Part 14

Again a sigh from the King; two great swords flashed, and Tanil, at one casement, saw the head of Flaune turn over backwards and topple to the ground, her body falling after with a great swathe of shorn tresses floating over it. Fax at the other casement saw Yali die, screaming a long cry that it seemed would never end. Tanil swayed at the casement.

Then Cumac turned with a moan of grief, his madness all gone. “The bond is ended. I have done. I say I have done.” He seemed to wake as from sleep, and, seeing the two captive men, he asked: “Why did they come? What brought them here? Take them away, the bond is ended, I say I have done. There shall be no more bonds given in the world. But take them out of the city gate and unbind them and cast them both loose; then clap fast the gate again. No more death, I would not have them die; let them wander in the live world, and dog each other for ever. Tanil, you rotten core of constancy, Fax brought you here and so Flaune, bitter and beautiful, dies. But Fax still lives—do you not see him?—I give Fax to you: may he die daily for ever. Fax, blundering jackal, you spoke of bonds. The bond is met, and so Yali is dead, but Tanil still lives: I give you Tanil as an offering, but not of peace. May he die daily for ever.”

So the guard took Fax and Tamil out of the city, struck off their shackles, and left them there together.

* * * * *

The bird man finished; there was a silence; the other yawned. “Did you hear this?” asked the bird man. And the man in the stripéd jacket replied: “Ay, with both ears, and so may God bless you.” So saying, he rose and went out singing.

_The Devil in the Churchyard_

“Henry Turley was one of those awkward old chaps as had more money than he knowed what to do wi'. Shadrach we called him, the silly man. He had worked for it, worked hard for it, but when he was old he stuck to his fortune and wouldn’t spend a sixpence of it on his comforts. What a silly man!”

The thatcher, who was thus talking of Henry Turley (long since dead and gone) in the “Black Cat” of Starncombe, was himself perhaps fifty years old. Already there was a crank of age or of dampness or of mere custom in most of his limbs, but he was bluff and gruff and hale enough, with a bluffness of manner that could only offend a fool—and fools never listened to him.

“Shadrach—that’s what we called him—was a good man wi’ cattle, a masterpiece; he would strip a cow as clean as a tooth and you never knowed a cow have a bad quarter as Henry Turley ever milked. And when he was buried he was buried with all that money in his coffin, holding it in his hand, I reckon. He had plenty of relations—you wouldn’t know ’em, it is thirty years ago I be speaking of—but it was all down in black and white so’s no one could touch it. A lot of people in these parts had a right to some of it, Jim Scarrott for one, and Issy Hawker a bit, Mrs. Keelson, poor woman, ought to have had a bit, and his own brother, Mark Turley; but he left it in the will as all his fortune was to be buried in the coffin along of him. ’Twas cruel, but so it is and so it will be, for whenever such people has a shilling to give away they goes and claps it on some fat pig’s haunches. The foolishness! Sixty pounds it was, in a canister, and he held it in his hand.”

“I don’t believe a word of it,” said a mild-faced man sitting in the corner. “Henry Turley never did a deed like that.”

“What?” growled the thatcher with unusual ferocity.

“Coorse I’m not disputing what you’re saying, but he never did such a thing in his life.”

“Then you calls me a liar?”

“Certainly not. O no, don’t misunderstand me, but Henry Turley never did any such thing, I can’t believe it of him.”

“Huh! I be telling you facts, and facts be true one way or another. Now you waunts to call over me, you waunts to know the rights of everything and the wrongs of nothing.”

“Well,” said the mild-faced man, pushing his pot toward the teller of tales, “I might believe it to-morrow, but it’s a bit of a twister now, this minute!”

“Ah, that’s all right then”—the thatcher was completely mollified. “Well the worst part of the case was his brother Mark. Shadrach served him shameful, treated him like a dog. (Good health!) Ah, like a dog. Mark was older nor him, about seventy, and he lived by himself in a little house out by the hanging pust, not much of a cottage, it warn’t—just wattle and daub wi’ a thetch o’ straa'—but the lease was running out (‘twas a lifehold affair) and unless he bought this little house for fifty pound he’d got to go out of it. Well, old Mark hadn’t got no fifty pounds, he was ate up wi’ rheumatics and only did just a little light labour in the woods, they might as well a’ asked him for the King’s crown, so he said to his master: Would he lend him the fifty pounds?

“‘No, I can’t do that,’ his master says.

“‘You can reduct it from my wages,’ Mark says.

“‘Nor I can’t do that neither,’ says his master, ‘but there’s your brother Henry, he’s worth a power o’ money, ask him.‘ So Mark asks Shadrach to lend him the fifty pounds, so’s he could buy this little house. ’No,’ says Henry, ‘I can’t.’ Nor he wouldn’t. Well—old Mark says to him: ‘I doan wish you no harm Henry,’ he says, ‘but I hope as how you’ll die in a ditch.’ (Good health!) And sure enough he did. That was his own brother, he were strooken wi’ the sun and died in a ditch, Henry did, and when he was buried his fortune was buried with him, in a little canister, holding it in his hand, I reckons. And a lot of good that was to him! He hadn’t been buried a month when two bad parties putt their heads together. Levi Carter, one was, he was the sexton, a man that was half a loony as I always thought. O yes, he had got all his wits about him, somewheres, only they didn’t often get much of a quorum, still he got them—somewheres. T’other was a chap by the name of Impey, lived in Slack the shoemaker’s house down by the old traveller’s garden. He wasn’t much of a mucher, helped in the fieldwork and did shepherding at odd times. And these two chaps made up their minds to goo and collar Henry Turley’s fortune out of his coffin one night and share it between theirselves. ’Twas crime, ye know, might a been prison for life, but this Impey was a bad lot—he’d the manners of a pig, pooh! filthy!—and I expects he persuaded old Levi on to do it. Bad as body-snatchen, coorse ’twas!

“So they goos together one dark night, ’long in November it was, and well you knows, all of you, as well as I, that nobody can’t ever see over our churchyard wall by day let alone on a dark night. You all knows that, don’t you?” asserted the thatcher, who appeared to lay some stress upon this point in his narrative. There were murmurs of acquiescence by all except the mild-faced man, and the thatcher continued: “‘Twere about nine o’clock when they dug out the earth. ’Twarn’t a very hard job, for Henry was only just a little way down. He was buried on top of his old woman, and she was on top of her two daughters. But when they got down to the coffin Impey didn’t much care for that part of the job, he felt a little bit sick, so he gives the hammer and the screwdriver to Levi and he says: ’Levi,’ he says, ‘are you game to make a good job o’ this?’

“‘Yes, I be,’ says old Levi.

“‘Well, then,’ Impey says, ‘yous’ll have my smock on now while I just creeps off to old Wannaker’s sheep and collars one of they fat lambs over by the 'lotments.’

“‘You’re not going to leave me here,’ says Carter, ‘what be I going to do?’

“‘You go on and finish this ’ere job, Levi,’ he says, ‘you get the money and put back all the earth and don’t stir out of the yard afore I comes or I’ll have yer blood.’

“‘No,’ says Carter, ‘you maun do that.’

“‘I ’ull do that,’ Impey says, ‘he’ve got some smartish lambs I can tell ’ee, fat as snails.’

“‘No,’ says Carter, ‘I waun’t have no truck wi’ that, tain’t right.’

“‘You will,’ says Impey, ‘and I ’ull get the sheep. Here’s my smock. I’ll meet ’ee here again in ten minutes. I’ll have that lamb if I ’as to cut his blasted head off.’ And he rooshed away before Levi could stop him. So Carter putts on the smock and finishes the job. He got the money and putt the earth back on poor Henry and tidied it up, and then he went and sat in the church poorch waiting for this Impey to come back. Just as he did that an oldish man passed by the gate. He was coming to this very place for a drop o’ drink and he sees old Levi’s white figure sitting in the church poorch and it frittened him so that he took to his heels and tore along to this very room we be sittin’ in now—only 'twas thirty years ago.

“‘What in the name of God’s the matter wi’ you?‘ they says to him, for he’d a face like chalk and his lips was blue as a whetstone. ’Have you seen a goost?’

“‘Yes,’ he says, ‘I have seen a goost, just now then.’

“‘A goost?’ they says, ‘a goost? You an’t seen no goost.’

“‘I seen a goost.’

“‘Where a’ you seen a goost?’

“So he telled ’em he seen a goost sitting up in the church poorch.

“‘I shan’t have that,’ says old Mark Turley, for he was a setting here.

“‘I tell you ’twas then,’ says the man.

“‘Can’t be nothing worse’n I be myself,’ Mark says.

“‘I say as ’tis,’ the man said, and he was vexed too. ‘Goo and see for yourself.’

“‘I would goo too and all,’ said old Mark, ‘if only I could walk it, but my rheumatucks be that scrematious I can’t walk it. Goosts! There’s ne’er a mortal man as ever see’d a goost. I’d go, my lad, if my legs ’ud stand it.’ And there was a lot of talk like that until a young sailor spoke up—Irish he was, his name was Pat Crowe, he was on furlough. I dunno what he was a-doing in this part of the world, but there he was and he says to Mark: ‘If you be game enough, I be, and I’ll carry you up to the churchyard on my back.’ A great stropping feller he was. ‘You will?’ says Mark. ‘That I will,’ he says. ‘Well I be game for ’ee,’ says Mark, and so they ups him on to the sailor’s shoulders like a sack o’ corn and away they goos, but not another one there was man enough to goo with them.

“They went slogging up to the churchyard gate all right, but when they got to staggering along ’tween the gravestones Mark thought he could see a something white sitting in the poorch, but the sailor couldn’t see anything at all with that lump on his shoulders.

“‘What’s that there?’ Mark whispers in Pat’s ear. And Pat Crowe whispers back, just for joking: ‘Old Nick in his nightshirt.’

“‘Steady now,’ Mark whispers, ‘go steady Pat, it’s getting up and coming.’ Pat only gives a bit of a chuckle and says: ‘Ah, that’s him, that’s just like him.’

“Then Levi calls out from the poorch soft like: ‘You got him then! Is he a fat ’un?’

“‘Holy God,’ cried the sailor, ‘it _is_ the devil!’ and he chucks poor Mark over his back at Levi’s feet and runs for his mortal life. He was the most frittened of the lot ’cos he hadn’t believed in anything at all—but there it was. And just as he gets to the gate he sees someone else coming along in the dark carrying a something on its shoulder—it was Impey wi’ the sheep. ‘Powers above,’ cried Pat Crowe, ‘it’s the Day of Judgment come for sartin!’ And he went roaring the news up street like a madman, and Impey went off somewheres too—but I dunno where Impey went.

“Well, poor old Mark laid on the ground, he were a game old cock, but he could hardly speak, he was strook dazzled. And Levi was frittened out of his life in the darkness and couldn’t make anythink out of nothink. He just creeps along to Mark and whispers: ‘Who be that? Who be that?’ And old Mark looks up very timid, for he thought his last hour was on him, and he says: ‘Be that you, Satan?’ Drackly Levi heard that all in a onexpected voice he jumped quicker en my neighbour’s flea. He gave a yell bigger nor Pat Crowe and he bolted too. But as he went he dropped the little tin canister and old Mark picked it up. And he shook the canister, and he heerd money in it, and then something began to dawn on him, for he knowed how his brother’s fortune had been buried.

“‘I rede it, I rede it,’ he says, ‘that was Levi Carter, the dirty thief! I rede it, I rede it,’ he says. And he putt the tin can in his pocket and hopped off home as if he never knowed what rheumatucks was at all. And when he opened that canister there was the sixty golden sovereigns in that canister. Sixty golden sovereigns! ‘Bad things ’ull be worse afore they’re better,’ says Mark, ‘but they never won’t be any better than this.’ And so he stuck to the money in the canister, and that’s how he bought his cottage arter all. ’Twarn’t much of a house, just wattle and daub, wi’ a thetch o’ straa', but ’twas what he fancied, and there he ended his days like an old Christian man. (Good health!)”

_Huxley Rustem_

Huxley Rustem settled himself patiently upon the hairdresser’s waiting bench to probe the speculation that jumped grasshopper-like into the field of his inquisitorial mind: ’Why does a man become a barber? Well, what _is_ it that persuades a man, not by the mere compulsion of destiny, but by the sweet reasonableness of inclination, to dedicate his activities to the excision of other people’s pimples and the discomfiture of their hairy growths? He had glanced through the two papers, _Punch_ and _John Bull_, handed him by the boy in buttons, and now, awaiting his turn, posed himself with this inquiry. There was a girl at it, too, at the end of the saloon. She seemed to have picked him out from the crowd of men there; he caught her staring, an attractive girl. It seemed insoluble; misfortunate people may, indeed must, by the pressure of circumstances, become sewermen, butchers, scavengers, and even clergymen, but the impulse to barbery was, he felt, quite indelicately ironic. How that girl stared at him—if she was not very careful she would be clipping the fellow’s ear—did she think she knew him? He rather hoped she would have to attend to him; would he be lucky enough? Huxley tried to estimate the chances by observing the half-dozen toilets in progress, but his calculations did not encourage the hope at all. It was very charming for an agreeable woman, a stranger, too, to do that kind of service for you. He remembered that, after his marriage five years ago, he had tried to persuade his wife to lather and shave him, “just for a lark, you know,” but she was adamant, didn’t see the joke at all! Well, well, he decided that the word barber derived in some ironic way from the words barbarism or barbarity, expressing, unconsciously perhaps, contempt on the part of the barber for a world that could only offer him this imposture for a man’s sacred will to order and activity. Yet it didn’t seem so bad for women—that splendid young creature there at the end of the saloon! The boy in buttons approached, and Huxley Rustem was ushered to that vacant chair at the end; the splendid young thing had placed a wrapper about him—she had almost “cuddled” it round his neck—and stood demurely preparing to do execution upon his poll, turning her eyes mischievously upon his bright-hued socks, which, by a notable coincidence, were the same colour as her own handsome hose. Huxley had a feeling that she had cunningly arranged the succession of turns in order to secure him to her chair—which shows that he was still young and very impressionable. Such a feeling is one of the customary assumptions of vanity, the natural and prized, but much-denied, possession of all agreeable people. Huxley, as the girl had already noted, and now saw more vividly in the mirror fronting them, _was_ agreeable, was attractive. (My dear reader, both you and Huxley Rustem are right, the dainty barbaress _had_ laid her nets for this particular victim.)

“How would you like it cut, sir?” she asked, placing a hand upon each of his shoulders, and peering round at him with enamouring eyes.

“Oh, with a pair of scissors, don’t you think?” he replied at a venture, for he was not often waggish. But it was a very successful sally, the girl chuckled with rapture, loose fringes of her hair tickled his cheek, and he caught puffs of her sweet-scented breath. She was gold-haired, not very tall, and had pleasant turns about her neck and face and wrists that almost fascinated him. When they had agreed upon the range and extent of his shearing, the girl proceeded to the accomplishment of the task in complete silence, almost with gravity. Huxley began wondering how many hundreds and thousands of crops were squeezed annually by the delicious fingers, how many polls denuded by those competent shears. Very sad. Once a year, he supposed, she would go holidaying for a week or ten days; she would go to Bournemouth for the bathing or for whatever purpose it is people go to Bournemouth, Barmouth, or Blackpool. He determined to come in again the day after to-morrow and be shaved by her.

At the conclusion of the rite she brushed his coat collar very meticulously, tiptoeing a little, and remarked in a bright manner upon the weather, which was also bright. Then she went back to shave what Huxley described to himself as a “red-faced old cockalorum,” whom he at once disliked very thoroughly. She had given him a check with a fee marked upon it; he took this down the stairs and paid his dues to “a bald-headed old god-like monster”—Huxley felt sure he was—who sat in the shop below, surrounded by fringe-nets, stuffings, moustache wax, creams, toothbrushes, and sponges.

Two days later Huxley Rustem repeated his visit, but not all the intrigue of the girl nor his own manœuvring could effect the happy arrangement again, although he sat for a long time feeling sure that there was no other establishment of its kind in which the elements of celerity were so unreservedly abandoned, and the flunkeyism so peculiarly viscous. The many mirrors, of course, multiplied the objects of his factitious contempt; those male barbers were small vain beings of disagreeable outline to whom the doom of shaving tens of thousands of chins for ever and ever afforded a white-faced languid happiness. Huxley was exasperated—his personality always ran so easily to exasperation—by the care with which the wrinkled face of a sportive old gent of sixty was being massaged with steaming cloths. He wore pretty brown button boots and large check trousers; there was still a vain wisp or two of white hair left upon his tight round skull and his indescribably silly old face. In the outcome our hero had perforce to be shaved by a youth of the last revolting assiduity, who caressed his chin with strong, excoriating palms.

In the ensuing weeks Huxley Rustem became a regular visitor to the saloon, but he suffered repeated disappointments. He was disconsolate; it was most baffling; not once did he secure the bliss of her attentions. He felt himself a fool; some men could do these things as easily as they grew whiskers, but Rustem was not one of them, for the traditions of virtue and sweet conduct were very firmly rooted in him; he was like a mouse living in a large white empty bath which, if it was unscaleable, was clean, and if it was rather blank was never terrifying. It is easy, so very easy, to be virtuous when you can’t be anything else. But still he very much desired to take the fair barber out to dinner, say, just for an hour or two in a quiet place where one eats and chats and listens to the pleasant shrilling of restaurant violins. He would be able to amuse her with tales and recitals of his experiences and she would constantly exclaim “Really!” as if entranced—as she probably would be. In his imagined hour her conversational exchanges never developed beyond that, yet it was enough to thrill him with a mild happiness. An egoist is a mystic without a god, but seldom ever without a goddess. It was bliss to adore her, but very heaven for her to be adoring him. To be just to Huxley Rustem that was all he meant, but try as he would he could never make up the happy occasion. It was a most discomfiting experience. It is true that he saw her in the street on three or four occasions, but each time he was accompanied by his wife, and each time he was guilty of a vain pretence, his behaviour to his companion being extremely casual—as if she were just an acquaintance instead of being an important alliance. But no one could possibly have mistaken the lady for anything but Huxley’s very own wife, and the little barber was provocatively demure at these encounters. Once, however, he was alone, and she passed, ogling him in a very frank way. But she did not understand egoists like Rustem. He was impervious to any such direct challenge; he thought it a little silly, coarse even. Had she been shy and diffident, allowing him to be masterful instead of confusing him, he would have fluttered easily into her flame.

So the affair remained, and would have remained for ever but that, by the grace of fortune, he found himself one day at last actually sitting again in front of the charming girl, who was not less aware of the attraction than he himself. She was nervous and actually with her shears clipped a part of his ear. Huxley was rather glad of that, it eased the situation, but on his departure he committed the rash act for which he never afterwards forgave himself. Her fingers were touching his as she gave him the pay check, when he took suddenly from his pocket a silver coin and pressed it into her hand, smiling. It was as if he had struck her a blow. He was shocked at the surprised resentment in the fierce glance she flung him. She tossed the coin into a tray for catching tobacco ash and cigarette ends. He realized at once the enormity of the affront; his vulgar act had smashed the delicate little coil between them. Vague and almost frivolous as it was, she had prized it. Poor as it was, it could yet deeply humiliate him. But it was a blunder that could never be retrieved, and he turned quickly and sadly out of the saloon, feeling the awful sting of his own contempt. Crass fool that he was, didn’t he realize that even barbers had their altitudes? Did he think he could buy a jewel like that, as he bought a packet of tobacco, with a miserable shilling? Perhaps Huxley Rustem was unduly sensitive about it, but he could never again bring himself to enter the saloon and meet that wounded gaze. He only recovered his balance when, a fortnight later, he encountered her in the street wearing the weeds of a widow! Then he felt almost as indignant as if she had indeed deceived him!

_Big Game_