Unclay

by T. F. Powys

  Mr. Solly and his friend left the garden; they walked in silence through the village and came to the church gates. All seemed silent there, and going in they took a path that led them around the church.

  Dodder village was unusually quiet for a Sunday evening, but so many had visited Lord Bullman’s gardens, and all who had been there had so much to talk of, that most of the people were indoors.

  Mr. Solly walked the first in the path. Behind the church and very much to his surprise, he saw a new-dug grave, and near beside it a heap of earth. Upon this heap of soil were laid out a girl’s clothes, neatly folded. Nearby, and lying naked upon the grass, was Susie Dawe, with her head resting upon a grave-mound, and thrown backwards a little, with her neck ready for the stroke.

  Before the body of Susie stood Death, with his arms stretched back and his sharp scythe ready to strike.

  The two had crept together unnoticed into the churchyard, where Death had dug a grave and hidden his scythe in readiness for the final act. After showing Susie the grave, he had bid her unclothe, and as she took off her garments, Death folded them—as a loving mother does a baby’s at night-time—and then bid Susie to lie down and to receive the blow.

  Joe Bridle stood between them. Death laid his scythe softly upon the ground.

  “Love is as strong as death,” he said, sadly, “and it is not given to me now to dispute a man’s right to a mortal girl. My time will come. He, under Whom I have my dominion and my power, is a dark star. Who can escape Him? I thought to have enjoyed Susie and to have forsaken for ever the hard task that has been laid upon me, and I almost attained to that freedom.”

  Susie rose bewildered, but, knowing that she was naked, she dressed herself again, looking like one in a dream.

  As soon as she was dressed, Mr. Solly led her to her home. Death and Joseph Bridle faced one another.

  Joe stood silently, but Death was by no means abashed. He raised his scythe and looked with pleasure at its sharp edge.

  “It is curious to observe,” he said to Joseph, “that one is often more pleased than sorry when interrupted in one’s pleasures. Although my experience in such affairs must be—for my holiday has been short—somewhat limited, yet I am now sure that, for the sake of one’s own happiness, it is better to renounce love. I have often disputed upon this subject with Mr. Hayhoe, who would always affirm that a peaceful hour, spent in reading the Watsons, can give a greater happiness than a whole night with a Helen or Laïs, and now I am inclined to agree with him. I remember well that in our conversation we both regretted an act of providence that compelled that book to be so nearly the last of them.

  “Alas! Joseph,” said Death, sitting down contentedly upon a grave-mound, “some one, whom I will not name, has His own ideas about literature. But, if only my Master had been educated at Benet College in Cambridge instead of in Palestine, perhaps He might have thought a little differently about prose-writers. But, as it is, He always preferred a short story to a novel, viewing a parable and a short story as the same thing. And, though His taste is sometimes sound, yet it is a well-known fact that He often prefers any fool or charlatan to a good writer.

  “This is unfortunate, for as He is able to do what He likes with His own, He permits one to write on, when, for the sake of posterity, their lives, as well as their works, had much better have been shortened.”

  Death chuckled.

  “Or else,” he said, with a knowing wink, “there may be another reason why so many of the best authors die young. You must be aware, Joseph, that sometimes a valuable manuscript is lost. God is a collector. An author had better look to his wares. There may come a robber, who will open the most hidden drawer, and I can promise you that the Shelton policeman will not catch Him.

  “A fire may come, or else a whirlwind may pass through the house upon a sudden and carry off something. If a writer misses anything, he had best beware. Who does not know that Keats was inclined to be careless and to leave things about? Others have done the same, and we know what high price can be made of a few lines of manuscript. This collector, I fear, is a greedy fellow.”

  Death laughed.

  Joe Bridle looked into the grave.

  “Give me my parchment,” cried Death, “for either you have it, or else you know where it is,”

  “And suppose I do know,” answered Bridle. “You cannot compel me to give it up.”

  “There is to be a wedding tomorrow in Dodder church,” said Death carelessly.

  Joe Bridle walked off, leaving Death in the churchyard. Soon the company at the Inn heard a well-known sound—the whetting of a scythe.

  L

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  Droit de Seigneur

  Over certain accidents God draws a natural veil. And, if the accident has not harmed the mind of its subject, all may yet be well. The veil is a woman’s longing and it covers much. Under the banner of love a sacrifice that is not killed recovers apace. The veil hides all. A girl may lie naked to death, and yet find her life again, and even forget in a little while what had happened to her.

  As soon as Susie reached her home, her father blamed her for being late and for not laying his supper as she was used to do. Had James Dawe spoken kindly to her, Susie might not have gained possession of herself so easily. His rudeness and angry words made things ordinary again, and having once prepared herself for Death’s embrace, she did not care now what happened to her. She was quite ready, she told her father, to marry Mr. Mere the next day.

  When supper was over and while Susie was washing the plates in the back-house, there came a soft knock at the front door. Susie sighed. She supposed that Mr. Mere was come. Her father would soon call her, and the farmer would wish to use her as countrymen do use the women they are soon to wed. She did not care what he did.

  Her father now called to her to come to the parlour, although his tone of voice was quieter than she had expected. Susie went, expecting to see Mr. Mere, but she was welcomed by Lord Bullman.

  If ever a man was made to change a dull and musty atmosphere, charged with dour cruelty, into a lighter kind of fancy, that man was Lord Bullman. Even Mr. Pix could not always regard his master—if his back was turned—without a smile. Lord Bullman’s look of ponderous displeasure at all he saw in the country—unless his gaze encountered a fair maid—his almost impossible pride in his own presence, and a simplicity of purpose, that he considered the utmost cunning, could never fail to amuse an onlooker. According to an old established custom in the family, the Bullmans, though a little brusque with their wives, had always been extremely civil and polite to their mistresses.

  Lord Bullman bowed low to Susie. Indeed, he had reason to, for he had never in his life seen a young girl look so lovely.

  Susie was very pale. Her love for Death had changed her into a creature that hardly seemed to be a being of this world.

  James Dawe withdrew.

  Lord Bullman bowed to Susie again. But, before he sat with her upon the sofa, he wished, he said, to ask her one question.

  Susie smiled and permitted him to whisper.

  “I have never,” murmured Lord Bullman, eagerly, “been able to pass a happy night of love since a certain fashion of clothes has been used by women in bed. But you, my dear, I know, wear a nightgown.”

  “I have worn one ever since I can remember,” answered Susie gaily, “and I am sure I can be as happy with old fashions as you, my lord.”

  “And,” exclaimed Lord Bullman, sitting joyfully beside Susie on the sofa, “you will not mind my talking to you a little before we go to bed?”

  “I will listen to you gladly,” observed Susie.

  “Even if I talk about thieves and robbers?” cried Lord Bullman.

  “Talk as long as you like,” replied Susie, “and of anything you many choose.”

  Never had Lord Bullman been answered so prettily. Thos
e ladies of pleasure that he had been wont to visit sometimes had always, after their first embraces were over, made a mock of him, and even before their playing, did he wish to talk a little seriously, they would not permit it.

  But Lord Bullman was not behaving to Susie quite as he intended to. While walking to Dodder, he had made up his mind what he meant to do. He had decided to go to bed with Susie first, and then to talk to her afterwards. But, as soon as he saw her, his feelings took a different turn. He saw her at once as a young woman who would listen to a man’s conversation in the most kindly manner, yielding a ready sympathy to the utmost folly. Unless it were Mr. Titball, no one had ever cared to listen to his views upon any local case of the thieving of even a hen-roost.

  Did he mention anything of the kind—a little timidly, of course—to his valet, that amiable young man would change the subject to the poetry of Robert Browning. Mr. Dapper, the present butler, would do worse, for when Lord Bullman happened once to be dining alone, and mentioned—in quite a social manner—the case of a man who had broken through one window and three locked doors and then, though he had the house entirely at his mercy, only stole the kitchen-maid’s chemise, Mr. Dapper without any reply or word of comment, poured out for his lordship a glass of cold water.

  Lord Bullman was now completely at his ease.

  “According to a learned lawyer that I have lately consulted,” he observed, “there is nothing mentioned in the ‘droit de seigneur’ about the right to talk. That law, it appears—if the old Latin can be depended upon—only covers certain familiarities that are too common to name, and are often a little too creature-like to do. If you have no objection, my dear, we will, for the present, pass over these country matters, for I have something far more important to talk of.”

  Lord Bullman sighed and took her hand.

  “Ever since,” he said, “I heard of the robbery in Merly Wood, I have been busy looking for the thief, and also considering very carefully the motive that could lead a man to undress a poor suicide—hanged and dead—and to steal his clothes.”

  “Perhaps they were better than his own,” suggested Susie.

  “I also thought that might be so,” said Lord Bullman, “until I met the tailor, John Death, at Daisy Huddy’s.”

  Susie frowned.

  “I went there for no harm,” said Lord Bullman hastily, “but I had only to look once at that man John to know that he was a thief. I was sure of it the first moment I saw him, and I can assure you, Susie, by my soul, that he is the worst of robbers.”

  Susie’s face coloured, then again grew deadly pale.

  “In my own garden,” went on Lord Bullman, “near to a few paltry dead flowers, I knew that he was the man who had taken the clothes from the corpse.”

  Susie shuddered.

  “After being put upon a false scent by a girl named Winnie, I interviewed the Shelton policeman.”

  Susie smiled.

  “You have never read lawyer Coke, my dear?”

  Susie shook her head. Lord Bullman looked relieved.

  “One must,” he said, “discover a motive for the crime. This is how I saw the matter. When I was a tiny boy, I very much wished to obtain a doll dressed in the finest hussar uniform, that belonged to my cousin Margaret—”

  “You stole it?” cried Susie.

  “No, I only tried to,” replied my lord. “Margaret discovered me in her bedroom and began to cry. My motive was simple, but who would wish to rob a corpse of clothes that were not paid for?—the bill would follow the thief. I found the case more difficult as I proceeded in it, and soon thought it necessary to consult counsel. This is what I have discovered. It appears that Tailor John had a kind of right to the clothes of the dead man.”

  “He helped to make them perhaps?” said Susie.

  Lord Bullman kissed her hand.

  “You have guessed rightly, child,” he cried, “and they were not paid for. Mr. Triggle, the man who hanged himself, had always been a very vain person, and when he determined to end his life, he wished to wear his best clothes. He ordered them for the purpose. They were made for him by a jobbing tailor of Maidenbridge, with whom I myself once had dealings”—Lord Bullman blushed—“and who has left the town and cannot be found. He is believed to have changed his name from Love to Death. The clothes were delivered to Mr. Triggle, but the bill was unpaid. I have learned from Mrs. Triggle, who still bemoans the loss of her good man, that her husband had agreed with the tailor, Love, that if the clothes were not paid for by a certain date, he, the tailor, had the right to his own again.

  “Though I am but a poor theologian,” observed Lord Bullman, “John Death does not appear to have done any more harm to this man than God does to us when we die. He takes our garment of flesh from us, that is given by Love, and returns it to the proper owner—our Mother Earth. But our laws are not God’s.”

  Lord Bullman smiled.

  “Though Death cannot be charged with theft—and there his nose deceived me—yet he shall and can be sent to prison for a common assault. Tomorrow I will make out a warrant for John’s arrest.”

  Susie praised his cleverness.

  Lord Bullman rose to go. He bowed low to Susie.

  “I only called to wish you every happiness,” he said, as he opened the door to go out.

  LI

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  Death No Enemy

  A deep gloom had settled upon the Dodder Vicarage this Sunday evening. The Sabbath day had not been spent by Mr. Hayhoe or by Priscilla in the way that they liked best to spend it. They had both missed, as all good people do, that pleasant hour—the evensong worship.

  When they met at the Vicarage again, after their visit to the grand gardens, Mr. Hayhoe observed unhappily that his talk with Lord Bullman had not been very suitable to the holy day. He had listened politely, of course, as became an inferior, he informed Priscilla, “but,” he said, with a deep sigh, “I fear the living of Dodder will never be ours.”

  After supper was over, Mr. Hayhoe withdrew to his study, where he busied himself for a while in writing a sermon for the next Sunday, hoping that by means of this occupation the gloom that lay upon his own heart as well as upon the village of Dodder might be raised a little.

  After writing for about an hour, Mr. Hayhoe—who always doubted his own inspiration—wished to ask his wife whether his treatment of Judith, the heroine of his sermon, was entirely proper, and so he left the study to seek Priscilla. He first sought her in the parlour, but she was not there, neither was she in the kitchen. Then he went softly to her bedroom and opened the door.

  To one who had sorrowed much, the kindly relief of soothing tears will never come. Only a deep sadness and one strange hope was left to Priscilla. She sat down close to the open window, and as though she could not take her eyes away from that place, she looked longingly at the grave of her little son.

  Mr. Hayhoe watched her in silence, for she had not heard him open the door, and thought that she followed with her eyes the movement of some one in the churchyard. The summer evening was very light. He wondered who it was that she saw.

  Mr. Hayhoe withdrew as silently as he had come and went down again to his study.

  Sometimes, all unexpectedly, human eyes that have known love and no hate are opened to strange sights.

  The shepherds, watching their silly sheep, once saw the heavens open and the winged host descend. A king beheld armed forces in the air, ready to rush upon his enemies that lay before the gates of Samaria, and to many a dying wight has an unexpected joy come.

  A great hope can open the heavens, and sorrow too—as well as joy—can sometimes uncover the deep places of darkness, burst the bonds of everlasting night and let the soul free.

  Priscilla Hayhoe looked into the churchyard. Some one moved there.

  She knew who this was—the gravedigger. But Dea
th did not look the same man. He was become young and beautiful. Susie had seen him thus, because love had uncovered her eyes, and now her own lasting sorrow showed the man, in his true form, to Priscilla.

  He moved like a blessed silence in the churchyard. His stature was kingly. He paused and spread out his hands over the holy dead. From a gesture that he made, he seemed to be dividing the living from the dead. Upon this side, the folly of passion, sorrow, suffering, and pain: every moment merged into the next, and all time passing away like the shadow of a swiftly moving cloud over Madder Hill. Upon the other side, the sweet silence of God.

  Mr. Hayhoe grew sleepy over his work, until at last he laid his head upon the Bible before him, and fell asleep.

  Priscilla softly went downstairs and out into the lane. She hastened into the churchyard. The evening darkened, a cloud of white mist descended upon the village.

  Priscilla found Death. She bowed before him.

  “I wish to see my boy,” she said. “Cannot I behold him, only this once?”

  Death looked upon her with compassion, but he shook his head.