THE PROPHET AND THE MOON
At six o'clock the following evening all Anderby was having tea. From fifty chimneys in the valley rose columns of white smoke. In the Hinds' house at the Wold Farm, the foreman was carving a huge beef pie while Ezra Dawson buried his face in a mug of steaming tea. Mike O'Flynn, paying tribute to his military training, washed himself with indiscreet enthusiasm over the kitchen sink. Jack Greenwood, whose agricultural career had brightened somewhat after Waite's dismissal, sat by his mother's table stuffing his mouth with cold bacon while for the seventh time that evening he explained how he had "mothered up" in the horse pasture.
In the Wold Farm John and Mary faced each other across cold ham and boiled eggs. Both of them disliked cold ham and boiled eggs, but Mary had driven to Market Burton that afternoon and had found no time to prepare a hot meal. Besides for the last three days they had fared sumptuously on chickens and scrambled eggs in honour of a guest.
One of the few people in Anderby who was not having tea sat in the "smoke-room" of theFlying Foxand wished himself back at Oxford—or even Manchester.
David's omission of tea resulted from a disquieting interview he had had that morning with his account book, after which he had been convinced that only by the strictest economy could he afford to spend another fortnight on an unremunerative tour of research and propaganda. He had lunched at twelve o'clock on bread and cheese and beer. He would presently sup on similar wholesome fare. Tea was a superfluous luxury, easily foregone by one who was determined to live as the labourers lived. All the same, the scent of frying sausages and bacon from Mrs. Todd's kitchen across the passage was irritatingly savoury. Against his will, David found himself recalling memories of brekkers in Harcourt's rooms at the House, of dinners at the paternal table in Hampshire, even of beefsteaks eaten in the congenial company of Merryweather, the journalist, and Moore, the lecturer on economics, in a chop-house near the Manchester offices of theNorthern Clarion.
This was not at all what he had intended to think about. Really, he must pull himself together and forget his physical demands for a little. Unfortunately, there was nothing particularly pleasant to distract his attention. The smoke-room of theFlying Foxwas not a beautiful place. David had decided, when he first saw it, that romantic novelists describing the picturesque interiors of wayside taverns could never have dreamed of such a room.
It was hateful. David hated the bilious green of its painted walls. He hated the wooden table, covered with brown oilcloth. He hated the unfriendly outline of the high-backed settle, and the china spittoons, and the smoking lamp. Most of all, he hated the smoke-grimed placard that hung against the wall, and announced to all comers that Bass's Beer could be obtained on the premises. Why Bass? Why not Symond's Ale—no, he was Soups—or—David failed to recall other brewers of renown.
The only comfortable thing in the room was the fire, leaping and crackling like a live creature. David bent towards it, warming his hands.
"Praised by my Lord for our Brother Fire, through whom showest us light in the darkness, and he is bright and pleasant, and very mighty and strong," he quoted softly. David at that time cherished an ardent admiration for St. Francis of Assisi as poet; and communist, though, being a conscientious agnostic, he felt bound to regret the saint's theology.
The door opened, and Mrs. Todd entered bearing a bucket of coal-dust and damp slack.
"Oh, you here still, Mr. Rossitur," she remarked with suggestive irony. She disliked strange young men, who announced their intention of occupying the cheap back room for several nights, and who bought nothing more costly than bread and cheese and hung about as though they had eaten roast beef and Yorkshire's. Besides, he might have evil designs on Victoria, her buxom daughter. Mrs. Todd, being a person of small imagination, had divided mankind into two classes, those who had designs on Victoria, those who had designs on Beer. Last night she had come to the regrettable conclusion that David had no true appreciation of Beer.
"Yes, I'm still here, and probably will stay for a little if I'm not in the way."
Mrs. Todd by way of reply swung her bucket over the fire, smothering flames and glowing cinders in a torrent of black coal-dust.
"Oh, Mrs. Todd!" groaned David, lamenting the extinction of his brother Fire. "Must you?"
Mrs. Todd regarded him slowly and with dignity. "I don't say nothing about gentlemen coming and sitting all hours in the smoking room, and paying no more for their beer—whenthey gets it which is not as often as might be considering how good—than if they drank it at the bar. What I say is that this fire has to last until closing time, and there being others what comes at proper times and stays as is right and fitting, and goes away again to return when wanted, there being no call to keep a fire at all when they're not due till 7.30 if that, and mebbe later."
Having delivered this lucid exposition of economy, forethought and natural preference for regular customers, she departed. David fell on his knees before the hearth and tried with a rusty poker to rescue the fire from its smothering burden. His efforts only resulted in an avalanche of fire coal, that fell, rattling through the bars of the grate, on to the stone below. A few angry bursts of flame sputtered and hissed before they died away.
He smiled ruefully. It was all very well to start out from Manchester with a mission of prophecy, all afire to challenge the indifference of agricultural labourers to their own interests; but it was quite another matter to kneel, tealess and with a sore throat, before a choked fire in a hideous room, feeling utterly alien and unwanted.
He heard steps in the passage outside. Some one was entering the bar. In a moment, he might be faced by the magnificent opportunity of confronting the downtrodden and exploited. Surely now he should be elated and indomitable, ready with pregnant arguments to assault the calculating caution of Yorkshire stolidity!
"I'm not a genuine enthusiast really," he groaned to himself. "I want to go back to the Wold Farm, and sit in front of Mrs. Robson's fire, and drink hot whisky and eat roast chicken and tea-cakes swimming in butter! I don't want to talk to labourers about their souls."
This was a perilous state of affairs. He rose and glanced round the room. After all, its very ugliness bore witness to the tyranny of capitalism—capitalism that robbed the hired labourer of all approaches to beauty; that set him to manufacture, by the thousand, lamps of such detestable design; that drove him, his day's work done, to sit on chairs so unbeautiful, in a room decorated solely by the advertisement for the watery wares of a capitalist creature called Bass. And even the one decorative part of the advertisement, the scarlet triangle, had been obliterated by smoke and dust! That was more the sort of thing.
With sudden resolution, he crossed the room, snatched the placard from its nail and stuffed it, crumpled and torn, between the bars of the grate. Then he felt better.
The footsteps he had heard before resounded again down the passage. Some one rattled the latch of the door, and Waite, followed by Ted Wilson, entered the room. Waite looked ill and worried. Since his dismissal from the Wold Farm, he had obtained no further work. His fourth child had appeared prematurely in an unwelcoming world, and his wife's tongue was more bitter than ever. Just now he was in no amiable frame of mind. He flung himself down on the settle and glowered at the smoking fire.
David, watching the smouldering fragments of the placard, wondered whether he could examine the new-comers without discourtesy.
Here were two choice specimens of the exploited proletariat. Waite, red-bearded, stocky, unclean, Wilson, lean and saturnine. Neither appeared to be in love with life. Both were shabby and disconsolate. There was excellent virgin soil in which to sow the seeds of progress. David was perfectly well aware of that. Now was the time to prophesy, but the prophet was dumb. David, fidgeting with the poker, mentally suggested and rejected a dozen introductory remarks. He found himself unable to think of anything more intelligent than the grease spots on Waite's coat. There were five grease spots—five and a half, if you counted the little one near his collar.
Nobody spoke.
Victoria Todd bounced into the room, planked down on the table two glasses of ale, and retired.
David began to make bets with himself, which of the two would speak first. If only some one would start to talk, he was sure he could go on. He had hoped that his unexpected appearance might arouse comment, not having yet learned the indifference to strangers of a Yorkshire labourer. He tried to reason with himself. These men were the very ones for whom he had left Oxford and Hampshire, and all the quite desirable advantages of capitalist luxury. It was absurd, now that he was here, to find no opening for conversation, simply because the red haired man had five and a half grease spots on his coat.
Wilson raised his glass, and deliberately blew off the froth. Light as a feather, a flake floated on to David's coat sleeve, and rested there.
"Now isn't that too bad?" inquired David of the world in general. "I haven't got any beer. I haven't any money to get any beer; yet here the beer comes to me, and sits on my coat sleeve, jeering at me."
Wilson turned slowly, and regarded him as though he were a lion in a travelling menagerie. Then enlightenment dawned across his face.
"Travelling?" he asked laconically. Commercial travellers sometimes stopped at Anderby on their way from Market Burton to Hardrascliffe.
David nodded. "Yes, in a way. And precious cold it is too at this time of the year. And then, Mrs. Todd is such an economical housekeeper that she won't even let the fires burn."
"Mean old cat," murmured Wilson sympathetically. He felt conversational after a day's solitary gardening. "Had any luck lately?"
"Not much, but I hope to have some soon."
"Hope's a fond thing. It fills no bellies. We had a fellow travelling round selling laces and the like to my missus t' other day. 'Done much business lately?' I says. 'Ay,' says he. 'I sold two yards o' ribbon to a girl at Cattlesby back o' Thursday, and now I'm going to sell your missus these here cards o' buttons.' 'Is that all?' ah says. 'All?' says he. 'How much do you want? That makes 9d. and 2-1/2d. profit. And I spent 5/- since I sold the ribbon and that only means 4/8-1/2 loss in three days. Ain't that a lot o' business?' says he. Hope's a fond thing."
"He seems to have had a pretty rough time," said David.
"Rough time? Ay, poor chap. He tried travelling in shoes next, but that weren't no good."
"Does that help?"
"What?"
"Travelling in shoes? Why not boots. Had his worn out?"
Wilson looked on him pityingly. "He sold the shoes. Leastwise tried to. Drowned hisself last week. Poor chap. You new to these parts?"
"Yes. I came from Manchester."
If only there was something to say that would arrest their attention—or if only the inn was full! David was aware that his methods were best adapted for addressing large audiences. Here he felt stifled and stupid.
"Ay—hope!" sneered Waite irrelevantly. He was gazing into the sulky fire with brooding eyes.
"You down on your luck too?" asked David.
"Luck, d'you call it? Pretty sort o' luck I say when you're turned out o' your job at worst time o' year, without a month's notice and your missus with another little 'un coming. That's luck, isn't it? It's luck when t' master sends 'is missus up t' farm to spy on you. It's luck when you don't go down and lick her boots like other fond fools, and she turns on you and tells a pack o' lies and get you chucked out. That's all luck, ain't it?"
"Is that what happened to you?" David asked quietly.
"Happened? Oh, no. These things don't happen. This is a fine land this is, and we're all free labourers. There's a lot of brotherly love about this, an' psalm singing and the rest on't. And they come round at Christmas w' puddings and bits o' beef till it fair sickens you. What we wants is justice. We don't ask no bloody charity."
"Who was it turned you out?"
David looked gravely towards him. They sat on opposite sides of the fire-place; Waite on the settle, one hand on the empty mug, staring suspiciously at David to see if any guile lay behind his intent questioning. David sitting forward in his chair, his lean hands clasped round his knees, his grey eyes dancing now with excitement, sympathy and indignation, his lips a little parted, his bright hair flaming in the lamplight.
Waite spat into the hearth.
"Who done it? Ay, who does owt in this village? Who turned Schoolmaster out o' his better job, and keeps him here kicking his heels up o' top o' Church Hill? Who pays starvation wages, and then takes coals an' Christmas cake round to stop our mouths so that we shan't grumble? Who goes about preaching and lying and telling tales to our wives, and making men fairly sick with her bits o' sermons an' patronizing ways? You ask Wilson here if Willerbys weren't going to pay him three pound a year more till they heard tell what Robsons give'd their men, so they'd go no higher?"
"Ay," Wilson spoke with his usual deliberation. "It's all right for Robson's lads, an' it's all right fer Robsons noo, but one o' these fine days Missus'll sicken of playing providence an' then Anderby will know a bit o' which way its hens were laying."
"Robsons?" asked David. "Not the Robsons at the Wold Farm?"
An hour later, Mike O'Flynn and Ezra Dawson opened the door of the smoking room at theFlying Fox. There were about a dozen habitués of the tavern gathered round a generous fire; but to-night they no longer wore that air of independent exclusiveness which most Yorkshire men assume while drinking, just to show that they need no support from their fellows in their progress through life or through a pint of Guinness's stout.
Instead every face was turned in one direction, and the smoking lamps illuminated varying expressions of incredulity, bewilderment or vacuous attention. At one side of the fire-place, opposite the high backed settle, stood one of the thinnest people the shepherd had ever seen, his arms waving in grotesque gesticulations, his hair standing from his head in a fiery halo, a torrent of words pouring from his impassioned lips.
"Wages!" he cried. "The wages of sin is death and the wages of labour, of lifelong labour honestly given and painfully wraught out by the sweat of the labourer—that, too, is death! Death to social competence—when a man labours from daybreak to nightfall for a miserable pittance, which stands in no proportion to the service he has rendered—Death to initiative and enterprise! When it's no use ever trying to do anything better than it was done yesterday, because the only person who will profit is the capitalist. Death to progress! Since how should men progress, who have become machines, bodies and hands—not brains. Those were dead long ago.
"They say in the Bible which some of you may have read when you were at Sunday School, 'Ye are gods.' I say 'You are beasts,' animals who rise to labour for another man, who sell your souls and bodies, and all the fine things of which your growing manhood once was capable for eighteen shillings a week, and a dole of beef at Christmas. To labour till your backs ache and your hands stiffen and your brains decay, until when the day's work is done you are fit for nothing but to feed grossly like beasts round a sordid table and to swill down beer in a public house before you roll to your dens and fall into a sodden sleep. Beasts, beasts, beasts!" he cried. "And you were born to be gods!"
Half of David's audience had no idea of his meaning, but they realized that he was very angry and on their behalf. He was telling them in this strange way that it was a poor thing to work on a farm—which some of them had thought for long enough—and that the farmers were their enemies, and that something—they weren't quite sure what—had to happen before this distressing state of things could end.
But Elias Waite leaned forward from the settle hearing at last the true interpretation of many of his own half-formed ideas. His face was flushed by excitement; his hands twisted; a new look of hope and understanding lit his brooding eyes.
David had paused. He felt no longer like a cold, hungry boy, listening with apprehension to footsteps along the passage. He felt inspired—a prophet—upborne on the waves of his own eloquence. The idea that he might possibly be talking nonsense never seemed to occur to him, or, if it had entered his head, he must have waved it away with an airy "Never mind. It doesn't matter whether this is sense or not. We've got going."
Ezra approached Wilson, who sat near the door, and tapped him on the shoulder.
"Who's yon lad?" he asked.
"A sort o' preaching chap," murmured Wilson, his eyes still fixed upon David. "Ay, but he's a rare speaker."
Victoria Todd shouldered her way through the crowd, and handed the shepherd his mug of ale. Mike O'Flynn deftly intercepted it and drank it heartily, winking meanwhile at Ezra. The shepherd merely smiled indulgently, knowing Mike would pay for the next, and, anyway, it was no good crossing O'Flynn after he had tasted his second glass.
From the group about the fire came a voice, half jeering, half in earnest:
"Ay, young fellow. It's all very well for you to call us beasts, but who's to start righting matters? We can't do nowt. If we asks more wages, we'll only lose our jobs and stand waiting long enough next Martinmas for hiring."
"Whose going to right it? Why you, and you and you——! The power lies with you, and you alone. Why can't you get up now, and demand high wages? Why do you behave like frightened children instead of standing up for yourselves like men? Because each of you stands alone, and fights alone. There's no co-operation among you."
Abandoning his rhetoric, David began to speak more slowly and calmly, of the possibility of forming an agricultural union, of the progress towards self-government already made in industry, and of the suggested centres for labour organization.
Opposite him a square uncurtained window glowed, faintly luminous, like a pale jewel in the painted wall. A round moon rode across the window pane, followed by a trail of tattered clouds, smoke white on a clear sky of delicate blue. David, glancing up, saw it and stood fascinated by the contrast between the room, reeking with tobacco and oil, the red glow of firelight on faces and clothes and knotted hands, the oppressive clamour of that little company, and the cold perfection of the moon. It mocked him, that remote beauty. It made him suddenly aware of the emptiness of his rhetoric and of the hopelessness of his task, but he responded gallantly to the challenge of its indifference. He turned again to his audience, who were becoming restive now, bored by the duller description of practical details after the excitement of denunciation.
"Of course there will be difficulties," he added, smiling as though these would be welcomed rather than dreaded. "But since I came north I've discovered that nothing is impossible to a Yorkshire man except shooting a fox or riding over seeds."
"There's another thing I'll be telling you is impossible!" said Mike O'Flynn from his seat near the door.
"And what's that?" David inquired confidently. He was showing a brave face to the cynical moon, that still sneered from the window upon the folly of human aspirations.
"And that's for an interfering stranger like yourself to be blarneying us into thinking we could be better off than we are. And sure it isn't Mike O'Flynn you'll be telling is an animal, without feeling the weight of his fist!"
"Oh. This is interesting. You are satisfied with your condition then?"
"Satisfied, bedad! I'd like to know of anyone who isn't if he works for Robsons of Anderby Wold."
David gave a slight ironical bow. "Gentlemen," he said, "allow me to introduce to you an agricultural labourer without a grievance! May I congratulate you, sir, on your contented disposition, no less than on your unique blindness of the truth of your situation?"
It was a mistake. Mike had reached that border line between sobriety and intoxication, when the sense of personal dignity is most vulnerable. He became deeply incensed.
"And may I congratulate you, sir, on the boldness of your impertinence in talking against them who have done most in the world for us, and never a farthing's worth of harm to yourself?"
"I think you misunderstand me. The farmers have, in many cases, done their best according to their own ideas, for their labourers, but misplaced philanthropy does more harm than indifference. If ever you had read the works of a certain gentleman called Aristotle—which from your exclusive attention to the particular, when I am discussing the general, I gather you have not—you would have learnt that 'There comes a time when from a false good arises a true evil.'"
"I'll thank you not to mention your particulars and generals when talking with Mike O'Flynn. I've neither read the works of that gentleman you spake of nor do I want to. But what I do say is that if ye's got anything to say against farmers and their wives, the same including Mrs. Robson, God bless her, you'll just step outside the house and repeat it to me slow and careful like before I knock it back down your dhirty throat. For when I had pneumonia and like to die I was with a pain in my chest like a hot iron and seeing the gowlden gates——"
Dawson placed a restraining hand on Mike's shoulder.
"Coom now, Mike, we've heard all that before. Sure enough there's one way yon young chap has you fair beat—at least 'e stops when 'e's finished."
David had finished. His enthusiasm had burnt itself out, and he felt subdued and exhausted. After a few concluding remarks and a suggestion that he would be at theFlying Foxnext evening, he left the inn.
The village crouched grey and ghostly in the moonlight under the circling hills. Beyond the road a frosty meadow gleamed like water frozen to white tranquillity. The cottages clustered together for company beside the ribbon of street. David stood at a turn in the road, between theFlying Foxand the Wold Farm. The air was cold, and he shivered a little, after the heat of the smoke-room. Always, when he had allowed himself to be carried away by his emotions in public, he suffered afterwards from depressing reaction. The worst of it was, he was never quite sure exactly what he might or might not have said. He could only remember hearing how the Robsons had treated that poor fellow, Waite, and then becoming violently excited. As the room filled, he had talked faster and faster and more and more wildly. He was as certain now as he had frequently been before that he had made a fool of himself, yet how, and why and to what extent he did not know. Only that Irishman, the discharged soldier, Mrs. Robson's protégé—perhaps one ought not to have been quite so ruthless. But then, as if he needed to be told that the Robsons had never done him any harm when all the time he was feeling such an unspeakable cad for criticizing, not them, no, not them, but the class to which they belonged, among the people whom Mrs. Robson believed to be adoring subjects.
"Well, Mr. Rossitur," called a clear voice, "it seems as if something meant us to meet on the road at night. How are you getting on, and how's your cold?"
Mary had emerged from the path which led to her garden through the smaller pasture. She was carrying a basket on her arm and in the moonlight looked taller than ever.
David stood stupidly silent, staring from Mary to the moon and back again to Mary. This was the woman who paid starvation wages and pauperized a whole village to satisfy her nauseated conscience. That was the moon which told him that he had just made a fool of himself and probably a cad and, anyway, it wasn't worth while forgetting that one was supposed to be a gentleman.
"Good gracious, Mr. Rossitur, you don't mean to say you've gone and lost your voice as well? Though I'm not surprised, sleeping at that inn where I'm sure they never air the sheets and standing about without a coat on."
"I—beg your pardon. Good evening. My cold really is better. Thank you very much—Yes, I must go—in a hurry——"
"In a hurry to be standing moonstruck again? You'd better by half go up and talk to John a bit and have a glass of hot lemonade. He's all by himself. I've got to go and see Mrs. Watts. She's rather ill to-night. But I shan't be long away and John would like the company. You go right on in. You look half starved. It's a real frost to-night."
"I'm all right. Really. It's awfully good of you, but I mustn't really."
He felt for his hat, remembered that he had lost it, bowed awkwardly, and hurried off down the road.
This was awful. Why on earth had he ever gone to the house, or even let them be kind to him? What would Mrs. Robson say if she knew how he had been talking at the inn? Really, it had not been necessary to say quite so much perhaps. Yet when he once started, the Lord only knew where he would stop.
He stumbled forward under the moon—the round white moon that had watched him through the window of the inn. It stared at him, unblinkingly, from a clear sky.
David stopped short and suddenly shook his fist at it.
"You may stare as hard as you like," he stormed. "Looking so wise, smiling in such a superior way! I know I'm an ass, but I know too that it's a good deal more sensible to make a fool of yourself over the right thing, than to be a model of decorum over the wrong ones. Mrs. Robson's as kind and sensible as anyone could be, but she's wrong, wrong, wrong, and you know it. And I'm right—though I some times wish to Heaven I weren't. So there!"
Then, because he was very tired and hungry, David went back to eat his bread and cheese at the inn. It was "after hours," so he missed his beer.
Mary, returning along the silent street from Mrs. Watts's cottage, was asking herself, miserably, "Why did he snub me? What's the matter? Why did he go away like that?"
Back in the Wold Farm, she scolded Violet with quite unnecessary rancour, because the coffee was cold.
A DEFINITION OF FELICITY
April came and brought to Ursula a fine pink boy, whose body, bundled in rolls of shawl, squirmed deliciously in Mary's arms as she cuddled him in a sunny room of the Hardrascliffe nursing-home. Ursula lay on a sofa near the window regarding her offspring with amused satisfaction. Her pale blue gown and lacy cap, and the light rug across her knees mingled so admirably daintiness with discretion, that Mary thought she looked more like an advertisement for somebody's invalid wine than a woman who had recently emerged from the disturbing crisis of motherhood.
The baby roused from a light doze and turned, whimpering a little, in Mary's arms.
"Poor little Thomas! You've woken him up, Mary. I'm sure you're not holding him right. Give him to me. You're crushing his feet or something."
Mary had been gazing dreamily through the window at the circling flight of gulls above the sunlit garden.
"He's all right," she said, rocking Thomas softly with practised hands. "But take him if you like. Hush, little love! Diddums, diddums! Did your old aunt then squeeze your little tootsies?"
She crooned over the bundle, smiling tenderly.
Ursula fidgeted on the sofa.
"There, there, hush-aby, sweet lamb, hush-aby!" cooed Mary.
Thomas nestled comfortably against her.
"Oh, Mary, I wish you wouldn't talk that silly baby talk. It's such nonsense—brings them up to bad habits. I don't intend the kid to hear anything but good English. I read in a book that the misnaming of common objects definitely retards a child's mental development. Fancy calling feet 'tootsies' and dogs 'bow-wows' when the real words are so much easier."
Mary smiled a little.
"Oh, it's all very well to smile. You're so old-fashioned, Mary. Come along to mother, sweetheart. He has been held by a stranger quite long enough, Mary. The new system is that children should be brought up to lie in their cots and not be dandled about all day like handbags. They must hate it. Put him in the cot, will you?"
Mary laid the protesting Thomas in a nest of bows and muslin, and stood waiting for Ursula to gather him up and comfort the wails which greeted his deprivation of protecting arms. But Ursula lay back serenely.
Before the arrival of her son, she had declared that all babies bored her to sobs, but recently, having consumed vast quantities of literature on the subject of their upbringing, she had learnt all about them that was to be known. Mary, who had only nursed several dozens of Anderby infants through croup and colic and teething, and cuddled them in unenlightened arms, felt terribly behind the times. She hated to hear children cry.
"Don't you ever want to cuddle him though, and say silly things? I thought all mothers would."
"Well, of course I consider Thomas's good before my own pleasure." Thomas from his cradle, objected loudly to his mother's altruism, but Ursula only put out a cool, white hand and touched his shawl. "He must be trained. He will soon learn."
The training was still in progress, when half an hour later Mrs. Toby arrived in a state of fluttering jubilation, to congratulate Ursula on her triumphant achievement.
"Well, my dear, this is nice! How lovely! How quite sweet he is! Dear, dear! I must say you look quite well. Better than I did, after my first. Toby drove me over from Market Burton, and I'm sure I wanted to come, though he does go so fast round the corners, and we always break down on Casserby Hill. But I thought I must slip up for a minute and see how you are and the dear child. Why, he's smiling! Dear little man!"
An appropriate tear stole down Mrs. Toby's cheek. She had four children of her own, whose existence had been to her a perpetual source of distressful agitation, but she still regarded the advent of other people's babies as a matter for tearful congratulation.
She hovered over the cot, blinking and smiling, and absent-mindedly dropping one or two little parcels on the floor. Mary decided that those strange, clucking noises she made with her tongue were intended for the edification of Thomas, who ungratefully declined to be amused.
Ursula was politely attentive to the privileged absurdities of a mother of four.
"I thought I might just bring along a few of Lucy's flannels, and the cot cover I bought for Gladys. When you've had four like I have, you'll know how these little things come in handy. And I just slipped one or two other little things into a parcel. Dear me, where is it?"
"How nice of you! That's ripping!"
Mary observed Ursula's occasional lapses from pure English with malicious relish. They compensated a little for her feeling of exclusion from the experience of the two mothers. She was not used to being out of it and disliked the sensation. Even little Mrs. Toby seemed to assume an air of faint patronage towards her uninitiation.
"Toby's talking to your husband, Mary," she said. "I left them together in the market. I thought I'd just slip along and see how Ursula and the precious child were."
Mrs. Toby's deference towards life was so great that she never presumed to make an unqualified statement. She would never go shopping, or visit Ursula: but only "just slipped round the corner to buy a few things" and "slipped along to the nursing house." "Life must be a very slippery affair for her," thought Mary, with uncharacteristic spitefulness. Usually she was rather sorry for Mrs. Toby. To-day, seeing her permitted as an experienced mother to hold Thomas for the unprecedented period of five minutes, she felt inclined to be spiteful. Lately, she had noticed several occasions on which she felt inclined to be spiteful.
"There, there! Hush then, little man!" murmured Mrs. Toby.
Ursula, bowing before a fourfold experience, offered no reproof.
"How's Toby?" she asked instead.
"Well, I'm sure I don't know. I really get a little worried sometimes, my dear. I do indeed. He works so hard, poor dear." Mrs. Toby shook her head, and her dangling veil became entangled with Thomas's safety-pins.
"Is he really busy?" asked Mary with relief. "Then his practice is going well? I suppose he has a lot to do just now when so much property is being sold."
The solicitor's wife pushed back her veil. "Well, it's not exactly the practice. For I'm sure, I don't really know. Poor Toby is so busy with other things. He doesn't seem to get much time. All this last month he has been getting a paper ready for the East Yorkshire Archæological Society. It takes such a lot of time. It's about the churches of the wold villages or something, and I'm sure he has to go out nearly every day to look at something or other."
Ursula felt that Mary had blundered on to an unwelcome topic. Tactfully she changed the subject.
"How is your socialist friend, Mary? The one who stood up and defied Cousin Sarah in your dining-room? It must have been a glorious scene! Foster heard about it from Tom Bannister."
"Oh, he's gone," said Mary casually. "I only took him in for a night or two because he had a bad cold, and it was such horrid weather."
"He sounded an awfully violent young man. You do seem to pick up some queer characters, Mary. I gathered from what you told me after you first met him that he was rather odd. What was he really like?"
"Oh—I don't know. Young, you know, and rather excitable!"
"Where has he gone to?"
"He's travelling about the wolds somewhere, speaking on socialism; but I really don't know."
"Oh, yes, you do! Look at her blushing, Mrs. Toby! Come on, Mary. Tell us the horrid truth!"
"There's nothing to tell. I met him, as I told you, before driving back from Hardrascliffe. Starlight knocked him down and I took him home for three days, as he was quite ill. Then he went to stay at the inn and talked a lot of nonsense to the villagers, but I don't think they understood. He stayed about a week, and took up with the schoolmaster a good deal. He's a most objectionable man, that Coast. But I only saw Mr. Rossitur twice in the street after he left us, and hardly spoke to him then."
Mary hoped that she sounded off-hand and uninterested. She kept her angry, miserable eyes steadfastly on the cradle, so that they should not betray her.
After that encounter in the moonlit road outside theFlying Fox, she had only seen David once. She had met him in the village climbing towards the School House—going to visit that wretched Coast, she supposed.
An overwhelming impulse had conquered her pride and driven her to invite him to tea. But David had turned away abruptly. "Very sorry, indeed, Mrs. Robson. It's awfully good of you to ask me. But I've promised to go up and see your schoolmaster—a most interesting person, full of ideas. He's part of my job, you see, so I mustn't disappoint him."
"Part of his job" indeed! This was the second time he had snubbed her. Very well, then, let him mind his job. Mary would mind hers. She tossed her head.
"Well, I'm sure I don't know what the world's coming to," chirruped Mrs. Toby. "Sarah Bannister was only saying yesterday that the wolds soon won't be fit for any farmers to live on. They've got a labourer's union down at Holderness, and I'm sure I don't know what will happen if we start strikes and things on the farms. The coal strikes last year were bad enough."
"Oh, Sarah Bannister's always thinking we're all going straight to the dogs," said Ursula. "When she goes to heaven she'll always be expecting Lucifer to make another war among the angels."
Mary rose and went to the window.
She wished she had not come. She wished that John would arrive to take her home to Anderby. She wished that she had never left home. It wasn't worth while being irritated by Ursula's superiority and Mrs. Toby's silliness when she couldn't even have the compensation of cuddling Thomas.
She wanted just then to cuddle Thomas very much indeed.
"Why, here's Toby coming along the path," she announced, welcoming a distraction. "He looks full of news."
"I don't really know whether I'm fit to receive a man," murmured Ursula, patting the curls below her cap. "Mary, be a dear and hand me that mirror and the powder. Your husband's so particular," she added archly to Mrs. Toby.
Mary brought the powder-box and silver mirror. She didn't see why she should wait on Ursula just because Ursula had a baby.
"Heavens! why didn't some one tell me that my nose was like a looking-glass? How could you let me go on looking such a fright?" Ursula's busy hand dabbed at her already well powdered face.
It was obvious, thought Mary, that she was delighted with the contrast between her daintiness and her visitors' dishevelment. Mary had driven to Hardrascliffe between scattering showers of April rain. Her hair was blown just anyhow, and there was a hole in her driving gloves.
Toby entered with a boisterous flourish. He liked Ursula tremendously. She was a good sort. Had more go in her than the rest of the family. She knew a thing or two. Not a conceited frump like Mary.
"They said that I might come in for a minute if I was very good. Well, Ursula, how are you? And how's the nipper? By Jove, the very image of his father. By the way, I saw Foster in the town. Never met a man so set up in my life! Well, Mary, I've been talking to your man in the market—you come baby worshipping? By Jove, Ursula, wait till you've got four! Then you'll say something!"
He winked at her delightedly, caught Thomas from his wife's reluctant arms, and held him at arm's length for inspection.
"Oh, by the way," he exclaimed suddenly, almost dropping Thomas back on to Ursula's sofa, "I've got something for you, Mary. Have you seen this week'sNorthern Clarion? By Jove, your little friend's been at it all right. There's a stinger there, a regular stinger. He's got you farmers pretty well on toast. He's going to make things hum a bit."
"What little friend?" asked Mary indifferently.
Her heart was in her mouth. She hardly dare open her lips lest Toby should see it.
"That socialist chap who set Sarah by the ears. We've all heard about that little business, Mary. You can't hide your light under a bushel in the East Riding. I met a chap at the Archæological Society who told me to read this. He'd met your young fellow—what's his name? Rossitur? up beyond Foxhaven way, ranting round like a Salvation Army soul-snatcher. Great little fellow, what? You read this."
He handed Mary the crumpled leaves of a newspaper.
The black letters danced madly on the printed page. Mary folded it, laughing rather breathlessly.
"Oh, it's too long to read now. I came to look at the baby, not to read the newspaper."
She could not face it here, in this little room, before the scrutiny of six unfriendly eyes. Toby, no doubt, thought it all a great joke; and Mrs. Toby, silly little hen! Mary Robson of Anderby Wold, who had always thought herself so clever and superior—that she of all people should have harboured a raging socialist, let him insult her relations in her own dining-room, and then go away and write inflammatory articles about her and her village in the most notorious of radical papers! Her hands round the paper tightened.
Toby, highly amused by her confusion, continued his chaffing. "By Jove, he's let you all have it! Starvation wages and coals at Christmas! 'Coddlin' and short' he calls it—coddlin' your men and paying them short. Do you read your Dickens? Good joke, eh? No ... that was in the letter. There's a letter too, by a chap called Hunting. Same thing though—friend of Rossitur's."
"Oh, is there?" Mary spoke with cold indifference.
"And there's a bit on rural education. Says the farmers won't have the children properly educated because that makes 'em discontented. All about the intrigue that goes on behind the schoolboards—children being snatched away to work in the fields before their time is up and all that. Quite a real scandal!"
"He got that from Coast," thought Mary. She wondered how much David had learned from Coast—how much about her and her kingdom at Anderby. How they must have laughed at her together in that hideous parlour at the School House! Her visits to Mrs. Watts, the Christmas Tree, the dances she organized. Probably Coast had been immensely entertained by the story of the embrocation, and the way in which she made David fold sheets, and her naive delight in having an author to stay in the house.
Toby and his wife were bending over the cradle, Ursula lay back on her cushions smiling luxuriously at them. The atmosphere of violet powder and hot milk and drying flannel became suddenly stifling.
Mary rose, clutching the paper.
"Oh, Ursula, I've just remembered. I have to order some cheese at Maryson's. I'll go now, and if John calls please tell him to wait."
She fled from the room. On the stairs she turned and, through the half-closed door, caught the sound of her name and David's, and then Toby's laugh.
The esplanade was deserted. The straight, shower-washed streets shone like polished metal above the dancing grey and silver of the sea. Blank, flat-chested boarding houses with lace-veiled windows lay swept and garnished, ready for the transitory influx of summer visitors. A paper bag blew forlornly along the path till it found a resting-place in the gutter at Mary's feet.
The breeze pulled at her scarf, and the newspaper in her hands flapped and struggled like a live thing. She found a seat facing the sea, and sheltered on three sides from the wind by an erection of glass and wood, built for the convenience of summer visitors. There she sat and unfolded the paper.
TheNorthern Clarionwas unfamiliar to her. She missed the genial friendliness with which theYorkshire Chroniclegreeted her each morning. She wrestled with the fluttering pages, turning them over and over to find David's article.
His name suddenly faced her at the head of a column.
"Progress and the Wolds" by David Rossitur. There was a column and a half of little black letters, dancing and wriggling on the paper. If they only would keep still for a minute, she could read what he had to say—what he had the amazing impertinence and ingratitude to say!
She folded the paper and began to read steadily, from the head on one column to its foot, then up again and half-way down the next, and that was all. She lowered her hands, and looked across the sea.
It might have been worse. After all, he really said very little. The tone of the article was more restrained than that of his book. He had begun by drawing a picture of the agricultural conditions, in East Yorkshire—a little exaggerated in outline, of course, but less grossly distorted than she had imagined. The passage about starvation wages was rather bitter, but the reference to education might have applied to anybody—not specially to her. Perhaps Coast had never even mentioned to him the incident of Jack Greenwood.
Perhaps her anger was unjust. David had to do his work after all. Perhaps she had not taken him seriously enough because he was such a boy. He sounded serious enough here. She shifted her position on the seat and turned to Hunting's letter. This surely was "the stinger." Toby had confused the two writers. Hunting declared that he wished to confirm David Rossitur's theories. He denounced the Eastern Farmers in half a column of crude virulence, and finally stated his intention of following up Mr. Rossitur's valuable work by the organization of a union among farm labourers.
Mary frowned.
Was this really what David meant when he spoke of the fellowship and courage necessary for reform? She turned again to the last passage in his article. It contained an appeal to the organizers of more advanced industries to have patience and sympathy with their comrades, the agriculturists. Although the evils of the countrymen were less flagrant and the sufferers less articulate, there was just the same need for encouragement. He warned them against the cowardice of complacency.
"Progress is not the movement towards a single, recognized goal. Because some of you have reached a condition of comparative prosperity, that is no reason why you should now withdraw from the race. It is cowardice to refuse to relinquish present good for the sake of future excellence. 'Felicity is the continual progresse of the desire from one object to another, the attaining of the former being still, but the way to the later ... so that, in the first place, I put for a generall inclination of mankind, a perpetuall and restlesse desire of power after power which ceaseth only after death and there shall be no contentment but proceeding.'"
Mary read that, and one passage further back about kings and queens. It was addressed to the masters of hired labourers. "You, who think you hold suzerainty over men, beware lest you find that time has robbed you of dominion. For those alone are kings and queens who sit enthroned above their generation and rule circumstance."
He had said something like that to her, standing by the mantelpiece in the Anderby dining-room, smiling at her with wistful, half-humorous eyes. Here it seemed a direct appeal to her understanding. Did he mean her to read it and remember?
She put down the paper. A man and a girl passed the shelter linked arm in arm. The girl wore a dark hat, trimmed with bright little scarlet wings. She looked up, laughing, in the man's face. He bent towards her, and Mary could not hear what he murmured, though they passed so close that the girl's skirt brushed her knee.
Their footsteps died away along the pavement. Mary was left alone with the wheeling gulls, and the sound of the wind striking the shelter.
David had said very little, but it was enough. She knew now what he thought about her.
David and his kind, the man and girl who had just passed her, the young labourers at Anderby, Jack Greenwood and Fred Stephens, they were the heirs of the future. They wanted to go forward because "there shall be no contentment but proceeding."
But Mary had placed herself in the ranks of the older generation who would have time leaden-footed. She cherished no longing to proceed. "Her restlesse and perpetuall desire for power after power" had taken her as far as she dared go.
She had John. She had Anderby.
Further progress could bring her no increase of power, only enforced abdication from the only dominion she could hold.
"Those alone are kings and queens who sit enthroned above their generation and rule circumstance."
She stared across the sea.
A gleaming sail, far out across the bay, caught a momentary flash of sunlight, then vanished into the grey waste of water.
And she was no older than David and Fred Stephens and Ursula and Violet—only different.
The sharp clop, clop of hoofs along the Esplanade caught her attention. She turned her head. Through the glass at the back of the shelter she saw John driving towards the nursing-home. She waited until he turned the corner, then rose and quickly followed.
The dog-cart was drawn up outside the gates of the nursing-home. John saw her coming, and raised his hand.
"Where have you been, honey? I thought you were with Ursula?"
"I went out on the Front a bit." She climbed wearily into the seat beside him.
Once, on the drive home, he broke the silence: "I was talking to Toby up in the market. He was saying to me that the Diamond Assurance Company, the one we deal with for the house and farm buildings and so on—fire insurance—it's going to pot. He says we ought to transfer our policy to Mallesons'. They're clients of his—good people. What do you think?"
Mary was not listening. Her eyes were looking beyond the falling road to the grey village, in the cup-shaped hollow of the walls.
"Eh, honey?"
"Oh, yes, if you think so."
Between the generation that was passing and the one coming forward was a great gulf fixed—Mary and John were on one side. For a moment rebellion seized her. Why could she not relinquish this—the dim hills before her, the bearded figure beside her, the responsibilities that preyed upon her? Why not escape to the other side?
They were passing the cross-roads where Starlight had picked up the stone in his shoe. Mary leaned forward; one vision rose before her; her rebellion culminated in one need—David, David Rossitur.
She saw him again as she had last seen him, climbing the hill towards the School House, his lean figure bent forward against the wind, the sun on his eager face, his red hair blowing in untidy locks across his forehead, the sleeves that were always too short for his long wrists....
John spoke again.
"Then you think it will be all right if I tell Toby to transfer that Insurance Policy?"
"Oh, yes. Anything you like," answered Mary.
On the hall-table at Anderby a note awaited her. She opened it listlessly while John removed his hat and coat.
"Anything the matter?" he asked suddenly, noticing her white face. "What's that?"
"This? Oh, nothing. Only a note from Coast to say he's afraid he can't let the boys have a holiday to go brassocking this year. He is a fool."
"There's going to be trouble with that fellow," muttered John. "Brassocks will grow like anything this spring unless we get in extra boys to hoe them. You can't expect the men to get the fields cleared quick enough."
"Oh, you're always seeing trouble ahead! You're as bad as Sarah," snapped Mary. "Why can't you look on the cheerful side of things for a change? Anyone would think you were an old man from the way you talk."
John looked up, hurt and surprised. Mary's outburst was unexpected. She never said such things.
His puzzled glance curbed her irritation, the instinct to comfort being stronger than the desire to wound some one else.
"I didn't meant that," she said quickly. "I didn't mean that, John. I don't know what I'm saying. I've got such a headache."
His surprise deepened to speechless bewilderment when she turned and suddenly kissed him on the forehead, then fled upstairs to her room.
John stood in the hall, silently scratching his head.
"Now what on earth did she do that for?" he inquired of the hatstand.
It ventured no reply.
THE FRUITFUL GROUND
"I really think you might have had more common sense, Mr. Coast," said Mary. "It isn't as if the boys had never had a holiday for brassocking before. I really don't see that you have any right to stop a thing that has gone on for so long."
The schoolmaster smiled.
"That's just what you all think about here, Mrs. Robson. No one has a right to stop anything that's gone on for any length of time. It doesn't matter whether a thing's good or bad so long as it's old."
"Well, it wouldn't be old if it wasn't good, would it? Some one would have stopped it long ago. The boys are all going to be labourers in a year or two. It wouldn't have done them any harm to have a day or two's holiday in the fields."
"It wouldn't have done them any harm to play football in your field, Mrs. Robson, but as they had always managed without a proper playground I suppose it was right that they should continue to do so."
"That has nothing to do with it. And I told you last year I had made up my mind about the field."
"Naturally in that case there's nothing more to say, is there?"
Mary looked at Mr. Coast and Mr. Coast looked at Mary.
She thought he would have irritated her less if his black coat had fitted him properly. Once, any sign of poverty or pathos appealed to her. Lately it had only aroused a grudging annoyance that anyone should be silly enough to add to the world's accumulation of misery.
"Of course there's nothing further to say." Though she knew quite well it would be better if she could leave things alone, she added: "Oh, except that it may have escaped your notice that the lock on the door of the class room cupboard, where we keep the tea-things, is broken. I can send the joiner up to mend it if you like."
Coast turned away.
"I have already attended to the matter," he replied.
A whist drive was in progress at the village school. Fourteen collapsible tables, with a fixed determination to fulfil their destiny by collapsing at every possible moment, filled the room where, five months ago, the Christmas Tree had stood. Fifty-six ladies and gentlemen from Anderby and the country sat around, intent and upright, clutching the fateful cards on which hung their chance of possessing a silver-plated toast-rack, a pair of gent's gloves, size 8-1/2, or a currant loaf.
Mr. Coast presided over the entertainment. At intervals that seemed all too short for perspiring players desperately pursuing the odd trick, he blew a shrill whistle, and fifty-six wooden chairs shrieked and grated along the well scrubbed boards.
Mrs. Robson was not playing. Instead she stood near the door, now talking to the schoolmaster, now vanishing into the adjoining class room to superintend the making of coffee, the arrangement of tarts and jellies, and the fair distribution of ham and chicken sandwiches that awaited the supper interval.
The vicar, arriving shortly after nine o'clock, approached the schoolmaster as the one unengrossed person in the room.
"Dear me, yes. A nice gathering you have here to-night. A very nice little gathering. I have just spoken to Mrs. Robson in the passage. Very, good supper there—ha? Very good indeed."
"Excuse me," remarked Coast dryly, and blew the whistle.
The chairs scraped. Miss Taylor, who was left for the seventh consecutive game at the corner table, sighed expansively.
"Oh, dear, isn't that just too bad now?" she lamented. "If only Mr. Armstrong had returned my lead in diamonds we should have got the odd that time. Mr. Slater, isn't it just vexing that when I get to the only broken chair in the room I should be kept sitting on it seven times running? I'll be sprouting roots into it if I don't get a move on soon."
"Clubs," gloomily announced Mrs. Armstrong, turning up the last card, and frowning at Miss Taylor.
"Well, of all the dreadful luck! When I haven't——"
"If you talked less, Miss Taylor," suggested Coast severely, "both you and your partner might have more chance of moving on, unless, of course, you want to get the booby prize."
Miss Taylor flushed, and bent disconsolately over her cards.
"Never mind, Miss Taylor." Mary had returned from the class room. "Luck in cards isn't everything. I never saw the supper room more prettily arranged, and if you can decorate as nicely as that you deserve the toast-rack at least, even if you don't make the highest score."
"May I beg you not to talk to the players, while the game is in progress, Mrs. Robson? Strictly a matter of formality of course, but rules are rules."
"Ha ha! we can't have our hostess called to order, can we, Miss Taylor?" laughed the vicar jocularly. "Not before supper anyway, Mr. Coast. She might go off with all the jellies—and the chocolate moulds, ha? Mustn't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs."
"Oh, good evening, Mr. Slater." The schoolmaster might not have existed for all the attention Mary paid him. "Have you seen how charmingly Mrs. Coast and Miss Taylor have decorated the class room? Come and look."
She led the way from the room.
Coast stood, watch in hand, waiting for the time to blow the whistle.
Through the open door he could see Mrs. Robson standing beside the laden table. Her tall figure, in its plain, black gown, was outlined against the delicate green of budding branches, fastened at each end of the supper-table. Paper lanterns of scarlet and blue swung from the pliant saplings like vivid flowers. Among the creams and trifles, three great bowls of daffodils lit the table with a golden glory. All this springtide elegance was Mrs. Robson's device and Mrs. Robson's gift to the village. The name whispered most frequently by the players, in the little bursts of conversation that heralded the union of fresh partnerships, was that of Mrs. Robson. She had given the prizes; she was the foremost contributor to the supper-table; she had organized the last whist drive before the approach of summer, in aid of the children's annual holiday to the seaside. But that the real burden of responsibility lay on the shoulders of quite another person, the schoolmaster knew well. The chief sufferer from the inconvenience of disarranging the whole school, of upsetting the precarious equilibrium of Miss Taylor's temperament, of settling down, after the departure of the last card player, to tidy the room, was Mr. Coast. But, of course, no one thought of him!
He did not doubt the efficiency of his handiwork, only the adequacy of its reward.
Of course with his miserable salary he couldn't send creams and trifles to grease the throats of these toadying villagers. He couldn't fatten his cows on the grass that should have been the school playground. He could only work the skin off his hands, serving an ungrateful society.
He blew the whistle with savage but ineffectual violence two whole minutes before its time.
"Oh, Mr. Coast, I've just got my cards gathered together, and I had such a lovely hand!" protested Miss Taylor.
"I think that was a little too early, Mr. Coast," said Mary. "Don't you think they can play on for the other two minutes?"
They played on.
Two hours later the last whistle had blown, the prizes had been presented, and the card players were struggling for hats and coats in the crowded lobby. The schoolroom was almost empty. Three tables, which had collapsed irretrievably, lay huddled in one corner. The scattered cards lent the scene an air of unwonted dissipation. Coast stood, frowning at the wreckage and wondering how long it would be before he could cross the asphalt yard to his own house and bed. He was tired, and the atmosphere of the crowded room had brought upon him one of his worst attacks of neuralgia.
The vicar was saying good-bye to Mrs. Robson.
"Well, a most satisfactory evening. I think I can congratulate you on a really successful evening. Fifty-six multiplied by two shillings—let me see. Very good indeed, very. What should we do without her, eh, Coast?"
Coast had already done his duty to Mrs. Robson. Before she presented the prizes he had praised her many virtues in a masterly speech. He had said enough.
A little hammer of hot iron seemed to be thumping at his right temple with maddening regularity.
"You look tired, Mrs. Robson," said the vicar. "Mustn't do too much. We can't afford to have you ill, you know—can't afford it, can we, Mr. Coast?"
"Oh, I'm all right," said Mary wearily. "I've been rather off colour the last few days. It's nothing—indigestion I expect, and the warmer weather."
She began to gather up her coat and scarf from the chair beside her. The vicar groped clumsily for them.
"Let me help. Mr. Coast, those are Mrs. Robson's gloves over there I believe, if you don't mind."
"I'm sorry. I have to clear the room. Got to hurry up."
Really, if he had to fetch and carry for the woman!
"Oh, I'll stay and help," suggested Mary mechanically, laying aside her coat.
"Please don't trouble. I can manage better by myself. Mrs. Coast and Miss Taylor will help me."
"Very well."
Mrs. Robson plainly did not care whether she stayed or went.
Indeed, from her listless movements it was clear and she did not much mind what happened at all.
The two men watched her go. The vicar rubbed his hands.
"Capital woman. One of the best. Splendid worker. Example to the whole parish, ha? But doesn't look well. I should say—mark you, I don't know, but I should say—she had been overdoing things."
Coast's self-control deserted him.
"No wonder, when she can't let the wind blow without puffing it on a bit! If she minded her own business a bit more and other people's a bit less, she might look better. I believe she thinks the Almighty can't get along without a deputy providence."
"Really, Mr. Coast!" said the vicar.
It was two o'clock in the morning before Coast locked behind him the heavy door of the school and turned towards his own house. It was a moonless night, and he stumbled across the yard, scraping his shins for the hundredth time against the low parapet near the gate.
His neuralgia was worse than ever.
Mrs. Coast trotting timidly behind him sighed forlornly.
"Well, that's done! But what ever shall we do about those tables? And did you hear Miss Taylor say she hadn't prepared her lessons for to-morrow yet? But what a lovely supper—only poor Mrs. Robson doesn't look well, does she?"
"Oh, don't talk. Can't you see I have a headache? Where did you put the matches? Are there never any matches in this confounded house?"
"Aren't you coming upstairs, Ernie? You must be tired."
"Oh, for God's sake leave me alone! Go to bed. And how many thousand times have I told you not to call me 'Ernie'?"
"Oh, I'm sure I didn't mean anything. Only I'm sure you're tired. Would you like a cup of cocoa, Ern—Mr. Coast?"
"Cocoa! Cocoa!" His voice rose to a shrill scream. The headache was closing in upon him now in a swirling horror of nausea. "Get out. Get out for Heaven's sake!"
Mrs. Coast fled.
Coast sat in the parlour, his head on his hands, his elbows on the table. He knew that there was something at the back of his memory which would console him, if only this cursed pain would stop for a moment and let him think. Ah! He rose unsteadily and went to the table in the window. On a woollen mat, in the shade of an aspidistra plant, lay a copy of theNorthern Clarion. He spread it on the table before him. Slowly he re-read an already familiar article, repeating softly the words, as though he found consolation in them. Rossitur, of course, was a fool. He had known that after half an hour's conversation with him. Enthusiasm was all very well; but enthusiasm totally detached from common sense was about as useful as a bell without a clapper. Why, the man didn't know what he was talking about. He wanted to turn the whole world into a sort of socialistic Sunday School with every one singing "Oh happy band of pilgrims" to the tune of the "Red Flag." Of flesh and blood and men with passionate and petty jealousies, with magnificent desires and sordid greeds, he knew nothing.
Still, even fools were sometimes useful.
Pictures chased each other through his mind. Mrs. Robson standing more like a stuffed duchess and handing Bert Armstrong's young woman a plated toast-rack. She thought there was no one like her in the whole East Riding; Mrs. Robson, sitting in that room, saying "The Field is mine. I will not sell"; Mrs. Robson walking down the village street, raising up and putting down whomsoever she would, acting deputy God.
How would she like one day to discover that she was only a cog in a worn-out economic machine? Now that chap, Hunting, talked sense. An agricultural labourer's union would soon show Mrs. Robson her place in society. Hunting seemed a practical chap. No nonsense about him. Said what he meant. He'd know just how to deal with a woman like Mrs. Robson.
Coast, holding one hand to his aching head, drew towards him a sheet of note-paper and dipped his pen in the inkpot. There was no ink. What on earth was the use of marrying a wife who never filled the inkpots? He wasted ten minutes groping about on shelves and cupboards before he found a sixpenny bottle behind Mrs. Coast's workbasket.
It was nearly four o'clock when he finally began his letter.