A. E. (Alfred Edgar) Coppard - The Collected Tales of A. E. Coppard

Dan Pavey was about thirty-five years old, of medium height and of medium appearance except as to his hat (a hard black bowler, which seemed never to belong to him, though he had worn it for years) and as to his nose. It was an ugly nose, big as a baby’s elbow; he had been born thus, it had not been broken or maltreated, though it might have engaged in some prenatal conflict when it was malleable, since when nature had healed, but had not restored it. But there was ever a soft smile that covered his ugliness, which made it genial and said, or seemed to say: Don’t make a fool of me, I am a friendly man, this is really my hat, and as for my nose—God made it so.

The six hamlets that he supplied with newspapers lie along the Icknield Vale close under the ridge of woody hills, and the inhabitants adjacent to the woods fell the beech timber and, in their own homes, turn it into rungs or stretchers for chair-manufacturers who, somewhere out of sight beyond the hills, endlessly make chair, and nothing but chair. Sometimes in a wood itself there may be seen a shanty built of faggots in which sits a man turning pieces of chair on a treadle lathe. Tall, hollow, and greenly dim are the woods, very solemn places, and they survey the six little towns as a man might look at six tiny pebbles lying on a green rug at his feet.

One August morning the newspaper man was riding back to Thasper. The day was sparkling like a diamond, but he was not singing, he was thinking of Scroope, the new rector of Thasper parish, and the thought of Scroope annoyed him. It was not only the tone of the sermon he had preached on Sunday, “The poor we have always with us,” though that was in bad taste from a man reputed rich and with a heart—people said—as hard as a door-knocker; it was something more vital, a congenital difference between them as profound as it was disagreeable. The Rev. Faudel Scroope was wealthy, he seemed to have complete confidence in his ability to remain so, and he was the kind of man with whom Dan Pavey would never be able to agree. As for Mrs. Scroope, gloom pattered upon him in a strong sighing shower at the least thought of her.

At Larkspur Lane he came suddenly upon the rector talking to an oldish man, Eli Bond, who was hacking away at a hedge. Scroope never wore a hat, he had a curly bush of dull hair. Though his face was shaven clean it remained a regular plantation of ridges and wrinkles; there was a stoop in his shoulders, a lurch in his gait, and he had a voice that howled.

“Just a moment, Pavey,” he bellowed, and Dan dismounted.

“All those years,” the parson went on talking to the hedger; “all those years, dear me!”

“I were born in Thasper sixty-six year ago, come the 23rd of October, sir, the same day—but two years before—as Lady Hesseltine eloped with Rudolf Moxley. I was reared here and I worked here sin’ I were six year old. Twalve children I have had (though five on ’em come to naught and two be in the army) and I never knowed what was to be out of work for one single day in all that sixty year. Never. I can’t thank my blessed master enough for it.”

“Isn’t that splendidly feudal,” murmured the priest, “who is your good master?”

The old man solemnly touched his hat and said: “God.”

“Oh, I see, yes, yes,” cried the Rev. Mr. Scroope. “Well, good health and constant, and good work and plenty of it, are glorious things. The man who has never done a day’s work is a dog, and the man who deceives his master is a dog too.”

“I never donn that, sir.”

“And you’ve had happy days in Thasper, I’m sure?”

“Right-a-many, sir.”

“Splendid. Well—um—what a heavy rain we had in the night.”

“Ah, that was heavy! At five o’clock this morning I daren’t let my ducks out—they’d a bin drowned, sir.”

“Ha, now, now, now!” warbled the rector as he turned away with Dan.

“Capital old fellow, happy and contented. I wish there were more of the same breed. I wish . . .” The parson sighed pleasantly as he and Dan walked on together until they came to the village street, where swallows were darting and flashing very low. A small boy stood about, trying to catch them in his hands as they swooped close to him. Dan’s own dog pranced up to his master for a greeting. It was black, somewhat like a greyhound, but stouter. Its tail curled right over its back and it was cocky as a bird, for it was young; it could fight like a tiger and run like the wind—many a hare had had proof of that.

Said Mr. Scroope, eyeing the dog: “Is there much poaching goes on here?”

“Poaching, sir?”

“I am told there is. I hope it isn’t true for I have rented most of the shooting myself.”

“I never heard tell of it, sir. Years ago, maybe. The Buzzlebury chaps one time were rare hands at taking a few birds, so I’ve heard, but I shouldn’t think there’s an onlicensed gun for miles around.”

“I’m not thinking so much of guns. Farmer Prescott had his warren netted by someone last week and lost fifty or sixty rabbits. There’s scarcely a hare to be seen, and I find wires wherever I go. It’s a crime like anything else, you know,” Scroope’s voice was loud and strident, “and I shall deal very severely with poaching of any kind. Oh yes, you have to, you know, Pavey. Oh yes. There was a man in my last parish was a poacher, cunning scoundrel of the worst type, never did a stroke of work, and he had a dog, it wasn’t unlike your dog—this is your dog, isn’t it? You haven’t got your name on its collar, you should have your name on a dog’s collar—well, he had a perfect brute of a dog, carried off my pheasants by the dozen; as for hares, he exterminated them. Man never did anything else, but we laid him by the heels and in the end I shot the dog myself.”

“Shot it?” said Dan. “No, I couldn’t tell a poacher if I was to see one. I know no more about ’em than a bone in the earth.”

“We shall be,” continued Scroope, “very severe with them. Let me see—are you singing the Handel on Sunday evening?”

“He Shall Feed His Flock, sir, like a Shepherd.”

“Splendid! Good day, Pavey.”

Dan, followed by his bounding, barking dog, pedalled home to a little cottage that seemed to sag under the burden of its own thatch; it had eaves a yard wide, and birds’ nests in the roof at least ten years old. Here Dan lived with his mother, Meg Pavey, for he had never married. She kept an absurd little shop for the sale of sweets, vinegar, boot buttons, and such things, and was a very excellent old dame, but as naїve as she was vague. If you went in to her counter for a newspaper and banged down a halfcrown she would as likely as not give you change for sixpence—until you mentioned the discrepancy, when she would smilingly give you back your halfcrown again.

Dan passed into the back room, where Meg was preparing dinner, threw off his bag, and sat down without speaking. His mother was making a heavy succession of journeys between the table and a larder.

“Mrs. Scroope’s been here,” said Meg, bringing a loaf to the table.

“What did she want?”

“She wanted to reprimand me.”

“And what have you been doing?”

Meg was in the larder again. “ ’Tis not me, ’tis you.”

“What do you mean, mother?”

“She’s been a-hinting,” here Meg pushed a dish of potatoes to the right of the bread, and a salt-cellar to the left of the yawning remains of a rabbit pie, “about your not being a teetotal. She says the boozing do give the choir a bad name and I was to persuade you to give it up.”

“I should like to persuade her it was time she is dead. I don’t go for to take any pattern from that rich trash. Are we the grass under their feet? And can you tell me why parsons’ wives are always so much more awful than the parsons themselves? I never shall understand that if I lives a thousand years. Name o’ God, what next?”