Part 9

He did not sleep for long. His watch had stopped, and he could not tell the time, but from the height of the sun he judged it to be between eight and nine o’clock. The grass of that southern hedge-side was already warm and fragrant, and the mistiness of the Severn plain beneath him promised another day of broiling heat. He was horribly stiff and lay on with a sense of lazy luxury, letting the sun warm his bones. Sprawling there with his eyes closed he now began to consider where he should go.

The obvious goal of an out-of-work in the midlands at that time was Coventry, an ancient city then rising on the third of its great industrial booms, the manufacture of motor-cars. There was always work, and well-paid work, to be had in Coventry. The journey was short, and Abner had no money to waste on railway fares. Even so, the idea of merely moving from one side of the black-country to another did not seem to represent the kind of radical change that he had intended. He wanted to make a clean start in a new country. It suddenly struck him that, after all, there was no real reason why a man should spend the whole of his life in the dust of coal and metal or the smell of fire. This joy of sunlight and fresh air seemed too good to lose.

He knew nothing of the conditions of labour in the country beyond the fact that many black-country families migrated every autumn into the fields of Worcestershire for the gathering of hops. He remembered how he had seen these sun-browned companies returning, men, women, and children together, carrying their household goods in old perambulators, looking happier and more healthy than the majority of Halesby people. He had no very definite idea when the ‘hopping’ season began; but whether he were too late for it or too early he knew, at any rate, that he had a store of strength and health to sell. He wasn’t afraid of work. Why shouldn’t he work in the open air? For the summer at least . . . after that he might go down with the money he had earned into the Welsh valleys and take to the pit again. He knew that between him and Wales lay a vast green country in which a man might live as well as anywhere else. Even now the sun was drinking up the mists that concealed it, revealing sombre woodlands heavy in leaf, yellow cornfields, the smoke of hidden towns or villages, and, here and there, a shining bend of river. From that high post, indeed, he gazed upon the pastoral heart of England, the most placid and homely of all her shires; but the national schools had taught him nothing of these things, and, as the mists ascended, showing the cliffs of Cotswold long and level, Bredon an island dome, May Hill and Malvern, Abberley, Clee, and all the nearer hills of Wales, he only knew that it was green and big and that it promised freedom.

He decided on Wales, and began to take stock of his possessions, counting the change that remained in his trouser pocket—seven and ninepence ha’penny in all—and untying the bundle into which he had put a change of socks and underwear. He wished, now that he came to think of it, that he had changed into his working clothes, for it did not seem right to him to look for work in his Sunday best. He turned out the pockets of the coat, wondering what tokens of his past life it would disclose. In the breast pocket, to his great surprise, he found a small packet of paper that he couldn’t account for. He opened it, and found that it contained two sovereigns. He stared at them incredulously and laughed aloud. Alice must have slipped them in when she said good-bye to him. He felt suddenly tender toward her, and immensely pleased at this striking turn in his fortunes. He scraped out of his side pocket some dry remnants of tobacco, filled his pipe, tied up his bundle, whistled to Tiger and set off down hill leaving the brow of the Uffdown between him and the blackness of Mawne.

It was all new ground to him. The hills that he was leaving behind formed a lip of the saucer in which the midland coal measures lay, and their line had always marked the limit of Abner’s curiosity as boldly as they defined his physical horizon. Now he was passing quickly to the unknown plain. The path grew rough and precipitous. For a hundred yards it cut into a plantation of larches fully grown. His feet and Tiger’s made no sound on the drift of needles. The wood was dry, warm, fragrant, and as quiet as a church. One would have thought that no living creature was there, till Tiger scented a squirrel, and Abner heard above him the thin alarm note of the wood-wren. From the wood they crossed a stone stile into a sunless lane, steeper even than the path across the hill, grass-grown for want of traffic and now possessed by a company of solemn foxgloves. This lane, though unfrequented, was the favourite picnic-place of Mr Willis of Mawne Hall, who always called it ‘our little Switzerland.’ The only thing that struck Abner about it was its steepness. A stone that he dislodged in his walking bounded on as though it were falling over the roof of a house, and Tiger scuttled after it full-pelt. Abner also found that it was easier to run than to walk.

At the bottom of the hill they came to a deserted watermill, fed by a stream that here issued from the hills. Near it stood a large farm-house that had fallen from its state of ease and comfort, and was now partly inhabited by a labouring family. A small boy was sitting playing with stones and eating a crust on the green in front of the house. Tiger ran up and sniffed at him, and he dropped his crust and ran screaming up the garden path. A pale woman with red hair rushed out to see what was the matter and comforted him with her apron. Abner said good-day to her, but she pulled the child inside the door as if she were frightened. He heard her bolting herself in, and laughed, for he didn’t realise what a ruffian he looked with his bruised, unshaven face and his swollen lip. Tiger, however, had the crust of bread and was thankful. He was no less hungry than his master.

Down the valley they passed. A hundred yards below the mill the trees receded and the stream widened into a neglected fishpond half-covered with water-lily leaves. The air was full of glittering blue dragon-flies, and the roadside littered and scorched by the signs of an abandoned gipsy encampment. The fishpond ended in a patch where the stream gushed through narrow sluices into a pool of brown, clear water. Sunlight, beating through the leaves above, lit the bottom with floating patches of golden brown, showing the shadows of trout that lay there gently swaying with their heads toward the sweet water. The coolness of this bathing-place was so alluring that Abner stripped and washed the slippery sweat from his body. Tiger, who was used to this kind of performance but hated water, watched him from the bank. When Abner had dried himself with his spare shirt they set off again down the sunny road.

He hoped that they would soon come to a village, for the bathe had only served to sharpen his appetite. As yet there were no signs of human habitation, but from the fields that chequered the hills on either side of the road came many country sounds: the creaking of invisible cart-wheels, the crack of a whip, the lowing of cattle and voices of men that echoed in the closed valley. A little lower down they met a man riding bareback on a pony, driving a flock of sheep before him. His legs hung straight down so that they nearly touched the ground. Tiger and the sheep-dog exchanged inquiries, but the horseman took no notice of Abner, who stood against the hedge while the flock stampeded past him with frightened brown eyes, raising a dust that was laden with a hot smell of wool and sheep-dip. The farmer’s man appeared to be riding in a dream, mechanically switching the pony’s flanks with a branch of hazel. Abner woke him by saying good-morning. He stopped the pony with a kick and turned to look.

‘Any pub handy hereabout?’ Abner asked him.

‘Pub? . . . Ay, you’m close on it. Ten minute’ll bring you to the Barley Mow.’ Abner had some difficulty in understanding him, for the language that he spoke was not that of Mawne. He thanked him. Then, after a long scrutiny, the horseman informed him that the nearest workhouses were at Bromsgrove and Kiddy, five miles to the right or left of the inn, said good-bye and kicked his pony into an amble again.

By that time the sheep had long since pattered out of sight; but this was an easy country in which hurry had no place. It amused Abner, and did not in the least offend him, to be taken for a tramp. In a few days, but for Alice’s final bounty, he might easily have become one. The labourer had made an estimate of the distance of the pub in accordance with his own leisurely way of progress. In less than half the time that he had predicted Abner found himself in front of an old red-brick inn shadowed by an immense horse-chestnut whose leaves already drooped with heat. As Abner reached the door, a man whom he took to be the landlord was starting to drive off in a yellow dog-cart, probably to some market, for a small pig was netted in the back of the trap. A big, blowsy woman whom he called ‘mother,’ but who appeared to be of his own age and was no doubt his wife, saw him off. ‘Don’t forget Emily’s stays, dad,’ she called. He waved his whip in answer and went bowling down the road into the sun. The woman returned with a sigh that sounded as if it betokened relief, to the wide, semi-circular steps where Abner was standing waiting for her. She had not seen him arrive, and appeared not to be pleased at the prospect. When he began to speak she cut him short with: ‘No, the master never gives anything. We have to make it a rule on this road.’

He had to explain that he wasn’t begging. ‘Can you give us a bit of breakfast, missis,’ he said, ‘I can pay for it.’ He showed her one of his sovereigns.

She looked him up and down incredulously, and then said: ‘Come on in and set yourself in the tap. Better leave the dog outside, or my Betsy’ll have his eyes out.’ Her Betsy, a big, black tom-cat, too rashly christened in his first days of innocence, was already arching a back more like that of a geometer caterpillar than a cat. ‘She can’t abear them if she don’t know them,’ said the landlady. ‘Once she knows them she’ll lie in their arms like a child.’

Abner left Tiger whining outside the door, and the landlady, now satisfied that he wasn’t as rough as he looked, was heard shouting orders to Emily in the kitchen. A smell of frizzling bacon came down the passage.

Abner settled himself on an oak bench. This taproom was very different from that of the Royal Oak. The floor was of big, uneven stone flags and all the furniture was black and shiny with centuries of use. The place did not smell, as did the Halesby pubs, of stale spirits and tobacco. It was as sweet as they were sour. Agricultural almanacs and signed photographs of memorable meets hung on the walls, and over the mantelpiece a number of cards recorded the fees and procreative achievements of shire stallions. Abner was nearly asleep when the landlady herself appeared with a plate of bacon and eggs and a pot of tea.

‘There now, how will that do you?’ she said.

Abner started to eat and she sat and watched him, apologising once more for her first reception. ‘We have to be careful, you see. What with all this unemployment there seems to be more tramps on the road summer-time than ever there was. In winter they dies off like the flies. Dad says they come and go with the swallers. That’s a lovely bit of bacon.’

It became evident from her conversation that she was curious to know what Abner was doing. She could see that his clothes were decent and that he wore a silver watch-chain, but hinted that she couldn’t understand the battered state of his face. He told her that he had had an accident.

‘There now!’ she said. ‘They always go in threes, and bless me if yours ain’t the third I’ve come across this week. Have a drop more tea?’—she poured it—‘Which way are you going, then? If you’d been a bit earlier dad could have give you a lift.’

Abner told her that he was looking for work, asked her if she could help him to find it.

‘You’re not a farming man,’ she said, ‘and it’s all farmering hereabouts.’

He told her that he was ready to turn his hand to anything, and she confessed, a little dubiously, that he might possibly get some casual employment with one of the farmers. ‘If I was you,’ she said, ‘I should go on through Chaddesbourne and ask at Mr Cookson’s—he’s the biggest employer round here—but you’re a bit too early for the harvest. Everything’s backward in these parts after the bad spring.’

He thanked her, and while she went out to change his sovereign, put aside a hunk of bread and a slice of bacon that he had not eaten for Tiger. They parted cheerfully and Abner set his face towards Chaddesbourne.

The heat of midday now lay heavy on the land, but in this wooded country-side one might always be certain of shade. In half an hour he came to Chaddesbourne, a village of black and white half timber that was already engaged in the midday coma with which it supplements its normal sleep of centuries. In all the length of the street Abner saw no human person stirring, nor any sign of life more violent than that of lazy butterflies sunning their wings upon the yellow flowers in cottage gardens. All the half-timbered houses had long strips in front of them behind which it seemed to be intended that they should sleep for ever in security. In a sandstone church some one was playing the organ. Abner had no ear for music and so he did not stop to listen.

At the end of the village he heard a more welcome sound: the clinking of a blacksmith’s hammer on his anvil and the hoarse wheezing of bellows. It was very different from Mawne with its vast hydraulic presses, but it showed the same process on a small scale, and the smith in his leather apron, working through the heat of the day, with the sweat tracking through his coal-dust, was more like a man of Abner’s own race than the labourer in the lane. He seemed glad of an excuse to stop work and talk to Abner. He offered him a drink of beer from a bottle, drank himself, and wiped the froth from his red lips with the back of his hand.

‘Looking for work!’ he said. ‘Well, I can tell you straight Chaddesbourne’s the wrong place for that. Not even at harvest time. You see, this is a dairy country, properly speaking. All the milk’s drove to the station and sent into Brum by train. Mr Cookson? Yes, Mr Cookson’s a very nice gentleman as every one knows; but I reckon he won’t be harvesting for another fortnight, being late-like. Still, there’s no harm in trying.’ He pulled on his coat and put a padlock on the door of the forge, for his home was a couple of hundred yards away in one of the long-gardened cottages. He said good-bye to Abner cheerily, and gave him directions for finding Mr Cookson. ‘If I was you,’ he said, ‘I should cut across the fields behind the house. It’ll save you some sweating on a day like this. Third gate on the right and follow along the hedge on your left hand.’

Abner took his advice, and calling Tiger to follow him entered the field. A quarter of a mile away on the hill-side he could see the red roof of the building that the smith had pointed out to him as Cookson’s farm. Tiger was in his element. He had never been in a field more rich in rabbit smell. Abner, following the smith’s directions, kept to the hedge on the left. It ran along the margin of a little wood that sheltered him from the sun and intrigued Tiger with prospects of infinite sport. It was impossible to keep the brute to heel, and though Abner cursed him till he came out of the wood he could not resist the temptation of running ahead of his master, sniffing the enchanted air. Suddenly, at the corner where the spinney ended, he stood stock still. Abner also stopped and watched him, for he too scented sport. There was a slight rustle in the hedgerow and a white creature, a little bigger than a stoat, put out its head. In a second Tiger had it by the neck and silenced its squealing with a shake. The next moment the owner of the ferret appeared round the corner of the hedge, a florid man of forty dressed in a prosperous greenish cord, carrying a gun. He fired at Tiger, who stood looking curiously at the ferret as though he still expected it to get up and run away. Tiger rolled over without a yelp, and Abner ran straight at the man who had shot him.

‘What you done to my dog?’ he cried.

‘And what the hell are you doing here, you poaching blackguard?’ He saw how ugly Abner looked. ‘Keep clear, or I’ll put the other barrel in you!’ A stupid-looking labourer slouched round the hedgeside and picked up the ferret, pinching it as if he were appraising its value as an article of food. Then, mumbling something, he thrust it into a sack that he carried and gave the dead body of Tiger a vicious kick. Abner would have flown at him for he needed something on which to vent his rage, but Mr Cookson again threatened to shoot. He had to content himself with cursing the farmer for his brutality. ‘The dog didn’t mean no harm,’ he said. ‘You’m a coward to shoot a dog like that.’

‘Not so fast, my friend,’ said the farmer. ‘I’ve not finished with you yet. I want to know what the devil you were doing skulking along my hedge. Thought you’d pick up a rabbit, eh? I know that game . . . taking the dog a walk. What were you doing on my land, eh?’

‘I’m lookin’ for work,’ said Abner.

‘And you look like getting it. I don’t suppose it’s the first time you’ll have picked oakum.’

Abner did not hear these words. He thought only of the shattered heap of flesh that had once been Tiger. He would have gone blindly for the dog’s murderer if he had not suddenly realised that his own case was hopeless. The owner of the gun looked like business, and the labourer was now ready to tackle him from behind. He could do nothing. Mr Cookson, however, having caught a poacher red-handed, didn’t mean to let him go.

‘I’ve had enough of this game,’ he said. ‘You black-country chaps think you can slip over the hills and do what you like . . . you and your dogs. It’s no use turning ugly now. You’ll come along with me to the police station, and that’s all about it. That’s the best ferret I’ve got, worth a dozen of your damned dogs.’

Abner, who saw that it was not worth while arguing and whose anger had now become more subject to his reason, tried to explain once more that he was coming to the house to ask for work.

‘That’s an old tale,’ said Cookson. ‘We’ve had enough talk. Come along! That don’t explain what you were doing in this field.’

The farmer also was now becoming more reasonable. Abner explained that he had taken the field-path on the smith’s advice. ‘If you can’t credit it, you ask him,’ he said. ‘It was the lady at the Barley Mow sent me here and give me your name. That is if your name’s Cookson.’

‘That’s my name right enough,’ said the farmer, ‘and you won’t forget it!’ He began to grumble at the landlady as the prime cause of his losing the ferret. None the less, he now appeared to believe Abner. At the root he was a good-natured man, celebrated for the sudden violence and quick subsidence of his temper.

‘Want work, do you?’ he said. ‘Well, I’ve got no work for you nor no one else, and if you see Mrs Potter again you can tell her so. What that woman wants to do using my name I don’t know. I reckon I’m feeding half Chaddesbourne as it is. Still, I’m ready to believe you. If you take my advice you’ll clear quick before I change my mind. Go on, hook it!’ He put his hand in his pocket and jingled some money as if he were debating whether he should give Abner half a crown.

‘What about my dog?’ said Abner.

Mr Cookson took his hand out of his pocket and his neck flushed. ‘I’ve told you you’d best clear,’ he said. ‘George’ll bury the dog.’ He turned to the labourer. ‘George, you go up to the yard and get a spade.’ He ejected the unused cartridge from his gun and turned his back on Abner, and Abner, still sore with resentment, took his advice and returned to the road.

The Ninth Chapter

IN the first moment of his loss he did not feel like retracing his steps. When he reached the main road he turned his face westward once more and set off walking as hard as the heat would allow him. He passed through a land of almost monotonous green, stopping once or twice to drink a pint of beer at a pub in one of the many half-timbered villages that straggled along the road. In the afternoon he reached a crest crowned with a plantation of smooth trunked beeches from which he could see the chimneys of an industrial town. This, he decided, must be Kidderminster, or, as the farmer’s man had called it, Kiddy. Once or twice in his life he had played football there for Mawne United, but in these excursions he had never noticed anything but the squalid streets between the station and the football ground. There was a workhouse in Kidderminster, as he had been told, but he was not yet in need of workhouses. The landlord of the last inn had found out that he was going into Wales, and had pointed out to him the rampart of the Malverns, dim-blue in the heat, as marking the course of his road. The idea of finding employment in the country now pleased him little. The sooner he reached the coal valleys, with the remains of his money, the better. From his new point of vantage the hills were still visible, floating like cragged islands in the haze. He left the smoke of Kidderminster on his right hand and forsook the road for a narrower lane that seemed to run in the direction that he wanted to follow. When evening came he was still walking south-west. Now the Malverns, whenever he saw them were etched black against a background of flame. The air was cool and sweeter. It was such an evening as Tiger would have loved, and his loneliness, which had been numbed by the heat, returned to him.

He must by this time have walked more than twenty miles since daybreak, and he was tired and hungry. Soon after sunset he turned in to an inviting public-house that stood alone on a straight length of road running between meagre oak-trees. The landlord was an aged man crippled with rheumatism who sat grasping two sticks in a chair beside the hearth of the taproom. He looked suspiciously at Abner and told his daughter, an angular woman of forty who did all the housework, to attend to him. This woman gave him clearly to understand that they didn’t like strangers and said that they could give him nothing to eat but bread and cheese. He accepted this gratefully and settled down to his supper under the grudging eyes of the old man.