CHERRY TIDE
“Well! What hesta left thy father doin’?” asked Granny, who had been
waiting for the two girls in the doorway of her shop-cottage.
Polly met Granny’s cheery gaze for a moment or two before answering.
Then she said, as she took off the hat specially manufactured to catch
Adam Wild’s soul, “Oh--we left him peeling potatoes.”
Granny stared, looking startled for a moment. The idea of Cherry
descending to the task of peeling potatoes gave her a shock similar
to that a good Royalist might feel on viewing a king washing his own
shirt. Then, on second thoughts, she realised that this was possibly
part of Cherry’s diplomacy.
“Nay, come in, lass,” she said to Becky.
So Becky came in.
The clean, small kitchen where no one could tell exactly where the
kitchen ended and the shop began, changed subtly, with their entry. The
cuckoo-clock striking made them start, then giggle!
“An’ how is them limb-narves of his?” queried Granny, returning to the
topic of her son-in-law. Then she said sharply, “What art doin’, Polly?”
Polly blushed.
She had been slyly using a face-leaflet.
“I think soa,” said Granny, as she put the thing away. “Tha’rt nice
enough without powder.”
Becky sat with downcast eyes, looking, Granny decided as if she
couldn’t say “peas.” Granny did not care a lot for Becky.
“The doctor thinks he’ll have to have an operation,” said Polly,
patting her hair. Then she put a bunch straight. “When there’s a bed
empty,” she added.
“Oh--ay!” said Granny.
She looked across quite fiercely at John Bunyan, who, with his
companion picture John Milton, was blissfully unconcerned.
“Well,” said the old Calvinist. “What is, _is_, I suppose.”
She commenced to make her stew, in the back-kitchen. Polly and Becky
explored the house, the garden, and finally went out into the lanes,
to see what kind of flowers--and lads--Cherrydale grew. Incidentally
they found black snails and threw them over their shoulders, for luck.
Then they wandered back again. Granny gave them macaroons to fill their
mouths, and a love-tale each to fill their minds.
It was whilst Granny was yet busy filling the white-lined dishes that a
step sounded on the cobbles just outside the door.
“Polly,” called Granny. “Just serve ’em, wilta?”
Polly reluctantly laid down “Parted in the Church Porch.”
Her inquiring eyes stared full into the Airedale-brown ones of Adam
Wild.
Becky looking up from her book, recognised him, and got behind it again.
Polly was very pink.
It seemed to her that her face and neck were stuck all over with
kisses, made visible to this young man, who was also a little
embarrassed. He seemed to have forgotten what he had come in for.
“Gotten stuck, Polly?” called Granny, breaking the awful spell.
Polly’s giggle said that she had.
Granny came out, wiping her fat, dimpled hands on a snowy huckaback,
and saying “Thi father’s reight. Tha couldn’t feight thy way out of a
sugar-bag, lass.”
Then, her good-humoured glance saw whom the customer was.
“Oh--it’s Adam,” she said. “This is my grand-daughter--Adam, Miss
Cherry. Now what’s ta think about her?”
She looked at Polly with eyes that said she was the finest lass in the
universe, which was somewhat comical after the remark she had made
about her a moment ago.
Adam smiled prudently.
What did he think of her?
He hardly knew what he thought--except that her bare neck offended his
Puritan instincts. In the broad light of day she outshone that vision
that had haunted him of how she looked under the rays of his lantern,
the wheat waving behind her. One portion of his brain was standing her
beside Susan Thorpe and saying that she was like a half-gaudy petunia
beside a daisy, and the other part was listening to Granny asking him
if it would not be better if Polly had a bit of a practice before
Sunday. He nodded indefinitely. The face skin of him tingled with the
sense-memory of his trespass over the girl’s face. He had the intensest
desire to escape.
Polly went and sat down beside “Parted in the Church Porch.”
Adam ordered the tobacco old Wild usually called in for.
“Well--how is thy father?” asked Granny, with sympathy.
Adam frowned slightly.
“Pulling round,” he answered.
He did not look over-glad.
“An’ how did that cauf go on?” asked Granny.
Jabez Thorpe had been telling her of the beast.
“She had got a nail driven into her under-jaw,” said Adam. “They found
it--at the slaughter-house, when her head was off.”
“Well, tha has some luck!” commented Granny.
Then she said, “I’m fain thy father’s pullin’ round.”
Adam did not second this.
Despite her admiration of Cromwell’s iron sincerity in theory, Granny
nowadays found it somewhat harsh. Having a heart that may stop at any
minute makes one look kindlier on life and people--sometimes.
Granny changed the subject.
She noticed a holiday look about his attire.
“Going to a weddin’?” she queried, with a wink.
Adam pocketed the tobacco.
“Nay,” he said awkwardly. “Only taking Miss Thorpe to the Tide.”
Granny saw her great plan of matchmaking, for once in her life
shattered. It had seemed to her Adam would have sense enough for two.
She had wanted him for Polly.
But all she said was, “Tha might do waur nor hang thy hat up there,
Adam. Susan’ll have a pot o’ brass when she’s one-an’-twenty.”
The young man reddened.
“Bob goin’, too?” queried Granny.
Failing Adam, the younger brother mightn’t be a bad match.
Adam had resented Granny’s speech, though he said no word. Granny saw
it all whilst fixing the weights that had fallen down. Truth pricked,
she thought, with genial malice.
Adam merely replied to the query regarding his brother going to the
Tide.
“If he gets back,” said Adam. “He’s over the Clouds with Ted.”
“That’s thy cousin Ted, Polly,” said Granny to Polly.
Polly tossed them a disinterested look from behind “Parted in the
Church Porch.”
Adam’s mind was obsessed with the soft roundness of her cheeks--that
peculiar indefiniteness of feature which made it look as though it
had been moulded into vivacious beauty, then had a hand laid on that
blurred and made it indescribable--all save the eyes, and the round
chin with its deep dimple and the beautiful singer’s throat. These
stuck out in the memory. The rest could not be classified.
“H’m, yes,” murmured Polly, politely, and retreated once more behind
her story.
“Good afternoon,” said Adam.
Becky’s book was shaking.
Adam could scarcely have got out of earshot when she went off like a
bottle of fizz, and Polly, after a futile attempt to withstand the
desire, joined her. Their giggles worried Granny, who tried to find out
why they laughed. But all that they would give as the reason was that
Becky had christened Adam--“John Willy, from heaven.”
Granny smiled.
“If somebody’d make a right fool o’ Adam Wild, he’d be a decent
body after,” she said. “But I doubt he’s backed the wrong horse,
for that. Susan Thorpe would make a fool o’ nobody. Two wise folk
weddin’--there’s no sense in it. An’ Adam’s head had that big bump o’
self esteem when he were only a bairn, it could ha’ been used for a hat
peg.” With which she went back to the stew-dishes.
As she brought them out and set them on the table, she informed the two
girls benevolently that she was going to take them to the Tide. Becky
turned green with disappointment. Polly’s eyes filled with water. Going
to the Tide--with an old woman! Alas! Seventeen looked on the world
turned to dust and ashes.
Out of a silence that made her ask them if they’d lost their tongues,
Polly inquired casually if Adam Wild was a rich man. All farmers in
novelettes were rich.
“He’ll be the richest man in these parts, one day, if he can only see
for lookin’,” was Granny’s epigram.
Polly interpreted it literally.
Seventeen and seventy, with a heart that dots and carries one, esteem
riches differently.
When Susan Thorpe came in shopping that afternoon Polly studied her
points, cold-bloodedly. She was just the kind of girl Adam ought to
marry. But Polly had an experience of boy-lore that Susan had not.
“Does she sing?” asked Polly, of Granny, later.
When answered in the negative Polly’s spirits rose.
At seven o’clock Granny was sold out, lock, stock, and barrel, as she
phrased it. It was ever thus at Cherrydale Tide. She stacked up the
fire, donned her bonnet wherein the flaming geranium stood symbolic
of her democratic leanings, and brought down her goose-head umbrella.
The two flappers had been dressing an hour. Polly had donned the blue
muslin in very irony of soul. She had likewise let her hair down and
put it in a thick plait--to show that she was a baby, she had whispered
to Becky. She did not look far from it either, as she said it.
Granny went out to put up the shop shutters.
Sunset glamour filled the one-streeted village, with the stream flowing
through it.
Susan Thorpe was coming along. The sun-glory was on her face. It was an
unusually animated look.
“Have you--seen Mr. Wild about?” she asked Granny.
She asked for Adam whilst she was thinking of Bob.
“Down thear--by that cherry-tree,” nodded Granny.
Adam had been waiting five minutes and had finally gone out of reach
of that girlish laughter from within Granny’s shop. It stopped him
thinking.
Granny peered sideways as she put up her second shutter. She could just
see the cherry bloom, and Adam dark against it.
Susan started back as she saw there were no other people--other than
this determined-looking farmer.
“Where are the others?” she asked.
She felt faint.
“When Bob gets on the moors,” laughed Adam, “he forgets time. We can be
walking on.”
Susan was not convinced.
Moreover--Cherrydale would talk.
She stared hesitatingly at the cherry tree.
Adam argued Cherrydale gossips down. He had an idea for a moment that
this was the right time to propose to Susan--and that the cherry bloom
wasn’t a bad setting. But he was so sure of Susan--the moment went
by. His determination overbeat the gentle Susan. They went towards the
Tide--the many lights casting that glow in the sky, feeble rival of
the sunset. If Adam Wild had not been so determined to make himself
not only marry Susan, but love her, so obstinate on self-conquest, so
iron-firm to save Sagg Farm, at any cost, and incidentally, himself
from Polly Cherry, thus making this girl’s heart the buffer between
two unwanted disasters, he would have realised that this white silence
of Susan’s was a very different thing from that blushing shyness of
modesty, or even of fear of gossips.
Absorbed in thinking out a letter that would keep off the yellow-faced
man, soothe him down, with Susan trailing along by him in dumb misery,
these two wholly estimable young people went towards the folly of
Cherrydale Tide.
Four miles of dew-drenched, dew-scented country, blackbird
thrilled--and they scarcely spoke a word. And so much may a man’s wish
be father to the thought that Adam took this as a good augury of their
being suited to each other.
During this walk Bob was out ranging on the Clouds, getting into
alternate fits of rage and admiration, according to the behaviour of
his dog, Ted the organ-blower describing a place where rabbits asked to
be caught almost, whilst ever at their heels louped Rag, the pedigree
dog. He breathed hard but manfully, walking on his “wrists” as Polly
termed his forepaws. Moreover, he wore the leggings. His eyes shone
doggy love of Bob. His tongue lopped out redly. He imitated the antics
of the dog who was ranging--quite unmoved by the laughter of Bob and
Ted at the sight.
After a hard run of fifteen minutes, Bob’s lurcher caught a baby
hare. Rag seized and ate it, skin and all, in a space of time short of
miraculous.
Then--the hunter in him satiated for a time, Bob looked back over the
way they had come. _The Clouds._ The moor merited its name at this hour.
He saw the light in the sky and gasped, suddenly, with the horror of a
pleasure-seeker who had almost forgotten a treat in store. “Cherrydale
Tide! Let’s hop it, Ted.”
They “hopped it,” Ted keeping his eye skinned for the gamekeeper, all
about them the darkness of the moors--that cloudy soberness, save
where the moor-pools filled with the gold of sunset and the vapours
of the sky leaned a rosy cheek against the dark earth. The curlew’s
on-the-wing cry seemed to float out of infinity.
Bob was utterly, gloriously happy, with a happiness Adam’s struggle
could not invade, nor his father’s weak folly, nor Sarah’s worriting
lest he be caught poaching. Whilst even at that moment, there was
fluttering to the Tide a “petticoat” destined to invade the peace of
that debonair mind. Never again, never again, it was written, should
his eye look on the Clouds with quite the same free anchorite’s
feelings roused in mind and heart.
Henceforth, the moor would speak to him with a new note--that was after
all only the echo from his own soul.
Ted went to Sagg Farm whilst Bob “dressed up” for the Fair, if pulling
off a silk muffler, putting on a front and tie can be described as
“dressing.” Old Wild was laid on the settle. Sarah had just come in
from putting the hens up. She had an old overcoat of Adam’s on. Sarah
always made Ted feel sorry. Femininity had died in Sarah--under that
task of working to save Sagg Farm, at Adam’s relentless pace. She
looked so like a man that it was not wonderful that Adam forgot she was
a woman. She walked like a cow.
She went nowhere beyond the farm and its fields--unless it was on a
“sticking” expedition, after a windy night. She rarely spoke--unless
spoken to, about work. She was that tragic thing--a farm drudge, doing
two people’s tasks, and in addition, responsive to Adam’s care, Bob’s
moods, her father’s weaknesses. She was a woman under those masculine
things she wore, troubled about many things, and, as all the village
said, faced with the workhouse if ever Adam married, and his wife did
not “take to her.”
“Going to th’ Tide, Sarah?” queried Ted, with that awe of her on him.
Sarah laughed.
It was tired laughter, untinged, however, by bitterness.
“I think,” she said, “I’ve got past that sort o’ thing.” Ted counted
her up on his fingers. She was twenty-eight--just a year older than
himself. She looked fifty.
Ted went out, thoughtful, as he always felt after a visit to Sagg Farm.
“Couldn’t your Adam find a farm wi’ less work an’ better pasturings to
it?” he queried.
“Lots,” said Bob.
“Then why----?”
“Adam’ll stop by Sagg Farm till it drops on top of him,” asserted Bob
glumly. He met Ted’s eye.
“Because,” he answered it, “it’s Sagg Farm, and he’s named after the
first chap took it on. It’s a fancy. The iller it does the closer he
sticks to it--like some fools of women sticks by ill husbands.”
They went down the glimmering hillside, over the wishing-bridge, along
the road, through the now deserted village. At the end of their second
mile they came upon Granny and her charges. Granny was “winded.” She
sat under a hedge. The girls had bidden her “rest”--but were thinking
unutterable things.
“Why--it’s my cousin Polly!” ejaculated Ted.
Whereupon Granny got up, took his arm, and left Bob to Polly and Becky.
They walked one on each side of him, according to town etiquette. Ted
pitied the shunner of petticoats, going gawkily along between the two
girls. A queer Bob this, compared with that one who sang “Drake’s
Drum,” roaring it out above the blowing of the moor-wind, to the
accompaniment of the whitened rushes, the shaggy bents, the whirr of
moorfowls’ wings.
He was still mum at the end of the third mile.
Whereupon Polly made some remark Ted could not overhear. But he saw Bob
look at her with less of instinctive distrust of petticoats. Bob began
to talk dogs to her, a distinctive mark of favour.
And Ted set his fair cousin down as being as fause as a rat--nay, fause
as the fausest rat that had ever holed.
But all Polly’s fauseness was only softly-smiling interest, and the
upward glance that, when properly accomplished, makes the mere male
realise himself as a very wonderful being.
When they reached the first street lamp, and Bob saw the face of this
girl to whom for half a mile he had been talking--worms--and areca--he
collapsed, mentally.
His ear tips grew scarlet.
They went on towards that pandemonium of sound made by six roundabouts
playing six different tunes, interjected by sirens shrieking, drums
beating, roaring of lions--and above all this, the laughter and talk of
half the people from half a score villages round, and an exodus from
Narrowfields.
It was the Tide.
Into it, trembling for her bunion and her purse, they piloted Granny
Harker. Cherry had asked her by note of hand by Polly, to keep her eye
on the girls. She wondered what that Narrowfields doctor would think of
her living a quiet life if she wished to live, as she struggled in that
Tide of laughing, joking, swearing, horse-playing merry human beings,
who had temporarily turned into irresponsible children. Callow youths
tickled Granny under the chin with ticklers on wire, and asked her if
she’d brought her goloshes. Red-faced men with hoarse voices hawked the
aigrette-like ticklers. A fat man staring about him in bewilderment
as to how he should get out of the Tide now he had got in it, trod on
Granny’s bunion--and she asked him to look where he was going--to the
laughter of all about them. It was at this moment that a young man
touched Polly on the elbow. “Oh--hello, Peter,” she said nonchalantly.
Peter attached himself to the party. It was the Tide where “more
and the merrier” is watchword. But Bob looked suspiciously at him,
nevertheless.
Bob made the bell ring every time in the shooting gallery. Bob
hitting pasteboard rabbits that hopped aggravatingly slow, then flew
aggravatingly fast as the shot went, Bob winning a cake-stand for
Granny in the deceitful tub-throwing game--and paying three times as
much to get it as it was worth, Bob trying to resist the call of the
girl in the green blouse, “Once through the mouth and you get your
money back,” became a figure round which the gaping crowd gathered.
He was so light-heartedly earnest at a Fair. It became a matter of
life and death to him that he knocked down the pipes in the grinning,
open-mouthed cardboard face. Yet he was laughing all the time. Whilst
into his pocket ever went his hand, and he had quite forgotten that he
was spending part of the egg-money belonging to Sagg Farm. But when
he brought out Punch, and was patted on the back by the old chap with
the machine that registered the force behind a man’s hammer blow, when
the old man said, “My lad, that’s the first time Punch has come out
_this_ Tide”--Polly hung on to Bob’s arm, to let the admiring young
women standing around know that this muscular fellow was a great friend
of hers. Whereupon the young women measured Polly, and looked at each
other as much as to say they wondered what he could see in her. But
then, when they got into the lion-show, and the beery-looking man with
the imitation tiger skin over his shoulder, standing on a stool and
looking over the heads of the crowd, made his sublime speech before
going in to the lions, Polly let go of Bob’s arm--and Bob felt lost,
abandoned, the sun gone out. It was in vain that he told Polly all this
was flap-doodle, that this speech was made every time, that the lions
were as harmless as cats brought up in a Dolly Varden hat.
“Think of the courage, patience, perseverance, which it has required to
subdue these noble creatures of the jungle,” wound up the beery-faced
man.
Granny didn’t think they ought to be allowed to go into lions’ dens,
though, truth to tell, she would have been very disappointed had anyone
stopped Lorenzo from going in. Polly closed her eyes and said she dared
not look, but could not help opening them as Lorenzo worked up the
lion, whilst Bob wondered that an old woman so plain as Granny could
have a grand-daughter so beautiful.
“He’s to do that to make ’em look wild,” he assured Polly. “Tame! Tame
as shrewmice.”
Whizz--bang.
Lorenzo just got out as the lion’s paws came crashing against the door.
“I wonder what we should do if one got out,” grinned Ted. “Rummy Tide
it’d be!” Which made Polly turn pale, and Bob assure her that lions
never did get out of cages.
Peter, left to talk to Becky and Ted, caught Polly’s eye once. She grew
quiet under it. Peter was putting in a claim.
As for Granny, she had summed Peter up as a young man who wore gold
hoops on his fingers. Never, in Granny’s long life had she known any
young man who wore gold hoops on his fingers do any young woman any
good. They left the lion-show, just in time for the circus. It was a
struggle to get up the steps through that crowd.
“I wonder how much a week _he_ gets for makin’ a fool of hissel’,”
quoth Granny, of the clown.
The lady in the blue tights and spangles began to beat a drum then,
and drowned everything. Bob paid for the party--more egg-money! They
stumbled down into the circus, smelling of sawdust and paraffin
torches, horses and guinea-pigs. Polly sat on a long box next to a
red-faced man who looked half-seas over, according to Granny, who
liked to talk as if she had been in the Mercantile Marine. Once Polly
wondered what there was in the box. “Guinea-pigs, no doubt,” said Bob,
and sat down on the other side of her. It was a true old-time circus.
First came the lady in the blue tights, leaping on the white pony’s
back, waving a ribbon, cheered by the crowd, the villain with the rose
cracking his whip to make it throw her. Which made Granny wish it
would kick him. Then came the boy in ruby velvet, whom Granny liked to
believe was the son of the lady in the tights, as he would be a bit of
comfort to her, poor thing, having to jump about like that for a living.
The young man in the ruby velvet said he would place on his forehead,
his knees, his throat, his feet, a glass of wine, without touching
it with his hands, and afterwards drink it. Which he eventually
did--really very clever. Though one astute countrywoman said it was
amazing he was not drunk, seeing he was doing this all day, if it was
wine.
“Ooo, Becky,” murmured Polly, as he rose with a great and noble air.
The youth in the ruby velvet made a collection for himself, which was
vaguely explained by the villain with the rose. But nobody minded.
Was it not the Tide? Polly was in such a flutter when he came to her
that she gave him half a crown instead of a penny. But even that was
forgotten as the thinking pony, shining like brown satin, trimmed with
pink paper roses, and looking exceedingly knowing, was led into the
ring.
It is quite true that the pony told the time of day.
He also told the time it was by a gentleman’s watch--that was a quarter
slow. His white foot struck the minutes, when the villain with the rose
told him to, and then the hour.
“Well, if ever I saw----!” laughed Granny, leaning forwards, and
giving a bald-headed man in front of her a crack on the head with her
cake-stand. Whereupon the bald-headed man’s wife made remarks about
some people having been brought up in a wood. Whereupon Granny gently
rubbed the bald-headed man’s head--and said folks with soft heads
shouldn’t come to the Tide, and there might have been a free fight
ensue, but for the pony coming round at this moment.
“Find me the gentleman who would rather drink a pint of beer than go to
church,” said the villain with the rose, darkly.
There was then great consternation amongst the young men who were total
abstainers, lest the pony make a mistake, and their sweethearts believe
the pony. Grins, and complacency amongst the men who valued a pint of
beer, and didn’t mind being selected. Round and round, in a great hush,
went the pony. He stopped once before a young man with a white face and
eyeglasses. Protests from the young man with the glasses--hysterical
giggles from the women round him, then--the pony went on, and the young
man breathed again. But at last the pony stopped. He stopped in front
of the red-faced man seated beside Polly.
“Is it the gentleman on the back row,” said the villain. Pony shook his
head decidedly.
“Is it the gentleman sitting on the box?” quoth he.
Pony ponders gravely, then nods fiercely, three times.
“That’s right,” guffawed the man next to Polly Cherry.
“Well, if ever I----!” laughed Granny again, but managed to keep the
cake-stand off the bald-headed man this time.
How the pony selected Polly as the young lady who was deeply in
love, to her indignation, need not take long to tell. How the party
went out, after discovering that Polly had been sitting on a box of
serpents, on which she would sit down no more, though the serpents were
then round the neck of the villain, and how Bob went into a show that
had nothing to show but a freak pig and two distorting mirrors, also
need not take long. Though, by telling the crowd outside what a rare
show it was, and getting them in, to take others in as a Cherrydale
Tide joke, set the drunken showman on his feet again. Whilst the noise
grew louder; lights burnt brighter; more and more people surged up; and
the young folk went on the switch-backs, flip-flaps, or rocking horses,
in the swing boats, only Granny would not “have a packet” as she said
folk were “put together so queerly.” But after they had topsy-turvied,
she went in with them to see the lady with the leopard spots, who
apologised for not being able to show further than the waist. How Polly
got into a peep-show, after great argument with the showman, who said
she had her hair down and they might be prosecuted, until Polly solved
the problem by pushing her hair under her hat, remains to be told,
and how she said to Bob, after they came out, “All that fuss! Just to
look at people pulling their stockings up.” Which made Bob laugh, and
realise a soul of exquisite innocence, cunning as she thought herself.
But Granny had not liked the demeanour of Peter in the show of the
leopard-spotted lady.
Granny began to speak of going home.
Her heart was dotting and carrying one.
Her bunion had been jumped on four times--and she had begun to realise
Tides were not good places to which to bring bunions.
They reached the “Mayflower”--that big boat that was visible all over
the Tide, going up and down, with its shrieking load of girls, taken
in by lads who mocked their shrieks, and truth to tell, got them in so
that they had a good excuse for putting their arms round their waists.
“Going up here?” asked Bob.
“Polly! It’ll topple thee out,” said Granny.
But Polly went, when the boat stopped, up the shaky scaffold-like
steps, Bob holding her safely, the others coming behind. Into the
“Mayflower” these pilgrim souls of youth stepped, adventuring as those
graver souls of long ago adventured. Up the steps. Still they came,
whilst a couple of grinning beefy-faced giants waiting to pull the
ropes thick as polonies, called in stentorian voices: “This way for
sailing.”
Peter sat in the stern, with Ted.
Bob, Becky, and Polly, were at the bow.
The middle of the boat soon filled.
There was only room for two at the bow.
Polly was just quivering, thinking they were moving when Becky
whispered, “Oh--John Willy from heaven.”
Adam Wild gravely piloted Susan Thorpe towards the only seat. He found
himself between her and a girl in blue muslin--and a large hat that
touched his face.
“Why, Addy!” called Bob, in surprise.
Adam at the Tide with Susan Thorpe was an earthquake to Bob.
Susan Thorpe’s eyes were like bits of dark velvet in a tired, white
face.
“Sit down!” yelled the rope-pullers from below. “No standing up.”
Much pulling by the two panting men below, then--the “Mayflower” began
to go, got a soul into her. The fun commenced. Polly’s was the first
shriek that rang out. At the sound of it Adam recognised the girl in
blue muslin. A shriek like that in a murder-scene would have made an
actress her fortune.
“Hold fast to the irons,” he told Susan Thorpe.
She linked her arms around the protecting rails behind her.
The occupants of the boat saw the Tide become a multi-coloured
mass--swimming lights. A chorus of shrieks rang out now, as she went
up and down, to the cat-calls of young men, the mimicry of those
rope-pullers below, whom the girls thought were now taking a personal
spite in sending her higher, yet higher.
Polly’s laughter, Polly’s shrieks rose above the others. Paler and
paler went Susan Thorpe as she clung to the unsympathetic irons.
Cherrydale Tide was almost upside down now. People standing below said
it shouldn’t be allowed. The great irons that poised the boat creaked.
Those in the bow looked down on those in the stern, those in the stern
then looked down in the bow.
“Ooo! Ooo!” cried Polly Cherry, growing too terrified to shriek, yet
still enjoying it--in a terror of delight going to perdition, yet----
Then--down she came, down, down into the uttermost gulfs, and--Polly
had seized blindly on to the arm of Adam Wild, her face buried in his
coat to shut out the awful sight of the Tide below them. Her muslin
sleeves flapped against his face. He sat stiffly upright so as not to
have the touch of her hair in his eyes. Whilst the sirens of beauty and
of song called to him, as they have called to man from immemorial ages.
On the other side of him industry, modesty, wisdom clung more tightly
to the rails, her face twisted into a brave smile, her lips twitching,
and Peter, looking down on Polly from his end of the boat, saw a
flushed face lift itself from Adam’s chest, recognised the farmer as
lights from a roundabout streamed momentarily over his face.
Giddily they came down to where Granny was waiting.
There was a great introduction.
“Safe on terra-cotta,” laughed Granny. “By! Anybody as goes in there
ought to be insured.”
Then they set out back to Cherrydale: Adam and Bob, Ted, Polly, Becky,
Susan and Granny--all but Peter, who was training it home.
Through the silver splendour of the spring night they walked back to
Cherrydale--the blare of bronze roundabouts’ trumpets fading away
under the cold, tiny voices of brooks, whispering of grasses, silences
singing between, save when they spoke of all they had seen.
“Ay. It’s a bonnie neet. One more an’ one less,” said Granny
meditatively.
“It’ll be too late for Polly to practise,” she said later, but Adam
said it wasn’t too late for him.
Susan Thorpe would not go up to Sagg Farm.
Adam took her to her own farm-gate.
Bob, Becky, and Polly were gone up to Sagg Farm.
“Enjoyed thyself, Susan?” asked Jabez, as she sat down.
She had been rubbing her cheeks with her hands all the way across the
fields, to give them colour before going in for her parents’ inspection.
“First rate,” she said briskly. “But, I’m tir’t. I’ll go to bed.” She
fled before that colour, brought by the rubbing of her hands, had faded.
Whilst round the yellow-keyed harmonium in Sagg Farm kitchen a quartet
of young voices rolled the “Hallelujah Chorus” down into the silence
of the night. Then Polly sang her pieces for the morrow. And as she
sang, she became again the tender priestess of song, joyful song,
untouched by the sordidness of the drab kitchen at Narrowfields, caring
nothing for lads, scent bottles, and cheap trinkets. She was youth,
singing, with its face turned towards the sun. But even so had sung all
the Harkers, but one--whether they sang in choirs or pubs.
Whilst the organist’s heart followed that fresh voice as a bird follows
the fowler’s cry--
“Youth and Song and Beauty!
A trinity of gifts, surely.”
But--not gifts that would make her a helpmeet for a poor farmer.
Rag went delirious on Polly meeting him again, by light of a lantern
upheld by Bob near the kennel. Polly was touched, too, but giggled at
sight of the leggings Rag slept in.
Adam let Bob take the girls to Granny’s cottage.
After Bob’s return Adam found one of her white gloves--violet-perfumed.
He kept it until he saw her make eyes at the tenor and the bass at the
Charity, next day.
Then, as Bob said he was going down that way he asked him to call at
Granny’s and give it to her, one of the girls having left it. Bob
accepted the ambassadorship. But when Granny asked Adam, later, if
they’d seen aught of a white glove at Sagg Farm, as Polly had lost one,
he prudently said “No.” Bob had kept it.
The siren had left it--as her challenge.
Bob had taken it up.
Polly went back to Narrowfields in high spirits, satisfied with her
work. Adam and Bob had words about the egg-money. Susan Thorpe was
sent by her mother to get a recipe from Sarah. Sarah was gathering
eggs. Adam was gone for provender to town. Bob asked Susan the best
way to catch a girl--confessing that he knew more about rabbits. She
looked so demure, such a little Quakeress that Bob said, “Give me some
tips.” She smiled and he thought she looked somewhat delicate in the
morning light. Before she left she was well on the way to being his
mother-confessor. He was to tell her the progress he made, and she
would advise tactics. When Adam came back from town Bob was working
industriously at a fence, capless, singing gayly:
“Oh, take when you can,
The word of a man,
But in love--the advice
Of a la-dy!
Fal-da-la-a; fal de-la-a;
In love--the advice of la-dee.”