‘Hullo. You’m come then?’
‘Hullo.’
He did not speak her name, nor she his. The encounter was impersonaclass="underline" male with female. She stared at him, her big bovine eyes wide with wonder and amorously mournful, her ripe mouth childishly pouted, the poise of her lush body languid and feline. She was bareheaded, and a clustering mass of black hair framed her plumpness with a suggestion of mystery. After that one word she said no more, but seemed content to stare and wait. The silence worked in him. The shyness he had felt at her first coming vanished away, leaving him free of all constraint, free to escape from himself into the bright sensual world that was opening before him. With a certain deliberation, as if doubting of her real existence, he put an arm about her shoulders. She smiled up at him and stroked his face, so that all his nerves vibrated with delight, and he became radiant with lust, a bright innocent animal. With a little growl he lifted her in his arms and carried her to the nearest covert, where, drenched in green shadow, they lay for a long while, wordless and passionate.
Dreams came crowding. Sometimes Seth caught himself absent in mind from the woman in whose arms he lay, and had no time to be astonished that this glory, in the moment of achievement, could be so painlessly, and in so rich an oblivion, lost to him. A little scrap of tune came murmuring in his head; a field of ripe corn floated into his vision. Sheep-bells tinkled on the green downs; and presently he was driving a plough along the base of a steep hill. The sun beat down on his bare arms with pulsing vigour. The broad buttocks of the mare swayed and plunged; the muscles of her thighs rippled and swelled; her tail lashed ceaselessly at the swarm of following flies. From such dreams he emerged from time to time into a waking life that was itself as dreamlike as any of them: woke to find two large eyes, brimming with dark light, shining upon him, and a blood-red amorous mouth near his own. The world and all its meaning lay within the circle of this small cool private place, this sun-freckled green. But with every kiss he tasted again of the lotus, and at last sank into the deep slumber of fulfilment.
When next he woke, he had travelled so far in sleep that he stared with dull eyes, wondering where he was, and at first could hardly believe the tale his memory pieced together. The woman, too, seemed stupid with sleep; and even at each other these lovers gazed blankly. They moved apart, and sat up. The silence between them persisted. Since their first greeting, neither had uttered an articulate word. Nor did this silence bring constraint: the artifice of speech was still something less than second nature to them.
It was she who spoke first. ‘You be Cowman Shellett’s son, bainta?’
‘Yes,’ said Seth. ‘Father be Squire Marden’s cowman sure enough.’ After a long pause, he added: ‘And I be gamekeeper.’
These things were common knowledge, and Seth could not imagine her to be ignorant of them. But he was proud of his position and glad to talk of it. He was not in general a vain man, but he could not help knowing that he was accounted a likelier fellow than dull Tom Shellett. And now he was eager to cut a fine figure in the eyes of Charity. For his attitude to Charity had changed. Suddenly, as it seemed, from being merely desirable, she had become significant, a person. An hour or two ago she had been to him merely woman: now she was his woman. He stole a glance at her, and remembered that tavern talk, and became savagely possessive. He flung an arm about her and clutched her shoulder. ‘You and me,’ he began. But he broke off, at a loss for words.
She wriggled herself free and rubbed her shoulder ruefully. ‘Adone do. Rackon you’ve give me a bruise.’
‘Nemmind bruises. You be my girl. See?’
She giggled, making big mocking eyes at him.
He scowled. ‘You be my girl. Dauntee forget. If anyone else come round you, I’ll murder un, and all manner.’
‘Oh, do adone!’ She grinned with delight. ‘I seen your father, Seth Shellett, up along Glatting one time.’
Seth grunted. He was not interested in his father. ‘Gamekeeper I be. Head man.’
‘Fancy!’ said Charity.
‘Used to be ploughman, I did. But I be gamekeeper now.’
‘That be tarrible pretty work for ee, I’ll ’low.’
‘I caught a feller after they birds t’other day. Rackon a won’t come again along me.’ With his stout hazel wand he began idly prodding at the ground, and the soft leaf-mould yielded to his assault as readily as Charity herself had yielded. It gave him a vague unconscious pleasure to see the hole growing bigger; but his thoughts were still with himself and his woman, for he was waiting for her to ask how he had dealt with the poacher, being very ready to tell her of the fine drubbing he had given that rascal, and how the drubbing was a kindness to him, and a martacious long sight better than the treatment he might have received at the hands of the law. But Charity had quite other thoughts. She liked Seth; she wanted him; she was resolved to keep him for her own; and her remarks were not idle.
But now she was ready to talk of other things than Cowman Shellett.
‘Whad you diggen a hole for?’
‘Eh?’ He was a little cross. He had hardly noticed that he was digging a hole. And, anyhow, it seemed a foolish question, because it was not the question he had hoped for. ‘Rackon a won’t come round along me again,’ he repeated perseveringly.
‘What a tarrible gurt stone you’m got there,’ she said, pointing to the hole at his feet.
He grunted illhumouredly; but, undiscouraged, she leaned forward and plunged her hand into the moist earth.
‘Tis a funny shape, annut?’ she said, shewing him her foundle.
Seth stared. In spite of himself the thing stirred a faint curiosity in him. He took it from her and turned it over in his hand: a broad shapely piece of flint about eight inches long. One end was broad and flat, the other sharp like an axe. Seth stared, not knowing at first what it was that attracted him; and even when he did know, he hardly knew how to express his thought. There was workmanship in this flint, and workmanship was something that Seth, for all his slowmindedness, seldom failed to recognise.
‘Do ee want ut?’ he asked.
She leaned forward and gave him a large loud kiss. ‘You shall have ut, darlen, for a keepsake,’ she said, half-mockingly, as though humouring a child.
‘He do want naun but a handle,’ said Seth. . . . But he did not finish speaking his thought; for Charity was waiting for more kisses. Idly dropping Ogo’s axe-head into his jacket pocket, he turned to her eagerly, and the drums of ancient warfare began beating again in his blood.
CHAPTER 4
MR BAILEY CONSULTS HIS HEART AND HEARS OF SOMETHING TO HIS ADVANTAGE
Mr Bailey, on this Midsummer Day, experienced unwonted difficulty in remembering where he was and what was demanded of him. Club Day was an occasion which he, no less than the humbler members, anticipated with eagerness. To be ‘Mr Secretary,’ to exercise unchallenged authority, to be deferred to and made much of, to receive confidences and give sententious counsel, these things gratified alike his vanity and his affection. More than ever now, he was a friendly soul; the years had mellowed him, ripening such humour as he had and weaning him from the worst of his nonsense. He was less greedy of notice, less expectant; but he was no less lonely. Indeed he was more than ever lonely in spite of the crowd of memories that companioned him. The sight or thought of beauty—and now all things external were apt to be translated into thought—had all its old power to trouble him with a vague hunger; but he no longer entertained any worldly ambition, and no longer regretted the chances—disasters, as he had once called them—that had made an innkeeper out of a smart self-important young schoolmaster. Marden Fee, to which he came as a foreigner, had accepted him at last. These villagers trusted him and liked him; looked up to him as an educated man, yet counted him one of themselves; and nowadays, fully realising his good fortune, he found this friendliness a matter not only for gratitude but even for surprise. So Club Day, when old friends, originally of the Fee, flocked in from all parts of the country (some from as far as Medlock, a good twelve miles), meant much to Mr Bailey. He took a paternal interest in these folks, making it his business to know where they lived and how they lived, whether their wives were kindly or shrewish, the number of their children, and the date of their last illness. It pleased him mightily, after years of self-induced difficulty, to find himself at ease with these men and of use to them. When Charley Grampound, an octogenarian, came to him from Dyking with complaints about old Mrs Grampound—‘My wife be sech a tarrible tarker, Mus Bailey, I doon’t lay wud ’er nowdays’—he was by no means at a loss. And when today, after dinner, his own club wardens, Mykelborne and Sweet, being (as the phrase goes) much concerned in drink, came near to bloodshed in a dispute about the true remedy for the ague, it was Mr Bailey who put the matter right and prevented a brawl that would certainly have become a riot. ‘Now tis this way, Mus Bailey. Old Johnny Ague, he’ve bin a-runnen his fingers down my back, and that be for why I carry this liddle nutshell round my neck. I’ve got a spider curled up in he, and old Johnny daun’t like spiders, tellee. Now this gurt booby Dick Mykelborne, he do say a man must swaller the spider. Roll un up in a caabweb and swaller un like he was a pill, says Dick Mykelborne, him and his old Postle Paul.’ Giving judgement, Mr Bailey ruled that both methods were good, each in its own way, arguing very plausibly that while some kinds of spider might prove curative taken as a pill (gratification of Mykelborne), others, less edible on account of their size and general aspect, had best be worn dangling, as a preventive charm (‘Whaddid I tellee, Dick!’ cried Sweet, in genial triumph.) And finally he thanked God that there were no spiders of any kind in his beer today, and if the clubfellows would do him the kindness to fill their glasses again he would venture to propose to them another toast: ‘Our trusty wardens, gentlemen. Those two devoted officers of this club who watch your old secretary day and night to secure that he do not abscond with the funds. Which same funds, gentlemen, are in safe keeping, and ready to be drawn upon for the benefit and assistance of any clubfellow that stands or shall stand in need of pecuniary aid. Sickness truly vouched for, injuries honestly come by, these we need not fear to confess, gentlemen. Our club is behind us. But if any man here choose to break his head in a quarrel, tis with his own money he must mend it, for not a groat shall he get from the funds while Erasmus Bailey is your secretary. Our trusty wardens, gentlemen—we’ll drink to ’em!’