The Hurly Burly and Other Stories

by A. E. Coppard

  The child was early born, and she was not prepared; it came and died. Her father took it and buried it in the garden. It was a boy, dead. No one else knew, not even Frank, but when she was recovered, her pride wavered and she wrote a loving letter to him, still keeping her secret. Not until she had written three times did she hear from him, and then he only answered that he should not see her any more. He did not tell her why, but she knew. He was going to marry Elizabeth Plantney, whose parents had died and left her five hundred pounds. To Mary’s mind that presented itself as a treachery to their child, the tiny body buried under a beehive in the garden. That Frank was unaware made no difference to the girl’s fierce mood; it was treachery. Maternal anger stormed in her breast, it could only be allayed by an injury, a deep admonishing injury to that treacherous man. In her sleepless nights the little crumpled corpse seemed to plead for this much, and her own heart clamoured, just as those bees murmured against him day by day.

  So then she got some vitriol. Rushing past her old lover on the night of the crime, she turned upon him with the lifted jar, but the sudden confrontation dazed and tormented her; in momentary hesitation she had dashed the acid, not into his faithless eyes, but at the prim creature linked to his arm. Walking away, she heard the crying of the wounded girl. After a while she had turned back to the town and given herself up to the police.

  To her mind, as she stood leaning against the dock rail, it was all huddled and contorted, but that was her story set in its order. The trial went droning on beside her remembered grief like a dull stream neighbouring a clear one, two parallel streams that would meet in the end, were meeting now, surely, as the judge began to speak. And at the crisis, as if in exculpation, she suffered a whisper to escape her lips, though none heard it.

  “’Twas him made me a parent, but he was never a man himself. He took advantage; it was mean, I love Christianity.” She heard the judge deliver her sentence: for six calendar months she was to be locked in a jail. “Oh Christ!” she breathed, for it was the lovely spring; lilac, laburnum, and father wading the brooks in those boots drawn up to his thighs to rake the dark sprigs and comb out the green scum.

  They took her away. “I wanted to come out then,” said Mr. O’Kane, “for the next case was only about a contractor defrauding the corporation—good luck to him, but he got three years—and I tried to get out of it, but if I did that geezer with the stick poked me down and said I’d not to stir out of it till the court rose. I said to him I’d kill him, but there was a lot of peelers about so I suppose he didn’t hear it.”

  II

  Towards the end of the year Oppidan had made up his mind what he would do to Mary McDowall when she came out of prison. Poor Liz was marred for life, spoiled, cut off from the joys they had intended together. Not for all the world would he marry her now; he had tried to bring himself to that issue of chivalry, of decency, but it was impossible; he had failed in the point of grace. No man could love Elizabeth Plantney now, Frank could not visit her without shuddering, and she herself, poor generous wretch, had given him back his promise. Apart from his ruined fondness for her, they had planned to do much with the five hundred pounds; it was to have set him up in a secure and easy way of trade, they would have been established in a year or two as solid as a rock. All that chance was gone, no such chance ever came twice in a man’s lifetime, and he was left with Liz upon his conscience. He would have to be kind to her for as long as he could stand it. That was a disgust to his mind, for he wanted to be faithful. Even the most unstable man wishes he had been faithful—but to which woman he is never quite sure. And then that bitch Mary McDowall would come out of her prison and be a mockery to him of what he had forgone, of what he had been deprived. Savagely he believed in the balance wrought by an act of vengeance—he, too!—eye for eye, tooth for tooth; it had a threefold charm, simplicity, relief, triumph. The McDowall girl, so his fierce meditations ran, miked in prison for six months and then came out no worse than when she went in. It was no punishment at all, they did no hurt to women in prison; the court hadn’t set wrong right at all, it never did; and he was a loser whichever way he turned. But there was still a thing he could do (Jove had slumbered, he would steal Jove’s lightning) and a project lay troubling his mind like a gnat in the eye, he would have no peace until it was wiped away.

  On an October evening, then, about a week after Mary McDowall’s release, Oppidan set off towards Trinkel. Through Trinkel he went and a furlong past it until he came to their lane. Down the lane too, and then he could hear the water ruttling over the cataracts of the cress-beds. Not yet in winter, the year’s decline was harbouring splendour everywhere. Whitebeam was a dissolute tangle of rags covering ruby drops, the service trees were sallow as lemons, the oak resisted decay, but most confident of all the tender-tressed ashes. The man walked quietly to a point where, unobserved, he could view the McDowall dwelling, with its overbowering walnut tree littering the yard with husks and leaves, its small adjacent field with banks that stooped in the glazed water. The house was heavy and small, but there were signs of grace in the garden, of thrift in the orderly painted sheds. The conical peak of a tiny stack was pitched in the afterglow, the elms sighed like tired old matrons, wisdom and content lingered here. Oppidan crept along the hedges until he was in a field at the back of the house, a hedge still hiding him. He was trembling. There was a light already in the back window; one leaf of the window stood open and he saw their black cat jump down from it into the garden and slink away under some shrubs. From his standpoint he could not see into the lighted room, but he knew enough of Fergus’s habits to be sure he was not within; it was his day for driving into the town. Thus it could only be Mary who had lit that lamp. Trembling still! Just beyond him was a heap of dung from the stable, and a cock was standing silent on the dunghill while two hens, a white one and a black, bickered around him over some voided grains. Presently the cock seized the black hen, and the white scurried away; but though his grasp was fierce and he bit at her red comb, the black hen went on gobbling morsels from the manure heap, and when at last he released her she did not intermit her steady pecking. Then Oppidan was startled by a flock of starlings that slid across the evening with the steady movement of a cloud; the noise of their wings was like showers of rain upon trees.

  “Wait till it’s darker,” he muttered, and skulking back to the lane he walked sharply for half a mile. Then, slowly, he returned. Unseen, he reached the grass that grew under the lighted window, and stooped warily against the wall; one hand rested on the wall, the other in his pocket. For some time he hesitated but he knew what he had to do and what did it matter! He stepped in front of the window.

  In a moment, and for several moments longer, he was rigid with surprise. It was Mary all right (the bitch!), washing her hair, drying it in front of the kitchen fire, the thick locks pouring over her face as she knelt with her hands resting on her thighs. So long was their black flow that the ends lay in a small heap inside the fender. Her bodice hung on the back of a chair beside her, and her only upper clothing was a loose and disarrayed chemise that did not hide her bosom. Then, gathering the hair in her hands, she held the tresses closer to the fire, her face peeped through, and to herself she was smiling. Dazzling fair were her arms and the one breast he astonishingly saw. It was Mary; but not the Mary, dull ugly creature, whom his long rancour had conjured for him. Lord, what had he forgotten! Absence and resentment had pared away her loveliness from his recollection, but this was the old Mary of their passionate days, transfigured and marvellous.

  Stepping back from the window into shadow again, he could feel his heart pound like a frantic hammer; every pulse was hurrying at the summons. In those breathless moments Oppidan gazed as it were at himself, or at his mad intention, gazed wonderingly, ashamed and awed. Fingering the thing in his pocket, turning it over as a coin whose toss has deceived him, he was aware of a revulsion; gone revenge, gone rancour, gone all thought of Elizabeth, and there was left in his soul what had not gone and
could never go. A brute she had been—it was bloody cruelty—but, but—but what? Seen thus, in her innocent occupation, the grim fact of her crime had somehow thrown a conquering glamour over her hair, the pale pride of her face, the intimacy of her bosom. Her very punishment was a triumph; on what account had she suffered if not for love of him? He could feel that chastening distinction melting now; she had suffered for his love.

  There and then shrill cries burst upon them. The cat leaped from the garden to the window-sill; there was a thrush in its mouth, shrieking. The cat paused on the sill, furtive and hesitant. Without a thought Oppidan plunged forward, seized the cat, and with his free hand clutched what he could of the thrush. In a second the cat released it and dropped into the room, while the crushed bird fluttered away to the darkened shrubs, leaving its tail feathers in the hand of the man.

  Mary sprang up and rushed to the window. “Is it you?” was all she said. Hastily she left the window, and Oppidan with a grin saw her shuffling into her bodice. One hand fumbled at the buttons, the other unlatched the door. “Frank.” There was neither surprise nor elation. He walked in. Only then did he open his fist and the thrush’s feathers floated in the air and idled to the floor. Neither of them remembered any more of the cat or the bird.

  In silence they stood, not looking at each other.

  “What do you want?” at length she asked. “You’re hindering me.”

  “Am I?” He grinned. His face was pink and shaven, his hair was almost as smooth as a brass bowl. “Well, I’ll tell you.” His hat was cumbering his hands, so he put it carefully on the table.

  “I come here wanting to do a bad thing, I own up to that. I had it in my mind to serve you same as you served her—you know who I mean. Directly I knew you had come home, that’s what I meant to do. I been waiting about out there a good while until I saw you. And then I saw you. I hadn’t seen you for a long, long time, and somehow, I dunno, when I saw you—”

  Mary was standing with her hands on her hips; the black cascades of her hair rolled over her arms; some of the strands were gathered under her fingers, looped to her waist; dark weeping hair.

  “I didn’t mean to harm her!” she burst out. “I never meant that for her, not what I did. Something happened to me that I’d not told you of then, and it doesn’t matter now, and I shall never tell you. It was you I wanted to put a mark on, but directly I was in front of you I went all swavy, and I couldn’t. But I had to throw it, I had to throw it.”

  He sat down on a chair, and she stared at him across the table. “All along it was meant for you, and that’s God’s truth.”

  “Why?” he asked. She did not give him an answer then, but stood rubbing the fingers of one hand on the finely scrubbed boards of the table, tracing circles and watching them vacantly. At last she put a question:

  “Did you get married soon?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Aren’t you? But of course it’s no business of mine.”

  “I’m not going to marry her.”

  “Not?”

  “No, I tell you I wouldn’t marry her for five thousand pounds, nor for fifty thousand, I wouldn’t.” He got up and walked up and down before the fire. “She’s—aw! You don’t know, you don’t know what you done to her! She’d frighten you. It’s rotten, like a leper. A veil on indoors and out, has to wear it always. She don’t often go out, but whether or no, she must wear it. Ah, it’s cruel.”

  There was a shock of horror as well as the throb of tears in her passionate compunction. “And you’re not marrying her!”

  “No,” he said bluntly, “I’m not marrying her.”

  Mary covered her face with her hands and stood quivering under her dark weeping hair.

  “God forgive me, how pitiful I’m shamed!” Her voice rose in a sharp cry. “Marry her, Frank! Oh, you marry her now, you must!”

  “Not for a million, I’d sooner be in my grave.”

  “Frank Oppidan, you’re no man, no man at all. You never had the courage to be strong, nor the courage to be evil; you’ve only the strength to be mean.”

  “Oh, dry up!” he said testily; but something overpowered her and she went leaning her head sobbing against the chimney-piece.

  “Come on, girl!” he was instantly tender, his arms were around her, he had kissed her.

  “Go your ways!” She was loudly resentful. “I want no more of you.”

  “It’s all right, Mary. Mary, I’m coming to you again, just as I used to.”

  “You . . .” She swung out of his embrace. “What for? D’ye think I want you now? Go off to Elizabeth Plantney . . .” She faltered. “Poor thing, poor thing, it shames me pitiful; I’d sooner have done it to myself. Oh, I wish I had.”

  With a meek grin Oppidan took from his pocket a bottle with a glass stopper. “Do you know what that is?”

  It looked like a flask of scent. Mary did not answer. “Sulphuric,” continued he, “same as you threw at her.”

  The girl silently stared while he moved his hand as if he were weighing the bottle. “When I saw what a mess you’d made of her, I reckoned you’d got off too light, it ought to have been seven years for you. I only saw it once, and my inside turned right over, you’ve no idea. And I thought: there’s she—done for. Nobody could marry her, less he was blind. And there’s you, just a six months and out you come right as ever. That’s how I thought and I wanted to get even with you then, for her sake, not for mine, so I got this, the same stuff, and I came thinking to give you a touch of it.”

  Mary drew herself up with a sharp breath. “You mean—throw it at me?”

  “That’s what I meant, honour bright, but I couldn’t—not now.” He went on weighing the bottle in his hand.

  “Oh, throw it, throw it!” she cried in bitter grief, but covering her face with her hands—perhaps in shame, perhaps fear.

  “No, no, no, no.” He slipped the bottle back into his pocket. “But why did you do it? She wouldn’t hurt a fly. What good could it do you?”

  “Throw it,” she screamed, “throw it, Frank, let it blast me!”

  “Easy, easy now. I wouldn’t even throw it at a rat. See!” he cried. The bottle was in his hand again as he went to the open window and withdrew the stopper. He held it outside while the fluid bubbled to the grass; the empty bottle he tossed into the shrubs.

  He sat down, his head bowed in his hands, and for some time neither spoke. Then he was aware that she had come to him, was standing there, waiting. “Frank,” she said softly, “there’s something I got to tell you.” And she told him about the babe.

  At first he was incredulous. No, no, that was too much for him to stomach! Very stupid and ironical he was until the girl’s pale sincerity glowed through the darkness of his unbelief: “You don’t believe! How could it not be true!”

  “But I can’t make heads or tails of it yet, Mary. You a mother, and I were a father!” Eagerly and yet mournfully he brooded. “If I’d ’a’ known—I can’t hardly believe it, Mary—so help me God, if I’d ’a’ known—”

  “You could done nothing, Frank.”

  “Ah, but I’d ’a’ known! A man’s never a man till that’s come to him.”

  “Nor a woman’s a woman, neither; that’s true, I’m different now.”

  “I’d ’a’ been his father, I tell you. Now I’m nothing. I didn’t know of his coming, I never see, and I didn’t know of his going, so I’m nothing still.”

  “You kept away from me. I was afraid at first and I wanted you, but you was no help to me, you kept away.”

  “I’d a right to know, didn’t I? You could ’a’ wrote and told me.”

  “I did write to you.”

  “But you didn’t tell me nothing.”

  “You could ’a’ come and see me,” she returned austerely, “then you’d known. How could I write down a thing like that in a letter as anybody might open? Any dog or devil could play tricks with it when you was boozed or something.”

  “I ought ’a’ bin told, I ought
’a’ bin told.” Stubbornly he maintained it. “’Twasn’t fair, you.”