THE RETURN OF CHERRY
It was Aunt Miriam, daughter to Obadiah Cherry, the porter’s deceased
godfather, who suggested, organised and stage-managed the gathering of
the Cherry clan to welcome the broken one out of hospital. On account
of the economic fight facing the porter, it was agreed that “everybody
should bring their own”--making the feast a communal one. Aunt Miriam
said it would cheer Cherry up if he saw they were “standing by him.”
There had not been such a rally since the last family gathering, when
Obie had died, leaving Uncle Silas, the oldest living branch of the
Cherry tree, with the never-failing regret that he had refused to poor
Obie the sum of five shillings.
Uncle Silas was the first arrival at the Cheer-up Party.
He wore the self-same coat in which he had been one of Obie’s carriers.
As he had enlarged considerably since then, he bore a comical
resemblance to an almost bursting caterpillar, with the most knowing of
pink faces, and the bluest of Cherry-blue eyes.
“Afternoon, Nan. Afternoon, Mir’am,” he panted.
The way from Cloughfold Farm to this house was long and weary, hard as
the proverbial road of transgressors. He had undertaken it as a penance
for not lending Obie that money, fifteen years ago.
He was fumbling to bring something out from a back pocket.
Polly had to help him out with it.
“Thear!” said Aunt Miriam.
She sat it down by the pyramid of pork pies Granny Harker had sent as
her contribution.
The little gesture of the sanctimonious-looking Miriam gave the
key-note to the whole gathering that was to come. She was fixing things
up for the mighty one fallen. They were going to do their duties as
Christians and stand by the one who had ever rebuffed all attempts at
family consolation on account of his lack of worldly possessions, and
his termagant of a wife.
“Ay, ay, this is a weary day,” said Uncle Silas, sitting down. “There’s
allus summat for somebody.”
He looked across at Nan, but the shrew did not reply. Her attempts at
dressing for a mournful occasion had somehow contrived to bring out
vast differences between herself and Miriam. The expression of her
countenance might suggest that she was trying hard to look overwhelmed
by greatness of the disaster that would face them in another hour,
stripped of hospital wrappings--the broken thing coming back to the
world of whole ones. Or it might only be that she was still struggling
with the momentous question of how to deal with Cherry’s ten shillings
weekly.
“God works in a mysterious way,” observed Aunt Miriam. “I don’t think
our family’s been as grateful as it might ha’ been. Maybe this has
come----”
“Nay, nay, lass,” said Uncle Silas. “We’ll not ha’ that. Accidents is
accidents.”
He took a consoling pinch of snuff.
“We’se ha’ to do as weel as we can,” he said, as valiantly and nobly
as if they were his legs that were gone. “We mun look on th’ breet
side. An’ after a’--he’s alive. That’s summat.”
There was a short silence.
The optimism of Uncle Silas somehow or other had the effect of
conjuring up all the tragedy of the big porter’s fall.
“He’se done weel,” said Aunt Miriam, striving against this. “If he
could only think so. He’se got out a month afore they thought he would.
Grand healin’ flesh, they said, he had. An’--it’ll be just as he makes
it, how he surrenders hissel’ to it.”
Uncle Silas abruptly changed the topic.
Surrender was Aunt Miriam’s pet subject--how you gained by losing--and
won by giving up.
“Ay, ay,” said Uncle Silas, returning to the healing. “Flesh heals soon
enough. It’s th’ other that plays owd Nick. It’s when yo’ get a raw
place where nobody can put sauve on. An’ a man doesn’t come down from
six foot one--to half a man, as you might say, without a bonnie big
bang inside him.”
“That’s where th’ Lord will help him,” said Aunt Miriam.
“Well, God helps him as helps hissel’,” said Uncle Silas. “An’ pity
without relief is like mustard without beef. We shall see what we shall
see.” With which he rose from his chair, flecked his leggings with a
tenderness that showed he appreciated the full value of legs, and went
off with an air that said he had some trump card to play that would
affect the destiny of his kinsman.
Polly showed him into the parlour and sat down with him on the
couch--brightening its dinginess with her blue muslin dress--making, as
Uncle Silas always said, “the only ornymint about the place.” For some
minutes they stared at a Siberian rabbit under a globe, a rabbit amidst
barren snows, with dark, and sardonic glance of eye.
A smart patter of rain on the window-pane made the old man observe that
it was fine growing weather. Polly made no answer.
“Coming to Cherrydale Fair?” he queried, with a droll look.
He regarded her proudly and with a certain surprise.
She had thinned a little during the six months. Her hair was up. When
she turned her head it made a perfectly round ball of glory behind her
head. Some of the cocksureness had faded from her look.
She had altered, with that subtle alteration which comes from the
inside, and shines through the flesh. In repose her face had shadows
of the discontent endured in this transition from girlhood to
womanhood--this awkward, moody, dangerous age. There was something
elusive in her personality.
“Coming to the fair and singing at the Charity,” she answered.
In contradistinction to the lessening of the cocksureness in her look,
her voice had an excess of it, as if some spiritual war was on within
her.
Uncle Silas surveyed her again.
She bore the admiring pride of this old, old man, like a plant that
thrives and spreads out under it.
“Ay. Tha’ll do,” said the old pig-breeder, his head on one side.
“Tha’ll pass in a crowd without much shovin’. ‘My face is my fortune,
sir, she said.’ Well, sometimes ’tis and sometimes ’tisn’t.” Then he
stopped, as about to say something else forgetfully. He had remembered
Granny’s prodigal daughter, and that he had a message to convey from
her to Granny.
Polly’s face had quietened down out of the pleased vanity in which
Uncle Silas was her mirror.
He stole a glance at her--when she was not looking, except at something
beyond and behind the Siberian rabbit. The girl looked--worried.
Uncle Silas grew solicitous. He leaned forwards, until his look
compelled Polly’s. He had a mysterious air.
Polly’s eyes were wide in surprise.
Uncle Silas made the most of this impression, did not speak out at
once, plumped his two fat hands the firmer on his fat knees, and then
spoke in a whisper that called for confidence.
“How has she bin wi’ thee, lass?” he asked, jerking his thumb slowly
towards the kitchen.
Polly’s surprise changed into expressions that made it a study. It’s
final one, the one that remained on top, made Uncle Silas shift his
position and feel that he had made a mistake.
“All right,” said a hard little voice.
Two young cold eyes stared back at him.
Then Uncle Silas broke into an uneasy laugh.
“Naught wrong, lass,” he said. “By th’ Mass! I didn’t know tha’d so
much Cherry in thee. Well,--it’ll happen serve thee weel. An’ a little
bit o’ Cherry goes a long way.”
Whilst in his own mind he was convinced that Nan hid been leading this
bonnie lass a regular devil’s dance.
Then he saw a face at the window.
“Ted--by goff!” he said, excitedly.
A young man was smiling in at them, somewhat sheepishly. He wore a red
tie with a bugle pin and had early snowdrops in his coat.
Polly went to open the door and take his cap.
Uncle Silas, through the crack of the parlour door, saw Ted looking at
her.
“Grown, hasn’t she?” he asked from within.
Ted nodded as he came in.
He stared again at the miracle of Polly.
Polly laughed.
Then Uncle Silas laughed.
And Ted laughed.
Ted’s laugh had trombone qualities that made Uncle Silas hold up a
fat forefinger to remind them there was tragedy in the house. And
the checked, worried look came back to Polly’s face. Tragedy on the
door-posts! And she--only lived in the sunshine.
She went to open the door once more.
“Uncle Bob Rimmer,” guessed Uncle Silas. “I can tell his foot. I’ve
ne’er sin him since Obie----” Whereupon he shook his head and sighed
heavily.
“Well, how are we?” asked a little man with bowed legs and a shining
head, and a short dab of a nose.
His voice matched his face.
He selected the easiest chair and dropped into it as by right divine.
“We’re here,” said Uncle Silas, solidly.
He looked it.
Uncle Bob took out a parcel and handed it to Polly, who took it into
the kitchen.
“_Ham_,” whispered Aunt Miriam.
Her expression was of pleased philanthropy.
She spread out the ham cheek by jowl with Uncle Silas’ somewhat scranny
pullet as if they were providing for Cherry for life.
After that the little front door was ever on the swing.
Within twenty minutes the parlour was packed in a way that justified
Uncle Silas’ remark that there was standing-room only. A couple of
dogs, one belonging to Bill Henry Cherry, local preacher and packman,
the other to a silent man addressed as “Jar-ge, lad,” kept up an
incessant rivalry of barking, whilst Martha, of Rainyharbour, also
kept up her rivalry of chatter against that of the preacher-packman’s
cherry-lipped wife, who would, according to Uncle Silas, flirt with
a stone-dead tom-cat. Beside the silent man with the glorious Irish
setter under his chair sat a little, neat, white-haired, black-aproned
old woman, who had brought her eternal crotchet with her. This was
Dinah Cherry, youngest sister of Silas, and great-aunt to Will Cherry.
Upon her cheek was a little bulbous growth, like a pink apple, into
which morphia went twice every day of her life. She was telling Martha
how it was that Martha couldn’t get a lythe on her puddings. Ted, the
organ-blower at Cherrydale old church, was telling how they caught a
rabbit, he and Bob Wild, right in the wood that was a stone’s-throw
from the parson’s garden.
Whereupon it was observed that Polly Cherry became very interested in
the subject of rabbit-catching, until--the silent man gave a jerk of
his finger towards the window he had never ceased to look through,
steadily.
“Nay----” said Uncle Silas, eager to put off the facing of the broken
thing.
The silent man nodded.
“It’s here,” he remarked.
Bill Henry Cherry cleared his throat as he always did, before giving
out a text. But he was visibly moved.
As for Uncle Silas, he was bracing himself up by giving good advice to
the others.
“Now then, yo’ women,” he sternly admonished the weaker sex. “No
eye-water on this business.”
“Ay,” said Uncle Bob Rimmer, from the window, “it’s it.”
The ambulance van had stopped outside the house. A small crowd that had
gathered waited to see what was to come forth from it. First of all
came the man in a white jacket, then a stretcher, draped respectably,
only Cherry’s face showing. It was white, and wore a twisted smile. So
much could be seen from the window before the crowd closed round--a
gaping thing that was made of eyes, human eyes, all staring curiously,
compassionately, morbidly, at this broken thing. The second man in the
white jacket admonished the thing that hedged nearer, ever nearer, to
see--to stare at the white face that was trying to smile.
“Polly!” called Uncle Silas, excitedly. “Open th’ door.”
But Polly had disappeared.
“Mir’am!” called Uncle Silas.
So it was Miriam, her sallow face set in a strained smile, who opened
the door of the house Cherry had been swept out of six months ago, to
return in this fashion.
As for Aunt Miriam, all the beautiful things she had meant to say
jumbled themselves up in her head, and all she could think of was to
warn the ambulance men, “Mind that mat”--for the mat had a big hole
in it. There was something unanswerable in Cherry’s face. Through its
whiteness, and that strange, twisted smile, the pain-lines woven about
mouth and brow, his eyes had the look of a stranger in a strange land,
who cannot tell the things he knows.
As for the parlour--it might have been tenanted by a company of ghosts,
listening to the march of the two men in white coats carrying this
strange kinsman of theirs into the kitchen--this man they knew, yet did
not know, this man who possibly had not yet found himself, for whom all
was chaos, throb of flesh and throb of soul, this broken giant being
jolted back to grapple with Life.
“This is--a day,” said Uncle Silas, mopping his brow. His tone had a
note of dejection very different from that he had used in the kitchen
before he had seen Cherry.
“Well--” said Uncle Bill Henry, clearing his throat again. “What had we
best do? Some of us had best go in!”
They listened again.
Cherry was evidently being seated in his chair. The casters squeaked.
“Easy there--easy does it,” said the second ambulance man.
“Right-o,” said Cherry.
His voice had lost some of its bigness, too, as if worn
thin--flabby-muscled, despondent at this horrible nightmare that was
proving itself every day a greater reality, and to which he would one
day have to accustom himself.
“Some of us should go in,” persisted Uncle Bill Henry, though he looked
as if he thought the most sensible plan was to bolt.
“Tha’rt a talker,” said Ted the organ-blower to the local preacher.
But he only glared in answer.
“Let’s all go,” said Uncle Bob Rimmer. “We can’t stop mutterin’ an’
mumblin’ here a’ day. An’ there’s naught to be fleyed on, as I see.”
“Wait till them chaps has gone,” said the silent man. The two men came
down the passage.
The door closed behind them.
It was not possible to defer the trying moment any longer.
“I think,” said the local preacher, in a whisper, “that this is a
woman’s job.” But Aunt Miriam, who had also retreated to the parlour
after the effort of opening the door for Cherry to pass in, shook her
head.
It was then that Aunt Dinah said quietly, “Why--I’ll go first.” Her
blue eyes were tearful, and the little pink apple on her cheek had gone
pinker.
“Shoo allus had a pluck,” said Uncle Silas, feebly.
So it was Aunt Dinah who walked into the kitchen where Cherry was
sitting, waiting for them. He had somewhat of the jaunty air with which
he had faced the world on that morning after giving Nan her thrashing.
But here was no grim determination that had marked him then. His hands
hung limply on the arms of his old chair.
The fairness of his complexion had become a bluey-whiteness, consequent
on his loss of blood. The genial smile was a twisted thing--gone
all awry, like life, like his vision that saw two Aunt Dinahs, both
struggling to keep calm and say the most fitting word.
After a time Aunt Dinah found it.
“God’s good, Will,” she said in a trouble way. “He tempers the wind to
the shorn lamb. He’s good.”
“Don’t upset yourself, Aunt,” said Cherry.
He spoke without that vitality that had characterised him--like a man
under the spell of opium.
“But, He is good. I’ve proved it,” said Aunt Dinah, as though she had
been contradicted; she then burst into tears.
The others filed in past the chair on which she had dropped.
Cherry bore the steady downpour of advice, solicitude, sympathy and
cheer-up philosophy without sense of resentment or appreciation. Only
his blanched fingers tapped the arms of his chair--a restless tattoo,
and he noticed that the old almanac with the crosses on the margin was
gone, whilst in its place was a framed picture--“Wedded Love.”
It was Aunt Miriam who brought Polly from an upper room where she had
hidden herself, Polly, with a watery smile and trembling chin, who slid
a cold little finger in her Dad’s hand, and propped herself against his
chair, struggling with herself.
“Ay, ay,” said Uncle Silas.
Cherry looked at his daughter.
She had obviously suffered during his absence from the haphazard house.
But it did not upset him in the least. He felt absurdly callous.
“She’s growin’ up, Cherry,” said Uncle Silas, admiringly.
The feminine portion of the onlookers, finding that Polly did not break
down, after all, wiped away the sympathetic water that had filled their
eyes.
“Ay. Some on us grows up, an’ some grows down,” said his sister Dinah,
referring to her own loss of inches from a slight stoop.
It was felt to be a clumsy remark.
Cherry did not notice it.
The passivity of the great, broken man gave him a half-dead look, in
contrast to those human beings around him, full of human sympathy.
But when Nan came into the kitchen he roused himself sufficiently to
say, “Well, Missus?”
Nan had not been crying.
That cold, unemotional part of his mind which noted everything, guessed
that she had kept out of the way so as to miss the display of family
affection. It amused him in a grim way. After all, he would get no
“sloppiness” from Nan. Nan was not eighty-eight parts water.
She did not answer that greeting of his, save by a glance that said she
saw him, a curious, furtive look that he felt searched his weakness.
“If you like,” said Uncle Silas, “we’ll all go an’ stand in th’
coal-nook whilst you do all your clippin’ an’ cussin’. Why, it’ll be
like a second honeymoon.” He winked knowingly.
“We can wait,” said the dwindled voice of the weary man. “Can’t we,
Nan?”
Her glance said that she had gathered the irony of his meaning.
Cherry had kept his skeleton locked up very closely. His family only
guessed that he and his did not “get on too well.”
“Well, I suppose we’ll have to make tea,” said Aunt Miriam, and put on
the cloth.
Cherry watched the cutting of great stacks of bread, with the feeling
of sickness the sight of food always gave him, now.
“There’ll be a pound o’ butter there out o’ that half-pound when tha’s
done, Mir’am,” said Uncle Silas, to the butterer.
Martha of Rainybarhour was setting out cakes, and watching Polly
critically, as a lazy young hussy. When Aggie went past Martha for
more plates they exchanged glances that told Cherry as plainly as if
they had spoken, that they were telling each other, “Well, what can yo’
expect, off a mother like that.”
Nan was setting the cups in a leisurely way, with a something in her
manner that plainly avowed Cherry’s folk were no friends of hers.
The way in which Aunt Miriam looked at the kettle, to see how it was
going on, gave her an affectation of great domestic virtues which Nan
overlooked entirely.
“When’s thy mother comin’, Will?” asked Aunt Dinah.
It was a plucky query.
There had been trouble between Nan and Grandma Cherry. Dinah thought
this was surely a time for letting by-gones be by-gones.
“She said she’d better not,” said Aunt Miriam. “It’d upset her too
much.”
Which was a diplomatic way of putting the truth that Grandma Cherry did
not know how she would be received in a house where she hadn’t been for
fourteen years.
“Oh, Mir’am, we’se ne’er eat all that,” said Uncle Silas.
“Oh! You never know what yo’ can do till yo’ try,” came a cheery voice
from the passage.
“Betsy, as I’m a sinner,” said Uncle Silas, as she came in. “I’ll tell
thee what--it’s a long time sin’ thee an’ me sucked a toffee-stick
together, isn’t it?”
Granny looked plainer than ever from the fact that she was dressed in
her best.
“Ay,” she smiled. “We’ve washed our necks sin’ then, haven’t we, Silas?
I’m not goin’ to sit down, Nan. Hesta an apron? Hello, Will! Home
again.”
She flashed a look at the man in the corner. Her greeting “Home again”
was as nonchalant as though he had been on holiday. Granny did not put
all in the window that she had in the shop. Cherry knew that he ought
to have appreciated her lack of demonstration. But he didn’t. He didn’t
appreciate anything. There was a hard something within him that blocked
him off from everything he had cared for and that cared for him. He
was quite alone, in a world of jabbering foreigners, who tried their
best to speak his tongue, to pass that hard barrier that had risen up
between him and them.
“Come on, lass. Stir thysel’,” Granny urged Polly, after having had a
few inches of tape put on the apron-strings to make them meet.
The bustling scene mesmerised Cherry.
The kitchen did not keep still.
When he looked too long at Uncle Silas, Uncle Silas became lost in
green snow. A crease of cloth made a burning bar of irritation across
one of his tender stumps. He was as weak as a ten-year-old child,
he, who had not known his strength. And these people--were come here
to sympathise with him. To sympathise! Whilst he felt miserably that
if they all dropped dead, it wouldn’t matter to him. What a coarse,
fat man Uncle Silas was! He liked money well enough to cut it with
a knife and fork. Strange that he had never perceived it before.
Uncle Bob Rimmer, too--he had once liked Uncle Bob Rimmer. He had
no more intellect than a rabbit, and would have cracked jokes on
his own mother’s coffin. Martha, of Rainyharbour, what was she but
a talking-machine to hang blouses on? Even Granny--Granny, once the
apple of his eye, struck him as a rather egotistical old woman who put
other folk in their places, but wouldn’t be put anywhere herself.
“Well. Are we ready?” queried Granny, at length.
“Ay. I think we are,” said Uncle Silas.
Uncle Silas was dying to eat.
Cherry knew he was.
“Now--who’ll wheel him up to the table?” quoth Uncle Silas.
It was Ted the organ-blower who came forward and put his two hands on
Cherry’s chair back.
“Don’t shake him more’n tha’ can help, Ted,” said Aunt Dinah.
The broken man gritted his teeth.
They were treating him openly like a broken doll.
“Mind th’ edge of th’ rug, Ted,” said Martha, solicitously, looking
naked sympathy at Cherry, a large brown teapot in her hand.
“Is that a’reight?” asked Ted, bashfully, of the rough man he had once
gone ratting with.
“Ay,” answered Cherry. He surveyed the table.
An unemotional rage had seized him--a rage of will and thought, rather
than of feeling, or perhaps feeling was deep down, subconscious, buried
under these mental attributes that had come to him as he was laid in
the hospital, living a life of inaction. He had come to this! To be
openly discussed as a broken article! His trembling hand took up a fork.
“Ay,” said Granny, approvingly, “get summat down tha, lad.”
“I’ve often noticed,” remarked Granny, to no one in particular, “how we
allus go on eytin’. It takes a lot to knock us off our meyt. Whatever
comes or goes, we keep _that_ up.”
Cherry stole a side-glance down the length of the table.
Every one was eating with solid earnestness. Chins were wagging. Eyes
were aslant in search of certain articles of food. The world went on
eating, like a great, hungry beast, whilst--he sickened, yet pushed the
stuff down.
An animal could creep in a hole.
A man could not.
Down at the far-end of the table Polly was being teased about dodging
taking the last piece of bread on the plate, lest she be an old maid.
Some one was inquiring about Rag.
“Oh--it’s at Sagg Farm,” said Granny. “They say it’s mendin’, but I
can’t see it. I expect tha’ll want it back, now, Will?”
“I’ll give it three months,” said Cherry, trying to rouse interest
within himself, “an’ if it hasn’t straightened up then, I’ll have it
shot.”
“Ooo!” said Polly.
Her face looked reproach on him, appearing from the round outline of
Uncle Bob.
Quite suddenly it had come to the ex-porter that a dog that couldn’t
fight other dogs was in the same position as a man who couldn’t fight
other men.
The endless meal was over, at last.
Uncle Silas put his hand sideways across his throat and looked
pathetically at Miriam, as a sign that he could eat no more.
And--Cherry heard a remark that told him that they had brought their
own food with them, to eat in his house, and that he also had been
eating thereof. He tried to feel indignant, knew he ought to feel
insulted, that on a day he would have risen up and ordered them out of
the house for such a thing. Now--he was wheeled away from the table,
gritting his teeth at a double indignity, the place full of green snow,
out of which he saw Nan, and Martha, and Aggie, both advising Ted, as
chair-wheeler, to mind the rug.
“Tha wants to give him a tonic, Nan,” said Granny.
Nan said nothing.
Whilst Cherry, in his chaotic state, thought that cocaine would have
been more in his line.
The business of clearing away, washing-up, putting on the coloured
cloth, was gone through.
It was Polly who reached down the phonograph horn, the phonograph, and
operated, with Ted as her assistant, when the lamp was lit. Cheerful
songs, with laughing choruses, each heralded by the “Edison Bell
Record”--were chosen for him, and the circle around the fire applauded,
and Cherry smiled, looking like a man pulled back by the lobes of his
ears. There was a night of this to be gone through. This was human
sympathy.
When they had tired of the phonograph, it was Aunt Miriam who got out
a pile of hymn-books, handing them out. They had just started “Scatter
Seeds of Kindness”--(Aunt Miriam had chosen this for Nan’s especial
benefit)--when the front door was flung violently open.
“I axed one or two of the Harkers to come in,” explained Granny.
Thus did Cherry behold Aunt Miriam’s conspiracy to turn this party into
a Moody and Sankey debauch defeated--and beheld for the first time the
astonishing spectacle of “Captain Brown” and his merry men, David and
Joseph Harker, cousins.
Joe Harker was an expert on the jews’ harp.
His cousin David sang in French--until Billy Breeze came in later,
when he became astonishingly shy on learning that Billy “knew a bit o’
French.”
But it was “Captain Brown” who became the life of the little party. The
way he could drink a man’s health was a revelation. The way he could
stand, back to the fire, a glass in his hand, filled to the brim, and
pour forth the most emotional songs with the greatest gusto, without
spilling a drop, was unique.
“Spill beer!” quoth the gallant “Captain.” “Spill _beer_!”
He grew pale at the sacrilegious thought that any one could suppose him
capable of such an act.
Who had brought the bottle of whisky no one ever knew. Let it suffice
that it began to be passed round. When Joe struck up a hornpipe on the
jews’ harp it was Granny Harker who vowed she could jig a jig with
Silas, and would, if it killed her.
Which she did.
Whilst the applauding circle had not the least idea that there was any
danger of her dropping dead.
Cherry tried hard to be enthusiastic.
He could only feel “out of it”--an outsider. In his longing to get
“home” he had never dreamed of this new self of his that would see in
the house he had left, the folk he had left, a strange dwelling-place,
and a new people, who had shifted their conception of him, who could
not meet him on the level.
He beheld them get more affable, more warm-hearted, more tolerant
to each others’ failings, under the influence of the whisky, with a
growing cynicism of coldness that made him as wretched as it could have
made them, had they been aware of it. They only beheld a weakened man,
with a heavy, drugged look. He beheld them as sages have beheld the
folly of the world.
In their sympathy and the opening of their hearts they told him he
should want for nothing. Aggie and Martha sunk their differences and
cried over him together. Aunt Dinah assured him that never a night
would pass but she should pray for him. Uncle Silas--Uncle Silas
flirted with Aggie, whilst her local-preacher husband was debating the
resurrection of the body with Uncle Bob Rimmer, until he discovered
Uncle Silas and Aggie holding hands, when he became very white and
vowed that if Uncle Silas had not been eighty, he’d have killed him.
Whereupon Uncle Silas went very red, said he was only in his
seventy-ninth year, and could fight anything in this generation, which
didn’t know it was born. Moreover, he vowed that he would hold hands
with Aggie again. Which he did. So that the local preacher ran at him;
and was forced down into a chair; and given whisky; so that in the end
he arose, vowed that he’d never had anything wrong against Uncle Silas,
called him his best friend, offered to lend him money, and became a
little more sober on Uncle Silas accepting the offer. As a Cheer-up
Party it was very successful. People who had come somewhat dolefully,
found that after all things might have been much worse. In the greatest
of good hearts and spirits the company eventually went to find its
individual hats, caps, bonnets, Polly holding the candle in the dingy
parlour.
“Shut th’ door,” commanded Uncle Silas, in a whisper.
It was shut.
“Now,” quoth Uncle Silas, trying at the same time to make up his mind
if the hat in his hand was his own, “what are we goin’ to do about it?”
Huddled together, in the shadowy room, Polly’s candle-light just
availed to reveal the expectancy chronicled on some of the faces,
surprise on others, and here and there the sheen on an eye, the turn of
a nose, as they looked towards Uncle Silas.
“What I say is,” avowed Uncle Silas, one finger up, “we ought to do
summat. There’s about a dozen on us in a position to do it. I’m willin’
to do my share.”
The local preacher coughed.
Then he said, “Will he have it?”
Uncle Silas glanced fiercely at him.
“He can’t have it if we don’t offer it him,” he said, in the same loud
whisper.
Polly was looking uncomfortable and unhappy.
“A shilling-a-week’ll hurt none of us,” said Uncle Bob Rimmer.
“Hear, hear,” said Ted.
“’Tis man’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn,” quoth
Captain Brown.
Aunt Dinah was putting on her things, very carefully and noiselessly.
“Ted has his mother to keep,” she said, in the same hushed way that all
were now speaking.
“Now,” beamed Uncle Silas, “that’s understood.”
Ted was protesting.
“Thee sit down!” said Aggie, and pushed him down on the couch and sat
beside him.
Whereupon the local preacher hurriedly arrived at the decision that all
there, excepting Ted, Aunt Dinah and Granny, should give one shilling
per week to their unfortunate kinsman. As there were all in all ten
persons (counting two absent ones) who could be expected to pay, some
one was to go in and inform Cherry that ten shillings per week would
come to him to augment the probable ten shillings compensation from the
Company.
“Who’ll tell him?”
Uncle Silas pointed at “Captain Brown.”
So it was the Captain, in Uncle Silas’ hat, who walked into the kitchen
when Granny was saying good-night to her son-in-law, and further
advising a tonic, and telling Nan she must look well after him.
Captain Brown broached the subject in both prose and verse--with
quotations from the Bible and Bobby Burns, and original interjections
of his own. He talked five minutes before the man in the corner
realised that this speech had some reference to himself, and that the
others were standing with downcast eyes, and expectant faces.
They were offering him--_help_.
Slowly, the awful fact that they had dared offer him help, burst on
him, surging through his brain, and the dull rage that had been passive
became emotional, active.
Only the iron will kept back words that would have estranged him from
them for ever.
“Not a blasted penny piece--” said Cherry.
His eyes looked at them like a thing’s at bay, out of the dead greyness
of his face. The force behind his voice was more than it could bear.
The words fell on the air of the kitchen, a pathetic falsetto.
“Never refuse nowt but blows,” said Uncle Silas, genially.
“‘Think gently o’ your brither man
Still gentler, sister woman--’”
said Captain Brown.
“Not a blasted penny piece,” reiterated the man in the corner.
The sound of his voice, in its weak accent, was painful now. Granny
winced under it. Polly trembled.
“Now, if tha’d rather not----” said the local preacher, who possibly
looked a little relieved.
“When I’m short--I’ll ax,” said Cherry.
His look was a blighting thing.
Their protests became craven, though they knew they had meant it well.
They went out into the night.
The door closed behind them.
The Cheer-up Party with its folk who ate their own stuff, and offered
financial help, was over. Feminine sympathy, masculine fellowship,
optimism, hymns, and bucolic joy, were on the other side of the door.
“Get ready for bed, Polly,” said Cherry.
Polly got ready, took her candle, with a good-night to this new father
she felt half in fear of.
In the other chair, facing his, was Nan, rocking herself.
“Doff my clothes,” said Cherry, weakly.
The sickness he had felt at the tea-table came over him like a cold
wave.
“Ay. When I’ve read this,” said Nan.
He could see the yellow back of the novellette she had picked up. In
the corner was the bed brought from upstairs, so that he would not need
to be carried up and down. After the hospital cleanliness it looked
almost dirty. The tick of the clock seemed to send the pendulum through
his brain.
“I’m tired,” he stated simply, after ten minutes, each one an age.
The dreams of what he would do when he got home, out of that hospital
bed, were all gone now. He merely wanted to sleep. He waited, until Nan
had finished the love-tale, knowing that this was done to tantalise
him. For the once, he did not care to wage war. He had not the energy.
Nan ungraciously took off his coat, wheeled him up to the bed, then
finished undressing him, turned down the bed clothes and half-lifted
him in.
“An’ if tha thinks tha can stop me doin’ owt I tak’ it into my head to
do now, tha’rt mistaken,” she said, undoing her stays.
Cherry looked at her wearily.
Feet were gone.
So was laughter.
He would have only ten shillings a week.
To-night he was too tired to take up the gauntlet.
The shrew in bondage was a shrew at large.
Beyond him was a stone wall that limited all his vision.
He lay down before it, and slept, only to wake with his old dream
of the iron beast of the glaring eyes coming down on him. Nan’s
snoring shook his frayed nerves. But at last he slept again, with the
degenerate wish, which he felt ashamed of as he wished it, that he
might never awaken.
It was ten o’clock in the morning when he awoke. Nan was just moving
about in the redness of the kitchen, the blind yet undrawn. Upon a
chair before the fire were the clothes he had left at Billy’s, on that
morning when he was six foot one. Billy had brought them in, now he was
home. The long legs of the trousers dangled over the chair. He looked
at them in a numbed, thoughtless way whilst Nan made breakfast. Then he
said, “When am I to get up?”
He could not get up now without her aid. She dressed him in the way
that said she wished him further. Polly was coming downstairs, yawning.
It was Polly who set him a bowl of water to wash his hands and face,
and pushed him up to the table. As she did so, he caught sight of
Nan’s look. It was jealous to a degree. Polly’s hands pushing his
chair to the table gave him the acute misery he had first felt when
being wheeled on a stretcher in the hospital. He sat and tried to eat
the burnt bacon, to drink the smoked tea. The battle of life in the
haphazard house had begun. He was taking his tonic. It was bitter.
On this day he scarcely spoke a word.
He gazed into the fire in the thought-numbed way of the wretched.
Whilst from the yard next door came the whistling of collier Jack,
whose wife was yet scolding. He was brushing his shoes to go out. At
least--he could get away.