After he had been so easily defeated by Winnie Huddy, when he wished to take her under the spreading branches of the old yew, John Death left the churchyard and walked into the Madder street in no very good humour. Nor was his temper made happier by listening at Daisy Huddy’s cottage door, where Winnie was narrating with the wildest merriment how she had given foolish Johnnie a prick to remember. He was not very well pleased, either, to hear Mr. Hayhoe gently chiding Winnie for permitting a man to carry her off in such a manner.
“Johnnie,” cried Winnie, “don’t know grapes from raisins; ’e do fancy that a maiden be butter to pat and shape; why, I do believe ’e had a mind to serve I same as wold Mere’s bull do serve they silly cows.”
“Oh! naughty Winnie,” Daisy remarked, “don’t you remember that Mr. Hayhoe is here?”
“What if he be?” laughed Winnie, “for bain’t I the one to know what Mr. Darcy were after thik Lizzie for?”
Death moved away, wishing a little rudely that he might be permitted to crown the clergyman’s forehead in an old and fashionable manner. He wandered on in a sulky humour, wondering how it had happened that a child had so easily outwitted him. He supposed that perhaps Mr. Jar, whom Death had more than once seen walking upon Madder Hill amongst the gorse-bushes, might have kept an eye upon Winnie, so that she could not have been harmed.
“But He doesn’t look after them all so kindly,” observed Death to himself, who, in his walk in life, had seen a thing or two.
Beside the green Death met Farmer Mere, who was returning from the Inn, where he had just cheated a poor drunken drover out of five shillings. Death stopped Mr. Mere and demanded the money that was due to him for the mowing of Joe Bridle’s field.
Mr. Mere, with a grin that the Devil might have been proud of, informed John that he would pay him at Maidenbridge upon the next market-day.
“No deferred payment will do for me,” replied Death, in a tone that he had not used since he had come to Dodder, “and no debtor of mine has ever gained a moment for himself by trying to put me off with fine promises. I demand to be paid at once.”
The two men stood in the road alone. They stood, as countrymen will, with their legs a little apart, as if each leg were established there to prop up the body, preparatory to a lengthy conversation. Then some one came by.
Death was not surprised. He had fancied when Winnie stabbed him in the churchyard that Tinker Jar was not far off. Winnie could never have been so brave unless a protector were near. Mr. Jar passed close to the farmer, but turned his face from him.
John Death bowed. Mr. Mere cursed Jar.
Death asked again for his money. Farmer Mere jeered at him.
“The hay is all safe in my rickyard,” he said tauntingly, “and who are you to expect your wage so soon? Do you think that money grows in a farmer’s pocket like nettles in a hedgerow? Even though thee be—from the reverence you paid to him as he went by—a friend to that lousy beggar, Jar, who do go about as a thief to steal, yet what are you to ask money of me?”
Death stept aside and allowed Mere, who laughed loudly, to proceed towards the Manor Farm. And John followed him.
But instead of going up the drive to the Manor Farm, Mr. Mere’s legs, against his own will, bore him in another direction.
There is one path that even a farmer who has been successful in defrauding a poor man, and is a little tipsy too, does not care to traverse—the path to the grave. Mr. Mere was surprised that his legs compelled him to go in that direction. But not his legs alone showed him whither he was travelling, for he saw with his own eyes that a certain pageant closely connected with himself was being enacted—a spectacle that no man, whether well or ill, can look at altogether calmly, unless he be a pilgrim in the way of holiness, who moveth no whither without a sweet presence that goes with him.
Mr. Mere now saw, all of a sudden, that he must die. This he had not before been able to believe, but now he knew death to be true. The last gasp that casts a man into eternal darkness must soon be given by him.
Coming near to the churchyard gates, he distinctly saw Mr. Hayhoe in his surplice, with a book in his hand, coming to meet him, and reading words out of the book that Mr. Mere did not much like the sound of. It was not John Death now who was the one to be mocked. There is another who can make a mock of even a Squire Mere or the Lord Bullman. While only he who has learned to love, in sorrow of heart and goodness of life, this grand revenger, and is prepared to sign a compact with eternity, is able to accept the final separation from life with a loving resignation.
Mr. Mere moved unwillingly towards the gate.
“Stay, Squire,” cried John, “the direction that you are taking will never lead you to pretty Susie’s bed. Do not forget how full of sweetness her fair body is; it’s like Priscilla Hayhoe’s red-currant jelly, all gracious delight. Her breasts are like round globes and her lips like an honeycomb. I know a great deal about women, more than you think I do, Mr. Mere. I have been the first with a number of them. They lie in bed and call to me to come to them. Of course I tantalize them a little. One cannot always be potent in an instant when one is wanted. A man so much in request as I has to hold back sometimes. Ah! you think that you alone can make a young maid cry out, but I can do so too, when I come to them. I give them pains for their pennies. Their tortured bodies cry and groan and drip blood because of my sweet embraces.
“When I approach these fair ones—and I always appear stark naked—their young eyes grow dim and droop in their excess of love. When I come to a girl she does not know her own mother. As soon as I enter the bedroom, the pretty things will often cast off all their clothing and lie naked before me. They lie in agony because of my love.”
Mere strove to turn upon Death, but he could not do so. Death’s taunts had awakened all the foul fury of his lusts. Behind him was the bridal bed, and all the merry sports that he meant to use upon his bride, proper to his nature—while before him he saw the loathsome pit of corruption. There he would be devoured in an ill manner. His evil tricks upon earth would change the lowly clods. He would never lie there in a sweet silence, as the good do, to whom the worms are as fair angels and the grave a casket of delight. Only the foulest hell would be his shroud.
Mr. Mere was near to the gates when he thought he heard these words spoken: “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away.”
He turned to Death and handed him a cheque for five pounds, that he had received that morning from Dealer Keddle to whom he had sold a fat calf.
John Death looked at the cheque a little suspiciously.
“But I wanted two silver shillings,” he said, “to pay for Winnie and myself to go into Lord Bullman’s garden tomorrow.”
Mr. Mere did not reply. He put his hands to his ears so that he might not hear any more words being read by Mr. Hayhoe out of a book, and now that his legs obeyed him, he staggered off to the Manor Farm.