Chapter VI: Part 6

She had drawn quite near to him, in her challenging coaxing intentness. He looked down at her with his bewitched face.

“No, I shan’t,” he said. “I shan’t do no such thing. _You’ll_ put me up for tonight.”

“Shall I!” she cried. And suddenly she flung her arms round him, hung on to him with all her powerful weight, calling to the soldiers: “Get the rope, boys, and fasten him up. Alfred—John, quick now—”

The man reared, looked round with maddened eyes, and heaved his powerful body. But the woman was powerful also, and very heavy, and was clenched with the determination of death. Her face, with its exulting, horribly vindictive look, was turned up to him from his own breast; he reached back his head frantically, to get away from it. Meanwhile the young soldiers, after having watched this frightful Laocoon swaying for a moment, stirred, and the malicious one darted swiftly with the rope. It was tangled a little.

“Give me the end here,” cried the sergeant.

Meanwhile the big man heaved and struggled, swung the woman round against the seat and the table, in his convulsive effort to get free. But she pinned down his arms like a cuttlefish wreathed heavily upon him. And he heaved and swayed, and they crashed about the room, the soldiers hopping, the furniture bumping.

The young soldier had got the rope once round, the brisk sergeant helping him. The woman sank heavily lower, they got the rope round several times. In the struggle the victim fell over against the table. The ropes tightened till they cut his arms. The woman clung to his knees. Another soldier ran in a flash of genius, and fastened the strange man’s feet with the pair of braces. Seats had crashed over, the table was thrown against the wall, but the man was bound, his arms pinned against his sides, his feet tied. He lay half fallen, sunk against the table, still for a moment.

The woman rose, and sank, faint, on to the seat against the wall. Her breast heaved, she could not speak, she thought she was going to die. The bound man lay against the overturned table, his coat all twisted and pulled up beneath the ropes, leaving the loins exposed. The soldiers stood around, a little dazed, but excited with the row.

The man began to struggle again, heaving instinctively against the ropes, taking great, deep breaths. His face, with its golden skin, flushed dark and surcharged, he heaved again. The great veins in his neck stood out. But it was no good, he went relaxed. Then again, suddenly, he jerked his feet.

“Another pair of braces, William,” cried the excited soldier. He threw himself on the legs of the bound man, and managed to fasten the knees. Then again there was stillness. They could hear the clock tick.

The woman looked at the prostrate figure, the strong, straight limbs, the strong back bound in subjection, the wide-eyed face that reminded her of a calf tied in a sack in a cart, only its head stretched dumbly backwards. And she triumphed.

The bound-up body began to struggle again. She watched fascinated the muscles working, the shoulders, the hips, the large, clean thighs. Even now he might break the ropes. She was afraid. But the lively young soldier sat on the shoulders of the bound man, and after a few perilous moments, there was stillness again.

“Now,” said the judicious sergeant to the bound man, “if we untie you, will you promise to go off and make no more trouble.”

“You’ll not untie him in here,” cried the woman. “I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could blow him.”

There was silence.

“We might carry him outside, and undo him there,” said the soldier. “Then we could get the policeman, if he made any bother.”

“Yes,” said the sergeant. “We could do that.” Then again, in an altered, almost severe tone, to the prisoner. “If we undo you outside, will you take your coat and go without creating any more disturbance?”

But the prisoner would not answer, he only lay with wide, dark, bright, eyes, like a bound animal. There was a space of perplexed silence.

“Well, then, do as you say,” said the woman irritably. “Carry him out amongst you, and let us shut up the house.”

They did so. Picking up the bound man, the four soldiers staggered clumsily into the silent square in front of the inn, the woman following with the cap and the overcoat. The young soldiers quickly unfastened the braces from the prisoner’s legs, and they hopped indoors. They were in their stocking-feet, and outside the stars flashed cold. They stood in the doorway watching. The man lay quite still on the cold ground.

“Now,” said the sergeant, in a subdued voice, “I’ll loosen the knot, and he can work himself free, if you go in, Missis.”

She gave a last look at the dishevelled, bound man, as he sat on the ground. Then she went indoors, followed quickly by the sergeant. Then they were heard locking and barring the door.

The man seated on the ground outside worked and strained at the rope. But it was not so easy to undo himself even now. So, with hands bound, making an effort, he got on his feet, and went and worked the cord against the rough edge of an old wall. The rope, being of a kind of plaited grass, soon frayed and broke, and he freed himself. He had various contusions. His arms were hurt and bruised from the bonds. He rubbed them slowly. Then he pulled his clothes straight, stooped, put on his cap, struggled into his overcoat, and walked away.

The stars were very brilliant. Clear as crystal, the beam from the lighthouse under the cliffs struck rhythmically on the night. Dazed, the man walked along the road past the churchyard. Then he stood leaning up against a wall, for a long time.

He was roused because his feet were so cold. So he pulled himself together, and turned again in the silent night, back towards the inn.

The bar was in darkness. But there was a light in the kitchen. He hesitated. Then very quietly he tried the door.

He was surprised to find it open. He entered, and quietly closed it behind him. Then he went down the step past the bar-counter, and through to the lighted doorway of the kitchen. There sat his wife, planted in front of the range, where a furze fire was burning. She sat in a chair full in front of the range, her knees wide apart on the fender. She looked over her shoulder at him as he entered, but she did not speak. Then she stared in the fire again.

It was a small, narrow kitchen. He dropped his cap on the table that was covered with yellowish American cloth, and took a seat with his back to the wall, near the oven. His wife still sat with her knees apart, her feet on the steel fender and stared into the fire, motionless. Her skin was smooth and rosy in the firelight. Everything in the house was very clean and bright. The man sat silent, too, his head dropped. And thus they remained.

It was a question who would speak first. The woman leaned forward and poked the ends of the sticks in between the bars of the range. He lifted his head and looked at her.

“Others gone to bed, have they?” he asked.

But she remained closed in silence.

“’S a cold night, out,” he said, as if to himself.

And he laid his large, yet well-shapen workman’s hand on the top of the stove, that was polished black and smooth as velvet. She would not look at him, yet she glanced out of the corners of her eyes.

His eyes were fixed brightly on her, the pupils large and electric like those of a cat.

“I should have picked you out among thousands,” he said. “Though you’re bigger than I’d have believed. Fine flesh you’ve made.”

She was silent for some time. Then she turned in her chair upon him.

“What do you think of yourself,” she said, “coming back on me like this after over fifteen years? You don’t think I’ve not heard of you, neither, in Butte City and elsewhere?”

He was watching her with his clear, translucent, unchallenged eyes.

“Yes,” he said. “Chaps comes an’ goes—I’ve heard tell of you from time to time.”

She drew herself up.

“And what lies have you heard about _me_?” she demanded superbly.

“I dunno as I’ve heard any lies at all—’cept as you was getting on very well, like.”

His voice ran warily and detached. Her anger stirred again in her violently. But she subdued it, because of the danger there was in him, and more, perhaps, because of the beauty of his head and his level drawn brows, which she could not bear to forfeit.

“That’s more than I can say of _you_,” she said. “I’ve heard more harm than good about _you_.”

“Ay, I dessay,” he said, looking in the fire. It was a long time since he had seen the furze burning, he said to himself. There was a silence, during which she watched his face.

“Do you call yourself a _man_?” she said, more in contemptuous reproach than in anger. “Leave a woman as you’ve left me, you don’t care to what!—and then to turn up in _this_ fashion, without a word to say for yourself.”

He stirred in his chair, planted his feet apart, and resting his arms on his knees, looked steadily into the fire, without answering. So near to her was his head, and the close black hair, she could scarcely refrain from starting away, as if it would bite her.

“Do you call that the action of a _man_?” she repeated.

“No,” he said, reaching and poking the bits of wood into the fire with his fingers. “I didn’t call it anything, as I know of. It’s no good calling things by any names whatsoever, as I know of.”

She watched him in his actions. There was a longer and longer pause between each speech, though neither knew it.

“I _wonder_ what you think of yourself!” she exclaimed, with vexed emphasis. “I _wonder_ what sort of a fellow you take yourself to be!” She was really perplexed as well as angry.

“Well,” he said, lifting his head to look at her, “I guess I’ll answer for my own faults, if everybody else’ll answer for theirs.”

Her heart beat fiery hot as he lifted his face to her. She breathed heavily, averting her face, almost losing her self-control.

“And what do you take _me_ to be?” she cried, in real helplessness.

His face was lifted watching her, watching her soft, averted face, and the softly heaving mass of her breasts.

“I take you,” he said, with that laconic truthfulness which exercised such power over her, “to be the deuce of a fine woman—darn me if you’re not as fine a built woman as I’ve seen, handsome with it as well. I shouldn’t have expected you to put on such handsome flesh: ’struth I shouldn’t.”

Her heart beat fiery hot, as he watched her with those bright agate eyes, fixedly.

“Been very handsome to _you_, for fifteen years, my sakes!” she replied.

He made no answer to this, but sat with his bright, quick eyes upon her.

Then he rose. She started involuntarily. But he only said, in his laconic, measured way:

“It’s warm in here now.”

And he pulled off his overcoat, throwing it on the table. She sat as if slightly cowed, whilst he did so.

“Them ropes has given my arms something, by Ga-ard,” he drawled, feeling his arms with his hands.

Still she sat in her chair before him, slightly cowed.

“You was sharp, wasn’t you, to catch me like that, eh?” he smiled slowly. “By Ga-ard, you had me fixed proper, proper you had. Darn me, you fixed me up proper—proper, you did.”

He leaned forwards in his chair towards her.

“I don’t think no worse of you for it, no, darned if I do. Fine pluck in a woman’s what I admire. That I do, indeed.”

She only gazed into the fire.

“We fet from the start, we did. And, my word, you begin again quick the minute you see me, you did. Darn me, you was too sharp for me. A darn fine woman, puts up a darn good fight. Darn me if I could find a woman in all the darn States as could get me down like that. Wonderful fine woman you be, truth to say, at this minute.”

She only sat glowering into the fire.

“As grand a pluck as a man could wish to find in a woman, true as I’m here,” he said, reaching forward his hand and tentatively touching her between her full, warm breasts, quietly.

She started, and seemed to shudder. But his hand insinuated itself between her breasts, as she continued to gaze in the fire.

“And don’t you think I’ve come back here a-begging,” he said. “I’ve more than _one_ thousand pounds to my name, I have. And a bit of a fight for a how-de-do pleases me, that it do. But that doesn’t mean as you’re going to deny as you’re my Missis....”

THE PRIMROSE PATH

A young man came out of the Victoria station, looking undecidedly at the taxi-cabs, dark-red and black, pressing against the kerb under the glass-roof. Several men in greatcoats and brass buttons jerked themselves erect to catch his attention, at the same time keeping an eye on the other people as they filtered through the open doorways of the station. Berry, however, was occupied by one of the men, a big, burly fellow whose blue eyes glared back and whose red-brown moustache bristled in defiance.

“Do you _want_ a cab, sir?” the man asked, in a half-mocking, challenging voice.

Berry hesitated still.

“Are you Daniel Sutton?” he asked.

“Yes,” replied the other defiantly, with uneasy conscience.

“Then you are my uncle,” said Berry.

They were alike in colouring, and somewhat in features, but the taxi driver was a powerful, well-fleshed man who glared at the world aggressively, being really on the defensive against his own heart. His nephew, of the same height, was thin, well-dressed, quiet and indifferent in his manner. And yet they were obviously kin.

“And who the devil are you?” asked the taxi driver.

“I’m Daniel Berry,” replied the nephew.

“Well, I’m damned—never saw you since you were a kid.”

Rather awkwardly at this late hour the two shook hands.

“How are you, lad?”

“All right. I thought you were in Australia.”

“Been back three months—bought a couple of these damned things,”—he kicked the tyre of his taxi-cab in affectionate disgust. There was a moment’s silence.

“Oh, but I’m going back out there. I can’t stand this cankering, rotten-hearted hell of a country any more; you want to come out to Sydney with me, lad. That’s the place for you—beautiful place, oh, you could wish for nothing better. And money in it, too.—How’s your mother?”

“She died at Christmas,” said the young man.

“Dead! What!—our Anna!” The big man’s eyes stared, and he recoiled in fear. “God, lad,” he said, “that’s three of ’em gone!”

The two men looked away at the people passing along the pale grey pavements, under the wall of Trinity Church.

“Well, strike me lucky!” said the taxi driver at last, out of breath. “She wor th’ best o’ th’ bunch of ’em. I see nowt nor hear nowt from any of ’em—they’re not worth it, I’ll be damned if they are—our sermon-lapping Adela and Maud,” he looked scornfully at his nephew. “But she was the best of ’em, our Anna was, that’s a fact.”

He was talking because he was afraid.

“An’ after a hard life like she’d had. How old was she, lad?”

“Fifty-five.”

“Fifty-five....” He hesitated. Then, in a rather hushed voice, he asked the question that frightened him:

“And what was it, then?”

“Cancer.”

“Cancer again, like Julia! I never knew there was cancer in our family. Oh, my good God, our poor Anna, after the life she’d had!—What, lad, do you see any God at the back of that?—I’m damned if I do.”

He was glaring, very blue-eyed and fierce, at his nephew. Berry lifted his shoulders slightly.

“God?” went on the taxi driver, in a curious intense tone, “You’ve only to look at the folk in the street to know there’s nothing keeps it going but gravitation. Look at ’em. Look at him!”—A mongrel-looking man was nosing past. “Wouldn’t _he_ murder you for your watch-chain, but that he’s afraid of society. He’s got it _in_ him.... Look at ’em.”

Berry watched the towns-people go by, and, sensitively feeling his uncle’s antipathy, it seemed he was watching a sort of _danse macabre_ of ugly criminals.

“Did you ever see such a God-forsaken crew creeping about! It gives you the very horrors to look at ’em. I sit in this damned car and watch ’em till, I can tell you, I feel like running the cab amuck among ’em, and running myself to kingdom come—”

Berry wondered at this outburst. He knew his uncle was the black-sheep, the youngest, the darling of his mother’s family. He knew him to be at outs with respectability, mixing with the looser, sporting type, all betting and drinking and showing dogs and birds, and racing. As a critic of life, however, he did not know him. But the young man felt curiously understanding. “He uses words like I do, he talks nearly as I talk, except that I shouldn’t say those things. But I might feel like that, in myself, if I went a certain road.”

“I’ve got to go to Watmore,” he said. “Can you take me?”

“When d’you want to go?” asked the uncle fiercely.

“Now.”

“Come on, then. What d’yer stand gassin’ on th’ causeway for?”

The nephew took his seat beside the driver. The cab began to quiver, then it started forward with a whirr. The uncle, his hands and feet acting mechanically, kept his blue eyes fixed on the highroad into whose traffic the car was insinuating its way. Berry felt curiously as if he were sitting beside an older development of himself. His mind went back to his mother. She had been twenty years older than this brother of hers whom she had loved so dearly. “He was one of the most affectionate little lads, and such a curly head! I could never have believed he would grow into the great, coarse bully he is—for he’s nothing else. My father made a god of him—well, it’s a good thing his father is dead. He got in with that sporting gang, that’s what did it. Things were made too easy for him, and so he thought of no one but himself, and this is the result.”

Not that “Joky” Sutton was so very black a sheep. He had lived idly till he was eighteen, then had suddenly married a young, beautiful girl with clear brows and dark grey eyes, a factory girl. Having taken her to live with his parents he, lover of dogs and pigeons, went on to the staff of a sporting paper. But his wife was without uplift or warmth. Though they made money enough, their house was dark and cold and uninviting. He had two or three dogs, and the whole attic was turned into a great pigeon-house. He and his wife lived together roughly, with no warmth, no refinement, no touch of beauty anywhere, except that she was beautiful. He was a blustering, impetuous man, she was rather cold in her soul, did not care about anything very much, was rather capable and close with money. And she had a common accent in her speech. He outdid her a thousand times in coarse language, and yet that cold twang in her voice tortured him with shame that he stamped down in bullying and in becoming more violent in his own speech.

Only his dogs adored him, and to them, and to his pigeons, he talked with rough, yet curiously tender caresses while they leaped and fluttered for joy.

After he and his wife had been married for seven years a little girl was born to them, then later, another. But the husband and wife drew no nearer together. She had an affection for her children almost like a cool governess. He had an emotional man’s fear of sentiment, which helped to nip his wife from putting out any shoots. He treated his children roughly, and pretended to think it a good job when one was adopted by a well-to-do maternal aunt. But in his soul he hated his wife that she could give away one of his children. For after her cool fashion, she loved him. With a chaos of a man such as he, she had no chance of being anything but cold and hard, poor thing. For she did love him.

In the end he fell absurdly and violently in love with a rather sentimental young woman who read Browning. He made his wife an allowance and established a new ménage with the young lady, shortly after emigrating with her to Australia. Meanwhile his wife had gone to live with a publican, a widower, with whom she had had one of those curious, tacit understandings of which quiet women are capable, something like an arrangement for provision in the future.

This was as much as the nephew knew. He sat beside his uncle, wondering how things stood at the present. They raced lightly out past the cemetery and along the boulevard, then turned into the rather grimy country. The mud flew out on either side, there was a fine mist of rain which blew in their faces. Berry covered himself up.

In the lanes the high hedges shone black with rain. The silvery grey sky, faintly dappled, spread wide over the low, green land. The elder man glanced fiercely up the road, then turned his red face to his nephew.

“And how’re you going on, lad?” he said loudly. Berry noticed that his uncle was slightly uneasy of him. It made him also uncomfortable. The elder man had evidently something pressing on his soul.

“Who are you living with in town?” asked the nephew. “Have you gone back to Aunt Maud?”

“No,” barked the uncle. “She wouldn’t have me. I offered to—I want to—but she wouldn’t.”

“You’re alone, then?”

“No, I’m not alone.”

He turned and glared with his fierce blue eyes at his nephew, but said no more for some time. The car ran on through the mud, under the wet wall of the park.

“That other devil tried to poison me,” suddenly shouted the elder man. “The one I went to Australia with.” At which, in spite of himself, the younger smiled in secret.

“How was that?” he asked.

“Wanted to get rid of me. She got in with another fellow on the ship.... By Jove, I was bad.”

“Where?—on the ship?”

“No,” bellowed the other. “No. That was in Wellington, New Zealand. I was bad, and got lower an’ lower—couldn’t think what was up. I could hardly crawl about. As certain as I’m here, she was poisoning me, to get to th’ other chap—I’m certain of it.”

“And what did you do?”

“I cleared out—went to Sydney—”

“And left her?”

“Yes, I thought begod, I’d better clear out if I wanted to live.”

“And you were all right in Sydney?”

“Better in no time—I _know_ she was putting poison in my coffee.”

“Hm!”

There was a glum silence. The driver stared at the road ahead, fixedly, managing the car as if it were a live thing. The nephew felt that his uncle was afraid, quite stupefied with fear, fear of life, of death, of himself.

“You’re in rooms, then?” asked the nephew.

“No, I’m in a house of my own,” said the uncle defiantly, “wi’ th’ best little woman in th’ Midlands. She’s a marvel.—Why don’t you come an’ see us?”

“I will. Who is she?”

“Oh, she’s a good girl—a beautiful little thing. I was clean gone on her first time I saw her. An’ she was on me. Her mother lives with us—respectable girl, none o’ your....”

“And how old is she?”

“—how old is she?—she’s twenty-one.”

“Poor thing.”

“_She’s_ right enough.”

“You’d marry her—getting a divorce—?”

“I shall marry her.”

There was a little antagonism between the two men.

“Where’s Aunt Maud?” asked the younger.

“She’s at the Railway Arms—we passed it, just against Rollin’s Mill Crossing.... They sent me a note this morning to go an’ see her when I can spare time. She’s got consumption.”

“Good Lord! Are you going?”

“Yes—”

But again Berry felt that his uncle was afraid.

The young man got through his commission in the village, had a drink with his uncle at the inn, and the two were returning home. The elder man’s subject of conversation was Australia. As they drew near the town they grew silent, thinking both of the public-house. At last they saw the gates of the railway crossing were closed before them.

“Shan’t you call?” asked Berry, jerking his head in the direction of the inn, which stood at the corner between two roads, its sign hanging under a bare horse-chestnut tree in front.

“I might as well. Come in an’ have a drink,” said the uncle.

It had been raining all the morning, so shallow pools of water lay about. A brewer’s wagon, with wet barrels and warm-smelling horses, stood near the door of the inn. Everywhere seemed silent, but for the rattle of trains at the crossing. The two men went uneasily up the steps and into the bar. The place was paddled with wet feet, empty. As the bar-man was heard approaching, the uncle asked, his usual bluster slightly hushed by fear:

“What yer goin’ ta have, lad? Same as last time?”

A man entered, evidently the proprietor. He was good-looking, with a long, heavy face and quick, dark eyes. His glance at Sutton was swift, a start, a recognition, and a withdrawal, into heavy neutrality.

“How are yer, Dan?” he said, scarcely troubling to speak.

“Are yer, George?” replied Sutton, hanging back. “My nephew, Dan Berry.—Give us Red Seal, George.”

The publican nodded to the younger man, and set the glasses on the bar. He pushed forward the two glasses, then leaned back in the dark corner behind the door, his arms folded, evidently preferring to get back from the watchful eyes of the nephew.

“—’s luck,” said Sutton.

The publican nodded in acknowledgement. Sutton and his nephew drank.

“Why the hell don’t you get that road mended in Cinder Hill—,” said Sutton fiercely, pushing back his driver’s cap and showing his short-cut, bristling hair.

“They can’t find it in their hearts to pull it up,” replied the publican, laconically.

“Find in their hearts! They want settin’ in barrows an’ runnin’ up an’ down it till they cried for mercy.”

Sutton put down his glass. The publican renewed it with a sure hand, at ease in whatsoever he did. Then he leaned back against the bar. He wore no coat. He stood with arms folded, his chin on his chest, his long moustache hanging. His back was round and slack, so that the lower part of his abdomen stuck forward, though he was not stout. His cheek was healthy, brown-red, and he was muscular. Yet there was about him this physical slackness, a reluctance in his slow, sure movements. His eyes were keen under his dark brows, but reluctant also, as if he were gloomily apathetic.

There was a halt. The publican evidently would say nothing. Berry looked at the mahogany bar-counter, slopped with beer, at the whisky-bottles on the shelves. Sutton, his cap pushed back, showing a white brow above a weather-reddened face, rubbed his cropped hair uneasily.

The publican glanced round suddenly. It seemed that only his dark eyes moved.

“Going up?” he asked.

And something, perhaps his eyes, indicated the unseen bed-chamber.

“Ay—that’s what I came for,” replied Sutton, shifting nervously from one foot to the other. “She’s been asking for me?”

“This morning,” replied the publican, neutral.

Then he put up a flap of the bar, and turned away through the dark doorway behind. Sutton, pulling off his cap, showing a round, short-cropped head which now was ducked forward, followed after him, the buttons holding the strap of his great-coat behind glittering for a moment.

They climbed the dark stairs, the husband placing his feet carefully, because of his big boots. Then he followed down the passage, trying vaguely to keep a grip on his bowels, which seemed to be melting away, and definitely wishing for a neat brandy. The publican opened a door. Sutton, big and burly in his great-coat, went past him.

The bedroom seemed light and warm after the passage. There was a red eider-down on the bed. Then, making an effort, Sutton turned his eyes to see the sick woman. He met her eyes direct, dark, dilated. It was such a shock he almost started away. For a second he remained in torture, as if some invisible flame were playing on him to reduce his bones and fuse him down. Then he saw the sharp white edge of her jaw, and the black hair beside the hollow cheek. With a start he went towards the bed.

“Hello, Maud!” he said. “Why, what ye been doin’?”

The publican stood at the window with his back to the bed. The husband, like one condemned but on the point of starting away, stood by the bedside staring in horror at his wife, whose dilated grey eyes, nearly all black now, watched him wearily, as if she were looking at something a long way off.

Going exceedingly pale, he jerked up his head and stared at the wall over the pillows. There was a little coloured picture of a bird perched on a bell, and a nest among ivy leaves beneath. It appealed to him, made him wonder, roused a feeling of childish magic in him. They were wonderfully fresh, green ivy leaves, and nobody had seen the nest among them save him.

Then suddenly he looked down again at the face on the bed, to try and recognise it. He knew the white brow and the beautiful clear eyebrows. That was his wife, with whom he had passed his youth, flesh of his flesh, his, himself. Then those tired eyes, which met his again from a long way off, disturbed him until he did not know where he was. Only the sunken cheeks, and the mouth that seemed to protrude now were foreign to him, and filled him with horror. It seemed he lost his identity. He was the young husband of the woman with the clear brows; he was the married man fighting with her whose eyes watched him, a little indifferently, from a long way off; and he was a child in horror of that protruding mouth.

There came a crackling sound of her voice. He knew she had consumption of the throat, and braced himself hard to bear the noise.

“What was it, Maud?” he asked in panic.

Then the broken, crackling voice came again. He was too terrified of the sound of it to hear what was said. There was a pause.

“You’ll take Winnie?” the publican’s voice interpreted from the window.

“Don’t you bother, Maud, I’ll take her,” he said, stupefying his mind so as not to understand.

He looked curiously round the room. It was not a bad bedroom, light and warm. There were many medicine bottles aggregated in a corner of the washstand—and a bottle of Three Star brandy, half full. And there were also photographs of strange people on the chest of drawers. It was not a bad room.

Again he started as if he were shot. She was speaking. He bent down, but did not look at her.

“Be good to her,” she whispered.

When he realised her meaning, that he should be good to their child when the mother was gone, a blade went through his flesh.

“I’ll be good to her, Maud, don’t you bother,” he said, beginning to feel shaky.

He looked again at the picture of the bird. It perched cheerfully under a blue sky, with robust, jolly ivy leaves near. He was gathering his courage to depart. He looked down, but struggled hard not to take in the sight of his wife’s face.

“I s’ll come again, Maud,” he said. “I hope you’ll go on all right. Is there anything as you want?”

There was an almost imperceptible shake of the head from the sick woman, making his heart melt swiftly again. Then, dragging his limbs, he got out of the room and down the stairs.

The landlord came after him.

“I’ll let you know if anything happens,” the publican said, still laconic, but with his eyes dark and swift.

“Ay, a’ right,” said Sutton blindly. He looked round for his cap, which he had all the time in his hand. Then he got out of doors.

In a moment the uncle and nephew were in the car jolting on the level crossing. The elder man seemed as if something tight in his brain made him open his eyes wide, and stare. He held the steering wheel firmly. He knew he could steer accurately, to a hair’s breadth. Glaring fixedly ahead, he let the car go, till it bounded over the uneven road. There were three coal-carts in a string. In an instant the car grazed past them, almost biting the kerb on the other side. Sutton aimed his car like a projectile, staring ahead. He did not want to know, to think, to realise, he wanted to be only the driver of that quick taxi.

The town drew near, suddenly. There were allotment-gardens with dark-purple twiggy fruit-trees and wet alleys between the hedges. Then suddenly the streets of dwelling-houses whirled close, and the car was climbing the hill, with an angry whirr,—up—up—till they rode out on to the crest and could see the tram-cars, dark-red and yellow, threading their way round the corner below, and all the traffic roaring between the shops.

“Got anywhere to go?” asked Sutton of his nephew.

“I was going to see one or two people.”

“Come an’ have a bit o’ dinner with us,” said the other.

Berry knew that his uncle wanted to be distracted, so that he should not think nor realise. The big man was running hard away from the horror of realisation.

“All right,” Berry agreed.

The car went quickly through the town. It ran up a long street nearly into the country again. Then it pulled up at a house that stood alone, below the road.

“I s’ll be back in ten minutes,” said the uncle.

The car went on to the garage. Berry stood curiously at the top of the stone stairs that led from the highroad down to the level of the house, an old stone place. The garden was dilapidated. Broken fruit-trees leaned at a sharp angle down the steep bank. Right across the dim grey atmosphere, in a kind of valley on the edge of the town, new suburb-patches showed pinkish on the dark earth. It was a kind of unresolved borderland.

Berry went down the steps. Through the broken black fence of the orchard, long grass showed yellow. The place seemed deserted. He knocked, then knocked again. An elderly woman appeared. She looked like a housekeeper. At first she said suspiciously that Mr. Sutton was not in.

“My uncle just put me down. He’ll be in in ten minutes,” replied the visitor.

“Oh, are you the Mr. Berry who is related to him?” exclaimed the elderly woman. “Come in—come in.”

She was at once kindly and a little bit servile. The young man entered. It was an old house, rather dark, and sparsely furnished. The elderly woman sat nervously on the edge of one of the chairs in a drawing-room that looked as if it were furnished from dismal relics of dismal homes, and there was a little straggling attempt at conversation. Mrs. Greenwell was evidently a working class woman unused to service or to any formality.

Presently she gathered up courage to invite her visitor into the dining-room. There from the table under the window rose a tall, slim girl with a cat in her arms. She was evidently a little more lady-like than was habitual to her, but she had a gentle, delicate, small nature. Her brown hair almost covered her ears, her dark lashes came down in shy awkwardness over her beautiful blue eyes. She shook hands in a frank way, yet she was shrinking. Evidently she was not sure how her position would affect her visitor. And yet she was assured in herself, shrinking and timid as she was.

“She must be a good deal in love with him,” thought Berry.

Both women glanced shamefacedly at the roughly laid table. Evidently they ate in a rather rough and ready fashion.

Elaine—she had this poetic name—fingered her cat timidly, not knowing what to say or to do, unable even to ask her visitor to sit down. He noticed how her skirt hung almost flat on her hips. She was young, scarce developed, a long, slender thing. Her colouring was warm and exquisite.

The elder woman bustled out to the kitchen. Berry fondled the terrier dogs that had come curiously to his heels, and glanced out of the window at the wet, deserted orchard.

This room, too, was not well furnished, and rather dark. But there was a big red fire.

“He always has fox terriers,” he said.

“Yes,” she answered, showing her teeth in a smile.

“Do you like them, too?”

“Yes”—she glanced down at the dogs. “I like Tam better than Sally—”

Her speech always tailed off into an awkward silence.

“We’ve been to see Aunt Maud,” said the nephew.

Her eyes, blue and scared and shrinking, met his.

“Dan had a letter,” he explained. “She’s very bad.”

“Isn’t it horrible!” she exclaimed, her face crumbling up with fear.

The old woman, evidently a hard-used, rather down-trodden workman’s wife, came in with two soup-plates. She glanced anxiously to see how her daughter was progressing with the visitor.

“Mother, Dan’s been to see Maud,” said Elaine, in a quiet voice full of fear and trouble.

The old woman looked up anxiously, in question.

“I think she wanted him to take the child. She’s very bad, I believe,” explained Berry.

“Oh, we should take Winnie!” cried Elaine. But both women seemed uncertain, wavering in their position. Already Berry could see that his uncle had bullied them, as he bullied everybody. But they were used to unpleasant men, and seemed to keep at a distance.

“Will you have some soup?” asked the mother, humbly.

She evidently did the work. The daughter was to be a lady, more or less, always dressed and nice for when Sutton came in.

They heard him heavily running down the steps outside. The dogs got up. Elaine seemed to forget the visitor. It was as if she came into life. Yet she was nervous and afraid. The mother stood as if ready to exculpate herself.

Sutton burst open the door. Big, blustering, wet in his immense grey coat, he came into the dining-room.

“Hello!” he said to his nephew, “making yourself at home?”

“Oh, yes,” replied Berry.

“Hello, Jack,” he said to the girl. “Got owt to grizzle about?”

“What for?” she asked, in a clear, half-challenging voice, that had that peculiar twang, almost petulant, so female and so attractive. Yet she was defiant like a boy.

“It’s a wonder if you haven’t,” growled Sutton. And, with a really intimate movement, he stooped down and fondled his dogs, though paying no attention to them. Then he stood up, and remained with feet apart on the hearthrug, his head ducked forward, watching the girl. He seemed abstracted, as if he could only watch her. His great-coat hung open, so that she could see his figure, simple and human in the great husk of cloth. She stood nervously with her hands behind her, glancing at him, unable to see anything else. And he was scarcely conscious but of her. His eyes were still strained and staring, and as they followed the girl, when, long-limbed and languid, she moved away, it was as if he saw in her something impersonal, the female, not the woman.

“Had your dinner?” he asked.

“We were just going to have it,” she replied, with the same curious little vibration in her voice, like the twang of a string.

The mother entered, bringing a saucepan from which she ladled soup into three plates.

“Sit down, lad,” said Sutton. “You sit down, Jack, an’ give me mine here.”

“Oh, aren’t you coming to table?” she complained.

“No, I tell you,” he snarled, almost pretending to be disagreeable. But she was slightly afraid even of the pretence, which pleased and relieved him. He stood on the hearthrug eating his soup noisily.

“Aren’t you going to take your coat off?” she said. “It’s filling the place full of steam.”

He did not answer, but, with his head bent forward over the plate, he ate his soup hastily, to get it done with. When he put down his empty plate, she rose and went to him.

“Do take your coat off, Dan,” she said, and she took hold of the breast of his coat, trying to push it back over his shoulder. But she could not. Only the stare in his eyes changed to a glare as her hand moved over his shoulder. He looked down into her eyes. She became pale, rather frightened-looking, and she turned her face away, and it was drawn slightly with love and fear and misery. She tried again to put off his coat, her thin wrists pulling at it. He stood solidly planted, and did not look at her, but stared straight in front. She was playing with passion, afraid of it, and really wretched because it left her, the person, out of count. Yet she continued. And there came into his bearing, into his eyes, the curious smile of passion, pushing away even the death-horror. It was life stronger than death in him. She stood close to his breast. Their eyes met, and she was carried away.

“Take your coat off, Dan,” she said coaxingly, in a low tone meant for no one but him. And she slid her hands on his shoulder, and he yielded, so that the coat was pushed back. She had flushed, and her eyes had grown very bright. She got hold of the cuff of his coat. Gently, he eased himself, so that she drew it off. Then he stood in a thin suit, which revealed his vigorous, almost mature form.

“What a weight!” she exclaimed, in a peculiar penetrating voice, as she went out hugging the overcoat. In a moment she came back.

He stood still in the same position, a frown over his fiercely staring eyes. The pain, the fear, the horror in his breast were all burning away in the new, fiercest flame of passion.

“Get your dinner,” he said roughly to her.

“I’ve had all I want,” she said. “You come an’ have yours.”

He looked at the table as if he found it difficult to see things.

“I want no more,” he said.

She stood close to his chest. She wanted to touch him and to comfort him. There was something about him now that fascinated her. Berry felt slightly ashamed that she seemed to ignore the presence of others in the room.

The mother came in. She glanced at Sutton, standing planted on the hearthrug, his head ducked, the heavy frown hiding his eyes. There was a peculiar braced intensity about him that made the elder woman afraid. Suddenly he jerked his head round to his nephew.

“Get on wi’ your dinner, lad,” he said, and he went to the door. The dogs, which had continually lain down and got up again, uneasy, now rose and watched. The girl went after him, saying, clearly:

“What did you want, Dan?”

Her slim, quick figure was gone, the door was closed behind her.

There was silence. The mother, still more slave-like in her movement, sat down in a low chair. Berry drank some beer.

“That girl will leave him,” he said to himself. “She’ll hate him like poison. And serve him right. Then she’ll go off with somebody else.”

And she did.

THE HORSE DEALER’S DAUGHTER

“Well, Mabel, and what are you going to do with yourself?” asked Joe, with foolish flippancy. He felt quite safe himself. Without listening for an answer, he turned aside, worked a grain of tobacco to the tip of his tongue, and spat it out. He did not care about anything, since he felt safe himself.

The three brothers and the sister sat round the desolate breakfast table, attempting some sort of desultory consultation. The morning’s post had given the final tap to the family fortunes, and all was over. The dreary dining-room itself, with its heavy mahogany furniture, looked as if it were waiting to be done away with.

But the consultation amounted to nothing. There was a strange air of ineffectuality about the three men, as they sprawled at table, smoking and reflecting vaguely on their own condition. The girl was alone, a rather short, sullen-looking young woman of twenty-seven. She did not share the same life as her brothers. She would have been good-looking, save for the impassive fixity of her face, “bull-dog”, as her brothers called it.

There was a confused tramping of horses’ feet outside. The three men all sprawled round in their chairs to watch. Beyond the dark holly-bushes that separated the strip of lawn from the highroad, they could see a cavalcade of shire horses swinging out of their own yard, being taken for exercise. This was the last time. These were the last horses that would go through their hands. The young men watched with critical, callous look. They were all frightened at the collapse of their lives, and the sense of disaster in which they were involved left them no inner freedom.

Yet they were three fine, well-set fellows enough. Joe, the eldest, was a man of thirty-three, broad and handsome in a hot, flushed way. His face was red, he twisted his black moustache over a thick finger, his eyes were shallow and restless. He had a sensual way of uncovering his teeth when he laughed, and his bearing was stupid. Now he watched the horses with a glazed look of helplessness in his eyes, a certain stupor of downfall.

The great draught-horses swung past. They were tied head to tail, four of them, and they heaved along to where a lane branched off from the highroad, planting their great hoofs floutingly in the fine black mud, swinging their great rounded haunches sumptuously, and trotting a few sudden steps as they were led into the lane, round the corner. Every movement showed a massive, slumbrous strength, and a stupidity which held them in subjection. The groom at the head looked back, jerking the leading rope. And the calvalcade moved out of sight up the lane, the tail of the last horse, bobbed up tight and stiff, held out taut from the swinging great haunches as they rocked behind the hedges in a motionlike sleep.

Joe watched with glazed hopeless eyes. The horses were almost like his own body to him. He felt he was done for now. Luckily he was engaged to a woman as old as himself, and therefore her father, who was steward of a neighbouring estate, would provide him with a job. He would marry and go into harness. His life was over, he would be a subject animal now.

He turned uneasily aside, the retreating steps of the horses echoing in his ears. Then, with foolish restlessness, he reached for the scraps of bacon-rind from the plates, and making a faint whistling sound, flung them to the terrier that lay against the fender. He watched the dog swallow them, and waited till the creature looked into his eyes. Then a faint grin came on his face, and in a high, foolish voice he said:

“You won’t get much more bacon, shall you, you little b——?”

The dog faintly and dismally wagged its tail, then lowered his haunches, circled round, and lay down again.

There was another helpless silence at the table. Joe sprawled uneasily in his seat, not willing to go till the family conclave was dissolved. Fred Henry, the second brother, was erect, clean-limbed, alert. He had watched the passing of the horses with more _sang-froid_. If he was an animal, like Joe, he was an animal which controls, not one which is controlled. He was master of any horse, and he carried himself with a well-tempered air of mastery. But he was not master of the situations of life. He pushed his coarse brown moustache upwards, off his lip, and glanced irritably at his sister, who sat impassive and inscrutable.

“You’ll go and stop with Lucy for a bit, shan’t you?” he asked. The girl did not answer.

“I don’t see what else you can do,” persisted Fred Henry.

“Go as a skivvy,” Joe interpolated laconically.

The girl did not move a muscle.

“If I was her, I should go in for training for a nurse,” said Malcolm, the youngest of them all. He was the baby of the family, a young man of twenty-two, with a fresh, jaunty _museau_.

But Mabel did not take any notice of him. They had talked at her and round her for so many years, that she hardly heard them at all.

The marble clock on the mantel-piece softly chimed the half-hour, the dog rose uneasily from the hearthrug and looked at the party at the breakfast table. But still they sat on in ineffectual conclave.

“Oh, all right,” said Joe suddenly, _à propos_ of nothing. “I’ll get a move on.”

He pushed back his chair, straddled his knees with a downward jerk, to get them free, in horsy fashion, and went to the fire. Still he did not go out of the room; he was curious to know what the others would do or say. He began to charge his pipe, looking down at the dog and saying, in a high, affected voice:

“Going wi’ me? Going wi’ me are ter? Tha’rt goin’ further than tha counts on just now, dost hear?”

The dog faintly wagged its tail, the man stuck out his jaw and covered his pipe with his hands, and puffed intently, losing himself in the tobacco, looking down all the while at the dog with an absent brown eye. The dog looked up at him in mournful distrust. Joe stood with his knees stuck out, in real horsy fashion.

“Have you had a letter from Lucy?” Fred Henry asked of his sister.

“Last week,” came the neutral reply.

“And what does she say?”

There was no answer.

“Does she _ask_ you to go and stop there?” persisted Fred Henry.

“She says I can if I like.”

“Well, then, you’d better. Tell her you’ll come on Monday.”

This was received in silence.

“That’s what you’ll do then, is it?” said Fred Henry, in some exasperation.

But she made no answer. There was a silence of futility and irritation in the room. Malcolm grinned fatuously.

“You’ll have to make up your mind between now and next Wednesday,” said Joe loudly, “or else find yourself lodgings on the kerbstone.”

The face of the young woman darkened, but she sat on immutable.

“Here’s Jack Fergusson!” exclaimed Malcolm, who was looking aimlessly out of the window.

“Where?” exclaimed Joe, loudly.

“Just gone past.”

“Coming in?”

Malcolm craned his neck to see the gate.

“Yes,” he said.

There was a silence. Mabel sat on like one condemned, at the head of the table. Then a whistle was heard from the kitchen. The dog got up and barked sharply. Joe opened the door and shouted:

“Come on.”

After a moment a young man entered. He was muffled up in overcoat and a purple woollen scarf, and his tweed cap, which he did not remove, was pulled down on his head. He was of medium height, his face was rather long and pale, his eyes looked tired.

“Hello, Jack! Well, Jack!” exclaimed Malcolm and Joe. Fred Henry merely said, “Jack.”

“What’s doing?” asked the newcomer, evidently addressing Fred Henry.

“Same. We’ve got to be out by Wednesday.—Got a cold?”

“I have—got it bad, too.”

“Why don’t you stop in?”

“_Me_ stop in? When I can’t stand on my legs, perhaps I shall have a chance.” The young man spoke huskily. He had a slight Scotch accent.

“It’s a knock-out, isn’t it,” said Joe, boisterously, “if a doctor goes round croaking with a cold. Looks bad for the patients, doesn’t it?”

The young doctor looked at him slowly.

“Anything the matter with _you_, then?” he asked sarcastically.

“Not as I know of. Damn your eyes, I hope not. Why?”

“I thought you were very concerned about the patients, wondered if you might be one yourself.”

“Damn it, no, I’ve never been patient to no flaming doctor, and hope I never shall be,” returned Joe.