Johnny Ludlow, First Series

V.

COMING HOME TO HIM

The year was getting on. Summer fruits were ripening. It had been a warm spring, and hot weather was upon us early.

One fine Sunday morning, George Reed came out of his cottage and turned up Piefinch Lane. His little girls were with him, one in either hand, in their clean cotton frocks and pinafores and straw hats. People had gone into church, and the bells had ceased. Reed had not been constant in attendance since the misfortune in the winter, when Major Parrifer put him into prison. The month’s imprisonment had altered him; his daughter Cathy’s mysterious absence had altered him more; he seemed unwilling to face people, and any trifle was made an excuse to himself for keeping away from service. To-day it was afforded by the baby’s illness. Reed said to his wife that he would take the little girls out a bit to keep the place quiet.

Rumours were abroad that he had heard once from Cathy; that she told him she should come back some day and surprise him and the neighbours, that she was “all right, and he had no call to fret after her.” Whether this was true or pure fiction, Reed did not say: he was a closer man than he used to be.

Lifting the children over a stile in Piefinch Lane, just beyond his garden, Reed strolled along the by-path of the field. It brought him to the high hedge skirting the premises of Major Parrifer. The man had taken it by chance, because it was a quiet walk. He was passing along slowly, the children running about the field, on which the second crop of grass was beginning to grow, when voices on the other side of the hedge struck on his ear. Reed quietly put some of the foliage aside, and looked through; just as Major Parrifer had looked through the hedge in Piefinch Lane at him, that Sunday morning some few months before.

Major Parrifer had been suffering from a slight temporary indisposition. He did not consider himself sufficiently recovered to attend service, but neither was he ill enough to lie in bed. With the departure of his family for church, the Major had come strolling out in the garden in an airy dressing-gown, and there saw his gardener picking peas.

“Halloa, Hotty! This ought to have been done before.”

“Yes, sir, I know it; I’m a little late,” answered Hotty; “I shall have done in two or three minutes. The cook makes a fuss if I pick ’em too early; she says they don’t eat so well.”

The peas were for the gratification of the Major’s own palate, so he found no more fault. Hotty went on with his work, and the Major gave a general look round. On a near wall, at right angles with the hedge through which Reed was then peering, some fine apricots were growing, green yet.

“These apricots want thinning, Hotty,” observed the Major.

“I have thinned ’em some, sir.”

“Not enough. Our apricots were not as fine last year as they ought to have been. I said then they had not had sufficient room to grow. Green apricots are always useful; they make the best tart known.”

Major Parrifer walked to the greenhouse, outside which a small basket was hanging, brought it back, and began to pick some of the apricots where they looked too thick. Reed, outside, watched the process—not alone. As luck had it, a man appeared on the field-path, who proved to be Gruff Blossom, the Jacobsons’ groom, coming home to spend Sunday with his friends. Reed made a sign to Blossom to be silent, and caused him to look on also.

With the small basket half full, the Major desisted, thinking possibly he had plucked enough, and turned away carrying it. Hotty came out from the peas, his task finished. They strolled slowly down the path by the hedge; the Major first, Hotty a step behind, talking about late and early peas, and whether Prussian blues or marrowfats were the best eating.

“Do you see those weeds in the onion-bed?” suddenly asked the Major, stopping as they were passing it.

Hotty turned his head to look. A few weeds certainly had sprung up. He’d attend to it on the morrow, he told his master; and then said something about the work accumulating almost beyond him, since the under-gardener had been at home ill.

“Pick them out now,” said the Major; “there’s not a dozen of them.”

Hotty stooped to do as he was bid. The Major made no more ado but stooped also, uprooting quite half the weeds himself. Not much more, in all, than the dozen he had spoken of: and then they went on with their baskets to the house.

Never had George Reed experienced so much gratification since the day he came out of prison. “Did you see the Major at it?—thinning his apricots and pulling up his weeds?” he asked of Gruff Blossom. And Blossom’s reply, gruff as usual, was to ask what might be supposed to ail his eyes that he shouldn’t see it.

“Very good,” said Reed.

One evening in the following week, when we were sitting out on the lawn, the Squire smoking, Mrs. Todhetley nursing her face in her hand, with toothache as usual, Tod teasing Hugh and Lena, and I up in the beech-tree, a horseman rode in. It proved to be Mr. Jacobson. Giles took his horse, and he came and sat down on the bench. The Squire asked him what he’d take, and being thirsty, he chose cider. Which Thomas brought.

“Here’s a go,” began Mr. Jacobson. “Have you heard what’s up?”

“I’ve not heard anything,” answered the Squire.

“Major Parrifer has a summons served on him for working in his garden on a Sunday, and is to appear before the magistrates at Alcester to-morrow,” continued old Jacobson, drinking off a glass of cider at a draught.

“No!” cried Squire Todhetley.

“It’s a fact. Blossom, our groom, has also a summons served on him to give evidence.”

Mrs. Todhetley lifted her face; Tod left Hugh and Lena to themselves: I slid down from the beech-tree; and we listened for more.

But Mr. Jacobson could not give particulars, or say much more than he had already said. All he knew was, that on Monday morning George Reed had appeared before the magistrates and made a complaint. At first they were unwilling to grant a summons; laughed at it; but Reed, in a burst of reproach, civilly delivered, asked why there should be a law for the poor and not for the rich, and in what lay the difference between himself and Major Parrifer; that the one should be called to account and punished for doing wrong, and the other was not even to be accused when he had done it.

“Brandon happened to be on the bench,” continued Jacobson. “He appeared struck with the argument, and signed the summons.”

The Squire nodded.

“My belief is,” continued old Jacobson, with a wink over the rim of the cider glass, “that granting that summons was as good as a play to Brandon and the rest. I’d as lieve, though, that they’d not brought Blossom into it.”

“Why?” asked Mrs. Todhetley, who had been grieved at the time at the injustice done to Reed.

“Well, Parrifer is a disagreeable man to offend. And he is sure to visit Blossom’s part in this on me.”

“Let him,” said Tod, with enthusiasm. “Well done, George Reed!”

Be you very sure we went over to the fight. Squire Todhetley did not appear: at which Tod exploded a little: he only wished he was a magistrate, wouldn’t he take his place and judge the Major! But the Pater said that when people had lived to his age, they liked to be at peace with their neighbours—not but what he hoped Parrifer would “get it,” for having been so cruelly hard upon Reed.

Major Parrifer came driving to the Court-house in his high carriage with a great bluster, his iron-grey hair standing up, and two grooms attending him. Only the magistrates who had granted the summons sat. The news had gone about like wild-fire, and several of them were in and about the town, but did not take their places. I don’t believe there was one would have lifted his finger to save the Major from a month’s imprisonment; but they did not care to sentence him to it.

It was a regular battle. Major Parrifer was in an awful passion the whole time; asking, when he came in, how they dared summon him. Him! Mr. Brandon, cool as a cucumber, answered in his squeaky voice, that when a complaint of breaking the law was preferred before them and sworn to by witnesses, they could only act upon it.

First of all, the Major denied the facts. He work in his garden on a Sunday!—the very supposition was preposterous! Upon which George Reed, who was in his best clothes, and looked every bit as good as the Major, and far pleasanter, testified to what he had seen.

Major Parrifer, dancing with temper when he found he had been looked at through the hedge, and that it was Reed who had looked, gave the lie direct. He called his gardener, Richard Hotty, ordering him to testify whether he, the Major, ever worked in his garden, either on Sundays or week-days.

“Hotty was working himself, gentlemen,” interposed George Reed. “He was picking peas; and he helped to weed the onion-bed. But it was done by his master’s orders, so it would be unjust to punish him.”

The Major turned on Reed as if he would strike him, and demanded of the magistrates why they permitted the fellow to interrupt. They ordered Reed to be quiet, and told Hotty to proceed.

But Hotty was one of those slow men to whom anything like evasion is difficult. His master had thinned the apricot tree that Sunday morning; he had helped to weed the onion-bed; Hotty, conscious of the fact, but not liking to admit it, stammered and stuttered, and made a poor figure of himself. Mr. Brandon thought he would help him out.

“Did you see your master pick the apricots?”

“I see him pick—just a few; green ’uns,” answered Hotty, shuffling from one leg to the other in his perplexity. “’Twarn’t to be called work, sir.”

“Oh! And did he help you to weed the onion-bed?”

“There warn’t a dozen weeds in it in all, as the Major said to me at the time,” returned Hotty. “He see ’em, and stooped down on the spur o’ the moment, and me too. We had ’em up in a twinkling. ’Twarn’t work, sir; couldn’t be called it nohow. The Major, he never do work at no time.”

Blossom had not arrived, and it was hard to tell how the thing would terminate: the Major had this witness, Hotty, such as he was, protesting that nothing to be called work was done. Reed had no witness, as yet.

“Old Jacobson is keeping Blossom back, Johnny,” whispered Tod. “It’s a sin and a shame.”

“No, he is not,” I said. “Look there!”

Blossom was coming in. He had walked over, and not hurried himself. Major Parrifer plunged daggers into him, if looks could do it, but it made no difference to Blossom.

He gave his evidence in his usual surly manner. It was clear and straightforward. Major Parrifer had thinned the apricot tree for its own benefit; and had weeded the onion-bed, Hotty helping at the weeds by order.

“What brought you spying at the place, James Blossom?” demanded a lawyer on the Major’s behalf.

“Accident,” was the short answer.

“Indeed! You didn’t go there on purpose, I suppose?—and skulk under the hedge on purpose?—and peer into the Major’s garden on purpose?”

“No, I didn’t,” said Blossom. “The field is open to every one, and I was crossing it on my way to old father’s. George Reed made me a sign afore I came up to him, to look in, as he was doing; and I did so, not knowing what there might be to see. It would be nothing to me if the Major worked in his garden of a Sunday from sunrise to sunset; he’s welcome to do it; but if you summon me here and ask me, did I see him working, I say yes, I did. Why d’you send me a summons if you don’t want me to tell the truth? Let me be, and I’d ha’ said nothing to mortal man.”

Evidently nothing favourable to the defence could be got out of James Blossom. Mr. Brandon began saying to the Major that he feared there was no help for it; they should be obliged to convict him: and he was met by a storm of reproach.

Convict him! roared the Major. For having picked two or three green apricots—and for stooping to pull up a couple or so of worthless weeds? He would be glad to ask which of them, his brother-magistrates sitting there, would not pick an apricot, or a peach, or what not, on a Sunday, if he wanted to eat one. The thing was utterly preposterous.

“And what was it I did?” demanded George Reed, drowning voices that would have stopped him. “I went to the garden to get up a bunch of turnips for my sick wife, and seeing some withered weeds flung on the bed I drew them off with the hoe. What was that, I ask? And it was no more. No more, gentlemen, in the sight of Heaven.”

No particular answer was given to this; perhaps the justices had none ready. Mr. Brandon was beginning to confer with the other two in an undertone, when Reed spoke again.

“I was dragged up here in handcuffs, and told I had broken the law; Major Parrifer said to me himself that I had violated the sanctity of the Sabbath (those were the words), and therefore I must be punished; there was no help for it. What has he done? I did not do as much as he has.”

“Now you know, Reed, this is irregular,” said one of the justices. “You must not interrupt the Court.”

“You put me in prison for a month, gentlemen,” resumed Reed, paying no attention to the injunction. “They cut my hair close in the prison, and they kept me to hard labour for the month, as if I did not have enough of hard labour out of it. My wife was sick and disabled at the time, my three little children are helpless: it was no thanks to the magistrates who sentenced me, gentlemen, or to Major Parrifer, that they did not starve.”

“Will you be quiet, Reed?”

“If I deserved one month of prison,” persisted Reed, fully bent on saying what he had to say, “Major Parrifer must deserve two months, for his offence is greater than mine. The law is the same for both of us, I suppose. He–”

“Reed, if you say another word, I will order you at once from the room,” interrupted Mr. Brandon, his thin voice sharp and determined. “How dare you persist in addressing the Bench when told to be quiet!”

Reed fell back and said no more. He knew that Mr. Brandon had a habit of carrying out his own authority, in spite of his nervous health and querulous way of speaking. The justices spoke a few words together, and then said they found the offence proved, and inflicted a fine on Major Parrifer.

He dashed the money down on the table, in too great a rage to do it politely, and went out to his carriage. No other case was on, that day, and the justices got up and mixed with the crowd. Mr. Brandon, who felt chilly on the hottest summer’s day, and was afraid of showers, buttoned on a light overcoat.

“Then there are two laws, sir?” said Reed to him, quite civilly, but in a voice that every one might hear. “When the law was made against Sabbath-breaking, those that made it passed one for the rich and another for the poor!”

“Nonsense, Reed.”

“Nonsense, sir? I don’t see it. I was put in prison; Major Parrifer has only to pay a bit of money, which is of no more account to him than dirt, and that he can’t feel the loss of. And my offence—if it was an offence—was less than his.”

“Two wrongs don’t make a right,” said Mr. Brandon, dropping his voice to a low key. “You ought not to have been put in prison, Reed; had I been on the bench it should not have been done.”

“But it was done, sir, and my life got a blight on it. It’s on me yet; will never be lifted off me.”

Mr. Brandon smiled one of his quiet smiles, and spoke in a whisper. “He has got it too, Reed, unless I am mistaken. He’ll carry that fine about with him always. Johnny, are you there? Don’t go and repeat what you’ve heard me say.”

Mr. Brandon was right. To have been summoned before the Bench, where he had pompously sat to summon others, and for working on a Sunday above all things, to have been found guilty and fined, was as the most bitter potion to Major Parrifer. The bench would never again be to him the seat it had been; the remembrance of the day when he was before it would, as Mr. Brandon expressed it, be carried about with him always.

They projected a visit to the sea-side at once. Mrs. Parrifer, with three of the Miss Parrifers, came dashing up to people’s houses in the carriage, finer and louder than ever; she said that she had not been well, and was ordered to Aberystwith for six weeks. The next day they and the Major were off; and heaps of cards were sent round with “P. P. C.” in the corner. I think Mr. Brandon must have laughed when he got his.

The winter holidays came round again. We went home for Christmas, as usual, and found George Reed down with some sort of illness. There’s an old saying, “When the mind’s at ease the body’s delicate,” but Mr. Duffham always maintained that though that might apply to a short period of time, in the long-run mind and body sympathized together. George Reed had been a very healthy man, and as free from care as most people; this last year care and trouble and mortification had lain on his mind, and at the beginning of winter his health broke down. It was quite a triumph (in the matter of opinion) for old Duffham.

The illness began with a cough and low fever, neither of which can labourers afford time to lie up for. It went on to more fever, and to inflammation of the lungs. There was no choice then, and Reed took to his bed. For the most part, when our poor people fell ill, they had to get well again without notice being taken of them; but events had drawn attention to Reed, and made him a conspicuous character. His illness was talked of, and so he received help. Ever since the prison affair I had felt sorry for Reed, as had Mrs. Todhetley.

“I have had some nice strong broth made for Reed, Johnny,” she said to me one day in January; “it’s as good and nourishing as beef-tea. If you want a walk, you might take it to him.”

Tod had gone out with the Squire; I felt dull, as I generally did without him, and put on my hat and coat. Mrs. Todhetley had the broth put into a bottle, and brought it to me wrapped in paper.

“I would send him a drop of wine as well, Johnny, if you’d take care not to break the bottles, carrying two of them.”

No fear. I put the one bottle in my breast-pocket, and took the other in my hand. It was a cold afternoon, the sky of a steely-blue, the sun bright, the ground hard. Major Parrifer and two of his daughters, coming home from a ride, were cantering in at the gates as I passed, the groom riding after them. I lifted my hat to the girls, but they only tossed their heads.

Reed was getting over the worst then, and I found him sitting by the kitchen fire, muffled in a bed-rug. Mrs. Reed took the bottles from me in the back’us—as they called the place where the washing was done—for Reed was sensitive, and did not like things to be sent to him.

“Please God, I shall be at work next week,” said Reed, with a groan: and I saw he knew that I had brought something.

He had been saying that all along; four or five weeks now. I sat down opposite to him, and took up the boy, Georgy. The little shaver had come round to me, holding by the chairs.

“It’s going to be a hard frost, Reed.”

“Is it, sir? Out-o’-door weather don’t seem to be of much odds to me now.”

“And a fall o’ some sort’s not far off, as my wrist tells me,” put in Mrs. Reed. Years ago she had broken her wrist, and felt it always in change of weather. “Maybe some snow’s coming.”

I gave Georgy a biscuit; the two little girls, who had been standing against the press, began to come slowly forward. They guessed there was a supply in my pocket. I had dipped into the biscuit-basket at home before coming away. The two put out a hand each without being told, and I dropped a biscuit into them.