THE MEMORY OF MR. HUGGINS
On a day after noon in late January the hand of winter was upon
Lydford, and the wet roads ran shining into the village. Utmost
sobriety, with a scant splash of colour here and there, marked the
time. The hedges were iron-grey, yet they flamed now and again where
a copper glow of foliage still clung to some pollarded beech. The
great castle scowled down from its blind windows, rain fell drearily;
all round about was mire and gloom and low mists, that crept along
hill and over fallow. In the meadow-lands grass seemed trodden into
mud; the very streets repined, and no life was revealed save where
fowls sat in the boughs of a laurel and resigned themselves to sleep
and forgetfulness, and where a lonely dog trotted along the main
thoroughfare. In an open doorway of a carpenter's shop two men
planed coffin planks; and further on came clink of chisel and mallet
from a shed where a stonemason was hammering at a granite cross. The
only human life visible seemed occupied with death. Each wayside
garden was a litter of ragged stalk and stem that cried to be hidden;
but the little golden yew, beside the home of Philip Weekes, shone
like a candle across the waning day, and rose sprightly and cheerful
in the languor and depression of the hour.
Aloft a winged people did not share Lydford's gloom. Starlings much
frequented the village at this season, and towards nightfall
assembled in many thousands together, where certain elms stood beside
the castle. Here, in a living stream, they flowed up from hedgerows
and fields, until the naked boughs were black with them. They forced
the sense of their presence upon the most abstracted spirit, and
raised a merry din that was audible a mile distant. This life
dominated dusk until one felt a sojourner in the abode of birds
rather than any home of men. If a door slammed or a man shouted, the
myriads would simultaneously take wing and launch like a black cloud
into the air. Then, uttering a sound as of many waters, they whirled
and warped, gyrated, turned, and with a gradual hush of diminishing
noise regained their perches, folded their feathers, and resumed
their shouting. Only with night did they depart into darkness and
silence. Then, one by one, the windows twinkled with fire, and there
came a wakening moment when men returned from their labour and the
street echoed to slow, splashing boots and human voices lifted in
many moods. Children cried to each other and hastened home from
school; women, indicated in the dark by the white oblongs of their
aprons, flitted between the cottage doors and the shops; suddenly
came barking of dogs and a pitter-patter of five hundred little
hoofs, where a flock of sheep passed through the village to an open
gate beyond. As they went, a fan of light from the post-office
window found their fleeces and flashed upon them during their brief
transit from darkness back into darkness again.
Behind the sheep came Joe Tapson, and beside him walked Jarratt
Weekes. They were discussing Brendon, and the widower talked, while
the other listened to him.
"Turned me off, like a worn-out dog, for no reason on God's earth
except I was losing my nature and getting old! May the time come
when the same happens to him; may I live to see him begging his
bread--that's what I pray; and me, now I'm up in years, brought down
to do a common drover's work and thankful for a roof to cover me."
"Wanted a younger and spryer man, I suppose," said Jarratt
indifferently. "Don't see you've got much call to grumble. 'Tis the
curse of all men who have to trust to their bodies for a living and
not their brains, that a time comes when they be worn out. I heard
from Sarah Jane that Daniel was sorry to be rid of you, only he
couldn't help it in justice to the farm. She told me Mr. Woodrow
gave you five pounds when you left."
"What's that? 'Tis nothing against the cruelty of flinging me off.
They don't fling Prout off, though he's far more useless than me.
They don't sack that sour-faced, sour-minded bag of bones, Tabitha."
"They are old servants--retainers. 'Tis quite a different matter.
Here's my way. I hope you'll get a fixed job soon. But I can't help
you; my luck's out too, and I'm a long way worse off than you for the
minute. You've got only your own carcase to think of; I've got a
wife and children."
Tapson departed behind the sheep, and Jarratt Weekes dropped in upon
his mother. He found her out, but Sarah Jane had also come to see
Hephzibah. She was talking to Philip when the huckster's son arrived.
"Can't wait no more, Mr. Weekes. Tell your wife--why, here's
Jarratt! Where's your mother got to, Jar?"
"I want her myself," he said. "Down there chattering to the people
at Little Lydford, I suppose, and setting the world right in general,
no doubt."
"I can't wait no longer, else Daniel will fear for me. 'Twas only
about the butter. How be you faring, and how's Mary? Haven't seen
her this longful time."
"She thought you'd forgot her, like one or two more of late."
"You say that. Mary never did. She knows me a long sight better
than that."
"I'll see you part of your road," said Jarratt. "I want to speak to
you; and you want to speak to me."
He referred to a previous conversation.
Sarah Jane nodded, bade Mr. Weekes good-bye, and went out with
Jarratt.
"What did he say? But I know. You'd have let me hear before now if
the man had any wish to befriend me. Did you ask for Mary's sake?
That was the only chance I know."
"I did. I said how she'd been troubled beyond reason of late, and
that the money would go far to lessen her load. I asked more than
once for her, and he was sorry he couldn't do it. You know him. He
doesn't make excuses or anything like that. He just said that if he
could have done it, he would have, and gladly. But it's out of his
power, so there's an end. Won't anybody else oblige you? Wouldn't
Mr. Churchward?"
"He can't. He's got that great, slack, good-for-nought William on
his hands again. How he endures the worthless rascal beats me; but
so it is. A pity your husband don't see his way--a very great pity
indeed."
"I feel the same, I'm sure. I wish there was anything I could do for
Mary. Would it rest her if I was to take your eldest boy home along
with me for a bit?"
He shook his head.
"No, no; 'tisn't little things like that; 'tis the big thing of
having to find three figures and lose money on it. I know right well
Brendon could do it. And I'll tell you more than that: he's making a
mistake not to."
"'Tis out of his power, I tell you."
"I know better."
"You oughtn't to speak so."
"Oughtn't I? Well, we all do what we oughtn't sometimes--even you
and Daniel. Tell him this: that I want the money badly and I make it
a very special favour, and I shall be greatly obliged to him, for all
our sakes, if he'll manage to find it for me by Ladyday next. Tell
him that. And use what influence you've got, Sarah Jane. You know
what I felt for you once--well, I'm fond enough of you still--much
too fond to bring any trouble on you if I can prevent it. So try
with all your might to get Dan to see sense."
He left her no time to answer, but turned away abruptly. She stood
still a moment, then, in deep astonishment went on her way; and
presently told Daniel of the matter.
"He's desperate seemingly," said her husband. "Even so he talked to
me, but dared not go quite so far as he did to you. Threats be the
weapons of weak men. He was always fond of talking rather large.
Even so Joe Tapson spoke when he had to go. The good I did him was
not remembered. He cared nothing for that. As for Weekes, I can't
help him, and there's an end of it."
Brendon dismissed the subject from his mind and bade Sarah Jane do
the like. He went on his way, and life with its thousand calls soon
made him forget the tribulations of Jarratt Weekes. His wife,
however, did not overlook them, because, when possible, she visited
Mary and heard of the increasing difficulties of her husband.
And Jarratt himself allowed embarrassment to breed ferocity, as
happens often with small-minded men. When he left Sarah Jane after
uttering his threat, he returned to Lydford and went to drink at the
Castle Inn. Full well he knew that Daniel Brendon was not to be
moved, and he dared not approach him directly for fear of actual
injury to himself. But he had reached striking point; out of his own
vexed and troubled heart rose a fierce longing to bring vexation and
trouble upon others. He scarcely realized the terrific gravity of
any attack on Brendon at this juncture, for the years had dulled his
memory, and only one main fact respecting Daniel's wife stuck there.
Given prosperity and sustained success, he might never have struck;
but now a time had come when misfortune played the lodestone and drew
from him an active and avid malignity. He smarted to see the other
rise from strength to strength. He did not perceive that even
rumours of the truth would bring absolute and utter ruination, or he
might have hesitated. All he designed as yet was a drop of gall for
Brendon's full cup of sweetness. He thought how to embitter; but he
did not desire to poison. He failed, as many a coarse-minded soul
fails, to perceive that what for him might be no more than affliction
and transitory torment, to a greater spirit must mean everlasting
wreck and perdition.
With a mind quite empty he entered the inn, ordered his drink and
waited to catch the thread of the conversation before taking his part
in it. Taverner was there, and old Huggins. The latter talked, and
half-a dozen men in the bar listened to him. Noah Pearn served his
customer with liquor and explained the subject.
"Valentine here be running on the past to-day, and he's gone back
fifty years in his memory as easy as we go back a month. He often
will after a third glass. 'Tis a pity there's none to write down the
things he calls home; for they'll all perish with him, and some of
'em be very well worth remembering."
He stopped, and they listened to the ancient.
"Them days of barley bread! But which among you folk ever tasted it?
Harsh it was and made us far shorter and sharper than we be nowadays.
I've seed a chap buried at cross-roads with a stake drove through his
carcase. 'Twas thought he'd killed hisself, and cross-roads was the
grave of such people then. By night they buried him; and by night
they dug him up again."
"Dug him up, Val!" cried Mr. Pearn. "Surely not. What for did they
dig him up again?"
"Because a year later 'twas found that he'd died by lawful murder and
never took his life at all! A valiant man, as stopped coaches on the
Launceston Road, was catched red-handed, and tried to Exeter, and
hanged 'pon Gibbet Hill above Mary Tavy. The last hanging there
'twas--somewhere about the year 1790, I reckon, or may have been
later. But I went to see the sight, as a small boy, and afore they
turned the bold feller off, he confessed that among other wicked
things, he'd put a bullet through the chap we buried, because the
chap had seed him stop a coach and marked him. And he'd left a old
hoss-pistol by the chap a purpose to make it look as if he'd done it
hisself. So they dug him up again and gived his fragments a proper
box, and laid him in holy ground, and parson made a whole-hearted
speech about it, and forgived everybody, as he hoped to be forgiven."
"The things you've seen!" murmured a young man.
"True for you--few living have seen the like. Ripe old customs, as
be gone past recalling. And religion at the back of all we did and
thought in them days. Even wassailing the apple-trees be dying out,
and charms, and all them high ways we had of reproving lightness and
sin, and punishing evil-doers afore the nation. I never seed a human
creature whipped at the cart-tail myself, and I'm glad I didn't, for
that's a very horrid idea, though 'twas often well enough deserved;
but other things I have seen, when the evil-doer has been catched out
in his sins and held up in the sight of all men. 'Twas a sign, no
doubt, that men were rising in knowledge and understanding when we
punished their minds instead of their backs, and made them a sign and
a byword without putting a hand upon 'em."
Mr. Huggins paused, quite weary. He had been talking a long time,
and before Weekes arrived he had sung an old song to an old tune.
"Wonnerful form he's in," whispered Taverner. "I hope it ban't the
last flicker of the candle, and we shall hear presently the cold have
took him off. He'd be quite a loss in company."
Weekes nodded. Certain words let drop by the venerable chronicler
had fallen upon the hungry soil of his mind and taken root there.
Now he desired further speech with Valentine, and presently offered
him an arm upon his way.
"I must get you to sing that song to me," he said. "You'm a
wonderful old man, Val. To think that you can sing and mind a tune
and the words and everything, and you up eighty-three or more."
"'Tis so. Not a note out of place, I believe, though the high ones
roll up into my head and miscarry somewhat. Still there 'tis: I've
got it; and a many others I've got as was thought pretty singing in
my young manhood, but wouldn't be vitty now. The times be altered,
and if I singed a thing or two I know right well, you'd think I was a
very coarse-minded old chap. Ideas have changed."
"Yes; but human nature hasn't. Did you punish frail folk then?
There was skimmitty riding, wasn't there?"
"Certainly there was; and a thing oftener done, because dreadfuller
and more solemn-like, was burying. 'Twas a very heart-shaking
affair, and the manner of it was this. Suppose a man and woman did
wrong, owing to the power of nature upon them, or the husband being
away from home, or some other natural cause, then, if 'twas found out
against 'em, the people rose up and acted a funeral. Everything was
done decently and in order. But you had to do it on private land,
else 'twas an unlawful assembling, like a prize-fight or a
cock-fight, and might get you into trouble. When the land was
chosen, skilled hands made two puppets as much like the parties as
their craft could; and they was dressed in grave-clothes, or else
common clothes, and put in coffins. Then some man who was up to it,
read the service, and the dolls were nailed home into their boxes,
and buried underground with all the dignity of real dead people. The
service was read, and if a chap had a clever tongue, he'd preach a
bit and lash the erring victims all he could. I've knowed cases when
a man faced it out and laughed at his own burying, and stood beer to
the mourners; and I've known cases when the parties was saved by it,
and turned to the Almighty, and was forgiven by all men; and I've
known cases where the burial was a mistake and the man and woman were
both quite innocent. A choir and undertaker and all, mind you. And,
besides such things as that, I've seen witches ducked, and scolds
bridled--in fact, 'twould puzzle me to tell you what I haven't seen
in my time."
Jarratt, however, kept him to the former matter, and won various
other details of the old ceremony before he bade Valentine farewell.
His mind was stored with a fantastic medley of ideas and
possibilities when he returned to his home; and on the following
evening he re-visited Mr. Huggins and learnt more concerning the
subject that now so largely interested him.