“But she ought,” the girl protested, with a sinking at the heart. “We’re goin’ to ask, an’ she ought to have it.”
He shook his head sagely. “No,” he said, “there aren’t no chance o’ that now. None ever do, now; too many bein’ killed. They do it in peace time arl right, so as to ‘tice the men, but when they’ve got ‘em, an’ gettin’ ‘em killed too quick, they can’t afford it. ’Twould be a disappointment for you to build on that, an’ I woo’n’t like yow to be disappointed.”
Dorrily’s distress was aggravated. The chief officer had been doubtful and more than doubtful, and this disinterested corroboration seemed to settle it. Truly the prospect was grievous.
Young Sim Cloyse looked again at the cottage roof, meditatively. “’Tis gettin’ a very oad place,” he remarked presently, as though to himself. “An’ it don’t pay, that’s sarten.”
Dorrily heard, and looked up.
“Still,” Sim pursued, with the same abstraction, “’twould seem hard to pull it down.”
“Pull down the cottage, Master Cloyse?” Dorrily asked. “You don’t think o’ that, do you?”
“O!” ejaculated young Sim, as though suddenly recalled to himself. “I were onny just a-thinkin’. I don’t want to pull ‘t down — no, not me. But my father, he be that obs’nit with a thing like that, yow can’t think. ‘’Tis no good to me,’ sez he, ‘at that rent, an’ repairs a-doin’. I could put up a noo place in brick, and make double on’t!’”
“O, Master Cloyse,” the girl pleaded, “we shouldn’t like to be turned out!”
“That’s what I said. ‘’Twould be mighty hard,’ sez I, ‘to turn ‘em out, with nowhere to go.’ ‘Can’t help that,’ sez my father. ‘They bin there a long time,’ sez I, ‘an’ got used to it.’ ‘Time they had a change, then,’ sez he. ‘Then,’ sez I, ‘they can’t get no other place so cheap.’ ‘No,’ sez he, ‘they can’t, an’ that’s proof I ben’t makin’ enough out o’ the place.’ He’s a keen ‘un, is my father. ‘But then,’ sez I,’ they can’t get no other place at arl, ‘cause nobody’ll have ‘em, consekens o’ bein’ carled witches,’ I sez. ‘Haps not,’ sez he, ‘but that’s oather folks’ fault, not mine.’ An’ ‘twere no manner o’ use to argufy with him.”
Dorrily broke down altogether. “O, Master Cloyse, ’tis cruel, cruel to be so with a poor woman!” And her face went down into her hands again.
Instantly young Sim Cloyse was on the seat beside her. “’Tis no need to take on so,” he said, with all the tenderness his voice could summon, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Yow can make arl right, easy enough.”
There was a murmur between Dorrily’s sobs, and young Sim went on. “’Tis arl the easiest thing out. Yow can hev better than fower pensions, an’ any house you choose in Leigh or Hadleigh, or a noo ‘un built; an’ nobody durst lay a finger on your aunt, witch or not. T’oather is arl over now, as yow doan’t need to be told, an’ ’tis well to look to future.”
Dorrily shrank, and let her hands fall from her tear-stained face.
“Come,” said young Sim Cloyse, “I’ll say’t out. Will yow hev me? Here I be, ready, willin’ an’ lovin’. Say yow’ll hev me, an’ arl your troubles be gone — arl Mrs Martin’s troubles wiped away for the rest of her time.”
She was at the end of the seat now, pale of face and wild of eye. “O, Master Cloyse!” she cried, “how can ‘ee? To talk o’ such things now! Ha’ ye no mercy?”
“Mercy?” young Sim repeated, with astonishment — for, indeed, he had used his finest tact. “Mercy? Why, ’tis arl mercy, an’ affection’s offerin’, an’ sich! Just think! Yow can save your aunt from starvin’ an’ bein’ turned out o’ doors without a roof, an’ bein’ swum for a witch — an’ ‘haps drownded if she ben’t one — an’ make a lady o’ yourself for life, just by sayin’ ‘yes’ to me, as is so woundly fond o’ ye. Why ’tis arl mercy! ’Tis yow that would hev no mercy on her if yow den’t say ‘yes.’ But that ye will o’ course — yow be too good a gal to sarve her bad, I know. Come now, the sooner yow say’t the sooner the troubles be done with.”
“O, Master Cloyse, I can’t say it! I can’t say’t! I can’t — not now, at any rate.” Her face was hidden again, almost at her knees. “O, let me think, Master Cloyse — let me think of it alone! I be in such cruel trouble, Master Cloyse — such deadly cruel trouble! An’ my head be so bad! Leave me alone, Master Cloyse, do ‘ee — onny to think, Master Cloyse, for a day or two!”
To young Sim Cloyse this seemed useless delay, since the issue was so simple, and since there remained but one reasonable course for any girl not a fool. Still he supposed that some allowance must be made for the natural eccentricity of women, and so, since he was prepared with no more blandishments, he presently sheered off, with a promise to return in a day or two. It was but the delay of womanish vanity, he assured himself, and the desire not to make her consent seem too cheap. It was unbusiness-like, perhaps, but he could afford to overlook that, since the result was so certain. And so young Sim Cloyse went over the foot-hills and marshes in the wake of the vanished chief officer, whistling aloud, and now and again winking and grinning self-congratulation on his uncommon cleverness and knowledge of human nature.
As for Dorrily, she was face to face with a means of ending her troubles that affrighted her more than the troubles themselves; and her affliction was the greater inasmuch as it seemed that her duty and gratitude to Jack’s mother demanded the sacrifice. Her detestation of young Sim Cloyse she could never overcome; but it were a selfishness to let her inclinations govern her. For herself alone it would be better far to die; but there in the cottage was the poor broken-witted woman who had reared her — Jack’s mother; and for her sake was there an alternative? Ere long tears failed Dorrily wholly, and a blank, almost calm, anguish filled her soul and dulled her faculties. Soon after midday a perfunctory boy dawdled and divagated down the lane from the post-office, and at last climbed the bank and left a letter. It was Jack’s last writing, finished three days before he went ashore for the last time.
XXI. — MAN AND MASTER
THAT night Dorrily slept, in the sheer stupor of weariness; how long she could not guess. In the black of the night she was awakened by her aunt, who had crept close to her side, talking fast, and again chuckling horribly.
“Be a witch, Dorry, like me!” she was saying. “’Tis a fine thing — a dogged fine thing to be a witch, I tell ‘ee!”
She held the girl fiercely, and her vehemence was dreadful.
“Get to sleep, auntie dear,” Dorrily said, “you be dreamin’!”
“No, Dorry gal, ’tis no dreamin’. ’Tis real an’ fine. I be a witch, I tell ‘ee!”
“There — there — rest you, deary, do,” Dorrily pleaded. “You be a good woman, sad put on an’ afflicted, but nothen wicked, I know!”
“I tell ‘ee I be a witch, Dorry Thorn! Else why do I see ‘em every night? See ‘em an’ talk to ‘em every night, John Martin an’ Reuben Thorn your father? Ay, an’ my boy John, too, that they tell me be dead!”
Dorrily trembled as she fondled the fevered head, and kissed the hot cheek.
“I see my man that I’ve lost for years, an’ he kisses me an’ lies at my side! He be just gone while I’m talkin’ — but he’ll come back, an’ soon! An’, Dorry, I hev letters — letters at daytime. There was one to-day, from my boy John at the wars. ’Tis double joy — the joy o’ letters from the absent by day, an’ by night they be absent no more. Be a witch like me, Dorry, an’ see ‘em! Death an’ life mean nothen if you be a witch! My boy John be at the wars, fightin’ as a man should, an’ here at night to kiss his mother! Be a witch, Dorry, an’ John’ll kiss ‘ee! Be a witch like me, with Queen’s men to guard ye from the folk! Come! Come you to Castle Hill, where arl the witches be at night!”
She sprang up and pulled at Dorrily’s arm, and so, raving and urging, made to leave the cottage. So she struggled and chattered for a while, till of a sudden she fell exhaust
ed, and suffered herself to be put quietly into bed again, where she slept soundly. And in the morning she was quiet still, and, it would seem, even placidly happy. Dorrily left her to rest the early hours in bed, and rose, hollow-eyed, to face the day.
Would young Sim Cloyse come again to-day? She half expected it. Weary and distraught, she was wholly incapable of giving his offer anything like definite consideration; but unconsciously at the back of her mind the resolve was growing up to entreat a little respite, to pray at least for a little more time, if only in regard to common decency and the memory of the dead; with a feeling that at the end of all there could be nothing but the piteous, inevitable surrender, the sacrifice she must make for the sake of Jack’s mother.
But that day young Sim Cloyse was made suddenly busy with other things. For in the night a note, in Cunning Murrell’s crabbed little writing, had been pushed under old Sim Cloyse’s door. It told that respectable tradesman that his “property” lay now wholly at his disposal, and might be removed where he pleased and when he chose; with a hint that the next would be the last wholly moonless night of the month. So that the morning found both young Sim and old Sim busy and ambulant in the villages a little way in from the shore, enlisting and giving appointment to a gang of men who were willing to sacrifice a night’s rest, carry tubs without unnecessary noise, and hold their tongues about it, for very excellent pay and plenty of drink at the end of the job. And Dorrily was left unmolested.
Roboshobery Dove was much exercised in mind, being very willing, and indeed anxious, to find how they fared at the black cottage, but being in just as much restrained by a reluctance to intrude, a reluctance he would never have felt in the case of any male friend whom he might have helped. Lingood, too, was under a similar constraint, with an added element which gave his position a delicacy only palpable to his instinct, and never clear or tangible in his thoughts. Though he began to feel that plain duty demanded an inquiry or approach of some sort. Dorcas Brooker had done what she could, and Dorrily had been grateful to her; but she would not keep her long. So this morning Roboshobery Dove made fidgety reconnaisances about the cottage, lurking behind fences and hedges and in ditches — a wooden leg is an embarrassment in all lurkings about ditches — and looking from afar through his telescope. At last, as he took one such peep, Dorrily came out, and turned her face full toward him. It was so pale, so drawn, so black and haggard about the eyes, so piteously broken-spirited in expression, that the old man’s arms dropped to his sides, and he recoiled as if from a blow between the eyes. For a moment he stood, staring at the distant cottage, in whose garden he could see now only a patch of print gown where Dorrily stood, and then he shut the telescope and hurried off to Lingood’s forge.
A change in the girl he had looked for, naturally; but this was so great that it seemed to him beyond what could be occasioned by the grief of bereavement, however sharp. He could make no better guess than to suppose some sort of privation. “Steve,” he said, “she be wasted to a ghost. ’Tis like as not they’re starvin’.”
Steve Lingood spent no more time in fancies. He dropped his hammer and washed himself, and in ten minutes he was climbing the bank to the cottage, alone; while Roboshobery awaited him afar off.
Dorrily Thorn, put in fear by the sound of a man’s footstep, first looked from the window, and then met Lingood at the door. He, too, was shocked to see the girl so careworn; but he went abruptly to the business in hand.
“If I could ha’ sent a woman,” he said, “I would. But I couldn’t, an’ ’tis no time for standin’ off. You be in sad trouble— ‘haps worse than I guess — an’ I’m here to help ‘ee, to my last kick, or my last penny, as’t may be. Now I know you’re in some oather trouble, beside what I know of. Tell me.”
He spoke sharply, in the manner of a man who commands and insists, and the fact gave Dorrily a curious relief, such as no gentle expressions of condolence could have caused; for the mere sound of command seemed to lift a little the weight of doubt and responsibility that was beyond her strength. She felt less embarrassment in telling her troubles to Lingood than might be supposed, because she had always looked on him as something of an elderly man. True, he was but twenty-eight, and she was twenty; but her habit of mind dated from the time when she was thirteen and he was twenty-one, big and tall, and, in her childish eyes, a man within view of middle age.
“Tell me,” demanded Steve Lingood.
She closed the door behind her and came out into the garden, in a part removed from the open bedroom window. “She’s upstairs,” she explained, “and talking near may disturb her.”
“Tell me,” the smith repeated. “Is’t money?”
Dorrily shook her head. “No, Master Lingood,” she said, mournfully enough, “’tis not money — at any rate for the present.”
“Then what?”
She looked up at his face, then down on the ground, and at last fixed her eyes on the bushes visible to the side of him. Somehow, now, it seemed harder to talk of the urgent, the pressing trouble than she had thought. “Poor aunt,” she said at length, “be very bad.”
“Ill? Sick?”
“Well enough in health, but strange in the head with her troubles, an’ helpless as a child. An’ then — Master Lingood, folk be so cruel to us!”
“Damn ‘em!” Lingood burst out with a stamp. “What ha’ they done?”
“’Tis not that they’ve done much but talk, though that be bad enough. But she be terrified they might swim her — the Leigh chaps have talked of it, I’m told. An’ — O, Master Lingood, arl sorrows come at once! ’Tis said there can be no pension for her, an’ Master Cloyse do talk o’ pullin’ down the cottage an’ turnin’ her out with nowhere to go. An’ arl is on me, Master Lingood, an’ it be too much for a poor girl!”
Lingood clenched his jaw, fidgeted his feet, shut and opened his fists. The strain was hard to bear.
“’Tis arl on me, Master Lingood, and which way to turn I can’t tell, an’ I be sick an’ ill with it. An’ — an’ there be only one way I can see.”
“What way?”
Dorrily’s wan cheeks flushed. “There be somebody wantin’ to marry me,” she said.
Lingood caught a quick breath. Then, as well as something in his throat would let him, he asked: “What — now? Since...?”
Dorrily nodded. She was pale again now, paler than ever.
Lingood was pale, too, though she did not look up to see it. “Well,” he said slowly, and with some touch of bitterness in his voice; “so you think that be the way then? Maybe—”
She lifted her eyes with so much in them of anguish and reproach that he stopped. “O, ’tis terrible. Master Lingood,” she cried, “an’ I don’t like him! But I must do’t, mustn’t I?”
Lingood had never before found speech so hard and so slow. “I don’t see,” he said. “Why?”
“What can I do? O, Master Lingood, I hate him; but ’tis keep and shelter for her, an’ protection, an’ ‘haps then his father’ll let her stay here — at least till she mends — an’—”
“His father?”
Dorrily nodded quickly, with a faint and momentary flush. “’Tis young Sim Cloyse,” she said quietly. And then, a little at a time, with the fewer tears because of the desperate resignation that had grown upon her, she told the story of yesterday’s interview. “’Tis bad for me bitter bad. Master Lingood,” she concluded, simply and sadly; “an’ I sicken to think of it. But I must, mustn’t I?”
Lingood could bear it little longer. Heart and brain alike seemed bursting. “Den’t you — think,” he gasped; “Den’t you — think — o’ friends — that might help ‘ee?”
“O, Master Lingood, you’re kind — kind friends — you an’ Master Dove; an’ the chief officer’s a good gentleman to us. But what can ‘ee do more than ye have? You be kind — over kind; but this — these things ye can’t help; ’tis for me only. An’ I must, Master Lingood, I must!”
“Ye shan’t!” Lingood burst out, for he c
ould hold it no more. “Ye shan’t! I won’t see’t — can’t! Dorrily Thorn, I love ‘ee myself — God forgive me for sayin’ it at such a time! But true ’tis, an’ now you know’t. Unnerstand!” he steadied himself sharply before the wondering gaze— “unnerstand! I’m not askin’ ye. I wouldn’t treat ye so at this time. I leave that. But the other you shall not do — I will see no such evil thing!”
Dorrily could only gaze and wonder. But her load was lightening — lightening at every word. This strong man was taking her doubts on himself, and resolving them.
“Now,” the smith went on, “let us hev no mistake. Young Sim Cloyse hev asked you to marry him, an’ you hate to think oft. Now, be that the full truth, an’ not a thote kep’ back?”
It was an injury to doubt her, and the tone of her answer said as much.
“An’ Mrs Martin don’t know?”
“No — nothen. I doubt if she’d understand.”
“Very well. I will take your answer to Sim Cloyse. Unless you’d rather tell him yourself?”
Dorrily shook her head. Truly she shrank from another experience of young Sim’s courtship.
“’Tis settled, then, an’ I’ll see you’re troubled no more. For what I said about myself— ’tis said now an’ can’t be unsaid, though ’twas forced from me. But you may be easy as to that, too; for never again will I speak of it, unless some time, when your trouble be nothen but a thing remembered, you make it known to me I may: unless you wear a rose in your hair again, as I saw you last year at Bennett’s harvestin’.”
She stood alone in the garden, and Steve Lingood was tramping up the lane. It seemed a dream — a dream that put all thought to rout, though a dream that had its under-mutter of doubt and sorrow. There went Stephen Lingood, striding up the lane, till the steps were heard no more; and here stood she in a whirl of amaze, though incongruously calm — even slow of understanding.
Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison Page 125