Devils' Spawn

by Charles Birkin

  “You understand, Pierre?”

  His great head nodded.

  When Sally awoke she felt cold; piercingly cold. She opened her eyes. She had been dreaming that she was being carried somewhere. Where was she? She lifted her head and looked around her. She was lying on a heap of straw on a stone floor in a circular room, hewn apparently from the rock, and with no outlet but a heavy wooden door. She raised herself on her elbow. What had happened, where was she? She focused her eyes on a torch that flamed in a bracket on the wall opposite to her.

  Suddenly she saw that the door was opening . . . somebody was coming in. Who was it? God! it was Pierre. . . . She gave a cry . . . staggered to her feet.

  At six o’clock the next morning Marie knocked on the bedroom of Madame de Civennes.

  “Well?”

  “It is done, Madame. My Pierre is strong and very determined.”

  “That is good. I will not forget you, Marie.” She chuckled and went quietly out of the room. Margaret lay on her bed, fully dressed; it was early yet, and the dawn glimmered behind the stunted trees that feathered the mountains. She crossed to the window and parted the curtains. The sky was faintly pink. Margaret spoke to herself, her lips barely whispering the words “. . . and loving not, rejoiced in love.”

  Later in the day Margaret passed through the arched door to visit her guest.

  “Reason it out for yourself,” she said. “You have ruined two lives—your fiancé’s, and mine. It is only right that you should make what amends are in your power. Pierre is a good man—a little uncouth perhaps—but still, a good man. Owing to his unprepossessing looks the girls here will have nothing to do with him. You can make him happy and you shall make him happy. You will stay here in this apartment until I see fit to allow you greater liberty. I will give you more comforts and you shall be adequately cared for by Marie. Later, when you have borne Pierre a child, I will arrange that he will marry you. It is the custom of the peasants so to wed in this part of the country. Should you not prove capable of childbearing, then it is for Pierre himself to decide whether or not he will take you in marriage. For my part I think it likely that he will do so. I shall now leave you. Any reasonable request you make will be told me by your future mother-in-law.” Margaret turned as she finished speaking.

  “Why are you doing this thing to me?” Sally demanded. “In whatever way I have injured you . . . I . . . are you a fiend that you can condemn me to such a life?”

  “You have condemned yourself. I invited you here to see if there was anything fine in you; to try and understand why André loved you enough to kill himself when you refused to go away with him. You are exactly what I expected—shallow and cheap. You wished for a lover. He is dead . . . for André’s sake I have found you another.”

  Sally heard the grate of a key. The thickness of the door deadened Margaret’s footsteps as she climbed the worn stone steps.

  OBSESSION

  The banns had been read for the first time of asking; and many of the congregation in the church turned covertly to glance at the girl who sat by her mother in the third pew on the left-hand side of the aisle. Doris Carson was well aware of this sly scrutiny and, feeling that the expected maidenly blush was absent, studied the prayer-book in her hands with becomingly pious zeal.

  The announcement of her forthcoming marriage to Henry Russell came as a surprise to no one among the worshippers; for the two had been more or less openly “keeping company” for more than a year; and the death of Henry’s father six months previously had left him alone in the big farmhouse that stood among ploughland and pasture a mile from the village of Hartledean. The ladies of the village considered that Sarah Carson’s girl had done very well for herself, and felt, somewhat enviously, that she was extremely lucky; for Quarry Farm was one of the most flourishing in the district, due, they admitted freely, to the unremitting work put into it by Henry and his father, who had not spared either themselves or the half-dozen labourers that they employed.

  Henry had just passed his thirtieth birthday, and it was only natural, they comforted themselves, that he should want to take a wife; and if it couldn’t be their Janet or their Mary or their Maud—then Doris Carson was a well-spoken and good-mannered girl—and, Christian charity once more implanted in their matronly bosoms, they shortly afterwards rose a little stiffly to sing that sprightly hymn, “All things bright and beautiful.”

  Following the announcement of his marriage, the young man had appeared more bashful than his bride. His face crimson, he had sat with his hands convulsively clutching his knees, his neck, bulging slightly over his high starched collar, dyed the same ruddy hue. Now, however, sensing that Doris and he were no longer the cynosures of all eyes, he joined in the hymn with vigour, and, it must be added, in a pleasing baritone voice.

  Looking up with approval at his broad back, old Mrs. Weatherby from the Post Office noted his regained composure, and her face crinkled in a knowing smile. Well, well, Tom Russell’s boy and Sarah Carson’s girl to wed! Half dreaming, the cavalcade of the years slipped past in retrospect. Her own arrival in Hartledean as a young bride in . . . the old lady frowned in her effort to recall the date . . . it must be nigh on fifty years. . . . Yes, in the summer of 1860. . . . Sarah’s father-in-law had been the beau of the countryside in those days . . . handsome John Carson. With a slight shock Mrs. Weatherby remembered that John had been buried nearly a quarter of a century ago in the sun-washed churchyard that she could see through the small leaded windows. Lost in her reverie she felt her niece tugging at her arm; and was dismayed to find that she alone of the congregation was standing . . . a lone figure in a sea of bowed heads. She flushed with embarrassment and abruptly sat down with a force that jarred her spine, darting as she did so, an angry glance at her companion.

  It was the custom in Hartledean for the church people to linger outside the porch after Matins, and to exchange greetings and gossip with their neighbours; and this glorious morning was ideal for such pleasant intercourse. Mrs. Weatherby, her right hand, in its thin black glove, resting frail as a leaf on her buxom niece’s prune-coloured sleeve, followed the throng through the arched door into the sunshine, where she joined the little groups that were gathering, growing, dwindling and dispersing, only to re-form sociably in some other spot. Mrs. Weatherby saw Mrs. Carson and Doris standing by the iron gate, centres of a group of women who were congratulating the girl and her mother. Slowly she made her way towards them. As she approached she heard Miss Bourne, the doctor’s sister, exclaim in her staccato manner, “Such a surprise, Doris. I’m so pleased for your sake! Henry is a good man! So hard-working! So lusty! What a lucky girl! How pleased your dear mother must be! Charming Farm!” Here she caught sight of Mrs. Weatherby, and broke off to give her a smile of welcome and a gracious inclination of her head.

  Mrs. Weatherby patted Doris on the shoulder. “My dear,” she said, “you must be very happy.” The girl smiled at her, and the old lady, touched by the radiance in her face, was reminded once more of another bride of fifty years ago.

  “I am.” Doris looked very sweet and fresh in her crisp print dress with its straggling design of cornflowers. Her eyes glanced past Mrs. Weatherby and looked to where Henry was standing near the church door, his dark head bared, laughing with a group of young men. Their congratulations were hearty enough, even if their jokes might have been a little crude; for both Henry and Doris were well liked in Hartledean. As she looked he turned and walked towards her, burly and prosperous in his Sunday suit of dark serge, double-breasted and buttoning high on his chest. Doris thought that he looked his best in his farmer’s clothes; somehow the blue suit seemed to hamper his solid muscular body. She liked to see him in breeches, his shirt-sleeves rolled to the elbows of his tanned forearms. At his approach the covey of well-wishers twittered with pleasure and good wishes.

  “And how will poor Bessie like having a new mistress at the Farm?” Mrs. Weatherby asked playfully. Bessie was a good-hearted but forbidding spinster of some s
ixty years, who had run the farmhouse for Henry since his mother had died.

  “She’ll stay. She likes Doris well enough.” His voice was slightly burred with the soft West Country accent.

  “She’s a good soul and a good worker. We’ll get along nicely together,” Doris agreed. “You’re coming back with mother for a bite?” she added.

  “Is that all you’ve got for a hungry man?” A discreet ripple of laughter greeted this sally.

  “Well, I mustn’t detain you,” Mrs. Weatherby broke in. “Gracious!” she exclaimed, as the clock in the square tower struck twelve. “How time flies to be sure. Good-bye, my dear. Goodbye, Henry,” and attaching herself once again to the arm of her plump and silent niece, she passed through the gate and into the High Street, on which looked the prim and lace-veiled windows of her front parlour.

  “Dear Mrs. Weatherby,” Miss Bourne was saying, “so gallant! Won’t give up! Marvellous for her age! Have to retire soon, I expect! Reads all our postcards, I’ll be bound! The Post Office won’t be the same without her!”

  And so the chatter and joking continued on this Sunday morning, a June day in the year of grace nineteen hundred and twelve, in the tranquil Somerset village, where a young couple had become engaged to be married. Presently, urged by pangs of hunger, the churchgoers departed to their homes.

  Doris and Henry sat on the sofa in Mrs. Carson’s sitting-room. The good lady herself was in the kitchen preparing the “high tea” with which she was accustomed to end the Sabbath, tactfully leaving them alone. They had spent the afternoon most agreeably in walking by the river-bank, and in much dalliance among the shady copses that fringed the sluggish water. Henry looked down at the head with its brown hair that rested on his shoulder.

  “Love me, Doris?”

  “A little.”

  “Not more than that?”

  “You know I do, Henry!”

  “As much as this?” He bent his head to hers and kissed her for the hundredth time.

  “Just about.”

  “More?”

  The sound of Mrs. Carson’s footsteps were heard approaching and, at a tactful cough from that thoughtful lady, Doris sat up and moved away from the young man. The door opened and her mother came in.

  “Oh, Doris. . . . Joe Langley is here and wants to see you. I can’t imagine what he has come for . . . he seems dreadfully excited.”

  “Joe Langley!” Henry exclaimed in surprise.

  “Jealous?” his mother-in-law laughed.

  He grimaced. Langley was the simple-minded son of a widow who lived in a cottage on the Wimblemere road.

  “Tell him you’re busy, Dot,” he suggested.

  “I can’t do that. I must see why the poor boy has come. I won’t be long.” She got up and, smoothing her dress, followed her mother from the room.

  Mrs. Carson paused at the door to say:

  “Smoke if you want to, Henry.”

  Left alone, the young farmer filled his pipe. He smiled to himself at the memory of Mrs. Carson’s mocking “Jealous?” A fine rival indeed . . . the widow Langley’s idiot boy. He leant back, jingling the coins in his pockets, and watched the clouds of blue smoke fading towards the low ceiling of the room.

  Doris found Joe waiting for her inside the door that led into the stone-flagged scullery. He appeared to be in a state of extreme agitation. His long red hands, protruding grotesquely from the short sleeves of his ragged coat, twisted the cap that he held. Thin almost to emaciation, he appeared more than his twenty-four years, strangely senile—with a withered look of old age that lay oddly on his vacant face. The nervous twitch that perpetually agitated his left eye and the corner of his mouth robbed him of all expression. At the sight of her he tried to speak, but so intense was his excitement that for some seconds the attempt was too great for him.

  “Yes, Joe? Why did you want to see me?”

  With a tremendous effort he blurted, “Is it true what they’re saying?”

  “Who? What are they saying?”

  “That you’re to wed Henry Russell?”

  “Yes, Joe, it’s quite true. Weren’t you at church this morning?”

  He ignored her question. Suddenly he turned away to hide his emotion. “You can’t do it, I tell you. You can’t do it.”

  Behind her Doris heard her mother laying the table, and realised that Joe was embarrassed by her presence. Perhaps he would explain himself more easily if she were alone with him. For greater privacy she closed the door between the two rooms.

  “I tell you you mustn’t. It’s not right. You’re all I’ve got. No one else but you has been kind to me. You’re my girl, do you hear, you’re mine. I know I never asked you to marry me, but I thought you knew.” He stopped speaking, exhausted by such a long speech.

  Doris was dumbfounded. True, she had always been nice to the boy. She had felt sorry for him, witless and misshapen as he was, the natural butt of the crueller element in the village; and he had rewarded her by a doglike devotion. She had an irresistible desire to laugh, but the blank misery of his beseeching animal eyes stopped her. What could she say to him? She put her hand on his arm.

  “Joe . . . I never dreamt you felt like that about me; how could I? But I’m afraid it’s too late. You see, I’m engaged to Henry, and it would hurt him terribly if I threw him over. You understand that, don’t you?” She spoke slowly, so that her words would sink in. “I can’t possibly marry you now that I’m promised to Henry. I didn’t mean this to be a shock to you. I thought that you knew . . . I thought everybody knew.”

  He remained silent, his face twitching. The ticking of the clock on the table seemed very loud. “I think you’d better go, Joe. I’m sorry.”

  “You can’t do it. . . . You’re my girl.”

  And then he had gone, and Doris faced the door that he had slammed behind him. She looked through the window and saw that a fine summer rain was falling. Poor Joe . . . she smiled a little sadly . . . of all the ludicrous ideas!

  “What did he want, dear?” Mrs. Carson asked, as she went through the kitchen.

  “Nothing, mother. He’d just heard of my engagement and he felt a little upset.”

  “Joe Langley upset! What impudence!” Mrs. Carson banged a sugar basin on to the table.

  Doris told Henry of her interview, and, as she had expected, he was greatly amused, and slapped his thigh; his laughter echoing into the kitchen.

  “The poor loon! Let me catch him saying a thing like that, and I’ll tan his hide for him quick enough.”

  “No, Henry, you won’t. It’s pathetic, dear. Leave him alone.”

  “Marry you! The little runt!” Henry pulled her down on to his knee, and by the time Mrs. Carson came to tell them that supper was ready, Joe Langley and his concerns had been forgotten.

  During the days that followed Doris saw little of the half-­witted boy. Occasionally in the village she caught sight of him, sullen and quiet, mooning outside the Blue Boar, or wandering restlessly along the road that led to his mother’s cottage. He seemed oblivious of her presence, but she felt that his gaze followed her whenever her back was turned.

  One morning she was on her way to the Post Office when she came upon a mob of schoolchildren running and laughing from a narrow lane that joined the High Street by the shop of John Tinkler, the baker.

  They were closely followed by the upright figure of Miss Bourne, indignation in every line of her bearing and in the parasol that she brandished in her hand.

  “Good morning, Miss Bourne.” Doris was curious to find the explanation of her friend’s militant conduct.

  “Good morning, Doris. Really these children! Of course it’s his mother’s fault for not keeping him at home! Horrid little savages! But it’s common knowledge that she has always been a drunken good-for-nothing!”

  Doris smiled polite inquiry; and the good lady hurried on, “They’ve been tormenting him again! Joe Langley! A crying shame! I found them pelting him with stones! One had struck him on the ankle when I arrived
on the scene! It’s not Christian! I shall speak to the vicar! But then, I suppose that boys will be boys!” She paused for breath.

  “Poor Joe—where’s he gone?”

  “He made off over the fields like a frightened rabbit! Kinder to send him to an institution, I should say!” and Miss Bourne bustled away, her shopping bag held firmly in her left hand, her gay parasol tapping the pavement in irregular accompaniment to her step.

  Henry, on the other hand, was less fortunate. True to his promise to treat Langley with kindly tolerance, he tried to ignore the boy’s persistent dogging of his footsteps. When he had occasion to drive to the village in his smart trap with its fat, well-groomed pony, he was aware of the simpleton’s scrutiny; in the lanes around his farm he was continually encountering the loose-limbed figure slouching in the shadow of the hedges. Once he had caught him near the house itself; and had warned him that if he found him trespassing on his land again he would give him a sound thrashing.

  After that Joe had been more circumspect in his shadowing, and nearly two weeks passed before his next meeting with Henry.

  The young farmer was walking down the narrow path that divided a big field of wheat that lay some distance from the house. The hot sun of June beat down upon his bare head. The crop promised to be a bumper one, and he looked at it with approval. Only a week remained until the day when he was to marry Doris. Whistling, he pushed open the gate that led into the pasture where his young heifers were grazing. He turned to shut the gate carefully behind him. At the same moment he was conscious that somebody was near him . . . someone was lurking behind a clump of briars by the pond a few yards to his left. He walked towards the spot, swinging the heavy stick which he carried.

  “Here you! Come on out of that!”

  Silence. Not a movement or sound in answer to his challenge.

  “I’ll soon have you out.” Henry peered into the hiding-place. Joe Langley, pressed close to the earth, glared up at him half resentful, half afraid.