'I'll go and ask him.'
But like a fury Emmie barred his way.
'No, you needn't. You needn't ask him nothing at all. We don't want you, so you can go.'
'Uncle's boss here.'
'A man that's dying, and you crawling round and working on him for his money! - you're not fit to live.'
'Oh!' he said. 'Who says I'm working for his money?'
'I say. But my father told our Matilda, and she knows what you are. She knows what you're after. So you might as well clear out, for all you'll get - guttersnipe!'
He turned his back on her, to think. It had not occurred to him that they would think he was after the money. He did want the money - badly. He badly wanted to be an employer himself, not one of the employed. But he knew, in his subtle, calculating way, that it was not for money he wanted Matilda. He wanted both the money and Matilda. But he told himself the two desires were separate, not one. He could not do with Matilda, without the money. But he did not want her for the money.
When he got this clear in his mind, he sought for an opportunity to tell it her, lurking and watching. But she avoided him. In the evening the lawyer came. Mr. Rockley seemed to have a new access of strength - a will was drawn up, making the previous arrangements wholly conditional. The old will held good, if Matilda would consent to marry Hadrian. If she refused then at the end of six months the whole property passed to Hadrian.
Mr. Rockley told this to the young man, with malevolent satisfaction. He seemed to have a strange desire, quite unreasonable, for revenge upon the women who had surrounded him for so long, and served him so carefully.
'Tell her in front of me,' said Hadrian.
So Mr. Rockley sent for his daughters.
At last they came, pale, mute, stubborn. Matilda seemed to have retired far off, Emmie seemed like a fighter ready to fight to the death. The sick man reclined on the bed, his eyes bright, his puffed hand trembling. But his face had again some of its old, bright handsomeness. Hadrian sat quiet, a little aside: the indomitable, dangerous charity boy.
'There's the will,' said their father, pointing them to the paper.
The two women sat mute and immovable, they took no notice.
'Either you marry Hadrian, or he has everything,' said the father with satisfaction.
'Then let him have everything,' said Matilda boldly.
'He's not! He's not!' cried Emmie fiercely. 'He's not going to have it.
The guttersnipe!'
An amused look came on her father's face.
'You hear that, Hadrian,' he said.
'I didn't offer to marry Cousin Matilda for the money,' said Hadrian, flushing and moving on his seat.
Matilda looked at him slowly, with her dark-blue, drugged eyes. He seemed a strange little monster to her.
'Why, you liar, you know you did,' cried Emmie.
The sick man laughed. Matilda continued to gaze strangely at the young man.
'She knows I didn't,' said Hadrian.
He too had his courage, as a rat has indomitable courage in the end. Hadrian had some of the neatness, the reserve, the underground quality of the rat. But he had perhaps the ultimate courage, the most unquenchable courage of all.
Emmie looked at her sister.
'Oh, well,' she said. 'Matilda - don't bother. Let him have everything, we can look after ourselves.'
'I know he'll take everything,' said Matilda, abstractedly.
Hadrian did not answer. He knew in fact that if Matilda refused him he would take everything, and go off with it.
'A clever little mannie - !' said Emmie, with a jeering grimace.
The father laughed noiselessly to himself. But he was tired....
'Go on, then,' he said. 'Go on, let me be quiet.'
Emmie turned and looked at him.
'You deserve what you've got,' she said to her father bluntly.
'Go on,' he answered mildly. 'Go on.'
Another night passed - a night nurse sat up with Mr. Rockley. Another day came. Hadrian was there as ever, in his woollen jersey and coarse khaki trousers and bare neck. Matilda went about, frail and distant, Emmie black-browed in spite of her blondness. They were all quiet, for they did not intend the mystified servant to learn anything.
Mr. Rockley had very bad attacks of pain, he could not breathe. The end seemed near. They all went about quiet and stoical, all unyielding. Hadrian pondered within himself. If he did not marry Matilda he would go to Canada with twenty thousand pounds. This was itself a very satisfactory prospect. If Matilda consented he would have nothing - she would have her own money.
Emmie was the one to act. She went off in search of the solicitor and brought him with her. There was an interview, and Whittle tried to frighten the youth into withdrawal - but without avail. The clergyman and relatives were summoned - but Hadrian stared at them and took no notice. It made him angry, however.
He wanted to catch Matilda alone. Many days went by, and he was not successful: she avoided him. At last, lurking, he surprised her one day as she came to pick gooseberries, and he cut off her retreat. He came to the point at once.
'You don't want me, then?' he said, in his subtle, insinuating voice.
'I don't want to speak to you,' she said, averting her face.
'You put your hand on me, though,' he said. 'You shouldn't have done that, and then I should never have thought of it. You shouldn't have touched me.'
'If you were anything decent, you'd know that was a mistake, and forget it,' she said.
'I know it was a mistake - but I shan't forget it. If you wake a man up, he can't go to sleep again because he's told to.'
'If you had any decent feeling in you, you'd have gone away,' she replied.
'I didn't want to,' he replied.
She looked away into the distance. At last she asked:
'What do you persecute me for, if it isn't for the money. I'm old enough to be your mother. In a way I've been your mother.'
'Doesn't matter,' he said. 'You've been no mother to me. Let us marry and go out to Canada - you might as well - you've touched me.'
She was white and trembling. Suddenly she flushed with anger.
'It's so indecent,' she said.
'How?' he retorted. 'You touched me.'
But she walked away from him. She felt as if he had trapped her. He was angry and depressed, he felt again despised.
That same evening she went into her father's room.
'Yes,' she said suddenly. 'I'll marry him.'
Her father looked up at her. He was in pain, and very ill.
'You like him now, do you?' he said, with a faint smile.
She looked down into his face, and saw death not far off. She turned and went coldly out of the room.
The solicitor was sent for, preparations were hastily made. In all the interval Matilda did not speak to Hadrian, never answered him if he addressed her. He approached her in the morning.
'You've come round to it, then?' he said, giving her a pleasant look from his twinkling, almost kindly eyes. She looked down at him and turned aside. She looked down on him both literally and figuratively. Still he persisted, and triumphed.
Emmie raved and wept, the secret flew abroad. But Matilda was silent and unmoved, Hadrian was quiet and satisfied, and nipped with fear also. But he held out against his fear. Mr. Rockley was very ill, but unchanged.
On the third day the marriage took place. Matilda and Hadrian drove straight home from the registrar, and went straight into the room of the dying man. His face lit up with a clear twinkling smile.
'Hadrian - you've got her?' he said, a little hoarsely.
'Yes,' said Hadrian, who was pale round the gills.
'Ay, my lad, I'm glad you're mine,' replied the dying man. Then he turned his eyes closely on Matilda.
'Let's look at you, Matilda,' he said. Then his voice went strange and unrecognizable. 'Kiss me,' he said.
She stooped and kissed him. She had never kissed him before, not since she was a tiny ch
ild. But she was quiet, very still.
'Kiss him,' the dying man said.
Obediently, Matilda put forward her mouth and kissed the young husband.
'That's right! That's right!' murmured the dying man.
Samson and Delilah
A man got down from the motor-omnibus that runs from Penzance to St Just-in-Penwith, and turned northwards, uphill towards the Polestar. It was only half past six, but already the stars were out, a cold little wind was blowing from the sea, and the crystalline, three-pulse flash of the lighthouse below the cliffs beat rhythmically in the first darkness.
The man was alone. He went his way unhesitating, but looked from side to side with cautious curiosity. Tall, ruined power-houses of tin-mines loomed in the darkness from time to time, like remnants of some by-gone civilization. The lights of many miners' cottages scattered on the hilly darkness twinkled desolate in their disorder, yet twinkled with the lonely homeliness of the Celtic night.
He tramped steadily on, always watchful with curiosity. He was a tall, well-built man, apparently in the prime of life. His shoulders were square and rather stiff, he leaned forwards a little as he went, from the hips, like a man who must stoop to lower his height. But he did not stoop his shoulders: he bent his straight back from the hips.
Now and again short, stump, thick-legged figures of Cornish miners passed him, and he invariably gave them goodnight, as if to insist that he was on his own ground. He spoke with the west-Cornish intonation. And as he went along the dreary road, looking now at the lights of the dwellings on land, now at the lights away to sea, vessels veering round in sight of the Longships Lighthouse, the whole of the Atlantic Ocean in darkness and space between him and America, he seemed a little excited and pleased with himself, watchful, thrilled, veering along in a sense of mastery and of power in conflict.
The houses began to close on the road, he was entering the straggling, formless, desolate mining village, that he knew of old. On the left was a little space set back from the road, and cosy lights of an inn. There it was. He peered up at the sign: 'The Tinners' Rest'. But he could not make out the name of the proprietor. He listened. There was excited talking and laughing, a woman's voice laughing shrilly among the men's.
Stooping a little, he entered the warmly-lit bar. The lamp was burning, a buxom woman rose from the white-scrubbed deal table where the black and white and red cards were scattered, and several men, miners, lifted their faces from the game.
The stranger went to the counter, averting his face. His cap was pulled down over his brow.
'Good-evening!' said the landlady, in her rather ingratiating voice.
'Good-evening. A glass of ale.'
'A glass of ale,' repeated the landlady suavely. 'Cold night - but bright.'
'Yes,' the man assented, laconically. Then he added, when nobody expected him to say any more: 'Seasonable weather.'
'Quite seasonable, quite,' said the landlady. 'Thank you.'
The man lifted his glass straight to his lips, and emptied it. He put it down again on the zinc counter with a click.
'Let's have another,' he said.
The woman drew the beer, and the man went away with his glass to the second table, near the fire. The woman, after a moment's hesitation, took her seat again at the table with the card-players. She had noticed the man: a big fine fellow, well dressed, a stranger.
But he spoke with that Cornish-Yankee accent she accepted as the natural twang among the miners.
The stranger put his foot on the fender and looked into the fire. He was handsome, well coloured, with well-drawn Cornish eyebrows, and the usual dark, bright, mindless Cornish eyes. He seemed abstracted in thought. Then he watched the card-party.
The woman was buxom and healthy, with dark hair and small, quick brown eyes. She was bursting with life and vigour, the energy she threw into the game of cards excited all the men, they shouted, and laughed, and the woman held her breast, shrieking with laughter.
'Oh, my, it'll be the death o' me,' she panted. 'Now, come on, Mr.
Trevorrow, play fair. Play fair, I say, or I s'll put the cards down.'
'Play fair! Why who's played unfair?' ejaculated Mr. Trevorrow. 'Do you mean t'accuse me, as I haven't played fair, Mrs. Nankervis?'
'I do. I say it, and I mean it. Haven't you got the queen of spades? Now, come on, no dodging round me. I know you've got that queen, as well as I know my name's Alice.'
'Well - if your name's Alice, you'll have to have it - '
'Ay, now - what did I say? Did you ever see such a man? My word, but your missus must be easy took in, by the looks of things.'
And off she went into peals of laughter. She was interrupted by the entrance of four men in khaki, a short, stumpy sergeant of middle age, a young corporal, and two young privates. The woman leaned back in her chair.
'Oh, my!' she cried. 'If there isn't the boys back: looking perished, I believe - '
'Perished, Ma!' exclaimed the sergeant. 'Not yet.'
'Near enough,' said a young private, uncouthly.
The woman got up.
'I'm sure you are, my dears. You'll be wanting your suppers, I'll be bound.'
'We could do with 'em.'
'Let's have a wet first,' said the sergeant.
The woman bustled about getting the drinks. The soldiers moved to the fire, spreading out their hands.
'Have your suppers in here, will you?' she said. 'Or in the kitchen?'
'Let's have it here,' said the sergeant. 'More cosier - if you don't mind.'
'You shall have it where you like, boys, where you like.'
She disappeared. In a minute a girl of about sixteen came in. She was tall and fresh, with dark, young, expressionless eyes, and well-drawn brows, and the immature softness and mindlessness of the sensuous Celtic type.
'Ho, Maryann! Evenin', Maryann! How's Maryann, now?' came the multiple greeting.
She replied to everybody in a soft voice, a strange, soft aplomb that was very attractive. And she moved round with rather mechanical, attractive movements, as if her thoughts were elsewhere. But she had always this dim far-awayness in her bearing: a sort of modesty. The strange man by the fire watched her curiously. There was an alert, inquisitive, mindless curiosity on his well-coloured face.
'I'll have a bit of supper with you, if I might,' he said.
She looked at him, with her clear, unreasoning eyes, just like the eyes of some non-human creature.
'I'll ask mother,' she said. Her voice was soft-breathing, gently singsong.
When she came in again:
'Yes,' she said, almost whispering. 'What will you have?'
'What have you got?' he said, looking up into her face.
'There's cold meat - '
'That's for me, then.'
The stranger sat at the end of the table and ate with the tired, quiet soldiers. Now, the landlady was interested in him. Her brow was knit rather tense, there was a look of panic in her large, healthy face, but her small brown eyes were fixed most dangerously. She was a big woman, but her eyes were small and tense. She drew near the stranger. She wore a rather loud-patterned flannelette blouse, and a dark skirt.
'What will you have to drink with your supper?' she asked, and there was a new, dangerous note in her voice.
He moved uneasily.
'Oh, I'll go on with ale.'
She drew him another glass. Then she sat down on the bench at the table with him and the soldiers, and fixed him with her attention.
'You've come from St Just, have you?' she said.
He looked at her with those clear, dark, inscrutable Cornish eyes, and answered at length:
'No, from Penzance.'
'Penzance! - but you're not thinking of going back there tonight?'
'No - no.'
He still looked at her with those wide, clear eyes that seemed like very bright agate. Her anger began to rise. It was seen on her brow. Yet her voice was still suave and deprecating.
'I thought not - b
ut you're not living in these parts, are you?'
'No - no, I'm not living here.' He was always slow in answering, as if something intervened between him and any outside question.
'Oh, I see,' she said. 'You've got relations down here.'
Again he looked straight into her eyes, as if looking her into silence.
'Yes,' he said.
He did not say any more. She rose with a flounce. The anger was tight on her brow. There was no more laughing and card-playing that evening, though she kept up her motherly, suave, good-humoured way with the men. But they knew her, they were all afraid of her.
The supper was finished, the table cleared, the stranger did not go. Two of the young soldiers went off to bed, with their cheery:
'Good-night, Ma. Good-night, Maryann.'
The stranger talked a little to the sergeant about the war, which was in its first year, about the new army, a fragment of which was quartered in this district, about America.
The landlady darted looks at him from her small eyes, minute by minute the electric storm welled in her bosom, as still he did not go. She was quivering with suppressed, violent passion, something frightening and abnormal. She could not sit still for a moment. Her heavy form seemed to flash with sudden, involuntary movements as the minutes passed by, and still he sat there, and the tension on her heart grew unbearable. She watched the hands of the dock move on. Three of the soldiers had gone to bed, only the crop-headed, terrier-like old sergeant remained.
The landlady sat behind the bar fidgeting spasmodically with the newspaper. She looked again at the clock. At last it was five minutes to ten.
'Gentlemen - the enemy!' she said, in her diminished, furious voice.
'Time, please. Time, my dears. And good-night all!'
The men began to drop out, with a brief good-night. It was a minute to ten. The landlady rose.
'Come,' she said. 'I'm shutting the door.'
The last of the miners passed out. She stood, stout and menacing, holding the door. Still the stranger sat on by the fire, his black overcoat opened, smoking.
'We're closed now, sir,' came the perilous, narrowed voice of the landlady.
The little, dog-like, hard-headed sergeant touched the arm of the stranger.
'Closing time,' he said.