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If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: Clorinda Walks in Heaven - -Author: Alfred Edgar Coppard - -Release Date: June 12, 2020 [EBook #62385] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CLORINDA WALKS IN HEAVEN *** - - - - -Produced by Carlos Colón, the California Digital Library -and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at -https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images -generously made available by The Internet Archive/American -Libraries.) - - - - - - - - - - - Transcriber's Notes: - - Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by - =equal signs=. - - Small uppercase have been replaced with regular uppercase. - - Blank pages have been eliminated. - - Variations in spelling and hyphenation have been left as in the - original. - - - - - CLORINDA - WALKS - IN HEAVEN - - TALES BY A. E. COPPARD - - - [Illustration] - - - THE GOLDEN COCKEREL PRESS - WALTHAM SAINT LAWRENCE - BERKSHIRE ... MCMXXII - - - - -_I record my acknowledgments to the Editors of the following journals -in which some of these tales first appeared_: The Cornhill, London -Mercury, Westminster Gazette, Manchester Guardian, English Review; -_and_ The Dial, _of America._ - - A.E.C. - - - - -CONTENTS - - - PAGE - - THE HURLY-BURLY 9 - - CLORINDA WALKS IN HEAVEN 21 - - THE CHERRY TREE 29 - - THE ELIXIR OF YOUTH 37 - - FELIX TINCLER 49 - - CRAVEN ARMS 61 - - A BROADSHEET BALLAD 93 - - COTTON 103 - - POMONA'S BABE 115 - - - - -TO MRS. FLYNN - - - - -THE HURLY-BURLY - - - - -THE HURLY BURLY - - -The Weetmans--mother, son, and daughter--lived on a thriving farm. It -was small enough, God knows; but it had always been a turbulent place -of abode. For the servant it was "Phemy, do this," or "Phemy, have you -done that?" from dawn to dark, and even from dark to dawn there was -a hovering of unrest. The widow Weetman, a partial invalid, was the -only figure that manifested any semblance of tranquility; and it was a -misleading one, for she sat day after day on her large hams, knitting -and nodding, and lifting her grey face only to grumble, her spectacled -eyes transfixing the culprit with a basilisk glare. And her daughter -Alice, the housekeeper, who had a large face, a dominating face, in -some respects she was all face, was like a blast in a corridor with her -"Maize for the hens, Phemy!--More firewood, Phemy!--Who has set the -trap in the harness room?--Come along!--Have you scoured the skimming -pans?--Why not?--Where are you idling?--Come along, Phemy, I have no -time to waste this morning; you really must help me!" It was not only -in the house that this cataract of industry flowed; outside there was -activity enough for a regiment. A master-farmer's work consists largely -of a series of conversations with other master-farmers, a long-winded -way of doing long-headed things; but Glastonbury Weetman, the son, was -not like that at all; he was the incarnation of energy, always doing -and doing, chock-full of orders, adjurations, objurgatives, blame, -and blasphemy. That was the kind of place Phemy Madigan worked at. -No one could rest on laurels there. The farm and the home possessed -everybody, lock, stock, and barrel; work was like a tiger, it ate you -up implacably. The Weetmans did not mind--they liked being eaten by -such a tiger. - -After six or seven years of this Alice went back to marry an old -sweetheart in Canada, where the Weetmans had originally come from; -but Phemy's burden was in no way lessened thereby. There were as many -things to wash and sew and darn; there was always a cart of churns -about to dash for a train it could not possibly catch, or a horse to -shoe that could not possibly be spared. Weetman hated to see his people -merely walking. "Run over to the barn for that hayfork!" or "Slip -across to the ricks, quick, now!" he would cry; and if ever an unwary -hen hampered his path it only did so once--and no more. His labourers -were mere things of flesh and blood, but they occasionally resented his -ceaseless flagellations. Glas Weetman did not like to be impeded or -controverted; one day in a rage he had smashed that lumbering loon of a -carter called Gathercole. For this he was sent to gaol for a month. - -The day after he had been sentenced Phemy Madigan, alone in the house -with Mrs. Weetman, had waked at the usual early hour. It was a foggy -September morning; Sampson and his boy Daniel were clattering pails in -the dairy shed. The girl felt sick and gloomy as she dressed; it was -a wretched house to work in, crickets in the kitchen, cockroaches in -the garret, spiders and mice everywhere. It was an old long low house; -she knew that when she descended the stairs the walls would be stained -with autumnal dampness, the banisters and rails oozing with moisture. -She wished she was a lady and married, and living in a palace fifteen -stories high. - -It was fortunate that she was big and strong, though she had only been -a charity girl taken from the workhouse by the Weetmans when she was -fourteen years old. That was seven years ago. It was fortunate that she -was fed well at the farm, very well indeed; it was the one virtue of -the place. But her meals did not counterbalance things; that farm ate -up the body and blood of people. And at times the pressure was charged -with a special excitation, as if a taut elastic thong had been plucked -and released with a reverberating ping. - -It was so on this morning. Mrs. Weetman was dead in her bed. - -At that crisis a new sense descended upon the girl, a sense of -responsibility. She was not in fear, she felt no grief or surprise. It -concerned her in some way, but she herself was unconcerned, and she -slid without effort into the position of mistress of the farm. She -opened a window and looked out of doors. A little way off a boy with a -red scarf stood by an open gate. - -"Oi--oi, kup, kup, kup!" he cried to the cows in that field. Some of -the cows, having got up, stared amiably at him, others sat on ignoring -his hail, while one or two plodded deliberately towards him. "Oi--oi, -kup, kup, kup!" - -"Lazy rascal, that boy," remarked Phemy; "we shall have to get rid of -him. Dan'l! Come here, Dan'l!" she screamed, waving her arm wildly. -"Quick!" - -She sent him away for police and doctor. At the inquest there were no -relatives in England who could be called upon, no other witnesses than -Phemy. After the funeral she wrote a letter to Glastonbury Weetman in -gaol, informing him of his bereavement, but to this he made no reply. -Meanwhile the work of the farm was pressed forward under her control; -for though she was revelling in her personal release from the torment -she would not permit others to share her intermission. She had got Mrs. -Weetman's keys and her box of money. She paid the two men and the boy -their wages week by week. The last of the barley was reaped, the oats -stacked, the roots hoed, the churns sent daily under her supervision. -And always she was bustling the men. - -"O dear me, these lazy rogues!" she would complain to the empty rooms. -"They waste time, so it's robbery--it _is_ robbery. You may wear -yourself to the bone, and what does it signify to such as them? All the -responsibility too! They would take your skin if they could get it off -you--and they can't!" - -She kept such a sharp eye on the corn and meal and eggs that Sampson -grew surly. She placated him by handing him Mr. Weetman's gun and a -few cartridges, saying: "Just shoot me a couple of rabbits over in the -warren when you get time." At the end of the day Mr. Sampson had not -succeeded in killing a rabbit, so he kept the gun and the cartridges -many more days. Phemy was really happy. The gloom of the farm had -disappeared. The farm and everything about it looked beautiful, -beautiful indeed with its yard full of ricks, the pond full of ducks, -the fields full of sheep and cattle, and the trees still full of leaves -and birds. She flung maize about the yard; the hens scampered towards -it and the young pigs galloped, quarrelling over the grains which they -groped and snuffled for, grinding each one separately in their iron -jaws, while the white pullets stalked delicately among them, picked -up the maize seeds--one, two, three--and swallowed them like ladies. -Sometimes on cold mornings she would go outside and give an apple to -the fat bay pony when he galloped back from the station. He would stand -puffing with a kind of rapture, the wind from his nostrils discharging -in the frosty air vague shapes like smoky trumpets. Presently, upon -his hide, a little ball of liquid mysteriously suspired, grew, slid, -dropped from his flanks into the road. And then drops would begin to -come from all parts of him until the road beneath was dabbled by a -shower from his dew-distilling outline. Phemy would say: - -"The wretches! They were so late they drove him near distracted, poor -thing. Lazy rogues, but wait till master comes back, they'd better be -careful!" - -And if any friendly person in the village asked her, "How are you -getting on up there, Phemy?" she would reply, "Oh, as well as you -can expect with so much to be done--and such men!" The interlocutor -might hint that there was no occasion in the circumstances to distress -oneself, but then Phemy would be vexed. To her, honesty was as holy -as the Sabbath to a little child. Behind her back they jested about -her foolishness; but, after all, wisdom isn't a process, it's a -result, it's the fruit of the tree. One can't be wise, one can only be -fortunate. - -On the last day of her elysium the workhouse master and the chaplain -had stalked over the farm, shooting partridges. In the afternoon she -met them and asked for a couple of birds for Weetman's return on -the morrow. The workhouse was not far away, it was on a hill facing -west, and at sunset-time its windows would often catch the glare -so powerfully that the whole building seemed to burn like a box of -contained and smokeless fire. Very beautiful it looked to Phemy. - - -2 - -The men had come to work punctually, and Phemy herself found so much -to do that she had no time to give the pony an apple. She cleared the -kitchen once and for all of the pails, guns, harness, and implements -that so hampered its domestic intention, and there were abundant signs -elsewhere of a new impulse at work in the establishment. She did not -know at what hour to expect the prisoner, so she often went to the -garden-gate and glanced up the road. The night had been wild with -windy rain, but morn was sparklingly clear though breezy still. Crisp -leaves rustled along the road where the polished chestnuts beside the -parted husks lay in numbers, mixed with coral buds of the yews. The -sycamore leaves were black rags, but the delicate elm foliage fluttered -down like yellow stars. There was a brown field neatly adorned with -white coned heaps of turnips, behind it a small upland of deeply green -lucerne, behind that nothing but blue sky and rolling cloud. The -turnips, washed by the rain, were creamy polished globes. - -When at last he appeared she scarcely knew him. Glas Weetman was a big, -though not fleshy, man of thirty, with a large boyish face and a flat -bald head. Now he had a thick dark beard. He was hungry, but his first -desire was to be shaved. He stood before the kitchen mirror, first -clipping the beard away with scissors, and as he lathered the remainder -he said: - -"Well, it's a bad state of things, this--my sister dead and my mother -gone to America. What shall us do?" - -He perceived in the glass that she was smiling. - -"There's nought funny in it, my comic gal!" he bawled indignantly. -"What are you laughing at?" - -"I wer'n't laughing. It's your mother that's dead." - -"My mother that's dead, I know." - -"And Miss Alice that's gone to America." - -"To America, I know, I know, so you can stop making your bullock's eyes -and get me something to eat. What's been going on here?" - -She gave him an outline of affairs. He looked at her sternly when he -asked her about his sweetheart. - -"Has Rosa Beauchamp been along here?" - -"No," said Phemy, and he was silent. She was surprised at the question. -The Beauchamps were such respectable high-up people that to Phemy's -simple mind they could not possibly favour an alliance now with a man -that had been in prison; it was absurd, but she did not say so to him. -And she was bewildered to find that her conviction was wrong, for Rosa -came along later in the day and everything between her master and his -sweetheart was just as before; Phemy had not divined so much love and -forgiveness in high-up people. - -It was the same with everything else. The old harsh rushing life was -resumed, Weetman turned to his farm with an accelerated vigour to make -up for lost time, and the girl's golden week or two of ease became an -unforgotten dream. The pails, the guns, the harness crept back into -the kitchen. Spiders, cockroaches, and mice were more noticeable than -ever before, and Weetman himself seemed embittered, harsher. Time alone -could never still him, there was a force in his frame, a buzzing in his -blood. But there was a difference between them now; Phemy no longer -feared him. She obeyed him, it is true, with eagerness, she worked in -the house like a woman and in the fields like a man. They ate their -meals together, and from this dissonant comradeship the girl, in a dumb -kind of way, began to love him. - -One April evening, on coming in from the fields, he found her lying -on the couch beneath the window, dead plumb fast asleep, with no meal -ready at all. He flung his bundle of harness to the flags and bawled -angrily to her. To his surprise she did not stir. He was somewhat -abashed; he stepped over to look at her. She was lying on her side. -There was a large rent in her bodice between sleeve and shoulder; her -flesh looked soft and agreeable to him. Her shoes had slipped off to -the floor; her lips were folded in a pout. - -"Why, she's quite a pretty cob," he murmured. "She's all right, she's -just tired, the Lord above knows what for." - -But he could not rouse the sluggard. Then a fancy moved him to lift her -in his arms; he carried her from the kitchen and, staggering up the -stairs, laid the sleeping girl on her own bed. He then went downstairs -and ate pie and drank beer in the candlelight, guffawing once or twice: -"A pretty cob, rather." As he stretched himself after the meal a new -notion amused him: he put a plateful of food upon a tray, together with -a mug of beer and the candle. Doffing his heavy boots and leggings, he -carried the tray into Phemy's room. And he stopped there. - - -3 - -The new circumstance that thus slipped into her life did not effect any -noticeable alteration of its general contour and progress. Weetman did -not change towards her. Phemy accepted his mastership not alone because -she loved him, but because her powerful sense of loyalty covered -all the possible opprobrium. She did not seem to mind his continued -relations with Rosa. - -Towards midsummer one evening Glastonbury came in in the late dusk. -Phemy was there in the darkened kitchen. "Master!" she said immediately -he entered. He stopped before her. She continued: "Something's -happened." - -"Huh, while the world goes popping round something shall always happen!" - -"It's me--I'm took--a baby, master," she said. He stood chock-still. -His back was to the light, she could not see the expression on his -face, perhaps he wanted to embrace her. - -"Let's have a light, sharp," he said in his brusque way. "The supper -smells good, but I can't see what I'm smelling, and I can only fancy -what I be looking at." - -She lit the candles and they ate supper in silence. Afterwards he sat -away from the table with his legs outstretched and crossed, hands sunk -into pockets, pondering while the girl cleared the table. Soon he put -his powerful arm around her waist and drew her to sit on his knees. - -"Are ye sure o' that?" he demanded. - -She was sure. - -"Quite?" - -She was quite sure. - -"Ah, well, then," he sighed conclusively, "we'll be married!" - -The girl sprang to her feet. "No, no, no! How can you be married? You -don't mean that--not married--there's Miss Beauchamp!" She paused and -added a little unsteadily, "She's your true love, master." - -"Ay, but I'll not wed her!" he cried sternly. "If there's no gainsaying -this that's come on you I'll stand to my guns. It's right and proper -for we to have a marriage." - -His great thick-fingered hands rested upon his knees; the candles threw -a wash of light upon his polished leggings; he stared into the fireless -grate. - -"But we do not want to do that," said the girl dully and doubtfully. -"You have given your ring to her, you've given her your word. I don't -want you to do this for me. It's all right, master, it's all right." - -"Are ye daft?" he cried. "I tell you we'll wed. Don't keep clacking -about Rosa--I'll stand to my guns." He paused before adding, "She'd -gimme the rightabout, fine now--don't you see, stupid--but I'll not -give her the chance." - -Her eyes were lowered. "She's your true love, master." - -"What would become of you and your child? Ye couldn't bide here!" - -"No," said the trembling girl. - -"I'm telling you what we must do, modest and proper; there's naught -else to be done, and I'm middling glad of it, I am. Life's a see-saw -affair. I'm middling glad of this." - -So, soon, without a warning to anyone, least of all to Rosa Beauchamp, -they were married by the registrar. The change in her domestic status -produced no other change; in marrying Weetman she but married all -his ardour, she was swept into its current. She helped to milk cows, -she boiled nauseating messes for pigs, chopped mangolds, mixed meal, -and sometimes drove a harrow in his windy fields. Though they slept -together, she was still his servant. Sometimes he called her his -"pretty little cob," and then she knew he was fond of her. But in -general his custom was disillusioning. His way with her was his way -with his beasts; he knew what he wanted, it was easy to get. If for a -brief space a little romantic flower began to bud in her breast it was -frozen as a bud, and the vague longing disappeared at length from her -eyes. And she became aware that Rosa Beauchamp was not yet done with; -somewhere in the darkness of the fields Glastonbury still met her. -Phemy did not mind. - -In the new year she bore him a son that died as it came to life. Glas -was angry at that, as angry as if he had lost a horse. He felt that he -had been duped, that the marriage had been a stupid sacrifice, and in -this he was savagely supported by Rosa. And yet Phemy did not mind; the -farm had got its grip upon her, it was consuming her body and blood. - -Weetman was just going to drive into town; he sat fuming in the trap -behind the fat bay pony. - -"Bring me that whip from the passage!" he shouted. "There's never a dam -thing handy!" - -Phemy appeared with the whip. "Take me with you," she said. - -"God-a-mighty! What for? I becomen back in an hour. They ducks want -looking over, and you've all the taties to grade." - -She stared at him irresolutely. - -"And whose to look after the house? You know it won't lock up--the -key's lost. Get up there!" - -He cracked his whip in the air as the pony dashed away. - -In the summer Phemy fell sick, her arm swelled enormously. The doctor -came again and again. It was blood-poisoning, caught from a diseased -cow that she had milked with a cut finger. A nurse arrived, but Phemy -knew she was doomed, and though tortured with pain she was for once -vexed and protestant. For it was a June night, soft and nubile, with -a marvellous moon; a nightingale threw its impetuous garland into the -air. She lay listening to it and thinking with sad pleasure of the time -when Glastonbury was in prison, how grand she was in her solitude, -ordering everything for the best and working superbly. She wanted to go -on and on for evermore, though she knew she had never known peace in -maidenhood or marriage. The troubled waters of the world never ceased -to flow; in the night there was no rest--only darkness. Nothing could -emerge now. She was leaving it all to Rosa Beauchamp. Glastonbury was -gone out somewhere--perhaps to meet Rosa in the fields. There was the -nightingale, and it was very bright outside. - -"Nurse," moaned the dying girl, "what was I born into the world at all -for?" - - - - -CLORINDA WALKS IN HEAVEN - - - - -CLORINDA WALKS IN HEAVEN - - -Miss Smith, Clorinda Smith, desired not to die on a wet day. Her -speculations on the possibilities of one's demise were quite ingenuous -and had their mirth, but she shrunk from that figure of her dim -little soul--and it was only dimly that she could figure it at -all--approaching the pathways of the Boundless in a damp, bedraggled -condition. - -"But the rain couldn't harm your spirit," declared her comforting -friends. - -"Why not?" asked Clorinda, "if there is a ghost of me, why not a ghost -of the rain?" - -There were other aspects, delectable and illusive, of this imagined -apotheosis, but Clorinda always hoped--against hope be it said--that it -wouldn't be wet. On three evenings there had been a bow in the sky, and -on the day she died rain poured in fury. With a golden key she unlocked -the life out of her bosom and moved away without fear, as if a great -light had sprung suddenly under her feet in a little dark place, into a -region where things became starkly real and one seemed to live like the -beams rolling on the tasselled corn in windy acres. There was calmness -in those translucent leagues and the undulation amid a vast implacable -light until she drifted, like a feather fallen from an unguessed star, -into a place which was extraordinarily like the noon-day world, so -green and warm was its valley. - -A little combe lay between some low hills of turf, and on a green bank -beside a few large rocks was a man mending a ladder of white new-shaven -willow studded with large brass nails, mending it with hard knocks that -sounded clearly. The horizon was terraced only just beyond and above -him, for the hills rolled steeply up. Thin pads of wool hung in the -arch of the ultimate heavens, but towards the end of the valley the -horizon was crowded with clouds torn and disbattled. Two cows, a cow -of white and a cow of tan, squatted where one low hill held up, as it -were, the sunken limits of the sky. There were larks--in such places -the lark sings for ever--and thrushes--the wind vaguely active--seven -white ducks--a farm. Each nook was a flounce of blooms and a bower for -birds. Passing close to the man--he was sad and preoccupied, dressed in -a little blue tunic--she touched his arm as if to enquire a direction, -saying "Jacob!" - -She did not know what she would have asked of him, but he gave her no -heed and she again called to him "Jacob!" He did not seem even to see -her, so she went to the large white gates at the end of the valley -and approached a railway crossing. She had to wait a long time, for -trains of a vastness and grandeur were passing without sound. Strange -advertisements on the hoardings and curious direction posts gathered -some of her attention. She observed that in every possible situation, -on any available post or stone, people had carved initials, sometimes a -whole name, often with a date, and Clorinda experienced a doubt of the -genuineness of some of these, so remote was the antiquity implied. At -last the trains were all gone by, and as the barriers swung back she -crossed the permanent way. - -There was neither ambiguity in her movements nor surprise in her -apprehensions. She just crossed over to a group of twenty or thirty men -who moved to welcome her. They were barelegged, sandal-footed, lightly -clad in beautiful loose tunics of peacock and cinnamon, which bore not -so much the significance of colour as the quality of light. One of -them rushed eagerly forward, crying "Clorinda!" offering to her a long -coloured scarf. Strangely, as he came closer, he grew less perceivable; -Clorinda was aware in a flash that she was viewing him by some other -mechanism than that of her two eyes. In a moment he utterly disappeared -and she felt herself rapt into his being, caressed with faint caresses, -and troubled with dim faded ecstacies and recognitions not wholly -agreeable. The other men stood grouped around them, glancing with -half-closed cynical eyes. Those who stood farthest away were more -clearly seen: in contiguity a presence could only be divined, resting -only--but how admirably!--in the nurture of one's mind. - -"What is it?" Clorinda asked: and all the voices replied, "Yes, we know -you!" - -She felt herself released, and the figure of the man rejoined the -waiting group. "I was your husband Reuben," said the first man -slowly, and Clorinda, who had been a virgin throughout her short -life, exclaimed "Yes, yes, dear Reuben!" with momentary tremors -and a queer fugitive drift of doubt. She stood there, a spook of -comprehending being, and all the uncharted reefs in the map of her mind -were anxiously engaging her. For a time she was absorbed by this new -knowledge. - -Then another voice spoke: - -"I was your husband Raphael!" - -"I know, I know," said Clorinda, turning to the speaker, "we lived in -Judĉa." - -"And we dwelt in the valley of the Nile," said another, "in the years -that are gone." - -"And I too ... and I too ... and I too," they all clamoured, turning -angrily upon themselves. - -Clorinda pulled the strange scarf from her shoulders where Reuben had -left it, and, handling it so, she became aware of her many fugitive -sojournings upon the earth. It seemed that all of her past had become -knit in the scarf into a compact pattern of beauty and ugliness of -which she was entirely aware, all its multiplexity being immediately -resolved ... the habitations with cave men, and the lesser human unit -of the lesser later day, Patagonian, Indian, Cossack, Polynesian, Jew -... of such stuff the pattern was intimately woven, and there were -little plangent perfect moments of the past that fell into order in -the web. Clorinda watching the great seabird with pink feet louting -above the billows that roared upon Iceland, or Clorinda hanging her -girdle upon the ebony hooks of the image of Tanteelee. She had taken -voyaging drafts upon the whole world, cataract, jungle and desert, -ingle and pool and strand, ringing the changes upon a whole gamut of -masculine endeavour ... from a prophet to a haberdasher. She could feel -each little life hung now as in a sarsnet of cameos upon her visible -breasts: thereby for these ... these _men_ ... she was draped in an -eternal wonder. But she could not recall any image of her past life in -_these_ realms, save only that her scarf was given back to her on every -return by a man of these men. - -She could remember with humility her transient passions for them all. -None, not one, had ever given her the measure of her own desire, a -strong harsh flame that fashioned and tempered its own body; nothing -but a nebulous glow that was riven into embers before its beam had -sweetened into pride. She had gone from them childless always and much -as a little child. - -From the crowd of quarrelling ghosts a new figure detached itself, -and in its approach it subdued that vague vanishing which had been -so perplexing to Clorinda. Out of the crowd it slipped, and loomed -lovingly beside her, took up her thought and the interrogation that -came into her mind. - -"No," it said gravely, "there is none greater than these. The ultimate -reaches of man's mind produce nothing but images of men." - -"But," said Clorinda, "do you mean that our ideals, previsions of a -vita-nuova...." - -"Just so," it continued, "a mere intoxication. Even here you cannot -escape the singular dower of dreams ... you can be drunk with dreams -more easily and more permanently than with drugs." - -The group of husbands had ceased their quarrelling to listen; Clorinda -swept them with her glances thoughtfully and doubtfully. - -"Could mankind be so poor," the angel resumed, "as poor as these, if it -housed something greater than itself?" - -With a groan the group of outworn husbands drew away. Clorinda turned -to her companion with disappointment and some dismay ... "I hardly -understand yet ... is this all then just...." - -"Yes," it replied, "just the ghost of the world." - -She turned unhappily and looked back across the gateway into the fair -combe with its cattle, its fine grass, and the man working diligently -therein. A sense of bleak loneliness began to possess her; here, -then, was no difference save that there were no correlations, no -consequences; nothing had any effect except to produce the ghost of a -ghost. There was already in the hinterland of her apprehensions a ghost -of her new ghostship: she was to be followed by herself, pursued by -figures of her own ceaseless being! - -She looked at the one by her side: "Who are you?" she asked, and at the -question the group of men drew again very close to them. - -"I am your unrealised desires," it said: "Did you think that the -dignity of virginhood, rarely and deliberately chosen, could be so -brief and barren? Why, that pure idea was my own immaculate birth, and -I was born, the living mate of you." - -The hungry-eyed men shouted with laughter. - -"Go away!" screamed Clorinda to them; "I do not want you." - -Although they went she could hear the echoes of their sneering as she -took the arm of her new lover. "Let us go" she said, pointing to the -man in the combe, "and speak to him." As they approached the man he -lifted his ladder hugely in the air and dashed it to the ground so -passionately that it broke. - -"Angry man! angry man!" mocked Clorinda. He turned towards her -fiercely. Clorinda began to fear him; the muscles and knots of his -limbs were uncouth like the gnarl of old trees; she made a little -pretence of no more observing him. - -"Now what is it like," said she jocularly to the angel at her side, and -speaking of her old home, "what is it like now at Weston-super-Mare?" - -At that foolish question the man with the ladder reached forth an ugly -hand and twitched the scarf from her shoulders. - -It cannot now be told to what remoteness she had come, or on what roads -her undirected feet had travelled there, but certain it is that in -that moment she was gone.... Why, where or how cannot be established: -whether she was swung in a blast of annihilation into the uttermost -gulfs, or withdrawn for her beauty into that mysterious Nox; into some -passionate communion with the eternal husbands, or into some eternal -combat with their passionate other wives ... from our scrutiny at least -she passed for ever. - -It is true there was a beautiful woman of this name who lay for a -month in a deep trance in the West of England. On her recovery she -was balladed about in the newspapers and upon the halls for quite a -time, and indeed her notoriety brought requests for her autograph from -all parts of the world, and an offer of marriage from a Quaker potato -merchant. But she tenderly refused him and became one of those faded -grey old maids who wear their virginity like antiquated armour. - - - - -THE CHERRY TREE - - - - -THE CHERRY TREE - - -There was uproar somewhere among the backyards of Australia Street. It -was so alarming that people at their midday meal sat still and stared -at one another. A fortnight before murder had been done in the street, -in broad daylight, with a chopper; people were nervous. An upper window -was thrown open and a startled and startling head exposed. - -"It's that young devil, Johnny Flynn, again! Killing rats!" shouted -Mrs. Knatchbole, shaking her fist towards the Flynn's backyard. Mrs. -Knatchbole was ugly; she had a goitred neck and a sharp skinny nose -with an orb shining at its end, constant as grief. - -"You wait, my boy, till your mother comes home, you just wait!" invited -this apparition, but Johnny was gazing sickly at the body of a big rat -slaughtered by the dogs of his friend George. The uproar was caused by -the quarrelling of the dogs, possibly for honours, but more probably, -as is the custom of victors, for loot. - -"Bob down!" warned George, but Johnny bobbed up to catch the full anger -of those baleful Knatchbole eyes. The urchin put his fingers promptly -to his nose. - -"Look at that for eight years old!" screamed the lady. "Eight years old -'e is! As true as God's my maker I'll...." - -The impending vow was stayed and blasted for ever, Mrs. Knatchbole -being taken with a fit of sneezing, whereupon the boys uttered some -derisive "Haw haws!" - -So Mrs. Knatchbole met Mrs. Flynn that night as she came from work, -Mrs. Flynn being a widow who toiled daily and dreadfully at a laundry -and perforce left her children, except for their school hours, to their -own devices. The encounter was an emphatic one and the tired widow -promised to admonish her boy. - -"But it's alright, Mrs. Knatchbole, he's going from me in a week, to -his uncle in London he is going, a person of wealth, and he'll be no -annoyance to ye then. I'm ashamed that he misbehaves but he's no bad -boy really." - -At home his mother's remonstrances reduced Johnny to repentance and -silence; he felt base indeed; he wanted to do something great and -worthy at once to offset it all; he wished he had got some money, he'd -have gone and bought her a bottle of stout--he knew she liked stout. - -"Why do ye vex people so, Johnny?" asked Mrs. Flynn wearily. "I work my -fingers to the bone for ye, week in and week out. Why can't ye behave -like Pomony?" - -His sister was a year younger than him; her name was Mona, which -Johnny's elegant mind had disliked. One day he re-baptised her; Pomona -she became and Pomona she remained. The Flynns sat down to supper. -"Never mind about all that, mum," said the boy, kissing her as he -passed her chair, "talk to us about the cherry tree!" The cherry tree, -luxuriantly blooming, was the crown of the mother's memories of her -youth and her father's farm; around the myth of its wonderful blossoms -and fruit she could weave garlands of romance, and to her own mind, as -well as to the minds of her children, it became a heavenly symbol of -her old lost home, grand with acres and delightful with orchard and -full pantry. What wonder that in her humorous narration the joys were -multiplied and magnified until even Johnny was obliged to intervene. -"Look here, how many horses _did_ your father have, mum ... really, -though?" Mrs. Flynn became vague, cast a furtive glance at this son of -hers and then gulped with laughter until she recovered her ground with; -"Ah, but there _was_ a cherry tree!" It was a grand supper--actually -a polony and some potatoes. Johnny knew this was because he was going -away. Ever since it was known that he was to go to London they had been -having something special like this, or sheep's trotters, or a pig's -tail. Mother seemed to grow kinder and kinder to him. He wished he had -some money, he would like to buy her a bottle of stout--he knew she -liked stout. - -Well, Johnny went away to live with his uncle, but alas he was only two -months in London before he was returned to his mother and Pomony. Uncle -was an engine-driver who disclosed to his astounded nephew a passion -for gardening. This was incomprehensible to Johnny Flynn. A great -roaring boiling locomotive was the grandest thing in the world. Johnny -had rides on it, so he knew. And it was easy for him to imagine that -every gardener cherished in the darkness of his disappointed soul an -unavailing passion for a steam engine, but how an engine-driver could -immerse himself in the mushiness of gardening was a baffling problem. -However, before he returned home he discovered one important thing from -his uncle's hobby, and he sent the information to his sister: - - Dear Pomona, - - Uncle Harry has got a alotment and grow veggutables. He says what - makes the mold is worms. You know we puled all the worms out off - our garden and chukked them over Miss Natchbols wall. Well you - better get some more quick a lot ask George to help you and I bring - som seeds home when I comes next week by the xcursion on Moms - birthday - - Your sincerely brother - John Flynn - -On mother's birthday Pomona met him at the station. She kissed him -shyly and explained that mother was going to have a half holiday to -celebrate the double occasion and would be home with them at dinner -time. - -"Pomona, did you get them worms?" - -Pomona was inclined to evade the topic of worms for the garden, but -fortunately her brother's enthusiasm for another gardening project -tempered the wind of his indignation. When they reached home he -unwrapped two parcels he had brought with him; he explained his scheme -to his sister; he led her into the garden. The Flynns' backyard, mostly -paved with bricks, was small, and so the enclosing walls, truculently -capped by chips of glass, although too low for privacy were yet too -high for the growth of any cherishable plant. Johnny had certainly -once reared a magnificent exhibit of two cowslips, but these had been -mysteriously destroyed by the Knatchbole cat. The dank little enclosure -was charged with sterility; nothing flourished there except a lot of -beetles and a dauntless evergreen bush, as tall as Johnny, displaying -a profusion of thick shiny leaves that you could split on your tongue -and make squeakers with. Pomona showed him how to do this and they then -busied themselves in the garden until the dinner siren warned them that -mother would be coming home. They hurried into the kitchen and Pomona -quickly spread the cloth and the plates of food upon the table, while -Johnny placed conspiciously in the centre, after laboriously extracting -the stopper with a fork and a hair-pin, a bottle of stout brought from -London. He had been much impressed by numberless advertisements upon -the hoardings respecting this attractive beverage. The children then -ran off to meet their mother and they all came home together with great -hilarity. Mrs. Flynn's attention having been immediately drawn to the -sinister decoration of her dining table, Pomona was requested to pour -out a glass of the nectar. Johnny handed this gravely to his parent, -saying:-- - -"Many happy returns of the day, Mrs. Flynn!" - -"O, dear, dear!" gasped his mother merrily, "you drink first!" - -"Excuse me, no, Mrs. Flynn," rejoined her son, "many happy returns of -the day!" - -When the toast had been honoured Pomona and Johnny looked tremendously -at each other. - -"Shall we?" exclaimed Pomona. "O yes," decided Johnny; "come on mum, in -the garden, something marvellous!" - -She followed her children into that dull little den, and by happy -chance the sun shone grandly for the occasion. Behold the dauntless -evergreen bush had been stripped of its leaves and upon its blossomless -twigs the children had hung numerous couples of ripe cherries, white -and red and black. - -"What do you think of it, mum?" they cried, snatching some of the -fruit and pressing it into her hands, "what do you think of it?" - -"Beautiful!" replied Mrs. Flynn in a tremulous voice. The children -stared silently at their mother until she could bear it no longer. She -turned and went sobbing into the kitchen. - - - - -THE ELIXIR OF YOUTH - - - - -THE ELIXIR OF YOUTH - - -Since the earth began its twisting, or since very soon after it began, -there have been persons on it who perceived more or less early in -life that it was seldom possible to get something in return for quite -nothing, and that even if you did the delicate situation then arising -was attended often with at least as much personal danger as delight, -and generally with much more. Tom Toole knew all about it, so he was -not going to sell his own little white soul to the devil, though he was -sixty years of age and his soul, he expected, was shrivelled a bit now -like a dried fig. He had no faith in wishing Hats, or Magic Carpets, -or Herbs of Longevity, and he had not heard of the Philosopher's -Stone, but he had a belief in an Elixir, somewhere in the world, that -would make you young again. He had heard, too, of the Transmutation of -Metals; indeed, he had associated himself a great many years ago with -a Belfast brassfounder in the production of certain sovereigns. The -brassfounder perished under the rigours of his subsequent incarceration -in gaol, but Tom Toole had been not at all uncomfortable in the lunatic -asylum to which a compassionate retribution had assigned him. It was -in the asylum that he met the man from Kilsheelan who, if you could -believe him, really had got a 'touch' from the fairies and could turn -things he had no wish for into the things he would be wanting. The man -from Kilsheelan first discovered his gift, so he told Tom Toole, when -he caught a turtle dove one day and changed it into a sheep. Then he -turned the sheep into a latherpot just to make sure and it _was_ sure. -So he thought he would like to go to the land of the Ever Young which -is in the western country, but he did not know how he could get there -unless he went in a balloon. Sure, he sat down in his cabin and turned -the shaving-pot into a fine balloon, but the balloon was so large it -burst down his house and he was brought to the asylum. Well that was -clear enough to Tom Toole, and after he had got good advice from the -man from Kilsheelan it came into his mind one day to slip out of the -big gates of the asylum, and, believe me, since then he had walked -the roads of Munster singing his ballads, and searching for something -which was difficult to find, and that was his youth. For Tom Toole was -growing old, a little old creature he was growing, gay enough and a bit -of a philanderer still, but age is certain and puts the black teeth in -your mouth and the whiteness of water on your hair. - -One time he met a strange little old quick-talking man who came to him; -he seemed just to bob up in front of him from the road itself. - -"Ah, good day t'ye, and phwat part are ye fram?" - -"I'm from beyant," said Tom Toole, nodding back to the Knockmealdown -Mountains where the good monks had lodged him for a night. - -"Ah, God deliver ye, and indeed I don't want to know your business at -all but----but----where are ye going?" - -Between his words he kept spitting, in six or seven little words there -would be at least one spit. There was yellow dust in the flaps of his -ears and neat bushes of hair in the holes. Cranks and wrinkles covered -his nose, and the skull of him was bare, but there was a good tuft on -his chin. Tom Toole looked at him straight and queer for he did not -admire the fierce expression of him, and there were smells of brimstone -on him like a farmer who had been dipping his ewes, and he almost -expected to see a couple of horns growing out of his brow. - -"It's not meself does be knowing at all, good little man," said Tom -Toole to him, "and I might go to the fair of Cappoquin, or I might walk -on to Dungarvan, in the harbour now, to see will I buy a couple of -lobsters for me nice supper." - -And he turned away to go off upon his road, but the little old man -followed and kept by his side, telling him of a misfortune he had -endured; a chaise of his, a little pony chaise, had been almost -destroyed, but the ruin was not so great, for a kind lady of his -acquaintance, a lady of his own denomination, had given him four pounds -one shilling and ninepence. "'Ah, not that I'm needing your money, -ma'am,' says I, 'but damage is damage,' I says, 'and it's not right,' -I says, 'that I should be at the harm of your coachman;" and there he -was spitting and going on like a clock spilling over its machinery when -he unexpectedly grasped Tom Toole by the hand, wished him Good day, and -Good luck, and that he might meet him again---- - -Tom Toole walked on for an hour and came to a cross roads, and there -was the same old man sitting in a neat little pony chaise smoking his -pipe. - -"Where are ye going?" says he. - -"Dungarvan," said Tom Toole. - -"Jump in then," said the little old man, and they jogged along the road -conversing together; he was as sharp as an old goat. - -"What is your aspiration?" he said, and Tom Toole told him. - -"That's a good aspiration, indeed. I know what you're seeking Tom -Toole; let's get on now and there'll be tidings in it." - -When Tom Toole and the little old man entered the public at Dungarvan -they met a gang of strong young fellows, mechanics and people to drive -the traction engines, for there was a circus in the town. Getting their -fill of porter, they were, and nice little white loaves; very decent -boys, but one of them a Scotchman with a large unrejoicing face, and -he had a hooky nose with tussocks of hair in the nostrils and the two -tails of hair to his moustache like an old Chinese man. Peter Mullane -was telling a tale, and there was a sad bit of a man from Bristol with -a sickness in his breast and a cough that would heave out the side of a -mountain. Peter Mullane waited while Tom Toole and his friend sat down -and then he proceeded with his tale. - -"Away with ye! said the devil to Neal Carlin, and away he went to the -four corners of the world. And when he came to the first corner he saw -a place where the rivers do be rushing----" - -"----the only dam thing that does rush then in this country," -interrupted the Scotchman with a sneer. - -"Shut your----" began the man from Bristol, but he was taken with the -cough, until his cheeks were scarlet and his eyes, fixed angrily upon -the Highland man, were strained to tear-drops. "Shut your----" he began -it again, but he was rent by a large and vexing spasm that rocked him, -while his friends looked at him and wondered would he be long for this -world. He recovered quite suddenly and exclaimed, "----dam face" to -that Highland man. And then Peter Mullane went on: - -"I am not given to thinking," said he, "that the Lord would put a -country the like of Ireland in a wee corner of the world, and he -wanting the nook of it for thistles and the poor savages that devour -them. Well, Neal Carlin came to a place where the rivers do be -rushing----" he paused invitingly, "and he saw a little fairy creature -with fine tresses of hair sitting under a rowan tree." - -"A rowan?" exclaimed the Highland man. - -Peter nodded. - -"A Scottish tree!" declared the other. - -"O shut your----" began the little coughing man, but again his -conversation was broken, and by the time he had recovered from his -spasms the company was mute. - -"If," said Peter Mullane, "you'd wish to observe the rowan in its pride -and beauty just clap your eye upon it in the Galtee Mountains. "How -would it thrive," I ask you, "in a place which was stiff with granite -and sloppy with haggis? And what would ye do, my clever man, what would -ye do, if ye met a sweet fairy woman----?" - -"I'd kiss the Judy," said the Highland man spitting a great splash. - -Peter Mullane gazed at him for a minute or two as if he did not love -him much. - -"Neal Carlin was attracted by her, she was a sweet creature. 'Warm!' -says she to him with a friendly tone. 'Begod, ma'am, it is a hot -day,' he said, and thinks he, she is a likely person to give me my -aspiration. And sure enough when he sat down beside her she asked him, -'What is your aspiration, Neal Carlin?' and he said, 'Saving your -grace, ma'am, it is but to enjoy the world and to be easy in it.' 'That -is a good aspiration,' she said, and she gave him some secret advice. -He went home to his farm, Neal Carlin did, and he followed the advice, -and in a month or two he had grown very wealthy, and things were easy -with him. But still he was not satisfied, he had a greedy mind, and -his farm looked a drifty little place that was holding him down from -big things. So he was not satisfied though things were easy with him, -and one night before he went sleeping he made up his mind, 'It's too -small it is. I'll go away from it now and a farm twice as big I will -have, three times as big, yes, I will have it ten times as big.' He -went sleeping on the wildness of his avarice, and when he rolled off -the settle in the morning and stood up to stretch his limbs he hit -his head a wallop against the rafter. He cursed it and had a kind of -thought that the place had got smaller. As he went from the door he -struck his brow against the lintel hard enough to beat down the house. -What is come to me, he roared in his pains; and looking into his field -there were his five cows and his bullock no bigger than sheep--will -ye believe that, then--and his score of ewes no bigger than rabbits, -mind it now, and it was not all, for the very jackdaws were no bigger -than chafers and the neat little wood was no more account than a grove -of raspberry bushes. Away he goes to the surgeon's to have drops put -in his eyes for he feared the blindness was coming on him, but on his -return there was his bullock no bigger than an old boot, and his cabin -had wasted to the size of a bird-cage." - -Peter leaned forward, for the boys were quiet, and consumed a deal of -porter. And the Highland man asked him, "Well, what happened!" - -"Oh, he just went up to his cabin and kicked it over the hedge as you -might an old can, and then he strolled off to another corner of the -world, Neal Carlin did, whistling 'The Lanty Girl.'" - -Tom Toole's friend spoke to Peter Mullane. "Did ye say it was in the -Galtee Mountains that the young fellow met the lady?" - -"In the Galtee Mountains," said Peter. - -"To the Galtee Mountains let us be going, Tom Toole," cried the little -old man, "Come on now, there'll be tidings in it!" - -So off they drove, and when they had driven a day and slept a couple of -nights they were there, and they came to a place where the rivers do be -rushing, and there was a rowan tree, but no lady on it. - -"What will we do now, Tom Toole," says the old man. - -"We'll not stint it," says he, and they searched by night and by day -looking for a person who would give them their youth again. They sold -the chaise for some guineas and the pony for a few more, and they -were walking among the hills for a thousand days, but never a dust of -fortune did they discover. Whenever they asked a person to guide them -they would be swearing at them or they would jeer. - -"Well, may a good saint stretch your silly old skins for ye!" said one. - -"Thinking of your graves and travelling to the priest ye should be!" -said one. - -"The nails of your boots will be rusty and rotten searching for the -like of that," said one. - -"It's two quarts of black milk from a Kerry cow ye want," said one; -"take a sup of that and you'll be young again!" - -"Of black milk," said Tom Toole's friend, "where would you get that?" - -The person said he would get a pull of it in the Comeragh Mountains, -fifty miles away. - -"Tom Toole," said the little old man, "It's what I'll do. I'll walk -on to the Comeragh Mountains to see what I will see, and do you go on -searching here, for to find that young girl would be better than forty -guineas worth of blather. And when I find the cow I'll take my fill of -a cup and bring you to it." - -So they agreed upon it and the old man went away saying, "I'll be a -score of days, no more. Good day, Tom Toole, good day!" much as an old -crow might shout it to a sweep. - -When he was gone Tom Toole journeyed about the world, and the day after -he went walking to a fair. Along the road the little ass carts were -dribbling into town from Fews and Carrigleena, when he saw a young girl -in a field trying to secure an ass. - -"Oi----, Oi----!" the girl was calling out to him, and he went in the -field and helped her with the ass, which was a devil to capture, and it -not wanting. She thanked him; she was a sweet slip of a colleen with a -long fall of hair that the wind was easy with. - -"'Tis warm!" she said to Tom Toole. "Begod, ma'am," says he to her -quickly, taking his cue, "it is a hot day." - -"Where are ye going, Tom Toole," she asked him, and he said: - -"I am seeking a little contrivance, ma'am, that will let me enjoy the -world and live easy in it. That is my aspiration." - -"I'll give you what you are seeking," and she gave him a wee bottle -with red juices in it. - -"Indeed, ma'am, I'm obliged to ye," and he took her by the hand and -wished her Good day and Good luck, and that he might meet her again. - -When he got the elixir of youth he gave over his searching. He hid the -bottle in his breast and went up into the mountains as high as he could -go to bide the coming of the little old man. It is a queer thing but -Tom Toole had never heard the name of him--it would be some place in -the foreign corners of the world like Portugal that he had come from -no doubt. Up he went; first there was rough pasture for bullocks, then -fern and burnt furze, and then little but heather, and great rocks -strewn about like shells, and sour brown streams coming from the bog. -He wandered about for twenty days and the old man did not return, and -for forty days he was still alone. - -"The divil receive him, but I'll die against his return!" And Tom Toole -pulled the wee bottle from his breast. He was often minded to lift the -cork and take a sup of the elixir of youth. "But," says he, "it would -be an unfriendly deed. Sure if I got me youth sudden I'd be off to -the wonders of the land and leave that old fool roaming till the day -of Judgment." And he would put the bottle away and wait for scores of -days until he was sick and sorry with grieving. A thousand days he was -on his lonely wanderings, soft days as mellow as cream, and hard days -when it is ribs of iron itself you would want to stiffen you against -the crack of the blast. His skimpy hair grew down to the lappet of his -coat, very ugly he was, but the little stranger sheep of the mountain -were not daunted when he moved by, and even the flibeens had the soft -call for him. A thousand days was in it, and then he said: - -"Good evening to my good luck. I've had my enough of this. Sure I'll -despise myself for evermore if I wait the tide of another drifting day. -It's to-night I'll sleep in a neat bed with a quilt of down over me -heart, for I'm going to be young again." - -He crept down the mountain to a neat little town and went in a room -in the public to have a cup of porter. A little forlorn old man also -came in from the road and sat down beside, and when they looked at each -other they each let out a groan. "Glory be!" says he. "Glory be," cried -Tom Toole, "its the good little man in the heel of it. Where are ye -from?" - -"From the mountains." - -"And what fortune is in it, did ye find the farm?" - -"Divil a clod." - -"Nor the Kerry cow?" - -"Divil a horn." - -"Nor the good milk?" - -"Divil a quart, and I that dry I could be drunk with the smell of it. -Tom Toole, I have traipsed the high and the deep of this realm and -believe you me it is not in it; the long and the wide of this realm ----- not in it." He kept muttering sadly, "Not in it." - -"Me good little man," cried Tom Toole, "don't be havering like an old -goat. Here it is! the fortune of the world!" - -He took the wee bottle from his breast and shook it before his eyes. -"The drops that 'ull give ye your youth as easy as shifting a shirt. -Come, now, I've waited the long days to share wid ye, for I couldn't -bring myself to desart a comrade who was ranging the wild regions for -the likes of me. Many's the time I've lifted that cork, and thinks I: -he's gone and soon I'll be going, so here goes. Divil a go was in it. I -could not do it, not for silver and not for gold, and not for all the -mad raging mackerel that sleep in the sea." - -The little old stranger took the wee bottle in his two hands. He was -but a quavering stick of a man now; half dead he was, and his name it -is Martin O'Moore. - -"Is it the rale stuff, Tom Toole?" - -"From herself I got it," he said, and he let on to him about that sweet -spoken young girl. - -"Did she give you the directions on the head of it?" - -"What directions is it?" - -"The many drops is a man to drink!" - -"No, but a good sup of it will do the little job." - -"A good sup of it Tom Toole, a good sup of it, ay?" says he, -unsqueezing the cork. "The elixir of youth, a good sup of it, says you, -a good sup of it, a great good good sup of it!" - -And sticking it into his mouth he drained the wee bottle of its every -red drop. He stood there looking like a man in a fit, holding the empty -bottle in his hand until Tom Toole took it from him with reproaches in -his poor old eyes. But in a moment it was his very eyes he thought were -deceiving him; not an inch of his skin but had the dew of fear on it, -for the little old man began to change his appearance quick like the -sand running through a glass or as fast as the country changes down -under a flying swan. - -"Mother o' God!" screamed Martin O'Moore, "its too fast backward I'm -growing; dizzy, dizzy I am." - -And indeed his bald head suddenly got the fine black hair grown upon -it, the whiskers flew away from him and his face was young. He began to -wear a strange old suit that suddenly got new, and he had grown down -through a handsome pair of trousers and into the little knickerbockers -of a boy before you could count a score. And he had a bit of a cold -just then, though he was out of it in a twink, and he let a sneeze that -burst a button off his breeches, a little tin button, which was all -that ever was found of him. Smaller and smaller he fell away, like the -dust in an hour glass, till he was no bigger than an acorn, and then -devil a bit of him was left there at all. - -Tom Toole was frightened at the quiet and the emptiness and he made to -go away, but he turned in the doorway and stretching out his arms to -the empty room he whispered, "The greed, the avarice, may hell pour all -its buckets on your bad little heart! May----" But just then he caught -sight of the cup of porter that Martin O'Moore had forgotten to drink, -so he went back to drink his enough and then went out into the great -roaring world where he walked from here to there until one day he came -right back to his old asylum. He had been away for twenty years, he -was an old man, very old indeed. And there was the man from Kilsheelan -digging potatoes just inside the gates of the sunny garden. - -"Tis warm!" said the traveller staring at him through the railings, but -the man from Kilsheelan only said, "Come in, Tom Toole, is it staying -or going ye are?" - - - - -FELIX TINCLER - - - - -FELIX TINCLER - - -The child was to have a birthday tomorrow and was therefore not uneasy -about being late home from school this afternoon. He had lost his -pencil case, a hollow long round thing it was, like a rolling-pin, only -it had green and yellow rings painted upon it. He kept his marbles -in it and so he was often in a trouble about his pencils. He had not -tried very much to find the pencil case because the boys 'deludered' -him--that's what his father always said. He had asked Heber Gleed if -he had seen it--he had strange suspicions of that boy--but Heber Gleed -had sworn so earnestly that the greengrocer opposite the school had -picked it up, he had even "saw him do it," that Felix Tincler went into -Mr. Gobbit's shop, and when the greengrocer lady appeared in answer to -the ring of the door bell he enquired politely for his pencil case. -She was tall and terrible with a squint and, what was worse, a large -velvety mole with hairs sprouting from it. She immediately and with -inexplicable fury desired him to flee from her greengrocer shop, with -a threat of alternative castigation in which a flat iron and a red-hot -pick-axe were to figure with unusual and unpleasant prominence. Well, -he had run out of Mr. Gobbit's shop and there was Heber Gleed standing -in the road giggling derisively at him. Felix walked on alone looking -in the gutters and areas for his pencil case until he encountered -another friendly boy who took him to dig in a garden where they grew -castor-oil plants. When he went home it was late; as he ran along under -the high wall of the orphanage that occupied one end of his street its -harsh peevish bell clanged out six notes. He scampered past the great -gateway under the dismal arch that always filled him with uneasiness, -he never passed it without feeling the sad trouble that a prison -might give. He stepped into his own pleasant home, a little mute, and -a little dirty in appearance; but at six years of age in a home so -comfortable and kind the eve of the day that is to turn you into seven -is an occasion great enough to yield an amnesty for peccadilloes. His -father was already in from work, he could hear him singing. He gave -his mother the sprigs he had picked from the castor-oil plant and told -her about the pencil case. The meal was laid upon the table, and while -mother was gone into the kitchen to boil the water for tea he sat down -and tried to smooth out the stiff creases in the white table cloth. His -father was singing gaily in the scullery as he washed and shaved:-- - - High cockalorum, - Charlie ate the spinach..., - -He ceased for a moment to give the razor a vigorous stropping and then -continued:-- - - High cockalorum, - High cockalee.... - -Felix knew that was not the conclusion of the song. He listened, but -for some moments all that followed was the loud crepitation of a razor -searching a stubborn beard and the sigh of the kettle. Then a new -vigour seized the singer:-- - - But mother brought the pandy down - And bate the gree.... - -Again that rasping of chin briefly intervened, but the conclusion of -the cropping was soon denoted by the strong rallentando of the singer - - ... dy image, - High cock--alorum, - High cock--a--lee. - -Mrs. Tincler brought in the teapot and her husband followed her with -his chin tightly shaven but blue, crying with mock horror: - -"Faylix, my son! that is seven years old tomorrow! look at him, Mary, -the face of him and the hands of him! I didn't know there was a bog in -this parish; is it creeping in a bog you have been?" - -The boy did not blench at his father's spurious austerity, he knew he -was the soul of kindness and fun. - -"Go wash yourself at the sink," interposed his mother. Kevin Tincler, -taking his son by the hand, continued with mocking admonishment: "All -the fine copybooks of the world that you've filled up with that blather -about cleanliness and holiness, the up strokes very thin and the down -strokes very thick! What was it, Mary, he has let it all out of his -mind?" - -"Go and wash, Felix, and come quickly and have your tea," laughed Mary -Tincler. - -"Ah, but what was it--in that grand book of yours?" - -The boy stood, in his short buff tunic, regarding his father with shy -amusement. The small round clear-skinned face was lovely with its -blushes of faint rose; his eyes were big and blue, and his head was -covered with thick curling locks of rich brown hair. - -"Cleanliness comes next to godliness," he replied. - -"Does it so, indeed?" exclaimed his father. "Then you're putting your -godliness in a pretty low category!" - -"What a nonsense," said Mary Tincler as the boy left them. - -The Irishman and his dark-eyed Saxon wife sat down at the table waiting -for their son. - -"There's a bit of a randy in the Town Gardens tonight, Mary, dancing on -the green, fireworks! When the boy is put to bed we'll walk that way." - -Mary expressed her pleasure, but then declared she could not leave the -boy alone in his bed. - -"He'll not hurt, Mary, he has no fear in him. Give him the birthday -gift before we go. Whisht, he's coming!" - -The child, now clean and handsome, came to his chair and looked up at -his father sitting opposite to him. - -"Holy Mother!" exclaimed the admiring parent, "it's the neck of a swan -he has. Faylix Tincler, may you live to be the father of a bishop!" - -After tea his father took him up on the downs for an hour. As they left -their doorway a group of the tidy but wretched orphans was marching -back into their seminary, little girls moving in double columns behind -a stiff-faced woman. They were all dressed alike in garments of charity -exact as pilchards. Gray capes, worsted stockings, straw hats with -blue bands round them, and hard boots. The boys were coming in from -a different direction, but all of them, even the minutest, were clad -in corduroy trousers and short jackets high throated like a gaoler's. -This identity of garment was contrary to the will of God, for he had -certainly made their pinched bodies diverse enough. Some were short, -some tall, dark, fair, some ugly, others handsome. The sight of them -made Felix unhappy, he shrank into himself, until he and his father -had slipped through a gap in a hedge and were going up the hill that -stretched smoothly and easily almost from their very door. The top -of the down hereabouts was quiet and lovely, but a great flank of it -two miles away was scattered over with tiny white figures playing -very deliberately at cricket. Pleasant it was up there in the calm -evening, and still bright, but the intervening valley was full of grey -ungracious houses, allotments, railway arches, churches, graveyards, -and schools. Worst of all was the dull forbidding aspect of the -Orphanage down beyond the roof of their own house. - -They played with a ball and had some wrestling matches until the -declining day began to grow dim even on the hill and the fat jumbo -clouds over the town were turning pink. If those elephants fell on -him--what would they do? Why they'd mix him up like ice-cream! So said -his father. - -"Do things ever fall out of the sky?" - -"Rain," said Mr. Tincler. - -"Yes, I know." - -"Stars--maybe." - -"Where do they go?" - -"Oh they drop on the hills but ye can never find 'em." - -"Don't Heaven ever?" - -"What drop down! No," said Mr. Tincler, "it don't. I have not heard of -it doing that, but maybe it all just stoops down sometimes, Faylix, -until it's no higher than the crown of your hat. Let us be going home -now and ye'll see something this night." - -"What is it?" - -"Wait, Faylix, wait!" - -As they crossed from the hill Mary, drawing down the blinds, signalled -to them from the window. - -"Come along, Felix," she cried, and the child ran into the darkened -room. Upon the table was set a little church of purest whiteness. Kevin -had bought it from an Italian hawker. It had a wonderful tall steeple -and a cord that came through a hole and pulled a bell inside. And -that was not all; the church was filled with light that was shining -through a number of tiny arched windows, blue, purple, green, violet, -the wonderful windows were everywhere. Felix was silent with wonder; -how could you get a light in a church that hadn't a door! then Mary -lifted the hollow building from the table; it had no floor, and there -was a night-light glowing in one of her patty-pans filled with water. -The church was taken up to bed with him in the small chamber next his -parents' room and set upon a bureau. Kevin and Mary then went off to -the 'bit of devilment' in the town gardens. - -Felix kept skipping from his bed, first to gaze at the church, and -then to lean out of the window in his night-shift, looking for the -lamplighter who would come to the street lamp outside. The house -was the very last and the lamp was the very last lamp on one of the -roads that led from the town and went poking out into the steady -furze-covered downs. And as the lamp was the very last to be lit -darkness was always half-fallen by the time the old man arrived at his -journey's end. He carried a pole with a brass tube on its top. There -were holes in the brass tube showing gleams of light. The pole rested -upon his shoulders as he trudged along humming huskily. - -"Here he is," cried Felix, leaning from the window and waving a white -arm. The dull road, empty of traffic, dim as his mother's pantry by -day, curved slightly, and away at the other end of the curve a jet -of light had sprung into the gloom like a bright flower bursting its -sheath; a black figure moved along towards him under the Orphanage -wall. Other lamps blossomed with light and the lamplighter, approaching -the Tinclers' lamp, thrust the end of his pole into the lantern, his -head meanwhile craning back like the head of a horse that has been -pulled violently backwards. He deftly turned the tap; with a tiny dull -explosion that sounded like a doormat being beaten against the wall in -the next street the lamp was lit and the face of the old man sprang -into vague brilliance, for it was not yet utterly dark. Vague as the -light was the neighbouring hills at once faded out of recognition and -became black bulks of oblivion. - -"Oi ... Oi ..." cried the child, clapping his hands. The old man's -features relaxed, he grunted in relief, the pole slid down in his palm. -As the end of it struck the pavement a sharp knock he drew an old pipe -from his pocket and lit it quite easily, although one of his hands was -deficient of a thumb and some fingers. He was about to travel back into -the sparkling town when Felix called to him: - -"Soloman! Soloman!" - -"Goo an to yer bed, my little billycock, or you'll ketch a fever." - -"No, but what's this?" Felix was pointing to the ground below him. The -old man peered over the iron railings into the front garden that had -just sufficient earth to cherish four deciduous bushes, two plants of -marigold, and some indeterminate herbs. In the dimness of their shadows -a glowworm beamed clearly. - -"That?" exclaimed he; "O s'dripped off the moon, yas, right off, moon's -wasting away, you'll see later on if you'm watch out for it, s'dripped -off the moon, right off." Chuckling, he blew out the light at the end -of his pole, and went away, but turned at intervals to wave his hand -towards the sky, crying "Later on, right off!" and cackling genially -until he came to a tavern. - -The child stared at the glowworm and then surveyed the sky, but the -tardy moon was deep behind the hills. He left the open window and -climbed into bed again. The house was empty, but he did not mind, -father and mother had gone to buy him another birthday gift. He did -not mind, the church glowed in its corner on the bureau, the street -lamp shined all over the ceiling and a little bit upon the wall where -the splendid picture of Wexford Harbour was hanging. It was not gloomy -at all, although the Orphanage bell once sounded very piercingly. -Sometimes people would stroll by, but not often, and he would hear them -mumbling to each other. He would rather have a Chinese lantern first, -and next to that a little bagpipe, and next to that a cockatoo with -a yellow head, and then a Chinese lantern, and then.... He awoke; he -thought he heard a heavy bang on the door as if somebody had thrown a -big stone. But when he looked out of the window there was nobody to be -seen. The little moon drip was still lying in the dirt, the sky was -softly black, the stars were vivid, only the lamp dazzled his eyes and -he could not see any moon. But as he yawned he saw just over the downs -a rich globe of light moving very gradually towards him, swaying and -falling, falling in the still air. To the child's dazzled eyes the -great globe, dropping towards him as if it would crush the house, was -shaped like an elephant, a fat squat jumbo with a green trunk. Then to -his relief it fell suddenly from the sky right on to the down where he -and father had played. The light was extinguished and black night hid -the fire-balloon. - -He scrambled back into bed again, but how he wished it was morning so -that he could go out and capture the old elephant--he knew he would -find it! When at last he slept he sank into a world of white churches -that waved their steeples like vast trunks, and danced with elephants -that had bellies full of fire and hidden bells that clanged impetuously -to a courageous pull of each tail. He did not wake again until morning -was bright and birds were singing. It was early, but it was his -birthday. There were no noises in the street yet, and he could not -hear his father or mother moving about. He crawled silently from his -bed and dressed himself. The coloured windows in the little white fane -gleamed still but it looked a little dull now. He took the cake that -mother always left at his bedside and crept down the stairs. There he -put on his shoes and, munching the cake, tiptoed to the front door. It -was not bolted, but it was difficult for him to slip back the latch -quietly, and when at last it was done and he stood upon the step he was -doubly startled to hear a loud rapping on the knocker of a house a few -doors away. He sidled quickly but warily to the corner of the street, -crushing the cake into his pocket, and then peeped back. It was more -terrible than he had anticipated! A tall policeman stood outside that -house, bawling to a woman with her hair in curl papers who was lifting -the sash of an upper window. Felix turned and ran through the gap in -the hedge and onwards up the hill. He did not wait; he thought he heard -the policeman calling out "Tincler!" and he ran faster and faster, then -slower and more slow as the down steepened, until he was able to sink -down breathless behind a clump of the furze, out of sight and out of -hearing. The policeman did not appear to be following him; he moved on -up the hill and through the soft smooth alleys of the furze until he -reached the top of the down, searching always for the white elephant -which he knew must be hidden close there and nowhere else, although -he had no clear idea in his mind of the appearance of his mysterious -quarry. Vain search, the elephant was shy or cunning and eluded him. -Hungry at last and tired he sat down and leaned against a large ant -hill close beside the thick and perfumed furze. Here he ate his cake -and then lolled, a little drowsy, looking at the few clouds in the -sky and listening to birds. A flock of rooks was moving in straggling -flight towards him, a wide flat changing skein, like a curtain of crape -that was being pulled and stretched delicately by invisible fingers. -One of the rooks flapped just over him; it had a small round hole -right through the feathers of one wing--what was that for? Felix was -just falling to sleep, it was so soft and comfortable there, when a -tiny noise, very tiny but sharp and mysterious, went "Ping!" just by -his ear, and something stung him lightly in the neck. He knelt up, a -little startled, but he peered steadily under the furze. "Ping!" went -something again and stung him in the ball of the eye. It made him -blink. He drew back; after staring silently at the furze he said very -softly, "Come out!" Nothing came; he beckoned with his forefinger and -called aloud with friendliness, "come on, come out!" At that moment -his nose was almost touching a brown dry sheath of the furze bloom, -and right before his eyes the dried flower burst with the faint noise -of "Ping!" and he felt the shower of tiny black seeds shooting against -his cheek. At once he comprehended the charming mystery of the furze's -dispersal of its seeds, and he submitted himself to the fairylike -bombardment with great glee, forgetting even the elephant until in one -of the furze alleys he came in sight of a heap of paper that fluttered -a little heavily. He went towards it; it was so large that he could -not make out its shape or meaning. It was a great white bag made of -paper, all crumpled and damp, with an arrangement of wire where the -hole was, and some burned tow fixed in it. But at last he was able to -perceive the green trunk, and it also had pink eyes! He had found it -and he was triumphant! There were words in large black letters painted -upon it which he could not read, except one word which was CURE. It -was an advertisement fire-balloon relating to a specific for catarrh. -He rolled the elephant together carefully, and carrying the mass of -it clasped in his two arms he ran back along the hill chuckling to -himself, "I'm carrying the ole elephant." Advancing down the hill to -his home he was precariously swathed in a drapery of balloon paper. The -door stood open; he walked into the kitchen. No one was in the kitchen, -but there were sharp straight voices speaking in the room above. He -thought he must have come into the wrong house, but the strange noises -frightened him into silence; he stood quite still listening to them. -He had dropped the balloon and it unfolded upon the floor, partly -revealing the astounding advertisement of - - PEASEGOOD'S PODOPHYLLIN. - -The voices above were unravelling horror upon horror. He knew by some -divining instinct that tragedy was happening to him, had indeed -already enveloped and crushed him. A mortar had exploded at the -fireworks display, killing and wounding people that he knew. - -"She had a great hole of a wound in the soft part of her thigh as you -could put a cokernut in...." - -"God a'mighty...." - -"Died in five minutes, poor thing." - -"And the husband ... they couldn't....?" - -"No, couldn't identify ... they could not identify him only by some -papers in his pocket." - -"And he'd got a little bagpipe done up in a package ... for their -little boy...." - -"Never spoke a word...." - -"Never a word, poor creature." - -"May Christ be good to 'em." - -"Yes, yes," they all said softly. - -The child walked quietly up the stairs to his mother's bedroom. Two -policemen were there making notes in their pocket books, their helmets -lying on the unused bed. There were also three or four friendly women -neighbours. As he entered the room the gossip ceased abruptly. One of -the women gasped "O Jesus!" and they seemed to huddle together eyeing -him as if he had stricken them with terror. With his fingers still upon -the handle of the door he looked up at the tallest policeman and said: - -"What's the matter?" - -The policeman did not reply immediately; he folded up his notebook, but -the woman who had gasped came to him with a yearning cry and wrapped -him in her protesting arms with a thousand kisses. - -"Ye poor lamb, ye poor little orphan, whatever 'ull become of ye!" - -At that moment the bell of the Orphanage burst into a peal of harsh -impetuous clangour and the policemen picked up their helmets from the -bed. - - - - -CRAVEN ARMS - - - - -CRAVEN ARMS - - -All schools since the beginning of time have been modern at some period -of their existence, but this one was modern, so the vicar declared, -because it was so blessedly hygienic; the townspeople were perhaps -proudest of its evening classes, very advanced they were--languages, -sciences, arts--and very popular. The school was built upon a high -tree-arboured slope overlooking the snug small town and on its western -side stared ambiguously at a free upland country that was neither -small nor snug. The seventeen young women and the nine young men -who comprised the evening sketching class were definitely, indeed -articulately, inartistic; they were as unĉsthetic as pork pies, all -except Julia Tern, a golden-haired pure-complexioned fawn of a girl -whose talent was already beyond the reach of any instruction the -teacher could give. He could not understand why she continued to attend -his classes. - -One evening she brought for his criticism a portrait sketch of himself. - -"This is extraordinarily beautiful," he murmured. - -"Yes," said Julia. - -"I mean the execution, the presentation and so on." - -Julia did not reply. He stared at her picture of him, a delicately -modelled face with a suggestion of nobility, an air that was kind as it -was grave. The gravity and nobility which so pleased him were perhaps -the effect of a high brow from which the long brown hair flowed thinly -back to curve in a tidy cluster at his neck. Kindness beamed in the -eyes and played around the thin mouth, sharp nose and positive chin. -What could have inspired her to make this idealisation of himself, -for it was idealisation in spite of its fidelity and likeness? He -knew he had little enough nobility of character--too little to show -so finely--and as for that calm gravity of aspect, why gravity simply -was not in him. But there it was on paper, deliberate and authentic, -inscribed with his name--_David Masterman_ 1912. - -"When, how did you come to do it?" - -"I just wanted it, you were a nice piece, I watched you a good deal, -and there you are!" She said it jauntily, but there was a pink flush in -her cheeks. - -"It's delicious," he mused, "I envy you. I can't touch a decent -head--not even yours. But why have you idealised me so?" He twitted her -lightly about the gravity and nobility. - -"But you are like that, you are. That's how I see you at this moment." - -She did not give him the drawing as he hoped she would. He did not care -to ask her for it--there was delicious flattery in the thought that she -treasured it so much. - -Masterman was a rather solitary man of about thirty. He lived alone -in a bungalow away out of the town and painted numbers of landscapes, -rather lifeless imitations, as he knew, of other men's masterpieces. -They were frequently sold. - -Sometimes on summer afternoons he would go into woods or fields with -a few of his pupils to sketch or paint farmhouses, trees, clouds, -stacks, and other rural furniture. He was always hoping to sit alone -with Julia Tern; but there were other loyal pupils who never missed -these occasions, among them the two Forrest girls, Ianthe, the younger, -and Katherine, daughters of a thriving contractor. Julia remained -inscrutable, she gave him no opportunities at all: he could never -divine her feelings or gather any response to his own, but there could -be no doubt of the feelings of the Forrest girls--they quite certainly -liked him, liked him enormously, and indeed could have had no other -reason for continuing in his classes, both being as devoid of artistic -grace as an inkstand. They brought fruit or chocolate to the classes -and shared them with him. Their attentions, their mutual attentions, -were manifested in many ways, small but significant and kind. On such -occasions Julia's eyes seemed to rest upon him with an ironical gaze. -It was absurd. He liked them well enough, and sometimes from his shy -wooing of the adorable but enigmatic Julia he would turn for solace to -Ianthe. Yet strangely enough it was Kate, the least alluring to him of -the three girls, who took him to her melancholy heart. - -Ianthe was a little bud of womanhood, dark-haired but light-headed, -dressed in cream-coloured clothes. She was small and right and tight, -without angularities or rhythms, just one dumpy solid roundness. But -she had an extraordinary vulgarity of speech, if not of mind, that -exacerbated him, and in the dim corridors of his imagination she did -not linger; she scurried as it were into doorways or upon twisting -staircases or stood briefly where a loop of light fell upon her hair, -her dusky face, her creamy clothes and her delightful rotundities. She -had eyes of indiscretion and a mind like a hive of bees, it had such a -tiny opening and was so full of a cloying content. - -One day he suddenly found himself alone with Ianthe in a glade of larch -trees which they had all been sketching. They had loitered. He had been -naming wild flowers which Ianthe had picked for the purpose and then -thrown wantonly away. She spied a single plant of helleborine growing -in the dimness under the closely planted saplings. - -"Don't! don't!" he cried. He kept her from plucking it and they knelt -down together to admire the white virginal flower. His arm fell -around Ianthe's waist in a light casual way. He scarcely realised its -presumption. He had not intended to do it; as far as that went he did -not particularly want to do it, but there his arm was. Ianthe took no -notice of the embrace and he felt foolish, he could not retreat until -they rose to walk on; then Ianthe pressed close to his side until his -arm once more stole round her. - -"Heavens above," she said, "you do get away with it quick!" - -"Life's short, there's no time to lose, I do as I'd be done by." - -"And there are so many of us! But glory," said the jolly girl, taking -him to her bosom, "in for a penny, in for a pound." - -She did not pick any more flowers, and soon they were out of the wood -decorously joining the others. He imagined that Julia's gaze was full -of irony, the timid wonder in Kate's eyes moved him uncomfortably, -there was something idiotic in the whole affair. - -Until the end of the summer he met Ianthe often enough in the little -town or in the city three miles further off. Her uncouthness still -repelled him and sometimes he disliked her completely, but she was -always happy to be with him, fond and gay with all the endearing -alertness of a pert bird. - -Her sister Kate was not just the mere female that Ianthe was; at once -sterner and softer her passions were more strong but their defences -stood solid as a rock. In spite of her reserve she was always on the -brink of her emotions, and they, unhappily for her, were often not -transient, but enduring. She was nearly thirty, still unwed. Her dark -beauty, for she, too, was fine, seemed to brood in melancholy over his -attentions to the other two women. She was quiet, she had little to -say, she seemed to stand and wait. - -One autumn night after the pupils had gone home from school he walked -into the dim lobby for his hat and coat. Kate Forrest was there. She -stood with her back to him adjusting her hat. She did not say a word -nor did he address her. They were almost touching each other, there was -a pleasant scent about her. In the class-room behind the caretaker was -walking about the hollow sounding floor, humming loudly as he clapped -down windows and mounted the six chairs to turn out the six gas lamps. - -When the last light through the glazed door was gone and the lobby was -completely dark Kate all at once turned to him, folded him in her arms, -and held him to her breast for one startling moment, then let him go, -murmuring "O ... O." It made him strangely happy. He pulled her back in -the gloom, whispering tender words. They walked out of the hall into -the dark road and stopped to confront each other. The road was empty -and dark except for a line of gas lamps that gleamed piercingly bright -in the sharp air and in the polished surface of the road that led -back from the hill down past her father's villa. There were no lamps -in the opposite direction and the road groped its way out into the -dark country where he lived, a mile beyond the town. It was windy and -some unseen trees behind a wall near them swung and tossed with many -pleasant sounds. - -"I will come a little way with you," Kate said. - -"Yes, come a little way," he whispered, pressing her arm, "I'll come -back with you." - -She took his arm and they turned towards the country. He could think of -nothing to say, he was utterly subdued by his surprise: Kate was sad, -even moody; but at last she said slowly: "I am unlucky. I always fall -in love with men who can't love me." - -"O but I can and do, dear Kate," he cried lightly, "love me, Kate, go -on loving me, I'm not, well, I'm not very wicked." - -"No, no, you do not." She shook her head mournfully; after a few -moments she added: "It's Julia Tern." - -That astonished him too. How could she have known it! How could anyone -have known--even Julia herself. It was queer that she did not refer to -his friendship with Ianthe; he thought that was much more obvious than -his love for Julia. In a mood that he only half understood he began -to deny her reproachful charge. "Why, you must think me very fickle -indeed. I really love you, dear Kate, really you." - -His arm was around her neck, he smoothed her cheek fondly against his -own. She returned his caresses, but he could glimpse the melancholy -doubt in her averted eyes. - -"We often talk of you, we often talk of you at night in bed, often." - -"What do you say about me--in bed? Who?" - -"Ianthe and me. She likes you." - -"She likes me! What do you say about me--in bed?" - -He hoped Ianthe had not been indiscreet, but Kate only said: "She -doesn't like you as I do--not like this." - -Soon they began to walk back towards the town. He smiled once when, as -their footsteps clattered irregularly upon the hard clean road, she -skipped to adjust the fall of her steps to his. - -"Do not come any further," she begged, as they neared the street lamps. -"It doesn't matter, not at all, what I've said to you. It will be all -right. I shall see you again." - -Once more she put her arms around his neck, murmuring "Good-night, -good-night, good-night." - -He watched her go quietly away. When he turned homeward his mind was -full of thoughts that were only dubiously pleasant. It was all right, -surprisingly sweet, but it left him uneasy. He managed to light a -cigarette, but the wind blew smoke into his eyes, tore the charred end -into fiery rags, and tossed the sparkles across his shoulder. If it -had only been Julia Tern!--or even Ianthe!--he would have been wholly -happy. Kate was good-looking, but these quietly passionate advances -disturbed him. Why had he been so responsive to her? He excused -himself, it was quite simple; you could not let a woman down, a loving -woman like that, not at once, a man should be kind. But what did she -mean when she spoke of always falling in love with men who did not like -her? - -He tossed the cigarette away and turned up the collar of his coat, -for the faintest fall of warm rain blew against his face like a soft -beautiful net. He thrust his hands into his pockets and walked sharply -and forgettingly home. - - -2 - -Three miles away from the little town was the big city with tramways, -electric light, factories, canals, and tens of thousands of people, -and there a few nights later he met Ianthe. Walking around and away -from the happy lighted streets they came out upon the bank of a canal -where darkness and loneliness were intensified by the silent passage -of black water whose current they could define but not see. As they -stepped warily along the unguarded bank he embraced her. Even as he did -so he cursed himself for a fool to be so fond of this wretched imp of a -girl. In his heart he believed he disliked her, but he was not sure. -She was childish, artful, luscious, stupid--this was no gesture for a -man with any standards. Silently clutching each other they approached -an iron bridge with lamps upon it and a lighted factory beyond it. The -softly-moving water could now be seen; the lamps on the bridge let down -thick rods of light into its quiet depths, and beyond the arch the -windows of the factory, inverted in the stream, bloomed like baskets of -fire with flaming fringes. A boy shuffled across the bridge whistling a -tune; there was the distant rumble and trot of a cab. Then all sounds -melted into quiet without one wave of air. Ianthe was replying to him: - -"No, no, I like it, I like you." She put her brow against his breast: -"I like you, I like you." - -His embracing hand could feel the emotion streaming within the girl. - -"Do you like me better than her?" - -"Than whom," he asked. - -Ianthe was coy. "You know, you know." - -Masterman's feelings were a mixture of perturbation and delight, -delight at this manifestation of jealousy of her sister which was an -agreeable thing, anyway, for it implied a real depth of regard for -him; but he was perturbed, for he did not know what Kate had told this -sister of their last strange meeting. - -He saluted her again, exclaiming: - -"Never mind her. This our outing, isn't it?" - -"I don't like her," Ianthe added naively, "she is so awfully fond of -you." - -"O confound her," he cried; and then: "You mustn't mind me saying that -so, so sharply; you don't mind, do you?" - -Ianthe's lips were soft and sweet. Sisters were quite unscrupulous, -Masterman had heard of such cases before, but he had tenderness and a -reluctance to wound anybody's susceptibility, let alone the feelings of -a woman who loved. He was an artist not only in paint but in sentiment, -and it is possible that he excelled in the less tangible medium. - -"It's a little awkward," he ventured. Ianthe didn't understand, she -didn't understand that at all. - -"The difficulty, you see," he said, with the air of one handling -whimsically a question of perplexity that yet yielded its amusement, -"is ... is Kate." - -"Kate?" said Ianthe. - -"She is so--so gone, so absolutely gone." - -"Gone?" - -"Well, she's really, really in love, deeply, deeply," looking away -anywhere but at her sister's eyes. - -"With Chris Halton, do you mean?" - -"Ho, ho!" he laughed. "Chris who? Lord, no! With me, with me, isn't -she?" - -"With you!" - -But Ianthe was quite positive, even a little ironical, about that. "She -is not. She rather dislikes you, Mr. Prince Charming, so there! We -speak of you sometimes at night, in bed--we sleep together. She knows -what I think of you. But she's quite, well, she doesn't like you at -all--she acts the heavy sister." - -"O!" said Masterman, groping as it were for some light in his darkness. - -"She--what do you think?--she warns me against you," Ianthe continued. - -"Against me?" - -"As if I care. Do you?" - -"No, no! I don't care." - -They left the dark bank where they had been standing and walked along -to the bridge. Halfway up its steps to the road he paused, and asked: -"Then who is it that is so fond of me?" - -"O, you know, you know." Ianthe nestled blissfully in his arm again. - -"No, but who is it; I may be making another howler, I thought you meant -Kate; what did she warn you of, I mean against me?" - -They were now in the streets again, walking towards the tram centre. -The shops were darkened and closed, but the cinemas lavished their -unwanted illuminations on the street. There were no hurrying people, -there was just strolling ease; the policemen at corners were chatting -to other policemen now in private clothes. The brilliant trams rumbled -and clanged and stopped, the saloons were full and musical. - -"What did she warn you against?" he repeated. - -"You," chuckled Ianthe. - -"But what about? What has she got against me?" - -"Everything. You know. You know you do." The archness of Ianthe was -objectively baffling, but under it all he read the significance, its -invitation. - -He waited beside her for a tram, but when it came he pleaded a further -engagement in the city and left her rather crest-fallen to her journey. -He had no other engagement, he only wanted to be alone to sort out the -things she had dangled before his mind, so he boarded the next car and -walked from the Tutsan terminus to his cottage. Both girls were fond -of him, then--Ianthe's candour left him no room for doubt--and they -were both lying to each other about him. Well, he didn't mind that, he -lied himself whenever it was necessary or suited him. Not often, but -when truth was inappropriate to a sensitive-minded man, this was his -protective colouring. Why after all should sympathetic mendacity be a -monopoly of polite society? - -"But it's also the trick of thieves and seducers," he muttered to -himself. "I'm not a thief, no, I'm not a thief. As for the other thing, -well, what is there against me--nothing, nothing at all." But a strange -voiceless sigh seemed to echo from the trees along the dark road; he -walked on more rapidly. - -Three women! There was no doubt either about the third, Ianthe had -thought of Julia, too, just as Kate had. What a fate for a misogamist! -He felt like a mouse being taken for a ride in a bath chair. He had -an invincible prejudice against marriage, not as an institution but -because he was perfectly aware of his incapacity for faithfulness. His -emotions were deep but unprolonged, they were fickle. Love was love, -but marriage turned love into the stone of Sisyphus. At the sound of -the marriage bell--a passing bell--earth at his feet would burst into -flame and the sky above would pour upon him an unquenching profusion -of tears. Love was a fine ennobling thing, but though he had the will -to love he knew beyond the possibility of doubt that his capacity for -love was a meandering strengthless thing. Even his loyalty to Julia -Tern--and that had the strongest flavour of any such emotion that had -ever beset him, no matter how brief its term--even that was a deviating -zig-zag loyalty. For he wanted to go on being jolly and friendly with -Ianthe if only Julia did not get to know. With Kate, too, that tender -melancholy woman. She would be vastly unhappy. Who was this Christopher -whom Ianthe fondly imagined her sister to favour? Whoever he was, poor -devil, he would not thank D. M. for his intervention. But he would drop -all this; however had he, of all men, come to be plumped so suddenly -into a state of things for which he had shown so little fancy in the -past? Julia would despise him, she would be sure to despise him, sure -to; and yet if he could only believe she would not it would be pleasant -to go on being friendly with Ianthe pending ... pending what? - -Masterman was a very pliant man; but as things shaped themselves for -him he did not go a step further with Ianthe, and it was not to Julia -at all that he made love. - - -3 - -The amour, if it may be described as such, of David Masterman and -Kate Forrest took a course that was devoid of ecstasy, whatever other -qualities may have illuminated their desires. It was an affair in which -the human intentions, which are intellectual, were on both sides strong -enough to subdue the efforts of passion, which are instinctive, to rid -itself of the customary curbs, and to turn the clash of inhibitions -wherein the man proposes and the woman rejects into a conflict not -of ideal but of mere propriety. They were like two negative atoms -swinging in a medium from which the positive flux was withdrawn; for -them the nebulĉ did not 'cohere into an orb.' - -Kate's fine figure was not so fine as Julia Tern's; her dusky charms -were excelled by those of Ianthe; but her melancholy immobility, -superficial as it was, had a suggestive emotional appeal that won -Masterman away from her rivals. Those sad eyes had but to rest on -his and their depths submerged him. Her black hair had no special -luxuriance, her stature no unusual grace; the eyes were almost blue and -the thin oval face had always the flush of fine weather in it; but her -strong hands, though not as white as snow, were paler than milk, their -pallor was unnatural. Almost without an effort she drew him away from -the entangling Ianthe, and even the image of Julia became but a fair -cloud seen in moonlight, delicate and desirable but very far away; it -would never return. Julia had observed the relations between them--no -discerning eye could misread Kate's passion--and she gave up her class, -a secession that had a deep significance for him, and a grief that he -could not conceal from Kate though she was too wise to speak of it. - -But in spite of her poignant aspect--for it was in that appearance -she made such a powerful appeal to Masterman; the way she would wait -silently for him on the outside of a crowd of the laughing chattering -students was touching--she was an egotist of extraordinary type. She -believed in herself and in her virtue more strongly than she believed -in him or their mutual love. By midsummer, after months of wooing, she -knew that the man who so passionately moved her and whose own love she -no less powerfully engaged was a man who would never marry, who had a -morbid preposterous horror of the domesticity and devotion that was her -conception of living bliss. "The hand that rocks the cradle rocks the -world," he said. He, too, knew that the adored woman, for her part, -could not dream of a concession beyond the limits her virginal modesty -prescribed. He had argued and stormed, sworn that baffled love turns -irrevocably to hatred. She did not believe him, she even smiled, but -he had behaved grossly towards her, terrified her, and they parted in -anger. - -He did not see her for many weeks. He was surprised and dismayed, his -misery was so profound. He knew he had loved her; he had not doubted -its sincerity, but he had doubted its depth. Then one September evening -she had come back to the class and afterwards she had walked along the -road with him towards his home. - -"Come to my house," he said, "you have never been to see it." - -She shook her head. It was getting dark and they walked on past his -home further into the country. The eve was late, but it had come -suddenly without the deliberation of sunset or the tenuity of dusk. -Each tree was a hatful of the arriving blackness. They stood by a white -gate under an elm, but they had little to say to each other. - -"Come to my house," he urged again and again. She shook her head. He -was indignant at her distrust of him. Perhaps she was right, but he -would never forgive her. The sky was now darker than the road; the -sighing air was warm, with drifting spots of rain. - -"Tell me," she suddenly said, taking his arm, "has anybody else ever -loved you like that." - -He prevaricated: "Like what?" He waited a long time for her answer. She -gave it steadily. "Like you want me to love you." - -He, too, hesitated. He kissed her. He wanted to tell her it was not -wise to pry. - -"Tell me," she urged, "tell me." - -"Yes," he replied. He could not see her plainly in the darkness, but he -knew of the tears that fell from her eyes. - -"How unreasonable!" he thought, "how stupid!" He began to tell the -truth to her, about his feelings towards her, and towards those others, -and about themselves--the truth as he conceived it. - -She was almost alarmed, certainly shocked. - -"But you don't believe such things," she almost shivered, "I'm sure you -don't, it isn't right, it is not true." - -"It may not be true," he declared implacably, "but I believe it. The -real warrant for holding a belief is not that it is true but that it -satisfies you." - -She did not seem to understand that; she only answered irrelevantly, -"I'll make it up to you some day. I shall not change, David, towards -you. We have got all our lives before us. I shan't alter, will you?" - -"Not alter!" he began angrily, but then subduedly added, with a grim -irony that she did not gather in; "No, I shall not alter." She leaned -upon his breast murmuring: "I'll make it all up to you, some day." - -He felt like a sick-minded man and was glad when they parted. He went -back to his cottage grumbling audibly to himself. Why could he not -take this woman with the loving and constant heart and wed her? He -did not know why, but he knew he never would do that. She was fine -to look upon, but she had ideas (if you could call them ideas) which -he disliked. Her instincts and propensities were all wrong, they -were antagonistic to him, just as, he felt, his were antagonistic to -her. What was true, though, was her sorrow at what she called their -misunderstandings; and what was profound, what was almost convincing, -was her assumption (which but measured her own love for him) that he -could not cease to love _her_. How vain that was. He had not loved -any woman in the form she thought all love must take. These were not -misunderstandings, they were just simply at opposite ends of a tilted -beam; he the sophisticated, and she the innocent beyond the reach -of his sophistries. But Good Lord! what did it all matter? what did -anything matter? He would not see her again. He undressed, and got into -bed. He thought of Julia, of Ianthe, of Kate.... He had a dream in -which he lay in a shroud upon a white board and was interrogated by a -saint who carried a reporter's notebook and a fountain pen. - -"What is your desire, sick-minded man?" the saint interrogated him, -"what consummation would exalt your languid eyes?" - -"I want the present not to be. It is neither grave nor noble." - -"Then that _is_ your sickness. That mere negation is at once your hope -and end." - -"I do not know." - -"If the present so derides the dignified past surely your desire lies -in a future incarnating beautiful old historic dreams?" - -"I do not know." - -"Ideals are not in the past. They do not exist in any future. They rush -on, and away, beyond your immediate activities, beyond the horizons -that are for ever fixed, forever charging down upon us." - -"I do not know." - -"What is it you do know?" asked the exasperated Saint, jerking his -fountain pen to loosen its flow, and Masterman replied like a lunatic: - -"I know that sealing wax is a pure and beautiful material, and you get -such a lot of it for a penny." - -He woke and could not sleep again. He cursed Kate, he jeered at Julia, -he anathematised Ianthe, until the bright eye of morning began to gild -once more their broken images. - - -4 - -For a time the breach between them could not be healed, and during -its interregnum he began to meet Ianthe again. But her eager devotion -had lost its savour now, and he was conscious of his own mere amorous -predacity, of treason to the dumb but benignant Kate, the sad-visaged -woman whose chilly regard had riveted him, whose reproach unspoken and -indeed unseen hovered almost annoyingly in his imagination. - -Ianthe behaved evilly to Kate when she discovered that mutual -infatuation for their one lover. Echoes of the sisters' feud, at first -dim, but soon crashingly clear, reached him, touched him and moved -him on Kate's behalf; all his loyalty belonged to her. What did it -matter that he could not fathom his desire for her, or that Ianthe -was his for a word, or that Kate's implacable virtue still offered its -deprecatory hand, when Kate herself came back to him? - -Kate was devout in the perfunctory way that denotes no apprehension -of the mystery of sublime recognitions but is yet an effectual moral -breakwater, she could be neither saint nor sinner. But her mind held -fast to its promise: she would make it up, she would make it all up -some day: and she did not feel or know that this was as much a promise -to herself as to the man she loved. - -They were to spend a picnic day together and she went to him for -breakfast. Her tremours of propriety were fully exercised as she cycled -along to his home; she was too fond of him and he was more than fond of -her. But all her qualms were lulled, he did not appear in any of the -half-anticipated _negligé_, he was beautifully and amusingly at home. - -"My dear!" he exclaimed in the enjoyment of her presence; she stood -staring at him as she removed her wrap, the morn though bright being -fresh and cool: "Why do I never do you justice! Why do I half forget! -You are marvellously irresistibly lovely. How do you do it--or how do I -fail so?" - -She could only answer him with blushes. His bungalow had but two rooms, -both on the ground floor, one a studio and the other his living and -sleeping room. It was new, built of bricks and unpainted boards. The -interior walls were unplastered and undecorated except for three small -saucepans hung on hooks, a shelf of dusty volumes, and nails, large -rusty nails projecting everywhere, one holding a discarded collar -and a clothes brush. A tall flat cupboard contained a narrow bed to -be lowered for sleeping; huge portmanteaus and holdalls reposed in a -corner beside a bureau; there was a big brass candle-pan on a chair -beside the round stove. While he prepared breakfast the girl walked -about the room, making shy replies to his hilarious questions. It -was warm in there, but to her tidy comfort-loving heart the room was -disordered and bare. She stood looking out of the window; the April air -was bright but chilly, the grass in thin tufts fluttered and shivered. - -"It is very nice," she said to him once, "but it's strange, and I feel -that I ought not to be here." - -"O, never mind where you ought to be," he cried, pouring out the -coffee, "that's where you are, you suit the place, you brighten and -adorn it, it's your native setting, Kate. No--I know exactly what is -running in your mind, you are going to ask if I suffer loneliness here. -Well, I don't. A great art in life is the capacity to extract a flavour -from something not obviously flavoured, but here it is all flavour. -Come and look at things." - -He rose and led her from egg and toast to the world outside. Long -fields of pasture and thicket followed a stream that followed other -meadows, soon hidden by the ambulating many-folding valleys, and so -on to the sea, a hundred miles away. Into his open door were blown, -in their season, balls of thistledown, crisp leaves, twigs and dried -grass, the reminder, the faint brush, of decay. Airs of wandering winds -came in, odours of herbs, the fragrance of viewless flowers. The land -in some directions was now being furrowed where corn was greenly to -thrive, to wave in glimmering gold, to lie in the stook, to pile on -giant stack. Horses were trailing a harrow across an upland below the -park, the wind was flapping the coats of the drivers, the tails and -manes of the horses, and heaving gladly in trees. A boy was firing -some heaps of scutch grass and the smoke wore across the land in dense -deliberate wreaths. Sportsmen's guns were sounding from the hollow park. - -Kate followed Masterman around his cottage; he seemed to be fascinated -by the smoke, the wind, the horses and men. - -"Breakfast will be cold." - -How queerly he looked at her before he said: "Yes, of course, breakfast -will be getting cold," and then added, inconsequently: "Flowers are -like men and women, they either stare brazenly at the sun or they bend -humbly before it: but even the most modest desire the sun." - -When he spoke like that she always felt that the words held a -half-hidden, perhaps libidinous, meaning, which she could not -understand but only guess at; and she was afraid of her guesses. Full -of curious, not to say absurd, superstitions about herself and about -him, his strange oblique emotions startled her virginal understanding; -her desire was to be good, very very good, but to be that she could not -but suspect the impulses of most other people, especially the impulses -of men. Well, perhaps she was right: the woman who hasn't any doubts -must have many illusions. - -He carried a bag of lunch and they walked out into the day. Soon the -wind ceased, the brightness grew warm, the warmth was coloured; clouds -lolled in the air like tufts of lilac. At the edge of a spinney they -sat down under a tree. Boughs of wood blown down by the winter gales -were now being hidden by the spring grass. A rabbit twenty yards away -sat up and watched the couple, a fat grey creature. "Hoi!" cried Kate, -and the rabbit hopped away. It could not run very fast, it did not seem -much afraid. - -"Is it wounded?" she asked. - -"No, I think it is a tame one, escaped from a farm or a cottage near -us, I expect." - -Kate crept after it on hands and knees and it let her approach. She -offered it the core of an apple she had just eaten. The rabbit took -it and bit her finger. Then Kate caught it by the ears. It squealed -but Kate held it to her bosom with delight, and the rabbit soon rested -there, if not with delight at least with ease. It was warm against her -breast. It was delicious to feel it there, to pull its ears and caress -its fat flank, but as she was doing this she suddenly saw that its -coat was infested with fleas. She dropped the rabbit with a scream of -disgust and it rushed into the thicket. - -"Come here," said Masterman to her, "let me search you, this is -distressing." - -She knelt down before him and in spite of her wriggling he reassured -her. "It's rather a nice blouse," he said. - -"I don't care for it. I shall not wear it again. I shall sell it to -some one or give it to them." - -"I would love to take it from you...." - -"You! Take it from me?" - -"Yes, stitch by stitch." - -With an awkward movement of her arm she thrust at his face, crying -loudly "No, how dare you speak to me like that!" - -"Is it very daring?" For a moment he saw her clenched hands, detestably -bloodless, a symbol of roused virtue; but at once her anger was gone, -Kate was contrite and tender. She touched his face with her white -fingers softly as the settling of a moth. "O, why did we come here?" - -He did not respond to her caresses, he was sullen, they left the -spinney; but as they walked she took his arm murmuring: - -"Forgive me, I'll make it all up to you, some day." - -Coyness and cunning, passion and pride, were so much at odds that later -on they quarrelled again. Kate knew that he would neither marry her nor -let her go; she could neither let him go nor keep him. This figure of -her distress amused him, he was callously provoking, and her resentment -flared out at the touch of his scorn. With Kate there seemed to be no -intermediate stages between docility and fury, or even between love and -hatred. - -"Why are you like this?" she cried, beating her pallid hands together, -"I have known you for so long." - -"Ah, we have known each other for so long, but as for really knowing -you--no! I'm not a tame rabbit to be fondled any more." - -She stared for a moment, as if in recollection; then burst into -ironical laughter. He caught her roughly in his arms but she beat him -away. - -"O, go to ... go to...." - -"Hell?" he suggested. - -"Yes," she burst out tempestuously, "and stop there." - -He was stunned by her unexpected violence. She was coarse, like Ianthe, -after all. But he said steadily: - -"I'm willing to go there, if you will only keep out of my way when I -arrive." - -Then he left her standing in a lane: he hurried and ran, clambering -over stiles and brushing through hedges, anything to get away from the -detestable creature. She did not follow him and they were soon out -of sight of each other. Anger and commination swarmed to his lips, he -branded her with frenzied opprobrium and all the beastliness that was -in him. Nothing under heaven should ever persuade him to approach the -filthy beast again, the damned intolerable drab, never, never again, -never. - -But he came to a bridge. On it he rested. And in that bright air, that -sylvan peace, his rancour fell away from him, like sand from a glass, -leaving him dumb and blank at the meanness of his deed. He went back -to the lane as fast as he could go. She was not there. "Kate, Kate, my -dove!" But he could not find her. - -He was lost in the fields until he came at last upon a road and a -lonely tavern thereby. It had a painted sign; a very smudgy fox, -in an inexplicable attitude, destroying a fowl that looked like -a plum-pudding but was intended to depict a snipe. At the stable -door the tiniest black kitten in the world was shaping with timid -belligerency at a young and fluffy goose who, ignoring it, went on -sipping ecstatically from a pan of water. On the door were nailed, in -two semi-circles of decoration, sixteen foxpads in various stages of -decay, an entire spiral shaving from the hoof of a horse, and some -chalk jottings: - - _2 pads._ - _3 cruppers._ - _1 bellyband._ - _2 set britchin._ - -The tavern was long and low and clean, its garden was bare but trim. -There was comfort; he rested, had tea, and then in the bar his musings -were broken upon by a ragged importunate old pedlar from Huddersfield. - -"Born and bred in Slatterwick, it's no lie ah'm speaking, ah were born -and bred Slatterwick, close to Arthur Brinkley's farm, his sister's in -Canady, John Orkroyd took farm, Arthur's dead." - -"Humph!" - -"And buried. That iron bridge at Jackamon's belong to Daniel Cranmer. -He's dead." - -"Humph!" - -"And buried. From the iron bridge it's two miles and a quarter to -Herbert Oddy's, that's the _Bay Horse_, am ah right, at Shelmersdyke. -Three miles and three-quarters from Dyke to the _Cock & Goat_ at -Shapley Fell, am ah right?" - -Masterman, never having been within a hundred miles of Yorkshire, -puffed at his cigarette, and nodded moodily, "I suppose so" or "Yes, -yes." - -"From Arthur Brinkley's to th' iron bridge is one mile and a half and a -bit, and from Arthur Brinkley's to Jury Cartright's is just four mile. -He's dead, sir." - -"Yes." - -"And buried. Is that wrong? Am ah speaking wrong? No. It's a long step -from yon, rough tramp for an old man." - -Masterman--after giving sixpence to the pedlar who, uttering a -benediction, pressed upon him a card of shirt buttons--said "Good -evening," and walked out to be alone upon the road with his once angry -but now penitent mind. "Kate, poor dear Kate!" - -The sun was low down lolling near the horizon but there was an -astonishing light upon the land. Cottage windows were blocks of solid -gold in this lateral brilliance, shafts of shapely shade lay across -leagues of fields, he could have counted every leaf among the rumpled -boskage of the sycamores. A vast fan of indurated cloud, shell-like and -pearly, was wavering over the western sky, but in the east were snowy -rounded masses like fabulous balloons. At a cross road he stood by an -old sign post, its pillar plastered with the faded bill of a long ago -circus. He could read every word of it but when he turned away he found -everything had become dimmer. The wind arose, the forest began to roar -like a heaving beast. All verdurous things leaned one way. A flock of -starlings flew over him with one movement and settled on a rolling -elm. How lonely it was. He took off his hat. His skull was fearfully -tender--he had dabbed it too hard with his hairbrush that morning. His -hair was growing thin, like his youth and his desires. - -What had become of Kate, where had she hidden? What _would_ be the -end of it all? He would never see her again. He disliked everything -about her, except herself. Her clothes, her speech, her walk, the -way she carried her umbrella, her reticence that was nothing if -not conspicuous, her melancholy, her angular concrete piety, her -hands--in particular he disliked her pale hands. She had a mind that -was cultivated as perfunctorily as a kitchen garden, with ideas like -roots or beans, hostilities like briars, and a fence of prudery as -tough as hoops of galvanised iron. And yet he loved her--or almost. -He was ready to love her, he wanted to, he wanted her; her deep but -guarded devotion--it was limited but it was devotion--compelled that -return from him. It was a passionate return. He had tried to mould that -devotion into a form that could delight him--he had failed. He knew -her now, he could peer into her craven soul as one peers into an empty -bottle, with one eye. For her the opportunities afforded by freedom -were but the preludes to misadventure. What a fool she was! - -When he reached home Kate stood in darkness at the doorway of his -house. He exclaimed with delight, her surprising presence was the very -centre of his desire; he wanted to embrace her, loving her deeply -inexplicably again, just in a moment. - -"I want my bike," the girl said sulkily. "I left it inside this -morning." - -"Ah, your bicycle! Yes, you did." He unlocked the door, "Wait, there -should be a candle, there should be." - -She stood in the doorway until he had lit it. - -"Come in, Kate," he said, "let me give you something. I think there is -some milk, certainly I have some cake, come in, Kate, or do you drink -beer, I have beer, come in, I'll make you something hot." - -But Kate only took her bicycle. "I ought to have been home hours ago," -she said darkly, wheeling it outside and lighting the lantern. He -watched her silently as she dabbed the wick; the pallor of her hands -had never appeared so marked. - -"Let's be kind to each other," he said, detaining her, "don't go, dear -Kate." - -She pushed her bicycle out into the road. - -"Won't you see me again?" he asked as she mounted it. - -"I am always seeing you," she called back, but her meaning was dark to -him. - -"Faugh! The devil! The fool!" He gurgled anathemas as he returned to -his cottage. "And me, too! What am I?" - -But no mortal man could ever love a woman of that kind. She did not -love him at all, had never loved him. Then what was it she did love? -Not her virtue--you might as well be proud of the sole of your foot; -it was some sort of pride, perhaps the test of her virtue that the -conflict between them provoked, the contest itself alone alluring her, -not its aim and end. She was never happier than when, having led him -on, she thwarted him. But she would find that his metal was as tough as -her own. - -Before going to bed he spent an hour in writing very slowly a letter to -Kate, telling her that he felt they would not meet again, that their -notions of love were so unrelated, their standards so different. "My -morals are at least as high as yours, though likely you regard me as a -rip. Let us recognise then," he wrote concludingly, "that we have come -to the end of the tether without once having put an ounce of strain -upon its delightful but very tense cord. But the effort to keep the -affair down to the level at which you seem satisfied has wearied me. -The task of living down to that assures me that for you the effort of -living up to mine would be consuming. I congratulate you, my dear, on -coming through scatheless, and that the only appropriate condolences -are my own--for myself." - -It was rather pompous, he thought, but then she wouldn't notice that, -let alone understand it. She suffered not so much from an impediment of -speech--how could she when she spoke so little?--as from an impediment -of intellect, which was worse, much worse, but not so noticeable, being -so common a failing. She was, when all was said and done, just a fool. -It was a pity, for bodily she must indeed be a treasure. What a pity! -But she had never had any love for him at all, only compassion and -pity for his bad thoughts about her; he had neither pity for her nor -compunction--only love. Dear, dear, dear. Blow out the candle. Lock the -door. Good-night! - - -5 - -He did not see her again for a long time. He would have liked to have -seen her, yes, just once more, but of course he was glad, quite glad, -that she did not risk it and drag from dim depths the old passion -to break again in those idiotic bubbles of propriety. She did not -answer his letter--he was amused. Then her long silence vexed him, -until vexation was merged in alarm. She had gone away from Tutsan--of -course--gone away on family affairs--oh, naturally!--she might be gone -away for ever. But a real grief came upon him. He had long mocked the -girl, not only the girl but his own vision of her; now she was gone his -mind elaborated her melancholy immobile figure into an image of beauty. -Her absence, her silence, left him wretched. He heard of her from -Ianthe, who renewed her blandishments; he was not unwilling to receive -them now--he hoped their intercourse might be reported to Kate. - -After many months he did receive a letter from her. It was a tender -letter though ill-expressed, not very wise or informative, but he could -feel that the old affection for him was still there, and he wrote her a -long reply in which penitence and passion and appeal were mingled. - -"I know now, yes, I see it all now; solutions are so easy when the -proof of them is passed. We were cold to each other, it was stupid, I -should have _made_ you love me and it would have been well. I see it -now. How stupid, how unlucky; it turned me to anger and you to sorrow. -Now I can think only of you." - -She made no further sign, not immediately, and he grew dull again. -His old disbelief in her returned. Bah! She loved him no more than a -suicide loved the pond it dies in; she had used him for her senseless -egoism, tempting him and fooling him, wantonly yes, wantonly, he had -not begun it, and she took a chaste pride in saving herself from him. -What was it the old writer had said? "Chastity, by nature the gentlest -of all affections--give it but its head--'tis like a ramping and -roaring lion." Saving herself! Yes, she would save herself for marriage. - -He even began to contemplate that outcome. - -Her delayed letter, when it came, announced that she was coming home at -once; he was to meet her train on the morning after the morrow. - -It was a dull autumnal morning when he met her. Her appearance was not -less charming than he had imagined it, though the charm was almost -inarticulate and there were one or two crude touches that momentarily -distressed him. But he met with a flush of emotion all her glances of -gaiety and love that were somehow, vaguely, different--perhaps there -was a shade less reserve. They went to lunch in the city and at the end -of the meal he asked her: - -"Well, why have you come back again?" - -She looked at him intently: "Guess!" - -"I--well, no--perhaps--tell me, Kate, yourself." - -"You are different, now, you look different, David." - -"Am I changed! Better or worse?" - -She did not reply and he continued: - -"You, too, are changed, I can't tell how it is, or where, but you are." - -"O, I am changed, much changed," murmured Kate. - -"Have you been well?" - -"Yes." - -"And happy?" - -"Yes." - -"Then how unwise of you to come back." - -"I have come back," said Kate, "to be happier. But somehow you are -different." - -"You are different, too. Shall we ever be happy again?" - -"Why--why not?" said Kate. - -"Come on!" he cried hilariously, "let us make a day of it, come along!" - -Out in the streets they wandered until rain began to fall. "Come in -here for a while." They were passing a roomy dull building, the museum, -and they went in together. It was a vast hollow-sounding flagstone -place that had a central brightness fading into dim recesses and -galleries of gloom. They examined a monster skeleton of something -like an elephant, three stuffed apes and a picture of the dodo. Kate -stood before them without interest or amusement, she just contemplated -them. What did she want with an elephant, an ape, or a dodo! The glass -exhibit cases were leaned upon by them, the pieces of coal neatly -arranged and labelled were stared at, besides the pieces of granite or -coloured rock with long names ending in _orite_, _dorite_ and _sorite_ -and so on to the precious gems including an imitation, as big as a -bun, of a noted diamond. They leaned over them, repeating the names -on the labels with the quintessence of vacuity. They hated it. There -were beetles and worms of horror, butterflies of beauty, and birds -that had been stuffed for so long that they seemed to be intoxicated; -their beaks fitted them as loosely as a drunkard's hat, their glassy -eyes were pathetically vague. After ascending a flight of stone steps -David and Kate stooped for a long time over a case of sea-anemones -that had been reproduced in gelatine by a German with a fancy for such -things. From the railed balcony they could peer down into the well of -the fusty-smelling museum. No one else was visiting it, they were alone -with all things dead, things that had died millions of years ago and -were yet simulating life. A footfall sounded so harsh in the corridors, -boomed with such clangour, that they took slow diffident steps, -almost tiptoeing, while Kate scarcely spoke at all and he conversed -in murmurs. Whenever he coughed the whole place seemed to shudder. In -the recess, hidden from prying eyes, David clasped her willing body in -his arms. For once she was unshrinking and returned his fervour. The -vastness, the emptiness, the deadness, worked upon their feelings with -intense magic. - -"Love me, David," she murmured, and when they moved away from the -gelatinous sea-urchins she kept both her arms clasped around him as -they walked the length of the empty corridor. He could not perceive her -intimations, their meaning was dark to him. She was so altered, this -was another Kate. - -"I have come home to make it all up to you," she repeated, and he -scarcely dared to understand her. - -They approached a lecture room; the door was open, the room was empty, -they went in and stood near the platform. The place was arranged like -a tiny theatre, tiers of desks rising in half circles on three sides -high up towards the ceiling. A small platform with a lecturer's desk -confronted the rising tiers; on the wall behind it a large white sheet; -a magic lantern on a pedestal was near and a blackboard on an easel. -A pencil of white chalk lay broken on the floor. Behind the easel was -a piano, with a duster on its lid. The room smelled of spilled acids. -The lover's steps upon the wooden floor echoed louder than ever after -their peregrination upon the flagstones; they were timid of the sound -and stood still, close together, silent. He touched her bosom and -pressed her to his heart, but all her surrender seemed strange and -nerveless. She was almost violently different; he had liked her old -rejections, they were fiery and passionate. He scarce knew what to -do, he understood her less than ever now. Dressed as she was in thick -winter clothes it was like embracing a tree, it tired him. She lay in -his arms waiting, waiting, until he felt almost stifled. Something like -the smell of the acids came from her fur necklet. He was glad when she -stood up, but she was looking at him intently. To cover his uneasiness -he went to the blackboard and picking up a piece of chalk he wrote the -first inconsequent words that came into his mind. Kate stood where he -had left her, staring at the board as he traced the words upon it: _We -are but little children weak_. - -Laughing softly she strolled towards him. - -"What do you write that for? I know what it is." - -"What it is!--well, what is it?" - -She took the chalk from his fingers. - -"It's a hymn," she went on "it goes...." - -"A hymn!" he cried, "I did not know that." - -Underneath the one he had written she was now writing another line on -the board: _Nor born to any high estate_. - -"Of course," he whispered, "I remember it now, I sang it as a child--at -school--go on, go on." - -But she had thereupon suddenly turned away, silent, dropping her hands -to her side. One of her old black moods had seized her. He let her go -and picking up another fragment of chalk completed the verse: - - _What can we do for Jesu's sake - Who is so high and good and great?_ - -She turned when he had finished and without a word walked loudly to the -piano, fetched the duster and rubbed out the words they had written on -the blackboard. She was glaring at him. - -"How absurd you are"--he was annoyed--"let us go out and get some tea." -He wandered off to the door, but she did not follow. He stood just -outside gazing vacantly at a stuffed jay that had an indigo eye. He -looked into the room again. She was there still just as he had left -her; her head bent, her hands hanging clasped before her, the dimness -covering and caressing her--a figure full of sad thoughts. He ran to -her and crushed her in his arms again: - -"Kate, my lovely." - -She was saying brokenly: "You know what I said. I've come to make it -all up to you. I promised, didn't I?" - -Something shuddered in his very soul--too late, too late, this was no -love for him. The magic lantern looked a stupid childish toy, the smell -of the acid was repulsive. Of all they had written upon the blackboard -one word dimly remained: _Jesu_. - -She stirred in his arms. "You are changed, David." - -"Changed, yes, everything is changed." - -"This is just like a theatre, like a play, as if we were acting." - -"Yes, as if we were acting. But we are not acting. Let us go up and sit -in the gallery." - -They ascended the steps to the top ring of desks and looked down to -the tiny platform and the white curtain. She sat fondling his hands, -leaning against him. - -"Have you ever acted--you would do it so well?" - -"Why do you say that? Am I at all histrionic?" - -"Does that mean insincere? O no. But you are the person one expects to -be able to do anything." - -"Nonsense! I've never acted. I suppose I could. It isn't difficult, you -haven't to be clever, only courageous. I should think it very easy to -be only an ordinary actor, but I'm wrong, no doubt. I thought it was -easy to write--to write a play--until I tried. I once engaged myself -to write a little play for some students to act. I had never done such -a thing before and like other idiots I thought I hadn't ever done it -simply because I hadn't ever wanted to. Heavens, how harassed I was -and how ashamed! I could not do it. I got no further than the author's -speech." - -"Well that was something. Tell me it." - -"It's nothing to do with the play. It's what the author says to the -audience when the play is finished." - -She insisted on hearing it whatever it was. "O well," he said at last. -"Let's do that properly, at least. I'll go down there and deliver -it from the stage. You must pretend that you are the enthusiastic -audience. Come and sit in the stalls." - -They went down together. - -"Now imagine that this curtain goes up and I suddenly appear." - -Kate faintly clapped her hands. He stood upon the platform facing her -and taking off his hat, began: - -"Ladies and Gentlemen. - -"I am so deeply touched by the warmth of this reception, this utterly -undeserved appreciation, that--forgive me--I have forgotten the -speech I had carefully prepared in anticipation of it. Let me meet -my obligation by telling you a story; I think it is true, I made it -up myself. Once upon a time there was a poor playwright--something -like me--who wrote a play--something like this--and at the end of the -performance the audience, a remarkably handsome well-fed intellectual -audience--something like this--called him before the curtain and -demanded a speech. He protested that he was unprepared and asked -them to allow him to tell them a story--something like this. Well, -that, too, was a remarkably handsome well-fed intellectual audience, -so they didn't mind and he began again, Once upon a time a poor -playwright,--and was just about to repeat the story I have already -twice told you when suddenly, without a word of warning, without a -sound, without a compunction, the curtain swooped down and chopped him -clean in half." - -Masterman made an elaborate obeisance and stepped off the platform. - -"Is that all?" asked Kate. - -"That's all." - -At that moment a loud bell clanged throughout the building signifying -that the museum was about to close. - -"Come along!" he cried, but Kate did not move, she still sat in the -stalls. - -"Don't leave me, David, I want to hear the play," she said archly. - -"There _was_ no play and there _is_ no play. Come, or we shall be -locked in for the night." - -Still she sat on. He went to her and seized her hands. - -"What does it matter!" she whispered, embracing him. "I want to make it -all up to you." - -He was astoundingly moved. She was marvellously changed. If she hadn't -the beauty of perfection she had some of the perfection of beauty. He -adored her. - -"But no," he said, "it won't do, it really won't. Come, I have got to -buy you something at once, a ring with a diamond in it, as big as a -bun, an engagement ring, quickly, or the shops will be shut." - -He dragged the stammering bewildered girl away, down the stairs and -into the street. The rain had ceased, the sunset sky was bright and -Masterman was intensely happy. - - - - -A BROADSHEET BALLAD - - - - -A BROADSHEET BALLAD - - -At noon the tiler and the mason stepped down from the roof of the -village church which they were repairing and crossed over the road -to the tavern to eat their dinner. It had been a nice little morning -but there were clouds massing in the south; Sam, the tiler, remarked -that it looked like thunder. The two men sat in the dim little taproom -eating, Bob, the mason, at the same time reading from a newspaper an -account of a trial for murder. - -"I dunno what thunder looks like," Bob said, "but I reckon this chap is -going to be hung, though I can't rightly say for why. To my thinking he -didn't do it at all: but murder's a bloody thing and someone ought to -suffer for it." - -"I don't think," spluttered Sam, as he impaled a flat piece of beetroot -on the point of a pocket-knife and prepared to contemplate it with -patience until his stuffed mouth was ready to receive it, "he ought to -be hung." - -"There can be no other end for him though, with a mob of lawyers like -that, and a jury too ... why the rope's half round his neck this -minute; he'll be in glory within a month; they only have three Sundays, -you know, between the sentence and the execution. Well, hark at that -rain then!" - -A shower that began as a playful sprinkle grew to a powerful steady -summer downpour. It splashed in the open window and the dim room grew -more dim, and cool. - -"Hanging's a dreadful thing," continued Sam, "and 'tis often unjust -I've no doubt, I've no doubt at all." - -"Unjust! I tell you ... at majority of trials those who give their -evidence mostly knows nothing at all about the matter; them as knows a -lot--they stays at home and don't budge, not likely!" - -"No? But why?" - -"Why? They has their reasons. I know that, I knows it for truth ... -hark at that rain, it's made the room feel cold." - -They watched the downfall in complete silence for some moments. - -"Hanging's a dreadful thing," Sam at length repeated, with almost a -sigh. - -"I can tell you a tale about that, Sam, in a minute," said the other. -He began to fill his pipe from Sam's brass box, which was labelled -cough lozenges and smelled of paregoric. - -"Just about ten years ago I was working over in Cotswold country. I -remember I'd been into Gloucester one Saturday afternoon and it rained. -I was jogging along home in a carrier's van; I never seen it rain like -that afore, no, nor never afterwards, not like that. Br..r..r..r! it -came down ... bashing! And we came to a cross-roads where there's a -public house called _The Wheel of Fortune_, very lonely and onsheltered -it is just there. I seed a young woman standing in the porch awaiting -us, but the carrier was wet and tired and angry or something and -wouldn't stop. 'No room'--he bawled out to her--'full up, can't take -you!' and he drove on. 'For the love o' God, mate,'--I says--pull up -and take that young creature! She's ... she's ... can't you see!' 'But -I'm all behind as 'tis', he shouts to me, 'you knows your gospel, -don't you: time and tide wait for no man?' 'Ah, but dammit all, they -always call for a feller,' I says. With that he turned round and we -drove back for the girl. She clumb in and sat on my knees; I squat on -a tub of vinegar, there was nowhere else and I was right and all, she -was going on for a birth. Well, the old van rattled away for six or -seven miles; whenever it stopped you could hear the rain clattering on -the tarpolin, or sounding outside on the grass as if it was breathing -hard, and the old horse steamed and shivered with it. I had knowed -the girl once in a friendly way, a pretty young creature, but now she -was white and sorrowful and wouldn't say much. By and bye we came to -another cross-roads near a village, and she got out there. 'Good day, -my gal,' I says, affable like, and; 'Thank you, sir,' says she, and -off she popped in the rain with her umbrella up. A rare pretty girl, -quite young, I'd met her before, a girl you could get uncommon fond of, -you know, but I didn't meet her afterwards: she was mixed up in a bad -business. It all happened in the next six months while I was working -round those parts. Everybody knew of it. This girl's name was Edith and -she had a younger sister Agnes. Their father was old Harry Mallerton, -kept _The British Oak_ at North Quainy; he stuttered. Well this Edith -had a love affair with a young chap William, and having a very loving -nature she behaved foolish. Then she couldn't bring the chap up to the -scratch nohow by herself, and of course she was afraid to tell her -mother or father: you know how girls are after being so pesky natural, -they fear, O they do fear! But soon it couldn't be hidden any longer -as she was living at home with them all, so she wrote a letter to her -mother. 'Dear Mother,' she wrote, and told her all about her trouble. - -"By all accounts the mother was angry as an old lion, but Harry took it -calm like and sent for young William, who'd not come at first. He lived -close by in the village, so they went down at last and fetched him. - -"'All right, yes,' he said, 'I'll do what's lawful to be done. There -you are, I can't say no fairer, that I can't.' - -"'No,' they said, 'you can't.' - -"So he kissed the girl and off he went, promising to call in and settle -affairs in a day or two. The next day Agnes, which was the younger -girl, she also wrote a note to her mother telling her some more strange -news. - -"'God above!' the mother cried out, 'can it be true, both of you girls, -my own daughters, and by the same man! O, whatever were you thinking -on, both of ye! Whatever can be done now!'" - -"What!" ejaculated Sam, "both on 'em, both on 'em!" - -"As true as God's my mercy--both on 'em--same chap. Ah! Mrs. Mallerton -was afraid to tell her husband at first, for old Harry was the devil -born again when he were roused up, so she sent for young William -herself, who'd not come again, of course, not likely. But they made him -come, O yes, when they told the girls' father. - -"'Well, may I go to my d..d..d..damnation at once!' roared old -Harry--he stuttered you know--'at once, if that ain't a good one!' So -he took off his coat, he took up a stick, he walked down street to -William and cut him off his legs. Then he beat him till he howled for -his mercy, but you couldn't stop old Harry once he were roused up--he -was the devil born again. They do say as he beat him for a solid hour; -I can't say as to that, but then old Harry picked him up and carried -him off to _The British Oak_ on his own back, and threw him down in -his own kitchen between his own two girls like a dead dog. They do say -that the little one Agnes flew at her father like a raging cat until he -knocked her senseless with a clout over head; rough man he was." - -"Well, a' called for it sure," commented Sam. - -"Her did;" agreed Bob, "but she was the quietest known girl for miles -round those parts, very shy and quiet." - -"A shady lane breeds mud," said Sam. - -"What do you say?--O ah!--mud, yes. But pretty girls both, girls you -could get very fond of, skin like apple bloom, and as like as two pinks -they were. They had to decide which of them William was to marry." - -"Of course, ah!" - -"'I'll marry Agnes,' says he." - -"'You'll not,' says the old man, 'you'll marry Edie.'" - -"'No I won't,' William says, 'it's Agnes I love and I'll be married -to her or I won't be married to e'er of 'em.' All the time Edith sat -quiet, dumb as a shovel, never a word, crying a bit; but they do say -the young one went on like a ... a young ... Jew." - -"The Jezebel!" commented Sam. - -"You may say it; but wait, my man, just wait. Another cup of beer? We -can't go back to church until this humbugging rain have stopped." - -"No, that we can't." - -"It's my belief the 'bugging rain won't stop this side of four o'clock." - -"And if the roof don't hold it off it 'ull spoil they Lord's -Commandments that's just done up on the chancel front." - -"O, they be dry by now." Bob spoke re-assuringly and then continued his -tale. "'I'll marry Agnes or I won't marry nobody,' William says, and -they couldn't budge him. No, old Harry cracked on but he wouldn't have -it, and at last Harry says: 'It's like this.' He pulls a half-crown out -of his pocket and, 'heads it's Agnes,' he says, 'or tails it's Edith,' -he says." - -"Never! Ha! ha!" cried Sam. - -"Heads it's Agnes, tails it's Edie, so help me God. And it come down -Agnes, yes, heads it was--Agnes--and so there they were." - -"And they lived happy ever after?" - -"Happy! You don't know your human nature, Sam; wherever was you brought -up? 'Heads it's Agnes,' said old Harry, and at that Agnes flung her -arms round William's neck and was for going off with him then and -there; ha! But this is how it happened about that. William hadn't any -kindred, he was a lodger in the village, and his landlady wouldn't have -him in her house one mortal hour when she heard all of it; give him -the rightabout there and then. He couldn't get lodgings anywhere else, -nobody would have anything to do with him. So of course, for safety's -sake, old Harry had to take him, and there they all lived together at -_The British Oak_--all in one happy family. But they girls couldn't -bide the sight of each other, so their father cleaned up an old -outhouse in his yard that was used for carts and hens and put William -and his Agnes out in it. And there they had to bide. They had a couple -of chairs, a sofa, and a bed and that kind of thing, and the young one -made it quite snug." - -"'Twas a hard thing for that other, that Edie, Bob." - -"It was hard, Sam, in a way, and all this was happening just afore -I met her in the carrier's van. She was very sad and solemn then; -a pretty girl, one you could like. Ah, you may choke me, but there -they lived together. Edie never opened her lips to either of them -again, and her father sided with her, too. What was worse, it came -out after the marriage that Agnes was quite free of trouble--it was -only a trumped-up game between her and this William because he fancied -her better than the other one. And they never had no child, them two, -though when poor Edie's mischance come along I be damned if Agnes -weren't fonder of it than its own mother, a jolly sight more fonder, -and William--he fair worshipped it." - -"You don't say!" - -"I do. 'Twas a rum go, that, and Agnes worshipped it, a fact, can prove -it by scores of people to this day, scores, in them parts. William and -Agnes worshipped it, and Edie--she just looked on, long of it all, in -the same house with them, though she never opened her lips again to her -young sister to the day of her death." - -"Ah, she died? Well, it's the only way out of such a tangle, poor -woman." - -"You're sympathising with the wrong party." Bob filled his pipe again -from the brass box; he ignited it with deliberation; going to the open -window he spat into a puddle in the road. "The wrong party, Sam; 'twas -Agnes that died. She was found on the sofa one morning stone dead, dead -as a adder." - -"God bless me," murmured Sam. - -"Poisoned," added Bob, puffing serenely. - -"Poisoned!" - -Bob repeated the word 'poisoned.' "This was the way of it," he -continued; "one morning the mother went out in the yard to collect her -eggs, and she began calling out; 'Edie, Edie, here a minute, come and -look where that hen have laid her egg; I would never have believed it,' -she says. And when Edie went out her mother led her round the back of -the outhouse, and there on the top of a wall this hen had laid an egg. -'I would never have believed it, Edie,' she says, 'scooped out a nest -there beautiful, ain't she; I wondered where her was laying. T'other -morning the dog brought an egg round in his mouth and laid it on the -doormat. There now, Aggie, Aggie, here a minute, come and look where -the hen have laid that egg.' And as Aggie didn't answer the mother went -in and found her on the sofa in the outhouse, stone dead." - -"How'd they account for it?" asked Sam, after a brief interval. - -"That's what brings me to the point about this young feller that's -going to be hung," said Bob, tapping the newspaper that lay upon the -bench. "I don't know what would lie between two young women in a -wrangle of that sort; some would get over it quick, but some would -never sleep soundly any more not for a minute of their mortal lives. -Edie must have been one of that sort. There's people living there now -as could tell a lot if they'd a mind to it. Some knowed all about it; -could tell you the very shop where Edith managed to get hold of the -poison, and could describe to me or to you just how she administrated -it in a glass of barley water. Old Harry knew all about it, he knew all -about everything, but he favoured Edith and he never budged a word. -Clever old chap was Harry, and nothing came out against Edie at the -inquest--nor the trial neither." - -"Was there a trial then?" - -"There was a kind of a trial. Naturally. A beautiful trial. The police -came and fetched poor William, they took him away and in due course he -was hanged." - -"William! But what had he got to do with it?" - -"Nothing. It was rough on him, but he hadn't played straight, and so -nobody struck up for him. They made out a case against him--there was -some unlucky bit of evidence which I'll take my oath old Harry knew -something about--and William was done for. Ah, when things take a turn -against you it's as certain as twelve o'clock, when they take a turn; -you get no more chance than a rabbit from a weasel. It's like dropping -your matches into a stream, you needn't waste the bending of your back -to pick them out--they're no good on, they'll never strike again. And -Edith, she sat in court through it all, very white and trembling and -sorrowful, but when the judge put his black cap on they do say she -blushed and looked across at William and gave a bit of a smile. Well, -she had to suffer for his doings, so why shouldn't he suffer for hers. -That's how I look at it...." - -"But God-a-mighty...!" - -"Yes, God-a-mighty knows. Pretty girls they were, both, and as like as -two pinks." - -There was quiet for some moments while the tiler and the mason emptied -their cups of beer. "I think," said Sam then, "the rain's give over -now." - -"Ah, that it has," cried Bob. "Let's go and do a bit more on this -'bugging church or she won't be done afore Christmas." - - - - -COTTON - - - - -COTTON - - -At the place where the road from Carnaby Down ends in the main western -highway that goes towards Bath there stands, or once stood, a strongly -built stone cottage confronting, on the opposite side of the high road, -a large barn and some cattle stalls. A man named Cotton lived with his -wife lonely in this place, their whole horizon bounded by the hedges -and fences of their farm. His Christian name, for some unchristian -reason, was Janifex; people called him Jan, possibly because it rhymed -with his wife's name, which was Ann. And Ann was a robust managing -woman of five and thirty, childless, full of desolating cleanliness -and kindly tyrannies, with no perceptions that were not determined by -her domestic ambition, and no sympathies that could interfere with her -diurnal energies whatever they might be. Jan was a mild husbandman, -prematurely aged, with large teeth and, since 'forty winters had -besieged his brow,' but little hair. Sometimes one of the large teeth -would drop out, leaving terrible gaps when he opened his mouth, and -turning his patient smile to a hideous leer. These evacuations, which -were never restored, began with the death of Queen Victoria; throughout -the reign of her successor great events were punctuated by similar -losses, until at last Jan could masticate, in his staid old manner, -only in one overworked corner of his mouth. - -He would rise of a morning throughout the moving year at five of the -clock; having eaten his bread and drunk a mug of cocoa he would don -a long white jacket and cross the road diagonally to the gate at the -eastern corner of the sheds. These were capped by the bright figure of -a golden cockerel, voiceless but useful, flaunting always to meet the -challenge of the wind. Sometimes in his deliberate way Jan would lift -his forlorn eyes in the direction of the road coming from the east, -but he never turned to the other direction, as that would have cost him -a physical effort, and bodily flexion had ceased years and years ago. -Do roads ever run backward--leaps not forward the eye? As he unloosed -the gate of the yard his great dog would lift its chained head from -some sacks under a cart, and a peacock would stalk out from the belt of -pines that partly encircled the buildings. The man would greet them, -saying, "O, ah!" In the rickyard he would pause to release the fowls -from their hut and watch them run to the stubbles or spurn the chaff -with their claws as they ranged between the stacks. If the day were -windy the chaff would fall back in clouds upon their bustling feathers, -and that delighted his simple mind. It is difficult to account for his -joy in this thing, for though his heart was empty of cruelty it seemed -to be empty of everything else. Then he would pass into the stalls and -with a rattle of can and churn the labour of the day was begun. - -Thus he lived, with no temptations, and few desires except perhaps for -milk puddings, which for some reason concealed in Ann's thrifty bosom -he was only occasionally permitted to enjoy. Whenever his wife thought -kindly of him she would give him a piece of silver and he would traipse -a mile in the evening, a mile along to the _Huntsman's Cup_, and take a -tankard of beer. On his return he would tell Ann of the things he had -seen, the people he had met, and other events of his journey. - -Once, in the time of spring, when buds were bursting along the hedge -coverts and birds of harmony and swiftness had begun to roost in the -wood, a blue-chinned Spaniard came to lodge at the farm for a few -weeks. He was a labourer working at some particular contract upon the -estate adjoining the Cottons' holding, and he was accommodated with a -bed and an abundance of room in a clean loft behind the house. With -curious shoes upon his feet, blazing check trousers tightly fitting -upon his thighs, a wrapper of pink silk around his neck, he was an -astonishing figure in that withdrawn corner of the world. When the -season chilled him a long black cloak with a hood for his head added -a further strangeness. Juan da Costa was his name. He was slightly -round-shouldered with an uncongenial squint in his eyes; though he -used but few words of English his ways were beguiling. He sang very -blithely shrill Spanish songs, and had a pleasant courtesy of manner -that presented a deal of attraction to the couple, particularly Ann, -whose casual heart he reduced in a few hours to kindness, and in a few -days, inexplicably perhaps, to a still warmer emotion--yes, even in the -dull blankness of that mind some ghostly star could glimmer. From the -hour of his arrival she was an altered woman, although, with primitive -subtlety, the transition from passivity to passion was revealed only by -one curious sign, and that was the spirit of her kindness evoked for -the amiable Jan, who now fared mightily upon his favorite dishes. - -Sometimes the Spaniard would follow Jan about the farm. "Grande!" he -would say, gesturing with his arm to indicate the wide-rolling hills. - -"O ah!" Jan would reply, "there's a heap o' land in the open air." - -The Spaniard does not understand! He asks: "What?" - -"O ah!" Jan would echo. - -But it was the cleanly buxom Ann to whom Da Costa devoted himself. -He brought home daily, though not ostensibly to her, a bunch of the -primroses, a stick of snowbudded sallow, or a sprig of hazel hung with -catkins, soft caressible things. He would hold the hazel up before -Ann's uncomprehending gaze and strike the lemon-coloured powder from -the catkins on to the expectant adjacent buds, minute things with stiff -female prongs, red like the eyes of the white rabbit which Ann kept in -the orchard hutch. - -One day Juan came home unexpectedly in mid-afternoon. It was a cold dry -day and he wore his black cloak and hood. - -"See," he cried, walking up to Ann, who greeted him with a smile; he -held out to her a posy of white violets tied up with some blades of -thick grass. She smelt them but said nothing. He pressed the violets to -his lips and again held them out, this time to her lips. She took them -from him and tucked them into the front of her bodice while he watched -her with delighted eyes. - -"You ... give ... me ... somethin ... for ... los flores?" - -"Piece a cake!" said Ann, moving towards the pantry door. - -"Ah ... cake...!" - -As she pulled open the door, still keeping a demure eye upon him, the -violets fell out and down upon the floor, unseen by her. He rushed -towards them with a cry of pain and a torrent of his strange language; -picking them up he followed her into the pantry, a narrow place almost -surrounded by shelves with pots of pickles and jam, plates, cups and -jugs, a scrap of meat upon a trencher, a white bowl with cob nuts and a -pair of iron crackers. - -"See..., lost!" he cried shrilly as she turned to him. She was about to -take them again when he stayed her with a whimsical gesture. - -"Me ... me," he said, and brushing her eyes with their soft perfume -he unfastened the top button of her bodice while the woman stood -motionless; then the second button, then the third. He turned -the corners inwards and tucked the flowers between her flesh and -underlinen. They stood eyeing one another, breathing uneasily, but with -a pretence at nonchalance. "Ah!" he said suddenly; before she could -stop him he had seized a few nuts from the white bowl and holding open -her bodice where the flowers rested he dropped the nuts into her warm -bosom. "One ... two ... three!" - -"Oh...!" screamed Ann mirthfully, shrinking from their tickling, but -immediately she checked her laughter--she heard footsteps. Beating -down the grasping arms of the Spaniard she darted out of the doorway -and shut him in the pantry, just in time to meet Jan coming into the -kitchen bawling for a chain he required. - -"What d'ye want?" said Ann. - -"That chain for the well-head, gal, it's hanging in the pantry." He -moved to the door. - -"'Taint," said Ann barring his way. "It's in the barn, I took it there -yesterday, on the oats it is, you'll find it, I took it over yesterday, -clear off with your dirty boots." She 'hooshed' him off much as she -'hooshed' the hens out of the garden. Immediately he was gone she -pulled open the pantry door and was confronted by the Spaniard holding -a long clasp knife in his raised hand. On seeing her he just smiled, -threw down the knife and took the bewildered woman into his arms. - -"Wait, wait," she whispered, and breaking from him she seized a chain -from a hook and ran out after her husband with it, holding up a finger -of warning to the Spaniard as she brushed past him. She came back -panting, having made some sort of explanation to Jan; entering the -kitchen quietly she found the Spaniard's cloak lying upon the table; -the door of the pantry was shut and he had apparently gone back there -to await her. Ann moved on tiptoe round the table; picking up the -cloak she enveloped herself in it and pulled the hood over her head. -Having glanced with caution through the front window to the farmyard, -she coughed and shuffled her feet on the flags. The door of the pantry -moved slowly open; the piercing ardour of his glance did not abash her, -but her curious appearance in his cloak moved his shrill laughter. As -he approached her she seized his wrists and drew him to the door that -led into the orchard at the back of the house; she opened it and pushed -him out, saying "Go on, go on." She then locked the door against him. -He walked up and down outside the window making lewd signs to her. He -dared not call out for fear of attracting attention from the farmyard -in front of the house. He stood still, shivered, pretended in dumb show -that he was frozen. She stood at the window in front of him and nestled -provocatively in his cloak. But when he put his lips against the pane -he drew the gleam of her languishing eyes closer and closer to meet his -kiss through the glass. Then she stood up, took off the black cloak, -and putting her hand into her bosom brought out the three nuts, which -she held up to him. She stood there fronting the Spaniard enticingly, -dropped the nuts back into her bosom ... one ... two ... three ... and -then went and opened the door. - -In a few weeks the contract was finished, and one bright morning the -Spaniard bade them each farewell. Neither of them knew, so much was -their intercourse restricted, that he was about to depart, and Ann -watched him with perplexity and unhappiness in her eyes. - -"Ah, you Cotton, goodbye I say, and you _señora_, I say goodbye." With -a deep bow he kissed the rough hand of the blushing country-woman. -"_Bueno._" He turned with his kit bag on his shoulder, waved them an -airy hand and was gone. - -On the following Sunday Jan returned from a visit in the evening and -found the house empty; Ann was out, an unusual thing, for their habits -were fixed and deliberate as the stars in the sky. The sunsetting light -was lying in meek patches on the kitchen wall, turning the polished -iron pans to the brightness of silver, reddening the string of onions, -and filling glass jars with solid crystal. He had just sat down to -remove his heavy boots when Ann came in, not at all the workaday Ann -but dressed in her best clothes smelling of scent and swishing her -stiff linen. - -"Hullo," said Jan, surprised at his wife's pink face and sparkling -eyes, "bin church?" - -"Yes, church," she replied, and sat down in her finery. Her husband -ambled about the room for various purposes and did not notice her -furtive dabbing of her eyes with her handkerchief. Tears from Ann were -inconceivable. - -The year moved through its seasons, the lattermath hay was duly mown, -the corn stooked in rows; Ann was with child and the ridge of her stays -was no longer visible behind her plump shoulders. Fruit dropped from -the orchard boughs, the quince was gathered from the wall, the hunt -swept over the field. Christmas came and went, and then a child was -born to the Cottons, a dusky boy, who was shortly christened Juan. - -"He was a kind chap, that man," said Ann, "and we've no relations to -please, and it's like your name--and your name _is_ outlandish!" - -Jan's delight now was to sit and muse upon the child as he had ever -mused upon chicken, lambs and calves. "O ah!" he would say, popping a -great finger into the babe's mouth, "O ah!" But when, as occasionally -happened, the babe squinted at him, a singular fancy would stir in his -mind, only to slide away before it could congeal into the likeness of -suspicion. - -Snow, when it falls near spring on those Cotswold hills, falls deeply, -and the lot of the husbandmen is hard. Sickness, when it comes, comes -with a flail and in its hobnailed boots. Contagious and baffling, -disease had stricken the district; in mid-March great numbers of the -country folk were sick abed, hospitals were full, and doctors were -harried from one dawn to another. Jan would come in of an evening -and recite the calendar of the day's dooms gathered from men of the -adjacent fields. - -"Amos Green 'ave gone then, pore o' chap." - -"Pore Amos," the pitying Ann would say, wrapping her babe more warmly. - -"And Buttifant's coachman." - -"Dear, dear, what 'ull us all come to?" - -"Mrs. Jocelyn was worse 'en bad this morning." - -"Never Jan! Us'll miss 'er." - -"Ah, and they do say Parson Rudwent won't last out the night." - -"And whom's to bury us then?" asked Ann. - -The invincible sickness came to the farm. Ann one morning was weary, -sickly, and could not rise from her bed. Jan attended her in his clumsy -way and kept coming in from the snow to give her comforts and food, -but at eve she was in fever and lay helpless in the bed with the child -at her breast. Jan went off for the doctor, not to the nearest village -for he knew that quest to be hopeless, but to a tiny town high on the -wolds two miles away. The moon, large, sharp and round, blazed in the -sky, and its light sparkled upon the rolling fields of snow; his boots -were covered at every muffled step; the wind sighed in the hedges and -he shook himself for warmth. He came to the hill at last; half-way -up was a church, its windows glowing with warm-looking light and its -bells pealing cheerfully. He passed on and higher up met a priest -trotting downwards in black cassock and saintly hat, his hands tucked -into his wide sleeves, trotting to keep himself warm and humming as -he went. Jan asked a direction of the priest, who gave it with many -circumstances of detail, and after they had parted he could hear the -priest's voice call still further instructions after him as long as -he was in sight. "O ah!" said Jan each time, turning and waving his -hand. But after all his mission was a vain one; the doctor was out and -away, it was improbable that he would be able to come, and the simple -man turned home with a dull heart. When he reached the farm Ann was -delirious but still clung to her dusky child, sleeping snugly at her -bosom. The man sat up all night before the fire waiting vainly for the -doctor, and the next day he himself became ill. And strangely enough as -he worked among his beasts the crude suspicion in his mind about the -child took shape and worked without resistance until he came to suspect -and by easy degrees to apprehend fully the time and occasion of Ann's -duplicity. - -"Nasty filthy dirty thing!" he murmured from his sick mind. He was -brushing the dried mud from the hocks of an old bay horse, but it was -not of his horse he was thinking. Later he stood in the rickyard and -stared across the road at the light in their bedroom. Throwing down the -fork with which he had been tossing beds of straw he shook his fist -at the window and cried out: "I hate 'er, I does, nasty filthy dirty -thing!" - -When he went into the house he replenished the fire, but found he could -take no further care for himself or the sick woman; he just stupidly -doffed his clothes and in utter misery and recklessness stretched -himself in the bed with Ann. He lay for a long while with aching brows, -a snake-strangled feeling in every limb, an unquenchable drouth in his -throat, and his wife's body burning beside him. Outside the night was -bright, beautiful and still sparkling with frost; quiet, as if the -wind had been wedged tightly in some far corner of the sky, except for -a cracked insulator on the telegraph pole just near the window, that -rattled and hummed with monstrous uncare. That, and the ticking of the -clock! The lighted candle fell from its sconce on to the mantelpiece; -he let it remain and it flickered out. The glow from the coals was -thick upon the ceiling and whitened the brown ware of the teapot on -the untidy hearth. Falling asleep at last he began dreaming at once, -so it seemed, of the shrill cry of lambs hailing him out of wild -snow-covered valleys, so wild and prolonged were the cries that they -woke him, and he knew himself to be very ill, very ill indeed. The -child was wailing piteously, the room was in darkness, the fire out, -but the man did not stir, he could not care, what could he do with that -flame behind his eyes and the misery of death consuming him? But the -child's cries were unceasing and moved even his numbed mind to some -effort. "Ann!" he gasped. The poor wife did not reply. "Ann!" He put -his hand out to nudge her; in one instant the blood froze in his veins -and then boiled again. Ann was cold, her body hard as a wall, dead ... -dead. Stupor returned upon him; the child, unhelped, cried on, clasped -to that frozen breast until the man again roused himself to effort. -Putting his great hands across the dead wife he dragged the child from -her arms into the warmth beside him, gasping as he did so "Nasty ... -dirty ... thing." It exhausted him, but the child was still unpacified -and again he roused himself and felt for a biscuit on the table beside -the bed. He crushed a piece in his mouth and putting the soft pap upon -his finger fed thus the hungry child until it was stilled. By now the -white counterpane spread vast like a sea, heaving and rocking with a -million waves, the framework of the bedstead moving like the tackle of -tossed ships. He knew there was only one way to stem that sickening -movement. "I hate 'er, I does," rose again upon his lips, and drawing -up his legs that were at once chilly and streaming with sweat, full of -his new hatred he urged with all his might his wife's cold body to the -edge of the bed and withdrew the bedclothes. Dead Ann toppled and slid -from him and her body clumped upon the floor with a fall that shook the -room; the candle fell from the mantelpiece, bounced upon the teapot -and rolled stupidly along the bare boards under the bed. "Hate 'er!" -groaned the man; he hung swaying above the woman and tried to spit upon -her. He sank back again to the pillow and the child, murmuring "O ah!" -and gathering it clumsily to his breast. He became tranquil then, and -the hollow sounding clock beat a dull rhythm into his mind, until that -sound faded out with all light and sound, and Jan fell into sleep and -died, with the dusky child clasped in his hard dead arms. - - - - -POMONA'S BABE - - - - -POMONA'S BABE - - -Johnny Flynn was then seventeen years old. At that age you could -not call him 'boy' without vexing him, or 'man' without causing -him to blush--his teasing ruddy and uproarious mother delighted to -produce either or both of these manifestations, for her offspring -was a pale mild creature--but he had given a deal of thought to many -manly questions. Marriage, for instance, was one of these. That was -an institution he admired, but whose joys, whatever they were, he -was not anxious to experience; its difficulties and disasters as -ironically outlined by the widow Flynn were the subject of his grossest -scepticism--scepticism in general being not the least prominent -characteristic of Johnny Flynn. - -Certainly his sister Pomona was not married; she was only sixteen, -an age too early for such bliss; but all the same she was going to -have a baby. He had quarrelled with his mother about most things; she -delighted in quarrels, they amused her very much; but on this occasion -she was really very angry, or she pretended to be so--which was worse, -much worse than the real thing. - -The Flynns were poor people, quite poor, living in two top-floor rooms -at the house of a shoemaker, also moderately poor, whose pelting and -hammering of soles at evening were a durable grievance to Johnny. He -was fond of the shoemaker, a kind, bulky, tall man of fifty, though -he did not like the shoemaker's wife, as bulky as her husband, and as -tall, but not kind to him or to anything except Johnny himself; nor -did he like any of the other lodgers, of whom there were several, all -without exception beyond the reach of affluence. The Flynn apartments -afforded a bedroom in front for Mrs. Flynn and Pomona, a room where -Johnny seldom intruded, never without a strained sense of sanctity -similar to the feeling he experienced when entering an empty church, -as he sometimes did. He slept in the other room, the living room, an -arrangement that also annoyed him--he was easily annoyed--for he could -never go to bed until mother and sister had retired, and for the same -reason he had always to rise before they got up, an exasperating abuse -of domestic privilege. - -One night he had just slipped happily into his bed, and begun to read -a book called _Rasselas_, which the odd-eyed man at the public library -had commended to him, when his mother returned to the room, first -tapping at the door, for Johnny was a prude, as she knew, not only from -instinct and observation but from protests which had occasionally been -addressed to her by the indignant boy. She came in now only half clad, -in petticoat and stockinged feet, her arms were quite bare. They were -powerful arms, as they had need to be, for she was an ironer of linen -at a laundry, but they were nice to look at, and sometimes Johnny liked -looking at them, though he did not care for her to run about like that -very often. Mrs. Flynn sat down at the foot of his couch and stared at -her son. - -"Johnny," she began steadily, but paused to rub her forehead with her -thick white shiny fingers. "I don't know how to tell you I'm sure, or -what you'll say...." Johnny shook _Rasselas_ rather impatiently and -heaved a protesting sigh. "I can't think," continued his mother, "no, -I can't think that it's our Pomony, but there she is, and it's got to -be done--I must tell you; besides, you're the only man in our family -now, so it's only right for you, you see, and she's going to have a -baby--our Pomony!" - -The boy turned his face to the wall, although his mother was not -looking at him--she was staring at that hole in the carpet near the -fender. At last he said "Humph! ... well?" And as his mother did not -say anything, he added, "What about it? I don't mind." Mrs. Flynn was -horrified at his unconcern, or she pretended to be so; Johnny was never -sure about the genuineness of her moods. It was most unfilial, but he -was like that--so was Mrs. Flynn. Now she cried out, "You'll _have_ to -mind, there, you must. I can't take everything on my own shoulders. -You're the only man left in our family now--you must, Johnny. What are -we to do?" - -He glared at the wallpaper a foot from his eyes. It had an unbearable -pattern of blue but otherwise indescribable flowers; he had it in his -mind to have some other pattern there--some day. - -"Eh?" asked his mother sharply, striking the foot of the bed with her -fist. - -"Why ... there's nothing to be done ... now ... I suppose." He was -blushing furiously. "How did it happen--when will it be?" - -"It's a man she knows. He got hold of her. His name is Stringer. -Another two months about. Stringer. Hadn't you noticed anything? -Everybody else has. You are a funny boy, can't make you out at all, -Johnny, I can't make you out. Stringer his name is, but he shall pay -dearly for it, and that's what I want you--to talk to you about. Of -course, he denies of everything, they always do." - -Mrs. Flynn sighed at this disgusting perfidy, brightening however when -her son began to discuss the problem. But she talked so long, and he -got so sleepy at last, that he was very glad when she went to bed -again. Secretly she was both delighted and disappointed at his easy -acceptance of her dreadful revelation; fearing a terrible outburst -of anger, she had kept the knowledge from him for a long time. She -was glad to escape that, it is true, but she rather hungered for -some flashing reprobation of this unknown beast, this Stringer. She -swore she would bring him to book, but she felt old and lonely, and -Johnny was a strange son, not very virile. The mother had told Pomona -terrifying prophetic tales of what Johnny would do, what he would be -certain to do. He would, for instance, murder that Stringer and drive -Pomony into the street; of course, he would. Yet here he was, quite -calm about it, as if he almost liked it. Well, she had told him, she -could do no more, she would leave it to him. - -In the morning Johnny greeted his sister with tender affection, and -at evening, having sent her to bed, he and his mother resumed their -discussion. - -"Do you know, mother," he said, "she is quite handsome; I never noticed -it before." - -Mrs. Flynn regarded him with desperation, and then informed him that -his sister was an ugly, disgusting little trollop who ought to be -birched. - -"No, no, you are wrong, mother, it's bad, but it's all right." - -"You think you know more about such things than your own mother, I -suppose." Mrs. Flynn sniffed and glared. - -He said it to her gently: "Yes." - -She produced a packet of notepaper and envelopes, _The Monster Packet -for a Penny_, all complete with a wisp of pink blotting paper and a -penholder without a nib, which she had bought at the chandler's on -her way home that evening, along with some sago and some hair oil for -Johnny, whose stiff unruly hair provoked such spasms of rage in her -bosom that she declared that she was "sick to death of it." On the -supper table lay also a platter, a loaf, a basin of mustard pickle, and -a plate with round lengths of cheese shaped like small candles. - -"Devil blast him!" muttered Mrs. Flynn as she fetched from a cupboard -shelf a sour-looking bottle labelled Writing Fluid, a dissolute pen, -and requested Johnny to compose a letter to Stringer--devil blast -him!--telling him of the plight of her daughter Pomona Flynn, about -whom she desired him to know that she had already consulted her lawyers -and the chief of police, and intimating that unless she heard from him -satisfactory by the day after to-morrow the matter would pass out of -her hands. - -"That's no good, it's not the way," declared her son thoughtfully; -Mrs. Flynn therefore sat humbly confronting him and awaited the result -of his cogitations. Johnny was not a very robust youth, but he was -growing fast now, since he had taken up with running; he was very -fleet, so Mrs. Flynn understood, and had already won a silver-plated -hot-water jug, which they used for the milk. But still he was thin and -not tall, his dark hair was scattered; his white face was a nice face, -thought Mrs. Flynn, very nice, only there was always something strange -about his clothes. She couldn't help that now, but he had such queer -fancies; there was no other boy in the street whose trousers were so -baggy or of such a colour. His starched collars were all right, of -course, beautifully white and shiny--she got them up herself--and they -set his neck off nicely. - -"All we need do," her son broke in, "is just tell him." - -"Tell him?" - -"Yes, just tell him about it--it's very unfortunate--and ask him to -come and see you. I hope though," he paused, "I hope they won't want to -go and get married." - -"He ought to be made to, devil blast him!" cried Mrs. Flynn, "only -she's frightened, she is; afraid of her mortal life of him! We don't -want him here, neither; she says he's a nasty, horrible man." - -Johnny sat dumb for some moments. Pomona was a day girl in service at -a restaurant. Stringer was a clerk to an auctioneer. The figure of his -pale little sister shrinking before a ruffian (whom he figured as a fat -man with a red beard) startled and stung him. - -"Besides," continued Mrs. Flynn, "he's just going to be married to some -woman, some pretty judy, God help her ... in fact, as like as not he's -married to her already by now. No, I gave up that idea long ago, I did, -before I told you, long ago." - -"We can only tell him about Pomony, then, and ask him what he would -like to do." - -"What he would _like_ to do--well, certainly!" protested the widow. - -"And if he's a decent chap," continued Johnny serenely, "it will be -all right, there won't be any difficulty. If he ain't, then we can do -something else." - -His mother was reluctant to concur, but the boy had his way. He sat -with his elbows on the table, his head pressed in his hands, but he -could not think out the things he wanted to say to this man. He would -look up and stare around the room as if he were in a strange place, -though it was not strange to him at all, for he had lived in it many -years. There was not much furniture in the apartment, yet there was -but little space in it. The big table was covered with American cloth, -mottled and shiny. Two or three chairs full of age and discomfort -stood upon a carpet that was full of holes and stains. There were some -shelves in a recess, an engraving framed in maple of the player scene -from "Hamlet," and near by on the wall hung a gridiron, whose prongs -were woven round with coloured wools and decorated with satin bows. -Mrs. Flynn had a passion for vases, and two of these florid objects, -bought at a fair, companioned a clock whose once snowy face had long -since turned sallow because of the oil Mrs. Flynn had administered "to -make it go properly." - -But he could by no means think out this letter; his mother sat so -patiently watching him that he asked her to go and sit in the other -room. Then he sat on, sniffing, as if thinking with his nose, while -the room began to smell of the smoking lamp. He was remembering how, -years ago, when they were little children, he had seen Pomony in her -nightgown and, angered with her for some petty reason, he had punched -her on the side. Pomony had turned white, she could not speak, she -could not breathe. He had been momentarily proud of that blow; it was -a good blow, he had never hit another boy like that. But Pomony had -fallen into a chair, her face tortured with pain, her eyes filled with -tears that somehow would not fall. Then a fear seized him, horrible, -piercing, frantic; she was dying, she would die, and there was nothing -he could do to stop her! In passionate remorse and pity, he had flung -himself before her, kissing her feet--they were small and beautiful, -though not very clean--until at last he had felt Pomony's arms droop -caressingly around him, and heard Pomony's voice speaking lovingly and -forgivingly to him. - -After a decent interval his mother returned to him. - -"What are we going to do about _her_?" she asked, "She'll have to go -away." - -"Away! Do you mean go to a home? No, but why go away. I'm not ashamed; -what is there to be ashamed of?" - -"Who the deuce is going to look after her? You talk like a -tom-fool--yes, you are," insisted Mrs. Flynn passionately. "I'm out all -day from one week's end to the other. She can't be left alone and the -people downstairs are none too civil about it, as it is. She'll have to -go to the workhouse, that's all." - -Johnny was aghast, indignant, and really angry. He would never, never -consent to such a thing! Pomony! Into a workhouse! She should not, she -should stop at home, here, like always, and have a nurse. - -"Fool!" muttered his mother, with castigating scorn. "Where's the money -for nurses and doctors to come from? I've got no money for such things." - -"I'll get some!" declared Johnny hotly. - -"Where?" - -"I'll sell something." - -"What?" - -"I'll save up." - -"How?" - -"And I'll borrow some." - -"You'd better shut up now, or I'll knock your head off!" cried his -mother. "Fidding and fadding about--you're daft!" - -"She shan't go to any workhouse!" - -"Fool!" repeated his mother, revealing her disgust at his hopeless -imbecility. - -"I tell you she shall not go there!" shouted the boy, stung into angry -resentment by her contempt. - -"She shall, she must." - -"I say she shan't!" - -"Oh, don't be such a blasted fool!" cried the distracted woman, rising -from her chair. - -Johnny sprang to his feet almost screaming, "You are the blasted -fool--you, you!" - -Mrs. Flynn seized a table knife and struck at her son's face with it. -He leaped away in terror, his startled appearance, glaring eyes, and -strained figure so affecting Mrs. Flynn that she dropped the knife, -and, sinking into her chair, burst into peals of hysterical laughter. -Recovering himself the boy hastened to the laughing woman. The -maddening peals continued and increased, shocking him, unnerving him -again; she was dying, she would die. His mother's laughter had always -been harsh but delicious to him, it was so infectious; but this was -demoniacal, it was horror. - -"Oh, don't, don't, mother, don't!" he cried, fondling her and pressing -her yelling face to his breast. But she pushed him fiercely away, and -the terrifying laughter continued to sear his very soul until he could -bear it no longer. He struck at her shoulders with clenched fist, and -shook her frenziedly, frantically, crying: - -"Stop it, stop, oh, stop it! She'll go mad! Stop it, stop!" - -He was almost exhausted, when suddenly Pomona rushed into the room in -her nightgown. Her long black hair tumbled in lovely locks about her -pale face and her shoulders; her feet were bare. - -"Oh, Johnny, what are you doing?" gasped his little pale sister Pomony, -who seemed so suddenly, so unbelievably, turned into a woman. "Let her -alone." - -She pulled the boy away, fondling and soothing their distracted mother -until Mrs. Flynn partially recovered. - -"Come to bed now," commanded Pomona, and Mrs. Flynn thereupon, still -giggling, followed her child. When he was alone tremblingly Johnny -turned down the lamp flame which had filled the room with smoky fumes. -His glance rested upon the table knife; the room was silent and -oppressive now. He glared at the picture of Hamlet, at the clock with -the oily face, at the notepaper lying white upon the table. They had -all turned into quivering semblances of the things they were; he was -crying. - - -2 - -A letter, indited in the way he desired, was posted by Johnny on his -way to work next morning. He was clerk in the warehouse of a wholesale -provision merchant, and he kept tally, in some underground cellars -carpeted with sawdust, of hundreds of sacks of sugar and cereals, tubs -of butter, of lard, of treacle, chests of tea, a regular promontory -of cheeses, cases of candles, jam, starch, and knife polish, many of -them stamped with the mysterious words FACTORY BULKED. He did not -like those words, they sounded ugly and their meaning was obscure. -Sometimes he took the cheese-tasting implement from the foreman's -bench, and, when no one was looking, pierced it into a fine Cheddar or -Stilton, withdrawing it with a little cylinder of cheese lying like a -small candle in the curved blade. Then he would bite off the piece of -rind, restore it neatly to the body of the cheese, and drop the other -candle-like piece into his pocket. Sometimes his pocket was so full of -cheese that he was reluctant to approach the foreman, fearing he would -smell it. He was very fond of cheese. All of them liked cheese. - -The Flynns waited several days for a reply to the letter but none -came. Stringer did not seem to think it called for any reply. At the -end of a week Johnny wrote again to his sister's seducer. Pomona had -given up her situation at the restaurant; her brother was conspicuously -and unfailingly tender to her. He saved what money he could, spent -none upon himself, and brought home daily an orange or an egg for -the girl. He wrote a third letter to the odious Stringer, not at all -threateningly, but just invitingly, persuasively. And he waited, but -waited in vain. Then in that underground cheese tunnel where he worked -he began to plot an alternate course of action, and as time passed, -bringing no recognition from Stringer, his plot began to crystallise -and determine itself. It was nothing else than to murder the man; he -would kill him, he had thought it out, it could be done. He would wait -for him near Stringer's lodgings one dark night, and beat out his -brains with a club. All that was necessary then would be to establish -an _alibi_. For some days Johnny dwelt so gloatingly upon the details -of this retribution that he forgot about the _alibi_. By this time he -had accumulated from his mother--for he could never once bring himself -to interrogate Pomona personally about her misfortune--sufficient -description of Stringer to recognise him among a thousand, so he -thought. It appeared that he was not a large man with a red beard, -but a small man with glasses, spats, and a slight limp, who always -attended a certain club of which he was the secretary at a certain hour -on certain nights in each week. To Johnny's mind, the _alibi_ was not -merely important in itself, it was a romantic necessity. And it was so -easy; it would be quite sufficient for Johnny to present himself at the -public library, where he was fairly well-known. The library was quite -close to Stringer's lodgings and they, fortunately, were in a dark, -quiet little street. He would borrow a book from the odd-eyed man in -the reference department, retire to one of the inner study rooms, and -at half-past seven creep out unseen, creep out, creep out with his -thick stick, and wait by the house in that dark, quiet little street; -it was very quiet, and it would be very dark; wait there for him all -in the dark, just creep quietly out--and wait. But in order to get -that _alibi_ quite perfect he would have to take a friend with him to -the library room, so that the friend could swear that he had really -been there all the time, because it was just possible the odd-eyed man -wouldn't be prepared to swear to it; he did not seem able to see very -much, but it was hard to tell with people like that. - -Johnny Flynn had not told any of his friends about his sister's -misfortune; in time, time enough, they were bound to hear of it. Of -all his friends he rejected the close ones, those of whom he was very -fond, and chose a stupid lump of a fellow, massive and nasal, named -Donald. Though awkward and fat, he had joined Johnny's running club; -Johnny had trained him for his first race. But he had subjected Donald -to such exhausting exercise, what with skipping, gymnastics, and tiring -jaunts, that though his bulk disappeared his strength went with it; -to Johnny's great chagrin he grew weak, and failed ignominiously in -the race. Donald thereafter wisely rejected all offers of assistance -and projected a training system of his own. For weeks he tramped miles -into hilly country, in the heaviest of boots to which he had nailed -some thick pads of lead. When he donned his light running shoes for -his second race he displayed an agility and suppleness, a god-like -ease, that won not only the race, but the admiration and envy of all -the competitors. It was this dull, lumpish Donald that Johnny fixed -upon to assist him. He was a great fool, and it would not matter if he -did get himself into trouble. Even if he did Johnny could get him out -again, by confessing to the police; so that was all right. He asked -Donald to go to the library with him on a certain evening to read a -book called _Rasselas_--it was a grand book, very exciting--and Donald -said he would go. He did not propose to tell Donald of his homicidal -intention; he would just sit him down in the library with _Rasselas_, -while he himself sat at another table behind Donald, yes, behind him; -even if Donald noticed him creeping out he would say he was only going -to the counter to get another book. It was all quite clear and safe. -He would be able to creep out, creep out, rush up to the dark little -street--yes, he would ask Donald for a piece of that lead and wrap it -round the head of the stick--he would creep out, and in ten minutes or -twenty he would be back in the library again asking for another book or -sitting down by Donald as if he had not been outside the place, as if -nothing had happened as far as he was concerned, nothing at all! - -The few intervening days passed with vexing deliberation. Each night -seemed the best of all possible nights for the deed, each hour that -Stringer survived seemed a bad hour for the world. They were bad, slow -hours for Johnny, but at last the day dawned, passed, darkness came, -and the hour rushed upon him. - -He took his stick and called for Donald. - -"Can't come," said Donald, limping to the door in answer to Johnny's -knock; "I been and hurt my leg." - -For a moment Johnny was full of an inward silent blasphemy that flashed -from a sudden tremendous hatred, but he said calmly: - -"But still ... no, you haven't ... what have you hurt it for?" - -Donald was not able to deal with such locution. He ignored it and said: - -"My knee cap, my shin. Oo, come and have a look. We was mending a -flue... it was the old man's wheelbarrow.... Didn't I tell him of it -neither!" - -"Oh, you told him of it?" - -Johnny listened to his friend's narration very abstractedly, and at -last went off to the library by himself. As he walked away he was -conscious of a great feeling of relief welling up in him. He could not -get an _alibi_ without Donald, not a sure one, so he would not be able -to do anything to-night. He felt relieved, he whistled as he walked, -he was happy again, but he went on to the library. He was going to -rehearse the _alibi_ by himself--that was the wise thing to do, of -course--rehearse it, practise it; it would be perfect next week when -Donald was better. So he did this. He got out a book from the odd-eyed -man, who strangely enough was preoccupied and did not seem to recognise -him. It was disconcerting, that; he specially wanted the man to notice -him. He went into the study room rather uneasily. Ten minutes later he -crept out unseen, carrying his stick--he had forgotten to ask Donald -for the piece of lead--and was soon lurking in the shadow of the dark, -quiet little street. - -It was a perfect spot, there could not be a better place, not in the -middle of a town. The house had an area entry through an iron gate; at -the end of a brick pathway, over a coalplate, five or six stone steps -led steeply up to a narrow front door with a brass letter box, a brass -knocker, and a glazed fanlight painted 29. The windows, too, were -narrow, and the whole house had a squeezed appearance. A church clock -chimed eight strokes. Johnny began to wonder what he would do, what -would happen, if Stringer were suddenly to come out of that gateway. -Should he--would he--could he...? And then the door at the top of the -steps did open wide, and framed there in the lighted space young Flynn -saw the figure of his own mother. - -She came down the steps alone, and he followed her short, jerky -footsteps secretly until she reached the well-lit part of the town, -where he joined her. It was quite simple, she explained to him with an -air of superior understanding; she had just paid Mr. Stringer a visit, -waiting for letters from that humbug had made her "popped." Had he -thought she would creep on her stomach and beg for a fourpenny piece, -when she could put him in jail if all were known, as she would, too, -if it hadn't been for her children, poor little fatherless things? No, -middling boxer, not that! So she had left off work early, had gone and -caught him at his lodgings and taxed him with it. He denied of it, he -was that cocky, it so mortified her, that she had snatched up the clock -and thrown it at him. Yes, his own clock. - -"But it was only a little one, though. He was frightened out of his -life and run upstairs. Then his landlady came rushing in. I told her -all about it, everything, and she was that 'popped' with him she give -me the name and address of his fionx--their banns is been put up. She -made him come downstairs and face me, and his face was as white as the -driven snow, Johnny, it was. He was obliged to own up. The lady said -to him, 'Whatever have you been at, Mr. Stringer?' she said to him, -'I can't believe it, knowing you for ten years; you must have forgot -yourself.' Oh, a proper understanding it was," declared Mrs. Flynn, -finally. "His lawyers are going to write to us and put everything in -order; Duckle & Hoole they are." - -Again a great feeling of relief welled up in the boy's breast, as if, -having been dragged into a horrible vortex, he had been marvellously -cast free again. - -The days that followed were blessedly tranquil, though Johnny was -often smitten with awe at the thought of what he had contemplated. -That fool, Donald, too, one evening insisted on accompanying him to -the library where he spent an hour of baffled understanding over the -pages of _Rasselas_. But the lawyers Duckle & Hoole aroused a tumult -of hatred in Mrs. Flynn. They pared down her fond anticipations to -the minimum; they put so much slight upon her family, and such a -gentlemanly decorum and generous forbearance upon the behaviour of -their client, Mr. Stringer, that she became inarticulate. When informed -that that gentleman desired no intercourse whatsoever with any Flynn, -or the offspring thereof, she became speechless. Shortly, Messrs. -Duckle & Hoole begged to submit for her approval a draft agreement -embodying their client's terms, one provision of which was that if the -said Flynns violated the agreement by taking any proceedings against -the said Stringer they should thereupon, _ipso facto_ willy nilly or -whatever, forfeit and pay unto him, the said Stringer, not by way of -penalty but as damages, the sum of £100. Whereupon Mrs. Flynn recovered -her speech and suffered a little tender irony to emerge. - -The shoemaker, whose opinion upon this draft agreement was solicited, -confessed himself as much baffled by its phraseology as he was -indignant at its tenour and terms. - -"That man," he declared solemnly to Johnny, "ought to have his brain -knocked out;" and he conveyed by subtle intimations to the boy that -that was the course he would favour were he himself standing in -Johnny's shoes. "One dark night," he had roared, with a dreadful glare -in his eyes, "with a neat heavy stick!" - -The Flynns also consulted a cabman who lodged in the house. His legal -qualifications appeared to lie in the fact that he had driven the -private coach of a major-general whose son, now a fruit farmer in -British Columbia, had once been entered for the bar. The cabman was a -very positive and informative cabman. "List and learn," he would say, -"list and learn;" and he would regale Johnny, or anyone else, with an -oration to which you might listen as hard as you liked but from which -you could not learn. He was husky, with a thick red neck and the cheek -bones of a horse. Having perused the agreement with one eye judiciously -cocked, the other being screened by a drooping lid adorned with a -glowing nodule, he carefully refolded the folios and returned them to -the boy. - -"Any judge--who was up to snuff--would impound that dockyment." - -"What's that?" - -"They would impound it," repeated the cabman, smiling wryly. - -"But what's 'impound it'? What for?" - -"I tell you it would be impounded, that dockyment would," asseverated -the cabman. Once more he took the papers from Johnny, opened them out, -reflected upon them and returned them again without a word. Catechism -notwithstanding, the oracle remained impregnable, mystifying. - -The boy continued to save his pocket money. His mother went about -her work with a grim air, having returned the draft agreement to the -lawyers with an ungracious acceptance of terms. - -One April evening Johnny went home to an empty room. Pomona was out. He -prepared his tea, and afterwards sat reading _Tales of a Grandfather_. -That was a book if anybody wanted a book! When darkness came he -descended the stairs to enquire of the shoemaker's wife about Pomony; -he was anxious. The shoemaker's wife was absent, too, and it was late -when she returned, accompanied by his mother. - -Pomona's hour had come. They had taken her to the workhouse--only just -in time--a little boy--they were both all right--he was an uncle! - -His mother's deceit stupefied him; he felt ashamed, deeply shamed; but -after a while that same recognisable feeling of relief welled up in -his breast and drenched him with satisfactions. After all, what could -it matter where a person was born, or where one died, as long as you -had your chance of growing up at all, and, if lucky, of growing up all -right. But this babe had got to bear the whole burden of its father's -misdeed, though; it had got to behave itself, or it would have to pay -its father a hundred pounds as damages. Perhaps that was what that -queer bit of poetry meant, 'The child is father of the man.' - -His mother swore that they were very good and clean and kind at the -workhouse, everything of the best and most expensive; there was nothing -she would have liked better than to have gone there herself when Johnny -and Pomony were born. - -"And if ever I have any more," Mrs. Flynn sighed, but with profound -conviction, "I will certainly go there." - -Johnny gave her half the packet of peppermints he had bought for -Pomona. With some of his saved money he bought her a bottle of -stout--she looked tired and sad--she was very fond of stout. The rest -of the money he gave her for to buy Pomony something when she visited -her. He would not go himself to visit her, not there. He spent the long -intervening evenings at the library--the odd-eyed man had shown him a -lovely book about birds. He was studying it. On Sundays, in the spring, -he was going out to catch birds himself, out in the country, with a -catapult. The cuckoo was a marvellous bird. So was a titlark. Donald -Gower found a goatsucker's nest last year. - -Then one day he ran from work all the way home, knowing Pomony would at -last be there. He walked slowly up the street to recover his breath. He -stepped up the stairs, humming quite casually, and tapped at the door -of their room--he did not know why he tapped. He heard Pomony's voice -calling him. A thinner paler Pomony stood by the hearth, nursing a -white-clothed bundle, the fat pink babe. - -"Oh, my dear!" cried her ecstatic brother, "the beauty he is! What -larks we'll have with him!" - -He took Pomona into his arms, crushing the infant against her breast -and his own. But she did not mind. She did not rebuke him, she even let -him dandle her precious babe. - -"Look, what is his name to be, Pomony? Let's call him Rasselas." - -Pomona looked at him very doubtfully. - -"Or would you like William Wallace, then, or Robert Bruce?" - -"I shall call him Johnny," said Pomona. - -"Oh, that's silly!" protested her brother. But Pomona was quite -positive about this. He fancied there were tears in her eyes, she was -always tender-hearted. - -"I shall call him Johnny--Johnny Flynn." - - - - - Printed at The Golden Cockerel Press - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's Clorinda Walks in Heaven, by Alfred Edgar Coppard - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CLORINDA WALKS IN HEAVEN *** - -***** This file should be named 62385-8.txt or 62385-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/2/3/8/62385/ - -Produced by Carlos Colón, the California Digital Library -and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at -https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images -generously made available by The Internet Archive/American -Libraries.) - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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