Part 14

Agnes threw him a laughing glance, and said it was early days to talk like that. Happen, if he waited, she would show him different, later on. Thomas, however, wasn’t to be put off. “There isn’t a smarter lass in the country-side,” he said, “and she’s a rare hand at managing a house.” The showman in him was aching to be out, and he was driven as well by an urgent need that he didn’t know how to explain. It was as if he was bent upon manufacturing a barrier of good things, an insurmountable barrier of comforts and kind words.... He had a sense of delicacy about beginning to praise the house, but it couldn’t be taken amiss if he praised his wife. “She’ll do you that well you’ll think you’re the king,” he said, “and she’s as bonny as they make ’em, as you can see for yourself.”

“Marget’s not much in the way o’ looks,” Kit said. “She’s the cankert sort, is Marget, wi’ a nippit nose.”

Thomas laughed and said it was just as well she couldn’t hear, but the bitter disparagement gave him a slight shock. It had never been like his father to say bitter things. He had had a good word for every erring soul, a tolerant explanation for every doubtful deed. Marget must have been dreadful indeed to have altered him like that. The thought of his own share in the matter troubled Thomas’s heart. “Bob’s catched a Tartar,” he added, after a while. “He darsent call his soul his own, poor lad!”

“Ay, she keeps folk stirring, Marget does,” Kit said, but after his little outburst he sat quiet. It was strange how Marget was present with him even here, so that he could not so much as open his mouth but she came jumping out. He tried to put her away from him as he watched Agnes moving about the hearth, all colour and curves and deft handling and neat ways. Agnes was flushed with the excitement of the occasion, and her eyes shone when she smiled. He could not remember that he had ever seen Marget smile except for the purpose of a sneer. She had never even smiled at the red-haired baby or Bob, and certainly not at the daft old man who was only a burden in the house. He liked a smiling face, but it embarrassed him as well, because he had forgotten what to do with people who smiled. That was why he shifted his eyes when Agnes looked his way, though he watched her again as soon as she left him alone. He liked her air of hurry without fuss, which filled the room with a vigour that did not fret. Marget would have spilt the kettle over the fender and one of the brats, and in the midst of the hissing and howling would have blamed himself. Somehow he could not picture Agnes ever spilling a drop. She brought the grand new tea-pot to be filled on the hearth, and the room was reflected in its polished side. Her blue gown, crossing and crossing the bars of gold, made him think of a coloured bird that kept flashing through the sun. From his window at Marget’s he had often watched the swifts darting and dipping in the evening light. The tiny whir of their wings across the pane had come to him in a series of little shocks. The long, pointed wings were like little slender swords, crossing and darting and never getting home. Now, if he looked from the farm-window, he would see the birds of the marsh, the long legs of the heron and the stately swing of the gull. The redshank and the curlew he would see lonely on the sands ... yet here he was busy thinking of Marget’s and the swifts.

It seemed as if the farther he went away from Marget’s the closer it followed up. Just at first he had seemed to leave it right behind, and yet in the heart of the dream it was waiting on the step. The one door of the viaduct that he had seen still wide had not succeeded in closing, after all. That meant that, when he went to bed, he would not be safe, because Marget might come and peer at him as he slept. The thing that might have swamped her and shut her out had not so much as begun to come to pass. He could not conjure her out of the house, because magic had failed him as he stepped inside. If there was anything there that belonged to himself, it had done nothing for him yet but make him sad. Yet he couldn’t help feeling that the joy was only slightly out of reach; as if he looked at it through a window, but could not come inside. His heart was heavy, as heavy as wet grass. Nothing, he told himself, was going right. Even the chair he sat in wasn’t right.

“I doubt I mun be getting old bones,” he said at last. “Chair don’t seem to fit me same as it used.”

Thomas had been busy with a contented little whistled tune, but he broke it off in the middle when his father spoke. “’Tisn’t the old chair, dad,” he said, a little abashed. “Yon went wi’ the rest o’ the furniture at the sale.”

Kit stared at him a moment with a puzzled frown, and then, as if still at a loss, he dropped his gaze to the chair. Thomas saw that he was thinking hard as he ran his hands repeatedly over the arms. While he was at Marget’s he had remembered many sales, but apparently he had never remembered his own. In those crowds of his he had seen many a chair sold, but his own had never come to the hammer under his eyes. How could it do anything of the sort when it had stayed safely in the dream, waiting in the house until he should come back? Yet it had vanished, after all, when the dream had come about, and there was only this false pretender in its place. When he stopped rubbing the arms he peered at the legs, and twisted round to stare at the leather back. It was a shop-chair, that was plain, varnished and hard-stuffed, unyielding as old bread. It almost seemed to reject him as he sat, refusing the purpose for which it had been made. It was handsome enough to look at, of its kind, making a great show with leather and brass nails, but as yet it was only an effigy of a chair. No ghost as yet had clung to its hard seat, those stubborn ghosts which hammers couldn’t eject. No shadowy arms would steal and clasp him round as he sighed himself asleep on a twilit afternoon. It was a mindless chair, a chair without a soul, the price of which was the sacrifice of death. Generations must use it before it grew a soul; lover sitting on lover’s knee, children clambering about its legs. Dreams of the winter dusk would have to shut it round; the sick, the dying, console themselves in its arms. There was a long education before the new arm-chair, and he himself was the sacrifice it asked....

“House is furnished every bit new,” Thomas said. “But I got chair as near the old one as I could.”

“Oh, ay, it’s a grand chair, thank ye—real smart.”

“Nay, I doubt it isn’t much, but it’s the best we’ve got.”

“Marget wouldn’t ha’ let me set in the best chair.”

“You shall set where you like, Father, in _this_ house!” Agnes flashed. “It’s queer if you can’t do as suits you best, I’m sure!”

Kit said she was right kind, and let his arms lie slackly along the arms of the new chair. The bright leather was cool and slippery to his sensitive old hands. The old chair had been covered with carpet that was rough to the touch—dark green and threadbare in many spots, with a pattern of ringed daisies centred by a faded rose.... It was all very well to say that he might choose; he was pinned to this new horror, nevertheless. Not here, any more than at Marget’s, could he sit exactly where he wished....

“Likely you’ve noticed we’ve a new kitchen range? Landlord said it was t’best as could be got.”

“Ay, I see it first thing,” Kit said, and looked away.

“Walls is new-washed, of course, and paint’s new, too. Yon old winder-sash gone——”

“Ay.”

“—new sink in back kitchen ... cupboards ... carpet on t’stairs——”

Agnes made a noise with the pot, and said the tea was mashed and they’d best set to. It was just like Thomas to spoil her pet surprise, but luckily it passed the old man by. He rose to his feet obediently when she spoke, and was set at the table, still in the hated chair. Agnes was telling him he wanted his tea, and he tried to agree with her, knowing that he lied. The light from the west still lay across the room, and blinded and hurt his unaccustomed eyes. He could not see the table as Agnes hoped he might—as she herself saw it with an artist’s pride. For her, every detail stood out on the whiteness of the cloth, coloured and glorified by the clear sun. The light was cool as water on china and polished plate, and rich on yellow butter and the pink surface of the ham. There were creamy scones and a gingerbread cake ... lavender in a vase ... deep crimson jam and eggs with warm brown shells. A white geranium stood on a sill, showing the sky behind it far and blue....

Thomas carved the ham and went on talking about the house. “There’s a deal that’s new above-stairs as well; beds and quilts and suchlike, and a deal besides. You could eat off the floors as easy as yon dish. Missis keeps the place like a new pin.”

“Marget’s nobbut a dirty slut,” Kit said. “Last week I come a terble bang over a pail.”

“Eh, now, but yon was wicked, if you like!” Agnes’s eyes dwelt pityingly upon him as she passed the tea. “She might ha’ finished you,” Thomas added, handing ham.

Kit said he doubted she wouldn’t have troubled if she had, and sat back, staring vacantly at his plate. His face looked worn and white now that the expression of almost venomous hate had died away. Thomas, busily carving, heard the hate in his voice, and again was conscious of a little shock. Kit himself was as puzzled by his vehemence as his son was jarred. Never before had he even thought of Marget in the terms he had used to-day. His tongue, like the rest of his body, had been in jail, and was only now beginning to be loosed. Yet his look was not the look of a man who was brooding on the past. That savage face belonged to a man in an unknown place ... betrayed....

And then he was back in the past, away from Beautiful End, back in the cottage where Marget’s pails lay hoping for his feet. This one had lurked in secret on the stair, and he had come on it hoping, and hurtled into space. Afterwards he and the fiddle sat on the bottom step, shaking and crying together in their pain. Nobody came near them however long they cried, though once the face of a neighbour showed scared beyond the door. Presently he had climbed the stair and gone back again to his room—to dream of his home where pails were kept in place. It was strange that now he was home he should wander away, to shake and pant and cry on the bottom step. It was strange he should long for that room now he was here, wanting that wretchedness beyond this grace....

Marget was in the mind of the others, too, it seemed. “Bob said she was fit to scratch when they come away,” Thomas was busy relating to his wife. “He made sure there’d be a row in the street, but she thought better o’ that. All the same, there was a grand to-do aforehand, so he said!”

“Jealous—that’s what it is!” Agnes answered with a toss of the head. She gave vent to a short laugh as well, and the laugh was a mixture of satisfaction and contempt. Kind as she was, and generous to a fault, she couldn’t help gloating over Marget to-day. She and Thomas were doing a beautiful thing, but little, sordid thoughts kept creeping in. Somewhere at the back of their minds they were gloating over Marget all the time. Of course she was bound to be jealous of their better luck—the unlovable woman with the wretched house. It must have irked her to see Kit driving off, knowing how glad he was to get away. She was bound to envy the bride with her pleasant home, her brand-new furniture and four-pronged forks. Those who sit in the sun are so sure of the envy of those in the shade. In any case, Marget could have nothing to offer that could possibly compare. Agnes’s nature was nearly all pure gold, but the bit of alloy that was in it sounded in that laugh. Besides, how could she feel anything but secure, glowing in secret over that room upstairs?

The security in the laugh tempted Thomas into further speech. There could be no harm now in telling her the other things that Bob had said. “Ay, but hark ye,” he added, “what d’ye think o’ this? Bob had it the old man mightn’t settle, after all. ‘I’ll be at Low Moss End for an hour or two,’ he said, ‘and if he doesn’t feel like stopping, I’ll take him back.’”

“Not settle, did you say?” Agnes stared at him open-mouthed.

“Ay.”

“Take him back?”

“Yon’s what he said.”

“Well, did you ever hear the likes o’ that!” This time the laugh was on a harder note.... “What’s wrong, Father?” she added, kindly again, seeing the old man gazing at his cup.

“I doubt you’ve given me the wrong mug, my lass. Mine was a sort o’ blue chiney, wi’ a pink rose.”

“Yon went at sale an’ all,” Thomas explained, “but I got as near a match as they had in t’shop.”

Kit said the mug was grand and would do right well, but a little colour came in his face, and he felt ashamed as he had done in the field. They must be thinking he was going daft, losing his senses because of his great age. He kept waiting and waiting for the things that were in his dream, and didn’t seem able to grasp the things that were under his nose. He winced when Thomas talked of “getting a match,” because you couldn’t match the furniture of a dream. Even if the mug had managed to look the same, he would have known when he touched it that it wasn’t his. Still, the thing to remember was that Thomas had done his best. “Tea’ll sup right enough out of it, I’ll be bound,” he said. “Yon as Marget give me was every bit cracked....”

“Old folks should have the best of what’s going,” Agnes said. She knew the best was on the table to-night, but he did not seem to be making much of a meal. Perhaps excitement had taken his appetite away, or more probably he was over-tired with the slow drive. Now and then he looked again at the alien “mug,” but she never saw him lift it to his lips. Old folks always wanted a little tempting to their food, but she had been so certain he would be suited to-night. A vague sense of disappointment touched her mind, in spite of the fact that it was still busy with Bob’s words. “I never hear such a thing as that about Bob!” she said again. “Surely to goodness Father’s had enough o’ his spot!”

“Ay, well, if he’s set on waiting, I reckon nobody’ll say him nay. He’ll nobbut be throwing away his time an’ that’ll be all.”

“It’s Marget’s nastiness—that’s what it is!” Agnes frowned. “She knows he’s glad to be shot of her, and she’s by way of having a slap.”

“That’s about it,” Thomas agreed, with a nod. He was glad now that he had spoken out, because Agnes had laid the bogey right away. First she had laughed, and then she had gone to the root of the matter and shown him the cause. The shadow lying on that first good hour had only been thrown by jealousy, after all. Bob had seen all the changes and novelties at the farm, and of course Agnes would know about them, too. It was Marget who gave the slap, as Agnes said; Bob was only the arm through which it struck. Jealousy—that was it; nothing but jealous lies. Under all the roofs of the kingdom none would be happier than Kit....

And Kit had fallen back again in his chair, staring vacantly in front of him with lifeless eyes. He was staring straight through the window that held the rolled-back sea, but all that he really saw was a cottage-kitchen wall. As far as he knew, he was back at Marget’s again, at the inhospitable board which he had loathed. Thomas saw that his plate of food was barely touched, and that the cup of tea had never been touched at all. His hands, lying at rest along the cloth, pointed knife and fork towards the roof.... His son reached a gentle finger towards his arm, and at once he shrank away as at a blow. Knife and fork went clattering down as he clutched at his knee for the fiddle that wasn’t there. Finding nothing, he glanced furtively from his companions to the floor, and then terror seized him, and he looked wildly around the room. Quite suddenly he became still again when he saw the fiddle under the shroud. He frowned a little, and made as if to rise; and then remembrance came into his eyes, and he sank back. Thomas, waiting for that moment, drew a breath of relief....

His voice, slow and easy, broke the last of the spell.... “You’re getting on terble badly wi’ your tea. I doubt you’re not taking kindly to the ham.”

Kit said the ham was grand, as he had said of the cup, and the smug, terrible chair that was waiting for him to die. He had always been partial to ham, he said, and Marget had never given him as much as a slice. But, all the same, he made no attempt to empty his plate, and his knife and fork were under the table and he let them lie. “It don’t taste quite the same as it used,” he pleaded at last. “I reckon there’s no pigs gangs down just like your own....”

He felt ashamed of himself again when he saw the disappointment in Agnes’s face, but she did not try to force him into eating the ham against his will. She did not even say that folks were hard to suit, as Marget most certainly would have said. “Have a bit o’ butter wi’ your bread,” she coaxed instead, pushing the shining pat within his reach, and he felt comforted for a moment, and forgot that he had seen Marget sitting in her place. He made a determined effort to receive an impression of light and space, of comfort and kindliness and the atmosphere of home. He said to himself peace where there was no peace, and not for one moment did he succeed. Agnes was busy talking about Marget again, and he pushed the butter away and drifted back.... Nothing had happened to rescue him from prison, after all, and he was in danger of losing his home of vision as well....

“We’ll have a trap, one o’ these days,” Agnes was saying, “and ride round by Bob’s. Marget’ll be madder than ever when she sees Father getting that perked up and fat!”

“He shall play fiddle all down t’road,” Thomas grinned, “an’ Marget’ll just have to bide and let him be!” They looked at each other across the table and laughed, and Thomas leaned back in his chair and chuckled and slapped his knee. They were so busy with the picture in their minds that they forgot to notice anything else. “Eh, well, never mind her, poor crabt body!” he finished at last. He took up his knife and fork with a smile still lingering on his face, and felt his father’s aloofness in the silence like a chill current in a quiet stream. The fork half-raised in the air came to a halt.... “Butter not right, neither, eh, old dad?”

“It’s grand butter, but I doubt it’s not like it used. Your mother was t’best butter-maker in t’country-side.”

“You must learn me different next time I churn,” Agnes told him with a good-tempered smile. “Likely I’ll shape to do better after a bit.”

“You’re a good lass,” the old man said suddenly, looking her in the face, and for the first time his voice sounded warm and strong. Their eyes met in full and happy accord, and their smiles mingled like the smiles of intimate friends. Their natures, each kindly and beautiful in its way, reached out one to the other and were enriched. Just for a moment she saw him as he had been when he was young, the affectionate, dreamy soul whom so many had helped and loved. He in his turn saw her as the future of the place, the soul that was making the new dream for the house. The beauty of kindness and good humour and happy work, she was bringing it all these, just as his own wife had brought them long ago. But it was a new beauty, and there was no place in it for him; he had his own, and his own was quite complete. Now he was beginning to see what he had done—how he had wandered into another’s dream of home. There was no room for him here unless he was ready to renounce his own, a thing which he had not thought possible even with death. Already he was being punished as those are punished who are false to their dreams; he could neither look forward happily nor yet behind. Suddenly he was conscious of being stifled by the pleasant room, oppressed by the fire and the sun and the smell of the food. His eyes dropped wearily from the girl’s face, and age and blankness came back to his own. “It’s terble warm,” he said, in a fretted tone, and pushed back his chair sharply and got to his feet. “I’ll gang out,” he added, looking towards the door. “I partly what think I’ll be easier outside.”

Thomas pushed away his plate, though rather regretfully, and got to his feet, too. “Ay, do,” he answered as heartily as he could, though he did not look at his father while he spoke. He did not look at his wife, either, though it was only a minute since they had laughed at each other across the cups. He knew as well as she that they had expected to linger over the meal, talking so fast they were on each other’s heels, and digging old stories together out of the past. They had expected to hear the old man laugh and crack his joke, but so far the laughter and jokes had all been theirs. There descended upon them again a stage chill, such as Thomas had sampled on his coming in. Then, however, the scene had waited for an actor that didn’t appear. Now the curtain was down too soon on a set that had been the work of months. Thomas gulped his tea hurriedly and looked longingly at the scones, and then looked hastily away and felt ashamed....

“You’ve nobbut made a terble poor tea,” Agnes said wistfully to the guest.

“Nay, I’ve done rarely, thank ye, missis, that I have. Now I come to think on, I’d summat on t’road.”

“Nobbut a sparrow-peck, that’s what it is! Cat would ha’ eaten more, I’m sure.”

“I’ve a new pipe for you, Father,” Thomas put in, fumbling about the mantel for his gift. “Ay, an’ there’s bacca an’ all for you in a tin.”

“It’s more than a while now since I’d a pipe. Marget can’t abide smoke about a house.”

“Seems she can’t abide owt as gives folk pleasure!” Agnes carped. There was something hurt and aggrieved in her voice that had not been there before; something graver, as well, as if the tone of her mind had changed. She still sat at the table, looking straight before her over the pots, and never once at the couple busy with the pipe. The meal had indeed been a sacrifice of sorts, and never a whiff of smoke had gone up from it to heaven. The gods had slept while the oblation was being made, and now there was nothing to do but to clear away. At least the fault, if there was a fault, was none of hers. Things never happened as one expected, of course....

Kit was holding the pipe limply in his hand, another stranger pretending to be a friend. His son’s eyes were set hopefully on his face, waiting for a look of cheer.

“I’ll fill it, shall I?” he asked.

“You’re right kind.”

“Likely you’d be better suited wi’ twist!”

“Nay, not I. Bacca’ll do grand.”

Thomas said, “Yon’s the ticket!” and handed over the pipe, and Kit took it and held it limply as before. “Where’s t’laylock?” he asked suddenly, staring through the porch. “You’ve never hagged down yon laylock as used to be by t’door?”

“Nay, not I,” Thomas said, with honest regret. “’Twas wind as took it—yon gale we had in March. A terble storm it was, to be sure! I made certain house was going an’ all.”

“I never heard tell as laylock was gone,” Kit said. He spoke the words very slowly, because he was thinking back. He remembered the storm, and how he had never slept the whole night long, not because he was afraid, but because it brought the sound of the sea. The chestnuts close to his window had been like giants raving in the dark, and now and then one hewed a limb from another and sent it crashing down. He had sat in a whistling draught and pictured the long waves breaking on the shore, and heard the long roar of succession filling the farmhouse. The yew tree, of course, would neither break nor bend, and the lilac would bend but it would never break. Morning showed great boughs across the road, but the trees of his dream were still untouched and whole. No gale that blew could harm the trees of his dream; and yet that storm had brought the lilac down....