THE BLACK PULLET.
“When will Mrs. Gillyflower come home?” asked the stranger.
“Oh, by nightfall.”
“Well, and you say the master will be home by sunsetting too. The shadows are stretching, lass, and the air a little sharp; the Squire will be a hungry man by the time he comes back. What have ye for his supper?”
It was the red round of beef, and potatoes — dinner and supper, all in one. “Come, we’ll give him a better supper than that — a bit of hot meat Go you and kill a fowl.”
The girl protested, in her broad north-country patois. ‘
“Go, Mall — do as I bid ye,” repeated the guest “She’ll be stark starin’ mad!” expostulated Mall.
“Go you and kill the fowl; I’ll take the blame myself; there shan’t a wry word fall on you.”
“But,” reasoned the girl, “it should a’ bin killed; it would be too soon to roast it.”
“He’ll not be home for three hours. Leave that to me. I’ll show you how to dress it — and he’ll say he never eat one half so good before. Go you — talk no more, but kill the fowl; and come back quick to me, and I’ll tell you what to do next.”
There was a cool high tone here that Mall, somehow, could not disobey.
Never was cooking so odd. So very strange, indeed, was the process that I had better describe it.
Mall, indeed, expostulated — sometimes in profound anxiety as to what would follow when Mrs. Gillyflower, having returned, discovered the unauthorized slaughter of the pullet — and then aghast at the astounding directions imposed by the damsel who had taken the command of the kitchen in the absence of old Martha. Sometimes Mall would stand agape, and gasp “Agoy!” or “By Jen!”
Sometimes, half frightened, she would look perplexed, in her face — thinking that their eccentric guest had gone stark daft — and sometimes bursting into irrepressible screams of laughter, till, as she said, she “clean kinkt wi’ laughin’!” She lost all power, for a time, either to resist or to obey.
This curious procedure took place, to make it odder still, not in the kitchen, but in the little field, close to the gate of the yard, under the trees, in the open air.
The imperious beauty there compelled Mall to scoop out a little hollow in the ground with a spade. In this she kindled a fire of peat and sticks. That dope, she ordered Mall, aiding herself with great solicitude, to twist a strong rope of straw.
The next step reduced Mall, with sheer convulsions of laughter, almost to a fainting condition. The bird, with all its feathers on, was wound up in this Straw-rope, so that nothing but a sort of ball of straw appeared. It was next covered up in the hot ashes, which had by this time accumulated in the hole, and the peat and wood fire was heaped up, round and upon it. After this she made Mall take the potatoes she had washed for boiling, and, instead of placing them in a pot, carry them out to the fire in the field; and there she buried them — one here, another there — in the embers, in serene contempt of Mall’s terrified expostulations and screams of laughter.
“And mind ye, I cook the dinner today; and if I see your potato-pot on the fire, I’ll break it with one whack of the poker; and ye’ll do just as I bid ye, neither more nor less, Mall Darrell.”
When these preparations were accomplished, the young lady’s solicitude seemed at an end, and she was able to converse on indifferent matters with her accustomed passion or levity.
She sat down on the grass near the fire, now a glowing, smouldering heap. She had the dog and the cat out to keep her company (for she loved pets), and the cage of the bullfinch on her knee; and to these companions she talked and whistled, while Mall made her more rational dispositions in the kitchen.
Then the girl would return to have a peep at the bonfire, and fall again into Shrieks of laughter. And the young priestess of this strange sacrifice would make her sit down on the grass beside her; and she would sing her a song, or tell her a story of a murder in Epping Forest, or of two horses and a tipsy dealer drowned one snowy night in a flooded ford, or of the woman’s ghost that was seen nursing and fondling the neglected child in the lonely tent. She grew into great spirits — wild spirits — beside this extemporized fire, and sang again and danced on the grass; and after a time, on a sudden, she grew sad, and she said:
“If we did right, Mall, we’d let that poor little bird go.” She had the cage again on her knee, by this time, and was looking, through the wires at the bird.
“Hoot, lass! I’s no sa awpy as firtle in any such lids. If Mrs. Gillyflower came home and tound her wee bird fleed — woe werth Mall! Be ma sang, she’d be stark beside hersel’!”
Mall, having seen the holocaust of the fowl, believed the strange girl capable of anything.
“I like pets — all my people do. I had a squirrel called ‘Jacka,’ and a green parrot; it died, pool little thing, and I buried it near Wyndale, in Derbyshire, under the middle tree of the three hawthorns that grow on the moor’s side, just at the turn of the brook. I was sick crying after it Lussha Lee had a pet fox, that frightened it, I think, and it died It would call me by my name; and it slept every day on its stick, after its dinner, not with its head under its wing, but just like an old gorgio, and its chin on its breast I’d have a parrot for a pet, or any outlandish bird that don’t live wild here; but these small things, when they see their companions and the green leaves, don’t you believe but their little hearts is sore — they’re looking for the old life? And, Mall, will ye miss me when I’m gone? I’ll be often thinking of ye all, and the pleasant fields of Haworth.”
“Ye’re no gangin’ yet, lass, and I’ll no greet till sorrow comes,” said Mall, heartily.
The stranger laughed kindly.
“Hark! — hear! The birds are all singing. The chimney shadow is away as far as Hazelden wolds; and Mrs. Gillyflower will be coming home again, and then the Squire. Is all ready, lass? Run and see, and trim the fire; the frost is coming, and all is ready here.”
And with the tip of her strong but tidy shoe she poked the edge of the ashes.
Mall had hardly returned, when Mrs. Gillyflower appeared; and her handmaid’s heart sunk, as she thought of the murdered pullet and the unboiled potatoes and saw Martha, who was not to be trifled with, descend from the taxcart before it reached the yard-gate, and cross the low’ stile, and stump over the sward towards the smouldering bonfire.
“Now mind, ye sid ye wod na let her flite me,” whispered Mall, in awful trepidation.
“Never you fear,” said the girl; and before Mrs. Gillyflower had quite reached them, the stranger called:
“I’m glad ye’re come home, ma’am; there has been sad doings. What do you think? Somebody has stolen the black pullet, Mrs. Gillyflower — what do ye think o’ that?”
“Stolen the black pullet!” echoed Mrs.
Gillyflower, corning to a stand-still, and looking herself as black as the pullet.
“Tell her it’s there — can’t ye?” whispered Mall, in her agony.
“Ay, burnt to a cinder; why, it’s all afire, ye fool, like a bit o’ peat!” whispered the stranger, scornfully.
“Ay! it’s gone — ay, the black pullet” (blacker than ever) she said, aside to Mall.
“And what’s the fire here for?” exclaimed Mrs. Gillyflower, breaking again into speech.
“We were terrible cold, ma’am.”
“And why not sit be the kitchen-fire — what’s the matter wi’ ye all?”
“Why, Mall let it out, and we were almost famished. The cat’s come out, and the dog, and the bird even.”
“La! But, ma’am— “ broke in Mall.
“And whaar’s the pittayties for supper?” gasped Mrs. Gillyflower, with her hand pugilistically raised, and a stamp of distraction. “Whaar’s the pittayties?”
“Well,” said the stranger, “I do suppose they’re where they were, for there’s none in the pot, though I told her she’d get into a row about them — I did.”
“Aw! la! Look at ye — weel!” broke out the betrayed Mall.
“The black pullet gone, and narra pittayta!” exclaimed the old lady, with both her open hands thrown back in distraction. “If I had a souple-jack in my hand, wouldn’t I ken whaar to lay it Don’t ye stand there ogglin’ like a gowk, ye strackle-brain’d scollops! Not a word out o’ yer head. I’ll hae nane o’ yer miff-maff here. Sarts! it’s bonny doins; fires out, and narra pittayta, and the best pou’t o’ the lot stole, and you sittin’ here croodlin’ in a scog! By my sang! it’s a good bevellin’ ye want, and if I had a widdy in my fist yer worse than nothin’. There’s the master cornin’, and wet and cold, and not a spark o’ fire in the study. If ever there was a rue-bargain, you’re ane; woe werth the day I saw yer foolish face! I can’t wait noo, but I’ll be talkin’ to ye i’ now.”
And with a florid complexion and angry brow away trotted she, to see after the Squire’s fire.
“He is coming — I see him down yonder by the hedge. See his flies, they’re caught in the bush,” said the stranger.
“Sit you here while I run in for the things.”
Away she ran, leaving Mall confounded and sore at the treatment she had received. And in a minute more she returned with two dishes and two tin covers, and a great knife and fork, and a huge cloth.
First from the glowing ashes forth came the potatoes, cased in their hard-baked skins, like roasted chestnuts; and well rubbed in the cloth and placed in the dish, did ever potatoes look so tempting?”
Mall began to feel happier. Next, in its thick black crust of burnt straw and feathers, emerged the fowl. Off came this crust, and never had Mall seen or dreamed of so savory and appetizing a dish as was now before her.
“By Jen!” gasped Mall Darrell, with a broad grin, and eyes jumping out of her head.
“Didn’t I tell you to do just as I bid you, and all would be well? And I told you to kill the black pullet because Mrs. Gillyflower was thinking this morning she’d a’ killed it, only she thought it would not a’ been a cold evening, but I knew better. Come, you bring in the pullet, and I’ll bring the potatoes, and ye’ll see how pleased she’ll be.”
And so she was, and forgave them both; and laughed and wondered, and wondered and laughed, and called the black-eyed stranger a “naughty pack;” and she told William the history of that eccentric cookery — how it was done in a bonfire, in a nook of the hedge, by the big ash-tree, under the open sky.
Nothing better was ever eaten: epicures would do well to try it