Chapter IX: The Memory of Mr. Huggins

On a day after noon in late January the hand of winter was upon Lydford, and the wet roads ran shining into the village. Utmost sobriety, with a scant splash of colour here and there, marked the time. The hedges were iron-grey, yet they flamed now and again where a copper glow of foliage still clung to some pollarded beech. The great castle scowled down from its blind windows, rain fell drearily; all round about was mire and gloom and low mists, that crept along hill and over fallow. In the meadow-lands grass seemed trodden into mud; the very streets repined, and no life was revealed save where fowls sat in the boughs of a laurel and resigned themselves to sleep and forgetfulness, and where a lonely dog trotted along the main thoroughfare. In an open doorway of a carpenter's shop two men planed coffin planks; and further on came clink of chisel and mallet from a shed where a stonemason was hammering at a granite cross. The only human life visible seemed occupied with death. Each wayside garden was a litter of ragged stalk and stem that cried to be hidden; but the little golden yew, beside the home of Philip Weekes, shone like a candle across the waning day, and rose sprightly and cheerful in the languor and depression of the hour.

Aloft a winged people did not share Lydford's gloom. Starlings much frequented the village at this season, and towards nightfall assembled in many thousands together, where certain elms stood beside the castle. Here, in a living stream, they flowed up from hedgerows and fields, until the naked boughs were black with them. They forced the sense of their presence upon the most abstracted spirit, and raised a merry din that was audible a mile distant. This life dominated dusk until one felt a sojourner in the abode of birds rather than any home of men. If a door slammed or a man shouted, the myriads would simultaneously take wing and launch like a black cloud into the air. Then, uttering a sound as of many waters, they whirled and warped, gyrated, turned, and with a gradual hush of diminishing noise regained their perches, folded their feathers, and resumed their shouting. Only with night did they depart into darkness and silence. Then, one by one, the windows twinkled with fire, and there came a wakening moment when men returned from their labour and the street echoed to slow, splashing boots and human voices lifted in many moods. Children cried to each other and hastened home from school; women, indicated in the dark by the white oblongs of their aprons, flitted between the cottage doors and the shops; suddenly came barking of dogs and a pitter-patter of five hundred little hoofs, where a flock of sheep passed through the village to an open gate beyond. As they went, a fan of light from the post-office window found their fleeces and flashed upon them during their brief transit from darkness back into darkness again.

Behind the sheep came Joe Tapson, and beside him walked Jarratt Weekes. They were discussing Brendon, and the widower talked, while the other listened to him.

"Turned me off, like a worn-out dog, for no reason on God's earth except I was losing my nature and getting old! May the time come when the same happens to him; may I live to see him begging his bread--that's what I pray; and me, now I'm up in years, brought down to do a common drover's work and thankful for a roof to cover me."

"Wanted a younger and spryer man, I suppose," said Jarratt indifferently. "Don't see you've got much call to grumble. 'Tis the curse of all men who have to trust to their bodies for a living and not their brains, that a time comes when they be worn out. I heard from Sarah Jane that Daniel was sorry to be rid of you, only he couldn't help it in justice to the farm. She told me Mr. Woodrow gave you five pounds when you left."

"What's that? 'Tis nothing against the cruelty of flinging me off. They don't fling Prout off, though he's far more useless than me. They don't sack that sour-faced, sour-minded bag of bones, Tabitha."

"They are old servants--retainers. 'Tis quite a different matter. Here's my way. I hope you'll get a fixed job soon. But I can't help you; my luck's out too, and I'm a long way worse off than you for the minute. You've got only your own carcase to think of; I've got a wife and children."

Tapson departed behind the sheep, and Jarratt Weekes dropped in upon his mother. He found her out, but Sarah Jane had also come to see Hephzibah. She was talking to Philip when the huckster's son arrived.

"Can't wait no more, Mr. Weekes. Tell your wife--why, here's Jarratt! Where's your mother got to, Jar?"

"I want her myself," he said. "Down there chattering to the people at Little Lydford, I suppose, and setting the world right in general, no doubt."

"I can't wait no longer, else Daniel will fear for me. 'Twas only about the butter. How be you faring, and how's Mary? Haven't seen her this longful time."

"She thought you'd forgot her, like one or two more of late."

"You say that. Mary never did. She knows me a long sight better than that."

"I'll see you part of your road," said Jarratt. "I want to speak to you; and you want to speak to me."

He referred to a previous conversation.

Sarah Jane nodded, bade Mr. Weekes good-bye, and went out with Jarratt.

"What did he say? But I know. You'd have let me hear before now if the man had any wish to befriend me. Did you ask for Mary's sake? That was the only chance I know."

"I did. I said how she'd been troubled beyond reason of late, and that the money would go far to lessen her load. I asked more than once for her, and he was sorry he couldn't do it. You know him. He doesn't make excuses or anything like that. He just said that if he could have done it, he would have, and gladly. But it's out of his power, so there's an end. Won't anybody else oblige you? Wouldn't Mr. Churchward?"

"He can't. He's got that great, slack, good-for-nought William on his hands again. How he endures the worthless rascal beats me; but so it is. A pity your husband don't see his way--a very great pity indeed."

"I feel the same, I'm sure. I wish there was anything I could do for Mary. Would it rest her if I was to take your eldest boy home along with me for a bit?"

He shook his head.

"No, no; 'tisn't little things like that; 'tis the big thing of having to find three figures and lose money on it. I know right well Brendon could do it. And I'll tell you more than that: he's making a mistake not to."

"'Tis out of his power, I tell you."

"I know better."

"You oughtn't to speak so."

"Oughtn't I? Well, we all do what we oughtn't sometimes--even you and Daniel. Tell him this: that I want the money badly and I make it a very special favour, and I shall be greatly obliged to him, for all our sakes, if he'll manage to find it for me by Ladyday next. Tell him that. And use what influence you've got, Sarah Jane. You know what I felt for you once--well, I'm fond enough of you still--much too fond to bring any trouble on you if I can prevent it. So try with all your might to get Dan to see sense."

He left her no time to answer, but turned away abruptly. She stood still a moment, then, in deep astonishment went on her way; and presently told Daniel of the matter.

"He's desperate seemingly," said her husband. "Even so he talked to me, but dared not go quite so far as he did to you. Threats be the weapons of weak men. He was always fond of talking rather large. Even so Joe Tapson spoke when he had to go. The good I did him was not remembered. He cared nothing for that. As for Weekes, I can't help him, and there's an end of it."

Brendon dismissed the subject from his mind and bade Sarah Jane do the like. He went on his way, and life with its thousand calls soon made him forget the tribulations of Jarratt Weekes. His wife, however, did not overlook them, because, when possible, she visited Mary and heard of the increasing difficulties of her husband.

And Jarratt himself allowed embarrassment to breed ferocity, as happens often with small-minded men. When he left Sarah Jane after uttering his threat, he returned to Lydford and went to drink at the Castle Inn. Full well he knew that Daniel Brendon was not to be moved, and he dared not approach him directly for fear of actual injury to himself. But he had reached striking point; out of his own vexed and troubled heart rose a fierce longing to bring vexation and trouble upon others. He scarcely realized the terrific gravity of any attack on Brendon at this juncture, for the years had dulled his memory, and only one main fact respecting Daniel's wife stuck there. Given prosperity and sustained success, he might never have struck; but now a time had come when misfortune played the lodestone and drew from him an active and avid malignity. He smarted to see the other rise from strength to strength. He did not perceive that even rumours of the truth would bring absolute and utter ruination, or he might have hesitated. All he designed as yet was a drop of gall for Brendon's full cup of sweetness. He thought how to embitter; but he did not desire to poison. He failed, as many a coarse-minded soul fails, to perceive that what for him might be no more than affliction and transitory torment, to a greater spirit must mean everlasting wreck and perdition.

With a mind quite empty he entered the inn, ordered his drink and waited to catch the thread of the conversation before taking his part in it. Taverner was there, and old Huggins. The latter talked, and half-a dozen men in the bar listened to him. Noah Pearn served his customer with liquor and explained the subject.

"Valentine here be running on the past to-day, and he's gone back fifty years in his memory as easy as we go back a month. He often will after a third glass. 'Tis a pity there's none to write down the things he calls home; for they'll all perish with him, and some of 'em be very well worth remembering."

He stopped, and they listened to the ancient.

"Them days of barley bread! But which among you folk ever tasted it? Harsh it was and made us far shorter and sharper than we be nowadays. I've seed a chap buried at cross-roads with a stake drove through his carcase. 'Twas thought he'd killed hisself, and cross-roads was the grave of such people then. By night they buried him; and by night they dug him up again."

"Dug him up, Val!" cried Mr. Pearn. "Surely not. What for did they dig him up again?"

"Because a year later 'twas found that he'd died by lawful murder and never took his life at all! A valiant man, as stopped coaches on the Launceston Road, was catched red-handed, and tried to Exeter, and hanged 'pon Gibbet Hill above Mary Tavy. The last hanging there 'twas--somewhere about the year 1790, I reckon, or may have been later. But I went to see the sight, as a small boy, and afore they turned the bold feller off, he confessed that among other wicked things, he'd put a bullet through the chap we buried, because the chap had seed him stop a coach and marked him. And he'd left a old hoss-pistol by the chap a purpose to make it look as if he'd done it hisself. So they dug him up again and gived his fragments a proper box, and laid him in holy ground, and parson made a whole-hearted speech about it, and forgived everybody, as he hoped to be forgiven."

"The things you've seen!" murmured a young man.

"True for you--few living have seen the like. Ripe old customs, as be gone past recalling. And religion at the back of all we did and thought in them days. Even wassailing the apple-trees be dying out, and charms, and all them high ways we had of reproving lightness and sin, and punishing evil-doers afore the nation. I never seed a human creature whipped at the cart-tail myself, and I'm glad I didn't, for that's a very horrid idea, though 'twas often well enough deserved; but other things I have seen, when the evil-doer has been catched out in his sins and held up in the sight of all men. 'Twas a sign, no doubt, that men were rising in knowledge and understanding when we punished their minds instead of their backs, and made them a sign and a byword without putting a hand upon 'em."

Mr. Huggins paused, quite weary. He had been talking a long time, and before Weekes arrived he had sung an old song to an old tune.

"Wonnerful form he's in," whispered Taverner. "I hope it ban't the last flicker of the candle, and we shall hear presently the cold have took him off. He'd be quite a loss in company."

Weekes nodded. Certain words let drop by the venerable chronicler had fallen upon the hungry soil of his mind and taken root there. Now he desired further speech with Valentine, and presently offered him an arm upon his way.

"I must get you to sing that song to me," he said. "You'm a wonderful old man, Val. To think that you can sing and mind a tune and the words and everything, and you up eighty-three or more."

"'Tis so. Not a note out of place, I believe, though the high ones roll up into my head and miscarry somewhat. Still there 'tis: I've got it; and a many others I've got as was thought pretty singing in my young manhood, but wouldn't be vitty now. The times be altered, and if I singed a thing or two I know right well, you'd think I was a very coarse-minded old chap. Ideas have changed."

"Yes; but human nature hasn't. Did you punish frail folk then? There was skimmitty riding, wasn't there?"

"Certainly there was; and a thing oftener done, because dreadfuller and more solemn-like, was burying. 'Twas a very heart-shaking affair, and the manner of it was this. Suppose a man and woman did wrong, owing to the power of nature upon them, or the husband being away from home, or some other natural cause, then, if 'twas found out against 'em, the people rose up and acted a funeral. Everything was done decently and in order. But you had to do it on private land, else 'twas an unlawful assembling, like a prize-fight or a cock-fight, and might get you into trouble. When the land was chosen, skilled hands made two puppets as much like the parties as their craft could; and they was dressed in grave-clothes, or else common clothes, and put in coffins. Then some man who was up to it, read the service, and the dolls were nailed home into their boxes, and buried underground with all the dignity of real dead people. The service was read, and if a chap had a clever tongue, he'd preach a bit and lash the erring victims all he could. I've knowed cases when a man faced it out and laughed at his own burying, and stood beer to the mourners; and I've known cases when the parties was saved by it, and turned to the Almighty, and was forgiven by all men; and I've known cases where the burial was a mistake and the man and woman were both quite innocent. A choir and undertaker and all, mind you. And, besides such things as that, I've seen witches ducked, and scolds bridled--in fact, 'twould puzzle me to tell you what I haven't seen in my time."

Jarratt, however, kept him to the former matter, and won various other details of the old ceremony before he bade Valentine farewell. His mind was stored with a fantastic medley of ideas and possibilities when he returned to his home; and on the following evening he re-visited Mr. Huggins and learnt more concerning the subject that now so largely interested him.