Unclay

by T. F. Powys

  The curious feeling of cold dread that Mr. Hayhoe had experienced so lately, almost as if he himself might have been at his last gasp, now completely left him. Indeed, his spirits were happier now—he had never been one to sorrow unduly—than they had been since the time of his boy’s illness.

  The day brightened; the dark cloud that had lowered upon the earth moved softly away in a thin mist; the sun shone warmly, and the stranger turned and saw Mr. Hayhoe.

  The clergyman was the first to speak.

  “If you have lost anything, my friend,” he said to the man, who was now come quite close to him, “perhaps you will allow me to help you to find it?”

  The man looked down anxiously at the ground; he did not reply, but said hurriedly, as though speaking to himself, “Such an unlucky accident as this has never happened in the memory of man, no, not since that foolish girl ate of the apple. Never before have I lost an order. Every command that has been committed to me to do, that command have I done until now.”

  “Tell me your name,” asked Mr. Hayhoe, who began to think that the poor man must have escaped from a madhouse, “so that, if I have the good fortune to discover your property, I may be able to restore to you what you have lost.”

  “My name is Death,” answered the man.

  “Suffolk family?” rejoined Mr. Hayhoe, “for I know a village in that county where your name is common, and I have seen it too written upon a tombstone in this neighbourhood. But I trust you will not think me rude if I ask you to tell me your Christian name too?”

  “I have never had one,” replied Death simply, “though in coming here this morning I met a little girl who made fun of my beard and called me ‘John.’”

  “Oh, that must have been Winnie Huddy,” cried Mr. Hayhoe, “who only likes to be happy. But, alas! good sir, have you then never been baptized? Tell me, what is your faith, your belief, your religion?”

  “I belong to God,” replied Death.

  Mr. Hayhoe bowed his head reverently. He then looked up gladly.

  It was indeed a rare thing for him to hear The Name spoken, unless in jest by the simple peasant, and, as a minister of the Gospel, he could not but commend one who spoke so truthfully.

  “And, taking the matter in another way, a man,” thought Mr. Hayhoe, “who has read his Bible and acknowledges to whom he belongs, might have read other books too, and have heard of Mr. Collins.”

  “You say well, friend,” said Mr. Hayhoe, joyfully, “and, in a little while, I am sure we shall have you in our fold.”

  “Or you in mine,” answered Death, amiably.

  Mr. Hayhoe was glad to talk to some one. Besides seeing this man’s name upon a Shelton tombstone, he also recollected noticing the same name in the local directory as belonging to a rag and bone merchant.

  Mr. Hayhoe invited his new acquaintance to sit beside him upon the grassy bank.

  V

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  Death Has No Memory

  A good man knows at once whom he likes and whom he can trust, and Mr. Hayhoe saw in his new companion one who would not betray his confidence, nor take advantage of his humble simplicity. It would be pleasant, he thought, because he had some one to talk to, to remain for a few moments more in that place now that the sun shone again.

  He saw no harm in resting for a little longer. Priscilla would await him where she most liked to be, beside her little boy’s grave in the Dodder churchyard. She used, each day, to go there to see if the cowslips she had planted were in flower. Perhaps they were and, at least, the primroses would be still blooming.

  Spring flowers are a holy company, and Priscilla loved them. To kneel and pray beside the first celandines was no uncommon thing for her to do, and now that there were flowers upon the grave, she must needs be happy there, even if she cried a little at first.

  Another reason—besides the softness of the bank—that moved Mr. Hayhoe to invite John Death to rest, was that he did not lack a very natural curiosity. His favourite author had given him a proper taste for wishing to discover what any one he met did for a living and, besides that, he was most anxious to know what it was that Mr. John Death had lost.

  “Perhaps you will not mind,” said Mr. Hayhoe, after they had talked for a little about trees and flowers, “if I call you ‘John,’ and I trust that the hunt will return the way it came that I may show you Lord Bullman—the greatest man in the county—and even introduce you to him.”

  “I fear,” answered Death, smiling, “that, if you were to do so, you would lose your benefice, for Lord Bullman has already heard of me, and he hates the very sound of my name.”

  “Perhaps he thinks,” rejoined Mr. Hayhoe—who, for the moment, supposed that Death might be a farmer—“that you bind your gates with barbed wire, and drive sharpened stakes into your fences, as Mr. Mere.”

  “Or, rather,” answered John, laughing, “he fancies that my gate opens too easily into a narrow pit.”

  “One certainly never knows why one is disliked,” observed Mr. Hayhoe, with a sigh. “But would you be so good as to tell me what it was that you were searching for so diligently when you first approached me?”

  Although Mr. Hayhoe asked this question in a careless manner, as if he did not wish to pry too nearly into another person’s affairs, yet he thought that his companion was unneedfully startled by so simple a request.

  John Death jumped up. He looked this way and that, fearing evidently that they might be overheard by some one, but, seeing Mr. Hayhoe looking expectantly at him as if he waited for a reply, he sat down again.

  “You need not be afraid to tell me of your loss,” said Mr. Hayhoe, wondering why the man did not speak.

  “I have lost something of great importance,” replied Death in a low tone, looking anxiously up into the sky, as if he expected a censure for his carelessness from that direction. “Indeed, I hardly like to name what I have lost, but as I know that you—as well as I—belong to God, there can be no harm in my telling you that I have dropped or mislaid a small piece of parchment.

  “I have no excuse to offer,” continued Death, looking again up to the sky, “unless it be that I had been idling more than I should—and, indeed, during such lovely weather any workman has a right to enjoy himself—and somehow or other, owing to my thoughtlessness, the parchment must have fallen from my pocket.”

  “The title-deeds, no doubt, of a small estate,” suggested Mr. Hayhoe.

  “Why, no,” replied Death, “for this parchment, that I have so foolishly lost, gives the right of way to a wide land. There are written upon it two names only—the signature of my employer, and one other word, that is the command.”

  “I suppose,” said Mr. Hayhoe, “that the persons named in your paper are those with whom you have some particular business.” And Mr. Hayhoe looked at John a little unhappily, for he now began to think that he might be a county bailiff, and, alas, he himself still owed money to the court.

  “But surely,” said Mr. Hayhoe, “this little mishap cannot trouble you much, for you have only to remember the names that were written so lastingly—when any common sheet of notepaper would have done as well—in order to manage your business?”

  “Alas!” cried John, “I have tried my best to recall them to my mind, but though I may appear to you as a person not altogether lacking in intelligence, yet I have the worst memory in the world. You may be surprised to hear me say so, but as soon as I have accomplished any work that I am ordered to do I forget all about it, and even the material upon which I have exercised my art seems also to be as if it had never been. My employment is a simple one—I change one thing into another.”

  “Perhaps he is a ladies’ hairdresser,” thought Mr. Hayhoe suddenly.

  “It is well sometimes to change the colour of a thing,” went on Death, “and my business is a most necessary one. Nothing can endure for
ever in the same form. Even the mountains crumble, and the seas change their places, yet I am always being reminded by some one or other that my profession is a very unseemly one.”

  “I do not believe I am right,” thought Mr. Hayhoe.

  “It’s my bad memory,” said Death, “that makes me so unpopular.”

  “We all have our troubles,” observed Mr. Hayhoe.

  “My memory is one of the worst of them,” remarked Death, “and knowing my lack, I have never dared to do anything for myself and only do what I am told, though perhaps—if I live a little while in Dodder, in order to find what I have lost—my memory may improve.”

  “But up to this moment,” said Mr. Hayhoe, “your employer has always given you his commands in writing, and even as a good Christian has the right rules for his behaviour given to him in the Bible, so you have your proper labours for the day written upon paper.”

  “But now that I have lost my parchment,” observed Death sadly, “who will trust me again with a written order? As soon as I discovered my loss, I wished myself the freedom of a certain vasty Hall that I have procured for many.”

  “A madhouse,” ejaculated Mr. Hayhoe.

  The clergyman looked anxiously at his companion.

  “Do not despair,” he said kindly, “for it often happens that something that is utterly gone is yet happily discovered. Though, of course, no merchant who employs a servant is pleased when that servant has mislaid his goods, yet as long as the master knows that his goods have not been applied to a wicked use, but have only been left by mistake in some wood or dell, he cannot be very aggrieved.”

  “You do not know my master,” observed Death.

  “I think I do,” said Mr. Hayhoe, who had in his mind a certain wine-merchant who had once visited the neighbourhood.

  “But, even though my master may not care,” said Death, “—and there are some who affirm that nothing troubles him—yet my employer’s clients may be very much disappointed if I do not find what I have lost. For these poor people may very soon be sorry that I did not visit them as I was ordered to do.”

  Mr. Hayhoe gave a little groan. “A moneylender,” he murmured.

  And yet it was extremely unlikely, he thought, that any one in that way of business should employ a man as an agent who not only confessed that he remembered nothing that he did, and who had the boldness to say that he belonged to God.

  “Neither would his name,” considered Mr. Hayhoe, “recommend him overmuch to any business man.”

  Death muttered something into his beard.

  “I am unable to hear you,” observed Mr. Hayhoe to his companion.

  “I only said,” replied Death, “that, though I forget most things that I do, yet sometimes certain little incidents do happen to me that I remember, and when I come to think of it, only this morning I met a kind lady who offered me a religious tract.”

  Mr. Hayhoe smiled gladly and rubbed his hands. He believed he knew, he said, who that lady was.

  “And did you read what Priscilla gave you?” he asked eagerly.

  “I certainly did,” answered John, “and the first lines, set in large print, pleased me very much. I have them here.” And, taking the tract out of his pocket, John read:

  “‘O Death, how bitter is the remembrance of thee to a man that liveth at rest in his possessions, unto the man that hath nothing to vex him, and that hath prosperity in all things: yea, unto him that is yet able to receive meat.’”

  “Mr. Mere even curses Death in the street,” said Mr. Hayhoe, “when he thinks of his end. But did you not read further?”

  “I read further,” replied John.

  “‘O Death, acceptable is thy sentence unto the needy, and unto him whose strength faileth, that is now in the last age, and is vexed with all things, and to him that despaireth and hath lost patience.’”

  “I have often heard old Huddy say,” observed Mr. Hayhoe, “that when his time comes, he will go gladly. But did you not tell Priscilla of your loss?”

  “I never trust a woman,” replied John Death, “for I have often heard them speak when they had promised to be as silent as the grave. But, hearing that her husband was the clergyman, I asked her where he could be found.”

  “And you read the last words of the tract, I hope?” said Mr. Hayhoe, “that were written large too?”

  “Certainly,” replied Death, “and excellent words they were:

  “‘Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.’”

  “Oh,” cried Mr. Hayhoe, “any man—whatever his trade may be—who says that he belongs to God, must know that the Earth is God’s bed as well as his own, and that to lie there is to lie with Him.”

  “I would rather lie with a Dodder maid,” John muttered.

  “And Priscilla told you where to find me?” remarked Mr. Hayhoe.

  “I certainly thought that you might assist me in my search,” replied Death, “for, though you may not remember the meeting, we too have met before.”

  “I cannot say that I remember you,” answered Mr. Hayhoe, “though when I was a curate at St. John’s, Weyminster, I used to see a great many people in one way or another that I have now quite forgotten. But, perhaps you were the doctor who came to see old Mrs. Dominy, but you only stepped into the room and she died?—though I have forgotten what the doctor looked like.”

  “I am glad that I am not the only one who forgets,” said Death gaily. “And now that you are going to be the vicar of Dodder—where the very goats, as merry Sancho once said, are like white violets—you will not perhaps mind giving me a little necessary information that will help me to recover what I have lost.”

  “I am your servant,” answered Mr. Hayhoe.

  “Well, then,” said Death, “I should like to know a little about some of the people who are under your charge, for one or other of them, I am sure, must have stolen my parchment, and though, of course, my master can employ others—for his state is kingly—to do my work, so that I may not be missed elsewhere, yet in Dodder I alone must perform my allotted task, and must remain there until I have found my lost command.”

  “Would it not be possible,” asked Mr. Hayhoe, “for you to write to your employer, and ask whether a new writ, or warrant, or whatever it was that you have happened to mislay, could not be posted to you, to replace the one that you have lost?”

  “Alas! no,” answered John Death, “for my master is a strange person, and will never do again what he has once done.”

  “Proud as well as lazy, I fear,” suggested Mr. Hayhoe.

  “He is indeed a determined gentleman,” replied Death, “and always likes his own way.”

  “Perhaps he is a Scotchman?” observed Mr. Hayhoe, rising from the bank, “but we may as well walk together to Dodder, as you and I intend to live there.”

  “I will gladly be your companion,” replied John Death, moving too, “for I am sure that there are many subjects that we can discourse upon that will be of great interest to us both. And I may certainly say that—though of course I am vastly troubled about my loss—yet I shall not be sorry to take a short holiday, for I am no liar when I tell you that, both in peace and war, I have a great deal to do.”

  “I have heard,” observed Mr. Hayhoe slyly, “that a sanitary inspector is a very busy man.”

  “You have come very near to guessing my profession,” answered Death, laughing, “and it is certainly true that the hurry of my occupation has never for one moment until now allowed me any time for love or friendship. There are many other experiences too, besides those two, that my busy life has prevented my knowing. Unlike my Lord of Northumberland, in the play, I have never had the leisure to be sick in such a jostling time. I have never known either sickness or pain, no, not even the scratch of a little pin has harmed me. My life has always been one of perfect health, and never have I had the time to pity the illness of others, nor
yet the quick sob of one whose doom is sudden.”

  Mr. Hayhoe shuddered. Was John Death the hangman? They walked together down the lane.

  “During my stay in Dodder, I hope to enjoy myself without pain,” said Death.

  “That,” replied Mr. Hayhoe, “is quite impossible.”

  “But, at least, I mean to know love,” laughed Death.

  “I hope without guile?” observed Mr. Hayhoe, a little anxiously.

  “You have been reading Milton,” said Death, turning quickly to him.

  “Only when I was at school,” replied Mr. Hayhoe, “and I thought him very tedious.”

  “I am glad you did not like him,” remarked Death, “for, though John Milton wrote some noble lines—that have never been equalled in beauty—yet he sometimes mistakes an honest man for a rogue, and surely all mothers are not so easy to tumble, nor all sons as wanton as he would have us believe?”

  “Are you married?” asked Mr. Hayhoe.

  “I am a bachelor,” replied John Death, “and have always lived wisely.”

  “I honour you for it,” said Mr. Hayhoe warmly.

  “But, however honestly one may live,” remarked Death, “there is sure to be some neighbour or other to cry out ‘lecher.’ And I—as well as others—have been accused of certain doings—but I can promise you that I have never been as bad as those Flemish gravediggers, who were wont to cry ‘Welcome, plague!’ in the city streets.… I now mean to enjoy myself in Dodder.”

  “I am sure that you will,” said Mr. Hayhoe happily, “and before you have been a month with us we shall have you baptized, confirmed, and married.”

  “But not buried, I hope,” replied Death, smiling.

  VI

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