Cousin Phillis (3 page)

'Your father up at three! Why, what has he to do at that hour?'

'What has he not to do? He has his private exercise in his own room; he
always rings the great bell which calls the men to milking; he rouses
up Betty, our maid; as often as not he gives the horses their feed
before the man is up—for Jem, who takes care of the horses, is an old
man; and father is always loth to disturb him; he looks at the calves,
and the shoulders, heels, traces, chaff, and corn before the horses go
a-field; he has often to whip-cord the plough-whips; he sees the hogs
fed; he looks into the swill-tubs, and writes his orders for what is
wanted for food for man and beast; yes, and for fuel, too. And then, if
he has a bit of time to spare, he comes in and reads with me—but only
English; we keep Latin for the evenings, that we may have time to enjoy
it; and then he calls in the men to breakfast, and cuts the boys' bread
and cheese; and sees their wooden bottles filled, and sends them off to
their work;—and by this time it is half-past six, and we have our
breakfast. There is father,' she exclaimed, pointing out to me a man in
his shirt-sleeves, taller by the head than the other two with whom he
was working. We only saw him through the leaves of the ash-trees
growing in the hedge, and I thought I must be confusing the figures, or
mistaken: that man still looked like a very powerful labourer, and had
none of the precise demureness of appearance which I had always
imagined was the characteristic of a minister. It was the Reverend
Ebenezer Holman, however. He gave us a nod as we entered the
stubble-field; and I think he would have come to meet us but that he
was in the middle of giving some directions to his men. I could see
that Phillis was built more after his type than her mother's. He, like
his daughter, was largely made, and of a fair, ruddy complexion,
whereas hers was brilliant and delicate. His hair had been yellow or
sandy, but now was grizzled. Yet his grey hairs betokened no failure in
strength. I never saw a more powerful man—deep chest, lean flanks,
well-planted head. By this time we were nearly up to him; and he
interrupted himself and stepped forwards; holding out his hand to me,
but addressing Phillis.

'Well, my lass, this is cousin Manning, I suppose. Wait a minute, young
man, and I'll put on my coat, and give you a decorous and formal
welcome. But—Ned Hall, there ought to be a water-furrow across this
land: it's a nasty, stiff, clayey, dauby bit of ground, and thou and I
must fall to, come next Monday—I beg your pardon, cousin Manning—and
there's old Jem's cottage wants a bit of thatch; you can do that job
tomorrow while I am busy.' Then, suddenly changing the tone of his deep
bass voice to an odd suggestion of chapels and preachers, he added.
'Now, I will give out the psalm, "Come all harmonious tongues", to be
sung to "Mount Ephraim" tune.'

He lifted his spade in his hand, and began to beat time with it; the
two labourers seemed to know both words and music, though I did not;
and so did Phillis: her rich voice followed her father's as he set the
tune; and the men came in with more uncertainty, but still
harmoniously. Phillis looked at me once or twice with a little surprise
at my silence; but I did not know the words. There we five stood,
bareheaded, excepting Phillis, in the tawny stubble-field, from which
all the shocks of corn had not yet been carried—a dark wood on one
side, where the woodpigeons were cooing; blue distance seen through the
ash-trees on the other. Somehow, I think that if I had known the words,
and could have sung, my throat would have been choked up by the feeling
of the unaccustomed scene.

The hymn was ended, and the men had drawn off before I could stir. I
saw the minister beginning to put on his coat, and looking at me with
friendly inspection in his gaze, before I could rouse myself.

'I dare say you railway gentlemen don't wind up the day with singing a
psalm together,' said he; 'but it is not a bad practice—not a bad
practice. We have had it a bit earlier to-day for hospitality's
sake—that's all.'

I had nothing particular to say to this, though I was thinking a great
deal. From time to time I stole a look at my companion. His coat was
black, and so was his waistcoat; neckcloth he had none, his strong full
throat being bare above the snow-white shirt. He wore drab-coloured
knee-breeches, grey worsted stockings (I thought I knew the maker), and
strong-nailed shoes. He carried his hat in his hand, as if he liked to
feel the coming breeze lifting his hair. After a while, I saw that the
father took hold of the daughter's hand, and so, they holding each
other, went along towards home. We had to cross a lane. In it were two
little children, one lying prone on the grass in a passion of crying,
the other standing stock still, with its finger in its mouth, the large
tears slowly rolling down its cheeks for sympathy. The cause of their
distress was evident; there was a broken brown pitcher, and a little
pool of spilt milk on the road.

'Hollo! Hollo! What's all this?' said the minister. 'Why, what have you
been about, Tommy,' lifting the little petticoated lad, who was lying
sobbing, with one vigorous arm. Tommy looked at him with surprise in
his round eyes, but no affright—they were evidently old acquaintances.

'Mammy's jug!' said he, at last, beginning to cry afresh.

'Well! and will crying piece mammy's jug, or pick up spilt milk? How
did you manage it, Tommy?'

'He' (jerking his head at the other) 'and me was running races.'

'Tommy said he could beat me,' put in the other.

'Now, I wonder what will make you two silly lads mind, and not run
races again with a pitcher of milk between you,' said the minister, as
if musing. 'I might flog you, and so save mammy the trouble; for I dare
say she'll do it if I don't.' The fresh burst of whimpering from both
showed the probability of this.

'Or I might take you to the Hope Farm, and give you some more milk; but
then you'd be running races again, and my milk would follow that to the
ground, and make another white pool. I think the flogging would be
best—don't you?'

'We would never run races no more,' said the elder of the two.

'Then you'd not be boys; you'd be angels.'

'No, we shouldn't.'

'Why not?'

They looked into each other's eyes for an answer to this puzzling
question. At length, one said, 'Angels is dead folk.'

'Come; we'll not get too deep into theology. What do you think of my
lending you a tin can with a lid to carry the milk home in? That would
not break, at any rate; though I would not answer for the milk not
spilling if you ran races. That's it!'

He had dropped his daughter's hand, and now held out each of his to the
little fellows. Phillis and I followed, and listened to the prattle
which the minister's companions now poured out to him, and which he was
evidently enjoying. At a certain point, there was a sudden burst of the
tawny, ruddy-evening landscape. The minister turned round and quoted a
line or two of Latin.

'It's wonderful,' said he, 'how exactly Virgil has hit the enduring
epithets, nearly two thousand years ago, and in Italy; and yet how it
describes to a T what is now lying before us in the parish of
Heathbridge, county —, England.'

'I dare say it does,' said I, all aglow with shame, for I had forgotten
the little Latin I ever knew.

The minister shifted his eyes to Phillis's face; it mutely gave him
back the sympathetic appreciation that I, in my ignorance, could not
bestow.

'Oh! this is worse than the catechism,' thought I; 'that was only
remembering words.'

'Phillis, lass, thou must go home with these lads, and tell their
mother all about the race and the milk. Mammy must always know the
truth,' now speaking to the children. 'And tell her, too, from me that
I have got the best birch rod in the parish; and that if she ever
thinks her children want a flogging she must bring them to me, and, if
I think they deserve it, I'll give it them better than she can.' So
Phillis led the children towards the dairy, somewhere in the back yard,
and I followed the minister in through the 'curate' into the
house-place. 'Their mother,' said he, 'is a bit of a vixen, and apt to
punish her children without rhyme or reason. I try to keep the parish
rod as well as the parish bull.'

He sate down in the three-cornered chair by the fire-side, and looked
around the empty room.

'Where's the missus?' said he to himself. But she was there home—by a
look, by a touch, nothing more—as soon as she in a minute; it was her
regular plan to give him his welcome could after his return, and he had
missed her now. Regardless of my presence, he went over the day's
doings to her; and then, getting up, he said he must go and make
himself 'reverend', and that then we would have a cup of tea in the
parlour. The parlour was a large room with two casemented windows on
the other side of the broad flagged passage leading from the
rector-door to the wide staircase, with its shallow, polished oaken
steps, on which no carpet was ever laid. The parlour-floor was covered
in the middle by a home-made carpeting of needlework and list. One or
two quaint family pictures of the Holman family hung round the walls;
the fire-grate and irons were much ornamented with brass; and on a
table against the wall between the windows, a great beau-pot of flowers
was placed upon the folio volumes of Matthew Henry's Bible. It was a
compliment to me to use this room, and I tried to be grateful for it;
but we never had our meals there after that first day, and I was glad
of it; for the large house-place, living room, dining-room, whichever
you might like to call it, was twice as comfortable and cheerful. There
was a rug in front of the great large fire-place, and an oven by the
grate, and a crook, with the kettle hanging from it, over the bright
wood-fire; everything that ought to be black and Polished in that room
was black and Polished; and the flags, and window-curtains, and such
things as were to be white and clean, were just spotless in their
purity. Opposite to the fire-place, extending the whole length of the
room, was an oaken shovel-board, with the right incline for a skilful
player to send the weights into the prescribed space. There were
baskets of white work about, and a small shelf of books hung against
the wall, books used for reading, and not for propping up a beau-pot of
flowers. I took down one or two of those books once when I was left
alone in the house-place on the first evening—Virgil, Caesar, a Greek
grammar—oh, dear! ah, me! and Phillis Holman's name in each of them! I
shut them up, and put them back in their places, and walked as far away
from the bookshelf as I could. Yes, and I gave my cousin Phillis a wide
berth, as though she was sitting at her work quietly enough, and her
hair was looking more golden, her dark eyelashes longer, her round
pillar of a throat whiter than ever. We had done tea, and we had
returned into the house-place that the minister might smoke his pipe
without fear of contaminating the drab damask window-curtains of the
parlour. He had made himself 'reverend' by putting on one of the
voluminous white muslin neckcloths that I had seen cousin Holman
ironing that first visit I had paid to the Hope Farm, and by making one
or two other unimportant changes in his dress. He sate looking steadily
at me, but whether he saw me or not I cannot tell. At the time I
fancied that he did, and was gauging me in some unknown fashion in his
secret mind. Every now and then he took his pipe out of his mouth,
knocked out the ashes, and asked me some fresh question. As long as
these related to my acquirements or my reading, I shuffled uneasily and
did not know what to answer. By-and-by he got round to the more
practical subject of railroads, and on this I was more at home. I
really had taken an interest in my work; nor would Mr Holdsworth,
indeed, have kept me in his employment if I had not given my mind as
well as my time to it; and I was, besides, full of the difficulties
which beset us just then, owing to our not being able to find a steady
bottom on the Heathbridge moss, over which we wished to carry our line.
In the midst of all my eagerness in speaking about this, I could not
help being struck with the extreme pertinence of his questions. I do
not mean that he did not show ignorance of many of the details of
engineering: that was to have been expected; but on the premises he had
got hold of; he thought clearly and reasoned logically. Phillis—so
like him as she was both in body and mind—kept stopping at her work
and looking at me, trying to fully understand all that I said. I felt
she did; and perhaps it made me take more pains in using clear
expressions, and arranging my words, than I otherwise should.

'She shall see I know something worth knowing, though it mayn't be her
dead-and-gone languages,' thought I.

'I see,' said the minister, at length. 'I understand it all. You've a
clear, good head of your own, my lad,—choose how you came by it.'

'From my father,' said I, proudly. 'Have you not heard of his discovery
of a new method of shunting? It was in the Gazette. It was patented. I
thought every one had heard of Manning's patent winch.'

'We don't know who invented the alphabet,' said he, half smiling, and
taking up his pipe.

'No, I dare say not, sir,' replied I, half offended; 'that's so long
ago.' Puff—puff—puff.

'But your father must be a notable man. I heard of him once before; and
it is not many a one fifty miles away whose fame reaches Heathbridge.'

'My father is a notable man, sir. It is not me that says so; it is Mr
Holdsworth, and—and everybody.'

'He is right to stand up for his father,' said cousin Holman, as if she
were pleading for me.

I chafed inwardly, thinking that my father needed no one to stand up
for him. He was man sufficient for himself.

'Yes—he is right,' said the minister, placidly. 'Right, because it
comes from his heart—right, too, as I believe, in point of fact. Else
there is many a young cockerel that will stand upon a dunghill and crow
about his father, by way of making his own plumage to shine. I should
like to know thy father,' he went on, turning straight to me, with a
kindly, frank look in his eyes.