Often the two friends stood silent for a long while; they were silent now. The summer evening had grown very still. Perhaps Mr. Bridle’s pond helped to make things cold. Sometimes a heavy dampness rose up from the pond, and circled slowly about Joseph’s field. The fog crept now around the little mound where the friends stood. It rose steadily, and they breathed its clammy moisture. It was a shroud come to envelop them.
The mist rose higher; only the top of the great elm escaped its enveloping folds. Bridle wished himself that tall tree. The tree had never known a woman’s love. It had neither known Love nor Death.
Mr. Solly was the first to speak. Since he had seen Winnie Huddy teasing Susie, he had not said one word. Now he sighed heavily.
“Spring cabbages should never be planted,” he said mournfully. “They are too pretty to be good. Their outer leaves are deceitful; who can know what there is underneath? A round, well-grown field beet is a harmless thing,” continued Solly, “there is nothing hidden about it. Even the red variety is no fraud, and the yellow ones are not painted. A white turnip, too, is very proper for the pot; it can be boiled until it is tender, and then placed in the marriage bed, in a dish with mutton and a well-steamed carrot.
“A turnip only grows; it has implanted in its nature a proper decorum. There is pretty Susie; she would make any man a good wife. But I ought to have shut my eyes and never have looked at Winnie Huddy.
“She may like nuts. One never knows what a small cabbage does like. Often it has no heart. It develops lying leaves. You may think that they enclose a plump heart, you expect a fine dinner on Whitsunday, but you are sure to be sadly disappointed. You squeeze the leaves, and there is nothing inside. Your dinner vanishes.
“But that is not all that happens—the cabbage laughs at you. No one likes to be mocked by a vegetable.”
Mr. Solly became very thoughtful. He had never expected to find danger in a Dodder lane. Had he planted his nut-trees thick enough? What had made him look at Winnie? He knew Love was very cunning; one has to be very wide-awake to keep a god out. If he cannot get in at the front, he will try the back door.
Mr. Solly felt in his pocket for the key of his garden gate. He was always afraid that an unlucky day might come when he would forget to lock his gate, and that Love—in the habit of a young maid—would find a way into his house. He trusted to his wall of nut-bushes, and to the garden gate, to keep out the foe. He never locked his cottage door. He thought it of no use to do that, for, when Love knocks so near, all doors must open. But with Love outside his grove, Solly felt safe.
Mr. Solly found the key in his pocket.
Joe Bridle said nothing; ugly doubts had entered his head. Did Susie really care for him? Had he a rival in John Death? Might there be others too, he wished to know. That same day, he had seen James Dawe speak to Mr. Mere—and those two did not usually address one another. Was there an evil plot being made to take Susie away from him? He wished to know.
In the lane, on their way to Joseph’s house, he asked a favour of Mr. Solly. He begged him to go to the Inn that evening. He asked this favour of his friend because he wished to know what was being said about Susie. He had heard an unpleasant whisper that James Dawe intended to sell his girl to Farmer Mere, as his wife. Joe wished to know whether there was any truth in this report. If he visited the Inn—an unusual thing for him to do—he knew that no one would mention the matter. All tongues would be tied, for all Dodder knew that Joe Bridle looked upon Susie as his own sweetheart.
Solly promised to go. He was aware that a Sunday evening was a fine time for gossip, and that at the Inn everything would be talked of.
Besides serving his friend, Solly had another reason for wishing to go to the Inn. There was something in the look of Winnie Huddy that made him, for the first time in his life, doubt the strength of his fortification. He knew Love to be a savage—the very worst of them—and Winnie had smiled at him. He feared her, but he might forget her at the Inn. Mr. Solly liked gin.
The evening mist, rising up from Bridle’s pond, had thickened. All Dodder lay hid in a bath of white vapour, only Madder Hill raised itself above the cloud. They reached Joseph’s cottage without being seen by any one, and were surprised, while still in the garden, to hear merry sounds in the parlour. Besides Miss Sarah Bridle, some one else was there.
Joseph was astonished. He had never heard his aunt laugh before; she had only worked. Thinking of herself as only a beast of burden, she had laboured like one; she did all with patience, she served a good master. The parlour was an oasis, the kitchen a small grove of palms, the pantry a caravanserai. The passage between these places was a sandy desert, the bedrooms a plateau upon a mountain.
Sarah would labour with her head bowed. Only when she took the clothes from the garden-line would she raise herself a little. Then it would seem to her that some one called her by name, and she, being frightened, would hurry indoors again.
Joe Bridle waited in the garden, near to the parlour window, and wondered what could have happened to his aunt. Had she become worse, more crazed, or had she—by some strange fancy—recovered her senses? Joe Bridle and Mr. Solly waited and listened.
Sarah’s laughter had ceased, but instead of laughing, she now made low sounds of delight—from the sofa. Evidently some kind of amusement was being enacted there that pleased Sarah.
Hearing these sounds, Mr. Solly began to smile. From suchlike folly his nut-bushes prevented him; being wise himself, he was pleased to hear that others could still be fools. Mr. Solly went softly to the window and peeped in. What he saw going on made him nod his head violently, and wink back at Joe. Mr. Solly had his own ideas about medicine. He believed that a learned doctor was performing a necessary cure upon Miss Bridle. He advised Joe to wait a few moments before he interrupted the cure.
Joe, who had not gone to the window, was rather alarmed; he did not know who was indoors with his aunt and felt anxious. But Mr. Solly assured him that nothing unnatural was happening in the parlour.
After waiting a few moments, Joe Bridle and Mr. Solly entered the house, Mr. Solly observing as he went in, that the best way to preserve a good swede was to put it in a grave.
Inside the parlour they found Sarah, resting contentedly upon the sofa, and smoothing her skirts. John Death was sitting next to her, with his arm round her, and was asking her to take him to Bagdad. He informed her, proudly, that he believed that General Gordon was not the only one who could ride a camel.
Death was in the highest spirits, and Sarah looked at him lovingly. Mr. Solly shook hands with them both in high glee. He called Death “doctor.”
“My dear doctor,” he said, “your treatment has been excellent; no king’s physician could have acted with more propriety. You doctors are knowing fellows. But perhaps you have been in practice for some while.”
“Only with Daisy Huddy,” replied John, a little disappointedly.
Sarah blushed and looked affectionately at her nephew, who was delighted to see her looking so different.
“I declare,” she said joyfully, “that Mr. Solly was not so very much mistaken in thinking that I am a woman, and no nut-tree. Mr. Death could never have behaved so lovingly to me, had I been a mere bush. Neither would he have liked me so well, had I been a camel.”
“I must grow my trees higher,” cried Solly, in alarm.
Miss Bridle smoothed her frock, blushed coyly, and invited Death to tea.
But John Death excused himself and withdrew.