Dorset dear

by M. E. Francis

THE SPUR OF THE MOMENT.

Daniel Chaffey stood poised on a step-ladder nailing up the fine Gloire de Dijon rose which was trailed over the wall of his house. He had already performed the same operation for the jessamine which grew over the porch and for the purple clematis on the right of it. He had tied his dahlias so tightly and firmly to a variety of newly cut stakes, that each individual scarlet bloom reminded one in some measure of a choleric old gentleman suffering from a tight and high shirt-collar. He had scraped the little path till the cobble-stones of which it was composed stood revealed each almost in its entirety. From his exalted position he could survey the whole frontage of his own roof—a sight in which an artist would have revelled, for not only was the thatch itself mellowed by time and weather to the most exquisite variety of tones, but on its mouldering surface had sprung up a multitude of blooms, vying in brightness with those of the garden beneath—not merely your common everyday mosses and lichens, though patches of these were to be found in every shade of emerald and topaz and silver, but flowers, real flowers, seemed to thrive there; saxifrages, toad-flax, snap-dragon, and, just where the bedroom gable jutted out, a flaming bunch of poppies. It will be seen from this that Daniel Chaffey’s house was an old one; it bore a date over the door, cut roughly in the weather-beaten stone—1701. It had mullioned windows with diamond panes, and an oaken door studded with nails. It had indeed once been the village schoolhouse, though the Chaffey family had been in possession of it now for many generations, and had farmed, more or less successfully, the small holding attached to it.

Daniel, himself, looked prosperous enough as he stood hammering and whistling, and occasionally pausing with his head on one side, and his mouth screwed up but emitting no sound, to survey his handiwork. He was a bullet-headed young man of about four or five-and-twenty, with twinkling blue eyes, and a face, the natural ruddy tone of which was overlaid by such a fine veneer of sunburn that it was now of a uniform brick-colour. His expression was jovial, not to say jocular; his mouth wore an habitual grin when it was not whistling, and on this particular occasion some inward source of jollity appeared to entertain him, for he not only frequently chuckled but winked to himself.

Having inserted the last tack into the crumbling wall, he paused, removing his hat and scratching his head meditatively; for the first time his face wore a somewhat serious, not to say puzzled expression, and his eyes travelled dubiously over the flaunting array of blossoming weeds on the roof.

“I wonder,” quoth Daniel to himself, “if ’twould look better if I was to scrape out them there. Maybe the thatch wouldn’t hold together, though—it’s a-been agrowed over sich a-many year, I d’ ’low I’ll let ’em bide—they do look well enough where they be.”

And, after coming to this decision, he was preparing to descend from the ladder when he was suddenly hailed by a chorus of voices from the lane on the other side of his garden-hedge.

“Hello, Dan’l!”—“Hallo, old cock!”—“Well, bwoy, bist getten’ all to rights afore weddin’?”

Daniel put on his hat and turned slowly round on his rung.

“E-es,” he said, grinning sheepishly, “that’s about it. The job’s to be done the day arter to-morrow.”

A party of young men had halted just outside his little gate; it was Saturday and, though only five o’clock, their field-work was over and they were now on their way to the allotments; a rough, sunburnt, merry-looking group, most of them bearing the marks of the day’s toil on heated face and earth-stained apparel; one or two of them with spade and fork on shoulder, others with dangling empty sacks. September was drawing to a close and potato-getting was in full swing. It was observable that as they addressed Chaffey, each man assumed a knowing and jocular air; this one nudged his neighbour, that one winked at Daniel himself.

“You’m to be called home for last time to-morrow, bain’t ye, Dan’l?” inquired Abel Bolt, elbowing himself to the front.

“E-es,” responded Daniel, “we be to be called last time to-morrow an’ tied-up o’ Monday.”

Abel threw back his head and laughed uproariously.

“I should like to come to your weddin’, Dan!” he cried ecstatically, “I d’ ’low I should.”

“Ye won’t, though,” retorted Chaffey. “Ye’ll be jist in the thick o’ your ploughin’—I thought o’ that. I axed the Reverend to fix time a-purpose. No, we’ll be wed on the quiet, Phœbe an’ me—I settled that.”

“There, ’tis real ill-natured o’ you, Dan,” cried one of the youths, looking archly at his comrades. “Sich a pretty sight as ’twill be. Sure it will! And your missus, sich a beauty!”

“Haw, haw, haw!” came the chorus again.

“Her eyes, now,” giggled Abel, “’twill be sich a convenience for the man to have a missus what can keep one eye on the dinner an’ t’other on the garden.”

“An’ her figure,” said Jarge Vacher, “did ye have to make the gate anyways larger, Dan?”

“No, there’d be no need for that,” returned Abel, before Daniel could open his mouth. “The woman could get in very nicely sideways, more pertick’ler since she can see all round her like.”

Chaffey’s complexion had been gradually deepening from crimson to purple, and from purple to a fine rich mahogany, his smile had widened to an extent that was positively painful, but he spoke with unimpaired good humour.

“Neighbours, you may laugh, but I do know what I’m about. I do know very well Phœbe Cosser bain’t a beauty, but she’s good, and I d’ ’low she’ll make I comfortable—an’ that’s the main p’int to look to. She mid be a bit older nor what I be——”

Here the irreverent group in the road began to nudge each other and chuckle afresh; Chaffey sat down suddenly on the top of his ladder.

“What I d’ say, neighbours, is,” he began, “what my notion be—if ye’d give over sniggering for a moment,” he cried with gathering ire, “I could make it plain to ye.”

But they wouldn’t give over; the merriment increased instead of diminishing, and at last Daniel, exclaiming that he would be dalled if he stood it any longer, leaped to the ground, and, dashing into his house, bolted the door behind him.

His friends, trooping into the little garden, serenaded him with a ballad which they thought suitable to his case, and having goaded him into declaring he would come out in a minute and break their heads for them, withdrew in good order and pursued their interrupted course to the allotments.

Daniel waited until the last heavy footfall had died away, the last battered hat brim disappeared, and then came forth with a vengeful expression on his usually good-tempered face. He picked up the hammer and nails which he had scattered in his flight, shouldered his ladder and carried it round to the little shed in the rear, and then came back slowly to resume his labours in the garden.

“She be a good ’un,” he muttered to himself, “let ’em say what they like, she be.”

He paused to uplift and secure a tuft of golden rod which had fallen across the path.

“I never did take so mich notice of her eyes,” he said to himself. “They bain’t so crooked as that comes to—they can see well enough, and that’s the p’int.”

He plucked out a tuft of groundsel which had hitherto escaped his vigilant eye.

“There’s nothin’ so much amiss wi’ her shape neither—I d’ ’low I’d sooner have a nice little comfortable round-about woman nor a great gawky faymale like a zowel or a speaker. If she’s pluffy, she’s sprack, an’ that’s the p’int.”

Whenever Daniel uttered this last phrase he seemed to pluck up courage, and a momentary cheerfulness returned to his face, which, nevertheless, speedily became overcast again. Dall it all, he thought, why couldn’t folks keep their tongues quiet. What was it to them what kind of missus Daniel chose, that they must come tormenting and ballyragging him? He didn’t meddle wi’ nobody, and didn’t want nobody to meddle wi’ he, but there, even the lord’s roughrider stopped him on the road to deliver, as his opinion, that he, Daniel, had chosen a plain-headed one. Old Mrs. Inkpen of the shop had laughed at him for marrying a woman so many years older than himself. Well, she’d be all the more sensible.

“Let ’em laugh if they do have a mind to; it’ll not hurt Phœbe and I. We’ll soon show ’em who’s in the right.”

And with that, he heaved a sigh and went indoors.

Next day he went to call for Phœbe, whom he had promised to escort to afternoon church. She stood awaiting him in her own doorway, which she filled up pretty well it must be owned—a little ball of a woman with the ugliest, merriest face it was possible to conceive. She wore a very fine purple hat with a feather in the middle and two red roses on each side, and this arrangement of headgear seemed to accentuate the somewhat roving propensities of her eyes. Pinned to her jacket was a bunch of natural roses that vied with these in hue, and in one stout hand she waved a posy, similar in colour and almost equal in size, which was intended for her swain.

At sight of her bright face Daniel forgot all his troubles, and after bestowing a sounding salute on her hard red cheek, stood straight and stiff to be decorated, then, “Come along, my dear,” said he, and they set forth arm-in-crook, entirely satisfied with each other.

Nevertheless, as they walked through the churchyard, Daniel was conscious of a dawning sense of discomfort, for was not that Abel Bolt who stood under the yew tree, and who stepped aside with such exaggerated deference to let them pass? Even his hat seemed to Daniel to be cocked with a sarcastic air. Martha Hansford and Freza Pitcher nudged each other as Phœbe preceded him up the church—he was almost sure he saw Martha spread out her hands in allusion to Phœbe’s figure, which certainly looked particularly ample in her thick cloth jacket. To increase his uneasiness Jarge Vacher took up his position immediately behind him. It must be owned that this proximity was seriously detrimental to poor Daniel’s devotions. When Phœbe found the place for him and invited him to sing out of her own hymn-book he heard a choking sound in his rear, which he knew proceeded from Jarge. As he stole a cautious glance round he observed that the eyes of more than one member of the congregation were directed towards him and the unconscious Phœbe, who happened to be in particularly fine voice and was singing away with entire satisfaction. Daniel fidgeted and reddened and grew more and more wrathful. He couldn’t see anything to laugh at, not he. The maid was right to sing out, and to be a bit more tender than usual to the man who, before twenty-four hours were out, would be her husband. Yes, it would be all over by this time to-morrow—that was one comfort; and it was a mercy he had fixed an early hour; none of these impudent chaps would be there to dather him.

At the conclusion of the service he started up and hurried from the church with what seemed to Phœbe, as she waddled in his wake, unseemly haste. Indeed they very nearly had their first serious “miff” on the subject. However, once out of sight of the mockers, and wandering with his sweetheart in the quiet lanes, where the hedgerows were all ablaze with scarlet berries, and primrose and amber leaves made little points of light here and there amid the more sober September green, he forgot his discomfiture.

“We be like to have a hard winter,” said Phœbe, as they paused to look over the first gate in the prescribed fashion of rustic lovers.

“I don’t care,” returned Daniel, gazing at her amourously from beneath his tilted hat. “I’ve got a snug little place of my own and a missus to make me comfortable. It may snow for all as I do care.”

Alas for Daniel! His jubilation was short-lived. Early on the morrow he was up and doing, putting the final touches to his preparations for welcoming his bride, and he set forth in good time to join the wedding party, whom he found ready and waiting for him, sitting stiffly in a row in the parlour. Mr. Cosser, magnificent in broadcloth and his father’s deerskin waistcoat; Mrs. Cosser in a violet gown and a Paisley shawl; Dick Cosser, Phœbe’s younger brother, in a suit of checks that would set an æsthetic person’s teeth on edge; Phœbe herself in a crimson silk with a white hat and a fluffy tippet, over which her eyes twinkled with most uncanny effect. Daniel privately thought she looked very well, and extended his arm to his future mother-in-law, with a bosom swelling with pride. Mr. Cosser had already preceded them with Phœbe, and Dick brought up the rear with his cousin Mary Ann, a tall maid of sixteen, who had an unusual capacity for giggling; these two were to officiate respectively as best man and bridesmaid. Daniel’s parents had long been dead, and most of his relations scattered, but his married sister who lived at some little distance, had promised to drive over and meet them at the church. She and her husband and their three or four olive-branches were, in fact, already installed in one of the front pews when the little procession arrived; the clergyman was in readiness, and the ceremony began without delay.

All went well at first; Phœbe was jubilant and extremely audible in her replies, Daniel gruff and sheepish as it behoved a rustic bridegroom to be, but just as the Rector uplifting his voice inquired “Dost thou take this woman to be thy wedded wife?” a certain scuffling sound was heard at the further end of the church, and the half-made husband might have been seen to start and falter. “Daniel, wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife?” repeated the Rector sternly.

Suppressed titters were heard, not only from the direction of the porch, but actually from the aisles. For the life of him, Daniel could not resist turning his head right and left with an anguished gaze. Horror! There was Abel Bolt peering from behind one pillar, and surely that was Jarge’s impudent face grinning at him from the opposite side. The Rector glared through his spectacles and uplifted his voice yet more.

“Daniel!” he cried emphatically, “wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife?”

The best man cleared his throat warningly, and the bride turning a reproachful glance somewhere in the direction of the west window, nudged him with her elbow.

“Speak up!” she whispered. This was the last straw.

Hardly knowing what he did, Daniel started away from her, and whisking round charged through the bridal party, down the nave, thrust aside the knot of gaping onlookers in the porch, descended the flight of steps apparently with one stride, and bounding over the lychgate fled into the fields on the opposite side of the road.

Phœbe, with a stifled shriek, hastened after him with all the speed that her distress of mind and amplitude of person would admit of, but was almost knocked over by her brother Dick, who had started in hot pursuit of the fugitive. Mary Ann, not to be outdone, gallopaded in the rear, and Mr. Cosser with muttered threats of vengeance hobbled in her wake at a considerable distance.

“Yoicks! Gone away!” shouted Abel Bolt, tumbling out of the church followed by Jarge and the whole of the idle crew who had brought about the catastrophe. In another minute, the whole party joined in the chase, and the church was left entirely deserted except for the astonished and scandalised Rector, his clerk and poor old Mrs. Cosser, who remained dissolved in tears in the front bench. Even Daniel’s own relations had joined in pursuit, his sister announcing breathlessly, as she hastened forth, that he must have gone out of his mind.

Meanwhile the fugitive, in spite of the tightness of his wedding boots and the stiffness of his new clothes, careered across country, with almost incredible speed. Now his blue-coated form might be seen leaping a hedge, now scudding over a stretch of pasture. Dick, the best man, was the nearest to him, family pride lending wings to his long legs, but even he was soon distanced, and by the time he had reached the second bank and forced his way through the thorns and briars which topped it, the runaway bridegroom was nowhere to be seen. Dick was at fault, and though when the rest of the pursuers came up they scoured the fields, and “drew” the thickets, and hunted up and down by the banks, and even searched the willow-bed by the river, no trace of the fugitive was to be found. Phœbe had come to a standstill in the midst of the third field, where her father presently joined her. They stood panting opposite each other for a moment or two, after which Phœbe, unfolding a lace-bordered handkerchief, wiped her brow; then restoring it to her pocket, she remarked in a tone of conviction:

“I d’ ’low he’ve a-changed his mind.”

“Looks like it,” returned her parent shortly. “Ye can have the law on him for this.”

“That wouldn’t be much comfort to I,” she retorted.

“What be goin’ to do then?”

“I d’ ’low I’ll go home-along,” said the forsaken bride with decision. “There bain’t no use in standin’ here for the folks to gawk at, an’ I mid just so well take up one o’ they fowls. I shouldn’t think any o’ Dan’l’s folks ’ud want to show their faces at our place.”

“I d’ ’low they won’t,” returned Mr. Cosser in a menacing tone, as though who should say, “they’d better not!”

“Let’s be steppin’ then,” said Phœbe. “You’d best look in at church and fetch mother. I’ll make haste home.”

“That there Dan’l o’ yourn be a reg’lar rascal!” shouted her father.

Phœbe, who had already proceeded some paces on her way, turned her head and called back over her shoulder: “I can’t say as how he’ve acted so very well!” Then she went on again.

When the baffled hunting party finally gave up the chase and returned to Cosser’s, partly with the hope of being commended for their zeal, which they felt must have atoned for all previous errors, partly to see how the forsaken bride bore herself, they found that damsel in her working dress, “salting down” a fine piece of beef.

“There’ll be a terr’ble lot o’ waste over this ’ere job,” she remarked, “but we must do our best to save all what we can.”

“We couldn’t find en nowheres, Phœbe,” cried Dick. “Abel here d’ say he’s very like drownded; serve en right if he be.”

Phœbe paused in her labours to cast a reflective glance at the horizon.

“I’ll go warrant he bain’t drownded,” she said. “He don’t want to marry I, that’s what ’tis. He wouldn’t ha’ married I a bit the more if you’d ha’ catched en.”

“But what’s the meanin’ of it,” thundered Mr. Cosser from his corner, “what’s the meanin’ on’t, I want to know. He did seem to know his own mind afore—very well he did.”

“I think he was gallied like,” said Phœbe. “E-es, I d’ ’low that’s what he wer’.”

Abel and Jarge began to edge away from the group, but Phœbe went on without seeming to notice them.

“When Parson did ax en the question straight-out like, I d’ ’low he felt ’fraid. That’s what ’twas, he was ’fraid.”

Withdrawing her gaze from the distant hills and heaving a gentle sigh she carried away her beef; and as there was no indication that any outsider was expected to join the family circle, or indeed to partake of any refreshment, the bystanders walked slowly away, and the Cosser family proceeded gloomily to divest themselves of their holiday clothes.

It was quite dark when Daniel rose from his cramped and exceedingly moist hiding-place in the sedges by the river, and slowly betook himself homewards. During the many hours he had lain cowering there, listening to the voices of his pursuers, he had had leisure to repent of and marvel at the senseless impulse which had brought him to his present plight.

“Well, I be a stunpoll!” he had said to himself over and over again. “I be a dalled stunpoll! What the mischief did I do it for? Whatever will the poor maid think of I? She’ll never look at I again—she’ll never take the leastest notice of me.”

More than once he had been half-inclined to rush out of his lair and give himself up to justice, but how could he face that grinning multitude? If they had made fun of him before, what would they do now? Besides her family were furious, and the rustic mind loves justice of a certain rough kind. Daniel was not more of a coward than another, but he had a wholesome dread of broken bones. No, he dursn’t show his face for a long time, that was certain; and as for ever making up with Phœbe again, it was out of the question—no woman could forgive such treatment.

Very disconsolately, indeed, did Daniel turn in at his own little gate; even in the dusk he could see how nice the place looked, how complete were his arrangements. He opened the door and slunk in, dropping into the nearest chair with a groan. After quite a long time he made up his mind to strike a match and look round, though he knew the sight of the cosy little room would increase his melancholy. He lit the blue glass lamp which had been placed in readiness on the dresser, and with a heavy sigh poked up the fire which had been carefully “kept in” with a thick layer of wet slack. The light leaped on the newly-papered walls with their neat design of blue roses on a buff ground—he had papered these walls himself, in honour of the coming event—on the two elbow-chairs, just re-covered with a gay chintz. On the table in the centre was a small tray with a biblical design in prodigiously bright colours, which bore a curious old decanter containing elderberry wine, a plate of mixed biscuits and two tumblers. In setting these forth that morning he had thought with tender glee of how Phœbe’s first wifely task would be to “hot-up” some of that wine in one of her new saucepans. Had it not been for his own inconceivable folly, they might at that very moment have been sitting face to face drinking each other’s health. And now! Daniel dropped his face in his hands and fairly sobbed.

One day about a fortnight after the untoward event which had so rudely quenched her simple hopes, Phœbe Cosser was standing by the wash-tub up to her eyes in suds, with Mary Ann similarly engaged; while Mrs. Cosser in the inner room laboriously ironed out a few of the fine things which had already passed through her daughter’s hands. All at once, Mary Ann, raising her eyes, uttered a little scream which immediately lost itself in a fit of giggles.

“There! I never did see such a foolish maid!” commented Phœbe severely. “Whatever be gawkin’ at?”

“Lard! There now! Well, to be sure!” ejaculated Mary Ann between spasmodic titters. “Look yonder behind the thorn tree!”

The Cossers’ garden sloped downwards towards the road, and a gnarled May tree filled the angle where the front hedge joined that which separated their piece of ground from their neighbour’s; the twisted trunk was split down to a few feet from the ground, and through this aperture Daniel Chaffey’s woeful face was peering. As Phœbe turned towards him he immediately dived out of sight. After waiting a moment and finding he did not reappear Phœbe philosophically went on with her washing. In a few minutes, however, Mary Ann began to giggle afresh. Phœbe whisked round so sharply that she caught a glimpse of her former lover’s vanishing face.

“Don’t take no notice,” she said sternly, implanting a vicious nudge in her cousin’s ribs; after which she shifted her position so as to turn her back to the thorn.

After another short interval, however, the sound of her own name breathed in the most dolorous of tones caused her to turn her head once more. Daniel had thrown an arm round each half of the trunk, and was craning forth through the gap, his face vying in colour with the clusters of haws which surrounded it.

“Phœbe!” he pleaded with a gusty sigh.

“Well?” returned she, slowly wiping the suds from her stout red arms.

“Phœbe, I’ve acted terr’ble bad to ye.”

“E-es, you have,” replied Phœbe succinctly.

“I d’ ’low I have,” he agreed dejectedly. “I be pure sorry, dalled if I bain’t.”

Miss Cosser snorted.

“I’ve a-repented, my dear, ever since. E-es, I have! Sure I have! Phœbe!”

“Well?”

“I’ve a-been thinkin’—would ye go to church wi’ me now?”

“This minute?” queried Phœbe with alacrity; the muscles of her face relaxed, and she twitched down first one of her rolled-up sleeves and then the other.

“E-es, this very minute; the Reverend ’ull tie us up right enough if I ax en.”

“Gie me a clean apron!” cried Phœbe, turning quickly to Mary Ann and jerking at the string of the very damp garment which protected her dress.

She already wore her hat, and by the time her cousin, who had vanished with a bound, reappeared shaking out the crisp folds of the clean white apron, she had unpinned her skirt.

“Now, then,” she remarked after tying it on, and she fixed her best eye with a business-like air on her Daniel, who had been gazing at her with almost incredulous rapture. He left off embracing the hawthorn and reached the garden gate at the same moment as Phœbe herself; and before Mrs. Cosser, attracted by Mary Ann’s shrieks of enjoyment, had had time to reach the door they had set off arm-in-crook and disappeared round the angle of the lane.