A pair of blue eyes
had been all taken down, and Stephen had gone upstairs to change his
clothes, Mrs. Smith’s mind seemed to recover a lost thread.
“Really our clock is not worth a penny,” she said, turning to it and
attempting to start the pendulum.
“Stopped again?” inquired Martin with commiseration.
“Yes, sure,” replied Mrs. Smith; and continued after the manner of
certain matrons, to whose tongues the harmony of a subject with a
casual mood is a greater recommendation than its pertinence to the
occasion, “John would spend pounds a year upon the jimcrack old thing,
if he might, in having it claned, when at the same time you may doctor
it yourself as well. ‘The clock’s stopped again, John,’ I say to him.
‘Better have en claned,’ says he. There’s five shillings. ‘That clock
grinds again,’ I say to en. ‘Better have en claned,’ ’a says again.
‘That clock strikes wrong, John,’ says I. ‘Better have en claned,’ he
goes on. The wheels would have been polished to skeletons by this time
if I had listened to en, and I assure you we could have bought a
chainey-faced beauty wi’ the good money we’ve flung away these last ten
years upon this old green-faced mortal. And, Martin, you must be wet.
My son is gone up to change. John is damper than I should like to be,
but ’a calls it nothing. Some of Mrs. Swancourt’s servants have been
here—they ran in out of the rain when going for a walk—and I assure you
the state of their bonnets was frightful.”
“How’s the folks? We’ve been over to Castle Boterel, and what wi’
running and stopping out of the storms, my poor head is beyond
everything! fizz, fizz fizz; ’tis frying o’ fish from morning to
night,” said a cracked voice in the doorway at this instant.
“Lord so’s, who’s that?” said Mrs. Smith, in a private exclamation, and
turning round saw William Worm, endeavouring to make himself look
passing civil and friendly by overspreading his face with a large smile
that seemed to have no connection with the humour he was in. Behind him
stood a woman about twice his size, with a large umbrella over her
head. This was Mrs. Worm, William’s wife.
“Come in, William,” said John Smith. “We don’t kill a pig every day.
And you, likewise, Mrs. Worm. I make ye welcome. Since ye left Parson
Swancourt, William, I don’t see much of “ee.”
“No, for to tell the truth, since I took to the turn-pike-gate line,
I’ve been out but little, coming to church o’ Sundays not being my duty
now, as ’twas in a parson’s family, you see. However, our boy is able
to mind the gate now, and I said, says I, ‘Barbara, let’s call and see
John Smith.’”
“I am sorry to hear yer pore head is so bad still.”
“Ay, I assure you that frying o’ fish is going on for nights and days.
And, you know, sometimes ’tisn’t only fish, but rashers o’ bacon and
inions. Ay, I can hear the fat pop and fizz as nateral as life; can’t
I, Barbara?”
Mrs. Worm, who had been all this time engaged in closing her umbrella,
corroborated this statement, and now, coming indoors, showed herself to
be a wide-faced, comfortable-looking woman, with a wart upon her cheek,
bearing a small tuft of hair in its centre.
“Have ye ever tried anything to cure yer noise, Maister Worm?” inquired
Martin Cannister.
“Oh ay; bless ye, I’ve tried everything. Ay, Providence is a merciful
man, and I have hoped He’d have found it out by this time, living so
many years in a parson’s family, too, as I have, but ’a don’t seem to
relieve me. Ay, I be a poor wambling man, and life’s a mint o’
trouble!”
“True, mournful true, William Worm. ’Tis so. The world wants looking
to, or ’tis all sixes and sevens wi’ us.”
“Take your things off, Mrs. Worm,” said Mrs. Smith. “We be rather in a
muddle, to tell the truth, for my son is just dropped in from Indy a
day sooner than we expected, and the pig-killer is coming presently to
cut up.”
Mrs. Barbara Worm, not wishing to take any mean advantage of persons in
a muddle by observing them, removed her bonnet and mantle with eyes
fixed upon the flowers in the plot outside the door.
“What beautiful tiger-lilies!” said Mrs. Worm.
“Yes, they be very well, but such a trouble to me on account of the
children that come here. They will go eating the berries on the stem,
and call ’em currants. Taste wi’ junivals is quite fancy, really.”
“And your snapdragons look as fierce as ever.”
“Well, really,” answered Mrs. Smith, entering didactically into the
subject, “they are more like Christians than flowers. But they make up
well enough wi’ the rest, and don’t require much tending. And the same
can be said o’ these miller’s wheels. ’Tis a flower I like very much,
though so simple. John says he never cares about the flowers o’ ’em,
but men have no eye for anything neat. He says his favourite flower is
a cauliflower. And I assure you I tremble in the springtime, for ’tis
perfect murder.”
“You don’t say so, Mrs. Smith!”
“John digs round the roots, you know. In goes his blundering spade,
through roots, bulbs, everything that hasn’t got a good show above
ground, turning ’em up cut all to slices. Only the very last fall I
went to move some tulips, when I found every bulb upside down, and the
stems crooked round. He had turned ’em over in the spring, and the
cunning creatures had soon found that heaven was not where it used to
be.”
“What’s that long-favoured flower under the hedge?”
“They? O Lord, they are the horrid Jacob’s ladders! Instead of praising
’em, I be mad wi’ ’em for being so ready to bide where they are not
wanted. They be very well in their way, but I do not care for things
that neglect won’t kill. Do what I will, dig, drag, scrap, pull, I get
too many of ’em. I chop the roots: up they’ll come, treble strong.
Throw ’em over hedge; there they’ll grow, staring me in the face like a
hungry dog driven away, and creep back again in a week or two the same
as before. ’Tis Jacob’s ladder here, Jacob’s ladder there, and plant
’em where nothing in the world will grow, you get crowds of ’em in a
month or two. John made a new manure mixen last summer, and he said,
‘Maria, now if you’ve got any flowers or such like, that you don’t
want, you may plant ’em round my mixen so as to hide it a bit, though
’tis not likely anything of much value will grow there.’ I thought,
‘There’s them Jacob’s ladders; I’ll put them there, since they can’t do
harm in such a place;’ and I planted the Jacob’s ladders sure enough.
They growed, and they growed, in the mixen and out of the mixen, all
over the litter, covering it quite up. When John wanted to use it about
the garden, ’a said, ‘Nation seize them Jacob’s ladders of yours,
Maria! They’ve eat the goodness out of every morsel of my manure, so
that ’tis no better than sand itself!’ Sure enough the hungry mortals
had. ’Tis my belief that in the secret souls o’ ’em, Jacob’s ladders be
weeds, and not flowers at all, if the truth was known.”
Robert Lickpan, pig-killer and carrier, arrived at this moment. The
fatted animal hanging in the back kitchen was cleft down the middle of
its backbone, Mrs. Smith being meanwhile engaged in cooking supper.
Between the cutting and chopping, ale was handed round, and Worm and
the pig-killer listened to John Smith’s description of the meeting with
Stephen, with eyes blankly fixed upon the table-cloth, in order that
nothing in the external world should interrupt their efforts to conjure
up the scene correctly.
Stephen came downstairs in the middle of the story, and after the
little interruption occasioned by his entrance and welcome, the
narrative was again continued, precisely as if he had not been there at
all, and was told inclusively to him, as to somebody who knew nothing
about the matter.
“‘Ay,’ I said, as I catched sight o’ en through the brimbles, ‘that’s
the lad, for I d’ know en by his grand-father’s walk;’ for ’a stapped
out like poor father for all the world. Still there was a touch o’ the
frisky that set me wondering. ’A got closer, and I said, ‘That’s the
lad, for I d’ know en by his carrying a black case like a travelling
man.’ Still, a road is common to all the world, and there be more
travelling men than one. But I kept my eye cocked, and I said to
Martin, ‘’Tis the boy, now, for I d’ know en by the wold twirl o’ the
stick and the family step.’ Then ’a come closer, and a’ said, ‘All
right.’ I could swear to en then.”
Stephen’s personal appearance was next criticised.
“He d’ look a deal thinner in face, surely, than when I seed en at the
parson’s, and never knowed en, if ye’ll believe me,” said Martin.
“Ay, there,” said another, without removing his eyes from Stephen’s
face, “I should ha’ knowed en anywhere. ’Tis his father’s nose to a T.”
“It has been often remarked,” said Stephen modestly.
“And he’s certainly taller,” said Martin, letting his glance run over
Stephen’s form from bottom to top.
“I was thinking ’a was exactly the same height,” Worm replied.
“Bless thy soul, that’s because he’s bigger round likewise.” And the
united eyes all moved to Stephen’s waist.
“I be a poor wambling man, but I can make allowances,” said William
Worm. “Ah, sure, and how he came as a stranger and pilgrim to Parson
Swancourt’s that time, not a soul knowing en after so many years! Ay,
life’s a strange picter, Stephen: but I suppose I must say Sir to ye?”
“Oh, it is not necessary at present,” Stephen replied, though mentally
resolving to avoid the vicinity of that familiar friend as soon as he
had made pretensions to the hand of Elfride.
“Ah, well,” said Worm musingly, “some would have looked for no less
than a Sir. There’s a sight of difference in people.”
“And in pigs likewise,” observed John Smith, looking at the halved
carcass of his own.
Robert Lickpan, the pig-killer, here seemed called upon to enter the
lists of conversation.
“Yes, they’ve got their particular naters good-now,” he remarked
initially. “Many’s the rum-tempered pig I’ve knowed.”
“I don’t doubt it, Master Lickpan,” answered Martin, in a tone
expressing that his convictions, no less than good manners, demanded
the reply.
“Yes,” continued the pig-killer, as one accustomed to be heard. “One
that I knowed was deaf and dumb, and we couldn’t make out what was the
matter wi’ the pig. ’A would eat well enough when ’a seed the trough,
but when his back was turned, you might a-rattled the bucket all day,
the poor soul never heard ye. Ye could play tricks upon en behind his
back, and a’ wouldn’t find it out no quicker than poor deaf Grammer
Cates. But a’ fatted well, and I never seed a pig open better when a’
was killed, and ’a was very tender eating, very; as pretty a bit of
mate as ever you see; you could suck that mate through a quill.
“And another I knowed,” resumed the killer, after quietly letting a
pint of ale run down his throat of its own accord, and setting down the
cup with mathematical exactness upon the spot from which he had raised
it—“another went out of his mind.”
“How very mournful!” murmured Mrs. Worm.
“Ay, poor thing, ’a did! As clean out of his mind as the cleverest
Christian could go. In early life ’a was very melancholy, and never
seemed a hopeful pig by no means. ’Twas Andrew Stainer’s pig—that’s
whose pig ’twas.”
“I can mind the pig well enough,” attested John Smith.
“And a pretty little porker ’a was. And you all know Farmer Buckle’s
sort? Every jack o’ em suffer from the rheumatism to this day, owing to
a damp sty they lived in when they were striplings, as ’twere.”
“Well, now we’ll weigh,” said John.
“If so be he were not so fine, we’d weigh en whole: but as he is, we’ll
take a side at a time. John, you can mind my old joke, ey?”
“I do so; though ’twas a good few years ago I first heard en.”
“Yes,” said Lickpan, “that there old familiar joke have been in our