Read Online Mr. Tasker's Gods by T. F. Powys - Free Book Online Page B

appeared from the house in answer to the shouted command. She carried a very large and evil-smelling bucket, the weight of which dragged her slight form to the ground on the bucket side. Her pale face, distorted with her effort, looked down into the wash as though in that mass of filth she saw her destiny written, as indeed it was. Henry watched her coming and noted the way she leaned. His brother looked at the sow.
    Of the two females, the one in the sty certainlyhad the best of it. She was the master’s favourite in every sense. She had brought him some splendid litters and had never been known to eat any of her children. Her master always spoke to her with consideration, even with a kind of love, in his tone. He saw her fed with the best wash, and made his own child kneel in the mud and slush to scratch her back with an old comb, while he, the master, with neck stretched out, listened to her contented grunts.
    From getting up at 4.30 A.M ., from carrying huge pails of wash, from milking fifteen cows a day, from scrubbing the dairy every night, the child had become a stooping, undersized, badly fed, for ever tired slave of the swine. And although she was only thirteen, she could not be called a little girl. That dainty appellation would not do for her, she was not that kind of thing at all. Her form, surrounded by the foul smells of the yards, had become like them. Her kind parent had nearly turned her heart into dung.
    Mr. Tasker took the pail from his girl into his own great hand, and burst out with, ‘Get … long … whome….’ Then he tossed the stuff into the trough and stood with one hand on the sty gate, that was half open, making a noise in his throat—a beast’s call to a beast—a call that only swine understand. The onlookers had not to wait very long before the favourite appeared. She proved to be a large black monster almost too huge to move.
    Mr. Tasker looked at her with great admiration . She was to him the most beautiful work of art in the world: she was a work of art designed with special care to meet the wants of his understanding . He really did understand her points, her lines, her curves. He knew how carefully she had been made, he knew how she had been cared for and nourished. When, as a little sowlet, she had run about amongst the others, he had chosen her as a queen amongst his gods. He had set her apart and had made his own girl, even in those early days, her slave. When the time and season were ripe, he, with the help of Elsie, had driven the sow into the yard of Mr. Bigland at Egdon, who possessed a purebred boar. This was the only occasion all that summer that Elsie had any time to pick daisies. She made quite a long daisy-chain while she waited to help her father drive the sow home. Her father had not sent her away to the meadow, she had left the yard because she had no wish to stay. There was a farm-boy of her own age looking over the gate with her father at the boar. Elsie was neither interested in the boy nor the boar, and she loved daisies.

CHAPTER VIII
TRUTH OUT OF SATAN’S MOUTH
    T HE Rev. John Turnbull complimented Mr. Tasker upon the care he must have taken with the sow, and the dairyman explained that all the well-being of a pig depended upon its having proper food when it was young.
    â€˜You must never,’ he said, ‘let pigs run about in the fields unless they have plenty of barley meal at home.—Pigs want attention!’ he kept on saying.
    Henry had been looking at the bottom hinge of the sty gate with a rather fixed stare. He had not been taking any part in the conversation. He was thinking about men and their real selves and was wondering what the eyes of God made of a man’s heart. Henry believed in God and he was sorry for God. He felt that God must see some very horrible things.
    The dairyman was now talking in the usual rather absent-minded way that he used with gentlemen of the Church, and with the auctioneer who sold