IX
Of the Passage of Many Years
After that time many years came and went and brought nothing of moment with them. It seemed, indeed, to me that however the great world’s affairs might go, naught disturbed us at Dale’s Field, where the seasons travelled round with monotonous regularity. Now it was winter and now spring, and with the latter came fresh flowers and the bleating of lambs, and summer followed only to be driven forth by apple-cheeked autumn, and so the year completed its cycle, and was in its turn compelled to give way to its successor. For I perceived at last that I was grown head and shoulders above my mother, who herself was a tall woman, and I was not a little proud to feel that I was approaching manhood.
I had pleaded hard after my father’s sudden death to be allowed to remain at home and help my mother in managing the farm, for I knew that she would need a helping hand and head where there was so much to do. There would, I foresaw, be many an occasion when she would need someone to carry messages and ride forth on business, and it seemed to me that I was the one to undertake such affairs. And for a time my mother, feeling the loneliness of her position, was minded to keep me at home to help her. But having taken counsel, as was her wont upon all important matters, with Parson Drumbleforth, she considered it best that I should go back to Dr. Parsons for a twelvemonth at least.
“Thou wilt do thy poor mother most good, Will,” said Parson Drumbleforth, “by going back to thy book and attending thereto. As to farm matters, she hath Jacob Trusty to assist her, and a wiser man in husbandry I know not. Go back, then, lad, to my good friend Doctor Parsons, and mind thy book for the space of a year, and get some strength into those great bones of thine against the time when thou wilt be master of Dale’s Field.”
And with that I was fain to be content, and returned to school, determined to do my duty there until such times as I was called to do it elsewhere. Yet I cared little about book-learning, for my head was always running after what things were going on at Dale’s Field, and I fear that my mind was often with Jacob Trusty and Timothy Grass when it ought to have been immersed in far diverse matters. It was, for example, a hard thing to sit in the ancient schoolhouse on a fine spring morning, staring at the grammar and remembering that at that very moment Jacob Trusty was probably counting the young lambs in the home meadow. At such times I used to wish that I could jump across the country and join Jacob for an hour, so inviting was the thought of the green fields and bright sunshine. However, I had a good deal of consolation in the weekly home-going, for I ran off homewards as soon as school was over on Friday, and did not return until Monday. By my mother’s pleasure I was often accompanied on these weekend visits by one or other of my fellows, Ben Tuckett or Tom Thorpe, and on the Saturday we were as often as not joined by Jack Drumbleforth, with whom we had many a royal day at birds’-nesting, so that the country round there became as familiar to us as the lines on our hands. And once or twice at holiday times I had all three lads to stay with me at Dale’s Field, and our merrymaking was great.
So the time went on, and I was growing every month and assuming vast proportions, so that people who knew me not stared in astonishment on learning my age, and thought me older than I was. For at my fifteenth year I was nearly six feet high and well-fashioned into the bargain, being broad-shouldered and properly proportioned, and having nothing of the beanstalk about me, as so many fast-growing lads have. Moreover, I was developing considerable strength, and could lift and carry a load of wheat or potatoes as easily as if it were a pikestaff. But Jacob Trusty would not allow me to do much in that way.
“Husband thy strength, William,” he was wont to say, “husband thy strength. For what good will it do thee to show folk how strong thou art now? ’Tis a fine sight, doubtless, to see so young a lad possess the strength of a grown man, but such things are, after all, but in the way of sightseeing, and afford only a passing curiosity. Keep thy strength, lad, for thy manhood, for thou mayst find a time of blows, and worse, coming.”
Now, when I was fifteen I told my mother with all respect that I thought it time I was busied about the farm and learning the active duties of life. And in this view I was supported by Dr. Parsons, who drove over to Dale’s Field one day during the holidays in order to talk with my mother about me. I can see him now as he sat in my mother’s parlour, a little round figure in sober black, with a bald head and gold spectacles, over which he would occasionally blink at me, as if wondering at my great height and breadth.
“Mistress Dale,” said the doctor, “as for your great lad here, I fear he must leave me. For look you, he is a man already in size, a regular Anak, and towers head and shoulders above his fellows.”
“As he does above me, sir,” said my mother with a smile.
“Yea, and above me, his master. Well, dame, but the lad’s heart is always with ye here, and his head is always running on sheep and cattle, turnip and wheat, sowing and reaping. And so now, having made him into a fair scholar, let him set to and make a better farmer.”
“I trust he has done his duty, sir?” said my mother.
“He hath been a good lad, mistress, a good lad indeed. For if he hath been slow he hath made sure, which is high praise. Yea, I am well enough pleased with thee, Will, and wish thee well.”
And so I was fairly entered upon my life’s business, which, as I understood it, was to do my duty to the land which my fathers had left me and hand it forward to my successors even better than when I found it. I need not tell you that I entered into my new mode of life with great eagerness. A proud lad I was when my mother bought me a new horse whereon to ride about the farm, and fitted me up in addition with a new saddle and bridle. My old schoolmates envied me not a little when they saw my new estate. They, too, were leaving school and going into the world, but none of them were thrown into such pleasant occupation as mine. I at least thought so, and so I believe did they. For Jack Drumbleforth was going to Oxford, so that he might in time become a parson, and Tom Thorpe had been articled to Mr. Hook the lawyer, and would henceforth have to live amongst the parchment and ink, while poor Ben Tuckett, meeting the worst fate of all, was apprenticed to a grocer of Pontefract, and liked the prospect ill.
“You are the one to be envied, Will,” said Jack Drumbleforth, “for you will be able to breathe fresh air every minute of the day if you are so minded, while I am poring over old books and while Tom is hunting ancient parchments and poor Ben is frying in the grocer’s shop. However, lads, ’tis all in a life and will be all the same a hundred years hence. I dare say we shall all meet again sooner or later.”
But with Jack Drumbleforth we did not meet often during the next few years, for he presently went away to Oxford and was entered at one of the colleges, and only came home to see his father once a year in the summer time. But Tom Thorpe and Ben Tuckett used to come to Dale’s Field often, for they were both apprenticed in Pontefract, and it was a pleasant walk across the meadows, so that they both took to coming every Sunday, and we made them heartily welcome and looked for them as a regular thing. And in the summer, when Jack Drumbleforth was at home, we had some gay meetings, for Jack was always full of life and suffered no one to be dull in his presence. He would come and stay all day in our harvest-field, eating and drinking with me and the men, and making merry with all until the sun set. And we always held our harvest-home supper before the time came for Jack to go back to his college, for he professed that he lived upon the remembrance of it for all the succeeding winter.
So the years went on, quietly and uneventfully for us at Dale’s Field. Time had somewhat healed our great sorrow, though it could never wholly destroy it. My mother had grown resigned, even happy again, and she took great pride in her children. Lucy was growing a fine girl by that time, and was a great help in the house, for she seemed to possess my mother’s clever ways, and was an adept at all domestic matters of preserving and baking and cooking and so forth. She was growing up not unlike my mother, that is to say, she was a tall, well-made girl with pleasant features and kind eyes and brown hair, which I believe Master Ben Tuckett learnt to admire even in our school days. For Lucy was Ben’s goddess, and he would fetch and carry for her like any dog. Nay, it dawned upon me as time went on that Ben had fallen in love with Lucy, such signs did he sometimes show of it. And I minded not, for I loved them both, and Ben was a good fellow. But I said naught of it even to my mother, being minded to let matters take their course.
In the year in which I came of age our harvest was an uncommonly favourable one. We had warm and nourishing rains in spring and abundant sunshine afterwards, and the corn had sprung and shot and ripened and was ready for the scythe by the end of July. And for many a week after that we had favourable weather, for day after day dawned bright and hot, and our men were in the fields early and late, cutting the grain with scythe and sickle, and binding and setting up the sheaves in long rows across the stubble. We had not, I think, a shower of rain during all that time of ingathering, and we were pleased and thankful that we should have such a favourable harvest. We were a little over a month in reaping and housing our crops, and it was getting near to my birthday in the second week of August, when our last field was ready to be cleared. So it seemed good to my mother that we should hold a merrymaking in honour of my coming to man’s estate at the same time as we held our harvest-home.
“For it will all be one trouble and one preparation, Will,” she said, “and we shall have but one asking of our guests. Yet we must have some extra merrymaking at a time like this, when you are going to enter into man’s estate and your own land at the same time.”
“Nay, mother,” said I, “what do I want more than to serve you?”
For, indeed, I cared not about their legal formalities, which would transfer the broad acres of Dale’s Field to me from those who had held them in trust. So long as they were ours and we were living upon them, I cared for nothing more.
“Nay,” said she, “my son must enter into his father’s possessions. Ah, Will, thou art so like thy father now. I think I see him in thee, just as he was two-and-twenty years ago. Well, but what shall we do at this feast, Will?”
“Nay,” said I, “I am no hand at that sort of thing, mother. Let us consult Jack Drumbleforth. He will know what we should do and tell us how to do it.”
And I went out and found Jack in our stackyard, where he was talking with Jacob Trusty, and carried him into the great kitchen, where my mother and Lucy were making fruit pies, and there we explained to Jack what it was we wished to do.
“Why,” said he, “what you want first of all, Mistress Dale, is to fill your larder with provisions. I warrant that everybody will be hungry and thirsty at a time like that.”
“If that be all,” said my mother, “nobody shall have cause to go away sorrowful.”
“Well, ’tis not all, but ’tis a great deal. What say you, now, if you have a great feast in the big barn? Or, come, ’tis fine weather, why not have it on the lawn outside here, and a dance to follow? You will ask all your friends, Will, and, indeed, make everybody who likes to come welcome.”
“Anyone shall be welcome who comes that day,” said my mother.
“We will have great things,” said Jack, rubbing his hands. “See to it that there is plenty to eat and drink, Mistress Dale, and I will do the rest. Come thou with me, Will, and we will talk matters over with Jacob Trusty.”