Mr. Tasker's Gods (21 page)

T
HE tramp had the fortune of a victor with him in his walk. The beer that he had drunk lent him wings. There was no need for him to shuffle now. He could even strike fire with his new boots on the stones in the road. ‘See what drink does for a man!’ he kept saying. He meant to earn that bottle.

The passengers who left the last up-train for Tadnoll were a girl and a man, Alice and Henry. The day had not been a great success for them. They had come home without the ring, and Alice had not enjoyed the pictures. Henry was
surprised
. He had thought that every girl liked the pictures. He was amused that he could not get the grin of the skull out of his head.

On their way between the turf banks, Alice cowered against him. She could not hide her fear of coming evil. Henry was happy. He loved her. He talked of the stars and told her their names. All at once he felt her whole body tremble, and he saw in front of them a man who stood right in their way in the middle of the path.

For a moment Henry felt the terror of Alice. She hid her face against his shoulder, but he still led her on. When they came up to the man, Henry knew him to be the local tramp, Mr. Tasker’s father. Henry turned a little to one side so that they might get past. He wondered
if the tramp had been drinking. The man moved again in their way.

‘Do ’ee see thik bloody ditch? That’s where ’ee be goin’!’ the tramp shouted, shaking his huge fist.

Henry spoke cheerfully to Alice, telling her, as if she were a child, to run home and get supper.

Alice still clung to him.

‘Run, dear, and tell Miss Neville about the ring. Tell her we could not get the ring, we were too late. We spent too much time at the pictures. Run quickly!’

Henry tenderly released her hold, and she like an arrow darted past the tramp and was gone. And Henry faced the Ancient of Days, the dread,
everlasting
presence that had entered into the tramp.

‘What do you want with me now?’ Henry asked.

‘I’ll break ’ee’s blasted ’ead!’ was the response.

In Henry’s eyes the tramp’s form grew to a stupendous size. Having taken into his being the whole brute force of the world, moving through the eternal ages, he was become as God himself. At last Henry knew that the monster from below, the immortal beginning and ending of man’s nature, the first and the last, was before him; even the everlasting mud, the background of all life, to whom our few days are as nothing, and we, leaves driven before the wind.

Through Henry blazed a fierce lightning. His soul burned with fire. He had felt a spark
of the same anger when for the first time he had heard the dairyman speak in his real voice to his family, and when his brother had spoken to him on the stormy night when he had fled from the vicarage.

Henry shook with anger. He too would defy, he too would strike once, one blow and die! Henry rushed at Mr. Tasker’s father—and was met halfway by the tramp’s boot.

Natural instinct had informed Mr. Tasker’s father that a man does not die of a kick, and can, if need be, very well stand more. Acting by this knowledge, he repeatedly kicked the face and body of the fallen Henry.

At last after a final good one, the tramp left his victim lying unconscious, and bleeding badly from a deep wound over the eye, caused by the iron of the boot-toe.

The tramp left the scene of his victory and crossed the heath by a different path, that passed the back of Miss Neville’s cottage. As he went by he saw three women with a lantern come out of the cottage and go in the direction of Tadnoll station. The tramp quickened his pace. He was thinking of the reward that a man gets when he fights on the strongest side in the world. The God-like power that he had drawn out of the earth had given him a divine thirst. He longed to put that bottle to his lips and drink. He stood for a moment upon the hill beside the lonely thorn, and listened to the voice of some creature
that made a low moan near the dairy. From quite near him, he heard the almost human scream of a hare caught in a gin. He would have that hare after his drink, he thought.

Mr. Tasker’s father lightly descended into the valley. Making his way to the inn, he climbed through a gap in the hedge. He had once or twice before entered that way to steal eggs. Under the innkeeper’s window he took up a little clod of earth and threw it, striking the lattice. In a minute or two the window opened, and the innkeeper’s voice said ‘Damn!’

‘Kicked ’un,’ was the reply.

‘A damned lie!’ said the innkeeper.

‘Kicked ’un,’ came again from below.

This time the tramp was believed, and the publican, leaning out, handed him the coveted bottle that the farmer had paid for. The
innkeeper
closed the window and retired, just having time to see Mr. Tasker’s father draw the cork and drink.

Outside the inn, the gentleman of the road sat down under the hedge and drank again. He would have liked to do a little more dancing with his new boots that night. He drank again, staggered to his feet and leaned over the dairy gate, looking towards his son’s home. The dark cowsheds slumbered under the stars. A hungry grunt came from a pig.

The warmth of the tramp’s feelings made him unbutton his coat. It was the only upper
garment 
that he had. His coarse hairy chest received the cool night wind. Mr. Tasker’s father tilted up the bottle and drank.

The autumn wind moved about the fields. The church owl flying homeward with a rat in its claws was aware of a man crossing her path. She passed to the right instead of the left of the vicarage.

Mr. Tasker’s father, bottle in hand, staggered across the meadow. His happiness was complete. He belonged to the élite for whom the world is made. A black shadow crossed the cow-yard and slunk under the wall.

Leaning over the yard gate, he finished the bottle and held it upside down. Two drops of spirit fell into the straw. Mr. Tasker’s father had never felt so complete a happiness before. Why should he not go in and smash the head of that huge black sow with his foot? It would be a pleasant early morning sight for his son. He unlatched the gate and entered.

A dark beast crouched under the wall, ready to spring. The huge sows lay sleeping. Others of the gods lay about in the soft dung. There was not room enough for so many in the sties.

The tramp raised his foot to kick. The other foot was unable to bear his weight. He lurched forward, staggered, and fell. A wolf-like shadow sprang from the wall and had him by the throat. A beast’s cry—and silence. The teeth of the dog gripped deep. It had not forgotten the smell
inside the felt hat, torn bits of the hat were still in the bottom of its tub. For five minutes it held on. Then it let go the body, and curled up at the end of its barrel, sniffing angrily at the pieces of torn felt. As it passed the largest sow, the dog moaned. It was a way it had, to moan in the night. It moaned like a beast in pain.

The two sows raised their snouts. They grunted greedily at the stars. They smelt blood. They had been taught by man to devour carrion. A day or two before they had torn to pieces the carcass of a cow that Farmer Dane had sold to Mr. Tasker for five shillings. The largest sow struggled to its legs and sniffed. Was there still some cow left? She moved towards a dark object that lay in the straw, and from whose throat blood oozed. The other gods were roused. They had no desire to be left out of the feast. The tusks of Mr. Tasker’s lately purchased prize boar were quite able to break the outer covering and the inner skin of a man.

That last cry, of the father, did awaken the son. Mr. Tasker heard a noise in the night. He thought for a moment about the little pig that he had got for nothing, and fell again into a sound slumber.

The hare died in the gin. The owl tore out the bowels of the rat. In the heath cottage, Molly covered the face of the dead Henry.

A
FRIENDLY feeling towards the world awoke Mr. Tasker early the next morning. Besides the recollection of the little pig, he felt sure that something had been about in the night. At 4.30 he carried his lantern into the yard and saw his father, or rather what his gods had left of him.

Mr. Tasker had never suffered from nerves. He dragged his father into the corner where the cow had been eaten. Fetching a fork he covered up the remains of the man and of the cow with dung.

That same morning the officious policeman of South Egdon had the happy surprise of reporting two deaths to the local coroner. One a common cattle drover found dead in the suicide’s corner of the Egdon churchyard, and the other, Henry Turnbull, a clergyman’s son who had been kicked to death somewhere on the heath.

Besides the policeman, there was another happy man who rejoiced in the village. He was Mr. Duggs, who helped to carry Henry Turnbull to the Shelton churchyard. On this occasion he was careful not to be the last of the bearers, having learned by experience the size and weight of the Rev. John’s foot. Mr. Duggs passed a remark at the inn that Henry’s sins could not have been as heavy as his father’s.

‘Only God Almighty knows about that,’ said the undertaker’s man, who went to chapel.

Mr. Duggs looked at him, but did not reply.

Dr. George brought his mother in a closed hired car. His own happened to be out of order. Mrs. Turnbull, seeing her old home so altered, burst into tears, and only recovered herself when she came to the grave, remembering, as she afterwards said to her loving sons, ‘that we all have to go.’ She was permitted by George to accept a pot of black-currant jam from a village woman. She longed to taste it to see whether it was as good as her own used to be.

Unluckily, when they returned to the doctor’s house the careless chauffeur let the jam fall, and Mrs. Turnbull wept again. She cried all the way upstairs, and sat down and cried again with her knitting on her lap. The black-currant jam was mixed with the mud of the road, and Mrs. Turnbull was unable to do anything else for three days but cry; her son even being obliged to guide her hand when she wrote her weekly cheque for her board. That week he explained to her that it must be a pound more, to help to pay for the hire of the closed motor car.

There now remains only a thimbleful of sand to trickle through the glass of our story.

Miss Annie Brent, who once figured as Mrs. Roude, married the gentleman of the Penny Shop. She had her troubles, for her husband used to give brooches to a dark-haired young woman who lived in Station Road.

‘They are all alike, these men!’ thought
Annie. When her little boy was born, she smiled and said she was glad baby was a boy, and, sleeping with little Harold in her arms, she dreamt that he was running to the grammar school to learn Latin.

As time went on, the Rev. John grew stouter, and the intervals between his real work in life became so short that he had no time to fill his pipe, and was forced to buy expensive cigars with ‘the dear girl’s’ money. His desires had learned, with the help of many rounds of beef, to wisely stay at home. Besides the cigars, ‘the dear girl’ gave him two children, who were undoubtedly impressed by the size of their father’s boots.

The Rev. Edward Lester likewise followed the excellent counsel of the Book of Wisdom, and partook, without asking needless questions, of the bread and the wine. In course of time, he became a canon of the Church, because his face grew to the proper length required for that place in the upper ranks.

At Portstown, happiness came again to Mrs. Fancy’s door. The Army of the Lord had been obliged to move, for the most simple of all reasons—that their place, even with the pictures of the devil, did not pay. The poor in that street grew tired of giving their souls and their pence. Men and women of the old type came again to the lodgings, and more than one young girl found it fit into the order of things to walk into the backwater to hide her shame.

This change was not Mrs. Fancy’s only good fortune. She married the jobbing gardener, and they walked to chapel together when he preached. When there was another preacher they watched the behaviour of the street from their front room. But her real triumph came when she could afford a new sofa. She then moved the one that had been so great a danger to her lodgers, upstairs.

Alice lived with Molly Neville on the heath, and was always quite a respected visitor in her friend Annie’s house at Maidenbridge.

Molly Neville, in her cushioned chair, read many books. But her happiness always remained in her own thoughts.

Rose Netley returned to the town with her mother, but her girlish gaiety never came back to her. Her old occupation, the social work of saving her sisters, had been taken up by others, who had as their head the mayor of the town, who had made his money letting furnished flats. The accepted plan of the new order of reform was to turn every man, woman, and child into the unthinking slave of the wealthy owners and managers of a rich empire.

The faithful Malden used to sit by Rose as she lay in her garden. He looked so sad, that to make him smile she agreed to learn to play chess.

About three weeks after the death of Henry Turnbull, Mr. Tasker found fault with a certain corner of his yard. He damned it every time
he went out to milk. ‘The cows were always slipping down just there,’ he said. He damned his wife for suggesting that the manure might be moved.

There was in the winter more time to spare for the dairyman, as many of the cows went dry and the others gave only a small yield of milk. There was always an hour or two in the middle of the day that Mr. Tasker might spend as he chose. One morning Mr. Tasker took out his horse, called his dog, and, borrowing a dung-cart from Farmer Dane, led the horse and cart to a
chalkpit
that was a few hundred yards up the farmer’s lane. Taking off his coat, he quickly filled the cart with chalk.

‘You be working,’ said the farmer who rode by.

When the load reached the dairy, his girl slaves pulled and lugged at the gate to open it wide enough to let the cart through. Why did not Mr. Tasker remove the precious dung from the corner before he turned up the cart? Was it possible that he could have forgotten the value of dung? He had girls who would move the foulest mess at his nod. Had Mr. Tasker
forgotten
that he was a father and owned children? Anyhow, to the utter astonishment of his wife, here was Mr. Tasker turning out load after load, three loads a day of chalk upon a wealth of rich manure.

Having at last satisfied himself that he had made a safe path to his cow-shed, he returned the
cart to the farmer. When he had finished milking the cows, he came in to his tea, after first throwing a sheep’s leg that Mr. Dane’s shepherd had given him, to his dog.

While she helped her husband to a large slab of cheese, Mrs. Tasker said:

‘They police ’aven’t catched father?’

‘No, they ’ant,’ replied Mr. Tasker. ‘Father be gone to Canada, right enough.’

And Mr. Tasker went out to feed his gods.

THE END