Mary Jane Married: Tales of a Village Inn

by George R. Sims

Things in this village haven’t changed much since we first came. Dashing Dick’s grandmother, poor old lady, is now quite paralyzed; but the lad has turned out much better than was expected, and has been sent to sea, and writes very nice letters to her from foreign parts, and has begun to send her a little money. Old Gaffer Gabbitas, his daughter, who lives in the village, told us, a little time ago was found dead in his armchair one Sunday afternoon, with his Bible on his lap open at the place where he had been reading it when he fell asleep for the last time. We have written out to Mr. Wilkins in Australia, giving him our new address, and saying we shall always be glad to hear from him; and dear Jenny has another baby, a little girl, so, as she says in her letter, we are both equal now.

Graves, the farrier, has much improved lately. He is more civilized since he took to use our house regularly, and gave up going to the other place. He came out quite nobly not long ago, in a little affair which made some talk in the village. One of his men injured himself while working at the forge, he being, I am sorry to say, the worse for liquor at the time (the man, not Graves), and was so bad he had to be sent to a London hospital, where he remained some time, and all the while he was away Graves paid his money to the wife, because she was an invalid, and had a large family. This shows that there is often a lot of good under a rough exterior; but I believe blacksmiths and farriers are very good-hearted men as a rule, and I always respect them, for I never see one without thinking of that noble-hearted blacksmith in the beautiful piece of poetry which I also heard as a song one night when there was an entertainment at our national schools. It was a lovely idea, that brawny fellow going to church of a Sunday, and thinking of his dead wife when he heard his daughter singing in the village choir, and wiping away a tear.

Graves isn’t the man to do that sort of thing—he couldn’t, because he has never married, and I don’t think he is so regular in attendance at church as the other blacksmith was; but his keeping that poor woman and children all those weeks, shows that his heart is in the right place, if he doesn’t always pick his words as carefully as he might.

Miss Ward, our barmaid, that you may remember was so unfortunate in her young man, that horrid fellow Shipsides, has married well, I am glad to say, and she and her husband have been put in to manage a public-house in the South of England. She wrote to me, and told me when she was married, and sent me a piece of cake, and I wrote her a nice letter back, and said how pleased I was to hear it.

Of course, directly I knew we were going to move, I wrote to Mr. Saxon, and told him what our new address would be, and said that he might be sure if he paid us a visit no one would be more welcome. He wrote back and said perhaps he would come when the races were on. I hear he has taken to go racing lately, which is a thing I should never have expected, though I remember hearing that, years ago, he used to be very fond of sport, but got too busy to keep it up. I hope it will do him good; at any rate, it is a change, and the fresh air is just what he wants. But I hope he won’t gamble and lose a lot of money; but I don’t think he will, as he has to work too hard to get it. I have been told that he takes that nice Swedish gentleman about with him to the races, so perhaps he will come, too. I shall be very glad to see him again, as he was one of the nicest gentlemen I ever talked to, and had been all over the world, and was full of information. Poor fellow! he ought to be taken about; for he must have a bad time of it at home with Mr. Saxon, whose liver seems to get worse as he gets older.

The last I heard of him he had been to Italy for a month, for the benefit of his health, and came back in a fortnight, swearing that he had shortened his life by ten years, by going. Fancy a man going away for rest, and to benefit his health, and travelling five thousand miles, night and day, in a railway carriage, and then going on because he felt knocked up. But, with all his faults and his queer ways, there will be nobody that I shall be more pleased to see at the “Royal Hotel” than Mr. Saxon.

The new clergyman, the young fellow who was the cause of Mr. Wilkins going to Australia, has turned out what Harry calls “quite a trump.” There is no mistake about the impression he has made in the place. He has woke it up, so to speak, and, though nobody liked him at first, resenting his new-fangled ways, now he is the greatest favourite with everybody. He is a fine cricketer, and has made a cricket club, and he sings capitally, and gets up penny readings and entertainments in the winter, and his sermons are first class. The first Sunday some of the old-fashioned people were horrified. He made a joke in his sermon, and it was such a good joke that it made the people laugh before they remembered where they were. He said afterwards that he saw a lot of people were horrified, but that it wasn’t wicked to laugh. He said being good didn’t mean being sulky and gloomy and pulling a long face, and there was no more harm in feeling glad and gay inside a church than outside it; in fact, if there was any place in which people ought to feel comfortable and happy, and ready to smile on the slightest provocation, it was when they were worshipping One who had done so much to make His people glad and gay and happy here below.

It took time to get the old-fashioned people round to his way of thinking; but he did it at last, and now our parson is the best-liked man in the place. Everybody respects him and likes him, and nobody is afraid of him, except the bad characters, and they are afraid of him because he don’t care whether they are high or low, rich or poor. He tells them straight what he thinks of them. The Rev. Tommy was a dear nice old gentleman; but his mind was always wandering away to before the Flood, and he let everything after the Flood go its own way. The new man, “the whipper-snapper,” doesn’t bother himself even about yesterday. He makes the best of to-day, and looks out for to-morrow, and, after all, that is the only way to take life practically, and to make the best of it.

Which reminds me that I have to make the best of to-day myself, and to look out for to-morrow as well, for I shall have all my work cut out, so my dear old “Memoirs” will have to be cut short, and wound up, and put away, for there won’t be any “Memoirs” at the “Royal Hotel.”

I think I have told you nearly everything about the people you know who have been mixed up with the ‘Stretford Arms.’ We leave it with plenty of friends, and, I honestly believe, without a single enemy. And we leave it with a first-class reputation and an excellent connection. It has become quite a “pulling-up house,” as it is called in the trade, with people who drive from London, and is now well-known as a quiet and comfortable country hotel for ladies and gentlemen and families, who wish to stay for a little time a short distance from town. The local connection has not been neglected, and our smoke-room has become quite a nice little local club, while the billiard-room has brought many of the young fellows from the best private houses to make it a rendezvous. We have been very particular to keep the billiard-room quiet and select, and to discourage gambling, and this has made it a boon to the neighbourhood, when with bad management it might have become quite the reverse.