on the shining green. Going up, as in coming down, they gave the same
impression of moving cloud. They travelled up the fell like smoke
blown from a giant’s pipe, with no hint of the toil of thousands of
little feet. They were going fast, too, though they looked strangely
slow on the vast expanse of ground. It was only when she marked them
by the end of the long stone wall that she saw how rapidly they
climbed. They were like a wave surging always up and up, smoothly,
determinedly, drawn by invisible cords. While her eye still watched
the corner at the top, they were near it, they were round it, they
were all of them silently gone....
After the meal in the big hall there were the usual trotting races
and sports. Thomas had always taken a leading part in these events,
but to-day he kept dismally aloof, unconsciously helping his new
impression on her heart. And at the end of the day there had been
the usual dance.
She happened to be upstairs when the fiddle struck up, and in the
cool of the evening she leaned out to hark. Through the windows below
she caught the jollity of the reel, the thin cry of the strings and
the stamp of feet on the flags. In the room behind her where the
great four-posters were, the shadows were creeping and climbing and
laying the draperies of the night. There were always shadows within
the curtains of the beds, as if they had come for those who had lain
there dead, and had never had time to lift and scatter away. With
the night there were the shadows of night as well, so that in shadow
on shadow those who slept in the beds must lie. On the house itself
there was shadow, the mighty shadow of the fells, and suddenly she
longed for a room on the edge of things, looking starkly out to sea.
There, in the night, one could always breathe, at least. She leaned
further until the roses came up about her face, and then she saw
Thomas standing by the pens.
At once, as she looked, the veil of her long bewilderment fell away.
Now she knew what she wanted, what she meant to do. The wind of that
longing for air and space had swept the cloudy room of her mind, and
there, with his face to herself and his back to the sea, Thomas was
all that the sudden wind had left.... He moved, as if meaning to go,
and almost in panic she turned and ran from the room, flying through
twisting passages and over the sagging floors. Shafts of light rayed
across her from deep-cut window-slits; polished oak doors gleamed at
her back as she sped down the bowed and winding stairs. The flood of
music and dance swelled up to her as she approached, and she paused
for a moment as she passed the room. After the soft purples out of
doors which the sun was leaving behind, the room seemed misty and
full of a golden dusk, yellow with lamps resisting the dying day.
High in the wall the sawing arm that held the bow flung the wild
music over the crowd, whirling figures and brown faces and gowns that
made streaks of colours under the lights. The mist and the music and
the beat of the feet made her head spin as she stood and looked. Her
face and gown were framed by the door and the dark behind, and a
partner began to edge towards her round the crowd. He was still some
distance away when he saw her disappear, like a ghost caught away
from the door by hidden hands. Again the longing for space had seized
her as she looked. She slid round the door and fled to Thomas in the
yard.
They were well on their way to her home before either found anything
to say; and then, “What made you quit so soon?” she enquired with a
rush at last.
He answered her, staring gloomily at the road, that the place was
overcrowded by a deal. He wasn’t as set on dancing as he used.
“Likely I’m getting old,” he added; “that’ll be it.” And then, after
minutes and minutes he let himself go.... “I couldn’t abide hearing
yon fiddle played.’Twas fiddle as fetched me out, if you want to
know.”
He turned his head as he spoke, and tried to look through the hedge,
and it was west and not east of them where the Hall lay that he
looked. Here in the lane, as in the yard, he seemed to hear a fiddle
that was dumb, thin and trembling and clear from the edge of the sea.
Standing outside the dance he had heard the two musics mingle and
clash, and had turned from the sound in the hot room to the sound
that drew over miles from the cool tide.
“What fetched _you_ out?” he asked of her, in his turn.
They had stopped in the road as if at some word of command, and the
swinging curves of the lane went winding before and behind, shutting
them in together this way and hiding them safe together that. The
sun, level on the fields as if smoothed by a hand, was below the
thick barrier of the mounted hedge. Only through chinks or the eye of
a gate could it find a way, to lie in patches on the hedgerow grass,
or splash its pools on the heavily-rutted road. It was more restful
than sleep in that cleft between the fields, where the roses, sprayed
overhead, took a richer colour against the sky. There was green upon
green on the background of dark wood—bramble and hazel, convolvulus
and thorn. There were yellow and purple and white sweet peeping faces
in the grass; ferns, emerald-fresh, stately in thick groups. And
close in the hedge-side, where all else was new, lingered the old
dead beech leaves of the year before, waiting for this year’s leaves
to drift there, too....
Already, though the clippings were barely through, folk were getting
to work at the hay. Away, as the land rose fast, they could see a
cutter at work, and the flash of the horses’ sides as they turned
in the sun. The sound of the cutter made sweeter their solitude and
peace, yet the voice of it in the silence loosened their difficult
tongues.
“I reckon I’ve made up my mind now,” Agnes said, facing him sturdily
as he looked away. “Likely I’ve lost you wi’ keeping you hanging
round so long. It’s nowt to wonder at if you’re tired, I’m sure. But
if you’re still set on our getting wed, there’s nowt as I can see
agen putting up the banns....
“It’s a bit sudden, happen,” she went on, as he did not speak, “and
yet I don’t know as it’s sudden, after all. It’s been coming along
for a goodish while, I doubt, and what finished it off was you
changing your spot in the yard. It made me feel queer like, after all
these years. The folks settin’ round you had all on ’em got homes,
an’ there you were settin’ among ’em wi’ none at all. There was Tommy
Todd, you’ll think on, as nobody need want, wi’ as good a missis as
there is in the country-side. There was Neddy Gibbs—him as is near
half-rocked—he’s a rare good home at the back of him as well. Bob
Martin and Billy Dent—ay, an’ his brother, Willie George—they’ve all
on ’em homes they can gang to if they want. I could see the doors
open at their backs, set for ’em to come in, but I couldn’t see owt
at the back o’ Thomas Sill. I could set a door wi’ the best on ’em,
I’ll be bound! I’m sure an’ certain I’d be fain to try....”
But miracles under one’s eyes are the last things one believes. “It’s
pity,” he muttered, refusing to look up. “I’m right enough where I
be ... you’ve no call to fret. It’s pity ... same as you felt for
him....”
“It’s nowt o’ the sort,” she exclaimed angrily, and then laughed.
“I’ll learn you whether it’s pity if you get talking stuff like yon!
If it’s pity, I reckon any lass would do, same as I rather think I
said afore. But yon home as I’m wanting for you can’t be made by
nobody but me—and—eh, you daft lad—I’m wanting it an all!”
It was the shortest lane in the world, just as the day was the
longest in all time. Often enough, hurrying home, she had sighed at
its length, but now it fled behind her while her feet were still.
Every bend as it came was strange to her eyes, and, turning, she saw
it new from the other side. The sun slid away from the fields like
a curtain silently withdrawn, and up on the higher land the cutter
whirred to a corner and was still. In the lane the night came long
before it touched the land beyond—the visible, purple night that
has no knowledge of the real dark. The roses, paled of their pink,
showed whitened starry faces to the sky, shining above the road like
blossoms laid on a pool. Only where some big tree leaned across was
there any real night, and as they passed beneath it and so out, they
lost each other for a moment in the dark, and found each other on
the further side, just as in life they had lost each other for a
time, and yet come together, after all. They heard the birds stir in
sudden flutters and be still. They heard wild things in the hedgerow
rustle and be still. Horses came to the fence and reached out shadowy
heads, and through continual gates they caught the remnants of the
lingering day. Sheep in the hedge-bottoms rose and scuttered away,
the sound of their going ghostly in the dark. Cattle, lying heavy on
the land, turned unaffrighted eyes at their approach. The night air
pressed close, warm and a little damp, and there was dew on the long
hedge-grass as well as the honeysuckle boughs.
“I doubt it’s over late for the farm,” Agnes murmured once. “Eh, if
we could nobbut set the clock back a year!”
“There’s a chance we might get it yet,” Thomas replied, but with the
new caution he had learned from life. Self-confident Thomas had grown
to be careful how he tempted fate. “The new man’s shaping badly, so
they say....”
She gave a little cry of excitement, and then sighed.
“I don’t deserve it, I’m sure; but eh, Thomas, if we should! We’d
make it the best spot anywheres about, and we’d have your father to
live with us right off. We’d do our best to make up to him all we
could....”
But she had forgotten Kit once more when she found herself at her
gate, and heard her lover’s step going from her down the lane. In
her bedroom she watched the moon come up, over the road where they
had walked, the patient moon that had not hurried or spied. Parts of
the lane would be as bright as day where for their passing had been
a velvet dusk. Folks who walked there now would have to whisper low,
because voices carried so clearly under the moon. They would see
their own shadows close about their feet, so that they would be four
instead of two, and therefore never alone. Thomas and she had had no
shadows at all, and even the shadows of their wasted years had been
hidden by the night.
They had got the farm, after all, but they had had another year to
wait. The new tenant’s fate had hung in the balance for some time,
and though, when the end came, it came short and sharp, there had
been much to do before they could move in. The new tenant, who had
never had time to become an old tenant, had yet contrived to occasion
many repairs. They had had to furnish, of course, and that meant
visits to sales, and hours of pondering in Witham shops. There was
also her mother to settle with a decent hired girl. The old woman’s
house was her own, and she had no notion of coming to the farm. “The
old man’ll keep you stirring, as it is,” she said to her daughter,
when the point was raised. “Young folks as is newly-wed don’t want
old folks hanging round their necks. It’ll make you feel what you’ll
come to, if it doesn’t do nowt else....”
So she stayed in the house between the fields while Agnes went to
the marsh, and though she paid her an afternoon visit now and then,
she could not be coaxed to stop for as much as a night. Agnes would
have been glad enough of her company, at times. She found the marsh
very lonely at first, and the hours were long when Thomas was out
on the land. She did not mind very much when the weather was fine,
and she could see the houses winking across the sands, but it was
dreary indeed when the bay was blotted out and there was nothing
to break the shaken veil of the rain. That was one of her reasons
for welcoming old Kit; they would be such cronies, she and the old
man! She would see him about the garden while she was at work in the
house, and could call to him from the windows if she felt inclined.
Just to hear her own voice answered once in a while would give
the place a feeling of fresh life. They would sit on the new seat
shelling peas, or watching the fishing boats making home with their
catch, their sails three-cornered blurs on the opal evening sky.
They would sit on the white-stoned hearth of a winter’s night, and
watch the fire burn red with the hardening of the frost. He would
have tales to tell when the gales came out in the spring, and the
narrow sea deepened and frothed into driven flood. Thomas would be
out with the sheep, and she would want a tale to distract her from
the storm. And sometimes, perhaps, Kit would play her the old, thin
tunes, bringing the dance-itch back to her sober feet. That careless
pleasure seemed to have dropped behind—not but what she could dance
with the smartest yet. But she seemed to herself to have shut a door
at her back, and behind that door were the strains of a violin.
She began to sing as she went about, and her voice escaped through
the open windows and fled away through the door; yet it was in the
house all the time as well. Down on the shore a man looked up as he
stepped on the sands, hearing the voice that was both within and
without. The house looked empty, he thought, with all its windows
wide, and the voice that sang seemed a bodiless voice, making the
house the emptier for its song. It followed him as he went leisurely
out, making for the channel and the farm across. He did not hurry,
for the tide would not be ready to turn for over an hour. Presently
he was on the bank, hailing the farm for a boat, and his voice,
shrill and lost-sounding in the open space, broke like a cry for help
across the joy of the song. Thomas, down by the gate, heard both the
song and the cry, but the old man coming in the trap heard only the
fiddle singing on his knee.
She sang so long that she did not know when she stopped, but Thomas,
down by the gate, felt as if a fiddle-string had snapped. He had the
same sense as of something wounded and ceasing to be. It was just at
that moment the trap checked at his side....
The wife in the house looked out and saw the marsh roads empty north
and east and south. The crawling speck she had watched so long must
have reached its stopping-place at last. She thought again of the
yacht, swinging so eagerly over the tide, only to turn so suddenly
at the end. Even the highest hopes, it seemed, met barriers they
could not leap.... But the trap, when the time came for it to turn,
trundling over land that had once been sailing-ground as well, would
leave something behind it when it went away. It would leave a heart
in haven, a spirit released, a wanderer come home. She wondered what
they were saying to each other, away down there under the thick
hedges by the meadow-gate. She wondered if Kit would notice the new
gate, its new paint and how easily it swung. The other had been an
ancient of days unwilling to be moved, protesting with rusty hinges
and the creak of rotten wood. And, when once it was opened, you had
to scurry through, so great was its haste to creak itself back to
rest....
But of course he would never notice it to-night, after all the
excitement of the ride. It was one of the grand new changes to be
shown him later on. Thomas, trained in sound methods on a well-kept
farm, seemed already to have changed the character of this. It was
almost as if it had pulled itself together under the mere glance of
his disapproving eye. Roots looked healthy, the corn was even and
getting ahead; the hedgerows were clear of nettles and the meadows
of thistles—on the whole. The hay was doing well and was thick at
the roots; they hoped to be cutting in a week. The old man would
be pleased with the new machines, the cutter and tedder in their
brilliant coats of blue. There were the horses, too, bargains and
rare good beasts. He would hardly know either stable or shippon, with
all that the Squire had done in the way of repairs. And as for all
the fine new things about the house—why, it would take a month of
Sundays to see them all!
She had, in that last pause, one of those rare moments when joy is
awaited fully prepared. All was swept and garnished about her for
this hour, as perfect as she could make it in the time; perhaps it
would never be as perfect again. Now she could put aside the work of
the weeks and meet the occasion with a settled mind. Both to herself
and to Thomas, hardly conscious of it though they were, there was
something symbolic in the coming event. Both recognised, more or
less, that they were owed a grudge by fate. In their search after
happiness, they had made someone sad. In their groping after each
other they had allowed somebody to be alone. Now that life had given
them so much they were ashamed to think that somebody was poor. This
coming of the old man stood for atonement on their part, resurrection
on his. It meant the sanction of fate to hold their consciences
clear....
So they had put into this home-coming everything that they knew of
kindly work and pleasant conspiring and kindly thought. There was
nothing within their compass that they had left undone, nothing
omitted that held a welcome of its own. They meant him to walk
straight into peace out of the passion through which he had passed,
while they looked on with relieved hearts, not quite certain whether
they were forgiven sinners or his guardian saints. Not that it
mattered if only old Kit was pleased; if only their good but troubled
souls might rest.
And still there was no sign of the guest, though she felt sure the
splendid moment had begun. Of course they would wait for a final
word with Bob, after Thomas had helped the old man down. Bob would
be asked, of course, to come to the house, but if he had hired or
borrowed the trap he would have to be getting back. She had never
included Bob in the picture in her mind, except as a part of the trap
as it lumbered away. And that parting crack would not be a long one,
she felt sure. Kit would be tired and fretting to get indoors, and
Thomas would know she was waiting for them—and tea. She was rarely
glad she had got that ham for tea....
Again, as she waited, she felt a wish to go to the gate. There was no
reason, really, why she shouldn’t run down. The old man would likely
be glad of another arm. Folks getting up in years were easily upset,
and joy was often a bit terrible to the old. He would be ready for
bed before so long ... and she would wake in the night and wonder
whether he slept. She forgot the gate in thinking of the room, and
how it would never be quite the same again. Surely there was no harm
in taking a last peep? Those folks at the gate wouldn’t be up yet.
She would hear their voices coming up the field, and could be down in
time to meet them at the door. She looked again and found nothing and
made up her mind. She disappeared up the carpeted stair.
II
Christopher Sill sat in the kitchen at Marget’s, waiting to be taken
away. He was a tall old man, with broad shoulders that were now bent,
blue, inward-looking eyes and quiet ways. In spite of his size he
gave an impression of lightness which was partly the frailty of age
and partly the spirit within, but he was too big for the kitchen,
which was smaller than even his wash-house had been at home. No
matter how he compressed himself, or shrank into corners and held
his breath, he seemed perpetually in the way. His feet, too, which
had been his innocent pride, once so light in the dance, and still
quite neat in spite of their clumsy boots, were, so it seemed, the
largest in the world. Either Marget or the children were for ever
catching them as they passed, and in addition to kicks from other
clumsy boots, he had to bear the onus of every mishap. Apparently his
feet were responsible for every broken pot, for a spilt pan, for the
children’s torn clothes, for the unsteady baby’s every fresh bruise.
Tumbling over Gran’pa was the accepted cause of each new piece of
damage and any sudden, ear-piercing howl. There had been room for
every man’s feet in the house from which he had come, and full room
for a man’s stride on the long levels of the marsh. He had never
realised his actual bodily size before.
Nor had he been conscious that human beings might press too close.
He had never troubled about the crowded rooms in which he had had
to play, the whirling dancers and the thick, lamp-poisoned air.
But he had come to them with his lungs full of the breath of the
marsh, and had gone out of them to the same clean draught. And he
had never minded the press below his platform or around his chair,
or the women’s dresses brushing against his knees. Between himself
and the crowd there had often been the bond of a friendly liking as
well as the tie of a pleasure equally shared. He was depressed by a
scanty gathering, and much preferred a real crush, even though in the
stamping and shuffling his music was apt to be drowned. The things
that the fiddle were saying reached every one of them all the same,
even those who were too far from him to hear. The more happy folks
there were, the more happiness there was in the room, and so it could
never be too full. He had never stifled through the long night hours
as here in Marget’s kitchen he stifled in the day. He and his fiddle
were never alone in there, could never get themselves really out of
sight. The children were always about him, shrill and curious and
infinitely cross, and when Marget came into the kitchen there was
simply no room for anyone else at all. She seemed to be sharply and
aimlessly all over it at once, just as an ill-tempered wind seems to
blow from every quarter at the same time. He shrank if she touched
him or came too near, and her draggled gowns worried him as they
passed.
The kitchen was dark, not only because there would have been darkness
wherever Marget happened to be, but because its one small window was
shadowed by the chestnuts across the road. It seemed like a little
dark well to the man who had lived in a wind-freshened house with
the whole of the open west to lighten his eyes. Yet there might have
been something to love in it, he knew. There were other houses in
the little old row, heavy with roses white and red, with trellised
porches and gay little flower-beds either side of the door, where
on a summer day the kitchens were little dim places of cool peace.
He knew that, because he had been into them sometimes, and rested
for a while in an arm-chair by the whitened hearth, while its proper
tenant left him alone or knitted in silence with soothing little
clicks. There were geraniums in those windows in pots, and cool,
little starched lace blinds, and though the windows were small the
sun reached round the pots and dropped a splash of gold on the stone
floor. The pots themselves made patches of mellow colour on the sill,
and there was a text on the wall which the sun always seemed to find.
“Where the treasure is, there will the heart be also,” it said,
and Kit knew better than anything else in the world what that text
meant. There was a heap of gold in a bottom corner and a clutter of
angel-crowns above, but Kit knew that real treasure had nothing to do
with things like those.
On those summer days the footpath under the trees was black, so that
the lasses passing in their light gowns looked like coloured pictures
on a dark screen. The road was half a patterned shadow flung by the
trees, and half a ribbon of dazzling limestone white. When carriages
came along, the pattern changed to the horses’ backs, and the
silvered harness flashed and shone in the sun. Sometimes there was a
whirl of dust after they had passed, but none of it came in because
door and window were shut, yet he did not feel stifled because the
door stood open into the scullery at the back, and the door of that
again into the garden beyond. You went up to the garden by old steps
sunk deep into the bank, with moss so thick about them that the
colour of it seemed to have grown into the stone itself. There were
bright flowers up above, mere flecks of colour high and far away,
when the sun was standing over the slanting beds. The door made a
picture for him as he sat, a vivid shimmer of gold and scarlet and
green, yet it was too far off to trouble his old eyes. Sometimes he
stared at it until he slept, with the polished fiddle gleaming across
his knee. The silent knitter would watch the fiddle with an anxious
eye, waiting to catch it when it slipped. But even in sleep his
fingers held it safe, because always in sleep it was with him where
he went.