A Poor Man's Prejudice. A Rich Girl's Folly.

The window was open just enough to let in the cool night air. The rising Sun has set every night to the same image: a farm hand engrossed in his labor and a rich girl engrossed in the farm hand. Their love, though beautiful to her, could never be and he does not wish it. She watches intently. He works unawares. Every few minutes, he wipes his brow from the sweat that collects there. His hand is a poor substitute to the cloth handkerchief she carries on her person. It doesn’t occur to her to offer her handkerchief to him. Why would it? She is rich and he is poor.

Born to riches and spoils, she, Jane Ash, was educated in the role of wife since birth. Born to a farmer and a servant, he, Gerard Douglas, was destined to remain such, a farm hand. Both girl and man see the hypocrisy of their life and situation but they are blinded by their own prejudices and folly. They both battle internal but diffident conflicts of mind and soul. There is little they can do to remedy their situation – they must adhere to social doctrine and marry their own. They must continue in their lives, that is the only way open to them. In a sense the only way they have to maintain the peace in their lives and families is in fact to do what is expected of them, whether it brings happiness or not. The oddity here is that this path will bring her no pleasure or love but he does not mind that he must marry of his own position. In fact, he wants it.

He, Gerard, is a man bent in labor and toil, born to farmer’s work. He works with a heavy scythe to cut the hay that is spreading like weeds in the grass. The hay will be harvested for hungry lambs that bleat their approval. Later in the year many of those lambs will be slaughtered by the same hands that fed them. They are fattened for their meat much in the same way as she is kept beautiful and pure that a man of wealth and fortune may choose to want her. It doesn’t occur to anyone that she may not wish to comply. In contrast he is abused of his strength day and night such that the owners of the farm may save on labor and machine. But he can choose whom he weds, and that is all that Jane sees, the romantic fluttering inside of her.

Jane looks intently at the farm hand who cares little for romance. Gerard’s tools are primitive; her father and brothers saw no reason to spend on heavy and costly machinery when they could buy labor for less. But Jane doesn’t see the fault of her own, she understands only what she can see – primitive tools equals primitive man. it does not occur to her that he must use these tools because they are the ones given to him. That he would gladly have better. His back aches with the labor. The skin on his forearms are burnt from the Sun and his hands are rough and calloused. He does not stop. He does not waver. He is sure in his work. Slash after slash of his scythe, the bales of hay pile up.

Despite this divide of theirs, Jane loves him still. She doesn’t notice her prejudices. Or how they offend. She feels only the romance of her situation. Gerard glances momentarily at her as she sits by the window. Realizing that she is seen, Jane cowers slightly attempting to shield herself from his view. Too embarrassing is the truth. As he notices that she has seen him, Gerard gives her a solitary wave, courtesy of his position. “Damn fine day we’re having,” he calls out with a joviality he does not feel. Jane notices that he has a deep and intoxicating laugh, a contagiously sexual smirk to his smile. He is not like other men. He is sure of himself where she is not. He has known the sweat and the taste of women. Their moans of pleasure. Their gratification.

And even though he knows his lot, he also knows that she would enjoy it. This lady of the land who, despite the irony of her title, has never lifted a hand to help with the work. Even as she watches, she sits in a languid position. Gerard feels irked and irritated that she is so rested and slack while he must work from dawn to dusk and dusk to dawn, no time to rest his limbs. Or so it feels. But he carries it well, he walks about his tasks with a lazy, self-assurance that speaks of years of the same. Gerard is certain that she has not noticed his ire. His disapproval. His chagrin. No, Jane would never suspect that a lowly farm hand could harbor such emotions. She must feel with a certainty that he would be glad of her attention, that he would feel the weight of what it meant to her. What he felt instead was not sin as her parents would but distaste. A strong and pungent distaste – not from his unwashed mouth but from the strong dislike he has for her class and the claim it gives her. They didn’t know work as he did but still they profited. His labor was what filled their coin purses. And yet his own purse held some few scraps of bread and very little else.

As he works, Gerard’s mind wanders to the lady watching him. Jane is well dressed in the latest fashions of lace and embroidery. She sits with a needle in hand incase someone should chance upon her reverie. She has her excuse at the ready. “The light is better by the window.”

Jane is slender in form, though she rarely ventures out. Her legs are not the legs of a woman used to the rough outdoors. Her arms do not boast of labor. Her skin is pale and there are no rashes there as with the servant girls he has bedded. But he has no respect for her pristine skin, pure as it is. Not like the men who would court her. Gerard sees the beguile of her class but it does not charm him as she would want. He is repulsed by the difference between them that has forced him into servants’ work while she reposes, sheltered from the Sun by a curtained drapery that must have cost more than he earns in a year. Gerard feels a deep loathing for her people, the people who decided his fate because of his low birth. One day Jane will forget him; she will do her duty at her husbands table, order his food from their cook, tell the servants what to wash and clean. He will forget her too. That is the irony she would not understand. That he, the farm hand, could forget her.

Gerard washes his dirt caked hands, swollen and red from handling the scythe. The bucket of water must be used several times over before they could change it for fresh water. Even though, he washes his face with the same water he has used for his hands. The water smells of the land and of the sweat and grime that comes only from sharing your water with many men. The farm had ten men working the abundance of land and six servants including the cook. That was a lot of filth to share a bucket of water with.

They were a rich people, the family of that lady. But they were not generous or kind. They didn’t share their spoils with the people they employed. They didn’t care if he was fed enough or if a servant girl fell pregnant. They were as callous of heart as his hands were worn from the labor he attended to every day. Gerard toiled for their sake and that burned him more than any of the labor. Gerard did not recoil from the work itself. He would gladly tend to it if it had been his own farm. But here, he receives no respect and next to no money for his troubles. Bed and board were enough.

Gerard’s shirt is damp from where he has wiped his hands, much like the collar is wet from his sweat. He is indifferent to the smell he carries even though he is sure it is not pleasant to the nose; showers are a privilege here, he must wait almost a week still until his next one. The sweat can build and stain the skin and clothes with its pungency, even his bed sheet.

But Gerard does not see his own prejudice. They have the same chains binding them to their position. They are bound by money and the lack of freedom that not being in control of their fortunes gives. She sees this more than he but she is not sympathetic as she should be. She does not recognize that his burden is heavy every day. Even though their lives will take widely different paths, neither can choose. Jane does not sweat as he does. She has the comfort of owning many dresses to his two and much used shirts. But for every indulgence she has she must pay a price. He sees Jane’s tranquility as a freedom but, to her, it has shackled her. It keeps her indoors and though this is a luxury to Gerard, she feels the weight of it. The burden is real in her mind. She cannot choose as easily whom to love. It is love Jane wants most of all.

To complain of such things must sound trite to a man with too few morsels to eat and barely a pint to drink. Jane feasts every night on the luxury of cold meats and breads fresh from the oven. Soups, sometimes even fish can be eaten at her table. Their cook is good. Meanwhile, he barely gets scraps. To a hungry man she must seem the epitome of indolence though the harshest word she might choose for herself is idle. She does nothing each day to deserve her bread. But she sees all this as a prisoner’s meal. To her, the meal is bought. Purchased at a price too high.

With each meal, each dress and everything else she owns, Jane must pay with her choices, her life and her body. She had been taught restraint and self-control by a governess, as well as the many accomplishments she would need to secure a good marriage. She rarely gestured unless it was necessary to express a point, such was her refinement. And even though Jane’s husband would one day have right over her, she was taught that this was a positive, a sign of her elevated status. She was not like the servant girls who were bedded not infrequently and by anyone. For now, it is her brother’s duty, as well as her father’s, to keep her pure. But her love will be bought one fine day and it will be a man of status. She will have a comfortable life. Even though Jane wishes she could forsake her comforts for love, her reasoning tells her that her mother is right, love will not last as long as life and money will win out always.

Gerard considers her as he works. Jane’s attention has not gone unnoticed. At the least he might think her bored. But never deserving of pity. Not his pity. At the least, Jane deems herself trapped. She does not judge herself harshly. And even though the world in which she is trapped in is one of great extravagances, her mind must wander to other things. After all, she is idle.

Jane sits again by the window doing some useless embroidering after dinner – mostly to watch the evening work. She pays little mind to her own work, so engrossed by the labor outside. Somedays Jane dreams of being one of them. Free. They are their own master, she thinks. Jane doesn’t notice the hardships that come with their world. Only the romance. Some nights she dreams of it as well. In her dreams she whispers to Gerard “I lived and loved and so too shall you, my love, because it was you whom I loved.” Her dreams were often peppered with such romances where they concerned Gerard. She thought them comely but Gerard would have scoffed had he heard them from her. He knew that love could only live if bound by bonds of parity. Their differences in stature would suffocate any love felt or romance imagined, just give it time.

Jane’s dreams never take her to the man she is betrothed to. That has all been sorted. Come next Spring she will leave this place she calls home. Leave the lands and farms she is so used to gazing upon. And leave the farm hand who so frequently enters her dreams. But Gerard will not notice her absence. His life is full enough. And even though Jane will always dream of him, he won’t spare a thought on her. Gerard will not care how she fares, if she births a child, if she is happy in her lot. He will not spare a thought on Jane whom has harbored such heated dreams of him. Though Gerard has often noticed her stares, he doesn’t share in her dreams. She lives her life not realizing that her dreams are unfounded. Unreciprocated. That he does not share in the heat she feels.

They are both bound by the lots that fate has besieged them. Jane lives in her dreams, while, Gerard’s dreams have been curbed since childhood by mindful parents who knew what it was to work hard for nothing. For his lot, Gerard must accept meagre pay and still less food. He must work a land that isn’t his. He must lose his looks to the labor, whether it is scrubbing a stall clean or tilling the land, the work cuts at his skin and he cannot hide it. Nor would Gerard wish to. Every scar is a sign of his love of the land. His kinship with the soil. His abilities of which he is proud.

Come night, Gerard lies in bed, a rickety affair that he is surprised has held his weight these six years he has worked here. He has already massaged his aching shoulders and rubbed muscles that are worn and stretched form the days work. It isn’t his day to shower. The smell doesn’t bother him, it has been this way as long as he remembers. Every one he knows smells as he does. He rubbed his face clean with a damp cloth that he keeps by his bed. It is so blighted with dirt that it is hard to see that it had once been white. He drifts into sleep thinking, “Work hard and dream little, a poor man’s dreams never happen.” Like Gerard’s father before him, he does not dream. His body is sore from the day’s exertion. As he slumbers, he drifts into a world where he can forget and ignore, such is his exhaustion.

Meanwhile Jane sleeps in a grand four poster bed, quilts woven from the finest fabrics. And, here inside the house, the whites stay white but this benefits no one. It is a sign of the labor of servants and the useless spending her mother allots the house. Jane’s night linen feels soft on her skin. She does not think of the man she is to marry. She thinks only of him. The farm hand who barely notices her. Who couldn’t care less. As much as Jane feels a love and lust for him, Gerard feels an empty disdain for her. He would gladly bed a servant girl with hands rough from work before he would so much as look at her, with her soft hands and laced gloves. As they drift to sleep one dreams of him and the other dreams of nothing. Such is their lot. Such is their life. ’Tis a good night until the morrow. Then the Sun rises again and the world begins again, the same. Each day like the last, and though they grow older and seasons pass, things never change. The rich girl will wake to stare at the man she cannot have, not realizing that he doesn’t want her, and the poor man will go on about his work like he does every day and with the same feeling he always has to labor and lord.

END