Part 10

The sky in front of them seemed packed to the sun with hills, the crowded purple mountains threaded with the dales. They looked empty as hills of the moon from across the bay, but Kit had many friends along their flanks. The folk there knew to the full what winter meant, and rain falling like rods from the high tops, and nights that were endless, whether wild or still, and becks at the flood and the great drama of the snow. From the marsh the hills were soft as blue clouds poised light on each other’s backs, but Kit knew that their bodies were strong soil and their bones of iron. He knew the rough grass that clothed them as Nebuchadnezzar was clothed with hair. He knew the exalted joy of mounting on their backs, like riding some mighty horse across the earth. He knew their crag-faces and screes, their smooth, green slides and rocky ghylls. He knew their moorland and moss-hags, their bog-pools and lost tarns. He knew the lone, white-fronted farms, and the becks rushing at their doors. And in the midst of the loneliness he had only to climb some peak, and find himself at home because looking out to sea.

He had often gone up to play in the dales, and of all his dances he had liked these best. First of all came the journey, which was always an adventure in itself. Some sudden turn from the high road to the north, and he was plunged in a twisting lane between the hills. Already, perhaps, it would be dusk, because of the barrier to the west, which grew and darkened and grew as the shadows gathered and trailed. He himself was small as a gnat on the thread of road, between the monsters soaring on either side. There would be water talking out of the shadows here and there, hidden streams and falls with the last light flashing on their manes. Always he heard the water-talk when he went into the dales, because it was so different from the voice of his own sea. And, greater than the water, was the stillness, that nothing was ever big enough to break, neither the shrill dogs nor the shepherds’ whistle nor the cry of the sheep. Even thunder and wind could only trouble it for a time, like the floating of furious smoke across a glass. Behind them you felt the imperturbable patience of a greater strength. It was a different stillness from the empty silences of the marsh. It was the live stillness of great bodies, crowded side by side, whom even Nature seemed powerless to stir.

His journey’s end was always some farmhouse, where he had a meal before starting for the dance. From these dwellings, which he often saw only by night, he carried pictures of shadowy rafters and firelit walls, blind staircases to which he trusted himself as to a horse knowing its way, and clean, bare rooms upstairs where a lighted candle seemed to bring the mountains into the house itself. After the meal he groped his way at a lantern’s tail to the festive barn. He could trace the hedges by the shadowy line along their tops, and smell the smell of earth that is damp in the night, and hear the sheep-wail out of the void. And then, in the midst of the dark, that was either smooth blackness or full of looming shapes, the door of the barn would open a yellow port-hole to the night. He left the night with regret, although he grew in stature as he went in, and the fiddle, too, increased in weight and power. Out in the dale it had seemed a tinkling thing, but once inside its voice was proud and strong. On the rough platform or the corner chair where they spent the night, he and his fiddle came proudly into their own.

Sometimes he got to the barn first and had time to look about the great, bare place that to-night was the heart of the dale. The knotted floor was well swept, and slippery with shredded wax. Forms were set along the walls, with clean paper at their backs, and high above that were the glistening, steady lamps. There were food and drink on tables at the end, white cloths and bright tea-urns and polished cups and plates. Far over all was the darkness of the roof, untouched by the light as the dale through the big doors. Outside the door, the opening had shone gold; on this, it was only a gaping square of black.

But the lads and lasses were waiting, as a rule, clear-skinned, dark-haired folk with still, grey eyes, and feet that were tapping the floor before he had tuned. He thought about them as he played with a steady swing, of their lives and the lives that had made them what they were. He thought of their old names, and the way they bred so true to type and strain. He thought of the long silences in which they spent their days, of their courtesies and roughnesses, their simple-mindedness and reserve, their inherited knowledge of the lonely places of the earth. He thought of their houses, with rafters and wide hearths, their worn flags and sudden steps, their deep sills and oak stairs. He thought of the windows which, at break of day, held pictures never seen on any wall. He thought of the hills where they walked, that were rich with Viking names and cradled the Viking dead. He thought of the secrets of the hills, of their mysterious dangers and almost-forgotten rites. It was a hundred years, perhaps, since they lighted the last fire on Baal’s Hill; less than seventy since the wildfire had gone round. The fire-charmers were barely dead, or the tooth-charmers, or the old women who knew the herbs. Folk lived long in the dales, and the old secrets longer still. Gods were not of necessity fled because the sacrifice was past. There was still that feeling up in the wastes that out of nothing something might appear. There were lakes in which drowned bodies never rose, and terrible winds which could slay you in a breath. Folks said there were spirits who hated the railways crossing the moors, and were glad when the big trains came to harm in the night. Things were as strange as when there were devils on Cross Fell, and the idol lay in its bed at Kirkby Thore. The dale-folk were wonderful to Kit, because of the mysteries in their blood, but often he found them rather pitiful, too. Often they seemed to him, as he played, like children dancing in a lighted cave. He thought of the cave as set in a blackened void, with giants of darkness stooping over its roof. The folk in the cave were not afraid, because for them the cave was the whole world. So heedless they seemed, and young, so fleet-passing and yet so strong. Death slew them, and yet they came in the same form, with the same faces and voices and transmitted ways. Life must surely be stronger than death, while the stamp of it stood so long....

When he forgot the cave he thought of their home-going in the dawn, of lights in misty shippons and the ivory gleam of milk. The mountains were fresh-made again, gentle as all new-born things. He saw the folks sitting at their meals, and heard them call to each other in the yards. He saw them dipping and clipping year by year, or high and alone with their dogs among the drifts. He thought of them kneeling in the little church, with Philip, Lord Wharton’s Prayer-Books in their hands. He thought of bridals under the axe-hewn beams, of corpse-roads over the fells, and arvel-bread....

Suddenly Bob spoke, making him start, for there had been years as well as miles between them as they drove. “You’ll be right suited to be back,” he said, flicking the dull horse with a listless whip. “It was a sad pity you ever had to quit.”

Kit said “Ay, ay,” rather vaguely, for he wanted to be left alone with his thoughts. Bob had already lost the exhilaration of setting out, and there was no place for this drooping failure in Kit’s mind. Besides, here on the marsh the past was so alive that voices barely found their way to his ear. No human speech, indeed, could have the colour and flow and flight of this epic spoken by his own soul. There was wistfulness in his memories but they were not sad, because only evil memories are sad. Beauty grows like a rose over every other, even pain; perhaps especially over pain. While he walked in his memories he was young and brave, unclogged by poverty, uncrippled by age. And how, in any case, could he be sad, who was going at long last to his home?

“They wanted you right off,” Bob went on. “They never give me no peace till I’d fixed a day.”

“They’re right kind,” Kit murmured, not thinking of them at all. He took another bite of the scone and tried to see the land around, instead of lighted caves and valleys in the dawn. “I think a deal o’ the spot,” he added, after a while. “I doubt I’d got too old to change.”

“Ay, but there’s changes at the farm an’ all,” Bob said, with a note of warning in his voice. “’Tisn’t in nature for things to stop the same. There’s bound to be changes when different folks get hold.”

Kit said “Ay, ay,” again, and munched stolidly at the scone. Marget had said things like that, and now she was saying them again through Bob. But he had left Marget ever so far behind, and out on the marsh she could not make him afraid. There couldn’t be changes in the place where he was at peace, because permanence was the essence of all peace. Bob should have known that, but Bob had forgotten peace. Bob, as his shoulders dropped, had found Marget still at his back. Not even on the marsh could Bob escape.

“’Tisn’t in nature,” Bob was saying again. “Folks is that different, they’re bound to make things different, too.” All his sentences seemed like tame echoes of Marget’s biting speech. “I don’t know as it ever does for folks to gang back.”

“Ay, well, I can nobbut try,” Kit said, sitting up and speaking with sudden force. “As for the changes you’re making out, I reckon they waint bite. There’s nowt can change that much in a couple o’ years, not things as is fairly set. There’s no change on the marsh as I can see, for all the sea’s frettin’ at it still; and danged if Jim Bell grandmother bedstead baint mendin’ yon fence yet!”

“Marsh don’t change overmuch, but it changes, all the same. What, they say, don’t they, as it all come out o’ the sea? Yon’s change enough, surely, when you come to think on? And folks change a deal faster than land and suchlike. I reckon you’ve changed yourself, these last two years.”

They were only Marget’s words, like the rest, but just for the moment they struck a little chill. It was likely enough that he had altered, as they said, when you came to think what those two years had meant. He had thought himself at the end of change when he left the farm, except for the change that is the beginning of things. If there were any currents left in his life’s stream, they had seemed too weak to carry him off his feet; yet now they were stirring and lifting him again. But if it was true that there were changes in himself, they could only be superficial, after all. Marget’s branding-iron could not permanently have disfigured his soul. At least he was sure that folks going home turned again into their old selves. When they went in at the door they forgot at once everything that had pushed its way in between. The real things were there, as they found; the real selves, the real souls. The rest was incidental as garments flung away. The old feeling took them that they were looking forward instead of back, happy because of the future instead of the past. Yet really they were happier than they had been before, because of the extra gladness of coming home. They would hardly know themselves when they looked in the glass, because the faces and feelings did not match. The place was full of things that took them back—like the smell and feel of things, and the sun on the floor. No matter what life had managed to do to them, it faded now. These were the real things where their real selves had stayed. They were the same, in spite of the years, abidingly, patiently, blessedly the same.

He was so certain about it all that he spoke even more forcibly than he had done before. “I’d not change to the marsh if I was dead and riz!” he said. “I’d not change to the farm if Squire offered me the Hall. And I’d be Kit Sill and for evermore Kit Sill, if I was coming from Heaven an’ nobbut from next door!”

Bob said drearily that likely his father knew his own business best. His own belief in the ultimate rightness of things had long since gone by the board, and he found it strange that Kit’s should be lingering still. The artist’s faith that yet all things shall be well had flamed for only a period in Bob. Marget had soon set herself to work to trample it out. Yet here was old Kit still brandishing the torch. But then Kit had only suffered for the space of a couple of years.

In spite of his admission, however, he seemed unable to let the subject drop. It was almost as if Marget must be whispering into his ear. “You’ll think on Marget said you could come back?” he wandered on. “She’s likely taken to you a deal better than I thought. If happen you don’t feel like settling at the farm, you’ve nobbut to say the word and come back.”

“I’ll settle, thank ye,” Kit said. “I will that.” Bob ought to have known, he thought, that it was simply a waste of time to talk like that. Marget was an outsider, of course, but Bob had once belonged. “Don’t fret yourself,” he said. “I’ll settle all right. I’ll bide.”

“Farm’s that smart it don’t know itself,” Bob said, “what wi’ new paint and paper and furniture as good as Squire’s. What, there’s a rug afore t’kitchen fire as’d likely make a carpet at our spot, I’m sure! There’s curtains to all the winders—some on ’em real lace; and parlour’s over grand to set in by a deal. They’ve been to a sight o’ pains fixing your old room an’ all. You’d think as the King hisself was coming to stop on the marsh.”

Kit listened to him, but only with half an ear, wondering why Bob should suddenly have so much to say. He knew nothing about the house of which Bob spoke, and didn’t want to know anything, if it came to that. The house he was going to see to-day was quite a different spot. It was empty and shabby and rather short of brass, but it was full of the soft tones that make for peace. There was no colour in it that the sun had never kissed, or wood that the years had not mellowed in its place. The worn surfaces knew his hand, and the uneven flooring had never troubled his feet. What, there was a sunk flag at the kitchen door that had never tripped his toe in fifty years!...

“Thomas mun ha’ done well for himself,” Bob was drawling at his side. “He mun ha’ laid by a deal more than we ever thought. I reckon he could ha’ taken the farm all right yon time as they went and turned you out. But they said the lass wasn’t for wedding him just then, and he was feared he’d loss her if he come away. She should think shame of herself, she should, for putting us all about.”

“Nay, nay,” Kit put in, “she did right to take her time. It’s an easy enough business getting wed, but none so easy to bear wi’ when it’s done. And she’s a good lass, they say, for all she give him sneck-posset at the start. She’ll do well for me, Thomas said; she’ll see to me like her own. I reckon I waint come off so badly, after all.”

Bob thought gloomily of the bearing with things which he had brought upon himself, and of the wife that was neither a good lass nor kind, but at the same time some remnant of feeling ranged him on Marget’s side. He, too, couldn’t help feeling sore because the old man was going away. He was not jealous as she was jealous, because her bone was being touched, but it hurt him that others should do for his father what he wanted to do himself. It was his place to be at the farm and to give his father a home, and, Marget apart, it would have been his pleasure as well. But both duty and pleasure were in this case out of reach, and it was his younger brother who had the right, as well as the place and the brass and the luck of a kindly wife. The last humiliation was that he should be here, driving the old man to the home that he preferred. Thomas had offered to fetch his father himself, but Bob’s pride had suddenly flickered, and he had refused. Now, however, he cursed himself for not letting Thomas have his way, because it seemed that he came with his failure in his hand—with a tacit admission that he had nothing to give. He wondered if Kit thought of it like that, and felt the slow blood rise and burn his cheek.

He tried to comfort himself with the thought that things would be easier at home, now that the burden and bugbear had gone away. Of course, they would miss the money to some extent, but there would be one mouth less to feed, as well as more room in the kitchen and less friction—perhaps—at meals. Marget would have no more tales to tell him at night of the bother his father had given her in the day. He would not have to lie in the dark and listen to his crimes—how he had torn his jacket or got lost, or sniffed at his pudding or broken a chair. He would not hear her beating the old man with her tongue, in default of the blows that she dealt her weaker prey. And at least he would be free of the dread that tragedy might be the end—some sudden violence, perhaps, or the river under the trees. He could sleep now without hearing the old man’s cough; it would be somebody else’s job to see to that. He could go to work unhaunted by the old man’s boots, gaping and sagging and leaking in the wet. Thomas would see to the boots and Agnes to the cough, and to other little things like socks and shirts. Kit would be housed and fed as he had not been for years, and he could play his fiddle again on his old marsh. Bob knew what that special deprivation must have meant; he was true enough son of Kit to guess at that. Things seemed to be looking up for them all round, and he knew he ought to be glad if he couldn’t be proud. At least the burden was off the failure’s back, which had more than enough to carry, as it was. But all that he really felt was jealous shame, and a hope that Thomas, too, might somehow fail.

He need not have been afraid, however, that Kit was despising him in his heart. He had forgotten him completely as he drove, as well as the ghost of Marget at his back. If he thought of him at all, it was as a boy, trudging to school or running about the marsh. Sometimes, indeed, he went back so far that Bob had not even begun to exist. Perhaps he lingered longest at that stage, because the mind is coming full circle at the last. Youth must inherit heaven as well as the earth, because most of us are made young again at the end. Bob’s words came out of a mist that covered the immediate past, like the gulls he had often heard crying over a foggy sea. He slipped right away from it through the years, as the swifts dipped and dropped about the steeple under the hill. But no matter where he was, the things around him were always good. The steady sun warmed him and the air was cool in his throat. His eyes rested themselves on hedge and dyke, and line upon long line of sand; but all the time he saw as much with his heart as with his eyes.

All the days that had found him on that road were present with him to-night;—golden days, such as this, and the quiet, grey days that seemed scarcely to draw a breath from dawn to dusk. On those days the whole world was grey, not as if hidden by a veil, but grey-washed by a broad yet feathery brush. Wet days, many and long, when the rain blowing in from the sea was as level as the sun; mornings, fiercely cold, with the north wind dropping straight from the high snows; evenings, drenched with mist and haunted by pale sheaves, peering over the road at the lapping tide. Moons world without end he had seen stand over the marsh, the first moon of the year, light and thin as the edge of a tossed coin, to the great harvest moon that was not like an English moon at all. There was something in the nature of Divine revelation about the moon that came with the sheaves, a touch of the mystical meaning that shone so plain from the Bethlehem Star. It was not only that it was so big and bright, as if it had really eaten all the rest. It had a tremendous personality of its own, a calm force that could be felt. You were never alone on the marsh while a moon walked with you there; but when the harvest moon rose up, it was like a majestic stranger in a room.

Days of storm, when he had to fight his way at his horse’s head; and whirling snow-days, with the ditches level with the road. Summer, when the tall grasses almost hid the dykes, and the tall hedges all but hid the fields. Spring, with a wail beside that of the curlew in the air, and lambs like new flowers all over the coloured carpet by the sea.

Nights, too, that would never in any world come back to him again ... and dawns when, returning from some dance, he had run from the sun that was hunting him over the hill. Out to sea all was still dark, and the road before him unsubstantial as a cloud. There might be sea to each side of him for all he knew, for land that has once belonged to the sea has always the feeling of sea-ground in the night. The music he had made was still in his brain, making itself again to the horse’s hoofs and the beat of a hidden train along the coast. The fiddle inside his coat was thrilling and singing like his brain. Not for long after they reached home would either of them be still.

And then, over the chain that cuts England in two, bursting out over the top like a man who rushes the last few feet of a climb, the sun took the marsh and the Lake mountains in its stride. Out of the blotted dusk soft, nebulous shapes arose. Faint colour came into the grass, faint silver into a stream. Life flowed into the faintly-living earth, and grew fuller and faster as it moved. He saw the cattle stand up, and the sheep come away from the hedges that were full of the questioning twitter of the birds. The larks went up from the still-shadowy fields, racing the sun for the earliest word with God. There was a gleam of marsh-marigolds in the dykes, though still unburnished and dim. In all the waking world he and his horse alone were sinking into sleep, and though the river was still sombre when he reached its banks, it was drawing in light each moment from the sky. The farm, when he saw it at last, seemed painted for him against the tide, with the yew a black finger against a whitened wall. All the air about it was still and sunshot and transparent and pure. Suddenly he saw a hand open a window upstairs, and knew that his wife had heard him on the road.