’tis a heavy marshy soil within and the ways are stabbled by the
hunters’ horses. Better keep out till summer comes, then ’tis dry and
pleasant-like.”
She sat down awkwardly on a heap of faggots, her feet turned slightly
inwards, but her cheeks were dainty pink in the cold air. What a smart
lady! He stood telling her things about the wood, its birds and foxes;
deep in the heart of it all was a lovely open space covered with the
greenest grass and a hawthorn tree in the middle of that. It bloomed in
spring with heavy creamy blossom. No, he had never seen any fairies
there. Come to that, he did not expect to, he had never thought of it.
“But there are fairies, you know,” cried the widow. “O yes, in old
times, I mean very old times, before the Romans, in fact before
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob then, the Mother of the earth had a big
family, thousands, something like the old woman who lived in a shoe
she was. And one day God sent word to say he was coming to visit her.
Well, then! She was so excited—the Mother of the earth—that she made a
great to do you may be sure, and after she had made her house sparkle
with cleanliness and had baked a great big pie she began to wash her
children. All of a sudden she heard the trumpets blow—God was just
a-coming! So as she hadn’t got time to finish them all, she hid those
unwashed ones away out of sight, and bade them to remain there and make
no noise or she would be angry and punish them. But you can’t conceal
anything from the King of All and He knew of those hidden children, and
he caused them to be hidden from mortal eyes for ever, and they are the
fairies, O yes!”
“No, nothing can be concealed,” Pettigrove admitted in his slow grave
fashion, “murder will out, as they say, but that’s a tough morsel if
you’re going to swallow it all.”
“But I like to believe in those things I Wish were true.”
“Ah, so, yes,” said Pettigrove.
It was an afternoon of damp squally blusters, uncheering, with slaty
sky; the air itself seemed slaty, and though it had every opportunity
and invitation to fall, the rain, with strange perversity, held off.
In the oddest corners of the sky, north and east, a miraculous glow
could be seen, as if the sun in a moment of aberration had determined
to set just then and just there. The wind made a long noise in the
sky, the smell of earth rose about them, of timber and of dead leaves;
except for rooks, or a wren cockering itself in a bush, no birds were
to be seen.
Letting his spade fall Pettigrove sat down beside the widow and kissed
her. She blushed red as a cherry and he got up quickly.
“I ought not to ha’ done it, I ought not to ha’ done that, Mrs.
Cronshaw!”
“Caroline!” said she, smiling the correction at him.
“Is that your name?” He sat down by her again. “Why, it is the same as
my wife’s.”
And Caroline said “Humph! You’re a strange man, but you are wise and
good. Tell me, does she understand you?”
“What is there to understand? We are wed and we are faithful to each
other, I can take my oath on that to God or man.”
“Yes, yes, but what is faith—without love between you? You see? You
have long since broken your vows to love and cherish, understand that,
you have broken them in half.”
She had picked up a stick and was drawing patterns of cubes and stars
in the soil.
“But what is to be done, Caroline? Life is good, but there is good
living and there is bad living, there is fire and there is water. It is
strange what the Almighty permits to happen.”
A slow-speaking man; scrupulous of thought and speech he weighed each
idea before its delivery as carefully as a tobacconist weighs an ounce
of tobacco.
“Have some cake?” said Caroline, drawing a package from a pocket. “Will
you have a piece ... John?”
She seemed to be on the point of laughing aloud at him. He took the
fragment of cake but he did not eat it as she did. He held it between
finger and thumb and stared at it.
“It’s strange how a man let’s his tongue wag now and again as if he’d
got the universe stuck on the end of a common fork.”
“Or at the end of a knitting needle, yes, I know,” laughed Caroline,
brushing the crumbs from her lap. Then she bent her head, patted her
lips, and regurgitated with a gesture of apology—just like a lady.
“But what are you saying? If there is love between you there is
faithfulness, if there is no love there is no fidelity.”
He bit a mouthful off the cake at last.
“Maybe true, but you must have respect for the beliefs of others....”
“How can you if they don’t fit in with your own?”
“Or there is sorrow.” He bolted the rest of his cake. “O you are
right, I daresay, Caroline, no doubt; it’s right, I know, but is it
reasonable?”
“There are afflictions,” she said, “which time will cure, so they
don’t matter; but there are others which time only aggravates, so what
can we do? I daresay it’s different with a man, but a woman, you know,
grasps at what she wants. That sounds reasonable, but you don’t think
it’s right?”
In the cold whistling sky a patch of sunset had now begun to settle
in its proper quarter, but as frigid and unconvincing as a stage
fireplace. Pettigrove sat with his great hands clasped between his
knees. Perhaps she grew tired of watching the back of him; she rose to
go, but she said gently enough: “Come in to-night, I want to tell you
something.”
“I will, Caroline.”
Later, when he reached home, he found two little nieces had arrived,
children of some relatives who lived a dozen miles away. A passing
farmer had dropped them at Tull; their parents were coming a day later
to spend Christmas with the Pettigroves.
They sat up in his wife’s room after tea, for Carrie left her bed only
for an hour or two at noon. She dozed against her pillows, a brown
shawl covering her shoulders, while the two children played by the
hearth. Pettigrove sat silent, gazing in the fire.
“What a racket you are making, Polly and Jane!” quavered Carrie.
The little girls thereupon ceased their sporting and took a picture
book to the hearthrug where they examined it in awed silence by the
firelight. After some minutes the invalid called out: “Don’t make such
a noise turning over all them leaves.”
Polly made a grimace and little Jane said: “We are looking at the
pictures.”
“Well,” snapped Mrs. Pettigrove, “why can’t you keep to the one page!”
John sat by the fire vowing to himself that he would not go along to
the widow, and in the very act of vowing he got up and began putting on
his coat.
“Are you going out, John?”
“There’s a window catch to put right along at Mrs. Cronshaw’s,” he
said. At other times it had been a pump to mend, a door latch to
adjust, or a jamb to ease.
“I never knew things to go like it before—I can’t understand it,” his
wife commented. “What with windows and doors and pumps and bannisters
anyone would think the house had got the rot. It’s done for the
purpose, or my name’s not what it is.”
“It won’t take long,” he said as he went.
The wind had fallen away, but the sky, though clearer, had a dull
opaque mean appearance, and the risen moon, without glow, without
refulgence, was like a brass-headed nail stuck in a kitchen wall.
The yellow blind at the widow’s cot was drawn down and the candles
within cast upon the blind a slanting image of the birdcage hanging at
the window; a fat dapper bird appeared to be snoozing upon its rod; a
tiny square was probably a lump of sugar; the glass well must have been
half full of water, it glistened and twinkled on the blind. The shadowy
bird shifted one foot, then the other, and just opened its beak as
Pettigrove tapped at the door.
They did not converse very easily, there was constraint between them,
Pettigrove’s simple mind had a twinge of guilt.
“Will you take lime juice or cocoa?” asked the widow, and he said:
“Cocoa.”
“Little or large?”
And he said: “Large.”
While they sat sipping the cocoa Caroline began: “Well, I am going
away, you know. No, not for good, just a short while, for Christmas
only, or very little longer. I must go.”
She nestled her blue shawl more snugly round her shoulders. A cough
seemed to trouble her. “There are things you can’t put on one side for
ever....”
“Even if they don’t fit in with your own ideas!” he said slyly.
“Yes, even then.”
He put down his cup and took both her hands in his own. “How long?”
“Not long, not very long, not long enough....”
“Enough for what?” He broke up her hesitation. “For me to forget you?
No, no, not in the fifty-two weeks of the whole world of time.”
“I did want to stay here,” she said, “and see all the funny things
country people do now.” She was rather vague about those funny things.
“Carols, mumming, visiting; go to church on Christmas morning, though
how I should get past those dreadful goats, I don’t know; why are they
always in the churchyard?”
“Teasy creatures they are! Followed parson into service one Sunday,
indeed, ah! one of ’em did. Jumped up in his pulpit, too, so ’tis said.
But when are you coming back?”
She told him it was a little uncertain, she was not sure, she could not
say, it was a little uncertain.
“In a week, maybe?”
Yes, a week; but perhaps it would be longer, she could not say, it was
uncertain.
“So. Well, all right then, I shall watch for you.”
“Yes, watch for me.”
They gave each other good wishes and said good-bye in the little dark
porch. The shadowy bird on the blind stood up and shrugged itself.
Pettigrove’s stay had scarcely lasted an hour, but in that time the
moon had gone, the sky had cleared, and in its ravishing darkness the
stars almost crackled, so fierce was their mysterious perturbation. The
village man felt Caroline’s arms about him and her lips against his
mouth as she whispered a “God bless you.” He turned away home, dazed,
entranced, he did not heed the stars. In the darkness a knacker’s cart
trotted past him with a dim lantern swinging at its tail and the driver
bawling a song. In the keen air the odour from the dead horse sickened
him.
Pettigrove passed Christmas gaily enough with his kindred, and even
his wife indulged in brief gaieties. Her cousin was one of those men
full of affable disagreements; an attitude rather than an activity of
mind. He had a curious face resembling an owl’s except in its colour
(which was pink) and in its tiny black moustache curling downwards like
a dark ring under his nose. If Pettigrove remarked upon a fine sunset
the cousin scoffed, scoffed benignantly; there was a sunset every
day, wasn’t there?—common as grass, weren’t they? As for the farming
hereabouts, nothing particular in it was there? The scenery was, well,
it was just scenery, a few hills, a few woods, plenty of grass fields.
No special suitability of soil for any crop; corn would be just
average, wasn’t that so? And the roots, well, on his farm at home he
could show mangolds as big as young porkers, forty to the cartload, or
thereabouts. There weren’t no farmers round here making a fortune, he’d
be bound, and as for their birds, he should think they lived on rook
pie.
Pettigrove submitted that none of the Tull farmers looked much the
worse for farming.
“Well, come,” said the other, “I hear your workhouses be middling
full. Now an old neighbour of mine, old Frank Stinsgrove, was a man as
_could_ farm, any mortal thing. He wouldn’t have looked at this land,
not at a crown an acre, and he was a man as _could_ farm, any mortal
thing, oranges and lemons if he’d a mind to it. What a head that man
had, God bless, his brain was stuffed! Full!! He’d declare black was
white, and what’s more he could prove it. I like a man like that.”
The cousin’s wife was a vast woman, shaped like a cottage loaf. For
some reason she clung to her stays: it could not be to disguise or curb
her bulk, for they merely put a gloss upon it. You could only view her
as a dimension, think of her as a circumference, and wonder grimly what
she looked like when she prepared for the bath. She devoured turkey and
pig griskin with such audible voracity that her husband declared that
he would soon be compelled to wear corks in his earholes at meal times,
yes, the same as they did in the artillery. She was quite unperturbed
by this even when little Jane giggled, and she avowed that good food
was a great enjoyment to her.
“O ’tis a good thing and a grand thing, but take that child now,” said
her father. Resting his elbow on the table he indicated with his fork
the diminutive Jane; upon the fork hung a portion of meat large enough
to half-sole a lady’s shoe. “She’s just the reverse, she eats as soft
as a fly, a spillikin a day, and not a mite more; no, very dainty
is our Jane.” Here he swallowed the meat and treated four promising
potatoes with very great savagery. “Do you know our Jane is going to
marry a house-painter, yah, a house-painter, or is it a coach-painter?
’Tis smooth and gentle work, she says, not like rough farmers or chaps
that knock things pretty hard, smiths and carpenters, you know. O
Lord! eight years old, would you believe it? The spillikin! John, this
griskin’s a lovely bit of meat.”
“Beautiful meat,” chanted his wife, “like a pig we killed a month ago.
That was a nice pig, fat and contented as you’d find any pig, ’twould
have been a shame to keep him alive any longer. It dressed so well, a
picture it was, the kidneys shun like gold.”
“That reminds me of poor old Frank Stinsgrove,” said her husband.
“He’d a mint of money, a very wealthy man, but he didn’t like parting
with it. He’d got oldish and afraid of his death, must have a doctor
calling to examine him every so often. Didn’t mind spending a fortune
on doctors, but every other way he’d skin a flint. And there was nought
wrong with him, ’cept age. So his daughter ups and says to him one
day—You are wasting your money on all these doctors, father, they do
you no good, what you must have is nice, dainty, nourishing food. Now
what about some of these new laid eggs? How much are they fetching now?
old Frank says. A penny farthing, says she. A penny farthing! I cannot
afford it. And there was that man with a mint of money, a mint, could
have bought Buckingham Palace—you understand me—and yet he must go on
with his porridge and his mustard plasters and his syrup of squills,
until at last a smartish doctor really did find something the matter
with him, in his kidneys. They operated, mark you, and they say—but I
never quite had the rights of it—they say they gave him a new kidney
made of wax; a new wax kidney, ah, and I believe it was successful,
only he had not to get himself into any kind of a heat, of course, nor
sit too close to the fire. ’Stonishing what they doctors can do with
your innards. But of course he was too old, soon died. Left a fortune,
a mint of money, could have bought the crown of England. Staunch old
chap, you know.”
Throughout the holidays John sang his customary ballads, “The Bicester
Ram,” “The Unquiet Grave,” and dozens of others. After songs there
would be things to eat. Then a game of cards, and after that things to
eat. Then a walk to the inn, to the church, to a farm, or to a friend’s
where, in all jollity, there would be things to eat and drink. They
went to a meet of the hounds, a most successful outing for it gave them
ravening appetites. In short, as the cousin’s wife said when bidding
farewell, it was a time of great enjoyment.
And Pettigrove said so too. He believed it, and yet was glad to be quit
of his friends in order to contemplate the serene dawn that was to
come at any hour now. By New Year’s Day Mrs. Cronshaw had not returned,
but the big countryman was patient, his mind, though not at rest,
was confident. The days passed as invisibly as warriors in a hostile
country, and almost before he had begun to despair February came, a
haggard month to follow a frosty January. Mist clung to the earth
as tightly as the dense grey fur on the back of a cat, ice began to
uncongeal, adjacent lands became indistinct, and distant fields could
not be seen at all. The banks of the roads and the squat hedges were
heavily dewed. The cries of invisible rooks, the bleat of unseen sheep,
made yet more gloomy the contours of motionless trees wherefrom the
slightest movement of a bird fetched a splatter of drops to the road,
cold and uncheering.
All this inclemency crowded into the heart of the waiting man, a
distress without a gleam of anger or doubt, but only a fond anxiety.
Other anxieties came upon him which, without lessening his melancholy,
somewhat diverted it: his wife suffered a sudden grave decline in
health, and on calling in the doctor Pettigrove was made aware of her
approaching end. Torn between a strange recovered fondness for his
sinking wife and the romantic adventure with the widow, which, to
his mind at such a juncture, wore the sourest aspect of infidelity,
Pettigrove dwelt in remorse and grief until the night of St.
Valentine’s Day, when he received a letter. It came from a coast town
in Norfolk, from a hospital; Caroline, too, was ill. She made light of
her illness, but it was clear to him now that this and this alone was
the urgent reason of her retreat from Tull at Christmas. It was old
tubercular trouble (that was consumption, wasn’t it?) which had driven
her into sanatoriums on several occasions in recent years. She was
getting better now, she wrote, but it would be months before she would
be allowed to return. It had been rather a bad attack, so sudden. Now
she had no other thought or desire in the world but to be back at Tull
with her friend, and in time to see that fairy may tree at bloom in the
wood—he had promised to show it to her—they would often go together,
wouldn’t they—and she signed herself his, “with the deepest affection.”
He did not remember any promise to show her the tree, but he sat down
straightway and wrote her a letter of love, incoherently disclosed and
obscurely worded for any eyes but hers. He did not mention his wife;
he had suddenly forgotten her. He sealed the letter and put it aside
to be posted on the morrow. Then he crept back to his wife’s room and
continued his sick vigil.
But in that dim room, lit by one small candle, he did not heed the
invalid. His mind, feverishly alert, was devoted to thoughts of that
other who also lay sick, and who had intimidated him. He had feared
her, feared for himself. He had behaved like a lost wanderer who at
night, deep in a forest, had come upon the embers of a fire left
mysteriously glowing, and had crept up to it frightened, without stick
or stone: if only he had conquered his fear he might have lain down and
rested by its strange comfort. But now he was sure of her love, sure
of his own, he was secure, he would lay down and rest. She would come
with all the sweetness of her passion and the valour of her frailty,
stretching smooth, quiet wings over his lost soul.
Then he began to be aware of a soft, insistent noise, tapping, tapping,
tapping, that seemed to come from the front door below. To assure
himself he listened intently, and soon it became almost the only
sound in the world, clear but soft, sharp and thin, as if struck with
the finger nails only, tap, tap, tap, quickly on the door. When the
noise ceased he got up and groped stealthily down his narrow crooked
staircase. At the bottom he waited in an uncanny pause until just
beyond him he heard the gentle urgency again, tap, tap, and he flung
open the door. There was enough gloomy light to reveal the emptiness
of the porch; there was nothing there, nothing to be seen, but he
could distinctly hear the sound of feet being vigorously shuffled on
the doormat below him, as if the shoes of some light-foot visitor
were being carefully cleaned before entry. Then it stopped. Beyond
that—nothing. Pettigrove was afraid, he dared not cross the startling
threshold, he shot back the door, bolted it in a fluster, and blundered
away up the stairs.
And there was now darkness, the candle in his wife’s room having spent
itself, but as a glow from the fire embers remained he did not hasten
to light another candle. Instead, he fastened the bedroom door also,
and stood filled with wondering uneasiness, dreading to hear the tap,
tap, tap come again, just there, behind him. He listened for it with
stopped breath, but he could hear nothing, not the faintest scruple of
sound, not the beat of his own heart, not a flutter from the fire, not
a rustle of feet, not a breath—no! not even a breathing! He rushed to
the bed and struck a match: that was a dead face.... Under the violence
of his sharpening shock he sank upon the bed beside dead Carrie and a
faint crepuscular agony began to gleam over the pensive darkness of his
mind, with a promise of mad moonlight to follow.
Two days later a stranger came to the Pettigrove’s door, a short
brusque, sharp-talking man with iron-grey hair and iron-rimmed
spectacles. He was an ironmonger.
“Mr. Pettigrove? My name is Cronshaw, of Eastbourne, rather painful
errand, my sister-in-law, Mrs. Cronshaw, tenant of yours, I believe.”
Pettigrove stiffened into antagonism: what the devil was all this?
“Come in,” he remarked grimly.
“Thank you,” said Cronshaw, following Pettigrove into the parlour
where, with many sighs and much circumstance, he doffed his overcoat
and stood his umbrella in a corner. “Had to walk from the station, no
conveyances; that’s pretty stiff, miles and miles.”
“Have a drop of wine?” invited Pettigrove.
“Thank you,” said the visitor.
“It’s dandelion.”
“Very kind of you, I’m sure.” Cronshaw drew a chair up to the
fireplace, though the fire had not been lit, and the grate was full of
ashes, and asked if he might smoke. Pettigrove did not mind; he poured
out a glass of the yellow wine while Cronshaw lit his pipe. The room
smelled stuffy, heavy noises came from overhead as if men were moving
furniture. The stranger swallowed a few drops of the wine, coughed, and
said: “My sister-in-law is dead, I’m sorry to say. You had not heard, I
suppose?”
“Dead!” whispered Pettigrove. “Mrs. Cronshaw! No, no, I had not, I had
not heard that, I did not know. Mrs. Cronshaw dead—is it true?”
“Ah,” said the stranger with a laboured sigh. “Two nights ago in a
hospital at Mundesley. I’ve just come on from there. It was very
sudden, O, frightfully sudden, but it was not unexpected, poor woman,
it’s been off and on with her for years. She was very much attached to
this village, I suppose, and we’re going to bury her here, it was her
last request. That’s what I want to do now. I want to arrange about the
burial and the disposal of her things and to give up possession of your
house. I’m very sorry for that.”
“I’m uncommon grieved to hear this,” said Pettigrove. “She was a
handsome lady.”
“O yes,” the ironmonger took out his pocket-book and prepared to write
in it.
“A handsome lady,” continued the countryman tremulously, “handsome,
handsome.”
At that moment someone came heavily down the stairs and knocked at the
parlour door.
“Come in,” cried Pettigrove. A man with red face and white hair
shuffled into the room; he was dressed in a black suit that had been
made for a man not only bigger, but probably different in other ways.
“We shall have to shift her down here now,” he began. “I was sure we
should, the coffin’s too big to get round that awkward crook in these
stairs when it’s loaded. In fact, ’tis impossible. Better have her down
now afore we put her in, or there’ll be an accident on the day as sure
as judgment.” The man, then noticing Cronshaw, said: “Good-morning,
sir, you’ll excuse me.”
The ironmonger stared at him with horror, and then put his notebook
away.
“Yes, yes, then,” mumbled Pettigrove. “I’ll come up in a few minutes.”
The man went out and Cronshaw jumped up and said: “You’ll pardon me,
Mr. Pettigrove, I had no idea that you had had a bereavement too.”
“My wife,” said Pettigrove dully, “two nights ago.”
“Two nights ago! I am very sorry, most sorry,” stammered the other,
picking up his umbrella and hat. “I’ll go away. What a sad coincidence!”
“There’s no call to do that; what’s got to be done must be done.”
“I’ll not detain you long then, just a few details: I am most sorry,
very sorry, it’s extraordinary.”
He took out his notebook again—it had red edges and a fat elastic
band—and after conferring with Pettigrove for some time the stranger
went off to see the vicar, saying, as he shook hands: “I shall of
course see you again when it is all over. How bewildering it is, and
what a shock it is; from one day to another, and then nothing; and the
day after to-morrow they’ll be buried beside one another. I am very
sorry, most sorry. I shall of course come and see you again when it is
all over.”