The Delectable Duchy Part 23

"Providence."

Naomi had treated Long Oliver badly in days gone by, but could still talk to him with more freedom than to other men. Still standing with a hand on her hip, she let fall a horrible sentence about the Almighty--all the more horrible in that it came deliberately, without emphasis, and from quiet lips.

"Woman!" cried a voice above them.

They turned, looked up, and saw the bent figure of a man framed in the street doorway. This was William Geake, who walked in from Gantick every Sat.u.r.day to collect the sixpences and s.h.i.+llings of Vellan's Rents for its landlord, a well-to-do wine and spirit merchant at Tregarrick. As a man of indisputable probity and an unwearying walker, Geake was entrusted with many odd jobs of this kind in the country round, filling in with them such idle corners as his trade of carpenter and undertaker to Gantick village might leave in the six working days. On Sundays he put on a long black coat, and became a Rounder, or Methodist local-preacher, walking sometimes twenty miles there and back to terrify the inhabitants of outlying hamlets about their future state.

"Woman!" cried William Geake, "Down 'pon your knees an' pray G.o.d the roof don't fall on 'ee for your vile words."

"I reckon," retorted Naomi quietly, with a glance up at the worm-riddled rafters, "you'd do more good by speakin' to the landlord."

William Geake had a high brow and bright, nervous eyes, betokening enthusiasm; but he had also a long and square jaw that meant stubbornness. This jaw now began to protrude and his lips to straighten.

"Down 'pon your knees!" he repeated.

Naomi turned her eyes from him to Long Oliver, who leant against the staircase wall with his arms crossed and a veiled amus.e.m.e.nt in his face. With a slightly heightened colour, but no flutter of the voice, she repeated her blasphemy; and then, pulling a s.h.i.+lling from her worn purse, tendered it to Geake. This, of course, meant "Mind your own business"; but he waved her hand aside.

"Down 'pon your knees, woman!" he shouted thunderously. Then, as she showed no disposition to obey, he added, grimly, "Eh? but somebody shall intercede for thee afore thou'rt a minute older."

And pulling off his hat there and then, he knelt down on the doorstep, with the soles of his hob-nailed boots showing to the street.

"Get up, an' don't make yoursel' a may-game," said Naomi hurriedly, as one or two children stopped their play, and drew around to stare.

"Father in heaven," began William Geake, in a voice that fetched the women-folk, all up and down the Chy-pons, to their doors, "Thou, whose property is ever to have mercy, forgive this blaspheming woman! Suffer one who is Thy servant, though a grievous sinner, to intercede for her afore she commits the sin that cannot be forgiven; to pluck her as a brand from the burning--"

By this, the women and a loafing man or two had cl.u.s.tered round, and Colliver's coal-cart had rattled up and come to a standstill. The Chy-pons is the narrowest street in Troy, and Colliver's driver could hardly pa.s.s now, except over William Geake's legs.

"Draw in your feet, brother Geake," he called out, "or else pray short."

One or two women giggled at this. But Geake did not seem to hear.

For five good minutes he prayed vociferously, as was his custom in meeting-house; then rose, replaced his hat, dusted his knees, held out his hand for Naomi's s.h.i.+lling, and wrote her the customary voucher in his most business-like manner, and without another word. But there was a triumphant look in his eyes that dared Naomi to repeat her offence, and she very nearly wept as she felt that the words would not come.

This and the shame of publicity drove her back into her room as Geake pa.s.sed down the stairs to collect the other rents. A few women still hung about the doorway as he emerged, some twenty minutes later. But he marched down Chy-pons with head erect and eyes fixed straight ahead.

II.

On the following Sat.u.r.day, when Geake called, Naomi was standing at her wash-tub. She had seen him pa.s.s the window, and, hurriedly wiping her hands, and pulling out her s.h.i.+lling, placed it ostentatiously in the very centre of the deal table by the door; then had just time to plunge her hands in the soap-suds again before he knocked. Try as she would, she could not keep back a blush at the remembrance of last week's scene, and half looked for him to make some allusion to it.

His extremely business-like air rea.s.sured her. She nodded towards the s.h.i.+lling without removing her hands from the tub. He took it, including in a polite good-morning both Naomi and her mother, who was huddled in an arm-chair before the fire and recovering from an attack of the fever, wrote out his voucher solemnly, set it in the exact spot where the s.h.i.+lling had stood, took up his hat, hesitated for less than a second, replaced his hat on the table, and, pulling a chair towards him, dropped on his knees, and began to pray aloud.

The old woman by the fire slewed her head painfully round and stared at him, then at Naomi. But Naomi was standing with her back to them both, and her hands soaping the linen in the tub--gently, however, and without any splas.h.i.+ng. She therefore let her head sink back on the cus.h.i.+on, and a.s.sumed that peculiarly dejected air, commonly reserved by her for the consolations of religion.

On this occasion William Geake prayed in a low and level tone, and very briefly. He made no allusion to last Sat.u.r.day, but put up an earnest pet.i.tion for blessings upon "our two sisters here," and that they might learn to accept their appointed portion with resignation, yea, even with a holy joy. At the end of two minutes he rose, and was about to dust his knees, after his usual custom, but, becoming suddenly aware of the difference in cleanliness between Naomi's lime-ash and the floors of the various meeting-houses of his acquaintance, refrained. This little piece of delicacy did not escape Naomi, though her shoulders were still bent over the tub, to all seeming as resolutely as ever.

"Well, I swow that was very friendly of Mister Geake!" the old woman e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, as the door closed behind him. "'Tisn't everybody'd ha'

thought what a comfort a little sc.r.a.p o' religion can be to an old woman in my state."

"He took a great liberty," said Naomi snappishly.

"Well, he might ha' said as much as 'By your leave,' to be sure; an' now you say so, 'twas makin' a bit free to talk about our dependence--an' in my own kitchen too."

"He meant our dependence on th' Almighty," Naomi corrected, still more snappishly. "William Geake's an odd-fangled man, but you might give 'en credit for good-feelin'. An', what's more, though I don't hold wi' Christian talk, if a man have a got beliefs, I respect 'en for standin' to 'em without shame."

"But I thought, a moment ago--" her mother began, and then subsided.

She was accustomed to small tangles in her own processes of thought, and quite incapable, after years of blind acceptance, of correcting Naomi's logic.

No more was said on the matter. The next Sat.u.r.day, after receiving his s.h.i.+lling, Mr. Geake knelt down without any hesitation. It was clear he wished this prayer to be a weekly inst.i.tution, and an inst.i.tution it became.

The women never knelt. Naomi, indeed, had never sanctioned the innovation, unless by her silence, and her mother a.s.sisted only with a very lugubrious "Amen," being too weak to stir from her chair. As the months pa.s.sed, it became evident to Geake that her strength would never come back. The fever had left her, apparently for good; but the rheumatism remained, and closed slowly upon the heart. The machine was worn out.

When the end came, Naomi had been doing the work single-handed for close upon twelve months. She could always get a plenty of work, and now took in a deal too much for her strength, to settle the doctor's and undertaker's bills, and buy herself a black gown, cape, and bonnet. The funeral, of course, took place on a Sunday. Geake, on the Sat.u.r.day afternoon, knocked gently at Naomi's door. His single intent was to speak a word or two of sympathy, if she would listen.

Remembering her constant att.i.tude under the Divine scourge, he felt a trifle nervous.

But there lay the s.h.i.+lling in the centre of the table, and there stood Naomi in a cloud of steam, hard at work on an immoderate pile of was.h.i.+ng--even a man's miscalculating eye could see that it was immoderate.

"I didn't call--" he began, with a glance towards the s.h.i.+lling.

"No; I know you didn't. But you may so well take it all the same."

Geake had rehea.r.s.ed a small speech, but found himself making out and signing the voucher as usual; and, as usual, when it was signed, he drew over a chair, and dropped on his knees. In prayer-meeting he was a great hand at "improving" an occasion of bereavement; but here again his will to speak impressively suddenly failed him. His words were:

"Lord, there were two women grinding at a mill; the one was taken, and t'other left. She that you took, you've a-carr'd beyond our prayers; but O, be gentle, be gentle, to her that's left!"

He arose, and looked shyly, almost shamefacedly, at Naomi. She had not turned. But her head was bowed; and, drawing near, he saw that the scalding tears were falling fast into the wash-tub. She had not wept when her husband was lost, nor since.

"Go away!" she commanded, before he could speak, turning her shoulders resolutely towards him.

He took up his hat, and went out softly, closing the door softly behind him.

His eye, which was growing quick to read Naomi's face, saw at once, as he entered the room a week later, that she deprecated even the slightest reference to her weakness. It also told him--he had not guessed it before--that her emotional breakdown had probably more to do with physical exhaustion than with any eloquence of his. The pile of was.h.i.+ng had grown, and the woman's face was grey with fatigue.

Geake, as he made out the voucher, cast about for a polite mode of hinting that this kind of thing must not go on. Nevertheless it was Naomi who began.

"Look here," she said, as he put down the voucher; "there ain't goin'

to be no more prayin', eh?"

"Why, to be sure there is," he answered with a show of great cheerfulness; and reached for a chair.

"I'd liefer you didn't. I don't want it. I don't hold by any o't.

You'm very kind," she went on, her voice trembling for an instant and then recovering its firmness, "and I reckon it soothed mother. But I reckon it don't soothe me. I reckon it rubs me the wrong way. There's times, when I hears a body prayin', that I wishes we was Papists again and wors.h.i.+pped images, that I might throw stones at 'em!"

She paused, looked up into Geake's devouring eyes, and added, with a poor attempt at a laugh:

"So you see, I'm wicked, an' don't want to be saved."

Then the man broke forth:

"Saved? No, I reckon you don't! Wicked? Iss, I reckon you be! But saved you shall be--ay, if you was twice so wicked. Who'll do it? I'll do it--I alone. I don't want your help. I want to do it in spite of 'ee: an' I'll lay that I do! Be your wickedness deep as h.e.l.l, an' I'll reach down a hand to the roots and pluck it up: be your salvation stubborn as Death, I'll wrestle wi' the Lord for it. If I sell my own soul for't, yours shall be redeemed!"