closed in before her and held her back. She could see the smiling
faces all along the street, people staring over the shoulders of
others or peering over their heads, leaning out of upstairs windows
and sitting along the wall. There were even faces peeping down from
the trees, and drawn up close to the kerb was the Squire’s carriage
and pair. The horses’ heads were turned away from the scene, but the
Squire and his wife were leaning over the hood. Even the coachman
was screwing his neck as far as it would go, and as for the footman,
he had forgotten himself right out, and had turned about and was
kneeling on the seat. And in the midst of the smiles and amusement
and applause the babies bobbed and moved with never a smile, and the
old man played as if he played before kings.
“_Here’s a prisoner we have got,
We have got, we have got.
Here’s a prisoner we have got,
(My fair Ladye!)_
_What’s the prisoner done to you,
Done to you, done to you?
What’s the prisoner done to you?
(My fair Ladye!)_
_Stole my watch and broke my chain,
Broke my chain, broke my chain.
Stole my watch and broke my chain,
(My fair Ladye!)_”
It was the first and only time that Marget’s children got anywhere
near his heart. Even the elder ones had forgotten to be cross and
ugly under the spell of the game. They laughed and skipped as they
watched, and sang the tune and clapped their hands with the rest. As
for the red-haired baby, Kit’s eyes followed it all the time. He
had given up the red-haired baby latest of all, and now it seemed
he had captured it at last. It seemed to him for the first time
to have a look of his own babies, who were either dead or lost in
the likenesses of men. He watched it stumbling over its own feet
and taking headers over its dirty gown. In the house it would have
screamed until it choked, but now it picked itself up without a
sound, and the solemn intensity never left its face. He watched it
tail up behind the rest until it was circled by the gaolers’ arms,
and saw its eyes widen as sentence was pronounced.
“_Off to prison she must go,
She must go, she must go!
Off to prison she must go,
(My fair Ladye!)_”
The fiddle shivered and halted and the tune nearly broke. It
seemed to him suddenly a rather cruel little game. It was not a
game, really, but a memorial to a tradition—the tradition that the
foundation-stones of London Bridge had been sprinkled with the blood
of little children. The babies were right who treated it as drama and
not play. Ever since the beginning of the world children had been
martyrs in some cause, and in the little song was the sound of all
that they had suffered through the years. When the fiddle jarred the
enchantment halted, too, and into the red-haired baby’s face came
panic fright. It was at that moment that Marget broke through the
crowd and snatched it into her arms.
The babies tumbled about her as if she had struck them down, flung
out of the magic, bewildered and alarmed. Some of them burst into
loud sobs, and even above Marget’s voice came the red-haired baby’s
cries. She hustled the crowd right and left with a fierce arm, that
seemed mighty enough to push even the Squire’s carriage out of the
way. Coachman and footman were already mere liveried backs, with a
couple of crested buttons winking in the sun. “Making such a stir in
front o’ folks’ doors,” Marget said, “and keeping the poor barns from
their tea an’ all! It was a pity folks hadn’t summat better to do
than to go dancing and singing like a German band. But there was no
sense o’ decency in yon wastrel she and her husband had to keep. You
might as well keep a dancing bear and ha’ done wi’ it right out!”
She reached Kit where he stood with a dropped bow, and caught hold of
his arm with an angry pull. He moved mechanically at her touch, and
was dragged away to the house without looking at her once. His head
swam with the violent flow of her speech and the shrieks of the baby
flung across her arm. Once he shrank, hearing a giggle out in the
crowd. But the Squire thanked him by name as he went by.
It passed, of course—all that vast and returning storm which followed
these mistakes, shaking the house like a powder-mill gone up, until
the frightened neighbours hammered at the walls. He left behind him
at last the shock and shame of that afternoon, forgetting it in the
healing of his dreams. But for a time he kept a faint affection for
the red-haired baby who had entered so passionately into his game,
and at first it seemed to be attracted to him, too. It would clutch
itself on to its feet by the help of his knee, and stand staring at
him with great, demanding eyes, as if asking him for the magic they
had made together in the street. It even tried to play the game by
itself, mopping and mowing in its trailing skirt, but the fiddle
never came to its aid, and very soon it ceased to ask. It forgot to
lift up wondering, seeking eyes, by which even the dirtiest baby may
win a heart, and became again the chief terror of the house. Always,
that is, excepting Marget herself. But then Marget’s terror was on
a plane of its own. The red-haired baby, at least, was human in its
misdeeds, but Marget was elemental, inhuman as packing ice.
And yet, even after the link with the baby had gone, a touch of
feeling for Marget stayed with Kit. He had had a glimpse of her
while it stood in the gaolers’ hands, and the game had begun to
harrow its little soul. Marget had looked as perhaps those other
mothers had looked, as mothers always look in the grip of the great
fear.... While he remembered it, he saw her with different eyes.
But even that attempt at sympathy went the way of the rest at last.
Marget was as open-handed with her smacks as she was open-mouthed
with abuse, and the red-haired baby came in for the hardest smacks
of all. He watched long enough for that glimpse to come again, but
it never did. He was one of those who make angels out of a passing
smile, and even to Marget he looked to show a wing. But the feet
of even his wandering trust had struck a blind alley at last, and,
seeing the face of her daily life, he forgot the look that had made
him drop his bow.
It was shortly after this, too, that the Persecution of the Fiddle
began, leaving him little time for dreams or anything else. All his
life the fiddle had been secure as the Lady riding through Ireland in
her gems, but it was in peril in a robber-country now. On the marsh
he had never been afraid to lay it down where he chose, on table or
chair, in the garden or the hedge-side. Somebody was sure to bring
it back if it was lost, and nobody ever dreamed of doing it harm.
Sometimes his own dog fetched it home, without as much as a scratch
on the shining wood, and once a butcher had seen it in the grass,
and turned his horse with it on the road he had come. And there was
a tale that a great musician had found it on the shore, and taken
it far out and played it on the sands. Kit could never be persuaded
to speak of that, because it was the nearest thing to stealing that
had come the fiddle’s way. Besides, he had an idea that it was never
afterwards quite the same. There was a certain un-English fierceness
in the lower notes, an occasional puzzling wildness in the higher.
It had gained something rather wonderful and strange, but it seemed
to him that it had lost something, too. Still, the fiddle itself had
come back safe to the farm, with a little note of thanks that was
signed by a famous name.
He kept his trick of confidence for months after he arrived at
Marget’s house. The fiddle came down with him in the morning when he
rose, and during the day might be found anywhere at all, from the
door-mat to the mantelpiece or the flowerless flower-box on the sill.
It was a miracle that it escaped being thrown on the fire, or stamped
to pieces under the children’s feet. There were occasional terrible
moments when it really disappeared, and nobody would help him in the
search. Once it was away from him for a whole night, and he sat on
his bed in the dawn, and was wholly uncomforted by his magic tree.
But he did not believe that it was lost, and he was right, for during
the morning a neighbour brought it timidly to the door. He learned to
be careful, however, after that, and seldom let the fiddle out of his
hands.
But now Marget announced boldly that she meant to destroy it
before she was done. Perhaps she was really ashamed because her
father-in-law had fiddled in the street; she had so little of any
other shame that at least there was plenty to spare. Perhaps it was
just a natural hate of a beautiful thing beyond her ken, or a grudge
for that touch of terror in the red-haired baby’s face. In any case,
she meant to steal the fiddle as soon as she could, and make an end
of it before his eyes. She let the children share in this pleasant
game, offering a reward, and setting them to catch him off his guard.
She could not take the fiddle from him by force, because in spite of
his age he would have given her a hard fight. Besides, there was as
much pleasure in the promise of the crime as there could possibly be
in the crime itself. She was always hinting at plots that couldn’t
help but succeed, and her nods and winks to the grinning fry turned
the old man cold. Her provisions for the doom of the fiddle were
various in the extreme. She would burn it ... break it in pieces
with the axe ... crucify it on the kitchen door. She would give it
to the ragman to take away in a bag, or to the children to bury in
the field. She would fling it into the barrel out at the back, and
they would all stand round and watch it sink and drown. “And what’ll
Gran’pa do wi’ his daft self then?” she would ask of the children
with meaning smiles, while Kit sat still before an untouched plate.
The children would echo her words and nudge each other and laugh, and
he would clutch the fiddle under the table until it spoke.
In the dark well where it was so difficult to see he felt always
about him creeping fingers and prying eyes. In the narrow room which
had neither corners nor dreaming-places for the old, there seemed
always a host of spies that crouched and peered. When he drowsed in
spite of himself on a hot afternoon, he would start awake to find
stealthy hands grasping at the treasure on his knee. Instinct told
him, as a rule, when the enemy was about, but sometimes the fiddle
warned him with a speaking string. He used to think that it knew its
danger as well as he; but of course it didn’t do to trust to that.
Small wonder he learned to take it with him in his dreams!
He thought once of asking Thomas to take it away, so that at least it
would be safe from Marget and her gang. This was on one of the days
when his fear was more than he could bear, when the hints and nudges
had over-tried his mind. What troubled him most was the thought of
the fiddle being drowned. He pictured it at the bottom of the barrel
in the dark, a choked and silenced creature rotting out of reach. He
saw himself, armed with a stick, everlastingly trying to drag it up,
and for ever watching it drift down again to die. It would be like
seeing some singing-bird thrust under to drown, not once, but many
times before it sank. At least it would have a chance of life if it
was given away; it might hear itself speak, might even come to be
loved. And if they broke it to bits, at least it would die quick, but
he could not endure that rotting by degrees. He would find it hard to
sleep when they took it away, but if it lay in the barrel how could
he sleep at all? So when Thomas, after his duty visit, rose to go,
the old man followed him out into the street. In the dark he felt
the fiddle thrust into his hands, and listened dully to the hurried
request. “I’ll see to it, never fret,” he said, when he understood,
and moved away with the fiddle under his coat; but he hadn’t gone
far before Kit was at his side, begging in anxious tones to have it
back. So master and fiddle returned together to the house of hinting
and spies. He said to himself that they might take it from him if
they could; at least he could never bring himself to send it away.
When Marget had her will of them both at last, it was his habit of
old time that delivered them into her hands. A man from the marsh
came along the street and hailed Kit through the window as he passed,
and Kit rose and ran out as if an angel had beckoned through the
pane. Marget heard him chattering in the street, and found the fiddle
lying on a chair. He did not see her or even feel her near, stooped
like a vulture over its watched-for prey. The strings jarred together
as she took the fiddle up, but he never heard them or even turned his
head. He went on talking and laughing in the street long and long
after the fiddle had disappeared....
The week that followed was just seven days and nights blotted clean
out of his tale of life. He never spoke of his loss, nor did he even
begin to make a search. He said nothing even in the first shock of
finding the fiddle gone. He just stood and stared at the chair where
it had lain as one stares at a shell where the spirit has once been.
The sense of irrevocable loss was as clear about the chair as about
the heedless dead with their shuttered eyes. Kit had always been
queer about furniture, as Thomas knew, and one of Marget’s unmeaning
chairs said something to him at last.
He did not know whether he spoke or ate during that dead week, but
for the most part he was silent and refused his food. Still, his
absent-mindedness was an old tale by now, so Marget got little
satisfaction out of that. The only difference was that he would not
sit in the kitchen any more, and no amount of abuse could fetch him
back. Perhaps he was afraid of the chair that was like a coffin in
his eyes; at all events, he refused to sit in it again. Instead, he
sat in his bedroom on his bed, staring for ever at his magic tree.
But there was no magic about it now, because the fiddle had gone
away, and without it the fairy glades would never let him in. Yet
still he sat there, staring and staring, while the sun climbed the
morning hills, touched the house in passing with a golden wing, and
fled away to break into colours in the west. Always he sat with his
fingers lightly clasped, as if something were lying within them on
his knee.
So, as it happened, Marget found her vengeance a poor thing, after
all. The scene that she had looked for hung fire and never came
off. There was nothing exciting in the way of pleading and tears;
nothing, in fact, except this absolute blank, risen like a fog
between her victim and herself. Even the children felt that the
situation had fallen flat. Instead of “carrying on,” as they had
hoped, Gran’pa had been as dull as a dead fish. He hadn’t even
spoken, nor did he mean to speak. He had not given them any sort of
scope for their peculiar powers. Why, you might almost have thought
that he didn’t even know!
Marget began to brag of her guilt at last, but it was impossible
to tell whether he took it in. He did not seem to notice her vivid
accounts of how the fiddle had met its end. Sometimes she was
exasperated into contradicting her own tales, but as none of them
seemed to reach him that did not matter very much. She was chiefly
puzzled, however, because he never tried to get the fiddle back.
The cheerful hide-and-seek that she had planned couldn’t be played
because the principal person concerned in it wouldn’t take part. He
never went to the water-butt to peer into its depths. He never poked
about the ashheap or raked the fire. He did not even dig about the
garden, as if hoping to find it among the flowers. He knew Marget
would never give it as clean a burial as that. All that he did was to
shut himself up and stare, until even she began to feel uneasy in
her mind. It would be a poor victory if he was too crushed to care,
and in any case she did not want him helpless on her hands. Daft as
he was, he was of use to her sometimes, a caretaker for the house
when she wanted to be out, a stick to frighten importunate beggars,
a hodman to lift a load; and always a peg upon which to hang her
tongue. If she drove him clean crazed, he would be a greater burden
than before, and certainly it looked as though that might be the end.
So it came about that, after a week, there was a miracle for which he
had not even prayed.
He was sitting as usual on his bed, holding between his hands the
thing that wasn’t there, when down in the kitchen he suddenly heard
its voice. He hardly knew it at first—it was so raucous and strange,
a voice that wept and screamed, and tried to keep silence but was
forced to speak, and was like to destroy itself with its own rage;
yet in all its wrath and pain it was still the voice he loved. He
tried to get up to go to its help, but even the beginning of the
miracle held him chained. He could only sit still and tremble ... and
wonder and wait....
The children were all together downstairs, and one of them had the
fiddle under his chin, while the red-haired baby, in its trailing
skirt, mopped and mowed in the forgotten game. Some of the magic had
come back, in spite of the fiddle’s terrible voice. They laughed
and clapped as they had done in the street, and the baby’s face was
exalted and set. Even the fiddler had a shadow of Kit’s dignity and
poise. There was an air of innocent joy strange in the dingy room,
a faint recalling of beauty once perceived. Marget, coming in on
the little scene, found herself outside it and shut off. There was
no part for her in the play they had learned from the daft old man,
who knew no better than to go fiddling in the street. All her fierce
jealousy was aroused by this faithfulness to his little moment’s
power. It seemed to her, watching, that he stood between the children
and herself, teaching them something she couldn’t learn, and taking
them where she could not go. For every mother there is a Piper
drawing her child away, as even Marget was coming to understand.
Perhaps she had seen his reflection in the red-haired baby’s face,
and suddenly saw it again now. In any case, she brought the show to
an end, clouting both player and dancer over the head, and making
away with the fiddle up the stair. Through this enveloping cloud Kit
heard the door burst open at his back, and saw a shining thing flung
quivering on the bed. He did not move until she had banged out once
more, and then after a long while he turned and put out a hand ...
found shape and touch just as they had been, and a sweet answer from
every string....
There flashed back on him at once all his vision and his peace. The
tree stood up again in the midst of wonderland, and on either side of
it the world was wide. His link with its golden solitude was renewed,
so that it was his to wander in when he would. And after a while,
when the first relief was past, his mind went off down the road that
led to the sea.
Always, until they took the fiddle from him, he had been able to see
the marsh when he chose, the broad, flat stretches and the clean,
soft lines. There, where his mind went, was no muddle of mortar and
folks. There was no street with the houses crouching cheek by jowl,
muttering secrets into each other’s ears; houses, where strange
faces looked in, where dust blew in from the road, where nobody was
securely still and safely alone. Here, nobody died or was born, or
suffered and rebelled, but the whole street knew and put it into
words; but out there none of these things kept one ever on guard.
Nobody heeded one’s secrets but the sea, and that never told until it
gave up its dead. And the sea never heeded, however folk behaved.
One could run there, while here one could only walk, could shout and
sing without troubling the police; while the strains of a fiddle
crying out its soul were as free as a gull crying behind a boat.
There was always sun for him when he thought of the marsh, the
early-evening sun on road and field. It lay in a great, golden sheet,
unbroken as always on a western marsh, stretching out to the far line
of the sea. No matter how it rained in the street, in his mind that
walked on the marsh there was always sun. The shadows were barely
out, and never conquered the gold. And through it along the white
road he came to his home.
But often he lingered so long on the road that his mind never
reached its goal. The journey alone was an adventure in itself,
full of things that could not be missed. There were always growing
things to see in the dykes, marsh-buttercups on some pool, purple
vetches on some hedge. Somewhere a farm would stand up between its
orchard and fields, and meet him always with a new surprise. Houses
never outstared you on the marsh, for all its long distances and
unbroken sweep. They grew upon you by degrees, coming, yet keeping
themselves in reserve, like faces peeping welcome round a porch.
Even his own home on the sand’s edge, alone on its shooting tongue
of land, stood back in a shelter of fence and tree. In spite of its
outstanding position, it was yet serenely aloof. It had the withdrawn
unconsciousness of well-bred folk, an unawareness of alien eyes. You
might stare at it all day long and it would not blink. At Marget’s
you were always conscious of the street outside.
Sometimes he did reach the farm and go in, and on those days he was
a long time coming back. Often he never passed the meadow gate, but
once through that he did not turn until he had reached the house
itself. The gate was troublesome to open because of its broken bars,
and even in his mind he found it hard to move. Even in his mind he
was tired by the time he got to the gate, and so he often stayed on
the near side. He could see the house from there plainly enough, and
it was always ready when he wished to go in. Things waited for him
until he came that way again. The light stayed level and golden on
the evening land. The face of the house was steadfast in its peace.
No need to hurry and force himself if he was tired. It would always
be ready for him when he came.
On the days when he did go in he went with a rush, as if he had
jumped the distance that lay between. He went with the whole of
his energy and desire unwasted by the sweetness of the way. There
he was, through the meadow and the wicket-gate and the house door,
and the miracle was accomplished that brought him home. All the
shadows and dim places of the house rested his eyes, and hinted of
folks who had never gone away. The scent of his own place was rich
with his memories of the past, tangible things that asked for his
hand upon their heads. The house was full of that special surprise
which belongs to the things we know by heart; the colour and shape
of them ... the feel of suddenly-opened doors ... the gleam of a
brass handle, the shallowness of a step, the forgotten pattern of
some ancient stuff. A sense of coolness in a certain room, or of sun,
or of firelight on a hearth; atmospheres as full of meaning as if
lavender had been stirred. It was strange how you saw things wrong
when you were living in a house. You had to leave and go back to it
to know.
Of course there were people in the house, but they never spoke to
him or he to them. He saw them sitting and talking or going about
their work, but he never heard them speak. They never looked at him,
either, as he went about. If they had lifted their eyes to look at
him he might have been afraid. But as long as they did not look he
could watch them in peace, the folk who had all been part of his own
life. His parents were there, his brothers and sisters, his wife and
his three sons. The same person at all ages was there, just as he
himself was there at every age, so that the house was full and rich
and warm. He never thought of it as it was when he left, a chilly
case for a wailing violin. As soon as he had gone he filled it again
with all who had a right within its walls, and wandered among them,
quietly content. He could not touch them or hear their voices or meet
their eyes, but he did not want to do any of these things. He could
leave the house as it was with only a little ache, but he could not
have left pleading looks and hands.
Even on the days when he went into the house he did not always go
upstairs, because it meant going too near the dividing-line of which
he was afraid. More often, he sauntered through the rooms below, into
the sudden whiteness of the dairy or the still little parlour shut
like a Sabbath book. Through every window as he passed, a picture
flashed that was old to him and yet strange. He saw each of them now
as if mounted and set in a frame. Things changed about the house
to match his memories as they came, but they never passed beyond a
certain point, and every one of them was mellow and sweet with time.
Looking back, he saw nothing that struck him as being new. It was
all much too beautiful for that.