At the place where the road from Carnaby Down ends in the main western highway that goes towards Bath there stands, or once stood, a strongly built stone cottage confronting, on the opposite side of the highroad, a large barn and some cattle stalls. A man named Cotton lived with his wife lonely in this place, their whole horizon bounded by the hedges and fences of their farm. His Christian name, for some unchristian reason, was Janifex, people called him Jan, possibly because it rhymed with his wife’s name, which was Ann. And Ann was a robust managing woman of five and thirty, childless, full of desolating cleanliness and kindly tyrannies, with no perceptions that were not determined by her domestic ambition, and no sympathies that could interfere with her diurnal energies whatever they might be. Jan was a mild husbandman, prematurely aged, with large teeth and, since “forty winters had besieged his brow,” but little hair. Sometimes one of the large teeth would drop out, leaving terrible gaps when he opened his mouth and turning his patient smile to a hideous leer. These evacuations, which were never restored, began with the death of Queen Victoria; throughout the reign[268] of her successor great events were punctuated by similar losses until at last Jan could masticate, in his staid old manner, only in one overworked corner of his mouth. He would rise of a morning throughout the moving year at five of the clock; having eaten his bread and drunk a mug of cocoa he would don a long white jacket and cross the road diagonally to the gate at the eastern corner of the sheds; these were capped by the bright figure of a golden cockerel, voiceless but useful, flaunting always to meet the challenge of the wind. Sometimes in his deliberate way Jan would lift his forlorn eyes in the direction of the road coming from the east, but he never turned to the other direction as that would have cost him a physical effort and bodily flexion had ceased years and years ago. Do roads ever run backward—leaps not forward the eye? As he unloosed the gate of the yard his great dog would lift its chained head from some sacks under a cart, and a peacock would stalk from the belt of pines that partly encircled the buildings. The man would greet them, saying “O, ah!” In the rickyard he would pause to release the fowls from their hut and watch them run to the stubbles or spurn the chaff with their claws as they ranged between the stacks. If the day were windy the chaff would fall back in clouds upon their bustling feathers, and that delighted his simple mind. It is difficult to account for his joy in this thing for though his heart was empty of cruelty it seemed to be empty of everything else. Then he would pass into the stalls[269] and with a rattle of can and churn the labour of the day was begun.
Thus he lived, with no temptations, and few desires except perhaps for milk puddings, which for some reason concealed in Ann’s thrifty bosom he was only occasionally permitted to enjoy. Whenever his wife thought kindly of him she would give him a piece of silver and he would traipse a mile in the evening, a mile along to the Huntsman’s Cup, and take a tankard of beer. On his return he would tell Ann of the things he had seen, the people he had met, and other events of his journey.
Once, in the time of spring, when buds were bursting along the hedge coverts and birds of harmony and swiftness had begun to roost in the wood, a blue-chinned Spaniard came to lodge at the farm for a few weeks. He was a labourer working at some particular contract upon the estate adjoining the Cottons’ holding, and he was accommodated with a bed and an abundance of room in a clean loft behind the house. With curious shoes upon his feet, blazing check trousers fitting tightly upon his thighs, a wrapper of pink silk around his neck, he was an astonishing figure in that withdrawn corner of the world. When the season chilled him a long black cloak with a hood for his head added a further strangeness. Juan da Costa was his name. He was slightly round-shouldered with an uncongenial squint in his eyes; though he used but few words of English his ways were beguiling; he sang very blithely shrill Spanish songs, and had a[270] pleasant courtesy of manner that presented a deal of attraction to the couple, particularly Ann, whose casual heart he reduced in a few hours to kindness, and in a few days, inexplicably perhaps, to a still warmer emotion—yes, even in the dull blankness of that mind some ghostly star could glimmer. From the hour of his arrival she was an altered woman although, with primitive subtlety the transition from passivity to passion was revealed only by one curious sign, and that was the spirit of her kindness evoked for the amiable Jan, who now fared mightily upon his favourite dishes.
Sometimes the Spaniard would follow Jan about the farm. “Grande!” he would say, gesturing with his arm to indicate the wide-rolling hills.
“O, ah!” Jan would reply, “there’s a heap o’ land in the open air.”
The Spaniard does not understand. He asks: “What?”
“O, ah!” Jan would echo.
But it was the cleanly buxom Ann to whom da Costa devoted himself. He brought home daily, though not ostensibly to her, a bunch of the primroses, a stick of snowbudded sallow, or a sprig of hazel hung with catkins, soft caressable things. He would hold the hazel up before Ann’s uncomprehending gaze and strike the lemon-coloured powder from the catkins on to the expectant adjacent buds, minute things with stiff female prongs, red like the eyes of the white rabbit which Ann kept in the orchard hutch.
One day Juan came home unexpectedly in mid-afternoon.[271] It was a cold dry day and he wore his black cloak and hood.
“See,” he cried, walking up to Ann, who greeted him with a smile; he held out to her a posy of white violets tied up with some blades of thick grass. She smelt them but said nothing. He pressed the violets to his lips and again held them out, this time to her lips. She took them from him and touched them with the front of her bodice while he watched her with delighted eyes.
“You ... give ... me ... something ... for ... los flores?”
“Piece a cake!” said Ann, moving towards the pantry door.
“Ah ... cake...!”
As she pulled open the door, still keeping a demure eye upon him, the violets fell out and down upon the floor, unseen by her. He rushed towards them with a cry of pain and a torrent of his strange language; picking them up he followed her into the pantry, a narrow place almost surrounded by shelves with pots of pickles and jam, plates, cups and jugs, a scrap of meat upon a trencher, a white bowl with cob nuts and a pair of iron crackers.
“See ... lost!” he cried shrilly as she turned to him. She was about to take them again when he stayed her with a whimsical gesture.
“Me ... me,” he said, and brushing her eyes with their soft perfume he unfastened the top button of her bodice while the woman stood motionless; then the second button, then the third. He turned the corners[272] inwards and tucked the flowers between her flesh and underlinen. They stood eyeing one another, breathing uneasily, but with a pretence of nonchalance. “Ah!” he said suddenly; before she could stop him he had seized a few nuts from the white bowl and holding open her bodice where the flowers rested he dropped the nuts into her warm bosom. “One ... two ... three!”
“Oh...!” screamed Ann mirthfully, shrinking from their tickling, but immediately she checked her laughter—she heard footsteps. Beating down the grasping arms of the Spaniard she darted out of the doorway and shut him in the pantry, just in time to meet Jan coming into the kitchen howling for a chain he required.
“What d’ye want?” said Ann.
“That chain for the well-head, gal, it’s hanging in the pantry.” He moved to the door.
“Tain’t,” said Ann barring his way. “It’s in the barn. I took it there yesterday, on the oats it is, you’ll find it, clear off with your dirty boots.” She “hooshed” him off much as she “hooshed” the hens out of the garden. Immediately he was gone she pulled open the pantry door and was confronted by the Spaniard holding a long clasp knife in his raised hand. On seeing her he just smiled, threw down the knife and took the bewildered woman into his arms.
“Wait, wait,” she whispered, and breaking from him she seized a chain from a hook and ran out after her husband with it, holding up a finger of warning to the Spaniard as she brushed past him. She came back[273] panting, having made some sort of explanation to Jan; entering the kitchen quietly she found the Spaniard’s cloak lying upon the table; the door of the pantry was shut and he had apparently gone back there to await her. Ann moved on tiptoe round the table; picking up the cloak she enveloped herself in it and pulled the hood over her head. Having glanced with caution through the front window to the farmyard, she coughed and shuffled her feet on the flags. The door of the pantry moved slowly open; the piercing ardour of his glance did not abash her, but her curious appearance in his cloak moved his shrill laughter. As he approached her she seized his wrists and drew him to the door that led into the orchard at the back of the house; she opened it and pushed him out, saying, “Go on, go on.” She then locked the door against him. He walked up and down outside the window making lewd signs to her. He dared not call out for fear of attracting attention from the farmyard in............