The Black Dog, and Other Stories

by A. E. Coppard

It was that prospect which most delighted Pettigrove, for he was a simple-minded countryman full of ambling content. Not even the church allured him so much, for though it pleased him and was just at his own threshold, he never entered it at all. Once upon a time there had been talk of him joining the church choir, for he had a pleasant singing voice, but he would not go.

“It’s flying in the face of Providence,” cried his exasperated wife—her mind, too, was a falsetto one: “You’ve as strong a voice as anyone in Tull, in fact stronger, not that that is saying much, for Tull air don’t seem good for songsters if you may judge by that choir. The air is too thick maybe, I can’t say, it certainly oppresses my own chest, or perhaps it’s too thin, I don’t thrive on it myself; but you’ve the strength and it would do you credit; you’d be a credit to yourself and it would be a credit to me. But that won’t move you! I can’t tell what you’d be at; a drunken man ’ull get sober again, but a fool ... well, there!”

John, unwilling to be a credit, would mumble an objection to being tied down to that sort of thing. That was just like him, no spontaneity, no tidiness in his mind. Whenever he addressed himself to any discussion he had, as you might say, to tuck up his intellectual sleeves, give a hitch to his argumentative trousers. So he went on singing, just when he had a mind to it, old country songs, for he disliked what he called “gimcrack ballads about buzzums and roses.”

Pettigrove’s occupation dealt with the extreme features of existence, but he himself had no extreme notions. He was a good medium type of man mentally and something more than that physically, but nevertheless he was a disappointment to his wife—he never gave her any opportunity to shine by his reflected light. She had nurtured foolish ideas of him first as a figure of romance, then of some social importance; he ought to be a parish councillor or develop eminence somehow in their way of life. But John was nothing like this, he did not develop, or shine, or offer counsel, he was just a big, solid, happy man. There were times when his childless wife hated every ounce and sign of him, when his fair clipped beard and hair, which she declared were the colour of jute, and his stolidity, sickened her.

“I do my duty by him and, please God, I’ll continue to do it. I’m a humble woman and easily satisfied. An afflicted woman has no chance, no chance at all,” she said. After twelve years of wedded life Pettigrove sometimes vaguely wondered what it would have been like not to have married anybody.

One Michaelmas a small house belonging to Mrs. Pettigrove was let to a widow from Eastbourne. Mrs. Cronshaw was a fine upstanding woman, gracefully grave and, as the neighbours said, clean as a pink. For several evenings after she had taken possession of the house Pettigrove, who was a very handy sort of man, worked upon some alterations to her garden, and at the end of the third or fourth evening she had invited him into her bower to sip a glass of some cordial, and she thanked him for his labours.

“Not at all, Mrs. Cronshaw.” And he drank to her very good fortune. Just that and no more.

The next evening she did the same, and the very next evening to that again. And so it was not long before they spoke of themselves to each other, turn and turn about as you might say. She was the widow of an ironmonger who had died two years before, and the ironmonger’s very astute brother had given her an annuity in exchange for her interest in the business. Without family and with few friends she had been lonely.

“But Tull is such a hearty place,” she said. “It’s beautiful. One might forget to be lonely.”

“Be sure of that,” commented Pettigrove. They had the light of two candles and a blazing fire. She grew kind and more communicative to him; a strangely, disturbingly attractive woman, dark, with an abundance of well-dressed hair and a figure of charm. She had carpet all over her floor; nobody else in Tull dreamed of such a thing. She did not cover her old dark table with a cloth as everybody else habitually did. The pictures on the wall were real, and the black-lined sofa had cushions on it of violet silk which she sometimes actually sat upon. There was a dainty dresser with china and things, a bureau, and a tall clock that told the exact time. But there was no music, music made her melancholy. In Pettigrove’s home there were things like these but they were not the same. His bureau was jammed in a corner with flowerpots upon its top; his pictures comprised two photo prints of a public park in Swansea—his wife had bought them at an auction sale. Their dresser was a cumbersome thing with knobs and hooks and jars and bottles, and the tall clock never chimed the hours. The very armchairs at Mrs. Cronshaw’s were wells of such solid comfort that it made him feel uncomfortable to use them.