DAGGING
When Zita returned to Prickwillow, Leehanna Tunkiss, with a malicious
leer, said, 'The master is upstairs, and would like to speak with you;'
then, with a sidelong look at the maid-of-all-work and a giggle, she
curtseyed and added 'Miss.'
Zita ascended leisurely to her room, removed her bonnet and changed her
shoes, put on an apron, and then proceeded to Drownlands' office. She
did not hurry herself. She sauntered along the passage and hummed a
folk-melody—'High Germany.' She stayed to shut a bedroom door that was
ajar and swinging in the draught. She trifled with a canary that hung
in a window.
The office door was open. She knew that Drownlands had heard her come
in, had heard Mrs. Tunkiss inform her that she was wanted, heard her
ascend the stairs. She knew that he was waiting with impatience whilst
she removed bonnet and shoes, that he was chafing at the leisurely
manner in which she approached his den.
After a while she tapped at the half-open door in careless fashion,
threw it open and stood in the doorway, and shrugged her shoulders,
then rubbed her hands as though they were cold.
'Mrs. Tunkiss said you required my presence.'
'You have taken your time in coming.' Drownlands was at his table; he
had been biting his fingers. There was a sheet of blotting paper on the
board; he had scratched it, torn four strips out of it with his nails.
His face was troubled and was working. 'Why did you not come at once?'
'I had to remove my shoes; they were wet. I did not suppose you were in
much of a hurry.'
'Come inside. Why do you stand in the doorway?'
She obeyed.
'Well, is it necessary to leave the door wide open behind you?'
She closed the door.
'Shut it, I say.'
She obeyed, and leaned her back against the valve, crossed her feet,
and put her hands behind her on the handle.
'Where have you been?' asked Drownlands imperiously.
'To Red Wings, to see your niece. You don't know her. It is a pity.
You should look after her; she is your own relation. She is not bad
in her way, but awfully poor—and pig-headed too, which poor people
oughtn't to be, because they can't afford it. I went to have a deal
with her, but it was of no use. She would do no business with me.'
'Oh, you have gone back to your old profession of Cheap Jack, have you?'
'I never left it off. I Cheap Jack in my sleep and make thundering
profits. It is disappointing to wake in the morning and see all the
goods—and damaged ones too—on the shelves where they were the night
before, after I had sold them off in my dreams at twenty-five and
thirty per cent. profits. There's an epergne has been the nightmare to
father and me. I wanted Kainie to take it, but she wouldn't. Suppose
you buy it and present it to her, and so make peace and love between
you?'
'Have done. I told you I did not wish you to know her.'
'But I went on business, and my time was wasted.'
'You have also been with that—that fellow.'
'Yes, with Mark. I took him out for a drive.'
'In the road, in the van?'
'Yes; the van wanted sweetening. The fowls have been roosting on it,
and have treated it shamefully.'
'Be silent. What are you playing with behind your back?'
'I am playing with nothing. I am always at work or doing business. I
never play.'
'And what work or business are you engaged on now?'
'I am polishing the handle of the door.'
'You not play? You never play?' exclaimed Drownlands, starting to his
feet. 'You are always at play, and I am your sport. You play me as a
fish, you dagg me like a pike. Look at this.'
He went to the corner of his room, and from the collection there thrown
together produced a singular weapon or tool, locally termed a gleve.
'Do you know the use of this?'
'No.'
'It is for playing,' said Drownlands bitterly. 'See, there are six
knives tied together by the handles at the head, and all the blades
have been jagged like saws, the teeth set backwards. Can you guess its
purpose?'
'No; it's not a woman's tool.'
'It is for playing—playing with pike. You take this and dagg into the
water; you dagg and dagg, and bring up a pike or an eel wedged between
these blades, cut into by these fangs. He cannot free himself; the more
he twists and turns, the deeper into his flesh bite these teeth, and
the greater is his anguish of heart. That is play—play for him who
does the dagging, not for the poor fish that is speared. And, Zita,
such is your play. With your fingers, with your tongue, with your brown
eyes, you dagg for me, and I am the miserable wretch whom you torture.
It may be fun to you.'
'I do not make sport with you, master,' said Zita, with placidity of
feature and evenness of tone in strong contrast with his working face
and quivering voice.
'You are at that handle again. Polishing it! Leave off, or you will
drive me mad. Can you not for one moment desist from tormenting me? You
seek out occasion, means, to twang my every nerve, and give me pain.'
'Master Drownlands, listen to me,' said Zita. 'You are quite in the
wrong when you say that I dagg for you. Lawk-a-biddy! I dagg for you?
On the contrary, it is you who are dagging for me, and I have to dodge
to this side, then to that, from your gleve, and as I happen to be
sharp of eye and nimble in movement, you do not catch me. That is how
the matter stands, and not at all as you represent it.'
'Who suffers?' asked Drownlands fiercely. 'Is it you, or is it I? You
stand there, composed and complacent, rubbing up my door-handle behind
your back, and all the while I am in torture. You cannot speak to
me but you stick a dart; you cannot look at me but I feel the knife
cutting; your very laugh causes a wound, and your weapons are all
poisoned, and the gashes fester. Here am I' (he flung the gleve back
into the corner with an oath), 'your victim, your sport—in suffering.'
He returned to the table.
'Sit down,' said the girl. 'Do not work yourself into a passion.
There's no occasion for that. Let us come to business.'
'Yes,' said Drownlands; 'that is the only way to deal with you. You
have a sorry, commercial mind. Everything to you must be a matter of
pounds, shillings, and pence.'
'That is the only way with me,' said Zita. 'I was brought up to trade,
and I love to drive a bargain. That, if you like it, is sport; it is
sport and business squeezed into one.'
'I will stand here,' said the man. 'You stand there by the door, if
you will; only, I beseech you, leave off polishing that cursed handle,
and reckoning, as I suppose you are, how many farthings to charge me
for it. As you say that you love business, to business we will go. As
nothing affects you but what is presented to your mind in a monetary
light, to moneys we will proceed. We also will have a deal.'
'By all means,' said Zita, with a sigh of relief. 'Now I am on my own
ground. Do you want to buy, sell, or barter?'
He did not answer immediately. He folded his arms and stood by the
window jamb, looking over his shoulder at her.
The dusk had set in after the set of sun, but a silvery grey light
suffused the room, the reflection of the snow on the ground. In this
light he could see Zita. She had withdrawn her hands from the knob,
and had them raised to her bosom, and was rubbing one palm against the
other leisurely. A fine, clean-built girl. He also was a fine man,
with strongly-cut features, picturesque, with his long black hair, his
swarthy complexion, his sturdy frame, and the tiger-skin slung across
his shoulders.
'Now I am ready,' said Zita.
He did not speak. He felt that much, everything, depended on what he
said, and how he said it. His breath came quick, and his brow was
beaded with perspiration.
'You are slow about it,' said Zita. 'Father took an agency once for
an _Illustrated History of the War_. It was to be in twenty parts, at
half a crown a part, and four beautiful steel engravings in each, of
battles, and generals, and towns. That _Illustrated War_ was such a
long time in progress that some of the subscribers died, and others
moved away, and some went bankrupt, and there was no getting their
money out of some of the others. Father never would have anything
more to do with concerns that did not go off smart like the snap of a
percussion cap. It seems to me that this business of yours is going to
be as long and tiresome as that of the _Illustrated War_.'
'You are dagging at me again,' said Drownlands sullenly.
'I cannot speak a word but it takes you contrariways,' observed the
girl.
He left the window and came to the table, leaned his hand on it, and
stood with his back to the light. Still unable to make up his mind to
speak, or how to speak, he began to tear up the blotting-paper into
little pieces and to throw them about, some on the floor, some on the
board. When the last fragment had left his fingers—
'Zita,' he said in loud and vehement tones, 'I suppose I am twice your
age.'
'I should fancy more than that—a good deal.'
'Be silent and listen to me.' He raised his voice. 'I am rich. I
have a large tract of land—fen-land. I have turned over every turf,
and under each found gold. But it has not made me happy. I have had
many contradictions, many sorrows, and some shame. My life has been
blistered and full of running sores. I have ever been seeking and never
finding, till I saw you. When you came into my house, then I knew at
once that it was you I had craved for and longed after, and that you,
and you alone, could give me what I can find nowhere else—happiness.'
'Give?' said Zita. 'I thought this was a business matter.'
'Let me buy my happiness, then, at what price you desire. I have told
you what I am worth. When I see you, I feel the fire kindles in my
heart; when I do not see you, it smoulders; and now—now I speak, it
breaks out into raging flames.'
'I must leave this place, or you will go clean crazy.'
'No, you must not—you shall not leave it! I could not live without
you, having once seen you. Zita, I must have you!'
'Me?' said Zita. 'With me go the van and the goods.'
'Curse the van!'
'You must not say that. The van is very fine, if the poultry would but
leave it alone; and with the curtains and tassels is fit for a king.'
'Zita, it is you only that I want.'
'There are a lot of goods goes with me—scrubbing-brushes, mops,
brooms, door-mats, pots and pans. Then there's Jewel—who is not bad
when he does go.'
'You are trifling with me again. Listen to me. Hear me to the end.'
'I want to hear the end and have done with it,' said the girl. 'I was
reckoning up the articles. Here's Cheap Jack Zita for one; there are
all these promiscuous goods, that's two; here's the van, that's three;
and there's Jewel, that's four—a job lot.'
'You are mocking me.'
'No indeed, I am not. We are after business, are we not?'
But Zita was purposely protracting the scene. She was in difficulties,
and was searching to find a way out of them.
'Yes, business. You are mercantile. Listen to what I offer. I am rich,
a man of consequence, and a Commissioner. Here is the house, here is
the land. I have money in the bank—thousands of pounds; all—all I
have is yours; give me but your own self in return.'
Zita was far from being unfeeling. She was stirred by the earnestness,
the devotion of the man, but she was not for a moment doubtful as to
what her answer must be. Commercial though her mind was, she could not
accept him at his price. Her scruple was how to word her refusal so as
least to wound him. In her peculiar fashion—one inveterate to her—she
twisted the matter about so as to give it a comical aspect. She saw no
other loophole for escape from a difficult and painful situation.
'I am sorry,' she said, 'that number one in the job lot is not to be
parted with. That is withdrawn from the sale, or bought in. But if it
is any consolation to you to have the van and a share of the goods'—
'That is no consolation to me.'
'A queer state of mind to be in—an unwholesome one, and looks like
derangement of intellects. The van ought to comfort any man with his
faculties about him.'
'Zita!' exclaimed Drownlands, striking the table with his fist, 'you
persist in fooling with me! I will not endure this. I am in deadly
earnest. I know the reason of this trifling. Mark Runham'—he choked
with passion—'Mark has stepped in, and you have given him that heart
which you deny me—a heart I would give worlds—worlds'—. He turned to
the window. It was starlight now, starlight over snowfields. 'Look out,
Zita, at the stars. It is said that they are worlds. If all these were
mine, and filled with unimaginable masses of treasure, the homes of
unexampled happiness, I would give all for you—all for you—listen to
me—merely that I might call you mine, and then die.'
'I cannot be yours,' said Zita in a firm voice. 'And now that you have
said this, I shall leave the house.'
'You shall not leave this house!' he cried fiercely. 'If you attempt
it,—if I see that you are about to attempt it—and I know whither you
would go,—then I will shoot you first, and myself afterwards.'
'I have to do, then, with a madman?'
'Be it so—with a madman; mad on one matter only, mad for one thing
only—you. I make no empty threat. I swear by these stars I will do
what I threaten. I cannot and I will not live without you. I will kill
you rather than that you should belong to another.'
Zita came forward from the door, came to the table.
'I can never be yours,' she said in a tone as earnest, as grave as his.
'There is that between us which makes it for ever impossible.'
'What is the _that_—Mark Runham?'
'No—not Mark Runham.'
'Who is it, then?'
'There is no _who_. There is a _something_. Must I tell you what it is?
I would gladly spare you.'
'Tell me, and torment me no more.'
She stepped to the corner of the room, took the flail up, and cast it
on the table between them.
'The _something_ is that flail.'
Suddenly through the window smote a red flare; it kindled the room, it
turned Zita's hair into a ruddy aureole, it streamed over the table,
and dyed the flail blood-red.
And Drownlands cast himself on his knees, with a cry of anguish and
remorse, and buried his face in his hands.
Then through the house sounded a hubbub of voices, and cries for the
master.