The black dog, and other stories

Front matter

V

Ki t

•vc^

II

On an Augu^ morning a few weeks later they travelled down together to see her father. In the interim Orianda had resigned her appointment, and several times Gerald had met her secretly in the purlieus of Tillington Park. The girl's cool casual nature fascinated him not less than her appearance. Admiration certainly outdi^anced his happiness, although that also increased; but the bliss had its shadow, for the outcome of their friendship seemed my^eriously to depend on the outcome of the proposed return to her father's home, devotion to that projeft forming the fir^ principle, as it were, of their intercourse. Orianda had not dangled before him the prospeft of any serener relationship ; she took his caresses as naturally and undemon^ratively as a pet bird takes a piece of sugar. But he had begun to be aware of a certain force behind all her charming naivete; the beauty that exhaled the freshness, the apparent fragility, of a drop of dew had none the less a savour of tyranny which he vowed should never, lea^ of all by him, be pressed to vulgar exercise.

When the train reached its de^ination Orianda confided calmly that she had preferred not to write to her father. Really she did not know for certain whether he was alive or even living on at the old home she so loved. And there was a journey of three miles or more which Orianda proposed to walk. So they walked.

The road lay across an expanse of marshy country and approached the wooded uplands of her home only by numerous eccentric divagations made necessary by culverts that drained the marsh. The day was bright; the sky, so va^ an arch over this flat land, was a very oven for heat; there were cracks in the earth, the grass was like bubble. At the mid journey they crossed a river by its wooden bridge, upon which a boy sat fishing with ^ick and ^ring. Near the water was a long white hut with a flag; a few tethered boats floated upon the ^ream. Gerald gave a shilling to a travelling woman who carried a burden on her back and shuffled slowly upon the harsh road sighing, looking neither to right nor left; she did not look into the sky, her gaze was faftened upon her dolorous feet, one two, one two, one two; her shift, if she had such a garment, mu^ have clung to her old body like a shrimping net.

In an hour they had reached the uplands and soon, at the top of a sylvan slope where there was shade and cooling air, Gerald saw a sign hung upon a sycamore tree. The Black Dog by Nathaniel Crahhe, The inn was small, pleasant with pink wash and brown paint, and faced across the road a large yard encircled by hedges, trees, and a gate. The travellers ^ood peeping into the enclosure which was locked with new ladders, hurdles, and poles of various sizes. Amid them ^ood a tall burly man at a block, trimming with an axe the butt of a willow rod. He was about fifty, clad in rough country clothes, a white shirt, and a soft ^raw hat. He had mild simple features coloured, like his arms and neck, almo^ to the hue of a bay horse.

" Hullo! " called the girl. The man with the axe looked round at her unrecognizingly. Orianda hurried through the gateway. " Father! " she cried.

" I did not know. I was not rightly sure of ye," said the man, dropping the axe, " such a lady you've grown."

As he kissed his daughter his heavy discoloured hands re^ed on her shoulders, her gloved ones lay again^ his brea^. Orianda took out her purse.

" Here is the money I ^ole, father."

She dropped some coins one by one into his palm. He counted them over, and saying simply " Thank you, my dear," put them into his pocket.

" I'm dashed! " — thought Loughlin, who had followed the girl — " it's exadly how she would take it; no explanation, no apology. They do not know what reproach means. Have they no code at all } "

She went on chatting with her father, and seemed to have forgotten her companion.

" You mean you want to come back! " exclaimed her father eagerly, " come back here } That would be grand, that would. But look, tell me what I am to do. I've — you see — this is how it is — "

He spat upon the ground, picked up his axe, re^ed one foot upon the axe-block and one arm upon his knee. Orianda sat down upon a pile of the logs.

" This is how it is ... be you married } "

" Come and sit here, Gerald," called the girl. As he came forward Orianda rose and said: " This is my very dear friend, father, Gerald Loughlin. He has been so kind. It is he who has given me the courage to come back. I wanted to for so long. O, a long time, father, a long time. And yet Gerald had to drag me here in the end."

" What was you afraid of, my girl ? " asked the big man.

" Myself."

The two visitors sat upon the logs. " Shall I tell you about mother } " asked the girl.

Crabbe hesitated ; looked at the ground.

" Ah, yes, you might," he said.

" She died, did you know .'' "

The man looked up at the trees with their myriads of unmoving leaves ; each leaf seemed to be likening.

" She died ? " he said softly. " No, I did not know she died."

*' Two years ago," continued the girl, warily, as if probing his mood.

" Two years! " He repeated it without emotion. " No, I did not know she died. 'Tis a bad job." He was quite ^ill, his mind seemed to be turning over his own secret memories, but what he bent forward and suddenly said was: " Don't say anything about it in there." He nodded towards the inn.

" No } " Orianda opened her crimson parasol.

'* You see," he went on, again reding one foot on the axe-block and addressing himself more particularly to Gerald: " I've . . . this is how it is. When I was left alone I could not get along here, not by myself. That's for certain. There's the house and the bar and the yard — I'd to get help, a young woman from Brighton. I met her at Brighton." He rubbed the blade of the axe refleftively across his palm — " And she manages house for me now, you see."

He let the axe fall again and ^ood upright. " Her name's Lizzie."

" O, quite so, you could do no other," Gerald exclaimed cheerfully, turning to the girl. But Orianda said softly: " What a family we are! He means he is living with her. And so you don't want your undutiful daughter after all, father ? " Her gaiety was a little tremulous.

" No, no! " he retorted quickly, " you mu^ come back, you mu^ come back, if so be you can. There's nothing I'd like better, nothing on this mortal earth. My God, if something don't soon happen I don't know what zvill happen." Once more he looped for the axe. " That's right, Orianda, yes, yes, but you've no call to mention to her " — he glared uneasily at the inn doorway — " that . . . that about your mother."

Orianda stared up at him though he would not meet her gaze.

" You mean she doesn't know .'' " she asked, " you mean she would want you to marry her if she did know } "

'* Yes, that's about how it is with us."

Loughlin was amazed at the girl's divination. It seemed miraculous, what a subtle mind she had, extraordinary! And how casually she took the old rascal's — well, what could you call it .'' — effrontery, shame, misdemeanour, helplessness. But was not her mother like it too } He had grasped nothing at all of the situation yet, save that Nathaniel Crabbe appeared to be netted in the toils of this housekeeper, this Lizzie from Brighton. Dear Orianda was " dished " now, poor girl. She could not conceivably return to such a menage.

Orianda was saying: " Then I may ^ay, father, mayn't I, for good with you .'' "

Her father's eyes left no doubt of his pleasure.

" Can we give Gerald a bedroom for a few days .'' Or do we ask Lizzie .'' "

" Ah, better ask her," said the shameless man. " You want to make a ^ay here, sir .'' "

" If it won't incommode you," replied Loughlin.

** O, make no doubt about that, to be sure no, I make no doubt about that."

** Have you ^ill got my old bedroom ? " asked Orlanda, for the amount of dubiety in his air was in prodigious antagonism to his expressed confidence.

" Why yes, it may happen," he replied slowly.

** Then Gerald can have the spare room. It's all wainscot and painted dark blue. It's a shrimp of a room, but there's a preserved albatross in a glass case as big as a van."

" I make no doubt about that," chimed in her father, ^raightening himself and scratching his chin uneasily, " you mu^ talk to Lizzie."

"Splendid!" said Gerald to Orianda, "I've never seen an albatross."

" We'll ask Lizzie," said she, " at once."

Loughlin was experiencing not a little inward digress at this turn in the affair, but it was he who had brought Orianda to her home, and he would have to go through with the horrid business.

" Is she difficult, father .? "

" No, she's not difficult, not difficult, so to say, you mu^ make allowance."

The girl was implacable. Her direftness almo^ froze the blood of the Hon. Loughlin.

" Are you fond of her ? How long has she been here ? "

" O, a goodish while, yes, let me see — no, she's not difficult, if that's what you mean — three years, perhaps."

" Well, but that's long enough! "

(Long enough for what — wondered Loughlin ?)

** Yes, it is longish."

*' If you really want to oret rid of her you could tell her ..." ^

;] Tell her what ? "

" You know what to tell her! "

But her father looked bewildered and professed his ignorance.

" Take me in to her," said Orianda, and they all walked across to " The Black Dog." There was no one within; father and daughter went into the garden while Gerald ^ayed behind in a small parlour. Through the window that looked upon a grass plot he could see a woman sitting in a deck chair under a tree. Her face was turned away so that he saw only a curve of pink cheek and a thin mound of fair hair tossed and untidy. Lizzie's large red fingers were slipping a sprig of watercress into a mouth that was hidden round the corner of the curve. With her other hand she was caressing a large brown hen that sat on her lap. Her black skirt wrapped her limbs tightly, a round hip and a thigh being rigidly outlined, while the blouse of figured cotton also seemed drained upon her buxom brea^, for it was torn and split in places. She had ^rong white arms and holes in her dockings. When she turned to confront the others it was easy to see that she was a foolish, untidy, but ^ill a rather pleasant woman of about thirty.

" How do you do, Lizzie ? " cried Orianda, offering a cordial hand. The hen fluttered away as, smiling a little wanly, the woman rose.

" Who is it, 'Thaniel ? " she asked.

Loughlin heard nomore,for some men came noisily into the bar and Crabbe hurried back to serve them.

Ill

In the afternoon Orianda drove Gerald in the gig back to the Nation to fetch the baggage.

" Well, what success, Orianda .'' " he asked as they jogged along.

" It would be perfe6l but for Lizzie — that zvas rather a blow. But I should have foreseen her — Lizzies are inevitable. And she is difficult — she weeps. But, O I am glad to be home again. Gerald, I feel I shall not leave it, ever."

" Yes, Orianda," he protested, " leave it for me. I'll give your nostalgia a little time to fade. I think it was a man named Pater said: ' All life is a wandering to find home.' You don't want to omit the wandering } "

" Not if I have found my home again ? "

" A home with Lizzie ! "

" No, not with Lizzie." She flicked the horse with the whip. " I shall be too much for Lizzie; Lizzie will resume her wandering. She's as slupid as a wax widow in a show. Nathaniel is tired of Lizzie, and Lizzie of Nathaniel. The two wretches ! But I wish she did not weep."

Gerald had not observed any signs of tearfulness in Lizzie at the midday dinner; on the contrary, she seemed rather a jolly creature, not that she had spoken much beyond " Yes, 'Thaniel, No, 'Thaniel," or Gerald, or Orianda, as the case had been. Her use of his Chri^ian name, which had swept him at once into the bosom of the family, shocked him rather pleasantly. But he did not know what had taken place between the two women; perhaps Lizzie had already perceived and tacitly accepted her displacement.

He was wakened next morning by unusual sounds, chatter of magpies in the front trees, and the ching of hammers on a bulk of iron at the smithy. Below his window a brown terrier stood on its barrel barking at a goose. Such common simple things had power to please him, and for a few days everything at " The Black Dog " seemed planned on this scale of novel enjoyment. The old inn itself, the log yard, harve^- ing, the chatter of the evening topers, even the village Sunday delighted him with its parade of Phyllis and Corydon, though it is true Phyllis wore a pink frock, dockings of faint blue, and walked like a man, while Corydon had a bowler hat and walked like a bear. He helped 'Thaniel with axe, hammer, and plane, but be^ of all was to serve mugs of beer nightly in the bar and to drop the coins into the drawer of money. The re^ of the time he spent with Orianda whom he wooed happily enough, though without establishing any marked progress. They roamed in fields and in copses, lounged in lanes, looking at things and idling deliciously, at last returning home to be fed by Lizzie, whose case somehow hung in the air, faintly defleding the perfed sTiream of felicity.

In their favourite glade a rivulet was joined by a number of springs bubbling from a pool of sand and rock. Below it the enlarged stream was dammed into a small lake once used for turning a mill, but now, since the mill was dismantled, covered with arrow heads and lily leaves, surrounded by inclining trees, bushes of rich green growth, terraces of willow herb, whose fairy-like pink steeples Orianda called " codlins and cream," and catmint with knobs of agreeable odour. A giant hornbeam tree had fallen and lay half buried in the lake. This, and the black poplars whose vacillating leaves underscored the solemn clamour of the outfall, gave to it the very serenity of desolation. Here they caught sight of the two woodpeckers bathing in the springs, a cock and his hen, who had flown away yaffling, leaving a pretty mottled feather tinged with green floating there. It was endless pleasure to watch each spring bubble upwards from a pouch of sand that spread smoke-like in the water, turning each cone into a midget Vesuvius. A wasp crawled laboriously along a flat rock lying in the pool. It moved weakly, as if, marooned like a mariner upon some unknown isle, it could find no way of escape; only, this isle was no bigger than a dish in an ocean as small as a cartwheel. The wasp seemed to have forgotten that it had wings, it creepingly examined every inch of the rock until it came to a patch of dried dung. Proceeding slill as wearily it paused upon a dead leaf until a breeze blew leaf and inse6l into the water. The wasp was overwhelmed by the rush from the bubbles, but at la^ it emerged, clutching the woodpecker's floating feather and dragged itself into safety as a swimmer heaves himself into a boat. In a moment it preened its wings, flew back to the rock, and played at Crusoe again. Orianda picked the feather from the pool.

" What a fool that wasp is," declared Gerald, '* I wonder what it is doing ? "

Orianda, placing the feather in his hat, told him it was probably wandering to find home.

One day, brighter of all days, they went to picnic in the marshes, a Grange place to choose, all rank with the mu^y smell of cattle, and populous with grasshoppers that burred below you and millions, quadrillions of flies that buzzed above. But Orianda loved it. The va^ area of coarse pa^ure harboured not a single farmhouse, only a shed here and there marking a particular field, for a thousand shallow brooks flowed like veins from all direftions to the arterial river moving through its silent leagues. Small frills of willow curving on the river brink, and elsewhere a temple of lofty elms, ofi^ered the only refuge from sun or ^orm. Store cattle roamed unchecked from field to field, and in the shade of gaunt rascally bushes sheep were ne^ling. Green reeds and willow herb followed the watercourses with endless efflorescence, beautiful indeed.

In the late afternoon they had come to a spot where they could see their village three or four miles away, but between them lay the inexorable barrier of the river without a bridge. There was a bridge miles away to the right, they had crossed it earlier in the day; and there was another bridge on the left, but that also was miles di^ant.

" Now what are we to do ^ " asked Orianda. She wore a white muslin frock, a country frock, and a large ^raw hat with poppies, a country hat. They approached a column of trees. In the soft smooth wind the foliage of the willows was tossed into delicate greys. Orianda said they looked like cockshy heads on spindly necks. She would like to shy at them, but she was tired. " I know what we could do." Orianda glanced around the landscape, trees, and bushes ; the river was narrow, though deep, not more than forty feet across, and had high banks.

" You can swim, Gerald } "

Yes, Gerald could swim rather well.

" Then let's swim it, Gerald, and carry our own clothes over."

" Can you swim, Orianda } "

Yes, Orianda could swim rather well.

" All right then," he said. " I'll go down here a little way."

" O, don't go far, I don't want you to go far away, Gerald," and she added softly, " my dear."

** No, I won't go far," he said, and sat down behind a bush a hundred yards away. Here he undressed, flung his shoes one after the other across the river, and swimming on his back carried his clothes over in two journeys. As he sat drying in the sunlight he heard a shout from Orianda. He peeped out and saw her sporting in the ^ream quite close below him. She swam with a graceful overarm ^roke that tossed a spray of drops behind her and launched her body as easily as a fish's. Her hair was bound in a handkerchief. She waved a hand to him. " You've done it! Bravo! What courage! Wait for me. Lovely." She turned away like an eel, and at every two or three ^rokes she spat into the air a gay little fountain of water. How extraordinary she was.

Gerald wished he had not hurried. By and by he slipped into the water again and swam up^ream. He could not see her.

" Have you finished ? " he cried.

" I have finished, yes." Her voice was close above his head. She was lying in the grass, her face propped between her palms, smiling down at him. He could see bare arms and shoulders.

*' Got your clothes across .'' "

*' Of course."

" All dry .? "

She nodded.

" How many journeys ? I made two."

" Two," said Orianda briefly.

" You're all right then." He wafted a kiss, swam back, and dressed slowly. Then as she did not appear he wandered along to her humming a discreet and very audible hum as he went. When he came upon her she ^ill lay upon the grass mo^ scantily clothed.

*' I beg your pardon," he said hazily, and full of surprise and mode^y walked away. The unembarrassed girl called after him: " Drying my hair."

" All right " — he did not turn round — " no hurry."

But what sensations assailed him. They aroused in his decent gentlemanly mind not exactly a tumult, but a flux of emotions, impressions, and qualms; doubtful emotions, incredible impressions, and torturing qualms. That alluring pifture of Orianda, her errant father, the abandoned Lizzie! Had the water perhaps heated his mind though it had cooled his body .'' He felt he would have to urge her, drag her if need be, from this " Black Dog." The setting was fair enough and she was fair, but lovely as she was not even she could escape the brush of its vulgarity, its plebeian pressure.

And if all this has, or seems to have, nothing, or little enough to do with the drying of Orianda's hair, it is because the Honourable Gerald was accustomed to walk from grossness with an averted mind.

" Orianda," said he, when she rejoined him, " when are you going to give it up. You cannot slay here . . . with Lizzie . . . can you .'' "

" Why not ? " she asked, sharply tossing back her hair. " 1 stayed with my mother, you know."

" That was different from this. 1 don't know how, but it muit have been."

She took his arm. " Yes, it was. Lizzie I hate, and poor ^upid father loves her as much as he loves his axe or his handsaw. I hate her meekness, too. She has taken the heart out of everything. I mu^ get her away."

" I see your need, Orianda, but what can you do .-^ "

" I shall lie to her, lie like a libertine. And I shall tell her that my mother is coming home at once. No Lizzie could tace that."

He was silent. Poor Lizzie did not know that there was now no Mrs. Crabbe.

" You don't like my trick, do you ? " Orianda shook his arm caressingly.

" It hasn't any particular grandeur about it, you know."

" Pooh! You shouldn't wa^e grandeur on clearing up a mess. This is a very dirty Eden."

" No, all's fair, I suppose."

" But it isn't war, you dear, if that's what you mean. I'm only doing for them what they are naturally loth to do for themselves." She pronounced the word " loth " as if it rimed with moth.

" Lizzie," he said, " I'm sure about Lizzie. I'll swear there is ^ill some fondness in her funny little heart."

" It isn't love, though ; she's jusl; sentimental in her puffy kind of way. My dear Honourable, you don't know what love is." He hated her to use his title, for there was then always a breath of scorn in her tone. Jusl at odd times she seemed to be — not vulgar, that was unthinkable — she seemed to display a contempt for good breeding. He asked with a ^iff smile " What /j love.?"

" For me," said Orianda, fumbling for a definition, " for me it is a compound of anticipation and gratitude. When either of these two ingredients is absent love is dead."

Gerald shook his head, laughing. " It sounds like a malignant bolus that 1 shouldn't like to take. 1 feel that love is jusl self-sacrifice. Apart from the ta^le of the thing or the price of the thing, why and for what this anticipation, this gratitude ?

" For the moment of passion, of course. Honour thy moments of passion and keep them holy. But O, Gerald Loughlin," she added mockingly, " this you cannot undersland, for you are not a lover; you are not, no, you are not even a good swimmer." Her mockery was adorable, but baffling.

" 1 do not understand you," he said. Now why in the whole world of images should she refer to his swimming ? He was a good swimmer. He was silent for a long time and then again he began to speak of marriage, urging her to give up her project and leave Lizzie in her simple peace.

Then, not for the firsl time, she bursl into a slrange perverse intensity that may have been love but might have been rage, that was toned like scorn and yet mu^ have been a je^.

" Lovely Gerald, you mu^ never marry, Gerald, you are too good for marriage. All the best women are already married, yes, they are — to all the wor^ men." There was an infinite slow caress in her tone but she went on rapidly. " So I shall never marry you, how should I marry a kind man, a good man } I am a barbarian, and want a barbarian lover, to crush and scarify me, but you are so tender and I am so crude. When your soft eyes look on me they look on a volcano."

" I have never known anything half as lovely," he broke in.

Her sudden emotion, though controlled, was unconcealed and she turned away from him.

" My love is a gentleman, but with him I should feel like a wild bee in a canary cage."

" What are you saying! " cried Gerald, putting his arms around her. " Orianda! "

*' O yes, we do love in a mezzotinted kind of way. You could do anything with me short of making me marry you, anything, Gerald." She repeated it tenderly. " Anything. But short of marrying me I could make you do nothing." She turned from him again for a moment or two. Then she took his arm and as they walked on she shook it and said chaffingly, " And what a timid swimmer my Gerald is."

But he was dead silent. That flux of sensations in his mind had taken another twi^, fiery and exquisite. Like rich clouds they shaped themselves in the sky of his mind, fancy's bright towers with shining pinnacles.

Lizzie welcomed them home. Had they enjoyed themselves — yes, the day had been fine — and so they had enjoyed themselves — well, well, that was right. But throughout the evening Orianda hid herself from him, so he wandered almo^ di^rafted about the village until in a garth he saw some men ^ruggling with a cow. Ropes were twisted around its horns and legs. It was flung to the earth. No countryman ever speaks to an animal without blaspheming it, although it he be engaged in some solitary work and inspired to music, he invariably sings a hymn in a voice that seems to have some vague association with wood pulp. So they all blasphemed and shouted. One man, with sore eyes, dressed in a coat of blue fuslian and brown cord trousers, hung to the end of a rope at an angle of forty-five degrees. His po^ure sugge^ed that he was trying to pull the head ofi^ the cow. Two other men had taken turns of other rope around some ^out po^s, and one ^tood by with a handsaw.

" What are you going to do ? " asked Gerald. Its harns be bent, ycu see," said the man with the saw, " they be going into its head. 'Twill blind or madden the bea^l."

So they blasphemed the cow, and sawed ofi-' its crumpled horns.

When Gerald went back to the inn Orianda was ^ill absent. He sat down but he could not resl. He could never re^ now until he had won her promise. That lovely image in the river spat fountains of scornful fire at him. " Do not leave me, Gerald," she had said. He would never leave her, he would never leave her. But the men talking in the inn scattered his flying fiery thoughts. They discoursed with a vacuity whose very endlessness was transcendent. Good God ! Was there ever a living person more magnificently inane than old Tottel, the regi^rar. He would have inspired a ^ork to prote^. Of course, a man of his age should not have worn a cap, a small one especially; Tottel himself was small, and it made him look rumpled. He was bandy: his intelleft was bandy too.