Chapter 12

At last matters reached a climax. It was late in March; Albert was much worse, and even the doctor looked solemn. "He won't last till the summer," he[Pg 367] said in answer to one of Pete's questions, and unluckily the sick man heard him.

When Pete went back into the room he found him struggling under the bedclothes, the sweat trickling down his face.

"Pete!" he cried chokingly—"I won't die!—I won't die!"

"And you w?an't, nuther," said Pete, soothing him.

"But I heard what the doctor said to you."

Pete was at a loss. He could lie if the lie were not too constructive, but in a case like this he was done for.

"Well, d?an't you fret, nohow," he murmured tenderly.

But it was no good telling Albert not to fret. He threw himself from side to side in the bed, moaned, and almost raved. For months now he had known that he must die soon, but somehow the idea had not really come home to him till this moment. He would not let Pete leave him, though there was a load of mangolds to be brought in; he clung to his brother's hand like a child, and babbled of strange sins.

"I've been so wicked—I daren't die. I've been the lowest scum. I'm lost. Pete, I'm damned—I shall go to hell."

Albert had been known openly to scoff at hell, whereas Pete had never thought much about it. Now it confronted them both under a new aspect—the scoffer trembled and the thoughtless was preoccupied.

"D?an't fret," reiterated poor Pete, desperate under the fresh complication of theology, "I reckon you're not bad enough to go to hell, surelye."

"But I'm the worst—the worst that ever was. I'm scum, I'm dirt"—and out poured more of the turbid stream, till Pete sickened.

"If I could only see a parson," sobbed Albert at last.

"A parson?"

"Yes—maybe he could comfort me. Oh, I know[Pg 368] I've mocked 'em and scoffed 'em all my life, but I reckon they could do summat for me now."

In his weakness he had gone back not only to the religious terrors of his youth, but to the Sussex dialect he had long forgotten.

Pete scarcely knew what to do. He had become used to his brother's gradual disintegration, but this utter collapse was terrifying. He offered his own ministrations.

"You've told me a dunnamany things, and you can tell me as many more as you justabout like"—touching the climax of self-sacrifice.

But Albert's weak mind clung to its first idea with scared tenacity. He was still raving about it when Pete came in from his work that evening.

"I want a parson," he moaned, throwing himself about the bed, and his terrors seemed to grow upon him as the darkness grew.

Neither of them slept that night. Albert was half delirious, and obsessed by the thought of hell. The room looked out on Boarzell, and he became convinced that the swart, tufted mass outlined against the sprinkled stars was hell, the country of the lost. He pictured himself wandering over and over it in torment. He said he saw fire on it, scaring the superstitious Pete out of his life.
"On the great Moor of the lost
Wander all the proud and dead—
Those who brothers' blood have shed,
Those who brothers' love have crossed."

He broke into his own verse, pouring it out deliriously:
"There's the shuddering ghost of me
Lips all black with fire and brine,
Chained between the libertine
And the fasting Pharisee."

Then he became obsessed by the idea that he was out on the Moor, wandering on it, and bound to it. The[Pg 369] earth was red-hot under his feet, and he picked them up off the bed like a cat on hot bricks, till Pete began to laugh inanely. He saw round him all the places he had known as a child, and called out for them, because he longed to escape to them from the burning Moor—"Castweasel! Castweasel!... Ramstile!... Ellenwhorne...."

It was strange to hear a man calling out the names of places in his fever as other men might call the names of people.

It was all a return to Albert's childhood. In spite of fifteen years in London, of a man's work and a man's love and a man's faith, he had gone back completely to the work and love and faith of his childhood. Odiam had swallowed him up, it had swallowed him up completely, his very hell was bounded by it. He spoke with a Sussex accent; he forgot the names of the women he had loved, and cried instead the names of places, and he forgot that he did not believe in hell, but thought of it as Boarzell Moor punctured by queer singing flames.

Pete lay and listened shuddering, waiting with sick desire for the kindling of the dawn and the whiteness that moved among the trees. At last they came, the sky bloomed, and the orchard flickered against it, stirred by a soundless wind. The poor fellow sat up in bed, all troubled and muddled by things that had never touched him before. He stretched himself and yawned from force of habit, for he was not in the least sleepy, then he began to dress.

"What is it?" mumbled Albert, himself again for a moment.

"I'm going to fetch a parson," said Pete.

It was very gallant of him to do so, for it meant venturing still further into new spheres of thought. None of the Backfields had been to church for years, though Reuben prided himself on being a good churchman, and Pete was rather at a loss what to do in a[Pg 370] ghostly crisis such as this. However, on one thing he was resolved—that he would not go through another night like the last, and he credited a parson with mysterious cabalistic powers which would miraculously soothe the invalid and assure him of sleep in future.

So he tramped off towards the Rectory, wondering a little what he should say when he got there, but leaving it to the inspiration of the moment. He warmed his honest heart with thoughts of Albert sleeping peacefully and dying beautifully, though it chilled him a little to think of death. Why could not Albert live?—Pete would have liked to think of him lying for years and years in that big untidy bed, pathetic and feeble, and always claiming by his weakness the whole strength that a day of unresting toil had left his brother.

The morning flushed. A soft pink crept into ponds and dawn-swung windows. The light perfumes of April softened the cold, clear air—the scent of sprouting leaves in the woods, and of primroses in the grass, while the anemones frothed scentless against the hedges. Pete was about half a mile from the village when he heard the sound of angry voices round a bend in the lane, pricked by little screams from a woman. Expecting a fight he hurried up eagerly, and was just in time to see one of the grandest upper cuts in his life. A short, well-built man in black had just knocked down a huge, hulking tramp who had evidently been improving the hour with a woman now blotted against the hedge. He lay flat in the road, unconscious, while his adversary stood over him, his fist still clenched and all the skin off his knuckles.

"Lordy! but that wur justabout pr?aper!" cried Pete, bustling up, and sorry that the tramp showed no signs of getting on to his feet.

"It's settled him anyhow," said the man in black.

They both stooped and eyed him critically.

"You've landed him in a good pl?ace," said Pete; "a little farther back and he'd have been gone."
 
"Praise be to God that his life was spared."

Pete looked in some surprise at the bruiser, who continued:

"I'm out of practice, or I shouldn't have skinned myself like this—ah, here's Coalbran's trap. Perhaps he'll give you a lift, ma'am, into Peasmarsh."

The woman was helped into the trap, and after some discussion it was decided not to give themselves the trouble of taking the tramp to the police station, but to pull him to the side of the road and leave him to the consequences he had brought upon himself.

"He's had some punishment," said Pete when they were alone. He inspected the tramp, now feebly moaning, with the air of a connoisseur. "I'm hemmed if I ever saw a purtier knock-out."

"I'm out of training, as I told you," said the stranger.

"Then you must have bin a valiant basher in your day. It's a pity you let yourself go slack."

"It was not becoming that I should use my fists, except to defend the weak. I am a minister of the Lord."

"A parson!" cried Pete.

"A minister of the Lord," repeated with some severity the man in black, "of the brotherhood named Ebenezer."

Pete remembered hearing that a new parson was coming to the local Methodists, but nothing had led him to expect such thrilling developments.

"I used to be in the fancy," said the minister, "but five years ago the Lord challenged me, and knocked me out in the first round."

Pete was following a train of thought.

"Is a minister the same as a parson?" he asked at length.

"Is a priest of Jehovah the same as a priest of Baal? For shame, young man!"
 
"I mean can a minister do wot a Parson does?—tell a poor feller wot's dying that he w?an't go to hell."

"Not if he's washed in the blood of the Lamb."

"That's wot I mean, surelye. Could you come and talk to a sick man about all that sort of thing?"

A gleam came into the minister's eyes, very much the same as when he had knocked out the tramp.

"Reckon I could!" he cried fierily. "Reckon I can snatch a brand from the burning, reckon I can find the lost piece of silver; reckon I can save the wandering sheep, and wash it in the blood of the Lamb."

"Same as a parson?" enquired Pete anxiously.

"Better than any mitred priest of Ammon, for I shall not vex the sinner's soul with dead works, but wash it in the crimson fountain. You trust your sick man to me, young feller—I'll wash him in blood, I'll clothe him in righteousness, I'll feed him with salvation."

"I'll justabout t?ake you to him, then. He asked fur a 'stablished parson, but I'd sooner far bring you, for, Lordy, if you ?un't the pr?aperest bruiser I've ever set eyes on."