PECKABY'S SHOP.
On passing through Deerham from Verner's Pride, a little below the shop
of Mrs. Duff, you come upon an opening on the left hand, which led to
quite a swarm of cottages. Many of the labourers congregated here. If
you took this turning, which was called Clay Lane, and continued your
way past the cottages in a straight line over the fields, you would
arrive at the residence of the gamekeeper, Broom, leaving some
brick-fields to the right, and the Willow Pool, which had been the end
of poor Rachel Frost, on the left. But, unless you climbed hedges, you
could not get to the pool from this quarter without going round, near
the gamekeeper's. The path which led to Verner's Pride past the pool,
and which Rachel had taken that unfortunate night, had its commencement
higher up in the village, above Mrs. Duff's. A few cottages were
scattered again beyond the gamekeeper's, and one or two on this side it;
but we have nothing to do with them at present.
A great part of the ill-feeling rife on the estate was connected with
these brick-fields. It had been a great mistake on Mr. Verner's part
ever to put Roy into power; had Mr. Verner been in the habit of going
out of doors himself, he would have seen this, and not kept the man on a
week. The former bailiff had died suddenly. He, the bailiff, had given
some little power to Roy during his lifetime; had taken him on as a sort
of inferior helper; and Mr. Verner, put to shifts by the bailiffs death,
had allowed Roy so to continue. Bit by bit, step by step, gradually,
covertly, the man made good his footing: no other was put over his head,
and in time he came to be called Roy the bailiff, without having ever
been formally appointed as bailiff. He drew his two pounds per week--his
stipulated wages--and he made, it is hard to say what, besides. Avarice
and tyranny were the predominant passions of Roy's mind; bad qualities,
and likely to bring forth bad fruits when joined to petty power.
About three years previous to Mr. Verner's death, a stranger had
appeared in Clay Lane, and set up a shop there. Nearly every conceivable
thing in the shape of eatables was sold in it; that is, such eatables as
are in request among the poor. Bread, flour, meat, potatoes, butter,
tea, sugar, red herrings, and the like. Soap and candles were also sold;
and afterwards the man added green vegetables and coals, the latter
doled out by the measure, so much a "kipe." The man's name was Peckaby;
he and his wife were without family, and they managed the shop between
them. A tall, strong, brawny man was he; his wife was a remarkably tall
woman, fond of gossip and of smart caps. She would go gadding out for
hours at a stretch, leaving him to get through all the work at home, the
preparing meals, the serving customers.
Folks fly to new things; to do so is a propensity inherent in human
nature; and Mr. Peckaby's shop flourished. Not that he was much honoured
with the complimentary "Mr."; his customers brought it out
short--"Peckaby's shop." Much intimacy had appeared to exist from the
first between him and Roy, so that it was surmised they had been
previously acquainted. The prices were low, the shop was close at hand,
and Clay Lane flocked to it.
New things, however, like new faces, are apt to turn out no better than
the old; sometimes not as good. And thus it proved with Peckaby's shop.
From rather underselling the shops of the village, Peckaby's shop grew
to increase its charges until they were higher than those of anybody
else; the wares also deteriorated in value. Clay Lane awoke to this by
degrees, and would have taken its custom away; but that was more easily
contemplated than done. A good many of its families had been allowed to
get on Peckaby's books, and they also found that Roy set his face
against their leaving the shop. For Roy to set his face against a
measure was a formidable affair, not readily contended with: the
labourers did not dare to fly in his face, lest he should make an excuse
to take their work from them. He had already discharged several. So
Clay Lane, for the most part, found itself tied to Peckaby's shop, and
to paying some thirty per cent. beyond what they would have paid at the
old shops; added to which was the grievance of being compelled to put up
with very inferior articles. Dissatisfaction at this state of things had
long been smouldering. It grew and grew, threatening to break out into
open rebellion, perhaps to bloodshed. The neighbourhood cried shame upon
Roy, and felt inclined to echo the cry upon Mrs. Verner; while Clay Lane
openly avowed their belief that Peckaby's shop was Roy's shop, and that
the Peckaby's were only put in to manage it.
One fearfully hot Monday morning, in the beginning of July, Lionel
Verner was passing down Clay Lane. In another week he would be away from
Deerham. Lady Verner's illness had commenced near the latter end of
April, and it was growing towards the end of June before she began to
get better, or would give Lionel leave to depart. Jan, plain-speaking,
truth-telling Jan, had at length quietly told his mother that there was
nothing the matter with her but "vexing and temper." Lady Verner went
into hysterics at Jan's unfilial conduct; but, certain it was, from that
very time she began to amend. July came in, and Lionel was permitted to
fix the day for his departure.
Lionel was walking down Clay Lane. It was a short cut to Lord Elmsley's
house over the hills, a mile or two distant. Not a very suitable day for
a walk. Had Lionel been training for a light jockey, without any
superfluous weight, he might have dispensed with extra covering in his
exercise, and done as effectually without it. A hotter day never was
known in our climate; a more intensely burning sun never rode in the
heavens. It blazed down with a force that was almost unbearable,
scorching and withering all within its radius. Lionel looked up at it;
it seemed to blister his face and dazzle his eyes; and his resolution
wavered as he thought of the walk before him. "I have a great mind not
to go," said he mentally. "They can set up their targets without me. I
shall be half dead by the time I get there." Nevertheless, in the
indecision, he still walked on. He thought he'd see how affairs looked
when he came to the green fields. Green! brown, rather.
But Lionel found other affairs to look at before he reached the fields.
On turning a sharp angle of Clay Lane, he was surprised to see a crowd
collected, stretching from one side of it to the other. Not a peaceable
crowd evidently, although it was composed for the most part of the
gentler sex; but a crowd of threatening arms and inflamed faces, and
swaying white caps and noisy tongues. The female population of Clay Lane
had collected there.
Smash! went the breaking of glass in Lionel's ears as he came in view;
smash! went another crash. Were Peckaby's shop windows suffering? A
misgiving that it must be so, crossed the mind of Lionel, and he made
few steps to the scene of warfare.
Sure enough it was nothing less. Three great holes were staring in so
many panes, the splinters of glass lying inside the shop-window, amidst
butter and flour, and other suchlike articles. The flour looked brown,
and the butter was running away in an oily stream; but that was no
reason why a shower of broken glass should be added to improve their
excellences. Mr. Peckaby, with white gills and hair raised up on end,
stood, the picture of fear, gazing at the damage, but too much afraid to
start out and prevent it. Those big men are sometimes physical cowards.
Another pane smashed! the weapon used being a hard piece of flint coal,
which just escaped short of Mr. Peckaby's head, and Lionel thought it
time to interfere. He pushed into the midst of them.
They drew aside when they saw who it was. In their hot passions--hot and
angry then--perhaps no one, friend or enemy, would have stood a chance
of being deferred to but Lionel Verner. They had so long looked upon him
as the future lord of Verner's Pride that they forgot to look upon him
as anything less now. And they all liked Lionel. His appearance was as
oil poured upon troubled waters.
"What is the meaning of this? What is the matter?" demanded Lionel.
"Oh, sir, why don't you interfere to protect us, now things is come to
this pass? You be a Verner!" was the prayer of remonstrance from all
sides that met his words.
"Give me an explanation," reiterated Lionel. "What is the grievance?"
The particular grievance of this morning, however easy to explain, was
somewhat difficult to comprehend, when twenty tongues were speaking at
once--and those, shrill and excited ones. In vain Lionel assured them
that if one, instead of all, would tell it, he should understand it
sooner; that if their tone were subdued, instead of loud enough to be
heard yonder at the brick-fields, it might be more desirable. Excited
women, suffering under what they deem a wrong, cannot be made quiet; you
may as well try to put down a rising flood. Lionel resigned himself to
his fate, and listened; and at this stage of the affair a new feature of
it struck his eye and surprised him. Scarcely one of the women but bore
in her hand some uncooked meat. Such meat! Lionel drew himself and his
coat from too close proximity to it. It was of varied hues, and walking
away alive. Upon plates, whole or broken, upon half-saucers, upon
dust-pans, upon fire-shovels, held at the end of tongs, hooked on to a
fork, spread out in a coal-box; anyhow so as to avoid contact with
fingers, these dainty pieces were exhibited for inspection.
By what Lionel could gather, it appeared that this meat had been
purchased on Saturday night at Peckaby's shop. The women had said then,
one and all, that it was not good; and Mr. Peckaby had been regaled with
various open conjectures, more plain than polite, as to the state of the
animal from which it had been supplied. Independent of the quality of
the meat, it was none the better, even then, for having been kept. The
women scented this; but Peckaby, and Peckaby's wife, who was always in
the shop with her husband on a Saturday night, protested and vowed that
their customers' noses were mistaken; that the meat would be perfectly
good and fresh on the Sunday, and on the Monday too, if they liked to
keep it so long. The women, somewhat doubtfully giving ear to the
assurance, knowing that the alternative was that or none, bought the
meat and took it home. On Sunday morning they found the meat
was--anything you may imagine. It was neither cookable nor eatable; and
their anger against Peckaby was not diminished by a certain fact which
oozed out to them; namely, that Peckaby himself did not cut _his_
Sunday's dinner off the meat in his shop, but sent to buy it of one of
the Deerham butchers. The general indignation was great; the men,
deprived of their Sunday's meat, joined in it; but nothing could be done
until Monday morning. Peckaby's shop was always hermetically sealed on a
Sunday. Mr. Verner had been stringent in allowing no Sunday traffic on
the estate.
Monday came. The men went to their work as usual, leaving their wives to
deal with the matter. Behold them assembled with their meat, kept for
the occasion in spite of its state, before the shop of Peckaby. But of
redress they could get none; Peckaby was deaf; and Lionel arrived to
find hostilities commenced. Such was the summary of the story.
"You are acting very wrongly," were Lionel's first words to them in
answer. "You should blame the meat, not Peckaby. Is this weather for
keeping meat?"
"The weather didn't get to this heat till yesterday in the afternoon,"
said they--and Lionel could not deny the fact. Mrs. Dawson took up the
word.
"_Our_ meat warn't bought at Peckaby's; our meat were got at Clark's,
and it were sweet as a nut. 'Twere veal, too, and that's the worst meat
for keeping. Roy 'ud kill us if he could; but he can't force _us_ on to
Peckaby's rubbish. We defy him to't."
In point of defying Roy, the Dawsons had done that long ago. There was
open warfare between them, and skirmishes took place occasionally. The
first act of Roy, after it was known that Lionel was disinherited, had
been to discharge old Dawson and his sons from work. How they had
managed to live since was a mystery; funds did not seem to run low with
them; tales of their night-poaching went about, and the sons got an odd
job at legitimate work now and then.
"It's an awful shame," cried a civil, quiet woman, Sarah Grind, one of a
very numerous family, commonly called "Grind's lot," "that we should be
beat down to have our victuals and other things at such a place as
Peckaby's! Sometimes, sir, I'm almost inclined to ask, is it Christians
as rules over us?"
Lionel felt the shaft levelled at his family, though not personally at
himself.
"You are not beaten down to it," he said. "Why do you deal at Peckaby's?
Stay a bit! I know what you would urge: that by going elsewhere you
would displease Roy. It seems to me that if you would all go elsewhere,
Roy _could_ not prevent it. Should one of you attempt to go, he might;
but he could not prevent it if you all go with one accord. If Peckaby's
things are bad--as I believe they are--why do you buy them?"
"There ain't a single thing as is good in his place," spoke up a woman,
half-crying. "Sir, it's truth. His flour is half bone-dust, and his
'taturs is watery. His sugar is sand, and his tea is leaves dried over
again, while his eggs is rotten, and his coals is flint."
"Allowing that, it is no good reason for your smashing his windows,"
said Lionel. "It is utterly impossible that that can be tolerated."
"Why do he palm his bad things off upon us, then?" retorted the crowd.
"He makes us pay half as much again as we do in the other shops; and
when we gets them home, we can't eat 'em. Sir, you be Mr. Verner now;
you ought to see as we be protected."
"I am Mr. Verner; but I have no power. My power has been taken from me,
as you know. Mrs. Verner is--"
"A murrain light upon her!" scowled a man from the outskirts of the
crowd. "Why do she call _herself_ Mrs. Verner, and stick herself up for
missis at Verner's Pride, if she is to take no notice on us? Why do she
leave us in the hands of Roy, to be--"
Lionel had turned upon the man like lightning.
"Davies, how dare you presume so to speak of Mrs. Verner in my presence?
Mrs. Verner is not the source of your ills; you must look nearer to you,
for that. Mrs. Verner is aged and ailing; she cannot get out of doors to
see into your grievances."
At the moment of Lionel's turning to the man, he, Davies, had commenced
to push his way towards Lionel. This caused the crowd to sway, and
Lionel's hat, which he held carelessly in his hand, having taken it off
to wipe his heated brow, got knocked down. Before he could stoop for its
rescue, it was trampled out of shape; not intentionally--they would have
protected Lionel and his things with their lives--but inadvertently. A
woman picked it up with a comical look of despair. To put on _that_
again was impossible.
"Never mind," said Lionel good-naturedly. "It was my own fault; I should
have held it better."
"Put your handkercher over your head, sir," was the woman's advice.
"It'll keep the sun off."
Lionel smiled, but did not take it. Davies was claiming his attention;
while some of the women seemed inclined to go in for a fight, which
should secure the hat.
"Could Mr. Verner get out o' doors and look into our grievances, the
last years of his life, any more, sir, nor she can?" he was asking, in
continuation of the subject.
"No, sir; he couldn't, and he didn't; but things wasn't then brought to
the pitch as they be now."
"No," acquiesced Lionel, "I was at hand then, to interpose between Roy
and Mr. Verner."
"And don't you think, sir, as you might be able to do the same thing
still?"
"No, Davies. I have been displaced from Verner's Pride, and from all
power connected with it. I have no more right to interfere with the
working of the estate than you have. You must make the best of things
until Mr. Massingbird's return."
"There'll be some dark deed done, then, afore many weeks is gone over;
that's what there'll be!" was Davies's sullen reply. "It ain't to be
stood, sir, as a man and his family is to clam, 'cause Peckaby--"
"Davies, I will hear no more on that score," interrupted Lionel. "You
men should be men, and make common cause in that one point for
yourselves against Roy. You have your wages in your hand on a Saturday
night, and can deal at any shop you please."
The man--he wore a battered old straw hat on his head, which looked as
dirty as his face--raised his eyes with an air of surprise at Lionel.
"What wages, sir? We don't get ours."
"Not get your wages?" repeated Lionel.
"No, sir; not on a Saturday night. That's just it--it's where the new
shoe's a-pinching. Roy don't pay now on a Saturday night. He gives us
all a sort o' note, good for six shilling, and we has, us or our wives,
to take that to Peckaby's, and get what we can for it. On the Monday, at
twelve o'clock, which is his new time for paying the wages, he docks us
of six shilling. _That's_ his plan now; and no wonder as some of us has
kicked at it, and then he have turned us off. I be one."
Lionel's brow burned; not with the blazing sun, but with indignation.
That this should happen on the lands of the Verner's! Hot words rose to
his lips--to the effect that Roy, as he believed, was acting against the
law--but he swallowed them down ere spoken. It might not be expedient to
proclaim so much to the men.
"Since when has Roy done this?" he asked. "I am surprised not to have
heard of it."
"This six weeks he have done it, sir, and longer nor that. It's get our
things from Peckaby's or it's not get any at all. Folks won't trust the
likes of us, without us goes with the money in our hands. We might have
knowed there was some evil in the wind when Peckaby's took to give us
trust. Mr. Verner wasn't the best of masters to us, after he let Roy get
on our backs--saving your presence for saying it, sir; but you must know
as it's truth--but there's things a-going on now as 'ud make him, if he
knowed 'em, rise up out of his grave. Let Roy take care of hisself, that
he don't get burned up some night in his bed!" significantly added the
man.
"Be silent, Davies! You--"
Lionel was interrupted by a commotion. Upon turning to ascertain its
cause, he found an excited crowd hastening towards the spot from the
brick-fields. The news of the affray had been carried thither, and Roy,
with much intemperate language and loud wrath, had set off at full speed
to quell it. The labourers set off after him, probably to protect their
wives. Shouting, hooting, swearing--at which pastime Roy was the
loudest--on they came, in a state of fury.
But for the presence of Lionel Verner, things might have come to a
crisis--if a fight could have brought a crisis on. He interposed his
authority, which even Roy did not yet dispute to his face, and he
succeeded in restoring peace for the time. He became responsible--I
don't know whether it was quite wise of him to do so--for the cost of
the broken windows, and the women were allowed to go home unmolested.
The men returned to their work, and Mr. Peckaby's face regained its
colour. Roy was turning away, muttering to himself, when Lionel beckoned
him aside with an authoritative hand.
"Roy, this must not go on. Do you understand me? It must not go on."
"What's not to go on, sir?" retorted Roy sullenly.
"You know what I mean. This disgraceful system of affairs altogether. I
believe that you would be amenable to the law in thus paying the men, or
in part paying them, with an order for goods; instead of in open, honest
coin. Unless I am mistaken, it borders very closely upon the truck
system."
"I can take care of myself and of the law, too, sir," was the answer of
Roy.
"Very good. I shall take care that this sort of oppression is lifted off
the shoulders of the men. Had I known it was being pursued, I should
have stopped it before."
"You have no right to interfere between me and anything now, sir."
"Roy," said Lionel calmly, "you are perfectly well aware that the right,
not only to interfere between you and the estate, but to invest me with
full power over it and you, was sought to be given me by Mrs. Verner at
my uncle's death. For reasons of my own I chose to decline it, and have
continued to decline it. Do you remember what I once told you--that one
of my first acts of power would be to displace you? After what I have
seen and heard to-day, I shall deliberate whether it be not my duty to
reconsider my determination, and assume this, and all other power."
Roy's face turned green. He answered defiantly, not in tone, but in
spirit--
"It wouldn't be for long, at any rate, sir; and Mr. Massingbird, I know,
'll put me into my place again on his return."
Lionel did not reply immediately. The sun was coming down upon his
uncovered head like a burning furnace, and he was casting a glance round
to see if any friendly shade might be at hand. In his absorption over
the moment's business he had not observed that he had halted with Roy
right underneath its beams. No, there was no shade just in that spot. A
public pump stood behind him, but the sun was nearly vertical, and the
pump got as much of it as he did. A thought glanced through Lionel's
mind of resorting to the advice of the women, to double his handkerchief
cornerwise over his head. But he did not purpose staying above another
minute with Roy, to whom he again turned.
"Don't deceive yourself, Roy. Mr. Massingbird is not likely to
countenance such doings as these. That Mrs. Verner will not, I know;
and, I tell you plainly, I will not. You shall pay the men's wages at
the proper and usual time; you shall pay them in full, to the last
halfpenny that they earn. Do you hear? I order you now to do so. We will
have no underhanded truck system introduced on the Verner estate."
"You'd like to ruin poor Peckaby, I suppose, sir!"
"I have nothing to do with Peckaby. If public rumour is to be credited,
the business is not Peckaby's, but yours--"
"Them that says it is a pack of liars!" burst forth Roy.
"Possibly. I say I have nothing to do with that. Peckaby--"
Lionel's voice faltered. An awful pain--a pain, the like of which, for
acute violence, he had never felt--had struck him in the head. He put
his hand up to it, and fell against the pump.
"Are you ill, sir?" asked Roy.
"What can it be?" murmured Lionel. "A sudden pain has attacked me here,
Roy," touching his head; "an awful pain. I'll get into Frost's, and sit
down."
Frost's cottage was but a minute's walk, but Lionel staggered as he went
to it. Roy attended him. The man humbly asked if Mr. Lionel would be
pleased to lean upon him, but Lionel waved him off. Matthew Frost was
sitting indoors alone; his grandchildren were at school, his son's wife
was busy elsewhere. Matthew no longer went out to labour. He had been
almost incapable of it before Mr. Verner's annuity fell to him. Robin
was away at work: but Robin was a sadly altered man since the death of
Rachel. His very nature appeared to have changed.
"My head! my head!" broke from Lionel, as he entered, in the intensity
of his pain. "Matthew, I think I must have got a sun-stroke."
Old Matthew pulled off his straw hat, and lifted himself slowly out of
his chair. All his movements were slow now. Lionel had sat himself down
on the settle, his head clasped by both hands, and his pale face turned
to fiery red--as deep a crimson as Mrs. Verner's was habitually.
"A sun-stroke?" echoed old Matthew, leaning on his stick, as he stood
before him, attentively regarding Lionel. "Ay, sir, for sure it looks
like it. Have you been standing still in the sun, this blazing day?"
"I have been standing in it without my hat," replied Lionel. "Not for
long, however."
"It don't take a minute, sir, to do the mischief. I had one myself,
years before you were born, Mr. Lionel. On a day as hot as this, I was
out in my garden, here, at the back of this cottage. I had gone out
without my hat, and was standing over my pig, watching him eat his wash,
when I felt something take my head--such a pain, sir, that I had never
felt before, and never wish to feel again. I went indoors, and Robin,
who might be a boy of five, or so, looked frightened at me, my face was
so red. I couldn't hold my head up, sir; and when the doctor came, he
said it was a sun-stroke. I think there must be particular moments and
days when the sun has this power to harm us, though we don't know which
they are nor how to avoid them," added old Matthew, as much in
self-soliloquy as to Lionel. "I had often been out before, without my
hat, in as great heat; for longer, too; and it had never harmed me.
Since then, sir, I have put a white handkerchief inside the crown of my
hat in hot weather. The doctor told me to do so."
"How long did the pain last?" asked Lionel, feeling _his_ pain growing
worse with every moment. "Many hours?"
"_Hours_?" repeated old Matthew, with a strong emphasis on the word.
"Mr. Lionel, it lasted for days and weeks. Before the next morning came,
sir, I was in a raging fever; for three weeks, good, I was in my bed,
above here, and never out of it; hardly the clothes smoothed a-top of
me. Sun-strokes are not frequent in this climate, sir, but when they do
come, they can't be trifled with."
Perhaps Lionel felt the same conviction. Perhaps he felt that with this
pain, increasing as it was in intensity, he must make the best of his
way home, if he would get home at all. "Good-day, Matthew," he said,
rising from the bench. "I'll go home at once!"
"And send for Dr. West, sir, or for Mr. Jan, if you are no better when
you get there," was the parting salutation of the old man.
He stood at the door, leaning on his stick, and watched Lionel down Clay
Lane. "A sun-stroke, for sure," repeated he, slowly turning in, as the
angle of the lane hid Lionel from his view.