Master traveller had indeed come into this room to be with this woman, and she as surely desired him, and for all its accidental occasion it was as if he, walking the ways of the world, had suddenly come upon what, what so imaginable with all permitted reverence as, well, just a shrine; and he, admirably humble, bowed the instant head.
Were there no other people within? The clock indicated a few minutes to nine. He sat on, still as stone, and the woman might have been of wax for all the movement or sound she made. There was allurement in the air between them; he had forborne his smoking, the pipe grew cold between his teeth. He waited for a look from her, a movement to break the trance of silence. No footfall in street or house, no voice in the inn but the clock, beating away as if pronouncing a doom. Suddenly it rasped out nine large notes, a bell in the town repeated them dolefully, and a cuckoo no farther than the kitchen mocked them with three times three. After that came the weak steps of the old landlord along the hall, the slam of doors, the clatter of lock and bolt, and then the silence returning unendurably upon them.
He rose and stood behind her; he touched the black hair. She made no movement or sign. He pulled out two or three combs and, dropping them into her lap, let the whole mass tumble about his hands. It had a curious harsh touch in the unravelling, but was so full and shining; black as a rook’s wings it was. He slid his palms through it. His fingers searched it and fought with its fine strangeness; into his mind there travelled a serious thought, stilling his wayward fancy—this was no wayward fancy, but a rite accomplishing itself! (Run, run, silly man, y’are lost!) But having got so far, he burnt his boats, leaned over, and drew her face back to him. And at that, seizing his wrists, she gave him back ardour for ardour, pressing his hands to her bosom, while the kiss was sealed and sealed again. Then she sprang up and picking his scarf and hat from the fender said:
“I have been drying them for you, but the hat has shrunk a bit, I’m sure—I tried it on.”
He took them from her and put them behind him; he leaned lightly back upon the table, holding it with both his hands behind him; he could not speak.
“Aren’t you going to thank me for drying them?” she asked, picking her combs from the rug and repinning her hair.
“I wonder why we did that?” he asked, shamedly.
“It is what I’m thinking too,” she said.
“You were so beautiful about—about it, you know.”
She made no rejoinder, but continued to bind her hair, looking brightly at him under her brows. When she had finished she went close to him.
“Will that do?”
“I’ll take it down again.”
“No, no, the old man or the old woman will be coming in.”
“What of that?” he said, taking her into his arms. “Tell me your name.”
She shook her head, but she returned his kisses and stroked his hair and shoulders with beautifully melting gestures.
“What is your name? I want to call you by your name,” he said. “I can’t keep calling you Lovely Woman, Lovely Woman.”
Again she shook her head and was dumb.
“I’ll call you Ruth, then, Dusky Ruth, Ruth of the black, beautiful hair.”
“That is a nice-sounding name—I knew a deaf and dumb girl named Ruth; she went to Nottingham and married an organ-grinder—but I should like it for my name.”
“Then I give it to you.”
“Mine is so ugly.”
“What is it?”
Again the shaken head and the burning caress.
“Then you shall be Ruth; will you keep that name?”
“Yes, if you give me the name I will keep it for you.”
Time had indeed taken them by the forelock, and they looked upon a ruddled world.
“I stake my one talent,” he said jestingly, “and behold it returns me fortyfold; I feel like the boy who catches three mice with one piece of cheese.”
At ten o’clock the girl said:
“I must go and see how they are getting on,” and she went to the door.
“Are we keeping them up?”
She nodded.
“Are you tired?”
“No, I am not tired.” She looked at him doubtfully.
“We ought not to stay in here; go into the coffee room and I’ll come there in a few minutes.”
“Right,” he whispered gaily, “we’ll sit up all night.”
She stood at the door for him to pass out, and he crossed the hall to the other room. It was in darkness except for the flash of the fire. Standing at the hearth he lit a match for the lamp, but paused at the globe; then he extinguished the match.
“No, it’s better to sit in the firelight.”
He heard voices at the other end of the house that seemed to have a chiding note in them.
“Lord,” he thought, “is she getting into a row?”
Then her steps came echoing over the stone floor of the hall; she opened the door and stood there with a lighted candle in her hand; he stood at the other end of the room, smiling.
“Good night,” she said.
“Oh no, no! come along,” he protested, but not moving from the hearth.
“Got to go to bed,” she answered.
“Are they angry with you?”
“No.”
“Well, then, come over here and sit down.”
“Got to go to bed,” she said again, but she had meanwhile put her candlestick upon the little sideboard and was trimming the wick with a burnt match.
“Oh, come along, just half an hour,” he protested. She did not answer, but went on prodding the wick of the candle.
“Ten minutes, then,” he said, still not going towards her.
“Five minutes,” he begged.
She shook her head and, picking up the candlestick, turned to the door. He did not move, he just called her name: “Ruth!”
She came back then, put down the candlestick, and tiptoed across the room until he met her. The bliss of the embrace was so poignant that he was almost glad when she stood up again and said with affected steadiness, though he heard the tremor in her voice:
“I must get you your candle.”
She brought one from the hall, set it on the table in front of him, and struck the match.
“What is my number?” he asked.
“Number-six room,” she answered, prodding the wick vaguely with her match, while a slip of white wax dropped over the shoulder of the new candle. “Number six . . . next to mine.”
The match burnt out; she said abruptly: “Good night,” took up her own candle, and left him there.
In a few moments he ascended the stairs and went into his room. He fastened the door, removed his coat, collar, and slippers, but the rack of passion had seized him and he moved about with no inclination to sleep. He sat down, but there was no medium of distraction. He tried to read the newspaper that he had carried up with him, and without realizing a single phrase he forced himself to read again the whole account of the execution of the miscreant Bridger. When he had finished this he carefully folded the paper and stood up, listening. He went to the parting wall and tapped thereon with his fingertips. He waited half a minute, one minute, two minutes; there was no answering sign. He tapped again, more loudly, with his knuckles, but there was no response, and he tapped many times. He opened his door as noiselessly as possible; along the dark passage there were slips of light under the other doors, the one next his own, and the one beyond that. He stood in the corridor listening to the rumble of old voices in the farther room, the old man and his wife going to their rest. Holding his breath fearfully, he stepped to her door and tapped gently upon it. There was no answer, but he could somehow divine her awareness of him; he tapped again; she moved to the door and whispered: “No, no, go away.” He turned the handle, the door was locked.
“Let me in,” he pleaded. He knew she was standing there an inch or two beyond him.
“Hush,” she called softly. “Go away, the old woman has ears like a fox.”
>
He stood silent for a moment.
“Unlock it,” he urged; but he got no further reply, and feeling foolish and baffled he moved back to his own room, cast his clothes from him, doused the candle and crept into the bed with soul as wild as a storm-swept forest, his heart beating a vagrant summons. The room filled with strange heat, there was no composure for mind or limb, nothing but flaming visions and furious embraces.
“Morality . . . what is it but agreement with your own soul?”
So he lay for two hours—the clocks chimed twelve—listening with foolish persistency for her step along the corridor, fancying every light sound—and the night was full of them—was her hand upon the door.
Suddenly, then—and it seemed as if his very heart would abash the house with its thunder—he could hear distinctly someone knocking on the wall. He got quickly from his bed and stood at his door, listening. Again the knocking was heard, and having half-clothed himself he crept into the passage, which was now in utter darkness, trailing his hand along the wall until he felt her door; it was standing open. He entered her room and closed the door behind him. There was not the faintest gleam of light, he could see nothing. He whispered: “Ruth!” and she was standing there. She touched him, but not speaking. He put out his hands, and they met round her neck; her hair was flowing in its great wave about her; he put his lips to her face and found that her eyes were streaming with tears, salt and strange and disturbing. In the close darkness he put his arms about her with no thought but to comfort her; one hand had plunged through the long harsh tresses and the other across her hips before he realized that she was ungowned; then he was aware of the softness of her breasts and the cold naked sleekness of her shoulders. But she was crying there, crying silently with great tears, her strange sorrow stifling his desire.
“Ruth, Ruth, my beautiful dear!” he murmured soothingly. He felt for the bed with one hand, and turning back the quilt and sheets, he lifted her in as easily as a mother does her child, replaced the bedding, and, in his clothes, he lay stretched beside her, comforting her. They lay so, innocent as children, for an hour, when she seemed to have gone to sleep. He rose then and went silently to his room, full of weariness.
In the morning he breakfasted without seeing her, but as he had business in the world that gave him just an hour longer at the inn before he left it for good and all, he went into the smoke-room and found her. She greeted him with curious gaze, but merrily enough, for there were other men there now—farmers, a butcher, a registrar, an old, old man. The hour passed, but not these men, and at length he donned his coat, took up his stick, and said good-bye. Her shining glances followed him to the door, and from the window as far as they could view him.
Adam and Eve and Pinch Me (1921)
Ring the Bells of Heaven
To every man his proper gift
Dame Nature gives complete.
I
The sun was glaring over a Suffolk heath that spread on either side of a sandy road thick with dust. The heath had two prevailing colours—the hue of its bracken green and tall, the tint of its flowering ling. These colours were clearly denoted and merged in isolated tracts, as though in the comity of vegetation one had commanded: thus far the purple, and the other: thus far the green. At the edge of the green ferns, haunt of heath fleas and lady-birds, some brown skeletons of last year’s foliage, blown there by mournful airs, lay clinging to their youthful offspring as if to say: “Dream not, but mourn for us.” On this July afternoon the blue of the sky was swart and clear although some stray clouds, trussed like the wool on a sheep’s back, soared over a few odd groups of pine and a white windmill turning on a knoll.
And along the road came padding a small black pony swishing its tail; wisps of dust puffed up from its hoofs, and bareback upon the pony sat a small uncomely boy about ten years old, carrying on his arm a bright tin bucket half full of red currants. The boy, who had the queer name of Blandford Febery, though he commonly answered to the call of “Cheery,” was off to meet his father, who had gone to market. The pony pranced along the heath road for a mile or so until they came to the town and so into the market. Mr. Febery was sitting at a table in the cool courtyard of the Tumble Down Dick inn with a group of men clad in cutaway coats and gaiters. He got up, took the bucket of currants from his son, and set it down by the table. “That’s my Cheery boy!” he cried gaily, lifting his son from the pony. “Now you jest slip along to Mrs. Farringay’s and leave her those currants from me while I put pony in stall, and I’ll wait here for you.”
“They be large currants, Albert,” said George Sands, as Blandford carried them away.
“A fairish sample, George,” shouted Mr. Febery, leading the pony off; “but my stomach can’t never abide such traffic, it turns on ’em, it do. And all our family be the same.”
“Has he got a large family?” asked Henry Ottershaw, a man with a big rosy face and a black patch over one eye.
“He’s got two boys,” replied George; “two boys and a gal. That one’s the oldest.”
“He’s the very image of his father, whether or no.”
“Oh, ay,” George answered; “Albert might have spit ’e out of his blessed mouth.”
This was only externally true. Albert Febery was a small yeoman farmer of cheerful disposition, for in those days—the 1880’s—farming was still a pretty business, and farmers, like his friends bluff George Sands and Henry Ottershaw, were spruce men whose wants were modest and their cares few. But his son was morose, and his wants were not modest.
The sky had grown overcast. Around the inn the air was full of protesting sounds and the smell of ordure, for the cattle were being routed out of the pens and screaming pigs were being lugged into carts. The market was over, though some stall-holders were still trading briskly in sweets and shoddy clothing.
The boy returned from his errand before his father had finished stalling the pony, and he sat himself silently down on the bench beside George Sands.
“I was a-going to begin cutting our oats tomorrow,” said Henry Ottershaw, casting a glance at the sky, “but I don’t like the look o’ they raggedy clouds; they can’t hold their water, we shall have a dirty Thursday. I think I do know when rain’s about—I can smell it.”
“Teasy weather,” remarked Sands. “Weather is teasy, you can never be sure. I had ten pole of early potatoes this year in my kitchen garden; sweet and blooming they was. Come a frost in May and cut ’em off like a soot sack.”
Ottershaw held up an admonishing finger. “We shall have a hard winter, George, mark you. Last week I was digging up a nut hazel bush and there was a frog and a toad under the root of it. ‘Ho, ho,’ I says, ‘there’s a hard weather brewing, you mark my words, people.’ I recollect two year ago a man prophesying as this very winter before us now was going to be the worst known for two hundred year. ‘Oh my,’ I says to him, ‘how ever can you recollect all that?’ ‘Never you mind,’ he says, ‘it’s the God’s truth I’m be telling you.’”
“Who was that, Henry?”
“Maybe you don’t know him—Will Goodson?”
“Oh, ah! Went bankrupt, didn’t he?”
“That’s the chap. And owed me thirteen pound ten. He come and telled me one day, leaned on the back of his cart and cried till the tears rolled all along the tailboard and dropped on to the road. I saw ’em, couldn’t take my eyes off ’em, George.”
“Cried! That man Goodson!”
“Like a girl, George.”
Sands shook his head and pursed his lips derisively: “A must have put pepper in his eyes.”
Young Blandford went into the inn to seek his father. The taproom was empty. On the wall hung a theatre poster:
THE MARKET HALL
TONIGHT
The boy went to it at once and stood intently transcribing its meaning. He made out that it was the bill of a benefit performance with all sorts of attractions for that night only, such as scenes from The Lady of Lyons and The Dumb Man of Manchester, including a
recitation (illuminated with lantern slides) by the world-renowned tragedian, Caesar Truman (Hamlet, Belphegor, The Duke’s Motto, etc., etc.). At the bottom of the bill was a small woodcut, the picture of a carter with a long whip pulling at a horse that looked tired, and a verse beginning:
“The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.”
Mr. Febery came in. “Hallo!” he said. The boy did not answer, and his father peered over his shoulder at the bill.
“That’s a nice bit of poetry. Yes, it is; and you’ll be able to read it all if you live long enough.”
The boy still silently studied it, while his father rambled on: “My! You could hear some grand reciting twenty years ago. You never hear anything like it now. They’d frighten you, they would! They’d make the tears pour out of your eyes, they would then.”
“Father,” said the boy, “it’s tonight, let us go.”
“Oh, we can’t do that,” his father gruffly answered. “No, no, we must have a cup of tea and then cut along home. It’s going to rain, I think.”
To his amazement his son’s eyes were brimmed with tears!
“Oh, father, take me!” cried the boy. “Take me, I must go!”
“Hoi! hoi! What’s amiss?” the elder sternly asked. “You’re too young for that sort of canter, Cheery.”
The youngster bent his head, drew his sleeve across his snivelling nose, and sobbed.
“Why, Blandford! What’s this ado? Shut up, now, shut up and come and have your tea.”
But the boy was inconsolable.
“I tell you we cannot go,” the father angrily expostulated. “We cannot go. Your mother would die of fright not knowing where we were.”
“I must! I must!” raged the unhappy boy.
George Sands came in and stared alternately at father and at son. “Why, what’s he been up to?”
“This infant wants me to take him to the theayter!” Albert explained. “Crying fit to burst! Look at him. Did you ever?”
“Well,” Mr. Sands commented, “what a God’s the harm of it?”
“’Tain’t the harm. Had I known on’t I could ’a’ told Susan this morning, but Susan don’t know; she’d worry herself into her grave afore dark.”
The Hurly Burly and Other Stories Page 15