They and I

by Jerome Klapka Jerome

  A voice crying to us to stop interrupted him.

  "Am on my round. Can't come," he shouted.

  "But you must," explained the voice.

  He turned so quickly that he almost knocked me over. "Bother and confound them all!" he said. "Why don't they keep to the time-table? There's no system in this place. That is what ruins farming―want of system."

  He went on grumbling as he walked. I followed him. Halfway across the field we met the owner of the voice. She was a pleasant-looking lass, not exactly pretty―not the sort of girl one turns to look at in a crowd―yet, having seen her, it was agreeable to continue looking at her. St. Leonard introduced me to her as his eldest daughter, Janie, and explained to her that behind the study door, if only she would take the trouble to look, she would find a time-table -

  "According to which," replied Miss Janie, with a smile, "you ought at the present moment to be in the rick-yard, which is just where I want you."

  "What time is it?" he asked, feeling his waistcoat for a watch that appeared not to be there.

  "Quarter to eleven," I told him.

  He took his head between his hands. "Good God!" he cried, "you don't say that!"

  The new binder, Miss Janie told us, had just arrived. She was anxious her father should see it was in working order before the men went back. "Otherwise," so she argued, "old Wilkins will persist it was all right when he delivered it, and we shall have no remedy."

  We turned towards the house.

  "Speaking of the practical," I said, "there were three things I came to talk to you about. First and foremost, that cow."

  "Ah, yes, the cow," said St. Leonard. He turned to his daughter. "It was Maud, was it not?"

  "No," she answered, "it was Susie."

  "It is the one," I said, "that bellows most all night and three parts of the day. Your boy Hopkins thinks maybe she's fretting."

  "Poor soul!" said St. Leonard. "We only took her calf away from her―when did we take her calf away from her?" he asked of Janie.

  "On Thursday morning," returned Janie; "the day we sent her over."

  "They feel it so at first," said St. Leonard sympathetically.

  "It sounds a brutal sentiment," I said, "but I was wondering if by any chance you happened to have by you one that didn't feel it quite so much. I suppose among cows there is no class that corresponds to what we term our 'Smart Set'―cows that don't really care for their calves, that are glad to get away from them?"

  Miss Janie smiled. When she smiled, you felt you would do much to see her smile again.

  "But why not keep it up at your house, in the paddock," she suggested, "and have the milk brought down? There is an excellent cowshed, and it is only a mile away."

  It struck me there was sense in this idea. I had not thought of that. I asked St. Leonard what I owed him for the cow. He asked Miss Janie, and she said sixteen pounds. I had been warned that in doing business with farmers it would be necessary always to bargain; but there was that about Miss Janie's tone telling me that when she said sixteen pounds she meant sixteen pounds. I began to see a brighter side to Hubert St. Leonard's career as a farmer.

  "Very well," I said; "we will regard the cow as settled."

  I made a note: "Cow, sixteen pounds. Have the cowshed got ready, and buy one of those big cans on wheels."

  "You don't happen to want milk?" I put it to Miss Janie. "Susie seems to be good for about five gallons a day. I'm afraid if we drink it all ourselves we'll get too fat."

  "At twopence halfpenny a quart, delivered at the house, as much as you like," replied Miss Janie.

  I made a note of that also. "Happen to know a useful boy?" I asked Miss Janie.

  "What about young Hopkins," suggested her father.

  "The only male thing on this farm―with the exception of yourself, of course, father dear―that has got any sense," said Miss Janie. "He can't have Hopkins."

  "The only fault I have to find with Hopkins," said St. Leonard, "is that he talks too much."

  "Personally," I said, "I should prefer a country lad. I have come down here to be in the country. With Hopkins around, I don't somehow feel it is the country. I might imagine it a garden city: that is as near as Hopkins would allow me to get. I should like myself something more suggestive of rural simplicity."

  "I think I know the sort of thing you mean," smiled Miss Janie. "Are you fairly good-tempered?"

  "I can generally," I answered, "confine myself to sarcasm. It pleases me, and as far as I have been able to notice, does neither harm nor good to anyone else."

  "I'll send you up a boy," promised Miss Janie.

  I thanked her. "And now we come to the donkey."

  "Nathaniel," explained Miss Janie, in answer to her father's look of enquiry. "We don't really want it."

  "Janie," said Mr. St. Leonard in a tone of authority, "I insist upon being honest."

  "I was going to be honest," retorted Miss Janie, offended.

  "My daughter Veronica has given me to understand," I said, "that if I buy her this donkey it will be, for her, the commencement of a new and better life. I do not attach undue importance to the bargain, but one never knows. The influences that make for reformation in human character are subtle and unexpected. Anyhow, it doesn't seem right to throw a chance away. Added to which, it has occurred to me that a donkey might be useful in the garden."

  "He has lived at my expense for upwards of two years," replied St. Leonard. "I cannot myself see any moral improvement he has brought into my family. What effect he may have upon your children, I cannot say. But when you talk about his being useful in a garden―"

  "He draws a cart," interrupted Miss Janie.

  "So long as someone walks beside him feeding him with carrots. We tried fixing the carrot on a pole six inches beyond his reach. That works all right in the picture: it starts this donkey kicking."

  "You know yourself," he continued with growing indignation, "the very last time your mother took him out she used up all her carrots getting there, with the result that he and the cart had to be hauled home behind a trolley."

  We had reached the yard. Nathaniel was standing with his head stretched out above the closed half of his stable door. I noticed points of resemblance between him and Veronica herself: there was about him a like suggestion of resignation, of suffering virtue misunderstood; his eye had the same wistful, yearning expression with which Veronica will stand before the window gazing out upon the purple sunset, while people are calling to her from distant parts of the house to come and put her things away. Miss Janie, bending over him, asked him to kiss her. He complied, but with a gentle, reproachful look that seemed to say, "Why call me back again to earth?"

  It made me mad with him. I was wrong in thinking Miss Janie not a pretty girl. Hers is that type of beauty that escapes attention by its own perfection. It is the eccentric, the discordant, that arrests the roving eye. To harmony one has to attune oneself.

  "I believe," said Miss Janie, as she drew away, wiping her cheek, "one could teach that donkey anything."

  Apparently she regarded willingness to kiss her as indication of exceptional amiability.

  "Except to work," commented her father. "I'll tell you what I'll do," he said. "If you take that donkey off my hands and promise not to send it back again, why, you can have it."

  "For nothing?" demanded Janie woefully.

  "For nothing," insisted her father. "And if I have any argument, I'll throw in the cart."

  Miss Janie sighed and shrugged her shoulders. It was arranged that Hopkins should deliver Nathaniel into my keeping some time the next day. Hopkins, it appeared, was the only person on the farm who could make the donkey go.

  "I don't know what it is," said St. Leonard, "but he has a way with him."

  "And now," I said, "there remains but Dick."

  "The lad I saw yesterday?" suggested St. Leonard. "Good-looking young fellow."

  "He is a nice boy," I said. "I don't really think I know a nicer boy than Dick; and c
lever, when you come to understand him. There is only one fault I have to find with Dick: I don't seem able to get him to work."

  Miss Janie was smiling. I asked her why.

  "I was thinking," she answered, "how close the resemblance appears to be between him and Nathaniel."

  It was true. I had not thought of it.

  "The mistake," said St. Leonard, "is with ourselves. We assume every boy to have the soul of a professor, and every girl a genius for music. We pack off our sons to cram themselves with Greek and Latin, and put our daughters down to strum at the piano. Nine times out of ten it is sheer waste of time. They sent me to Cambridge, and said I was lazy. I was not lazy. I was not intended by nature for a Senior Wrangler. I did not see the good of being a Senior Wrangler. Who wants a world of Senior Wranglers? Then why start every young man trying? I wanted to be a farmer. If intelligent lads were taught farming as a business, farming would pay. In the name of common-sense―"

  "I am inclined to agree with you," I interrupted him. "I would rather see Dick a good farmer than a third-rate barrister, anyhow. He thinks he could take an interest in farming. There are ten weeks before he need go back to Cambridge, sufficient time for the experiment. Will you take him as a pupil?"

  St. Leonard grasped his head between his hands and held it firmly. "If I consent," he said, "I must insist on being honest"

  I saw the woefulness again in Janie's eyes.

  "I think," I said, "it is my turn to be honest. I have got the donkey for nothing; I insist on paying for Dick. They are waiting for you in the rick-yard. I will settle the terms with Miss Janie."

  He regarded us both suspiciously.

  "I will promise to be honest," laughed Miss Janie.

  "If it's more than I'm worth," he said, "I'll send him home again. My theory is―"

  He stumbled over a pig which, according to the time-table, ought not to have been there. They went off hurriedly together, the pig leading, both screaming.

  Miss Janie said she would show me the short cut across the fields; we could talk as we went. We walked in silence for awhile.

  "You must not think," she said, "I like being the one to do all the haggling. I feel a little sore about it very often. But somebody, of course, must do it; and as for father, poor dear―"

  I looked at her. Her's is the beauty to which a touch of sadness adds a charm.

  "How old are you?" I asked her.

  "Twenty," she answered, "next birthday."

  "I judged you to be older," I said.

  "Most people do," she answered.

  "My daughter Robina," I said, "is just the same age―according to years; and Dick is twenty-one. I hope you will be friends with them. They have got sense, both of them. It comes out every now and again and surprises you. Veronica, I think, is nine. I am not sure how Veronica is going to turn out. Sometimes things happen that make us think she has a beautiful character, and then for quite long periods she seems to lose it altogether. The Little Mother―I don't know why we always call her Little Mother―will not join us till things are more ship-shape. She does not like to be thought an invalid, and if we have her about anywhere near work that has to be done, and are not always watching her, she gets at it and tires herself."

  "I am glad we are going to be neighbours," said Miss Janie. "There are ten of us altogether. Father, I am sure, you will like; clever men always like father. Mother's day is Friday. As a rule it is the only day no one ever calls." She laughed. The cloud had vanished. "They come on other days and find us all in our old clothes. On Friday afternoon we sit in state and nobody comes near us, and we have to eat the cakes ourselves. It makes her so cross. You will try and remember Fridays, won't you?"

  I made a note of it then and there.

  "I am the eldest," she continued, "as I think father told you. Harry and Jack came next; but Jack is in Canada and Harry died, so there is somewhat of a gap between me and the rest. Bertie is twelve and Ted eleven; they are home just now for the holidays. Sally is eight, and then there come the twins. People don't half believe the tales that are told about twins, but I am sure there is no need to exaggerate. They are only six, but they have a sense of humour you would hardly credit. One is a boy, and the other a girl. They are always changing clothes, and we are never quite sure which is which. Wilfrid gets sent to bed because Winnie has not practised her scales, and Winnie is given syrup of squills because Wilfried has been eating green gooseberries. Last spring Winnie had the measles. When the doctor came on the fifth day he was as pleased as punch; he said it was the quickest cure he had ever known, and that really there was no reason why she might not get up. We had our suspicions, and they were right. Winnie was hiding in the cupboard, wrapped up in a blanket. They don't seem to mind what trouble they get into, provided it isn't their own. The only safe plan, unless you happen to catch them red-handed, is to divide the punishment between them, and leave them to settle accounts between themselves afterwards. Algy is four; till last year he was always called the baby. Now, of course, there is no excuse; but the name still clings to him in spite of his indignant protestations. Father called upstairs to him the other day: 'Baby, bring me down my gaiters.' He walked straight up to the cradle and woke up the baby. 'Get up,' I heard him say―I was just outside the door―'and take your father down his gaiters. Don't you hear him calling you?' He is a droll little fellow. Father took him to Oxford last Saturday. He is small for his age. The ticket-collector, quite contented, threw him a glance, and merely as a matter of form asked if he was under three. 'No,' he shouted before father could reply; 'I 'sists on being honest. I'se four.' It is father's pet phrase."

  "What view do you take of the exchange," I asked her, "from stockbroking with its larger income to farming with its smaller?"

  "Perhaps it was selfish," she answered, "but I am afraid I rather encouraged father. It seems to me mean, making your living out of work that does no good to anyone. I hate the bargaining, but the farming itself I love. Of course, it means having only one evening dress a year and making that myself. But even when I had a lot I always preferred wearing the one that I thought suited me the best. As for the children, they are as healthy as young savages, and everything they want to make them happy is just outside the door. The boys won't go to college; but seeing they will have to earn their own living, that, perhaps, is just as well. It is mother, poor dear, that worries so." She laughed again. "Her favourite walk is to the workhouse. She came back quite excited the other day because she had heard the Guardians intend to try the experiment of building separate houses for old married couples. She is convinced she and father are going to end their days there."

  "You, as the business partner," I asked her, "are hopeful that the farm will pay?"

  "Oh, yes," she answered, "it will pay all right―it does pay, for the matter of that. We live on it and live comfortably. But, of course, I can see mother's point of view, with seven young children to bring up. And it is not only that." She stopped herself abruptly. "Oh, well," she continued with a laugh, "you have got to know us. Father is trying. He loves experiments, and a woman hates experiments. Last year it was bare feet. I daresay it is healthier. But children who have been about in bare feet all the morning―well, it isn't pleasant when they sit down to lunch; I don't care what you say. You can't be always washing. He is so unpractical. He was quite angry with mother and myself because we wouldn't. And a man in bare feet looks so ridiculous. This summer it is short hair and no hats; and Sally had such pretty hair. Next year it will be sabots or turbans―something or other suggesting the idea that we've lately escaped from a fair. On Mondays and Thursdays we talk French. We have got a French nurse; and those are the only days in the week on which she doesn't understand a word that's said to her. We can none of us understand father, and that makes him furious. He won't say it in English; he makes a note of it, meaning to tell us on Tuesday or Friday, and then, of course, he forgets, and wonders why we haven't done it. He's the dearest fellow alive. When I think of him as a big boy, then h
e is charming, and if he really were only a big boy there are times when I would shake him and feel better for it."

  She laughed again. I wanted her to go on talking, because her laugh was so delightful. But we had reached the road, and she said she must go back: there were so many things she had to do.

  "We have not settled about Dick," I reminded her.

  "Mother took rather a liking to him," she murmured.

  "If Dick could make a living," I said, "by getting people to like him, I should not be so anxious about his future―lazy young devil!"

  "He has promised to work hard if you let him take up farming," said Miss Janie.

  "He has been talking to you?" I said.

  She admitted it.

  "He will begin well," I said. "I know him. In a month he will have tired of it, and be clamouring to do something else."

  "I shall be very disappointed in him if he does," she said.

  "I will tell him that," I said, "it may help. People don't like other people to be disappointed in them."

  "I would rather you didn't," she said. "You could say that father will be disappointed in him. Father formed rather a good opinion of him, I know."

  "I will tell him," I suggested, "that we shall all be disappointed in him."

  She agreed to that, and we parted. I remembered, when she was gone, that after all we had not settled terms.

  Dick overtook me a little way from home.

  "I have settled your business," I told him.

  "It's awfully good of you," said Dick.

  "Mind," I continued, "it's on the understanding that you throw yourself into the thing and work hard. If you don't, I shall be disappointed in you, I tell you so frankly."

  "That's all right, governor," he answered cheerfully. "Don't you worry."

  "Mr. St. Leonard will also be disappointed in you, Dick," I informed him. "He has formed a very high opinion of you. Don't give him cause to change it."

  "I'll get on all right with him," answered Dick. "Jolly old duffer, ain't he?"

  "Miss Janie will also be disappointed in you," I added.