The first building passed by the westerly road as it descends into
Tregarrick is a sombre pile of some eminence, having a gateway and
lodge before it, and a high encircling wall. The sun lay warm on its
long roof, and the slates flashed gaily there, as Farmer Lear came
over the knap of the hill and looked down on it. He withdrew his eyes
nervously to glance at the old couple beside him. At the same moment
he reined up his dun-coloured mare.
"I reckoned," he said timidly, "I reckoned you'd be for stopping
hereabouts an' getting down. You'd think it more seemly--that's what I
reckoned: an' 'tis down-hill now all the way."
For ten seconds and more neither the man nor the woman gave a sign of
having heard him. The spring-cart's oscillatory motion seemed to have
entered into their spinal joints; and now that they had come to
a halt, their heads continued to wag forward and back as they
contemplated the haze of smoke spread, like a blue scarf over the
town, and the one long slate roof that rose from it as if to meet
them. At length the old woman spoke, and with some viciousness, though
her face remained as blank as the Workhouse door.
"The next time I go back up this hill, if ever I do, I'll be carried
up feet first."
"Maria," said her husband, feebly reproachful, "you tempt the Lord,
that you do."
"Thank 'ee, Farmer Lear," she went on, paying no heed; "you shall
help us down, if you've a mind to, an' drive on. We'll make shift to
trickly 'way down so far as the gate; for I'd be main vexed if anybody
that had known me in life should see us creep in. Come along, Jan."
Farmer Lear alighted, and helped them out carefully. He was a clumsy
man, but did his best to handle them gently. When they were set on
their feet, side by side on the high road, he climbed back, and fell
to arranging the reins, while he cast about for something to say.
"Well, folks, I s'pose I must be wishing 'ee good-bye." He meant
to speak cheerfully, but over-acted, and was hilarious instead.
Recognising this, he blushed.
"We'll meet in heaven, I daresay," the woman answered. "I put
the door-key, as you saw, under the empty geranium-pot 'pon the
window-ledge; an' whoever the new tenant's wife may be, she can eat
off the floor if she's minded. Now drive along, that's a good soul,
and leave us to fend for ourselves."
They watched him out of sight before either stirred. The last decisive
step, the step across the Workhouse threshold, must be taken with none
to witness. If they could not pass out of their small world by the
more reputable mode of dying, they would at least depart with this
amount of mystery. They had left the village in Farmer Lear's cart,
and Farmer Lear had left them in the high road; and after that,
nothing should be known.
"Shall we be moving on?" Jan asked at length. There was a gate beside
the road just there, with a small triangle of green before it, and
a granite roller half-buried in dock-leaves. Without answering, the
woman seated herself on this, and pulling a handful of the leaves,
dusted her shoes and skirt.
"Maria, you'll take a chill that'll carry you off, sitting 'pon that
cold stone."
"I don't care. 'Twon't carry me off afore I get inside, an' I'm going
in decent, or not at all. Come here, an' let me tittivate you."
He sat down beside her, and submitted to be dusted.
"You'd as lief lower me as not in their eyes, I verily believe."
"I always was one to gather dust."
"An' a fresh spot o' bacon-fat 'pon your weskit, that I've kept the
moths from since goodness knows when!"
Old Jan looked down over his waistcoat. It was of good
"West-of-England broadcloth, and he had worn it on the day when he
married the woman at his side.
"I'm thinking--" he began.
"Hey?"
"I'm thinking I'll find it hard to make friends in--in there. 'Tis
such a pity, to my thinking, that by reggilations we'll be parted so
soon as we get inside. You've a-got so used to my little ways
an' corners, an' we've a-got so many little secrets together an'
old-fash'ned odds an' ends o' knowledge, that you can take my meaning
almost afore I start to speak. An' that's a great comfort to a man o'
my age. It'll be terrible hard, when I wants to talk, to begin at the
beginning every time. There's that old yarn o' mine about Hambly's cow
an' the lawn-mowing machine--I doubt that anybody 'll enjoy it so
much as you always do; an' I've so got out o' the way o' telling the
beginning--which bain't extra funny, though needful to a stranger's
understanding the whole joke--that I 'most forgets how it goes."
"We'll see one another now an' then, they tell me. The sexes meet for
Chris'mas-trees an' such-like."
"I'm jealous that 'twon't be the same. You can't hold your triflin'
confabs with a great Chris'mas-tree blazin' away in your face as
important as a town afire."
"Well, I'm going to start along," the old woman decided, getting on
her feet; "or else someone 'll be driving by and seeing us."
Jan, too, stood up.
"We may so well make our congees here," she went on, "as under the
porter's nose."
An awkward silence fell between them for a minute, and these two old
creatures, who for more than fifty years had felt no constraint in
each other's presence, now looked into each other's eyes with a
fearful diffidence. Jan cleared his throat, much as if he had to make
a public speech.
"Maria," he began in an unnatural voice, "we're bound for to part, and
I can trewly swear, on leaving ye, that--"
"--that for two-score year and twelve It's never entered your head to
consider whether I've made 'ee a good wife or a bad. Kiss me, my old
man; for I tell 'ee I wouldn' ha' wished it other. An' thank 'ee for
trying to make that speech. What did it feel like?"
"Why, 't rather reminded me o' the time when I offered 'ee marriage."
"It reminded me o' that, too. Com'st along."
They tottered down the hill towards the Workhouse gate. When they were
but ten yards from it, however, they heard the sound of wheels on
the road behind them, and walked bravely past, pretending to have no
business at that portal. They had descended a good thirty yards
beyond (such haste was put into them by dread of having their purpose
guessed) before the vehicle overtook them--a four-wheeled dog-cart
carrying a commercial traveller, who pulled up and offered them a lift
into the town.
They declined.
Then, as soon as he passed out of sight, they turned, and began
painfully to climb back towards the gate. Of the two, the woman had
shown the less emotion. But all the way her lips were at work, and as
she went she was praying a prayer. It was the only one she used night
and morning, and she had never changed a word since she learned it as
a chit of a child. Down to her seventieth year she had never found it
absurd to beseech God to make her "a good girl"; nor did she find it
so as the Workhouse gate opened, and she began a new life.