In a Quiet Village

by S. Baring-Gould

Aaron Price did not keep his treasury of stories bottled up in his own breast. He was great at retailing them, but he transferred the scenery to Wales, translated Camaralzaman and Badoura into David Jones and Sheena Williams, located every incident in some well-known spot, and thoroughly bewildered his hearers, who could not make out whether he were poking fun at them or narrating facts.

Perhaps the climax was reached when he converted Ganem the slave of Love, into the amiable, somewhat corpulent, and eminently respectable squire, Sir John Vaughan, at Llanselyf. The whole tale was told with so much circumstance and such actuality, that next Sunday, when the squire came to church, he found himself the object of intense interest, observation, and private whispered comment.

It may be remembered that in the original tale Ganem was up a tree overhanging a cemetery when he saw some slaves bury a chest, at the dead of night, in the earth. When they were gone he descended from the tree, dug down to and opened the chest, when he found it contained a lady of incomparable beauty who “as soon as she was released from her confined situation, and exposed to the open air began to sneeze, and half-opening her eyes and rubbing them exclaimed, ‘Zohorob Bostan (Flower of the Garden), Schagrom Marglan (Branch of Coral), Cassabos Souccar (Sugar-cane), Nouronnihar (Light of Day), Nagmatos Sohi (Star of the Morning), Nouzhetos Zaman (Delight of the Season), speak, where are you?’”

This, as related by the carpenter, took a very local and personal complexion. The incident was transferred to the churchyard of his own parish, and to a certain elm tree that grew there; it was Sir John Vaughan who climbed the tree, and the lady when released from the box exclaimed, “Mary Jones, my housemaid, Flower of the Garden, and you, Susanna Rees, scullery-maid, Branch of Coral; and you also, Elizabeth Thomas, tweenie maid and Sugar-cane; and you, Margaret Cole, the lady’s-maid, Light of Day, and under housemaid Joan, Star of the Morning, and third housemaid Wilmot, Delight of the Season, speak, my dear tried servants, where are you?”

Now, on this particular Sunday morning, not only was Sir John an object of great interest, but so was Lady Vaughan, and when, during the service, she sneezed, it produced a general agitation; so also were the maid-servants of the family. On their arrival there were nudgings, “Here comes Branch of Coral, and there is Light of the Day. But where is Flower of the Garden?” To which an answer came in a whisper, “Got a bad cold in her head, and can’t come to church.”

Now, a remarkable occurrence in the parish took place. Aaron, alias Haroun, fell in love, and took to courting Elizabeth Thomas, alias Sugar-cane, alias Cassabos Souccar, the tweenie maid. It took the whole parish by surprise, for Elizabeth was not beautiful; she had not the eyes or the frame, or the svelte movements or the elastic tread of the light gazelle. She was a somewhat heavily formed, broad-shouldered, pudding-faced damsel, who could not cross a room without rattling all the chimney ornaments, and who had no more imagination and genius than has a duck. And in what did the attraction consist? Why had Aaron not become enamoured of the lady’s-maid, a most willowy person with a very sweet and refined face? Why not with the kitchen-maid, the Sprig of Coral, who had indeed coralline lips, and who in time would know how to boil a potato and do a chop so as not to be done to leather. But a tweenie! and such a tweenie! The whole parish discussed it for a month. It was most astounding that the man who romanced about every one and everything and every place, should make such dead prose of his own love affair. However, after this had been debated in the servants’ hall, at the forge, in the stable, at the tavern, each such debate ended with some one remarking sententiously, “After all, it is his affair and not mine.”

It is, however, a mistake to say that Aaron’s courtship was prosaic. That it was not so was proved by one of his letters to Elizabeth Thomas, which the girl carelessly left about; and it got read, copied, and distributed through the village, and excited much admiration at the splendour of the style, till some one detected the original, of which it was but a copy, in the story of Abdul Hassan and Schemselnihar. Here is the epistle—

“Aaron Price, carpenter, to Elizabeth Thomas, tweenie maid.

“Deprived of your presence, I seek to continue the illusion, and converse with you by means of these ill-formed lines, which afford me some pleasure, while I am prevented the happiness of speaking to you.

“Patience, they say, is the remedy of all evils; yet those I suffer are increased instead of relieved by it. Although your image is indelibly engraven on my heart, my eyes nevertheless wish again to behold the original.