“It’s no good if his stomach won’t have it.” said Tom, in mild reproof, as if he were sneaking of a child. Arthur filled George’s glass with beer without speaking. The two young men were full of kind, gentle attention.
“Let ’im ‘a’e a spoonful o’ tonnup then,” persisted the old man. “I canna eat while ‘is plate stands there emp’y.”
So they put turnip and onion sauce on George’s plate, and he took up his fork and tasted a few mouthfuls. The men ate largely, and with zest. The sight of their grand satisfaction, amounting almost to gusto, sickened him.
When at last the old man laid down the dessert-spoon which he used in place of a knife and fork, he looked again at George’s plate, and said:
“Why tha ‘asna aten a smite, not a smite! Tha non goos th’ raight road to be better.”
George maintained a stupid silence.
“Don’t bother him, Father,” said Emily.
“Tha art an öwd whittle, Feythey,” added Tom, smiling good-naturedly. He spoke to his father in dialect, but to Emily in good English. Whatever she said had Tom’s immediate support. Before serving us with pie, Emily gave her brother junket and damsons, setting the plate and the spoon before him as if he were a child. For this act of grace Tom looked at her lovingly, and stroked her hand as she passed.
After dinner, George said, with a miserable struggle for an indifferent tone:
“Aren’t you going to give Cyril a glass of whisky?”
He looked up furtively, in a conflict of shame and hope. A silence fell on the room.
“Ay!” said the old man softly. “Let ’im ‘ave a drop.”
“Yes!” added Tom, in submissive pleading.
All the men in the room shrank a little, awaiting the verdict of the woman.
“I don’t know,” she said clearly, “that Cyril wants a glass.”
“I don’t mind,” I answered, feeling myself blush. I had not the courage to counteract her will directly. Not even the old man had that courage. We waited in suspense. After keeping us so for a few minutes, while we smouldered with mortification, she went into another room, and we heard her unlocking a door. She returned with a decanter containing rather less than half a pint of liquor. She put out five tumblers.
“Tha neda gi’e me none,” said the old man. “Ah’m non a proud chap. Ah’m not.”
“Nor me neither,” said Arthur.
“You will, Tom?” she asked.
“Do you want me to?” he replied, smiling.
“I don’t,” she answered sharply. “I want nobody to have it, when you look at the results of it. But if Cyril is having a glass, you may as well have one with him.”
Tom was pleased with her. She gave her husband and me fairly stiff glasses.
“Steady, steady!” he said. “Give that George, and give me not so much. Two fingers, two of your fingers, you know.”
But she passed him the glass. When George had had his share, there remained but a drop in the decanter.
Emily watched the drunkard coldly as he took this remainder.
George and I talked for a time while the men smoked. He, from his glum stupidity, broke into a harsh, almost imbecile loquacity.
“Have you seen my family lately?” he asked, continuing. “Yes! Not badly set up, are they, the children? But the little devils are soft, mard-soft, every one of ’em. It’s their mother’s bringin’ up — she marded ’em till they were soft, an’ would never let me have a say in it. I should ‘a brought ’em up different, you know I should.”
Tom looked at Emily, and, remarking her angry contempt, suggested that she should go out with him to look at the stacks. I watched the tall, square-shouldered man leaning with deference and tenderness towards his wife as she walked calmly at his side. She was the mistress, quiet and self-assured, he her rejoiced husband and servant.
George was talking about himself. If I had not seen him, I should hardly have recognised the words as his. He was lamentably decayed. He talked stupidly, with vulgar contumely of others, and in weak praise of himself.
The old man rose, with a:
“Well, I suppose we mun ma’e another dag at it,” and the men left the house.
George continued his foolish, harsh monologue, making gestures of emphasis with his head and his hands. He continued when we were walking round the buildings into the fields, the same babble of bragging and abuse. I was wearied and disgusted. He looked, and he sounded, so worthless.
Across the empty cornfield the partridges were running. We walked through the September haze slowly, because he was feeble on his legs. As he became tired he ceased to talk. We leaned for some time on a gate, in the brief glow of the transient afternoon, and he was stupid again. He did not notice the brown haste of the partridges, he did not care to share with me the handful of ripe blackberries, and when I pulled the bryony ropes off the hedges, and held the great knots of red and green berries in my hand, he glanced at them without interest or appreciation.
“Poison-berries, aren’t they?” he said dully.
Like a tree that is falling, going soft and pale and rotten, clammy with small fungi, he stood leaning against the gate, while the dim afternoon drifted with a flow of thick sweet sunshine past him, not touching him.
In the stackyard, the summer’s splendid monuments of wheat and grass were reared in gold and grey. The wheat was littered brightly round the rising stack. The loaded wagon clanked slowly up the incline, drew near, and rode like a ship at anchor against the scotches, brushing the stack with a crisp, sharp sound. Tom climbed the ladder and stood a moment there against the sky, amid the brightness and fragrance of the gold corn, and waved his arm to his wife who was passing in the shadow of the building. Then Arthur began to lift the sheaves to the stack, and the two men worked in an exquisite, subtle rhythm, their white sleeves and their dark heads gleaming, moving against the mild sky and the corn. The silence was broken only by the occasional lurch of the body of the wagon, as the teamer stepped to the front, or again to the rear of the load. Occasionally I could catch the blue glitter of the prongs of the forks. Tom, now lifted high above the small wagon load, called to his brother some question about the stack. The sound of his voice was strong and mellow.
I turned to George, who was also watching, and said: “You ought to be like that.”
We heard Tom calling, “All right!” and saw him standing high up on the tallest corner of the stack, as on the prow of a ship.
George watched, and his face slowly gathered expression. He turned to me, his dark eyes alive with horror and despair.
“I shall soon — be out of everybody’s way!” he said. His moment of fear and despair was cruel. I cursed myself for having roused him from his stupor.
“You will be better,” I said.
He watched again the handsome movement of the men at the stack.
“I couldn’t team ten sheaves,” he said.
“You will in a month or two,” I urged.
He continued to watch, while Tom got on the ladder and came down the front of the stack.
“Nay, the sooner I clear out, the better,” he repeated to himself.
When we went in to tea, he was, as Tom said, “downcast”. The men talked uneasily with abated voices. Emily attended to him with a little, palpitating solicitude. We were all uncomfortably impressed with the sense of our alienation from him He sat apart and obscure among us, like a condemned man.