THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL
BY J. S. FLETCHER
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO
SIR WILLIAM ROBERTSON NICOLL
WITH MUCH GRATITUDE
CONTENTS
Part the First: RISE
I APPLECROFT 11
II THE TIGHT LIP 23
III THE BROKEN MAN 35
IV THE DIPLOMATIC FATHER 47
V THE SHAKESPEARE LINE 59
VI THE GLOVES OFF 71
VII THE GOLDEN TEAPOT 83
VIII THE BATTLE BEGINS 95
IX THE IRON ROD 107
X THE ETERNAL FEMININE 119
XI HUMBLE PIE 131
XII THE TRIPLE CHANCE 142
XIII DEAD MEN'S SHOES 153
Part the Second: FALL
I AVARICE 165
II THE BIT OF BAD LAND 177
III COAL 189
IV BIRDS OF A FEATHER 201
V THE YORKSHIRE WAY 213
VI OBSESSION 225
VII THE LAST THROW 237
VIII THE COMMINATION SERVICE 248
IX THE BELL RINGS 260
X BLACK DEPTHS 271
XI THE SENTENCE 283
XII THE SECOND EXODUS 294
XIII THE LUSTRE JUG 307
_Part the First: RISE_
CHAPTER I
_Applecroft_
Half-way along the one straggling street of Savilestowe a narrow lane
suddenly opened out between the cottages and turned abruptly towards the
uplands which rose on the northern edge of the village. Its first course
lay between high grey walls, overhung with ivy and snapdragon. When it
emerged from their cool shadowings the church came in view on one hand
and the school on the other, each set on its own green knoll and
standing high above the meadows. Once past these it became narrower and
more tortuous; the banks on either side rose steeply, and were crowned
by ancient oaks and elms. In the proper season of the year these banks
were thick with celandine and anemone, and the scent of hedge violets
rose from the moss among the spreading roots of the trees. Here the ruts
of the lane were deep, as if no man had any particular business to
repair them. The lane was, in fact, a mere occupation road, and led to
nothing but an out-of-the-way farmstead, which stood, isolated and
forlorn, half a mile from the village. It bore a picturesque
name--Applecroft--and an artist, straying by chance up the lane and
coming suddenly upon it would have rejoiced in its queer gables, its
twisted chimneys, in the beeches and chestnuts that towered above it,
and in the old-world garden and orchard which flanked one side of its
brick walls, mellowed by time to the colour of claret. But had such a
pilgrim looked closer he would have seen that here were all the marks of
ill-fortune and coming ruin--evident, at any rate, to practical eyes in
the neglected gates and fences, in the empty fold, in the hingeless,
tumble-down doors, in the lack of that stitch in time which by
anticipation would have prevented nine more. He would have seen, in
short, that this was one of those places, of which there are so many in
rural England, whereat a feckless man, short of money, was vainly
endeavouring to do what no man can do without brains and capital.
Nevertheless--so powerfully will Nature assert her own wealth in the
face of human poverty--the place looked bright and attractive enough on
a certain morning, when, it then being May, the trees around it were in
the first glory of their leafage, and the orchard was red and white with
blossom of apple and plum and cherry. There was a scent of sweetbriar
and mignonette around the broken wicket gate which admitted to the
garden, and in the garden itself, ill-kept and neglected, a hundred
flowers and weeds, growing together unchecked, made patches of vivid
colour against the prevalent green. There were other patches of colour,
of a different sort, about the place, too. Beyond the garden, and a
little to the right of the house, a level sward, open to the full light
of the sun, made an excellent drying ground for the family washing, and
here, busily hanging out various garments on lines of cord, stretched
between rough posts, were two young women, the daughters of William
Farnish, the shiftless farmer, whose hold on his house and land was
daily becoming increasingly feeble. If any shrewd observer able to
render himself invisible had looked all round Applecroft--inside house
and hedge, through granary and stable--he would have gone away saying
with emphasis, that he had seen nothing worth having there, save the two
girls whose print gowns fluttered about their shapely limbs as they
raised their bare arms and full bosoms to the cords on which they were
pegging out the wet linen.
Farnish's wife had been dead some years, and since her death his two
daughters had not only done all the work of the house, but much of what
their father managed to carry out on his hundred acres of land. They
bore strange names--selected by Farnish and his wife, after much
searching and reflection, from the pages of the family Bible. The elder
was named Jecholiah; the younger Jerusha. As time had gone on Jecholiah
had become Jeckie; Jerusha had been shortened to Rushie. Everybody in
the parish and the neighbourhood knew Jeckie and Rushie Farnish. They
had always been inseparable, these sisters, yet it needed little
particular observation to see that there was a difference of character
and temperament between them. Jeckie, at twenty-five, was a tall,
handsome, finely-developed young woman, generous in proportion, with a
flashing, determined eye, and a mouth and chin which denoted purpose and
obstinacy; she was the sort of woman that could love like fire, but whom
it would be dangerous to cross in love. Already many of the young men of
the district, catching one flash of her hawk-like eyes, had felt
themselves warned, and it had been a matter of astonishment to some
discerning folk when it became known that she was going to marry Albert
Grice, the only son of old George Grice, the village grocer, a somewhat
colourless, tame young man whose vices were non-existent and his virtues
commonplace, and who had nothing to recommend him but a good-humoured,
weak amiability and a rather good-looking, boyish face. Some said that
Jeckie was thinking of Old Grice's money-bags, but the vicar's wife, who
studied psychology in purely amateur fashion, said that Jeckie Farnish
had taken up Albert Grice in precisely the same spirit which makes a
child love a legless and faceless doll, and an old maid a miserable
mongrel--just in response to the mothering instinct; whether Jeckie
loved him, they said, nobody would ever know, for Jeckie, with her
proud, scornful lips and eyes full of sombre passion, was not the sort
to tell her heart's secrets to anybody. Not so, however, with her
sister Rushie, a soft, pretty, lovable, kissable, cuddlesome slip of a
girl, who was all for love, and would have been run after by every lad
in the village and half the shop-boys in the neighbouring market town,
if it had not been that Jeckie's mothering and grandmothering eye had
always been on her. Rushie represented one thing in femininity; her
sister typified its very opposite. Rushie was of the tribe of Venus, but
Jeckie of the daughters of Minerva.
Something of the circumstances and character of this family might have
been gathered from the quality of the garments which the sisters were
industriously hanging out to dry in the sun and wind. Most of them were
their own, and in the bulk there was nothing of the frill and lace of
the fine lady, but rather plain linen and calico. An expert housewife,
fingering whatever there was, would have said that each separate article
had been worn to thinness. Thus, too, were the sheets and pillow-cases
and towels; and of such coarse stuff as belonged to Farnish himself--all
represented the underwear and appointments of poor folk. But while there
was patching and darning in plenty, there were no rags. If her father
allowed a gate to fall off its posts rather than hunt up an old hinge
and a few nails, Jeckie took good care that her needle and thread came
out on the first sign of a rent; it was harder to replace than to
repair, in her experience. And now, as she put the last peg in the last
scrap of damp linen, it was with the proud consciousness that if the
whole show was poverty-stricken it was at least whole and clean.
"That's the lot, Rushie!" she said, turning to her sister as she picked
up the empty linen basket. "A good drying wind, too. We'll be able to
get to mangling and ironing by tea-time."
Rushie, who had no such love of labour as her sister, made no answer.
She followed Jeckie across the drying-ground and into the house; it was
indicative of her nature that she immediately dropped into the nearest
chair. The washing had been going on since a very early hour in the
morning, broken only by a hastily-snatched breakfast; on the table in
the one living-room the dirty cups and plates still lay spread about in
confusion. And Jeckie, who had eyes all round her head, glanced at them,
and at the old clock in the corner, and at her sister, sitting down, all
at once.
"Nay, child!" she exclaimed. "It's over soon for that game! Eleven
already, and naught done for dinner. Get those pots washed up, Rushie,
and then see to the potatoes. Father'll none be so long before he's
home; and there'll be Doadie Bartle and him for their dinners at twelve
o'clock. Come on, now!"
"I'm tired," said Rushie, as she slowly rose, and began to clear up the
untidy table. "We've never done in this house!"
"So'm I," retorted Jeckie. "But what's that to do with it when there's
things to be done? Hurry up now, while I look after those fowls; they've
never been seen to this morning."
She caught up a sieve as she spoke, filled it with waste stuff from a
tub in the scullery, and, going out through the back of the house,
walked into the fold behind, calling as she went to the cocks and hens
which were endeavouring to find something for themselves amongst its
boulders. None knew better than Jeckie the importance and value of that
feathered brood. For three years she had kept things going with her
poultry and eggs, and with the milk and butter which she got from the
four cows that formed Farnish's chief property. The money that she made
in this fashion had found the family in food and clothing, and gone some
way towards paying the rent. And as she stood there throwing handfuls of
food to the fowls, scurring and snatching about her feet, she had a
curious sense that outside them and the cows feeding in the adjacent
meadow there was literally nothing about the whole farmstead but
poverty. The fold was destitute of manure; half a stack of straw stood
desolate in the adjoining stack-garth; there was no hay in the loft nor
corn in the granary; whatever produce he raised Farnish was always
obliged to sell at once. The few pigs which he possessed were at that
moment rooting in the lane for something to swell out their lank sides;
his one horse was standing disconsolate by the trough near the well,
mournfully regarding its emptiness. And Jeckie, as she threw away the
last contents of her sieve and went over to the pump, had a vision of
what other possibilities there were on the farm--certain acres of wheat
and barley, of potatoes and turnips, the welfare of which, to be sure,
depended upon the weather. She had a pretty keen idea of what they would
bring in that coming autumn in the way of money; she had an equally good
one of what Farnish would have to do with it.
The horse, a fairly decent animal, drank greedily when Jeckie had pumped
water into the trough, and as soon as he had taken his fill of this
cheap commodity she opened the gate of the fold and let him out into the
lane to pick up whatever he could get--that was an equally cheap way of
feeding stock. Then, always with an eye to snatching up the
potentialities of profit, she began to go round the farm buildings,
looking for eggs. Hens, as all hen-wives know, are aggravating
creatures, and will lay their eggs in any nook or corner. Jeckie knew
where eggs were to be found--in beds of nettles, or under the stick-cast
in the orchard, or behind the worn-out implements in the barn. Twice a
day she or Rushie searched the precincts of Applecroft high and low
rather than lose one of the precious things which went to make up so
many dozen for market every Saturday, and when they had finished their
labours it was always with the uneasy feeling that some perverse Black
Spanish or Cochin China had successfully hidden away what would have
brought in at any rate a few pence. But a few pence meant much. Though
there were always eggs by the score in the wicker baskets in Jeckie's
dairy, none were ever eaten by the family nor used for cooking purposes.
That, indeed, would have been equivalent to eating money. Eggs meant
other things--beef, bread, rent.
Jeckie's search after the morning's eggs took her up into the old
pigeon-cote of the farm--an octagon building on the roof of the
granary--wherein there had been no pigeons for a long time. Approached
by a narrow, much-worn stone stairway, set between the walls of barn and
granary, this cobwebbed and musty place was honeycombed from the broken
floor to the dilapidated roof by nests of pigeon-holes. There were
scores upon scores of them, and Jeckie never knew in which she might not
find an egg. Consequently, in order to make an exhaustive search, it was
necessary to climb all round the place, examining every row and every
separate chamber. In doing this she had to pass the broken window, long
destitute of the thick glass which had once been there. Looking through
it, she saw her father coming up the lane from the village. At this,
leaving her search to be resumed later, she went down to the fold again,
carefully carrying her eggs before her in her bunched-up apron; for
Jeckie knew that Farnish had been into Sicaster, the neighbouring
market-town, that morning on a question that had to do with money, and
whenever money was concerned her instincts were immediately aroused.
Farnish was riding into the fold as she regained it, and he got off his
pony as she went towards him, and silently removing its saddle and
bridle, turned it loose in the lane, to keep the horse company and find
its dinner for itself. Carrying its furniture, he advanced in the
direction of his daughter--a tall, lank, shambling man, with a wisp of
yellowish-grey whisker on either side of a thin, weak face--and shook
his head as he turned into the stable, where Jeckie silently followed
him. He flung saddle and bridle into an empty manger, seated himself on
a corn-bin, and, swinging his long legs, shook his head again.
"Well?" demanded Jeckie.
Farnish, for a long time, had found it difficult to encounter his elder
daughter's steady and questioning gaze, and he did not meet it now. His
eyes wandered restlessly about the stable, as if wondering out of which
particular hole the next rat would look, and he made no show of speech.
"You may as well out with it," said Jeckie. "What is it, now?"
There was an emphasis on the last word that made Farnish look at his
daughter for a brief second; he looked away just as quickly, and began
to drum his fingers on his bony knees.
"Aye, well, mi lass!" he answered, in a low tone. "As ye say--now! Ye
may as well hear now as later. It's just like this here. Things is about
at an end! That's the long and that's the short, as the saying goes."
"You'll have to be plainer than that," retorted Jeckie. "What is it?
Money, of course! But--who's wanting it?"
Farnish made as if he swallowed something with an effort, and he kept
his eyes steadily averted.
"I didn't make ye acquainted wi' it at the time," he said, after a brief
silence. "But ye see, Jeckie, my lass, at t'last back-end I had to
borrow money fro' one o' them money-lendin' fellers at Clothford--them
'at advertises, like, i' t'newspapers. I were forced to it!--couldn't
ha' gone on, nohow, wi'out it at t'time. And so, course, why, its
owin'!"
"How much?" demanded Jeckie.
"It were a matter o' two hundred 'at I borrowed," replied Farnish.
"But--there's a bit o' interest, of course. It's that there
interest----"
"What are they going to do?" asked Jeckie. Her whole instinct was to get
at the worst--to come to grips. "Let's be knowing!" she said
impatiently. "What's the use of keeping it back?"
"They can sell me up," answered Farnish in a low tone. "They can sell
aught there is. I signed papers, d'ye see, mi lass. I had to. There were
no two ways about it."
Jeckie made no answer. She saw the whole of Applecroft and its hundred
acres as in a vision. Sold up! There was, indeed, she thought, with
bitter and ironic contempt, a lot to sell! Household furniture, live
stock, dead stock, growing crops--was the whole lot worth two hundred
pounds? Perhaps; but, then there would be nothing left. Now, out of the
cows and the poultry a living could be scratched together, but....
"I been into Sicaster to see Mr. Burstlewick, th' bank manager,"
continued Farnish. "I telled him all t'tale. He said he were very sorry,
and he couldn't do naught. Naught at all! So, you see, my lass, that's
where it is. An' it's a rare pity," he concluded, with a burst of
sentimental self-condolence, "for it's a good year for weather, and I
reckon 'at what we have on our land'll be worth three or four hundred
pound this back-end. And all for t'want of a hundred pounds, Jeckie, mi
lass!"
"What do you mean by a hundred pound?" exclaimed Jeckie. "You said two!"
"Aye, but ye don't understand, mi lass," answered Farnish. "If I could
give 'em half on it d'ye see, and sign a paper to pay t'other half when
harvest's been and gone--what?"
"Would that satisfy 'em?" asked Jeckie suspiciously.
"So they telled me, t'last time I saw 'em," replied Farnish in apparent
sincerity. "'Give us half on it, Mr. Farnish,' they said, 'and t'other
half and t'interest can run on.' So they said; but it's three weeks
since, is that."
Jeckie meditated for a moment; then she suddenly turned, left the
stable, and, crossing the empty fold, got rid of her eggs. She went into
the kitchen; took something from its place in the delf-ledge, and, with
another admonition to Rushie to see to the dinner, walked out into the
garden, and set off down the lane outside. Farnish, from the fold, saw
her going, and as her print gown vanished he turned into the house with
a sigh of mingled relief and anticipation. But as he came in sight of
the delf-ledge the sigh changed to a groan. Jeckie, he saw, had carried
away the key of the beer barrel, and whereas he might have had a quart
in her certain absence he would now get nothing but a mere glass on her
problematical return.