THE POTATO-FIELD.
Live who may, and die who must, the work of the world shall be carried
on. Of all these works, the one that can never be long in arrears is
eating; and of all British victuals, next to bread, the potato claims
perhaps the foremost place. Where the soil is light towards Hagdon Hill,
on the property of the Dean and Chapter, potatoes, meet for any
dignitary of the Church, could be dug by the ton, in those days. In
these democratic and epidemic times, it is hard to find a good potato;
and the reason is too near to seek. The finer the quality of fruit or
root, the fiercer are they that fall on it; and the nemesis of
excellence already was impending. But the fatal blow had not fallen yet;
the ripe leaves strewed the earth with vivid gold, instead of reeking
weltering smut; and the berries were sound, for boys and girls to pelt
one another across the field; while at the lift of the glistening fork
across the crumbling ridges, up sprang a cluster of rosy globes, clean
as a codlin, and chubby as a cherub.
Farmer John Horner, the senior Churchwarden, and the largest ratepayer
on the south side of the Perle, would never have got on as he did,
without some knowledge of the weather. The bitter east wind of the
previous night, and the keen frost of the morning, had made up his mind
that it was high time to lift his best field of potatoes. He had two
large butts to receive the filled sacks--assorted into ware and
chats--and every working man on the farm, as well as his wife and
children, had been ordered to stick at this job, and clear this
four-acre field before nightfall. The field was a good step from the
village, as well as from Farmer Horner's house; and the lower end (where
the gate was) abutted on the Susscot lane, leading from the ford to
Perlycross.
It was now All-Hallows day, accounted generally the farewell of autumn,
and arrival of the winter. Birds, and beasts, that know their time
without recourse to calendar, had made the best use of that knowledge,
and followed suit of wisdom. Some from the hills were seeking
downwards, not to abide in earnest yet, but to see for themselves what
men had done for their comfort when the pinch should come; some of more
tender kind were gone with a whistle at the storms they left behind; and
others had taken their winter apparel, and meant to hold fast to the
homes they understood.
Farmer John, who was getting rather short of breath from the fatness of
his bacon, stirred about steadfastly among the rows, exhorting,
ordering, now and then upbraiding, when a digger stuck his fork into the
finest of the clump. He had put his hunting gaiters on, because the
ground would clog as soon as the rime began to melt; and the fog, which
still lingered in the hollows of the slopes, made him pull his triple
chin out of his comforter to cough, as often as he opened his big mouth
to scold. For he was not (like farmers of the present day) too thankful
for anything that can be called a crop, to utter a cross word over it.
Old Mr. Channing, the clerk, came in by the gate from the lane, when the
sun was getting high. Not that he meant to do much work--for anything
but graves, his digging time was past, and it suited him better to make
breeches--but simply that he liked to know how things were going on, and
thought it not impossible that if he praised the 'taturs, Churchwarden
might say--"Bob, you shall taste them; we'll drop you a bushel, when the
butt comes by your door." So he took up a root or two here and there,
and "hefted it," (that is to say, poised it carefully to judge the
weight, as one does a letter for the post) and then stroked the sleek
skin lovingly, and put it down gingerly for fear of any bruise. Farmer
John watched him, with a dry little grin; for he knew what the old
gentleman was up to.
"Never see'd such 'taturs in all my life," Mr. Channing declared with a
sigh of admiration. "Talk of varmers! There be nobody fit to hold a
can'le to our Measter John. I reckon them would fry even better than
they biled; and that's where to judge of a 'tatur, I contends."
"Holloa, Mr. Clerk! How be you then, this fine morning?" The farmer
shouted out, as if no muttering would do for him, while he straddled
over a two-foot ridge, with the rime thawing down his gaiters. "Glad to
see 'e here, old veller. What difference do 'e reckon now, betwixt a man
and a 'tatur?"
Farmer John was famous for his riddles. He made them all himself, in
conversation with his wife--for he had not married early--and there was
no man in the parish yet with brains enough to solve them. And if any
one attempted it, the farmer always snubbed him.
"There now, ye be too deep for me!" Mr. Channing made a hole in the
ground with his stick, as if Mr. Horner was at the bottom of it. "It
requireth a good deal more than us have got, to get underneath your
meaning, sir."
"No, Bob, no! It be very zimple, and zuitable too for your trade. A
'tatur cometh out of ground, when a' be ripe; but a man the zame way
goeth underground. And a good thing for him, if he 'bideth there,
according to what hath been done in these here parts, or a little way up
country. No call for thee to laugh, Bob, at thy time of life, when
behooveth thee to think over it. But I'll give thee an order for a pair
of corduroys, and thou shalt have a few 'taturs, when the butt comes by.
Us, as belongs to the Church, is bound to keep her agoing, when the hogs
won't miss it! But there, Lord now, I want a score of nose-rings? Have
'e see'd anything of Joe Crang, this morning? We never heer'd nort of
his anvil all the time! Reckon Joe had a drop too much at the _Bush_,
last night."
"Why, here a' coom'th!" exclaimed the clerk. "Look, a' be claimbin' of
an open gate! Whatever can possess the man? A' couldn't look more mazed
and weist, if a hunderd ghostesses was after him?"
Joseph Crang, the blacksmith at Susscot ford, where the Susscot brook
passed on its way to the Perle, was by nature of a merry turn, and
showed it in his face. But he had no red now, nor even any black about
him, and the resolute aspect, with which he shod a horse, or swung a big
hammer, was changed into a quivering ghastly stare; his lips were of an
ashy blue, like a ring of tobacco smoke; and as for his body, and legs,
and clothes, they seemed to have nothing to do with one another.
"What aileth the man?" cried Mr. Channing, standing across, as he had
the right to do, after bestraddling so many burials; "Master Joe Crang,
I call upon thee to collect thy wits, and out with it."
"Joe, thy biggest customer hath a right to know thy meaning." Farmer
John had been expecting to have to run away; but was put in courage by
the clerk, and brought up his heels in a line with the old man's.
"Coompany, coompany is all I axes for," the blacksmith gasped weakly, as
if talking to himself--"coompany of living volk, as rightly is alive."
"Us be all alive, old chap. But how can us tell as you be?" The clerk
was a seasoned man of fourscore years, and knew all the tricks of
mortality.
"I wish I wadn't. A'most I wish I wadn't, after all I zee'd last night.
But veel of me, veel of me, Measter Channin', if you plaise to veel of
me."
"Tull 'e what," the Churchwarden interposed; "gie 'un a drink of zider,
Bob. If a' be Joe Crang, a' won't say no to thiccy. There be my own
little zup over by the hedge, Joe."
Without any scruple the blacksmith afforded this proof of vitality. The
cider was of the finest strain--"three stang three," as they called
it--and Joe looked almost like himself, as he put down the little wooden
keg, with a deep sigh of comfort.
"Maketh one veel like a man again," he exclaimed, as he flapped himself
on the chest. "Master Hornder, I owe 'e a good turn for this. Lord only
knoweth where I maight a' been, after a' visited me zo last night. It
was a visit of the wicked one, by kitums." Master Crang hitched up his
trousers, and seemed ready to be off again. But the Churchwarden gripped
him by the collar.
"Nay, man. Shan't have it thy own way. After what us have doed for thy
throat, us have a call upon thy breath. Strange ways with strangers;
open breast with bellyful."
The honest blacksmith stood in doubt, and some of his terror crept back
again. "Bain't for me to zettle. Be a job for Passon Penniloe. Swore
upon my knees I did. Here be the mark on my small-clothes. Passon is the
only man can set my soul to liberty."
"What odds to us about thy soul? 'Tis thy tongue we want, lad?" the
senior Churchwarden cried impatiently. "Thou shalt never see a groat of
mine again, unless thou speakest."
"Passon hath a chill in's bones, and the doctor hath been called to
him," Mr. Channing added, with a look of upper wisdom. "Clerk and
Churchwarden, in council assembled, hath all the godliness of a rubric."
The blacksmith was moved, and began to scratch his head. "If a' could
only see it so?" he muttered--"howsomever, horder they women vessels out
o' zight. A woman hath no need to hear, if her can zee--according as the
wise man sayeth. And come where us can see the sun a shinin'; for my
words will make 'e shiver, if ye both was tombstones. I feel myself a
busting to be rid of them."
Master Crang's tale--with his speech fetched up to the manner of the
east of England, and his flinty words broken into our road-metal--may
fairly be taken for spoken as follows:--
"No longer agone than last night, I tell you, I went to bed, pretty much
as usual, with nothing to dwell upon in my mind; without it was poor
Squire's funeral, because I had been attending of it. I stayed pretty
nearly to the last of that, and saw the ground going in again; and then
I just looked in at the _Bush_, because my heart was downsome. All the
company was lonesome, and the room was like a barn after a bad cold
harvest, with a musty nose to it. There was nobody with spirit to stand
glasses round, and nobody with heart to call for them. The Squire was
that friendly-minded, that all of us were thinking--'The Lord always
taketh the best of us. I may be the one to be called for next.' Then an
old man in the corner, who could scarcely hold his pipe, began in a low
voice about burials, and doctors, and the way they strip the graves up
the country; and the others fell in about their experience; and with
only two candles and no snuffers but the tongs, any one might take us
for a company of sextons.
"The night was cruel cold, when I come out, and everything looking weist
and unkid, and the big bear was right across the jags of church-tower;
and with nothing inside to keep me up to the mark, and no neighbour
making company, the sound of my own heels was forced upon my ears, as
you might say, by reason of the gloomy road, and a spark of flint
sometimes coming up like steel-filings, when I ran to keep heat, for I
had not so much as a stick with me. And when I got home I roused up the
forge-fire, so as to make sure where I was, and comfort my knuckles; and
then I brashed it down, with coals at present figure, for the morning.
"As it happened, my wife had been a little put out, about something or
other in the morning; you know how the women-folk get into ways, and
come out of them again, without no cause. But when she gets into that
frame of mind, she never saith much, to justify it, as evil-tempered
women do, but keeps herself quiet, and looks away bigly, and leaves me
to do things for myself; until such time as she comes round again. So I
took a drink of water from the shoot, instead of warming up the teapot,
and got into bed like a lamb, without a word; leaving her to begin
again, by such time as she should find repentance. And before I went to
sleep, there was no sound to be heard in the house, or in the shop
below; without it was a rat or two, and the children snoring in the
inner room, and the baby breathing very peaceful in the cradle to the
other side of the bed, that was strapped on, to come at for nursing of
her.
"Well, I can't say how long it may have been, because I sleep rather
heartily, before I was roused up by a thundering noise going through the
house, like the roaring of a bull. Sally had caught up the baby, and was
hugging and talking, as if they would rob her of it; and when I asked
what all this hubbub was, 'You had better go and see,' was all she said.
Something told me it was no right thing; and my heart began beating as
loud as a flail, when I crept through the dark to the window in the
thatch; for the place was as black almost as the bottom of my
dipping-trough, and I undid the window, and called out, 'Who is there?'
with as much strength as ever I was master of, just then.
"'Come down, or we'll roast you alive,' says a great gruff voice that I
never heard the like of; and there I saw a red-hot clinker in my own
tongs, a sputtering within an inch of my own smithy thatch.
"'For God's sake, hold hard!' says I, a thinking of the little ones.
'In less than two minutes I'll be with you.' I couldn't spare time to
strike a light, and my hands were too shaky for to do it. I huddled on
my working clothes anyhow, going by the feel of them; and then I groped
my way downstairs, and felt along the wall to the backway into workshop,
and there was a little light throwing a kind of shadow from the fire
being bellowsed up; but not enough to see things advisedly. The door had
been kicked open, and the bar bulged in; and there in the dark stood a
terrible great fellow, bigger than Dascombe, the wrestler, by a foot; so
far as I could make out by the stars, and the glimmer from the water.
Over his face he had a brown thing fixed, like the front of a fiddle
with holes cut through it, and something I could not make out was
strapped under one of his arms like a holster.
"'Just you look here, man, and look at nothing else, or it will be worse
for you. Bring your hammer and pincers, while I show a light.'
"'Let me light a lantern, sir,' I said, as well as I could speak for
shivering; 'if it is a shoeing job, I must see what I am about.'
"'Do what I say, blacksmith; or I'll squash you under your anvil.'
"He could have done it as soon as looked; and I can't tell you how I put
my apron on, and rose the step out of shop after him. He had got a
little case of light in one hand, such as I never saw before, all black
when he chose, but as light as the sun whenever he chose to flash it,
and he flashed it suddenly into my eyes, so that I jumped back, like a
pig before the knife. But he caught me by the arm, where you see this
big blue mark, and handed me across the road like that.
"'Blast the horse! Put his rotten foot right,' he says. And sure enough
there was a fine nag before me, quaking and shaking with pain and
fright, and dancing his near fore-foot in the air, like a Christian
disciple with a bad fit of the gout.
"That made me feel a bit like myself again; for there never was no harm
in a horse, and you always know what you are speaking to. I took his
poor foot gently, as if I had kid gloves on, and he put his frothy lips
into my whiskers, as if he had found a friend at last.
"The big man threw the light upon the poor thing's foot, and it was
oozing with blood and black stuff like tar. 'What a d----d fuss he makes
about nothing!' says the man, or the brute I should call him, that stood
behind me. But I answered him quite spirity, for the poor thing was
trying to lick my hand with thankfulness, 'You'd make a d----der, if it
was your foot,' I said; 'he hath got a bit of iron driven right up
through his frog. Have him out of shafts. He isn't fit to go no
further.' For I saw that he had a light spring-cart behind him, with a
tarpaulin tucked in along the rails.
"'Do him where he stands, or I'll knock your brains out;' said the
fellow pushing in, so as to keep me from the cart. 'Jem, stand by his
head. So, steady, steady!'
"As I stooped to feel my pincers, I caught just a glimpse under the
nag's ribs of a man on his off-side, with black clothes on, a short
square man, so far as I could tell: but he never spoke a word, and
seemed ever so much more afraid to show himself than the big fellow was,
though he was shy enough. Then I got a good grip on the splinter of the
shoe, which felt to me more like steel than iron, and pulled it out
steadily and smoothly as I could, and a little flow of blood came after
it. Then the naggie put his foot down, very tenderly at first, the same
as you put down an over-filled pint.
"'Gee-wugg's the word now,' says the big man to the other; and sorry I
am to my dying bones that I stopped them from doing it. But I felt
somehow too curious, through the thicket of my fright, and wise folks
say that the Lord hath anger with men that sleep too heartily.
"'Bide a bit,' I told him, 'till I kill the inflammation, or he won't go
a quarter of a mile before he drops;' and before he could stop me, I ran
back, and blew up a merry little blaze in the shop, as if to make a
search for something, and then out I came again with a bottle in my
hand, and the light going flickering across the road. The big man stood
across, as if to hide the cart; but the man behind the horse skitted
back into a bush, very nimble and clever, but not quite smart enough.
"The pretty nag--for he was a pretty one and kind, and now I could
swear to him anywhere--was twitching his bad foot up and down, as if to
ask how it was getting on; and I got it in my hand, and he gave it like
a lamb, while I poured in a little of the stuff I always keep ready for
their troubles, when they have them so. For the moment I was bold, in
the sense of knowing something, and called out to the man I was so
mortal frit of--'Master, just lend a hand for a second, will you; stand
at his head in case it stingeth him a bit.' Horse was tossing of his
head a little, and the chap came round me, and took him by the nose, the
same as he had squeezed me by the arm.
"'I must have one hind-foot up, or he will bolt,' says I; though the
Lord knows that was nonsense; and I slipped along the shaft, and put my
hand inside the wheel, and twitched up the tarpaulin that was tucked
below the rail. At the risk of my life it was; and I knew that much,
although I was out of the big man's sight. And what think you I saw, in
the flickering of the light? A flicker it was, like the lick of a
tongue; but it's bound to abide as long as I do. As sure as I am a
living sinner, what I saw was a dead man's shroud. Soft, and delicate,
and white it was, like the fine linen that Dives wore, and frilled with
rare lace, like a wealthy baby's christening; no poor man, even in the
world to come, could afford himself such a winding-sheet. Tamsin
Tamlin's work it was; the very same that we saw in her window, and you
know what that was bought for. What there was inside of it was left for
me to guess.
"I had just time to tuck the tarpaulin back, when the big man comes at
me with his light turned on. 'What the ---- are you doing with that
wheel?' says he, and he caught me by the scruff of the neck, and swung
me across the road with one hand, and into my shop, like a sack with the
corn shot out of it. 'Down on your knees!' he said, with no call to say
it, for my legs were gone from under me, and I sprawled against my own
dipping-trough, and looked up to be brained with my own big hammer. 'No
need for that,' he saith, for he saw me glancing at it; 'my fist would
be enough for a slip such as you. But you be a little too peart, Master
Smith. What right have you to call a pair of honest men sheep-stealers?'
"I was so astonished that I could not answer, for the thought of that
had never come nigh me. But I may have said--_Shish_--_shish!_ to soothe
the nag; and if I did, it saved my life, I reckon.
"'Now swear, as you hoped to be saved,' says he, 'that never a word
shall pass your lips about this here little job to-night.' I swore it by
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; but I knew that I never could stick to
it. 'You break it,' says he, 'and I'll burn you in your bed, and every
soul that belongs to you. Here's your dibs, blacksmith! I always pay
handsome.' He flung me a crown of King George and the Dragon, and before
I could get up again, the cart was gone away.
"Now, I give you my word, Farmer Hornder, and the very same to you Clerk
Channing, it was no use of me to go to bed again, and there never was a
nightcap would stay on my head without double-webbing girths to it. By
the mercy of the Lord, I found a thimbleful of gin, and then I roused up
light enough to try to make it cheerful; and down comes Sally, like a
faithful wife, to find out whatever I was up to. You may trust me for
telling her a cock-and-bull affair; for 'twas no woman's business, and
it might have killed the baby."