“Runnin’ t’ cider out of cask with a chube!” Mrs. Cramp screamed up the hill to Mrs. Elliott. “’Ooever ’eered!” Mrs. Elliott rumbled huskily back at Mrs. Cramp. All these figures closed in furtively; the children peering through tiny interstices in the hedge and muttering one to the other: “’Ooever ’eered…. Foreign ways I call it…. A glass chube…’Ooever ’eered.” Even Cramp, though, wiping his bald head with his carpenter’s apron, he admonished Mrs. Cramp to remember that he had a good job — even Cramp descended from the path to the hedge-side and stood so close — peering over — that the thorns pricked his perspiring chest through his thin shirt. They said to the baker who wearily followed his weary horse up the steep path, coming from the deep woods below: It had ought to be stopped. The police had ought to know. Bottling cider by means of a glass tube. And standing the cider in running water. Where was the excise? Rotting honest folks guts! Poisoning them. No doubt the governor could tell them a tale about that if he could speak or move. The police had ought to know…. Showing off, with cider in running water — to cool it when first bottled! ’Ooever ’eered! Just because they ’ad a Ladyship to their tail. ’N more money than better folks. Not so much money either. Reckon they’d come to smash ’n be sold up like ’Igginson at Fittleworth. Set ’isself up fer Quality, ’e did too!… ’N not so much of a Ladyship, neither. Not so much more of a Ladyship as us if the truth was known. Not an Earl or a Lord, only a baronite-ess at that, supposin’ we all ’ad our rights…. The police had ought to be brought into this affair!
A number of members of the Quality, on shining horses, their leathers creaking beautifully, rode at a walk up the path. They were the real Quality. A fine old gentleman, thin as a lath, clean face, hooky nose, white moustache, lovely cane, lovely leggings. On ’Is Lordship’s favourite hack. A bay mare. A fine lady, slim as a boy, riding astride as they do to-day though they did not use to. But times change. On the Countess’s own chestnut with white forehead. A bad-tempered horse. She must ride well, that lady. Another lady, grey-haired, but slim too, riding side-saddle in a funny sort of get-up. Long skirt with panniers and three-cornered hat like the ones you see in pictures of highwaymen in the new pub in Queens Norton. Sort of old-fashioned she looked. But no doubt it was the newest pattern. Things is so mixed up nowadays. ’Is Lordship’s friends could afford to do as they pleased. A boy, eighteen, maybe. Shiny leggings too: all their clothes is shiny. Rides well, too, the boy. Look how his legs nip into Orlando — the chief whip’s horse. Out for an airing. ’Is Lordship’s groom of the stud only too glad if the horses can get exercise in hay-cutting time. The real Quality.
They reined in their horses a little further up the road, and sat staring down into the orchard. They had ought to be told what was going on down there. Puts white powder into the cider along o’ the sugar. The Quality ought to be told…. But you do not speak to the Quality. Better if they do not notice you. You never know. They sticks together. Might be friends of Tietjenses for all you know. You don’t know Tietjenses ain’t Quality. Better git a move on or something might ‘appen to you. You hear!
The boy in the shiny leggings and clothes — bareheaded he was, with shiny fair hair and shiny cheeks — exclaimed in a high voice:
“I say, mother, I don’t like this spying!” And the horses started and jostled.
You see. They don’t like this spying. Get a move on. And all that peasantry got a move on whilst the horses went slowly up hill. Queer things the Gentry can do to you still if they notice you. It is all very well to say this is a land fit for whatever the word is that stands for simple folk. But they have the police and the keepers in their hands, and your cottages and livings.
Gunning went out at the garden gate beside the stable and shouted objurgations at Young Hogben.
“Hey, don’t you drive that sow. She’s as much right on Common as you.”
The great sow was obstinately preceding the squat figure of Young Hogben who hissed and squeaked behind her. She flapped her great ears and sniffed from side to side, a monument of black imperturbability.
“You keep your ’ogs out of our swedes!” Young Hogben shouted amidst objurgations. “In our forty acre she is all day ’n all night too!”
“You keep your swedes outen our ’ogs,” Gunning shouted back swinging his gorilla arms like a semaphore. He advanced onto the Common. Young Hogben descended the slope.
“You fence your ’ogs in same’s other folks ’as to do,” Young Hogben menaced.
“Folks as abuts on Commons ‘as to fence out, not fence in,” Gunning menaced. They stood foot to foot on the soft sward menacing each other with their chins.
“S Lordship sold Tietjens’s to the Cahptn without Common rights,” the farmer said. “Ask Mr. Fuller.”
“S Lordship could no more sell Tietjens’s ’thout Common rights ’n you could sell milk without drinking rights. Ast Lawyer Sturgis!” Gunning maintained. Put arsenic in among ’is roots, Young Hogben maintained that he would. Spend seven years up to Lewes Jail if ’e did, Gunning maintained. They continued for long in the endless quarrel that obtains between tenant-farmer who is not Quality but used to brutalising his hinds, and gentleman’s henchman who is used to popularity amongst his class and the peasantry. The only thing upon which they agreed was that you wouldn’t think there ’adnt been no war. The war ought to have given tenant farmers the complete powers of local tyrants; it should have done the same for gentlemen’s bailiffs. The sow grunted round Gunning’s boots, looking up for grains of maize that Gunning usually dropped. In that way sows come to heel when you call them however far away they may be on the Common.
Down through the garden by the zig-zag path that dropped right away from the hard road up the hill — Tietjens’s went up the slope to the hedge there — descended the elderly lady who was singularly attired in the eyes of the country people. She considered that she was descended, not by blood, but by moral affinity from Madame de Maintenon, therefore she wore a long grey riding skirt with panniers, and a three-cornered, grey felt hat and carried a riding switch of green shagreen. Her thin grey face was tired but authoritative, her hair which she wore in a knot beneath her hat was luminously grey, her pince-nez rimless.
Owing to the steepness of the bank on which the garden rose the path of sea-pebbles zigzagged across most of its width, orange-coloured because it had been lately sanded. She went furtively between quince-trunks, much like the hedge-sparrow, flitting a stretch and then stopping for the boy with the shining leggings stolidly to overtake her.
She said that it was dreadful to think that the sins of one’s youth could so find one out. It ought to make her young companion think. To come at the end of one’s life to inhabiting so remote a spot! You could not get there with automobiles. Her own Delarue-Schneider had broken down on the hill-road in the attempt to get there yesterday.
The boy, slim in the body, but heavy in the bright red cheeks, with brown hair, truly shiny leggings and a tie of green, scarlet and white stripes, had a temporarily glum expression. He said nevertheless with grumbling determination that he did not think this was playing the game. Moreover hundreds of motors got up that hill; how else would people come to buy the old furniture? He had already told Mrs. de Bray Pape that the carburettors of Delarue-Schneiders were a wash-out.