Unclay

by T. F. Powys

  Before they started out, Mr. Mere had even patted Tom. He had looked at him thoughtfully too, as if he envied him a little. Indeed he did envy him, for what he wished to do often himself, the dog did. Mr. Mere had long teeth too—he could bite like Tom. He could growl and rend a carcass to pieces as easily, and attack a living being as fiercely.

  In the street, before he reached Susie, Mr. Mere met James Dawe. The two men spoke no word to one another; they passed by as though they were strangers. Dawe had just come out of his cottage, and Mere was going towards it. After they were gone by one another, Dawe turned. He looked at Tom; he also noticed that Mere carried in his hand a knotty holly stick.

  The summer evening grew ominous; there was evil in the air. Sometimes at dawn the awful will of the Almighty rises to do good, and sets—when the evening comes—to do evil. There is no holding back His terrible purpose. In His right hand He holds evil, in His left good; He deals out as He chooses. Man can do nothing. God is no tamed beast.

  Susie was in the parlour dusting when Mere called. Her father had set her doing one task after another all that day. She had filled up a great barrel with water from Mr. Bridle’s pond. She had made a chicken coop for a new brood, and had been early out in the meadows to gather mushrooms. The day had been very hot, and Susie, when she ran down to the shop, told Mrs. Moggs that she only wore three garments.

  Mrs. Moggs laughed. What young girls wore always interested her.

  “Why, you be nearly all skin,” she said, leaning over the counter, and trying to touch her. “And thee best take care of they men.” Mrs. Moggs handed Susie the loaf, with a wink.…

  Susie put the duster aside and opened the door. She thought that Mr. Johnson, of the Maidenbridge Drapery Stores, might have called, knowing that her father had gone out, and wishing to sell her a few pretty ribbons. When she opened the door, Mr. Mere stepped in.

  Susie blushed; she was surprised to see him. The summer evening, though so soft and pleasing, had frightened her. As soon as her father had gone out, a curious fear had entered the house. A young and frightened girl can look like a dove, or like an old woman. Susie looked like a dove, and a dove can be timid. She was not altogether sorry to see Mr. Mere, for she felt lonely.

  Her thin summer frock had shown her off so finely, and she was so tempting a young woman that a wood wasp—who had lost his way, and happened to be in the room—flew out of the door when Susie opened it for Mr. Mere, because he feared that to look at Susie might endanger his soul. Even a little she-mouse, who had peeped out of her hole while Susie was dusting, retired hastily to her nest and informed her spouse, in a hushed whisper—for fear the children should hear—that it would be better for him to stay safe at home rather than to peep out at such beauties. Also a chair that Susie moved, so that she might dust a small shelf where Mr. Dawe kept a few books, creaked mournfully, hoping that Susie felt tired and would like to rest a little. But Susie had not rested, and the chair looked jealously at the sofa, thinking that she would lie down there.…

  There was no girl in Dodder who would not have been proud to open the door to rich Mr. Mere, and Susie could not but be glad that he had fancied her, instead of searching amongst the well-to-do farmers’ daughters for a wife to marry. But she pouted a little and regarded the farmer inquisitively, wondering how such a rich man would behave in his own home. He certainly had rather an odd look, had Mr. Mere, and he eyed her fiercely. But what a fine thing it would be to marry so rich a man!

  Susie turned to place a chair for her guest, and she hardly noticed that Mere shut and made fast the door.

  Although some hours would yet have to go by before the summer evening became night, yet, as a heavy cloud hid the sun, the parlour grew very dim.

  Mr. Mere did not take the chair that had been offered to him, but instead he went near to Susie, and, as he stept to her, he bid his dog, with an angry gesture, lie down by the door, Susie expected no harm.

  At first he looked into her eyes, until she turned away. Then he felt her body with his hands, sometimes pinching her flesh, as if to test her plumpness. As he had evidently by his manners come to court her, Susie showed no objection to what he did. His wife had died many years before, and Susie supposed that those were but Mr. Mere’s ways when he chose a girl to marry. Perhaps he only touched her to see how her frock was made. For even a wealthy man likes a wife who can sew.

  Without any warning, his manners changed. He served her like a sheep and cast her upon the floor.

  Susie, who was quite unprepared for such a sudden assault, fell heavily. Mere took up his stick and shouted to his dog. He urged the dog to leap upon her, to tear and to worry her.

  Mr. Mere knew Tom’s ways; the dog liked to bite and gnaw. But, for this one time in his life, Farmer Mere was mistaken in Tom. It is said, and not untruly, that the fiercest animal can sometimes be cowed by beauty. Beauty has a strong power. It can destroy like a lion, and yet it can save like a mouse. Perhaps the dog suspected a trap; some one else might leap upon him. He looked inquiringly at his master.

  Susie, half stunned by her sudden fall, lay still upon the floor. But Tom would not stir, he only sniffed the air, looked up at his master, and uttered an ugly snarl.

  Mere was enraged. Susie sobbed uneasily; she hardly knew what had happened, and yet she cried because her frock was torn.

  Mr. Mere cursed his dog; he set him at the prey. And what he said should have made God blush. But still the dog would not move.

  Mr. Mere began to beat the dog with his stick; he dragged it to Susie.

  Susie shut her eyes. Heavy blows fell upon Tom, but the dog did not move. He was covered in blood, and yet he would not leap upon the girl.

  Mere’s lust grew terrible. He now began to strike his dog, meaning to kill. But Tom saw a chance of escape. He turned suddenly, leaped through the closed window, shattering the glass, and escaped. Though he had received his death-blow, yet he had not touched Susie.

  She heard the crash, her eyes were shut and she did not know what had happened. Then she felt the fangs of an animal sink deep into her shoulder. She screamed and opened her eyes. Mere was kneeling over her, but the dog was gone.

  XXIX

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  Signs and Wonders

  A girl-child wishes to see signs and wonders. She waits impatiently, hoping that as each new day comes a sign will be shown to her. When she sees the sign, she believes that it will not be long before the wonder comes. But, being young, she does not yet know the world.

  She has crept into the world crying, through a portal where suffering and desire jostle for pre-eminence, and one day she will go out by another gate, with a sad groan. Between the infant’s cry and the woman’s last gasp there may be many days for her to live, and in the earlier portion of those days the girl-child will have to run a race. Whether she likes it or not, she will have to run. Nature—that cruel slave-mistress—will be behind her, with a knotted cord in her hand.

  The young girl may seem a pretty thing; she may use many gay pastimes for her delight. She may stay, for a while, in a rose garden, or lean over a rock pool and play with the little fish—but she must on. Every girl wears those red shoes that compel her to dance for ever. There is no stopping those red shoes. They may be a misfit, but wear them she must, and dance in them she shall. They will never allow her to rest, a furious demon drives her on.

  A fine paper-chase it is, too, that she has to run in. Her young body wonders at first what it lacks, and why she must follow a piper who leads on so strangely. The merry piper who leads on so gaily is but a man. He pipes and the women follow.

  A fine hunt ensues. The young women are a pack of hounds; they follow the bucks, that wear large horns. The hounds will win the chase; they will catch those merry stags unawares—an easy prey. The hounds pursue gladly, and without knowing how it has happened, they themselves are the ones th
at are caught. And the nearest green bank is used for a bridal bed. There, a pretty pastime may be practised with sweet usage, or perhaps, instead of loving manners, a furious frolic may come of it, cruel and hostile to love.

  From such doings lust may emanate, or love and gentle content.

  But perhaps hideous cruelty alone is there, and its claws bloody. This wonder may come quick and sudden; at other times it is very slow—a ponderous bulk that moves to destroy. Or else it shows its victim for her own face in the glass. ’Tis her own sweetness that brought in the terror. She called for the music, ’twas the piper who played. Her outcries, her screams are forgotten, and she returns again and again to kiss the rod.

  Her young eyes, moist and clinging, gaze at the terrible sign. Her knees bend tremblingly; she has entered the pagan grove where the pole is set up. She knows herself to be a sacrifice to the god. The god demands her; his prey must be given to him.

  But over all that happens, a watcher stands and looks. This watcher is Madder Hill. Above life—that grand and woeful calamity—Madder Hill looks and yields a kind of consolation to those who bend to it. It may be but the sweet odour of white clover, or the winter’s sun setting in the sea, that tells other tales than the fury of constant becoming and continuous ending. Madder Hill is the same yesterday, today, and for ever. Our eyes have seen it, and not another’s.…

  Mere knelt over Susie. He wished her to become conscious, so that she might be fully aware of what he meant to do to her now.

  But Susie was still dazed, and to do what he had a mind to do with her, in that state, was not what he wished.

  Even a madman, such as Mere seemed to be, does not like to be watched. And the eyes that were now fixed upon Mr. Mere soon drew his attention to them. Mr. Mere turned and saw John Death at the window. John was smiling.

  Mere rose, with a curse; he left Susie, unlocked the door, and went out of the house.

  Susie had not seen Death, and as soon as Mere was gone, she began to recover her scattered senses. She had supposed that she was going to be killed, and was surprised to find that she was still alive. She had expected, from her fears, to be far more hurt than she was. She was surprised when she found how easily she could get up. The blood from the bite in her shoulder had ceased to flow, and though the wound pained her, she forgave the poor dog who, she supposed, had bitten her. Feeling better, she went into the back-kitchen, and washed the bite; she then went upstairs to change the torn clothes. She cried over them, as if they alone had been hurt. Then she looked into a cracked glass and saw that she was still the same girl.

  As well as forgiving the dog, she even thought better of Mr. Mere, now he had gone from her. Mrs. Moggs had told her to beware of the men in her thin clothes. Perhaps it was the pink frock that had done the mischief. Men, she knew, sometimes became quite wild—like bulls. A girl ought to be careful what she wore; Susie even smiled. She supposed that Mr. Mere must have grown tired of visiting Daisy Huddy so often. She was glad of that.

  Of course, as a Dodder girl, with so little to spend herself, Susie had always been envious of Daisy. Had a poor man—such as Joseph Bridle was—only visited Daisy, she would not have cared, because Joseph never had anything to give away.

  But Mr. Mere was a very different matter to Joe. Many called him the Squire of Dodder, and the highest pew in the church was his to sit in, if he chose. He never entered Daisy’s cottage without carrying, in the inner pocket of his coat, a well-filled wallet. And, though his purse was hardly depleted at all when he came out, yet to be near such wealth must have been very pleasing to a girl. And Daisy would often boast of what he used to show her.

  Susie bared her shoulder before the glass, and looked at the wound.

  The dog had not hurt her much, and where the bite was no one could notice it. But the dog—she was aware that the man had beaten it horribly. Had it leaped through the window to die?

  As Susie felt better, she began to trouble less about what had happened to herself. Perhaps Mr. Mere was shy, and shyness, Susie knew, sometimes makes a man cross. Perhaps Mr. Mere had beaten his dog in order to gain confidence himself.

  Mrs. Moggs had often told Susie how a strong man will throw a girl down, a little roughly sometimes, and marry her very gently a month later. Many strange pranks, Susie knew, were often played in a country place before the wedding bells rang. And a man of Mr. Mere’s wealth was not likely to be too kind to a poor girl.

  “Perhaps,” thought Susie, “I ought to have been kinder to him.”

  Mrs. Moggs had told her, more than once, how a man expects a girl to behave. She now almost wished that Mr. Mere would come back to her again. She even ran out into the lane to see if he still loitered near. In the lane she found John Death waiting for her.

  Susie was glad to see him; what she had gone through had made her restless, and she stept happily to John. She knew him as a pleasant man to talk to, with a merry, roguish look, and, even with a beard, he did not look uncomely. Susie had always liked the look of John. She liked the way he played with the children upon the green. He allowed the little boys and girls to play with him at all hours, unless he was sharpening his scythe or searching for his lost parchment.

  He had always spoken politely to Susie, as if she were a fine lady and he a gentleman, and he spoke to her, too, in a way that no other man had ever done. When Susie mocked and teased Joe he always became gloomy and sad, but John Death never cared what a girl said. He would answer as saucily and give as good as he got.

  Something, Susie felt, had to be done with herself that evening. She was a flower that a storm had blown down, and now she longed to be culled.

  But John, when he saw her, appeared a little quieter than usual. He looked at her more seriously than she liked to be looked at—though not as Joe Bridle was wont to look at her. John’s eyes spoke of different doings than his.

  He asked her about the dog; that was why, he said, he had come to the window. He had been playing ball with the children upon the green, and had heard the crash and wondered what it meant. In the lane he had seen the dog, all bloody. He saw it roll over, then it got up and staggered into Joe Bridle’s field.

  Susie begged John to go with her there, and to kill the dog. She could not bear, she said, to think of its being in such agony. “Mr. Mere,” she cried, “never finishes anything off; he likes to leave an animal in pain.”

  On the way to Joseph’s field, Susie was conscious of a strange fascination that drew her to Death. He seemed a man who could do more for a girl than many another. There was a power in his step and a purpose, too, and the nearer he was to her, the more she was aware of his comeliness. He was different from any other man that she knew. As they walked to Joseph’s field, John talked to her pleasantly; he evidently wished to put her quite at her ease.

  He began to talk of many little things that every country girl likes to hear of. He spoke of the tradesmen who came from the town shops, and of their cunning ways with their customers. One afternoon a certain Mr. Dicks—who travelled for a draper—had called upon him. Mr. Dicks sold both men’s and women’s clothes. He looked a little curiously at John’s trousers, and asked him whether he would not like to buy a new pair. John replied, with a smile, that he wished to purchase a girl’s frock. Mr. Dicks was quite prepared for such an order. He hurried out to his van and returned with a pretty red dress that he knew would exactly fit Daisy Huddy.

  Susie laughed. She liked to think that even Mr. Dicks knew all about Daisy’s bad ways. She liked to think, too, that Mr. Mere had quite finished with Daisy, for on the same day that Mr. Dicks had called upon John, he had also carried a bill for another frock to Daisy, that evidently Mr. Mere had refused to pay.

  But as to John, Susie did not seem, curiously enough, to be jealous of him. He was the kind of man whose merry temper permitted him to do exactly what he chose. No man who had ever lived in Dodder was quite like John.

  He w
as the sort of man, Susie supposed, to take a girl into a field of soft grass, please her there, and then go off himself and leave her to admire the yellow buttercups.

  Susie looked at Death longingly; he had started her thoughts dancing. They bounded like tennis balls, then they flew like the winged seeds of the sycamore and fell upon Death as upon a good ground. He alone could fully satisfy her; he alone could give her himself wholly and utterly. She knew not how it was, but she became aware then that he loved her too, and she, being a girl, wished that he might soon make her his own.

  As soon as she thought so, she knew that he was all-powerful over her, and had he changed himself into a thorn-bush, she would have clung to him as lovingly. She longed to run merrily down the lane of love, at the end of which is Death.

  They loitered along without need to hurry. And, even though the task that they had to do—to find the stricken dog and to kill it—was not a pleasant one, yet Susie, now that John was her companion, did not mind the adventure.

  There was nothing that he did not know, there was no village girl that he was not aware of. He even went so far as to make fun of Priscilla Hayhoe’s hat, that she wore in church. He had something new to tell her, too—that Mr. Hayhoe read to Daisy Huddy each evening of the week. “And once,” said John, “when Farmer Crawford, who always considered himself a fine fellow—though he was but a small man—came to see her and heard the following passage read, he retired hurriedly without knocking at the door.

  “‘Handsome! Nobody can call such an undersized man handsome. He is not five foot nine. I should not wonder if he was not more than five foot eight. I think he is an ill-looking fellow. In my opinion, these Crawfords are no addition at all. We did very well without them.’”