LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter 2

       Puffs of Wind in the Sail

       Table of Contents

      The year burst into glory to usher us forth out of the valley of Nethermere. The cherry trees had been gorgeous with heavy out-reaching boughs of red and gold. Immense vegetable marrows lay prostrate in the bottom garden, their great tentacles clutching the pond bank. Against the wall the globed crimson plums hung close together, and dropped occasionally with a satisfied plunge into the rhubarb leaves. The crop of oats was very heavy. The stalks of corn were like strong reeds of bamboo; the heads of grain swept heavily over like tresses weighted with drops of gold.

      George spent his time between the Mill and the Ram. The grandmother had received them with much grumbling but with real gladness. Meg was re-installed, and George slept at the Ram. He was extraordinarily bright, almost gay. The fact was that his new life interested and pleased him keenly. He often talked to me about Meg, how quaint and naïve she was, how she amused him and delighted him. He rejoiced in having a place of his own, a home, and a beautiful wife who adored him. Then the public house was full of strangeness and interest. No hour was ever dull. If he wanted company he could go into the smoke-room, if he wanted quiet he could sit with Meg, and she was such a treat, so soft and warm, and so amusing. He was always laughing at her quaint crude notions, and at her queer little turns of speech. She talked to him with a little language, she sat on his knee and twisted his moustache, finding small, unreal fault with his features for the delight of dwelling upon them. He was, he said, incredibly happy. Really he could not believe it. Meg was, ah! she was a treat. Then he would laugh, thinking how indifferent he had been about taking her. A little shadow might cross his eyes, but he would laugh again, and tell me one of his wife’s funny little notions. She was quite uneducated, and such fun, he said. I looked at him as he sounded this note. I remembered his crude superiority of early days, which had angered Emily so deeply. There was in him something of the prig. I did not like his amused indulgence of his wife.

      At threshing day, when I worked for the last time at the Mill, I noticed the new tendency in him. The Saxtons had always kept up a certain proud reserve. In former years, the family had moved into the parlour on threshing day, and an extra woman had been hired to wait on the men who came with the machine. This time George suggested: “Let us have dinner with the men in the kitchen, Cyril. They are a rum gang. It’s rather good sport mixing with them. They’ve seen a bit of life, and I like to hear them, they’re so blunt. They’re good studies though.”

      The farmer sat at the head of the table. The seven men trooped in, very sheepish, and took their places. They had not much to say at first. They were a mixed set, some rather small, young, and furtive looking, some unshapely and coarse, with unpleasant eyes, the eyelids slack. There was one man whom we called the Parrot, because he had a hooked nose, and put forward his head as he talked. He had been a very large man, but he was grey, and bending at the shoulders. His face was pale and fleshy, and his eyes seemed dull-sighted.

      George patronised the men, and they did not object. He chaffed them, making a good deal of demonstration in giving them more beer. He invited them to pass up their plates, called the woman to bring more bread, and altogether played mine host of a feast of beggars. The Parrot ate very slowly.

      “Come, Dad,” said George, “you’re not getting on. Not got many grinders —?”

      “What I’ve got’s in th’ road. Is’ll ‘a’e ter get ’em out. I can manage wi’ bare gums, like a baby again.”

      “Second childhood, eh? Ah well, we must all come to it,” George laughed.

      The old man lifted his head and looked at him, and said slowly:

      “You’n got ter get ower th’ first afore that.”

      George laughed, unperturbed. Evidently he was well used to the thrusts of the public house.

      “I suppose you soon got over yours,” he said.

      The old man raised himself and his eyes flickered into life. He chewed slowly, then said:

      “I’d married, an’ paid for it; I’d broke a constable’s jaw an’ paid for it; I’d deserted from the army, an’ paid for that: I’d had a bullet through my cheek in India atop of it all, by I was your age.”

      “Oh!” said George, with condescending interest, “you’ve seen a bit of life then?”

      They drew the old man out, and he told them in his slow, laconic fashion, a few brutal stories. They laughed and chaffed him. George seemed to have a thirst for tales of brutal experience, the raw gin of life. He drank it all in with relish, enjoying the sensation. The dinner was over. It was time to go out again to work.

      “And how old are you, Dad?” George asked. The Parrot looked at him again with his heavy, tired, ironic eyes, and answered:

      “If you’ll be any better for knowing — sixty-four.”

      “It’s a bit rough on you, isn’t it?” continued the young man, “going round with the threshing machine and sleeping outdoors at that time of life? I should ‘a thought you’d ‘a wanted a bit o’ comfort —”

      “How do you mean, ‘rough on me’?” the Parrot replied slowly.

      “Oh, I think you know what I mean,” answered George easily.

      “Don’t know as I do,” said the slow old Parrot.

      “Well, you haven’t made exactly a good thing out of life, have you?”

      “What d’you mean by a good thing? I’ve had my life, an’ I’m satisfied wi’ it. Is’ll die with a full belly.”

      “Oh, so you have saved a bit?”

      “No,” said the old man deliberately, “I’ve spent as I’ve gone on. An’ I’ve had all I wish for. But I pity the angels, when the Lord sets me before them like a book to read. Heaven won’t be heaven just then.”

      “You’re a philosopher in your way,” laughed George.

      “And you,” replied the old man, “toddling about your backyard, think yourself mighty wise. But your wisdom ‘11 go with your teeth. You’ll learn in time to say nothing.”

      The old man went out and began his work, carrying the sacks of corn from the machine to the chamber.

      “There’s a lot in the old Parrot,” said George, “as he’ll never tell.”

      I laughed.

      “He makes you feel, as well, as if you’d a lot to discover in life,” he continued, looking thoughtfully over the dusty straw-stack at the chuffing machine.

      After the harvest was ended the father began to deplete his I farm. Most of the stock was transferred to the Ram. George was going to take over his father’s milk business, and was going to farm enough of the land attaching to the Inn to support nine or ten cows. Until the spring, however, Mr Saxton retained his own milk round, and worked at improving the condition of the land ready for the valuation. George, with three cows, started a little milk supply in the neighbourhood of the Inn, prepared his land for the summer, and helped in the public-house.

      Emily was the first to depart finally from the Mill. She went to a school in Nottingham, and shortly afterwards Mollie, her younger sister, went to her. In October I moved to London. Lettie and Leslie were settled in their home in Brentwood, Yorkshire. We all felt very keenly our exile from Nether-mere. But as yet the bonds were not broken; only use could sever them. Christmas brought us all home again, hastening to greet each other. There was a slight change in everybody. Lettie was brighter, more imperious, and very gay; Emily was quiet, self-restrained, and looked happier; Leslie was jollier and at the same time more subdued and earnest; George looked very healthy and happy, and sounded well pleased with himself;

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