It was the last week-end in August that Herrick arrived. For nearly
two days before it had rained steadily, and I had spent the time
indoors, discounting old scores in the shape of letters, and
enlivened only by a visit from Lessing, who walked over in oilskins
on the Thursday afternoon to spend a couple of hours smoking on a
sheltered corner of the front porch. The weather lifted on Friday
night, and by Saturday morning the roads were passable. As I did not
expect Herrick before the 5.40 train I took my bicycle out after
lunch and went for a spin to stretch my limbs.
I set out by way of the village, posting my letters on the way, and
intending to make a circuit that would bring me home from the
opposite direction. I managed, however, to lose my bearings, and
after some fruitless bungling stopped at a farmhouse to ask my way.
The farmer seemed rather less taciturn than most of the folk about,
and readily pointed me out a short cut which, according to him, would
bring me out at the cross roads just above the dam.
The road, which lay for the first few miles through cultivated land,
entered eventually upon a stretch of sparsely wooded country,
desolate and inhospitable enough. Stunted spruce trees, powdered
with blue berries, clung tenaciously to the barren ground, and
everywhere the grey monotonous boulders cropped out, scattered as
though in the idle finish to some giant's play. Their uncouth
rounded outlines suggested from a distance a field dotted with grey
misshapen sheep, for ever movelessly browsing. The road was bad; a
horse would have had difficulty in picking his way, and I cursed the
well-meaning farmer roundly as I dismounted to push my heavy machine.
A little distance on, however, things became better. I reached the
beginning of a wood, gaunt ragged hickories interspersed with tangles
of wild grape-vine, and matted creepers, and a few hundred yards
beyond a broken snake-fence suggested the whereabouts of a house.
I came upon it at the turn of the road, a square, red-painted frame
house and barn, surrounded by a medley of small sheds and outhouses
in every degree of dilapidation. There was no gate, merely a couple
of bars let down in the fencing, and I left the bicycle a moment and
went inside.
The yard upon which I entered was a litter of old junk of every
description, ancient packing-cases, broken barrels, scrap-iron, and
bones flung into piles. The wagon-ruts leading up to the house were
sunken deep in filth, and an indescribable odour filled the air, in
which the smell of badly kept fowls predominated. They ran
everywhere, a ragged nondescript crew, scratching, cackling, gazing
at me from evil yellow-rimmed eyes. Many more were confined in the
coops, mere oblong boxes of lath from which protruded gaunt heads and
outstretched necks, whose mournful protest mingled with the clamour
of their untrammelled brethren. So far as I could see, every shed
held its prisoners, all in the same state of filth and neglect, a
sore to the eyes and offence to the nostrils. There was that in the
look and smell of the place that stuck in my throat, used as I was to
poverty in both town and country. There seemed no one about, and
after a moment's hesitation I retraced my steps across the black mire
of the yard and regained the roadway.
On the opposite side of the way a little ragged girl of about
thirteen watched my retreat with keen eyes. She had been in the
woods gathering the small uneatable nuts that children call
pig-hickories; her apron was filled with the green unripe hulls. She
grinned, backing a little at my approach.
"Hello, sis," I said. "Who lives in that house there?"
"'S Mister Menning's."
"Ah!" I took another backward glance at the ill-kept yard, with its
indescribable litter. As I did so a low moan, almost human in its
misery, came from the barn behind the jumbled sheds. It was
repeated, long-drawn and mournful, the protest of a dumb thing
exhausted by suffering. I turned to the child sharply.
"What's the matter there?"
"It's the cow." She shuffled her bare toes in the dust, looking with
a fascinated curiosity towards the place whence the sound came. "She
hollers awful sometimes."
"Is it ill?"
"Mennin beats her." She said with the curious indifference of the
country-bred child towards animal suffering. "He's allus beatin'
her. Gran'pap's spoke to him, onct. He says she don't make no
profit an' Gran'pa says she can't make no profit if he's allus
beatin' her."