Opportunities of escape soon presented themselves. The retirement of their most promising player from the United team created a sensation not only in Mawne but in the surrounding towns. Abner would give no explanation for it. When people asked him why he was not playing for Mawne he merely told them to go and ask Hudson. It was impossible for him to changehis team in the middle of the season without an official transfer. The secretary of the Albion made a special journey to Halesby to ask him to consent to this; but since this proceeding would have presented the Mawne club with a handsome transfer fee, he refused. The Albion offered him good and easy work in North Bromwich if he would sign on for them next season. ‘You can have it for the asking,’ they said—but he refused, for though he would have liked nothing better he felt that it would be wrong to desert Alice in her present emergency. Until his father returned it was his duty to stay with her.
The winter wore on, and John Fellows, whose alcoholic history made him a bad subject for a fractured thigh-bone, still lay in hospital. Abner stuck to his thankless labours at the pit. He worked longer underground than he need have done, simply for the reason that he did not want to spend his evenings in the dangerous company of Alice. After that night he knew that he could not wholly trust himself. His earnings were now sufficient to keep the household in comfort, and the money that he drew from his overtime he put aside for an emergency, concealing them in an old stocking underneath the mattress of his bed. He wanted to be sure of his liberty as soon as his father returned.
At Christmas, Alice made a heroic attempt to recover her lost happiness. A week before the festival she went down into the market at Halesby and bought a branch of berried holly which she hung above the middle of the table from a nail that had once supported a hanging lamp. She decorated the branch with cheap trifles, flags, lustred balls and candles of coloured wax in metal clips shaped like butterflies. Over the mantelpiece she pinned a scroll of varnished paper with ‘God Bless Our Home’ in gothic characters upon it, and in various inaccessible places she put sprigs of mistletoe. Although she said nothing to Abner it was evident that she was counting on him to celebrate the feast at home. A few days before the event she showed him a present that she had bought for the child, a wooden horse with red nostrils, a lambskin mane, and a ridiculous dab of a tail. Even this failed to move him, and up to the last moment she was in doubt as to whether he would forsake her.She schemed her very hardest to keep him, using as a bait the child whose curious ways and stumbling attempts at speech amused him. This creature loved, above all things, to be caught up and perched on the dizzy height of Abner’s shoulder, so high that he was able to examine the unexplored country of the ceiling. He also loved to play with Tiger, who now came and went in Hackett’s Cottages of his own accord. Tiger liked children, and he and little John would roll over together on the kitchen floor. Alice always made the dog welcome, tempting him with such bones as never entered Mrs Moseley’s house. He was a link with Abner, and therefore to be encouraged.
In the end Abner spent Christmas Day at Hackett’s Cottages, or, to be exact, the morning and evening of it, for the afternoon he devoted to watching the league match between Mawne United and Dulston on the Royal Oak ground. He could not bring himself to forget football altogether even though he persisted in his determination not to play. In spite of all Alice’s pathetic efforts, the day was not a success. In the evening, when they sat over the fire and Mr Higgins, who had brought in a basket of oranges, had left them alone together, she made a direct attempt to have the matter out with him.
‘Why are you so funny with me, Abner?’ she said. ‘I don’t know what I’ve done that you should treat me distant like this. You didn’t use to do it.’ But he would not answer. ‘You’ve took a turn against me,’ she said. ‘I know you have. What is it I’ve done?’
‘Youain’t done nothing,’ he said. ‘AndIain’t took a turn again’ you neither. I’m all right if so be you’ll leave me alone.’
‘Yo’m different even with our John,’ she said.
‘Don’t yo’ bother,’ he said at last. ‘It’ll be different time ourn comes back. He must be getting on a bit now.’
She had to leave it at that. It had been a difficult evening for Abner, for in spite of her troubles the firelight and the excitement that the baby’s pleasure in his presents had given her made her look very attractive in her own fragile way. ‘When ourn comes back . . .’ She sighed, for she felt that JohnFellows’s return would put an end even to the small measure of happiness that she managed to extract from the present. When John Fellows came back she would be faced with all the old desperate problems, the old terrible nights. As they sat over the fire she turned her face aside to hide the tears that came into her eyes. Abner puffed stolidly at his pipe. ‘When he comes back,’ he said, ‘I reckon I’ll have a look round for another job.’
‘Where?’ she asked, in alarm.
‘Oh, anywhere out of this place,’ he said. ‘I’m sick of Halesby. I reckon I’ll go to Coventry or Wales. There’s good money in Wales.’
‘Abner,’ she cried. ‘Oh, Abner, you’m not going to leave me? Not with him. . . . I couldn’t abide it, Abner. Abner, if you leave me, I’ll make a hole in the cut, God strike me if I won’t!’ She could contain herself no longer and went sobbing upstairs. Abner found it difficult to resist an impulse to follow her and comfort her. He was not used to a woman’s tears. He got as far as the foot of the stairs, then slowly turned back and sat on, smoking till midnight amid the pathetic decorations of that poor room. His reflections determined him more than ever to cut himself free from the embarrassments of life at Halesby. Coventry was almost too near. Yes, he would go down into Wales. On his way upstairs he listened for a moment outside her bedroom door. He thought he heard her still sobbing under the sheets, but when he listened the sound of sobbing stopped.
Next day she had quite regained her self-possession. They went together, taking the baby with them, to visit John Fellows in the North Bromwich Infirmary. They found him lying in a long, clean ward festooned with Christmas decorations. The ominous erection of an apparatus of weights and pulleys at the foot of his bed emphasised his helplessness. He did not appear to be very pleased to see them, and his embraces so frightened the baby that he set up a howl. The baby need not have been frightened, for John Fellows was far less impressive than he had been in his former state. The whole man seemed to have shrunk. Hewas newly shaved; his rough hands had become clean and almost transparent; but though he now looked as if he couldn’t hurt any one, the presence of the visitors set him grumbling at once. From the first he appeared to be offended with Abner because he had not thought to smuggle in any liquor for him.
‘You ain’t brought a spot,’ he said. ‘Well, you’re a b—y fine son!’ Even three months of abstinence had not diminished his craving. He told them that he dreamed of liquor, but that there seemed to be no chance of him getting any nearer to it than in dreams, for, as far as he could see, his leg was exactly as it had been when he came into hospital. After this outburst of discontent he softened a little, pinched Alice’s cheek, played a little with the baby, who had by this time overcome his fears, and even talked to Abner about football. In this way he heard the story of the Albion match and Mawne committee’s attempt to square the players. At first he was enthusiastic about George Harper’s resistance to the corrupting influence; but on second thoughts he disapproved of it. ‘I reckon you and George done your mates a bad turn. It ain’t every day you can pick up ten pound for nothing.’ The only thing that modified his opinion was the dislike that he shared with all the other men at Mawne of Hudson. ‘Hudson . . .’ he said. ‘I wish you’d a’ finished him!’
While Abner and his father were talking football Alice had approached the sister, a dark, capable-looking woman whose features and hair and eyes were as rigid and sharp and metallic as the scissors hanging from her starched belt, on the subject of John Fellows’s progress. This woman stared at her for a moment. ‘Are you Fellows’s daughter?’ she asked.
‘No, sister, I’m his wife.’
‘He’s the worst grumbler we’ve ever had in this ward,’ said the sister; ‘but as a matter of fact he’s getting on finely. The doctor says the bone is set nicely, and he should be out in a couple of weeks now. I expect they’ll send him out on a Thomas’s splint. You don’t know what that is,’ she added, with a rather scornful intonation, but then, noticing that Alice looked tired, she took her into her bunk and gave her a cup of tea.
‘I couldn’t imagine that you were Fellows’s wife,’ she said, ‘and this his baby. I thought your husband was the young man who came with you.’
‘He and baby’s half-brothers,’ Alice explained, blushing. ‘By Mr Fellows’s first wife, you know.’
‘Well, I hope you’ll be happy,’ replied the sister doubtfully. ‘It’s time the visitors were going. Is Fellows a very heavy drinker?’
‘I’m afraid he is,’ said Alice mildly.
‘I thought so,’ said the sister. ‘We ought to keep him in here for your sake. But there’s always a rush on surgical beds at Christmas time. You’d better call your stepson.’
Abnerwas genuinely relieved when Alice told him the good report that the sister had given her on his father’s condition, for it promised him a speedy release from the discomfort of the situation. Alice, who had accustomed herself to examine every shade of expression that he showed, knew that he was rejoicing at the prospect of leaving her. The thought piqued her, for she had forced herself always to behave toward him exactly as if there had never been a moment of embarrassment between them. Her pride would not let the matter rest.
‘You’m glad he’s coming back,’ she said. ‘I know you be.’
‘I’m glad his leg’s joined, if that’s what you mean,’ he replied. ‘That’s only human-like. Besides, it’s best for everybody.’
‘And what about me?’ she asked, passionately.
He would not answer, and she flowed on with a stream of reproaches, telling him that she knew he hated her and couldn’t bear the sight of her, in the hope that he would be driven to say that he did nothing of the sort. Abner remained passive. He knew very well that if he were to lose his temper with her the situation might easily become just as dangerous as if he were tender. The main thing to be avoided with her was emotion of any kind. Life had been made difficult enough for him already simply because he knew that their relation was capable of passionate developments. He knew what passion was, and in spite of himself he could not always banish the thought of Alice from his mind. Admitting this, he had mapped out a course of conduct for himself, and he meant to stick to it until the happy day of his relief.
It was not a fortnight but a month before John Fellows left the hospital. He came back, as the sister had anticipated, with a Thomas’s splint on his thigh and instructions to attend the infirmary as anout-patient in another month’s time. The splint was an embarrassment that he resented, for it compelled him to sit in an uncomfortable position with the right leg extended, but it did not prevent him walking or drinking, and as soon as he had mastered the first of these processes he lost no time in making up for his long abstinence from the second. The rules of the friendly society to which he belonged forbade its members to visit public-houses as long as they were receiving sick pay, so that the invalid was forced to enter the Lyttleton Arms by a back door which he reached by crossing the garden of a friend, and having once solved this problem Fellows managed to put in the day without any difficulty.
Every Friday morning he hobbled down on his crutches to the doctor’s surgery and obtained a certificate by means of which he drew his weekly pay. It was only twelve shillings a week, and he never parted with a penny of it to Alice, so that the household now depended entirely on Abner’s earnings. It puzzled both of them to imagine how he managed to live in a state of fuddled alcoholism on this small sum. They supposed that his old friend the landlord, trusting him, put it on the slate in the hope of being paid when Fellows went back to work. He had always been free with his money, and no doubt his boon companions of the past were ready to treat him as often as they could afford it.
At the end of February he went in to North Bromwich in accordance with the hospital orders and returned without his splint. The doctors had told him that it would now be wise to use the leg as much as possible and suggested that the colliery authorities, who were partly responsible for the accident, should now give him a light job at the pit-head. John Fellows, however, didn’t see the point of this. He had paid into the Loyal United Free Gardeners for more than thirty years and now that he had the chance he meant to get some of his money back by staying on the box as long as they would let him. He could get quite enough exercise for his leg in his clandestine approaches to the Lyttleton Arms. What was more, he would not do a stroke of work until his claim against the colliery was settled.He had consulted a solicitor, and a claim under the Workmen’s Compensation Act was pending.
Abner meanwhile waited impatiently for his release. The presence of his father in the house had eased the awkwardness of his relation with Alice by abolishing the sense of lonely isolation that surrounded it. Alice herself was almost complacent. She did not mind how long John Fellows abstained from work as long as Abner was left to her. At the end of May the doctor refused to continue the farce of signing the miner’s certificates. John Fellows grumbled, but had to admit that he had done fairly well out of the club. He pushed on his claim for compensation, which was settled for fifty pounds. Alice was overjoyed at this windfall, for the strain of her straitened housekeeping had forced her to run up a few small debts with tradesmen. She took the opportunity of asking her husband for money when Abner was in the room.
‘Money . . .?’ said John Fellows. ‘Money . . .? What do yo’ want with money? What’s money to do with me when I’ve a son at work earning a man’s wages? If yo’ want money better ask our Abner. Didn’t I keep him all through his schooling in food and clothes? working day and night? I reckon it’s his turn now.’
‘I bain’t goin’ to keep you in pub-crawling any longer,’ said Abner. ‘You’d best give her some, while you’ve got it. I’m going off to work in Wales.’
‘Work in Wales!’ cried John Fellows. ‘I’ll teach you to talk to your father like that,’ he cried, coming over to him with his head low between his shoulders like an angry bull. When he reached his son he stopped, for Abner had thrown back his elbow. Alice ran to separate them. There was no need for her to have done so, for Fellows knew better than to appeal to force.
‘You’re a fine pair, the two on you!’ he said. ‘And don’t you go thinking I can’t see.’
He went out of the room with the limp that he now cultivated, and it was well that he did so, for by this time Abner was white with rage. He would have followed his father if Alice had not withheld him.
‘Abner, don’t!’ she cried. ‘What did he mean?’
‘You know what he meant as well as I do,’ said Abner with a laugh. ‘Still, that don’t matter. I’m off to-morrow.’
But he did not go. Thinking the matter over he could not bring himself to abandon Alice and her child to the desolation that he knew must follow his departure. It even seemed to him that his going might suggest to his father that he had hit the right nail on the head. The fact that, this time, Alice knew better than beg him to stay, also influenced him. By this token she accepted his independence and appealed only to his generosity. She never had a penny of her husband’s fifty pounds. Some of it, no doubt, he owed to the landlord of the Lyttleton Arms: but in any case it became clear that as long as it lasted he could not be expected to return to work. In the meantime he took great pains to avoid crossing Abner, feeling less obligation towards the housekeeping expenses from the fact that his nourishment in these days was mainly liquid and taken elsewhere.
It was difficult to say how long the money would last him. For the present he was managing extraordinarily well and there seemed no reason why he should ever take up work again, although there was now no physical reason why he should not begin. The summer passed without any change in their arrangements. Abner still disliked his work. The prolonged strain of working in cramped positions was beginning to tell on his eyes; but in the lower levels of the pit he suffered little from the extremity of heat which made work above ground almost impossible in the July of that year, and made his father thirstier than ever. Under the new conditions he found it impossible to save money for the needs of the day when he should be free. All his earnings but a few shillings went to Alice every Saturday night, and it was with difficulty that he refrained from breaking into the small store that he had kept intact in his stocking.
On August bank-holiday the men at the pit stopped work. This was the day of Dulston Wake, the principal festival of the black-country year. Each of the small towns that lie like knots on the network of tramwaysthat has its centre in North Bromwich has its own minor fair of swing-boats, roundabouts, and cocoa-nut shies, but none of these have half the significance of Dulston Wake, which is prominent not only by its magnitude but also by the weight of tradition that belongs to it and by the magnificence of its setting. In all his life Abner had never missed it, nor, for that matter, had his father; and when the day drew near it was taken as a matter of course that the whole family should put on its Sunday clothes and go to the Wake together. They left soon after midday, John Fellows already mildly intoxicated, Abner in his blue suit with a white silk neckerchief, and Alice, carrying the baby breeched for the occasion, in her best black costume.
They had to walk more than a mile from Hackett’s Cottages to the terminus of the electric tramway system that had not yet come to Mawne. John Fellows, who had forgotten his limp, led the way at a great pace down Mawne bank, so fast indeed that Alice grew tired by the weight of the child. The day was one of sweltering heat, of the kind in which the people of the black-country prefer to take their pleasures. John Fellows carried a bottle of draught beer in each pocket of his coat and a red pocket-handkerchief escaped from under the brim of his bowler hat. He turned to swear at Alice for delaying the progress of the party, and then, mumbling something under his breath, put on a spurt of ridiculous energy and left them behind.
Abner relieved the panting Alice of her burden, and carried the child on his shoulder. Soon they had crossed the Stour at the bridge by the gun-barrel works and had gained the relative coolness of shade under the chestnuts of Mr Willis’s hanging gardens. They arrived at the tramway terminus ten minutes later than John Fellows to find that he had not profited by his exertions since the trams were overcrowded and a breakdown had disorganised the service. He had taken the opportunity of sitting down on the cinder path and emptying one of his beer bottles, and as fast as he drank beer sweat oozed from every pore of his body. When the tram appeared in the distance he pulled himself upwith a grunt and prepared to fight for a seat in it. It was quite impossible for Alice to compete in this kind of scrimmage. John Fellows pushed his way in first and sat fanning himself with his hat while Abner, Alice and the baby were left behind. They did not see him again during the day.
They waited for twenty minutes in the sun before they found a place in one of those reckless tramway-cars that go roaring like spent shells through all the wastes of the black country. They could not speak for the jolt and jangle of its progress, for the clanging of its bell and the alarming sputter of electric sparks when it swayed on its springs and threatened to jump the rails. In all their four miles of journey they could see no green. They passed through endless streets of grimy brick, baked culverts from which a blast of acrid and lifeless air rushed through the front of the car like a sirocco. Even though the fires of the furnaces and factories had been banked down for the holidays they could still smell the heat which had scorched and blackened this volcanic country on every side.
At last they were jolted through the narrow streets of Dulston, happily without catastrophe, and ejected at the foot of the hill on which its medieval castle stands. Here the crowd was at its thickest. Noisy hawkers sold ticklers and leaden water-squirts and programmes of the fête. Tram after tram disgorged its sweaty contents to mix with the cooler occupants of brakes and char-a-bancs. Through the dense foliage of the castle woods that hung limp in the heat like painted leafage in a theatre, the discordant music of competing roundabouts floated down, and beneath it one could hear the low, exciting rumour of the fair, toward which the steady stream of new arrivals was setting. It was a stiff pull up the slope of the castle hill and every one who climbed it seemed bitten with an infectious speed. At the top of it the crowd thickened beneath the constriction of a narrow Norman arch and then burst and scattered into the huge central courtyard where gray ruins looked down upon this modern substitute for the tourneys of the middle ages.
Abner and Alice were caught up in the excitements ofthe fair. He soon added to his burdens by knocking down three cocoa-nuts. At a shooting-gallery to the admiration of Alice he smashed thin globes of glass spinning above a jet of water. For his prize he chose a brooch of imitation gold: a heart pierced by an arrow and surmounted by the word ‘Alice.’ She laughed and pinned it in the neck of her black bodice. She marvelled at the sureness of his hand and eye. There was no one in all that crowd whom she would have chosen for her escort rather than him. She rejoiced, for the first time in many months, to find him a happy and natural companion, only wishing that she could forget the fact that John Fellows also was there, drinking, no doubt, in one of the canvas marquees that the firm of Astill had erected in each corner of the courtyard. Once, and only once, she spoke her thoughts. ‘I wonder where he is, Abner. . . .’ she said. He only laughed at her.
‘I’ll find him if you like.’
‘Oh, don’t be soft, Abner,’ she said. ‘I was only wondering. . .’
They spent their coppers at a dozen booths, seeing the fattest lady and the smallest horse in the world, the riders of bucking bronchos with woolly trousers and slouch hats, who were even better shots than Abner; and the lady of mystery, who divined the name and age of Alice and the dates on Abner’s football medals and told them that their married happiness was threatened by a dark woman. To this seeress Alice protested blushing Abner was not her husband. ‘Well, my love,’ said that lady, pointing to the baby, ‘that bain’t nothing to boast about.’ The crowd in the tent laughed, and Alice was annoyed with Abner for laughing with them. ‘You ought to have told ’er,’ she said crossly as they emerged. ‘It’s enough to take my character for life!’
By this time the cause of the mystery lady’s speculations was getting tired and peevish. Abner took him for a ride on one of the galloping roundabout horses, but the motion only made him sick, and so they left the courtyard and sat resting in the tepid air under the shadow of the castle beeches, undisturbed by anybut casual lovers who had sought the same kind of privacy.
‘I think it’s awful the way they be’ave!’ said Alice, hugging the baby to her breast as though she thought he might be corrupted by the sight of so much unbridled passion. It came natural to her to adopt this pose of modesty in Abner’s company. She expected him to agree with her; but he only laughed, and this set her thinking of the dark episode of Susan Wade and wishing she knew what actually had happened. ‘You didn’t ought to laugh,’ she said, ‘it bain’t decent.’
But Abner was too contented to pursue the argument.
The child slept for an hour, and Abner sat smoking beside them. He went back to the fair-ground and brought her a cup of tea. Thus refreshed they returned to the castle courtyard. The sun was setting; the uppermost storeys of the ruins were tinged with warm and mellow light, but the crowded space beneath them had grown cooler. Hissing flares of naphtha were lighted. Swing-boats soared out of the pit of the ruins into the glowing sky. The crowd, released from the burden of heat under which it had laboured, began to pluck up spirits. There was a good deal of friendly horse-play, from which Alice shrank into the protection of Abner’s bulk. Little John did not seem much the better for his sleep. He was tired and irritable, and frightened by the squirts of water and the feathered teasers. It seemed as if they would have to take him home. ‘But I did want him to see the fireworks!’ Alice said regretfully. Already two monstrous fire-balloons had ascended and drifted away till they showed no bigger than the moon.
‘Come on then,’ said Abner. ‘I’ve had enough of it if yo’ have. Let’s get back before the trams is crowded.’
He took the baby from her arms and she, almost unwillingly, followed him.
At the end of the courtyard, near the Norman archway by which they had entered, stood a boxing-booth, inside which the show was just on the point of beginning. The proprietor, a heavy-jowled ruffian in a sweater, whose board proclaimed him to be an ex-welter-weight champion of Bermondsey, had collected a crowd roundhis platform by inveighing, in the intervals between ringing his bell, against the sporting reputation of the black-country. At the back of the platform two of his staff, a nigger and a Hebrew, were sparring gently like kittens at play. It seemed that the reason for his resentment was his failure to get the Dulston audience to do anything but watch him and his pets. What he wanted, he said, was sport . . . just to see what the local talent was made of.
‘Sport?’ he said, ‘you don’t know the meaning of the word in this gord-forsaken ’ole. When I puts up this tent in Durham or Middlesborough or Wales, they flock into it, flock in . . . ready to take a turn with the boys and give a little exhibition. Frightened to use your fists, that’s what you are here. What the hell’s England coming to? That’s what I want to know. It’s enough to make me sick, you people! It’s enough to make me want to take down the saloon and burn the whole bleedin’ bag of tricks, damme if it isn’t, an’ the boys waiting here for a bit of sport.’ The nigger had stopped sparring and was grinning insolently at the crowd, among the younger women of which his strangeness exercised an attraction. Nobody, however, seemed inclined to enter the booth.
‘Come along, Abner,’ Alice whispered, tugging at his arm.
The proprietor rang his bell again. ‘Now, for the last time,’ he said. ‘Just commencing! If you haven’t the spunk to put on the gloves yourselves, come and see a pretty exhibition of scientific boxing. And I give you my word this is the last time I ever bring my entertainment into the bleedin’ black-country!’
‘Good job, gaffer,’ said somebody.
The laughter of the crowd made the big man lose his temper. ‘Good job, is it?’ he cried. ‘I’d ask the gentleman that made that remark to come up here and say it to my face. Ever hear the name of Budge Garside? That’s mine! ’Ere, I’ll give five pounds’—he pulled out a leather bag of money and jingled it—‘I’ll give two pounds to any of you chaps that’ll stand up to me for six rounds. That’s what I think of the bloody lot of you. Men! There’s not one of youblack-country chaps worth the name. All you’re fit for, as far as I can see, is to carry the babby about and ’old the missis’s ’and. Yes, sir, it’s you I’m talkin’ to!’
Everybody looked at Abner. Alice again tried to pull him away. ‘That’s right, my dear,’ said Garside, encouraged, ‘take ’im ’ome before ’e gets ’is pretty face spoiled!’
Abner shook himself free from her hand and shoved the baby into her arms.
‘Come on, gaffer,’ he said, ‘I’m game.’ He moved forward through the crowd. Alice, clinging to him desperately, tried to hold him back, but the people made way for him, and even helped him forward, swarming up on to the platform after him. Garside, pleased with the result of his stratagem, shook hands with him. ‘That’s the spirit I like,’ he said thickly. ‘Come on in and strip. Let’s have a drink to start with.’ They disappeared together into the tent. Sixpences rattled into the wooden bowl that the negro held to receive them. Men and women poured into the booth anxious to see what kind of battering the representative of the district would get. The little Jew pushed back the crowd and held up a piece of boarding with the words ‘House Full’ painted on it, while the negro fastened the strings of the tent door.
Alice was left alone in the crowd outside clutching the baby nervously in her arms. She could not have borne to see Abner fight. All she could do was to wait patiently outside and listen in agony for any sounds within. She could hear very little but the buzz of conversation. Even when she crept round to the side of the tent and put her ear to the canvas the sounds that came to her were indistinct, unreal, and blurred by the nearer rumour of the multitude, the hiss of naphtha flares, the creaking of swing-boats, cracks of rifles, and above all the raucous blaring of the steam organs and the shriek of their whistles. If only she could have heard something she would have been happier. She could not bear to think of Abner’s white flesh being bruised, and yet, curiously enough, she was thrilled and proud of him. Her distaste for violence couldn’t get the better of her exultation in her man’svirility. She stood at the side of the tent tensely listening. A rocket screamed into the sky; there was a moment of relative silence from the crowd in which she thought she heard a sound of dull thuds mingled with another pattering noise. The rocket burst into a shower of gold amid a salvo of ‘Oh’s!’ The crowd, noisily streaming towards the ramparts, from which they could see the fireworks against a blacker sky, jostled her, passing between the boxing-booth and the next tent. Six rounds! It could not last much longer. Why had he left her so roughly? Why hadn’t he taken her with him? Of course you couldn’t take a baby into a boxing-booth—not even a black-country baby—but there was no reason why he should have pushed her aside like that. She wouldn’t forgive him that roughness in a hurry! But she knew that she would: she would forgive Abner anything as long as he did not disregard her. The crowd still streamed past her. Showers of starred rockets and tadpoles of fire were bursting above her in the velvet sky. A whole battery of maroons shook the ruins. He would be sorry to have missed the fireworks! If he were badly knocked about she still had some of Mrs Moseley’s ointment left—a fine thing for bruises or broken skin. That was the night, she remembered, when he had come home drunk: the night when, for a moment they had gazed into each other’s eyes. She knew how dangerous the emotion of pity was. A set-piece suddenly sputtered out of the darkness. Letters of fire began to form themselves. What would they say?GOD SAVE. . . ‘The king,’ of course. Little John began to cry, saying that he wanted to go to bed. ‘Yes, my precious!’ she crooned, ‘mammy’ll take you home.’ Six rounds. . . . She suddenly remembered how a young pitman at Mawne had once been killed in a boxing-booth by a knock-out blow on the chin. A knock-out blow . . . she remembered old Mr Higgins talking of it. But Abner was strong. Nothing of that kind could possibly happen to him. Even so, she couldn’t get the sinister picture of Budge Garside with his heavy jowl out of her head. He was such a deadly-looking customer! Suppose . . .
A sound of cheering came from inside the tent. She ran round to the front, wishing to goodness that John would hold his noise. The curtains opened. The negro came out with another signboard: ‘Just Commencing.’ People surged out of the tent laughing and talking together. A bold girl burst out laughing in the nigger’s face. Alice took hold of the sleeve of one of the men who came out alone and looked as if he were sober. ‘Tell us what’s happened?’ she gasped; but he only stared at her and shook his head and went on straight forward as if he had mistaken her motive for accosting him. The tent emptied. After a moment she saw Abner shaking hands with the giant in the door. He didn’t seem to notice her, and when he came down the wooden steps and she called his name he did not look pleased to see her. His lip was cut and his forehead still damp from a vigorous sponging. She took his arm; she wanted to show him how glad she was. He was too dazed to resent this familiarity, simply saying: ‘Come on out of this!’ In the gate of the courtyard he stopped. ‘Wait a jiff,’ he said, ‘You’d better take the two quid.’ He gave her the coins and then, suddenly realising the tiredness of her face in the lamplight, asked her to give him the kid. ‘I reckon this is a man’s job,’ he said with a deep laugh.
This time they caught their tram without difficulty. They spoke very little, and in whispers, for John had fallen asleep in his mother’s arms, and even if he had wanted to talk, Abner would have known better than to risk waking him. As a matter of fact he had taken a good deal of punishment from Garside’s left. On points he would have been thoroughly outmatched and nothing but his stubborn will had kept him on his feet until the end of the sixth round. The mild elation that had sustained him when he left the booth had now faded, and in its place he began to feel the effects of the terrific hammering that he had undergone. His lip was beginning to swell and his body felt cold in spite of the sultry weather. He dozed in the corner of the tram-car, and when they came to the terminus and Alice roused him by a touch on his sleeve, he felt it an unreasonable effort to pull himself together and carrythe child up Mawne bank. The creature was still asleep and hung a dead weight on his shoulder. Rather than wake him when they reached Hackett’s Cottages Alice carried him upstairs and laid him still asleep in his cot.
When she came downstairs again she found Abner in the washhouse bathing his face in cold water. ‘Don’t do that, Abner,’ she said, ‘let me see to it proper.’ She took Mrs Moseley’s ointment and some strips of linen from the cupboard, but he wouldn’t let her touch him, saying that he was tired as a dog and would rather turn in. She gazed at him sorrowfully, knowing that she could not drive him and fearing to persuade. He rallied her weakly: ‘If you stand lookin’ at me like that yo’ll be late for the funeral,’ he said, and then, softening, ‘You look dead tired yourself. Put the light out and leave the door open.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve never done that. I shall wait up for him.’
‘Well, you women takes the biscuit!’ said Abner.
He left her there, and rolling up in his blankets soon fell asleep. It was not often that he dreamed, but on that night his dreams would not let him be. From the very moment that he first slept he seemed to be fighting, fighting with Budge Garside on a platform of creaking boards with a rope barrier round it, lit by hissing naphtha flares. Every moment he grew more exhausted; but he had to go on fighting in spite of the violent jabs of Garside’s fist over his heart. The crowd in the booth, whose faces could not be seen for tobacco smoke, were laughing at him, and this filled him with an angry determination to go through with it. The round seemed endless. He waited for the umpire’s bell to save him, but the umpire had vanished. And now he was fighting all three: Garside with his broad, shaggy chest, the small-headed negro, and the little Jew who skipped about like a flea. He hadn’t bargained to take on all three at once, but there was nobody to whom he could appeal, and so he had to go on boxing as well as he could in this hurricane of six fists. He thought of Alice and the baby whom he had left outside. If he were knocked out, as he surely must be in amoment, she would have to look to herself. That couldn’t be helped. Suddenly he heard her calling from outside the tent: ‘Abner . . . Abner!’ He tried to call back to her, just to show her that he was still keeping up, but no voice would come through his cut lips. Garside landed a terrific blow on the point of his chin. He woke. . . . He supposed he was awake. But the voice that he had heard in his dream still followed him. She was calling ‘Abner . . Abner!’ He tumbled out of bed, pulled on his trousers, and ran downstairs. The mild light of the kitchen dazzled him.
In the corner, beyond a pile of overturned furniture, he saw Alice cowering, and above her John Fellows. In the struggle which he had not heard his father had ripped her bodice and torn away the gilt brooch that Abner had given her. Now he had her at his mercy, holding her by the hair, shaking her from time to time like a terrier with a rat and making her scream with pain. Abner had never seen such terror in a human creature’s eyes. When she saw him she cried for his help. ‘Abner . . . Abner . . . make him give over. Tell him I done nothing!’
‘Abner,’ said John Fellows savagely. ‘Abner . . . there’s a bleedin’ side too much Abner in this ’ouse! You’ll get out of it quick, the pair of you.’
‘Loose her!’ Abner shouted.
‘Loose her?’ John Fellows laughed. ‘I reckon I’ve let her go too much as it is. Give me the slip, the two of you. Took her off into the woods, tickin’ and tannin’, you dirty devil! Give her joolry! Give your own mother joolry! An’ what happened when I was on my back in the hospital?’
‘Leave go of her!’ said Abner, coming nearer.
‘In the very bed you was born in,’ cried John Fellows. ‘Yo’re a fine bloody fossack! Out you go, the both of you! Joolry! Give me the slip, would you? No — fear! Gerrup, I say!’
He pulled Alice up from her knees. Her sobs rose to a scream. ‘John, you’m killing me!’
Abner took him by the arm.
‘Lay hands on your own father, would you? Take that, you . . . !’ He hit Abner full on his bruisedmouth with all his strength. Alice, released, ran to the other side of the room and stood panting, her hands clutching at her torn bodice. The baby started crying upstairs.
Abner put his hand to his mouth. His lip was bleeding again. He pulled himself together. ‘You’re boozed,’ he said. ‘Get on upstairs!’ He tried to lead his father to the door, but John Fellows was not to be put off. ‘Boozed!’ he said, ‘and what would drive a man to booze worse nor a bad wife? No, yo’ don’t get out of it like that. What’ve you done to ’er?’
‘I never touched her,’ said Abner.
‘Never touch ’er, an’ give her joolry!’ Fellows scoffed. ‘Maybe I’m boozed, but I’m not too boozed to put you to rights.’ He launched a savage blow at Abner’s face, and encouraged by the fact that Abner did not return it, followed it up with another. Alice, crying ‘Oh!’ ran to the door. ‘Stay where yo’ are!’ Abner shouted. John Fellows closed with him, lashing out viciously. He had been something of a boxer in his day, and his attack was so violent that Abner found it difficult to defend himself. Fellows fought like a tiger cat, with boots and finger-nails and teeth. His bloodshot eyes were fixed on Abner’s throat. It was as if all the suppressed malice of seven years had been suddenly released. Then, suddenly, he dropped Abner and flew at the frightened Alice. Abner stopped him with a blow under the right ear. He crumpled up and fell on the floor like a sack.
‘Abner . . . you’ve done him in!’ Alice cried.
He fell to his knees and listened for his father’s heart. The impulse still fluttered there. ‘No . . . he’s only stunned. I reckon he’ll wake up sober,’ he said. Alice stood trembling and sobbing in short gasps: a strange, mechanical noise. Abner remained bent over his father’s body in silence.
‘Johnnie’s crying . . . bless his little ’eart!’ she said. He took no notice of her. ‘Put the rug over ’im. Leave him here till ’e comes to.’
‘Abner, ’e spoke something awful! ’E said you’n me had been going together while he was away. ’E took up this brooch. . . . A thing like that!’
‘I don’t want to ’ear what he said.’
‘’E said our John wasn’t his child . . . said I’d always been rotten bad. . .’
John Fellows gave a groan.
‘Hark, ’e’s coming round,’ said Abner.
‘An’ I never done nothing! . . . nothing!’
‘You’d better look to the babby.’
‘Poor lamb! Nothing, I never done, Abner . . .’
‘I know you done nothing. You don’t take no notice what a man says when ’e’s boozed. You look to the kid, while I get my clothes on.’
‘Yo’ bain’t goin’ to dress?’ She picked up the alarm clock that Fellows had knocked down from the mantelpiece. It was still going, with a harsh metallic click. ‘It’s not two o’clock yet.’
But he had gone. Left alone she glanced fearfully at the form of her husband. For a moment he lay quite still. Then he shuddered, rolled over and began to snore. The baby was still wailing upstairs. If only John Fellows had been dead! But that would have been murder. What was Abner doing? She could not live without Abner. She went upstairs to his room and tapped at the door. Candlelight glinted through cracks in the boards. He answered angrily, she thought, but she came in.
‘What are you doing now?’ she whispered.
‘Putting two-three things together.’
‘What’s up now?’
‘I’m off out of this.’
‘Going?’ she cried. ‘Abner . . . you can’t go and leave me like this. Not with him!’
He laughed. ‘I can’t take you along with me. Not likely!’ He went on pulling out clothes from his wooden box. She broke down altogether.
‘Abner . . . Abner, don’t go and leave me. I can’t . . . I can’t . . .’ He put on his scarf. ‘Abner, only stay along with us for a bit. . .’
‘I’ve stayed too long as it is.’
She tried to put her arms round his neck, but he pushed her away. ‘It’s lucky I’ve got a bit of money put by for a start,’ he said, fumbling in the mattress for his stocking. ‘I’ll give you what I can spare.’
Then suddenly he swore violently. He had found the stocking, but it was empty. He turned furiously on Alice: ‘You devil, you took it!’
She fell at his feet, imploring him to believe that she knew nothing about it. ‘I’ve never told you a lie, Abner,’ she said.
His rage made him unreasonable. ‘You’re like the rest on ’em! Twenty pounds! What have you done with it?’
‘I swear I never seen a penny of it, Abner. It must be there. Look again.’
He had ripped the bed to pieces, but there was no money. Suddenly light dawned on them both. They had found the explanation of John Fellows’ continued affluence. Thinking of this, they could not doubt where the money had gone.
‘That’s the worst turn he ever done me,’ he said, pulling on his cap.
Even now she could not believe that he was going. ‘Not till the morning,’ she said. ‘Don’t leave me with him like that in the dark.’
In the kitchen Abner again examined his father, who now appeared to be sleeping peacefully. ‘He won’t remember a word of it when he wakes,’ he said.
Again she implored him not to leave her, but now she could see that entreaties were useless and that his mind was made up. It was the most awful parting in her life: as final and annihilating as death. For more than three years she had lived for him and very little else. He opened the door. It was a bland summer night, the sky full of soft stars and the country of a breathing sweetness.
‘So long, then, Alice,’ he said.
She could not speak. She put up her arms and kissed him for the first time in her life. He did not then push her away; but she felt that he was only compelling himself to tolerate her embrace. ‘I never touched that money,’ she said hastily.
‘I know you never did,’ he replied. ‘So long . . .’
His shadow disappeared into the darkness. She shut the door of the kitchen. John Fellows lay on the floor snoring, and upstairs the baby still cried.
Therewas no moon, but the sky, even at this early hour of the morning, was full of a curious shimmer of light reflected mirage-like from the upper air clothing Europe to eastward of the English lands. At that season of the year sunlight was never distant. Now, every moment the stars shone fainter, and the slate roofs of the houses seemed to gather light. Abner stood looking up and down the Stourton Road. He did not know which way to turn; he was dazed by the suddenness with which the freedom so long and so patiently awaited had come to him. In the bewilderment of the moment he could scarcely even realise that it was sweet. He had planned it differently and anticipated the day so often that its violent arrival took him off his feet. He had expected to leave Mawne deliberately in his own time and carrying his savings in his pocket. Events had cast him out violently and penniless . . . not quite penniless, for he still had a little change left from the money he had taken to the Wakes. He remembered with regret that he had been fool enough to give Alice the two sovereigns he had won in the boxing-booth. They would have come in handy; but reflection told him that Alice would need them a great deal more than he.
A man began to cough in the front bedroom of the house before which he was standing. People upstairs were beginning to wake. A cock crowed dismally. He had better make up his mind, for day was beginning. Eastward the Stourton Road led to Coventry, westward to Wales. Whichever way he went his lack of money would compel him to walk. He wasn’t afraid of walking or, for that matter, of sleeping rough; and yet he felt that he was at sea and incapable in his present condition of making up his mind. His head and body ached with Garside’s blows, for the bruised muscles were beginning to stiffen. He was sleepy, as well as tired, and couldn’t remember one thing thatseemed to be calling for recognition in the back of his mind. He went on walking aimlessly towards Halesby; the motion set his mind working once more and he remembered the thing that had baffled and escaped him. Tiger. . . . He couldn’t very well leave the dog on Mrs Moseley’s hands. At the same time he didn’t want to frighten the old woman by disturbing her before daylight. To do so would entail explanations, possibly arguments on the subject of his filial duties. It would mean another good-bye, and he wanted to get away quietly without anything of that kind. Still, he meant to have Tiger as much for his own comfort as for Mrs Moseley’s. He determined to see what could be done.
The old woman’s house was the last on the right of a steep, cobble-paved street climbing at right angles to the Stourton Road. He turned up it, his hob-nails raising stinging echoes on the stones. He felt as if he must surely wake every one that slept there. Mrs Moseley’s house was as quiet as the rest. He surveyed it strategically. At the back of it lay a little yard that in happier days had been used as a fowl-run. To advertise the presence of these treasures within, her husband had prevailed upon the landlord to top the wall with fragments of broken bottles. This barrier now confronted Abner. Luckily he was tall enough to reach the top of the wall with his hands, and he soon discovered that time and weather had taken the nature out of Mr Moseley’s mortar so that it crumbled easily and allowed him to remove the glass from a foot of the coping. In two minutes he had done this, straddled the wall, and dropped down softly on the other side. Tiger, bad watchdog that he was, still slept. Abner came softly to the door of the washhouse and tried it. There was no fear that Mrs Moseley would leave a door unlocked at night even behind a glass-topped wall. The only other aperture in the scullery was a window that was too small for him to get through and set very high in the wall. With his pocket-knife thrust through a broken pane he lifted the hasp and opened it. Tiger gave a sharp bark.
‘Ss . . .’ Abner whispered. ‘Tiger. . . . Good dog. . . Come on then.’
Tiger, with a snuffle of recognition, came out of his hole and yawned. The next moment he was jumping up towards the window, anxious to get at his master and whining like a baby because the window was too high for him. Time after time he leapt and failed to reach the sill. The wall was too smooth, and the space of the washhouse too cramped to give him a run for his jump. He grew excited and inclined to be noisy, and at last Abner, seeing no other way out of the difficulty, put his arm as far as he could through the window, and when the dog jumped caught blindly at the loose skin of his back and hauled him through. Tiger trembled with gratitude and the anticipation of new joys. He licked Abner’s face as he lifted him up and put him on the top of the coping. He jumped over into the road and Abner followed him. A policeman, attracted by the strange phenomenon of Tiger’s egress, watched him as he dropped over. He was a young man, a football player, who knew Abner, and when he saw Tiger’s master emerge he grinned.
‘Got him out without waking the old woman,’ said Abner.
‘Rabbits?’ said the other, with a wink. Abner laughed. Both of them knew that the game-laws do not run in colliery districts. ‘Looks as if ’e knows all about it,’ said the constable at parting. Tiger was already nearly out of sight, sniffing the grass as he went. Since Abner went back to work at the pit he had been deprived of hunting at this ideal hour.
It was extraordinary how Tiger’s company restored Abner’s confidence. He felt no longer alone and worried by indecision. Tiger had gone so far that it was useless to call him back. He had chosen his own direction, and Abner was content to follow him. What he wanted most of all, he decided, was a sleep.
Beyond the level of Mrs Moseley’s cottage the houses thinned away and the ground fell steeply to the fields above the Stour, the scene of Abner’s walks with Susan more than a year before. Dawn came, heralded by no fierce splendours, white light stealing from the eastover a cloudless sky. The birds were already awake, but the hush of August held them, so that the warblers were silent. Larks there were, lost in the sunlit levels above the whiteness; thrushes made subdued domestic noises in the hedgerows; linnets already flocking for the early harvest of seed, rustled the hawthorn thickets, chaffinches sang boldly in a more vulgar strain. A soft air bloomed the drowsy hedges. Elder blossoms and slender umbels of parsley flower gleamed like dull ivory. Light, and more light came welling over the world. When Abner had reached the plank bridge over the Stour where Susan first had kissed him, the edge of the woodland rose up black beyond the stream, the water gleamed beneath the alders, and the hills, that had lain folded in night, lifted their heads. Now the birds were silent. Only the larks still sang. Walking behind the ecstatic Tiger through a green lane in Uffdown Wood, Abner saw the peak of Pen Beacon before him smitten with fire. The sun was up. Gigantic shadows dappled and barred the grass. Tiger, dancing from side to side, pursued a phantom hound. They left the woods and dropped over a stile into a winding road. As yet the sun had no real heat: colour it warmed, but the air was cool, cool and clean as the surface of this rocky road so often scoured by torrents. The heavy odours of the woods belonged to night, but the smell of the road was one of morning. Gradually the banks released the peculiar perfume of a hill-country in sunshine, a lovely, healthy savour of thyme and bracken and dry heather. A breeze swept the harebells. Still they climbed the path towards the top of Uffdown where the sun came first. Even at this hour pods were snapping amid the almond scent of late gorse blossom. In the shadow of a hedge where prickles were few Abner threw himself down propping his head on a tussock of thin grass. He closed his eyes, and was soon asleep, and Tiger, having smelt and scared innumerable rabbits, came at last to lie beside him, propping his slender lower jaw upon the smooth of Abner’s thigh.
He did not sleep for long. His watch had stopped, and he could not tell the time, but from the height ofthe sun he judged it to be between eight and nine o’clock. The grass of that southern hedge-side was already warm and fragrant, and the mistiness of the Severn plain beneath him promised another day of broiling heat. He was horribly stiff and lay on with a sense of lazy luxury, letting the sun warm his bones. Sprawling there with his eyes closed he now began to consider where he should go.
The obvious goal of an out-of-work in the midlands at that time was Coventry, an ancient city then rising on the third of its great industrial booms, the manufacture of motor-cars. There was always work, and well-paid work, to be had in Coventry. The journey was short, and Abner had no money to waste on railway fares. Even so, the idea of merely moving from one side of the black-country to another did not seem to represent the kind of radical change that he had intended. He wanted to make a clean start in a new country. It suddenly struck him that, after all, there was no real reason why a man should spend the whole of his life in the dust of coal and metal or the smell of fire. This joy of sunlight and fresh air seemed too good to lose.
He knew nothing of the conditions of labour in the country beyond the fact that many black-country families migrated every autumn into the fields of Worcestershire for the gathering of hops. He remembered how he had seen these sun-browned companies returning, men, women, and children together, carrying their household goods in old perambulators, looking happier and more healthy than the majority of Halesby people. He had no very definite idea when the ‘hopping’ season began; but whether he were too late for it or too early he knew, at any rate, that he had a store of strength and health to sell. He wasn’t afraid of work. Why shouldn’t he work in the open air? For the summer at least . . . after that he might go down with the money he had earned into the Welsh valleys and take to the pit again. He knew that between him and Wales lay a vast green country in which a man might live as well as anywhere else. Even now the sun was drinking up the mists that concealed it, revealing sombre woodlands heavy inleaf, yellow cornfields, the smoke of hidden towns or villages, and, here and there, a shining bend of river. From that high post, indeed, he gazed upon the pastoral heart of England, the most placid and homely of all her shires; but the national schools had taught him nothing of these things, and, as the mists ascended, showing the cliffs of Cotswold long and level, Bredon an island dome, May Hill and Malvern, Abberley, Clee, and all the nearer hills of Wales, he only knew that it was green and big and that it promised freedom.
He decided on Wales, and began to take stock of his possessions, counting the change that remained in his trouser pocket—seven and ninepence ha’penny in all—and untying the bundle into which he had put a change of socks and underwear. He wished, now that he came to think of it, that he had changed into his working clothes, for it did not seem right to him to look for work in his Sunday best. He turned out the pockets of the coat, wondering what tokens of his past life it would disclose. In the breast pocket, to his great surprise, he found a small packet of paper that he couldn’t account for. He opened it, and found that it contained two sovereigns. He stared at them incredulously and laughed aloud. Alice must have slipped them in when she said good-bye to him. He felt suddenly tender toward her, and immensely pleased at this striking turn in his fortunes. He scraped out of his side pocket some dry remnants of tobacco, filled his pipe, tied up his bundle, whistled to Tiger and set off down hill leaving the brow of the Uffdown between him and the blackness of Mawne.
It was all new ground to him. The hills that he was leaving behind formed a lip of the saucer in which the midland coal measures lay, and their line had always marked the limit of Abner’s curiosity as boldly as they defined his physical horizon. Now he was passing quickly to the unknown plain. The path grew rough and precipitous. For a hundred yards it cut into a plantation of larches fully grown. His feet and Tiger’s made no sound on the drift of needles. The wood was dry, warm, fragrant, and as quiet as a church. One would have thought that no living creature was there, till Tigerscented a squirrel, and Abner heard above him the thin alarm note of the wood-wren. From the wood they crossed a stone stile into a sunless lane, steeper even than the path across the hill, grass-grown for want of traffic and now possessed by a company of solemn foxgloves. This lane, though unfrequented, was the favourite picnic-place of Mr Willis of Mawne Hall, who always called it ‘our little Switzerland.’ The only thing that struck Abner about it was its steepness. A stone that he dislodged in his walking bounded on as though it were falling over the roof of a house, and Tiger scuttled after it full-pelt. Abner also found that it was easier to run than to walk.
At the bottom of the hill they came to a deserted watermill, fed by a stream that here issued from the hills. Near it stood a large farm-house that had fallen from its state of ease and comfort, and was now partly inhabited by a labouring family. A small boy was sitting playing with stones and eating a crust on the green in front of the house. Tiger ran up and sniffed at him, and he dropped his crust and ran screaming up the garden path. A pale woman with red hair rushed out to see what was the matter and comforted him with her apron. Abner said good-day to her, but she pulled the child inside the door as if she were frightened. He heard her bolting herself in, and laughed, for he didn’t realise what a ruffian he looked with his bruised, unshaven face and his swollen lip. Tiger, however, had the crust of bread and was thankful. He was no less hungry than his master.
Down the valley they passed. A hundred yards below the mill the trees receded and the stream widened into a neglected fishpond half-covered with water-lily leaves. The air was full of glittering blue dragon-flies, and the roadside littered and scorched by the signs of an abandoned gipsy encampment. The fishpond ended in a patch where the stream gushed through narrow sluices into a pool of brown, clear water. Sunlight, beating through the leaves above, lit the bottom with floating patches of golden brown, showing the shadows of trout that lay there gently swaying with their heads toward the sweet water. The coolness ofthis bathing-place was so alluring that Abner stripped and washed the slippery sweat from his body. Tiger, who was used to this kind of performance but hated water, watched him from the bank. When Abner had dried himself with his spare shirt they set off again down the sunny road.
He hoped that they would soon come to a village, for the bathe had only served to sharpen his appetite. As yet there were no signs of human habitation, but from the fields that chequered the hills on either side of the road came many country sounds: the creaking of invisible cart-wheels, the crack of a whip, the lowing of cattle and voices of men that echoed in the closed valley. A little lower down they met a man riding bareback on a pony, driving a flock of sheep before him. His legs hung straight down so that they nearly touched the ground. Tiger and the sheep-dog exchanged inquiries, but the horseman took no notice of Abner, who stood against the hedge while the flock stampeded past him with frightened brown eyes, raising a dust that was laden with a hot smell of wool and sheep-dip. The farmer’s man appeared to be riding in a dream, mechanically switching the pony’s flanks with a branch of hazel. Abner woke him by saying good-morning. He stopped the pony with a kick and turned to look.
‘Any pub handy hereabout?’ Abner asked him.
‘Pub? . . . Ay, you’m close on it. Ten minute’ll bring you to the Barley Mow.’ Abner had some difficulty in understanding him, for the language that he spoke was not that of Mawne. He thanked him. Then, after a long scrutiny, the horseman informed him that the nearest workhouses were at Bromsgrove and Kiddy, five miles to the right or left of the inn, said good-bye and kicked his pony into an amble again.
By that time the sheep had long since pattered out of sight; but this was an easy country in which hurry had no place. It amused Abner, and did not in the least offend him, to be taken for a tramp. In a few days, but for Alice’s final bounty, he might easily have become one. The labourer had made an estimate of the distance of the pub in accordance with his own leisurely way of progress. In less than half the timethat he had predicted Abner found himself in front of an old red-brick inn shadowed by an immense horse-chestnut whose leaves already drooped with heat. As Abner reached the door, a man whom he took to be the landlord was starting to drive off in a yellow dog-cart, probably to some market, for a small pig was netted in the back of the trap. A big, blowsy woman whom he called ‘mother,’ but who appeared to be of his own age and was no doubt his wife, saw him off. ‘Don’t forget Emily’s stays, dad,’ she called. He waved his whip in answer and went bowling down the road into the sun. The woman returned with a sigh that sounded as if it betokened relief, to the wide, semi-circular steps where Abner was standing waiting for her. She had not seen him arrive, and appeared not to be pleased at the prospect. When he began to speak she cut him short with: ‘No, the master never gives anything. We have to make it a rule on this road.’
He had to explain that he wasn’t begging. ‘Can you give us a bit of breakfast, missis,’ he said, ‘I can pay for it.’ He showed her one of his sovereigns.
She looked him up and down incredulously, and then said: ‘Come on in and set yourself in the tap. Better leave the dog outside, or my Betsy’ll have his eyes out.’ Her Betsy, a big, black tom-cat, too rashly christened in his first days of innocence, was already arching a back more like that of a geometer caterpillar than a cat. ‘She can’t abear them if she don’t know them,’ said the landlady. ‘Once she knows them she’ll lie in their arms like a child.’
Abner left Tiger whining outside the door, and the landlady, now satisfied that he wasn’t as rough as he looked, was heard shouting orders to Emily in the kitchen. A smell of frizzling bacon came down the passage.
Abner settled himself on an oak bench. This taproom was very different from that of the Royal Oak. The floor was of big, uneven stone flags and all the furniture was black and shiny with centuries of use. The place did not smell, as did the Halesby pubs, of stale spirits and tobacco. It was as sweet as they were sour. Agricultural almanacs and signed photographs of memorable meets hung on the walls, andover the mantelpiece a number of cards recorded the fees and procreative achievements of shire stallions. Abner was nearly asleep when the landlady herself appeared with a plate of bacon and eggs and a pot of tea.
‘There now, how will that do you?’ she said.
Abner started to eat and she sat and watched him, apologising once more for her first reception. ‘We have to be careful, you see. What with all this unemployment there seems to be more tramps on the road summer-time than ever there was. In winter they dies off like the flies. Dad says they come and go with the swallers. That’s a lovely bit of bacon.’
It became evident from her conversation that she was curious to know what Abner was doing. She could see that his clothes were decent and that he wore a silver watch-chain, but hinted that she couldn’t understand the battered state of his face. He told her that he had had an accident.
‘There now!’ she said. ‘They always go in threes, and bless me if yours ain’t the third I’ve come across this week. Have a drop more tea?’—she poured it—‘Which way are you going, then? If you’d been a bit earlier dad could have give you a lift.’
Abner told her that he was looking for work, asked her if she could help him to find it.
‘You’re not a farming man,’ she said, ‘and it’s all farmering hereabouts.’
He told her that he was ready to turn his hand to anything, and she confessed, a little dubiously, that he might possibly get some casual employment with one of the farmers. ‘If I was you,’ she said, ‘I should go on through Chaddesbourne and ask at Mr Cookson’s—he’s the biggest employer round here—but you’re a bit too early for the harvest. Everything’s backward in these parts after the bad spring.’
He thanked her, and while she went out to change his sovereign, put aside a hunk of bread and a slice of bacon that he had not eaten for Tiger. They parted cheerfully and Abner set his face towards Chaddesbourne.
The heat of midday now lay heavy on the land, but in this wooded country-side one might always be certainof shade. In half an hour he came to Chaddesbourne, a village of black and white half timber that was already engaged in the midday coma with which it supplements its normal sleep of centuries. In all the length of the street Abner saw no human person stirring, nor any sign of life more violent than that of lazy butterflies sunning their wings upon the yellow flowers in cottage gardens. All the half-timbered houses had long strips in front of them behind which it seemed to be intended that they should sleep for ever in security. In a sandstone church some one was playing the organ. Abner had no ear for music and so he did not stop to listen.
At the end of the village he heard a more welcome sound: the clinking of a blacksmith’s hammer on his anvil and the hoarse wheezing of bellows. It was very different from Mawne with its vast hydraulic presses, but it showed the same process on a small scale, and the smith in his leather apron, working through the heat of the day, with the sweat tracking through his coal-dust, was more like a man of Abner’s own race than the labourer in the lane. He seemed glad of an excuse to stop work and talk to Abner. He offered him a drink of beer from a bottle, drank himself, and wiped the froth from his red lips with the back of his hand.
‘Looking for work!’ he said. ‘Well, I can tell you straight Chaddesbourne’s the wrong place for that. Not even at harvest time. You see, this is a dairy country, properly speaking. All the milk’s drove to the station and sent into Brum by train. Mr Cookson? Yes, Mr Cookson’s a very nice gentleman as every one knows; but I reckon he won’t be harvesting for another fortnight, being late-like. Still, there’s no harm in trying.’ He pulled on his coat and put a padlock on the door of the forge, for his home was a couple of hundred yards away in one of the long-gardened cottages. He said good-bye to Abner cheerily, and gave him directions for finding Mr Cookson. ‘If I was you,’ he said, ‘I should cut across the fields behind the house. It’ll save you some sweating on a day like this. Third gate on the right and follow along the hedge on your left hand.’
Abner took his advice, and calling Tiger to follow him entered the field. A quarter of a mile away on the hill-side he could see the red roof of the building that the smith had pointed out to him as Cookson’s farm. Tiger was in his element. He had never been in a field more rich in rabbit smell. Abner, following the smith’s directions, kept to the hedge on the left. It ran along the margin of a little wood that sheltered him from the sun and intrigued Tiger with prospects of infinite sport. It was impossible to keep the brute to heel, and though Abner cursed him till he came out of the wood he could not resist the temptation of running ahead of his master, sniffing the enchanted air. Suddenly, at the corner where the spinney ended, he stood stock still. Abner also stopped and watched him, for he too scented sport. There was a slight rustle in the hedgerow and a white creature, a little bigger than a stoat, put out its head. In a second Tiger had it by the neck and silenced its squealing with a shake. The next moment the owner of the ferret appeared round the corner of the hedge, a florid man of forty dressed in a prosperous greenish cord, carrying a gun. He fired at Tiger, who stood looking curiously at the ferret as though he still expected it to get up and run away. Tiger rolled over without a yelp, and Abner ran straight at the man who had shot him.