Chapter IX Darkness at ‘The Corner House’
As time advanced even the least observant took note of an increasing gloom that hung over Reuben Shillabeer. It fluctuated but set steadily in upon him. He grew more silent and more fanatical where matters of religion formed the topic. He talked of giving up ‘The Corner House.’ He declared that had it been in his power, he would long since have emulated the bold Bendigo and preached to his fellow men.
“I can’t do that, along of having no flow of words,” said Mr. Shillabeer moodily. “Speech in the pulpit manner have been denied to me. All the same, I may have done more for the Lord than any of you men know about.”
He addressed a Saturday night bar and reduced most of those who listened to an embarrassed silence.
“’Tis things like that we don’t expect and have a right to object to in a public house,” declared Mr. Screech afterwards. “We come here for peace and quietness and a pint. At this rate ‘the Dumpling’ will very soon want to end the evening with a prayer meeting; and I for one shall be very glad when he goes and us get a cheerfuller pattern of publican there.”
Many were of Billy’s mind. Two potmen in succession left ‘The Corner House’ owing to the depressed atmosphere of that establishment; the regular guests held serious meetings to discuss the situation. Some were for strong measures; others held the evil must soon cure itself.
“Either the poor soul will go melancholy mad and have to be taken from among us—and ’twill ask for half a dozen strong men to do it—or else the cloud will pass off,” explained Mr. Moses. “Be it as ’twill, we can’t go on like this. I advise that we wait till the turn of the year; and then, if nothing happens, we’ll make a regular orderly deputation, with me and Mr. Bowden as ringleaders, and wait upon Sir Guy Flamank and explain to him that ‘The Corner House’ under Shillabeer isn’t what it should be.”
“’Twould be better far,” Ernest Maunder had said, “if the man would be as good as his word and retire. If we can urge him without unkindness to do so, he might get calmer and easier in his mind in private life.”
“Not him,” prophesied Screech. “Take the life and company and stir of the bar from him, and he’d become a drivelling old mump-head in six months. As ’tis he may be seen half a dozen times in a week sitting on his wife’s grave, when he ought to be to work in his house.”
“Mr. Merle have said the same,” admitted Charles Moses. “To me the man said it. ‘I don’t like to have poor Shillabeer in the churchyard so often,’ was his word. ’Tisn’t seemly for the people to observe him with his hand over his face and his hat off beside him sitting there. To display his grief in this manner, after nearly fifteen years, is not true to nature, and I feel very alarmed about it.’ That was what his reverence said to me; and I answered that he echoed my very thought.”
“The man wants to be lifted to more wholesome ideas,” declared Mr. Maunder. “Nobody can say of me that I’m against the Bible; but there’s times and seasons—a time for everything and everything in its time—as the Book says itself, I believe; but he thrusts Scripture into conversation and peppers talk with texts till free speech be smothered. He ought to go—to say it without feeling.”
And meantime the anti-social instinct in Shillabeer, filtering by secret ways through the old man’s brain, took another turn and led him upon a road none had foreseen. Vaguely at first he glimpsed it, and on his declining years a dark short cut to peace suddenly yawned.
The first glimpse of this haunting evil that now crept upon the old prize-fighter was revealed to a woman; and on the occasion Mr. Shillabeer not only shocked her with a thought, but astonished her by a confession.
First, however, there came dark words between them, as happens at the meeting of unhappy and restless spirits. Then Margaret Bowden, for it was she, learnt the man’s simple secret. It argued some unexpected cunning in him that he could have pursued his purpose and also hidden it; and the circumstance taken in conjunction with the present theme, made her fear for his sanity. Not the subject so much startled her as its existence in this particular man’s brain. She listened, was surprised to find how reasonable his arguments seemed, yet strove with all her wits to refute them.
One day on his way back from Princetown Mr. Shillabeer noted the smoke rising from ‘Meavy Cot’ under Black Tor. He had never seen David Bowden’s home and the opportunity was a good one. He left the main road, therefore, and soon reached the house. David happened to be away, and Rhoda was also out. But Margaret made the visitor welcome, hastened the hour of tea-drinking, and insisted that he should stop for it.
“As nice a house as one might wish for,” he said. “And I’d like to say that I’m among them that wish all joy and good fortune and good luck to your husband. He’s one of the fortunate ones, and well he deserves to be. I suppose it won’t be long now afore he takes up the new work?”
“We go after the winter,” she answered.
“A position of great trust. ’Tis wonderful to me to think that when I first come to Sheepstor he was a little fellow in a lamb’s-wool coat, as wanted his mother’s hand to help him over the rough ground. And I’ve lived to see him rise into manhood, and show his valour in the ring, and take a wife, and now stand up among leading people and rise to be the right hand of one of the richest personages in the county.”
“Very wonderful, as you say. Yet not wonderful neither. ’Tis David that is wonderful—not the things as happen to him. Given such a man, he was bound to get up top.”
“True,” declared Mr. Shillabeer, passing his cup to be refilled; “the very same thought often came in my mind when my wife was alive. She was the wonder, and I was sure to be lucky and fortunate when I married her. But death’s stronger than the most wonderful life that ever was lived. She went and took her luck with her; and her gone, I sank again to be a common man. And when you feel puffed up, Margaret, always remember that death lies behind every hedge and makes ready the gun trigger for this man, the flood for that; the weak lynch-pin here, and the mad dog there. Another thing as you may have noticed; ’tis always the usefulest be picked off. Heaven’s terrible jealous of a real valuable man. It ain’t got no need of the rogues and wastrels no more than we have; but if a male or female be doing for the Lord with both hands, so often as not the Lord says, ‘That’s the very man or woman I want for such and such a bit of real high work.’ And they’m cut down like the grass of the field.”
“Yes,” she said. “The Lord harvests His own way, Mr. Shillabeer; and because a beautiful, useful life goes, ban’t for us to mourn, but to say ’twas needed for higher things.”
“And another point I’d have you to know,” he added. “I ban’t at all sure if the right of private judgment be withheld either. Parson will tell you, and most people will also tell you, that ’tis a very bad come-along-of-it for a human creature to say ‘I ban’t wanted no more and so I’ll be off;’ but I won’t go so far as that myself. I’ve tried to look at this matter with the eyes of God A’mighty, and I’ve done it.”
She stared at him.
“You’m surprised,” he said; “but listen to me. I’m a man of many troubles and griefs, and I hope you’ll never see half a quarter the sorrows I have. Still as the sparks fly upwards, so you’ll have your share and know what it is to suffer.”
“Yes, for certain.”
“But don’t you ever suppose that we’re put here for nought but suffering and nought but happiness. I tell you, Margaret, that suffering and happiness be both beside the great question.”
“We’re put here for usefulness,” she said, and he eagerly agreed with her.
“The very word! Trouble or joy be an accident—always a matter of chance. You can see it everywhere. There’s wise and sensible people wading through nought but trouble and opening their eyes on it at every sun up; and there’s born fools sailing along in nought but fine weather; and so you get men like me full of doubt and darkness, because we can’t trust our own wisdom; and fools such as—but I won’t name no names—thinking themselves terrible clever and giving themselves terrible airs because they suppose their good be a matter of their own making, instead of simple kind fortune.”
“I suppose things come out pretty fair all round in the long run,” she said. “If you’ve got money, you miss childer; if you’ve got love you miss luck; if you’ve got health—”
“As to health, nought matters less than that,” declared Mr. Shillabeer.
“You speak as one who never had an ache or pain,” she said.
“Bah!” he answered, “this carcase be less to me than the bones the crows have plucked beside the way. I’ve reached a high pitch of mind now when I could drive a red-hot needle through the calf of my leg and care nought for the pang. D’you think these things matter to a man who have been hammered into a heap of bruised, senseless flesh four different times in his life like what I have? ’Tis the inner pain that hurts me, and if I was canker-bitten and racked with every human ill, I’d laugh at it all, if only my wife had been spared to sit beside me and hold my hand. Things ban’t fairly planned here. You say they are, but it isn’t so. I know ’tis a common speech on easy tongues, but it won’t stand the test of workaday life. Happy people may say it to calm their consciences if they be having an extra good life, but ’tisn’t true, and never was true. Things ban’t fair all round—nothing like it.”
“No, they’re not,” she confessed. “’Tis just a foolish parrot speech. I know they’re not fair as well as you do really.”
“Then I go on to my argeyment,” said Reuben. “Granted the Lord, for His own secret ends, ban’t concerned to play fair with us, then, being a just God, He must let us right the balance and use our own judgment where we have the power. If even you—with all your big share of good luck—allow on second thoughts that things don’t fall fair, how much more must the most of people feel it so?”
“My luck—” she began, and stopped, but her tone indicated she was about to demur, and he invited her to do so.
“There again,” he said, “we can only speak what we see, but what we see ban’t always the truth. The outside ban’t a glass pane to show the inside, but more often a clever door to hide it. I say in my haste how that none ever had more luck to her share than you. Well, I’ve no right to say that. Perhaps I’m wrong.”
“In a way, yes. David, you must know, is a great man now, and ’tisn’t the least of a loving woman’s hardships to see her husband growing great and herself biding little.”
“Good Lord! what a silly point of view!” said he. “Ban’t you bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh? How the deuce can the man grow great and leave you behind?”
“I can’t explain,” she said. “But ’tis so—off and on. Sometimes he catches sight of me in his life, if you understand, and remembers me, and we have precious days. Then again he loses sight of me for a bit. I tell you these things, because you be such a big-hearted, understanding man, Mr. Shillabeer.”
“I am,” he said. “’Tis my sole vartue to be so. But my usefulness is nearly over. So we come back to that usefulness we started with.”
“Your usefulness ban’t ended, I’m very sure.”
“’Tis only ourselves know about that. A thinking creature, unless he’s growing old and weak in the head, knows very well when his usefulness be coming to an end. Old I may be growing, but my mind is clear enough, and it tells me that my work’s pretty nearly done. Think if ’twas you, Margaret, and them you loved best was in heaven, and there come into your mind the certainty that there was nought to keep you an hour from them—what would you do?”
“Wait the Lord’s time.”
“What happens must be in the Lord’s time, and can’t fall out in any other time. But if the thought comes into your heart to join the dead, ban’t it the Lord as sent the thoughts; and if you do join ’em, can it be done without the Lord’s wish and will?”
“Of course nothing can happen without the Lord permits, because He’s all-powerful and wills nought but good.”
“That’s all I want for you to see. And it follows—don’t it?—that if the still small voice tells me I may go home, the way be clear?”
“Go home!”
“To the home that’s waiting where my woman be. I’m home-sick for it—terrible home-sick. And the thought have come very strong of late that there’s nothing left to bide for. And a simple thing—such a simple thing! ’Tis merely putting something between you and the air of heaven for a brief minute—a drop of water, or a rope round your throat. Or, if your nature goes against that way, you can let the immortal soul out through a hole—”
His great eyes stared into vacancy, and she gazed with horrified interest at him.
“To kill yourself! Oh, dear Mr. Shillabeer, what are you saying?”
“You may call it killing,” he said, “but I don’t. I call it opening the half-hatch of the door and going home. They say self-slaughterers be mad mostly—at least, so ’tis brought in most times by a crowner’s jury of busy men—men as don’t care a button about the job, but want to get back to their work. But I tell you ’tis no mark of weak intellects to do it. A cowardly deed it may be sometimes, but a coward isn’t daft as a rule. And now and then ’tis the bravest thing a man can do, and now and then the wisest.”
“Never—never!”
“You wait till you’ve seen life move into the middle time, or lost what’s better than life. Keep your own opinions, but don’t grow narrow, and don’t tell me that the still small voice ever whispered a lie to a Christian man. Usefulness ended, ’tis our place to seek a new bit of ground again where we can be useful anew; and if this world have done with us, who’s to say the next won’t be very glad of a new workman?”
“But not to go like that, surely?”
“I tell you the Lord’s over all,” he answered again solemnly. “The Lord chooses the fly for the fish, and hedge-sparrow for the hawk, and the mouse for the owl. The Lord comes to me by night, and He says, ‘Shillabeer,’ and I say, ‘I be listening, Lord.’”
Margaret shivered, yet felt no fear of him.
“And then,” he continued, “the Lord says ‘They’ve done with you, Shillabeer; they want a cheerfuller, hopefuller pattern of man;’ and I say, ‘’Tis so, Lord; I read it in their faces.’”
He broke off suddenly and spoke of other things.
“D’you mind when holy words sprang up on the gates and lintels round about—like corn springs after rain? ’Twas my work! You’re the first to know it, and I must ax of you to keep it dark ’till I’m gone to my reward. But ’twas my thought and deed. By night I’d do it; and of lonely grey evenings; and often afore the sun was up. I’ve walked with God, woman!”
“And much good those texts in the lone places did. I know they warmed my heart more than once, Mr. Shillabeer.”
“Yes, they did a power of good. I could see that.”
“To think you was never found out!”
“The Lord hid me. ’Twas His idea, not mine. Every idea be the Lord’s first; and the cleverest things we can do be planned out by Him and then slipped into a man’s intellects, like we post a letter or whisper into a ear.”
“But the wicked thoughts?”
“Good men don’t get ’em. Proper-thinking people don’t let ’em in. Be the God of Hosts going to suffer a humble, faithful servant like me to be pestered with Satan’s nonsense at my time of life? Would that be a fair thing? If a man ban’t done with the Devil when he’s in sight of seventy, ’tis a bad lookout for him. And God’s nearly always been a fair sportsman, you mind.”
“Somebody far wiser and cleverer than me ought to hear about this,” she declared. “I do think and believe you’re terribly wrong.”
He shook his great head impatiently.
“No, no. I’m in the right. I met Mr. Merle in the churchyard, when I was sitting beside my wife’s bones a bit ago, and he walked over and had a tell with me; and I axed him if our inner thoughts come from God—just to see what he’d say. He answered that every good and perfect thought comed from the Father of Gifts. So there you are. What is it—this thing driving me to be gone? Why, ’tis the voice of Heaven calling me—just like you yourself might call the cows home off the moor at milking time.”
“You make a terrible mistake.”
He held up his hand.
“Say not a word, my dear. ’Tis no better than speaking against the Master of all flesh to tell me I’ve heard wrong. My wife’s in Heaven. I’ve got her that loved me best among the angels at the Throne of Grace. Belike she’s just fretting her spirit with cruel impatience because I hang fire. You might think, perhaps, that there wasn’t no great haste, eternity being what it is. But if you loved your husband like my wife loved me, you’d know eternity’s self was none too long for us to be together again. There’s only one little thing that makes me hang back.”
“’Tis the Word of God.”
“Not a bit. ’Tis the way of man. I’m very doubtful of parson Merle—not as a righteous creature before Heaven; but he’s human, and he’s a terrible narrow thinker here and there. If I take myself off, ’tis so like as not he’ll get some bee in his bonnet and withhold the burial service or maim it over me, like he did when Pritchard hung himself. Not that that would trouble me very greatly; but supposing that he wouldn’t let my bones go beside hers? Such a thing happening would turn me into a wandering ghost till Doom without a doubt.”
“Don’t give him the chance. Think a very great deal about it,” she urged. “You may be all wrong in your opinions, dear Mr. Shillabeer, and right well I know you are. Perhaps, if you was to pray about it to Christ, He’d show you how awful mistaken you was. And as for usefulness, there’s no more useful and well thought on man among us.”
“I’ve done my duty, and my duty’s done,” he said.
“Promise me not to do anything till you’ve talked to me again,” she urged. “At least you might do that. I knew your wife, and she loved me.”
“Yes, my wife was very fond of you when you was a child,” he said. “I’ll do your bidding that far then. You speak what be put into you to speak, no doubt. Now I look at you, there’s sense as well as sadness in your face. I hope the sense will bide and the sadness lift in God’s good time.”
The old man departed, and that night Margaret told David of all that she had heard and the condition of Reuben Shillabeer’s mind. He took the matter very seriously and resolved to be busy on the sufferer’s behalf.
“I can ill spare the time,” he said. “But for a neighbour in such a fix our own affairs must be put aside. I’ll go to doctor at Tavistock to-morrow the first thing. He’s a rare sportsman and a very keen man. ’Twas him that stood referee in the fight. ’Tis time he took the poor old chap in hand; and Shillabeer’s got high respect for him and will trust him I hope, if he goes about his work clever.”
David was not surprised to hear the secret of the texts.
“As a matter of fact amongst a few of us—my father and me and others—’twas an open secret,” he said. “Father himself first guessed it. But we didn’t say a word for fear of vexing poor old ‘Dumpling.’ ’Twas a harmless thing, and very likely it did good now and again.”