J. S. Fletcher - The Collected Works of J. S. Fletcher - 17 Novels & 28 Short Stories (Illustrated Edition)

Perris grinned as he stooped and picked up the coins.

"If I eat as much as I mean to at yon dinner, I shan't care whether there's owt for t' supper, or whether there isn't, mi lass," he said. "I know how to fill mi belly when it costs nowt to do it."

And, triumphant in his knowledge of possession of money, he once more resumed his grip on the umbrella and went off, heedless of Rhoda's shrill reminder that even if he did not want supper that night, he would be sure to want his dinner next day. For Perris the coming day had no terrors; he had his rent in his pocket, and the prospect of a banquet of gross food and a sufficiency of drink before him, and he laughed fatuously as he descended the hill to the village.

The Dancing Bear was as busy as a hive of bees. The cottager folk were eating and drinking in the kitchens; the small farmers and the tradesmen were in one parlour; the big farmers in another; outside the inn numerous idlers and hangers-on lounged against the walls, or stood about the cross-roads, hoping that something in the way of good cheer might come their way. Perris walked into the sanded hall and met the carpenter emerging from the temporary office. He nodded his head at the door.

"Anybody wi' him?" he asked carelessly.

"Nay—I think you're t' last o' us little 'uns," answered the carpenter. "Ye'll hev' a bit o' good news in theer, Mestur Perris—I hear there's a rebate for such as ye. We don't get it."

Perris pricked his ears. He knocked boldly at the door of the room in which the steward sat, and, having entered, marched up to the receipt of custom as confidently as if he had a large balance lying at his bankers'. A moment later he laid down the borrowed money as proudly as if it had been his own. The clerk began to make out the receipt, and the steward glanced at Perris through his gold-rimmed spectacles.

"You'll be glad to hear that there is a rebate to come to you, Mr. Perris," said the steward. "In consideration of last year's wet harvest, his Lordship has very generously made a reduction of ten per cent. on the rental. So we must give you back—"

"Four pound, seven, three-halfpence," broke in the clerk, who had a mind above niceties in fractions. "There you are, Mr. Perris, and there's your receipt. I think Mr. Perris is the last of that lot, sir," he added, turning to his principal.

Perris picked up the money and the receipt with ill-concealed pleasure. He grinned widely at the steward.

"Why, I'm sure I'm deeply obliged to his Lordship," he said. "Deeply obliged, sir. Yes, sir, it were a very bad time, last harvest, and it didn't improve nowt at t' back end o' t' year, and—"

"Doing all right, Mr. Perris?" asked the steward, cutting him short.

"Why, you were pleased to say we looked very well, yesterday, sir," replied Perris, still grinning. "Of course—"

"I thought you looked very tidy, and I'm glad to see you're attending well to your fences," said the steward, "but I also think you want more stock on your farm."

Perris's face grew solemn, and he looked at the ceiling. Then he looked at the steward with a mysterious air, and bent to him across the ledgers and the papers.

"Pigs, sir!" he said in a hoarse whisper. "Pigs is what pays, sir! I'm a-goin' to do summat big in pigs."

"Oh, I see!" said the steward. "Pigs, eh? All right. You're stopping to the dinner, of course."

Perris intimated that such was his intention, and made his bow. He went out of the room chuckling to himself as he jingled the money which the clerk had handed him. And as he lingered for a moment in the hall, previous to joining his fellow small farmers and the carpenter and blacksmith in the room set apart for them, Mark Taffendale rode up to the door of the Dancing Bear on his smart cob, and, dismounting, threw the bridle to a lad who stood near.

Taffendale was both an owner of land and a tenant of land. The lime quarry, and much of the land which he farmed, was his own freehold property, and so was his farmstead. But on the Martinsthorpe side of the Limepits he rented some two hundred acres of the estate whose steward was now collecting the rents, and he made a point of always attending the audit, to pay his rent in person, and to share the rent dinner with his neighbours of the village. He had seen Perris at these dinners, but he had never spoken to him, for Rhoda had been right when she said the big farmers regarded the little ones as so much dirt beneath their feet; and now, as he came into the Dancing Bear, he merely gave the tenant of the Cherry-trees a careless, cold nod. But Perris was in his path, and Taffendale had to stop, for the man pulled off his hat and made a servile obeisance.

"Good-mornin', Mestur Taffendale," said Perris, He favoured Taffendale with one of his weak smiles, and looked around him with his air of mystery. "I—I were hopin' to speak to you, sir. I'm deeply obliged to you, Mestur Taffendale, for your kindness, and—"

Taffendale made to brush past him.

"All right, all right!" he said brusquely. "No need to say anything, Perris: that's enough. Look to your farm—you can do well on it if you are careful."

He passed on and entered the steward's room, and closed the door behind him, and so shut out Perris, who was vainly trying to say more. And Perris, again grinning, and again jingling the unexpected money, made for the little parlour wherein his own set awaited him. There was still a full hour before the serving of dinner, and naught to do but to make merry in it: Perris drew silver out of his pocket as he joined the company. He bestowed one of his fatuous grins on the other small farmers.

"I think we mun as well spend a bit o' that rebate money—what?" he said. "Ecod, I weren't expectin' owt o' that sort this mornin'! Now what's it to be, gentlemen, while t' big nobs is payin' up and t' dinner's gettin' ready, like? Speyk the word!"

Four hours later Perris shambled away up the hill from the Dancing Bear. He, the blacksmith, the carpenter and the little farmers had kept conviviality up when all else were gone. The steward and his clerk, Taffendale and the better-to-do men, had left as soon as the dinner was over; the men who could least afford to spend money had lingered to waste what they had. And Perris, once clear of the inn and the crossroads, became conscious of his misbehaviour, and a great fear fell on him.

"I misdoubt I've ta'en overmuch o' yon sherry wine," he muttered to himself. "I'm over and above market-merry. I moan't face t' missis like this here—she'll gi' me bell-tinker if I do! I mun lie down a bit somewhere, and sleep t' drink off—that's what I mun contrive."

He remembered a quiet spot behind a wheatstack in a corner of one of his own fields, and with a view to reaching it unobserved he climbed the hedge a little further on and made towards it. But in climbing the hedge he slipped and broke off the handle of the highly prized umbrella, and further visions of Rhoda's wrath arose before him. Moaning and whimpering over his bad luck, he made his way beneath the shelter of the hawthorns to the quietude of the wheat-stack; and there, clutching the fragments of the umbrella to him, he cried himself into unconsciousness.

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When Perris lay down to sleep behind the wheat-stack he was unaware that Pippany Webster was watching him from the vantage-point of a convenient hole in the adjacent hedge. The man-of-all-work had been spending a leisurely day in hoeing turnips, and, secure in the knowledge that his master was at the Dancing Bear, and likely to remain there, he had varied his peregrinations up and down the rows of fresh green plants by long rests in the welcome shade of the hawthorns. It was during one of these vacations that he saw Perris lurching across the next field. Pippany saw at once that the farmer was drunk, and, drawing back into the hedgerow, he followed his crab-like movements with interest. He watched Perris gain the wheatstack and disappear behind it; seeing that he made no reappearance, Pippany decided to approach with caution, and to ascertain for himself what had happened. The wheatstack stood in the angle of the field; it was an easy matter to creep along the hedge and to see what was going on in the angle which Perris had sought as a refuge from Rhoda. In a few moments the man was gazing at the master, who by that time was oblivious of everything.