here for a while." They were passing a roomy dull building, the museum,
and they went in together. It was a vast hollow-sounding flagstone
place that had a central brightness fading into dim recesses and
galleries of gloom. They examined a monster skeleton of something
like an elephant, three stuffed apes and a picture of the dodo. Kate
stood before them without interest or amusement, she just contemplated
them. What did she want with an elephant, an ape, or a dodo! The glass
exhibit cases were leaned upon by them, the pieces of coal neatly
arranged and labelled were stared at, besides the pieces of granite or
coloured rock with long names ending in _orite_, _dorite_ and _sorite_
and so on to the precious gems including an imitation, as big as a
bun, of a noted diamond. They leaned over them, repeating the names
on the labels with the quintessence of vacuity. They hated it. There
were beetles and worms of horror, butterflies of beauty, and birds
that had been stuffed for so long that they seemed to be intoxicated;
their beaks fitted them as loosely as a drunkard's hat, their glassy
eyes were pathetically vague. After ascending a flight of stone steps
David and Kate stooped for a long time over a case of sea-anemones
that had been reproduced in gelatine by a German with a fancy for such
things. From the railed balcony they could peer down into the well of
the fusty-smelling museum. No one else was visiting it, they were alone
with all things dead, things that had died millions of years ago and
were yet simulating life. A footfall sounded so harsh in the corridors,
boomed with such clangour, that they took slow diffident steps,
almost tiptoeing, while Kate scarcely spoke at all and he conversed
in murmurs. Whenever he coughed the whole place seemed to shudder. In
the recess, hidden from prying eyes, David clasped her willing body in
his arms. For once she was unshrinking and returned his fervour. The
vastness, the emptiness, the deadness, worked upon their feelings with
intense magic.
"Love me, David," she murmured, and when they moved away from the
gelatinous sea-urchins she kept both her arms clasped around him as
they walked the length of the empty corridor. He could not perceive her
intimations, their meaning was dark to him. She was so altered, this
was another Kate.
"I have come home to make it all up to you," she repeated, and he
scarcely dared to understand her.
They approached a lecture room; the door was open, the room was empty,
they went in and stood near the platform. The place was arranged like
a tiny theatre, tiers of desks rising in half circles on three sides
high up towards the ceiling. A small platform with a lecturer's desk
confronted the rising tiers; on the wall behind it a large white sheet;
a magic lantern on a pedestal was near and a blackboard on an easel.
A pencil of white chalk lay broken on the floor. Behind the easel was
a piano, with a duster on its lid. The room smelled of spilled acids.
The lover's steps upon the wooden floor echoed louder than ever after
their peregrination upon the flagstones; they were timid of the sound
and stood still, close together, silent. He touched her bosom and
pressed her to his heart, but all her surrender seemed strange and
nerveless. She was almost violently different; he had liked her old
rejections, they were fiery and passionate. He scarce knew what to
do, he understood her less than ever now. Dressed as she was in thick
winter clothes it was like embracing a tree, it tired him. She lay in
his arms waiting, waiting, until he felt almost stifled. Something like
the smell of the acids came from her fur necklet. He was glad when she
stood up, but she was looking at him intently. To cover his uneasiness
he went to the blackboard and picking up a piece of chalk he wrote the
first inconsequent words that came into his mind. Kate stood where he
had left her, staring at the board as he traced the words upon it: _We
are but little children weak_.
Laughing softly she strolled towards him.
"What do you write that for? I know what it is."
"What it is!--well, what is it?"
She took the chalk from his fingers.
"It's a hymn," she went on "it goes...."
"A hymn!" he cried, "I did not know that."
Underneath the one he had written she was now writing another line on
the board: _Nor born to any high estate_.
"Of course," he whispered, "I remember it now, I sang it as a child--at
school--go on, go on."
But she had thereupon suddenly turned away, silent, dropping her hands
to her side. One of her old black moods had seized her. He let her go
and picking up another fragment of chalk completed the verse:
_What can we do for Jesu's sake
Who is so high and good and great?_
She turned when he had finished and without a word walked loudly to the
piano, fetched the duster and rubbed out the words they had written on
the blackboard. She was glaring at him.
"How absurd you are"--he was annoyed--"let us go out and get some tea."
He wandered off to the door, but she did not follow. He stood just
outside gazing vacantly at a stuffed jay that had an indigo eye. He
looked into the room again. She was there still just as he had left
her; her head bent, her hands hanging clasped before her, the dimness
covering and caressing her--a figure full of sad thoughts. He ran to
her and crushed her in his arms again:
"Kate, my lovely."
She was saying brokenly: "You know what I said. I've come to make it
all up to you. I promised, didn't I?"
Something shuddered in his very soul--too late, too late, this was no
love for him. The magic lantern looked a stupid childish toy, the smell
of the acid was repulsive. Of all they had written upon the blackboard
one word dimly remained: _Jesu_.
She stirred in his arms. "You are changed, David."
"Changed, yes, everything is changed."
"This is just like a theatre, like a play, as if we were acting."
"Yes, as if we were acting. But we are not acting. Let us go up and sit
in the gallery."
They ascended the steps to the top ring of desks and looked down to
the tiny platform and the white curtain. She sat fondling his hands,
leaning against him.
"Have you ever acted--you would do it so well?"
"Why do you say that? Am I at all histrionic?"
"Does that mean insincere? O no. But you are the person one expects to
be able to do anything."
"Nonsense! I've never acted. I suppose I could. It isn't difficult, you
haven't to be clever, only courageous. I should think it very easy to
be only an ordinary actor, but I'm wrong, no doubt. I thought it was
easy to write--to write a play--until I tried. I once engaged myself
to write a little play for some students to act. I had never done such
a thing before and like other idiots I thought I hadn't ever done it
simply because I hadn't ever wanted to. Heavens, how harassed I was
and how ashamed! I could not do it. I got no further than the author's
speech."
"Well that was something. Tell me it."
"It's nothing to do with the play. It's what the author says to the
audience when the play is finished."
She insisted on hearing it whatever it was. "O well," he said at last.
"Let's do that properly, at least. I'll go down there and deliver
it from the stage. You must pretend that you are the enthusiastic
audience. Come and sit in the stalls."
They went down together.
"Now imagine that this curtain goes up and I suddenly appear."
Kate faintly clapped her hands. He stood upon the platform facing her
and taking off his hat, began:
"Ladies and Gentlemen.
"I am so deeply touched by the warmth of this reception, this utterly
undeserved appreciation, that--forgive me--I have forgotten the
speech I had carefully prepared in anticipation of it. Let me meet
my obligation by telling you a story; I think it is true, I made it
up myself. Once upon a time there was a poor playwright--something
like me--who wrote a play--something like this--and at the end of the
performance the audience, a remarkably handsome well-fed intellectual
audience--something like this--called him before the curtain and
demanded a speech. He protested that he was unprepared and asked
them to allow him to tell them a story--something like this. Well,
that, too, was a remarkably handsome well-fed intellectual audience,
so they didn't mind and he began again, Once upon a time a poor
playwright,--and was just about to repeat the story I have already
twice told you when suddenly, without a word of warning, without a
sound, without a compunction, the curtain swooped down and chopped him
clean in half."
Masterman made an elaborate obeisance and stepped off the platform.
"Is that all?" asked Kate.
"That's all."
At that moment a loud bell clanged throughout the building signifying
that the museum was about to close.
"Come along!" he cried, but Kate did not move, she still sat in the
stalls.
"Don't leave me, David, I want to hear the play," she said archly.
"There _was_ no play and there _is_ no play. Come, or we shall be
locked in for the night."
Still she sat on. He went to her and seized her hands.
"What does it matter!" she whispered, embracing him. "I want to make it
all up to you."
He was astoundingly moved. She was marvellously changed. If she hadn't
the beauty of perfection she had some of the perfection of beauty. He
adored her.
"But no," he said, "it won't do, it really won't. Come, I have got to
buy you something at once, a ring with a diamond in it, as big as a
bun, an engagement ring, quickly, or the shops will be shut."
He dragged the stammering bewildered girl away, down the stairs and
into the street. The rain had ceased, the sunset sky was bright and
Masterman was intensely happy.
A BROADSHEET BALLAD
A BROADSHEET BALLAD
At noon the tiler and the mason stepped down from the roof of the
village church which they were repairing and crossed over the road
to the tavern to eat their dinner. It had been a nice little morning
but there were clouds massing in the south; Sam, the tiler, remarked
that it looked like thunder. The two men sat in the dim little taproom
eating, Bob, the mason, at the same time reading from a newspaper an
account of a trial for murder.
"I dunno what thunder looks like," Bob said, "but I reckon this chap is
going to be hung, though I can't rightly say for why. To my thinking he
didn't do it at all: but murder's a bloody thing and someone ought to
suffer for it."
"I don't think," spluttered Sam, as he impaled a flat piece of beetroot
on the point of a pocket-knife and prepared to contemplate it with
patience until his stuffed mouth was ready to receive it, "he ought to
be hung."
"There can be no other end for him though, with a mob of lawyers like
that, and a jury too ... why the rope's half round his neck this
minute; he'll be in glory within a month; they only have three Sundays,
you know, between the sentence and the execution. Well, hark at that
rain then!"
A shower that began as a playful sprinkle grew to a powerful steady
summer downpour. It splashed in the open window and the dim room grew
more dim, and cool.
"Hanging's a dreadful thing," continued Sam, "and 'tis often unjust
I've no doubt, I've no doubt at all."
"Unjust! I tell you ... at majority of trials those who give their
evidence mostly knows nothing at all about the matter; them as knows a
lot--they stays at home and don't budge, not likely!"
"No? But why?"
"Why? They has their reasons. I know that, I knows it for truth ...
hark at that rain, it's made the room feel cold."
They watched the downfall in complete silence for some moments.
"Hanging's a dreadful thing," Sam at length repeated, with almost a
sigh.
"I can tell you a tale about that, Sam, in a minute," said the other.
He began to fill his pipe from Sam's brass box, which was labelled
cough lozenges and smelled of paregoric.
"Just about ten years ago I was working over in Cotswold country. I
remember I'd been into Gloucester one Saturday afternoon and it rained.
I was jogging along home in a carrier's van; I never seen it rain like
that afore, no, nor never afterwards, not like that. Br..r..r..r! it
came down ... bashing! And we came to a cross-roads where there's a
public house called _The Wheel of Fortune_, very lonely and onsheltered
it is just there. I seed a young woman standing in the porch awaiting
us, but the carrier was wet and tired and angry or something and
wouldn't stop. 'No room'--he bawled out to her--'full up, can't take
you!' and he drove on. 'For the love o' God, mate,'--I says--pull up
and take that young creature! She's ... she's ... can't you see!' 'But
I'm all behind as 'tis', he shouts to me, 'you knows your gospel,
don't you: time and tide wait for no man?' 'Ah, but dammit all, they
always call for a feller,' I says. With that he turned round and we
drove back for the girl. She clumb in and sat on my knees; I squat on
a tub of vinegar, there was nowhere else and I was right and all, she
was going on for a birth. Well, the old van rattled away for six or
seven miles; whenever it stopped you could hear the rain clattering on
the tarpolin, or sounding outside on the grass as if it was breathing
hard, and the old horse steamed and shivered with it. I had knowed
the girl once in a friendly way, a pretty young creature, but now she
was white and sorrowful and wouldn't say much. By and bye we came to
another cross-roads near a village, and she got out there. 'Good day,
my gal,' I says, affable like, and; 'Thank you, sir,' says she, and
off she popped in the rain with her umbrella up. A rare pretty girl,
quite young, I'd met her before, a girl you could get uncommon fond of,
you know, but I didn't meet her afterwards: she was mixed up in a bad
business. It all happened in the next six months while I was working
round those parts. Everybody knew of it. This girl's name was Edith and
she had a younger sister Agnes. Their father was old Harry Mallerton,
kept _The British Oak_ at North Quainy; he stuttered. Well this Edith
had a love affair with a young chap William, and having a very loving
nature she behaved foolish. Then she couldn't bring the chap up to the
scratch nohow by herself, and of course she was afraid to tell her
mother or father: you know how girls are after being so pesky natural,
they fear, O they do fear! But soon it couldn't be hidden any longer
as she was living at home with them all, so she wrote a letter to her
mother. 'Dear Mother,' she wrote, and told her all about her trouble.
"By all accounts the mother was angry as an old lion, but Harry took it
calm like and sent for young William, who'd not come at first. He lived
close by in the village, so they went down at last and fetched him.
"'All right, yes,' he said, 'I'll do what's lawful to be done. There
you are, I can't say no fairer, that I can't.'
"'No,' they said, 'you can't.'
"So he kissed the girl and off he went, promising to call in and settle
affairs in a day or two. The next day Agnes, which was the younger
girl, she also wrote a note to her mother telling her some more strange
news.
"'God above!' the mother cried out, 'can it be true, both of you girls,
my own daughters, and by the same man! O, whatever were you thinking
on, both of ye! Whatever can be done now!'"
"What!" ejaculated Sam, "both on 'em, both on 'em!"
"As true as God's my mercy--both on 'em--same chap. Ah! Mrs. Mallerton
was afraid to tell her husband at first, for old Harry was the devil
born again when he were roused up, so she sent for young William
herself, who'd not come again, of course, not likely. But they made him
come, O yes, when they told the girls' father.
"'Well, may I go to my d..d..d..damnation at once!' roared old
Harry--he stuttered you know--'at once, if that ain't a good one!' So
he took off his coat, he took up a stick, he walked down street to
William and cut him off his legs. Then he beat him till he howled for
his mercy, but you couldn't stop old Harry once he were roused up--he
was the devil born again. They do say as he beat him for a solid hour;
I can't say as to that, but then old Harry picked him up and carried
him off to _The British Oak_ on his own back, and threw him down in
his own kitchen between his own two girls like a dead dog. They do say
that the little one Agnes flew at her father like a raging cat until he
knocked her senseless with a clout over head; rough man he was."
"Well, a' called for it sure," commented Sam.
"Her did;" agreed Bob, "but she was the quietest known girl for miles
round those parts, very shy and quiet."
"A shady lane breeds mud," said Sam.
"What do you say?--O ah!--mud, yes. But pretty girls both, girls you
could get very fond of, skin like apple bloom, and as like as two pinks
they were. They had to decide which of them William was to marry."
"Of course, ah!"
"'I'll marry Agnes,' says he."
"'You'll not,' says the old man, 'you'll marry Edie.'"
"'No I won't,' William says, 'it's Agnes I love and I'll be married
to her or I won't be married to e'er of 'em.' All the time Edith sat
quiet, dumb as a shovel, never a word, crying a bit; but they do say
the young one went on like a ... a young ... Jew."
"The Jezebel!" commented Sam.
"You may say it; but wait, my man, just wait. Another cup of beer? We
can't go back to church until this humbugging rain have stopped."
"No, that we can't."
"It's my belief the 'bugging rain won't stop this side of four o'clock."
"And if the roof don't hold it off it 'ull spoil they Lord's
Commandments that's just done up on the chancel front."
"O, they be dry by now." Bob spoke re-assuringly and then continued his
tale. "'I'll marry Agnes or I won't marry nobody,' William says, and
they couldn't budge him. No, old Harry cracked on but he wouldn't have
it, and at last Harry says: 'It's like this.' He pulls a half-crown out
of his pocket and, 'heads it's Agnes,' he says, 'or tails it's Edith,'
he says."
"Never! Ha! ha!" cried Sam.
"Heads it's Agnes, tails it's Edie, so help me God. And it come down
Agnes, yes, heads it was--Agnes--and so there they were."
"And they lived happy ever after?"
"Happy! You don't know your human nature, Sam; wherever was you brought
up? 'Heads it's Agnes,' said old Harry, and at that Agnes flung her
arms round William's neck and was for going off with him then and
there; ha! But this is how it happened about that. William hadn't any
kindred, he was a lodger in the village, and his landlady wouldn't have
him in her house one mortal hour when she heard all of it; give him
the rightabout there and then. He couldn't get lodgings anywhere else,
nobody would have anything to do with him. So of course, for safety's
sake, old Harry had to take him, and there they all lived together at
_The British Oak_--all in one happy family. But they girls couldn't
bide the sight of each other, so their father cleaned up an old
outhouse in his yard that was used for carts and hens and put William
and his Agnes out in it. And there they had to bide. They had a couple
of chairs, a sofa, and a bed and that kind of thing, and the young one
made it quite snug."
"'Twas a hard thing for that other, that Edie, Bob."
"It was hard, Sam, in a way, and all this was happening just afore
I met her in the carrier's van. She was very sad and solemn then;
a pretty girl, one you could like. Ah, you may choke me, but there
they lived together. Edie never opened her lips to either of them
again, and her father sided with her, too. What was worse, it came
out after the marriage that Agnes was quite free of trouble--it was
only a trumped-up game between her and this William because he fancied
her better than the other one. And they never had no child, them two,
though when poor Edie's mischance come along I be damned if Agnes
weren't fonder of it than its own mother, a jolly sight more fonder,
and William--he fair worshipped it."
"You don't say!"
"I do. 'Twas a rum go, that, and Agnes worshipped it, a fact, can prove
it by scores of people to this day, scores, in them parts. William and
Agnes worshipped it, and Edie--she just looked on, long of it all, in
the same house with them, though she never opened her lips again to her
young sister to the day of her death."
"Ah, she died? Well, it's the only way out of such a tangle, poor
woman."
"You're sympathising with the wrong party." Bob filled his pipe again
from the brass box; he ignited it with deliberation; going to the open
window he spat into a puddle in the road. "The wrong party, Sam; 'twas
Agnes that died. She was found on the sofa one morning stone dead, dead
as a adder."
"God bless me," murmured Sam.
"Poisoned," added Bob, puffing serenely.
"Poisoned!"
Bob repeated the word 'poisoned.' "This was the way of it," he
continued; "one morning the mother went out in the yard to collect her
eggs, and she began calling out; 'Edie, Edie, here a minute, come and
look where that hen have laid her egg; I would never have believed it,'
she says. And when Edie went out her mother led her round the back of
the outhouse, and there on the top of a wall this hen had laid an egg.
'I would never have believed it, Edie,' she says, 'scooped out a nest
there beautiful, ain't she; I wondered where her was laying. T'other
morning the dog brought an egg round in his mouth and laid it on the
doormat. There now, Aggie, Aggie, here a minute, come and look where
the hen have laid that egg.' And as Aggie didn't answer the mother went
in and found her on the sofa in the outhouse, stone dead."
"How'd they account for it?" asked Sam, after a brief interval.
"That's what brings me to the point about this young feller that's
going to be hung," said Bob, tapping the newspaper that lay upon the
bench. "I don't know what would lie between two young women in a
wrangle of that sort; some would get over it quick, but some would
never sleep soundly any more not for a minute of their mortal lives.
Edie must have been one of that sort. There's people living there now
as could tell a lot if they'd a mind to it. Some knowed all about it;
could tell you the very shop where Edith managed to get hold of the
poison, and could describe to me or to you just how she administrated
it in a glass of barley water. Old Harry knew all about it, he knew all
about everything, but he favoured Edith and he never budged a word.
Clever old chap was Harry, and nothing came out against Edie at the
inquest--nor the trial neither."
"Was there a trial then?"
"There was a kind of a trial. Naturally. A beautiful trial. The police
came and fetched poor William, they took him away and in due course he
was hanged."
"William! But what had he got to do with it?"
"Nothing. It was rough on him, but he hadn't played straight, and so
nobody struck up for him. They made out a case against him--there was
some unlucky bit of evidence which I'll take my oath old Harry knew
something about--and William was done for. Ah, when things take a turn
against you it's as certain as twelve o'clock, when they take a turn;
you get no more chance than a rabbit from a weasel. It's like dropping
your matches into a stream, you needn't waste the bending of your back
to pick them out--they're no good on, they'll never strike again. And
Edith, she sat in court through it all, very white and trembling and
sorrowful, but when the judge put his black cap on they do say she
blushed and looked across at William and gave a bit of a smile. Well,
she had to suffer for his doings, so why shouldn't he suffer for hers.
That's how I look at it...."
"But God-a-mighty...!"
"Yes, God-a-mighty knows. Pretty girls they were, both, and as like as
two pinks."
There was quiet for some moments while the tiler and the mason emptied
their cups of beer. "I think," said Sam then, "the rain's give over
now."
"Ah, that it has," cried Bob. "Let's go and do a bit more on this
'bugging church or she won't be done afore Christmas."
COTTON
COTTON