, like my poor, poor, sister; and
though I was a sad stupid girl afore I married, I tried to take after him
when we came together.”