Mr. Tasker's Gods

by T. F. Powys

  The Rev. Edward Lester sidled into the dining-room of the vicarage at Shelton, and his face beamed with smiles and his eyes glistened when he saw the family porter-jug.

  ‘We used to get good stout in Hall,’ he said, and put down his glass empty.

  ‘Edith, Mr. Lester will take another glass.’

  ‘Your pickles are home-made, I expect, Mrs. Turnbull? What lovely sweet-peas, quite heavenly! Miss Rudge, you know, takes all the prizes in our town. I believe she sometimes waters the plants herself, and I know for a fact she chooses the seeds, though they keep gardeners. She kindly sends some flowers over to our men’s club sometimes. Good fellows, our men—rough and ready, you know. You would be surprised how they love flowers.’

  Mr. Turnbull was eating. Henry and his mother listened quietly.

  ‘By the by, one of our men told me his father lived here. I think he said his father was your gardener. Such a serious young man. I have had him up to my rooms—he is rather too advanced, though—a red-hot socialist, but a dear good chap! He said it was awful the way young girls followed him about. I met him at the station this afternoon. He said he had been somewhere on business.’

  Mr. Turnbull coughed. Mrs. Turnbull looked at a dead wasp in the jam, while Henry was left to explain that the curate’s friend, ‘the red-hot socialist,’ had seduced their simple servant-maid Alice.

  ‘And no doubt he must have deserted her, as you saw him to-day.’

  Mr. Lester’s face, already flushed with talking and eating, now flushed with anger.

  ‘And I gave him three Turkish cigarettes, and a whisky and soda, in the station bar! What kind of a person was your servant?’ he asked Henry. At the same time his flush deepened.

  ‘Quite a pretty girl and little more than a child,’ said Henry. ‘We would like to know where she is now. Would you mind asking your friend?’

  The story of Alice cast a gloom over Mr. Lester’s smile, but at the same time awakened within him certain thoughts. How could he overcome the virtue, already beginning to fade, of a young girl that he knew? As became a modern clergyman, he did not like to be overreached in any way by a red-hot socialist.

  As he walked back to the town—his bicycle had unluckily been punctured that morning riding from his ‘diggings’ to church—he strode along through the dampness of the night and his thoughts wandered over one or two things that had happened to him not so very long before. He dwelt upon every detail in these little experiences even to the taking off of the stockings—he always insisted upon that.

  The town was quiet, and he entered his rooms with a certain determination in his heart. He sat down for a moment and looked at his boots, then he took a drink and went to bed, having in his inner thoughts overcome the last feelings of modesty in a girl who could hardly write her own name. The happiness of a natural man is certainly a wonderful thing, and Mr. Lester was no stranger to it!

  While this reverend gentleman who had taken the duty at South Egdon was returning to his lodgings, enjoying his own thoughts, the sick priest whose place he had taken at the altar was holding a conversation with a stranger, who had been admitted after protest from Mrs. Lefevre. This stranger was the same repulsive drover whose dog had taken such a fancy to the leg of the bar table at Kingston. The drover was sitting in the chair that Mr. Lester had placed by the bed, upon his face was a strange look, a look that seemed to plead. He sat there and watched the priest. He held his heavy stick tight. He had come there to confess.

  ‘I beats ’er—I took ’er money—she starved. She ate naught. To-day they buried she over there,’ he nodded out of the window. ‘I beat she—poor maid—like thik.’ And the drover hit as though he were beating something on the ground. And then he went on to explain. ‘I watched through rails—they bury ’un up at Shelton—parson Turnbull, little black cap on ’es ’ead—they drop she in like thik,’ the drover dropped his stick. ‘I heared she go thud! into thik hole.—I beat thik dog—thik maid. Thik dog, ’e growl—she, whine, whine—and now to-day—thud!—Will she bide still? That’s what I wants to know—will she walk? I drives stock late—shall I meet she when I go by thik wold tree where a man were ’anged? Can you keep she down, parson, like she wented—thud. Let she bide still in ground!’

  The drover had never uttered so long a speech in his life. After it was over he looked at the priest. Then he turned to stare again at something white that he saw between the trees.

  Neville lay with his hand upon his forehead.

  ‘Have you any money?’ he asked.

  The drover, with a slow downward motion of his hand, carefully laid his stick upon the floor and took off the coat, stained with cow-dung, that he wore. Very slowly he folded it and placed it gently upon his stick; after that, with much care, he unfastened his belt. There was attached to the belt a purse. The drover turned it out upon the bed, shaking out therefrom seventeen sovereigns and one shilling.

  ‘Take it—take it all—it belonged to she. I’m fear’d of she—take thik money and keep she in the ground—thud! like she wented. She saved thik money in service—I beat she—I took ’en and to-day she went, thud!’ And the drover brought his hat with a heavy motion to the floor.

  Neville put the gold, pound by pound, into the purse, and gave the strap again to the drover.

  ‘Listen to what I say. Go on with your work and keep the money for a while. Remember it is still hers,—the woman that you beat. She wishes you to keep it till you meet a maid in trouble, unhappy like she was. And when you find a girl in trouble give her all of it, only keep the shilling; and when you go “thud,” let them put that shilling with you into the ground. The devil will not dare to face that shilling, and Christ will not forget it. Now go.’

  The drover slowly picked up his coat, and, taking up his stick, went out to find the maid who should save his soul.

  CHAPTER XV

  DESERTED

  MRS. FANCY folded up and put away the clothes from the lodgers’ bed. They had left her. But the girl lodger was still hanging about.

  ‘Funeral’s’ son had used the last few shillings of Miss Alice’s money to buy a ticket to Maidenbridge. It was there that Mr, Tasker sold his pigs, and there too the Rev. Edward Lester resided. Roude had managed to slip away from Alice in the town, and when she reached the station, the train, and her last shilling, and her lover were all departed. The girl wandered back to the street that had been her ‘home’ for a week.

  Mrs. Fancy had not been at home when she knocked, but all the same she had seen Alice tearfully walking up the street, and then she watched her coming down the other side, and, by setting her head at the very corner of the window, saw Alice enter the small lodging-house near the lamp-post.

  Mrs. Fancy was pleased. She rubbed her hands. She knew that house, and two gentlemen of the sea had followed the girl in.

  Mrs. Fancy dusted her rooms and again set up in her window the notice directing visitors to her good lodgings. After that she looked once more out of the window. This time the figure of a big sailor swayed along taking up nearly the whole pavement. Mrs. Fancy prayed that the sailor might enter the house by the lamppost. She wanted Alice brought down a little; that white dress was a bit too white in Mrs. Fancy’s eyes. The sailor was drunk. She watched him stoop a little as he entered the door.

  Then Mrs. Fancy counted again the money that had been paid her for the week’s lodgings. She counted ten shillings and sixpence. The ten shillings she wrapped in a small piece of paper, a piece of the Dainty Bits that had been left by her late lodger. She laid the sixpence on the table, the ten shillings she put aside for her rent. Then she cut herself a thin slice of bread and margarine, and poured some hot water upon the lodgers’ tea-leaves that still lay at the bottom of the pot. She helped herself to a cup, and, after drinking, gazed at the tea-leaves that were settled at the bottom.

  During her life Mrs. Fancy had amused herself more than once telling her fortune with tea-leaves. Now she thought she would find out by the same means what was going t
o happen to her late lodger. She knew pretty well what would happen to Alice, but she wanted a sign. She shook the cup and peered; then she laughed,—a mocking, aged, female laugh.

  ‘What funny people!’ she said aloud.

  The leaves in the bottom of the cup had taken the form of two devils.

  ‘What funny people!’ remarked Mrs. Fancy, this time to herself. She picked up the sixpence, and, putting on her bonnet, went out, after carefully locking her door. In one hand she carried a string bag and in the other her purse.

  ‘They will think,’ she said to herself, ‘that I am going to buy a tin of salmon for my supper.’

  But the people of that street knew quite well what the woman of the chapel was going to buy.

  As she passed the house by the lamp-post she heard sailors singing. Mrs. Fancy walked fast when she got away from her own street. She took the first turning to the right and then entered a little public-house, out of which she presently emerged without the sixpence.

  Of course Mrs. Fancy had taken that walk before, but this time the outing gave her especial pleasure. She walked along the street slowly and piously, like a good English matron going to her home, and she lapped up, like a thirsty hyena, the noise that came from the lodging-house by the lamp-post.

  About four hours after Mrs. Fancy’s return, the church clock that was nearest to this particular lamp-post struck two, and the door of the lodging-house at the corner noisily opened. A girl in a white soiled frock was thrust out in the street. She was thrust out by the big sailor who had passed Mrs. Fancy’s in the afternoon, and who now shouted:

  ‘Cut away, kid! Damnation, I’ve paid for your going.’

  And so indeed he had, for he was covered with blood, and with one eye black. As he let the girl out, three heads appeared at the upper window, and an empty rum bottle was hurled after the retreating figure of Alice. Luckily for her it burst upon the lamp-post, and she was followed only by a volley of obscene abuse.

  The girl was dazed. She felt only like a sick creature, beaten and trampled upon. She hurried away from that street, the street of her week’s honeymoon. As she went along she heard the wailing of a new-born infant.

  Alice waited. The babe wailed again.

  ‘A girl,’ she said aloud, and passed on shivering.

  A sick feeling overcame her; there were pains in her body, and her feet had no feeling in them. She fell forward on the pavement. Then she crawled. Just beyond her she saw an open space with a seat under a tree. In the dim light it seemed a refuge. Inch by inch she made her way to the wet board. At last she reached it, and leaned against the rough bark of an old elm. She even pressed her lips against the tree.

  CHAPTER XVI

  THE GOOD SAMARITAN

  BECAUSE Alice was young, she slept a little. In her dreams she stroked the tree with her hand in a strange crazed way. The fatherly charity of Providence and the strange jesting of men had given to this child a bed under a tree. Together the divine under-force and the human upper hand had made her feel that she was a rather weakly girl—but entirely a child.

  She shivered. Time had grown from a night with lamps into a grey day with smoke. Around her there were the fog and dumbness of early morning. She could just manage to move a little. She found that she had, all the time, held tightly clasped in her left hand a coin that the big sailor had put there. When she could open her stiff fingers, she found that it was a two-shilling piece.

  She found her way slowly to the station. The first down train was nearly due. An aged porter was brushing out the waiting-room. When the ticket office opened, Alice timidly asked the price of a ticket to Maidenbridge. The clerk looked at her through the opening. He knew by sight the local users of this early train.

  ‘You had better go back to your friends, miss,’ he said, not unkindly.

  The only friend she possessed in that town being a tree, Alice told the clerk that she lived near Maidenbridge, which indeed was true, though her only idea was to follow after her lover. She asked how far she could book for two shillings and the clerk gave her a ticket for Tadnoll, a little wayside station that came just before Maidenbridge, and was about five miles from that pleasant market town.

  Alice sank into the corner of an empty carriage. The train moved out of the station. She tried to watch the trees. Everywhere she saw unreal things move. A new gate-post looked to her like the bare neck of a sailor with protruding black veins. She thought of Tom Roude. They had started away from their lodgings together, and then he had sent her back to Mrs. Fancy’s to see if he had left his cigarette case under their bed. He had said he would hold her bag and wait for her by Johnson’s Stores. The train moved slowly, and smoky dust passed by the carriage window. Alice wondered what Mr. Roude had done with her clothes.

  He had, as a matter of fact, left them in the carriage when he got out at Maidenbridge. He had thought—clever young man—that a girl of sixteen-and-a-half, with no belongings, would not travel very far that day. And he knew her fear of the police. Roude was a realist. He believed that if you pluck a flower and it fades and you cast it into the gutter, the fault is not yours if it dies.

  The train travelled slowly and stopped at three stations before it came to Tadnoll. At each station there were the same things—a clatter of milk-cans, wet dairymen trundling cans along the platforms, and a sleepy porter who looked at Alice and then came back and looked at her again. She read the name of the station, and climbed down from the train. She was the only passenger to leave.

  A burly dairyman was rolling a churn up the platform when Alice alighted. He stopped at once when he saw her. She moved out of his way, and he proceeded to roll his churn deftly with one hand, explaining the presence of Alice to himself by two expressive words, ‘Them soldiers.’

  The train moved on, and Alice, after giving up her ticket, asked a porter, who was filling a lamp, the nearest way to Maidenbridge. She had been to Tadnoll before, but she could not remember which road to take. The porter could not get the wick of the lamp to turn up, and, hardly looking at Alice, he told her the way and said it was six miles; then concentrated the whole of his attention upon the behaviour of the lamp.

  There were three dairy carts outside the station, and as the girl walked on, they rattled past her loaded with empty milk-cans. Each driver looked back at her, but none offered her a ride. Perhaps they thought she looked too young and too ill to be respectable—and besides, what would their wives at home say? Each man remarked to himself, ‘T’ain’t no business of mine,’ and drove on.

  Before Alice had gone three miles, she dropped like an overdriven calf by the side of the road and lay in the long, soaked grass. All she knew was that she just lay there on the grass, and she began to count the dead leaves that came floating down from a tree near. She had never before known how cooling wet grass was to a girl in trouble; she felt it through her frock, and she took some up and sucked the water from a leaf.

  She had counted seventeen leaves, bright golden leaves, that fluttered down; then another one came, then no more. Alice turned a little and looked up the road. A man had just come round the corner, and he stopped suddenly in the middle of the road. Alice wondered why the man had stopped, and how long it would be before he would begin to walk again.

  Drops fell from the tree above her, and one almost fell into her mouth. She opened her mouth and waited for the next. She looked at the man in the road. He was walking towards her now. He carried a knotted stick in his hand, and his face was more beast than human. How different he looked from one of the sailors—the one that had held her down. She saw this sailor again quite plainly, a good-looking boy. She had begged him to let her go. She remembered begging, crying, even biting—there had been blood on his arm, and he had held her with the laugh of a spoilt child.

  The man with the stick stopped in front of her and appeared to be lost in thought. His face in this condition looked so queer that Alice almost laughed. The man slowly unbuttoned his coat. What was he going to do? The others had done eve
rything, nothing mattered to her now. A drop of water fell upon her nose, and she smiled. What was this strange man doing now? He had folded up his coat neatly, and now he laid it in the dry mud of the road; he was undoing a strap. Alice pinched her leg to see if it could still feel, and then shut her eyes.

  Another leaf came down and then another—they were very heavy; they all fell into her lap—and clinked. She opened her eyes. They were not leaves at all but golden coins that this strange man poured into her lap. She could only smile and wonder what was going to happen next.

  It was then that the man spoke. Was she a little maid again, late for school? And was he going to tell her the bell had rung?

  ‘’Tis all yours—ye be in trouble. She give it thee—let I tie it up for ’e, poor maid.’ The man spoke in a queer way as though he feared she might refuse to take the money.

  Alice, still smiling, took her handkerchief from her pocket and gave it to her odd companion, and he, placing it on the grass, collected the gold again and tied it up in her handkerchief, and carefully put it into the very bottom of her pocket. He had kneeled down beside her to do this, and when he was sure that she had the gold safe, he got on his legs and turned a very ugly face upwards to the sky and shook his fist.

  ‘Now let she out if thee dare!’ he shouted; and added as an afterthought, ‘Damn theeself to hell!’

  The strange man began to walk away, but he soon turned and came back to Alice. He had remembered that a calf, when it is down, has to be carried. He took Alice up from the grass as he would have taken up a calf, and carried her along the road.

  A farmer, driving a light trap, passed them, walking his horse up the hill that they were going down. This farmer knew the drover by sight, though he never employed him, and was for that reason his enemy.