“Thank you kindly. I hope he’s tender.”
“Sure he is. I can tell by the feel of his breastbone. We’ll have him for supper and, mind you, there’s to be no running away afterwards.”
“Don’t you worry, Mrs. Barker,” said Raikes, munching coffee. “We won’t run away.”
He went off through the snow, carrying his gun. He crossed the narrow road lined with maple saplings, threw his leg over a low fence and was in one of Eugene Clapperton’s fields. A path made by himself led to the barn. It was a large barn built a hundred years before, but so far the present owner had gone but cautiously into farming. Raikes entered the barn, took a lantern from a hook and lighted it. He climbed the ladder into the hayloft. A great mound of hay confronted him like a dry sweet-smelling mountain. He skirted its base and behind it cast the light of the lantern on a small pen in which nine piglets slept curled close together for warmth. Disturbed by the light they moved and snuffled, twitching their plump pink legs. A grin, half tender, half-mischievous, lighted Raikes’ face.
“Are ye warm enough, ye rascals?” he whispered. “Well, here’s some nice fresh straw.” He fetched an armful of straw and strewed it about the little pigs. He bent over them and patted a plump side. “Well,” he said, “I must soon be getting you out of here — you’re too noisy. Now mind what I say and be good and quiet.” They snuggled closer together with comfortable grunts and he descended the ladder and went to see that all was well in the stable.
The Polish woman was in the kitchen as he passed through. She was doing her last job of the evening, leaving things ready for breakfast. She gave him a look askance to see if he had brought in snow on his boots. He smiled ingratiatingly at her. He said:
“Divil a bit of snow have I on me. I’m a good boy, isn’t that so?”
She gave him her puzzled, yet aggressive look. “Please,” she said. “I can’t do.”
“Nobody asked you to, old dear. All you have to do is to mind your own business and lave me to mind mine.” He went along a narrow passage and into his own little room, his haven. It had nice clean curtains, a yellow pine chest of drawers with a small looking glass, a patchwork quilt on the bed, and under the bed his tin trunk, on which he still preserved the torn steamship label, for it seemed a kind of link with the old land — not that he ever wanted to go back there.
He bent to look in the mirror, took a comb from his pocket and combed his black gypsy locks. From a hook on the door he took a decent black overcoat and Homburg hat. With them on his arm he returned to the kitchen. The woman was gone to her own room. At the sink he washed his hands in the running water and even splashed it once across his mouth and chin. He dried himself on the roller towel that hung on the door. Then putting on his overcoat and carrying his hat in his hand, he tiptoed along the passage to the hall and tapped on the door of the living room.
Eugene Clapperton’s voice, reading aloud, ceased and he called out, — “Come in.”
Raikes opened the door just wide enough to enter and stepped inside. In appearance he was transformed into a man making an evening call but his manner was deferential. He said:
“Excuse me, sir, but would you be wanting me to go to the vet’s at Stead for the medicine?”
“How is the cow?” Eugene Clapperton asked irritably. “Animals seem to always be getting something wrong with them. First it was the young pigs dying and now this cow sick. I wish I hadn’t a cold. I’d like to go out and see her.”
“The stable would be a bad place for you, sir. The cow is no better. The creatures are like us. They have their ills. But the medicine I was telling you of will fix her up. I think it would be well for her to have it tonight. Had I better be taking the car to Stead, sir?”
“Yes, certainly. And let me know in the morning how she is.”
“I will indeed, sir.” As he stood smiling a gentle comforting smile at Mr. Clapperton, Gemmel, playing a game of Patience beside a rose-shaded floor lamp, contrasted the two men, to the cruel disadvantage of her husband. His grizzled head that she always thought of as a mean shape, his dry skin, his bluish lips and dark teeth, she contrasted with Raikes’ black locks, his skin tinted warmly by the good blood beneath, the rim of his gleaming white teeth, just visible. Eugene was too consciously straight like someone who was determined never to die. Raikes drooped a little glancing sideways. A man, she thought, who would go anywhere over the world and not consider either life or death.
When he had gone Eugene said, — “In the time we have lived here I have had four men. Yes, this is the fourth. It’s a terrible reflection on conditions today, that it’s next to impossible to hire a decent respectable man. This man gives me a sense of security I haven’t had since I came here. Not till now. You will remember that I advertised for a man that was sober and industrious. Those were my words.” He savoured the words as though he had invented them. “Yes, sober and industrious. And when this man appeared and I talked to him I realized that here at last was a man I could trust. He gives you that feeling too, doesn’t he, girlie?”
“Oh, yes,” she answered vaguely, then she added, — “That reminds me I must ask him to get some cough mixture for Tania. Her cold gets no better.”
“The druggist won’t be open at this hour.”
“Perhaps not but I’ll ask Tom to try.”
“Tom?”
“Yes. Tom Raikes.”
“Let him get her a dose at the vet’s. That’ll do her. Just the thing for her.”
Gem went through to the kitchen. Raikes was standing with his hand on the doorknob ready to turn it. He had his hat on, the brim casting a dark shadow over his eyes, but he took it off, with a polite little inclination of the head as she entered.
“Oh, Tom,” she said.
“Yes, Mrs. Clapperton?”
“Could you get some cough mixture for Tania?”
“I’m afraid the drugstore won’t be open. But Tania wouldn’t take it anyway. I offered her a dose of mine and she wouldn’t have it. She’s like that.”
“Then we can’t do anything about it.”
“I’m afraid not. She’s a quare woman.” He smiled good-humouredly.
She noticed the length of his eyelashes and how they cast a shadow on his cheek. Yet strangely they did not take from his look of careless masculinity. He stood with his hand on the doorknob waiting to go, waiting politely for her permission to go.
“Well,” she said and hesitated.
He raised his black brows enquiringly.
For a moment she could think of nothing to say, then, — “My husband was just remarking how pleasant it is for us to have a man we can trust about the place. I hope you’re quite satisfied, Tom.”
His face lighted happily. “I’m well satisfied, ma’am. I hope to work for you and Mr. Clapperton many years.”
“I’m glad of that. Goodnight, Tom.”
“Goodnight, ma’am, and thank you.”
A rush of icy air entered the kitchen, then the door closed behind him. She heard his feet crunch in the snow, then the opening of the garage door and the engine of the car throbbing…. Since early childhood she had been a cripple, unable to walk because of a fall, until she met Eugene Clapperton, and his generosity had made possible the operation on her spine. He had made it possible for her to walk strongly and quickly, to be like other girls. He had made her his wife. No matter how long he lived she never could do enough to repay him. She went back into the living room and saw him sitting there. He looked up at her with his