Transcriber’s Note
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BEAUTIFUL END
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
CRUMP FOLK GOING HOME
THE LONELY PLOUGH
THE OLD ROAD FROM SPAIN
[Illustration: “The yew’s tall finger pointing to the sky”]
[Illustration: “Nobody’s shadow could tread on your heels”]
BEAUTIFUL END
BY
CONSTANCE HOLME
“Houses not made with hands”
MILLS & BOON, LIMITED
49 RUPERT STREET
LONDON, W. 1
_Published 1918_
“THE PLACE FOR WHICH I CRY”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The author wishes to state that no character in this book is drawn
from any living person.
BEAUTIFUL END
I
She put her hand to the curtain for the last time and drew back.
Very reluctantly she admitted to herself that now there was nothing
left to do. Here was the room really finished at last, and none of
her wistful glances from side to side could find her a fresh task.
She had lingered over it as long as she possibly could, but now the
pleasant work had really come to an end. Everything had to come
to an end so that other things might begin, but the hours of toil
had been so sweet that she hated to let them go. The room seemed
full of the tunes she had sung as she painted and scrubbed, full
of plans and pleased thoughts and thrills of housewifely pride. It
stood, of course, for so very much more than just a simply-furnished
chamber in a simple house. It stood, for instance, for the end of a
self-reproach marring a happiness otherwise complete. It meant the
comforting of a hurt which still troubled her kind soul, however
unwillingly it had been wrought. It meant return and renewal on
better lines, the rebuilding of ancient things with better hands....
In the upstairs room of the marsh farmhouse there was a great
pleasantness and peace. The early evening sun drove straight towards
it from the west, and through its deep-set eyes sent shining ladders
all across the floor. Only the corners of the room stayed dim and
aloof.
Now that all was done, and so thoroughly done, she was puzzled to
find herself depressed. Perhaps it was nothing more than the nervous
doubt which foreruns every great moment just at the last. Perhaps it
was just the regret that lies like a sigh under the chant of pride
in a finished task. Certainly, nobody else would ever see the room
exactly as it looked to herself. Nobody would see, as she could see,
not only the finished whole, but the work and the joy that had made
it what it was. That meant, of course, that when she passed out for
the last time, the room’s own perfect moment would pass as well.
Therefore she lingered and looked, hoping for the chance of a further
touch, but however she looked, she could think of nothing else.
Even after she had ceased to wonder she could not tear herself away.
The low room was not only a room, such as anybody might prepare for a
guest; it was a refuge, a place for himself that she had made for a
stray. She had stained the floor with her own hands, and washed the
knitted quilt on the bed. She had made the white valances with their
borders of knitted lace, the cloth rug by the bedside, the white
window-curtains with their pleated frills. She had distempered the
white walls and polished the chest of drawers so that the brass-bound
Bible on its top was reflected deeply as in a pool. All the paint was
white; perhaps she was proudest of the paint. The new bedstead was
iron, with brass knobs crowning its slender posts. In a crinkly vase
on one sill was a posy of coloured flowers.... Surely the old man
would be able to rest here?
The windows of the room were so full of sun that they looked like
translucent plates of beaten gold. Beyond them, the scene was so
bright that it hurt the eye—the river shining and glinting close
below the farm, the sands all sparkling as if they were sown with
quartz, and the houses across the bay snow-white against the hill.
The tide was dead out—at the end of the world it seemed; yet never at
any time was it very far. Always, when you had forgotten it, it came
stealing back, a thief in the night, a trespasser by day. Even now
she had not grown used to the tides, though she did not look out of
the windows all the time, as she had done when she first arrived on
the marsh. But he, when he came, would look out of the windows all
day long.... She stood in the long rays, staring round the room, her
blue eyes frowning a little as she looked. Her young, firm figure was
full of energy and strength. Her dark hair was ruffled and her cheek
flushed with the final effort that was actually the last.
Very soon now the old man would be here, and the room that had once
been his for so long would be his again. He would find things a good
deal changed, it was true, but how much for the better, after all!
No doubt the place had been well enough once, years and years ago,
perhaps, when he was first wed, but it had been only a poor spot
later on. It had had a neglected look from the outside, and the
fields and hedges seemed to ask for a hand. At the last, of course,
it had been a desolate place, indeed.... By accident, as it happened,
she had seen the room before he left, and the desolation of it still
haunted her mind. The old wooden bedstead had been rickety all
through, and there was never a mat on the bare, unvarnished boards.
In the quilt grown thin as a rag there was a jagged tear, and in each
of the ceiling-corners a spider had spun a web. The once blue-washed
walls had faded a dirty grey, and the plaster was crumbling away
where the damp had driven in. The windows had broken hasps, and
one had a broken pane; all dim they were, mysterious with crusted
salt ... and by the bed had stood a pair of old woman’s shoes. She
remembered the shoes because they had been his wife’s. It was weeks,
she remembered—months—after she was dead.
A dismal room indeed it had seemed to the girl, a forlorn place
thoroughly in tune with a forlorn human old age. She remembered how
she laid hands on it, then as now, mending the quilt and fetching the
spiders from their homes, spending a lusty scrubbing on the floor.
Even then she had had a vision of what she would some day make of
the place, plotting and planning and laughing as she toiled. She
had never put her head inside that room, it seemed, but some web of
contrival at once began to spin. Of course it was not exactly as
she had planned, because every creation meddles with the tools, but
it was near enough to satisfy her, nevertheless. It was inevitable
somehow ... intended ... definitely right. It seemed inevitable,
too, that she herself should be here, although she had questioned
and delayed her fate so long. She felt sure, when she looked back,
that she had known it to be inevitable all the time; that just the
same personal interest had gone to that far-away putting of things
to rights. But she had not been ready for Thomas, just then, and the
future had had to take care of itself. Thomas’s father, however, had
not been able to care for himself. In the midst of her indecision he
had had to quit. The trouble had gone further than just an unswept
room....
And yet, in spite of the intervening break, her fate and the room’s
fate had fulfilled themselves in time. She had come in the end to the
place ordained, just as the changes she had meant for the room had
come about. Now it was all scoured clean, painted and stained, with
a new iron bed that had full command of its legs, and four little
knobs like four little globes of gold. Her second scrubbing had been
so thorough that it almost seemed as if there was nothing of the old
room left. Even the dust and dimness had had a character of their
own, and both of them had been swept away. Even the windows looked
a different shape now they were frames for those shining plaques of
gold. They were like young eyes now, shining and clear, where before
they were ancient and blurred with tears ... eyes with a whole world
behind them under the sky, instead of blankness staring at nothing
without sight.
Yet something lingered that belonged to the old room, something that
was perhaps nothing more than a question in the air. That was the
reason, perhaps, why she hesitated to call her work complete, since
the room seemed to cry upon her for something else. It seemed to
be waiting for something to come back; she wondered vaguely if it
was the old woman’s shoes. She would have brought them back right
willingly if she could, but she had never seen or heard of them since
that day. Probably they had gone at the sale, or simply been lost or
burnt or thrown away. It was out of the question, anyhow, to think of
finding them now. If the room was waiting for that, it would have to
do without.
She felt sure that, even in its best days, the room had never
looked so fine, even in those far-off days when the house had
freshened itself for another bride. There might have been curtains,
perhaps—perhaps not upstairs—but almost certainly there had been no
blinds. Little need for them, indeed, with windows facing the lone
sands, and a white-sailed yacht at the flood the only passer-by. And
she was certain that, not for years, if ever before, had roses been
set upon the sill.
There was no doubt, however, that rooms, like folks, were growing
smarter with the times. Old as he was, the old man would know that,
and would feel, if only unconsciously, the finer touch. He would be
proud of a son’s wife who had such ways; straight from his present
home, indeed, how could he be anything but proud? And progress and
new paint had not harried the old-time peace of the room, nor could
she herself have done it real harm. The tradition behind her was too
pure for that, the abiding spirit of the house too strong.
Rousing herself, she crossed the rays towards the door, but stopped
on her way to run her hand along the quilt. The limbs that would lie
under it would be snug enough, she thought, the head on the pillow
would surely lie still. Stooping, she came on something soft to her
foot, and started hastily aside. It was almost as if she had trodden
and crushed the worn, old shoes.... But it was only the new cloth rug
beside the bed.
Out on the landing she paused again, feeling the evening stillness
warm through all the house. There were empty rooms right and left
of her, empty, yet full of secrets, as empty rooms always are. When
other things went out of the rooms, they filled them for themselves.
Yet, in spite of their secrets, they seemed lonely sometimes,
consciously waiting, like the room she had left; but to-night they
were only full of the sunny peace. She looked into them, one after
the other, and shut them up again, and then out in the passage stood
gazing at the doors. It was strange to live in a house with so many
empty rooms. It was like living with people who never spoke, but were
busily thinking all the time. A house with empty rooms could never be
at its best. Something might come out of that brooding silence, such
things as come from a mind for ever feeding on itself. She was sure
that, when the winter nights came, she would start thinking of those
empty rooms upstairs, hear voices, perhaps, and steps ... if she left
them too long to think things by themselves. She would put apples in
one, she determined, when the fruit was ripe; cheeses in another,
when she started making cheese. There would be other things after a
while to fill the rest—other things, other people, other thoughts—so
that the rooms would not have time to grow lonely and queer. And at
least one of them would have finished with being lonely by to-night.
She found herself turning again to the room where her work was done,
and only stopped herself at the handle of the door. Then she heard
her husband moving in the kitchen below, and her dreamy mood fell
from her and she ran down. There was carpet under her feet, she
thought, as she ran. How many years since the old man had seen new
carpet on those stairs?
Thomas had been busy redding himself up, and turned towards her a
tanned but shining face. He was still in his working clothes, but
he had shaved, and slipped his jacket over his rolled-up sleeves.
There was health in the clean lines of his jaw and the warm colours
of his skin, and kindness and honesty in his tranquil eyes. Only
his mouth, firmly-cut and set, showed that he could be obstinate if
driven too far. This was a man who saw one road at a time, and when
once he was set on it could not turn aside. Agnes had known that
face when it was dogged and harsh, heard passion and bitterness in
the slow, deep voice, seen tortured and angry strength in the broad,
slow form. But that was long ago, of course, before she had come to
her senses and seen clear. To-night, Thomas’s face shone as much with
pleasure as with soap. Everything was an occasion for his smile, the
slowly-broadening smile which thought before it came. He smiled as
he turned instinctively towards the stair. He had not yet ceased to
watch for her coming in. Often and often he had seen her in his mind
before she was really there in front of his eyes. Now, as he watched,
he saw her soft, blue gown paint itself clear on the dusk beyond the
door.
The sun was in the kitchen, too, but in far greater power, because
of the wider windows and the open porch, that was like some arching
cave with a golden tide at the flood. Almost everything in the
kitchen was new, and everything was scrubbed and polished as it had
been upstairs. The dresser was as white as when the timber first
yielded to the saw. The plates in the pot-rail were so many circular
mirrors in the sun. And everything spoke of new housekeeping and
newly-wedded pride. The legs of the table were shapely and smooth,
unworn by the marks of large or little boots, unscarred by the
clawings of generations of cats. There was an arm-chair to the side
of the flashing fender and the modern range, an expensive-looking
chair, with its castors shining and whole, its covers unfaded and its
padding plump. The grandfather’s clock had not yet settled to his
corner place. Behind the warming-pan with its flat gold face, there
was never a mark on the pale-coloured wall.
Out in the little garden the box hedges and borders looked almost
black, making the roses between them a warmer, deeper red, and
whitening the white rose over the cavern that was the porch. Beside
the parlour window a tall yew stood up, clipped like Cleopatra’s
needle and as straight. The little garden had peculiarly the air of
refuge and close, set as it was between the desolation of the sands
and the lesser and different desolation of the marsh. The marsh was
lonely, of course, but Nature was always there, growing her grass and
plants and flowers, her acorns and cones fashioning into trees, her
thorn hedges throwing up every year their close and towering screens;
and, after Nature, man, with his cattle and thin ploughs, his barns
and shippons, his clustered chimney-stacks. But out on the sand there
were only sand and lost shells, and the goalless footprints of flown
birds. It was enemy ground, where neither blown seed nor human hearth
might take hold. The marsh had a peace of its own as well as its
fear; but out on the sands there was only fear.
One window in the kitchen pretended to itself that there was neither
sand nor fear. It looked across the square fields to the higher
land behind the marsh, over tall hedges thick with rose to sloping
meadowland and woods. Up in the sky was a climbing, high-hung road,
and below it a hidden village with a seeking spire. On the marsh
between the straight hedges all the roads ran straight.... It was to
this window that Agnes crossed to look out.
“Hadn’t you best be getting off?” she enquired, pressing her face
against the pane. “It’ll never do to be hanging about and miss your
time. He’ll likely think he’s not wanted if you’re a bit behind.”
“Nay, there’s no call to be off yet,” Thomas replied tranquilly,
without offering to move. “We’ll catch a sight on ’em on t’road,
long afore they’re here.” He settled his jacket leisurely, looking
at himself in the little kitchen glass, mottled and cracked in its
worn mahogany frame. It looked old and strange on the new face of the
wall—almost the only thing in the kitchen that wasn’t new. “’Twas
half-past six, wasn’t it, they said? It wants a bit to that yet.”
“What was it you went and settled wi’ Bob, after all?”
“I was to meet ’em at meader gate so as to give the old man an arm.
It’s over rough riding up for him, I doubt. He’ll be best on his feet
by a deal.”
“Ay, old bones can’t abide being rumbled about. I shouldn’t wonder
but he’s a bit shaky after his ride, so you mun be sure to be there
on the tick.... Eh, well, we’ll have him as right as a bobbin afore
so long!”
“It’ll take a while, will that!” Thomas frowned. Staring, he saw
the face in the glass grow older and rather grim. “He’s been going
downhill sharp, lately, has the old chap. Last time I was at the
cottage he give me a fair fright. It was a bad job his having to
gang to Marget an’ Bob.”
He could see his wife through the glass beyond himself, and the face
that she turned to him was clouded, too.
“Nay, what...” she began quickly, her voice troubled and sore.
“That’s by with, surely? You promised you’d let it bide.”
Their eyes met in the glass, and he threw her a repentant nod. “Ay,
that’s so, and I mean to hold by it an’ all.” He drew a long breath,
squaring his shoulders as if to an enemy threatening his peace. For a
long moment he went on staring thoughtfully at himself, and when he
spoke again it was with an obvious attempt at ease. “I reckon I don’t
favour the old dad much in the face; nay, nor Bob, neither, for the
matter o’ that.”
“You don’t take after him no way,” Agnes answered, turning back.
She gave a little sigh of relief as she stared again at the marsh.
“Folk’d be hard put to it to tell you’re the same breed. He’s the
light sort, for one thing, and you’re that dark. He’s fond of music
and terble forgetful-like, and you’re that set on your job, and wi’
no more tune than an old bull.”
Thomas laughed his good-tempered laugh.
“I’m not much in the singing line, I doubt, but I’m real fond o’
music, all the same. He was for ever trying to learn me the fiddle,
but it wasn’t no use. All the music I’ve gitten is in my heels.”
“Ay, well, you’re a bonny dancer—I’ll give you that,” she agreed. “So
was Bob, poor lad, afore he got wed, but he’s not much to crack on,
nowadays, I doubt. All the spring’ll be out on him, by now. He’s been
plagued and bothered over long.”
“A bad missis’ll do for a man quicker than a green Christmas,” Thomas
said. “There’s nobbut once he’ll have rued, I reckon, and that’s all
the time. He’d plenty o’ warning an’ all, if he’d nobbut took it, the
daft fool! I never see such a time as she give him when they were
courting—Marget an’ Bob. Same as cat and mouse it were, only worse,
and yet he couldn’t frame to bide away. Come to that, he’d say we
were a while about it, ourselves....”
He saw her stiffen again as he said that, but this time she did not
turn. Only the back of her smooth head was visible in the glass. “Ay,
well, I’m one as looks afore they leap,” she answered shortly, on a
sharp note.... “Hadn’t you best be thinking o’ making a move?”
“It’s over soon, I tell ye ... there’s no sign o’ them yet.” Suddenly
he left the glass and came over to her side, leaning his arms along
the window-frame. All the windows in the kitchen were new, their
sashes gleaming with fresh paint, broad windows that filled the place
with pictures and the sun. “Seems like it couldn’t be true,” he went
on, looking down at her cheek where it touched the stuff of his
sleeve—“you an’ me wed and at the farm, and the old dad coming back,
after all. Seems like I’m only dreaming it’s come true.... I doubt
he’ll want seeing to a bit, at first. He’s not as young as he was,
and he’s terble down. You an’ me we mun do for him all we can.”
“We’ll see to him, don’t you fret!” Agnes said cheerfully, in her
firm tones. “We’ll have him so he won’t know himself afore long, wi’
nowt to cross him and the best to eat. It’s queer if we can’t shape
better than Marget at the job. We ought to be shammed on ourselves if
we can’t, that’s all!”
As if bent upon showing her willingness to begin, she left him to
pick up the white cloth ready spread for a meal, and shook it on
again with a hearty slap. Thomas, searching the roads of the marsh
in her place, heard her busy behind him among the pots, her free
step over the flags full of energy and goodwill. The clean air of
the kitchen thrilled with kindly expectation and innocent pride. The
sun and the cheerful room seemed the best setting in the world for
the little scene of welcome that they had planned. Even the weather
had kept the right sort of day for the old man’s coming home. Then
it was evening, early evening, when all should go home by rights to
rest and good food and cheerful voices and open doors—doors, flooded
with sun which you took with you when you went in, yet left as much
as they wanted for those outside; food, such as was being laid on the
table behind; and a voice like his wife’s as she murmured over her
job. “Father’ll think they forks right smart,” he heard her say; and,
“It’s the bonniest china, I’m sure, I’ve seen for a while!” Between
the setting of every two or three pots she asked for news of the
trap.... “Likely they’ll have got off afore their time.”
“Nay, Marget’ll watch out for that!” Thomas scoffed. “It’s a deal
more like to be the other way about. She was fair wild when she heard
he meant coming to us, though I don’t see how she could ha’ looked
for owt else. What, he was born here, to start wi’, and never stirred
off the spot; and then, when his father give up, he took hold for
himself. I’m sure it’s like enough he should want to come back.”
“He’s bound to hanker to be back on the marsh,” she agreed, admiring
the plated tea-pot with an absent air.... “It was real kind of Aunt
Martha Bainbridge to give us yon....”
“Ay, he’s hankered right enough!” Thomas said, with so much
bitterness in his voice that it startled even himself. Agnes came out
of her meditation with a jerk, and the little cloud settled again on
her face. She looked anxiously at her husband’s back, which seemed to
have taken on the sudden harshness of his mood. “’Tisn’t as if Marget
had wanted him, neither,” he went on, in a sort of burst. “She’s no
call to make a to-do because she’s going to be quit of him at last.
She took him because she couldn’t for shame do owt else, and a bonny
time he’s had wi’ her and her ways! What, it’s been the talk o’ the
country-side, the life she’s led the poor old chap! Coming away from
her’ll be like coming out o’ hell. Ay, she’s been bad to him, has
Marget—she has that! She never let him play his fiddle or owt, and
give him the back of her tongue from morn to night. Such a rare hand
as he used to be wi’ the fiddle an’ all! There’s folks still ax after
Fiddlin’ Kit.”
“Ay, well, poor old body, he’ll get nobody’s tongue here; and he can
have his precious fiddle to bed and board. He can play till all’s
black if he likes, and owt he likes—fiddle or toothcomb or big brass
pan!”
“That’s right,” Thomas nodded. “That’s a good lass,” but she turned
away almost brusquely and without a smile. “We mun do our best for
the old folks, I’m sure,” she went on. “One o’ these days we’ll want
seeing to ourselves.” She began to move about the table again, but
with downcast eyes. “I’m rarely glad to have him, and that’s the
truth.”
“Ay, an’ he’s suited as sheep in a turmut-field to come! Fair
blubbered he did, the poor old chap, when it was fixed. I reckon he’d
near give up hoping it would ever come off. Told me he couldn’t sleep
for thinking on’t, he did that!”
Tears came into his wife’s eyes, so that the pots in front of her
melted into a shining blur. “Ay, well, he’ll sleep right enough
to-night, I’ll take my oath! I’ve made him a grand bed, wi’ a piller
as soft as soft, and a bit of a rug alongside for his poor feet.
Rarely snod an’ heartsome the room looks, to be sure. You’d best slip
up and take a peep for yourself.”
He cast a glance at the new white-faced clock, which the uncertain
old grandfather was trying to talk down. “Happen I’ll have a look
after I’ve gitten back. I’ll likely miss the trap if I gang now. Any
road, mind and see you hap him up warm. He’s shivered many a time at
Marget’s, I’ll be bound!”
“There’s plenty blankets on the bed, and I’ve put him yon quilt as we
bought at Wilson’s sale. It’s as good a quilt as ever I see. I mind
Maggie Wilson making it herself. As for t’ blankets, they’re the best
there is in t’house.”
“Ay, ay,” Thomas nodded, “hap him up. Give him the best we’ve got,
and you’ll not be wrong.”
“I’d think shame o’ myself to give a visitor owt else.” There was a
stress in her voice that made him turn his head, but she was going
away from him into the scullery and he could not see her face. Her
last words, however, were flung back with the crisp cheerfulness to
which he was used. “I’ll be getting they scones buttered while you’re
off.... Now don’t be mooning about and miss your time!”
She disappeared through the open door, and he was left to his vigil
over the marsh. His mind, released from the tie of another in the
room, began slowly and toilsomely to go back over old events. Once he
sighed sharply, as if oppressed, but it was simply with extraordinary
relief. He knew now, from his sudden sense of mental ease, how he
had worried and fretted about the old dad. It was as if something
he had ignored had been tugging at his coat, and now he could look
behind him without fear of what he might see. He was free, or thought
himself free, of that troubling episode at his back ... yet wondered
ever so vaguely why there should still be a sore place at his heart.
It was not as if he regretted anything he had done, or that he would
not have been ready to do that particular thing again. There had been
only one way for him, and he had taken it, and if it had happened
a thousand times he would have taken it still, but nevertheless
it had left him with a latent fear of life, a darkening sense of
indebtedness to fate. Even now, with the whole business right at
last, and the road clear as the stars before his feet, he suffered
a faint oppression of the mind. He supposed he would always have a
bitter memory of the breaking up of the old home. Even an outsider
must have felt it to some extent, an outsider who had had nothing
to do with the cause. The old man had taken it so hard and yet with
scarcely a word, so painfully like a hurt but yielding child; and
he himself had done nothing but stand by, because just at that time
he had not been able to help.... When he came to that word “able,”
it somehow stuck in his throat.... Anyhow, able or no, he had not
helped, that was sure; and so the old man and the home had had to
go....
That was after his mother’s death, of course, and after his eldest
brother’s death, too; not that matters had ever been very grand at
Beautiful End. Kit had never been a practical man at any time of his
life, had never known the substance from the shadow or the business
from the dream. He would be off playing his fiddle while crops waited
and stock starved. Not but what he had played it rarely—everybody
admitted that. There was not one of his sons but was proud of his
gift, however awkward the moment of demonstration and the certainty
of its cost. Even among themselves they allowed no criticism of his
method of life, and certainly they never allowed it from anybody
else. They had the strong filial feeling natural to their breed, and,
added to that, a vague sense of something helpless and wonderful
entrusted to their care. Lacking the gift on their own account, they
yet shared an artistic strain which bade them pay tribute to the
glamour, and worship, if they could not follow, the gleam. They had
no quarrel with music if there was also daily bread. It was only that
farming and suchlike didn’t agree.
Perhaps things might have been better if Kit had gone to a new spot
instead of following his father on the farm where he was bred. For
once, in the shock of change, he might have seen both place and life
in a practical light, and begun, at least, on normal, practical
lines. But on the marsh, where he had dreamed as a lad, and which he
had never left, he had never had even the vestige of a chance. For
him it was saturated with wonderment, tuned to the first magic of
his fiddle, set in the light that never was on sea or land. It was
impossible for him to reduce his particular enchantment to sound
commercial terms. The place wasn’t even real to him in the sense that
it was real to others. It was the land of faery, and he had never
come out of that land until—well, if the truth were known, he had
never really come out. Spiritually, he had gone on living as he had
lived as a youth. Life had not altered for him even when he succeeded
to the farm, except that the rent which had stood in his father’s
name now stood in his own.
Not that Thomas, brooding as he watched, worked things out for
himself like this. He only said to himself that his father, when he
was young, might have done better with a bit of stirring up. It was
right enough for a man to come back to his own place, as he himself
had done, but it did him no harm to have a look at other methods
first. Rooted and grooved in a spot, he might never grow up, and
so throw the whole chain of existence out of gear. This bother,
for instance, of the last few years—why, it should never have been
allowed to happen at all. If Kit could have framed a little better at
his job ... if he could have hung on a bit longer ... made a little
brass ... but where was the use of thinking about that now? Farther
than this little mental growl, Thomas neither argued nor blamed. He
accepted his father and his doings as he had accepted them all his
life, and traced the shadow that lay on the evening’s joy no further
than himself.
The three sons had been dark, silent men, caring for little beyond
their work and the ordinary pastimes of their class. They had been
cradled in music, but, as Thomas said, its only expression through
them was in their heels. They were all good dancers, and had been
known as such far and near, appearing at every gathering with their
serious faces and light feet. They were wrestlers as well, though
here Bob was easily first, just as in the dancing Thomas was easily
first. John might have been better than either, but he had not tried
or not cared. Both the younger sons had gone out to service as lads,
while John stayed to help his father at home. John had never married,
never gone away to stay, never moved one day out of the groove into
which he had been born. He had worked hard, but without zest, and in
his work had kept to the old ways, instead of moving with the times.
It was almost as if he had known his life would end at thirty-eight,
and so the travail of progress had not seemed to him worth while. He
never talked of the future as the others did when they met, even
unlucky Bob, with all the weights he had made such haste to fasten
about his neck. Thomas remembered him moving alone about the level
fields, a melancholy figure in spite of his youth and strength. He
had been most at home with the stock, friends, whose lives, like his
own, were ruled from without and had but a little day. But as long as
he lived he had kept things going on the farm, just as his mother had
kept things going in the house. And then, just over two years ago,
the pair of them had died within a month; he, of a slipping ladder on
a stack; she, in the new-established order of change. Shortly after
had come the final change of all, when the living had followed the
dead from out the house.
John had been only a negative sort of success, but Bob had been a
failure all along the line. He had not liked his first situation
from the start, and it was not long before the situation ceased to
care about him. He had taken to changing places very soon, and, as
is usually the case, the changes were mostly towards a lower grade.
Marriage had anchored him, after a fashion, but at the same time it
had finished his chance of ever rising higher. He now lived in the
village across the marsh, acting as odd-job man to a cattle dealer in
the place. His cottage was an abode of tempest and wrath, slatternly
beyond belief, full of crawling and screaming children and the loud
alarums of a nagging woman’s voice. It was easy to see where Bob
would probably end, with a public-house almost cheek by jowl with
his own. And yet, as Agnes had just said, he had been a smart enough
lad....
Thomas, indeed, was the only one who had made out, unless John’s
translation from a workaday world might be counted a higher
achievement still. At his first hiring he had found for himself a
rare good spot, and had stayed there solidly all through. Bob’s
flights of fancy in the way of new jobs did not appeal to his
farther-seeing mind; never, indeed, stirred him to anything but a
sort of wondering contempt. He knew what he wanted, and, once set
upon the course that led to it direct, could not be forced from it
or lured aside. He had his settled programme of life long before it
came anywhere within his reach. He would save enough brass to start
comfortably on his own; he would take a farm on the marsh, and he
would marry Agnes Black. But he was thirty-five before any of these
things came to pass.
Yet, up to the last few years, he had had no doubt about them at all.
They would follow, he thought, as naturally as harvest followed
seed-time or summer fulfilled spring. Nature’s checks to the plans
of man had, as a rule, some form of logic at their back, and were
generally rectified in Nature’s time. Checks in his own scheme, if
they came, would follow the same lines, and his practised country
patience would be able to see them through. And then suddenly and
with lasting amazement he discovered that life was not like that—that
it was more complicated and subtle than Nature, more idiotic,
incomprehensible and perverse. It threw things awry without purpose
or natural law, wrecked, and did not renew, robbed, and did not
repay. His way had been blocked, as if by logs piling terribly in a
stream, and there had been nothing for it but to hack himself out.
Two years ago he had been just two years behind his plans. His
savings were not yet quite full-grown, his wife was still to
secure. Not but what things were more or less fixed between Agnes
and himself, and had been, indeed, for long. It had been a kindly
courting, too, with never a quarrel of any sort to break its charm,
and scarcely a casual look or impatient word. Most certainly it had
not resembled in any degree the cat-and-mouse exhibition presented
by Marget and Bob. He had never imagined that they might slip apart
until the thing was on the point of coming about, still less ever
dreamed that they might do so with the end of the road actually in
sight. Nevertheless, when the changes had begun with a rush, the
first of them had announced itself just here. Suddenly she had turned
from him, half hesitating, it was true, but turning away from him,
all the same. She was not certain, she said, that she could marry
him, after all, and it was better to think now than on the other side
of the ring. She had no reason to give except that she wasn’t sure,
and all his wrath and persuasion could not change her mind. He was
free to leave her, she told him, if he thought it best, or welcome
to wait for the puzzle to come right. He had chosen to wait, if the
impossibility of doing anything else might be dignified by the name
of choice. Sometimes it seemed to him that they had already waited
too long, but he was unable to tear himself from his settled course.
Months of bewildered argument and rage brought him no nearer the
solution of the point. Perhaps, after all, they had not been suited,
in spite of the pleasant years. Perhaps it was just that the sight of
the end, which sent him pressing on, had startled her to a halt and a
springing aside.
Thomas, for whom nothing had ever gone amiss, found it hard to
believe that fate was really playing him false. His disgust, when
the truth was finally forced upon him, was that of a man seeing for
the first time the other side of the shield. The trouble and dread of
his threatened loss had all the freshness of first pain and dread. It
seemed to him that, if he lost Agnes, everything else in his scheme
of life might possibly go as well; and while he was passing through
this uncertain time, trying hard to regain his old security of
belief, the trouble at home threatened afresh the ground beneath his
feet.
He had been fond of his mother, and was shaken by her loss, and he
was hit, as well, by his brother’s accident and death, yet neither
calamity seemed for the moment to threaten either his future or his
present way of life. Yet he must have known what would happen if his
thoughts had not been entirely fixed elsewhere. Kit had muddled along
for a while with the help of a hired man, and then one night he sent
for his two remaining sons.
Standing there in the caressing sun, with achievement behind him and
the crown of achievement before, Thomas looked back on the long walk
in the rain, the dull sands and the grey and sodden marsh. Under the
waning light and the veil of the wet they had looked all one, all an
untouched waste, unclaimed of any but the sea. And to-night even the
sea seemed to refuse a thing so desolate and bare, leaving it lying
as if accursed between heaving water and the richer land. The younger
brother, tramping the dyked road, had come upon Bob, slouching slowly
ahead, a dreary figure still drearier than the day. The farm, when
it stood up to them on the flat, looked lonely and helpless beyond
words, a lost and futile thing of no account. They could have sworn
that it was empty and that no one moved in the rooms, either human or
ghost; that neither chair nor bed nor old press held a trace of souls
that were gone. Only those who loved it would not mock at its name
to-night. But as they came nearer by degrees, and its blank face took
something of meaning and shape, they heard the thin voice of a violin.
They had stopped, he and Bob, by the meadow-gate, and listened awhile
to the trembling sweetness charming the sad marsh. It had seemed the
smallest thing in the world between the vastness of earth and sky,
and perhaps also the bravest thing in the world as well. They had
forgotten for a moment how the rain was beating over the fence. They
had forgotten the untended fields and neglected home. They had even
forgotten the probable errand on which they were bent, the oppression
of which had clogged their feet as they came. They remembered
together little things out of the past ... a wooden cradle with
carved sides ... apples in the orchard ... long paddles on warm sands
... skating ... the red light of a hearth ... an aproned form with
a face that was always looking out, set for them at every window,
watching for them at each door. Every picture they saw was bathed in
sun or fire, because the notes of the fiddle were touching it with
gold. Thomas forgot while he listened that life was twisting itself
into knots in his helpless hands. Out there, while the fiddle spoke,
Agnes still loved him and had never looked aside. And perhaps Bob,
too, found an old dream waiting on the desolate road.
The life of the house seemed to sink when the fiddle stopped, and
as they came towards it across the field with heavy, squelching
steps, it had the effect of retreating instead of drawing near.
Even when the door opened at the click of the garden gate, showing
their father’s figure in the square, the impression was that of a
shadow opening in a shadow’s face. They had gone in silently, their
mood gentled by that singing voice over the marsh, and the door
closing behind them had shut out the rain but nothing else. The dusk
and sadness claiming both land and sea were all through the lost
farmhouse as well.
The three of them sat in the kitchen without fire or light, and the
younger men said nothing while the old man put his case. They stared
at him dumbly in the dusky place, seeing little through the gloom
but the silver of hair and whisker round his head, and hearing his
voice, when they looked away, as if it came from nobody at all, the
vibrating old voice that had mostly been used for greeting and song
and seemed to have borrowed a sweetness from the violin. There were
only the three of them in the shadowed room, but it always seemed
possible that there might be more. Sometimes, indeed, Thomas forgot
that John was no longer there, and strained his eyes towards the
corners to make sure. He had always been so still and rare of speech
that death did not seem to have taken him away. Afterwards, it seemed
to Thomas that many had sat in judgment on the case, for shame can
multiply a face or two into a crowd. The wettest moon he had ever
seen had suddenly appeared at a pane, like a stranger walking and
staring round the house; and where the waves were breaking below the
farmyard wall was the dismal wash of a rain-whipped, lifeless tide.
Old Christopher Sill had not beaten about the bush; indeed, he was
disconcertingly direct. He told them quite simply that he had had
notice to quit, making no attempt at either excuse or complaint.
Both, of course, had guessed that the end was getting near, but it
came as a shock when finally declared. The thing was common enough,
indeed, in such lives as theirs, but it had not happened to the
Sills for more than a hundred years. They had just gone on, father
and son, until they chanced to come to Kit, and, if John had lived,
he might very possibly have gone on, too. They had often wondered,
Thomas and Bob, why he had never pressed his father to resign, but
they guessed at the double reason now. John’s feet had long been set
on a different road, and the money behind the farm had been dwindling
every year. Money vanished with Kit as the notes of his fiddle
fluted out to sea, and he troubled as little about it as about the
music-gold that he could so easily recreate. The steady downgrade
on which he had lived had not been able to push the lesson home. It
had never seemed possible that he could leave the farm, and the bare
formality of a notice to quit could not make it possible now. Surely
there could be nothing more right than that a man should spend his
last breath where he was born, and especially one of the rooted,
marsh-bred Sills? He only asked for a year or two at the end of all
that had gone; couldn’t Thomas and Bob see that he had that? A year
or two, happen—and happen not so much. He wouldn’t be long at his
dying, he felt sure.
“But ye’ve gitten your notice,” Bob observed, staring at the floor,
and Thomas had looked out of the window at the sky. Neither needed
telling what was coming next, and each was getting ready to meet it
in his way.... All those generations of Sills had kept Kit on the
place long after a less tie-bound landlord would have turned him out,
and they gave him a further chance of rescue now. The Squire was
willing to let the farm to one of the lads, provided he could show a
reasonable guarantee. “Then happen you’d let me bide wi’ ye till I
was finished,” Kit said at the end. “I partly what think it wouldn’t
be so long.”
Even in the dusk, and doggedly turned away, they had been conscious
of his eyes, moving enquiringly from face to face. Both of them,
staring either at the sky or at the floor, saw equally the gleam
of the white head turning and pausing and always turning again. In
the house, in spite of its dumb ghosts, there was still the strange
emptiness that stays so long after a death, as if out of a full cup
some portion has been spilled. The silence enfolding the brothers
seemed to beg to speak for itself, to deplore and refuse the harsh
necessity of words. But still the old man’s eyes travelled and
begged; and at last the slack-shouldered elder moved his head in a
dreary shake.
“I’m no use to you that way, Father, I doubt,” Bob said. “What this
place wants is brass, and I’ve none o’ that at my back. It takes me
all my time and more to shift along as it is, as folks in plenty’ll
tell you if you ax. It’s no manner o’ use my thinking o’ the farm.”
There was a second pause after that, and with it a sense in the air
that the question had passed on, but nobody answered it except by
that silence which resisted and refused. Then Bob spoke again, with a
sort of half-shamed urging in his tone. “The lad here mun ha’ saved a
bit by now. Happen Thomas could see to help you out.”
Undoubtedly Thomas had seemed the one to help—the youngest, the
strongest, and the man who had the brass. It was well enough known
that he had saved, had been careful and patient, anxious to lay by.
They knew, too, that he meant to take a farm, and here was Beautiful
End for the lifting of a hand. What could he possibly want that
would be more likely than that? Bob, who could as well have taken
the Hall itself as the little farm, envied his younger brother with
all his heart. It was on Thomas the old man had relied, never on
Bob; that was perfectly clear to the one who had not made out. The
asking of them together had been only a form, a polite concession
to conservative family dues. Thomas was the right and proper person
to respond; to put it plainly, he was the only one who could. But
the claim on his help had come at the worst possible time, and his
natural kindly instinct smothered in revolt.
“Not but I doubt Marget would never ha’ come,” Bob was drawling on in
his tired voice. “There’s over much work on a farm to suit her by a
deal. I reckon she’d ha’ thought it a dreary spot an’ all. She’s one
as likes seeing folks go by, and a sight o’ clattin’ an’ suchlike in
the street. But the lad here isn’t bothered wi’ a missis just yet,
nor like to be, as far as we know. There’s nowt to keep him from
throwing up his job. He’s free to do as suits him, is Tom.”
And still Thomas did not speak, ashamed of himself and yet holding
himself hard. The aversion with which he had set out to meet this
probable demand arose in him again in a fierce flood and all but
forced him to his feet. It was a wet night, or he might never have
come at all, but on an evening like this Agnes would be sure to be
fast at home. There would be no chance of meeting her about the
fields or lanes. He could never have brought himself to come so
far, while the hope of her face was behind each turn and hedge....
Yet here he was being asked to leave the spot for good—he, whose
uncertainty could not stay one hour!
Suddenly he spoke, without preamble or excuse, long after the
question seemed to have fainted away and died, ashamed. “I’m no use,
neither,” he heard himself saying at last, his voice sounding dull
and cold over the wrath and shame within. He was still staining at
the sky while he spoke. Failure may look at the floor because of the
burden on its back, but success, when it makes its refusal, must look
up. It was then that the moon slid round the corner, and drew nearer,
and looked in. He felt a spasm of rage against it, as at another
spectator of the ignoble scene.
“Ay, but you’ve the brass saved all right!” Bob exclaimed, twisting
his head to get a glimpse of his brother’s face. His discomfort at
his own position in the affair seemed for the moment to be swallowed
up in surprise. “Many’s the time you’ve tellt me on’t, I’ sure, and
how you meant taking a farm afore so long. I’d ha’ thought this had
fallen in for you just right.”
“I’m not ready,” Thomas said doggedly. “I mun have a bit more time.
Happen another year I could see my way....”
“A year’s neither here nor there, surely, if yon’s all?”
“It’d be two, happen—ay, and maybe more. I don’t rightly know. I
can’t rightly say.”
“Ay, well, it’s now or never for the old dad,” Bob said. “A year
or two’s no use to the old chap, wi’ notice to quit pinned to his
jacket-tail. What’s gitten you, lad, to be hanging back like this?”
He raised his voice and spoke more firmly, sure of his cause. “The
spot’ll suit you, waint it, come to that?”
“Ay, I’d like it right well.”
“Well, then, whatever’s to do?” Bob peered at him curiously, struck
by the mixture of longing and dogged resistance in his tone. “If
it’s nobbut a matter of a pound or two, you can fetch up easy enough
on yon. There’s a deal o’ folk’d lend you a hand, seeing how you’re
placed. It’s more than time, too, you were starting on your own. It
doesn’t do to stop in service over long. You get kind o’ fixed and
feared o’ striking out.”
“I’ll strike right enough, never you fret—I will that. But it’ll be
in my own time....”
“You can’t always suit things just to the tick.... Eh, I wish the
chance had come my road, that’s all!” Bob sighed and frowned,
depressed by the thought of what he had missed, and the folly which
refused what he would so gladly have seized. “But it’s no use my
thinking on’t, so that’s flat. Even if I could borrow the brass, I’d
never catch up with it, I doubt, and there’s Marget to be suited in
t’matter, as I said afore. Nay, I’m a broken reed, that’s what it is,
and I mun just let be. It’s for you to say what you’ll do for the old
man.”