Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  “As if he had not heaps of land himself to make kitchen-gardens of!”

  “But don’t you see, Master Johnny, to a man like Major Parrifer, who thinks the world was made for him, there’s nothing so mortifying as being balked. He set his mind upon this place; he can’t get it; and he is just boiling over. He’d poison me if he could. Now then, what’s wanted?”

  Cathy had come up, with her pretty dark eyes, whispering some question to her father. I ran on; it was growing late, and the Manor ever-so-far off.

  From that time the feud grew between Major Parrifer and George Reed. Not openly; not actively. It could not well be either when their relative positions were so different. Major Parrifer was a wealthy landed proprietor, a county magistrate (and an awfully overbearing one); and George Reed was a poor cottager who worked for his bread as a day-labourer. But that the Major grew to abhor and hate Reed; that the man, inhabiting the place at his very gates in spite of him, and looking at him independently, as if to say he knew it, every time he passed, had become an eyesore to him; was easily seen.

  The Major resented it on us all. He was rude to Mr. Brandon when they met; he struck out his whip once when he was on horse-back, and I passed him, as if he would like to strike me. I don’t know whether he was aware of my visit to Mr. Brandon; but the cottage was mine, I was friendly with Reed, and that was enough. Months, however, went on, and nothing came of it.

  One Sunday morning in winter, when our church-bells were going for service, Major Parrifer’s carriage turned out with the ladies all in full fig. The Major himself turned out after it, walking, one of his daughters with him, a young man who was on a visit there, and a couple of servants. As they passed George Reed’s, the sound of work being done in the garden at the back of the cottage caught the Major’s quick ears. He turned softly down Piefinch Lane, stole on tiptoe to the high hedge, and stooped to peep through it.

  Reed was doing something to his turnips; hoeing them, the Major said. He called the gentleman to him and the two servants, and bade them look through the hedge. Nothing more. Then the party came on to church.

  On Tuesday, the Major rode out to take his place on the magisterial bench at Alcester. It was bitterly cold January weather, and only one magistrate besides himself was on it: a clergyman. Two or three petty offenders were brought before them, who were severely sentenced — as prisoners always were when Major Parrifer was presiding. Another magistrate came in afterwards.

  Singular to say, Tod and I had gone to the town that day about a new saddle for his horse; singular on account of what happened. In saying we were there I am telling the truth; it is not invented to give colour to the tale. Upon turning out of the saddler’s, which is near the justice-room, old Jones the constable was coming along with a prisoner handcuffed, a tail after him.

  “Halloa!” cried Tod. “Here’s fun!”

  But I had seen what Tod did not, and rubbed my eyes, wondering if they saw double.

  “Tod! It is George Reed!”

  Reed’s face was as white as a sheet, and he walked along, not unwillingly, but as one in a state of sad shame, of awful rage. Tod made only one bound to the prisoner; and old Jones knowing us, did not push him back again.

  “As I’m a living man, I do not know what this is for, or why I am paraded through the town in disgrace,” spoke Reed, in answer to Tod’s question. “If I’m charged with wrong-doing, I am willing to appear and answer for it, without being turned into a felon in the face and eyes of folks, beforehand.”

  “Why do you bring Reed up in this manner — handcuffed?” demanded Tod of the constable.

  “Because the Major telled me to, young Mr. Todhetley.”

  Be you very sure Tod pushed after them into the justice-room: the police saw him, but he was a magistrate’s son. The crowd would have liked to push in also, but were sent to the right-about. I waited, and was presently admitted surreptitiously. Reed was standing before Major Parrifer and the other two, handcuffed still; and I gathered what the charge was.

  It was preferred by Major Parrifer, who had his servants there and a gentleman as witnesses. George Reed had been working in his garden on the previous Sunday morning — which was against the law. Old Jones had gone to Mr. Sterling’s and taken him on the Major’s warrant, as he was thrashing corn.

  Reed’s answer was to the following effect.

  He was not working. His wife was ill — her little boy being only four days old — and Dr. Duffham ordered her some mutton broth. He went to the garden to get the turnips to put into it. It was only on account of her illness that he didn’t go to church himself, he and Cathy. They might ask Dr. Duffham.

  “Do you dare to tell me you were not hoeing turnips?” cried Major Parrifer.

  “I dare to say I was not doing it as work,” independently answered the man. “If you looked at me, as you say, Major, through the hedge, you must have seen the bunch of turnips I had got up, lying near. I took the hoe in my hand, and I did use it for two or three minutes. Some dead weeds had got thrown along the bed, by the children, perhaps, and I pulled them away. I went indoors directly: before the clock struck eleven the turnips were on, boiling with the scrag of mutton. I peeled them and put them in myself.”

  “I see the bunch of turnips,” cried one of the servants. “They was lying — —”

  “Hold your tongue, sir,” roared his master; “if your further evidence is wanted, you’ll be asked for it. As to this defence” — and the Major turned to his brother-magistrates with a scornful smile— “it is quite ingenious; one of the clever excuses we usually get here. But it will not serve your turn, George Reed. When the sanctity of the Sabbath is violated — —”

  “Reed is not a man to say he did not do a thing if he did,” interrupted Tod.

  The Major glared at him for an instant, and then put out of hand a big gold pencil he was waving majestically.

  “Clear the room of spectators,” said he to the policeman.

  Which was all Tod got for interfering. We had to go out: and in a minute or two Reed came out also, handcuffed as before; not in charge of old Jones, but of the county police. He had been sentenced to a month’s imprisonment. Major Parrifer had wanted to make it three months; he said something about six; but the other two thought they saw some slightly extenuating circumstances in the case. A solicitor who was intimate with the Sterlings, and knew Reed very well, had been present towards the end.

  “Could you not have spoken in my defence, sir?” asked Reed, as he passed this gentleman in coming out.

  “I would had I been able. But you see, my man, when the law gets broken — —”

  “The devil take the law,” said Reed, savagely. “What I want is justice.”

  “And the administrators of it are determined to uphold it, what can be said?” went on the solicitor equably, as if there had been no interruption.

  “You would make out that I broke the law, just doing what I did; and I swear it was no more? That I can be legally punished for it?”

  “Don’t, Reed; it’s of no use. The Major and his witnesses swore you were at work. And it appears that you were.”

  “I asked them to take a fine — if I must be punished. I might have found friends to advance it for me.”

  “Just so. And for that reason of course they did not take it,” said the candid lawyer.

  “What is my wife to do while I am in prison? And the children? I may come out to find them starved. A month’s long enough to starve them in such weather as this.”

  Reed was allowed time for no more. He would not have been allowed that, but for having been jammed by the crowd at the doorway. He caught my eye as they were getting clear.

  “Master Johnny, will you go to the Court for me — your own place, sir — and tell the master that I swear I am innocent? Perhaps he’ll let a few shillings go to the wife weekly; tell him with my duty that I’ll work it out as soon as I am released. All this is done out of revenge, sir, because Major Parrifer couldn’t get me from my cot
tage. May the Lord repay him!”

  It caused a commotion, I can tell you, this imprisonment of Reed’s; the place was ringing with it between the Court and Dyke Manor. Our two houses seemed to have more to do with it than other people’s; first, because Reed worked at the Court; secondly, because I, who owned both the Court and the cottage, lived at the Manor. People took it up pretty warmly, and Mrs. Reed and the children were cared for. Mr. Sterling paid her five shillings a week; and Mr. Brandon and the Squire helped her on the quiet, and there were others also. In small country localities gentlemen don’t like to say openly that their neighbours are in the wrong: at any rate, they rarely do anything by way of remedy. Some spoke of an appeal to the Home Secretary, but it came to nothing, and no steps were taken to liberate Reed. Bill Whitney, who was staying a week with us, wrote and told his mother about it; she sent back a sovereign for Mrs. Reed; we three took it to her, and went about saying old Parrifer ought to be kicked, which was a relief to our feelings.

  But there’s something to tell about Cathy. On the day that Reed was taken up, it was not known at his home immediately. The neighbours, aware that the wife was ill, said nothing to her — for old Duffham thought she was going to have a fever, and ordered her to be kept quiet. For one thing, they did not know what there was to tell; except that Reed had been marched off from his work in handcuffs by Jones the constable. In the evening, when news came of his committal, it was agreed that an excuse should be made to Mrs. Reed that her husband had gone out on a business job for his master; and that Cathy — who could not fail to hear the truth from one or another — should be warned not to say anything.

  “Tell Cathy to come out here,” said the woman, looking over the gate. It was the little girl they spoke to; who could talk well: and she answered that Cathy was not there. So Ann Perkins, Mrs. Reed’s sister, was called out.

  “Where’s Cathy?” cried they.

  Ann Perkins answered in a passion — that she did not know where Cathy was, but would uncommonly like to know, and she only wished she was behind her — keeping her there with her sister when she ought to be at her own home! Then the women told Ann Perkins what they had intended to tell Cathy, and looked out for the latter.

  She did not come back. The night passed, and the next day passed, and Cathy was not seen or heard of. The only person who appeared to have met her was Goody Picker. It was about two o’clock in the afternoon, Tuesday, and Cathy had her best bonnet on. Mother Picker remarked upon her looking so smart, and asked where she was going to. Cathy answered that her uncle (who lived at Evesham) had sent to say she must go over there at once. “But when she came to the two roads, she turned off quite on the contrairy way to Evesham, and I thought the young woman must be daft,” concluded Mrs. Picker.

  The month passed away, and Reed came out; but Cathy had not returned. He got home on foot, in the afternoon, his hair cut close, and seemed as quiet as a lamb. The man had been daunted. It was an awful insult to put upon him; a slur on his good name for life; and some of them said George Reed would never hold up his head again. Had he been cruel or vindictive, he might have revenged himself on Major Parrifer, personally, in a manner the Major would have found it difficult to forget.

  The wife was about again, but sickly: the little ones did not at first know their father. One of the first people he asked after was Cathy. The girl was not at hand to welcome him, and he took it in the light of a reproach. When men come for the first time out of jail, they are sensitive.

  “Mr. Sterling called in yesterday, George, to say you were to go to your work again as soon as ever you came home,” said the wife, evading the question about Cathy. “Everybody has been so kind; they know you didn’t deserve what you got.”

  “Ah,” said Reed, carelessly. “Where’s Cathy?”

  Mrs. Reed felt obliged to tell him. No diplomatist, she brought out the news abruptly: Cathy had not been seen or heard of since the afternoon he was sent to prison. That aroused Reed: nothing else seemed to have done it: and he got up from his chair.

  “Why, where is she? What’s become of her?”

  The neighbours had been indulging in sundry speculations on the same question, which they had obligingly favoured Mrs. Reed with; but she did not think it necessary to impart them to her husband.

  “Cathy was a good girl on the whole, George; putting aside that she’d do no work, and spent her time reading good-for-nothing books. What I think is this — that she heard of your misfortune after she left, and wouldn’t come home to face it. She is eighteen now, you know.”

  “Come home from where?”

  Mrs. Reed had to tell the whole truth. That Cathy, dressed up in her best things, had left home without saying a word to any one, stealing out of the house unseen; she had been met in the road by Mrs. Picker, and told her what has already been said. But the uncle at Evesham had seen nothing of her.

  Forgetting his cropped hair — as he would have to forget it until it should grow again — George Reed went tramping off, there and then, the nearly two miles of way to Mother Picker’s. She could not tell him much more than he already knew. “Cathy was all in her best, her curls ‘iled, and her pink ribbons as fresh as her cheeks, and said in answer to questions that she had been sent for sudden to her uncle’s at Evesham: but she had turned off quite the contrairy road.” From thence, Reed walked on to his brother’s at Evesham; and learnt that Cathy had not been sent for, and had not come.

  When Reed got home, he was dead-beat. How many miles the man had walked that bleak February day, he did not stay to think — perhaps twenty. When excitement buoys up the spirit, the body does not feel fatigue. Mrs. Reed put supper before her husband, and he ate mechanically, lost in thought.

  “It fairly ‘mazes me,” he said, presently, in local phraseology. “But for going out in her best, I should think some accident had come to her. There’s ponds about, and young girls might slip in unawares. But the putting on her best things shows she was going somewhere.”

  “She put ’em on, and went off unseen,” repeated Mrs. Reed, snuffing the candle. “I should have thought she’d maybe gone off to some wake — only there wasn’t one agate within range.”

  “Cathy had no bad acquaintance to lead her astray,” he resumed. “The girls about here are decent, and mind their work.”

  “Which Cathy didn’t,” thought Mrs. Reed. “Cathy held her head above ‘em,” she said, aloud. “It’s my belief she used to fancy herself one o’ them fine ladies in her halfpenny books. She didn’t seem to make acquaintance with nobody but that young Parrifer. She’d talk to him by the hour together, and I couldn’t get her indoors.”

  Reed lifted his head. “Young Parrifer! — what — his son?” turning his thumb in the direction of Parrifer Hall. “Cathy talked to him?”

  “By the hour together,” reiterated Mrs. Reed. “He’d be on that side the gate, a-talking, and laughing, and leaning on it; and Cathy, she’d be in the path by the tall hollyhocks, talking back to him, and fondling the children.”

  Reed rose up, a strange look on his face. “How long was that going on?”

  “Ever so long; I can’t just remember. But young Parrifer is only at the Hall by fits and starts.”

  “And you never told me, woman!”

  “I thought no harm of it. I don’t think harm of it now,” emphatically added Mrs. Reed. “The worst of young Parrifer, that I’ve seen, is that he’s as soft as a tomtit.”

  Reed put on his hat without another word, and walked out. Late as it was, he was going to the Hall. He rang a peal at it, more like a lord than a labourer just let out of prison. There was some delay in opening the door: the household had gone upstairs; but a man came at last.

  “I want to see Major Parrifer.”

  The words were so authoritative; the man’s appearance so strange, with his tall figure and his clipped hair, as he pushed forward into the hall, that the servant momentarily lost his wits. A light, in a room on the left, guided Reed; he entered it, and found himsel
f face to face with Major Parrifer, who was seated in an easy-chair before a good fire, spirits on the table, and a cigar in his mouth. What with the smoke from that, what with the faint light — for all the candles had been put out but one — the Major did not at first distinguish his late visitor’s face. When the bare head and the resolute eyes met his, he certainly paled a little, and the cigar fell on to the carpet.

  “I want my daughter, Major Parrifer.”

  To hear a demand made for a daughter when the Major had possibly been thinking the demand might be for his life, was undoubtedly a relief. It brought back his courage.

  “What do you mean, fellow?” he growled, stamping out the fire of the cigar. “Are you out of your mind?”

  “Not quite. You might have driven some men out of theirs, though, by what you’ve done. We’ll let that part be, Major. I have come to-night about my daughter. Where is she?”

  They stood looking at each other. Reed stood just inside the door, hat in hand; he did not forget his manners even in the presence of his enemy; they were a habit with him. The Major, who had risen in his surprise, stared at him: he really knew nothing whatever of the matter, not even that the girl was missing; and he did think Reed’s imprisonment must have turned his brain. Perhaps Reed saw that he was not understood.

  “I come home from prison, into which you put me, Major Parrifer, to find my daughter Catherine gone. She went away the day I was taken up. Where she went, or what she’s doing, Heaven knows; but you or yours are answerable for it, whichever way it may be.”

  “You have been drinking,” said Major Parrifer.

  “You have, maybe,” returned Reed, glancing at the spirits on the table. “Either Cathy went out on a harmless jaunt, and is staying away because she can’t face the shame at home which you have put there; or else she went out to meet your son, and has been taken away by him. I think it must be the last; my fears whisper it to me; and, if so, you can’t be off knowing something of it. Major Parrifer, I must have my daughter.”