“They say a deal o’ things that they ken naething aboot—like that for wan, that they keepit it oop here yestreen till a’ the hours o’ t’ night.”
“And I tell ye it’s an untruth, Simon, whoever says it—it’s just a lee, that’s what it is. I shut the door upon them with my ain hand. No a living soul but them belonging to t’house at half after eleven. Ye may tell that to whoever tellt you; and if I kent who they were I would hav’ them oop afore the coart for slander. I would tak’ justice o’ them. Lies! that’s what it is. Mr. Harry stood talking afore the door with young Selby maybe talking nonsense; but was that any fault o’ mine? Every lad o’ them a’ was oot o’ this house and home to their beds by the hoor named in the regulations. Tak’ away your butter; I think we’re wanting none the day.”
“Na, na, mistress, there’s nought to be vexed aboot,” said old Simon. “You’ve got your clash aboot the White House, and I’ve got my clash o’ the ‘Red Lion.’ There’s non’ o’ them true; but we can give and take like friends—the best o’ friends must give and take.”
“Ask you that crooked body, Isaac Oliver; he was wan, and a bonnie time he would have with the misses, or I’m mistaken. He was wan; for I saw him waiting to speak to Mr. Harry when I shut the door. He was talking with young Selby, as I tell ye, in the street, till I wished them i’ th’ moon, disturbing honest folk’s rest. He might have gone home and kept it oop with young Selby. I canna tell. If there’s any wan as blames me it’s an untruth, Simon; and as for clashin’ it’s a thing I never do. Miss Joan may have twenty lads for what I care, and high time—if she’s no to be an old maid aw her days, which is what the haill town thought.”
“I wish her nae worse,” said Simon. “I’m wan mysel’—better that than fightin’ and scratchin’, or to be frightent for what the misses will say—the missises in your way o’ business must be terribly bad for trade.”
“Well, I don’t blame them,” said the mistress of the “Red Lion,” with a momentary preference of her own side in morals to her own side in trade. But this, it may be readily guessed, was a toleration which could not last. She was beginning to discuss the missis of Isaac Oliver, when Simon took up his basket and adopted her former counsel of taking it to the other side of the house. He had heard all he wanted; but he made his circuit through the village, and left his butter here and there, with a snatch of gossip wherever he went, and no particular regard to the anxiety of his mistress. Anxiety is not much understood in the fells. Why there should be a hurry for news: why you should make an expedition expressly to learn one thing or another when there is something else to do, which you could do at the same time, was not comprehensible to old Simon. They would know “soon enough,” he thought. What was wrong with the womenfolk that they should for ever be wanting news? they would hear soon enough. It was true that he began to have a notion that Mr. Harry’s escapade, whatever it was, meant more than a visit to his brother; but what could it matter whether they knew about the “Red Lion” at ten o’clock or twelve? He went tranquilly about his business and delivered his butter, and heard everywhere about Miss Joan’s “lad.” Most of the customers thought with the mistress of the “Red Lion,” that it was “high time;” but some of them were of opinion that she would be a terrible loss. “What will ye do without her? The missis isn’t of the stirring sort, she’ll never keep the house agate,” they said. Simon did not much believe in his mistress himself, as has been already said; but being a Joscelyn, although only by marriage, he felt she was at least better than anyone else. “You have to know the missis,” he said, “before you can speak. She mayn’t be a stirring one; but t’ house is one of t’ houses as goes by itself.” When he had heard their comments, and added his share to them, Simon went leisurely home. He made no particular haste, even though his basket was lightened of its load. He had accomplished his mission very carefully; but that anyone should be especially eager about the result of it was a thing that his brain could not conceive.
In the meanwhile the time was passing very heavily at the White House. Mrs. Joscelyn had got up, after enduring the torture of lying still as long as she was capable of it, and was seated in the uneasy seat in the parlour window, gazing out, though with her work by her, with which to veil her watch should anyone come in. Joscelyn had said nothing about it last night. He had been almost conciliatory at breakfast to Joan, who thought, on the whole, that it was better to let well alone, and make no allusion to what had passed. “I will speak my mind to him sooner or later,” she said to herself; “but it comes easier when you are angry and don’t mind what you say.” Thus she did from calculation what so many people do against all calculation, resolving to take advantage of the next storm to deliver her soul. She and her father got on tolerably well when the mother was out of the way. Joscelyn spoke to his daughter about his farm affairs, about the prospects of his stables, and the horses upon which he set his hopes. He was a considerable horse-dealer, and she knew as much about them as any woman was capable of knowing. She was quite willing to discuss the points of the last new filly, and quite able to do so, and an intelligent critic, which her mother had never been. “If she knows a horse from a cow it’s all she does,” he said of his wife; and perhaps she had been sometimes a little impatient of these constant discussions; but Joan had an opinion and gave it freely. Joan ate a good breakfast, notwithstanding that half her mind was with Harry, and that she kept her eye upon the window, that she might not miss old Simon coming back—and she talked with perfect good-humour notwithstanding all that had happened. She did not care, now that it was over, about her locking-out; indeed she was of opinion that it was better not to give her father the gratification of supposing that he had produced any effect upon her. But when Mrs. Joscelyn came downstairs, appealing to her with her pale face Joan’s difficulties were much increased. She could not be hard upon her mother at such a moment; indeed she was never hard upon her mother. She entreated her not to make a fuss; not to take on; brought her a footstool; put out her work for her, and so went off to her own occupations again. “But bless my heart, I would be crazy before dinner-time if I were to sit with mother, and go over it and over it, and see her wringing her poor hands—poor dear!”
The last words were added after a pause, with involuntary tenderness. Joan was anxious, too, about her brother, so that a slight gleam of understanding had aroused her mind. Poor dear! to take on like that for every trifle, to take nothing easy, was a state of mind which irritated Joan; but this time it was not so wonderful. This time she was anxious herself, and there was a cause for it. Long before Simon came back she had rejected her own suggestion, that Harry must have gone to the “Red Lion.” And if not there, where had he gone? where had he spent the night? She kept her eyes upon the window or the door all the morning, darting forth whenever she saw any stranger approach, prepared to find a message from some cottage or outlying hamlet to bring her news of Harry. He would have the sense to send, she thought; surely he would have the sense to send word. He would know the state in which his mother would be. But the long hours of the morning went on till noon, and nobody came. They had never seemed to Joan so long before. She had never known what it was before to do her work with a divided interest, and on a strain of expectation. When she saw old Simon coming along the road with his empty basket on his arm and his hat in one hand, while with the other, and a spotted blue handkerchief, he wiped his furrowed forehead, a wild sense of impatience came over her. She marched out upon him, the big wooden spoon, with which she had been taking the cream off the milk, still in her hand. He thought she was going to attack him with this inappropriate but yet dangerous weapon. “Well?” she said, with a sort of gasp; “well?” Her fervour bewildered him, for she had been quite calm when she gave him the commission, and he stared at her with a mixture of surprise and alarm.
“Oh ay, Miss Joan, a’ well,” said old Simon. He had almost forgotten the occasion of his early visit to the “Red Lion;” or was it that desire to exasperate that sometimes seizes upon an old servant? It was all she could do not to seize him by the shoulders and shake his news out of him. She cried out in spite of herself, stamping her foot upon the hard road.
“What answer have ye brought? You have been out four hours, if you’ve been a minute. I am waiting my answer,” she cried, in a strange, half-stifled voice.