Chapter XXIX: Joe Takes It ILL

Melinda Honeysett came to see Mr. Stockman, and it happened that she paid her visit but half an hour after heavy tidings had fallen on his ears.

From the moment of her arrival, she was aware of something unusual in his manner, and presently she learned from him all particulars.

He was in his garden, sitting alone under a little arbour constructed at the side of the house with its eye in the sun; and there he sat with his hands in his pockets, idle, staring before him. Even the customary pipe was absent from his mouth. He was restored to health, as Melinda knew; but she felt at a loss to see him dawdling thus at noon. He looked old and dejected too, nor did he rise to greet her when she entered the garden.

She approached him therefore, and he gazed indifferently and dull-eyed upon her.

"Morning, Joe. They cabbages you gave me be all bolting* I'm sorry to say, and Mr. Ford, my next door neighbour, tells me I can't do nothing."

* "Bolting"--running to seed.

"Ban't the only things that's bolting. Funny as you should be the one to face me after what I've just heard."

"You'm down seemingly?"

"Down and out you might say without straining the truth. It's a blasted world, though the sun do be happening to shine. I've had the hardest blow of my life this morning. I'm still wondering if I ban't in an evil dream."

"Terrible sorry I'm sure. Good and bad luck don't wait for the weather. I be in trouble, too--more or less. Jerry and Jane Bamsey have fallen out and I'm in two minds--sorry for Jerry, and yet not all sorry, for father always said she wasn't any good. Yet I don't know what Jerry will do if it don't come right."

Mr. Stockman seemed totally uninterested at this news. He still looked before him and brooded. Melinda took a cane chair, which stood near his, and mopped her face, for she was hot.

"Only a lovers' quarrel I dare say; but if it was broke off altogether I reckon my brother might live to be thankful. And Orphan Dinah's gone to find work somewhere. I hope she will this time. Jane thinks she's run away to get married."

"Marriage--marriage!" he said. "Perdition take all this bleating about marriage! I'm sick to death of it, as well I may be."

She was astonished.

"I never heard you talk against it for them so inclined. Marriage is a good bit in the air this summer I believe. My sailor brother, Robert, be coming home for a spell pretty soon. And he writes me as he'll wed afore he goes back to sea, if he can find one. And I thought of Dinah. And Mr. Ford, the gardener, next to me--I reckon he means to marry again. He's got a great opinion of the state. Harry Ford's my own age to a day, strange to say. Our birthdays fall together. He had no luck with his wife, but he's going to try again I can see."

"I don't want to hear no more about him, or anybody else," said Mr. Stockman. "'Tis doubtful manners mentioning him to me. If you knew what I know, you'd be dumb with horror."

"Well, I can't be horrified if you won't tell me why I should. Where's Soosie-Toosie?"

She received a shattering answer.

"To hell with Soosie-Toosie!" cried Joe.

"Man alive, what's got into you? Be you ill again, or is it Palk leaving? If that's the trouble, lift your finger and he'll stay. You do that. I lay he meant nothing but good, standing up for Susan. He's a clumsy, ignorant creature; but you're always quick to forgive faults a man can't help. Pardon the chap and let him bide. I've always told you it was going too far to sack him on that. Don't be craking about it no more. It's your fault, after all, that he's going."

He glowered at her.

"You're like cats--the pack of you--never do what a reasonable creature wants, or expects. Put a bowl for 'em and they'll only drink out of a jug. Call 'em to the fire, they'll go to the window. Ope the window for 'em and they'll turn round and make you ope the door. And only a born fool wastes time or thought to please a cat; and be damned if ever I will again."

"Be you talking about Susan, or me?" asked Mrs. Honeysett, with rising colour. She did not know what was disturbing Joe's mind and began to feel angry. He pursued his own dark thoughts a moment longer and then, as she rose to leave him, he broke his news.

"Not an hour ago, when all was peace and I had been able to tell the household I found myself well again, and was turning over an advertisement for a new horseman, they crept before me, hand in hand--like a brace of children."

"Who did?"

"Why, Susan and that blasted sarpent, Palk."

"Palk a sarpent!"

"Do, for God's sake, shut up and listen, and don't keep interrupting. They came afore me. And Palk said that, owing to a wonderful bit of news, he hoped we was going to part friends and not enemies, though he was afraid as he might have to give me another jar. Then I told him to drop my darter's hand that instant moment and not come mountybanking about when he ought to be at work; and then he said that Susan had taken him, and they hoped afore long to be married!"

"Mercy on us, Joe!"

"That's what I heard this morning. And the woman put in her oar when I asked Palk if he was drunk. She said she loved him well and dearly, and hoped that I wouldn't fling no cold water over her great joy, or be any the less a kind father to her. Got it all by heart of course."

"What a world! That's the last thing ever I should have thought to fall out."

"Or any other sane human. It's a wicked outrage in my opinion and done, of course, for revenge, because I cast the man away--cunning devil!"

"Don't you say that. You must take a higher line, Joe. Soosie-Toosie's a good woman, and you always said Thomas was a good man."

"He's not a good man. He's a beast of a man--underhand and sly and scheming. He's got one of them hateful, cast-iron memories, and when I began to talk to them and soon had my daughter dumb, it was Palk, if you please, opened his mouth and withstood me and flung my own words in my face."

"What words?"

"And it shows kind speech to that fashion of man be no better than cheese-cakes to a pig. I told him to think twice before he made himself a laughing-stock to the parish, and then he minded me of the past and a thing spoke when I sacked him, a fortnight ago. I've gone so weak as a mouse over this job I can tell you."

"Take your time. What had you said to him?"

"I'd told him, when he dared to come afore me about my way with my only child, that if there was anything in the world I could do for Susan to make her home a happier place, he might rest assured she would tell me so herself. And the sarpent remembered that and then invited the woman to speak; which she did do, and told me that her life, without this grey-headed son of a gun, wouldn't be worth living no more; and she hoped that I wouldn't pay back all her love and life-long service--'service,' mind you--by making a rumpus about it, or doing or saying anything unkind. And I've got to go down the wind like a dead leaf afore them, because I soon saw that under her mild words, Susan weren't going to be shook."

"She wouldn't be. There's no strength like the strength of a woman who gets her only chance. She knows, poor dear, 'tis Palk or nothing."

"I told 'em to get out of my sight for a pair of cold-blooded, foxy devils--yes, in my anger I said that--and so they have; and soon, no doubt, they'll be gone for good and all. And that's the middle and both ends of it; and the worst and wickedest day's work ever I heard tell about."

"You've dropped below your usual high standards, if I may say so," answered Melinda. "Little blame to you that you should feel vexed, I'm sure; but 'tis more the shock than the reality I believe. I feel the shock likewise, though outside the parties and only a friend to all. 'Tis so unlike anything as you might have expected, that it throws you off your balance. Yet, when you come to turn it over, Joe, you can't help seeing there's rhyme and reason in it."

"You say that! For a woman to fly from the safety and security of her father's home--and such a father--to a man who don't even know what work he's going to do when he leaves me. And a wretch that's proved as deep as the sea. Can't you read his game? He knows that Susan be my only one, and bound to have all some day--or he thinks he knows it. That's at the bottom of this. He looks on and says to himself, 'All will be hers; then all will be mine.'"

"Don't you say that. Keep a fair balance. Remember you held a very high opinion of Palk not two months agone, when he showed by his acts to his dead sister's child that he was a high-minded man."

"I'll thank you to keep my side of this, please," he answered. "I don't much like the line you're taking, Melinda. Just ax yourself this: would any man, young or old, look at Susan as a possible help-mate and think to marry her, if he warn't counting on the jam that would go with the powder? She's my child, and I'm not one to bemoan my fortune as to that, but a woman's a woman, and was the male ever born who could look at Susan as a woman? You know very well there never was."

"You couldn't; but men ain't all so nice as you about looks. And you can't deny that apart from being a bit homely, Susan----"

"Stop!" he said. "I believe you knew about this all the time and be here as a messenger of peace! And if I thought that----"

"Don't think nothing of the sort, there's a good man. I'd so soon have expected the sun to go backward as hear any such thing. But 'tis done on your own showing, and you must be so wise as usual about it and not let the natural astonishment upset your character. It's got to be, seemingly. So start from there and see how life looks."

Melinda indeed was also thinking how life looked. Her mind ran on and she had already reached a point to which Mr. Stockman's bruised spirit was yet to bring him. She prepared to go away.

"I won't stop no more now. You'll have a lot to think over in your mind about the future. Thank goodness you be well again--and never looked better I'm sure. What's their plans?"

"Damn their plans--how about my plans?"

"You'll come to your plans gradual. And don't think 'tis the end of the world. You never know. When things turn inside out like this, we be often surprised to find there's a lot to be said for changes after all."

"'Tis mortal easy to be wise about other folk's troubles," he said.

Then Mrs. Honeysett departed and felt Joe's moody eyes upon her back as she went slowly and thoughtfully away. Soosie-Toosie's eyes were also upon her; but that she did not know.