Susie wasn’t like that. With Susie he knew exactly where he was. She had even, once or twice, shown herself jealous of his devotion to Mary, and tried to read into it an intimacy which was very far removedfrom their real state. She had seen Mary in the police-court and in the gallery at the assizes, had recognised her beauty and the dignity which contrasted so deeply with her own abandon. She would ask Abner questions about her, implying that Mary must be jealous of his visits to Mainstone, in this way half convincing Abner that it was unnatural for her not to be jealous, and aggravating his grievance.
‘I suppose she takes your money and then treats you like dirt,’ she said scornfully. And Abner could not be sure that she hadn’t described the situation exactly.
Christmas came and passed: a meagre Christmas such as their means imposed upon them. The morning was bright, and Mary took the children to church. In the evening Mrs Mamble and old Drew joined them, and in their company the bearing of Mary curiously lightened. She became young and gay, almost childish. There was laughter in her eyes and her cheeks were flushed with firelight. The old labourer had brought with him a bottle of cowslip wine that he had made in the spring, and they sat together late into the night telling stories of forgotten people and distant counties. About midnight the others left them, and though her attitude sensibly changed, a little of the glow was left in Mary’s face.
‘Last Christmas,’ she said musingly, ‘we all went down to the Buffalo in the evening—George and me and the children.’
Abner also remembered. He told her of his own Christmas at Hackett’s Cottages, how John Fellows had been in hospital with his broken thigh and he had been left alone with Alice and little John. Mary leaned forward and listened to him in the firelight with her soft eyes fixed upon his face.
‘Was it her you wrote that letter to?’ she asked.
‘The one you wanted to post?’
‘I thought I could save you the trouble.’
He laughed. ‘Yes . . . that was her.’
‘How old was she?’
‘Somewhere about the same as you, I reckon.’
‘And two children?’
‘No, only one kid.’
‘How long was he . . . I mean your father . . . in hospital?’
‘Pretty nigh six month.’
‘And you had to keep the house going?’
‘Of course I had. There wasn’t nought coming in except his club, and that bain’t nothing to speak on.’
‘Six months . . .’ She stared into the fire, and there was a long silence. ‘It’s funny, isn’t it?’ she said at last, without raising her eyes. ‘Funny how things turn out?’
‘Yes, it’s a rum go.’
Then she began slowly to question him about Alice: what was she like, fair or dark, how tall, the kind of dress she wore—curious details that he had to search his memory to answer. She seemed to be working out for herself the obvious parallel, but never looked at him.
‘Why did you leave them?’ she said at last.
By this time is was no longer difficult to talk to her. He told her continuously the story of his last days at Halesby. She listened eagerly, putting in from time to time a short question for which he could see no reason. He told her of John Fellows’s bouts of drink, of the way in which he had set himself to work through his compensation money, of the day of Dulston Wakes, the boxing booth, the brooch, the moment when he had come blundering down into the kitchen at Alice’s cry for help, the struggle—and the blow with which he had knocked his father out. He even told her of the sovereigns that Alice had slipped into his pocket when he left her.
‘That’s what I sent back to her in that letter,’ he said.
‘Was that all? It was good of you.’
He was silent, and she pressed him again.
‘Why didn’t you go before?’ she said. ‘Why did you stay on there till that happened?’
‘I dunno’,’ he said. ‘I reckon I’d got to see it through. That football business turned me up.’
‘You wanted to go before?’
‘Yes, I was pretty well sick of it. Any one would have been.’
She looked at him, and her eyes were now humble. She spoke almost with diffidence.
‘Abner,’ she said, ‘if ever you want to go from here for any reason, no matter what it is, promise me that you’ll tell me straight. Don’t you keep it hidden like that, feeling that the children and me are a drag on you! If you want to go to-morrow, you go. Don’t you think of what you said to George. You don’t owe him anything. You don’t owe me anything at all. If ever you feel for one minute you want to go, please tell me straight. I can look after myself, and I shall understand. That’s what I felt with George. Promise me. . .’ She leaned toward him with clasped, beseeching hands.
‘I’ll tell you right enough,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Don’t you fret yourself about that.’
She sighed, and pushed her hair back from her forehead.
‘Now I feel easier,’ she said. ‘How late it is!’
She wished him good-night, and left him; but he did not move till the logs collapsed in the grate. He was thinking drowsily of the other Christmas in Halesby, of the different way in which Alice had approached him, how she had tried to draw him nearer to her and how he had resisted her. He thought of the clinging dependence of Alice contrasted with the strength and independence of this other woman. Poor Alice! She had never answered his letter or acknowledged his postal order; but then, she was never one for letter-writing. The suggestion of freedom, the open way of escape which Mary, in her pride, had shown him, made him feel for a moment curious about that other life that had seemed so far away. If he wanted to do so, he reflected, he could throw up his job at a week’s notice and take a train that would transport him in half a day back to North Bromwich, back to the familiar smoke-pale sky, to the chimney stacks, the furnaces and the smell of pit mounds. The odour of coal-dust and slag-heaps was in his nostrils. He saw the packed amphitheatre of the Albion ground and the white-lined turf within it. He heard the rumour of a football crowd, the thud of the ball, the referee’s whistle.So utterly remote. . . . He went to the door and opened it before he turned the key in its wards. He saw nothing but the high blackness of the winter night, not even a single star. The dank air chilled him; it crept into the lighted room.
‘It’s a rum go . . . a bloody rum go!’ he said, yawning.
With the New Year, Abner’s work on the pipe-track became more strenuous, for much time had been lost in the ten days of snow that fell about the time of Bastard’s death and in the violent floods that followed on the thaw. A mild January did little to dry the sodden workings, and the task of shovelling earth was heavier to Abner than his old labours in Mawne Pit. His mate, Munn, who lodged miserably in a leaky labourer’s cottage on the river-bank at Mainstone, was taken ill with bronchitis, and Abner worked alone. Up to his ankles in reddish clay he toiled, his hands were rufous and his trousers caked with it. The burden of the wet earth weighed on him. It was like a sullen enemy that made his feet leaden and strained against the muscles of his arms. All the labourers felt it. Their speech, which had been gay and good-humoured, became dogged and irritable. Nor were they the only folk who suffered. In every farm of the sodden Wolfpits valley men were making the same struggle under the raw and steely sky. Brimming dykes that drained the meadows shone cold beside the black hedgerows. The Folly Brook, a brown torrent, dammed with broken branches that gathered leaves and creamy foam, filled the whole valley with melancholy roaring. Waterfowl, snipe, and mallard and even slow-winged herons, moved upward to the sodden springs. It was a sad season in which the solitary workers on the farms, seen at evening in the fields, looked as if they were stuck fast in mires from which they could not escape: so slowly they moved, so huddled and pitiful they seemed. Even on the drive at Wolfpits, where the gravel was reasonably dry, it was painful to see the bowed figure of old Drew returning at night, his boots so caked with mud that he could scarcely drag himself along. It was no wonder that the man found consolationin the sweet, fiery spirits that he distilled. He sang so loudly at night that Mrs Mamble would come in and sit with Mary and Abner rather than listen to his high, cracked voice.
Toward the end of January the vicar of the parish awoke to the fact that George Malpas was in prison and his wife presumably destitute. Between his vicarage and Wolfpits lay the vast bulk of Castel Ditches, so that he rarely visited the valley in winter. George Malpas, too, was a member of a dissenting family, his mother being known as a fanatic Methodist; but the Condovers, in so far as they had ever professed religion, were church people. Morgan and Gladys had both been baptized in the parish church, and since scandal informed him that old Mrs Malpas, like the dissenter that she was, had abandoned her son’s family, the vicar sent the parish relieving officer on a special visit to Wolfpits to see if Mary were starving.
It pained and astonished the vicar to learn that she was doing nothing of the sort. She was not even humble, as a woman in her degrading position should be. The relieving officer, who had made his long journey to Wolfpits for nothing, reported that she was not in need of relief, and for the most shameful of reasons. There was a lodger, a young man employed on the water-works and known to the police as a desperate character, who appeared to be filling the absent husband’s place. Malpas’s wife had not even made any decent attempt to conceal this state of affairs. She had confessed brazenly that she was living on this young man’s earnings. To help her in any way would merely be putting a premium on immorality. The vicar nodded his head gravely. Such cases were all too frequent in rural districts, and yet it was a relief to feel that his principles freed him from any further responsibility. He mentioned the matter with satisfaction to his wife at supper on Sunday. At this meal, his weekly labours being ended, he always felt that he could speak more lightly of parish matters.
The vicar’s wife was shocked. ‘I always thought her such a superior young woman, dear. Do have some more beef!’ she said. The idea of the superior anddesirable young woman, whom she remembered as the mother of those two sweet children, living in open sin, obsessed her. It was a terrible and fascinating picture, and since the usual supply of gossip failed at the next Lesswardine working party, she dilated, in hushed tones, on the latest enormity.
‘One feels a thing like that in one’s own parish,’ she said, speaking, as usual, as if she, and not the vicar, were the incumbent. ‘But I am afraid nothing can be done.’
Somebody made a suggestion. The sister of the vicar of Aston-by-Lesswardine, Mr Cyril Malpas—the name was a curious coincidence—was shortly to be married to a young engineer, and the vicar would consequently be in need of a housekeeper. What a providential escape it would be if this young woman could find a home in Mr Malpas’s vicarage! ‘If only Mr Malpas would overlook this terrible state of affairs and take her,’ they added.
‘The only difficulty that I see,’ said the vicar’s wife, ‘is that of the children.’
‘But the matron at the workhouse is so motherly, and such a religious woman. Poor little things! It would be a blessing in disguise.’
Mr Malpas readily consented. His sister Celia, to tell the truth, had not been very successful as a housekeeper. Her individuality had been too marked—not to say aggressive—for that position, and a woman who had her reputation to regain would surely be anxious to please.
The new arrangement was proposed to Mary. The vicar’s wife put the matter delicately, for she prided herself on her tact. More than ever she was impressed with the young woman’s superiority and the sweetness of the children.
‘Then I shall tell Mr Malpas that you will be glad to come, Mrs . . . er . . . Malpas?’
‘I must talk it over with Mr Fellows,’ said Mary.
‘Mr Fellows?’
‘My lodger.’
‘Oh . . . yes, I see . . .’ said the vicar’s wife. That evening Abner came in tired from a day’s work in the rain. His clothes were soaked; they steamed ashe stood before the fire and filled the room with a harsh odour of wool and sweat. She told him calmly of her visitor and of the proposal that she had made. She did not say a word of her own inclinations.
‘What about the kids?’ he asked.
‘I couldn’t take them with me. They would go to the workhouse.’
‘To hell with the work’us!’ said Abner. ‘Not likely! What do they take you for?’
Mary smiled. She told him what they took her for.
Abner was seized with rage. ‘They’re a dirty lot of swine, that’s what they are!’ he said. ‘By God, I’d like to tell ’em of it!’
‘It’s natural,’ she said. ‘It looks like that.’
‘And what the hell does it matter what it looks like, so long as there bain’t nothing wrong? Old George knows it’s all right, and he’m the only one as matters.’
She did not answer.
‘An’ what’s the difference you being here with me or living alone with that there parson?’
‘He’s a clergyman,’ she said.
‘A clergyman, is he?’ Abner cried. ‘A clergyman! I like that!’
It pleased her, in her heart, to see him so moved.
‘Well, what do you think of it?’ she said quietly. ‘If you want to go, like you did before when you were at home, this is your chance.’
He stood scowling in front of the fire. He couldn’t make her out. When he left the court at Shrewsbury he had set himself to a deliberate line of conduct and determined to go through with it. When they had spoken of it before it had seemed to him that he and Mary were agreed on it and that nothing could change it until George’s return. Even now he couldn’t bring himself to believe that she wanted to make a change. He knew her quiet passion for the children too well to think that anything could tempt her to abandon them to the care of strangers. Also he knew her pride. He believed that her pride and nothing else was keeping her from telling him exactly what she felt. It was useless for her to pretend to him that she had no feelings. It struck him that she was not playing the game. Whena man and woman were placed in their position anything but the most complete confidence in each other was unfair. He would force her to say what she thought. Even if it humbled her he would force her to speak.
‘It’s naught to do with me,’ he said. ‘If you want to go, you go, and that’s all that matters.’
She was silent for a long time.
‘If you want to go, you go,’ he repeated.
At last she spoke, very quietly.
‘I don’t want to go,’ she said.
A feeling of joy swept over him, a curious, almost physical exultation. He had brutally broken through the veil in which she hid herself. He had seen herself at last. Now, with the blood tingling in his fingers, he would assert himself triumphantly as the man by whose labour she lived. She could despise him no longer. He wanted to tell her so, to make himself strong before her, but when he looked at her and saw her humility, he could do nothing. His words withered on his lips. He scarcely knew what he was saying.
‘Give us a spot of tea, then,’ he said roughly, and she turned from him without another word.
Shestayed at Wolfpits. The iron of winter lay heavy on the land. The hills were leagued with winter to hem them in and isolate them. It was as though Wolfpits were besieged. For many years there had been no such winter in the Powys march, and old men who divined portents of weather from the berries of holly and the conduct of birds, foretold that there was worse to come. By the end of January the cloggers, as sensitive to sky-change as any feathered migrants, had struck their tents in the Wolfpits valley, leaving half their harvest of alder ungathered, and set off north for Lancashire where, in a country parched with fire and warmed with millions of huddled houses, they might finish the shaping of their wood for market. In any case they had stayed in the country later than usual, and when old Mrs Malpas, shocked by Wigan Joe’s attempts to put life into her husband, bundled them out of their lodging at the Buffalo, they had no choice but to go, for the tenting that flapped miserably by the banks of the Folly Brook was no shelter for men in that bitter weather.
‘We’ll be back to hear the cuckoo, lad,’ said Wigan Joe. ‘You’ll none get rid of bad pennies like uz.’ And Abner, walking down the valley to work, heard no longer the echoing of their axes nor the crack of rending wood. Where the trim piles of billets had stood covered in tarpaulin he now saw nothing but squares of withered grass, and charred circles where they had made their fires among the birches by the river. Their departure made Wolfpits seem more distant and desolate than ever. Little by little the constriction of winter was crushing all life out of the valley. Only Wolfpits was alive, and it seemed a miracle that even Wolfpits should live.
For a few days at the latter end of February there came a mockery of sunshine, sad, like the suns of autumn. Abner sang as he walked down the valley;the labourers sang at their work. In a moment, such is the indomitable hope of living things, the birds broke their silence, the purple hedges were flushed, the bare twigs of hazel trembled as though they would shake their pale catkins out; one could feel the sap of life secretly stirring. But on the third day March came in howling like a lion with a dry wind from the northwest, sweeping brown leaves along, and the branches of the trees that bowed before it rattled dryly like dead bones. Once more the floods arose and drowned the land, and there was no more thought of spring.
Through all this season the excavations under Callow Hill went on, and this was fortunate for Mary and her children, since Abner’s wages came in steadily through many weeks when snow and flood made it impossible for men to work on the farms. Sometimes old Drew would be weatherbound at Wolfpits for two days at a time, and this was a misery to him, for he had no life but his work, and his employer knew better than to pay him for anything less than he performed. On these days he would shut himself up in his rooms leading the life of a hibernating animal, lighting no fire and cooking no food, simply lying wrapped up in the blankets on his bed with door and windows closed against the cold. At night he would drink himself warm with his turnip-wine, and keep Mrs Mamble awake by singing.
Fair or foul, the work of the pipe-track never slackened, and Mary was kept busy scraping the caked mud from Abner’s clothes. The rain ceased and the floods fell. There followed a hushed season in which the note of the chiff-chaff was heard sounding faintly, timorously. The trees whispered together in the night. The valley was silent, and yet, beneath the silence, one felt a secret battle of blind forces. Moment by moment, cell by cell, the creatures of earth were breaking free from the heavy lethargy that had sealed them. Even in the dull members of men the slow flame quickened, the numb fibres stirred. As yet on the surface of the earth few changes might be seen. Over the fields flights of peewits wheeled and screamed, with flapping, tumbling wings. Only the bloom of purple on the hedgerows flushed to a warmer brown, onlytassels of elm-blossom in bud softened the stark outline of their branches: only, on the fringe of the woodland, the green of dog-mercury appeared.
Then, with a sudden fervour unknown in more temperate climes, spring came. The sloes were sprayed with light; the hue of hawthorn twigs paled; in the space of a single week the whole earth broke in a green flame. Nor was it only green things that were born. White lambs appeared as by magic in the fields, seeming as little dependent on the agency of men as the white daisies. At evening, when Abner came home from work, they leapt into the air and twisted their heads sideways in the leap. The valley was full of tender bleatings. He laughed at them, striding homewards. His mates laughed and whistled at their work. Even the sad, disfigured face of Munn grew blandly, childishly happy.
Gladys and Morgan knew that spring had come—indeed they had known of its coming long before Abner suspected it. They made great plans to go out into the fields with Spider and see the lambs at play; they cried when bedtime came, for very excess of life. ‘But it ban’t dark, mam,’ they said, coaxing Mary to let them play a little longer. She could not refuse them, for she herself loved to sit sewing in the doorway, hearing their voices echoed from the warming walls of the house while the swallows darted to and fro under the eaves above her. She would sit there talking lazily to old Drew, who now began to be busy with his garden. When she inquired how his rheumatism was, he would straighten his back with a smile, and tell her that he felt like a man of thirty. When rain came he would stand on his step gazing at the garden fondly, as though he expected to see his seeds pushing above the finely-tilled soil.
During all these days they heard nothing of George. The three months of silence that the law imposes on a prisoner in jail were now over. Mick Connor, that specialist in all the details of a criminal’s life, informed Abner that when this time was over, the convict was usually allowed the privilege of writing one letter a month, and, if his conduct were good enough, he mighteven receive one visitor of his choice. But no letter came to Wolfpits. One day at his work Abner overheard a conversation between two of his mates from which he gathered that Mrs Malpas had made a journey to Shrewsbury and seen her son. ‘He’s looking up fine, by all accounts,’ said one of them, ‘and the old woman’s pleased as anything he hasn’t sent for his missus.’
Abner experienced a sudden feeling of anger for Mary’s sake. He felt the slight almost as much as if it had been pointed against himself; but on the way home he decided that it would be better not to tell her. Probably she imagined that a prisoner was shut off from all communication with the outer world for the term of his sentence; and, if this were so, it was better that she should remain in ignorance. Who would be George’s next visitor? The woman from Lesswardine?
A drowsiness fell on the valley, a deep drowsiness of growth and heavy green. Cuckoos began to call at dawn: even in the heat of the day they called, flying from hedge to hedge. The monotony of their song lulled the valley to sleep. Twilights lengthened. Abner was now so settled in his life at Wolfpits that his friends would come up and see him there, sitting in the garden through the evening, talking to him and playing with the children. Munn, who had never yet shaken himself free from the toils of his unhappy childhood, came shyly, and was self-conscious in their company, particularly when Mary joined them; but Mick Connor, who had never been shy in his life and loved children, as most Irishmen do, made his visit to Wolfpits almost a daily custom. In this happy, languid season, he had no more serious business in hand. He even viewed Badger indulgently. Badger might shoot as many foxes, might hatch, rear, and put down as many young pheasants in the woods as he liked—the more the better! For the present Mick was content to take his ease.
Mary liked him . . . she couldn’t help liking him, for he made her laugh, and was so kind to the children. Morgan, in particular, looked forward to Mick’s coming, for his young animal instinct had discovered that the poacher’s pocket in the skirts of the Irishman’s coat sometimes contained bananas, a fruit to whichMorgan would devote himself to the degree of suffering. Mick could never make Gladys forsake her Abner’s knee for his; but Morgan’s stomach always got the better of filial love when his new friend appeared.
‘Is there aught in your pocket, Mis’r Connor, to-night?’ he would say coaxingly.
‘Morgan, you mustn’t be rude!’ Mary would protest.
‘Mayn’t I ask him, mam?’
Mick would wink at him: ‘And how would I know what’s in there? Come and be looking, for yourself.’ He would take Morgan up on his knee and then, half awed by warnings that something might bite him, the child would slip his hand into the deep pocket and pull out the fruit with a chuckle of delight.
‘Mr Connor spoils you, and that’s the truth!’ Mary would reply.
Sometimes the pocket was empty, and at such times Mick was put to an elaborate explanation of what had happened, embracing the origin of this mysterious fruit.
‘Wait an’ I’ll tell you,’ he said. ‘Last night, when I looked in my box where the leprechaun puts it, there was a beautiful lot of fruit there. Oranges and grapes and apples and the rest, more’n I could lift in the both of my hands.’
‘Not any bananas?’ Morgan asked anxiously.
‘Bananners? Ah, don’t be talkun! Three beautiful bunches of them fresh from the tree, with the juice runnun’ out of the stalks of them, they was that ripe. “So,” says I, “I’ll put them all in my pocket, I will, and go out and ate one or two of them.” His voice sank to an awed, confidential level. ‘So, when I was after leaving Mainstone, and got out on the turnpike, I walked quick along the cemetery wall, for you never know what you mightn’t see in a place the likes of that. An’ then I heard a sound of wheels behind me and the hoofs of horses trottun’ up to the corner. An’ I thought, “Who would be driving after me at that time of night, an’ not a star showun’. Houly saints, I thought, what can it be?”’
‘I know what it was,’ said Morgan grimly, for he had heard of this adventure before.
‘Is that a fact?’ said Mick, with impressive surprise.
‘It was the dead-coach, mam,’ said Morgan in a whisper.
‘And so it was,’ replied Mick, slapping his thigh. ‘The dead-coach—and on the box of ut two men in long black coats with the faces blacked on them and hair like our ass. When they see me they pulls up sudden, and these black pair jumps off of the box and takes hould on me and puts their hands in my pocket, the way my shirt stuck to my back for fright, and stole all the fruit on me and drove off without a word.’
The sensation of this adventure was almost enough to compensate Morgan for the loss of his fruit. It was Morgan’s favourite story. But Gladys was Abner’s girl, and would rather sit on his knee listening with wide eyes. On Abner’s knee she felt quite safe.
Sometimes Abner, Mick, and the two children would leave Mary busy with her sewing and walk down together to the bridge over the Folly Brook, or to the meadows where thickets of hazel and shy companies of birches stood along the stream. Mick always carried a catapult with him. Ever since his boyhood he had been a deadly shot with this weapon, and could ‘knock the head off of a wran,’ as he put it, at a range of thirty yards. He made Morgan a catapult with which the child blackened his thumb-nails, and carried in his pocket small round pebbles that he picked from the bed of the stream, now shrunken to a thread of gin-clear water.
Although he could never resist killing birds when he had the chance, Mick loved every feather on them, and indeed he knew them well: their nestings, their flight, their song, and their quick cries of alarm. He showed Morgan all the birds of that mountain valley: the tree pipits that sprang upward like a stone tossed into the air and then planed downwards with spread tails twittering like mechanical toys: the sandpipers that called plaintively from spits of sand: the black dippers that fled upstream under the arching alders; the water-ouzel that made in echoing, stony combes a noise that he imitated by tapping two pebbles together: the redstarts that fluttered their bright tails near thewalls in whose crevices they nested. And they would stand still, this little group of four, listening to the warble of the blackcap safely hidden in impenetrable thickets, or lift their heads, under the high shade of larches to hear the hissing note of the wood-wren, coming home tired in the twilight, the children’s hands hot with the green smell of moth-like cuckoo-flowers that they had gathered in the meadows.
While the light faded the two men would smoke their pipes on the bridge, where the big black trout that inhabited the pool hung gorged with mayfly and held the stream with faintly quivering fins. Mick loved to watch them quietly, telling, in his slow, hypnotic tones, of the great cannibal trout of the Barrow, so strong that they could pull a child into the water after them. When they turned to go home Morgan would beg to shoot at the trout with his catapult. He never hit one, but when the stone reached the water they could see the dark streaks of the fishes vanishing under the shadows of the bridge.
Often Mick would talk of great days in Ireland, the days of country race-meetings and fairs, and round these events also a legend arose. When Morgan was shooting with his catapult the Irishman would encourage him with the patter of the man who kept a shooting gallery, reeling off long strings of words that meant nothing to the child, and standing up with bright eyes and flushed cheeks as though the hum of the fair were still in his ears.
‘Now then, walk up, walk up. . . . Fire, my rattler, fire! Six more shots a penny! Right through the hardware shop—and very near winning the silver cane! Fire, my bold American, fire. Pass along to the next caravan: your halfpenny is no more!’
He told them of the maggie-man, a live Aunt Sally, who stood up in his tub with tangled hair and fierce beard warding off the flights of sticks that were hurled at his head, and of that great mystery, the Live Lion Stuffed with Straw. Morgan drank it all in eagerly.
‘Why bain’t there no fairs in these parts?’ he said.
In a weak moment his mother told him that there were fairs in Shropshire, and above all, the great fairof Brampton Bryan, held every year in June. She told him how her father had taken her there many years ago, when she was a little girl, and how she had eaten the cakes which are made on purpose for this festival. ‘Bron cakes, they call them,’ she said.
The fact that eating was added to these other delights inflamed Morgan’s imagination.
‘Will they have Bron cakes this time?’ he asked.
‘Of course they will. They always have Bron cakes.’
‘Can’t we go, mam?’
‘It’s a long way away,’ she told him.
‘But granfer tookyou. . .’
‘Granfer had a horse and trap.’
‘Grandma Malpas has a pony,’ Morgan persisted.
‘Some day, when you’re a big boy, you shall go,’ said Mary.
The subject dropped from their conversation, but not from Morgan’s mind. The child knew better than to pester his mother about it, but as the time of the fair grew nearer, he talked to every one else that he met, to Mick, to Abner, to Mrs Mamble, and even to old Drew. The thought of Bron Fair obsessed him and even found its way into his dreams. The week before the event he became so persistent and showed so keen a disappointment at the thought of missing it, that Abner began to take him seriously.
‘Why shouldn’t we take ’em along?’ he said to Mary, when the children were in bed.
‘It’s too far away,’ she said. ‘Much too far.’
‘It’s not that far over the hills. Some of our chaps is going to walk there.’
‘You can’t drag children up hill and down dale.’
‘Well, there’s the train from Llandwlas.’
She shook her head. ‘You can’t get back the same day,’ she said.
‘You could put in the night at Redlake. There’s a station there.’
She said nothing. ‘It’s a shame to disappoint them,’ he added.
Her interest in the children’s happiness was her weak point, and in the end Abner had his way. He settled with the Gunner that he should leave work early onthe Thursday afternoon and return on Saturday morning. He met Mary and the children on the platform at Llandwlas in the afternoon. Morgan had never travelled in a train before, and stood excitedly at the window, next to his mother. Gladys sat quietly by the side of Abner, who carried the brown paper parcel in which their clothes and provisions were packed. He was not quite comfortable, for it seemed to him even now that Mary had undertaken the expedition under protest. This was unreasonable, for he had enough money to carry them through, and it was no use going on an expedition like this unless she were determined to enjoy it. But Mary was thinking of her last journey from Llandwlas in the morning train to Shrewsbury. Perhaps she was thinking also of George.
A fit of train-sickness put a stop to Morgan’s enthusiasms for a time. In the cool of the evening they reached the station of Redlake, a small village which stands on a little river that is a torrent in winter but in summer no more than a trickle of water. From there a road, hung with heavy trees, runs straight to Brampton Bryan, three or four miles away. The train was crowded, and as they approached Redlake Mary grew uneasy, for she guessed that most of the travellers were bound for the same place and with the same purpose and began to wonder if they could find a lodging in so small a village. She whispered her fears to Abner, and they hurried from the station into the sloping street. The first inn that they came to was already full.
‘You might get a room at the Harley Arms, if you’re quick,’ a flustered landlord told them. They went straight on. Abner walked too quickly for them, and Mary almost had to run, dragging the children behind her. At the Harley Arms a fat woman eyed them suspiciously.
‘It’s the worst day of the whole year,’ she said. ‘I don’t see how I can do it. If you’d come in by the next train you wouldn’t have found a bed in the whole of Redlake.’
‘You can’t turn the children out,’ said Abner. ‘The little boy’s been sick in the train.’
Morgan’s face was still patched yellow and whiteat the corners of the mouth. The landlady, against all her intentions, softened. ‘Poor little soul!’ she said. She tied another knot in the string of the blue striped apron that she wore, as though her hands must be doing something to contribute to the general atmosphere of haste and flurry. ‘Poor little soul! Well, now, what can I do? What with the pies and one thing and another! The only thing I can do is to put the man in the front room along with Mr Prowse at the back; but I must say I don’t like disturbing Mr Prowse, the number of fairs he’s been with me. Comes regular, he does . . . you can look for him like the swallows. Still, he’s a nice man: a very nice man, and if I told him all about it I don’t think he’d stand in your way. Come along, my dear!’
The last words were addressed to Mary, whose hand Morgan was clutching convulsively as though he still felt the train swinging under his feet. They all entered a room on the left of the doorway. In it were two long tables spread with coarse linen cloths of a gleaming whiteness and laden with a series of boiled hams crisped with golden bread-crumbs, and gigantic pies whose crusts were of the same rich hue. Loaves of white bread stood between them, and at the head of each table a leaning tower of plates. At the other end of the room a barrel of cider had been propped upon two bottle-boxes.
Even Morgan’s revolted stomach could not resist the inspiration of seeing so much food. In a hushed voice he asked Mary what was inside the pies.
‘Inside of them, my love?’ cooed the landlady. ‘There’s bunny rabbits inside of them, and lovely pieces of bacon in a jelly that would stand by itself. You’ll see what’s inside of them soon!’ She laughed happily and then, tying another knot in her apron-string, explained to Mary that the rabbit pies of the Harley Arms were an institution on the eve of Bron Fair. ‘We used to make as many as thirty of them,’ she said, ‘but the fair’s not what it was in those days. Still, they must have their pies. They’d drop down dead if they came into the room and never see them! There they are, waiting ready for them: pies and ham and bread and cider, and they helps themselves. We’retoo busy to look after them. They takes what they want, and pays the same whether its much or little. That’s the custom, you see.’
By this time the concentration of rich smells had overcome Morgan’s interest. ‘I want to lie down, mam,’ he said, and Mary stopped the landlady in a flood of reminiscence to inquire again about their room before disaster came.
‘Well, now,’ she said in a more kindly, mysterious voice. ‘I’ll tell you what do. I’ll put you in Mr Prowse’s room without asking him. That’s the best way. If you’re there, you’re there, and that’s the end of it. You can put the little girl on the sofa and the little boy can sleep in between the two of you. ’Tis a fine, old-fashioned bed. A family bed, as the saying is.’
Abner saw Mary go red. He came quickly to the rescue.
‘We’re not man and wife, missus,’ he said.
‘What! You’re not a married couple? That’s different altogether,’ said the landlady, her tone hardening.
‘This young man only came along with me to help me with the children,’ Mary explained.
‘I’ve kept this place respectable all my life, and I don’t intend to start anything different,’ said the landlady severely. ‘I think you’d better look somewhere else.’
Mary, half shocked, half frightened, would have taken the children away at once. ‘Come along, Abner,’ she said. But Abner would not be beaten.
‘Look here, missus,’ he said to the landlady. ‘If we wasn’t respectable, we could have took you in, and you been none the wiser. I’m here looking after this young woman. There’s nothing else between us. If there was I should have codded you we was married.’
‘Don’t, Abner!’ said Mary.
The landlady looked from one to the other of this strange couple. Morgan began to whimper, and the sight of the child’s tiredness melted her heart.
‘You’d better come on upstairs,’ she said to Mary, and then, with a defiant glance at Abner: ‘But theyoung man will have to look out for himself. There’s no bed here I can give him. My husband and the boys’ll have to sleep in the loft as it is. I oughtn’t to take you in, by rights, and that’s the truth.’
‘Never you mind me,’ said Abner. ‘It won’t hurt me to sleep rough.’
She took Mary and the children upstairs. Abner stayed on in the long room alone, listening to the busy clatter of the house. The landlord, his sons, and a couple of village girls, who had been brought in to deal with the rush of business, went running up and down stairs and stone passages and in and out of the bar as quickly and apparently as aimlessly as the inhabitants of a disturbed ants’ nest. The sun dipped behind the mountains. A train arrived from the north, then another from the south, and each time the street was flooded with a crowd of excitable men knocking at door after door in search of lodging for the night. Abner heard the landlord in the bar refusing them one after another. With the second train arrived the important Mr Prowse, a tall, lumbering man in cord breeches and black leggings covered with the red dust of the Black Mountain, from the slopes of which he came. He wore a close red beard, and spoke in a high sing-song, for part of his mountain pasturage was in Wales. He had already drunk too freely at the Craven Arms station buffet to be much worried by the idea of a sleeping companion.
‘What is it you’re after this fair, Mr Prowse?’ asked the landlord.
‘Draught horses,’ said the farmer. ‘They’re very scarce down our way, and a price that would frighten you.’
‘Then you and me are going to have a field day, Mr Prowse,’ said a fat, asthmatical Cardiff Jew, who had just arrived in the doorway.
‘Ah, Mr Myers, how is it then?’ said the farmer. ‘Mr May says he’s put you and me to sleep in the same room. There’s a young woman in the front.’
‘A young woman?’ growled Myers. ‘What’s a young woman doing here at this time?’
‘The more of them the better!’ said the farmer, with a laugh.
‘No. . . . I’ve got over all that,’ said the Jew, shaking his head.
‘Now, what are you two gentlemen taking with me?’ asked the landlord.
They all settled down to talk about horses. Abner was getting more and more hungry and wondering when Mary would come downstairs. The sight of that magnificent array of food whetted his appetite, but he did not want to be the first to begin. He drew himself a mug of cider from the cask: a dry, half bitter product of the Hereford orchards. He drank a pint of it, and the alcohol, taken on an empty stomach, made him happy and confident. He no longer felt uneasy that Mary was so long away.
Now he had not long to wait for his supper, for Prowse and Myers came in from the bar, and in a few moments other men arrived. They all carved for themselves huge segments of pie and rich slices of ham with knives that were whetted thin with use. Abner took his place among them. Nobody spoke to him, for he seemed to be the only stranger in the company. Many of them had not seen their friends for a whole year, since their last meeting in the same place. Twilight came, and the lamps were lit. The buyers sat on talking and drinking at the tables, running with one accord to door or window when the hoofs of some horse that had been brought to the fair for sale were heard trotting down the road.
‘Jenkins wants to sell that there cob to-night rather than take him to Bron,’ said Myers.
‘Never buy a horse you don’t see by daylight,’ Prowse replied, shaking his clay pipe to mark the words.
‘I don’t,’ said Myers, with a wink. ‘I heard a fellow from Brum offer him forty, and he’s a fool if he don’t take it.’
‘There’s high prices going this fair,’ said Prowse. ‘There’s a great scarcity down our way. Jenkins is a chap as knows his business.’
‘And so do I,’ said the Jew. ‘So do I.’
Abner, mildly exalted, walked out into the moonlit street. At the cottage doors and down by the bridge little groups of men in breeches and leggings stoodtalking together with low voices. From time to time the clatter of approaching hoofs was heard and the men stopped to listen. The village was full of a strange sense of expectancy. Abner wandered over the bridge and a little way upstream. In the hush of the night he heard a girl laughing. The sound disturbed him. He thought suddenly of Susie. The excitement of drink and a full stomach turned his thoughts in the direction of physical desire. He stopped and listened for the girl’s voice again, and wondered what man was with her.
He walked back irritably into the village. An old man was putting out the oil lamps that gave a feeble light to the street. What was he, Abner, doing without a woman, when the village was full of them? He looked up at the front room of the inn where Mary and the children were sleeping. It filled him with an unreasoning annoyance to think of her sleeping calmly there. She was treating him ridiculously, without confidence. Why hadn’t she come down into the room for supper as soon as she had put the children to sleep? Just because the landlady had shocked her by suggesting that they should sleep together, he supposed, and, by God, it might have put some sense into her if they had done so. He laughed. He hadn’t thought of Mary in that light before; but in this curious state to which the liquor, the moonlight, and that light voice heard in the darkness had excited him, he felt that he had been a fool not to make love to Mary. If once he had treated her that way and she had accepted him, there would be an end of her airs and graces. George . . .? Well, George’s own life didn’t exact a high degree of fidelity from his wife.
So, like a hungry animal, Abner prowled beneath the inn windows. The panes of that which belonged to Mary’s bedroom shone blankly in the moon through twigs of white jessamine. In the bar, Mr Prowse, now very drunk, was declaiming staccato judgments on the value of basic slag. Abner would have joined them and got drunk if he had any money to spend, but the small sum that he had saved for the occasion woulddo no more than pay for their lodging and their return fares to Llandwlas. The moonlight seemed to cool the air. Even the smell of jessamine grew fainter in the cold. It was no good standing there any longer, and so he found a sleeping place on some straw in the loft above the stable, and settled down as well as he could, listening to the steady grinding of the horses’ jaws and the snatching noise that they made as they pulled out hay from the racks above their mangers.
Mary slept badly. Earlier in the evening, when Morgan and Gladys had fallen asleep, she had caught the landlady on the stairs and begged that her supper might be brought to her in her bedroom. There she had devoured a solitary plate of the famous rabbit-pie, but hearing below her the sound of many men’s voices and still dreading to be mistaken for Abner’s wife, she had not dared to go downstairs and find him. Instead of thinking any more about it she decided to go to bed, creeping gently under the sheets for fear of disturbing the children. But she could not sleep. The bedroom was immediately over the room in which supper was served, and she could not hear so many voices buzzing beneath her without wanting to catch what they were saying. As the evening wore on the house grew noisier. It seemed as if they would never go to bed; and when, at last, the noise ceased and she had nearly fallen asleep, the moonlight, beating in through the muslin-curtained window, awoke Morgan. He said that he was thirsty, and after much groping, she gave him water from the ewer on the washhand-stand. Thus awakened from the sleep that followed his train-sickness, the excitement of his strange surroundings kept him going for a couple of hours of questions about the fair.
‘Why bain’t Abner up here?’ he said at last.
This was more than she could explain. ‘If you don’t keep quiet, my son,’ she said, ‘I shall take you right out and give you to Abner for the night. Then you’ll cry to come back to your mother. You’re a little nuisance, that’s what you are!’
She tucked him away and huddled him against her breast away from the moonlight, and so, at length, he fell asleep.
Next morning, Abner, who had slept well, was early astir, but no earlier, it seemed, than the rest of the world. In the yard below him the owner of the stabled horses was up and grooming them. He asked Abner to give him a hand and offered him a shilling for his trouble. ‘I reckon they’m going to make wonnerful prices to-day,’ he said. An opaline sky, covered with the faintest veil of mist, promised a hot morning.
The landlord of the Harley Arms had not yet risen, but the girls were sweeping the passage and setting the table for breakfast in the long room, and his wife was watching them with sleepy eyes, while she sipped a cup of tea. Abner joined her, paid the bill for the night, five shillings, and took some tea with bread and butter to the door of Mary’s room. He knocked and called to her, and she answered in a voice that seemed alarmed by his nearness.
‘I bain’t going to eat younorthe children,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be a fine day. How long do you want to keep us waiting?’
She assured him timidly that they wouldn’t be long, and by half-past nine they had become part of the stream of traffic flowing along the road from Redlake to Brampton Bryan, raising clouds of hot dust under the heavy green of the trees.
‘I don’t think the sun will come through, after all,’ said Mary regretfully, though the sight of the horses sweating on the road should have told her that this was fortunate. They walked slowly along the edge of the white highway, Mary anxiously pulling in the children to her side when swift traps or single horses, southward bound, came past them. It seemed to her that so great a collection of strong, spirited animals, which snorted and sniffed the air excited by the presence of strangers of their kind, was dangerous. What would happen to Morgan and Gladys if some sudden noise or infectious fear threw them into a stampede? All the way along the road she was looking anxiously ahead for the next gateway or gap in the hedge, planning ways of escape.
The children loitered, and it was nearly noon when they reached the outskirts of Brampton Bryan. Thesky was still white. Mist lay cold on the hills, but the plain grew suffocating. At this point, where the traffic began to feel the backward pressure of the congested village, matters were complicated by an actual constriction of the road. Horses and traps were crowded together in a block, and the men who drove them looked serious and impatient. There was scarcely room along the side of the road for them to pass.
‘Come on,’ said Abner. ‘What are you waiting for?’
‘Can’t we wait here till they move on?’ said Mary, gathering the children closer to her. If she could have done so without encountering other advancing dangers she would have turned back. She hated this narrow, twisting neck of roadway.
They waited, leaning up against an iron fence, breathing the hot smell of the horses. Other people on foot passed them in a steady stream. Among these Abner saw the farmer from the Black Mountain and his friend the lethargic Jew. They appeared to be talking together, and thinking of nothing else, but their eyes were wide open, and when they saw a likely animal they would stop and ask the driver about prices or stoop and run their hands along the horse’s slender legs. They did not notice Abner with Mary and the children in the hedge. The block of vehicles moved on a little and was checked. The movement, slight as it was, infected the animals with restlessness. They snorted, and champed their bits; they danced with springing fetlocks and necks arched to the tightened reins. Mary pressed closer to the iron railings. She felt that she was foolish to be scared, and yet it irritated her to see the unconcern of Abner. What was his strength compared with the violence of horses? Again the block moved on.
‘We can’t wait here all day,’ he said; but she only shook her head.
A strange cart pulled up opposite to them, drawn by a spiritless pony and bearing a black tin plate with the words: Hughes, Brecon, painted on it in a scrawl of white. A gipsy drove it, and behind, on the tilted cart-tail sat a withered, dirty woman and a girl of fifteen with a beautiful dark face and long, black hair, whichthe old woman was carefully and necessarily combing. To the tail of the cart a cowed and mangy mongrel of the greyhound breed was tied with a strand of rope. The eyes of the girl were dark and wild as those of an animal, and she stared insolently at Abner, half-smiling, attracted, no doubt, by the contrast of his fair strength. For some strange reason Mary felt that the girl’s glance hurt her. ‘She’s smiling at you. Don’t look at her, Abner!’ she whispered. ‘How dirty she is!’ The whisper disturbed the old woman, who ceased her hairdressing, wiped the comb on her apron and smiled across at Mary. She had no teeth but a single yellow tusk in the middle of her lower jaw. She leaned over the edge of the cart and held out her hand toward them.
‘Shall the old woman tell your fortune, my pretty dear?’ she whined. ‘You and your lovely children and your husband? A fine upstanding man, my dear, if ever there was one. Cross the old woman’s hand with a bit of silver and she’ll tell you the future as it’s written!’
Mary looked away. The gipsy girl continued to stare at Abner.
‘Ah, don’t you want to know the happiness that’s coming?’ the old woman went on, with her hand outstretched. ‘I tell you that’s worth more to you than a piece of silver. All that lays before you, my pretty dear. . .’
Mary clutched at Abner’s arm. ‘Don’t look at her! She’s staring at you! I think we’d better go on,’ she whispered. But a cart had pulled in to the side in front of them, and they could not move. The old woman continued to pester them with her whinings. When she saw that no silver would cross her palm she changed her tone. She leaned further out of her cart, speaking now of ill-fortune rather than good, gratuitously prophesying evil, and a near evil at that. Abner bandied words with her and laughed, but Mary felt her heart sinking within her. From more maledictions they were saved by a sudden forward movement of the block. The cart started with a jerk which pulled the mongrel who had been biting at fleas on its belly, to its feet. The girlgave Abner a final, dark smile; the old woman spat in Mary’s direction.
‘Come on,’ said Abner, ‘now’s your chance!’
But Mary could not move. In some way the encounter had destroyed her nerve. ‘Let’s wait till it’s clearer!’ she pleaded.
A drove of mountain ponies that the gipsies had driven down to the fair from some heathery upland of Montgomery or Clun, followed them. They were small, shaggy, and very wild. They stamped and snorted, then huddled together anxiously in a bunch, sniffing the air with distended nostrils. The sense of being herded together between the hedge and the iron railings made them tremble with fright, and Mary was no less frightened than they. Her anxiety spread to the children, and for the first time since they had left Redlake Morgan forgot his cakes. He began to whimper.
‘They’re all right,’ said Abner. ‘Don’t you take no notice of them.’
A little black stallion, the last of the herd, suddenly took fright. He made a dash for the hedge on the opposite side, but the blackthorn was too high for him and he stood quivering half-way up the bank. A heavy loutish man, of Atwell’s build, who seemed a giant beside the little animal, climbed up and took hold of it by the ear. It gave a sudden convulsive movement, and in a moment the man and the horse were fighting together. The animal pulled him to the ground and for a moment they struggled in the dust. Then another man sat on its head and put a snitch on its muzzle. They jumped aside and the pony leapt to its feet. It stood trembling and screamed with pain. The big man, panting and dusty, held the rope of which the snitch was made. A bitter fight followed, the pony rushing wildly from side to side with fierce, terrible screams, the man holding on grimly yet barely keeping his feet. The other gipsies drove on the rest of the herd, and those who came behind ran forward to watch the duel, with cries of encouragement now to the man, now to the beast. It was a horrible sight, at which Mary did not dare to look, thoughAbner enjoyed it. To and fro the panting animal plunged. It rolled on the ground, leapt in the air, with fierce snortings and shrill cries. Its eyes were bright with rage. At last it stood stock still in the middle of the road and would not move. The man who had sat on its head approached it with a halter. Still it stood its ground, trembling violently, shaken with angry snorts, foaming. It seemed that the fight was over and the wild spirit conquered, but before he could slip the halter on its head the animal had taken another violent leap. Abner saw its body hurling through the air and threw himself in front of Mary and the children. He went over with the stallion on the top of him, hearing Mary’s cry. The iron railings were bent back, and Mary was holding Gladys in her arms. The shouts of the crowd rang in Abner’s ears: ‘Her’s dead! They’ve no business to drive ’em on a public road! Savage they are! Poor little thing! These bloody gipsies! That chap did his best . . .’
Two men were now holding the pony, and the big fellow was bending over Mary and the ghastly face of the child. Abner pushed him aside. ‘She’s all right . . . she’s all right!’ said Mary. Gladys was crying in shrill, frightened gasps.
‘My leg, mam, oh, my leg!’ she wailed.
‘Try to move your toes, love,’ a woman said. ‘If she can move her toes the bone’s not broken.’
A dozen others clustered round with various advice, while the men stood staring stupidly with pained eyes. Mary was hiding the child’s face in her bosom. Morgan clung crying to her skirts. Her face was terribly set, but she soon recovered her presence of mind.
‘Abner . . . you take Morgan,’ she said. ‘We must find a doctor.’
‘He lives just round the corner, ma’am,’ a bustling woman cried. ‘The red ’ouse with the trees in front of it. You can see the roof.’
‘Let me take her. She’s too heavy for you,’ said Abner and Mary surrendered the child, picking up Morgan in her own arms. A curious crowd followed them to the doctor’s house.
Theyfound the doctor just setting out on his morning round. His wife, a forbidding woman, plainly dressed and flat-chested, caught him in the stableyard and brought him back into the surgery.
‘It’s the first accident . . . a little girl,’ she said. ‘Did you ever know the fair without one?’
He followed her in fussily, hoping that there was nothing to keep him, for he had a long list of country visits to get through before the broken heads should begin to roll up in the evening. Abner had laid the child down on a high couch covered with American leather. In the road she had screamed her breath away and now she lay shivering and whimpering softly, almost quiet.
‘Well, what is it?’ said the doctor brusquely.
‘It’s her leg,’ Mary whispered. ‘I’m afraid it’s broken.’
‘A kick from a horse,’ said the doctor’s wife from the background.
‘Let’s see!’
Mary’s fingers fumbled with the tapes of the child’s drawers.
‘Scissors!’ said the doctor. The sudden touch of steel made Gladys cry out loud, and the first cry of alarm was quickly changed to one of pain. She struggled with the pain and by her movement increased it. The doctor leaned his left arm above her body and held her still. Mary, clasping Gladys’s hands in hers, put down her face to the child’s tear-dabbled cheek. Her own tears were mingled with those of her child, but she made no sound. Abner stood helpless, watching, and behind him also stood the doctor’s wife, gaunt, flat, immobile. In a former state she had been a sister at the North Bromwich Infirmary.
The doctor was leaning over Gladys and breathing heavily through his nostrils. His hands, lean, brown, and slightly stained with iodine, were placed firmly yet tenderly upon the pink and white of the child’sthigh. His fingers moved like tentacles, searching, soothing the spastic muscles under the skin. Gladys gave a sudden frightened, ‘Oh . . .mam!’—and the fingers tightened like bands of steel. All the man’s mind was in his fingers; his eyes gazed vaguely out of the window to the cascades of fading laburnum blossom in his shrubbery, the billowy outline of lilac against the white sky.
‘Yes . . .’ he said at last. ‘Separated epiphysis. Lower end of femur. I shall want a small Liston splint and plenty of strapping. I expect she’ll need a whiff of chloroform, too. If you’ll get it I won’t move.’ Then he addressed Mary. ‘I think it will be better if the small boy is out of the room. They can look after him in the kitchen.’
Bribed by a sup of cocoa, Morgan allowed himself to be taken away from his mother by the doctor’s wife, who soon returned with the splint, the dressings, and the anæsthetic.
‘I’ll just get her under, if you’ll see that she doesn’t move. If she kicks about there may be a lot more hæmorrhage.’
His wife took his place and he sprinkled a few drops of heavy liquid on to a wire mask covered with lint. A sweetish odour mingled with that of the lilac. It seemed to Abner that the room had suddenly become oppressively hot.
‘Now breathe deeply. Smell it in! It’s ever so nice!’ said the doctor. Gladys sniffed, then choked, and tried to push away the mask with her hands.
‘Hold her fingers, mother!’ said the doctor. Mary closed her eyes and took the child’s fingers in her own.
‘That’s better . . . that’s better.’ He sprinkled more chloroform on the lint. In another minute he raised the mask. Gladys was now breathing heavily; her face was suffused, and she puffed out her lips with each breath. The doctor handed over the mask to his wife. ‘Give her a drop now and then,’ he said, ‘and plenty of air as well. She’s just nicely under.’ He pushed back an eyelid with his finger to see that the pupillary reflex was active. ‘Nicely . . . nicely.’
He rose to his feet and changed places with his wife.
Again he placed his hands on the child’s thigh, but now the hands were no longer gentle agents of perception, but strong and ruthless weapons. His brown fingers grasped the limb firmly. The room swam before Abner’s eyes. He went down like a stone. Mary gave a cry of alarm.
‘He’s all right,’ said the doctor, with a glance over his shoulder. ‘These big strong fellows are always the most liable to faint over a job like this. Give me a woman, any day!’
When Abner came to his senses the limb was set. A long splint with a serrated lower end had been strapped to the child’s body from armpit to heel. Her face was still flushed, but she breathed as softly as though she were lying in a natural sleep. The doctor was washing his hands and preparing to set out again. He offered Abner a medicine glass full of cold water with a dash of brandy in it.
‘What’s owing, gaffer?’ Abner asked.
The doctor looked him up and down. ‘A labourer,’ he thought, ‘with a wife and two kids: a decent-looking young fellow.’ He hated asking those people for money in the middle of a misfortune; but he had to live.
‘Oh, we’ll say five shillings,’ he said, ‘but don’t forget to send me the splint back. Dr Davies, Brampton Bryan. That will find me!’
Abner gave him two half-crowns that were loose in his pocket.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You must be careful how you carry her. The bone’s in a nice position if you don’t disturb it.’
‘How long will it take, doctor?’ Mary asked.
‘Five or six weeks with luck. Good-morning!’
For an hour or more they stayed in the surgery, visited from time to time by the doctor’s wife. Gladys awoke as from a gentle sleep. The support of the splint freed her from the spasm of the torn muscles. She rubbed her eyes and cried softly in her mother’s arms.
‘We’d best go straight to the station,’ said Abner.
So, having torn the unwilling Morgan from the material attentions of the cook, they set off along thehot road that they had travelled earlier in the day. They walked slowly, for they had at least three hours to spare before the afternoon train left Redlake station. They reached their goal at three o’clock and laid the child down flat on a bench in the waiting room, while Abner produced the sandwiches which he had cut earlier in the morning at the inn. Morgan, having fed and cried a little because his dinner did not include specimens of the famous Bron cakes, fell asleep upon his mother’s knees. Mary and Abner talked together in undertones for fear of waking the children, until the station-master entered the waiting-room with a swagger and threw up the shutter of the booking-office, peering at them with official eyes through the wire grille.
‘I reckon I’d better get the tickets,’ said Abner. He went to the window, asking for two third singles and two halves to Llandwlas. The station-master whipped the tickets out and stamped them as smartly as though a queue of a hundred trippers was waiting for him. ‘Five and four pence ha’penny,’ he said.
Abner felt for his purse: he knew that the doctor’s fee had only left him a few coppers loose in his pocket. A panic seized him. He could not find it. He turned to Mary.
‘You got my purse?’
‘No, I’ve never seen it.’
‘There was a quid in it. I must have put it in my waistcoat. Wait a moment, gaffer. . . . God! my watch is gone too!’
‘Don’t get moithered now,’ she urged.
But though he searched everywhere he could not find it. He appealed again to Mary, but she had no money, not a single penny. Abner had nothing but a handful of coppers left.
‘They must have took both of them . . . picked my pocket!’ he said.
She advised him to look again, but it was useless. ‘While we was standing up again’ those railings,’ he muttered, ‘talking to that gipsy woman. It’s gone right enough. Not a bloody cent except this!’ He threw the coppers on the sill of the booking window.
‘Had your pocket picked?’ said the station-masterwith a laugh. ‘It’s not the first time that’s happened at Bron Fair!’ A bell clanged in the signal box, and a porter peered at them through the door with a stupid, rustic face.
‘Can’t you let us have a ticket on strap?’ Abner asked.
‘Not likely!’ said the stationmaster. ‘I’ve heard that tale before.’
‘The little girl’s had an accident . . . broken her leg,’ Mary pleaded.
The station-master shook his head.
‘There’s not another train to-day,’ she said. ‘Have we time to try and get some money in the village?’
The porter gave a stupid laugh.
‘Train’s two minutes overdue now,’ said the station-master blandly, glancing at the clock on the booking-office wall.
‘But what can we do?’ she cried.
The train clanked in. A number of country people in their Sunday clothes, coming from the villages under the Long Mynd, swarmed on to the platform. They came laughing into the booking-office. ‘All tickets!’ shouted the porter at the door. Abner was still rummaging in his pockets when the train went out. They were left quite alone.
‘What can we do?’ Mary repeated, in a voice full of trouble.
‘We’ve got to walk, that’s all,’ said Abner.
‘But you can’t carry her all that way!’