the nearest chair. He blinked his eyes a moment because of the sun,
and then he began to look about for his wife. He couldn’t persuade
himself at first that she wasn’t there, because this was the great
moment of which she had talked. He had almost expected to meet her in
the field, or at least to discover her waving from the porch. Failing
that, they would find her when they got inside, ready with welcome
for a tired old man. Here they were, however, at the journey’s end,
only to find her vanished off the earth. Not only was she not in the
kitchen as he had thought, but he had a terrible feeling that she
wasn’t even in the house. There was no stir in the air of the kitchen
as though somebody had just run out. The silence of it was settled
and whole, and seemed to flow away into unstirred deeps beyond. Just
for a moment he felt his old loneliness crush back, thinking her shut
away from him where he could not go. Then he roused himself and went
to the stair and called, and Kit stopped staring at the flag and
shuffled into the room. There he stood and waited, as he had learned
to wait, with his careless-careful fingers clasping fiddle and bow.
The kitchen still seemed dim and rather strange, and nothing spoke to
him out of it that he knew. The sun sent pointers of light across the
room, picking out tables and chairs he had never seen.
Thomas shouted and said she wouldn’t be far; and shouted again and
said she wouldn’t be long. This sudden check at the very start
seemed to have thrown all their pleasant planning out of gear. The
great occasion couldn’t begin until Agnes was in place, and as far
as he could discover she was gone for good. He thought, as he waited
and fretted, that things were going amiss ... right from the earliest
moment they were going amiss....
He said over and over again that she wouldn’t be far, just as Kit had
repeated his speech about the flag. They were like helpless, stranded
actors dropping cues that there was nobody left in the theatre to
pick up. Then Thomas bellowed again in the midst of a last excuse,
and they heard a door fling open above them and afterwards slam.
There was a running and flutter and clatter on the stair, and Agnes
came flying past him into the room.
She went straight across to the guest and took his hand, her face
warm with welcoming smiles, and her voice full of self-reproach. “Eh,
now, to think I missed you after all!” she said; “an’ me that set on
being on the spot! I never thought you’d catch me unbeknownst. I was
nobbut giving a look to things upstairs.... Ay, well, you’re welcome,
I’m sure ... you are that. We’re right glad, Thomas and me, to have
you come....”
She still had hold of the hand which he left limply in her clasp,
and he looked at her smiling face and said “Thank you,” and smiled
too. The kindliness of her welcome warmed his heart, though it was
not the welcome he wanted from the house. It was like the welcome
from the cottages in the row, which was pleasant and comforting but
had nothing to do with home. Agnes was mistress of the place, but she
was a stranger, too, and no stranger could give you the real feeling
of home. She had never been in the house when he went in his dream,
and now that she spoke in the dream it was bound to seem strange.
But she was pleasant to look at, and homely, and very kind, and she
would grow to be part of the real things after a while. So when she
continued to smile he smiled again, and Thomas smiled joyfully over
by the stair. Perhaps there was just a touch of self-satisfaction in
the smile, because he was thinking of Marget’s welcome home. Anyhow,
they had done the old man better than that, even if Agnes had been
off the spot! He forgot, as he watched, that he had been afraid, that
things had seemed to be going utterly wrong. He only remembered that
they were perfect now—the house, the weather, and the kindly wife.
Certainly, it would be queer if his father wasn’t content ... but
then he was positive he would be content....
Agnes was sure of it, at least, sure as triumphant angels gathering
tired souls into heaven. Now she was laughing and repeating her first
speech—it was curious how they repeated themselves to-night. Then
she flew to the hearth and set the kettle back to boil, afterwards
swinging round to put the visitor into his chair.
“Set you down, Father, and I’ll make the tea. You’ll be wanting your
tea, I reckon, after yon drive. Now, then, Thomas, shove it nearer
the fire, and don’t stand poping like a pig at a punch! There you be,
Father ... champion ... now you’ll do. Shall I put fiddle down for
you, by the way?”
He looked at her as she stood in front of him, holding out her hand,
and a look of anxious terror crossed his face. It was true that she
looked like the lasses who had loved the fiddle in the past, but that
was before he had learned to be afraid. Still, this was home, and
to refuse was to be false to the dream from the very first, because
home was a place where every man’s foolishness was safe. “You’ll mind
what you’re at?” he pleaded, searching her with his eyes, and she
nodded her head wisely, and for the first time did not smile. Taking
it gently, she set it on a table near, and there was no tremor of
nervousness from the strings. She nodded again as she turned away, as
though the fiddle was a secret that they shared....
“I’m feared to let it out o’ my sight,” Kit explained in an
apologetic tone. “Marget was that set on shoving it in the fire.”
“Ay, well, it’ll be safe enough here,” Agnes said. “It’ll be safe as
the Bible and precious as bright gold.” She went to a brass-handled
drawer and whipped out a snowy square of a cloth which she laid
across the strings. “Thomas mun make you a box for it,” she went on;
“a nice warm box as’ll keep it out o’ the damp.”
Thomas said he would start on it first thing, in a tone that meant
he was glad of something to say. Of course he was quite sure now, as
Agnes was sure, but as yet he could not copy her conversational ease.
“A grand warm box’ll be just the ticket,” he said. “It’ll be better
and snugger a deal when it’s gitten a box.”
Kit said they were right kind, and settled himself in his chair,
staring in front of him at the shining hearth. He did not like to say
that he would not have the box, and that he hated to see the fiddle
covered up. The white cloth looked for all the world like a little
shroud, and the box would be only a coffin in his eyes. He did not
mean to have the box whatever they said, but it wouldn’t be manners
to tell them so right off. There seemed no letting him and his fiddle
alone, though all that folks could do for him was to let him alone.
It was just the way Thomas had bothered him in the field, showing
him things he didn’t want to see. Well, he would slip away from them
later on, but now he must mind his manners and let be.
He roused himself with a little attempt at cheer. “Ay, well, I’ve
landed at last!” he said, with a smile. “I never thought I’d see the
old spot again.”
Thomas and Agnes gave him a double beam. “It’s a sight for sore eyes
to see you here, I’m sure!”
“Marget wasn’t best pleased at me coming away,” the old man said.
“She’s had a deal to say about it, these last few week.”
“And wi’ the rough side of her tongue for it, I’ll swear!” Thomas
laughed. “I heard tell she was taking on and terble wild. Ay, well,
you’ll have none o’ that wi’ Agnes, don’t you fret.”
Agnes threw him a laughing glance, and said it was early days to
talk like that. Happen, if he waited, she would show him different,
later on. Thomas, however, wasn’t to be put off. “There isn’t a
smarter lass in the country-side,” he said, “and she’s a rare hand
at managing a house.” The showman in him was aching to be out, and
he was driven as well by an urgent need that he didn’t know how to
explain. It was as if he was bent upon manufacturing a barrier of
good things, an insurmountable barrier of comforts and kind words....
He had a sense of delicacy about beginning to praise the house, but
it couldn’t be taken amiss if he praised his wife. “She’ll do you
that well you’ll think you’re the king,” he said, “and she’s as bonny
as they make ’em, as you can see for yourself.”
“Marget’s not much in the way o’ looks,” Kit said. “She’s the cankert
sort, is Marget, wi’ a nippit nose.”
Thomas laughed and said it was just as well she couldn’t hear, but
the bitter disparagement gave him a slight shock. It had never been
like his father to say bitter things. He had had a good word for
every erring soul, a tolerant explanation for every doubtful deed.
Marget must have been dreadful indeed to have altered him like that.
The thought of his own share in the matter troubled Thomas’s heart.
“Bob’s catched a Tartar,” he added, after a while. “He darsent call
his soul his own, poor lad!”
“Ay, she keeps folk stirring, Marget does,” Kit said, but after his
little outburst he sat quiet. It was strange how Marget was present
with him even here, so that he could not so much as open his mouth
but she came jumping out. He tried to put her away from him as he
watched Agnes moving about the hearth, all colour and curves and
deft handling and neat ways. Agnes was flushed with the excitement
of the occasion, and her eyes shone when she smiled. He could not
remember that he had ever seen Marget smile except for the purpose
of a sneer. She had never even smiled at the red-haired baby or
Bob, and certainly not at the daft old man who was only a burden in
the house. He liked a smiling face, but it embarrassed him as well,
because he had forgotten what to do with people who smiled. That was
why he shifted his eyes when Agnes looked his way, though he watched
her again as soon as she left him alone. He liked her air of hurry
without fuss, which filled the room with a vigour that did not fret.
Marget would have spilt the kettle over the fender and one of the
brats, and in the midst of the hissing and howling would have blamed
himself. Somehow he could not picture Agnes ever spilling a drop. She
brought the grand new tea-pot to be filled on the hearth, and the
room was reflected in its polished side. Her blue gown, crossing and
crossing the bars of gold, made him think of a coloured bird that
kept flashing through the sun. From his window at Marget’s he had
often watched the swifts darting and dipping in the evening light.
The tiny whir of their wings across the pane had come to him in a
series of little shocks. The long, pointed wings were like little
slender swords, crossing and darting and never getting home. Now, if
he looked from the farm-window, he would see the birds of the marsh,
the long legs of the heron and the stately swing of the gull. The
redshank and the curlew he would see lonely on the sands ... yet here
he was busy thinking of Marget’s and the swifts.
It seemed as if the farther he went away from Marget’s the closer it
followed up. Just at first he had seemed to leave it right behind,
and yet in the heart of the dream it was waiting on the step. The one
door of the viaduct that he had seen still wide had not succeeded in
closing, after all. That meant that, when he went to bed, he would
not be safe, because Marget might come and peer at him as he slept.
The thing that might have swamped her and shut her out had not so
much as begun to come to pass. He could not conjure her out of the
house, because magic had failed him as he stepped inside. If there
was anything there that belonged to himself, it had done nothing
for him yet but make him sad. Yet he couldn’t help feeling that the
joy was only slightly out of reach; as if he looked at it through a
window, but could not come inside. His heart was heavy, as heavy as
wet grass. Nothing, he told himself, was going right. Even the chair
he sat in wasn’t right.
“I doubt I mun be getting old bones,” he said at last. “Chair don’t
seem to fit me same as it used.”
Thomas had been busy with a contented little whistled tune, but he
broke it off in the middle when his father spoke. “’Tisn’t the old
chair, dad,” he said, a little abashed. “Yon went wi’ the rest o’ the
furniture at the sale.”
Kit stared at him a moment with a puzzled frown, and then, as if
still at a loss, he dropped his gaze to the chair. Thomas saw that
he was thinking hard as he ran his hands repeatedly over the arms.
While he was at Marget’s he had remembered many sales, but apparently
he had never remembered his own. In those crowds of his he had seen
many a chair sold, but his own had never come to the hammer under
his eyes. How could it do anything of the sort when it had stayed
safely in the dream, waiting in the house until he should come back?
Yet it had vanished, after all, when the dream had come about, and
there was only this false pretender in its place. When he stopped
rubbing the arms he peered at the legs, and twisted round to stare at
the leather back. It was a shop-chair, that was plain, varnished and
hard-stuffed, unyielding as old bread. It almost seemed to reject
him as he sat, refusing the purpose for which it had been made. It
was handsome enough to look at, of its kind, making a great show
with leather and brass nails, but as yet it was only an effigy of a
chair. No ghost as yet had clung to its hard seat, those stubborn
ghosts which hammers couldn’t eject. No shadowy arms would steal and
clasp him round as he sighed himself asleep on a twilit afternoon.
It was a mindless chair, a chair without a soul, the price of which
was the sacrifice of death. Generations must use it before it grew a
soul; lover sitting on lover’s knee, children clambering about its
legs. Dreams of the winter dusk would have to shut it round; the
sick, the dying, console themselves in its arms. There was a long
education before the new arm-chair, and he himself was the sacrifice
it asked....
“House is furnished every bit new,” Thomas said. “But I got chair as
near the old one as I could.”
“Oh, ay, it’s a grand chair, thank ye—real smart.”
“Nay, I doubt it isn’t much, but it’s the best we’ve got.”
“Marget wouldn’t ha’ let me set in the best chair.”
“You shall set where you like, Father, in _this_ house!” Agnes
flashed. “It’s queer if you can’t do as suits you best, I’m sure!”
Kit said she was right kind, and let his arms lie slackly along the
arms of the new chair. The bright leather was cool and slippery to
his sensitive old hands. The old chair had been covered with carpet
that was rough to the touch—dark green and threadbare in many spots,
with a pattern of ringed daisies centred by a faded rose.... It was
all very well to say that he might choose; he was pinned to this new
horror, nevertheless. Not here, any more than at Marget’s, could he
sit exactly where he wished....
“Likely you’ve noticed we’ve a new kitchen range? Landlord said it
was t’best as could be got.”
“Ay, I see it first thing,” Kit said, and looked away.
“Walls is new-washed, of course, and paint’s new, too. Yon old
winder-sash gone——”
“Ay.”
“—new sink in back kitchen ... cupboards ... carpet on t’stairs——”
Agnes made a noise with the pot, and said the tea was mashed and
they’d best set to. It was just like Thomas to spoil her pet
surprise, but luckily it passed the old man by. He rose to his feet
obediently when she spoke, and was set at the table, still in the
hated chair. Agnes was telling him he wanted his tea, and he tried to
agree with her, knowing that he lied. The light from the west still
lay across the room, and blinded and hurt his unaccustomed eyes. He
could not see the table as Agnes hoped he might—as she herself saw
it with an artist’s pride. For her, every detail stood out on the
whiteness of the cloth, coloured and glorified by the clear sun.
The light was cool as water on china and polished plate, and rich
on yellow butter and the pink surface of the ham. There were creamy
scones and a gingerbread cake ... lavender in a vase ... deep crimson
jam and eggs with warm brown shells. A white geranium stood on a
sill, showing the sky behind it far and blue....
Thomas carved the ham and went on talking about the house. “There’s a
deal that’s new above-stairs as well; beds and quilts and suchlike,
and a deal besides. You could eat off the floors as easy as yon dish.
Missis keeps the place like a new pin.”
“Marget’s nobbut a dirty slut,” Kit said. “Last week I come a terble
bang over a pail.”
“Eh, now, but yon was wicked, if you like!” Agnes’s eyes dwelt
pityingly upon him as she passed the tea. “She might ha’ finished
you,” Thomas added, handing ham.
Kit said he doubted she wouldn’t have troubled if she had, and sat
back, staring vacantly at his plate. His face looked worn and white
now that the expression of almost venomous hate had died away.
Thomas, busily carving, heard the hate in his voice, and again was
conscious of a little shock. Kit himself was as puzzled by his
vehemence as his son was jarred. Never before had he even thought of
Marget in the terms he had used to-day. His tongue, like the rest
of his body, had been in jail, and was only now beginning to be
loosed. Yet his look was not the look of a man who was brooding on
the past. That savage face belonged to a man in an unknown place ...
betrayed....
And then he was back in the past, away from Beautiful End, back in
the cottage where Marget’s pails lay hoping for his feet. This one
had lurked in secret on the stair, and he had come on it hoping, and
hurtled into space. Afterwards he and the fiddle sat on the bottom
step, shaking and crying together in their pain. Nobody came near
them however long they cried, though once the face of a neighbour
showed scared beyond the door. Presently he had climbed the stair
and gone back again to his room—to dream of his home where pails
were kept in place. It was strange that now he was home he should
wander away, to shake and pant and cry on the bottom step. It was
strange he should long for that room now he was here, wanting that
wretchedness beyond this grace....
Marget was in the mind of the others, too, it seemed. “Bob said she
was fit to scratch when they come away,” Thomas was busy relating
to his wife. “He made sure there’d be a row in the street, but
she thought better o’ that. All the same, there was a grand to-do
aforehand, so he said!”
“Jealous—that’s what it is!” Agnes answered with a toss of the
head. She gave vent to a short laugh as well, and the laugh was a
mixture of satisfaction and contempt. Kind as she was, and generous
to a fault, she couldn’t help gloating over Marget to-day. She and
Thomas were doing a beautiful thing, but little, sordid thoughts kept
creeping in. Somewhere at the back of their minds they were gloating
over Marget all the time. Of course she was bound to be jealous of
their better luck—the unlovable woman with the wretched house. It
must have irked her to see Kit driving off, knowing how glad he was
to get away. She was bound to envy the bride with her pleasant home,
her brand-new furniture and four-pronged forks. Those who sit in
the sun are so sure of the envy of those in the shade. In any case,
Marget could have nothing to offer that could possibly compare.
Agnes’s nature was nearly all pure gold, but the bit of alloy that
was in it sounded in that laugh. Besides, how could she feel anything
but secure, glowing in secret over that room upstairs?
The security in the laugh tempted Thomas into further speech. There
could be no harm now in telling her the other things that Bob had
said. “Ay, but hark ye,” he added, “what d’ye think o’ this? Bob had
it the old man mightn’t settle, after all. ‘I’ll be at Low Moss End
for an hour or two,’ he said, ‘and if he doesn’t feel like stopping,
I’ll take him back.’”
“Not settle, did you say?” Agnes stared at him open-mouthed.
“Ay.”
“Take him back?”
“Yon’s what he said.”
“Well, did you ever hear the likes o’ that!” This time the laugh was
on a harder note.... “What’s wrong, Father?” she added, kindly again,
seeing the old man gazing at his cup.
“I doubt you’ve given me the wrong mug, my lass. Mine was a sort o’
blue chiney, wi’ a pink rose.”
“Yon went at sale an’ all,” Thomas explained, “but I got as near a
match as they had in t’shop.”
Kit said the mug was grand and would do right well, but a little
colour came in his face, and he felt ashamed as he had done in the
field. They must be thinking he was going daft, losing his senses
because of his great age. He kept waiting and waiting for the things
that were in his dream, and didn’t seem able to grasp the things
that were under his nose. He winced when Thomas talked of “getting
a match,” because you couldn’t match the furniture of a dream. Even
if the mug had managed to look the same, he would have known when he
touched it that it wasn’t his. Still, the thing to remember was that
Thomas had done his best. “Tea’ll sup right enough out of it, I’ll be
bound,” he said. “Yon as Marget give me was every bit cracked....”
“Old folks should have the best of what’s going,” Agnes said. She
knew the best was on the table to-night, but he did not seem to be
making much of a meal. Perhaps excitement had taken his appetite
away, or more probably he was over-tired with the slow drive. Now and
then he looked again at the alien “mug,” but she never saw him lift
it to his lips. Old folks always wanted a little tempting to their
food, but she had been so certain he would be suited to-night. A
vague sense of disappointment touched her mind, in spite of the fact
that it was still busy with Bob’s words. “I never hear such a thing
as that about Bob!” she said again. “Surely to goodness Father’s had
enough o’ his spot!”
“Ay, well, if he’s set on waiting, I reckon nobody’ll say him nay.
He’ll nobbut be throwing away his time an’ that’ll be all.”
“It’s Marget’s nastiness—that’s what it is!” Agnes frowned. “She
knows he’s glad to be shot of her, and she’s by way of having a slap.”
“That’s about it,” Thomas agreed, with a nod. He was glad now that he
had spoken out, because Agnes had laid the bogey right away. First
she had laughed, and then she had gone to the root of the matter and
shown him the cause. The shadow lying on that first good hour had
only been thrown by jealousy, after all. Bob had seen all the changes
and novelties at the farm, and of course Agnes would know about
them, too. It was Marget who gave the slap, as Agnes said; Bob was
only the arm through which it struck. Jealousy—that was it; nothing
but jealous lies. Under all the roofs of the kingdom none would be
happier than Kit....
And Kit had fallen back again in his chair, staring vacantly in
front of him with lifeless eyes. He was staring straight through the
window that held the rolled-back sea, but all that he really saw was
a cottage-kitchen wall. As far as he knew, he was back at Marget’s
again, at the inhospitable board which he had loathed. Thomas saw
that his plate of food was barely touched, and that the cup of tea
had never been touched at all. His hands, lying at rest along the
cloth, pointed knife and fork towards the roof.... His son reached
a gentle finger towards his arm, and at once he shrank away as at
a blow. Knife and fork went clattering down as he clutched at his
knee for the fiddle that wasn’t there. Finding nothing, he glanced
furtively from his companions to the floor, and then terror seized
him, and he looked wildly around the room. Quite suddenly he became
still again when he saw the fiddle under the shroud. He frowned a
little, and made as if to rise; and then remembrance came into his
eyes, and he sank back. Thomas, waiting for that moment, drew a
breath of relief....
His voice, slow and easy, broke the last of the spell.... “You’re
getting on terble badly wi’ your tea. I doubt you’re not taking
kindly to the ham.”
Kit said the ham was grand, as he had said of the cup, and the smug,
terrible chair that was waiting for him to die. He had always been
partial to ham, he said, and Marget had never given him as much as
a slice. But, all the same, he made no attempt to empty his plate,
and his knife and fork were under the table and he let them lie. “It
don’t taste quite the same as it used,” he pleaded at last. “I reckon
there’s no pigs gangs down just like your own....”
He felt ashamed of himself again when he saw the disappointment in
Agnes’s face, but she did not try to force him into eating the ham
against his will. She did not even say that folks were hard to suit,
as Marget most certainly would have said. “Have a bit o’ butter wi’
your bread,” she coaxed instead, pushing the shining pat within his
reach, and he felt comforted for a moment, and forgot that he had
seen Marget sitting in her place. He made a determined effort to
receive an impression of light and space, of comfort and kindliness
and the atmosphere of home. He said to himself peace where there
was no peace, and not for one moment did he succeed. Agnes was busy
talking about Marget again, and he pushed the butter away and drifted
back.... Nothing had happened to rescue him from prison, after all,
and he was in danger of losing his home of vision as well....
“We’ll have a trap, one o’ these days,” Agnes was saying, “and ride
round by Bob’s. Marget’ll be madder than ever when she sees Father
getting that perked up and fat!”