Ripple and Flood

Front matter

<iA ZhQovel. By JA^MSS P%10^ London, 1897 HUTCHINSON AND CO 34, Paternoster Row . . . Printed by Hazel!, Watson, & Viney, Ld. London and Aylesbury CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I SMALL BEGINNINGS I II A STRANGER COMES ' IO III THE STRANGER STAYS 1 8 IV MRS. BARNES PRONOUNCES 26 V THE FACE ON THE HEARTH 33 VI ARS LONGA 40 VII THE FIGHT IN THE SNOW . . . . . .48 VIII IVY'S RABBIT 58 IX ELEMENTARY ART 66 X THE gull's NEST 77 XI THE RISING OF THE RIVER 89 XII THE FLOOD 96 xiii ivy's gratitude 108 XIV THE RUNAWAY Il6 XV TWO SACKS AND WHAT THEY HELD . . . . 1 27 XVI THE BIRD ON THE HOOK I38 XVII THE BIRD IN THE HAND 146 XVIII BY THE RIVER-SIDE 1 56 v CONTENTS VI PACE CHAP. - XIX I GIVE MY NAME AND ADDRESS Ib4 XX A SABBATHLESS SUNDAY 172 XXI THE SUBPŒNA . . . . • ■ ■ .181 XXII A ROGUE AND VAGABOND 189 XXIII OLD NEWS 20I XXIV EVIL DREAMS 211 XXV DRAWING FROM THE LIFE 217 XXVI IVY THROWS A STONE 224 XXVII I HAVE TO CHOOSE 23 1 XXVIII MIDNIGHT 243 XXIX FOURTEEN YEARS PASS 252 XXX THE BIG DRUM 260 XXXI A NIGHT DRIVE 268 XXXII MARKET GOSSIP 280 XXXIII THE MARCH OF CIVILISATION 289 XXXIV ONE TAKEN, ANOTHER LEFT 296 XXXV FOR HIS LIFE 305 XXXVI THE SUNRISE 313 XXXVII THE HAYMAKERS 32 1 XXXVIII ANNA 332 XXXIX THE BLOW . . . , . . . . * . 34I XL THE FLIGHT 350 XLI THE INQUEST 3CQ XLII THE CONCLUSION ,7I

Chapter I Small Beginnings

Here I sit, pen in hand, but what I have to write comes slowly. When a man seeks to discover the limits of his memory, it is as if he were trying to map with a definitive pencil the evading bounds of a hazy horizon. What he sees he does not see, and what he does not see he sees. Vainly he strives to separate his recollections from the imaginations with which they are immeshed. Nay, were he able to do so, who shall decide whether the remembrance or the surmise be the better founded on fact ? Therefore in these autobiographical scraps, which I am purposing to put together into whatever artless design they may best run, I must not be understood to vouch for the entire reality of this or that detail. All I can say for certain is that the past has come out towards me, and I have gone back on it until we have met ; but whether I have travelled so far on solid footing or at a volatile impulse is more than I know.

In one of the most distinct of my early reminiscences, which is probably rather the sum of many blended im pressions, I see myself — nay, if I lean back in my chair, and close my eyes, thus, I feel myself — lying under a 1 i sack on a heap of winter greens at the bottom of my uncle's heavy spring cart, jogging wearily home from market in the waning light. The sky seems very close to me as I lie thus ; and that is all I can see of my surroundings, beside an occasional glimpse of snow-covered hills, or the tops of snow-covered trees by the roadside. My uncle tells me, at the second or third or fourth time of asking, that the sky is called white, not only where it seems nearest to me, but also where it rests heavily on the hills, and where the moon is dimly understood to be ; also that the trees are white, and the snowy ground, and the sticks of crisp blanched celery at my feet.

I know that our old horse Lammy is called white as often as grey, and that the earthy coats of the sheep have no other name. (I can hear their baas, the swish of a turnip-cutter, and the bark of a dog on the other side of the hedge.) I perplex myself with trying to reconcile what I am told with what I perceive, until I grow drowsy. When I am fully awake again, I am whimpering with cold. My uncle whips up old Lammy and endeavours not to hear me. When my cries grow louder, he assures me boys never did so when he was a boy, though it was colder then ; sternly exhorts me to be a man ; ironically begs me not to " scar the crows " ; persuasively promises that the last two miles shall be little ones, and a warm fire at the end of them. When all will not do, he lays by his whip, pulls me by one arm up on his knee, and opens his blue overcoat so as to enwrap me with it.

I nestle close to the warmth of his red waistcoat, and fall asleep there. I wake again ; one cheek is hot and one cool. I am laid on the hearth, before the newly-kindled fire, my uncle's overcoat still about me. The sticks hiss and crackle and roar under the coals. I lie and watch the long tongues of light lick the low ceiling from side to side. When I hear uncle kicking the snow off his boots at the door, I push the great coat off and sit up. He comes in, smiting his great red hands together. He goes to the adjoining room and fetches me out a slice of bread and a Nonpareil apple, to keep me quiet whilst he gets ready our meal, which is dinner and tea in one. I nibble at the bread, but keep the apple in my hand for the pleasure of looking at the streaks of crimson among the greenish yellow.

Uncle puts the cold boiled bacon and a loaf of bread on the table, a blue plate for me and a green-edged one for himself; the brown jug has his ale in it. When he has brought out of the oven, between horny finger and thumb, my yellow bowl of bread and milk, I get up and stand with my nose to the edge of the table and say grace, stealthily keeping my eyes on my apple all the time. Another recollection is of my fetching a chair and climbing up on it to look over our hedge at a gorgeous sunset. I seem to remember feeling particularly small in front of that mighty blaze. The projecting bough of an apple-tree almost leafless, with one pale apple on it, cut it in two. I looked till I was dazed, and had to descend from my chair to save myself from falling. I ran back into the house to ask my uncle what it was called, but he was sitting frowning at the fire, and I durst not disturb him.

When he was like that, as he frequently was at the idle end of the day, I was afraid to make myself heard or let myself be seen ; when he was at work with spade or pruning-knife, he answered me at random, or testily, or not at all ; but when he was smoking I could venture to rub against his leathern leggings and tread upon his boots, and it was then he would drop his short, but not unkindly, answers to my childish cross-questioning. I was even at that early period very observant of colour, and my first inquiry about every new thing was, " What do you call it ? " meaning, " Of what colour is it ? " To which, my uncle's vocabulary being limited, I got replies that per plexed me. I learnt that the speedwells that weeded our garden were blue, crocus and Canterbury bells also, and all the differences of the sky ; likewise some cows and some cheeks and some eyes.

Green comprised every change of the grass, when the wind blew and when it was at rest, holly-leaf, sage and feverfew, Mrs. Morris's new bonnet, and the hues that sometimes part the ruddy gold of an autumnal sunset from the smoky purples. The fire was red; so was a geranium, a Victoria plum, a foxglove, the bricks our house was built of, the sun in a fog, the rind of a chestnut, a ferret's eyes, the twenty different shades of a withering bramble-leaf. While yellow appar ently might be anything from the sickly hue of a stinging nettle's root, or poor Tabby Oliver's usual complexion, to the utmost glory mortal eye could sustain. Since then I have had much to do with paint and painters, with men who have many names for many pigments, none of which match with what I see about me. Still we are apt to grow proud of our learned inaccuracy, and I find it necessary frequently to remind myself that if the oils and earths and varnishes with which we hide a canvas please any eye, it is not for what they are in themselves, but by what they suggest to the docile imagination.

The village of Cockerby lies off the highway, entirely about the flat winding lane which leads from Clayton Station to the banks of the Trent and the larger village of Elham. Thither we came, my uncle Richard Allius and myself — or so I appear to remember — when I could but just walk. I must have been a sore burden to the poor man in those early days. I was always in awe of him, but though his brow was often stern and his words sometimes rough, he never laid his hand upon me. If he had I should have remembered it. We lived alone, my uncle doing all the work of our little household with his own hands, until I was of an age to assist him in it. The cottage we inhabited was in a small detached portion of the village, which lay within a few hundred yards of the river, upon ground rising slightly from the road.

It was but a tiny domicile, with two low rooms on the ground floor, the inner one, which we called the kitchen, serving as a store-room, while the outer was our living-room. A door at the back of the latter opened into a narrow recess wherein was a kind of open stairway or ladder. It gave passage to the attic, which was divided by a wooden partition into two scanty sleeping places, for my uncle and myself. In front of the house was a narrow yard, variously paved with boulders and odd bricks and fragments of rough stone. It was closed in on two sides by ranges of rude wooden out-buildings, but the open side looked south and gave way to a small garden plot which sloped down to the road. The pigsty was in the midst of the garden ; at the back of the house was a considerable orchard. Besides that we had a large close of plough land at the other end of the village, and as much grass as served for Lammy and a calf or two.

Altogether we were considered to have one of the most desirable cottager holdings in the place, and being new-comers, were re garded by some with no small jealousy ; notably by old Loosemore, who was rheumatic and could not cultivate what land he had. Bit by bit I perceived — oh, and earlier than would be supposed likely — that my uncle was not popular with his fellows. There may have been a little of the above mentioned jealousy at the bottom of it, but jealousy soon rubs off by contact, even in rheumatic people. He was a hard bargainer, it is true, but so was Tom Uppleby of a Saturday morning, and Tom could not go fifty yards down the village os a Saturday night without the offer of "summat," meaning to drink. My uncle never sat in the public-house drinking, either for his own or any other man's pleasure, and there may have been something in that.

Yet old Skeel the ranter not only did the like, but threw about hard reasons for it, and nobody ever thought of him, even at Christmas-tide, but with humorous con tempt. I call to mind that a certain unfortunate expression of my uncle's, " uz farmers," which slipped from his mouth in an unguarded moment, was ever after remembered against him by both drunken memories and sober ones. There may have been pride lurking in it, and pride is one of the seven deadly sins, if not all of them. Yet now I think of it, Johnny Javens the pauper was always under stood to be " wonderful proud and independent," and I never heard a word but of indulgence for his failing. Certainly Johnny's pride had been born and bred in the place and was eighty years of age. I give it up, I might have done so before ; the growth of an aversion is so easy, especially when that aversion has a tongue and can answer back.

Anyhow, no man or woman ever crossed our threshold except on business, nor that done, remained either for gossip or for smoke ; but I did not know whether my uncle kept himself aloof or was avoided, nor with a child's stolid acceptance of what is, did I seek to know. There was no school at Cockerby, so as soon as I was old enough to walk the distance, I attended the National School at Clayton, to which parish we were ecclesiastically united. Until then I had never mixed with other children, and you may be sure that on that first day they took stock of me from head to foot, with something of the scorn that country folk have of all foreigners. Probably I was wearing a sailor suit or a sailor hat ; anyhow they of one accord nicknamed me Sailor on the spot, and Sailor I continued to be called so long as I lived among them, so that scarcely anybody but the schoolmaster — who was professionally precise — knew that my baptismal name was Edward.

I had to grow used to it, but at the time I felt the epithet like a disgraceful badge upon me ; and I stood against a wall all playtime, as though to hide it from sight. I remained at that school until there was a change of vicars, the new-comer being very High Church. Our old service had been alike cold, drowsy, and colourless, whether a solitary voice mumbled, or a score or two made a sort of hold-back scramble of it ; and I must say I enjoyed the intrusion into it of lights and movement and music and bits of red. But my uncle, who had a hearty contempt for colour, so far excepted as it denoted race and rank in apple or plum, withdrew from attendance at the church and sent me to school at Elham, a mile and a half through the fields and half a mile more by road, in the contrary direction.

On the very first day a rude, rough, romping, hatless girl, younger than myself, with her dusky hair in her eyes and only two hooks to her rent, red frock, came to me while I was eating my dinner by myself in a quiet corner of the playground, and was very confidential all at once ; to which, from a boy, I have had a mortal aversion. I thought her ugly too, for she was thin and dispro portionately long-legged, and her skin was almost as dark as a walnut's. " What have yer got for dinner ? " she asked. " Summat," said I. "Beef? That's not much. I've had puddin'. But a could have puddin' every day if a liked." I knew that was a fib somehow, but did not say so. I looked the other way and went on munching my beef and bread. " How old are yer ? " she next asked of me. " Goin' of twelve," I replied with proper majesty.

" I'm goin' of twelve too," she said. A manifest fib, for with due allowance for her long legs, she was evidently not above ten. But I did not say so. "Isn't them yer best boots ? " she asked. " Not them," I replied slightingly, without even looking down at them. "These isn't my best boots neither," she said; "a've got lots better. Buttoned uns an' all." I did not show the slightest interest in her boots. I fetched a rosy apple out of my bag and began eating it. She watched me in silence until it was half gone, then she said : "Give uz a bite ; a'll bite fair." I took another apple out and gave it to her. Her white teeth went through and through it with a healthy vigour; she smacked her lips and sucked in the juice that oozed out of the corners of her mouth. I liked to enjoy my food less obtrusively ; I looked on the ground and munched in silence.

When she had swallowed it, core and all, she began to talk again. " Can yer fish ? " she said. " Yes," said I, on the strength of certain operations with a bent pin and an osier rod. " I've got a rod that'll take to bits, and a reel. A once copped a barbel. But that's noat ; any kid thinks 'e can fish. Can yer swim ? " I did not choose to hear. " A knowed yer couldn't." " I could if I liked. " No, yer couldn't. Yer'd be drownded if yer-r 'adn't been larnt, an' then what a blooming fool yer'd look ! Father larnt me. A can swim raight across the Trent an' back. An' a can dive, an' a can float. If yer was drowndin' a could save yer to land, like fun. Haven't yer another apple in that thear ? " " No." " I hed four apples yisterday. I'd a gen yo two if yer'd been hear. Hev yer finished grubbin' ?

Well, can yer play at cricket ? " " I should think so," said I. In fact, I prided myself on my cricket. I was popularly reported to be the second best bat in the Clayton school ; and if Tom Scoble scored a good many more notches, the bowlers hated me more than they did him. I tightened up the cord of my bag, slung it round my wrist, shoved my hands into my pockets, and showed her my left shoulder. " Then a'll let yer play wi' me ; a've got a bat." She showed a piece of ash paling whittled at one end into the semblance of a handle. " I'll goo in fog." " I don't play with girls," said I. I saw the red blaze out under her cheek-bones, and thought it made her look not quite so ugly as before. I meant leaving her, but she was beforehand with me. She threw away her bit of ash, sprang at me, and slapped me full in the face. There were several other children looking on. I revenged myself by pretending it didn't hurt, and walked off whistling.

Chapter II

A STRANGER COMES Ivy Sivil, the girl who slapped me in the face, was the daughter of the ferryman at Elham, who by argument from his skin and the silver earrings in his ears and a more active disinclination to work than an ordinary British labourer shows, was popularly believed to be a gipsy. Ivy could swim — a rare accomplishment with us ; she could run and climb and jump, and play at every boy's game ; she often took command of the ferry-boat during her father's absences, and when she chose to risk a paternal skelping, could give gratuitous passage across the Trent to boys whom she favoured ; she had besides the shrillest voice and the quickest temper of the playground, and a certain amount of influence in consequence. During the next few days she was telling everybody whom she was not quarrelling with that I was a proud old thing, as proud as proud, as proud as a peacock, because we had a horse and a cart with our name on it.

Grown-up folk who know themselves to be humble are always ready to believe any other person is proud, how ever little justification he may have of pride ; and children are singularly like grown-up folk. Or I may have been proud ; I didn't know it then, and I don't now, and it seems unlikely on the face of it. In the play-hour I heard their unsuppressed voices within a few yards of me. " We want one more. Let's ax Sailor ; he's main good at saddle-my-nag." " Oh no ! " Ivy shrieked ; " he's combed 'is 'air, an' got a clean collar on ; he'd niver play wee uz." " All right ! Who wants him ? Billy Brown's a sight better nor him. Hi, Billy ! " I made myself hard of hearing — even children can do that — and went out of the playground into the road, and down the road at a venture as it seemed ; but the venture took me to the river.

The midday sun was on it, and a fresh wind was blowing against the current, ruffling it into waves, and between myself and the opposite bank it was all one dazzling dance of light and dark. I thought it was like the silver flutter of a flight of birds. I did not know those birds, but I believed there must be such in the purlieus of that city I had read of, whose gates were each one pearl, and whose walls were built of strange gems, unpronounceable, scarce imaginable. I looked until I was obliged to turn away and rest my eyes upon some thing cool and dim. I went down to the water in my next dinner-hour. The sun was under a cloud, and the wind was still, so there was only a fitful shimmer where the glory had flashed. But that was pretty in its way ; and so were the still dark stretches under the opposite bank, wherein the shadows of the trees just nodded a little as every eddy passed ; and I wondered how deep the water might be which allowed such great trees to stand upon their heads in it.

On the third day — do I remember this, or has fancy defeated memory ? — on the third day also I was by the river-side. It had dressed itself in vapour ; not a thick concealing fog, but a delicate veil which was like a net to catch the sunshine in. I stood on the bank and looked down into it. The meadows on the other side lay under the same wrappage, and it appeared as though the river extended to the abrupt hills beyond them. Ivy Sivil's vindictiveness was not permanent ; after the third day it appeared to have subsided to mere coolness ; her shrill voice was no longer uplifted against me, and when I would I played like the other children. But very often I preferred to wander down to the Trent, especially when I knew that the sun would be shining upon it. When my comrades found out that I did not go to fish, or to play at ducks and drakes, or to throw stones at the birds, or to paddle in the cool shallows, their contempt was unbounded ; they professed to believe I was a girl in the disguise of coat and breeches, and gave me the change nickname of Polly.

Sailor had been so long mine that they had almost forgotten it was not my rightful appella tion, and I suppose they felt the need of something to miscall me by when they were too angry to invent. But I had other things to think about than childish sports. As I had grown older my services had been more and more required by my uncle in both house and field. For besides the labour in those departments, he visited Nottingham every Wednesday and Saturday, the market days, in order to dispose, not only of his own garden produce, but also that of neighbours, for whom he sold upon commission. No wonder he was often hinting at the time when I should leave school and be able to assist him to my full strength. Indeed he had got into some thing of a habit, when he thought some laborious piece of work was desirable, but was not yet prepared to under take it — the re-roofing of the stables, for example, or the cleaning of the well — of deferring it " until you've dropped standard seven, Ted."

I always understood, but not from his telling, that both my father and mother were dead. He never talked to me about my parentage ; but then he never talked to me about anything, not to say talked. Only when he was in an unusually good humour he might make a calculation, something between thinking up and conversation, of the yield of the Pond's Seedlings, or in his intention of re grafting that idle Golden Pippin might hesitate aloud between a Blenheim Orange and a Ribston. Our nearest approach to sociability was when he was smoking of an evening, after the labours of the day had tamed him into sluggishness ; especially in the winter time, when the light and warmth withindoors shut off the cold and dark, and with them whatever was without, the cares of the day, the spoiling of the seasons, the coming and going of men.

I used to sit on the other side of the littery hearth with my eyes on the fire, and the puffing of my uncle's pipe seemed to be for both of us. Since I wrote the above, my pen has been idle and my brain busy for a long, long hour, and my eyes have had nothing to do with what I have seen. How well do I remember such an evening as I have just described, snug and drowsy, one November, the first November after I began to go to school at Elham ! The rain had fallen all day, straight down without hurry ; the brown leaves rotted on the black ground ; it turned quite dark by four o'clock. But we had changed our wet clothing, and sat comfortably before the fire. We felt, without saying it, that it was good to be within. My uncle was smoking and nursing his left leg with an unusually placid expression on his face.

I was doing my sums for the morrow by the light of a tallow dip. For a long while there was no sound but the grating of my slate pencil, my uncle's quiet puffing at his pipe, and the stealthy drip of the rain outside. If a cinder fell on the hearth we both heard it. Suddenly (it seemed suddenly, all was so quiet) there was a tap at the door. My uncle put the leg down that he was nursing, took his pipe out of his mouth, and said, " Come in," in that loud deliberate voice of his. There was the rattling of the sneck under an unsteady hand, then an object entered, and seemed to bring the worst of the weather in with it. There was some appearance of a man's clothes about it, but I was afraid of it, and my uncle's voice was altered when he said, " What do you want ? " It put out a man's hands, and said in a strange voice, faint and hoarse, " I'm hungry, I'm cold, I'm tired."

My uncle beckoned it to the fire without speaking, at the same time pushing back his own chair to the wall. It crawled nearer by some sort of motion, not a human walk, leaving a slimy trail on the floor like a snail. When it came within the influence of the tallow dip I saw it had a man's face, pale, wild, hunger-gnawn, yet a man's. Still I feared him and made wide room for him beside the hearth. He sank down on my chair and seemed to drink in the warmth. At my uncle's bidding I closed the door, which the man had left open ; and having done so I remained on that side of the room, holding my slate in my hand and watching what went on. My uncle took the candle and went into the kitchen, which I have said was our larder and store-room. I shrank to the door by which he went out ; I was afraid of being alone in the dark with the stranger, but still I looked.

His rags reeked and wrapped him in a sort of mist. The red glow of the fire gave dreadful meanings to what I could see of his ghastly face and its covering of wild beard and dank unkempt hair, and cast a noisome shadow behind him. But when he chanced to lift one of his gaunt hands above his head, the shadow of it darted across the ceiling, slid down the wall, and seemed to smite me like a monstrous Satanic finger where my heart beat. I uttered a cry of horror. My uncle came out of the kitchen hastily, and asked what ailed me. I could not speak ; I pointed to the man. My uncle strode to him, candle in hand, and said wrathfully, " What have yer done to my lad ? " The man rose, but stiffly. He seemed shaken into some sort of trembling alertness. He stood at a bend, which made him seem a head and shoulders shorter than my uncle, who held the candle in his face and looked down on him with angry scrutiny.