Part 31

He dropped his hand and walked straight out of the room. Left alone, she was overborne with shame for what she had done, and cried for her lost dignity. Never in her life had she so abased herself. ‘But he lied to me! He lied to me!’ she told herself. ‘If he hadn’t lied to me it wouldn’t have happened!’ Little by little the turmoil of her thoughts abated and she began to remember his goodness, his patience, all that she owed to him. ‘If he had struck me,’ she thought, ‘I should have deserved it.’ She almost wished that his hand had fallen, for nothing less than a blow could have justified her violence and her base ingratitude. The only thing with which she could comfort herself was a firm determination that she would never offend him again. By nothing but the most complete sacrifice of her feelings could she repay him a thousandth part of what she owed him.

After that day she never uttered one complaint, though the tale of her sufferings increased beyond the bounds of endurance. To their hardships she turned a front of steel, but to Abner himself she was as tender as she dared to be. The consciousness of this discipline sustained her. She was a new woman, worn and anxious but invincibly cheerful; and Abner himself took heart from her courage.

Winter fell upon them. The snow-bound ramparts of the hills came nearer to them, encircling the valley with a clear-cut beauty. The colours of life faded from the land, and every farm was like a fortress of stone, close-barred against the assaults of rain and icy wind. The fields lay cold and dead; the sap sank downward from every frozen branch. There was no colour in all the land but a brilliant mockery of red berries on brier and holly and thorn. ‘There’s a tarrable lot of berry this year,’ said old Drew. ‘I reckon we’m in for a hard winter again.’

And so the remotest possibility of finding work on the farms drifted away from Abner. The few labourers who moved about the fields, the solitary teams at plough, seemed glued to the frozen surface of the land, stirring sadly as in a dream. In spite of the kindness of their neighbours, so delicately shown in the gifts of roots and bundles of wood that old Drew carried home on his bent shoulders, the family at Wolfpits felt the pinch of cold and want. Mary, true to her resolution, uttered no word of complaint, but her face told Abner what she was suffering so plainly that he could not bear to look at her. One night he left her and spent the evening with old Drew in his bedroom, drinking the labourer’s home-made poison till his brain was fuddled and his limbs, for the first time, were warm. Mary heard him stumbling up the stairs at night, but when they met next morning she did not reproach him.

Her little store of money was nearly gone. One day, racking her brains for some new expedient to stave off the inevitable end, she remembered Mrs Malpas’s visit and the story of the fifty pounds which George had stolen from the Buffalo on the eve of his imprisonment. She wondered, desperately, if the old woman was right, and he had hidden it in some corner of the house. She began to search, with the fierce enthusiasm of a seeker after treasure. She spent all her energy in turning the bedroom and kitchen inside out; she looked into the chimneys, for she had heard that money was sometimes hidden in such places. By the end of the day she was utterly exhausted but had found nothing. ‘At any rate,’ she thought, ‘the place looks tidier.’ A poor consolation!

That night it occurred to her that if only she could get as far as Shrewsbury she might pawn some of her wedding presents, particularly a set of plated tea-things which her father, lavish in the expenditure of other people’s money, had given her. They made a clumsy parcel, difficult to conceal, and in order to spend as little as possible on the railway fare she decided to walk over the hills towards Clun and catch a train on the branch railway. She left the children in Mrs Mamble’s care, and slipped away without letting Abner know that she had gone. In Shrewsbury a sad discouragement awaited her. The man in the pawnshop sniffed at her property. ‘This kind of thing’s gone out of fashion,’ he said. ‘If you’d brought it here five year ago I might have done better for you. Twenty-five shillings’s all it’s worth.’ The sacrifice hurt her, but she accepted his figure. The fare home to Llandwlas left her with a guinea in hand, and on that money they existed for more than two weeks. She only prayed that Abner would not notice the blank in the cupboard from which she had taken the silver, but she need not have been frightened, for Abner had no eye for things of that kind. One imprudence, however, nearly betrayed her. On the way to the station at Shrewsbury she had seen a box of oranges newly imported for Christmas and had not been able to resist the temptation of buying two for the children. Next day Abner saw them on the table.

‘Oranges?’ he said, his eyes shocked by her extravagance.

She lied quickly.

‘Yes, Mrs Hendrie met me on the road and gave me them for Morgan and Gladys.’

Afterward, in the curiously sensitive state of her conscience, this lie troubled her. He himself was so open with her that she felt it almost a duty to tell him the truth. She brooded over the question for several days, but in the end it sank into insignificance before the fact that they had no money left. Looking at her empty purse she felt that she could face the situation no longer. She dared not ask for credit in any shop in Mainstone, for she suspected that all the shop-people must be aware of her plight. Greatly daring, she made an expedition to Lesswardine and entered a grocer’s with whom she had not dealt since the days before her marriage. The man had been a friend of her father’s. Perhaps that would count for something.

It was Saturday night, and the shop was buzzing with people. The grocer, flurried with work, scarcely nodded to her, and she was nearly leaving the shop in fright when a new assistant whom she did not know asked her what he could serve her with. Fortunately, she had dressed herself with care and looked respectable. She ordered blindly, lavishly, and the smart young man dumped her purchases on the counter with a flourish and dashed off the bill with a pencil that he carried behind his ear in a hieroglyphic of his own.

‘Cash or account, madam?’ he asked rapidly.

‘Account,’ she murmured.

‘Certainly. What was the name?’

‘Mrs Malpas, Wolfpits.’

‘Of course,’ said the young man, excusing himself. ‘Pardon. Shall we send them?’

‘To-morrow’s Sunday, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘I think I’d better take them with me.’

‘Thank you, madam. Very kind of you,’ said the assistant, making a large blue-paper parcel, which he handed her over the counter with an obsequious bow.

She picked up her parcel and fled, thankful that the grocer was too busy to notice her. She felt that the eyes of all the women were on her and that they knew her for a thief. Also she knew that she could never attempt this adventure again.

So the end came, or what they thought must be the end. They sat together one night in the kitchen at Wolfpits, and both of them knew that they were beaten. A fire burned brightly in the hearth—in this thickly wooded valley they need never lack warmth—the room seemed cosy and almost gay in the firelight, showing no signs that they had fallen from prosperity, for though Mary had paid three more visits to the pawnbroker’s and now felt hardened to the adventure, she had always managed to conceal the deficiencies in the furniture by some new arrangement. On her last journey to Shrewsbury, hurrying to the station under the walls of the jail, the idea had struck her that she might be forced in the end to pawn her wedding ring, and she had laughed bitterly to herself. Much good had it done her! The idea had only struck her as a whimsical prospect. She had too much common sense to allow herself to be driven to this conventional expedient. She knew that they could not go on indefinitely stripping the house of its furniture. It would be far better to face the facts. If Abner could not find work, and there seemed no probability of his doing so, the best that they could do was to part. He must leave her, and she, pocketing her pride, must apply to the relieving officer, whom she had once shown to the door, for money from the parish. She knew that it must come to this, and yet she could not bring herself to tell Abner. She had settled in her mind that the proposal must come from him, and for the present he seemed numbed, worn, incapable of thinking. He sat opposite her in silence with an empty pipe between his teeth staring at the fire. After a little while she found herself silently weeping, and turned her face away from him, blowing her nose to hide her tears.

Some one knocked at the door, and she cried: ‘Come in!’

It was old Drew. They were not surprised. By this time they were used to the labourer’s visits. Often, in the evening, he would drop in with the excuse of having a talk with Abner, though most of the talking fell to Mary, and then, just as he was on the point of leaving, he would produce from one of the vast pockets in his coat some article of food that he had picked up at the farm. They knew so well this delicate subterfuge! At first Mary had been amused by it, and more than a little touched. Now she only waited impatiently to see what the old man had brought.

That night it seemed as if he would never go; but just when they had reached the point when it seemed that the eggs or turnips must appear, he turned to Abner and told him that he had some good news for him.

‘Good news?’ said Abner. ‘It’s a long time since I’ve heard anything of that.’

‘I was talking about ’ee to Mr Willums,’ said Drew, ‘and told en that you was in a purty bad way. “Well, Drew,” says he, “if it’s as bad as that, I don’t say we mightn’t do something. There do be a heap of stones scattered over the top fields as us might well be rid on. It do be a boy’s work, ’tis true, but Fellows might be glad of it.”’

Mary flushed with pleasure and clasped her hands. ‘I’d be glad of anything,’ said Abner.

‘Well,’ the old man went on, ‘I do reckon that there be no more’n a fortnight’s work there, and a poor, niggling job that’s like to break your back at that. But I thought you’d be glad of it, and I told en so. So up you comes along with me at six o’clock to-morrow morning, for I told en you’d come for sure. Threepence an hour he’ll pay ’ee. That makes twelve shillin’ a week. ’Tis not much, but ’tis something.’

They thanked him without reserve, but he shook his head at them. ‘I don’t know as it’s me you have to thank,’ he said. ‘’Tis your old mother down to the Buffalo as you’d ought to be grateful to. Mr Willums have took it into his head as giving Abner work would make her mazed. He’ve never forgive her over that cider, and never will. He’s a long memory, Mr Willums.’

When he left them Mary was so full of an emotional thankfulness that she could not speak. Abner went to bed cheerfully. She heard him whistling in his room above her.

Next morning his work at the Pentre began. As Mr Williams had said, it was a boy’s work by rights and unfitted to a man of Abner’s strength. At first sight it seemed like one of those labours which malignant kings impose upon their daughters’ suitors in fairy tales. The Pentre was a large farm of miserable land. Its uppermost cultivated fields reached nearly to the crown of the smooth hills at the valley head, ending abruptly at the foot of stony screes. From these unstable precipices the winter torrents rolled down many stones, flat rocky fragments that impeded the plough. Nor were these all, for the soil was so thin, that every ploughing turned up thousands more, and in winter the fields were overspread with a pale bloom of stones.

At this season of the year the uplands were always cold, enwrapped in icy vapours or glistening with frost that glued each fragment to the ground. Abner’s task was to clear these stubborn acres of their surface stones: an endless labour, for no sooner had he picked the surface over than new stones appeared. No convict labour could have been more monotonous, more thankless, nor, as it seemed, more futile. From dawn to sunset he worked in loneliness. No single human figure approached him all day long except that of Mr Williams, whom he would see coming like a speck in the lower distance urging his pony upwards. When he reached Abner the farmer would stay scowling at him for a few minutes. He was a surly man, and rarely spoke except on Monday evenings after Ludlow market. Then, having satisfied himself that Abner was not shirking, he would turn away and walk his pony down the hill again.

There was never any fear that Abner would not work. It was only by violent exertion that he could keep any heat in his body, for his food was poor, and the winter, as old Drew had prophesied, severe. He toiled there in rain, in sleet, in snow, and in blinding mist. The pay was so poor that he knew he could not afford to miss a day, picking up stones with numbed and ragged fingers when no other labourers were afield. Every evening he walked home dead tired, scarcely knowing if his legs were his own, for the continual stooping took all sensation away from them.

Once, in the dusk, he lost his way, for he had tried to shorten his journey by a cross-cut. He found himself suddenly on the brink of the sea-crows’ pool, but not a bird was to be seen, for in winter they returned to their homes on the Cardigan coast. His memory of what had happened there was as hazy as that of a dream. It seemed to him that he had lived half a lifetime since that night. He stumbled down through the fog and passed the door of Badger’s cottage. A light burned in the window, and he thought he saw Susie moving in the parlour. He laughed to himself and damned her . . . damned all women. Another evening on his way home a dog-cart overtook him coming over the hills from Clun. It had passed him before he saw that its occupants were Marion Prosser and a young farmer named Maddy, whom Abner only knew by sight. They bowled by him at a good pace. He wondered if she had recognised him, for he had been in their sight for some time. If she had, she made no sign of having seen him. And again he hardened his heart against all women.

And yet, though he did not know it, the sight of Abner trudging homeward down the lane had awakened a palpitating interest in Marion’s heart, and inspired her with a sudden distaste for the man who was sitting in the trap beside her. She looked down on him from the height of the driver’s seat, seeing his mean shoulders, the thin nape of his neck, and his small foxy face in profile. She felt that she would like to lash at him with the whip that she held in her hand; but since she knew that ladylike young women did not do such things, she flicked him with the lash of her tongue instead.

‘That was Fellows, our cowman, Fred,’ she said, knowing that the name would wound him.

He gave an ugly laugh. ‘I know him. He had the face to come and ask me for work. I soon gave him the right-about!’

‘You!’ she cried scornfully. ‘You’re not fit to talk to him! He’s twice the man that you are.’

He flushed. ‘Look here, Marion, who the hell do you think you’re talking to?’ he said, clutching her arm with a show of strength.

‘Don’t!’ she cried. She wrenched herself free and slapped his face. The horse broke into a canter.

‘That’s not the way to get yourself married,’ he said.

She would not reply to his insult and they drove to The Dyke in an uncomfortable silence.

Next day she set out deliberately to meet Abner on the road. She called ‘Good-evening’ to him, but he, still smarting under the discomfort of Mary’s outburst, would not answer her. She followed him and took him by the arm.

‘Abner,’ she said. ‘Will you ever forgive me? I don’t like to think of the way we parted.’

‘I don’t bear you any ill-will,’ he said. ‘That’s all over and done with.’

‘I want you to think of me as a friend,’ she said. ‘Abner, if ever you’re in need of money . . . if you want money now . . . I wish you’d take it from me.’

He laughed. ‘I’m in work now,’ he said. ‘You’d best leave us alone. We don’t want your money.’ His resentment burst out afresh. ‘Nor you neither,’ he added.

She controlled herself. ‘Very well. That’s understood,’ she said, and left him without another word.

She walked home violently in the dusk, thinking of the desperate mess she had made of her life, wondering if she could ever bring herself to marry a man with sloping shoulders and a squeaky voice like Fred Maddy. What did it matter? What did anything matter?

Mr Williams had reckoned that the top fields would provide Abner with a fortnight’s work. He had merely given him the job to satisfy a passing whim of inflicting a pin-prick on Mrs Malpas, and had told him from the first that he could not continue to employ him when the work was done. Luckily for Abner at the end of the fortnight half the fields remained uncleared. Mr Williams recognised that he had worked well, and decided to keep him on, for perhaps another ten days. The expense was trivial, and the job worth doing. Christmas, his second Christmas at Wolfpits, intervened, but by the third of January Abner’s work at the Pentre was nearly finished.

The Twenty-Third Chapter

ONCE again the situation had to be faced. This time Abner was in no doubt as to what must be done. Those lonely days on the cold upland had given him time to think. He now realised that as far as finding work in the Lesswardine district went he was definitely beaten, and that every day that he spent at Wolfpits must make him more and more a drag upon the resources of the family. The obvious thing for him to do was to turn his early experiences at Mawne to account, to set off southward for the coal valleys and work as a miner underground. On the Welsh coalfield, wages ran high and he might be sure of earning enough to keep himself in comfort and to supply the Wolfpits household with a living that would seem luxurious after their long privations. In solitude this determination had been easily made, and the feeling that something definite was in view had made him happier and better pleased with himself; but when he left the Pentre and came to lay his plans before Mary, his course did not seem so clear or so free from complications.

During their three months of hardship their relations had undergone a curious change. Mary’s outburst of jealous anger when she learned the true cause of his dismissal from The Dyke, had swept through her like a storm, stripping her heart of its hidden grudges and reservations. It passed, leaving her weak, bewildered, and yet happy. It was as if this sudden tempest, while almost destroying her, had snapped the last threads that bound her to her old life. All the past was broken. It rolled away from her in a tumult of spent cloud, and in the serene silence that followed she came to herself, realising that she was alone in the world with Abner and her children. It was like the bewildered calm that comes after an escape from death; the hushed birth of a new world; a strange, unearthly quiet.

In this new state she found herself most eager to atone for the endless, wordless contest that she had waged against him. She knew that she could never repay him a hundredth part of what he had given her and suffered at her hands. The money was nothing. What he had sacrificed for her was his freedom, a hard denial for a man in the prime of youth. And so, thinking gratefully of his goodness toward her and of his unfathomed patience, she began to dwell tenderly on other aspects of the man: his splendid, supple strength, his honest eyes, the straightness and simplicity of his whole nature, and to compare them, instinctively, with what she knew of her husband: his superficial charm, his persuasive manners, and his callous heart: all those qualities that she had been taught by bitterest experience to hate and to mistrust. It was in this light that Abner seemed to her most wonderful. And she had used him like a shrew! Every natural impulse of kindness in him she had checked and thwarted! Pride had made her thankless; prudishness had hardened her. She was detestable, and if he hated her she had only herself to thank for it.

But did he hate her? She hoped, fervently, that he did not. She could not bear that he should hate her. It pained her even to think that she owed his kindness to the fact that he had given some promise to George, and in the simplicity of his nature felt that he must redeem it. She knew that he was fond of the children and could not bear to see them suffer; but that was not enough for her. Her new being craved for a personal devotion. If that were not forthcoming she felt that she would have little left in the world, that her life must be finally bitter and useless. And she knew that she was far too young for any such finality. She hated the pride that had brought her to this, and resolved to proclaim her new humility by every means in her power.

Abner himself was sensible of the change in her attitude toward him. During the time of his work at the Pentre, he became aware of it. Little by little, for she was far too cautious to make the change a sudden one, she was demolishing the barrier that she had built so carefully between them, and he, reluctantly, had accepted. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, they were nearing once more the point which they had reached in a moment of stress and abandonment on the night of the white mist six months before, the moment when he had seen her transfigured, or rather revealed, as the one woman in the world whom he wanted, body and soul.

In all those hard days not a single chilling word passed her lips, not a single intolerable silence drove him away from her. Her kindness made her beautiful, but the nearness of her beauty frightened him and he withdrew himself, having once cruelly burnt his fingers at that flame. He was happy, but could not trust his happiness, not because any scruples of honour pricked him, but because he feared a new rebuff.

Even though he dared not believe in her submission he could not escape the influence of her tenderness. The lean days were the best he had ever known at Wolfpits: even if he had had money to spend he would not have gone elsewhere, and every moment that brought him nearer to the inevitable parting on which he had decided, made the idea of it more painful and more difficult. It now seemed to him monstrously unreasonable that when such complete happiness was in his grasp he should wilfully renounce it. And yet, what else could he do? A sense of the futility of her kindness made him shrink from it.

She saw what was happening, knew that she deserved it, and in order that she might justify herself she now tried to play on his affection for the children, to create an atmosphere of interdependence among the four of them, to bind him closer to her with a web of many strands each so slender that he need not be aware of the process. But he felt the light pressure of the net in which he was being entangled; he struggled to free himself. And she saw the convulsions of his struggle and feared to lose him. The thrill of this new, half-hidden conflict held her.

On the Saturday night before his last week at the Pentre, he kept back five shillings of his earnings. By working from dawn till sunset each day he had managed to put in many hours of overtime, so that he was able to give her half a sovereign clear. It seemed to him a good opportunity for breaking the news of his plan to her. Sooner or later the word must be spoken. She held the gold coin in her hand and looked at him inquiringly.