Part 19

He devoted his evening to the children. Their frolic in the snow had excited them. They were full of play and laughter. Mary moved about her business silently, watching the fireside group with benevolent eyes. At seven o’clock, just before their bedtime, another constable came to the door with the police-court summons. The case had been fixed for the following day—eleven o’clock at Lesswardine. The man was in a hurry to serve his other summonses, and would not enter. Abner told Mary the news.

‘Eleven o’clock,’ she repeated intently. ‘Come thy ways, Morgan, love, time for bye-byes.’

The children left Abner unwillingly, Gladys insisting that he should carry her upstairs. He did so, and Mary followed with her son in her arms, rubbing his cold-flushed eyelids with his fists.

Abner returned to the fire. Eleven o’clock! Less than twenty-four hours ago none of this had happened. He was impressed, in spite of himself, with the inevitable regularity of the machine that had drawn George Malpas into its ponderous clutches. He saw, for the first time, the tremendous power of the law, and his own helplessness.

Mrs Mamble joined them for supper. When they had nearly finished another knock came to the door, and Abner went to open it. The new visitor was old Drew, who came in, blinking at the light.

‘Please come in, Mr Drew,’ said Mary, ‘and take a seat.’

He stood for a moment, a bowed and awkward figure. Then he placed on the tablecloth three brown eggs that he had carried in his huge misshapen hand.

‘I bringed you two three eggs, missus,’ he said. ‘They’m getting tarrable scarce these days, and I reckon the chilring might like them.’

‘That is good of you, Mr Drew,’ Mary cried.

‘Don’t ’ee mention it!’ said the old man. ‘I rackon it won’t be so aisy for ’ee with the maister in trouble. Us all knows what that be, and you’m welcome to them. Iss, us all knows what trouble be, praise God! I had a brother of my own to Lapton Huish as was took for the killing of his wife, though the poor twoad never knew what he done, for a’ suffered from fits, a’ did. Tried and hanged into Exeter he were . . . dear soul too! Iss, I know what trouble manes.’

‘We all know what trouble means,’ said Mrs Mamble, with a sigh, ‘from the highest to the lowest; but the law be kinder these days than it used to be. My poor dear Robert’s grandfather was a labourin’ man, a quiet, Christian man too, as never raised a hand against any livin’ creature, as Robert told me times, but that weren’t enough to save him from hanging. It was a hard winter, I can’t mind how many years agone, though Robert he told me, and they got him for stealing a sheep—stealing, they says!—as he found dead-stiff in the snow on Clee Hills. As he’d a right to, with the fields like stone and no work and the children crying for bread. But they hanged men for that in Worcester jail in them days. Ay, and when my Robert was a lad, the other boys ‘d put it up against him as his dad had kept sheep by moonlight: that’s what they call hanging in chains, like the gibbet, so they call it, as used to stand in olden times near Clows Top. A quieter man never breathed, nor a better worker. Put a bit more wood on the fire, Mr Fellows, do!’

Abner threw a faggot on the fire and the flames leapt. This friendly flicker, aided, perhaps, by the hypnotic drone of Mrs Mamble’s voice, as soothing as the sound of running water or the midnight rustle of poplars, so encouraged the old labourer that he let himself sink into a chair by the corner of the table.

The firelight glinted in his beard, and Abner saw that his full lips were red as those of a young man. He saw also Mary’s face, withdrawn into the gloom. It seemed as if she were dreaming, her mind altogether removed from the voices of her comforters.

‘Ay,’ said Drew, ‘I’ve heard of men that was strung up for stealing sheep down Exmoor way. There’s a many sheep on the moors, and ponies too. You should see them when the foals come along, springtime, and when they’m drove down to Bampton fair. ’Tis a fine sight, sure ‘nuff! But that there’s nothing to the old times. My granf’er, ’er was barn up Somerset, not too far from Ta’nton, used to tell as how men was stringed up by the dozen, the same as jays or magpies, by a tarrable old chap of the name of Jeffereys. Bloody Jeffereys, that’s what they called ’en. A judge he were. . . . Iss, bloody Jeffereys.’

‘There now!’ said Mrs Mamble, throwing up her hands.

‘And them they durs’nt hang they sent off to Canada, so I’m told. Ay, many likely chaps was sent there and never came home no more, though what they sent ’en for I can’t rightly call to mind, unless ‘twere rick-burning. Had the redcoats to ’em, they did! But that’s all past and gone, thanks-be! Iss, past and gone. . . . The law bain’t what it used to be. There’s juries these days. An’ what be manslarter but a thing that might come to any man unbeknownst? Don’t ’ee be afeared, missus! Don’t ’ee be afeared! There be no shame in “going up the line,” as they do call it down our way.’

‘No shame, as you say, Mr Drew,’ said Mrs Mamble solemnly. ‘But the shame’s not everything. It’s a hard thing on a woman that has little children with her crying for an empty belly when a man’s away in jail and not a penny in the house but what the parish gives her. And the questions they ask! That’s where the shame comes in, and I’ve known many a proud woman starve for a crust of bread rather than answer them, they’re that disgusting.’

‘Ah, get away, do! woman,’ said old Drew, with a laugh. ‘What’s questions? And Mrs Malpas here ban’t going to do no such thing. A woman never knows what friends she’s got till she’s found trouble, and they that has a roof to their heads and a bit of garden to till can spare something for their neighbours. No, don’t ’ee believe ’en, my dear! If it’s only potatoes and swede out of the fields, no chilring ’ll starve to Wolfpits, not they! Don’t you believe it! An’ a woman like your George’s mother with a tidy little business at the Buffalo. . . . Trouble ’ll tell you your friends.’

The clock struck nine.

‘Now that’s a fine thing to be sure,’ he went on, with a glance of admiration, ‘a fine thing to have a clock to tell ’ee when to be going up over, and keep ’ee company night-time. ’Tis hard to judge the hour in winter when the old sun be hid!’

He pulled his stiff limbs together painfully, and left them with more encouragements.

‘He’s a quiet man,’ said Mrs Mamble, when they heard him treading softly over the snow, ‘but I always reckoned he’d be a good neighbour.’

She seemed loath to leave Mary to herself, and even proposed that she should sleep with her, nominally for the sake of warmth, until the strain of George’s trial should be over, an offer that Mary found it difficult to refuse with grace. When she left them she took the younger woman to her breast and kissed her tenderly. Abner opened the door for her, and when he returned he saw that Mary’s eyes were bright with tears. He felt that he himself must struggle to add some words of reassurance, but before he could do so she had said good-night and vanished.

Next morning he rose early. He had lit the fire and made the kettle boil before she was astir. When she heard his feet in the kitchen she hurried to come down and thank him.

‘You needn’t have done that,’ she said.

‘That’s nowt,’ he replied bluntly. ‘We’ve got to get on the road early.’

After breakfast she deposited the children, as had been arranged, with Mrs Mamble. Morgan, who scarcely ever left his mother’s side, resented this.

‘Where are you going, mam?’ he cried.

‘Only to Lesswardine with Abner here.’

‘You’re not going for good, mam? You’re coming back again?’

‘Don’t be a silly boy, Morgan. Of course I’m coming back.’

‘When, mam?’

‘This afternoon.’

A new anxiety seized him. ‘What’s for dinner, mam?’ he said.

‘A nice brown egg, my love, what Mr Drew brought you,’ said Mrs Mamble, coming to the rescue. ‘You come along now, and you shall have dear Robert’s watch to play with.’

To the last temptation Morgan succumbed. This watch was the principal curiosity of Mrs Mamble’s bedroom. It hung there in the smell of rotting wood, a silver monster, like a toy warming-pan, suspended in a celluloid case above the old woman’s bed. Mrs Mamble whipped them away, and Abner set out with Mary.

Snow still covered the ground, but by this time, in lane and road, the trampled ways were clear and the bordering drifts marked with the treading of birds, squirrels, and other woodland creatures. Abner was so unused to walking with a woman that he set a pace that Mary could not equal. Breathless, she begged him to walk more slowly. The exertion and the cold air flushed her cheeks and reddened her lips to the hue of holly and spindle-berries in the hedge. Her body glowed, and her hair was bright as the fronds of bracken in the sun. In spite of their tragic mission her lips smiled. No spiritual anxiety could check the exhilaration of the blood that this crisp winter morning gave her walking under the open sky. But when they drew near to Lesswardine the houses closed in on them like the walls of a prison; the fine snow was swept and sullied, the light faded from the sky.

A special court had been summoned to deal with George’s case. The squire, Sir George Delahay, was driving down to take the chair, and before Abner and Mary arrived the court-room was nearly full of Lesswardine villagers who could always spare a morning if anything sensational was passing. Abner, as one of the principal witnesses, was soon separated from his companion. He was herded together with the others into a small block of chairs on the right-hand side of the bench and opposite to the dock. From this point he could see the court, a mass of white faces from which arose a rumour like the buzzing of flies. In the midst of them he saw Mary, pale and innocent. It was in her agony that these buzzing tormentors would find delight. Almost on a level with her at the other end of the bench he saw old Mrs Malpas. She had come to the court as she would have come to chapel, in the same dour, determined spirit, in the same tight black dress. They sat abreast of one another, these two women to whom George Malpas belonged, and not a glance passed between them.

A new witness arrived, a fair young woman, clothed in black and veiled, who walked in hurriedly with lowered eyes and tried to conceal herself, as it seemed, behind the chairs of the men. The flies buzzed as loudly as when they are driven from a heap of filth. Abner guessed that this was George’s Lesswardine woman. Mrs Malpas darted one eager glance in the new-comer’s direction, but Mary did not raise her eyes. At the last moment Mr Hind entered with Susie. She smiled, and the sight of her made Abner’s blood leap, for she was no longer the white-faced impersonal being that she had seemed at the inquest. She met his eyes full, and smiled again. Mary also was looking at him now. Abner went hot under their two glances. Why did Mary look at him? The other was the woman that he wanted!

In a sudden silence George was brought forward. He seemed none the worse for his night in the cells. He walked straight to the dock with a policeman on either side of him, looking neither at his mother, whose hands went to her heart, nor at Mary, who did not move. His eyes found Abner on the opposite side of the court, and he smiled, but the smile suddenly vanished and he went pale, for beyond Abner he had seen the face of the woman from Lesswardine. He went pale with anger that they should have dragged her into this; but there was no one on whom his anger could fall. His hands, that had quickly clutched at the edge of the dock, fell to his sides. He stood there with his fine, pale face and black hair, and on him were centred the emotions of those three women who would not look at each other. The court buzzed again, going suddenly silent as Badger’s master entered and took his seat on the bench above the head of the clerk.

The proceedings were formal, being no more than another step in George’s journey to Salop. The only new witness was the young woman whom the police had unearthed to establish the sequence of George’s movements on the night of Bastard’s death. She gave her evidence in a subdued voice and never raised her eyes. She said that George had never taken liquor in her house; that he had often come to see her; that he was her friend. No more.

When she had left the box George gave a sigh of relief. Abner wondered why he should have preferred this shrinking creature to Mary or to Susie Hind. The sitting ended in the obvious way, George being committed to take his trial at the county assizes. Nothing else could have been expected.

At the door of the court Abner rejoined Mary. Mrs Malpas, who had been whispering to the local solicitor, marched past them without speaking, and Mary flushed at this deliberate slight.

‘She won’t speak to me,’ she said. ‘I think that’s too bad! That was Lawyer Harley she was talking to.’

‘Don’t take no notice of her,’ said Abner. ‘That old woman’s half-cracked.’

He went on to tell her that Mick Connor, who had gone to the Buffalo out of curiosity the night before, had heard Mrs Malpas tell one of her customers that if George were sent to Shrewsbury she would employ the best criminal advocate on the circuit, even if it cost her the last penny she possessed. He did not tell her that Mrs Malpas had declared that it was nothing but the proud ways of Mary, ‘that thief’s daughter,’ she called her—that had driven George to his ruin.

‘He didn’t look at me once,’ said Mary on the way home.

‘He’d no call to look at nobody,’ Abner replied.

‘He looked at _her_,’ said Mary bitterly. ‘He’s strange. I don’t know what to make of him.’

‘That’s natural enough. He didn’t want to see her dragged out in public.’

‘Dragged out in public?’ she cried, with an unusual flush of spirit. ‘What about _me_?’

They settled down to another placid evening at Wolfpits. The children had enjoyed their day with Mrs Mamble, though Morgan was persuaded with difficulty to go to bed without the coveted warming-pan under his pillow. Mrs Mamble was just preparing to leave them for the night when a knock came to the door, and without waiting for it to be opened to her Mrs Malpas entered. Her walk to Wolfpits over the roadway, now slippery with ice, had exhausted her, so that she looked more like a wraith than a woman. Even so she did not stop to recover her breath. She clenched her hands in the queer gesture that Abner had noticed the evening before, and with trembling wrists began to storm in Mary’s face.

‘What have you done with the money?’ she cried. ‘What have you done with it?’ Abner laid his hand on her shoulder, for she looked dangerous.

‘Take your hands off me!’ she screamed. ‘The money. . . . I want my money!’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Mary said.

‘My money, you brazen madam!’ she cried. ‘The money out of the box in father’s bedroom. More than fifty pound . . .’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ repeated Mary, bewildered.

‘It’s gone . . . gone! Don’t tell me you don’t know where it’s gone, when I know you’ve a’ had it! He can’t have spent it all. Give me what’s left . . . to pay the lawyers. George would never have gone and took it without you to put him up to it . . . you with your lady’s ways and your fine speech! Ah, that’s where the bad blood comes out. Your father was a thief, and you’re no better! Bad blood . . . bad blood!’

‘Don’t you dare . . .’ Mary cried. ‘Don’t you dare speak of my father!’

She stood tall and flushed above her mother-in-law.

‘Give me the money . . . what’s left of it,’ Mrs Malpas pleaded. ‘Give it me, and I won’t say no more.’

Her violence had spent itself. Now she was only small, pathetic, withered. Mary controlled herself. She would not answer.

‘I’d forgive him taking it. . . . I’d forgive him. Mr Harley says they’ll want twenty pound before they touch the case. Only twenty pound. . . . I can find more later. Give me twenty pound.’

‘She says she don’t know nothing about it,’ said Abner.

‘_Says_! It must have been George. No one else knew where I kept it. He’s hidden it. Up in his room. You must look . . . you must look!’

‘I know nothing about it,’ said Mary, mastering herself. ‘I’ve not seen a penny. I . . . I can’t talk to you. I wish you would go away.’

‘Leave the woman alone, missus,’ said Abner. ‘She’s enough to put up with without you. You’d best go out quiet. You’m not answerable. Come on, now!’

The old woman seemed to pull her strength together, looking from one to the other. They waited for a new outburst, but instead of speaking she suddenly threw up her hands and burst into a fit of choking sobs. Mary made a compassionate movement toward her, but Mrs Malpas stopped her with a violent gesture. Then she straightened her bonnet and moved to the door. She became her old, wiry, deliberate self. Her voice was clear and her face like stone.

‘If George took it,’ she said emphatically, ‘it was the devil that drove him, and I can’t do no more. But not one penny shall you ever get out of me, Mary Condover. You can starve, you and your children together, but don’t come crying to dad and me. You and your pride. . . .! Now you can see what you’ve to be proud of. The daughter of a thief and the wife of a thief. That’s what you are! I never want to set eyes on you again . . . you and your fancy lodger!’

She went out, leaving the door open behind her. Mary stood looking after her, shaken like a tree in the wind. Then she gave a curious laugh and sat down at the table. Abner could do nothing for her; but she managed to contain herself until she had risen and passed from his sight upstairs.

It was fortunate for them all in the suspense that now held them that the Shrewsbury assizes had been fixed for the middle of December, immediately before the Christmas vacation. On his committal by the Lesswardine bench, George had been taken at once to the county jail where he lay awaiting his trial. In the meantime the leisurely routine of work in those wintry valleys, disturbed so abruptly by these violent events, reasserted itself. The snow melted. To the sodden days of thaw succeeded a period of mild and mistily golden weather that would have seemed like spring had it not been so silent. The work on the pipeline began again like the progress of some great engine that had kept its power hissing beneath the snow, and daily gathered speed. Even the Pound House, still suspect by the police but happily safe until the Brewster sessions, regained its old popularity, though Mr Hind, having been duly warned, gave more attention to his business than ever before. It had been clear from the first that he had taken a violent dislike to Abner, whom he regarded as the cause of all his trouble. On the day of the inquest he had shown this by his silence; but when Abner appeared again at the inn, he told him in as many words that his custom wasn’t wanted. Susie, a little shaken by her father’s severity, implored him not to persist in coming to the Pound House, and though she appeared no less passionately devoted to Abner, the lovers’ meetings were fewer and their secrecy more precarious.

It was strange how little difference George’s absence made to life at Wolfpits. Within a week it almost seemed as if the place and its inhabitants had forgotten him. Neither Mary nor the children ever mentioned his name, and since the day of the police-court proceedings Abner had heard nothing from him but a single scribbled letter which George contrived to send from the lock-up by the hand of the young policeman who had drunk his beer. In this letter a new flicker of care for his family had shown itself: he had reminded Abner of his promise to stay at Wolfpits and look after them. ‘I would have sent you some money,’ he wrote, ‘but they’ve taken it off me. Mary can ask mother if she’s in a fix.’ The reminder was quite unnecessary. Abner had given his word to a pal and meant to stick to it, though he foresaw a difficult moment when the plan should be disclosed to Mary. He could not see, for the life of him, how to open the subject, and so he let things take their course, waiting for the occasion to arrive without his interference.

It came, as he had half expected, at the end of the week, when the next payment for his lodging was due. Instead of his usual fourteen shillings he gave Mary the whole of his wages wrapped up in the piece of paper in which he received them at the works. The situation embarrassed her, as she told him, for she had no change.

‘I don’t want none,’ he said bluntly.

‘But I can’t take it from you,’ she protested. ‘It isn’t right.’

‘Right or wrong,’ said he, ‘you and the children can’t live on less, and you’ll find it a tight pinch as it is.’

‘I can’t take it,’ she said again.

They stood on either side of the table with the packet of money between them.

‘It isn’t only that,’ she added. ‘Don’t suppose I think the less of your kindness. . . . I wish I could tell you what I do think . . . but I’m afraid it isn’t right for you to stay on here now George is away.’

‘That’s why I ought to stay,’ he said.

‘You don’t understand,’ she replied. ‘Men don’t think of such things. It would be the talk of the village. They’d say there was something wrong.’

‘As long as there bain’t nothing wrong there’s no harm in talk. Talk never hurt nobody.’

‘There’s George’s mother . . . you don’t know her! Remember what she said that night.’

‘Do you think I’d ever take the upper hand of you?’

‘No, no . . . it’s not me,’ she said quickly, turning away from him.

‘Then there’s no call to be soft over it.’

‘There’s George, too . . .’

‘Don’t you fret yourself about George,’ he said, and showed her her husband’s letter. ‘That’s what George thinks about it. I reckon that’s good enough.’

For a long time she would not take his money. The hard facts of her case, the words of Mrs Malpas, and the ugly necessity of applying for parish relief, seemed to weigh less with her than this tyrannous modesty.

‘You can take it or leave it,’ he said, ‘but I’ve promised George and the money will come to you just the same. . . . Supposing I get another lodge, the money will be less, that’s all. If you bain’t afeard of me . . . .’

She protested: ‘No . . . no . . . .’

‘Then I may as well stay on. You can’t do without a man in a place like this. There’s the wood to chop and the water to draw and that. I should have to come here just the same. We’ve got to live on a poor wage, and it’s all the better if I’m here.’

‘I must think it over,’ she said.