A 922,174
FISH
MONGERS
FIDDLE
HE COPPARDI
828
C7848/
1925
મ

ARTES
LIBRARY
1817
VERITAS
SCIENTIA
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
TUEBOR
SIQUERIS PENINSULAM-AMITHAM`
CIRCUMSPICE
וב
25
WSO
R
:
828
C7848€
1925
FISHMONGER'S FIDDLE
FISHMONGER'S
FIDDLE
TALES BY
A. E. COPPARD

NEW YORK
ALFRED A. KNOPF
MCMXXV
MADE & PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
BY BUTLER & TANNER LTD
FROME AND
LONDON
to
GAY
OLD MARTIN
THE LITTLE MISTRESS
WILLIE WAUGH
THE HIGGLER
ITALIAN WHIRLIGIG
Contents
THE JEWEL OF JEOPARDY
ALICE BRADY
THE WATERCRESS GIRL
AT LABAN'S WELL
A WILDGOOSE CHASE
DUMBLEDON DONKEY
A THREE-HANDED REEL
THE SNARE
FISHMONGER'S FIDDLE
A LITTLE BOY LOST
A DIVERSION WITH THOMAS
MR. LIGHTFOOT IN THE GREEN ISLE
7
9
32
64
73
114
121
145
155
175
181
217
225
252
260
284
295
303
I
record my acknowledgments to the Editors of the
following journals in which some of these tales first
appeared:
The Adelphi, The Century, Hutchinson's Magazine,
The Manchester Guardian, The Metropolitan, The
Queen, The Saturday Review, The Spectator, the
Transatlantic Review.
A.E.C.
TH
OLD MARTIN
HREE BARNOVER MEN DIED, AND DIED BADLY TOO,
within a month of each other; a succession of
mortality so swift as to be almost terrifying. Barn-
over was proud of its folks' longevity; it was four or
five years since anyone had died there; but the alarm
had its mitigations, for the three dead men were
drunken, lecherous, swearing fellows.
Barnover was hidden in an oval pan-like hollow sur-
rounded by turfy hills, a very quiet stolid place. The
railway was four miles distant and the main road as
far off in another direction. A kennel of hounds was
kept there, and a mill for the weaving of thick cloth.
There was also a brown dumpy church, the tiniest of
graveyards chock-full of headstones, and a large
portly vicarage with suitable vicar. Of the two inns,
the Fox was favoured by the Oddfellows, while none
but Foresters foregathered at the Angel. In summer
there was cricket on the green, in winter there was
nothing; but the people were prosperous enough to
be contented; their natures were simple to the point
of superstition; they were happy even though not
wise. If Barnover men had a vice at all it was
very
toping; the Oddfellows and Foresters were strong,
thirsty men - something in the air, perhaps - but
things were easier now the three drunken rips were
dead and buried. Ephraim Stinch, the last of them,
had been the worst of all.
"Those three scandalous drunkards are at rest now,
and the place is all the better for it,' people said, and
9
OLD MARTIN
George Bartlett, the huntsman, said it when he came
to supper with Old Martin and Monica about that
time.
But were they at rest? Old Martin had his doubts.
He was a retired seafaring man living with his orphan
niece, the schoolmistress of Barnover.
'Your grandmother in Galway,' he began to his
niece, Monica Doyle, 'your grandmother, Eva Mar-
tin - she was second-sighted - often told me the dead
have no rest; they do not rest, they do not rest at all.
And what's more, Bartlett, the last-comer to the
cemetery, the last one to be buried, that one, she said,
has to slave and to serve all the other lost souls that
lie in the same consecrated patch waiting for their
judgment; the last one,' he repeated, 'always.'
The tall girl stared at her Uncle Martin. The
huntsman, a plump, twinkling person with crooked
legs, said:
'So I have heard, too; ah, and Ephraim Stinch will
have his hands full of it rushing to Limbo or Tophet
or wherever he is ordered to go.'
'Go he must,' Old Martin asserted. 'Until the next
poor soul dies and gets buried there, he'll fetch and
carry, carry and fetch. But at last his own turn is
bound to come.'
'Yes, I can believe that; ha, ha!' cried old George.
'Ho, ho, yes, that I can.'
But Monica shuddered; she did not like to hear of
this. She had feared the living Ephraim Stinch, a
powerful, ruddy, unruly farmer, of forty or there-
abouts, with a large horn-like nose and an ox-like
ΙΟ
OLD MARTIN
moustache - he resembled a Swiss; now he was dead
she wanted to think of him as done with. His house
had been dim and dirty, his farm harsh and hungry,
with stealthy cats, lean dogs, and famished hens. He
had ogled Monica, very often he had ogled and
affronted her when he was drunk, sometimes even
when he was sober. Oh, he had been fond of her
according to his lights, and indeed in spite of the
drink he had money in the bank, but Monica could
not think of him or look at him without repulsion.
He had drunkenly sworn to get even with her.
'In fact,' continued the huntsman, 'I know such
things be true, for I'd the proof of it, the very warrant
of it; three nights ago - or four if this be Thursday.'
A rotund little squirrel of a man, still dapper in
mind and body, was this huntsman, whose healthy
shaven face looked as if he washed in tomato soup.
Without a vein of contrariety in his frame, or a useful
conception in his mind about anything but the hunt-
ing of a fox, he was just a genial person who delighted
to agree with everybody. A teller of tales and a re-
tailer of news that he trilled off his jolly mind and
forgot. All information was grist to him, he affected
to believe everything he was told, and he hoped for
similar faith in his own hearers. His mishandling of
the truth amounted to genius, but there was no harm
in him at all.
'I tell you I know,' he asseverated to Martin, 'be-
cause I have seen that man since he died.'
Old Martin glanced at Monica and at George in
turn. Certainly the principal emotion expressed in
I I
OLD MARTIN
his glances was scepticism, but he only said: 'God
bless us!'
'I have seen the man,' repeated the huntsman.
'I knew it!' declared Old Martin. Monica begged
to be told about it.
'He walks,' the huntsman said, his gaze dropping to
the table. ‘As I'm a living man I saw his ghost four
nights ago if this be Thursday.' He was groping
thoughtfully with his left hand for a morsel of bread.
"Twas past eleven o'clock, and I'd just popped out
in my shirt-sleeves for a smoke, not thinking it would
be so dark. Dark! I could scarcely find my way out
of my own garden gate. I be got into the road when
I see something.' George here swallowed the last
pickled walnut and took a deliberate swig at his glass
of beer. 'For all the darkness I saw something and I
said to myself, "That's a good visible man, for this
dark night seems to choke my very eyesight. I won-
der who he may be." And before I knew it the words
popped into my head and out of my mouth: "Is that
you, Ephraim Stinch?” It didn't make no reply, no
reply at all, but 'twas Ephraim Stinch as large as life.
"God help me," I said, and I wanted to run, but I
couldn't, so I gave a few damns to myself and stood
till the thing was by me, and I knew that but for the
dark I could ha' seen right through him to his spinal
column. He did not look like e'er a ghost I ever
heard tell of; no skeleton, nor no white sheet, nor no
brimstone fire; was just the man himself, same's we
all knew him, though if it hadn't been dark I'd a
seen right through him, like that glass,'
I 2
OLD MARTIN
J
Monica silently filled it.
'It took no notice of me, but this is the awful
story - that ghost was roaring drunk (thank you,
Miss Monica), as I'm a living man, full to the gob,
but no sound coming from it. Cussing and damning,
ramping and roaring - you could see - staggering
from here to yon, you could see but you could hear
nothing, not a word, not a footfall, and that's how it
passed behind me, close as the back of my chair. A
very strong murderous man, sir. When it was gone
by I pulled myself together. A man has got to be a
man, whether or no, but believe you me, my flesh
wherever I touched myself felt like that blancmange.
I didn't know rightly whether I burned or froze. My
hair was just grass and my elbows were stiff and chill
as the handle of a jug. What I want to know is where
he got it.'
'Got what?' they both interrogated him.
"The strong drink - and how could he carry it.
Whatever it was it should by rights have dropped
clean through him- begging your pardon, Miss
Monica.'
'It was devil's drink,' murmured Old Martin.
'Yes, I suppose,' agreed the huntsman, ‘the devil's
own drink. But where he got it! eh! Ah, well, some
will perish their mortal souls for anything - for any-
thing. But not me, would you?'
'He is working out his fate, Bartlett, you may
depend.'
'Sir,' said the other solemnly, laying his right palm
confidently upon the tablecloth and inclining his
13
OLD MARTIN
head towards the Captain, but at the same time slew-
ing a glance towards Monica, 'I don't envy the poor
lost souls he's among, the devil himself would be a
greater comfort to 'em in their strange situation.
Young lady, ghosts are terrible things, terrible!'
Old Martin was much impressed by this sound
confirmation of his ghostly theme. A good man's
simple credulity was his: 'You are sure it was
Ephraim?'
'Why, bless you,' protested the huntsman, 'I knew
him as a boy. A hard man, sir, his own mother died
in bearing him, and he was a sickly child until his
father, who was a butcher, fed him on spoonfuls of
raw ox-blood. Then he thrived, I do assure you; ha,
ha!'
‘O, but that is horrible!' Monica put her fingers
into her ears. George was dismayed and hastened to
change the subject.
"Talking of tipple, d'ye know, James, it is not a great
many years ago when our parson himself was fond
of a cup of strong drink. Ah, many a firkin of good
stingo have gone down his gullet and laid to rest.
Mind you,' — he lowered his voice - 'that is between
ourselves; but truth's true, and let it be known.'
Old James Martin had followed the sea for nigh
upon forty years; then had he suddenly cried, 'Done!'
and severed himself from it, retaining not a single
maritime reminder, not a flag, telescope, barometer,
whistle, uniform, or cutlass. Clad in a grey tweed
suit and a white panama hat he came to live with his
widowed sister in Barnover, carrying only a mirror
14
OLD MARTIN
given him by a strange woman in Java. It was a foot
square, bound in copper, and he hung it up on the
wall of his bedroom.
When Monica was fourteen, eight years ago, Mrs.
Doyle died. Martin had installed a maidservant in
the little house, enabling his bonny niece to qualify
as a teacher by the time she had grown into a hand-
some woman. Then indeed the pleasures of life and
home were deepened and enlarged. What a pleasant
little house it was, thatched with bright straw and
coloured with saffron wash; the fruit trees, much
cherished by the old sailor, almost hid it. But most
of the homes in Barnover were like that, and a fantas-
tic stranger once looking down from the encircling
hills when fruit bloom was flaunting in every garden
had declared that Barnover village resembled an
omelette lying in a green dish.
Old Martin lived on there, loving his niece and his
garden, but nothing else, maintaining a simple but
not uncharitable reserve to all but George Bartlett,
the huntsman, and disliking nobody, except, perhaps,
the Reverend Coberly Nashe. The parson had a fat,
expensive-looking stomach, lean legs, and, as far as
could be discovered, a lean mind that did not cost
him a penny. But Martin was a regular attendant at
his church and a subscriber to his funds.
The sturdy old mariner, with his clipped grey beard,
suit of tweed, hat of straw, always carried a malacca
cane trimmed with a silver knob when he walked in
Barnover. If occasionally he spoke to casual acquaint-
ances such as the policeman and the postman, he
15
OLD MARTIN
would genially address them as: 'Well, my son, how
is it with you to-day?' If it were a child he recognized
he would always stop and, fumbling in his pockets,
inquire, 'Well, old man!' or 'Well, old lady!'
When Monica died Old Martin began to hate the
parson and ceased to attend his church. Monica
died soon, and suddenly, almost mysteriously. The
tragedy crushed the old man's mind, and it physic-
ally weakened him. She was buried in the church-
yard, a new white stone was set at the head of the
mound; a new mistress taught in the school, and no
one seemed a penny the worse or a penny the wiser.
But Old Martin was in anguish, not so much for his
personal loss as for Monica's own fearful fate. For
it was in vain he tried to repudiate that wild notion
of her grandmother: The dead do not rest. The last-
comer serves the lost souls. Deep down it was an in-
stinctive belief; grafted upon his childhood it clung
to him. Dreams of the dead girl flocked into his
sleep, terrible dreams that drove sleep from him and
brought agony and madness. These were dreams not
alone of Monica, for he saw, or his distracted mind
thought it saw, the dreadful sodden form of Stinch
dogging, enslaving and destroying his beautiful girl.
He visibly aged, he recognized no one in the streets
and was greeted by none - even the children stood
unnoted at his side. All refrained from touching the
deep wound of his sorrow; they could do no other,
he was so changed. He walked in loneliness on the
hills above the village, and the countrymen, seeing his
ambling figure there, would mutter: 'Old Martin
16
OLD MARTIN
again. He takes it badly; the poor man.' Daylight
gave him no relief, for he sought no relief for him-
self; all his malady was a vast anxiety for Monica
whose doom floated ever about him, touching and
maddening him until his wits went wandering.
Casting his thoughts around upon his neighbours, he
wondered: 'Who then will die soon? On what poor
unfortunate will it fall to take this load of evil from
Monica, and she be free and sleeping?' He ran over
in his mind all the old people of the place, but none
was sick or sorry, all were hearty, the least of them
might last another ten years. Then, all at once, a
great light broke upon him. Why, he could kill
himself! Of course he could! That would trim
Ephraim Stinch's ghost, leave him alone for that!
But he would have to disguise his intention, for they
would not bury a suicide in that same consecrated
ground. Not all the dead bodies in the world could
help Monica unless they were buried there. They
must not bury him at a cross road.
That night the old man lay sleepless in his bed,
but with a mind more tranquil now he had seen a
way of hope, when his gaze was caught by the faint
gleam on the wall of the square mirror from Java.
Suddenly from the floor beneath it something puffed
like a spirt of thick white smoke. It rolled and
lolled right up to the ceiling, and then resolved
slowly into a round mass like a balloon. At last that
began to droop and flag and fold itself into the shape
of Monica, tall and frail, wearing a blue robe with
gold beads and bands, the blue of succory. She
17
F.F.
B
OLD MARTIN
had a face of marble whiteness and pale gold
hair.
He knew it was she though the darkness was com-
plete. Had it not been so dark he would have seen
right through her body, he felt sure. It was she,
though he had never seen her in a robe of that kind.
In the morning he felt that he had had a beautiful
dream, but he could not remember it.
His friend George came to see him, but could make
nothing of him. The old man was gone wavering
in his mind, he was dull, until George said, 'Come,
my old friend, you must get yourself out of this
humour. Sorrow don't last for ever.'
'Does it not?'
'It will bring nothing back to ye. Sorrow don't
give, it only takes away. You must come out of your
shell and ockipy your mind with things.'
'I see too many things, Bartlett.'
'What things?'
'Not of this world. Stinch and my Monica!' The
old man broke into tears.
'Au but... but . . .' spluttered the huntsman,
'that can't be true, my old friend, they're . . . they've
passed away!'
'I know, I know, but I see her. And you have seen
him.'
'Me!' cried the dapper one. 'Never in this world,
never in this life! Mind you, I don't say as spirits
are not to be seen, but they never come my way,
never on your life, James.'
The old man gazed at him in dismay. 'But you
18
OLD MARTIN
yourself saw Ephraim Stinch, you told us, you told
us, you told Monica.'
'Pshaw!' the huntsman stood up, fiddling with his
hat. 'You been adreaming, James. I ain't seen
Ephraim Stinch, I ain't seen him' - he reflectively
cocked his eye- 'no, not since a week afore he died.
Come you along now. This kind of thought is no
good to you, it's too depressing. You want a cheer-
fuller outlook, all the gossip of the town that goes on
round about ye. Did ye hear now of old Harry
Chalgrove? Died last night - in a fit!'
'Dead! O heavens,' quavered the old man, ‘is that
true? Good news, George, it is good news indeed!
What a load that takes from my mind; it's gladness.
When will he be buried, George?'
The huntsman was so amazed at this outburst that
he could not speak. Noting the concern in his friend's
eyes, Old Martin continued: 'Don't you see? My
girl's spirit has been roaming and restless - Monica
fetching and carrying - in mortal danger from that
Stinch. Horrible! You remember, don't you - the
last soul buried slaves for all?'
'Well, to be sure, I can't tell whether or no. But
Harry Chalgrove will not be buried in the church-
yard. 'Tis full up! They will put him aground in
the new lot!'
It was true. Barnover churchyard was now as full as
it could be; it was recently completely and finally
filled. Monica's corpse was the last; not another
body would it hold. The Council had already pro-
cured another half-acre in a different part of the
19
OLD MARTIN
parish. It had been trimmed and consecrated, and
now awaited the inevitable procession of luckless
mortality. Harry Chalgrove was to head it.
This was a circumstance of dreadful, shocking import
to Old Martin, to whose diseased comprehension it
was plain that nothing now could ever release the soul
of Monica from its horrible task. That stricken soul
was doomed to drift in ceaseless agony till the Day
of Judgment.
The huntsman comforted his friend. 'Go see Par-
son Nashe about it.
yet.'
Something may be done
Martin went to bed determining to ask Nashe's
assistance in the morning. In the middle of the
night the ghost came in a cloud again, and this time
it appeared to fade away into the Javanese mirror
as if that were a portal to the Unknown. Old Martin
did not sleep, and at an early hour, trembling, he
sought the help of the parson.
The Rev. Coberly Nashe received him in his
study, a comfortless, heartless, linoleumed room with
a great looking-glass and a carafe of water on the
black mantelpiece. Columns of dusty books were
piled in the corners or against the knee-hole desk of
pale wood lined with dark green leather. The win-
dow was closed, though the morning was warm, and
the room smelled of upholstery that seemed to be
decomposing. There was little else in the room but
some chairs and the Rev. Coberly Nashe, who had
a stomach that could be delicately described as buxom
and a countenance that might have seemed all mouth
20
OLD MARTIN
and teeth but for the spectacled eyes that glistened
and gloomed at the visitor.
Old Martin's request to him was that Chalgrove's
body might be buried in the old churchyard instead
of the new cemetery lot; the dead man had no rela-
tives or friends; he was old, he had been forgotten.
'I fear it is an impossibility, Mr. Martin. I fear so.
But why do you ask for this? It is kind and consider-
ate, but it is . . . singular.'
The visitor sat silent. Nashe got up and filled a
glass with water from the carafe. Sipping it occa-
sionally, he straddled before Old Martin.
'Extraordinary difficulty, you know,' he went on,
between his sips. 'Act of Parliament - that sort of
thing - absurd, of course - but there you are.'
Nashe very carefully replaced the glass and leaned
with an elbow upon the mantelpiece, twirling his
watchguard with the disengaged hand. It was of
black cord hung with a medallion of copper, a cross
of gold, and a seal of silver.
'I would do anything to oblige you, Mr. Martin,
anything, but this is not a case for obligation; it is a
thing beyond my power to do. Anything, I assure
you, to oblige
'Do you believe in ghosts, Mr. Nashe?'
The vicar was silent. Old Martin raised his musing
head:
'From the day of death the soul may be in grief or
pain to the Day of Judgment, and if we neglect it,
it haunts its friends and its home, seeking relief.
Such things are seen and known, for sure, sir!'
21
OLD MARTIN
‘Oh, come, Mr. Martin, different men, different
vision. I like to keep an open mind. These things
are hidden from our mortal eyes, we can but conjec-
ture. But the human eye, the human eye, mind, can
only see human objects
'Then maybe you'd not see what I do see and have
seen. In three latitudes of the world's waters, very far
apart, I assure you, I saw the Flying Dutchman!
And that's a fabulous ship, the ghost of a strong
vessel, full of the moving souls of dead men.'
"That is very wonderful, my dear sir,' said the vicar.
'And I saw,' quavered the old man, 'the ghost of a
person lately dead in this parish. For the peace of
that soul I want to see Chalgrove buried in the old
yard.'
'But why? But why?'
Old Martin did not care to give his fantastic reason
to this sceptic. He only said:
'He should be buried with the friends of his bygone
days.'
The vicar was all at sixes and sevens. Queer man,
Old Martin! He observed the alteration in him (poor
old chap!), and he was very sympathetic, but there
was nothing he could do; there was not a foot of
space left. What could he do? Nothing!
The old man went away despondently, but in half
an hour he was back again in the vicar's room. He
felt he had not been frank enough with the parson.
Now he told Nashe how the spirit of his niece visited
him in a ball of smoke, how she was being ceaselessly
harried by the dire menace of Stinch. And so he
22
OLD MARTIN
wanted the body of Monica, already three months
in its grave, transferred from the churchyard to the
new cemetery lot. Let Chalgrove have her place.
Of course it was an impossible request. Sacrile-
gious! Preposterous! Nashe bluntly told him that
his mind was perhaps a little unhinged by grief. He
was unwell, ill, must look after himself carefully,
consult a doctor, and so on. Mr. Nashe was intensely
sympathetic, but just then he was also very busy.
'My dear sir, it cannot be done without a faculty,
and a faculty could not be procured for love or money
in such a case. Only by an order of the higher
authorities for an extraordinary occasion. My dear
sir, my sympathy is with you, needless to say, entirely
with you. But it would be impossible, ludicrous even,
for me to approach them on such an errand. You
see it's impossible, don't you? Why, my good man
Martin, you know in your heart of hearts it is absurd.
That you should see the spirit of your niece is, I am
of firm belief, due to hallucination, pure hallucina-
tion; and to see the soul of Stinch in a state of inso-
briety is undoubtedly an hallucination of the Evil
One himself. Fix your thoughts upon the Almighty
and this madness will leave you. Oh, and see a doc-
tor.' Alternately looking at his watch and burbling
in this fashion, the vicar burbled Old Martin out of
the vicarage door and through the vicarage garden
into the road, where, patting him on the shoulder
and howling 'Hallucination!' at him twice, as if it
were the name of a sovran remedy, he left him.
The ghost of Monica allowed her uncle no peace,
23
OLD MARTIN
Her own restlessness, her trouble, was to be shared
with him. In the middle of the night she came again.
The cloud of smoke puffed from the floor below the
mirror from Java. It spun into a lolling globe that
sank and declined like drapery round a whirling
dancer, and there was she. The man felt no terror,
only an anguish of human helplessness. The girl did
not look at him; no sound, no sign, pale and unbe-
seeching, a figure whose pitiful appearance clawed
at his heart, she stood peering into the mirror.
'Monica!' he gasped. At the word she faded and
died; it seemed that she passed, a little whorl of
smoke, into the mirror itself. After a few moments
he rose from his bed and looked squarely into the
strange glass from Java that hung upon a wall. At
that momentary glimpse a shriek of horror burst
from him; he sank trembling upon his bed. Cre-
dence no longer wavered; all his mind's foreboding
flamed into terrible confirmation. He lay almost
senseless until the cocks began to crow and day
came once more, but not to lull his fears.
George Bartlett called again the next evening and
they sat in the garden under a walnut tree. He was
startled at Old Martin's terrible appearance.
"There, there,' he soothed the trembling man when
he heard of his experience. 'By God, what is it,
James? I tell you what, my old friend; say but the
word and we'll dig her up together and plant her
elsewheres, some dark night, but not to-night, for
I've an early job to-morrow. But when you like,
James, whenever you choose, I'll stand to you,'

24
OLD MARTIN
"Tis no good, Bartlett, no good. You can't play
tricks with an evil that comes from hell itself. There
is nothing mortal can deceive it. Its course must run
for ever and ever and ever.'
In the dim air of that thick and moveless evening
the bell in the church tower deeply hummed its nine
o'clock. A distant flock of sheep baaed in a prepos-
terous bass. A young owl kept up a shrill snarl, a
mixture of bird whistle and the bark of a puppy.
Martin looked up into the tree:
'O trees, trees, you should have some springy elastic
growth so that if you pulled down a branch, Monica,
you could shoot yourself into the skies, like a cata-
pult!' He recovered himself and looked at his friend.
'Except, of course, for gravity, Bartlett. She couldn't
conquer gravity, nobody ever has. Gravity, grave-
yard, graves - oh, when shall I go - what shall I do
- where shall I be buried!'
The old man's tears were shocking to the jolly
huntsman. He tried to rally his friend, and to per-
suade him to that body-snatching effort.
'James, it can be done, it has been done. I know
the man as done it, too, and all. He worked for a
gentleman in Scotland, in some castle it was, where
the king of Scotland used to live when the wars were
on. The queen's chair is in it now. Bless you, yes.
But Martin declined the impious offer. The hunts-
man went home and declared to his wife: 'Old Martin
is mad. There is not a doubt upon it. I do believe
he is mad.'
Then, although it was so late, Old Martin took his
25
OLD MARTIN
stick and called upon the vicar. He was in his study,
sitting between two candles with a book in his hands.
He listened to the man's fresh evidence, and then
said with a snort of irritation: "There is nothing in
the whole world I can do for you. I have told you
how impossible it all is, but you have given your
mind to it, I suppose. Now you see the result. You
can believe anything if you let your mind dwell upon
it, anything, James Martin,' he said sternly. "The
mind is an obstinate thing, it goes its own way. I am
reading this book now, you see, a book of divinity,
to help me in my sermons. But I cannot attend to it
well, for I keep thinking of a piece of business I have
in hand and intend to do. I go on reading my book,
but I cannot understand it, not one single word, for
all that business I intend to do keeps pressing itself
forward like a child that is bothering me and will
have my attention. At last I put down my book, lean
back in my chair, and let my mind dwell upon that
piece of business I have to do. And then, what do
you think? my mind dismisses that business, it re-
fuses to contemplate anything but the book I have
been reading, although I have not absorbed its con-
tents. How is this now, tell me?'
But Old Martin could not tell him, he could not
understand him, he could only realize that the soul
of Monica was harshly suffering. Nashe reclined in
his chair, linked his fingers across his stomach, and
gazed at his visitor with a smile that endeavoured to
be benignant, but uncommonly resembled a grimace.
He sat up and said: 'So you see! you see! Concentra-
26
OLD MARTIN
tion! You must concentrate your mind.' He accom-
panied the old man to the vicarage gate, loudly
exhorting him not to let his mind dwell upon goblins
and cantrips, they were a kind of intemperance, an
intoxication, they would pass. And when the vicar
saw the old man disappear in the darkness, he too
murmured: 'Poor old chap, all the tiles loose, quite
gone. It's excess of grief, he is mad. I must speak
to the doctor about him; it makes me uneasy.' He
walked up to a glow-worm in his garden path, and
taking it to be a spent match carefully put his foot
upon it. And when he got back into his study his
mind leaped to his own absorbing busness. For he
was a widower, contemplating a new marriage to
a spinster who had five thousand pounds and a
moustache.
Martin carried his grief locked in his own breast
for days; he scarcely stirred from his home; if he did,
the people eyed him furtively, children avoided him.
Once more the huntsman called:
'Do you know what I've done, James?' he began
impressively. 'I killed our best hound, Glossary,
prince of the pack — and last night, listen James, Mr.
Martin, I buried him myself in the churchyard. He's
in the corner there behind the monkey tree. That's
cooked the business. Don't tell me! If that soul of a
dog can't settle all this business I'm a salamander.
James, that dog-hound Glossary beats cock-fighting.
He could nose out an earwig and he could kill a
bison beast, Glossary could. You go to your rest,
James.'
27
OLD MARTIN
And James went, but not to rest - never again
under heaven. The huntsman's plan must have
failed, for horrors thickened upon him; the image of
his niece, vision, hallucination, or mirage, was
fraught with unending torture.
The vicar spoke to the doctor, the doctor told the
squire, the squire revealed that Old Martin's retire-
ment from sea had been adroitly hastened by the
shipowners on account of certain delusions held by
the captain; quite simple, harmless delusions, but
seamen were superstitious, uneasy men, and the
owners could not afford to take any risks. Besides,
their old trusted servant had done exceedingly well;
he had amassed a modest little fortune which they
supplemented with a pension. And so on.
Barnover began to watch him, but no one came
near him any more; even the faithful huntsman
deserted him. His obsession, however, did not
desert him; it ravaged his life and left him peaked and
pined.
One day in October, when the last apples were
being gathered, a cadaverous Old Martin called
once more at the vicarage. The vicar could not see
him, he was unwell. A few days later Martin called
again; the vicar was ill. In short, the Rev. Coberly
Nashe was unable to fulfil his engagement to marry
the spinster, for he died.
Behold, he was buried under the pavement of his
own church, in the same tomb with his long-departed
wife, and not more than twenty feet from the coffin
of Ephraim Stinch.
28
OLD MARTIN
An excellent change was soon observable in the
conduct and appearance of Old Martin. It could not
be exactly dated, but imperceptibly that haunted look
slipped from his visage, the quiet smile came back.
Good health overtook him, his ribs began to fatten,
his back to unbend, his beard to be clipped again.
He became once more the sprightly veteran, not less
immersed in his own quiet thoughts, but at least
happy in them. Other elderly men chatted to him,
complimenting him upon his recovery, and when
they did so, 'Ho, my son!' he would say, and ex-
change amiable views with them about the affability
of the weather, the price of crops, or the shortening
days, as is the custom of amiable, affable persons in
Barnover and possibly elsewhere. Little Pollys,
Janes, Arabellas, and Rachels, who had lived as
many months as he had years, again became his 'Old
Girls,' receiving also a largesse which led to such an
increase of trade at the lollypop shop that its ancient
dame, Miss Phipps, threw up her hands and reck-
lessly ordered a whole seven pounds of butterscotch
where she had previously contracted for four.
When the hounds met at the end of Barnover High
Lane just before Christmas, Old Martin, too, walked
along to the assembly of hounds and hunters. Every
one was jolly, and George sat on a big sandy-coloured
gelding in the midst of the hounds, a grand figure in
his scarlet coat. A good sixpennyworth of cochineal
had been exhausted in cleaning that coat from stain;
the pipeclay on his breeches, the gloss upon his
hunting cap, the lustre of his boots, the sparkle of
29
OLD MARTIN
his spurs! Wonderful! George kept cracking his
whip and roaring at the dogs. You... Waterford!
Nora, girl! Come back, Glossary!' Glossary, indeed,
was particularly tiresome. People from miles around,
important people, too, who had come in to the meet,
walked up to George and shook hands with him,
while he cracked a joke or cracked his whip or swore
lustily at a slinking hound. 'You, Glossary!'
'Why, James!' he cried, when he saw Old Martin.
Martin stepped among the hounds to his friend and
shook hands heartily with him. George retained the
old sailor's hand in his clasp and, bending down,
whispered confidentially, 'Old friend, how is it with
you? and Martin replied that he was never so well
in his life before. George released his hand after
another earnest pressure and sat upright in the saddle.
'Good 'ealth,' said the huntsman with a sigh-
though why that figure of prime and radiant existence
should exude a sigh when joy was surely chippering
in his birdlike breast is a matter beyond explanation
- 'Good 'ealth's a wonderful thing!'
Then he leaned down once more, while for a space
the hounds roamed unreproved. 'How is that sad
business? Do you see anything o' nights now?'
Old Martin smiled sweetly: 'My poor girl is at
rest at last.'
'Good!' murmured the huntsman fervently. 'What
did I tell you! That dog I killed - that . . . that
Bolingbroke - he was the masterpiece of this earth!
A masterpiece!' He repeated it again and again,
much louder. ‘A masterpiece!'
30
OLD MARTIN
"Three weeks since, though,' Old Martin said, 'I saw
a thing that would have interested you.' He smiled
up at George. 'I saw, on my soul, I saw Ephraim
Stinch!'
The huntsman sat up and surveyed his friend with
stern, puckered eyes. Martin beckoned with his
finger and the huntsman bent down to him again.
"There were two of them, though. I saw those two
ghosts as clear as I see you, Bartlett. He was arm-in-
arm with Parson Nashe. I never saw a living man so
drunk as that dead parson was.'
George perked himself upright with a shout of
laughter. 'Don't tell me! God above, would you
believe it, James! Good for you, James,' he roared.
'Damned if ever I heard tell of a boozy ghost afore!
Never on my life, ho, ho! ha, ha!'
At that moment, Barnover clock struck eleven. The
master called out, 'Hounds, please, gentlemen!' and
they all moved off to the top of the hills.
31
THE LITTLE MISTRESS
I
MALL AS IT WAS, AND AMPLY SHADED BY MAPLE
SM
a
trees, the little villa was hidden in a garden wholly
enclosed by a high wall of brick. There was a bright
green door with a latch in one corner of the wall, its
lintel and sill painted white: near the top of the door
was a white word Sackville, and in the middle of the
door was a brass plate.
Curious travellers on the tops of passing omnibuses
could just glance into the two lower rooms of the
house; they had no time to observe much, but they
could see in the first room a fireplace framed with
marble in the back wall, with a tall mirror upon the
mantel and a gilt clock under a glass dome. In the
second room they could see the same features meticu-
lously repeated, nothing but fireplace, white mantel,
large mirror, gilt clock. Once inside the garden you
felt that the modest little house took on, or seemed
to take on, a watching self-conscious air, an impres-
sion not at all lessened by the dark door which con-
fronted you with a large knocker of very conscious
brass, three separate bell-pulls- one marked NIGHT,
one marked DAY, the third not marked at all, but
possibly for use in time of an eclipse - a brass-
mouthed letter-box, a brass speaking-tube, and a new
glistening name-plate of much brass inscribed HUGH
HARPER, Physician. Visiting consultants would be
ushered into the right-hand room - all marbled and
gilt-clocked and mirrored - by a
mirrored by a more or less
32
THE LITTLE MISTRESS
spruce maidservant, and chronic patients, not too
far lapsed from the arts of observation, might have
remarked a changing succession of these domestics.
The Harpers never had more than one; they came,
they served, they departed; they did not continue to
serve at Sackville. After a month or two of the dis-
composure induced by each of them the young doc-
tor would say to his wife in a soft meditative voice:
'Francesca, I shall discharge her.'
In contrast to his wife Harper was of quite dis-
tinctive avoirdupois, almost a colossus, with crisp
hair, brown moustache growing tightly on a round
fresh face, and a lot of pleasant teeth. He always
dressed in grey, and a watchguard of gold and black
silk always stretched from pocket to pocket of his
vest in a broad grin. His hands lived in the pockets
of his trousers like rabbits in a burrow; he was never
seen to stretch himself. Harper and his wife Fran-
cesca might be defined typographically, the one a
capital O and the other an asterisk: there was always
an implied footnote about Francesca, who was small
and dusky and lovely.
'Yes, I shall discharge her now.'
Harper always discharged the servant, quietly, after
a few weeks. He had no liking for such an office, it
was disagreeable to him, but somehow or other,
sooner or later, like a domestic Henry the Eighth
he discharged everybody - even his friends - and he
always had a reason for that course. Maggie Taproe
committed unmentionable indiscretions, Eva Lod-
den developed incurable boils, Lena Hughes would
F.F.
33
C
THE LITTLE MISTRESS
spill oil into the bath and neglect that business of the
cat: they were discharged without a gramme of com-
punction or gratitude; service was service, and if you
paid for it it should be worth paying for. Each de-
parting menial was a vicious unspeakable hag, while
her successor for how brief a date! - was a peerless
angel. But the doctor's antipathies, though vast,
were superficial; his sympathy and kindness in their
narrower range were deep and prodigious.
In the fullness of time and dissatisfaction he pre-
pared to discharge Fanny Hackbut, who had been
engaged by him without a recommendation of any
sort, human, devilish, or divine. It appeared that her
last mistress had indulged in a most scandalous affair
with a fascinating gentleman, a Perugian from
South America. Miss Hackbut's moral pride had
revolted and demanded recognition; she had pru-
dently left. That was good enough for Harper, who
admired (amongst a heap of other things) conscience
and character; he engaged her: 'She's a howling
prude, but I think she'll do.'
And she didn't do at all. He met her more than
once descending the stairs. There was nothing more
unendurable to him than the sight of a woman wear-
ing a man's boots - and they were his own boots.
'I shall discharge her,' he told Francesca.
'What has she done?' asked his gentle wife, who
was as delightful as an antelope.
'Oh, curse the girl, she's a great female elephant!'
Fanny Hackbut had features - God made them, it
is true, but you could not think of that, said Fran-
34
THE LITTLE MISTRESS
cesca which were too improbable for description;
and she had a mind like a devitalized fowl - God
inscrutably made that, too. In times gone by she had
been engaged (Providentially engaged, Francesca
couldn't help thinking) to the thin youth with the
physique of a hairdresser who came round upon a
bicycle carrying a large tin that had once (according
to Francesca) contained pounds and pounds of jam,
and was now used to convey pints and pints of milk.
That was all over. So few virtues and so few vices had
she that the whole lot might have been collected like
half a dozen buttons, black and white ones, left
unnoticed on the corner of a large dark table: there
might once have been more of them, but they had
dropped off. The rest of the large dark table was the
rest of Fanny.
Meals were late, or if not late were badly served,
or if not badly served were poorly conceived. Every-
thing was left to Fanny, for Francesca - the doctor
confided it to himself – though dainty and adorable
was, oh, capricious: she was all brains and appre-
hension, but she hadn't any sense; they might talk
of a thing for a week and she would forget it in five
minutes. Piles of unclean dishes languished in the
kitchen sink from morn to eve. Those brooms on
the dark places of the stairs, those pails in the passage
corners - they were man-traps, deliberate traps, dia-
bolical! Fanny's one grace was a devotion to her
little mistress who, unlike the huge master, had the
tiniest of shoes, of hats, of gloves, indeed of every-
thing. Those personal belongings delighted Fanny
35
THE LITTLE MISTRESS
in the way that a doll's things delight a child. Fran-
cesca's room was always a pattern of brightness and
discretion, the buckles on her shoes most perspiringly
shone, hose and linen had the perfect sequence and
spontaneity of a packet of new envelopes; brushes
and combs never lost their pristine order; while the
silver trinkets of the dressing-table, sconces and cas-
kets and phials, beamed as in the days when they
adorned some jeweller's window. But as for the
young doctor, it appeared that not a thing was ever
in place, or rightly done, or punctually performed.
A clean shirt was as rare as a gift from the King!
Socks! He had no socks, once there had been
millions! She was a squab, a fœtus, a sprout!
Like the servant, he too adored the little mistress.
and could deny her nothing, not even the lover whose
blue-grey letters strangely inscribed so often ap-
peared in the letter-box. Even Fanny had noticed
their impressive caligraphy, a battalion of half-
dressed letters flung boldly across the solitude of the
envelope and left at astonished attention.
After the usual couple of months Fanny had become
insupportable to Harper. On a warm September eve
he and Francesca had concluded a disillusioning din-
ner. Windows and doors were open, the thrush in the
garden was trying to recapture its old gamut, lamps
were yet unlit, though it was growing a little dim.
'I shall give her notice now, I think,' he mumbled.
At the door which led to the kitchen he stood for a
moment, listening.
'She's singing, Frances, singing to herself, the fool!'
36
THE LITTLE MISTRESS
Playfully Francesca grimaced at him.
'Can't sack a person who is singing,' he growled.
'But why not?'
'Well, I dunno, you can't somehow.' He lumbered
about the room and grinned apologetically at Fran-
cesca. He shook his fist at the door.
'Minx, elephant! Stop it, will you!' he chuckled.
'Dash it, she'll stop soon.' He grew very serious.
'I'll tell her then, presently. If not - to-morrow. Go
she must, the Kaffir!'
He sat down and began to play a game of dominoes
with his wife.
'Now she's not singing,' remarked Francesca pre-
sently.
'No, she's stopped, hasn't she?' Harper gazed at
his wife. 'Yes, she's stopped, but let's finish this
game and then I'll sack her. Presently will do, or
to-morrow. You know, she's so ugly; I didn't notice
that at first, did you?'
'Oh, Lord, yes,' replied Francesca.
'You did! You didn't tell me! I thought she was
going to be so good. She was good at first, damn her,
wasn't she?'
'Oh, I think she does rather well; she dotes on doing
things for me,' Francesca said. 'My room is immacu-
late, I'm almost pained to touch anything, and when
I tell her to get my bath ready she's enchanted; I
have to shove her out of the room while I undress,
for I can't take off so much as a shoe while she's
there, she gloats so.'
"Yes, she would,' cried Hugh, 'just gloat and gloat.
37
THE LITTLE MISTRESS
That's good of her though, I'll give her one more
chance. You talk to her, look after her, and be firm
with her, Frances, will you?'
'Yes, Hugh.' Francesca's eyes dropped under their
lids. 'But do you know what I've heard - she's got a
baby.'
'Baby! A baby!' The doctor was incredulous,
'How?'
'She keeps it at Tappingham and goes over to see it
whenever she can.'
'At Tappingham! Does she know?'
'Know? Frances was puzzled.
'I mean does she know that you know?'
'She thinks we don't know.'
'What a devil! How did you come to know?'
"The grocer's wife told me. Oh, such a fool I am!
That grocer muddled me up about the candles I
ordered; the beast has sent packets and packets,
there are 432 candles in the kitchen and Fanny
can't find anywhere to put them. What can we do
with them all, Hugh?'
'Burn 'em,' said the doctor. 'How old is this kid?'
'Only a few months. I like her much better now,
don't you? I'm rather pleased, aren't you? She's
not our fool of a Fanny, now. It's such an enlighten-
ing surprise, Hugh; I'm rather pleased.'
'Pleased! And all that pious reason of hers for leav-
ing her last situation was just bunkum. What a
libellous cat! She was thrown out because of this."
'Oh, Hugh, do you think so? How shameful! I'd
rather liked what she told me about that mistress.
38
THE LITTLE MISTRESS
Good Lord, Hugh, our Fanny was too good for such
people!'
"I shall discharge her now, certainly.'
'No, Hugh, not now! What difference does it make?'
'On the spot!' he cried, rising and approaching the
door leading to the kitchen. 'She's a liar, a baggage,
an immoral fool!' But he paused, doubtfully. 'Shall
I? Shall I sack her? Now?'
After a moment or two he turned back with a tor-
tured grin. 'She's singing again!' He meditated.
'Well, at any rate, I can tell her to stop that, and if she
don't stop it I'll sack her on the spot. And if she does
stop it - well, I can sack her presently. Do you know,
I like the word sack.' He went and sat down by
Francesca. 'It's such a satisfactory word, it's like a
funnel; you pour your feeling into it - sack - and it
swirls and swishes down through the pipe-sack -
such a beautiful jolt.'
'Hm! Sack, sack, sack, sack – yes,' said Francesca,
'but I think the loveliest word of all is cotton.'
'Cotton!' he cried.
'No, say it cot'n: the "cot" hard, mute the next "t"
and then gulp the "n." "
'Cot'n, cot'n, cot'n, cot'n. Oh my, yes, isn't it
delicious!' cried the doctor. 'Cot'n, cot'n, cot'n!'
2
For a few days longer some baffling protector
seemed to ward from Fanny the menace of dismissal
Harper's tremors, his absences, or the servant's
temporary disappearances. It was a task the young
39
THE LITTLE MISTRESS
doctor would not delegate to his wife, for whom he
strove to maintain an atmosphere of congruity and
peace, with no disturbing elements crossing her ap-
prehension of what life meant to her. Whether that
was much or little mattered not at all so long as the
mild air of its enchantments engrossed and sustained
her. Francesca was moulded less by her acts than by
her intentions; her will was so much less strong than
her desires that life was coloured more by the inten-
sity of her moods than by its misuse of her aims.
But even Francesca, indifferent, forbearing, pounced
with anger one morning just as she had pounced, like
a cat, into her own room, for there she beheld the
execrable Fanny perusing with eminent delight a
bundle of those blue-grey letters which usually re-
posed in a locked drawer. So engrossed was the cul-
prit that she did not hear her mistress until, venting
a sigh of appreciation, she suddenly realized that she
was observed. Guilty Fanny dropped the letters to
the table and turned briskly to her broom and bushes.
Francesca closed the door behind her and said very
disgustedly, 'Yes, Fanny?' The servant with pained
innocence murmured, 'What, ma'am?'
Francesca directed at her a gaze that mutely ful-
minated. 'I suspected this: you read my private
letters! You do read them,' insisted the trembling
Francesca. 'You've read them all, I know you.'
There was no answer; there were just the broom,
the brushes, and Fanny, and as Francesca scuffled
the letters back into their drawer and turned the key
Fanny went towards the door.
40
THE LITTLE MISTRESS
'Where are you going?' hissed Francesca.
'Downstairs, ma'am,' the lost sheep whispered.
'You abominable thing! What have you to say?'
'Oh, for sure, I'd never say anything, ma'am,' said
the astonishing culprit, 'never anything to anybody
I shouldn't say, not to anyone, ma'am.'
'What do you mean - what is there to say? You
wicked eavesdropping girl! It's the wickedest thing
in the world to do, the most wicked.'
'I didn't mean to, ma'am . . .
'Of course not, of course you didn't - they bit you,
I suppose.'
'I saw them lying about.'
'Where? Where did you see them?'
Just there on the table.'
'When?' Francesca had to repeat it. 'When were
they lying on the table?'
'When I came here, the first week.'
'So you read them before, all of them! I guessed
that! How horrible and vulgar! When did you read
them since?'
'Every day, ma'am, I think.'
'But it's impossible; I lock them up.'
'You leave the key in the drawer, ma'am. (You have
now, ma'am.) But I didn't do it sneakily. . .
'No?'
'I didn't, ma'am; you leave 'em lying about. And
you see he calls you by the name of Dear Fan, and
that's my name - it's the same as me.'
'Absurd devil!' commented Francesca. "You've read
them all?'
4I
THE LITTLE MISTRESS
"That's no harm, ma'am. I shan't make any trouble,
ma'am,' wailed unhappy Fanny. 'I like you too much,
I do, and him too.'
The women gazed at each other curiously for a few
moments until Fanny was moved to say: 'It's rather
... it's so . . . so...' The ghost of a smile seemed
to chase the ghost of a word from the girl's lips.
'So what?' snapped the little mistress.
Fanny let it surprisingly fall at last. 'Funny!' she
said, and the indignant flush on Francesca's cheeks
deepened as the domestic continued. 'His name is
just like my friend's, who I used to walk out with; he
used to write to me, just like that. It was rude of me
to read your letters, ma'am, and me so fond of you,
but my name's Fan, too, and it didn't seem rude, not
with the same names. I'm stupid, ma'am, I don't
know everything sometimes, ma'am.'
Fanny's eyes glimmered ruefully in her yellow face,
and her small nose exhibited a perfect stupidity of
pink that almost disarmed Francesca.
"Oh, I don't mind your having read them, though
of course I don't like it really; it's loutish. But it's
the beastly furtiveness you've imported into my
private affairs which I resent. If my private affairs
aren't safe from this . . . Oh, you cursed devil,
you've spoiled everything now, you've made every-
thing ridiculous, you beastly clammy Hackbut! I
suppose' she gleamed ironically at the stricken
servant - 'you spied on your last mistress, just the
same? And then you left her, didn't you, proper
Hackbut? I shall never call you Fanny again, never;
42
THE LITTLE MISTRESS
never anything but Hackbut until you go, for of
course you would not dream of stopping here now,
would you?'
'I don't want to leave you, ma'am.'
'Oh,' raged Francesca, 'I must tell Dr. Harper at
once.' And she ran angrily out of the room.
Fanny returned to the kitchen, full of musing tre-
mors, but with just one gleam of confidence: her
mistress couldn't tell the doctor. God's body, she
would not dare! Why, the letters . . . Oh, but they
were so .. so... they were like what you read
about, like the Bible, they were like plays. If she
only had a lover like that she'd go with him and do
things and things, all sorts of things. She would do
whatever she liked, and he would do what he wanted,
and they'd go all over the world together – the Isle
of Wight and Tappingham Woods, Tappingham,
Tap ...' Hackbut drooped forlornly upon the
kitchen table and broke into tears. There her mis-
tress found her again.
'Why, what's the matter? Don't be such a fool,
Fanny! I'm going out to tea this afternoon and I
want you to...
'It's my afternoon off,' Fanny interjected with
sullen promptitude, through her tears.
'Oh,' exclaimed Francesca, sullenly too, 'dear me,
yes.
'I've got an appointment,' explained Fanny.
'I see. All right then,' agreed her mistress.
Having prepared lunch, Fanny hurried from the
house, dressed in her brown jacket and the flaunting
43
THE LITTLE MISTRESS
hat with green bow as large as a lampshade. Fran-
cesca hated it; she always wore small hats herself,
like the socket of an acorn.
After lunch the little mistress cycled away to a
country friend, five miles off. You couldn't help
staring at Francesca, always, and now she was dressed
in white she was more beguiling than ever - all white
from head to foot except the gold ring on her finger
and the strip of crimson ribbon hanging from her
hat. The hat was not quite white, perhaps; shaped
like the moon in its first quarter it curved round her
dark fringed hair as if it loved her, and the points
almost brushed her pink cheeks. You couldn't help
staring at Francesca.
Stopping at the Tappingham café on the way, for
a cup of coffee, she sat at a table opposite a nun
who was eating three sausages. Three! But Fran-
cesca did not stare at the nun; no, she only sipped her
coffee and glanced out of the window at the passers-
by, or looked at the other customers. There were
two ladies with a youngish man who took snuff
frequently. Disgusting! Presently the ladies retired
to the lavatory and left the youngish man alone at the
table. He did not look very merry: small squeezed
eyes he had, thin mouse-coloured hair, and was
painfully shaven. Francesca could see in the mirror
behind him that a bald patch as large as a teacup had
already established itself upon his oily skull. And
what a squab nose! But it must have smelt money,
Francesca thought, for he looked, indefinably, quite
rich. He took the small box again from his fob,
44
THE LITTLE MISTRESS
tapped it, opened it, took a pinch between finger and
thumb, shook the surplus to the floor (how filthy!),
pressed the thumb into his right nostril, the fore-
finger into the left, replaced the box and drew out
his handkerchief. There followed a mild dexterous
convulsion.
But oh, how happy little Francesca was! There was
nothing in life so exciting as one's interest in one's
self, and she had nothing to do but sit and see her own
life glide sweetly by, like - like a yacht. Indeed it was
she herself that seemed to glide and glide, with infi-
nite gentleness, like a little white yawl sliding to its
moorings in a green crystal bay, with a yard-long
burgee of crimson galloon. She could rest apart, as it
were, and behold herself living and acting as some-
thing beautifully strange. Some day, soon, she was
to go on a cruise with a friend whose yacht was called
The Francesca.
Well, she must get on, so on she goes. She pays
for her coffee, and as she steps into the street a clergy-
man crosses the road towards her, dressed in his
cassock, and hatless. In his arms he carries a pile of
six or seven money-boxes for missionaries, and as he
is about to enter the ironmonger's shop next door to
the café one of the boxes tumbles from his arms and
clutters along the pavement to Francesca's feet.
Francesca picks it up for him. "Thank you,' he
intones solemnly, but as he replaces it another box
falls. Francesca with a gleam of gaiety restores this
too; the clerical gentleman says solemnly, 'I am much
obliged to you,' and then dives into the doorway.
45
THE LITTLE MISTRESS
'Fop!' mutters Francesca, turning to her bicycle.
But again she is interrupted, she almost bumps into
two passing women, one old and one young. Fran-
cesca draws sharply back, for the young one, in
black attire, carries in her arms before her a little
white coffin. She does not wear the appearance of
grief, indeed she seems secretly to enjoy the surprise
of the staring people. The older woman is weeping.
With a little chilling shock Francesca recognizes the
girl with the coffin; it is Fanny Hackbut, in a bor-
rowed black hat and cloak. The two mourning
women pass along the pavement for some distance
and then cross the road into the churchyard at the
end of the street. The clergyman comes out of the
ironmonger's shop and hurries after them.
Francesca rode away to her friend, a little quenched
in spirit.
'So miserable I am,' she wailed to Goneril Stroove,
'I passed a funeral, and I hate funerals.'
Miss Stroove dwelt in a village that was but a hig-
gledy-piggledy street with an inn at each end. One,
The Crown, had lost the sign from its tall white pole:
the other was The King's Head. Her tiny house was
higgledy-piggledy too. It had a rather large bakery
on one side, a rather small post office on the other,
and behind was a blacksmith's yard - she could hear
the anvil chiming all day long. Her front door,
painted deeply blue, had a disc of glass as large as a
coal plate above the black knocker. The ground
floor was a little below the level of the street and visi-
tors had accordingly to descend two stone steps and
46
THE LITTLE MISTRESS
crank themselves through the doorway straight into
a room where the ceiling was altogether too low for
the lofty thoughts encouraged there. Its two front
windows each had six bulbous panes that defeated
inquisitive scrutineers, and left even the dweller
herself in a state of hapless speculation about passing
identities. A clear window at the back revealed the
yard of the smith.
Goneril was a plump grey lady, spruce as a crested
lark, with wavery eyes the colour of zinc. She dab-
bled a little in occultism and other sidereal quackery,
but her ideas, good or bad, were never indifferent,
were pungently expressed, and her pathetic belief
in human brotherhood - as if the whole of mankind
might be turned into a joint stock soul company
with herself as private secretary
infected her
hearers with the charm of her sincerity. For some
years now she had been compiling a History of
History.
While Goneril went into her kitchen to prepare tea
Francesca sat and listened to the ching of the anvil.
The smith was shoeing a horse, and the smell of its
burning hoofs came unpleasantly through the open
window. Neither men nor horses could be seen, but
gruff voices of the smith and a carter in charge of the
horse carried on a conversation much broken by
violent admonitions to the animal. Pit, pit, pit, went
the hammer on the new shoe.
'Whuppah!' yelled the smith. It startled Francesca
at first; she thought the horse must have bitten
somebody, but it was not so. 'Git over, Dragon.
47
THE LITTLE MISTRESS
Doh-wee-yock, boy,' cried the very affable carter.
Pit, pit, pit, went the hammer again.
'How much they give for this hoss, Archie?' puffed
the smith.
'Sixty pounds,' replied Archie. 'He cost sixty golden
(Whoa!) sovrins, Ted.'
"Too much, that,' gurgled the smith. 'Whoa, Dragon!
Whoa, boy!'
'Bought him from a man as had the whooping-
cough or summat.'
'Git up there!' roared the smith. To Francesca his
voice sounded fearfully brutal.
Over some rather intense muffins and cups of China
tea Goneril discoursed to Francesca for some time
upon universal space, of the way to raise sunken
ships, and lastly of dual personality.
'Yes, Goneril,' said Francesca at length, 'there
is nothing in life so exciting to me as my own interest
in myself. I suppose I am an egoist.
'I dare say - if one only knew them - the things other
people think about you would be quite as ex-
citing.'
'Oh, but...' objected Francesca.
'Almost everything one person thinks of another,'
persisted Goneril, is likely to be bad rather than
good. We are all of us at once delicate and brutal,
wise and wanton, courageous and procrastinating.
But well, then, our virtues are taken for granted, or
what is pleasanter, they are generally known; but it
is what is unknown in others that offers itself to our
crooked furtive speculations. Fortunately these inde-
48
THE LITTLE MISTRESS
cencies are seldom expressed. It's a sublime reti-
cence.'
'Aren't we foul!' ejaculated Francesca. 'And yet I
was thinking only as I came along that there is no-
thing in life so fascinating as one's own view of one-
self. Do you ever stand apart, as it were, and observe
yourself, living and acting as some enchanting thing,
beautifully strange?'
The zinc eyes wavered about the visitor's visible
daintiness. 'I never see myself in that way, no, but
sometimes I do feel my being as a kind of labyrinth,
with my spirit wandering in it lost and sighing, in
search of something. I don't know what I wish I
did. Yes, take that piece of muffin, please. I'm not
a romantic, you see; I can only probe into myself,
make dissections of my tendencies, my impulses.'
Francesca had a fleeting vision of numberless rashers
of bacon. 'It is very hopeless, though, disillusioning,'
continued Goneril. "The person I really am is the
person I understand least of all. I never do see my-
self. No, Nimrod, no; you are a filthy cat!'
Nimrod's stiff upstanding tabby tail reminded her -
Miss Stroove said - of the Tower of Babel: she was
debarred for ever from understanding even with him.
Whenever it ceased to prowl the tabby imp continued
to lift its paws in apparent trepidation, as though it
could feel the fire which is said to lie in the heart of
the earth. Silently for a few moments they watched
him do this; then the voices from the smithy broke
upon them again.
'He's a queer hoss, Ted,' the carter was saying. 'If
F.F.
49
D
THE LITTLE MISTRESS
he've bin in mud and his fetlocks be all mired up he'll
stand to the brush and let a child groom him; but if
you went to lay a finger on him when he was clean
he'd kick a fly's eye out. Now then, Dragon! What
be at? Git over!'
'Yes,' Francesca resumed, 'I suppose the average
person is romantic?'
"The average person!' said Goneril, with a whimsical
frown. 'What is that? There was once an Average
Man, and his good and bad deeds were mingled in
such equal proportions, so absolutely balanced, that
no one could determine whether he had any goodness
at all. In consequence everybody believed him to be
bad. When he was swayed by his bad desires they
called him Sinner and Monster. When he had his
good ones, they could not believe the evidence of
their senses, it was too good to be true: they called
him Hypocrite, Impostor, Liar. When he did things
neither good nor bad they said he was trivial - and
wished him dead.'
She was interrupted by renewed uproar from the
smithy.
'What a hubbub!' cried Francesca, ‘it must annoy
you dreadfully.'
'No, no,' cried Goneril, ‘I like it, I like it. I expect
it's a difficult horse to shoe.'
'Git over, Dragon!' shouted Archie, 'you lolloping
badger, you! I'll gie you a drench to-morrow.
The silent women peered a little apprehensively at
the back window.
'He's not up to much,' the smith growled and
50
THE LITTLE MISTRESS
puffed, 'what you been feeding him on - unction?"
'Oh, they has to be fed, we know. Horses have to
be fed, Ted, we knows that. He's too fat, now, but
not so bloody.
'Whoa up, there! Gee whoa, Dragon!' roared the
smith, 'gee whoa!'
Pit, pit, pit, went the hammer again.
'He ain't-whoa, Dragon, good boy,' said Archie,
'he ain't so bloody
'Yah, whuppah!' the smith again momentarily
raged. The horse subsided, it was bearing its ordeal
with fortitude, the hammer resumed its pit, pit, pit.
'What was that you was a-going to say, Archie?'
"To say, Ted?' the carter questioned, 'to say? What
was I a-going to say?'
'Ah, I can't tell you, Archie. Only God Almighty
could do that, but it were summat about this 'ere
hoss, I believe.'
'Oh, ah, I know!' Archie crowed. 'I was only going
to say as how he a'n't so fat as he was, not near.'
The smith made no reply, the shoeing was finished.
'So long, Ted.'
'So long, Archie.' A great horse, with a man on its
back, clumped past Goneril's little window.
"I am romantic, you know,' continued Francesca
at last, 'I am too romantic, such a fool I am!'
'No, no, don't say too romantic,' protested Goneril;
'all romantic souls have compassion. One of the
most beautiful things in life is mankind's pity for its
own sinfulness.'
'Do you think so?' Francesca said. 'It sounds rather
51
THE LITTLE MISTRESS
maudlin to me. But it is you who are compassionate,
Goneril. Nobody could be more compassionate than
you. And you're not a a bit romantic! Too, too
compassionate you are, you never find fault with the
world, the flesh, or the devil, or anything else - if
there is anything else!'
'If there are faults to find, Francesca,' Goneril's
gaze seemed to pierce her visitor's, 'it is not my
business to find them, and I don't want to find them.
True, this is an entirely inexplicable existence: we
may be living in a fool's paradise, but it is paradise.
You see,' she went on as Francesca did not speak,
'romance is a bridge between mysticism and reality.
To the mystic nothing is impossible save reality,
which is vanity and vexation of spirit; while to the
realist all things are possible, except mysticism. You
are neither, dear little Francesca, you are like love
itself, and love's only duty is to be delightful.'
'Dear Goneril,' protested the other, 'you rush over
me like a cataract, terrifying! And I don't under-
stand your axioms one bit - I never do, though I
like them enormously - they seem to me to be just
sufficiently comprehensive to be either true or untrue.
So puzzled I am! Surely love now should be faith-
ful, that is its duty, surely?'
'Faithful to what?'
"To what it loves.'
'It can only be faithful or unfaithful to itself, Fran-
cesca, to its own genius of delight. Yes, yes, and to
that faith I know we all prove false: men are ungrate-
ful and women are unwise. Blessed are the pure in
52
THE LITTLE MISTRESS
heart, for they shall see God: but isn't that just too
hard a price to pay - even for heaven?”
'Ah, yes,' said Francesca, 'we always know what we
can do until we try!'
Goneril had brought their talk to an altitude at
which (as happened with the Tower of Babel) neither
knew what to do with it. It stood there, tempting
time, until Francesca put on her yellow gloves and
Goneril declared that it - the weather was blowing
up for rain.
-
So Francesca departed: she kissed her friend in the
sunken doorway.
'Good-bye, Goneril, you will come in to tea soon?'
'Yes, I will. Have you got rid of your tiresome ser-
vant yet?'
'No,' Francesca deliberated, with one leg over the
cycle saddle, 'we've not, no. She's begun to be satis-
factory. We are keeping her on.'
'Indeed!'
'Oh, she's quite a friend of the family now - she
reads our letters! Good-bye!'
'Dear me! Good-bye, Francesca.'
Francesca cycled away quite swiftly, for she was
exhilarated. 'What a curious day it keeps on being!'
she breathlessly mused. Goneril always excited her.
She felt like a tiny plant, recently parched, that had
just been cheered by soft copious streams from a
pot that had a brass sprayer, very large and shiny,
with very little holes in it.
'And it's not half over yet. Oh, all sorts of things
I've got to tell Hugh.'
53
THE LITTLE MISTRESS
She came to the railway crossing and abated her
speed.
I'm sure it is not going to rain, it is only splendidly
dull. I think that railway station is perfectly beauti-
ful, too. Railway stations can be, and they are. Oh,
isn't it! It must be charming to live there.'
It was a very, very small station - there were only
two advertisements even: one that promised soft
white hands and a good complexion (Francesca had
both), the other a gall cure for horses. One bench,
one window, one lamp, and one fox-terrier dog that
dashed from the booking office six times a day to bark
at a train coming almost silently from the tunnel in
the green hills and then sliding through the lime
works that sprawled in a white pit with six black
cupolas and a high pink chimney.
'Goneril's talk is so stimulating. And yet that's
strange, too, for it's no more like real life than a topic
of conversation in a train. I don't know, I can't think
she can have been in love many times; perhaps not
more than once - everybody has loved once. In men
it is an art- she says - and in women it is a gift.
That's very true, only, how can one keep on giving
one's gift away? As one does?'
Back through Tappingham she rode with undimin-
ished spirit. The ironmonger's shop was closing; the
baths and shovels had been taken down so that she
could now see the name above the window, Kitchen,
late Kettle. The churchyard was very still. Francesca
glanced over the wall as she sped by, but she could
see nothing disquieting. She was glad. It would be
54
THE LITTLE MISTRESS
nice when one died to have a very beautiful quota-
tion on one's grave, something quite distinctive
that no one else had ever thought of; she determined
to make notes of suitable mottoes.
In the park under Tappingham woods scores of
deer were browsing under the trellising trees, and
close to the metal palings there was a small but
emphatic lake, its ambulant swan covering the be-
holder with the shrewd eye of a strumpet.
'Goneril doesn't help me in the least, really. She
makes everything one hopes for seem impossible.
And one always longs for the impossible - there's
nothing else to wish for. Oh, but I love days like
this, they are so exciting!'
On reaching home Francesca ran first to peep in
the kitchen. Nobody there, but it smelled of dinner
- divinely. Stuffed hare, force-meat balls, fried
whiting - lovely! How pathetic the fishes would
look under their little sprigs of parsley! How deli-
cious! How tantalizing! Oh, hunger was quite the
most heavenly thing in the world! Nobody in the
dining-room either, no letters by the afternoon post,
the gilt clock had stopped at twenty-five minutes
past six. It often stopped between six and seven - so
stupid of it. Then, through an open doorway that
led into the garden, she could see and hear her
husband talking to Fanny, a very quenched Fanny
standing with a bowl of corn in her hands. Hugh
had the appearance of a virtuous man about to con-
vict a despicable scoundrel of some misdemeanour.
'Stupid,' he said softly, but disagreeably, 'you needn't
·
55
THE LITTLE MISTRESS
do that, I've already fed them; besides, some of them
are broody and mustn't be fed at all. You are a fool,
you know nothing about chickens, do you? No, you
know nothing about chickens!'
'Hugh, Hugh,' cried Francesca from the doorway,
'come in quickly, please, I want you.'
'Hello, hello!' He came at once, and Francesca
closed the door.
'You mustn't do it, Hugh, not now. You mustn't
do it at all.'
'Do what?'
'Mustn't discharge her, her baby is dead.'
'Oh!' he said blankly. 'Well, they always do die.
I'm rather glad.'
'But, Hugh, you mustn't discharge her at all now.
She only buried it to-day, this afternoon. I saw her
carrying the coffin in her arms, in the street,
Hugh.'
They sat down side by side and she told him all
about it. Later on, after dinner, as they sat in the
gathering dusk still harping upon Fanny, Francesca
said: 'She's been reading my letters.'
Hugh made no comment.
'My private ones,' Francesca proceeded. 'I caught
her at them, all of them!'
'Your private letters? From... him?'
Francesca nodded with a playful grimace.
'Well,' said he slowly, that's a reason the more for
getting rid of her, isn't it? Not that we want any more,
when there are already 999, the slut.'
'Reasons? Yes, but perhaps . we must let this
56
THE LITTLE MISTRESS
blow over. You mustn't do it now, Hugh, at least,
you mustn't do it yet, must you?'
'Oh, because of the letters! I see, I see, yes, I see.
Darn her,' he added softly, but after a few seconds
he burst out petulantly: 'I wish you'd give up this
confounded Airtation. You've let yourself in for
something now, if she goes tattling - as of course she
will!'
'But you said I could.'
'Could?' he snapped.
'Have a friend.
'O God! You say that as if I had said that you
might have a cake.'
'Well,' Francesca said, a little hardly, and it seemed
the only thing to say, 'what about it?'
'About it! I did say so, yes, I did say it, yes, cer-
tainly; but if he writes you letters which horrify our
scullion
'Oh, but they don't, Hugh; she revels in them, she's
in love with them, her imbecility is quite touching.'
'He's a philanderer,' replied her husband severely, 'a
posturer, a scandal-maker and a liar. Besides, I don't
approve of him. I liked him once, but I loathe him
now. I warn you, he has a crooked bawdy mind, and
is not to be trusted or believed.'
'Does all that matter, Hugh?'
'Doesn't it?'
'No, his only duty is to be delightful.'
"And is he?'
She nodded again. 'It's so odd, Hugh, I'm fond
of him.' Her small white hands groped their way
57
THE LITTLE MISTRESS
into the doctor's large fist. 'I shall be seeing him
again... soon.'
'When?'
Francesca did not reply.
'Well,' he said, releasing her, 'he's not in love
with me, nor I with him. I don't like him. His
clothes always look too large for him, and his hats too
small.'
'Oh, Hugh, Hugh!' Francesca shuddered.
'I used to like him once, very much, but he hasn't
a scrap of conscience, not a scrap. Everybody has
some sort of conscience, but he has none; I couldn't
exist without it. One forgets it, it's true, same as one
forgets the collar stud at the back of one's neck - but
it's there! When are you going to see him?'
He gleamed at her with all his pleasant teeth.
"To-morrow, Hugh.'
Again she groped her way into his unresponsive
hands. He could enjoy the perfume of her dark
fine hair, carelessly combed, but never dishevelled.
Ah, she was most lovely, most discerning, and yet
still most fantastic.
They were silent for a very long time. He could
hear the maple trees in their garden swishing and
sighing. He thought Francesca had gone to sleep,
she fell asleep so easily; he got up, groping his way
towards the door, and put on a hat. Her voice at
last broke drowsily into the darkness that had grown
chill about them.
'Good night, Hugh,' she said; and he said 'Good
night' and went out to walk in the dark streets. The
58
THE LITTLE MISTRESS
wind had roughened and he tramped in freshened
airs as far as the borders of the town where there were
no public lights, only a few scattered villas with long
hedged gardens and lines of trees. There seemed to
be light as well as sound in the windy sky, but earth
remained all one streaming blackness, and he stepped
along timidly. His soul was full of doubt, mournful
as the dark seething trees. The gates in the gardens
rattled their loose latches, dim lights shone through
most of the upper windows, each casting the shadow
of a looking-glass upon its drawn blind - symbol of
curiosity and care, vanity and love. What a world it
would be without looking-glasses, wherein we see
ourselves as others do not see us! The wind blows;
upon its unknown course rolls this vast surprising
world; how idle is sorrow, how vain is faith, how
slight a thing is love. Nothing, nothing (his mind
chattered) but a little fervid dust peering into a mirror
that reflects only its own gazing face.
'It's beginning to rain,' sighed Harper, 'I must go
back home,' and he returned home to find an urgent
summons from an old colleague desiring his assist-
ance in a critical case some fifteen miles away.
On several nights he was away from home, it was
the desperate case of an unimportant but wealthy
woman, and for
and for many days he scarcely saw Francesca
at all, except that always on his tired return she would
meet him, beautifully sympathetic, and minister to
him.
But she made no further confidences, his almost
frenzied desire to be assured of her romantic infidel-
59
THE LITTLE MISTRESS
ity was never satisfied. As to that the absurdest
inhibition possessed him, he could not muster the will
to ask her and discover. He knew Francesca too well
to be hopeful, she had a curious ruthlessness. Yet he
was puzzled, and he kept the puzzle lying in his
hands like some useless intricate ingenuity that he
could neither conquer nor discard. And there was
some sort of solace in mere doubt - doubt and hope
were just two sides of the same coin - it left him a
margin on which he could still precariously, though
so intolerably, live. How serious Francesca intended
this affair to be he did not know, he could only
guess. She had opportunity for anything, every-
thing, but opportunity was nothing unless time, or
chance, or the devil himself, transfigured it.
'Why, oh, why,' he groaned, 'doesn't she go and see
him? Or does she? She ought to go, it's the thing
to do. She is fond of him. I wish it were not true.
What a thing love is! Well, well, but if it's got to be
borne! O God, I wish it were not true!'
If he could only be certain of something, good or
bad! He would feel better, even if it were bad; he
would indeed welcome the ignominy of that relief.
But he dared not for the peace of his soul ask the
simple question of Francesca. Let sleeping dogs lie -
he remembered the adage, only he wanted to be sure
that they were sleeping and not shamming for some
infernal purpose. Francesca was quite blameless; he
envisioned her always, always as a tender flower; but
she had to grow in the way God made her. 'All
brains and apprehension - but she hasn't any sense,
60
THE LITTLE MISTRESS
he confided to himself, and in that state of mind he
moodily waited, and only frigidly fingered the dis-
tractions of duty, of scene, of appetite.
One afternoon, three weeks having gone by, he
came home and found her kneeling in front
of the fire with a pile of blue-grey letters in her
lap.
'Hello!' He squatted down beside her. 'What's all
this?'
'Junk!' said Francesca. 'Do you see, Hugh?' She
smiled at him and continued idly throwing the letters
by twos and threes into the flames. 'Junk!' Francesca
repeated, 'throw some on, Hugh, quickly.'
He began to throw letters upon the fire.
'Do you think I'm faithless, Hugh?'
'Well, he hasn't much to congratulate himself upon;
how long did it last?'
'Oh, I don't mean faithless to him. Besides, it
doesn't matter how long, does it?'
'Not as long as it was long enough,' said he.
'Enough for what?' Francesca shot a glance at him,
but he was not looking at her.
'Enough to get tired of,' he rejoined.
She seized some of the remaining letters and began
to peruse them silently, even sullenly.
"These will do,' at last she cried, throwing the rest
away, 'they are not too wicked, they won't corrupt
her, they couldn't demoralize anyone, even me; they
wouldn't agitate a nun. I'm keeping these for Fanny,
she explained, 'I shall leave them about on purpose
for her to read.'
61
THE LITTLE MISTRESS
'Humph!' grinned the doctor. "Tell me what hap-
pened.'
'Oh, it was too silly! She read them all, and revelled
in them.'
'Fanny?'
"Yes, it spoilt everything and made it ridiculous. I
could see myself in such an absurd light, like a house-
maid! Do you ever see yourself, Hugh, living and
acting very strangely apart from your real self? No?
I suppose I am too sensitive, but it seemed as if
Fanny and I had changed places, that the letters
were more hers than mine - she liked them better
than I did - and that he was, too. Preposterous situa-
tion! Have you ever felt like that, Hugh?'
'Yes,' murmured the doctor, gazing at his wife, 'I
think, yes.'
"Too preposterous, isn't it? But it was you who were
so right, Hugh. It's incredible - but you are always
so incredibly right. You aren't ever right in the
ordinary way. You are really rather wrong about him
generally: he is just like Goneril's average man, so
very balanced that he's just trivial. But what I do see
so absurdly now - I can see nothing else and it's
horribly ridiculous - is that his clothes are too big,
and his hats are too small!'
The doctor grinned as generously as his some-
what strained apprehension allowed. Francesca
clasped her white hands and gazed at the paper
ashes; the doctor gathered her tiny fists into his
own.
'Hugh, am I a faithless being?"
62
THE LITTLE MISTRESS
'Well,' he replied, 'isn't that just what I want to
know?'
'Dear Hugh!' and then Francesca irrelevantly said:
'Fanny's such an impossible fool!'
'Now, isn't she?' the doctor softly groaned. 'I shall
sack her at once.'
'Hugh,' Francesca murmured,' why don't you ever
want to sack me?'
63
WILLIE WAUGH
N A FINE AFTERNOON IN APRIL A MAN IS SITTING
ON
at the foot of an ash-tree beside the pool of
water on Peck Common. Twelve tiny ducklings
on the water belong to him, and he is admiring them.
There are four ash-trees there, growing out of the
tenderest turf and spreading over the pool; the bright
air seems to swim visibly around their bare grey
limbs. A carrier this man is, a little man with an old
conical hat, his coat sleeves coming down over his
knuckles, his hat coming down over his ears, and he
is the masterpiece of the whole district for trapping
a mole. Beside him a sallow bush, richly embowered,
also stretches out above the pool, every twig of it
bearing a ball of blossom covered with yellow dust,
whereon fat bees are mumbling and clinging. But
the day's air comes coldly from the east, and at inter-
vals the bees, so chilled, tumble into the pool. The
man takes a branch he has broken from the palm
tree and drags them to earth again, where they dry
their wings and crawl into the grass for comfort.
'Lend us your saw, Willie Waugh,' said Peter
Finch, coming suddenly upon him.
'Good evening,' said the man in the funny hat,
without looking up. He had not noticed Peter's
approach, for the grass was quiet under his footfall,
and then his ducklings had just paddled to the shore
and one of them was behaving queerly. It would
not follow its friends, it just kept turning round and
turning round, squealing all the time.
64
WILLIE WAUGH
Peter Finch asked again: 'Will you lend me your
saw for a few nights, Willie?'
'Look at that duckling,' Waugh indicated the
creature with his pipe; 'do you know what the
matter is with that duckling?'
'I only waunts to borrow it for a few nights,' con-
tinued Peter Finch, a tall man, a thin man, who
shaved in vain so blue was his sharp chin. "The old
keeper asked me to fell some trees arter I done my
daily work, so it's for a bit of overtime, you see.
Your big saw, if you're not a-using of it.
'It's blind, that duckling is,' explained the other,
'blind.'
'I ain't got a saw of my own, Willie, or I wouldn't
ask ye.' - Peter was not to be diverted - 'I'll take
care of it, you knows that, I'll take care of it well.'
'I shan't kill it for a day or two, not yet I shan't.
I'll see how it gets on. It eats like a blam young
tiger,' commented Waugh.
'Dan'l Gunn,' pursued Peter, ‘ask me and Hoppy
Marlow to fell they trees. We'em a-going to do it
between us, overtime work. It 'ull put three or four
pounds apiece in our pockets. If so be as you'd
Îend us your big saw.'
'Blind as a bat,' Willie Waugh continued, 'that's
why he keeps on turning round. It ain't got no tail
now, neither.'
'I thought Hoppy had got one, but he ain't. He
used to have a big saw, I thought; I quite thought
that, but he says as how he didn't.'
"That foal in Casby's paddock,' cried Waugh,
F.F.
65
E
WILLIE WAUGH
'picked it up in its mouth last night and started
chawing of it like a wisp hay. That little duck!
That's a fine caper, an' it? I collared that duckling
away from it just in time, but his tail was gone.'
As disgust and indignation mounted within him
Willie turned and looked Peter Finch fiercely in
the eyes. 'An' I gin him a kick in the stomach as
cured him o' duck hunting, I warrant!'
'So I'll send my young Tommy,' said Peter, 'round
for it to-morrow, after tea-time. Right-o.' And off
went Peter.
Next evening little Tom Finch came to the car-
rier's door to fetch the saw for his father to fell the
trees along of Hoppy Marlow.
'I've changed my mind,' declared Willie Waugh.
'I can't lend him, tell your father.'
'Our father sent me for the saw, please,' repeated
the child.
'And I tell you I ain't a-going to lend him. Can't
you hear? I told you once and now I tell you twice.
Tell your father I've changed my mind.'
Away went little Tom, and soon afterwards Peter
Finch appeared at the door of Waugh's cottage,
which was No. 93 Peck Common, although if you
took a spyglass, even, you would not, and could not,
see more than ten or a dozen cottages there. Willie
had crept away to the pool, but Peter saw him and
went after him.
'Lend us your saw, Willie Waugh,' begged Peter,
'I've a job of overtime to do.'
'I can't lend you,' Willie said.
66
WILLIE WAUGH
'Why can't you lend me your big saw?' There was
a sharpish note in Peter's voice.
'I've changed my mind.'
'And for why have you changed your mind?'
Willie meditated, stared at his interrogator's chest,
removed his pipe with his right hand, and with the
forefinger of his left he tapped the arm of Peter
Finch, and began:
'I'll tell you for why, I'll diagonize it for you.
You're a man in full heart of work, from Monday
morning to Saturday arternoon; a full week's work,
and a full week's pay you draws.'
'Ah?'
'Well, there's a-plenty men roundabout here's not
doing more than two or three days' work instead of a
week, and they's the ones as ought to be set to do
this overtime job. When you be in full heart o'
work and they be not, you to go and work overtime
for another man does them out of the chance,'
'Ho, that's how it runs, is it?' commented
Peter.
"That's it an' all. Several there be. Two of 'em I
knows for certain at Creevey Lane - Moby Colfax
for one- and there's Topper Oakes over at Fire-
brass Hill, and some more I knows. And that's
why I shan't a-lend 'ee my saw.'
"Topper Oakes! He couldn't fell a nut tree! Look
here, did I ever do you a bad turn, Willie Waugh?'
Willie began to fill his pipe. 'No, not to my know-
ledge, I can't say you ever did that.'
"Treat me as a neighbour, then, as a neighbour
67
WILLIE WAUGH
should. Do me no harm. Do me no harm, and I'll
do none. Only man I ever harmed is myself. Full
work and full pay, says you;
pay, says you; but you knows you can
put that thirty shillings in your eye and sneeze on
it- and then it wouldn't choke you.'
'I understands all that. . . .'
'Eight young uns I got, and a wife, and a cripple
mother.
'Well, that's your look out, it's your luck. I under-
stands all that. But if you doos this overtime job
you're depriving another man of his just dues, and
if I lends you my saw I be just as bad.'
'How d'ye make that out?'
'Stands to reason. You be a-taking the bread out of
a man's mouth. That's truth and sound sense.'
Peter Finch stared at him as if he were an absurd
phenomenon - an ox with a hat on, perhaps, or a
pig with a toothbrush. 'You're chattering as if you
was the lord mayor of this parish.'
>
'Sound truth and sound sense,' repeated Willie,
'sound as a bell.'
'Ah, and hard as a ram's horn,' quoth Peter.
"There's many a man as wouldn't ever speak to you
again for this, Willie Waugh. You talk of robbing
men of their bread: tell me this - Would you lend
e'er a one of 'em your big saw?'
'If they asked me,' replied Waugh imperturbably,
'I might.'
"Then wouldn't you be a-robbing me and mine,
and Hoppy Marlow and his'n?'
'No!'
68
WILLIE WAUGH
'Course you would. Come on, I'll pay you a crown
for the use of that saw.'
'I couldn't take it,' said Waugh, 'my conscience
wouldn't let me.'
'Bah! If I harboured a thing like that I wouldn't
call it a conscience! You're a sour neighbour, Willie
Waugh, sour as varjuice. I've done a good deed to
you, more than once I have, and known you all my
life.'
"The same to you, many a time!' ejaculated Willie.
Then he lit his pipe that he always smoked with the
bowl upside down.
"When the wheel of your cart come off on Cadmer
Hill,' continued Finch, 'and we had to unempty it
'cause of a storm coming on...
"I unemptied it myself,' cried the carrier.
'Didn't I carry four sacks of meal home for you?
On my back? Half a mile each time, and rain and
sweat sopping me through!'
'Who was it drove your missus to the 'firmary when
she had her breast off for cancer, eh? A day's jour-
ney, that were, free and for nothing!'
'Well, and when you and your wife was down with
fever, and no one come near you for fear of catching
it, not even the parson, eh? Said he never knew
about it...
'Ah, the Peter!'
'Who looked after you then, Willie Waugh, and
your stock, Willie Waugh, and emptied your slops,
Willie Waugh?'
'And who collected a subscription for you when
69
WILLIE WAUGH
your sow died?' rejoined the carrier. 'Seven pounds
fourteen shillin's and ninepence ha'penny for a pig
as warn't worth half that money.'
"That's right enough,' Peter agreed. 'You been a
good neighbour, good as a man ever knowed. But
why do you round on me now?'
'I've not rounded on you, I'm only telling
you.'
'A neighbour,' Peter Finch observed, 'should stand
by his neighbour, turn and turn about. I've lived
next or nigh you all my life. You riz in the world,
you've prospered, but I haven't.
'God bless me,' cried Waugh, 'when I started out
to work I got three and six a week and a pound at
Michaelmas. My old dad would give me a penny
out of that on Saturdays.
'Oh, I knows. I knowed you, Willie Waugh, ever
since you was a nipper; I knowed you when you
put the tadpoles in the font at Farmer Fescot's
christening.
'Five o'clock we had to get up then, and work till
dark. None of this 'ere starting at seven and leaving
off at five, and football, and crickets, and God knows
what all! They was some farmers in those days,
but if their old corpses could come out of their
holes and see what goes on now, why, they.
they they'd go mad - it 'ud kill 'em!'
Peter was unmoved, a very unfeeling, unprincipled
man.
"Too many holidays in this country,' Willie rambled
moodily on, that's what there is. I'd sooner work
70
WILLIE WAUGH
seven days a week than six, for I don't know what to
be at a' Sundays.'
'We was at school then,' mused Peter. 'I caught the
tadpoles, a tin-full, and you tipped 'em in the font
water. There was a racket about that.'
'Ah,' commented Willie, 'you was afraid to do it of
yourself.'
I bet you once as you couldn't swallow a butter-
fly ...
Ah, and I ate four of 'em at once,' interrupted
Willie.
'But you was sick arterwards.'
'Nor you didn't pay up, by dam.' Waugh, leaning
against one of the ash-trees, smiled into the pool.
"That Farmer Fescot was a good old farmer as ever
was, a thoroughbred 'un.
"Thoroughly thoroughbred,' granted Peter. 'We
cooked the liver of his piebald nag when it died, you
and me!'
'His wife warn't much,' declared Willie.
'No. She ought to have had her head shook. Do
you recollect that circus as come by here one even-
ing? Going out west somewheres. They pasted up
bills on the barns and walls as they went along, and
we dogged 'em and turned their bills all upsy down.
Miles we followed that circus, and it wasn't half late
when we got home!'
'Ah,' chortled Willie, 'I 'members you falling over
the elephant's dung in the dark.'
"That's a few years ago,' sighed Peter, ‘a few years
ago, thirty, forty. Ah!' He turned and sauntered
71
WILLIE WAUGH
away, plucking as he did so a blade of grass and
chewing it as he went.
Willie called after him. 'Arn't you going to take
that saw?'
'If you like, Willie,' Peter turned, if you don't
mind obliging me for a few nights.'
'Well, take the blam saw,' said Willie gruffly.
"Think I'm going to run about arter you with it!'
So they went back to the cottage, and Peter got
the saw and took it home. When he had gone
Willie Waugh came and leaned over his garden
gate, staring across the common at the four ash-trees
by the pond where the grass was so very geen.
The trees were budding; the sky beyond them was
glassy blue, with a cusp of new white moon, and
clouds with fiery fringes hovering on the borders of
everywhere. Long shadows slanted from the ash-
trees, and long smoke twirled from the village
chimneys. Tir-a-loo sang the birds, and the eyes of
the playing children shone with a golden light.
'I never see,' grumbled Willie to himself, 'never in
all my days - such a pack of fools - as there be in this
world. And,' he added, 'they be all alike.'
72
THE HIGGLER
I
N A COLD APRIL AFTERNOON A HIGGLER WAS
Odriving across Shag a
C
cart.
driving across Shag Moor in a two-wheeled
H. WITLOW
Dealer in Poultry
DINNOP
was painted on the hood; the horse was of mean
appearance but notorious ancestry. A high upland
common was this moor, two miles from end to end,
and full of furze and bracken. There were no trees
and not a house, nothing but a line of telegraph
poles following the road, sweeping with rigidity
from north to south; nailed upon one of them a
small scarlet notice to stonethrowers was prominent
as a wound. On so high and wide a region as Shag
Moor the wind always blew, or if it did not quite
blow there was a cool activity in the air. The furze
was always green and growing, and, taking no
account of seasons, often golden. Here in summer
solitude lounged and snoozed; at other times, as
now, it shivered and looked sinister.
Higglers in general are ugly and shrewd, old and
hard, crafty and callous, but Harvey Witlow, though
shrewd, was not ugly; he was hard but not old, crafty
but not at all unkind. If you had eggs to sell he
would buy them, by the score he would, or by the
long hundred. Other odds and ends he would buy
73
THE HIGGLER
or do, paying good bright silver, bartering a bag of
apples, carrying your little pig to market, or fetching
a tree from the nurseries. But the season was back-
ward, eggs were scarce, trade was bad - by crumps,
it was indeed! - and as he crossed the moor Harvey
could not help discussing the situation with himself.
'If things don't change, and change for the better,
and change soon, I can't last and I can't endure it;
I'll be damned and done, and I'll have to sell,' he
said, prodding the animal with the butt of his whip,
'this cob. And,' he said, as if in afterthought, prod-
ding the footboard, 'this cart, and go back to the
land. And I'll have lost my fifty pounds. Well,
that's what war does for you. It does it for you, sir,'
he announced sharply to the vacant moor, 'and it
does it for me. Fifty pounds! I was better off in the
war. I was better off working for farmers - much.
But it's no good chattering about it, it's the trick of
life; when you get so far, then you can go and order
your funeral. Get along, Dodger!'
The horse responded briskly for a few moments.
'I tell ye,' said Harvey adjuring the ambient air, 'you
can go and order your funeral. Get along, Dodger!'
Again Dodger got along.
"Then there's Sophy, what about Sophy and me?'
He was not engaged to Sophy Daws, not exactly,
but he was keeping company with her. He was not
pledged or affianced, he was just keeping company
with her. But Sophy, as he knew, not only desired a
marriage with Mr. Witlow, she expected it, and
expected it soon. So did her parents, her friends, and
74
THE HIGGLER
everybody in the village, including the postman who
didn't live in it but wished he did, and the parson
who did live in it but wished he didn't.
'Well, that's damned and done, fair damned and
done now, unless things take a turn, and soon, so
it's no good chattering about it.'
And just then and there things did take a turn.
He had never been across the moor before; he was
prospecting for trade. At the end of Shag Moor he
saw standing back on the common, fifty yards from
the road, a neat square house set in a little farm.
Twenty acres, perhaps. The house was girded by
some white palings; beside it was a snug orchard
in a hedge covered with blackthorn bloom. It was
very green and pleasant in front of the house. The
turf was cleared and closely cropped, some ewes
were grazing and under the blackthorn, out of the
wind, lay half a dozen lambs, but what chiefly
moved the imagination of Harvey Witlow was a
field on the far side of the house. It had a small
rickyard with a few small stacks in it; everything
here seemed on the small scale, but snug, very snug;
and in that field and yard were hundreds of fowls,
hundreds, of good breed, and mostly white. Leaving
his horse to sniff the greensward, the higgler entered
a white wicket gateway and passed to the back of
the house, noting as he did so a yellow wagon in-
scribed Elizabeth Sadgrove. Prattle Corner.
At the kitchen door he was confronted by a tall
gaunt woman of middle age with a teapot in her
hands.
75
THE HIGGLER
‘Afternoon, ma'am. Have you anything to sell?'
began Harvey Witlow, tilting his hat with a con-
fident affable air. The tall woman was cleanly
dressed, a superior person; her hair was grey. She
gazed at him.
It's cold,' he continued. She looked at him as
uncomprehendingly as a mouse might look at a
gravestone.
I'll buy any mottal thing, ma'am. Except
trouble; I'm full up wi' that already. Eggs?
Fowls?'
'I've not seen you before,' commented Mrs. Sad-
grove a little bleakly, in a deep husky voice.
'No, 'tis the first time as ever I drove in this part.
To tell you the truth, ma'am, I'm new to the busi-
ness. Six months. I was in the war a year ago.
Now I'm trying to knock up a connection. Difficult
work. Things are very quiet.'
Mrs. Sadgrove silently removed the lid of the tea-
pot, inspected the interior of the pot with an intent
glance, and then replaced the lid as if she had seen a
blackbeetle there.
‘Ah, well,' sighed the higgler. 'You've a neat little
farm here, ma'am.'
'It's quiet enough,' said she.
'Sure it is, ma'am. Very lonely.'
'And it's difficult work, too.' Mrs. Sadgrove almost
smiled.
'Sure it is, ma'am; but you does it well, I can see.
Oh, you've some nice little ricks of corn, eh! I does
well enough at the dealing now and again, but it's
76
THE HIGGLER
teasy work, and mostly I don't earn enough to keep
my horse in shoe leather.'
'I've a few eggs, perhaps,' said she.
'I could do with a score or two, ma'am, if you
could let me have 'em.'
'You'll have to come all my way if I do.'
'Name your own price, ma'am, if you don't mind
trading with me.'
'Mind! Your money's as good as my own, isn't
it?'
'It must be, ma'am. That's meaning no disrespects
to you,' the young higgler assured her hastily, and
was thereupon invited to enter the kitchen.
A stone floor with two or three mats; open hearth
with burning logs; a big dresser painted brown,
carrying a row of white cups on brass hooks and
shelves of plates overlapping each other like the
scales of fish. A dark settle half hid a flight of stairs
with a small gate at the top. Under the window a
black sofa, deeply indented, invited you a little
repellingly, and in the middle of the room stood a
large table, exquisitely scrubbed, with one end of it
laid for tea. Evidently a living-room as well as
kitchen. A girl, making toast at the fire, turned as
the higgler entered. Beautiful she was: red hair, a
complexion like the inside of a nut, blue eyes, and
the hands of a lady. He saw it all at once, jacket of
bright green wool, black dress, grey stockings and
shoes, and forgot his errand, her mother, his fifty
pounds, Sophy - momentarily he forgot everything.
The girl stared strangely at him. He was tall, clean-
77
THE HIGGLER
shaven, with a loop of black hair curling handsomely
over one side of his brow.
'Good afternoon,' said Harvey Witlow, as softly as
if he had entered a church.
'Some eggs, Mary,' Mrs. Sadgrove explained. The
girl laid down her toasting-fork. She was less tall
than her mother, who she resembled only enough for
the relationship to be noted. Silently she crossed the
kitchen and opened a door that led into a dairy. Two
pans of milk were creaming on a bench there, and
on the flags were two great baskets filled with eggs.
'How many are there?' asked Mrs. Sadgrove, and
the girl replied: 'Fifteen score, I think.'
"Take the lot, higgler?'
'Yes, ma'am,' he cried eagerly, and ran out to his
cart and fetched a number of trays. In them he
packed the eggs as the girl handed them to him from
the baskets. Mrs. Sadgrove left them together.
For a time the higgler was silent.
'No,' at length he murmured, 'I've never been this
road before.
There was no reply from Mary. Sometimes their
fingers touched, and often, as they bent over the
eggs, her bright hair almost brushed his face.
It is a loneish spot,' he ventured again.
'Yes,' said Mary Sadgrove.
When the eggs were all transferred her mother
came in again.
'Would you buy a few pullets, higgler?'
'Any number, ma'am,' he declared quickly. Any
number; by crumps, the tide was turning! He
78
THE HIGGLER
followed the mother into the yard, and there again
she left him, waiting. He mused about the girl and
wondered about the trade. If they offered him ten
thousand chickens, he'd buy them, somehow, he
would! She had stopped in the kitchen. Just in
there she was, just behind him, a few feet away.
Over the low wall of the yard a fat black pony was
strolling in a field of bright greensward. In the
yard, watching him, was a young gander, and on a
stone staddle beside it lay a dead thrush on its back,
its legs stiff in the air. The girl stayed in the kitchen;
she was moving about, though, he could hear her;
perhaps she was spying at him through the window.
Twenty million eggs he would buy if Mrs. Sadgrove
had got them. She was gone a long time. It was
very quiet. The gander began to comb its white
breast with its beak. Its three-toed feet were a most
tender pink, shaped like wide diamonds, and at
each of the three forward points there was a toe like
a small blanched nut. It lifted one foot, folding the
webs, and hid it under its wing and sank into a
resigned meditation on one leg. It had a blue eye
that was meek - it had two, but you could only see
one at a time—a meek blue eye, set in a pink rim
that gave it a dissolute air, and its beak had raw red
nostrils as if it suffered from the damp. Altogether
a beautiful bird. And in some absurd way it resem-
bled Mrs. Sadgrove.
'Would you sell that young gollan, ma'am?' Harvey
inquired when the mother returned.
Yes, she would sell him, and she also sold him two
79
THE HIGGLER
dozen pullets. Harvey packed the fowls in a crate.
'Come on,' he cried cuddling the squawking gander
in his arms, ‘you needn't be afeard of me, I never
kills anything afore Saturdays.'
He roped it by its leg to a hook inside his cart.
Then he took out his bag of money, paid Mrs. Sad-
grove her dues, said 'Good day, ma'am, good day,'
and drove off without seeing another sign or stitch
of that fine young girl.
'Get along, Dodger, get along wi' you.' They went
bowling along for nearly an hour, and then he could
see the landmark on Dan'el Green's Hill, a windmill
that never turned though it looked a fine competent
piece of architecture, just beyond Dinnop.
Soon he reached his cottage and was chaffing his
mother, a hearty buxom dame, who stayed at home
and higgled with any chance callers. At this business
she was perhaps more enlightened than her son.
It was almost a misfortune to get into her clutches.
'How much you give for this?' he cried, eyeing
with humorous contempt an object in a coop that
was neither flesh nor rude red herring.
'Oh crumps,' he declared, when she told him, 'I
am damned and done!'
'Go on with you, that's a good bird, I tell you, with
a full heart, as will lay in a month.
'I doubt it's a hen at all,' he protested. ‘Oh, what a
ravenous beak! Damned and done I am.'
Mrs. Witlow's voice began indignantly to rise.
'Oh, well,' mused her son, 'it's thrifty perhaps. It
ain't quite right, but it's not so wrong as to make a
80
THE HIGGLER
fuss about, especially as I be pretty sharp set. And
if it's hens you want,' he continued triumphantly,
dropping the crate of huddled fowls before her,
'there's hens for you; and a gander! There's a gan-
der for you, if it's a gander you want.'
Leaving them all in his cottage yard he went and
stalled the horse and cart at the inn, for he had no
stable of his own. After supper he told his mother
about the Sadgroves of Prattle Corner. 'Prettiest
girl you ever seen, but the shyest mottal alive. Hair
like a squirrel, lovely.'
'An't you got to go over and see Sophy to-night?"
inquired his mother, lighting the lamp.
'Oh lord, if I an't clean forgot that! Well, I'm tired,
shan't go to-night. See her to-morrow.'
2
Mrs. Sadgrove had been a widow for ten years-
and she was glad of it. Prattle Corner was her pro-
perty, she owned it and farmed it with the aid of a
little old man and a large lad. The older this old
man grew, and the less wages he received (for Eliza-
beth Sadgrove was reputed a 'grinder'), the more
ardently he worked; the older the lad grew the less he
laboured and the more he swore. She was thriving.
She was worth money was Mrs. Sadgrove. Ah!
And her daughter Mary, it was clear, had received
an education fit for a lord's lady; she had been at a
seminary for gentlefolk's females until she was
seventeen. Well, whether or no, a clock must run as
you time it; but it wronged her for the work of a
F.F.
81
F
THE HIGGLER
farm, it spoiled her, it completely deranged her for
the work of a farm; and this was a pity and foolish,
because some day the farm was coming to her as
didn't know hay from a bull's foot.
All this, and more, the young higgler quickly
learned, and plenty more he soon divined. Business
began to flourish with him now; his despair was
gone, he was established, he could look forward, to
whatever it was he wanted to look forward, with
equanimity and such pleasurable anticipation as the
chances and charges of life might engender. Every
week, and twice a week, he would call at the farm,
and though these occasions had their superior busi-
ness inducements they often borrowed a less formal
tone and intention.
"Take a cup of tea, higgler?' Mrs. Sadgrove would
abruptly invite him; and he would drink tea and
discourse with her for half an hour on barndoor
ornithology, on harness, and markets, the treatment
of swine, the wear and tear of gear. Mary, always
present, was always silent, seldom uttering a word
to the higgler; yet a certain grace emanated from
her to him, an interest, a light, a favour, circum-
scribed indeed by some modesty, shyness, some in-
hibition, that neither of them had the wit or the
opportunity to overcome.
One evening he pulled up at the white palings of
Prattle Corner. It was a calm evening in May, the
sun was on its downgoing, chaffinches and wrens
sung ceaselessly. Mary in the orchard was heavily
veiled; he could see her over the hedge, holding a
82
THE HIGGLER
brush in her gloved hands, and a bee skep. A swarm
was clustered like a great gnarl on the limb of an
apple tree. Bloom was thickly covering the twigs.
She made several timid attempts to brush the bees
into the skep, but they resented this.
"They knows if you be afraid of 'em,' bawled Har-
vey; 'I better come and give you a hand.'
When he took the skep and brush from her she
stood like one helpless, released by fate from a task
ill-understood and gracelessly waived. But he liked
her shyness, her almost uncouth immobility.
'Never mind about that,' said Harvey, as she unfast-
ened her veil, scattering the white petals that had
collected upon it; 'when they kicks they hurts, but
I've been stung so often that I'm 'nocolated against
'em. They knows if you be afraid of 'em.'
Wearing neither veil nor gloves he went confidently
to the tree, and collected the swarm without mishap.
'Don't want to show no fear of them,' said Harvey.
'Nor of anything else, come to that,' he added with a
guffaw, 'nor anybody.'
At that she blushed and thanked him very softly,
and she did look straight and clearly at him.
Never anything beyond a blush and a thank-you.
When, in the kitchen or the parlour, Mrs. Sadgrove
sometimes left them alone together Harvey would
try a lot of talk, blarneying talk or sensible talk, or
talk about events in the world that was neither the
one nor the other. No good. The girl's responses
were ever brief and confused. Why was this? Again
and again he asked himself that question. Was
83
THE HIGGLER
there anything the matter with her? Nothing that
you could see; she was a bright and beautiful being.
And it was not contempt, either, for despite her
fright, her voicelessness, her timid eyes, he divined
her friendly feeling for himself; and he would dis-
course to his own mother about her and her mother:
"They are well-up people, you know, well off, plenty
of money and nothing to do with it. The farm's their
own, freehold. A whole row of cottages she's got,
too, in Smoorton Comfrey, so I heard; good cot-
tages, well let. She's worth a few thousands, I war-
rant. Mary's beautiful. I took a fancy to that girl
the first moment I see her. But she's very highly
cultivated and, of course, there's Sophy.'
To this enigmatic statement Mrs. Witlow offered
no response; but mothers are inscrutable beings to
their sons, always.
Once he bought some trees of cherries from Mrs.
Sadgrove, and went on a July morning to pick the
fruit. Under the trees Mary was walking slowly to
and fro, twirling a clapper to scare away the birds.
He stood watching her from the gateway. Among
the bejewelled trees she passed, turning the rattle
with a listless air, as if beating time to a sad music
that only she could hear. The man knew that he
was deeply fond of her. He passed into the orchard,
bade her Good morning, and, lifting his ladder into
one of the trees nearest the hedge, began to pluck
cherries. Mary moved slimly in her white frock up
and down a shady avenue in the orchard waving the
clapper. The brightness of sun and sky was almost
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THE HIGGLER
harsh; there was a little wind that feebly lifted the
despondent leaves. He had doffed his coat; his shirt
was white and clean. The lock of dark hair drooped
over one side of his forehead; his face was brown and
pleasant, his bare arms brown and powerful. From
his high perch among the leaves Witlow watched for
the girl to draw near to him in her perambulation.
Knavish birds would scatter at her approach, only to
drop again into the trees she had passed. His soul
had an immensity of longing for her, but she never
spoke a word to him. She would come from the
shade of the little avenue, through the dumb trees
that could only bend to greet her, into the sunlight
whose dazzle gilded her own triumphant bloom.
Fine! Fine! And always as she passed his mind
refused to register a single thought he could offer
her, or else his tongue would refuse to utter it. But
his glance never left her face until she had passed
out of sight again, and then he would lean against
the ladder in the tree, staring down at the ground,
seeing nothing or less than nothing, except a field
mouse climbing to the top of a coventry bush in the
hedge below him, nipping off one thick leaf and
descending with the leaf in its mouth. Sometimes
Mary rested at the other end of the avenue; the
clapper would be silent and she would not appear
for-oh, hours! She never rested near the trees
Witlow was denuding. The mouse went on ascend-
ing and descending, and Witlow filled his basket,
and shifted his stand, and wondered.
At noon he got down and sat on the hedge bank to
85
THE HIGGLER
eat a snack of lunch. Mary had gone indoors for
hers, and he was alone for awhile. Capriciously
enough, his thoughts dwelt upon Sophy Daws.
Sophy was a fine girl, too; not such a lady as Mary
Sadgrove - oh lord, no! her father was a gamekeeper!
- but she was jolly and ample. She had been a little
captious lately, said he was neglecting her. That
wasn't true; hadn't he been busy? Besides, he
wasn't bound to her in any sort of way, and of course
he couldn't afford any marriage yet awhile. Sophy
hadn't got any money, never had any. What she
did with her wages - she was a parlourmaid - was a
teaser! Harvey grunted a little, and said 'Well!'
And that is all he said, and all he thought, about
Sophy Daws, then, for he could hear Mary's clapper
begin again in a corner of the orchard. He went
back to his work. There at the foot of the tree were
the baskets full of cherries, and those yet to be filled.
'Phew, but that's hot!' commented the man, 'I'm as
dry as a rattle.'
A few cherries had spilled from one basket and
lay on the ground. The little furry mouse had
found them and was industriously nibbling at one.
The higgler nonchalantly stamped his foot upon it,
and kept it so for a moment or two. Then he looked
at the dead mouse. A tangle of entrails had gushed
from its whiskered muzzle.
He resumed his work and the clapper rattled on
throughout the afternoon, for there were other
cherry trees that other buyers would come to strip in
a day or two. At four o'clock he was finished. Never
86
THE HIGGLER
a word had he spoken with Mary, or she with him.
When he went over to the house to pay Mrs. Sad-
grove Mary stopped in the orchard scaring the
birds.
"Take a cup of tea, Mr. Witlow,' said Mrs. Sad-
grove; and then she surprisingly added, 'Where's
Mary?'
'Still a-frightening the birds, and pretty well tired
of that, I should think, ma'am.'
The mother had poured out three cups of
tea.
'Shall I go and call her in?' he asked, rising.
'You might,' said she.
In the orchard the clappering had ceased. He
walked all round, and in among the trees, but saw
no sign of Mary; nor on the common, nor in the
yard. But when he went back to the house Mary
was there already, chatting at the table with her
mother. She did not greet him, though she ceased
talking to her mother as he sat down. After drinking
his tea he went off briskly to load the baskets into
the cart. As he climbed up to drive off Mrs. Sad-
grove came out and stood beside the horse.
"You're off now?' said she.
'Yes, ma'am; all loaded, and thank you.'
She glanced vaguely along the road he had to
travel. The afternoon was as clear as wine, the
greensward itself dazzled him; lonely Shag Moor
stretched away, humped with sweet yellow furze
and pilastered with its telegraph poles. No life
there, no life at all. Harvey sat on his driving board,
87
THE HIGGLER
musingly brushing the flank of his horse with the
trailing whip.
"Ever round this way on Sundays?' inquired the
woman, peering up at him.
'Well, not in a manner of speaking, I'm not, ma'am,'
he answered her.
The widow laid her hand on the horse's back,
patting vaguely. The horse pricked up its ears, as if
it were listening.
'If you are, at all, ever, you must look in and have a
bit of dinner with us.'
'I will, ma'am, I will.'
'Next Sunday?' she went on.
'I will, ma'am, yes, I will,' he repeated, 'and thank
you.'
'One o'clock?' The widow smiled up at him.
'At one o'clock, ma'am; next Sunday; I will, and
thank you,' he said.
She stood away from the horse and waved her hand.
The first tangible thought that floated mutely out of
the higgler's mind as he drove away was: 'I'm
damned if I ain't a-going it, Sophy!'
He told his mother of Mrs. Sadgrove's invitation
with an air of curbed triumph. 'Come round - she
says. Yes I says - I 'ull. That's right - she says –
so do.'
-
-
3
On the Sunday morn he dressed himself gallantly.
It was again a sweet unclouded day. The church
bell at Dinnop had begun to ring. From his win-
88
THE HIGGLER
dow, as he fastened his most ornate tie, Harvey
could observe his neighbour's two small children in
the next garden, a boy and girl clad for church-going
and each carrying a clerical book. The tiny boy
placed his sister in front of a hen-roost and, opening
his book, began to pace to and fro before her, shrilly
intoning: 'Jesus is the shepherd, ring the bell. Oh
lord, ring the bell, am I a good boy? Amen. Oh
lord, ring the bell.' The little girl bowed her head
piously over her book. The lad then picked up
from the ground a dish which had contained the
dog's food, and presented it momentarily before the
lilac bush, the rabbit in a hutch, the axe fixed in a
chopping block, and then before his sister. Without
lifting her peering gaze from her book she meekly
dropped two pebbles in the plate, and the boy passed
on, lightly moaning, to the clothes-line post and a
cock scooping in some dust.
'Ah, the little impets!' cried Harvey Witlow. 'Here,
Toby! Here, Margaret!' He took two pennies from
his pocket and lobbed them from the window to the
astonished children. As they stooped to pick up
the coins Harvey heard the hoarse voice of neigh-
bour Nathan, their father, bawl from his kitchen:
'Come on in, and shut that bloody door, d'y'ear!'
Harnessing his moody horse to the gig Harvey
was soon bowling away to Shag Moor, and as he
drove along he sung loudly. He had a pink rose in
his buttonhole. Mrs. Sadgrove received him almost
affably, and though Mary was more shy than ever
before, Harvey had determined to make an impres-
89
THE HIGGLER
sion. During the dinner he fired off his bucolic
jokes, and pleasant tattle of a more respectful and
sober nature; but after dinner Mary sat like Pati-
ence, not upon a monument, but as if upon a rocking-
horse, shy and fearful, and her mother made no effort
to inspire her as the higgler did, unsuccessful though
he was. They went to the pens to look at the pigs,
and as they leaned against the low walls and poked
the maudlin inhabitants, Harvey began: 'Reminds
me, when I was in the war.
'Were you in the war!' interrupted Mrs. Sad-
grove.
'Oh, yes, I was in that war, ah, and there was a pig.
Danger? Oh lord, bless me, it was a bit danger-
ous, but you never knew where it was or what it ud
be at next; it was like the sword of Damockels.
There was a bullet once come 'ithin a foot of my
head, and it went through a board an inch thick,
slap through that board.' Both women gazed at
him apprehendingly. 'Why, I might 'a been killed,
you know,' said Harvey, cocking his eye musingly
at the weather-vane on the barn. 'We was in billets
at St. Gratien, and one day a chasseur came up - a
French yoossar, you know - and he began talking
to our sergeant. That was Hubert Luxter, the
butcher: died a month or two ago of measles. But
this yoossar couldn't speak English at all, and none
of us chaps could make sense of him. I never could
understand that lingo somehow, never; and though
there was half a dozen of us chaps there, none of us
were man enough for it neither. 'Nil compree,' we
90
THE HIGGLER
says, 'non compos.' I told him straight: 'you ought
to learn English,' I said, 'it's much easier than your
kind of bally chatter.' So he kept shaping up as if he
was holding a rifle, and then he'd say "Fusee -
bang!' and then he'd say 'cushion' - kept on saying
'cushion.' Then he gets a bit of chalk and draws on
the wall something that looks like a horrible dog,
and says 'cushion' again.
'Pig,' interjected Mary Sadgrove softly.
'Yes, yes!' ejaculated Harvey, 'so 'twas! Do you
know any French lingo?'
'Oh, yes,' declared her mother, 'Mary knows it very
well.'
'Ah,' sighed the higgler, 'I don't, although I been
to France. And I couldn't do it now, not for luck
nor love. You learnt it, I suppose. Well, this
yoossar wants to borrow my rifle, but of course I
can't lend him. So he taps on this horrible pig he'd
drawn, and then he taps on his own head, and rolls
his eyes about dreadful! "Mad?" I says. And that
was it, that was it. He'd got a pig on his little farm
there what had gone mad, and he wanted us to come
and shoot it; he was on leave and he hadn't got any
ammunition. So Hubert Luxter he says, "Come on,
some of you," and we all goes with the yoossar and
shot the pig for him. Ah, that was a pig! And
when it died it jumped a somersault just like a
rabbit. It had got the mange, and was mad as any-
thing I ever see in my life; it was full of madness.
Couldn't hit him at all at first, and it kicked up bobs-
a-dying. "Ready, present, fire!" Hubert Luxter
91
THE HIGGLER
says, and bang goes the six of us, and every time we
missed him he spotted us and we had to run for our
lives.'
As Harvey looked up he caught a glance of the girl
fixed on him. She dropped her gaze at once and,
turning away, walked off to the house.
'Come and take a look at the meadow,' said Mrs.
Sadgrove to him, and they went into the soft smooth
meadow where the black pony was grazing. Very
bright and green it was, and very blue the sky. He
sniffed at the pink rose in his buttonhole, and deter-
mined that come what might he would give it to Mary
if he could get a nice quiet chance to offer it. And
just then, while he and Mrs. Sadgrove were strolling
alone in the soft smooth meadow, quite alone, she
suddenly, startlingly, asked him: 'Are you courting
anybody?'
'Beg pardon, ma'am?' he exclaimed.
'You haven't got a sweetheart, have you?' she
asked, most deliberately.
Harvey grinned sheepishly: 'Ha, ha, ha,' and then
he said, 'No.'
'I want to see my daughter married,' the widow
went on significantly.
'Miss Mary!' he cried.
'Yes,' said she; and something in the higgler's
veins began to pound rapidly. His breast might
have been a revolving cage and his heart a demon
squirrel. 'I can't live for ever,' said Mrs. Sadgrove,
almost with levity, ‘in fact, not for long, and so I'd
like to see her settled soon with some decent under-
92
THE HIGGLER
standing young man, one that could carry on here,
and not make a mess of things.'
‘But, but,' stuttered the understanding young man,
'I'm no scholar, and she's a lady. I'm a poor
chap, rough, and no scholar, ma'am. But mind
you.
"That doesn't matter at all,' the widow interrupted,
'not as things are. You want a scholar for learning,
but for the land...'
‘Ah, that's right, Mrs. Sadgrove, but . . .
'I want to see her settled. This farm, you know,
with the stock and things are worth nigh upon three
thousand pounds.'
'You want a farmer for farming, that's true, Mrs.
Sadgrove, but when you come to marriage, well,
with her learning and French and all that...
'A sensible woman will take a man rather than a
box of tricks any day of the week,' the widow re-
torted. 'Education may be a fine thing, but it often
costs a lot of foolish money.'
'It do, it do. You want to see her settled?'
'I want to see her settled and secure. When she is
twenty-five she comes into five hundred pounds of
her own right.'
The distracted higgler hummed and haa-ed in his
bewilderment as if he had just been offered the pur-
chase of a dubious duck. 'How old is she, ma'am?'
he at last huskily inquired.
"Two-and-twenty nearly. She's a good healthy girl,
for I've never spent a pound on a doctor for her, and
very quiet she is, and very sensible; but she's got a
93
THE HIGGLER
strong will of her own, though you might not think
it or believe it.'
'She's a fine creature, Mrs. Sadgrove, and I'm very
fond of her. I don't mind owning up to that, very
fond of her I am."
'Well, think it over, take your time, and see what
you think. There's no hurry, I hope, please God.'
'I shan't want much time,' he declared with a laugh,
'but I doubt I'm the fair right sort for her.'
'Oh, fair days, fair doings!' said she inscrutably,
'I'm not a long liver, I'm afraid."
'God forbid, ma'am!' His ejaculation was intoned
with deep gravity.
'No, I'm not a long-living woman.' She surveyed
him with her calm eyes, and he returned her gaze.
Hers was a long sallow face, with heavy lips. Some-
times she would stretch her features (as if to keep
them from petrifying) in an elastic grin, and display
her dazzling teeth; the lips would curl thickly, no
longer crimson, but blue. He wondered if there
were any sign of a doom registered upon her gaunt
face. She might die, and die soon.
'You couldn't do better than think it over, then,
eh?' she had a queer frown as she regarded him.
'I couldn't do worse than not, Mrs. Sadgrove,' he
said gaily.
They left it at that. He had no reason for hurrying
away, and he couldn't have explained his desire to
do so, but he hurried away. Driving along past the
end of the moor, and peering back at the lonely farm
where they dwelled amid the thick furze snoozing in
94
THE HIGGLER
the heat, he remembered that he had not asked if
Mary was willing to marry him! Perhaps the widow
took her agreement for granted. That would be
good fortune, for otherwise how the devil was he to
get round a girl who had never spoken half a dozen
words to him! And never would! She was a lady, a
girl of fortune, knew her French; but there it was,
the girl's own mother was asking him to wed her.
Strange, very strange! He dimly feared something,
but he did not know what it was he feared. He had
still got the pink rose in his buttonhole.
4
At first his mother was incredulous; when he told
her of the astonishing proposal she declared he was
a joker; but she was soon as convinced of his sincerity
as she was amazed at his hesitation. And even
vexed: 'Was there anything the matter with this
Mary?'
'No, no, no! She's quiet, very quiet indeed, I tell
you, but a fine young woman, and a beautiful young
woman. Oh, she's all right, right as rain, right as a
trivet, right as ninepence. But there's a catch in it
somewheres, I fear. I can't see through it yet, but
I shall afore long, or I'd have the girl, like a shot I
would. "Tain't the girl, mother, it's the money, if
you understand me.
'Well, I don't understand you, certainly I don't.
What about Sophy?'
'Oh lord!' He scratched his head ruefully.
'You wouldn't think of giving this the go-by for
95
THE HIGGLER
Sophy, Harvey, would you? A girl as you ain't even
engaged to, Harvey, would you?"
'We don't want to chatter about that,' declared her
son. 'I got to think it over, and it's going to tie my
wool, I can tell you, for there's a bit of craft some-
wheres, I'll take my oath. If there ain't, there ought
to be!'
Over the alluring project his decision wavered for
days, until his mother became mortified at his in-
explicable vacillation.
'I tell you,' he cried, 'I can't make tops or bottoms
of it all. I like the girl well enough, but I like Sophy,
too, and it's no good beating about the bush. I like
Sophy, she's the girl I love; but Mary's a fine crea-
ture, and money like that wants looking at before
you throw it away, love or no love. Three thousand
pounds! I'd be a made man.'
And as if in sheer spite to his mother; as if a bushel
of money lay on the doorstep for him to kick over
whenever the fancy seized him; in short (as Mrs.
Witlow very clearly intimated) as if in contempt of
Providence he began to pursue Sophy Daws with a
new fervour, and walked with that young girl more
than he was accustomed to, more than ever before;
in fact, as his mother bemoaned, more than he had
need to. It was unreasonable, it was a shame, a
foolishness; it wasn't decent and it wasn't safe.
On his weekly visits to the farm his mind still
wavered. Mrs. Sadgrove let him alone; she was
very good, she did not pester him with questions
and entreaties. There was Mary with her white
96
THE HIGGLER
dress and her red hair and her silence; a girl with a
great fortune, walking about the yard, or sitting in
the room, and casting not a glance upon him. Not
that he would have known it if she did, for now he
was just as shy of her. Mrs. Sadgrove often left
them alone, but when they were alone he could not
dish up a word for the pretty maid; he was dumb as
a statue. If either she or her mother had lifted so
much as a finger then there would have been an end
to his hesitations or suspicions, for in Mary's pre-
sence the fine glory of the girl seized him incon-
tinently; he was again full of a longing to press her
lips, to lay down his doubts, to touch her bosom -
though he could not think she would ever allow that!
Not an atom of doubt about her ever visited him; she
was unaware of her mother's queer project. Rather,
if she became aware he was sure it would be the end
of him. Too beautiful she was, too learned, and too
rich. Decidedly it was his native cunning, and no
want of love, that inhibited him. Folks with pro-
perty did not often come along and bid you help
yourself. Not very often! And throw in a grand
bright girl, just for good measure as you might
say. Not very often!
For weeks the higgler made his customary calls,
and each time the outcome was the same; no more,
no less. 'Some dodge,' he mused, 'something the
girl don't know and the mother does.' Were they
going bankrupt, or were they mortgaged up to the
neck, or was there anything the matter with the girl,
or was it just the mother wanted to get hold of him?
F.F.
97
G
THE HIGGLER
He knew his own value if he didn't know his own
mind, and his value couldn't match that girl any
more than his mind could. So what did they want
him for? Whatever it was Harvey Witlow was
ready for it whenever he was in Mary's presence,
but once away from her his own craftiness asserted
itself: it was a snare, they were trying to make a
mock of him!
But nothing could prevent his own mother mock-
ing him, and her treatment of Sophy was so unbear-
able that if the heart of that dusky beauty had not
been proof against all impediments, Harvey might
have had to whistle for her favour. But whenever he
was with Sophy he had only one heart, undivided
and true, and certain as time itself.
'I love Sophy best. It's true enough I love Mary,
too, but I love Sophy better. I know it; Sophy's the
girl I must wed. It might not be so if I weren't all
dashed and doddered about the money; I don't
know. But I do know that Mary's innocent of all
this craftiness; it's her mother trying to mogue me
into it.'
Later he would be wishing he could only forget
Sophy and do it. Without the hindrance of con-
science he could do it, catch or no catch.
He went on calling at the farm, with nothing said
or settled, until October. Then Harvey made up
his mind, and without a word to the Sadgroves
he went and married Sophy Daws and gave up calling
at the farm altogether. This gave him some feeling
of dishonesty, some qualm, and a vague unhap-
98
THE HIGGLER
piness; likewise he feared the cold hostility of Mrs.
Sadgrove. She would be terribly vexed. As for
Mary, he was nothing to her, poor girl; it was a
shame. The last time he drove that way he did not
call at the farm. Autumn was advancing, and the
apples were down, the bracken dying, the furze out
of bloom, and the farm on the moor looked more
and more lonely, and most cold, though it lodged a
flame-haired silent woman, fit for a nobleman, whom
they wanted to mate with a common higgler. Crafty,
you know, too crafty!
5
The marriage was a gay little occasion, but they
did not go away for a honeymoon. Sophy's grand-
mother from a distant village, Cassandra Fundy,
who had a deafness and a speckled skin, brought
her third husband, Amos, whom the family had
never seen before. Not a very wise man, indeed he
was a common man, stooping like a decayed tree,
he was so old. But he shaved every day and his hair-
less skull was yellow. Cassandra, who was yellow
too, had long since turned into a fool; she did not
shave, though she ought to have done. She was
like to die soon, but everybody said old Amos would
live to be a hundred; it was expected of him, and he,
too, was determined.
The guests declared that a storm was threatening,
but Amos Fundy denied it and scorned it.
"Thunder p'raps, but 'twill clear; 'tis only de pride
o' der morning.'
99
THE HIGGLER
'Don't you be a fool,' remarked his wife enig-
matically, 'you'll die soon enough.'
'You must behold der moon,' continued the octo-
genarian; 'de closer it is to der wheel, de closer der
rain; de furder away it is, de furder der rain.'
"You could pour that man's brains into a thimble,'
declared Cassandra of her spouse, 'and they wouldn't
fill it - he's deaf.'
Fundy was right; the day did clear. The marriage
was made and the guests returned with the man and
his bride to their home. But Fundy was also wrong,
for storm came soon after and rain set in. The guests
stayed on for tea, and then, as it was no better, they
feasted and stayed till night. And Harvey began to
think they never would go, but of course they
couldn't and so there they were. Sophy was looking
wonderful in white stockings and shiny shoes and a
red frock with a tiny white apron. A big girl she
seemed, with her shaken dark hair and flushed face.
Grandmother Fundy spoke seriously, but not
secretly to her.
'I've had my fourteen touch of children,' said
Grandmother Fundy. 'Yes, they were flung on the
mercy of God - poor little devils. I've followed
most of 'em to the churchyard. You go slow,
Sophia.'
'Yes, granny.'
'Why,' continued Cassandra, embracing the whole
company, as it were, with her disclosure, my mother
had me by some gentleman!'
The announcement aroused no response except
100
THE HIGGLER
sympathetic, and perhaps encouraging, nods from
the women.
‘She had me by some gentleman - she ought to ha'
had a twal' month, she did!'
'Wasn't she ever married?' Sophy inquired of her
grandmother.
Married? Yes, course she was,' replied the old
dame, of course. But marriage ain't everything.
Twice she was, but not to he, she wasn't.'
'Not to the gentleman?'
'No! Oh, no! He'd got money - bushels! Mar-
riage ain't much, not with these gentry.'
'Ho, ho, that's a tidy come-up!' laughed Harvey.
'Who was that gentleman?' Sophia's interest was
deeply engaged. But Cassandra Fundy was silent,
pondering like a china image. Her gaze was to-
wards the mantelpiece, where there were four lamps
- but only one usable - and two clocks - but only
one going- and a coloured greeting card a foot
long with large letters KEEP SMILING adorned with
lithographic honeysuckle.
'She's hard of hearing,' interpolated grandfather
Amos, 'very hard, gets worse. She've a horn at
home, big as that. . .' His eyes roved the room for
an object of comparison, and he seized upon the fire
shovel that lay in the fender. 'Big as that shovel.
Crown silver it is, and solid, a beautiful horn, buť'·
he brandished the shovel before them - 'her won't
use 'en.'
'Granny, who was that gentleman?' shouted Sophy.
'Did you know him?'
ΙΟΙ
THE HIGGLER
'No! no!' declared the indignant dame. 'I dunno
ever his name, nor I don't want to. He took hisself
off to Ameriky, and now he's in the land of heaven.
I never seen him. If I had, I'd a given it to him
properly; oh, my dear, not blay-guarding him, you
know, but just plain language! Where's your seven
commandments?"
At last the rain abated. Peeping into the dark
garden you could see the fugitive moonlight hung
in a million raindrops in the black twigs of all sorts
of bushes and trees, while along the cantle of the
porch a line of raindrops hung, even and regular, as
if they were nailheads made of glass. So all the
guests departed, in one long staggering, struggling,
giggling and guffawing body, into the village street.
The bride and her man stood in the porch, watch-
ing and waving hands. Sophy was momentarily
grieving: what a lot of trouble and fuss when you
announced that henceforward you were going to
sleep with a man because you loved him true! She
had said good-bye to her grandmother Cassandra,
to her father and her little sister. She had hung on
her mother's breast, sighing an almost intolerable
farewell to innocence - never treasured until it is
gone, and thenceforward a pretty sorrow cherished
more deeply than wilder joys.
Into Harvey's mind, as they stood there at last
alone, momentarily stole an image of a bright-
haired girl, lovely, silent, sad, whom he felt he had
deeply wronged. And he was sorry. He had escaped
the snare, but if there had been no snare he might
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THE HIGGLER
this night have been sleeping with a different bride.
And it would have been just as well. Sophy looked
but a girl with her blown hair and wet face. She
was wiping her tears on the tiny apron. But she had
the breasts of a woman and decoying eyes.
'Sophy, Sophy!' breathed Harvey, wooing her in
the darkness.
'It blows and it rains, and it rains and it blows,'
chattered the crumpled bride, 'and I'm all so be-
scambled I can't tell wet from windy.'
'Come, my love,' whispered the bridegroom, 'come
in, to home.'
6
Four or five months later the higgler's affairs had
again taken a rude turn. Marriage, alas, was not all
it might be; his wife and his mother quarrelled
unendingly. Sometimes he sided with the one and
sometimes with the other. He could not yet afford
to instal his mother in a separate cottage, and there-
fore even Sophy had to admit that her mother-in-law
had a right to be living there with them, the home
being hers. Harvey hadn't bought much of it; and
though he was welcome to it all now, and it would
be exclusively his as soon as she died, still, it was her
furniture, and you couldn't drive any woman (even
your mother) off her own property. Sophy, who
wanted a home of her own, was vexed and moody,
and antagonistic to her man. Business, too, had
gone down sadly of late. He had thrown up the
Shag Moor round months ago; he could not bring
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THE HIGGLER
get
himself to go there again, and he had not been able
to square up the loss by any substantial new con-
nections. On top of it all his horse died. It stum-
bled on a hill one day and fell, and it couldn't
up, or it wouldn't at any rate, it didn't. Harvey
thrashed it and coaxed it, then he cursed it and
kicked it; after that he sent for a veterinary man,
and the veterinary man ordered it to be shot. And it
was shot. A great blow to Harvey Witlow was that.
He had no money to buy another horse; money
was tight with him, very tight; and so he had to hire
at fabulous cost a decrepit nag that ate like a good
one. It ate - well, it would have astonished you to
see what that creature disposed of, with hay the price
it was, and corn gone up to heaven nearly. In fact
Harvey found that he couldn't stand the racket
much longer, and as he could not possibly buy
another it looked very much as if he was in queer
street once more, unless he could borrow the money
from some friendly person. Of course there were
plenty of friendly persons, but they had no money,
just as there were many persons who had the money
but were not what you might call friendly; and so
the higgler began to reiterate twenty times a day,
and forty times a day, that he was entirely and abso-
lutely damned and done. Things were thus very
bad with him, they were at their worst - for he had a
wife to keep now, as well as a mother, and a horse
that ate like Satan, and worked like a gnat - when it
suddenly came into his mind that Mrs. Sadgrove
was reputed to have a lot of money, and had no call
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THE HIGGLER
to be unfriendly to him. He had his grave doubts
about the size of her purse, but there could be no
harm in trying so long as you approached her in a
right reasonable manner.
For a week or two he held off from this appeal, but
the grim spectre of destitution gave him no rest,
and so, near the close of a wild March day he took
his desperate courage and his cart and the decrepit
nag to Shag Moor. Wild it was, though dry, and
the wind against them, a vast turmoil of icy air
strident and baffling. The nag threw up its head
and declined to trot. Evening was but an hour away,
the fury of the wind did not retard it, nor the clouds
hasten it. Low down the sun was quitting the
wrack of storm, exposing a jolly orb of magnifying
fire that shone flush under eaves and through the
casements of cottages, casting a pattern of lattice and
tossing boughs upon the interior walls, lovelier than
dreamed-of pictures. The heads of mothers and
old dames were also imaged there, recognizable in
their black shadows; and little children held up
their hands between window and wall to make five-
fingered shapes upon the golden screen. To drive
on the moor then was to drive into blasts more dire.
Darkness began to fall, and bitter cold it was. No
birds to be seen, neither beast nor man; empty of
everything it was except sound and a marvel of dying
light, and Harvey Witlow of Dinnop with a sour
old nag driving from end to end of it. At Prattle
Corner dusk was already abroad: there was just one
shaft of light that broached a sharp-angled stack in
105
THE HIGGLER
the rickyard, an ark of darkness, along whose top
the gads and wooden pins and tilted straws were
miraculously fringed in the last glare. Hitching his
nag to the palings he knocked at the door, and
knew in the gloom that it was Mary who opened it
and stood peering forth at him.
'Good evening,' he said, touching his hat.
'Oh!' the girl uttered a cry, 'Higgler! What do
you come for?' It was the longest sentence she had
ever spoken to him; a sad frightened voice.
'I thought,' he began, 'I'd call - and see Mrs. Sad-
grove. I wondered.
'Mother's dead,' said the girl. She drew the door
farther back, as if inviting him, and he entered.
The door was shut behind him, and they were alone
in darkness, together. The girl was deeply grieving.
Trembling, he asked the question: 'What is it you
tell me, Mary?'
'Mother's dead,' repeated the girl, 'all day, all day,
all day.' They were close to each other, but he could
not see her. All round the house the wind roved
lamentingly, shuddering at doors and windows.
'She died in the night. The doctor was to have
come, but he has not come all day,' Mary whispered,
‘all day, all day. I don't understand; I have waited
for him, and he has not come. She died, she was
dead in her bed this morning, and I've been alone
all day, all day, and I don't know what is to be done.'
'I'll go for the doctor,' he said hastily, but she took
him by the hand and drew him into the kitchen.
There was no candle lit; a fire was burning there,
106
THE HIGGLER
richly glowing embers, that laid a gaunt shadow of
the table across a corner of the ceiling. Every dish
on the dresser gleamed, the stone floor was rosy,
and each smooth curve on the dark settle was shining
like ice. Without invitation he sat down.
'No,' said the girl, in a tremulous voice, 'you must
help me.' She lit a candle: her face was white as
the moon, her lips were sharply red, and her eyes
were wild. 'Come,' she said, and he followed her
behind the settle and up the stairs to a room where
there was a disordered bed, and what might be a
body lying under the quilt. The higgler stood still
staring at the form under the quilt. The girl, too,
was still and staring. Wind dashed upon the ivy at
the window and hallooed like a grieving multitude.
A crumpled gown hid the body's head, but thrust
from under it, almost as if to greet him, was her
naked lean arm, the palm of the hand lying upper-
most. At the foot of the bed was a large washing
bowl, with sponge and towels.
'You've been laying her out! Yourself!' exclaimed
Witlow. The pale girl set down the candle on a
chest of drawers. 'Help me now,' she said, and
moving to the bed she lifted the crumpled gown
from off the face of the dead woman, at the same
time smoothing the quilt closely up to the body's
chin. 'I cannot put the gown on, because of her arm,
it has gone stiff.' She shuddered, and stood holding
the gown as if offering it to the man. He lifted
that dead naked arm and tried to place it down at
the body's side, but it resisted and he let go his hold.
107
THE HIGGLER
The arm swung back to its former outstretched
position, as if it still lived and resented that pressure.
The girl retreated from the bed with a timorous cry.
'Get me a bandage,' he said, 'or something we can
tear up.
She gave him some pieces of linen.
'I'll finish this for you,' he brusquely whispered,
'you get along downstairs and take a swig of brandy.
Got any brandy?'
She did not move. He put his arm around her and
gently urged her to the door.
Brandy,' he repeated, 'and light your candles.'
He watched her go heavily down the stairs before
he shut the door. Returning to the bed he lifted
the quilt. The dead body was naked and smelt of
soap. Dropping the quilt he lifted the outstretched
arm again, like cold wax to the touch and unpliant as
a sturdy sapling, and tried once more to bend it to
the body's side. As he did so the bedroom door
blew open with a crash. It was only a draught of
the wind, and a loose latch - Mary had opened a
door downstairs, perhaps - but it awed him, as if
some invisible looker were there resenting his pres-
ence. He went and closed the door, the latch had a
loose hasp, and tiptoeing nervously back he seized
the dreadful arm with a sudden brutal energy, and
bent it by thrusting his knee violently into the
hollow of the elbow. Hurriedly he slipped the
gown over the head and inserted the arm in the
sleeve. A strange impulse of modesty stayed him
for a moment: should he call the girl and let her
108
THE HIGGLER
complete the robing of the naked body under the
quilt? That preposterous pause seemed to add a
new anger to the wind, and again the door sprang
open. He delayed no longer, but letting it remain
open, he uncovered the dead woman. As he lifted
the chill body the long outstretched arm moved and
tilted like the boom of a sail, but crushing it to its
side he bound the limb fast with the strips of linen.
So Mrs. Sadgrove was made ready for her coffin.
Drawing the quilt back to her neck, with a gush of
relief he glanced about the room. It was a very
ordinary bedroom: bed, washstand, chest of drawers,
chair, and two pictures - one of deeply religious
import, and the other a little pink print, in a gilded
frame, of a bouncing nude nymph recumbent upon a
cloud. It was queer: a lot of people, people whom
you wouldn't think it of, had that sort of picture in
their bedrooms.
Mary was now coming up the stairs again, with a
glass half full of liquid. She brought it to him.
'No, you drink it,' he urged, and Mary sipped the
brandy.
'I've finished - I've finished,' he said as he watched
her, 'she's quite comfortable now.'
The girl looked her silent thanks at him, again
holding out the glass. 'No, sup it yourself,' he said;
but as she stood in the dim light, regarding him with
her strange gaze, and still offering the drink, he
took it from her, drained it at a gulp and put the
glass upon the chest, beside the candle. 'She's quite
comfortable now. I'm very grieved, Mary,' he said
109
THE
HIGGLER
with awkward kindness, 'about all this trouble
that's come on you.
She was motionless as a wax image, as if she had
died in her steps, her hand still extended as when
he took the glass from it. So piercing was her gaze
that his own drifted from her face and took in again
the objects in the room: the washstand, the candle
on the chest, the little pink picture. The wind beat
upon the ivy outside the window as if a monstrous
whip were lashing its slaves.
'You must notify the registrar,' he began again,
'but you must see the doctor first.'
'I've waited for him all day,' Mary whispered, ‘all
day. The nurse will come again soon. She went
home to rest in the night.' She turned towards the
bed. 'She has only been ill a week.'
"Yes?' he lamely said. 'Dear me, it is sudden.'
'I must see the doctor,' she continued.
'I'll drive you over to him in my gig.' He was
eager to do that.
'I don't know,' said Mary slowly.
'Yes, I'll do that, soon's you're ready. Mary,' he
fumbled with his speech, 'I'm not wanting to pry
into your affairs, or any thing as don't concern me,
but how are you going to get along now? Have you
got any relations?'
'No,' the girl shook her head, 'No.'
"That's bad. What was you thinking of doing?
How has she left you - things were in a baddish
way, weren't they?"
'Oh, no,' Mary looked up quickly. ‘She has left
IIO
THE HIGGLER
me very well off. 'I shall go on with the farm;
there's the old man and the boy - they've gone to a
wedding to-day; I shall go on with it. She was so
thoughtful for me, and I would not care to leave all
this, I love it.'
'But you can't do it by yourself, alone?'
'No. I'm to get a man to superintend, a working
bailiff,' she said.
'Oh!' And again they were silent. The girl went
to the bed and lifted the covering. She saw the
bound arm and then drew the quilt tenderly over the
dead face. Witlow picked up his hat and found him-
self staring again at the pink picture. Mary took
the candle preparatory to descending the stairs.
Suddenly the higgler turned to her and ventured:
'Did you know as she once asked me to marry you?'
he blurted.
Her eyes turned from him, but he guessed - he
could feel that she had known.
'I've often wondered why,' he murmured, 'why she
wanted that.'
'She didn't,' said the girl.
That gave pause to the man; he felt stupid at once,
and roved his fingers in a silly way along the rough-
ened nap of his hat.
'Well, she asked me to,' he bluntly protested.
'She knew,' Mary's voice was no louder than a sigh,
'that you were courting another girl, the one you
married.'
'But, but,' stuttered the honest higgler, ‘if she knew
that why did she want for me to marry you?'
III
THE HIGGLER
'She didn't,' said Mary again; and again, in the
pause, he did silly things to his hat. How shy this
girl was, how lovely in her modesty and grief!
I can't make tops or bottoms of it,' he said; 'but
she asked me, as sure as God's my maker.'
'I know. It was me, I wanted it.'
'You!' he cried, 'you wanted to marry me!'
The girl bowed her head, lovely in her grief and
modesty: 'She was against it, but I made her ask
you.'
'And I hadn't an idea that you cast a thought on
me,' he murmured. 'I feared it was a sort of trick
she was playing on me. I didn't understand, I had
no idea that you knew about it even. And so I
didn't ever ask you.'
'Oh, why not, why not? I was fond of
you then,'
whispered she. 'Mother tried to persuade me
against it, but I was fond of you –
you - then.'
He was in a queer distress and confusion: 'Oh, if
you'd only tipped me a word, or given me a sort of
look,' he sighed. 'Oh, Mary!'
She said no more, but went downstairs. He followed
her and immediately fetched the lamps from his gig.
As he lit the candles: 'How strange,' Mary said, ‘that
you should come back just as I most needed help. I
am very grateful.'
'Mary, I'll drive you to the doctor's now.'
She shook her head; she was smiling.
"Then I'll stay till the nurse comes.'
'No, you must go. Go at once.'
He picked up the two lamps, and turning at the
II2
THE HIGGLER
door said: 'I'll come again to-morrow.' Then the
wind rushed into the room: 'Good-bye,' she cried,
shutting the door quickly behind him.
He drove away into deep darkness, the wind howl-
ing, his thoughts strange and bitter. He had thrown
away a love, a love that was dumb and hid itself.
By God, he had thrown away a fortune, too! And he
had forgotten all about his real errand until now,
forgotten all about the loan! Well, let it go; give it
up. He would give up higgling; he would take on
some other job; a bailiff, a working bailiff, that was
the job that would suit him, a working bailiff. Of
course there was Sophy; but still - Sophy!
113
F.F.
H
ITALIAN WHIRLIGIG
OF
NE TIME I WAS IN A LITTLE ITALIAN TOWN NOT FAR
from Pisa, and in the middle of it was a scrap of
waste ground that no one seemed to own or to
require. A sweet grove of pollarded sycamores grew
along one of its three sides - for it had the shape of
a triangle - with two blocks of tall yellow dwellings
along the others and a statue of Christopher
Columbus in one corner. The triangle was occupied,
in a sort of a way, by a caravan, a shooting alley, and a
merry-go-round; of course you wouldn't break
your
neck looking at a fair like that, it was too small,
indeed it wasn't big, just the whirligig and the
shooting stall.
Well, I lived there in one of those yellow buildings
a deuce of a hard time with a man who had fallen
in love; a great philosopher fellow, my friend, with
no money, not a bean - they never have. And she
was a beautiful girl with sandy hair and a sandy
face and a necklet of coral beads: an English girl
from Scunthorpe. All day long Dapson - that
was his name-would be singing a little bit of a
song:
I sat with my love in the ivy tree,
And hid her coat under the brier.
But I can take my oath that was a thing he never
would do, for he was a squirrel itself for shyness,
very shy. A person of great mind, though, full of
rich thoughts, but he was not fond of exposing them
114
ITALIAN WHIRLIGIG
- unless it was to myself. He was like a man who
kept his treasures in a dim room - they were dim
treasures, too, and you wouldn't understand them
only at odd times he would take up one of these
treasures and polish it till it would shine, or tap
it and tune it until it rang like a marriage bell.
That was his imagination, his ideas. And this girl,
she used to hang her stockings out of her window
overlooking the roundabout and things. I suppose
she hung them there to dry, and not for any token,
for when I told her one day that Dapson was pining
to a thread for love of her: 'Good sakes!' she said,
'I'd want to marry something a little better than
that backward creature.' And then she added,
looking very straight at me, 'But not so very much
better, neither.'
'His aunt,' I said, 'keeps him short of money, but
she has erysipelas and she'll die of it yet.'
'What's the use complaining you're poor?' said the
bright girl, 'there's always more money in the world
than you can do with!'
'Will you be going to the fair when it opens?' I
asked her.
"The fair? What fair?' she says.
"This little bit of a spree.' And I pointed out of her
window.
‘Oh, that! But it is open,' she said.
"Then why don't it begin?'
'It has begun.'
'What do you tell me? There's never a soul goes
into it!'
115
ITALIAN WHIRLIGIG
'And never will, for nobody wants it, and to tell
you the truth it wants nobody either.'
"Then why don't it go away?'
"That I can't tell you, but I've heard that it's been
here for years.'
"That's queer,' I said, 'for I seen the master of it,
an old man with big moustaches, very gentle he
seems, and he's always painting new paint on his
attractions, making them very neat and very fetch-
ing.'
'Gentle!' she cried.
'Indeed, yes, so it seems.'
'Good sakes! Once he had a pony, but it was half-
starved, so they say, and a wife that was three parts
dead for the same reason, so I've heard, and some
children that ought never to have been alive.'
'And where are they now then - don't they look
after him?' I asked her.
"They are in their graves, poor dears, where else.
could they be?'
"The devil take him!' said I.
When I left her I took a walk into the fair and
everything was quiet, even the shooting alley. It
was painted like a castle, with clay pipes stuck in
every cranny, and bits of shell you'd gather from
the shore dangling on threads from the battlements,
to be popped at by boys. Just one little gun, and no
more. The merry-go-round was not a great con-
trivance: seven wooden horses there were, painted a
white that was very white, with black tails, black
manes and eyes, their hoofs black and a red ring
116
ITALIAN WHIRLIGIG
round each eye; but their mouths and nostrils were
red as dripping blood, and their necks and behinds
were dappled with rose spots as big as crab apples.
Then there were two lions amongst them, and one
dragon, sandy lions with thin rumps but massy
heads; the half of them was head, like a John Dory,
and very ferocious. That dragon was large as a hog,
but more like a fish - saving the legs and his eyes
were gold and his teeth were green and a dreadful
conglomeration he was, with a great show of paint on
him. To turn it all there was a handle in the middle,
and an organ full of brass spouts shining like a
doctor's door-knocker, but not a groan or a grunt
coming from the lot of it. I couldn't understand it.
All spick and span with new paint, saving the caravan
that was burst to a ruin that you wouldn't put a crow
in. The old man of the fair went by me, going with a
pail of water he had drawn from the fountain. He
was mumbling to himself, he was always mumbling,
and what I heard him say was just this: 'She's better
to-day, better to-day, she'll soon be well. Oh, yes,
she's much better to-day.' I tell you, I couldn't
understand it at all.
Indoors I went and found Dapson, and I told him
about the young girl - how she was pining to a
thread for love of him. But he said he didn't care
now, so I asked him why was that? And he asked me
did I happen to notice her stockings hanging out,
and did I see anything peculiar about them?
'Peculiar?' I said.
'About the feet of them?' says he.
117
ITALIAN WHIRLIGIG
'No, I did not.'
'Well,' he said, 'I look at them every day, morning
and evening, and they affect me curiously, strangely
they affect me. Can you understand? - they look
ungainly, heavy, they give me a painful impression.
In short,' said he, 'they convey to me the disagree-
able suggestion that her feet have lumps on them!'
'Lumps!' I thought he was crazy.
'Yes, something rather monstrous. It's quite in-
describable, I'm bewitched by it; can you under-
stand?'
'But what sort of lumps?' I thought he was crazy.
'Oh, I can't explain, but it's spoilt everything, and
it's quite impossible for me to love her now.' He
put his head down between his hands. Sick and
sorry he looked. 'I wish I had never seen them.'
'I think,' I said, 'you are too much cooped up here
in the summer heat. Come out, now, and sit in the
public gardens.' For I knew the young girl would
be walking there with her two little feet going
sweetly as a deer's.
But he would not do that. 'Summer is good, yes,
he said, ' but if you can't sit in the house the flies in
the garden are mad to kill you, and they would kill
you if you didn't smoke, and you can't smoke with-
out tobacco,' he said, 'and you can't get tobacco
without money, and money simply isn't to be
had.'
'Come out, you,' says I again to him then, 'and let's
go to the fair!' I told him what I had heard of it and
seen of it. He would not do that either, but he sat
118
ITALIAN WHIRLIGIG
up and
and began turning over one of his thoughts, and
polishing it, and tapping and tuning it.
'For some reason,' he began, 'no one patronizes that
charming institution. Even I, who am full of admira-
tion, have never spent a coin upon it. And this is the
reason-it would be sacrilege! Do you follow me?
Times are not bad, and the children play, but no one
ever seeks to bestride those gallant beasts, or try his
skill with the popgun. And it does not seem to
cause any concern to the owner, that old man. On
the contrary! He cherishes his steeds and lions in
a strange way. How delicately dreadful they are
with their snarly mouths! Day by day I see him
with a pot of white paint, or a pot of blue or red or
green, adding a daub of colour to the dragon's eye,
the lions' manes, or the horses' hooves. Like an
artist he touches here, touches there, and then with-
draws to scan the effect with a closed eye, and
perhaps an anxious smile curving under his old
moustache. Then sometimes he paints the white
pipes whiter, or shines the barrel of the little gun –
how fearfully it gleams! And I feel that he is
dwelling in an absurd world of love of these simple
funny things. No longer a means of life to him they
have come into life itself, transcendent and for ever
young. Some days they actually seem to have grown
fatter! He will never suffer a strange hand to touch
them now, no one must use them but him alone, for
they mean splendid things to him, and he worships
them like a monk. Do you understand this?'
'It's queer talking,' I answered.
119
ITALIAN WHIRLIGIG
'Ah,' he went on, 'the heart of man is full of queer-
nesses and strange loves. And yet, after all, it's
most full of strange hatreds. Turn and turn about
we come to hate most things, even life itself. I'm
not sure whether one hates life more for the responsi-
bilities it entails, or for the disappointments it daily
brings.'
'Ha, ha! Were you thinking of those stockings
again?' I asked him with a playful shout.
'No, no,' he was speaking quietly, turning it over
in his mind as he said it, 'I was thinking of my aunt's
erysipelas. It is true each responsibility seems to
give you a new strength, but that in turn becomes
only a new weakness; whereas disappointments put
such a lustre upon your desperate hopes that they
become bright landmarks on your road, hostages
as it were for the ultimate attainment
'Meaning the erysipelas, I suppose!'
'No, the stockings I mean,' he cried.
'Mr. Dapson, - I put it to him decently – 'you had
better come out in the air and sit in the public
gardens.'
I20
THE JEWEL OF JEOPARDY
I
APA LANKSHEER GOT UP FROM THE TABLE AND
stood in front of the fire clutching the corner of
The Morning Post at his side between an irritated
forefinger and a quite passionate thumb. Emma was
removing breakfast things with the reckless tinkling
of china and silver that always vexed him.
'Emma! For Heaven's sake!' he exclaimed, shaking
his newspaper admonishingly. Then he turned to
his beautiful but wretched daughter Helen and said:
'Rubbish! Vanity!'
'Yes, I know, father, but you don't understand
vanity; it really is necessary, it isn't a crime. You
wouldn't have me hideous, would you?'
'I'd rather have you hideous than blind. Eyesight's
a most precious thing, I tell you, Helen. I can
remember - but there, I won't go into that. You
really must consult an oculist. Why, confound it,
you'll be colliding with cabstands, and dashing into
nursery maids with perambulators who never look
where they are going, never. Yes, you must, I
insist, vanity or no vanity, it stands to reason. And
what's the matter with glasses? Glasses don't make
you hideous, they set off your expression, make you
look intellectual. I wear 'em, worn 'em all my life.
What's the matter with glasses?'
'I know it's unreasonable, but you don't understand
how I shrink from the ugly things; I've never worn
them before, I've never had to, and now . . . bụt
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there, after all, one might as well be dead as blind.'
'Why do you keep buzzing about ugliness - like
some wretched bee! I tell you a woman with a bee
in her bonnet hasn't any honey in her mind. . . nor
nor . . . nor anything else. Go and see this
man, go this afternoon, go and see him now, before
lunch!'
If Mr. Lanksheer had scope for anxiety about his
daughter he had none for personal vanity. He was
holding his newspaper at his side as a child some-
times holds its pocket-handkerchief; it would not
have surprised you had he picked up another corner
and inserted it between his teeth. He was an
ordinary ageing man who, without being corpulent,
carried some implications of grossness. Yet he was
the mildest of tipplers. You would have had no
scruples about attributing to him a rich, abundant
appetite - until you saw him eat; he dared not
succumb to its temptations for he was the prey of
dyspepsia. Very fat fingers adhered to his plump pink
hands, the lobes of his ears were pendulous as pears
against his unbulging but nevertheless puffy cheeks.
And hooky was his nose; it was on terms of ferocious
intimacy with his moustache. His voice was inelastic
and hard. Helen was not like that at all, and, to be
frank, she did not admire her father.
She visited the ophthalmist after lunch and all her
alarms were confirmed to the uttermost. The ail-
ment was perhaps even worse than she had feared.
Reading, music, sewing, cinemas, all forbidden - for
a time, at least - and glasses to be worn constantly;
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really very serious. So judged the delightful young
man who had examined her eyes. He was not the
actual specialist, he was an Irishman, temporarily
from London, deputizing for the great man. He
had signed the prescription for her glasses with the
name Paul Duhy. He had strange, delicate-looking
hands, and he wore glasses himself: otherwise he
looked anything but delicate, and he was undeniably
handsome. Before the professional consultations
ceased - and Mr. Lanksheer began to have appre-
hensions that they would never cease - Paul and
Helen had grown very fond of each other, and there
ensued consultations elsewhere upon topics other
than ophthalmy, although Helen's eyes - for they
were very beautiful – were the subject of most fre-
quent, and the happiest possible, reference.
But Helen Lanksheer was a calamitous girl. She
did not inspire or promote calamity, it followed her
doggedly as a wolf. She knew it, and she feared the
course of her true love would never run smooth. Of
delightful presence, of good family, of impeccable
virtue, she had yet a fantastic reputation that even as
I set it down here seems to contain assumptions that
are grotesque, too extravagant for credence by any
normal mind. Yet I reflect that as late as the
eighteenth century, even in England, women with
far less sinister renown were burnt at the stake, and
it is certain that though the so-called punishments
have ceased, belief in witchcraft and baleful influ-
ence has by no means reached its conclusion. Helen
brought disaster upon nearly all who foregathered
*
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with her. In beauty she was a jewel, but, alas, a
jewel of jeopardy. Her mother died in giving her
birth. A brother had drowned in saving her at a
boating accident. Relatives and intimate friends,
those whose affections she cherished, suffered mis-
fortunes to which Helen's fatal destiny had inno-
cently, but none the less irresistibly, drawn them.
Perhaps it was entirely fallacious to associate the
poor girl with these happenings. After all, is it a
platitude to insist that the only certainty in life is its
uncertainty? Perhaps the arts of coincidence, what-
ever they may be, excelled in some marvellous way
because she was beautiful and striking. Perhaps;
but the sequence of misfortune cannot be scorned,
these things undoubtedly happened. Her sister,
sleeping with her in the same bed, was burned to
death in a fire. Her remaining brother was killed in
a railway accident while travelling to fetch Helen
home from a visit to Scotland. Her cousin, Helen
Lanksheer christened so in her honour - became
an idiot. When she alone was left to live with her
father his fortunes markedly declined. No, the
occasions when her fatal associations could be vividly
traced were so numerous, even in minor happenings,
so pointed, that her circle of friends dwindled away
and at twenty-two the charming girl was a very lonely
one. She herself had come to recognize, and to
accept tacitly, the vicarious blame; it could not fail
to be borne upon a sensitive mind, and Helen was
above everything sensitive-minded. She had other
graces as well: she was nearly tall but not quite tall,
-
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hair not quite golden though it had the glister, eyes
more blue than grey but not quite either. Her face,
with that pinkness that looks like fragrance itself,
and long thin lips, was lovingly shaped even to the
slightest of flaws in the dainty nose. Though not
even yet fully developed - she was a singularly
virginal type - you could have no shadow of doubt
that she would be wonderful. And Paul Duhy
already found her wonderful, so wonderful indeed.
that he was quick to negotiate an opportunity to enter
into a partnership with his specialist friend, declaring
to himself and to Helen that he had no desire to
resign that favoured town while she walked its
forever-lighted streets! All this, and much besides,
he declared to Helen who loved to hear it, and all
might have gone well with them, despite her fore-
bodings of that ever-hovering malignity ever seeking
to deprive her of her one lover, her only friend, had
not the last week of Paul's term in the town coin-
cided with an unexpected visit to London that her
father was called upon to make. This threw the
lovers together in freedom for a week of delicious
days. Paul's absence, before he could return to take
up his partnership, might last perhaps for a couple
of months, so with all the urgency of new lovers
soon to be parted they crowded into those days an
abundance of joys, vows, smiles, kisses and tears.
And at the end, tears, everlasting tears. For the
unbelievable, the unforeseen, happened; not a
quarrel, not a tragedy, but an event that drove Paul
irrevocably from her side.
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2
Mr. Lanksheer returned from London to a sad,
dispirited daughter, but her condition failed to
impress itself upon him for his own health had
become a matter of desperate concern, more vivid
than any to which Helen's sorrows, even had he
divined them, could have moved him. He was an
egotist, almost devoid of the sympathetic sense, and
with little wisdom. Knowledge he had, but nature
had not given him any art in the common use of it.
The letters M.A. - he was a Brasenose man were
just a tiny intellectual seal that he dangled from a
rather empty mental fob. So Helen was lonely, and
her father was sick. She had lost Paul. Paul was
gone, she had no word from him and his silence was
charged with more of his contempt than a sheaf of
sharp reproaches. She did not complain of that, she
could not complain of anything about Paul, they
were in it too deeply together. She derived no feeling
of triumph from her successful avoidance of - well,
whatever it was she had avoided or foregone. On
the contrary, she felt guilty, as deeply as she could
possibly have been had their swift passionate project
been carried out. Her father's sickness made there-
fore a diversion from her own sad thoughts, and
when his physician prescribed an immediate resort
to the seaside she was glad to hail her father's
eagerness to obey.
You may figure them, then, from the sharp spring
onward, at a resort on the south coast, the old man
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seeking to recover that which he would never have
again, his daughter for her part nursing a passion
that was equally hopeless. The spring wore into
summer, but they stayed on; Mr. Lanksheer's con-
dition shaped to a slow persistent decline, though
there were curious improvements in his temper and
outlook for which the girl was grateful. Never a
cordial man he developed now a whimsical, and on
the whole inoffensive, irascibility that was in its way
pathetic. The rough crags of his temperament
seemed to dissolve as if beaten upon by those waves
it was their constant occupation to observe and
admire. Her own unhappiness had not been dis-
solved, and there was renewed anxiety in her mind
about her eyes, in which the old alarming symptoms
had begun to reassert themselves. But these troubles
she never disclosed, and she continued to accompany
her father on the daily aimless amble that occupied
their rich sunny mornings. Here, for the first time
in her life, Helen had taken to calling him ironically
'Papa' because he was so amusing to her. The
dignity of fatherhood had left him, he had never
been so talkative, so funny, so furious, or so friendly.
He was really, in a pathetic way, enjoying himself
immensely. Yet they could do nothing except walk
along the sea front from one glass shelter to the next,
from that glass shelter to the pier, from the pier to
the groyne,
from the groyne to the bandstand. In his
latter days he was dragged about in a Bath chair by a
man named Briggs, whom he playfully bullied and
poked with his stick. They would move slowly
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along, staring down upon the crowded beach that
her father was too weak to visit now; not that he
would have gone down in any case, for he was
inveterately arrogant about the merry poor people
who did 'that sort of thing.'
'No self-respecting being,' he would rattle on - and
he always took the self-respecting being as the
exemplar of Christian conduct, thrusting uncon-
sciously a dagger into the heart of secret Helen –
'no self-respecting being would dream of squatting
in a mob on that shore.'
'But why not, Papa?'
'Well, look at it, my dear Helen, it's an idiotic place
where mobs from other towns resort to lacerate their
very bones by squatting on cobbles and hard rocks
and the sides of boats; the side of a boat! Did you
ever sit on anything so profoundly repellent as the
side of a boat? And there they go, meditating, with
their feet in the water like a lot of herons. I'm glad
when the sea's rough, they can't do it. And those
unfortunate little girls with buckets and spades.
Fatuous buckets they are, always smaller than the
spades! Nothing annoys me more. And balloons!
They make me feel giddy, quite giddy.'
But they would continue parading, the old man
humming to himself until they reached other mani-
festations that seldom failed to goad him.
'Where do they come from, these hordes of harpies,
where do they come from? Blackening their faces for
some reason - quite immoral, I've no doubt, unless
of course they are very ugly, and they all are: singing
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wretched songs which I don't want to hear, and
pestering me for pennies which I don't want to give.
And then they blackguard me, as politely as they
dare, because a penny is all I give and all I ever
intend to give. Really, I tell you...'
They would pass on in a never-ceasing shower of
civilized sound: the pat of a thousand footsteps
passing them by, rumble of cart, burr of motor, the
general clatter of vendors, the blarney of the excur-
sion men, the waves blundering up the beach, the
hails of boatmen, fishermen, sailormen, steamer-
men, the sad hilarity of the minstrels, hoots of
steamers, blare of bands, shouts, bangs and chimes
that sprang in the air endlessly like hopping fleas.
'But nothing annoys me more,' declared Mr. Lank-
sheer as he approached them, 'than these hoarse
red-faced rascals with rings in their ears, and stink-
ing barrows. There's a green one with red wheels,
look, Helen, crowded with dishes. Fearful little
animals called cockles, I believe; yes, they are
cockles. Not, my dear, those that reside traditionally
in your heart for the sole purpose of being warmed
on precious occasions, ha, ha! but some little pisca-
torial horrors — look at them, Helen!'
For a moment or two Helen feared that he was
going to poke them off the barrow.
Yes, and people gobble them up, too, they gobble
'em up. Nothing annoys me more. But for the
vampires in excelsis those are the ones, yes,' he would
declare, pointing his malacca cane at the miscreants,
'those old women with baskets of apples that are
F.F.
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THE JEWEL OF JEOPARDY
shrivelled or sour, and oranges that taste like lemons,
and nuts that were young when Gladstone was a
boy. Are your eyes better to-day, Helen? You are
not wearing your glasses. Vanity! Vanity! Helen,
he would drop his voice to a mysterious tone, 'be
careful of those scoundrels who try to persuade you
to have your photograph taken. They will dish you
up, my dear, they will dish you up looking very cross-
eyed, I assure you, with a head that is like nothing so
much as a misshapen bun. That's how they turn
you out. Well, well, it's very pleasant out this
morning. How are your eyes?'
'Splendid, Papa, and you, you haven't coughed
once this morning!'
At which reminder Papa Lanksheer would develop
an irrepressible desire to make good the omission.
In the afternoon he generally slept, and Helen
would go out, often into a quiet town enclosure
where she could sit alone. She loved to loiter for a
while on one of the iron benches in the gravelled
walks, her capacities seeming to reverse in the bulky
warmth of the afternoons; she could hear the silence
and see reflectively things other than objects in her
line of sight: though these were dim enough now,
those large angular trees, for instance, that turf worn
thin as lodging-house carpet, and the iron foot
railing that had been painted in some old time
darkly blue, or bluely dark, she could not tell which.
And it was then that her unhappiness was prone to
descend upon her most intimately. The mood of
self-pity is a tempting possession. Her life now was
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full of stupid futilities; it was like a screen behind
which stood possibilities of endless remote happi-
ness, now for ever barred. At such times the hopes
of youth and the loveliness of experience made play
upon her nature in vain; perplexed with the vagaries
of existence she would return to their lodgings
tremulous and cast down.
The summer moved exquisitely on, but her father
was dying. His pleasant little asperities had dis-
appeared; the balmy heat of the sun became horrible,
or the warm crisping breeze was a tempest to him.
He could not go out when he most desired, or he
had no desire when he was free to go. In short the
entire compression of the world fitted down upon
him tightly like a steel cap, and at last he quavered
and died, perhaps not so much from disease as from
total dissatisfaction with the manifold activities of
his Maker.
Scarcely had her father's remains been conveyed
to a London crematorium, and the last rites done,
when a further disaster clapped down upon Helen.
The mourning relatives returned again to the sea-
side to assist and comfort the stricken girl. They
did not stay for long, they adjusted her affairs as
quickly as they could; none cared to run the risk of
her permanent companionship either in their homes
or her own. They all confidently urged that her
blindness was only temporary, due to the strain of
her exceptional situation, though some attributed it
to the inexperienced treatment of Paul Duhy. But
the girl never recovered her sight.
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She spent some agonizing months in various institu-
tions where people were extraordinarily kind to her.
She learned to read Braille books and to work in
many curious little arts connected with plaiting and
weaving. Her life was full of tragedy, her mind
brooded upon it, but at length, getting a grip upon
her new faculties, she went back to her home and
the care of Emma, the old devoted domestic above
whom no maleficent influence ever seemed to im-
pend. It was necessary to engage some sort of a
helpmate for Emma, and after much cogitation
Emma herself lit upon a small boy, a nephew of her
own named Frank, who was taken into the house-
hold to live with them. It was Frankie's office to
attend Helen whenever she went out, to wait upon
her generally while she was acquiring the blind's
facility of touch and sense of security. He became
a charming companion, at first rather shy; he had a
pleasant soft voice, and soon established himself not
only as her guide but as her philosopher and friend.
Paul Duhy she did not hear of, he seemed out of the
range of her approach now; and how could she
inflict, even if he desired her in the old, ardent
way,
a blind lover upon him? There was that other
aspect, too, the fate that seemed to cast its shade
over her chosen ones. It was a fantastic enemy, but
to her a vivid, a real, one. She had scruples strong
enough, for a time at least, to put aside any offer to
renew the old tie.
The house was a small one of the Georgian age,
set in a garden having a small incurious plot of turf
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THE JEWEL OF JEOPARDY
surrounded by a frescade of shrubs; there were a few
trees, the pleasant haunt of birds, and the house had
the deep pent eaves that charm the martin's eye.
It was not so pleasant inside; it was dull, rather
stridently furnished. Helen spent her days in the
room next the kitchen, that had been half parlour,
half study in her father's time. Its walls were hung
with unpleasant wall-paper which a number of por-
traits of Papa, all very elaborately framed, partially
hid. A large long table stood upon a worn carpet;
it had a nice smooth cover of plush-like material
that Helen now loved to rove her fingers along.
She remembered it was dull green and fringed with
balls of worsted wound upon beads of wood. There
was a sideboard with large mirrors: everything in
that room seemed large, for the leather-lined easy-
chair at the fireplace was framed for persons of
elephantine proportions. There was a black piano,
now never played, and a desk. A bamboo cabinet
for china, never opened, occupied one corner, and a
camera and stand, never used, another. Under the
window was a sofa. Here the blind girl would sit,
day in, day out, hour by hour. As the spring ripened
and was warm she would go with Frankie into the
park where they would mope or converse; but mostly
she would sit at home in that room listening and
brooding, brooding and listening. Time did not
seem to matter now, neither day nor night. The
clock was a meaningless instrument to the blind,
who had no vanities. If it were not for the dial
recording the passage of time, hours, days, weeks,
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months and years, we should not experience half the
unhappiness of growing old, we should age without
belief. But the early days in that room, before
Frankie came to be her guide, often moved her to
hysterics. She felt like the starling in its cage, 'I
can't get out, I can't get out.' She thought of the
polar bear in the wild beast show, a vivid image,
pacing its six steps forward on its zinc floor and six
steps back again interminably. She could not even
pace the black clinging trap that enmeshed her. All
her thoughts formed images. She had imaginations
unlike those born blind. She remembered reading
a tale of a tiger, that, unseen, unheard, crept into
the hut of a blind Indian. The terror of that situa-
tion one day so wrought upon her that she screamed
out in agony until Emma rushed in to comfort her.
One April morning, when earth and sky were so
bright and gay that even the melancholy girl could
divine their beauty, she was sitting upon the sofa
under the window. The window was open behind
her; she was listening to the noises of the birds;
there was a heavenly thrush, and pleasant sounds
seemed to drift in from everywhere. There was a
carrier in from the country at the side door, she could
hear him talking to Emma about weather.
'Wonderful, wonderful, ma'am, truly,' he was say-
ing, 'yet I met a man only last night, a very old man
he was, who remembers sixty-five years ago this
very week when you could walk over the tops of the
hedges and never see 'em!'
'How's that?' inquired Emma blankly.
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'Snow; yes, snow! Did you see that bit in the paper
the day afore yesterday then, or was it Wednesday,
no, 'twas a' Tuesday?"
"What was that?'
'Nine inches a' snow in Jerusalem!'
'Gracious!'
'Never before knowed in the 'membrance uv man.'
'Did you ever!' said Emma. There was a pause;
then she added: 'Ah, well.'
'Beg your pardon, ma'am,' said the carrier.
'I only said 'Ah, well,' Emma explained more
loudly.
'Oh, ah, yes, you're right, ma'am, that's true!' he
said and departed.
Helen began laughing lightly and cheerfully.
'How absurd they are, but I love them all!'
She put down the book she had been fingering.
The air of the world outside was warm and kind,
but within the room was a small fire. She sat quite
still for a long time recalling every feature of the
room, even the electric light pendants. There were
two of them, she knew, with odd shades, one in a
dim corner that never got any sunlight. The other,
just above the table, always had two or three flies
flirting beneath it and spotting the glass of the
bulb. She rose and moved cautiously to the lamp,
holding her hand below it for some moments to see
if the flies would rest upon her. But they did not.
She returned to the sofa. The marvellous thrush
outside sang as if he divined her thoughts, as if they
were just the luminous air he breathed. It was
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simply fancy, of course; she was thinking of Wales,
not any special spot; she knew of none, she had
never been there. But as an idea, as a locality, its
very names stirred secret emotions in her. She
could not pore over a map now. All of Wales that
she knew or was ever to know was stored in her
memory, and what was significantly there now was
not the dæmon of Wales but of Paul. The voice of
the bird, in her darkness, her loneliness, sang to that
undying passion: Paul will cure me! Paul will cure
me! But what chiefly moved her soul were images of
her lover and his fierce frightening embraces: Paul
will love me! Paul will love me! She longed for him
without reserve: the fiercer his demands the more
she would grant him. What did blind Helen Lank-
sheer care now for the looks or condemnations of
friends she knew but could not see, for the censure
of people she did not know and could now never
know? Blindness gave her a new moral code, it
covered her own longing with a kind of reverent
indiscretion and nullified all opprobrium. The con-
suming regret in her heart concerned her lost lover
Paul and their last meeting while her father was
absent in London. Even now its desperate signifi-
cance brought the flame to her cheeks.
The thrush sang on, and Helen lived again those
last hours with Paul.
Here in this very room he had been so passionate,
so gentle, so persuasive, so kind, but ... She did
not rank herself above reproach, but she was not
dreaming of reproaches in what was so strange and
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THE JEWEL OF JEOPARDY
exquisite. She too had been passionate, trembling
on a cliff of dalliance from which, if she took but
one step, she would fly or be borne on wings of
enchantment to a world from which there was no
return, or from which return was the last thing
desired. Paul had proposed to hire a car and take
her into Wales for a few days, alone, together.
Almost before she was aware she had half consented,
and when she clasped him fondly for that good-night
she had wholly agreed.
The thrush outside sang madly, distracting her
recollections.
What came next? Oh, yes, next morning she had
told the astonished but unquestioning Emma to take
the remainder of the week for a holiday: she had
worked so hard at cleaning during Mr. Lanksheer's
absence. At noon next day Emma had gone. Paul
was coming for her in the car at seven o'clock when
it was dark. At four o'clock she had packed her
bag and frittered about with tea. After that she had
sat in her cloak in the front room until it grew dark.
She did not switch on the light, she preferred the
darkness. At seven o'clock the little car glided up
to the gate. She was watching behind the drawn
blinds. Paul came into the path and rang the bell of
the door. It was a sharp impetuous ring. She stood,
listening to its vibrations and the low hum of the
motor outside. Her heart throbbed, she could not
move, she stood transfixed. The bell rang again,
two long insistent clangs. She did not go to him.
She did not move. Twice again the bell raged, but
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Helen was locked in a strange mood, not stupor -
she was very much alive - but a stringent fear that
possessed her. Paul turned the handle of the door.
It was locked. He stood in the garden and surveyed
the house. How fine his shape in the gloom! He
went to the side door, which he tried without success.
At last he went away.
Helen sighed: 'Oh dear, that stupid bird, I wish
it would stop. I can't think! I can't think!'
Her thoughts swum back to her.
When Paul departed she had lain coals upon the
fire and sunk down, still in her cloak, still in dark-
ness, chilled to the soul with grief. After a long,
long time, more than an hour, she heard the motor
again glide up to the gate. She half turned in the
chair, gripping its padded sides until her nails and
fingers were pierced with pain. The bell once more
flashed its summons: its idle summons, for she lay
cowering until Paul had gone. She sat on in the
dark room like a stricken child. At nine o'clock
he came yet again, but there was neither fear nor
love in her then, neither pride nor passion. She was
just empty, dull, weary. She heard him at last go
back to the gate. It slammed with a heavy crash.
He waited awhile, then just spat into the garden,
was gone. She was cold then. She got up and went
to her bedroom, carrying the travelling bag with her.
She undressed and, lying in her bed, all her love
returned. But he would not come again, her dear
angry lover. She flung her arms round the vision of
him there. Oh, if he would only come again she
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would unlock the doors and greet him humbly, yes,
humbly. Time and again she rose from her bed and
peered into the moonlit road, but he was not there,
she knew he would never come again. She got up
and dressed herself quickly, very, very quickly, and
hurried into the empty town, carrying her travelling
bag. Where had he gone, where could she look for
him, she would never find him again. The night was
glorious in beauty, and even the suburban dissonance
was vanquished. Yes, there was a soft flush of
moonlight from the sharp sky. Bushes, shrubs, and
trees in the villas flung grey shades across the road.
A clock was chiming twelve. Three dissolute men
lay upon a bench, one of them imitating a cock-
crow. Tiny gales lifted the boughs, sifted the
shadows, and dissolved in them. Sometimes a low-
hanging star would trickle behind the moving trees.
Ahead lay the shapely heave of a hill, vaguer trees,
and the white cheeks of houses. It was cold. A
cape of snow cowered in the eastern sky and a cape
of snow in the west, but the track of the road was
still seen sharply in the moon's light. In her dis-
traction she ran along the great road leading to
Wales, following it out into lonely sylvan country,
but vainly. She met nobody, and the swift rush of
headlights never once gladdened her eager eyes. She
never heard from Paul again.
The blinded girl sat up from her daydream as if
dazed, intoxicated by her romantic recollections.
She began to repeat a sorrowful couplet from an old
poem:
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Dust hath closed Helen's eye,
I am sick, I must die.
Nothing but darkness, darkness of eye, darkness of
mind, of hope, of religion. To her religion offered no
solace, no alleviations; most aspects of the religious
life left her unmoved.
But the thrush was still singing; trilling a Welsh
gamut, it seemed to cry:
My dear, my dear, my dear!
Chirk, chirk, chirk, chirk, chirk, chirk!
Swansea, Swansea!
Poo... come along, come along.
Poo . . . Oo . . . Oo
Oo . . . flutter Aberdovey!
She could hear the little boy in the kitchen playing
with his engine. He had built a toy roundabout,
with wheels and rails and cardboard horses and
figures that rolled up and down, round and round,
as long as he turned a handle. The toy possessed
him. She could hear him interminably twisting a
handle, its mechanism rattling frenziedly upon the
table.
Trevithick! Trevithick!
O-00, O-00, O-00.
Where was Trevithick? Probably near Cardiff.
My dear, my dear!
Chirk-chirk-chirk-chirk.
The thrush went on carolling thus madly.
Helen called out to her boy: 'Frank!' The rattle
of the roundabout ceased, the door opened and the
140
THE JEWEL OF JEOPARDY
little boy came and stood by her. She held out her
hands. Come here.' They happened to fall upon
his thick fluffy hair.
'What is the colour of your hair, Frankie?'
'Brown, miss.'
"Is it dark or light? Is it like chocolate or . . . dead
leaves?'
She took the boy into her arms, passing her hands
over his strange young face.
'Are you pretty, Frankie? What colour is your
hair?'
He appeared to cogitate carefully: 'It's more like
seaweed, miss.'
'Dark, then, dark.'
She pressed his head to her bosom. 'Don't call me
miss, Frankie, call me Helen, won't you? What
colour are your eyes are they strong eyes?'
'Yes, Miss Helen; I don't know what the colour
is.'
'Not know their colour! And you've had them for
ten years! Frankie! Why, fetch a looking-glass and
tell me what their colour is.'
He obeyed. 'Nearly black, miss.'
'No, no, Frankie!' She put her arms around his
neck again with a queer hungering feeling for the
child. What are you to call me?' she whispered.
He, too, lowered his voice as he answered 'Helen.'
Thereat she pressed him in both arms again, laying
her cheek against his cool small face. Something
moved him to touch her cheeks gently with his
fingers and kiss her.
14I
THE JEWEL OF JEOPARDY
The caress enraptured her.
'Frankie, where is Trevithick?'
'He's dead, Helen.'
•
'Dead? Oh, no I don't mean . . . it's a place
. in Wales.' Frankie reflected, and declared his
belief that Trevithick was the man who made rail-
ways first of all, long time ago. Surely that was
Stephenson, wasn't it? Frankie explained that it was
not so.
'I must have heard it somewhere. Look in the
gazetteer, Frankie.'
Frankie was triumphant, for neither gazetteer nor
time-table recorded the name.
'Find some notepaper in the desk, Frankie. You
are a good writer, aren't you?'
The boy declared that he was.
'Write a letter for me then, Frankie, please, write
it in your very best style.'
DEAR PAUL,
Come and see me. I want to speak to you. Come
to tea to-day.
Yours,
HELEN.
Frankie stood up and read it over to her. 'You are
sure that you have spelt the words all right? And
there are no blots?'
'Yes.'
'What else?'
"The envelope.'
'No, I mean what are you to call me?'
142
THE JEWEL OF JEOPARDY
Frankie did not reply. He sat down and inscribed
the envelope. 'I want you to take it to Fulton
Crescent. And wait for an answer. Can you go
quickly? How long will you be? Not long, will you,
Frankie? Oh, wait, wait! You must open it again,
open it, have you opened it? Put P.S. at the bottom.
P.S. I am quite blind, Paul. Now another envelope,
just as you wrote before.'
The envelope was sealed, and the boy departed,
promising to return within half an hour. 'Run,
Frankie, won't you?' She appealed. She almost
counted the beats of the clock until his return.
Frankie brought back the letter. Mr. Duhy was
not in.
‘But, oh, Frankie, how stupid of you! You should
have left it. When will he be in?'
'I wanted to leave it,' he replied, "but she wouldn't
let me. She said you take it back where you brought
it. He left a year ago and he ain't come back any
more .. Helen!'
'Oh, Frankie, what do you say, not live there?"
Her agitation was pitiful. 'Where is he? What does
it mean? Run and tell Emma I want my hat and
coat. Emma! Emma! You must take me there,
Frankie, at once, do you hear?'
'Yes, Helen,' he replied. In a few minutes they had
left the house together, the boy modestly holding
her hand. They walked without speaking, for some
dread of that old Malignity, that doom she drew
down upon her friends, began to thrust its grim
shadow upon her swift intention. But tears rose into
143
THE JEWEL OF JEOPARDY
her dead eyes; she could not, would not, believe it
now. Surely her blindness had expiated all the
terrible blame!
'Where are we? Are we nearly there?' she kept
asking.
"Yes, nearly . . . Helen.'
They were crossing a road amid a pause in the
traffic when an outburst of startled shouting sprang
in the air, a vast noise of rushing wagons suddenly
boomed upon the street and seemed to swoop at
them.
'No! no!' screamed the boy to Helen, 'look . . . !'
He was torn from her grasp, while the clamour of
flying horses crashed past her very face and pounded
on. There was a shocking silence. Some soft foot-
steps seemed to assemble near the waiting girl.
'What is it? Frankie! Frankie! Where are you?'
she screamed.
But the people, the quite silent people, stooped
down just beyond her to gather up the dead boy
before they turned to Helen in her doom and her
blindness.
144
BUP
ALICE BRADY
RIGHT? YES, IT WAS BRIGHT. 'THE SUN'S COME
like a fire coal this morning,' said Alice Brady,
lying in her room at the Carpenters' Arms, a long
low room with a little bedstead of brass in a large
corner; a stand to wash at, looking very naked, in
another; and a lot of cupboards brown and musty.
How old she was! Eighty years and more, and
every day of those long years she had dwelt and slept
at the inn. Father, too. He had died there. For
more than a century a Brady had kept the ‘Car-
penters.' To-day-it was Old Michaelmas Day
they were thinking to turn her out of it. People pass,
they decline and die, the stocks and stones outlast
them. Though not so young as she had once been
Alice was lasting well, but her landlord had died and
the property had been sold to a new brewer; his new
tenant was moving in to-day: Old Michaelmas
Day.
George's Molly was downstairs cracking sticks
for the fire, and, as always, it sounded as if she were
in a temper with the faggots. Alice could not bear
bad-tempered people. They chilled her, they an-
noyed, they were exasperating. Cheerful people
were the salt of the earth. 'Give me a man as can
sing at eight o'clock in the morning, any fool can
sing a song at night.' Alice had said it again and
again. For years now, George's Molly had come
over from her own house and lit Alice's fire and
helped her to dress. For years she had done that,
145
F.F.
K
ALICE BRADY
but Alice didn't want her to, didn't need her at all,
didn't like her, and for those reasons if for no others
had never paid her a trifle for her services. She had
never spoken to her brother George since his Molly
was born, born out of wedlock forty years ago; and
George's Molly had always called her Alice, for
Miss Brady would never recognize her consan-
guinity by acknowledging the name of 'aunt.'
Alice began to get up, a long exhausting process,
and the pain in her throat hurt her unmercifully, but
she would get up by herself. "They'll find me a bit
too young for 'em yet.' She sneezed twice. Then,
after dipping her hands in the water bowl and
wiping her cheeks with a damp flannel, she knelt
down at the bedside: it was more respectful to wash
yourself before praying to the Lord.
Peaceful the day was, Old Michaelmas Day.
Peering from her window she could see the mild sun
airing the wet farms. Winter oats were finger high
in Napton's field. Pleasant country to live in, pretty
and quiet. But now, what was going to happen to
her she didn't know, she didn't care. Only she was
not going from her home, not now, at her time of
life. You might live to be a hundred – people did -
and how could a body go wearing out its days
tramping from one end of the world to the other,
especially when they had never been married? As
she was about to descend the stairs George's Molly
came up, humming, with a cup of tea.
'Why, Alice! You up?' And as the old woman
made no rejoinder Molly continued: "The rain's
146
ALICE BRADY
bated, but you can't tell whether it's going to be fine
or whether it 'ull be wet.'
'What if it is bated! 'Twill as soon be wet as fine,'
declared Alice, 'it's all one to the Lord.'
‘Ah, so it ain't, be the look of it,' said her cryptic
niece.
Alice drank the tea, and George's Molly helped
her to totter downstairs. Then the niece went away
home and the old woman was left to grim medita-
tions, arousing old resentments and awakening new
fears as she sat by the log fire in her tap-room, the
polished feet of the iron firedogs looking like big
spurs. It was gloomy there even now, although it
had but recently been cleaned with paint and wash
that still smelled sourly. Alice had liked it better
when the ceiling had been densely blackened with
the smoke from the open hearth. A red valance
hung along the mantelshelf, on which reposed three
brass lamps and two books, a Holy Bible and Old
Moore's Almanac, while in the darkest corner stood
darkly the chain clock that was older even than her
father and had never lost an hour; it was true as
judgment. A lot of Alice's time was spent in
perusing the two books. Her long unsmiling face
with its hooky nose and dull glasses sucked consola-
tion from the one and knowledge from the other.
But she preferred consolation.
Weeks ago it had been explained to the old woman
that the inn was sold. Of course – she said - she was
very sorry, but she couldn't help that. And of
course she couldn't. What did they expect her to do?
147
ALICE BRADY
If you were born in a house you'd a right to die in
it, hadn't you? No - they said. Not if you had never
been married? No - they said again. Then where
did they think she was going, or what did they think
she would do? She was old, eighty-one, she could
go nowhere else, no one had room for an old woman
like her, and nothing, nothing in the living world,
would ever persuade her to go and live with that
George's Molly. Oh, no. They said they would find
a place for her to go to. 'Where?' asked Alice. 'Oh,
a nice place,' they said, 'neat and comfortable for an
old lady.' Alice said she shouldn't go. She would
not go if she could, and as of course she couldn't
go she wouldn't be able to go at all.
By and by some wretches of men had come and put
scaffolding up about the house and taken off the roof
tiles, some of them, and laid tarpaulin over the
rafters; and while that was doing the weather turned
bad. It rained days and it rained nights, and all day
long the devils would come in and drink their pints
and smoke and swear, but Alice never spoke to them
except in the way of custom. At last the roof was
repaired and finished, and then the men came into
the house and hacked and sawed and painted and
swore and spat, but Alice never budged, and when
they were finished she didn't know her old home -
it was so glaring. People came and told her she was
to go out on Old Michaelmas Day, but what could
she do, an old woman with no kith nor kin in the
world? George's Molly had tried to poison her,
often. And there was no call to clatter and smash
148
ALICE BRADY
the house at all. Such a house it had been, too!
So steep the roof that the rain swilled from it, it
dried in a twinkle of sun. And a tall tower in the
middle of the roof, with three chimneypots on it,
red, poking from the top of the tower. Four
windows on the long sunny front of the house, two
up and two down, and a little door in the middle,
level with the chimneystack, and two windows at
each end, one down and one up. It was all white as a
bone, except the roof; so white that when you saw it
in the moonlight you would think it a palace built by
some good person not too rich to be pleasant. There
would be a light, soft and golden, in every lower
window. The tower rose up, like a pillar of salt you
might think, and the shadow it cast dropped right
across the road, black, like a strip of velvet. If a
man walked over that shadow on a bright night you
could only see the top half of him.
That was the place she'd been born in, and her
father had lived in it before then, ever so many
years; for over a hundred years a Brady had kept
the 'Carpenters,' and no one could remember the
'Carpenters' without ever a Brady in it.
Come midday, it was raining again. The village
men came into the tap-room, came crowding into it,
Reuben Attwater, Oxlade the farrier, and Toby
Daw, a lot of them, tree-fellers, chair bodgers, mole
catchers and herds, all having pints and smoking
and spitting. What did they all want? They seldom
came before evening. They hadn't come to say
good-bye; they had come to see her be cast from her
149
ALICE BRADY
house, those men with their pints, and they'd never
lift a hand!
And it was true that they had never cared for her
- how could they? - an old maid who read her Bible
and was punctual as day for closing time, and never
had a smile or a good word for a man that drunk beer
or was free in his talk. She had even sold her old
parrot because it had learnt to swear. And then it
had died. But they stared at her now, angry and
indignant at her misfortunes which they were
powerless to prevent. 'Once property is sold, God
Almighty Himself can't odds it." Candour declared
it and custom agreed, and they were sullen be-
cause they were helpless, subdued by mysterious
forces.
'I remember her father, old Jack Brady, 'began
Reuben Attwater.
'How long's he bin dead and gone?' interrupted
Toby Daw in his squeaky voice.
'Forty years... Reuben folded his giant arms
and lifted the pipe from his cheerful mouth.
'I 'members him, too,' declared Twit Simmons,
'his missus was a . . .'
"They was a-drawing green beech from the 'ood,'
Reuben continued indomitably, 'one stormy day.
He'd just stapped under th' 'orse's neck to shoot a
trace on the off shaft when a flash o' lightning come
and struck th' 'orse dead, but never touched 'e.
Dead as a bloody hammer. Killed it.'
'I know. And his wife was a come-by-chance,'
pursued Twit Simmons.
150
ALICE BRADY
'Well,' reflected Attwater, 'you've no call to drag
that up agin him.'
'Used to be a lot of chair bodging here in those
days,' piped a maker of legs and rungs, Harbottle
his name, a man with sore eyes.
'Oh, ah!'
'And a lot o' beer drinked.'
'I dessay.' Reuben nodded and gazed sternly at
his pot.
'I knows as how there was,' asseverated Harbottle.
Oxlade, a morose man, stared out of the window.
The rain had ceased to fall, day was brightening
again. 'It don't thunder now as it used to years ago,
nor lightning now as it used to, and we don't have
no winters like there used to be - years ago.'
'It used to thunder and lightning,' Toby Daw was
moved to enthusiasm, 'four and five days togedder.
Wid'out stopping!'
'Lightning is only drawed to ash trees and oak
trees,' Oxlade said, 'never strikes no other trees,
never,' and the limitation seemed to lie like a canker
in his gloomy bosom.
'Here it is,' suddenly said Reuben, and the men
all stood up together in a crowd. A man had driven
up in a neat pony-chaise, and he sat waiting outside.
George's Molly came breathlessly into the tap-room,
other women bustling in behind her.
'Come,' said Molly to Alice, 'it's time to go.'
'Go?' quavered Alice, her long hand clutching her
Bible, 'where to go?'
'A nice fine house the mister is going to drive you
151
ALICE BRADY
to,' said Molly. The women glanced at each other
and sniffed.
"There's no house like my own.' Alice was proud
about it. One of the women took Alice's cloak from
a hook and put it round the old woman's shoulders.
Another popped a bonnet on her head. Alice
snatched them off and threw them on the floor.
'Why, Alice!' exclaimed George's Molly, 'put your
bonnet on now!' She picked the things up from the
floor and wrapped the old woman in her cloak again.
'The old clock's stopped,' cried Toby Daw. All
turned and stared at the dark brass face. In the
silence you could hear no tick. The old woman
looked at her clock. She walked with weak steps up
to the ancient timepiece, peering long and sur-
prisedly at it.
'No,' she mumbled, 'never! Never before! What's
up
with it? It never stopped before; in all my days,
it never stopped before.
Still clutching her Bible Alice turned to George's
Molly, who took her by the arm and led her, unresist-
ing, to the open doorway. They helped the old
woman to climb into the trap, and when she had
finally settled herself she gave a long look at the
village street. The rain had stopped, the sun shone
through the clouds and glowed on the breasts of
white doves flying high; so miraculous, they were
pieces of winged light. And at the end of the street
she could see the long down with the mill upon its
highest reach, a mill whose arms had not moved
these twenty years. It was surrounded by a hedge
152
ALICE BRADY
that lapped over the contour of the down like the
fringe of a saddle-cloth. There were no trees, but
upon its flank was planted a score of small tods,
bushes of whitebeam that in spring were brightly
grey.
God will deal with them,' the old woman was
mumbling as the trap moved off. 'God will deal with
the rogues and villains of the world. Yes, I know
He will, blessed God!'
"Then I wish as how He'd get on with the job,'
screamed George's Molly after her, waving her
hand.
When they got to the workhouse the first thing
they did was to undress Alice and put her into a hot
bath. Then they put her to bed, and she never got
up again. George's Molly went to her funeral, and
when she returned to the village she was full of
resentment and full of scorn.
"They said she died of a concert in her throat, but
they'd no call to put an old woman into a bath
not all at once. She was too old for that sort of
treachery. Wash when you can and when it's
wanted, that's what I believe in. I washes up as
far as I can, and the next time I washes down as far
as I can, but I wouldn't be put in no bath for fifty
shillings. If God in heaven meant us to drown'd
ourselves in water we'd a bin made like fishes.'
Now, though the inn is whiter and cosier and looks
more tall, and on moonlight nights is most grand
to view, nobody goes there. There had always been
a Brady in The Carpenters' Arms, always, for a hun-
153
ALICE BRADY
dred years. There will never be a Brady there again,
and so it is in the other inn that the men forgather,
and recall at odd moments what a 'rum old gal'
Alice Brady was.
154
THE WATERCRESS GIRL
I
HEN MARY MCDOWALL WAS BROUGHT TO THE
WH assize court the place was crowded, Mr.
O'Kane said, 'inside out." It was a serious trial, as
everybody - even the prisoner - well knew: twelve
tons of straw had been thrown down on the roads
outside the hall to deaden the noise of carts passing
and suchlike pandemoniums, and when the Judge
drove up in his coach with jockeys on the horses, a
couple of young trumpeters from the barracks stiff-
ened on the steps and blew a terrible fanfare up into
heaven. 'For a sort of a warning, I should think,'
said Mr. O'Kane.
The prisoner's father having been kicked by a horse
was unable to attend the trial, and so he had enlisted
Mr. O'Kane to go and fetch him the news of it; and
Mr. O'Kane in obliging his friend suffered annoy-
ances and was abused in the court itself by a great
fat geazer of a fellow with a long staff. 'If you
remained on your haunches when the judge came in,
complained Mr. O'Kane, 'you were poked up, and
if you stood up to get a look at the prisoner when she
came in you were poked down. Surely to God we
didn't go to look at the judge!'
Short was her trial, for the evidence was clear, and
the guilt not denied. Prisoner neither sorrowed for
her crime nor bemoaned her fate; passive and casual
she stood there to suffer at the willing of the court for
a thing she had done, and there were no tears now in
155
THE WATERCRESS GIRL
Mary McDowall. Most always she dressed in black,
and she was in black then, with masses of black hair;
a pale face with a dark mole on the chin, and rich red
lips; a big girl of twenty-five, not coarsely big, and
you could guess she was strong. A passionate girl,
caring nothing or not much for this justice; unim-
pressed by the solemn court, nor moved to smile at
its absurdities; for all that passion concerns with is
love - or its absence - love that gives its only gift by
giving all. If you could have read her mind, not now
but in its calm before the stress of her misfortune,
you would have learned this much, although she
herself could not have formulated it: I will give to
love all it is in me to give; I shall desire of love all I
can ever dream of and receive.
And because another woman had taken what Mary
McDowall wanted, Mary had flung a corrosive acid
in the face of her enemy, and Elizabeth Plantney's
good looks were gone, gone for certain and for ever.
So here was Mary McDowall and over there was
Frank Oppidan; not a very fine one to mislead the
handsome girl in the dock, but he had done it, and
he too had suffered, and the women in court had pity
for him, and the men - envy. Tall, with light oiled
hair and pink sleepy features (a pink heart, too, you
might think, though you could not see it), he gave
evidence against her in a nasal tone with a confident
manner, and she did not waste a look on him. A
wood-turner he was, and for about four years had
'kept company' with the prisoner, who lived near a
village a mile or two away from his home. He had
156
THE WATERCRESS GIRL
often urged her to marry him, but she would not, so
a little while ago he told her he was going to marry
Elizabeth Plantney. A few evenings later he had
been strolling with Elizabeth Plantney on the road
outside the town. It was not yet dark, about eight
o'clock, but they had not observed the prisoner, who
must have been dogging them, for she came slyly
up and passed by them, turned, splashed something
in his companion's face and then walked on. She
didn't run; at first they thought it was some stupid
joke, and he was for going after the prisoner whom
he had recognized.
'I was mad angry,' declared Oppidan, 'I could
have choked her. But Miss Plantney began to
scream that she was blinded and burning, and I had
to carry and drag her some ways back along the road
until we came to the first house, Mr. Blackfriar's,
where they took her in and I ran off for the doctor.'
The witness added savagely, ‘I wish I had choked
her.'
There was full corroboration, prisoner had admitted
guilt, and the counsel briefed by her father could
only plead for a lenient sentence. A big man he was
with a drooping yellow moustache and terrific teeth;
his cheeks and hands were pink as salmon.
'Accused,' he said, 'is the only child of Fergus
McDowall. She lives with her father, a respectable
widower, at a somewhat retired cottage in the valley
of Trinkel, assisting him in the conduct of his busi-
ness - a small holding by the river where he culti-
vates watercress, and keeps bees and hens and things
157
THE WATERCRESS GIRL
of that kind. The witness Oppidan had been in the
habit of cycling from his town to the McDowall's
home to buy bunches of watercress, a delicacy of
which, in season, he seems to have been - um-in-
ordinately fond, for he would go twice, thrice, and
often four times a week. His visits were not confined
to the purchase of watercress, and he seems to have
made himself agreeable to the daughter of the house;
but I am in possession of no information as to the
nature of their intercourse beyond that tendered
by the witness Oppidan. Against my advice the
prisoner, who is a very reticent, even a remarkable,
woman, has insisted on pleading guilty and accepting
her punishment without any - um- chance of miti-
gation, in a spirit, I hope, of contrition, which is not-
um entirely inadmirable. My lord, I trust . . .'
...
While the brutal story was being recounted,
prisoner had stood with closed eyes, leaning her
hands upon the rail of the dock, stood and dreamed
of what she had not revealed:
Of her father Fergus McDowall; his child she was,
although he had never married. That much she
knew, but who her mother had been he never told
her, and it did not seem to matter; she guessed
rather than knew that at her birth she had died, or
soon afterwards, and the man had fostered her. He
and she had always been together, alone, ever since
she could remember, always together, always happy,
he was so kind; and so splendid in the great boots
that drew up to his thighs when he worked in the
watercress beds, cutting bunches deftly, or cleaning
158
THE WATERCRESS GIRL
the weeds from the water. And there were her bee-
hives, her flock of hens, the young pigs, and a calf
that knelt and rubbed its neck on the rich mead with
a lavishing movement just as the ducks did when
the grass was dewy. She had seen the young pigs,
no bigger than rabbits, race across the patch of
greensward to the blue-roan calf standing nodding
in the shade; they would prowl beneath the calf,
clustering round its feet, and begin to gnaw the
calf's hoof until, full of patience, she would gently
lift her leg and shake it, but would not move away.
Save for a wildness of mood that sometimes flashed
through her, Mary was content, and loved the life
that she could not know was lonely with her father
beside the watercress streams. He was uncom-
municative, like Mary, but as he worked he hummed
to himself or whistled the soft tunes that at night he
played on the clarinet. Tall and strong, a handsome
man. Sometimes he would put his arm around her
and say, 'Well, my dear.' And she would kiss him.
She had vowed to herself that she would never leave
him, but then - Frank had come. In this mortal
conflict we seek not only that pleasure may not
divide us from duty, but that duty may not detach
us from life. He was not the first man or youth she
could or would have loved, but he was the one who
had wooed her; first-love's enlightening delight, in
the long summer eves, in those enticing fields! How
easily she was won! All his offers of marriage she
had put off with the answer: 'No, it would never do
for me,' or 'I shall never marry,' but then, if he
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THE WATERCRESS GIRL
angrily swore, or accused her of not loving him
enough, her fire and freedom would awe him almost
as much as it enchanted. And she might have mar-
ried Frank if she could only have told him of her
dubious origin, but whether from some vagrant
modesty, loyalty to her father, or some reason what-
ever, she could not bring herself to do that. Often
these steady refusals enraged her lover, and after
such occasions he would not seek her again for
weeks, but in the end he always returned, although
his absences grew longer as their friendship length-
ened. Ah, when the way to your lover is long, there's
but a short cut to the end. Came a time when he did
not return at all and then, soon, Mary found she
was going to have a child. 'Oh, I wondered where
you were, Frank, and why you were there, wherever
it was, instead of where I could find you.' But the
fact was portentous enough to depose her grief at
his fickleness, and after a while she took no further
care or thought for Oppidan, for she feared that like
her own mother she would die of her child. Soon
these fears left her and she rejoiced. Certainly she
need not scruple to tell him of her own origin now,
he could never reproach her now. Had he come
once more, had he come then, she would have
married him. But although he might have been
hers for the lifting of a finger, as they say, her pride
kept her from calling him into the trouble, and she
did not call him, and he never sought her again.
When her father realized her condition he merely
said 'Frank?' and she nodded. The child was early
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THE WATERCRESS GIRL
born, and she was not prepared; it came, and died.
Her father took it and buried it in the garden. It
was a boy, dead. No one else knew, not even Frank,
but when she was recovered her pride wavered and
she wrote a loving letter to him, still keeping her
secret. Not until she had written three times did
she hear from him, and then he only answered that
he should not see her any more. He did not tell her
why, but she knew. He was going to marry Eliza-
beth Plantney, whose parents had died and left her
£500. To Mary's mind that presented itself as a
treachery to their child, the tiny body buried under a
beehive in the garden. That Frank was unaware
made no difference to the girl's fierce mood; it was
treachery. Maternal anger stormed in her breast,
it could only be allayed by an injury, a deep admon-
ishing injury to that treacherous man. In her sleep-
less nights the little crumpled corpse seemed to
plead for this much, and her own heart clamoured,
just as those bees murmured against him day by day.
So then she got some vitriol. Rushing past her
old lover on the night of the crime she turned upon
him with the lifted jar, but the sudden confrontation
dazed and tormented her; in momentary hesitation
she had dashed the acid, not into his faithless eyes,
but at the prim creature linked to his arm. Walking
away, she heard the crying of the wounded girl.
After a while she had turned back to the town and
given herself up to the police.
To her mind, as she stood leaning against the dock
rail, it was all huddled and contorted, but that was
F.F.
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L
THE WATERCRESS GIRL
her story set in its order. The trial went droning on
beside her remembered grief like a dull stream
neighbouring a clear one, two parallel streams that
would meet in the end, were meeting now, surely,
as the judge began to speak. And at the crisis, as if
in exculpation, she suffered a whisper to escape her
lips, though none heard it.
"Twas him made me a parent, but he was never a
man himself. He took advantage, it was mean, I
love Christianity.' She heard the judge deliver her
sentence: for six calendar months she was to be
locked in a gaol. 'O Christ!' she breathed, for it was
the lovely spring; lilac, laburnum, and father wading
the brooks in those boots drawn up to his thighs to
rake the dark sprigs and comb out the green scum.
They took her away. 'I wanted to come out then,'
said Mr. O'Kane, ‘for the next case was only about
a contractor defrauding the corporation - Good
luck to him, but he got three years - and I tried to
get out of it, but if I did that geazer with the stick
poked me down and said I'd not to stir out of it till
the court rose. I said to him I'd kill him, but there
was a lot of peelers about so I suppose he didn't
hear it.'
2
Towards the end of the year Oppidan had made up
his mind what he would do to Mary McDowall
when she came out of prison. Poor Liz was marred
for life, spoiled, cut off from the joys they had in-
tended together. Not for all the world would he
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THE WATERCRESS GIRL
marry her now; he had tried to bring himself to that
issue of chivalry, of decency, but it was impossible;
he had failed in the point of grace. No man could
love Elizabeth Plantney now, Frank could not visit
her without shuddering, and she herself, poor gen-
erous wretch, had given him back his promise.
Apart from his ruined fondness for her, they had
planned to do so much with the £500; it was to have
set him up in a secure and easy way of trade, they
would have been established in a year or two as solid
as a rock. All that chance was gone, no such chance
ever came twice in a man's lifetime, and he was left
with Liz upon his conscience. He would have to
be kind to her for as long as he could stand it.
That was a disgust to his mind for he wanted to
be faithful. Even the most unstable man wishes
he had been faithful - but to which woman he is
never quite sure. And then that bitch Mary Mc-
Dowall would come out of her prison and be a
mockery to him of what he had forgone, of what he
had been deprived. Savagely he believed in the
balance wrought by an act of vengeance - he, too! -
eye for eye, tooth for tooth; it had a threefold charm,
simplicity, relief, triumph. The McDowall girl, so
his fierce meditations ran, miked in prison for six
months and then came out no worse than she went
in. It was no punishment at all, they did no hurt to
women in prison, the court hadn't set wrong right
at all, it never did; and he was a loser whichever way
he turned. But there was still a thing he could do
(Jove had slumbered, he would steal Jove's light-
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THE WATERCRESS GIRL
ning) and a project lay troubling his mind like a
gnat in the eye, he would have no peace until it was
wiped away.
On an October evening, then, about a week after
Mary McDowall's release, Oppidan set off towards
Trinkel. Through Trinkel he went and a furlong
past it until he came to their lane. Down the lane
too, and then he could hear the water ruttling over
the cataracts of the cress-beds. Not yet in winter, the
year's decline was harbouring splendour everywhere.
Whitebeam was a dissolute tangle of rags covering
ruby drops, the service trees were sallow as lemons,
the oak resisted decay, but most confident of all were
the tender-tressed ashes. The man walked quietly
to a point where, unobserved, he could view the
McDowall dwelling, with its overbowering walnut
tree littering the yard with husks and leaves, its
small adjacent field with banks that stooped in the
glazed water. The house was heavy and small, but
there were signs of grace in the garden, of thrift
in the orderly painted sheds. The conical peak of a
tiny stack was pitched in the afterglow, the elms
sighed like tired old matrons, wisdom and content
lingered here. Oppidan crept along the hedges
until he was in a field at the back of the house, a
hedge still hiding him. He was trembling. There
was a light already in the back window; one leaf of
the window stood open and he saw their black cat
jump down from it into the garden and slink away
under some shrubs. From his standpoint he could
not see into the lighted room, but he knew enough of
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THE WATERCRESS GIRL
Fergus's habits to be sure he was not within; it was
his day for driving into the town. Thus it could
only be Mary who had lit that lamp. Trembling
still! Just beyond him was a heap of dung from the
stable, and a cock was standing silent on the dung-
hill while two hens, a white one and a black, bickered
around him over some voided grains. Presently
the cock seized the black hen and the white scurried
away; but though his grasp was fierce and he bit at
her red comb, the black hen went on gobbling mor-
sels from the manure heap, and when at last he
released her she did not intermit her steady pecking.
Then Oppidan was startled by a flock of starlings
that slid across the evening with the steady move-
ment of a cloud; the noise of their wings was like
showers of rain upon trees.
"Wait till it's darker,' he muttered, and skulking
back to the lane he walked sharply for half a mile.
Then, slowly, he returned. Unseen he reached the
grass that grew under the lighted window, and
stooped warily against the wall; one hand rested on
the wall, the other in his pocket. For some time he
hesitated, but he knew what he had to do, and what
did it matter! He stepped in front of the window.
In a moment, and for several moments longer, he
was rigid with surprise. It was Mary all right (the
bitch!), washing her hair, drying it in front of the
kitchen fire, the thick locks pouring over her face
as she knelt with her hands resting in her thighs.
So long was their black flow that the ends lay in a
small heap inside the fender. Her bodice hung on
165
THE
WATERCRESS GIRL
the back of a chair beside her, and her only upper
clothing was a loose and disarrayed chemise that did
not hide her bosom. Then, gathering the hair in
her hands, she held the tresses closer to the fire, her
face peeped through, and to herself she was smiling.
Dazzling fair were her arms and the one breast he
astonishingly saw. It was Mary; but not the Mary,
dull ugly creature, whom his long rancour had con-
jured for him. Lord, what had he forgotten! Ab-
sence and resentment had pared away her loveliness
from his recollection, but this was the old Mary of
their passionate days, transfigured and marvellous.
Stepping back from the window into shadow again,
he could feel his heart pound like a frantic hammer;
every pulse was hurrying at the summons. In those
breathless moments Oppidan gazed as it were at
himself, or at his mad intention, gazed wonderingly,
ashamed and awed. Fingering the thing in his
pocket, turning it over as a coin whose toss has
deceived him, he was aware of a revulsion: gone
revenge, gone rancour, gone all thought of Eliza-
beth, and there was left in his soul what had not
gone, and could never go. A brute she had been - it
was bloody cruelty - but, but... but what? Seen
thus, in her innocent occupation, the grim fact of
her crime had somehow thrown a conquering glam-
our over her hair, the pale pride of her face, the
intimacy of her bosom. Her very punishment was a
triumph; on what account had she suffered if not
for love of him? He could feel that chastening dis-
tinction meltingly now: she had suffered for his love.
166
THE WATERCRESS GIRL
There and then shrill cries burst upon them. The
cat leaped from the garden to the window-sill; there
was a thrush in its mouth, shrieking. The cat
paused on the sill, furtive and hesitant. Without a
thought Oppidan plunged forward, seized the cat
and with his free hand clutched what he could of the
thrush. In a second the cat released it and dropped
into the room, while the crushed bird fluttered away
to the darkened shrubs, leaving its tail feathers in
the hand of the man.
Mary sprang up and rushed to the window. 'Is it
you?' was all she said. Hastily she left the window,
and Oppidan with a grin saw her shuffling into her
bodice. One hand fumbled at the buttons, the
other unlatched the door. 'Frank.' There was
neither surprise nor elation. He walked in. Only
then did he open his fist, and the thrush's feathers
floated in the air and idled to the floor. Neither
of them remembered any more of the cat or the bird.
In silence they stood, not looking at each other.
'What do you want?' at length she asked, 'you're
hindering me.'
'Am I?' he grinned. His face was pink and shaven,
his hair was almost as smooth as a brass bowl.
'Well, I'll tell you.' His hat was cumbering his
hands, so he put it carefully on the table. 'I come
here wanting to do a bad thing, I own up to that.
I had it in my mind to serve you same as you served
her you know who I mean. Directly I knew you
had come home, that's what I meant to do. I been
waiting about out there a good while until I saw you.
G
167
THE WATERCRESS GIRL
And then I saw you. I hadn't seen you for a long,
long time, and somehow, I dunno, when I saw you...
Mary was standing with her hands on her hips;
the black cascades of her hair rolled over her arms;
some of the strands were gathered under her fingers,
looped to her waist, dark weeping hair.
'I didn't mean to harm her!' she burst out.
'I never meant that for her, not what I did. Some-
thing happened to me that I'd not told you of then,
and it doesn't matter now, and I shall never tell you.
It was you I wanted to put a mark on, but directly I
was in front of you I went all swavy, and I couldn't.
But I had to throw it, I had to throw it.'
He sat down on a chair, and she stared at him
across the table: 'All along it was meant for you,
and that's God's truth.'
'Why?' he asked. She did not give him an answer
then, but stood rubbing the fingers of one hand on
the finely scrubbed boards of the table, tracing
circles and watching them vacantly. At last she put
a question:
'Did you get married soon?'
'No,' he said.
'Arn't you? But of course it's no business of mine.'
'I'm not going to marry her.'
'Not?'
'No, I tell you I wouldn't marry her for five thou-
sand pounds, nor for fifty thousand, I wouldn't.'
He
got up and walked up and down before the fire.
'She's aw! You don't know, you don't know what
you done to her! She'd frighten you. It's rotten,
168
THE WATERCRESS GIRL
like a leper. A veil on indoors and out, has to wear
it always. She don't often go out, but whether or
no, she must wear it. Ah, it's cruel.'
There was a shock of horror as well as the throb of
tears in her passionate compunction. 'And you're
not marrying her!'
'No,' he said bluntly, 'I'm not marrying her.'
Mary covered her face with her hands, and stood
quivering under her dark weeping hair.
"God forgive me, how pitiful I'm shamed!' Her
voice rose in a sharp cry. 'Marry her, Frank! Oh,
you marry her now, you must!'
'Not for a million, I'd sooner be in my grave.'
‘Frank Oppidan, you're no man, no man at all.
You never had the courage to be strong, nor the
courage to be evil; you've only the strength to be
mean.
'Oh, dry up!' he said testily; but something
overpowered her and she went leaning her head
sobbing against the chimneypiece.
'Come on, girl!' he was instantly tender, his arms
were around her, he had kissed her.
'Go your ways!' She was loudly resentful. 'I want
no more of you.
'It's all right, Mary. Mary, I'm coming to you
again, just as I used to.'
'You...' She swung out of his embrace. 'What
for? D'ye think I want you now? Go off to Eliza-
beth Plantney . . .' She faltered. 'Poor thing,
poor thing, it shames me pitiful; I'd sooner have
done it to myself; oh, I wish I had.'
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THE WATERCRESS GIRL
With a meek grin Oppidan took from his pocket a
bottle with a glass stopper. 'Do you know what that
is?' It looked like a flask of scent. Mary did not
answer. 'Sulphuric,' continued he, 'same as you
threw at her.'
The girl silently stared while he moved his hand as
if he were weighing the bottle. 'When I saw what a
mess you'd made of her, I reckoned you'd got off too
light, it ought to have been seven years for
you. I
only saw it once, and my inside turned right over,
you've no idea. And I thought: there's she done
for. Nobody could marry her, less he was blind.
And there's you, just a six months and out you
come right as ever. That's how I thought and I
wanted to get even with you then, for her sake, not
for mine, so I got this, the same stuff, and I came
thinking to give you a touch of it.'
Mary drew herself up with a sharp breath. 'You
mean - throw it at me?'
"That's what I meant, honour bright, but I couldn't
- not now.' He went on weighing the bottle in his
hand.
'Oh, throw it, throw it!' she cried in bitter grief,
but covering her face with her hands - perhaps in
shame, perhaps fear.
'No, no, no, no.' He slipped the bottle back into
his pocket. 'But why did you do it? She wouldn't
hurt a fly. What good could it do you?'
"Throw it,' she screamed, 'throw it, Frank, let it
blast me!'
'Easy, easy now. I wouldn't even throw it at a rat.
170
THE WATERCRESS GIRL
See!' he cried. The bottle was in his hand again as
he went to the open window and withdrew the
stopper. He held it outside while the fluid bubbled
to the grass; the empty bottle he tossed into the
shrubs.
He sat down, his head bowed in his hands, and for
some time neither spoke. Then he was aware that
she had come to him, was standing there, waiting.
'Frank,' she said softly, 'there's something I got
to tell you.' And she told him all about the babe.
At first he was incredulous. No, no, that was too
much for him to stomach! Very stupid and ironical
he was until the girl's pale sincerity glowed through
the darkness of his unbelief: "You don't believe!
How could it not be true!'
'But I can't make heads or tails of it yet, Mary.
You a mother, and I were a father!' Eagerly and yet
mournfully he brooded. 'If I'd a known - I can't
hardly believe it, Mary - so help me God, if I'd 'a
known...
'You could done nothing, Frank.'
‘Ah, but I'd 'a known! A man's never a man till
that's come to him.'
'Nor a woman's a woman, neither; that's true, I'm
different now.'
'I'd 'a been his father, I tell you. Now I'm nothing.
I didn't know of his coming, I never see, and I didn't
know of his going, so I'm nothing still.'
"You kept away from me. I was afraid at first and
I wanted you, but you was no help to me, you kept
away.
171
THE WATERCRESS GIRL
'I'd a right to know, didn't I? You could 'a wrote
and told me.'
'I did write to you.'
'But you didn't tell me nothing.'
'You could 'a come and see me,' she returned aus-
terely, 'then you'd known. How could I write down
a thing like that in a letter as anybody might open?
Any dog or devil could play tricks with it when
was boozed, or something."
you
'I ought 'a bin told, I ought 'a bin told.' Stubbornly
he maintained it. "Twasn't fair, you.'
"Twasn't kind, you. You ought to 'a come; I asked
you, but you was sick o' me, Frank, sick o' me and
mine. I didn't want any help neither, 'twasn't that I
wanted.'
'Would you 'a married me then?' Sharply but per-
suasively he probed for what she neither admitted
nor denied. 'Yes, yes, you would, Mary. 'Twould
'a bin a scandal, if I'd gone and married someone
else.'
When at last the truth about her own birth came
out between them, oh, how ironically protestant he
was! 'God a' mighty, girl, what did you take me
for! There's no sense in you. I'll marry you now,
for good and all (this minute if we could), honour
bright, and you know it, for I love you always and
always. You were his mother, Mary, and I were his
father! What was he like, that little son?'
Sadly the girl mused. 'It was very small.'
'Light hair?'
'No, like mine, dark it was.'
172
THE WATERCRESS GIRL
'What colour eyes?'
She drew her fingers down through the long
streams of hair. 'It never opened its eyes.' And her
voice moved him so that he cried out: 'My love, my
love, life's before us; there's a' many good fish in the
sea. When shall us marry?'
'I couldn't ever. No, Frank, no.'
'When shall us marry?'
'I couldn't ever go with you, Frank. What
you did
to me was cruel, but it's gone now - like my repu-
tation: a dog wouldn't pick that up. But nothing
can alter what I did to her, and nothing can't mend
it. She's ruined. If it weren't for that- but how
could I ever forgive myself!'
'When shall us marry?'
'Let me go, Frank. And you'd better go now,
you're hindering me, and father will be coming in,
and . . . and . . . the cakes are burning!'
Snatching up a cloth she opened the oven door and
an odour of caraway rushed into the air. Inside the
oven was a shelf full of little cakes in pans.
'Give us one,' he begged, and then I'll be off.'
'You shall have two,' she said, kneeling down by
the oven. 'One for you - mind, it's hot!' He seized
it from the cloth and quickly dropped it into his
pocket. 'And another, from me,' continued Mary.
Taking the second cake, he knelt down and em-
braced the huddled girl.
'I wants another one,' he whispered.
A quick intelligence swam in her eyes: 'For?'
'Ah, for what's between us, dear Mary.'
173
THE WATERCRESS GIRL
The third cake was given him, and they stood up.
They moved towards the door. She lifted the latch.
'Good night, my love.' Passively she received his
kiss. 'I'll come again to-morrow.
'No, Frank, don't ever come any more.'
'Aw, I'm coming right enough,' he cried cheerily
and confidently as he stepped away.
And I suppose we must conclude that he did.
174
AT LABAN'S WELL
ARTON HAD COLLECTED HIS SHEEP FROM DIFFER-
BART
road.
ent fields into the large common that led to the
‘A fine day,' said I.
"Too fine,' Barton's wife replied; 'too fine, it will
breed a bad 'un.'
We breakfasted in a room that was full of milk-
pails, harness, guns, and children that were not
washed and had small prospect of being washed for
hours.
Only one sheep was left at home, a ewe that had
lambed since dawn. A fox had already stolen the
lamb that is why there were guns in the breakfast-
room.
We drove the sheep to a dipping well on a neigh-
bouring farm. Four hundred of them flowed in a
long stream down the lanes, and the odour of the
fleece left a powerful pleasant tang in the air.
There was one jolly little brown rascal of a lamb
with a thick tail. He was of no great age - as yet
only six weeks old - but a few days before he had
travelled quite nimbly here from a market fifteen
miles away. The sound of all the trotting feet was
like a passing shower and, pressed together in a
solid phalanx as they galloped, nothing else could
be distinguished except the black ears of sheep
dancing like dark waves on a rushing river of milk.
Amid vast confusion caused by an encounter with
a team of playful plough-horses who ambled and
175
AT LABAN'S WELL
gambolled through our flock; the advent of a passion-
ate young terrier who developed a fondness for legs
of mutton; and the fall of two tegs over a bank into
a duck-pond where their inexplicable appearance
harried the souls of a brood of young goslings who
were bathing in defiance of the injunctions of their
Buff Orpington mother; the whole flock was hoicked
and hustled and prodded into the great yard of the
neighbour's farm. Here we were joined by Laban,
a morose lobcock of a man who might have been
twenty-five, or just as possibly fifty, years old. He
was fresh-coloured and he wore a clean shirt. He
had, of course, another name: Jones.
To dip the sheep we ushered thirty or forty at a
time into small pens. A sheep is not a simple thing
to deal with, not an obedient creature, not easy to
circumvent. I infinitely prefer a snake. You may
open forty gates, but no sheep worthy of its flock
will pass through one of them unless accompanied
by its mates. They wedge themselves together be-
tween the gate-posts, standing mutely, or perhaps
benignantly baaing, and when, under cover of
stroking one kindly, you attempt to push the whole
mob through the gateway, they skip back around
you with a contemptuous flirt of the hindlegs, and
quite conceivably a wink of the bland bright eye.
When finally penned they huddle in corners and
bury their heads like the youthful ostrich. We catch
one by a leg, its head is put in chancery, our hands
join under its neck and under its stomach, and poor
sheep is toppled backwards into the deep end of a
176
AT LABAN'S WELL
sloping tank sunk in the earth. There it wallows or
is pushed and floundered by Laban Jones with a
long pole until, finding bottom, it staggers from the
disgusting fluid and wanders away.
But the sky overcast, rain began to fall, and though
time passed this did not pass over, it increased; the
firmamental buckets were mercilessly tilted until the
yard became a wretched stabbled quagmire, a pur-
gatory of slime that turned men from kindly beings
into savage swearing tyrants.
At noon we ate and rested in a dry cartshed, but we
did not speak, Barton and I, we were silent with dis-
comfort, exhaustion and anger. Laban Jones un-
fastened a shoulder-basket and drew forth cheese,
onion, loaf, and a wedge of meat. It seemed not in
his power to munch a casual bite, his habit being to
thrust into his jaws a store of provender and then
compress and harrow it into the pit of his stomach,
an operation that induced protuberation of eye, the
distension of his Adam's apple, and meditative
gazes. Two others were sheltering in the shed, an
old ploughman and an old gipsy man. They were
talking together. The ploughman as he ate peered
over a sheet of newspaper, and to assist his sight he
used a magnifying glass made from the bullseye of a
lantern.
"When I was a boy feller,' the gipsy was saying in a
husky voice, 'I dwelled over in the forest country
beyant W...
'Good sheep country!' interjected the ploughman.
'It is, sir, it is,' cried the gipsy.
F.F.
177
M
AT LABAN'S WELL
'Lord J's place.'
"True, sir, Lord J, a good man as ever druv carriage
in this world.'
'Know him?'
'Sir, I worked for him years, I knew Lord J. A
nobleman, sir; they said he'd a weak heart, but 'twas
in the right place. Always a gentleman, none better,
a great loss when he died, God bless him, God bless
him.'
'Ah, we must all come to it,' said the ploughman,
closely scanning his piece of news.
'Aye, aye, sir, sure, life's very varied, you never
understand what's overhanging, misfortune afflicts
you, but death reduces you.
"That's what they be for,' commented the plough-
man.
"True, sir, true, there are afflictions and varieties
throughout everywhere, like the rain at a marriage
or an onion to the eye, God help us all. My wife and
me were thrown out of a pony-trap together. I
broke my leg in two places. I lay in the infirmary
for six months. When I came out my wife was
dying.'
D
'Dear me,' said the ploughman, 'how old was she?"
'Sixty-three, sir, when she died, sixty-three.'
'Ah,' said the old ploughman, planting his reading
glass so close against his eye that it looked as large
as a hard-boiled egg, 'quite young, quite young.'
'She was a good woman, faithful, but you wouldn't
notice her, no. Why, I don't even remember the
colour of her eyes. She had twenty children in
178
AT LABAN'S WELL
thirty-one years. Ah, goodness bless me, seventeen
of 'em still living, yes; at least they should be. I
don't know where they are and I don't want to
know. Better keep to yourself quiet-like, for mis-
fortune stalks you like the Almighty hunter, yes. I
remember when I was a boy feller, a man, a very
wealthy man, who had a couple of sons. Well, after
many years the sons collared all his property, they
did, those two sons, every rap of it, and he became a
poor man. I was astonished at the change in him,
sir; he was a good man, yes. Surprising! Very piti-
ful indeed, a good man. Very varied is life, sir.'
He was silent. We could hear only the pelt of the
rain or the sad bleat of sheep. Two pigeons came
with bewildered flight through the downpour and
perched upon the roof of the barn opposite. They
shook the water impatiently from their feathers and
sat on exposed to the unslackening fall, hunched
like owls. Presently the gipsy got up and left us
saying, 'Good day, and a good 'un, gentlemen!'
He returned almost immediately to tell us that the
dipped sheep had broken fence and were traversing
our neighbour's field of beans. Oh, how difficult it
was! Their recovery was attended by every symp-
tom of human mortification. The Old Imp was in
them, and they were in the beans. They roved that
beanfield as cunningly as a tiger roves the jungle.
They triumphed in its coverts and baaed derisively.
Each tender plant, too, was a reservoir of accumu-
lated rain that swabbed us with unction. The
heavens poured upon us, and the drovers poured
179
AT LABAN'S WELL
upon the sheep the futilities of a deep fund of
blasphemy.
When the truants were again locked in the yards
we angry unfortunate men turned to the last hun-
dred of the undipped and swept them through their
ordeal with the passion of demons. We rushed
the shrinking ewes much as the cohorts stormed
the Sabine women, and flung them into that infernal
trough like the bodies of malefactors cast in to
limbo.
But all things come to an end save endlessness,
which is infinity - and sheep are only mutton. Yet
we had even then perforce to stroll back to our own
farm behind a pack of hungry devils who dawdled
to crop the hedge-banks while the rain, undimin-
ished, was swept from the trees in gusts that de-
lighted to wreathe us with their veils of lashing
water. And on the way we discovered that the little
brown rascal was missing. He was never found, and
I believe he still prowls in the groves of that Elysium
of beans, seeking whom or what he may devour.

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I
ARTIN BEAMISH IN ANGUISH OF SOUL WANDERED
MAR up
dejectedly up and down their drawing-room, a
large apartment almost lavish in its comfort. The
autumn night was freezing, but whenever he did
approach the fire it was only to stir the blazing fuel
to newer fury. Off again then, up and down, hands
clasped behind back, and head bent sideways like a
listening bird. In extreme anguish, it might be
said, for his wife Athalie, so inconsiderate but so
handsome, sat by the fire not speaking, and how
could he converse with a woman who was shedding
tears? It was provoking!
Beamish was a plain man - even his friends said
so- and safe. He, too, boasted of it - there is no-
thing else to be done when you are thirty-five and
married. In politics, religion, and morals, he was
plain as the Bank of England, and safe as time and
tide. He had inherited an income of six or seven
hundred a year, and he understood men. Certainly
his clothes were plain, and they never seemed to
wear out. As for his features they, like his clothes
and his morals and the other things, were almost too
plain to be nice, so shaven, so sallow, with a Jew
nose shaped like a bean, and tough hair, of a colour
that you couldn't lay a name to, clasping his skull
with the tenacity of a limpet sticking to its rock – at
least, that was the impression it gave. Conjugally
Athalie knew him to be plain, and she had thought
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A WILD GOOSE CHASE
him safe, but here he was - just listen to him!
'I mean in a friendly way, perfectly friendly, for a
while, a little while, say a month or two. People
do live apart and so might we. Oh, I tell you we
might, you to go your way and I mine.' He urged
this demand upon her with a beguiling reasonable-
ness that touched with the balm of favourable con-
jecture her wounded pride.
'But what have you against me?' She mused mourn-
fully. 'If I could see that, if I could only fathom it!'
'Nothing, nothing, my dear girl. Beautiful you are,
and - er — and always have been; you are only thirty-
one or thirty-two is it? - affectionate and intelli-
gent; but' - he paraded on his heel - 'I cannot live
with you.
I cannot. I mean to say you are the most
excellent wife and we've had seven years of ideal
bliss. No, I am not teasing, it is absolutely true,
but I will tell you: at thirty-five a man's life – at
least mine does - it seems to shape up suddenly in a
different way. Perhaps I'm different from most men,
I can't say, but there seems to be no further outlet,
I am all closed in; I'm in a great globe of empti-
ness, and I want to smash it, to get out and realize.'
To live in such emptiness - he explained to baffled
Athalie was not to live at all; it was even a com-
plicated death, indeed it was, for the spirit kept
dying and only the body lived on; only the appetite
for beef and bread and such disgusting things
remained. How trivial it was, but how hideous, she
would never be able to comprehend, but he had
suffered, he could tell her that. Sorrow and such-like
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A WILDGOOSE CHASE
things were sweeping over his life. Nothing tragic
really, he supposed; just dull, dull, but wasn't that
worse than any tragedy?
'Do put that poker down,' said she.
'It will be best for both of us. Do believe that,
Athalie; can't you see it?' And he held out the little
brass poker to Athalie.
'Put it down,' she said.
Bah! That was just like her, that was his curse! An
intention as open and direct as the free air she had,
and even a certain nobility of mind, but it was
coupled with an infirmity of purpose which...
well, her mind was really like a little silk purse that
when you opened it disclosed immensely important
trifles like buttons, hooks and eyes - and pokers.
Damn the thing; he threw it on the hearth. That
was what he wanted to get away from.
'Far better separate happily for a while,' he re-
peated, 'better for both of us.'
'Best for you, perhaps.' Sadly she said it. 'But my
life so clings to yours."
No, no, that was not so at all. It would be just as
good for her, he was positive. Nothing would be
changed except that he would go away for a while.
She could keep the house and stay on - no difficulty
about money. He might travel a little, stay in lodg-
ings and so on, and sometimes he would come back
and stay with her; in fact, quite often, if she would
have him. 'You'd be glad to see me,' he queried
gaily, 'wouldn't you?' And as she did not answer he
continued, 'Why, of course you would. It would be
splendid, terrific!'
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A WILD GOOSE
CHASE
'I should like to travel, too,' Athalie said, looking
up at him.
'Certainly, certainly, why not!'
'Couldn't I come with you?'
'Why, no.' He was soft and deliberate about that.
As her head drooped again he begged her not to
think of him, she was to think only of herself, her
own freedom. She would be free, quite free, to do
as she liked, just as she liked.
'And you? You will be free, too?"
'Yes, that's what I mean, Athalie. You can trust
me, of course, and I've the most perfect trust in
you. We need not talk of restrictions, they are not
necessary. No restrictions. You can trust me, you
know that, Athalie?'
'I've been faithful to you, too faithful, I suppose,'
she remarked bitterly.
Grave and insistent he was, with the sort of dignity
that a superintendent of police might wear when
about to enter the kingdom of heaven upon some
professional inquiry: 'You can trust me, Athalie;
that you know, right well.'
She rose up, uttering a shocking scream, and stum-
bling towards the couch flung herself upon it in a
passion of tears. Beamish was horrified. He hesi-
tated for a moment or two, but her tears were awful,
awful. With a shrug of his shoulders he went to her,
took her into his arms and begged her to calm her-
self, she was his darling, his sweetheart. Awful,
awful tears!
'Oh, damnation, this is dreadful!' he moaned,
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A WILD GOOSE CHASE
'Athalie! Listen! Suppose the servant was to come
in! Good heavens!'
The door of the room was shut. He slipped away
to it for some reason he went on tiptoe - and
turned the key in the lock gently. There he stood
listening for a few seconds, and when he turned
round Athalie was sitting up. Somehow she had
achieved pacification, she was smiling through her
tears! He sat by her side, and chatted and smoked
and very charmingly forgave her for the injury she
had not done him; and though she would not agree -
she could not, and never, never would it was some-
how settled that he was to go away for a while, and
go soon.
In a few days his trunks were packed and his
arrangements made. The last morning arrived,
cold but bright, and the passers-by in the street
seemed full of cheer; men were humming as they
went to their work, lads were whistling, and the trot
of the horses had such a gay sound. But Beamish
had lain in dread all night, and when he rose he did
not even peep into her room, he breakfasted alone.
There would be those awful tears again, Athalie
was so hysterical, and the anticipation made him.
sweat. Then the cab came, and so he went up to
her room, cheerfully like the men going to their
work, two steps at a time. And Athalie was sitting
up in her bed, smoking a cigarette.
'Oh, time to go?'
'Yes,' he said, but he could not look her in the eyes,
indeed he could hardly speak; strange pangs seemed
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A WILDGOOSE CHASE
to surge into his throat; and those marvellous white
arms - perhaps he would never see them again!
'Well,' she went on, puffing with astounding delib-
eration, ‘make the most of your freedom, and smash
your globe; it was a globe, wasn't it? I wish you
joy.'
'Yes, yes,' he quavered, almost dumb, 'you too.'
'You'll write sometimes, Martin?'
He nodded, and then bent over Athalie, but she
held her hand against his breast and, smiling, puffed
a whiff of smoke into his face. 'Don't forget - no
restrictions!' were her last words.
2
But now when his destiny fairly confronted him
Beamish was found (though he did not find himself)
a little inadequate. Exulting in his escape - how
simple it was! — and retrieving so whatever it was he
had wanted to retrieve, he made only a modest use
of the occasion because he had no clear idea of what
he wanted to be at except to be going, going, going
- and now he was gone! No feasible hope need have
been unrealized; his tastes were simple, his desires
plain, even if not plain to his mind. Although the
soul kept dying and the body lived on, one's appe-
tite was easily assuaged; and Beamish had no more
definite ambition than would trouble a cat in a
fender. Would you believe it, then, that he fled
from the arms of his wife and buried himself in the
British Museum? Well, that is what he did. What
is more, the incentive to this strange course arose
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A WILD GOOSE CHASE
only during his train journey from Wiltshire to
Paddington.
The seclusion of the third-class carriage in which
he had been installed by his porter was disturbed
two stations later by the advent of a hairy vivacious
terrier, dragging at the end of its strap a nurse with
a markedly fresh, intolerably healthy, complexion
and massive haunches. The nurse immediately leaned
out of the window and remarked to a young lady
who had accompanied her to the platform: 'And
then, of course, the body gives off its waste pro-
ducts.'
'Oh, I see,' returned the young lady, nodding with a
gravity that was powerless to dissipate any of her
abundant charm. 'Darling doggie! He's a good
guard, isn't he?' she inquired, eyeing Beamish with a
placid gaze.
A precious!' nurse exclaimed. 'Last night we met
three awful, awful cats, three! Of course he can't
bear cats. The first ran up a tree, and the second,
do you know, he couldn't quite get at it; but the
third one he almost killed. I believe he would have —
if he had only caught it. But they are so cunning.'
'Isn't he sweet!' commented the houri. 'But I shall
Oh, you are off now. Good-bye, Miss
never
Tonks.'
'Good-bye,' chanted the nurse. 'And don't forget.
Come as soon as you can. We are two doors from
the station and five miles from the river.'
"That's nice!'
'It is, yes.'
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A WILD GOOSE CHASE
'Very nice indeed. Good-bye.'
Nurse sat down heavily as the train moved off, and
bade her dog go to sleep, which he immediately
and miraculously did. Then she must have bidden
herself to do likewise, for she soon massively slum-
bered and left Beamish to his contemplation of the
pleasant twirling country.
Landscapes - he mused - are like women: there
are some that excite, some that soothe, some that
annoy. Neither category quite fitted the one just
here, with its tangled spaces of cropped field, dark
trees with shadows under them, and soft-inclining
hills with the sky's brightness over them, and clouds
travelling from thence to here and yet not moving.
It was something different. Perhaps it was the wave
of autumn, for although the fields new-ploughed,
the ricks new-thatched, the leaves new-toned, gave
pleasure to the eye an air of melancholy hovered
over the spirit. But what is this he sees over upon
the hills? On their green bulk is scratched the vast
white outline of a horse in canter, monument of
battle, birth, or bridal, some event momentous in a
history that itself has died. Often he had heard of
this; he is in the Vale of the White Horse. At once
the imagination of Beamish was engaged, as if his
mind, having severed its familiar links, had begun
moth-like to gesture at once and admiringly in the
brightness of the first new flame. What was there
to be learnt about such things, earthworks, mono-
liths, trackways, Stonehenge, the giants, and the
White Horse? Some of them, the Long Man of
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A WILDGOOSE CHASE
Wilmington and the Cerne Giant, he had known in
boyhood. Their origins were so remote that you
peered into history as in a reversed telescope, where
conjecture roved with bears over the English downs
and hobnobbed even with elephants. Marvellous,
marvellous! He longed to know it all. The fit lasted
until he reached London, and for long afterwards.
In a few days he had procured lodgings near the
Temple, and thereafter we may perceive him in the
British Museum, pondering tomes of archæology
as bulky as ledgers or as lean as tracts, immured
under the dome of the great library like a placid
carp glimmering among its weeds. So engrossed
did he become that he would have forgotten Athalie
had she not written regularly to him, so scrupulous
of his welfare, or begging him to return, or anon
sending him a knitted tie. All her letters concluded
with the admonition, 'No restrictions.' At which
Martin would smile and send her an affectionate
reply, but without ever touching upon her desire
for their reunion.
Several months passed in this way and Beamish
was still teasing the dust of this extinguished history,
occasionally paying visits to the more prominent
remains, when he had the good fortune to light
upon the tradition of a remarkable figure on a Cots-
wold hill-side, long since overgrown or obliterated,
but which it seemed might yet yield some possibility
of reconstruction. It was variously described by
aged gaffers who had heard tell of it as the figure of
‘a deer with harns like a prop,' a flying duck, ‘a pig
189
A WILDGOOSE CHASE
with frills along his back like a porkapus,' and a
'wild 'ooman wid no clothes on.' Just at that time
Athalie wrote to him that she was shutting up the
house for a while and going off to Italy with some
friends. Owing to his absence in the Cotswolds
the letter lay awaiting him several days, and by the
time he returned and opened it Athalie was gone.
It was a startling moment; it was as if someone had
suddenly planted on his head a hat full of snow.
The Cotswold expedition had been fruitless; the deer,
the duck, the woman, or the pig - and Beamish's
private hope had been for the woman - were either
tremendously interred, or a tremendous hoax, and
in the bitter chill of a rather conspicuous failure his
thoughts had warmed to Athalie, he had intended to
visit her. Now she was gone, and the usual taunt at
the bottom of her letter, 'No restrictions, mind!'
affected him like a leer. He felt he had been aban-
doned, yes, abandoned at a juncture when he most
desired comfort and solace. Thereupon, what with
the check to his hopes in the Cotswolds, and the
check to his pride occasioned by Athalie's departure,
his archæological fevers underwent some abatement.
For a while a pang at his domestic loss filled their
place. It culminated, in brief, by Beamish's return
to their home in Wilts. Recalling the servants he
settled down to resume his studies there. Of course
he had joined various societies, and had corresponded
with curators and scientific pundits to his heart's
content; he was in, deeply in, and his enthusiasm
had been boundless. But now the novel brightness.
190
A WILDGOOSE CHASE
of his theme had suffered some diminution. Gone
was the magic that had inspired him, perhaps shut
up in those tiny lodgings near the Temple, or packed
away in the British Museum. He found himself
languishing in a discontent that affected even him
with a vague surprise until one afternoon, while
stalking about the room, his glance happened to take
in a photograph hanging on the wall. It had hung
there since their marriage, but he had not noticed it
for years. Staring at it with new vision, as it were,
he felt that she was still as beautiful as in her bridal
days, that she had hardly changed, that her face
still wore the impress of an intellect he had never
sufficiently regarded. And yet, no, it was mislead-
ing; she was not a woman of intellect. Ah, but she
was calm and certain and sufficient. Her thought
was as steady and direct as a man ploughing; it may
have been as slow, but it turned over a fair neat clod
and its furrow was straight. Something came wan-
dering into his heart, tremulous joy, soft as the
summer air that moves a curtain in a quiet room.
3
Athalie, it appeared, was enchanted with life in
Italy. Her letters, prompt and voluminous, were
full of the sweet Ligurian air, orange trees and
violet bays. Friends seemed to spring up wherever
she went along the coast of the Gulf of Genoa, she
was picking up the language, and her days were full
of the happiest incident. That Beamish was home
again gave her a pleasure she never tired of express-
191
A WILDGOOSE CHASE
ing; in each letter the 'hope everything is all right'
was as invariable as the stamp on the envelope; and
always there was her familiar postscript, ‘No restric-
tions.' And he would reply that everything was all
right, but he could not bring himself to inquire
about her return. No, that must be left to her; he had
taken his own step, the next must come from her; she
would know that he waited, and she would come soon.
So three months passed by, and then he was deeply
perturbed to hear that although her friends had
returned Athalie had stayed behind. Beamish was
so vexed that he did not write to her for nearly a
month, although her letters came to him with the
usual regularity. She did not complain of his silence,
she did not ask him to go to her, she did not touch
upon the question of her own return. Beamish
explained his silence by saying that he had had
nothing to write about, buried as he was in Wilts;
that her life was so full and varied that of course it
was easy for her to write long charming frequent
letters. And Athalie, unperturbed, continued to
write little accounts of visits to monasteries and
mountains and the devil knows what, and she de-
scribed the little flat she had taken, of two rooms,
where she 'did' for herself except for some cleaning
assistance by the padrona, until Beamish could stand
it no longer; he suddenly became perfectly definite,
if not peremptory, and asked her when she was com-
ing home? He had wasted all the summer for her,
he said. At the last moment, though, he altered the
word 'wasted' and turned it into 'waited.'
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A WILDGOOSE CHASE
Her answer was shocking to him. About their
mutual freedom - she wrote - she hoped he had
been serious and wouldn't mind, but she had taken
him at his word. There was a man she had met, he
had become a very great friend; she had not thought
of coming home just yet - was it absolutely necessary:
and so on and so on.
Lord God above! what did she mean? It surely
could not mean
He read the letter again.
'Struth! Damnably vague it was. And that was
just like her, always, always, always. You could
never tell what it was she was wanting; not one
clear cut solid statement did he ever get from her,
never, never, never. The most incoherent, inchoate
woman he had ever known. Monstrous, monstrous
it was that she did not want to come home, for any
reason; but if it meant that this man He rushed
to get her previous letters, and found that for some
two months past she had omitted her tag of No
restrictions! He scrutinized her photograph again
and was reassured, it was so morally faultless. But
what is this? Upon the nail from which the photo-
graph hung a ring also was hanging, unnoticed
before. He took it down, a plain gold ring it was
that slipped out of his fingers. Dropping to the floor
it went rolling slowly across the room until it came
to rest with a sharp click against the leg of a chair.
That meant nothing, he was certain it meant no-
thing; there was nothing of the wanton in the pic-
tured face.
But the bad idea would not leave him, it embraced
F.F.
193
N
A WILDGOOSE CHASE
him as a grave may clasp a corpse, and in an hour
he had packed his bag and caught a train to London.
Crossing to Calais by the night boat, he was in
Paris at early morn, feeling sick as he passed the
time tramping to and fro a great bridge. The Seine
was a river of mud; the blunt façades lining it were
mud-coloured, without the sheen that even the filthy
river managed to receive. There was haze, enough
haze to keep the sun from glittering, just as the sun
had enough brightness to keep the haze from utter
gloom.
From Paris Beamish travelled for twenty hours in
the same compartment as an Irish quack doctor and
an Italian waiter from Edinburgh. He did not care
much for the bulky and blatant Irishman whose
intellect seemed to flower in large patterns of obscure
meaning (it reminded Beamish of chintz) and he
could not agree with him upon anything at all.
Beamish hated to differ from anyone - although he
was bound to differ - because it always gave him a
sense of menace, of personal danger. Why wouldn't
people agree with him? He was always reasonable
enough. But the Italian was a delightful companion,
genial and gracious to Beamish; he even showed him
a set of indecent photographs. Beamish gurgled
and flushed at these, but the quack doctor dismissed
them as very tame, nothing, he had seen much better.
Then the little Italian said to Beamish that he would
give him an address, could recommend it, if he
cared for that sort of thing; and Beamish astonish-
ingly found himself noting down the address in his
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A WILD GOOSE CHASE
pocket-book, wishing as he did so that he had had
the courage to reject the friendly offer. And it is
unpleasant when the imperfections of a friend are of
the kind particularly distasteful to you: let them be
the ones you can enjoy, that is good; or let them sin
your sins, though it is important that they do them in
a different way; one likes to be heeded, not aped.
"Twenty years I am married,' said the little waiter,
'and I was not on the loose more times than twice a
year.'
Nobody commented.
"That's good, isn't it?' queried the Italian.
'Good!' yelled the Irishman, 'with forty fornications
on your conscience! O God ... bah!' Such a wave
of indignation seemed to pound in his chest that he
lolled back in his corner and gazed out of the win-
dow. Then he began to whistle a lively lovely tune,
only to break off suddenly and lean forward to
shout:
'How many women?'
The little Italian looked blankly at Beamish, then
at the other. 'Beg pardon?' he asked mildly.
'How many women have you seduced?' sternly
inquired the quack doctor. Beamish listened in-
tently.
'Oh!' said the culprit. He wore whipcord riding
breeches with brown leather gaiters - and he rubbed
his knees reflectively with his hands. 'It was not me
that accomplished any . . . any of that. Not much,
not many."
'Were they prostitutes?'
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A WILDGOOSE CHASE
'Oh, no!' exclaimed he, with a deprecatory smile.
'Well, then, what?' demanded the investigator.
"Young or old?'
The Italian rubbed his knees more gaily and
emitted a smiling cackle. "They wasn't very old, no,
not old.'
'Single women?'
'Some was single, yes.'
'And some married, I suppose?'
'Oh, all sorts, they was all sorts.'
Again a great ninth wave rolled over the doctor.
He toppled back and gazed out at a mountain that
had a cone of snow, beyond a lake crumpled and
blue. On a road near the railway track some fawn
bullocks were drawing a wagon full of barrels, and a
giant of a man in wooden shoes walked beside them
carrying a long wand. For some minutes the doctor
was whistling shrilly, but at length he shifted nearer
to the Italian and said:
'Come, tell us all about them.'
Then for an hour or two Beamish listened to
scandalous relations that fascinated but unnerved
him, though the doctor seemed a little disappointed.
4
At Genoa his fellow-travellers left the carriage, bid-
ding Beamish farewell, and an hour later, in the
afternoon, the train reached Athalie's town.
Her villa was not far off, so he walked to it. The
piazza was planted with palm trees, their trunks
Îike vast pineapples, loaded with bright saffron
196
A WILDGOOSE CHASE
—
trusses as large as wheat sheaves of dates. And
there was the very blue sea that he had watched all
the way from Genoa. Nothing else he noted, for he
was enchantingly thrilled by the sense of Athalie's
nearness. She did not know of his intention, he had
not wired or written; how surprised she would be!
Forgotten, or almost forgotten, were those doubts,
those insane fancies, the cause of this flying visit.
In two or three minutes she would be in his arms.
Oh, but he was intoxicated! The spirit of Athalie,
the old Athalie fond and faithful, was there like a
fairy island set in that calm blue sea; his thoughts of
her now were delighting birds, they rushed up into
the sky that was all love, all her love, that embraced
the island, hovered over the sea and called to the
flashing birds.
Now he is climbing to the second floor of the villa.
He knocks at the door and an old woman
opens.
'Signora Beamish?' he inquires, and she points to
one of the doors opening from a large hall. He taps
upon it and enters.
Athalie, who sat by the window, knitting, was
dressed as he had never seen her before; brightly,
fantastically, so youthful and blooming was she! She
just turned her eyes, archly smiling, towards him.
Then her mouth opened and she whispered, 'Oh!' her
cheeks filling with scarlet blushes.
'Hello!' he laughed, expectantly.
Athalie stood up, her colour deepening. The knit-
ting dropped clicking to the tiled floor. She bent to
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A WILD GOOSE CHASE
pick it up, keeping her eyes averted for a few mo-
ments longer.
'Didn't expect to see me!' he challenged heartily.
'No, no, I didn't expect to see you. No, I thought
you were in England.' Laying down her knitting
she went to him and was heartily embraced. 'Would
you like some tea?'
Yes, he would like some tea. There and then the
real purpose of his visit again rose up before him,
but he thrust it away, down into some deep crevice
of his mind like a guilty packet dropped slyly into a
pit. He would leave all that for the present, for he
could never face her irony if his suspicion were
wrong, nor his own confusion if it were right. And so,
over their tea, he gabbled of the long journey, of how
much he liked Italy, and how pleasant her rooms were.
'Yes, but they are very small; my bedroom is
smaller even than this,' remarked Athalie. She was
pouring out tea, and her radiance was somehow
dashed; she was like a child bothered by a problem
in mental arithmetic. 'What are you going to do?'
'Do?"
'I mean, how long are you going to stay?'
'Stay? Why, that's what I've come to ask you!'
Athalie did not immediately reply, and she did not
look at him. As she dropped lumps of sugar into
his tea he saw on her ring finger a ring with a large
ruby in it. He had never seen it before, and the
guilty packet once more came rising up from its pit.
Then she looked up. 'I mean, where are you going
to sleep?'
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A WILD GOOSE CHASE
'Sleep?' Absurdly he was like an echo.
'You see there's no room here.'
'Oh, but anything, anything
'No, there's no room at all.'
'Do you mean you don't want me, Athalie?' He
fidgeted with his knees, with his collar, and he picked
a match from the ash-tray and flung it out of the
window. 'I can go to an hotel, I suppose? Ah!' he
cried joyfully, jumping up, 'we'll both go, that's it,
we'll both go to an hotel.'
Yet Athalie seemed unwilling, she murmured that
she hadn't got her wedding ring with her.
'No? But that's stupid,' Martin said testily. They
were in Italy, no one knew them! Athalie made no
effort to bridge their difference.
'Look here,' the troubled man began once more.
'I'll go and buy another ring; come along.' He
picked up his hat, but Athalie did not move. Won't
you?' he asked. Apparently she would not. Her
silence was unnerving; he put his hat down again.
'Or you could turn round that other ring you've got
on. Where did you get it?' But Athalie was shocked
at the suggestion. 'No, certainly not!' And it
seemed as if in some secret way she was hugging the
ring to her breast.
'Yes,' then he said sadly, 'just as I thought. Even
if
you had
your ring, not then you wouldn't!' He
jammed on his hat again. 'Would you?' Still she
was evasive.
'I wish I hadn't come here. I'll go to the hotel.' As
he lifted his bag Athalie got up and offered to show
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him the way. It was darkening, she switched on the
light.
'No, it doesn't matter,' he uttered moodily; but with
his hand upon the door-knob he turned and fired his
last shot: Who's this man?'
'Man?'
'Don't keep repeating my words,' he dismally
begged. 'You wrote about him. Not very much, but
it was a bit startling, wasn't it? Have you anything
to say to me about him?'
"To say?' Athalie stared at Martin.
'Yes, I suppose I ought to know.'
'But to say what?'
'Don't prevaricate, please. Is there anything in it –
anything you ought to tell me?'
"There is nothing I ought to tell you,' said Athalie,
with a suggestion of intense weariness, 'Nothing at all.'
'Well, I'm glad. . . or do you mean' - the examiner
was ruthless - 'that you won't tell.'
"There is nothing I shall tell you — ever.'
'Humph. I see. Well, you needn't have said so
much if you wanted to tell so little.'
'Ha, ha, ha!' Athalie rippled with laughter. He
was astounded. 'Oh, it was only the funny way you
said that,' she explained placatingly. 'You see,' she
went on gravely, 'when you left me all alone in Wilt-
shire you bargained for "no restrictions".
'I didn't bargain at all,' Martin asserted. 'Certainly
not for this,' he added lugubriously.
'Didn't you insist on having absolute freedom?
Wasn't that what you
wanted?'
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A WILD GOOSE CHASE
'Didn't I say you could trust me,' he replied steadily,
'as I trusted you?'
'What had I to trust to when I was forsaken? You
got your way, you've had your fling, you've done
what you wanted to do
.
'But I tell you,' he cried, exasperated, 'I've done
nothing, nothing at all.'
'I don't ask you about that,' she sharply returned,
'what you've done, is done. I'm not inquisitive, I
don't want any confessions.'
'But, Athalie! I swear. . . Good Lord, you don't
dream.
>
'I don't care!' shouted Athalie with finality.
And at that he could do no other than open the
door and go, muttering as he did so, 'I'll come and
see you in the morning - perhaps.' He slammed the
inner door, and the outer door he slammed, and
raging to himself, 'Perhaps, perhaps! Ho, ho!
Humph!' he ran down the stairs and almost collided
with a man guiding a mule cart passing close up to
the door. Damn the fellow, it was dark, and the
fool hadn't got a lantern; instead he was carrying a
lit candle in one hand with a shade of paper wrapped
round to keep off the draught. Even that was not
necessary in such softly-breathing air; indeed it was
a silken romantic night, the stars scrawling the
heavens with their notation of immensity, the same
stars still, although the shops were strange, the
people queer, their language and their trees un-
natural. It should have been a night. . . . Oh dear,
oh dear! Only a couple of hours ago he was deeply
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in love; now he was in hatred, stung by the surprise
of her coolness and baffled by the uncertainty of the
thing he dreaded.
-
For half an hour he trudged about gazing at all the
hotels, but unable to please his fancy until there were
no more to choose from; then he went back and
stopped at the first. His disenchantment suffered
no abatement in the proximity - at the very next
table of a German family which had just strayed in
for dinner, a little dumpy Herr whose patent-leather
shoes were as wrinkled as his face, and whose white
spats curled
up at the edges like his hair and his nose;
his large and solid Frau, draped entirely in lace-
she was an antimacassar with a hat on was trying
to live down to her youth, but it was beyond her
depth and she drowned before your very eyes.
Whenever she made a remark to her husband he
would first take off his glasses, hold them at half-
arm's length, and meditate before answering very
deliberately. Then he would dash vino rosso into his
little mouth and gulp and gulp and gulp. To put
down the glass was but an opportunity to grab a
hunch of roll and cram it after the wine, and lo, it
was gone, all gone, with the hors d'œuvres, the risotto,
the pollo alle cacciatore, and the cream cheese that
was to become part of the Herr for ever more. Their
little boy, whose head was shaped like the end of a
bolster, rustled about on his chair as if there were
nettles in his breeches, and while his parents sipped
their coffee he consumed a quantity of éclairs. First
he would bite off the end and spy into the hollow
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A WILDGOOSE CHASE
fragment left as if it were a telescope; having allayed
some itch of curiosity he would devour the body of
the delicacy with an absent-minded air and suck, one
by one, his long thick outspread fingers.
Beamish feared he was going to have a very un-
happy night, but after dining he began to get drowsy,
so off he went to bed and slept calmly, irresistibly,
and unbrokenly. When he awoke he found himself
still nurturing indignation against Athalie, and he
determined not to run after her any more, he would
just hang on for a few days and then go back to
England without a word. For two days, then, he did
not go to visit Athalie, and she, even had she wished
to, could not visit him because she did not know
where he was staying. Even on the third day, when
he did go to her flat, she received him with re-
proaches.
"Why, why do you treat me like this?'
'But,' he stammered, 'I thought it was a mistake.
So it was - you didn't want me.'
Passionately resentful she was. 'You make a fool
of yourself, but is that any reason why you should
make a fool of me? You come sneaking here, and
then you hide away. It's mean and disgusting, it is.
And I have had so much unkindness from you. Why
do you behave in this absurd manner?'
'But I thought' - so bewildered was Martin - 'I
thought I was in the way, that you didn't want me.
And you didn't.'
Athalie's contempt was a revelation. 'No, then, I
didn't want you, and I don't want you.'
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A WILDGOOSE CHASE
'You married me. After all, I'm your husband,' he
maintained sturdily.
'Heaven help you for a fool! Such a miserable
thing you have made of our lives. Always you've
had your own way, but it was never a man's way.'
'Listen, Athalie. I came all the way from England
for you.'
'Yes, why?'
"I just wanted to see you.'
'Yes, but why?'
'I came for more than I can tell you,' he said.
'Oh!' she was bitterly impatient. 'You think I
don't know why but I know well enough!'
'I came, but you drove me away.'
Athalie eyed him, at this, as a schoolmistress eyes
an idiotic infant.
'Let us go out!' she said petulantly. 'Let us go out!
Shall we go out?'
The crumpled man put on his hat, and they walked
together down into the streets. Silently all the way,
under a long avenue of leafless sycamores, until they
came to the market where the cheapjack's tiny boy
was screaming: 'Una lira! Una lira! The honest
burgesses were sauntering in the square, the seats of
all their trousers mightily mended - not deceivingly,
but with gusto, every patch coming boldly to the
eye like a poster on a wall- and their women were
bargaining at stalls for fruit that engendered a multi-
tude of misgivings, for exhausted herbage and
repellent fauna, for cheese and fish that would tempt
neither cook nor cat - not in England, said Martin
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A WILD GOOSE CHASE
to Athalie. On through the market to the sea they
went, idling up and down the piazza where elderly
people sat half-snoozing on seats, and infants harried
you with hard balls and soft balloons, while those
who did neither wandered laxly, enjoying their lan-
guor. It seemed that there was seldom any wind,
seldom any birds, and quite certainly never any
chimneypots in the little town. And it was all
exactly as Martin had imagined it would be,
coloured, queer, cosmopolitan, flamboyant, and
agreeable. A meek old man with a humpty back and
a meditative eye sat by a street corner roasting coffee
in a charcoal stove; there was a sweet smell. Horses
and rumbling carts went by musical with bells, the
barefoot carters cracking their whips; and there was
an Apollo with a huge blue-striped bundle bound
upon his back: he was crying in a loud voice that he
wanted so Athalie said to mend your mattress.
They sat down together upon the sea wall that was
warm as a hearth. Their antagonism had flown
away, though perhaps it had not flown very far, for in
Martin's mind there still hovered the thought of a
man, some man, who had impinged, or was about
to impinge - well, upon what? And who was he?
With gentle raillery he urged Athalie to tell him
something.
'What you are longing to hear,' replied she, 'is a
confession.'
'Well?' And he was prepared to hear it, his name,
appearance, age. But no, she would tell him no-
thing. Her downcast looks, as Martin pleaded for
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A WILDGOOSE CHASE
something – he knew not what, but it was a desire
for some certainty amid all things now so uncertain
- her downcast smiling looks moved him to an
emotion that was none the less charged with admir-
ation of her bloom. She got up and sauntered away
for a few yards, trailing her hand along the warm
coping of the wall. How white her hands, how
gracefully she moved, how newly alluring she was!
No doubt she had written to the man telling him to
keep away, or perhaps he was even now in view,
watching them. It was ironic, this change in his
wife, it was transfiguring her. Now he was the
suppliant, and she was queening it in her escape
from him. Soon she came back and stood beside
him.
'When shall we go home?' she asked.
'When you like, dear Athalie, just as you please.
Are you tired?'
'Oh, I mean when shall we go back to England?'
Her gaze was turned to the sea, as if that blue im-
mensity alone could contain her sad thoughts. 'I
have packed my things.'
'Oh, Athalie!' Eager and breathless, he sprang up
from the low wall. That's beautiful. Will you go?
Let's go, yes, let's go. At once, can't we? There's a
train to Genoa in an hour, and we can catch the
Paris express to-night from there.'
No, she thought it would be better to catch the
same express from their own station. 'Come for me
in a cab in time to catch it to-night.'
'Yes, yes,' he said it joyously.
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"Then good-bye until this evening,' said Athalie.
With this smiling sally she went away, left him
standing dumbfounded at the dismissal; but his
relief at the happy turn of events vanquished that
creeping grudge, and very good-humouredly he
turned off in the opposite direction.
To while away the daylight hours he went nosing
around for curios and souvenirs of the little cittá,
lace things with Adam and Eve and the Serpent
portrayed in cotton, and bangles and brooches of
silver filigree, which he would give to Athalie as an
offering for the deuce knew what! - but an offering
certainly. Rejoicing emotions fluted in his bosom
as he walked sharply from shop to shop. Athalie!
Athalie! A handsome barefoot fishergirl mending
nets sat sprawled on the pavement, her legs out-
stretched in the shape of a V, the torn net hitched
over both great toes, the shuttle dancing marvel-
lously from hand to hand. Tiny cherubim, in mun-
dane attire, turned the wooden wheels in the
ropewalk, wheels huge enough for Ixion and ancient
as the Medicis, while the spinners handling hanks
of tow sauntered backwards exuding threads as
silently as spiders - until they stopped and shouted.
Steep were the rocky lanes from the mountain-side,
yet not too steep for the little swift Ligurian men
who came and went like the angels on Jacob's ladder,
shouldering their tubs of olive oil. But nothing in
the streets or the people or the houses or on the sea-
shore had power to interest Beamish now, not even
the sign of Factoria Acqua Gasose over the ginger-
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A WILD GOOSE CHASE
beer works, or the smell that pervaded all the land
like a mixture of coffee and cocoa. He went among
it unnoticingly, as if he had lived there for twenty
years instead of - as you might say - twenty min-
utes. Time and the blue air were enchantingly his.
Only a few dark and gaunt vessels in the port
dimmed the astonishing lustre of the hour, just as
the few bright yachts seemed to augment it. For
there was nothing in the mortal world one half so
real and fair as Athalie's devotion to him; he knew
now, he knew it all. It gave him the very accents of
joy, it gave him pride, the pride of a conqueror
whose conquest had been for ever, who had come
for his tribute of undying faithful love and had not
been denied. At least, not implacably! Even Ath-
alie had her whims and fancies; but even these had
their ultimate felicities. Jove! it was a near thing.
though, however sweetly she had surrendered. Back
in England he could now go on with his studies once
more; they would ransack a whole county, he and she
together, although of course she would have to
learn a lot of important things: she wouldn't know,
for instance, he couldn't expect her to know –
that the mouth of the Thames was once in Lincoln-
shire. As for this fellow, it would be better not to
mention him again, not to Athalie. No badgering,
it was only a passing fancy, nothing more. Let him
drop out of her mind entirely. Let him die - yes,
let him die a death like a damned cat in a canal.
(It was queer how seldom you saw a dead person;
he had only seen two in his life - and one of them
208
A WILDGOOSE CHASE
was his own father.) Yah! let him rot like a strangled
cat.
It was a grand evening, fine moonlight it was,
when he called for Athalie. And Athalie was wait-
ing for him, dressed for travelling. He covered her
face with kisses.
'Come, we must go,' she said.
'Yes, let us go,' Martin echoed. "There's a fine
moon and it's a grand evening.'
But all the way to the station she lolled back in the
cab and never spoke a word. And of course there
was nothing to be said, not much, really. Fine
night though, grand!
The train that took them was packed so full of
travellers that Beamish had to stand in the corridor
for the first hour. A great nuisance, so many people
going in the same direction. All the way to Genoa
the train would now run close to the shore for a
few minutes, now burrow under mountains for a
few minutes, and then emerge slap into little towns
hovering on the sea, and stop for a few minutes.
Full and bright the moon, but it did not seem to
light up the gulf; the water had no sparkle, there
was only a gloomy movement of purple bulk. All
the eastern heaven in the direction of Leghorn was
menaced by a cloud as high and wide as ten thousand
mountains, and every few minutes it was ripped by
lightning that made no sound. But the white villas
by the sea glimmered carelessly in the moonlight;
the fine trees, the olives, the palms, were still, and
you knew of the water only by the white foam
F.F.
209
A WILDGOOSE CHASE
squandering round the rocks. At one station perched
on a ledge of a mountain Beamish could see down
into a courtyard below him; there was a clothes line
stretched across the yard, and on the line a pair of
trousers inside out - how white the pockets were! –
was hanging to dry. Immense and clear on the wall
of a palazzo near by, the shadow of an ancient
empty lantern hoisted above a gateway was thrown
by a neighbouring street lamp. It was half-past
nine, though the clock tower showed but a quarter
to four, and the town seemed empty, lifeless, sound-
less, stone quiet, until the train moved again. Then
the trousers on the line began to toss violently in a
sudden thrust of wind, and the lantern shadow on
the wall was waving to and fro. The train roared
away into a mountain and on the other side slackened
at a station covered with snow. One of the guards
got down, picked up a handful, and scrutinized it
closely and amazedly, as though he were peering at
a watch with unbelievable figures; he stared for
certitude again at the white glister under his feet,
and gazed up into the clear heavens; then he brought
his handful of snow back into the train and gave
pieces of it to the wondering passengers who tasted
it. Beyond the next mountain, at the next station,
there was not a vestige of snow; only moonlight,
calm villas, trees by a dark sea, and a cloud full of
lightning over Leghorn. The train emptied at
Genoa, and soon Beamish was in the carriage alone
with his wife, rolling inland from the sea.
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A WILDGOOSE CHASE
5
It is known for truth by those who have commerce
with fairies and the goblin sort that all their gifts and
powers fall in the end to nothing, or even worse.
Their bright gold turns to a shadow, to dead leaves
their coin, the wine to air, the fine cloak to a wisp of
hay, their joy to madness. Maybe in the heart of
man there is some such demon president turning
our hopes to vapour and our desires to dust. Possi-
bly Beamish had bid too high, or his imagination was
too low; whatever it was, long ere night came to an
end some alchemy had effected a change: Athalie
had shed her Italian charm with her Italian frock,
and she was once more the old Athalie, placable,
morose, subdued. Neither of them slept; they had
both stretched themselves on the seats of the com-
partment and dozed and were rocked for hours.
Dawn found them hurtling through magical Savoy,
he disillusioned, she formal and polite - nothing
more. How had all her extraordinary desirability
withered? Was it only in combat with him that her
beauty grew clear? For there was no change in him.
Having borne her from probable disaster, had the
glory been only in the achievement and not in what
he had won? If he had retrieved only their old
disharmony they had come together again to no end
but calamity.
A still deeper flush of recognition awaited tím
after they had breakfasted together in the saloon.
He had caught at the tail of an idea, seen as unex-
2ΙΙ
A WILDGOOSE CHASE
pectedly as a snake in one's path; he almost groaned
aloud. The intolerable duplicity! Blind ass he had
been! This tale of a man in Italy was a fabrication,
a trick to win him back to her again! Oh, he had
been beautifully fooled. Now she sat there looking
ugly in her sly disagreeable silence, quite positively
ugly, with a melancholy as if she had the bellyache.
All a pose! She was secretly triumphant, because
she had hitched her halter over him again. Her
halter! Why, he had hooked it over himself, he had
actually brayed for it, and she, the subtle wretch,
was smiling in her dishonourable soul. She had
told him this lie, she had seen him take it as a bird
is taken in the trap of a devil, a meagre crawling
devil, senseless and useless as the trap. She had even
taken off that ring now, that idiotic ring that had so
misled him; her fingers were bare. He had swal-
lowed the whole damned foolishness.
For hours the concealed poison worked in his indig-
nant mind, but in the afternoon he began to probe
her. He had had enough of it; she should see!
'What are your plans when we get to England?'
'Plans?' She was smiling wanly.
'Yes, plans.'
'Oh, I have no plans,' replied she. 'What's the use
of plans? They all come to nothing - now.'
"They do, they do. You don't seem very happy at
coming back."
'No?'
"Then why the deuce did you come?'
'I came because
you wanted me, Martin.'
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A WILDGOOSE CHASE
'But it was your suggestion.'
'Mine? Didn't you want me to come?'
'Don't prevaricate, please,' he adjured sternly, 'I
hate it.'
'I'm not prevaricating.' She shook her head sadly.
'I came out to you at once, to get you out of a pre-
cious mess. I thought you were making a fool of
yourself. This is the result.' He threw out his arms
and was restless.
'I was happy where I was,' she said quietly. 'You
thought I had lost my honour, or broken it, or some-
thing, didn't you? Let me ask you this: is my hon-
our involved only to you?'
'What? Who else could it be to?'
'Everybody,' she cried, 'except. . . perhaps . . .
He quivered at her hesitation, puzzled: 'Well?
perhaps?'
"To you!' she burst out, 'you!'
Martin was silent for some moments; then he said.
'If you were so devilish happy why didn't you stop
there? Why concoct such a lying tale to get me
over there?"
"Tale?'
Beamish looked his unspeakable bitterness. "This
tale about a man. You hoaxed me; you know it well
enough, and I know it now.'
Athalie stared at him in silence.
'Such nonsense,' he continued, 'but I was weak
enough to believe it. Oh, it deceived me, it's true.
It took me in completely. I ought to have known
you better.'
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A WILDGOOSE CHASE
Athalie wrinkled her brow with dawning appre-
hension. 'I wonder,' she said, staring out of the
window, 'whether you would be good enough to
tell me what you are talking about.
'Do you know...
'No, I don't!' she snapped.
'I'm not asking a question, I am giving you an
answer.'
'I don't want to hear it! You imagine now that I
made up a story to lure you out to Italy, and then
persuade you to take me back. That's it, is it?'
He made no answer and she went on. 'I was a fool.
I admit I was touched when you came. More fool I.
I'd forgotten your self-conceit, I thought it was
your love come back again. But it was only that you
couldn't bear to be supplanted even in the feelings
of a wife you hated. For you do hate me.'
'You seem to hate me,' he said moodily.
'I've only one regret in the world now, Martin.
Do you know what it is?'
"That you married me?'
'No, that's your regret. For me that was good, for a
long while I give the devil his due. No, my regret
is that I'm going back with you. I won't do it,' she
wailed. 'I won't! I won't! All I want is to be rid
of you, to see you no more. Oh, why did I let you
persuade me? I have borne so much, and now I
have thrown away. . . . Oh, I've thrown everything
away!'
'Persuaded you! Good Lord, what about the trick
you've played me?'
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A WILD GOOSE CHASE
'Martin,' — even in her tears she commiserated him
-you are a hopeless fool!'
But now they were nearing Dijon; thousands of
railway lines seemed to be radiating eastwards.
The train was slowing, soon the train stopped.
'Do we wait here long?' inquired Athalie, now quite
composed.
'Don't know,' he answered, 'a little while, per-
haps.'
She got up and strolled into the corridor, at which
relief an emotion so easeful pervaded Beamish,
soothing his ruffled plumes, that he smiled queerly
and sighed with rapture. When she did return, in
ten minutes or so, her coming was momentous.
'I'm not coming any farther, I shall stop here to-
night.'
'Don't be absurd, there's no occasion to be so
drastic; I quite understand. I'll get into another
compartment if that will satisfy you.' Cheerfully,
almost humorously, he said it.
'Don't bother,' returned Athalie. 'I'm not coming
back with you.' She took her small case from the
rack. 'I've just got them to shy my luggage on the
platform. I'm not coming back at all. I can't stand
you any longer, you revolt me."
'But what, but what,' he began to stammer, 'but
what in the world are you going to do now?'
She repeated with a sort of whispered passion, 'I
can't stand you, you're insufferable. You close me
in, in your own precious globe of emptiness, and
I've got to smash it, too. The dullness was mutual;
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A WILDGOOSE CHASE
I realized mine when you realized yours. I must
thank you for that, I suppose.'
'Athalie,' he begged, 'don't say it.'
'I can't stop, the train will be going,' was her reply.
He grabbed her arm. 'Don't you stop me!' she
cried fiercely, 'I'll fling myself from the window.'
'Hush, hush, be sensible, Athalie. What are you
going to do?'
I'm going back to Italy, where I had found hap-
piness.
She ran away down the corridor, and he was too
awed to follow her. Desolated he sank into his seat
where her valise had lodged. God bless! she had
gone! Stupidly, vacantly, he read a notice over the
door: Nicht in den wagen spukken. Over and over he
said it, many times, until the train began to move.
He sprang up, grabbed at his bag - but he did not
lift it from the rack. He rammed his hat on his
head - but then he dashed it to the floor. 'Spukken,
spukken, nicht in den wagen spukken.' Into the cor-
ridor he rushed, and pulled down a window, just as
the coach glided by Athalie on the platform beside
her trunks. He flung kisses to her as he passed,
dozens. At that, she just smiled and waved a hand
to him. He could have sworn he saw the flash of a
ring on one of the fingers, a ruby ring. She was
looking strangely lovely again as she passed away
from him. Spukken, Nicht in den wagen spukken.
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DUMBLEDON DONKEY
N A MORNING IN EARLY SPRING THE CORN
beginning to shine in the furrows, the sun
bright, the air warm - a man is trenching a hedge
ditch in the lonely fields near Dumbledon guidepost,
a big angular countryman with a face almost as blue
as it is brown and humorous blue eyes. His coat is
folded on the bank and upon it lies his rush bag
containing provender enough for an ox.
He peers through the bottom of the hedge into the
field beyond him, and then unbending himself with
a groan he stretches and breathes deeply. Taking
up the loaded gun that lies hidden beneath his coat
he creeps along to a gap in the hedge. Two or three
hundred rooks are waddling like aldermen across the
wheat, pecking soberly at the new spikes of green.
The man with the gun shoots one of them - it seems
to stumble and then it slips over. The black flock
rises on leisurely, almost insolent, pinions until a
second shot cracks upon their flight and another
rook, tumbling down out of the sky, lies upon the
green wheat with a vain movement of wing. The
man returns to his trenching and with his spade he
continues to smear blue mud from the ditch neatly
upon the hedge bank, leaving a clean shallow channel
behind him. The sun is bright, the air warm, and a
lark in a frenzy begins to whistle.
By and by a dumpy little man in shirt-sleeves (and
deep in middle age) came along by the hedge carry-
ing a horse-whip in his hand. The digger looked up
217
DUMBLEDON DONKEY
and called with great deliberation in a grizzled but
gay voice: 'Hallo, Harry Munt!'
Ah, Jim,' replied Munt, in a tone that sounded like
a squeaky sigh.
"What are you arter in these parts?' asked the other,
"Tis a lonesome spot for timid chaps. A'n't you
afeard o' being murdered?' He had a loud and cheer-
ful tone.
"Tisn't so lonesome, Jim.'
'And ne'er a drop o' drink for a couple o' mile? You
be keerful, Harry Munt. There be all sorts o' wild
men going about the land - tinkers and gippoes and
women as waunts to sell you a gridiron, and blind
beggars a-walking to the races. You never can't tell
what some on 'em be at, Harry Munt, and you might
be done to your death in a fourpost bed.'
'No, Jim, no,' the little old man seemed to sigh,
'I've come down to catch Mrs. Bustin's donkey.
'Ketch a donkey!'
'She wants me to drive her into Starn.'
'Well, that's a marciful fine thing to come ketching
a donkey wi'!'
'What, Jim?' There was a look of botheration in
Munt's eyes.
'Why, wi' a whip! He'll be rather fresh and frisky,
I'm thinking; you won't catch a donkey wi' a whip
in your hand.
'Won't?'
'Not wi' a whip you won't.'
'We'll see, Jim Massey,' replied Munt, 'we'll see.'
He went away across the grass. It was a big field
218
DUMBLEDON DONKEY
and a rough field, with great tots of briers and thorn
bushes growing all about it; around each clump the
cattle had worn tracks as they ambulated, musing (it
might be) upon the universe. Now the only tenant
was the donkey meandering near the white palings
of a farm-house that stood in the nearest corner by a
vast ragged pile of yellow straw, a cloven hayrick, and
a pile of black faggots with a blue cotton gown thrown
upon it.
For some time Munt mildly ambled in the wake of
the retreating donkey, cooing and gurgling: 'Come
along, my pretty, come along, my bird.' The sun
was bright, the air warm.
'He waunt have it,' bawled the big man from the
ditch.
'He will have it, yes, he will have it,' returned the
other.
The farmer's wife came and stood at the end of her
white palings, clucking to some hens. She had a
large face and many freckles, her sun-bleached hair
was combed tightly to her head and then fastened in
a wad like the top of a cottage loaf.
'Hee-haw! hee-haw!' roared Massey derisively when
Munt at length began to adjure the donkey with
some venom.
'Oh, if I catch you!' groaned the little man, tiring
visibly, 'if I catch you! Ah, you devil!' he shouted to
the defiant donkey, 'you blam rooster, I'll cut the
legs off you!'
He cracked his whip furiously. 'Hey!' he cried,
'Ho!' he cried, and as the donkey cavorted with
219
DUMBLEDON
DONKEY
pleasing extravagance Munt was gratified and slashed
the whip again and again. But he soon got tired of
that, it was useless, time was getting along, it was
hot, and he had a journey before him.
'Ho, you rooster you! Hey, you! I got to drive you
twice to Starn as 'tis, and now I'll drive you three
times, see if I don't, you blam rooster, you, and four
times I'll drive you, yes, I will, and I'll cut the legs off
you!'
'Why don't you come and help him,' called the
farmer's wife to Massey, "stead of laughing there,
poor man, this hot day!'
'He must be crazy, ma'am,' said Massey indignantly,
'but I'll catch that donkey.'
He flung down his spade and very soon he delivered
the animal into the arms of the panting Munt.
'You blam rooster,' gasped that worthy man, 'you
give me a pretty coddle and now I'll give you a
pretty coddle.'
'Where's your halter?' growled Massey.
'I din' bring no halter.'
'Well, look arter him now you got him. I never seed
a donkey wi' such a wicked eye. You got him?'
'Yes, Jim, I got him,' and firmly grasping the
donkey by one of its ears Munt led it away.
'Look arter him now,' bellowed Massey finally.
Returning to the ditch he seized his gun, and al-
though there were no more rooks to be seen he fired
a couple of charges into the hedge. Immediately the
donkey was seized by a paroxysm of extreme emo-
tion; he brayed, he butted, his ears quivered, he
220
DUMBLEDON DONKEY
lashed his tail, his little hairy legs were thrust into
the air at all sorts of angles; in short he pranced vio-
lently from the arms of Mr. Munt.
Of course he was caught again, for not even a jack-
ass can evade the hand of destiny for ever, but after-
wards (though it cannot be told for certain) old Munt
must have treated him badly, perhaps gave him a
good hiding, or drove him incessantly to and from
Starn. Possibly some private anguish pressed upon
the donkey's soul, or you can't tell-old Munt
may have poisoned him. Certain it is that what with
one thing and another the donkey laid down at night
and died, and the next morning he was found stiff
and cold without a vice left in him, or a virtue either.
The good Mrs. Bustin, his mistress, sorrowed
deeply; he was a spoilt donkey, but she was much
attached to him. And that is not strange, for the
world is full of respectable ladies who cherish a
passion for some strange object or another, as likely
as not an ass, though in the towns they can some-
times be seen riding on the tops of omnibuses with
an armful of lilac, or bicycling out to the autumn
woods for branches of dead leaves to put on a mantel-
piece. Mrs. Bustin sent tearfully for Sexton Jethro.
You can dig graves?' she began. 'I've dug many a
score, ma'am, I warrant,' says he. 'Can you dig a
grave for a donkey?' He said again he had dug many
a score. So he and Munt were directed to inter the
donkey in the field where he died, which was down
near the Dumbledon guidepost. Somewhere adja-
cent to that spot Jim Massey, two days later, was
221
DUMBLEDON DONKEY
topping some willow trees when Munt again ap-
proached him.
Come and give us a hand with this dead donkey,
Jim.'
'Where is it, Harry Munt?' the countryman
asked.
'Only over in the long field,' Munt jerked his thumb
in the direction. 'Just give us a hand, will you?'
'Surely you a'n't bin and started him off again,
Harry, have you?' said the grinning giant as he picked
up his coat and his bag and his axe (for he was a
careful and wary man) and stalked off alongside
little Munt.
'You'd think,' said Munt, 'that a man who's dug
hundreds of graves would have more sense, but this
grave ain't bin dug properly. It isn't big enough nor
deep enough and there's not earth enough to cover
him all up.
In the long field Massey saw the new mound of earth
from the four corners of which four little posts stood
up. Jethro sat beside it earnestly scrutinizing the
pictures in a newspaper, he took no notice of the two
men. Massey stared at the small posts on the mound
and saw that they were the four legs of the donkey.
It had been thrown into its grave upside down, and
though the earth had been heaped upon him his little
stiff legs protruded from it, not very much, but they
were still about a foot high above the ground.
'Well, that's a pretty piece of doxology!' commented
Massey.
The sullen sexton made no reply, he continued to
222
DUMBLEDON DONKEY
regard his newspaper fixedly while Massey placed
his basket on the ground beside him.
'Never knowed our Jethro was a larnèd man afore,
but here he be a-reading big print and little print
like a schoolmaster.'
The flattered sexton cleared his throat: "Tis the
Weekly Journal. I buys it sometimes for pictures,
and sometimes I reads out of it, but mostly it's for
pictures. 'Tis the only thing as ever I reads.'
"The Weekly Journal?'
"That and the Bible. I an't ashamed to tell 'ee.'
'When did you ever read your Bible?' inquired the
inexorable Massey.
'Every morning I reads the Bible. Ah! Every
morning! And I an't ashamed to tell 'ee that. But,'
added Jethro with a sigh, 'if there an't any photy-
graphs of old Sam's funeral in it I shan't buy no
Journal this week.'
He raised himself up from the grass and they all
surveyed the mound. It was neatly done, the donkey
was buried, he was at rest, he was hidden - all but
his four small legs; the hocks hung laxly, a little
pitifully, as if appealing for something.
'What can we do with him, Jim Massey?' said Munt,
enunciating a kind of husky hopelessness.
'Can't do nothing,' broke in the sexton, "tis done
and that's the end of it. We can't get him out again,
we can't move him, he's wedged in as tight as a
mossel o'cheese.'
'I'll show 'ee what to do,' said Massey grimly. 'One,'
he said, "Two,' he said. "Three,' he said. 'Four,' he
223
DUMBLEDON
DONKEY
said. At each number he heaved his sharp axe at the
little posts and the donkey's severed shanks rolled off
the mound.
Munt picked them up one by one and held them in
his arms.
'What shall I do with them?' he gurgled with a
quaver of dismay.
'Pickle 'em!' roared Massey. And so Munt carried
them away, but nobody ever discovered what he did
with them. Jim Massey asked him often enough,
often he asked, but Harry Munt never would tell
him.
224
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N THE THIRD DECADE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
deserted on
a fusilier deserted from his regiment on the eve of
its embarkation for wars in Portugal. Casting aside.
his forelock and martial gear Roland Bartlemas con-
trived to possess himself of civilian apparel, and made
his way from Plymouth towards the interior, his
intention being to trudge the lonely hill country that
lies right across the southern counties. There he
might travel in safety, as he thought, until he could
reach his home in the Vale of Aylesbury.
He was not a coward, although the bare statement
of his act may imply the contrary. The odds against
complete escape were prodigious - he knew that
well- and the punishment on capture was dire. Not
war, it was not war he feared; it was the misuse of his
life in ways unsought by him and despised. A plant
strives towards the light it sees: what does a man
strive to? Bartlemas hardly knew, but he knew that
he had been jockeyed into the army by a trick while
he was drunk in a market town of the Vale, and
snatched from his young wife and the genial gear of
home to toil in the harsh life of the camps. The early
rankle of that injustice did not heal. Well built,
freckled and fair, a vigorous countryman of twenty-
five, he had kept a tiny farm and a hostelry which lay
on the line of one of those old British trackways, the
Icknield, whose uneager endless miles form an artery
under the ridge of the downs, along which once
streamed droves of cattle and sheep bound for metro-
225
F.F.
Р
A THREE-HANDED REEL
politan markets from places even as remote as Wales.
Such hostels as The Leather Bottel were much used
in those days by the weary heavy-mannered drovers,
who penned the flocks for the night in the paddocks
of the inns.
+
A year or more had passed since he had left the
Vale, and now as he pressed on his eluding way
across the Berkshire uplands, from whence at last
he could view again the great Vale and the hills of
home, his heart leaped in his bosom, and a natural
satisfaction mingled with his triumph at having de-
feated, though still so precariously, the trick by
which his liberty had been won from him. Resent-
ment never had abated; he was a gay countryman, he
was but a sullen soldier.
A day later he crossed the Thames at Wallingford
and soon regained the old trackway that turned
northwards under the Chiltern wolds and continued
green and long, a wide rough grassy track set be-
tween hedges or running open across solitary spaces
that knew no barrier. Towards nightfall he was
within sight of the inn. September coolness was in
the air, and the thick odour of sheep that had lately
passed. The stalwart gables and chimneys of his
house were sharp in the dimness; there was a light
in one of the windows. Hesitating and wary, he
crept to the back of the house. No voices. Then he
went in. His wife Rachel was there, and they kissed
long and fervently.
'Roy!' she cried through her tears. 'What's hap-
pened of you?'
226
A
THREE-HANDED REEL
And he sat down and told her. Trembling she was.
A fine woman, stalwart as he, with fair hair too, and
a rich tint of skin; a comely figure, with breasts so
firm and fine - as Roland often said - that you could
crack a flea on them.
"They were here only yesterday, some soldiers
seeking of you,' Rachel whispered fearfully. "They
were after you. They swore you would be taken soon.
Oh, what will they do to 'ee, my love?'
Bartlemas grinned confidently, and consoled her.
He did not tell Rachel what would happen if he were
taken up again, his mind turned away from so dread
a prospect. Besides, he did not mean to be taken up.
But he was alarmed. Who was staying at the inn now?'
'Nobody, only a drover man,' Rachel told him.
'Came along since noon with a flock of yoes. He's
had a misfortune, though; a bough of a tree fell on
him and broke his head open, poor man, so he's gone
to bed.'
'Bough of a tree! There's not a wag of wind to-day,'
Bartlemas said suspiciously.
'No? But there's yon crack in his head. Meg ban-
daged it up
for him. The blood! He'll not set foot
from here for days yet, I warrant. He groans and
groans for the pain and the delay; he's behind time,
it seems, and wants to get on. I think he said he was
bound for Dunstable, but we can't get much out of
him, he's so dazed.'
Bartlemas sat biting his fingers in silence. 'Where
be the sheep?' then he suddenly inquired. 'Has he
got a dog?'
227
A THREE-HANDED REEL
'No, there was ne'er a dog, and there's only a few
score yoes. They're out on the greens'ard.'
Roland got up. 'I'll go and have a look at 'em.'
'Oh, why?' whispered Rachel. 'Stay, you must be
famished, Roy dear.'
'Only a minute or two,' returned her husband.
"This may turn out well for me. It will help tide me
over for a day or two case the soldiers be watching
around. I daren't stay here, and this is fortunate.
Go find out who the sheep be for. Tell this chap I'm
for Dunstable and I'll go off wi' un first thing in the
morning.'
Bartlemas started towards the door. 'Don't tell
him who I am. And just pop out now, Rachel, and
see if coast be clear. I don't want to run into they
soldiers.'
Throwing a cloak over her shoulders she kissed
him ardently, and was gone outside for a few
moments. When she came back nodding reassur-
ingly, he stepped out across the old track to the field
where the sheep lay. There was still light enough to
perceive them. Bartlemas crept through a hedge gap
and noted that they were yoes of the Hampshire
breed, all marked with a letter H in blue ruddle on
the haunch. Shearling ewes, about eighty of them,
not in very good fettle; they were thin and lame,
having no doubt been over-driven. A figure began to
move slowly towards him from a shed in the corner
of the field, and then stopped. He saw it was an ass.
Bartlemas went to the shed to assure himself that no
one hid there, then stretched his arms - part lassi-
228
A THREE-HANDED REEL
tude, part relief - and leaned against the shed. Above
him the Great Bear had begun to twinkle, and even-
ing airs were caressing the hedge of thorns. Beyond
that sigh, and the cough of a ewe, there was no sound.
How calm and peaceful, serene, secure, was all
this; his own plight how perilous! They would never
be able to resume life together here, they would have to
sell their home and go far away, perhaps to America.
"They be for a Mister Oxlade of Dunstable, as far as
I can make out,' said Rachel when he came again
into the kitchen, 'but there's no understanding him,
he's that queer.
'Oxlade? Oxlade?' her husband repeated, 'I don't
know such a man; but I'll take 'em, tell him. I'll
bide in the loft to-night, 'twill be safer so, and in the
morning I'll go, and I'll be back when the coast is
clear. Give me some money, lass.'
She gave him money.
'Who's this Meg you've got here?'
'She's a daft girl I've got to help me, and for com-
pany.'
'Don't tell her who I be.' Then he said: 'I'll go to
the loft now, and you can bring me a morsel to eat
there secret, and put some in a bag for me to take in
the morning.'
She did that and they slept in the loft together.
Towards dawn he rose. 'Don't come wi' me, lass. I'll
get 'em away quietly. Stay here. I'll send you word
soon what we'll do together. Mayhap we'll have to
go away from here. I won't be took alive. Good-
bye.' And he kissed her softly and crept away. Later
229
A THREE-HANDED REEL
she heard the flock bleating, and the run of their
many hooves as they passed out and away down the
long green road.
After a while Rachel got up and descended from the
loft into the yard. The sun was almost risen, 'twould
be a fine day. She went quietly up to her own room,
but although she was weary love and anxiety kept her
from sleeping. A strange impulse made her get up
again and go to the room where the sick drover lay.
After listening at the door she tapped upon it. There
was no reply; all seemed so very still within that she
lifted the latch and peered into the gloom. Not a
breath could she hear. The silence as she stood there
all suddenly rushed over her, startling and sugges-
tive. There was not light enough to investigate, and
fear kept her from venturing farther. Leaving the
door wide open she hurried downstairs, lit a rushlight
and then returned to that dreadful silence. The
drover lay on his back with his mouth wide open, a
young slim ugly fellow with a black beard. He was
fully clad, just as he had come into the inn. The
bandage gave him a terrible aspect.
'I say,' whispered Rachel, but he did not reply or
stir. She shook him slightly. 'Wake up.' But he did
not awake. Rachel had never seen a dead man before,
but there and then she knew that this one was dead.
He did not breathe. Shaking him, calling him, had
no effect, there was no life in him at all, and he was
cold. Panic-stricken, she left him as he lay, fled
through the open door back to her own room. There
she locked herself in.
230
A THREE-HANDED REEL
The danger of this catastrophe had immediately
seized her, not its gruesomeness, but its danger to
Roland. Oh, what was to be done now! For she
would have to notify the death at once, and explain
the drover's presence and the absence of his sheep!
All would come out, and Roland would be tracked!
The sun was risen up now, he was already a couple of
miles away, she could never catch him up in time,
and if she did he would not dare return with the sheep.
They could not be abandoned, and if she drove them
herself she could not get back before people were
abroad, and any explanation of her possession of
them would imperil her husband. She was distraught
with apprehension. Whatever she did Roland would
be caught and sent to the wars and killed. All be-
cause a rascal of a drover had died in his bed, a
travelling rascal, whom nobody knew anything about
or cared for. He was dead, and his sheep were gone.
A curious possibility began to flutter in her mind.
Could she... She might hide the body, she might
hide it so that she need never give any warning of it
at all. She might . . . His sheep were gone - well,
he could be gone, too. With this wild project racing
through her brain she snatched off her gown, dressed
herself, and descended to the inn yard. Her mind
was already made up, she would seize the chance of
avoidance.
The sky was clear and earth was bright, the fresh
blowing morn put a strange eagerness into the aspect
of every hedge and hill. These hedges at hand
seemed to be rushing along the rising of the track-
231
A THREE-HANDED
REEL
way towards Roland – and the hills in a breathless
pause glowed with an intensity of lovely shape and
shade. Rachel went to the field where the sheep had
lain - the grass was cool to her bare feet - and caught
the donkey by the ears. After hitching him into the
shafts of a tiny cart that stood under the shed she
led him out of the field to the side of the inn. Into
the house she went again, treading like a cat, and by
and by came out staggering under an ugly burden
hung across her shoulders. She tipped the limp
drover into the tiny cart, covering him with sacks;
then drove off along the trackway, turning shortly
into a lane that led up into the hills. All the way she
kept muttering meaningless phrases to herself, mixed
even with snatches of song. The hill was reached,
the long slanting haul to the top was overcome.
There the lane became a mere grassy passage mean-
dering amongst abundant furze and bracken that
stretched for many an acre; multitudes of rabbits
skipped there, and blackberries fruited like the vine.
Below and behind her the Vale lay in infinite holy
brightness, filled with hamlets and meadows and
shorn fields ticked with sheaves of corn. Every tree
and stook had a long shaft of shade. There was no
smoke rising yet from any chimney. But Rachel
scanned only the dark furze that sprawled like a con-
tinent across an ocean of hills, and no human shape
met her gaze. The cart was backed into one of the
innumerable alleys in the furze, where long black-
berry briers came vipering across the path. Powerful
woman though she was she could not get the body
232
A THREE-HANDED REEL
across her shoulder again, there was repulsion as well
as physical difficulty, so she hauled him from the cart
by the armpits, his legs dropping, one, two, and
stumbled with him into the recesses of the furze,
laying and leaving him in a nook where he might
rot till the day of judgment. No one could ever find
him. Then Rachel mounted the cart again and drove
the donkey down the hill back to the lovely Vale,
without a compunction in her soul, though she knew
that justice is justice, truth is truth, and you cannot
hack them about. But once you have closed the door
on either you may as well shoot the bolt, there is no
turning back. The cart was backed into the shed
again, the ass turned adrift in the field again, and the
young wife trod quietly back into the house, leaving
the door ajar. Meg was still sleeping, it seemed, and
Rachel, feeling more drowsy as the sense of relief
deepened, went to her bed again and slept until she
was roused by the daft maid.
'Missus, the sheep be gone! And the man wid 'um,
the scampish man wi's head all blood.' Meg stood
in the doorway, a young creature with foolish eyes
and crooked body. 'He is gone, I tell you,' she re-
peated.
Rachel, drowsy and startled, sat up in bed. 'Gone?'
Then her craft returned to her. 'Oh, yes, gone with
his sheep, what a thief!'
Later on she primed Meg to say nothing at all to
anybody about the defaulting drover, fearing that
the foolish girl might blab the news of his destination
to someone and thus put them on the track of Roy.
233
A THREE-HANDED REEL
She was to deny all knowledge of the drover. 'I
believe he be up to no good, and p'raps 'ull bring a
judgment on us. He came with his sheep and went
off with his sheep, but I don't want to be mixed up
with it. If so be anyone inquires we must say...
we must say that he did not come here, we have not
seen him, you understand? He was a bad man, poor
fellow, but the world's full of bad men and we have to
make the best of 'em.'
Three days went by and Roy had not returned.
Rachel was calm in appearance, but she was often to
be seen throughout the day gazing along the green
road, or towards the hills that lay so close, whence he
might descend at nightfall. And her ears were for
ever acock for news of soldiers.
On the fourth day after his departure Rachel drove
off in her donkey chaise to the market at Thame,
some miles off. She transacted her business and
returned home in the afternoon. Meg met her in the
doorway of the inn.
'I said he was bad, I told you, missus,' began Meg
excitedly. "That scampish man, that drover, bad and
all and murder, too.'
'What! What do you say?'
'Murder!' repeated Meg with gleams of horrific
joy. 'But he is taken, he's to hang, sure as doom.'
"Tell me at once, do,' urged the trembling Rachel,
and Meg followed her into the parlour. It appeared
that three men on horseback had ridden up soon
after her mistress's departure to market. They were
sheriff's officers from Dunstable and Wallingford.
234
A THREE-HANDED REEL
They asked Meg if a man driving a flock of sheep
had slept there on a certain night. No - she had said.
Was she sure of it, could she swear to it? - they had
asked. Yes she had said. And then they looked at
each other, and the Dunstable man had said – No, I
thought not! and the Wallingford man said - No, he
thought not. And they had written out and left a
warrant, exhorting her mistress to attend the justices
at twelve o'clock on the following day. A murder had
been done, a body found with the head broken.
-
'But when did they find him?' exclaimed Rachel in
terror. It was incredible that the body had been dis-
covered already in such a wilderness of furze. The
maid did not know; her vagueness maddened the
mistress. All she knew was that murder had been
done and the scampish man must be the man who did
it. But Rachel knew that was not so he could not
be the murderer and the murdered too. Meg was
insistent. 'Yes, and his name, it is Reuben Lynch.'
'Whose name?' asked the bewildered Rachel.
"That scampish man, they've agot him.'
'But he is dead, is he not?' cried her mistress.
'No, not him. He run away from here, but they ha'
caught him at Dunstable.'
'But how could they? Who did he murder?'
'He murdered the man he stole the sheep from. He
was driving the sheep at Dunstable, just the same
number and marks, so they knew him.'
Rachel realized that it was inevitable for Meg to
assume that the man arrested and the drover were
one and the same, but she herself saw that Reuben
235
A THREE-HANDED REEL
Lynch must be some other man: But who? And how
did he get the sheep from Roland? And where was
Roland? It was all mystifying and terrifying to
Rachel; she was too much oppressed by the pitiful
end of the drover, but after all the man was dead,
dead men tell no tales, and no one could ever know
of her part in the disposal of the body - not even
Meg. She could deny all knowledge of him; having
gone so far nothing should induce her to recant and
betray her husband. He was still in danger, he could
not be in a safe place yet, but perhaps he would come
back to-night.
The topic of the murder raged in the tap-room all
the evening; such rumours as came to hand were still
more puzzling to Rachel. One asserted that the body
had been found at the foot of Swyncombe Down, way
back along the road, ten miles towards Wallingford.
Another declared that the murdered man was a red-
haired man with a hare-lip, whose name was Isaac
Thorn. Rachel knew these things to be false, and it
irked her not to give the lie to them, but she held her
peace, though she held it scornfully.
Early next morn the carrier's van conveyed her to
Wallingford, where they arrived an hour before noon.
While standing amid the groups of people awaiting
admission to the court Rachel gathered some addi-
tional news of the affair. It appeared that a drover
had been journeying across country with a flock of
sheep. His name was Isaac Thorn. Where he came
from or whither he was bound had not so far been
discovered, but he had been coming from the west
236
A THREE-HANDED
REEL
and going in the direction of London. Miles away
on the downs he had been joined by a stranger, some
rough man who was going the same road, and they
had travelled the pleasant miles very friendly together
until they suddenly fell a-quarrelling about the catch-
ing of a hare. From words they came to blows, the
blood was up, and they fought each other so ragingly
with their cudgels that Isaac Thorn was at last
knocked senseless into a ditch and left for dead. A
farmer passing in his gig had come upon him and
thought him dead, but he recovered under some
cognac, and was carried to the nearest house. Thorn
could only mumble thus much of the matter; beyond
this no more had been gleaned from him, and he had
died a few hours later. But Rachel learned that
Isaac Thorn was found near Swyncombe; he was a
red-haired man with a hare lip.
She breathed with infinite relief. This dead man
was clearly not the dead man she knew of, whose
body had not been found, and was still in the furze.
She could deny all knowledge of Isaac Thorn with a
clear conscience; at least, although her conscience
might not be clear it was not in any way venal. This
relief, however, only ushered in a new bewilderment;
it had lain almost unheeded under the stress of her
own peril, but grew into graver prominence at the
realization that her own dead man was still undis-
covered. How had the arrested man, this Reuben
Lynch, got possession of the sheep? The coincidence
of Thorn's murder aroused her deepest fears: had
Roland himself suffered a similar fate?
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A THREE-HANDED REEL
The court of justice stood by itself in the town
square, a pleasant place surrounded by shops that
gleamed with affability. The shops gazed cheerfully,
confidently, at the court-hall, but that noble building
appeared gloomy and aloof, as if its immune dignity
precluded all consort with so ephemeral a thing as life.
It was an oblong top-heavy building set upon a two-
step base of stone, its upper stories underpinned by
plain pillars that made a colonnade around it. The
church, all tower and gable, loomed close by, its white
clock marked with black figures. At a quarter before
twelve the loiterers began to go into the hall and
Rachel went in with them, into a dim chamber that
was full of private doors and benches and pews and
tables with many inkstands full of goosequills, chairs
covered with crimson plush, and ushers who talked
loudly to people who humbly whispered. Soon some
of those private doors opened, and lawyers came in
and sat at the tables and turned over bundles of docu-
ments as if their own lives depended upon it - as
indeed they did. At last the ushers shouted for
'Silence,' and in came the justices. There were five
of them, all dressed like other men; they sat them-
selves down at the long table on five crimson chairs,
and before Rachel knew what was happening a
wretched man was standing in the dock. It was her
own husband, charged under the disguised name of
Reuben Lynch, with the murder of Isaac Thorn. At
that revelation Rachel screamed aloud, and dropped
in a swoon. 'Poor thing!' said the people who carried
her outside and revived her, 'Poor thing! She says he
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A THREE-HANDED REEL
is her husband!' Oh, there was a hubbub about that,
a great to-do about that, and the long and short of it
was that Rachel returned to the chamber and her
evidence was secured. The man in the dock - she
told the justices - could not be guilty of this crime
because he was not Reuben Lynch at all, because he
was her own husband, Roland Bartlemas.
'Oh, wife,' the prisoner groaned, 'you've condemned
me!'
So they asked Rachel what she could tell them about
this business. She had instantly realized the danger
Roland was in: she knew now that he had given a
false name only because of his desertion, that he was
not aware of the terrible complications newly arisen.
Only herself was fully aware of them, and she had
rather him be taken back to the wars than hang for a
murder. There was no other way out, so she opened
up and made a clean breast of her misdeed; told them
all about the sick drover who had died at The Leather
Bottel, and the way she had hidden his body in the
furze. And they asked the prisoner if he was indeed
Roland Bartlemas, and he confessed he was; but
when they asked him why he had but now answered
to the name of Reuben Lynch he hung his head and
would not answer any more. And when they asked
Rachel why she disposed of the dead man in that
wicked manner instead of giving notice to the jus-
tices as by law required, she was confused and said
she was afraid. When they inquired what it was she
feared she was more confused than ever and burst
into tears. At that Roland blurted out the truth about
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A THREE-HANDED REEL
himself, for he saw it would otherwise go hard with
them about the crime, and he did not want to suffer
for a deed he had not done. He confessed that he was
a soldier, that he had deserted and gone secretly
home to The Leather Bottel, that the pursuers had
been there only the day before him.
'I didn't know what were best for me to do, I was
badgered. So there was the sick drover with the flock
of yoes wanting to get on to Dunstable, and if he
could not take them of himself I thought it a good
ways to escape, for I'd be able to say I was a drover
from far over in the west and no soldier at all. I
went off with the yoes early next morning, but my
great mischance was this crime against Isaac Thorn,
which I did not know of, for the number of his sheep
was known, eighty-one of 'em, all marked with a blue
H. Soon as I drove 'em into Dunstable and asked
for John Oxlade I was taken up by the sheriff's man.
He asked me my name and I said it was Reuben
Lynch, thinking it was the soldiers after me. I hadn't
heard of this murder at all. I hadn't heard any gossip,
I hadn't heard of Isaac Thorn, but of course there was
no such person as John Oxlade and that put me in
the fault at once. And that's the truth, for I was
never a liar - anyone as knows me will tell you that.
Good God! Why should I murder a living man?
When I was told of this charge of murder against
me I owned up about receiving the sheep from the
sick drover at The Leather Bottel, though I did not
give my right name, nor say I was a soldier. And
this drover that I left sick in bed, I didn't know
24C
A THREE-HANDED REEL
he was dead until this moment, indeed I did
not."
Well, well! So they asked Rachel where she had
hidden the body of the second man, and she told
them: In the furze.
"Your husband did not know that he had died?'
'No,' Rachel replied,' my husband knew nothing
about it, he had gone off with the yoes.'
'And you believe that this unknown drover caused
the death of Isaac Thorn?'
'Oh, yes, he did,' she said, 'my husband knew no-
thing about that neither; nor I. This man had a
wound in his head, which he said a tree fell on him,
but he must have got it in the fighting.'
So the case was adjourned for the body of the un-
known drover to be fetched from the furze. The five
justices left their crimson seats and went back to
their families, and Roland Bartlemas went back to
his prison, while the sheriff's men accompanied
Rachel to the furze on the hill. Ah! that was a plight
for a poor pitiful wife, to go raking after the corpse of
a rascal who had done murder, and he himself five
or six days rotting. All the way in the sheriff's gig
the sheriff kept asking Rachel about him: what sort
of a man he was, and so on; and she gave a clear
description of him - an ugly slim dark man with his
head in a bandage. She described how she drove up
the hill with the body in the donkey cart.
'By yourself alone?' the sheriff asked.
'Yes, all alone; 'twas soon after dawn, and I was
home again before anyone was abroad, it's not far.
F.F.
241
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A
REEL
THREE-HANDED
No one saw me or him, no one knew he was dead
except me.'
The sheriff was accompanied by two of his men who
rode behind the gig on stout black cobs. An hour
before sundown they came to the top of the hill and
the lane that became a grassy way and the alley into
the furze with the long briers clawing across the
path. Here they dismounted and Rachel led them
into the secret alley as far as she could go, then
stopped with a cry: 'Oh, he's not here, he's gone!'
And true enough the body was gone. Rachel, turning
round, saw that one of the sheriff's men had a queer
grin on his face. 'Well, what did you expect to find?'
he asked his mate. And then both of the sheriff's
men had queer grins. They searched and they
searched, but not a rag or a bone or a hair of any
drover could they discover in that place. Rachel
declared the body must have been stolen away, or he
must have been alive after all, stunned only, and be
alive somewhere now. 'Oh, what a cunning villain!
How he has deceived us!' The sheriff's two men
grinned queerly again, and shortly they all gave over
the search and journeyed back to Wallingford, where
Rachel found a lodging for the night.
Roland Bartlemas, as he was now called, was
brought up before the justices again next day, and
when the sheriff reported his failure to find the
alleged body all five of the justices turned on their
crimson cushions and whispered among themselves.
'Is there any corroboration of your testimony about
this dead body?' was what they finally asked Rachel.
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A THREE-HANDED REEL
'My servant Meg saw him sick, and bandaged his
head,' replied she; but the sheriff pointed out that
they had already interrogated Meg, who was a
natural, and she had declared that no drover at all
had called or slept at The Leather Bottel on that day.
In short it was agreed that Rachel's statement was
a cock-and-bull story designed by the unhappy wife
to shield her husband. She was a confessed liar, and
so was he, and so evidently was her servant.
'But the sheep!' cried Rachel, scarlet with shame
and indignation. 'My husband had the man's sheep,
and that you can't deny!'
'No,' said the justices, 'but it is clear that he stole
them from the unfortunate Isaac Thorn.'
And so her husband was committed for trial at the
assizes to be held a fortnight later at Oxford. Mean-
while the owner of the sheep, Isaac Thorn's master,
had not yet been found, neither had anyone come
forward to claim the flock; the sheriff's inquiries
were being diligently pursued, and by the time the
trial came on it was expected that the owner would
have been found.
Rachel returned to The Leather Bottel, a free but
despairing woman. No action was taken against her
concerning the body in the furze, because there was
no body, it was a myth.
"The injustice, the wickedness of it all!' she moaned.
'There's not enough truth in the world for people
to know it when they see it.' Back of her mind she
knew that her own unwise action was the cause of
all the trouble. She could blind herself no longer
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A THREE-HANDED REEL
to the terrible danger it had placed her husband in,
and she was frantic because God had given her a holy
burden - conscience. She was a big pretty woman,
but the bloom went off her; she could scarcely eat or
sleep, she just pined and wept, or went up to the furze
on the hill for long desperate hours seeking among
its bushes. The crushing irony of events over-
whelmed her. Truth was there, as plain as plain,
but she alone knew it all. It was clear as the sun in
the sky, but no one believed her. Again and again
she told the story to the people she knew, or to
anybody who would listen, whether she knew them
or not, and brought the hapless grinning Meg to
her support; but those people sat mute. No one
would believe her, they could not; she was like a
woman with a strange language wandering forlorn
in a world where nobody understood her. If anything
happened to Roland she would die of remorse and
grief. Her dear sweet husband had come home to
her and she had betrayed him. Pining and weeping
and searching, the bloom went off her. Then there
was the lawyer she engaged, spending long con-
fabulating hours with him in a musty office that
smelled of ink and cheese. Perhaps he believed her
story, perhaps not, but he was not sanguine of the
outcome, she divined that. The sheriff, too, although
she besought him to search the country again and
again, would not undertake it. Time rattled by until
only a few days remained before the assize began,
and her agony grew deeper and darker as the dread-
ful day grew nearer.
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A THREE-HANDED REEL
One morning she was attending to her duties in the
tap-room of The Leather Bottel when the door was
quietly opened and a slim dark ugly man with a
beard confronted her. He was smiling.
'God's mercy!' cried Rachel, her heart rocking in
her breast.
"You remember me?' asked the drover, for it was he,
the man whose body she had huddled into the
furze. 'I come arter my sheep. Where be they?'
'Sheep! Sheep!' stammered the young hostess,
recoiling from the apparition and rubbing her hand
against her heart to allay that tumult there. The
drover walked right into the room and Rachel
uttered a loud shriek.
'What! What's up, missus?' he cried, and then daft
Meg came running in. She stared at her wild-eyed
mistress and at the drover who sat himself down on
a settle.
"Tis the scampish man!' cried Meg. 'Where you
bin, hopping away like a flea on a sheet?'
'I bin middling bad; give us a drink,' said he in a
weak way.
Rachel went to her shelves and tilted down a flagon
of brandy. Two little glasses she filled, giving one
to the drover, and sipping herself at the other. He
sat silent.
'You're thought dead!' giggled the crooked girl.
'I bin middling bad.' He drew his hand wearily
across his brow. Although ugly, he was slim and
weak and did not look a murderer.
Rachel led Meg into the kitchen and whispered
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fiercely: 'Run to the constable as fast as you can go
and bid him come quickly!'
Away flew Meg, helter-skelter, but Rachel stood
perfectly still in her kitchen, listening. There was
fear in her bosom, she knew this was no ghost, this
was a desperate villain, yet she wanted to bolt and
bar every door to prevent him making off before the
constable could catch him. That would rouse him,
though, and she dared not let slip this certainty of
Roland's deliverance. Never, never should he escape
now; and so, taking a large pig-killing knife and
hiding it in a pocket of her dress, she returned to
the tap-room.
'Where be they sheep, missus?' he amicably in-
quired. Rachel stood behind her counter, with her
hand in the pocket.
"There's been trouble about those sheep,' she re-
turned steadily. 'You've been thought dead, you
couldn't be found. A great pack of trouble it brought
upon me.'
'Why!' said the little man, lifting his mild gaze on
her. 'What all about?'
Rachel glared menacingly at him. 'You told me the
yoes was for John Oxlade at Dunstable.'
'I told you!' he cried in incredulous tones. 'John
Oxlade? That's my own name! There's no Oxlades
at Dunstable as I know of.'
'Well, that's what you told me.'
'I disremember that, missus. Why should I tell
you that? I come in here middling bad, I knows
that, and I went to bed, and that gal put a bandage
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on my head, I knows that, but I can't recollect no
more, not a scrap.'
'Oh, yes,' pursued Rachel. 'Oh, yes. You'd better
freshen up your memory. I came upstairs to you
and asked you that night where the sheep was to go.
You kept on talking and rambling about them. They
must be there, you said, they must be there; and I
asked you where, and you said Dunstable. And I
asked you what name, and you said John Oxlade. A
friend of mine was going that way and he said he
would take them for you, and I told you so, seeing
you were sick and likely to be sick for days. And
there's no keep in our paddock for a flock of yoes.'
'Oh,' he drawled thoughtfully, 'I don't remember
a word of that, missus.
'You'd better freshen up your memory, then,'
repeated Rachel casually.
'I was all silly like, I'd had a big knock on my
head...'
'A tree fell on it, you said,' interrupted Rachel.
'Ah, well,' the drover smiled, 'that was just a manner
of speaking, a jokey way of saying it. It was a bit of
a tree: I'd been fighting with some man and he struck
me on my head with a stick! I expect I couldn't
understand what you was asking of me. I expect I
thought you was asking for my own name, for
Oxlade's my name, I'm John Oxlade. As for Dun-
stable, well, I was to go through Dunstable, but the
sheep are for Mr. Hallowbrass over by Hertford,
that's where they're going.'
Again he drew his hand across his brow. 'I gave
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A THREE-HANDED REEL
that fellow a tidy crack myself, I left him stretched
out for dead!'
'Oh,' observed Rachel coolly, but she dreaded to
ask him about that conflict, and still more to tell
him its shocking outcome. Her anxiety was madden-
ing, but she had got him now and she would kill
him if he made to get away.
'Whose sheep are they, where are they from?' she
began again.
'My master is Mr. Stribblewell, down in Hampshire,
Liphook, if you know it. A good master, too; he'll
be wondering what's come of I. Ought to ha' bin
back there a week ago. But perhaps he's not back
himself yet he went off into Wales same day as I
started for here. Oh dear,' he said forlornly, pushing
the drink away from him, 'I mun have no more
of that, my head is bad. I was crossing Ilsley downs
with they sheep, and I was jined there abouts by some
travelling feller, a nasty ugly chap with red hair and
a hare lip - I never did like that sort, but he was set
on coming along of I, and so we drove the sheep along
together for a day or a day and a half. His name was
Isaac something or other, Thorn, I think. We was
coming along by Swyncombe and a hare jumped off
beside us, and I threw my stick at it and cut it head
over heels, clean as a smelt. This joker threw his
stick at same time and pretended that it was his stick
that did it. Course it warn't so, but he was a very
owdacious sort, and he snatched that hare out of
my hand. Well, afore you could say Sweat! we was
leathering one another for good and all; he was for
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killing me, surely, I could see that, oh, yes, a great
strapping man, and he give me this blow,' - pointing
to his head - 'but at the same time I give him the
bitterest crack a man ever bore- well, he couldn't
bear it, nor could you, no one could, and down he
went. I didn't stop for no more, for the sheep had run
off a long ways and I tore after them. Somehow I
drove 'em as far as here, I just don't know how, and
after I got into your bed I don't remember a thing till
I woke up in some furze atop of yon hill. How did
I get there?' he asked, looking stupidly at Rachel.
Without waiting for her reply he continued, 'Well, I
dunno; I only know I went to bed in your bed and
I woke up in the furzes. I'd forgotten everything,
sheep and all, and when I crawled out of the furzes I
didn't know what all, nor where I was. So I tiggled
on along the hills some ways, but I couldn't find
nobody, and then through a wood, but I never met a
creature till I come out of the wood into a bottom
with a cottage in it, a very solitary spot. I fell down
in a dead faint outside the cottage. An old shepherd
lives there and his wife took me in, and they kept me
in a bed as I was raving for a week. Arter that I got
better, but everything was gone out of my mind, and
I couldn't remember anything till this very morning.
I was out for a stroll, and I happened to see the wood
I'd come through, and I went through it again. Then
I came to the furze, and gradually I found the top of
yon hill, and I could see the green road and I could
remember the country, and everything began to come
back to me. So I run down a lane, and the very first
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A THREE-HANDED REEL
place I see is this house, and all I wants now is my
sheep. But they were a good old couple, very kind
to me they was.'
Only friendly feelings were surging in Rachel's
bosom now, and she said to the drover: 'Mister, I
fear there's trouble in store for you along of that
man - he's dead.'
'What man?' he asked simply.
'Isaac Thorn.' And just as Rachel said this in came
daft Meg and the constable, accompanied by a
couple of powerful rustics provided with sticks.
Oxlade had to tell over his story again, and then the
constable took him away. Rachel flew off to her
lawyer.
Well, of course, all was very well now and as good
as over. Rachel went to the assizes in a confident
spirit, and much astonishment ensued at the trial.
Oxlade's master, Mr. Stribblewell, came forward
and confirmed his man's statement. He himself had
been gone into Wales, and knew nothing of the
hue and cry. Isaac Thorn, it was discovered, was a
ne'er-do-well, and as the blow had been struck in
self-defence Oxlade was exonerated. Thorn's state-
ment before he died had been confused, and it
was now seen that much of it had been misunder-
stood.
Roland Bartlemas stepped out of the dock, free
again. Rachel kissed him passionately, and mur-
mured, 'All right, my love?' 'Yes,' he said. And
there stood Oxlade beside them, in much concern at
the account of what had happened to him while at
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A THREE-HANDED
REEL
The Leather Bottel. To be carted off for dead and
thrown into a furze like a dog!
'Course you thought I was dead,' he complained to
Rachel, 'and it didn't matter, but it was a bad thing
to do, any road.'
Rachel was covered with shame before him.
'Yes, I understands all that,' he replied to her de-
fence, 'but it was a bad thing to do, any road. I'd a
bin in a poor way if I hadn't met that old shepherd
and his wife. They were good to I. Still,' he took her
hand and shook it, and he did not look so ugly, after
all, 'all's well that ends well. You didn't know,' he
added, 'that's right.'
Rachel linked her arm in Roland's. 'Come, my
love.' And they walked away. They reached the
doorway, but there Roland stopped stone still. 'Ah,'
he groaned. A posse of soldiers waited there. They
came forward and took him. Rachel clung to his
breast and screamed, but they took him from her,
locked his hands together, put him into a military
wagon and drove away.
Soon afterwards he was sent out to his regiment in
Portugal, and there he was tried by a court-martial
for desertion and condemned to be shot. And he
was shot. Rachel did not hear of this until long after-
wards, though.
251
N
THE SNARE
AB BIRD, RETURNING FROM A VISIT TO THE GIRL
of his heart, had walked a dozen Berkshire
miles since breakfast, and what with the heat of the
summer day and his happy thoughts he felt the need
of rest and reflection and so lay down in a shady
nook of furze on the edge of a common to sleep and
dream of the girl to whom he was just betrothed -
ah, fine dreams indeed, for she was all Nab's hope
and fancy.
When he awoke he found a little girl staring at
him. She had a pale dull face, short hair, no hat.
Her frock was ragged; her face and arms were dirty,
and heavy hobbed boots were on her feet; she was
perhaps ten years old.
'Hallo!' exclaimed Nab, sitting up and pointing to
a dead rabbit she was carrying, 'where d'ye get
that?'
She made no reply, she only stared at the third
buttonhole of his waistcoat which had been deprived
of its button.
'Ay? What's time, little 'un?'
"S'three a'clock,' she said in a slow timid voice.
'Ju know where I can get some dinner?' he in-
quired.
She lifted her skinny arm and pointed to some
buildings lying a little way back from the road. She
then moved off in that direction, followed by our
traveller, and soon they entered a small inn whose
one public room seemed to be mixed with its private
252
THE SNARE
domestic intentions. An enormous saucepan, with-
out a lid, but crammed full of potatoes, was boiling
desolately on the dull but oppressive fire. The stone-
flagged room was stifling. The landlord was leaning
across the serving counter addressing a label. He
was a fat uncouth man, wearing an old felt hat but
no collar, a pair of spectacles but no coat, a waistcoat
without buttons, and a belt large enough for a horse.
Glancing over his spectacles, which hung so near the
point of his nose that they seemed windows for his
cheeks rather than his eyes, he noted first of all the
dead rabbit.
'Is it a buck?'
'Yes,' replied the little girl.
'Go on, draw it then,' he growled, and resumed his
writing while the little girl passed through the bar
into the kitchen of the inn. Nab Bird walked across
the room to the open window and remarked that it
was a fine day. If the observation called for a reply
it received none; the landlord's pen went on scratch-
ing horridly beneath his pulpy hand. A pipe that he
did not puff was stiffly fastened in the corner of his
mouth - it might have been a twig growing from
his face. Having brought his pen to its final scratch
he stood up, blotted his writing, and adjusted his
spectacles. Taking up the label he peered at it
and then struck upon the counter a blow of vexa-
tion:
'Garm it all, I bin and 'dressed it to meself!'
He crumpled the label viciously in his fist, flung it
across to the fire and commenced a new label.
253
THE SNARE
'You ain't in no hurry, are you?' he remarked. 'I
just waunts to git this 'ere label right.'
'Well, I ain't going up in my balloon for a minute
or two yet,' Nab Bird remarked, winking at an
almanac depicting a flock of gloomy sheep upon a
snow-clad wold, 'but soon's you're disengaged,
should like a drink, soon's you're quite at
leisure.'
'Oh, ah,' said the man, 'shan't be arf a tick, my
son.'
'And a bit of bread and cheese, or something,'
added Nab.
He sat down and the room was quiet save for a bee
that buzzed like an organ. He surveyed a high
musty mantelshelf with a black empty wine bottle
upon it and a clock with only one hand that hadn't
the heart to move in such celibate isolation. There
were three tables, magnificently scrubbed, three
benches, and a lot of spittoons. An old field spaniel
surveyed him with trance-like meditation, fixed him
with a maudlin eye like that of a drowsy judge
summoning him up. Her puppy became his
devoted friend. It was a tiny fat monstrous-limbed
creature that, as it reclined upon its haunches,
looked as if it were sitting in an arm-chair. Its
beautiful eyes kept him in a dream until the inn-
keeper thundered an expletive which I will only refer
to and not actually mention, although the sweet
satisfaction derived from its appropriate use renders
it extremely popular. He thundered it and struck
the inanimate counter a second blow of anger. Nab
254
THE SNARE
stared coolly at him; the man took off his spectacles
and laid them by.
"Dressed the damn thing to meself again. Now
what do you waunt?'
'Half pint ale, please.
'Half a pint?'
'Ah.'
'D'ye waunt bitter or mild?'
'Mild,' said Nab.
'Half a pint?'
'Yes,' said Nab.
'You'll be making yourself blooming drunk, if you
ain't keerful. Anythink else you waunts while I be
going there?'
Yes,' said Nab reflectively, mopping his brow,
'there is.'
'What?'
'A pound of peaches and a bottle of jugged hare.
Not too many flies in 'em, neither.'
The fat man bellowed, 'Ho! ho!' remarking, too,
that he hadn't got any something peaches, nor no
something jugged hare, but if his customer waunted
summat to something well eat, why couldn't he
something well say so.
'Leave it to you, mister, leave it to you entirely,'
said the diplomatic traveller, 'and while you're gone
I'll write that label for you.'
'You will! Yas, go on then - theer's the address I
waunts it to go to, not to meself- I'll get yer summat.'
He departed. Nab noticed that though his feet
were cased in slippers he wore no socks, and the
255
THE SNARE
seat of his trousers was brightened with frank,
unabashed patches.
'I waunts two of them 'ere labels,' bellowed the
voice from somewhere.
'Right-o,' called Nab, 'do ya a couple of dozen
while I'm at it last you a lifetime.'
-
When the man returned he brought a plate of fat
ham, cold potatoes, bread, and the required jorum
of stimulant. He placed them before the hungry
fellow and proceeded to examine the labels.
'That's a nice crafty bit of work,' he granted, 'but I
don't like them capital dees a'yourn. I can do a better
one 'an that meself. I 'as a lot a practice wid dees.'
'Oh!' said Nab.
'Didn't yer see my name over door as yer come in?'
'No, I didn't notice.'
'You 'ave a look at it.'
'You tell me,' suggested Nab.
'No, you 'ave a look at 'im.'
There was a reflective twinkle in his awful eyes;
they were afflicted with some disease and the lower
lids hung down like two wounds, open and bloody.
Nab stuffed a quantity of potato into his mouth and,
fork in hand, departed to the doorway where he
read that a licence to sell beer, spirits and tobacco
had been granted to
DIDDIMUS DUDDRIDGE,
and having exclaimed thereat as appreciatively as
the occasion warranted, he re-entered the room
swallowing potato.
256
THE SNARE
'What d'yer think a that?' grunted the Duddridge,
adding that it was a something fine name to give
anyone, waun't it?
'Well, if it comes to that,' declared Nab, ‘mine is
a something fine name, too. What d'ye think of
Naboth - Naboth Bird?'
'Nebawth! I 'eard that name afore, I thinks -
Shakespeare, ain't it? Ow ju spell it?'
Nab explained that it was a Biblical name, and he
outlined the story of Naboth the Jezreelite, a piece
of biography with which he was well acquainted.
Mr. Duddridge meanwhile was sitting in front of
the fire in an attitude of reflection; that is to say, his
hands were firmly clenched in the pockets of his
trousers, his knees were bent to suffer his naked
heels to repose against the rung of his chair, his head
was cocked judicially, while occasionally, without
moving either his pipe or his head, he spat cleanly
and cleverly into the grate just underneath the
saucepan. At the conclusion the landlord, with an
extravagance of epithet that was positively regal,
entered a condemnation of the lady Jezebel that it
would be difficult to transcribe, and unpardonable
to publish.
'You bain't married, be you?' he asked.
'Not yet.'
'Well, never you be. I knows what women are.'
He paused and his hearer added, 'I know, I know!'
'And you know what women are?'
'Ah,' said Nab.
'Women ...' Diddimus began to harangue, but
F.F.
257
R
THE SNARE
paused for the commensurate utterance; to gain time
he removed the pipe from his mouth and spat with
perfect ferocity. Before he could resume the little
girl crept in, silently carrying the denuded form of
the rabbit. She had disembowelled it, skinned it,
and cleansed it, cut off its feet, inserted a peg of
white wood between the flanks of the stomach so
that its organs of economy could be scrutinized,
and now displayed her handiwork to the two men
with something like pride in her eyes.
"Thass a nize robbut, Nallie,' said Diddimus, taking
it from the child and gazing upon those edible
entrails with speculative pleasure. 'A nize robbut,
that is. Here you are, my gal.'
He gave her sixpence and she departed without a
word.
'Now take that gal,' he resumed, 'she's on-
natural.
'Humph!' said Nab Bird.
'She is. Lives over there at that farm - they got her
from the workhouse - does everything a gal should-
n't ought, she do. Always knocking about with the
cattle and horses and the animals. She ain't fond uv
'em - she likes it 'cause she can order 'em about.
If you waunts to give 'er a treat you just set 'er to
kill a couple a pullets, or let 'er go ratting. She sets
all these robbut snares, and when she catches one
alive she strangles it slowly as she can 'cause she
likes to watch the funny look in the robbut's eyes.
'S'what she says! And that's just what women be
like if they gets 'old of ye. Don't you 'ave nothing
258
THE SNARE
to do with no women or you'll be served like her
robbuts be.'
The traveller smiled sceptically; had he not yester-
day pledged his heart to a girl who was all his hope
and fancy.
'You will, ah, my oath, you will; too something true,
you will,' declared the fat misogynist, waddling away
with the little corpse, adding as he went: 'thass a
nize robbut.'
'So long!' cried Naboth Bird.
259
FISHMONGER'S FIDDLE
AXIE MORRISARDE WAS NOT OF THE GENERATION
MA
of Morrisardes; what they were doesn't mat-
ter, save that one of them was a vendor of cheroots.
Her paternal ancestry was Vole, her father and her
father's father were Voles, but neither does that
matter, for her mother had been a Crump. Here and
now, for better or for worse, she was a Morrisarde
set in a dominion of Voles. Aunt Vole and Uncle
Vole. They had Christian names, of course, – Ethel-
bert and Ida - but they were the sort of people who
never sported their Christian plumes, you always
thought of them patronymically, and Maxie ad-
dressed them simply - Uncle, Aunt. And those
respectable elderly retired Voles dwelt in a villa
called Crag Dhu, half a mile from the sea front. It
had blood-red bricks and a white gate. There was
also a laburnum tree that never flowered, so it might
just as well have been a pincushion; but still, it was
a tree and it stood in the gate-corner of a plot of grass
that framed an escarpment of mould whereon a
dozen geraniums took seasonal holiday. And Crag
Dhu seemed to hover over its garden, its gravel,
and its coal plate, with benignity and pride. The
next villa was in the occupation of a horse doctor,
and was called Phædra. Except for this it was just
like Crag Dhu, where the Voles lived; where Maxie
Morrisarde was now living, and feeling much like
one of those geraniums. That was absurd, for Maxie
was married - in a kind of a way. She had been
260
FISHMONGER'S FIDDLE
married truly and honourably to a one-time amiable
tobacconist, who, however, after six months, had
untruly and shamefully forsaken her by bolting to
America, leaving Maxie without any tangible means
of subsistence until she was rescued by her uncle and
aunt. A ruffian, a serpent, he was; he had married
her for her little fortune; a swindler he was, pimp,
bloodsucker, criminal, and sponge; and he was
doomed to the gallows; these things Aunt Vole so
constantly avowed, vociferated and vouched for that in
time even Maxie came to believe them. In her heart,
too, Mrs. Vole believed him to be a bigamist, but of
this she never breathed a hint to the deserted girl.
Mrs. Morrisarde had been a school teacher, a
slight fair pretty creature, helpless, charming, deli-
cate, and an orphan, when she married, quite
suddenly, the first man who had made love to her -
this scoundrelly tobacco fellow. Having no other
friends in the world her gratitude to the Voles when
they, as it were, adopted her was profound. Uncle
Vole was a retired cattle dealer, hearty, connubial,
and a Nonconformist. Aunt Vole was neither hearty
(saving as to appetite) nor connubial (except by
implication), but she was rather deaf and she was
very nonconformist. Life to her was the world, the
flesh, and repentance; packed with tribulation from
birth to burial, with snares by the scheming of Satan
in every hour of the twenty-four. All by the schem-
ing of Satan. Mercy enough if you were alive, and
miracle beyond belief if you were sinless. Aunt Vole
sewed and sewed and glowered.
261
FISHMONGER'S FIDDLE
Now the Voles had a great rough hufty of a dog,
with the name of Toots and the manners of a buffalo.
'What breed is she?' Maxie once asked, and Aunt
Vole quivered all over as if Maxie had sworn at her.
'Breed!' she repeated, with hushing deprecation.
And, really, when her aunt said it thus it did sound
like something not quite nice.
'Oh, I only mean what sort,' floundered the flushed
Maxie.
"Toots is a very good dog and bold as a lion. You
must take her with you whenever you go out; you're
safer with a dog, always.'
But Maxie did not go out alone, not at first; for a
while her aunt always accompanied her with Toots,
and inadoors the colloquy of Aunt Vole was as con-
stant as the clock-ticks. Sometimes she felt a vague
unease, would have liked to go out by herself to some
quiet place by the shore and think her own timid
thoughts for a while, but she was shy and unresist-
ing. She did not know that freedom is never to be
given, but only to be taken; she was like a child for
ever beckoning to the things that did not come -
tobacconists, perhaps. The tobacconist was never
heard of more, and in time Maxie's freedom was
enlarged, but there was generally a catechism.
'Well?' her aunt said at tea-time.
'Been a beautiful day,' bayed Mr. Vole, 'turned out
capital well.'
'What do you think,' laughed Maxie, 'I saw a man
with a 'cello going into a fishmonger's shop.'
Mr. Vole genially grinned.
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FISHMONGER'S FIDDLE
'With a what?' Aunt Vole gazed curiously at the
girl.
"Cello!' cried her husband.
‘A great big fiddle.' Maxie made a gesture in the
air with her two hands to indicate its gigantic size.
'Fiddle! Oh, I thought . . . humph.' And a silence
followed in which the powerful crunching of lettuce
became audible as an earthquake. Then Aunt Vole
took up her cup and you could hear her gulping her
tea - gallons of it. So Maxie took up her cup, and
Uncle Vole his, and they all gulped together.
'What shop did you say?' inquired Aunt Vole.
'Fish shop!' shouted her husband.
'A fish shop,' said Maxie too. 'It looked funny, you
know.'
'Fish shop,' echoed the elder lady, with a puzzled
frown. 'What were you in a fish shop for?'
'I wasn't, aunt; I only saw him go in.
'Where?'
'In Stamboul Street, I think it was. I was just pass-
ing by the fish shop and this man went in with a
great big fiddle.' Again Maxie made a curve in the
air with her hands.
'Did he say anything to you?'
'No, no, aunt, of course not.' A faint blush grew in
Maxie's cheek. 'He didn't see me,' she added.
'What did they want with a fiddle in there?'
'Oh, I don't suppose he was anything to do with the
shop,' explained the girl.
"They don't go into a fish shop for nothing,' Aunt
Vole pursued, 'fiddle or no fiddle.'
263
FISHMONGER'S FIDDLE
'No, he must have gone in to buy some fish,'
ventured her flurried niece.
‘Oh,' rejoined aunt, 'Roman Catholic, I dare say.
I shouldn't go that way again.'
Maxie felt as if she had been admonished for some
questionable behaviour.
"The best fiddler ever I heard was old Fishel Ayres.
Up at Cadmer End, t'other side of Kent, mother,'
mused Uncle Vole. "The master hand! He hadn't
got no sense, and he wouldn't be told no sense. But
he was the masterpiece with a fiddle; ah, good ocean!
Never had an overcoat on or an umbrella, not if it
rained bullock's blood. The last words he ever said
to me was, "I shan't last many more years." "No,"
I said, “you won't if you don't take care of yourself.
He'd only got an old policeman's jacket coat on, and
believe you me he was dead in a week. Played the
fiddle capital well, but you know: break out - and
you break down. Those were his last words to me.
Now that's a funny thing, ain't it?”
Aunt Vole had no pity for those roving customers.
"They are all for self, and no responsibility; they're
no good, and you can't trust them. A man should
settle down, he should settle down and bear his
burdens, bear his burdens properly. That's what a
burden's for.'
One morning Maxie took the dog with her and
went to the pier. It stretched out into the sea quite
a long way and was dotted with little cabins where
you had your horoscope told or your photograph
taken. Delicious it was on sunny mornings to hear
264
FISHMONGER'S FIDDLE
the thumps of your own feet and those of people
with parasols and fine-scented cigars all assembling
to hear the musicians, or to fish, or to dive, or to
go little journeys in rollicking little steamers.
Maxie had no wish to indulge in these accessory
joys; she was content to stroll up and down the long
planked pier, or to sit and divide the passing people
into those she liked - how few they were! - and
those she did not.
A small group stood silently staring at a man
sitting on a bench. He was covered with wild
pigeons, the birds hopping upon his head, his
shoulders, his knees, or picking peas from his hands
outstretched on either side of him. Only a few were
enjoying this vision of man and trusting birds; a
tiny boy with a hoop and a black velvet tam-o'-
shanter hat; a dame with a hare-lip and the austerity
of a judge; a stout gentleman in grey with a malacca
cane and a white hat; some sweethearts. Pigeons
pattered at the man's feet; he had a gentle face. As
Maxie came by the dog Toots bounded into the
group and snapped one of the birds in her jaws. The
other pigeons swooped away on thick flapping wings,
everybody shouted 'Brrr!' and the stout gentleman
fetched the wretched Toots such a blow with his
malacca stick that she yelped and dropped the bird
at Maxie's feet. It was dead.
'Oh, oh! What can I do?' cried Maxie to the man
who sprang up and confronted her. 'Is it dead, was
it yours?'
He picked up the dead bird and felt its breast, then
265
FISHMONGER'S FIDDLE
turned and dropped it into the sea. The boy in the
velvet hat leaned over the railing to watch the
feathered body floating and lifting with the waves.
The man he was not very old, he might have been
thirty or thereabouts, with a pale face and thick
brown hair - turned and stared at Maxie.
'I am so very sorry,' she stammered, trembling with
apprehension, or disgust, or pity. Toots had van-
ished. 'You had better apologize to God,' the young
man sourly said, walking away. Maxie was then still
more abashed, for the people glowered at her; the
little boy looked as if he was about to weep, and the
stout gentleman swore that the dog ought to be shot
or poisoned or cut in half; then he went stumping off
after the young man, thumping his malacca stick
dreadfully. Maxie fled off the pier, deeply angry
with the young man. It was wicked of him to say
such a thing to her, and she thought him quite nasty;
but Aunt Vole, when the quivering girl related the
misadventure to her, said it was only what you might
expect from such people, that it was a dog's nature,
and people ought to look after their birds better.
So emphatic was she, that a flame of forgiveness at
once began to flicker in Maxie's heart for the young
man whom the birds seemed to love.
In a few days she ventured on the pier again. It
was afternoon, and she did not take Toots with her,
but still she had a faint fear that some passer-by
would remember her as the girl whose dog had killed
the pigeon. In that episode it seemed to her as if
she had shared in a crime, dreadful and pitiful, and
266
FISHMONGER'S FIDDLE
that it would be long before the stout gentleman with
a cane and the velvet-hatted boy with a hoop would
cease to arraign her. Of the young man himself she
had come to think that he might even protect her
from them. None of these appeared, and no one else
affronted her. Then she audaciously paid twopence
to sit in a chair close to the band. At that moment a
solo was being played, a piece called Wiegenlied by
a composer named Schubert; so dreamy and beauti-
ful it was that Maxie at the close even clapped her
hands with delight. Everybody else applauded too,
and so the player had to stand up in the midst of the
band and bow and smile. Bowing and smiling, with
his arm cuddling the neck of a violoncello, stood the
young man of the pigeons.
Maxie knew at once. In the act of clapping she
stayed as if she had been turned into that pillar of
salt, her two hands still raised, her lips parted, and
her eyes very wide open, for he was looking at her
now. She remembered his sad serious gaze when he
had reproached her about the dead bird; she re-
membered his going into that fishmonger's shop;
remembered too her aunt's warning words when
she had spoken to her of that. How strangel and
how clever of Aunt Vole! It was exhilarating, and
yet almost terrifying, to know he was that same man.
But nothing could have been less terrifying than
their conjunction as she was leaving the pier. The
music was over, people were sauntering off to tea,
and suddenly he walked at her side, lifted his hat
and chaffed her about her savage dog - where was
267
•
FISHMONGER'S FIDDLE
it? Had it been shot yet, or poisoned yet, or had she
chopped it in half! No, yes; yes, no; confused
delight allowed her no more indulgent replies; but
when they parted at the pier gates she knew that she
would meet him again as surely as if he had asked
her to which he did not - that he was splendid and
clever, and that she must be careful not to let Aunt
Vole know anything at all about it.
At their second meeting, as they took tea together
on the pier, she told him of her marriage and her
misfortune. Blackburne smiled: sympathetically,
but he appeared to think it was funny. He was
rather queer, but irresistibly friendly, and Aunt
Vole had been quite wrong about him: nothing to do
with any fishmonger at all, he only bought fish to
eat. It was a pity, but all musicians had to, and he
vowed that he ate like a horse. Each day he played
on the pier three times, day in and day out; he was
like a cart-horse, never free, and he would rather be
a fishmonger, and he envied Maxie.
'Oh, but that is quite a mistake,' said the girl.
'I haven't any freedom.'
'Stuff!' cried Blackburne, so loudly that the wait-
resses turned and stared at him. In lower tones he
went on: 'You married and so achieved a status.
That's an important truth about marriage - for the
woman. She links herself with a man and ipso facto
becomes an individual. Until then she has only been
a nuisance, bullied by her mother, badgered by her
sisters, and spanked by her brothers - possibly even
by her pa. You were freed of all those affectionate
268
FISHMONGER'S FIDDLE
ties, and then your man obligingly left you, so now
you are more free than ever.
"He has left me alone, but not free,' murmured Mrs.
Morrisarde.
'Are you still fond of him?'
She shook her head. 'No, he is wicked.'
"Forget him then.'
'I have forgotten.'
And he did not go to church at all, how could he?
And he wasn't a Roman Catholic or anything like that.
'But Roman Catholics,' he declared, 'do at least
confess their sins to some real person; it's more than
the other sort ever do.'
"That's because they've got,' ventured Maxie, 'such
a lot to confess.'
'All the more to their credit then,' grinned Black-
burne (whose other name was Arnold).
'No,' Maxie was positive, 'they confess, and then
they go and sin the more.'
'Well, if their consciences are clear! Of course,' he
jested.
"The only one who can forgive is God.'
'Who's He?' the implacable musician returned.
'You told me to apologize to Him.'
'And did you?'
'It was so rude of you, I thought.'
"There you are, you didn't!' laughed Blackburne,
but noting her solemnity, he quickly added: 'No, no,
forgive me; you were not to blame. And you would
never have anything to confess, nothing worth
hearing.'
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FISHMONGER'S FIDDLE
'It isn't so,' cried she, 'no.'
'What! Shameful, shameful, Mrs. Morrisarde!'
And he swore he would kiss her sins away - let her
begin telling him at once!
He did not, he could not, give her those kisses then
and there, but Maxie imagined them, and was
secretly thrilled to be treated as a woman. Aunt Vole
never would forget that her husband had run away,
and her air imputed a blame to Maxie for that loss,
as if she had been silly and overlooked something,
something about his socks or his taste in cheese;
without the anchorage of a husband of some sort she
was a ship drifting, menaced by hazards all too
dreadful to name but not too ambiguous to signify.
Maxie Morrisarde continued to meet her friend,
to meet him daily, and to keep her aunt in ignorance
of him. Concealment was like a 'worm i' the bud,'
but still there was a bud, and it was opening, for
although Arnold was absurd and tempestuous and
spoke foolishly of God, he was handsome and care-
less and tender, and all her thoughts were of him.
Days of the week were days of timid bliss, but
Sunday was a wretch for dullness. In the Voles'
creed a visit to the pier on the Sabbath Day was an
act verging on blasphemy, and their niece was no
blasphemer, and no rebel. She had had a black serge
father and a mother full of hymns; they died young,
but they had not died soon enough - Maxie was no
rebel.
Aunt Vole had put on her Sunday afternoon bodice;
though her proportions were inelegant she knew she
270
FISHMONGER'S
FIDDLE
was a woman with refined ideas. Uncle Vole
snoozed in his easy chair; Maxie hymned at the
piano, with the soft pedal down; Toots wandered
disconsolately about the room, until Uncle Vole
opened his eyes and commanded her to lie down.
'Lie down, Toots,' whispered Maxie, and Aunt,
glaring up from a book, said "Toots!' so sharply that
it sounded like a sneeze. The dog complied, and
silence settled on them all like a mist in a vacant
garden. Ping. ping ping chimed the time-
piece bell.
•
'Ah,' Uncle Vole mistily murmured, 'it's three
o'clock.'
'Humph,' sighed his wife, and Maxie sighed
too, and went out into the garden to look at the
geraniums. The thought of her marriage, so dis-
turbing, so disillusioning, so inescapable, had lately
begun to sadden her. She was filled with longings,
restless as a bee in a window, for the afternoon was
fair and languorous, the pier would be full of gaiety
and the music would be sweet. How tiny, harsh and
ridiculous the garden looked, how vast and blue the
sky! Some clouds, in a small remote line, inched
along the horizon; dark and flat underneath, but
white and convoluted above, they were like travel-
ling snails.
'Aunt,' said she on returning to the parlour, 'is it
hard to get a divorce?'
As if the word were foul, fouler even than the word
'breed,' Aunt Vole flung it away from her. And
from Maxie too.
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FISHMONGER'S FIDDLE
"I just wondered,' temporized the niece.
'How could you! No modest Christian girl could
wonder or talk or think of such a wicked thing. At
least I hope not. Whatever did you get married
for?'
'It costs a bushel of money,' Uncle Vole sat up.
'Good ocean! It costs a fortune, my girl!'
'We may thank God for that,' his wife added.
'I could go to work.'
'What? I can't hear!' shouted Mrs. Vole. 'What
could you work at?'
'I could work at something, I could save. I don't
like him, and he doesn't want me.'
"That makes no odds, you've been joined,' declared
Uncle Vole, 'it's in the Book.'
'Besides, you're separated now.' Her aunt was
quite impatient with her.
'He doesn't want me, he has been so bad to me.'
'Suppose,' cried Aunt Vole, 'suppose he came back
again?'
'I couldn't bear it, he has been bad to me.'
'Or suppose he sent for you, as of course he might
as soon as he settles down and pays his debts? Then
you would be together again, and just as happy as
ever you were.' Aunt Vole could travel upside down
as easily as a wasp on a ceiling, and you dared not
remind her of this for she could just as easily sting
you.
'Aunt, I believe I hate him.'
'No, you don't. You can't, not your own husband!
I never heard of such nonsense. I don't know why
272
FISHMONGER'S FIDDLE
the Almighty allowed a Christian girl to marry such
a wretch - but He did; and you've got to carry your
burden. That's what a burden's for! Oh, Maxie,
no, no, no!'
'Listen to me for a minute, my dear,' began her
uncle. 'One of our leading butchers died last
Tuesday, Roland Dean. I spent many a happy half-
hour with him. And he used to keep a dog called
Brisket chained up in his yard, very savage it was.
There lived close by a soft-hearted man who wanted
to make friends with the dog, and kept on trying to
persuade Roland Dean to let it off the chain, just
for an hour now and again. Well, every dog has his
day, and so after a lot of jaw tackle Roland Dean did
let it off, and the first thing Brisket did what do
you think? Flew at him! Flew at the soft-hearted
man - Budge his name was - and nearly limbed
him. That's a fact. And always afterwards that
Brisket was so savage whenever she saw Budge that
he had to give up going past there altogether. So
you see! Things should be left alone. Stay as you
are, my girl, you're safer. Break out, and you break
down.
Maxie, timid and unfortunate, felt like an insect
caught in a web that the spider has forsaken. But
her delicate beauty throve, for in those hours
snatched almost daily with Arnold was all the life
and wonder she desired. Morning or afternoon –
she could not meet him at night – in the intervals of
his playing they would sit together and murmur and
smile, and he would say the most absurd, the most
F.F.
273
S
FISHMONGER'S FIDDLE
delightful things. And coming or going, the lively
streets crowded with people crudely gay or graci-
ously dignified, the very dust on the worn pave-
ments printed with a thousand footfalls, the sweet
air, the wide sea rolling a collar of milky surf along
the shore, were full of an enchanting savour; her
soul seemed to caress all these things, and her dark
fancies were lulled.
'Look!' he cried one day as he greeted her, ‘to-
morrow I'm to have a holiday. You must spend it
with me. We'll go along the shore, miles and
miles ...'
But already she was shaking her head, denying
him. It would have been difficult in any circum-
stances, but to-morrow would be Sunday.
'But you must!' he cried. 'What! I've a hundred
things to tell you and ask
and ask you. Are you afraid?'
"Yes,' she answered meekly.
'Afraid of those wretched Voles! Pouf! I'll teach
you!' And he was so contemptuous and jocular and
headstrong that she had to consent. She dared not
tell her aunt, and it was impossible to think of an
excuse for such an absence - on a Sunday, too!
How it was to be done she did not know, but she
did not care now; she had promised. In the morning
she slipped guiltily out of Crag Dhu before her aunt
could interrogate her, and ran to meet Blackburne
waiting by the sea.
They made off in a westerly direction far along the
sands. The air was windily bright, the tide was low,
but the waters were dull dark green, except for the
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FISHMONGER'S FIDDLE
tufts of foam the wind tossed upon the strand. All
over the soft wet shore were worm-like knots of
sand, and tiny recesses beside them like sunken cups
with a hole in the middle.
When Arnold asked her what excuse she had made
to the Voles she answered that she had not told
them at all, and did not know what the outcome
would be.
"Tell them the truth,' he said, 'I will come with you.'
And he kept on singing, or beating stones into the
sea with his stick. "Tell them the truth.'
By and by they came to a village, all cabins and
nets and husky canvas-clad fishermen. Beyond the
village was a river, with an old wooden bridge cross-
ing it. The river was wide and they sat down upon
its grassy margin before going over. Some way off
was a chalk pit scooped out of a green down, so
white that it dazzled the eyes, and beside it were tall
black chimneys. Nearer there were fields, vacant
save for a few writhen trees. And in the middle of
the river, where it widened to take the sea, lay a
pear-shaped island of sand uncovered by the ebb;
nearly an acre of flat smooth sand, like bleached
gold, washed by blue crinkled waves. On that silent
isle hundreds of snowy gulls were scattered, standing
motionless, snoozing in the sun, intensely white,
like a drift of divine flowers, and among them a few
rooks intensely black.
'Enchanting,' murmured Blackburne, 'how lovely!'
"They are like crocuses growing,' Maxie said.
'Yes, indeed,' the man replied. "That is how our
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FISHMONGER'S FIDDLE
sense of beauty sometimes drugs us - by analogies;
by things that in their beautiful deceit remind us of
things different but in their likeness. The voice of
the forest is like the voice of the sea, the rhythm of
a hill is the green wave, the torrent of storm is the
anger of God, and so on. Here are birds that make
you think of flowers. Pure nonsense! It is all un-
natural; it is only man's strange faculty for making
an ass of himself."
One of the gulls came soaring above them, and as
it slid by on motionless wings it lifted one of its pink
feet and scratched gravely at its tilted neck. Arnold
lounged beside Maxie and meditated solemnly.
She did not understand him, but the sunny solitude
was sweet, and she was happy.
'You cannot catch beauty,' he went on. 'She never
affirms herself or asserts herself. Beauty is that
which is denied – isn't it so?'
'I don't know,' said the girl, 'I know so little.'
"Ignorance is bliss, my dear, truly. What makes for
happiness? Not knowledge. Knowledge only real-
izes that it doesn't know very much, and that what
little it does know it doesn't know very well. You
just take up life and opportunity, learn the way to
do things and keep life in order that's all.'
'It seems to me God does all that for you.'
A deeper pink flush spread in her cheeks as she
said it. He is wise. To pray for them that hate you
and to forgive your enemies is noble, and that is wise
too. You pretend not to believe in Him, but in
spite of it your spirit knows.'
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FISHMONGER'S FIDDLE
'Perhaps, my dear priestess, perhaps. For a man's
emotions are exposed not merely in his relations with
his fellows; they are most nobly expressed in his
denial of the world in which he lives, and in his
sense of his soul's relation with its perceptions,
its concurrences with - that ideal kingdom of which
he only dreams and wonders. Yes,' he mused, but
as if not speaking to her and communing only
with himself as he gazed at the vision of the birds,
'beauty is that which is denied. Man so loves the
world that he craves this unbegotten beauty, not as
a sign of his mystical relationship to God, but as a
sequel and a solace to his own mute misgivings.
Without this we are but stocks and stones.' He
turned to her, smiling. 'You may not understand
this. I hope you don't.'
'I do! And it means that you are a Christian.'
'Oh, chuck, chuck! You've no more brains than a
frying-pan. But oh, Mrs. Morrisarde,' he leaned
on his elbow closer to her, 'I'm deeply fond of you.'
Her blush deepened as she slipped off her wedding
ring and tossed it into the river. 'Don't call me
that,' and she put her arms around him. He swore
that she had a soul as sweet as any of the white birds,
and the body of a queen - which was going rather
far, perhaps, but not really absurd, maybe.
The wind had fallen and the heat was increasing
when they journeyed over the bridge. A mile or two
along the road they found an inn and a haughty bar-
maid with bedevilled eyes and lustrous hair, who
said she could not provide them with lunch but that
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FISHMONGER'S FIDDLE
they might have sandwiches. They sat down in the
bar and ate them. Arnold drank beer and Maxie
drank wine. Presently they heard steps approaching
the open door and a voice lustily singing a song about
the Queen of Poland. An elegantly dressed man and
a lad came in together, flushed from swift walking,
their boots covered with dust.
'Foo!' said the gentleman to the barmaid, 'Foo, hot!
The barometer is - ah - quite a lot, I think. In the
shade, you know. Foo, dash it, yes!'
He had a large freckled face and triangular eye-
brows, with a tough chestnut moustache; his voice
was large and angular, too.
'What can we have to drink? How's that blister,
Jamie?'
The sylph of the barrels replied: 'Anything you
care for.'
'Well, yes; it must be something we care for. You
haven't any egg flip? No, you haven't any egg flip.
Then a bottle of melodious beer, if you please, with
a few chromatic splinters in it.'
Leaning upon his walking-stick, he crossed a leg
and sung again:
Oh, the Queen of Poland is my queen
And I'm her Salamander.'
'Jamie, have a bun? Isn't it hot, foo! What have
you done with your orange? Jamie, spotless treas-
ure, they haven't any buns, so what now, eh? Cocoa!
Oh, but Jamie, you can't; it's Sunday, it's rude. No,
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FISHMONGER'S FIDDLE
what you want for your complaint, my darling, is
is.
'I said some ginger-beer,' the boy interrupted
loudly.
'Ginger-beer! Oh, God bless me, yes. If you please,
madam.'
'Oh, the Queen of Poland is my queen,'
sang the gentleman, winking - or appearing to wink
at Mrs. Morrisarde.
Arnold and she walked in the fields again, inland,
far from the sea, towards a town where they could
catch an evening train for home. Fragrant and
alluring their track was, fragrant and tender those
untiring hours, with the glimpse of a kingfisher as it
dashed from a rock into the bosom of a stream;
rabbits, watervoles, ducks; the forlorn beggars who
all cajoled pence from Blackburne: 'I'm powerless,
abject,' he cried to her, 'they conduct their peaceful
raids upon my charitable emotions'; the cottage
where they got tea from a widow whose man had
been massacred by Zulus; the churchyard stone to
a sailor who had been 'done to death by Neptune;
Maxie felt she could go on roving thus for ever in
so bright and free a world, to hear and see all the
absurd things and all the beautiful things with the
man she loved.
But in the cool of the evening: "Tell me,' Black-
burne suddenly urged, 'what can we do about this
husband of yours? Can't you divorce him?”
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FISHMONGER'S
FIDDLE
She stopped quite still, facing him; not looking at
him but staring back along their travelled road. So
far they had come already, so very far! They were
in a long thin white rambling road, its herby borders
fringed with ragwort and succory. A willow brook
dribbled along one side, and endless fields ranked
with stooks of corn stretched on and on. The sun
was going down, the daylight moon which had
ghosted in the sky for hours was triumphantly
hovering. So alone they were, so quiet it was, that
their very footsteps had seemed to crunch the peace-
ful air. Her hand was laid upon his sleeve in a slow
caress.
'No,' she said, 'it's impossible, Arnold.' She had
come to accept her aunt's horror of divorce; not for
its hideous publicity, but because it defamed God's
will. Like all timid people she took a reason that
had not been hers, and made it her own, multiplying
its intensity. Never, never, never! And with that
dark question hopelessly argued there and then
between them she felt she was a miserable woman,
deeply sinning. Blackburne pleaded and scoffed
and stormed, but she cried on his breast and declared
she must never see him again.
'I believe, you know,' said he, 'that in seven years
you are free to marry again provided you hear no-
thing of him in that time; you are free.'
'Is that true?'
'I have heard so, in seven years, yes.
'How strange!' She was smiling, almost placidly,
'That's not long.'
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FISHMONGER'S FIDDLE
'Oh, no- the week after next!' But his sarcasm
crumbled at her gaze. 'Dear love, I want you.'
'Yes, yes,' she murmured.
'Do you know? Do you want it, too?'
She was bewildered by his caresses. 'Oh, what do
you want, Arnold?'
'A lover, a wife, a mistress,' he whispered, 'whatever
you can be to me.'
'If I gave you everything it would not be enough.'
'Come and live with me, Maxie. I'll care for you
dearer than any husband.'
Her refusal was the softest ever uttered, but it was
the ultimate answer.
With her arm linked in his they walked on rapidly
until they got to the railway station, where they sat
and waited for their train.
'Don't hate me, Arnold.'
'No, of course not,' he returned moodily. 'Isn't this
an ugly, rackety, exasperating hole? And that cursed
engine boasting and heaving and crashing with its
millions of empty trucks!'
Half an hour later they parted at the gate of Crag
Dhu. Should he wait to see if she were flung from
the door? No. In the gathered gloom she pressed
him to her as if bidding an eternal farewell.
'Don't go, Maxie. Come away now!'
'It has been a sweet little holiday,' she whispered,
and then ran off along the garden path.
As she entered the house Aunt Vole appeared in
the passage, bonneted and cloaked and wild-eyed.
With a stupid shriek she heaved herself upon the
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FISHMONGER'S FIDDLE
errant girl and burst into tears. 'Oh, Maxie, darling
child!' Little Mary Fitchew, the servant, stared
from the end of the passage like an owl.
'We thought you were dead!' sobbed the extra-
ordinary, the surprising, Aunt Vole. 'Dead
drowned!'
'Oh, Aunt! I'm all right, I've only been out with a
friend.'
'Or that you had run away!'
'No, no, aunt, I'm all right.' At this unexpected
reception she almost wept herself; but she patted her
hysterical aunt and hushed her. 'I ought not to have
gone, I know; I ought to have told you, didn't I?'
"Tell me, come into the parlour and tell me every-
thing,' adjured Aunt Vole. And there Maxie told
her everything.
'Dear, dear!' was her aunt's comment. 'And your
uncle is scouring the town after you.'
'Let me go to bed,' said the distracted girl.
'Oh, but wait for your uncle, won't you?'
'No, you tell him, aunt.'
'If you wish it, child. But promise me, promise me
this, promise you will never see that man again.'
Maxie sat silent for a few moments. 'I'll go away,
aunt, a long way away, and get work.'
'Oh, you uncle wouldn't hear of that. Do you want
to leave us? We are fond of you. And what work
could you do now? And your husband - don't for-
get him - what would your husband think of this?'
The pretty sinner bowed her head in tears, while
Aunt Vole, who envisaged a soul tottering on the
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FISHMONGER'S FIDDLE
brink of destruction, went to a shelf and reached
down a large heavy book.
"You will promise?' she urged, with strange un-
familiar gentleness.
'Yes,' said Maxie.
'Lay your hand on the book.'
Maxie laid her hand on the open book. She was
the creature of her environment, always. With her
lover she had no fears, for he was fearless. With
the Voles she laid down her pride; and she swore on
the book as Aunt Vole directed her. There at the
end of one of her fingers a verse met her glance:
'My heart panteth, my strength faileth me: as for
the light of mine eyes, it also is gone from me.'
Her aunt kissed her, and then startlingly knelt
down as if in silent prayer. But Maxie did not join
her. She sat staring at invisible things, a wonderful
sunset shining with eternity, and far-off ineffable
joys. Seven years! Seven years! And there was a
stupid man with triangular eyebrows who kept
winking at her and singing:
Oh, the Queen of Poland is my queen,
And I'm her Salamander.
283
TH
A LITTLE BOY LOST
HE BOY OUGHT TO HAVE A CRICKET BAT, TOм,'
said Eva Grieve to her husband one summer
evening. He was a farm labourer, very industrious,
very poor, and both were so proud of their only
child that they sometimes quarrelled about him.
They all lived together in a tiny field that was shaped
like a harp and full of sweet grass. There was an
ash tree in it, a water splash, a garden with green
things and currant bushes in corners; and of course
their little cottage.
'He can't play cricket,' Tom Grieve replied.
'Not without a bat, he can't; he ought to have a bat,
like other boys.'
'Well, I can't buy him no cricket bats and so he
can't have it,' said Tom.
'Why, you mean wretch...' began Eva with
maternal belligerence.
'For one thing,' continued her mate, 'he ain't old
enough - only five; and for another thing, I can't
afford no cricket bat.'
'If you had the true spirit of a father' - very scornful
Eva was 'you'd make him one, yourself."
So Tom chopped a cricket bat out of a slice of
willow bough and presented it to his son. The child
hardly looked at it.
'Course not,' snapped Eva to her sarcastic husband,
'he wants a ball, too, don't he?'
'You'll be wanting some flannel duds for him next.'
'I'll make him a ball,' cried Eva.
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A LITTLE BOY LOST
Eva went into the fields and collected wisps of
sheep's wool off the briers for her firstborn, and
bound them firmly into a ball with pieces of twine.
But the child hardly looked at that either. His
mother tossed the ball to him, but he let it fall. She
pelted him playfully with it and it made his nose
bleed.
'He's got no one to play with,' explained Eva, so
she cut three sticks for a wicket, and in the evenings
she and Tom would take the child out into the harp-
shaped field. But the tiny Grieve did not care for
cricket; it was not timid, it simply did not care. So
Eva and Tom would play while David stood watching
them with grave eyes; and at last Tom became very
proficient indeed, and so enamoured of the game of
cricket that he went and joined the village club and
no longer played with Eva; and the child wouldn't,
so she was unhappy.
'He likes looking at things, but he doesn't want to
do anything himself. What he ought to have is a
telescope,' said Eva. But how to get a telescope?
She did not know. The village store had stocks of
hobnailed boots and shovels and peppermint drops,
but optical instruments were not in demand, and
Eva might for ever have indulged in dreams - as she
constantly did - of telescopes that brought the in-
terior of heaven itself close up to you as clear as
Crystal Palace. But one day she went to a farm
auction, and there had the luck to meet a great
strapper of a gipsy man, with a husky voice, a long
ragged coat and a depressed bowler hat, who had
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A LITTLE BOY LOST
bought a bucketful of crockery and coathooks and
odds and ends, including a little telescope.
'Here,' Eva approached the gaunt man,' is that
telescope a good one?'
'Good!' he growled. 'Course it's a good 'un, and
when I say it's a good 'un I mean the gentleman's
gone to Canada, ain't he? And he don't want it.
Ho, ho!' he yelled, extending the instrument and
tilting it against his solemn eye. 'Ho, ho! I give
you my oath it's good. I can see right clean into the
insides of that cow over there!' Forty people turned
to observe that animal, even the auctioneer and his
clerk and his myrmidons. 'I can see his liver, I can.
Ho, what a liver he has got - I never see such a
liver in my life! Here, ' he dropped the glass
into Eva's hand, 'two shillings.'
Eva turned it over and over. It looked perfect.
'Have a squint in it,' roared the gipsy man. 'Go on,
have a squint at me!'
Eva was too dashed in public to do any such thing.
'How much do you want?'
'Look here, ma'am, no talk for talk's sake. Two
bob.'
Eva quickly gave him back the telescope.
'Eighteenpence, then,' wailed he.
She turned away.
'Come here, a shilling.'
Eva took the telescope and gave the gipsy a shilling.
Home she went, and David received the telescope
on his birthday. It occupied him for an hour, but he
did not seem able to focus it properly, and so he only
286
A LITTLE BOY LOST
cared to look through it from the wrong end. He
would sit on one side of the table and stare through
the cylinder at his mother on the other side. She
seemed miles away, and that appeared to amuse him.
But Eva was always taking peeps with it, and carried
it with her wherever she went. She would look at
the trees or the neighbouring hill and discover that
those grey bushes were really whitebeam; or tell you
what old woman had been tiggling after firewood in
the hanging copse and was bringing a burden home;
or who that man was riding on the slow horse
through the shocks of barley. Once when she
surveyed the moon she saw a big hole in the planet
that no one had ever mentioned to her before; and
there wasn't a man in the moon at all. But David
could not contrive to see any of these wonders, and
after a while the telescope was laid by.
A singularly disinterested child was David; not
exactly morose, and certainly never peevish, but how
quiet he was! Quiet as an old cat. 'He'll twine
away!' sighed his mother. Gay patient Eva would
take him into the spring woods to gather flowers,
but he never picked a bloom, and only waited silently
for her.
'Look at this, I declare!' cried she, kneeling down
in a timber lane before a strange plant. When its
green shoots had first peered into light they pushed
themselves up through a hole in a dead leaf that had
lain upon them. They had grown up now to four or
five inches, but they still carried the dead constricting
leaf as if it were a collar that bound them together;
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A LITTLE BOY LOST
it made them bulge underneath it, like a lettuce tied
with bast only it was much smaller. Eva pulled at
the dead leaf; it split, and behold! the five released
spears shot apart and stretched themselves flat on
the ground.
"They're so pleased now,' cried she. 'It's a bluebell
plant.'
And Eva, singular woman, delighted in slugs! At
a threat of rain the grass path in the harp-like field
would be strewn with them, great fat creatures,
pearly or black, with such delicate horns. Eva liked
the black ones most.
'See!' she would say to her son. 'It's got a hole in
its neck, that little white hole, you can see right into
it. There!' And she would take a stalk of grass
grass and
tickle the slug. At once the hole would disappear
and the horns collapse. "That's where it breathes.'
She would trot about tickling slugs to make them
shut those curious valves. David was neither dis-
gusted nor bored; he just did not care for such
things, neither flowers, nor herbs, nor fine weather,
nor the bloom of trees.
One day they met a sharp little man with grey eye-
brows that reminded you of a goat's horns. There
was a white tie to his collar, shiny brown gaiters to
his legs, and an umbrella slanted through his arm as
if it were a gun.
'How is your cherry tree doing this year, Mr. Barn-
aby?'
Mr. Barnaby wagged his head, and gazed critically
down at Eva's son.
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A LITTLE BOY LOST
"There was a mazing lot of bloom, Eva; it hung on
the tree like - like fury, till it come a cold wind and a
sniggling frost. That coopered it. A nightingale
used to sing there; my word it could sing, it didn't
half used to chop it off!' Then he addressed the lad.
'Ever you see a nightingale part its hair?'
David gazed stolidly at Mr. Barnaby.
-
'Say No,' commanded Eva, shaking him.
The boy only shook his head.
'No, you wouldn't,' concluded the man.
"There's no life in him. I'm feared he'll twine
away,' said Eva.
For David's ninth birthday she procured him a
box of paints, and a book with outlines of pigs and
wheelbarrows and such things, to be coloured.
David fiddled about with them for a while and then
put them aside. It was Eva who filled up the book
with magnificent wheelbarrows and cherubic pigs.
She coloured a black-and-white engraving of The
Miraculous Draught of Fishes, every fish of a differ-
ent hue, in a monstrous gamboge ocean; a coloured
portrait of David himself was accomplished which
inade her husband weep with laughter; and a text,
extravagantly illuminated, I am the Way, the Truth,
and the Life, which was hung above David's bed.
To what ambitious lengths this art might have car-
ried her it is impossible to say, the intervention of
another birthday effecting a complete diversion.
This time the lad was given a small melodeon by his
fond parents, but its harmonic complications embar-
rassed him, baffled him; even the interpretations of
F.F.
289
T
1
A LITTLE BOY LOST
'All hail the power' or 'My Highland Laddie' which
Eva wrung from its desperate bosom were enough
to unhinge the mind of a dog, let alone poor David.
David seemed to be a good scholar, he was obedient
and clean, and by the time he was due to leave
school at the age of fourteen he had won the right to
a free apprenticeship with an engineer who special-
ized in steam-rollers. How proud Eva was! Tom
too, how proud!
Yet he had not been at work three months when
he was stricken with a spinal infirmity that obliged
him to take to his bed. There he remained a long
time. The doctor prescribed rest, and David rested
and rested and rested, but he did not get better.
At the end of a year he was still as helpless. There
was no painful manifestation of disease, but it seemed
as if his will were paralysed, as if he had surrendered
a claim on life which he did not care to press. Two
years, three years rolled on, and four years went by.
The long thin youth, prematurely nipped, and help-
less, was a burden like the young cuckoo that usurps
a dunnock's nest. But even the cuckoo flits, and
David Grieve did not. For seven years thus he lay.
There were ill-speaking folk who hinted that he was
less ill than lazy, that his parents were too easy with
him, that he wanted not rest but a stick. At times
Tom, who had begun to feel the heavy burden of
years, seemed to agree, for there was nothing the
brooding invalid was interested in save brandy.
For years he was indulged with spoonfuls of brandy
in lieu of medicine, and a long row of bottles in
290
A LITTLE BOY LOST
Eva's kitchen testified that the treatment had been
generous. It had, to the point of sacrifice. Decent
steady-going people the Grieves had been, with the
most innocent vices - for vice comes to all but at
last Tom had to sink the remnant of his savings in a
specialist doctor from London. To the joy of the
devoted parents the doctor declared that a certain
operation might effect a cure.
So David was bundled off to the county hospital
and operated upon. For a while Eva breathed with
gaiety, an incubus was gone; it was almost as if she
herself had been successfully operated upon. But
soon, like a plant that flourishes best in shade, she
began to miss not only David but the fixed order his
poor life had imposed on her. His twenty-second
birthday occurred as he was beginning to recover,
and so they sent him a brand-new suit of clothes,
the first he had had since boyhood.
DEAR SON, (Eva wrote to him)
We are pleased to hear of you getting so well
thank God we are very pleased and miss you a lot
but cant expect no other you being our only little
pipit. Your father has bought you a suit for you to
ware when you get up and you can walk a drak serge
like himself what a tof. And will send them by
the parcel post off next week. Look careful in the
pockets.
And God bless love from
TOм and Eva.
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A LITTLE BOY LOST
He looked careful in the pockets - and found a
half-crown.
It was on an April day that he returned to his par-
ents, very much enfeebled, neither man nor child.
Seven years of youth he had foregone, his large
bones seemed too cumbersome for him and adult
thoughts still hung beyond his undeveloped flight.
But even to him the absence had taught something:
his mother had lost her sprightly bloom, his father
was setting towards the sere. Both of them kissed
him with joy, and Eva hung upon his neck in an
ecstasy of tears that made him gasp and stagger to a
chair.
Restoration to vigour was still far off. Sometimes a
villager would come in of an evening and chat with
him, or invite him to a party or a 'do' of some sort,
but David did not go; he was frail, and as it were
immobile. He was on his feet again, but hardly more
than enough to convey him about the harp-like
field. Restless and irritable he grew; his life was
empty, quite empty, totally irremediably empty.
The weather, too, also unmanned him; summer
though it was, the storms of rain were unending and
he would sit and sigh.
'What is that you're saying?' asks Eva.
'Rain again!'
'O Lord,' says his mother, 'so it is. Well!'
The grass was lush in the field, the corn grew green
and high, but the bloom of the flowering trees was
scattered and squandered. Whole locks of laburnum
would lie in the lane, the blossomy cream of the
292
A LITTLE BOY LOST
quicken tree was consumed, and the chestnut flowers
were no more than rusty cages.
But on one brighter eve he suddenly took a stick
and hobbled off for to take a walk. The wrath of
the morning had gone like the anger of a good
woman. The sky was not wholly clear, but what
was seen was radiant, and the shadows were august.
Trees hummed in the bright glow, bees scoured the
blooms without sound, and a tiny bird uttered its
one appealing note - Please! For half an hour he
strolled along a road amid woods and hills; then
the sky overdarkened quickly again, and he waited
under a thick tree to watch a storm pass over.
Clouds seemed to embrace the hills, and the woods
reeled in a desperate envy. Rain fell across the
meads in drooping curtains, and died to nothing.
Then, in a vast surprise, heaven's blue waves rocked
upon reef all gold, and with a rainbow's coming the
hills shone, so silent, while the trees shone and sung.
There was no song in the heart of the desolate man;
his life was empty, and even its emptiness had a
weight, a huge pressure; it was a fearful burden - the
burden of nothingness. Grieve turned back, and
when he came to an inn he entered and drank some
brandy. Others there who knew him offered him
ale, and he sat with them until his sorrow fell away.
But when he got up to go the world too seemed to
fall away, his legs could not support him, nor his
mind guide him. Two companions took him and
with his arms around their necks conveyed him.
home.
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A LITTLE BOY LOST
'He's drunk, then?' uttered Tom harshly.
'No, it's the weakness,' cried Eva.
'That's it,' corrected one of the men. "That beer at
The Drover ain't worth gut room. If you has five
or six pints you be giddy as a goose.'
For a week David could not rise from his bed,
but as soon as he was up he went out again, and as
often as he went out, he was carried home, tipsy.
Tom took his money away from him, but that did
not cure him.
'He's mad,' said the father, and at last Tom took
the suit of clothes, too, rolled them into a bundle,
and went and sold them to a neighbour.
So David Grieve lies on his bed, and his mother
cherishes him. Sometimes he talks to her of his
childhood and of school-treats he remembers on days
that smelt so he says - like coco-nut. Eva has
ransacked her cupboards and found a melodeon and
a box of paints and a telescope. The sick man
watches for her to come and feed him, and then he
sleeps; or, propped against a pillow he hugs the
melodeon to his breast and puffs mad airs. Or he
takes the telescope, and through the reverse end
stares at a world that is not so far away as it looks.
Eva has taught him to paint inscriptions, but he
repeats himself and never does any other than Lead,
kindly Light, because it is easy to do, and the letters
are mostly straight ones.
294
A DIVERSION WITH THOMAS
HE TOWN ITSELF IS ENCHANTING, VERY SMALL
THE
and shy and delightful; it just smirks and
snoozes - you know! And it has history and all the
suitable monuments, priory, ramparts, manor, alleys
and gateways, a tower where a marchioness was
smothered, and a guild of something or other. I beg
you to realize that you can't rush into a spot like that
by train, you dare not; it's a shrine; you must draw
nigh reverently and behold it. . . .
'I understand you.'
'You understand, yes; I assure you it cannot be
properly enjoyed apart from a congenial approach,
it is, well, I put it for simplicity, like a supremely
heavenly kidney in the heart of a superb steakpie.
We will go,' declared my friend Pondicherry, hook-
ing a compass to his watchchain and pocketing a
map, ‘on foot. The day will be fine and hearty.'
Pondicherry was a man of great parts but small
person, guardedly rotund, with a face that seemed
unused to amusement. He was always as spick and
span as a new envelope and at least once a day he
polished the gold or gilded parts of his spectacles with
a piece of soft leather which he concealed in his purse.
'Yes, on foot let us go,' agreed I, reflecting that a
visit to an Ancient Place is always a job for a pilgrim-
age, which is never anything but a job for the feet.
I took my stick, he brought out his umbrella. The
same obscure movement of genius led him to bring
his son, a modest lad, Thomas by name,
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'Exceptionally intelligent, that child, really,' ex-
plained Pondicherry to me. 'I find it so moving to
watch his mind unfold. What is a father if he is no
more than a parent? Absurd. He must be guide,
philosopher, friend, a refuge, an encyclopædia, in
fact the whole bag of tricks in one. It is delightful;
far be that day when he no longer needs me. I say
the whole focus of society must be upon the genus
boy; it responds. Dear me, how that child responds!
Would you believe it...?' And so on, and so on.
Away we went until we came to a hedged lane, a
wide grassy track, so exceeding full of ruts and
stones and hillocks and mud as to make our travelling
a matter of some discomfort.
'I never set foot upon a Roman road,' began my
friend -
'Is this a Roman road?' I exclaimed.
'Oh, yes, the genuine article,' declared Pondicherry,
'straight from the Cæsars. I never set foot upon a
Roman road but that some essence of history creeps
from boot to brain and I march with Agricola and
his cohorts.'
"True, I understand such thoughts, a sort of amnesia
of time; but this Roman way has so little of my
notion of a road that I feel all the swords of all those
cohorts must have been whacked into ploughshares
which have never ceased ploughing here.'
'Father,' interposed Thomas, 'what is a cohort?"
'A body of soldiers.'
'I thought it was a fowl.'
'A fowl, my boy! But you know what a fowl is?'
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At that moment a loud and vehement country-
woman hailed us. 'Be they your boys?' She appeared
from a small house set between an orchard and a
couple of yards, one of which was full of pigs and
the other of dung. 'Be they your boys?' she raged.
We declared that we knew nothing of any boys; what
boys?
"Thousands an 'em, just gone by, not five minutes.
They like a flock of locusts; two bushels o' codlins
stole from my archard and a duck trod on, it's mur-
der. Be they your boys!'
Mr. Pondicherry again said 'No.'
"Then whose be they?' roared the violent woman.
'I haven't the least idea,' replied he, ‘this little lad is
my only offspring.'
'I don't care whose they be or what they be,' cried
the fury, shaking her fist at my friend, 'they ought to
be poisoned, that's it and all, the dirty devils, ought
to be chucked into purgatory, straightaways, so
there!'
I led my friend and Thomas away to safety, ex-
plaining to them that we were apparently in the
track of some rascally boys and were being blamed
for their misdeeds.
‘Father, what is a purgatory?'
'A kind of half-way house to the deuce knows
where. As a matter of fact there is no such place.'
'I thought it was a swimming-bath.'
'A swimming-bath, my boy! But you know what a
swimming-bath is.'
We heard, not far ahead it seemed, noise of shout-
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A DIVERSION WITH THOMAS
ing and the sound of bugles, a gamut unmatched for
profane indelicacy. Advancing towards us was a
fat sheep, incredibly nimble, pursued by a man of
whose nimbleness the sheep made mockery and
scoff.
‘All my ship be going the Lord know wheres,' cried
the panting distracted drover, 'all through a gang o'
boys-be they yourn? May they be fog-lasted. You
putt 'em at a job o' work, master, or I'll have their
blood. I had to come back for this 'ere 'un, I had to
come back.'
'Ah,' chimed Pondicherry affably, 'so this is the one
more than the ninety and nine.'
'Ninety! There's three hundred ship in that flock,
or there was, fog-last 'em; there should be when I
gets 'un back, however. Be they your boys, master?'
No,' said Pondicherry hurriedly, and we began to
help the man with his animal. But getting it back
was not so easy as getting the camel through the eye
of its peculiar needle. I am persuaded that it was
not man's first disobedience nor the fruit of that
forbidden tree, not Eve, not Helen, that first brought
woe into the world, but a sheep; when sheep first
stepped into Eden peace popped out of it. In short
this one exhibited an aversion to walk anywhere at
all, and as for progression in the destined path its
disapproval was as a mighty bastion. The man
slipped a belt from his waist, and buckling it round
the neck of the beast he began to hale it forwards and
we to push it from behind. After immense exertions
the sweating drover begged us to go and collect his
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A DIVERSION WITH THOMAS
flock, somewhere up the lane, and drive them back
to him. Only by such means could this monster be
persuaded. 'She'll go with 'em, but not without 'em.
And keep all your boys from me or their blood I'll
have, I will.'
So we went on and soon espied sheep. Sheep were
in the lane, in the fields to the left, and in the fields
to the right more sheep revelled and wandered,
terribly dispersed.
'Good heavens!' protested Pondicherry, 'let us get
on with our journey, it is a hopeless job, we shall
never get those sheep, we shall never get anywhere.
Leave the old wretch to do the best he can with his
ewe.'
So we did this and hurried on, shamefully silent,
thinking of the drover.
'Father,' piped little Tom, 'what is a ewe?'
'A ewe is a female sheep.'
'I ... I thought it was a tree.'
'A tree, my boy! But surely you know what a tree
is?'
We left the Roman road but we did not leave our
difficulties. Other occasions, several, heaped all
their opprobrium on us. There was a man with
onions from Brittany, an interview with an uncon-
vinced and unconvincible policeman, and then that
astounding altercation with a suffering charabanc
party. We renounced and denounced those boys;
we solemnly, indeed excessively, paraded our entire
dissociation from them, but the applewoman had
overtaken the drover, the drover had connived with
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A DIVERSION WITH THOMAS
the policeman, and the policeman bore down upon
the charabanc party. We escaped molestation, but
our hazard had been fearful for we could not invoke
a single impartial witness.
Why, oh, why,' groaned Pondicherry, 'should we
be confounded with this horde of envenomed
ruffians? We haven't even seen 'em! Is it because
Thomas is with us! I suppose so. It's a devilish
bad joke, you know. Let us slip into the fields and
go along by the river. Our whole adventure is in
peril.'
Into the fields went we, but how futile. It was by
the river that we ran into an outlier of these mythical
miscreants, fifty skull-caps, each with a coloured
knob atop, blue, yellow, green, red, white, and be-
neath each cap walked a larrikin of the genus boy.
He had a bugle or he had a bat, had a ball, a stick, a
yell, in truth the quintessential demon pranced and
cavorted. Conspire as we would we could not escape
them and anguish dropped from Mr. Pondicherry's
eyes as we approached the Ancient Place in the tail
of a particularly exasperating troup of the fiends.
Pondicherry almost sobbed: 'It is one entire horror
to me. This horde, this rabble, has been let loose
upon us. It is tragic, the whole spirit of the place,
the sense of the past, the eloquence and dignity of
history is being smitten, as it were, in the nose,
smack! It is tragic, the very soul of poetry is
wounded.'
Pondicherry was right, these imps were everywhere,
whooping in alley and garden, swarming in the
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A DIVERSION WITH THOMAS
priory, massing upon the tower where the marchion-
ess was smothered, and hobbledehoying on the
bridge. The ramparts were racketed by assault,
decorum outraged, glamour mocked, and pande-
monium established. The places of mere refresh-
ment were denuded of every bottle and bun. By
heavens, it was impossible to obtain the small relish
of a ginger-pop for the exhausted Thomas, and so
in pain and discomfiture we turned our back upon
the Ancient Place and retreated to the station. Be-
hold! Boys were already on the platform before us;
behind many others were joyously marshalling for
the train.
'No, I know nothing of these monsters, sir,' declared
my friend Pondicherry to the stationmaster very
abruptly and passionately. "They are,' he continued
to me, 'the curse of society, a blight, a catastrophe.
May I be switched!'
Then a tall man came upon the platform. It was
an old acquaintance whom I had not seen for a
couple of years. I went up to him.
'My dear fellow,' he cried, ‘is that you? Well, well!'
After a few exchanges I learnt that he was now a
master at the famous school in the neighbourhood.
He had come over in charge of two or three hundred
boys.
'I have seen them,' I murmured, ‘a band of vipers,
indeed.'
He grinned: 'Yes, rather a handful. I arranged for
them to walk over, just to tone them down, six
miles, you know. I came over by train this morning
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A DIVERSION WITH THOMAS
early so as to get the town to myself. Adorable
place, isn't it? So calm, so mature, so full of languor,
just exquisite, don't you think?'
'My friend,' I exclaimed with emotion, 'come and
tell it to Pondicherry, come.'
We moved through crowds of boys who seemed
suddenly transformed into well-looking modest
youths of behaviour and breeding. They touched
their skull-caps to my friend murmuring 'Good
afternoon, sir,' with almost an excess of politeness.
As we approached the Pondicherries I heard the
one unto the other say:
'It's a decoction for killing bugs, Thomas.'
"Why, father, I thought it was a bottle.'
'A bottle, my boy! But surely you know what a
bottle is?'
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MR. LIGHTFOOT IN THE GREEN ISLE
I
HAD NOT TAKEN MORE THAN SIX PACES ACROSS THE
at
bridge at Waterford, that is to say I had not lived
longer than two minutes in Ireland, when I was
accosted by a big poor man in old boots - so very
old indeed that he moved like some soft-walking
spirit - who offered me his assistance in a voice at
once colossal and husky. I was grateful, for to be
strange and weary in a city at seven o'clock of the
morning, with the sunlight lying on the flats of the
houses heavily yellow, and the air not kind to cough-
ing people, is no sort of a way to be beguiling the
hours of your ease. So I was very grateful to my
friend who wanted to guide me to an hotel, he saying
this to me, and I looking already like the third part
of a tramp:
"To the Imperial Hotel, sir, you should go, patron-
ized by Royalty and all the officers of Europe.'
We approached that hostelry, but the number of
its windows and the gravity both of its appearance
and my own abashed me, and it was in another
quarter I decided to choose my lodging. So I
handed my friend threepence. He surveyed patheti-
cally the contents of his palm, and scrutinized me
with those mild blue eyes.
'Ah, begod, I can't get a drink with that. . . it's
sixpence a pint in Waterford!'
'But you could,' I said, 'you could buy a banana
with it.'
He gazed at me uncomprehendingly, and I hast-
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MR. LIGHTFOOT IN THE GREEN ISLE
ened to give him another twopence, which left him
with still a margin for anxiety.
In the afternoon I walked to the top of Yellow
Road, where there was to be a hurling match, and
there I met a young man standing outside of his
house. Discovering that I was a stranger he took me
to walk with him. He was a curious youth with a
voice that fluttered from high falsetto and plunged
to gruff profundity.
"You are a bit of a walker,' said he as we paced
along, the sun shining very clear and straight upon
us. You are a boy for the walking,' and he wiped
his neck and eyes.
'I am used to it,' said I. 'It isn't at all uncommon for
me to do my thirty miles a day.'
He looked ahead reflectively. "Thirty miles is a
great way to walk. Would you believe it, I took a
drove of heifers from Clonmel to Waterford a fort-
night ago in one little bit of a day.'
'How far is that?' I asked him.
"Thirty-one miles,' he said, ‘and forty-three cattle,
or maybe forty-two . . . thirty-one miles!'
'I did a good journey myself a week or two ago,' I
said. 'I walked a matter of forty miles in a little
over ten hours.'
'And the next day,' he continued, 'I drove two
hundred and eighty-three sheep from Ballyporeen
to Carrick.'
'Is that very far?'
'About forty-one miles,' said he. 'It was in the
afternoon we did it. . . they were
they were
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MR. LIGHTFOOT IN THE GREEN ISLE
very good sheep and we sold them well. It is dry
walking.
We approached a shop and entered. I bought a
half-pint of Guinness, which was given me in a stone
bottle commonly used for ginger-beer, while he
took a pint of porter.
'Whisky,' he said, 'is no drink for chaps the like
of us. Now we can stop when we are half drunk
agin we fall, but whisky is a dangerous drink, it
defeats ye. If you're fond of the walking I could
take you a little walk on Thursday next.'
'Yes, I should be very pleased,' I said, 'on Thurs-
day.'
'Ah,' he cried, 'we'll have a right ramble, a cushy
day! We'll get two sticks and I'll take you to Thul-
gare, and bring you round by The Sweep and so on
to Mornington. Come along now.'
We marched upon the road again. 'Grand country
about here, and I'll be showing it you. There's a fine
bit of corn now,' said he, starting at lah and running
down the me ray doh of his voice.
Now I had it in my mind that I could
grow better
oats on the roof of a hencote than the crop I saw in
the field he indicated, but I did not want to wound
him, so I said, 'Ah!' as if the prospect delighted me.
'What would ye think it 'ud thresh out to?'
I could not say.
‘Ah, but give a guess.
I'd no knowledge of such things.
'No? I suppose ye haven't. Well, on Thursday
then we'll have a right ramble, a cushy day.'
F.F.
305
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MR. LIGHTFOOT IN THE GREEN ISLE
Soon we approached a young bull straying in the
road.
"There's a nice bull,' he said.
'Ah!' said I.
'Now, what would you think is the worth of that
bull?'
'I don't know.'
'But put a price on him now, go on!'
'Twenty pounds.'
'Ah, you might as well offer a ha'penny! Forty
guineas is the worth of that bull. Oh, he's the boyo,
he is,' he screamed, and shouting harsh words at the
animal he leaped towards him with horrific gestures
that put the fear of seven-and-twenty devils into the
heart of the bull, who leaped over the low hedges
and was never seen again. We went on in silence
until he began murmuring half to himself, 'On
Thursday then. . . . I'm a man of me principles,
mind ye
... we'll have a right ramble ... begod
it is hot! a cushy day. We'll get two sticks.
two little twigs . . . and I'll take ye to Thul-
gare.
He stopped, and took me by the arm. 'Now, what
do ye think of that mare?' he said, remarking a
female horse that stood in a field with a foal beside
her.
'A beautiful animal,' said I.
'Put a price on her.'
'Fifty pounds.'
He spat before me with fine facility, looking sternly
in my eyes.
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MR. LIGHTFOOT IN THE GREEN ISLE
‘A hundred guineas is the worth of that mare,' said
he.
Again we walked on, ‘and I'll bring you round by
The Sweep and so on to Mornington."
Ah me, the many things I promised to do for him!
To deny him led to such unending argument that I
promised a thousand promises which I couldn't
fulfil if I had had a thousand good intentions, which
I had not. As, for instance:
Would I take him to Duncannon on the steamer?
And to the boxing-match on Friday evening?
Would we go to Tramore together?
Would I give him a pair of old boots?
And find him a job in England?
Am I an angel now to be dangling largesse, or the
Lord Himself come to be dropping sweetness and
fatness upon him like a stray bird in a nest?
We came back to the town and he prepared to
leave me:
'On Thursday, then, we'll have a right ramble, a
cushy day. Give me sixpence,' said he. Search my
pockets as I would I could but find fourpence
ha'penny, and with this I endowed him.
2
It is a long way to Tipperary, and I suppose it was
the song that sent me there. Wondrous, is it not,
the insignificant motives that inspire some compli-
cated efforts?
'Let you be giving me a penny, sir,' said the old
307
MR. LIGHTFOOT IN THE GREEN ISLE
woman to me. I had but just started upon that
sunny journey, and she hailed me.
'Let you be giving me a penny, sir.' I gave it.
'May the Great God take ye to heaven, sir,' said
she, and then I wished I'd given her a shilling, for,
thought I, if I get to heaven for a penny, the Lord
Himself might forgive me a great deal for the odd
elevenpence.
And, indeed, then I am specially blessed, for as the
old woman goes wending away I stand looking back
at her, and there by the highway I see a little group
of farm buildings and trees just sitting across the
top of a low bank, so very green, soft as silk it was,
with no blemish upon it. Across that green some
white ducks go a-travelling; the wind blows their
voices to me. There is, too, a line of poplar sprigs,
very slender and fan-like, their stems no bigger
than altar candles, and they sigh like women in
their grieving.
I got out a post card, one of those rarely tinted and
admirably chased with a golden edge which I carry
for the purpose, and, licking my pencil stub like a
greengrocer's boy, I made a poem, one of those
things with no rhyme in it, and with rhythms like a
mangled corkscrew, with some lines as short as a
full stop, and some unending ones on which you peg
out very sweet notions as indiscriminately as a
washerwoman hangs out her underwear, and then
magnify with an exclamation mark.
'Go on, now,' said I to myself then, and go on I did,
like a sheep. It is not uncommon to feel yourself
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MR. LIGHTFOOT IN THE GREEN ISLE
convincingly bullied by yourself into doing the
thing you would not want to do. I'd love to be
standing in that place, with a coin of gold in my
hand, this very minute, until I'd become a pillar of
salt with looking at it, but I went on until I came to
the borheen.
Now, a borheen is a lean lane, full of deceitful
notions, with hedges as high as a workhouse wall
and brambles like the midriff of a great fish. Within
a borheen the travelling stranger is beset as com-
pletely as the slice of meat in a sandwich, no more
view of the surrounding world, no more will of his
direction. Does a serpent twist? Then a borheen
is a serpent bereft of its reason. What is the longest
thing in the world? A borheen, for it's longer than
a sad Sunday. In ten miles or in twenty miles you
may happen upon a cabin. You approach it, you
drop a glance over the half-door, and you perceive
an old, old woman sitting on some steps leading to a
loft. There may be a pig sitting before her, appar-
ently worshipping her, and there will certainly be
hens, very furtive hens, and a cauldron. The old
woman regards you with apprehension, with awe.
You ask to be directed and she tells you to go on
and inquire at the next house. You indulge this vain
pursuit for as long as your sanity survives, or until
you meet a pig coming towards you. There will be
no more than just room for him to pass you, and so
you will stand like one Christian meeting another,
or like any man with a gush of charity in his breast.
But this pig will fear you, he will turn tail, and be-
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MR. LIGHTFOOT IN THE GREEN ISLE
hold you have a pig upon your hands, for, wherever
you go now, you have upon you the appearance of
driving that poor pig before you. You will endea-
vour to conciliate him, or persuade him of your
passionate friendship, but there is no mortal man
can appease a pig and it not wanting. He will be-
have like a Kaffir, and finally you will dislike him—
and tell him so.
'A great nuisance was that pig to me,' I said when
I regained freedom upon the high road once more,
'and a great pity that I only bought a pennyworth
of blessing of that good old woman. I'll go no more
into those borheens, so go upon your journey now.'
And I was just going when I heard the stir of a vast
noise behind me. A great grey ass was standing in
the road and braying as if he were the king of all
asses, as indeed he was, for, look you, along the
road a car came flying with military persons in it.
The horn went Honk! Honk! but the ass went
He! Haw! and lay down in the road before them,
lashing his heels as if he'd tear the skin off the sky,
and screaming triumphantly as the car came to a
stop upon his very neck.
'Get out of it, or we'll break your heart,' yelled the
soldiers, and the car pumped noises at him like a
big gun, but the ass trailed his carcass in the road
with no fear at all, until someone leaped out of the
car, kicked him where there was no dignity, and
then pushed him into the borheen, where, I thought,
if he meets that little pig of mine, it will not be
Greek meeting Greek, for its just Ajax to a sun-
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MR. LIGHTFOOT IN THE GREEN ISLE
flower that he will destroy my little pig and devour him.
'But go on now,' said I to myself, and I walked on
into Tip, where I got some interesting food - but it
was queer feeding. Better a fly in the ointment,
believe me, than one in the blancmange. You will
always have a cosy for the teapot in Ireland, and a
slop basin, but there will be something odd and
incinerated about the teapot; there will always be
insects in the milk, cracks in the cup, and things in
the sugar basin besides sugar!
'Waiter,' I said, 'this tea is very weak!'
'Is it, begod, sir, then I'll just put another half-
pound in it,' and, taking from his waistcoat pocket a
thimbleful of tea wrapped in a screw of paper that
had once contained tobacco, he emptied it into my
teapot, saying soothingly, 'It 'ull be all right now.'
In the evening I went into a bar. She had eyes as
soft as darkness and a voice like a singing swallow.
'A drop!' I cried to her, for she was reading on a
book and did not heed me. When she had given me
the whisky, she resumed her book.
'May I be stricken to my doom this minute,' said
I, quite to myself, 'if it is not poetry and new poetry
that girl is reading.' At that a handsome young man
came in and stood before her.
'Good evening, Mary.'
'What is it you're wanting, Peter?"
'Stout,' said he; 'and what is it you're reading,
Mary?'
'Poetry,' said she; 'listen to this, Peter,' and she
read out, in the soft voice that was like the singing
3II
MR. LIGHTFOOT IN THE GREEN ISLE
of swallows, some verses. Mary went on reading
the poems, and there was no laughter upon the
handsome young man; we were both filled with
delight.
Pleasant thoughts I had that night as I pulled the
quilt up to my neck, for pleasant it is to sleep in a
country where the very donkeys are valiant, and
even the barmaids woo you to the muses.
3
Currency notes, like time and tide, wait for no
man, and when a small packet of them has the itch
for exchange there is none can say it nay. At least
so it happened to me when I had been walking for
all a week in Wexford and Wicklow. Mine would
go- oh, how they would go! I would turn a black
one into two red ones, and they'd fly off like little
pigeons, swift birds with the large appetite of tur-
keys, until I became savage with impecuniosity. So
I cast about in my mind for some notion of replen-
ishing the lean pocket, or of dealing with the situ-
ation. Meditating fitly I approach a board that
bears a bill upon it, a bill with strange blue words
beneath a handsome woodcut of a bull prancing
and breathing out smoke, a sweet figure indeed.
These were the words:
Hould that one!
Tear the skin off him!
and take it to
James O'Loughlin,
Who gives best prices for skins and hides.
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MR. LIGHTFOOT IN THE GREEN ISLE
Well, I had little stomach for such jobs. I looked
into the fields where there were grazing heifers and
fat steers, but there was not one mild old cow, or
even a calf, that I was prepared to dispossess of its
only garment just for the profit of myself and this
Mr. O'Loughlin.
I walked on a mile until I saw another bill tacked
upon a tree, about a man at Carrick who was clam-
ouring for:
Five thousand tons of Blackberries!
Get 'em! Get 'em! Get 'em!
I studied his invitation, but I concluded there were
not five thousand tons of blackberries in the rolling
world, leave alone any part of Ireland that I could
step across before they were all gone. And what was
the use of a couple of pounds in a handkerchief to a
great blackberry captain like that! Besides, there
were no blackberries to be got yet, they were only
just podgy little green buds squeezing on the twigs.
So I proposed to myself a resolution: I would not
spend a penny before the fall of night, and I'd wait
till my stomach was barking before I would give in
to it. (Carried.) Isn't eating a wretched means of
keeping the life jogging in your bones? And it is
not healthy. I considered the fields in their beauty
upon either hand of me. 'Observe,' said I, invoking
the unconscious sky, 'all these things are living -
yes, they are thriving - upon air and mud, and not
toiling nor spinning nor starving; air and mud!'
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MR. LIGHTFOOT IN THE GREEN ISLE
I became curious about that, and thoughts began to
unfold within me.
'Who has heard,' I said in my large manner, 'who
has ever heard of pangs or of hunger among the
green leafy things that live on air and mud? Nutri-
ment! Why the rich carrot is buried in it. Who
ever heard of an elm tree suffering from neuras-
thenia, or of a cucumber with a debilitated lung?
What vegetable product ever went mad or contracted
chilblains? Are there pills for potatoes, or plasters
for parsnips? Before the hardy but excellent onion
the paregoric drop pales its utterly ineffectual fires.
Take the gorgeous dandelion: that incomparable
beast may have its bad moment when bitten by a
cow, but it has, I am persuaded, a pleasant pastoral
immunity from pains in the back. Isn't eating the
wretchedness! I will not spend a penny before the
fall of night.' This was in the early morn. Alas, a
good resolution that lasts longer than one o'clock
becomes a penance and no virtue at all. Vows are
made, not with the intention, but with the expecta-
tion of being broken. Crossing a mountain range, I
saw not a soul nor the sign of it in the miles behind
me, nor in the miles before, and I tell you the bird
of hunger was roosting on my breast. I bore it
until I could stand no longer, and I sat down to con-
trive in my mind the kind of meal I would have if I
ever came to a place where I could lavish my rich
money. There would be a beautiful girl to wait
upon me, the table to be set like snow for the linen,
and like a Jew's pantry for the silver. And she
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MR. LIGHTFOOT IN THE GREEN ISLE
would speak to me like this, with all the notes of a
dove in her wooing voice:
I
'Chops?' she would say.
"Two of them,' say I, and a bottle of stout,' I say.
'One?' says she.
'Two of them,' say I.
There would be loaves in dozens, bastions of
cheese, and little round ounces of butter. All of it
would be consumed by me. In time I awake from
this dream and shuffle upon my courses, going on
from hour to hour until at last I have put the moun-
tains behind me and come upon a road. Upon this
go on and on, and from mile to mile, meeting not
a soul or the sign of it, until suddenly, hard upon
five o'clock, I see a little round thing lying in the
road. You remember that footprint in Crusoe's
island? This was an onion. Here at last was
humanity, and if this irascible herb was a sign more
pungent than propitiating it at least denoted the
possibility of a meal with some grace, however pro-
vincial. When I got to the place there was no tea
in it, and no beer in it; whisky there was and wel-
come, and I with no food in me since the clock was
nine! I have,' said the old lady - Anne Kennedy
was her name and beguiling were her ways - 'I have
some lemonade and some bread and butter.'
'Lay on, then,' said I. She was a very sweet old lady,
and she produced a loaf so huge that she lifted it
with difficulty; a yard long it was, and nigh upon
two feet wide. It would have been the fair snack
even for Magog and his twin brother with the ugly
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name. Here it was, then, and hot from the oven.
"This fine drink,' I said, ‘and this fine food, may be
the destruction of me, but here goes - if I die in five
minutes.'
However, I did not die, and I was in Dublin itself
by eight o'clock, where a queer adventure befell me.
4
In Dublin I was driven by necessity to lodge in a
mean crooked little hotel, that had bullet holes in
its windows, where I ate sausages and eggs until I
nearly burst, not with pure joy of such food, but
because I was almost hungry enough to eat a billy-
cock hat. On a tramping journey the egg dogs you
like a punctual ritual of flagellation; it is flung into
all your meals like the apple of discord - that regret-
table pippin; fried out of truth into toughness it
becomes not meat but mendacity. Were there any
adoration left in me, I would adore as the jewelled
prop of the world any maid who produced for me a
tin of sardines, or even the mere shavings of a nut.
But listen now to the two men who are talking
behind me as they shuffle the cards for a game.
"The pigs I bought this morning, James?'
'I seen 'em.'
'Four pounds each, James!'
'Ah!'
"They'll do well, James.'
"They'll do well in twelve months."
"They will, James?'
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'No doubt at all unless something comes on 'em.'
'And it won't, James?'
'It should not.'
'Well, James, pigs are pigs.'
Somehow that conversation decided me.
'Madam,' said I to the house lady, 'could you put
me up this night?'
'Well, I could and I couldn't.'
I waited.
"There is but the one room left, which you may
share with Neal Callaghan, a very pleasant boy.'
'Neal Callaghan,' I thought, 'I would do a great
deal for a man with a name like that - but ..
'Yes,' said she, 'there are separate beds.'
"Thank you, ma'am, I'll be pleased to share with
Neal Callaghan.'
So she took a candle and me up two flights of stairs,
a few steps down, a little bridge to be crossed, round
a corner or two, and again up a flight, for all the
world as if we were a couple of domestic hares
deceiving some kind of a hound, till we came to a
room which was numbered 14. Two beautiful white
beds were in it.
"That will be yours,' said herself, pointing to the
one by the window. I left my satchel there and went
to walk abroad in the city of Dublin, where the gut-
ters were lined with ragged children and women
offering things for sale. There were a thousand arms.
outstretched and voices crying:
'See the three rich apples!'
"The four fine plums a penny!'
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'A penny for that onion!'
The distracting thing about Dublin, as about all
Irish towns, is its domestic architecture. It doesn't
merely decay, it is smitten by a disease from which
there seems to be no recovery. The walls fall in-
let them fall. Is there a conflagration - well, then
we go, and the ashes are triumphant. If a window is
broken, it is like the vow of a bad woman - broken
for ever. Calamity here is progressive. I said as
much to a Dubliner.
'Begod, then, ye should see the slums of Belfast!'
said he, implying that even if Dublin were Sodom
there was a very complete Gomorrah elsewhere.
I bought some Sein Fein papers, and went home.
Creeping in unobserved I seized a candle and sought
my room. His lordship was already in bed. He lay
with his back to me, but I could see from the corner
of my eye that he was slumbering. A slight fellow
he seemed, and, thought I, if he does misbehave I'll
have no difficulty in subduing him. So I did off my
clothes and was just taking a last peep in the glass to
see what sort of a face the sun had left me when the
voice behind me said:
'Are ye sure ye're in the right room?'
Just those simple words, nothing extravagant about
them, but, by the Lord, I was badgered to the heart
for the voice was the voice of a woman! What
could any man do there in the shame of his un-
dress?
'I stood stone still, let time run over me.'
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Then I sat upon the bed and put some decency
upon me.
'Yes, oh, yes, it is my room truly,' and, taking the
candle, I pulled back the door.
"There you are,' I said, lighting up the number
triumphantly, 'No. 14, my very own room, and I
think you'd better be going.'
She turned round to me at that, smiling with excel-
lent eyes - a fine white-handed girl with a mouth of
sweet shape.
"That's nothing,' she said, 'next door is 102, and my
sweetheart is in No. 79.'
Very friendly she was, and yet I sat down upon her
bed and urged her to leave. But of course she was
disinclined.
'I will not,' said she, and there was no moving her
from it.
'Shut the door,' she says, 'and don't be making a
noise, for me sweetheart's in a room somewhere on
this landing.'
'Your sweetheart! God help me!'
'Oh, there's no harm at all in the world.'
'Is your sweetheart Neal Callaghan?'
'I never heard that name on him,' she said, 'but it's a
good thing I heard you, or what would I do in the
morning when I woke in my innocence and see you
lying across there!'
Indeed, that was a serious thought, but I could see
her shaking with her laughter under the quilt.
'I'd not be rising against you were gone - how could
I, under the Lord!'
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'No more would I,' I said to her.
When I had finished my dressing, I went to the
landlady and told her of my misfortune. Confessing
her folly, and screaming with glee at my recital, she
made a good explanation to me. She led me to
another room where I was abed and sleeping till the
clock was one, when my Neal Callaghan came in
with the madness of drink raging, skinned to the
very eyes. He flung his hat out of the window, and
his collar into the ewer; the candle slipped from his
fist and his foot crushed it. He lay on his bed smok-
ing a shag of a pipe, and letting a blather of whisky
and jockeys out of him. He cursed me for some
minutes and groaned for hours - did not I, too!
Late it was when I went to my breakfast, and there
in the big room sat the girl with a tall fierce-looking
man. She glanced a smile at me, but I looked beyond
her, for I thought in my subtle simplicity it would
be awkward for her to explain our acquaintance.
Eggs and eggs again I ate until at last the couple
rose and went towards the door. I durst not raise a
glance to her, but as he passes the young man bows
genially and cunningly to me.
'Good morning, sir!' says he.
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