WHEN Mr Prosser returned from Craven Arms next evening he was in a bad
temper. At the Railway Hotel on the night before he had fallen in with a
number of cattle dealers from North Bromwich and Manchester. He had
drunk more than he could stand, and had sat up playing cards in the
commercial room till three o’clock in the morning, losing the price of a
bullock in the process. Marion, who met him at Llandwlas station, told
him that the Devon cow had died in the night.
‘Died?’ said he, ‘what do you mean “died”? She was all right yesterday.’
‘Fellows says it was bronchitis. It was awful to see her breathing.’
‘Bronchitis! They don’t die that quick with bronchitis. What the hell
does Fellows know about it?’
‘He couldn’t have done more than he did,’ she replied. ‘He sat up with
her till she went.’
‘I’ve never known such an unlucky year,’ he grumbled. ‘Hayes’s wife says
that he won’t be out of hospital for another month or more. Fellows
means well enough, but he’s not like an experienced cowman.’ He sat
broodily in the trap for a few moments. ‘Why didn’t you send for
Harris?’ he asked at length.
‘We did, but Daisy died before he could get up.’
‘I shall advertise for a cowman,’ he said, with a show of determination
that gave him a better opinion of himself.
‘Fellows did his best. It wasn’t his fault.’
‘What do you know about it, anyway?’ said Mr Prosser roughly.
Reaching The Dyke in the worst of tempers, he had not even time to give
Ethel the kiss for which she stood waiting. He went straight into the
dining-room and mixed himself a stiff whisky and water, then, feeling
masterful and businesslike, he went straight out into the fields to look
for Harris. He found him driving in his team from the plough.
‘Did you see Daisy last night?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I see’d her, but not afore she was wellnigh cold.’
‘How did she come to go off sudden like that, eh?’
‘If you want to know what I thinks, Mr Prosser, I’ll tell you. That cow
she died of violent neglect. I’ve had my eye on her some days now.’
‘Then why the devil didn’t you say so?’
‘Me and Fellows don’t speak to one another, and you was gone off to the
sales.’
‘Why didn’t you tell Miss Marion, then?’
‘It’s no good talking to Miss Marion about he. Her wouldn’t hear a word
against Fellows, though he be no more fit to look after cows than
rabbits, and I know for why.’ Harris shook his head knowingly.
‘What do you mean by that? Why don’t you speak plain?’
‘And I will speak plain, Mr Prosser, though I don’t know where your eyes
have been if you haven’t seed it for yourself. Miss Marion’s soft on
that Fellows, and he knows it and takes advantage on it.’
Prosser gave an uneasy laugh. ‘You don’t get me to believe that,’ he
said.
‘You can believe it or not, gaffer,’ said Harris. ‘It’s all the same to
me. I’m only telling you of what I knows, and what I’ve seen with my own
eyes. When Daisy was dying that Fellows was in your own kitchen and the
two of them kissing one another, so took up they never saw me coming.
And that’s the truth, as I’m standing here!’
Prosser could only stare at him.
‘You ought to have known the name that chap has with women. There’s Mr
Hind’s daughter over at the Pound House; there’s George Malpas’s wife,
not counting those that was never found out. He’s a proper young bull,
that Fellows, and no mistake!’
The farmer left him in a fury. He found Marion laying the supper-table
in the dining-room. Ethel was crouched by the fire reading a book of
fairy-tales.
‘You go out into the kitchen, Ethel,’ he said. ‘I want to talk to
Marion.’
‘I’m so comfy here, dad,’ said the child sleepily.
‘Do as you’re bid!’ he shouted, and Ethel, frightened, left the room.
‘You’ve scared her,’ said Marion. ‘She’s not used to being spoken to
like that.’
‘No,’ said he, ‘and it ’ld be better for the both of you if you were.
Just you put those things down and tell me the truth about Fellows.’
‘What do you mean, father?’ she asked. ‘I’ve told you he did all he
could. He sat up with her.’
‘And that’s a damned lie to start with! Sat up with her, did he? Sat up
spooning in the kitchen along with you. That’s more like it!’
She blushed, then straightened herself and faced him with her hands
clasped before her. He was almost frightened of her burning eyes.
‘Who told you that?’ she said quietly.
‘Never you mind who told me. They that told me saw it with their own
eyes. Saw you behaving like a labourer’s girl in a hedge. That’s a fine
thing to come to! You deny it if you can!’
‘I’m not going to deny it,’ she said.
‘Then you’ve no shame left in you. Thank God your poor mother hasn’t
lived to see it! I never thought to hear a daughter of mine speak like
that!’
He waited for her to defend herself; but she stood as though petrified,
cold, with a furnace of emotions flaming inside her. He took her by the
arm, roughly, and shook her.
‘Don’t dad!’ she whispered.
‘Here, tell me how far it’s gone.’
She wouldn’t answer him.
‘You’d better make a clean breast of it. How long has it been going on?
There’s nothing wrong with you, eh? Better tell me straight!’
The implication affronted her modesty, for though she had fearfully
imagined physical passion and its admonitions had found their way into
her dreams, the least suggestion of crudity shocked her. Her father’s
words made her want to cover her face for shame. Her resolution wavered.
In a piercing moment of revelation she saw the scene in which she was
taking a part: the hard, tasteless room, with its steel engravings of
sporting pictures and its horsehair-covered furniture, the coarse cutlery
that she had been putting on the table, the metallic ticking bronze clock
on the mantelpiece, the worn hearthrug, and, in front of her, the angry,
flushed face of her father, the face of a man inflamed by passion and the
prejudices of his class. And she saw herself, a farmer’s daughter in a
print overall, discovered, shamed, in a gross affair with a labouring
man. How many times in the history of the countryside had the same scene
been enacted? How many women of her kind had been pestered with the same
urgent questions? And still he pressed her.
‘What’s done can’t be mended. Better tell me straight, my girl!’
All her suppressed idealism rose in revolt against him, against her
surroundings, against her whole manner of life. She hated her father and
utterly despised him.
‘I won’t have you talking to me like that,’ she said. ‘I’m not a child,
and you shan’t treat me like one. I’m a woman. I’m nearly thirty. Do
you think a woman can go on living this miserable, separated life and
settle down into an old maid like Aunt Isabel without feeling anything?
No . . . people like you don’t think that a woman should have any
feelings. You think as long as you’re well fed and get your glass of
whisky at night and all your books kept up to date, you think that’s
enough life for a woman, you think that it’s a privilege for her to spend
her days looking after you. Do you think a woman never wants a man?’
Prosser gasped. ‘I think you’ve taken leave of your senses, Marion,’ he
said.
‘I’ve a life to live as well as you!’ she cried. ‘You call yourself a
farmer, but you’ve no more idea of nature . . .’ She could say no more,
but threw her hands wide in a gesture of despair.
It slowly dawned on him that she was defending herself. He saw himself
shamed among his fellows. There had never been a scandal at The Dyke in
his time. He said: ‘Good God! Good God!’ then helped himself to another
glass of whisky and took a stiff gulp. ‘Well, I never thought it of
you,’ was all he could say. He poured out another tot.
A sudden gust of anger swept over Marion. Scarcely knowing what she did,
she picked up the cut-glass whisky decanter and sent it crashing into the
fire. The flames roared up the chimney; blue tongues of lighted spirit
ran out over the hearthrug.
‘Marion! My God, you’re mad!’ he cried. ‘You’ll set the house afire!
What do you think you’re doing?’
He snatched a rug from the sofa and went down on his knees stifling the
flame. She burst out into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. He stared
at her, frightened. ‘What are you laughing at?’ he cried.
‘I don’t know,’ she said weakly. ‘I felt I must break something. What
an awful mess!’ The outburst had sobered her, and more than that the
sight of her father’s scared and innocent face.
‘It’s all right now,’ she said. ‘I’ll fetch a cloth from the kitchen.’
He looked so bewildered that she couldn’t help laughing at him.
‘I’m damned if I can make you out,’ he said.
‘Of course you can’t. You’ve not the least idea. . .’
‘Then it’s all right?’ he said solemnly.
The dawning relief in his face was too much for her. She knelt down on
the carpet beside him and kissed his head.
‘Oh, dad, you’re too killing!’ she said. ‘Do you think I can’t look
after myself?’
‘Well, thank Heaven for that!’ was all he could say.
They talked the matter out more soberly that evening over the embers of
the fire when Ethel had been sent off to bed. They were as happy in each
other’s company and as tender as lovers who have quarrelled and made it
up again. The moment of vision had faded for ever. The room in which
they sat had regained its old familiarity in Marion’s eyes, forcing
itself to be accepted as her home; Mr Prosser was no longer a coarse,
fair-whiskered man with more than a drop of whisky in him, but the father
whom she had always known; the sombre life of The Dyke, with its slow,
rich comfort, was the life to which she had been born. And she
considered what would be the effect on that life of her marrying Abner
Fellows, for if her father’s suspicions had been justified there was no
doubt but that he would have compelled the lover to make an honest woman
of her. No happiness worth the daring lay in that direction. She knew
that she could hope for nothing but a continual clashing of the two men’s
wills and herself a buffer between them. Her father had a long memory
for his hates. There could never be any peace in the house till he died.
Rather than submit to such a humiliation she would cut herself free from
The Dyke and share Abner’s life. Love in a cottage with a vengeance!
But did he love her? She had no real reason to believe it. And did she
love him? She could not say. Better, far better, cling to the
certainties, whatever they might be.
‘We’ll say no more about it,’ said Mr Prosser. ‘Let bygones be bygones,
eh?’
She nodded her head slowly at the fire. A piece of the shattered
decanter that had escaped her brush suddenly caught a gleam of light. It
meant no more to her now than a flake of the stone-men’s flint of the
kind that she and Ethel found on their picnics at Castel Ditches.
‘Of course Fellows must go,’ said Mr Prosser. ‘I reckon I can find
another man by the end of the week.’
‘Yes,’ Marion murmured. ‘At the end of the week.’
‘Luckily there’s no scarcity of labour,’ said Mr Prosser happily.
Marion’s thoughts turned idly to Wolfpits. She shut the idea of Wolfpits
out of her mind. It was wrong, she thought, that Mary Malpas should ever
have come again into her life. It was always wrong to uncover the past.
They sat for a long time in silence. She crouched on the floor at her
father’s side and his arm was thrown carelessly over her shoulder. His
head nodded and he fell asleep, but Marion still stared into the embers,
seeing nothing. It was nearly midnight when Mr Prosser woke with a start
and rubbed his eyes.
‘I think I must have dropped off,’ he said. ‘Why, look at the clock!’
He kissed her good-night.
‘By the way,’ he said, ‘I saw young Fred Maddy over at Craven Arms. He
talked about riding over for tea Sunday. He’s doing pretty well, is Fred
Maddy, since his father died.’
He stood blinking at her curiously; but she made him no reply.
‘Will you put out the light in the kitchen, dad, and see to the doors?’
she said.
Next morning, when he had listened to Abner’s own version of Daisy’s
death and stood for a few moments in contemplation of the carcass, Mr
Prosser told him without offering any explanation that he would not be
wanted at The Dyke after the end of the week. Abner took it for granted
that the loss of the cow explained his dismissal. It was a piece of bad
luck, and no more was to be said for it. The blow was a heavy one, for
he had felt that his position on the farm was secure and that the
fortunes of Wolfpits were safe for the winter. He would have to begin
his search for work all over again, and this at a time when the demand
for labour was at its lowest. What made him particularly savage was the
look of triumph that he now saw on Harris’s face. No doubt the ploughman
had managed to put a word in against him with Mr Prosser. Well, a man
who had taken such a hammering as Harris got on the night of the harvest
home had a right to get his own back, particularly when fortune had given
his enemy a trip.
What puzzled Abner more was the strangeness of Marion’s attitude. He did
not attach any great importance to her breakdown in the farm kitchen and
the tender moment that followed: that was the kind of thing that might
happen with any woman: but he did find it rather shabby of her to abandon
him as soon as he was down on his luck, for he had always felt that she
was his friend and supporter, and knew, indeed, that he had owed his job
to her from the beginning. Still, he believed that it was in keeping
with human—and even more with feminine nature—to kick a man when he was
down. The school in which he had been brought up had left him with few
romantic illusions: so, instead of brooding over her defection, he went
on steadily with his work until the day of his departure.
On the last evening they met, for one moment only. She came into the
byre at milking-time and took up her old station in the doorway, watching
him as he worked. He looked round and found her standing there: it was
too dark for him to see her face. She handed him the pails in silence,
and when he had finished and stood wiping his hands on his trousers, she
said, almost timidly:
‘This is the last time.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘and I’m sorry to go.’
‘I’m sorry too,’ she said, though she could not be sure that she was
speaking the truth. ‘You’ve been a great help to us.’
He gave an uneasy laugh. ‘If that old Daisy hadn’t gone and catched
cold,’ he said.
‘Where are you going?’ she asked abruptly.
‘That’s a hard one to answer,’ he said.
‘I wish I could help you.’ She found it difficult to speak without
wounding his delicacy. ‘If you’re in want of money at any time . . .’
She felt it was her duty to give him anything she possessed. It was
necessary for her own self-esteem that she should not feel under any
obligation to him.
‘Money’s no use to me,’ he said, falling back on one of Mick Connor’s
characteristic phrases.
‘But if ever you’re in need?’ she persisted. ‘I know that Mrs Malpas and
her children are dependent on you.’
It was the second time that she had ever mentioned Mary’s name. She
compelled herself to do so now because in this way she could make it
quite clear that the incident of the other night was forgotten and that
he could not build on it. She wanted to clear herself at any price.
Even as she spoke the consciousness of her own motives filled her with
shame. She held out her hand.
‘You won’t forget that, will you?’ she said.
‘No, Miss Marion, you’ve been a good friend to me.’ And he took her hand
in his.
His unexpected use of the respectful prefix emboldened her and made her
feel surer of herself. In a moment the indefiniteness of the situation
had gone. They were back on their old footing of servant and mistress.
Her heart gave a leap of thankfulness. She felt that she was saved. The
man whose rough hand her fingers now touched for a moment was no longer
the symbol of an ideal but simply a farm-labourer whom her father had
dismissed. She withdrew her own hand hurriedly.
‘I’ll say good-bye, then,’ she said.
‘Good-bye, miss, and thank ’ee,’ said Abner, and touched his cap.
The idea of leaving The Dyke had shocked him; but when he passed down the
drive for the last time, with Prosser’s money in his pocket, Abner
experienced a sudden feeling of relief. It was probable that hard times
were ahead of him, and yet he had never felt so free since the day when
he left his father’s house at Halesby. When he got home he told Mary
with an affectation of lightness that he had got the sack. Her first
impulse was one of fear for their finances, but almost as quickly she
found herself thankful that Abner was no longer in touch with Marion
Prosser. The world in which she and Marion had been friends was so far
behind and spoke to her so poignantly of a lost content that she was glad
to be wholly freed from it. She could not disguise the fact that she was
jealous of Marion, not only for this but for other reasons. She put on a
bold and heartening front.
‘I’ve a nice bit of money in hand,’ she said. ‘That shows how wise we
were to go easy.’
Her show of cheerfulness and courage pleased him. ‘I thought it ‘d put
you out a bit,’ he said.
‘We ought to be used to uncertainty by this time,’ she replied. ‘I’m
glad you won’t have that long walk there and back. It was enough to take
the strength out of any man.’
‘It’s a rum thing,’ he said, ‘but I don’t mind it any more than you do,
leaving The Dyke.’
‘You must get a job nearer home now,’ she said. ‘You’re quite a
stranger.’
‘Ay, I’ll have a look round to-morrow,’ he said.
When the day came he had not the heart to set out in quest of work.
Instead of doing so he lounged all morning, and after dinner took the
children out for a long walk over the stark, wintry fields. They were
wildly excited to go with him, for it was now many months since they had
known such a holiday. Mary watched them, smiling as they left Wolfpits.
She saw that they were happy, and marvelled at her own happiness. Abner
and the children made their way through the silent larchwoods to the top
of Castel Ditches and sat there gazing idly down upon the river valleys.
About the time when cohorts of starlings wheeled through the sky above
the reed-beds of the Barbel where they made their nightly roosting place,
the three of them dropped down the slope towards the waterworks. There
Abner found a diminished gang still working on the last details of the
track. The sidings, the cranes, and the engines were gone, and in place
of the trenches on which Abner had worked a year before, he now saw trim
walls, culverts, and bridges of stone. A single wooden hut remained
standing, and there he found the Gunner rubbing his hands over a bucket
of coke. He stared at Abner as though he were a stranger.
‘Well, our Abner,’ he cried, when he recognised him, ‘how goes it? I
thought you’d left these parts long ago. What have you been up to?’
‘Farm-labouring, up at The Dyke,’ Abner told him.
‘That’s a poor game,’ said the Gunner, shaking his head.
‘Don’t I know it!’ said Abner. ‘I’ve just finished with it. . . Can’t
you give us a job here?’
‘No, my son . . . nor any one else,’ said the Gunner. ‘We’re just
clearing up like. I’ve got ten men of the old gang left, but in another
week we shall have finished the lot. Don’t you imagine I’m sorry for it
either. I’ve had enough of Mainstone to last me for a bit.’
‘Well, I’ve got to get a job somehow,’ said Abner.
‘Then you won’t get it here. This place is dead, my son, and that’s the
truth! You’d best get back to dear old Brum. Or Coventry, that’s the
place for you. Everybody’s going mad on these here motor-cars the same
as they did on bicycles. Coventry’s your ticket!’
He gave the children a red-cheeked apple apiece. Abner bade him
good-night and turned homewards.
‘Did you hear about our wedding at the Pound House?’ the foreman shouted
after him. ‘Whisky? You could have swum in it! Pity old Mick wasn’t
about.’
It was dusk when Abner reached Wolfpits.
He began his quest for a new job hopefully, undeterred by the foreman’s
warning or the still gloomier prophecies of old man Drew. He knew that
work was scarce at that season; but it could not well be scarcer than it
had been when he found continued employment at The Dyke. Abner felt that
luck would come to him in much the same unexpected way.
His first attempts seemed full of promise. At the time when he had set
out canvassing before, he had always been received with a kind of
negative pessimism that he learned to consider as the normal attitude
toward life of the border farmer. Now, he noticed that the farm-people,
and particularly the women, listened to his applications with more
interest, remembered his name, asked him questions about himself, and
even appeared to regard his person with curiosity. He took this as a
good sign; but though he was encouraged his hopes came no nearer to
realisation. One after another the local farmers or their wives heard
his story, had a good look at him, and turned him down.
The reason for their interest was not far to seek. In spite of Mr
Prosser’s anxiety to keep dark the true cause of Abner’s dismissal and
the scandal that it implied, Harris, the ploughman, had not been able to
resist the temptation of making public his enemy’s discomfiture, and
though nobody dared to whisper to the principal actors in the comedy that
they knew what had happened, the whole story of Marion Prosser’s
infatuation for her father’s cowman went the rounds of the neighbourhood.
At Ludlow market it passed for a good tale against Prosser, who was
envied for his possessions, and Marion, whose aloofness had made her
unpopular.
In the most frequent version of the story Abner had been caught out with
Marion in the byre at a time when that astute young woman had arranged
for her father to stay the night at Craven Arms for his health’s sake.
Marion, it was said, had refused, for the most pressing of reasons, to
give her cowman up; but Prosser’s family pride—a well-known quantity—had
been so deeply wounded that he had threatened to shoot the fellow on the
spot and let his daughter’s name go hang. The men enjoyed the joke
against Prosser; the women were agreed that proud creatures such as
Marion usually found their own level by some such violent means. The
principal question of interest that remained was where Marion would go to
hide her shameful condition.
In every stratum of local society from that of Lesswardine Court to that
of the newly-married Mrs Badger at the Pentre, the incident was
discussed; but nobody in the district heard it with more triumph and
satisfaction than old Mrs Malpas of the Buffalo. By this time the whole
village was so used to her vilifications of Mary that they were scarcely
taken seriously, for village opinion, even when it is censorious in
expression, is, as a rule, charitable in deed. Now that she found
herself armed with a new enormity to reinforce the old, she set herself
steadily to the task of making it impossible for Abner to find work. She
determined to drive him out of the district, for in this way she knew
that Mary and her children must undergo the suffering that they deserved
and that Abner’s devotion had spared them.
With incredible patience she made it her business to interview every
farmer within five miles of Lesswardine and to beg him, or failing him
his wife, to refuse employment to such a scandalous character. The
Wesleyan minister at Chapel Green, who regarded Mrs Malpas as one of the
principal pillars of his church, helped her in this, and only the
laziness of the vicar of Mainstone prevented his wife from making him a
party to the same plan. Abner, in his ignorance, was faced by a
deliberate boycott. The men who spoke him fairly, when he asked them for
work were prepared to see him and the family that he supported starve
before they gave it to him.
For a whole month this heart-breaking business went on. When first Abner
began to look for work Mary had greeted him every evening with enquiring
eyes, Now she no longer dared ask him what had happened during the day.
The monotony of unfulfilled promises told on him. He began to avoid her
society and to shrink from that of the children, trying to exhaust his
strength with long walks afield and cutting wood for Mrs Mamble and old
Drew as well as for their own household. She pitied him with all her
heart, but dared not show him pity lest it should tax his courage too
heavily. Money was running short. She starved herself in order that he
and the children might not lack, and thus found herself dragged into a
vicious circle, for her sacrifice lessened her own resistance and made
her temper uneven and liable to be irritated by Abner’s moroseness. They
did not speak of their troubles, but neither of them could see what the
end would be.
Wolfpits, in its utter isolation, was the last place in the district that
rumour ever reached. It was five weeks after Abner had left The Dyke
when Mrs Mamble heard the cause of Abner’s dismissal and whispered it to
Mary. In a normal state she might have borne it, but her exhaustion made
her an easy prey to jealousy. One evening Abner found her unusually pale
and speechless, and asked her what was the matter with her.
‘I’ve only just heard the truth,’ she said, scarcely controlling her
passion.
‘What about?’ he asked innocently.
‘About why you left The Dyke. Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I did tell you. You know as well as I do.’
‘You never said a word about Marion. Not one word!’
‘Who’s been putting that rubbidge into your head?’ said Abner angrily.
‘Rubbish!’ she repeated. ‘You can call it that now! But if you’d left
the girl alone we shouldn’t be where we are now, not knowing where to
look for a shilling and the children likely to want for bread.’
‘You’ve got a maggot in your head, missus,’ he said. ‘Why I left The
Dyke’s got nothing to do with Miss Marion, so don’t you think it.’
‘Oh, I’m tired of you!’ she cried. ‘It’s no use your telling off your
lies to me. I’m dead sick of you and your women . . . you and your Susie
Hinds and Marion Prossers! Running after loose women with your eyes shut
and never a thought for those that keep themselves decent like me. And
if there was another caught your eye to-morrow, you’d be up and away
after her the same. You’re no better than an animal! Like the rest of
men: they’re all the same!’
She stood up to him, trembling with rage. At that moment she was ugly,
and rising to the violence of her challenge, he hated her. He lost sight
of her weakness. All he saw was her impudent provocation. An answering
anger fumed up into his head and carried him away so that he could easily
have struck her. He came towards her with his hand lifted.
‘Don’t! Don’t!’ she shrieked in terror.
He dropped his hand and walked straight out of the room. Left alone, she
was overborne with shame for what she had done, and cried for her lost
dignity. Never in her life had she so abased herself. ‘But he lied to
me! He lied to me!’ she told herself. ‘If he hadn’t lied to me it
wouldn’t have happened!’ Little by little the turmoil of her thoughts
abated and she began to remember his goodness, his patience, all that she
owed to him. ‘If he had struck me,’ she thought, ‘I should have deserved
it.’ She almost wished that his hand had fallen, for nothing less than a
blow could have justified her violence and her base ingratitude. The
only thing with which she could comfort herself was a firm determination
that she would never offend him again. By nothing but the most complete
sacrifice of her feelings could she repay him a thousandth part of what
she owed him.
After that day she never uttered one complaint, though the tale of her
sufferings increased beyond the bounds of endurance. To their hardships
she turned a front of steel, but to Abner himself she was as tender as
she dared to be. The consciousness of this discipline sustained her.
She was a new woman, worn and anxious but invincibly cheerful; and Abner
himself took heart from her courage.
Winter fell upon them. The snow-bound ramparts of the hills came nearer
to them, encircling the valley with a clear-cut beauty. The colours of
life faded from the land, and every farm was like a fortress of stone,
close-barred against the assaults of rain and icy wind. The fields lay
cold and dead; the sap sank downward from every frozen branch. There was
no colour in all the land but a brilliant mockery of red berries on brier
and holly and thorn. ‘There’s a tarrable lot of berry this year,’ said
old Drew. ‘I reckon we’m in for a hard winter again.’
And so the remotest possibility of finding work on the farms drifted away
from Abner. The few labourers who moved about the fields, the solitary
teams at plough, seemed glued to the frozen surface of the land, stirring
sadly as in a dream. In spite of the kindness of their neighbours, so
delicately shown in the gifts of roots and bundles of wood that old Drew
carried home on his bent shoulders, the family at Wolfpits felt the pinch
of cold and want. Mary, true to her resolution, uttered no word of
complaint, but her face told Abner what she was suffering so plainly that
he could not bear to look at her. One night he left her and spent the
evening with old Drew in his bedroom, drinking the labourer’s home-made
poison till his brain was fuddled and his limbs, for the first time, were
warm. Mary heard him stumbling up the stairs at night, but when they met
next morning she did not reproach him.
Her little store of money was nearly gone. One day, racking her brains
for some new expedient to stave off the inevitable end, she remembered
Mrs Malpas’s visit and the story of the fifty pounds which George had
stolen from the Buffalo on the eve of his imprisonment. She wondered,
desperately, if the old woman was right, and he had hidden it in some
corner of the house. She began to search, with the fierce enthusiasm of
a seeker after treasure. She spent all her energy in turning the bedroom
and kitchen inside out; she looked into the chimneys, for she had heard
that money was sometimes hidden in such places. By the end of the day
she was utterly exhausted but had found nothing. ‘At any rate,’ she
thought, ‘the place looks tidier.’ A poor consolation!
That night it occurred to her that if only she could get as far as
Shrewsbury she might pawn some of her wedding presents, particularly a
set of plated tea-things which her father, lavish in the expenditure of
other people’s money, had given her. They made a clumsy parcel,
difficult to conceal, and in order to spend as little as possible on the
railway fare she decided to walk over the hills towards Clun and catch a
train on the branch railway. She left the children in Mrs Mamble’s care,
and slipped away without letting Abner know that she had gone. In
Shrewsbury a sad discouragement awaited her. The man in the pawnshop
sniffed at her property. ‘This kind of thing’s gone out of fashion,’ he
said. ‘If you’d brought it here five year ago I might have done better
for you. Twenty-five shillings’s all it’s worth.’ The sacrifice hurt
her, but she accepted his figure. The fare home to Llandwlas left her
with a guinea in hand, and on that money they existed for more than two
weeks. She only prayed that Abner would not notice the blank in the
cupboard from which she had taken the silver, but she need not have been
frightened, for Abner had no eye for things of that kind. One
imprudence, however, nearly betrayed her. On the way to the station at
Shrewsbury she had seen a box of oranges newly imported for Christmas and
had not been able to resist the temptation of buying two for the
children. Next day Abner saw them on the table.
‘Oranges?’ he said, his eyes shocked by her extravagance.
She lied quickly.
‘Yes, Mrs Hendrie met me on the road and gave me them for Morgan and
Gladys.’
Afterward, in the curiously sensitive state of her conscience, this lie
troubled her. He himself was so open with her that she felt it almost a
duty to tell him the truth. She brooded over the question for several
days, but in the end it sank into insignificance before the fact that
they had no money left. Looking at her empty purse she felt that she
could face the situation no longer. She dared not ask for credit in any
shop in Mainstone, for she suspected that all the shop-people must be
aware of her plight. Greatly daring, she made an expedition to
Lesswardine and entered a grocer’s with whom she had not dealt since the
days before her marriage. The man had been a friend of her father’s.
Perhaps that would count for something.
It was Saturday night, and the shop was buzzing with people. The grocer,
flurried with work, scarcely nodded to her, and she was nearly leaving
the shop in fright when a new assistant whom she did not know asked her
what he could serve her with. Fortunately, she had dressed herself with
care and looked respectable. She ordered blindly, lavishly, and the
smart young man dumped her purchases on the counter with a flourish and
dashed off the bill with a pencil that he carried behind his ear in a
hieroglyphic of his own.
‘Cash or account, madam?’ he asked rapidly.
‘Account,’ she murmured.
‘Certainly. What was the name?’
‘Mrs Malpas, Wolfpits.’
‘Of course,’ said the young man, excusing himself. ‘Pardon. Shall we
send them?’
‘To-morrow’s Sunday, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘I think I’d better take them
with me.’
‘Thank you, madam. Very kind of you,’ said the assistant, making a large
blue-paper parcel, which he handed her over the counter with an
obsequious bow.
She picked up her parcel and fled, thankful that the grocer was too busy
to notice her. She felt that the eyes of all the women were on her and
that they knew her for a thief. Also she knew that she could never
attempt this adventure again.
So the end came, or what they thought must be the end. They sat together
one night in the kitchen at Wolfpits, and both of them knew that they
were beaten. A fire burned brightly in the hearth—in this thickly wooded
valley they need never lack warmth—the room seemed cosy and almost gay in
the firelight, showing no signs that they had fallen from prosperity, for
though Mary had paid three more visits to the pawnbroker’s and now felt
hardened to the adventure, she had always managed to conceal the
deficiencies in the furniture by some new arrangement. On her last
journey to Shrewsbury, hurrying to the station under the walls of the
jail, the idea had struck her that she might be forced in the end to pawn
her wedding ring, and she had laughed bitterly to herself. Much good had
it done her! The idea had only struck her as a whimsical prospect. She
had too much common sense to allow herself to be driven to this
conventional expedient. She knew that they could not go on indefinitely
stripping the house of its furniture. It would be far better to face the
facts. If Abner could not find work, and there seemed no probability of
his doing so, the best that they could do was to part. He must leave
her, and she, pocketing her pride, must apply to the relieving officer,
whom she had once shown to the door, for money from the parish. She knew
that it must come to this, and yet she could not bring herself to tell
Abner. She had settled in her mind that the proposal must come from him,
and for the present he seemed numbed, worn, incapable of thinking. He
sat opposite her in silence with an empty pipe between his teeth staring
at the fire. After a little while she found herself silently weeping,
and turned her face away from him, blowing her nose to hide her tears.
Some one knocked at the door, and she cried: ‘Come in!’
It was old Drew. They were not surprised. By this time they were used
to the labourer’s visits. Often, in the evening, he would drop in with
the excuse of having a talk with Abner, though most of the talking fell
to Mary, and then, just as he was on the point of leaving, he would
produce from one of the vast pockets in his coat some article of food
that he had picked up at the farm. They knew so well this delicate
subterfuge! At first Mary had been amused by it, and more than a little
touched. Now she only waited impatiently to see what the old man had
brought.
That night it seemed as if he would never go; but just when they had
reached the point when it seemed that the eggs or turnips must appear, he
turned to Abner and told him that he had some good news for him.
‘Good news?’ said Abner. ‘It’s a long time since I’ve heard anything of
that.’
‘I was talking about ’ee to Mr Willums,’ said Drew, ‘and told en that you
was in a purty bad way. “Well, Drew,” says he, “if it’s as bad as that,
I don’t say we mightn’t do something. There do be a heap of stones
scattered over the top fields as us might well be rid on. It do be a
boy’s work, ’tis true, but Fellows might be glad of it.”’
Mary flushed with pleasure and clasped her hands. ‘I’d be glad of
anything,’ said Abner.
‘Well,’ the old man went on, ‘I do reckon that there be no more’n a
fortnight’s work there, and a poor, niggling job that’s like to break
your back at that. But I thought you’d be glad of it, and I told en so.
So up you comes along with me at six o’clock to-morrow morning, for I
told en you’d come for sure. Threepence an hour he’ll pay ’ee. That
makes twelve shillin’ a week. ’Tis not much, but ’tis something.’
They thanked him without reserve, but he shook his head at them. ‘I
don’t know as it’s me you have to thank,’ he said. ‘’Tis your old mother
down to the Buffalo as you’d ought to be grateful to. Mr Willums have
took it into his head as giving Abner work would make her mazed. He’ve
never forgive her over that cider, and never will. He’s a long memory,
Mr Willums.’
When he left them Mary was so full of an emotional thankfulness that she
could not speak. Abner went to bed cheerfully. She heard him whistling
in his room above her.
Next morning his work at the Pentre began. As Mr Williams had said, it
was a boy’s work by rights and unfitted to a man of Abner’s strength. At
first sight it seemed like one of those labours which malignant kings
impose upon their daughters’ suitors in fairy tales. The Pentre was a
large farm of miserable land. Its uppermost cultivated fields reached
nearly to the crown of the smooth hills at the valley head, ending
abruptly at the foot of stony screes. From these unstable precipices the
winter torrents rolled down many stones, flat rocky fragments that
impeded the plough. Nor were these all, for the soil was so thin, that
every ploughing turned up thousands more, and in winter the fields were
overspread with a pale bloom of stones.
At this season of the year the uplands were always cold, enwrapped in icy
vapours or glistening with frost that glued each fragment to the ground.
Abner’s task was to clear these stubborn acres of their surface stones:
an endless labour, for no sooner had he picked the surface over than new
stones appeared. No convict labour could have been more monotonous, more
thankless, nor, as it seemed, more futile. From dawn to sunset he worked
in loneliness. No single human figure approached him all day long except
that of Mr Williams, whom he would see coming like a speck in the lower
distance urging his pony upwards. When he reached Abner the farmer would
stay scowling at him for a few minutes. He was a surly man, and rarely
spoke except on Monday evenings after Ludlow market. Then, having
satisfied himself that Abner was not shirking, he would turn away and
walk his pony down the hill again.
There was never any fear that Abner would not work. It was only by
violent exertion that he could keep any heat in his body, for his food
was poor, and the winter, as old Drew had prophesied, severe. He toiled
there in rain, in sleet, in snow, and in blinding mist. The pay was so
poor that he knew he could not afford to miss a day, picking up stones
with numbed and ragged fingers when no other labourers were afield.
Every evening he walked home dead tired, scarcely knowing if his legs
were his own, for the continual stooping took all sensation away from
them.
Once, in the dusk, he lost his way, for he had tried to shorten his
journey by a cross-cut. He found himself suddenly on the brink of the
sea-crows’ pool, but not a bird was to be seen, for in winter they
returned to their homes on the Cardigan coast. His memory of what had
happened there was as hazy as that of a dream. It seemed to him that he
had lived half a lifetime since that night. He stumbled down through the
fog and passed the door of Badger’s cottage. A light burned in the
window, and he thought he saw Susie moving in the parlour. He laughed to
himself and damned her . . . damned all women. Another evening on his
way home a dog-cart overtook him coming over the hills from Clun. It had
passed him before he saw that its occupants were Marion Prosser and a
young farmer named Maddy, whom Abner only knew by sight. They bowled by
him at a good pace. He wondered if she had recognised him, for he had
been in their sight for some time. If she had, she made no sign of
having seen him. And again he hardened his heart against all women.
And yet, though he did not know it, the sight of Abner trudging homeward
down the lane had awakened a palpitating interest in Marion’s heart, and
inspired her with a sudden distaste for the man who was sitting in the
trap beside her. She looked down on him from the height of the driver’s
seat, seeing his mean shoulders, the thin nape of his neck, and his small
foxy face in profile. She felt that she would like to lash at him with
the whip that she held in her hand; but since she knew that ladylike
young women did not do such things, she flicked him with the lash of her
tongue instead.
‘That was Fellows, our cowman, Fred,’ she said, knowing that the name
would wound him.
He gave an ugly laugh. ‘I know him. He had the face to come and ask me
for work. I soon gave him the right-about!’
‘You!’ she cried scornfully. ‘You’re not fit to talk to him! He’s twice
the man that you are.’
He flushed. ‘Look here, Marion, who the hell do you think you’re talking
to?’ he said, clutching her arm with a show of strength.
‘Don’t!’ she cried. She wrenched herself free and slapped his face. The
horse broke into a canter.
‘That’s not the way to get yourself married,’ he said.
She would not reply to his insult and they drove to The Dyke in an
uncomfortable silence.
Next day she set out deliberately to meet Abner on the road. She called
‘Good-evening’ to him, but he, still smarting under the discomfort of
Mary’s outburst, would not answer her. She followed him and took him by
the arm.
‘Abner,’ she said. ‘Will you ever forgive me? I don’t like to think of
the way we parted.’
‘I don’t bear you any ill-will,’ he said. ‘That’s all over and done
with.’
‘I want you to think of me as a friend,’ she said. ‘Abner, if ever
you’re in need of money . . . if you want money now . . . I wish you’d
take it from me.’
He laughed. ‘I’m in work now,’ he said. ‘You’d best leave us alone. We
don’t want your money.’ His resentment burst out afresh. ‘Nor you
neither,’ he added.
She controlled herself. ‘Very well. That’s understood,’ she said, and
left him without another word.
She walked home violently in the dusk, thinking of the desperate mess she
had made of her life, wondering if she could ever bring herself to marry
a man with sloping shoulders and a squeaky voice like Fred Maddy. What
did it matter? What did anything matter?
Mr Williams had reckoned that the top fields would provide Abner with a
fortnight’s work. He had merely given him the job to satisfy a passing
whim of inflicting a pin-prick on Mrs Malpas, and had told him from the
first that he could not continue to employ him when the work was done.
Luckily for Abner at the end of the fortnight half the fields remained
uncleared. Mr Williams recognised that he had worked well, and decided
to keep him on, for perhaps another ten days. The expense was trivial,
and the job worth doing. Christmas, his second Christmas at Wolfpits,
intervened, but by the third of January Abner’s work at the Pentre was
nearly finished.