LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter 4

       Domestic Life at the Ram

       Table of Contents

      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, and have got dressed directly. But no, she must sit gossiping with Emily all the time they were asleep, and then as soon as they wake up she begins to make cake —”

      “I suppose she felt she’d enjoy a pleasant chat, all quiet,” I answered.

      “But she knew quite well you were coming, and what it would be. But a woman’s no dam foresight.”

      “Nay, what does it matter” said I.

      “Sunday’s the only day we can have a bit of peace, so she might keep ’em quiet then.”

      “I suppose it was the only time, too, that she could have a quiet gossip,” I replied.

      “But you don’t know,” he said, “there seems to be never a minute of freedom. Teenie sleeps in now, and lives with us in the kitchen — Oswald as well — so I never know what it is to have a moment private. There doesn’t seem a single spot anywhere where I can sit quiet. It’s the kids all day, and the kids all night, and the servants, and then all the men in the house — I sometimes feel as if I should like to get away. I shall leave the pub as soon as I can — only Meg doesn’t want to.”

      “But if you leave the public-house — what then?”

      “I should like to get back on a farm. This is no sort of a place, really, for farming. I’ve always got some business on hand. There’s a traveller to see, or I’ve got to go to the brewers, or I’ve somebody to look at a horse, or something. Your life’s all messed up. If I had a place of my own, and farmed it in peace —”

      “You’d be as miserable as you could be,” I said.

      “Perhaps so,” he assented, in his old reflective manner. “Perhaps so! Anyhow, I needn’t bother, for I feel as if I never shall go back — to the land.”

      “Which means at the bottom of your heart you don’t intend to,” I said, laughing.

      “Perhaps so” he again yielded. “You see, I’m doing pretty well here — apart from the public-house: I always think that’s Meg’s. Come and look in the stable. I’ve got a shire mare and two nags: pretty good; I went down to Melton Mowbray with Tom Mayhew, to a chap they’ve had dealings with. Tom’s all right, and he knows how to buy, but he is such a lazy, careless devil, too lazy to be bothered to sell —”

      George was evidently interested. As we went round to the stables, Emily came out with the baby, which was dressed in a new silk frock. She advanced, smiling to me with dark eyes.

      “See, now he is good! Doesn’t he look pretty?”

      She held the baby for me to look at. I glanced at it, but I was only conscious of the near warmth of her cheek, and of the scent of her hair.

      “Who is he like?” I asked, looking up and finding myself full in her eyes. The question was quite irrelevant: her eyes spoke a whole clear message that made my heart throb; yet she answered.

      “Who is he? Why, nobody, of course! But he will be like Father, don’t you think?”

      The question drew my eyes to hers again, and again we looked each other the strange intelligence that made her flush and me breathe in as I smiled.

      “Ay! Blue eyes like your father’s — not like yours —” Again the wild messages in her looks.

      “No” she answered very softly. “And I think he’ll be jolly, like Father — they have neither of them our eyes, have they?”

      “No,” I answered, overcome by a sudden hot flush of tenderness. “No — not vulnerable. To have such soft, vulnerable eyes as you used makes one feel nervous and irascible. But you have clothed over the sensitiveness of yours, haven’t you? — like naked life, naked defenceless protoplasm they were, is it not so?”

      She laughed,

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