Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “Nay, not a penny,” said she. “I don’t spend from it on myself, ’tis all put by for the child that’s coming to me.”

  “ I guessed so. Then there’s nought for it but to sell them two meadows above St. Columb’s. And I can get a good price for them. That lawyer chap over to Penzance has been wanting to buy them this last six months. I met him this afternoon, and I told him I’d sell.”

  “And does Dennis say aye to it? That’s needful, you told me.”

  “Damn the boy!” said John, filling his glass again. “He! gave me a surly answer, when I said something of it to him before, but I’ll make him see sense. Leave Dennis to me!”

  She gave a little thin cackle of laughter. “Eh, John, ’twas a pretty hash Dennis made o’ you last time you went for to tackle him,” said she. “I thought you’d never be the same man again. But indeed you recovered wonderful, for ’twas scarce a fortnight after that that you was as lusty as ever, and you and I came together again after all these years.”

  “Never mind that,” said he. “Dennis has just got to sign as he’s bid, agreeing to the sale.”

  “Maybe he will, and maybe he won’t. The boy’s just as obstinate as any Pentreath can be; and now ’tis not he only, but Nell ‘ll be backing him up, and she’s of a stock that equals yours, for it’s my own. They’re wedded folk now, and there’s a child coming. That’ll stiffen her against selling what’ll one day be her son’s, and she’ll stiffen Dennis against it. It wants a bit o’ planning, if you’re to get your way with him.”

  Her voice rose as she began to speak fast with that shrill gabble he knew so well. But now there was no scolding or rating in it.

  “’Tis strange how things turn out,” she said. “Just round about the time that you and me came together again after twenty years, there was your own grandson and Nell burning for each other, and now us two women are expecting. Eh, he and Nell were quiet and secret about it; I couldn’t ‘a been more secret myself, and never shall I forget the evening, two nights or three it must ‘a been after the bonfire, when he came sauntering in, as if the place was his a’ready. ‘Nell and mes gwaineter get married as soon as Passon can put us through the banns,’ he says. She was with child by him then, and ’twas on Midsummer Eve that she told him she was fruitful by him. They danced in the circle that night, same as you and J, skipping wild they were, and ’twas strange that a grandfather and his grandson should be there together. Wild they skipped, but Mollie Pentreath’s heels were as high as theirs, I reckon, spite of the generations as severs us. ’Twas that night, I’ll be bound, that I conceived, though she got the start of me, and now in the spring days there’ll be born to you a child of your grandson, while your own’s just coming to ripeness. Lord! That’ll be something to think about for Passon, as is so bent on hell-fire. The fire of earth ain’t burned itself out yet, and maybe t’other’ll cool down first.”

  She rose to her feet, waving the little half-knitted sock.

  “Eh, there was fire abroad that night,” she cried, “the old great fire of the world, as kindles women twice as hot as Passon’s hell, or as man either. Man takes his pleasure, as did you of me, and Dennis of Nell, but where’s your joy to mine, or Dennis’s to hers, for when your bit of pleasure is over ’tis we women that day and night grow great with the fruit of it. Indeed, yes, there were powerful good friends o’ mine about on St. John’s Eve, there in the circle, and in Kenrith copse too, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  She pushed him down into the chair from which she had risen, and came and sat on his knee, nestling to his shoulder. Whatever had been the trick whereby she had brought him back to her, renewing their marriage rites by the harlotry of his desire, even as by harlotry she had married him, he was hers again now, as if newly wed.

  “But be you sure that you’re waxing with child?” he asked. “Isn’t it, maybe, some fancy of yours, because you long for it? Women have strange notions? they say, when they come to your time of life, and they go crazy with wanting. Shan’t I get Dr. Symes to come and have a look over you?”

  She laughed in his face.

  “Tush for your doctors!” she said. “Do I want a doctor to tell me I’ve a head on my neck or a womb within me? No more do I want one to tell me what’s waxing there. And the sickness and all: why, man, I glory in it. There’s Nell, not yet born when I was first wed to you, and I’m fruitful still, no withered branch to be lopped off and thrust into the oven. The tender leaf’s sprouting from it yet, for all my years, and I need no ‘pothecary to tell me that. ’Twas of your begetting; John: the stroke of your manhood met my desire, and tush for your doctors.”

  “Yet I’m not at ease, Mollie,” he said. “You look thin and worn, you do, when a woman should be stout and buxom, and your face is yellow when it should be growing roses for your baby to pluck, and slack and tallen are your breasts that should be growing firm for your child to suck. ’Tis little good your food does you, and you’re light as a fleshed bone on my knee, when ’tis heavy you should be. Look at Nell.”

  She laughed again.

  “Aye, and look at Dennis, if it comes to that,” she said, «and then behold yourself, John Pentreath. Dennis is all spring and sap and fire, while you’re old and heavy-footed, and if I’m different from Nell, you’re different from Dennis, though you made yourselves fathers together. ’Tis in nature that you haven’t his fibre and his lustiness, and why should I be buxom and firm of breast like Nell? But I’ll not be paying a doctor for telling me what I know already. Time for him to come when we send for the midwife.”

  “Well, you’re a wonder,” he said.

  He held her close to him, astonished at the ardour he felt towards the woman whom for years he had regarded as a blackened, weather-worn hull stranded on the shore. Though at the first moment when, maddened by her trick, he had dealt her that savage blow, there was no deceit about the joy she had already given him, for there was fire and challenge in her, fit to match any riotous young poll of half her years. Then too she had proved for him his manhood’s efficiency, and that flattered his pride, for it was not everyone who could reel tipsy to bed on most nights for a solid thirty years or more, and at the end be capable of begetting a child. It was a proud thing to be a Pentreath who could play hell with every rule of whole some living, and yet prove himself as good a man as any of the sober and stiff-lipped.

  A flap of rain beating on the window recalled to him the thought of his ruined harvest and of Dennis’s possible obstinacy about the sale of the fields.

  “The boy’s got to come round to my way of thinking,” he said, «and I’ll have no nonsense. I’ll speak him fair about it, but he’s got to give way. Damn that lather of mine, who made th’ entail, so they name it, after he’d sold more nor thirty acres himself.”

  “Father or no father, ’tis wiser not to go damning the dead,” said she, “for happen they can heed you yet.”

  “Nay, Mollie, d’you think that?” he asked.

  “Reckon I do. But talking of the acres, those acres went down the old man’s throat, same as these’ll go down yours if you manage to sell. John, can’t you give up your drink, with a child coming to you from me and a great-grandchild to Dennis? Nigh on a pound a week goes in your bottles. Strong and lusty you were when you went without it after Dennis’s mishandling of you. He and Nell know where the price of the land will go, for she spoke to me of it when you tried Dennis before. “What’ll Dennis or our children see 0’ that money?” she said. “Twill all have gone down a red lane I know of, first.”

  “I might offer him half the purchase price,” said John. “That’ll be a hundred and fifty pounds in his pocket.”

  “And for why should he take that, when one day t’other half will be his, too?” she asked.

  “That’s so. God, how I hate that feller! It makes me writhe to think he’ll be strutting here when I’m no more than mould. All flesh is grass, well I know it, but I reckon there’s some grass as is tough and wiry yet, and I’m o’ that breed.”

&
nbsp; Mollie knitted awhile in silence.

  “The lad won’t sign if he knows what he’s signing,” she said at length. “Nell’s behind him in that, and I’ll back their will against yours. But can’t you get his scrawl out of him without his knowing? Can’t you get the deed wrapped up in lawyer’s language, so that he don’t rightly understand it?”

  He turned a pleased but fuddled face to her.

  “Faith, and I believe you’ve hit it,” he said. “’Tis worth trying, anyhow, and if it comes off, he’ll look pretty when he finds that I’ve condiddled him. That’d put things a bit more even between us, and mark you, I shan’t be satisfied till I’ve paid him back. Dearly should I like to look at his dead face, and give it a clout and say, ‘Aye, you thought to step into my shoes, did ‘ee? But a winding sheet’s all you need, for the dead go barefoot.’”

  “Aye, you hate him sure ‘nough,” said she, “for I’ve seen your eyes glint when they light on him or on Nell either. And I’m with you in that, for if ’twasn’t for him, and her brat that’s coming, ’twould be my child as would have and hold the farm when you’re gone. But, there, I can’t think o’ that for long, for my mind goes back to what’s coming to me, and then ’tis not in me to think ill for any.”

  She put her lips to the tiny sock she was knitting, and kissed it.

  “’Tis the fruits of autumn, maybe, as are the sweetest,” she said.

  All that week the boisterous, pouring weather continued, completing the ruin of the harvest in those parts, and then too late for the saving of it, windless days and the dear shining of summer suns returned. But already the corn was flat on the mire of the fields, and as if in mockery and derision, the ripened grain was sprouting everywhere, and the poppies were ablaze. In the field where stood the circle of stones, not a blade was left upright, and grey and indifferent the monoliths regarded the ruin, for what mattered it to them and their centuries of stability? For this year they had done their work for those who had danced within the circle of their spell: there were two couples, it was said, down in St. Columb’s, each with five years of barren wedlock behind them, and their dancing had done it for them now. Dr. Symes would bear witness that both of these wives were pregnant, and what could have brought that about but their dancing? And then it was said that Mollie Pentreath up at the farm was expecting, but Dr. Symes hadn’t been asked for his opinion there, and so he couldn’t; say as to her.

  Nell and Dennis, on the evening of one of these hot days after the return of the sun, were coming up from St. Columb’s, Nell was a bit out of breath with the ascent when they came opposite the circle of stones. “We’ll sit awhile, Dennis,” she said. “’Tis only a cold supper to-night, and your mother and I made all ready before I came out. Eh, that Midsummer Night! Gracious it was to us, for we leaped and now we’re married, and there’s a child coming. And there the stones stand, so heedless and quiet. Do you mind you of Aunt Mollie that night? ’Twas a strange thing to see her capering there.”

  “And ’twas a stranger thing that came of it,” said Dennis. “Yes, if so be there’s something coming of it. Yet there’s Betty Poltalloch and Susan Burton down to St. Columb’s, who are in the way, and both danced that night.”

  “Lord, there was power abroad,” said he, “and who can doubt it? Not you and me, Nell, for we danced as frantic as any, and leaped too. Maybe ’tis we who believe as make the power same as faith, that Passon talks about in church, makes you lusty enough to move mountains.”

  “Happen that’s it. There’s Aunt Mollie, who wouldn’t see the young moon through glass for a pocketful of guineas, and perhaps it would do her a mischief if she did. But I’d stare at the moon through glass all night before it would hurt me.”

  Dennis laughed.

  “I like that,” he said, “for what about that silver piece you wear round your neck to keep your blood pure. A rare taking you were in that night when I filched it, and hung it round myself for a change, and ’twasn’t till you saw it there that you’d be comforted.”

  “Well, that’s a match for the moon, I allow,” she said, “and there’s a sight of things I don’t know whether I believe or not. But there’s one thing I don’t believe for sure, and that’s that Aunt Mollie has a child coming.”

  “Why, how’s that?” he asked. “What makes her believe so-then? She’s been having the morning sickness, hasn’t she, same as you?”

  She shook her head.

  “Nay, there’s plenty o’ things which can make a women spew beside that,” she said. “And then to look at her! She’s thin as a lath, and yellow-brown for colour, and there’s not an ounce of juice in her body, and she grows more dawered every day. She can’t nourish herself, and you don’t tell me that there’s nourishment for another as well. And for all that, she goes smiling and eager with her knitting o’ baby clothes. She’s got queer pains, too, and I’ve seen her clutch at herself and turn white, and what’s she doing with pain yet? And the sweat breaks out on her; many a time have I seen her sitting close to the fire, but ’tis not the fire that gives her the sweat. It lathers on her, and there’s a corruption in it, soapy, I’d call it.”

  “Well, I know a lass who was in a lather just now, coming up from St. Columb’s,” said Dennis.

  “Yes, and ’twas me,” she said, “and you might give me a wipe of your handkerchief, for I came out wanting one.”

  Dennis drew a big square of coarse stuff from his trouser-pocket.

  “Reckon it’s not very dainty,” he said, “and there’s a streak 0’ blood on it, too, for I cut myself pruning the hedges, and it’s soiled.”

  She took it from him.

  “Sweaty and bloody it may be,” she said, “but there’s a wholesomeness.”

  She passed it over her forehead, and held it, crumpling and kneading it in her hands.

  “Don’t I know the whiffs you get in soiled linen,” she said, « me that spends a day every week of my life over the wash-tubs? There’s a sourness that’s wholesome, and a sweetness that’s rank, thin-like and acid. I couldn’t make out an account of it, but there it is. And, Lord, there’s your mother’s musk. That’s just a silly stink. Makes me laugh sometimes.”

  She leaned back, fitting her shoulder between his arm and his chest.

  “Dennis, I can’t get Aunt Mollie out o’ my head,’ she said. “She may knit her baby-socks, but who’ll be wearing them? She and I sit together, often, after supper at our knittings, but what does she think of as she knits? Just her desire for a child as she wants to make true. She’s full of spells still: she sits in the garden, when the owls are flighting, and she goes sauntering across the pasture to Kenrith copse, for I’ve seen her popping in, and what for? It’s barren she is, like the sour earth where you may plant year in and year out, and nothing will grow. Maybe, she’s come to believe that she’s fruitful, who knows with one as secret as that?”

  She stuffed his handkerchief back into his pocket.

  “And often, as she knits,” she said, “Aunt Mollie’s thinking of your grandfather and naught else. Do I do that? Don’t you believe it, for when I knit a baby-piece I think o’ nothing but what’ll be wearing it. And when it’s forth from me it will desire nothing of you, but just my breast only. There ‘twill suck and grow strong, and it and me will be the whole world to each other; and I reckon poor old Daddy may go rot in hell when it’s pulling at me.”

  “Thank ye for that, I’m sure,” said Dennis. “Very handsomely spoken.”

  Nell looked up at him a moment, but there was his face all full of sunshine.

  “It takes a woman to understand a woman when the child waxes within her,” she said, «so give it up, Dennis, and listen to what I tell you. It isn’t with Aunt Mollie as it is with me. She may kiss the little bits 0’ things she’s knitting, but it’s her desire for a child as has crazed her wits into the belief she’ll have one, while I could go and sing Magnificat by the hour with Passon, for I know. Sometimes I doubt whether she’s not a bit queer in the head with her spell
s and her copses and her secret ways. She lives in a world as is different from ours, and she’s treading dark paths. Women often go a bit queer when the child’s coming, but hers ain’t a queerness like that. Withered she is and barren. Maybe, it’s ill-luck for me to talk of it, so we’ll have done.”

  She drew his head down to hers.

  “Dennis, sometimes I feel there’s something stirring in me, and, Lord, the rapture of it, though I doubt it’s only my fancy, but a pretty fancy it is, and I like to think on it. ’Tis as if a little teeny hand tapped as if to say it lived, and I must laugh for the joy of it. But soon it’ll be stirring indeed, and when my time comes, every pain will be a joy, for ’tis you and I as’ll be born then. Remember that, and don’t let them give me any sleepy stuff, for I’ll not miss a pang of it. And don’t you come hanging round, or sit sweating on the stairs, and making a botheration for everyone. You get hold of your Willie, to take your mind off me. Lord, how you two fellers love each other: it’s fine to think on. Pull me up, for it’s time we went home.”

  They stood there looking out a moment over the tops of the house roofs in St. Columb’s and the shining bay beyond, molten with the sky-fires of the reflected sunset and shadowed here and there by dark windbreaks. Then they saw coming up the path from the village the figure of John Pentreath and a couple of men following him. They halted some distance off, and stood talking, pointing out over the fields below.

  “And what be they up to?” said Dennis.

  One of them stood still on the path, while the other with John walked forward, holding the end of a long tape-measure. A hundred yards brought it to its full stretch, and then the third man on the path rejoined them, reeling it in, and off they set again.

  “Measuring,” said Nell, “and what’ll that be for?”