John Snaith - The Wayfarers

After shaking down several bundles of sweet-smelling hay and making of it a rare soft bed, I was about to lie in it, when the propriety of the feminine character was most excellently manifested. With a good deal of confusion in her voice, and I'll swear in her face too, though unhappily the darkness of this far corner was so great I could not observe it, my companion intimated her modest doubts. It seemed we had not yet been through the hands of the clergyman. Be sure that this marvellously bashful proper miss did not use words of this rude character. In faith, I hardly think that she used words at all; and if she did, certainly not more than three at a time, and even they were of such a nature that taken by themselves they could have no meaning whatever. But so evident were the poor child's modest distresses, and so keen her desire not to act in anywise contrary to the conventions of that propriety in which her sex has ever been foremost, that I nearly cracked a rib with my vulgar mirth.

"So be it, Mrs. Puritan," says I. "But upon my soul more bourgeois reasons I never heard. 'Fore Gad, though, a most meritorious respectability."

Little Cynthia, however, was not to be smoked out of her demeanour. She persevered in it in the most straight-laced manner, and in the end I was fain to erect a barrier of hay between us, and build up a second couch for myself. Thus we might at a pinch be said to occupy separate chambers, though to be sure the partition between us was not stout enough to prevent us conversing as we lay in our separate beds. But it was little talk that passed between us. We were so delightfully weary that it began and ended in "Good-night!" The next minute an unmistakable indication came from Mrs. Cynthia's apartment, and a minute afterwards I was sunk in the honestest and therefore the most delicious sleep I had enjoyed for many a year. I neither dreamt nor wandered, but just dropt into a profound insensibility which was continued well into the daylight of the morning. This rare refreshment was destined to end in a somewhat peremptory fashion.

I think it must have been a kick or a blow that waked me. For I came to my senses with an unnatural suddenness and a curse on my tongue. It was broad day, and the misty morning sun was struggling in through numerous chinks in the roof and walls of the hovel. A farmer with a pitchfork in his hand was standing before me. He was almost inarticulate with rage. As I opened my eyes he burst out into a violent Doric that I hope these pages are much too chaste to adequately reproduce.

"Well I nivver in all my born days," says he, stamping his feet, and then rounding his period with a most ferocious kick on my shin.

"Get up, ye impident scoundrel, and I'll beat ye to purpose so I will. In my own barn, in broad daylight too. O the impidence, the domned impidence of it!"

The kick had greatly helped me to realize the state of the case. We had been discovered by the owner of the cow-house, and he, with true British respect for the rights of property, was not unnaturally incensed that two persons were so calmly infringing them. For by this he had discovered poor little Cynthia, whom I was able to observe through the frail portion of hay between us, sitting up in her bed with a very woeful, frightened countenance.

"Whoy theer's a woman too," says the farmer. "Well if this doan't beat all I ivver heard. O you impident hussy."

"My good fellow," says I, fearing lest he should deal Cynthia a kick also, "I am afraid you are under some misapprehension in this matter. Allow me to explain."

I thought it to be an occasion when the very nicest suavity of tone and manner was required, for the consequences were like to be uncommonly ruffling else. Therefore I could not have been more careful of my courtesy had I been addressing my remarks to the King. But all I got for my pains was the sight of a great bewilderment that suddenly ran in the farmer's purple face.

"Whoy, a dom'd foreigner," says he. "That makes it wuss, an hundred times wuss, that it do. I'll give you foreigner, I will too. A foreigner in my plaace, among my cows, lying in my hay. Come out o' it and I'll break your yedd in two plazen; once for yersen, and once for t' little witch with the blue eyes. How d'ye like that, Mister Foreigner?"

Crack came the blunt end of the pitchfork at me so smartly, that it was only the fact that I was expecting some small manifestation of the kind that enabled me to get up my arm quick enough to save my head.

As my attempt at a polite argument had had such an unfortunate effect upon him, I judged that I should best serve my skin by advancing a less formal sort of rejoinder, but one that might more directly appeal to his rustic character.

"Enough of this, sir," says I, "But just lay down your pitchfork, take off your jacket and step outside, and you shall be the judge as to whether I am a foreigner, or as good an Englishman as you are yourself."

The effect upon him was excellent. His anger melted at once at this proposal, so clearly was it after his own mind.

"'Tis fair speaking anyway," says he. "I could not have spoken it better myself. Come on this way, my lad, we'll soon set this matter to rights."

Cynthia was terribly frightened. She clung to my arms, and refused to let me follow the farmer into the yard.

"Much as I admire your solicitude, my prettiness," says I, "it is most highly inconvenient. For do you not see that this is as much an affair of honour as an appointment at Lincoln's Inn Fields? Mr. Chawbacon has suffered an injury at our hands, and you who milked his cow last night should be the last to deny it. Wherefore should he not have the satisfaction that he desires? You would not, I am sure, have me put off my gentility now that I cease to wear its livery. It is the only reparation that I can make to Mr. Chawbacon, and if I denied it to the honest fellow I should cease to respect myself."

Poor little Cynthia having no substantial argument to advance against this – indeed how could she have? – had recourse to a flood of tears, at once the most natural, formidable and convincing one her sex can set up. But greatly as her behaviour embarrassed me, I was committed with the farmer, and I have such an instinct in these matters, that notwithstanding Cynthia's very real distress, I could not possibly have backed out of my position with any shred of credit. Therefore taking off my great-coat I bade the poor frightened child wrap herself in it up to her ears and to stay where she was, that she might neither hear nor observe that which was going forward. She obeyed me in this, and lay sobbing softly to herself while I went forth to do battle with my friend the farmer.

On stepping out of the hovel into the yard I found my antagonist was surrounded by three or four of the farm yokels, and moreover was stripped to the waist. To judge by his expression he was plainly animated by the highest intentions towards me, and was prepared to give quite as much or even more than he was likely to receive.

"Now then, my lad," he says briskly, "I'm a-going to do as well by you as Tench did last week by the Fightin' Tinman. Now then, Joe Barker, and you, Bill Blagg, come on with them there pails and moppses."

To my infinite delight I saw that the two children of the soil in question were bearing two buckets of water towards us with a sponge floating on the top of each.

"We can't have this done in due and proper form according to the reggerlations," says this sportsman of a farmer in an apologetic voice, "because you see we've got no judge, and none o' these men o' mine could be trusted with the dooties. I wish Squire was here, I do so. We could have it all done proper then accordin' to the reggerlations. Squire was Tench's backer down Putney way last week, and knows all the reggerlations off by heart, does Squire. He only lives just across the road, and if you'll wait a minute I'll have him fetched."