Bellamy

Chapter I

N OT many miles from the smoke-blanketed Potteries — which lie panting with a foul breath night and day, winking strained and* bloodshot eyes, seeming strangers to sleep, wallowing there, in the midst of that beautiful country, like Sly the Tinker in the Duke’s bed — there is another sort of town: grey where they are black: austere and aloof : spreading itself out over a hill-top, set in a wide valley among other and greater hills, with all the inviolate air of a mountain town.

For despite the fact that one looks down upon Edge, from the broken rocky moorland and wooded heights which encompass it, yet still it seems to soar ; holding its very skirts aloof from the polluting breath of Burslem and Stoke, Stockport, Newcastle and other unredeemable places.

In the higher parts of the town, around the market-place, the streets are irregular, bearing all the charm of age. A charm which finds its focus in the old grey church, with its sloping disused churchyard, at the lower corner of which — against what is now called Little France — a handful of French prisoners are laid to rest; the officers, with all the decorum of the eighteenth century, some little distance from their men.

Those were troublesome days. But now the dead, French and English alike, lie at peace beneath the crowded grey stones ; while the living — who sit each evening on the circular seat beneath the ancient lime tree, and look away across the valley to the sunset — seem as blankly peaceful as their neighbours. Being, for the most part, people who have already grown to that age when there is a curious feeling of companionship for the stationary inhabitants of such places.

But further down the hill, and more particularly towards the south and east, one reaches a different world. Here are narrow streets of unredeemed ugliness. Row upon row of little houses with no single jutting gable or porch. Squatting there in silence all through the day, while the people are at the mills and the children at school : thin lipped, narrow and appallingly decent, close one against the other as the slats of a Venetian blind. So alike that one could not imagine a diverse thought in any one of them.

There may be crimes in Edge. But they are of the silent, the inward order; like the quiet, insistent socialism, which is — for the most part — more felt than heard. But there is nothing desperate: none of those frantic tragedies of love and hatred that one may meet with in any little Italian town, with just such struggling, rough-paved streets, climbing just such a little hill among other hills.

Almost at the same proud apex as the market proper, with its grey stone and black and white timbered houses, is the cattle market. And at the top left-hand corner of this, splaying out of it like the fingers from the palm of a hand, are more of these narrow streets ; while at the angle formed by two of them — fronting the cattle market and backed by the towering edifice of one of the largest mills — there once stood a small general dealer’s shop : with a window at either side; one looking down North Street, the other into court number five; a little triangular living-room and scullery being packed in at the back, along with an apologetic stairway, which squirmed its way almost unseen, to the upper story.

Here was the best bedroom, fronting the court, and the parlour fronting North Street. And above these the attics ; one used as a sort of store, and the other — at the time of which I write, and since he topped his fifth year — as Walter Bonnet Bellamy’s bedroom*.

One side of this attic was so low that, even at his first promotion to it, he could not stand upright ; while before he was fourteen the highest side missed the top of his head by a bare four inches : which left him at five foot one and a half.

But this was measuring him by his actual bodily height at that time — and he did not attain to his full growth till later in life than most young men of his own class, who seem to get nipped off, as it were, at sixteen or seventeen — for Walter Bellamy’s spirit soared far above the entire house, while as yet it was only necessary for him to lower his head the merest fraction, in order to stand upright at the lowest side of the attic.

It had soared first when he discovered the joy of making people “ believe things ” by transmuting the commonplace and punishable pain of green apples — eaten surreptitiously and hurriedly before evening service — to the stirring of the Spirit. And of not only imposing on his mother, but so nearly imposing on himself, that one-half of him was present, as a wildly enthusiastic audience, while the other was wrung with supplication and prayer : to the wonder and edification of the congregation who entreated the Lord, to “ come down — ’ere, come right down ’ere ” — and behold this second infant Samuel.

Walter never quite forgot the fashion in which that one-half of him still soared, palpitating and triumphant, as he was led home by his mother’s hand, stared at in wonder as one who had testified, while the other half applauded and laughed, doubling itself up with unholy glee.

“ That ain’t nothing,” Willie Clarke declared next morning in the school yard, when young Bellamy’s boasting became unendurable. “ Any ’un could do the like o’ that ; yer shud just ’ear me testify.”

“ Do it then,” shouted Walter, very red in the face. “ Do it then.” And “ Testify, testify ! ” yelled the other pupils.

But Willy merely stood on one foot; rubbed the heel of the other up and down the calf of his leg and said nothing. For the Infant Samuel could both fight and testify, and Willy could do neither.

The second step upwards was when he realised the power of a stare. A stout old lady had run into him in a crowd in the market-place one Wednesday evening, trod on both his toes and then abused him ; to be met with a stare of such cold contempt that she actually apologised.

Another child might not have realised the reason for this sudden change of front, but little Walter Bellamy had felt the widening of his eyeballs, the sudden stiffening of his entire face. He could not have put it into words, but he knew how it was done : did it again and again and tested its powers. It was a particularly unchildish achievement, but there was never anything really child-like about him. When he was a baby he was as enigmatic as an infant Buddha. When he lengthened out in slim boyhood he was like a faun; wholly pagan in his impulses, his reservations, his sudden abandonments to the sheer joy of life, his utter conscienceless.

His third step upwards was achieved when he realised the value of silence. He was only just eight when this occurred.

It happened that he was having his tea, in the casual way in which meals were taken “ up at Bellamy’s ” — where the most intimate and private things of life were split by the clang of the shop bell — while his mother busied herself making a pair of knickerbockers, of which he was in urgent need.

She had got them cut out and tacked all ready, and had just started one seam when the needle of her machine broke.

“ Why couldn’t it a’ gone an’ done that a’fore; all this while ? ” she enquired bitterly, as though the machine were sentient and self-propelling, and might in common decency have worked off its ill-humour before she touched it. Then — still complaining of “ things,” which seemed to have a peculiarly nagging way of treating her as they treated no one else — she inserted a fresh needle and started the machine again, finished a whole seam, regardless of the rasping hiccough with which it progressed, and drew out her work to find a black welter of heavily looped stitches.

“If that ain’t like my luck? I’ll never not get ’em done, and fer yer to wear them ter-morrow ; with all I ’ave ter do an’ all. Did yer ever see the like o’ that ? ”

She appealed to Walter who regarded the garment held out for his inspection with cold distaste. He hated the acid smell of the cheap serge, and the unbleached calico with which it was lined — each seam stitched in one and each a torture. He did not want the knickers finished, he preferred his easy rags: he could always boast of his “best” at home, but with his “best” on, he could make no show whatever.

Despite this, however, his pride of knowledge triumphed over all else.

Without a word he dropped from his chair; knelt down beside the machine, and began to loosen the screw which held the needle.

“ What art thee arter now ? Dwarn’t thee go tamperin’ with that machine,” interposed his mother.

But without taking the faintest notice of her words the boy removed the needle. Turned it round and round in his fingers examining it carefully; replaced it, screwed it tight, and returning to his place at the littered table, dragged his lesson books towards him, remarking : — “ It’ull go now.”

With a sniff of incredulity, merely to show him his mistake, Mrs. Bellamy ripped out the loose stitches, raised the foot of the machine, slipped the work under it, turned the handle; and followed in dazed surprise, the smooth, humming progress of the needle.

At the end of the seam she cut the work loose and carried it to the door that she might see better, hoping for the worst. She liked Wally to appear as a genius before all the world — • including the Lord — and a fool before her ; feeling that it made him more completely her own. For with no power of winning affection she was eternally famished for it.

But there was no fault to be found. The stitch was regular and unbroken.

“ What didst thee do ter it ? ” she demanded in amazement.

“ You’d got the groove at the wrong side, that’s all,” answered the boy without raising his head.

“ How dis’st thee knaw ? ”

“ Oi knawed.”

That was all.

Later on he heard his mother telling some one over the back-yard fence : — “ The things that there child knawed, without any telling, was past natcher ; ” and hugged himself, knowing of whom they spoke.

It did not seem necessary to tell any one that only the night before, playing in Jane Irwin’s kitchen, the same thing had happened, when Jane’s father had been appealed to — wrested away from the giddy delights of leaning against a post, outside the public-house at the corner — and had, naturally enough, sworn at his wife, or “ any danged ’ooman as doesn’t knaw which side ter put the groove o’ th’ needle.”

Walter did not know which side. He merely jumped to the conclusion that, as Mrs. Bellamy had undoubtedly set it in the wrong side, the reverse must be right.

Next week he was put in a hole by some other woman, right off at Battle Green, sending her little boy to ask him to come and set her machine right for her also.

Merely as a means of gaining time, he said he didn’t understand any but Singer’s machines, and by some happy chance it was not a Singer. On which he declared no other machines were worth bothering over, and so went his proud way, with his glory no wit diminished.

He even got over the obvious commonness, the palpable home-madeness of his new knickers.

“ Ma says as ’ow they’re good enough fur Edge, an’ I’m ter save mer tailor-mades till I go ter Stoke ter me gran’- mither’s.”

Walter’s father and mother were both orphans. But once he invented a grandmother he had to stick to her. Though even then having created her himself, he was better off than other children with real grandparents, in that he could do as he pleased with her. Make her what he liked. Cause her to keep the biggest sweetie shop in Stoke, and wear purple roses in her hat ; and have a little boy who had grown up to be a big mill-owner, “ same as Morrison up street.” If he had known of any higher rank, the fictitious uncle should have had it.

Morrison, the original founder of the firm where Walter’s father worked, was the wealthiest, and the oldest mill-owner in Edge, and used this fact as a sort of battering-ram, a species of steam-hammer, or punching-machine against all humble folk. Not that he really meant unkindly — as long as the workers kept their place, and he seemed to have a private understanding with the Almighty as to what that was — but because his very kindness was of such a quality as to cause the recipient to writhe with shame.

Chapter II

B ELLAMY senior was a weaver. His father and mother were both of French origin, and it was from his maternal grandmother that young Walter got his second name of Bonnet — pronounced Bonne. Hardly any one in Edge can speak French, but when a name is French they keep the accent of it pure: which they would not, or could not, do in Stoke. Just before young Walter left school, however, the study of that language was added to the already gorged curriculum ; and he took to it like a duck to water. But he did not tell his parents that he was learning; he simply stuffed himself with words, or short sentences, and shot them out at the most impressive moments : regardless of the sense, which did not matter, for nobody knew what they meant.

“ Comment vous portez-vous ? La soeur a mon bon canif , le tasse est sur la table. Le chat, le chien, le beurre, la maison.” And such like, all in a breath.

When asked what that “ bletherim ” was about, he replied that it was French; and on being further pressed to know how he learnt it, merely answered coldly — with that odd lift of his chin, that blankly indifferent look in his dark eyes : —

“ Oh ! it just cum.”

The extraordinary part of it all was that no one ever doubted it was French as he said, though for all they knew it might have been absolute gibberish. But few people ever did doubt Bellamy : that was what made his pretensions so fatally easy.

Only Jane really knew and understood him. She learnt French in the same class. But for all that she would not give him away: though she happened to be walking home from chapel with the Bellamys, when the conversation which I have recorded, took place. For Walter had no fear of being betrayed by Jane; clearly as he realised that she saw through him.

Later, however, she took him to task.

He was loitering about with a group of other boys at the dip of Little France, quite a long way from his own home and possible calls to Sunday school, when Jane passed him on her demure way back to tea: paused, looked back and called to him.

“ Walter Bellamy ! I want ter speak ter yer.”

“ A’right,” answered young Bellamy and joined her, not the least afraid of being laughed at for “ goin’ along o’ a soppy girl; ” his last boast being that he had learnt Ju-Jitsu from a Japanese nobleman who boarded with his grandmother in Stoke: an assertion which he was never called upon to prove, the name being enough.

“ Why didn’t thee tell thwar mither as thwart learnin’ French at school?” she demanded.

At that time Jane was a slim person of eleven with her hair done in two tight plaits turned up and tied with a black bow at the back of either ear. If some impish hairdresser had done it thus while she slept on Saturday night it could not have been better ; for the whole of her face tilted upwards, from the small creamy chin, the ridiculous nose and the dark lashes to the softly pencilled brows with the odd little twist at the ends of them. It was a face of which every curve said, “ kiss me ; ” and was then given the lie by the gravity of the wide grey eyes.

Jane’s eyes burnt like two steady, never waning moons in her delicate, pastel tinted face.

Walter Bellamy’s danced like Will-o’-th’-Wisps : — that is, when he was not practising his famous stare.

“ Why should I tell ’em?”

“ Why not? ’Tain’t honest”

“ Honest, la ! ” That’s the way he said it : where the other boys would have said “ lor ” or “ Good Lord ! ”

“ You’ll burn in Hell, Walter Bellamy ! sure as sure.”

Jane stood facing him. Her small hands in their white cotton gloves clasped on the top of her umbrella, for it had threatened rain, her grave eyes full on him, her quaint little face holding both wonder and disapproval ; and yet withal an unwilling admiration. That sort of admiration which rendered her never quite free of Walter Bellamy, then or at any other time of her life. For despite — or perhaps because of — her understanding of him she was ceaselessly fascinated: knowing that his complete marvellousness had nothing to do with Divine Inspiration but, more wonderful still — was the outcome of sheer cleverness of an almost diabolical and most perilous kind.

“ Burn in Hell, all shrivelled up for ever and ever, without so much as a drawp of warter ter quench thwar thirst.” She piled on the agony for her own edification and strengthening, for somehow Heaven seemed to have grown rather thin with no Walter to share it. But Walter scarcely seemed to be listening. He was swinging to and fro on his toes and heels, his rather prominent dark eyes raised to the rough outline of moorland which hung frowning above them.

“ It’s foine,” he said dreamily : “ with yer Sunday shoen on ter bend an’ swing yer foot. When once I’m in work I’ll never not wear clogs no more.”

“ But why did yer go fur ter say it? ” persisted Jane ; still firm on the subject of the French language.

“ Oh! Oi dwarn’t knaw. It’s queer, Jane:” he turned to her with an air of engaging candour ; “ everything as is really an’ truly, is that dull. An’ things that one gets out o’ one’s head — oh they’re different; they maekes ’un feel all a tiptoed up like these ’ere Sunday shoen.”

“ But why didn’t yer say as the lady teacher taught you ? — What ’ull yer do now if yer get a prize, as she said yer ’ud? Ye’ll be fine an’ caught there, Walter Bellamy.”

“ Oi warn’t, I’ll put ’un back o’ chimney. Oi dwarn’t care fur prizes, silly books as no ’un wants fur ter read,” he answered loftily. Though the thought flicked him. What was the good of gaining a prize that one could not show? But for all that he had been right. It was a stupid thing for a boy who had once possessed a French grandfather and grandmother to sit down and learn the language out of a book like any one else. It was far more exciting to pretend that it had just “come” as a sort of divine influx, or was part of that something else which the French teacher had spoken of when Walter made one of his characteristic gestures with his hands. For a moment or two his mind fumbled for the word, and then he got it — “ hereditary.”

At first he thought of offering this new theory to Jane;

but at her next words : — “ To say it corned ! It beats me how folks believe yer!” he rejected the idea and returned to his original statement.

“ It corned ! I said as how it corned, an’ it’s gospel truth ; lashins more corned than teacher ever learnt Oi, lashins an’ leavins!” He swung himself joyously to and fro on his toes — during the week-days so tightly imprisoned in brasstipped wood : — “ ’Side that it corned into yed o’ Inspector ter send taecher, an’ taecher corned ter Edge. If she brought the French ter me, it corned; anyways it corned.” Jane’s head was reeling : — “ It corned as sure as that there fire corned when Abraham was shut off from offering up Isaac.”

“ Walter Bellamy ! That there’s the Bible, ain’t yer ’shamed o’ yer’sen ! ”

But the boy’s eyes, which had been vaguely fixed on the heights, were suddenly filled with a purpose. It was the thought of Isaac bound upon the altar which did it ; for, as always, he had seen the whole thing in a mental flash. There were altar stones still- — not more than three miles away — on the height, where the Danes had offered up human sacrifice.

“ Let’s go for a walk up along the Hanging Rock.”

“ What are yer talkin’ on ? It’s three miles good, an’ it’s gone four now, close on tea-time.”

“Who cares for tea?” retorted Walter, and flung off across the lower path of the churchyard: then threw over his shoulder : — “ you needn’t come if yer afear’d. I don’t want no silly ninnies wid me. There’s kirk-grims up along the Rocks.”

Jane knew this. Knew also that in addition to kirk-grims there were h.ell-horses and headless riders who made a horror of that wild moorland which overhung the peaceful town, with its thin film of Sabbath smoke. But for all that she followed.

Jane never forgot that walk; sensing, for the first time, something wild and terrible in nature : alien to the monotonous, toil-ordered life of the little town.

Walter Bellamy was touched by it also, but to a different tune : realising it as a setting to himself, a swirl of circling

BELLAMY n

wind-driven clouds in the midst of which he felt himself the hub.

It was a long pull, all up hill. At first a suavely winding road, then a rough track, then a scramble up to the top of the great overhanging rocks which edge the moor, menacing the valley.

By the time the two children topped them — Walter dragging Jane by the wrist, his chin high, his eyes ablaze, already living through all that he would have to tell to his schoolfellows — the west was a flame of scarlet and gold, and the remainder of the sky a piled mass of purple and leaden grey clouds, which swept great shadows, like the advancing battalion of a divided host, across the moors.

Walter had read the story of the struggle between Danes and Britains, in the history of Edge at the public library, and now his memory, snatching back at it, remoulded it to the present. The greater clouds, with their heavy massed shadows were the Danes, the light skirmishing shadows were the Britains — running low, skirling with the wind. And among these, now on one side, now on the other, the wild moor folk slid shrieking: the kirk-grims and goblins, the ghostly horse-men and hell-hounds, witches and war-locks : while one long hurrying shadow, heading straight towards where the children stood — poised upon the huge rock, beneath which lay an infinite stretch of mist-haunted valley — there was the phantom coach, which plies nightly across the moor, in search of just such belated wanderers.

“ It wur Clowes the tailor as told me ’o ’un : he saw ’un with his own eyes, he did : fair awful it was too. ’Ee, that ’ud make yer yair stand on end fur sure, Jane Irwin. That ’ud make yer throw a fit, it hid ! ” cried Walter, sing-songing above the wind, the crest of his dark hair swept back, erect on his forehead. “ ’Un wur drawn by six horses, an’ hound dogs ran along o’ it. An’ the man as draw ’un, he carried the reins in his one yand, an’ his yead under t’other arm — all bluggy it wur ; and his eyes glimming. ‘ Get ’ee up an’ ’ave a ride/ he says ter Clowes : ‘ get ’ee up an’ ’ave a ride.’ What will yer do if he come an’ says that ter yer, Jane Irwin? Clowes he be a mon, a grown mon, an’ yet he throwed a fit he wur that skeered, an’ there he lay till mornin’. Gummy — but don’t Oi wish ’ee’d cum ter me, Oi’d not throw no fit, not Oi. If he’d come ter me now, and say ’ave a ride along o’ Oi ”

“ Fool — Walter Bellamy ! fool ! ” The chill wind beat upon little Jane: flattening out her white frock against her back. It was cold and strange up there on the height — just such a place as that to which Satan had led the Lord to tempt him — and there was something about Walter Bellamy which seemed terribly suited to the place, that crest of dark hair of his was almost a horn — but still her sense of logic held ; and after all what devil had there ever been with but one horn.

“ How could ’un talk ter yer, yer great fool, or ter tailor Clowes neither, if his yead was under his yarm ? Such silliness ! ”

Walter Bellamy leant forward: either he had whitened from the effect of his imagination, or the gathering twilight had sapped all the colour from his cheeks : — “ ’Un talks out o’ the yole whur — whur his yead wur chopped off,” he shrieked ; “ ’un makes a great round yole like this.” He opened his mouth, and drew it into a circle with stiffened lips. Then suddenly flung round towards the downward path. “ He’s cornin’ ! he’s cornin’ ! look behind yer, Jane, he’s cornin’,” he cried. And, wild with fear, without even waiting to look behind her, Jane followed him: scrambling and stumbling, falling and bruising hands and knees, picking herself up and pushing on again.

It was only Walter Bellamy’s foolishness; she knew it. But the minister had been preaching on Hell that very day — on the graves giving up their dead : and now — with the hurrying clouds, the wind, and gathering darkness — the moon seemed bursting with a fearsome pageant of past life.

And this was not all. Walter Bellamy was frightened too.

All at once his imagination had taken the bit between its teeth. The Death Coach was really there ; he could hear the wheels, the panting of the horses, the short yapping breath of the dogs, and catching Jane by the arm he dragged her on ; pulling her to her feet when she fell, his face white amid the darkness. For the whole moor was alive, and at their heels. The distorted thorn trees waving wild arms; the gorse bushes, hunched together, running low beneath their shields.

He was terrified, really terrified : yet with an exhilarating fear, which held in its heart a wave of triumph.

No other boy in Edge had ever braved such a foe — for even then, still running, he forgot that he ran — confronted the headless driver: dared him to his oddly placed face: “ sauced ” him, without even a thought of throwing a fit.

“ An’ Oi said ter ’un,” — Jane heard him next morning, holding forth in the school yard, to an admiring and awestricken audience : “ Oi dwarn’t want none o’ yer dirty old coaches — Oi ain’t got no time fur any o’ yer broken down owd mokes ; t’aint likely, when my own gran’maither, along at Stoke, has two motor-cars o’ ’er very own.”

“An’ what did ’un say then, Wally? Tell us what ’un said then.”

“ He didn’t not say nothing — he was fair sneeped. Him an’ his rotten old coach ! ” answered Walter contemptuously. Then his expression changed; he gave one furtive glance round, as if half afraid of what he was going to say, and his voice dropped ; “ but the chap inside ”

“ Yer didna say that there wur no chap inside.”

“ Oi can’t say everything all at once, can Oi, stupid ? ”

“ Oi dwarn’t believe there was no chap. It’s all one o’ Wally Bellamy’s loys. Oi dwarn’t believe that ’ee never wur up the Rocks at all,” put in a scornful voice.

“ Yer dwarn’t then,” Walter flung round with blazing eyes. “ Well yer just ask my maither; an’ ask owd Jimmy Clarke, an’ Maester Irwin as was cornin’ out wid lanterns ter look fur us. Jest yer ask ’un ”

“ But tell us who was inside. Dwarn’t mind ’im, Wally. Tell us who was inside,” interrupted a chorus of voices.

“ Oi’ll not be talkin’ ter folk as dwarn’t believe what Oi seys.”