And then Hannah and Lucy fell to at such a preparation, adjusting, re-adjusting, snipping, snipeing, cutting, hemming, tuckering of shawls and dresses, to such a trimming of hat and bonnet, and such a littering of the house with female finery, that if a wedding or a coronation had been afoot, matters could not have been worse.
“Aw’st nivver howd aat till Sunday, Tom,” Ben confided to him. “Aw haven’t set tooith into a turkey sin’ aw can’t remember when an’ ivvry time aw think on it mi maath watters soa aw can hardly speik. Do’st think there’ll be sossidge wi’ it? Tha mieet ha’ just nudged her abaat th’ sossidge when yo’ wrote if yo’d gi’en it a thowt, but aw’m feart it’s too lat’ nah. An’ gooise an’ apple sauce, an stuffin’, an’ plum puddin’ wi’ brandy sauce—eh, lad, it’s a pity tha cannot come o’ age onst a week. But aw munnot show greedy. Aw onst knew a felly at a club supper ’at e’t a whull leg o’ mutton to his own cheek, wi’ capers and onion sauce an’ breead, an’ supped two gallon o’ ale. They’d to gie him kester oil for aboon a week at after afore he fair gate shut on it. Nah! aw ca’ that a fair abuse o’th’ kindly fruits o’th’ earth. Nah! tha’ll ha’ studied ettiket nah tha’s ta’en to talkin’ townified. How mony helpin’s dun yo reely think aw mieet ha’ wi’ out bein thowt greedy? Aw’m nooan a glutton, like that chap at Gowcar ’at went to a club dinner—Bill o’ Natt’s, aw think they ca’ed him—an’ when he gate whom he rolled o’th’ floor, an’ all he could say wer’ ‘Howd, belly, howd, for if tha brusts awm done.’ And Ben looked anxiously at Tom for a reply. But Tom only smiled, for he knew that Ben was merely talking to let off steam. So the excited little man went on:
“Tha’ll nooan be teetotal that day, Tom. It ’ud be a sort o’ slur o’ Missus Schofield. Aw tak’ it at goin’ to a feeast at a public wi’ a publican an’ ca’in’ for cowd watter ’ud be just as bad manners as feedin’ wi’ a teetotaller an’ axin for a pint o’ drink. Nah! doesn’t it strike yo’ i’ that leet, Tom?”
But Tom explained that he had had that point over with his good friend Betty many a time before and that he wasn’t going to begin his manhood by breaking the pledge he had taken with himself. “You’ll have to drink my share too, Ben.”
“An’ Lucy’s, for ’oo’s tarred wi’ th’ same brush as thee, Tom. Aw do believe ’at if yo’ took to runnin’ abaat th’ village wi’ a caa’s tail atween yo’r teeth like them niggers yo’n read on o’th’ banks o’th river Ganges, yar Lucy ’ud do th’ same as well as her legs ’ud let her. An’ thank God!—an’ yo’, Tom, ’oo can walk wi’out sticks nah.” And Ben pressed Tom’s arm as caressingly as ever maiden conveyed message to favoured swain.
“You’ll have to be careful, Ben, if you’re going to drink for three.”
“Aye, aye, if all’s weel aw’st be poorly th’ day after, sha’not aw? But wi’ one thing an’ another aw just feel as if aw cud turn cart wheels slap daan th’ sides o’ Pots an’ Pans till aw poo’d up at th’ Hanging Gate. It is na th’ eitin’, lad, nor th’ drinkin’, though them’s nooan things to be sneezed at, let me tell yo’. It’s thowts at’ mi Tom’s so well thowt on bi all at’s knowd him sin’ he wer’ a suckin’ babe. Aw tell thee, lad, mi heart’s so full aw could blubber like a cawf, if aw didn’t howd missen in.” And then Tom knew it was time for him to look intently in any direction but that of honest Ben’s face.
Sunday came, and with Sunday came Workh’us Jack, such a beaming radiant Jack as never village saw before: Jack, with a great white rosette on his breast and a white ribbon on the end of the whip with which he flicked the mare with many a soothing “so-ho, so-ho,” and hortatory “come up;” an older Jack by many a biting Winter’s lapse since first we met him; a stouter, plumper, rosier Jack, but with the same smiling face and unfailing cheerfulness.
How, with infinite tenderness, Lucy was lifted into the trap, how Tom smothered her with wraps and shawls, how Hannah declared she would rather walk through the village because everybody was, she knew, stopping from chapel on purpose to gaup at her, and how she was hoisted bodily in under protest; how, as a matter of fact the neighbours and the neighbour’s children turned out into the street braving the whipping of the gusty snow or peered from chamber window; how it was all over Holmfirth in no time that Gentleman Tom and Lucy Garside were “off over th’ Isle of Skye to be wed at St. Chad’s,” how every gossip in the village insisted that she had expected nothing else these months back, and called upon her neighbour to testify that she had often been heard to say so; how the demure young maidens declared that Lucy for all her quiet ways was a deep one and a sly one, and that it was a shame a fine strapping young fellow should be trapped into wedding a pale faced useless thing, little better than a cripple; how Ben and Tom walked far ahead of the trap all the way up the ascent of road to the Isle of Skye, but were overtaken just as they reached the inn there: how Ben insisted on Jack taking “summat short” to keep the cold out, and Tom would have Hannah drink some hot port-wine negus to keep Jack company, and how Jack had another drink for the good of the house; how the exhilarating influence of the liquor passed by some mysterious process from the driver to the driven so that the old mare rattled down from Bill’s o’ Jack’s to Greenfield, and from Greenfield to the Church Inn, at Saddleworth; how it stopped there of its own accord and positively refused to budge till Jack descended from his seat and had another drink; how Hannah made sure that Ben and Tom would be foolish enough to try a short cut over the moors and untimely perish like Tom’s mother before them; and how finally the chaise drew up in fine style before the Hanging Gate, and Lucy almost fell into Betty Schofield’s welcoming arms—all this the reader must imagine.
And there, sure enough in the big room upstairs, with its mysterious cupboard labelled R.A.O.B., the sacred room in which the Royal Antedeluvian Order of Buffaloes declared every lodge night that they would “hunt the buff, would hunt the buff, would hunt the buffalo,” though where to find it thereabouts would have puzzled them to tell. In this great room a glorious fire roared and cast its welcome warmth and the walls were hung with the Christmas decorations of the lodge, and the Christmas holly and mistletoe looked yet fresh and green, and the long narrow table down the centre was white with Betty’s best napery, and Moll, feigning mighty indignation because Tom had caught her round the waist and kissed her smackingly under the mistletoe, busied about making a great clattering of plates and spoons and knives and forks, whilst a distracting odour of roast goose came up the narrow staircase. Mr. Redfearn was there betimes, and Aleck, all in his Sunday best. Then came the down-sitting, Mr. Redfearn at the table-head, Tom at the foot. Aleck facing Ben, and Hannah, and Lucy supporting the chair and vice-chair. Moll o’ Stute’s and Jack had their dinner later on. How many helps of turkey with sausage and of goose with stuffing and apple sauce, and of plum-pudding with brandy-sauce Ben had I entirely refuse to tell, but only say with all his talk he came in a very lame second to Aleck.