The Tale of Hill Top Farm (2 page)

NEAR SAWREY, OCTOBER, 1905

It was a splendid morning in October when Miss Abigail Tolliver departed this world—one of those brilliant, breezy days that sets the heart singing and stirs the blue English lakes and the blue English sky into a grand and glorious celebration of clouds and color. It was one of those perfect days that seem to promise the beginning of all good things, but because the leaves were whirling from the trees, it promised endings, too.

Dimity Woodcock discovered what had happened at eleven o’ clock, when she went to Anvil Cottage to consult Miss Tolliver about the School Roof Fund. There was no answer to her tap at the back-garden door, but since it was always kept off the latch, she called and went in, expecting to find Miss Tolliver in the kitchen. She found her, instead, slumped in her upholstered chair in the sitting room, where the previous afternoon Dimity had presided over tea and cake at a village celebration of Miss Tolliver’s sixty-fifth birthday.

“Oh, dear!” Dimity gasped as she touched dear Miss Tolliver’s cold hand. Her heart leapt straight up into her throat. “Oh, sweet Miss Tolliver!”

“She died last night,”
Tabitha Twitchit said. She gave a long, sad sigh.
“I’ve been keeping watch.”

Dimity looked down at the old calico cat, Miss Tolliver’s companion of many years. “What a plaintive meow,” she said, bending over to stroke her fur. “But of course you and Miss Tolliver have been together for ages and ages. You’ll miss her.” She straightened up. “You must be hungry, Tabitha. Come home with me, and I’ll give you something to eat.”

“Thank you all the same, but I’ll just stay here with Miss Tolliver,”
Tabitha said, tucking her paws neatly under her fur bib.
“I had a mouse last night, but if you would be so kind as to bring me a bowl of milk with a bit of bread in it, that would be quite nice.”

Dimity regarded the cat thoughtfully, reflecting that animals seemed to feel death as keenly as people. “On second thought, perhaps you’d rather stay with your mistress for a while. Tell you what, dear—I’ll bring you a bowl of bread and milk when I come back.”

And with that, Dimity hurried home to Tower Bank to fetch her brother, Captain Miles Woodcock, Justice of the Peace for Sawrey District, who was always called upon when someone died and knew exactly what must be done.

The news of Miss Tolliver’s unexpected death spread swiftly through Near Sawrey. Agnes Llewellyn, who lived at High Green Gate, the farmhouse next up Market Street, met Dimity coming out of Anvil Cottage and heard what had happened. Agnes hurried back home to fetch the black crepe mourning wreath she had hung on her own mother’s door some months before. Some might say it was unlucky to use the same crepe, but Agnes, a practical person, could not see the sense in letting a very good bit of crepe go to waste—and now that Miss Tolliver was departed, what worse luck could there be?

Betty Leech, gathering the last striped marrows in the frost-kissed garden of Buckle Yeat, heard the sad news from Mary, Agnes Llewelyn’s daughter. She set down her garden basket, told ten-year-old Ruth (who was home from school with a bad cold) to mind the babies, and went to help Agnes hang the crepe. That done, she hurried round to the back of Anvil Cottage, where Miss Tolliver kept two hives of bees, to tell them the news of their mistress’s passing. It was always good practice to tell the hive courteously and with respect for their feelings, so that the bees did not decline and die in sympathy with the departed, or take offense and fly off in search of new quarters. The bees properly informed, Betty went knocking on the doors of the cottages on Market Street, and sent her oldest daughter Rachel to tell those who lived on Graythwaite Lane.

Up the hill, at Castle Cottage, Viola Crabbe learnt of Miss Tolliver’s death from the baker’s boy from Hawkshead, when he delivered the usual weekly order of two loaves, a half-dozen glazed currant buns, and three seed wigs, one for each of the three Misses Crabbe. The boy had stopped at Anvil Cottage on his way up Market Street and heard the news from Dimity Woodcock, who had answered his knock at the door. Viola Crabbe immediately went to tell her sister, Pansy, who—clad in a voluminous purple morning dress that expressed her artistic nature—was playing the piano in the sitting room.

“Oh, dear,” Pansy exclaimed, flinging the end of her fringed purple scarf over her shoulder. “Whoever will I find to take dear Abigail’s soprano solo in ‘Let Us with a Glad-some Mind’?” Pansy led the Sawrey Choral Society.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” Viola said, in her shrill, reedy voice. “Mathilda Crook, perhaps, although her high G is liable to be appallingly flat. Abigail reached it so easily and truly. She shall be missed.” She took out her handkerchief and touched her eyes. “Oh, yes, she shall be
sorely
missed.” Her voice trembled. Viola gave dramatic readings, and had schooled herself in the effective expression of grief.

“It’s odd that Myrtle didn’t mention an illness,” Pansy said, referring to the third Miss Crabbe, their older sister, who was a teacher and headmistress at Sawrey School. “Didn’t she stop to have a chat with Abigail yesterday evening?”

“I believe so,” Viola replied, and put her handkerchief away. “Now I must go and look out my good black. I shall want it for the funeral.”

Within the half-hour, Joseph Skead, the sexton at St. Peter’s, was ringing the passing bell in slow and steady strokes, six strokes and a pause, then six more, to let the parish know that it was a woman who had died. (If the departed had been a man, Joseph would have rung nine, or three for a child.) Around the twin hamlets of Near and Far Sawrey and out on the waters of Lake Windermere, the men looked up from their work to tally the peals and wonder who had died. And in all the cottages and gardens within earshot, the women paused as they stirred soup on the stove or picked the last runner beans in their gardens, listening and counting and feeling a little shiver as the ringing went on and on. Six strokes, pause, six strokes, pause.

“What a pity about dear Miss Tolliver,” said Margaret Nash, the teacher of the infants class at Sawrey School, to Myrtle Crabbe, headmistress and teacher of the junior class. The two of them were standing in the school doorway, watching their exuberant charges race around the yard after lunch. “It is the end of an epoch.” Margaret shook her head, feeling dazed. “We will all be lost without her.”

Miss Crabbe, who had lately begun to seem rather nervous about things, pulled at her long upper lip. “It is sad—and so sudden. I do hope she arranged to have the roof repaired. Water dripped on my desk yesterday, and I had to put a bucket to catch—” She raised her voice. “Harold, stop pushing Jeremy! That is not at all nice!”

Margaret gave her headmistress a startled look. “But the Roof Fund Committee hasn’t got properly underway yet, Miss Crabbe. I doubt that there’s been any money at all collected.”

“It is my understanding that the solicitation has been completed, Miss Nash,” Miss Crabbe said in a reproving tone.

Margaret knew there was no point in arguing the matter. Miss Crabbe’s memory could not be relied upon at all these days, but the headmistress was far too proud to acknowledge the problem, and any attempt to correct her only led to unpleasantness. The week before, she had misplaced her attendance book, and they’d turned the school upside down before it was finally found, under a stack of song-sheets on a shelf in the map locker. In the interval, Bertha Stubbs, the school’s daily woman, had been blamed, and there had been a great deal of rancor and ill will all round.

“I think you mentioned that you intended to see Miss Tolliver yesterday evening after supper,” Margaret said, tactfully returning to the subject. “Did she show any signs of illness?”

“I didn’t see her,” Miss Crabbe said shortly. “It was late and I could not take the time.”

“Ah,” said Margaret, and sighed. “Well, we shall all miss her dreadfully.”

Margaret Nash’s view of the situation was shared by everyone. In the post office at Low Green Gate Cottage, there was distress and dismay.

“I simply can’t b’lieve it,” mourned Lucy Skead, the plump, cherub-faced postmistress. “Miss Tolliver wasn’t that old, and never a day’s ill health. Who will take her place in the Mother’s Union?”

Mathilda Crook, who had stepped into the post office to buy a stamp for her letter to her sister in Brighton, replied with a dramatic sigh. “And the May Fete? That’s been Miss Tolliver’s doing for thirty-five years.” With a resolute frown, she added, “If anybody should take it in mind to ask me, I want nothing to do with it. That job is more ‘n’ two people can manage, and I’ve my hands busy at Belle Green, with a house full of boarders.”

“She’s exaggerating, as usual.”
Rascal, a small fawn-colored Jack Russell terrier, spoke in a low voice to Crumpet, a smart-looking gray tabby cat with a red collar. Rascal, who had a great passion for detail, always liked to state things precisely.
“The house isn’t nearly full. There’s only two boarders, and two empty bedrooms.”

“Now is not the time to quibble, Rascal,”
said Crumpet sternly. She shook herself so that the little gold bell on her collar tinkled. Some cats might not like being belled by their owners (in this case, Bertha Stubbs), but Crumpet was not one of them. She thought the bell lent her a certain authority.
“The real question is, what’s to become of Tabitha Twitchit, now that Miss Tolliver is gone?”

In the queue behind Mathilda, Hannah Braithwaite, wife of the village constable, spoke up sadly. “There was never a more generous soul than Miss Tolliver. Why, last Christmas, she gave my Sally a new pair of boots, and Jack a knitted cap.” She paused and added, “I s’pose the vicar will telegraph her nephew in Kendal, won’t he?”

“That one!” Mathilda snorted. “Never came, never wrote. No other family, though, so I s’pose he’ll get the cottage, more’s the pity.” She frowned at the little dog, who had followed her into the post office. “Tha’s mud on thi paws, Rascal. Wait for me outside, and doan’t go runnin’ off.”

“Come on, Rascal,”
Crumpet said comfortingly, seeing Rascal hang his head. She knew he hated to be scolded in public—it made him feel foolish.
“We’ll both go outside. We need to talk, anyway.”

“There’s a woman in Manchester,” Lucy Skead said. “Sarah Barwick is her name. She’s not kin, though. She writes twice a year, and always sends a little something for Miss Tolliver’s Christmas and birthday. Home-baked tea cakes, ’twas, just day before yesterday. Almond, I b’lieve.” Lucy, an inveterate snoop, could be counted on to know the names of everyone’s relations and how often they kept in touch, since all their letters and cards and packages came and went through her hands. Some minded, of course, but it did them no good, for Lucy could no more keep herself from noticing names and relationships than the sun could keep itself from peering into the windows.

By this time, Crumpet and Rascal had gone a little way down the path.
“I think we should go and see Tabitha,”
Crumpet said, pausing for an appreciative sniff at a bit of fragrant, low-growing mint.
“It makes me sad to think of her staying in Anvil Cottage all by herself. And there’s no one to feed her, now that Miss Tolliver is gone. We have to help her find somewhere to stay.”
Crumpet was an organizer who could be counted on to take charge in a difficult situation. Show her a stray kitten and she’d find a home for him before any of the Big Folk could say, “Somebody ought to get rid of that extra cat.”

“Well,”
Rascal replied judiciously,
“there’s room at Belle
Green, and since the Crooks keep a cow, there’s always plenty of milk. And now that old Cranberry’s dead and gone, the mice have rather taken over the place. Tabitha certainly wouldn’t lack for work.”

“Good,”
Crumpet said.
“I’ll let her know.”

Rascal looked over his shoulder to see if Mathilda Crook had come out of the post office yet. She hadn’t, so he said,
“I’ll catch up to you later, Crumpet. I want to stop in at the joinery. Mr. Dowling usually has a bit of something in his lunch pail for me.”

Down the way, in Roger Dowling’s joiner’s shop, Roger and his nephew David were already at work on Miss Tolliver’s coffin. Both undertaker and coffin-maker, Roger took pride in having the coffin ready when the family came to lay out the deceased, a task which in this case would probably be performed by the women of the village, since the nearest relation was the nephew in Kendal.

“Wonder what’s t’ become of Anvil Cottage,” young David Dowling said to his uncle as they fitted the last plank of seasoned oak. “Fine place, that,” he added enviously, “with t’ garden ‘n’ all. Bees, too. Hope somebody thought to tell them the news, so’s they don’t go flyin’ off.”

Roger Dowling picked up his joiner’s plane and began to true the edge of the coffin, the shavings curling in golden ringlets to the sawdust-covered floor. “Cottage’ll be sold up, most like,” he grunted. “There’s only just that nephew. A draper, he is, in Kendal, with several shops to look after. He woan’t want t’ bodderment of a cottage here. He’ll sell it for what he can get and be done wi’ it.” He glanced at the little dog who had just come in through the open door. “Hullo, Rascal. Come fer thi bone?” He reached into his lunch pail, took out a small ham bone, and tossed it to the dog.

Rascal caught it deftly in his mouth.
“Kind of you,”
he muttered, around the bone.

“Doan’t mention it.” Roger Dowling chuckled, as Rascal turned and trotted back out the door. “Odd thing how old George’s dog manages to be so near human. More human than old George hissel, sometimes.”

David was still thinking about the cottage. “If tha ask me, it’d be a girt pity if that place was sold to an off-comer,” he remarked, a little ungraciously, since he knew he could not afford to buy it himself. But David’s feelings were understandable, for Anvil Cottage had been owned by Tollivers since Sawrey’s earliest days, and the villagers, rightly or wrongly, thought of it as belonging to them, or nearly so. And none of them welcomed off-comers, especially in the village proper. The cottages were small and close together, as if they all belonged to one family, as in a way they did, and most of the villagers thought of Sawrey village as one large family, which in a way it was. People from outside the village were not exactly welcome.