The Penguin Book of the British Short Story, Volume 1 Read online

  After seeing the garden, I saw the cows milked, and that was the last sight I saw that day; for while I was telling mamma about the cows, I fell fast asleep, and I suppose I was then put to bed.

  The next morning my papa and mamma were gone. I cried sadly, but was a little comforted at hearing they would return in a month or two, and fetch me home. I was a foolish little thing then, and did not know how long a month was. Grandmamma gave me a little basket to gather my flowers in. I went into the orchard, and before I had half-filled my basket I forgot all my troubles.

  The time I passed at my grandmamma’s is always in my mind. Sometimes I think of the good-natured pied cow that would let me stroke her while the dairy-maid was milking her. Then I fancy myself running after the dairy-maid into the nice clean dairy, and see the pans full of milk and cream. Then I remember the wood-house; it had once been a large barn, but being grown old, the wood was kept there. My sister and I used to peep about among the faggots, to find the eggs the hens sometimes left there. Birds’ nests we might not look for. Grandmamma was very angry once, when Will Tasker brought home a bird’s nest full of pretty speckled eggs for me. She sent him back to the hedge with it again. She said the little birds would not sing any more if their eggs were taken away from them.

  A hen, she said, was a hospitable bird, and always laid more eggs than she wanted, on purpose to give her mistress to make puddings and custards with.

  I do not know which pleased grandmamma best, when we carried her home a lapful of eggs, or a few violets; for she was particularly fond of violets.

  Violets were very scarce; we used to search very carefully for them every morning round by the orchard hedge, and Sarah used to carry a stick in her hand to beat away the nettles; for very frequently the hens left their eggs among the nettles. If we could find eggs and violets too, what happy children we were!

  Every day I used to fill my basket with flowers, and for a long time I liked one pretty flower as well as another pretty flower; but Sarah was much wiser than me, and she taught me which to prefer.

  Grandmamma’s violets were certainly best of all, but they never went in the basket, being carried home, almost flower by flower, as soon as they were found, therefore blue-bells might be said to be the best, for the cowslips were all withered and gone before I learned the true value of flowers. The best blue-bells were those tinged with red; some were so very red that we called them red blue-bells, and these Sarah prized very highly indeed. Daffodils were so very plentiful, they were not thought worth gathering unless they were double ones; and buttercups I found were very poor flowers indeed, yet I would pick one now and then, because I knew they were the very same flowers that had delighted me so in the journey; for my papa had told me they were.

  I was very careful to love best the flowers which Sarah praised most, yet sometimes, I confess, I have even picked a daisy, though I knew it was the very worst flower of all, because it reminded me of London, and the Drapers’ Garden; for, happy as I was at grandmamma’s, I could not help sometimes thinking of my papa and mamma, and then I used to tell my sister all about London; how the houses stood all close to each other; what a pretty noise the coaches made; and what a great many people there were in the streets. After we had been talking on these subjects, we generally used to go into the old wood-house and play at being in London. We used to set up bits of wood for houses; our two dolls we called papa and mamma; in one corner we made a little garden with grass and daisies, and that was to be the Drapers’ Garden. I would not have any other flowers here than daisies, because no other grew among the grass in the real Drapers’ Garden. Before the time of hay-making came, it was very much talked of. Sarah told me what a merry time it would be, for she remembered everything which had happened for a year or more. She told me how nicely we should throw the hay about. I was very desirous, indeed, to see the hay made.

  To be sure, nothing could be more pleasant than the day the orchard was mowed: the hay smelled so sweet, and we might toss it about as much as ever we pleased; but, dear me, we often wish for things that do not prove so happy as we expected; the hay, which was at first so green and smelled so sweet, became yellow and dry, and was carried away in a cart to feed the horses; and then, when it was all gone, and there was no more to play with, I looked upon the naked ground, and perceived what we had lost in these few merry days. Ladies, would you believe it, every flower, blue-bells, daffodils, buttercups, daisies, all were cut off by the cruel scythe of the mower. No flower was to be seen at all, except here and there a short solitary daisy, that a week before one would not have looked at.

  It was a grief, indeed, to me, to lose all my pretty flowers; yet when we are in great distress, there is always, I think, something which happens to comfort us; and so it happened now that gooseberries and currants were almost ripe, which was certainly a very pleasant prospect. Some of them began to turn red, and as we never disobeyed grandmamma, we used often to consult together, if it was likely she would permit us to eat them yet; then we would pick a few that looked the ripest, and run to ask her if she thought they were ripe enough to eat, and the uncertainty what her opinion would be made them doubly sweet if she gave us leave to eat them.

  When the currants and gooseberries were quite ripe, grandmamma had a sheep-shearing. All the sheep stood under the trees to be sheared. They were brought out of the field by old Spot, the shepherd. I stood at the orchard-gate and saw him drive them all in. When they had cropped off all their wool, they looked very clean, and white, and pretty, but, poor things, they ran shivering about with cold, so that it was a pity to see them. Great preparations were making all day for the sheep-shearing supper. Sarah said a sheep-shearing was not to be compared to a harvest-home, that was so much better, for that then the oven was quite full of plum-pudding, and the kitchen was very hot indeed with roasting beef; yet I can assure you there was no want at all of either roast-beef or plum-pudding at the sheep-shearing.

  My sister and I were permitted to sit up till it was almost dark, to see the company at supper. They sat at a long oak table, which was finely carved, and as bright as a looking-glass.

  I obtained a great deal of praise that day, because I replied so prettily when I was spoken to. My sister was more shy than me; never having lived in London was the reason of that. After the happiest day bedtime will come! We sat up late; but at last grandmamma sent us to bed; yet though we went to bed, we heard many charming songs sung; to be sure, we could not distinguish the words, which was a pity, but the sound of their voices was very loud, and very fine indeed.

  The common supper that we had every night was very cheerful. Just before the men came out of the field, a large faggot was flung on the fire; the wood used to crackle and blaze, and smell delightfully; and then the crickets, for they loved the fire, they used to sing; and old Spot, the shepherd, who loved the fire as well as the crickets did, he used to take his place in the chimney corner; after the hottest day in summer, there old Spot used to sit. It was a seat within the fireplace, quite under the chimney, and over his head the bacon hung.

  When old Spot was seated, the milk was hung in a skillet over the fire, and then the men used to come and sit down at the long white table.

  James Hogg

  John Gray o’ Middleholm

  There was once a man of great note, of little wit, some cunning, and inexhaustible good nature, who lived in the wretched village of Middleholm, on the border of Tiviotdale, to whom the strangest lot befell, that ever happened to a poor man before. He was a weaver to his trade, and a feuar; about six feet four inches in height; wore a black coat with horn buttons of the same colour, each of them twice as broad and thick as a modern lady’s gold watch. This coat had wide sleeves, but no collar, and was all clouted about the elbows and armpits, and moreover the tails of it met, if not actually overlapped each other, a little above his knee. He always wore a bonnet, and always the same bonnet, for ought that any one could distinguish. It was neither a broad nor a round bonnet, a Highland bonnet nor
a Lowland bonnet, a large bonnet nor a small bonnet; nevertheless, it was a bonnet, and a very singular one too, for it was a long bonnet, shaped exactly like a miller’s meal-scoop. He was altogether a singular figure, and a far more singular man. Who has not heard of John Gray, weaver and feuar in Middleholm?

  John had a garden, which was a middling good one, and would have been better, had it been well sorted; he had likewise a cow that was a very little, and a very bad one; but he had a wife that was the worst of all. She was what an author would call a half-witted inconsiderate woman; but the Middleholm wives defined her better, for they called her ‘a tawpie, and an even-down haverel’. Of course John’s purse was very light, and it would never throw against the wind; his meals were spare and irregular, and his cheek-bones looked as if they would peep through the face. It is impossible for a man to be in this state without knowing the value of money, or at least regretting the want of it. His belly whispers to him every hour of the day, that it would be a good thing to have; and when parched with drought of an evening, and neighbours are going into the alehouse to enjoy their crack and their evening draught, how killing the reflection, that not one penny is to spare! It even increases a man’s thirst, drying the very glands of his mouth to a cinder – It makes him feel more hungry, and creates a sort of void, either in idea or in the stomach, which it is next to impossible to fill up. Such power over the internal feelings has this same emptiness of the purse.

  John had all these feelings most keenly in his way; for his sides were so long, and so lank, and enclosed in such a bound of space, that it was no easy matter to fill it up. Now, it being a grand position in philosophy, that no space within the earth’s atmosphere can remain a void, owing to the intolerable pressure of air, amounting to the inconceivable weight of fifteen pounds on every square inch, it may well be conceived what an insufferable column pressed constantly on John’s spacious tube. Nothing gave John so much uneasiness as the constant suggestions of this invidious column of air.

  There was but one thing on earth that could counter-work this pressure of elemental fluid, and keep it up to its proper sphere, and that was money. This was a grand discovery made by John, which Bacon himself never thought on, or thought of only to be completely mistaken. That sage says, ‘The state of all things here is, to extenuate, and turn things to be more pneumatical and rare; and not to retrograde from pneumatical to that which is dense.’ How absurd! It is evident that Mr Bacon had never been a feuar in Middleholm.

  John’s system was exactly the reverse of this, and it was the right one. He conceived, and felt, that the tangible part of the body ought always to prevail over the pneumatical; and then, as to the means of accomplishing this, he discovered that money – money alone, was the equivalent power that could equiponderate in such a case. But as to the means of procuring this great universal anodyne, that puzzled John more than the great discovery itself.

  Every man, however, has some prospects, or at least some hopes, of increasing his stock of this material. John had his hopes of doing so too; but no man, or woman either, will guess on what these hopes were founded. It could not possibly be by the profits of his weaving, at least with such a wife as he had; for John’s proficiency in that useful art was far short of what was expected of a country weaver in those days. He could work a pair of blankets, or a grey plaid; but beyond that his science reached not. When any customer offered him a linen web, however coarse, or a brace of table-cloths, he modestly declined them, by assuring the goodwife, ‘that his loom didna answer thae kind o’ things, and when fo’k teuk in things that didna answer their looms, they whiles fashed them mair than if they had keepit them out.’ It could not be by the profits of the miserable feu that he hoped to make money, for the produce of that was annually consumed before it came half to maturity. He had no rich friends; and his live stock consisted of, a small lean cow, two wretched-looking cats, a young one and an old one; six homely half-naked daughters, one son, and his wife, Tibby Stott.

  But it is hard for a man to give up the idea of advancing somewhat in life, either by hook or by crook. To stand still, and stagnate as it were, or yield to a retrograde motion, are among the last things that the human mind assents to. John’s never assented to any such thing. Notwithstanding all these disadvantages that marshalled against him, he had long-cherished and brilliant hopes of making rich; and that by the simplest and most natural way in the world, namely, by finding a purse, or a pose, as he more emphatically called it.

  Was not John the true philosopher of nature? What others illustrated by theory, he exemplified in practice; namely, that the mind must grasp at something before. John longed exceedingly to have money – every other method of attaining it seemed fairly out of his reach, save this; and on this he fixed with avidity, and enjoyed the prospect as much as one does who believes he must fall heir to an estate. He knew all the folks in the kingdom that had got forward in life by finding poses; but the greatest curiosity of all was, that he never believed money to be made in any other way. John never saw money made by industry in his life; there was never any made at Middleholm, neither in his days nor those of any other man, and what he had never seen exemplified he could not calculate on: so that, whenever he heard of a man in the neighbourhood who had advanced his fortune rapidly, John uniformly attributed it to his good fortune in having found a pose.

  But it was truly amazing, how many of these he believed to be lying hid all over the country, especially in the vicinity of the old abbeys. And John reasoned in this manner: ‘The monks and the abbots amassed all the money in the country; they had the superiority of all the lands, and all the wealth, and all the rents at their control. Then, on the approach of any marauding army, it was well known that they went always out and hid their enormous wealth in the fields, from whence a great part of it was never again lifted.’ And then there was all the fields of battle, with which the Border counties abound, concerning which fields John argued in this way: ‘Suppose now there were 20,000 English and 15,000 Scots met on a field; there might be mony mae, and there might be fewer; but, supposing there were so many, every one of these would hide his purse before he came into the battle, because he kend weel, that if he were either woundit or taen prisoner, he wad soon be strippit o’ that. In ony o’ thae cases, when it was hidden, he could get it again; whereas, if he was killed, it was o’ nae mair use to him, an’ was as weel there as in the hands o’ his enemies. There was then 35,000 purses, or poses rather, a’ hid in a very sma’ bounds. An’ then, to consider how many great battles war foughten a’ o’er the country, an’ often too when the tae party was laden wi’ spulzie.’ In short, John believed that all these Border districts were lined with poses, and that we every day walked over immense sums of old sterling coinage.

  He had several times visited the fields of Philliphaugh, of Middlestead, and Ancrum Moor; and on each of these he had delved a great deal, looking for poses; but, as he simply and good-naturedly remarked, never chanced to light on the right spot. For all that he was nothing discouraged, but every year grew more and more intent on realizing some of these hidden treasures.

  He had heard of a large sum of money that was hid in a castle of Liddesdale, and another at Tamleuchar Cross; and of these two he talked so long, and so intently, that he resolved at last to go and dig, first for the one treasure, and then for the other. So one evening he got some mattocks ready, and prepared for his journey, being resolved to set out the next morning.

  But that night he had a singular dream, or rather a vision, that deterred him. The narrative must be given in John’s own words, as it has doubtless never been so well told by any other person. No one else could be so affected by the circumstances, and when the heart is affected, the language, however diffuse, has something in it that approximates to nature.

  ‘I was lying in my bed, close yerkit against the stock; for my wife, poor creature! had twae o’ the weans in ayont her, an’ they war a’ sniffin an’ sleepin; an’ there was I, lying thinking and thinking
what I wad do wi’ a’ my money aince I had it howkit up; when, ere ever I wist, in comes an auld grey-headit man close to my bed-side. He was clad in a grey gown, like the auld monks lang syne; but he had nae cross hingin at his breast; an’ he lookit me i’ the face, an’ says to me, – says he, “John Gray o’ Middleholm, do you ken me?” ’ Na, honest man, quo’ I; “how should I ken you?”

  ‘ “But I ken you, John Gray; an’ I hae often been by your side, an’ heard what ye war sayin, an’ kend what ye war thinkin, an’ seen what ye war doing, when ye didna see me. Ye’re a very poor man, John Gray.”

  ‘ “Ye needna tell me that, honest man; there needs nae apparition come frae the dead to tell me that.”

  ‘ “An’ ye hae a very ill wife, John Gray, an’ a set o’ ill-bred menseless bairns. Now, how mony o’ them will ye gie me, an’ I’ll mak ye rich? Will ye gie me Tibby Stott hersel?”

  ‘ “Weel I wat, honest man, she wad be better wi’ ony body than me; but I can never gie away auld Tibby Stott, ill as she is, against her will. She has lien sae lang by my side, an’ sleepit i’ my bosom, that she’s turned like a second nature to me; an’, I trow, we maun just tak the gude wi’ the ill, an’ fight thegither as lang as our heads wag aboon the ground, though mony a sair heart an’ hungry wame she has gart me dree.” He then named o’er a’ the bairns to me, ane by ane, an’ pledd an’ fleeched me for this an’ the tither ane; but, after a’ he could say, an’ a’ the promises he could make, I wadna condescend to part wi’ ane o’ my bairns.

  ‘ “John Gray o’ Middleholm,” quo’ he, “ye’re a great fool; I kend ay ye were a fool; an’ a’ the country kens it as weel as me; but ye’re no just sae ill as I thought you had been. How do you propose to maintain a’ thae tawpies, young an’ auld?