“Yes, even then.”
He put down his cup and took both her hands in his own. “How long?”
“Not long, not very long, not long enough . . .”
“Enough for what?” He broke up her hesitation. “For me to forget you? No, no, not in the fifty-two weeks of the whole world of time.”
“I did want to stay here,” she said, “and see all the funny things country people do now.” She was rather vague about those funny things. “Carols, mumming, visiting; go to church on Christmas morning, though how I should get past those dreadful goats, I don’t know; why are they always in the churchyard?”
“Teasy creatures they are! Followed parson into service one Sunday, indeed, ah! one of ’em did. Jumped up in his pulpit, too, so ’tis said. But when are you coming back?”
She told him it was a little uncertain, she was not sure, she could not say, it was a little uncertain.
“In a week, maybe?”
Yes, a week; but perhaps it would be longer, she could not say, it was uncertain.
“So. Well, all right then, I shall watch for you.”
“Yes, watch for me.”
They gave each other good wishes and said good-bye in the little dark porch. The shadowy bird on the blind stood up and shrugged itself. Pettigrove’s stay had scarcely lasted an hour, but in that time the moon had gone, the sky had cleared, and in its ravishing darkness the stars almost crackled, so fierce was their mysterious perturbation. The village man felt Caroline’s arms about him and her lips against his mouth as she whispered a “God bless you.” He turned away home, dazed, entranced, he did not heed the stars. In the darkness a knacker’s cart trotted past him with a dim lantern swinging at its tail and the driver bawling a song. In the keen air the odour from the dead horse sickened him.
Pettigrove passed Christmas gaily enough with his kindred, and even his wife indulged in brief gaieties. Her cousin was one of those men full of affable disagreements; an attitude rather than an activity of mind. He had a curious face resembling an owl’s except in its colour (which was pink) and in its tiny black moustache curling downwards like a dark ring under his nose. If Pettigrove remarked upon a fine sunset the cousin scoffed, scoffed benignantly; there was a sunset every day, wasn’t there?—common as grass, weren’t they? As for the farming hereabouts, nothing particular in it was there? The scenery was, well, it was just scenery, a few hills, a few woods, plenty of grass fields. No special suitability of soil for any crop; corn would be just average, wasn’t that so? And the roots, well, on his farm at home he could show mangolds as big as young porkers, forty to the cartload, or thereabouts. There weren’t no farmers round here making a fortune, he’d be bound, and as for their birds, he should think they lived on rook pie.
Pettigrove submitted that none of the Tull farmers looked much the worse for farming.
“Well, come,” said the other, “I hear your work-houses be middling full. Now an old neighbour of mine, old Frank Stinsgrove, was a man as could farm, any mortal thing. He wouldn’t have looked at this land, not at a crown an acre, and he was a man as could farm, any mortal thing, oranges and lemons if he’d a mind to it. What a head that man had, God bless, his brain was stuffed! Full! He’d declare black was white, and what’s more he could prove it. I like a man like that.”
The cousin’s wife was a vast woman, shaped like a cottage loaf. For some reason she clung to her stays: it could not be to disguise or curb her bulk, for they merely put a gloss upon it. You could only view her as a dimension, think of her as a circumference, and wonder grimly what she looked like when she prepared for the bath. She devoured turkey and pig griskin with such audible voracity that her husband declared that he would soon be compelled to wear corks in his earholes at meal times, yes, the same as they did in the artillery. She was quite unperturbed by this even when little Jane giggled, and she avowed that good food was a great enjoyment to her.
“O ’tis a good thing and a grand thing, but take that child now,” said her father. Resting his elbow on the table he indicated with his fork the diminutive Jane; upon the fork hung a portion of meat large enough to half-sole a lady’s shoe. “She’s just the reverse, she eats as soft as a fly, a spillikin a day, and not a mite more; no, very dainty is our Jane.” Here he swallowed the meat and treated four promising potatoes with very great savagery. “Do you know our Jane is going to marry a house-painter, yah, a house-painter, or is it a coach-painter? ’Tis smooth and gentle work, she says, not like rough farmers or chaps that knock things pretty hard, smiths and carpenters, you know. O Lord! eight years old, would you believe it? The spillikin! John, this griskin’s a lovely bit of meat.”
“Beautiful meat,” chanted his wife, “like a pig we killed a month ago. That was a nice pig, fat and contented as you’d find any pig, ’twould have been a shame to keep him alive any longer. It dressed so well, a picture it was, the kidneys shun like gold.”
“That reminds me of poor old Frank Stinsgrove,” said her husband. “He’d a mint of money, a very wealthy man, but he didn’t like parting with it. He’d got oldish and afraid of his death, must have a doctor calling to examine him every so often. Didn’t mind spending a fortune on doctors, but every other way he’d skin a flint. And there was nought wrong with him, ’cept age. So his daughter ups and says to him one day—You are wasting your money on all these doctors, father, they do you no good, what you must have is nice, dainty, nourishing food. Now what about some of these new laid eggs? How much are they fetching now? old Frank says. A penny farthing, says she. A penny farthing! I cannot afford it. And there was that man with a mint of money, a mint, could have bought Buckingham Palace—you understand me—and yet he must go on with his porridge and his mustard plasters and his syrup of squills, until at last a smartish doctor really did find something the matter with him, in his kidneys. They operated, mark you, and they say—but I never quite had the rights of it—they say they gave him a new kidney made of wax; a new wax kidney, ah, and I believe it was successful, only he had not to get himself into any kind of a heat, of course, nor sit too close to the fire. ’Stonishing what they doctors can do with your innards. But of course he was too old, soon died. Left a fortune, a mint of money, could have bought the crown of England. Staunch old chap, you know.”
Throughout the holidays John sang his customary ballads, “The Bicester Ram,” “The Unquiet Grave,” and dozens of others. After songs there would be things to eat. Then a game of cards, and after that things to eat. Then a walk to the inn, to the church, to a farm, or to a friend’s where, in all jollity, there would be things to eat and drink. They went to a meet of the hounds, a most successful outing for it gave them ravening appetites. In short, as the cousin’s wife said when bidding farewell, it was a time of great enjoyment.
And Pettigrove said so too. He believed it, and yet was glad to be quit of his friends in order to contemplate the serene dawn that was to come at any hour now. By New Year’s Day Mrs. Cronshaw had not returned, but the big countryman was patient, his mind, though not at rest, was confident. The days passed as invisibly as warriors in a hostile country, and almost before he had begun to despair February came, a haggard month to follow a frosty January. Mist clung to the earth as tightly as the dense grey fur on the back of a cat, ice began to uncongeal, adjacent lands became indistinct, and distant fields could not be seen at all. The banks of the roads and the squat hedges were heavily dewed. The cries of invisible rooks, the bleat of unseen sheep, made yet more gloomy the contours of motionless trees wherefrom the slightest movement of a bird fetched a splatter of drops to the road, cold and uncheering.
All this inclemency crowded into the heart of the waiting man, a distress without a gleam of anger or doubt, but only a fond anxiety. Other anxieties came upon him which, without lessening his melancholy, somewhat diverted it: his wife suffered a sudden grave decline in health, and on calling in the doctor Pettigrove was made aware of her approaching end. Torn between a strange recovered fondness for his sinking wife
and the romantic adventure with the widow, which, to his mind at such a juncture, wore the sourest aspect of infidelity, Pettigrove dwelt in remorse and grief until the night of St. Valentine’s Day, when he received a letter. It came from a coast town in Norfolk, from a hospital; Caroline, too, was ill. She made light of her illness, but it was clear to him now that this and this alone was the urgent reason of her retreat from Tull at Christmas. It was old tubercular trouble (that was consumption, wasn’t it?) which had driven her into sanatoriums on several occasions in recent years. She was getting better now, she wrote, but it would be months before she would be allowed to return. It had been rather a bad attack, so sudden. Now she had no other thought or desire in the world but to be back at Tull with her friend, and in time to see that fairy may tree at bloom in the wood—he had promised to show it to her—they would often go together, wouldn’t they—and she signed herself his, “with the deepest affection.”
He did not remember any promise to show her the tree, but he sat down straightway and wrote her a letter of love, incoherently disclosed and obscurely worded for any eyes but hers. He did not mention his wife; he had suddenly forgotten her. He sealed the letter and put it aside to be posted on the morrow. Then he crept back to his wife’s room and continued his sick vigil.
But in that dim room, lit by one small candle, he did not heed the invalid. His mind, feverishly alert, was devoted to thoughts of that other who also lay sick, and who had intimidated him. He had feared her, feared for himself. He had behaved like a lost wanderer who at night, deep in a forest, had come upon the embers of a fire left mysteriously glowing, and had crept up to it frightened, without stick or stone: if only he had conquered his fear he might have lain down and rested by its strange comfort. But now he was sure of her love, sure of his own, he was secure, he would lay down and rest. She would come with all the sweetness of her passion and the valour of her frailty, stretching smooth, quiet wings over his lost soul.
Then he began to be aware of a soft, insistent noise, tapping, tapping, tapping, that seemed to come from the front door below. To assure himself he listened intently, and soon it became almost the only sound in the world, clear but soft, sharp and thin, as if struck with the finger nails only, tap, tap, tap, quickly on the door. When the noise ceased he got up and groped stealthily down his narrow crooked staircase. At the bottom he waited in an uncanny pause until just beyond him he heard the gentle urgency again, tap, tap, and he flung open the door. There was enough gloomy light to reveal the emptiness of the porch; there was nothing there, nothing to be seen, but he could distinctly hear the sound of feet being vigorously shuffled on the doormat below him, as if the shoes of some light-foot visitor were being carefully cleaned before entry. Then it stopped. Beyond that—nothing. Pettigrove was afraid, he dared not cross the startling threshold, he shot back the door, bolted it in a fluster, and blundered away up the stairs.
And there was now darkness, the candle in his wife’s room having spent itself, but as a glow from the fire embers remained he did not hasten to light another candle. Instead, he fastened the bedroom door also, and stood filled with wondering uneasiness, dreading to hear the tap, tap, tap come again, just there, behind him. He listened for it with stopped breath, but he could hear nothing, not the faintest scruple of sound, not the beat of his own heart, not a flutter from the fire, not a rustle of feet, not a breath—no! not even a breathing! He rushed to the bed and struck a match: that was a dead face . . . Under the violence of his sharpening shock he sank upon the bed beside dead Carrie and a faint crepuscular agony began to gleam over the pensive darkness of his mind, with a promise of mad moonlight to follow.
Two days later a stranger came to the Pettigrove’s door, a short, brusque, sharp-talking man with iron-grey hair and iron-rimmed spectacles. He was an ironmonger.
“Mr. Pettigrove? My name is Cronshaw, of Eastbourne, rather painful errand, my sister-in-law, Mrs. Cronshaw, tenant of yours, I believe.”
Pettigrove stiffened into antagonism: what the devil was all this? “Come in,” he remarked grimly.
“Thank you,” said Cronshaw, following Pettigrove into the parlour where, with many sighs and much circumstance, he doffed his overcoat and stood his umbrella in a corner. “Had to walk from the station, no conveyances; that’s pretty stiff, miles and miles.”
“Have a drop of wine?” invited Pettigrove.
“Thank you,” said the visitor.
“It’s dandelion.”
“Very kind of you, I’m sure.” Cronshaw drew a chair up to the fireplace, though the fire had not been lit, and the grate was full of ashes, and asked if he might smoke. Pettigrove did not mind; he poured out a glass of the yellow wine while Cronshaw lit his pipe. The room smelled stuffy, heavy noises came from overhead as if men were moving furniture. The stranger swallowed a few drops of the wine, coughed, and said: “My sister-in-law is dead, I’m sorry to say. You had not heard, I suppose?”
“Dead!” whispered Pettigrove. “Mrs. Cronshaw! No, no, I had not, I had not heard that, I did not know. Mrs. Cronshaw dead—is it true?”
“Ah,” said the stranger with a laboured sigh. “Two nights ago in a hospital at Mundesley. I’ve just come on from there. It was very sudden, O, frightfully sudden, but it was not unexpected, poor woman, it’s been off and on with her for years. She was very much attached to this village, I suppose, and we’re going to bury her here, it was her last request. That’s what I want to do now. I want to arrange about the burial and the disposal of her things and to give up possession of your house. I’m very sorry for that.”
“I’m uncommon grieved to hear this,” said Pettigrove. “She was a handsome lady.”
“O yes,” the ironmonger took out his pocket-book and prepared to write in it.
“A handsome lady,” continued the countryman tremulously, “handsome, handsome.”
At that moment someone came heavily down the stairs and knocked at the parlour door.
“Come in,” cried Pettigrove. A man with red face and white hair shuffled into the room; he was dressed in a black suit that had been made for a man not only bigger, but probably different in other ways.
“We shall have to shift her down here now,” he began. “I was sure we should, the coffin’s too big to get round that awkward crook in these stairs when it’s loaded. In fact, ’tis impossible. Better have her down now afore we put her in, or there’ll be an accident on the day as sure as judgment.” The man, then noticing Cronshaw, said: “Good-morning, sir, you’ll excuse me.”
The ironmonger stared at him with horror, and then put his notebook away.
“Yes, yes, then,” mumbled Pettigrove. “I’ll come up in a few minutes.”
The man went out and Cronshaw jumped up and said: “You’ll pardon me, Mr. Pettigrove, I had no idea that you had had a bereavement too.”
“My wife,” said Pettigrove dully, “two nights ago.”
“Two nights ago! I am very sorry, most sorry,” stammered the other, picking up his umbrella and hat. “I’ll go away. What a sad coincidence!”
“There’s no call to do that; what’s got to be done must be done.”
“I’ll not detain you long then, just a few details: I am most sorry, very sorry, it’s extraordinary.”
He took out his notebook again—it had red edges and a fat elastic band—and after conferring with Pettigrove for some time the stranger went off to see the vicar, saying, as he shook hands: “I shall of course see you again when it is all over. How bewildering it is, and what a shock it is; from one day to another, and then nothing; and the day after to-morrow they’ll be buried beside one another. I am very sorry, most sorry. I shall of course come and see you again when it is all over.”
After he had gone Pettigrove walked about the room murmuring: “She was a lady, a handsome lady,” and then, still murmuring, he stumbled up the stairs to the undertakers. His wife lay on the bed in a white gown. He enveloped her stiff thin body in a blanket and carried it downstairs to the parlour
; the others, with much difficulty, carried down the coffin and when they had fixed it upon some trestles they unwrapped Carrie from the blankets and laid her in it.
Caroline and Carrie were buried on the same day in adjoining graves, buried by the same men, and as the ironmonger was prevented by some other misfortune from attending the obsequies there were no other mourners than Pettigrove. The workshop sign of the Tull carpenter bore the following notice:
COMPLETE UNDERTAKER
SMALL HEARSE KEPT.
and therefore it was he who ushered the handsome lady from the station on that bitter day. Frost was so heavy that the umbrage of pine and fir looked woolly, thick grey swabs. Horses stood miserably in the frozen fields, breathing into any friendly bush. Rooks pecked industriously at the tough pastures, but wiser fowls, unlike the fabulous good child, could be neither seen nor heard. And all day someone was grinding corn at the millhouse; the engine was old and kept on emitting explosions that shook the neighbourhood like a dreadful bomb. Pettigrove, who had not provided himself with a black overcoat and therefore wore none at all, shivered so intensely during the ceremony that the keen edge of his grief was dulled, and indeed from that time onwards his grief, whatever its source, seemed deprived of all keenness: it just dulled him with a permanent dullness.
He caused to be placed on his wife’s grave a headstone, quite small, not a yard high, inscribed to
CAROLINE
THE BELOVED WIFE
OF
JOHN PETTIGROVE
Some days after its erection he was astonished to find the headstone had fallen flat on its face. It was very strange, but after all it was a small matter, a simple affair, so in the dusk he himself took a spade and set it up again. A day or two later it had fallen once more. He was now inclined to some suspicion, he fancied that mischievous boys had done it; he would complain to the vicar. But Pettigrove was an easy-going man, he did not complain; he replaced the stone, setting it more deeply in the earth and padding the turf more firmly around it.
The Hurly Burly and Other Stories Page 6