At noon the tiler and the mason stepped down from the roof of the village church which they were repairing and crossed over the road to the tavern to eat their dinner. It had been a nice little morning, but there were clouds massing in the south; Sam the tiler remarked that it looked like thunder. The two men sat in the dim little taproom eating, Bob the mason at the same time reading from a newspaper an account of a trial for murder. “I dunno what thunder looks like,” Bob said, “but I reckon this chap is going to be hung, though I can’t rightly say for why. To my thinking he didn’t do it at all: but murder’s a bloody thing and someone ought to suffer for it.”
“I don’t think,” spluttered Sam as he impaled a flat piece of beetroot on the point of a pocket-knife and prepared to contemplate it with patience until his stuffed mouth was ready to receive it, “he ought to be hung.”
“There can be no other end for him though, with a mob of lawyers like that, and a judge like that, and a jury too ... why the rope’s half round his neck this minute; he’ll be in glory within a month, they[284] only have three Sundays, you know, between the sentence and the execution. Well, hark at that rain then!”
A shower that began as a playful sprinkle grew to a powerful steady summer downpour. It splashed in the open window and the dim room grew more dim and cool.
“Hanging’s a dreadful thing, continued Sam, and ’tis often unjust I’ve no doubt, I’ve no doubt at all.”
“Unjust! I tell you ... at the majority of trials those who give their evidence mostly knows nothing at all about the matter; them as knows a lot—they stays at home and don’t budge, not likely!”
“No? But why?”
“Why? They has their reasons. I know that, I knows it for truth ... hark at that rain, it’s made the room feel cold.”
They watched the downfall in complete silence for some moments.
“Hanging’s a dreadful thing,” Sam at length repeated, with almost a sigh.
“I can tell you a tale about that, Sam, in a minute,” said the other. He began to fill his pipe from Sam’s brass box which was labelled cough lozenges and smelled of paregoric.
“Just about ten years ago I was working over in Cotswold country. I remember I’d been in to Gloucester one Saturday afternoon and it rained. I was jogging along home in a carrier’s van; I never seen it rain like that afore, no, nor ever afterwards, not like that. B-r-r-r-r! it came down ... bashing! And[285] we come to a cross roads where there’s a public house called The Wheel of Fortune, very lonely and onsheltered it is just there. I see’d a young woman standing in the porch awaiting us, but the carrier was wet and tired and angry or something and wouldn’t stop. ‘No room’—he bawled out to her—‘full up, can’t take you!’ and he drove on. ‘For the love o’ God. Mate,’—I says—‘pull up and take that young creature! She’s ... she’s ... can’t you see!’ ‘But I’m all behind as ’tis’—he shouts to me—‘you know your gospel, don’t you: time and tide wait for no man?’ ‘Ah, but dammit all, they always call for a feller’—I says. With that he turned round and we drove back for the girl. She clumb in and sat on my knees; I squat on a tub of vinegar, there was nowhere else and I was right and all, she was going on for a birth. Well, the old van rattled away for six or seven miles; whenever it stopped you could hear the rain clattering on the tarpaulin, or sounding outside on the grass as if it was breathing hard, and the old horse steamed and shivered with it. I had knowed the girl once in a friendly way, a pretty young creature, but now she was white and sorrowful and wouldn’t say much. By and bye we came to another cross roads near a village, and she got out there. ‘Good day, my gal’—I says, affable like, and ‘Thank you, sir,’—says she, and off she popped in the rain with her umbrella up. A rare pretty girl, quite young, I’d met her before, a girl you could get uncommon fond of, you know, but I didn’t meet her afterwards, she was mixed up in a bad business. It all happened in the next six months while I was working[286] round these parts. Everybody knew of it. This girl’s name was Edith and she had a younger sister Agnes. Their father was old Harry Mallerton, kept The British Oak at North Quainy; he stuttered. Well, this Edith had a love affair with a young chap William, and having a very loving nature she behaved foolish. Then she couldn’t bring the chap up to the scratch nohow by herself, and of course she was afraid to tell her mother or father: you know how girls are after being so pesky natural, they fear, O they do fear! But soon it couldn’t be hidden any longer as she was living at home with them all, so she wrote a letter to her mother. ‘Dear Mother,’ she wrote, and told her all about her trouble.
“By all accounts the mother was angry as an old lion, but Harry took it calm like and sent for young William, who’d not come at first. He lived close by in the village so they went down at last and fetched him.
“‘All right, yes,’ he said, ‘I’ll do what’s lawful to be done. There you are, I can’t say no fairer, that I can’t.’
“‘No,’ they said, ‘you can’t.’
“So he kissed the girl and off he went, promising to call in and settle affairs in a day or two. The next day Agnes, which was the younger girl, she also wrote a note to her mother telling her some more strange news:
“‘God above!’ the mother cried out, ‘can it be true, both of you girls, my own daughters, and by the same man! whatever were you thinking on, both of ye! Whatever can be done now!’”
“What!” ejaculated Sam, “both on ’em, both on ’em!”
[287]
“As true as God’s my mercy—both on ’em—same chap. Ah! Mrs. Mallerton was afraid to tell her husband at first, for old Harry was the devil born again when he were roused up, so she sent for young William herself, who’d not come again, of course, not likely. But they made him come, O yes, when they told the girls’ father.
“‘Well, may I go to my d ... d ... d ... damnation at once!’ roared old Harry—he stuttered, you know—‘at once, if that ain’t a good one!’ So he took off his coat, he took up a stick, he walked down the street to William and cut him off his legs. Then he beat him until he howled for his mercy, and you couldn’t stop old Harry once he were roused up—he was the devil born again. They do say as he beat him for a solid hour; I can’t say as to that, but then old Harry picked him up and carried him off to The British Oak on his own back, and threw him down in his own kitchen between his own two girls like a dead dog. They do say that the little one Agnes flew at her father like a raging cat until he knocked her senseless with a clout over head; rough man he was.”
“Well, a’ called for it, sure,” commented Sam.
“Her did,” agreed Bob, “but she was the quietest known girl for miles round those parts, very shy and quiet.”
“A shady lane breeds mud,” said Sam.
“What do you say?—O ah!—mud, yes. But pretty girls both, girls you could get very fond of, skin like apple bloom, and as like as two pinks they were. They had to decide which of them William was to marry.”
[288]
“Of course, ah!”
“‘I’ll marry Agnes’—says he.
“‘You’ll not’—says the old man&............