Chapter IV

An’ o’ worken’ days, oh! he do wear
Such a funny roun’ hat,—you mid know’t—
Wi’ a brim all a-strout roun’ his hair,
An’ his glissenèn eyes down below’t;
An’ a coat wi’ broad skirts that do vlee
In the wind ov his walk, round his knee.

WILLIAM BARNES.

ALL the forenoon was passed in butter-making, and in the afternoon Rosalie betook herself to the mead to superintend the operations of James and Robert. It was not until after tea that she had leisure to change her dress and make her way, by the well-known little footpath that skirted the cornfields and wound across the downs, to Isaac Sharpe’s farm.

She found that worthy standing contemplatively in the middle of his yard. There had been sheep-shearing that day, and the master had worked as hard as any of the men; now, however, the naked, ungainly-looking ewes had returned to their pasture, the newly-taken fleeces lay neatly piled up in a corner of the barn, and Isaac was at liberty to straighten his weary back, relax his muscles, and smoke the pipe of peace.

Tall, massive, and imposing was this figure of his, ever at its best in the smock-frock and serviceable corduroys and leggings of weekday wear; his wideawake, turned up at the back and projecting in front in the orthodox shovel form, was decidedly more becoming than the Sunday beaver. He started as the yard-gate creaked upon its hinges, and Rosalie’s black-robed figure passed through.

‘Why, Mrs. Fiander,’ he cried, hastening towards her, ‘be this you? I’m glad to see ye. Is there anything I can do for ’ee?’

Rosalie could hardly have defined the motive which prompted her visit; her desolate heart felt the need of sympathy; in this strange new life of hers she yearned to find herself once more, if but for a moment, in touch with the past. ‘No, Mr. Sharpe,’ she said with a little gasp, ‘I don’t think there’s anything you can do for me. I only came because I—I—oh, Mr. Sharpe, everything is going wrong!’

Isaac Sharpe took out his pipe and opened his eyes very wide.

‘Come,’ he said, ‘come—tell me what be the matter.’

‘Everything’s the matter,’ returned the widow in a shaking voice. ‘Oh, Isaac, I can’t get on without Elias!’

‘Can’t ’ee now, my dear?’ returned Isaac, blinking very hard. ‘Well, I’m sure ’t is nat’ral.’

Rosalie gave a little sob, and the farmer, stretching out a large brown hand, patted her arm soothingly.

‘Don’t ’ee take on, though,’ he said. ‘Nay now, don’t ’ee take on, my dear. Cryin’ never did nobody no good.’

‘I’m so lonely,’ went on the girl brokenly. ‘I miss him at every turn.’

‘Ye’d be like to do that,’ responded Sharpe judicially. ‘Dear, yes—ye’d be like to do that.’

‘Everything is at sixes and sevens,’ she pursued plaintively. ‘The men think they can do just as they like; it was eight o’clock before they began their mowing this morning.’

‘Well, I never!’ ejaculated Isaac. ‘Eight o’clock! What be the world comin’ to?’

‘The very maids won’t get up,’ continued Rosalie. ‘This was churning morning, and it was after five before anybody moved. None of the men came near the place until six; the cows were left in the pasture, none of the beasts were fed!’

‘Shockin’! shockin’!’ commented the farmer. ‘Dear heart alive! I never heard o’ sich doin’s!’

‘When I speak to them,’ cried Rosalie, her voice rising with the recollection of her wrongs, ‘they turn round and tell me they are all too much upset to think of work.’

‘Do they now?’ in tones of deep disgust. ‘Well, an’ that’s a pretty story!’

‘Yes. And you know, Mr. Sharpe, ’t is the last thing Elias would have wished—that the work should be neglected and everything allowed to go wrong like this; yet they seem to think me heartless for expecting things to go on as before. And the worst of it all is’—here poor Rosalie began to weep hysterically—‘they don’t any of them believe that I am sorry for Elias, and they think I’m going to marry again; and, and—two hateful, odious, impudent young men have already come to court me.’

Her sobs well-nigh choked her as she made this last announcement; and Isaac, full of concern, fell to patting her arm again.

‘Don’t ’ee now, my dear, don’t ’ee. Well, ’t is very annoyin’ for ’ee, I’m sure. There, don’t ’ee cry so. Well, well! to think on’t! Started coortin’ a’ready, have they? Well, they mid ha’ waited a bit! But come in a minute, do ’ee, Mrs. Fiander, and sit ’ee down. Dear heart alive! dear heart alive! poor Elias ’ud be terrible upset if he were to see ye a-givin’ way like this.’

He half persuaded, half propelled the still weeping widow across the yard and into his kitchen, where, sitting down near the table and covering her face with her hands under the heavy crape veil, she continued to sob until her host was nearly distracted.

‘Here, my dear, take a sup o’ this, ’t will do ye good.’

Rosalie threw back her veil and took the glass which he offered her. Raising it to her lips, she found that the dark decoction which it contained was excessively strong, unusually acid, and unspeakably nasty. Fresh tears, not prompted by sorrow this time, started to her eyes as she set down the glass.

‘Thank you, Mr. Sharpe,’ she said; ‘I am better now. I don’t think I’ll finish it. It seems very strong.’

‘Ah, it’s that,’ agreed the farmer with some pride. ‘Sloe wine Bithey d’ call it; she do make a quart every year. Wonderful good for the spasms, or sich-like. She do get taken that way sometimes in her in’ards, pore old soul! an’ she says a drop o’ this do al’ays set her to rights. Sloe wine! ah, that’s what it be called; ye’d scarce think ’twere made o’ nought but the snags what grows in the hedges—jist snags an’ a trifle o’ sugar. But I do assure ye ’t is that strong ’t will sometimes lift the cork out o’ the bottle. Now, Mrs. Fiander, ye’d best finish it; ’t is a pity to let the good stuff go to waste.’

But, as Rosalie gratefully but firmly declined, the worthy man appeased his thrifty conscience by draining the glass himself.

‘Well now, Mrs. Fiander,’ he resumed, as he set it down, ‘I be trewly sorry that ye be so vexed an’ ann’yed wi’ the men comin’ so late; but, if I may advise ’ee, be a bit stiff wi’ ’em; don’t ’ee let ’em fancy they can impose upon ’ee because ye be a woman.’

‘I assure you, Mr. Sharpe, I showed them very plainly that I was vexed this morning. I spoke as severely as I could.’

‘Lard, my dear, them chaps don’t care for words; more pertic’lar a woman’s words. Bless you! they’ve all got women-folks o’ their own, an’ they be well used to scoldin’. ’T is different wi’ us men; when we be angry we can _dang_ here and there, and use a bit o’ language. Then, d’ ye see,’ said Isaac, leaning forward confidentially, ‘the chaps understand as we be in earnest; but ’t ’ud be no manner o’ good your tryin’ to do that, my dear; ’t would n’t come nat’ral to ’ee, and they would n’t think a bit the better of ’ee for it. Nay, nay,’ he repeated mournfully, ‘they wouldn’t think the better of ’ee.’

A faint smile hovered round Rosalie’s lips, but Isaac remained quite serious.

‘A woman must show by her deeds that she be in earnest,’ he went on after a pause. ‘’T is the only way, my dear. Deeds and not words for a woman!’

Here he paused again, shaking his head reflectively. It was possible that his thoughts had travelled back to that memorable box in which his erring father had enshrined the riven locks that testified to his own transgressions and the vigorous retaliation of his wife. Isaac’s late mother had certainly been a woman of action.

‘That’s it, my dear,’ repeated Sharpe, emerging from his reverie, ‘ye’ll be forced to turn to deeds. Next time them chaps comes late, jist you up an’ fine them. Says you, “Short work desarves short pay. Bear in mind,” says you, “that accordin’ to the work shall be the wage.”’

‘Yes, I might try that,’ agreed Rosalie. ‘But the worst of it is they lose so much time and do their work so badly when they do come.’

‘Then, jist make a’ example o’ one o’ them—that’s your best plan. Give the worst o’ them the sack, and ye’ll find the others ’ull settle down like—like lambs,’ said the sheep-farmer, bringing out the simile triumphantly.

‘Thank you very much for your advice, Mr. Sharpe. I’ll take it. And now—’ she paused a moment, blushing—‘what would you recommend me to do with regard to my other difficulty? How am I to make people understand that I don’t mean to marry again?’

‘Well, a body ’ud really think they need n’t be so pushin’,’ remarked Isaac. ‘It be downright ondacent for ’em to be a-hangin’ about ’ee so soon—’

‘They have no business to think of it at all, Mr. Sharpe,’ interrupted the widow fiercely. ‘I shall never, _never_ put anyone in my dear Elias’s place!’

‘That’s very well said, my dear,’ returned Isaac, looking at her with real kindness and emotion. ‘’T is the proper spirit. I myself, as you may have heard me say, was never one to set up for wedlock. Well, ye’ve had a husband, and a good ’un, an’ you be in the right o’t to be satisfied wi’ that, just as I be satisfied wi’ havin’ no wife at all. Dear heart alive! when I were a young chap the maids did use to be castin’ their eyes at me, but I never took no notice, and when I grew more staid there was one very perseverin’ woman, I do mind—very perseverin’ she were. Ah, she come to house here, time and again, wi’ one excuse or another, and at last, so soon as I did see her comin’ I did use to shut door in her face.’

‘Why, that’s what I shall do,’ cried Rosalie, laughing, and clapping her hands—‘that’s the very thing I shall do. Thank you for the hint, Mr. Sharpe. That again, you see, will be deeds, not words.’

Isaac looked kindly at the bright face and sparkling eyes, and nodded cheerfully.

‘That be the way to take ’em.’

‘I only wish I had thought of it on Sunday,’ she went on. ‘Those two men sat and talked so long, that I was wishing them anywhere. I expected you on Sunday, Mr. Sharpe,’ she added, in an altered voice, while the smile vanished from her face.

‘Did ’ee?’ said Isaac, abashed, and guilty.

‘Yes, I did, indeed—I thought you would have come if only in memory of old times.’

‘Why, to tell the trewth, I could n’t a-bear to go nigh the place,’ blurted out the farmer. ‘Nay, nay—I’ve been a-goin’ to Littlecomb Farm Sunday after Sunday for nigh upon five and twenty year. I don’t know how you could expect me, Mrs. Fiander, to go there now as he be gone.’

He wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his smock-frock, and at this tribute to Elias’s memory his widow forgave the gruffness of Isaac’s tone, and almost, but not quite, the slight to herself.

She gazed at him for a moment in silence with a quivering lip, and he wiped his eyes again and heaved a sigh.

‘You do not think of me at all,’ said Rosalie, at last. ‘You don’t consider my loneliness, or what I feel when I sit there, looking at the two empty chairs, and thinking of how I used to sit between you, and how happy we used to be. Is n’t it worse for me to see his empty place than you? You might have come—even if it did hurt you—you might have come to bring me a word of comfort. I think you were very unkind, Mr. Sharpe!’

‘Don’t ’ee now, my dear,’ stammered Isaac, almost purple in the face, and with his usually keen eyes suffused with tears. ‘I do really feel touched to the ’eart when you look at me so pitiful and say such things. God knows I’d be main glad to comfort you, but what can the likes of I do?’

‘You could let me feel that I had still a friend,’ sobbed Rosalie. ‘You might come and sit in your old chair, and we could—we could talk about Elias.’

‘That’s trew, so we could,’ agreed Isaac in a choked voice. ‘Well, next Sunday—if I live so long—I’ll not let nothing hinder me. I’ll come, my dear. I d’ ’low I should ha’ thought of you yesterday, but I could n’t seem to think o’ nothing but how ’Lias war n’t there.’

‘Well, I shall be very glad to see you,’ said Rosalie, rising, and tremulously beginning to pull down her veil. ‘And I am very grateful for your kindness. Perhaps,’ she added hesitatingly, ‘you might be able to look in one day during the week?’

‘Nay,’ returned the farmer, ‘nay, Mrs. Fiander, not before Sunday. I be very busy to-week—we be shearin’, d’ ye see, and there’s the big mead to be cut. Nay—not before Sunday.’

‘Oh, very well,’ she responded a little stiffly; and she went out of the house and across the yard without speaking again except to say Good-bye at the gate.

The downs were now all bathed with the light of the sinking sun, and the topmost branches of the hedges which bordered the cornfields seemed turned to gold; while the banks beneath had begun already to assume the deeper tint that spoke of gathering dew—dew that the morning light would turn to a very sheet of silver; but Rosalie could only see the beauties of the world without through a mist of crape and tears.

‘I have not a friend in the world,’ she said to herself, ‘not one! Isaac would n’t even take the trouble to walk a quarter of a mile to see how I was getting on after following his advice. He is only coming on Sunday as a sort of duty, not because he wants to. Well, never mind, I will show him and everyone that I can look after myself. I want nobody’s pretended pity since nobody really cares.’

And she held up her head beneath its heavy veil, and went on her way with a stately carriage and a firm step.