PEACHES, AND PEACHING
THERE seem to be many ways of taking the very simplest fact we meet
and if any man was sure to take things by his own light, it was my
good Uncle. When a friend, or even a useful neighbour, offered a free
opinion, my Uncle Cornelius would look at him, say never a word, but
be almost certain to go downright against that particular view. One of
his favourite sayings was, “Every man has a right to his own opinion,”
although he was a strict Conservative—and of that right he was so
jealous, that he hated to have his opinions shared. And this was a very
lucky thing for me, as I cannot help seeing and saying.
For the very next morning, a neighbour came in (when I was gone
prowling, I need not say where), and having some business, he told
Tabby Tapscott to show him where her master was most likely to be
found. This gentleman was Mr. Rasp, the baker, who kept two women, a
man, and a boy, and did the finest trade in Sunbury. And what he wanted
now was to accept my Uncle’s offer, at which he had hum’d and hawed a
week ago, of ten sacks of chat potatoes at fifteen pence a bushel, for
the purpose of mixing with his best white bread. By the post of that
morning Mr. Rasp had heard from the great flour-mills at Uxbridge, that
good grindings were gone up six shillings a quarter, and sure to be
quoted still higher next week, by reason of the cold, wet harvest. But
he did not intend to tell Uncle Corny this.
That excellent gardener was under his big wall, which had formed
part of the monastic enclosure, and was therefore the best piece of
brickwork in the parish, as well as a warm home and sure fortress to
the peach and nectarine. This wall had its aspect about S.S.E., the
best that can be for fruit-trees, and was flanked with return walls
at either end; and the sunshine, whenever there seemed to be any,
was dwelling and blushing in this kind embrace. The summers might be
bitter—as they generally are—but if ever a peach donned crimson velvet
in the South of England out of doors, it was sure to be sitting upon
this old red wall and looking out for Uncle Corny.
Mr. Cornelius Orchardson, as most people called him when they tried
to get his money, glanced over his shoulder when he heard the baker
coming, and then began to drive a nail with more than usual care. Not
that he ever drove any nail rashly, such an act was forbidden by his
constitution; but that he now was in his deepest calm, as every man
ought to be in the neighbourhood of a bargain. His manner was always
collected and dry, and his words quite as few as were needful; and he
never showed any desire to get the better of any one, only a sense
of contentment, whenever he was not robbed. This is often the case
with broad-shouldered people, if they only move quietly and are not
flurried; and my good Uncle Corny possessed in his way every one of
these elements of honesty.
“Good morning, Mr. Orchardson!” said Rasp the baker. “What a pleasure
it is to see a glimpse of sun at last! And what a fine colour these red
bricks do give you!”
“As good as the bakehouse,” said my Uncle shortly. “But look out where
you are treading, Rasp. I want every one of them strawberry-runners.
What brings you here? I am rather busy now.”
“Well, I happened to see as your door was open, so I thought I’d just
jog your memory, to have them potatoes put up in the dry, while I’ve
got my copper lighted.”
“Potatoes! Why, you would not have them, Rasp. You said fifteen pence a
bushel was a deal too much, and potatoes were all water such a year as
this. And now I’ve got a better customer.”
“Well, it don’t matter much either way,” said the baker; “but I always
took you, Mr. Orchardson, to be a man of your word, sir—a man of your
word.”
“So I am. But I know what my words are; and we came to no agreement.
Your very last words were—‘A shilling, and no more.’ Can you deny that,
Rasp?”
“Well, I didn’t put it down, sir, and my memory plays tricks. But I
told my wife that it was all settled; and she said, ‘Oh, I do like to
deal with Mr. Orchardson, he gives such good measure.’ So I brought
round the money in this little bag, thirty-seven shillings and
sixpence. Never mind for a receipt, sir; everybody knows what you are.”
“Yes, so they do,” answered Uncle Corny; “they’d rather believe me than
you, Master baker. Now how much is flour gone up this morning, and
floury potatoes to follow it? Never a chat goes out of my gate, under
one and sixpence a bushel.”
“This sort of thing is too much for me. There is something altogether
wrong with the times. There is no living to be made out of them.”
Mr. Rasp shook his head at the peaches on the wall, as if they were
dainties he must not dare to look at.
“Rasp, you shall have a peach,” declared my Uncle Corny, for he was
a man who had come to a good deal of wisdom; “you shall have the
best peach on the whole of this wall, and that means about the best
in England. I will not be put out with you, Rasp, for making a fine
effort to cheat me. You are a baker; and you cannot help it.”
If any other man in Sunbury was proud of his honesty, so was Rasp;
and taking this speech as a compliment to it, he smiled and pulled a
paper-bag from his pocket, to receive the best peach on the wall for
his wife.
“What a difference one day’s sun has made! At one time I doubted if
they would colour, for it is the worst summer I have known for many
years. But they were all ready, as a maiden is to blush, when she
expects her sweetheart’s name. With all my experience, I could scarcely
have believed it; what a change since Saturday! But ‘live and learn’ is
the gardener’s rule. _Galande_, the best peach of all, in my opinion,
is not yet ripe; but _Grosse Mignonne_ is, and though rather woolly in
a year like ’57, it is first-rate in a cool season. Observe the red
spots near the caudal cavity—why bless my heart, Rasp, I meant that for
your wife!”
“My wife has a very sad toothache to-day, and she would never forgive
me if I made it worse. But what wonderful things they are to run!”
This baker had a gentle streak of juice in either runnel of his chin,
which was shaped like a well-fed _fleur-de-lis_; and he wiped it all
dry with the face of the bag, upon which his own name was printed.
“I knows a good thing, when I sees it; and that’s more than a woman in
a hundred does. Don’t believe they can taste, or at least very few of
them. Why, they’d sooner have tea than a glass of good beer! Howsoever,
that’s nought to do with business. Mr. Orchardson, what’s your lowest
figure? With a wall of fruit coming on like them, sixpence apiece and
some thousands of them, you mustn’t be hard on a neighbour.”
My Uncle sat down on his four-legged stool (which had bars across the
feet, for fear of sinking, when the ground was spongy), and he pulled
his bag of vamp-leather to the middle of his waistcoat, and felt for a
shred and a nail. He had learned that it never ends in satisfaction, if
a man grows excited in view of a bargain, or even shows any desire to
deal. Then he put up his elbow, and tapped the nail in, without hitting
it hard, as the ignorant do.
“Come, I’ll make a fair offer,” the baker exclaimed, for he never let
business do justice to itself; “an offer that you might call handsome,
if you was looking at it in a large point of view. I’ll take fifty
bushels at fifteen pence, pick ’em over myself, for the pigs and the
men; and if any crusty people turn up, why here I am!”
“Rasp, you make a very great mistake,” said my Uncle, turning round
upon his stool, and confronting him with strong honesty, “if you
suppose that I have anything to do with the use you make of my
potatoes. I sell you my goods for the utmost I can get, and you take
good care that it is very little. What you do with them afterwards is
no concern of mine. I owe you no thanks, and you know me not from Adam
the moment you have paid me. This is the doctrine of free-trade—you
recognize everything, except men.”
“Tell you what it is,” replied the baker; “sooner than vex you, Mr.
Orchardson, I’ll give sixteen pence all round, just as they come out of
the row. Who could say fairer than that now?”
“Eighteen is the money. Not a farthing under. From all that I can hear,
it will be twenty pence to-morrow. Why, here’s another fine peach fit
to come! I shall send it to your wife, and tell her you ate hers.”
The gardener merrily nailed away, while the baker was working his hands
for nothing. “You would never do such a thing as that,” he said; “a
single man have no call to understand a woman; but he knows what their
nature is, or why did he avoid them? My wife is as good a woman as can
be; but none of them was ever known to be quite perfect. If it must be
eighteen, it must—and I’ll take fifty.”
“Ah, couldn’t I tell you a bit of news?” said the baker, as he
counted out the money. “You are such a silent man, Mr. Orchardson,
that a man of the world is afraid of you. And the young fellow, your
own nevvy—well, he may take after you in speech, but not about the
ladies—ah, you never would believe it!”
“Well, then, keep it to yourself, that’s all. I don’t want to hear a
word against young Kit. And what’s more—if I heard fifty, I wouldn’t
believe one of them.”
“No more wouldn’t I. He’s as steady a young fellow as ever drove a
tax-cart. And so quiet in his manners, why, you wouldn’t think that
butter—”
“His mother was a lady of birth and breeding. That’s where he gets his
manners from; though there’s plenty in our family for folk that deserve
them. Out with your news, man, whatever it is.”
“Well, it don’t go again him much,” the baker replied, with some
fear—for my Uncle’s face was stern, and the wall-hammer swung in his
brown right hand; “and indeed you might take it the other way, if he
had done it all on his road home from church. You know the bridge over
the Halliford brook, or at least where it was, for it’s all washed
away, as you heard very likely this morning. What right had your nevvy
there, going on for dark?”
My Uncle was a rather large-minded man; but without being loose, or
superior. “Rasp, if it comes to that,” he said, “what right have you
and I to be anywhere?”
“That’s neither here nor there,” answered the baker, having always been
a man of business; “but wherever I go, I pay my way. However, your Kit
was down there, and no mistake. What you think he done? He punched Sam
Henderson’s head to begin with, for fear of him giving any help, and
then he jumped into the water, that was coming like a house on fire
from Tim Osborne’s dam, and out of it he pulled Mother Marker, and the
pretty young lady as had been in church.”
“Kit can swim,” said my Uncle shortly. “It is a very dangerous trick to
learn, being bound to jump in, whenever any one is drowning. Did the
women go in, for him to pull them out?”
“Ah, you never did think much of them, Mr. Corny; but you never had no
inskin experience. Take ’em all round, they are pretty nigh as good
as we are. But they never jumped in—no, you mustn’t say that. They
were bound to go home, and they were doing of it, till the flood took
their legs from under them. Mrs. Marker have been, this very morning,
conversing along of my good missus, and was likely to stop when I was
forced to come away, and you should hear her go on about your Kit! And
nobody knows if she has any friends. I am told when her time comes to
go to heaven, she will have the disposal of four hundred pounds.”
“You be off to your wife!” cried Uncle Corny; “Mrs. Marker is quite a
young woman yet, but old enough to have discovered what men are. Go to
your work, Rasp. I hate all gossip. But I am glad that Kit thrashed Sam
Henderson.”