Richard waited till they were out of sight and then went straight into the kitchen. ‘Grace!’ he shouted, but Grace was in the rooms above and did not hear him. I can’t stand a lunch alone with the old man, he thought and began mechanically putting together some bread and cheese. This he crammed into his pocket along with some small cakes. ‘Grace!’ he shouted again. This time she heard him and came running down, her heavy West Country tread shaking the whole cottage. ‘You must look after Mr Moreton, today, Grace,’ he said, in the most offhand, easy manner he could assume. ‘We shall all be out.’
‘Nothing wrong, Mr Richard, I hope, begging your pardon? Nothing to do with burnin’ any certifications or such like? ’Tis a queer world and summat of the likes of they things do bring terrible trouble on folks’ heads. I knew’d ’ee and Miss Nelly had had a bit of a ruption. And what’s more I could have told ’ee ’twere comin’, this very mornin’, if ’ee’d a listened to I. ’Twas that girl hedge pig the Master brought in the house. I never did hold wi ‘bringin’ the like of them stinking pricklies into Christian families. I knew’d it ’ud mean trouble soon as I set eyes on ’un. Master ain’t as careful as ’a should be over these ’ere pick-ups.’ A kind o’ forgets that ’tis you and Miss Nelly’s kiss-luck time, when men and maidies be growin’ into married folk like, and lovin’ natural and unthinkin’ by night and by day. ‘A shouldn’t a’ done it. ’Twere a temptin’ them as is Above. A girt lousy prickleback, with a snout like Satan and little squimsy eyes. Do ’ee tell ’un of it, Mr Richard, do ’ee tell ’un of it. I can’t abide them stinkin’ things. Sparrerhawks and flitter-mice be all very well. They be honest fellow creatures, they be; but them hedge pigs,’ tisn’t behavin’ right to the Dear Lord to go meddlin’ wi’ the likes o’ they!’
‘I’ll do what I can, Grace,’ said Richard when the woman stopped for breath. ‘But you know what Mr Moreton is. Well! you’ll be able to see for yourself that he only collects lucky things today. I may be back by tea time and I may not. Goodbye, Grace.’
‘Don’t ’ee go bein’ sour and angered agin’ our young leddy,’ whispered Grace. ‘Don’t ’ee get argufying with ’un. The way to manage us womenfolk is to be one thing or ‘tother. Kiss us soft and sweet or let’s have it hard so us knows what’s what. None of this burnin’ o’ dockiments and bidin’ the time. Out w’it, straight and forrard; that’s what I do say to my Jim.’
‘You say very well, Grace,’ responded the writer. ‘I’m sure I hope you’ll always be with us to keep us in the right path.’
‘And don’t ’ee let Miss Nelly go gadding off with young Mr Robert. There ain’t no maid nor wife in God’s kingdom what’s perfect sure of ‘erself when’t do come to them carryin’s on. We be all meanin’ for the best; but girls be girls and young fellers be young fellers and ‘tis hard to be stiff as a poker on haymaking days.’
Richard looked gravely into the young woman’s face as if he were on the point of asking her what she really thought about his wife’s attitude to Canyot. But he turned away with a smile. ‘Well! Grace,’ he said, ‘you and I must make her so happy here, that she won’t be in need of any friends but us. Goodbye Grace!’ And he left the house and began walking gloomily and thoughtfully in the direction of the Happy Valley.
*
Old Mr Moreton was not altogether pleased when he found he was destined to spend a lonely Sunday. On weekdays he never expected much society. It seemed quite natural that they should all be occupied with their own affairs. But on Sundays it was rather different, because he felt a vague tradition in the air against going on just the same with his scientific work; and it was pleasant, as a change from that, to see something more of those he lived with.
He ate the admirable meal prepared by Grace in rather melancholy silence which was not made any more cheerful by the servant’s comments on the events of the morning.
‘It ain’t nice of Miss Nelly and Master Richard to leave ’ee lonesome and solemn-like of a fine Zunday. It don’t seem kind o’ natural; and I be lorn to see ’ee so. I just out and told ‘un straight how it do seem to I. There’ll be sad goin’s on, present, I sez to ‘un, when the Missus and that young man get too fond like. Kiss and be friends, I sez to ‘un, and don’t fall into the sin o’ pride.’
‘Your mistress is in a difficult position, Grace,’ said the old man; ‘and I’d rather you didn’t talk about it. Mr Canyot has always been very considerate and civil. It’s a difficult position for her. But the young man is going away in a few days so we shall be quieter then. We shall go on quietly and as usual then. But Mr Canyot is always very civil to me—’ John Moreton sighed heavily — ‘very civil and considerate.’
When the meal was over and he was thinking of returning for his usual rest, Grace, who came to take away what was left of the gooseberry tart for her own consumption, surprised him by saying, ‘Why don’t ’ee go and see Mrs Shotover, over to Furze Lodge, sir? She be an old friend of your’n I reckon and a good friend o’ Miss Nelly’s. Maybe she’d be able to hearten’ ‘ee up a bit, in a manner of speaking.’
The old man raised his head and stared at the maid. ‘Eh? what’s that, Gracie? Go to see her again?’ He blinked with his deep-set grey eyes and knitted his shaggy eyebrows. ‘But she and Nelly have been quarrelling since she was last here. But after all, that doesn’t matter; that’s nothing to do with me! I go quietly on my own way whatever fuss the womenfolk make, don’t I, Grace? Well perhaps I will walk up in Furze Lodge direction when I’ve rested a bit. I do feel as if I needed a little change today. One can’t work seven days a week.’
Well pleased with the result of her audacity the Dorsetshire maiden retired to the kitchen.
‘’Twill do the Master a gallon o’ good,’ she said to herself. ‘What with one thing and another the poor old gentleman do look mighty doddery. ’Twill hearten ’im up like, to pass the time o’ day with that old rappity-tappity.’
The afternoon of that June day proved hotter than Mr Moreton had anticipated. The old man found the way long and exhausting. It was most of it uphill and bare of trees; the scorching sun struck fiercely upon his lean black-coated figure.
He stopped frequently to rest and sat down at last in the middle of a cornfield, overtaken by a fit of dizziness.
As he sat there, seeing the green world of innumerable waving stalks about him, the world as it must always appear at that season to field mice, partridges, hares and rabbits, the old naturalist felt a profound melancholy enter his heart like some jagged piece of iron.
He knew nature too well to be able for long intervals to enjoy her external charm in the epicurean manner familiar to his son-in-law. As he hugged his dusty-trousered knees and blinked out of his deep-set eyes at those myriad green stalks, there came into his nostrils the smell of death. By shifting a little upon his haunches he was able to detect the cause of this smell; and what he saw did not diminish the prod of that iron in his soul.
Near him lay on its side the dead body of a small rabbit gazing horribly and vacantly into the burning sky out of a great eye socket which was nothing but a dried-up hole of rusty blood. The old man knew at once that he was looking at one of the normal atrocities of creative nature, a rabbit killed by a weasel.
He got up laboriously to his feet and tottered on, the beautiful sun-bathed world about him darkened for him and poisoned as if by a universal smell of murder. As he struggled forward in the fiery heat, the soles of his boots as hot as the cracked chalk earth beneath them, it presented itself once more to his mind that the only religious symbol in the world capable of covering and including the pain of this cruel chaos was the symbol of the Mass, where the wounded flesh and the spilt blood of the God-Man becomes an eternal protest, for those who enter into it, against all this blind suffering.