The Collected Works of J. S. Fletcher: 17 Novels & 28 Short Stories (Illustrated Edition). J. S. Fletcher
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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