Marget’ll just have to bide and let him be!” They looked at each
other across the table and laughed, and Thomas leaned back in his
chair and chuckled and slapped his knee. They were so busy with the
picture in their minds that they forgot to notice anything else. “Eh,
well, never mind her, poor crabt body!” he finished at last. He took
up his knife and fork with a smile still lingering on his face, and
felt his father’s aloofness in the silence like a chill current in
a quiet stream. The fork half-raised in the air came to a halt....
“Butter not right, neither, eh, old dad?”
“It’s grand butter, but I doubt it’s not like it used. Your mother
was t’best butter-maker in t’country-side.”
“You must learn me different next time I churn,” Agnes told him with
a good-tempered smile. “Likely I’ll shape to do better after a bit.”
“You’re a good lass,” the old man said suddenly, looking her in the
face, and for the first time his voice sounded warm and strong.
Their eyes met in full and happy accord, and their smiles mingled
like the smiles of intimate friends. Their natures, each kindly and
beautiful in its way, reached out one to the other and were enriched.
Just for a moment she saw him as he had been when he was young, the
affectionate, dreamy soul whom so many had helped and loved. He in
his turn saw her as the future of the place, the soul that was making
the new dream for the house. The beauty of kindness and good humour
and happy work, she was bringing it all these, just as his own wife
had brought them long ago. But it was a new beauty, and there was no
place in it for him; he had his own, and his own was quite complete.
Now he was beginning to see what he had done—how he had wandered into
another’s dream of home. There was no room for him here unless he was
ready to renounce his own, a thing which he had not thought possible
even with death. Already he was being punished as those are punished
who are false to their dreams; he could neither look forward happily
nor yet behind. Suddenly he was conscious of being stifled by the
pleasant room, oppressed by the fire and the sun and the smell of
the food. His eyes dropped wearily from the girl’s face, and age and
blankness came back to his own. “It’s terble warm,” he said, in a
fretted tone, and pushed back his chair sharply and got to his feet.
“I’ll gang out,” he added, looking towards the door. “I partly what
think I’ll be easier outside.”
Thomas pushed away his plate, though rather regretfully, and got to
his feet, too. “Ay, do,” he answered as heartily as he could, though
he did not look at his father while he spoke. He did not look at his
wife, either, though it was only a minute since they had laughed at
each other across the cups. He knew as well as she that they had
expected to linger over the meal, talking so fast they were on each
other’s heels, and digging old stories together out of the past. They
had expected to hear the old man laugh and crack his joke, but so far
the laughter and jokes had all been theirs. There descended upon them
again a stage chill, such as Thomas had sampled on his coming in.
Then, however, the scene had waited for an actor that didn’t appear.
Now the curtain was down too soon on a set that had been the work of
months. Thomas gulped his tea hurriedly and looked longingly at the
scones, and then looked hastily away and felt ashamed....
“You’ve nobbut made a terble poor tea,” Agnes said wistfully to the
guest.
“Nay, I’ve done rarely, thank ye, missis, that I have. Now I come to
think on, I’d summat on t’road.”
“Nobbut a sparrow-peck, that’s what it is! Cat would ha’ eaten more,
I’m sure.”
“I’ve a new pipe for you, Father,” Thomas put in, fumbling about the
mantel for his gift. “Ay, an’ there’s bacca an’ all for you in a tin.”
“It’s more than a while now since I’d a pipe. Marget can’t abide
smoke about a house.”
“Seems she can’t abide owt as gives folk pleasure!” Agnes carped.
There was something hurt and aggrieved in her voice that had not been
there before; something graver, as well, as if the tone of her mind
had changed. She still sat at the table, looking straight before her
over the pots, and never once at the couple busy with the pipe. The
meal had indeed been a sacrifice of sorts, and never a whiff of smoke
had gone up from it to heaven. The gods had slept while the oblation
was being made, and now there was nothing to do but to clear away. At
least the fault, if there was a fault, was none of hers. Things never
happened as one expected, of course....
Kit was holding the pipe limply in his hand, another stranger
pretending to be a friend. His son’s eyes were set hopefully on his
face, waiting for a look of cheer.
“I’ll fill it, shall I?” he asked.
“You’re right kind.”
“Likely you’d be better suited wi’ twist!”
“Nay, not I. Bacca’ll do grand.”
Thomas said, “Yon’s the ticket!” and handed over the pipe, and Kit
took it and held it limply as before. “Where’s t’laylock?” he asked
suddenly, staring through the porch. “You’ve never hagged down yon
laylock as used to be by t’door?”
“Nay, not I,” Thomas said, with honest regret. “’Twas wind as took
it—yon gale we had in March. A terble storm it was, to be sure! I
made certain house was going an’ all.”
“I never heard tell as laylock was gone,” Kit said. He spoke the
words very slowly, because he was thinking back. He remembered
the storm, and how he had never slept the whole night long, not
because he was afraid, but because it brought the sound of the sea.
The chestnuts close to his window had been like giants raving in
the dark, and now and then one hewed a limb from another and sent
it crashing down. He had sat in a whistling draught and pictured
the long waves breaking on the shore, and heard the long roar of
succession filling the farmhouse. The yew tree, of course, would
neither break nor bend, and the lilac would bend but it would never
break. Morning showed great boughs across the road, but the trees of
his dream were still untouched and whole. No gale that blew could
harm the trees of his dream; and yet that storm had brought the lilac
down....
“I never thought on to say,” Thomas answered with a troubled air.
“I’m sorry about laylock, but there’s a new seat down by t’hedge.
You’ll find it rarely snug, if you want to be setting out.”
Kit looked through the window at the neat new object of painted
boards, set where the light from the west would trouble and dazzle
his eyes. The seat by the lilac had been turned away from the west,
so that he might rest his eyes on the evening peace of the fields.
It had been sheltered, too, by the tree and the porch, so that even
in winter it was warm. The new seat looked snug in the thick of the
fence, but there was no shade over it for his head, and when the
leaves were gone the wind would come thinly through. Worst of all, it
was painted the same colour as the meadow gate, that terrible hard
blue that was like a blow. It was horrible what things you could do
with a pot of paint; but, then, as they knew on the marsh, he had
never cared for paint....
“Ay, it’s snug,” he said very politely, and turned the pipe over in
his hand.
“We’ll get by, then,” Thomas said, “while missis sides the pots.” He
was already, almost thankfully, in the porch.
“Nay, I don’t rightly think——”
“What’s amiss?”
“Laylock’s gone, d’ye see, and I doubt I can’t smoke anywheres else.”
He set the pipe aside, gently, but with a final air.
“What, there was no laylock at Marget’s, was there?” Thomas asked and
stared.
“Nay, not as folk knowed.”
“Losh save us—what d’ye mean by that?” Agnes stood up suddenly with a
brusque movement, and began to gather the plates together in a pile.
When she spoke it was still without looking at either of the men.
“Now, then, don’t be fretting him, Thomas. Let him be. He’ll find his
way about, after a bit.”
“Gox, you talk for all the world as if he was strange folk come to
stay!”
“Happen there’s none so strange as them that comes home.” The words
came almost absently from the old man’s lips, as if he was answering,
unknown to himself, some echo out of the air. He moved away from the
couple to where the fiddle lay, and began to draw the cloth from the
taut strings. Thomas looked from his father to his wife, but now it
was she who would not meet his eyes. With a movement that was almost
symbolic he came into the room and shut the door; the only time,
as he knew, that it had been shut that day. He stood in the middle
of the floor between the two who were so intent—the man bent over
the fiddle and the woman over her pots. The impulse to question was
still strong in his mind, but Agnes turned before he could speak, and
thrust the plates commandingly into his hands.
“Leave him be for a bit,” she said in a lowered tone. “Likely he’s
tired, and we’re bothering him over much. Carry pots for me, will
you, there’s a good lad?”
He shut his mouth with an effort, and helped her to clear away,
tramping obediently between the front kitchen and the back. Agnes
went about her business as if there were nobody there, but Thomas
could not resist an occasional glance at the silent guest. He had
drawn the shroud away from the fiddle’s face, and when they were
not looking, he let it drop behind the table to the floor. He drew
a breath of relief when he had done that, and felt a little soothed
now that the fiddle was in his hands. He gathered it close to him
and stood quiet, letting his glance go stealthily round the room.
Now he could reckon every change to the full, the paint and the new
furniture and the kitchen grate. He looked at the white-faced clock
and the table and the shelf with the books. He looked at the new
chair over and over again, and every time he looked it was still new.
Dimly, though Agnes never guessed anything of the sort, he realised
the new carpet on the stairs.... Only into the old mirror he
steadily refused to look, because of the power that lies lurking in a
glass. He looked out of the window for his lilac tree. Once or twice
he glanced furtively at the door....
Thomas plodded in and out with the pots, a little more hopeful when
he was coming back, and a little more troubled when he went away.
He said to himself again that things were wrong, that with every
minute that passed they were going wrong. So far the old man hadn’t
“settled” in the least, and only a blind donkey could pretend that he
had. The situation which they had plotted with such care seemed to
be getting completely out of hand. They saw their pleasant surprises
turn to disappointments as they looked, and could do nothing but
watch the change with pained amaze. There had been the chair and the
mug, and the pipe and bacca and the seat, and Heaven knew how many
other things besides. It was just as if they were all bewitched and
upside down, and instead of righting themselves they were getting
deeper under the spell. He stared at the old man standing like a
stock, and felt there was something sinister in his look. He had an
air of waiting for something, listening and looking out—something
that was a terrible time on the road. He did not look at home in the
very least—a happy old body coming home to stay. Thomas thought it
was time that somebody said a word.... So after his last trip he
halted and spoke....
“Yon’ll be an old fiddle, I doubt, by now?” “Nay. Fiddles is always
young.”
“Old as time gangs, I mean, yon’s all.” He looked at the shining
thing that he had known so well, and Agnes came to the inner door and
listened, drying a pot. “It’s sung Bob an’ me to sleep many a time
when we were barns. There’s whiles I wake even yet, hearing music
somewheres in the dark.”
“I’ll be bound Marget’s barns isn’t fiddled to sleep!” the young wife
scoffed behind their backs.
“There’s never no music at Marget’s that she can hear.... Never a
note from dawn to dusk, barring what the birds make in the eaves.”
“Ay, well, we’d music to bed and board,” said his son. “An’ then,
when we were grown lads, we danced to fiddle instead. Nobody could
ever play up our feet like the old dad.”
“Many a lad and lass it’s danced into love.”
“Us among ’em—didn’t it, Agnes?—us an’ all! We’re married folk now,”
Thomas added, “but I reckon we can dance a bit still.”
Agnes finished the pot, and her eyes brightened with a new idea.
“Get Father to give us a tune,” she said, “an’ we’ll show him what we
can do, right off.”
“It’s over soon, I doubt.” Thomas hesitated, taken aback. “Ay, well,
why not?” he added, with a laugh. “’Tisn’t every day as’ll bring the
old man home!”
“Nay, it’s over soon, as you say.” Agnes affected to withdraw. “We’d
best not worrit him. He’s tired.”
“Nay, not I!” A sudden lightness and strength came into Kit’s voice,
and his face brightened and he tried to smile. “I’ll be main glad,”
he said, and straightened his back. All his fiddler’s pride was
aroused by the implication that he was too tired to answer the call
to his art. His hands went eagerly to the smooth pegs, as he started
to tune. Life and meaning came back into his eyes....
“You’re bound to be a bit done, all the same. I reckon we’d best let
the music be, to-night.”
“I’m as fresh as a lemon, I tell ye!” the old man said. His tone was
suddenly testy, almost sharp, and the young folk smiled at each other
aside.
“Ay, well, then, Thomas, shove the table back. We’ll show Father
we’ve got a foot to us both yet....”
Thomas went for the big table with zest, his heart light in him
now as a sail at sea. As if by a miracle the whole atmosphere had
cleared, transformed in a moment by a simple speech. Now it was sane
and happy and almost gay, just as they had always expected it to
be. He had been nearly troubled to tears by his father’s look—that
hang-dog look, that look of a trapped beast. In the back kitchen
he had questioned Agnes as to what they had done ... what they had
left undone ... what was wrong. He couldn’t be homesick for Marget’s
after all he had suffered at her hands, and yet even at Marget’s he
had never looked like that. There were changes about the place, of
course—and none too soon; he couldn’t have hoped to find it just the
same. And yet all the time he seemed to be looking out—waiting for
something ... seeking—what?
“He’s strange—nowt else,” Agnes said in reply, hiding herself behind
a cupboard door.
“Strange? In his own spot?”
“Ay.”
“Land’s sake! Whatever for?”
“Nay, I don’t know,” she answered, still hiding behind the door.
“Old folks is easy put about, but he’ll not be strange long.” Her
own confidence had been sadly shaken by the failure of the meal, and
then suddenly she had remembered the room upstairs. They ought to
have known that coming home made people sorry as well as glad, but
the night when it came would bring its special peace. To-morrow they
would look back and wonder what had gone awry.... But she did not
want to remind Thomas of that upstairs room. He would be telling his
father before he could be stopped, clumsily forestalling the first
effect. So she listened in silence and let him worry away, pushing
his cap further and further to the back of his puzzled head. All
she did was to hide behind the door, and say in the pause that “he
wouldn’t be strange long.”
And then, after all, the change had come about long before there
was any sign of night. Thomas couldn’t help feeling terribly set up
because at last he had thought of the tactful thing to say. It was
true that it was Agnes who had suggested the dance, but the opening
remark about the fiddle had been his. They should have turned the
talk upon fiddles long before, and then perhaps they would have had
a decent meal. The old man’s trouble, whatever it had been, seemed
to have slipped right away now that he was about to give them a
tune. The very look of him had altered, almost out of belief. His
eyes were young again and his movements were certain and brisk. He
leaned against the table with the fiddle under his chin, trying the
single notes with his finger and the chords with his fine bow. The
fiddle answered him in a full, penetrating voice, ringing loud in the
airy house that had no neighbour but the sea. He bent his ear to it
and fixed his eyes on the strings, his whole being absorbed by the
presence behind the voice....
“I doubt there’s not over much room.” Thomas gave the last piece of
furniture a final shove. “There’s not that many on us, though, to get
in each other’s road. I reckon we don’t need Harry Dixon’s barn.”
“There’s nowt like a dance in a barn.” Kit spoke dreamily, without
so much as lifting his head. “There it be, all light and laughing
inside, and outside all the gert night looking in through the doors.
It’s summer, happen, wi’ folk coming through the meadow-grass,
holding their gowns to keep’em off the dew. An’ t’others coming along
the lanes, wi’ the sound o’ beck-water rushing by.”
“Ay. Yon’s how it was,” Thomas said gently. “Wasn’t it, lass?”
“Ay,” Agnes said, and sighed. “A bonny time!”
“There’s bettermer times now,” he insisted stoutly, but she shook her
head. She knew already that there were no “bettermer” times.
Now they had cleared the room as much as they could, and were
standing together in the middle of the floor. It had hurt Agnes a
little to have to upset the room, even in so pleasant a cause as
this. She had spent so long in planning it all out, and now you might
have thought, from the look of things, that it was the night before a
sale. The new chair, that had sat so smugly on the hearth, had been
pushed into a corner to look on, as well as the little footstool that
she had covered with red cloth. This was the chair’s first lesson in
life, if she had known; it would never be quite such a smug outsider,
after this.... But she had liked to see it neatly on the hearth, just
as she had preferred the table spread with food, and this sudden
dismantling hurt her homely pride. Yet the comfort and order had done
nothing to cheer the poor old man who was looking for a home. He
hadn’t even begun to look happy until it was done away. She felt a
moment’s terrible qualm for the sanctuary upstairs....
“Now, then, folks—get yourselves set!” Kit stopped his tuning and
threw up his head, his eyes roving commandingly over the room.
He refused a chair and settled himself firmly against the table
edge. His face had hardened a little, and his mouth was stern. He
was master now, as he had always been when he played, half-god
and artist, never the hireling of the crowd. Gentle as he was in
everything else, he was always supremely the autocrat in this. Once
he had quitted a ball at its very height, because the dancers had
gone against his will. Now, as he motioned the couple into place, the
sweep of his bow was like the sweep of a sword....
“Baint it fine to see him so pleased?” Agnes whispered, as she took
her stand. Just for a moment they felt foolish standing there, this
serious, new-wed couple with their brand-new house. But the dancing
that was bred in them soon got the better of that, as well as the
growing atmosphere of the past. Almost at once they threw themselves
into their parts as Kit had thrown himself into his. Thomas became
the fiercely-diffident youth, whose feet had always been nimbler than
his tongue; Agnes, the spoilt favourite of a crowded ball. She turned
to the old man with a smile that had won her many a tune before
to-day.
“Be it a reel, Mr. Fiddler? I hope it’s a reel.”
“Ay, it’s a reel,” he conceded with a lordly nod, though he had
settled to give them a reel from the very start.
Thomas said, “Ay, make it a reel!” in a gruff, shy voice, the voice
of the youth whose only way of expression was through his dancing
feet. All of them felt the thrill of the word each time that it
was said, the lilt and beat of the tune in their brains and heels.
The old feeling came back that life was only lived from dance to
dance. The ecstasy came back, the almost insolent sense of power;
the passion of motion, the thrill of mutual purpose and touch. The
very air of the kitchen seemed to change and become mistily lamp-lit,
throbbing to many hearts. Over the house there was no longer the
clear arch of the evening light, but a roof of darkness, powdered
with steady stars. The man and the girl felt dancers all around;
sometimes they touched a shoulder or an arm. They were all waiting
for the fiddle to begin, lasses in bright colours, and lads in their
best clothes. Now and then somebody laughed or threw a challenge
across the room, but as soon as the music started they would all be
dumb. Through the mist showed the warm colours and shining hair,
bright eyes and gleaming teeth, young, happy faces, and figures come
to their first strength. They were all friends and acquaintances who
were there, folks who had danced together through the round of the
years. Agnes saw smiling girlish faces in the crowd, and men’s eyes
that smiled and lingered on hers. Once she saw Marget, young and trim
and cold; and Bob watching her, sulking by a door. She saw Thomas,
the Thomas she had lost, who was no more the man she had married
than any in the room. What that Thomas had given her she would never
find again, the breathless vision of the unexplored. The dogged face,
the brooding, pleading eyes, the touch of a spirit strange to her
as yet—even the memory of them caught her by the throat. She found
her heart beating and her cheek grown hot. This life in her hands to
crown or throw away ... no, there was never another moment quite like
that.
The little sordidness came creeping back. “I wish Marget could clap
eyes on the old man now!”
“Ay, so do I!”
Kit waved again. “Whisht, will ye! I’m just off.”
“Right, Father! We’re ready.”
“We’re all set.”
“Now!”
He lifted his bow high, and the atmosphere tightened like a string.
It was like waiting for the striking of a flame, the first touch
of lips, or the dead coming out of a grave. All the grace of youth
was in the curve of his arm; the certainty of his knowledge in his
thrilling finger-tips. He leaned his ear to the fiddle as to a secret
bound to be told. His face held expression behind expression, like
the endless perspective of images in a pool, but at the back of all
was the passionate gravity of the artist at his task. Old as he was,
the sense of power that was strong in the others was stronger far in
him. All who had ever danced to his piping waited upon his nod; feet
by the hundred ached for the loosed tune. Now, now, before all the
gods he was a god, as well....
And then slowly, as the note still hung in the balance, his face
chilled and changed. The fiddle was as full of music as it would
hold, but just for the moment it would not give it up. All those
months of silence it had been singing to itself, and now the racing
torrent was choking its throat. Slowly his bow sank ... slowly ...
and sank....
“Nay, it’s ganged.”
“What’s ganged, Father?”
“The music.”
“It’ll come back right enough,” Thomas said in a cheerful tone.
“Let’s see if I can mind the tune.” He pursed his lips to whistle,
thought a moment, and began. “Yon’s it.”
“Ay, yon’s it.” He bent to the fiddle again. “I’ve got it now.” The
moment that was like a sharpened string drew to its length again and
snapped like a string.... “Nay, I’ve not.”
“It’s like this, you’ll think on,” Agnes put in. She started to hum
the air in a gay little voice, and Kit nodded his head and listened
and said “Ay.” She beat out the time with her foot, and the fiddle
went up and down. Then he lifted his bow and waited ... and listened
again.... “Nay, it’s ganged.”
“We’ll give him a lead, missis!” Thomas cried, and began to whistle
the music very loud. At once they flung themselves eagerly into the
dance, lithe, earnest figures making their neat, light steps. As they
danced he whistled and she sang, until the house was filled with the
tune from floor to roof. The very flags of the kitchen seemed to sway
to the air; it seemed impossible that the old man could not hear.
Faster and faster they speeded it up, and, as they whirled, their
eyes met once and again, and then they smiled. Every moment they
looked for the fiddle to join in, putting fresh life and rhythm into
their feet. And instead they heard the old man’s voice crying aloud,
harsh with the harshness of great pain and fear. He struck the table
soundingly with his open palm.
“Whisht, will ye? Whisht! Didn’t I say it was ganged?”
Now he was straight on his feet and gazing blankly round, not seeming
to see them where they had fallen apart.... “There’s nowt left o’ the
things I used to know.”
“You’re out o’ practice,” Thomas murmured in an uncertain tone; and
Agnes added—“It’s Marget’s blame, for never letting you play.”
“Ay, but she let me nurse fiddle on my knee, and tunes was singing in
my head all the time. Now I’ve come back and they waint sing no more.”
“You’ll see they’ll sing right enough afore so long.”
He covered them again with the same unseeing eyes.
“I’d ha’ done better to stop where I were.”
Agnes put out her hand at that with a little cry. “Nay, now, Father,
you mustn’t talk like that!”