OAKLEAF POTATOES.
"Of all slow people in this slow place, I am quite certain that there
is none so slow as Cripps, the Carrier."
This "hot spache," as the patient Zacchary would perhaps have called
it, passed the lips of no less a person than old Squire Oglander. He,
on the 20th day of December (the day after that we began with), was
hurrying up and down the long straight walk of his kitchen garden, and
running every now and then to a post of vantage, from which he could
look over the top of his beloved holly hedge, and make out some of the
zigzags of the narrow lane from Beckley. A bitter black frost had now
set in, and the Squire knew that if he wanted anything more fetched
out of his ground, or anything new put into it, it might be weeks
before he got another chance of doing it. So he made a good bustle,
and stamped, and ran, and did all he could to arouse his men, who knew
him too well to concern themselves about any of his menaces.
"I tell you we are all caught napping, Thomas. I tell you we ought to
be ashamed of ourselves. The frost is an inch in the ground already.
Artichokes, carrots, parsnips, beetroot, even horse-radish for our
Christmas beef--and upon my soul, a row of potatoes never even dug
yet! Unless I am after you at every corner--well, I am blessed if I
don't see our keeping onions!"
"Now, measter, 'ee no call to be so grum! None of they things'll be a
haporth the worse. The frost'll ony swaten 'em."
"You zany, I know all your talk. Hold your tongue. Not a glass of beer
will I send out, if this is all I get for it. Sweeten them, indeed!
And when we want them, are we to dig them with mattocks, pray? Or do
you thick-heads expect it to thaw to order, when the pot is bubbling?
Stir your lazy legs, or I'll throw every one of you on the work-house
the moment the first snow falls."
The three men grinned at one another, and proceeded leisurely. They
knew much better than the Squire himself what his gentle nature was,
and that he always expiated a scolding with a jug of beer.
"Man and boy," said the eldest of them, speaking below his breath, as
if this tyranny had extinguished him; "in this here gearden have I
worked, man and boy, for threescore year, and always gi'en
satisfaction. Workuss! What would his father a' said, to hear tell in
this gearden of workuss? Workuss! Well, let un coom, if a will! Can't
be harder work, God knoweth."
"Tummuss, Tummuss, you may say that," said another lazy rascal,
shaking his head, with his heel on his spade, and then wiping his
forehead laboriously. "'Tis the sweat of our brow, Tummuss, none of
'em thinks on--but there, they was born to be driving of us!"
Squire Oglander made as if he heard them not; and then he hurried to
the hedge again, and stood on the wall of the leaf-mould pit, and
peered over the beard of hollies. And this time he spied in the
distance Cripps, or at any rate the tilt of the Crippsian cart,
jogging sedately to the rhythm of the feet of Dobbin.
"Hurrah!" cried the Squire, who was still as young in mind as if he
had no body. "By George, we shall be just in time. Never mind what I
said, my lads. I was a little bit cross, I know. Take out the crumbs
from the bottom of your trenches, and go two inches deeper. Our new
potatoes are come at last! Mary, come out with a gallon of ale."
Squire Oglander, having retired now from the army and all warfare, was
warmly devoted to the arts of peace. Farming, planting, gardening,
breeding, training of dogs, and so on--all of these quiet delights
fell softly on a very active mind, when the vigour of the body began
to fail. He loved his farm, and he loved his garden, and all his
attempts at improvement, and nothing better than to point out his own
mistakes to rash admirers. But where is the pleasure of showing things
to strangers who know nothing? The old man's grand delight of all was
to astonish his own daughter, his only child, Grace Oglander.
This it was that made him work so hard at the present moment. He was
determined to have his kitchen garden in first-rate winter order by
the time his daughter should come home from a visit to her aunt at
Cowley. Now this sister, Mrs. Fermitage, had promised to bring home
their joint pet Gracie in time for the dinner at five o'clock that
very day, and to dine there with them; so that it was needful to look
alive, and to make quick step of everything. Moreover, this good
Squire had some little insight (as behoves a farmer and a sportsman)
into the ways and meaning of the weather of the neighbourhood. He knew
as well as a short-tailed field-mouse that a long frost was coming.
The sharp dry rustle of the upturned leaves of holly and of ivy, the
heavy stoop of the sullen sky, the patches of spaded mould already
browning with powdery crispness, the upward shivering look of the
grass, and the loss of all gloss upon everything, and the shuddering
rattle in the teeth of a man who opened his mouth to the wind at
all--many other things than these, as well as all of them, were here;
that any man (not blind, or deaf, or choked in citied ignorance) might
fall to at once, and dig every root of his potatoes.
But the strange thing, in this present matter, was that Squire
Oglander was bent not only on digging potatoes, but also on planting
them, this very day. Forsooth it was one of his fixed dates in the
chronicles of the garden, that happen what might, or be the season
whatsoever it chose to be, new potatoes and peas he would have by the
last day of May, at the latest. And this without any ignoble resort to
forcing-pit, hot-bed, or even cold frame; under the pure gaze of the
sky, by that time they must be ready. Now, this may be easy at
Ventnor, or Penzance, or even Bournemouth; but in the highlands of
Oxfordshire it requires some skill and management. In the first place,
both pea and potato must be of a kind that is ready to awake right
early; and then they must be humoured with a very choice place; and
after that they must be shielded from the winter's rages. If all these
"musts" can be complied with, and several "ifs" are solved aright, the
gardener (eager as well as patient) may hope to get pleasure from his
early work.
Of all men there was none perhaps more capable of hoping than this
good Squire Oglander. In his garden and his household, or among his
friends and neighbours, or the world at large, he not only tried to
see, but saw, the very best side of everything. When things fell out
amiss, he always looked very wise, and shook his head, and declared
that he had predicted them; and before very long he began to find out
that they were not so bad as they might have been. His ruddy face, and
blue eyes, and sometimes decidedly waggish nose, as well as his crisp
white hair, and way of standing to be looked at, let everybody know
that here was a man of no great pretension, yet true, and of kind and
happy heart, and fit to be relied upon. Ten thousand such may be found
in England; and they cannot be too many.
"Inside and outside, all look alive!" cried this gentleman, running to
and fro: "Gracie will be home; Miss Grace, I mean; and not a bit of
fire in the drawing-room grate! No Christmas-boxes for any of you
sluts! Now, I did not mean that, Mary, as you might know. Inside the
women, and outside the men--now, what is this paper for, my dear?"
"That there Cripps, sir, have a sent 'un in. He be gettin' so
pertikular!"
"Quite right. Quite right. Business is business. No man can be too
particular. Let him sit down and have a pint of ale. He wants me to
sign this paper, does he? Very well; tell him to come next week. My
fingers are cramped with the wind. Tell Cripps--now, don't you be in
such a hurry, Mary; Cripps is not a marrying man."
"As if I would touch him with a pair of tongs, sir! A Hookham to have
a Cripps, sir!--a man who always smells as if he had been a-combing of
a horse!"
"Ah, poor Mary, the grapes are sour. Tell bachelor Cripps to send in
the bag. And bring me the little truck-basket, Mary; I dare say that
will hold them. Just in time, they are only just in time. To-morrow
would have been a day too late."
The Squire was to pay a guinea for this bushel of early oakleaf
potatoes, a sort that was warranted to beat the ashleaf by a
fortnight, and to crop tenfold as much. The bag had been sent by the
Henley coach from a nursery near Maidenhead, and left at the Black
Horse in St. Clement's, to be called for by the Beckley carrier.
"Stay now," cried the Squire; "now I think of it we will unpack the
bag in the brewery, Mary. They have had a fire there all the morning.
And it will save making any mess in here. Miss Grace is coming, bless
her heart! And she'll give it to me, if she finds any dirt."
"But, sir, if you please, Master Cripps now just is beginning of his
pint of ale. And he never hurrieth over that----"
"Well, we don't want Cripps. We only want the bag. Jem will bring it
into the brewery, if you want to sit with Cripps. Cripps is tired, I
dare say. These young men's legs are not fit for much. Stop--call old
Thomas; he's the best, after all. If I want a thing done, I come back
to the old folk, after all."
"Well, sir, I don't think you have any reason to say that. Howsomever,
here cometh Mr. Kale. Mr. Kale, if you please, you be wanted."
Presently Thomas Kale, the man who had worked so long in the garden
there, followed his master across the court, with the bag of potatoes
on his back. The weight was a trifle, of course, being scarcely over
half a hundredweight; but Thomas was too old a hand to make too light
of anything.
"I've knowed the time," he said, setting down the sack on the head of
an empty barrel, "when that there weight would have failed, you might
say, to crook my little finger. Now, make so bold--do you know the
raison?"
"Why, Thomas, we cannot expect to be always so young as we were once,
you know."
"Nout to do wi' it--less nor nout. The raison lie all in the vittels,
maister; the vittels is fallen from what they was."
"Thomas, you give me no peace with your victuals. You must groan to
the cook, not to me, about them. Now, cut the cord. Why, what has
Cripps been about?"
The bag was made of a stout grey canvas, not so thick as sacking, and
as the creases of the neck began to open, under the slackening cord,
three or four red stripes were shown, such as are sometimes to be
found in the neck of a leather mail-bag, when the postmaster has been
in a hurry, and dropped his wax too plenteously. But the stripes in
these creases were not dry and brittle, as of run sealing-wax, but
clammy and damp, as if some thick fluid had oozed from dripping
fingers.
"I don't like the look of it," cried the old Squire. "Cripps should be
more careful. He has left the bag down at his brother the butcher's. I
am sure they never sent it out like this. Not that I am of a squeamish
order, but still--good God! What is this that I see?"
With scarcely time for his cheeks to blanch, or his firm old hands to
tremble, Squire Oglander took from the mouth of the sack a coil of
long bright golden hair. The brown shade of the potatoes beneath it
set off its glistening beauty. He knew it at a glance; there was no
such hair in all Oxfordshire but his Gracie's. A piece of paper was
roughly twisted in and out the shining wreath. This he spread in the
hollow of his palm, and then put on his spectacles, and read by the
waning light these words, "All you will ever see of her."