Actions and Reactions
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Rudyard Kipling >> Actions and Reactions
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"You're sure you've took no 'arm?" cried Mrs. Cloke, who had
heard the news by farm-telegraphy, which is older but swifter
than Marconi's.
"No. I'm perfectly well," Sophie protested.
"You lay down till tea-time." Mrs. Cloke patted her shoulder.
"THEY'll be very pleased, though she 'as 'ad no proper
understandin' for twenty years."
"They" came before twilight--a black-bearded man in moleskins,
and a little palsied old woman, who chirruped like a wren.
"I'm his son," said the man to Sophie, among the lavender bushes.
"We 'ad a difference--twenty year back, and didn't speak since.
But I'm his son all the 'same, and we thank you for the
watching."
"I'm only glad I happened to be there," she answered, and from
the bottom of her heart she meant it.
"We heard he spoke a lot o' you--one time an' another since you
came. We thank you kindly," the man added.
"Are you the son that was in America?" she asked.
"Yes, ma'am. On my uncle's farm, in Connecticut. He was what they
call rood-master there."
"Whereabouts in Connecticut?" asked George over her shoulder.
"Veering Holler was the name. I was there six year with my
uncle."
"How small the world is!" Sophie cried. "Why, all my mother's
people come from Veering Hollow. There must be some there
still--the Lashmars. Did you ever hear of them?"
"I remember hearing that name, seems to me," he answered, but his
face was blank as the back of a spade.
A little before dusk a woman in grey, striding like a
foot-soldier, and bearing on her arm a long pole, crashed through
the orchard calling for food. George, upon whom the unannounced
English worked mysteriously, fled to the parlour; but Mrs. Cloke
came forward beaming. Sophie could not escape.
"We've only just heard of it;" said the stranger, turning on her.
"I've been out with the otter-hounds all day. It was a splendidly
sportin' thing "
"Did you--er--kill?" said Sophie. She knew from books she could
not go far wrong here.
"Yes, a dry bitch--seventeen pounds," was the answer. "A
splendidly sportin' thing of you to do. Poor old Iggulden--"
"Oh--that!" said Sophie, enlightened.
"If there had been any people at Pardons it would never have
happened. He'd have been looked after. But what can you expect
from a parcel of London solicitors?"
Mrs. Cloke murmured something.
"No. I'm soaked from the knees down. If I hang about I shall get
chilled. A cup of tea, Mrs. Cloke, and I can eat one of your
sandwiches as I go." She wiped her weather-worn face with a green
and yellow silk handkerchief.
"Yes, my lady!" Mrs. Cloke ran and returned swiftly.
"Our land marches with Pardons for a mile on the south," she
explained, waving the full cup, "but one has quite enough to do
with one's own people without poachin'. Still, if I'd known, I'd
have sent Dora, of course. Have you seen her this afternoon, Mrs.
Cloke? No? I wonder whether that girl did sprain her ankle. Thank
you." It was a formidable hunk of bread and bacon that Mrs. Cloke
presented. "As I was sayin', Pardons is a scandal! Lettin' people
die like dogs. There ought to be people there who do their duty.
You've done yours, though there wasn't the faintest call upon
you. Good night. Tell Dora, if she comes, I've gone on."
She strode away, munching her crust, and Sophie reeled breathless
into the parlour, to shake the shaking George.
"Why did you keep catching my eye behind the blind? Why didn't
you come out and do your duty?"
"Because I should have burst. Did you see the mud on its cheek?"
he said.
"Once. I daren't look again. Who is she?"
"God--a local deity then. Anyway, she's another of the things
you're expected to know by instinct."
Mrs. Cloke, shocked at their levity, told them that it was Lady
Conant, wife of Sir Walter Conant, Baronet, a large landholder in
the neighbourhood; and if not God; at least His visible
Providence. George made her talk of that family for an hour.
"Laughter," said Sophie afterward in their own room, "is the mark
of the savage. Why couldn't you control your emotions? It's all
real to her."
"It's all real to me. That's my trouble," he answered in an
altered tone. "Anyway, it's real enough to mark time with. Don't
you think so?"
"What d'you mean?" she asked quickly, though she knew his voice.
"That I'm better. I'm well enough to kick."
"What at?"
"This!" He waved his hand round the one room. "I must have
something to play with till I'm fit for work again."
"Ah!" She sat on the bed and leaned forward, her hands clasped.
"I wonder if it's good for you."
"We've been better here than anywhere," he went on slowly. "One
could always sell it again."
She nodded gravely, but her eyes sparkled.
"The only thing that worries me is what happened this morning. I
want to know how you feel about it. If it's on your nerves in the
least we can have the old farm at the back of the house pulled
down, or perhaps it has spoiled the notion for you?"
"Pull it down?" she cried. "You've no business faculty. Why,
that's where we could live while we're putting the big house in
order. It's almost under the same roof. No! What happened this
morning seemed to be more of a--of a leading than anything else.
There ought to be people at Pardons. Lady Conant's quite right."
"I was thinking more of the woods and the roads. I could double
the value of the place in six months."
"What do they want for it?" She shook her head, and her loosened
hair fell glowingly about her cheeks.
"Seventy-five thousand dollars. They'll take sixty-eight."
"Less than half what we paid for our old yacht when we married.
And we didn't have a good time in her. You were--"
"Well, I discovered I was too much of an American to be content
to be a rich man's son. You aren't blaming me for that?"
"Oh, no. Only it was a very businesslike honeymoon. How far are
you along with the deal, George?"
"I can mail the deposit on the purchase money to-morrow morning,
and we can have the thing completed in a fortnight or three
weeks--if you say so."
"Friars Pardon--Friars Pardon!" Sophie chanted rapturously, her
dark gray eyes big with delight. "All the farms? Gale Anstey,
Burnt House, Rocketts, the Home Farm, and Griffons? Sure you've
got 'em all?"
"Sure." He smiled.
"And the woods? High Pardons Wood, Lower Pardons, Suttons,
Dutton's Shaw, Reuben's Ghyll, Maxey's Ghyll, and both the Oak
Hangers? Sure you've got 'em all?"
"Every last stick. Why, you know them as well as I do." He
laughed. "They say there's five thousand--a thousand pounds'
worth of lumber--timber they call it--in the Hangers alone."
"Mrs. Cloke's oven must be mended first thing, and the kitchen
roof. I think I'll have all this whitewashed," Sophie broke in,
pointing to the ceiling. "The whole place is a scandal. Lady
Conant is quite right. George, when did you begin to fall in love
with the house? In the greenroom that first day? I did."
"I'm not in love with it. One must do something to mark time till
one's fit for work."
"Or when we stood under the oaks, and the door opened? Oh! Ought
I to go to poor Iggulden's funeral?" She sighed with utter
happiness.
"Wouldn't they call it a liberty now?" said he.
"But I liked him."
"But you didn't own him at the date of his death."
"That wouldn't keep me away. Only, they made such a fuss about
the watching"--she caught her breath--"it might be ostentatious
from that point of view, too. Oh, George"--she reached for his
hand--"we're two little orphans moving in worlds not realized,
and we shall make some bad breaks. But we're going to have the
time of our lives."
"We'll run up to London to-morrow, and see if we can hurry those
English law solicitors. I want to get to work."
They went. They suffered many things ere they returned across the
fields in a fly one Saturday night, nursing a two by
two-and-a-half box of deeds and maps--lawful owners of Friars
Pardon and the five decayed farms therewith.
"I do most sincerely 'ope and trust you'll be 'appy, Madam," Mrs.
Cloke gasped, when she was told the news by the kitchen fire.
"Goodness! It isn't a marriage!" Sophie exclaimed, a little awed;
for to them the joke, which to an American means work, was only
just beginning.
"If it's took in a proper spirit"--Mrs. Cloke's eye turned toward
her oven.
"Send and have that mended to-morrow," Sophie whispered.
"We couldn't 'elp noticing," said Cloke slowly, "from the times
you walked there, that you an' your lady was drawn to it,
but--but I don't know as we ever precisely thought--" His wife's
glance checked him.
"That we were that sort of people," said George. "We aren't sure
of it ourselves yet."
"Perhaps," said Cloke, rubbing his knees, "just for the sake of
saying something, perhaps you'll park it?"
"What's that?" said George.
"Turn it all into a fine park like Violet Hill"--he jerked a
thumb to westward--"that Mr. Sangres bought. It was four farms,
and Mr. Sangres made a fine park of them, with a herd of faller
deer."
"Then it wouldn't be Friars Pardon," said Sophie. "Would it?"
"I don't know as I've ever heard Pardons was ever anything but
wheat an' wool. Only some gentlemen say that parks are less
trouble than tenants." He laughed nervously. "But the gentry, o'
course, they keep on pretty much as they was used to."
"I see," said Sophie. "How did Mr. Sangres make his money?"
"I never rightly heard. It was pepper an' spices, or it may ha'
been gloves. No. Gloves was Sir Reginald Liss at Marley End.
Spices was Mr. Sangres. He's a Brazilian gentleman--very sunburnt
like."
"Be sure o' one thing. You won't 'ave any trouble," said Mrs.
Cloke, just before they went to bed.
Now the news of the purchase was told to Mr. and Mrs. Cloke alone
at 8 P.M. of a Saturday. None left the farm till they set out for
church next morning. Yet when they reached the church and were
about to slip aside into their usual seats, a little beyond the
font, where they could see the red-furred tails of the bellropes
waggle and twist at ringing time, they were swept forward
irresistibly, a Cloke on either flank (and yet they had not
walked with the Clokes), upon the ever-retiring bosom of a
black-gowned verger, who ushered them into a room of a pew at the
head of the left aisle, under the pulpit.
"This," he sighed reproachfully, "is the Pardons' Pew," and shut
them in.
They could see little more than the choir boys in the chancel,
but to the roots of the hair of their necks they felt the
congregation behind mercilessly devouring them by look.
"When the wicked man turneth away." The strong, alien voice of
the priest vibrated under the hammer-beam roof, and a loneliness
unfelt before swamped their hearts, as they searched for places
in the unfamiliar Church of England service. The Lord's Prayer
"Our Father, which art"--set the seal on that desolation. Sophie
found herself thinking how in other lands their purchase would
long ere this have been discussed from every point of view in a
dozen prints, forgetting that George for months had not been
allowed to glance at those black and bellowing head-lines. Here
was nothing but silence--not even hostility! The game was up to
them; the other players hid their cards and waited. Suspense, she
felt, was in the air, and when her sight cleared, saw, indeed, a
mural tablet of a footless bird brooding upon the carven motto, "
Wayte awhyle--wayte awhyle."
At the Litany George had trouble with an unstable hassock, and
drew the slip of carpet under the pewseat. Sophie pushed her end
back also, and shut her eyes against a burning that felt like
tears. When she opened them she was looking at her mother's
maiden name, fairly carved on a blue flagstone on the pew floor:
Ellen Lashmar. ob. 1796. aetat 27.
She nudged George and pointed. Sheltered, as they kneeled, they
looked for more knowledge, but the rest of the slab was blank.
"Ever hear of her?" he whispered.
"Never knew any of us came from here."
"Coincidence?"
"Perhaps. But it makes me feel better," and she smiled and winked
away a tear on her lashes, and took his hand while they prayed
for "all women labouring of child"--not "in the perils of
childbirth"; and the sparrows who had found their way through the
guards behind the glass windows chirped above the faded gilt and
alabaster family tree of the Conants.
The baronet's pew was on the right of the aisle. After service
its inhabitants moved forth without haste, but so as to block
effectively a dusky person with a large family who champed in
their rear.
"Spices, I think," said Sophie, deeply delighted as the Sangres
closed up after the Conants. "Let 'em get away, George."
But when they came out many folk whose eyes were one still
lingered by the lychgate.
"I want to see if any more Lashmars are buried here," said
Sophie.
"Not now. This seems to be show day. Come home quickly," he
replied.
A group of families, the Clokes a little apart, opened to let
them through. The men saluted with jerky nods, the women with
remnants of a curtsey. Only Iggulden's son, his mother on his
arm, lifted his hat as Sophie passed.
"Your people," said the clear voice of Lady Conant in her ear.
"I suppose so," said Sophie, blushing, for they were within two
yards of her; but it was not a question.
"Then that child looks as if it were coming down with mumps. You
ought to tell the mother she shouldn't have brought it to
church."
"I can't leave 'er behind, my lady," the woman said. "She'd set
the 'ouse afire in a minute, she's that forward with the matches.
Ain't you, Maudie dear?"
"Has Dr. Dallas seen her?"
"Not yet, my lady."
"He must. You can't get away, of course. M-m! My idiotic maid is
coming in for her teeth to-morrow at twelve. She shall pick her
up--at Gale Anstey, isn't it?--at eleven."
"Yes. Thank you very much, my lady."
"I oughtn't to have done it," said Lady Conant apologetically,
"but there has been no one at Pardons for so long that you'll
forgive my poaching. Now, can't you lunch with us? The vicar
usually comes too. I don't use the horses on a Sunday"--she
glanced at the Brazilian's silver-plated chariot. "It's only a
mile across the fields."
"You--you're very kind," said Sophie, hating herself because her
lip trembled.
"My dear," the compelling tone dropped to a soothing gurgle,
"d'you suppose I don't know how it feels to come to a strange
county--country I should say--away from one's own people? When I
first left the Shires--I'm Shropshire, you know--I cried for a
day and a night. But fretting doesn't make loneliness any better.
Oh, here's Dora. She did sprain her leg that day."
"I'm as lame as a tree still," said the tall maiden frankly. "You
ought to go out with the otter-hounds, Mrs. Chapin. I believe
they're drawing your water next week."
Sir Walter had already led off George, and the vicar came up on
the other side of Sophie. There was no escaping the swift
procession or the leisurely lunch, where talk came and went in
low-voiced eddies that had the village for their centre. Sophie
heard the vicar and Sir Walter address her husband lightly as
Chapin! (She also remembered many women known in a previous life
who habitually addressed their husbands as Mr. Such-an-one.)
After lunch Lady Conant talked to her explicitly of maternity as
that is achieved in cottages and farm-houses remote from aid, and
of the duty thereto of the mistress of Pardons.
A gate in a beech hedge, reached across triple lawns, let them
out before tea-time into the unkempt south side of their land.
"I want your hand, please," said Sophie as soon as they were safe
among the beech boles and the lawless hollies. "D'you remember
the old maid in 'Providence and the Guitar' who heard the
Commissary swear, and hardly reckoned herself a maiden lady
afterward? Because I'm a relative of hers. Lady Conant is--"
"Did you find out anything about the Lashmars?" he interrupted.
"I didn't ask. I'm going to write to Aunt Sydney about it first.
Oh, Lady Conant said something at lunch about their having bought
some land from some Lashmars a few years ago. I found it was at
the beginning of last century."
"What did you say?"
"I said, 'Really, how interesting!' Like that. I'm not going to
push myself forward. I've been hearing about Mr. Sangres's
efforts in that direction. And you? I couldn't see you behind the
flowers. Was it very deep water, dear?"
George mopped a brow already browned by outdoor exposures.
"Oh no--dead easy," he answered. "I've bought Friars Pardon to
prevent Sir Walter's birds straying."
A cock pheasant scuttered through the dry leaves and exploded
almost under their feet. Sophie jumped.
"That's one of 'em," said George calmly.
"Well, your nerves are better, at any rate," said she. "Did you
tell 'em you'd bought the thing to play with?"
"No. That was where my nerve broke down. I only made one bad
break--I think. I said I couldn't see why hiring land to men to
farm wasn't as much a business proposition as anything else."
"And what did they say?"
"They smiled. I shall know what that smile means some day. They
don't waste their smiles. D'you see that track by Gale Anstey?"
They looked down from the edge of the hanger over a cup-like
hollow. People by twos and threes in their Sunday best filed
slowly along the paths that connected farm to farm.
"I've never seen so many on our land before," said Sophie. "Why
is it?"
"To show us we mustn't shut up their rights of way."
"Those cow-tracks we've been using cross lots?" said Sophie
forcibly.
"Yes. Any one of 'em would cost us two thousand pounds each in
legal expenses to close."
"But we don't want to," she said.
"The whole community would fight if we did."
"But it's our land. We can do what we like."
"It's not our land. We've only paid for it. We belong to it, and
it belongs to the people--our people they call 'em. I've been to
lunch with the English too."
They passed slowly from one bracken-dotted field to the
next--flushed with pride of ownership, plotting alterations and
restorations at each turn; halting in their tracks to argue,
spreading apart to embrace two views at once, or closing in to
consider one. Couples moved out of their way, but smiling
covertly.
"We shall make some bad breaks," he said at last.
"Together, though. You won't let anyone else in, will you?"
"Except the contractors. This syndicate handles, this proposition
by its little lone."
"But you might feel the want of some one," she insisted.
"I shall--but it will be you. It's business, Sophie, but it's
going to be good fun."
"Please God," she answered flushing, and cried to herself as they
went back to tea. "It's worth it. Oh, it's worth it."
The repairing and moving into Friars Pardon was business of the
most varied and searching, but all done English fashion, without
friction. Time and money alone were asked. The rest lay in the
hands of beneficent advisers from London, or spirits, male and
female, called up by Mr. and Mrs. Cloke from the wastes of the
farms. In the centre stood George and Sophie, a little aghast,
their interests reaching out on every side.
"I ain't sayin' anything against Londoners," said Cloke,
self-appointed clerk of the outer works, consulting engineer,
head of the immigration bureau, and superintendent of woods and
forests; "but your own people won't go about to make more than a
fair profit out of you."
"How is one to know?" said George.
"Five years from now, or so on, maybe, you'll be lookin' over
your first year's accounts, and, knowin' what you'll know then,
you'll say: 'Well, Billy Beartup'--or Old Cloke as it might
be--'did me proper when I was new.' No man likes to have that
sort of thing laid up against him."
"I think I see," said George. "But five years is a long time to
look ahead."
"I doubt if that oak Billy Beartup throwed in Reuben's Ghyll will
be fit for her drawin-room floor in less than seven," Cloke
drawled.
"Yes, that's my work," said Sophie. (Billy Beartup of Griffons, a
woodman by training and birth, a tenant farmer by misfortune of
marriage, had laid his broad axe at her feet a month before.)
"Sorry if I've committed you to another eternity."
"And we shan't even know where we've gone wrong with your new
carriage drive before that time either," said Cloke, ever anxious
to keep the balance true with an ounce or two in Sophie's favour.
The past four months had taught George better than to reply. The
carriage road winding up the hill was his present keen interest.
They set off to look at it, and the imported American scraper
which had blighted the none too sunny soul of "Skim" Winsh, the
carter.
But young Iggulden was in charge now, and under his guidance,
Buller and Roberts, the great horses, moved mountains.
"You lif' her like that, an' you tip her like that," he explained
to the gang. "My uncle he was roadmaster in Connecticut."
"Are they roads yonder?" said Skim, sitting under the laurels.
"No better than accommodation roads. Dirt, they call 'em. They'd
suit you, Skim."
"Why?" said the incautious Skim.
"Cause you'd take no hurt when you fall out of your cart drunk on
a Saturday," was the answer.
"I didn't last time neither," Skim roared.
After the loud laugh, old Whybarne of Gale Anstey piped feebly,
"Well, dirt or no dirt, there's no denyin' Chapin knows a good
job when he sees it. 'E don't build one day and dee-stroy the
next, like that nigger Sangres."
"SHE's the one that knows her own mind," said Pinky, brother to
Skim Winsh, and a Napoleon among carters who had helped to bring
the grand piano across the fields in the autumn rains.
"She had ought to," said Iggulden. "Whoa, Buller! She's a
Lashmar. They never was double-thinking."
"Oh, you found that? Has the answer come from your uncle?" said
Skim, doubtful whether so remote a land as America had posts.
The others looked at him scornfully. Skim was always a day behind
the fair. Iggulden rested from his labours. "She's a Lashmar
right enough. I started up to write to my uncle--at once--the
month after she said her folks came from Veering Holler."
"Where there ain't any roads?" Skim interrupted, but none
laughed.
"My uncle he married an American woman for his second, and she
took it up like a like the coroner. She's a Lashmar out of the
old Lashmar place, 'fore they sold to Conants. She ain't no Toot
Hill Lashmar, nor any o' the Crayford lot. Her folk come out of
the ground here, neither chalk nor forest, but wildishers. They
sailed over to America--I've got it all writ down by my uncle's
woman--in eighteen hundred an' nothing. My uncle says they're all
slow begetters like."
"Would they be gentry yonder now?" Skim asked.
"Nah--there's no gentry in America, no matter how long you're
there. It's against their law. There's only rich and poor
allowed. They've been lawyers and such like over yonder for a
hundred years but she's a Lashmar for all that."
"Lord! What's a hundred years?" said Whybarne, who had seen
seventy-eight of them.
"An' they write too, from yonder--my uncle's woman writes--that
you can still tell 'em by headmark. Their hair's foxy-red
still--an' they throw out when they walk. He's in-toed-treads
like a gipsy; but you watch, an' you'll see 'er throw, out--like
a colt."
"Your trace wants taking up." Pinky's large ears had caught the
sound of voices, and as the two broke through the laurels the men
were hard at work, their eyes on Sophie's feet.
She had been less fortunate in her inquiries than Iggulden, for
her Aunt Sydney of Meriden (a badged and certificated Daughter of
the Revolution to boot) answered her inquiries with a two-paged
discourse on patriotism, the leaflets of a Village Improvement
Society, of which she was president, and a demand for an overdue
subscription to a Factory Girls' Reading Circle. Sophie burned it
all in the Orpheus and Eurydice grate, and kept her own counsel.
"What I want to know," said George, when Spring was coming, and
the gardens needed thought. "is who will ever pay me for my
labour? I've put in at least half a million dollars' worth
already."
"Sure you're not taking too much out of yourself?" his wife
asked.
"Oh, no; I haven't been conscious of myself all winter." He
looked at his brown English gaiters and smiled. "It's all behind
me now. I believe I could sit down and think of all that--those
months before we sailed."
"Don't--ah, don't!" she cried.
"But I must go back one day. You don't want to keep me out of
business always--or do you?" He ended with a nervous laugh.
Sophie sighed as she drew her own ground-ash (of old Iggulden's
cutting) from the hall rack.
"Aren't you overdoing it too? You look a little tired," he said.
"You make me tired. I'm going to Rocketts to see Mrs. Cloke about
Mary." (This was the sister of the telegraphist, promoted to be
sewing-maid at Pardons.) "Coming?"
"I'm due at Burnt House to see about the new well. By the way,
there's a sore throat at Gale Anstey--"
"That's my province. Don't interfere. The Whybarne children
always have sore throats. They do it for jujubes."
"Keep away from Gale Anstey till I make sure, honey. Cloke ought
to have told me."
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