Chapter XV: Polly’s Despair

When Peter arrived at the Cherry castle twice in one week, Cherry realised that something must be done. Peter was so obviously a young man in a hurry. Worse than that, he was also the wrong young man. Polly had apparently selected him as one most suited to rile good Cherrydalers. “Goodness,” temporarily at least, since that night when she saw Adam Wild’s soul, was to her another word for meanness.

She was seen by divers people leaning against Peter, looking, as the cobbler’s wife said, “like a deein’ duck in a thunnerstorm.” She smoked a cigarette, one evening, in public view of four persons.

After that Cherrydale was prepared for anything, and--Polly was so sick, Cherry recommended a milder brand of cigarette.

He and Nan had a miserable Christmas, eating the goose alone, Granny being bad with asthma--Polly forgetting to do more than walk up there to meet Peter.

Cherry was watching Polly now--from his ingle-nook, with its recently added ledge that could serve as a writing-table on which ever stood ready a pile of printed forms headed “The Invincible Clothing Club.”

Six new members had joined that day.

He was getting used, at length, to the idea of himself as the Little Pedlar. He had even dreamt of himself, in this new identity that had thrust itself upon him.

Now--here was the problem of Polly.

He surveyed it--a white-faced problem, of antagonistic look, and chaotic soul, in which revolution was going on--sensible Cherries against the mad Harkers.

Polly was cutting out something from her new muff and fur.

Candlelight shone on her face.

It struck him that she was near a nervous breakdown. The resolve to banish Peter became a vow.

The youth appeared that very evening.

Cherry asked him to have a “walk,” and winked.

They went down to the “Peep In.” There was no one in the little parlour. Peter sat down, and Cherry admired the finished artistry of Peter’s handling of a pint pot, with a reservation that a man with a face like Peter should never get drunk--as he would be sure to bring disrepute on good drinking. It was Cherry’s steadfast opinion that only a gentleman, with inlaid morals that would not wash off with beer, deserved to get drunk.

It was after Peter’s tenth pint that Cherry said suddenly, “Well, lad! What’s this cock-an’-bull story about thee weddin’ _my_ daughter?”

Peter was not drunk.

But he stared at the reflection of the ram’s head through the mirror advertising Pale Ale, as if he imagined, for a moment, that this strange observation came from the ram.

“Pardon!”--he said, at length.

Cherry was smiling.

“Tha can’t be serious about weddin’ yon lass o’ mine,” he said. “What tha wants is summat tha couldn’t punch out o’ shape--summat ’at’d stick to thee whatever tha did. Yon lass o’ mine--she’s as monny moods as a fiddle, an’ needs as much care.”

Peter’s black eyes stared at the laughing blue ones.

“How much to call it off?” queried Cherry.

Peter leapt up.

For a moment he had forgotten that Cherry could not leap up.

Cherry jingled his money in his pocket, and gave Peter time to cool down.

Then he repeated, “How much?”

“I’m marryin’ Polly,” said Peter, doggedly.

Cherry’s look said they’d agree to differ.

“I shall do right to her,” said Peter.

“Eh?” queried Cherry.

Peter winced away from his look.

“I could do wi’ chaps like thee,” said Cherry genially, “if you didn’t want to take a woman aboard. I’ve known some knew theirsel’s well enough not to do. Anyhow, my lass isn’t bookin’ a ticket.”

Then he saw George peeping in at the doorway.

“Fill us up, lad,” he said.

George filled up their pots.

“Ten pounds,” said Cherry, meditatively.

Peter sneered.

“It’d buy a hen-pen,” said Cherry. “Well--fifteen, then. That’d take thee to America.”

Peter started at that.

Cherry realised that for some reason or other he had touched the right button.

An hour later they left the inn. Cherry with a written statement from Peter that he would neither see nor communicate with Polly Cherry, after receiving the fifteen pounds.

“Where’s Peter?”

It was Polly who asked her father this on his return.

“Gone home,” said Cherry.

She looked weary surprise, yawned, bundled up her sewing, and departed for Granny’s.

When Cherry saw her, in the morning, she had evidently passed a sleepless night. Now that she had left the rouge off, Polly’s pallor, the strain on the young face, was noticeable. Granny had tried to make the girl eat and behave herself, but was now, as she told Cherry, saving her breath to cool her porridge with.

Cherry winked.

His wink said he had the matter well in hand.

“Tha’rt goin’ to have another matter in hand,” said Granny. “For _that_ Jerry Clin came here yesterday, axin’ me if I knew a Miriam Cherry ’at were writing him letters threatening him for breach o’ promise.”

Which Cherry would have enjoyed mightily, had he not had this weight of Polly on his mind.

“Send him up to me,” he said.

Granny said she would.

The little pedlar went up the road.

Soon afterwards Polly Cherry went up the road, also. She went on until she saw the carrier. Something passed hurriedly between them. Polly put it in her pocket, until she could read it.

It was a message from Peter.

Peter was asking her to meet him at Narrowfields Station, on the following Saturday afternoon, and emigrate with him. He told a wonderful tale of a fortune left by an uncle.

He asked her to be sure to burn that letter. Polly never did the thing she should. She carried it in her pocket two days. After which she forgot it, owing to a strange, uncanny feeling she got whenever she went out, that Cherrydalers were watching her with a something in the feminine eye she could not understand.

Strange fancies about seeing rats run up the blind--cats run across the shop and vanish through the middle of the yellow-stoned flags in the scullery, possessed her, and odd fragments of music she had not heard or thought of for years, came up in her mind. Sometimes she would be unaware of what Granny was saying, listening to this music--until the old woman repeated the question two or three times. She would be dog-tired on going to bed, and be suddenly alert, unable to sleep, as soon as she lay down.

All this while she tried to ponder whether or not to “run away” with Peter. Running away appealed to Polly’s romantic heart. All the nicest heroines “ran away.” She was engrossed, at times, in thinking of Adam Wild’s feelings, if told she had gone away. But she could not decide whether or not to do it.

Cherry came to the cottage and borrowed five pounds of Granny.

Two days later he came again.

If Polly had not been too engrossed with her own sick fancies she would have noticed the pain-graven look on the pedlar’s face. She went out, to sweep the cobbles in the yard.

“I heard to-day,” said Cherry, to his mother-in-law, “a terrible lie. I know it’s a lie. But--oh----”

His voice broke.

His look was terrible.

“Here, ha’ a sup o’ reviver,” said Granny and gave him a nip of whisky.

“I heard,” he said, “’at it’s all over Cherrydale ’at our Polly is in trouble.”

Granny stared like a Cheshire cat.

Then that remarkable old woman, with one staccato-like “What?” yapped rather than spoken, made for her bonnet.

“Goin’ out, Polly,” she said, as Polly came in with the broom.

Poor Polly!

Her strained smile, her subdued look, the revolution going on within her, gave her a sadly changed look that lent colour to the story going about.

She watched the two go out, sat down and tried to read a love-tale. They were dreadfully unreal, now, these love-tales. Moreover, she couldn’t read long, or sit still long anywhere--there was a buzzing in her ears, and always she struggled with a temptation to set off and walk and walk, right up into the snow of those hills around, away from everybody. Sometimes she thought she was going to be ill.

She began to stitch at the baby coat Susan Thorpe had finished cutting out for her. She was making poor Becky’s poor baby a lovely suit. As Polly’s heart had hardened against good people, it had softened towards what those good people call “bad” ones.

Mrs. Jay came in to be served.

Polly laid the coat down on the counter.

She served Mrs. Jay.

Mrs. Jay was fat, and wore a virtuous look--a look downwards from the height of a British Matron’s Respectability.

When she pocketed her change and took the article she remarked, pityingly, “Eh--I am sorry for thee, lass!”

Polly stared.

She didn’t understand.

But a colour leapt like fire into snow.

“Oh--I don’t want anybody to be sorry for me,” she said, with a proud look Mrs. Jay defined as “brazent” afterwards.

“But--I am,” said the matron, and went out sorrowfully shaking her head. Polly rubbed her own, trying to solve the problem.

She was still trying to solve it when Granny came back, Granny with a high colour, excited eyes, and a warrior-like look.

“Granny----” said Polly.

“Eh, lass,” said Granny shortly. “Tha doesn’t know what folk are sayin’ on thee.”

Polly looked dazed at her.

The buzzing in her ears was growing louder.

“They’re sayin’,” quoth Granny, “that tha’rt in trouble.”

Polly stared.

Then--she laughed.

Quite suddenly the world appeared as one monstrous joke.

“It’s summat to laugh at, isn’t it?” said Granny wrathfully.

“Gran,” said Polly, “you don’t believe----”

In this monstrous joke of a world, she held out her hands to Granny.

“No-a,” yapped Granny, clearly. “But--thy father--it’s meeting him all over th’ place. If I could only lay my hands on where the lies started. Eh--yo’ can lock th’ doors against a thief, but not against a liar.”

She sat down and rocked.

When she looked up, Polly was crying. The Harkers were under. The Cherries were up.

And--Granny did the most foolish thing in her life.

She crossed over to Polly, lifted the limp figure up, sat down with her and rocked the big young woman as though she were a baby.

“Tha mun get summat to eat, cock-throstle,” she said. “Or tha’ll be ill.”

She made bite and sup, but Polly would not eat. It was seeing the girl trying to sew the baby coat gave Granny her clue as to how the gossip began. A little conversation with Polly clinched the idea. She went out to see Mrs. Jay, and came back, after telling half the village on the way of the libel on Polly. She went to see the minister, an admirer of hers. After hearing her tale he promised to preach a special sermon on Sunday, when Polly was to sing. Then she went to report to Cherry that she had half pulled back what evil tongues had done.

It was on the edge of dark when Cherry returned to his castle.

When he saw that Granny sat by his hearth, toasting muffins as Nan buttered them, he smiled. His heart had been a coal all day--sometimes against Polly.

Granny related what she had done.

“You’re an angel, mother-in-law,” he said. “Well--th’ lass’ll never need to know.”

“She knows,” said Granny, “an’--she’s come to her senses. By Goff! Will! It’s more luck nor management. Or else--there’s summat looks after silly persons like our Polly.”

“She knows----” said Cherry.

Granny nodded.

“An’--what did she say?” he asked.

“She said at first,” quoth Granny, “’at she’d never go out no more. She looked scared. Then she said she would. Anyhow, she’s to sing, Sunday.”

The days that followed were a nightmare to Polly. She went out into the village, with uplifted head. Once she met Adam Wild. His whitened look, the wincing of it away, made her see that he, also, had heard that rumour.

Women’s eyes peering out on her from the little cottages--to turn round suddenly and find the fixed stare of gossips, while pretending to sweep their flags--began to obsess her. She began to think of Becky, poor Becky, and to cry with a new, tender sadness for the hard joke of a world. There was nothing she could say to nail this lie down--only--to come out, and keep her head well up, and stare them out.

She did this for three days.

By that time people were not sure of the accuracy of the rumour.

When she did sleep, she would wake to find eyes watching her, curious, feminine.

A girl who couldn’t fight her way out of a sugar-bag nailing down this type of lie was conscious of the strain. Above all things, nature had not meant Polly for anything heroic.

“I can’t go an’ sing, Gran,” she told Granny, whimperingly, on Friday night.

“It’s the only way of provin’ it’s not true,” said Granny. “They’ll say tha’s bin expelled out o’ th’ choir.”

Polly wrote a note to Peter, saying she was not coming Saturday. But she forgot to post it. She forgot things strangely, now. Granny put it down to “upset.” Whilst the ordeal of having to stand up on Sunday and sing, with all those eyes and that thought to beat down in them, became a terror, magnifying with each hour.

But the iron-strung old Calvinist held her to it.

All Saturday, until dinner-time, Polly helped in house and shop.

She had sent her love and the coat and bonnet to the erring Becky--at least, to the old address, begging it to be forwarded. Also, four and sixpence--all her worldly wealth. Sometimes, as she stood at the counter, she grew quite dizzy. John Milton seemed to stare at her in a very peculiar way with his sightless eyes, from the opposite wall. Granny said there would be a blizzard before night, or she was no judge.

Granny was tired with all the excitement of fighting Martha Jay, of trying to unravel the lies, and fell asleep after dinner.

When she awoke Polly was gone out.

Granny thought she was gone “up home.” But when the second hour passed and the girl had not returned, she sent a small boy to the house on Thomas Hill.

He returned with snow on his coat, and the news that Polly had not been near.

Nan came down soon afterwards.

She had to wait until Granny’s shop emptied.

Nan was “dressed up.”

“That lass has gone an’ done summat,” she said to Granny. “An’ now I’m goin’ to that Martha Jay--to give her a hidin’, first of all--an’ then--I’m goin’ to seek our Polly.”

Granny stared.

“‘Vengeance is Mine,’ Nan,” she quoted.

“I were told to go an’ see her, an’ hide her,” said Nan calmly. “An’ I’m goin’.”

She went.

Whilst Granny mused on the folly of setting out to seek any one when you didn’t know where they had gone--and at the earliest opportunity searched through Polly’s pockets. She found the two letters--read them--looked at the clock, and started. The lass had been gone two hours. The train for Liverpool left Narrowfields in another hour and a half.

Ting-ting!

The shop-bell worried her.

Sometimes--only sometimes--it seemed that she would not mind “liggin’ low an’ sayin’ nowt” in Cherrydale Churchyard. If only Cherry would come. Then--it began to seem a long time since Nan went out to Martha Jay’s. Granny put on her bonnet and cape, left the shop to Providence, and went towards the Jays’. There was a side window to the Jay house which school-children loved to tap, and run away. The blind was not pulled down. Granny peeped in through this window, and saw a remarkable thing taking place.

Mrs. Jay was sitting writing, evidently under compulsion. Her hair and dress were very dishevelled. She had evidently been pulled about. Nan stood like Nemesis, took the paper, dried it at the fire, and--came out.

“Tha didn’t lick her, Nan,” said Granny, in a tone that said she hoped she had done so.

“She’ll not use her tongue so ready again,” said Nan. “She’s written an apology.”

“I’ll pay for the printing,” said Granny. “Well--an’ tha licked her.”

The wind was playing hurly-burly with the sleet now.

“Yon’s Cherry,” said Nan.

There was welcome in her voice.

“Nay”--said Granny.

“Just by the bush,” said Nan.

The little figure on wheels came on through the blinding sleet.

“Bill,” called Nan, “I’ve licked yon Jay woman. She’s written a public apology. An’--our Polly’s run away. I’m going to seek her.”

Cherry blinked snow from his eyelashes and stared.

“Run away!” he said, at length.

Granny’s shop was full. So she opened the door of what she called “the room,” for Cherry and Nan to talk things over there.

“Like looking for a needle in a haystack,” said Cherry. “We can’t get there by the train starts. But I’ll go an’ wire em to stop her gettin’ on the boat. She’s a minor.”

“It’ll be another name,” said Nan.

They went back, up to Tom Hill.

It was as much as Cherry could manage to get up the hill--a whitening hill.

The wind was gathering in the valley, making a hollow roaring.

They ate.

“There’s nothing for it but to wait,” said Cherry. “Besides, she mightn’t have gone.”

“If she hasn’t--where----?” began Nan.

Cherry shook his head.

Through two hours in which every rattle of the door made them hope it was Polly’s hand on the latch, they waited.

“It’s only eight o’clock yet,” said Cherry.

Nan went down to Granny’s.

“Has she come?” asked Granny. Then, “She’s not gone on that train to Liverpool. Bob Wild has bin in, an’ he says he met her ower by th’ Clouds--walkin’ steady along, like she knew where she were goin’. He said she didn’t see him, though he passed close enough to touch her. Ay, it were her. She were humming, he said--quite happy.”

Granny looked disturbed.

Nan looked fear.

“Tha has it as I got it,” yapped Granny. “Oh, Lord--if I could see that lass sattled--I could dee content.”

Then she said, “Whear arta goin’?”

“To get a search party,” said Nan.

“At half-past eight?” quoth Granny. “An’ happen she’ll walk in, whilst they’re seekin’. Happen she’s gone to walk things off. But--out on them lonely places----! Well, we’ll bide another hour.”

They bided.

Then Nan went to report to Cherry.

“She’s not gone, then,” said the Yorkshireman. “But where----?”

At nine o’clock the blizzard leapt down in all its strength.

Polly had not returned.

Adam Wild sitting up in the big kitchen with Sarah, in this their last week in Sagg Farm, heard a knock on the door.

It was Nan who came in, a snow-shape of her, with her eyes looking in on them.

“There’s a party goin’ seekin’ our Polly ower th’ Clouds,” she panted. “Cherry said, wilta come.”

Adam did not answer.

He moved mechanically towards the door through which the snow was blowing.

“Adam--thy cap an’ coyt,” Sarah reminded him. “An’ you’ll want as many lamps as you can get.”

Then she said, “Let me come, too.”

Her brother did not answer.

Sarah became a dark dummy, carrying a huge lantern, the same lantern that had shed its light on the swinging frayed rope.

The party was gathered up at Myrtle Cottage.

There were a score of folk, Mrs. Jay’s husband amongst them, with Bob Wild, who took the Thorpe dog. Nan and Sarah were the only two women. The party went out and left Cherry sitting in the ingle-nook, alone.

At the foot of the hill Nan Cherry found she would hinder the party.

She went back.

“Polly!” said Cherry.

Then his eager look faded into disappointment.

“It’s only me,” said Nan.

They sat waiting together.

The voice of the wind was like the roar of a white panther now claiming the country-side.

Cherry’s heart was striding about in the blind whiteness of the hills around--seeking, seeking. His body sat still on the chair.

“It’s a punishment on me!” wailed the woman opposite him, once.

He did not move.

“Bill!” said Nan, once.

He looked at her.

“Say summat,” she said.

“If she comes back,” he said, “I don’t care for aught else. Not for aught else. But I’ve to sit here. Just to sit here--like an old woman!--an’ _wait_.”

It was as though his pent impatience hurtled itself against his body. His face was ashen, his Cherry-blue eyes blazed.

Nan drew her chair up to his, and sat down.

Another hour went by.

The two hands clasped one another.

They were waiting together.

And, little jerking confessional phrases were spoken by Nan--such as, “I wanted to be boss,” “I didn’t like to let thee see I cared--it looked daft----” to all of which Cherry listened, saying nothing. Nan had hauled down her flag for good.

Cherry said nothing.

Nan got up from the chair and built up the fire. If Polly came, it might be needed. _If._ The agony of the clock grew intolerable. They ceased to look at it. They only listened.

“There’s summat,” said Nan, at midnight.

“A sash rattling,” said Cherry.

But--it was the latch.

Sarah opened the door.

She was like a snow-woman.

“They’ve found her--” she gasped. “But----”

“Dead?” came Cherry’s voice.

It had the old falsetto note born of striving against emotion.

Sarah shook her head.

“Jesus wept!” cried Nan, and burst into a loud fit of sobbing. Then she ran out down the hillside--only to stand, caught in the teeth of the storm, unable to get a step further.

Adam Wild strode past Nan, without seeing her.

He carried Polly--wrapped in his topcoat, which in its turn was wrapped in snow.

The rest of the party had stayed at the foot of the hill endeavouring to shelter behind the hedge of that long field down which Polly had danced not long ago.

Nan followed Adam, tearing herself savagely towards the door left open, its light streaming out.

She helped to pull away the frozen coat.

“She’s dead, Bill!” she said.

At that moment Polly Cherry opened her eyes.

She saw Adam Wild, felt that he was holding her.

“Go away,” she said, childishly. “Go away,” and endeavoured to thrust him from her. They were the last coherent words she spoke for several days. The doctor pronounced brain-fever, when he arrived.

Sarah stayed to help get her to bed, in that bed in the kitchen corner, and to tell how Adam had saved her from walking into White Moor Reservoir. She had been stepping out blindly, unconscious of anything, singing, and somehow fighting her way through the storm, with a mad strength. Her voice, shrieking out “Kyrie Eleison” uncannily, had led them to her. The long strain was over. She would not need to sing in Cherrydale Church to-morrow, and the sermons preached on keeping one’s tongue from bearing false witness against one’s neighbour would have an added eloquence from that empty place in the choir.

Half way down the hill Adam turned back. The doctor passed him.

Adam had left his lantern.

Polly was babbling again--incoherencies about music--singing out of tune, but with that euphony of tone nothing could destroy. Nan was warming blankets.

“If there’s anything I can get,” said the man with the lantern, “or do----”

“That French gavotte,” said Polly, “they don’t play it right. I say--they don’t play it right. It goes----”

She la-laed all out of tune.

“Or fetch from town,” proceeded Adam, calmly.

Cherry nodded.

“I’ll call in--every morning,” said Adam.

He waited, for leave to do so.

Cherry nodded.

“Wrong, wrong, all wrong,” said Polly.

Cherry looked at him.

Adam understood that just at present he was not wanted.

“By the way----” he said blunderingly, and stopped.

“If she gets better,” he said, “have I your consent to come here often, Mr. Cherry?”

Cherry eyed young Wild.

“If tha likes,” he said, shortly. Then, “But--hast heard all the gossip?”

Adam nodded.

Then he mumbled something about it making no difference if she were in the gutter, he’d have her. Cherry did not undeceive him. He had arrived at his own conclusions before Adam--believed it was he who had thrown the lass “off her trolley.” He let Adam Wild have those few more hours of uncertainty before the minister’s sermons would clear the little singer in the sight of Cherrydale. But as a man Adam’s fumbling’s words had placed him in the right place in Cherry’s heart.

It was next morning, as the church bells rang, that a weary figure trailed up Tom Hill.

Nan saw her first, out of the window.

“There’s a woman hangin’ on our gate,” she said to Cherry.

Then she said, “It’s that Becky!”

But--what a Becky!

Becky, draggled, verminous, dragging foot by foot painfully through the snow, come from that doss-house and unable to get to the Workhouse. A green velvet bow hung down over her hat--half hiding her features.

“Polly--she said, ‘Come’--” said Becky. “I haven’t anybody.”

“Get upstairs wi’ thee,” yapped Nan.

Becky dimly perceived that Polly was sick, on that bed in the corner.

“I’m not fit to sleep in a right bed,” she said, miserably. “I’d no idea. I got a bed for fourpence, an’----”

“Go on,” said Nan. “I’ll find thee some clean things.”

It was quiet after the blizzard.

Sunshine lit up the white village.

Cherry went out on his wheels to ask the cobbler’s wife to come and stay with Becky, and inform the doctor.

When he got back Nan said, “Look here! I found this in her pocket.”

It was a note from Peter, in which he declared he didn’t believe the child was his, and that he would not pay for it.

“Every chap as is born ought to be strangled at birth,” said the Amazon fiercely.

Two hours later she brought a pink atom down, wrapped in “swaddling bands” that had been used by all the cobbler’s children.

“Look at its hands, Bill,” she said. “Look at ’em.”

She spread out a pink pair with almost invisible nails.

“What is it?” asked Cherry.

“A lad,” she said. “An’ look at th’ collops o’ fat behind its neck. Well, it’s happen a good job it’s a lad. An’--it’s as fit to live as onnybody else, for aught I can see.”

There were moments when Cherry perceived that hooliganism had its bigness. Nan’s calm acceptance of the child was so unashamedly Nan-like. Her sympathies were still with folk who were not “born in chapel vestries.”

Meanwhile, Life had entered the house on the hill. Death stood hovering near. Against the doors stood two stubborn souls--Nan and Cherry. Never had they been as one before, but they were now, when they fought to save Polly, Polly who never rested day or night, and perhaps would never rest again until----

But of that they would not think.

At last, these two differing souls had a great common impulse.