Title: Perris of the Cherry-trees
Author: J S Fletcher
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Language:  English
Date first posted: June 2008
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Title: Perris of the Cherry-trees
Author: J S Fletcher



I


Pippany Webster, handy-man and only labourer to Abel Perris, the small
farmer who dragged a bare living out of Cherry-trees, the little holding
at the top of the hill above Martinsthorpe, came lazily up the road from
the village one May afternoon, leading a horse which seemed as fully
inclined to laziness as Pippany himself. Perris had left home for a day
or two, and had apportioned his man a certain fixed task to accomplish by
the time of his return: Pippany, lid it so pleased him, might have
laboured steadily at it until that event happened. And for the whole of
the first day and half of the next he had kept himself to the work, but
at noon on that second day it was borne in upon him that one of the two
horses, which formed the entire stable of the establishment, required
shoeing, and after eating his dinner, he had led it down the hill to the
smithy near the cross-roads in Martinsthorpe. There, and in the kitchen
of the Dancing Bear, close by, where there was ale and tobacco and
gossip, he had contrived to spend the greater part of the afternoon. He
would have stayed longer amidst such pleasant surroundings, but for the
fact that supper-time was approaching.

It was difficult, looking at man and horse, to decide as to which most
suggested helplessness and incompetence. The horse showed itself to be a
poor man's beast in every line and aspect of its ill-shaped, badly-fed
body, in the listless droop of its head, in its ungroomed, rough-haired
coat, in the very indecision with which it set down its oversized,
sprawling feet. It had a dull, listless eye, the eye of an equine
outcast; there was an evident disposition in it to stop on any
provocation, to crop the fresh green of the grass from the broad
stretches of turf on the wayside, to nibble at the tender shoots of the
hedgerows, to do anything that needed little effort. It breathed heavily
as it breasted the hill, following the man who slouched in front, his
head drooping from his bent shoulders, his lips, still moist and sticky
from the ale he had drunk, sucking mechanically at a foul clay pipe. He
was a little more fully attired than the scarecrows in the neighbouring
fields, but there was all over him the aimlessness, the ineptitude, the
purposelessness of the unfit. His old hat, shapeless and colourless,
shaded a face which suggested nothing but dull stupidity, and was only
relieved from utter vacancy by a certain slyness and craftiness of
expression. He shambled in his walk, and his long arms, the finger-tips
of which reached below his knees, wagged and waved in front of him as he
forged ahead, as though they were set loose in their sockets, his small,
pig-like eyes fixed on the few inches of high-road which lay immediately
before his toes. From the foot of the hill to its crest those eyes were
never lifted.

And yet, the crest of the hill once gained, a landscape presented itself
over which most folk would have gazed with pleasure and appreciation. On
all sides the country stretched away in a great plateau, thickly wooded,
and just then smiling in the clear light and fresh, unsullied tints and
colours of spring-tide. The place to which the unkempt man was leading
the unkempt horse was in itself a picture. It stood, a small but very old
farmhouse, with a high sloping roof, dormer windows, and tall chimneys,
in t he angle made by the meeting of two roads; before i t lay a
flower-garden, in one corner of which rose an ancient cedar-tree; behind
it stretched a wide-spreading orchard, filled, for the most part, with
cherry-trees, just then in the full glory of pink and white blossom. I
immediately in front of it, on the opposite side of the highway, rose a
great grove of chestnut-trees; they, too, were in bloom, and the wax-like
clusters made little pyramids of light against the, glossy green of the
widespreading leaves. And over everything was the clear blue of the May
sky, and in the hedgerows and the coppices were the first signs of the
flowering of the hawthorn.

Pippany Webster saw nothing of all this. He shambled slowly round the
corner of the high-road into the lane which led towards the woods, and
made a boundary on that side to Perris's farmstead, into which he let
himself by a ramshackle door that opened on a range of dilapidated
buildings. These buildings stood between the old house and the cherry
orchard; the lane ran at the back of them; a farm-fold lay in front of
them, fenced off from the rear of the house by a low stone wall. Against
this wall, on the fold side, was a stone trough; above it a leaden spout
projected through the wall; on the other, the house side of the wall, was
a pump, which communicated with the well below. The human animals in the
house and the brute animals in the field both drank water from a spring
thirty feet beneath them, into which the runnings of fold and byre and
stable percolated in some indefinite degree about which neither ever
speculated.

The range of buildings into which Pippany Webster dragged the newly-shod
horse was characteristic of what is usually seen on a small holding when
the holder is poor and more or less shiftless. Between it and the house
stood a dilapidated Dutch barn, empty of aught but a mess and litter of
straw on the earth flooring almost as empty was the range of buildings
itself when entered and inspected. The lower part was stable, cow-house,
piggery so far as one-half was concerned; above these offices was a
granary, and next it a chamber wherein wool might be stored; the other
half of the range, unfloored from earth to roof face, made a barn which
was nearly as destitute of straw as its Dutch substitute outside. Two
horses in the stable, three cows in the byre, a few pigs in the sty,
constituted Perris's live stock; but outside in the fold, and in the
adjoining orchard, his wife kept a pretty good establishment of
poultry--fowls, ducks, and geese--and at various times made a little
money out of it. It was well that she had some such stand-by, for the
evidences of prosperity at Cherry-trees were few. An observer, skilled in
matters of farming, having taken due stock of the animals, the condition
of the fold, the emptiness of barns and granary, the poor bits of dead
stock, ploughs, harrows, and the like, which lay rusting and woe-begone
of appearance in a lean-to shed, would have sniffed and turned up his
nose with a remark as to the folly of trying to work even fifty acres
without capital.

Pippany Webster unceremoniously turned the horse into a stable as
destitute of straw on the bouldered floor as it was empty of aught to eat
in the broken mangers. The horse looked into the manger, and at the rack
fixed in the wall above it, and turning its head gazed at Pippany. It
knew as well as Pippany knew that it and its stable companion would
presently be cast forth for the night into the adjoining grass meadow,
and that as the spring nights were still nipping cold it was only right
and just that something more warming to the belly than buttercups and
daisies should be served up before the casting forth took place. And
Pippany recognised the look and wagged his head.

"Then ye mun wait till I can cut some o' yon owd clover," he said.
"Theer's none so much left, and when it's done wi' ye'll hev' to depend
on what ye can pick up--if so be as ye're alive. There's nowt much of owt
left about this here place."

As if in proof of this assertion he lifted the lid of the old
stable-chest in which the horse-corn was kept, and gazed meditatively at
its contents. In the depths of the chest lay two or three bushels of
meal: Pippany remembered that there was none left in the granary above
the stable; he remembered, too, that he had only enough pig-meal left
wherewith to feed the pigs that night. He scratched his head dubiously.

"This is a bonny come-up!" he soliloquised. "If t' maister doesn't come
home to-morrow and bring soome brass wi' him these here animals 'll go
fro' bad to worse--if such is possible! Howsomever, I mun cut some o' yon
clover for t' hosses and t' cows."

From a nook behind the corn-chest Pippany brought forth a hay-cutting
knife, and proceeded to put an edge on it with a whetstone which he took
from a hole in the wall. And at last, armed with this and with a stable
fork whereupon he meant to impale the chunk of dried clover which he
intended to carve out of the old stack at the end of the orchard, he went
forth into the fold and crossed over to the orchard gate.

In the orchard, amidst the pink and white of the cherry-trees, two women
were hanging out the last results of a day's family washing. The lines to
which they suspended the various articles of clothing, drawn wet and
heavy from the wicker basket which they had just set down on the grass,
were fastened here and there to the trunks or branches of the trees, here
and there to certain ancient posts which were shaky in their foundations,
and looked as if a little extra weight on the lines would pull them down
altogether. There was scarcely any movement of air in the orchard; the
lighter garments stirred but feebly when they were safely pinned to the
line, the heavy ones hung straight down, motionless and inert.

Of the two women thus employed when Pippany entered the orchard, one, the
elder, Tibby Graddige, general odd-job woman to the parish, was a tall,
spare, athletic female whose every action indicated energy and strength.
When she moved, every muscle and sinew of her body seemed to be brought
into play; hands moved in unison with feet, and elbows with knees. Just
as active were the motions of her thin, straight lips and her coal-black
eyes; the way in which her hair, equally black, was drawn in straight,
severe fashion from her forehead and hidden behind an old cap fashioned
from the remains of some shred of funeral crape indicated her views of
life and of a day's work, which were to keep going at both until both
were over. She passed now from basket to line and from line to basket as
if everything of importance in the world depended upon the swiftness with
which the wet linen was hung out to dry.

The other and younger woman, Rhoda Perris, wife of Pippany's absent
master, was of a different order of femininity. She looked to be about
two-and-twenty years of age; the print gown which she wore did little to
hide a figure which sculptors would have had nothing to find fault with
had it been suggested to them as a model for the statue of something
between a Venus and a Diana. Above the medium height, generous of bosom
and hip, there was yet a curious suggestion of lissom slenderness about
her which was heightened by the print gown. Her uncovered hair, catching
the glint of the westering sun, revealed tints of gold and red and brown
accordingly as her head was turned; it fell away to her ears in natural
undulations from a centre parting, and was carelessly bound up into a
heavy coil at the nape of her neck. Beneath the low, square forehead
which the ripples of this elusively-tinted hair shaded were a pair of
large eyes, the colour of which was as elusive as the hair--at times they
seemed to be violet, at times grey, at times green. Always there was in
them a strange sleepy seductiveness and a curious steadiness of gaze when
they fixed themselves upon the object of their possessor's thoughts. The
nose was in the slightest degree retrousse, the mouth inclining to
largeness but perfectly shaped, the chin firm and rounded. As for the
woman's colour it was that of the healthy, full-blooded human animal
whose surroundings from infancy have been those of the woods and fields,
and into whom the spirit of free air and the strength of the earth has
entered with all the stirring nourishment of mother's milk.

Rhoda Perris, idly hanging a garment on the clothesline, looked round as
Pippany shambled through the rickety gate. She took a clothes-peg from
between her strong, white teeth, and smiled sideways at Tibby Graddige.

"Seems to me it takes a nice long time to put one shoe on a horse
nowadays, Pippany Webster," she remarked. "You took that horse down to
the crossroads at one o'clock, and it's past five now."

"T' smith weren't theer when I landed," said Pippany sullenly. "He were
away up to Mestur Spink's about summat or other. An' when he came back
theer wor another man afore me 'at had browt two hosses--leastways a hoss
an' a mare. Ye can't shoe a beast i' five minutes. An' I worn't going
down there to wait all that time for nowt."

"No, and I'll warrant you didn't!" remarked Tibby Graddige. "T' Dancing
Bear mek's a good waiting-room for such-like as ye when ye go to t'
smith's!"

"Ye ho'd yer wisht!" retorted Pippany. "Nobody's given ye onny right to
order my goings and comings, Mistress Graddige. I know when a hoss wants
its shoes seeing to as weel as onny man."

"We'll see what your master says when he comes home," said Rhoda. "You'd
no need to take the horse to-day--it was naught but an excuse to go and
drink."

"I care nowt for what t' maister says nor what nobody else says,"
retorted Pippany, lurching forward past the women. "If Mestur Perris has
owt to say to me he can pay me mi wage and let me go. I'm stalled o' this
job--there's nowt left about t' place, and t' animals 'll be starvin'
afore to-morrow neet. I'm none a fooil, and I can see how things is goin'
wi' Mestur Perris--so theer!"

Tibby Graddige shot a swift look out of her black eyes in Rhoda's
direction.

"There's imperence for yer!" she said softly. "But he allus were a bad un
wi' his tongue, were that there Pippany Webster--used to miscall his poor
mother, as were bedridden, shameful. Eh, dear--when the cat's away the
mice will play, as it says in the Good Book. If I were Mestur Perris I
should show t' way to the back door to yon theer."

Pippany shambled on to the old clover-stack, which stood at the end of
the orchard. There was little of it left: what little there was made a
dusky tower which rose some eighteen or twenty feet in air from a base
of two square yards. It was already shored up on three sides with stack
props; on the fourth a ladder led to the particular elevation at which
Pippany on the previous day had cut sufficient provender out of the
tightly compressed mass to serve for the animals' supper. Round the base
of this remnant many inroads had been made upon the clover by the
depredations of the cattle which had been allowed to pull at it; when
Pippany, carrying his hay-knife and the stable fork, proceeded slowly to
climb the ladder, the stack began to tremble and to sway; it was obvious
that it would have tottered over but for the support which it received
from the poles. But Pippany gave no heed to these signs; he steadily
mounted to the top, plunged his fork into the side, and kneeling down
proceeded to drive his knife into the edges of the portion which he
desired to cut out.

To drive an imperfectly edged cutting-knife into the compressed mass of
an old clover-stack which has been standing, as this stack had, for at
least three years, and had accordingly become almost solid, requires no
small expenditure of might and strength. At every downward thrust which
Pippany gave to his knife the stack shook and tottered on its insecure
base, and if he had not been muttering threats and anathemas against
Tibby Graddige to himself, he might have heard an ominous cracking and
crunching below him. Pippany, however, heard nothing but the harsh voice
of his knife crunching through the clover. And suddenly one of the
supporting poles, already rotten when it was put up, snapped off short,
the reeling stack gave way, and flinging Pippany, knife still in hand,
headlong from it, heeled over after him and enveloped him in the debris
of its destruction.

The two women looked round from the clotheslines with scared faces.

"God ha' mercy on us, missis!" exclaimed Tibby Graddige. "What's yon
atomy done now? Oh, Lord, Lord, that owd stack's fallen on him! And us
wi'out a man about the place!"

When they reached the scene of disaster there was no sign of Pippany. The
fine dust caused by the fall of the stack was clearing away, but neither
leg nor arm protruded from it.

"He's buried under it!" whispered Tibby Graddige. "Oh, Lord, whatever mun
we do?"

Rhoda was already silently tearing at the clover, seizing great heaps of
it in her powerful arms and casting it aside. The elder woman joined her,
but ever and anon loudly lamented the absence of a man. And suddenly she
looked up, listening.

"There's somebody a-horseback riding past the corner!" she said. "Eh, I
mun call to him, whoever he is!"

She ran swiftly through the cherry-trees to the low hedge which separated
the orchard from the lane, and craned her neck above the green branches.
The next instant Rhoda heard her voice, shrill and insistent.

"Hi, mestur! Mestur Taffendale! Mestur Taffendale!"

The man thus hailed, who was slowly riding along the highway at the end
of the lane, drew rein, and, turning in the saddle, looked in Tibby
Graddige's direction. Seeing that she was frantically waving her bare arm
to him, he turned his horse's head, and rode towards her.

"What is it, missis?" he said as he drew near. "Anything wrong?"

Tibby Graddige panted out her reply.

"Oh, Mestur Taffendale, sir, th' owd clover-stack's fallen on Pippany
Webster, and he's buried under it, and there's nobody about but me and
the missis. Come over and help us wi' it, if you please, sir!"

Taffendale's first thought was that if the clover-stack had buried
Pippany Webster once and for all the Martinsthorpe community would have
experienced no great loss. But without making audible reply to Tibby
Graddige's supplication, he forced his horse through one of the many gaps
which abounded in the hedge of Perris's orchard, dismounted, and tied the
bridle to the lower branch of a cherry-tree.

"Where is he?" he said, speaking in the tones of a man who is asked to do
something in which he has no personal concern and about which he is
utterly indifferent.

"This way, sir; the missis and me's pulled some of it offen him already,"
replied Tibby Graddige. "But there's more on it than you'd think."

When they turned the corner of the hedgerow behind which the fallen
clover-stack lay piled in a shapeless mass, Taffendale saw Rhoda Perris
for the first time. He himself lived on his farmstead a mile and a half
away across the plateau behind the woods; he rarely visited the village
or passed Cherry-trees, and though he had heard of Perris's wife as what
the country-folk called a bit of a beauty, he had never seen her since
she and her husband had come to the place two years before. Now, as she
stood up, flushed and panting from her exertions, he gave her one swift
glance and as swiftly looked away. He had not been prepared for what he
had seen.

By that time Rhoda had torn away a good deal of the fallen clover, and
had uncovered the handle of the stable fork. Taffendale threw off his
coat and seized the fork, at the same time jerking his head at the two
women.

"Stand aside!" he said half-roughly.

He went to work carefully and systematically, but with sureness and
swiftness. Tibby Graddige volubly gave forth her fears for Pippany and
her admiration for Mr. Taffendale's cleverness and strength; Rhoda, her
hands planted on her hips, stood by, watching in silence.

"Here he is!" said Taffendale at last, throwing aside the fork and
resorting to his hands. "And, by George, he looks like a goner!"

He turned the crumpled-up Pippany over on his back, swiftly untied his
neckcloth, and moved his head. Pippany's throat gurgled, and his lips
emitted a long breath.

"He's alive, but he's unconscious," said Taffendale quickly. "We'll carry
him into the house. Here, Mrs. Graddige, get hold of his legs and I'll
take his shoulders. Have you got any brandy?" he continued, turning and
looking squarely at Rhoda.

"No, but there's some whisky," answered Rhoda.

"Whisky will do," said Taffendale. "Now then, Mrs. Graddige, come on.
He's no weight."

Rhoda ran on before them to the house, and was ready with the whisky
bottle when they arrived and laid Pippany on the settle in the
house-place. Taffendale took the bottle from her, poured some of its
contents into a saucer which he caught up from the table, and some into a
teacup. He handed the saucer to Tibby Graddige.

"Here, rub that on his forehead," said he. "Have you got a spoon handy,
Mrs. Perris?"

Rhoda gave him a teaspoon, and he slowly poured small quantities of the
raw spirit between Pippany's lips. Pippany began to stir and to moan; in
a few minutes and under the influence of the whisky he opened his eyes.
He gazed vacantly around him.

"Where--what--?" he began. "Where--?"

"Hold your tongue!" said Taffendale. "You're all right. You've saved your
neck this time. Here, drink this, and then let's see if you've broken any
bones."

A generous dose of whisky-and-water enabled Pippany to move his four
limbs and to convince his interested helpers that he had not broken his
back. Taffendale smiled grimly, and turned to Rhoda.

"He's all right, Mrs. Perris," he said. "Let him rest a bit and then send
him home."

And again he smiled, looking at her inquisitively behind the smile.

Rhoda, in her turn, looked at Taffendale. She, too, was seeing him for
the first time. She had often heard of him as the rich farmer and
lime-burner across at the Limepits, but she had never met him. Now she
viewed him with curiosity. He was a tall, loosely-built man, evidently
about thirty or thirty-two years of age, dark of hair, eye, and
complexion; there was a curiously reserved, self-reliant air about him
which unconsciously impressed her. Just as unconsciously the sense of his
masculinity was forced upon her; she was sensible of it just as she was
sensible of his good clothes, his polished boots and fine cloth Newmarket
gaiters, his white stock with the gold horseshoe pin carelessly thrust
into its folds. And she compared him, scarcely knowing that she did so,
with her husband, Abel Perris, and something in the comparison aroused a
curious and subtle feeling in her.

"I'm much obliged to you, Mr. Taffendale," she said. "And so ought you to
be, Pippany. You'd have been dead by now if Mr. Taffendale hadn't chanced
to be riding by."

"I'm deeply obligated to Mestur Taffendale," mumbled Pippany, eyeing the
whisky bottle. "I'm allus obligated to them as does good to me. But I'm
worth a good many dead 'uns yet, and if Mestur Taffendale theer ever
wants a friend--"

Taffendale gave Rhoda another grim smile, and moved towards the door. He
had bestowed a swift circular glance on his surroundings, and he was
marvelling at their poverty. The house-place in which they stood was
little superior in its furnishing to any day-labourer's cottage; through
an open door he caught a glimpse of a parlour that looked cold and bare.
It seemed to him a poor setting for a woman as good-looking as he had
found Perris's wife to be.

"Well, good-day," he said. "You go home, Webster, and get to bed."

Rhoda made a motion of her hand towards the whisky bottle.

"Won't--won't you take anything, Mr. Taffendale?" she said diffidently.

"No, no, nothing, thank you," replied Taffendale hurriedly. "I'm pressed
for time. Good-day, Mrs. Perris."

He walked quickly through the fold, observing things to right and left of
him without turning his eyes in either direction. And he saw the evident
poverty of the place, and mentally appraised its value, and when he had
got his coat and mounted his horse, and was riding away, he shook his
head to the accompaniment of another of his sardonic smiles.

"That looks to be in a poorish state!" he thought. "And it's rent-day
next week. I wonder how Perris stands for that? It's a pity for that wife
of his--a fine woman!"

Rhoda and Tibby Graddige went back to the orchard to finish hanging out
the clothes. Both were in meditative mood, brought about by the event of
the afternoon.

"So that's Mr. Taffendale, is it?" said Rhoda. "For all we've been here
two years I never saw him before. Well off, isn't he, Tibby?"

Tibby Graddige jerked her head.

"Well off!" she exclaimed. "I'll warrant! What with his big farm, and his
lime-kilns, I should think he were well off, yon! Why, his father, old
Mestur Taffendale, left him thirty thousand pound. An' isn't it fair
shameful?--he's never yet shown sign o' tekkin' a wife to share it wi'
him!"

Rhoda made no answer. She was wondering what so wealthy a man had thought
of the palpable poverty of Cherry-trees.


II


About the time that Mark Taffendale and Tibby Graddige carried Pippany
Webster into the house-place, Abel Perris got out of a train at the
little railway station, Somerleigh, which stood four miles away along the
high-road to the north of Martinsthorpe. A tallish, bony man, somewhat
uncertain at his knees and rounded of shoulder, with a sharp, thin face,
a weak chin, and a bit of sandy whisker cropping out in front of each
over-large ear, he looked almost pathetically desolate as he stood on the
platform, mechanically feeling in one pocket after another in the effort
to find his ticket. His attire gave no force to his naturally colourless
personality.' Having been on a visit to his relations he had worn his
best clothes--garments rarely brought out of the chest which had been
their place of repose for several years. The sleeves of the black coat
were too short, and exposed the prominent, fleshless bones of the
wearer's wrists; the legs of the grey trousers had been shortened by much
creasing and bagging at the knees, and revealed the rough grey stockings
which terminated in unpolished lace-up boots; the waistcoat, loose and
baggy, was crossed by a steel watch-chain, bought in youth, a great
bargain, at some forgotten statute-hiring fair. A much frayed collar,
dirty and crumpled by its two days' wearing, and at least a size too
small for the neckband of the coarse shirt on which it had with
difficulty been fastened, formed a striking contrast to the gaudy necktie
of blue satin, which was wound about it and had worked itself out of
place until its knot lay beneath the wearer's left ear. The necktie, like
the watch-chain, was the result of a visit to some fair or other; it
expressed Perris almost as eloquently as the useless switch of ashplant
which he carried aimlessly in his great raw hand--a switch that was of no
use for anything in a pedestrian's hand but to snick off the heads of the
flowers and weeds by the wayside.

Perris was the only person who left the train; a solitary porter was the
only person who emerged from the station buildings to greet and speed it.
The train went on slowly, and Pen-is made for the exit at the end of the
platform with equal leisureliness. He found and gave up his ticket, and
went out on the high-road. Opposite the station stood a wayside inn,
meagre and poor of aspect, but dignified with the title of Railway Hotel;
Perris, having moved a few yards in the homeward direction, paused and
looked at its open door uncertainly. His feet began to shuffle towards
it; eventually he crossed the road with shambling gait and bent head.

"I may as well take an odd glass," he muttered. "There's nowt 'twixt here
and our house, and it's a good four mile."

The parlour into which he turned on entering the inn was close and heavy
with the smell of rank tobacco and stale beer. Sawdust, strewn about
three days before, and now littered and foul with the accumulations
brought in from the road outside, covered the floor; the rough tables of
unpolished wood were marked with the rings made by the setting down upon
them of overflowing pots and mugs; the walls, originally washed in some
indefinite tint of yellow or drab, and now stained and discoloured by
damp and neglect, were relieved from sheer bleakness by framed
advertisements of ales and spirits, and here and there by a grocer's
fly-blown almanack. One side of the room was filled up by a bar, covered
over with zinc sheeting, out of which projected three beer-pulls standing
up like ninepins; behind it, on shelves ranged against the walls, were
displayed a few bottles of spirits, an ancient cigar-box or two, and some
rows of cloudy glasses. The whole place was down at heel and
disconsolate: Perris, however, noticed nothing of its shabbiness: his
eyes were no more offended by the squalor and the untidiness than his
nose was vexed by the unpleasant atmosphere. He sat down heavily at the
table nearest to the bar, and tapped on its surface with his ash switch.

A man emerged lazily from an inner apartment--a gross-habited, bloated
man, about whose thickly-jowled face coarse black hair grew in sparse
tufts. The silence with which he advanced to the bar was due to the fact
that although the afternoon was merging towards eventide, he still
retained the slippers into which he had thrust his feet on rising; it
needed no particular observation to see that so far he had performed no
ablutions nor made his toilet. His trousers were kept in place by a
single suspender; between them and his open waistcoat, almost destitute
of buttons and greasy from much spilling of fat meats, large rolls of
coarse linen forced themselves and suggested that he considered an
allowance of one shirt a week ample for his requirements. He wore neither
collar nor necktie: his unbuttoned shirt revealed a thick bull neck, and
beneath it a chest covered as with the pelt of an animal.

"Day," said Perris, nodding mechanically. "I'll take a drop of Irish, if
you please."

He reached up to the counter and laid a sixpenny-piece on it, and the
landlord turned to a bottle behind him and poured some of its
muddy-looking contents into a glass.

"Happen you'll take a drop o' summat yourself, like?" suggested Perris
generously.

"Well, I'll just take a twopennorth o' gin," replied the landlord,
helping himself from another bottle. "Here's my best respects."

"Best respects," murmured Perris. He picked up the penny which the
landlord pushed across the counter, and dropped it into his pocket.
"Quietish about here, isn't it?" he said.

The landlord leaned across the counter and stroked his sparse beard.

"Aye, there's naught much doing," he said. "This place is over far out o'
the village, and them as comes by train doesn't turn in here very oft.
It's naught to me--I was only put in to manage it, like: it's a tied
house. Which way might you be going?"

"Nay, I come fro' Martinsthorpe yonder," answered Perris, nodding his
head towards the south. "Least-ways, fro' Cherry-trees Farm--I been
farming there this last two year. I don't oft come this way--it isn't in
my direction for anywhere."

"How's things out your way, like?" asked the landlord.

"Middlin', middlin'," answered Perris, tapping his switch on the floor.
"There's naught much to be made at it. It's naught but scrattin' a livin'
out o' t' land."

"Why, it's summat to do that," observed the landlord. "There's some as
can't scrat that much. And there's some as can. I'll lay yon neighbour o'
yours at Martinsthorpe Limepits scrats more nor a livin'."

"Mestur Taffendale?" said Perris, looking up. "Ah, yes, but he were one
o' them 'at's born wi' silver spoons i' their mouths, accordin' to what I
understand. Yes, I understand that he's part brass, has Mestur
Taffendale."

The landlord held out his hand for Perris's glass and replenished it and
his own.

"Aye, he has so!" he observed. "And them that has aught, always gets more
to put to it. I'll lay Taffendale could buy up all t' farmers i'
Martinsthorpe."

Perris sipped his whisky and laughed feebly and foolishly.

"I'll lay he could buy me up!" he said. "It's our rent-day next week, and
I'm sure a body's hard put to it to raise t' rent nowadays. There'll have
to be some reductions or abatements, or summat, or else us little farmers
'll be sore tried."

The landlord made no reply to these remarks. He glanced the caller up and
down, and drew his own conclusions. And Perris presently drank off his
whisky, and rising to his feet looked indefinitely about him.

"Well, I must be off," he said. "It's four mile to my place. I think I'll
take a sup o' whisky in a bottle, like, as there's no callin' place on t'
way."

"Shillingsworth?" asked the landlord.

"Aye, shillingsworth or eighteenpennorth, it makes no difference,"
replied Perris, fumbling in his pocket and producing a florin. "Here,
there's two shilling--make it eighteenpennorth, and we'll have another
glass out o' t' change. And there's another penny, and I'll have a
twopenny smoke."

With a rank cigar between his teeth, and a small bottle of bad whisky in
the tail of his coat, Perris set out homeward along the highway. He had
pushed his last coin across the zinc-covered counter, and his purse and
pockets were now empty, yet he laughed as he shambled on beneath the
wayside trees and the high hedgerows, carelessly swishing at weed or
flower with his ashplant. But when he had gone a mile he paused, and
leaning over a gate he drew out and took a long pull at his bottle and
shook his head.

"I mun tell Rhoda how things is," he muttered. "She's a sharp un, is
Rhoda; she'll happen be able to make out a bit. She might be for sellin'
t' cows, and very like she's gotten a bit put away out o' them cocks and
hens--women contrives to save a shillin' or two here and there where us
men can't. Aye, I mun hev' a word or two wi' Rhoda."

Rhoda was alone when Perris came slowly in at the side gate and shambled
along the cobble-paved path which lay between the fold and the house. He
had drunk all his whisky and had thrown away the bottle, but the stump of
his twopenny cigar still remained between his teeth, and he smiled weakly
around it as he turned the door.

"I've corned, ye see, my lass," he said, dropping into the nearest chair.
"Aye, and I didn't aim at gettin' back till to-morrow, but there were
naught no more to do over yonder, so I thought I might as well be
steppin', like. I could do wi' a bit o' supper, Rhoda, my lass."

Rhoda, who had got rid of Pippany, and having just seen Tibby Graddige
depart, was trying to reduce the untidy house-place to something like
order, turned from the hearth, looking at her husband with anything but a
friendly glance. She instinctively compared his careless and forlorn
appearance, his weak and fatuous face, with the vastly different
impression which Mark Taffendale had left upon her, and she was suddenly
conscious of an intense dislike, a fierce loathing of something which was
not exactly Abel Perris, but with which he was somehow inextricably mixed
up. Her glance lighted on the bright blue satin necktie, and she felt an
almost insane impulse to snatch it from Perris's long, thin neck and
stamp on it.

"How do you expect me to have any supper ready, or likely to be ready,
when I didn't know you were coming?" she exclaimed. "You should come home
when you say you're coming--there isn't so much as even a bone in the
larder--yon there Pippany finished up what there was for his supper."

Perris, who was making vain attempts to relight the sucked and soddened
stump of his cigar, looked up to where the shrunk shank of what had been
a ham dangled from the rafters. There was little flesh left on it, but
from the adjacent hooks hung a respectable piece of a flitch of bacon.

"Ye could fry a bit o' that bacon, my lass," he suggested. "And happen a
egg or two wi' it."

"I can't spare any eggs," said Rhoda. "I want all the eggs I have for
market. And if you must have some tea, you'd better go and fill that
kettle. I wish you'd stopped away till to-morrow."

Perris took the kettle out to the pump, filled it, came back and placed
it on the fire, and having reseated himself again tried to induce the
cigar to burn.

"I didn't see no use i' stoppin' away when I'd done mi business," he
remarked suddenly. "When business is done, it is done, and so there's an
end on 't."

"And I hope you did whatever it was you set off to do," said Rhoda, who,
mounted on a chair, was cutting slices off the flitch of bacon and
tossing them into the frying-pan which she had placed on top of the oven.
"And if it's aught to do with money I hope you've brought some home, for
if ever there was a place where it was wanted, this is it! There was Mr.
Taffendale here this afternoon, and I'm sure I was fair ashamed that he
should see such a starved looking hole!"

Perris looked up with a faint gleam in his pale grey eyes.

"What might Mestur Taffendale be wantin' on my premises?" he asked.

"Your premises? Lord, you talk as if the place was a castle or a hall!"
exclaimed Rhoda. "What did he want? Why, yon fool of a Pippany Webster
pulled that old clover stack over on himself, and Mr. Taffendale happened
to be passing, and helped Tibby Graddige to carry him in here--he'd have
been suffocated if it hadn't been for Mr. Taffendale."

Perris slowly rose, and going to the door craned his long neck in the
direction of the orchard.

"Ah, I see t' clover stack's down," he said, coming back. "Did he bre'k
any bones, Pippany?"

"No, he didn't break any bones, nor his neck neither," replied Rhoda. "A
good job if he had--idle good-for-naught! He'd been down at the Dancing
Bear all the afternoon. It's worse nor a puzzle to me that you keep such
a shiftless gawpy about the place. Why don't you go and clean yourself?"
she suddenly burst out, turning upon him from the fire, where she was
endeavouring to accommodate both kettle and frying-pan. "You look as if
you'd never been washed since you went out of that door. And for
goodness' sake take that necktie off--you look like one of those country
joskins that's used to naught decent."

"Mi Aunt Maria, over yonder, thought it were a very fine tie," said
Perris, unconsciously fingering the adornment. "She remarked that it
were, as soon as ever she set eyes on it."

"Then your Aunt Maria's a fool!" remarked Rhoda. "Go and wash yourself,
do!"

Perris went into a scullery beyond the house-place; when he returned, the
dirty, crumpled collar and the blue necktie had disappeared, and his face
shone with brown soap, and his neutral-tinted, damp hair was smoothly
plastered over his forehead. He hung up his coat on a peg that projected
from the end of the tall dresser, and sat down in his shirt-sleeves.
Rhoda had cleared a place for him at the deal table, and had set out a
cup and saucer, a plate, and bread on the hare board. While the bacon
frizzled in the pan she folded the damp clothes which lay piled about,
sorting them into heaps against the morrow's ironing.

"And what did you go away for?" she asked suddenly, glaring at Perris,
who sat awaiting his supper, with his hands folded under his baggy
waistcoat.

"I weern't talk no business till I've had mi supper," he answered. "I've
had neither bite nor sup since I left yon place, and I'm none goin' to
talk business on an empty belly."

Rhoda gave him another swift glance.

"You mayn't have bitten, but you'll none make me believe you haven't
supped," she retorted. "You were stinking of spirits when you came in."

"That's neither here nor there," said Perris. "I might have taken an odd
glass or two on t' way--all travellers does that. But I want summat to
eat, and I'll none talk till I've had it."

Rhoda gave no further attention to him. When the bacon was cooked she set
it before him, made him a pot of tea, and went on with her work. In the
silence that ensued she was increasingly conscious of a growing dislike
to her husband's presence; it seemed to her that the mere fact of his
being there was setting up in her some sort of nausea which she could not
explain. And once more she thought of Mark Taffendale, of his good
clothes, his fine linen, his suggestion of power and prosperity and
money, and a certain uneasiness grew and stirred to increasing activity
within her.

Perris ate up every scrap of the food which his wife had set before him,
and finished his supper by cleaning the grease off his plate with a piece
of bread, which he then swallowed with evident satisfaction. He turned
his chair to the fire with a grunt of animal contentment, and proceeded
to light his pipe. Rhoda whisked away the earthenware he had used into
the scullery, and washed it up; having come back to the house-place she
silently went on with her work amongst the clothes. For a time Perris sat
and smoked, silent as she was, but at last, after some preliminary
scraping of his feet and clearing of his throat, he addressed her.

"There's a matter that I think we'd best have a bit o' talk about, Rhoda,
my lass," he said diffidently. "It's gotten to be talked about some time
or other, and we may as well table it and have done wi' it."

"Well?" she said.

"Ye're aware, my lass, ye're aware that the rent-day's close at hand,"
continued Perris. "Early next week it is."

"Well?" she said again.

"Aye, well, the fact is, my lass, that I'm not ready for it," he said.
"I've nowt i' hand!"

Rhoda put down the garment which she was just then folding and looked
round at her husband.

"You don't mean to say that you can't pay your rent?" she demanded in
sharp tones.

"I've nowt i' hand," Perris repeated stolidly. "Nowt! Times has been that
there bad that I haven't been able to make no provision. It made a deal
o' difference to me losing that young horse last back-end, and ye know as
well as I do, my lass, that I made nowt out o' what bit o' stuff I had to
sell all winter. No, I've nowt i' hand for no rent-days."

Rhoda was still standing idle, still gazing at him as if she scarcely
comprehended what he was telling her.

"What did you go away for?" she asked suddenly. Perris shook his head.

"I went to see if so be as I could raise t' rent money among mi
relations," he answered. "I went to see mi brother John William, and mi
Uncle George. I considered that they were t' likeliest people to make
application to, ye see, my lass. Howsomever, they could do nowt, for
times is as bad wi' them as what they are wi' me. Mi Uncle George has had
sad losses, and our John William's suffered a deal o' sickness in his
family, and now his wife's been thowtless enough to go an' have twin
bairns on t' top on it. No! they couldn't do nowt to help, howsoever
willin' they might ha' been. An' so, of course, that's where I'm
sittiwated, Rhoda."

Rhoda had neglected the contents of the clothes baskets ever since Perris
began to talk. She was leaning over the table at which he had eaten his
supper, her knuckles resting on the ledge, her body bent slightly forward
as if she wanted to meet every word that came from him. Her eyes, hard,
cold, questioning, never left his face.

"Where's the five hundred pound you said you had when we got married two
year ago?" she demanded suddenly.

Perris looked up quickly, and as quickly looked away again. He shuffled
his feet uneasily on the stone floor.

"Why, why, my lass!" he answered deprecatingly. "Five hundred pounds is
none so much to start housekeepin' and farmin' on. There were furniture
to buy and stock to buy, and there's been rent to pay, and--"

"Then it's all gone?" she said. "There's naught in the bank?"

"Aw, there's naught in t' bank," he admitted. "At least, nowt much--not
beyond a pound or two. Ye see, I've made nowt o' this farm. What I've
scratted out on it's just about kept us, my lass."

"Fine keeping!" she exclaimed scornfully. She turned to the
clothes-basket again, and began to sort out the garments with nervous,
spasmodic movements. "And what's to come if you don't pay that rent next
week?" she demanded again, pausing in her work. "What's going to happen,
I say?"

Perris shook his head.

"Nay!" he replied. "I don't know, my lass. T' steward's none over
friendly inclined, as it is. Last time he were round this way he threw
out some hints about me not having over and above much amount o' stock.
Happen he'll sell us up. There's about enough on t' place to pay t' rent,
anyway."

"And we should go out on the road--beggars!" said Rhoda.

Perris rubbed the end of his chin and stared about him.

"It's a poor game, bein' a little farmer," he observed. "I never had
enough capital, as they call it. If I had a hundred pound now I could
pull things round. But as mi Uncle George and our John William says--"

"I want to hear naught about your Uncle George nor your John William
neither!" said Rhoda. "What's going to be done! You sit there, and do
naught but talk."

"Happen I could persuade t' steward to wait a piece," suggested Perris.
"He's given other men time to pay. I can happen talk him round."

"And happen you can't! He knows as well as you do that there's naught
about the place," said Rhoda. "Where he does give time to pay, it's where
a man has something to show. You've naught to show."

Perris hung his head and blinked at the fire.

"I can sell t' beasts and t' pigs," he said. "That 'ud make summat
towards t' rent."

"And leave the place barer than what it is! You'll not do aught of the
sort. What's wanted," Rhoda continued, "isn't taking stuff off this
place, but putting stuff on."

"I could soon put some stuff on if I'd brass to do it with," said Perris.
"But I've never had no luck. I expect ye haven't a bit o' money put aside
out o' them cocks and hens, my lass?"

Rhoda darted a look at him which made him shrink instinctively into his
chair. She vouchsafed no answer to his question, but went on mechanically
folding and wrapping. Suddenly she turned on Perris and snapped out a
command.

"Off you get to bed!" she said. "If all's as bad as you say it is, you'll
have to stir yourself to-morrow, so you may as well get your rest. It's
past nine o'clock now."

Perris obeyed this order at once. He slipped off his boots and lumbered
heavily up the chamber stairs. Hours after he had gone his wife worked at
her task, her face clouded and her eyes sombre with thought. It was near
midnight when she turned out the lamp, wrapped herself up, fully dressed,
in an old rug, and lying down on the settle, fell instantly fast asleep.


III


Rhoda wasted no words on her husband next morning until he had finished
his breakfast, which meal he took in company with Pippany Webster,
sitting at the same table, and making no distinction or difference
between his man and himself. But that over, she drove Pippany out of the
house-place with a look and a word, and turned on Perris, who, if she had
not been between himself and the door, would have slipped away and
escaped her for the rest of the morning.

"Now, then, what're you going to do?" she demanded.

Perris looked at her furtively.

"Why, there's a bit o' fencin' wants attendin' to away i' yon five-acre,"
he answered. "I were thinking that you could happen give as a bit o'
dinner to carry along wi' us, and then we'd make a full day's job on it."

"You'll get your dinner here, and at the proper time," said Rhoda. "And
you answer my question. I say--what're you going to do?"

"Do about what, then?" Perris asked sullenly.

"This rent. You're got to do something," she said. "I'm not going to be
turned out like a beggar, if you are!"

"There's nowt that I can do," replied Perris, scratching his head.
"Leastways, not to-day. I might sell them beasts and pigs to-morrow when
I go to market, but--"

"You'll sell neither beasts nor yet pigs," declared Rhoda. "You're the
sort that 'ud sell fifty pounds of stuff for twenty. You don't take a
thing off this place!"

Perris muttered, and scratched his head again.

"Have it yer own way!" he said. "Have it yer own way, my lass!"

"I wish I had had it my own way!" she retorted. "We shouldn't have been
in this mess. Just you listen to me, Abel Perris! As like as not, the
steward 'll be turning up here on Monday morning, first thing, just as he
did last year. What's this place look like for him to peep and spy about
in? Now then, you and that there Pippany set to work and put things to
rights, and if you want your dinners at noon, and your suppers at six
o'clock, mind you've something to show for 'em! I know what wants doing,
and I know how much two of you can do, and if you haven't done what you
ought to have done by twelve o'clock there'll be no dinner on this table.
So now you know."

Perris shambled out, muttering comments on his own folly in telling his
affairs to a woman.

"You can grumble and chunter as much as you like," Rhoda called after
him, "but there 'll be neither bite nor sup, when dinner-time comes, if
all them buildings aren't straight and this fold tidied up. There 'll be
plenty for you to do to earn your supper after that."

Perris murmured, but made instant preparation for obedience. He knew that
Rhoda would be as good as her word; he also knew that she was right in
what she said. The steward had a nasty habit of descending upon the
smaller tenants when he came on his half-yearly visits, and when he did
make such a descent the poked his long nose into every corner of
farmstead and field. Perris felt himself to be an inject of suspicion
already, and he knew that the steward would have no mercy upon him if he
found things going to rack and ruin. He summoned Pippany from a lazy
contemplation of the pigs, and entered unwillingly upon a day of hard
work. By noon the buildings had been tidied up and made presentable;
Rhoda came out from her ironing and looked them over; her approval was
manifested in the fact that she gave each man a pint of ale with his
dinner of boiled bacon. Experience had taught her to preserve the key of
the barrel in her own possession, and Perris had known all the morning
that there would be no beer unless her commands were obeyed. Similar
conclusions made him and Pippany toil hard all the afternoon. By
supper-time a great change had come over the place: Perris, indulging a
certain foolish optimisim which was ingrained in him, felt it to be a
pity that the steward could not drive up at that moment.

Rhoda, having accomplished a long day's ironing, gave master and man
their suppers and disappeared upstairs. When she came down again she was
wearing her Sunday finery, and Perris, stretching his legs before the
fire, stared at her.

"Aw, where 're ye goin', mi lass?" he inquired.

"Going?--I'm going to chapel, of course," answered Rhoda. "Isn't it the
monthly week-night service?"

"Nay, I didn't know," said Perris. "Well, I weern't offer to accompany
yer, my lass--I'll just bide at home and smoke mi pipe. I'm over tired to
go chappillin' when I've done mi day's labour but of course them 'at's
religious is different."

Rhoda made no reply. She opened the top drawer of the old bureau which
stood in one corner of the house-place and took out a hymn-book and a
handkerchief. From a gaily-decorated bottle she sprinkled a few drops of
cheap scent on the handkerchief; carrying it and the hymn-book in her
left hand, and taking her ivory-handled umbrella in her right, she went
off without further word to her husband. The key of the beer-barrel was
in her pocket; the last drop of whisky had been wasted in restoring
Pippany Webster to consciousness; she had made herself assured that
Perris had no money on him, and therefore could not visit the Dancing
Bear. Accordingly, he could come to little harm during her absence at the
religious exercises which she made a point of never missing.

In addition to her charm of face and figure, Perris's young wife
possessed a fine voice, of the quality of which she was by no means
unconscious. If she had been less gifted she would have attended the
parish church, but the church possessed a surpliced choir of men and
boys, and had no need for a particularly strong soprano; and, moreover,
anything beyond the most modest congregational singing was not much
desired by its authorities. This sent Rhoda, who had no idea of allowing
her talents to go unused, to the Methodists. These good people, a little
time before the coming of Perris and his wife to Cherry-trees, had bought
a second-hand American organ for their chapel, and had consequently
turned their attention to something better in the way of music than they
had previously attempted. They welcomed Rhoda with great enthusiasm, and
immediately installed her as leader of the choir. It would have been
difficult, indeed, to make her anything else, for her voice was strong
and clear, and she led and controlled the hymn-singing in more senses
than one. On summer evenings, when the doors of the chapel stood open,
her powerful notes were heard far across the meadows outside, and the
non-religious part of the surrounding population lounged over garden
gates, or sat on the edge of the causeway, to listen with surprise and
pleasure.

Whatever might be going on at home, Rhoda never missed any of the chapel
services or the weekly choir-practices. She had come to be sovereign
mistress of the young men, maidens, and children who sat with her in the
singing-pew beneath the pulpit, and though the ministers and preachers
chose the hymns, it was Rhoda who settled upon the particular tunes to
which they should be sung. Consequently she was something of a power, and
had already begun to consider the chapel in the same light in which an
opera-house is viewed by a prima-donna who sings in it season after
season. The heads of the little congregation deferred to her in
everything relating to the musical part of the services; the young man
who walked out from the market-town to play the American organ, and who
cultivated his hair after the fashion of a plaster cast of Beethoven
which he had purchased from an itinerant vendor of busts, worshipped her,
and presented her every Sunday afternoon with a paper of strong mint
lozenges, to be consumed during the sermon. These attendances at the
chapel were therefore Rhoda's sole diversion in an otherwise grey and
colourless life; she would not have missed one of them for any reason
whatever, and she was always in her place winter and summer, fair weather
or foul.

But on this particular evening Rhoda had an additional reason for going
down to the chapel. On one night of the month one of the regular
ministers came to preach; the minister for that night was an old man who
had a reputation for prudence and sagacity; she wanted to ask his counsel
and advice on the difficulty in which Perris by his incompetence had
placed his wife and himself. All through the service she was scheming and
planning as to what might be done; of the sermon she heard nothing; she
sang the hymns mechanically. And when the service was over and the
congregation had departed she curtly dismissed the organist, who usually
walked with her as far as the Dancing Bear on their homeward way, and
following the old minister into the little vestry, she asked for an
interview with him. With a plainness and directness which made him regard
her as an eminently business-like and practical young woman, she put the
situation before him.

"You see, Mr. Marriner," she concluded, "it's this way. Abel, he's not a
bad farmer, but he's weak and shiftless, and if things begin going wrong
he loses heart and then he goes from bad to worse. I'm sorry to say I've
little good opinion of him as a manager for himself. But I know what I
can do. If I'd a bit of money I'd manage that place myself, and I'd make
him work. I'd manage it, and I'd manage him--I've managed him to-day to
some purpose, I'll warrant you, Mr. Marriner! I'm none going to stand by
and see everything go to naught but failure if I can help it. But the
thing is--where am I to find the money? My poor father's a big family of
his own, and it's all he can do to keep it--he can't do aught for me.
What would you advise, now, Mr. Marriner?"

The old minister, who had a sufficient knowledge of Abel Perris to make
him aware that in this case the grey mare was much the better horse,
considered matters for a few minutes.

"Well, Mrs. Perris," he said at last. "I dare say there are plenty of
people who would lend you money in preference to lending it to your
husband. Now, supposing you could get money and pull things round, do you
think you could manage him?"

Rhoda drew her fine eyebrows together, and screwed up her eyes, and Mr.
Marriner gained a new impression of her. He laughed softly, nodding his
head.

"I see--I see!" he said. "Well, now, aren't there any of your neighbours
that would help? I understand that some of the big farmers hereabouts are
pretty well to do--some of them very well to do. Can't you think of one
of them?"

A sudden hot flush burned into Rhoda's cheeks. She was quick to make
excuse for it.

"I don't like the idea of going cap in hand, as they say, to neighbours,
Mr. Marriner," she said. "I've never been used to asking favours, though
I came of poor folks. And I don't know any of the big farmers hereabouts;
they look upon us little farmers as so much dirt beneath their feet! I've
never spoken to one of them--except to Mr. Taffendale."

"Why, Mr. Taffendale's the very man!" said the old minister. "I know him
to be a wealthy man. He's on a committee of which I'm a member, so I meet
him now and then. I'll tell you what I'll do, Mrs. Perris, if you like.
I'll write him a note, saying that you've told me your troubles, and that
I'm sure he won't be disappointed if he helps you. How would that be?"

"Thanking you kindly, Mr. Marriner, it would be a good help," Rhoda
answered. "I should feel less what you might call ashamed and frightened
about it if I had some writing of yours to show."

"All right, all right!" said the old man. "I'll write it now. I think
you'll find Mr. Taffendale a likely man to apply to. Tell him all you've
told me; let him see you mean business. He'll see then, I'm sure, that
you know what you're talking about."

"Oh, I know what I'm talking about, Mr. Marriner!" said Rhoda, with quiet
confidence. "I don't talk for talking's sake. And I know what I can do if
I set out to do it."

Ten minutes later, when the old minister had mounted his horse and ridden
away, Rhoda, holding the note which he had given her, stood in the
darkness outside the chapel, thinking. Once she turned in the homeward
direction, only to pause before she had taken many steps. And after the
pause she suddenly turned in the other direction and began to walk
rapidly down the village street, already deserted and quiet.

"Since it's got to be done, I'll do it now," she muttered to herself.
"I'll do it, and get it over."

Martinsthorpe was a long, straggling village lying in a valley which ran
from east to west. It was divided into two halves by a high-road running
north and south, and transecting the one street at the point where the
Dancing Bear looked down from his swinging sign upon the cross-roads
formed by the intersection. In the western half of the village stood the
church, the school, the principal farmsteads, and the great house of the
place; in the eastern there was nothing more pretentious in the way of
human habitation than the smithy, the carpenter's shop, a general store
kept by an old woman, various clusters of labourers' cottages, and the
little chapel. Beyond lay open and uninhabited country which stretched,
wood, meadow and arable land, for many a mile before the next village
showed itself through its ring of ash and elm. But just beyond the chapel
a footpath ran across the valley and up the hillside in the direction of
the Limepits, Taffendale's place on the uplands, and this Rhoda took, and
followed with swift steps. Having made up her mind on the question
which--in spite of her silence upon it during her conversation with the
old minister--had been agitating it all day, she was resolved on a plan
of action, and she went with firmness and resolution to its first
beginnings.

The great stretch of flat land on which the Lime-pits Farm stood like
some giant ship in the midst of an otherwise lonely sea, was silent
almost to oppression as Rhoda passed across it in the dusky night. Long
before she reached it she saw the gaunt farmstead outlined against the
stars. Something in its vast solidity, its bulky mass of house and
outhouse, barn and granary gave her a curious sense of power, wealth,
security--it seemed to typify Taffendale and his money. And as she drew
nearer the sense deepened, for opposite the farm lay the famous limepits,
from which the bulk of that money was drawn, and from the burning pits a
dull glow of fiery red was rising to the night. She stood for a moment
between the two sources of wealth which were in this one man's control,
and she felt the glow of the burning pits play over her face, and caught
the pungent odour of the lime in her nostrils. Then, with a quick
catching of her breath she turned boldly to the farmhouse and knocked
firmly at its door.


IV


Taffendale, always a man of action, and supremely interested in his
numerous affairs, had been out and about during the whole of a long day.
From an early hour of the morning until close upon noon he had been
busied with the demands made upon him by his farm and his lime quarry;
after dinner he had galloped into the market-town to attend the weekly
auction sale, and had subsequently gone to a special meeting of the Board
of Guardians; on his return home he had had his correspondence to deal
with; his early supper over, he had given two hours to his account books.
And when Rhoda's knock sounded at his door, he had just put on his
slippers, lighted his pipe, mixed himself a glass of whisky-and-water,
and was about to spend a quiet hour over the newspaper before going to
bed. That last hour at night, he was accustomed to say, was the only one
he ever really got to himself.

The sound of the firm, decisive knock, reverberating through the
stone-walled passages of the big house, caused Taffendale to take his
pipe out of his mouth and to look vaguely around him. His farmstead was
so isolated in the midst of the lonely land, so far away from any other
habitation and from the nearest high-road, that it was a rare thing for
any person to come there at any time except by invitation or on business;
that any one should call there at such a late hour of the night was
something quite out of the common. He sat for a moment wondering if he
had heard aright; then he remembered that his housekeeper and servants
always went to bed at nine o'clock, and that there was no one to answer
this unusual summons. With the unwillingness of a man who dislikes
disturbance all the more because its cause is unknown to him, Taffendale
slowly raised himself out of his chair and went down the hall to open the
front door. In the light of the swinging lamp he recognised Rhoda Perris.
The rustic porch in which she stood made a sort of setting and frame
around her; behind her the red glow of the burning lime-kilns, across the
garden and the road, conspired with the deep blue of the night to form a
background to her figure and to the warm tint of her hair. Taffendale
felt himself start at the unexpected sight of her.

"Mrs.--Mrs. Perris?" he said questioningly.

"Good evening, Mr. Taffendale," she replied in tones which were curiously
suggestive of timidity and yet of assurance. "You'll excuse me for
calling at a time like this, but can I have a word with you?"

Taffendale stood aside and motioned her to enter.

"Come in--come in!" he said. "Yes--yes; certainly, Mrs. Perris."

Closing the door, he led the way back to his sitting-room, wondering
greatly what had brought Perris's wife there. No reason for her visit
suggested itself to him; he was still speculating about it in a vague,
indefinite fashion when he led her into the room and pushed forward the
easy-chair from which he had just risen. And as Rhoda took it he plunged
his hands deep into the pockets of the riding-breeches in which he had
been going about all day, and had been too busy to take off before his
supper, according to his usual practice, and stood looking down at her
with the doubtful expression of a puzzled man. As he looked, the
consciousness of the woman's attractive and compelling femininity forced
itself upon him; he felt, rather than saw, the healthy glow of her
cheeks, reddened by the rush of the wind across the uplands over which
she had walked, and the clearness of her grey eyes and the warmth of her
hair, and something stirred within himself and troubled him. He withdrew
one hand from a pocket and rubbed his chin as if in perplexity.

"It's--it's rather cold to-night," he said suddenly. "It--it turns cold
of a night. Will you take anything, Mrs. Perris?"

He glanced at the spirit-case which stood on the table, and he made a
move towards it with the zest of a man who finds relief from
embarrassment in action.

Rhoda raised her head and shook it.

"Oh, no, thanking you kindly, Mr. Taffendale," she hastened to say. "I
never touch spirits."

"A glass of wine, then," said Taffendale. "Come--a glass of port won't do
you any harm. And if you're afraid of drinking it without eating, there's
a cake somewhere. My housekeeper's gone to bed, but I know there's always
a plum-cake at hand."

He had turned to a sideboard as he spoke, and had begun fumbling about in
one of its recesses. Rhoda made no answer to this second invitation
except to murmur something inarticulate which might be taken as
acquiescent; she sat in front of the blazing fire, instinctively
appreciative of its warmth and cheeriness. And Taffendale's back being
now turned, she glanced round about her with swift comprehension of the
details of her host's surroundings. She was quick to notice the comfort
and even luxury upon which she had entered out of the night; her woman's
eyes realised the significance of the fine old furniture, the thick
carpet, the silver and glass on the sideboard, the family portraits on
the walls, the books and papers, the little evidences of the possession
of money in plenty. And as swiftly as she took all this in, she
visualised with equal swiftness her recollection of her own house-place
at Cherry-trees--poverty-stricken, cheerless, and Abel Perris, unkempt,
toil-stained, sitting, hands crossed on stomach, and heavy with sleep,
before a dying fire in a badly-polished grate.

"Aye, here it is," said Taffendale, turning to the table and setting upon
it a plum-cake which stood in a silver basket. "My housekeeper prides
herself on her cakes, Mrs. Perris. Now you'll take a glass of port--it'll
do you no harm after your walk."

Rhoda let him help her without further demur on her part; it was a long
time since anybody had offered her hospitality, or waited upon her. She
crumbled a piece of the cake and sipped at the red wine, and Taffendale,
feeling less embarrassed, drank off his whisky and mixed himself another
glass. He was still wondering why the woman had come to see him, but no
explanation of her presence suggested itself to him.

"How's that man of yours?" he asked suddenly. "Any the worse?"

Rhoda shook her head.

"No, he's no worse, Mr. Taffendale, thank you," she answered. "He's done
his work to-day." Taffendale laughed gently.

"I should think Pippany Webster's day's work isn't worth much," he said.
"He was always a shammocking sort." Rhoda nodded.

"He isn't worth what little he gets," she answered. "But--"

She paused suddenly and looked up from the plate on her knee to gaze with
resolute steadiness at her host, who had taken a chair on the other side
of the hearth, and had re-lighted the pipe which he had laid down on her
entrance.

"Mr. Taffendale," she said, "you're wondering what I came for?"

Taffendale, surprised by the directness of her look and tone, nodded.

"Just so," he answered, with equal directness, "I am."

Rhoda put the tip of a finger on a crumb and began to move it round and
round the rim of the plate.

"I always believe in saying things straight out," she said, after a brief
pause. "The truth is, Mr. Taffendale, I've come to see if you'll lend me
some money."

Taffendale's brows knitted, but Rhoda was quick to see that the
alteration arose not from resentment but from surprise.

"Oh!" he said. "Why, what is it? What's it all about? Of course, I
couldn't think why you'd called."

"No," she said. "Of course, you couldn't, Mr. Taffendale. Well, you see,
it's this, to put it shortly. Perris, he hasn't the money for the rent."

Taffendale smiled quietly.

"Did he send you?" he asked.

"No," she answered quickly. "No, he didn't, Mr. Taffendale. Perris
doesn't know that I'm here. I'm not asking you to help him--I'm asking
you to help me. I wouldn't ask anybody to help Perris. He's--he's--well,
he's not fit to be trusted with money."

Taffendale frowned, and began to rub his chin with the back of his
hand--a habit of his when he was puzzled.

"Make it clear, Mrs. Perris," he said. "Take your time, but make it
clear."

Rhoda put her plate on the table and faced her host.

"Well, it's like this, Mr. Taffendale," she said. "I'll make it as clear
as I can. You see, when we came there to Cherry-trees, two years ago,
Perris and me had just been married, and he said he'd five hundred
pounds, and he could do well on that bit of farm, and of course I
believed him. But it didn't take so long to see that he wasn't doing
well--I knew that plain enough, because I come of farming folk. All the
same, I never knew that he was doing as badly as it turns out he was. I
thought he'd some--a good deal--of that five hundred pounds left in the
bank. Then the other day he went off, saying that he'd business with some
of his relations, and last night, after you'd gone away, he came home,
and he out with the truth. He'd been to try to borrow money for the rent,
and he couldn't borrow it, and he's naught but a pound or two in the
bank. That's where it is, Mr. Taffendale."

"Aye," said Taffendale. "Aye--I see. And the rent-day's early next week."

"And the rent-day's early next week," repeated Rhoda. "And what's more,
Mr. Taffendale, the steward 'll have no mercy on Perris. You saw what
there was about the place."

Taffendale laughed softly and nodded.

"I saw," he said. "Um! And if I did lend you the money for the rent, Mrs.
Perris, you'd be no better off than before. You'd--"

Rhoda interrupted him with a quick turn of her head.

"Wait a bit, Mr. Taffendale," she exclaimed. "I said I'd ask you to lend
the money to me, not to Perris. I've considered matters. I've been
considering all day long. I've talked matters over with Mr. Marriner, the
minister. It was Mr. Marriner advised me to come to you. He wrote me this
letter to give to you. Perhaps you'll read it, Mr. Taffendale."
Taffendale took the note which Rhoda held out to him, and read its
contents carelessly.

"Yes," he said, laying the note on the table, "I know Mr. Marriner, of
course. But supposing I lend you this money, Mrs. Perris, what are you
going to do afterwards?--after the rent-day, I mean?"

Rhoda involuntarily straightened her figure, and Taffendale, covertly
watching her, gained an impression of strength and purpose.

"Do?" she exclaimed. "Do? I know what I'd do, Mr. Taffendale. I'd keep a
tight hand on Perris. I said--I've been considering matters all day, and
I've explained my notions to Mr. Marriner. That Cherry-trees farm can be
made to pay, and I can make it pay--if only I'm master! If I'd had the
management of the money it would have been paying now, and there'd have
been no need to ask help from anybody. Once let me get that rent paid,
and perhaps have a bit of money to go on with, and then I shall have
Perris under my thumb, and there I'll keep him. Oh, he's a good farmer,
and a good worker, is Perris, so long as he's made to work, and I can
make him. I made him work like a nigger to-day, I can assure you, Mr.
Taffendale."

Taffendale laughed delightedly. His neighbour's wife was beginning to
amuse, as well as interest, him.

"How?" he asked.

"I told him if there wasn't so much work done by dinner-time there'd be
no dinner," answered Rhoda, with a flash of her grey eyes and her white
teeth; "and if there wasn't so much more done by supper-time there'd be
no supper. He worked right enough, did Perris, after that, for he knew I
meant what I said. But that's Perris all over. He wants a master. Let me
get the chance, and I'll master him: I'll keep him at it till he's made
that farm pay, or I'll know why. He's weak, is Perris, and he's let
things slide, and I was that silly that I didn't see how it was all
going. But I see now, and I see how I can right 'em. It's never too late
to mend, Mr. Taffendale."

Taffendale laughed again. He had risen from his chair, and, hands plunged
in his breeches pockets, was standing at an angle of the fire-place,
looking down at his visitor with the amused eyes of a man to whom
something new and entertaining is presented. And suddenly he blurted out
the thought that was in his mind.

"However came a woman like you to marry a man like Perris?" he exclaimed.
"How was it?"

Rhoda looked quickly up and met his inquiring gaze with eyes of childlike
candour.

"Well, you see, Mr. Taffendale, it was like this," she answered. "My poor
father, he had the foolishness to have a very big family--there's eleven
of us, all alive, and I was the eldest of the lot. And he's naught but a
little farmer, and, as you know, Mr. Taffendale, little farmers is sore
put to it to make ends meet, and to scratch a living, at the best of
times; and, of course, when there's a family as big as that you can guess
what it's like--shameful, I call it, for folk to have such families!
However, that's neither here nor there--eleven of us there was, and eight
of us girls, which made it all the worse; and, of course, it was about
all we could do to scrape along And then when I grew up it came to it
that the older ones had to go out to work. And what can such-like as we
do, Mr. Taffendale? We never had any education, except such as there was
at the village school, so there was naught for it but going to service.
Well, I was in service at the Squire's for three or four years, and I
didn't like it because I wanted to be my own mistress--I've a good deal
of pride about me, Mr. Taffendale. And then when I was nineteen, Perris
yonder came along, and he said he'd taken this Cherry-trees farm at
Martinsthorpe here, and he'd five hundred pounds in the bank, and he
wanted a wife, and--and so, well, I married him, Mr. Taffendale. That's
how it was."

Taffendale, who had watched Rhoda closely while she gave him this history
of her career, nodded his head.

"Aye, I see, I see," he said. "You've never had any children?"

Rhoda, who had kept her eyes fixed on his while she talked, turned them
swiftly away, and he saw a curious flicker play for an instant around the
corner of her lips.

"No," she answered quietly. "We've had no children, Mr. Taffendale."

Taffendale took his hands out of his pockets and his pipe out of his
mouth, and moved across the room to an old bureau which stood, filled
with books and papers, in one corner. He sat down, turning the papers
over.

"Let's see, Mrs. Perris," he said. "How many acres is that Cherry-tree
farm?"

"It's sixty-seven acres, Mr. Taffendale," answered Rhoda.

"And what's the rent?" he asked. "I used to know, but I've forgotten."

"It's twenty-six shillings an acre, Mr. Taffendale," she replied.

Taffendale made a rapid calculation.

"Eighty-seven pounds, two shillings a year," he said presently. "And
there's how much rent owing, Mrs. Perris?"

"Only half a year's, Mr. Taffendale," she answered. "This last half-year.
All's clear up to then. And, what's more, I made sure to-day that there's
naught else owing."

Taffendale turned his back upon her, and for the next minute or two
occupied himself in writing. When he turned round again, he rose and
handed her a slip of pink paper.

"There's a hundred," he said carelessly. "Now, mind, Mrs. Perris, I'm
lending that to you, not to Perris. You'll observe I've made the cheque
out to 'cash'--you cash it yourself to-morrow when you go to market.
Give Perris the exact amount that is needed when he goes to pay his rent
at the Dancing Bear next week, and take care of the rest yourself. And
you run that place as you've told me you would, and you'll make it pay."

Rhoda stood up, trembling. Her cheeks flushed and her eyes shone, and
Taffendale suddenly grasped the fact that she was a very handsome woman.
Affecting unconcern, he picked up his glass and nodded to her.

"Here's good luck to you!" he said laughingly. "You seem a good hand at
business, Mrs. Perris." Rhoda's flushed cheeks deepened in colour.

"I don't know what to say to thank you, Mr. Taffendale," she said in a
low voice. "It's hard to find the right words, and--"

"Then don't bother to find them," Taffendale broke in. "I'm glad to help
you. There's one thing--if I were you, I should tell your husband who's
helped you. And then, perhaps, you could just have that bit of talk with
him--eh?--about pulling things round."

Rhoda's eyes flashed back her recognition of his meaning.

"Oh, I'll tell him!" she answered. "I'll tell him, Mr. Taffendale!
And--I'll talk to him. You'll see I'll straighten things up down there.
And now I'll go--and thank you, again."

"You aren't afraid of going home alone?" he asked, looking at her
narrowly.

"I'm afraid of nothing," she said quietly. "I've walked lonelier roads
than this, and later at night."

Taffendale walked down to the garden gate with her, and lingered there
for some time listening to her retreating footsteps. When at last he went
back to the parlour he looked at the chair in which his visitor had sat,
and for a moment he seemed to see her still sitting there, and the
parlour was warm and alive with the remembrance of her womanhood.


V


Perris, hearing next morning just as much as Rhoda chose that he should
hear, was conscious of only two feelings--the first, of relief at the
knowledge that the half-year's rent was going to be paid; the second, of
unbounded admiration at his wife's cleverness in raising a loan. He began
to laugh foolishly.

"Gow, but that were a rare clever notion on your part, Rhoda, my lass!"
he exclaimed, slapping his bony knees. "Ecod, I should never ha'
conceived that there notion as long as I lived! I mun express my
obligations to Mestur Taffendale when I meet him at t' rent dinner, and,
of course, we mun aim to repay him his loan as soon as we can. I expect
he'd hand yer t' amount in a cheque--what?--so I can get t cash for it
when I go t' market to-day. I'll get myself cleaned up, and be off afore
noon."

"You're going to no markets to-day," said Rhoda.

"I'm going; and I can do all that wants doing: I know what's wanted as
well as you do. What you'll do, is to stop at home, and go on with
getting this place put to rights against the steward coming round.
There's enough for you and that there Pippany Webster to do even if you
work your hardest all day long. You'll get that fencing put right in the
orchard, and there's two big gaps wants seeing to in the garth, and when
all that's done you can spend the rest of your time in the front garden.
You'll find your dinners on the oven top, and two pints of ale in a
bottle; and if you've done all you should have done by the time I get
home there'll be something extra for your supper, and maybe a drop of
whisky before you go to bed. So you get to work, and don't stand idling
there any longer!"

Perris, whose lean face had grown longer and longer during this address,
shook his head wonderingly, and began to comprehend that in some fashion
his wife had got the whip hand of him.

"Well, I never heard tell of a chap not going to market on a market-day,"
he said. "It seems summat right out o' t' common, does that there! No, I
never heard tell--"

"Well, you've heard tell now, then," exclaimed Rhoda. "And what do you
want to go to market for? You've naught to sell, and what bit of horse
corn and pig meal there is to buy I can order as well as you, and better.
You get to your work, and mind what I say, else there'll be no supper,
and no drop of whisky after it."

"Why, my, lass, why!" said Perris. "I expect ye mun have your own way.
But what about Mestur Taffendale's cheque?--'cause I expect it is a
cheque--ye'll have to--"

"Never you mind about Mr. Taffendale's cheque, nor aught else," answered
Rhoda commandingly. "It's enough for you to know that there'll be the
rent ready for you to take down to the Dancing Bear on Tuesday morning.
Off you go to your work--and mind you look after that good-for-naught
Pippany Webster!"

Perris, chiefly appealed to by the thought of the promised supper and the
drop of whisky thereafter, shambled to the door.

"Well, it's summat to know that t' rent's provided for," he said, as he
went out. "Ye mun have t' exact amount, my lass, in notes and--"

Rhoda shut the door in her husband's face, and went up to her chamber to
make herself ready for her walk to the market-town. She had little doubt
as to the effect of her warning to Perris, and when she came back late in
the afternoon she found that her orders had been faithfully carried out,
and that more than she had stipulated for had been done. And Perris had
his reward in his supper, and in one stiff glass of grog before he went
to bed, and he told Rhoda that he always knew she was clever. He
endeavoured to turn such conversation as there was between them to the
subject of Taffendale's loan, but Rhoda repulsed him whenever he did so.
She made him go twice to chapel next day, and on the Monday morning she
had him up and at work at a bright and early hour. And in the forenoon,
without any warning, the steward descended upon Cherry-trees, and looked
carefully about him, and at the end of an hour went away obviously
surprised and gratified with what he saw. He took off his hat to Rhoda
when he left, and Rhoda gave him a cool nod. The steward, who, from
information received, had fully expected that Perris would not be able to
pay his rent that half-year, smiled as he drove off in his smart
dog-cart.

"Perris 'll turn up with his money all right tomorrow," he said to
himself. "And I'll lay a pound to a penny-piece that his wife's got it
hidden away in some corner at this very minute!"

The half-yearly rent audit was held at the Dancing Bear, and the day was
one of the most important in the village calendar. At half-past nine in
the morning the steward drove over from the market-town with his clerk,
and took up his quarters in a room which for that occasion only was
converted into an office. At ten precisely the door of this room was
opened, and the cottagers filed in to pay their rents of ninepence, a
shilling, or fifteen-pence a week. As each discharged his or her due, he
or she received a present of two shillings in lieu of a dinner, and each
was sent out to the kitchen to take modest refreshment in the shape of
bread-and-cheese and ale. By eleven o'clock these humble folk were
cleared off; they were good and ready payers all, and it was very rarely
that any of them were short of their rent or had to ask for grace. Then
came the turn of the blacksmith, the carpenter, the shopkeepers, and the
small farmers; when they were disposed of, the big farmers, solid and
important men, entered and handed over their cheques. By noon the audit
was over, and the steward, his clerk, and the farmers, big and little,
and the tradesfolk sat down to meat in the club-room. The steward tarried
long enough to eat this ceremonial dinner, to propose the usual loyal
toasts and the health of the lord of the manor, and to make a little
speech on agriculture in general and the state of the village in
particular: these duties performed, he and his clerk departed with their
money-bags, and the company either dispersed or gave itself up to
conviviality for the remainder of the afternoon.

If Rhoda could have had her own way she would have gone down to the
Dancing Bear and paid the rent herself. But she knew that that was
neither possible nor proper; such a proceeding would only have aroused
comment, and her policy was to pursue her new course quietly. All that
she could do was to warn and exhort Perris, and to send him on his errand
decently equipped. She had pressed and brushed his best suit, and had
bought him a new necktie; she saw to it that he was scrupulously clean
and neat when he set out, and to put a finishing-touch to his appearance
she took his ashplant switch away from him and gave him her own
ivory-handled umbrella to carry, being herself utterly unconscious that
it suited him about as incongruously as a pink parasol would suit an
elephant. But the attiring and bedecking of him was the least part of
Rhoda's troubles. Since their coming to Cherry-trees Perris had attended
three rent dinners, and he had come home from each in a state of foolish
intoxication. Rhoda had her own reasons for wishing him to keep sober on
this particular occasion, and she meant to use such methods of prevention
as she could. She knew that Perris had no money on him, and so, when he
was all ready for departure, and dangling the ivory-handled umbrella in
his big red hand in a fashion which showed how seriously it incommoded
him, she counted out the exact amount of the rent on the parlour table,
and made no offer to supplement it with a modest sum for himself.

"There you are," she said, again enumerating the notes, gold and silver,
"forty-three pounds, eleven shillings. And you take good care you don't
touch a penny of it, after you button it up in that pocket, until you
hand it over to the steward, and mind you get your proper receipt. And
now, then, get off, and come straight home as soon as the dinner's over."

Perris slowly put the money in a much-worn leather purse, which he
carefully buttoned up in his breeches pocket. He looked at his wife
doubtfully.

"I shall want a bit o' brass for misen, like, my lass," he said, with
almost pathetic reproach. "I spent up when I went to see mi Uncle George
and our John William. I've nowt left. I mun have summat mi pocket, Rhoda."

"What do you want aught in your pocket for?" demanded Rhoda. "You've
naught to spend it on. Isn't there a good dinner provided for you, and as
much to drink as ever you like, and cigars and all? There's no call to
spend a penny!"

"Aye, but ye, see, mi lass, a chap feels strange, like, if he's nowt in
his pocket," said Perris. "I know 'at all's provided, but then there's
allus a bit o' waitin' time before t' dinner, and ye can't sit i' company
wi'out takin' an odd glass, and happen treatin' a neighbour. I should
feel ashamed to go into company wi'out owt mi pocket."

"Well, you'll get naught here," said Rhoda. "You ought to feel thankful
that I've borrowed that rent money. You couldn't borrow it!"

Perris gazed at his wife furtively, and his dull eyes narrowed and a
faint spot of red came into each lank cheek.

"Ye weern't gi' me nowt to go wi'?" he said. "No!" she answered. "I
won't!"

Perris flung down the ivory-handled umbrella.

"Then I'm none goin'!" he said. "T' steward can come and fetch his
brass. I weern't go into company wi'out a penny in mi' pockets."

Rhoda glanced at the clock. It was already time that Perris was off. From
some recess of her gown she hastily drew forth some loose silver and
flung it on the floor.

"There, then!" she said sulkily. "But you mind this--come home as you did
last time, and you'll see what you'll get, Abel Perris. You'll find no
supper to-night if you don't behave yourself."

Perris grinned as he stooped and picked up the coins.

"If I eat as much as I mean to at yon dinner, I shan't care whether
there's owt for t' supper, or whether there isn't, mi lass," he said. "I
know how to fill mi belly when it costs nowt to do it."

And, triumphant in his knowledge of possession of money, he once more
resumed his grip on the umbrella and went off, heedless of Rhoda's shrill
reminder that even if he did not want supper that night, he would be sure
to want his dinner next day. For Perris the coming day had no terrors; he
had his rent in his pocket, and the prospect of a banquet of gross food
and a sufficiency of drink before him, and he laughed fatuously as he
descended the hill to the village.

The Dancing Bear was as busy as a hive of bees. The cottager folk were
eating and drinking in the kitchens; the small farmers and the tradesmen
were in one parlour; the big farmers in another; outside the inn numerous
idlers and hangers-on lounged against the walls, or stood about the
cross-roads, hoping that something in the way of good cheer might come
their way. Perris walked into the sanded hall and met the carpenter
emerging from the temporary office. He nodded his head at the door.

"Anybody wi' him?" he asked carelessly.

"Nay--I think you're t' last o' us little 'uns," answered the carpenter.
"Ye'll hev' a bit o' good news in theer, Mestur Perris--I hear there's a
rebate for such as ye. We don't get it."

Perris pricked his ears. He knocked boldly at the door of the room in
which the steward sat, and, having entered, marched up to the receipt of
custom as confidently as if he had a large balance lying at his bankers'.
A moment later he laid down the borrowed money as proudly as if it had
been his own. The clerk began to make out the receipt, and the steward
glanced at Perris through his gold-rimmed spectacles.

"You'll be glad to hear that there is a rebate to come to you, Mr.
Perris," said the steward. "In consideration of last year's wet harvest,
his Lordship has very generously made a reduction of ten per cent. on the
rental. So we must give you back--"

"Four pound, seven, three-halfpence," broke in the clerk, who had a mind
above niceties in fractions. "There you are, Mr. Perris, and there's your
receipt. I think Mr. Perris is the last of that lot, sir," he added,
turning to his principal.

Perris picked up the money and the receipt with ill-concealed pleasure.
He grinned widely at the steward.

"Why, I'm sure I'm deeply obliged to his Lordship," he said. "Deeply
obliged, sir. Yes, sir, it were a very bad time, last harvest, and it
didn't improve nowt at t' back end o' t' year, and--"

"Doing all right, Mr. Perris?" asked the steward, cutting him short.

"Why, you were pleased to say we looked very well, yesterday, sir,"
replied Perris, still grinning. "Of course--"

"I thought you looked very tidy, and I'm glad to see you're attending
well to your fences," said the steward, "but I also think you want more
stock on your farm."

Perris's face grew solemn, and he looked at the ceiling. Then he looked
at the steward with a mysterious air, and bent to him across the ledgers
and the papers.

"Pigs, sir!" he said in a hoarse whisper. "Pigs is what pays, sir! I'm
a-goin' to do summat big in pigs."

"Oh, I see!" said the steward. "Pigs, eh? All right. You're stopping to
the dinner, of course."

Perris intimated that such was his intention, and made his bow. He went
out of the room chuckling to himself as he jingled the money which the
clerk had handed him. And as he lingered for a moment in the hall,
previous to joining his fellow small farmers and the carpenter and
blacksmith in the room set apart for them, Mark Taffendale rode up to the
door of the Dancing Bear on his smart cob, and, dismounting, threw the
bridle to a lad who stood near.

Taffendale was both an owner of land and a tenant of land. The lime
quarry, and much of the land which he farmed, was his own freehold
property, and so was his farmstead. But on the Martinsthorpe side of the
Limepits he rented some two hundred acres of the estate whose steward was
now collecting the rents, and he made a point of always attending the
audit, to pay his rent in person, and to share the rent dinner with his
neighbours of the village. He had seen Perris at these dinners, but he
had never spoken to him, for Rhoda had been right when she said the big
farmers regarded the little ones as so much dirt beneath their feet; and
now, as he came into the Dancing Bear, he merely gave the tenant of the
Cherry-trees a careless, cold nod. But Perris was in his path, and
Taffendale had to stop, for the man pulled off his hat and made a servile
obeisance.

"Good-mornin', Mestur Taffendale," said Perris, He favoured Taffendale
with one of his weak smiles, and looked around him with his air of
mystery. "I--I were hopin' to speak to you, sir. I'm deeply obliged to
you, Mestur Taffendale, for your kindness, and--"

Taffendale made to brush past him.

"All right, all right!" he said brusquely. "No need to say anything,
Perris: that's enough. Look to your farm--you can do well on it if you
are careful."

He passed on and entered the steward's room, and closed the door behind
him, and so shut out Perris, who was vainly trying to say more. And
Perris, again grinning, and again jingling the unexpected money, made for
the little parlour wherein his own set awaited him. There was still a
full hour before the serving of dinner, and naught to do but to make
merry in it: Perris drew silver out of his pocket as he joined the
company. He bestowed one of his fatuous grins on the other small farmers.

"I think we mun as well spend a bit o' that rebate money--what?" he said.
"Ecod, I weren't expectin' owt o' that sort this mornin'! Now what's it
to be, gentlemen, while t' big nobs is payin' up and t' dinner's gettin'
ready, like? Speyk the word!"

Four hours later Perris shambled away up the hill from the Dancing Bear.
He, the blacksmith, the carpenter and the little farmers had kept
conviviality up when all else were gone. The steward and his clerk,
Taffendale and the better-to-do men, had left as soon as the dinner was
over; the men who could least afford to spend money had lingered to waste
what they had. And Perris, once clear of the inn and the crossroads,
became conscious of his misbehaviour, and a great fear fell on him.

"I misdoubt I've ta'en overmuch o' yon sherry wine," he muttered to
himself. "I'm over and above market-merry. I moan't face t' missis like
this here--she'll gi' me bell-tinker if I do! I mun lie down a bit
somewhere, and sleep t' drink off--that's what I mun contrive."

He remembered a quiet spot behind a wheatstack in a corner of one of his
own fields, and with a view to reaching it unobserved he climbed the
hedge a little further on and made towards it. But in climbing the hedge
he slipped and broke off the handle of the highly prized umbrella, and
further visions of Rhoda's wrath arose before him. Moaning and whimpering
over his bad luck, he made his way beneath the shelter of the hawthorns
to the quietude of the wheat-stack; and there, clutching the fragments of
the umbrella to him, he cried himself into unconsciousness.


VI


When Perris lay down to sleep behind the wheat-stack he was unaware that
Pippany Webster was watching him from the vantage-point of a convenient
hole in the adjacent hedge. The man-of-all-work had been spending a
leisurely day in hoeing turnips, and, secure in the knowledge that his
master was at the Dancing Bear, and likely to remain there, he had varied
his peregrinations up and down the rows of fresh green plants by long
rests in the welcome shade of the hawthorns. It was during one of these
vacations that he saw Perris lurching across the next field. Pippany saw
at once that the farmer was drunk, and, drawing back into the hedgerow,
he followed his crab-like movements with interest. He watched Perris gain
the wheatstack and disappear behind it; seeing that he made no
reappearance, Pippany decided to approach with caution, and to ascertain
for himself what had happened. The wheatstack stood in the angle of the
field; it was an easy matter to creep along the hedge and to see what was
going on in the angle which Perris had sought as a refuge from Rhoda. In
a few moments the man was gazing at the master, who by that time was
oblivious of everything.

"Drucken!" Pippany muttered, as he peered through the undergrowth of the
hedge. "Reight drucken! He's come theer to sleep t' drink off. I wonder
what our missis 'ud say if shoo set ees on him?--shoo'd be for takin' t'
skin offen his back. It 'ud be a rare fine thing if I went and telled her
'at he wor liggin' theer!--I could like to see her beltin' him."

Pippany was so taken with the notion of beholding Rhoda thrash her
drunken husband that he was minded to set off in the direction of the
farmstead there and then, and to fetch her to the scene of Perris's
slumbers. But just as he was about to turn away his small eyes caught
sight of a shining object which lay on the ground at the unconscious
man's side. The shaft of sunlight which streamed down between the
wheatstack and the hedgerow fell full upon it, and Pippany noticed that
it was glinting upon a golden sovereign.

Visions of great possibilities stole across Pippany's mental field at the
sight of that piece of gold. He rose from his hands and knees, trembling
in every limb, and looked fearfully and cautiously about him. There was
not a soul in sight anywhere; the ground on which the wheatstack stood
lay in something of a dip in the land, and it was impossible to see it
from the farmstead. Close by there was a convenient gap in the hedge;
Pippany presently crept through it, and cautiously approached the
recumbent figure. A slight inspection convinced him that Perris was not
to be aroused by anything short of violence, and he picked up the
sovereign and bestowed it in his own pocket. Then it struck him that
where the sovereign had been other sovereigns might be, and he presently
summoned up courage to insert his hand into his master's pocket and to
draw forth what he found there. And, stealing quietly round to the other
side of the wheatstack, Pippany counted his gains. There were three
sovereigns and a half sovereign, and some small silver; the silver
Pippany put in his breeches, the gold he placed in his metal tobacco-box,
snugly stuffed in amongst the tobacco.

"I mud just as weel hev' it as let him hev' it," he said to himself.
"He's niver paid me fair, and this here 'll do to mak' up. Gow, but
Mistress Perris, shoo would be mad an' all if shoo knew I'd takken his
brass away thro' him!"

This reflection so cheered Pippany that he crept back through the gap in
the hedge, picked up his hoe, and worked steadily at the turnips until it
was time to discontinue his labours for the day. At a quarter to six he
shouldered his hoe and made off to the farmstead. His supper was due to
be served at a quarter past six, but he was indifferent as to whether it
was ready or not; he was already promising himself a supper of his own,
later on, when he returned to his cottage in the village.

Rhoda was in a temper when Pippany walked into the house-place. She had
expected Perris to return home by four o'clock at the latest, he would
even then have had quite two hours for his conviviality and recreation.
When five o'clock arrived and there were no signs of him she began to
exhibit symptoms of anger, and her temper was not improved by the remarks
of Tibby Graddige, who had come to assist at the weekly wash, and was
full of suggestions as to what happened when a parcel of men got talking
and drinking after the rent dinner. And just before Pippany's arrival she
had sent Tibby down to the Dancing Bear with a message to the effect that
Mr. Perris was urgently wanted at home.

"Have you seen aught of your master?" she demanded, as Pippany lurched
into the house-place and made for the seat whereat he took his meals.
"Has he been with you since dinner-time?"

"I hevn't seen nowt o' no maisters," answered Pippany, seating himself.
"I hevn't set ees on Mestur Perris sin' braikfast, when he telled me to
start on them tonnups. An' a rare hard day I've hed on it, an' all--t'
sun wor that hot this efternoon 'at ye could ha' fried that theer bacon
by it!"

Rhoda made no reply. She had no cause of complaint against Pippany, and
she set his supper and his pint of ale before him. As he began to eat and
drink Tibby Graddige came back, black-browed and mysterious. She gave
Rhoda a swift glance as she entered.

"Now then?" said Rhoda.

"They say 'at Mestur Perris left t' Dancin' Bear at just after four
o'clock," said Tibby. "Mistress Pycock, t' landlady, she says she see'd
him walkin' as straight and sober as a judge up t' road--he shakked hands
wi' her afore he quitted t' premises."

"Then where's he gone?" said Rhoda. "It doesn't take more than a quarter
of an hour to walk up from the cross roads."

Pippany Webster looked up, his cheeks bulging with bread and bacon.

"It's i' my mind, missis," he said, "it's i' my mind 'at our maister
said summat this mornin' about goin' over to Lowcroft yonder some time
to-day to see about some young pigs 'at Mestur Turbey hes to sell. Happen
he's gone theer when he come away thro' t' rent dinner?--killed two birds
wi' one stone. I' that case he'd go across t' fields at t' back of the
village. I know he wor wantin' some o' Mestur Turbey's young
pigs--they're reight 'uns, is them young pigs--what they call Berkshires.
I lay that's wheer he's gone."

Rhoda considered this suggestion in silence. She and Tibby Graddige sat
down to a cup of tea at the little table near the fire. Tibby, who had
taken a drop of something comforting at the invitation of Mrs. Pycock,
began to tell the news.

"They've hed grand doin's to-day down at t' Bear," she said. "Mistress
Pycock, she tell'd me what they hed to eat. Theer were a noble sirloin o'
beef--t' biggest, she said, 'at they iver put on t' spit i' their
kitchen--and a boiled leg o' mutton, wi' t' usual trimmin's, and a boiled
ham--a grand 'un!--and roast fowls and boiled fowls, and plumpuddin's,
and berry-pies and custards. I'll lay some on 'em weern't want their
bellies fillin' for another week. And theer wor wine to sup, an'
all--port wine and sherry wine, same as t' quality sups when they get
their dinners. And Mistress Pycock, she says 'at they all did full
justice to it, and t' steward complimented her varry high afore all t'
company. And of course all t' farmers hed good reasons to be i' reight
fettle for their meat, an' to rejoice an' all, 'cause theer were a
reduction o' t' rents."

"A what?" exclaimed Rhoda.

"A reduction o' t' rents, as they call it," answered Tibby. "A rebate,
like--givin' 'em all back summat out o' what they paid, 'cause his
Lordship had pity on 'em on account o' t' wet harvest last year."

"How much?" demanded Rhoda.

"Why, Mistress Pycock, she said it wor what they term ten per cent.,"
replied Tibby, "an' I'm sure I don't know what that means, 'cause I'm no
scholard; but she said, did Mistress Pycock, 'at it meant 'at wheer a
farmer paid, as it weer, say fifty pound, t' steward handed five on it
back to him. An' a varry nice surprise an' all, and I don't wonder 'at
they hed a good heart for atein' their dinners. I could ate as much as
iver were set afore me if I hed a few golden pounds i' my pocket 'at I
hedn't expected to find theer!"

"Aye, an' so could I!" said Pippany Webster. "Theer's nowt gives a man
such a appetite as knowin' 'at he's gotten a bit o' brass on him!"

Rhoda had sufficient mathematical knowledge to be able to make a rough
mental calculation. If a man who paid fifty pounds in rent had five
pounds returned to him, a man who paid over forty must receive at least
four. So that, in addition to the small silver change which she had flung
on the hearthrug at his feet that morning, Perris before noon must have
been put in possession of over four pounds in gold. Where was he? What
had he done with it? What was he doing with it? She knew his weakness; if
he had gone to look at Turbey's pigs, it was quite probable that he and
Turbey had adjourned to a certain roadside inn at the other end of
Martinsthorpe, and that they would sit there drinking until the landlord
turned them out. And for the hundredth time that day she wished that she
had done what she had wanted to do--made an excuse for Perris's
nonattendance and gone down to pay the rent herself.

Pippany Webster finished his supper and went off, turning his tobacco-box
over and over in his breeches pocket; Tibby Graddige remained long enough
to wash up the crockery, and then she went, too, and Rhoda was left
alone. By that time she was furiously angry, and her anger increased
because of her powerlessness to deal with the situation. Had she known as
a certainty that Perris was at the Dancing Bear, she would have gone down
there and raked him out of parlour or kitchen without shame or ceremony.
But by that time she did not know where he might be. He might be at
Turbey's--Turbey was fond of the bottle himself--or he might be at the
wayside inn beyond Lowcroft; he might even have gone into the
market-town. There was nothing for it but to wait, and in the gathering
dusk she waited, chafing and resentful.

The dusk changed to darkness, but Rhoda had no thought of lighting the
lamp. The wood fire died down until it was no more than a handful of
smouldering ash; she let it sink unregarded. Nine o'clock had come and
gone when she heard an uncertain step on the cobble-stones of the
farmyard. She sprang up then, and lighted a tallow candle which stood on
the table; as its feeble light slowly spread over the cheerless scene the
door opened, and Perris came in, to meet his wife's accusing and angry
eyes.

Perris was sober by that time--sober enough, at any rate, to be in a
state of dire dejection, repentance and fright. He had awakened with a
violent start, to find himself on his back behind the wheatstack, with a
starlit patch of sky over his head, the hedgerow swaying in the night
wind, and his clothes damp with the rapidly gathering dew. He had there
and then set off home, having some vague notion in his muddled head that
there was a bad time before him, and that he had better get it over, But
he was unconscious of the loss of his money; the only catastrophe of
which he was aware was that of the ivory-handled umbrella. And when he
walked into his house, he grinned at Rhoda with the ingratiating and
benevolent smile of one who brings good tidings.

"Now, my lass!" he said, with a fine attempt to carry matters off in a
good style. "I'm a bit late, as it were--I hed a bit o' business that
okkeypied me when t' rent dinner were over. Ye'll be glad to hear, mi
lass, 'at his Lordship thowt well to make a reduction on t' rents, and so
accordin'-ly--accordin'-ly, I say--"

Rhoda suddenly uttered an exclamation of horror. She had caught sight of
the broken umbrella, and she darted forward and snatched it out of
Perris's grasp.

"Aw--aye-I hed an accident wi' t' umbrella," said Perris apologetically.
"It's ower weak for a grown man to walk wi'. We mun hey' it mended, mi
lass, or we mun buy a new 'un. Howsomiver, as I were observin', mi lass,
his Lordship were so disposed--"

Rhoda suddenly slapped her open palm on the table.

"Where's the money?" she demanded. "Where's the money?"

Perris began to fumble in his pockets. His wife's sharp eyes detected the
bits of straw and grass on his clothes; he looked as a young colt looks
that has been rolling itself in field and fold; she saw, too, that his
billycock hat was crushed in, and that he had torn a considerable rent in
the tail of his coat. And as she watched him she saw his face, drawn and
dirty from his out-of-doors sleep, turn pasty with wonder and fear. His
hands shook as they strayed from pocket to pocket.

"It's--it's none there!" he stammered. "I--I mun ha' been robbed!
Robbed!"

Rhoda's bosom heaved up in a great throb of passionate rebellion. Her
face, too, turned white around her blazing eyes and drawn lips as she
shook her fist at the amazed man who stood swaying and sweating before
her.

"You damned, blasted liar!" she burst out. "Robbed! You've drunk it, and
lost it. You--"

But there speech failed her. For an instant Perris shrank back, thinking
she was going to strike him, but the lifted hand dropped to the table,
crashing the tin candlestick and its feeble light to the ground. In the
darkness he heard Rhoda rush past him, the door open and close with a
bang: he knew himself then to be alone. For a few moments he stood
muttering to himself, as he again searched pocket after pocket; at last
he groped about his feet for the fallen candle, and, having relighted it,
set it on the table and wonderingly stared around the house-place. And,
crossing over to the door, he pulled it open with a jerk and looked out
on the night. The night was as silent as the house, but somewhere in the
road outside his straining ears caught the faint patter of hurrying feet.


VII


For the second time within that week, Taffendale, smoking his last pipe
before going to bed, heard a knock at his door, and again he started in
his chair, wondering who could come at such a late hour. But when he
opened the door he was not surprised to see Perris's wife; something had
told him as he walked down the hall that it was she who stood on his
threshold.

Rhoda had fled away from the Cherry-trees in the linen gown in which she
had worked all day. The wind had blown the red-gold hair about her face;
her cheeks were flushed; her eyes were unnaturally bright; her lips were
parted; one hand was clutching the bosom of her gown. And though he was
not surprised at the sight of her, Taffendale started as the light of the
lamp fell on her face.

"Mrs. Perris!" he exclaimed.

Rhoda 'stepped in without ceremony.

"Let me come in, Mr. Taffendale," she said. "I--I've come on purpose."

Taffendale silently motioned her to go forward to the parlour; he closed
the front door, and soon followed her there.

"What is it?--what's wrong?" he asked. "You haven't come across the
fields like that?"

Rhoda was tugging at something which she kept within the bosom of her
gown. In her excitement she tore the gown open, revealing more of herself
than she was aware of; Taffendale saw that she was unconscious of what
she was doing. She pulled out a canvas bag, and laid it on the table
between them.

"I've brought your money back," she panted. "At least, what there is left
of it. I--I never ought to have come and borrowed. It's no good, Mr.
Taffendale--no good! It'll only be wasted. I wish I'd never troubled you.
But I'll work myself to skin and bone to pay you back."

Taffendale laid his hand on her arm, and gently pushed her into the chair
which he had just quitted.

"Sit down," he said. "Come, now, what's it all about? What's gone wrong?
Is it--Perris?"

Rhoda yielded unconsciously to his touch, and sank into the chair. He saw
a look that was not far from intense hatred cross her face, and her eyes
flashed as she gave him a swift glance.

"Perris!" she exclaimed. "Who else should it be but Perris? I wish to God
I'd died the day I set eyes on him! It's no use trying to help a thing
like him--he isn't a man, that!"

"Take your time, now," said Taffendale. He went over to the sideboard and
brought her a glass of his old port. "Drink it." he said authoritatively.

"Drink it--it'll do you good. And now--what's it all about?"

Rhoda poured out her story to him, gaining relief in confession. Help
Perris any further she would not. He could go to the dogs for all she
would do to stop him. And when she had made an end of her story she leapt
to her feet looking very determined.

"Anyway, I've brought your money back, Mr. Taffendale--what there is left
of it, and I'll repay you the rest," she said. "I'll leave that man,
and--"

"Stop a bit, stop a bit!" Taffendale broke in. "I lent that money to you,
not to Perris. Now then, take that bag back, Mrs. Perris, and just--try
again. A man's apt to forget himself at a rent dinner. Take it back, and
I'll come and have a talk to Perris to-morrow. Here, put the money in
your pocket again."

Rhoda stared at him.

"Do you mean that?" she said suddenly.

"Of course I mean it," answered Taffendale quietly. "It's you that's
going to pull things round, don't you see? Come, now, do as I say--put
the money up again."

Rhoda hid the canvas bag in her bosom, still staring at him.

"That's right," said Taffendale. "Now, then, I'm going to see you home.
And so you came out without anything; here's an old shawl of my
housekeeper's--put it on."

But instead of waiting for Rhoda to take the shawl, he wrapped it round
her himself. Then he picked up his cap and his stick, and together they
went out of the house and into the silence of the night.


VIII


Perris, who had slunk off to bed when he found himself left alone, awoke
next morning with anticipations of further trouble: he knew his wife well
enough by that time to feel assured that she would give him the benefit
of her tongue all that day, and the next day, and for many days. He went
downstairs quietly in his stockinged feet, and peeping into the
house-place, saw Rhoda fast asleep on the old settle. Perris stole over
to the hearth, secured the boots which he had left there the previous
night, and let himself out into the yard. Sitting on the edge of the
well-trough he put the boots on, and then made swiftly in the direction
of the field wherein he had slept off his drink. His brain was still
clouded and heavy from the previous day's debauch, but he was sensible
enough to know that there was a strong probability of his having lost his
money at the wheatstack.

"I mun ha' rolled ower i' my sleep, and then it slipped out o' mi
pockets," he muttered, as he went over the dew-laden grass. "There's
nowhere else where I could ha' lost it, and I mun find it, or else
there'll be t' Owd Lad to play wi' Rhoda. It mun be theer!"

But when Perris came to the wheatstack, fully expecting to find his gold
and silver on the spot where he had lain, he found nothing, though he got
down on hands and knees and examined every foot of the space between the
stack and the hedgerow. Then he retraced the path which he had followed
from the high-road, and he went down the high-road itself until he was in
sight of the Dancing Bear. He went back by the same way, and again
examined his resting-place of the day before; in the end, as
breakfast-time was drawing near, he returned to the farmstead,
empty-handed as he had set out. If it had been possible he would have
fled to the ends of the earth he knew well what was in store for him.

Pippany Webster, very red about the eyes and tremulous about the lips,
was feeding the pigs when Perris crossed the fold on his way to the
house. Perris stopped and looked at him.

"Ye were hoeing turnips i' yon five-acre yesterday afternoon?" he said,
without preface.

"I wor hoein' turnips theer all t' day," answered Pippany. "Niver did
nowt else."

"Did ye see onnybody about i' t' afternoon?" asked Perris. "Any strange
folk, like, goin' over yon footpath across t' fields?"

"Noe!" replied Pippany. "I niver seed nobody--leastways, I did see t'
parson governess, and t' parson two childer, walkin' across theer wi'
their dog. About three o'clock that there wor."

"Did yer see me?" asked Perris.

Pippany looked at his master with the surprise of innocence.

"Ye?" he exclaimed. "No, I niver seed owt o' ye, maister. I thowt ye wor
at t' rent dinner."

Perris rubbed his chin and walked into the house. It was in his mind that
he would let Rhoda storm while he himself held his peace. He expected to
hear her tongue as soon as he crossed the threshold, and he hung his head
and rounded his shoulders as he stepped in. After all, he was saying to
himself, she was bound to give him his breakfast, and after that he could
escape to the fields.

But to Perris's intense surprise no storm of anger and reproach burst
upon him. The house-place was tidied up more neatly than was usual; the
breakfast table was set in the window: two places were laid for his wife
and himself, and one for Pippany Webster; there was a fragrant smell of
hot coffee; and Rhoda was frying bacon at the fire. She half-turned
towards him as he entered, and Perris, dull of comprehension as he was,
noticed that she was very pale, that there were dark shadows under her
eyes, and that in the quick look which she gave him there was some
expression which he had never seen there before. He sat down, staring at
her, and as he stared he saw her face suddenly suffused with colour.

"Breakfast 'll be ready in a minute," she said, turning away from him to
bend over the frying-pan. "The bacon's nearly done."

"Ye're none looking so well this morning, my lass," remarked Perris, not
unkindly. "It's a soft thing to lig yerself down and fall asleep on that
there old settle as ye've got into t' habit o' doin'. What's t' matter,
like, my lass?"

"It's naught," replied Rhoda. "I've a headache."

"Happen a cup o' coffee 'll improve it," said Perris. "Gow, ye were as
white as a mork when I come in, and now ye've turned as red as a rose I
I've no doubt," he continued, rubbing his bony knees with his great
hands, and still lost in his surprise that Rhoda should be so quiet,
"I've no doubt 'at ye were upset yesterday, my lass, 'cause I didn't come
home, and again last night because o' that matter o' losing t' rebate
money. Now, that there rebate money--"

"What's the use of talking about it?" said Rhoda. "It's done now. All the
talking in the world won't alter that. When a thing's done--it's done!"

"I'm none so sure about that there," said Perris, gaining confidence
because of his wife's unusual placability. "I'm none goin' to lose my
brass wi'out an effort to find it. You see, my lass, it's true 'at I were
a bit overcome wi' t' drink--ye know what these here rent dinners is, and
I'm none used to drinkin' sherry wines and suchlike--and t' truth is 'at
I went to yon owd wheatstack to sleep it off a bit. But I had that there
brass i' my pocket when I went there, and it weren't i' my pocket when I
comed home. That's t' truth, Rhoda. An'--"

The scraping of feet outside the door announced the arrival of Pippany
Webster for breakfast. He came in and took his accustomed place, and
Rhoda, putting the fried bacon on the table, nudged her husband's elbow.

"Say no more now," she whispered. "Wait a bit."

Perris made no answer beyond a stare: he pulled the dish of bacon towards
him and began serving the rashers while Rhoda poured out the coffee.

"You needn't give me any bacon," she said suddenly. "I don't want any."

And instead of sitting down at the table, she drank her coffee as, she
moved about the house-place, doing one small job after another. Perris,
unobservant as he was, noticed that she finished her first cup quickly,
and helped herself to another before he had done little more than taste
his own.

"Ye seem uncommon dry this morning, my lass," he said. "I hope ye're none
goin' to be badly."

"I'm all right," she answered. But she finished the second cup as if she
was still thirsty as when she first drank: that done, she went upstairs,
and they heard her moving about in the bedchamber. When she came down
Pippany Webster had finished his breakfast and was going out. Rhoda
stopped him with a word. "I want that cow-house cleaning out," she said,
turning to Perris. "It wasn't touched yesterday."

"Theer wor no chance o' cleanin' t' cow-house out yisterda'," said
Pippany. T' maister theer said I wor to stick to t' tonnups all day."

"Now then, away and get it done wi'," commanded Perris. "Do it t' first
thing."

When Pippany had gone into the farmyard, Rhoda closed the door and turned
to her husband. She sat down at the end of the table, between the door
and the window, and in such a position that her face was in the shadow of
the window curtain. Perris, lighting his clay pipe with a live coal from
the fire, looked at her curiously.

"Ye're still paleish, like, my lass," he remarked. "I hope--"

"I'm all right, I tell you," she said hurriedly. "Now then, what about
this money. I didn't want you to say aught before Pippany Webster. Where
do you say you lost it?"

Perris, always ready to be garrulous, sat down contentedly in the
easy-chair by the fire and sucked at his pipe.

"Now, ye see, it were this here way, Rhoda, my lass," he began. "Ye see,
there's no denyin' 'at I were the worse for a drop o' drink. And so,
thinks I, I'll away and lie down for a piece behind yon owd wheatstack t'
Four-Acre and sleep it off. And certain sure I am 'at when I went there I
had that brass i' my pocket."

"How much?" asked Rhoda.

"There 'ud be three sovereigns and a half-sovereign, and a lot o' silver
money," answered Perris. "I werrn't that overcome 'at I didn't know what
I spent down at t' Bear. I know it were there--it must ha' been there.
Why, now then, I slept a lot longer nor what I thowt to do, and when I
wakkened I come straight home. And then when I were goin' to bring t'
brass out to hand over to ye, my lass, it werrn't there! Didn't I say at
t' time 'at I must ha' been robbed? An' I must ha' been!--there's no two
ways about it."

Rhoda made no answer. She was sitting with her hands folded in her lap,
and she watched Perris in a dull, apathetic fashion, as if he talked of
something in which she had no immediate concern or special interest. And
Perris went on, glad to hear himself talk.

"Ye see, my lass, there's a footpath across yon fields," lie said. "It
goes, as ye're aware, reightaways up fro' t' chappil across my land and
over t' high ground as far as Mestur Taffendale's place at t' Limepits.
Ye know it, my lass."

Rhoda started.

"Yes," she said in a low voice "I know it."

"Well, ye see, if there's tramps about they might take that there
footpath," continued Perris. "And if so be as a feller o' that sort
chanced to see me lyin' down at t' back o' yon wheatstack, he could ha'
picked my pocket while I were asleep."

Rhoda got up from her seat and began to clear the breakfast things away.

"Wasn't yon Pippany hoeing turnips in the near field to that wheatstack
yesterday afternoon?" she asked suddenly.

"He wor, he wor, my lass," replied Perris. "Yes, he were there, were
Pippany. He were i' t' Four-Acre and I were i' t' Five-Acre. But he see'd
nobody crossin' them fields, 'ceptin' t' parson childer, an' their
governess, and t' dog. I axed Pippany about that there this mornin'."

"You'd a deal better have asked him if he'd robbed you," said Rhoda. "If
you were so far gone as all that, what had he to do but put his hand in
your pocket? He was there, and I'll lay aught he saw you. And I'll lay
aught he's got that money."

Perris, at first hearing this suggestion with an incredulous stare,
suddenly leapt to his feet and banged the table.

"By Gow, I niver thowt o' that, Rhoda!" he exclaimed, "Of course, he
were there i' t' next field. I'll break every bone i' his body, t'
thievin'--"

"Stop a bit," said Rhoda. She pushed Perris back as he made for the door,
and motioned to him to sit down again. "I'll call him, and we'll see what
he has to say to me. You hold your tongue till I give you the word."

She opened the door, and, going out into the yard, called Pippany from
the cow-house. Pippany came slowly across the fold, resentful and grumpy.

"Now then, what is it?" he demanded, as he came inside. "I no sooiner get
agate on one job nor I'm called off to another."

Rhoda, who had remained by the door, shut it and set her back against it.
She folded her arms and fixed Pippany with a stern look.

"Where's that money you took out of your master's pocket yesterday
afternoon when he was asleep?" she demanded. "Hand it out!"

Pippany's jaw dropped, and his weak knees suddenly assumed a new degree
of weakness. He was amazed by the directness of Rhoda's charge, and the
first thought which flashed into his brain was that he had been watched.

"Now, then, none of your lies!" said Rhoda, quick to detect the signs of
Pippany's guilt. "Out with it!"

Pippany recovered his wits. He would brazen matters out.

"Out wi' what?" he demanded. "I've nowt o' t' maister's--I niver set ees
on t' maister fro' yisterda' mornin' till this mornin'."

"You set eyes on him when he was asleep behind that old wheatstack, and
you took his money out of his pocket," asserted Rhoda. "You thought
nobody was watching you, but other folks can look through hedges as well
as you. Now then, out with it!"

"I wish I may be struck down dead if ever--" began Pippany.

Rhoda nodded to Perris. Perris sprang up and seized his man in a firm
grip. Rhoda advanced on Pippany as he began to kick and scream.

"Hold him tight while I see what he's got in his pockets," she said.
"We'll soon find out what he has about him."

"I'll hev' t' law on both on yer!" yelled Pippany, struggling in Perris's
firm grasp. "Ye can't stand to 'sault a body i' this way! I'll summons
both on yer afore afore t' magistrates I'll--"

Rhoda went through Pippany's pockets in thorough fashion, laying their
contents on the table as she drew them out. She found some copper and
silver in his breeches: in his waistcoat pocket she discovered the
tobacco-box. A sudden inspiration prompted her to open it. From the
tightly compressed tobacco she produced three sovereigns and a
half-sovereign, and at the sight of them Perris shook Pippany until his
teeth chattered in his jaws.

"There!" said Rhoda. "You'll go to prison for that, you thief! I knew
you'd got it."

"It's--it's mine, I tell you!" screamed Pippany. "It's mi savin's, and ye
can't stand to rob a body like that there! I'll--"

In the midst of Pippany's vociferation and moans the door opened.
Taffendale, spick and span, walked in, and stood astonished at the sight
which presented itself.

"Hullo!" he exclaimed. "I--I couldn't make anybody hear, so I came in.
What's the matter?"

Rhoda, who had turned very pale at the sight of Taffendale, and had as
suddenly flushed crimson, gave the visitor a swift look from beneath her
eyelids.

"Pippany Webster's been robbing his master," she said in a low voice.
"We've just found the money on him."

Perris gave Pippany another savage shake.

"Ho'd yer wisht!" he commanded. "Aye, he's been robbin' me, Mestur
Taffendale. Theer's t' money--Rhoda there found it i' his bacca-box. What
would you do wi' him, sir?--would you take him down to t' policeman?"

"For the present I should kick him out," said Taffendale, bestowing a
careless look on Pippany. "He can't get far away."

Perris wasted no time in carrying this counsel into effect. He ran
Pippany to the open door and kicked him into the fold with a force which
landed his victim on all fours in the manure. That done, he came back,
grinning all over his face.

"Ecod, that'll learn him a lesson!" he said, panting. "Aye, robbed me o'
summat like four pound, did t' feller. Sit you down, Mestur Taffendale,
sir: we'm proud to see you i' our house, an' I hope--"

"No, thank you," said Taffendale. "I promised your wife the other day
that I'd give you a bit of advice about your farm, so if you like, we'll
walk round it, and see how things are--I