Bowden did not attend when three weeks later the baby was christened
Edward Bowden. He spent the June morning in his cart with a bull-calf,
taking it to market. The cart did not run well, because the weight of
the calf made it jerk and dip. Besides, though used to it all his life,
he had never become quite case-hardened to separating calves from their
mothers. Bowden had a queer feeling for cattle, more feeling indeed
than he had for human beings. He always sat sulky when there was a
little red beast tied up and swaying there behind him. Somehow he felt
for it, as if in some previous existence he might himself have been a
red bull-calf.
Passing through a village someone called:
“’Eard the nus? They beat the Germans up proper yest’day mornin’.”
Bowden nodded. News from the war was now nothing but a reminder of how
that fellow Steer had deprived him of Ned’s help and company. The war
would be over some day, he supposed, but they didn’t seem to get on
with it, gaining ground one day and losing it the next, and all the
time passing this law and that law interfering with the land. Didn’t
they know the land couldn’t be interfered with--the cuckoos? Steer, of
course, was all part of this interference with the land--the fellow
grew wheat where anybody could have told him it couldn’t be grown!
The day was hot, the road dusty, and that chap Steer hanging about the
market like the colley he was--so that Bowden imbibed freely at ‘The
Drake’ before making a start for home.
When he entered his kitchen the newly christened baby was lying in a
grocery box, padded with a pillow and shawl, just out of the sunlight
in which old Mrs. Bowden sat moving her hands as if weaving a spell.
Bowden’s sheepdog had lodged its nose on the edge of the box, and
was sniffing as if to ascertain the difference in the baby. In the
background the girl Pansy moved on her varying business; she looked
strong again, but pale still, and ‘daverdy,’ Bowden thought. He stood
beside the box contemplating the ‘monstrous’ baby. It wasn’t like Ned,
nor anything, so far as he could see. It opened its large grey eyes
while he stood there. That colley Steer would never have a grandchild,
not even one born like this! The thought pleased him. He clucked to the
baby with his tongue, and his sheepdog jealously thrust its head, with
mass of brushed-back snowy hair, under his hand.
“Hullo!” said Bowden, “what’s matter wi’ yu?”
He went out presently, in the slanting sunlight, to look at some beasts
he had on the rough ground below his fields, and the dog followed.
Among the young bracken and the furze not yet in bloom again, he sat
down on a stone. The afternoon was glorious beyond all words, now that
the sun was low, and its glamour had motion, as it were, and flight
across the ash-trees, the hawthorn, and the fern. One may-tree close
beside him was still freakishly in delicate flower, with a sweet
and heavy scent; in the hedge the round cream-coloured heads of the
elder-flower flashed, flat against the glistening air, while the rowans
up the gulley were passing already from blossom towards the brown
unrounded berries.
There was all the magic of transition from season to season, even in
the song of the cuckoo, which flighted arrow-like to a thorn-tree up
the rocky dingle, and started a shrill calling. Bowden counted his
beasts, and marked the fine sheen on their red coats. He was drowsy
from his hot day, from the cider he had drunk, and the hum of the
flies in the fern. Unconsciously he enjoyed a deep and sensuous peace
of warmth and beauty. Ned had said there was no green out there. It
was unimaginable! No green--not the keep of a rabbit; not a curling
young caterpillar-frond of fern; no green tree for a bird to light on!
And Steer had sent him out there! Through his drowsiness that thought
came flapping its black wings. Steer! Who had no son to fight, who was
making money hand over fist. It seemed to Bowden that a malevolent
fortune protected that stingy chap, who couldn’t even take his glass.
There were little blue flowers, speedwell and milkwort, growing
plentifully in the rough grass around; Bowden noted, perhaps for the
first time, those small flower luxuries of which Steer had deprived his
son by sending him to where no grass grew.
He rose at length, retracing his slow-lifted tread up the lane,
deep-soiled with the dried dung of his cows, where innumerable gnats
danced level with the elder-blossom and the ash leaves. The village
postman was leaving the yard when Bowden entered it. The man stopped in
the doorway, and turned his bearded face and dark eyes blinking in the
level sunlight.
“There’s a talegram for yu, Mist Bowden,” he said, and vanished.
“What’s that?” said Bowden dully, and passed in under the porch.
The ‘talegram’ lay unopened on the kitchen table, and Bowden stared at
it. Very few such missives had come his way, perhaps not half a dozen
in his fifty odd years. He took it up, handling it rather as he might
have handled a fowl that would peck, and broke it open with his thumb.
“Greatly regret inform you your son killed in action on seventh
instant. War Office.”
He read it through again and again, before he sat down heavily,
dropping it on the table. His round solid face looked still and blind,
its mouth just a little open. The girl Pansy came up and stood beside
him.
“Here!” he said, “read that.”
The girl read it and put her hands up to her ears.
“That idn’ no yuse,” he said, with surprising quickness.
The girl’s pale face crimsoned; she uttered a little wail and ran from
the room.
In the whitewashed kitchen the only moving things were the clock’s
swinging pendulum and old Mrs. Bowden’s restless eyes, close to the
geranium on the window-sill, where the last of the sunlight fell before
passing behind the house. Minute after minute ticked away before Bowden
made a movement--his head bowed, his shoulders rounded, his knees
apart. Then he got up.
“God for ever darn the blasted colley,” he said slowly, gathering up
the telegram. “Where’s my stick?”
Lurching blindly he walked round the room, watched by the old woman’s
little dark bright eyes, and went out. He went at his unvaried gait on
the path towards Steer’s, slowly climbing the two stiles and emerging
from the field into Steer’s farmyard.
“Master in?” he said to the boy who stood by a cow byre.
“No.”
“Where is ’e, then?”
“Not ’ome from Bickton yet.”
“Oh! he idden! Gone in the trap, eh?”
“Ya-a-s.”
And Bowden turned up into the lane. There was a dull buzzing in his
ears, but his nostrils moved, savouring the evening scents of grass,
of cow-dung, dried earth, and hedgerow weeds. His nose was alive, the
rest within him all knotted into a sort of bitter tangle round his
heart. The blood beat in his temples, and he dwelled heavily on foot
and foot. Along this road Steer must come in his cart--God for ever
darn him! Beyond his own top pasture he reached the inn abutting on the
road. From the bench in there under the window he could see anyone who
passed. The innkeeper and two labourers were all the company as yet.
Bowden took his usual mug and sat down on the window-seat. He did not
speak of his loss, and they did not seem to know of it. He just sat
with his eyes on the road. Now and then he responded to some question,
now and then got up and had his mug refilled. Someone came in; he noted
the lowering of voices. They were looking at him. They knew. But
he sat on silent till the inn closed. It was still daylight when he
lurched back up the road toward home, intent on not missing Steer. The
sun had gone down; it was very still. He leaned against the wicket gate
of his top field. Nobody passed. Twilight crept up. The moon rose. An
owl began hooting. Behind him in the field from a group of beech-trees
the shadows stole out ever so faint in the flowery grass, and darkened
slowly as the moonlight brightened.
Bowden leaned his weight against the wood--one knee crooked and then
the other--in dogged stupefaction. He had begun imagining things, but
not very much. No grass, no trees, where his son had been killed,
no birds, no animals; what could it be like--all murky grey in the
moonlight--and Ned’s face all grey! So he would never see Ned’s face
any more! That colley Steer--that colley Steer! His dead son would
never see and hear and smell his home again. Vicarious home-sickness
for this native soil and scent and sound--this nest of his fathers
from time beyond measuring--swept over Bowden. He thought of the old
time when his wife was alive and Ned was born. His wife--why! she had
brought him six, and out of the lot he had only ‘saved’ Ned, and he was
a twin. He remembered how he had told the doctor that he wasn’t to
worry about the ‘maiden’ so long as he saved the boy. He had wanted the
boy to come after him here; and now he was dead and dust! That colley
Steer!
He heard the sound of wheels--a long way off, but coming steadily.
Gripping his stick he stood up straight, staring down the road all
barred with moonlight and the dusk. Closer came the rumble, the
clop-clop of hoofs, till the shape of horse and cart came out of the
darkness into a bright patch. Steer’s right enough! Bowden opened his
wicket gate and waited. The cart came slowly; Bowden saw that the mare
was lame, and Steer was leading her. He lurched a yard out from the
gate.
“’Ere,” he said, “I want to speak to yu. Come in ’ere!”
The moonlight fell on Steer’s thin bearded face.
“What’s that?” he answered.
Bowden turned towards the gate.
“Hitch the mare up; I want to settle my account.”
He saw Steer stand quite still as if debating, then pass the reins over
the gate. His voice came sharp and firm:
“Have you got the money, then?”
“Ah!” said Bowden, and drew back under the trees. He saw Steer coming
cautiously--the colley--with a stick in his hand. He raised his own.
“That’s for Ned,” he said and struck with all his might.
The blow fell short a little; Steer staggered back, raising his stick.
He struck again, but the sticks clashed, and dropping his own, Bowden
lurched at his enemy’s throat. He had twice Steer’s strength and
bulk; half his lean quickness and sobriety. They swayed between the
beech trunks, now in shadow, now in moonlight which made their faces
livid, and showed the expression in their eyes, of men out to kill.
They struggled chest against chest, striving to throw each other;
with short hard gruntings. They reeled against a trunk, staggered and
unclinched, and stood, breathing hard, glaring at each other. All those
months of hatred looked out of their eyes, and their hands twitched
convulsively. Suddenly Steer went on his knees and gripping Bowden’s
legs strained at them, till the heavy unsteady bulk pitched forward
and fell over Steer’s back with stunning weight. They rolled on the
grass then, all mixed up, till they came apart, and sat facing each
other, dazed--Bowden from the drink shaken up within him, Steer from
the weight which had pitched upon his spine. They sat as if each knew
there was no hurry and they were there to finish this; watching each
other, bent a little forward, their legs stuck out in the moonlight,
their mouths open, breathing in hard gasps, ridiculous--to each other!
And suddenly the church bell began to toll. Its measured sound at first
reached only the surface of Bowden’s muddled brain, dully devising the
next attack; then slid into the chambers of his consciousness. Tolling?
Tolling? For whom? His hands fell by his sides. Impulse and inhibition,
action and superstition, revenge and mourning gripped each other
and rolled about within him. A long minute passed. The bell tolled
on. A whinny came from Steer’s lame mare outside the gate. Suddenly
Bowden staggered up, turned his back on his enemy, and, lurching in
the moonlight, walked down the field for home. The clover among the
wild grasses smelled sweet; he heard the sound of wheels--Steer had
started again! Let him go! ’Twasn’t no use--’twouldn’ bring Ned back!
He reached the yard door and stood leaning against it. Cold streaming
moonlight filled the air, covered the fields; the pollarded aspens
shivered above him; on the low rock-wall the striped roses were all
strangely coloured; and a moth went by brushing his cheek.
Bowden lowered his head, as if butting at the beauty of the night. The
bell had ceased to toll--no sound now but the shiver of the aspens,
and the murmur of a stream! ’Twas monstrous peaceful--surely!
And in Bowden something went out. He had not the heart to hate.
1921.