Authors: Yelena Kopylova
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