towards the close of the nineteenth century the parish of tull was a genial but angular hamlet hung out on the north side of a midland hill, with scarcely renown enough to get itself marked on a map. its felicities, whatever they might be, lay some miles distant from a railway station, and so were seldom regarded, being neither boasted of by the inhabitants nor visited by strangers.
but here as elsewhere people were born and, as unusual, unconspicuously born. john pettigrove made a note of them then, and when people came in their turns to die pettigrove made a note of that too, for he was the district registrar. in between whiles, like fish in a pond, they were immersed in labour until the divine angler hooked them to the bank, and then, as is the custom, they were conspicuously buried and laboured presumably no more.
the registrar was perhaps the one person who had love and praise for the simple place. he was born and bred in tull, he had never left tull, and at forty years of age was as firmly attached to it as the black clock to the tower of tull church, which never recorded anything but twenty minutes past four. his wife carrie, a delicate woman, was also satisfied with tull, but as she owned two or three small pieces of house property there her fancy may not have been entirely beyond suspicion; possession, as you might say, being nine points of the prejudice just as it is of the law. a year or two after their marriage carrie began to suffer from a complication of ailments that140 turned her into a permanent invalid; she was seldom seen out of the house and under her misfortunes she peaked and pined, she was troublesome, there was no pleasing her. if pettigrove went about unshaven she was vexed; it was unclean, it was lazy, disgusting; but when he once appeared with his moustache shaven off she was exceedingly angry; it was scandalous, it was shameful, maddening. there is no pleasing some women—what is a man to do? when he began to let it grow again and encouraged a beard she was more tyrannical than ever.
the grey church was small and looked shrunken, as if it had sagged; it seemed to stoop down upon the green yard, but the stones and mounds, the cypress and holly, the strangely faded blue of a door that led through the churchyard wall to the mansion of the vicar, were beautiful without pretence, and though as often as not the parson’s goats used to graze among the graves and had been known to follow him into the nave, there was about the ground, the indulgent dimness under the trees, and the tower with its unmoving clock, the very delicacy of solitude. it inspired compassion and not cynicism as, peering as it were through the glass of antiquity, the stranger gazed upon its mortal register. in its peace, its beauty, and its age, all those pious records and hopes inscribed upon its stones, seemed not uttered in pride nor all in vain. but to speak truth the church’s grace was partly the achievement of its lofty situation. a road climbing up from sloping fields turned abruptly and traversed the village, sidling up to the church; there, having apparently satisfied some itch of141 curiosity, it turned abruptly again and trundled back another way into that northern prospect of farms and forest that lay in the direction of whitewater copse, hangman’s corner, and one o’clock.
it was that prospect which most delighted pettigrove, for he was a simple-minded countryman full of ambling content. not even the church allured him so much, for though it pleased him and was just at his own threshold, he never entered it at all. once upon a time there had been talk of him joining the church choir, for he had a pleasant singing voice, but he would not go.
“it’s flying in the face of providence,” cried his exasperated wife—her mind, too, was a falsetto one: “you’ve as strong a voice as anyone in tull, in fact stronger, not that that is saying much, for tull air don’t seem good for songsters if you may judge by that choir. the air is too thick maybe, i can’t say, it certainly oppresses my own chest, or perhaps it’s too thin, i don’t thrive on it myself; but you’ve the strength and it would do you credit; you’d be a credit to yourself and it would be a credit to me. but that won’t move you! i can’t tell what you’d be at; a drunken man ’ull get sober again, but a fool ... well, there!”
john, unwilling to be a credit, would mumble an objection to being tied down to that sort of thing. that was just like him, no spontaneity, no tidiness in his mind. whenever he addressed himself to any discussion he had, as you might say, to tuck up his intellectual sleeves, give a hitch to his argumentative trousers. so he went on singing, just when he had a142 mind to it, old country songs, for he disliked what he called “gimcrack ballads about buzzums and roses.”
pettigrove’s occupation dealt with the extreme features of existence, but he himself had no extreme notions. he was a good medium type of man mentally and something more than that physically, but nevertheless he was a disappointment to his wife—he never gave her any opportunity to shine by his reflected light. she had nurtured foolish ideas of him first as a figure of romance, then of some social importance; he ought to be a parish councillor or develop eminence somehow in their way of life. but john was nothing like this, he did not develop, or shine, or offer counsel, he was just a big, solid, happy man. there were times when his childless wife hated every ounce and sign of him, when his fair clipped beard and hair, which she declared were the colour of jute, and his stolidity, sickened her.
“i do my duty by him and, please god, i’ll continue to do it. i’m a humble woman and easily satisfied. an afflicted woman has no chance, no chance at all,” she said. after twelve years of wedded life pettigrove sometimes vaguely wondered what it would have been like not to have married anybody.
one michaelmas a small house belonging to mrs. pettigrove was let to a widow from eastbourne. mrs. cronshaw was a fine upstanding woman, gracefully grave and, as the neighbours said, clean as a pink. for several evenings after she had taken possession of the house pettigrove, who was a very handy sort of man, worked upon some alterations to143 her garden, and at the end of the third or fourth evening she had invited him into her bower to sip a glass of some cordial, and she thanked him for his labours.
“not at all, mrs. cronshaw.” and he drank to her very good fortune. just that and no more.
the next evening she did the same, and the very next evening to that again. and so it was not long before they spoke of themselves to each other, turn and turn about as you might say. she was the widow of an ironmonger who had died two years before, and the ironmonger’s very astute brother had given her an annuity in exchange for her interest in the business. without family and with few friends she had been lonely.
“but tull is such a hearty place,” she said. “it’s beautiful. one might forget to be lonely.”
“be sure of that,” commented pettigrove. they had the light of two candles and a blazing fire. she grew kind and more communicative to him; a strangely, disturbingly attractive woman, dark, with an abundance of well-dressed hair and a figure of charm. she had carpet all over her floor; nobody else in tull dreamed of such a thing. she did not cover her old dark table with a cloth as everybody else habitually did. the pictures on the wall were real, and the black-lined sofa had cushions on it of violet silk which she sometimes actually sat upon. there was a dainty dresser with china and things, a bureau, and a tall clock that told the exact time. but there was no music, music made her melancholy. in pettigrove’s home there were things like these but144 they were not the same. his bureau was jammed in a corner with flowerpots upon its top; his pictures comprised two photo prints of a public park in swansea—his wife had bought them at an auction sale. their dresser was a cumbersome thing with knobs and hooks and jars and bottles, and the tall clock never chimed the hours. the very armchairs at mrs. cronshaw’s were wells of such solid comfort that it made him feel uncomfortable to use them.
“ah, i should like to be sure of it!” she continued. “i have not found kindly people in the cities—they do not even seem to notice a fine day!—i have not found them anywhere, so why should they be in tull? you are a wise man, tell me, is tull the exception?”
“yes, mrs. cronshaw. you must come and visit us whenever you’ve a mind to; have no fear of loneliness.”
“yes, i will come and visit you,” she declared, “soon, i will.”
“that’s right, you must visit us.”
“yes, soon, i must.”
but weeks passed over and the widow did not keep her promise although she only lived a furlong from his door. pettigrove made no further invitation for he found excuses on many evenings to visit her. it was easy to see that she did not care for his wife, and he did not mind this for neither did he care for her now. the old wish that he had never been married crept back into his mind, a sly, unsavoury visitant; it was complicated by a thought that his wife might145 not live long, a dark, shameful thought that nevertheless trembled into hope. so on many of the long winter evenings, while his wife dozed in her bed, he sat in the widow’s room talking of things that were strange and agreeable. she could neither understand nor quite forgive his parochialism; this was sweet flattery to him. he had scarcely ever set foot outside a ten-mile radius of tull, but he was an intelligent man, and all her discourse was of things he could perfectly understand! for the first time in his life pettigrove found himself lamenting the dullness of existence. he tried to suppress this tendency, but words would come and he was distressed. he had always been in love with things that lasted, that had stability, that gave him a recognition and guidance, but now his feelings were flickering like grass in a gale.
“how strange that is,” she said, when he told her this, “we seem to have exchanged our feelings. i am happy here, but i know that dark thought, yes, that life is a dull journey on which the mind searches for variety, unvarying variety.”
“but what for?” he cried.
“it is constantly seeking change.”
“but for why? it seems like treachery to life.”
“it may be so, but if you seek, you find.”
“what?”
“whatever you are seeking.”
“what am i seeking?”
“not to know that is the blackest treachery to life. we are growing old,” she added inconsequently, stretching her hands to the fire. she wore black silk mittens.
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“perhaps that’s it,” he allowed, with a laugh. “childhood’s best.”
“surely not,” she protested.
“ah, but i was gay enough then. i’m not a religious man, you know—and perhaps that’s the reason—but however—i can remember things of great joy and pleasure then.”
and it seemed from his recollections that not the least pleasant and persistent was his memory of the chapel, a baptist hall long since closed and decayed, to which his mother had sent him on sunday afternoons. it was a plain, tough, little tabernacle, with benches of deal, plain deal, very hard, covered with a clear varnish that smelled pleasant. the platform and its railing, the teacher’s desk, the pulpit were all of deal, the plainest deal, very hard and all covered with the clear varnish that smelled very pleasant. and somehow the creed and the teacher and the attendants were like that too, all plain and hard, covered with a varnish that was pleasant. but there was a way in which the afternoon sun beamed through the cheap windows that lit up for young pettigrove an everlasting light. there were hymns with tunes that he hoped would be sung in paradise. the texts, the stories, the admonitions of the teachers, were vivid and evidently beautiful in his memory. best of all was the privilege of borrowing a book at the end of school time—pilgrim’s progress or uncle tom’s cabin.
for a while his recollections restored him to cheerfulness, but his dullness soon overcame him again.
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“i have been content all my life. never was a man more content. and now! it’s treachery if you like. my faith’s gone, content gone, for why?”
he rose to go, and as he paused at the door to bid her good-night she took his hand and softly and tenderly said: “why are you depressed? don’t be so. life is not dull, it is only momentarily unkind.”
“ah, i’ll get used to it.”
“john pettigrove, you must never get used to dullness, i forbid you.”
“but i thought tull was beautiful,” he said as he paused upon the doorsill. “i thought tull was beautiful....”
“until i came?” it was so softly uttered and she closed the door so quickly upon him. they called “good-night, good-night” to each other through the door.
he went away through the village, his mind streaming with strange emotions. he exulted, and yet he feared for himself and for the widow, but he could not summon from the depths of his mind what it was he feared. he passed a woman in the darkness who, perhaps mistaking him for another, said “good-night, my love.”
the next morning he sat in the kitchen after breakfast. it wanted but a few days to christmas. there was no frost in the air; the wind roared, but the day, though grey, was not gloomy; only the man was gloomy.
“nothing ever happens,” he murmured.148 “true, but what would you want to happen?”
out in the scullery a village girl was washing dishes; as she rattled the ware she hummed a song. from his back window pettigrove could see a barn in a field, two broken gates, a pile of logs, faggots, and a single pollarded willow whose head was strangled under a hat of ivy. beside a barley stack was a goose with a crooked neck; it stood sulking. high aloft in the sky thousands of blown rooks wrangled like lost men. and pettigrove vowed he would go no more to the widow—not for a while. something inside him kept asking, why not? and he as quickly replied to himself: “you know, you know. you’ll find it all in god-a-mighty’s own commandments. stick to them, you can’t do more—at least, you might, but what would be the good?”
so that evening he went along to the christmas lottery held in a vast barn, dimly lit and smelling of vermin. a rope hung over each of its two giant beams, dangling smoky lanterns. there was a crowd of men and boys inspecting the prizes in the gloomy corners, a pig sulking in a pen of hurdles, sacks of wheat, live hens in coops, a row of dead hares hung on the rail of a wagon. amid silence a man plunged his hand into a corn measure and drew forth a numbered ticket; another man drew from a similar measure a blank ticket or a prize ticket. each time a prize was drawn a hum of interest spread through the onlookers, but when the chief prize, the fat pig, was drawn against number seventy-nine there was agitation, excitement even.
“who be it?” cried several.149 “who be number seventy-nine for the fat pig?”
a man consulted a list and said doubtfully: “miss subey jones—who be she?”
no one seemed to know until a husky alto voice from a corner piped: “i know her. she’s from shottsford way, over by squire marchand’s.”
“oh,” murmured the disappointed men; the husky voice continued: “day afore yesterday she hung herself.”
for a few seconds there was a pained silence, until a powerful voice cried: “it’s a mortal shame, chaps.”
the ceremony proceeded until all the tickets were drawn and all the prizes won and distributed. the cackling hens were seized from the pens by their legs and handed upside down to their new owners. the pig was bundled squealing into a sack. bags of wheat were shouldered and the white-bellied hares were held up to the light. everybody was animated and chattered loudly.
“i had number thirty in the big chance and i won nothing. and i had number thirty-one in the little chance and i won a duck. number thirty-one was my number, and number thirty in the big draw; i won nothing in that, but in the little draw i won a duck. well, there’s flesh for you.”
some of those who had won hens held them out to a white-faced youth who smoked a large rank pipe; he took each fowl quietly by the neck and twisted it till it died. a few small feathers stuck to his hands or wavered to the floor, and even after the bird was dead and carried away it continued slowly and vaguely to flap its big wings and scatter its lorn feathers.
pettigrove spent most of the next day in the forest150 plantation south of tull great wood, where a few chain of soil had been cultivated and reserved for seedlings, trees of larch and pine no bigger than potted geraniums, groves of oaks with stems slender as a cockerel’s leg and most of the stiff brown leaves still clinging to the famished twigs; or sycamores, thin but tall, flourishing in a mat of their own dropped foliage that was the colour of butter fringed with blood and stained with black gouts like a child’s copy-book. it was a toy forest, dense enough for the lair of a beast, and dim enough for an anchorite’s meditations, but a dog could leap over it, and a boy could stand amid its growth and look like gulliver in lilliput.
“may i go into the wood?” a voice called to pettigrove. looking sharply up he saw mrs. cronshaw, clad in a long dark blue cloak with a fur necklet, a grey velvet hat trimmed with a pigeon’s wing confining her luxuriant hair.
“ah, you may,” he said, stalking to her side, “but you’d best not, ’tis a heavy marshy soil within and the ways are stabbled by the hunters’ horses. better keep out till summer comes, then ’tis dry and pleasant-like.”
she sat down awkwardly on a heap of faggots, her feet turned slightly inwards, but her cheeks were dainty pink in the cold air. what a smart lady! he stood telling her things about the wood, its birds and foxes; deep in the heart of it all was a lovely open space covered with the greenest grass and a hawthorn tree in the middle of that. it bloomed in spring with heavy creamy blossom. no, he had never151 seen any fairies there. come to that, he did not expect to, he had never thought of it.
“but there are fairies, you know,” cried the widow. “o yes, in old times, i mean very old times, before the romans, in fact before abraham, isaac, and jacob then, the mother of the earth had a big family, thousands, something like the old woman who lived in a shoe she was. and one day god sent word to say he was coming to visit her. well, then! she was so excited—the mother of the earth—that she made a great to do you may be sure, and after she had made her house sparkle with cleanliness and had baked a great big pie she began to wash her children. all of a sudden she heard the trumpets blow—god was just a-coming! so as she hadn’t got time to finish them all, she hid those unwashed ones away out of sight, and bade them to remain there and make no noise or she would be angry and punish them. but you can’t conceal anything from the king of all and he knew of those hidden children, and he caused them to be hidden from mortal eyes for ever, and they are the fairies, o yes!”
“no, nothing can be concealed,” pettigrove admitted in his slow grave fashion, “murder will out, as they say, but that’s a tough morsel if you’re going to swallow it all.”
“but i like to believe in those things i wish were true.”
“ah, so, yes,” said pettigrove.
it was an afternoon of damp squally blusters, uncheering, with slaty sky; the air itself seemed slaty, and though it had every opportunity and152 invitation to fall, the rain, with strange perversity, held off. in the oddest corners of the sky, north and east, a miraculous glow could be seen, as if the sun in a moment of aberration had determined to set just then and just there. the wind made a long noise in the sky, the smell of earth rose about them, of timber and of dead leaves; except for rooks, or a wren cockering itself in a bush, no birds were to be seen.
letting his spade fall pettigrove sat down beside the widow and kissed her. she blushed red as a cherry and he got up quickly.
“i ought not to ha’ done it, i ought not to ha’ done that, mrs. cronshaw!”
“caroline!” said she, smiling the correction at him.
“is that your name?” he sat down by her again. “why, it is the same as my wife’s.”
and caroline said “humph! you’re a strange man, but you are wise and good. tell me, does she understand you?”
“what is there to understand? we are wed and we are faithful to each other, i can take my oath on that to god or man.”
“yes, yes, but what is faith—without love between you? you see? you have long since broken your vows to love and cherish, understand that, you have broken them in half.”
she had picked up a stick and was drawing patterns of cubes and stars in the soil.
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“but what is to be done, caroline? life is good, but there is good living and there is bad living, there is fire and there is water. it is strange what the almighty permits to happen.”
a slow-speaking man; scrupulous of thought and speech he weighed each idea before its delivery as carefully as a tobacconist weighs an ounce of tobacco.
“have some cake?” said caroline, drawing a package from a pocket. “will you have a piece ... john?”
she seemed to be on the point of laughing aloud at him. he took the fragment of cake but he did not eat it as she did. he held it between finger and thumb and stared at it.
“it’s strange how a man let’s his tongue wag now and again as if he’d got the universe stuck on the end of a common fork.”
“or at the end of a knitting needle, yes, i know,” laughed caroline, brushing the crumbs from her lap. then she bent her head, patted her lips, and regurgitated with a gesture of apology—just like a lady. “but what are you saying? if there is love between you there is faithfulness, if there is no love there is no fidelity.”
he bit a mouthful off the cake at last.
“maybe true, but you must have respect for the beliefs of others....”
“how can you if they don’t fit in with your own?”
“or there is sorrow.” he bolted the rest of his cake. “o you are right, i daresay, caroline, no doubt; it’s right, i know, but is it reasonable?”
“there are afflictions,” she said,154 “which time will cure, so they don’t matter; but there are others which time only aggravates, so what can we do? i daresay it’s different with a man, but a woman, you know, grasps at what she wants. that sounds reasonable, but you don’t think it’s right?”
in the cold whistling sky a patch of sunset had now begun to settle in its proper quarter, but as frigid and unconvincing as a stage fireplace. pettigrove sat with his great hands clasped between his knees. perhaps she grew tired of watching the back of him; she rose to go, but she said gently enough: “come in to-night, i want to tell you something.”
“i will, caroline.”
later, when he reached home, he found two little nieces had arrived, children of some relatives who lived a dozen miles away. a passing farmer had dropped them at tull; their parents were coming a day later to spend christmas with the pettigroves.
they sat up in his wife’s room after tea, for carrie left her bed only for an hour or two at noon. she dozed against her pillows, a brown shawl covering her shoulders, while the two children played by the hearth. pettigrove sat silent, gazing in the fire.
“what a racket you are making, polly and jane!” quavered carrie.
the little girls thereupon ceased their sporting and took a picture book to the hearthrug where they examined it in awed silence by the firelight. after some minutes the invalid called out: “don’t make such a noise turning over all them leaves.”
polly made a grimace and little jane said: “we are looking at the pictures.”
“well,” snapped mrs. pettigrove, “why can’t you keep to the one page!”
john sat by the fire vowing to himself that he155 would not go along to the widow, and in the very act of vowing he got up and began putting on his coat.
“are you going out, john?”
“there’s a window catch to put right along at mrs. cronshaw’s,” he said. at other times it had been a pump to mend, a door latch to adjust, or a jamb to ease.
“i never knew things to go like it before—i can’t understand it,” his wife commented. “what with windows and doors and pumps and bannisters anyone would think the house had got the rot. it’s done for the purpose, or my name’s not what it is.”
“it won’t take long,” he said as he went.
the wind had fallen away, but the sky, though clearer, had a dull opaque mean appearance, and the risen moon, without glow, without refulgence, was like a brass-headed nail stuck in a kitchen wall.
the yellow blind at the widow’s cot was drawn down and the candles within cast upon the blind a slanting image of the birdcage hanging at the window; a fat dapper bird appeared to be snoozing upon its rod; a tiny square was probably a lump of sugar; the glass well must have been half full of water, it glistened and twinkled on the blind. the shadowy bird shifted one foot, then the other, and just opened its beak as pettigrove tapped at the door.
they did not converse very easily, there was constraint between them, pettigrove’s simple mind had a twinge of guilt.
“will you take lime juice or cocoa?” asked the widow, and he said:156 “cocoa.”
“little or large?”
and he said: “large.”
while they sat sipping the cocoa caroline began: “well, i am going away, you know. no, not for good, just a short while, for christmas only, or very little longer. i must go.”
she nestled her blue shawl more snugly round her shoulders. a cough seemed to trouble her. “there are things you can’t put on one side for ever....”
“even if they don’t fit in with your own ideas!” he said slyly.
“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.
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“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 soil158 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 workhouses 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.
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“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. now160 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 to161 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 to162 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, he163 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 stopped164 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 cronshaw165 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.
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“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:167 “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:
small
? complete undertaker 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,168 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.
when it fell the third time he was astonished and deeply moved, but he was no longer in doubt, and as he once more made a good upheaval by the grave in the dusk he said in his mind, and he felt too in his heart, that he understood.
“it will not fall again,” he said, and he was right: it did not.
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pettigrove himself lived for another score of years, during which the monotony of his life was but mildly varied; he just went on registering births and deaths and rearing little oaks and pines, firs and sycamores. sentimental deference to the oft-repeated wish of his wife led him to join the church choir and sing its anthems and hymns with a secular blitheness that was at least mellifluous. moreover, after a year or two, he did become a parish councillor and in a modest way was something of a “shining light.”
“if i were you,” observed an old countryman to him, “and i had my way, i know what i would do: i would live in a little house and have a quiet life, and i wouldn’t care the toss of a ha’penny for nothing and nobody!”
in the time of may, always, pettigrove would wander in tull great wood as far as the hidden pleasaunce where the hawthorn so whitely bloomed. none but he knew of that, or remembered it, and when its dying petals were heaped upon the grass he gathered handfuls to keep in his pocket till they rotted. sometimes he thought he would leave tull and see something of the world; he often thought of that, but it seemed as if time had stabilized and contracted round his heart and he did not go. at last, after twenty years of widowhood, he died and was buried, and this was the manner of that.
two men were digging his grave on the morning of the interment, a summer’s day so everlasting beautiful that it was incredible anyone should be dead. the two men, an ancient named jethro and a younger whom he called mark, went to sit in the cool porch170 for a brief rest. the work on the grave had been very much delayed, but now the old headstone was laid on one side, and most of the earth that had covered his wife’s body was heaped in untidy mounds upon the turf close by. otherwise there was no change in the yard or the trees that grew so high, the grass that grew so greenly, the dark brick wall, or the door of fugitive blue; there was even a dappled goat quietly cropping. a woman came into the porch, remarked upon the grand day, and then passed into the church to her task of tidying up for the ceremony. jethro took a swig of drink from a bottle and handed it to his mate.
“you don’t remember old fan as used to clean the church, do you? no, ’twas ’fore you come about these parts. she was a smartish old gal. bother me if one of they goats didn’t follow her into the darn church one day, ah, and wouldn’t be drove out on it, neither, no, and she chasing of it from here to there and one place and another but out it would not go, that goat. and at last it act-u-ally marched up into the pulpit and putt its two forelegs on the holy book and said ’baa-a-a!’” here jethro gave a prolonged imitation of a goat’s cry. “well, old fan had been a bit skeered but she was so overcome by that bit of piety that, darn me, if she didn’t sit down and play the organ for it!”
mark received this narration with a lack-lustre air and at once the two men resumed their work. meanwhile a man ascended the church tower; other men had gone into the home of the dead man. soon the vicar came hurrying through the blue door in171 the wall and the bell gave forth its first solemn toll.
“hey, jethro,” called mark from the grave. “what d’you say’s the name of this chap?”
“pettigrove. hurry up, now.”
mark, after bending down, whispered from the grave: “what was his wife’s name?”
“why, man alive, that ’ud be pettigrove, too.”
the bell in the tower gave another profoundly solemn beat.
“what’s the name on that headstone?” asked mark.
“caroline pettigrove. what be you thinking on?”
“we’re in the wrong hole, jethro; come and see for yourself, the plate on this old coffin says caroline cronshaw, see for yourself, we’re in the wrong hole.”
again the bell voiced its melancholy admonition.
jethro descended the short ladder and stood in the grave with mark just as the cortège entered the church by the door on the opposite side of the yard. he knelt down and rubbed with his own fingers the dulled inscription on the mouldering coffin; there was no doubt about it, caroline cronshaw lay there.
“well, may i go to glory,” slowly said the old man. it may have occurred to mark that this was an extravagantly remote destination to prescribe; at any rate he said: “there ain’t no time, now, come on.”
“who the devil be she? however come that wrong headstone to be putt on this wrong grave?” quavered the kneeling man.
“are you coming out?” growled mark, standing172 with one foot on the ladder, “or ain’t you? they’ll be chucking him on top of you in a couple o’ minutes. there’s no time, i tell you.”
“’tis a strange come-up as ever i see,” said the old man; striking one wall of the grave with his hand: “that’s where we should be, mark, next door, but there’s no time to change it and it must go as it is, mark. well, it’s fate; what is to be must be whether it’s good or right and you can’t odds it, you darn’t go against it, or you be wrong.” they stood in the grave muttering together. “not a word, mark, mind you!” at last they shovelled some earth back upon the tell-tale name-plate, climbed out of the grave, drew up the ladder, and stood with bent heads as the coffin was borne from the church towards them. it was lowered into the grave, and at the “earth to earth” jethro, with a flirt of his spade dropped in a handful of sticky marl, another at “ashes to ashes,” and again at the “dust to dust.” finally, when they were alone together again, they covered in the old lovers, dumping the earth tightly and everlastingly about them, and reset the headstone, jethro remarking as they did so: “that headstone, well, ’tis a mystery, mark! and i can’t bottom it, i can’t bottom it at all, ’tis a mystery.”
and indeed, how should it not be, for the secret had long since been forgotten by its originator.
