as ink against the swimming gold of the road. Kit’s hat was over his
eyes, so that he did not see Marget at the wheel until she spoke.
Then he looked and saw her white face and her fringe, and the red
head of the baby glowing in the light. “Think on you can come back,”
she said in her hard tones, and repeated it as they slowly drew
away. He nodded vaguely by way of reply, wondering why she talked of
coming back when he was not yet conscious of being gone, and Bob said
hurriedly, “Ay, ay, he knows,” and flourished the ragged whip. The
horse gathered itself into a slow trot, and Marget fell back out of
sight. The river that was yet road began to swim past, lined with
waving figures on its banks. They lurched away straight into the eye
of the sun, and the folk came back to the street to watch them go.
Kit looked a very old man indeed from behind, and Bob’s shoulders
seemed tired and slack. They were like weary folk hurrying into the
light to be made young and strong. The swing of the cart behind the
rolling horse gave them the air of going very fast. Those who were
left talking in the street began to dispute whether the old man would
look round. “Nay, he’s over glad to be off,” said one; “he’ll look
round none, will the old chap, not he!” And another said, “He’s not
found it that grand he’ll risk his neck for it, I’ll swear!” But
a woman said, “We’ve had many a crack together, him and me”; and
another said, “He makes his own things to suit himself with, does
Kit.”
They watched the trap to the end of the street, past the little white
rows that had steps up to the doors, and the woodyard and the smithy
and the farmhouse by the bridge, and still Kit did not turn. The trap
gave a sudden swerve, and they could see the buttered scone held
tightly in his hand. Bob leaned towards him and spoke, but the old
man gave no sign of reply.
And then just at the very last he turned, when another minute would
have blotted him out. All he could see now was the tunnel of the
trees, with the houses showing dimly along the side. He had thought
himself free without so much as a pang, but somewhere a link was
holding, after all. Something was left behind in the village street,
something that would not follow, that could not come. He felt the tug
at his heart and looked back, though it was too late to do anything
but look. It passed as soon as the turn was passed, and his heart
lifted, thinking itself loosed. Nevertheless, something was gone that
he might not find again—something that he had made in prison, and
might not take away.
III
Once they were past the turn, Bob let the horse slip into a walk,
and moved in his seat with something like relief. Now they were out
of reach of the following eyes, and especially of Marget’s terrible
eyes. Even they, piercing as they were, could not bore through stone
and rising earth. The remains of his youth awoke at this touch of
adventure and escape, and he looked about him from side to side, and
whistled as if compelled by the rhythm of the hoofs. The old man
stirred, too, and looked about, and suddenly, with a half-mechanical
lifting of the hand, he began to eat his buttered scone. He forgot it
again, however, after a couple of bites, because his memories crowded
in too fast.
[Illustration: “Houses never outstared you on the marsh”]
[Illustration: “Shore-grasses never really still”]
They came to the twilight spot on the river bank where he had played
until Marget found him out, but he barely looked at it as he drove
past. He was a different person to-day from the shabby fiddler who
had played through stolen hours to an idle ring. A charm had begun
to work after he reached the turn, so that he was no longer the
down-trodden creature rated by a shrew. Now he was just the simple
old man who had lived at the sea’s edge with a fiddle under his
arm. Marget’s voice was no longer in his ears, but the voice of the
peewit and gull and the rush of the incoming tide. And Bob, too, was
changed from a dull epitome of mistakes to a soul who remembered
the pride and spring of life. If Kit had turned to look at him just
then, he would have seen him a moment in his splendid youth, with the
wrestler’s steady eye and muscular grace. He remembered him conqueror
in many a ring, and wondered what had become of his cups and belts.
They were not at the cottage, he felt sure of that. Marget would have
been sure to say they were “in the road,” and at least he would have
seen the children using them in their play. Bob’s exploits were never
mentioned in that house, because Marget was of opinion that wrestling
was low. Probably the trophies had gone long since to provide other
things more necessary if less proud. But in the old days there had
been a grand show of them on the dresser at the farm, polished
glories that, when the dusk came, made silver points of light both
above and within the oak.
The river still ran by them on the left, and beyond it was the
climbing sweep of the park, with the belts of wood binding it east
and west. Once, coming home in the dawn from a dance on the far side,
he had found a little fawn in a dim glade. It was said to be lucky
to find a new-born fawn. Over the hill-top the wishing-trees used to
stand, but he had never been back there since they were cut down.
Things couldn’t alter as long as you didn’t go back. They stayed the
same while you kept them so in your mind.... The further wood was
slowly growing black, because of the hill between it and the west.
At the foot of the wood was the long, clean-coloured house, with its
pillars and flat windows and wide, stately steps. Kit saw his own
life clearly when he looked at the house, because the lives within
and around the house were bound together like a bundle of sticks.
Through all his memories the romance of a higher class ran like a
silken thread through a homespun cloth. High and low, they had seen
together so much that was the same. They had watched death and life
changing the country-side, and awakened each morning to the gift of
the same day. They had done many things together, too, and where one
had done them alone, the one that looked on seemed still to have his
share. Glancing back from a great age, it was hard to tell where the
lives really drew apart. Rich or poor, they belonged to the same
scheme of things, and had their final share in the same earth.
He could not have told you how many squires he had known. The old
family had died off fast, and in the multitude of their names he
could not be certain which had gone churchwards first. He was always
put to it when asked to say whether Philip Edmund or Edmund John had
died before the succession honours were barely his; whether John
Philip or merely John had lived to the striking age of fifty-one.
One who had lived to be really old had died when Kit was a lad; a
fine, old-fashioned autocrat who knew his place. Folks saluted on
all sides when he walked up the street, and the women had had to go
in and shut their doors. Perhaps he was at his best in the church
over the hill, with its hacked Crusader monument and its floor paved
with names. All who served him had to come to church, wearing the
livery of their class. Even the keepers from over the sands had to be
there, crossing the river-channel when they could. The head keeper
wore a scarlet coat, he thought, and the others green, and the men
with the hound-dogs, blue. Coachmen and grooms came in livery, too,
with buttons that shone like little moving moons. Through the deep,
diamond-paned windows you could see the churchyard full of gold
laburnum trees, and old houses with their feet among the tombs, and
luminous patches of morning sky. Those who had been rich or poor in
their lives shared the gold of the laburnum equally in death. Nobody
nodded in the sermon under the Squire’s eye, or moved a foot to the
aisle until he had left the church.
Now they were passing the agent’s house on the right, a creepered
dwelling facing river and hill. It was many a long year since he had
been inside, but a certain room was always clear in his mind. He had
gone to ask for the farm when his father died, and taken with him the
lass he meant to wed. They had sat stiffly on the leather chairs,
speaking their parts as bravely as they could. Ann had been far the
smarter of the two, spoken up better and known what she was about.
Likely enough they had got the farm because of her, but he wasn’t the
only man who had to own to that. She was always the better horse, as
everybody knew....
Now, when he thought of the room, it was like a picture in a book,
and the shy young couple seemed like pictures, too. Yet all his life
he had thought of Ann as she was then, with her dark stuff gown and
the colour bright in her cheeks, and his real self was still that
daft young man, twisting his cap on the edge of an office chair.
Folks said you lived your life before you were twenty-five, and that
all the rest was simply looking back. Marget would have it he had
changed, but change couldn’t touch that picture in his mind. Ann and
Kit still sat on their leather chairs, smiling at him, steadfastly
alive.
The plantation further on which he had seen cut down, was grown again
just as tall and thick. The road was dark and damp under the trees,
cool in summer and muddy in the wet. Down this hill he had once
seen timber-waggons running away. It must have been winter because
it had snowed in the night, and the sky was black and the road just
sprinkled white. The river was the colour of the blade of an axe, and
running as if it was out of control, too. The children were coming
from school when the first waggon got away, with a team of three
horses and a load of larch. The long, clean poles, straight as a
ship’s masts, swung like an anchored boat to the incoming tide. The
driver was running close in front of the wheel, lying back on the
reins and shouting all the way. The children scattered like feathers
thrashed from a bed, and collected again to watch the waggon take the
turn, skidding and swinging broadways to the road. The other waggon
braked along the wall, driving a furrow in mortar and moss and fern.
Kit remembered it all as if it had been last week,—the fine bite in
the air and the thundering hoofs, the musical clink of the brasses
and the fierce clanking of the chains, the swing and heave and weight
and length of the load, the great horses, the nerve and strength of
the men.... When you were old you liked to think of these things, to
remember that not everybody grew old at the same time. Once he had
seen Bob lift a trap through a gate with the help of the cowman from
the Hall. The broad shoulders and strong wrists had raised the wheels
like toys, and the Squire had sat in the trap above their heads and
laughed. And there were still men to do these things though Bob had
fallen out. Youth was still in the world, and hands were firm on a
rein....
Bob pulled up on the bridge before he turned to the marsh, to let him
look at the river from either side. And first he looked at it sliding
through the park, between grass banks and bulrushes and dreaming,
stooping trees. Through the trees he saw flashes of red and white
that were cattle coming down to drink, and where the sun had left the
water black there was the sudden whiteness of still swans. The ghosts
of themselves gleamed at them from beneath, and when the cattle
stooped to drink there would be coloured cattle in the water, too.
The fish were rising as the shadows grew, stirring the river with
their delicate rings. It was hard to remember in the peace that all
water had its toll, even this calm dreamer shedding its gold coat.
Yet it, too, had its weeds that could drag a swimmer down, its black
spot of tradition where the brothers had been drowned, pools where
the lonely had sought a greater solitude still. But to-night the
peace of the evening was glad peace, because of the Tyranny of Marget
overpast.
On one side of the bridge the river was making ready for the night,
but on the other it was still sunny and awake. It had still to get
out on to the sands, to catch the last drop of gold as it fell from
the lingering day. There were no bridges or banks to gather it into
shade, or trees that hushed the water with shadow long before the sun
was under the sea. Once safely out it ran in a glinting length in
which nothing was mirrored but the sky. This was the river he knew
best, that was never afraid of the lonely flat or the Terrible Friend
that was the tide. In the park and the village it was cluttered and
darkened by the growing things on its banks, like the minds of folks
who lived in a close street. Here, on the edge of the world, nobody’s
shadow could tread on your heels. He drew a breath of relief as they
turned for the moss-road, and took another bite from his buttered
scone.
The moss-road, running close beside the sands, with the sea-wall
on its left like a ruled fence, had grassy borders dropping to
grass-grown dykes. Beyond the hedge to the right the fields lay level
and square, planned for the easy handling of the plough. The long
lines of the roots were at right angles to the long line of the road,
and when there was wind over the young corn it billowed across it in
unbroken waves. Marsh and sands were full of these darting lines with
their sense of flight, as if they were arrows shot from the bow of
the eye.
Dropping behind them to the south was the hamlet above the beach that
had once been known as a port. All its white faces were snowy in the
sun, but there were no sails slipping to rest in front of it to-day.
Yet it was not so long since ships had sailed from there to trade
with Spain. Kit remembered the old merchant who had owned the ships,
with his comb of white hair, round spectacles and benevolent grey
eyes. The Spanish trade had died with him, and seemed like a fairy
tale to-day. He had been everybody’s friend who needed a friend, and
there had been hands in his pockets all his life.
The sky in front of them seemed packed to the sun with hills, the
crowded purple mountains threaded with the dales. They looked empty
as hills of the moon from across the bay, but Kit had many friends
along their flanks. The folk there knew to the full what winter
meant, and rain falling like rods from the high tops, and nights
that were endless, whether wild or still, and becks at the flood and
the great drama of the snow. From the marsh the hills were soft as
blue clouds poised light on each other’s backs, but Kit knew that
their bodies were strong soil and their bones of iron. He knew the
rough grass that clothed them as Nebuchadnezzar was clothed with
hair. He knew the exalted joy of mounting on their backs, like riding
some mighty horse across the earth. He knew their crag-faces and
screes, their smooth, green slides and rocky ghylls. He knew their
moorland and moss-hags, their bog-pools and lost tarns. He knew the
lone, white-fronted farms, and the becks rushing at their doors. And
in the midst of the loneliness he had only to climb some peak, and
find himself at home because looking out to sea.
He had often gone up to play in the dales, and of all his dances
he had liked these best. First of all came the journey, which was
always an adventure in itself. Some sudden turn from the high road
to the north, and he was plunged in a twisting lane between the
hills. Already, perhaps, it would be dusk, because of the barrier to
the west, which grew and darkened and grew as the shadows gathered
and trailed. He himself was small as a gnat on the thread of road,
between the monsters soaring on either side. There would be water
talking out of the shadows here and there, hidden streams and falls
with the last light flashing on their manes. Always he heard the
water-talk when he went into the dales, because it was so different
from the voice of his own sea. And, greater than the water, was the
stillness, that nothing was ever big enough to break, neither the
shrill dogs nor the shepherds’ whistle nor the cry of the sheep.
Even thunder and wind could only trouble it for a time, like the
floating of furious smoke across a glass. Behind them you felt the
imperturbable patience of a greater strength. It was a different
stillness from the empty silences of the marsh. It was the live
stillness of great bodies, crowded side by side, whom even Nature
seemed powerless to stir.
His journey’s end was always some farmhouse, where he had a meal
before starting for the dance. From these dwellings, which he often
saw only by night, he carried pictures of shadowy rafters and firelit
walls, blind staircases to which he trusted himself as to a horse
knowing its way, and clean, bare rooms upstairs where a lighted
candle seemed to bring the mountains into the house itself. After
the meal he groped his way at a lantern’s tail to the festive barn.
He could trace the hedges by the shadowy line along their tops,
and smell the smell of earth that is damp in the night, and hear
the sheep-wail out of the void. And then, in the midst of the dark,
that was either smooth blackness or full of looming shapes, the door
of the barn would open a yellow port-hole to the night. He left the
night with regret, although he grew in stature as he went in, and
the fiddle, too, increased in weight and power. Out in the dale it
had seemed a tinkling thing, but once inside its voice was proud and
strong. On the rough platform or the corner chair where they spent
the night, he and his fiddle came proudly into their own.
Sometimes he got to the barn first and had time to look about the
great, bare place that to-night was the heart of the dale. The
knotted floor was well swept, and slippery with shredded wax. Forms
were set along the walls, with clean paper at their backs, and high
above that were the glistening, steady lamps. There were food and
drink on tables at the end, white cloths and bright tea-urns and
polished cups and plates. Far over all was the darkness of the roof,
untouched by the light as the dale through the big doors. Outside
the door, the opening had shone gold; on this, it was only a gaping
square of black.
But the lads and lasses were waiting, as a rule, clear-skinned,
dark-haired folk with still, grey eyes, and feet that were tapping
the floor before he had tuned. He thought about them as he played
with a steady swing, of their lives and the lives that had made them
what they were. He thought of their old names, and the way they bred
so true to type and strain. He thought of the long silences in which
they spent their days, of their courtesies and roughnesses, their
simple-mindedness and reserve, their inherited knowledge of the
lonely places of the earth. He thought of their houses, with rafters
and wide hearths, their worn flags and sudden steps, their deep sills
and oak stairs. He thought of the windows which, at break of day,
held pictures never seen on any wall. He thought of the hills where
they walked, that were rich with Viking names and cradled the Viking
dead. He thought of the secrets of the hills, of their mysterious
dangers and almost-forgotten rites. It was a hundred years, perhaps,
since they lighted the last fire on Baal’s Hill; less than seventy
since the wildfire had gone round. The fire-charmers were barely
dead, or the tooth-charmers, or the old women who knew the herbs.
Folk lived long in the dales, and the old secrets longer still. Gods
were not of necessity fled because the sacrifice was past. There was
still that feeling up in the wastes that out of nothing something
might appear. There were lakes in which drowned bodies never rose,
and terrible winds which could slay you in a breath. Folks said there
were spirits who hated the railways crossing the moors, and were glad
when the big trains came to harm in the night. Things were as strange
as when there were devils on Cross Fell, and the idol lay in its bed
at Kirkby Thore. The dale-folk were wonderful to Kit, because of the
mysteries in their blood, but often he found them rather pitiful,
too. Often they seemed to him, as he played, like children dancing in
a lighted cave. He thought of the cave as set in a blackened void,
with giants of darkness stooping over its roof. The folk in the cave
were not afraid, because for them the cave was the whole world. So
heedless they seemed, and young, so fleet-passing and yet so strong.
Death slew them, and yet they came in the same form, with the same
faces and voices and transmitted ways. Life must surely be stronger
than death, while the stamp of it stood so long....
When he forgot the cave he thought of their home-going in the
dawn, of lights in misty shippons and the ivory gleam of milk. The
mountains were fresh-made again, gentle as all new-born things. He
saw the folks sitting at their meals, and heard them call to each
other in the yards. He saw them dipping and clipping year by year,
or high and alone with their dogs among the drifts. He thought of
them kneeling in the little church, with Philip, Lord Wharton’s
Prayer-Books in their hands. He thought of bridals under the axe-hewn
beams, of corpse-roads over the fells, and arvel-bread....
Suddenly Bob spoke, making him start, for there had been years as
well as miles between them as they drove. “You’ll be right suited to
be back,” he said, flicking the dull horse with a listless whip. “It
was a sad pity you ever had to quit.”
Kit said “Ay, ay,” rather vaguely, for he wanted to be left alone
with his thoughts. Bob had already lost the exhilaration of setting
out, and there was no place for this drooping failure in Kit’s mind.
Besides, here on the marsh the past was so alive that voices barely
found their way to his ear. No human speech, indeed, could have the
colour and flow and flight of this epic spoken by his own soul. There
was wistfulness in his memories but they were not sad, because only
evil memories are sad. Beauty grows like a rose over every other,
even pain; perhaps especially over pain. While he walked in his
memories he was young and brave, unclogged by poverty, uncrippled by
age. And how, in any case, could he be sad, who was going at long
last to his home?
“They wanted you right off,” Bob went on. “They never give me no
peace till I’d fixed a day.”
“They’re right kind,” Kit murmured, not thinking of them at all. He
took another bite of the scone and tried to see the land around,
instead of lighted caves and valleys in the dawn. “I think a deal
o’ the spot,” he added, after a while. “I doubt I’d got too old to
change.”
“Ay, but there’s changes at the farm an’ all,” Bob said, with a note
of warning in his voice. “’Tisn’t in nature for things to stop the
same. There’s bound to be changes when different folks get hold.”
Kit said “Ay, ay,” again, and munched stolidly at the scone. Marget
had said things like that, and now she was saying them again through
Bob. But he had left Marget ever so far behind, and out on the marsh
she could not make him afraid. There couldn’t be changes in the place
where he was at peace, because permanence was the essence of all
peace. Bob should have known that, but Bob had forgotten peace. Bob,
as his shoulders dropped, had found Marget still at his back. Not
even on the marsh could Bob escape.
“’Tisn’t in nature,” Bob was saying again. “Folks is that different,
they’re bound to make things different, too.” All his sentences
seemed like tame echoes of Marget’s biting speech. “I don’t know as
it ever does for folks to gang back.”
“Ay, well, I can nobbut try,” Kit said, sitting up and speaking with
sudden force. “As for the changes you’re making out, I reckon they
waint bite. There’s nowt can change that much in a couple o’ years,
not things as is fairly set. There’s no change on the marsh as I can
see, for all the sea’s frettin’ at it still; and danged if Jim Bell
grandmother bedstead baint mendin’ yon fence yet!”
“Marsh don’t change overmuch, but it changes, all the same. What,
they say, don’t they, as it all come out o’ the sea? Yon’s change
enough, surely, when you come to think on? And folks change a deal
faster than land and suchlike. I reckon you’ve changed yourself,
these last two years.”
They were only Marget’s words, like the rest, but just for the moment
they struck a little chill. It was likely enough that he had altered,
as they said, when you came to think what those two years had meant.
He had thought himself at the end of change when he left the farm,
except for the change that is the beginning of things. If there were
any currents left in his life’s stream, they had seemed too weak
to carry him off his feet; yet now they were stirring and lifting
him again. But if it was true that there were changes in himself,
they could only be superficial, after all. Marget’s branding-iron
could not permanently have disfigured his soul. At least he was sure
that folks going home turned again into their old selves. When they
went in at the door they forgot at once everything that had pushed
its way in between. The real things were there, as they found; the
real selves, the real souls. The rest was incidental as garments
flung away. The old feeling took them that they were looking forward
instead of back, happy because of the future instead of the past.
Yet really they were happier than they had been before, because of
the extra gladness of coming home. They would hardly know themselves
when they looked in the glass, because the faces and feelings did
not match. The place was full of things that took them back—like the
smell and feel of things, and the sun on the floor. No matter what
life had managed to do to them, it faded now. These were the real
things where their real selves had stayed. They were the same, in
spite of the years, abidingly, patiently, blessedly the same.