Mr. Poskitt's Nightcaps. Stories of a Yorkshire Farmer

The incidents – mean, ignoble – of his wrong came up before him as he sat there waiting, and their colours were as fresh as ever. Five-and-twenty years before he had been on the verge of marriage with Lavinia Deane, celebrated all the countryside over for her beauty and her vivacity. Everything was arranged; the wedding-day was fixed; the guests invited; the bride's finery sent home. Suddenly came news that made women weep and men smile. Almost on the eve of the wedding Lavinia ran away with Richard Sutton, and was married to him in a distant town. It was a bad business, said everybody, for Richard Sutton had been Martin Nelthorp's bosom friend from childhood, and was to have been his best man at the wedding. Nobody could conceive how the thing had come about; the girl had always seemed to be in love with Martin, and had never been seen in company with Sutton. But there the facts were – they were married, and Martin Nelthorp was a bitterly disappointed and wronged man. The man who broke the ill news to him would never speak of how he received that news, of what passed between them, or of what he said on hearing of the falseness of his sweetheart and the treachery of his friend, but it was commonly rumoured that he swore some dreadful oath of vengeance on the man and woman who had wrecked his life. And the neighbours and the people of the district watched eagerly to see what would happen.

But years went on and nothing happened. Richard Sutton and his wife stayed away from the village for some time; there was no necessity for their immediate return, for Sutton had a fine business as a corn-miller and could afford to appoint a capable manager in his absence. But they came back at last, and as Martin Nelthorp's farm was within a mile of the mill, the busybodies wondered how things would go when the two men met. Somehow they never did meet – at least, no one ever heard of their meeting. Nelthorp kept himself to his farm; Sutton to his mill. Years went by, and things resolved themselves into a state of quiescence or indifferentism: the men passed each other in the market-place or on the highroad and took no heed. But keen-eyed observers used to note that when they passed in this way Sutton used to go by with averted head and downcast eye, while Nelthorp strode or rode on with his head in the air and his eye fixed straight before him.

Whether there had been a curse put upon them or not, Sutton and his wife did not thrive. Almost from the time of their marriage the business went down. In his grandfather's and father's days there had been little competition; the opening up of the countryside by railways made a great difference to Sutton's trade. His machinery became out of date, and he neglected to replace it with new until much of his business had slipped away from him. One way and another things went from bad to worse; he had to borrow, and to borrow again, always hoping for a turn in the tide which never came. And eventually, through the instrumentality of Mr. Postlethwaite, everything that he had was mortgaged to Martin Nelthorp.

Martin, during these years, had prospered exceedingly. He had been fortunate in everything in his life, except his love affair. He had money to begin with – plenty and to spare of it – and he knew how to lay it out to the best advantage. He was one of the first to see the importance of labour-saving machinery and to introduce it on his land in good time. Again, there was nothing to distract his attention from his land. He put all thought of marriage out of his head when Lavinia proved false to him; indeed, he was never afterwards known to speak to a woman except on business. For some years he lived alone in the old farmhouse in which he had been born. Then his only sister lost her husband, and came to live with Martin, bringing with her her one child, a boy, who had been named after his uncle. Very soon she, too, died, and the boy henceforward formed Martin's one human interest. He devoted himself to him; educated him; taught him all that he himself knew of farming, and let it be known that when his time came his nephew would step into his shoes. The two were inseparable; now, when the boy had come to man's age and the man had grown grey, they were known for many a mile round as Old Martin and Young Martin.

Old Martin knew, as he sat by the parlour fire, that the old feeling of hatred against Richard Sutton was by no means dead within him. He had robbed him of the woman he loved, the only woman he ever could love, and, as the solicitor had said, the old wound still rankled. Well, it was in his power now to take his revenge – his enemy was at his feet. But – the woman? She, too, would be ruined, she would be a beggar, an outcast. It would be turning her out on the road. Well – his face grew stern and his eyes hard as he thought of it – had she not once turned him out on a road, longer, harder to tread than that? An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth…

It never occurred to him to ask himself if there were any children who might be affected.

The man who presently came in to keep his appointment with Martin remarked afterwards that he had never known Mr. Nelthorp so hard and determined in bargaining as he was that evening.

When the bargaining was done Martin Nelthorp got on his horse and rode home to his comfortable fireside. It was always a pleasure to him to get under his own roof-tree after a long day on the land or an afternoon at market or auction. There was the evening meal in company with his nephew; the easy-chair and the newspaper afterwards; the pipe of tobacco and the glass of toddy before going to bed. And Old Martin and Young Martin, as most folk thereabouts were well aware, were more like companions than uncle and nephew; they had many tastes in common – hunting, shooting, sport in general, and the younger man was as keen a farmer as the elder. There was therefore no lack of company nor of conversation round the parlour fire at the Manor Farm.

But on this particular night, for the first time since either of them could remember, there was an unusual silence and restraint round the supper-table. Both men as a rule were good trenchermen – a life in the open air helped them to hearty and never-failing appetite. This night neither ate much, and neither seemed disposed to talk much. Old Martin knew why he himself was silent, and why he was not inclined to food – he was too full of the Sutton affair. But he wondered what made his nephew so quiet, and why he did not replenish his plate after his usual fashion. As for Young Martin he had his own thoughts to occupy him, but he, too, wondered what made the elder so obviously thoughtful.

Old Martin remained quiet and meditative all the evening. He held the newspaper in his hands, but he was not always reading it. He had his favourite pipe between his lips, but he let it go out more than once. Young Martin was similarly preoccupied. He affected to read the Mark Lane Express, but he was more often staring at the ceiling than at the printed page. It was not until after nine o'clock, at which hour they generally began to think of bed, that any conversation arose between them. Young Martin started it, and with obvious confusion and diffidence.

"There's a matter I wanted to mention to you to-night, Uncle Martin," he said. "Of course, I won't speak of it if you've aught serious to be thinking of, but you know I never keep aught back from you, and – "

"What is it, my lad?" asked the elder man. "Speak out – I was only just studying about a business matter – it's naught."

Young Martin's diffidence increased. He shuffled his feet, became very red, and opened and shut his mouth several times before he could speak.

"It's like this," he said at last. "If you've no objection I should like to get married."

Old Martin started as if he had been shot. He stared at his nephew as though he had said that he was going to fly.

"Married!" he exclaimed. "Why, my lad – goodness be on us, you're naught but a youngster yet!"

"I'm twenty-six, uncle," said Young Martin.

"Twenty-six! Nay, nay – God bless my soul, well, I suppose you are. Time goes on so fast. Twenty-six! Aye, of course," said Old Martin. "Aye, you must be, my lad. Well, but who's the girl?"

Young Martin became more diffident than ever. It seemed an age to him before he could find his tongue. But at last he blurted the name out, all in a jerk.

"Lavinia Sutton!"

Martin Nelthorp dropped his pipe and his paper. He clutched the back of his elbow-chair and stared at his nephew as he might have stared at a ghost. When he spoke his own voice seemed to him to be a long, long way off.

"Lavinia Sutton?" he said hoarsely. "What – Sutton of the mill?"

"Yes," answered Young Martin. Then he added in a firm voice: "She's a good girl, Uncle Martin, and we love each other true."

Old Martin made no immediate answer. He was more taken aback, more acutely distressed, than his nephew knew. To cover his confusion he got up from his chair and busied himself in mixing a glass of toddy. A minute or two passed before he spoke; when he did speak his voice was not as steady as usual.

"He's a poor man, is Sutton, my lad," he said.

"I know that," said Young Martin stoutly. "But it's Lavinia I want – not aught from him."

"He's in a very bad way indeed," remarked the elder man. "Very bad."

Young Martin made no reply. Old Martin took a long pull at the contents of his glass and sat down.

"I didn't know Sutton had children," he said absently.

"There's only Lavinia," said his nephew.

Lavinia! The reiteration of the name cut him like a knife: the sound of it sent him back nearly thirty years. Lavinia! And no doubt the girl would be like her mother.

"You're no doubt aware, my lad," he said, after another period of silence, during which his nephew sat watching him, "you're no doubt aware that me and the Suttons is anything but friends. They – the man and his wife – wronged me. Never mind how. They wronged me – cruel!"

Young Martin knew all about it, but he was not going to say that he did.

"That was not Lavinia's fault, uncle," he said softly. "Lavinia – she wouldn't wrong anybody."

Old Martin thought of the time when he had – faith in women. He sighed, and drinking off his toddy, rose heavily, as if some weight had been put on him.

"Well, my lad," he said, "this is one of those things in which a man has to choose for himself. I shouldn't like to have it on my conscience that I ever came between a man and a woman that cared for each other. But we'll talk about it to-morrow. I'm tired, and I've got to look round yet."

Then he went out to fulfil his nightly task, never neglected, never devolved to any one else, of looking round the farmstead before retiring to rest. His nephew noticed that he walked wearily.

Outside, in the fold around which horses and cattle were resting or asleep in stall or byre, Martin Nelthorp stood and stared at the stars glittering high above him in a sky made clear by October frost. He was wondering what it was that had brought this thing upon him – that the one thing he cared for in the world should seek alliance with the enemies of his life who now, by the ordinance of God, lay in his power. He had given Young Martin all the love that had been crushed down and crushed out; he was as proud of him as if the lad had been his own son by the woman he cared for; he meant to leave him all that he had; he was ambitious for him, and knowing that he would be a rich man he had some dreams of his nephew's figuring in the doings of the county, as councillor or magistrate – honours which he himself had persistently refused. And it had never once come within his scheme of things that the boy should fix his affections on the daughter of the enemy – it had been a surprise to him to find out that he even knew her.

Martin Nelthorp walked up and down his fold and his stackyard for some time, staring persistently at the stars. Though he did not say so to himself, he knew that that astute old attorney, Postlethwaite, was right when he said that old wounds rankle. He knew, too, that however much a man may strive to put away the thought from himself, there is still enough of the primitive savage left in all of us to make revenge sweet. And he had suffered through these people – suffered as he had never thought to suffer. He looked back and remembered what life had been to him up to the day when the news of a man's treachery and a woman's weakness had been brought to him, and he clenched his fists and set his teeth, and all the old black hatred came welling up in his heart.

"He shan't have her!" he said. "He shan't have her! A good girl! – what good could come of stock like that?"

Then he went indoors and up to his chamber, and Young Martin heard him walking up and down half the night. When he himself got down next morning his uncle had gone out: the housekeeper, greatly upset by the fact, seeing that such a thing had never happened within her fifteen years' experience of him, said that the master had had no more breakfast than a glass of milk and a crust of bread, and she hoped he was not sickening for an illness.

At that moment Martin Nelthorp was riding along the russet lanes towards the market-town. There had been a strong frost in the night, and the sky above him was clear as only an autumn sky can be. All about him were patches of red and yellow and purple, for the foliage was changing fast, and in the hedgerows there were delicate webs of gossamer. Usually, as a great lover of Nature, he would have seen these things – on this morning he rode straight on, grim and determined.

He was so early at Mr. Postlethwaite's office that he had to wait nearly half-an-hour for the arrival of that gentleman. But when Mr. Postlethwaite came his client lost no time in going straight to his point.

"I want all papers of mine relating to that Sutton affair," he said. "Before I settle what I shall do I must read through 'em myself. Give me the lot."

Mr. Postlethwaite made some would-be facetious remark as to legal phraseology, but Martin Nelthorp paid no attention to it. He carried the papers away with him in a big envelope, and riding straight home at a smart pace, took them into the little room which he used as an office, and went carefully through them merely to see that they were all there. That done, he tore certain of them in half, and enclosing everything in another cover, he addressed it to Richard Sutton.

Then Old Martin went into the parlour and found Young Martin there, cleaning a gun. He clapped him on the shoulder, and the young man, looking up, saw that something had gone out of his elder's eyes and face.

"Now, my lad!" said Old Martin cheerily. "You can marry the girl – and you can go and make the arrangements this morning. And while you're there you can give this packet to Richard Sutton – he'll understand what it is."

Then, before his nephew could find his tongue, Martin Nelthorp strode over to the kitchen door and called lustily for his breakfast.

CHAPTER IX

AN ARCADIAN COURTSHIP

Sweetbriar Farm, when I went to visit my cousin there, seemed to me a crystallization of all the storied sweets of Arcadia as one reads of them in the poets and the dreamers. The house itself was some five hundred years old; it had diamond-paned windows framed in ivy; on one side, where there was no ivy, the grey walls were covered with clematis and honeysuckle and jessamine. There was a walled garden, gay with blossom; there was an orchard, where the blossom fell on lush grass in which golden daffodils sprang up. At the end of the orchard ran a stream, brown and mysterious, in whose deeper pools lurked speckled trout. All about the house and the garden and the orchard the birds sang, for the nesting and breeding season was scarce over, and at night, in a coppice close by, a nightingale sang its heart out to the rising moon.

Within the old farmstead everything was as Arcadian as without. The sitting-room – otherwise the best parlour – was a dream of old oak, old china, old pewter, and old pictures. It smelt always of roses and lavender – you could smoke the strongest tobacco there without offence, for the flower-scent was more powerful. A dream, too, was my sleeping-chamber, with lavender-kept linen, its quaint chintz hangings, and its deep window-seat, in which one could sit of a night to see the moonlight play upon garden and orchard, or of an early morning to watch the dew-starred lawn sparkle in the fresh sunlight. And, once free of the house, there was the great kitchen to admire, with its mighty hearth, its old brass and pewter, its ancient grandfather clock, its flitches and hams hanging, side by side with bundles of dried herbs, from the oaken rafters; and beyond it the dairy, a cool and shadowy place where golden butter was made out of snow-white cream; and beyond that, again, the deep, dungeon-like cellar where stood the giant casks of home-brewed ale – nectar fit for the gods.

Nor were the folk who inhabited this Arcadia less interesting than the Arcadia itself. My cousin Samuel is a fine specimen of an Englishman, with a face like the rising sun and an eye as blue as the cornflowers which grow in his hedgerows. There was his wife, a gay and bustling lady of sixty youthful years, who was never without a smile and a cheery word, and who, like her good man, had but one regret, which each bore with admirable resignation – that the Lord had never blessed them with children. There were the people who came and went about the farm – ruddy-faced and brown-faced men, young maidens and old crones, children in all stages of youthfulness. And there was also John William and there was Susan Kate.

John William Marriner – who was usually spoken of as John Willie – was the elder of the two labourers who lived in the house. He was a youth of apparently one-and-twenty years of age, and as straight and strong as a promising ash-sapling. Whether in his Sunday suit of blue serge, or in his workaday garments of corduroy, John Willie was a picture of rustic health – his red cheeks always glowed, his blue eyes were always bright; he had a Gargantuan appetite, and when he was not smiling he was whistling or singing. Up with the lark and at work all day, he spent his evenings in the company of Susan Kate.

Susan Kate was the maid-of-all-work at Sweetbriar Farm – a handsome, full-blown English rose of nineteen, with cherry cheeks and a pair of large, liquid, sloe-black eyes which made her white teeth all the whiter. It was an idyll in itself to see Susan Kate – whose surname was Sutton – milking the cows, or feeding the calves out of a tin bucket; it was still more of an idyll to watch her and John William hanging over the orchard gate of an evening, the day's work behind them and the nightingale singing in the neighbouring coppice.

It seemed to me that Mr. Marriner and Miss Sutton were certainly lovers, and that matrimony was in their view. Now and then they went to church together, Susan Kate carrying a clean handkerchief and a Prayer Book, John Willie carrying Susan Kate's umbrella. Sometimes they went for walks on a Sunday afternoon; I more than once encountered them on these occasions, and curiously observed the manner of their love-making. We invariably met in shady lanes or woodland paths – Mr. Marriner in his Sunday suit, with some hedgerow flower in his buttonhole, invariably came first, bearing Miss Sutton's umbrella, with which he would occasionally switch the grass; Miss Sutton, very rosy-cheeked, followed at a distance of two yards. They never seemed to hold any discourse one with the other, but if they looked sheepishly conscious, they were undeniably happy.

Into this apparent Paradise suddenly entered a serpent.

There came into the sitting-room one morning, when I happened to be alone there, a Susan Kate whom I had certainly not seen before. This Susan Kate had evidently spent a considerable part of the night in affliction – her eyes were red and heavy, and there was even then a suspicious quiver at the corners of her red and pouting lips. She laid the tablecloth, set the plates and the knives and forks upon the table as if it was in her mind to do an injury to them.

"Why, Susan Kate!" said I. "What is the matter?"

Susan Kate's only immediate answer was to sniff loudly, and to retire to the kitchen, whence she presently returned with a cold ham, uncarven as yet, and a crisp lettuce, either of which were sights sufficient to cheer up the saddest heart. But Susan Kate was apparently indifferent to any creature comforts. She sniffed again and disappeared again, and came back with the eggs and the toast and the tea.

"I'm afraid, Susan Kate," said I, with all the dignified gravity of middle age, "I'm afraid you are in trouble."

Susan Kate applied a corner of her apron to her left eye as she transferred a bowl of roses from the sideboard to the middle of the breakfast-table. Then she found her tongue, and I noticed that her hands trembled as she rearranged my cup and saucer.

"It's all that there Lydia Lightowler!" she burst out, with the suddenness of an April shower. "A nasty, spiteful Thing!"

I drew my chair to the table.

"And who is Lydia Lightowler, Susan Kate?" I inquired.

Susan Kate snorted instead of sniffing.

"She's the new girl at the Spinney Farm," she answered.

"Oh!" I said. "I didn't know they had a new girl at the Spinney Farm. Where's Rebecca got to?"

"'Becca's mother," replied Susan Kate, "was took ill very sudden, and 'Becca had to leave. So this here Lydia Lightowler come in her place. And I wish she'd stopped where she came from, wherever that may be!"

"Ah!" I said. "And what has Lydia Lightowler done, Susan Kate?"

Susan Kate, whose stormy eyes were fixed on something in vacancy, and who was twisting and untwisting her apron, looked as if she would like to deliver her mind to somebody.

"Well, it isn't right if a young man's been making up to a young woman for quite six months that he should start carrying on with another!" she burst out at last. "It's more than what flesh and blood can stand."

"Quite so, quite so, Susan Kate," I said. "I quite appreciate your meaning. So John Willie – "

"I had to go on an errand to the Spinney Farm last night," said Susan Kate; "to fetch a dozen of ducks' eggs it was, for the missis, and lo and behold, who should I come across walking in Low Field Lane but John William and Lydia Lightowler – a nasty cat! So when I saw them I turned and went another way, and when John William came home him and me had words, and this morning he wouldn't speak."

Here Susan Kate's tears began to flow afresh, and hearing the approach of her mistress she suddenly threw her apron over her head and rushed from the parlour, no doubt to have a good cry in some of the many recesses of the ancient farmstead. It was plain that Susan Kate's heart was fashioned of the genuine feminine stuff.

In the course of my walk that morning I crossed the field in which Mr. John William Marriner was performing his daily task. Usually he sang or whistled all day long, and you could locate him by his melody at least a quarter of a mile away. But on this particular morning – a very beautiful one – John William was silent. He neither whistled nor sang, and when I got up to him I saw that his good-natured face was clouded over. In fact, John William looked glum, not to say sulky. He was usually inclined to chat, but upon this occasion his answers were short and mainly monosyllabic, and I did not tarry by him. It was plain that John William was unhappy.

So there was a cloud over Arcadia. It appeared to increase in density. It was on a Tuesday when it first arose; after Wednesday Susan Kate wept no more, but went about with dry eyes and her nose in the air, wearing an injured expression, while John William conducted his daily avocations in a moody and sombre fashion. There were no more idylls of the orchard gate, and the farmhouse kitchen heard no merry laughter.

But on the next Monday morning I found Susan Kate laying the breakfast-table and showing undoubted signs of grief – in fact, she looked as if she had cried her eyes out. And this time there was no need to invite her confidence, for she was only too anxious to pour out her woes.

"He walked her to church and home again last night!" exclaimed Susan Kate, nearly sobbing. "And they sat in the same pew and sang out of the same book, same as what him and me used to do. And Bob Johnson, he saw them going down Low Field Lane, and he said they were hanging arms!"