Part 8

And putting the trumpet to his own lips he blew a brilliant and mocking reveille, whose echoes hurtled far over the harbour and into the neighbouring hills.

“God save us!” cried the trumpeter with a furtive eye on the captain at the end of the platform, who did not appear to have heard that miraculous salvo, “it’s a great grand breath you’ve got, sir.”

* * * * *

THE ANGEL AND THE SWEEP

* * * * *

THE ANGEL AND THE SWEEP

I’d been sitting in the _Axe & Cleaver_ along of Mrs. Pellegrini for an hour at least; I hadn’t seen her in five years since she was doing the roads near Pontypool. An hour at least, for isn’t the _Axe & Cleaver_ the pleasant kind of place? Talking or not talking you can always hear the water lashing from the outfall above Hinney Lock, the sound of it making you feel drowsy and kind. And isn’t the old bridge there a thing to be looking at indeed?

Mrs. Pellegrini had a family of pikeys who traded in horses, willow-wattles, and rocksalt; she was as cunning as a jacksnipe, and if she _had_ a deep voice like a man she was full of wisdom. A grand great woman was Rosa Pellegrini, with a face silky-brown like a beechnut, and eyes and hair the equal of a rook for darkness. The abundance of jewellery hooked and threaded upon her was something to be looking at too. Old man and young Isaac kept going out to look at the horses, or they’d be coming in to upbraid her for delaying, but she could drink a sconce of beer without the least sparkle of hilarity, as if it were a tribute she owed her whole magnificent constitution, or at least a reward for some part of it. So she kept doing it, while her son and her husband could do no other and did it with nothing of her inevitable air.

Well, I was sitting in the _Axe & Cleaver_ along of Mrs. Pellegrini when who should rove in but Larry McCall, good-looking Larry, bringing a friend with him, a soft kind of fellow who’d a harsh voice and a whining voice that we didn’t like the noise of tho’ he had good money in his purse. Larry gave me the grace of the day directly he entered the door, and then, letting a cry of joy out of him, he’d kissed Mrs. Pellegrini many times before she knew what was happening to her. She got up and punished him with a welt on his chin that would have bruised an oak-tree, and bade him behave himself. He sat down soothingly beside her and behaved very well. His companion stood very shy and nervous, like a kitten might be watching a cockfight.

“Who is this young man?” Mrs. Pellegrini asks.

“That’s Arthur,” said Larry: “I forget what Arthur knocks a living out of--I’ve known him but these three bits of an hour since we were walking in the one direction.”

“My dad,” said Arthur slowly and raspingly, “is an undertaker, and he lets me help him in his business: we bury people.”

“Oh come, young man,” said Mrs. Pellegrini, “that’s no sort of a trade at all--d’ye think it, Mr. McCall?”

“No, I do not,” replied Larry, “but Arthur does. It don’t seem to be a trade with very much humour in it. Life ain’t a sad solid chunk.”

“Now that’s just where you’re wrong,” drawled Arthur.

“’Tain’t a life at all,” Rosa interrupted severely, “it’s only sniffing, having a bad cold! No sort of a life at all--d’ye think it, Mr. McCall?”

“No, I do not,” said Larry with a chuckle, “but Arthur does!”

“Oh, I know what you’re a deluding on,” commenced the young man again, “but....”

“Strike me dead if I can see any fun in funerals!” Mrs. Pellegrini said with finality, taking up her mug. “But if you _will_ have your grief, young man,” she added, pausing in one of her gulps to gaze at Arthur until he quivered, “you must have it, and may fortune fall in love with what we like. Fill up that cup now!”

The young man in agitation obeyed, and while this was doing we all heard someone come over the bridge singing a song, and that was Jerry Ogwin, who could tell the neatest tales and sing the littlest songs. Well, there were great salutations, for we all knew Jerry and loved Jerry, and he loved some of us. But he was the fiercest looking, fieriest gipsy man you ever saw, and he had all the gullible prescience of a cockney.

“My fortune! Where are you from, you cunning little man?”

“I bin doing a bit o’ road down Kent and London way. D’ye know Lewisham?” commenced Jerry.

“No,” said Larry, grinning at me, “but Arthur does!”

“No, I don’t; I never been there,” chanted Arthur.

“Now what’s the good of talking like that!” said McCall sternly, and letting a wink at me.

“More I ain’t,” asserted Arthur.

“Then I was at Deptford and Greenwich--know Greenwich?” continued Jerry.

“No,” replied Larry, then adding nonchalantly, “Arthur does.”

“No, I don’t, I don’t,” said Arthur wormily, for Jerry was glaring at him, and that fighting scar all down his nose, where his wife Katey once hit him with the spout of a kettle, was very disturbing.

“What’s the good of that?” urged the devilish-minded Larry. “Why don’t you talk to the gentleman, you don’t want to vex him, do you?”

“You ain’t blooming silly, are you?” queried Jerry.

Without waiting for reply he drifted off again.

“Me and my mate was doing a bit o’ road with oranges and things, you know--three for a ’eaver--down Mary’s Cray; d’ye know Mary’s Cray?”

But this time Arthur was looking avidly out of the window.

“Well, we was ’avin’ a bit of grub one night, just about dark it was, you know, with a little fire, we’d bin cookin’ something, when a blooming sweep come along. I’ll tell it to you; it was just inside a bit of a wood and we was sleeping rough. My mate was a bit nervous, you know, ’e kept looking round as if ’e could see something, but it was that dark you might be looking in a sack. I says to Timmy: what’s up with you? I dunno, ’e says, something going on, and just as ’e says that this blooming sweep ’oofs in from nowhere and falls over our beer. I says to Timmy, ’e’s knocked over our beer; are you going to fight ’im or shall I? And Timmy shouts: look at ’im, ’e’s laying on the fire! And s’elp me God so ’e was, ’is legs was in the sticks and ’is trousers was a-burning. Come out of it, we says, but ’e didn’t move. No, my oath, ’e layed there like a dead sheep. Well, we pulled ’im off it, but ’e was like a silly bloke. ’E couldn’t stand up and ’e couldn’t say anything. ’E got a lot of froth round ’is mouth like a ’orse that’s going wicked. And ’e wasn’t drunk, neither, but, _you_ know, ’e was just frightened out of ’is life about something. We sit ’im down with ’is back against a tree and made the fire up again. What’s the matter with you, we says; you got a fit, we says; what d’ye want coming ’ere, we says? But we couldn’t get no answer from ’im. ’Is face was that dam white ’cept where it was smudged with soot, and there was this froth dribbling on ’im, and what d’yer think, ’e’d got a red rose stuck in ’is button-’ole. ’E was a horrible sight; we couldn’t bear ’im, so we picks ’im up, and Timmy give ’im a clout in the ear and shoves ’im out among some bushes where we couldn’t see ’im. Sw’elp me if ’e didn’t come crawling back on ’is hands and knees where we was sitting round the fire. Oh, ’e was horrible. Timmy went nearly daft and I thought ’e was going to give ’im one good kick in the mouth and finish ’im. ’Stead of that we picks ’im up again and runs ’im further down the wood and heaves ’im into some blackberry bushes and tells ’im what we’d do to ’im if ’e come again. That was no good; in five minutes ’e crawled back. Timmy was shaking like a dog, and fell on ’im as if ’e was going to strangle ’im, but we had to let ’im stay, and old Timmy was blacker than the sweep when ’e’d done with ’im. But the bloke _wouldn’t_ say nothing or open ’is eyes, _you_ know, he _wouldn’t_ open his eyes, ’e was like something what had been murdered and wouldn’t die, if you know what I mean. Blast ’im, I could kill ’im, Timmy says. That’s no good of, says I, and at last we left ’im ’side the fire, and we went off somewhere just outside the wood and packed up in a clump of ur-grass. I went to sleep, but I don’t believe old Timmy did, well, I know ’e didn’t. Now we hadn’t ’eard nothing all night, nothing at all, but when I wakes up in the morning the blooming sweep was gone and not a chink of ’im left anywhere. But,” said Jerry impressively to Arthur, who eyed him with horror, “we found something else!” There was silence while Jerry’s face was connected to his mug of beer. Nobody spoke. We eyed him with eager interest. He vanquished his thirst and smacked his lips but held the mug in readiness for further libation.

“Not twenty chain away a woman was laying down. Timmy touches me frightened like and says, Look, what’s that? My eyes was nearly skinned out of me. I couldn’t speak. We walked quietly up to ’er like two sick men. She lay there just as if she’d dropped out of the sky, naked as an angel, not a shift nor a stocking, not a button on ’er.” There was again silence until Larry struck a match loudly on a jar, his pipe, hooked tightly in his forefinger, having gone out. Mrs. Pellegrini stared, and breathed audibly. “And,” said Jerry impressively, “she was the grandest creature what ever you see. I touched ’er with them two fingers and she was cold as iron, stiff, gone a bit dull like pearls look, but the fine build of that lady was the world’s wonder. There was not a scratch or a wound on ’er or the sign of ’er death anywhere. One of ’er legs was cocked up at the knee like she’d lay in bed. ’Er two eyes was just looking at the ground and there was a kind of funny smile on ’er face. Fine long hair she had, black as a cat’s back and long as the tail of a horse. And in it there was a red rose, and in one of ’er hands she was holding a white lily. There was a little bird’s dropping on ’er stomach. I wiped it off. I says to Timmy: That sweep! And ’e says to me, Jerry Ogwin, we’re ’aving a share out. What about that sweep I says to ’im, but all ’e says was: we’re ’aving a share out. ’E was afraid of getting pulled for this job, _you_ know. I never seen a man so frightened afore, and ’e was not a chap as renagged ever, not Timmy.”

“That ’e wasn’t,” said Mrs. Pellegrini, “I seen ’im once half murder two sojers for beating a deaf and dumb man.”

“Well,” continued Jerry, “I says all right Timmy, and so we ’as a share out and gits on different roads. My share was a clothes basket and a pair of spectacles cost tuppence ha’penny, _you_ know, and I walked all that day as ’ard as ever I could. Then I bushes for the night, and when I woke up nex’ morning I ’eard some talking going on. I looks under the ’edge and found I was side a strawberry field, _you_ know, a lot of strawberries. So I ’ops in and sells my basket to the strawberry pickers for a shilling. They give me a shilling for it, so that was all right. ’Ad a shilling and a pair of spectacles for my share out. I goes on a bit and then I comes across a beanfeast party, and I showed ’em my pair o’ gold spectacles--I’d just found ’em--_you_ know!”

Larry burst into a peal of laughter that seemed to surprise Jerry and he said:

“Ain’t you ever met a feller what’s found a pair of gold spectacles?”

Larry couldn’t reply and Jerry continued:

“No, ain’t you really? God, what a laugh! Yes, I sells ’em to a fly young party for two and fo’ pence and off I goes. Never ’eard no more of Timmy. Never ’eard no more of anything. I dunno if they found the girl. I dunno if they found that sweep. They didn’t find _me_.”

He paused for a moment.

“They didn’t find _me_,” he repeated.

There was silence at last; the room was getting dim with evening. Mrs. Pellegrini spoke:

“And you wiped it off her stomach, did you, Jerry?”

“I did,” said he.

Mrs. Pellegrini turned to Arthur and said in a sharp voice:

“Fill that pot for the gentleman!”

The young man in terror obeyed, he exceedingly obeyed.

When the last pot was emptied Jerry and Larry and the wretched mute went off along the road together. Rosa Pellegrini said “So long” to me and drove off with her cavalcade. The inn was empty and quiet again so you could hear the water at the outfall.

I walked along the bank of the old river until I came to the lock where the water roaring windily from the lasher streamed like an old man’s beard; a pair of swans moved in the slack water of the pool. Away there was a fine lea of timothy grass looking as soft as wool. And at the end of the lea there was a low long hill covered with trees full of the arriving darkness; a train that you could not hear the noise of shot through a grove and poured a long spool of white fume upon the trees quietly, a thing to be looking at, it was so white and soft. But I was thinking ... thinking ... thinking of the grand white slim woman who did not seem dead at all to me, lying with a lily in her hand, a red rose in her hair. And I could not think it to be true at all; I believe Jerry was only telling us one of his tales.

* * * * *

ARABESQUE

* * * * *

ARABESQUE: THE MOUSE

In the main street amongst tall establishments of mart and worship was a high narrow house pressed between a coffee factory and a bootmaker’s. It had four flights of long dim echoing stairs, and at the top, in a room that was full of the smell of dried apples and mice, a man in the middle age of life had sat reading Russian novels until he thought he was mad. Late was the hour, the night outside black and freezing, the pavements below empty and undistinguishable when he closed his book and sat motionless in front of the glowing but flameless fire. He felt he was very tired yet he could not rest. He stared at a picture on the wall until he wanted to cry; it was a colour print by Utamaro of a suckling child caressing its mother’s breasts as she sits in front of a blackbound mirror. Very chaste and decorative it was, in spite of its curious anatomy. The man gazed, empty of sight though not of mind, until the sighing of the gas jet maddened him. He got up, put out the light, and sat down again in the darkness trying to compose his mind before the comfort of the fire. And he was just about to begin a conversation with himself when a mouse crept from a hole in the skirting near the fireplace and scurried into the fender. The man had the crude dislike for such sly nocturnal things, but this mouse was so small and bright, its antics so pretty, that he drew his feet carefully from the fender and sat watching it almost with amusement. The mouse moved along the shadows of the fender, out upon the hearth, and sat before the glow, rubbing its head, ears, and tiny belly with its paws as if it were bathing itself with the warmth, until, sharp and sudden, the fire sank, an ember fell, and the mouse flashed into its hole.

The man reached forward to the mantelpiece and put his hand upon a pocket lamp. Turning on the beam, he opened the door of a cupboard beside the fireplace. Upon one of the shelves there was a small trap baited with cheese, a trap made with a wire spring, one of those that smashed down to break the back of ingenuous and unwary mice.

“Mean--so mean,” he mused, “to appeal to the hunger of any living thing just in order to destroy it.”

He picked up the empty trap as if to throw it in the fire.

“I suppose I had better leave it though--the place swarms with them.” He still hesitated. “I hope that little beastie won’t go and do anything foolish.” He put the trap back quite carefully, closed the door of the cupboard, sat down again and extinguished the lamp.

Was there any one else in the world so squeamish and foolish about such things! Even his mother, mother so bright and beautiful, even she had laughed at his childish horrors. He recalled how once in his childhood, not long after his sister Yosine was born, a friendly neighbour had sent him home with a bundle of dead larks tied by the feet “for supper.” The pitiful inanimity of the birds had brought a gush of tears; he had run weeping home and into the kitchen, and there he had found the strange thing doing. It was dusk; mother was kneeling before the fire. He dropped the larks.

“Mother!” he exclaimed softly. She looked at his tearful face.

“What’s the matter, Filip?” she asked, smiling too at his astonishment.

“Mother! What you doing?”

Her bodice was open and she was squeezing her breasts; long thin streams of milk spurted into the fire with a plunging noise.

“Weaning your little sister,” laughed mother. She took his inquisitive face and pressed it against the delicate warmth of her bosom, and he forgot the dead birds behind him.

“Let me do it, mother,” he cried, and doing so he discovered the throb of the heart in his mother’s breast. Wonderful it was for him to experience it, although she could not explain it to him.

“Why does it do that?”

“If it did not beat, little son, I should die and the Holy Father would take me from you.”

“God?”

She nodded. He put his hand upon his own breast. “Oh feel it, Mother!” he cried. Mother unbuttoned his little coat and felt the gentle _tick tick_ with her warm palm.

“Beautiful!” she said.

“Is it a good one?”

She kissed his upsmiling lips. “It is good if it beats truly. Let it always beat truly, Filip, let it always beat truly.”

There was the echo of a sigh in her voice, and he had divined some grief, for he was very wise. He kissed her bosom in his tiny ecstasy and whispered soothingly: “Little mother! little mother!” In such joys he forgot his horror of the dead larks; indeed he helped mother to pluck them and spit them for supper.

It was a black day that succeeded, and full of tragedy for the child. A great bay horse with a tawny mane had knocked down his mother in the lane, and a heavy cart had passed over her, crushing both her hands. She was borne away moaning with anguish to the surgeon who cut off the two hands. She died in the night. For years the child’s dreams were filled with the horror of the stumps of arms, bleeding unendingly. Yet he had never seen them, for he was sleeping when she died.

While this old woe was come vividly before him he again became aware of the mouse. His nerves stretched upon him in repulsion, but he soon relaxed to a tolerant interest, for it was really a most engaging little mouse. It moved with curious staccato scurries, stopping to rub its head or flicker with its ears; they seemed almost transparent ears. It spied a red cinder and skipped innocently up to it ... sniffing ... sniffing ... until it jumped back scorched. It would crouch as a cat does, blinking in the warmth, or scamper madly as if dancing, and then roll upon its side rubbing its head with those pliant paws. The melancholy man watched it until it came at last to rest and squatted meditatively upon its haunches, hunched up, looking curiously wise, a pennyworth of philosophy; then once more the coals sank with a rattle and again the mouse was gone.

The man sat on before the fire and his mind filled again with unaccountable sadness. He had grown into manhood with a burning generosity of spirit and rifts of rebellion in him that proved too exacting for his fellows and seemed mere wantonness to men of casual rectitudes. “Justice and Sin,” he would cry, “Property and Virtue--incompatibilities! There can be no sin in a world of justice, no property in a world of virtue!” With an engaging extravagance and a certain clear-eyed honesty of mind he had put his two and two together and seemed then to rejoice, as in some topsy-turvy dream, in having rendered unto Cæsar, as you might say, the things that were due to Napoleon! But this kind of thing could not pass unexpiated in a world of men having an infinite regard for Property and a pride in their traditions of Virtue and Justice. They could indeed forgive him his sins but they could not forgive him his compassions. So he had to go seek for more melodious-minded men and fair unambiguous women. But rebuffs can deal more deadly blows than daggers; he became timid--a timidity not of fear but of pride--and grew with the years into misanthropy, susceptible to trivial griefs and despairs, a vessel of emotion that emptied as easily as it filled, until he came at last to know that his griefs were half deliberate, his despairs half unreal, and to live but for beauty--which is tranquillity--to put her wooing hand upon him.

Now, while the mouse hunts in the cupboard, one fair recollection stirs in the man’s mind--of Cassia and the harmony of their only meeting, Cassia who had such rich red hair, and eyes, yes, her eyes were full of starry enquiry like the eyes of mice. It was so long ago that he had forgotten how he came to be in it, that unaccustomed orbit of vain vivid things--a village festival, all oranges and houp-là. He could not remember how he came to be there, but at night, in the court hall, he had danced with Cassia--fair and unambiguous indeed!--who had come like the wind from among the roses and swept into his heart.

“It is easy to guess,” he had said to her, “what you like most in the world.”

She laughed; “To dance? Yes, and you...?”

“To find a friend.”

“I know, I know,” she cried, caressing him with recognitions. “Ah, at times I quite love my friends--until I begin to wonder how much they hate me!”

He had loved at once that cool pale face, the abundance of her strange hair as light as the autumn’s clustered bronze, her lilac dress and all the sweetness about her like a bush of lilies. How they had laughed at the two old peasants whom they had overheard gabbling of trifles like sickness and appetite!

“There’s a lot of nature in a parsnip,” said one, a fat person of the kind that swells grossly when stung by a bee, “a lot of nature when it’s young, but when it’s old it’s like everything else.”

“True it is.”

“And I’m very fond of vegetables, yes, and I’m very fond of bread.”

“Come out with me,” whispered Cassia to Filip, and they walked out in the blackness of midnight into what must have been a garden.

“Cool it is here,” she said, “and quiet, but too dark even to see your face--can you see mine?”

“The moon will not rise until after dawn,” said he, “it will be white in the sky when the starlings whistle in your chimney.”

They walked silently and warily about until they felt the chill of the air. A dull echo of the music came to them through the walls, then stopped, and they heard the bark of a fox away in the woods.

“You are cold,” he whispered, touching her bare neck with timid fingers. “Quite, quite cold,” drawing his hand tenderly over the curves of her chin and face. “Let us go in,” he said, moving with discretion from the rapture he desired. “We will come out again,” said Cassia.

But within the room the ball was just at an end, the musicians were packing up their instruments and the dancers were flocking out and homewards, or to the buffet which was on a platform at one end of the room. The two old peasants were there, munching hugely.

“I tell you,” said one of them, “there’s nothing in the world for it but the grease of an owl’s liver. That’s it, that’s it! Take something on your stomach now, just to offset the chill of the dawn!”

Filip and Cassia were beside them, but there were so many people crowding the platform that Filip had to jump down. He stood then looking up adoringly at Cassia, who had pulled a purple cloak around her.

“For Filip, Filip, Filip,” she said, pushing the last bite of her sandwich into his mouth, and pressing upon him her glass of Loupiac. Quickly he drank it with a great gesture, and, flinging the glass to the wall, took Cassia into his arms, shouting: “I’ll carry you home, the whole way home, yes, I’ll carry you!”

“Put me down!” she cried, beating his head and pulling his ears, as they passed among the departing dancers. “Put me down, you wild thing!”