Читать книгу The Collected Tales of A. E. Coppard - A. E. Coppard - Страница 22

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Down in the village the women called him “the dirty old man,” the children did not seem to notice him, and their fathers called him “the Owd Venrable,” or old Dick, with a sigh as of vague envy. There was little cause for that, he living in a wood in a little old tent shanty built of boughs and string and tarpaulin, with a heap of straw to sleep on. Outside the tent was his fire, and he had dwelt there so long that the mound of wood ash had grown almost as big as his house. Seventy years old he was, an old venerable ragged crippled man using two sticks, with a cheery voice and a truculent spirit, but honest as spring water, sharing his last drop with the last man or the first—he invariably shared theirs. When he was drunk he sang, when he was not drunk he talked for evermore about nothing, to nobody, for his tent was in a wood, a little clearing in a great wood, and the wood was away, a long way, from anywhere, so that he lived, as you might say, on air and affability and primed his starved heart with hope. A man like that could hope for anything, and a mere anything—twopence—would bring him bliss, but his undeviating aspiration, an ambition as passionate as it was supine, was to possess a donkey. He had pestered many sympathetic people who had the means; often he had sent out that dove of his fancy from the ark of his need, but it had never returned, at least not with a donkey; and never an ass fell like a bolt from heaven. If it had done, it would surely have taken no hurt, such a grand wood it was, miles of it, growing up and down the hills and hills, and so thickly bosomed that if you had fallen from a balloon into the top of that wood it would have been at the last like sinking into a feather bed. And full of birds and game. And gamekeepers. The keepers did not like him to be there, it was unnatural to them, but keepers come and go, the shooting was let to a syndicate, and he had been there so long that new keepers found him where the old ones had left him. They even made use of him; he swept the rides and alley-ways for the shooters, marked down the nests of pheasants, and kept observation on rabbits and weasels and the flocks of pigeons which anybody was welcome to shoot. Sometimes he earned a few shillings by plashing hedgerows or hoeing a field of roots, but mostly he was a “kindler,” he gathered firewood and peddled it on a hand-truck around the villages. That was why he dreamed of donkey and nothing but donkey; a creature whose four feet together were not so big as one of its ears, would carry double and treble the load of kindling and make him a rich man.

One day he tramped right over to the head keeper’s house to deliver a message, and there Tom Hussey had shown him a litter of retriever puppies he was tending. They had a pedigree, Tom Hussey said, as long as the shafts of a cart; the mother herself was valued at fifty golden guineas, but the sire belonged to Lord Camover and banknotes wouldn’t buy that dog, nor love nor money—not even the crown of England. There they were, six puppies just weaned and scrambling about, beautiful bouncing creatures, all except one that seemed quiet and backward.

“That one?” Tom Hussey said; “I be going to kill her. Sha’s got a sort of rupture in her navel.”

“Don’t do that,” said old Dick, for he knew a lot about dogs as well as birds and lambs and donkeys. “Give it to I.” And Tom Hussey gave him the pup then and there, and he took it home to his tent and bandaged it artfully with a yard strip of canvas, and called it Sossy because it was so pert.

Every day the old man attended to that bandage round Sossy’s stomach—he knew a whole lot about dogs—and the dog throve and grew, and every night nuzzled in the straw beside him; and Dick rejoiced. They lived heartily, for Dick was a nimble hand with a wire, and rabbits were plentiful, and he was always begging for bones and suchlike for his Sossy. Everywhere in that wood he took Sossy with him and he trained her so in the arts of obedience that she knew what he wanted even if he only winked one eye. After about six months of this he took off her bandage for the last time and threw it away. There she was, cured and fit and perfect, a fine sweet flourishing thing. What a glossy coat! What a bushy tail! And her eyes—they made you dream of things!

Awhile after that Tom Hussey came into the wood to shoot some pigeons. There was always a great flock of them somewhere in the wood, and when they rose up from the trees the whirr of their thousand wings was like the roar of a great wave. Well, Tom Hussey came, and as he passed near the tent he called out the good of the morning to old Dick.

“Come here,” cried Dick, and Tom Hussey went, and when he saw that dog you could have split him with a lath of wood he was so astonished. Sossy danced round him in a rare flurry, nuzzling at his pockets.

“She’s hungry,” he said.

“No, she ain’t. Get down, you great devil! No, she ain’t hungry, she’s just had a saucepan full o’ shackles—get down!—that saucepan there what I washes myself in.”

When Tom Hussey shot a pigeon she stood to the gun and brought the bird back like an angel.

“Dick, you can swap that dog for a donkey whenever you’ve a mind to,” Tom Hussey said.

“Ain’t she got a mouth? I tell you,” Dick cried joyfully.

“Like silk,” was the rejoinder.

“It’s a gift.”

“Born,” chanted Tom Hussey.

“It’s a gift, I tell you.”

“Born. She’s worth twenty pounds. You sell that bitch and get you a donkey, quick.”

“No,” deliberated the veteran. “I shan’t do that.”

“Twenty pound she’s worth, of good money.”

“I shan’t have ’ee, I tell you.”

“You sell that bitch and get you a donkey. That’s my last word to you,” Tom Hussey said as he stalked away.

But that “Owd Venrable” was a far-seeing sagacious creature, a very artful old man he was, and when the time came for it he and Tom Hussey conjured up a deal between themselves. It would have been risky for Tom Hussey, but as he was changing to another estate he chanced it and he connived and Sossy was mated on the sly to one of his master’s finest retrievers, as good as ever stepped into a covert, and by all accounts the equal of Lord Camover’s dog that had begot Sossy. So when Tom Hussey departed, there was old Dick with his valuable dog, looking forward to the few weeks hence when Sossy would have the finest bred puppies of their kind in the land. He scarcely dared to compute their value, but it would surely be enough to relegate the idea of a donkey to the limbo of outworn and mean conceits. No, if all went well he would have a change of life altogether. He would give up the old tent; it was rotting, he was tired of it. If things came wonderful well he would buy a nag and a little cart and a few cokernuts and he would travel the round of the fairs and see something of the world again. Nothing like cokernuts for a profitable trade. And perhaps he might even find some old “gal” to go with him.

This roseate dream so tinted every moment of his thoughts that he lived, as you might say, like a poet, cherishing the dog, the source and promise of these ideals, with fondness and joy. The only cloud on the horizon of bliss was the new gamekeeper, a sprag young fellow, who had taken a deep dislike to him. Old Dick soon became aware of this animosity, for the new keeper kept a strict watch upon his neighbourhood and walked about kicking over Dick’s snares, impounding his wires, and complaining of his dirty habits and his poaching. And it was true, he was dirty, he had lost his pride, and he did poach, just a little, for he had a belly that hungered like any other man’s, and he had a dog.

Early one morning as Dick was tending his fire the new keeper strolled up. He was a wry-mouthed slow-speaking young chap, and he lounged there with his gun under his arm and his hands in his pockets. Neither spoke for a while, but at last the keeper said:

“It burns well.”

“Huh, and so would you burn well,” grinned the old man, “if I cut you atop of it.”

For fully two minutes the young keeper made no retort, he was a rather enraging young keeper. Then he said: “Ah, and what do you think you may be doing round here?”

The old man flung a few pinches of tea into a can of boiling water.

“You get on with your job, young feller, and I’ll get on with mine.”

“What is your job?”

The “Owd Venrable” eyed him angrily.

“My job? I’ll tell you—it’s to mind my own business. You’ll learn that for yourself later on, I ’spects, when you get the milk outer your mouth—you ought to, however. Wait till yer be as old as I.”

“Ah,” drawled the keeper, “I don’t mind waiting.”

“I met chaps like you before,” the old man began to thunder. “Thousands on ’em. D’you know what happened to the last one?”

“Died of fleabites, I shouldn’t wonder,” was the placid rejoinder.

“I had him on the hop. When he warn’t thinking,” the old man, ruminating, grinned, “I wuz! I give him a kick o’ the stomach as fetched him atween wind and water, and down he went, clean as a smelt. D’you know what I did then?”

“Picked his pocket, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Yah! Never stole nothing from no man, ’cept it was my own. Clean as a smelt, I tell you.”

“Well,” the new keeper slowly said, shifting his gun from the left arm to the right, “I can take a hiding from any man....”

“Ah, and from any old woman, too, I should say.”

“... from any man,” continued the imperturbable one, “as can give it me—if you know of one.” He began to pick his teeth with a matchstick. “Did you get my message?” he more briskly added.

“What message?”

“I sent you a message.”

“Then you sent it by a wet hen. I an’t had no message.”

“I know you had it, but I’ll tell you again. I’ve got orders to clear you out of this wood, you and your dog. You can take your time, don’t want to be hard on you, but out you goes, and soon, you and your dog.”

“Well, we can go, my cunning feller, we can go.”

“That’s right, then.”

“We can go—when we’ve a mind to. But who’s a-going to look arter my job?”

“What job’s that?”

“Huh, what job!” the old man disgustedly groaned. “Why, who’s a-going to keep an eye on things, and they poachers, thousands on ’em, just waiting for to catch I asleep! But they can’t do it.”

“Naw, I shouldn’t think anyone could sleep in a hole like that!”

“Yah, I could sleep, I could sleep a sack o’ taters rotten! And who’s a-going to clear up when the storms been shamracking about the place? I cleans up the paths, I cleans ’em for one and all, and I cleans ’em for you. Some I does it right for and some I does it wrong. If I did it right for all, I’d be out of this world, seemly.”

“Who asked you to? Nobody asked you to, we can do without it, and we can do without you. So now I’ve told you.” With that the young keeper sauntered airily away.

“Yah!” the Old Venerable called after him. “Clean as a smelt, I tell you, clean as a smelt”; and as long as his adversary remained in view he continued to remind him of that excellent conclusion.

But despite his contempt the old man was perturbed; he knew the game was up, he would have to seek a lodging elsewhere. By the grace of fortune the blow had come just when it could least concern him; all he wanted was time for Sossy to rear her pups, and then he would go; then he would go gaily, driving his horse and cart like a man of property all over that Berkshire and that Oxfordshire, along with some old “gal.”

A week later Sossy was safely delivered of nine puppies. Miracles are possible—they must be—but it is not possible to anticipate a miracle: a litter of nine! They were born in the tent beside the man, and they all—Dick, Sossy, and the nine morsels—slept together, and in a few days, although Sossy, despite heroic feeding, began to grow lean, the pups were fat as slugs.

When they were seven days old the man got up one morning to go to a job of hedging. It was a bright, draughty March morn, and he noted the look of the early pink clouds. A fine day promised, though some of the clouds had a queer shape like a goose with its head turned backwards. That boded something! The blackies and thrushers sang beautiful. After Sossy had fed somewhat daintily from the same pot of “shackles” as himself, old Dick hung the sack over the tent opening and left her mothering the pups. He limped off to work. The hedge he was laying was on an upland farm that overlooked his wood. At midday when he lunched he could sit and stare over the vast stern brownness that was so soon to unbend in unbelievable trellises of leaves. Already the clearings and banks were freckled with primroses, the nut thickets hung with showers of yellow pods, and the pilewort’s cresset in the hedge was a beam to wandering bees. In all that vastitude there was one tiny hole into which he had crept like a snail for years and years, but it was too small to hide him for ever and ever. So now they would go, he and Sossy. Just beside him was a pond and the barns of the farm. Two white horses were nuzzling each other in the croft, and a magpie watched them from the cone of a stack. A red ox at the pond snuffled in the water, and as it lifted its head to stare at the old man streams of water pattered back from its hairy lips. Deftly the ox licked with its tongue first one nostril, then the other, but water still dribbled from its mouth in one long glutinous stripe. A large cloud hung above the scene, brooding, white and silent as a swan. Old Dick rose and stretched himself; the wind had died. When the afternoon had worn on he ceased work and turned home. Half-way through the woods he came to a clearing full of primroses, and on a bank, with her muzzle in a rich clump of the blooms, lay his dog, shot through the breast. The old man knelt down beside his dog, but there was nothing he could do, she had been dead a long time. He recalled hearing the shot of a gun, hours ago, not a sharp report, but sullen. Perhaps she had gone out for a scamper and had been chasing a rabbit, or perhaps she had left her litter in order to come to him. The keeper had shot her, shot a poor man’s dog, shot her dead. There was nothing he could do, the doom had come crushing even time in its swiftness.

“Fizzled and mizzled I am now,” he said forlornly, “and that’s a fact.”

He left her there and, conversing angrily, pottered home to his tent. Two of the pups were already dead. The others were helpless, and he was helpless; there was nothing he could do for them, they were too young to feed by hand, and he had nothing to feed them with. He crawled out of the tent to suck a long drink from the bucket of water that stood outside, and then he knelt there gazing without vision at the smouldering fire.

“I know, yes, I know what I can do,” he mumbled, picking up his long, heavy billhook. “Just a smack o’ that behind his earhole and he won’t take no more hidings from e’er a man or a woman neither. Tipet, I says, and he’d be done, he’d be done in a couple o’ minutes, ah, quicker, quicker’n you could say smoke.” He dashed the billhook to the earth and groaned. “Oh, I be fair fizzled and mizzled now, I be, ah.” He sat up and pulled the bucket between his legs. Picking up one of the pups he plopped it into the bucket. “There’s your donkey,” he gurgled, “huh, huh, huh! And there”—as he plopped the others in one by one—“goes your cob and your cart and your cokernuts. And there”—as he dashed the last one violently in—“goes the old gal. Huh!”

After a while the old man rose and emptied the drowned bodies into a heap of bushes; the clash of the bucket as he flung it back only fretted the silence of the wood for a few moments.

The Field of Mustard (1926)