“FOR SUCH PERSONS——”
1.
There was no sign of a break in the weather. The sun that had dropped
behind the orchard in a hot turbulence of colour last night, rose from
the lake, as from a brazen pool, like a warrior refreshed. The fruit was
drying; the sand was like hot metal under the feet; even the fowls
clustered together in the shade with parted beaks.
Derek saw with satisfaction that the pickers were hard at work. As he
waited for his breakfast, he calculated on the back of an envelope what
the proceeds of yesterday’s shipment would be. He thought he was not
doing badly. Snailem had told him that Chard had not shipped as much. He
was determined that Mrs. Machin should hear good accounts of the fruit.
She had the idea, he knew, that things would go smash without her. He
had refused hot food, and Phœbe brought him a bowl of strawberries and
thick cream. Cream flowed freely those days at Grimstone; Vale wondered
sometimes where the next churning of butter was to come from. Phœbe
creaked in and out waiting on him. She wore red knitted slippers and
white cotton stockings that wrinkled about her thick ankles. Her cheeks
vied with the strawberries and cream in freshness and colour.
As Derek divided the strawberries with his spoon, disclosing the sweet
pink hearts of them, which rapidly were smothered in cream, he heard
Fawnie’s voice, singing to her child. “It must be hot upstairs,” he
thought, “under the roof,” and he had a desire to see Fawnie eating
strawberries at the table beside him. He went, napkin in hand, to the
foot of the stairs.
“Fawnie,” he called, “won’t you come down and have some strawberries
with me? I’ve twice too many.”
“Yes. I’ll come this minute. I’m hungry. But this fonny little child he
don’ want to go to sleep. His eyes is as bright as bright.”
“Lay him on the bed.”
“Yes, I will. Now you go to sleep, Abner, like a good little boy.”
“What was it you called him?” Vale asked, as she came down the stairs.
“Abner. Don’ you think that is a nice name?”
“No. I think it is a milksop name. Call him something
picturesque—colourful.”
“Derek, then?”
“Lord, no. I’ll think up a name while we eat our strawberries.”
Fawnie was in love with the idea of sitting at table with Derek. She
clapped her hands, and ran around the table twice, like a little brown
bird fluttering about a bough, before she settled in her chair. Then she
said, with hands flat on the tablecloth on either side of her plate:
“I must not spill crumbs, nor slop tea on this nice white cloth, or
you’ll kill me, won’t you, Derek?”
“I surely will. Now have some buttered toast, Fawnie, or perhaps you
like scones.”
“I’ll have toast. We never have toast. Just Maw’s bread that she bakes
in the fryin’-pan.”
She helped herself to toast. Phœbe had buttered it so thickly that the
butter oozed through to the other side. Fawnie set her teeth in it,
laughing over it with narrowed eyes at Derek.
“What are you going to call our baby?” she demanded with her mouth full.
“I have it. Buckskin. That’s a jolly name. It means something. Suits a
little Indian boy. Makes you think of Nipigon, Timagami, wild things,
and the smell of gunpowder and wood smoke. Abner makes you think of hair
oil, creaky boots, and Sunday-school leaflets, eh?”
Fawnie stared at him with the expression of an intelligent child. “I
understand,” she said. “But I think he’ll be an awful bad little boy if
we call him Buckskin. . . . Buckskin Vale, h’m. . . .” She stopped
eating and stared straight before her, as though savouring the name.
Phœbe, coming in with a jug of hot water to replenish the pot, started
in amazement at seeing Fawnie seated at the table with Vale. Catching
her toe on the doorsill she stumbled into the room, slopping the water
as she came. A drop fell on Jock’s long feathered tail that projected
from under the table and he fled howling out of doors. Derek looked up
crossly at her, and Fawnie said:
“Say, you’re awful stupid this morning, Phœbe. Haven’t you ever seen a
lady and gentleman eatin’ hot toast before?”
“A gentleman must have a margin, if it’s ever so, as I said to Hughie,”
declared Phœbe, addressing Vale, “but the margin’s getting wider and
wider.”
“’Tis not so wide as a church door nor so deep as a well but ’twill
suffice,” boomed Snailem from the kitchen. “Which is from Shakespeare as
always hits the mark.”
A pleasant voice came from outside. The owner of it was sympathizing
deeply with Jock, who wriggled on his belly towards someone who
approached. Vale leaned back in his chair to look through the open door.
He saw Mr. Ramsey pushing his bicycle over the flagstones. He stared,
stupefied, at the advancing figure which, in grey Norfolk suit and white
straw sailor hat, stood for Church, and order, and the accepted
sacraments.
Phœbe stared, too, in gaping consternation. As Mr. Ramsey, having stood
his wheel against the rail of the verandah, filled the doorway with his
well-knit figure, she went towards him, hot-water kettle in hand.
“Oh, sir,” she cried, “I hope as you haven’t come here to talk about
columbines and such! Because Mr. Vale reely don’t deserve it. If ever
there was a well-meaning young man it’s him, and, as I said to Hughie, a
gentleman must have a margin, if it’s ever so.” She would have
proceeded, even more recklessly, but a dribble of scalding water from
the kettle she held fell on her woollen slipper and brought her up with
an exclamation of pain.
“Phœbe,” said Derek, desperately, “please go to the kitchen and shut the
door after you.”
Phœbe, feeling that she was in disgrace, hurried from the room, and,
tripping once more over the doorsill, was precipitated into the kitchen.
Snailem caught her, and carefully closed the door upon them.
Mr. Ramsey turned with a cheerful smile to Derek. “Quite a character,
that girl,” he said. “Most amusing. I was positive she was going to
baptize me with that boiling water. . . . How nice and cool you are
here. It’s frightful out of doors.”
“Won’t you sit down?” said Derek, regaining his outward composure, “and
have some breakfast? You’re out early.” He looked at Fawnie anxiously,
and she, meeting his eyes, divined that he would be rid of her. With an
odd dignity, she stood up in her narrow blue dress, and said in her low
voice, “I guess I take my tea and scone upstairs and finish it there,
eh?”
“Thanks, Fawnie,” said Derek; and Mr. Ramsey with an amused little bow
opened the door into the hallway and smiled at her as she passed
through.
“Won’t you have some breakfast?” repeated Derek, feeling that, by
eating, the evil moment might be delayed.
“Thank you, no. I had breakfast at Hickson’s. I went there early to give
the Communion to old Mr. Hickson, who is dangerously ill. And afterwards
I had my breakfast.” Derek saw then that he carried a small black bag.
Mr. Ramsey stared at the remains of the breakfast in silence for a
moment, then he turned his deep-set grey eyes on Derek’s face with a
look of intense scrutiny. “So that is the girl,” he said with a new
harsh note in his voice.
“What do you mean by calling her ‘the girl,’ as though I had done
something tremendous and irrevocable?” demanded Derek resentfully.
“Well, haven’t you?” returned Mr. Ramsey, on a deep note. “It is rather
tremendous, isn’t it, to bring a young girl into your house under such
circumstances? Rather irrevocable to bring a son into the world?”
Derek strode up and down the room, and at last paused before the china
greyhound on the chimney-piece, and looked into its immobile face. “Such
things have been done before,” he said.
“Not often. Can you recall a case among your acquaintances? And never
without consequences.”
“Look here,” interrupted Derek. “Did you come here as a friend, or not?”
“Absolutely as a friend.” Mr. Ramsey came and stood beside him. “A
friend above all things. Not to rebuke nor to give advice, but to help,
if possible.”
“Well, sir,” said Derek, looking at him steadily, “put yourself in my
place.”
Mr. Ramsey flushed a little. “Yes,” he said dryly.
“What could I do? There was that poor young thing beaten into welts by
an old hag—was threatened even worse things. I brought her here simply
to save her skin. The child had to come too. Then my housekeeper got
wild, talked about my criminal actions to the world in general and left
me. Next thing Chard and the minister from Mistwell came and insulted
me—ordered me to put the girl out—or marry her. Would you have been
baited by them? Then that affair last night—a bunch of rowdies—would
any decent fellow submit to their bullying?”
“It is true that your position has been frightfully difficult. You must
not think, my dear fellow, that I am insensible to that. What I have
come for this morning is to help you, if possible, to a better
understanding with yourself, and with those who hold your friendship as
something very dear.”
“Do you mean the Jerrolds?”
“Yes, and myself, of course.”
“Have you spoken of this to them?”
“Mr. Jerrold and I have talked it over. He is laid up with lumbago, you
know. I should have shunned the subject with Miss Jerrold, but she
brought it up herself as I was leaving yesterday.”
Derek picked up the china greyhound and turned it in his hand, waiting
for the Vicar to go on.
“She was very much upset,” said Mr. Ramsey, in a low voice.
“Yes. I suppose she would be. I suppose she’ll never want to speak to me
again, eh?” His hand shook a little as he carefully set the dog on the
oval mark its base had made in the dust film on the mantelpiece.
“I shouldn’t like to think that. I do think that she has every hope that
you will make what restitution you can.”
Vale stared at him uncomprehending, and the Vicar went on: “She said to
me that she was positive you would do the right thing by the girl.”
“Provide for her?”
“In the only way possible.”
“Come now, Mr. Ramsey,” said Vale with heat. “You don’t expect me to
believe that Grace Jerrold thinks I should marry Fawnie.”
“I think she hopes intensely that you will.”
Derek struck the mantelpiece with his closed hand. “It’s the most
preposterous thing I ever heard of. Because I made a fool of myself—a
beast if you like—once, she expects me to pay for it for the rest of my
life. All men are fools—beasts sometimes. Perhaps not actually, but in
thought. No one knows about them. Everyone knows of this, and I am
willing to face the consequences. But that does not mean I am willing to
tie myself to an ignorant Indian girl.”
“I suppose she was thinking about your son. I confess that is what
troubles me, too.”
“Good God! I will provide for him! But marry her. . . . Oh, I know how
you look at it. . . . I was strictly brought up. . . . I know the
phrase—the woman you wronged—I take the blame—but marry her!” The
blood rushed to his head at the mere thought of such a marriage; at the
thought, too, of Grace Jerrold discussing his wrongdoing with the Vicar.
What a horrible mess he had got into! How was he to get out? He did not
know what way to turn. Mrs. Machin, Chard, the minister, the Mistwell
folk, the Jerrolds, Mr. Ramsey, they were all banded together to bait
him. He felt bewildered. His eyes looked strange as he faced the Vicar.
“Don’t get excited, my dear fellow. Remember I am here to help you. I
want you to realize the elemental truths of the affair. Even if you give
the girl money and send her away with the child, what will become of
him? Try to picture his life—the life of your own flesh and blood. He
is no common Indian. He has the blood of your mother—your father—your
uncle who gave you this place. If you supplied his mother with money, do
you suppose her family would ever let her be? She would be their prey.
Your son would be knocked about by some low half-breed, probably. Think
of him as a ragged, dirty, ignorant youth coming to pick berries some
day at Grimstone, the home of his fathers. As for the girl—Fawnie, is
it?—she is pretty, intelligent, a direct descendant of Tecumseh, I
believe, and she cannot be repulsive to you or you would not have been
eating your breakfast so happily with her as I came in.” Mr. Ramsey’s
clean-shaven lips parted in a slightly derisive smile.
Derek flushed deeply. More than ever, he felt cut, bewildered. Now he
could not bear the Vicar’s keen eyes. He went to the door and looked out
on the blinding surface of the lake. A wave of heat like the breath of a
furnace beat in upon him. He glanced at the thermometer hanging in the
shade on the verandah. The mercury touched 102 degrees. No wonder he
felt bewildered. He put his hand to his head. Strange pains were
tormenting the back of his neck. He could not think. And yet thoughts
were gnawing at his brain like rats gnawing to get free of a trap. There
seemed to be no air to breathe. A black schooner was passing, trailing a
streamer of sooty black smoke. . . . He was roused by the sound of a
shuffling step on the flags. It was old Mrs. Sharroe. She gave him an
imperturbably hostile stare as she passed. He thought of gentle Fawnie
at her mercy. Of his son, poor little beggar, at her mercy. He
remembered the feel of those welts on Fawnie’s shoulder and turned sick
with repugnance. He wheeled back into the room and could scarcely make
out Mr. Ramsey’s figure, still standing by the fireplace, for the
strange jigging in his eyes. He was afraid that Mr. Ramsey would begin
talking again. Anything seemed better than more talk. Words beat so on a
fellow’s brain. Like the heat, only worse. . . . “We’ll have done with
all this talk, then,” he thought, and he said heavily:
“All right. I’ll marry her—since everybody thinks I should.”
He could never rightly remember that drive to Mistwell to buy the
licence. He knew that a motor had passed them once and covered them with
dust, and he remembered the glare of a red and yellow sign by the
roadside advertising fur coats and wraps. The man who sold him the
licence had seemed but half awake. He had yawned in open boredom as he
asked questions and filled in blanks. Only Mr. Ramsey seemed cool,
alert, masterful.
He talked cheerfully and kindly to Derek on the way homeward, and before
parting advised him almost in the tone of a doctor to take care not to
expose himself to the heat, but to keep quiet and cool until he should
return in the afternoon to perform the ceremony.
2.
He looked at the table after the Vicar had gone and wondered what meal
it was that he had been eating a while ago. He took up the teapot and
poured himself a little tea. It was tepid and bitter, not what he
wanted. From the cupboard under the stairs he got a bottle of Scotch
whisky and half filled a tumbler, adding cold water from the pump
outside. He drank it slowly and his brain felt clearer, but he wanted to
be alone to think—if possible.
He went to the parlour and stretched himself on the sofa, his burning
head pressed against the unfriendly beaded cushion. But, instead of
thinking, he became drowsy and slept. In his dreams the air was full of
yells and hoots, and the beating of tin pans.
He was awakened by the pain in the back of his neck. He had been
dreaming something about the Indians. Oh, yes, they had been going to
hang him from a tree in the orchard. Jammery had just placed the rope
about his neck. Mr. Ramsey had been there in his surplice, reading the
burial service, and a mob of Mistwell fellows were making a frightful
row. He felt dazed. Then, suddenly, he remembered everything.
No one would expect him to keep such a promise. He had hardly known what
he was saying. He made up his mind that he would go straight to Mr.
Jerrold and talk it over with him. And, if he met Grace, he would speak
frankly to her, as he had spoken to Mr. Ramsey. He pictured himself
putting the matter before her plainly, almost brutally, yet withal
throwing himself upon her mercy, making her feel that she above all
others could save him from the disaster.
He got his hat and went out by the front door. The road was deserted
except for a speckled hen who was taking a dust-bath with tempestuous
energy, just outside the gate. She ceased for a moment as he passed and
gazed up at him with a hard yellow eye. She lay on her side, every
feather on end, and one scaly leg stiffly extended in the dust. Fearing
some passing motor-car might kill her, Derek pushed her with his foot
and sent her, dishevelled and angry, through the gateway.
As he passed over the bridge he noticed that the stream had gone almost
dry. Out of the shiny ooze of the pool grotesque spotted lilies seemed
to stare up at him with yellow eyes like the hen’s. The sloping field
beyond the stream was a shimmering sea of oats, their bluish stalks
bending and whispering under a faint hot breeze.
He hesitated, listening to that drowsy, sibilant music, and did not
notice the approach of a vehicle until it was almost upon him. Looking
up, as the driver turned his horses aside, he looked straight into the
face of Grace Jerrold.
She was alone save for the groom who sat on the seat before her. She was
in a thin white dress and held a green silk parasol above her bright
uncovered head.
Derek started forward, shamefaced, yet eager. He thought, instantly, he
would climb in beside her and pour out the whole miserable business into
her ears. The driver drew up his horses, and looked over his shoulder,
expecting an order to stop. But, instead, she gave him a little nod to
go on, and, after one sorrowful look into the expectant eyes raised to
hers, turned her face away, and stared across the lake.
The carriage passed. Now the glistening green parasol hid her from view.
She had dropped it on her shoulder, either to hide herself from the
contamination of his gaze, or from faintness perhaps. It did not matter.
She had cut him. He scarcely seemed able to take that in as he stood in
the dust of the wheels.
All he wanted now was to get home, to escape from the glare of the road
into the dim shade of the parlour. There he would sit until Mr. Ramsey’s
return. He had said he would be back about three. He would sit there
quietly till Mr. Ramsey came, and then he would tell him of his
unchangeable decision not to marry the girl.
He began quickly to retrace his steps Two little girls in clumsy
pinafores met him and whispered together behind their hands. Then they
began to laugh hysterically, and ran past him clutching each other. When
he reached his own gate, the hen was exactly where he had first found
her, taking a second dust-bath.
In the house all was quiet. He shut himself in the parlour with the
bottle of Scotch, and, when Phœbe called him to dinner, he said he had a
headache and did not want to be disturbed. Upstairs Fawnie sang the same
song over and over to the baby.
3.
“But, my dear fellow,” said Mr. Ramsey, anxiously, “you look very
flushed. I hope you have not been exerting in the heat.”
“Sitting here all day.”
“Then I am afraid you’re not quite well. But it’s enough to make anyone
ill. I’m sure I have sweated five pounds off, pedalling those seven
miles from Brancepeth three times to-day.” But he still looked quite
fresh. And he spoke with cheerful matter-of-factness.
“Is Miss Fawnie ready?” he asked.
“Who the devil? Oh, yes—Miss Fawnie. I’ve not told her yet,” Derek
replied, stupidly.
“Not told her? Oh, my dear fellow! Do you want me to? Shall I?” His tone
was that of one who indulges a petulant child.
“No. The fact is——” What was the fact? For the life of him he could
not tell. The one fact he seemed able to grasp was that Grace had turned
her face from him that morning in the road. All else seemed a stupid
bungle from which he was too tired to extricate himself.
“Do you want me to tell her?” repeated Mr. Ramsey.
“No. I’ll go. I don’t care. Tell her if you like.”
“Very well. I’ll leave you the ring. You remember you asked me to buy
it? A very nice one, I think. I’ll make the service as short as I can,
since you are not well. Upstairs, is she? I hear her voice. She sings
very sweetly.”
Derek heard him decisively mount the stairs, then came the sound of a
knock, followed by his vibrant, pleasant speech with Fawnie. Shortly he
descended and put his head in at the parlour door. “It’s all right,” he
said. “She will be down directly. Wanted to change her blouse. May I go
in your room, Derek, old fellow,”—it was his first use of the Christian
name—“to slip my surplice on? Thanks, very much. I’ll be with you
directly. Nice little ring, isn’t it? Narrow, yet heavy.”
Derek dropped the ring stolidly into the pocket of his jacket. His eyes
were on Jock, who had just come in from out of doors. He was panting
jerkily, and Derek thought—“I must have him clipped. But by someone who
knows. I don’t want his fine coat all jagged up.”
The Vicar had called Phœbe and Hugh McKay as witnesses, and they now
came in, standing shyly at the far end of the room. They seemed overcome
by the turn things had taken. Phœbe had exchanged her woollen slippers
for shiny buttoned boots, which pinched her cruelly as she stood,
balancing from one foot to the other.
Derek got slowly to his feet as Mr. Ramsey, like some impressive vessel
in full sail, entered in his surplice. Fawnie, frightened, yet elated,
followed him. She had once seen a wedding in the English Church at
Brancepeth, and was determined to be as orthodox in her attire as that
other bride married by Mr. Ramsey. Desperately eager to wear a veil, her
eyes had fallen on the fine white net curtains Mrs. Machin had recently
hung at the window. Quick as thought she had mounted a chair and
unfastened the brass pins of one curtain. No fair bride, arranging the
folds of the Brussels lace veil her grandmother had worn beneath a
chaplet of pearls, could have been thrilled by a pride more delicious
than that felt by Fawnie as she glimpsed the dark glow of her eyes and
the pouting red of her lips behind the starched white net.
She looked so pretty as she came into the parlour, that Derek was roused
for a moment from his lethargy and smiled at her. Mr. Ramsey looked at
the veil dubiously, then his brow cleared, and, with a tolerant smile,
he motioned them to their place before him. Jock sniffed the billowing
surplice, but obeyed Hugh’s deep-voiced injunction, “Sit ye doon, Jock.”
Mr. Ramsey opened his prayer-book and began the service in a hurried,
muffled voice, soothing to the ear. Derek John took Fawnie Pearl by the
right hand, and promised, rather unintelligibly, to have and to hold her
from that day forward, for better for worse. Fawnie Pearl took Derek
John by his right hand, and promised in her husky little voice (not
understanding a word of it) to have and to hold him, to love, cherish,
and obey him, from that day forward, till death did them part. Then
Derek, without flurry or confusion, produced the ring and put it on the
taper third finger of the too supple brown hand, and they were man and
wife. Jock stretched himself and yawned. Hugh drew a deep sigh, and Mr.
Ramsey wished them great joy.
But Buckskin, upstairs, broke into angry cries, as though protesting
against the union of those two fond strangers who had given him being.
4.
Derek and Fawnie were sitting side by side on the sofa in the parlour.
They were alone. Late sunlight was slanting between the chinks in the
shutters. A solemn hush hung over the house. The atmosphere created by
Mr. Ramsey’s cassock and surplice still brooded there.
“My goodness,” said Fawnie, thinking aloud. “He looked terr’ble nice in
them wraps, almost like God. And he had a big ring with a shiny black
stone—and I couldn’t tell a word he said. I never saw anyone as much
like God. But I don’ like his big ring half as well as my nice ring.”
She turned her graceful little hand before his face. He noticed that she
wore a gold bangle bracelet.
“You have a bracelet, too,” he observed. “Where did you get that,
Fawnie?”
She quickly hid her wrist in the folds of her dress and broke into a
chuckling laugh. “I’ll tell you some day. Not now. I’ll tell you
sometime when I want to make you laugh. But not now. Now I jus’ want to
sit still and get used to things. I’m pretty near scared o’ this big
room, and the pianner, and all the pictures starin’ at me. Who’s that
fonny woman with the lace cap and mittens?”
“My great-grandmother.”
“Is it put on with paint?”
“Yes. An oil painting.”
“Oh. Where was it made?”
“In Devon.”
“Is that near Halifax?”
“No. It’s in England.”
“I know where England is. It’s up at a place where the king lives.”
“Yes.”
“I don’ like the way she stares at us, do you?”
“Not exactly.”
“What do you s’pose she’s thinkin’?”
“Nothing very pleasant.”
“No, nothing very pleasant. She’s mad, I think, and jealous of me
sittin’ here in my yaller dress with a gold ring, and a gold bracelet,
and a white veil, with a nice young man beside me. She wishes she could
hop right out of that picture and tear us apart, eh?”
“Shouldn’t be surprised.”
“But you can’t do it, ole lady, so jus’ be good or I’ll turn your face
to the wall. . . . Put your head on my shoulder, Derek, you look awful
sleepy.”