What an inexhaustible source was here, to a thinking being, both for information and entertainment! Oh Providence Divine! she cried, how minute is the perfection, yet how grand the harmony of thy works!
Still, however, she sought vainly to obtain the requested conference. The farmer, whose thoughts were absorbed exclusively in the interests of his farm, was always too busy to afford her any time, and too indifferent to give her any attention. As she lodged in the house, he could hear her, he said, when he should be more at leisure; and all her eloquence was ineffectual, either to awaken his curiosity, or to excite his benevolence, by intimations of the importance, or of the haste, of the business which she wished to communicate. 'Ay, girl, ay,' he would reply; 'by and by will do just as well.'
But by and by came not! When she endeavoured to catch a moment, at the hour of breakfast, the whole day, he would cry, was as good as thrown away, if a man lost a moment of his morning: yet if she solicited his hearing in the evening, he would cordially offer her some bread and cheese, and beer; but rise from them himself, heavy and sleepy, to go to bed; saying, 'Hark y', my girl; when you've worked as hard as a farmer, you'll be as glad of your night's rest.'
If she sought him in the middle of the day, he was always surrounded by his family, and by labourers, from whom he would never step apart; telling her to speak out what she had to say, and to fear nothing and nobody.
Farming, she soon found, he regarded as the only art of life worth cultivation, or even worth attention; every other seemed to him superfluous or silly. A woman, therefore, as she could neither plough the field, nor mow the corn, he considered as every way an inferiour being: and, like the savages of uncivilised nature, he would scarcely have allowed a female a place at his board, but for the mitigation given to his contempt, from regarding her as the mother of man.
The sex, therefore, of Juliet, was here wholly against her; and youth and beauty, those powerful combatants of misanthropy! were necessarily without influence, where they were never looked at: Could they ripen his corn? or make his hay? No; What then, was their value?
Nevertheless, he treated neither his wife nor his daughters ill; he only considered them as his servants: and when they were diligent and useful, he praised them and gave them presents; and, when their work was done, suffered them to seek what diversion they pleased, without interference or controul. The females were indifferent, and therefore contented; though neither confidential nor affectionate.
The sons, on the contrary, were open, boisterous, and daring; domineering over their sisters, and mocking their mother; while they nearly shared, with their partial father, both his authority and his profits.
In a family such as this, Juliet had no chance of softening the languor of her suspense by society; and books, its best substitute, had never found their way into the farm-house; save an odd volume or two of trials, sundry tracts upon farriery, and various dismal old ballads.
The first charm of this rural residence, consisting in its views and its walks, soon lost something of its animation to Juliet, through the restriction of fear, which impeded her from roving beyond the neighbourhood of the farm. And though the beautiful prospect from the meadow, and the air and exercise of mounting to the school, might permanently have afforded her delight, if shared with some loved friend, or enjoyed with some good author; she became, in a short time, through the total deprivation of either, nearly as languid from monotony without, as she was wearied by ungenial intercourse within.
On Sunday, after they had all been to church, the young women proposed to accompany her in a stroll; and the hope of a romantic ramble without danger, induced her acceptance of the invitation. This, however, was an essay which she did not feel tempted to repeat. She found that their only idea of taking a stroll, was to get away from home; and their only object of pursuit, was to encounter their several sweethearts. They walked not for exercise; they had more than enough in their daily occupations. They walked not for air; they rarely spent an hour of the day under shelter. They walked still less in search of rural views, or picturesque beauties; they saw them not; or, rather, they saw them too constantly to heed them. Their chosen scene was the high road; along which they leisurely, but merrily sauntered, to enjoy, – not the verdure of the adjacent fields, or wood; not the freshness of the salubrious breeze; not the charm, here and there occasionally bursting upon the sight, of sloping hills, or flowery dales; but to watch for every distant cloud of rising dust, that announced, or that promised the approach of a horse, cart, or waggon.
What, to these, was the pleasure of situation? Juliet saw, with concern, that all which, to herself, would have solaced a similar way of life, to them was null. Accustomed from their infancy to beautiful scenery, they looked at it as a thing of course, without pleasure or admiration; because without that which fixes all worldly acceptation of happiness, – comparison.
The mother, whose existence, from the fear and from the commands of her husband, was laborious; and, from her own love of saving, penurious; had scarcely even any idea of pleasure, beyond what accrued from feeding her rabbits, fattening her hogs, and carrying her eggs and poultry to a good market.
The farmer, whose will had no controul, either from himself or his family; and who indulged his own humours in the same proportion that he kept theirs in awe, had yet a master; and a master more despotic and ungovernable than himself, – the Weather! to whose power, however, he by no means submitted tamely. The whole house rang with the violence of his rage, if the rain fell while his hay were cutting or stacking; and he could scarcely swallow his dinner for chagrin, if it failed to fall when his peas wanted filling: his imprecations were those of a man provoked by the grossest personal injury, if a sharp wind came not at his bidding, when he perceived insects crawling upon the leaves of his fruit-trees in the orchard; and his whole family trembled, as if immediate ruin, or an earthquake were impending, when he claimed, and claimed in vain, the sun to ripen his corn.
Juliet now found, that a farmer is sensible to no happiness, that a gust of wind, a shower of rain, or the beams of the sun; as they meet, or oppose, his wishes; does not confirm, or may not destroy.
The storms, nevertheless, raised by this man of the elements, were from causes too obvious to create surprize; and they were known to be too harmless in their operations, to occasion any other movement in his household, than that of a general struggle which should first get out of his way till they were blown over: but, to a stranger, to Juliet, they were more tremendous, because as foreign to the habits of her life, as they were ungenial to her nature. To change therefore, a scene so continually overcast, she took leave of the family, thankfully repaying the services which she had received; and left the farm, to lodge herself with the pleasing old woman, who had won her favour, in the beautifully picturesque cottage in the neighbourhood.