brushing the dried mud from the hocks of an old bay horse, but it was
not of his horse he was thinking. Later he stood in the rickyard and
stared across the road at the light in their bedroom. Throwing down the
fork with which he had been tossing beds of straw he shook his fist
at the window and cried out: “I hate ’er, I does, nasty dirty filthy
thing!”
When he went into the house he replenished the fire but found he could
take no further care for himself or the sick woman; he just stupidly
doffed his clothes and in utter misery and recklessness stretched
himself in the bed with Ann. He lay for a long while with aching
brows, a snake-strangled feeling in every limb, an unquenchable drouth
in his throat, and his wife’s body burning beside him. Outside the
night was bright, beautiful and still sparkling with frost; quiet, as
if the wind had been wedged tightly in some far corner of the sky,
except for a cracked insulator on the telegraph pole just near the
window, that rattled and hummed with monstrous uncare. That, and the
ticking of the clock! The lighted candle fell from its sconce on the
mantelpiece; he let it remain and it flickered out. The glow from the
coals was thick upon the ceiling and whitened the brown ware of the
teapot on the untidy hearth. Falling asleep at last he began dreaming
at once, so it seemed, of the shrill cry of lambs hailing him out of
wild snow-covered valleys, so wild and prolonged were the cries that
they woke him, and he knew himself to be ill, very ill indeed. The
child was wailing piteously, the room was in darkness, the fire out,
but the man did not stir, he could not care, what could he do with that
flame behind his eyes and the misery of death consuming him? But the
child’s cries were unceasing and moved even his numbed mind to some
effort. “Ann!” he gasped. The poor wife did not reply. “Ann!” He put
his hand out to nudge her; in one instant the blood froze in his veins
and then boiled again. Ann was cold, her body hard as a wall, dead ...
dead. Stupor returned upon him; the child, unhelped, cried on, clasped
to that frozen breast until the man again roused himself to effort.
Putting his great hands across the dead wife he dragged the child from
her arms into the warmth beside him, gasping as he did so, “Nasty ...
dirty ... thing.” It exhausted him but the child was still unpacified
and again he roused himself and felt for a biscuit on the table beside
the bed. He crushed a piece in his mouth and putting the soft pap upon
his finger fed thus the hungry child until it was stilled. By now the
white counterpane spread vast like a sea, heaving and rocking with a
million waves, the framework of the bedstead moving like the tackle
of tossed ships. He knew there was only one way to stem that sickening
movement. “I hate ’er, I does,” rose again upon his lips, and drawing
up his legs that were at once chilly and streaming with sweat, full of
his new hatred he urged with all his might his wife’s cold body to the
edge of the bed and withdrew the bedclothes. Dead Ann toppled and slid
from him and her body clumped upon the floor with a fall that shook the
room; the candle fell from the mantelpiece, bounced from the teapot
and rolled stupidly along the bare boards under the bed. “Hate ’er!”
groaned the man; he hung swaying above the woman and tried to spit upon
her. He sank back again to the pillow and the child, murmuring “O, ah!”
and gathering it clumsily to his breast. He became tranquil then, and
the hollow-sounding clock beat a dull rhythm into his mind, until that
sound faded out with all light and sound, and Jan fell into sleep and
died, with the dusky child clasped in his hard dead arms.
* * * * *
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 judge 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 the 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 in to 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 ever afterwards, not like that.
B-r-r-r-r! it came down ... bashing! And we come to a cross roads
where there’s a public house called _The Wheel of Fortune_, very lonely
and onsheltered it is just there. I see’d 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 know 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 tarpaulin, 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 these 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! 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 the street to
William and cut him off his legs. Then he beat him until he howled for
his mercy, and 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.”
“Its 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 reassuringly 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 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 came 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 o’ 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 sympathizing 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 that 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 Edie 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 onlucky 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 bid more on this
’bugging church or she won’t be done afore Christmas.”
* * * * *
POMONA’S BABE
* * * * *
POMONA’S BABE
Johnny Flynn was then seventeen years old. At that age you could
not call him boy without vexing him, or man without causing him
to blush--his teasing, ruddy and uproarious mother delighted to
produce either or both of these manifestations for her off-spring
was a pale mild creature--but he had given a deal of thought to many
manly questions. Marriage, for instance, was one of these. That was
an institution he admired but whose joys, whatever they were, he
was not anxious to experience; its difficulties and disasters as
ironically outlined by the widow Flynn were the subject of his grossest
scepticism, scepticism in general being not the least prominent
characteristic of Johnny Flynn.
Certainly his sister Pomona was not married; she was only sixteen, an
age too early for such bliss, but all the same she was going to have a
baby; he had quarrelled with his mother about that. He quarrelled with
his mother about most things, she delighted in quarrels, they amused
her very much; but on this occasion she was really very angry, or she
pretended to be so--which was worse, much worse than the real thing.
The Flynns were poor people, quite poor, living in two top-floor rooms
at the house of a shoemaker, also moderately poor, whose pelting and
hammering of soles at evening were a durable grievance to Johnny. He
was fond of the shoemaker, a kind bulky tall man of fifty, though he
did not like the shoemaker’s wife, as bulky as her husband and as
tall but not kind to him or to anything except Johnny himself; nor
did he like any of the other lodgers, of whom there were several, all
without exception beyond the reach of affluence. The Flynn apartments
afforded a bedroom in front for Mrs. Flynn and Pomona, a room where
Johnny seldom intruded, never without a strained sense of sanctity
similar to the feeling he experienced when entering an empty church
as he sometimes did. He slept in the other room, the living room, an
arrangement that also annoyed him. He was easily annoyed, but he could
never go to bed until mother and sister had retired, and for the same
reason he had always to rise before they got up, an exasperating abuse
of domestic privilege.
One night he had just slipped happily into his bed and begun to read a
book called “Rasselas,” which the odd-eyed man at the public library
had commended to him, when his mother returned to the room, first
tapping at the door, for Johnny was a prude as she knew not only from
instinct and observation but from protests which had occasionally been
addressed to her by the indignant boy. She came in now only half clad,
in petticoat and stockinged feet, her arms quite bare. They were
powerful arms as they had need to be, for she was an ironer of linen
at a laundry, but they were nice to look at and sometimes Johnny liked
looking at them, though he did not care for her to run about like that
very often. Mrs. Flynn sat down at the foot of his couch and stared at
her son.
“Johnny,” she began steadily, but paused to rub her forehead with her
thick white shiny fingers. “I don’t know how to tell you, I’m sure, or
what you’ll say....” Johnny shook “Rasselas” rather impatiently and
heaved a protesting sigh. “I can’t think,” continued his mother, “no, I
can’t think that it’s our Pomony, but there she is and it’s got to be
done, I must tell you; besides you’re the only man in our family now,
so it’s only right for you, you see, and she’s going to have a baby.
Our Pomony!”
The boy turned his face to the wall, although his mother was not
looking at him--she was staring at that hole in the carpet near the
fender. At last he said, “Humph ... well?” And as his mother did not
say anything, he added, “What about it, I don’t mind?” Mrs. Flynn was
horrified at his unconcern, or she pretended to be so; Johnny was never
sure about the genuineness of her moods. It was most unfilial, but he
was like that--so was Mrs. Flynn. Now she cried out, “You’ll have to
mind, there, you must. I can’t take everything on my own shoulders.
You’re the only man left in our family now, you must, Johnny. What are
we to do?”
He glared at the wallpaper a foot from his eyes. It had an unbearable
pattern of blue but otherwise indescribable flowers; he had it in his
mind to have some other pattern there--some day.
“Eh?” asked his mother sharply, striking the foot of the bed with her
fist.
“Why ... there’s nothing to be done ... now ... I suppose.” He was
blushing furiously. “How did it happen, when will it be?”
“It’s a man she knows, he got hold of her, his name is Stringer.
Another two months about. Stringer. Hadn’t you noticed anything?
Everybody else has. You are a funny boy, I can’t make you out at all,
Johnny, I can’t make you out. Stringer his name is, but I’ll make him
pay dearly for it, and that’s what I want you--to talk to you about. Of
course he denies of everything, they always do.”
Mrs. Flynn sighed at this disgusting perfidy, brightening however when
her son began to discuss the problem. But she talked so long and he got
so sleepy at last that he was very glad when she went to bed again.
Secretly she was both delighted and disappointed at his easy acceptance
of her dreadful revelation; fearing a terrible outburst of anger she
had kept the knowledge from him for a long time. She was glad to escape
that, it is true, but she rather hungered for some flashing reprobation
of this unknown beast, this Stringer. She swore she would bring him to
book, but she felt old and lonely, and Johnny was a strange son, not
very virile. The mother had told Pomona terrifying prophetic tales of
what Johnny would do, what he would be certain to do; he would, for
instance, murder that Stringer and drive Pomony into the street; of
course he would. Yet here he was, quite calm about it, as if he almost
liked it. Well, she had told him, she could do no more, she would leave
it to him.
In the morning Johnny greeted his sister with tender affection and
at evening, having sent her to bed, he and his mother resumed their
discussion.
“Do you know, mother,” he said, “she is quite handsome, I never noticed
it before.”
Mrs. Flynn regarded him with desperation and then informed him that his
sister was an ugly disgusting little trollop who ought to be birched.
“No, no, you are wrong, mother, it’s bad, but it’s all right.”
“You think you know more about such things than your own mother, I
suppose.” Mrs. Flynn sniffed and glared.
He said it to her gently: “Yes.”