Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  He brooded in silence over this, while Nancy finished clearing away. Supper had been late, and by the time she had washed up the tall clock whirred for the hour of ten.

  “It’s late,” she said, “so if we’re to have prayers, Mr. Pentreath, let’s have them now, and then I’ll be off to bed.”

  “Prayers?” he said. “I wonder now—”

  “Well, then, leave ’em out,” she said. “I but thought you’d find a bit of comfort in ‘em, but, lor’, it’s no odds to me.”

  “Happen I might make a prayer or two, low and quiet,” he said, «but there was a terrible to-do, ye’ll not forget, when last I lifted up my voice of a Sunday evening.”

  “Then I’ll be off to bed,” said she, “if you don’t feel prayerful, for I’m tired out with the day we’ve had.”

  He fidgeted in his chair with the pipe which he had forgotten to fill stuck in his mouth. Sure enough, there could be no screaming and thumping on the floor overhead to-night, but the old house had been creaking oddly, and that might be some warning. And what should he say if he prayed, that would please the Lord, and not bring risk of giving offence to those who walked in other ways? Perhaps in a week’s time if all went on peacefully he might get more confidence, and bellow away again. There was a queer sinking feeling creeping upon him to-night; an hour ago at supper he had been full of pluck, thinking of all the honour he’d done to Mollie, but that had vanished, and a trembling and a fearfulness was come over him.

  “Nay, there’ll be no prayers to-night,” he said in a loud voice so that anyone could hear. “The spirit o’ prayer seems to have gone from me, and then there’s you and Dennis, and no petition o’ mine would be a guidance and a strength to you: ’tis like casting pearls before swine. But it’s full early yet, and the nights are long still, and I don’t fancy lying in my room with the empty chamber next door, now that old Sally’s not keeping an eye on the dead. But if you want to get to bed, Nancy, there’s Dennis who’ll keep me company awhile. ’Tis a thousand pities, Dennis, that you’e never learned to take your liquor yet, as a Pentreath should, or I’d let you take your will o’ my bottle, and we could sit and quaff all night.”

  He got up, shaking and holding on to the table.

  “Eh, I can’t lie in that room,” he said, “till we see whether Mollie’s bed in the churchyard’s to her fancy. I won’t sleep there, I tell ye. I’m scared to think on it.”

  Dennis looked at him with a certain contemptuous compassion, scarcely sorry for the man himself, but rather for such an abjectness.

  “You can sleep in my room then,” he said, “if you’re so scared o’ your own, for Nell’s still bedded above the studio.”

  “Well, thank ye kindly, I’m sure, for telling your grandfather where he may sleep,” he cried in a sudden flame of anger against Dennis.

  Dennis got up with a shrug of his shoulders.

  “Sure, ’tis for you to sleep where you like,” he said. “I’m off to bed.”

  “Nay, but don’t you both leave me,” stammered John. ’Tis company I want, ’tis being alone that’s beyond me. And there’ve been no prayers. God forgive me. I’ll put up a petition or two now, just silently, if ye’ll bide a minute yet.’

  He went down on his knees, and covered his face.

  “He’s fair gibbering to-night,” said Nancy to Dennis in a low voice, “and, lor’, whatever are we to do with him? I doubt he’s got the horrors coming on.”

  “No, ’tisn’t the drink, ’tis fear,” said Dennis. Here, Grandfather, get you up, and you can put your mattress and pillow on the floor in my room. And I’ll take th’ old dog whip with me, so mind you don’t come within reach o’ my bed. Now up we go.”

  CHAPTER XIV. SUNDAY BY THE SEA

  IT was a Sunday morning in mid-May and Dennis was walking along the footpath that led through the fields south-eastwards from the farm to the sea. It passed from field to field through gateless stiles which were floored with three stone blocks set lengthways across them, with a dug-out space of a couple of feet between them. This simple device was sufficient to prevent the straying of the grazing sheep, for it never entered their silly heads to step steady from block to block till they were over. You’d see a young ewe going careful with a foreleg, and then a hind-leg would slip into the drop between the stones, and that was no go. It would turn about in a bungle and leap to the field it carne from: it learned its lesson after a few such experiments, and tried no more. Dennis thought of his grandfather when in his cups, trying to negotiate such a passage: he’d step firm on to one block, and then, as like as not, trip between the next two and bark a shin. But then nowadays he’d never think of going abroad after dusk had come on; he’d be back in the kitchen before the gloaming, and be drinking himself blotty. He had broken up Mollie’s rocking-chair one evening when Dennis, with a sly foot, had set it bobbing, just for mischief. A rare turn that had given him, but he was courageous that night, and had gone for it with the wood-axe, and stuffed the bits of it into the fire, so there would be no more rocking.

  They had had a bad time with him after the evening of Mollie’s funeral. Nancy, good soul, had stopped at the farm for a couple of weeks after that, though she had intended to go up to London as soon as the burying was over, till she saw them more settled. But she had been of little use, for she was all of a twitter herself, after the strain of that gruesome nursing, and Nell was getting upset, too, which would never do, while her child was yet unweaned. Dennis had said something of this botheration to his Willie; he hardly liked to be out all day, leaving the two women with the tipsy old dodderer, and good God, wasn’t Willie a brick! He just gave a grunt or two, but no more, and an hour afterwards there was he at the kitchen door with a bag of his clothes in his hand, come to do housework, if ’twas needed, and be there, anyhow, day and night to help them along. There was no jaw about it: he just said he was out of a job, and he’d work on the farm, while Dennis stopped at home, or he’d bide there while Dennis was out at work, and they’d both be there for nights. And what a head of teak he had! John was ever so pleased to have a young fellow who’d keep him company and drink with him, when the milk-and-water folk had yawned themselves to bed, and an hour later Willie would hoist the old tipsy-cake up the stairs, and see him stowed in his room, and then get to snoring sound himself in the chamber next door, where Mollie had died. There’d been a noisome stink there at first, but soon it got purified, and one night as he was undressing a great brown owl had perched on the sill of the open window. Willie had just taken off his belt, and he whipped it fine with the buckle of it, across its hissing mouth, and off it went, for sure it was welcome in that room no longer. Happen it was the same bird, thought Dennis, as had raided the hens on the afternoon of his grandmother’s funeral. He had tried once and again to get a shot at it, but it was a wary bird as well as bold, and was away before he could loose off. Willie’s advent had set Nancy free, and now she was up in England keeping house for Mr. Giles in London.

  Dennis had a towel over his shoulder, for he would have a swim on this warm morning, and he carried a basket of victuals in his hand. Nell was to follow him presently, bringing the boy with her, and they meant to spend the day on a little sandy beach tucked away below a bit of a hamlet down there, while Willie, the handy fellow, cooked dinner for himself and John Pentreath; and after that he would leave the old man for his Sunday Bible-reading, and be back for supper. There was the sound of bells, distant and blurred, in the air, and John had already gone off to church at St. Columb’s in his napless top-hat, which had its thick new mourning band around it, clothing its nakedness.

  A rare day it was, the sun as hot as midsummer, while spring and all its jubilant freshness still lingered. Once more the meadows were tall with the growing hay, and there was a promise of just such a bumper crop as last year. A strip of downland to the edge of the low cliffs succeeded the fields, and a band of gorse fringed its upper edges, grown so thick that Dennis must sidle through it. All winter long it had been in
flower, and now under this hot sun the pods were popping with minute explosions and scattering their seed. The honeyed scent of it lay on the air like streaks of oil on water, and Dennis paused once and again to pluck a blossom and suck the sweetness from the heart of it. Then came a steepish descent, where lichened blocks of granite stuck out of the soil with ferns growing in the cool crevices between, and the scent of wood-smoke from the cottages below where dinner was cooking drifted up the hillside. On the strip of level where the road wound round from St. Columb’s were orchards of full-blossomed apple-trees with circles of lime daubed round their trunks to keep the crawling creatures off them, and Dennis struck the road here and followed it through the hamlet. The stream from Kenrith copse ran channelled at the edge of it, and the thatched cottages stood behind, with fuchsia-trees and japonica covering their walls, and bee-skeps in their bits of garden. He turned off down a short lane that led direct to the shore, and passed through a grove of silver poplars that winked and twinkled in the breeze that came up from the sea. Thickets of blackthorn starred with flowers lay about them, and the hawthorn buds were opening. Then came a further small cluster of thatched roofs, and perched on a hewn platform the red-brick Methodist church. There was singing going on within, and Dennis puckered his lips and joined his whistle to a familiar tune.

  The lane came to an end just above the beach, where tawny fishing-nets lay drying. Outside the last of the cottages was a grey collie-dog, dozing in the sun, who looked sleepily up as Dennis passed, sniffed to see if he could be trusted, and put his head down again on his outstretched paws. A bank of boulders lay along the top edge of the beach, and a short curving pier, tall and strong enough to resist the inpouring of waves from the south-west when the sea ran high, jutted out from the right-hand side of this small bay, and at its base lay a couple of fishing-boats moored to rings there, not now afloat, but lying tilted sideways on the sand uncovered by the ebbed tide.

  Dennis gave this beach the go-by, and went on along the short turf above it for another hundred yards, where was the rendezvous he had appointed with Nell. There was a scrambling descent among some rocks, and at the bottom a small sequestered stretch of sand lying between two reefs running out into the water. A cave among these rocks would serve as a dressing-place for her, if so be she was firm in her resolve to have a dip, and there was this sun-warmed sand for the baby to roll on. But she would not be down for a while yet, and Dennis stripped and walked out along the reef to take his plunge into deeper water, cursing at the sharpness of the limpets and barnacles that made their horny homes there. Tepid rock-pools lay along it, with delicate forests of green seaweed waving in them, which housed pulpy sea-anemones, red as droppings of currant jam. Tiny fish whisked away from his foot, as he splashed into one of these, taking cover in the weeds, and a small crab, defiant with gaping pincers, scuttled from the edge of the pool. “There’s a spunky little warrior, indeed,” thought Dennis, and he squatted down with the sun warm on his shoulders and must needs rout it out from its hiding-place among the pebbles in a high state of indignation, and make it fight his fingers, till the wash of a ripple from without bore it away upside down with its legs clutching wildly at the water. Then he stood up, taut and erect, pulling a long breath into his lungs before he threw himself with arms stretched out above his yellow head into the shining of the sea. He swam out till he had passed the end of the pier and could look across the small enclosed harbourage and up the hillside down which he had come. He whistled to the drowsy dog, who stared blankly about and vented a couple of tentative barks by way of answer, and then he spied Nell coming down the lane above. He shouted to her, and her sharp eyes saw his head and waving arm, for she stopped and danced the baby up and down, as a signal of reply. Then he turned and swam seawards again, arm over arm with a frill of water standing up round his neck, and lay floating there awhile.

  “God, it’s good to be in the water again,” he thought. “I yearned for it this morning, and to get away with Nell for a day in the open.”

  Presently he heard his name called, and there she was at the top of the scramble down the rocks, distrustful of her stepping with the boy in her arms.

  “Bide there,” he shouted, “and I’ll come and take him from you.”

  He foamed back to land and ran across the sandy beach.

  “Eh, Dennis, you’re a disgrace,” she called. “Pray and hitch a towel round you, for all the folk are coming out o’ chapel, and ’tis in full sight o’ them if you climb up here.”

  He picked up the towel from where his clothes lay, and went up to her.

  “Give me the boy,” he said, “for I’m barefoot and can’t slip, and I’ll carry him down and then come back to give you a hand.”

  “Nay, I can manage easy for myself,” she said, following him. “’Twas only that I wanted an arm to spare to steady myself. Look at him: he’s eager to come to you, the ingrate he is. We’ll soon have his duds off him, and give him a taste o’ the sun.”

  Dennis tucked the baby into the crook of his arm, and depositing him on the beach began fumbling with the abstruse strings of his clothes.

  “Here, Nell, I’m making a silly job o’ these fastenings,” he said. “’Tis more in your line.”

  The baby chuckled and crowed with delight when, as Nell slipped his socks and swathings from him, he felt the sun warm on his dimpled limbs and rolled over on the sand.

  “Eh, put a towel round him, Nell,” said Dennis.

  “’Twould be a scandal if the folk from chapel saw a great feller like him without a rag on. It’s a fair disgrace you allow your boy to be.”

  She answered him only with a smile, for she was watching the antics of the child as he turned himself over in the sand and kicked at the air. Then from him her eyes went back to Dennis. His shoulder, close to her, still glistened with the wet, and he smelt of the sea out of which he had just come. There was a wisp of weed like a strip of plaster clinging to it, and she peeled it off.

  “The pair of you!” she said, “and to think that some day he’ll be bigger than his daddy, maybe, and looking out for a wife. Sit him on your shoulder again, for that’s a thing to make him crow.”

  Dennis reached out a hand and caught the little naked body up and perched him there, while the aimless hands caught at his hair and buffeted his face.

  “What’ll he be thinking of, I wonder?” said she.

  “He can’t tell as you’re his daddy, but just something warm and wet and comfortable to sit upon. I must get me into the sea, too, for I brought my dress down.”

  “Aye, there’s the cave,” said Dennis. “Get you ready quick, and we’ll go for a swim together.”

  Dennis waded out after her when she came forth again with the child still on his shoulder.

  “May I be dipping him, Nell?” he called. “A taste of the salt makes them hard and strong, don’t it?”

  “Aye, dip him just once, but put your wet hand on his head first to see if the water’s to his mind. Lord, the lamb! Don’t he like it! So put him in quick and gentle just up to his shoulders, and see the water don’t get in his eyes.”

  A gurgle and a gasp followed, and marvellous mutterings.

  “’Tis enough,” she said. “Give him a rub in your towel, and set him on the beach again.”

  Nell had launched herself, and he swam out after her. She had been used to the sea since her childhood, and, at ease in the water, moved along as unconsciously as she walked, in her tunic and knickerbockers, with arms and legs bare to the shoulder and knee, and an eye ever watchful of the bundle on the beach. Then presently she had had enough for the first dip of the year, and got back to land to dress the baby, and let the water dry off her. She was scarcely less dumb than her child to express the sense of renewal and cleansing that this morning of sun and sea brought to her, and it was just a wordless ecstasy of sweetness to be here with two wholesome creatures that were the world to her. They had all cut free from the dark house, and the shadow that brooded over it, and from the more
definite presence of John Pentreath, with his unquiet eyes that seemed always to be on the lookout for something they feared to see, and the grim mouth that seldom spoke. Often, when he was half tipsy in the evening, he would sit looking at Dennis, busy hating him, and sometimes that gave Nell an uneasy moment, but it was an empty fear, surely: what more occupied him was something he himself dreaded, and, as like as not, that was an empty fear, too. It was something to do with her Aunt Mollie, she felt sure, but the poor soul had laid quiet in her grave now for two months and more, and all that she had left behind her, the bees and the poultry, prospered wonderfully. Only a few days back Nell had taken an early swarm herself, independent of veil or gloves, as Aunt Mollie had bade her, but just crooning the bee-song to them, as she dropped them by the handful into the new hive. This looked as if Aunt Mollie, poor soul, was kindly to the farm, if so be she was Aunt Mollie still, and not a mere lump of earthworms. Yet fear sat ever in John Pentreath’s eyes, and what else could he be fearing? A dismal wreck he had become by now, sallow and shaking and dirty. Going fast downhill, said Dr. Symes, and perhaps the sooner he came to the bottom of it the better...But just now all thoughts of such things were scoured off her by the sea and the sun: mind and body alike were cleansed from these dark tarnishings.

  She had dressed herself by the time Dennis came back from his swim; but he would have naught to do with his clothes yet, and ate his food with but the towel to gird him. His thoughts apparently had been running on the same lines as hers. “’Tis a bit better here than being stewed in the kitchen at home,” he said. “Sunday and all, which is the worst of the week with Grandfather. Lord, Nell, it’s little more’n a year ago that you and I would sit there mum all afternoon, with those damned stories of Romans and Christians to read, and ’twas the Romans I fancied best of the two. And now we’re free as the gulls.”

  “Aye, and who is it as sets us free?” she asked.