Читать книгу Strawberry Roan - A. G. Street - Страница 3

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One Sunday evening in the year 1928, John Dibben walked back from chapel much more quickly than usual. His two small daughters, Kate aged eleven and Emily aged nine, generally referred to by their parents as “Katenemily”, were forced to trot by their father’s side in order to keep up with him, and his wife was beginning to puff at the unaccustomed speed.

As a general rule their return from chapel was more in the nature of a leisurely stroll, with frequent halts for intimate conversation with other village worthies; a dallying which was usually finished by Mrs. Dibben’s, “Now father, do ’ee come on. Katenemily do want their supper.”

But this evening there were no stops of any kind. Mr. Dibben strode along as if for a wager, with only a hurried wave of the hand, and a curt “Good evening” to his cronies. The Wesleyan chapel was a little distance from the heart of the village of Coombe Wallop, being nearly a mile from the Dibbens’ home, and, as it was a warm, sultry, September evening, the pace set by her lord and master soon proved too much for Mrs. Dibben.

She was what is known as comfortable in build, she was garbed in decorous Sunday black, and she had on a pair of new, black, button boots. New boots are usually a trial to most folk, and about halfway home these caused Mrs. Dibben to burst out with, “Fer mercy’s sake, John, goo a bit stiddier, do. What’s yer ’urry? My corn be fair tuggin’.”

“Sorry, me dear,” said Mr. Dibben, slowing down a trifle, “I werden thinkin’, and I do want to get ’ome. I do want to go up along atter supper, fore do get dark.”

“Lor, ’ow you do worrit about that place. You were up there afore tea.”

Presently they arrived outside the village shop, of which the fascia board bore the inscription, “John Dibben”, with the word “Baker” in front of the “John”, and the words “& Grocer” after the “Dibben”. Mr. Dibben took a large key from his pocket and opened the shop door to the accompaniment of the “ping” of the shop bell.

This was one of Mrs. Dibben’s greatest griefs. Though they were very comfortable, doing well, and she was considered a lucky woman by most of her contemporaries, the front entrance to her home was through the shop. And Mrs. Dibben wanted a private front door. She had wanted it for years. On weekdays the “ping” of the shop bell was music to her ears, but on Sundays it was distinctly out of tune. Sometimes the minister came to her home after the morning service, and she hated to have him come through the shop.

This was another grievance against “that place”, which seemed to fill all John’s waking thoughts. If he had not taken “that place”, she would have had her front door last year. “Matter o’ ten poun,” Jesse Sturmey, the builder, had said, “and make ’ee a tidy li’l front porch an’ all.” And John had almost decided to have it done, and then he had taken “that place”, which had swallowed up all the available ten pounds, and more besides. She heaved a regretful sigh at the thought of her disappointment, passed hurriedly through the shop, discarded the new boots for more comfortable footwear, and began to lay the supper.

There was no mystery attached to “that place”, to which Mr. Dibben was going after supper. It was merely a small farm of about one hundred and forty acres, which he had rented from the Squire since the previous Michaelmas. Although Mr. Dibben was a baker and grocer, and a successful one at that, the taking of this farm marked the realization of his life’s dream; for he came of farming stock, and had toiled early and late at his business, in order, in some measure, to get back to the soil from whence he sprang.

He was not ashamed of being a baker and grocer, he was proud of it, and the past year’s working had proved to him that, by comparison with the shop, the farm was far from being a business proposition. But while the shop might make money, the farm satisfied Mr. Dibben’s inmost soul. He loved every inch of it—the slow, certain growth and maturing of his crops, the horses, the cows, the pigs, and above all the pleasing thrill of possessing the right to do this or that at will with a piece of England’s land.

But why should he want to go to his farm after supper on a Sunday evening? He was a staunch Wesleyan. Didn’t he know that on the Sabbath he should do no manner of work? Of course he did, but he was not to be caught out by means of the Scriptures, because he was well aware of the bit about the man who had an ox or an ass, which had fallen into a ditch and required human assistance. Granted, Mr. Dibben did not expect to find any tragedy of this nature, when he arrived at his farm, but in the words of his old stockman and general factotum, Silas Ridout, “Wold Dolly wur about due”. And “Wold Dolly” was Mr. Dibben’s best cow.

In his heart of hearts Mr. Dibben was far more interested in wheat growing than in dairying, but like the majority of farmers in the district he had decided that the cow was undoubtedly “the lady who paid the rent”.

He wanted to grow wheat because of the joy he got from seeing a field of it at harvest time, which marked the fruition of three years of constant planning and toil. But every time he thought about it, he was forced to admit that while it was a pleasing thing to do, it was not only too long a business, but also a certain way of losing money.

Even before he had taken the farm he had often thought about wheat growing, and had tried to find an argument which would justify growing it, but he had never succeeded. Life was too short, he thought. Why, the soil required two years of preparation in the shape of repeated crops of sheep feed, which had to be folded off by sheep to enrich the land before the wheat could be sown. Then there followed some ten months of almost continuous difficulties and dangers, before the crop could be harvested.

Rooks dug up the seed as soon as it was planted, and then, when the thin spears of almond-green made their appearance above the ground, usually in November, clouds of hungry starlings fed upon them. The plants, which survived these pests and also the winter’s rigours, were damaged by rabbits and hares in the spring. The remainder came into ear about the first week in June, but unless this occurred in calm warm weather, the ears were only half filled. From then until harvest wheat needed sunshine, then sunshine, and yet more sunshine, which Mr. Dibben knew could not be depended upon in his district.

Everything, he thought, seemed to be against wheat growing. A July thunderstorm might lay the smiling field of yesterday as flat as a pancake, thereby reducing the yield by one third and increasing the harvesting expenses by at least one half. And the harvest placed the wheatgrower utterly helpless in the hands of the weather in dealing with his crop.

Mr. Dibben’s final objection to growing wheat was, of course, its unremunerative price. He was a Liberal and a Free Trader, and had been a great admirer of that great Liberal statesman, Mr. Lloyd George; but since he had taken a farm his faith in that gentleman had been badly shaken. There should have been a fair price for wheat, he thought. The present state of things was wrong, and somehow there seemed to be some justice in the contention of the neighbouring farmers that Mr. Lloyd George had let them down badly over the Corn Production Act. He hated to think such a heresy, but he could not help it.

Still, if he could not grow wheat under the existing conditions, there were other things which he could do, so like most of his neighbours, he had turned to the gentle, placid cow for comfort and support. Wheat growing was too long about, but cows were the quickest thing in farming. You could buy a cow one day, and sell milk from her the next—a small profit, possibly, but that unique thing in agriculture, a quick return.

Being a shopkeeper, Mr. Dibben, quite early in his farming career, had discovered this pleasing quality in milking cows as compared to the other branches of farming, and “Wold Dolly” was the apple of his farming eye—hence his hurried supper that Sunday evening.

It was a pity to hurry over supper on any Sunday evening at the Dibbens’. Supper on the Sabbath consisted almost invariably of cold roast beef and pickles. The whole family liked pickles, and from a long and varied consumption they had acquired a pretty taste in these foodstuffs. Mr. Dibben usually stuck to onions, with an occasional pickled walnut by way of a change. Mrs. Dibben was far too genteel to eat onions, and inclined more to the fancy brands of pickles, more particularly to the Indian Mango, which had a thrilling picture of an eastern snake-charmer on the label on the bottle. Pickles, being considered an unsuitable article of diet for children, were only permitted to Katenemily on Sunday nights as a treat, and the children preferred the rich, brown, liquid Piccalilli.

“Eat your own goods, and then you can tell a customer what’s what,” was one of Mr. Dibben’s maxims, and, in the matter of pickles, undoubtedly the Dibbens knew what was what.

But there was no lingering over these delights for Mr. Dibben that Sunday evening. He consumed his supper in hurried silence. Then he rose from the table, took out his cuff links—he had supped without his coat—and began to roll up his shirt sleeves well above the elbow.

“Whatever be at, father? You bain’t going to work to-night, surely?”

Mr. Dibben grunted, reached for an old mackintosh on the wall, and put it on over his rolled shirt sleeves. Old Silas Ridout was a good dairyman, and doubtless all would be well with Wold Dolly, but in these matters you never knew, and it was as well to be prepared for a job of work if necessary. Of course, this was far too delicate a subject to explain to his wife, as she was a woman, and Mr. Dibben thought it in rather bad taste that she should draw attention to his unusual procedure that evening. It never occurred to him, that as Mrs. Dibben had produced Katenemily, she was probably well aware of what troubles might have to be surmounted in connection with Wold Dolly’s coming parturition. So he ignored his wife’s question, put on his hat, took up a walking stick, and with a gruff “Shan’t be gone long, but don’t ’ee sit up,” he was gone through the shop, and out of the door into the street to the ever-annoying ping of the bell.

Down the village street he walked, past the Green Dragon, and turned up a lane towards his farm. There were one or two villagers standing about at the corner by the inn, and his unusual garb provoked this remark from one of them after he had passed by. “Wot be Farmer Dibben at to-night then, in ’is mackintosh? Tidn’ gwaine to rain, surely?”

This came from a youth who worked at a wheelwright’s in the next village, and who, therefore, was not quite in touch with the doings of Coombe Wallop; but another and more enlightened villager elucidated the mystery. “I seed Wold Zilas drawen up along yer a bit back. I low they got a cow bad, er one calvin’, er zummat on.”

Along the lane Mr. Dibben plodded, and as he passed under the railway arch, the farming countryside opened out before him. He noted that Farmer Wright had nearly finished ploughing his Long Acre field of wheat stubble, in preparation for sowing winter oats, and Mr. Dibben made a mental note to happen up against his neighbour in the near future to find out whether it would be possible to borrow a corn drill to sow his own small field with the same crop.

Farther on he stepped out of the lane through a gap and walked up the field alongside the hedge. It was not perhaps such good walking, and definitely was not suitable for his Sunday boots, which he had forgotten to change, but it enabled him to make a critical examination of Farmer Wright’s mangolds, and also to discover with satisfaction once again, that his own mangolds, which lay a bit farther on, were greatly superior to his neighbour’s. He had done this almost every time he had walked either up or down the lane during the last month, but it had never failed to give him joy. For there was no doubt about it, his crop was definitely the better one.

This point satisfactorily settled once again, he looked ahead to the pasture in which his five dry or in-calf cows should have been grazing. He could count but four, three reds and a white. Then Wold Dolly, who was roan in colour, must be at it somewhere. He quickened his pace until he reached the pasture gate, which he opened and closed securely, for like all countrymen, although he was in a hurry, he never thought of getting over a gate. He looked anxiously round the field, and presently spied Wold Dolly in the far corner under the hedge.

But it was all right, for he could see Silas over there too, and as he drew nearer he could see the calf also. He heaved a sigh of relief, and slackened his pace. It would never do by hurrying to let Silas know how anxious he had been. It must appear as if he were out for a stroll, and just happened along, and for this reason he was sorry that he had on the old mackintosh instead of his Sunday jacket. It looked too obvious.

Now that his mind was relieved by knowing that the calving had apparently taken place satisfactorily, he wondered whether it was a heifer or a bull calf that had been born, as a heifer calf would be worth a matter of two pounds or so more money. In commercial dairying as in nearly all walks of life, the male is at a discount.

“Old gel managed it all right then, Silas?”

“Ay, I knawed she wur a trifle oneasy afore tea, an’ I lowed as ’ow she’d ’appen it fore night. She dropped un bout twenty minnits gone, as I wur comin’ droo the gate. She’ve a bin droo thease caper a few times afore, an’ didn’ want no ’elp.”

Now although most cows were called old something-or-other as soon as they produced their second calf, which was usually at about four years old, Wold Dolly was in truth a venerable old lady. She had borne eight single calves and one twin before this latest arrival, and on account of her age she would not have been purchased by Mr. Dibben at the outgoing tenant’s sale last year, but for Silas saying, “Wot ever you do, you buy Wold Dolly. I ain’t never knawed she sick, neet sorry, and she’s a wonnerful milker.”

Mr. Dibben and Silas gazed at Wold Dolly and her calf for several minutes in silent satisfaction. Like most country folk they had developed this silent concentration of pure thought to a fine pitch of perfection. They gazed, and gazed, and gazed. Wold Dolly did likewise. No townsman was present to spoil this beautiful satisfying silence with empty chatter. Mr. Dibben, Silas, and Wold Dolly were in perfect sympathy, and enjoyed this ideal, hushed contemplation of each other to the full. They gazed, and gazed, and gazed.

The calf struggled shakily to its feet, Wold Dolly licked it methodically in maternal content, and Mr. Dibben and Silas continued to gaze.

“What is it, Silas, heifer or bull?”

This was a very satisfactory Sunday evening for Mr. Dibben, for Silas reported, on examination, that Wold Dolly had been blessed with a daughter, and moreover that the daughter was of the right colour, a roan. The silent study of mother and daughter continued for a few moments longer, and then Silas said: “Well, I ’low they’ll be all right yer till marnin’. I’ll git she in atter breakfast termorrer, an’ milk her out.”

“Ay, Silas. That’ll be the way of it. Well, we best be getting ’ome.”

Master and man plodded silently over the pasture through the gathering dark, the gate creaked, then closed with a dull click, and talking of farming problems, they went plod, plod, plod, down the lane towards the village.

It was almost dark when they separated at the Green Dragon, into which Silas went for a final pint, while Mr. Dibben walked up the village street towards his home, wondering why a good reliable man like Silas must have a pint in the Green Dragon at five minutes to ten on a Sunday night. For Mr. Dibben had been a staunch teetotaller all his life, and the delights of a village inn’s tap-room were unknown to him. If Silas had been a ne’er-do-well, he could have understood this desire for beer, as it would have been in keeping with the rest of his character. In Mr. Dibben’s mind there were only two classes of people in connection with this question of strong drink—decent useful folk, the total abstainers, and the no-goods, those who drank—or in other words the sheep and the goats. Silas upset Mr. Dibben’s classification as he belonged to neither party, which puzzled his master greatly.

Silas was also puzzled at his master’s attitude to this matter. He was greeted in the tap-room with, “What cheer, Zilas! Bin doin’ a bit o’ awvertime? Where’s thee boss? Idn’ ’er comin’ in to stand thee a pint?”

“Naw,” said Silas, drinking deeply at his mug, “ ’Ee idn. ’Ee’s gone ’ome. Vunny lil veller, zno. ’Ee do mean well, but ’ee cain’t zim to understand as I’d zooner ’ee come in an’ stood I a pint o’ zix-penny than paid I fer a hower’s awvertime which ’ee’ll do come Vriday, zno, an’ that’ll cost un aightpence.”

“Ah, but if ’ee did that you, ’ee’d a to ’ave one isself, an’ that ud cost un another tanner, zno, zo ’ee do zave fowerpence by ’is way o’ doin’ it,” replied a villager.

“Tidn’ the money,” said Silas. “ ’Tis zummat as ’ee don’t unnerstand, neet I. I don’t want ’is money fer the awvertime; ’ee ain’t a bad veller to work vor. I don’t want nothin’ fer seein’ to a cow atter ’owers. An’ ’ee jist natchally don’t want to come in yer an’ drink no beer. ’Tis zummat’s we can’t ’elp, but tidn’ money, neet beer. There’s more to it nor that.”

“Time, gentlemen,” said the landlord of the inn, breaking in on Silas’s philosophy, and with sundry good-nights, the company dispersed to their various cottages.

Meantime Mr. Dibben had reached his home, the shop bell had pinged for the last time that Sunday, and shortly afterwards Mr. Dibben was in bed with his spouse, who, on hearing that all was well with Wold Dolly, muttered sleepily, “Lor’, ’ow you do worrit about ‘that place’.”