Jim the Blacksmith
The village of Brammerton seemed only half awake. A rumbling cart was
slowly wending its way up the hill, three or four old men were standing
yarning at the inn corner; now and again, a busy housewife would appear
at her door and take a glimpse of what little was going on and
disappear inside just as quickly as she had shown herself. The sound
of the droning voices of children conning their lessons came through
the open window of the old schoolhouse.
These were the only signs and sounds of life that forenoon in
Brammerton. Stay!--there was yet another. Breaking in on the general
quiet of the place, I could hear distinctly the regular thud of hard
steel on soft, followed by the clear double-ring of a small hammer on a
mellow-toned anvil.
One man, at any rate, was hard at work,--Jim Darrol,--big, honest,
serious giant that he was.
Light of heart and buoyant in body, I turned down toward the smithy. I
looked in through the grimy, broken window and admired the brawny giant
he looked there in the glare of the furnace, with his broad back to me,
his huge arms bared to the shoulders. Little wonder, thought I, Jim
Darrol can whirl the hammer and put the shot farther than any man in
the Northern Counties.
How the muscles bulged, and wriggled, and crawled under his dark, hairy
skin! What a picture of manliness he portrayed! And, best of all,--I
knew his heart was as good and clean as his body was sound.
I tiptoed cautiously inside and slapped him between the shoulders. He
wheeled about quickly. He always was a solemn-looking owl, but this
morning his face was clouded and grim. As he recognised me, a terrible
anger seemed to blaze up in his black eyes. I could see the muscles
tighten in his arms and his fingers close firmly over the shaft of the
hammer he held. I could see a new-born, but fierce hatred burning in
every inch of his enormous frame.
"Hello, Jim, old man! Who has been rubbing you the wrong way?" I cried.
His jaws set. He raised his left hand and pointed with his finger to
the open doorway.
"Get out!" he growled, in a deep, hoarse voice.
I stood dumbfounded for a brief moment, then I replied roughly and
familiarly: "Oh, you go to the devil! Keep your anger for those who
have caused it."
"Get out, will you!" he cried again, taking a step nearer to me, his
brows lowered, his lips drawn to a thin line.
I had seen these danger signals in Jim before, but never with any ill
intent toward me. I was so astounded I could scarcely think aright.
What could he mean? What was the matter?
"Jim, Jim," I soothed, "don't talk that way to old friends."
"You're no friend of mine," he shouted. "Will you get out of here?"
In some respects, I was like Jim Darrol: I did not like to be ordered
about.
"No! I will not get out," I snapped back at him. "I mean to remain
here until you grow sensible."
I went over to his anvil, set my leg across it and looked straight at
him.
He raised his hammer high, as if to strike me; and I felt then that if
I had taken my eyes from Jim's for the briefest flash of time, my last
minute on earth would have arrived.
With an oath,--the first I ever heard him utter,--he cast the hammer
from him, sending it clattering into a corner among the old horse shoes.
"Damn you,--I hate you and all your cursed aristocratic breed," he
snarled. And, with the spring of a tiger, he had me by the throat,
with those great, grabbing hands of his, his fingers closing cruelly on
my windpipe as he tried to shake the life out of me.
I had always been able to account for Jim when it came to fisticuffs,
but never at close quarters. This time, his attack was violent as it
was unexpected. I did not have the ghost of a chance. I staggered
back against the furnace wall, still in his devilish clutch. Not a
gasp of air entered or left my body from the moment he clutched me.
He shook me as a terrier does a rat.
Soon my strength began to go; my eyes bulged; my head felt as if it
were bursting; dancing lights and awful darknesses flashed and loomed
alternately before and around me. Then the lights became scarcer and
the darknesses longer and more intense. As the last glimmer of
consciousness was leaving me, when black gloom had won and there was no
more light, I felt a sudden release, painful and almost unwelcome to
the oblivion to which I had been hurling. The lights came flashing
back to me again and out of the whirling chaos I began to grasp the
tangible once more. As I leaned against the side of the furnace,
pulling at my throat where those terrible fingers had
been,--gasping,--gasping,--for glorious life-giving, life-sustaining
air, I gradually began to see as through a haze. Before long, I was
almost myself again.
Jim was standing a few paces away, his chest heaving, his shaggy head
bent and his great hands clenched against his thighs.
I gazed at him, and as I gazed something wet glistened in his eyes,
rolled down his cheeks and splashed on the back of his hand, where it
dried up as if it had fallen on a red-hot plate.
I took an unsteady step toward him and held out my hand.
"Jim," I murmured, "my poor old Jim!"
His head remained lowered.
"Strike me," he groaned huskily. "For God's sake strike me, for the
coward I am!"
"I want your hand, Jim," I answered. "Tell me what is wrong? What is
all this about?"
At last he looked into my eyes. I could see a hundred conflicting
emotions working in his expressive face.
"You would be friends after what I have done?" he asked.
"I want your hand, Jim," I said again.
In a moment, both his were clasped over mine, in his vicelike grip.
"George,--George!" he cried. "We've always been friends,--chums. I
have always known you were not like the rest of them."
He drew his forearm across his brow. "I am not myself, George. You'll
forgive me for what I did, won't you?"
"Man, Jim,--there is nothing done that requires forgiving;--only, you
have the devil's own grip. I don't suppose I shall be able to swallow
decently for a week.
"But you are in trouble: what is it, Jim? Tell me; maybe I can help."
"Ay,--it's trouble enough,--God forbid. It's Peggy, George,--my dear
little sister, Peggy, that has neither mother nor father to guide
her;--only me, and I'm a blind fool. Oh!--I can't speak about it.
Come over with me and see for yourself."
I followed him slowly and silently out of the smithy, down the lane and
across the road to his little, rose-covered cottage. We went round to
the back of the house. Jim held up his hand for caution, as he peeped
in at the kitchen window. He turned to me again, and beckoned, his big
eyes blind with tears.
"Look in there," he gulped. "That's my little sister, my little Peggy;
she who never has had a sorrow since mother left us. She's been like
that for four hours and she gets worse when I try to comfort her."
I peered in.
Peggy was sitting on the edge of a chair and bending across the table.
Her arms were spread out in front of her and her face was buried in
them. Her brown, curly hair rippled over her neck and shoulders like a
mountain stream. Great sobs seemed to be shaking her supple body. I
listened, and my ears caught the sound of a breaking heart. There was
a fearful agony in her whole attitude.
I turned away without speaking and followed Jim back to the smithy.
When we got there, something pierced me like a knife, although all was
not quite clear to my understanding.
"Jim,--Jim," I cried, "surely you never fancied I--I was in any way to
blame for this. Why! Jim,--I don't even know yet what it is all
about."
He laughed unpleasantly. "No, George, no!--Oh! I can't tell you.
Here----"
He went to his coat which hung from a hook in the wall. He pulled a
letter from his inside pocket. "Read that," he said.
I unfolded the paper, as he stood watching me keenly.
The note was in handwriting with which I was well familiar.
"My DEAR LITTLE PEGGY,
I am very, very sorry,--but surely you know that what you ask is
impossible. I shall try to find time to run out and see you at the
usual place, Friday night at nine o'clock. Do not be afraid, little
woman; everything will come out all right. You know I shall see that
you are well looked after; that you do not want for anything.
Burn this after you read it. Keep our secret, and bear up, like the
good little girl you are. Yours affectionately,
H----"
As I read, my blood chilled in my veins, was,--there could be no
mistaking it.
"My God! Jim," I cried, "this is terrible. Surely,--surely----"
"Yes! George," he said, in a tensely subdued voice, "your brother did
that. Your brother,--with his glib tongue and his masterful way.
Oh!--well I know the breed. They are to be found in high and low
places; they are generally not much for a man to look at, but they are
the kind no woman is safe beside; the kind that gets their soft side
whether they be angels or she-devils. Why couldn't he leave her alone?
Why couldn't he stay among his own kind?
"And now, he has the gall to think that his accursed money can smooth
it over. Damn and curse him for what he is."
I had little or nothing to say. My heart was too full for words and a
great anger was surging within me against my own flesh and blood.
"Jim,--does this make any difference between you and me?" I asked,
crossing over to him on the spongy floor of hoof parings and steel
filings. "Does it, Jim?"
He caught me by the shoulders, in his old, rough way, and looked into
my face. Then he smiled sadly and shook his head.
"No, George, no! You're different: you always were different; you are
the same straight, honest George Brammerton to me;--still the same."
"Then, Jim, you will let me try to do something here? You will promise
me not to get into personal contact with Harry,--at least until I have
seen him and spoken with him. Not that he does not deserve a dog's
hiding, but I should like to see him and talk with him first."
"Why should I promise that?" he asked sharply.
"For one thing,--because, doubtless, Harry is home now. And again,
there is going to be a week-end House Party at our place. Harry's
engagement of marriage with Lady Rosemary Granton is to be announced;
and Lady Rosemary will be there.
"It would only mean trouble for you, Jim;--and, God knows, this is
trouble enough."
"What do I care for trouble?" he cried defiantly. "What trouble can
make me more unhappy than I now am?"
"You must avoid further trouble for Peggy's sake," I interposed.
"Jim,--let me see Harry first. Do what you like afterwards. Promise
me, Jim."
He swallowed his anger.
"God!--it will be a hard promise to keep if ever I come across him.
But I do promise, just because I like you, George, as I hate him."
"May I keep this meantime?" I asked, holding up Harry's letter to Peggy.
"No! Give it to me. I might need it."
"But I might find greater use for it, Jim. Won't you let me have it,
for a time at least?"
"Oh! all right, all right," he answered, spreading his hands over his
leather apron.
I left him there amid the roar of the fire and the odour of sizzling
hoofs, and wended my way slowly up the dust-laden hill, back home,
having forgotten entirely, in the great sorrow that had fallen, to tell
Jim my object in calling on him that day.