A SILENT LIFE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume X, Issue 16, 22 April 1893, Page 373

A SILENT LIFE.

(BY A VILLAGER ) Monday we buried a neighbour of mine. '• -I He was an old man and glad to go. I refeS/l member him young, before he was married ; he was one of the quietest of young men, even (JILWkJ ■* a < in this place, where we are given to silence, , and how he ever found the courage or the energy to keep company with a maid is more than many folks can understand. But for my part I have no doubt on the matter. It was she who kept company with him—l know she used to go and fetch him for a walk, and put her arm round his waist when they were leaning against the stile. She was always the better man of the two. He loved to be out of doors ; he never in all his life, I think, said a word that he wasn’t obliged to say, and in the fields you meet nobody and don’t need to speak, except for the shouting to the cows, a thing which any unlearned man could do. He was one of the first to be off to his work in the morning, and the last to go away in the evening. When he was dying, he would sit in the garden as long as he could crawl out there, and when he couldn’t leave his bed he would have the window open until his wife insisted on shutting it, because she said he would catch his death of cold. And he was fond of his beasts ; he might be comfortless enough with us, but he always seemed at home with them. And I believe they were fond of him, and would do more for him than they would for other people. His master used to say that there never was a better man on the farm for doctoring cattie. He seemed to know by nature what was the matter with them, and what would do them good. He had all sorts of medicines of his own invention ; he mayn’t have been a clever man in other things—his wife never thought much of him—but he understood cows.

After they had been married a while, and there were two or three children, his wife wasn’t contented any longer with the wages coming in. She was a proud kind of person ; she’d been in service where they kept a boy in buttons, and she knew how things ought to be. She wanted to have her children and her house smarter than her neighbours’, but the best manager can’t get much smartness out of thirteen shillings a week, without a house or garden. And she was cleverer than most of ns ; she thought of setting up a little shop. She did it, too ; there was a pound or so left in the savings bank from what she put there wben she was in service, and she had a second cousin, mairied to a man that kept a little shop in the town, who helped her. She started with some calico and sugar and reels of cotton, laid out in a little entry between her front door and her woodhouse, and after a twelvemonth she was able to have a bigger window put in and a signboard over, and her children were the finest in the village on Sundays. Her husband’s name was painted on the signboard, but it was liitle enough he had to do with the concern ; .she was so proud of it, though, that she would make excuses to go out and

look at it half a dozsn times a day. Theo she told him that he must give up his work on the farm and come to help her in the shop ; they could rent a garden, keep pigs, and do wonderfully well if she had a man about; and she would not have her children looked down upon by other people’s because their father wore a smock frock, and was a cowman. He did as she told him ; he always did, from the time when they first went courting. The farmer tried to make him think better of it, for he valued a man who was steady if he wasn’t over bright, and who had such a natural gift with animals. He even offered a rise of two shillings a week in wages, which was more than could have been expected. But my old neighbour was not to be won over ; he hadn’t obeyed his wife so long that he should have a mind of his own then. He listeued to all that the farmer had to say, just as solemn as he always was —I don’t believe any man ever heard him laugh—and he said • Yes ’ and ‘ No,’ and agreed with him in everything, but afterwards he gave notice again, and stuck to it. His master was an uncommon good master, he said, and he bad worked for the family ever since he could work at all ; be wasn’t going to work for anybody else, but lie must leave at the end of the week. I don’t think myself that he was ever the same man again. When a man’s lived out under the sky most of the time since he was a little chap of ten years old, it can't be an easy thing for him to spend his days in a house ; and for such a quiet man, no doubt it was a trial to be obliged to live in a shop, where women and children are constantly coming and going and there is a continual clatter. He seemed to grow old all at once ; up till then he was a young man, but soon after he left the farm his hair was growing grey, and we looked upon him as staid and middle aged. The shop went on flourishing; they kept the pigs, and he spent a good deal of his time with them. He learnt about killing and curing and the like, though he was mortal slow to learn, and his bacon was never as good as other people’s till his wife took it in hand ; then it was the best in the parish, and people sent from the town after it. Once even the duke’s people sent down for a side ; it is true that they never wanted any more, but the wife had that letter framed, and it is hanging in the front parlour now. After a while the cottage was needed altogether for the shop, and they went to live in the next house, with a brass knocker and a large garden behind. The children went into the town to school and to be apprenticed afterwards, and grew very fine, so that their father had less and less to do with them. He used to play with them of an evening, in his quiet way, when they were little, but now he did not understand their talk about their lessons and their fiiends.

The shop is a paying concern now, one of the best about here. And the front parlour is much newer and smarter than any of the rooms at the rectory, if it isn’t so big. But for many a day the master hasn’t been easily to be found about it. When I wanted to see him I have not gone when his bustling wife was talking to her customers in the shop or to the side door with the brass knocker—l should not feel comfortable to go into the room with the red plush chairs and the antimacassars—l have stepped in by a back

gate into the garden and found him busy about there, if you could ever honestly say of such a slow man that be was busy. As his wife and chihlieu grew livelier and richer, he grew more silent. He was always finding something to do that kept him away from them. How ami when he got his food we didn’t know, except that it was apart from them ; most likely the tidiness aod the new four-pronged forks frightened him, and he slunk off with his bit of bread and cheese, and ate it in comfort out in the open, just as he used to do iu the good old days when he worked on the farm. It was pitiful sometimes to see him look at his eldest girl. He was very fond of her when she was little, and he’d had more chance of nursing her than the others ; and now she was a busy ci entitle, uncommonly like her mother, dressing very fine and managing everybody ; she seemed to be a little ashamed of her father, because he was so dull. She was much too managing ever to marry, but the others mostly dropped off, marrying or setting up in business away from heie, and the old man missed them, though he’d had so little to do with them. He got greyer and more bent and slower than ever ; lie was a little deaf, and sometimes his wife and daughter had no patience with his stupidity. But he never said a word against them, and of course he was a trial to them. I think we neighbours noticed that he was failing long before they did. When at last people began to say to her that he looked very ill, his wife took him to the doctor, and he said that the old man wasn’t going to live long ; then we found out that our neighbour bad been suffering pain for a good while back, but he never thought of saying anything to anybody, more than his pony would. He just put up with it. I suppose he thought it was the dispensation of Providence, like the weather. It was too late to cure him then, and 1 don’t think he wanted to be cured. He broke up slowly, got weaker and weaker, till he couldn’t leave his bed, and then he grieved sorely. Our minister used to go and read to him, for they were chapel folks, and I suppose he listened ; he looked out at -the sky all the time, for he would lie facing the window, and he answered when he was obliged, and if they asked him many questions he went to sleep. And yet, though he was such a quiet man, it was astonishing how we all turned out to see him buried. Not that we don’t always take a great interest in funerals, for they don’t happen so often that we can afford to think little of them, but this time everybody in the parish felt sorry as if they’d lost a person that belonged to them. There was one little maid that wouldn’t be comforted when they told her that he would never come any more to bring her sweets and to kiss her ; but his wife was inclined to be vexed when she found out why they made no profits on the sugar-sticks lately. Everybody had a kind word to say of him that never said any sort of word, good or bad, of himself. It wasn’t possible, anyhow, to say a word against him ; we all felt kindly towards so poor-spirited a man ; and, indeed, the loudest of the preachers who tell us we are all desperate sinners would be puzzled to find out his desperate sins. Even the rector sent down a few Howers for his grave, though he takes no notice of Dissenters in general, and you would hardly believe how the village misses him.