Innocent : her fancy and his fact Part 6

The name broke from his lips like a cry of suffering, and she ran to him trembling.

"Dad, dear, what is it?"

He caught her outstretched hands and held them close.

"Nothing--nothing!" he answered, drawing his breath quick and hard--"Nothing, la.s.s! No pain--no--not that! I'm only frightened!

Frightened!--think of it!--me frightened who never knew fear! And I--I wouldn't tell it to anyone but you--I'm afraid of what's coming--of what's bound to come! 'Twould always have come, I know--but I never thought about it--it never seemed real! It never seemed real--"

Here the door opened, admitting a flood of cheerful light from the outside pa.s.sage, and Robin Clifford entered.

"Hullo, Uncle! Supper's ready!"

The old man's face changed instantly. Its worn and scared expression smoothed into a smile, and, loosening his hold of Innocent, he straightened himself and stood erect.

"All right, my lad! You've worked pretty late!"

"Yes, and we've not done yet. But we shall finish stacking tomorrow,"

answered Clifford--"Just now we're all tired and hungry."

"Don't say you're thirsty!" said the old farmer, his smile broadening.

"How many barrels have been tapped to-day?"

"Oh, well! You'd better ask Landon,"--and Clifford's light laugh had a touch of scorn in it,--"he's the man for the beer! I hardly ever touch it--Innocent knows that."

"More work's done on water after all," said Jocelyn. "The horses that draw for us and the cattle that make food for us prove that. But we think we're a bit higher than the beasts, and some of us get drunk to prove it! That's one of our strange ways as men! Come along, lad! And you, child,"--here he turned to Innocent--"run and tell Priscilla we're waiting in the Great Hall."

He seemed to have suddenly lost all feebleness, and walked with a firm step into what he called the Great Hall, which was distinguished by this name from the lesser or entrance hall of the house. It was a n.o.bly proportioned, very lofty apartment, richly timbered, the roof being supported by huge arched beams curiously and intricately carved. Long narrow boards on stout old trestles occupied the centre, and these were spread with cloths of coa.r.s.e but spotlessly clean linen and furnished with antique plates, tankards and other vessels of pewter which would have sold for a far larger sum in the market than solid silver. A tall carved chair was set at the head of the largest table, and in this Farmer Jocelyn seated himself. The men now began to come in from the fields in their work-a-day clothes, escorted by Ned Landon, their only attempt at a toilet having been a wash and brush up in the outhouses; and soon the hall presented a scene of lively bustle and activity.

Priscilla, entering it from the kitchen with her two a.s.sistants, brought in three huge smoking joints on enormous pewter dishes,--then followed other good things of all sorts,--vegetables, puddings, pasties, cakes and fruit, which Innocent helped to set out all along the boards in tempting array. It was a generous supper fit for a "Harvest Home"--yet it was only Farmer Jocelyn's ordinary way of celebrating the end of the haymaking,--the real harvest home was another and bigger festival yet to come. Robin Clifford began to carve a sirloin of beef,--Ned Landon, who was nearly opposite him, actively apportioned slices of roast pork, the delicacy most favoured by the majority, and when all the knives and forks were going and voices began to be loud and tongues discursive, Innocent slipped into a chair by Farmer Jocelyn and sat between him and Priscilla. For not only the farm hands but all the servants on the place were at table, this haymaking supper being the annual order of the household. The girl's small delicate head, with its coronal of wild roses, looked strange and incongruous among the rough specimens of manhood about her, and sometimes as the laughter became boisterous, or some bucolic witticism caught her ear, a faint flush coloured the paleness of her cheeks and a little nervous tremor ran through her frame. She drew as closely as she could to the old farmer, who sat rigidly upright and quiet, eating nothing but a morsel of bread with a bowl of hot salted milk Priscilla had put before him. Beer was served freely, and was pa.s.sed from man to man in leather "blackjacks" such as were commonly used in olden times, but which are now considered mere curiosities. They were, however, ordinary wear at Briar Farm, and had been so since very early days. The Great Hall was lighted by tall windows reaching almost to the roof and traversed with shafts of solid stonework; the one immediately opposite Farmer Jocelyn's chair showed the very last parting glow of the sunset like a dull red gleam on a dark sea. For the rest, thick home-made candles of a torch shape fixed into iron sconces round the walls illumined the room, and burned with unsteady flare, giving rise to curious lights and shadows as though ghostly figures were pa.s.sing to and fro, ruffling the air with their unseen presences. Priscilla Priday, her wizened yellow face just now reddened to the tint of a winter apple by her recent exertions in the kitchen, was not so much engaged in eating her supper as in watching her master. Her beady brown eyes roved from him to the slight delicate girl beside him with inquisitive alertness. She felt and saw that the old man's thoughts were far away, and that something of an unusual nature was troubling his mind. Priscilla was an odd-looking creature but faithful;--her attachments were strong, and her dislikes only a shade more violent,--and just now she entertained very uncomplimentary sentiments towards "them doctors" who had, as she surmised, put her master out of sorts with himself, and caused anxiety to the "darling child," as she invariably called Innocent when recommending her to the guidance of the Almighty in her daily and nightly prayers. Meanwhile the noise at the supper table grew louder and more incessant, and sundry deep potations of home-brewed ale began to do their work. One man, seated near Ned Landon, was holding forth in very slow thick accents on the subject of education:

"Be eddicated!" he said, articulating his words with difficulty,--"That's what I says, boys! Be eddicated! Then everything's right for us! We can kick all the rich out into the mud and take their goods and enjoy 'em for ourselves. Eddication does it! Makes us all we wants to be,--members o' Parli'ment and what not! I've only one boy,--but he'll be eddicated as his father never was--"

"And learn to despise his father!" said Robin, suddenly, his clear voice ringing out above the other's husky loquacity. "You're right!

That's the best way to train a boy in the way he should go!"

There was a brief silence. Then came a fresh murmur of voices and Ned Landon's voice rose above them.

"I don't agree with you, Mr. Clifford," he said--"There's no reason why a well-educated lad should despise his father."

"But he often does," said Robin--"reason or no reason."

"Well, you're educated yourself," retorted Landon, with a touch of envy,--"You won a scholars.h.i.+p at your grammar school, and you've been to a University."

"What's that done for me?" demanded Robin, carelessly,--"Where has it put me? Just nowhere, but exactly where I might have stood all the time. I didn't learn farming at Oxford!"

"But you didn't learn to despise your father either, did you, sir?"

queried one of the farm hands, respectfully.

"My father's dead," answered Robin, curtly,--"and I honour his memory."

"So your own argument goes to the wall!" said Landon. "Education has not made you think less of him."

"In my case, no," said Robin,--"but in dozens of other cases it works out differently. Besides, you've got to decide what education IS. The man who knows how to plough a field rightly is as usefully educated as the man who knows how to read a book, in my opinion."

"Education," interposed a strong voice, "is first to learn one's place in the world and then know how to keep it!"

All eyes turned towards the head of the table. It was Farmer Jocelyn who spoke, and he went on speaking:

"What's called education nowadays," he said, "is a mere smattering and does no good. The children are taught, especially in small villages like ours, by men and women who often know less than the children themselves. What do you make of Danvers, for example, boys?"

A roar of laughter went round the table.

"Danvers!" exclaimed a huge red-faced fellow at the other end of the board,--"Why he talks yer 'ead off about what he's picked up here and there like, and when I asked him to tell me where my son is as went to Mexico, blowed if he didn't say it was a town somewheres near New York!"

Another roar went round the table. Farmer Jocelyn smiled and held up his hand to enjoin silence.

"Mr. Danvers is a teacher selected by the Government," he then observed, with mock gravity. "And if he teaches us that Mexico is a town near New York, we poor ignorant farm-folk are bound to believe him!"

They all laughed again, and he continued:

"I'm old enough, boys, to have seen many changes, and I tell you, all things considered, that the worst change is the education business, so far as the strength and the health of the country goes. That, and machine work. When I was a youngster, nearly every field-hand knew how to mow,--now we've trouble enough to find an extra man who can use a scythe. And you may put a machine on the gra.s.s as much as you like, you'll never get the quality that you'll get with a well-curved blade and a man's arm and hand wielding it. Longer work maybe, and risk of rain--but, taking the odds for and against, men are better than machines. Forty years we've scythed the gra.s.s on Briar Farm, and haven't we had the finest crops of hay in the county?"

A chorus of gruff voices answered him:

"Ay, Mister Jocelyn!"

"That's right!"

"I never 'member more'n two wet seasons and then we got last load in 'tween showers," observed one man, thoughtfully.

"There ain't never been nothin' wrong with Briar Farm hay crops anyway--all the buyers knows that for thirty mile round," said another.

"And the wheat and the corn and the barley and the oats the same,"

struck in the old farmer again--"all the seed sown by hand and the harvest reaped by hand, and every man and boy in the village or near it has found work enough to keep him in his native place, spring, summer, autumn and winter, isn't that so?"

"Ay, ay!"

"Never a day out o' work!"

"Talk of unemployed trouble," went on Jocelyn, "if the old ways were kept up and work done in the old fas.h.i.+on, there'd be plenty for all England's men to do, and to feed fair and hearty! But the idea nowadays is to rush everything just to get finished with it, and then to play cards or football, and get drunk till the legs don't know whether it's land or water they're standing on! It's the wrong way about, boys! It's the wrong way about! You may hurry and scurry along as fast as you please, but you miss most good things by the way; and there's only one end to your racing--the grave! There's no such haste to drop into THAT, boys! It'll wait! It's always waiting! And the quicker you go the quicker you'll get to it! Take time while you're young! That time for me is past!"

He lifted his head and looked round upon them all. There was a strange wild look in his old eyes,--and a sudden sense of awe fell on the rest of the company. Farmer Jocelyn seemed all at once removed from them to a height of dignity above his ordinary bearing. Innocent's rose-crowned head drooped, and tears sprang involuntarily to her eyes. She tried to hide them, not so well, however, but that Priscilla Priday saw them.

"Now, lovey child!" she whispered,--"Don't take on! It's only the doctors that's made him low like and feelin' blue, and he ain't takin'

sup or morsel, but we'll make him have a bite in his own room afterwards. Don't you swell your pretty eyes and make 'em red, for that won't suit me nor Mr. Robin neither, come, come!--that it won't!"

Innocent put one of her little hands furtively under the board and pressed Priscilla's rough knuckles tenderly, but she said nothing. The silence was broken by one of the oldest men present, who rose, tankard in hand.

"The time for good farming is never past!" he said, in a hearty voice--"And no one will ever beat Farmer Jocelyn at that! Full cups, boys! And the master's health! Long life to him!"