stood before it.
“There’s a beautiful bird. Hoicks!” cried old John, tapping the bars of
the cage with his terrible finger-nail. “But he won’t sing.”
“Won’t he sing?”
“He donn make hisself at home. He donn make hisself at home at all, do
’ee, my beautiful bird? No, he donn’t. So I’m a-going to chop his head
off,” said the laughing old man, “and then I shall bile him.”
Afterwards Martin went every day to see if the thrush was still there.
And it was.
Martin grew. Almost before Dan was aware of it the child had grown
into a boy. At school he excelled nobody in anything except, perhaps,
behaviour, but he had a strange little gift for unobtrusively not doing
the things he did not care for, and these were rather many unless his
father was concerned in them. Even so, the affection between them was
seldom tangibly expressed, their alliance was something far deeper than
its expression. Dan talked with him as if he were a grown man, and
perhaps he often regarded him as one; he was the only being to whom he
ever opened his mind. As they sat together in the evening while Dan
put in a spell at turning chair—at which he was astoundingly adept—the
father would talk to his son, or rather he would heap upon him all the
unuttered thoughts that had accumulated in his mind during his adult
years. The dog would loll with its head on Martin’s knees; the boy
would sit nodding gravely, though seldom speaking: he was an untiring
listener. “Like sire, like son,” thought Dan, “he will always coop his
thoughts up within himself.” It was the one characteristic of the boy
that caused him anxiety.
“Never take pattern by me,” he would adjure him, “not by me. I’m a
fool, a failure, just grass, and I’m trying to instruct you, but you’ve
no call to follow in my fashion; I’m a weak man. There’s been thoughts
in my mind that I daren’t let out. I wanted to do things that other men
don’t seem to do and don’t want to do. They were not evil things—and
what they were I’ve nigh forgotten now. I never had much ambition, I
wasn’t clever, I wanted to live a simple life, in a simple way, the
way I had a mind to—I can’t remember that either. But I did not do
any of those things because I had a fear of what other people might
think of me. I walked in the ruck with the rest of my mates and did
the things I didn’t ever want to do—and now I can only wonder why I
did them. I sung them the silly songs they liked, and not the ones I
cherished. I agreed with most everybody, and all agreed with me. I’m a
friendly man, too friendly, and I went back on my life, I made nought
of my life, you see, I just sat over the job like a snob codgering an
old boot.”
The boy would sit regarding him as if he already understood. Perhaps
that curious little mind did glean some flavour of his father’s tragedy.
“You’ve no call to follow me, you’ll be a scholar. Of course I know
some of those long words at school take a bit of licking together—like
elephant and saucepan. You get about half-way through ’em and then
you’re done, you’re mastered. I was just the same (like sire, like
son), and I’m no better now. If you and me was to go to yon school
together, and set on the same stool together, I warrant you would win
the prize and I should wear the dunce’s cap—all except sums, and there
I should beat ye. You’d have all the candy and I’d have all the cane,
you’d be king and I’d be the dirty rascal, so you’ve no call to follow
me. What you want is courage, and to do the things you’ve a mind to. I
never had any and I didn’t.”
Dan seldom kissed his son, neither of them sought that tender
expression, though Meg was for ever ruffling the boy for these pledges
of affection, and he was always gracious to the old woman. There was
a small mole in the centre of her chin, and in the centre of the mole
grew one short stiff hair. It was a surprise to Martin when he first
kissed her.
Twice a week father and son bathed in the shed devoted to chair. The
tub was the half of a wooden barrel. Dan would roll up two or three
buckets of water from the well, they would both strip to the skin, the
boy would kneel in the tub and dash the water about his body for a
few moments. While Martin towelled himself Dan stepped into the tub,
and after laving his face and hands and legs he would sit down in it.
“Ready?” Martin would ask, and scooping up the water in an iron basin
he would pour it over his father’s head.
“Name O’ God, that’s sharpish this morning,” Dan would say, “it would
strip the bark off a crocodile. Broo-o-o-oh! But there: winter and
summer I go up and down the land and there’s not—Broo-o-o-oh!—a mighty
difference between ’em, it’s mostly fancy. Come day, go day, frost
or fair doings, all alike I go about the land, and there’s little in
winter I havn’t the heart to rejoice in. (On with your breeches or I’ll
be at the porridge pot afore you’re clad.) All their talk about winter
and their dread of it shows poor spirit. Nothing’s prettier than a
fall of snow, nothing more grand than the storms upending the woods.
There’s no more rain in winter than in summer, you can be shod for it,
and there’s a heart back of your ribs that’s proof against any blast.
(Is this my shirt or yours? Dashed if they buttons a’nt the plague of
my life.) Country is grand year’s end to year’s end, whether or no. I
once lived in London—only a few weeks—and for noise, and for terror,
and for filth—name O’ God, there was bugs in the butter there, once
there was!”
But the boy’s chosen season was that time of year when the plums
ripened. Pavey’s garden was then a tiny paradise.
“You put a spell on these trees,” Dan would declare to his son every
year when they gathered the fruit. “I planted them nearly twenty years
ago, two 'gages and one magny bonum, but they never growed enough to
make a pudden. They always bloomed well and looked well. I propped ’em
and I dunged 'em, but they wouldn’t beer at all, and I’m a-going to cut
’em down—when, along comes you!”
Well, hadn’t those trees borne remarkable ever since he’d come there?
“Of course, good luck’s deceiving, and it’s never bothered our family
overmuch. Still, bad luck is one thing and bad life’s another. And
yet—I dunno—they come to much the same in the end, there’s very little
difference. There’s so much misunderstanding, half the folks don’t know
their own good intentions, nor all the love that’s sunk deep in their
own minds.”
But nothing in the world gave (or could give) Dan such flattering joy
as his son’s sweet treble voice. Martin could sing! In the dark months
no evening passed without some instruction by the proud father. The
living room at the back of the shop was the tiniest of rooms, and
its smallness was not lessened, nor its tidiness increased, by the
stacks of merchandise that had strayed from Meg’s emporium into every
corner, and overflowed every shelf in packages, piles, and bundles.
The metalliferous categories—iron nails, lead pencils, tintacks, zinc
ointment, and brass hinges—were there. Platoons of bottles were there,
bottles of blue-black writing fluid, bottles of scarlet—and presumably
plebeian—ink, bottles of lollipops and of oil (both hair and castor).
Balls of string, of blue, of peppermint, and balls to bounce were
adjacent to an assortment of prim-looking books—account memorandum,
exercise, and note. But the room was cosy, and if its inhabitants
fitted it almost as closely as birds fit their nests they were as happy
as birds, few of whom (save the swallows) sing in their nests. With
pitchpipe to hand and a bundle of music before them Dan and Martin
would begin. The dog would snooze on the rug before the fire; Meg
would snooze amply in her armchair until roused by the sudden terrific
tinkling of her shop-bell. She would waddle off to her dim little
shop—every step she took rattling the paraffin lamp on the table, the
coal in the scuttle, and sometimes the very panes in the window—and the
dog would clamber into her chair. Having supplied an aged gaffer with
an ounce of carraway seed, or some gay lad with a packet of cigarettes,
Meg would waddle back and sink down upon the dog, whereupon its awful
indignation would sound to the very heavens, drowning the voices even
of Dan and his son.
“What shall we wind up with?” Dan would ask at the close of the lesson,
and as often as not Martin would say: “You must sing ‘Timmie.’”
This was “Timmie,” and it had a tune something like the chorus to
“Father O’Flynn.”
O Timmie my brother,
Best son of our mother,
Our labour it prospers, the mowing is done;
A holiday take you,
The loss it won’t break you,
A day’s never lost if a holiday’s won.
We’ll go with clean faces
To see the horse races,
And if the luck chances we’ll gather some gear;
But never a jockey
Will win it, my cocky,
Who catches one glance from a girl I know there.
There’s lords and there’s ladies
Wi’ pretty sunshadies,
And farmers and jossers and fat men and small;
But the pride of these trips is
The scallywag gipsies
Wi’ not a whole rag to the backs of ’em all.
There ’s cokernut shying,
And devil defying,
And a racket and babel to hear and to see,
Wi’ boxing and shooting,
And fine high faluting
From chaps wi’ a table and thimble and pea.
My Nancy will be there,
The best thing to see there,
She’ll win all the praises wi’ ne’er a rebuke;
And she has a sister—
I wonder you’ve missed her—
As sweet as the daisies and fit for a duke.
Come along, brother Timmie,
Don’t linger, but gimme
My hat and my purse and your company there;
For sporting and courting,
The cream of resorting,
And nothing much worse, Timmie—Come to the fair.
On the third anniversary of Martin’s homecoming Dan rose up very early
in the dark morn, and leaving his son sleeping he crept out of the
house followed by his dog. They went away from Thasper, though the
darkness was profound and the grass filled with dew, out upon the hills
towards Chapel Cheary. The night was starless, but Dan knew every trick
and turn of the paths, and after an hour’s walk he met a man waiting
by a signpost. They conversed for a few minutes and then went off
together, the dog at their heels, until they came to a field gate. Upon
this they fastened a net and then sent the dog into the darkness upon
his errand, while they waited for the hare which the dog would drive
into the net. They waited so long that it was clear the dog had not
drawn its quarry. Dan whistled softly, but the dog did not return. Dan
opened the gate and went down the fields himself, scouring the hedges
for a long time, but he could not find the dog. The murk of the night
had begun to lift, but the valley was filled with mist. He went back to
the gate: the net had been taken down, his friend had departed—perhaps
he had been disturbed? The dog had now been missing for an hour. Dan
still hung about, but neither friend nor dog came back. It grew grey
and more grey, though little could be distinguished, the raw mist
obscuring everything that the dawn uncovered. He shivered with gloom
and dampness, his boots were now as pliable as gloves, his eyebrows
had grey drops upon them, so had his moustache and the backs of his
hands. His dark coat looked as if it was made of grey wool; it was
tightly buttoned around his throat and he stood with his chin crumpled,
unconsciously holding his breath until it burst forth in a gasp. But he
could not abandon his dog, and he roamed once more down into the misty
valley towards woods that he knew well, whistling softly and with great
caution a repetition of two notes.
And he found his dog. It was lying on a heap of dead sodden leaves.
It just whimpered. It could not rise, it could not move, it seemed
paralysed. Dawn was now really upon them. Dan wanted to get the dog
away, quickly, it was a dangerous quarter, but when he lifted it to his
feet the dog collapsed like a scarecrow. In a flash Dan knew he was
poisoned, he had probably picked up some piece of dainty flesh that a
farmer had baited for the foxes. He seized a knob of chalk that lay
thereby, grated some of it into his hands, and forced it down the dog’s
throat. Then he tied the lead to its neck. He was going to drag the
dog to its feet and force it to walk. But the dog was past all energy,
it was limp and mute. Dan dragged him by the neck for some yards as a
man draws behind him a heavy sack. It must have weighed three stone,
but Dan lifted him on to his own shoulders and staggered back up the
hill. He carried it thus for half a mile, but then he was still four
miles from home, and it was daylight, at any moment he might meet
somebody he would not care to meet. He entered a ride opening into some
coverts, and, bending down, slipped the dog over his head to rest upon
the ground. He was exhausted and felt giddy, his brains were swirling
round—trying to slop out of his skull—and—yes—the dog was dead, his old
dog dead. When he looked up, he saw a keeper with a gun standing a few
yards off.
“Good morning,” said Dan. All his weariness was suddenly gone from him.
“I’ll have your name and address,” replied the keeper, a giant of a
man, with a sort of contemptuous affability.
“What for?”
“You’ll hear about what for,” the giant grinned. “I’ll be sure to let
ye know, in doo coorse.” He laid his gun upon the ground and began
searching in his pockets, while Dan stood up with rage in his heart and
confusion in his mind. So the Old Imp was at him again!
“Humph!” said the keeper. “I’ve alost my notebook somewheres. Have you
got a bit of paper on ye?”
The culprit searched his pockets and produced a folded fragment.
“Thanks.” The giant did not cease to grin. “What is it?”
“What?” queried Dan.
“Your name and address.”
“Ah, but what do you want it for. What do you think I’m doing?”
protested Dan.
“I’ve a net in my pocket which I took from a gate about an hour ago. I
saw summat was afoot, and me and a friend o’ mine have been looking for
’ee. Now let’s have your name and no nonsense.”
“My name,” said Dan, “my name? Well, it is ... Piper.”
“Piper is it, ah! Was you baptized ever?”
“Peter,” said Dan savagely.
“Peter Piper! Well, you’ve picked a tidy pepper-carn this time.”
Again he was searching his pockets. There was a frown on his face.
“You’d better lend me a bit o’ pencil too.”
Dan produced a stump of lead pencil and the gamekeeper, smoothing the
paper on his lifted knee, wrote down the name of Peter Piper.
“And where might you come from?” He peered up at the miserable man, who
replied: “From Leasington”—naming a village several miles to the west
of his real home.
“Leasington!” commented the other. “You must know John Eustace, then?”
John Eustace was a sporting farmer famed for his stock and his riches.
“Know him!” exclaimed Dan. “He’s my uncle!”
“O ah!” The other carefully folded the paper and put it into his breast
pocket. “Well, you can trot along home now, my lad.”
Dan knelt down and unbuckled the collar from his dead dog’s neck. He
was fond of his dog, it looked piteous now. And kneeling there it
suddenly came upon Dan that he had been a coward again, he had told
nothing but lies, foolish lies, and he had let a great hulking flunkey
walk roughshod over him. In one astonishing moment the reproving face
of his little son seemed to loom up beside the dog, the blood flamed in
his brain.
“I’ll take charge of that,” said the keeper, snatching the collar from
his hand.
“Blast you!” Dan sprang to his feet, and suddenly screaming like a
madman: “I’m Dan Pavey of Thasper,” he leapt at the keeper with a fury
that shook even that calm stalwart.
“You would, would ye?” he yapped, darting for his gun. Dan also seized
it, and in their struggle the gun was fired off harmlessly between
them. Dan let go.
“My God!” roared the keeper, “you’d murder me, would ye? Wi’ my own
gun, would ye?” He struck Dan a swinging blow with the butt of it,
yelling: “Would ye? Would ye? Would ye?” And he did not cease striking
until Dan tumbled senseless and bloody across the body of the dog.
Soon another keeper came hurrying through the trees.
“Tried to murder me—wi’ me own gun, he did,” declared the big man, “wi’
me own gun!”
They revived the stricken Pavey after a while and then conveyed him to
a policeman, who conveyed him to a gaol.
The magistrates took a grave view of the case and sent it for trial at
the assizes. They were soon held, he had not long to wait, and before
the end of November he was condemned. The assize court was a place of
intolerable gloom, intolerable formality, intolerable pain, but the
public seemed to enjoy it. The keeper swore Dan had tried to shoot
him, and the prisoner contested this. He did not deny that he was
the aggressor. The jury found him guilty. What had he to say? He had
nothing to say, but he was deeply moved by the spectacle of the Rev.
Scroope standing up and testifying to his sobriety, his honesty, his
general good repute, and pleading for a lenient sentence because he was
a man of considerable force of character, misguided no doubt, a little
unfortunate, and prone to recklessness.
Said the judge, examining the papers of the indictment: “I see there is
a previous conviction—for betting offences.”
“That was three years ago, my lord. There has been nothing of the kind
since, my lord, of that I am sure, quite sure.”
Scroope showed none of his old time confident aspect, he was perspiring
and trembling. The clerk of the assize leaned up and held a whispered
colloquy with the judge, who then addressed the rector.
“Apparently he is still a betting agent. He gave a false name and
address, which was taken down by the keeper on a piece of paper
furnished by the prisoner. Here it is, on one side the name of Peter
Pope (Piper, sir!) Piper: and on the other side this is written:
_3 o/c race. Pretty Dear, 5/- to win. J. Klopstock._
Are there any Klopstocks in your parish?”
“Klopstock!” murmured the parson, “it is the name of my cook.”
What had the prisoner to say about that? The prisoner had nothing to
say, and he was sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment with hard
labour.
So Dan was taken away. He was a tough man, an amenable man, and the
mere rigours of the prison did not unduly afflict him. His behaviour
was good, and he looked forward to gaining the maximum remission of his
sentence. Meg, his mother, went to see him once, alone, but she did
not repeat the visit. The prison chaplain paid him special attention.
He, too, was a Scroope, a huge fellow, not long from Oxford, and Pavey
learned that he was related to the Thasper rector. The new year came,
February came, March came, and Dan was afforded some privileges. His
singing in chapel was much admired, and occasionally he was allowed to
sing to the prisoners. April came, May came, and then his son Martin
was drowned in a boating accident, on a lake, in a park. The Thasper
children had been taken there for a holiday. On hearing it, Pavey sank
limply to the floor of his cell. The warders sat him up, but they could
make nothing of him, he was dazed, and he could not speak. He was taken
to the hospital wing. “This man has had a stroke, he is gone dumb,”
said the doctor. On the following day he appeared to be well enough,
but still he could not speak. He went about the ward doing hospital
duty, dumb as a ladder; he could not even mourn, but a jig kept
flickering through his voiceless mind:
In a park there was a lake,
On the lake there was a boat,
In the boat there was a boy.
Hour after hour the stupid jingle flowed through his consciousness.
Perhaps it kept him from going mad, but it did not bring him back
his speech, he was dumb, dumb. And he remembered a man who had been
stricken deaf, and then blind—Scroope knew him too, it was some man who
had mocked God.
In a park there was a lake,
On the lake there was a boat,
In the boat there was a boy.
On the day of the funeral Pavey imagined that he had been let out of
prison; he dreamed that someone had been kind and set him free for an
hour or two to bury his dead boy. He seemed to arrive at Thasper when
the ceremony was already begun, the coffin was already in the church.
Pavey knelt down beside his mother. The rector intoned the office,
the child was taken to its grave. Dumb dreaming Pavey turned his eyes
from it. The day was too bright for death, it was a stainless day.
The wind seemed to flow in soft streams, rolling the lilac blooms. A
small white feather, blown from a pigeon on the church gable, whirled
about like a butterfly. “We give thee hearty thanks,” the priest was
saying, “for that it hath pleased thee to deliver this our brother
out of the miseries of this sinful world.” At the end of it all Pavey
kissed his mother, and saw himself turn back to his prison. He went by
the field paths away to the railway junction. The country had begun to
look a little parched, for rain was wanted—vividly he could see all
this—but things were growing, corn was thriving greenly, the beanfields
smelled sweet. A frill of yellow kilk and wild white carrot spray lined
every hedge. Cattle dreamed in the grass, the colt stretched itself
unregarded in front of its mother. Larks, wrens, yellow-hammers. There
were the great beech trees and the great hills, calm and confident,
overlooking Cobbs and Peter, Thasper and Trinkel, Buzzlebury and
Nuncton. He sees the summer is coming on, he is going back to prison.
“Courage is vain,” he thinks, “we are like the grass underfoot, a blade
that excels is quickly shorn. In this sort of a world the poor have no
call to be proud, they had only need be penitent.”
In the park there was a lake,
On the lake ... boat,
In the boat....
_Luxury_
Eight o’clock of a fine spring morning in the hamlet of Kezzal Predy
Peter, great horses with chains clinking down the road, and Alexander
Finkle rising from his bed singing: “O lah soh doh, soh lah me doh,”
timing his notes to the ching of his neighbour’s anvil. He boils a
cupful of water on an oil stove, his shaving brush stands (where it
always stands) upon the window-ledge (“Soh lah soh do-o-o-oh, soh
doh soh la-a-a-ah!”) but as he addresses himself to his toilet the
clamour of the anvil ceases and then Finkle too becomes silent, for the
unresting cares of his life begin again to afflict him.
“This cottage is no good,” he mumbles, “and I’m no good. Literature is
no good when you live too much on porridge. Your writing’s no good,
sir, you can’t get any glow out of oatmeal. Why did you ever come here?
It’s a hopeless job and you know it!” Stropping his razor petulantly as
if the soul of that frustrating oatmeal lay there between the leather
and the blade, he continues: “But it isn’t the cottage, it isn’t me, it
isn’t the writing—it’s the privation. I must give it up and get a job
as a railway porter.”
And indeed he was very impoverished, the living he derived from his
writings was meagre; the cottage had many imperfections, both its
rooms were gloomy, and to obviate the inconvenience arising from its
defective roof he always slept downstairs.