Part 1

DAVID GARNETT

GO SHE MUST!

ALFRED·A·KNOPF: NEW YORK

MCMXXVII

COPYRIGHT 1927, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO STEPHEN TOMLIN

CONTENTS

ONE: BIRDS IN THE SNOW 3

TWO: PLOUGH MONDAY 16

THREE: SOTHEBY’S SHOP 31

FOUR: THE TRAPEZE BOY 45

FIVE: THE FROST HELD 60

SIX: WINGED SEEDS 77

SEVEN: THE BURNT FARM 90

EIGHT: WILLOW-PATTERN PARIS 105

NINE: BIRTHDAY TEA 121

TEN: NO GOOD-BYES 134

ELEVEN: BEFORE THE SWALLOW DARES 150

TWELVE: RICHARD’S FRIENDS 165

THIRTEEN: PARIS 179

FOURTEEN: A REMOVAL 192

FIFTEEN: HONEYMOONING 213

SIXTEEN: ANGELS 228

GO SHE MUST!

ONE: BIRDS IN THE SNOW

Snow lay thick over everything on the morning of the second Monday in the year, and the Reverend Charles Dunnock, drawing back the curtains of his bedroom window, said to himself that if the great sycamore full of rooks’ nests in the churchyard were to fall, or even if a steeple were to be built for the little church of Dry Coulter, such changes would not alter the landscape so much as this snowstorm had done. Buried under three inches of snow the country was recognizable, but wholly transformed, and he asked himself how it was that a uniform colouring should make a totally new world yet one which was composed of familiar objects in their accustomed places.

Indifferent to the cold, he gazed out of his bedroom window enchanted by the beauty of the scene, and then, as he caught a glimpse of the first horizontal beams of the sun falling on Nature’s wedding-cake, he told himself that even the dullest witted of his dissenting parishioners would feel compelled to cry out: “This is like Heaven! I could fancy myself dead, and this Eternity!”

“Yes”--he reflected--“all men must feel it, for that conceit is helped out by the extraordinary stillness, the footfalls of man and bird and beast are muffled, and the world seems empty. Nobody is stirring, for there is nothing like a heavy fall of snow to keep people by their firesides. Only the postman and the milkman go their rounds”; and while he was dressing he heard their sudden knocks at the back door, with no warning crunch of gravel, or sound of the gate slamming in the yard.

“Their fidelity,” he said to himself, “is like that of the clocks striking the hours when there is death in the house”--for Mrs. Dunnock had died exactly a year before, and her death was always in his mind. His bedroom had been her bedroom, though only for a few months, for she had died soon after her husband had been presented with a living, and since her death he slept alone in the great bed where she had waited so often for him to come up from his study, and where he had always found her with her soft hair spread like a bird’s wing over the pillow, and in which she had died.

“The clocks strike the hours in the moments of our greatest sorrow,” he said to himself. “Nothing will keep them from the punctual discharge of their duty, and listening to them we are recalled to this life, we shoulder our burdens once more, we begin ticking again ourselves, ticking away our ordinary lives.”

He went to the looking-glass hanging over _her_ dressing-table and began to comb his beard, then, looking once more out of the window, watched two men pass by, leading a horse along the road to be roughed at the blacksmith’s, a slow business, for one of the men had to throw down sacks every few yards for it to step on, wherever the blizzard had whirled away the snow and left a polished slide of ice.

At a few minutes before nine he sat down to the breakfast table and took the cup of tea that his daughter poured out for him; then, hearing a shout, both Anne and he turned to the window and caught sight of a red muffler flying in the wind, and a thrown snowball, but when the children had passed, running on their way to school, all was silence, for Mr. Dunnock had turned to read a circular which the postman had brought that morning.

“Evangelicals! Evangelicals!” he muttered angrily, for he was a ritualist; a last flicker of the Oxford Movement had filled his life with poetry. Then he pushed away the newspaper, and, taking some bread for the birds, he rose from the breakfast table and went to the front door.

The world outside was dazzling, and the snow lay piled up deep before the sill. Mr. Dunnock peered out, not daring to step in the snow in his carpet slippers. He listened: not a sound; he looked and marked the roofs which yesterday were but the edges of a row of tiles, to-day as thick as thatch--like Christmas cards. “And here’s a robin,” he said, “waiting for me to throw him some of the bread.” He threw a piece which was lost in the snow. “A wedding-cake! How strange it is to reflect that Anne is older now than her mother when I married her! Yes, the world is become a wedding-cake. Something very strange has happened, and who knows what will be the end of it? for it has begun to snow again, and the rare flakes drift slowly to the ground like feathers from the angels’ wings. Are they moulting up there? Or has Satan got among them like a black cat which has climbed through the wire netting into the dove loft?”

Mr. Dunnock fetched a piece of cardboard from his study to serve as a table for the birds, and dropped it a few feet away on to the snow, then, crumbling the bread in his fingers, he threw the birds their breakfast. Some of the crumbs fell on each side into the snow and were lost.

“Here they come,” he said to himself, for bright eyes had been watching him from every tree and bush.

The birds fluttered nearer, eyeing the crumbs spread out for them, and then looking sideways at the tall, bearded man standing in the doorway. Their fear was speedily forgotten, for the clergyman made it his habit to feed them every morning, and soon the cardboard table was covered with sparrows, robins, blackbirds, and thrushes, all of them flashing their wings, bickering and scrambling for the finest crumbs like a flock of bantams. And having been successful, one would often fly off with a piece in his bill, which he wished to devour in solitude.

Anne Dunnock remained at the breakfast table, for she had only just finished the kipper on her plate. “The labourers will not go to work in the fields on such a day as this,” she said to herself. “And not a woman will venture out except me, for women’s boots are generally leaky, and their skirts flap wet against their calves. With a frost like this there should be skating, but the snow will have spoilt the ice, even if it were swept.” She finished a piece of toast and rose from the table to clear away the breakfast. The loaf was a pitiful object, only a shell of crust, with all of the inside scooped out.

“Another loaf gone,” she said to herself. “We always have stale crusts, yet I am sure the birds would eat them as readily as they do the crumb, and crusts are so nasty in bread-and-butter pudding.”

Mr. Dunnock continued watching the birds, and the draught from the open front door made his daughter shiver. “Birds! Birds! I should like to wear a bird in my hat.”

She was a tall girl, beautiful, with a small pale face, and straw-coloured hair, hair which would not stay up; wherever she went she scattered hairpins. She was still in mourning for her mother’s death, and her long black dress fitted her badly, hindering her impatient movements, and giving her the look of a converted savage dressed in a missionary’s night-gown.

“Father is feeding the birds. He never forgets them, and here am I grudging them the crumb of the loaf. But housekeeping would have made Saint Francis uncharitable, though Saint Francis would not have said he wanted a bird for his hat.”

The marmalade, the cruet, the silver toast rack, all were put away into the mahogany sideboard, the tablecloth was brushed, and holding the little wooden tray full of crumbs, she went out into the hall, where her father still stood at the open door, and then leaning over his shoulder she shook the crumbs out on to the snow, and, scared by her sudden gesture, the birds flew off.

“Oh, Anne, how stupid and inconsiderate you are!” exclaimed her father, angrily. “How little imagination you have. Don’t you understand that when you wave anything suddenly like that you frighten them? There was such a fine missel-thrush too. He is not regular, and though the other birds will soon come back, he will be discouraged. It is most vexing.” Now that Mr. Dunnock had lost his congregation (a far larger one than had ever attended a Communion service at Dry Coulter Church), he shut the door, shaking his head irritably, then he put his beard in his mouth, as if that were the best way to stifle his anger, and went into his study.

The book he took up fell from his hands before he had turned the second or third page, for he had not the intellect nor the determination to be a scholar. A beautiful word always set his mind chasing a beautiful picture; his thoughts clouded over with dreams, and he remained lost in meditation. When he came to himself it was to sink on to his knees in prayer, for he was a shy man, unable to express himself to men, and for that reason much given to communing with God.

For twenty years he had been a poor curate at a church in the shadow of Ely Cathedral, but he had not been popular: he was indifferent to the things which were important to his fellow clergy, and his mystical love of ritual had found no sympathizers, until at last the Bishop took pity on him, and gave him a small living in a district in the fens. His growing uncertainty of temper, combined with a sort of hopeless oddity, had begun to make him a nuisance, and some provision had to be made.

At Ely the Church is taken seriously: it is a great power, and on taking up his new position, Mr. Dunnock was shocked to find it completely disregarded, for the inhabitants of Dry Coulter are Nonconformists. Even with the few who belonged to the church, he was not a success. His sermons were incomprehensible, yet they might have passed unnoticed if he had not affected a cassock and a biretta, if he had not placed a crucifix on the Communion table and called a blessing on the houses of the sick before he entered them. As vicar Mr. Dunnock was a failure, and within less than a year he was regarded with far greater contempt than is usually extended to the clergy. Yet he was not a disappointed man, for he had never been ambitious of success, and had never imagined that he might be popular. He knew that it was too late in his life for him to make any effort; he was disinclined to exert himself with his parishioners, and avoiding them as far as he could, he was not unhappy. He had grown lazy, too, and now that it was in his power, he neglected to hold the innumerable little services which as a curate he had longed to celebrate.

If his wife had lived he might perhaps have exerted himself, but he knew that Anne did not share his emotions, and soon the special days were passed over, and Mr. Dunnock remained sunk in melancholy. Sometimes his conscience pricked him; then he shut himself up in his room and remained for hours in prayer.

“Damn the missel-thrush!” thought his daughter. “But father is always irritable on Mondays; I have noticed it before. Life indeed would be intolerable if it were not for the house. I have everything to make me unhappy, but I love this house. Dear old Noah’s ark.”

She went upstairs, where Maggie was waiting for her to help in making the beds. Maggie Pattle was a girl of seventeen, who lived out with her mother, and let herself into the vicarage early every morning, for she was the only servant and came in by the day. Shorter than Anne, she was fully twice as broad, a well-nourished girl, who would eat a pound of sausages or of bacon at a sitting, washing it down with vinegar, and her red cheeks shone with health.

Anne often thought that if only Maggie had come from another village she would have made an excellent servant; all her sluttish ways came from her mother’s being just round the corner; she had only to slip down the vicarage garden and through a hole in the hedge to be at home. The cottage was so small, and Mrs. Pattle and her family so large, that Anne thought of the old woman who lived in a shoe whenever she looked at it; though Mrs. Pattle never seemed in any doubt what to do. She knew when to slap a child, and when only to swear at it.

No doubt she was a good mother, resembling very much one of the huge sows which sometimes wandered over the village green in front of her cottage--a sow whose steps were followed by a sounder of little porkers trotting about in all directions. What if she did chastise one, or even gobble it up? One would not be missed.... No, indeed, for how did it come about that Mrs. Pattle had three children that all seemed to be between two and three years old, yet none of them twins? Was one of them Maggie’s? Anne thought not, but it was difficult to be sure, and if the matter were not settled soon she would never know; on such points the Pattles’ memories were not trustworthy. Yes, they were a slipshod family, though not exactly what one would call an immoral one....

Yet, though Anne despised Maggie for her sluttishness and untruthfulness, in some ways she admired her. Maggie was a good girl, she did what she was told, had a passion for washing floors, and was not a bad cook. Then she would go anywhere at any time, and do anything for anybody to oblige. Mrs. Pattle’s cottage was crawling with babies, could one of them be the fruit of this cheery good-nature?

But if Anne admired the way Maggie scrubbed the scullery floor, she felt envy when she saw her sauntering along the lanes with her hands in her pockets, whistling like a ploughboy, and stopping to speak to every person she met on the road. Did she envy Maggie only because she had so many friends, or was it partly because she knew all the boys and the young men, and went in the grove in the evenings, coming out with her cheeks no redder than they were by nature?

Why was it, Anne asked herself, that she could not whistle as she walked along in her long black dress and her black straw hat? She had no friends to talk to except the village people, and she could only visit them if they were ill, or in trouble. That, and watching her father feed the birds, was not enough to fill her life. She read, and when the young carters went ploughing she laid aside her book to watch them as they passed the house, sitting sideways on their great horses. Anne liked the way men whistled, and their deep voices as they spoke to the cart-horses drinking at the pond, voices so full of restraint and kindliness. There was no way for her to speak to these young men who looked so cheerful as they went by to work in their rough clothes, though sometimes, when she was out on a long walk and was far from home, she had tried to get into conversation with a young farmer leaning over a gate, or with a gamekeeper idling along the edge of a wood, his black and white spaniel at his heels.

But the beds had to be made, and since she liked to sleep in a big four-poster that they had found in the vicarage on their arrival, and her father also slept in a large bed, she helped Maggie to turn the mattresses.

It takes two to make a bed properly, and with an unselfish companion who does not take more than her fair share of the sheets to tuck in on her side, it is pleasant work.

How the mattress bends and coils on itself, somersaulting heavily like a whale, and how brave the great linen sheet looks as you turn it down! The last of the two beds was made, and they were tucking in the quilt when a strange sound came from outside the house--a confused noise of voices singing. Was it a hymn?

“Whatever can that be, Maggie?” she asked.

“That’s the carters come, Miss,” the girl answered. “It is Plough Monday to-day.”

“What is Plough Monday?”

Maggie could only stare at this question--she could not answer it, except by saying:

“Well, they always keep Plough Monday round here, though not properly, like they used to do. They came to the gate last year, but I told them not to come singing with your mother lying ill.”

“I shall go and see,” said Anne, and she ran across the landing from her bedroom, which faced the garden, into her father’s, which overlooked the road.

TWO: PLOUGH MONDAY

The sound of voices came again, men and boys singing, one out of tune with the others, but all ringing with the same fresh gaiety and purity through the frosty air, reminding the hearer of the sharp notes of the blacksmith’s hammer raining on the anvil, and giving him the same assurance that the very texture of man’s ordinary life is a beautiful and joyous fabric.

This time Anne could hear the words of the song.

One morning very early, The ploughboy he was seen All hastening to the stable His horses for to clean.

She ran to the window and, looking out into the whiteness, she was blinded for the first moment by the sun shining on to the dazzling field of snow, but in the next instant she perceived three great chestnut horses standing just below her immediately in front of the door. They were harnessed to a plough, at the handles of which stood a labourer, whilst at the head of each of the horses was a young carter, and on the foremost of the horses were two little boys riding. It was the voices of these little boys which were so oddly out of tune.

Anne was astonished to see them with their plough and horses so close to the doorstep, and was filled with a sense of strangeness even before she saw what was most strange about these visitors. That a plough should be standing so close to the house was strange, and even for the moment seemed to her shocking, for one of the horses was standing on a flower-bed, but this was nothing to the appearance of the men, for all of them had their faces blacked and their shoulders and their caps were white with snow. The black faces against the whiteness of the snow frightened her; for a moment she caught her breath with fear, which turned almost instantly to wonder and delight.

With chaff and corn He did them bait, Their tails and manes He did comb straight.

What was it? What was it? Something strange, something beautiful, the thing perhaps she had always wanted, and half guessed at, but which she had never before met face to face.

The tune changed:

Come all you lads and lasses See a gay ploughboy.

Gay, yes, they were gay; the snow was falling, and the sun was shining, and they had blacked their faces and come to her doorstep, and one black face with an open pink mouth was looking up at her in the window.

Please can you spare a halfpenny For an old ploughboy? A bit of bread and cheese Is better than nothing.

The song was over; one of the young carters came to the door and gave a knock which echoed through the house. Anne started, woken from her rapt contemplation of the horses and the men, and still repeating under her breath: “Beautiful, they are beautiful!” she ran downstairs to open the door. Mr. Dunnock, however, was there before her, and from the hall she could see nothing of the men with their black faces, nor of the plough, nor the horses with their satin coats, their manes flecked with snow, and their tails twisted up in plaits of straw; her father’s back blocked the doorway, and she could hear his voice in anger.

“That’s enough of this foolery. You should know better than to trample down the lawn and the flower-bed.”

Give us a shilling and we shall be glad, Give us a penny and we shall go home,

piped the two little boys from the horse’s back. “Please, Sir, it’s Plough Monday, we like to keep it up.”

“I have nothing for you,” said her father. “I have quite enough deserving objects for my charity.” He shut the door, and found himself face to face with his daughter.

“Some village clod-hoppers have come begging,” said the clergyman, throwing back his head and giving vent to a cough of irritation. “They actually brought three horses and a plough over the flower-beds and up to the door.”

“They won’t have hurt the flower-beds, father, in this weather, with so much snow on the ground,” said Anne.

“Perhaps not,” he answered, “but they have made a great mess of the snow in front of the house; besides I had wished to measure the footprints of the birds.”

“You might have given them something, they seemed so jolly.”

“Jolly?” Mr. Dunnock’s cough became almost a bark. “It is not my idea of jollity, nor I should have hoped yours, for yokels to black their faces in imitation of Christie minstrels, and come begging for money simply because they are given a day’s holiday on account of the weather.”

“But, father, I think that it is an old custom, and that they expect to be given money.”

Mr. Dunnock gazed at his daughter with real surprise.

“I won’t hear of it. I most strongly disapprove. They may try other people. I am not going to be victimized, or imposed on. Old custom? Remember what the midshipman said in his letter to his mother: ‘Manners they have none, and their customs are beastly.’” The clergyman recovered himself sufficiently to laugh at his own joke, but when his daughter moved towards the door, he said angrily: “I forbid you to encourage them, Anne; the incident is closed and I have sent them away.”

The local Christie minstrels, however, had not gone away, and as Mr. Dunnock spoke a loud knock resounded on the door.

“You had better go upstairs, Anne. Kindly leave me to deal with them.”

Anne ran upstairs, trembling with rage, and rushed into her father’s bedroom, where, by looking out of window, she was able to see what was going on and overhear most of what was being said.

When Mr. Dunnock opened the door he found all the ploughmen gathered in a group on the doorstep.

“It’s Plough Monday, Sir, and we have come to keep it, and ask you for a piece of money for our song.”

“I have told you already to go away,” said the clergyman, coughing with exasperation. “I don’t give money to beggars.”

There was a silence, then one of the young men at the back laughed and said: “He doesn’t tumble to it; tell the parson that it is Plough Monday.”

“Where would you be if there weren’t no ploughmen, or no ploughing done?” asked the spokesman of the group. “You wouldn’t get no tithes if it weren’t for the plough.”

There was a chorus of approval at that.

“No, that you wouldn’t!”

“He can’t answer that, Fred.”

They shouted, but at the word _tithes_ Mr. Dunnock had slammed the door in their faces. The ploughmen knocked again, and for some minutes the sound echoed through every room in the house. Anne could see that they were puzzled, and in some doubt what to do next. One or two of them were laughing, another scratched his head while he said: “Called us beggars, did he? Reckon we work as hard as he.” Presently they retreated to one corner of the garden and remained talking together for some little while, until Maggie appeared from round the corner of the kitchen and called out to them.

“You had best go away,” she said. “The parson he says you are a lot of lazy louts. I heard him. He won’t give you naught. You won’t get nothing if you do plough his doorstep up.” The ploughmen did not answer her, nor did they appear to pay any attention to her words, but slowly went back to their horses’ heads. “What must be, must be,” said the oldest of the company, laying hold of the handles of the plough. “I’ld as lief keep the custom. Come on, boys!” he shouted. At these words Anne could see that they all suddenly recovered their good humour, and a moment after they began joking among themselves.

“Parson will have to wipe his feet on his mat before we have done with him,” said one lad.