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if you don’t call that scandylos —!’ said old Ma
“Stainwright, and Meg began to cry. You don’t know, Cyril! She sobbed fit to break her heart. I felt as if I could have killed him.
“That old gran’ma began talking to him, and he laughed at her. I do hate to hear a man laugh when he’s half drunk. It makes my blood boil all of a sudden. That old grandmother backs him up in everything, she’s a regular nuisance. Meg has cried to me before over the pair of them. The wicked, vulgar old thing that she is —”
I went home to Woodside early in September. Emily was staying at the Ram. It was strange that everything was so different. Nethermere even had changed. Nethermere was no longer a complete, wonderful little world that held us charmed inhabitants. It was a small, insignificant valley lost in the spaces of the earth. The tree that had drooped over the brook with such delightful, romantic grace was a ridiculous thing when I came home after a year of absence in the south. The old symbols were trite and foolish.
Emily and I went down one morning to Strelley Mill. The house was occupied by a labourer and his wife, strangers from the north. He was tall, very thin, and silent, strangely suggesting kinship with the rats of the place. She was small and very active, like some ragged domestic fowl run wild. Already Emily had visited her, so she invited us into the kitchen of the mill, and set forward the chairs for us. The large room had the barren air of a cell. There was a small table stranded towards the fireplace, and a few chairs by the walls; for the rest, desert spaces of flagged floor retreating into shadow. On the walls by the windows were five cages of canaries, and the small sharp movements of the birds made the room more strange in its desolation. When we began to talk the birds began to sing, till we were quite bewildered, for the little woman spoke Glasgow Scotch, and she had a hare lip. She rose and ran towards the cages, crying herself like some wild fowl, and flapping a duster at the warbling canaries.
“Stop it, stop it,” she cried, shaking her thin weird body at them. “Silly little devils, fools, fools, fools!!” and she flapped the duster till the birds were subdued. Then she brought us delicious scones and apple jelly, urging us, almost nudging us with her thin elbows to make us eat.
“Don’t you like ’em, don’t you? Well, eat ’em, eat ’em then. Go on, Emily, go on, eat some more. Only don’t tell Tom — don’t tell Tom when ‘e comes in”— she shook her head and laughed her shrilling, weird laughter.
As we were going she came out with us, and went running on in front. We could not help noting how ragged and unkempt was her short black skirt. But she hastened around us, hither and thither like an excited fowl, talking in her high-pitched, unintelligible manner. I could not believe the brooding mill was in her charge. I could not think this was the Strelley Mill of a year ago. She fluttered up the steep orchard bank in front of us. Happening to turn round and see Emily and me smiling at each other she began to laugh her strident, weird laughter, saying, with a leer:
“Emily, he’s your sweetheart, your sweetheart, Emily! You never told me!” and she laughed aloud.
We blushed furiously. She came away from the edge of the sluice gully, nearer to us, crying:
“You’ve been here o’ nights, haven’t you, Emily — haven’t you?” and she laughed again. Then she sat down suddenly, and pointing above our heads, shrieked:
“Ah, look there “— we looked and saw the mistletoe. “Look at her, look at her! How many kisses a night, Emily? — Ha! Ha! Kisses all the year! Kisses o’ nights in a lonely place.”
She went on wildly for a short time, then she dropped her voice and talked in low, pathetic tones. She pressed on us scones and jelly and oat-cakes, and we left her.
When we were out on the road by the brook Emily looked at me with shamefaced, laughing eyes. I noticed a small movement of her lips, and in an instant I found myself kissing her, laughing with some of the little woman’s wildness.
Chapter 4
Domestic Life at the Ram
George was very anxious to receive me at his home. The Ram had as yet only a six days’ licence, so on Sunday afternoon I walked over to tea. It was very warm and still and sunny as I came through Greymede. A few sweethearts were sauntering under the horse-chestnut trees, or crossing the road to go into the fields that lay smoothly carpeted after the hay-harvest.
As I came round the flagged track to the kitchen door of the inn I heard the slur of a baking-tin and the bang of the oven door, and Meg saying crossly:
“No, don’t you take him, Emily — naughty little thing! Let his father hold him.”
One of the babies was crying.
I entered, and found Meg all flushed and untidy, wearing a large white apron, just rising from the oven. Emily, in a cream dress, was taking a red-haired, crying baby from out of the cradle. George sat in the small arm-chair, smoking and looking cross.
“I can’t shake hands,” said Meg, rather flurried. “I am all floury. Sit down, will you —” and she hurried out of the room. Emily looked up from the complaining baby to me and smiled a woman’s rare, intimate smile, which says: “See, I am engaged thus for a moment, but I keep my heart for you all the time.”
George rose and offered me the round arm-chair. It was the highest honour he could do me. He asked me what I would drink. When I refused everything, he sat down heavily on the sofa, frowning, and angrily cudgelling his wits for something to say — in vain.
The room was large and comfortably furnished with rush-chairs, a glass-knobbed dresser, a cupboard with glass doors, perched on a shelf in the corner, and the usual large sofa whose cosy loose-bed and pillows were covered with red cotton stuff. There was a peculiar reminiscence of victuals and drink in the room; beer, and a touch of spirits, and bacon. Teenie, the sullen, black-browed servant girl came in carrying the other baby, and Meg called from the scullery to ask her if the child were asleep. Meg was evidently in a bustle and a flurry, a most uncomfortable state.
“No,” replied Teenie, “he’s not for sleep this day.”
“Mend the fire and see to the oven, and then put him his frock on,” replied Meg testily. Teenie set the black-haired baby in the second cradle. Immediately he began to cry, or rather to shout his remonstrance. George went across to him and picked up a white furry rabbit, which he held before the child.
“Here, look at bun-bun! Have your nice rabbit! Hark at it squeaking”
The baby listened for a moment, then, deciding that this was only a put-off, began to cry again. George threw down the rabbit and took the baby, swearing inwardly. He dandled the child on his knee.
“What’s up then? — What’s up wi’ thee? Have a ride then — dee-dedee-dedee.”
But the baby knew quite well what was the father’s feeling towards him, and he continued to cry.
“Hurry up, Teenie” said George as the maid rattled the coal on the fire. Emily was walking about hushing her charge, and smiling at me, so that I had a peculiar pleasure in gathering for myself the honey of endearment which she shed on the lips of the baby. George handed over his child to the maid, and said to me with patient sarcasm:
“Will you come in the garden?”
I rose and followed him across the sunny flagged yard, along the path between the bushes. He lit his pipe and sauntered along as a man on his own estate does, feeling as if he were untrammeled by laws or conventions.
“You know,” he said, “she’s a dam rotten manager.”
I laughed, and remarked how full of plums the trees were.
“Yes” he replied heedlessly —“you know she ought to have sent the girl out with the kids this afternoon,