Marcella. Mrs. Humphry Ward
in the faded blue eyes; a quick spot of red in his old cheeks; these Marcella had often noticed in him, as though the flame of some inner furnace leapt. He had been a Radical and a rebel once in old rick-burning days, long before he lost the power in his limbs and came down to be thankful for one of the parish almshouses. To his social betters he was now a quiet and peaceable old man, well aware of the cakes and ale to be got by good manners; but in the depths of him there were reminiscences and the ghosts of passions, which were still stirred sometimes by causes not always intelligible to the bystander.
He had rarely, however, physical energy enough to bring any emotion—even of mere worry at his physical ills—to the birth. The pathetic silence of age enwrapped him more and more. Still he could gibe the women sometimes, especially Mrs. Jellison, who was in general too clever for her company.
"Oh, you may talk, Patton!" said Mrs. Jellison, with a little flash of excitement. "You do like to have your talk, don't you! Well, I dare say I was orkard with Isabella. I won't go for to say I wasn't orkard, for I was. She should ha' used me to 't before, if she wor took that way. She and I had just settled down comfortable after my old man went, and I didn't see no sense in it, an' I don't now. She might ha' let the men alone. She'd seen enough o' the worrit ov 'em."
"Well, she did well for hersen," said Mrs. Brunt, with the same gentle melancholy. "She married a stiddy man as 'ull keep her well all her time, and never let her want for nothink."
"A sour, wooden-faced chap as iver I knew," said Mrs. Jellison, grudgingly. "I don't have nothink to say to him, nor he to me. He thinks hissen the Grand Turk, he do, since they gi'en him his uniform, and made him full keeper. A nassty, domineerin' sort, I calls him. He's allus makin' bad blood wi' the yoong fellers when he don't need. It's the way he's got wi' 'im. But I don't make no account of 'im, an' I let 'im see 't."
All the tea-party grinned except Mrs. Hurd. The village was well acquainted with the feud between Mrs. Jellison and her son-in-law, George Westall, who had persuaded Isabella Jellison at the mature age of thirty-five to leave her mother and marry him, and was now one of Lord Maxwell's keepers, with good pay, and an excellent cottage some little way out of the village. Mrs. Jellison had never forgiven her daughter for deserting her, and was on lively terms of hostility with her son-in-law; but their only child, little Johnnie, had found the soft spot in his grandmother, and her favourite excitement in life, now that he was four years old, was to steal him from his parents and feed him on the things of which Isabella most vigorously disapproved.
Mrs. Hurd, as has been said, did not smile. At the mention of Westall, she got up hastily, and began to put away the tea things.
Marcella meanwhile had been sitting thoughtful.
"You say Westall makes bad blood with the young men, Mrs. Jellison?" she said, looking up. "Is there much poaching in this village now, do you think?"
There was a dead silence. Mrs. Hurd was at the other end of the cottage with her back to Marcella; at the question, her hands paused an instant in their work. The eyes of all the old people—of Patton and his wife, of Mrs. Jellison, and pretty Mrs. Brunt—were fixed on the speaker, but nobody said a word, not even Mrs. Jellison. Marcella coloured.
"Oh, you needn't suppose—" she said, throwing her beautiful head back, "you needn't suppose that I care about the game, or that I would ever be mean enough to tell anything that was told me. I know it does cause a great deal of quarrelling and bad blood. I believe it does here—and I should like to know more about it. I want to make up my mind what to think. Of course, my father has got his land and his own opinions. And Lord Maxwell has too. But I am not bound to think like either of them—I should like you to understand that. It seems to me right about all such things that people should enquire and find out for themselves."
Still silence. Mrs. Jellison's mouth twitched, and she threw a sly provocative glance at old Patton, as though she would have liked to poke him in the ribs. But she was not going to help him out; and at last the one male in the company found himself obliged to clear his throat for reply.
"We're old folks, most on us, miss, 'cept Mrs. Hurd. We don't hear talk o' things now like as we did when we were younger. If you ast Mr. Harden he'll tell you, I dessay."
Patton allowed himself an inward chuckle. Even Mrs. Jellison, he thought, must admit that he knew a thing or two as to the best way of dealing with the gentry.
But Marcella fixed him with her bright frank eyes.
"I had rather ask in the village," she said. "If you don't know how it is now, Mr. Patton, tell me how it used to be when you were young. Was the preserving very strict about here? Were there often fights, with the keepers—long ago?—in my grandfather's days?—and do you think men poached because they were hungry, or because they wanted sport?"
Patton looked at her fixedly a moment undecided, then her strong nervous youth seemed to exercise a kind of compulsion on him; perhaps, too, the pretty courtesy of her manner. He cleared his throat again, and tried to forget Mrs. Jellison, who would be sure to let him hear of it again, whatever he said.
"Well, I can't answer for 'em, miss, I'm sure, but if you ast me, I b'lieve ther's a bit o' boath in it. Yer see it's not in human natur, when a man's young and 's got his blood up, as he shouldn't want ter have 'is sport with the wild creeturs. Perhaps he see 'em when ee's going to the wood with a wood cart—or he cooms across 'em in the turnips—wounded birds, you understan', miss, perhaps the day after the gentry 'as been bangin' at 'em all day. An' ee don't see, not for the life of 'im, why ee shouldn't have 'em. Ther's bin lots an' lots for the rich folks, an' he don't see why ee shouldn't have a few arter they've enjoyed theirselves. And mebbe he's eleven shillin' a week—an' two-threy little chillen—you understan', miss?"
"Of course I understand!" said Marcella, eagerly, her dark cheek flushing. "Of course I do! But there's a good deal of game given away in these parts, isn't there? I know Lord Maxwell does, and they say Lord Winterbourne gives all his labourers rabbits, almost as many as they want."
Her questions wound old Patton up as though he had been a disused clock. He began to feel a whirr among his creaking wheels, a shaking of all his rusty mind.
"Perhaps they do, miss," he said, and his wife saw that he was beginning to tremble. "I dessay they do—I don't say nothink agen it—though theer's none of it cooms my way. But that isn't all the rights on it nayther—no, that it ain't. The labourin' man ee's glad enough to get a hare or a rabbit for 'is eatin'—but there's more in it nor that, miss. Ee's allus in the fields, that's where it is—ee can't help seein' the hares and the rabbits a-comin' in and out o' the woods, if it were iver so. Ee knows ivery run ov ivery one on 'em; if a hare's started furthest corner o' t' field, he can tell yer whar she'll git in by, because he's allus there, you see, miss, an' it's the only thing he's got to take his mind off like. And then he sets a snare or two—an' ee gits very sharp at settin' on 'em—an' ee'll go out nights for the sport of it. Ther isn't many things ee's got to liven him up; an' ee takes 'is chances o' goin' to jail—it's wuth it, ee thinks."
The old man's hands on his stick shook more and more visibly. Bygones of his youth had come back to him.
"Oh, I know! I know!" cried Marcella, with an accent half of indignation, half of despair. "It's the whole wretched system. It spoils those who've got, and those who haven't got. And there'll be no mending it till the people get the land back again, and till the rights on it are common to all."
"My! she do speak up, don't she?" said Mrs. Jellison, grinning again at her companions. Then, stooping forward with one of her wild movements, she caught Marcella's arm—"I'd like to hear yer tell that to Lord Maxwell, miss. I likes a roompus, I do."
Marcella flushed and laughed.
"I wouldn't mind saying that or anything else to Lord Maxwell," she said proudly. "I'm not ashamed of anything I think."
"No, I'll bet you ain't," said Mrs. Jellison, withdrawing her hand. "Now then, Patton, you say what you thinks. You ain't got no vote now you're in the parish houses—I minds that. The quality don't trouble you at 'lection times.