Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead

by Barbara Comyns

  The children were by this time extremely dirty and rather tired and did not want to be hustled home. Then, unfortunately, they came to one of the fields filled with the cows their father had so much admired. Dennis was frightened of cows and, when be saw the great beasts tossing their heads adorned with their curling horns, he knew he could never pass them. Even the ones who were grazing kept slashing at flies with their tails in an alarming manner. He stood at the gate and refused to budge while Hattie coaxed him and his father swore, “You bloody little fool, they won’t hurt you. If you don’t come immediately, I’ll leave you here and you’ll have to face them all alone!” And that is exactly what did happen. Ebin went on, although both children begged him not to, and he forced Hattie to go with him, which she sulkily did, looking over her shoulder every now and then at the sad little figure standing by the gate. When they had gone out of sight Dennis rushed back to the miser’s hovel with the idea of staying there until the following morning, when the farmer would take the offending cows away to be milked. The grimy little ruin had lost its charm and appeared a desolate place to the boy, who sat down on a pile of bricks to wait for the morning, which seemed so far away. When it was almost dark, some enormous flying beetles started a mad and dreadful dance round a may tree with the blossom all dried and brown upon it.

  When they reached the bridge, Ebin told Hattie to go home by herself because he wanted to visit the White Lion. He felt depressed and the good esteem in which he had been holding himself had somehow gone. He hoped Dennis would have returned before he did; otherwise there would be great trouble with Emma. And now he kept thinking of the lonely small figure standing by the gate in the dusk. But a country boy afraid of cows—it was too absurd! I shall feel better after a drink, he thought as he tripped into the White Lion. When he left half an hour later he had heard that there were eleven new cases of the strange illness in the village. Also, the dog from the White Lion had died of convulsions.

  - CHAPTER XII -

  WHEN EMMA discovered Hattie had returned without Dennis she was rather unjustly angry with the child. She was not unduly worried because she thought her father must have returned for Dennis when he had sent Hattie home by herself. But later she heard the heavy front gates close and saw Ebin walking through the dank, tree-lined front garden alone.

  “Where’s Dennis?” she demanded.

  “Dennis?” her father asked, “Isn’t he home yet? I’ve just heard there are eleven new cases of this madness, and, strangely enough, they were all guests at the funeral; so it must be contagious after all.”

  “Of course it’s contagious,” Emma almost screamed, “and you’ve taken the children right through the village and left Dennis alone in some wretched field. I hope you are the next one to get the madness, indeed I do!” And she rushed past him into the street.

  Emma hurried through the village. It was already dusk and lamps were being lit in cottage windows. She passed the White Lion and heard laughter and voices and the click of billiard balls coming out, and there was a smell of beer. She crossed the bridge and entered the small field which had belonged to the butcher, and she startled the dreamy sheep waiting to be killed by the butcher who had already killed himself. The next field had lately been cut for hay and now was very green, and horses had been turned into it to graze. Pontius Pilate—an aged golden hunter who drew the village cab—followed her hopefully, because she usually brought him sugar lumps; but she did not notice him as she hurried through the field. She passed Old Toby’s cottage, where already the dahlias were showing high, and she asked the old man if he had seen Dennis. He looked at her dreamily out of his sad red eyes and then recognised her.

  “No, Miss Willoweed. I haven’t seen the boy. Can I help you find him, do you think, Miss?”

  But she refused his help and was afraid of his scarred face, which she had not seen so close before.

  She climbed the hill that led to the ruined hovel, and, as she came near a cottage with lights showing from every window, she heard a child’s piercing screams and a woman crying. Then a terrified child with tousled hair appeared at the window and rattled the casement; but a man quickly grabbed it and it disappeared from view. But the screams came again. Emma stood for a moment staring at the cottage in horror while she tried to summon enough courage to go to the child’s assistance; and, as she stood there, a man came to the window and tried it to see if it was firmly closed, and the child’s tormented screams arose again. As the man at the window turned away, Emma recognised Doctor Hatt’s cadaverous face. Startled, she drew into the shadows, and she realised the demented child she had seen at the window was suffering from the madness.

  “Oh, please, God, don’t let Dennis get it, and help that poor child,” she found herself praying as she stumbled in the dusk up the rough hillside path.

  It was almost dark when she found Dennis asleep on the broken stone floor of the hut. He gave a bewildered cry as she gently touched his shoulder, but was reassured when he heard her voice. Although the evening was warm, he appeared to be cold and repeatedly shivered; so Emma made him run down the hill to bring back some warmth to his body. They passed through the field with the cows; but he did not seem to notice them, although their comfortable breathing and occasional husky coughs could be heard in the darkness. When they came to the cottage where the demented child had screamed, all was still and there was only a light in one window. The moon was rising, and there was a beautiful smell of summer night about. The quietness was suddenly disturbed by the sound of angry voices and muttered mumblings.

  When they came near Old Toby’s cottage they could see it was surrounded by people, and a great rumble of anger seemed to he coming from them and above it there were shouts for Toby to show himself.

  “Come out, you bastard—come out you murderer!” Then someone shouted, “If you don’t come out, we will burn your house down.”

  “Yes, burn the bugger,” a thin little woman, wearing a man’s cloth cap, yelled as she savagely elbowed her way through the crowd.

  The miller’s son seized a rake from the garden and beat on the door shouting, “You killed my Dad with your filthy bread. Come out you scabby old monster!”

  Emma and Dennis stood on the outskirts of the crowd, which had now advanced right up to the cottage, and there was a sound of breaking glass as they beat the windows in with sticks. The enormous dahlias were trodden underfoot.

  “Poor Old Toby, what can he have done?” Emma asked a scared-looking woman standing near.

  “I don’t know, I’m sure, miss,” she replied, “but I did hear as they say he put poison in the bread and that’s the cause of this here illness—or madness, as they call it.”

  The woman melted into the shadows, and Emma and Dennis cringed against a hedge. Besides the shouting there were other most disturbing sounds like some great malevolent animal snorting and grunting, and there was a stench of evilness and sweating, angry bodies. A man with his shirt all hanging out pushed past Emma, and in the moonlight she could see his face all terrible, with loose lips snarling and saliva pouring down his chin. Shrieks of laughter greeted him when he climbed on the thatched roof and shouted and swore down the chimney. Several men carried lanterns, which they wildly waved above their heads and which made a strange and dancing light. Emma and Dennis crept against the hedge, and, although they were pushed and jostled, they clung to each other and were not parted. They stumbled over two unheeding figures rolling and grunting on the grass, and a woman with her mouth all bleeding pushed them out of her way as she ran yelling towards the village. She battled her way through the mob, and Emma, dragging Dennis, ran in her wake, and suddenly they were free and the crowd and terror were behind them.

  As they trailed through the village street they heard the roar of Doctor Hatt’s car, and, as it passed them, they saw the doctor was accompanied by the policeman, and Dennis said sleepily, “Look Emma, Old Toby will be saved now.”

  Emma looked over her shoulder at the car as it passed across the b
ridge and saw that the sky was all lit up and glowing, and knew that they were burning Toby’s cottage. She gave Dennis a gentle push, told him to hurry home and get Norah to give him something hot to drink, and rushed back over the bridge. She forgot her recent terror and tiredness and only felt a compelling urge to shield the wretched old man from his persecutors.

  She returned to see the cottage blazing. Floating, burning straw from the thatching was starting minor fires all round, and the heat and smoke were terrible. The crowd become subdued and afraid and many were creeping away, some of the men with their coats over their heads, so that they could not be recognised. The policeman had managed to round up a few and was questioning them; but no one appeared to know if Old Toby was still in the cottage. Doctor Hatt tried the door; but although it was burning the bolts still remained firm. The heat and smoke were so intense, he was driven back.

  “Is that poor man still in there?” he shouted to the crowd; but there was no reply above the roaring and crackling of the fire. A few men half-heartedly advanced towards the cottage with sticks as if to beat the flames out; but they soon retreated with streaming eyes and glowing red, scorched faces.

  Emma ran to the back of the house where it was comparatively clear. She had an idea the old man might have crept out that way and be hiding in his privy among the giant cabbages. It was then that she started to scream—a dreadful penetrating scream of one awful note. They thought it was the old man trapped and burning alive in his house, and Doctor Hatt made one frantic attempt to climb through the tiny broken window; but the size of the window and the heat made it impossible.

  The hideous scream continued, and then the dark people with dancing flames on their faces were all around Emma as she stood there among the wilting cabbages. One hand was over her mouth as if to stop the scream and the other was pointing at something crawling on the ground, and as they came nearer it became still and they recognised it as something human. As they bent over the still form, there was a sickening smell of burnt flesh and smouldering cloth still burning. The fierce changing light revealed Old Toby’s charred corpse more terrible than he had ever been in life, and, although the doctor bent over him in compassion, most of the onlookers staggered away half fainting and some uncontrollably vomiting.

  Someone quite gently led Emma away and helped her to sit upon a tree trunk away from the heat. There she stayed vaguely watching the disturbed insects that madly rushed about its bark and she muttered over and over again. “He smelt so dreadful, and he crawled …”

  Old Toby’s body was wrapped in sacks, so recently used for forcing rhubarb, to prevent the limbs from falling from the body, and carefully lifted into the back seat of the doctor’s car. As the policeman climbed into the front seat and the doctor went to the front of the car to turn the starting handle, several men sprang forward offering their help. As if from nowhere Ebin Willoweed suddenly appeared with notebook in hand and demanding to be told how Toby’s cottage came to be burnt. The doctor pushed past him without speaking and got into the throbbing car and drove away; at the same time the horse-drawn fire engine arrived.

  The absence of the policeman and the presence of the fire engine drew the crowd back, and Ebin went from one to another trying to get a coherent account of all that had passed that evening. Eventually he almost fell over Emma, still sitting on her log staring at insects. Although surprised to see her, he immediately asked her how much she had seen.

  “I want an eye witness account, Emma.”

  But the only answer he received was, “He smelt dreadful and he crawled …”

  When he had managed to piece some sort of a story together, he returned for Emma, who had just noticed the crowd had nearly disappeared and the fire was almost out. She stood up feeling quite dazed and somehow managed to follow her father across the moonlit field to the river, where Ebin had moored a boat. Silently they rowed across; but as he tied the boat to the landing stage Ebin said, “It’s a pity I missed most of it.”

  “I only wish I’d never returned,” Emma thought as she wearily walked towards the house.

  Before going to her room, she remembered Dennis and went to see if he was safely in bed. A light was shining below his door, and when she entered his room she saw a candle was still burning on his chest-of-drawers and she held it over the sleeping boy. She saw that he had gone to bed without washing, and his hands and face were streaked with black. She smiled for a moment, but then her eyes fell on a half-finished hunk of rye bread and butter and a pot of jam on the chair by his bed. She remembered hearing that the bread had been examined for poisoning, and she flung it through the open window. As she did so she saw the glow across the river from the remains of Old Toby’s cottage, which was still burning.

  - CHAPTER XIII -

  IVES ARRIVED the next morning and was full of the news and rumours that were circulating in the village. When Grandmother Willoweed heard his excited old voice floating out of the kitchen, she tugged the cord of her huge bell and demanded that Ives should be sent to her immediately. The old man did not like the idea of entering ladies’ bedrooms; but he was eager to tell his news and followed Eunice quite docilely. When he entered the room, however, he was so overcome by the smell of camphor combined with peppermint and stuffy old clothes that he couldn’t get his breath to speak and there was a dreadful pause, which rather increased the drama of his words when they eventually came.

  “Well ma’m, it’s like this. Toby that worked for the baker is burnt to a cinder—dead, and the old ladies at Roary Court … well, their goat’s dead, died in the most terrible convulsions, and one of the old ladies herself is none too well—diarrhoea and hands and feet shaking like a leaf. But that’s not all. There are strange policemen and other strangers taking away all the baker’s flour and he’s in a terrible state; it’s almost as if he had the madness himself. And ma’m, there won’t be no baking there for many a day. All our bread is coming in carts from over Stratford way. Oh, yes, and I saw Doctor Hatt’s man, Mr. Fig, and he says there are seventeen suffering from this poisoning or madness or whatever it be; but they don’t seem to be dying, just terrible pains and never a wink of sleep. But Fig’s a close one and it’s more than likely that they are dying like flies.”

  The old man stopped for lack of breath, and, if Grandmother Willoweed had been able to smile, she would have smiled kindly at him. Instead, she thanked him for his interesting information and told him he was to ask the servants to give him a good breakfast.

  “Anything you like—gammon, kidneys, eggs, separate or all together, just as you fancy. And, while you are about it, you can tell them to bring up my tray; I’m famished.”

  Emma had slept late, but was disturbed by the old people’s voices. She hastened over her washing and dressing; but, before she had finished brushing her long hair, Hattie came sadly into her room with three dead birds she had discovered on the round lawn that came close to the house. One of the birds—a robin—was still warm, and she gave it to Emma and asked if there was a chance that it was not really dead but only in a faint.

  “No, I’m afraid it’s dead,” Emma said as she gently stroked the limp body, “but why three birds should suddenly die on our lawn, I cannot say. There is no sign of violence and it cannot be thirst so near the river.”

  She gave the sad little body back to Hattie, who suddenly said:

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you. Dennis won’t get up because he says he’s cold.”

  “Cold? Hattie, why didn’t you tell me before instead of showing me those silly birds!” Emma exclaimed as she roughly pushed her sister out of the way and ran to Dennis’s bedroom, while Hattie buried her dark face on the birds’ bodies and wept.

  Dennis lay in bed shivering and complaining that he felt tired; and Emma, who had had little experience of illness, felt his forehead and, when that seemed cool against her hand, was reassured. He had every reason to feel tired after his experiences the previous evening, she reasoned, and he would be well enough by lunch time if he was al
lowed to rest. He refused his breakfast, but drank a glass of hot milk, and then lay quietly, apparently happy, looking at the cracks in the ceiling.

  “That one’s just like Australia with the big bite out, and there is one in the corner just like Ireland—or it could be a Teddy bear,” he said dreamily to Emma as she was leaving the room.

  At the bakery, Horace Emblyn sat broken-hearted by his empty flour bins. All his flour had been confiscated and condemned, although it was only established that the rye bread had contained ergot. The previous evening the medical officer of health, accompanied by the policeman, had called at the bakery and informed him that it was the bread that he baked which had poisoned the villagers and caused the madness. He was responsible for his wife’s death, the butcher’s death, the miller’s death—and perhaps there would be others who would suffer and die through eating the bread he had made with such pleasure. There were seventeen new cases, not very severe as yet, but it was quite likely that some of them would end in death through eating rye bread baked by Horace Emblyn.