The Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson: The Dream Of X & Other Fantastic Visions (5 page)

He finished his curious eulogy, rather lamely, and pulled out his old red handkerchief. After he had blown his nose, and furtively wiped his eyes, he used the handkerchief to polish the interior and exterior of the pan; after which he held it up once more to the view of the silent and sympathetic crowd.

“What’ll ye give for it?” he asked, looking round anxiously at the many faces.

“Sixpence,” said a low voice, and the old man, after a quick glance round the crowd, said:—“It’s yours, Mrs. Mike Callan,” and handed it across to a woman in the front of the crowd. The money was paid into his hand in coppers, as I could tell by the chink.

I looked towards the purchaser, feeling that I should like to buy back the saucepan, and return it to the old man. This way, I saw Father Johnson moving here and there through the little crowd, with a calico bag in his hand. From this, in a surreptitious manner, he drew something constantly—which I conceived by the faint chinking to be money—and distributed it to a man here and a woman there among the onlookers, accompanying each act with a few whispered words.

I understood much and guessed the rest. It was obvious that the people had little money to spare; for both their clothes and their little huts, all told of an utter poverty. This poverty, Father Johnson was remedying for the occasion, and his whispered words were probably hints concerning the articles for which to bid, and the amount to be bid for each. This, of course, is only a guess; but I believe that I am correct, in the main.

Once, I bid for a little old crock, offering double or treble its original value; but the old man took not the slightest notice, and continued to offer the article to bids that counted pence to the shillings of my offer. I was astonished, and began to see newly, if I may put it in that way. The man next to me, bid fivepence; then turned and put up his finger, shaking his head in friendly fashion, but warningly. Evidently, I was to be allowed no part in this function of neighbourly help, which was obviously ordered by rules of which I lacked a fundamental knowledge. A woman, near to me, made things somewhat clearer. She bent my-wards, and whispered:—

“ ’E’d not take it back from you, Sir, nor the price you offered, neither. ’E’s got a inderpendent ’eart, ’e ’as, Sir. Poor old man.”

So the things were going to be given back, after all. I wondered how they would arrange the returning. It was evident that he had no conceiving of the intentions of his neighbours; for the emotion of distress was too plainly writ in his face, with each familiar article that he auctioned. I learned afterwards that he was detained in chapel by Father Johnson for a few “worrds,” during which the household gear was replaced in his cottage.

When everything else had been sold, there remained only a poor bundle of something, done up in a faded shawl. It was as if the old man had put off, to the very end, the selling of this. Now, he got down clumsily on to his knees, and began to undo the knots, fumbling stupidly, and bending his head low over the bundle. He got the knots undone at last, and presently, after a little turning over of the few things, in a way that I perceived to be more a dumb caressing, than because he sought any particular article, he rose to his feet, holding an old worn skirt.

“This ’ere,” he said slowly, “wer’ my missus’s best, an’ she wer’ very spechul ’bout it, these ’ere thirty year. I mind w’en she first wor’ it.” (His face lined a moment with emotion, grotesquely.) “She wer’ that slim ’s she hed ter put a tuck in ther waistban’; not that it ’armed it; she tuk pertickler care, an——”

I lost the old man’s low-voiced explanation at this point; for I was suddenly aware that Father Johnson was almost at my side. I glanced an instant at him; but he was staring at the old man, with the oddest expression on his face. I noticed, subconsciously, that he was clenching and unclenching his hands rapidly. Then the old man’s quaver caught my ear again:—

“It’s fine an’ good cloth, an’ them stain-marks couldn’t be ’elped. As she said, it wer’ ther Lord’s will, an’ she mustn’t complain. This ’ere one on the ’em wer’ done fifteen year back——” Again my attention was distracted. I caught the sharp flip of a finger and thumb, and a man looked round and sidled out of the crowd, up to Father Johnson, in obedience to his signal.

“Sthop ut, Mike! Sthop ut this instant!” I heard the priest whisper, his brogue coming out strong, because he was stirred. “Offer ten bob for the lot, an’ sthop ut; ’tis breakin’ the hearts av us.”

He handed the man some money, and Mike bid for the shawl-full. But, even then, it was horrible to see old Cardallon’s fight, before he could relinquish the garments to the buyer.

The sale was over. The latter part of it had been attended by an ever increasing audience; from those who at first had been content to sit and talk and rest quietly on the benches; and who—coming from the outlying districts—were not intimate neighbours of old Tom. As they broke up to return to their seats, I saw one or two women crying openly.

James Pelple and I stayed for the service of the Rosary, in all reverence, though of another persuasion. Afterwards, as we stood in doorway, waiting for Father Johnson, I looked across at him.

“Well?” I queried, “a den of thieves?”

But Pelple, “the Stickler,” shook his head.

“A wonderful man,” he said, “a wonderful man. I should like to know him better.”

I laughed outright.

“So you’ve come under the banner too,” I said. “I wondered whether you would.” And just then, Father Johnson joined us it his cassock, and we began our return journey to his house.

On the way, we passed the door of Cardallon’s cottage, the upper half of which was open. The priest looked in, with a cheery word, and we joined him. The old man was standing in the centre of his hard-beaten mud floor, staring round in a stunned, incredulous fashion at all his restored household goods. He stared half-vacantly at Father Johnson, the tears running slowly down his wrinkled face. In his right hand, he held the little bundle, knotted round with the faded shawl.

The priest stretched a hand over the half-door, and blessed old Tom Cardallon in the loveliest, homeliest way, that stirred me, I admit frankly, to the very depths.

Then he turned away, and we resumed our walk, leaving the old man to his tears, which I am convinced were signs, in part at least, of a gentle happiness.

“He would not take the money from us,” said the priest, later. “But do ye think the heart av him would let him sind back the gear!”

I looked across at Pelple, and smiled to his nod; for I knew that his last vague questioning was answered.

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JUDGE BARCLAY’S WIFE

M
rs Judge Barclay she was called, and no one thought to call her anything less. And at the instant of this tale she sat in the crude, log-built cabin that
did temporary duty for a court in the small township of Selville, which lay at the head of what was locally termed the “gold-creek.”

Her husband, assisted by the sheriff and a number of his posse, accompanied by a number of miners, was trying a young miner named Jem Turrill,
and the old Judge’s face showed a strong tendency to mercy as he looked
down from his raised seat of packing-cases at the sullen face of the young m
an before him.

On her part, Mrs Judge Barclay was trying to catch the Judge’s eye, to
“stiffen his back-bone,” as she would have phrased it; for she had dealt with him
often and bitterly concerning his undue tendency to mercy. A hard-fac
ed, big-boned, childless woman of sixty she was, vigorous and a ruler of men, her husband in particular, except on this one point which pertained to m
ercy. Judge Barclay, however, had once been sheriff, and had practical k
nowledge that the capital sentence given in court was but the precursor of th
at dread scene where a rope, and too often a fine man, kicking his life aw
ay, formed a dreadful conjunction in his memory. Many and many a man h
ad he seen pass outward this way; yet, with pleasure it may be told that such experiences had not brought callousness.

But Mrs Judge Barclay knew nothing of what I might term the practical side
of Justice. She failed in Realisation. She attended constantly at the courts w
here her husband presided, and would listen with critical severity to her hu
sband’s “handling” of the case, and see no further than the given sentence. To
o often, she would listen, with a sort of impatient half-contempt in her hear
t old Judge Barclay’s constant tempering of Justice with good human mercy; and always after any special evidence of this trait in him, she would consi
der it her duty to “stiffen his backbone,” as she termed it—a process
which occasionally included the unloading upon the Judge of some rather
brusque comments, bordering almost on the contemptuous.

As a result of his wife’s constant attitude, old Judge Barclay had more
than once found himself dealing out sentences that were sterner than his
heart considered the needs of the case to require. This wife of his strung him
up, as it were, to a sort of concert-pitch of austerity. But such stringing up
was only temporary, in every case; and after the Court had ended the old
Judge would have a bad time with his own kindly nature, the while, perhaps,
that he would be walking back to his log hotel with his wife, nodding
absently to her comments of somewhat grim approbation. Perhaps, once in a
way, he would wake up to the whole meaning of the situation, with, maybe, something of a vague half-bitterness towards his wife, and a desire to show
her somewhat of the things that lay actually “behind the sentence”—the human agony and shame and degradation of the poor human in the
Machinery of Correction.

Once, indeed, he had made the attempt; had silenced her with a sudden sternness that had astounded her, and brought a certain novel respect for him
into her general feeling of Proprietorship. But he had failed entirely, as he worked slowly and earnestly, striving to pull up for her inspection the deep roots (the principles) out of which grew the plant of his conduct in life. He
had no particular gift of speech and had striven with logic, where only the
wand of emotion might have helped him to reach down to the sunk wells of
pity that lay so deep in the frozen womanhood of his grim and childless wife.

His effort merely earned the retort that “evildoers must take their physic,
or else quit their bad ways,” and further, that if he had not the “stomach for
his duty,” he would be better employed doing other work, “maybe nursin’
babbies!” (What an inverted expression of the pain of her denied motherhood
lay in this tilt at the Judge; though it is more than probable that the woman
never realised it.)

And now she sat in the log-shanty court, and stared with cold eyes of
complete condemnation from Jem Turrill, the prisoner, to her husband, the
Judge, and so back again to the prisoner, her brain taking the evidence, piece
by piece, and her stern reasoning breeding in her an impatient contempt for the look of compassion which old Judge Barclay occasionally turned upon the sullen and youthful Jem.

Jem Turrill was certainly a rather sullen looking young lout; but, for all that, he was possessed of a more wholesome heart and better abilities than a
casual look at his face suggested; the poor effect he produced owing itself
probably to his constant sullen expression, which put onlookers immediately out of sympathy with him. He was given to occasional heavy drinking-bouts, and he gambled inveterately, but also he worked hard, and he had a very real
affection for his old mother, whose love for him had for so long been pitiful in its hungry anxiety to aid and coax him to steady ways, without angering
him.

Her affection had brought her West, among the mining towns, that she
might be near to him. She had come one evening, a few months prior to the
event I am relating, and the son had welcomed her with a curious mixture of
honest joy and equally honest shamefacedness, lest the other miners of his
acquaintanceship should view the matter from the standpoint of the
“maternal apron-strings.” Yet the over-youthful Jem need not have troubled; his comrades neither thought nor cared one way or the other about the new
arrival, except, it might be, to envy him the possession of a competent house-
keeper and cook in his little, rough shanty. And, as I have said, though a
wayward, sullen youth, his affection for his mother was genuine and
curiously intense, after its own peculiar fashion.

But of all this Mrs Judge Barclay was unaware. It is to be doubted
whether she even realised that the youthful thief and murderer (for these
were the counts on which he was standing his trial) so much as possessed a mother—whether, indeed, such a dreadful creature could possibly have been born of woman! If she herself had borne children, she might have understood
many things, and she would not have been sitting there. As it was, she sat
there, calm and logical and utterly impatient of the “sentimentality!” of her
husband’s expression as he viewed the sodden-looking young reprobate
before the Court.