North and South
were, and it’s not till they’re gone, and one’s a little at peace, that
one can think that there were things one might have said on one’s own
side of the question. He’ll be after the men’s cans in the hay-field,
and peeping in; and then there’ll be an ado because it’s not
ginger-beer, but I can’t help it. My mother and my grandmother before me
sent good malt liquor to hay-makers, and took salts and senna when
anything ailed them; and I must e’en go on in their ways, though Mrs.
Hepworth does want to give me comfits instead of medicine, which, as she
says, is a deal pleasanter, only I’ve no faith in it. But I must go,
miss, though I’m wanting to hear many a thing; I’ll come back to you
before long.”
Mr. Bell had strawberries and cream, a loaf of brown bread, and a jug of
milk (together with a Stilton cheese and a bottle of port for his own
private refreshment), ready for Margaret on her coming down stairs; and
after this rustic luncheon they set out for a walk, hardly knowing in
what direction to turn, so many old familiar inducements were there in
each.
“Shall we go past the vicarage?” asked Mr. Bell.
“No, not yet. We will go this way, and make a round so as to come back
by it,” said Margaret.
Here and there old trees had been felled the autumn before; or a
squatter’s cottage roughly-built and decaying cottage had disappeared.
Margaret missed them each and all, and grieved over them like old
friends. They came past the spot where she and Mr. Lennox had sketched.
The white, lightning-scarred trunk of the venerable beech, among whose
roots they had sate down was there no more; the old man, the inhabitant
of the ruinous cottage, was dead; the cottage had been pulled down, and
a new one, tidy and respectable, had been built in its stead. There was
a small garden on the place where the beech-tree had been.
“I did not think I had been so old,” said Margaret after a pause of
silence; and she turned away sighing.
“Yes!” said Mr. Bell. “It is the first changes among familiar things
that make such a mystery of time to the young, afterwards we lose the
sense of the mysterious. I take changes in all I see as a matter of
course. The instability of all human things is familiar to me, to you it
is new and oppressive.”
“Let us go on to see little Susan,” said Margaret, drawing her companion
up a grassy road-way, leading under the shadow of a forest glade.
“With all my heart, though I have not an idea who little Susan may be.
But I have a kindness for all Susans, for simple Susan’s sake.”
“My little Susan was disappointed when I left without wishing her
good-bye; and it has been on my conscience ever since, that I gave her
pain which a little more exertion on my part might have prevented. But
it is a long way. Are you sure you will not be tired?”
“Quite sure. That is, if you don’t walk so fast. You see, here there are
no views that can give one an excuse for stopping to take breath. You
would think it romantic to be walking with a person ‘fat and scant o’
breath’ if I were Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Have compassion on my
infirmities for his sake.”
“I will walk slower for your own sake. I like you twenty times better
than Hamlet.”
“On the principle that a living ass is better than a dead lion?”
“Perhaps so. I don’t analyse my feelings.”
“I am content to take your liking me, without examining too curiously
into the materials it is made of. Only we need not walk at a snail’s
pace.”
“Very well. Walk at your own pace, and I will follow. Or stop still and
meditate, like the Hamlet you compare yourself to, if I go too fast.”
“Thank you. But as my mother has not murdered my father, and afterwards
married my uncle, I shouldn’t know what to think about, unless it were
balancing the chances of our having a well-cooked dinner or not. What do
you think?”
“I am in good hopes. She used to be considered a famous cook as far as
Helstone opinion went.”
“But have you considered the distraction of mind produced by all this
haymaking?”
Margaret felt all Mr. Bell’s kindness in trying to make cheerful talk
about nothing, to endeavour to prevent her from thinking too curiously
about the past. But she would rather have gone over these dear-loved
walks in silence, if indeed she were not ungrateful enough to wish that
she might have been alone.
They reached the cottage where Susan’s widowed mother lived. Susan was
not there. She was gone to the parochial school. Margaret was
disappointed, and the poor woman saw it, and began to make a kind of
apology.
“Oh! it is quite right,” said Margaret. “I am very glad to hear it. I
might have thought of it. Only she used to stop at home with you.”
“Yes, she did; and I miss her sadly. I used to teach her what little I
knew at nights. It were not much to be sure. But she were getting such a
handy girl, that I miss her sore. But she’s a deal above me in learning
now.” And the mother sighed.
“I’m all wrong,” growled Mr. Bell. “Don’t mind what I say. I’m a hundred
years behind the world. But I should say, that the child was getting a
better and simpler, and more natural education stopping at home, and
helping her mother, and learning to read a chapter in the New Testament
every night by her side, than from all the schooling under the sun.”
Margaret did not want to encourage him to go on by replying to him, and
so prolonging the discussion before the mother. So she turned to her and
asked,
“How is old Betty Barnes?”
“I don’t know,” said the woman rather shortly. “We’se not friends.”
“Why not?” asked Margaret, who had formerly been the peace-maker of the
village.
“She stole my cat.”
“Did she know it was yours?”
“I don’t know. I reckon not.”
“Well! could not you get it back again when you told her it was yours?”
“No! for she’d burnt it.”
“Burnt it!” exclaimed both Margaret and Mr. Bell.
“Roasted it!” explained the woman.
It was no explanation. By dint of questioning, Margaret extracted from
her the horrible fact that Betty Barnes, having been induced by a gipsy
fortune-teller to lend the latter her husband’s Sunday clothes, on
promise of having them faithfully returned on the Saturday night before
Goodman Barnes should have missed them, became alarmed by their
non-appearance, and her consequent dread of her husband’s anger, and
as, according to one of the savage country superstitions, the cries of a
cat, in the agonies of being boiled or roasted alive; compelled (as it
were) the powers of darkness to fulfil the wishes of the executioner,
resort had been had to the charm. The poor woman evidently believed in
its efficacy; her only feeling was indignation that her cat had been
chosen out from all others for a sacrifice. Margaret listened in horror;
and endeavoured in vain to enlighten the woman’s mind; but she was
obliged to give it up in despair. Step by step she got the woman to
admit certain facts, of which the logical connexion and sequence was
perfectly clear to Margaret; but at the end, the bewildered woman simply
repeated her first assertion, namely, that “it were very cruel for sure,
and she should not like to do it; but that there was nothing like it for
giving a person what they wished for; she had heard it all her life; but
it were very cruel for all that.” Margaret gave it up in despair, and
walked away sick at heart.
“You are a good girl not to triumph over me,” said Mr. Bell.
“How? What do you mean?”
“I own I am wrong about schooling. Anything rather than have that child
brought up in such practical paganism.”
“Oh! I remember. Poor little Susan! I must go and see her; would you
mind calling at the school?”
“Not a bit. I am curious to see something of the teaching she is to
receive.”
They did not speak much more, but thridded their way through many a
bosky dell, whose soft green influence could not charm away the shock
and the pain in Margaret’s heart, caused by the recital of such cruelty;
a recital too, the manner of which betrayed such utter want of
imagination, and therefore of any sympathy with the suffering animal.
The buzz of voices, like the murmur of a hive of busy human bees, made
itself heard as soon as they emerged from the forest on the more open
village-green on which the school was situated. The door was wide open,
and they entered. A brisk lady in black, here, there, and everywhere,
perceived them, and bade them welcome with somewhat of the hostess-air
which, Margaret remembered, her mother was wont to assume, only in a
more soft and languid manner, when any rare visitors strayed in to
inspect the school. She knew at once it was the present Vicar’s wife,
her mother’s successor; and she would have drawn back from the interview
had it been possible; but in an instant she had conquered this feeling,
and modestly advanced, meeting many a bright glance of recognition, and
hearing many a half-suppressed murmur of “It’s Miss Hale.” The Vicar’s
lady heard the name, and her manner at once became more kindly. Margaret
wished she could have helped feeling that it also became more
patronizing. The lady held out a hand to Mr. Bell, with,—
“Your father, I presume, Miss Hale. I see it by the likeness. I am sure
I am very glad to see you, sir, and so will the Vicar be.”
Margaret explained that it was not her father, and stammered out the
fact of his death; wondering all the time how Mr. Hale could have borne
coming to revisit Helstone, if it had been as the Vicar’s lady supposed.
She did not hear what Mrs. Hepworth was saying, and left it to Mr. Bell
to reply, looking round, meanwhile, for her old acquaintances.
“Ah! I see you would like to take a class, Miss Hale. I know it by
myself. First class stand up for a parsing lesson with Miss Hale.”
Poor Margaret, whose visit was sentimental, not in any degree
inspective, felt herself taken in; but as in some way bringing her in
contact with little eager faces, once well-known, and who had received
the solemn rite of baptism from her father, she sate down, half losing
herself in tracing out the changing features of the girls, and holding
Susan’s hand for a minute or two, unobserved by all, while the first
class sought for their books, and the Vicar’s lady went as near as a
lady could towards holding Mr. Bell by the button, while she explained
the Phonetic system to him, and gave him a conversation she had had with
the Inspector about it.
Margaret bent over her book, and seeing nothing but that—hearing the
buzz of children’s voices, old times rose up, and she thought of them,
and her eyes filled with tears, till all at once there was a pause—one
of the girls was stumbling over the apparently simple word “a,”
uncertain what to call it.
“A, an indefinite article,” said Margaret, mildly.
“I beg your pardon,” said the Vicar’s wife, all eyes and ears; “but we
are taught by Mr. Milsome to call ‘a’ an—who can remember?”
“An adjective absolute,” said half-a-dozen voices at once. And Margaret
sate abashed. The children knew more than she did. Mr. Bell turned away,
and smiled.
Margaret spoke no more during the lesson. But after it was over, she
went quietly round to one or two old favourites, and talked to them a
little. They were growing out of children into great girls; passing out
of their recollection in their rapid development, as she, by her three
year’s absence, was vanishing from theirs. Still she was glad to have
seen them all again, though a tinge of sadness mixed itself with her
pleasure. When school was over for the day, it was yet early in the
summer afternoon; and Mrs. Hepworth proposed to Margaret that she and
Mr. Bell should accompany her to the parsonage, and see—the word
“improvements” had half slipped out of her mouth, but she substituted
the more cautious term “alterations” which the present Vicar was making.