The days were now so short that the evening feeding had to be done by lanternlight; and on the second Thursday in December Hadstock entered the bull-stall, a skep of food embraced by his left arm, the lantern and the bull-pole held in his right hand. He set the lantern down and in the murky light advanced, slipped the hook, as he thought, into the ring, pressed, felt some resistance and edged himself towards the manger. But the hook had missed the ring and was pressing against the bull’s nose. It moved its head slightly, the hook fell away, and there was Hadstock, close to the manger. He realised instantly what had happened and without releasing his hold on the skep—a stout wicker basket capable of holding a bushel—leaped away. The skep saved his life, deflecting the full force of the impact of the animal’s attack. One horn struck the upper part of his arm, tearing it to the bone, and as he fell backwards he hit his head on the edge of the manger. But the fall carried him out of reach of further attack and the bull’s supper fell back too and was scattered on the floor. So there was Hadstock
lying senseless and the bull, held by the chain, prevented from doing murder and also from enjoying his supper. Very soon the bull began to lament in a loud voice the folly of his recent action; he could smell his food, but he could not reach it.
‘Di’n’t Mr ‘Adstock feed that there owd devil?’ Tim Palmer asked Boy Jarvey as, having finished their rounds, they were on their way home.
‘I see him go off with the skep. Ain’t sin him since.’
“E don’t generally make that row time ‘e’s eating,’ Tim said, leaving it to Boy’s wit to know that he was referring to the bull, not the bailiff “Old your lantern out of the way a minnit, Boy. Ah, I thought so—there’s a light in the beast’s stall.’
‘He’s talking to him,’ said Boy with that deep irony of which only the very simple are capable. ‘Soothing, like he towd me time he see me fending him off with a pitchfork. Come on, Tim, thass gonna freeze cruel. Less get along.’
‘I don’t like the sound of yon,’ said Tim, who was not without experience. ‘You don’t reckon the owd devil got Mr ‘Adstock down, do you?’
‘Serve him right if he did,’ Boy said; but the callousness was superficial, for he added immediately, ‘Mebbe we’d best take a look.’ There was, also at a superficial level, curiosity, the chance of drama, and below that, deeply rooted, the old loyalty, man against beast.
They entered the bull-pen cautiously and pulled Hadstock out by the legs, Tim Palmer, even at that moment, sparing attention and breath to address the bull sardonically, ‘Thass right, you go on a-blaring, you
owd––. Reckon anybody’ll feed you arter this?’ Then
he said, “E’s ‘urt bad, Boy. Run along to the ‘ouse and tell them.’
‘But of course he must be brought in here,’ Linda said. ‘And somebody must go for the doctor.’ So Hadstock was carried into the room where Mr Mundford had slept during his brief visit and somebody rode, helterskelter,
for the doctor who lived in Baildon and came somewhat unwillingly, since he, like Boy Jarvey, expected frost and had, by careful questioning, made quite sure that neither Sir Richard nor his lady was in need of his attentions. And when, much later, he arrived, there was nothing that he could do, because Lady Shelmadine had already bandaged the gash in the man’s arm, and when he suggested bleeding the patient in the hope of restoring him to consciousness she said, ‘Oh, but he has bled a great deal already–-‘
The doctor was comforted, however, by presently being set down to an excellent game pie and as much port wine and brandy as he could take, and a little later he had the satisfaction of watching the victim of the accident return to his senses—or at least show signs of life.
They stood, the doctor flushed and expansive, Linda pale and tense, by the foot of the bed when Hadstock’s eyelids flickered, and he said, in a voice which surprised the doctor, who had, after all, only the working clothes and some gasped-out words about a bailiff whom a bull had gored to go upon:
‘So there you are. I knew that somewhere in the Elysian fields … it could not be otherwise, or how could Heaven be?’ The blurred gaze focused, sharpened, came to rest on the doctor’s flushed face; and then, very slowly but surely, the curtain of reserve dropped again. ‘I was wrong,’ Hadstock said: ‘I should have taken a pitchfork.’
Next day, though ghastly pale and obviously in pain, Hadstock suggested going home to his cottage.
‘But you can’t. You couldn’t look after yourself one-handed.’
‘Then I’ll hire an old crone.’
‘But why do you want to go home? Aren’t you comfortable? Is there anything I can do? Books? I have several—some quite new; let me fetch …”
‘I wish to go home.’ Hadstock said, in a manner only just short of rude and ungrateful.
‘I forbid it. You must stay at least until the doctor has been again and we are sure that the wound is not inflamed.
Then, if you must, and I am sure that some able-bodied woman is there to look after you, I will allow you to
go-‘
It was obvious, from the way he set his mouth, that it
was with an effort of will that he prevented himself from speaking words of anger. They looked sternly at one another. Then Linda said, with dignity:
‘There are plenty of servants; you give no trouble. And if you wish to be alone you can have solitude here quite as well as in Berry Lane. Alfred will look after you; and if you wish for anything just tell him.’
‘Now you’re angry,’ Hadstock said, surprising her. ‘Don’t be angry. I’m not .ungrateful, I assure you. I know you mean kindly, but you don’t … It’s just that, for a sick man, home is the only place.’
‘Then just for a day or two you must regard this as
your home.’
She walked to the fireplace and laid on two logs and then went out of the room. She did not enter it again that day, nor the next, but contented herself by ordering light, nourishing invalidish meals, telling Alfred to tell Hadstock that she had made kind inquiries about his health and sending him two of her newest and most entertaining books.
On Sunday morning her caution was justified. Alfred reported that Mr Hadstock was out of his mind, mumbling and muttering and carrying on very strange. Later in the day the doctor, fetched from Baildon in a hurry, had his moment of sweet self-justification. He was able to say, ‘I expected this’, and to do his bleeding after all, audibly hoping that it was not too late.
The bleeding, and certain nostrums which he administered, silenced Hadstock for a while; but presently he began his mumbling and muttering and carrying on again, and Linda, having listened to him for a while, took the sensible precaution of sending Alfred away for a well-earned rest. It would never do to have Alfred exercising his simple mind on the subject of what Hadstock was talking about. A good deal of it was well
out of his range—Shakespeare’s sonnets, so much quoted, for example: ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely …’, ‘Being your slave, what should I do but tend Upon the hours and times of your desire?’ That was all innocuous enough; but Hadstock, wildly quoting, wildly commentated too. ‘The hours and times,’ he said—‘shall it be the time when I’m all in a muck, and sweaty and stinking, or later on when I am, if nothing else, clean? Just as you wish, Hadstock, of course it is nothing to me. Clean or dirty, all one! She’ll offer you tea, however much you stink. Oh, most gracious. “I know many men despise it”—just for a minute setting you alongside the rest of them: a man, like the others. I will not take the Borgia draught. Lower the fence and let the tiger in? Halt by the shop window and stare, wet-lipped with longing? Not II’
It went on and on.
There was fear in the house. Everybody knew someone, or someone’s close relative, who had been gored by a bull and died. Even though he had had the benefit of a doctor’s attentions the bailiff would go the way of all the rest. There was a special venom about a bull’s horns, as about a toad’s tongue, a serpent’s tooth and a cat’s claw. Accidents went in threes, and death was catching. As the year moved towards its dark nadir everyone was content, indeed deeply glad, to leave it to Linda to sit in the sickroom, to thrust spoonfuls of black syrup into the sunken mouth, to lay wet cloths on the burning brow and listen to the interminable ravings.