Collected works of j s f.., p.152
Collected Works of J S Fletcher, page 152
“Neer mind,” he said, shaking his head threateningly. “I’m noän done wi’ yon lot — I’ll mak’ Mistress Perris suffer for treatin’ me as shoo did this mornin’. There’s nobody can dew as they like wi’ me. I’m noän dependent on Mestur Perris for a job o’ work — theer’s other folk i’ t’ parish ‘at’ll employ me besides him. And I’m noän wi’out a hit o’ brass, neyther.”
“What, ye gotten summat put by like?” asked Tibby Graddige, instantly curious. “Of course, bein’ a single bachelor, ye will hey’.”
Pippany wagged his head with mysterious intent.
“Now, then, niver ye mind,” he answered. “I’m noän such a fooil as some folks think — I know a thing or two, I can tell yer. I’m happen as weel off as what Mestur Perris is, and I’m noän goin’ to be insulted by neyther him nor her.”
Thus thrown out of his regular employment, Pippany gathered together a living during the next two or three weeks by following the threshing-machine from farm to farm. It was quite true that he had some money hidden away in a corner of his cottage, but he had a liking for rum, and the store began to diminish. Pippany, however, was a man of infinite resource, and he knew many ways of eking out a living. He grew his own vegetables in his own garden; he fed, killed, cured and sold a pig every year, but reserved one flitch and one ham for his own consumption; he knew how to abstract a fat chicken from the neighbouring farmsteads now and then; he knew how to get fresh eggs without the trouble of paying for them. And upon occasion he knew how to snare a rabbit, and in the proper season his pot was not innocent of the presence of a hare. Appetising odours sometimes hung about Pippany’s cottage, and if the gamekeeper had smelt them he might have been suspicious as to their cause; but the cottage was out of the way, and when Pippany cooked it was behind a jealously-locked door.
His weekly revenue being somewhat shorn by his peremptory dismissal from Cherry-trees, Pippany’s predatory instincts were aroused, and he began to poach a little in a quiet and cautious fashion. There was no great danger in following this illegal method of obtaining food. The lord of the manor was an absentee, who never came near the village save at long intervals; the tenant of the house was an old gentleman who was too much of a recluse to care for sport; and although a gamekeeper was kept, he was more for ornament than for use. The gamekeeper certainly went to his bed at a proper and seasonable hour, and did no night patrolling of the woods and coverts which were under his care: Pippany, therefore, had little difficulty about getting a couple of rabbits when he wanted them. Now and then he gave a couple to Tibby Graddige: Tibby took them and asked no questions; it seemed to her a reasonable thing that a single gentleman who is obliged to buy bread and groceries and rum should eke out his living by appropriating ground game or anything else which costs him nothing.
Eastward of the village, and in the dip of the valley which lay beneath the uplands, whereof Taffendale’s farm and lime-quarry formed the centre point, was a thick stretch of old woodland which covered a considerable expanse of country. This was Pippany Webster’s favourite hunting-ground; he knew every yard of it, every turn of the tracks in it; he could have gone through it blindfold, or on the darkest night. In its very midst was a valley within a valley — a quiet, lonely dingle known to the village folk as Badger’s Hollow. Tradition had it that a man had been hanged there in chains, and it was true that from an ancient oak in its midst there still depended some rusty scraps and links of iron which clanked and clinked in the wind when it penetrated through the wood. Therefore, of course, Badger’s Hollow was haunted; no Martinsthorpe man or woman would ever have dreamed of venturing near it after nightfall. But Pippany Webster had no fear of ghosts, and he knew Badger’s Hollow to be a rare place for rabbits, and when the rest of the village folk were asleep he might have been found making his way through the wood to a favourite spot in this retired place, whereat he had set a snare on the previous night. There had been times when Pippany had returned from these midnight maraudings with a cock-pheasant in his company.
On the third week after his dismissal from Perris’s employ Pippany found no work to do beyond one day’s threshing. The three shillings which he received for that was not enough to provide him with rum for the week’s consumption, and he had to dip into his secret store. The fact that this was diminishing induced Pippany seriously to consider a proposition which had recently been made to him. During that spring a certain itinerant vendor of fish had started coming round Martinsthorpe and the neighbouring villages; getting into conversation with Pippany in the kitchen of the Dancing Bear, what time no one else was about, he had asked him if he ever had a few rabbits to dispose of. Pippany had returned an evasive answer at the time, but he and the fish-seller had foregathered again, and at last Pippany had a definite offer. After all, there seemed to be small danger about the matter. The country was so lonely, so houseless, about Martinsthorpe, that it would be an easy thing for the man to meet Pippany at an appointed place in some solitary by-way to receive a consignment of dead rabbits, and to pay cash for them on the spot. Pippany decided to commence business on these lines.
And so it came about that one evening, after such darkness had fallen as an early summer night brings, Pippany was in the woods on his way to Badger’s Hollow, where he hoped to find a dozen rabbits in his snares. He had traversed those woods hundreds of times o’ nights, and had never encountered human being in them. But on this night, as he went noiselessly along, he suddenly became aware of two human beings who were coming his way, and, with the rapidity of a weasel, he slipped beneath the neighbouring undergrowth and became as quiet as the motionless twigs and leaves which shrouded him. The figures which his sharp eyes had made out came nearer, passed in front of him, passed by him, went on their way into the deeper shades of the wood and disappeared. And Pippany crawled out of his shelter, muttering to himself, and as delighted as he was surprised.
“Taffendale and Perris’s wife!” he said. “An’ he wor makkin’ love to her; he had his arm round her waist. An’ her a respectable wed woman! Weel, theer is some wickedness i’ this here world. Gow, I wonder what Mistress Graddige ‘ud say to that theer?”
But before he returned home in the grey light of morning Pippany had resolved not to communicate his news to Mistress Graddige or to anybody else. He would keep the secret to himself: he was already beginning to see vaguely that it might be profitable. But there was no need to trade on it yet; he had carried out a good transaction with the vendor of fish, and rabbits ran by thousands in the woods.
“But shoo’s a bad ‘un, is yon Mistress Perris!” reflected Pippany. “An’ her that theer religious an’ all! I’ll go to t’ chappil o’ Sunda’ and hear her sing i’ t’ choyer.”
He carried this design out on Sunday, and heard Rhoda sing a solo at each of the services. She sang better than ever, and the old women wiped tears off their cheeks, and Pippany listened with his mouth wide open. But that night he watched her and Taffendale meet again, and he went home wiser than ever.
X
THE IMMEDIATE RESULT of Taffendale’s visit of advice and suggestion was that Perris suddenly turned over a new leaf and began to mend his ways. He kicked Pippany Webster clear of Cherry-trees, and engaged a more capable man who happened to be out of work at the time. He forswore the Dancing Bear and all other hostelries, and he never went to market unless it was really necessary that he should go there, nor stayed longer in the market-town than his business demanded. He was up early, and he worked hard, and Rhoda had no fault to find with him. He followed out Taffendale’s hints: Cherry-trees began to look prosperous. The under-steward reported to his superior that new stock had been put on the farm, and that Perris appeared to be doing well; the neighbouring farmers, looking over the hedges as they rode by, saw that the land was being properly treated, and came to the conclusion that its tenant had got a bit of money from somewhere. But nobody suspected Taffendale of generosity, and only Perris and his wife knew whence this help had come.
“I’m sure we owt to feel deeply obligated to Mestur Taffendale, Rhoda, my lass,” Perris would observe, as he sat smoking his pipe at his hearth of a night. “He just come i’ the nick of time, as it weer. Now, ye see, my lass, all them there bits o’ good advice as he gev’ me have all turned out well, and ye’ll see ‘at there ‘ll be no need for us to go to him nor to any other for help about t’ next half-year’s rent. He’s what I call a reight friend, is yon there man, and I hope ye feel as grateful to him as what I do, my lass.”
And Rhoda always replied that she felt very much obliged to Mr. Taffendale, and that it was very kind of him to take so much interest in them. She was more than surprised that Perris had developed such a strong line of good purpose and endeavour, and sometimes she found herself looking at him wonderingly, and speculating as to whether he was not a better man than she thought him. All his thought and attention was now given to his work; he appeared to have no time for anything else, and it was an easy matter to hoodwink and deceive him. He never asked questions of his wife when she seemed to be unduly late home from the chapel; he was, in fact, usually fast asleep in bed when Rhoda came in from her meetings with Taffendale, and he had forgotten by next morning whether she had been out or not. The new interest in his farm which Taffendale’s friendly intervention had given him had driven all other matters out of Perris’s mind; his one idea now was to make things pay, and Rhoda found that, instead of being obliged to goad him to work, she had nothing to do but to stand by and see him ceaselessly labouring. She and Taffendale looked on at Perris’s new line of conduct from a detached point of view; it suited them both that his attention was fully occupied; careful to the finest degree about their assignations, they believed that the secret between them was their own, and that they were safe from discovery. Taffendale never came to the little farmstead; now and then, riding past, he exchanged a few words with Perris over the top of the hedgerow; sometimes he talked to husband and wife together at the orchard gate: it was his idea to keep the world from knowing that he was in any way mixed up with them. The folk of the village in the valley, who rarely went up the hillside to the uplands, knew nothing of the links between the rich man at the Limepits and the Penises of the Cherry-trees.
Pippany Webster kept his knowledge of the love affairs of Mr. Taffendale and Mrs. Perris to himself during the summer that followed his summary dismissal from Perris’s employment. He had got another regular job; he could always add a half-sovereign to his week’s wages by his transactions with the itinerant fish-vendor, and there seemed to be no immediate reason for turning his knowledge to account. At that time, indeed, being in full feather as regards money, he had no idea of profiting pecuniarly by that knowledge: his great idea was to revenge himself on Rhoda. He became an adept in tracking her; many a night when she went away from the choir-practice he followed her to lonely parts of the adjacent woods, and was witness to her meetings with Taffendale, and he chuckled to himself as he thought of the time when he would expose her treachery to Perris and let the small world around them know what manner of woman she was.
“It’ll be a nice come-down for mi lady, will that theer!” he mused. “An’ a bonny come-up for t’ Methodisses to hear ‘at their fine leadin’ singer i’ t’ choyer-pen’s carryin’ on wi’ Taffendale same as if shoo wor one o’ them leet wimmen ‘at they talk about. Nobbut wait a bit, mi lass, and I’ll mak’ ye as ye’ll repent takkin’ that bit o’ brass out o’ my pocket — I will so!”
Although he told her nothing in return, Pippany extracted all the news that he could get from Tibby Graddige. He heard of the altered condition of things at Cherry-trees; of the reformation of Perris himself; of the growing prosperity which was manifesting itself in various ways. And his ferret-like wits began to put two and two together; he suddenly saw where the help had come from, and he developed long fits of thinking and scheming, all with a view to Mrs. Perris’s discomfiture. But he would bide his time — yon there Taffendale, he reminded himself, had said, when he counselled Perris to kick him out: that he, Pippany, couldn’t get far away — no, and neither could Taffendale nor Mrs. Perris get far away. He would wait — but he would be down on them when the right time came.
It was Tibby Graddige who brought Pippany news which made him think that possibly the right time had come. Entering his cottage one evening towards the end of that summer, in order to put things to rights, and incidentally to partake of the drop of rum to which its lord and master was always ready to treat her, she revealed a countenance suggestive of important tidings.
“It wodn’t surprise me to hear ‘at Mestur Perris is goin’ to come into a bit o’ money,” she observed.
“Wodn’t it?” said Pippany. “Aw! An’ wheer might it be comin’ fro’, like?”
Mrs. Graddige wiped her lips with the edge of her apron, and Pippany pushed the rum bottle over to her, and motioned her to the cracked tea-cup out of which she usually took her refreshment.
“This afternoon as ever were,” said Mrs. Graddige, having tasted her drink and made a face over it, me and Mistress Perris bein’ engaged in hingin’ out the clothes i’ that theer orchard wheer you come by your accident — and a rare mercy it were as you didn’t meet wi’ yer death, as I’ve remarked many a time and oft, and shall agen — theer come a tallygrapht, which I never remember nowt o’ t’ sort ever comin’ theer afore while I’ve known that place, and of course gev’ me t’ spasms i’ mi insides. Mestur Perris, he were down t’ little field t’other side o’ t’ orchard, a-talkin’ to Mestur Taffendale over t’ hedge top, so Mistress Perris, she oppened it. — Mercy on us V she says, just like that beer. “Mercy on us, Mestur Perris’s ‘Uncle George is dead!’”
“Who’s his Uncle George?” asked Pippany.
“His Uncle George were a draper, at Fenford. away there i’ t’ low country, and had money, bi what I heard,” answered Tibby Graddige. “I’ve heerd speyk of him afore. Howsomiver, he were dead, accordin’ to t’ tallygrapht, and Mistress Perris she waved t’ paper to Mestur Perris to come, and Mestur Taffendale, he rode his horse up t’ hedgeside wi’ him. Yer Uncle George is dead, and they want you to go at once,’ says Mistress Perris. Ye’d better change yer things and set off,’ she says. ‘An’ you won’t lose no time,’ she says, ‘‘cause there’s none so many trains that way, and it’s gettin’ on for five now, and the station’s four mile off.’ Here, I’ll tell you what,’ says Mestur Taffendale, friendly like, ‘I’ll lend yer my horse, Perris, and ye can leave him at t’ inn at Somerleigh station, and I’ll send one o’ my men over for him to-night.’ ‘Why, thankin’ you kindly, Mestur Taffendale,’ says Mestur Perris.”
“‘Aye,’ he says, ‘I’d best go,’ he says. ‘I shouldn’t wonder if mi Uncle George hes left me a bit o’ money,’ he says. — He allus promised ‘at he wod,’ he says.
“‘Why, then, be off and see after it,’ says Mestur Taffendale, and he rode t’ horse into t’ orchard, and gat off it, and they all then went into t’ house. An’ i’ less than a quarter of an hour Mestur Perris rode off on Mestur Taffendale’s horse, to go and fetch his fortune.”
“Did it say owt about t’ fortune i’ t’ tallygrapht?” inquired Pippany.
“Why, no, not as Mistress Perris read it out,” replied Mrs. Graddige. “But, of course, theer’s allus a fortune or summat o’ that sort when folks sends tallygraphts. An’ varry lucky it were, as I said to Mistress Perris, ‘at Mestur Taffendale happened to be theer to gi’ t’ poor man a lift on his horse. It ‘ud ha’ been dowly wark, walkin’ four mile to t’ station wi’ a load o’ grief on yer back, and wonderin’ all t’ way how much money t’ dead man had left yer.”
“Aye, it wod so!” agreed Pippany. “He’d feel t’ matter less when he wor mounted on hossback. An’ so Mestur Taffendale ‘ud hey to walk home on his own feet, like?”
“Why, it’s none so far fro’ t’ Cherry-trees to t’ Limepits,” observed Tibby Graddige. “Aye, he went his ways when Mestur Perris had ridden off. ‘I hope yer husband ‘ll hey’ some good news, Mrs Perris,’ he says, when he went away. ‘An’ bring home a handsome fortun’,’ he says, laughin’ — that’s what he said, did Mestur Taffendale.”
“He’ll hev’ to stop till t’ buryin’s over,” said Pippany. “They niver part wi’ a dead man’s brass till t’ corpse is i’ t’ grave — that’s t’ law, so they tell me. Them ‘at’s appointed to look after t’ corpse’s money niver pays it out until all’s overed and done wi’ — t’ way o’ buryin’.”
“Eh, an’ I wonder what t’ reason o’ that is?” inquired Tibby Graddige. “Theer mun be a reason, of course.”
“It’s so ‘at t’ dead body can’t hear what t’ relations says about it when they hev’ t’ brass ‘livered up to ’em,” replied Pippany. “Theer’s allus some on ’em ‘at isn’t satisfied wi’ what they receive, an’ then they say foul things about t’ dead corpse, and, of course, it wodn’t be reight for it to hear owt said agean it, so they allus mak’ away wi’ it afore sham’ t’ brass out — that’s t’ law, as they call it. So Mestur Perris ‘ll be away for a day or two, like?”
“Aye, and she’ll be left alone all by hersen i’ that lonely house,” answered Mrs. Graddige. “I made offer to go and stop wi’ her, but she said she were none afraid.”
“Shoo’s afraid o’ nowt, isn’t that theer,” observed Pippany. “Shoo’s as strong as onny man, shoo is. And I reckon theer’s nowt ‘at’s worth steylin’ t’ place now, whativer there may be when Mr. Perris brings his Uncle George’s fortune back wi’ him.”
But whether there was anything that was worth stealing or not at Cherry-trees, Pippany Webster could not refrain from visiting the little farmstead that night. He sat by his own fireside for a long time after Mrs. Graddige had finished her charing work, drunk her second drop of comfort, and gone away with a present of a couple of rabbits, and when he at last turned out his lights, damped his fire, and locked up the front door it was only to let himself out at a back window and to slink away in the darkness. By various quiet and devious ways he made his way up the hillside, and to the outbuildings at Cherry-trees. The clock in the church tower was striking ten when he looked cautiously round the corner of the barn and saw that a light was still burning in the house: he saw, also, that it did not proceed from the house-place, but from the parlour, a room which, according to his experience of them, the Perrises scarcely ever used.
