ALL that night Abner heard Gladys crying softly and Mary moving about in
the room beneath him. In the small hours she knocked at his door and
begged him to take Morgan into his bed. Gladys was so restless that the
child could not get to sleep. They spoke together with the oak door
between them, and a moment later, having knocked again, she thrust a
small, red-eyed figure into the room. Abner picked him up and carried
him into bed. The child nestled close to him, like a small, warm-blooded
animal. Abner wrapped him up in his arms, protectively, as though, by
steadying his muscles, he could compel him to settle down to sleep.
Morgan’s fingers lay gently on his forearm, soft and listless. He was so
quiet that Abner thought he had fallen asleep already. In this he was
mistaken. The change of rooms and the adventure of finding a new
bedfellow had completely wakened him, and when he had lain dead still for
a little while, Morgan’s fingers began to stroke Abner’s arm. Then he
fidgeted and spoke in a reverent whisper:
‘Abner, are you awake?’
‘Ay, what is it?’
‘Why is your arm all hairy, Abner?’
‘Why? Because I’m grown up.’
‘Mam’s isn’t,’ said Morgan, after a thoughtful pause, and then: ‘I like
being here.’
‘Then don’t you go asking questions or I’ll put you out again,’ said
Abner.
After this the child was quiet. He lay there burning in Abner’s arms.
Falling asleep, his limbs relaxed, and then, suddenly clutching at
consciousness, twitched violently. These movements were like those of a
very young animal, feeble and frightened, and Abner, feeling them,
gathered the child more closely in his arms, until he moved no longer
save with the gentle breathing of a sweet sleep.
Abner had never slept with a child before. It gave him a queer, almost
physical sensation of comfort in addition to the protective emotions
which Morgan’s helplessness aroused. He had never thought seriously what
it would be like to have a child of his own, and even now he did not
explain his feelings in that way. He pictured himself, for a moment, in
the position of father to a child of Susie Hind’s, and the prospect did
not move him. The only way in which he could explain this curious
enthralling tenderness was by the fact that Morgan was really part of
Mary, that the child had come to him straight from the warmth of her
arms, carrying with him an impalpable essence of herself. He wondered
vaguely what he would have felt like if the child had been not only
Mary’s but his as well, and in the midst of these tender and dangerous
reflections he fell asleep himself.
Next morning, before returning to work, he left a message with the doctor
at Lesswardine, asking him to call at Wolfpits. All through the day he
was restless and unhappy, feeling that his proper place was at Wolfpits
lending Mary a hand, supporting her anxieties. He consoled himself with
the knowledge that Mrs Mamble was used to domestic troubles and would
probably be of more use to Mary than himself, even apart from the fact
that their finances would not easily stand the strain of the lost time.
He only wondered, all the time, what the doctor’s report would be, and
whether their wild night-journey might have added to the child’s injury.
He did not mention anything of what had happened to his mates, and the
day was therefore long and anxious.
It was after dinner-time when the doctor reached Wolfpits. Escorted by
Mrs Mamble, he soon got to business and took down the injured limb,
complimenting the Brampton Bryan surgeon on the way in which he had done
his job. The dislocated fragments, he said, had been skilfully opposed,
and the leg now lay in a good position. Gladys was young, a child’s
tissues were full of vitality, and the splint, which he put on again,
need not be worn for more than three weeks.
He stayed a little longer than he need have done, for he had finished his
round and Mary Malpas was an attractive woman. He was a middle-aged man
and not above taking a kind of guarded pleasure in the intimacy with such
charming creatures that his profession gave him. He asked her how it had
all happened, and Mary told him, without hesitation, of their train
journey two nights before, of their difficulty of finding rooms at
Redlake, and of all that had led up to the accident. He listened
gravely, giving no sign of unusual interest when Abner’s name was
mentioned, but when he drove away again he chuckled to himself, being
intrigued by this new little sidelight on the frailty of human nature,
and taking an interest that was not wholly professional in the idea of
this extraordinarily desirable woman finding consolation in the arms of
her lodger. For that was how he interpreted the case.
When he got home that evening he told the story to his wife. Little
incidents of this kind, which came so often into his professional
experience, supplied him with a vicarious sexual stimulus which his
marital relations had lacked for some years. Mrs Hendrie, listening,
pursed her lips, and smiled. The story was not one for general
publication, but she knew that it would be acceptable to the vicar’s
wife, who had already taken such a kindly, if profitless, interest in
this unfortunate young woman.
In this way the scandal of the Redlake adventure began to be whispered in
that most exclusive circle of which the sewing-party at the vicarage was
the centre. In this quarter, indeed, Mary had been already judged and
damned as a woman who preferred a life of open sin to the privilege of
attending to the blameless, physical needs of the Rev. Cyril Malpas. The
new intelligence did no more than supply a sorrowful confirmation of what
was already suspected. ‘It’s those two sweet children I’m thinking of,’
said the vicar’s wife. ‘Imagine the awful effects of surroundings of
that kind in later life!’ The vicar only shook his head. After all,
Wolfpits was so very nearly in his neighbour’s parish as to make him
scarcely responsible.
It came as a great relief to Abner to find that Gladys was none the worse
for her journey in his arms. In the morning they pulled round the long
kitchen settle into the sun, and in the evening he carried this out of
doors so that the child might enjoy the mellow light with the others.
She took a few days to get over the original shock of the accident, but
after that she settled down into a placid convalescence, fully aware of
her importance and treating, not only Mary and Mrs Mamble, but Abner and
Mick Connor, as her slaves. Morgan was vaguely jealous of the attention
that they paid her.
‘But _I_ slep’ with Abner,’ he said, ‘and Gladys an’t, has her, mam?’
Mary smiled at him. Now that she knew that Gladys’s injury was not so
severe as they had imagined she could afford to smile, sitting there in
the summer evening with her friends about her. It was so quiet at
Wolfpits. Not even the birds were singing. She sat there and heard the
trout rising and plopping in the pool beneath the bridge, a hundred yards
away, and then the murmurous wings of a humming-bird-hawk moth, hovering
in a nebula of bronze, swooping to plunge its curled trumpet into the
cups of flowers. Then beetles droned above them and bats zig-zagged with
rapid wings. She told Abner that it was time for him to take the settle
into the house. While he did so she held Gladys in her lap and watched
the man’s big shoulders as he moved almost without effort under the
weight of the settle. It reminded her of another memory of him that she
knew she would never forget: a picture of trailing mists and loneliness,
and a man walking before her with a child in his arms.
In this state of happiness and innocence neither of them suspected any
mischief of tongues. It is true that Abner had found the presence of
Badger at the Pentre on the night of the fair a little sinister at first,
but the fact that they had chosen to descend into the Wolfpits valley at
the level of the sea-crows’ pool and Williams’s farm was the purest
accident, and Mary, who only knew the keeper by name, and had never seen
him outside a court of law, thought nothing of it, while Mr Williams of
the Pentre never entered into their calculations as a source of evil.
But Williams, in spite of his ready kindness in driving them back to
Wolfpits with his tired horse, had chuckled to find in this incident a
chance of annoying his old enemy, Mrs Malpas of the Buffalo. In all
things he was a gross and childish man, whose plan of life embraced only
two classes of acquaintance, enemies and friends, and he spent the
greater part of his time in scheming to annoy the former and overwhelm
the latter with the most naïve of kindnesses. As for Mrs Malpas, not
even pity for her in the affair of George could induce him to forget his
quarrel over the hogshead of cider. He knew very well that her weak spot
was her own claim to an unassailable chapel morality, and having already
enjoyed the pleasure of scoring her off by sending her only son on his
first stage to Shrewsbury as a felon, he could not now resist the
satisfaction of telling her that her daughter-in-law had been away with
the lodger while George was in Salop jail.
Next week, at Ludlow market, he entertained the farmers’ ordinary with
the story, and in the evening, having done a good day’s business and
drunk enough to make him fear no man, he drove home, chuckling to
himself, by way of Chapel Green, pulling up at the Buffalo for a final
drink. It was the first time that he had visited the inn since that
unfortunate quarrel. The cloggers who had gone away in the previous
winter had found lodgings in a village farther westward on their return
in the spring, and the Buffalo had never emerged from the silence in
which they had left it. Mrs Malpas seemed surprised that any one should
call so late at night. The bar was empty, and she had to light the
swinging oil lamp for him, standing on a chair. Williams himself found a
match and lit it for her out of sheer fuddled kindness. It struck her
that he was too kind by half. He drank his whisky standing in the middle
of the taproom, smacking it on his tongue.
‘You didn’t go to Bron Fair, ma’am?’ he said.
‘No,’ Mrs Malpas replied. ‘Nor have I these many years.’
‘There’s pretty things to be seen there,’ said Williams, with a grin.
She made no reply, and he advanced obliquely from another angle.
‘How’s your son getting on?’
‘But for the shame that we all bear, Mr Williams, he’s out of harm’s
way.’
‘Yes, it’s a good Christian prison, I’m told,’ said he, laughing.
‘Chaplains and all! How’s his wife, eh?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Mrs Malpas shortly. ‘And I don’t want to know.’
‘Smart looking young woman!’ Williams leered.
‘I know nothing about her, Mr Williams.’
‘Then I’ll tell you something, ma’am. She’s been off on the spree,
childer an’ all, to Bron Fair. Slept the night at the Harley Arms,
Redlake, with that lodger chap. What do you think of that?’
Mrs Malpas blenched. ‘That’s your story, Mr Williams, but there’s no
need to believe you, thanks be!’
‘But seeing’s believing, ma’am,’ said Williams heavily. ‘And I seen.
What is it I owe you now?’
She gasped: ‘Sixpence,’ and took the money. Williams gave her a cheery
good-night. He wondered at the way in which she had taken his scandal.
‘A proper hard old case, an’ no mistake!’ he thought. Mrs Malpas,
forgetful of economy, left the light burning and went straight in to her
husband. In moments of stress, even though she despised him and knew
that he hardly understood her, she would use him as a dummy on which to
vent her feelings.
‘Dad, dad!’ she cried. ‘That was Mr Williams of the Pentre.’
‘Ay, mother . . . good land, good land! Williams. . . . Ay.’
‘He has a tale of our George’s wife. She’s going on with that Fellows as
lodges with them, the one that brought trouble on George. They was
caught the two on them, at the Harley Arms, Redlake. You know . . .’
The old man, who was now awake, mumbled something about that being in the
nature of things when a young woman was left too long to herself. She
picked up the word furiously.
‘Nature!’ she cried. ‘It’s the nature of a brute beast, not the nature
of a Christian woman! It’s the bad blood in her!’
He let her rave on in the dark. It was late, and now unlikely that any
one else would call in at the bar. His head nodded, while she went on
fuming, half to him and half to herself. She persuaded herself that her
morality had been offended, though it was really the spiteful
satisfaction of Williams rather than his news that had wounded her, for
she could not think any worse of Abner and Mary than she did already.
When the heat of her irritation against the farmer subsided, its place
was taken by another and more subtle flame. She realised that she had
found something to explain her former unreasonable hatred. Williams, in
trying to shame her, had put a new weapon into her hands, one with which
she might positively injure Abner and Mary together in George’s eyes. It
had been the hardest part of her dealings with him at the time of the
trial to see the way in which his loyalty to Mary, however little that
might mean, returned. Now that her chance had come, George couldn’t keep
up this sentimental pretence of a belief in Mary’s goodness any longer.
Williams had justified her at last.
She helped the old man up to bed, blew out his candle, and left him in
the dark. Then she went downstairs, carried the lamp from the bar into
the parlour, took out a sheet of lined paper, and a penholder carved out
of olive wood from the garden of Gethsemane, and—began a letter to
George. She wrote without haste, in the firm pointed characters that she
had learnt as a young girl, carefully, methodically, with a perfect and
cold precision. From first to last not the least quaver of indecision
stayed her pen; but when she held the paper to the light to read what she
had written, her hands trembled and the words ran like fire across her
brain.
‘_MY DEAR SON_,’—_she had written_, ‘_I hope this finds you in
perfect health as it leaves me_, _thank God_, _and your father_. _I
am sorry to say that I have sad news to tell you which_, _I am
afraid_, _is all too true_. _Your wife and the young man Fellows
have been away together_, _living in sin at the Harley Arms_,
_Redlake_. _It was madness of you_, _as I tried to tell you before_,
_but you would not listen to your __mother_, _to have trusted them_,
_but you only laughed me to scorn_. _Now it is an open scandal and
hard for your poor father to bear_. _You can do nothing to mend it
where you are_, _but be patient_, _dear George_, _and remember the
word of Hebrews xii. 6_: “_Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth_.” _I
wish I had not to write this_, _George_, _but I have always told you
that she was a light and wicked woman_. _Still it is just as well_,
_and God moves in a mysterious way_, _for when you come back you can
take the children away from her_, _though do not think that you will
have the Buffalo_, _even if God should take your dear father_, _for
the justices would never give it to one who had been in jail_, _even
for no fault of their own_. _In this way you are saved from
temptation_. _This is the Lord’s doing_, _dear George_, _and it is
marvellous in our eyes_. _Why did you not send for me last month_,
_my son_? _I will tell you more_, _please God_, _when we meet_, _I
remain_, _with fond kisses_,
_Your loving mother_,
‘_ARABELLA MALPAS_.’