Chapter XI: Nan’s Return

The great struggle between Nan and Cherry began so soon as everything in the new house was in apple-pie order. It began, in fact, immediately the bustle ended, and the hole Nan had left in the domestic circle began to make itself felt, like a tooth that has ached yet leaves a mighty gap. Cherry knew where Nan was. He knew all that she was doing. He knew that sooner or later, her Lucifer-like pride would smash up. Nan living with another strange woman! Nan was not cosmopolitan. She would have to come back, because the savage in her would hound her back. But she was putting up a good fight, though Granny told him that she had it on good authority that she looked ill as a poisoned rat. It was this idea of Nan that bothered Cherry. Never in her life had Nan been ill. Granny said it was proud flesh that made her look so ill.

Nan was waiting to be fetched home, in glorious triumph, so that she could always tell him he couldn’t do without her, and would act accordingly. Cherry was waiting till she came home, so that she would be forever un-Nanned. This invisible struggle, of soul with soul, need against need, was their most terrible and vital one. Sitting facing her empty chair, Cherry realised that in spite of everything he thought quite a good deal of Nan. More than that he would acknowledge, not even to himself.

He had started out in good earnest to map out the dale, and work it, week by week. But he found out early that whilst he had been right in his surmise, that Cherrydale was a good centre for a “Scotchman,” there was also a real Scotchman, of the name of Sandy MacGower. Sandy had brought ill-repute on the “peddling man.” Twenty-five per cent. of the women in the cottages and farms were in his clutches. They bought things they did not want, lest he tell their husbands of their debts. He played up to their Eveish vanity like a very Mephisto, and--they fell. Only some few, stout enough of heart to confess to their spouses, or to eat dry bread and treacle until the debt was paid, wriggled themselves free. Tale after tale did Cherry hear, until Sandy began to appear to his imagination rather as a giant, holding souls in his hands, than a mere, common peddling man.

In some way this conception justified Cherry in the resolution he had formed, to oust any other pedlar from the vicinity of Cherrydale. Whilst the struggle was to prove the survival of the fittest, it had now the additional excuse of being an act of justice.

Sitting in the ingle-nook at night, in that kitchen whose poverty did not look sordid, as it had done in the drab, cramped house in Narrowfields, Cherry would alternately ponder how to get even with Sandy MacGower, how to bring Nan to her “scolden meat”--and, last and least, how to pay out Aunt Miriam for sending tracts from the Brand from the Burning Publishing House.

During this triangular problem, he received two letters from Billy Breeze, both saying that, very shortly, the Union hoped to see his case through. At which Cherry had smiled. Since that one awful ordeal, when he had foolishly thought it would be enough to fight his own case, he had no faith in law. He was going to give it a chance, however. There was always the ten shillings he could claim. Meanwhile, he was working out his own salvation, economically, and--domestically.

Slow day after slow day passed.

Every night as he came in, sometimes having done good business, sometimes having done little, he looked and listened for Nan’s presence. His heart sank lower and lower. Nan, meanwhile, on her side had all the feeling of having lost caste that the savage she was believed in, since her husband could get on without her.

In the day time she washed.

Evenings she spent praying and singing in the Salvation Army barracks. Nan had been saved. Those nights following on the street’s condemnation of her as unfit to be trusted with a little child, she had been what Cherry called “palling on with God.” Hence she had told him he need not be jealous. But it was the great reaction of having left Cherry half-dead, as she thought, having struck him that mad blow in sheer desperation because he would not hit her in answer to those lesser blows, that had driven her towards the primitive religion that was eminently suited to her requirements. This reaction had come just at the moment when a famous Salvationist was setting county after county afire by sulphurous eloquence that made people afraid to die--unless they were saved.

Oh, Nan!

She could not surrender to anything but force, after all.

Whilst Cherry pondered his lesser problems, and the big one of hounding Nan home to himself and Polly, her flag lowered, if not pulled down forever, she was living in misery. Her jealousy was as a flame burning her. It was after Cherry had begun to deal with Sandy MacGower and Aunt Miriam, that a third idea presented itself to him as another good iron to have in the fire.

He sent up an advertisement to a local paper which he knew Nan would be sure to see.

It ran:--

“Wanted, by Elderly Widower (G.), a housekeeper, at once. Must
drink only in moderation. _Must be one that will stay._ Religion no
hindrance. Wages generous.--Myrtle Cottage, Thomas Hill, Cherrydale.”

Nan, as Cherry supposed, knew his whereabouts.

After that awful moment when she came back to start at an empty house, whose dark, unshrouded windows looked at her with awful eyes, she had set her spies at work. For Nan had human communication cords around Cherrydale, that had known her in her youth.

When she read that advertisement, the world spun round for her.

Nan had to exercise more restraint than ever she had used in her life, to keep from running to Myrtle Cottage.

Cherry, meanwhile, was not having a gala day as the result of his plan.

The week following that advertisement appearing in _The Herald_ he was besieged by all manner of “housekeepers.” They engrossed his spare time from the poor soul who vowed if he took her in she would never leave him (he could quite believe her!), and said one bob a week would keep her going, to the ogling smart woman obviously out to catch a husband, with all the brands in between, Cherry had the pick of the market. It was all he could do to keep them at bay.

“Ooo, Dad, there’s been another!” Polly would almost cry sometimes, when he returned. “She’s comin’ again, when you’re in.” Whereupon, Cherry would go out at the time she had to call. There was one fat woman who said she could cook anything but jellies and “entries.”

In a deluge of housekeepers, in the struggle to oust the Scotchman, and between writing passionate letters of love to Aunt Miriam, which he posted at Thorn and signed by the fictitious name of Jerry Clin, Cherry said he was “working overtime.” But under it all was the big hole that Nan had left. He weakened once so far as to say to Granny Harker that he had half a mind to go and fetch her back.

“Tha’ll rue it as long as tha lives,” Granny said, pointing a fat finger at him. He knew it was true.

Granny was generally right.

He decided to hang on.

Polly was a very amateur housekeeper.

When her mother came home she was to go to Granny, to be made into a professional. Meanwhile--her mother did not come. The invisible struggle waxed keener and yet more keen. Cherry inserted the same advertisement for another week.

By which time Aunt Miriam’s answers to Jerry Clin began to come back to the little shop where Cherry had it fixed up that they should come until he called for them. Oh, Aunt Miriam, hounder of sinful souls, how was thine then revealed to William Cherry. Aunt Miriam playing Juliet to the Romeo Cherry had invented was enough to make gods and men weep--and smile. He had not thought she had it in her. But oh, when Cherry imparted the joke to Granny, how she laughed. Every ounce of fat on Granny dithered like jelly. Tears ran down her cheeks. She coughed and held her hand to her side. Every time she looked at Cherry she started again.

“Man alive,” she gasped at length. “What made thee call thyself Jerry Clin?”

Cherry said the name had trickled into his pate.

“Well, there is one,” said Granny. “He’s well-known in these parts. What will ta do now?”

“Married or single?” said Cherry.

“Single--except he keeps a hedgehog,” Granny told him.

She gave him further particulars.

They pleased Cherry.

“To the bitter end, then,” he said, which Granny interpreted to mean that he was going on with the joke.

Meanwhile, he was physically weak, mentally miserable, and Nan--sick.

Only Rag consoled him.

Rag was at Myrtle Cottage now, covering the chair-cushions with hairs, and barking at every housekeeper who applied and then licking their shoes before they went. He still wore the leggings.

It was on a calm, summer evening, approaching ten o’clock, as Polly and Cherry sat at supper, that Rag cocked his left ear in the way that made him resemble a cross between a gargoyle and a windmill.

Cherry looked at the clock.

He had that burst of hope which he had felt often--and which had dwindled away into despair.

Nan had been away three weeks.

Somebody knocked.

Hope died.

Nan would not knock.

Polly went to open the door.

She peered out into the blue dusk.

“Ooo!” she said.

Then all was silence.

She came in.

She was very white.

“It’s--my Mam,” she said in a giggling, hysterical whisper.

Cherry sat there outwardly calm.

Something had gone bust in Nan.

But--what was it?

They heard some one come in very heavily and slowly.

Then--she appeared on the threshold of the kitchen, cosy and quiet in the rays of lamplight and firelight.

It was Nan.

But--such a Nan.

She came forward with the faintest shadow of her old aggressiveness, looking to see she knew not what. Then when she saw only Cherry and Polly--she flopped into the first chair. She did not cry. She did not faint. But her face twitched convulsively. Cherry believed that she must have lost a stone.

“Get thy mother a pot o’ tea,” was all he said.

This was his triumph.

But--it hurt him as much as it hurt Nan. Possibly more.

She took the tea and sipped it in the same dull way.

After a little while, she recovered sufficiently to say, “Settin’ thysel’ up for a widower! I could ha’ thee up for bigamy.”

Cherry was suitably humble. He explained that (G.) in his advertisement was a classification meaning “Grass.”

When Polly had gone to bed. Nan cleared the table and washed up the dishes.

She sat down in the chair on the other side the hearth from his.

Her eyes had the same tortured look.

It would take her weeks to recover from the physical effects this soul-struggle of hers had entailed. Cherry could see that.

“After all,” he reminded her, “it was thee ’at left me.”

Her face twitched again.

“Shut thy daft face,” she said.

He began to tell her about the housekeepers.

Her eyes blazed in their old way.

“House-breakers, tha means,” she yapped.

She looked round the place jealously for any odd job that wanted doing. Then, when he intimated that he was tired, she helped him undress. Her hands were shaking. When she saw the lint peeping up at his shirt-neck, she pretended not to see. She lifted him on the bed in the corner.

It was when the cottage had only on it the rosy light of the fire that her voice came to him, long after he thought her asleep.

“Did I hurt thee--much, Bill?” she asked.

Cherry grinned in the darkness.

“Nay--just a bit of a scratch,” he said with sarcasm. “It tickled me a bit, that’s all.”

She was not communicative about her conversion.

That led Cherry to believe in its reality.

But he knew it was only because Nan had been terrified by devils--that she was palling up with the Almighty.

“Put a good word in for me now an’ again. Nan,” he chaffed.

But Nan refused to be drawn.

Next day, she performed her household duties in a way that made Cherry remark she did things better for the Lord than ever she had done them for him.

There was only one drawback to Nan’s being religious.

It entailed her going to Narrowfields every Sunday. That meant--cold dinners.

But Cherry did not grumble.

He was, as Grandma Cherry said he should be, thankful for small mercies.

In the new house he and Nan were beginning a new life. It was built on the old one, and bits would bust through, he knew. But still--it was a beginning. During the next week he did quite good business. He also got a bit of news that put him on the right way to oust his rival, the peddling Scotchman. His scheme against Aunt Miriam was at the second stage. He changed “Jerry’s” address to the one that would find the real Jerry, still going on writing the Romeo-like epistles. The result came in two weeks’ time.

A frightened-looking man going bald called to see Cherry. He had been inquiring at Granny’s if she knew a Miriam Cherry, and Granny had sent him up to her son-in-law’s.

“Is this Cherry’s?” he asked.

Nan conducted him into the kitchen where Cherry was making out a great advertisement of the Invincible Clothing Club.

“Thy name Cherry?” quoth Jerry.

Cherry nodded.

He could not trust himself to speak, at first.

This was Romeo--this knock-kneed, bald-headed, timorous object!

“I’ve bin told you--know a Mir’am Cherry?” said he, stammering.

Cherry nodded.

“She’s--she’s under the impression I’m makin’ love to her,” said Jerry. “I--I’ve never heard tell on her. She’s mad. But she’ll not believe me.”

Cherry did not understand.

So Jerry went into details.

“Got the address right, too,” said Cherry, inspecting the envelope Jerry showed him.

Jerry winced at his look.

“Sure you haven’t bin makin’ love to her,” said Cherry.

Jerry was emphatic.

“Me!” he said, aghast. “I couldn’t do it to save my life.”

Cherry grinned.

“It isn’t allus necessary,” he said.

“But----”

“Legally,” said Cherry, “you’d have hard work to disprove it. Seen that breach of promise case this last week?”

Jerry had.

He was fond of brass.

He went out from Cherry’s in nowise comforted.

Nan looked at her spouse.

“What’s ta bin doin’?” she asked.

Cherry hesitated.

He had ceased to confide in Nan since the third week after their marriage. But--he felt some reward was due to her, after the bruised condition of her soul in its utter defeat. Nan had half-hauled down her flag. But only half. She had made no open confession of surrender. She was yet quivering.

In a burst of the big softness, Cherry told her what he had done. Jealousy and a sense of the ridiculousness of the thing struggled for a moment. Then--she laughed.

She laughed in the way that she had laughed when little Rob punched the door.

It was at Nan’s suggestion that Cherry began to send flowers, in the name of Jerry Clin.

“The plot thickens,” Cherry would say sometimes. Or else, “It is dusty on the deep, Nan,” mimicking the Narrowfields stage villains.

Polly was gone down to Granny’s now.

In a way, Cherry was glad.

The weeks that followed made history for him and Nan. She was sitting on her old self, rather than having it for a stepping-stone as the poet puts it. And--its corpse would show galvanic signs of life at intervals. Somehow, Cherry felt that it was easier for Nan that Polly was away, that another female of the species did not witness her struggles. She tried very hard. At last he said:

“I wouldn’t be too hard wi’ mysel’ for a bit, Nan. Yap a bit. The main point about havin’ arguments, is not to carry them too far.”

He didn’t believe, afterwards, when he came to think of it in cold blood, that she would have been able to manage at all, but for the Sundays when she could let off the steam with the Army. Cherry was an apologetic sort of conqueror in these days. He brought her some roses one day, and he acknowledged that Rag was a bit of a nuisance.

Aunt Miriam did not trouble him any more.

It was taking her all her time to capture Jerry Clin, whom she was now accusing of altering his handwriting to try and get out of it, and threatening him with breach of promise.

Cherry met the formidable Scotchman under rather unique circumstances. Sandy was drunk in the “Peep In,” Cherry’s favourite house of call (though the “Cold Well” and the “Black Mare” were also favourite houses of call). The Scotchman showed himself very human, in drink. He wept as he recited “The Mountain Daisy.” He treated Cherry to whisky, and complimented him on Rag, which he took for a dachshund, in his dazed condition, though Cherry had distinctly told him it was an Airedale. He also, though he did not know it, paid for four mugs of nut-brown for Rag, who was certainly not a Rechabite. And--he let fall sundry hints as to the progress of his courtship of Widow Riley at Witch Gate.

They parted under the stars, swearing lifelong friendship, and Cherry realised that he had got MacGower dished.

He made it on his way to get round to Witch Gate with new summer dress materials. He called on Widow Riley. She was a prim, proud body whose great weakness was a dislike to being made in any way “cheap.” When Cherry told her that MacGower had been boasting of the kisses she gave, in the “Peep In,” she was scandalised. There was no chance of the wily Scotchman sitting in the dead and gone Riley’s chair. She said that if she’d had a brother she’d have “shown him.”

Which opened the way for Cherry’s plan.

On a certain night, when MacGower was sure that the widow would meet him, as appointed (Widow Riley had made it a moonlight night) the unsuspicious MacGower, waiting under a great copper beech, saw her approach.

Widow Riley was very coy at this night when the Scotchman had decided he could not lose anything by marrying her.

She refused to say the word.

MacGower became ardent.

He embraced her.

At the same moment he was lifted clean off his feet--to a loud, masculine laugh that proceeded from the widow--and before he knew what was happening was dropped into a pond on the other side. MacGower knew a little of swimming, but when he did get out, he had four miles to walk before he got home. Whilst a band of young men, who dropped upon him a little lower down the road, suggested that it would help dry him if he were dipped in flour. Which they proceeded to do, despite his valiant struggles.

Of his progress that Saturday night over that four miles, scaring lovers who took him for the famous ghost that is supposed to appear as a warning to such foolish people, MacGower never forgot a single awful detail. But the most awful thing, on his next peddling trip was to find the whole story known. Women openly flouted him when he asked them to get the money quick, or he’d tell their husbands. He had fallen from his tragic power to a farcical figure. In the pubs he would be twitted as the man who courted young Simms, the blacksmith, and folk would ask him how long it was since Widow Riley said “Yes” under the copper beech. He stuck it as long as he could. But the fact was--he was never the same man after that terrible night. Cherry got more and more of his business.

When autumn came he left the dale to his victorious rival.

By this time Granny had set Polly’s worth as a domestic help down at “sixpence” a week and her meat.

Cherry was earning thirty shillings a week on an average. Rag was having bay salt baths, and Cherry was saying this was his last chance. But he had said that often. At the bottom of his heart Cherry believed he would never have the moral courage to put Rag out of a world that smiled at his short-comings.

Nan was gradually needing to sit less firmly on herself. Polly Cherry was beginning to flirt less promiscuously. When Cherry went back into hospital in October, for that painful operation that was to deal with the erring “narves” of that left stump, he went with considerable regret, but no real fear that on his return all would not be as he left it.

Nan yapped a good deal on the day before he went.

Now that the explosion of her pride had made the way free to her heart, Cherry had proceeded to make himself at home there. Polly at Granny’s, himself in hospital, and his empty chair staring at her--would, he felt, do her a world of good. In which calculation he was not mistaken.