Part 25

‘All gone home an hour ago,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘There’s only me and the master, and he’s not back yet.’

At that moment all the dogs began to bark together. She got up and opened the door, and the lights of a gig turned the corner and dashed into the yard. Another cob was tied to the cart tail. The woman ran to meet the new-comer, and a big man threw the reins over the horse’s flanks and got out of the trap. The dog yelped round him friendlily, and he cursed it. ‘Get away!’ he said.

‘You’d best take out,’ he said to the woman. ‘I’m properly starved, I am. What do you think of the new cob? Forty-eight pound! I never knew such prices!’

‘There’s a chap here says he’s a woman and two children lost up by the sea-crows’ pool,’ she said, disregarding his question. ‘You’d better go and have a word with him.’

‘Gipsies?’ he said angrily; but without waiting for her reply he stalked stiffly into the room, slapping his dank hands and blinking at the light. He stared at Abner.

‘Hallo!’ he said. ‘I know you. You’m George Malpas’s lodger.’

Abner also recognised his host. It was Mr Williams of Pentre Higgin, the farmer who had chosen himself foreman of the jury at Bastard’s inquest.

‘Well, what’s all this I hear about a woman and two kids?’ said the fanner threateningly. ‘Is that Malpas’s wife?’

Abner told him what had happened. What bewildered him most was to realise that after all they had hit the upper part of their own valley. The Pentre was indeed the farm on which old Drew worked, and less than five miles from Wolfpits itself. The farmer poured himself out a glass of cider and stood smacking his lips while Abner told his story.

‘Well, this is a pretty turn-out!’ he said. ‘I heard some talk of an accident to a little girl over there.’

He went to the door. ‘Hi!’ he shouted, ‘you’d better put to again, missus! Shove the new cob in the stall and give ’en some hay. Mind he don’t bite you.’

He chuckled to himself, being what people in those parts call ‘market-peart,’ then drank off another glass of cider, and motioned to Abner to follow him. ‘We’d best find Badger to give us a hand,’ he said.

He tied the reins of the harnessed horse to a post in the yard, and threw a blanket over its back. Abner followed him silently out of the yard and up the road. They stopped in front of a small cottage, and Williams knocked at the door. After some delay Badger in his shirt-sleeves opened it, emitting a queer odour of naphthaline and the dried skins of animals and birds.

‘Put your coat on, Bill,’ said the farmer. ‘Malpas’s wife and kids is up by the sea-crows’ pool. Got lost in the fog.’

In a few moments, as it seemed, they had found the derelicts. By this time Mary protested, she was quite able to walk. Abner again picked up Gladys, Williams carried Morgan, and an easy path brought them down to the farm again. Badger walked beside Abner, but never spoke a word.

‘Now I reckon I’ve got to drive you home,’ said Williams sourly. ‘You’d better jump up quick.’

The lights of the house shone on Mary’s pale face. She did not look at Abner, but the woman of the farm, who appeared to be Williams’s wife, stared at her with hostile eyes. ‘Good-night, Bill!’ the farmer called, as Badger slouched away.

‘Thank’ee, Mr Badger!’ Abner added. But Badger only mumbled something that he could not hear.

The sweating horse jogged easily down the lane to Wolfpits.

The Nineteenth Chapter

ALL that night Abner heard Gladys crying softly and Mary moving about in the room beneath him. In the small hours she knocked at his door and begged him to take Morgan into his bed. Gladys was so restless that the child could not get to sleep. They spoke together with the oak door between them, and a moment later, having knocked again, she thrust a small, red-eyed figure into the room. Abner picked him up and carried him into bed. The child nestled close to him, like a small, warm-blooded animal. Abner wrapped him up in his arms, protectively, as though, by steadying his muscles, he could compel him to settle down to sleep. Morgan’s fingers lay gently on his forearm, soft and listless. He was so quiet that Abner thought he had fallen asleep already. In this he was mistaken. The change of rooms and the adventure of finding a new bedfellow had completely wakened him, and when he had lain dead still for a little while, Morgan’s fingers began to stroke Abner’s arm. Then he fidgeted and spoke in a reverent whisper:

‘Abner, are you awake?’

‘Ay, what is it?’

‘Why is your arm all hairy, Abner?’

‘Why? Because I’m grown up.’

‘Mam’s isn’t,’ said Morgan, after a thoughtful pause, and then: ‘I like being here.’

‘Then don’t you go asking questions or I’ll put you out again,’ said Abner.

After this the child was quiet. He lay there burning in Abner’s arms. Falling asleep, his limbs relaxed, and then, suddenly clutching at consciousness, twitched violently. These movements were like those of a very young animal, feeble and frightened, and Abner, feeling them, gathered the child more closely in his arms, until he moved no longer save with the gentle breathing of a sweet sleep.

Abner had never slept with a child before. It gave him a queer, almost physical sensation of comfort in addition to the protective emotions which Morgan’s helplessness aroused. He had never thought seriously what it would be like to have a child of his own, and even now he did not explain his feelings in that way. He pictured himself, for a moment, in the position of father to a child of Susie Hind’s, and the prospect did not move him. The only way in which he could explain this curious enthralling tenderness was by the fact that Morgan was really part of Mary, that the child had come to him straight from the warmth of her arms, carrying with him an impalpable essence of herself. He wondered vaguely what he would have felt like if the child had been not only Mary’s but his as well, and in the midst of these tender and dangerous reflections he fell asleep himself.

Next morning, before returning to work, he left a message with the doctor at Lesswardine, asking him to call at Wolfpits. All through the day he was restless and unhappy, feeling that his proper place was at Wolfpits lending Mary a hand, supporting her anxieties. He consoled himself with the knowledge that Mrs Mamble was used to domestic troubles and would probably be of more use to Mary than himself, even apart from the fact that their finances would not easily stand the strain of the lost time. He only wondered, all the time, what the doctor’s report would be, and whether their wild night-journey might have added to the child’s injury. He did not mention anything of what had happened to his mates, and the day was therefore long and anxious.

It was after dinner-time when the doctor reached Wolfpits. Escorted by Mrs Mamble, he soon got to business and took down the injured limb, complimenting the Brampton Bryan surgeon on the way in which he had done his job. The dislocated fragments, he said, had been skilfully opposed, and the leg now lay in a good position. Gladys was young, a child’s tissues were full of vitality, and the splint, which he put on again, need not be worn for more than three weeks.

He stayed a little longer than he need have done, for he had finished his round and Mary Malpas was an attractive woman. He was a middle-aged man and not above taking a kind of guarded pleasure in the intimacy with such charming creatures that his profession gave him. He asked her how it had all happened, and Mary told him, without hesitation, of their train journey two nights before, of their difficulty of finding rooms at Redlake, and of all that had led up to the accident. He listened gravely, giving no sign of unusual interest when Abner’s name was mentioned, but when he drove away again he chuckled to himself, being intrigued by this new little sidelight on the frailty of human nature, and taking an interest that was not wholly professional in the idea of this extraordinarily desirable woman finding consolation in the arms of her lodger. For that was how he interpreted the case.

When he got home that evening he told the story to his wife. Little incidents of this kind, which came so often into his professional experience, supplied him with a vicarious sexual stimulus which his marital relations had lacked for some years. Mrs Hendrie, listening, pursed her lips, and smiled. The story was not one for general publication, but she knew that it would be acceptable to the vicar’s wife, who had already taken such a kindly, if profitless, interest in this unfortunate young woman.

In this way the scandal of the Redlake adventure began to be whispered in that most exclusive circle of which the sewing-party at the vicarage was the centre. In this quarter, indeed, Mary had been already judged and damned as a woman who preferred a life of open sin to the privilege of attending to the blameless, physical needs of the Rev. Cyril Malpas. The new intelligence did no more than supply a sorrowful confirmation of what was already suspected. ‘It’s those two sweet children I’m thinking of,’ said the vicar’s wife. ‘Imagine the awful effects of surroundings of that kind in later life!’ The vicar only shook his head. After all, Wolfpits was so very nearly in his neighbour’s parish as to make him scarcely responsible.

It came as a great relief to Abner to find that Gladys was none the worse for her journey in his arms. In the morning they pulled round the long kitchen settle into the sun, and in the evening he carried this out of doors so that the child might enjoy the mellow light with the others. She took a few days to get over the original shock of the accident, but after that she settled down into a placid convalescence, fully aware of her importance and treating, not only Mary and Mrs Mamble, but Abner and Mick Connor, as her slaves. Morgan was vaguely jealous of the attention that they paid her.

‘But _I_ slep’ with Abner,’ he said, ‘and Gladys an’t, has her, mam?’

Mary smiled at him. Now that she knew that Gladys’s injury was not so severe as they had imagined she could afford to smile, sitting there in the summer evening with her friends about her. It was so quiet at Wolfpits. Not even the birds were singing. She sat there and heard the trout rising and plopping in the pool beneath the bridge, a hundred yards away, and then the murmurous wings of a humming-bird-hawk moth, hovering in a nebula of bronze, swooping to plunge its curled trumpet into the cups of flowers. Then beetles droned above them and bats zig-zagged with rapid wings. She told Abner that it was time for him to take the settle into the house. While he did so she held Gladys in her lap and watched the man’s big shoulders as he moved almost without effort under the weight of the settle. It reminded her of another memory of him that she knew she would never forget: a picture of trailing mists and loneliness, and a man walking before her with a child in his arms.

In this state of happiness and innocence neither of them suspected any mischief of tongues. It is true that Abner had found the presence of Badger at the Pentre on the night of the fair a little sinister at first, but the fact that they had chosen to descend into the Wolfpits valley at the level of the sea-crows’ pool and Williams’s farm was the purest accident, and Mary, who only knew the keeper by name, and had never seen him outside a court of law, thought nothing of it, while Mr Williams of the Pentre never entered into their calculations as a source of evil.

But Williams, in spite of his ready kindness in driving them back to Wolfpits with his tired horse, had chuckled to find in this incident a chance of annoying his old enemy, Mrs Malpas of the Buffalo. In all things he was a gross and childish man, whose plan of life embraced only two classes of acquaintance, enemies and friends, and he spent the greater part of his time in scheming to annoy the former and overwhelm the latter with the most naïve of kindnesses. As for Mrs Malpas, not even pity for her in the affair of George could induce him to forget his quarrel over the hogshead of cider. He knew very well that her weak spot was her own claim to an unassailable chapel morality, and having already enjoyed the pleasure of scoring her off by sending her only son on his first stage to Shrewsbury as a felon, he could not now resist the satisfaction of telling her that her daughter-in-law had been away with the lodger while George was in Salop jail.

Next week, at Ludlow market, he entertained the farmers’ ordinary with the story, and in the evening, having done a good day’s business and drunk enough to make him fear no man, he drove home, chuckling to himself, by way of Chapel Green, pulling up at the Buffalo for a final drink. It was the first time that he had visited the inn since that unfortunate quarrel. The cloggers who had gone away in the previous winter had found lodgings in a village farther westward on their return in the spring, and the Buffalo had never emerged from the silence in which they had left it. Mrs Malpas seemed surprised that any one should call so late at night. The bar was empty, and she had to light the swinging oil lamp for him, standing on a chair. Williams himself found a match and lit it for her out of sheer fuddled kindness. It struck her that he was too kind by half. He drank his whisky standing in the middle of the taproom, smacking it on his tongue.

‘You didn’t go to Bron Fair, ma’am?’ he said.

‘No,’ Mrs Malpas replied. ‘Nor have I these many years.’

‘There’s pretty things to be seen there,’ said Williams, with a grin. She made no reply, and he advanced obliquely from another angle.

‘How’s your son getting on?’

‘But for the shame that we all bear, Mr Williams, he’s out of harm’s way.’

‘Yes, it’s a good Christian prison, I’m told,’ said he, laughing. ‘Chaplains and all! How’s his wife, eh?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Mrs Malpas shortly. ‘And I don’t want to know.’

‘Smart looking young woman!’ Williams leered.

‘I know nothing about her, Mr Williams.’

‘Then I’ll tell you something, ma’am. She’s been off on the spree, childer an’ all, to Bron Fair. Slept the night at the Harley Arms, Redlake, with that lodger chap. What do you think of that?’

Mrs Malpas blenched. ‘That’s your story, Mr Williams, but there’s no need to believe you, thanks be!’

‘But seeing’s believing, ma’am,’ said Williams heavily. ‘And I seen. What is it I owe you now?’

She gasped: ‘Sixpence,’ and took the money. Williams gave her a cheery good-night. He wondered at the way in which she had taken his scandal. ‘A proper hard old case, an’ no mistake!’ he thought. Mrs Malpas, forgetful of economy, left the light burning and went straight in to her husband. In moments of stress, even though she despised him and knew that he hardly understood her, she would use him as a dummy on which to vent her feelings.

‘Dad, dad!’ she cried. ‘That was Mr Williams of the Pentre.’

‘Ay, mother . . . good land, good land! Williams. . . . Ay.’

‘He has a tale of our George’s wife. She’s going on with that Fellows as lodges with them, the one that brought trouble on George. They was caught the two on them, at the Harley Arms, Redlake. You know . . .’

The old man, who was now awake, mumbled something about that being in the nature of things when a young woman was left too long to herself. She picked up the word furiously.

‘Nature!’ she cried. ‘It’s the nature of a brute beast, not the nature of a Christian woman! It’s the bad blood in her!’

He let her rave on in the dark. It was late, and now unlikely that any one else would call in at the bar. His head nodded, while she went on fuming, half to him and half to herself. She persuaded herself that her morality had been offended, though it was really the spiteful satisfaction of Williams rather than his news that had wounded her, for she could not think any worse of Abner and Mary than she did already. When the heat of her irritation against the farmer subsided, its place was taken by another and more subtle flame. She realised that she had found something to explain her former unreasonable hatred. Williams, in trying to shame her, had put a new weapon into her hands, one with which she might positively injure Abner and Mary together in George’s eyes. It had been the hardest part of her dealings with him at the time of the trial to see the way in which his loyalty to Mary, however little that might mean, returned. Now that her chance had come, George couldn’t keep up this sentimental pretence of a belief in Mary’s goodness any longer. Williams had justified her at last.

She helped the old man up to bed, blew out his candle, and left him in the dark. Then she went downstairs, carried the lamp from the bar into the parlour, took out a sheet of lined paper, and a penholder carved out of olive wood from the garden of Gethsemane, and—began a letter to George. She wrote without haste, in the firm pointed characters that she had learnt as a young girl, carefully, methodically, with a perfect and cold precision. From first to last not the least quaver of indecision stayed her pen; but when she held the paper to the light to read what she had written, her hands trembled and the words ran like fire across her brain.

‘_MY DEAR SON_,’—_she had written_, ‘_I hope this finds you in perfect health as it leaves me_, _thank God_, _and your father_. _I am sorry to say that I have sad news to tell you which_, _I am afraid_, _is all too true_. _Your wife and the young man Fellows have been away together_, _living in sin at the Harley Arms_, _Redlake_. _It was madness of you_, _as I tried to tell you before_, _but you would not listen to your __mother_, _to have trusted them_, _but you only laughed me to scorn_. _Now it is an open scandal and hard for your poor father to bear_. _You can do nothing to mend it where you are_, _but be patient_, _dear George_, _and remember the word of Hebrews xii. 6_: “_Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth_.” _I wish I had not to write this_, _George_, _but I have always told you that she was a light and wicked woman_. _Still it is just as well_, _and God moves in a mysterious way_, _for when you come back you can take the children away from her_, _though do not think that you will have the Buffalo_, _even if God should take your dear father_, _for the justices would never give it to one who had been in jail_, _even for no fault of their own_. _In this way you are saved from temptation_. _This is the Lord’s doing_, _dear George_, _and it is marvellous in our eyes_. _Why did you not send for me last month_, _my son_? _I will tell you more_, _please God_, _when we meet_, _I remain_, _with fond kisses_,

_Your loving mother_, ‘_ARABELLA MALPAS_.’

She sighed, sealed the envelope, and addressed it to:—

‘_GEORGE MALPAS_, ‘_NO._ 157. _COUNTY JAIL_, ‘_SHREWSBURY_.’

Then she folded her spectacles, blew out the light, and went upstairs in the dark to the room where her husband was already snoring. She crept into bed beside him and soon fell asleep in the blessed consciousness of innocence.

Williams, blabbing to old Mrs Malpas in the childish hope of irritating her, was not the only person who found an interest in spreading the story. Badger, pulled into the mist out of the stink of his preservatives and walking sullenly up the slope toward the sea-crows’ pool, had slowly realised that here was an opportunity of discrediting Abner in the eyes of Susie Hind once and for all. Although the lovers’ meetings had of late been fewer and secret, while Susie, reminded from time to time of the keeper’s jealousy, had been clever enough to laugh him off and to make him feel ridiculous, Badger had not forgotten his suspicions. It was true that he never now saw Abner at the Pound House, and never heard his name mentioned outside the tirades of Mr Hind, who was still anxious for his licence, but the rearing of his young pheasants was now keeping Badger busy, and since he had no time to waste in watching, he could never be quite sure that Abner was not profiting by his forced neglect. Sometimes he would threaten Susie as he had done before, pretending that he knew more than he did; but experience had taught her how to deal with this crude creature; she treated his violence as though it amused her, and he always ended by accepting what she said with certain dark reservations that only troubled him beneath the threshold of consciousness, and set him strangely wondering at night.

In the middle of one of these doubting moods Williams had come knocking at his door with Abner beside him, asking for his help in the search for Mary, and next day he and his neighbour had talked together, Williams delighted as a child in his discovery of such frailty in old Mrs Malpas’s daughter-in-law. Badger cared nothing one way or the other for Mary’s chastity, he had no particular grudge against Mrs Malpas or her son, but he quickly saw that in Williams’s discovery he had hit on a rare touchstone for Susie’s feelings toward Abner. He saw that he must make use of it before the tale became common talk, so he cornered Susie at the first opportunity that he found, and told her, as bluntly as was his custom, what had happened.

‘He’s brazen-faced enough, that chap Fellows,’ he said, ‘seeing that he told Mr Williams right out that he and George Malpas’s wife had slept at the Harley Arms, over Redlake way. Took the two children with ’em and all! That was the rum part of it!’

While he spoke he watched Susie with his small keen eyes, sharpened by the habit of observing wild game, waiting for her face to betray to him exactly what she felt toward Abner. But it was not for nothing that Susie had learnt the art of being all things to all men. Badger’s eyes were a little too eager, and she was quick to see it.

‘Why do you want to tell me this, Mr Badger?’ she said slowly.

‘He’s an old friend of yours. You don’t put me off as easy as that!’

‘Then you might have saved yourself the trouble,’ she said, turning her back on him. ‘If you’ve any other dirty stories to tell, I’ll be obliged if you’ll keep them to yourself.’

He flushed darkly, so that she felt she was overdoing it. She came back to him and stood talking of other things, her hand on the table within an inch of his own.

‘I hope you didn’t take any offence,’ she said softly. ‘Only I don’t like to hear my name coupled with a chap of that kind.’

Badger swallowed his liquor with satisfaction. It seemed to him that he had artfully secured his point. He looked Susie up and down, appraising her, lazily satisfied. She had gained a new value in his eyes. He held her in talk, and she loitered by his table, standing on one leg. In taking away his glass she even touched his hand. They were alone in the bar. He caught her and kissed her. Protesting, as a matter of form, she smiled. In her heart she hated him like poison. Her mind was aflame with vague jealousies, for any fool could see that Abner was worth two of this man.