Part 16

‘That young Fellows,’ said Bastard, ‘he’s not been nigh the place for more nor a week. For myself I’d say that he looks a quiet chap, but you never know . . . upon my word you don’t.’

‘The simpler they looks,’ said Badger emphatically, ‘the more they wants an eye kept on them. I’m pretty near certain I saw him that night they was arter the salmon.’

‘Never you fear!’ said the constable, ‘I’ll keep an eye on the lot.’

It never occurred to Badger, whose energies were centred for the present on one problem, to connect Abner’s absence from the Pound House with Susie’s visit to Hereford. He was an obstinate and not very intelligent man, thick-set in mind as in body, who had learnt his own craft thoroughly and knew little else. He had become aware of Susie’s coldness toward him before her departure, but he had not thought to explain it by her fancying another man. In any case the matter might wait. He could only do one thing at a time, and for the present he was too busy with Mick and his friends to waste good time in dangling round the Pound House. Perhaps it was only that Susie wanted more fuss made of her. All in good time . . .

After ten days she returned, and Abner began to visit the Pound House again. He found her imperious and exacting, she could not see too much of him. Bastard reported him to Badger as a regular attendant at the inn.

‘You needn’t trouble about that young Fellows,’ he said. ‘He’s after other game.’

‘There’s no game here to speak on but ours,’ said Badger stupidly.

‘Ah, it’s a different kind I mean,’ said the constable. ‘That girl of Hind’s is looking after him. Any night of the week if you want to see a picture you can watch her take him in by the back door when the old man’s asleep upstairs.’

Badger went livid and swore so violently as to shock the constable’s principles.

‘I don’t believe it,’ he said, ‘not a word of it.’

‘Seeing’s believing,’ said Bastard. ‘At any rate seeing’s good enough for me.’

All thought of the poachers vanished from Badger’s single mind. He left the constable in the middle of their conversation and went straight to the Pound House, where he found Susie alone, making a petticoat from a pattern that she had bought in Hereford. She could see by his stormy entrance that something had upset him and switched on her most ingratiating manner.

‘Well, it is a time since I’ve seen you, Mr Badger,’ she said, laying aside her work. ‘Will you have something?’

He wouldn’t drink; he refused to waste time in preliminary skirmishing.

‘You’re not going to get round me that way,’ he said. ‘What’s this about you and that chap Fellows?’

‘Fellows?’ said Susie. ‘What Fellows is that?’

‘Now don’t start that game on me,’ said Badger angrily. ‘I’ve seen there was something up with you for the last month. Now I know what it is. You can’t go on like that with me. I’m not that kind of man.’

‘And I’m not that kind of girl, Mr Badger,’ said Susie. ‘I thought better of you, indeed I did.’

‘You can drop all that,’ said Badger, with a laugh. ‘You can let on you’re as innocent as a lamb, but I know better. Understand that!’

‘If that’s what you mean, I can tell you straight I’m not going to listen to your dirty tongue. I’m not accustomed to be spoke to by my friends like that.’ She rose indignantly and would have gone into the kitchen but he caught hold of her arm.

‘You don’t deny it,’ he said.

‘I wouldn’t demean myself.’ She tried to wrench away from him, but he would not let her go. The warmth of her arm on his fingers made him mad. He wanted to use her roughly. She cried out with pain.

‘Don’t!’ she cried. ‘You’re hurting me!’

He wanted to hurt her. He only held her tighter. ‘Where’s your father?’ he said.

‘Father’s gone out,’ she said. ‘Oh, let me go!’

‘Gone out, is he? Well, I’ll have a talk to him about this when he comes back. Then we’ll see . . .’

‘You can tell him all the dirty lies you like,’ she said defiantly.

But, in reality, his words had thrown her into a state of terror. That squat owl-faced father of hers was the one person on earth whom she dreaded. It came over her suddenly that somehow or other she must prevent his knowing, for though he had no objection to his daughter being free with men for the good of the house, she knew that he was anxious to keep on good terms with Badger and would be furious to think that she had taken up with a labouring man. Somehow she must flatter the keeper out of his intention; but she knew that a sudden change of front would be a manœuvre too transparent. It pleased her, therefore, to give vent to the emotions which she had so far controlled and to break down in the most natural tears. She put her handkerchief to her eyes and sobbed violently.

Badger was bewildered by this but still determined.

‘You don’t get over me that way,’ he said. ‘Not if I know it!’

She went on sobbing, and the spectacle began to get on his nerves.

‘You can cry your eyes out, my girl, but I’m going to tell your father.’

She raised her eyes. ‘It’s not that!’ she said violently. ‘You can tell him any lie you like and it won’t make no difference to me. What I can’t stand is that you should think it of me . . . that you should think I’d go with a common chap like that. It’s cruel, Mr Badger . . . cruel! After the friends we’ve been. . .’

She put her hands on his shoulders and looked at him, pleading. His lust got the better of him and he took her violently in his arms. She submitted, and he began to forget his suspicions. She clung to him so that he could think of nothing but that she was desirable. Then, cunningly, gradually she became playful and childish, teasing him, indignant that he should have thought so ill of her. By the time that he left her she had convinced him that nothing could spoil their intimacy; but whatever she pretended she could not shake herself free from the fright he had given her. She felt that the time would never pass till she could see Abner and warn him.

It was no easy matter, for when the evening came and she began her work in the bar, moving among the drinkers with her usual smiling freedom, Badger was also there following her with hungry eyes as she went about her work. He sat in a corner, isolated, for none of the strangers would have anything to do with him. While serving a tot of gin to Gunner Eve she contrived to whisper to Abner, begging him to keep away from the house that night.

‘Why? What’s up?’ he said.

‘I can’t tell you,’ she whispered. ‘Come to-morrow early, before it’s light on your way to work. Just to please me!’

She spoke so urgently and with such evident distress that he obeyed her, and Badger, who had seen her bending over to speak to Abner, spent a cold night watching the back of the Pound House in vain. He might well have been better employed, for while he stood there shivering Mick Connor made free with half a dozen of his pheasants.

Next morning, in the half light of dawn, which made the cold kitchen look unspeakably sordid, she received Abner. The meeting had none of the warm glamour of their nightly love-making, and her anxiety made him impatient.

‘What the hell do I care for Badger?’ he said.

‘Oh, quiet . . . quiet! Don’t speak so loud!’ she implored him. She submitted to his embraces, but her mind was not with him.

‘I can’t think what’s up with you,’ he said.

His unconcern irritated her. ‘Can’t you understand?’ she said. ‘It’s better to do without me for a little than to lose me for good. That’s what would happen if father knew. He’d send me away to Hereford, to grandma’s. That’s what he’d do. Only for a week, Abner. After that, when he’s forgotten about it, things ’ll be better.’

Her distress was so real and she seemed so little to belong to him in her present state that he consented not to see her for a week.

‘Then I shan’t come a’nigh the place,’ he said. ‘I’m not goin’ to sit there looking at you and nothing after.’

‘Yes . . . that would be best,’ she said gladly. It inflamed him to think that she could take this complete divorce so calmly.

‘Better finish it off,’ he said.

Then she clung to him. ‘No, no, Abner. . . . I couldn’t bear that! Only a week, my love, only a week. . .’

He kept to his side of the bargain, and Badger was relieved to see him no more at the Pound House, although the suddenness of Abner’s abstention coloured his suspicions. What with his pheasants and the woman the keeper’s life was becoming too complicated for his intelligence, for Mick profited by Badger’s new devotion to Susie by ravaging his coverts. In this Abner, who had no other way of killing time, joined his friend, and on the last night of the week came a sharp but bloodless encounter in which the keeper was more than ever certain that he had seen Abner’s face. After this it became fixed in Badger’s mind that Abner was his principal enemy, the man who was obstinately working against him wherever he went. Somehow or other, he determined, he must get the better of him.

On the night when Abner returned to the Pound House, Badger was already there. Mick, as usual after a successful foray, was spending money freely, and by nine o’clock the room was full of excited men. Abner was ready to drink with the best of them, for his pockets were full of money and he had not been inside a pub for a week. To add to this uproarious assembly in came George Malpas, returning early from his own dark business in Lesswardine.

‘Go easy, boys,’ he said, as he entered, ‘that damned copper’s outside.’

But Mick Connor had by now gone too far to go easy. The liquor which in the early stages of intoxication merely rendered him funny now made him boastful, and the sight of Badger, glowering in his corner over a hot whisky, provided him with a subject for his wit. Atwell tried to keep him within bounds, but Mick, once fairly nourished, could talk the cross off an ass’s back. The laughter with which his sallies at the keeper’s expense were greeted stimulated him. He plunged into wild excesses of simile, while Badger sat sipping his whisky, going redder and redder as he listened. He knew that the whole room was against him; felt that before long he must do something to assert himself. If he went out into the road he would only be laughed at, but no man could sit there listening to Mick Connor without shame.

‘Wait while I’m tellin’ you,’ said Mick. ‘Over in Connemara there used to be an old gent named Hewish, a proper old sportsman. It was he that invented that game I’ve told you of . . . spider racing, spiders burning the legs off of them on a hot plate. Cock-fightin’ too. And badger-baitin’. I’m after tellin’ you that’s the sport for a man!’

A roar of laughter greeted him. ‘And so say all of us!’ said Mick insolently, staring into Badger’s corner. Badger pushed aside the table and rose to his feet. His glass went down with a crash.

‘Oh, Mr Badger!’ Susie cried.

‘Gard! The baste’s afther turning on me!’ cried Mick. ‘All together, boys!’

Badger pushed his way through the crowd to Mick. The Irishman lowered his head and butted him in the stomach like a ram. Badger, falling, saw Abner’s smiling face and lashed out at it. The two men went down together, fighting on the floor. Susie rushed into the kitchen, calling for her father, and at the same moment the constable ran into the room. He began to try and pinion Abner, who had Badger on the floor.

‘Leave them alone,’ cried George Malpas excitedly. ‘Badger hit him first!’ He took hold of the policeman’s shoulder, and tried to pull him back.

‘Do you know what you’re doing?’ Bastard shouted. ‘Obstructing my duty?’

But George would not let him go. The policeman left Abner and closed with Malpas. He was the taller, but the older man. They swayed in each other’s arms and then, tripping on the leg of an overturned chair, went down together. The policeman was undermost and his head hit the stone floor with a dull thud. George, who had fallen above him, freed himself from his arms.

‘The b—’s stunned,’ said Atwell. ‘Serve him right!’

Mr Hind had appeared on the scene and was bending over the prostrate policeman. George leaned panting against the bar.

‘There’s blood coming from his ears and nose,’ Mr Hind said hoarsely.

‘The b—’s stunned,’ Atwell repeated stolidly.

‘He’s not stunned,’ said the landlord, looking up. ‘He’s dead!’

By this time Abner had got the better of the keeper, whom he held beneath him on the floor. He heard the crash as George Malpas and Constable Bastard went over amid a hubbub of voices. Then, with the landlord’s words, which Abner did not hear, fell a sudden silence. He wondered what was up, released Badger, and pushed forward to the cluster of men that surrounded the policeman’s body. He heard the word ‘dead’ passing from one to another. ‘Lock at the blood coming out of his ear,’ they said. And there was George Malpas leaning up against the bar with his hands behind him gripping it, ghastly pale and panting with his mouth open, and twitching at the corners. He didn’t see Abner or any one else. A curious inertia had fallen on the group of men about Bastard’s body. They simply stared at it as though it had fallen into the midst of them from another planet. Mr Hind, by way of an experiment, lifted the constable’s hand and let it fall again. It fell on the floor with a wooden sound.

‘Somebody run to Lesswardine for the doctor,’ said Mr Hind.

‘I’ll go myself,’ said Abner.

‘That’s right. Tell ’im about the blood, and be’s quick as you can.’

‘It’s snowing,’ some one called.

Abner went hatless to the door. Looking back into the kitchen he saw the face of Susie. It was white, like a mask. For the moment it meant nothing to him. They looked at each other for that fraction of a second unrecognising. Abner started running toward Lesswardine. The hard road echoed. The night was deadly black and snow was falling.

He scarcely noticed the snow. He went on plodding over the road to Lesswardine without realising, for the time, the importance of his journey. He felt the snowflakes spatter his face, his neck, his chest, for in the struggle with Badger his shirt had been torn open. He was glad he had come to grips with Badger. He felt he could do what he liked with the keeper now. The white-faced vision of Susie, till then unrealised, came back to him out of the darkness. Scared, she must have been!

In Lesswardine yellow lamps beamed through halos of cold air. Crossing the bridge he saw that his clothes were as white as a miller’s. The great flakes danced like moths in the lamplight, they flew into his mouth and melted on the heat of his tongue. His feet did not echo in these new streets, for the macadam was felted with an inch of snow. He had nearly reached his goal. It was senseless to go on running, panting, and swallowing mouthfuls of snow; but his legs would not obey these half-formed thoughts and carried him onwards.

The doctor was smoking his after-supper pipe when Abner arrived. The Hinds were good patients, and he did not hesitate to turn out. ‘Give me a hand with the mare,’ he said, and they went out into the stable to put to. The doctor’s wife had warmed his overcoat and wrapped a muffler round his neck. He gave Abner a peg of whisky to keep him warm. When they were clear of the Lesswardine lights he asked for details of the affair. ‘By Gad, that’s serious,’ he said. ‘That means an inquest and a P.M.’ He thought to himself: ‘Two guineas,’ and touched up the mare with satisfaction.

‘You say Bastard and George Malpas went down together? He was struggling with George?’

‘Yes—it was me and Badger he was after.’

‘That’s beside the point,’ said the doctor. ‘It’s a bad lookout for Malpas—and for his mother, poor old lady! A bad lookout. . . . It’s homicide—manslaughter.’

The Fourteenth Chapter

BY the time that Abner and the doctor reached Mainstone, Bastard’s body was growing cold, and the last hope that his unconsciousness was any less than that of death had vanished. The Pound House was still full of those who waited for the verdict, a silent, sober company. Mr Hind, who had not seen the beginning of the struggle, tried vainly to find out what had happened. All accounts of it were confused and contradictory, and in any case it mattered little to the landlord, for he knew that his house was already in the black books of the police, and felt sure that this catastrophe would mean the loss of his licence. The doctor scarcely needed to look at Bastard’s body.

‘Yes, fractured base,’ he said. ‘He must have died at once. An elderly man with brittle bones. There’s nothing to be done, Hind. I’ll knock up the sergeant when I get back to Lesswardine and telephone the coroner.’

‘I wouldn’t have had this happen for nothing, doctor!’ moaned Mr Hind.

‘Of course you wouldn’t. It’s not your fault.’

‘He must have tripped over that chair.’ And everybody, including the doctor, stared at the offending piece of furniture with interest.

‘Come on, Abner,’ said George Malpas. ‘Good-night, Mr Hind.’

Mr Hind did not reply.

All through that night the snow fell slowly, incessantly. The soft, frozen sky drifted downward idly on the land, and George and Abner had to pick their way back to Wolfpits blindly in the small hours, guided through the plain by the presence of ghostly trees and in the Wolfpits valley by the snow-muffled tumult of the Folly Brook. The hills were desolate and savage. They lay dead, and the sky covered them. Wolfpits itself rose before the travellers’ eyes sudden and black through the falling snow. There was no light in any of the windows, for Mary had given them up long ago and gone to bed. Wood embers smouldered in the kitchen grate. George poked them into a blaze. They took off their snow-plastered coats and sat in front of the fire.

‘Well, this is a bloody fine thing!’ said George. ‘Old Bastard gone and me a murderer. I’ve looked for some queer things but never for this.’

‘I reckon it’s my fault,’ said Abner. ‘That’s bound to come out.’

‘That’s not going to help me,’ said George, with a laugh. ‘Not it! . . . It’s mother I’m thinking of. There’s no luck in our family. It’s no good talking about it. It’s my last fling, and I’d do it again for a pal. If it hadn’t happened to-night, it wouldn’t never have happened at all.’

Abner could say nothing. Even now he didn’t realise the seriousness of his friend’s position.

‘Just my blasted luck!’ said George. ‘Better turn in unless you want to get frozen.’

He went upstairs with his candle, and Abner followed.

When daylight returned the snow had ceased, but the night’s fall had obliterated the track of their returning feet. Wolfpits had become a black island in the surrounding whiteness. From the drift upon the doorstep the snow lay smooth to the tops of the hills which dawn illumined with a rosy light. Never had the mountains seemed so near to the house, so beautiful, and so little threatening.

Abner woke early and looked out on this transfigured world. In all the house no one was astir. Even old Drew, who worked in all weathers, had not yet emerged from his snowbound door. George and Mary still slept. It was very cold, and Abner threw his coat over his bedclothes. It was no good getting up, for he knew that with so deep a fall there could be no work on the pipe-track that day. He lay in bed, smoking, watching the clustered chimneys of Wolfpits against the sky. The rosy hue faded from the mountains. The sky cleared to a thin, dazzling blue. A thread of smoke issued from old Drew’s chimney, rising, straight as a larch, into the clear air. In the room beneath him, where George and Mary slept, he heard voices. No doubt George Malpas was telling his wife what had happened. Sometimes the talk was rapid; sometimes there were long silences. Abner was thankful that the sad business of telling Mary had not been left to him. He heard the children’s voices on the stair. The time had come when he would have to face them all.

They were all in the kitchen when he came downstairs. He could see from Mary’s eyes that she had been crying; she scarcely dared to look at him lest she should cry again. George was pretending to be cheerful. He was playing with the children, telling them how they must make a snow man in the drive. He said good-morning to Abner as though nothing had happened overnight, and Abner’s heart went out to him for his courage. Mary did not speak to him, but it seemed to him that her red eyes were reproachful. He felt that she probably considered him responsible for the tragedy, was conscious of his indirect share of guilt, and wished there were some way in which he could atone for it. He admired the manly way in which George took his trouble. Indeed he never felt so wholly friendly to George in his life.

The elders breakfasted in silence, but the children talked incessantly, being excited by the snow. An overwhelming impulse to put himself right with Mary made Abner stop her when she was carrying the breakfast things into the scullery.

‘George has told you?’ he said.

‘Yes, he’s told me. I suppose there’s nothing to be done?’

‘Naught that I know on,’ he replied. And she left him quickly, for she did not want him to see her crying again.

George lit his pipe at the fire. ‘Funny to hear them kids,’ he said, with a half smile. ‘I mind it just the same once before. It was at Mary’s father’s funeral when his sister, her Aunt Rachel, brought her youngsters over from Bromyard.’

They were spared more of these harrowing contrasts, for the air was warm, and the children, carefully wrapped up by Mary, ran out to play in the glistening stuff. Mary did not reappear, and the two men sat on over the fire. Only George spoke from time to time.

‘It’s all of a piece with my luck,’ he said. ‘I reckon I was born unlucky. One thing and another. . . I don’t mind as long as it don’t come out what I was after in Lesswardine. She’s a decent woman and I wouldn’t have her damaged by it. I wish to God I’d stayed like she wanted me.’

He seemed to be waiting for Abner to speak, so that he felt bound to ask who the woman in Lesswardine was.

‘A young woman, a widow . . .’ said George. ‘I wouldn’t have her name mentioned if I could help it. She’s got enough to put up with. Probably I shan’t see her, so I’ll give you a note for her.’

He relapsed into silence. ‘The odds is,’ he went on, after a long pause, ‘this is the last time I shall see Wolfpits at night. Well, I’m not sorry for that, though there’s no denying that Mary’s been a good wife to me.’

He spoke more excitedly. ‘There’s one thing: try as they will, they can’t make it murder. Accidental manslaughter, that’s the most they can make of it. That means a couple of years hard labour. You can’t tell. . . . It depends on the damned jury. Only mention the word “poaching” and the judges are again’ you. Yes . . . you can’t deny she’s been a good wife, if I hadn’t married her too young. I’ve got mother to thank for that. But I don’t know what’ll happen to her. She’s too proud for charity, and she’d starve herself and the children rather than take a penny piece from mother.’

‘She won’t want while I’m here,’ said Abner.

George looked at him steadily without replying.

‘You mean you’ll stay here and keep the home together?’

‘If you want me to,’ said Abner.

‘You’re a good pal, Abner,’ he replied. ‘I’ve said that before. And I wouldn’t have her suffer. There’s something in what her dad used to say . . . about good blood and that. If I hadn’t took a fancy against her this wouldn’t never have happened. I wouldn’t have the home broke up.’

‘I’ll look to that,’ said Abner. ‘That is, if she don’t turn against me.’