Farmer Tubbs’s Revenge.

Patea Mail, 26 May 1882, Page 2 (Supplement)

Farmer Tubbs’s Revenge.

A Story in Two Chapters.

CHAPTER I. “ Well, wife; what are yow goin’ to give us for dinner ?” asked Farmer Tubbs of his better-half, as he leaned back in his Windsor chair after a very substantial breakfast, the last traces of which he was just removing from his full lips with the back of his hand.

“Nivver yow mind, Thomas/’ she retorted sharply. She was a quick little brown-eyed woman, neat as a new pin, as even her most formidable critics acknowledged. “ Nivver you mind, Thomas. That’s nothing to yow ” “ 00, ay. Nothin’ to me, is it. Well, I shan’t get too fat on that, shall I ?” said he, as he rose with a low, rich chuckling laugh, that was resumed at intervals for the next five minutes, while he patted his kine, rubbed the pigs, and slyly administered to his favourite pony Daisy, the slice of bread that he had surreptitiously brought away from the breakfast table for him.

He knew that his dinner was safe enough; and his little joke was threadbare. Tom Tubbs loved his joke, but invention was not his forte, and when no novelty presented itself to his imagination, he could use his old jokes over again with perfect contentment and full enjoyment. Mrs Tubbs went through the little performance with a sense of relish, rather as delighting in her husband’s satisfaction than as bending her own mind to such frivolities.

This morning, when what she was going to provide was nothing to her husband, she had her husband’s favourite dinner to cook —a .duck and green peas, preceded by a hard dumpling, and followed by a currant and raspberry tart and a custard—and she had to keep a look out on the servant who, as Mrs. Tubbs would say, “if my eyes are off her for a moment goos and does summat wrong, or falls a-starin’ at nothin’ that wacant that it would rile yow in yowr best Sunday go-to-meetin’ dress to see her.”

Everything was done to a turn, and to the minute, and Mrs. Tubbs, with her kitchen apron thrown off, her face bright as the morning, with clean collar and cuffs, was in state to have served the banquet to a lord. But Farmer Tubbs had not come home. He had gone down to the water-meadows, and had not returned.

When the intimation was brought to Mrs. Tubbs —who was a great disciplinarian—she pressed her lips a little tighter, and sent her darning needle with increased vigour into the stockings; but she said nothing. When the little clock chimed the quarter past one, however, her backbone grew stiffer, and her lips began to move.

“ Now really, Thomas,” she said, apostrophising the absent farmer, “ yow don’t deserve to have a good dinner, that yow don’t. And I shouldn’t wonder if when yow come home, you’ve been spilin’ yowr appetite wi’ eatin’ raw turmuts or some such nastiness. But any sort o’ appetite is good enough when your wittles ia dried up, or flabby; only if I’d ha’ know’d the duck was goin’ to be spiled i’ this way, it shouldn’t ha’ been killed ; that’s all.”

But the darning went on, and the duck, under Martha’s superintendence, accommodated itself to circumstances as best it could; and Farmer Tubbs’s armchair stood yawning at the end of the table.

“ Martha, run up to the front bedroom, and look if yow can see yowr master cornin’, and mind yow don’t put them dirty hands —I don’t need to look at ’em to know they are dirty—don’t yow put ’em on the curtains,” called out Mrs. Tubbs.

Every step that Martha made on the stairs sounded like twenty 5 that was Martha’s way, A gentle-souled good girl, given to splutter over whatever she put her hands to. Unlike the sleeping princess, her breathings were heard in chambers far apart, but there was something so unusually heavy in her breathing on this occasion, something so like a smothered cry, that Mrs. Tubbs, listening, and talking to herself, as was her wont, said: “ What have yow been doin’ now, I wonder. Brukken summat, I warr’nt; fer, fer an active, willin’ gal, yow are the clumsiet i’ yowr fingers that ever I come across. Ah,” she went on as Martha delayed, “ yow don’t like to come and tell me what yow ha’ done, I’ll go bail. And I don’t wonder at it. But yow’ll ha’ to do it, my gal, and yow may as well come at once.” But Martha did not come; her longdrawn breathings were heard still, but there was no movement. “ Come along, Martha,” called Mrs. Tubbs. “If yow can’t see him, it’s no use waitin’; come along, and get on wi’ yowr work,”

There was no response, and Mrs. Tubbs’s fears were strongly excited. She had an old Worcester punch-bowl, which she knew to be of great money value, and which was of far more than money value to her. It was filled with dried rose-leaves; and placed in her spare bedroom, and now the thought flashed on her mind that Martha had broken this bowl, and dared not come to make confession. I don’t suppose she had ever heard of Othello, but with her as with him, “ once to be in doubt was ence to be resolved.” Hastening to the chamber, her first glance was at the bowl, which stood in its usual place, intact; but, to her horror and dismay, there stood Martha at the window, each black hand clutched into a spotless dimity curtain, and so intent on what she saw out of the window that Mrs. Tubbs’s approach was unheeded. She was seriously displeased, and it was characteristic of her that when she was so her manner lost its asperity, and her rebuke was grave and dignified. “ I thought I could ha’ trusted yow better,” she said ; “ come away from the window, Martha.” Martha took no heed; but as her mistress moved across the room she clutched the curtains and drew them across the window, exclaiming : “ Don’t look, missis! don’t look!”

Firmly, but gently, Mrs. Tubbs put her aside, and drew back the soiled curtains ; and what she saw, as she looked out, blanched her face with dread. Over the home-field came six men, bearing a something, covered up, ©n a gate. “ Oh, missis, missis, come away 1” cried the poor girl. *• Don’t look at it, missis j it’ll kill ye !” “ Foolish child 1” said Mrs. Tubbs; “ don’t yow be feared for me. If I don’t know all, how can I get what’s wanted? Go now, get out two or three blankets and take ’em down to the parlour and put ’em on the sofy; see that there’s plenty of hot water, and then tell Jim to take Daisy and ride as quick as he can and ask Dr. Laver to come. Tell him to wait a moment at the side gate to see if I have any message to send. Steady and quick, there’s a good girl.”

All this was said with white lips and colourless face, but with a voice in which there was no tremor. The men with their burden were hesitating; she saw it, divined the reason, and moved out swiftly that there might be no delay in breaking the news to her. It was little they had to tell Farmer Tubbs had been found in the watermeadows, apparently lifeless, with a severe wound on the back of his head.

After the first awkward pause, the men were voluble enough. They had no doubt that the master had been murdered ; but Mrs. Tubbs ascertained that the heart still beat, though faintly. Swiftly, noiselessly, and without hurry, she buckled to her work. A few words of instruction to Jim sufficed, and Daisy’s hoofs were clattering down the road, as though she knew that on her speed depended the preservation of the kindly hand from which she took her morning dainties.

Martha, in awed wonder, repressing, out of respect to her mistress a violent inclination to hysterics, stumbled about with wild and blundering good-will, moaning to herself in solitary places as much and as often as she could. The men drank their beer in the yard, and conversed in hoarse whispers; speculating about the “ coroner’s quest,” the motive of the murder, and other high matters; and slowly the breath of life rolled once more through the nostrils of the wounded man; and still by his side watched and tended, with mute lips, with vigilant eye, with ever-ready hand, the good wife, the very sunlight of whose being lay there hovering between life and death.

Farmer Tubbs did not die. Dr. Laver was quickly in attendance, and his verdict, waited for with hungry eyes and ears, was such as to give hope, if not to inspire confidence. Slowly consciousness came back, but Dr. Laver strictly forbade all questioning for a time, and curiosity had nothing to feed on but what the village constable was willing to disclose as the result of his investigations ; and this was little enough, the only additional item being that a spud had been found with clotted blood and hair upon it. The doctor had no hesitation in saying that the wound could not have been the result of a fall, and, in the long lush grass where he was found, there was nothing that could have accounted for even a slight wound. No one was known to bear him a grudge; he was popular with all classes in the village; his men were the envy of all in their own rank, for Farmer Tubbs was kindly and generous almost to a fault, homely and familiar, and though firm in all his business affairs, he was never harsh. Robbery could not have been the motive, for his watch and chain were still in his fob, and the money in his pocket was untouched.

The mystery was not cleared up when, with returning strength, his wife began to question him. He had just waked up one day from a long and healthy sleep, with a brighter and healthier look on his face than she had seen since he was brought home. “ Yow feel better now, don’t yow, Thomas ?” asked the bright-eyed little woman, who never left him. “ Ay, mother, that ay du ; ay’ll soon be purely agen now,” he answered. “ Du yow feel strong enough to talk a bit ?” she asked.

“ Ay, old gal,” he said, with a faint smile. “Ay can talk a little bit; not much. Ay ain’t much at talkin’ j that ain’ my line ; ay leave that to the wimmen.” “ Tell me how it happened. Who done it?” “ Done what P” he asked.

“ Half-murdered yow,” she replied curtly. “ Who ?” he said. “ Why nobody. Tow wimmen is alius tryin’ to make out some fine story or another. Tow marn’t make a fuss about a little thing. Ay hurt myself a failin’, ay suppose.” “That’s all nonsense, Thomas, and yow know it. There ain’t nothin’ for yow to hurt yowrself agen, down i’ the watermeadows.”

“ 00, ay; and how do yow think it happened then ?” he said. “ Why, some villain struck yow, Thomas, and it’s no use yow bein’ so soft-hearted as to try to screen him, fer if he’s above ground, I’ll have him,” she said with energy, “so yow may as well tell me all about it.”

“Ay can’t tell yow nothin’ more, mother,” he replied. “ Let ’un bide, let ’un bide. Yow moyther me, claverin’ about it. It makes my head queer.” Mrs. Tubbs was afraid of a relapse, if he were at all excited, and this hint was enough to tie her tongue for the present. With a little dissatisfied grunt she dropped the subject, only to resume it again with gathered energy and determination, when she could do so with safety.

But returning strength did not render the farmer more communicative. He would not allow others to question him; his wife’s remonstrances he endured, but he did not respond to them. “ Thomas,” she said one evening, when he had got downstairs again, and the motion of her tongue was not impeded by fear of bringing about a relapse, “ I nivver have worried yow about little things, nor yet about big ones neither, to my knowin’, but yow are that aggravatin’ about this tryin’ to murder yow that I can’t be quiet under it. I haven’t nivver kept no secret from yow, and you didn’t ought to keep none from me. If it’s suffin that shouldn’t go no furder, yow needn’t fear my blabbin’. I can hold my tongue as well as a man, and the men are most quiet because their ideas are slow and they’ve got nothin’ to say. But how yow came by that wound, I mean to know, and I will.” “ Yow’ve alius been a good wife to me, Mary,” he said slowly. “No man nivver had a better, and he needn’t want one. And I’ve nivver kept nothin’ from yow, onless it was somebody else’s secret more’n mine; and I nivver will. It wouldn’t do yow no good to know any more about this silly affair; but I couldn’t tell yow if I would; so there.” This was the nearest approach he had made to confessing that there was a secret. It was something gained, and Mrs. Tubbs was not the woman to leave the opportunity unimproved. “His secret more’n yours? Yes; I’ll warr’nt he’ll keep the secret safe enough, and he deserves to be hanged for it. I know what a soft forgivin’ feller yow are, Thomas; and I don’t say nothin’ agen forgiveness in a general way, but there’s no call to go and put the miller’s eye out.f If yow don’t care for yowrself, yow might think suthin’ o’ me ” —here the voice quavered a little—“ and ov other folks. There’s a lot of murderin’ and robbin’ about, and yow should help to put it down. Why the very time as yow was well-nigh killed in the meadow, there was a house broke into at Oakstead in broad daylight down beyond the want, and a man—old Leggat it was; yow mind him ?—beaten almost to death. Howsomever, they’ve caught him, and I hope he’ll get hanged for it, if the man dies as it's like he will.”

“Ay, ay,” said he, glad to turn the

' * This is an Essex proverbial saying when a things good in itself, defeats its end by extravagance.

conversation from his own case. ‘‘ to they’ve collared ’un, have they. Who was it?”

“ Nobody yow know; a feller named Ephraim Diggles, or some such name ; a shire man, I guess, There’s the whole account ov it in the paiper, ef yow like to read it.”

His hand trembled as he took the paper, for he had been, it seemed, excited by the conversation, though he had spoken so quietly, He held the paper now upside down, and without attempting to read it; but when the careful housewife left him to attend to her domestic affairs, he sobbed out, ‘‘ Oh, John, John ; you hev broken ray heart,” and with tearful eyes began to study the details of the crime.

It was but a brief item of police news, and read as follows: “The Murderous Assault and Burlabt at Oakstead. —Ephraim Diggles, a tramp, was charged on remand, with having, on the 23rd ultimo, broken into the dwel-ling-house of Simon Leggat, at Oakstead, with stealing five pounds nine shillings, a watch, and other articles, and with violently assaulting the said Simon Leggat. This brutal assault, of which we published a full account at the time, it will be remembered was committed between the hours of one and two p.m. on the 23rd ultimo. The prisoner was found on the following day sleeping in a barn at Colsey Green, with blood on his clothes and hands. None of the missing property was found upon him, though it is alleged that he was seen in the neighbourhood of Leggat’s cottage on the day preceding the assault. Leggat still lies in a very critical state, and the magistrates granted a further remand till Wednesday next, The prisoner, who looked very haggard and listless, denied that he was guilty, though he said he had deserved anything that might happen to him.” Farmer Tubbs slowly spelt jut this paragraph ; read it, and re-read it till he knew it by heart. It was about one o’clock on the 23rd of July that he had met with his mysterious accident; and full twenty miles away, almost at the same moment, as it seemed, this outrage had been committed. The coincidence appeared to puzzle him his pipe went out, and yet he sat there with it in his mouth for a good hour, apparently nnconscious of the fact. After tea, Mrs. Tubbs got out the draught-board as usual, and though he generally gave her two and beat her easily, they now played even, and he was huffed over and over again. “ I can’t plaay to-night,” he said, “ my head’s muddled. I’ll just take a walk round the garden, and then I’ll toddle up the wooden hill.”