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

“Cold?” asked Dan.

The child shook its head solemnly at him and then put one hand in Dan’s and gazed at the fire that was bringing a brightness into the long-lashed dark eyes and tenderly flushing the pale face.

“Hungry?”

The child did not reply. It only silently smiled when the boys brought him a lighted stick from the faggots. Dan caught him up into his arms and pushed the cycle across the way into his own home.

Plump Meg had just shredded up two or three red cabbages and rammed them into a crock with a shower of peppercorns and some terrible knots of ginger. There was a bright fire and a sharp odour of vinegar—always some strange pleasant smell in Meg Pavey’s home—she had covered the top of the crock with a shield of brown paper, pinioned that with string, licked a label: “Cabege Novenbr 5t,” and smoothed it on the crock, when the latch lifted and Dan carried in his little tiny boy.

“Here he is, mother.”

Where Dan stood him, there the child remained; he did not seem to see Mother Pavey, his glance had happened to fall on the big crock with the white label—and he kept it there.

“Who ever’s that?” asked the astonished Meg with her arms akimbo as Dan began to unwrap the child.

“That’s mine,” said her son, brushing a few flakes of snow from the curls on its forehead.

“Yours! How long have it been yours?”

“Since ’twas born. No, let him alone, I’ll undo him, he’s full up wi’ pins and hooks. I’ll undo him.”

Meg stood apart while Dan unravelled his offspring.

“But it is not your child, surely, Dan?”

“Ay, I’ve brought him home for keeps, mother. He can sleep wi’ me.”

“Who’s its mother?”

“ ’Tis no matter about that. Dan Cupid did it.”

“You’re making a mock of me. Who is his mother? Where is she? You’re fooling, Dan, you’re fooling!”

“I’m making no mock of anyone. There, there’s a bonny grandson for you!”

Meg gathered the child into her arms, peering into its face, perhaps to find some answer to the riddle, perhaps to divine a familiar likeness. But there was nothing in its soft smooth features that at all resembled her rugged Dan’s.

“Who are you? What’s your little name?”

The child whispered: “Martin.”

“It’s a pretty, pretty thing, Dan.”

“Ah!” said her son, “that’s his mother. We were rare fond of each other—once. Now she’s wedd’n another chap and I’ve took the boy, for it’s best that way. He’s five year old. Don’t ask me about her, it’s our secret and always has been. It was a good secret and a grand secret, and it was well kept. That’s her ring.”

The child’s thumb had a ring upon it, a golden ring with a small green stone. The thumb was crooked, and he clasped the ring safely.

For a while Meg asked no more questions about the child. She pressed it tenderly to her bosom.

But the long-kept secret, as Dan soon discovered, began to bristle with complications. The boy was his, of course it was his—he seemed to rejoice in his paternity of the quiet, pretty, illegitimate creature. As if that brazen turpitude was not enough to confound him, he was taken a week later in the act of receiving betting commissions and heavily fined in the police court, although it was quite true that he himself did not bet and was merely a collecting agent for a bookmaker who remained discreetly in the background and who promptly paid his fine.

There was naturally a great racket in the vestry about these things—there is no more rhadamanthine formation than that which can mount the ornamental forehead of a deacon—and Dan was bidden to an interview at the “Scroopery.” After some hesitation he visited it.

“Ah, Pavey,” said the rector, not at all minatory but very subdued and unhappy. “So the blow has fallen, in spite of my warning. I am more sorry than I can express, for it means an end to a very long connection. It is very difficult and very disagreeable for me to deal with the situation, but there is no help for it now, you must understand that. I offer no judgment upon these unfortunate events, no judgment at all, but I can find no way of avoiding my clear duty. Your course of life is incompatible with your position in the choir, and I sadly fear it reveals not only a social misdemeanour but a religious one—it is a mockery, a mockery of God.”

The rector sat at a table with his head pressed on his hands. Pavey sat opposite him, and in his hands he dangled his bowler hat.

“You may be right enough in your way, sir, but I’ve never mocked God. For the betting, I grant you. It may be a dirty job, but I never ate the dirt myself, I never betted in my life. It’s a way of life, a poor man has but little chance of earning more than a bare living, and there’s many a dirty job there’s no prosecution for, leastways not in this world.”

“Let me say, Pavey, that the betting counts less heavily with me than the question of this unfortunate little boy. I offer no judgment upon the matter, your acknowledgment of him is only right and proper. But the fact of his existence at all cannot be disregarded; that at least is flagrant, and as far as concerns your position in my church, it is a mockery of God.”

“You may be right, sir, as far as your judgment goes, or you may not be. I beg your pardon for that, but we can only measure other people by our own scales, and as we can never understand one another entirely, so we can’t ever judge them rightly, for they all differ from us and from each other in some special ways. But as for being a mocker of God, why, it looks to me as if you was trying to teach the Almighty how to judge me.”

“Pavey,” said the rector with solemnity, “I pity you from the bottom of my heart. We won’t continue this painful discussion, we should both regret it. There was a man in the parish where I came from who was an atheist and mocked God. He subsequently became deaf. Was he convinced? No, he was not—because the punishment came a long time after his offence. He mocked God again, and became blind. Not at once: God has eternity to work in. Still he was not convinced. That,” said the rector ponderously, “is what the Church has to contend with; a failure to read the most obvious signs, and an indisposition even to remedy that failure. Klopstock was that poor man’s name. His sister—you know her well, Jane Klopstock—is now my cook.”

The rector then stood up and held out his hand. “God bless you, Pavey.”

“I thank you, sir,” said Dan. “I quite understand.”

He went home moodily reflecting. Nobody else in the village minded his misdeeds, they did not care a button, and none condemned him. On the contrary, indeed. But the blow had fallen, there was nothing that he could now do, the shock of it had been anticipated, but it was severe. And the pang would last, for he was deprived of his chief opportunity for singing, that art in which he excelled, in that perfect quiet setting he so loved. Rancour grew upon him, and on Saturday he had a roaring audacious evening at the White Hart, where, to the tune of The British Grenadiers, he sung a doggerel:

Our parson loves his motor car,

His garden and his mansion,

And he loves his beef for I’ve remarked

His belly’s brave expansion;

He loves all mortal mundane things

As he loved his beer at college,

And so he loves his housemaid (not

With Mrs. parson’s knowledge).

Our parson lies both hot and strong,

It does not suit his station,

But still his reverend soul delights

In much dissimulation;

Both in and out and roundabout

He practises distortion,

And he lies with a public sinner when

Grass widowhood’s his portion.

All of which was a savage libel on a very worthy man, composed in anger and regretted as soon as sung.