CHAPTER II.

In the room from which this cheerful blaze proceeded, he beheld a girl

seated on a willow chair, and busily occupied by the light of the fire,

which was ample and of wood. With a bill-hook in one hand and a leather

glove, much too large for her, on the other, she was making spars, such

as are used by thatchers, with great rapidity. She wore a leather apron

for this purpose, which was also much too large for her figure. On her

left hand lay a bundle of the straight, smooth sticks called

spar-gads—the raw material of her manufacture; on her right, a heap of

chips and ends—the refuse—with which the fire was maintained; in front,

a pile of the finished articles. To produce them she took up each gad,

looked critically at it from end to end, cut it to length, split it

into four, and sharpened each of the quarters with dexterous blows,

which brought it to a triangular point precisely resembling that of a

bayonet.

Beside her, in case she might require more light, a brass candlestick

stood on a little round table, curiously formed of an old coffin-stool,

with a deal top nailed on, the white surface of the latter contrasting

oddly with the black carved oak of the substructure. The social

position of the household in the past was almost as definitively shown

by the presence of this article as that of an esquire or nobleman by

his old helmets or shields. It had been customary for every well-to-do

villager, whose tenure was by copy of court-roll, or in any way more

permanent than that of the mere cotter, to keep a pair of these stools

for the use of his own dead; but for the last generation or two a

feeling of cui bono had led to the discontinuance of the custom, and

the stools were frequently made use of in the manner described.

The young woman laid down the bill-hook for a moment and examined the

palm of her right hand, which, unlike the other, was ungloved, and

showed little hardness or roughness about it. The palm was red and

blistering, as if this present occupation were not frequent enough with

her to subdue it to what it worked in. As with so many right hands born

to manual labor, there was nothing in its fundamental shape to bear out

the physiological conventionalism that gradations of birth, gentle or

mean, show themselves primarily in the form of this member. Nothing but

a cast of the die of destiny had decided that the girl should handle

the tool; and the fingers which clasped the heavy ash haft might have

skilfully guided the pencil or swept the string, had they only been set

to do it in good time.

Her face had the usual fulness of expression which is developed by a

life of solitude. Where the eyes of a multitude beat like waves upon a

countenance they seem to wear away its individuality; but in the still

water of privacy every tentacle of feeling and sentiment shoots out in

visible luxuriance, to be interpreted as readily as a child’s look by

an intruder. In years she was no more than nineteen or twenty, but the

necessity of taking thought at a too early period of life had forced

the provisional curves of her childhood’s face to a premature finality.

Thus she had but little pretension to beauty, save in one prominent

particular—her hair. Its abundance made it almost unmanageable; its

color was, roughly speaking, and as seen here by firelight, brown, but

careful notice, or an observation by day, would have revealed that its

true shade was a rare and beautiful approximation to chestnut.

On this one bright gift of Time to the particular victim of his now

before us the new-comer’s eyes were fixed; meanwhile the fingers of his

right hand mechanically played over something sticking up from his

waistcoat-pocket—the bows of a pair of scissors, whose polish made them

feebly responsive to the light within. In her present beholder’s mind

the scene formed by the girlish spar-maker composed itself into a

post-Raffaelite picture of extremest quality, wherein the girl’s hair

alone, as the focus of observation, was depicted with intensity and

distinctness, and her face, shoulders, hands, and figure in general,

being a blurred mass of unimportant detail lost in haze and obscurity.

He hesitated no longer, but tapped at the door and entered. The young

woman turned at the crunch of his boots on the sanded floor, and

exclaiming, “Oh, Mr. Percombe, how you frightened me!” quite lost her

color for a moment.

He replied, “You should shut your door—then you’d hear folk open it.”

“I can’t,” she said; “the chimney smokes so. Mr. Percombe, you look as

unnatural out of your shop as a canary in a thorn-hedge. Surely you

have not come out here on my account—for—”

“Yes—to have your answer about this.” He touched her head with his

cane, and she winced. “Do you agree?” he continued. “It is necessary

that I should know at once, as the lady is soon going away, and it

takes time to make up.”

“Don’t press me—it worries me. I was in hopes you had thought no more

of it. I can _not_ part with it—so there!”

“Now, look here, Marty,” said the barber, sitting down on the

coffin-stool table. “How much do you get for making these spars?”

“Hush—father’s up-stairs awake, and he don’t know that I am doing his

work.”

“Well, now tell me,” said the man, more softly. “How much do you get?”

“Eighteenpence a thousand,” she said, reluctantly.

“Who are you making them for?”

“Mr. Melbury, the timber-dealer, just below here.”

“And how many can you make in a day?”

“In a day and half the night, three bundles—that’s a thousand and a

half.”

“Two and threepence.” The barber paused. “Well, look here,” he

continued, with the remains of a calculation in his tone, which

calculation had been the reduction to figures of the probable monetary

magnetism necessary to overpower the resistant force of her present

purse and the woman’s love of comeliness, “here’s a sovereign—a gold

sovereign, almost new.” He held it out between his finger and thumb.

“That’s as much as you’d earn in a week and a half at that rough man’s

work, and it’s yours for just letting me snip off what you’ve got too

much of.”

The girl’s bosom moved a very little. “Why can’t the lady send to some

other girl who don’t value her hair—not to me?” she exclaimed.

“Why, simpleton, because yours is the exact shade of her own, and ’tis

a shade you can’t match by dyeing. But you are not going to refuse me

now I’ve come all the way from Sherton o’ purpose?”

“I say I won’t sell it—to you or anybody.”

“Now listen,” and he drew up a little closer beside her. “The lady is

very rich, and won’t be particular to a few shillings; so I will

advance to this on my own responsibility—I’ll make the one sovereign

two, rather than go back empty-handed.”

“No, no, no!” she cried, beginning to be much agitated. “You are

a-tempting me, Mr. Percombe. You go on like the Devil to Dr. Faustus in

the penny book. But I don’t want your money, and won’t agree. Why did

you come? I said when you got me into your shop and urged me so much,

that I didn’t mean to sell my hair!” The speaker was hot and stern.

“Marty, now hearken. The lady that wants it wants it badly. And,

between you and me, you’d better let her have it. ’Twill be bad for you

if you don’t.”

“Bad for me? Who is she, then?”

The barber held his tongue, and the girl repeated the question.

“I am not at liberty to tell you. And as she is going abroad soon it

makes no difference who she is at all.”

“She wants it to go abroad wi’?”

Percombe assented by a nod. The girl regarded him reflectively. “Barber

Percombe,” she said, “I know who ’tis. ’Tis she at the House—Mrs.

Charmond!”

“That’s my secret. However, if you agree to let me have it, I’ll tell

you in confidence.”

“I’ll certainly not let you have it unless you tell me the truth. It is

Mrs. Charmond.”

The barber dropped his voice. “Well—it is. You sat in front of her in

church the other day, and she noticed how exactly your hair matched her

own. Ever since then she’s been hankering for it, and at last decided

to get it. As she won’t wear it till she goes off abroad, she knows

nobody will recognize the change. I’m commissioned to get it for her,

and then it is to be made up. I shouldn’t have vamped all these miles

for any less important employer. Now, mind—’tis as much as my business

with her is worth if it should be known that I’ve let out her name; but

honor between us two, Marty, and you’ll say nothing that would injure

me?”

“I don’t wish to tell upon her,” said Marty, coolly. “But my hair is my

own, and I’m going to keep it.”

“Now, that’s not fair, after what I’ve told you,” said the nettled

barber. “You see, Marty, as you are in the same parish, and in one of

her cottages, and your father is ill, and wouldn’t like to turn out, it

would be as well to oblige her. I say that as a friend. But I won’t

press you to make up your mind to-night. You’ll be coming to market

to-morrow, I dare say, and you can call then. If you think it over

you’ll be inclined to bring what I want, I know.”

“I’ve nothing more to say,” she answered.

Her companion saw from her manner that it was useless to urge her

further by speech. “As you are a trusty young woman,” he said, “I’ll

put these sovereigns up here for ornament, that you may see how

handsome they are. Bring the hair to-morrow, or return the sovereigns.”

He stuck them edgewise into the frame of a small mantle looking-glass.

“I hope you’ll bring it, for your sake and mine. I should have thought

she could have suited herself elsewhere; but as it’s her fancy it must

be indulged if possible. If you cut it off yourself, mind how you do it

so as to keep all the locks one way.” He showed her how this was to be

done.

“But I sha’nt,” she replied, with laconic indifference. “I value my

looks too much to spoil ’em. She wants my hair to get another lover

with; though if stories are true she’s broke the heart of many a noble

gentleman already.”

“Lord, it’s wonderful how you guess things, Marty,” said the barber.

“I’ve had it from them that know that there certainly is some foreign

gentleman in her eye. However, mind what I ask.”

“She’s not going to get him through me.”

Percombe had retired as far as the door; he came back, planted his cane

on the coffin-stool, and looked her in the face. “Marty South,” he

said, with deliberate emphasis, “_you’ve got a lover yourself_, and

that’s why you won’t let it go!”

She reddened so intensely as to pass the mild blush that suffices to

heighten beauty; she put the yellow leather glove on one hand, took up

the hook with the other, and sat down doggedly to her work without

turning her face to him again. He regarded her head for a moment, went

to the door, and with one look back at her, departed on his way

homeward.

Marty pursued her occupation for a few minutes, then suddenly laying

down the bill-hook, she jumped up and went to the back of the room,

where she opened a door which disclosed a staircase so whitely scrubbed

that the grain of the wood was wellnigh sodden away by such cleansing.

At the top she gently approached a bedroom, and without entering, said,

“Father, do you want anything?”

A weak voice inside answered in the negative; adding, “I should be all

right by to-morrow if it were not for the tree!”

“The tree again—always the tree! Oh, father, don’t worry so about that.

You know it can do you no harm.”

“Who have ye had talking to ye down-stairs?”

“A Sherton man called—nothing to trouble about,” she said, soothingly.

“Father,” she went on, “can Mrs. Charmond turn us out of our house if

she’s minded to?”

“Turn us out? No. Nobody can turn us out till my poor soul is turned

out of my body. ’Tis life-hold, like Ambrose Winterborne’s. But when my

life drops ’twill be hers—not till then.” His words on this subject so

far had been rational and firm enough. But now he lapsed into his

moaning strain: “And the tree will do it—that tree will soon be the

death of me.”

“Nonsense, you know better. How can it be?” She refrained from further

speech, and descended to the ground-floor again.

“Thank Heaven, then,” she said to herself, “what belongs to me I keep.”