Air and light on Sack Down at summer sunset were soft as ointment and sweet as milk; at least, that is the notion the down might give to a mind that bloomed within its calm horizons, some happy victim of romance it might be, watching the silken barley moving in its lower fields with the slow movement of summer sea, reaching no harbour, having no end. The toilers had mostly given over; their ploughs and harrows were left to the abandoned fields; they had taken their wages and gone, or were going, home; but at the crown of the hill a black barn stood by the roadside, and in its yard, amid sounds of anguish, a score of young boar pigs were being gelded by two brown lads and a gipsy fellow. Not half a mile of distance here could enclose you the compass of their cries. If a man desired peace he would step fast down the hill towards Arwall with finger in ear until he came to quiet at a bank overlooking slopes of barley, and could perceive the fogs of June being born in the standing grass beyond. Four figures, a labourer and his family, travelled slowly up the road proceeding across the hill, a sound mingling dully with their steps—the voice of the man.[46] You could not tell if it were noise of voice or of footsteps that first came into your ear, but it could be defined on their advance as the voice of a man upbraiding his little son.
“You’re a naughty, naughty—you’re a vurry, vurry naughty boy! Oi can’t think what’s comen tyeh!”
The father towered above the tiny figure shuffling under his elbow, and kept his eyes stupidly fixed upon him. He saw a thin boy, a spare boy, a very shrunken boy of seven or eight years, crying quietly. He let no grief out of his lips, but his white face was streaming with dirty tears. He wore a man’s cap, an unclean sailor jacket, large knickerbockers that made a mockery of his lean joints, a pair of women’s button boots, and he looked straight ahead.
“The idear! To go and lose a sixpence like that then! Where d’ye think yer’ll land yerself, ay? Where’d I be if I kept on losing sixpences, ay? A creature like you, ay!” and lifting his heavy hand the man struck the boy a blow behind with shock enough to disturb a heifer. They went on, the child with sobs that you could feel rather than hear. As they passed the black barn the gipsy bawled encouragingly: “S’elp me, father, that’s a good ’un, wallop his trousers!”
But the man ignored him, as he ignored the yell of the pig and the voice of the lark rioting above them all; he continued his litany:
“You’re a naughty, naughty boy, an’ I dunno what’s comen tyeh!”
The woman, a poor slip of a woman she was, walked behind them with a smaller child: she seemed to have[47] no desire to shield the boy or to placate the man. She did not seem to notice them, and led the toddling babe, to whom she gabbled, some paces in the rear of the man of anger. He was a great figure with a bronzed face; his trousers were tied at the knee, his wicker bag was slung over his shoulder. With his free and massive hand he held the hand of the boy. He was slightly drunk, and walked with his legs somewhat wide, at the beginning of each stride lifting his heel higher than was required, and at the end of it placing his foot firmly but obliquely inwards. There were two bright medals on the breast of his waistcoat, presumably for valour; he was perhaps a man who would stand upon his rights and his dignities, such as they were—but then he was drunk. His language, oddly unprofane, gave a subtle and mean point to his decline from the heroic standard. He only ceased his complaining to gaze swayingly at the boy; then he struck him. The boy, crying quietly, made no effort to avoid or resist him.
“You understand me, you bad boy! As long as you’re with me you got to come under collar. And wher’ll you be next I dunno, a bad creature like you, ay! An’ then to turn roun’ an’ answer me! I dunno! I dunno what’s comen tyeh. Ye know ye lost that sixpence through glammering about. Wher’ d’ye lose it, ay? Wher’ d’ye lose it, ay?”
At these questions be seized the boy by the neck and shook him as a child does a bottle of water. The baby behind them was taken with little gusts of laughter at the sight, and the woman cooed back playfully at her.
“George, George!” yelled the woman.
[48]
The man turned round.
“Look after Annie!” she yelled again.
“What’s up?” he called.
Her only answer was a giggle of laughter as she disappeared behind a hedge. The child toddled up to its father and took his hand, while the quiet boy took her other hand with relief. She laughed up into their faces, and the man resumed his homily.
“He’s a bad, bad boy. He’s a vurry naughty bad boy!”
By-and-by the woman came shuffling after them; the boy looked furtively around and dropped his sister’s hand.
“Carm on, me beauty!” cried the man, lifting the girl to his shoulder. “He’s a bad boy; you ’ave a ride on your daddy.” They went on alone, and the woman joined the boy. He looked up at her with a sad face.
“O, my Christ, Johnny!” she said, putting her arms round the boy, “what’s ’e bin doin’ to yeh? Yer face is all blood!”
“It’s only me nose, mother. Here,” he whispered, “here’s the tanner.”
They went together down the hill towards the inn, which had already a light in its windows. The screams from the barn had ceased, and a cart passed them full of young pigs, bloody and subdued. The hill began to resume its old dominion of soft sounds. It was nearly nine o’clock, and one anxious farmer still made hay although, on this side of the down, day had declined, and with a greyness that came not from[49] the sky, but crept up from the world. From the quiet hill, as the last skein of cocks was carted to the stack, you could hear dimly men’s voices and the rattle of their gear.