DAGGING

WHEN Zita returned to Prickwillow, Leehanna Tunkiss, with a malicious leer, said, 'The master is upstairs, and would like to speak with you;' then, with a sidelong look at the maid-of-all-work and a giggle, she curtseyed and added 'Miss.'

Zita ascended leisurely to her room, removed her bonnet and changed her shoes, put on an apron, and then proceeded to Drownlands' office. She did not hurry herself. She sauntered along the passage and hummed a folk-melody—'High Germany.' She stayed to shut a bedroom door that was ajar and swinging in the draught. She trifled with a canary that hung in a window.

The office door was open. She knew that Drownlands had heard her come in, had heard Mrs. Tunkiss inform her that she was wanted, heard her ascend the stairs. She knew that he was waiting with impatience whilst she removed bonnet and shoes, that he was chafing at the leisurely manner in which she approached his den.

After a while she tapped at the half-open door in careless fashion, threw it open and stood in the doorway, and shrugged her shoulders, then rubbed her hands as though they were cold.

'Mrs. Tunkiss said you required my presence.'

'You have taken your time in coming.' Drownlands was at his table; he had been biting his fingers. There was a sheet of blotting paper on the board; he had scratched it, torn four strips out of it with his nails. His face was troubled and was working. 'Why did you not come at once?'

'I had to remove my shoes; they were wet. I did not suppose you were in much of a hurry.'

'Come inside. Why do you stand in the doorway?'

She obeyed.

'Well, is it necessary to leave the door wide open behind you?'

She closed the door.

'Shut it, I say.'

She obeyed, and leaned her back against the valve, crossed her feet, and put her hands behind her on the handle.

'Where have you been?' asked Drownlands imperiously.

'To Red Wings, to see your niece. You don't know her. It is a pity. You should look after her; she is your own relation. She is not bad in her way, but awfully poor—and pig-headed too, which poor people oughtn't to be, because they can't afford it. I went to have a deal with her, but it was of no use. She would do no business with me.'

'Oh, you have gone back to your old profession of Cheap Jack, have you?'

'I never left it off. I Cheap Jack in my sleep and make thundering profits. It is disappointing to wake in the morning and see all the goods—and damaged ones too—on the shelves where they were the night before, after I had sold them off in my dreams at twenty-five and thirty per cent. profits. There's an epergne has been the nightmare to father and me. I wanted Kainie to take it, but she wouldn't. Suppose you buy it and present it to her, and so make peace and love between you?'

'Have done. I told you I did not wish you to know her.'

'But I went on business, and my time was wasted.'

'You have also been with that—that fellow.'

'Yes, with Mark. I took him out for a drive.'

'In the road, in the van?'

'Yes; the van wanted sweetening. The fowls have been roosting on it, and have treated it shamefully.'

'Be silent. What are you playing with behind your back?'

'I am playing with nothing. I am always at work or doing business. I never play.'

'And what work or business are you engaged on now?'

'I am polishing the handle of the door.'

'You not play? You never play?' exclaimed Drownlands, starting to his feet. 'You are always at play, and I am your sport. You play me as a fish, you dagg me like a pike. Look at this.'

He went to the corner of his room, and from the collection there thrown together produced a singular weapon or tool, locally termed a gleve.

'Do you know the use of this?'

'No.'

'It is for playing,' said Drownlands bitterly. 'See, there are six knives tied together by the handles at the head, and all the blades have been jagged like saws, the teeth set backwards. Can you guess its purpose?'

'No; it's not a woman's tool.'

'It is for playing—playing with pike. You take this and dagg into the water; you dagg and dagg, and bring up a pike or an eel wedged between these blades, cut into by these fangs. He cannot free himself; the more he twists and turns, the deeper into his flesh bite these teeth, and the greater is his anguish of heart. That is play—play for him who does the dagging, not for the poor fish that is speared. And, Zita, such is your play. With your fingers, with your tongue, with your brown eyes, you dagg for me, and I am the miserable wretch whom you torture. It may be fun to you.'

'I do not make sport with you, master,' said Zita, with placidity of feature and evenness of tone in strong contrast with his working face and quivering voice.

'You are at that handle again. Polishing it! Leave off, or you will drive me mad. Can you not for one moment desist from tormenting me? You seek out occasion, means, to twang my every nerve, and give me pain.'

'Master Drownlands, listen to me,' said Zita. 'You are quite in the wrong when you say that I dagg for you. Lawk-a-biddy! I dagg for you? On the contrary, it is you who are dagging for me, and I have to dodge to this side, then to that, from your gleve, and as I happen to be sharp of eye and nimble in movement, you do not catch me. That is how the matter stands, and not at all as you represent it.'

'Who suffers?' asked Drownlands fiercely. 'Is it you, or is it I? You stand there, composed and complacent, rubbing up my door-handle behind your back, and all the while I am in torture. You cannot speak to me but you stick a dart; you cannot look at me but I feel the knife cutting; your very laugh causes a wound, and your weapons are all poisoned, and the gashes fester. Here am I' (he flung the gleve back into the corner with an oath), 'your victim, your sport—in suffering.'

He returned to the table.

'Sit down,' said the girl. 'Do not work yourself into a passion. There's no occasion for that. Let us come to business.'

'Yes,' said Drownlands; 'that is the only way to deal with you. You have a sorry, commercial mind. Everything to you must be a matter of pounds, shillings, and pence.'

'That is the only way with me,' said Zita. 'I was brought up to trade, and I love to drive a bargain. That, if you like it, is sport; it is sport and business squeezed into one.'

'I will stand here,' said the man. 'You stand there by the door, if you will; only, I beseech you, leave off polishing that cursed handle, and reckoning, as I suppose you are, how many farthings to charge me for it. As you say that you love business, to business we will go. As nothing affects you but what is presented to your mind in a monetary light, to moneys we will proceed. We also will have a deal.'

'By all means,' said Zita, with a sigh of relief. 'Now I am on my own ground. Do you want to buy, sell, or barter?'

He did not answer immediately. He folded his arms and stood by the window jamb, looking over his shoulder at her.

The dusk had set in after the set of sun, but a silvery grey light suffused the room, the reflection of the snow on the ground. In this light he could see Zita. She had withdrawn her hands from the knob, and had them raised to her bosom, and was rubbing one palm against the other leisurely. A fine, clean-built girl. He also was a fine man, with strongly-cut features, picturesque, with his long black hair, his swarthy complexion, his sturdy frame, and the tiger-skin slung across his shoulders.

'Now I am ready,' said Zita.

He did not speak. He felt that much, everything, depended on what he said, and how he said it. His breath came quick, and his brow was beaded with perspiration.

'You are slow about it,' said Zita. 'Father took an agency once for an Illustrated History of the War. It was to be in twenty parts, at half a crown a part, and four beautiful steel engravings in each, of battles, and generals, and towns. That Illustrated War was such a long time in progress that some of the subscribers died, and others moved away, and some went bankrupt, and there was no getting their money out of some of the others. Father never would have anything more to do with concerns that did not go off smart like the snap of a percussion cap. It seems to me that this business of yours is going to be as long and tiresome as that of the Illustrated War.'

'You are dagging at me again,' said Drownlands sullenly.

'I cannot speak a word but it takes you contrariways,' observed the girl.

He left the window and came to the table, leaned his hand on it, and stood with his back to the light. Still unable to make up his mind to speak, or how to speak, he began to tear up the blotting-paper into little pieces and to throw them about, some on the floor, some on the board. When the last fragment had left his fingers—

'Zita,' he said in loud and vehement tones, 'I suppose I am twice your age.'

'I should fancy more than that—a good deal.'

'Be silent and listen to me.' He raised his voice. 'I am rich. I have a large tract of land—fen-land. I have turned over every turf, and under each found gold. But it has not made me happy. I have had many contradictions, many sorrows, and some shame. My life has been blistered and full of running sores. I have ever been seeking and never finding, till I saw you. When you came into my house, then I knew at once that it was you I had craved for and longed after, and that you, and you alone, could give me what I can find nowhere else—happiness.'

'Give?' said Zita. 'I thought this was a business matter.'

'Let me buy my happiness, then, at what price you desire. I have told you what I am worth. When I see you, I feel the fire kindles in my heart; when I do not see you, it smoulders; and now—now I speak, it breaks out into raging flames.'

'I must leave this place, or you will go clean crazy.'

'No, you must not—you shall not leave it! I could not live without you, having once seen you. Zita, I must have you!'

'Me?' said Zita. 'With me go the van and the goods.'

'Curse the van!'

'You must not say that. The van is very fine, if the poultry would but leave it alone; and with the curtains and tassels is fit for a king.'

'Zita, it is you only that I want.'

'There are a lot of goods goes with me—scrubbing-brushes, mops, brooms, door-mats, pots and pans. Then there's Jewel—who is not bad when he does go.'

'You are trifling with me again. Listen to me. Hear me to the end.'

'I want to hear the end and have done with it,' said the girl. 'I was reckoning up the articles. Here's Cheap Jack Zita for one; there are all these promiscuous goods, that's two; here's the van, that's three; and there's Jewel, that's four—a job lot.'

'You are mocking me.'

'No indeed, I am not. We are after business, are we not?'

But Zita was purposely protracting the scene. She was in difficulties, and was searching to find a way out of them.

'Yes, business. You are mercantile. Listen to what I offer. I am rich, a man of consequence, and a Commissioner. Here is the house, here is the land. I have money in the bank—thousands of pounds; all—all I have is yours; give me but your own self in return.'

Zita was far from being unfeeling. She was stirred by the earnestness, the devotion of the man, but she was not for a moment doubtful as to what her answer must be. Commercial though her mind was, she could not accept him at his price. Her scruple was how to word her refusal so as least to wound him. In her peculiar fashion—one inveterate to her—she twisted the matter about so as to give it a comical aspect. She saw no other loophole for escape from a difficult and painful situation.

'I am sorry,' she said, 'that number one in the job lot is not to be parted with. That is withdrawn from the sale, or bought in. But if it is any consolation to you to have the van and a share of the goods'—

'That is no consolation to me.'

'A queer state of mind to be in—an unwholesome one, and looks like derangement of intellects. The van ought to comfort any man with his faculties about him.'

'Zita!' exclaimed Drownlands, striking the table with his fist, 'you persist in fooling with me! I will not endure this. I am in deadly earnest. I know the reason of this trifling. Mark Runham'—he choked with passion—'Mark has stepped in, and you have given him that heart which you deny me—a heart I would give worlds—worlds'—. He turned to the window. It was starlight now, starlight over snowfields. 'Look out, Zita, at the stars. It is said that they are worlds. If all these were mine, and filled with unimaginable masses of treasure, the homes of unexampled happiness, I would give all for you—all for you—listen to me—merely that I might call you mine, and then die.'

'I cannot be yours,' said Zita in a firm voice. 'And now that you have said this, I shall leave the house.'

'You shall not leave this house!' he cried fiercely. 'If you attempt it,—if I see that you are about to attempt it—and I know whither you would go,—then I will shoot you first, and myself afterwards.'

'I have to do, then, with a madman?'

'Be it so—with a madman; mad on one matter only, mad for one thing only—you. I make no empty threat. I swear by these stars I will do what I threaten. I cannot and I will not live without you. I will kill you rather than that you should belong to another.'

Zita came forward from the door, came to the table.

'I can never be yours,' she said in a tone as earnest, as grave as his. 'There is that between us which makes it for ever impossible.'

'What is the that—Mark Runham?'

'No—not Mark Runham.'

'Who is it, then?'

'There is no who. There is a something. Must I tell you what it is? I would gladly spare you.'

'Tell me, and torment me no more.'

She stepped to the corner of the room, took the flail up, and cast it on the table between them.

'The something is that flail.'

Suddenly through the window smote a red flare; it kindled the room, it turned Zita's hair into a ruddy aureole, it streamed over the table, and dyed the flail blood-red.

And Drownlands cast himself on his knees, with a cry of anguish and remorse, and buried his face in his hands.

Then through the house sounded a hubbub of voices, and cries for the master.