s [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

carriage, and something like a storm of open discord going on at the back of the room.
. . . . . . . . .
The social divisions in the County healed themselves after their own fashion; both parties
found common ground in condemning the Baroness's outrageously bad taste and
tactlessness.
She has been fortunate in sub-letting for the greater part of her seven years' lease.
The Peace Of Mowsle Barton
Crefton Lockyer sat at his ease, an ease alike of body and soul, in the little patch of
ground, half-orchard and half-garden, that abutted on the farmyard at Mowsle Barton.
After the stress and noise of long years of city life, the repose and peace of the hill-begirt
homestead struck on his senses with an almost dramatic intensity. Time and space
seemed to lose their meaning and their abruptness; the minutes slid away into hours, and
the meadows and fallows sloped away into middle distance, softly and imperceptibly.
Wild weeds of the hedgerow straggled into the flower-garden, and wallflowers and
garden bushes made counter- raids into farmyard and lane. Sleepy-looking hens and
solemn preoccupied ducks were equally at home in yard, orchard, or roadway; nothing
seemed to belong definitely to anywhere; even the gates were not necessarily to be found
on their hinges. And over the whole scene brooded the sense of a peace that had almost a
quality of magic in it. In the afternoon you felt that it had always been afternoon, and
must always remain afternoon; in the twilight you knew that it could never have been
anything else but twilight. Crefton Lockyer sat at his ease in the rustic seat beneath an old
medlar tree, and decided that here was the life- anchorage that his mind had so fondly
pictured and that latterly his tired and jarred senses had so often pined for. He would
make a permanent lodging-place among these simple friendly people, gradually
increasing the modest comforts with which he would like to surround himself, but falling
in as much as possible with their manner of living.
As he slowly matured this resolution in his mind an elderly woman came hobbling with
uncertain gait through the orchard. He recognized her as a member of the farm
household, the mother or possibly the mother-in-law of Mrs. Spurfield, his present
landlady, and hastily formulated some pleasant remark to make to her. She forestalled
him.
"There's a bit of writing chalked up on the door over yonder. What is it?"
She spoke in a dull impersonal manner, as though the question had been on her lips for
years and had best be got rid of. Her eyes, however, looked impatiently over Crefton's
head at the door of a small barn which formed the outpost of a straggling line of farm
buildings.
"Martha Pillamon is an old witch " was the announcement that met Crefton's inquiring
scrutiny, and he hesitated a moment before giving the statement wider publicity. For all
he knew to the contrary, it might be Martha herself to whom he was speaking. It was
possible that Mrs. Spurfield's maiden name had been Pillamon. And the gaunt, withered
old dame at his side might certainly fulfil local conditions as to the outward aspect of a
witch.
"It's something about some one called Martha Pillamon," he explained cautiously.
"What does it say?"
"It's very disrespectful," said Crefton; "it says she's a witch. Such things ought not to be
written up."
"It's true, every word of it," said his listener with considerable satisfaction, adding as a
special descriptive note of her own, "the old toad."
And as she hobbled away through the farmyard she shrilled out in her cracked voice,
"Martha Pillamon is an old witch!"
"Did you hear what she said?" mumbled a weak, angry voice somewhere behind
Crefton's shoulder. Turning hastily, he beheld another old crone, thin and yellow and
wrinkled, and evidently in a high state of displeasure. Obviously this was Martha
Pillamon in person. The orchard seemed to be a favourite promenade for the aged women
of the neighbourhood.
"'Tis lies, 'tis sinful lies," the weak voice went on. "'Tis Betsy Croot is the old witch. She
an' her daughter, the dirty rat. I'll put a spell on 'em, the old nuisances."
As she limped slowly away her eye caught the chalk inscription on the barn door.
"What's written up there?" she demanded, wheeling round on Crefton.
"Vote for Soarker," he responded, with the craven boldness of the practised peacemaker.
The old woman grunted, and her mutterings and her faded red shawl lost themselves
gradually among the tree-trunks. Crefton rose presently and made his way towards the
farm-house. Somehow a good deal of the peace seemed to have slipped out of the
atmosphere.
The cheery bustle of tea-time in the old farm kitchen, which Crefton had found so
agreeable on previous afternoons, seemed to have soured to-day into a certain uneasy [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]