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

“What for?”

“You’ll hear about what for,” the giant grinned. “I’ll be sure to let ye know, in doo coorse.” He laid his gun upon the ground and began searching in his pockets, while Dan stood up with rage in his heart and confusion in his mind. So the Old Imp was at him again!

“Humph!” said the keeper. “I’ve alost my notebook somewheres. Have you got a bit of paper on ye?”

The culprit searched his pockets and produced a folded fragment.

“Thanks.” The giant did not cease to grin. “What is it?”

“What?” queried Dan.

“Your name and address.”

“Ah, but what do you want it for? What do you think I’m doing?” protested Dan.

“I’ve a net in my pocket which I took from a gate about an hour ago. I saw summat was afoot, and me and a friend o’ mine have been looking for ’ee. Now let’s have your name and no nonsense.”

“My name,” said Dan, “my name? Well, it is—Piper.”

“Piper is it, ah! Was you baptized ever?”

“Peter,” said Dan savagely.

“Peter Piper! Well, you’ve picked a tidy peppercarn this time.”

Again he was searching his pockets. There was a frown on his face. “You’d better lend me a bit o’ pencil too.”

Dan produced a stump of lead pencil, and the gamekeeper, smoothing the paper on his lifted knee, wrote down the name of Peter Piper.

“And where might you come from?” He peered up at the miserable man, who replied: “From Leasington”—naming a village several miles to the west of his real home.

“Leasington!” commented the other. “You must know John Eustace, then?” John Eustace was a sporting farmer famed for his stock and his riches.

“Know him!” exclaimed Dan. “He’s my uncle!”

“Oh ah!” The other carefully folded the paper and put it into his breast pocket. “Well, you can trot along home now, my lad.”

Dan knelt down and unbuckled the collar from his dead dog’s neck. He was fond of his dog, it looked piteous now. And kneeling there it suddenly came upon Dan that he had been a coward again, he had told nothing but lies, foolish lies, and he had let a great hulking flunkey walk roughshod over him. In one astonishing moment the reproving face of his little son seemed to loom up beside the dog, the blood flamed in his brain.

“I’ll take charge of that,” said the keeper, snatching the collar from his hand.

“Blast you!” Dan sprang to his feet, and suddenly screaming like a madman: “I’m Dan Pavey of Thasper,” he leaped at the keeper with a fury that shook even that calm stalwart.

“You would, would ye?” he yapped, darting for his gun. Dan also seized it, and in their struggle the gun was fired off harmlessly between them. Dan let go.

“My God!” roared the keeper, “you’d murder me, would ye? Wi’ my own gun, would ye?” He struck Dan a swinging blow with the butt of it, yelling: “Would ye? Would ye? Would ye?” And he did not cease striking until Dan tumbled senseless and bloody across the body of the dog.

Soon another keeper came hurrying through the trees.

“Tried to murder me—wi’ me own gun, he did,” declared the big man, “wi’ me own gun!”

They revived the stricken Pavey after a while and then conveyed him to a policeman, who conveyed him to a jail.

The magistrates took a grave view of the case and sent it for trial at the assizes. They were soon held, he had not long to wait, and before the end of November he was condemned. The assize court was a place of intolerable gloom, intolerable formality, intolerable pain, but the public seemed to enjoy it. The keeper swore Dan had tried to shoot him, and the prisoner contested this. He did not deny that he was the aggressor. The jury found him guilty. What had he to say? He had nothing to say, but he was deeply moved by the spectacle of the Rev. Mr. Scroope standing up and testifying to his sobriety, his honesty, his general good repute, and pleading for a lenient sentence because he was a man of considerable force of character, misguided no doubt, a little unfortunate, and prone to recklessness.

Said the judge, examining the papers of the indictment: “I see there is a previous conviction—for betting offences.”

“That was three years ago, my lord. There has been nothing of the kind since, my lord, of that I am sure, quite sure.”

Scroope showed none of his old-time confident aspect, he was perspiring and trembling. The clerk of the assize leaned up and held a whispered colloquy with the judge, who then addressed the rector.

“Apparently he is still a betting agent. He gave a false name and address, which was taken down by the keeper on a piece of paper furnished by the prisoner. Here it is, on one side the name of Peter Pope” (“Piper, sir!”) “Piper: and on the other side this is written:

3 o/c race. Pretty Dear, 5/- to win. J. Klopstock.

Are there any Klopstocks in your parish?”

“Klopstock!” murmured the parson; “it is the name of my cook.”

What had the prisoner to say about that? The prisoner had nothing to say, and he was sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment with hard labour.

So Dan was taken away. He was a tough man, an amenable man, and the mere rigours of the prison did not unduly afflict him. His behaviour was good, and he looked forward to gaining the maximum remission of his sentence. Meg, his mother, went to see him once, alone, but she did not repeat the visit. The prison chaplain paid him special attention. He, too, was a Scroope, a huge fellow, not long from Oxford, and Pavey learned that he was related to the Thasper rector. The new year came, February came, March came, and Dan was afforded some privileges. His singing in chapel was much admired, and occasionally he was allowed to sing to the prisoners. April came, May came, and then his son Martin was drowned in a boating accident, on a lake, in a park. The Thasper children had been taken there for a holiday. On hearing it, Pavey sank limply to the floor of his cell. The warders sat him up, but they could make nothing of him, he was dazed, and he could not speak. He was taken to the hospital wing. “This man has had a stroke, he is gone dumb,” said the doctor. On the following day he appeared to be well enough, but still he could not speak. He went about the ward doing hospital duty, dumb as a ladder; he could not even mourn, but a jig kept flickering through his voiceless mind:

In a park there was a lake,

On the lake there was a boat,

In the boat there was a boy.

Hour after hour the stupid jingle flowed through his consciousness. Perhaps it kept him from going mad, but it did not bring him back his speech, he was dumb, dumb. And he remembered a man who had been stricken deaf, and then blind—Scroope knew him too, it was some man who had mocked God.

In a park there was a lake,

On the lake there was a boat,

In the boat there was a boy.

On the day of the funeral Pavey imagined that he had been let out of prison; he dreamed that someone had been kind and set him free for an hour or two to bury his dead boy. He seemed to arrive at Thasper when the ceremony was already begun, the coffin was already in the church. Pavey knelt down beside his mother. The rector intoned the office, the child was taken to its grave. Dumb dreaming, Pavey turned his eyes from it. The day was too bright for death, it was a stainless day. The wind seemed to flow in soft streams, rolling the lilac blooms. A small white feather, blown from a pigeon on the church gable, whirled about like a butterfly. “We give thee hearty thanks,” the priest was saying, “for that it hath pleased thee to deliver this our brother out of the miseries of this sinful world.” At the end of it all Pavey kissed his mother and saw himself turn back to his prison. He went by the field paths away to the railway junction. The country had begun to look a little parched, for rain was wanted—vividly he could see all this—but things were growing, corn was thriving greenly, the beanfields smelled sweet. A frill of yellow kilk and wild white carrot spray lined every hedge. Cattle dreamed in the grass, the colt stretched itself unregarded in front of its mother. Larks, wrens, yellow-hammers. There were the great beech trees and the great hills, calm and confident, overlooking Cobbs and Peter, Thasper and Trinkel, Buzzlebury and Nuncton. He sees the summer is coming on, he is going back to prison. “Courage is vain,” he thinks, “we are like the grass underfoot, a blade that excels is quickly shorn. In this sort of a world the poor have no call to be proud, they had only need be penitent.”