Chapter VIII Triumph of Billy Screech
On a day in early summer David Bowden met his father by appointment at Nosworthy Bridge in Meavy valley. It was not Sunday, but both wore their Sunday clothes. The fact would have led observers to suppose that a funeral or a wedding must be at hand, but it was not so. They had before them a serious and, they feared, a difficult duty. Neither knew that the other proposed to wear black; yet a sort of similar instinct led to the donning of the colour, and each felt glad, when he saw the other, that he had been of that mind.
“’Twill be for you to speak, father,” said David; “and where I can think of words to back you up, I shall put them in. If you and me together ban’t stronger than such a man as Screech, ’tis pity.”
“The law be weak, unfortunately,” answered Elias, “else I’d never have gone near the man, but just left justice to take its course. But as it stands, so lawyer tells me, we can’t make Screech marry Dorcas if he won’t. The thing is to be as patient with the man as we know how, and coax him into it if possible.”
David nodded.
“It’s a bad business, looked at which way you will. Rhoda’s took it more to heart than all of us. She won’t never speak to Dorcas or see her again.”
“We mustn’t talk that nonsense. Nature will out, and for my part, to you, David, though to none else, I’m sorry to God now I said ‘nay.’ However, we’ll see if we can fetch him to reason. Here’s the house—a ragged, hang-dog look it hath.”
“And there’s the man,” added David.
Billy Screech was digging in a patch of garden beside his cottage, but at sight of the visitors, he stuck his spade into the earth, cleaned his boots on it, drew down his shirt-sleeves, donned his coat and came forward.
“You’m a thought earlier than I expected,” he said. “Give you a very good-morning, Mr. Bowden; and you, David.”
Elias took the hairy Screech’s hand; David nodded, but avoided a direct salute.
“In your black, I see—a black business, no doubt,” said Billy. “And if you’ll give me a matter of minutes, I’ll polish up a bit and put on mine. Perhaps you didn’t know as I’ve got some good broadcloth for my back; but I have.”
He called to his mother and went upstairs. Then, while he was absent, the thin and slatternly woman known as Eliza Screech shuffled in and put chairs for the Bowdens. She stood and rubbed her hands over each other and listened to the noise her son made overhead. By certain sounds she knew how his change of attire advanced.
“I hope you are on our side in this matter, ma’am,” began Elias, solemnly.
“Yes, I am, and always have been since I heard about it,” she said. “I’ve been at him night and day till he threatened to take the wood-chopper to me. I can’t say what he thinks about it, for not a word will he utter. He’s always chuckling to hisself, however. ’Tis a very shameless thing to have happened, though very common. I’m sorry about it.”
She spoke kindly but indifferently.
“My girl is the same as him,” declared Mr. Bowden. “‘Shameless’ is the only word to be used against her—a hardened giglet as keeps her own secrets and did keep ’em till they would out. And, instead of going in tears and sackcloth, she’s as gay as a lark and don’t care a button for our long faces. Even to church she’ll come, if you can believe it. And not a word of sorrow.”
Mrs. Screech heard her son putting on his boots.
“Well, I hope that your way of saying things will catch hold on William,” she answered. “He’s a thoughtless man; but he was never fond of the girls till he met your Dorcas, and ’twas a very great blow to him he couldn’t take her.”
“He must take her: that’s what we’ve come about,” declared David.
Mrs. Screech shrugged her shoulders.
“There’s room here,” she said, “and though us be a little down in the world, I daresay for a pound or two we could mend up the glass and make things vitty for Dorcas. I’m very fond of her, I may tell you. Here’s William coming down, so I’ll go.”
She left them, and a moment later Mr. Screech entered transformed. He wore excellent black. He had brushed his hair and beard; he had washed his hands and put on a pair of tidy boots.
“Now,” he said, “perhaps you’ll let me know what I can do for you, Mr. Bowden. Not long since there was a thing as you might have done for me; but I got a very sour answer, if I remember right. However, you’ll find me more reasonable if you come in reason.”
“In reason and in right I come, William Screech. And well you know why for I’m here,” said the master of Ditsworthy. “You’ve seduced my daughter Dorcas, and you cannot deny it.”
“Yes, I can,” answered Mr. Screech. “I can deny it and I can take my Bible oath of it. I never seduced her, and I never even offered to. I’ll swear she never told you that I seduced her.”
“She’ll tell me nought.”
“Then why d’you charge it against me?”
“Don’t fiddle with words,” broke in David. “The question be simple, and the answer be ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Do you deny that you are the father of the child she’m going to bear?”
“Certainly not. I am the parent; and a very proud man I shall be on the day.”
“Then why d’you say you didn’t seduce her?” cried David.
Mr. Screech looked at him in a pitying and highly superior manner.
“Better let your father talk,” he said. “You childless men be rather narrow in your opinions. He’s more sensible and more patient. Because a maiden changes her state and starts out to bud, it don’t follow nobody’s seduced her. If anybody was seduced, ’tis me, standing here afore you.”
He grinned genially at the humour of the situation. David uttered an inarticulate sound of anger; Mr. Bowden settled himself in his chair.
“Explain yourself, William,” he said.
“Well, I will. Perhaps you may remember when you forbade the match, that your daughter was a bit savage about it.”
“She was. I allowed for that.”
“You didn’t allow enough. You didn’t know what a clever girl Dorcas was; and you didn’t know how well she understood me. None ever understood me like her. I was merely a sort of a mongrel man—good for nought—in your opinion. You didn’t know how witty I could be if I chose; or what a lot of brains there was in my head. But she knowed and she trusted me. Pluck! Talk about this here prizefighter’s pluck and your Rhoda’s pluck—Good Lord! there’s more valour in Dorcas than the whole pack of you! She’s a marvel, she is. This be her work, master, not mine. After her big sister catched her with me and boxed her ears, she soon knowed what to do. And she done it; and I was very pleased to help. And here we are.”
Mr. Bowden gasped.
“Do you mean to say a daughter of mine axed you to get her in the family way?” he asked.
“That’s the English of it,” answered Mr. Screech. “There was nothing else she could do. ‘Anything to oblige you, Dorcas,’ I said, and my bosom swelled with rejoicing to think the maiden I loved best in the world could trust me like that. ‘’Twill larn my father and that self-righteous David and Rhoda to mind their own business in future,’ said Dorcas to me; and I’m sure I hope it will. You must all try to be sensibler without a doubt.”
David felt an inclination to crush and smite the hairy and insolent Screech; but nothing could be gained by such an act.
“And how do we stand now, please?” inquired Mr. Bowden, very humbly.
“In a very awkward fix, of course,” answered Billy. “Here’s my dear Dorcas going to have a babby, and me wrapped up in her, and my mother cruel fond of her, and her own people all shocked out of their skins at her; and yet I ban’t allowed to make an honest woman of her; because you’ve sworn afore witnesses that you’d sooner see her dead than Mrs. William Screech. It do seem a pity; but of course we all know the man you are—never known to call back an opinion. Dorcas and me be halves of a flail—one nought without t’other; but you’ve spoken. I shall be very pleased to help with the child, however; and I hope you’ll bring it up well to the Warren House.”
This was too much for David.
“If you give us any more of your cheek, I’ll smash you where you sit,” he said.
Billy shrugged his shoulders.
“Where’s the cheek? What a silly man you are! Ax your father if I’ve said a syllable more than the truth. I’m only sorry about it. Of course the likes of me, with my skilled inventions and general cleverness, ban’t worthy to be your brother-in-law—you with your great ideas and your five hundred pounds—left to you by somebody else. But, maybe, your father may feel different. A father can understand a father. ’Tis for him to speak now, not you, and say what he thinks had better be done about his child—and mine.”
“There’s only one thing to be done, and that afore the month is out,” said Mr. Bowden. “And you know what, for all your sly jokes, Billy. The pair of you have bested me. Well, I know when I’m beat. And the sooner the wedding be held, the better for everybody’s credit.”
Billy pretended immense surprise.
“You mean as you’ll call home all them high words, master?”
“Every one of ’em,” answered Elias, calmly. “If I’d been a bit sharper, I might have guessed as you and her would find a way. You have found it—’tis vain to deny that. So there’s nothing to do but wed; and I hope you’ll live to make good your promises; and so soon as you do, I’ll be the first to up and own I misjudged you.”
“That’s fair and sportsmanlike, master, and I’ll be as good as you; and if my new rabbit trap don’t make you proud of me for a son-in-law, Elias Bowden, you ban’t the honest man I think.”
“It’s settled then,” said David, rising, and eager to be away.
“On one condition,” answered the other; “that me and Dorcas have a proper show wedding, same as David here had. Us won’t have no hole and corner sort of job; and there’s no reason why we should. Only us and you know about it.”
“She shall have a perfectly right and proper wedding, Billy,” declared Mr. Bowden.
“Very good,” answered the other; “and the day after we’m married and my Dorcas comes here to live, I’ll show you the trap, and save you twenty pounds a year if a penny.”
Mr. Screech rose and indicated that the interview was ended.
“The banns go up on Sunday,” he said. “Have no fear of me. I’m in quite so much of a hurry as anybody.”
Mrs. Screech, who had heard everything from behind the door, crept off, and the Bowdens departed, while Billy went as far as the gate with them.
“Please give Dorcas my respects, and tell her I’ll be up over to tea on Sunday, if agreeable to all parties,” he said.
“I will, William,” answered Elias, mildly; “and ’twill be quite agreeable, I assure you.”
The victory was complete and time proved Mr. Screech a just and even magnanimous conqueror. But for the moment the friction set up by his methods of approaching matrimony caused not a few persons a little uneasiness. While David had writhed before Billy’s satirical humours, Rhoda Bowden also suffered; but she took herself off and thus escaped direct contact with the cause of it. It happened that Dorcas was restless after her father had set forth to see Mr. Screech. She had wandered towards Coombeshead and finally—moved as many others were moved—determined to seek Madge, and so win comfort, and wait with her at ‘Meavy Cot’ until David returned. Of the issue Dorcas felt no manner of doubt. Mr. Screech longed to marry her, and his single-hearted devotion was the finest element in a rather mean character. Marriage Dorcas felt to be a certainty; but she was none the less eager to learn how the great interview had fallen out and to what extent Billy had punished his future brother-in-law. Mr. Screech especially despised the Puritanical views of David; and Dorcas suspected that he might have taken pleasure on this occasion in wounding rather deeply her brother’s susceptibilities. She went to see Margaret, therefore, and felt sorry to find Rhoda also at home. Her sister was in the garden; but Rhoda saw the visitor some way off and departed leisurely without any interchange of words. The red girl flushed and set her teeth in a sneer; the other passed quickly into the Moor.
Then Dorcas entered and found Madge making a pudding. She sat down, took off her sunbonnet, and nibbled a piece of raw rhubarb.
“Did you see Rhoda go off?” she asked.
“Never mind, ’twill come right. You know how she feels things.”
“Feel! Don’t you think she feels, Madge. She’s hard as them stone statues of women in church—a dead-alive, frozen beast! Feel! I wish somebody would make her feel. Don’t you look like that. You’ve lived with her now half a year and more. You know what she is.”
“Be fair, Dorcas. She takes this a bit to heart; but that’s only what all of us do.”
“You don’t, and you needn’t pretend it—not like her, anyway. You’d have done the same if your father had said you wasn’t to have David. You’d have trusted David, same as I trusted Billy. Things like her—Rhoda, I mean—why, good Lord! they’re not women; they ban’t built to bring dear li’l, cuddling, cooing babbies into the world, like you and me. All for yowling dogs and walking in the moonlight—by herself! Pretty frosty sport that for a female creature with blood in her veins!”
“It’s throwed her into a great trouble, and ’tis no good to deny it,” said Margaret. “Of course the man will marry you, as you’ve told me in secret, and no doubt David will come back presently in a good temper about it; but Rhoda’s different. She’s rather terrible if a girl slips. I’ve heard her say frightful things long before this—this business of yours. ’Tis the point of view, Dorcas. You’m so good as a married woman now, and me and you can talk; but Rhoda’s awful different—as the maidens often be till they’m tokened. Then they begin to soften and understand men-folk a bit better.”
“Fool!” said Dorcas.
“She’ll take a bit of time to recover; but she’ll be at your wedding with the best of us, if I know her.”
“Not her! Mark me! She’ll never come inside my house or put a finger to my childer. And God knows I don’t want her to.”
“She will—she will. You’re too hard. She’ll grow wiser and more understanding. She’s a very kindly, sensible girl in a lot of ways. Only she’s made of sterner stuff than me and you. I wish I was so noble-minded as her and so brave, I’m sure. She’s as plucky as David, Dorcas. Nought on four legs can frighten her.”
“Four legs!” said Dorcas. “I want for a man on two legs to frighten her—ay, and master her and make her run about and do his will. But no man will ever look at her. They want something to put their arms around—not the sour, stand-offish likes of she. ’Tis no better than facing the east wind to be along with her.”
“Not at all, Dorcas. You’ll soon see different. She have a sort of queer feeling in her that ’tis an awful horrid thing to give yourself over to a man. I do believe she feels almost the same if a woman marries. You’d think the whole race of women had received a blow in the face when one takes a husband. She can’t talk of ’em with patience. But us will get her a husband come presently. Then her eyes will open.”
“Never—never!” foretold the other. “She’ll go single to her grave—and a good riddance when it happens.”
“Here’s David coming up the path,” said Margaret, and both women went out to meet him.
But Madge’s prophecy was only partly fulfilled. He brought, indeed, the news that Mr. Screech was prepared to wed with Dorcas at the earliest opportunity; but he showed no joy at the fact, and was indeed in an exceedingly bad temper.
“What are you doing here?” he said to Dorcas, sternly. But she never had been and never was likely to be brow-beaten by a man.
“Come to see Madge, seemingly, and hearing that you was gone with father to have a tell with my William, I thought I’d wait and see what came of it.”
“Your William!” he said. “I wonder you don’t blush for yourself, Dorcas Bowden.”
“Ah! you must see a lot of things that make you wonder,” she answered insolently. “Not for myself did I ever blush; but for father, as forbid me to marry the only chap that ever loved me, or was ever likely to. What do I care? I suppose you and father, in your righteous wisdom, have decided that we may be married now, anyway; and if you haven’t ’tis no odds, because parson will mighty soon shout out the banns when we ax him to do it.”
“You’re a bad woman,” said her brother, shortly, “and this is a very brazen, shameless piece of work.”
“That for you,” she answered, flicking her fingers in his face. “I’m as straight and honest and true as your wife, or Rhoda either. ’Tis her that’s nasty and shameful, with her prudish ways, not me. And if I’ve done anything to think twice about, ’tis father’s fault—and yours.”
David was angry and turned to his wife.
“The less you hear of this sort of talk the better,” he said. “I’ll have no trollop here, fouling your ears with her lewd speeches.”
“Call yourself a man!” sneered Dorcas. “Call yourself a man, to speak of me like that. You know I loved the chap as faithful and true as a bird its mate, and I was his wife just as much as Madge be yours in everything but the jargon and the ring. And you turn round and call me ‘lewd,’ because I did the only thing I could do to force father to say ‘yes.’ ’Tis you that are lewd—you and yonder creature, who won’t see me nor touch me no more; and so much the better for me.” She pointed to Rhoda, who was sitting a little way off calmly waiting for Dorcas to depart.
“Larn from your wife to be larger-minded,” she began again; then David silenced her.
“Stop!” he thundered out. “Who are the likes of you—a common, fallen woman—to preach to me? You get going out of this! I don’t want you here no more, and I won’t have you here no more.”
“Bah!” she answered. “You’re jealous of my William—that’s what you are! Because you can’t do what he’s done!”
“Begone before I come back,” he answered, “or I’ll wring your neck, you foul-thinking slut! And look to it you treat her as I do, Margaret, or there may come trouble between us.”
He glanced at his wife darkly, then, in most unusual anger, left the threshold and walked across to Rhoda.
“A pair of ’em,” commented Dorcas. “And, please Heaven, they’ll both be childless to their dying day. I hate the ground they walk on!”
“Don’t! don’t, for God’s sake, curse like that,” cried the other, and Dorcas, divining what she had done, was instantly contrite. Indeed, she began to cry.
“I’m—I’m that savage; but not with you, Madge—never with you. Forgive me for saying that. Of course you’ll have plenty of children—plenty—more’n you want, for that matter. Never think you won’t—such a lover of the little creatures as you be. You’ll make up for lost time when you do start. And I hope you’ll love mine as well as your own, for, barring me and Billy and Billy’s mother, there won’t be many to love ’em.”
Her words had turned Margaret’s thoughts upon herself and made her sad.
“Sometimes there comes an awful fear over me, Dorcas, that I shall have none,” she confessed. “’Tis all folly and weakness, yet you’d be astonished how oft I dream I’m to have none. And if it fell out so, I doubt David would break his heart.”
“Don’t think such nonsense. Dreams never come true, and ’twill be all right,” declared Dorcas. “But now I’ll clear out, else he’ll bully you for talking to me so long after what he threatened. And, David or no David, you’ve got to be our friend, Madge; because there never was such a dear, sweet creature afore, and never will be. And if ’tis a girl, Billy have promised me I may call it ‘Madge’; and I shall do.”
Dorcas dried her eyes and prepared to depart, but the other bade her wait a moment.
“A drop of milk you must have; and—and—I know ’twill be a dinky darling, and I shall love it only less than you and your husband will,” Margaret said.
Then Dorcas drank and set off homeward, fearing further trouble; but with her father she had no painful scene, for by the time that Elias returned to the warren, the humorous side of that day’s encounter had struck him. He kept this to himself most firmly however; but, as a result, he indulged in no anger. Instead he merely informed Dorcas that Mr. Screech would marry her at the earliest possible moment on one condition: the bridegroom insisted upon a wedding of ceremony and importance.