St. Cuthbert's tower

Rishton Hall Farm was let at last. Lord Stannington had had it on his hands a long time, and had offered it at a lower and ever lower rent. It was an open secret that John Oldshaw, who had a long lease of Lower Rishton Farm at the other end of the village, had expected the Rishton Hall lease to drop into his hands at last for a very trifling rent indeed. He was a careful man; the property under his hands throve; and he was fond of saying that his lordship would make a better bargain by letting him have the land at £10 an acre than by letting another man have it at £15. However, Lord Stannington had apparently thought otherwise; at any rate, when a stranger appeared upon the scene and offered him a fair rent for the land without any haggling, they came to terms without delay, and John Oldshaw found that his hoped-for bargain had escaped him.

This West Riding farmer was not a nice person to deal with when he was disappointed. He drove over to Sheffield to the agent’s office, and stamped into that gentleman’s presence, his square, heavy face purple with ill-suppressed rage.

“Na then, Maister Garrett, be pleased to tell mah if yender’s true as Ah hear, that Rishton Hall Farm’s let to a stranger?” he bellowed, thumping the table with his broad fist, and glaring at the agent with the unreasoning fierceness of an angry bull.

Mr. Garrett was a slight, fair man of uncertain age, whose light eyes were accustomed, by long practice, to read men pretty accurately.

“Quite true, Mr. Oldshaw,” he answered, civilly, with imperturbable coolness. “It was let a fortnight ago; and the new tenant comes in--let me see--” referring to his papers--“on the 16th; this day week in fact.”

“And dost tha’ knaw, Maister Garrett, that Ah’re had ma mahnd set on Rishton Hall Farm for this twelvemonth and mair?”

“How could we know it, Mr. Oldshaw, since the farm’s been in the market more than twice that time, and we have never had any intimation from you of a wish for it?”

“We Yarkshiremen doan’t do thing’s in a hurry. But every mon in t’ village knawed Ah’d set ma heeart on t’ farm, and noo Ah’m to be t’ laughin’-stock o’ a’ t’ feeals i’ t’ coontry, and Rishton Farm let ower ma yead to a stranger as nawbody’s ever heeard on!”

And the farmer gave an apoplectic snort of malignant anger.

“Oh, but that is not the case, Mr. Oldshaw,” said the agent as quietly as ever; “Mr. Denison, the gentleman who has taken the farm, is a friend of friends of his lordship, and in every way a tenant of the most desirable kind.”

John Oldshaw calmed down suddenly, and into his small, bloodshot blue eyes there came a satisfied twinkle.

“A gentleman, ye say. A gentleman’s got the farm!” in a tone of the deepest contempt. “Thank ye, Maister Garrett, Ah’m quite satisfied. It’s not for me to grumble at his lordship, then. Ah can pity him. The’ never was t’ gentleman barn could do any good at farming, and if a gentleman barn’s got Rishton Hall Farm, all t’ ill I wish his lordship is--may t’ gentleman barn stick to’s bargain.”

And with these words, uttered in a tone of fierce triumph, the farmer, who had not removed his hat on entering the office, turned and stalked out with every appearance of enjoying, as he had intimated, a complete revenge.

The village of Rishton boasted two inns, both of the most unpretending kind. The larger and more important of these was the Chequers, a stone building of the simplest kind of architecture, to which were attached numerous small outbuildings, forming three sides of a quadrangle for Mr. Tew’s gig and Mrs. Tew’s hens. The Chequers stood just outside the gate of Rishton Hall Farm, and its windows commanded the approach from Matherham, the nearest market town, which was three miles away. On the 16th of January, the day of the expected arrival of the new tenant of Rishton Hall, John Oldshaw took up his stand at one of the inn windows, watching with malevolent eyes for the approach of his rival. It was a bitterly cold day, grey overhead and black under foot; and the frost, which had held for three days, was growing harder as the afternoon wore on. John Oldshaw, with a sense of keen disappointment, had at last to acquiesce in the general belief that the new tenant would not come to-day.

“If he’s coom as far as Matherham he’ll stop there t’ night, Maister Oldshaw,” said Tew, the landlord, a small man, ruled by his wife. “T’ ground’s too slaippery for e’er a horse to stand on, lettin’ alone t’ road’s all hill and dale ’tween this and Matherham. Besides, t’ awd house is as bare as a barn; he’d never coom till he’d sent some stuff to put in it, and a coople o’ servants to set it to rights a bit.”

“Well, it ain’t ma way o’ doin’ things, to neame wan day for coomin’ and then to coom another,” said Oldshaw, contemptuously. “But, then, Ah’m naw gentleman, and my lord Stannington ’ll mighty soon wish as he could say same o’ t’ new tenant, Maister Tew.”

Mr. Tew could not afford to have an independent opinion in the presence of the great man of the village, with that miserable Cock and Bottle, not five hundred yards away, gaping for first place as the hostelry of the elite.

“It’s ta mooch to expect to get another tenant like you, Maister Oldshaw,” he said, discreetly.

It was by this time nearly four o’clock, and the grey day was already beginning to darken towards a black evening when Mat Oldshaw, the farmer’s oldest son, who had been sent by his father to the top of the hill on the look-out, re-entered the inn at a pace somewhat faster than his usual shambling gait. He was a tall, round-shouldered lad of about twenty, with fair hair and a weather-tanned face, whose heavy dulness was for the moment lightened by a passing gleam of great excitement.

“Weel, Mat, hast seean a ghoost?” asked his father.

“Naw, feyther; but there’s a cab coomin’ down t’ hill----”

“So Maister Gentleman’s coom, has he?” shouted the farmer, triumphantly; and he had seized his stout ash stick, and was making with ponderous strides for the door, as if with the intention of inflicting bodily chastisement on the insolent new comer, when his son interposed, blushing a deep brick-red to the roots of his hair.

“Eh, but feyther,” he stammered, turning the door handle uneasily, and dividing his glances between the floor, the window, and his father’s boorish face, “it’s na t’ gentleman; it’s nobbut twea lasses.”

After which admission, he fell to blushing more violently than before.

“Twea lasses?” echoed Oldshaw, incredulously.

“Hey, feyther. An’ wan o’ them’s got a feace lik’ a rose.”

“Feace lik’ a rose?” thundered the farmer. “Doan’t thee daze tha dull wits lookin’ at wenches’ faces, for Ah tell tha Ah’ll have na son o’ mine hangin’ aboot t’ Hall noo.”

“She bain’t na lass for t’ likes o’ mea, feyther; yon lass is a leady,” said the lad, simply.

If the stranger’s fair face had not, as his father suggested, dazed his dull wits already, the young man would surely have had the tact to restrain these rash words, which fanned the flame of his father’s coarse malevolence.

“A leady! A foine leady! ta foine for any son o’ mine? Ah tell thee, feeal, t’ day’ll coom when tha foine leady’ll wish she wur good enoo for t’ loikes o’ thee; and good enoo she shall never be--tha heears?”

Though the young man’s head was bent in a listening attitude, and he assented in the meekest of gruff voices, the father guessed that this deep attention was not all for his discourse, when the sound of hoofs and wheels on the hard ground outside attracted him to the outer door, which he reached in time to see a luggage-laden cab slowly descend the hill and pass the inn door, giving time for a look at the two young faces inside. Mistress and maid evidently; both bright, eager, and rather anxious. The former met full the surly stare of the farmer, and she drew back her head as if a blast of chilling wind had met her on her approach to her new home. The little maid, who had rosy cheeks and what one may call retrousse features, was less sensitive, and she looked out to resent this cold unwelcome with a contemptuous toss of the head.

“They’re reg’lar savages in these parts, Miss Olivia,” she said, in a slightly raised tone. “I only hope we may be uneaten by the time the master comes!”

The cab had passed the front of the inn, and was rounding the sharp turn which led up a slight ascent through the open farmyard gate, when suddenly, without any warning except a few rough jolts over the uneven ground, it turned over on its side, to the accompaniment of shrill screams from one female throat, and a less loud but more plaintive cry from the other. Mat Oldshaw, who was standing on the inn doorstep behind his father, made a spring forward to help them. But the elder man, with a movement quicker than one would have expected from his clumsy form and ponderous gait, grasped his arm with a violence which made the lad reel, and giving him a push back against the wall of the house, said, in a low, thick voice--

“Doan’t thoo meddle with what darn’t concern thee. Wheer there’s so mooch cry, there ain’t mooch hurt, tak’ ma word for’t.”

“Feyther!” said Mat, indignantly, entreatingly. Then he was dumb, for even through his not over-bright brains came a suspicion that this accident was perhaps not wholly unexpected by one of its witnesses.

As this brief scene passed between father and son, a man in a short frieze coat, knickerbockers, gaiters, and deer-stalker cap, who had quickened his pace down the hill into a run on seeing the accident, looked full into the faces of both men with a keen, shrewd expression as he dashed by.

“It’s parson Brander, o’ S’ Cuthbert’s, feyther. He heeard thee,” said the young man in a husky, awed whisper.

“An’ wha not? Ah’d loike to see sik as him say a word to me!” said the farmer, in a loud voice of boastful contempt.

And the attitudes respectively of father and son, the one of contemptuous disgust, the other of awestruck respect, represented the two views most commonly taken in the country-side of the Reverend Vernon Brander, vicar of Saint Cuthbert’s.

Before the last disdainful word was out of John Oldshaw’s mouth, the new comer had opened the cab door, and extricated the two girls from their unpleasant position. The maid was uppermost, but she was a little creature, and had probably inflicted far less inconvenience on her more massively built mistress than that young lady would have inflicted on her had their positions been reversed. Her rosy cheeks had lost their color, and from her forehead, which had been cut by the broken glass of the carriage window, blood was trickling down.