Beggars on Horseback

by F. Tennyson Jesse

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There is little to tell of the love of Senath and Manuel save that it was swift, unspeakably dear, and put beyond the possibility of fulfilment by the death of the man. The slight accident of a rusty nail that ran into his foot, enhanced by the lack of cleanliness of the true peasant, and Manuel, for such a trifling cause, ceased to be. They were fated lovers; fated, having met, to love, and, so Senath told herself in the first hours of her bitterness, fated never to grasp their joy. The time had been so short, as far as mere weeks went, so infinitely long in that they had it for ever. After the funeral in the moorland churchyard, Senath went into her cottage and was seen of no one for many days. Then she reappeared, and to the scandal of the world it was seen that she had discarded her black. She went about her work silently as ever, but seemed to shun meeting her fellow-creatures less than formerly. A bare year after Manuel's death she had married Samuel Harvey.

No one wondered more than Sam himself how this had come about. If the marriage had been a matter of several months earlier, the common and obvious interpretation as to its necessity would have been current everywhere, and Sam would have had his meed of half-contemptuous pity. As it was, no one knew better than Sam that the other Harvey's wooing had gone no further than that wonderful kiss to which middle-aged people, who have missed the thing in their youth, can bring more reverential shyness than any blushing youth or girl.

Had it been any other than Senath, folk would not have been so surprised. A woman may get along very well single all her days if she has never been awakened to another way of life, but give her a taste of it and it is likely to become a thing that she must have. Yet few made the mistake of thinking that that was how it was with Senath. A strongly spiritual nature leaves its impress on even the most clayey of those with whom it comes in contact, and all knew Senath to be not quite as they were. Yet she married the red-necked Samuel Harvey, and they went to live together at the Upper Farm. And, as to any superior delicacy, Senath showed less than most. A few kind souls there were who thought, with the instinctive tact of the sensitive Celt, that it might hurt her to hear the name "Mrs. Harvey" which would have been hers had she married Manuel. On the contrary, just as though she were some young bride, elated at her position, she asked that even old friends should call her by the new title.

Sam was genuinely fond of Senath, and mingled with his fondness was a certain pride at having won what he had set out to win so many years ago; yet, it was so many years that he had been in a fair way to forget all about it till, one evening, he met Senath as he was driving home from market, much as when he had been with Manuel a year before. It had struck him as odd, for Senath was not apt to be upon the highway at that time, and although she was going in an opposite direction she asked for a lift back in his gig. When they came to the track that led off to her cottage, he tied up the mare and went with her to advise her as to her apple-trees, which were suffering from blight, and by the time he left, half an hour later, they were promised to each other. How it came about, Sam never quite understood; the only thing he was sure about was that it had been entirely his doing. Yet he couldn't help wondering a bit, though it all seemed to follow on so naturally at the time, that it was not until he was on his way back to the Upper Farm that he felt puzzled. He was still wondering about it, and her, when the parson joined their hands in the bleak, cold church, and Senath stood, beneath her unbecoming daisied hat, looking as bleak and cold as the granite walls around her.

Later, Sam found this to be a misleading impression. Never was bride more responsive, in the eager passive fashion of shut eyes and quiet, still mouth, than was Senath. Only now and again, in the first weeks of their life together, she would give a start, and a look of terror and blank amazement would leap across her face, as though she were suddenly awakened out of a trance.

Men of Sam's condition and habit of mind do not, by some merciful law of nature, make ardent lovers, and life soon settled down comfortably enough on the farm. Senath was a capable housewife, and, what with the dairy-work and cooking and superintending the washing, and such extra work as looking after any sickly lamb or calf, she had plenty to do. And yet, in the midst of so much activity, every now and then Sam was struck by a queer little feeling of aloofness in Senath—not any withdrawing physically, but a feeling as though her mind were elsewhere. He might find her sitting on the settle with her eyes closed, although she was obviously awake, and an expression of half-fearful joy on her face, as on that of a person who is listening to some lovely sound and holding his breath for fear lest the least noise on his own part should frighten it into stillness.

However, Sam was not an imaginative man, and since the house shone with cleanliness such as it had never known, the shining not of mere scouring, but of the fine gloss only attained by loving care, he did not trouble his head. Women were queer at the best of times, and besides, a few months after the marriage, reason for any additional queerness on the part of Senath became known to him. After she had told him the news, Sam, ever inarticulate, but moved to the rarely felt depths of his nature, went out into a field that was getting its autumn ploughing, and his heart sang as he guided the horses down the furrow. Even as he was doing now, and his father had done before him, so should his son do after him, and the rich earth would turn over in just this lengthening wave at the blade of the ploughshare for future generations of Harveys yet to come. Like most men with any feeling for the land in them, Sam was sure his child must be a son.

And to him, who had not hoped for such a thing in marrying Senath, to him this glory was coming. Everything seemed to him wonderful that day; the pearly pallor of the dappled sky; the rooks and screaming gulls that wheeled and dipped behind his plough; the bare swaying elms, where the rooks' nests clung like gigantic burrs. Dimly, and yet for him keenly, he was aware of all these things, as a part of a great phenomenon in which he held pride of place.

When he came in, his way led through the yard, where a new farm-cart, just come home, stood under the shed in all the bravery of its blue body and vermilion wheels. Senath had crept round in the shed to the back and was studying the tailboard, one hand against it.