Speed Dating Events

This South-West version of the Hound of the Baskervilles barks and sniffs round him all night. The Major hangs there in mortal dread that any second he will feel a vicious set of canines sink into the seat of his pants. But this is not the only trial. If ever a man suffered . . .

The wind begun to blow bominable cold, and the old bag kep turnip round and swingin so it made me sea-sick as mischief . . . thar I sot with my teeth rattlin like 1 had a ager. I do blieve if I didn’t love Miss Mary so powerful I would of froze to deth; for my hart was the only spot that felt warm, and it didn’t beat more’n two licks a minit, only when I thought how she would be sprised in the mornin, and then it went into a canter.

At last morning comes, and the sack is found and opened:

`Good Gracious!’ ses Miss Mary, ‘if it ain’t the Majer himself”

`Yes!’ ses I. ‘And you know you promised to keep my Crismus present as long as you lived.’

Miss Mary — bless her bright eyes — she blushed as butiful as a morninglory and sed she‘d stick to her word. I tell you what, it was worth hangin in a meal bag from one Crismus to another to feel as happy as I done ever since.

You must come to the weddin if you possibly kin. Let you know when. No more from,

What about Jos, then? Isn’t he a peach? If this is what men were like in the ol’ Deep South, no wonder Scarlett O’Hara wanted to get back to the plantation. So next Christmas, when you’re hanging up your stocking, don’t forget to suspend a two-bushel meal bag somewhere prominent outside — just in case there are any more Jones boys at home like the darling `Majer!

A man in love will often express himself all the better for being natural and unaffected. Such a man is Kester Woodseaves, the hero of Mary Webb’s unforgettable novel, Precious Bane. This recounts the story of Prudence Sarn, a country girl with a fiercely loving heart and a deep longing to have a mate of her own, a cottage and `a babe in a cot o’ rushes’. But her looks are marred by one blemish, like a scar on her sensitive soul — she has a hare lip. Because of this, she is brutally told, she will never have a husband or lover, ‘her own dear acquaintance‘ in the country dialect that she speaks. Prue tells us how this makes her feel in her own simple yet poetic way:

I was like a maid standing at the meeting of the lane-ends on May Day with a posy-knot as a favour for a rider that should come by. And behold! The horseman rode straight over me, and left me, posy and all, in the mire.

Then Kester Woodseaves comes into her life, and she knows at once that her soul has found its mate — ‘here was my lover and my lord’. But she has no hope of winning him, handsome, merry and kind as he is, and goes out of her way to keep her love secret. Yet Kester is drawn to this shy, passionate girl, and tries to show her his awakening love:

. . It seemed to me, though I told myself it must be fancy, that his eyes, so live and bright, dwelt on me, smiled at me, friended me and pled with me, being as are the eyes of a man when he looks long upon his dear acquaintance who has given her peace for his, her soul to his keeping, and her body for his joy.

Kester is determined to break down Prue’s resistance to him, and convince her that she is attractive. He refuses to let her call herself ‘a poor daggly creature’, and tells her that she has `a figure like an apple-blossom fairy’. Tenderly but firmly he moves her towards the realization that they were meant for one another:

`You still go frommet me a bit, I see, Prue Sam. It mun be toerts, not frommet.’

Prue still finds it almost impossible to believe that she can be moving ‘towards’ such undreamed-of happiness, not away `frommet‘. But finally, in the powerful climax of the story, Kester comes riding by to claim her as his ‘dear acquaintance‘, his lover and his wife:

`Prue!’ he said.

I rose up.

Did I say at harvesting that it was to be toerts or frommet?’ he asked me.

Toerts.’

I could only whisper it.

`Come here, then, Prue Woodseaves!’

He stooped. He set his arms about me. He lifted me to the saddle. All sank, all faded in the quiet air. There was only the evening wind lifting the boughs, like a lover lifting his maid’s long hair. We were going at a canter towards the blue and purple mountains.

`But no!’ I said. ‘It mun be frommet, Kester. You mun marry a girl like a lily. See, I be hare-shotten!’

But he wouldna listen. He wouldna argufy. Only after I’d pleaded agen myself a long while, he pulled up sharp, and looking down into my eyes, he said —

‘No more sad talk! I’ve chosen my bit of Paradise. ‘T is on your breast, my dear acquaintance!’

And when he’d said those words, he bent his comely head and kissed me full on the mouth.

What man could better that?

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