Gladys, the Reaper Part 2

'No parishes! I suppose that's the geography the vagabonds teach you?

Well you pay dear enough for your lessons. But I tell you what, Mary, you just go and tell 'em all to decamp this minute.'

'But the girl is too weak and ill.'

'Then send her to the Union, I say, and they are bound to forward her.'

'But a Sunday! and the House miles away! Oh, Davy, we really cannot do it to-day!'

'What with the Irish, and one charity and another, I declare there's no peace in life! Name o' goodness, 'oornan, why do you harbour such folk?

If the girl's too ill to go on with her gang, they must leave her at the Union, or else get the overseers to send for her.'

'Will you just go and look at her?'

'No, I 'ont, and that's plain speaking!'

Here the red face, and white night-cap and ta.s.sel, suddenly, disappeared amongst the bed-clothes.

Mrs Prothero considered a few minutes, and again left the room, and went to the barn. Here, all was confusion and consultation. They had tried to help Gladys to rise, and the girl could not stand.

A clamour of voices a.s.sailed Mrs Prothero, who was bewildered by the noise, and terrified at the remembrance of her husband.

'My good people, I don't know what to advise,' she said at last.

'She don't want to laive Carrmanthins.h.i.+re, my leddy.'

'We'll be ruined intirely if we stop till she's cured, yer leddys.h.i.+p!'

'Niver a frind in the worrld, yer honour.'

'Her mother and father, sisthers and brothers, all dead of the faver and the famine.'

'n.o.body left but her relations in Carrmarrthins.h.i.+re, and, maybe, they're all dead and buried, yer honour's glory.'

'And what'll we do wid her, poor sowl?'

Mrs Prothero was looking compa.s.sionately on the poor girl, whilst sentence upon sentence was poured into her ear; and as the death of her relation was mentioned, she fancied she perceived a movement in her seemingly impa.s.sive features. She opened her eyes, and looked at Mrs Prothero, who went to her, and seeing her lips move, knelt down by her side.

'Let them go, and send me to the workhouse, if you please, my lady,' she murmured.

Mrs Prothero once more left the barn, promising to return shortly, and, with trembling steps, again sought the apartment where her lord and master was reposing. A very decided snore met her ear. She stood by the bedside, and looked at the ta.s.sel, which was the only portion visible of her better half. She sat down on a chair; she got up again; she fussed about the room; she even opened the drawers and took out the Sunday attire of that Somnus before her. But nothing she could do would arouse him.

At last she gently touched the face. A louder snore was the only reply.

She gave a nervous push to the shoulder, and whispered into the bed-clothes, 'My dear.'

'Well, what now?' growled the justly irritated sleeper.

'My dear, I am very sorry, but the poor girl is too ill to move, and I really don't know what is to be done.'

'Upon my very deed, if you are not enough to provoke a saint!' broke out Mr Prothero, now fairly sitting up in bed. 'If you will encourage vagrants, get rid of 'em, and don't bother me. I'll tell you what it is, Mrs Prothero, if all of 'em are not off the farm before I'm up, I'll give 'em such a bit of my mind as 'll keep 'em away for the future; see if I don't.'

Mrs Prothero saw that her husband was redder in the face than usual, and she had a very great dread of putting him in a pa.s.sion; still she ventured one word more very meekly.

'But the girl, David?'

'What's the girl to you or me! we've a girl of our own, and half-a-dozen servant girls. We don't want any more. Send her to the Union.'

'How can we send her?'

'Let the rascally Irish manage that, 'tis no affair of mine; but if you bother me any more, I vow I'll take a whip and drive 'em, girl and all, off the premises.'

'Very well, David,' said Mrs Prothero, submissively, and with a heavy sigh: 'but if the girl should die?'

She walked across to the door, paused on the threshold, and glanced back; but there was no change in the rubicund face. She went into the pa.s.sage, and slowly closed the door, holding the handle in her hand for a few seconds as she did so. She walked deliberately down the pa.s.sage, pausing at each step. Before she was at the end of it, a loud voice reached her ear. She joyfully turned back and re-entered the bedroom.

'Yes, David?' she said quietly.

'If the girl is really bad, send her in the cart, or let her have a horse, if you like,' growled Mr Prothero. 'Only I do wish, mother, you would have nothing to do with them Irishers.'

'Thank you, my dear,' said the quiet little woman. 'Then if the rest go away, I may manage about the girl?'

'Do what you like, only get rid of 'em somehow.'

'Thank you.'

'Oh, you needn't thank me! I'd as soon send every one of 'em to jail as not; but I can't stand your puffing and sighing just as if they were all your own flesh and blood.'

'We're all the same flesh and blood, my dear.'

'I'd be uncommon sorry to think so. I've nothing but Welsh flesh and blood about me, and should be loath to have any other, Irish, Scotch, or English either.'

Mrs Prothero disappeared.

'That 'ooman 'ould wheedle the stone out of a mill,' continued the farmer, rubbing his eyes, and deliberately taking off his night-cap, 'and yet she don't ever seem to have her own way, and is as meek as Moses. She has wheedled me out of my Sunday nap, so I suppose I may as well get up. Hang the Iris.h.!.+ There is no getting rid of 'em. She's given 'em a night's lodging, and a supper for so many years, that they come and ask as if it was their due. But I'll put a stop to it, yet, in spite of her, or my name isn't David Prothero.'

When Mr Prothero came forth from his dormitory, he was in his very best Sunday attire. As he walked across the farm-yard in search of his wife, there was an air about him that seemed to say, 'I am monarch of all I survey.' Indeed, few monarchs are as independent, and proud of their independence, as David Prothero of Glanyravon.

He was a tall, muscular man, of some fifty years of age. He was well made, and of that easy, swinging gait, that is rather the teaching of Dame Nature, than of the dancing mistress or posture master. His face was full and ruddy, betokening health, spirits, and that choleric disposition to which his countrymen are said to incline, whether justly or unjustly is not for me to determine. His hair had a reddish tinge, and his whiskers were decidedly roseate, bearing still further testimony to a slight irrascibility of temperament. But he was a good-looking man, in spite of his hair and whiskers, which, as his wife admired them, are not to be despised.

'Where's your mistress, Sam?' roared Mr Prothero across the farm-yard.

'In the barn, master,' answered a man, who was eating bread and cheese on the gate, and swinging his legs pleasantly about.

'Tell her I want her,'

In answer to the summons, immediately appeared his worthy helpmate. She carried a very beautiful half-blown rose in her hand, which, as soon as she approached her husband, she placed carefully in his b.u.t.ton-hole, standing on tiptoe to perform this graceful Sunday morning service.

'Thank you, mother,' said Mr Prothero, smiling, and looking down complacently on his little wife.

What went with all his lecture upon the profligacy of Irish beggars? I suppose it was silently delivered from his breast to the rose, for none of it came to his lips, though it was quite ready to be heard when the rose made her appearance.