Crowded Out! and Other Sketches

by S. Frances Harrison

“No miss, he's not at the inn, and if he was sober, he wouldn't be at the inn, and you'll never see him, nor me, nor 'Ide yonder, nor anyone on us at all no more at the inn. For the inn's changed 'ands, miss. There's an end of Mrs. Cox, who was a mother to many, if not to Woods. There's an end to good old times and dancin' and singin', and honest Robert, though he was a cross 'un—there's an end to it all now, miss, for the inn's changed 'ands, and I'm the first in the village as knows it.”

“Good gracious. Is it possible?” said Charlotte, genuinely surprised. “Who can have succeeded Mrs. Cox and why? I thought she was so popular and making so much money, and what—what will become of the Mr. Foxleys?”

Mrs. Woods gave a triumphant grin. “It's them, theirselves, miss; it's them that 'as it now. And the younger one will be marrying Milly in a little while and settling down comfortable in the inn. It's gentlefolks and aristocrats we'll have now at the inn, miss, and 'ard workin' people like me and Woods may trudge all day and freeze all night, and never a pot of beer or a warm at the kitchen fire and meat paid regular for year in, year out!”

Charlotte stood aghast. The woman's injured volubility rushed past her as a scene outside a railway car rushes past us, leaving only one idea, one word caught at, as from the window through which we apprehend the landscape, one scene or portion of a scene enchains the eye and lingers in the mind though other scenes fly past in varied succession.

“Marry?” she repeated. “Marry! Milly, did you say? That is the girl, isn't it, Mrs. Cox's niece? Which—”

“Ay,” said the woman, “that's Milly, the 'ired girl; she's no I more than that, if she be her aunt's niece. And 'ard work for one's niece. Me and Woods, if we'd 'ad one, would have done better for her nor that, makin' her work like a slave or a dummy. Cows, and pigs, and poultry, and dish-washing, and scrubbing, and lamps, and starched fronts, and fine gentlemen—but she's well paid, she's well paid. She's to marry one of the fine gentlemen, Mr. Joseph it is, and they're to live on at the Inn with Milly as mistress, and her fine husband behind the bar, very like. Well, good-mornin', Miss Dexter; I wish you joy of the mutton. Me and Woods often says—we'll take this or that little Dexter's Oak, but it's most times forgot, for Woods is 'alf crazed, Miss Dexter, and I've got to do the whole. Good-mornin'.”

Having adjusted her bonnet and the donkey-cart to her satisfaction, Mrs. Woods drove off rather disappointed on the whole at Miss Dexter's calm demeanour. Astonishment, perplexity, doubt, contempt and disgust she had undoubtedly shown, but not a single sigh of weakness. Charlotte Dexter was not the woman to swoon or lament or even turn pale as her sister Ellen would have done. But when she came into her house and sat down in her lonely parlour, she enacted a scene which would have petrified with astonishment any inhabitant of the prosy little village in which she had dwelt so long and indeed many other people as well, for when you and I, dear reader, go to see one of these emotional plays in which the French actress writhes on the sofa; grovels on the floor, rolls up her handkerchief into a ball or tears it into strips, prays, weeps, curses, censures, implores, looks at herself in the glass until she is on the point of going mad, and strides about the stage as no woman in real life has ever been seen to stride, ending by throwing herself across an arm-chair as rigid as marble thereby assuring the audience that she is in a “dead faint”—I say, that when we see all this performed by a travelling “star,” and her truly eclectic Company, comprising a Diva, a Duenna, a Diner-out and a Devil, we are apt to look around at the placid Canadian or the matter-of-fact American audience and wonder if they understand the drift of the thing at all, the situations, the allusions, even in the slightest degree, forgetting that perhaps the most placid, most commonplace person in the theatre has gone through some crisis, some tragedy as thrilling, as subtle and as terrible as the scene we have just witnessed. “Not out of Paris,” we say, “can such things happen?” Do we know what we are saying? Is it only in Paris that hearts are won and tossed aside this night—as in the play? Is it only in Paris that honor is forgotten and promises are broken this night—as in the play? Is it only in Paris that money allures and rank dazzles, and a dark eye or a light step entrances, this night—as in the play? Is it only in Paris that nature is human and that humanity is vile, or weak, or pure, or firm, as this night in the play? Oh! in that obscure little Canadian village, a lonely old maid locked her door that morning and pulled down her blind that the daylight might not come in and see her misery, might not mock even more malignantly than the ignorant, impertinent and hard-hearted woman who had dealt her this blow. Like most women in such a crisis, she lost the habit of thought. Reason entirely deserted her, and she never dreamed but that it was true. For when a women has to own to herself that she holds no dominion over a man, that it is only too perfectly clear that the impulse of loving is all on her side and that she has neither anything to expect nor anything to fear from him, since indifference is the keynote of his attitude to her, she will all the more readily believe that he loves elsewhere, worthily or unworthily the same to her. A woman is not a noble object in such a situation. All trusting feminine instincts, all sweet emotions of hope, all sentiment, all passion even, retreat and fall away from her, leaving either a cold, bitter, heartless petrifaction, in a woman's clinging robe, or the Fury that is the twin sister of every little red-lipped, clear-eyed girl born into the world. She never dreamed but that this story was true. In fact so entirely had her woman's wit deserted her, she said to herself of course it was true. Her brain could work sufficiently to conjure up hints, phrases, words, looks, events, accidents that all bore testimony to the truth of the extraordinary tale. For it was extraordinary. Miss Dexter herself was the great grand-daughter of an Admiral, and the grand-daughter of a judge, and as such, respected all these accidents of birth which we are supposed to ignore or at least not expected to recognize in a new country. That such men as the Mr. Foxleys could make themselves as completely at home in the Inn as rumor had frequently asserted, and with truth, seemed at all times monstrous to her. She had lived so long out of England, over thirty years now, that she had forgotten the sweet relations that prevailed there between the aristocracy or landed gentry and their inferiors. The Mr. Foxleys were simply doing in Canada what they would have done had they been still in England, only they were assisted in so doing by the unusually English surroundings in which they found themselves. Miss Dexter looked around her in the yellow inclosed light. There was a sampler in a frame, worked by herself when a little child, another exactly similar, worked by Ellen, a couple of fine old family portraits in heavy gilt frames, half a dozen ivory miniatures scattered about on the walls, some good carvings in ivory, a rare old Indian shawl festooned over the wooden mantle-board, a couple of skins on the floor, a corner piece of furniture known as a “whatnot” crowded with bits of egg-shell china, birds' eggs and nests, a few good specimens of spar and coral and a profusion of plants everywhere. It was all neat, respectable, even dignified, superior. There was no such other room in the village. In the village? There were not many at that time even in the town. Sooner than part with the eggshell china or the Indian shawl the Miss Dexters had suffered the pains of poverty and hunger; these cherished reminders of an absent father and an artistic youth could never be lost or borne away by the hands of a stranger. And how glad those foolish Miss Dexters had been to possess such beautiful and interesting objects when it pleased Mr. George Foxley to drink tea out of the cups on summer afternoons on the verandah of the little cottage looking up into the splendid vault of the mighty oak, or when Mr. Joseph would wind the Indian shawl round his silly head in the winter evenings when the draughts of cold air would rush in through the thin walls. These and other memories crowded into Charlotte Dexter's brain as she looked around her room, crowded thick and fast, crowded fast and furious, surged, broke, leaving an empty moment of perfect blankness, then crowded again thicker, faster, surged and seethed and then broke again, leaving in the void of perfect blankness this time a fixed idea, a resolve, a determination, seen in the dark like a luminous point of phosphorus.

That afternoon as Farmer Wise was driving slowly along the road, the main road leading through Ipswich to the town, he was accosted by Miss Dexter from her verandah. She had her jacket on and held her bonnet in her hand.

“Can you give me a seat as far as the Albion?” said she. “I would have sent a message to you yesterday if I had known I was going. But if it will not trouble you—”

“Oh! no trouble no trouble at all, Miss Dexter,” replied Farmer Wise. “I'm sorry I've only the waggon to offer ye. But I'm takin' in apples as you see, nine barrel of 'em, and only a waggon will do for them.”