and his own. But she did not mind. She did not rebuke him, she even let
him dandle her precious babe.
“Look, what is his name to be, Pomony? Let’s call him Rasselas.”
Pomona looked at him very doubtfully.
“Or would you like William Wallace then, or Robert Bruce?”
“I shall call him Johnny,” said Pomona.
“O, that’s silly!” protested her brother. But Pomona was quite positive
about this. He fancied there were tears in her eyes, she was always
tender-hearted.
“I shall call him Johnny, Johnny Flynn.”
* * * * *
THE HURLY-BURLY
* * * * *
THE HURLY-BURLY
The Weetmans, mother, son, and daughter, lived on a thriving farm. It
was small enough, God knows, but it had always been a turbulent place
of abode. For the servant it was: “Phemy, do this,” or “Phemy, have you
done that?” from dawn to dark, and even from dark to dawn there was
a hovering of unrest. The widow Weetman, a partial invalid, was the
only figure that manifested any semblance of tranquillity, and it was
a misleading one for she sat day after day on her large hams knitting
and nodding and lifting her grey face only to grumble, her spectacled
eyes transfixing the culprit with a basilisk glare. And her daughter
Alice, the housekeeper, who had a large face, a dominating face, in
some respects she was all face, was like a blast in a corridor with her
“Maize for the hens, Phemy!--More firewood, Phemy!--Who has set the
trap in the harness room?--Come along!--Have you scoured the skimming
pans?--Why not!--Where are you idling?--Come along, Phemy, I have no
time to waste this morning, you really must help me.” It was not only
in the house that this cataract of industry flowed; outside there
was activity enough for a regiment. A master-farmer’s work consists
largely of a series of conversations with other master-farmers,
a long-winded way of doing long-headed things, but Glastonbury
Weetman, the son, was not like that at all; he was the incarnation of
energy, always doing and doing, chock-full of orders, adjurations,
objurgatives, blame, and blasphemy, That was the kind of place Phemy
Madigan worked at. No one could rest on laurels there. The farm and
the home possessed everybody, lock, stock, and barrel; work was like a
tiger, it ate you up implacably. The Weetmans did not mind--they liked
being eaten by such a tiger.
After six or seven years of this Alice went back to marry an old
sweetheart in Canada, where the Weetmans had originally come from,
but Phemy’s burden was in no way lessened thereby. There were as many
things to wash and sew and darn; there was always a cart of churns
about to dash for a train it could not possibly catch, or a horse
to shoe that could not possibly be spared. Weetman hated to see his
people merely walking: “Run over to the barn for that hay-fork,” or
“Slip across to the ricks, quick now,” he would cry, and if ever an
unwary hen hampered his own path it did so only once--and no more. His
labourers were mere things of flesh and blood, but they occasionally
resented his ceaseless flagellations. Glas Weetman did not like to
be impeded or controverted; one day in a rage he had smashed that
lumbering loon of a carter called Gathercole. For this he was sent to
jail for a month.
The day after he had been sentenced Phemy Madigan, alone in the house
with Mrs. Weetman, had waked at the usual early hour. It was a foggy
September morning; Sampson and his boy Daniel were clattering pails in
the dairy shed. The girl felt sick and gloomy as she dressed; it was
a wretched house to work in, crickets in the kitchen, cockroaches in
the garret, spiders and mice everywhere. It was an old long low house;
she knew that when she descended the stairs the walls would be stained
with autumnal dampness, the banisters and rails oozing with moisture.
She wished she was a lady and married and living in a palace fifteen
stories high.
It was fortunate that she was big and strong, though she had been only
a charity girl taken from the workhouse by the Weetmans when she was
fourteen years old. That was seven years ago. It was fortunate that she
was fed well at the farm, very well indeed; it was the one virtue of
the place. But her meals did not counterbalance things; that farm ate
up the body and blood of people. And at times the pressure was charged
with a special excitation, as if a taut elastic thong had been plucked
and released with a reverberating ping.
It was so on this morning. Mrs. Weetman was dead in her bed.
At that crisis a new sense descended upon the girl, a sense of
responsibility. She was not in fear, she felt no grief or surprise. It
concerned her in some way, but she herself was unconcerned, and she
slid without effort into the position of mistress of the farm. She
opened a window and looked out of doors. A little way off a boy with a
red scarf stood by an open gate.
“Oi ... oi, kup, kup, kup!” he cried to the cows in that field. Some
of the cows having got up stared amiably at him, others sat on ignoring
his hail, while one or two plodded deliberately towards him. “Oi ...
oi, kup, kup, kup!”
“Lazy rascal, that boy,” remarked Phemy, “we shall have to get rid of
him. Dan’l! Come here, Dan’l!” she screamed, waving her arm wildly.
“Quick!”
She sent him away for police and doctor. At the inquest there were no
relatives in England who could be called upon, no witnesses other than
Phemy. After the funeral she wrote a letter to Glastonbury Weetman in
jail informing him of his bereavement, but to this he made no reply.
Meanwhile the work of the farm was pressed forward under her control,
for though she was revelling in her personal release from the torment
she would not permit others to share her intermission. She had got Mrs.
Weetman’s keys and her box of money. She paid the two men and the boy
their wages week by week. The last of the barley was reaped, the oats
stacked, the roots hoed, the churns sent daily under her supervision.
And always she was bustling the men.
“O dear me, these lazy rogues!” she would complain to the empty rooms,
“they waste time, so it’s robbery, it _is_ robbery. You may wear
yourself to the bone and what does it signify to such as them? All the
responsibility, too!--They would take your skin if they could get it
off you--and they can’t!”
She kept such a sharp eye on the corn and meal and eggs that Sampson
got surly. She placated him by handing him Mr. Weetman’s gun and a few
cartridges, saying: “Just shoot me a couple of rabbits over in the
warren when you got time.” At the end of the day Mr. Sampson had not
succeeded in killing a rabbit so he kept the gun and the cartridges
many more days. Phemy was really happy. The gloom of the farm had
disappeared. The farmhouse and everything about it looked beautiful,
beautiful indeed with its yard full of ricks, the pond full of ducks,
the fields full of sheep and cattle, and the trees still full of leaves
and birds. She flung maize about the yard; the hens scampered towards
it and the young pigs galloped, quarrelling over the grains which they
groped and snuffed for, grinding each one separately in their iron
jaws, while the white pullets stalked delicately among them, picked
up the maize seeds, One, Two, Three, and swallowed them like ladies.
Sometimes on cold mornings she would go outside and give an apple to
the fat bay pony when he galloped back from the station. He would stand
puffing with a kind of rapture, the wind from his nostrils discharging
in the frosty air vague shapes like smoky trumpets. Presently upon his
hide a little ball of liquid mysteriously suspired, grew, slid, dropped
from his flanks into the road. And then drops would begin to come from
all parts of him until the road beneath was dabbled by a shower from
his dew-distilling outline. Phemy would say:
“The wretches! They were so late they drove him near distracted, poor
thing. Lazy rogues, but wait till master comes back, they’d better be
careful!”
And if any friendly person in the village asked her: “How are you
getting on up there, Phemy?” she would reply, “Oh, as well as you
can expect with so much to be done--and such men.” The interlocutor
might hint that there was no occasion in the circumstances to distress
oneself, but then Phemy would be vexed. To her, honesty was as holy
as the sabbath to a little child. Behind her back they jested about
her foolishness; but, after all, wisdom isn’t a process, it’s a
result, it’s the fruit of the tree. One can’t be wise, one can only be
fortunate.
On the last day of her Elysium the workhouse master and the chaplain
had stalked over the farm shooting partridges. In the afternoon she
met them and asked for a couple of birds for Weetman’s return on
the morrow. The workhouse was not far away, it was on a hill facing
west, and at sunset time its windows would often catch the glare
so powerfully that the whole building seemed to burn like a box of
contained and smokeless fire. Very beautiful it looked to Phemy.
II
The men had come to work punctually and Phemy herself found so much
to do that she had no time to give the pony an apple. She cleared the
kitchen once and for all of the pails, guns, harness, and implements
that so hampered its domestic intention, and there were abundant signs
elsewhere of a new impulse at work in the establishment. She did not
know at what hour to expect the prisoner so she often went to the
garden gate and glanced up the road. The night had been wild with windy
rain, but the morn was sparklingly clear though breezy still. Crisp
leaves rustled about the road where the polished chestnuts beside the
parted husks lay in numbers, mixed with coral buds of the yews. The
sycamore leaves were black rags, but the delicate elm foliage fluttered
down like yellow stars. There was a brown field neatly adorned with
white coned heaps of turnips, behind it a small upland of deeply green
lucerne, behind that nothing but blue sky and rolling cloud. The
turnips, washed by the rain, were creamy polished globes.
When at last he appeared she scarcely knew him. Glas Weetman was a big,
though not fleshy, man of thirty with a large boyish face and a flat
bald head. Now he had a thick dark beard. He was hungry, but his first
desire was to be shaved. He stood before the kitchen mirror, first
clipping the beard away with scissors, and as he lathered the remainder
he said:
“Well, it’s a bad state of things this, my sister dead and my mother
gone to America. What shall us do?”
He perceived in the glass that she was smiling.
“There’s naught funny in it, my comic gal,” he bawled indignantly,
“what are you laughing at?”
“I wer’n’t laughing. It’s your mother that’s dead.”
“My mother that’s dead. I know.”
“And Miss Alice that’s gone to America.”
“To America, I know, I know, so you can stop making your bullock’s eyes
and get me something to eat. What’s been going on here?”
She gave him an outline of affairs. He looked at her sternly when he
asked her about his sweetheart.
“Has Rosa Beauchamp been along here?”
“No,” said Phemy, and he was silent. She was surprised at the
question. The Beauchamps were such respectable high-up people that to
Phemy’s simple mind they could not possibly favour an alliance, now,
with a man that had been in prison: it was absurd, but she did not
say so to him. And she was bewildered to find that her conviction was
wrong, for Rosa came along later in the day and everything between her
master and his sweetheart was just as before; Phemy had not divined so
much love and forgiveness in high-up people.
It was the same with everything else. The old harsh rushing life was
resumed, Weetman turned to his farm with an accelerated vigour to make
up for the lost time and the girl’s golden week or two of ease became
an unforgotten dream. The pails, the guns, the harness, crept back into
the kitchen. Spiders, cockroaches, and mice were more noticeable than
ever before, and Weetman himself seemed embittered, harsher. Time alone
could never still him, there was a force in his frame, a buzzing in his
blood. But there was a difference between them now; Phemy no longer
feared him. She obeyed him, it is true, with eagerness, she worked in
the house like a woman and in the fields like a man. They ate their
meals together, and from this dissonant comradeship the girl in a dumb
kind of way began to love him.
One April evening on coming in from the fields he found her lying on
the couch beneath the window, dead plumb fast asleep, with no meal
ready at all. He flung his bundle of harness to the flags and bawled
angrily to her. To his surprise she did not stir. He was somewhat
abashed, he stepped over to look at her. She was lying on her side.
There was a large rent in her bodice between sleeve and shoulder; her
flesh looked soft and agreeable to him. Her shoes had slipped off to
the floor; her lips were folded in a sleepy pout.
“Why, she’s quite a pretty cob,” he murmured. “She’s all right, she’s
just tired, the Lord above knows what for.”
But he could not rouse the sluggard. Then a fancy moved him to lift
her in his arms; he carried her from the kitchen and staggering up the
stairs laid the sleeping girl on her own bed. He then went downstairs
and ate pie and drank beer in the candle-light, guffawing once or
twice, “A pretty cob, rather.” As he stretched himself after the meal a
new notion amused him: he put a plateful of food upon a tray together
with a mug of beer and the candle. Doffing his heavy boots and leggings
he carried the tray into Phemy’s room. And he stopped there.
III
The new circumstance that thus slipped into her life did not effect any
noticeable alteration of its general contour and progress, Weetman did
not change towards her. Phemy accepted his mastership not alone because
she loved him but because her powerful sense of loyalty covered all the
possible opprobrium. She did not seem to mind his continued relations
with Rosa.
Towards midsummer one evening Glastonbury came in in the late
dusk. Phemy was there in the darkened kitchen. “Master,” she said
immediately he entered. He stopped before her. She continued:
“Something’s happened.”
“Huh, while the world goes popping round something shall always happen.”
“It’s me--I’m took--a baby, master,” she said. He stood stock-still.
His face was to the light, she could not see the expression on his
face, perhaps he wanted to embrace her.
“Let’s have a light, sharp,” he said in his brusque way. “The supper
smells good but I can’t see what I’m smelling, and I can only fancy
what I be looking at.”
She lit the candles and they ate supper in silence. Afterwards he sat
away from the table with his legs outstretched and crossed, hands sunk
into pockets, pondering while the girl cleared the table. Soon he put
his powerful arm around her waist and drew her to sit on his knees.
“Are ye sure o’ that?” he demanded.
She was sure.
“Quite?”
She was quite sure.
“Ah, well then,” he sighed conclusively, “we’ll be married.”
The girl sprang to her feet. “No, no, no--how can you be married--you
don’t mean that--not married--there’s Miss Beauchamp!” She paused and
added, a little unsteadily: “She’s your true love, master.”
“Ay, but I’ll not wed her,” he cried sternly. “If there’s no gainsaying
this that’s come on you, I’ll stand to my guns. It’s right and proper
for we to have a marriage.”
His great thick-fingered hands rested upon his knees; the candles threw
a wash of light upon his polished leggings; he stared into the fireless
grate.
“But we do not want to do that,” said the girl, dully and doubtfully.
“You have given your ring to her, you’ve given her your word. I don’t
want you to do this for me. It’s all right, master, it’s all right.”
“Are ye daft?” he cried. “I tell you we’ll wed. Don’t keep clacking
about Rosa.... I’ll stand to my guns.” He paused before adding: “She’d
gimme the rightabout, fine now--don’t you see, stupid--but I’ll not
give her the chance.”
Her eyes were lowered. “She’s your true love, master.”
“What would become of you and your child? Ye couldn’t bide here!”
“No,” said the trembling girl.
“I’m telling you what we must do, modest and proper; there’s naught
else to be done, and I’m middling glad of it, I am. Life’s a see-saw
affair. I’m middling glad of this.”
So, soon, without a warning to any one, least of all to Rosa Beauchamp,
they were married by the registrar. The change in her domestic status
produced no other change; in marrying Weetman she had married all
his ardour, she was swept into its current. She helped to milk cows,
she boiled nauseating messes for pigs, chopped mangolds, mixed meal,
and sometimes drove a harrow in his windy fields. Though they slept
together she was still his servant. Sometimes he called her his
“pretty little cob” and then she knew he was fond of her. But in
general his custom was disillusioning. His way with her was his way
with his beasts; he knew what he wanted, it was easy to get. If for a
brief space a little romantic flower began to bud in her breast it was
frozen as a bud, and the vague longing disappeared at length from her
eyes. And she became aware that Rosa Beauchamp was not yet done with;
somewhere in the darkness of the fields Glastonbury still met her.
Phemy did not mind.
In the new year she bore him a son that died as it came to life. Glas
was angry at that, as angry as if he had lost a horse. He felt that he
had been duped, that the marriage had been a stupid sacrifice, and in
this he was savagely supported by Rosa. And yet Phemy did not mind; the
farm had got its grip upon her, it was consuming her body and blood.
Weetman was just going to drive into town; he sat fuming in the trap
behind the fat bay pony.
“Bring me that whip from the passage,” he shouted; “there’s never a
damn thing handy!”
Phemy appeared with the whip. “Take me with you,” she said.
“God-a-mighty! What for? I be comin’ back in an hour. They ducks want
looking over and you’ve all the taties to grade.”
She stared at him irresolutely.
“And who’s to look after the house? You know it won’t lock up--the
key’s lost. Get up there!”
He cracked his whip in the air as the pony dashed away.
In the summer Phemy fell sick, her arm swelled enormously. The doctor
came again and again. It was blood-poisoning, caught from a diseased
cow that she had milked with a cut finger. A nurse arrived but Phemy
knew she was doomed, and though tortured with pain she was for once
vexed and protestant. For it was a June night, soft and nubile, with
a marvellous moon; a nightingale threw its impetuous garland into the
air. She lay listening to it, and thinking with sad pleasure of the
time when Glastonbury was in prison, how grand she was in her solitude,
ordering everything for the best and working superbly. She wanted to go
on and on for evermore, though she knew she had never known peace in
maidenhood or marriage. The troubled waters of the world never ceased
to flow; in the night there was no rest--only darkness. Nothing could
emerge now. She was leaving it all to Rosa Beauchamp. Glastonbury was
gone out somewhere--perhaps to meet Rosa in the fields. There was the
nightingale, and it was very bright outside.
“Nurse,” moaned the dying girl, “what was I born into the world at all
for?”
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Notes:
Punctuation has been made consistent.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in
the original publication, except that obvious typographical errors have
been corrected.