Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  His eye fell on Dennis, and his hatred flared.

  “By God, yes, I mind me now,” he said. “There was a day last spring when she riled that boy, and he went for her hot-blooded, and gave her a crool clout. ’Twas that: sure ’twas that.”

  Dennis shrugged his shoulders.

  “’Tis just his thunderin’ lies,” he said to the doctor.

  “Nay, it’s not my lies, don’t you heed the boy,” cried John. “I mind it well. ’Twas one night... .Eh, it’s gone from me again. But strike her he did, that’s sure.”

  Dr. Symes nodded at Dennis, taking no notice of the other.

  “Nay, but you don’t believe me,” cried John. “He’s a ruffian, that fellow, and if his granny dies ‘twill be next door to murder, same as he tried on me. Sure it was that that did it. And if he says it’s lies, there stands the liar for you. I shouldn’t wonder if he said it was me next. Come on, say ’twas me.”

  “An’ so it was,” said Dennis. “My mother told me, Doctor Symes, for she saw the clout given. And she bade me keep it to myself, but when it comes to him saying ’twas I, it’s time to speak.”

  “And what have you got to say to that, Pentreath?” asked the doctor.

  John looked first at one, then at the other, and back again. Neither believed him: a pretty state of things in his own house. Then some muddled notion came into his head that if he told the truth God might be better pleased with him: besides, he had had every excuse for that blow.

  “Well, maybe I did give her a push,” he said, “for she angered me sore with a trick she played me, and before God my fist had gone out at her before I knew it. There’s not a man in the world who wouldn’t have struck a woman for what she did. A whoreish trick, if ever there was one for a wife to play. I’ll tell you how it was—”

  “You’ll do nothing of the sort,” said the doctor sharply.

  John took a staggering step towards him, with a trembling hand held out in front of him. “Don’t tell me it was that push I gave her which started it,” he said.

  “And just now you said it must have been, when you were putting it on Dennis.”

  “I spoke hasty then. Just a push it was: sure it can’t have been that, doctor.”

  Dr. Symes had an impulse of pity for this sodden wreck of a man with his lies and his pieties streaming indifferently from his mouth.

  “No, I don’t say it must have been that,” he said; “and whether or no, there’s no good in thinking on it. I’ll be going now and be back in the morning. And look you here, Pentreath, I’ve warned you once, and I warn you once more, that you’re killing yourself with your soaking. You won’t last long unless you take yourself in hand now. Last time I saw you, you were in a fair way to break yourself of your boozing, but to-day you’re not the man you were then, and you’re going to bits as quick as a man can.”

  John put the cork in his bottle with an air of great determination. It was something of a feat to find the opening.

  “I’ve done with it!” he said magnificently.

  Dr. Symes turned to Dennis.

  “Come out and see me across the garden, lad,” he said, “for it’s black as pitch under the trees, and your young eyes can see where mine can’t. Get you to bed, Pentreath, and let me find you sober in the morning.”

  He took Dennis’s arm to guide him as they stepped out into the darkness.

  “Now you’ve got to be wise and cautious, young fellow,” he said. “Your grandfather’s as bitter an enemy of yours as you need, and in a way I don’t wonder, for you bashed him pretty savagely not long ago.”

  “Lord, yes, he hates me like poison,” said Dennis.

  “Bear it in mind, then. He’s half-crazy with drink already, and perhaps the sooner he gets through with it the better. Now there’s another thing. Your grandmother thinks she’s with child, and you’ve all got to make her go on thinking so. And tell me this: has she been queer lately?”

  “She’s always been what you’d call queer,” said Dennis, “dwelling in her secrets and her spells.”

  “She went on devilish queerly when I was with her,” he said, “saying she must get up and go to Kenrith copse. Something about dancing there and the blood of a cat. Was that just raving, or was there something in it, do you know?”

  “’Twasn’t raving,” said Dennis, “’twas all true enough that she acted so, for I saw her at it.”

  “You’re a pretty household! And how’s your Nell?”

  “Coming on fine, an’ happy as a queen. Sorry she is, too, for her Aunt Mollie, for she always guessed that she wasn’t with child.”

  “Well, good night: I can see my way here. I’ll be up in the morning.”

  Once more the household adjusted itself to a new routine. Nancy undertook the nursing of the sick woman, and moved into John’s room next door to hers; a girl from the village came to help Nell in the housework. For several days Mollie lay in a half-stupor, with occasional fierce spasms of pain for which now Nancy had the morphia needle handy, but the progress of her disease seemed temporarily to be stayed: these bouts became rarer and less violent, and in a week’s time she was sitting up in bed, busy with her knitting again, for the conviction that she was far advanced in pregnancy remained unshaken, and the family all spoke of it to her as a sure thing. She took an interest in the affairs of the farm; Nell brought the daily yield of eggs into her room that she might count them, and when she had gone over them she would bid the girl stop and chat.

  “I shouldn’t wonder, Nell,” she’d say, “if my day didn’t come before yours, though you’re great, too. Eh, there’s my knitting dropped. Pick it up for me, dear. ’Tis a little woollen jersey I’m at for him to wear when t’other’s in the wash. Pretty colour, ain’t it?”

  “Rare pretty, indeed, it is, Aunt Mollie,” said Nell.

  “He’ll come into the world with a wardrobe fit for a young king.”

  “Yes, and all o’ his mother’s making: not a bit of shop stuff will he wear. You’ll be going down to St. Columb’s, I reckon, with my eggs, so just pick a posy if there’s aught in flower yet, and put it on top o’ one of the tall stones in the circle, and say naught about it.”

  Another afternoon Nancy would come in, and Mollie spoke sometimes of that collapse of hers at the prayers on Sunday evening.

  “Mortal afraid I was,” she said, “when I came round after that sleepy stuff the doctor gave me, that I’d had a miscarriage, for that would have fair broken me up.”

  “Not much call to worry about that, Mrs. Pentreath,” said Nancy, cheerfully. “Anyone as looks at you could see you’d not had a disappointment. And here’s your cup of tea with a good dollop of thick cream in it, for that’s strengthening for you.”

  “What, is it time for my tea already? Seems a short while ago since morning.”

  “Yes, you’ve been having a nice long sleep, but it’s struck four. The days are lengthening out now with the coming of the spring. But it’s a cloudy evening to-day, and dark’s drawing on.”

  “Aye, that it is,” said Mollie, peering out into the gathering dusk, “and it’s ever the gloaming that’s the best hour o’ the day with me. Seems friendly like...There, you may take the tea away, for I don’t seem to fancy it. You’ll be going down to St. Columb’s maybe to-night, if your man ain’t tired of you yet.”

  “Lor’, he’s been gone this long time,” said Nancy, “and as for his being tired of me, Mrs. Pentreath, he wants me to go and keep house for him in London. That doesn’t look as if he’s tired of me, does it? And I wrote to tell him I’d come, but naturally, said I, that’ll have to be put off a bit, till I’ve seen you through your trouble. I’m not a one to run away like that, I hope. But after that I’ll be packing. Lor’! how I shall like to see the gas-lamps and the crowds of a night when the folk are coming out of the play-houses.”

  Mollie’s hard drawn face softened.

  “Well, that’s right good o’ you, Nancy,” she said. “You’re a kind woman, and kind you were to John, too
, when that boy O’ yours mashed him up. We’ve had a year of it, indeed, what with that, and then with John coming back to me again, and the dancing on Midsummer Eve. I reckon I’ll be dancing again when next it comes round.”

  “Why, to be sure you will!” said Nancy. “You’ll have a regular family soon.”

  Mollie gave a little shrill laugh, laughing with the mouth and eyes only, and rigid in breast and stomach, as if she had been cased in iron.

  “I shouldn’t wonder,” she said, “for there’s a life in me now, and why not again? But get you gone, for I’ll be having a snooze. And set the window open first, for I’m warm in bed, and I like to have the gloaming creep in about me.”

  So Nancy betook herself to her room next door, and lit her candle and had a read at her book. The wall between the two rooms was but thin, and to-night, not for the first time, she heard the sound of a voice from where her patient lay.

  “She’s just having a jabber in her sleep,” she said to herself, and went on with her reading, till it should be time to go down to the kitchen, and get supper. Dearly would she have liked to cut free, and go straight up to London, but that was impossible while the poor old body next door was wanting her. “Mean-like it would be,” she thought to herself, “and Mr. Giles’ll just have to wait, though I reckon he won’t have to wait long, neither. Once I’ve been to the funeral, decent and proper, then I’ll pack my boxes quick enough, for I shan’t be needed here any more. Lor’! what a comic letter he wrote me, telling me of the old moke as does for him now, giving him soup that’s fitter to swim in than to nourish you, and a chop roasted to a cinder. I’ll make things more comfortable for him, and he for me, and it’s more than his dinner that he wants of me. But there! No decent woman could think of leaving that pore stricken old thing, till she’s out of her worries, and that’ll be only one way. I’ll give myself a good smearing of my perfume when I go in to make her tidy for the night, for there’s a smell of corruption that fair turns my stomach, in spite of her open window...”How she goes on gabbling! Perhaps I’d better see if she wants anything.”

  Nancy got up, and took her candle in her hand, and quietly opened the door. There was Mollie, lying fast asleep to all appearances, and dreamlessly slumbering. But on the sill of the open window was perched one of those great brown owls which were for ever flitting round the house when dusk fell. It hissed angrily at her, and, startled out of her wits, she dropped her tin candle-stick on the floor, with a clatter fit to wake the dead. But the candle burned still, and when she picked it up the bird had slid off into the night. That metallic crash had not disturbed Mollie: she lay quiet and sleeping.

  Another visitor to the sickroom, not so frequent as Nancy, but as regular, was John Pentreath: he brought up his glass after the midday dinner, and smoked a pipe by her bedside. Drowsier she grew every day, and sometimes she would lie there dozing for ten minutes before she became aware of him, with her hands still holding her knitting. But then her eyes opened, and her anus, no more than a couple of bones in a loose bag of skin, reached out to him, and her fingers closed on his.

  Aye, old woman, sure, ’tis I,” he said, and he glanced at her face, and away again, for it was now just the face of a brown, withered mummy long dead, and it was the hand of a skeleton that grasped his thick veined fingers. But in that dead face were set two jewels of life, and in her eyes was gathered all the vitality that the tumour had not sucked from her. Those eyes still burned with unquenched desire, and now and then their circle of vitality spread to her mouth and set it smiling. When only Nancy was there or Nell, it shone like light through a window with the blind down, but when John was with her it poured out unobscured: even then it was stale and wan, as if it were some phosphorescence from decayed wood. Often she would ask him to pack the pillows behind her, so that she could be more upright in bed, and then she sat with her hand over his.

  “My time’s drawing near now,” she mumbled, “and he’ll be a bonny fellow. Back to me ye came after all these years, and we were sappy yet. Look, John, a second little pair o’ breeches for him, soft wool they are as’ll keep his pink little behind warm.”

  She stroked his hand.

  “There’s a fist, indeed,” she said, “and once I felt the weight of it. But I never laid that up against ye, for back ye’d come to me then.”

  The voice died away, an echo of a voice it seemed, coming from very far. But as often as he looked up, replying, there were her eyes fixed and unwinking. Then her eagerness wearied her, and she would drop into a doze again. There were no Sunday evening prayers any more, for once, soon after she had taken to her bed, as his voice rose over some drunken denunciation, there came a thumping on the ceiling from Mollie’s room above, and Nancy got up from her knees and hurried upstairs.

  “I’ll go and see what ails her,” she said. “Lor’, she’s screaming now.” Mollie was sitting up in bed, in some frenzy that gave her strength, thumping on the floor with the chair that stood by.

  “Stop it, stop it,” she cried. “’Twas just that as brought on the false pains that nigh killed me, and they’re coming back again now, and it’s like a sword slashing in me.”

  Nancy fetched the morphia needle.

  “There, there: I’ll make you easy again in a jiffy, Mrs. Pentreath,” she said, “and don’t go on so, fit to deafen me. He stopped the moment he heard your thumpings. Lor’! but there’s power in you to make such a banging: you fair made the room shake.”

  “I won’t have it: I won’t have it,” yelled Mollie. “He’s cursing them as are helping me. I’ll call ’em in — —”

  Nancy gave a terrified glance at the window, not knowing what she feared, but utterly on edge with the hideous energy of that screaming.

  “Now you’re injuring yourself if you behave like that,” she said, H and doing a mischief to your babby. Mr. Pentreath’s stopped his praying, so just lie down, and hold yourself together, and in a minute now you’ll be soothed and sleepy.”

  So now there was no sound of praying when supper was cleared away on Sunday, but John Pentreath sat silent, smoking and drinking by the fire. Now and then, perhaps, he slid to his knees, and his mouth moved in silent supplications, for he dreaded what wrathful judgment of God might fall on him if he neglected those atrocious devotions, but soon he would shuffle to his feet again with terror from another quarter that some mysterious knowledge of his employment might penetrate to the room upstairs and cause some equally fearful dispensation. There he sat, sipping and biting nails, threatened on both sides, and over his mind again, black as the swift approach of night, there drove up the one thought that now obsessed him, so that his hatred of Dennis was smothered in it. He it was, he felt convinced, who, by dealing Mollie that blow in his fit of passion, had brought her to this. It was no use for Dr. Symes to say that it might not have been that: John Pentreath knew better, and that conviction was to him as certain as the monstrous tumour itself. Mollie did not know that: she thought that he had put life within her, and what he had dealt her was death. But when her fierce spirit had shuffled itself free of its tortured habitation it would know the truth, and in what concentration of wrath and revenge would it not return for his undoing? He made no question that those whom men called the dead lived on, if their deeds had been evil, in everlasting punishment, for his black religion had taught him that, while his superstitions, equally engrained in him, had taught him that such spirits could return from the flames that died not any more than they, with terrors and vengeance for those who had injured them. For every look of yearning and unfounded joy that she gave him now, as he sat by her bed, for every touch of her withered hand, she would visit him with the potency of disembodied hate. Already, with his conviction of guilt, she was terrible to him even in her ignorance, but what would she be when she knew? He feared her dead infinitely more than he had ever feared her living, and if he could have chosen he would have had her live on just as she was rather than that she should die and be quit of her pains.

  Then ther
e was a loneliness gathering round him that scared him, for the others seemed to shun him, seldom speaking to him, except when there was need. He would have thought a year ago that nothing could have mattered less to John Pentreath than how Nancy and Dennis regarded him, so long as one cooked the dinner and the other did his work. But this withdrawal of all human contacts made his terrors the more insupportable: he was not the strong, self-sufficient man he had been, and he longed for a word or a look behind which he could detect a kindly impulse. It was strange, indeed, he thought, that John Pentreath should want such flimsy nonsense, when drink and stubborn health and the fear of God had sufficed him so long.

  CHAPTER XIII. MOLLIE PASSES

  ON a warm, windless evening a month later Nancy was sitting by the bedside in Mollie’s room, waiting for old Sally Austell to relieve her, and take on the watching through the night, for the sick woman required constant attention now, though for the most part she lay in open-eyed stupor. How she still held to life was a wonder: nothing but her conviction that she would soon be delivered of her child could have kept her.

  Nancy was longing to be gone, and to rinse, not body alone, but her soul also, so to say, with a sight of Nell and her week-old son. That would be a cleansing and a healthiness after being shut up all day in the poisoned room, which so soon now must be the death chamber. Like most simple-minded folk Nancy had not an atom of horror at death in itself, for that was natural, but to-day Mollie had been restless, and Nancy had been through hours fit to turn pity sour, hours of incessant muttered talk, of hideous gestures and cacklings and sawing breath.

  Sally was in the house, for Nancy had seen her black bonnet bobbing along through the garden ten minutes ago, but she was having a bit of an argument with John Pentreath, demanding her week’s pay for her ministries in advance, and he had muttered and mowed at her, saying he would give it to her when she had earned it. From above, as Nancy waited for her relief, she could hear the wordless murmur and clack of their voices in the kitchen.