Unclay

by T. F. Powys

  “What is it that you did to me?” he asked, “because, for the first time in my life, I felt a sudden impediment to happiness.”

  “An’ ’twon’t be the last time neither,” replied Winnie, who was flushed and angry, “if thee do try to take I under they dark trees.”

  “But many children,” answered Death, “even younger than you, Winnie—both boys and girls—have come here with me, and I have used them as my custom is.”

  “’Tothers bain’t I,” replied Winnie, “and ’tain’t to no churchyard that I do want to be brought, but only to West Dodder gardens; but for all that, I don’t believe they be so fine wi’ flowers as Hartfield that Mr. Hayhoe do read of.”

  John Death, looking happier, replied gallantly that he hoped to take her there.

  Winnie plucked a pink from a grave and ran home.

  XLI

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  A Debt Paid

  After he had been so easily defeated by Winnie Huddy, when he wished to take her under the spreading branches of the old yew, John Death left the churchyard and walked into the Madder street in no very good humour. Nor was his temper made happier by listening at Daisy Huddy’s cottage door, where Winnie was narrating with the wildest merriment how she had given foolish Johnnie a prick to remember. He was not very well pleased, either, to hear Mr. Hayhoe gently chiding Winnie for permitting a man to carry her off in such a manner.

  “Johnnie,” cried Winnie, “don’t know grapes from raisins; ’e do fancy that a maiden be butter to pat and shape; why, I do believe ’e had a mind to serve I same as wold Mere’s bull do serve they silly cows.”

  “Oh! naughty Winnie,” Daisy remarked, “don’t you remember that Mr. Hayhoe is here?”

  “What if he be?” laughed Winnie, “for bain’t I the one to know what Mr. Darcy were after thik Lizzie for?”

  Death moved away, wishing a little rudely that he might be permitted to crown the clergyman’s forehead in an old and fashionable manner. He wandered on in a sulky humour, wondering how it had happened that a child had so easily outwitted him. He supposed that perhaps Mr. Jar, whom Death had more than once seen walking upon Madder Hill amongst the gorse-bushes, might have kept an eye upon Winnie, so that she could not have been harmed.

  “But He doesn’t look after them all so kindly,” observed Death to himself, who, in his walk in life, had seen a thing or two.

  Beside the green Death met Farmer Mere, who was returning from the Inn, where he had just cheated a poor drunken drover out of five shillings. Death stopped Mr. Mere and demanded the money that was due to him for the mowing of Joe Bridle’s field.

  Mr. Mere, with a grin that the Devil might have been proud of, informed John that he would pay him at Maidenbridge upon the next market-day.

  “No deferred payment will do for me,” replied Death, in a tone that he had not used since he had come to Dodder, “and no debtor of mine has ever gained a moment for himself by trying to put me off with fine promises. I demand to be paid at once.”

  The two men stood in the road alone. They stood, as countrymen will, with their legs a little apart, as if each leg were established there to prop up the body, preparatory to a lengthy conversation. Then some one came by.

  Death was not surprised. He had fancied when Winnie stabbed him in the churchyard that Tinker Jar was not far off. Winnie could never have been so brave unless a protector were near. Mr. Jar passed close to the farmer, but turned his face from him.

  John Death bowed. Mr. Mere cursed Jar.

  Death asked again for his money. Farmer Mere jeered at him.

  “The hay is all safe in my rickyard,” he said tauntingly, “and who are you to expect your wage so soon? Do you think that money grows in a farmer’s pocket like nettles in a hedgerow? Even though thee be—from the reverence you paid to him as he went by—a friend to that lousy beggar, Jar, who do go about as a thief to steal, yet what are you to ask money of me?”

  Death stept aside and allowed Mere, who laughed loudly, to proceed towards the Manor Farm. And John followed him.

  But instead of going up the drive to the Manor Farm, Mr. Mere’s legs, against his own will, bore him in another direction.

  There is one path that even a farmer who has been successful in defrauding a poor man, and is a little tipsy too, does not care to traverse—the path to the grave. Mr. Mere was surprised that his legs compelled him to go in that direction. But not his legs alone showed him whither he was travelling, for he saw with his own eyes that a certain pageant closely connected with himself was being enacted—a spectacle that no man, whether well or ill, can look at altogether calmly, unless he be a pilgrim in the way of holiness, who moveth no whither without a sweet presence that goes with him.

  Mr. Mere now saw, all of a sudden, that he must die. This he had not before been able to believe, but now he knew death to be true. The last gasp that casts a man into eternal darkness must soon be given by him.

  Coming near to the churchyard gates, he distinctly saw Mr. Hayhoe in his surplice, with a book in his hand, coming to meet him, and reading words out of the book that Mr. Mere did not much like the sound of. It was not John Death now who was the one to be mocked. There is another who can make a mock of even a Squire Mere or the Lord Bullman. While only he who has learned to love, in sorrow of heart and goodness of life, this grand revenger, and is prepared to sign a compact with eternity, is able to accept the final separation from life with a loving resignation.

  Mr. Mere moved unwillingly towards the gate.

  “Stay, Squire,” cried John, “the direction that you are taking will never lead you to pretty Susie’s bed. Do not forget how full of sweetness her fair body is; it’s like Priscilla Hayhoe’s red-currant jelly, all gracious delight. Her breasts are like round globes and her lips like an honeycomb. I know a great deal about women, more than you think I do, Mr. Mere. I have been the first with a number of them. They lie in bed and call to me to come to them. Of course I tantalize them a little. One cannot always be potent in an instant when one is wanted. A man so much in request as I has to hold back sometimes. Ah! you think that you alone can make a young maid cry out, but I can do so too, when I come to them. I give them pains for their pennies. Their tortured bodies cry and groan and drip blood because of my sweet embraces.

  “When I approach these fair ones—and I always appear stark naked—their young eyes grow dim and droop in their excess of love. When I come to a girl she does not know her own mother. As soon as I enter the bedroom, the pretty things will often cast off all their clothing and lie naked before me. They lie in agony because of my love.”

  Mere strove to turn upon Death, but he could not do so. Death’s taunts had awakened all the foul fury of his lusts. Behind him was the bridal bed, and all the merry sports that he meant to use upon his bride, proper to his nature—while before him he saw the loathsome pit of corruption. There he would be devoured in an ill manner. His evil tricks upon earth would change the lowly clods. He would never lie there in a sweet silence, as the good do, to whom the worms are as fair angels and the grave a casket of delight. Only the foulest hell would be his shroud.

  Mr. Mere was near to the gates when he thought he heard these words spoken: “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away.”

  He turned to Death and handed him a cheque for five pounds, that he had received that morning from Dealer Keddle to whom he had sold a fat calf.

  John Death looked at the cheque a little suspiciously.

  “But I wanted two silver shillings,” he said, “to pay for Winnie and myself to go into Lord Bullman’s garden tomorrow.”

  Mr. Mere did not reply. He put his hands to his ears so that he might not hear any more words being read by Mr. Hayhoe out of a book, and now that his legs obeyed him, he staggered off to the Manor Farm.

  XLII

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  A Strange Sweetness

  An English Sunday has come to be regarded by some as a mere day, and by others as a sad lady in a cap who pulls at the church-bells, with a wish that she was tolling them. Yet, quite unbeknown and unsought by those who have at certain times—as a conceit, whim, or fancy moved them—commanded that a settled ritual should be used to the glory of God, there has come into being a strange sweetness in country places to grace the Sabbath day.

  Whatever can in any way stem the horrid waters of rude and hideous violence, has done and will ever do—though the belief may be utter folly—the greatest good to man. Who may not now kneel or rest or loiter, with this excuse to give to the more ardent labourers, that he worships the Lord? Let the High Temple priests still pretend, if such pretence can give to us poor ones a little release from toil.

  The pastoral gods still live in mossy corners. Those who know the green places, that have each day a life and being of their own—wearing a new coat as the seasons change—take notice of the Sabbath day as one of the kind ones. It is a day of magic hours, wherein for a moment the pretty sparrow may forget the monstrous hawk.

  Even the lonely church-bell, that in Dodder is rung by Daisy Huddy, who has changed her trade through listening to a good storyteller, may be to one who does not mean to attend the call, a pleasant sound to hear. Those who have the will to love this day—and I am a brother to them—reckon it as somewhat more gentle and friendly to man than an ordinary working-day, and are glad to watch the slow and orderly manner in which Tom Huddy, having received a spirited command from Miss Winnie, goes to the well for water.

  And with no need to hurry, he fills the bucket with Sunday care, brushes his coat upon which a little dust may have blown, and bears the bucket to his cottage in the same sacramental manner. As he came out, so he returns—this day his own master.

  Mr. Huddy has always supposed the Sunday to be a fair maid, who may be looked at but not touched, but who lends to the day a virgin grace that compels all ugly toil, and even week-day clothes, to hide in covered places until the day ends. The feelings of even his Sunday trousers must be respected; it would not suit them to be seen climbing a hedge; they must be worn decently, or else the fair Maid Mary might complain.

  A week is a long time. During a week the pains of labour may come upon a woman, the babe may be born, its name chosen, and the child carried to church to be baptized. A girl may be courted, married, and be sorry for it during the same period of time. Shepherd Brine may buy a new pair of boots, kick one of the soles off upon the dern of his own door, and be as bootless as before, in one week. Within a week a man may be taken ill, may suffer sadly, may die, and be buried.

  It is something indeed to live from one Sunday to another. Though we cannot stop time, we can take more heed to its going, and every Sunday should be carefully noted.

  Even the wych-elm beside the Dodder church gets a Sabbath look, as well as Mr. Titball. The winds knowingly rustle the leaves of the tree and set them a-praying, while during matins, upon a Christmas morning, the bare boughs droop a little and pretend to be pious.

  It is all pretence, for when no one knows what truth is, what else is there to do but to pretend? All life is pretence, but never death.

  That state stands as the one stone unturned in the fields of folly. In all other matters the world is as we like to make it, for not Jesus alone can turn water into wine. A tiny pool may seem the whole of the wine-dark deep, and Mr. Hayhoe’s back garden can be a wild wilderness—as indeed it is.

  Whoever has noticed cows walking upon the Sunday will observe that they are no episcopalians, for, on their way to be milked, they will loiter beside a chapel while a hymn is being sung—especially if it be by Charles Wesley—but pass the church with a flick of their tails to scatter the flies.

  Sunday is a day of surprises.

  Mr. Hayhoe puts on his surplice inside out. Daisy Huddy, who attends him in the vestry—to the scandal of some—readjusts the garment. Priscilla Hayhoe, with the hat that all admire, sits in the Vicarage pew and finds the correct place for evensong in her prayer-book. She turns the pages with caution, as though she thinks that something odd may creep out of them—a spider, perhaps, or an earwig—for no one knows what one will find in a church, any more than a woman knows what she will find in her own mind. A strange fancy—that she will not wish to tell to any one—will sometimes come into her thoughts as she follows the service in the book. It will but be a wish to follow after a little mouse that she has seen scamper from the altar table and hurry into its hole under the pulpit.

  Then Priscilla looks at her book again; she is thinking of green lawns and fair flowers, a shadow cast by a sundial, a fair fountain in a rose garden.

  XLIII

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  Mr. Balliboy and the Beast

  Mr. Balliboy was the Norbury carrier. But the people of that proud village were offended by him; he had insulted their vanity.

  He had committed a sad sin. Mr. Balliboy had once permitted a beggar-woman named Mary—who expected, about Christmas-time, her bastard to be born—to ride in his van from Maidenbridge to where she lived, though none knew exactly where that place was. And so Mr. Balliboy’s ordinary customers left him in a rage, and ever after that day they had travelled in Mr. Hawking’s car.

  But a tale told in one village with intent to injure a harmless man is not always heeded in another, and Mr. Balliboy would often call at Dodder for a load, and there his kindness to Mary, though it might have been heard of, was not believed.

  Upon the Sunday that we have reached in our story, Mr. Balliboy arose from his bed with a liveliness in his heart that betokened a prosperous day. He hoped, too, as he put on his boots that the wish of his heart would soon be fulfilled. He wanted to marry.

  But it was no woman that Mr. Balliboy desired to wed; he wished to marry an animal. He had ever respected and admired the brute creation, and especially those that bear burdens willingly. He had once, too, overheard a sermon preached by a young man of Folly Down to a bull, and he agreed with Luke Bird, the preacher, that the beasts of the field were more friendly than men. Having often seen, in the way of his trade, how the best women even behave to their husbands, Mr. Balliboy could never understand why the lawgiver Moses made so strict a rule against a man mating with a beast. The gift of speech had certainly done women very little good, no animal had ever learned to speak so unkindly. Mr. Balliboy had dreamed that very night that he had found a creature who would marry him.

  “Such a wedding,” thought Mr. Balliboy, “is common to all fairy stories, so why should it not come to pass in real life?”

  Mr. Balliboy intended to take a party from Dodder to Lord Bullman’s gardens. There was nothing he liked better, in the way of revenge for their treatment of him, than to give the Norbury people cause to wonder where he was going and what business he had to do. He rose early, and, in the presence of all who wished to view him, he brushed out and washed his car. And then, after retiring indoors and dressing himself as finely as a bridegroom, with a white flower in his coat, he rattled out of Norbury in a grand manner.

  The gardens at West Dodder Hall were to be opened at one o’clock, and Mr. Balliboy waited beside the Dodder Inn, informing all who came near to look at him, that his charge for taking passengers to the great gates was only one shilling, to go and return.

  Winnie Huddy was one of the first to come to him, and after informing her of his price, he drew her near to him and inquired in a whisper whether Winnie knew of any creature in Dodder, any friendly beast of burden, that was in need of a good husband.

  “’Tain’t no woman I do want to marry, ’tis an animal,” he said.

  Such a subject as matrimony, Winnie, who had listened to Mr. Solly’s conversations and to Mr. Hayhoe’s readings, looked upon with extreme seriousness, and she showed the utmost respect for Mr. B
alliboy’s inquiry. She did not even smile. Indeed the request seemed to her to be extremely sensible, and she replied readily, “Maybe thee’d fancy a good camel, for I do know of one that do bide in Dodder.”

  Mr. Balliboy looked very glad.

  “She don’t kick, do she?” he asked timidly.

  “No,” answered Winnie, “she do only work.”

  “Then ’twill be a wedding,” cried Mr. Balliboy joyfully.

  As may easily be expected, there were many who preferred to ride two miles upon a very hot day than to walk. Mr. Hayhoe, always an early man when he went anywhere, was the first to step in. He asked Mr. Balliboy whether he would mind waiting a few moments for Priscilla.

  Mr. Hayhoe looked a little troubled, for, no sooner had he come forth from the church after matins than a note was put into his hand by Mr. Pix himself, demanding that he should visit Lord Bullman at once, or else the living of Dodder would go to another.

  We are all of us packed into this world—though there ought certainly to be plenty of room—nearly as close together as the occupants of Mr. Balliboy’s car, and we are quite as odd a mixture. The car was soon full, but as the custom is with such a carriage, it could always hold another.

  At their first coming together, a company setting out upon a holiday is a silent creature: the women look at one another and the men sit gloomily and feel in their trouser pockets. Mr. Titball sat next to Mr. Dady, and Dillar regarded with a fixed stare old James Dawe and Susie, who were going together to see the flowers.

  But quite unexpectedly a match was struck that made all merry. This was done by Winnie, who burst in with the news that Mr. Solly, as well as Mr. and Miss Bridle, were going too, and that they were already in sight. Winnie, who sat next to Mr. Balliboy, touched his arm and whispered into his ear.