Part 7 (1/2)
”I will go home and send them some refreshment,” said Mrs Estcourt.
All the party rose and accompanied her. In the next field they pa.s.sed the mowers preparing to begin mowing again. Geoffrey and Valentine both tried to mow, but utterly failed; the point of the scythe persistently stuck into the ground.
”A' be a' akkerd tool for a body as bean't used to un,” said the eldest of the men, taking out his stone rubber from the sling at his back, preparatory to giving the scythe a touch up after such rough handling; ”and um bean't what um used to be when I wur a bwoy.”
”How do you mean?” said Felix.
”Aw,” said the mower, tilting his hat back, ”th' blades be as good as ever um wur--thaay folk at Mells be th' vellers to make scythes. Thur bean't none as good as thaim. But it be th' handle, look'ee, as I means. I minds when thaay wur made of dree sarts of wood, a main bit more crooked than this yer stick, and sart o' carved a bit; doant 'ee see? It took a chap a week zumtimes to find a bit a' wood as ud do.
But, bless ee, a'moast anything does now.”
Swish went the keen blade through the tall gra.s.s. They watched him a few minutes.
”Thur be some blight about,” said the man; ”scythe do sc.u.m up terrable,”
and he showed them the blade all covered with a greenish-white froth, supposed to be caused by insects. ”Thur be blight up thur, look.”
He pointed to a dark heavy cloud that seemed to float at a great height in the east.
”It will thunder,” said May.
”Aw, no it wunt, miss,” said the mower. ”A' reckon as it'll be nation hot; thuck cloud be nothing but blight. Spile the fruit, bless'ee.”
”So even the scythe handles used to be artistic,” said Felix, as they walked away. ”There used to be art and taste and workmans.h.i.+p even in so common a thing. It was made of three distinct pieces of wood, carefully finished off; men took days to find a piece. Now it is nothing but a stick smoothed by machinery. I _hate_ machinery. I like to see the artist in his work; to see the mark of the knife where the chip has been taken out. But the spirit of art flies when things are sent forth by machinery--hundreds exactly alike.”
To May it was a great pleasure to hear him dilate in this way. Near the house they met Augustus, radiant with smiles, and perfectly loaded with the wooden bottles for the men.
”I knows I'm a fool,” said he; ”at least I ought to, since I'm told so forty times a day. But a fool must be sometimes right. 'Pend upon it, there's nothing like ale!”
At Greene Ferne, May found a letter for her which spoilt the day. It was from her grandfather, Andrew Fisher, of the Warren, written in great anger, and commanding her immediate return home, and to mind and bring that rug with her that had been at Greene Ferne ever since Christmas.
The old grasping miser, in his rage, remembered such a trifle as a travelling-rug. Fisher had sent a verbal message for his granddaughter before, which she had ventured to put off; now he wrote in a furious temper, and added at the foot that if that parson ever came a-nigh the Warren again he'd have him ducked in the mill-pool. So bitter had the mere thought made him that Felix wanted his money. There was nothing for it but for May to return, and she asked for her horse to be saddled.
Felix could hardly suppress his annoyance. May was much downcast, but Margaret cheered her.
”I will go with you,” she said. ”He was always nice to me. He is a regular old flatterer,”--(she peeped in the gla.s.s)--”only think, flattering at ninety! But a man must flatter, if he's a hundred! I shall get over him! I'll ride my chestnut, and I can stay with you, dear, can't I? and come back next evening.”
So they left together. Geoffrey, in shaking hands with Margaret, tried to whisper, ”May I come and meet you to-morrow evening?” but could not well manage it, Valentine being near.
”Be sure and return by the road, dear,” said Mrs Estcourt--”the Downs are very lonely if you come by yourself, and you may lose your way.”
”Oh, no,” laughed Margaret. ”I love the hills, and I know them all. I must come over the turf, mamma dear.”
Now, Geoffrey heard this, and mentally noted it. He had his horse at Thorpe Hall, and he determined to ride and meet Margaret on the morrow.
CHAPTER FIVE.
EVENING.
”Aw, aim for th' Tump, measter; aim for th' Tump,” said the carter, slanting his whip to indicate the direction. ”When you gets thur, look'ee, go for th' Cas'l; and when you gets thur, go athwert the Vuzz toward th' Virs; and when you gets drough thaay, thur be Akkern Chace, and a lane as goes down to Warren. Tchek! Woaght!”
At the foot of the Downs, along whose base the highway road wound, Geoffrey had paused to take counsel of a carter, who had just descended with a load of flints, before venturing across the all-but-trackless hills. The man very civilly stopped his waggon and named the various landmarks by which he would have guided his own course to Andrew Fisher's. Geoffrey had started early in the evening, intending to go all the way to Warren House, for he carried with him the rug (strapped to the saddle) which Margaret and May had forgotten, and for which the rude old man had written. This rug, which Mrs Estcourt gave him, was in fact his pa.s.sport, for he scarcely knew how Margaret would take his coming to fetch her in that rather abrupt way. Guessing what the man meant more by the slant of his whip than his words, he turned off the road on to the sward, and ascended the hill.
A long narrow shadow of man and horse, disproportionately stretched out, raced before him along the slope. The hoofs of the grey hardly cut the firm turf, dry with summer heat; the vivid green of spring had already gone, and a faint brown was just visible somewhere in the gra.s.s. Dark boulder stones--sa.r.s.ens--bald and smooth, thrust their shoulders out of the sward here and there; hollowed out into curious cuplike cavities, in which, after a shower, the collected raindrops remained imprisoned in tiny bowls hard as the fabled adamant of mediaeval story. Round white bosses--white as milk, and globular like cannon-shot--dotted the turf, fungi not yet ripened into the dust of the puff-ball. Now and again the iron shoes dashed an edible mushroom to pieces, turning the pink gills upwards to shrivel and blacken in the morrow's sun. The bees rose with a shrill buzz from the white clover, which is the shepherd's sign of midsummer. Swiftly the grey sped along the slopes, the shadow racing before grew longer and fainter as the beams of the sun came nearly horizontally. Already the ridges cast a shadow into the hollows--into the narrow coombes, where great flints and chalk fragments had rolled down and strewed the ground as with the wreck of a t.i.tanic skirmish.