‘Does he want me to see him?’
‘He didn’t say nought of that.’
‘No,’ she said reflectively.
‘He said: “Tell ’em that I’m all right,”’ Abner explained. ‘Nowt else.’
‘_Them_?’
‘That’s his mother . . .’
‘Ah!’ She stiffened a little, and Abner, scenting a new hostility,
continued:
‘This business bain’t all George’s fault. It’s a bit of bad luck that
might have happened to any one. It might just as well a’ been me . . .
as well and better. If that Bastard hadn’t gone at me from behind
George’d never have touched him.’
‘If he’d been home here,’ she interrupted, with a sudden energy, ‘it
wouldn’t have happened at all. It’s drink that’s done for George,’ she
added.
‘He hadn’t a drap in him,’ said Abner loyally. ‘He was as sober as I am
this minute. He hadn’t set foot in the place not half an hour.’
She was silent for a moment, and then, with a curious directness, asked:
‘Where had he been then?’
‘How should I know where he’d been? I don’t meddle or mak in George’s
affairs.’
She pressed him: ‘Didn’t it come out at the inquest where he’d been?’
He saw how things were going, and lied brazenly in George’s defence.
‘No,’ he said.
‘Well, that’s one comfort,’ she said, with a sigh. ‘I’ve borne enough
shame from George without that!’ Then, as her suspicions flashed up
again: ‘But I don’t believe you. They don’t let things like that pass.’
‘I don’t know what you’m after.’
‘Oh, you’re all the same, you men! You think women are simple enough to
be put off with anything. It’s you who are simple. Do you think we
don’t know it? I know where George was that night as well as you do.
I’ve known of his new fancy for three months now. That woman and me have
met one another on the road, and looked at each other and smiled and
passed the time of day and not another word, because we knew, both of us,
the thing was best hidden and it would humble the two of us if it came to
light. But I don’t believe they’d let a thing like that go at a
coroner’s inquest.’ She waited for his reply.
‘They said he’d been at Lesswardine. A widow woman, they said, but they
didn’t tell her name. That’s the truth.’
‘Nothing more?’
‘I tell you that’s the lot. I was neyther piller nor bo’ster. I’d have
told you at the first, but I thought to save your feelings.’
‘Feelings!’ she repeated. ‘There’s better ways of saving a woman’s
feelings than keeping the truth from her. That was George’s way. If you
guessed anything of what women are like you’d know that it’s the truth
they want. You can forgive a man a lot if he doesn’t lie to you.’ Her
tone changed suddenly. She became dispassionate, practical, once more.
‘When will it come on at the police court?’
‘I don’t know. I reckon they won’t keep him long at Lesswardine.’
‘I shall have to go there,’ she said. ‘Even if he doesn’t want me it’s
my place to be there. If I don’t go there George will think that I’ve
thrown him over. I would have come to-day if he’d let me, but he begged
me not to. He’s funny, like a child, is George.’
Her voice softened when she spoke the last words, as though her
imagination had suddenly carried her back to the days of George’s
courtship when her father was a hearty, prosperous man and no troubles
whatever had entered her life. For the moment she seemed to Abner no
more than a child herself. At the first moment he had thought her
insensitive, in the next she had put him to shame by her frankness, now
she was yielding, pitiful. These alternations of stoicism, passion, and
tenderness bewildered him. He had not thought that women were so
various. In addition to this she was beautiful. He wondered what
perverse strain in George could ever have compelled him to desert her.
After another long silence she thanked him for what he had told her, then
turned and left him. He heard her talking brightly to the children as
though nothing had happened.
Although darkness had fallen it was still early. Abner’s natural impulse
would have bidden him walk back to Mainstone and find Susie. It had been
a torment to see her cold and remote, seeming no more to him than a
stranger. In the hushed court-room when he had stolen out at the moment
of George’s arrest she had not looked at him. He had left her staring
straight in front of her like a pious churchgoer. He decided, in the
end, to stay at Wolfpits, for the night was cold and unhomely and he
still carried in his mind the sinister vision of the empty bar with
Bastard’s body lying in the room behind it. More than this, he began to
be conscious of a definite duty toward Mary, whose attitude had ended by
filling him with admiration and loyalty. He felt it in his bones that
she despised him, being undeniably a creature of finer clay than himself,
but the moment in which she had demanded his confidence remained with
him. It was as though the veil which had always hung between them had
been suddenly rent, admitting them to an intimacy as clear as light. In
all his life he had known no such experience. Even in the most
passionate moments of his relation with Susie she had been no more to him
than a strange woman for whose beauty he hungered without reason. He
knew her body and thrilled to it, but of herself he knew nothing. With
Mary it was different. At first he had felt vaguely that he must be
loyal to her for the sake of his friend, not so much because he loved
George as because their friendship had been the immediate cause of their
disaster. It was for herself that he must now be loyal, and this seemed
strange to him, for it was an obligation which he had never considered as
possible between a man and a woman, and nothing but that sudden moment of
vision could have revealed it to him.
He devoted his evening to the children. Their frolic in the snow had
excited them. They were full of play and laughter. Mary moved about her
business silently, watching the fireside group with benevolent eyes. At
seven o’clock, just before their bedtime, another constable came to the
door with the police-court summons. The case had been fixed for the
following day—eleven o’clock at Lesswardine. The man was in a hurry to
serve his other summonses, and would not enter. Abner told Mary the
news.
‘Eleven o’clock,’ she repeated intently. ‘Come thy ways, Morgan, love,
time for bye-byes.’
The children left Abner unwillingly, Gladys insisting that he should
carry her upstairs. He did so, and Mary followed with her son in her
arms, rubbing his cold-flushed eyelids with his fists.
Abner returned to the fire. Eleven o’clock! Less than twenty-four hours
ago none of this had happened. He was impressed, in spite of himself,
with the inevitable regularity of the machine that had drawn George
Malpas into its ponderous clutches. He saw, for the first time, the
tremendous power of the law, and his own helplessness.
Mrs Mamble joined them for supper. When they had nearly finished another
knock came to the door, and Abner went to open it. The new visitor was
old Drew, who came in, blinking at the light.
‘Please come in, Mr Drew,’ said Mary, ‘and take a seat.’
He stood for a moment, a bowed and awkward figure. Then he placed on the
tablecloth three brown eggs that he had carried in his huge misshapen
hand.
‘I bringed you two three eggs, missus,’ he said. ‘They’m getting
tarrable scarce these days, and I reckon the chilring might like them.’
‘That is good of you, Mr Drew,’ Mary cried.
‘Don’t ’ee mention it!’ said the old man. ‘I rackon it won’t be so aisy
for ’ee with the maister in trouble. Us all knows what that be, and
you’m welcome to them. Iss, us all knows what trouble be, praise God! I
had a brother of my own to Lapton Huish as was took for the killing of
his wife, though the poor twoad never knew what he done, for a’ suffered
from fits, a’ did. Tried and hanged into Exeter he were . . . dear soul
too! Iss, I know what trouble manes.’
‘We all know what trouble means,’ said Mrs Mamble, with a sigh, ‘from the
highest to the lowest; but the law be kinder these days than it used to
be. My poor dear Robert’s grandfather was a labourin’ man, a quiet,
Christian man too, as never raised a hand against any livin’ creature, as
Robert told me times, but that weren’t enough to save him from hanging.
It was a hard winter, I can’t mind how many years agone, though Robert he
told me, and they got him for stealing a sheep—stealing, they says!—as he
found dead-stiff in the snow on Clee Hills. As he’d a right to, with the
fields like stone and no work and the children crying for bread. But
they hanged men for that in Worcester jail in them days. Ay, and when my
Robert was a lad, the other boys ‘d put it up against him as his dad had
kept sheep by moonlight: that’s what they call hanging in chains, like
the gibbet, so they call it, as used to stand in olden times near Clows
Top. A quieter man never breathed, nor a better worker. Put a bit more
wood on the fire, Mr Fellows, do!’
Abner threw a faggot on the fire and the flames leapt. This friendly
flicker, aided, perhaps, by the hypnotic drone of Mrs Mamble’s voice, as
soothing as the sound of running water or the midnight rustle of poplars,
so encouraged the old labourer that he let himself sink into a chair by
the corner of the table.
The firelight glinted in his beard, and Abner saw that his full lips were
red as those of a young man. He saw also Mary’s face, withdrawn into the
gloom. It seemed as if she were dreaming, her mind altogether removed
from the voices of her comforters.
‘Ay,’ said Drew, ‘I’ve heard of men that was strung up for stealing sheep
down Exmoor way. There’s a many sheep on the moors, and ponies too. You
should see them when the foals come along, springtime, and when they’m
drove down to Bampton fair. ’Tis a fine sight, sure ‘nuff! But that
there’s nothing to the old times. My granf’er, ’er was barn up Somerset,
not too far from Ta’nton, used to tell as how men was stringed up by the
dozen, the same as jays or magpies, by a tarrable old chap of the name of
Jeffereys. Bloody Jeffereys, that’s what they called ’en. A judge he
were. . . . Iss, bloody Jeffereys.’
‘There now!’ said Mrs Mamble, throwing up her hands.
‘And them they durs’nt hang they sent off to Canada, so I’m told. Ay,
many likely chaps was sent there and never came home no more, though what
they sent ’en for I can’t rightly call to mind, unless ‘twere
rick-burning. Had the redcoats to ’em, they did! But that’s all past
and gone, thanks-be! Iss, past and gone. . . . The law bain’t what it
used to be. There’s juries these days. An’ what be manslarter but a
thing that might come to any man unbeknownst? Don’t ’ee be afeared,
missus! Don’t ’ee be afeared! There be no shame in “going up the line,”
as they do call it down our way.’
‘No shame, as you say, Mr Drew,’ said Mrs Mamble solemnly. ‘But the
shame’s not everything. It’s a hard thing on a woman that has little
children with her crying for an empty belly when a man’s away in jail and
not a penny in the house but what the parish gives her. And the
questions they ask! That’s where the shame comes in, and I’ve known many
a proud woman starve for a crust of bread rather than answer them,
they’re that disgusting.’
‘Ah, get away, do! woman,’ said old Drew, with a laugh. ‘What’s
questions? And Mrs Malpas here ban’t going to do no such thing. A woman
never knows what friends she’s got till she’s found trouble, and they
that has a roof to their heads and a bit of garden to till can spare
something for their neighbours. No, don’t ’ee believe ’en, my dear! If
it’s only potatoes and swede out of the fields, no chilring ’ll starve to
Wolfpits, not they! Don’t you believe it! An’ a woman like your
George’s mother with a tidy little business at the Buffalo. . . .
Trouble ’ll tell you your friends.’
The clock struck nine.
‘Now that’s a fine thing to be sure,’ he went on, with a glance of
admiration, ‘a fine thing to have a clock to tell ’ee when to be going up
over, and keep ’ee company night-time. ’Tis hard to judge the hour in
winter when the old sun be hid!’
He pulled his stiff limbs together painfully, and left them with more
encouragements.
‘He’s a quiet man,’ said Mrs Mamble, when they heard him treading softly
over the snow, ‘but I always reckoned he’d be a good neighbour.’
She seemed loath to leave Mary to herself, and even proposed that she
should sleep with her, nominally for the sake of warmth, until the strain
of George’s trial should be over, an offer that Mary found it difficult
to refuse with grace. When she left them she took the younger woman to
her breast and kissed her tenderly. Abner opened the door for her, and
when he returned he saw that Mary’s eyes were bright with tears. He felt
that he himself must struggle to add some words of reassurance, but
before he could do so she had said good-night and vanished.
Next morning he rose early. He had lit the fire and made the kettle boil
before she was astir. When she heard his feet in the kitchen she hurried
to come down and thank him.
‘You needn’t have done that,’ she said.
‘That’s nowt,’ he replied bluntly. ‘We’ve got to get on the road early.’
After breakfast she deposited the children, as had been arranged, with
Mrs Mamble. Morgan, who scarcely ever left his mother’s side, resented
this.
‘Where are you going, mam?’ he cried.
‘Only to Lesswardine with Abner here.’
‘You’re not going for good, mam? You’re coming back again?’
‘Don’t be a silly boy, Morgan. Of course I’m coming back.’
‘When, mam?’
‘This afternoon.’
A new anxiety seized him. ‘What’s for dinner, mam?’ he said.
‘A nice brown egg, my love, what Mr Drew brought you,’ said Mrs Mamble,
coming to the rescue. ‘You come along now, and you shall have dear
Robert’s watch to play with.’
To the last temptation Morgan succumbed. This watch was the principal
curiosity of Mrs Mamble’s bedroom. It hung there in the smell of rotting
wood, a silver monster, like a toy warming-pan, suspended in a celluloid
case above the old woman’s bed. Mrs Mamble whipped them away, and Abner
set out with Mary.
Snow still covered the ground, but by this time, in lane and road, the
trampled ways were clear and the bordering drifts marked with the
treading of birds, squirrels, and other woodland creatures. Abner was so
unused to walking with a woman that he set a pace that Mary could not
equal. Breathless, she begged him to walk more slowly. The exertion and
the cold air flushed her cheeks and reddened her lips to the hue of holly
and spindle-berries in the hedge. Her body glowed, and her hair was
bright as the fronds of bracken in the sun. In spite of their tragic
mission her lips smiled. No spiritual anxiety could check the
exhilaration of the blood that this crisp winter morning gave her walking
under the open sky. But when they drew near to Lesswardine the houses
closed in on them like the walls of a prison; the fine snow was swept and
sullied, the light faded from the sky.
A special court had been summoned to deal with George’s case. The
squire, Sir George Delahay, was driving down to take the chair, and
before Abner and Mary arrived the court-room was nearly full of
Lesswardine villagers who could always spare a morning if anything
sensational was passing. Abner, as one of the principal witnesses, was
soon separated from his companion. He was herded together with the
others into a small block of chairs on the right-hand side of the bench
and opposite to the dock. From this point he could see the court, a mass
of white faces from which arose a rumour like the buzzing of flies. In
the midst of them he saw Mary, pale and innocent. It was in her agony
that these buzzing tormentors would find delight. Almost on a level with
her at the other end of the bench he saw old Mrs Malpas. She had come to
the court as she would have come to chapel, in the same dour, determined
spirit, in the same tight black dress. They sat abreast of one another,
these two women to whom George Malpas belonged, and not a glance passed
between them.
A new witness arrived, a fair young woman, clothed in black and veiled,
who walked in hurriedly with lowered eyes and tried to conceal herself,
as it seemed, behind the chairs of the men. The flies buzzed as loudly
as when they are driven from a heap of filth. Abner guessed that this
was George’s Lesswardine woman. Mrs Malpas darted one eager glance in
the new-comer’s direction, but Mary did not raise her eyes. At the last
moment Mr Hind entered with Susie. She smiled, and the sight of her made
Abner’s blood leap, for she was no longer the white-faced impersonal
being that she had seemed at the inquest. She met his eyes full, and
smiled again. Mary also was looking at him now. Abner went hot under
their two glances. Why did Mary look at him? The other was the woman
that he wanted!
In a sudden silence George was brought forward. He seemed none the worse
for his night in the cells. He walked straight to the dock with a
policeman on either side of him, looking neither at his mother, whose
hands went to her heart, nor at Mary, who did not move. His eyes found
Abner on the opposite side of the court, and he smiled, but the smile
suddenly vanished and he went pale, for beyond Abner he had seen the face
of the woman from Lesswardine. He went pale with anger that they should
have dragged her into this; but there was no one on whom his anger could
fall. His hands, that had quickly clutched at the edge of the dock, fell
to his sides. He stood there with his fine, pale face and black hair,
and on him were centred the emotions of those three women who would not
look at each other. The court buzzed again, going suddenly silent as
Badger’s master entered and took his seat on the bench above the head of
the clerk.
The proceedings were formal, being no more than another step in George’s
journey to Salop. The only new witness was the young woman whom the
police had unearthed to establish the sequence of George’s movements on
the night of Bastard’s death. She gave her evidence in a subdued voice
and never raised her eyes. She said that George had never taken liquor
in her house; that he had often come to see her; that he was her friend.
No more.
When she had left the box George gave a sigh of relief. Abner wondered
why he should have preferred this shrinking creature to Mary or to Susie
Hind. The sitting ended in the obvious way, George being committed to
take his trial at the county assizes. Nothing else could have been
expected.
At the door of the court Abner rejoined Mary. Mrs Malpas, who had been
whispering to the local solicitor, marched past them without speaking,
and Mary flushed at this deliberate slight.
‘She won’t speak to me,’ she said. ‘I think that’s too bad! That was
Lawyer Harley she was talking to.’
‘Don’t take no notice of her,’ said Abner. ‘That old woman’s
half-cracked.’
He went on to tell her that Mick Connor, who had gone to the Buffalo out
of curiosity the night before, had heard Mrs Malpas tell one of her
customers that if George were sent to Shrewsbury she would employ the
best criminal advocate on the circuit, even if it cost her the last penny
she possessed. He did not tell her that Mrs Malpas had declared that it
was nothing but the proud ways of Mary, ‘that thief’s daughter,’ she
called her—that had driven George to his ruin.
‘He didn’t look at me once,’ said Mary on the way home.
‘He’d no call to look at nobody,’ Abner replied.
‘He looked at _her_,’ said Mary bitterly. ‘He’s strange. I don’t know
what to make of him.’
‘That’s natural enough. He didn’t want to see her dragged out in
public.’
‘Dragged out in public?’ she cried, with an unusual flush of spirit.
‘What about _me_?’
They settled down to another placid evening at Wolfpits. The children
had enjoyed their day with Mrs Mamble, though Morgan was persuaded with
difficulty to go to bed without the coveted warming-pan under his pillow.
Mrs Mamble was just preparing to leave them for the night when a knock
came to the door, and without waiting for it to be opened to her Mrs
Malpas entered. Her walk to Wolfpits over the roadway, now slippery with
ice, had exhausted her, so that she looked more like a wraith than a
woman. Even so she did not stop to recover her breath. She clenched her
hands in the queer gesture that Abner had noticed the evening before, and
with trembling wrists began to storm in Mary’s face.
‘What have you done with the money?’ she cried. ‘What have you done with
it?’ Abner laid his hand on her shoulder, for she looked dangerous.
‘Take your hands off me!’ she screamed. ‘The money. . . . I want my
money!’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Mary said.
‘My money, you brazen madam!’ she cried. ‘The money out of the box in
father’s bedroom. More than fifty pound . . .’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ repeated Mary, bewildered.
‘It’s gone . . . gone! Don’t tell me you don’t know where it’s gone,
when I know you’ve a’ had it! He can’t have spent it all. Give me
what’s left . . . to pay the lawyers. George would never have gone and
took it without you to put him up to it . . . you with your lady’s ways
and your fine speech! Ah, that’s where the bad blood comes out. Your
father was a thief, and you’re no better! Bad blood . . . bad blood!’
‘Don’t you dare . . .’ Mary cried. ‘Don’t you dare speak of my father!’
She stood tall and flushed above her mother-in-law.
‘Give me the money . . . what’s left of it,’ Mrs Malpas pleaded. ‘Give
it me, and I won’t say no more.’
Her violence had spent itself. Now she was only small, pathetic,
withered. Mary controlled herself. She would not answer.
‘I’d forgive him taking it. . . . I’d forgive him. Mr Harley says
they’ll want twenty pound before they touch the case. Only twenty pound.
. . . I can find more later. Give me twenty pound.’
‘She says she don’t know nothing about it,’ said Abner.
‘_Says_! It must have been George. No one else knew where I kept it.
He’s hidden it. Up in his room. You must look . . . you must look!’
‘I know nothing about it,’ said Mary, mastering herself. ‘I’ve not seen
a penny. I . . . I can’t talk to you. I wish you would go away.’
‘Leave the woman alone, missus,’ said Abner. ‘She’s enough to put up
with without you. You’d best go out quiet. You’m not answerable. Come
on, now!’
The old woman seemed to pull her strength together, looking from one to
the other. They waited for a new outburst, but instead of speaking she
suddenly threw up her hands and burst into a fit of choking sobs. Mary
made a compassionate movement toward her, but Mrs Malpas stopped her with
a violent gesture. Then she straightened her bonnet and moved to the
door. She became her old, wiry, deliberate self. Her voice was clear
and her face like stone.
‘If George took it,’ she said emphatically, ‘it was the devil that drove
him, and I can’t do no more. But not one penny shall you ever get out of
me, Mary Condover. You can starve, you and your children together, but
don’t come crying to dad and me. You and your pride. . . .! Now you can
see what you’ve to be proud of. The daughter of a thief and the wife of
a thief. That’s what you are! I never want to set eyes on you again . . .
you and your fancy lodger!’
She went out, leaving the door open behind her. Mary stood looking after
her, shaken like a tree in the wind. Then she gave a curious laugh and
sat down at the table. Abner could do nothing for her; but she managed
to contain herself until she had risen and passed from his sight
upstairs.
It was fortunate for them all in the suspense that now held them that the
Shrewsbury assizes had been fixed for the middle of December, immediately
before the Christmas vacation. On his committal by the Lesswardine
bench, George had been taken at once to the county jail where he lay
awaiting his trial. In the meantime the leisurely routine of work in
those wintry valleys, disturbed so abruptly by these violent events,
reasserted itself. The snow melted. To the sodden days of thaw
succeeded a period of mild and mistily golden weather that would have
seemed like spring had it not been so silent. The work on the pipeline
began again like the progress of some great engine that had kept its
power hissing beneath the snow, and daily gathered speed. Even the Pound
House, still suspect by the police but happily safe until the Brewster
sessions, regained its old popularity, though Mr Hind, having been duly
warned, gave more attention to his business than ever before. It had
been clear from the first that he had taken a violent dislike to Abner,
whom he regarded as the cause of all his trouble. On the day of the
inquest he had shown this by his silence; but when Abner appeared again
at the inn, he told him in as many words that his custom wasn’t wanted.
Susie, a little shaken by her father’s severity, implored him not to
persist in coming to the Pound House, and though she appeared no less
passionately devoted to Abner, the lovers’ meetings were fewer and their
secrecy more precarious.
It was strange how little difference George’s absence made to life at
Wolfpits. Within a week it almost seemed as if the place and its
inhabitants had forgotten him. Neither Mary nor the children ever
mentioned his name, and since the day of the police-court proceedings
Abner had heard nothing from him but a single scribbled letter which
George contrived to send from the lock-up by the hand of the young
policeman who had drunk his beer. In this letter a new flicker of care
for his family had shown itself: he had reminded Abner of his promise to
stay at Wolfpits and look after them. ‘I would have sent you some
money,’ he wrote, ‘but they’ve taken it off me. Mary can ask mother if
she’s in a fix.’ The reminder was quite unnecessary. Abner had given
his word to a pal and meant to stick to it, though he foresaw a difficult
moment when the plan should be disclosed to Mary. He could not see, for
the life of him, how to open the subject, and so he let things take their
course, waiting for the occasion to arrive without his interference.
It came, as he had half expected, at the end of the week, when the next
payment for his lodging was due. Instead of his usual fourteen shillings
he gave Mary the whole of his wages wrapped up in the piece of paper in
which he received them at the works. The situation embarrassed her, as
she told him, for she had no change.
‘I don’t want none,’ he said bluntly.
‘But I can’t take it from you,’ she protested. ‘It isn’t right.’
‘Right or wrong,’ said he, ‘you and the children can’t live on less, and
you’ll find it a tight pinch as it is.’
‘I can’t take it,’ she said again.
They stood on either side of the table with the packet of money between
them.
‘It isn’t only that,’ she added. ‘Don’t suppose I think the less of your
kindness. . . . I wish I could tell you what I do think . . . but I’m
afraid it isn’t right for you to stay on here now George is away.’
‘That’s why I ought to stay,’ he said.
‘You don’t understand,’ she replied. ‘Men don’t think of such things.
It would be the talk of the village. They’d say there was something
wrong.’
‘As long as there bain’t nothing wrong there’s no harm in talk. Talk
never hurt nobody.’
‘There’s George’s mother . . . you don’t know her! Remember what she
said that night.’
‘Do you think I’d ever take the upper hand of you?’
‘No, no . . . it’s not me,’ she said quickly, turning away from him.
‘Then there’s no call to be soft over it.’
‘There’s George, too . . .’
‘Don’t you fret yourself about George,’ he said, and showed her her
husband’s letter. ‘That’s what George thinks about it. I reckon that’s
good enough.’
For a long time she would not take his money. The hard facts of her
case, the words of Mrs Malpas, and the ugly necessity of applying for
parish relief, seemed to weigh less with her than this tyrannous modesty.
‘You can take it or leave it,’ he said, ‘but I’ve promised George and the
money will come to you just the same. . . . Supposing I get another
lodge, the money will be less, that’s all. If you bain’t afeard of me . . . .’
She protested: ‘No . . . no . . . .’
‘Then I may as well stay on. You can’t do without a man in a place like
this. There’s the wood to chop and the water to draw and that. I should
have to come here just the same. We’ve got to live on a poor wage, and
it’s all the better if I’m here.’
‘I must think it over,’ she said.
In the end she consented to his staying—happily for herself since
otherwise life would have been almost impossible. During the three weeks
that passed before George’s trial, they settled down into a new and
orderly condition, living poorly, it is true, but contentedly, and aided
by the attentions of their neighbours. Mrs Mamble, perhaps at Mary’s
request, often softened the awkwardness of the situation by dropping in
about supper-time and staying to talk over the fire, and old Drew was
continually giving the children presents of eggs from his own fowl-yard,
farm-produce from the land on which he worked, and even some of the milk
which, according to the custom in those parts, he received in part
payment of his wage. Mary could not refuse these gifts so beautifully
given; she could not even return him adequate thanks; but she tried to
add a little to the comfort of the rooms in which the old man lived, and
offered to attend to his clothes, an attempt in which she failed, since
Drew always locked his door when he left it in the dawn, resenting, in
the manner of many bachelors, the least interference with his own homely
dirt, and wore in winter every shred of clothing that he possessed.
The sense of an obligation unfulfilled would have made them awkward if
the old man had not accepted the help of Abner in his garden, a
proceeding that he watched with suspicion, being as fidgety as any old
maid, and that of Mary in the feeding of his fowls. Within a few weeks,
indeed, the inhabitants of Wolfpits had settled down into a kind of
communal life that was happy if only for the fact that its existence
implied so much goodwill.
The subpoenas for the assizes arrived, and with them a new wave of rumour
and excitement troubled the villages. It was agreed that George had no
chance of being acquitted, but those who had experience of the law vied
with those who had none in predicting the term of his sentence. Through
the medium of Susie, Pound House gossip filtered back to Abner, and in
this way he learned that Mrs Malpas had managed in spite of her loss to
brief a barrister named Rees, who had a great reputation for skill in
criminal defences on that circuit. A week before the trial Abner
received a note from the lesser of the two local solicitors, who, being a
liberal and a nonconformist, had nothing to lose by an implied opposition
to the squire. Together with Mick Connor and Atwell, Abner repeated his
version of the affair to this man.
‘I shall let Mrs Malpas, senior, know by wire when the case is likely to
come on,’ he said, ‘and you, of course, will hold yourselves in
readiness.’
A fortnight later Mrs Malpas sent up a message by a small boy from Chapel
Green to Wolfpits, telling Abner that it would be necessary to set out
for Shrewsbury on the following morning. The message made no mention of
Mary.
‘But I shall go all the same,’ she said.
They left Wolfpits in darkness, whispering their farewells to Mrs Mamble
for fear of waking the children, whom Mary, dressing quietly, had left
asleep. The nearest station to Chapel Green was that of Llandwlas, a
minute hamlet hidden amid the springs of the Barbel, a little to the
north of the single line that winds painfully out of Wales between the
dominant masses of the forests of Radnor and Clun. From Wolfpits,
cross-country, this made a five-mile walk. A dripping mist hid the land,
and they saw no soul until they reached the station. There, on the raw,
deserted platform, where the porter had lit a single oil lamp to show
that the day had begun, they waited, walking up and down to keep
themselves warm. They were early, and the only other sign of life was
the yellow square of the stationmaster’s bedroom in the adjoining
cottage. Even if daylight had come, the density of the mist would have
given them the same sense of isolation. Little by little the place
became alive: first a float drove up with a couple of milk-cans; next
came a gnomish figure who carried a stick, with dead rabbits slung from
it over his shoulder: then a noisy party of two, whom Abner recognised as
his fellow-witnesses.
‘That’s Connor and Atwell come up,’ he said.
‘Let’s keep at the other end,’ Mary whispered, moving away.
Two more traps arrived, the first containing the Hinds, the second
Badger, alone, and last, the small, energetic figure of George’s mother.
All these people, whom a chance blow had precipitated into the same grim
business, stood waiting for the train singly or in isolated groups of
two. A straining of wires was heard, and the fogged, red eye of the
signal changed to green. The stationmaster threw up the shutter of the
booking office with a rattle. Abner found himself wedged in front of the
window between Badger and Mr Hind. Mrs Malpas, fidgeting with her purse,
stood waiting in the background. As Abner rejoined Mary, a sound of
distant panting was heard, and a minute later the front of the engine
loomed enormous through the fog. They entered a third-class smoker at
the end of the train. The milk-cans were rolled over the echoing
platform into the van, and the train moved off with a clank of couplings
and a hiss of white steam. Down through the valleys, mile on mile they
wound. The train rocked on the gradients until it seemed that the
carriages must touch the black edge of the woods. The mist turned white
and dazzling. The sun had risen.