Chapter 6

Shortly before Christmas Mrs. Beatup decided that Steve Kadwell had “intentions.” He was now back at Eastbourne, but came over to Worge every Sunday, and after little more than half an hour beside a crushed and plaintive Mus’ Beatup would sit in the kitchen till it was time to go home.

“Never shows the end of his nose to ’em at Stilliands Tower,” said Mrs. Beatup. “Reckon thur’s someone [227] here he liks better.”

“Do you mean me?” asked Nell wearily.

“Well, I doan’t mean me—and I doan’t mean that trug-faaced lump of an Ellen, so I reckon it’s you. You needn’t look so black at me, Nell—thur’s no harm in a maid getting wed. I’d bin wed a year at your age, surelye, and three month gone wud my fust child—the one that never opened his eyes on day.”

“Did father always drink?”

“Always a bit more or less—naun very lamentable—just here a little and there a little, as the Bible says. He’s got wuss this last few year. It’s that hemmed war.”

“You and father aren’t a very good advertisement for marriage.”

Mrs. Beatup was huffed.

“I dunno wot you want—here we are three years past our silver wedding, and five strong children still alive. It aun’t the fault of his marriage he’s bruk his leg—he might have done it single, and you cud say the saum of his drinking too.”

Further argument was prevented by the arrival of Steve Kadwell on his Sunday visit. Nell, who had been a little excited by her mother’s remarks, received him with more friendliness than usual. Certainly he was a very personable man—better-looking even than Ivy’s Corporal Seagrim, and younger. The grip of his huge hand gave her an extraordinary sense of well-being and self-confidence, and the flush which always came while his eyes appraised her was this time half pleasurable. She fidgeted a good deal while he was upstairs.

His conversational powers were not great, and she suffered a reaction of boredom during tea, which she and her mother had ready for him when he came down. He ate enormously and not very elegantly, though he was not entirely a bumpkin—for he had spent an occasional leave in London, “having a good time,” he told her with a wink. He talked a good deal about himself and various [228] men in his platoon, whose dull doings and sayings he related in detail. Nell lost her new friendliness, and as soon as tea was over went out to feed the chickens and shut them up for the night.

She went into the barn to mix the feed. The sun had just set and there was a reddish dusk, through which she groped for the binns. She was kneading a paste with middlings, bran and barley-meal, when she heard a footstep on the frosty stones of the yard, and the next minute the barn grew quite dark as a man blocked the doorway.

“Your mother said I cud come and help you.”

Nell felt somehow a little frightened.

“I’m all right.”

“Reckon you are”—he came into the barn. “You’re fine,” and he stooped down to her, she felt his breath fanning her neck. Her hands ceased to move in the paste, and suddenly she began to tremble.

She tried to save herself with a small, faltering remark about the chicken-food—“Reckon soon we’ll have to do without the meal.”

He did not answer, but stooped closer still, so that she could smell him, his virile smell of hair and leather and tobacco. Then she suddenly snatched her hands out of the trug, all clogged and sticky with paste and meal, and tried to push him away.

“Don’t ... don’t....”

“Nellie—you’re not afraid of me?”

“Please let me go”—for his arms were round her now.

“Not now I’ve got you, little kid.... I’m justabout going to keep you till I know what you’re made of.”

He laughed, and her struggling passed suddenly into weakness.

[229]

Then his mouth pressed down on hers, and Nell, who had till that moment known nothing but the bodiless spirit of love, suddenly met him in the power of his fierce body. The contact seemed to break her. She lay back helpless in Kadwell’s arms, unable to stir or resist till he let her go, and he did not let her go till he seemed to have drawn all the life out of her in a long kiss—all the hoard of fire and sweetness which she had kept long years for another man he drew out of her with his lips and took for his own.

Then he released her, and she fell back against the binns, gasping a little, and crying, while her eyes strained to him through the dusk. She seemed unable to move, and he pointed to the bowl of chicken-food on the floor, saying, “Pick up that trug and come out.”

She did as he told her, and went out meekly at his heels.