They were threshing on the farm; the whirring sound hummed in and the smell from the engine hung on the air. On the south wall a man, by her orders, was cutting back the foliage from the vine so that the sun might get freely at the Sweet-water grapes. In a few weeks it would be time to think about wine-making. The busiest time of the year was coming on. She hadn’t a moment to waste. She should at that moment have been straining the mushroom-juice from the salt and boiling it with spices. But the letter, fluttering in her veined, gnarled hand, had made her an idle woman before noon. She read it again with the weighty deliberation of an almost illiterate person. It was written in a dashing but undecided hand, and the words were stilted. Evidently the writer had been ill at ease.
She got up stiffly at last and moved about the room, flicking a duster over the ancient furniture. There was an oak cupboard reaching to the ceiling—a double corner cupboard with delicate brass escutcheons and an inlaid border of boxwood.
She ran the duster down the dark panels and breathed softly on the brass. Then she took out her keys from her apron pocket and opened the doors of the upper half. There were three shelves, the edge of each scalloped out. On every shelf were bottles and jars full of preserves and pickles. She touched them quite tenderly, looking at the faintly written labels, pursing up her colorless lips and moving her head spasmodically.
She shut the cupboard at last and went slowly on her journey round the room. She dusted the oak sideboard, the long oak table, with the form against the wall and the carved joint stools—the high one for the master, the low one for the dame—at each end. She dusted the chairs, some of solid oak, some of golden beech with rush seats. She dusted the clock; its hand pointed ominously to twelve.
It was about time then. In a few minutes she should be here. Gainah chuckled a little, remembering that she had purposely neglected to send the trap to the station. All the men were at harvest, and she had wanted old Chalcraft to trim the vine. She sat down by the door again, looking out blankly at the warmth and life. There were thick parchment-like mushrooms dotted over the meadow beyond the quickset hedge, and in the orchard fruit kept thudding softly from the trees. It was the beginning of rich autumn, when one makes provision for winter. She was always so busy through August and September; on her feet until late at night—late for Folly Corner—straining and boiling, and pulping and stirring; scolding the two maids and tyrannizing over Jethro.
Those mushrooms had been in salt too long; the wind-fall apples were almost past preserving. It was washing-day, too—they had washed on the first Monday in the month for thirty years. The soapy smell floated into the dining-parlor; she could hear the rasping sound of the brush and the gurgling swill of suds. She heard also the cackle of the two maids and the mellow voice of the elderly washerwoman. They were wasting their time. Yet she didn’t move. Her eyes fell to the letter which she had taken out of her pocket again. Her lips mumbled the signature—“PAMELA CRISP.”
After thirty-three years! And she had served his father before him! It was very hard! She wouldn’t give up her keys—he wouldn’t expect that. She smiled dryly. He wouldn’t expect that—he was a Jayne and he knew when he was well off. He would never get anyone else to slave so. Even the green tomatoes were pickled—with onions and apples and mysterious spices. She was the only woman for miles round who had the recipe, and before she died she meant to burn it, having no daughter to bequeath it to. And scarlet runners put down every year for winter eating. Her butter had never been known to have a twang. She could make cakes without fat and used snow for puddings when eggs were scarce.
The bed in the best room had been made under her eye from the feathers of birds killed on the farm.
Birds! It was not many henwives who could manage to hatch a full sitting. She never thought fifteen eggs too many to put under a hen; the Dorking might manage even more. The gray-and-white hen—didn’t it steal a nest of twenty-two and come clucking home at the end of three weeks with nineteen chicks, most of them pullets, too! A young, flighty woman would have spoilt everything by poking about and interfering with the bird. She had known all along that it was sitting in the barn, but she wasn’t going to let it know she knew. Young women spoilt their lives by haste. They spoilt the lives of other people too. Her eye dropped again to the dashing signature—“PAMELA CRISP.”
She sat brooding by the door, thinking proudly of all her domestic achievements and telling herself piteously that Jethro would never allow her to be displaced. Of course, she had known that he would marry some day, but then, in her own mind, she had picked him out a wife: pretty, soft-looking Nancy from Turle House. A wife—pliable and a little foolish, like Nancy—would not have mattered. But a cousin on the mother’s side! An unknown girl from London! A girl whose capital “P” trailed to the edge of the envelope!