Women of the Country Part 1

Women of the Country.

by Gertrude Bone.

CHAPTER I

When I was a child I lived in a small sea-coast town, with wide, flat sands. The only beautiful thing in the place--a town of no distinction--were the sunsets over this vast, level expanse. I remember them at intervals, as one recalls things seen pa.s.sing in a train through a solitary landscape. I seem to see myself, a child with a child's imagination, standing on those wet sands, looking out over their purple immensity to the glittering line of the tide on the horizon, and to see again the sun in such a wide heaven that it seemed to have the world to itself, and to watch the changes in the sky as it sank, drawing with it the light. These great sands were dangerous at times, shifting in whirling and irresistible rushes of water, and changing the course of the channel, which was unaltered by the tide and which always lay out a gleaming artery from the almost invisible sea.

It was Sunday morning--a day observed with such precision in that little town that I was almost alone out of doors. A string of cart-horses, their day of rest well-earned, were being led across the sands from the level tide. The sand, uncovered by the sea for weeks, was bleached to an intolerable whiteness, but there was no wind to lift it, and the sea was tranquil, its little waves all hastening in one direction, like a shoal of fish making for a haven. The sun was already changing its early glory to heat. All the erections for amus.e.m.e.nt on the sh.o.r.e looked a little foolish in that solitude. I returned to the town along the empty asphalt roads and went with my companions to church. It was a church whose pretensions were high and genteel. Nothing of a personal nature was ever heard from its well-bred pulpit. The hymns were discreetly chosen to avoid excitement, and a conversion would have given offence. The minister for that day was a young man from the poorer end of the town, and I remember, even as a child, being disturbed by the announcement of his first hymn, "Rock of Ages." Even the organ blundered as it played so common a tune as Rousseau's Dream, and I, who learning counterpoint, feared to be seen singing so ordinary a melody, lest it should set me down as unmusical for ever. But soon my concern was with the unfortunate young man, for he was, I felt sure, quite ignorant of the habits of such congregations as ours, and would certainly offend our best people. For after that we read the parable of the Prodigal Son and sang, "The Sands of Time are Sinking." Then I forgot even this curious lapse from our Sunday custom, so clearly did the tale now begun by the preacher bring again before my eyes those inhuman sands, that lonely sky, and the unstayed power of the sea.

He had chosen, so he said, for his service this morning the favourite hymns, Scripture, and text of an obscure member of the congregation taken from earth in a strange manner the day before. For more years than he could remember, there had come and gone in that congregation an old blind man. He had heard him spoken of from time to time in a kindly contemptuous, way as "Old Born Again," and it was by that nickname he would speak of him this morning, but he could find no place in his intelligence for contempt, for Old Born Again now saw and knew the things which prophets and kings desire to look into.

He had lived for many years thus. He was a widower living with a married daughter, whose husband was a fisherman. She herself kept a greengrocer's shop of the poorer kind. She had five children, the eldest, a boy of thirteen, earning his living with her in the shop. He and his blind grandfather went round the district every day with a small cart and horse, selling their vegetables from house to house and thus enlarging their custom. The boy guided the horse and his grandfather helped with the selling and the money. In the early morning at the end of each week they drove the horse and cart to the sea's edge to wash them, making always for the steady channel which ran unaltering through the empty sand, when the tide was down. This morning they had gone as usual, and when they reached the water (the old man was blind you will remember, and his companion a child), they knew no difference in its appearance. A man who was gathering c.o.c.kles at a distance knew and called to them, running towards them, but the old man did not see and the boy was intent upon guiding the horse and cart into the water.

That night the sand, so unstable, had moved beneath the pressure of an unusual tide. The course of the channel had changed, and when the horse, treading confidently, had approached the edge, it stepped straight into deep water and, losing its balance, being also impeded by the cart, dragged with it the vehicle, the old blind man and the child to unavoidable death. Their bodies had been recovered but too late. "Let us pray," added the minister, "for the mourners."

To a child the fact of death is not very terrible, because the fact of life is not yet understood; but I never see in imagination the level and sad-coloured country of my childhood, stretching out of sight to the sea across an expanse of sand, a country whose pomp was in the heavens, whose hills were the clouds, without seeing also, journeying across it, an old blind man, a child, and a dumb creature, to disappear for ever under the wide sky, beneath the sun, within that great waste of waters.

The life of the poor, coloured outwardly with the same pa.s.sivity and acceptance of their lot as the rest of visible nature, disciplined by the same forces which break the floods and the earth, remains for most of us querulous, ign.o.ble, disappointing. What can be said suggestive or profound of the life that is born, that labours its full day with its face to the ground, from which it looks for its sustenance, and at last is carried, spent, to the square ground which holds the memory and remains of the dead.

Yet one day the sun which has risen, stirring the only emotion in the landscape, will rise upon a tragic, significant, or patient human group, for whom sun and seasons and the wide heavens are small, whose emotion is yet contained within the room of a mean dwelling and whose destiny is accomplished within a tilled field.

Under a sky that is infinite and a heaven accessible to all, the poor "work for their living," bowed always a little towards tragedy yet understanding joy, from the bitterness of life and death and the added anguish of ignorance drinking often their safety.

CHAPTER II

It was evening in the country at harvest-time, at that moment towards sundown when the light, about to be withdrawn, glows with a fulness of gold which makes it seem impossible that it can ever die. The earth was heavy with fruition, every square field brimful of the ungathered harvest. The heavy corn swayed almost by reason of its own weight. A thunderstorm would beat it prostrate in an hour. All the crops were full and good, some almost level with the low hedges. Heat seemed to radiate from the yellow ma.s.s, that scorching heat which in autumn never seems to leave the earth, but to linger about the ground, surrounding the responsive and standing corn. But the day had brought no heaviness to the sky, blue without a cloud, only a grave and increasing heat, a sun which blinded the eyes and seemed to take no account of anything save its steady purpose of ripening the fruit and grain.

Looking round one saw that it was not an impressive country. There were no hills, no grandeurs, no proximity to the sea. It was a country whose pageants were made, not by great heights or sombre woods, but by the orderly and coloured procession of the harvests; where one recovered the preoccupied sight of little children, seeing so much to absorb one near the ground that one did not seek the horizon; where matters were measured and done not by the clock but by the sun's height, by midday heat and darkness, by the lowing of cows or the calling of lambs.

A woman, well on the way to middle age, sat in the house-place of a small cottage on the white high-road. Everything had been done for the night, the pigs and pony fed; the cow milked and the milk strained; the churn cleaned and the cream standing. The hens had been driven in and were almost asleep on their perches. The wood was ready for the morning and the clock had been wound up. She had not had her supper yet she did not remove her sun-bonnet or yard-boots. She cut herself a slice of stale bread and a large piece of cheese, dipped a cup in the barrel of b.u.t.termilk and sat down on a low stool with the bread and cheese in one hand and the cup of milk in the other. She was evidently in great perturbation, for at times she forgot to eat altogether and sat with the bread and cheese suspended in her hand while she thought deeply. Her rather large plain features had a dignity of expression which was pleasing, though it betrayed a tendency to melancholy. She had no frown, for her blue eyes were of excellent strength and one does not sit up late in the country. She was tall and rather bony, a strong peasant woman.

Presently she rose, her supper still unfinished, and took from a shelf, from among a medley of herbs and medicine bottles, a penny bottle of ink with a pen sticking in it. Searching in a drawer of the round table she found a large envelope on which was written, "Giant pennyworth of note."

She took from it one of the thin bluish sheets of paper, and sitting at the table, her sun-bonnet making a grotesque shadow behind her, she began to write. She wrote with little hesitation, urged by the strength of some feeling. Her handwriting was large and she made long loops to her g's.

"DEAR SIR,--Though you pa.s.sed by my cottage yesterday you are so unknown to me by sight, that I have only just discovered who it was that was brought to such a pitiable condition before me.

First, sir, let me describe to you what a sight I saw before me, when, hearing a great plunging and shouting in the road, I came out from the shippon to see what was the matter.

"I saw, sir, a strong, well-looking, well-dressed young man of twenty-six lying in the mud of the road, his foot in one stirrup of his horse, he, mad with drink cursing, first the poor horse (a very quiet stallion), then the road (a very easy one) and last, the Almighty G.o.d of love. The horse, dragged everywhere by the efforts of the young man to gain a footing, was rewarded for its patience when its master at last, by my help, regained his feet, by severe kicks in the belly, and I, a poor woman, was abused and called evil names.

"Sir! if instead of cursing the good-tempered beast or the G.o.d of love above you, you had cursed the origin of such a spectacle as you then were, your clothes covered with mud, your mouth full of blaspheming, staggering about the road pulling at the mouth of your horse--_strong drink_--you would have been a more reasonable being.

"What, sir, had the horse done to you? What had this poor woman done to you? What, sir, had your heavenly Father done to you, that you should fill your mouth with curses against us all? Your enemy was none of us, but that viper, strong drink.

"O sir! shun your enemy I beseech you. I am a woman who has had no children, but, sir, if I had been the mother of so strong and good-looking a man as you, it would have broken my heart to see you lying there muddy and cursing, a poorer sight under G.o.d's sky than the poor dumb beast that bore you.--Your obedient servant,

Ann Hilton."

The woman folded and fastened the letter and then wiped her eyes with the corner of her ap.r.o.n. She looked round the room as if to see that everything was done and went to shut the door for the night. She looked out into the lane. The cottage a little lower down had a light in the window and here and there lights shewed along the road. The night when one can no longer work out of doors matters little in the country, yet the ample stillness with distant rustling sounds pleased her and she lingered. Two young men carrying shapeless bundles on their shoulders wished her good-night as they pa.s.sed home from work. Everyone seemed to have finished with out of doors. Even the cat from the yard rubbed against her as it ran into the house, stealthily and crouching as if in fear. She turned indoors and lit the lamp, fastened the door with a wooden bolt and drew the blind before the diamond-paned window.

CHAPTER III

Anne Hilton was one of those women who have so little knowledge of the practical thoughts of those round about them, that they pa.s.s their lives half-disliked, partly respected, and mostly avoided. She had lived alone now for two years, her father, whom she had nursed, having died of the saddest human malady. He had ("as anyone might have had with such a daughter," declared the neighbours), harboured a great contempt for women, and though, being uninclined to tread the heights himself, he feared his daughter's uprightness of character, he had never lost an occasion of pouring scorn on her unpractical ways.

"Can you take it home for me, James?" would ask a neighbour, handing up a case of eggs to the cart, where James sat preparing to leave the market.

"There's no women in the cart," James would reply, and supposed he had given the required a.s.sent.

The "round-about ways of doing things," which had been the b.u.t.t of her shrewd old father, had brought upon Anne a customary air of half-readiness, so that going in suddenly, she might be found with her bonnet on and her handkerchief on the table, but one perceived she was still in her petticoat, and was making a pie for dinner. Meals, indeed, she considered as things to be got out of the way, both her own, and, to their expressed discomfort, those of other people. She herself often ate them as she went about her work, pausing to take a spoonful from a plate on the table or from the saucepan itself.

Taking the Scripture as the literal rule of the smallest details of her life, she never wore a mixture of wool and cotton, as that was forbidden to the Jews, nor would she wear any imitation of linen for the same reason. In consequence, her clothes, which were of sound material, never looked common, but always out-of-date.

She could be got (not that many people had tried to do so) to do nothing quite like other people, not from perversity as some readily declared, or a desire to "be different," but from inability to acquire the point of view from which the most ordinary actions are done. She took no money on Sunday, and this becoming known to her ne'er-do-well neighbours, they made a point of forgetting to come for milk on Sat.u.r.day.

"You must tell your mother I never sell milk on Sunday."

"Yes, Miss Hilton."

"I'll give you a little to go on with, but next week you must come for it on Sat.u.r.day."

And the child, having got what she wanted, would run off with the jug of milk and the money which should have paid for it, to repeat exactly the same offence the following week. Her reputation for queerness let her be considered fair game, and so convinced is the ordinary person that queerness is of necessity contemptible, that when she did anything which was unusual, its reason was never examined, nor did the possibility that it might be better done in that way occur to anybody. It was merely a new evidence of her oddity.

But it was especially in those points in which she felt herself moved by her religious convictions that she was most suspected. For in spite and over all her eccentricities of belief, she was genuinely religious, having the two great religious virtues, charity in judgment and sorrow for the failures of others. But again she was "different," as it is evident in this world that the failures of other people are entirely their own fault, and to be gentle in judgment is more than other people will be to you, and therefore unnecessary. So that, without being in intention a reformer, she suffered the suspicion and dislike of the reformer, being, in fact, however she might disguise it, "different"

from other people.

This constant clashing with the steadfast ideas of every one had in time produced a timidity and secretiveness in the most ordinary actions, though where she believed herself to be directed by the Spirit, she had no lack of confidence and determination. If her movements could be kept secret she would do her utmost to make them so. She would send the reply to an invitation to tea half over the country before it reached its destination. Yet she would often pray in the prayer-meeting, and had been known to do unusually bold actions as a matter of course.

When it became known that she had written a letter to the son of Squire Nuttall asking him to give up his dissipated habits, which were the scandal of the country, no one was surprised, though many were shocked, and the poorer tenants of the estate alarmed lest some indirect wrath might fall upon them. When neither Squire nor son took the smallest notice of the letter she was blamed universally as having gone too far, as if this chorus of subterranean condemnation might somehow reach the Squire, who would know that the rest of his tenants had no hand in the matter nor sympathy with the writer.

On the contrary, though she was secretive with her near acquaintances, she would become greatly communicative with a casual vendor of books, or even a vagrant to whom she had given a cup of tea, that English equivalent for a cup of cold water. She was so fearful of falling behind in sympathy with sinners that she fell into the unusual error of treating them better than the saints. She was fond of doing small generosities, especially to children, who were half afraid of her but who would eat the big Victoria plums she gave them (leading them stealthily round to the back of the house to do so), and recognize that in some sedate and mysterious way they had a friend.

She would send presents to young people whose conduct had pleased her, gifts which always excited surprise and sometimes derision. Once she sent the substantial gift of a sack of potatoes to a young husband and wife, but the present became chiefly an amusing recollection, because, not having string, she had sewed the sack with darning-wool, with the result that it burst open on the station platform before it reached its destination.

A number of books, some of an old-fashioned theology, had been left to Anne by an aunt who had had a son a Methodist preacher. This aunt had also left her a black silk dress, which Anne had received with the joyful exclamation that she knew she was really a king's daughter. The books she read ardently and critically, underlining and marking, and with them also she embarra.s.sed the vicar to whom she lent them. He, being a kind man, took the books and her comments in spite of his wife's indignation. They had formed the standard of her conversation, which was in ceremonial moments antiquated and dignified. Young women, and older men with wives to guide their perceptions, thought her absurd, but young men seldom did so. Perhaps that was because she seldom thought _them_ absurd, and understood something of the ambitions with which their heads were filled. They were not, indeed, unlike those with which her own was overflowing. Whenever she was angry it was at any meanness or injustice, which seemed to arouse in her a Biblical pa.s.sion of righteous fury.

A small meanness in another depressed her as much as if she had done it herself. Once she had walked five miles to deliver some b.u.t.ter and returned utterly dejected, not alone from fatigue, but because she had been offered nothing to eat or drink after her long tramp. It would have been useless to point out to her that she had gone on a purely business errand. It was one of those small meannesses of which she was herself incapable, and a proportion of warmth had died out of her belief.

"You know my sister Jane's son?" said a farmer's wife, who had stopped her trap at the cottage to pick up a lidded wisket in which some earthenware had been packed. "He's getting a good-looking young man and he's all for bettering himself. Well, he went and got his photo taken at Drayton and brought them in to show his mother. She was making jam at the time, and she's not an easy tongue at the best o' times. 'What's that?' she says; 'you don't mean to say that's a likeness o' thee? It looks fool enough.' She says she never saw 'em again, he went straight out and burnt 'em."

"He chose the wrong minit," said her husband beside her. "If he knew as much about women as _I_ do, for instance."