The Mad Busman, and Other Stories/The Wonderful Story

by I. A. R. Wylie

 

III

The Wonderful Story

YES! No doubt it does seem strange to you that I should be contented here. Such a little bit of a place. Nothing ever happens. The people are very ordinary people. They sit under me on Sunday, and if they keep awake they feel, I think, that they have offered God an honest and sufficient sacrifice. No one to rub wits with—no one to sit with me by a roaring study fire and quarrel with me over a translation. Just sometimes a stray visitor like yourself. And then, of course, I grew garrulous.

Well, I am growing old, too.

When I say that nothing happens, I mean nothing that does not happen everywhere in the world at some time or other. People die and people are born. They quarrel and make it up. There is trouble and sickness, sometimes for the individual and sometimes for the whole community. It is spring now, and the countryside is green and peaceful. But the winters are very hard. You see, that gap in the hills lets in a tearing north wind, and sometimes for weeks together the snow lies so thick on the ground that some of the outlying farms are completely cut off. And the people are poor. They have nothing to fall back upon, and there is much suffering. But all this is very commonplace. You will find it anywhere.

When I first took over the incumbency I was very unhappy. After such an adventurous, roving life as mine, it seemed the end of everything. A straggling hamlet for a man who was as familiar with Rome as with New York, and who reads the classics in the original with the same ease as he reads his native Dickens! A handful of dull, illiterate yokels for a scholar who had mixed with the best brains in Europe. Dear Heaven, what a fate!

But I have grown content. I have learnt a great deal here. Indeed, I am not sure that I have not learnt more in this quiet, inarticulate little place than in all the rest of the world. Or rather, it is so quiet that I have come to notice things that I overlooked elsewhere in the noise and bustle.

I said "very ordinary people." But are not the most ordinary of us extraordinary and wonderful enough?

Shall I tell you about the Martins? I am almost afraid to tell you their little story, because after all, like every other event here, nothing really happens in it. It is such a slight yet exquisite thing. I have told it to the wrong people, and they have simply stared at me, wondering when the point was coming. So I have grown cautious. But I wish I had de Maupassant here to help me.

The Martins were two brothers—Robert and Jimmy Martin—and Kate Richards was their nearest neighbour. That, at any rate, is the promising and hackneyed beginning. They lived in a three-roomed cottage just outside the village, and besides working their little bit of land, they did odd jobs for the gentry in the district. If a roof wanted mending, or a pipe leaked, or an extra hand was needed in the garden, there were always the Martins to call upon. One or other of them would be found able and willing. Between them they made enough to live on, and that is all that people hope for in these parts.

They were brothers and nearly of an age, but there was not more than a family resemblance between them. Perhaps I can best describe Robert by saying that no one except his brother called him "Bob," and that only on rare occasions. Not that he was forbidding or unfriendly. But one would as soon have taken liberties with a good-natured bull.

I can remember quite well the first time I saw him. It was in church, and I was preaching my introductory sermon. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, I began to feel disturbed—as though something had come near me which touched and animated, not the bad side of my man's nature, but the lower side. I had been speaking of the spirit, and I began to feel of the earth earthy. I looked down from the pulpit, and there was Robert Martin, a little to my right, his eyes fixed on my face. He was not handsome, but very big and powerful, and dark; high cheek-boned and black-browed. His eyes were a curious slow burning hazel. I do not think he understood a word of what I was saying, any more than the rest of the congregation—I had not yet learnt to adapt myself—and no one noticed that I broke off with the threads of my theme all dangling in disorder. That was the effect he had on me. I know he had the same effect on others—especially on women. No one could be near him without feeling troubled. I do not mean that he was bad or brutal, or even coarse. There was not a more austere living man in the whole village. But he was elemental. I do not think in all my dealings with human beings—some of them the most violent and uncivilised—I have ever come across any one who had his roots so deep in the earth, or who came so near to the animals in the directness and simplicity of his emotions. His very austerity was animal. You know the animals are neither so promiscuous nor so bestial as we choose to think them. They have their austerity—unconscious and effortless. They await their mate.

Robert Martin was like that. And because our people here, though they are very simple and ignorant, have been touched by that process of detaching the soul from the body which we call civilisation, he troubled them.

James Martin was different. He was just Jimmy. I do not think he felt less. Perhaps in his way he was the more sensitive of the two, but his feelings were confused with a whole lot of abstract notions about right and wrong and God, so that they were less direct and less effective. He was not clever, but in his slow, groping way he was intent on being "fair" and on doing the fair thing by everybody. He had a fund of good spirits too, and could joke and laugh in a way the elder brother never did. People a liked him, but you could be a long time in a place before you knew he was there.

So much for the two men. Then there was Kate Richards. Hers was the next cottage to the Martins', though half a mile divided them: a single-roomed, miserable place where she lived with a bedridden grandmother in grim hand-to-mouth poverty. Kate worked for the neighbouring farmers' wives whenever the stress was great; but they were poor themselves, and could give her little.

On the whole, the country, contrary to popular belief, does not breed pretty women The work is too hard, the housing conditions too wretched. Women wither and grow weather-beaten almost before they reach womanhood. Kate Richards was not beautiful. But even in her teens she had a bigness of build, a kind of slow, gracious strength that gave one a sense of security and peace. There was something generous about the masses of fair hair which she wore neatly plaited about her head, and the steady, full-gazing eyes. Of the earth too, if you like, but of the earth in its deep serenity, in its mood of placid brooding. She knew nothing of its volcanic unrest.

When I first came she was a girl, but a few months later her grandmother died, and suddenly she became a woman, and then Robert Martin turned to her instinctively, as a child turns to the sun.

I have never seen a more simple courtship. There was no shy hesitancy, no self-distrustful advances. Robert Martin followed her, not like a dog, but like a man driven by an instinct which there was no gainsaying. I saw him often enough in the congregation, with his burning eyes on her face. It was impossible to forget him. He was dynamic, a slow unreasoning force moving to its appointed end.

As to Kate herself—I do not know. You see, I got to read and understand the two men, inarticulate as they were; but women, though they talk easily of their superficial emotions, have reserves which no one penetrates. For myself, I think she loved Mar tin as simply and naturally as he loved her. He was the first man who had come into her life, and she accepted him passively and with a kind of grateful awe.

He must have made a magnificent lover. I remember coming upon the two of them one brilliant summer night in Honeysuckle Lane behind the church. I knew them at once because of his unusual height. His arms were about her, and I gave the discreet cough which I have learnt in these parts; but though she struggled a little he would not let her go. There was no sheepish edging apart and giggling. With his arm about her shoulders he turned towards me, his head up, his face in the pale light as proud as Lucifer's. And yet not bad either—not ignoble. Lucifer was not the right name. I was thinking of some wild animal I have seen—a mountain lion that I tracked once and which turned on me....

I had come upon them smiling in the fatuous, superior way of old people, but I passed them feeling ashamed. I felt myself a mean little man with scanty hair, and bowed shoulders, and thin blood in my veins. I could not even answer his serene "Good night, sir."

Two days later the village knew that they were betrothed.

I am sure in my own mind that Jimmy had never thought of her. He was too young. He was one of those men who mature late, and who, indeed, remain undeveloped all their lives unless some big event comes to them. He had light-hearted firtations with half the girls in the village, but they meant nothing. He seemed at that time as incapable of a serious emotion as he was incapable of a mean act. He was just Jimmy—good-natured, contented, and hard-working, with a muddle-headed belief in God and the general rightness of ordained things.

Two days after the betrothal Martin came to me to arrange about the wedding. He did not wear his holiday clothes, as other villagers would have done on such an occasion. His black hair was matted with the day's heat, and the strong scent of the fields was about his body. But I knew somehow that he meant neither myself nor the occasion any disrespect. When I close my eyes I can see him now, standing in front of me, with his queer look of almost sombre abstraction. He was like a man held in some sort of trance, and though, judging him coldly, he was just a slow, ignorant rustic, yet the single simplicity of his nature gave him the dignity of thought.

"Well, this is quick work, Martin," I said.

"There be no cause for us to wait, sir," he answered. "We knows what we wants, and what don't come to us now bain't never coming."

There was truth in this. These people have youth in common with the rest of the world. They have no other inheritance.

"And where's the home to be?" I asked, making my notes.

"We stays where we are, sir."

"And Jimmy?"

"Well, sir, we've got three rooms. So be it we'll manage for a while——"

I chanced to look up, and there was his dark face flushed with an emotion which both startled and touched me deeply. It was as though for a moment I saw the whole man and his one purpose and his one hope. It was all that life offered him, and he held to it with all his strength. I remember that I looked away from him quickly, as though unwillingly I had been prying.

"It's not easy to build a home these days," I said.

"I'll manage, sir," he answered quietly.

You see, he was very strong. It is difficult for strong men to realise failure.

When it was all fixed up we shook hands together. I felt warmly towards him, and my "Well, bless you both!" was no clerical phrase. But I do not think he heard me. Now that my part was played I had passed out of his vision.

Yes, and there was something primeval in the way he set out to prepare his place for her. That, too, was like an all-mastering instinct. Late into the night a light burnt in the cottage window, and after every one else had gone to bed, one could hear hammering and the buzz of a saw. He was a good workman, and in a short time he had added two new chairs to their little stock of furniture, and a dresser and a window-box, and all the shelves and drawers were in first-class repair. He allowed no one to help him—not even Jimmy. He did not like people to watch him or to ask questions, and when they did so he grew shy and sullen. That also seemed to me oddly typical. But Kate came sometimes towards evening, and when I passed I would see her leaning against the lintel, her quiet eyes following the swift, strong work of his hands. I never heard them talk together. Either they fell silent when people came near them, or they never spoke. They did, indeed, seem like people wrapped in a kind of dream.

Robert Martin liked me. I was the only outsider who knew what he was doing and heard progress. The day before his wedding I came upon him perched on the roof of their cottage tinkering with a loose tile.

"Making the ship weather-tight?" I called to him.

"That's right, sir! All finished now." And he made an awkward flourish and lost his balance and came down like a helpless log. It was not far to fall, but he was a big man and fell awkwardly.

I went to him, and Jimmy came running from their bit of land where he had been working, and between us we carried him into the little living-room. He kept on remonstrating with us angrily, saying it was nothing—nothing at all, and that in a minute he'd be up and about again. But I noticed that when we laid him on the old horse-hair couch he did not try to move and though he seemed in no particular pain, I had my misgivings even then.

We sent for Kate and for the doctor. I had a sermon to preach that evening in a neighbouring parish and I could not wait. But before I left Kate came down the narrow garden path. She brushed past me as though she did not see me.

I could not get those three out of my mind, and the next morning I went round early to the Martins' cottage. Jimmy must have been waiting for me. He came down the garden path and stopped me before I had opened the gate. He was trembling all over like a big frightened child.

"Don't you go in, sir," he whispered. "Not yet awhile. The doctor's been again. Robert's main bad—it's his back, sir. A bone or summit—I don't rightly know what. But he'll not work again——"

My heart was leaden for them all. But, somehow, I'd known all along.

"Does he know?" I asked.

"No one's told him. We daresn't. He keeps on trying to get up and talkin ' of the weddin'—he's like something mad——"

"And Kate?" I said.

"I was going to 'er now, sir. I waited a bit, hoping you'd come with me. It's an awful thing——"

I went with him. I shall never forget that half-mile across the sunny fields. I took Jimmy's arm at last because he was stumbling, and I thought he would break down utterly. The blow had caught him in the full tide of his careless youth, and he crumbled under it.

"We must think of Kate," I said. "It's worse for her. We've got to help her."

He straightened up.

"That's true, sir. We've got to help her."

It's queer what premonitions real disaster sends out as harbingers. To all appearances there had been nothing much to be alarmed about. It was the kind of accident that at the worst might have involved a broken arm or leg. But when Kate saw us coming she went back into her cottage and stood bracing herself against the table, facing us as though we had been enemies. I confess I failed. So it was Jimmy who went up to her and answered the questions she could hardly utter.

"No, it's not that bad, my girl. But it's bad enough. If it's as the doctor says, poor Bob won't walk no more in this life."

Remember, it was her wedding day. The simple dress which she had toiled over for the last month lay on the chair—and the cheap wreath of orange blossoms that had cost her many a sacrifice. For a minute no one moved or spoke. Then Jimmy, who could bear no more, took her hand, and she turned to him and buried her face on his shoulder, crying her heart out. And he comforted her. I forget what he said. It was disjointed and uncouth enough. But I wish I had so much of the beauty of pure human kindness in my sophisticated old heart. I think in that moment he grew up and became a man. And I think, also, for the first time, he saw Kate with a man's eyes.

I went on ahead. There could be no wedding, and Robert must be told—if not the whole truth, at least enough to make the present case clear to him. And Jimmy had done his share. They were both genuinely afraid of Robert, helpless as he was, and I own that I was afraid, too. You see, there was that immense force in him. How would it vent itself?

They had made up a bed for him in the living room, and the first thing I saw was his dark face glaring at me over the white sheet. I have never seen anything more terrible. He was like a wild beast, trapped and bound and helpless.

"Where have you all been?" he shouted at me, "What's up? Why don't you come and lend a hand to get me out o' this? What's wrong? Don't you know I'm going to get married? What's that damn fool of a doctor done to me? Where's Kate?"

The veins on his forehead stood out, and the sweat dripped down his livid cheeks. I could see that he was trying to break the hideous, incomprehensible spell that held him. I began the weary platitudes which the well and strong offer the sick.

"It's a bad business, Martin," I said. "You've got to show patience and courage. You've got to pull yourself together and show us the man you are. There can be no marriage for you to-day——"

He could use his arms a little. He thrust me on one side, and I don't blame him, for I felt my own futility bitterly. His eyes were fixed on the door, and now they were full of sheer, awful panic.

"Kate!" he called. "Kate!"

She came to him. Somehow it was all very different from what I had foreseen. She came heavily, slowly, as though she were being drawn against her will. He caught hold of her and dragged her down on her knees beside him. Then she seemed to rouse herself. She put her arm under him, and held his dark head against her breast. And he began to cry.

She was quite tearless. I saw her face. It was deadly pale, and full of horror and pity and grief. But love?—I don't know. It was the queerest and saddest thing.

As the days went on I began to understand. She was the sort of woman who would have married the man she loved so long as there was a breath of life left in him. But she did not marry Robert Martin. There was no thought of it, and I will do him the justice to say that even then the suggestion never crossed his lips. And yet she had loved him. It was the love that has driven men and women together from the beginning of things—sometimes to their happiness, and as often to their damnation, but always to the glory of the race. She had loved the man. He had swept her off her feet by his strength, his immense virility, his superb animalism. But now he was not that man any more. It was not her fault. I know she reproached herself, and agonised over her own wickedness. I saw her grow pale and hollow-eyed with the effort to overcome herself. But it was of no use. The attributes which she had worshipped in Robert Martin were paralysed, and her love for him was dead.

Men and women fall by the wayside, but life goes on. Jimmy went back to work and toiled for both of them. Kate hid away the unused wedding-dress and the poor little wreath. Every day she went out to one or other of the farms and sometimes they paid her with a shilling and sometimes with a little produce. They were sorry for her, but it was a bad year for them. In the evening she came down to the Martins' cottage, and she and Jimmy would sit with Robert and try to cheer and amuse him. But what could they do? What had they to offer? Their own doings and their clumsy village gossip enraged him. And there was nothing else. Mostly they fell into a helpless, baffled silence.

He was too big to be carried up and down stairs, so his bed was made up permanently in the living room and set where he could see the garden and the passers-by through the open door. In the early morning, before he went to his work, Jimmy set his brother right for the day, and often a neighbour would drop in—a pure act of charity, for Robert knew no gratitude—and I helped when I could. Once I came in the evening, and there the three of them were in the grey dusk, not looking at each other, not speaking, and Robert Martin with his face turned to the wall and the savage tears rolling down his cheeks. Somehow the picture stays in my mind.

I could do nothing, though Heaven knows I tried. It was my duty; but besides that it irked me as a human being to see a man rot under my eyes. I brought him the papers. I tried to interest him in the world's affairs. I read to him the kind of stories that I thought might appeal to him. But the strong cannot choose for the weak. Unconsciously we grow to look upon the sick as people of another world. We forget. And one day in my reading I came upon a simple love scene, and Martin tore the book from me and crushed it between his hands till it was a shapeless mass.

"Do you think I'm dead yet?" he panted. "Don't I want things like them a home and wife and children? Do you think because I'm tied down here I'm not a man no more——"

And he went on and on, raving, and I sat there feeling as though inadvertently I had opened the gate of a little hell. For it was true. He was not different. His body had been injured, but its passions and desires remained. They festered. Imprisoned and thrown back upon themselves, they lost their elemental simplicity and became evil. They seemed to be eating alive the man they lived in.

He began to hate his brother. I don't think that Jimmy realised the change as hatred—not at first, at any rate. He only knew that Robert liked to be alone with Kate in the evening, to lie there and hold her hand, and stare at her pale, sad face with his burning eyes, and so Jimmy would go out into the garden and work till it was too dark to see. And then he would lean against the garden gate and wait for her. At first they just exchanged "good nights," or she would linger for a minute and they would talk in an undertone together as though some dark, tyrannical force were watching them; but after a while he began to walk home with her. I don't know what they said to one another in those few quiet moments of their lives. Probably very little. As I told you, they were just ordinary people. They were rather like the soil they lived on—heavy and silent—and like cattle which find their way by instinct to the water and rich pasture, and which suffer without complaint. The tragedy had isolated them from the ordinary village life. Jimmy bore a double burden, and when his work was done there was the gloomy home to face and the endless care of Robert. And Kate's life was hard, too. She was all alone, and for some reason or other the young men fought shy of her as though they felt there was no hope for them.

So I can imagine that their quiet walks through the darkness were a great comfort to these two. They must have grown to look forward to them—and from thence to loving one another. And all the while there was Robert in the background like an accursed spirit.

So three years passed like that. And I believe that Jimmy told me the truth when he said that in all that time they never kissed each other or held each other's hands or spoke of what was growing up between them. Because Jimmy loved his brother, and Kate could not love him any more, they were both laden with remorse and guilt. But it was not till afterwards that I knew what had been happening. All I saw was that the youth seemed to be fading out of them like a starved fire. And in a blind, unreasoning, and most un-Christian way, I grew to hate Robert with his hideous desire of life.

Then came a wonderful summer. We English are a hard and stoic people. Our climate, like a stern monitor, stands at our backs, bracing us to meet bitter winds and leaden, dripping skies with an untroubled courage. But when such a summer comes, it is like the lifting of a burden. Every day is an intoxicating wonder. We look out at the world with new eyes. We feel that nothing is beyond us, and all our deep reserves of courage are freed for the sheer joy of life.

It was like that with us then. In the gentle rains and long, mellow days of sunshine everything flourished. The crops ripened unchecked. The sheep and cattle multiplied. A blessing seemed on the land. The old wiseacres shook their heads, threatening disaster, but none came. We rode into a golden harvest-time.

Yes, it was like an intoxication. I felt it. One saw it on the faces of the people—a kind of glow—of subdued laughter. There was riot in the blood of the oldest of us. Lovers were like blackberries in Honeysuckle Lane, and I grew rich on marriage fees. It was as though all creation expanded and blossomed out. The drear winters and bite of poverty slipped away into a dim past.

Only Martin rotted in his misery. I forgot my repugnance for him in those days. He had not changed. He was not broken. He lay there scowling out into the sunshine. The passing of the strong young men and the laughter of their sweethearts as they strolled together in the cool dusk was torture to him. Sometimes I marvelled that the will in him did not perform a miracle and bring him to his feet.

So the harvest came. It was a real festival, such as one reads of in the old, simple days. Every one who could stand was in the fields. God had done His share, and we were going to do ours with a will. At lunch-time we sat together under the sheaves, like seeking out like, and it amused me to pick out from the little groups those whom I should be called upon to marry next. It was then that it began to dawn upon me how it was with Kate and Jimmy Martin. It was not only that they were always together. It was the change in them. Somehow in that general well-being and prosperity they had re gained their youth. They were like flowers that had been nipped by frost, but which slowly blossom out in the day's warmth. The sun had burnt their faces and strong young arms to a golden brown. Their eyes were very bright. They laughed and talked together as they worked, not secretly, but as though they were quite alone. They gave me the feeling that the rest of us were just shadows.

When the last sheaves were gathered in, the biggest farmer in the neighbourhood gave his barn for a final and triumphant junketing. A fiddler and a trombone were produced from somewhere. The gentry provided a mighty spread. And I, of course, as parson, had to give my blessing and, since the Squire, was absent, to lead off. Later on, when I was free to look about me, I remembered Kate and Jimmy. They danced together. Though I was a good friend of theirs, they did not even see me when they passed me. Their faces were those of two people lost in an ecstatic happiness.

But I could only think of Robert. I could not get him out of my mind. And presently I left and made my way through the deserted village to the Martins' cottage. The door stood open. It was quite dark. I called, and heard a shuffling sound like that of a sick animal trying to drag itself from its lair.

"Shall I make a light for you, Martin?" I asked cheerfully.

"No," he said. His voice sounded choked and roughened. He groped for my hand, and his own burned with fever. "Where are they?" he flung at me. "What are they doing now?"

"Why, they're dancing," I answered in the same matter-of-fact tone. "They've worked hard. They deserve a good time. And, look here, I've been stealing for you, Martin. I remembered how you liked old Mrs. Simpson's ham pie——"

"Stop that!" he said between his teeth. "Where's Jimmy and Kate?"

"They're there, too, of course."

"Together?"

"Why, yes," I answered. "It's only natural."

"Perhaps it is," he interrupted. His grip on my hand fairly hurt me. "But she's my woman for all that, parson. And I'll put my black curse on the man who tries to take her. I don't care who he be——"

I tore myself free from him.

"You're talking wickedly, Robert Martin," I said. "Because a great misfortune has befallen you, you have no right to blast the lives of others. Kate is young If you really love her you will hope that one day a happiness will come to her that will atone to her for her loss."

He gave a kind of laugh.

"That's enough parson's talk," he cried. "You go and tell them what I've said to you."

I went. It was useless to talk to him, and I was sick with the misery and shame of it all.

You know how sometimes it seems that things are working to a crisis, and then instead they fall back and nothing happens. It was like that. After the harvest festival we went on with the old life. The weather broke in a grey and dismal autumn, and we crept back into ourselves and were a dour, stern people again. As far as I could see, there was no change in the relations of Kate and the two Martins. If anything, it seemed to me that Kate and Jimmy avoided one another. But I was very busy and had no time to study them, and was, perhaps, eager enough to put away a painful problem.

And then, one dripping November night, Jimmy came to see me. I had him into my study, but he refused to sit down, and stood opposite me, with the firelight on his face. And it struck me that the youth had gone out of him for good. He had the look of a man who has learnt to carry a heavy burden.

"Kate and I are to be married, sir," he said. "And I've come to ask you if you'll put up the banns for us."

It's strange how the troubles of a little community like mine get a hold on one. I was as aghast as though some personal misfortune had befallen me. For a minute I was silent. What could I say—remembering Robert? At last I stammered out:

"And when is it to be, Jimmy?"

"I don't know how quick it can be done, sir. We want it now."

I went on blunderingly:

"God knows I don't grudge you two happiness. You deserve it. And you have a right to marry each other. There's no one who can say a word against it. I'm thinking of Robert. It would have been better if it had been any man but you, Jimmy."

"I know," he said. "But it's got to be, sir." And he looked at me steadily, but with a kind of despair. "It's no good for any one to say aught to us," he went on. "Kate and me we've wanted each other these two years and haven't so much as said a word. We stuck it as best we could. But there's a time comes when flesh and blood can't stand no more——"

And I said nothing. Looking back, I shall always be glad to think I did not add my drop to their bitter cup

"Does Robert know?" I asked, when we had settled all the details and he had already said" Good night."

"No, sir; I'm going to tell him now," Jimmy answered quietly.

It so happened that I was called away on private business the following morning, and I never knew what transpired between the two brothers. But when I returned the first ceremony I performed was the marriage of James Martin to Kate Richards. It was very quiet, very simple. Curious, and often pitiless, as they are, the villagers kept away. It was as though they felt instinctively there was a blight over the union. And yet to me there was something very tender and beautiful about those two poor sinners. They knelt before me hand in hand like children who cling to each other for support and comfort. They were so sincere, so deeply in earnest with their love, and they faced a future that might well have daunted the bravest hearts.

No, I can't think of any marriage that has moved me more.

Afterwards I went home with them. It wasn't my business, perhaps, but I felt they wanted me, and I couldn't fail them. When we came to the garden gate I went on ahead. The first thing I seemed to see in that low, dim room was Robert Martin's face.. He did not look at me. His staring eyes were fixed beyond me. I went up to him and put my hand over his clenched fist.

"You've been an unlucky, unhappy man, Martin," I said; "but it's in your power now to give happiness to yourself and to your brother and sister——"

I believe that the whole thing was a shock to him.

I believe that he thought he had put such terror into his brother's heart that he would never dare go through with the marriage. His face was convulsed with passion.

"You filthy, slimy traitors—both of you!" he screamed at them. "You've cheated and robbed me. Why didn't you go on with what you've begun? Why don't you put me out into the street—or send me to th' workhouse? Or are you trying to pluck up courage?" His eyes fell upon Kate standing beside her husband, and they distended with a look beyond description. And yet I swear there was love in it. He threw a name at her which I will not repeat. I saw Jimmy clench his hands, and involuntarily I stepped between them. "And as to you, you snivelling, black-coated humbug," he shouted, "get out of here! If you show your face in this place again, by God, I'll stand up yet and break your neck for you!"

He lay there helpless and threatened us. He had the whip-hand from the beginning.

Well, I am quick tempered, and there are limits to my endurance even with a sick man. So I took Jimmy and Kate by the hand and muttered a blessing that I am afraid sounded to them like mockery, and left them.

The great burden of the poor, as I see it, is not so much the lack of food or clothing or pleasure as the lack of decency. When something ugly comes into the lives of the well-to-do, they can swathe themselves in a protecting luxury, or they can separate themselves from it by a thousand miles—or at least by the thickness of a wall. But the poor must live naked with their sins and misfortunes always.

There was no choice for those two. They had no money to set up a separate home. They could not, and would not, have given Robert into the care of others. They went straight from their marriage into the Martins' three-roomed cottage without a day in which to adjust themselves to their future. It was raw—raw life.

What happened in those first hours only those three know. And yet I can see it. I saw it at the time like a series of inexorable pictures. I saw Kate prepare their supper. I saw Robert take his food from her hands. I saw those two eat under his eyes. I seemed to feel in my own flesh their cringing—not so much from his malice as from the stark shamefulness of it all. And then the night comes. They smooth his bed for him. They try to say something, but they are too inarticulate—too helpless. I can see his dead white face seamed with passion.

At last they go upstairs. The candlelight climbs higher and higher, and then it is all dark with Robert Martin. He can lie there on his useless back and stare up at the black ceiling and think whatever thoughts are given him. Knowing him as he was, I have to turn away from that picture and hide myself.

For seven months I did not cross the threshold of their cottage. You may be sure it was not Robert's pitiful violence that kept me away. It was rather the feeling that makes one avoid a place of bereavement and look away from people who are suffering. But the instinct translated itself among the villagers into a superstition. Their imaginations, that are still shadowed by witchcraft and old pagan fancies, began to see in that silent, melancholy place something ominous and accursed. They spoke of it under their breath. They began to whisper of happenings, that, though different, were perhaps no blacker than the reality. Their pity became an uneasy shrinking. As time went on the feeling spread till the nightmare of that household overshadowed the whole village.

At first I tried to keep in touch with Jimmy and Kate, and to offer them whatever comfort I could in my friendship and sympathy; but they avoided me as they avoided every one. Jimmy worked away from the village as much as possible, and only returned at night; and Kate rarely went farther than her garden. Sometimes she went to meet him, for I used to meet them both at dusk, walking close to one another and in silence. They passed me always with the same furtive "Good night, sir," and to my troubled fancy they were like galley-slaves dragging their invisible chains. Then as spring advanced Jimmy walked alone, and it was only in church that I saw them together. They sat apart from the rest of the congregation in the shadow of the wall, and by their sad faces lifted to me in the pulpit, and by the gentle care he showed her, I knew that somehow their tormented love survived.

July came, and a day that I have never forgotten. It seems to me that even now by the mere effort of memory I can conjure back the oppression and inexpressible unquiet which beset me and, I think, beset us all. I could neither work nor rest. A sullen, suffocating heat hung from a leaden sky. Not a breath of wind stirred. The evening was ominous, and towards nine o'clock the first clap of thunder burst in a reverberating explosion over the hills. But it did not rain. A few minutes later the wind rose and became almost instantly a hurricane, which bore down upon us like the breath of a raging fever. Darkness descended, and I was just closing my study window against the cloud of dust that was being whirled up from the road, when I heard a voice call me. I waited, and a moment later I saw a woman fighting her way across the lawn. I ran out to meet her, for she was old, and the storm nearly swept her from her feet.

"If you please, sir," she panted, "and would you come at once—the Martins—Mrs. Martin—her time's come—she's very poorly—they don't think—she'll come through—she's asking for you——"

I did not wait even to fetch my hat. In silence, for the wind and dust half choked us, we made our way into the lane which led to the Martins' cottage. It was pitch dark under the trees, but there was still a glimmer of daylight overhead, and I could see the branches waving like the arms of maniacs.

"The poor thing!" I heard my companion gasp. "The poor thing——"

But she did not come with me beyond the garden gate. You see, there was a curse upon the place.

The door was unlatched, and flew open with a crash before the wind. It took all my strength to shut it again, for I was dazed and breathless, and when I turned I saw Jimmy Martin standing opposite me. He was doing nothing. He looked to me as though he might have been standing there for a long time in that helpless, will-less inertia. His arms hung limp at his side. His features might have been carved in wood. His eyes were glassy. He tried hard to say something to me, but no sound came from him.

Against my will, drawn by sheer repugnance, I turned to the other occupant of the room Either Robert was unaware of my presence, or he had forgotten his anger against me. He lay there on his back and stared up at the ceiling. The expression on his dark, sunken face was blank. And yet—or perhaps it was just my excited fancy—it might also have been a mask which covered thinly something like satisfaction.

Then some one came down the narrow, creaking stairs. It was the doctor, an old crony of mine, who gave me a nod of grave welcome.

"I'm glad you've come," he said in an undertone. "She's been wanting you, and it will ease her to know you're here. But you're no good just now. This is my fight. Can you stay?"

"As long as I can hope to be of any help," I said.

Again I saw that Jimmy was trying to speak. The doctor glanced at him.

"It's going to be a hard business, Martin," he said, "but you know we'll do our best. If she'd only lend us a hand—but she seems not to care. There's no fight in her." He added solemnly: "If there is anything any one could do to ease her mind—to encourage her—let them do it now whilst there is time."

I thought he looked at Robert, but no one spoke, and Robert's face did not change by a flicker, and the doctor went slowly and heavily up the stairs again.

I took Jimmy's hand, and he returned my pressure convulsively. He would not let my hand go. His grip was clammy and desperate like that of a drowning man. I made him sit down, but he could not relax. He remained rigid, staring in front of him, listening—waiting.

Quite suddenly and clearly he spoke.

"She couldn't stand it no more," he said.

That was all. It was not an accusation nor even an appeal. It was as though she were already dead, and he explained why she had died. And there was Robert with his eyes fixed on the ceiling.

I began to pray. It was not a clerical formality on my part. I had to. I tell you no mediæval priest was more haunted by a belief in a personal and present devil than I was at that moment. I suppose, too, I was shaken by the whole atmosphere of the place, and by the demonic howl of the storm outside. But I know that I have never prayed like that since. I do not remember what I asked for—not for Kate's life, for at that moment it would have seemed to me no blessing. It must have been for mercy on us all, and for the secret good that lies hidden in our hearts. It seemed to me that I was fighting something, and that I was being driven back and overwhelmed. My prayers seemed to fall back upon me, lifeless. And all the time I prayed the wind rushed in through the chinks and crannies, and sent the shadows scudding before it like mad things. The thunder broke immediately overhead. We could almost hear the dry crackling of the lightning.

The heat was awful. My breath laboured. I felt as though my skull were splitting, and I thought of Kate up there under that low stilling roof. In a kind of fever I prayed for rain to bring us relief.

Then came a lull, and we heard a sound that was no part of the storm. It had a quality that I cannot forget. It seemed to reach right down and tear at the roots of one's soul. It was low and long and terrible. It brought Jimmy and me to our feet, staring at each other in horror-stricken unbelief. But it came again. It encompassed us as though it poured in upon us through the very walls.

A cry of unendurable human agony.

I saw Jimmy's face grow sallow. At every fresh outburst he shook as though his own body was being torn asunder. He grew old under my eyes.

I do not know how long that lasted. It must have been for over an hour. I had forgotten Robert—I had forgotten everything but that terrible crying. But suddenly a great groan burst from Jimmy's lips, and he turned and flung himself on his knees at his brother's side.

"Oh, Bob—Bob," he cried. "Don't you be angry with us no more. Take your curse from us, Bob. Take it from poor Kate. For it weren't her fault—it weren't no one's fault. We couldn't help loving. We'd fought against it all we could—for your sake, Bob, because we knowed how it would be with you—but it weren't no good. Don't you be angry—not with her, Bob. Let me have it all. Bob, you was always kind to poor things in pain—little hurt animals and such—and you love Kate, too. Don't you make her suffer no more——"

I can see him now, clawing the bedclothes in the agony of his appeal. But Robert lay quite still, staring up at the ceiling. He was so quiet that for a moment I thought that he was dead.

Then Jimmy crumbled up in a heap, face downwards, on the bed at his brother's feet. He did not move or speak again all through that night.

That cry was as regular as the beat of a pulse. I could not pray any more. I was beaten. I was losing my personality. I do not know whether I can make you understand—I seemed to be dissolving in that cry. I was no longer an isolated human being—I was an infinitesimal part of a great unity—I was a drop in a vast ocean of human suffering—I and Jimmy and Kate, and Robert, and the whole world.

Even Robert. He could not escape. I saw his hands twist themselves in the bedclothes, and the sweat break out and run down his face. And all at once I forgot our agony. I felt that I was witnessing some stupendous drama—that something more than mortal life was being born in that tumult and darkness. I kept on repeating to myself:

"And God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul——"

Then the rain came. It broke over us in a deluge that threatened to sweep the cottage from its foundations. The hot, feverish air grew moist and cool. The wind dropped. The thunder rolled like great chariot wheels into the distance, and even the crying overhead was hushed. It seemed to me that the whole racked and tortured universe had gone down in that overwhelming flood.

So the night wore on, and no one spoke or moved. The dawn came greyly through the window. I opened the door, letting in a breath of its dank sweetness. The rain had lost its violence. It fell lightly and tenderly like a benediction.

I heard some one come wearily down the stairs. I turned and saw the doctor bending over Jimmy's prostrate body.

"You have a son, Martin," he said. "Thank God, both of them will live."

But Jimmy did not move. I looked at Robert. And he had turned his face to the wall.

 

It was a long while before Kate came down into the living-room. She was very weak, and perhaps another woman would have died. But her old serene courage had been given back to her.

I came to see her every day without hindrance. Robert never looked at me. He was always silent now. But there was nothing sullen in his silence. It seemed to me that he was just absorbed in something beyond our knowledge. His eyes lost their look of burning, thwarted desire, and grew calm and satisfied.

It happened that I was with them when Kate came down for the first time. Jimmy carried her baby for her as far as the bottom of the stairs, and then she turned and took it from him. She went over to Robert and stood at his side looking down at him. And he looked back at her steadily for a long time. It was as though some understanding had passed between them. Then Robert made a little movement, and Kate laid the child in the circle of his arm.

That is the whole story. To me it is very wonderful, but, then, perhaps I am losing my sense of proportion. As I told you, nothing happens in this little place.

They are very happy. Robert has learnt basket-making, and helps to support the family, and as things go in these parts, they are well off. The villagers are in and out of the cottage the whole day long. They bring their troubles and their joys to the crippled man as though they know that he has some special greater knowledge.

I think it pleases him.

There are two children now. They play round Robert as they would in the friendly shadow of some great, storm-battered oak.

If you come with me one day you shall see them for yourself.