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Amy Foster
By
Joseph Conrad
AMY
FOSTER
By
Joseph Conrad
Kennedy is a coun=
try
doctor, and lives in Colebrook, on the shores of Eastbay. The high ground
rising abruptly behind the red roofs of the little town crowds the quaint H=
igh
Street against the wall which defends it from the sea. Beyond the sea-wall
there curves for miles in a vast and regular sweep the barren beach of shin=
gle,
with the village of Brenzett standing out darkly across the water, a spire =
in a
clump of trees; and still further out the perpendicular column of a lightho=
use,
looking in the distance no bigger than a lead pencil, marks the vanishing-p=
oint
of the land. The country at the back of Brenzett is low and flat, but the b=
ay
is fairly well sheltered from the seas, and occasionally a big ship, windbo=
und
or through stress of weather, makes use of the anchoring ground a mile and a
half due north from you as you stand at the back door of the "Ship
Inn" in Brenzett. A dilapidated windmill near by lifting its shattered
arms from a mound no loftier than a rubbish heap, and a Martello tower
squatting at the water's edge half a mile to the south of the Coastguard
cottages, are familiar to the skippers of small craft. These are the offici=
al
seamarks for the patch of trustworthy bottom represented on the Admiralty
charts by an irregular oval of dots enclosing several figures six, with a t=
iny
anchor engraved among them, and the legend "mud and shells" over =
all.
The brow of the
upland overtops the square tower of the Colebrook Church. The slope is green
and looped by a white road. Ascending along this road, you open a valley br=
oad
and shallow, a wide green trough of pastures and hedges merging inland into=
a
vista of purple tints and flowing lines closing the view.
In this valley do=
wn
to Brenzett and Colebrook and up to Darnford, the market town fourteen miles
away, lies the practice of my friend Kennedy. He had begun life as surgeon =
in
the Navy, and afterwards had been the companion of a famous traveller, in t=
he
days when there were continents with unexplored interiors. His papers on the
fauna and flora made him known to scientific societies. And now he had come=
to
a country practice--from choice. The penetrating power of his mind, acting =
like
a corrosive fluid, had destroyed his ambition, I fancy. His intelligence is=
of
a scientific order, of an investigating habit, and of that unappeasable
curiosity which believes that there is a particle of a general truth in eve=
ry mystery.
A good many years=
ago
now, on my return from abroad, he invited me to stay with him. I came readi=
ly
enough, and as he could not neglect his patients to keep me company, he too=
k me
on his rounds--thirty miles or so of an afternoon, sometimes. I waited for =
him
on the roads; the horse reached after the leafy twigs, and, sitting in the
dogcart, I could hear Kennedy's laugh through the half-open door left open =
of
some cottage. He had a big, hearty laugh that would have fitted a man twice=
his
size, a brisk manner, a bronzed face, and a pair of grey, profoundly attent=
ive eyes.
He had the talent of making people talk to him freely, and an inexhaustible
patience in listening to their tales.
One day, as we
trotted out of a large village into a shady bit of road, I saw on our left =
hand
a low, black cottage, with diamond panes in the windows, a creeper on the e=
nd
wall, a roof of shingle, and some roses climbing on the rickety trellis-wor=
k of
the tiny porch. Kennedy pulled up to a walk. A woman, in full sunlight, was
throwing a dripping blanket over a line stretched between two old apple-tre=
es.
And as the bobtailed, long-necked chestnut, trying to get his head, jerked =
the
left hand, covered by a thick dog-skin glove, the doctor raised his voice o=
ver
the hedge: "How's your child, Amy?"
I had the time to=
see
her dull face, red, not with a mantling blush, but as if her flat cheeks had
been vigorously slapped, and to take in the squat figure, the scanty, dusty
brown hair drawn into a tight knot at the back of the head. She looked quite
young. With a distinct catch in her breath, her voice sounded low and timid=
.
"He's well,
thank you."
We trotted again.
"A young patient of yours," I said; and the doctor, flicking the
chestnut absently, muttered, "Her husband used to be."
"She seems a
dull creature," I remarked listlessly.
"Precisely,&=
quot;
said Kennedy. "She is very passive. It's enough to look at the red han=
ds
hanging at the end of those short arms, at those slow, prominent brown eyes=
, to
know the inertness of her mind--an inertness that one would think made it
everlastingly safe from all the surprises of imagination. And yet which of =
us
is safe? At any rate, such as you see her, she had enough imagination to fa=
ll
in love. She's the daughter of one Isaac Foster, who from a small farmer has
sunk into a shepherd; the beginning of his misfortunes dating from his runa=
way
marriage with the cook of his widowed father--a well-to-do, apoplectic graz=
ier,
who passionately struck his name off his will, and had been heard to utter =
threats
against his life. But this old affair, scandalous enough to serve as a moti=
ve
for a Greek tragedy, arose from the similarity of their characters. There a=
re
other tragedies, less scandalous and of a subtler poignancy, arising from
irreconcilable differences and from that fear of the Incomprehensible that
hangs over all our heads--over all our heads...."
The tired chestnut
dropped into a walk; and the rim of the sun, all red in a speckless sky,
touched familiarly the smooth top of a ploughed rise near the road as I had
seen it times innumerable touch the distant horizon of the sea. The uniform
brownness of the harrowed field glowed with a rosy tinge, as though the
powdered clods had sweated out in minute pearls of blood the toil of uncoun=
ted
ploughmen. From the edge of a copse a waggon with two horses was rolling ge=
ntly
along the ridge. Raised above our heads upon the sky-line, it loomed up aga=
inst
the red sun, triumphantly big, enormous, like a chariot of giants drawn by =
two slow-stepping
steeds of legendary proportions. And the clumsy figure of the man plodding =
at
the head of the leading horse projected itself on the background of the
Infinite with a heroic uncouthness. The end of his carter's whip quivered h=
igh
up in the blue. Kennedy discoursed.
"She's the
eldest of a large family. At the age of fifteen they put her out to service=
at
the New Barns Farm. I attended Mrs. Smith, the tenant's wife, and saw that =
girl
there for the first time. Mrs. Smith, a genteel person with a sharp nose, m=
ade
her put on a black dress every afternoon. I don't know what induced me to
notice her at all. There are faces that call your attention by a curious wa=
nt
of definiteness in their whole aspect, as, walking in a mist, you peer
attentively at a vague shape which, after all, may be nothing more curious =
or
strange than a signpost. The only peculiarity I perceived in her was a slig=
ht hesitation
in her utterance, a sort of preliminary stammer which passes away with the
first word. When sharply spoken to, she was apt to lose her head at once; b=
ut
her heart was of the kindest. She had never been heard to express a dislike=
for
a single human being, and she was tender to every living creature. She was
devoted to Mrs. Smith, to Mr. Smith, to their dogs, cats, canaries; and as =
to
Mrs. Smith's grey parrot, its peculiarities exercised upon her a positive
fascination. Nevertheless, when that outlandish bird, attacked by the cat,
shrieked for help in human accents, she ran out into the yard stopping her
ears, and did not prevent the crime. For Mrs. Smith this was another eviden=
ce
of her stupidity; on the other hand, her want of charm, in view of Smith's =
well-known
frivolousness, was a great recommendation. Her short-sighted eyes would swim
with pity for a poor mouse in a trap, and she had been seen once by some bo=
ys
on her knees in the wet grass helping a toad in difficulties. If it's true,=
as
some German fellow has said, that without phosphorus there is no thought, i=
t is
still more true that there is no kindness of heart without a certain amount=
of
imagination. She had some. She had even more than is necessary to understand
suffering and to be moved by pity. She fell in love under circumstances that
leave no room for doubt in the matter; for you need imagination to form a
notion of beauty at all, and still more to discover your ideal in an unfami=
liar
shape.
"How this
aptitude came to her, what it did feed upon, is an inscrutable mystery. She=
was
born in the village, and had never been further away from it than Colebrook=
or
perhaps Darnford. She lived for four years with the Smiths. New Barns is an
isolated farmhouse a mile away from the road, and she was content to look d=
ay
after day at the same fields, hollows, rises; at the trees and the hedgerow=
s;
at the faces of the four men about the farm, always the same--day after day,
month after month, year after year. She never showed a desire for conversat=
ion,
and, as it seemed to me, she did not know how to smile. Sometimes of a fine
Sunday afternoon she would put on her best dress, a pair of stout boots, a =
large
grey hat trimmed with a black feather (I've seen her in that finery), seize=
an
absurdly slender parasol, climb over two stiles, tramp over three fields and
along two hundred yards of road--never further. There stood Foster's cottag=
e.
She would help her mother to give their tea to the younger children, wash up
the crockery, kiss the little ones, and go back to the farm. That was all. =
All
the rest, all the change, all the relaxation. She never seemed to wish for
anything more. And then she fell in love. She fell in love silently,
obstinately--perhaps helplessly. It came slowly, but when it came it worked
like a powerful spell; it was love as the Ancients understood it: an
irresistible and fateful impulse--a possession! Yes, it was in her to become
haunted and possessed by a face, by a presence, fatally, as though she had =
been
a pagan worshipper of form under a joyous sky--and to be awakened at last f=
rom
that mysterious forgetfulness of self, from that enchantment, from that
transport, by a fear resembling the unaccountable terror of a brute....&quo=
t;
With the sun hang=
ing
low on its western limit, the expanse of the grass-lands framed in the
counter-scarps of the rising ground took on a gorgeous and sombre aspect. A
sense of penetrating sadness, like that inspired by a grave strain of music,
disengaged itself from the silence of the fields. The men we met walked past
slow, unsmiling, with downcast eyes, as if the melancholy of an over-burden=
ed
earth had weighted their feet, bowed their shoulders, borne down their glan=
ces.
"Yes," =
said
the doctor to my remark, "one would think the earth is under a curse,
since of all her children these that cling to her the closest are uncouth in
body and as leaden of gait as if their very hearts were loaded with chains.=
But
here on this same road you might have seen amongst these heavy men a being
lithe, supple, and long-limbed, straight like a pine with something striving
upwards in his appearance as though the heart within him had been buoyant.
Perhaps it was only the force of the contrast, but when he was passing one =
of
these villagers here, the soles of his feet did not seem to me to touch the
dust of the road. He vaulted over the stiles, paced these slopes with a long
elastic stride that made him noticeable at a great distance, and had lustro=
us
black eyes. He was so different from the mankind around that, with his free=
dom of
movement, his soft--a little startled, glance, his olive complexion and
graceful bearing, his humanity suggested to me the nature of a woodland cre=
ature.
He came from there."
The doctor pointed
with his whip, and from the summit of the descent seen over the rolling top=
s of
the trees in a park by the side of the road, appeared the level sea far bel=
ow
us, like the floor of an immense edifice inlaid with bands of dark ripple, =
with
still trails of glitter, ending in a belt of glassy water at the foot of the
sky. The light blur of smoke, from an invisible steamer, faded on the great
clearness of the horizon like the mist of a breath on a mirror; and, inshor=
e,
the white sails of a coaster, with the appearance of disentangling themselv=
es slowly
from under the branches, floated clear of the foliage of the trees.
"Shipwrecked=
in
the bay?" I said.
"Yes; he was=
a
castaway. A poor emigrant from Central Europe bound to America and washed
ashore here in a storm. And for him, who knew nothing of the earth, England=
was
an undiscovered country. It was some time before he learned its name; and f=
or
all I know he might have expected to find wild beasts or wild men here, whe=
n,
crawling in the dark over the sea-wall, he rolled down the other side into a
dyke, where it was another miracle he didn't get drowned. But he struggled
instinctively like an animal under a net, and this blind struggle threw him=
out
into a field. He must have been, indeed, of a tougher fibre than he looked =
to
withstand without expiring such buffetings, the violence of his exertions, =
and
so much fear. Later on, in his broken English that resembled curiously the
speech of a young child, he told me himself that he put his trust in God,
believing he was no longer in this world. And truly--he would add--how was =
he
to know? He fought his way against the rain and the gale on all fours, and
crawled at last among some sheep huddled close under the lee of a hedge. Th=
ey
ran off in all directions, bleating in the darkness, and he welcomed the fi=
rst
familiar sound he heard on these shores. It must have been two in the morni=
ng
then. And this is all we know of the manner of his landing, though he did n=
ot arrive
unattended by any means. Only his grisly company did not begin to come asho=
re
till much later in the day...."
The doctor gather=
ed
the reins, clicked his tongue; we trotted down the hill. Then turning, almo=
st
directly, a sharp corner into the High Street, we rattled over the stones a=
nd
were home.
Late in the eveni=
ng
Kennedy, breaking a spell of moodiness that had come over him, returned to =
the
story. Smoking his pipe, he paced the long room from end to end. A reading-=
lamp
concentrated all its light upon the papers on his desk; and, sitting by the
open window, I saw, after the windless, scorching day, the frigid splendour=
of
a hazy sea lying motionless under the moon. Not a whisper, not a splash, no=
t a
stir of the shingle, not a footstep, not a sigh came up from the earth belo=
w--never
a sign of life but the scent of climbing jasmine; and Kennedy's voice, spea=
king
behind me, passed through the wide casement, to vanish outside in a chill a=
nd
sumptuous stillness.
"... The
relations of shipwrecks in the olden time tell us of much suffering. Often =
the
castaways were only saved from drowning to die miserably from starvation on=
a
barren coast; others suffered violent death or else slavery, passing through
years of precarious existence with people to whom their strangeness was an
object of suspicion, dislike or fear. We read about these things, and they =
are
very pitiful. It is indeed hard upon a man to find himself a lost stranger,
helpless, incomprehensible, and of a mysterious origin, in some obscure cor=
ner
of the earth. Yet amongst all the adventurers shipwrecked in all the wild p=
arts
of the world there is not one, it seems to me, that ever had to suffer a fa=
te
so simply tragic as the man I am speaking of, the most innocent of adventur=
ers
cast out by the sea in the bight of this bay, almost within sight from this
very window.
"He did not =
know
the name of his ship. Indeed, in the course of time we discovered he did not
even know that ships had names--'like Christian people'; and when, one day,
from the top of the Talfourd Hill, he beheld the sea lying open to his view,
his eyes roamed afar, lost in an air of wild surprise, as though he had nev=
er
seen such a sight before. And probably he had not. As far as I could make o=
ut,
he had been hustled together with many others on board an emigrant-ship lyi=
ng
at the mouth of the Elbe, too bewildered to take note of his surroundings, =
too
weary to see anything, too anxious to care. They were driven below into the=
'tweendeck
and battened down from the very start. It was a low timber dwelling--he wou=
ld
say--with wooden beams overhead, like the houses in his country, but you we=
nt
into it down a ladder. It was very large, very cold, damp and sombre, with
places in the manner of wooden boxes where people had to sleep, one above
another, and it kept on rocking all ways at once all the time. He crept into
one of these boxes and laid down there in the clothes in which he had left =
his
home many days before, keeping his bundle and his stick by his side. People
groaned, children cried, water dripped, the lights went out, the walls of t=
he
place creaked, and everything was being shaken so that in one's little box =
one dared
not lift one's head. He had lost touch with his only companion (a young man
from the same valley, he said), and all the time a great noise of wind went=
on
outside and heavy blows fell--boom! boom! An awful sickness overcame him, e=
ven
to the point of making him neglect his prayers. Besides, one could not tell
whether it was morning or evening. It seemed always to be night in that pla=
ce.
"Before that=
he
had been travelling a long, long time on the iron track. He looked out of t=
he
window, which had a wonderfully clear glass in it, and the trees, the house=
s,
the fields, and the long roads seemed to fly round and round about him till=
his
head swam. He gave me to understand that he had on his passage beheld uncou=
nted
multitudes of people--whole nations--all dressed in such clothes as the rich
wear. Once he was made to get out of the carriage, and slept through a nigh=
t on
a bench in a house of bricks with his bundle under his head; and once for m=
any
hours he had to sit on a floor of flat stones dozing, with his knees up and=
with
his bundle between his feet. There was a roof over him, which seemed made of
glass, and was so high that the tallest mountain-pine he had ever seen would
have had room to grow under it. Steam-machines rolled in at one end and out=
at
the other. People swarmed more than you can see on a feast-day round the
miraculous Holy Image in the yard of the Carmelite Convent down in the plai=
ns
where, before he left his home, he drove his mother in a wooden cart--a pio=
us
old woman who wanted to offer prayers and make a vow for his safety. He cou=
ld
not give me an idea of how large and lofty and full of noise and smoke and
gloom, and clang of iron, the place was, but some one had told him it was
called Berlin. Then they rang a bell, and another steam-machine came in, an=
d again
he was taken on and on through a land that wearied his eyes by its flatness
without a single bit of a hill to be seen anywhere. One more night he spent
shut up in a building like a good stable with a litter of straw on the floo=
r,
guarding his bundle amongst a lot of men, of whom not one could understand a
single word he said. In the morning they were all led down to the stony sho=
res
of an extremely broad muddy river, flowing not between hills but between ho=
uses
that seemed immense. There was a steam-machine that went on the water, and =
they
all stood upon it packed tight, only now there were with them many women and
children who made much noise. A cold rain fell, the wind blew in his face; =
he
was wet through, and his teeth chattered. He and the young man from the sam=
e valley
took each other by the hand.
"They thought
they were being taken to America straight away, but suddenly the steam-mach=
ine
bumped against the side of a thing like a house on the water. The walls were
smooth and black, and there uprose, growing from the roof as it were, bare
trees in the shape of crosses, extremely high. That's how it appeared to him
then, for he had never seen a ship before. This was the ship that was going=
to
swim all the way to America. Voices shouted, everything swayed; there was a
ladder dipping up and down. He went up on his hands and knees in mortal fea=
r of
falling into the water below, which made a great splashing. He got separated
from his companion, and when he descended into the bottom of that ship his
heart seemed to melt suddenly within him.
"It was then
also, as he told me, that he lost contact for good and all with one of those
three men who the summer before had been going about through all the little
towns in the foothills of his country. They would arrive on market days dri=
ving
in a peasant's cart, and would set up an office in an inn or some other Jew=
's
house. There were three of them, of whom one with a long beard looked
venerable; and they had red cloth collars round their necks and gold lace on
their sleeves like Government officials. They sat proudly behind a long tab=
le;
and in the next room, so that the common people shouldn't hear, they kept a
cunning telegraph machine, through which they could talk to the Emperor of
America. The fathers hung about the door, but the young men of the mountains
would crowd up to the table asking many questions, for there was work to be=
got
all the year round at three dollars a day in America, and no military servi=
ce
to do.
"But the
American Kaiser would not take everybody. Oh, no! He himself had a great
difficulty in getting accepted, and the venerable man in uniform had to go =
out
of the room several times to work the telegraph on his behalf. The American
Kaiser engaged him at last at three dollars, he being young and strong.
However, many able young men backed out, afraid of the great distance; besi=
des,
those only who had some money could be taken. There were some who sold their
huts and their land because it cost a lot of money to get to America; but t=
hen,
once there, you had three dollars a day, and if you were clever you could f=
ind
places where true gold could be picked up on the ground. His father's house=
was
getting over full. Two of his brothers were married and had children. He
promised to send money home from America by post twice a year. His father s=
old
an old cow, a pair of piebald mountain ponies of his own raising, and a cle=
ared
plot of fair pasture land on the sunny slope of a pine-clad pass to a Jew
inn-keeper in order to pay the people of the ship that took men to America =
to
get rich in a short time.
"He must have
been a real adventurer at heart, for how many of the greatest enterprises in
the conquest of the earth had for their beginning just such a bargaining aw=
ay
of the paternal cow for the mirage or true gold far away! I have been telli=
ng
you more or less in my own words what I learned fragmentarily in the course=
of
two or three years, during which I seldom missed an opportunity of a friend=
ly
chat with him. He told me this story of his adventure with many flashes of
white teeth and lively glances of black eyes, at first in a sort of anxious=
baby-talk,
then, as he acquired the language, with great fluency, but always with that
singing, soft, and at the same time vibrating intonation that instilled a
strangely penetrating power into the sound of the most familiar English wor=
ds,
as if they had been the words of an unearthly language. And he always would
come to an end, with many emphatic shakes of his head, upon that awful
sensation of his heart melting within him directly he set foot on board that
ship. Afterwards there seemed to come for him a period of blank ignorance, =
at
any rate as to facts. No doubt he must have been abominably sea-sick and
abominably unhappy--this soft and passionate adventurer, taken thus out of =
his knowledge,
and feeling bitterly as he lay in his emigrant bunk his utter loneliness; f=
or
his was a highly sensitive nature. The next thing we know of him for certai=
n is
that he had been hiding in Hammond's pig-pound by the side of the road to
Norton six miles, as the crow flies, from the sea. Of these experiences he =
was
unwilling to speak: they seemed to have seared into his soul a sombre sort =
of
wonder and indignation. Through the rumours of the country-side, which last=
ed
for a good many days after his arrival, we know that the fishermen of West =
Colebrook
had been disturbed and startled by heavy knocks against the walls of
weatherboard cottages, and by a voice crying piercingly strange words in the
night. Several of them turned out even, but, no doubt, he had fled in sudden
alarm at their rough angry tones hailing each other in the darkness. A sort=
of frenzy
must have helped him up the steep Norton hill. It was he, no doubt, who ear=
ly
the following morning had been seen lying (in a swoon, I should say) on the
roadside grass by the Brenzett carrier, who actually got down to have a nea=
rer
look, but drew back, intimidated by the perfect immobility, and by something
queer in the aspect of that tramp, sleeping so still under the showers. As =
the day
advanced, some children came dashing into school at Norton in such a fright
that the schoolmistress went out and spoke indignantly to a 'horrid-looking
man' on the road. He edged away, hanging his head, for a few steps, and then
suddenly ran off with extraordinary fleetness. The driver of Mr. Bradley's
milk-cart made no secret of it that he had lashed with his whip at a hairy =
sort
of gipsy fellow who, jumping up at a turn of the road by the Vents, made a
snatch at the pony's bridle. And he caught him a good one too, right over t=
he
face, he said, that made him drop down in the mud a jolly sight quicker tha=
n he
had jumped up; but it was a good half-a-mile before he could stop the pony.
Maybe that in his desperate endeavours to get help, and in his need to get =
in
touch with some one, the poor devil had tried to stop the cart. Also three =
boys
confessed afterwards to throwing stones at a funny tramp, knocking about all
wet and muddy, and, it seemed, very drunk, in the narrow deep lane by the
limekilns. All this was the talk of three villages for days; but we have Mr=
s.
Finn's (the wife of Smith's waggoner) unimpeachable testimony that she saw =
him
get over the low wall of Hammond's pig-pound and lurch straight at her,
babbling aloud in a voice that was enough to make one die of fright. Having=
the
baby with her in a perambulator, Mrs. Finn called out to him to go away, an=
d as
he persisted in coming nearer, she hit him courageously with her umbrella o=
ver
the head and, without once looking back, ran like the wind with the
perambulator as far as the first house in the village. She stopped then, ou=
t of
breath, and spoke to old Lewis, hammering there at a heap of stones; and the
old chap, taking off his immense black wire goggles, got up on his shaky le=
gs to
look where she pointed. Together they followed with their eyes the figure of
the man running over a field; they saw him fall down, pick himself up, and =
run
on again, staggering and waving his long arms above his head, in the direct=
ion
of the New Barns Farm. From that moment he is plainly in the toils of his
obscure and touching destiny. There is no doubt after this of what happened=
to
him. All is certain now: Mrs. Smith's intense terror; Amy Foster's stolid
conviction held against the other's nervous attack, that the man 'meant no
harm'; Smith's exasperation (on his return from Darnford Market) at finding=
the
dog barking himself into a fit, the back-door locked, his wife in hysterics=
; and
all for an unfortunate dirty tramp, supposed to be even then lurking in his
stackyard. Was he? He would teach him to frighten women.
"Smith is
notoriously hot-tempered, but the sight of some nondescript and miry creatu=
re
sitting cross-legged amongst a lot of loose straw, and swinging itself to a=
nd
fro like a bear in a cage, made him pause. Then this tramp stood up silently
before him, one mass of mud and filth from head to foot. Smith, alone among=
st
his stacks with this apparition, in the stormy twilight ringing with the
infuriated barking of the dog, felt the dread of an inexplicable strangenes=
s.
But when that being, parting with his black hands the long matted locks that
hung before his face, as you part the two halves of a curtain, looked out at
him with glistening, wild, black-and-white eyes, the weirdness of this sile=
nt
encounter fairly staggered him. He had admitted since (for the story has be=
en a
legitimate subject of conversation about here for years) that he made more =
than
one step backwards. Then a sudden burst of rapid, senseless speech persuaded
him at once that he had to do with an escaped lunatic. In fact, that impres=
sion
never wore off completely. Smith has not in his heart given up his secret
conviction of the man's essential insanity to this very day.
"As the crea=
ture
approached him, jabbering in a most discomposing manner, Smith (unaware tha=
t he
was being addressed as 'gracious lord,' and adjured in God's name to afford
food and shelter) kept on speaking firmly but gently to it, and retreating =
all
the time into the other yard. At last, watching his chance, by a sudden cha=
rge
he bundled him headlong into the wood-lodge, and instantly shot the bolt.
Thereupon he wiped his brow, though the day was cold. He had done his duty =
to the
community by shutting up a wandering and probably dangerous maniac. Smith i=
sn't
a hard man at all, but he had room in his brain only for that one idea of
lunacy. He was not imaginative enough to ask himself whether the man might =
not
be perishing with cold and hunger. Meantime, at first, the maniac made a gr=
eat
deal of noise in the lodge. Mrs. Smith was screaming upstairs, where she had
locked herself in her bedroom; but Amy Foster sobbed piteously at the kitch=
en door,
wringing her hands and muttering, 'Don't! don't!' I daresay Smith had a rou=
gh
time of it that evening with one noise and another, and this insane, distur=
bing
voice crying obstinately through the door only added to his irritation. He =
couldn't
possibly have connected this troublesome lunatic with the sinking of a ship=
in
Eastbay, of which there had been a rumour in the Darnford marketplace. And I
daresay the man inside had been very near to insanity on that night. Before=
his
excitement collapsed and he became unconscious he was throwing himself
violently about in the dark, rolling on some dirty sacks, and biting his fi=
sts
with rage, cold, hunger, amazement, and despair.
"He was a
mountaineer of the eastern range of the Carpathians, and the vessel sunk the
night before in Eastbay was the Hamburg emigrant-ship Herzogin Sophia-Dorot=
hea,
of appalling memory.
"A few months
later we could read in the papers the accounts of the bogus 'Emigration
Agencies' among the Sclavonian peasantry in the more remote provinces of
Austria. The object of these scoundrels was to get hold of the poor ignorant
people's homesteads, and they were in league with the local usurers. They
exported their victims through Hamburg mostly. As to the ship, I had watched
her out of this very window, reaching close-hauled under short canvas into =
the
bay on a dark, threatening afternoon. She came to an anchor, correctly by t=
he
chart, off the Brenzett Coastguard station. I remember before the night fel=
l looking
out again at the outlines of her spars and rigging that stood out dark and
pointed on a background of ragged, slaty clouds like another and a slighter
spire to the left of the Brenzett church-tower. In the evening the wind ros=
e.
At midnight I could hear in my bed the terrific gusts and the sounds of a
driving deluge.
"About that =
time
the Coastguardmen thought they saw the lights of a steamer over the
anchoring-ground. In a moment they vanished; but it is clear that another
vessel of some sort had tried for shelter in the bay on that awful, blind
night, had rammed the German ship amidships (a breach--as one of the divers
told me afterwards--'that you could sail a Thames barge through'), and then=
had
gone out either scathless or damaged, who shall say; but had gone out, unkn=
own,
unseen, and fatal, to perish mysteriously at sea. Of her nothing ever came =
to
light, and yet the hue and cry that was raised all over the world would have
found her out if she had been in existence anywhere on the face of the wate=
rs.
"A completen=
ess
without a clue, and a stealthy silence as of a neatly executed crime,
characterise this murderous disaster, which, as you may remember, had its
gruesome celebrity. The wind would have prevented the loudest outcries from
reaching the shore; there had been evidently no time for signals of distres=
s.
It was death without any sort of fuss. The Hamburg ship, filling all at onc=
e,
capsized as she sank, and at daylight there was not even the end of a spar =
to
be seen above water. She was missed, of course, and at first the Coastguard=
men
surmised that she had either dragged her anchor or parted her cable some ti=
me
during the night, and had been blown out to sea. Then, after the tide turne=
d, the
wreck must have shifted a little and released some of the bodies, because a
child--a little fair-haired child in a red frock--came ashore abreast of the
Martello tower. By the afternoon you could see along three miles of beach d=
ark
figures with bare legs dashing in and out of the tumbling foam, and
rough-looking men, women with hard faces, children, mostly fair-haired, were
being carried, stiff and dripping, on stretchers, on wattles, on ladders, i=
n a
long procession past the door of the 'Ship Inn,' to be laid out in a row un=
der
the north wall of the Brenzett Church.
"Officially,=
the
body of the little girl in the red frock is the first thing that came ashore
from that ship. But I have patients amongst the seafaring population of West
Colebrook, and, unofficially, I am informed that very early that morning two
brothers, who went down to look after their cobble hauled up on the beach,
found, a good way from Brenzett, an ordinary ship's hencoop lying high and =
dry
on the shore, with eleven drowned ducks inside. Their families ate the bird=
s,
and the hencoop was split into firewood with a hatchet. It is possible that=
a
man (supposing he happened to be on deck at the time of the accident) might
have floated ashore on that hencoop. He might. I admit it is improbable, bu=
t there
was the man--and for days, nay, for weeks--it didn't enter our heads that we
had amongst us the only living soul that had escaped from that disaster. The
man himself, even when he learned to speak intelligibly, could tell us very
little. He remembered he had felt better (after the ship had anchored, I
suppose), and that the darkness, the wind, and the rain took his breath awa=
y.
This looks as if he had been on deck some time during that night. But we
mustn't forget he had been taken out of his knowledge, that he had been
sea-sick and battened down below for four days, that he had no general noti=
on
of a ship or of the sea, and therefore could have no definite idea of what =
was
happening to him. The rain, the wind, the darkness he knew; he understood t=
he bleating
of the sheep, and he remembered the pain of his wretchedness and misery, his
heartbroken astonishment that it was neither seen nor understood, his disma=
y at
finding all the men angry and all the women fierce. He had approached them =
as a
beggar, it is true, he said; but in his country, even if they gave nothing,
they spoke gently to beggars. The children in his country were not taught to
throw stones at those who asked for compassion. Smith's strategy overcame h=
im
completely. The wood-lodge presented the horrible aspect of a dungeon. What
would be done to him next?... No wonder that Amy Foster appeared to his eye=
s with
the aureole of an angel of light. The girl had not been able to sleep for
thinking of the poor man, and in the morning, before the Smiths were up, she
slipped out across the back yard. Holding the door of the wood-lodge ajar, =
she
looked in and extended to him half a loaf of white bread--'such bread as the
rich eat in my country,' he used to say.
"At this he =
got
up slowly from amongst all sorts of rubbish, stiff, hungry, trembling,
miserable, and doubtful. 'Can you eat this?' she asked in her soft and timid
voice. He must have taken her for a 'gracious lady.' He devoured ferociousl=
y,
and tears were falling on the crust. Suddenly he dropped the bread, seized =
her
wrist, and imprinted a kiss on her hand. She was not frightened. Through his
forlorn condition she had observed that he was good-looking. She shut the d=
oor
and walked back slowly to the kitchen. Much later on, she told Mrs. Smith, =
who shuddered
at the bare idea of being touched by that creature.
"Through this
act of impulsive pity he was brought back again within the pale of human
relations with his new surroundings. He never forgot it--never.
"That very s=
ame
morning old Mr. Swaffer (Smith's nearest neighbour) came over to give his
advice, and ended by carrying him off. He stood, unsteady on his legs, meek,
and caked over in half-dried mud, while the two men talked around him in an
incomprehensible tongue. Mrs. Smith had refused to come downstairs till the
madman was off the premises; Amy Foster, far from within the dark kitchen,
watched through the open back door; and he obeyed the signs that were made =
to
him to the best of his ability. But Smith was full of mistrust. 'Mind, sir!=
It
may be all his cunning,' he cried repeatedly in a tone of warning. When Mr.
Swaffer started the mare, the deplorable being sitting humbly by his side, =
through
weakness, nearly fell out over the back of the high two-wheeled cart. Swaff=
er
took him straight home. And it is then that I come upon the scene.
"I was calle=
d in
by the simple process of the old man beckoning to me with his forefinger ov=
er
the gate of his house as I happened to be driving past. I got down, of cour=
se.
"'I've got
something here,' he mumbled, leading the way to an outhouse at a little
distance from his other farm-buildings.
"It was there
that I saw him first, in a long low room taken upon the space of that sort =
of
coach-house. It was bare and whitewashed, with a small square aperture glaz=
ed
with one cracked, dusty pane at its further end. He was lying on his back u=
pon
a straw pallet; they had given him a couple of horse-blankets, and he seeme=
d to
have spent the remainder of his strength in the exertion of cleaning himsel=
f.
He was almost speechless; his quick breathing under the blankets pulled up =
to
his chin, his glittering, restless black eyes reminded me of a wild bird ca=
ught
in a snare. While I was examining him, old Swaffer stood silently by the do=
or,
passing the tips of his fingers along his shaven upper lip. I gave some
directions, promised to send a bottle of medicine, and naturally made some
inquiries.
"'Smith caug=
ht
him in the stackyard at New Barns,' said the old chap in his deliberate,
unmoved manner, and as if the other had been indeed a sort of wild animal.
'That's how I came by him. Quite a curiosity, isn't he? Now tell me,
doctor--you've been all over the world--don't you think that's a bit of a
Hindoo we've got hold of here.'
"I was great=
ly
surprised. His long black hair scattered over the straw bolster contrasted =
with
the olive pallor of his face. It occurred to me he might be a Basque. It di=
dn't
necessarily follow that he should understand Spanish; but I tried him with =
the
few words I know, and also with some French. The whispered sounds I caught =
by
bending my ear to his lips puzzled me utterly. That afternoon the young lad=
ies
from the Rectory (one of them read Goethe with a dictionary, and the other =
had struggled
with Dante for years), coming to see Miss Swaffer, tried their German and
Italian on him from the doorway. They retreated, just the least bit scared =
by
the flood of passionate speech which, turning on his pallet, he let out at
them. They admitted that the sound was pleasant, soft, musical--but, in
conjunction with his looks perhaps, it was startling--so excitable, so utte=
rly
unlike anything one had ever heard. The village boys climbed up the bank to
have a peep through the little square aperture. Everybody was wondering what
Mr. Swaffer would do with him.
"He simply k=
ept
him.
"Swaffer wou=
ld
be called eccentric were he not so much respected. They will tell you that =
Mr.
Swaffer sits up as late as ten o'clock at night to read books, and they will
tell you also that he can write a cheque for two hundred pounds without
thinking twice about it. He himself would tell you that the Swaffers had ow=
ned
land between this and Darnford for these three hundred years. He must be
eighty-five to-day, but he does not look a bit older than when I first came
here. He is a great breeder of sheep, and deals extensively in cattle. He
attends market days for miles around in every sort of weather, and drives
sitting bowed low over the reins, his lank grey hair curling over the colla=
r of
his warm coat, and with a green plaid rug round his legs. The calmness of
advanced age gives a solemnity to his manner. He is clean-shaved; his lips =
are
thin and sensitive; something rigid and monarchal in the set of his feature=
s lends
a certain elevation to the character of his face. He has been known to drive
miles in the rain to see a new kind of rose in somebody's garden, or a
monstrous cabbage grown by a cottager. He loves to hear tell of or to be sh=
own
something that he calls 'outlandish.' Perhaps it was just that outlandishne=
ss
of the man which influenced old Swaffer. Perhaps it was only an inexplicable
caprice. All I know is that at the end of three weeks I caught sight of Smi=
th's
lunatic digging in Swaffer's kitchen garden. They had found out he could us=
e a
spade. He dug barefooted.
"His black h=
air
flowed over his shoulders. I suppose it was Swaffer who had given him the
striped old cotton shirt; but he wore still the national brown cloth trouse=
rs
(in which he had been washed ashore) fitting to the leg almost like tights;=
was
belted with a broad leathern belt studded with little brass discs; and had
never yet ventured into the village. The land he looked upon seemed to him =
kept
neatly, like the grounds round a landowner's house; the size of the cart-ho=
rses
struck him with astonishment; the roads resembled garden walks, and the asp=
ect of
the people, especially on Sundays, spoke of opulence. He wondered what made
them so hardhearted and their children so bold. He got his food at the back
door, carried it in both hands carefully to his outhouse, and, sitting alon=
e on
his pallet, would make the sign of the cross before he began. Beside the sa=
me
pallet, kneeling in the early darkness of the short days, he recited aloud =
the
Lord's Prayer before he slept. Whenever he saw old Swaffer he would bow with
veneration from the waist, and stand erect while the old man, with his fing=
ers
over his upper lip, surveyed him silently. He bowed also to Miss Swaffer, w=
ho kept
house frugally for her father--a broad-shouldered, big-boned woman of
forty-five, with the pocket of her dress full of keys, and a grey, steady e=
ye.
She was Church--as people said (while her father was one of the trustees of=
the
Baptist Chapel)--and wore a little steel cross at her waist. She dressed
severely in black, in memory of one of the innumerable Bradleys of the
neighbourhood, to whom she had been engaged some twenty-five years ago--a y=
oung
farmer who broke his neck out hunting on the eve of the wedding day. She had
the unmoved countenance of the deaf, spoke very seldom, and her lips, thin =
like
her father's, astonished one sometimes by a mysteriously ironic curl.
"These were =
the
people to whom he owed allegiance, and an overwhelming loneliness seemed to
fall from the leaden sky of that winter without sunshine. All the faces were
sad. He could talk to no one, and had no hope of ever understanding anybody=
. It
was as if these had been the faces of people from the other world--dead
people--he used to tell me years afterwards. Upon my word, I wonder he did =
not
go mad. He didn't know where he was. Somewhere very far from his
mountains--somewhere over the water. Was this America, he wondered?
"If it hadn't
been for the steel cross at Miss Swaffer's belt he would not, he confessed,
have known whether he was in a Christian country at all. He used to cast
stealthy glances at it, and feel comforted. There was nothing here the same=
as
in his country! The earth and the water were different; there were no image=
s of
the Redeemer by the roadside. The very grass was different, and the trees. =
All
the trees but the three old Norway pines on the bit of lawn before Swaffer's
house, and these reminded him of his country. He had been detected once, af=
ter
dusk, with his forehead against the trunk of one of them, sobbing, and talk=
ing
to himself. They had been like brothers to him at that time, he affirmed. E=
verything
else was strange. Conceive you the kind of an existence overshadowed,
oppressed, by the everyday material appearances, as if by the visions of a
nightmare. At night, when he could not sleep, he kept on thinking of the gi=
rl
who gave him the first piece of bread he had eaten in this foreign land. She
had been neither fierce nor angry, nor frightened. Her face he remembered as
the only comprehensible face amongst all these faces that were as closed, as
mysterious, and as mute as the faces of the dead who are possessed of a
knowledge beyond the comprehension of the living. I wonder whether the memo=
ry
of her compassion prevented him from cutting his throat. But there! I suppo=
se I
am an old sentimentalist, and forget the instinctive love of life which it
takes all the strength of an uncommon despair to overcome.
"He did the =
work
which was given him with an intelligence which surprised old Swaffer. By-an=
d-by
it was discovered that he could help at the ploughing, could milk the cows,
feed the bullocks in the cattle-yard, and was of some use with the sheep. He
began to pick up words, too, very fast; and suddenly, one fine morning in
spring, he rescued from an untimely death a grand-child of old Swaffer.
"Swaffer's
younger daughter is married to Willcox, a solicitor and the Town Clerk of
Colebrook. Regularly twice a year they come to stay with the old man for a =
few
days. Their only child, a little girl not three years old at the time, ran =
out
of the house alone in her little white pinafore, and, toddling across the g=
rass
of a terraced garden, pitched herself over a low wall head first into the
horse-pond in the yard below.
"Our man was=
out
with the waggoner and the plough in the field nearest to the house, and as =
he
was leading the team round to begin a fresh furrow, he saw, through the gap=
of
the gate, what for anybody else would have been a mere flutter of something
white. But he had straight-glancing, quick, far-reaching eyes, that only se=
emed
to flinch and lose their amazing power before the immensity of the sea. He =
was barefooted,
and looking as outlandish as the heart of Swaffer could desire. Leaving the
horses on the turn, to the inexpressible disgust of the waggoner he bounded
off, going over the ploughed ground in long leaps, and suddenly appeared be=
fore
the mother, thrust the child into her arms, and strode away.
"The pond was
not very deep; but still, if he had not had such good eyes, the child would
have perished--miserably suffocated in the foot or so of sticky mud at the
bottom. Old Swaffer walked out slowly into the field, waited till the plough
came over to his side, had a good look at him, and without saying a word we=
nt
back to the house. But from that time they laid out his meals on the kitchen
table; and at first, Miss Swaffer, all in black and with an inscrutable fac=
e,
would come and stand in the doorway of the living-room to see him make a big
sign of the cross before he fell to. I believe that from that day, too, Swa=
ffer
began to pay him regular wages.
"I can't fol=
low
step by step his development. He cut his hair short, was seen in the village
and along the road going to and fro to his work like any other man. Children
ceased to shout after him. He became aware of social differences, but remai=
ned
for a long time surprised at the bare poverty of the churches among so much
wealth. He couldn't understand either why they were kept shut up on week da=
ys.
There was nothing to steal in them. Was it to keep people from praying too
often? The rectory took much notice of him about that time, and I believe t=
he
young ladies attempted to prepare the ground for his conversion. They could
not, however, break him of his habit of crossing himself, but he went so fa=
r as
to take off the string with a couple of brass medals the size of a sixpence=
, a
tiny metal cross, and a square sort of scapulary which he wore round his ne=
ck.
He hung them on the wall by the side of his bed, and he was still to be hea=
rd
every evening reciting the Lord's Prayer, in incomprehensible words and in a
slow, fervent tone, as he had heard his old father do at the head of all the
kneeling family, big and little, on every evening of his life. And though he
wore corduroys at work, and a slop-made pepper-and-salt suit on Sundays,
strangers would turn round to look after him on the road. His foreignness h=
ad a
peculiar and indelible stamp. At last people became used to see him. But th=
ey
never became used to him. His rapid, skimming walk; his swarthy complexion;=
his
hat cocked on the left ear; his habit, on warm evenings, of wearing his coat
over one shoulder, like a hussar's dolman; his manner of leaping over the
stiles, not as a feat of agility, but in the ordinary course of
progression--all these peculiarities were, as one may say, so many causes of
scorn and offence to the inhabitants of the village. They wouldn't in their
dinner hour lie flat on their backs on the grass to stare at the sky. Neith=
er
did they go about the fields screaming dismal tunes. Many times have I heard
his high-pitched voice from behind the ridge of some sloping sheep-walk, a
voice light and soaring, like a lark's, but with a melancholy human note, o=
ver our
fields that hear only the song of birds. And I should be startled myself. A=
h!
He was different: innocent of heart, and full of good will, which nobody
wanted, this castaway, that, like a man transplanted into another planet, w=
as
separated by an immense space from his past and by an immense ignorance from
his future. His quick, fervent utterance positively shocked everybody. 'An
excitable devil,' they called him. One evening, in the tap-room of the Coach
and Horses (having drunk some whisky), he upset them all by singing a love =
song
of his country. They hooted him down, and he was pained; but Preble, the la=
me
wheelwright, and Vincent, the fat blacksmith, and the other notables too,
wanted to drink their evening beer in peace. On another occasion he tried to
show them how to dance. The dust rose in clouds from the sanded floor; he l=
eaped
straight up amongst the deal tables, struck his heels together, squatted on=
one
heel in front of old Preble, shooting out the other leg, uttered wild and
exulting cries, jumped up to whirl on one foot, snapping his fingers above =
his
head--and a strange carter who was having a drink in there began to swear, =
and
cleared out with his half-pint in his hand into the bar. But when suddenly =
he
sprang upon a table and continued to dance among the glasses, the landlord
interfered. He didn't want any 'acrobat tricks in the taproom.' They laid t=
heir
hands on him. Having had a glass or two, Mr. Swaffer's foreigner tried to
expostulate: was ejected forcibly: got a black eye.
"I believe he
felt the hostility of his human surroundings. But he was tough--tough in
spirit, too, as well as in body. Only the memory of the sea frightened him,
with that vague terror that is left by a bad dream. His home was far away; =
and
he did not want now to go to America. I had often explained to him that the=
re
is no place on earth where true gold can be found lying ready and to be got=
for
the trouble of the picking up. How then, he asked, could he ever return home
with empty hands when there had been sold a cow, two ponies, and a bit of l=
and
to pay for his going? His eyes would fill with tears, and, averting them fr=
om
the immense shimmer of the sea, he would throw himself face down on the gra=
ss.
But sometimes, cocking his hat with a little conquering air, he would defy =
my
wisdom. He had found his bit of true gold. That was Amy Foster's heart; whi=
ch
was 'a golden heart, and soft to people's misery,' he would say in the acce=
nts
of overwhelming conviction.
"He was call=
ed
Yanko. He had explained that this meant little John; but as he would also
repeat very often that he was a mountaineer (some word sounding in the dial=
ect
of his country like Goorall) he got it for his surname. And this is the only
trace of him that the succeeding ages may find in the marriage register of =
the
parish. There it stands--Yanko Goorall--in the rector's handwriting. The
crooked cross made by the castaway, a cross whose tracing no doubt seemed to
him the most solemn part of the whole ceremony, is all that remains now to
perpetuate the memory of his name.
"His courtsh=
ip
had lasted some time--ever since he got his precarious footing in the
community. It began by his buying for Amy Foster a green satin ribbon in
Darnford. This was what you did in his country. You bought a ribbon at a Je=
w's
stall on a fair-day. I don't suppose the girl knew what to do with it, but =
he
seemed to think that his honourable intentions could not be mistaken.
"It was only
when he declared his purpose to get married that I fully understood how, fo=
r a
hundred futile and inappreciable reasons, how--shall I say odious?--he was =
to
all the countryside. Every old woman in the village was up in arms. Smith,
coming upon him near the farm, promised to break his head for him if he fou=
nd
him about again. But he twisted his little black moustache with such a
bellicose air and rolled such big, black fierce eyes at Smith that this pro=
mise
came to nothing. Smith, however, told the girl that she must be mad to take=
up
with a man who was surely wrong in his head. All the same, when she heard h=
im
in the gloaming whistle from beyond the orchard a couple of bars of a weird=
and
mournful tune, she would drop whatever she had in her hand--she would leave
Mrs. Smith in the middle of a sentence--and she would run out to his call. =
Mrs.
Smith called her a shameless hussy. She answered nothing. She said nothing =
at
all to anybody, and went on her way as if she had been deaf. She and I alone
all in the land, I fancy, could see his very real beauty. He was very
good-looking, and most graceful in his bearing, with that something wild as=
of
a woodland creature in his aspect. Her mother moaned over her dismally when=
ever
the girl came to see her on her day out. The father was surly, but pretended
not to know; and Mrs. Finn once told her plainly that 'this man, my dear, w=
ill
do you some harm some day yet.' And so it went on. They could be seen on th=
e roads,
she tramping stolidly in her finery--grey dress, black feather, stout boots,
prominent white cotton gloves that caught your eye a hundred yards away; and
he, his coat slung picturesquely over one shoulder, pacing by her side, gal=
lant
of bearing and casting tender glances upon the girl with the golden heart. I
wonder whether he saw how plain she was. Perhaps among types so different f=
rom
what he had ever seen, he had not the power to judge; or perhaps he was sed=
uced
by the divine quality of her pity.
"Yanko was in
great trouble meantime. In his country you get an old man for an ambassador=
in
marriage affairs. He did not know how to proceed. However, one day in the m=
idst
of sheep in a field (he was now Swaffer's under-shepherd with Foster) he to=
ok
off his hat to the father and declared himself humbly. 'I daresay she's fool
enough to marry you,' was all Foster said. 'And then,' he used to relate, '=
he
puts his hat on his head, looks black at me as if he wanted to cut my throa=
t,
whistles the dog, and off he goes, leaving me to do the work.' The Fosters,=
of course,
didn't like to lose the wages the girl earned: Amy used to give all her mon=
ey
to her mother. But there was in Foster a very genuine aversion to that matc=
h.
He contended that the fellow was very good with sheep, but was not fit for =
any
girl to marry. For one thing, he used to go along the hedges muttering to
himself like a dam' fool; and then, these foreigners behave very queerly to
women sometimes. And perhaps he would want to carry her off somewhere--or r=
un
off himself. It was not safe. He preached it to his daughter that the fellow
might ill-use her in some way. She made no answer. It was, they said in the
village, as if the man had done something to her. People discussed the matt=
er.
It was quite an excitement, and the two went on 'walking out' together in t=
he face
of opposition. Then something unexpected happened.
"I don't know
whether old Swaffer ever understood how much he was regarded in the light o=
f a
father by his foreign retainer. Anyway the relation was curiously feudal. So
when Yanko asked formally for an interview--'and the Miss too' (he called t=
he
severe, deaf Miss Swaffer simply Miss)--it was to obtain their permission to
marry. Swaffer heard him unmoved, dismissed him by a nod, and then shouted =
the intelligence
into Miss Swaffer's best ear. She showed no surprise, and only remarked gri=
mly,
in a veiled blank voice, 'He certainly won't get any other girl to marry hi=
m.'
"It is Miss
Swaffer who has all the credit of the munificence: but in a very few days it
came out that Mr. Swaffer had presented Yanko with a cottage (the cottage
you've seen this morning) and something like an acre of ground--had made it
over to him in absolute property. Willcox expedited the deed, and I remember
him telling me he had a great pleasure in making it ready. It recited: 'In
consideration of saving the life of my beloved grandchild, Bertha Willcox.'=
"Of course,
after that no power on earth could prevent them from getting married.
"Her infatua=
tion
endured. People saw her going out to meet him in the evening. She stared wi=
th
unblinking, fascinated eyes up the road where he was expected to appear, wa=
lking
freely, with a swing from the hip, and humming one of the love-tunes of his
country. When the boy was born, he got elevated at the 'Coach and Horses,'
essayed again a song and a dance, and was again ejected. People expressed t=
heir
commiseration for a woman married to that Jack-in-the-box. He didn't care.
There was a man now (he told me boastfully) to whom he could sing and talk =
in
the language of his country, and show how to dance by-and-by.
"But I don't
know. To me he appeared to have grown less springy of step, heavier in body,
less keen of eye. Imagination, no doubt; but it seems to me now as if the n=
et
of fate had been drawn closer round him already.
"One day I m=
et
him on the footpath over the Talfourd Hill. He told me that 'women were fun=
ny.'
I had heard already of domestic differences. People were saying that Amy Fo=
ster
was beginning to find out what sort of man she had married. He looked upon =
the
sea with indifferent, unseeing eyes. His wife had snatched the child out of=
his
arms one day as he sat on the doorstep crooning to it a song such as the
mothers sing to babies in his mountains. She seemed to think he was doing it
some harm. Women are funny. And she had objected to him praying aloud in th=
e evening.
Why? He expected the boy to repeat the prayer aloud after him by-and-by, as=
he
used to do after his old father when he was a child--in his own country. An=
d I
discovered he longed for their boy to grow up so that he could have a man to
talk with in that language that to our ears sounded so disturbing, so
passionate, and so bizarre. Why his wife should dislike the idea he couldn't
tell. But that would pass, he said. And tilting his head knowingly, he tapp=
ed
his breastbone to indicate that she had a good heart: not hard, not fierce,
open to compassion, charitable to the poor!
"I walked aw=
ay
thoughtfully; I wondered whether his difference, his strangeness, were not
penetrating with repulsion that dull nature they had begun by irresistibly
attracting. I wondered...."
The Doctor came to
the window and looked out at the frigid splendour of the sea, immense in the
haze, as if enclosing all the earth with all the hearts lost among the pass=
ions
of love and fear.
"Physiologic=
ally,
now," he said, turning away abruptly, "it was possible. It was
possible."
He remained silen=
t.
Then went on--"At all events, the next time I saw him he was ill--lung
trouble. He was tough, but I daresay he was not acclimatised as well as I h=
ad
supposed. It was a bad winter; and, of course, these mountaineers do get fi=
ts
of home sickness; and a state of depression would make him vulnerable. He w=
as
lying half dressed on a couch downstairs.
"A table cov=
ered
with a dark oilcloth took up all the middle of the little room. There was a
wicker cradle on the floor, a kettle spouting steam on the hob, and some
child's linen lay drying on the fender. The room was warm, but the door ope=
ns
right into the garden, as you noticed perhaps.
"He was very
feverish, and kept on muttering to himself. She sat on a chair and looked at
him fixedly across the table with her brown, blurred eyes. 'Why don't you h=
ave
him upstairs?' I asked. With a start and a confused stammer she said, 'Oh! =
ah!
I couldn't sit with him upstairs, Sir.'
"I gave her
certain directions; and going outside, I said again that he ought to be in =
bed
upstairs. She wrung her hands. 'I couldn't. I couldn't. He keeps on saying
something--I don't know what.' With the memory of all the talk against the =
man
that had been dinned into her ears, I looked at her narrowly. I looked into=
her
shortsighted eyes, at her dumb eyes that once in her life had seen an entic=
ing
shape, but seemed, staring at me, to see nothing at all now. But I saw she =
was uneasy.
"'What's the
matter with him?' she asked in a sort of vacant trepidation. 'He doesn't lo=
ok
very ill. I never did see anybody look like this before....'
"'Do you thi=
nk,'
I asked indignantly, 'he is shamming?'
"'I can't he=
lp
it, sir,' she said stolidly. And suddenly she clapped her hands and looked
right and left. 'And there's the baby. I am so frightened. He wanted me just
now to give him the baby. I can't understand what he says to it.'
"'Can't you =
ask
a neighbour to come in tonight?' I asked.
"'Please, si=
r,
nobody seems to care to come,' she muttered, dully resigned all at once.
"I impressed=
upon
her the necessity of the greatest care, and then had to go. There was a good
deal of sickness that winter. 'Oh, I hope he won't talk!' she exclaimed sof=
tly
just as I was going away.
"I don't know
how it is I did not see--but I didn't. And yet, turning in my trap, I saw h=
er
lingering before the door, very still, and as if meditating a flight up the
miry road.
"Towards the
night his fever increased.
"He tossed,
moaned, and now and then muttered a complaint. And she sat with the table
between her and the couch, watching every movement and every sound, with the
terror, the unreasonable terror, of that man she could not understand creep=
ing
over her. She had drawn the wicker cradle close to her feet. There was noth=
ing
in her now but the maternal instinct and that unaccountable fear.
"Suddenly co=
ming
to himself, parched, he demanded a drink of water. She did not move. She had
not understood, though he may have thought he was speaking in English. He
waited, looking at her, burning with fever, amazed at her silence and
immobility, and then he shouted impatiently, 'Water! Give me water!'
"She jumped =
to
her feet, snatched up the child, and stood still. He spoke to her, and his
passionate remonstrances only increased her fear of that strange man. I bel=
ieve
he spoke to her for a long time, entreating, wondering, pleading, ordering,=
I
suppose. She says she bore it as long as she could. And then a gust of rage
came over him.
"He sat up a=
nd
called out terribly one word--some word. Then he got up as though he hadn't=
been
ill at all, she says. And as in fevered dismay, indignation, and wonder he
tried to get to her round the table, she simply opened the door and ran out
with the child in her arms. She heard him call twice after her down the roa=
d in
a terrible voice--and fled.... Ah! but you should have seen stirring behind=
the
dull, blurred glance of these eyes the spectre of the fear which had hunted=
her
on that night three miles and a half to the door of Foster's cottage! I did=
the
next day.
"And it was I
who found him lying face down and his body in a puddle, just outside the li=
ttle
wicket-gate.
"I had been called out that ni=
ght to
an urgent case in the village, and on my way home at daybreak passed by the
cottage. The door stood open. My man helped me to carry him in. We laid him=
on
the couch. The lamp smoked, the fire was out, the chill of the stormy night
oozed from the cheerless yellow paper on the wall. 'Amy!' I called aloud, a=
nd
my voice seemed to lose itself in the emptiness of this tiny house as if I =
had cried
in a desert. He opened his eyes. 'Gone!' he said distinctly. 'I had only as=
ked
for water--only for a little water....'
"He was mudd=
y. I
covered him up and stood waiting in silence, catching a painfully gasped wo=
rd
now and then. They were no longer in his own language. The fever had left h=
im,
taking with it the heat of life. And with his panting breast and lustrous e=
yes
he reminded me again of a wild creature under the net; of a bird caught in a
snare. She had left him. She had left him--sick--helpless--thirsty. The spe=
ar
of the hunter had entered his very soul. 'Why?' he cried in the penetrating=
and
indignant voice of a man calling to a responsible Maker. A gust of wind and=
a swish
of rain answered.
"And as I tu=
rned
away to shut the door he pronounced the word 'Merciful!' and expired.
"Eventually I
certified heart-failure as the immediate cause of death. His heart must have
indeed failed him, or else he might have stood this night of storm and
exposure, too. I closed his eyes and drove away. Not very far from the cott=
age
I met Foster walking sturdily between the dripping hedges with his collie at
his heels.
"'Do you know
where your daughter is?' I asked.
"'Don't I!' =
he
cried. 'I am going to talk to him a bit. Frightening a poor woman like this=
.'
"'He won't
frighten her any more,' I said. 'He is dead.'
"He struck w=
ith
his stick at the mud.
"'And there's
the child.'
"Then, after
thinking deeply for a while--"'I don't know that it isn't for the best=
.'
"That's what=
he
said. And she says nothing at all now. Not a word of him. Never. Is his ima=
ge
as utterly gone from her mind as his lithe and striding figure, his carolli=
ng
voice are gone from our fields? He is no longer before her eyes to excite h=
er
imagination into a passion of love or fear; and his memory seems to have
vanished from her dull brain as a shadow passes away upon a white screen. S=
he
lives in the cottage and works for Miss Swaffer. She is Amy Foster for
everybody, and the child is 'Amy Foster's boy.' She calls him Johnny--which
means Little John.
"It is
impossible to say whether this name recalls anything to her. Does she ever
think of the past? I have seen her hanging over the boy's cot in a very pas=
sion
of maternal tenderness. The little fellow was lying on his back, a little
frightened at me, but very still, with his big black eyes, with his flutter=
ed
air of a bird in a snare. And looking at him I seemed to see again the other
one--the father, cast out mysteriously by the sea to perish in the supreme
disaster of loneliness and despair."