The Two Farms: A moving family saga set in a Victorian farming community

by Mary E. Pearce

  ‘For myself, yes, I can feel well pleased. I just wish that your buying Godsakes didn’t involve hurting a man who has struggled so hard for so many years.’

  ‘Well, luckily for us,’ Philip said tartly, ‘it isn’t your business to decide.’

  ‘Quite so,’ Jim agreed, and, rising from the table, he excused himself, having work to discuss with old Abelard.

  John Sutton, left alone with Philip, pushed the bottle of port towards him and watched him as he filled his glass.

  ‘I haven’t yet heard about your latest round of visits,’ he said. ‘Especially Langley. How is your courtship of Caroline Alton coming along?’

  ‘It’s not,’ Philip said, with a certain stiffness. ‘Caroline was away from home.’ Then, somewhat flushed, he said: ‘I’m told she is soon to become engaged to one of Colonel Conroy’s sons.’

  ‘Oh,’ Sutton said, and was silent a while, watching his son with a scrutiny that was at once sympathetic and shrewd. ‘Well, there are plenty of other nice girls about, and I think you may be well advised to look for one nearer home. But it seems rather as though Jim is going to pip you to the post when it comes to finding a wife.’

  ‘Does it, though? And who’s the girl?’

  ‘Someone you haven’t met,’ Sutton said, ‘because you’ve been too much away from home.’

  ‘Imagine Jim being in love!’ Philip sipped his glass of port. ‘You must tell me all about it,’ he said.

  Out in the pasture where the flocks were grazing, Jim stood in the gathering dusk, discussing with old Abelard the next morning’s work, of sorting out lambs to send to market. From across the valley came the sound of a shot and as they stood listening it was followed quite soon by another. There had been similar shots all day.

  ‘That’s Riddler loosing off in case the bum-bailies are lurking about,’ old Abelard said grimly. ‘But they will get him in the end, just as sure as eggs are eggs.’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid they will,’ Jim said, and turned to look across the valley, imagining the feelings of the man who lived almost in a state of siege on that lonely, tumbledown farm where, in the darkness, as Jim looked, a single light came into being and burnt with a kind of stubborn defiance, faintly and dimly, in one of the windows. ‘Only some kind of miracle can save Morris Riddler now, I’m afraid.’

  Harvest began early in August and from then on Jim was kept fully occupied, for the acreage of corn now grown at Peele was the greatest ever, and both wheat and barley promised an exceptional yield that year. Once he went over to Hide House Farm to see the new reaping machine that Alec Reynolds had bought and while they were watching the engineer demonstrating its use in the field, Jane and her mother came out to join them and invited Jim to stay to lunch. Sadly, he was obliged to refuse, being on his way into town to draw money for the men’s wages, but Jane’s disappointment at his refusal sent him away almost as happy as he would have been if he could have stayed.

  ‘Jim is a busy man, my dear,’ her father said, reproving her. ‘I doubt if we shall see much of him until he’s finished harvesting.’

  ‘Oh, I shan’t be so very busy,’ Jim said, ‘that I can’t walk over and see you sometimes.’

  ‘To see us all?’ Reynolds asked slyly. ‘Or is it only one of us?’

  Jim and Jane exchanged a smile.

  Philip, at his father’s instigation, was at this time often in Missenham, collecting information about Morris Riddler’s debts, which Sutton considered might be useful to them when buying Godsakes.

  One afternoon at the beginning of August, coming back from one of these errands, Philip turned off at the crossroads just outside Abbot’s Lyall and rode up the lane towards Hide House Farm. It was a day of intense heat, with a hot surging wind breathing out of the east, and when he reached the River Cran he walked his mare down to the ford so that she could drink and be cool.

  While he sat at ease in the saddle, looking up towards Hide House, a girl in a pale blue muslin frock, with a blue straw hat on her head, came slowly along the river bank, picking meadowsweet and wild tansy. The mare had finished drinking now but Philip, in no hurry to move, sat smiling gently to himself, watching the girl on the bank above. She had almost reached the ford when suddenly a gust of wind carried her straw hat from her head. A quick, clumsy grab; a headlong lunge; and then a small exclamation, with more than a hint of laughter in it, as the hat blew down into the river and began floating downstream.

  Philip, having dismounted quickly, was just in time to reach the hat as it was floating across the ford. He fished it out and gave it a shake. The girl had now come to the top of the slip and Philip, with the hat in his hand, stood looking up at her.

  ‘No need to ask who you are,’ he said. ‘I know you from my father’s description.’

  ‘Your father? Now let me see if I can guess who that is!’ She studied him with her head on one side. ‘No, it’s no good, I just don’t know. I see no likeness to anyone.’

  ‘Then, of course, I must introduce myself.’

  Leading his mare by the bridle he splashed his way across the ford and walked up to the top of the slip where the girl stood waiting for him.

  ‘I’m Philip Sutton of Peele House Farm.’ He bowed to her and proffered the hat. ‘I’m afraid it’s rather wet,’ he said.

  All through the month of August and during the first week of September, whenever Jim could spare the time from superintending the harvest at Peele, he walked over to Hide House in the hope of seeing Jane, but each time he was disappointed. She had ‘gone in to town to the dressmaker’ or ‘gone on a picnic with some friends to escape the heat in Lyall Woods’. Once when he called in the evening she was lying down with a sick headache, quite unable to see anyone, but when he called to enquire the next morning she had recovered sufficiently to have gone for an early morning ride by the river, ‘with a party from Allern Hall’.

  Jim thought it very strange that never once in all these weeks had she strolled over to see him at Peele, as she had done often enough before, but ‘really her life is a whirl these days’, Mrs Reynolds said to him, ‘and she seems to be such a favourite, you know, with all our nice neighbours round about’.

  ‘Yes, it would seem so,’ Jim said. ‘I’m glad she is better, at any rate.’

  As he walked away from the house, thinking of what Mrs Reynolds had said, he became more and more aware that her manner to him had been evasive; had smacked of a certain embarrassment; had even ‒ but maybe this was his fancy ‒ held a hint of pity in it.

  The feeling became so strong that instead of going back to Peele he went down to the river and along the bank and there, about a mile downstream, where the willows formed a shady grove, he saw Jane and Philip together, walking along, arm in arm, absorbed in each other, plainly lovers. Their horses were tethered nearby. There was no ‘party from Allern Hall’; Philip and Jane were quite alone.

  They did not see Jim and he stole away without showing himself. Seeing them together, so intimate, with Jane looking up into Philip’s face and laughing in that particular way, although it only confirmed a fear which had been growing for days in his mind, was nevertheless a shock to him and filled him with an anger that weakened him. He felt too hurt, too vulnerable, to face them together at that moment. He needed time to be alone; to absorb the pain and to think things out.

  An hour was enough. By then, instead of weakening him, his anger gave him a kind of strength. True, some faint hope lingered in his heart, causing him to ask himself whether there might, after all, be some innocent explanation of what he had seen. But he knew this hope for what it was and derided himself for his childishness. Still, he had to know for sure, and that as soon as possible. So he walked back to the narrow lane leading up to Hide House and stood in the shade of an oak tree there, waiting for Jane to return home.

  When he stepped out into the lane she went rather pale and looked, just for an instant, as though she would ride right past him. But as he moved to block her way she had no choice but to stop
, and when he took hold of her horse’s bridle, she gave a small, nervous laugh.

  ‘Jim! Just imagine seeing you! So early in the morning as well! I thought you were busy harvesting.’

  ‘I’ve called at the house any number of times. Surely they must have told you that?’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course they did. But I have been out a lot just lately and ‒’

  ‘Jane, I must tell you,’ Jim said, ‘that I saw you about an hour ago with Philip Sutton at Dunton Reach.’

  ‘Do you mean you were spying on me?’

  ‘You can call it that if you like. But I wanted to know how I stood with you. Surely I’m entitled to that?’

  Jane was suddenly close to tears, quite unable to answer him, and after a while he spoke again, quietly, in a voice well controlled. ‘You said you loved me.’

  ‘Yes. Well …’

  ‘You also said you would marry me.’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’ She shook her head. ‘I never said any such thing.’

  ‘But when I asked you … you didn’t say no.’

  ‘That’s not the same as saying yes.’

  ‘You were going to speak to your parents about it.’

  ‘Yes. I was. But I didn’t say when.’

  ‘You mean,’ he said, with some irony, ‘that you may still speak to them even now?’

  ‘No. Not now.’

  ‘Why not?’ he asked.

  ‘You know why not.’

  ‘Yes, I know. Because something better has come along.’

  ‘I suppose it’s only natural that you should feel like this about it ‒’

  ‘I certainly can’t imagine anyone feeling any differently.’

  ‘Jim, I’m sorry. Truly I am. I didn’t mean to hurt you like this.’

  ‘Are you going to marry him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In that case there’s nothing more to be said ‒ except for one or two things I shall have to say to Philip himself.’

  ‘What things?’ Jane asked.

  But Jim was already walking away, impatient now to get back to Peele.

  Philip stood in the stable doorway, talking to Charlie Clements who was inside, grooming the mare. He turned as Jim came into the yard and sauntered towards him, tapping his boot with his riding-crop.

  ‘My father is out looking for you. Nobody seemed to know where you were.’

  ‘I’ve just come from seeing Jane.’

  ‘Ah,’ Philip said, and his gaze sharpened, becoming wary, inquisitive, amused, and full of bright expectancy. ‘Jane. Yes. Exactly so.’

  ‘She tells me she’s going to marry you.’

  ‘Then, of course, it must be true.’

  ‘You haven’t wasted much time,’ Jim said. ‘You’ve only been home a month or so.’

  ‘Five weeks and three days, to be precise.’

  ‘And never once in that time have you even mentioned meeting her.’

  ‘There was a good reason for that.’

  ‘I can well believe it,’ Jim said.

  ‘I was trying to spare your feelings, you see, because, right from the very start, I loved the girl and she loved me.’

  ‘Loving people,’ Jim said, ‘is something she seems to find easy to do.’

  ‘That is not a very gentlemanly remark.’

  ‘I’m not feeling gentlemanly.’

  ‘No, I can see you’re not.’

  ‘But then, I am not a gentleman, nor have I ever laid claim to be.’

  ‘No?’ Philip said, with a lift of his brows. ‘And yet you expected to marry Jane, a girl of good family connections, not to mention superior breeding.’ He spread his hands in disbelief. ‘You, a farm bailiff,’ he continued, ‘earning eighteen shillings a week, hoping to lure the poor girl into marriage with your few paltry hundreds in the bank and your talk of renting a little farm ‒’

  Philip, though watching so warily, was nevertheless taken by surprise when Jim suddenly lashed out and caught him a stinging, back-handed blow on the mouth. Until this moment Jim’s feelings had been kept under control but now, as he learnt that his cherished ambitions had been discussed between Philip and Jane, and made the subject of ridicule between them, he allowed his anger a free rein and when Philip, with a muttered exclamation, cut at him with his riding-crop, Jim struck out straight and hard with his fist and sent Philip sprawling on his back on the cobbles.

  Behind him, in the stable doorway, Charlie Clements now appeared, but before he could intervene John Sutton walked into the yard.

  ‘What the devil’s going on?’

  Philip got slowly to his feet.

  ‘Jim,’ he said, nursing his jaw, ‘has just found out that I am going to marry Jane Reynolds.’

  ‘You are going to do what?’

  ‘And, as you see, he’s not taking it well. He’s no kind of sportsman, I’m afraid. That’s one thing we’ve never drummed into him.’

  ‘All right, Clements, get on with your work! There’s no need to stand gaping there!’ Sutton, very red in the face, waited until Clements had gone before turning back to Philip. ‘When did all this happen with Jane? It’s all very sudden, isn’t it? You’ve only been home a few weeks.’

  ‘So everyone keeps telling me. But a few weeks is all it took.’ Philip stood brushing the dust from his clothes. ‘You have said often enough that it was time I married and settled down and that is what I’m planning to do. It just happens that the girl in question is one Jim thought he had a lien on and now that he finds himself mistaken ‒’

  ‘Well, it can’t be settled by fighting like a couple of stable-boys.’ Sutton glanced questioningly at Jim. ‘If the girl has made her choice ‒’

  ‘Oh, yes, she’s made her choice,’ Jim said, with great bitterness, ‘but you mustn’t be surprised if I’m not very ready in offering my felicitations.’

  ‘I’m not pretending to be surprised. I’d feel exactly the same as you do. But this is no place to discuss the matter. We’d all be better indoors.’

  ‘I’m not in a mood for discussion,’ Jim said. ‘I think I’d be better left alone. Anyway, there’s work to be done, and I had better get on with it, doing my duty as your bailiff, earning my eighteen shillings a week!’

  He strode away, out of the yard, and Sutton turned again to his son. ‘Come indoors,’ he said tersely. ‘I’ve got a few things to say to you.’

  At about half-past ten that morning, at work in the rickyard, Jim received word that he was wanted up at the house. He went somewhat reluctantly and found Sutton alone in his study.

  ‘This is a bad business, Jim, and I am more sorry than I can say. I’ve had it out with Philip and I’ve told him what I think of him. But it seems he’s perfectly serious about wanting to marry Jane and there’s no changing his mind about it.’

  ‘How could that possibly help anything? You surely don’t think I would want her now, when she’s made it plain that she doesn’t want me?’

  ‘No. Of course not. I didn’t mean that.’

  Sutton, sitting behind his desk, motioned Jim into a chair, but Jim, refusing, continued to stand, his fists buried deep in his jacket pockets.

  ‘Philip tells me,’ Sutton said, ‘that they intend to marry quite soon.’

  Jim said nothing, but stood like a stone.

  ‘In fact they talk of an autumn wedding. Early October, perhaps, he says. It all seems very quick to me, but there it is. You will have to consider what to do.’

  ‘Do?’ Jim queried. ‘Why, what would I do?’

  ‘Well, you can’t very well stay here after this, and surely you wouldn’t want to? With Philip and Jane living here and such bad blood between you and him … it’s out of the question, you must surely see that?’

  ‘You mean I would have to move out of the house? Yes, of course, I do see that.’

  ‘Not just out of the house, but away from Peele altogether. Somewhere new. Fresh woods, as they say. I’m sorry about it. Angry, too. You’re a good lad and I’m fond of you and your work here as bailif
f these past three years ‒’

  ‘Am I to be turned off, then?’ Jim said.

  ‘That’s not the way I would put it, myself, but you must certainly leave Peele, and the sooner it can be arranged, the better it will be for everyone. I’ve given it a good deal of thought and the ideal solution, it seems to me, is for you to go out to Canada and join my cousin Tom on his farm. He badly needs young men like you and if I write to him straight away ‒’

  ‘Canada!’ Jim said hollowly, and, with a wry twist of his mouth, he asked, ‘Is that quite far enough away, do you think?’

  ‘It will mean a new life for you, my boy. A whole new adventure. A challenge, that’s what! Tom farms five thousand acres out there in Ontario. Five thousand acres, just think of that! Miles and miles of nothing but corn! It will be a splendid chance for you to make a new start and I’m sure you will agree with me that it will be better for everyone if you were gone clean away before Philip’s wedding to Jane takes place. In fact, as soon as it can be fixed. It’ll spare your own feelings and theirs.’

  ‘Whatever I do,’ Jim said, ‘it will not be to spare Philip’s feelings.’

  ‘I understand how you feel but ‒ he is my son, remember.’

  ‘And I am nobody’s son. I’ve got no family of my own. No money to speak of. No land, no home. Nothing to offer but what I am.’

  ‘And a very good bargain, too,’ Sutton said, ‘for the right girl in the right place.’

  Jim’s face remained clenched, his eyes a cold, glittering blue, and Sutton, looking up at him, gave a small, sympathetic sigh. But he was anxious to have Jim’s answer; anxious to get his plan under way; and he spoke now with a touch of impatience.

  ‘Well? What do you say to my idea? Canada is a wonderful place, you know, and it’s crying out for young chaps like you. You’ll make good there in no time at all. So what do you say? Shall I write to Tom?’