‘Thank you, Shad,’ said Julie. She took up the reins and made the sort of sound likely to encourage a donkey.
‘Go on, fetch him a whack; don’t, he’ll never start,’ Shad cried.
Julie used the stick, timidly at first and then firmly, and the donkey moved away. Even at his slow pace Julie felt the jolting of the cart in all her stiffened joints, and when he stopped, as he soon did, she waited for some moments before rousing him to action again. Between home and the cross-roads where the grave was, bright this afternoon with scabious and knapweed, he stopped twice more and Julie began to be conscious of time’s passing.
‘Oh, get along, get along,’ she cried. ‘I surely ain’t so heavy as some loads you take!’
The slow, intermittent progress continued and at last three-quarters of their journey was done and Muchanger only another mile away. Then the donkey stopped once more, and Julie hit him as usual. This time, instead of moving along, he seemed to crumple, went down on his knees and then keeled over sideways, tilting the little cart. A shaft snapped and the cart righted itself, so Julie escaped without even a bruise; but Shad’s donkey, that legendary animal, the wonder of six parishes, had stopped for the last time.
This would happen to me, with Amos so against me borrowing him and all, she thought as she climbed awkwardly out of the cart and looked down at the little grey heap. She was sorry about the donkey too; for as long as she could remember he had been part of the landscape of the Waste. And she regretted that last blow.
‘I’m sorry, Neddy, but I couldn’t know, could I? And what am I going to do with you now? And how’m I going to get to Muchanger and back?’
She looked helplessly up and down the road. Nobody in sight. She was now miserably sure that bad news awaited her at Muchanger; this was an ill omen, surely. Tears filled her eyes.
Well, it was no use standing there crying. She must get to Muchanger somehow and know the worst. She set out to hobble the last slow mile.
The mere mention of Damask Greenway’s name infuriated the Muchanger cook, always an irascible woman.
‘She ain’t here, thass all I know and all I can tell you. Went off a fortnight ago for her free day and never came back, and me with a dinner-party on my hands on the Sunday. Thass your creeping Methodist what had to hev a Sunday off every month so’s she could go to chapel.’
‘Didn’t nobody get a word?’
‘Mrs Cobbold got a letter and said to me that little Greenway ain’t coming back. And I say good riddance.’
‘Is Mrs Cobbold at home?’ Julie asked, humbly.
‘No, she ain’t; the master neither. They’re in Norfolk.’
‘So nobody knows. Was it Damask wrote the letter? She can write.’
‘Oh, she can write.’ The woman’s voice was sour. ‘Always above herself, she was. How should I know who wrote the letter? I worn’t told a word but what I’ve told you, and ‘twasn’t my place to ask. My job was to muddle along short-handed till another girl was found—and not a Methody this time, thank God.’
As Julie turned to hobble away the cook fired her final shaft:
‘Gone to the bad, like as not. Them quiet sort is always the worst.’
Hearing it put like that, Julie knew that that was what she had, all along, feared without admitting it to herself. She had never been able to rid herself of the memory of the way in which Damask had poured the brandy into the tea; it had indicated a deliberate face-about–-
She had not gone a quarter of a mile before she realised that it had been the desire to get to Muchanger which had enabled her to walk there. Now, with no desire to go anywhere—least of all home where she must break the
news about the donkey to Shad and the news about Damask to Amos—every step became more painful. She began to cry again, and was shuffling along, now and again wiping her eyes with the edge of her shawl, when she heard the clop-clop of hoofs and the rattle of wheels behind her. On such a day it was almost too much to expect that she might fall in with somebody kind who would give her a lift to the cross-roads, so it was with a hopeless kind of hope that she lifted her head when the vehicle drew level. And it was Matt Ashpole.
He reined in quickly, but he had gone a little past her already. Twisting round in his seat, he shouted in an astonished voice:
‘Julie Greenway! Why, for God’s sake, Julie, what’re you doing here? How’d you get here? And what’re you howling for? Here, come along now, give us your hand.’ He helped her into the cart and made room for her beside him. ‘There now, there now,’ he said in a soothing voice. ‘Tell us whass gone wrong.’
‘Oh, Matt,’ she sobbed, ‘I never was so glad to see anybody in the whole of my life. There’s my Damask gone from Muchanger, nobody can tell where. And I’ve killed Shad’s poor old donkey and I didn’t think I’d ever get home.’
‘Giddap, Gyp I’ Matt said, shaking the reins. ‘There now, you stop blaring, Julie. We’ll see you safe home. You tell me all about it.’
She did so, omitting only the reason for her concern over Damask’s well-being, merely saying that she had missed her Sunday. By the time she had ended her tale they had reached the scene of the disaster. ‘And there he lay,’ she said, pointing.
Matt drove just past the wreck and drew to a halt.
‘Well, now I’ve seen all,’ he said in an interested voice which somehow seemed to make the whole thing less tragic. ‘That ought to be put on show, that do! They say you never see a dead donkey, and I never did afore—not in all my days. Well, well. Now we gotta get him home, I reckon; can’t leave him here on the highway. Besides,
Shad’d never believe you; he’d think you’d swapped him for half a pound of tea!’ He swung himself over the side of the cart. There was no one on earth, Julie thought, comforted, better able to deal with a dead donkey and a broken cart than Matt.
First he loosed the harness and turned the little cart and hitched it behind his own. Then, with a grunt, he lifted the little grey carcase into the cart which it had drawn so many miles. His movements were competent and sparing of effort, and in no time at all he was climbing back into his own vehicle.
‘Well, here we go, missus! Reg’lar Lord Mayor’s Show; ain’t we? Giddap, Gyp!’
Shad’s grief and rage knew no measure.
‘You med him run, thass what you did,’ he shouted at Julie. ‘Thass women all over; no sense, no patience. I let you hev him out of the goodness of my heart, and you kilt him. He’d hev lasted out my time but for you. You’re a murderer, Julie Greenway, same as if you’d killed a pusson—and there’s a heap of them could hev been better spared!’
The commotion brought everybody out of the cottages; even Amos looked out to see what was afoot. Seeing Julie wilting in the centre of the group, he came and joined her, hammer in hand, half a dozen brads held in his teeth.
When Shad renewed his accusations Amos was moved to loyalty; spitting the brads into his hand, he said:
‘Come, come, man, thass no way to talk. Poor old Neddy been due to die this last five year. ‘Twas just bad luck my missus happened to be out with him.’ He put his arm through Julie’s and she leaned on it gratefully.
‘How’m I gonna make a living without my old Neddy?’ Shad demanded.
‘We’ll cap around for you,’ Matt said. ‘All of us here, eh?’ There were murmurs of assent, varying in enthusiasm, but unanimous. ‘And I’ll ask all the chaps down at the old Horse and all about. I’ll start you off with a shilling,’ Matt said, reckless with generosity, ‘and I’ll keep
my eyes open for a nice cheap donkey for you.’
Amos drew Julie towards their cottage. There his manner changed.
‘I told you,’ he said, ‘but you would go running off. Now there’s a shilling gone outa what I was saving for the chapel! You being out with the creature, we can’t very well give less than Ashpole. And if you’d just stayed here you’ve hev seen Damask.’
‘Seen her? You mean to say she was here?’ ‘No more than ten minutes arter you’d gone galloping off. She’ve changed her job and gone just acrost the road to Miss Parsons. Said she’d hev come over afore to let us know, but the house was in a terrible state and there worn’t nobody to leave the old lady with till lately.’