Princess Puck

Nobody could make farming pay, at least no one about Wrugglesby. This was an axiom in the Ashelton district, which no one attempted to confute though each had an explanation for it, according to his political opinions and education, or want of education. But one and all believed it, though they continued to farm and to grumble, both the small men and the great. The small men were very small, little more than peasant tenants with neither the capital nor the ability to farm their small holdings with any show of justice to the starved land, living from hand to mouth, employing no labour, themselves and their families practically doing the work, and doing it indifferently. The great men were quite another class, a cross between a landed gentry and a yeoman squirearchy, socially ranking with the professional classes and for all practical purposes supplying the place of the county-families, now for the most part either impoverished or else removed to more congenial centres. The greater farm-owners undoubtedly did make some profit out of the land, or appeared to do something very like it, though possibly they might have done so more successfully had they inclined more towards the yeoman squirearchy and less towards the landed gentry in their tastes and habits.

At least such was the opinion of one who, a little more than six months previous to Bill’s advent in the Morton household, had come to settle among the yeoman-farmers and to prove to himself and to them some of the theories he held with regard to farming. His theory-in-chief was a short one, and could be summed up in one word,—work. A working farmer could make it pay; there were one or two of the old-fashioned sort of large working farmers still left, who made it pay, even though they had no social position and wanted none. Their net profits were small, it is true, but then they had not the benefit of a modern education; they were also abnormally pig-headed, and, in spite of experience, would do as their fathers had done in the palmy days of Protection. Young Gilchrist Harborough was of opinion that, were it only possible to unite the work in detail of these men with the knowledge and capital of the gentleman-class, results of surprising grandeur could be obtained.

He held this theory long ago, before ever he saw the English farmer at work; he held it still more firmly now that fate had given him an opportunity of putting it to the test. The opportunity had come unexpectedly in the shape of a legacy from a friend of his father’s, a man who had at one time stayed in the bush home where Gilchrist was reared, and who, half amused and half pleased by the young man’s earnestness, had left him Crows’ Farm and a sufficiency on which to try his theories on a small scale.

An unpretentious, whitewashed building was the farm, not unlike two cottages knocked into one. For many years it had been inhabited by a bailiff who farmed the adjoining land, the owner, frequently absent abroad, only coming down for the partridge-shooting. Ashelton was fond of this man, and genuinely sorry to hear of his death; he was the kind of man those good folks understood, and was sadly missed at the social functions which always took place in September and in which he usually joined. But the new owner, the young Australian to whom he had left the farm, was something of a puzzle to them. Of course he had a right to his theories: everyone has in these highly educated days; but it is not everyone who tries to put his theories into practice, nor who, moreover, has such uncomfortable ones. Harborough lived the life of a working farmer in his little old house; lived, so report said, almost like Robinson Crusoe, doing his own cooking and cleaning, rising early and sharing even the most menial toil with his few labourers. This was not all strictly correct, but it was near enough to the truth to satisfy Ashelton, and the parish talked and wondered, and said dubiously that the experiment might answer, questioning for a while how Mr. Harborough would be received. But in the winter the question was settled by Mrs. Dawson, who, perhaps, alone was capable of settling it finally. She, under the influence of her son Jack, decided that Mr. Harborough was as one of themselves, notwithstanding his theory and his colonial origin,—a decision which scarcely did justice to Harborough, but gave great satisfaction to everyone, even including Mr. Dane, the old rector. He, indeed, had seemed particularly to appreciate it, and had even listened to Mrs. Dawson’s judgment on the case with a faint smile flickering in his grey eyes. It is true he made Harborough’s acquaintance without waiting for Mrs. Dawson’s decision, but then, as she said, the rector, of course, knew everybody. Mr. Johnson, the curate, being only a curate, had waited for her decision.

But none of these matters troubled Harborough. He lived his life in his own way, working hard as long as he was able, smoking hard when work was done; reading sometimes, and the books had nothing to do with the theory, neither were they such as Jack Dawson would have chosen; dreaming sometimes in spite of the theory, in spite also of the pure reason with which he was still young enough to believe he governed his life. Of his neighbours he thought little; he was friendly when he came across them, but with the friendliness of the self-contained man who regards the rest of his kind as supernumeraries, necessary parts of the world-play, but as well filled by one set of actors as by another. He knew about his neighbours, of course, since he could not well live in Ashelton without doing so; but he did not care greatly about them, nor was there any reason to care; nothing to his knowledge had gone seriously wrong or seriously right in Ashelton until that night when he took Robert Morton home.

That night there had been something seriously wrong, and the more he thought about Morton, the more wrong the whole matter seemed. Drunkenness looked such a beastly thing in this quiet little village, in that peaceful home with that fair young wife. “The man’s a brute,” was his disgusted verdict, “coming home to a wife like that! Lucky it wasn’t her. By the way, I wonder who the girl was, queer little thing.”

But he did not wonder very much, for he was too sleepy that night and too busy the next day till the time when the girl revealed her identity to him. It was somewhere about noon when he saw her, as he was returning by a lane which bordered one side of the Haylands property. He had been that way once before during the morning, but was not aware that anyone had been watching him. As he came back, however, he met the girl of last night’s adventure evidently waiting for his return. The Morton’s orchard was here; an untidy orchard, with old stooping apple-trees, lichen-covered and unpruned, a thicket of nuts and pollard quinces and, beyond, a briery tangle of blackberries. As yet there was neither flower nor leaf, except for one plum-tree near the gate white as snow in its blossom.

It was in the orchard that Harborough saw the girl. She was sitting on the gate deliberately waiting for him, and when he came in sight she made the fact known.

“I want to speak to you,” she announced. “I have been waiting ever so long.”

“I’m sorry,” he answered, in some surprise; “now I have come, what can I do for you?”

“It is about Robert, Robert Morton—is he often drunk?”

If Harborough had any delusions as to her not grasping the situation last night, they were now dispelled. “I don’t know,” he said; “I have never seen him so before.”

“Do you think he often is?”

“I really cannot tell you; I am only very slightly acquainted with him.”

A little smile crept round the corners of the girl’s mouth. “I didn’t suppose you were great friends,” she said.

Harborough bit his lip. His tone had not implied it, yet he was conscious that there had been a slight feeling of annoyance at the suggestion of intimacy conveyed by her words; there was now a second feeling of annoyance that she should have discovered the first.

“I am a comparatively new comer in the place,” he said somewhat stiffly; “you would perhaps do better to ask someone who has lived here longer.”

“Umph!” As she made the oracular answer she drew her legs up to the top bar of the gate and clasped her hands round them in a position Harborough considered most unsafe. As he watched her, fascinated, wondering which way she would fall, she turned a little towards him.

“Take care!” he exclaimed.

“Theresa does not know,” she said, answering her own thoughts. “She has no idea; but she will, you know.”

Harborough thought it possible, but he only said: “I suppose her husband told her he did not wish to disturb her last night?”

“Yes.”

“Then I do not see how she is to know, if you do not tell her.”

“No, not this time; but next,—I may not be here then.”

“How do you know there will be a next time?” he asked. “You have no reason to suppose this was anything but,—but an accident which might happen to any of us.”

“You, for instance?”

Her blandly innocent eyes were turned on him. “Any man,” he answered briefly. The eyes showed neither surprise nor disgust; in fact they did not seem much convinced, and he went on. “There is no reason to say it must occur again; why do you?”

“Why do you?”

“I do not,” he answered; “I should be very sorry to give such a definite opinion on the subject.”

“Well, then,” she replied cheerfully, “that is the difference between us. I give the opinions, you only have them, but we mean the same thing.”

“I have not formed any opinion.”

“No, but you know him,—not very well, I dare say,—but you know other men. I don’t know him very well either, better than you do, of course, but not well. I came here on Tuesday, and to-day is Friday; before that I don’t think I saw him more than six times; but, all the same, I know he will get drunk again.”

“Pray, did you expect him to be drunk last night?” Harborough asked.

“No,” she answered; “I had never thought about it. Until I saw him last night I never thought about his drinking; now, of course, I know.”

“I must say you took it very coolly,” he observed, “that is, if it was a revelation to you.”

She shrugged her shoulders, till he thought she must inevitably fall off the gate; she did not, but turned to him, asking, “What would you have had me do?”

“Nothing different from what you did. I meant that you did not seem at all upset.”

“No, I don’t think I can be upset easily.” He unconsciously looked at the squirrel-like perch on the gate. “You see,” she went on, “there was a good deal to be done till you went; after that I thought.”

“Yes?” He wondered what she thought, what sort of brain she had under that thatch of copper-brown hair.

“It is about Theresa,” she went on to explain; “she does not know, and she must sooner or later; he is bound to let it out some time. He may have got drunk and hidden it in the past: he may do so in the future; but sooner or later there will come another time like last night, and she will find out.”

He drove his stick into the ground thoughtfully. “Well,” he said at last, “if this is all as inevitable as you say, if this takes place, I suppose Mrs. Morton will have to bear it, as other women have borne it before. There is nothing else for it; we can’t help her; she will just have to bear it.”

Harborough felt this was cold comfort. It was easy talking out here in the spring sunshine, easy adjusting the burden to the accompaniment of the thrushes’ love-songs; but to bear it was another matter, and the girl evidently thought so.

“You don’t know Theresa,” she said. “She just can’t bear it; I think it would kill her.”

Harborough repressed a smile. “I don’t think it would do anything of the kind,” he said, from his wider knowledge of mankind. “Mrs. Morton by this time knows, what you, too, will find out some day, that the world is peopled with men not heroes, and that you must take men, even husbands, as you find them, and not despair and die because they are not heroes of romance.”

“That’s just what Theresa has not found out,” Theresa’s cousin persisted, “at least not properly. She and Robert don’t quite understand one another, I’m afraid. It’s an awful pity for people to get married; they can’t really know one another unless they have lived together for a long time first. You see, T. has lived such a different life. It was a kind of she-life, quiet and dainty and small, and nice as nice could be,—weak tea in old china and wash the cups up carefully afterwards—that is how we lived. The pity is she married Robert; it might have answered if she had married some other man, better, perhaps, or more,—more watered down, or something; I don’t know how to say it, but you understand how it is. They just belong to different kinds of people.”

Harborough leaned against the gate-post, the one opposite to the end of the gate on which the girl sat; he was careful not to give her the least jar as he considered the connubial problem presented to him. “Of course you think Morton is to blame,” he said at last. “You would blame him far more than your sister—cousin is it?—your cousin then. He is, I suppose, a low hound, drunken and all the rest of it?”

“Well,” she answered slowly, “it isn’t so much that; he has his good points of course, though I don’t altogether like him. It isn’t exactly a case of right and wrong; it’s how the thing seems to the other person, and it’ll seem bad to T. For myself, I don’t think I should like getting drunk, but I don’t so much mind about things; I can understand how it is in a way, and besides, it is not such a sin to his nature; it isn’t nice, but it is all of a piece with himself.”

Harborough nodded. “That’s so,” he said and added: “To come home drunk is not, after all, such a dreadful thing from a man’s point of view; it is not nice, as you say, but it is not the most awful thing in the world. Life’s entire happiness does not cease because of it; it is not the end of all things.”

“No,” she said thoughtfully looking past him into some fancy picture. “No, there is always the necessity to get up and have breakfast next morning, even after a big tragedy; things don’t end.”

He laughed a little. “Naturally not, and a good thing too on the whole, though perhaps it is not dramatic. Why not induce Mrs. Morton to take your truly judicial view of the case?”

“My view? It couldn’t be done.”

“Why not? I think I understood you to say that she had lived in the same circumstances as yourself; if the view is possible to you, why not to her?”

“I don’t know, but it is not.” Bill spoke with absolute conviction. “Besides, I can’t speak about it to her; I can’t even warn her what to expect. If she had been with me when you brought him home last night, I should have been obliged to pretend I did not know what was the matter, and I should have kept up the pretence afterwards.”

“Would you?” he said, eyeing her curiously. “I suppose you would, and she would have helped you; women always try to hide the shortcomings of their loved ones. She won’t admit it when she finds him out; she will stand by him with a sort of proud deceit to the end.”

“Of course,” Bill answered simply; “he is her family now, and you must stand by your family, right or wrong.”

“I suppose that is what you call loyalty,” Harborough said with a laugh. “I was born in a land where we don’t think so much of our families, where we have not always reason to think much of them.”

“Mine isn’t much to boast of,” Bill admitted. “But that has nothing to do with it; I must stand by them all the same,—why, I should bolster up Polly. But we are no nearer the settling of Theresa; I suppose we never shall be, so there is no more to be said. Thank you for telling me all you knew.”

“All I didn’t know; that is what it amounts to.”

She moved as if she were going to get off the gate, then stopped in the act and said suddenly: “Polly said Robert would die of apoplexy,—die young. What do you think?”

“I think it is a solution of the difficulty I should not dwell on, if I were you.”

“Why not? Isn’t it likely?”

“I should say it was at least uncertain; also it is not usually considered decent to think about such things, at all events to talk about them.”

“Oh, decent!” she said, and laughed softly as she remembered Carrie’s and Alice’s lecture. Then she dropped off the gate and was immediately lost among the orchard bushes. He stood for a moment, half-expecting her to come back, though he did not know why. As she did not, he went on, smiling a little.

Gradually the smile died away. It was all very well to smile out there in the sunshine, all very well to talk under the apple-boughs, but the fact remained, the grim, stern fact. It was no concern of his, it is true, but he could not help thinking about it. Of course he knew that Morton drank, not desperately, nor enough to do any serious harm, not more than did plenty of other men, nothing more than occasionally a little too much; so serious an affair as last night’s occurrence would probably be an exception. It was not exactly a cardinal sin, it was just part of his nature, as the little brown girl had said, a kind of nature for which Harborough had a tolerant contempt when regarded as a detached specimen; as a personal acquaintance it naturally wore a different aspect. “If a man drinks, he drinks, and it is his affair. One can forgive lapses; we are none of us exactly bread-and-butter saints when we are nearing the thirties.” Harborough emphasised the words with his stick; he had almost said them aloud, not quite, but loud enough for the man, who that moment joined him, to guess part of the speech.

“Who is not a saint when he is nearing the thirties?” he asked. “Forgive me for surprising your thoughts, Mr. Harborough; you really should not think so loud, you know.”

“I will forgive you more easily than I fancy you would forgive me for thinking them.” So Harborough answered, for he had certain very definite notions as to what was and what was not acceptable to the clergy, and it was a clergyman who had accosted him, the rector of Ashelton on his way to the rectory by a field-path well known to at least one of his parishioners.

Perhaps Harborough misjudged this clergyman; at all events he promised forgiveness for all sins of thought before they were expressed. “I give absolution beforehand,” he said; “now confess the whole.”

“The whole? I am afraid I was speech-making to myself, a bad habit I have got from living so much alone; still you shall have it all. Here goes,—If a man drinks, he drinks, and it is his affair. One can forgive lapses; we are none of us bread-and-butter saints when we are nearing the thirties. But a man whom the divine wisdom has, it would seem, for its own purposes, made something of a beast, should keep his beastliness for suitable places. There is a lot done ‘somewhere east of Suez’ and in other places nearer at hand, which one does not blame a man for doing there; but when he does it in his wife’s drawing-room,—when he is such an egregious fool, such an unmitigated brute—why then he wants kicking, and he should be soundly kicked.”

Mr. Dane laughed a little, but whether at the length of the speech or the unconscious earnestness of its delivery did not appear. “Yes,” he said, “yes, brutes want kicking; I’m not sure we don’t all want kicking sometimes. Poor little wife; God help the wife, whoever she is!”

Harborough acquiesced. “And yet,” he said doubtfully, “if she understood, it would be easier, much easier; a good woman is a hard judge.”

“Ay, possibly.” The rector’s cold gray eyes seemed to summon up the memory of some good woman who had judged hardly. “They were not made to understand some things.”

“Not all women,” Harborough interposed.

“Not all; are you sure she was a good woman, this exception of yours? But perhaps we had better not start a controversy now; it is too late. I suppose the good women will judge the bad men, and love them too, to the end of the story. Bad men? No, I beg pardon, average men, neither good nor bad, just human, no bread-and-butter saints—good-bye.”

They parted at the rectory-gate. Just as it closed after Mr. Dane he turned to call after Harborough: “How about the beef and beer saints? What of them?”

“Are there any?”

“Yes, and they’re good for three-score years and ten.”