Chapter III
THE KINGDOM
While Uncle Dickie was proposing his toast in the Robsons' dining-room, another party was in progress up the village in the smoke-room of the Flying Fox. The Flying Fox was a cosy little inn, not frequented by strangers like the Eden Arms. The men who now sat there, smoking and talking, were old habitués.
On the high-backed settle near the fire-place sprawled Ezra Dawson, the Robsons' shepherd, a great soldierly figure in corduroys. A drooping eyelid marred his handsome face, half obscuring his twinkling left eye in a perpetual wink. He was holding forth to a young farmer who stood sheepishly near the table.
"Noo, lad, tha may be a clever fellow." The men on the far bench snorted incredulously. "Ah'm not saying tha is, but taking it for a parable like. Tha may be a clever fellow, but if tha marries a fool she'll ruin tha. And if tha's a fool and weds a clever lass wi' a good hand for pastry, who feeds lads well and keeps in wi' gentry and dealers, tha's fair fettled up and mebbe'll find tha self a rich man some day."
"Then mun I marry a clever woman?" asked the boy.
"Noo, lad, ah wouldn't go so far as to say that. If tha' marries a good-for-nowt,'un she'll ruin tha, but if tha weds a clever lass folks'll give her all credit and call thee a fool."
Bert frowned anxiously.
"Then what am I to wed?"
"Stay single, Bert," advised another voice from the doorway. It came from a short, red-bearded man who had not yet spoken. "Stay single an' tha'll never have cause to rue."
"But if ah'm single ah'll have to get a housekeeper. Our Liza says she can't stay with me much longer." Bert was genuinely anxious to profit by their counsel.
"Noo then, Shep," laughed another, "who'd you say he ought to get as housekeeper, a clever lass or a fool?"
Dawson turned slowly.
"Nay lad, did'st ever hear tell of a clever housekeeper?"
Bert scratched his head but failed to recall such a phenomenon.
"You see," explained the shepherd gleefully, "all clever housekeepers marries their masters. Y'can't get round women. They scores all ways."
"Ah'm not denying they scores," said the red-bearded woman-hater. "What I asks is—why do we let'em? Because we're fond fools! That's why. Take any man you like an' any woman you like and set'em to do t' same job, and ye'll find t' woman fair beat before they've been at it ten minutes. Talk about women's reets—if they had their reets they'd all be shut up in their houses wi' their bairns!"
"Missus been a bit pawky to-day, Eli?" inquired Dawson with a quizzical glance at the fiery orator.
The company nodded in sympathy. They knew the humour of a wife's tongue when the wind was easterly and the Christmas rent due, and another addition to the family expected. Eli Waite's domestic troubles had been a welcome topic at many similar gatherings, so, though he was unpopular and suspected as an extremist, to-night his audience was inclined to be gracious. But Eli disappointed those who hoped to hear further details of the Waite household. He changed the conversation.
"There's rare goings on up at t' Robsons to-night they say."
"Ay," replied Dawson, taking another drink. "T' family stayed on to tea, and health drinking and the like. Violet let me see table when I was up salting bacon this after' an' giv'd me a bit o' t' cake."
"And a drop o' whisky ah'll be bound," laughed old Deane. "Noo then, Shep, tell t' truth and shame t' devil."
"Ay. Mebbe a drop o' whisky. Allus keep in wi't women ah says."
"Ugh," growled Eli. "Ye talk o' women, Dawson, but ye'd any of you sell your souls for a bit o' dinner up at Mrs. Robson's. She knows how t' manage you all—coals an' Christmas pudding—an' then there'll be no grumblin' about wages at Martinmas."
"Tha eats dinner there tha'sen fast enough, Eli, when tha's chance."
"Ay. Chance is a bonny thing."
Eli turned upon the Shepherd. "Chance is a bonny thing wi' you, Shep, and Mary Robson—going following her aboot like a gawking lad, as if tha' hadn't wenches enough wi'out your master's woman."
"What's that?" Dawson's one eye suddenly opened.
"Ah only said tha' hadn't much self-respect, sucking up t' gentry," said Eli, retreating hastily.
"Ay. Tha'd better only say yon. Ah thowt mebbe it was a matter o' summat else."
"So did I, indade," broke in a sharp Irish voice from an obscure corner. A little, black haired man came forward and placed his glass on the table. "If you have anything to say about Mrs. Robson at all, you'll just have the goodness to step outside the door and repate it to me, slow and careful."
"Ah've no call to answer for my words to a drunken Irish harvester who stays beyond his times."
"Noo then, Mike," interposed Dawson. "Doant take on. Eli didn't mean nowt. 'E's been like a bear wi' a sore head ever since his missus hasn't been well like. Anderby air don't suit him like that out at Market Burton, does it, Eli?"
"I'll thank you to mind your own business, Misther Dawson!" began Mike O'Flynn.
But Dawson rose slowly and laid one hand on the little man's shoulder.
"It's my business as much as your'n, lad, that no one here speaks words like them there o' Waite's, what I wouldn't care for Mrs. Robson to hear. Ah've known her since she was a little lass, an' used to ride her pony up to Sheepfold as pretty as a circus girl. Eli's a stranger like, an' don't know what we of Anderby does."
"Then it's me who'll tell him quick enough bedad, if he clacks his foul tongue again."
"Doant be a fool, Mike." Dawson's deep voice rose from a cloud of blue smoke. "Waite won't say no more. Ye see, it's like this here, Eli. Mike was sick two years ago last harvest up at Littledale, and Mrs. Robson went up at night an' sat poulticing him an' the like for long enough."
"'Twas pneumonia I had," broke in Mike, unwilling to surrender to another the pleasure of telling this story. "Like to die I was, and seeing the gowlden gates half opened an' she came to me like an angel from heaven.
"'Is it the praste you'll be wanting?' says she. 'Now what should I want with a praste when 'tis the angels themselves have come to look after me'? says I. But she only smiled and sent for Father Murphy from Hardrascliffe, and for three days an' nights she hardly left me side an' me with a pain like hot iron across me chest, an' me voice like the creaking o' the pump when 'tis oiling it needs."
"Ay. That's all very well for Robsons, but all folks ain't like that, nor all farmers either. Mrs. Robson 'ud give away her last coat if need be; but ah've just come from a talk wi' Ted Wilson—him as is gardener for Willerby's up at Highwold."
The speaker was a lean, melancholy man who had been fidgeting by himself with a draught-board in the corner.
"They're new folks, ain't they?"
"Ay. Wust turn old Granger ever did to Anderby was dying like that an' letting Willerby take his farm."
"I thowt Willerby was a decent, quiet sort o' chap. 'E doant say much, but 'e could do worse nor that."
"Nay, but yon's not trouble."
Dawson took a pull at his pipe and hazarded grimly:
"It's a woman ah'll be bound."
"Ay. I said to Wilson, 'Ow'd ye come on wi' missus these days?' Ah says. And he gives me one o' them there slow, considerable looks like, an' says, 'She doant like rattens getting in among 'er chickens.' 'E does fowls up at Willerby's does Wilson.' 'Well,' ah says, 'nor does other folks, but it's all fortunes o' war.' 'It's fortunes o' war when it's other people's chickens,' says 'e. 'But it's danged carelessness o' some one else's when they're your own. Missus is a bad loser,' 'e says. 'Why, she bain't mean, is she, Ted?' ah says. 'Mean?' 'e says. You know that way 'e has o' waiting to let you get one word well chewed before 'e gives you 'tother. 'Oh no. She's not mean. She'd only steal t' shroud off her mother's corpse, an' then take on because it wouldn't wash!'"
"Ay," murmured Dawson sagely. "There's nowt so queer as folks."
"Except women, Shep," jeered Waite.
"Then what wages will they be giving up at Willerby's?" asked Bert Armstrong, feeling that as the only farmer present he ought to show a decent interest in the affairs of his new neighbours.
"Same as anyone else's. Same as Robson's. But when you get no bits o' beef, nor packets o' tea, nor nursing if you're sick, you can soon tell t' difference. Ah can tell you, Wilson says 'e won't stay after Martinmas unless things tak' up a bit."
"There you are," pronounced Shepherd triumphantly, removing his pipe from his mouth to give greater effect to his words. "'Tis t' woman again. Get a bad 'un and a good farmer's nowt. Get a good 'un and t' farmer don't count."
"If you think so much o' them, Shep, why have you never married yourself?"
"Ah've never yet found a lass wi' a bit o' brass who'd have me. If ever ah does find one wi' same mind as myself, ah'll away get wed."
"Tha mun have her rich then?"
"Oh ay." Dawson knocked the ashes from his pipe and prepared to depart.
"But if she turns out a bad 'un?" pursued Bert, in quest of information.
"Well then, she'll still have 'er brass, and a fat sorrow's better t' bear than a lean sorrow."
The company stirred and smiled. Old Deane in the corner shook his head.
"Ay. But you don't find 'em like Mary Robson growing on every hedge bottom," he said.
Outside, the wind tore at the stacks and hedges in a shrieking hurricane. It snatched at Mike's hat, and whipped the sleet across his face. He had left early, for work, interrupted that day, began next morning at six, and the long nights were short enough after back-aching days in the sheep-fold.
As he passed the railings of Mary's garden he heard through a lull in the storm the clop, clop of hoofs on the road before him, and Sarah Bannister drove past in a flurry of black shadows and yellow carriage lights. Upstairs in the Wold Farm, a single light burned and Mike, thinking it to shine from Mary's room, sighed sentimentally and murmured a paternoster for her soul's salvation. Neither his experiences as a soldier in India and Africa nor the indifference of his fellow workers on the farm had robbed him of a simplicity which somehow confounded the Mary of Anderby with the Lady of Sorrows.
Unfortunately for his pious intention the light before his shrine was only a candle carried by Violet into the spare bedroom where Foster and Ursula had decided to spend the night rather than face the violence of the storm.