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<h2> CHAPTER XXIII </h2>
<h3> ISAAC'S CHILDREN </h3>
<blockquote>
Isaac Bawcombe's family—The youngest son—Caleb
goes to seek David at Wilton sheep-fair—Martha, the
eldest daughter—Her beauty—She marries Shepherd
Ierat—The name of Ierat—Story of Ellen
Ierat—The Ierats go to Somerset—Martha and the
lady of the manor—Martha's travels—Her mistress
dies—Return to Winterbourne Bishop—Shepherd
Ierat's end
</blockquote>
<p>Caleb was one of five, the middle one, with a brother and
sister older and a brother and sister younger than
himself—a symmetrical family. I have already written
incidentally of the elder brother and the youngest sister,
and in this chapter will complete the history of Isaac's
children by giving an account of the eldest sister and
youngest brother.</p>
<p>The brother was David, the hot-tempered young shepherd who
killed his dog Monk, and who afterwards followed his brother
to Warminster. In spite of his temper and "want of sense"
Caleb was deeply attached to him, and when as an old man his
shepherding days were finished he followed his wife to their
new home, he grieved at being so far removed from his
favourite brother. For some time he managed to make the
journey to visit him once a year. Not to his home near
Warminster, but to Wilton, at the time of the great annual
sheep-fair held on 12th September. From his cottage he would
go by the carrier's cart to the nearest town, and thence by
rail with one or two changes by Salisbury to Wilton.</p>
<p>After I became acquainted with Caleb he was ill and not
likely to recover, and for over two years could not get
about. During all this time he spoke often to me of his
brother and wished he could see him. I wondered why he did
not write; but he would not, nor would the other. These
people of the older generation do not write to each other;
years are allowed to pass without tidings, and they wonder
and wish and talk of this and that absent member of the
family, trusting it is well with them, but to write a letter
never enters into their minds.</p>
<p>At last Caleb began to mend and determined to go again to
Wilton sheep-fair to look for his beloved brother; to
Warminster he could not go; it was too far. September the
12th saw him once more at the old meeting-place, painfully
making his slow way to that part of the ground where Shepherd
David Bawcombe was accustomed to put his sheep. But he was
not there. "I be here too soon," said Caleb, and sat himself
patiently down to wait, but hours passed and David did not
appear, so he got up and made his way about the fair in
search of him, but couldn't find 'n. Returning to the old
spot he got into conversation with two young shepherds and
told them he was waiting for his brother who always put his
sheep in that part. "What be his name?" they asked, and when
he gave it they looked at one another and were silent. Then
one of them said, "Be you Shepherd Caleb Bawcombe?" and when
he had answered them the other said, "You'll not see your
brother at Wilton to-day. We've come from Doveton, and knew
he. You'll not see your brother no more. He be dead these two
years."</p>
<p>Caleb thanked them for telling him, and got up and went his
way very quietly, and got back that night to his cottage. He
was very tired, said his wife; he wouldn't eat and he
wouldn't talk. Many days passed and he still sat in his
corner and brooded, until the wife was angry and said she
never knowed a man make so great a trouble over losing a
brother. 'Twas not like losing a wife or a son, she said; but
he answered not a word, and it was many weeks before that
dreadful sadness began to wear off, and he could talk
cheerfully once more of his old life in the village.</p>
<p>Of the sister, Martha, there is much more to say; her life
was an eventful one as lives go in this quiet downland
country, and she was, moreover, distinguished above the
others of the family by her beauty and vivacity. I only knew
her when her age was over eighty, in her native village where
her life ended some time ago, but even at that age there was
something of her beauty left and a good deal of her charm.
She had a good figure still and was of a good height; and had
dark, fine eyes, clear, dark, unwrinkled skin, a finely
shaped face, and her grey hair, once black, was very
abundant. Her manner, too, was very engaging. At the age of
twenty-five she married a shepherd named Thomas Ierat—a
surname I had not heard before and which made me wonder where
were the Ierats in Wiltshire that in all my rambles among the
downland villages I had never come across them, not even in
the churchyards. Nobody knew—there were no Ierats
except Martha Ierat, the widow, of Winterbourne Bishop and
her son—nobody had ever heard of any other family of
the name. I began to doubt that there ever had been such a
name until quite recently when, on going over an old downland
village church, the rector took me out to show me "a strange
name" on a tablet let into the wall of the building outside.
The name was Ierat and the date the seventeenth century. He
had never seen the name excepting on that tablet. Who, then,
was Martha's husband? It was a queer story which she would
never have told me, but I had it from her brother and his
wife.</p>
<p>A generation before that of Martha, at a farm in the village
of Bower Chalk on the Ebble, there was a girl named Ellen
Ierat employed as a dairymaid. She was not a native of the
village, and if her parentage and place of birth were ever
known they have long passed out of memory. She was a
good-looking, nice-tempered girl, and was much liked by her
master and mistress, so that after she had been about two
years in their service it came as a great shock to find that
she was in the family way. The shock was all the greater when
the fresh discovery was made one day that another unmarried
woman in the house, who was also a valued servant, was in the
same condition. The two unhappy women had kept their secret
from every one except from each other until it could be kept
no longer, and they consulted together and determined to
confess it to their mistress and abide the consequences.</p>
<p>Who were the men? was the first question asked There was only
one—Robert Coombe, the shepherd, who lived at the
farm-house, a slow, silent, almost inarticulate man, with a
round head and flaxen hair; a bachelor of whom people were
accustomed to say that he would never marry because no woman
would have such a stolid, dull-witted fellow for a husband.
But he was a good shepherd and had been many years on the
farm, and it was altogether a terrible business. Forthwith
the farmer got out his horse and rode to the downs to have it
out with the unconscionable wretch who had brought that shame
and trouble on them. He found him sitting on the turf eating
his midday bread and bacon, with a can of cold tea at his
side, and getting off his horse he went up to him and damned
him for a scoundrel and abused him until he had no words
left, then told his shepherd that he must choose between the
two women and marry at once, so as to make an honest woman of
one of the two poor fools; either he must do that or quit the
farm forthwith.</p>
<p>Coombe heard in silence and without a change in his
countenance, masticating his food the while and washing it
down with an occasional draught from his can, until he had
finished his meal; then taking his crook he got up, and
remarking that he would "think of it" went after his flock.</p>
<p>The farmer rode back cursing him for a clod; and in the
evening Coombe, after folding his flock, came in to give his
decision, and said he had thought of it and would take Jane
to wife. She was a good deal older than Ellen and not so
good-looking, but she belonged to the village and her people
were there, and everybody knowed who Jane was, an' she was an
old servant an' would be wanted on the farm. Ellen was a
stranger among them, and being only a dairymaid was of less
account than the other one.</p>
<p>So it was settled, and on the following morning Ellen, the
rejected, was told to take up her traps and walk.</p>
<p>What was she to do in her condition, no longer to be
concealed, alone and friendless in the world? She thought of
Mrs. Poole, an elderly woman of Winterbourne Bishop, whose
children were grown up and away from home, who when staying
at Bower Chalk some months before had taken a great liking
for Ellen, and when parting with her had kissed her and said:
"My dear, I lived among strangers too when I were a girl and
had no one of my own, and know what 'tis." That was all; but
there was nobody else, and she resolved to go to Mrs. Poole,
and so laden with her few belongings she set out to walk the
long miles over the downs to Winterbourne Bishop where she
had never been. It was far to walk in hot August weather when
she went that sad journey, and she rested at intervals in the
hot shade of a furze-bush, haunted all day by the miserable
fear that the woman she sought, of whom she knew so little,
would probably harden her heart and close her door against
her. But the good woman took compassion on her and gave her
shelter in her poor cottage, and kept her till her child was
born, in spite of all the women's bitter tongues. And in the
village where she had found refuge she remained to the end of
her life, without a home of her own, but always in a room or
two with her boy in some poor person's cottage. Her life was
hard but not unpeaceful, and the old people, all dead and
gone now, remembered Ellen as a very quiet, staid woman who
worked hard for a living, sometimes at the wash-tub, but
mostly in the fields, haymaking and harvesting and at other
times weeding, or collecting flints, or with a spud or sickle
extirpating thistles in the pasture-land. She worked alone or
with other poor women, but with the men she had no
friendships; the sharpest women's eyes in the village could
see no fault in her in this respect; if it had not been so,
if she had talked pleasantly with them and smiled when
addressed by them, her life would have been made a burden to
her. She would have been often asked who her brat's father
was. The dreadful experience of that day, when she had been
cast out and was alone in the world, when, burdened with her
unborn child, she had walked over the downs in the hot August
weather, in anguish of apprehension, had sunk into her soul.
Her very nature was changed, and in a man's presence her
blood seemed frozen, and if spoken to she answered in
monosyllables with her eyes on the earth. This was noted,
with the result that all the village women were her good
friends; they never reminded her of her fall, and when she
died still young they grieved for her and befriended the
little orphan boy she had left on their hands.</p>
<p>He was then about eleven years old, and was a stout little
fellow with a round head and flaxen hair like his father; but
he was not so stolid and not like him in character; at all
events his old widow in speaking of him to me said that never
in all his life did he do one unkind or unjust thing. He came
from a long line of shepherds, and shepherding was perhaps
almost instinctive in him; from his earliest boyhood the
tremulous bleating of the sheep and half-muffled clink of the
copper bells and the sharp bark of the sheep-dog had a
strange attraction for him. He was always ready when a boy
was wanted to take charge of a flock during a temporary
absence of the shepherd, and eventually, when only about
fifteen, he was engaged as under-shepherd, and for the rest
of his life shepherding was his trade.</p>
<p>His marriage to Martha Bawcombe came as a surprise to the
village, for though no one had any fault to find with Tommy
Ierat there was a slur on him, and Martha, who was the finest
girl in the place, might, it was thought, have looked for
some one better. But Martha had always liked Tommy; they were
of the same age and had been playmates in their childhood;
growing up together their childish affection had turned to
love, and after they had waited some years and Tommy had a
cottage and seven shillings a week, Isaac and his wife gave
their consent and they were married. Still they felt hurt at
being discussed in this way by the villagers, so that when
Ierat was offered a place as shepherd at a distance from
home, where his family history was not known, he was glad to
take it and his wife to go with him, about a month after her
child was born.</p>
<p>The new place was in Somerset, thirty-five to forty miles
from their native village, and Ierat as shepherd at the
manor-house farm on a large estate would have better wages
than he had ever had before and a nice cottage to live in.
Martha was delighted with her new home—the cottage, the
entire village, the great park and mansion close by, all made
it seem like paradise to her. Better than everything was the
pleasant welcome she received from the villagers, who looked
in to make her acquaintance and seemed very much taken with
her appearance and nice, friendly manner. They were all eager
to tell her about the squire and his lady, who were young,
and of how great an interest they took in their people and
how much they did for them and how they were loved by
everybody on the estate.</p>
<p>It happens, oddly enough, that I became acquainted with this
same man, the squire, over fifty years after the events I am
relating, when he was past eighty. This acquaintance came
about by means of a letter he wrote me in reference to the
habits of a bird or some such small matter, a way in which I
have become acquainted with scores—perhaps I should say
hundreds—of persons in many parts of the country. He
was a very fine man, the head of an old and distinguished
county family; an ideal squire, and one of the few large
landowners I have had the happiness to meet who was not
devoted to that utterly selfish and degraded form of sport
which consists in the annual rearing and subsequent slaughter
of a host of pheasants.</p>
<p>Now when Martha was entertaining half a dozen of her new
neighbours who had come in to see her, and exhibited her baby
to them and then proceeded to suckle it, they looked at one
another and laughed, and one said, "Just you wait till the
lady at the mansion sees 'ee—she'll soon want 'ee to
nurse her little one."</p>
<p>What did they mean? They told her that the great lady was a
mother too, and had a little sickly baby and wanted a nurse
for it, but couldn't find a woman to please her.</p>
<p>Martha fired up at that. Did they imagine, she asked, that
any great lady in the world with all her gold could tempt her
to leave her own darling to nurse another woman's? She would
not do such a thing—she would rather leave the place
than submit to it. But she didn't believe it—they had
only said that to tease and frighten her!</p>
<p>They laughed again, looking admiringly at her as she stood
before them with sparkling eyes, flushed cheeks, and fine
full bust, and only answered, "Just you wait, my dear, till
she sees 'ee."</p>
<p>And very soon the lady did see her. The people at the manor
were strict in their religious observances, and it had been
impressed on Martha that she had better attend at morning
service on her first Sunday, and a girl was found by one of
her neighbours to look after the baby in the meantime. And so
when Sunday came she dressed herself in her best clothes and
went to church with the others. The service over, the squire
and his wife came out first and were standing in the path
exchanging greetings with their friends; then as the others
came out with Martha in the midst of the crowd the lady
turned and fixed her eyes on her, and suddenly stepping out
from the group she stopped Martha and said, "Who are
you?—I don't remember your face."</p>
<p>"No, ma'am," said Martha, blushing and curtsying. "I be the
new shepherd's wife at the manor-house farm—we've only
been here a few days."</p>
<p>The other then said she had heard of her and that she was
nursing her child, and she then told Martha to go to the
mansion that afternoon as she had something to say to her.</p>
<p>The poor young mother went in fear and trembling, trying to
stiffen herself against the expected blandishments.</p>
<p>Then followed the fateful interview. The lady was satisfied
that she had got hold of the right person at last—the
one in the world who would be able to save her precious
little one "from to die," the poor pining infant on whose
frail little life so much depended! She would feed it from
her full, healthy breasts and give it something of her own
abounding, splendid life. Martha's own baby would do very
well—there was nothing the matter with it, and it would
flourish on "the bottle" or anything else, no matter what.
All she had to do was to go back to her cottage and make the
necessary arrangements, then come to stay at the mansion.</p>
<p>Martha refused, and the other smiled; then Martha pleaded and
cried and said she would never never leave her own child, and
as all that had no effect she was angry, and it came into her
mind that if the lady would get angry too she would be
ordered out and all would be over. But the lady wouldn't get
angry, for when Martha stormed she grew more gentle and spoke
tenderly and sweetly, but would still have it her own way,
until the poor young mother could stand it no longer, and so
rushed away in a great state of agitation to tell her husband
and ask him to help her against her enemy. But Tommy took the
lady's side, and his young wife hated him for it, and was in
despair and ready to snatch up her child and run away from
them all, when all at once a carriage appeared at the
cottage, and the great lady herself, followed by a nurse with
the sickly baby in her arms, came in. She had come, she said
very gently, almost pleadingly, to ask Martha to feed her
child once, and Martha was flattered and pleased at the
request, and took and fondled the infant in her arms, then
gave it suck at her beautiful breast. And when she had fed
the child, acting very tenderly towards it like a mother, her
visitor suddenly burst into tears, and taking Martha in her
arms she kissed her and pleaded with her again until she
could resist no more; and it was settled that she was to live
at the mansion and come once every day to the village to feed
her own child from the breast.</p>
<p>Martha's connexion with the people at the mansion did not end
when she had safely reared the sickly child. The lady had
become attached to her and wanted to have her always,
although Martha could not act again as wet nurse, for she had
no more children herself. And by and by when her mistress
lost her health after the birth of a third child and was
ordered abroad, she took Martha with her, and she passed a
whole year with her on the Continent, residing in France and
Italy. They came home again, but as the lady continued to
decline in health she travelled again, still taking Martha
with her, and they visited India and other distant countries,
including the Holy Land; but travel and wealth and all that
the greatest physicians in the world could do for her, and
the tender care of a husband who worshipped her, availed not,
and she came home in the end to die; and Martha went back to
her Tommy and the boy, to be separated no more while their
lives lasted.</p>
<p>The great house was shut up and remained so for years. The
squire was the last man in England to shirk his duties as
landlord and to his people whom he loved, and who loved him
as few great landowners are loved in England, but his grief
was too great for even his great strength to bear up against,
and it was long feared by his friends that he would never
recover from his loss. But he was healed in time, and ten
years later married again and returned to his home, to live
there until nigh upon his ninetieth year. Long before this
the Ierats had returned to their native village. When I last
saw Martha, then in her eighty-second year, she gave me the
following account of her Tommy's end.</p>
<p>He continued shepherding up to the age of seventy-eight. One
Sunday, early in the afternoon, when she was ill with an
attack of influenza, he came home, and putting aside his
crook said, "I've done work."</p>
<p>"It's early," she replied, "but maybe you got the boy to mind
the sheep for you."</p>
<p>"I don't mean I've done work for the day," he returned. "I've
done for good—I'll not go with the flock no more."</p>
<p>"What be saying?" she cried in sudden alarm. "Be you feeling
bad—what be the matter?"</p>
<p>"No, I'm not bad," he said. "I'm perfectly well, but I've
done work;" and more than that he would not say.</p>
<p>She watched him anxiously but could see nothing wrong with
him; his appetite was good, he smoked his pipe, and was
cheerful.</p>
<p>Three days later she noticed that he had some difficulty in
pulling on a stocking when dressing in the morning, and went
to his assistance. He laughed and said, "Here's a funny
thing! You be ill and I be well, and you've got to help me
put on a stocking!" and he laughed again.</p>
<p>After dinner that day he said he wanted a drink and would
have a glass of beer. There was no beer in the house, and she
asked him if he would have a cup of tea.</p>
<p>"Oh, yes, that'll do very well," he said, and she made it for
him.</p>
<p>After drinking his cup of tea he got a footstool, and placing
it at her feet sat down on it and rested his head on her
knees; he remained a long time in this position so perfectly
still that she at length bent over and felt and examined his
face, only to discover that he was dead.</p>
<p>And that was the end of Tommy Ierat, the son of Ellen. He
died, she said, like a baby that has been fed and falls
asleep on its mother's breast.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
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