“I never said she was.”
“A pleasant person, though; hearty, cheerful-looking, and strong. I can easily imagine her trotting over the common with her basket of eggs — chatting to the old woman, and scolding the naughty boy.”
“Don’t make fun of her. She must have a hard life with her old father.”
Of course, seeing him take it up so seriously, I jested no more.
“By-the-by, did not the father’s name strike you? MARCH— suppose it should turn out to be the very Mr. March you pulled out of Severn five years ago. What a romantic conjuncture of circumstances?”
“Nonsense,” said John, quickly — more quickly than he usually spoke to me; then came back to wish me a kind goodbye. “Take care of yourself, old fellow. It will be nightfall before I am back from Norton Bury.”
I watched him mount, and ride slowly down the bit of common — turning once to look back at Rose Cottage, ere he finally disappeared between the chestnut trees: a goodly sight — for he was an admirable horseman.
When he was gone, I, glancing lazily up at Mr. March’s window, saw a hand, and I fancied a white-furred wrist, pulling down the blind. It amused me to think Miss March might possibly have been watching him likewise.
I spent the whole long day alone in the cottage parlour, chiefly meditating; though more than once friendly Mrs. Tod broke in upon my solitude. She treated me in a motherly, free-and-easy way: not half so deferentially as she treated John Halifax.
The sun had gone down over Nunnely Hill, behind the four tall Italian poplars, which stood on the border of our bit of wilderness — three together and one apart. They were our landmarks — and skymarks too — for the first sunbeam coming across the common struck their tops of a morning, and the broad western glimmer showed their forms distinctly until far in the night. They were just near enough for me to hear their faint rustling in windy weather; on calm days they stood up straight against the sky, like memorial columns. They were friends of mine — those four poplars; sometimes they almost seemed alive. We made acquaintance on this first night, when I sat watching for John; and we kept up the friendship ever afterwards.
It was nine o’clock before I heard the old mare’s hoofs clattering up the road: joyfully I ran out.
David was not quite his youthful, gay self that night; not quite, as he expressed it, “the David of the sheep-folds.” He was very tired, and had what he called “the tan-yard feeling,” the oppression of business cares.
“Times are hard,” said he, when we had finally shut out the starlight, and Mrs. Tod had lit candles, bade us good-night in her free, independent way, and “hoped Mr. Halifax had everything he wanted.” She always seemed to consider him the head of our little menage.
“The times are very hard,” repeated John, thoughtfully. “I don’t see how your father can rightly be left with so many anxieties on his shoulders. I must manage to get to Norton Bury at least five days a week. You will have enough of solitude, I fear.”
“And you will have little enough of the pleasant country life you planned, and which you seem so to delight in.”
“Never mind — perhaps it’s good for me. I have a life of hard work before me, and can’t afford to get used to too much pleasure. But we’ll make the most of every bit of time we have. How have you felt today? Strong?”
“Very strong. Now what would you like us to do tomorrow?”
“I want to show you the common in early morning — the view there is so lovely.”
“Of Nature, or human nature?”
He half smiled, though only at my mischievousness. I could see it did not affect him in the least. “Nay, I know what you mean; but I had forgotten her, or, if not absolutely forgotten, she was not in my mind just then. We will go another way, as indeed I had intended: it might annoy the young lady, our meeting her again.”
His grave, easy manner of treating and dismissing the subject was a tacit reproach to me. I let the matter drop; we had much more serious topics afloat than gossip about our neighbours.
At seven next morning we were out on the Flat.
“I’m not going to let you stand here in the dews, Phineas. Come a little farther on, to my terrace, as I call it. There’s a panorama!”
It was indeed. All around the high flat a valley lay, like a moat, or as if some broad river had been dried up in its course, and, century after century, gradually converted into meadow, woodland, and town. For a little white town sat demurely at the bottom of the hollow, and a score or two of white cottages scattered themselves from this small nucleus of civilisation over the opposite bank of this imaginary river, which was now a lovely hill-side. Gorges, purple with shadow, yellow corn-fields, and dark clumps of woodland dressed this broad hill-side in many colours; its highest point, Nunnely Hill, forming the horizon where last night I had seen the sun go down, and which now was tinted with the tenderest western morning grey.
“Do you like this, Phineas? I do, very much. A dear, smiling, English valley, holding many a little nest of an English home. Fancy being patriarch over such a region, having the whole valley in one’s hand, to do good to, or ill. You can’t think what primitive people they are hereabouts — descendants from an old colony of Flemish cloth-weavers: they keep to the trade. Down in the valley — if one could see through the beech wood — is the grand support of the neighbourhood, a large cloth mill!”
“That’s quite in your line, John;” and I saw his face brighten up as it had done when, as a boy, he had talked to me about his machinery. “What has become of that wonderful little loom you made?”
“Oh! I have it still. But this is such a fine cloth-mill! — I have been all over it. If the owner would put aside his old Flemish stolidity! I do believe he and his ancestors have gone on in the same way, and with almost the same machinery, ever since Queen Elizabeth’s time. Now, just one or two of our modern improvements, such as — but I forget, you never could understand mechanics.”
“You can, though. Explain clearly, and I’ll try my best.”
He did so, and so did I. I think he even managed to knock something of the matter into my stupid head, where it remained — for ten minutes! Much longer remained the impression of his energetic talk — his clear-headed way of putting before another what he understood so well himself. I marvelled how he had gained all his information.
“Oh! it’s easy enough, when one has a natural propensity for catching hold of facts; and then, you know, I always had a weakness for machinery; I could stand for an hour watching a mill at work, especially if it’s worked by a great water-wheel.”
“Would you like to be a mill-owner?”
“Shouldn’t I!”— with a sunshiny flash, which soon clouded over. “However, ’tis idle talking; one cannot choose one’s calling — at least, very few can. After all, it isn’t the trade that signifies — it’s the man. I’m a tanner, and a capital tanner I intend to be. By-the-by, I wonder if Mrs. Tod, who talks so much about ‘gentlefolk,’ knows that latter fact about you and me?”
“I think not; I hope not. Oh, David! this one month at least let us get rid of the tan-yard.”
For I hated it more than ever now, in our quiet, free, Arcadian life; the very thought of it was insupportable, not only for myself, but for John.
He gently blamed me, yet, I think, he involuntarily felt much as I did, if he would have allowed himself so to feel.
“Who would guess now that I who stand here, delighting myself in this fresh air and pleasant view, this dewy common, all thick with flowers — what a pretty blue cluster that is at your foot, Phineas! — who would guess that all yesterday I had been stirring up tan-pits, handling raw hides? Faugh! I wonder the little harebells don’t sicken in these, my hands