Read Ebook: The Broom-Squire by Baring Gould S Sabine

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Ebook has 1270 lines and 46166 words, and 26 pages

"And Simon is terrible cut up?"

"Bears it like a man."

"Here, take old Clutch; give him some oats, and kick him, he deserves it, he's been so unruly. But, stay--no. Hold his head, and I'll kick him, afore he's had his oats. He's a darned malicious old Radical. Put in some pepper to his nose when he's done his oats."

Bideabout went into the house, through the porch, and entered the bar.

Simon was seated there smoking a long clay, with his feet on the fender, before a glowing fire, and with a stiff glass of hot punch on the table at his side.

"Sorry for you," was Jonas's brief address of salutation and condolence.

Mr. Verstage shook his head. "That's what my old woman said."

Seeing an expression of surprise and query in the Broom-Squire's face, he explained: "Not after, afore, in course. She said, 'Very sorry for you, Simon, very. It's wus for you than for me, I shall die--you'll make yourself ridic'lous.'"

"What did she mean?"

"Can't think," answered Simon, with great solemnity. "Will you have a drop of something? In this vale of tears we want consolation." Then, in a loud voice, "Polly--another glass."

After looking steadily and sadly into the embers, Mr. Verstage said: "I don't believe that woman ever made a mistake in her life--but once."

"When was that?"

"When she gave Matabel to you. We wanted her in this house. Her proper place was here. It all comes wi' meddlin' wi' what ort to be let alone--and that is Providence. There's never no sayin' but Iver--"

Dimly the old host saw that he was floundering upon delicate ground. "My doctrine is," said he, "let things alone and they'll come right in the end."

Bideabout moved uneasily. He winced at the reference to Iver. But what he now really was anxious to arrive at was the matter of money left by Mrs. Verstage to Mehetabel.

"Now," said Simon, looking after the serving-maid, as she left the bar, when she had deposited the tumbler beside Bideabout. "Now, my old woman was amazin' set against that girl. Why--I can't think. She's a good girl when let alone. But Sanna never would let her alone. She were ever naggin' at her; so that she upset the poor thing's nerve. She broke the taypot and chucked the beer to the pigs, but that was because she were flummeried wi' my old woman going on at her so. She said to me she really couldn't bear to think how I'd go on after she were gone. I sed, to comfort her, that I knowed Polly would do her best. 'She'll do the best she can for herself,' answered Sanna, as sharp as she said 'Yes, I will,' when we was married. I don't know what her meanin' was. You won't believe it, but it's true what I'm going to tell you. She said to me, did Susanna, 'Simon there was Mary Toft, couldn't die, because there were wild-fowl feathers in her bed. They had to take her off the four-poster and get another feather-bed, before she could die right off. Now,' said Sanna, 'it's somethin' like that with me. I ain't got wild-bird feathers under me, but there's a wild fowl in the house, and that's Polly. So long as she's here die I can't, and die I won't.' 'Well, old woman,' sed I, if that's all, to accommodate you, I'll send Polly to her mother,' and so I did--and she died right on end, peaceable."

"But Polly is here."

"Oh, yes--when Sanna were gone--we couldn't do wi'out her. She knowed that well enough and came back--runnin' like a long dog, and very good and thoughtful it was of her. Most young wimen ain't considerate like that."

This was all wide of the subject that engrossed the interest of Bideabout, and had induced him to revisit the Ship. As the host made no allusion to the topic, the Broom-Squire plunged into the matter, headforemost.

"Joe Filmer," said he, "called me back. I didn't wish to come in and trouble you now. But Joe said as how you wanted to speak to me about some money as your wife had left with you for my Matabel; and I thought it might be botherin' your mind when you wanted to turn it to religious thought, and so I came back to say I'd relieve you of it and take it at once."

"Money! Oh!" Mr. Verstage was a little difficult to turn from one line of thought to another. "Polly never stood out for higher wages. Not like some who, when they've been with you just long enough to learn the ways of the house, and to make themselves useful, and not to break everything they handle, and spoil everything they touch, ask, 'Please will you advance my wages?' Polly never did that."

"I am not speakin' of Polly," said Jonas, peevishly, "but of some money that Joe Filmer told me you wanted to tell me about. Something that your poor wife desired you to give to Matabel."

"Oh, you mean that hundred pounds. I wasn't against it. On the contrary, I said I'd add fifty to it. I always said Sanna did wrong in giving Matabel to--I mean flying in the face of Providence."

"I shall be very glad to take it, and thus relieve your mind of all care."

"Oh, it's no care at all."

"It must be, and besides--it must interfere with your turning your mind to serious thoughts."

"Oh, not at all. I can't give you the money. It is not for you."

"No; but it is for Matabel, and we are one."

"Oh, no; it's not for Matabel."

"The hundred and fifty pounds is not for Matabel? And yet you said it was intended to make up to her for something you did not exactly explain."

"No, it is not for Matabel. Matabel might have had it, I daresay, but my old woman said she was set against that."

"Then we are to be deprived of it by her folly?" The Broom-Squire flushed purple.

"Oh, no. It is all right. It is for the child."

"For the child! That is all the same. I am the father, and will take care of the money."

"But I can't give it you."

"Have you not got it?"

"The money is all right. Sanna's hundred pounds--I know where that is, and my fifty shall go along with it. I was always fond of Matabel. But the child was only baptized to-day, and won't be old enough to enjoy it for many years."

"In the meantime it can be laid out to its advantage," urged Bideabout.

"I daresay," said Simon, "but I've nothin' to do with that, and you've nothin' to do with that."

"Then who has?"

"Iver, of course."

"Iver!" The Broom-Squire turned livid as a corpse.

"You see," pursued the host, "Sanna said as how she wouldn't make me trustee, I was too old, and I might be dead, or done something terrible foolish, before the child came of age to take it on itself, to use her very words. So she wouldn't make me trustee, but she put it all into Iver's hands to hold for the little chap. She were a won'erful shrewd woman were Sanna, and I've no doubt she was right."

"Iver trustee--for my child!"

"Yes--why not?"

The Broom-Squire stood up, and without tasting the glass of punch mixed for him, without a farewell to the landlord, went forth.

MARKHAM.

The funeral of Mrs. Verstage was conducted with all the pomp and circumstance that delight the rustic mind. Bideabout attended, and his hat was adorned with a black silk weeper that was speedily converted by Mehetabel, at his desire, into a Sunday waistcoat.

In this silk waistcoat he started on old Clutch one day for Guildford, without informing his wife or sister whither he was bound.

The child was delicate and fretful, engaging most of its mother's time and engrossing all her thought.

She had found an old cradle of oak, with a hood to it, the whole quaintly and rudely carved, the rockers ending in snakes' heads, in which several generations of Kinks had lain; in which, indeed, Jonas had spent his early infancy, and had pleaded for his mother's love and clamored for her attention. Whether with the thought of amusing the child, or merely out of the overflow of motherly love that seeks to adorn and glorify the babe, Mehetabel had picked the few late flowers that lingered on in spite of frost, some pinched chrysanthemums, a red robin that had withstood the cold, some twigs of butcher's broom with blood-red berries that had defied it, and these she had stuck about the cradle in little gimlet holes that had been drilled round the edge, probably to contain pegs that might hold down a cover, to screen out glaring sun or cutting draught.

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