'That's more than I can say of you,' she said. 'I've heard more harm than good about you.'
'Ay, I dessay,' he said, looking in the fire. It was a long time since he had seen the furze burning, he said to himself. There was a silence, during which she watched his face.
'Do you call yourself a man?' she said, more in contemptuous reproach than in anger. 'Leave a woman as you've left me, you don't care to what! - and then to turn up in this fashion, without a word to say for yourself.'
He stirred in his chair, planted his feet apart, and resting his arms on his knees, looked steadily into the fire, without answering. So near to her was his head, and the close black hair, she could scarcely refrain from starting away, as if it would bite her.
'Do you call that the action of a man?' she repeated.
'No,' he said, reaching and poking the bits of wood into the fire with his fingers. 'I didn't call it anything, as I know of. It's no good calling things by any names whatsoever, as I know of.'
She watched him in his actions. There was a longer and longer pause between each speech, though neither knew it.
'I wonder what you think of yourself!' she exclaimed, with vexed emphasis. 'I wonder what sort of a fellow you take yourself to be!' She was really perplexed as well as angry.
'Well,' he said, lifting his head to look at her, 'I guess I'll answer for my own faults, if everybody else'll answer for theirs.'
Her heart beat fiery hot as he lifted his face to her. She breathed heavily, averting her face, almost losing her self-control.
'And what do you take me to be?' she cried, in real helplessness.
His face was lifted watching her, watching her soft, averted face, and the softly heaving mass of her breasts.
'I take you,' he said, with that laconic truthfulness which exercised such power over her, 'to be the deuce of a fine woman - darn me if you're not as fine a built woman as I've seen, handsome with it as well. I shouldn't have expected you to put on such handsome flesh: 'struth I shouldn't.'
Her heart beat fiery hot, as he watched her with those bright agate eyes, fixedly.
'Been very handsome to you, for fifteen years, my sakes!' she replied.
He made no answer to this, but sat with his bright, quick eyes upon her.
Then he rose. She started involuntarily. But he only said, in his laconic, measured way:
'It's warm in here now.'
And he pulled off his overcoat, throwing it on the table. She sat as if slightly cowed, whilst he did so.
'Them ropes has given my arms something, by Ga-ard,' he drawled, feeling his arms with his hands.
Still she sat in her chair before him, slightly cowed.
'You was sharp, wasn't you, to catch me like that, eh?' he smiled slowly. 'By Ga-ard, you had me fixed proper, proper you had. Darn me, you fixed me up proper - proper, you did.'
He leaned forwards in his chair towards her.
'I don't think no worse of you for it, no, darned if I do. Fine pluck in a woman's what I admire. That I do, indeed.'
She only gazed into the fire.
'We fet from the start, we did. And, my word, you begin again quick the minute you see me, you did. Darn me, you was too sharp for me. A darn fine woman, puts up a darn good fight. Darn me if I could find a woman in all the darn States as could get me down like that. Wonderful fine woman you be, truth to say, at this minute.'
She only sat glowering into the fire.
'As grand a pluck as a man could wish to find in a woman, true as I'm here,' he said, reaching forward his hand and tentatively touching her between her full, warm breasts, quietly.
She started, and seemed to shudder. But his hand insinuated itself between her breasts, as she continued to gaze in the fire.
'And don't you think I've come back here a-begging,' he said. 'I've more than one thousand pounds to my name, I have. And a bit of a fight for a how-de-do pleases me, that it do. But that doesn't mean as you're going to deny as you're my Missis....'
The Primrose Path
A young man came out of the Victoria station, looking undecidedly at the taxi-cabs, dark-red and black, pressing against the kerb under the glass-roof. Several men in greatcoats and brass buttons jerked themselves erect to catch his attention, at the same time keeping an eye on the other people as they filtered through the open doorways of the station. Berry, however, was occupied by one of the men, a big, burly fellow whose blue eyes glared back and whose red-brown moustache bristled in defiance.
'Do you want a cab, sir?' the man asked, in a half-mocking, challenging voice.
Berry hesitated still.
'Are you Daniel Sutton?' he asked.
'Yes,' replied the other defiantly, with uneasy conscience.
'Then you are my uncle,' said Berry.
They were alike in colouring, and somewhat in features, but the taxi driver was a powerful, well-fleshed man who glared at the world aggressively, being really on the defensive against his own heart. His nephew, of the same height, was thin, well-dressed, quiet and indifferent in his manner. And yet they were obviously kin.
'And who the devil are you?' asked the taxi driver.
'I'm Daniel Berry,' replied the nephew.
'Well, I'm damned - never saw you since you were a kid.'
Rather awkwardly at this late hour the two shook hands.
'How are you, lad?'
'All right. I thought you were in Australia.'
'Been back three months - bought a couple of these damned things' - he kicked the tyre of his taxi-cab in affectionate disgust. There was a moment's silence.
'Oh, but I'm going back out there. I can't stand this cankering, rotten-hearted hell of a country any more; you want to come out to Sydney with me, lad. That's the place for you - beautiful place, oh, you could wish for nothing better. And money in it, too. - How's your mother?'
'She died at Christmas,' said the young man.
'Dead! What! - our Anna!' The big man's eyes stared, and he recoiled in fear. 'God, lad,' he said, 'that's three of 'em gone!'
The two men looked away at the people passing along the pale grey pavements, under the wall of Trinity Church.
'Well, strike me lucky!' said the taxi driver at last, out of breath. 'She wor th' best o' th' bunch of 'em. I see nowt nor hear nowt from any of 'em - they're not worth it, I'll be damned if they are - our sermon-lapping Adela and Maud,' he looked scornfully at his nephew. 'But she was the best of 'em, our Anna was, that's a fact.'
He was talking because he was afraid.
'An' after a hard life like she'd had. How old was she, lad?'
'Fifty-five.'
'Fifty-five ...' He hesitated. Then, in a rather hushed voice, he asked the question that frightened him:
'And what was it, then?'
'Cancer.'
'Cancer again, like Julia! I never knew there was cancer in our family. Oh, my good God, our poor Anna, after the life she'd had! - What, lad, do you see any God at the back of that? - I'm damned if I do.'
He was glaring, very blue-eyed and fierce, at his nephew. Berry lifted his shoulders slightly.
'God?' went on the taxi driver, in a curious intense tone, 'You've only to look at the folk in the street to know there's nothing keeps it going but gravitation. Look at 'em. Look at him!' - A mongrel-looking man was nosing past. 'Wouldn't he murder you for your watch-chain, but that he's afraid of society. He's got it in him.... Look at 'em.'
Berry watched the towns-people go by, and, sensitively feeling his uncle's antipathy, it seemed he was watching a sort of danse macabre of ugly criminals.
'Did you ever see such a God-forsaken crew creeping about! It gives you the very horrors to look at 'em. I sit in this damned car and watch 'em till, I can tell you, I feel like running the cab amuck among 'em, and running myself to kingdom come - '
Berry wondered at this outburst. He knew his uncle was the black-sheep, the youngest, the darling of his mother's family. He knew him to be at outs with respectability, mixing with the looser, sp
orting type, all betting and drinking and showing dogs and birds, and racing. As a critic of life, however, he did not know him. But the young man felt curiously understanding. 'He uses words like I do, he talks nearly as I talk, except that I shouldn't say those things. But I might feel like that, in myself, if I went a certain road.'
'I've got to go to Watmore,' he said. 'Can you take me?'
'When d'you want to go?' asked the uncle fiercely.
'Now.'
'Come on, then. What d'yer stand gassin' on th' causeway for?'
The nephew took his seat beside the driver. The cab began to quiver, then it started forward with a whirr. The uncle, his hands and feet acting mechanically, kept his blue eyes fixed on the highroad into whose traffic the car was insinuating its way. Berry felt curiously as if he were sitting beside an older development of himself. His mind went back to his mother. She had been twenty years older than this brother of hers whom she had loved so dearly. 'He was one of the most affectionate little lads, and such a curly head! I could never have believed he would grow into the great, coarse bully he is - for he's nothing else. My father made a god of him - well, it's a good thing his father is dead. He got in with that sporting gang, that's what did it. Things were made too easy for him, and so he thought of no one but himself, and this is the result.'
Not that 'Joky' Sutton was so very black a sheep. He had lived idly till he was eighteen, then had suddenly married a young, beautiful girl with clear brows and dark grey eyes, a factory girl. Having taken her to live with his parents he, lover of dogs and pigeons, went on to the staff of a sporting paper. But his wife was without uplift or warmth. Though they made money enough, their house was dark and cold and uninviting. He had two or three dogs, and the whole attic was turned into a great pigeon-house. He and his wife lived together roughly, with no warmth, no refinement, no touch of beauty anywhere, except that she was beautiful. He was a blustering, impetuous man, she was rather cold in her soul, did not care about anything very much, was rather capable and close with money. And she had a common accent in her speech. He outdid her a thousand times in coarse language, and yet that cold twang in her voice tortured him with shame that he stamped down in bullying and in becoming more violent in his own speech.
Only his dogs adored him, and to them, and to his pigeons, he talked with rough, yet curiously tender caresses while they leaped and fluttered for joy.
After he and his wife had been married for seven years a little girl was born to them, then later, another. But the husband and wife drew no nearer together. She had an affection for her children almost like a cool governess. He had an emotional man's fear of sentiment, which helped to nip his wife from putting out any shoots. He treated his children roughly, and pretended to think it a good job when one was adopted by a well-to-do maternal aunt. But in his soul he hated his wife that she could give away one of his children. For after her cool fashion, she loved him. With a chaos of a man such as he, she had no chance of being anything but cold and hard, poor thing. For she did love him.
In the end he fell absurdly and violently in love with a rather sentimental young woman who read Browning. He made his wife an allowance and established a new ménage with the young lady, shortly after emigrating with her to Australia. Meanwhile his wife had gone to live with a publican, a widower, with whom she had had one of those curious, tacit understandings of which quiet women are capable, something like an arrangement for provision in the future.
This was as much as the nephew knew. He sat beside his uncle, wondering how things stood at the present. They raced lightly out past the cemetery and along the boulevard, then turned into the rather grimy country. The mud flew out on either side, there was a fine mist of rain which blew in their faces. Berry covered himself up.
In the lanes the high hedges shone black with rain. The silvery grey sky, faintly dappled, spread wide over the low, green land. The elder man glanced fiercely up the road, then turned his red face to his nephew.
'And how're you going on, lad?' he said loudly. Berry noticed that his uncle was slightly uneasy of him. It made him also uncomfortable. The elder man had evidently something pressing on his soul.
'Who are you living with in town?' asked the nephew. 'Have you gone back to Aunt Maud?'
'No,' barked the uncle. 'She wouldn't have me. I offered to - I want to - but she wouldn't.'
'You're alone, then?'
'No, I'm not alone.'
He turned and glared with his fierce blue eyes at his nephew, but said no more for some time. The car ran on through the mud, under the wet wall of the park.
'That other devil tried to poison me,' suddenly shouted the elder man. 'The one I went to Australia with.' At which, in spite of himself, the younger smiled in secret.
'How was that?' he asked.
'Wanted to get rid of me. She got in with another fellow on the ship.... By Jove, I was bad.'
'Where? - on the ship?'
'No,' bellowed the other. 'No. That was in Wellington, New Zealand. I was bad, and got lower an' lower - couldn't think what was up. I could hardly crawl about. As certain as I'm here, she was poisoning me, to get to th' other chap - I'm certain of it.'
'And what did you do?'
'I cleared out - went to Sydney - '
'And left her?'
'Yes, I thought begod, I'd better clear out if I wanted to live.'
'And you were all right in Sydney?'
'Better in no time - I know she was putting poison in my coffee.'
'Hm!'
There was a glum silence. The driver stared at the road ahead, fixedly, managing the car as if it were a live thing. The nephew felt that his uncle was afraid, quite stupefied with fear, fear of life, of death, of himself.
'You're in rooms, then?' asked the nephew.
'No, I'm in a house of my own,' said the uncle defiantly, 'wi' th' best little woman in th' Midlands. She's a marvel. - Why don't you come an' see us?'
'I will. Who is she?'
'Oh, she's a good girl - a beautiful little thing. I was clean gone on her first time I saw her. An' she was on me. Her mother lives with us - respectable girl, none o' your....'
'And how old is she?'
' - how old is she? - she's twenty-one.'
'Poor thing.'
'She's right enough.'
'You'd marry her - getting a divorce - ?'
'I shall marry her.'
There was a little antagonism between the two men.
'Where's Aunt Maud?' asked the younger.
'She's at the Railway Arms - we passed it, just against Rollin's Mill Crossing.... They sent me a note this morning to go an' see her when I can spare time. She's got consumption.'
'Good Lord! Are you going?'
'Yes - '
But again Berry felt that his uncle was afraid.
The young man got through his commission in the village, had a drink with his uncle at the inn, and the two were returning home. The elder man's subject of conversation was Australia. As they drew near the town they grew silent, thinking both of the public-house. At last they saw the gates of the railway crossing were closed before them.
'Shan't you call?' asked Berry, jerking his head in the direction of the inn, which stood at the corner between two roads, its sign hanging under a bare horse-chestnut tree in front.
'I might as well. Come in an' have a drink,' said the uncle.
It had been raining all the morning, so shallow pools of water lay about. A brewer's wagon, with wet barrels and warm-smelling horses, stood near the door of the inn. Everywhere seemed silent, but for the rattle of trains at the crossing. The two men went uneasily up the steps and into the bar. The place was paddled with wet feet, empty. As the bar-man was heard approaching, the uncle asked, his usual bluster slightly hushed by fear:
'What yer goin' ta have, lad? Same as last time?'
A man entered, evidently the proprietor. He was good-looking, with a long, heavy face and quick, dark eyes. His glance at Sutton was swift, a start, a re
cognition, and a withdrawal, into heavy neutrality.
'How are yer, Dan?' he said, scarcely troubling to speak.
'Are yer, George?' replied Sutton, hanging back. 'My nephew, Dan Berry.
Give us Red Seal, George.'
The publican nodded to the younger man, and set the glasses on the bar. He pushed forward the two glasses, then leaned back in the dark corner behind the door, his arms folded, evidently preferring to get back from the watchful eyes of the nephew.
' - 's luck,' said Sutton.
The publican nodded in acknowledgement. Sutton and his nephew drank.
'Why the hell don't you get that road mended in Cinder Hill - ,' said Sutton fiercely, pushing back his driver's cap and showing his short-cut, bristling hair.
'They can't find it in their hearts to pull it up,' replied the publican, laconically.
'Find in their hearts! They want settin' in barrows an' runnin' up an' down it till they cried for mercy.'
Sutton put down his glass. The publican renewed it with a sure hand, at ease in whatsoever he did. Then he leaned back against the bar. He wore no coat. He stood with arms folded, his chin on his chest, his long moustache hanging. His back was round and slack, so that the lower part of his abdomen stuck forward, though he was not stout. His cheek was healthy, brown-red, and he was muscular. Yet there was about him this physical slackness, a reluctance in his slow, sure movements. His eyes were keen under his dark brows, but reluctant also, as if he were gloomily apathetic.
There was a halt. The publican evidently would say nothing. Berry looked at the mahogany bar-counter, slopped with beer, at the whisky-bottles on the shelves. Sutton, his cap pushed back, showing a white brow above a weather-reddened face, rubbed his cropped hair uneasily.
The publican glanced round suddenly. It seemed that only his dark eyes moved.
'Going up?' he asked.
And something, perhaps his eyes, indicated the unseen bed-chamber.
'Ay - that's what I came for,' replied Sutton, shifting nervously from one foot to the other. 'She's been asking for me?'
England, My England Page 15