Stories by English Authors: England | Page 5

the clan, as it were, lived at Maythorpe Farm, near Finchley,
and here the Pemberthys would forgather on any great occasion, such
as a marriage, a funeral, or a christening, the funeral taking precedence
for numbers. There had been a grand funeral at Maythorpe Farm only a
few days before our story opens, for Reuben Pemberthy had been

consigned to his fathers at the early age of forty-nine. Reuben
Pemberthy had left one son behind him, also named Reuben, a stalwart,
heavy-browed, good-looking young fellow, who, at two and twenty,
was quite as well able to manage the farm and everybody on it as his
father had been before him. He had got rid of all his relatives save two
six days after his father's funeral; and those two were stopping by
general consent, because it was signed, sealed, and delivered by those
whom it most concerned, that the younger woman, his cousin, pretty
Sophie Tarne, was to be married before the year was out to the present
Reuben Pemberthy, who had wooed her and won her consent when he
went down to her mother's house at King's Norton for a few days' trip
last summer. Being a steady, handsome fellow, who made love in
downright earnest, he impressed Sophie's eighteen years, and was
somewhat timidly but graciously accepted as an affianced suitor. It was
thought at King's Norton that Mrs. Tarne had done a better stroke of
business in the first year of her widowhood than her late husband had
done--always an unlucky wretch, Timothy--in the whole course of his
life. And now Sophie Tarne and her mother were staying for a few days
longer at Maythorpe Farm after the funeral.
Mrs. Tarne, having been a real Pemberthy before her unfortunate
marriage with the improvident draper of King's Norton, was quite one
of the family, and seemed more at home at Finchley than was the new
widow, Mrs. Pemberthy, a poor, unlucky lady, a victim to a chronic
state of twittering and jingling and twitching, but one who, despite her
shivers, had made the late Reuben a good wife, and was a fair
housekeeper even now, although superintending housekeeping in jumps,
like a palsy-stricken kangaroo.
So Sophie and her bustling mother were of material assistance to Mrs.
Pemberthy; and the presence of Sophie in that house of
mourning--where the mourning had been speedily got over and
business had begun again with commendable celerity--was a
considerable source of comfort to young Reuben, when he had leisure
after business hours which was not always the case, to resume those
tender relations which had borne to him last autumn such happy fruit of
promise.

Though there was not much work to do at the farm in the winter-time,
when the nights were long and the days short, yet Reuben Pemberthy
was generally busy in one way or another; and on the particular day on
which our story opens Reuben was away at High Barnet.
It had been a dull, dark day, followed by a dull, dark night. The farm
servants had gone to their homes, save the few that were attached to the
premises, such as scullery-maids and dairymaids; and Mrs. Pemberthy,
Mrs. Tarne, and her daughter Sophie were waiting early supper for
Reuben, and wondering what kept him so long from his home and his
sweetheart.
Mrs. Tarne, accustomed, mayhap, to the roar and bustle of King's
Norton, found the farm at Finchley a trifle dull and lonely,--not that in
a few days after a funeral she could expect any excessive display of life
or frivolity,--and, oppressed a bit that evening, was a trifle nervous as
to the whereabouts of her future son-in-law, who had faithfully
promised to be home a clear hour and a half before the present time,
and whose word might be always taken to be as good as his bond. Mrs.
Tarne was the most restless of the three women. Good Mrs. Pemberthy,
though physically shaken, was not likely to be nervous concerning her
son, and, indeed, was at any time only fidgety over her own special
complaints--a remarkable trait of character deserving of passing
comment here.
Sophie was not of a nervous temperament; indeed, for her eighteen
years, was apparently a little too cool and methodical; and she was not
flurried that evening over the delay in the arrival home of Reuben
Pemberthy. She was not imaginative like her mother, and did not
associate delay with the dangers of a dark night, though the nights were
full of danger in the good old times of the third George. She went to the
door to look out, after her mother had tripped there for the seventh or
eighth time, not for appearances' sake, for she was above that, but to
keep her mother company, and to suggest that these