CHAPTER III

DIPWELL FARM

In rain or in sunshine this old farmhouse had a constant resemblance to a

wall-flower; and it had the same moist earthy smell, except in the

kitchen, where John and Martha Thresher lived, apart from their

furniture. All the fresh eggs, and the butter stamped, with three bees,

and the pots of honey, the fowls, and the hare lifted out of the hamper

by his hind legs, and the country loaves smelling heavenly, which used to

come to Mrs. Waddy's address in London, and appear on my father's table,

were products of Dipwell farm, and presents from her sister, Martha

Thresher. On receiving this information I felt at home in a moment, and

asked right off, 'How long am I to stay here?--Am I going away

tomorrow?--What's going to be done with me?' The women found these

questions of a youthful wanderer touching. Between kissings and promises

of hens to feed, and eggs that were to come of it, I settled into

contentment. A strong impression was made on me by Mrs. Waddy's saying,

'Here, Master Harry, your own papa will come for you; and you may be sure

he will, for I have his word he will, and he's not one to break it,

unless his country's against him; and for his darling boy he'd march

against cannons. So here you'll sit and wait for him, won't you?' I sat

down immediately, looking up. Mrs. Waddy and Mrs. Thresher raised their

hands. I had given them some extraordinary proof of my love for my

father. The impression I received was, that sitting was the thing to

conjure him to me.

'Where his heart's not concerned,' Mrs. Waddy remarked of me

flatteringly, 'he's shrewd as a little schoolmaster.'

'He've a bird's-nesting eye,' said Mrs. Thresher, whose face I was

studying.

John Thresher wagered I would be a man before either of them reached that

goal. But whenever he spoke he suffered correction on account of his

English.

'More than his eating and his drinking, that child's father worrits about

his learning to speak the language of a British gentleman,' Mrs. Waddy

exclaimed. 'Before that child your h's must be like the panting of an

engine--to please his father. He 'd stop me carrying the dinner-tray on

meat-dish hot, and I'm to repeat what I said, to make sure the child

haven't heard anything ungrammatical. The child's nursemaid he'd lecture

so, the poor girl would come down to me ready to bend double, like a

bundle of nothing, his observations so took the pride out of her. That's

because he 's a father who knows his duty to the child:--"Child!" says

he, "man, ma'am." It's just as you, John, when you sow your seed you

think of your harvest. So don't take it ill of me, John; I beg of you be

careful of your English. Turn it over as you're about to speak.'

'Change loads on the road, you mean,' said John Thresher. 'Na, na, he's

come to settle nigh a weedy field, if you like, but his crop ain't nigh

reaping yet. Hark you, Mary Waddy, who're a widde, which 's as much as

say, an unocc'pied mind, there's cockney, and there's country, and there

's school. Mix the three, strain, and throw away the sediment. Now, yon

's my view.

His wife and Mrs. Waddy said reflectively, in a breath, 'True!'

'Drink or no, that's the trick o' brewery,' he added.

They assented. They began praising him, too, like meek creatures.

'What John says is worth listening to, Mary. You may be over-careful. A

stew's a stew, and not a boiling to shreds, and you want a steady fire,

and not a furnace.'

'Oh, I quite agree with John, Martha: we must take the good and the evil

in a world like this.'

'Then I'm no scholar, and you're at ease,' said John.

Mrs. Waddy put her mouth to his ear.

Up went his eyebrows, wrinkling arches over a petrified stare.

In some way she had regained her advantage. 'Art sure of it?' he

inquired.

'Pray, don't offend me by expressing a doubt of it,' she replied, bowing.

John Thresher poised me in the very centre of his gaze. He declared he

would never have guessed that, and was reproved, inasmuch as he might

have guessed it. He then said that I could not associate with any of the

children thereabout, and my dwelling in the kitchen was not to be thought

of. The idea of my dwelling in the kitchen seemed to be a serious

consideration with Mrs. Martha likewise. I was led into the rooms of

state. The sight of them was enough. I stamped my feet for the kitchen,

and rarely in my life have been happier than there, dining and supping

with John and Martha and the farm-labourers, expecting my father across

the hills, and yet satisfied with the sun. To hope, and not be impatient,

is really to believe, and this was my feeling in my father's absence. I

knew he would come, without wishing to hurry him. He had the world beyond

the hills; I this one, where a slow full river flowed from the sounding

mill under our garden wall, through long meadows. In Winter the wild

ducks made letters of the alphabet flying. On the other side of the

copses bounding our home, there was a park containing trees old as the

History of England, John Thresher said, and the thought of their

venerable age enclosed me comfortably. He could not tell me whether he

meant as old as the book of English History; he fancied he did, for the

furrow-track follows the plough close upon; but no one exactly could

swear when that (the book) was put together. At my suggestion, he fixed

the trees to the date of the Heptarchy, a period of heavy ploughing. Thus

begirt by Saxon times, I regarded Riversley as a place of extreme

baldness, a Greenland, untrodden by my Alfred and my Harold. These heroes

lived in the circle of Dipwell, confidently awaiting the arrival of my

father. He sent me once a glorious letter. Mrs. Waddy took one of John

Thresher's pigeons to London, and in the evening we beheld the bird cut

the sky like an arrow, bringing round his neck a letter warm from him I

loved. Planet communicating with planet would be not more wonderful to

men than words of his to me, travelling in such a manner. I went to

sleep, and awoke imagining the bird bursting out of heaven.

Meanwhile there was an attempt to set me moving again. A strange young

man was noticed in the neighbourhood of the farm, and he accosted me at

Leckham fair. 'I say, don't we know one another? How about your

grandfather the squire, and your aunt, and Mr. Bannerbridge? I've got

news for you.'

Not unwilling to hear him, I took his hand, leaving my companion, the

miller's little girl, Mabel Sweetwinter, at a toy-stand, while Bob, her

brother and our guardian, was shying sticks in a fine attitude. 'Yes, and

your father, too,' said the young man; 'come along and see him; you can

run?' I showed him how fast. We were pursued by Bob, who fought for me,

and won me, and my allegiance instantly returned to him. He carried me

almost the whole of the way back to Dipwell. Women must feel for the

lucky heroes who win them, something of what I felt for mine; I kissed

his bloody face, refusing to let him wipe it. John Thresher said to me at

night, 'Ay, now you've got a notion of boxing; and will you believe it,

Master Harry, there's people fools enough to want to tread that ther'

first-rate pastime under foot? I speak truth, and my word for 't, they'd

better go in petticoats. Let clergymen preach as in duty bound; you and

I'll uphold a manful sport, we will, and a cheer for Bob!'

He assured me, and he had my entire faith, that boxing was England's

natural protection from the foe. The comfort of having one like Bob to

defend our country from invasion struck me as inexpressible. Lighted by

John Thresher's burning patriotism, I entered the book of the History of

England at about the pace of a carthorse, with a huge waggon at my heels

in the shape of John. There was no moving on until he was filled. His

process of receiving historical knowledge was to fight over again the

personages who did injury to our honour as a nation, then shake hands and

be proud of them. 'For where we ain't quite successful we're cunning,' he

said; 'and we not being able to get rid of William the Conqueror, because

he's got a will of his own and he won't budge, why, we takes and makes

him one of ourselves; and no disgrace in that, I should hope! He paid us

a compliment, don't you see, Master Harry? he wanted to be an Englishman.

"Can you this?" says we, sparrin' up to him. "Pretty middlin'," says he,

"and does it well." "Well then," says we, "then you're one of us, and

we'll beat the world"; and did so.'

John Thresher had a laborious mind; it cost him beads on his forehead to

mount to these heights of meditation. He told me once that he thought

one's country was like one's wife: you were born in the first, and

married to the second, and had to learn all about them afterwards, ay,

and make the best of them. He recommended me to mix, strain, and throw

away the sediment, for that was the trick o' brewery. Every puzzle that

beset him in life resolved to this cheerful precept, the value of which,

he said, was shown by clear brown ale, the drink of the land. Even as a

child I felt that he was peculiarly an Englishman. Tales of injustice

done on the Niger river would flush him in a heat of wrath till he cried

out for fresh taxes to chastise the villains. Yet at the sight of the

beggars at his gates he groaned at the taxes existing, and enjoined me to

have pity on the poor taxpayer when I lent a hand to patch the laws. I

promised him I would unreservedly, with a laugh, but with a sincere

intention to legislate in a direct manner on his behalf. He, too, though

he laughed, thanked me kindly.

I was clad in black for my distant mother. Mrs. Waddy brought down a

young man from London to measure me, so that my mourning attire might be

in the perfect cut of fashion. 'The child's papa would strip him if he

saw him in a country tailor's funeral suit,' she said, and seemed to blow

a wind of changes on me that made me sure my father had begun to stir up

his part of the world. He sent me a prayer in his own handwriting to say

for my mother in heaven. I saw it flying up between black edges whenever

I shut my eyes. Martha Thresher dosed me for liver. Mrs. Waddy found me

pale by the fireside, and prescribed iron. Both agreed upon high-feeding,

and the apothecary agreed with both in everything, which reconciled them,

for both good women loved me so heartily they were near upon disputing

over the medicines I was to consume.

Under such affectionate treatment I betrayed the alarming symptom that my

imagination was set more on my mother than on my father: I could not help

thinking that for any one to go to heaven was stranger than to drive to

Dipwell, and I had this idea when my father was clasping me in his arms;

but he melted it like snow off the fields. He came with postillions in

advance of him wearing crape rosettes, as did the horses. We were in the

cricket-field, where Dipwell was playing its first match of the season,

and a Dipwell lad, furious to see the elevens commit such a breach of the

rules and decency as to troop away while the game was hot, and surround

my father, flung the cricket-ball into the midst and hit two or three of

the men hard. My father had to shield him from the consequences. He said

he liked that boy; and he pleaded for him so winningly and funnily that

the man who was hurt most laughed loudest.

Standing up in the carriage, and holding me by the hand, he addressed

them by their names: 'Sweetwinter, I thank you for your attention to my

son; and you, Thribble; and you, my man; and you, Baker; Rippengale, and

you; and you, Jupp'; as if he knew them personally. It was true he nodded

at random. Then he delivered a short speech, and named himself a regular

subscriber to their innocent pleasures. He gave them money, and scattered

silver coin among the boys and girls, and praised John Thresher, and

Martha, his wife, for their care of me, and pointing to the chimneys of

the farm, said that the house there was holy to him from henceforth, and

he should visit it annually if possible, but always in the month of May,

and in the shape of his subscription, as certain as the cowslip. The men,

after their fit of cheering, appeared unwilling to recommence their play,

so he alighted and delivered the first ball, and then walked away with my

hand in his, saying:

'Yes, my son, we will return to them tenfold what they have done for you.

The eleventh day of May shall be a day of pleasure for Dipwell while I

last, and you will keep it in memory of me when I am gone. And now to see

the bed you have slept in.'

Martha Thresher showed him the bed, showed him flowers I had planted, and

a Spanish chestnut tree just peeping.

'Ha!' said he, beaming at every fresh sight of my doings: 'madam, I am

your life-long debtor and friend!' He kissed her on the cheek.

John Thresher cried out: 'Why, dame, you trembles like a maid.'

She spoke very faintly, and was red in the face up to the time of our

departure. John stood like a soldier. We drove away from a cheering crowd

of cricketers and farm-labourers, as if discharged from a great gun. 'A

royal salvo!' said my father, and asked me earnestly whether I had

forgotten to reward and take a particular farewell of any one of my

friends. I told him I had forgotten no one, and thought it was true,

until on our way up the sandy lane, which offered us a last close view of

the old wall-flower farm front, I saw little Mabel Sweetwinter, often my

playfellow and bedfellow, a curly-headed girl, who would have danced on

Sunday for a fairing, and eaten gingerbread nuts during a ghost-story.

She was sitting by a furze-bush in flower, cherishing in her lap a lamb

that had been worried. She looked half up at me, and kept looking so, but

would not nod. Then good-bye, thought I, and remembered her look when I

had forgotten that of all the others.