"You needn't have been so beastly drunk last night. Then them knives wouldn't want doing this morning. If it hadn't been for me the dog wouldn't have had no food. If the mistress knew she would have given you what for, as I expect your missis have already if the truth were known."
"Damn the mistress!" said Tumpany. He adored Mary Lothian, as Phoebe very well knew, but his head burned and he was in the uncertain temper of the "morning after." The need of self-assertion was paramount.
"Now, no beastly language in my kitchen," said the girl. "You go and do your damning—and them knives—in the outhouse. I wonder you've the face to come here at all, Master being away too. Get out, do!"
With a very red and sulky face, Tumpany gathered up the knives and shambled away to his own particular sanctum.
The ex-sailor was confused in his mind. There was a buzzing in his head like that of bees in a hive. He had a faint recollection of being turned out of the Mortland Arms just before ten o'clock the night before. His muddy memories showed him the stern judicial face of the rather grim old lady who kept the Inn. He seemed to feel her firm hands upon his shoulders yet.
But had he come back to the Old House? He was burning to ask the cook. One thing was satisfactory. His mistress had not seen him or else Phoebe's threat would have meant nothing. Yet what had happened in his own house? He had woke up in the little parlour behind the shop. Some one had covered him with an overcoat. He had not dared to go upstairs to his wife. He hoped—here he began to rub a knife up and down the board with great vigour—he did hope that he hadn't set about her. There was a sick fear in the man's heart as he polished his knives.
In many ways a better fellow never breathed. He was extremely popular in the village, Gilbert Lothian swore by him, Mary Lothian liked him very well. He was a person of some consequence in the village community where labourers worked early and late for a wage of thirteen shillings a week. His pension was a good one, the little shop kept by his wife was not unprosperous, Lothian was generous. He only got drunk now and then—generally at the time when he drew his pension—but when he did his wife suffered. He would strike her, not knowing what he did. The dreadful marks would be on her face in the morning and he would suffer an agony of dull and inarticulate remorse.
So, even in the pretty cottage of this prosperous and popular man—so envied by his poorer neighbours—surgit amari aliquid!
. . . If only things had been all right last night!
Tumpany put down his knife with a bang. He slipped from his little outhouse, and slunk across the orchard. Then he opened the iron gate of the dog's kennel.