If you be built on a grand scale, there's always people to feel the greatness, and though, when you hap to be a knave, their respect is a bit one-sided, still there it is: greatness will be granted.
In the case of John Warner, he weren't a knave, but his greatness, so to call it, took the form of such a complete and wondrous selfishness that you was bound to own a touch of genius in the masterful way he bent all things to his purpose and came out top over his neighbours. The man was an only son, and what might have been chastened in his youth was fostered by a silly mother, who fell in love with his fine appearance and never denied him a pleasure she could grant. And his father weren't no wiser, so when, at five-and-twenty, he found himself an orphan and Wych Elm Farm his own, lock, stock, and barrel, young John Warner come to his kingdom with a steadfast determination to get the best he could for himself out of life and make it run to his own pattern so far as unsleeping wit of man could do.
He married a pretty woman with a bit of money and he altered a good few of his father's ways and used Jane Slowcombe's dowry to buy up a hundred acres alongside his own. The land had been neglected and wanted patience and cash; but where his lasting interests were concerned, John never lacked for one, nor stinted the other. He was a clever man and a charming man, and his cleverness and his charm appeared in many ways. Over the steel hand of sleepless selfishness John drew the velvet glove of good manners and nice speech. He created the false idea that he never wanted to do more than give and take in the properest spirit you could wish. He spoke the comfortablest words ever a farmer did speak to his fellow-creatures, and many a man was lost afore he knew it when doing business with John Warner, and never realised, till it came to the turn, how a bargain which sounded so well had somehow gone against him after all.
Of course, John prospered exceeding, for amongst his other gifts, he weren't afraid of work. He knew his business very well indeed, and always understood that it was worth his while to take pains with a beginner and paid him in the long run so to do. People felt a good bit interested in him, and though they knew there was a lot to hate in the man, yet they couldn't give a name to it exactly. When a fallen foe was furious and bearded John and shook a fist in his face, as sometimes happened, he'd look the picture of sorrow and amazement and express his undying regrets. But he never went back on nothing, and near though he might sail to the wind, none ever had a handle by which to drag him before the Law. 'Twas just the very genius of selfishness that sped him on his way victorious every time.
He never took no hand in public affairs, nor offered for the Borough Council, nor nothing like that. He might have been a useful man in Little Silver, where we didn't boast more brains than we needed, nor yet enough; but John Warner said he weren't one of the clever ones and felt very satisfied with them that were, and applauded such men as did a bit of work for nothing out of their public spirit. For praise, though cheap, is always welcome, and he had a great art to be generous with what cost him nothing.
He'd pay a man a thought above his market value if he judged him worth it, and he often said that on a farm like Wych Elm, where everything was carried out on the highest grade of farming, 'twas money in any young man's pocket to come to him at all. And nobody could deny that either. And he never meddled in his neighbour's affairs, or offered advice, or unfavourably criticised anything that happened outside his own boundaries.
One daughter only John Warner had, and that was all his family, and her mother struck the first stroke against his happiness and content, for she died and left him a widower at five-and-forty. She fell in a consumption, much to his regret, after they'd been wedded fifteen years; and their girl was called Jane after her, and 'twas noted that though sprung of such handsome parents, Jane didn't favour either but promised to be a very homely woman—a promise she fulfilled.
Her father trained her most industrious to be his right hand, and she grew up with a lively admiration for him and his opinions. Farming interested her a lot, and men mildly interested her; but among the hopeful young blades with an eye on the future who offered to keep company and so on, there was none Jane saw who promised to be a patch on her parent, and after his worldly wisdom and grasp of life and shrewd sense, she found the boys of her own age no better than birds in a hedge. Indeed she had no use for any among 'em, but made John Warner her god, as he meant she should do; for, as she waxed in strength and wits, he felt her a strong right hand. In fact, he took no small pains to identify her with himself for his own convenience, and secretly determined she shouldn't wed if he could help it. Little by little he poisoned her mind against matrimony, praised the independent women and showed how such were better off every way, with no husband and family to fret their lives and spoil their freedom.
Jane was one, or two-and-twenty by now—a pale, small-eyed maiden with a fine, strong body and a great appetite for manual work. There was no taint from her mother in her and she lived out of doors for choice and loved a hard job. She'd pile the dry-built, granite walls with any man, and do so much as him in a day; and folk, looking on her, foretold that she'd be rich beyond dreams, but never know how to get a pennyworth of pleasure out of all her money.
But Jane's one and only idol was her father, and for him she would have done anything in her power. She counted on him being good to live for ever, along of his cautious habits, and she'd give over all thought of any change in the home when the crash came and the even ripple of their lives was broke for her by a very unexpected happening.
Because, much to his own astonishment, John Warner found his mind dwelling on a wife once more—the last thing as ever he expected to happen to him. Indeed the discovery flustered the man not a little, and he set himself to consider such an upheaval most careful and weigh it, as he weighed everything, in the scales of his own future comfort and success. He was a calculating man in all things, and yet it came over him gradual and sure that Mrs. Bascombe had got something to her which made a most forcible appeal and awakened fires he thought were gone out for ever when his wife died. As for Nelly Bascombe, she was a widow and kept a shop-of-all-sorts in Little Silver and did well thereat, and Bascombe had been dead two years when his discovery dropped like a bolt out of a clear sky on John Warner.
It vexed him a bit at first and he put it away, after considering what an upstore a second wife would make in the snug and well-ordered scheme of his existence; but there it was and Nelly wouldn't be put away. So John examined the facts and came to the interesting conclusion that, in a manner of speaking, his own daughter was responsible for his fix. Because, being such a wintry fashion of female, she made all others of the sex shine by contrast, and her father guessed it was just her manly, hard, bustling way that showed up the feminine softness and charming voice and general appealing qualities of Nelly Bascombe.
Nelly was a tall, fine woman of forty years old. Her hair was thick and dark, her eyes a wondrous big pair and so grey as the mist, and her voice to poor Jane's was like a blackbird against a guinea-fowl. Farmer, he dropped in the shop pretty often to pass the time of day and measure her up; and for her part being a man-loving sort of woman, who had lost a good husband, but didn't see no very stark cause why she shouldn't find another, she discovered after a bit what was lurking in the farmer's mind. Then, like the rest of the parish, she wondered, for 'twas never thought that such an own-self man as Warner, and one so well suited by his daughter, would spoil his peace with another wife.
But nobody's cleverer to hide his nature than a lover, and Warner found himself burrowing into Nelly's life a bit and sizing up her character, though full of caution not to commit himself; and she was very near as clever as him, and got to weigh up his points, good and bad, and to feel along with such a man that life might be pleasant enough for a nature like hers. For she was a good manager with a saving disposition. She liked John's handsome appearance and reckoned the fifteen year between 'em would work to suit her. And, more than that, she hated her business, because a shop-of-all-sorts have got a smell to it like nothing else on earth, and Nelly found it cast her spirits down a bit as it always had done. She made no secret of this, and John Warner presently got to see she was friendly disposed towards him and might easily be had for the asking if he asked right. He took his time, however, and sounded Jane, where he well knew the pinch would come.
He gleaned her opinion casual on the subject of a woman here and there, and he found Jane thought well enough of Mrs. Bascombe, whose shop was useful and her prices well within reason. But it was a long time before he made up his mind, the problem being whether to tell Jane of the thing he was minded to do before he done it, or take the step first and break it to her after. In the end he reckoned it safer to do the deed and announce it as an accomplished fact; because he very well knew that she would take it a good bit to heart and hate with all her might any other female reigning at Wych Elm but herself.
And meanwhile, all unknown to farmer, Jane chanced to be having a bit of very mild amusement with a male on her own account.
Martin Ball was known as 'the busy man of Little Silver,' and none but had a good word for him. He was a yellow-whiskered, stout, red-faced and blue-eyed chap with enough energy to drive a steamship. The folk marvelled how he found time for all he undertook. He was Portreeve of the district—an ancient title without much to it nowadays—and he was huckster to a dozen farms for Okehampton Market. He also kept bees and coneys and ran a market-garden of two acres. He served on the Parish Council and he was vicar's warden. And numberless other small chores with money to 'em he also undertook and performed most successful. And then, at forty-two years of age, though not before, he began to feel a wife might be worked into his life with advantage, and only regretted the needful time to find and court the woman.
And even so, but for the temper of his old aunt, Mary Ball, who kept house for him, he would have been content to carry on single-handed.
He knew the Warners very well and Jane had always made a great impression on him by reason of her fearless ways and great powers and passionate love of work; and though he came to see very soon that work was her only passion, beyond her devoted attachment to her father, yet he couldn't but mark that such a woman would be worth a gold-mine to any man who weren't disposed to put womanly qualities first. Of love he knew less than one of his working bees, but maybe had a dim vision at the back of his mind about it, which showed him clear enough that with Jane Warner, love-making could never amount to much. He measured the one against t'other, however, and felt upon the whole that such a woman would be a tower of strength if she could only be got away from her parent.
And so he showed her how he was a good bit interested, and had speech with her, off and on, and made it pretty clear in his scant leisure that she could come to him if she was minded. It pleased her a good bit to find such a remarkable man as Ball had found time to think upon her, and she also liked his opinions and his valiant hunger for hard work. She'd even let herself think of him for five minutes sometimes before she went to sleep of a night, and what there was of woman in her felt a mild satisfaction to know there lived a man on earth she'd got the power to interest. Marriage was far outside her scheme, of course; but there's a lot that wouldn't marry for a fortune, yet feel a good bit uplifted to know they might do so and that a male exists who thinks 'em worth while.
So Jane praised Martin Ball and let him see, as far as her nature allowed, that she thought well of him and his opinions and manner of life; and he began to believe he might get her.
He touched it very light indeed to John Warner one day when they met coming home on horse-back, and then he found himself up against a rock, for when he hinted that Warner would be losing his wonderful daughter some time, the farmer told him that was the very last thing on earth could ever happen.
"Never," said John Warner. "The likes of her be her father's child to her boots. I'm her life, Ball, and there's no thought of marriage in her, nor never will be so long as I'm above-ground. She ain't that sort anyhow, and I'm glad of it."
He wanted it both ways, you see. In his grand powers of selfishness, John had planned to have Nelly for wife by now, and he'd also planned to keep his daughter, well knowing that no wife would do a quarter of what Jane did, or be so valuable on a business basis. Jane for business and Nelly Bascombe for pleasure was his idea.
And then John offered for Mrs. Bascombe, after making it clear to her that he was going to do so and finding the running good. He put it in his masterly language and said that he'd be her willing slave, and hinted how, when he was gathered home, the farm would be her own for life and so on; and while knowing very well that John weren't going to be her slave or nothing like that, Mrs. Bascombe reckoned the adventure about worth while, having took a fancy to him and longing most furious to escape the shop-of-all-sorts. And so she said "Yes," though hiding a doubt all the time, and Warner, who hated to have any trouble hanging over him, swore he was a blessed and a fortunate man, kissed her on the lips, and went home instanter to tell Jane the news. He broke it when supper was done and they sat alone—her darning and him mixing his 'nightcap,' which was a drop of Hollands, a lump of sugar and a squeeze of lemon in hot water.
"I've got glad news for you, Jane," he said. "Long I've felt 'twas a cheerless life for you without another woman to share your days on a footing of affection and friendship and—more for your sake than my own—I've ordained to wed again. Not till I heard you praise her did I allow my thoughts to dwell on Mrs. Bascombe, but getting better acquaint, I found her all you said, and more. A woman of very fine character—so fearless and just such a touzer for work as yourself, and, in a word, seeing that you did ought to have a fellow-woman to share your labours and lighten your load, I approached her and she's took me. And I thank God for it, because you and her will be my right and left hand henceforward; and the three of us be like to pull amazing well together. 'Tis a great advancement for Wych Elm in my judgment, and I will that the advantage shall be first of all for you."
She heard him out with her little eyes on his face and her darning dropped and her jaw dropped also, as if she'd been struck dead. But he expected something like that, because he very well knew Jane would hate the news and make a rare upstore about it. He was all for a short battle and very wishful to go to bed the conqueror. But he did not. Jane hadn't got his mellow flow of words, nor yet his charming touches when he wanted his way over a job; but she shared a good bit of his brain-power and she grasped at this fatal moment, with the future sagging under her feet, that she'd never be able to put up no fight nor hold her own that night. In fact, she knew, as we all do, that you can't do yourself justice after you've been knocked all ends up by a thunderbolt. But she kept her nerve and her wits and looked at him and shut her mouth and put up her work in her workbasket.
"Good night, father," she said. "Us'll talk about it to-morrow, if you please."
Then she rose up and went straight to her chamber.
He was sorry for himself, though not at all surprised; and he finished his liquor, locked the house and retired. An hour had passed before he went to bed, and he listened at Jane's door and ordained that if by evil chance he heard her weeping he'd go in and say comforting words and play the loving father and advance his own purpose at the same time. But Jane weren't weeping; she was snoring, and John Warner nodded and went on. He couldn't help admiring her, however, even at that moment.
"She's saving all her powers for to-morrow," thought Jane's parent; and she was. She slept according to her custom, like a dormouse, and woke refreshed to put up the fight of her life. They got to it after breakfast, when the house-place was empty, and Warner soon found that, if he were to have his will, 'twould be needful to call on Heaven to help him.
Jane didn't waste no time, and if her father had astonished her, she had quite so fine a surprise for him after she'd thought it all over and collected herself.
"'Tis in a nutshell," she said. "All my life I've put you afore everything on earth but my Maker, and I was minded so to continue. I've been everything any daughter ever was to a father, and you have stood to me for my waking and sleeping thought ever since I could think at all. And now you want me to go under in my home and see another take my place. Well, dad, that's your look-out, of course, and if you think Mrs. Bascombe will be more useful to you than me, then take her. But I'll say here and now, please, that if you be going to marry, I shall leave Wych Elm for good and all, because I couldn't endure for another woman to be over me and closer to your interests than what I am. Never, never could I endure it. Is that quite clear?"
He looked at her and filled his tobacco pipe while he done so.
"So clear as can be, Jane," he said. "'Tis like your fine courage and affection to feel so. But I make bold to believe you haven't weighed this come-along-of-it same as I have, and find yourself getting up in the air too soon. I could no more see Wych Elm without you than I could see myself without you, and the affection I feel for Mrs. Bascombe is on a different footing altogether. Love of a wife and love of a daughter don't clash at all. They be different things, and she would no more come between me and you and our lifelong devotion than love of man would come between you and me."
He flowed on like that, so clever as need be, and she listened with a face that didn't show a spark of the thought behind it. But he failed to move her an inch, because, unknown to him, she'd got a fine trump card up her sleeve, of course.
He saw presently that he wasn't making no progress and sighed a good bit and turned on a pathetic note, which he had at command, and blew his nose once or twice; but these little touches didn't move Jane, so he ventured to ask her what her future ideas might be away from Wych Elm, if such a fearful thing was thinkable.
"God, He knows," said John Warner, "as I never thought to be up against life like this, and find myself called to choose by you, who was the apple of my very eye, between a wife and an only child; but since you can have the heart to come between me and a natural affection towards Mrs. Bascombe, may I venture to ask, dear Jane, what your own plans might be if you could bring yourself to do such a deed as to leave me?"
"That's easy," she answered. "If your love for me was not strong enough to conquer your love for Nelly Bascombe, then I'm very much afraid, father, my love for you might go down in its turn, before my feelings for another man. In a word, dad, if I felt I wasn't the queen of your home no more, I should turn my attention to being queen of another."
He stared at that.
"Never heard anything more interesting, dear child," he said. "'Tis a wonderful picture to see you reigning away from Wych Elm. But though I'm sure there's a dozen men would thank their stars for such a wife as you, I can't but feel in these hard times that few struggling bachelors would be equal even to such a rare woman, unless it was in her power to bring 'em something besides her fine self."
She smiled at that and rather expected it.
"I thought you'd remind me how it stood and I was a pauper if you so willed," she replied. "But we needn't go into figures, because the man I'm aiming at knows you very well, and he'll quite understand that if he was to get me away from you, there won't be no flags flying when I go to him, nor yet any marriage portion. He ain't what you might call a struggling bachelor, however, but a pretty snug man by general accounts."
"And who might he be, I wonder?" asked John; because in his heart he didn't believe for a moment there was any such a man in the world; and when Jane declined to name Martin Ball, her father was more than ever convinced that she was bluffing.
"We will suffer a month to pass, Jane," he told her. "Let a full month go by for us to see where we stand and get the situation clear in our minds. Certain it is that nought that could happen will ever cloud my undying affection for you, and I well know I'm the light also to which your fine daughterly devotions turn. So let this high matter be dead between us till four weeks have slipped by."
"Like your sense to suggest it," she answered.
And the subject weren't named again between 'em till somebody else named it.
But meantime John didn't hesitate to take the affair in strict secrecy to the woman who had promised to wed him; and when the engagement was known, of course, Martin Ball struck while the iron was hot and felt a great bound of hope that Jane would now look upon him with very different eyes. And even while he hoped, his spirit sank a bit now and again in her company. But he put the weak side away and told himself that love was at best a fleeting passion.
Jane didn't say much to him herself, because in truth she would have a thousand times sooner bided at Wych Elm with her parent than wed the busy man of Little Silver; but Martin screwed himself to the pinch and urged her to let there be a double wedding. He found her very evasive, however, for hope hadn't died in Jane, and she knew by a good few signs her father was hating the thought of losing her. The idea of Jane away from Wych Elm caused him a lot of deep inconvenience, and Nelly Bascombe seemingly weren't so much on his side as he had hoped. Of course the woman well knew that life at Wych Elm would be far more unrestful with Jane than without her, and so she rather took the maiden's view and tried to make John see it might be better if his girl was to leave 'em. And this she did because it happened, after a week had passed, she knew a lot more about the truth than Mr. Warner could. He still clung to the hope that Jane was lying and that no man wanted her; and even if such man existed, John, well understanding that his daughter was not the sort to fill the male eye in herself, doubted not that the lover would soon cry off if he heard Jane's prospects were gone. He voiced this great truth to Nelly Bascombe, and he'd have been a good bit surprised to know that on the very day he did so, she reported his intentions word for word to the man most interested. Because, when the situation unfolded, Martin Ball had gone to Mrs. Bascombe in hope to get some useful aid from her.
They were acquaint, because Nelly sold Ball's honey in her shop, but more than that Martin didn't know of the woman. She had a good name for sense, however, and when he heard that she had taken Warner, he saw what her power must now be in that quarter and asked for a tell in private. Which she was agreeable to give him, and in truth they saw each other a good few times and traversed over the situation most careful.
Nelly had a way to understand men and she listened to Martin and liked the frank fashion he faced life. He was honest as the day, though fretting a bit because Jane Warner wouldn't say "Yes" and be done with it. He'd wanted to go to her father, too, and let John know his hopes; but that Jane wouldn't allow at this stage of the affair.
"In fact, she won't let me whisper a word," said Martin to Mrs. Bascombe, "and 'tis treason to her in a way my coming to you at all; but I feel terrible sure you can help, and it looks as if it would be all right and regular and suit everybody if she was to take me and leave the coast clear for you when you wed her parent."
"It does look like that to a plain sight," admitted Nelly, "but in truth things be very different. And for your confidence, in strict secrecy, I can give you mine. Warner don't want her to go. He badly wants me and her both, while, for her part, she don't want to go and hates the thought; but, so far, she's determined to do so if I come."
"That ain't love, however," argued Mr. Ball.
"It ain't," admitted Nelly Bascombe, "and you mustn't fox yourself to think she'll come to you for love. A good helper she'd be to any man in her own way; but she belongs to the order of women who can't love very grand as a wife. She do love as a daughter can love a father, however, and it's very clear to me that John Warner is her life in a manner of speaking. On the other hand, it would upset her existence to the very roots if I went to Wych Elm at farmer's right hand, where naturally I should be."
Mr. Ball listened and nodded, and his blue eyes rested upon Mrs. Bascombe's grey ones.
"You throw a great light," he said. "In a word, there was deeper reasons far than any growing affection for me that have made her so on-coming of late?"
"God forbid as I should suggest such a thing as that," answered Nelly. "You're a sort of man to please any woman, if I may say so; but I'm only telling you what lies in her mind. And I'll say more in fairness to the both of you. Her father don't believe there is a man after her at all. Jane's just sitting on the fence, in fact, and waiting to see if she can't shake him off me. And if I'm turned down, then you'll be turned down. 'Tis rather amusing in a way."
"It may be, but I ain't much one for a joke," he confessed, and then went on. "Though too busy for love-making and all that, yet I've got my pride, Mrs. Bascombe, and I shouldn't like to be taken as a last resort—amusing though it might be."
"No man would," she answered. "And I hope I'm wrong. She may be turning to you for your qualities. She may be coming for affection after all, knowing you'd prove a very fine husband."
"I would," declared Mr. Ball. "I can tell you, without self-conceit or any such thing, that where I loved I'd stick, and the woman as shared my life would share my all. There's a lot in me only hid because nothing have yet happened to draw it out. I'm busy and I'm wishful to do my little bit of work in the world for other people; but if I was married, my home would be a find thought to me, and my wife would be first always and her comfort and happiness a lot more to me than my own. 'My home' I call it, but it have long been borne in upon me that a home is a hollow word with nought in it but an aunt such as Mary Ball. It may be like blowing my own trumpet, and I wouldn't say it save in an understanding ear; but I do think Jane Warner would find I was good enough."
"She certainly would," admitted Nelly; and deep in her heart, such was her powers of perspection, she couldn't help contrasting Martin's simple nature and open praise of himself with John Warner's cleverer speechifying and far more downy and secret mind.
After that Ball and the widow met a good few times unknown to the farmer and his daughter, and there's no doubt that the more Martin saw of Mrs. Bascombe, the more impressed he felt with her good sense. They couldn't advance each other's interests, however, for all Nelly was able to tell him amounted to nothing. John revealed to her that Jane hadn't taken no steps to relieve the situation, but that she still asserted that she'd got a man up her sleeve; while all Martin could say was that Jane held off and marked time and wouldn't decide for or against.
"At the end of a month," explained Nelly. "John Warner is to get on to Jane again. He's death on her stopping at Wych Elm; but she's given no sign that she will stop if I come. I may also tell you that she's been to see me on the subject and given it as her opinion I'll be doing a very rash act to go to Wych Elm. She says I'll live to find out a lot about her wonderful father as might surprise me painfully."
"And for her part to me," replied Martin Ball, "she says I'm still in her mind as a husband, but there's a good bit to consider and I mustn't name the thing again till she do. In a word, she's still tore in half between her father and me. And I don't like it too well, because, little though I know of love, I feel a screw's loose somewhere still."
Nelly looked at Martin, in doubt whether to tell him something more, or not. But her woman's mind decided to tell him.
"And another curious fact," she said, "I do believe, at the bottom of his mind, which is deep as a well, her father's torn in half between me and her also!"
His blue eyes goggled at that.
"God's goodness!" he cried. "He knows what love is surely—even if she don't. You must be dreaming, woman."
"No," she answered. "You don't dream much at forty years old. He thinks to hide it—my John does—so to call him. But I see it very plain indeed. He knows what amazing gifts his daughter have got, and he knows she's vital to Wych Elm; but he don't know what gifts I have got to put against 'em, and so I do believe that deep out of sight he's weighing her parts against mine."
"That ain't love, however," vowed Martin.
"'Tis one love weighed against another," she told him. "A man over fifty don't love like a boy."
"The depths of human nature!" cried Mr. Ball. "I never thought that such things could be. It looks to me, Mrs. Bascombe, as if—However, I'm too loyal to say it. But you do give one ideas."
"Like father like daughter, I shouldn't wonder," she said thoughtfully.
"Just the same dark fear as was in my mind," he confessed.
He left her then in a mizmaze of deep reflections; but he didn't go until they'd ordained to meet again. A considerable lot more of each other they did see afore the fateful month was done, and the more easily they came together because John Warner began to be very much occupied with Jane at this season. The fourth week had very near sped and still she remained firm; while behind the scenes, when he did see her, John found no help from Nelly Bascombe. In fact he marked that she'd got to grow rather impatient on the subject and didn't appear to be so interested in her fate, or yet his, as formerly.
So things came to a climax mighty fast, and while Warner, who didn't know what it was to be beat where his own comfort was concerned, kept on remorseless at Jane, she hardened her heart more and more against him and finally took the plunge and told Martin Ball as she'd wed when he pleased. He hadn't seen her much for ten days owing to press of business, and when she made up her mind, 'twas she had to write and bid him go walking with her. But he agreed at once so to do and came at the appointed evening hour. And then, afore she had time to speak, he cried out as he'd got a bit of cheerful news for her.
"And I've got a bit of cheerful news for you," said Jane Warner, though not in a very cheerful tone of voice. And then, in a dreary sort of way, she broke her decision.
"Father's going to marry the woman at the shop-of-all-sorts, as you know," explained Jane; "and if him, why not me? And, be it as it will, you've said so oft you could do with me that—"
She stopped to let him praise God and bless her and fall on her neck; but, a good bit to her astonishment, Martin didn't show no joy at all—far from it. He was silent as the grave, for a minute, and then he only axed a question that didn't seem to bear much on the subject.
"Your father haven't seen Mrs. Bascombe to-day, then?" he said.
"Not for a week have he seen her, I believe; but he's been a good bit occupied and worried. He was going to sup with her to-night," answered Jane. "And that's why for I asked you to meet me, Martin."
"What a world!" mused Mr. Ball; and he bided silent so long that the woman grew hot.
"You don't appear to have heard me," she told him pretty sharp, and then he spoke.
"I heard you only too well," he replied. "If my memory serves me, it's exactly three weeks now since last I offered for you, Jane, and your answer was a thought frosty. In fact, you dared me to name the subject again until you might be pleased to."
"Well, and now I do name it," she told him.
"Why, if I may ask?" he said.
'Twas her turn to be silent now. Of course she saw in a moment that things had gone wrong, and she instantly guessed, knowing her father, that 'twas he had made up a deep plot against her behind her back and called the man off her.
So sure felt she that she named it.
"This be father's work," she said. "You've changed your mind, Ball."
"Minds have been changed," he admitted, "and not only mine. But make no mistake, Jane. This has got nothing whatever to do with your father so far as I'm concerned. You've been frank, as you always are, and I'll be the same. And if Mr. Warner be taking a snack with Nelly this evening he'll make good every word I'm telling you. In fact I dare say what you have now got to pretend is bad news, Jane, be really very much the opposite. There's only one person is called to suffer to-night so far as I know, and that's John Warner. And even he may not suffer so much as he did ought. He put Mrs. Bascombe afore you, and so you ordained to keep your threat and leave him. And you come to me to take you and make good your threat."
"You didn't ought to put it like that—it ain't decent," she said. But she knew, of course, she'd lost the man.
"It don't matter now," he replied, "because human nature overthrows decency and delights in surprises—decent and otherwise. What has happened is this. Me and Nelly Bascombe was equally interested in your family, and along of that common interest and seeing a lot of each other and unfolding our opinions, we got equally interested in one another. And then nature cut the knot, Jane, and, in a word, I darned soon found I liked Nelly Bascombe a lot better than ever I liked you, if you'll excuse my saying so; and, what was a lot more to the purpose, she discovered how she liked me oceans deeper than she liked your father."
"My goodness!" cried Miss Warner. "That's the brightest news I've heard this longful time, you blessed man! Oh, Martin, can you get her away from father? I'll love you in real earnest—to my dying day I will—if you can!"
She sparkled out like that and amazed him yet again.
"I have got her away," he said. "And that's what Mr. Warner's going to hear from Nelly to-night, so brace yourself against he comes home."
And that's what John Warner did hear, of course, put in woman's nice language, when he went to sup with his intended. First he was terrible amused to learn that Ball had come courting Nelly because, when he thought on Jane, it looked as if he had been right and she was only putting up a fancied lover to fright him. In fact, he beamed upon Mrs. Bascombe so far, for it looked as though everything was coming his way as usual after all.
But he stopped beaming when she went on and explained that she was forty and Martin Ball forty-two, and that she'd come to feel Providence had planned everything, and how, only too bitter sure, she felt that Martin was her proper partner, and that John would find his good daughter a far more lasting consolation and support than ever she could hope to be at her best.
John Warner had never been known to use a crooked word, and he didn't then. He made no fuss nor yet uproar, for he was a wonder at never wasting an ounce of energy on a lost cause. He only asked one question:
"Are you dead sure of what you're saying, Nelly?" he inquired, looking in her eyes; and she answered that, though cruel grieved to give such a man a pang, she was yet convinced to the roots of her being it must be so.
Then she wept, and he said 'twas vain to work up any excitement on the subject, and that he doubted not it would be all much the same a hundred years hence. And she granted that he was right as usual.
So he left her, and Martin Ball waited, hid behind the hedge, to see him go; and Jane was home before him. Then John told his daughter word for word all that had happened at the shop-of-all-sorts; and he wasn't blind to the joy that looked out of her little eyes. She didn't even say she was sorry for him, but just answered as straight as he had and confessed how she'd offered herself within the hour to Martin Ball and found that his views were very much altered and he didn't want her no more. "And God knows best, father," finished up Jane.
"So it's generally believed," he answered. "And nobody can prove it ain't true. For my part, you was always balanced in my mind very tender against that changeable woman, and nought but a hair turned the balance her way. 'Tis a strange experience for me not to have my will, and I feel disgraced in a manner of speaking; but, if I've lost her, I've gained you, seemingly. And I shan't squeak about it, nor yet go courting no more; and I'll venture to bet, dear Jane, you won't neither."
"Never—never," she swore to him. "I hate every man on earth but you, dad."
She closed his eyes and tied up his chin twenty years after, and when she reigned at Wych Elm, she found but one difficulty—to get the rising generation of men to bide under her rule and carry on.
A woman may be just as big a fool at sour seventy as she was at sweet seventeen. In fact, you can say about 'em, that a woman's always a woman, so long as the breath bides in her body; and my sister, Mary, weren't any exception to the rule. You see, there was only us two, and when my parents died, I married, and took on Brownberry Farm and my sister, who shared and shared alike with me, took over our other farm, by the name of Little Sherberton, t'other side the Dart. A very good farmer, too, she was—knew as much as I did about things, by which I mean sheep and cattle; while she was still cleverer at crops, and I never rose oats like she did at Little Sherberton, nor lifted such heavy turnips as what she did.
Mary explained it very simply.
"You'm just so clever as me," she said, "but you'm not so generous. You ain't got my powers of looking forward, and you hate to part with money in your pocket for the sake of money that's to be there. In a word, you're narrow-minded, and don't spend enough on manure, Rupert; and till you put it on thicker and ban't feared of paying for lime, you'll never get a root fit to put before a decent sheep."
There was truth in it I do believe, for I was always a bit prone, like my father before me, to starve the land, against my reason. You'd think that was absurd, and yet you'll hardly find a man, even among the upper educated people, who haven't got his little weak spots like that, and don't do some things that he knows be silly, even while he's doing 'em. They cast him down at the moment; and he'll even make resolves to be more open-handed, or more close-fisted, as the case may be, but the weakness lies in your nature, and you could no more cure me from being small-minded with my manure than you could have cured Mary from shivering to her spine every time she saw a single magpie, or spilled the salt.
A very impulsive woman, and yet, as you may say, a very keen and clever one in many respects. I don't think she ever wanted to marry and certainly I can call home no adventures in the way of courting that fell to her lot. And yet a pleasant woman, though not comely. In fact, without unkindness, she might have been called a terribly ugly woman. Yellow as a guinea, with gingery hair, yellow eyes, and no figure to save her. You would have thought her property might have drawn an adventurer or two, for Little Sherberton was a tenement farm and Mary's very own; but nobody came along, or if they did, they only looked and passed by; and though Mary had no objection to men in general, she didn't encourage them. But in her case, without a doubt, they'd have needed all the encouragement she could give 'em, besides the property, to have a dash at her.
So she bided a spinster woman, and took very kindly to my childer, who would run up over to her when they could, for they loved her. And by the same token, my second daughter, by the name of Daisy, was drowned in Dart, poor little maid, trying to go up to her aunt. My wife had whipped her for naughtiness, and the child—only ten she was—went off to get comfort from Mary and fell in the river with none to save her. So I've paid my toll to Dart, you see, like many another man in these parts.
Well, my sister, same as a good many other terrible ugly women, got better to look at as she grew older; and after she was sixty, her hair turned white and she filled out a bit. Her voice was always a pleasant thing about her. It reflected her nature, which was kindly, though excitable. But her people never left her. She'd got a hind and his wife—Noah and Jane Sweet by name; and he was head man; and his son, Shem Sweet, came next—thirty year old he was; and besides them was Nelly Pearn, dairymaid, and two other men and a boy.
Then came along the Old Soldier to Little Sherberton; and he never left it again till five year ago, when he went out feet first.
To this day I couldn't tell you much about him. His character defied me. I don't know whether he was good, or bad, or just neither, like most of us. But on the whole I should be inclined to say he was good. He was cast in a lofty mould, and had a wide experience of the seamy side of life. I proved him a liar here and there, and he proved me a fool, but neither of us shamed the other in that matter, for I said (and still say) that I'd sooner be a fool then a rascal; while he, though he denied being a rascal, said that he'd sooner be the biggest knave on earth than a fool. He argued that any self-respecting creature ought to feel the same, and he had an opinion to which he always held very stoutly, that the fools made far more trouble in the world than the knaves. He went further than that, and said if there were no fools, there wouldn't be no knaves. But there I didn't hold with him; for a man be born a fool by the will of God, and I never can see 'tis anything to be shamed about; whereas no man need be a knave, if he goes to the Lord and Father of us all in a proper spirit, and prays for grace to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the Dowl.
Bob Battle he called himself, and he knocked at the door of Little Sherberton on a winter night, and asked to see Mary, and would not be put off by any less person. So she saw him, and heard how he had been tramping through Holne and stopped for a drink and sang a song to the people in the bar. It happened that Mr. Churchward, the innkeeper, wanted a message took to my sister about some geese, and none would go for fear of snow, so the tramp, for Bob was no better, said that he would go, if they'd put him in the way and give him a shilling. And Churchward trusted him, because he said that he reminded him of his dead brother. Though that wasn't nothing in his favour, seeing what Henry Churchward had been in life.
However, Bob earned his money and came along, and Mary saw him and took him in, and let him shake the snow off himself and eat and drink. Then began the famous blizzard, and I've often thought old Bob must have known it was coming. At any rate there was no choice but to let him stop, for it would have been death to turn him out again. So he stopped, and when the bad weather was over, he wouldn't go. There's no doubt my sister always liked the man in a way; but women like a man in such a lot of different ways that none could have told exactly how, or why, she set store on him. For that matter she couldn't herself. Indeed I axed her straight out and she tried to explain and failed. It wasn't his outer man, for he had a face like a rat, with a great, ragged, grey moustache, thicker on one side than t'other, and eyebrows like anybody else's whiskers. And one eyelid was down, though he could see all right with the eye under it. Round in the back he was and growing bald on the top; but what hair he had was long, and he never would cut it, because he said it kept his neck warm.
He had his history pat, of course, though how much truth there was to it we shall never know in this world. He was an old soldier, and had been shot in the right foot in India along with Lord Roberts in the Chitral campaign. Then he'd left the service and messed up his pension—so he said. I don't know how. Anyway he didn't get none. He showed a medal, however, which had been won by him, or somebody else; but it hadn't got no name on it. He was a great talker and his manners were far ahead of anything Mary had met with. He'd think nothing of putting a chair for her, or anything like that; and while he was storm-bound, he earned his keep and more, for he was very handy over a lot of little things, and clever with hosses and so on, and not only would he keep 'em amused of a night with his songs and adventures; but he'd do the accounts, or anything with figures, and he showed my sister how, in a good few ways she was spending money to poor purpose. He turned out to be a very clean man and very well behaved. He didn't make trouble, but was all the other way, and when the snow thawed, he was as busy as a bee helping the men round about the farm. He made his head save his heels, too, and was full of devices and inventions.
So when I got over after the worst was past, to see how they'd come through it, there was Bob Battle working with the others; and when I looked him up and down and said; "Who be you then?" he explained, and told me how Mary had took him in out of the storm and let him lie in the linhay; and how Noah had given him a suit of old clothes, and how much he was beholden to them all. And they all had a good word for the man, and Mary fairly simpered, so I thought, when she talked about him. There was no immediate mention of his going, and when I asked my sister about it, she said:
"Plenty of time. No doubt he'll get about his business in a day or two."
But, of course, he hadn't no business to get about, and though he talked in a vague sort of way concerning his home in Exeter and a brother up to Salisbury, it was all rubbish as he afterwards admitted. He was a tramp, and nothing more, and the life at Little Sherberton and the good food and the warm lying at nights, evidently took his fancy. So he stuck to it, and such was his natural cleverness and his power of being in the right place at the right moment that from the first nobody wished him away. He was always talking of going, and it was always next Monday morning that he meant to start: but the time went by and Bob Battle didn't. A very cunning man and must have been in farming some time of his life, for he knew a lot, and all worth knowing, and I'm not going to deny that he was useful to me as well as to my sister.
She was as good as a play with Bob, and me and my wife, and another married party here and there, often died of laughing to hear her talk about him. Because the way that an unmarried female regards the male is fearful and wonderful to the knowing mind.
Mary spoke of him as if she'd invented him, and knew his works, like a clockmaker knows a clock. He interested her something tremendous, and got to be her only subject presently.
"Mr. Battle was the very man for a farmer like me," she said once, "and I'm sure I thank God's goodness for sending him along. He's a proper bailiff about the place, and that clever with the men that nobody quarrels with him. Of course he does nothing without consulting me; but he's never mistaken, and apart from the worldly side of Mr. Battle, there's the religious side."
I hadn't heard about that and didn't expect to, for Mary, though a good straight woman, as wouldn't have robbed a lamb of its milk, or done a crooked act for untold money, wasn't religious in the church-going or Bible-reading sense, same as me and my wife were. In fact she never went to church, save for a wedding or a funeral; but it appeared that Mr. Battle set a good bit of store by it, and when she asked him, if he thought so much of it, why he didn't go, he said it was only his unfortunate state of poverty and his clothes and boots that kept him away.
"Not that the Lord minds," said Bob, "but the churchgoers do, and a pair of pants like mine ain't welcomed, except by the Salvationists; and I don't hold with that body."
So he got a suit of flame new clothes out of her and a new hat into the bargain; and then I said that he'd soon be a goner. But I was wrong, for he stopped and went down to Huccaby Chapel for holy service twice a Sunday; and what's more he kept it up. And then, if you please, my sister went with him one day; and coming to it with all the charm of novelty, she took to it very kindly and got to be a right down church-goer, much to my satisfaction I'm sure. And her up home five-and-sixty years old at the time!
To sum up, Bob stayed. She offered him wages and he took them. Twenty-five shillings a week and his keep he got out of her after the lambing season, for with the sheep he proved a fair wonder same as he done with everything else. And nothing was a trouble. For a fortnight the man never slept, save a nod now and again in the house on wheels, where he dwelt in the valley among the ewes. And old shepherds, with all the will to flout him, was tongue-tied afore the man, because of his excellent skill and far-reaching knowledge.
Mary called him "my bailiff," and was terrible proud of him; and he accepted the position, and always addressed her as "Ma'am" afore the hands, though "Miss Blake" in private. And in fulness of time, he called her "Miss Mary." The first time he went so far as that, she came running to me all in a twitter; but I could see she liked it at heart. She got to trust him a lot, and though I warned her more than once, it weren't easy to say anything against a man like Battle—as steady as you please, never market-merry, and always ready for church on Sundays.
When I got to know him pretty well, I put it to him plain. One August day it was, when we were going up to Princetown on our ponies to hear tell about the coming fair.
"What's your game, Bob?" I asked the man. "I'm not against you," I said, "and I'm not for you. But you was blowed out of a snow storm remember, and we've only got your word for it that you're a respectable man."
"I never said I was respectable," he answered me, "but since you ask, I'll be plain with you, Rupert Blake. 'Tis true I was a soldier and done my duty and fought under Lord Roberts. But I didn't like it, and hated being wounded and was glad to quit. And after that I kept a shop of all sorts on Salisbury Plain, till I lost all my little money. Then I took up farm labourer's work for a good few years, and tried to get in along with the people at a farm. But they wouldn't promise me nothing certain for my old age, so I left them and padded the country a bit. And I liked tramping, owing to the variety. And I found I could sing well enough to get a bed and supper most times; and for three years I kept at it and saw my native country: towns in winter it was, and villages in summer. I was on my way to Plymouth when I dropped into Holne, and Mr. Churchward offered me a bob if I'd travel to Little Sherberton. And when I arrived there, and saw how it was, I made up my mind that it would serve my turn very nice. Then I set out to satisfy your sister and please her every way I could, because I'm too old now for the road, and would sooner ride than walk, and sooner sleep in a bed than under a haystack."
"You fell into a proper soft thing," I said; but he wouldn't allow that.
"No," he answered. "'Tis a good billet; but nothing to make a fuss about. Of course for ninety-nine men out of a hundred, it would be a godsend and above their highest hopes or deserts; but I'm the hundredth man—a man of very rare gifts and understanding, and full of accomplishments gathered from the ends of the world. I'm not saying it ain't a good home and a happy one; but I'm free to tell you that the luck ain't all on one side; and for your sister to fall in with me in her declining years was a very fortunate thing for her; and I don't think that Miss Blake would deny it if you was to ask her."
"In fact you reckon yourself a proper angel in the house," I said in my comical tone of voice. But he didn't see nothing very funny in that.
"So I do," he said. "It was always my intention to settle down and be somebody's right hand man some day; and if it hadn't been your sister, it would have been some other body. I'm built like that," he added. "I never did much good for myself, owing to my inquiring mind and great interest in other people; but I've done good for others more than once, and shall again."
"And what about the church-going?" I asked him. "Is that all 'my eye and Betty Martin,' or do you go because you like going?"
"'Tis a good thing for the women to go to church," he answered, "and your sister is all the better for it, and has often thanked me for putting her in the way."
"'Twas more than I could do, though I've often been at her," I told the man, admiring his determined character.
And then came the beginning of the real fun, when Mary turned up at Brownberry after dark one night in a proper tantara, with her eyes rolling and her bosom heaving like the waves of the sea. She'd come over Dart, by the stepping stones—a tricky road for an old woman even by daylight, but a fair marvel at night.
"God's my judge!" began Mary, dropping in the chair by the fire. "God's my judge, Rupert and Susan, but he's offered marriage!"
"Bob!" I said; and yet I weren't so surprised as I pretended to be. And my wife didn't even pretend.
"I've seen it coming this longful time, Mary," she declared. "And why not?"
"Why not? I wonder at you, Susan!" my sister answered, all in a flame. "To think of an old woman like me—with white hair and a foot in the grave!"
"You ain't got a foot in the grave!" answered Susan. "In fact you be peart as a wagtail on both feet—else you'd never have come over they slipper-stones in the dark so clever. And your hair's only white by a trick of nature, and sixty-five ain't old on Dartmoor."
"Nor yet anywhere else," I said. "The females don't throw up the sponge in their early forties nowadays, like they used to do. In fact far from it. Didn't I see Squire Bellamy's lady riding astride to hounds but yesterday week, in male trousers and a tight coat—and her forty-six if a day? You're none too old for him, if that was all."
"But it ain't all," answered Mary. "Why, he offered me his brains to help out mine, and his strong right arm for me to lean upon! And he swears to goodness that he never offered marriage before—because he never found the woman worthy of it—and so on; and all to me! Me—a spinster from my youth up and never a thought of a man! And now, of course, I'll be a laughing-stock to Dartymoor, and a figure of fun for every thoughtless fool to snigger at."
"You couldn't help his doing it," I said. "'Tis a free country."
"And more could he help it, seemingly," she answered. "Any way he swore he was driven to speak. In fact he have had the thing in his prayers for a fortnight. 'Tis a most ondacent, plaguey prank for love to play; for surely at our time of life, we ought to be dead to such things?"
"A man's never dead to such things—especially a man that's been a soldier, or a sailor," I told my sister; and Susan said the same, and assured Mary that there was nothing whatever ondacent to it, silly though it might be.
Then Mary fired up in her turn and said there wasn't nothing whatever silly to it that she could see. In fact quite the contrary, and she dared Susan to use the word about her, or Mr. Battle either. And she rattled on in her violent and excited way and was on the verge of the hystericals now and again. And for my life I couldn't tell if she was pleased as Punch about it, or in a proper tearing rage. I don't think she knew herself how she felt.
We poured some sloe gin into her and calmed her down, and then my eldest son took her home; and when he came back, he said that Bob Battle had gone to bed.
"I looked in where he sleeps," said my son, "and Bob was in his shirt, quite calm and composed, saying his prayers."
"Trust him for being calm and composed," I said. "None ever saw him otherwise. He's a ruler of men for certain, but whether he's a ruler of women remains to be seen—for that's a higher branch of larning, as we all know."
Next day I went over and had a tell with Bob, and he said it weren't so much my business as I appeared to think.
"There's no doubt it flurried us both a lot," he told me. "To you, as an old married man, 'tis nothing; but for us, bachelor and spinster as we are, it was a great adventure. But these things will out and I'm sorry she took it so much to heart. 'Twas the surprise, I reckon—and me green at the game. However, she'll get over it—give her time."
He didn't offer no apology nor nothing like that.
"Well," I said—in two minds what to say—"she've made it clear what her feelings were, so I'll ask you not to let it occur again."
"She made it clear her feelings were very much upheaved," answered Bob; "but she didn't make it clear what her feelings were; because she didn't say 'yes' and she didn't say 'no.'"
"You don't understand nothing about women," I replied to him, "so you can take it from me that 'tis no good trying no more. She's far too old in her own opinion. In a word you shocked her. She was shaking like an aspen leaf when she ran over to me."
Bob Battle nodded.
"I may have been carried away and forced it on to her too violent, or I may have put it wrong," he said. "'Tis an interesting subject; but we'd better let it rest."
So nothing more was heard of that affair at the time; though Bob stopped on, and Mary never once alluded to the thing afterwards. In fact, it was sinking to a nine days' wonder with us, when blessed if she didn't fly over once more—this time in the middle of a January afternoon.
"He's done it again!" she shouted out to me, where I stood shifting muck in the yard. "He's offered himself again, Rupert! What's the world coming to?"
This time she had put on her bonnet and cloak and, Dart being in spate, she'd got on her pony and ridden round by the bridge.
She was excited, and her lip bivered like a baby's. To get sense out of her was beyond us, and after she'd talked very wildly for two hours and gone home again, my wife and me compared notes about her state; and my wife said that Mary wasn't displeased at heart, but rather proud about it than not; while I felt the contrary, and believed the man was getting on her nerves.
"'Tis very bad for her having this sort of thing going on, if 'tis to become chronic," I said. "And if Bob was a self-respecting man, as he claims to be, he wouldn't do it. I'm a good bit surprised at him."
"She'd send him going if she didn't like it," declared Susan, and I reminded her that my sister had actually talked of doing so. But it died down again, and Bob held on, and I had speech with Noah Sweet and his wife; and they said that Mary was just as usual and Bob as busy as a bee.
However, my sister spoke of it off and on, and when I asked her if the man persecuted her, and if she wanted my help to thrust him out once for all, she answered thus:
"You can't call it persecution," she told me, "but often he says of a night, speaking in general like, that an Englishman never knows when he's beat, and things like that; and when he went to Plymouth, he spent a month of his money and bought me a ring, with a proper precious blue stone in it for my sixty-sixth birthday. And nothing will do but I wear it on my rheumatic finger. In fact you can't be even with the man, and I feel like a bird afore a snake."
All the same she wouldn't let me speak a word to him. She wept a bit, and then she began to laugh and, in fact, went on about it like a giglet wench of twenty-five. But my firm impression continued to be that she was suffering and growing feared of Battle, and would soon be in the doctor's hands for her nerves, if something weren't done.
I troubled a good bit and tried to get a definite view out of her, but I failed. Then I had a go at Bob too; but for the first time since I had known him, he was a bit short and sharp like, and what I had to say didn't interest him in the least. In fact he told me in so many words to mind my own business and leave him to mind his.
Then another busy spring kept us apart a good bit, till one evening Noah Sweet came up, all on his own, with a bit of startling news.
"I wasn't listening," he said, "and I should feel a good bit put out if you thought I was; but passing the parlour door last Sunday, I heard the man at her again! I catched the words, 'We're neither of us growing any younger, Mary Blake,' and then I passed on my way. And coming back a bit later, with my ear open, out of respect for the missis, I heard the man kiss her—I'll swear he did—for you can't mistake the sound if once you've heard it. And she made a noise like a kettle bubbling over. And so of course, I felt that it would be doing less than my duty if I didn't come over and tell you, because your sister's eyes was red as fire at supper table, and 'twas very clear she'd been weeping a bucketful about it. And me and my wife feel 'tis an outrageous thing and something ought to be done against the man."
Well, I went over next morning, and Mary wouldn't see me! For the only time in all our lives, she wouldn't see me. And first I was properly angry with her, and next, of course, I thought how 'twas, and guessed the man had forbidden her to speak to me for fear of my power over her. Him I couldn't see neither, because he was gone to Plymouth. Of course he'd gone for craft, that I shouldn't tackle him. So I left it there, and walked home very much enraged against Bob Battle. Because I felt it was getting to be a proper struggle between him and me for Mary; and that it was about time I set to work against him in earnest.
The climax happened a week later, when the Lord's Day came round again, and we went to church as usual. Then a proper awful shock fell on me and my wife.
For at the appointed time, if the Reverend Batson didn't ax 'em out! "Robert Battle, bachelor, and Mary Blake, spinster, both of this parish," he said; and so I knew the old rascal had gone too far at last and guessed it was time I took him in hand like a man. I remember getting red-hot all over and feeling a rush of righteous anger fill my heart; and an angry man will do anything, so I got up in the eye of all the people—an act very contrary to my nature, I'm sure. The place swam before my eyes and I was only conscious of one thing: my wife tugging at my tail to drag me down. But nought could have shut me up at that tragical moment, and I spoke with a loud and steady voice.
"I deny it and defy it, Reverend Batson," I said, when he asked if anybody knew 'just cause'; and the people fluttered like a flock of geese, and parson made answer:
"Then you will meet me in the vestry after Divine Service, Farmer Blake," he answered, and so went on with his work.
After that I sat down, and my wife whispered; "Now you've done it, you silly gawk!"
But I was too put about to heed her. In fact I couldn't stand no more religion for the moment, and I rose up and went out, and smoked my pipe behind the family vault of the Lords of the Manor, till the people had all got away after service. And then I came forth and went into the vestry. But I wasn't the first, for who should be waiting for me but my sister, Mary, and Bob Battle himself. Bob was looking out of the window at the graves, thoughtful like, and parson was getting out of his robes; but Mary didn't wait for them. She let on to me like a cat-a-mountain, and I never had such a dressing down from mortal man or woman in all my life as I had from her that Sunday morning.
"You meddlesome, know-naught, gert fool!" she said. "How do you dare to lift your beastly voice in the House of God, and defy your Maker, and disgrace your family and come between me and the man I be going to marry? You're an insult to the parish and to the nation," she screamed out, "and 'tis enough to make father and mother turn in their graves."
"I didn't know you was to church," I answered her, "and of course if you're pleased—"
"Pleased!" she cried. "Very like I am pleased! 'Tis a pleasing sort of thing for a woman to wait for marriage till she's in sight of seventy and then hear her banns defied by her own brother! Of course I'm pleased—quite delighted, I'm sure! Who wouldn't be?"
Well, we was three men to one woman, and little by little we calmed her down with a glass of cold water and words of wisdom from his Reverence. Then I apologised to all of them—to Mary first for mistaking her meaning, and to Bob next for being too busy, and to his holiness most of all for brawling under the Sacred Roof. But he was an understanding man and thought nothing of it; and as to Battle, he had meant to come up that very afternoon, along with his betrothed wife, to see us. And it had been Mary's maidenly idea to let us hear tell about it in church first—to break the news and spare her blushes.
Well, I went home with my tail a good bit between my legs, in a manner of speaking; and my sister so far forgave me as to come to tea that day fortnight, though not sooner. And she was cold and terribly standoffish when she did come. We made it up, however, long before the wedding—thanks to Bob himself; for he bore no malice and confessed to me in strict privacy after all was over that it had been a difficult and dangerous business, and that the Chitral Campaign was a fool to it.
"The thing is to strike the right note in these matters," he said. "And it weren't till the third time that I struck it with your sister. Afore that I talked of being her right hand and protector and so on, and I offered to be a prop to her declining years, and all that. And I knew I'd failed almost before the words were spoken. But the third time I just went for her all ends up, as if we was boy and girl, and told her that I loved her, and wanted her for herself, and wouldn't take 'No' for an answer. Why—God forgive me—I even said I'd throw myself in the river if she refused again! But there it was: she yielded, and I kissed her, and she very near fainted with excitement. And I want you to understand this, Rupert Blake: I'm not after her stuff, nor her farm, nor nothing that's worth a penny to any man. Her will must be made again, but everything goes back to you and yours. I only ask to stop along with her till I'm called: for I'm alone in the world and shouldn't like to be thrust out. And if Mary goes first, then I ordain that you let me bide to my dying day in comfort out of respect to her memory. And that's all I ask or want."
I didn't see how the man could say fairer than that, and more did my wife. And it all went very suent I'm sure. They was wedded, and spent eight fairly happy years together, and Bob knew his place till Mary's dying day. He didn't kill himself with work after he'd got her; and he wasn't at church as regular as of old; but he pleasured her very willing most times, and was always kind and considerate and attentive; and if ever they had a word, only them and their Maker knew about it.
She loved him, and she loved the ring he put on her finger, and she loved signing herself "Mary Battle"—never tired of that. And then she died, and he bided on till he was a very old, ancient man, with my son to help him. And then he died too, and was buried along with his wife. He was always self-contained and self-respecting. He took his luck for granted and never made no fuss about it; and such was his character that no man ever envied him his good fortune. In fact, I do believe that everybody quite agreed with his own opinion: that he hadn't got any more than he deserved—if as much.