II
Christopher Sill sat in the kitchen at Marget’s, waiting to be taken away. He was a tall old man, with broad shoulders that were now bent, blue, inward-looking eyes and quiet ways. In spite of his size he gave an impression of lightness which was partly the frailty of age and partly the spirit within, but he was too big for the kitchen, which was smaller than even his wash-house had been at home. No matter how he compressed himself, or shrank into corners and held his breath, he seemed perpetually in the way. His feet, too, which had been his innocent pride, once so light in the dance, and still quite neat in spite of their clumsy boots, were, so it seemed, the largest in the world. Either Marget or the children were for ever catching them as they passed, and in addition to kicks from other clumsy boots, he had to bear the onus of every mishap. Apparently his feet were responsible for every broken pot, for a spilt pan, for the children’s torn clothes, for the unsteady baby’s every fresh bruise. Tumbling over Gran’pa was theaccepted cause of each new piece of damage and any sudden, ear-piercing howl. There had been room for every man’s feet in the house from which he had come, and full room for a man’s stride on the long levels of the marsh. He had never realised his actual bodily size before.
Nor had he been conscious that human beings might press too close. He had never troubled about the crowded rooms in which he had had to play, the whirling dancers and the thick, lamp-poisoned air. But he had come to them with his lungs full of the breath of the marsh, and had gone out of them to the same clean draught. And he had never minded the press below his platform or around his chair, or the women’s dresses brushing against his knees. Between himself and the crowd there had often been the bond of a friendly liking as well as the tie of a pleasure equally shared. He was depressed by a scanty gathering, and much preferred a real crush, even though in the stamping and shuffling his music was apt to be drowned. The things that the fiddle were saying reached every one of them all the same, even those who were too far from him to hear. The more happy folks there were, the more happiness there was in the room, and so it could never be too full. He had never stifled through the long nighthours as here in Marget’s kitchen he stifled in the day. He and his fiddle were never alone in there, could never get themselves really out of sight. The children were always about him, shrill and curious and infinitely cross, and when Marget came into the kitchen there was simply no room for anyone else at all. She seemed to be sharply and aimlessly all over it at once, just as an ill-tempered wind seems to blow from every quarter at the same time. He shrank if she touched him or came too near, and her draggled gowns worried him as they passed.
The kitchen was dark, not only because there would have been darkness wherever Marget happened to be, but because its one small window was shadowed by the chestnuts across the road. It seemed like a little dark well to the man who had lived in a wind-freshened house with the whole of the open west to lighten his eyes. Yet there might have been something to love in it, he knew. There were other houses in the little old row, heavy with roses white and red, with trellised porches and gay little flower-beds either side of the door, where on a summer day the kitchens were little dim places of cool peace. He knew that, because he had been into them sometimes, and rested for a while in an arm-chair by the whitened hearth, while its proper tenant left him alone or knittedin silence with soothing little clicks. There were geraniums in those windows in pots, and cool, little starched lace blinds, and though the windows were small the sun reached round the pots and dropped a splash of gold on the stone floor. The pots themselves made patches of mellow colour on the sill, and there was a text on the wall which the sun always seemed to find. “Where the treasure is, there will the heart be also,” it said, and Kit knew better than anything else in the world what that text meant. There was a heap of gold in a bottom corner and a clutter of angel-crowns above, but Kit knew that real treasure had nothing to do with things like those.
On those summer days the footpath under the trees was black, so that the lasses passing in their light gowns looked like coloured pictures on a dark screen. The road was half a patterned shadow flung by the trees, and half a ribbon of dazzling limestone white. When carriages came along, the pattern changed to the horses’ backs, and the silvered harness flashed and shone in the sun. Sometimes there was a whirl of dust after they had passed, but none of it came in because door and window were shut, yet he did not feel stifled because the door stood open into the scullery at the back, and the door of that again into the garden beyond. You wentup to the garden by old steps sunk deep into the bank, with moss so thick about them that the colour of it seemed to have grown into the stone itself. There were bright flowers up above, mere flecks of colour high and far away, when the sun was standing over the slanting beds. The door made a picture for him as he sat, a vivid shimmer of gold and scarlet and green, yet it was too far off to trouble his old eyes. Sometimes he stared at it until he slept, with the polished fiddle gleaming across his knee. The silent knitter would watch the fiddle with an anxious eye, waiting to catch it when it slipped. But even in sleep his fingers held it safe, because always in sleep it was with him where he went.
He used to thank the people in these houses of good rest, but he was not always perfectly certain which was which, and to the day of his death he never knew their names. There were real corners in those kitchens of theirs, where the old could gather themselves into the shadow unobserved. The kitchen at Marget’s was exactly the same size, but it had no corners that he could ever find; only bare walls set rigidly each to each, where naughty children could be sent to sulk, and dust might settle and gather at its will. The other kitchens had space and they had peace. Those of their occupantswho thought them poor and mean found themselves suddenly proud in possession after he had gone. It was as if he had placed a charm on the table before he went away.
But he was not often able to seek these hiding-places from the storm. Marget was one of those souls jealous of a burden they do not want but will not share. Even while she resented his presence under her roof, she resented equally that he should be happy anywhere else. He was welcome to hate her as much as he chose, but she demanded that he should hate other folk as well. If he was hers to see to, she would have him all to herself, and nobody should take him from her even for half an hour. Besides, she lacked the full flavour of abuse when he wasn’t about the house. In the dark kitchen, in spite of his size, she could not always be sure that he was there. She might trip over something and snarl, “Drat you! Mind your feet!” before she discovered that it was only a stool.
So it was not very often he could get away; she hunted him down too rigorously for that. And even out of her sight he was conscious of the obsession of her thought. Even during those snatched moments, seldom as they came, there lurked round every corner the possibility of her face. It was only in sleep that he ever really escaped, and even then he awoke sometimesto find her watching him from the door—her gnawed and useless bone that she still would drag to her cave.
She said such terrible things, too, to the silent knitters of his peace. Suddenly the little kitchen would be full of battering, brazen-sounding speech, carrying so far along the street that folk would hear it and come out. When Marget emerged with her bone between her teeth, they would be standing in little knots or edging towards the door. Little boys came out of nowhere as they always do, and sometimes a passing carriage would be brought to a halt. Through it all Marget would swim on a powerful stream of abuse, while he went quiet in her clutch, his fiddle gathered close. Sometimes people laughed, and he heard, and that was worst of all.
Only at night had he respite for a while. Two of the children slept in his little room, and even they, incredibly curious as they were, were forced to close their peering eyes at times. The old man, kept awake when he might have slept, could not always sleep later on, and often sat for hours by his window, looking out into the night. Up there, it almost seemed as though he were in the chestnuts over the road, only out in the branches where the birds slept it was cool, and full of a rocked and murmuring peace. Sometimes, though, on the stillest nights,not a leaf moved or shook on the giant boughs, but more often there was a little breeze that whispered busily all the time. There was a wind, too, that did nothing but sigh, and another that hissed in angry little gusts. The one that sighed meant that thunder was about, and the fretted one was the herald of change and rain. And another wind rolled in a long, soft soughing all the way through the trees, like the long, smooth waves of a very far-off tide. It would swell and rise while he listened for it to break, but always it ebbed and died without breaking at all. Sometimes it stopped in the midst of the downward curve, like a sentence softly suspended without cause. He liked this wind because it took him back to the marsh, but best of all he liked the big gales that came to him straight from the west. The wind that thrashed and tramped on the great trees, that hammered the little window of his room and sent great draughts down chimneys and through keyholes, and flung the blue slates spinning into the street, came to him straight from the place where he belonged. Sometimes, when it was very dark and wild, he was sure the street was full of the sea. He thought of it rolling and pushing at all the doors.... There was a meadow beyond the chestnuts over the road, and often he heard the water under the wall,like the tide that beat at the banks along the marsh.
He was fond of that meadow beyond the trees, with its shimmering levels golden in the sun, yet cool to the eye because of the shadow in between. At first he spent his time by the leaning wall, talking to people as they came along, but that was another thing Marget couldn’t abide. Strangers stared at his violin, and asked questions, and that vexed her pride. It was like a beggar-man, she said, to be seen with a fiddle in the street. Folks would be giving him coppers before so long, and shaming them all and pulling them all down. Kit held to his talking-ground for a while, but after one dreadful episode he gave way. Sometimes people asked if the old man were dead, the old man with the fiddle beside the wall.
He liked the meadow best of all in the dawn, when it took on the look of parkland wrapped in early mist. Right across, through a break in the chestnuts, he could see another tree stand up, a tree that, because of the haze, looked tiny as a toy. The shadow of it, black when the sun got up, was at first no more than a darker veil of mist along the sward. There was magic about this little vignette in which there was only a tree. It was so tiny and grey and tender, so light, so delicately soft. Yet, small as itwas, it suggested infinite space, stretches of wander-room, pleasaunces without end. There were no barriers about it that had to be pushed away. You knew that from under its branches you could see the world.
Even when the sun was up at last, and the tree was strong wood and the earth firm soil, when the leaves had found colour and the boughs taken their shape, the little vista kept its promise still. Still it was growing in enchanted air, amid the far distances of the soul’s desire.
And then the house around him would come awake. The children would fight each other in their beds. All through the house would pierce the edginess of Marget’s morning voice....
He lost his vignette when the chestnuts lost their leaves, and through the stripped boughs the picture was not the same. But the chestnuts themselves were enough for him, just then, with their straight-grown limbs cut black against the sky, and every delicate filament of twig sparkling and dazzling with the frost. In the winter, too, he could see the moon through the trees, a flat and silver face laid to the open spaces as to a pane. Star after star he saw balancing on a bough.
At the end of the village was the river that he had known only where it ran out over the sand. It was dear to him, because it wenttowards the marsh, but otherwise it was not the river he knew. Out there it was silver or thin blue, sometimes a dull and hurrying grey, but always it held the mirror of its face wide open to the sky. Here it was black, because of the high banks and the old bridge and the big trees leaning right across. It was a glorious black, velvet-smooth, with underneath it the colours of weeds and stones and darting fish, and the reflection of other colours overhead. There were trees in the water, too, as real as those above; he could not always tell which was which. They had the same vivid, wide-spreading green, the same ribbed and splendid trunks. It was like looking down into a forest from a bird’s wing, only the forest was overhead as well. It seemed as far to look down as it was to look up. He thought the mirror-picture the daintier of the two—cleaner, as it were, for the water washing over its face; like the forests one sees through the polished glass of a dream. There was only one other difference that he could see. When the trees above stood perfectly still, the trees in the water seemed to wave and dance. But it was only the ripple across the river’s face. Beneath it the painted picture was still and serene.
He was fond of the bridge, too, and liked to wait for the sun dipping under its curve, but itwas not often that he had a chance of that. The children were in league with Marget to hunt him down, and could spy him out in the most unlikely spots. Then they would harry him back along the street, beating at him with dirty little hands, and though he felt dreadfully ashamed and hurt, it was better than being fetched by Marget herself. “Grandpa” added zest to the children’s lives, gave them a sense of drama, a heady taste of power. Their days would lack a certain excitement when Marget’s bone was gone.... In the end he gave up the bridge as he had yielded the wall, because the pleasure was not worth the risk. The river under the bridge was not his own river, after all. Safe in his mind he had it where he liked it best, pale on the brown waste as it swam to sea.
There were other things strange to him in Marget’s house, besides the absence of room and peace. He found, for instance, that he could not love the tables and chairs. He could not even love his rickety bed, which carried him homeward when he slept, and was the stall to his fairyland through the trees. Certainly he could not love Marget’s pots, which were never whole or clean, or the kettle which poured boiled cockroaches from its spout. Nor could he like the propped-up chests of drawers into which it was never safe to put a hand, for fearof upright needles or relics of bacon fat. It was not wise to look too closely at the kitchen sink or into the few battered pans used by the children in their play. The clock was stuffed with rags and boots, and had a sinister face which he disliked. The oilcloth on the stairs was full of holes.
Of course, he did not hate the things just because they were old. The house on the marsh, as Agnes knew, had been very neglected before the last. The old things around him were falling to pieces under his eyes, but they were not being kicked and battered to their end. They were really old, peacefully grown old, not abused into miserable age before their time. There were dust and cobwebs and broken furniture and torn clothes, but the sun or the wind was cleansing the place every hour. There was no dirt in dark corners or refuse under the stairs. There were no slimy walls or messes in doubtful pots. In the old chests of drawers were no mysteries save those that a tidy old woman’s hands had folded away. The things had been lovable in that house, because in spirit they were clean. They had lived an honest life, and they were not dying an obscene death. Always about the furniture lingered the sweetness of the tree.
Perhaps he might have grown fond of hisown chair, but then he never had a chair of his own. Marget’s chairs were as restless as herself; you never found them twice in the same place. And age, as Kit very quickly learned, was last and behind that in that house. If he happened to show a liking for a seat, he was sure to be ousted by some elbowing child. Quite soon he learned to wait until the rest had settled down, and to fit his old bones into anything that was left. Only Bob, when he was at home, would find his father the most comfortable chair.
He had no place at the table, either, and he was always served last, and sometimes Marget seemed to forget him and he had to go without. Even when she chose to remember, he could not always eat what she had cooked. That meant that he was hungry most of the time, and because he was hungry the time was very long.
He had come to the cottage, as Thomas knew, without any bitterness in his heart. Leaving the farm had meant the end of all things, of course, but as long as he wasn’t bitter there was room for hope, and he had always been able to beautify what he touched. Never once, even in his mind, had he reproached Thomas for condemning him to this. Thomas would have helped him, had it been possible, he felt sure. The lads were all good lads, alive or dead,and there had never been anything wrong between him and them. Marget made a point of telling him very soon that Thomas could have saved him if he had liked, but it passed Kit by like a wasp in a gale of wind. She was always abusing Thomas and Kit’s old friends on the marsh. All the things that were wrong about him came solely from living on the marsh. They were a low lot down there, so Marget said, living like savages all the week, and only at market seeing their fellow-men. They bred wastrels and do-nowts like himself, cracked on fiddling and the like, whom other folk had to keep in their last years. And again she would harp on Thomas and his crime, but she never succeeded in making him understand. Her talk about the marsh and its folk conveyed nothing to old Kit. It was like somebody talking of a country they had never seen.
And such a little kindness would have made him content. He was away so much in his own mind that he did not need very much from the folk with whom he lived. And instead of a little kindness he had had a great deal. Women had thought for his comfort all his life, children had always run to him before; and it took him a long time to grasp that things were changed. He had come into the cottage with a trustful smile, but his smile was one of the things thatwent first. He never forgot that first tempest in Marget’s terrible voice, and the hostile looks of her sly and peering brood. And yet the fact that he could not love them had grown upon him only by degrees. He had never lived with poverty coupled with hate, and he could not grasp its indications for long. But he never learned to love any one of the crowd, any more than he learned to love the chairs.
Bob was as kind as possible when he was at home, but that was so seldom that he did not count. Slack in everything else, he had at least grown smart in keeping out of the way. Even Marget, who knew the backways of truth as well as anybody on earth, could not always discover where he lied. So he was not often at hand to come between his father and his wife, though he stood up for the old man when he was there. But under the roof where Marget ruled only the strongest soul could call itself its own. Bob seemed to fade, to be far-off in the little room with the narrow walls, where Marget towered to the ceiling and covered the whole floor. Yet she was only a middle-sized woman, after all, where he was six foot and broad, but a word from her tongue was like a slap from a clout, the look in her eye was like the dig of a pin. Her scurrying slippers, flapping at her heels, left no calm place where her footsteps had not been.
Because there was nothing to love, something had gone out of the old man after a while. He was polite and gentle, as he had always been, but now he grew very quiet, as though a finger was laid on his tongue. He did not always see what was under his nose, and when he was spoken to he did not always hear. He looked “lost,” Marget said, and the word was truer than she knew. Of course he had always “mooned,” as she called it, all his life, but behind the mooning the vital spark was plain. His mind was off on its travels, but it was sharply alive, and when it came back it brought with it fire from Heaven. But now there was no winged spirit behind his eyes. He lived in his dreams, but they never came down to earth.
Thomas, in one of his rare calls, noticed the difference without knowing what it meant. “The old man’s not as lish as he was,” he said to himself, watching his father with a troubled frown. “Likely it’s just he’s getting up in years.... Going that seldom I’m bound to see a change....” But years should have meant nothing to Kit, as he was vaguely aware. At the farm the old man would have remained a happy child, even to the last minute of his dying bed. Thomas pushed the worry to the back of his mind, but though he could not define the difference, he knew the cause. It wasMarget who had smothered that long-lived spirit of youth.
Even with her hand pressing upon it, it had taken months to die. It had never really flickered out until he had ceased trying to find one of them to love. He had tried each of them in turn, from the rating, jibing mother herself to the red-haired baby screaming on the hearth, and then he had suddenly let them all go. Perhaps it might never have died at all if Marget had allowed him to play his fiddle from time to time, but it was the first part of him at which she struck. The sound of it seemed to send her out of her mind, and even the baby greeted it with yells. Certainly, its unearthly, quivering note, peculiarly thin and sweet, made an almost heart-breaking wail in the little house. He did his best to obey, but it was a long time before he learned to keep his fingers from the strings. Often he found himself playing without knowing that he had begun, and awoke to a chorus of abuse and screams. He would play in the night, too, forgetting that it was night, and then even the neighbours would start knocking at the walls. There was always music singing in his mind, so that he did not always know when the fiddle was singing, too. He used to wonder, when they made so much to-do, how it was they did not hear the other music as well.But even the red-haired baby did not seem to hear that. Anyhow, if it did, it did not scream.
When he found that he could not play in the house, he tried to find somewhere to play outside—down by the river, for instance, close to the bridge. He had a rather wonderful time down there until Marget scented him out. Sitting on a great root at the water’s edge, he would play to the forest above and the forest beneath, until folk came along walking through the one, while their reflections walked through the other, down below. They used to seat themselves on the tree-trunks near or stand about him in groups, while he played them varsovianas and schottisches and reels. Of course there were always children, but others came as well, and sometimes there was quite a crowd. The music would run to the village across the fields, though never as far as Marget’s open door. But over the river and up the park it went as far as it liked, and as far as it liked with the river down to the sea. On the grass at the river’s edge the sun threw patches never twice alike, and the listening faces looked paler under the trees. Kit, in his old clothes, was just a bit of the trunk on which he leaned, except for the flying movements of his hands. Beside him was the velvety water, deep black, shot and shivered by goldpatines and leaf-dances and lacy patterns and bright gleams.
Sometimes, when he was tired, he talked to the crowd, telling them of old dances and melodies and old times. They left the tree-trunks, and came nearer by degrees, the lads with their hands in their pockets and the children with fingers in their mouths. He looked round at their friendly eyes, and thought how nearly all eyes changed when a fiddle was played. If anybody laughed or jeered at first, he was an open or a sneaking worshipper before long. Sometimes the women who lived near brought him a cup of tea and a snack to eat, and nothing he ever had at Marget’s heartened him half so much. And on especially blessed days when the tunes went like so much unwound silk, there came somebody who remembered Fiddlin’ Kit.
It was after one of these days, taking him clean back to happier times, that he brought a horrible vengeance on himself. One afternoon, when the children were coming home from school, he went out to the forbidden footpath under the chestnuts and played. He forgot all about the cottage just across, and Marget of the music-hating heart. He forgot that he was only a beggar-man and that somebody paid his keep. He only remembered that he was Fiddlin’Kit, at sight of whom folk had always danced, and the feet of the children stirred his ancient blood. The young feet, the feet of the coming generation of dancers, always stirred his blood. From the end of the village they came skipping down the road, singing a little tune they had learned in school. Most of them came in twos and threes, linked together by twining arms, or trailing a little cloak by its hem in the dust. Some whispered great mysteries in others’ ears. Some held a little school on the kerb, as if they had not already had enough, and in the midst of the lesson gathered themselves up and ran. And all the time, here and there, some of them sang, and the tune that they sang got into the fiddle and played. Kit, down the long perspective of the street, saw the white school from which they had come, and the tune, as it were, coming with them out of the door. He had known the song long ago, and he never forgot a tune. It was only in nature that the fiddle should sing, too.
Marget, staring crossly at neglected plants in the ill-treated patch behind the house, heard both fiddle and voices lilting over the roof. They climbed the slates and swung off the chimney-tops to drop in delicate sweetness on her head. She thought of Kit, of course, in the first breath, but remembered that she hadleft him nodding in the house. The red-haired baby, she knew, had had him under its eye. She glanced suspiciously down the cottage backs, wondering which harboured this nuisance to the rest. The Martin boy had a fancy for fiddling, she believed; she had caught him talking to Kit about it in the road. Then there was that lass of Simpson’s that thought she played—the one that was going to service before so long. Folks never seemed to care whether the neighbours liked the noise, though they were fit to swear if the red-haired baby cried. There was more than one that she wanted a word with about that, a word flung in like a bomb at a cottage door. This dratted fiddling might give her her excuse, so she picked up her vegetables and hurried down.
She thought of Kit again as she flapped along, and again told herself that it was somebody else. He was safe enough under her thumb, by now, the silly old man. He had given her a deal of trouble at first, fiddling in other folks’ houses when he might not fiddle in hers, but of course she had easily traced him by the sound. Then she had stolen upon him unawares, breaking the harmonies like so much silvered glass, and after a time or two he had never done it again. Besides, this playing came from the street, and if she was sure of anythingshe was sure she had cured him of that. It was much more likely to be some fiddling tramp, who would be knocking for ha’pence at her door. She slipped as she ran down the steps to give him the best of her tongue, and the potatoes flew out of her apron left and right. It took her some minutes to pick them up again, and as she was doing so the music changed. Now it was playing a dismal little tune, and little voices began to sing it in breathless little jerks. On the top of the tune she heard laughter and applause, and then fiddle and voices went on their way alone. Puzzled, she scrambled up with grubby hands, bunched the potatoes in her grimy apron and opened the cottage door.
The old man stood on the footpath under the trees, his ear bent to the fiddle as he played. His eyes, looking gravely before him at the scene, were as intent as if the fate of nations hung on his bow. The street was full of folk as far as she could see, and in the midst of them the children were playing “London Bridge.” Under the trees and over the sun-flecked road they moved slowly and solemnly to the tune, and between the laughing folk on either side their faces looked serious and sad. There were babies among them, for this is the little children’s game, and even the babies’ faces were sad. They stood facing each other in rows across thestreet, keeping themselves up by the grasp of their little hands. Sometimes they lost their balance and fell down, but they were so intent on the game that even as they bumped their faces never changed. Suddenly Marget discovered some of her own offspring in the crowd, and that the younger ones were even taking part. Last of all she saw the red-haired baby among the rest, clenching determined fists and setting a firm mouth.
“London Bridge is broken down,Broken down, broken down.London Bridge is broken down,(My fair Ladye!)Build it up with pins and needles,Pins and needles, pins and needles.Build it up with pins and needles,(My fair Ladye!)Pins and needles rust and bend,Rust and bend, rust and bend.Pins and needles rust and bend,(My fair Ladye!)”
“London Bridge is broken down,Broken down, broken down.London Bridge is broken down,(My fair Ladye!)Build it up with pins and needles,Pins and needles, pins and needles.Build it up with pins and needles,(My fair Ladye!)Pins and needles rust and bend,Rust and bend, rust and bend.Pins and needles rust and bend,(My fair Ladye!)”
“London Bridge is broken down,Broken down, broken down.London Bridge is broken down,(My fair Ladye!)
“London Bridge is broken down,
Broken down, broken down.
London Bridge is broken down,
(My fair Ladye!)
Build it up with pins and needles,Pins and needles, pins and needles.Build it up with pins and needles,(My fair Ladye!)
Build it up with pins and needles,
Pins and needles, pins and needles.
Build it up with pins and needles,
(My fair Ladye!)
Pins and needles rust and bend,Rust and bend, rust and bend.Pins and needles rust and bend,(My fair Ladye!)”
Pins and needles rust and bend,
Rust and bend, rust and bend.
Pins and needles rust and bend,
(My fair Ladye!)”
Marget made a rush as soon as she got her breath, but the crowd 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 tothe 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!)”
“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!)”
“Here’s a prisoner we have got,We have got, we have got.Here’s a prisoner we have got,(My fair Ladye!)
“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!)
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!)”
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 allthe 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!)”
“Off to prison she must go,She must go, she must go!Off to prison she must go,(My fair Ladye!)”
“Off to prison she must go,She must go, she must go!Off to prison she must go,(My fair Ladye!)”
“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 theenchantment 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 stayedwith 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 ifit 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 momentswhen 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 grinningfry 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 totrust 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 underhis 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 clearabout 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. Therewas 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 folkbehaved. 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 hisenergy 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 nothingthat struck him as being new. It was all much too beautiful for that.
When he did get to the bedroom at last, there was always shadow there. He went into the shadow as he went up the stair, and met it when he opened the door. Through the windows, when he looked out, there was no sun on the marsh, only the faint rising of a moon. Somewhere out in the uncertain dark was the quiet plashing of the sea. It was the hour when the world is nothing and some one person is all; when Heaven comes easily, and earth as easily goes. So would death come, he thought, his own good death. Some day he would enter the house for the last time, and climb the stair and open and shut the door. Through the shadows for the last time he would see the things stand out that they had shared, and that perhaps they might find again on the other side. The bits of carpet that their feet had worn; the bed where they had heard each other’s breathing in the night; handles and hooks that hand after hand had touched. The sea would be there for the last time, because in Heaven there would be no sea. He would lean out to it, but would only hear it, silver and cool. Then he would let himself summon her out of the dark, because now there would be no need of turning back, and however she came she would be just right,whether fresh and young or grey and wrinkled and bowed. They would put out their arms to each other, and find each other there.... Death, that seemed so dreadful to folk, meant only that.
His dreams grew upon him after the fiddle came back, chiefly because now he very seldom went out. He could not walk very far, and no matter where he went, it was sure to be against the rules. He was forbidden the other houses in the row, and the river-bank and his potterings on the footpath by the wall. If he went out at all, it was on an errand of Marget’s to the shops, but he had lost the wish to go out, just as he seemed to have lost the wish to play. In these days his fingers never went unknowingly to the strings. Even now that the fiddle was safe, he went on sitting in his room, and for some unstated reason Marget let him be. So his mind was often away on its travels over the marsh, and the body that was left grew quieter every day. The time seemed to be getting near for that last mounting of the stairs. Those who saw him about then said that he “wouldn’t be so long.”
And now, after all the days, had come the order of release. Thomas had got the farm in the end, and straight away asked for his father to come home. Not only his mind but his bodycould go to the place for which he cried. He could go to a son who would ease his remaining days and a daughter awaiting him with open arms. Of course he was glad to be going, thankful beyond words; too thankful and anxious, indeed, for his content. He could have taken it simply and easily, earlier on, but after all this time it loomed too large. Before, it would have been inevitable and right, but now it seemed to him more than a little strange. As he sat waiting for them to come and take him away, he was conscious of the discomfort and even terror of change. He felt both the reluctant weariness of the old—for whom every shift on the road may be the last—and the fear of the dreamer that his dream may prove untrue. The idealist always shrinks from fulfilment just at the last, and Kit was shrinking and suffering all through. He dreaded the emotional strain through which he would have to pass, longing with shame for his wretched bed and the quiet communion with his tree. Nevertheless he reached forward eagerly to his dream, knowing that he must accept it now, even if he slew both it and himself. Steadily, at the back of his mind, shone the golden glory of the marsh.
He sat patiently, as the old sit who have to husband their strength, but he was filled with a feverish aching to be off. His nervous energyebbed continually during this long pause before the start. He had a miserable fear that he might refuse to go when it came to the point. He saw himself making for his room as soon as the trap appeared, an obstinate, desperate old animal slinking to its lair. Marget would curse and hammer on the door, and he would cower on the bed in silence, holding his breath. When they were tired of it they would leave him alone, and his heart would stop shaking itself out of its place. He would hear the trap drive away out of his life, and know in that instant all that he had missed....
He might have steadied his nerves by dozing in his chair, but the children, as usual, kept him from doing that. All the time they were darting in and out to look for the trap, or peering at him round the doors. All about the dark cottage he could see their eyes, excited, curious, mocking and bold. He could hear them speaking of him in rough whispers that always reached him as jeers. For once he wished them busy at their quarrelsome games, but they were much too intent to take themselves out of the way. The dramatic element in Gran’pa held them to the last—the thing that hinted tragedy and scenes. Even the act of driving away would mean more with Gran’pa than with anybody else. They felt instinctively that this was oneof the climaxes of life, and responded eagerly to its thrill. Gran’pa’s bundle in its red handkerchief was also a source of thrill, a sort of monster pudding in its cloth. Now and then one of the children emerged and gave the bundle a sly but searching poke. If Gran’pa hadn’t been there, they would have had it open at once, and there was always the chance that he might leave it behind. So they stayed, impatient and fidgety but firm, wearing the old man’s strength with whisper and stare. There was more to be got out of this than any casual play. Besides, Marget’s concluding scene was still to make.
Now he had that first terrible feeling of being suffocated and hemmed in. He couldn’t even find a place to rest his eyes, because of the pointing fingers bristling on all sides. There seemed to be faces everywhere as well, and even when he turned to the street one peered at him over the sill. He would have got up and gone outside, but he knew they were there to watch him and would cry him down. Panting, he fixed his hunted gaze on the stair, seeing it in the dark room as a mysterious ladder climbing into peace. It rested him just to look at it and picture where it led. Up above, safe from all the eyes, was a hiding-place for the hunted, shrinking old. The desire to be there grew upon him as he looked, so that he was drawnirresistibly to his feet. Once up the narrow stair, he would be free of the effort that lay ahead, and the minds that had fastened on his like preying teeth. Now he ached to be there, burned to be there.... Something with wings would stand outside the door.... He straightened himself, nerving himself to move, and then he saw Marget coming down the stairs.
The silence, breaking the children’s speech in half, held a sense of something thrown from a height and smashed. Something always died or was hurt when Marget entered a room. Kit had been too intent to heed her step, but now she was there before him, blocking his way. Where the presence with wings should have been he saw Marget instead, thin, pallid, slatternly, flaring-fringed and slit-eyed. Her tight lips sneered when she saw the old man on his feet, and her knuckles whitened as she gripped the rail. He looked very tall in the low room, and, with bundle and fiddle, very ready to be gone. This was a bitter moment for Marget that snatched her bone from between her teeth. She was ragingly jealous of those who wanted him for himself—wanted before they had tried him, Marget said. They couldn’t really be glad of a burden in the house; they were only pretending, to make other folks look small. She despised them for saddling themselves with theold man, and hated and mocked them because they did it with smiles. Also she hated Kit for his evident eagerness to go.
“What d’ye think ye’re at?” she demanded, looking down at him from the stair. Her malignant face sneered at him out of the gloom, and her voice was full of sounds that troubled his delicate ear.
He braced himself, as he always did when Marget spoke. Even when she looked at him he held himself ready for attack. “Trap’ll be round, waint it?” he asked, by way of reply. He leaned his hand on the table to steady himself, looking up. “I reckon trap’ll be round afore so long.”
She glanced for a moment at his hand, finer, in spite of its age, than any in the house, and there came into her face that hatred of things unknown which had stirred her to fury when the baby danced.
“Nay, then, it just waint!” she rapped out. “I told Bob he needn’t hurry himself, getting off. They won’t be looking for you yet. Marsh-folk is always a week behind everybody else.”
“I’ll be glad to be off,” Kit said dully, with the mechanical patience he had learned at her hands. “I’m getting weary a bit, hanging about. I’d best be off.”
“Ay, well,” she jibed at him, “you’ll have tobide. I don’t know as another hour or two in my house’ll do you any harm. You were glad enough on it once, when landlord skifted you out. And it’s as cheap sitting as standing, I reckon, even for folks as hasn’t the price of a seat. You’d best set down till it’s time for you to stir.”
“Trap’ll be round,” Kit repeated doggedly. “I’d reyther stand.” He drew in his fingers as if her eyes hurt them, and did his best to straighten his back and set his jaw. The deliverance that was so near gave him courage to fight, in spite of the sinister things in her face and voice. He had yielded in almost every contest yet, and if she had lost where the fiddle was concerned, it was because she had been conquered by something in herself. To sit was to own himself beaten to the end, and would send him shamed to the marsh from a last defeat. And there was always the chance that if he sat he might never get away, because of the shrinking that wrought against him in his heart.
So again he braced himself and said, “I’ll stand.”
She bent forward towards him from the stair, her chin thrust out at him and her eyes nearly shut. He wanted to push her away and hurry out into the street. He had a feeling that she had trodden that winged thing underfoot, sothat there was no longer a refuge for him upstairs.
“I tellt you trap wouldn’t be round just yet.”
“Ay, but it will.”
“Likely you think I don’t know?”
“Nay, not I.” Kit looked away.
“I’m a liar, that’s what it is?”
“Nay.”
“Set down and bide.”
“I’ll stand.”
Suddenly she dropped her strained pose and became all violence and storm, like the wind that gets up out of nowhere on a silent night. Raising herself with a jerk, she flapped down the stair with the noise of a dozen carpet-beaters in full swing. Nobody ever expressed as much as Marget with a pair of down-trodden slippers loose at the heels; yet nobody would keep them when she was gone, pathetic and reverenced by a bed.... Kit thought of his winged thing she had beaten down, and looked to see feathers scattered under her feet. Her face was changed both in colour and shape by the unknown terrible things that lived in her brain. Her voice was changed in the same way, and it was her voice that Kit dreaded most, because his ear had the straighter run to his soul. The things that were part of Marget yet not Marget he never could understand. Hewas never ready for them, never on his guard. Now she was close to him, bent as if to strike, a trick that had a special horror for the sensitive old man. The children nudged each other and laughed, gloating, yet more than half afraid.
“Stand, will ye—getting in folks’ road and showing yourself that smart to be up and off? Ay, I know you’re fain to be shot of us at last, and you should be right shammed o’ suchlike nastiness, I’m sure. Who’d ha’ seen to you all this time if it hadn’t been for us? Thomas wanted nowt wi’ you, as you know; he’d other fish to fry, had Tom. You’d ha’ bin on the parish, that’s where you’d ha’ bin, and like enough in t’ Union itself. Yon’s the spot for do-nowts as spend their own brass and then look to spend other folks’ as well! Yon’s the spot for wastrels and rattlehorns and fancy fiddlers playing in the street. (Eh, but it banged owt, did yon!) It’ll be queer if you don’t come to it yet, wi’ a pound o’ baccy at Christmas, and ‘Thank ye kindly, master,’ all the week. Likely they’ll set you going errands, tea and currants and a bit o’ lard, or happen your job’ll be cleaning out the pigs. Ay, you’ll land there yet, as sure as eggs is eggs! Likely you’ll think on a bit then about Bob and me.”
He stood looking at her without saying a word, fascinated, just as the children were fascinated,by this exhibition of a ruthless mind. He could feel them gathering closer, magnetised though afraid. The voice that was full of strange things filled all the house, flooded the street and carried down the row, so that folks in passing halted and stared, and the neighbours came running to their doors. “She’ll do for him yet,” they said to each other when they heard that voice, and there was always the chance that the moment had arrived.
“As for the spot you’re off to,” she flared on, “I hope you’ll find it all you think for, I’m sure. Thomas and his missis’ll likely be terble throng wi’ you while you’re fresh, but wait till they’ve had you to do for as long as me. Wait till they’ve gitten you maundering about the place, making a deal o’ work wi’ your daft-like ways. Agnes Black’ll skift you pretty sharp, or she’s not the woman I take her for, that’s all.”
Still he said nothing, paralysed by the flood of sound, and the fierce inflections springing out of her voice like sparks from a cat’s back. And then suddenly she changed her method of attack, letting her voice slide down the scale until it was even and chill and full of insidious hints and something that smiled.
“You think it’ll be a soft spot, I’ll be bound, wi’ nowt to do but set fiddling all day. Youreckon you’re going back to things as they was, only wi’ other folk to see to the work instead o’ you. But if you’re counting on things being just the same, you’re badly wrong. Nowt stands still, and I reckon farms is like the rest. What, I doubt you’ll not know the place when you set eyes on it again! It’ll have changed a deal in these last two years, same as you’ve changed a deal yourself. Last man let it down pretty bad; it’s a mercy he broke his neck afore so long. Landlord’s had a deal to do at it, they say, and Thomas is that set up he’s for doing a deal more. Ay, it’ll not be the same farm, no more than Kit Sill’s the same man. You’ll find it out for yourself afore you’ve been there a week. You’ll be nobbut a beggar there, you’ll think on, same as here, and owe somebody every bite. It’ll be another man’s roof over you, as used to be your own. There’ll be another chap master, telling you what’s what. There’ll be a woman for missis as baint no wife o’ yours. It’ll be bitter as salt water washing at your door....”
“Ay, but it’ll be home,” Kit said bravely, holding up his head, and wondering what devil taught her his secret fear.
“Yon’s what you think—now.” For the first time there was a touch of sincerity in her voice. Her cold eyes looked away from himthrough the open door. “Them as gangs once shouldn’t return. Going back doesn’t mend things; it nobbut spoils what you’ve had. You’ll likely spoil summat if you gang ... summat you’ve fettled for yourself.... Your sort doesn’t live in houses made wi’ hands....”
“Summat I’ve fettled?” Kit asked, and his voice shook. “Houses not made wi’ hands...?” He stared at her, terror and pleading in his face, and she knew she had beaten him and turned again with a jeer.
“Nay, I doubt there’s summat smittal about daft folks like ye! I nobbut mean you’ll happen wish yourself back wi’ Marget afore you’ve done. Not that you’re off yet, so you can just set you down. Folks wi’ manners wouldn’t be showing themselves that smart.”