Isaac Bawcombe’s family—The youngest son—Caleb goes to seek David at Wilton sheep-fair—Martha, the eldest daughter—Her beauty—She marries Shepherd Ierat—The name of Ierat—Story of Ellen Ierat—The Ierats go to Somerset—Martha and the lady of the manor—Martha’s travels—Her mistress dies—Return to Winterbourne Bishop—Shepherd Ierat’s end
Caleb was one of five, the middle one, with a brother and sister older and a brother and sister younger than himself—a symmetrical family. I have already written incidentally of the elder brother and the youngest sister, and in this chapter will complete the history of Isaac’s children by giving an account of the eldest sister and youngest brother.
The brother was David, the hot-tempered young shepherd who killed his dog Monk, and who afterwards followed his brother to Warminster. In spite of his temper and “want of sense” Caleb was deeply attached to him, and when as an old man his shepherding days were finished he followed his wife to their new home, he grieved at being so far removed from his favourite brother. For some time he managed to make the journey to visit him once a year. Not to his home near Warminster, but to Wilton, at the time of the great annual sheep-fair held on 12th September. From his cottage he would go by the carrier’s cart to the nearest town, and thence by rail with one or two changes by Salisbury to Wilton.
After I became acquainted with Caleb he was ill and not likely to recover, and for over two years could not get about. During all this time he spoke often to me of his brother and wished he could see him. I wondered why he did not write; but he would not, nor would the other. These people of the older generation do not write to each other; years are allowed to pass without tidings, and they wonder and wish and talk of this and that absent member of the family, trusting it is well with them, but to write a letter never enters into their minds.
At last Caleb began to mend and determined to go again to Wilton sheep-fair to look for his beloved brother; to Warminster he could not go; it was too far. September the 12th saw him once more at the old meeting-place, painfully making his slow way to that part of the ground where Shepherd David Bawcombe was accustomed to put his sheep. But he was not there. “I be here too soon,” said Caleb, and sat himself patiently down to wait, but hours passed and David did not appear, so he got up and made his way about the fair in search of him, but couldn’t find ‘n. Returning to the old spot he got into conversation with two young shepherds and told them he was waiting for his brother who always put his sheep in that part. “What be his name?” they asked, and when he gave it they looked at one another and were silent. Then one of them said, “Be you Shepherd Caleb Bawcombe?” and when he had answered them the other said, “You’ll not see your brother at Wilton to-day. We’ve come from Doveton, and knew he. You’ll not see your brother no more. He be dead these two years.”
Caleb thanked them for telling him, and got up and went his way very quietly, and got back that night to his cottage. He was very tired, said his wife; he wouldn’t eat and he wouldn’t talk. Many days passed and he still sat in his corner and brooded, until the wife was angry and said she never knowed a man make so great a trouble over losing a brother. ‘Twas not like losing a wife or a son, she said; but he answered not a word, and it was many weeks before that dreadful sadness began to wear off, and he could talk cheerfully once more of his old life in the village.
Of the sister, Martha, there is much more to say; her life was an eventful one as lives go in this quiet downland country, and she was, moreover, distinguished above the others of the family by her beauty and vivacity. I only knew her when her age was over eighty, in her native village where her life ended some time ago, but even at that age there was something of her beauty left and a good deal of her charm. She had a good figure still and was of a good height; and had dark, fine eyes, clear, dark, unwrinkled skin, a finely shaped face, and her grey hair, once black, was very abundant. Her manner, too, was very engaging. At the age of twenty-five she married a shepherd named Thomas Ierat—a surname I had not heard before and which made me wonder where were the Ierats in Wiltshire that in all my rambles among the downland villages I had never come across them, not even in the churchyards. Nobody knew—there were no Ierats except Martha Ierat, the widow, of Winterbourne Bishop and her son—nobody had ever heard of any other family of the name. I began to doubt that there ever had been such a name until quite recently when, on going over an old downland village church, the rector took me out to show me “a strange name” on a tablet let into the wall of the building outside. The name was Ierat and the date the seventeenth century. He had never seen the name excepting on that tablet. Who, then, was Martha’s husband? It was a queer story which she would never have told me, but I had it from her brother and his wife.
A generation before that of Martha, at a farm in the village of Bower Chalk on the Ebble, there was a girl named Ellen Ierat employed as a dairymaid. She was not a native of the village, and if her parentage and place of birth were ever known they have long passed out of memory. She was a good-looking, nice-tempered girl, and was much liked by her master and mistress, so that after she had been about two years in their service it came as a great shock to find that she was in the family way. The shock was all the greater when the fresh discovery was made one day that another unmarried woman in the house, who was also a valued servant, was in the same condition. The two unhappy women had kept their secret from every one except from each other until it could be kept no longer, and they consulted together and determined to confess it to their mistress and abide the consequences.
Who were the men? was the first question asked There was only one—Robert Coombe, the shepherd, who lived at the farm-house, a slow, silent, almost inarticulate man, with a round head and flaxen hair; a bachelor of whom people were accustomed to say that he would never marry because no woman would have such a stolid, dull-witted fellow for a husband. But he was a good shepherd and had been many years on the farm, and it was altogether a terrible business. Forthwith the farmer got out his horse and rode to the downs to have it out with the unconscionable wretch who had brought that shame and trouble on them. He found him sitting on the turf eating his midday bread and bacon, with a can of cold tea at his side, and getting off his horse he went up to him and damned him for a scoundrel and abused him until he had no words left, then told his shepherd that he must choose between the two women and marry at once, so as to make an honest woman of one of the two poor fools; either he must do that or quit the farm forthwith.
Coombe heard in silence and without a change in his countenance, masticating his food the while and washing it down with an occasional draught from his can, until he had finished his meal; then taking his crook he got up, and remarking that he would “think of it” went after his flock.
The farmer rode back cursing him for a clod; and in the evening Coombe, after folding his flock, came in to give his decision, and said he had thought of it and would take Jane to wife. She was a good deal older than Ellen and not so good-looking, but she belonged to the village and her people were there, and everybody knowed who Jane was, an’ she was an old servant an’ would be wanted on the farm. Ellen was a stranger among them, and being only a dairymaid was of less account than the other one.
So it was settled, and on the following morning Ellen, the rejected, was told to take up her traps and walk.
What was she to do in her condition, no longer to be concealed, alone and friendless in the world? She thought of Mrs. Poole, an elderly woman of Winterbourne Bishop, whose children were grown up and away from home, who when staying at Bower Chalk some months before had taken a great liking for Ellen, and when parting with her had kissed her and said: “My dear, I lived among strangers too when I were a girl and had no one of my own, and know what ‘tis.” That was all; but there was nobody else, and she resolved to go to Mrs. Poole, and so laden with her few belongings she set out to walk the long miles over the downs to Winterbourne Bishop where she had never been. It was far to walk in hot August weather when she went that sad journey, and she rested at intervals in the hot shade of a furze-bush, haunted all day by the miserable fear that the woman she sought, of whom she knew so little, would probably harden her heart and close her door against her. But the good woman took compassion on her and gave her shelter in her poor cottage, and kept her till her child was born, in spite of all the women’s bitter tongues. And in the village where she had found refuge she remained to the end of her life, without a home of her own, but always in a room or two with her boy in some poor person’s cottage. Her life was hard but not unpeaceful, and the old people, all dead and gone now, remembered Ellen as a very quiet, staid woman who worked hard for a living, sometimes at the wash-tub, but mostly in the fields, haymaking and harvesting and at other times weeding, or collecting flints, or with a spud or sickle extirpating thistles in the pasture-land. She worked alone or with other poor women, but with the men she had no friendships; the sharpest women’s eyes in the village could see no fault in her in this respect; if it had not been so, if she had talked pleasantly with them and smiled when addressed by them, her life would have been made a burden to her. She would have been often asked who her brat’s father was. The dreadful experience of that day, when she had been cast out and was alone in the world, when, burdened with her unborn child, she had walked over the downs in the hot August weather, in anguish of apprehension, had sunk into her soul. Her very nature was changed, and in a man’s presence her blood seemed frozen, and if spoken to she answered in monosyllables with her eyes on the earth. This was noted, with the result that all the village women were her good friends; they never reminded her of her fall, and when she died still young they grieved for her and befriended the little orphan boy she had left on their hands.
He was then about eleven years old, and was a stout little fellow with a round head and flaxen hair like his father; but he was not so stolid and not like him in character; at all events his old widow in speaking of him to me said that never in all his life did he do one unkind or unjust thing. He came from a long line of shepherds, and shepherding was perhaps almost instinctive in him; from his earliest boyhood the tremulous bleating of the sheep and half-muffled clink of the copper bells and the sharp bark of the sheep-dog had a strange attraction for him. He was always ready when a boy was wanted to take charge of a flock during a temporary absence of the shepherd, and eventually, when only about fifteen, he was engaged as under-shepherd, and for the rest of his life shepherding was his trade.
His marriage to Martha Bawcombe came as a surprise to the village, for though no one had any fault to find with Tommy Ierat there was a slur on him, and Martha, who was the finest girl in the place, might, it was thought, have looked for some one better. But Martha had always liked Tommy; they were of the same age and had been playmates in their childhood; growing up together their childish affection had turned to love, and after they had waited some years and Tommy had a cottage and seven shillings a week, Isaac and his wife gave their consent and they were married. Still they felt hurt at being discussed in this way by the villagers, so that when Ierat was offered a place as shepherd at a distance from home, where his family history was not known, he was glad to take it and his wife to go with him, about a month after her child was born.
The new place was in Somerset, thirty-five to forty miles from their native village, and Ierat as shepherd at the manor-house farm on a large estate would have better wages than he had ever had before and a nice cottage to live in. Martha was delighted with her new home—the cottage, the entire village, the great park and mansion close by, all made it seem like paradise to her. Better than everything was the pleasant welcome she received from the villagers, who looked in to make her acquaintance and seemed very much taken with her appearance and nice, friendly manner. They were all eager to tell her about the squire and his lady, who were young, and of how great an interest they took in their people and how much they did for them and how they were loved by everybody on the estate.
It happens, oddly enough, that I became acquainted with this same man, the squire, over fifty years after the events I am relating, when he was past eighty. This acquaintance came about by means of a letter he wrote me in reference to the habits of a bird or some such small matter, a way in which I have become acquainted with scores—perhaps I should say hundreds—of persons in many parts of the country. He was a very fine man, the head of an old and distinguished county family; an ideal squire, and one of the few large landowners I have had the happiness to meet who was not devoted to that utterly selfish and degraded form of sport which consists in the annual rearing and subsequent slaughter of a host of pheasants.
Now when Martha was entertaining half a dozen of her new neighbours who had come in to see her, and exhibited her baby to them and then proceeded to suckle it, they looked at one another and laughed, and one said, “Just you wait till the lady at the mansion sees ‘ee—she’ll soon want ‘ee to nurse her little one.”
What did they mean? They told her that the great lady was a mother too, and had a little sickly baby and wanted a nurse for it, but couldn’t find a woman to please her.
Martha fired up at that. Did they imagine, she asked, that any great lady in the world with all her gold could tempt her to leave her own darling to nurse another woman’s? She would not do such a thing—she would rather leave the place than submit to it. But she didn’t believe it—they had only said that to tease and frighten her!
They laughed again, looking admiringly at her as she stood before them with sparkling eyes, flushed cheeks, and fine full bust, and only answered, “Just you wait, my dear, till she sees ‘ee.”
And very soon the lady did see her. The people at the manor were strict in their religious observances, and it had been impressed on Martha that she had better attend at morning service on her first Sunday, and a girl was found by one of her neighbours to look after the baby in the meantime. And so when Sunday came she dressed herself in her best clothes and went to church with the others. The service over, the squire and his wife came out first and were standing in the path exchanging greetings with their friends; then as the others came out with Martha in the midst of the crowd the lady turned and fixed her eyes on her, and suddenly stepping out from the group she stopped Martha and said, “Who are you?—I don’t remember your face.”
“No, ma’am,” said Martha, blushing and curtsying. “I be the new shepherd’s wife at the manor-house farm—we’ve only been here a few days.”
The other then said she had heard of her and that she was nursing her child, and she then told Martha to go to the mansion that afternoon as she had something to say to her.
The poor young mother went in fear and trembling, trying to stiffen herself against the expected blandishments.
Then followed the fateful interview. The lady was satisfied that she had got hold of the right person at last—the one in the world who would be able to save her precious little one “from to die,” the poor pining infant on whose frail little life so much depended! She would feed it from her full, healthy breasts and give it something of her own abounding, splendid life. Martha’s own baby would do very well—there was nothing the matter with it, and it would flourish on “the bottle” or anything else, no matter what. All she had to do was to go back to her cottage and make the necessary arrangements, then come to stay at the mansion.
Martha refused, and the other smiled; then Martha pleaded and cried and said she would never never leave her own child, and as all that had no effect she was angry, and it came into her mind that if the lady would get angry too she would be ordered out and all would be over. But the lady wouldn’t get angry, for when Martha stormed she grew more gentle and spoke tenderly and sweetly, but would still have it her own way, until the poor young mother could stand it no longer, and so rushed away in a great state of agitation to tell her husband and ask him to help her against her enemy. But Tommy took the lady’s side, and his young wife hated him for it, and was in despair and ready to snatch up her child and run away from them all, when all at once a carriage appeared at the cottage, and the great lady herself, followed by a nurse with the sickly baby in her arms, came in. She had come, she said very gently, almost pleadingly, to ask Martha to feed her child once, and Martha was flattered and pleased at the request, and took and fondled the infant in her arms, then gave it suck at her beautiful breast. And when she had fed the child, acting very tenderly towards it like a mother, her visitor suddenly burst into tears, and taking Martha in her arms she kissed her and pleaded with her again until she could resist no more; and it was settled that she was to live at the mansion and come once every day to the village to feed her own child from the breast.
Martha’s connexion with the people at the mansion did not end when she had safely reared the sickly child. The lady had become attached to her and wanted to have her always, although Martha could not act again as wet nurse, for she had no more children herself. And by and by when her mistress lost her health after the birth of a third child and was ordered abroad, she took Martha with her, and she passed a whole year with her on the Continent, residing in France and Italy. They came home again, but as the lady continued to decline in health she travelled again, still taking Martha with her, and they visited India and other distant countries, including the Holy Land; but travel and wealth and all that the greatest physicians in the world could do for her, and the tender care of a husband who worshipped her, availed not, and she came home in the end to die; and Martha went back to her Tommy and the boy, to be separated no more while their lives lasted.
The great house was shut up and remained so for years. The squire was the last man in England to shirk his duties as landlord and to his people whom he loved, and who loved him as few great landowners are loved in England, but his grief was too great for even his great strength to bear up against, and it was long feared by his friends that he would never recover from his loss. But he was healed in time, and ten years later married again and returned to his home, to live there until nigh upon his ninetieth year. Long before this the Ierats had returned to their native village. When I last saw Martha, then in her eighty-second year, she gave me the following account of her Tommy’s end.
He continued shepherding up to the age of seventy-eight. One Sunday, early in the afternoon, when she was ill with an attack of influenza, he came home, and putting aside his crook said, “I’ve done work.”
“It’s early,” she replied, “but maybe you got the boy to mind the sheep for you.”
“I don’t mean I’ve done work for the day,” he returned. “I’ve done for good—I’ll not go with the flock no more.”
“What be saying?” she cried in sudden alarm. “Be you feeling bad—what be the matter?”
“No, I’m not bad,” he said. “I’m perfectly well, but I’ve done work;” and more than that he would not say.
She watched him anxiously but could see nothing wrong with him; his appetite was good, he smoked his pipe, and was cheerful.
Three days later she noticed that he had some difficulty in pulling on a stocking when dressing in the morning, and went to his assistance. He laughed and said, “Here’s a funny thing! You be ill and I be well, and you’ve got to help me put on a stocking!” and he laughed again.
After dinner that day he said he wanted a drink and would have a glass of beer. There was no beer in the house, and she asked him if he would have a cup of tea.
“Oh, yes, that’ll do very well,” he said, and she made it for him.
After drinking his cup of tea he got a footstool, and placing it at her feet sat down on it and rested his head on her knees; he remained a long time in this position so perfectly still that she at length bent over and felt and examined his face, only to discover that he was dead.
And that was the end of Tommy Ierat, the son of Ellen. He died, she said, like a baby that has been fed and falls asleep on its mother’s breast.