A Dinner Of Herbs (48 page)

through that door rimed with frost and snow day after day, bringing us the milk and

things, caring for us.

I knew then I was learning what real love meant. And you’ll never know how ashamed I

felt of the way I

used to go at you, cutting’ you with me tongue. “

He smiled broadly into her face now, saying, “You only came off second-best in that

way. Now you

must admit that. I was a master of it.” Then the smile disappearing from his face, he said,

“It was a

cloak that I donned early on. I think you were about fifteen when I had to face up to what had hit me.

Mary Ellen, I’ve loved you for a long time, and I’ll love you to the day I die.” Slowly now he rose and

drew her to her feet. Then he kissed her, not gently, nor tenderly, but with a fierceness that, after a

moment of shock, found a response in herself, and they clung together for long seconds.

And when at last

they stood apart, they looked at each other sliyly, their hands gripped tightly now. Then slowly and

simultaneously their faces moved into laughter, and they fell against each other, hugging each other like

two children.

When they were once more seated on the settle he said, “We’ll have to see the parson.

He’s a nice

fellow.”

She could only nod at him because there was a lump in her throat and a smarting in her eyes.

“And ... and about this?” He now moved his hand round the room.

“It’s rented, isn’t it? A shilling a week. But it doesn’t come under the mill so they can’t claim it for a

worker once you move out. I’ve been thinking about it. Well, sort of planning, wishful thinkin’, you

could say. It belongs to the Ribbons, doesn’t it? And he won’t mind who has it as long as the rent’s

paid. So I’ve thought about letting Annie have it.”

“Annie? Comin’ to live here on her own?”

“Aye. Poor old Annie, she’d give her eye-teeth to get away from her father and the farm.

She’s nothing

but an unpaid slave there like the rest of them. She even asked me some time ago if I’d take her on full

time and she would sleep in the loft.” He pulled a face at her now.

“Imagine... imagine the oil that would have provided for the tongues. Yes, yes, indeed.”

She pulled a similar face; then they both laughed again, and he drew her close once more and began to

kiss her, until she pressed him away, saying, “Listen. Listen. You were talkin’ about

Annie.”

“Oh, Annie, aye. Well, now, she’s as good a worker as any man, and if she could just step into here

with it all set up with its bits and pieces, it would be like heaven to her. If I give her four shillings a week

and her keep, my! she won’t know she’s born. And there’s your father. She might even

soften him up,

you never can tell. What d’you say?”

“I’d be only too pleased. But how’ll she take me?”

“Oh, she’ll take you all right. She knows how I feel about you; she’s known for a long time. And only

yesterday she said, “ She’s a nice lass,” and that’s a compliment from her.”

She stared at him, her head slightly to the side now. Two men in her life and so different: one who

thought of nobody but himself, and that was the one she had wasted so many years of

feeling on, for, call

it young love or what you will, it had been real and a torment; and now here was this man who had none

of the outward attributes of the other, because he wasn’t pretty, his face was too rugged for that, but

unlike the other one, he was kind and thoughtful, just as he had said in his wishful

thinking, he had thought

of Annie . and her father. Oh!

her father. She would be a miracle worker if she got through to him.

Yet miracles did happen . one was happening to her now.

Putting her arms around his neck, she looked into his face and said, “I’ll be a good wife to you, Hal.

God willing, I’ll bear you children that you’ll be proud of. And no matter how our fortune goes, I’ll be

there beside you. As Kate was apt to say, better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a stalled ox and

hatred therewith.”

“Aye, she did. I’ve heard her say it many a time. But let me tell you, Mary Ellen, and this is a promise,

there’ll be no dinner of herbs for us, for I mean to rise, and one day I’ll put you in a house worthy of

you. All your young life you slaved for others. Aye, the Davisons might have been kind, but they were

only so because they got their pound of flesh. But come one day, you’ll have a servant or two of your

own; what’s more, you’ll know how to treat them. That, Mary Ellen my love, is a

promise.”

PART THREE. The Stalled Ox

It was a Sunday evening in early November in the year eighteen forty six. A high wind

was blowing

across the moor and bringing with it a heavy rain mixed with sleet that beat against the walls of the long

stone farmhouse, diffusing the light streaming from the four long windows to one side of the front door.

Two at the other side were also showing some light; and with the dim lighting coming

from the windows

on the first floor, altogether the farmyard seemed to be enveloped with a feeling of

comfort and security.

There was no sound from the animals in their stalls and outbuildings, which were ranged around two sides

of the yard, which really had very little appearance of an ordinary farmyard, but looked like a courtyard

attached to a small manor house. But when the animals were let out and the milk churns were rolled

across the yard, with the clanking of harness and the bustle of workers, then it would come to life and be

a farm, and a very busy one at that.

But on this Sunday the busyness was all inside the house, and particularly so in the

dining-room, for the

whole family had gathered to join in a special supper, special because it was the last the eldest daughter

Kate would partake of as a single woman, for on the morrow she was to be married.

The dining-room was a large well-appointed room, the ceiling high with a deep cornice; the walls were

half panelled and, standing against them was an array of very good furniture, one piece being a

magnificent nine-foot—long sideboard on which was laid out a large quantity of glass

and silver. Eighteen

people could be seated at the dining-table in comfort. The dining-chairs were upholstered in hide, and a

suite covered in the same material was positioned at one end of the room.

There were several small cabinets and two corner cabinets filled with china. The fireplace was stone, not

rude stone but sculptured, and in a way looked too ornate and slightly out of place in the room, as well it

might, for it had once graced the drawing-room of a castle. The carpet in a deep red

patterned design

did not cover the whole floor but showed a good expanse of nine-inch-wide polished

boards all around

it.

Towards each end of the dining-table which was covered with a linen cloth, stood a four branch

candelabrum, and round about them such an assortment of foods that there was hardly

room for the

diners’ plates.

There were twelve chairs around the table, but only nine people were seated. Two empty chairs were

tilted forward, their high backs leaning against the table, the tops of them protruding somewhat over it.

To the left of these at the bottom of the table sat the mistress of the house, and next to her was another

empty chair. This was usually occupied by Annie, who at the moment was in bed trying

to ward off a

cold so that she’d be fit for the celebrations on the morrow.

Mary Ellen was now forty-three years old, and for a woman who had borne nine children, she carried

her age as might another who had known far less emotional stress. There was no grey in her hair, her

face was unlined and her big rounded figure trim and straight.

At the other end of the table sat Hal. He was now turned forty-seven, but unlike Mary

Ellen, he was

showing the marks left on him by the years: his hair was grizzled, and there were two

deep furrow lines

running from the end of his nose down to his chin; his face looked weathered and his

body, which had

always been broad, had thickened still further, but it was a hard thickness, there was no flab about him.

Looking at him through the candlelight and amid the laughter and bantering chatter at the table, Mary

Ellen thought, as she had done for many years now, If he’d only let up. If he’d only be satisfied, and

know that I have all I want, and all I’ll ever want, as long as I have him. If only I could make him believe

that.

Hardly a day had passed in their twenty-four years of marriage that she hadn’t, in some way, expressed

her love for him. Yet, he was never certain of it, for always in his mind there was the memory of her first

love, that all-consuming girlish passion that had given birth to her daughter Kate, whom she was losing on

the morrow. Oh, how she would miss Kate. Of the nine children she had borne Hal, two

had died with

the typhus that had swept through Allendale and the surrounding district in forty—one.

They had been

her youngest, Peg and Walter, and they had been so beautiful, so full of life. Every

Sunday night for

years they had sat in those chairs now tilted to the side of her.

And she could see their faces now, laughing and merry. They had been close, those two, and their

natures had been sunny, like the twins John and Tom there, at the top of the table. They too had sunny

natures. But not so their sister Maggie who came next to them. She didn’t know who

Maggie took

after; she was, though, somewhat like herself as she had been years ago, free with her tongue. Maggie

was twenty-two and there was no sign of her marrying, although it wasn’t for the chance; she was a bit of

a flibbertigibbet was Maggie.

Florrie came next. There was always a year between them. She had been regular in that

way, except

once, when it had come too early and she had miscarried. Florrie was quiet, not like any of the others at

all, certainly not like Hugh, and Gabriel who followed him. These two were tough

unshell raisers, as their

father said, but laughing hell raisers.

All her children laughed a great deal, except perhaps Kate.

With Walter her breeding had stopped. It was as if her nature had said. You promised to give him ten

children and you have done that; enough is enough. And she could say she had given him ten because he

loved Kate as his own, yes, as his very own.

And this worried her at times.

They had both been well satisfied, until their nine of a family had been depleted by death.

Then a blight

had fallen on them, and only now did they seem to be rising through it, for she couldn’t remember such a

merry night as this since before the youngsters went.

Up till a year ago not one of her family had shown the slightest sign of getting married; in fact, they had

laughed about it. It was as Hal said, they were too well got at home to take on the

responsibility of a

wife or of a husband. But she knew that had suited him, for he loved them about him,

inside and outside

the house. And now here was Kate, although the eldest, the most unlikely one to have

made the first

breakaway; quite candidly, she had thought that Kate would always be with her, for as

Maggie with her

slack tongue had said, but on the quiet, well, their Kate wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea.

No, perhaps she wasn’t, but how had it come about? Her father had been handsome, and

she herself

had been bonny. And when Kate was born she’d been bonny too. When had she

changed? When had

she first noticed her prettiness slipping? She could have said fancifully that it was from the day she

married Hal, and the child not yet a year old. But certainly from she was two, because from then she

noticed a plainness creeping over the child’s face. Her skin thickened a little, but that was nothing. Then

at five years old, she was as tall as a child of seven or eight, and she never seemed to stop growing. She

was bigger than anyone in the family, being all of five feet eight inches tall, and big-boned with it. But it

wasn’t only her height or her shape, which you could say really gave her a fine figure, it was her

plainness; but she was saved, God help her, from being ugly only by her eyes. They were fine eyes, finer

than those possessed by any of her other children, being large and of a soft brown colour and which at

times held an awareness that hurt one to see, as it had on that day she had said to her,

“Why haven’t I

taken after you, Mam . and him?”

She had told her that Hal wasn’t her father when she was quite young in case it should be thrown in her

face by other children, or whispered in her presence by other women. And on that

particular day she

had said, “You did tell me he was a fine-looking man.”

Yes, she had told her that, but she knew now that that young girl had held that knowledge to her, not as

a comfort, but as a big question mark in her mind: why she should look as she did if her father had been

good-looking and her mother pretty.

Yet how was she to convince her daughter that she had qualities that outshone those in her other

children. She was kind not that the others weren ‘t—and good-natured. If she had

expressed her

thoughts by saying, she’s lovable, she knew that every other member of her family would have shown