IV
They went arm-in-arm along the meadow path, the young and the old masters of Beautiful End. Thomas had always been a silent soul, but now he talked as if he would never stop. Every now and then he laughed as well, a satisfied, happy chuckle in his throat. Also he acted showman, which was hard to bear, and Kit said “Ay” and “Nay,” and looked the other way. He wished with all his heart that Thomas would stop pointing and hold his tongue. He did not want to be shown things; most passionately he didnot. He could find what he wanted for himself, and see it as Thomas could never see it, if he tried for the rest of his life. There was no use in showing things at any time, if it came to that, because no two persons saw them just the same. Thomas was equally busy pointing out what was new, and introducing old friends, as it were, by the scruff of the neck. Thomas had been off at service from a lad, yet here he was teaching his father about the farm, although Kit had never ceased seeing it since he went away. Didhe remember the three old trees in a clump, and how deep the river ran below the house? Glimpses of bay and moss ... his own fields ... things that were closer than breathing and nearer than hands and feet! He was ashamed of himself for being irritated and vexed, because, of course, Thomas was only meaning to be kind. It wasn’t every son who would do so much for a thriftless dad, and he didn’t know he was spoiling things at the start. He must just be allowed to talk himself to a stop, and then perhaps they would have a little peace. He would surely get tired of pointing, after a bit. There was nothing to do but say “Ay” and look away.
The meadow was altered, somehow, he said to himself, though just for the moment he was puzzled to say why. It had a smoother and greener look than he remembered it to have worn, though at the same time it seemed somehow rather bare. “There’s a deal less thistles than there used,” he said, when he understood, and Thomas laughed and nodded his head with pride.
“Ay, and there’ll be fewer still afore I’m through.” His eyes went keenly across the meadow and over the land, seeing things as his father would never see them, if he tried for the rest of his life. “I’ve not made a job of ityet, not by a deal, but there’s over much to take in hand right off. I just went for t’things as was worst, and t’others mun just make shift and bide their time. I’d ha’ liked to have had the whole place sided afore you come, but yon was a bigger bite than I could chew....”
There was a warm satisfaction in his voice in spite of his words, for he had done wonders already, as, of course, he knew. Already the farm had a look of care such as it had not worn for many a long year. He could not help feeling proud that it had changed its face even in so short a time, and was perfectly sure that his father would be proud as well. Kit, however, seemed scarcely to notice what he said, but was busy staring at the cattle under the hedge.
“What’s come to old Bonny?” he demanded, suddenly stopping short in the rough track. “You’ve never gone and parted with her, surely—a rare good cow like yon?”
“I never had her to part with,” Thomas said, with a look of surprise. “Bonny’s been dead a while back, father, if you come to think on. Even the best can’t last for ever, and Bonny had her spell.”
“It’s the first I’ve heard on it,” Kit replied in a vexed tone. He stared aggrievedly at the new stock, as if the blame of his disappointmentwas somehow theirs. “What d’ye think it was as took her off at the last?”
“Nobbut old age, I reckon!” Thomas said, with a laugh. “What, it was not so long afore you give up the farm! You’ve never gone and forgotten yon, I’m sure!”
“Ay, I reckon I have,” Kit said in a voice like a full stop, and stared for a while longer at the drowsy group, before he turned away and left them in the sun. He remembered now, of course, that Bonny was dead, and was deeply ashamed of his lapse and his daft talk. It was just that he had forgotten that things change, because in his dream of home there was never any change. Everything in it had been as stable as the stars, even such creatures of time as thistles and cows. But he couldn’t let Thomas think he was fretting after the past, so presently he made an effort to speak again. “Seemingly you’ve a decent bit o’ stock,” he said. “I reckon you’ve got an eye for the right stuff.”
Thomas had been conscious of a sudden chill, but this remark brightened him at once. “Happen I’ve not done that badly,” he answered as modestly as he could, longing to stop again for another stare. He wanted to drag his father across the field, and tell him the history of each separate beast, and how they had all been bargains beyond belief. But there was plenty oftime for that, and the old man must be tired; besides, Agnes was waiting for them at the house.
“I’ve always meant to go in for right good stuff,” he said. “I always knew I’d be stock-proud if I got the chance. Farming’s like owt else—there’s nowt beats the best. A good roan’s my choice—you can’t do better than yon. Your old Bonny was a rare good cow, if nobbut she hadn’t been white.”
“She suited me well enough,” Kit said, in the tone that meant the subject was now closed, and Thomas remembered himself and hedged with shame. Agnes would have plenty to say, he felt sure of that, if he put the old man about before ever he reached the house! “There’s always changes,” he murmured, after a while, not knowing that he was echoing Marget and Bob. “Farm’s in the same spot, anyway, and the yew. Grass grows much the same colour, I’ll be bound; and there’s always the sea, as doesn’t change at all....”
Kit remembered Bob when they were halfway to the house, and turned to look for him, thinking him at their heels. But the track behind them was empty and the gate shut, and there was no more sign of Bob and his trap than if they had never been. The old man wanted to know why he had gone away, and Thomas looked shy at the question, and seemed vexed.
“Nay, I doubt he’s a bit put out about summat, is Bob. Happen he’s not best suited at you coming to us.... Any road, he wasn’t for coming up to the house, whatever I said. He said he’d be stopping a while at Low Moss End, and likely getting his tea along wi’ ’em an’ all....”
Kit remained standing still in the middle of the field, looking rather forlornly down the track. “Happen he’d a message or summat for ’em,” he observed. “They’re cousins o’ Marget’s, now I come to think on.” There was a lost sound in his voice, as if he had somehow been betrayed. “I never thought as he wouldn’t be coming up.”
Thomas had come to a stand, too, looking crestfallen and cast down. He had never imagined for a moment that his father would want Bob. One would have thought he had had enough of that family and to spare! “Is there owt you wanted to tell him?” he ventured at last. “I could happen slip down and fetch him as soon as I’ve had my tea.”
But before he had stopped speaking Kit had swung round, shaking his head and making for the house. Now he seemed to be running away from Bob, thrusting him into the distance that lay behind. He wondered why he had asked for his elder son, and why he had feltdeserted when he saw the empty field. Bob was the last connecting link with what he had left, and he couldn’t be really free until Bob had gone. He ought to have felt exultant instead of afraid, but there was no trusting his wretched nerves to-night. He felt ashamed of himself again ... he was always feeling ashamed. He was the sort that would try to escape on the threshold of Paradise itself....
He breathed more easily when they reached the garden gate, because it did not seem possible that he could turn back now, and he saw with relief that the gate was still the same. It was painted, indeed, in the new shade of blue, but that did not prevent it from being the same gate underneath. He knew it to be the same by the missing spoke, which must have been missing for over twenty years. Thomas apologised for the spoke, but he paid no heed; he was so busy gloating over the fact that it wasn’t there.
He hurried between the box borders along the path, and all the sweet scents of the garden came to him, and the homely, well-known odours of the farm. There was lavender somewhere, wallflower, mignonette; sweet briar, faint salt from the far sea, and the scent of the ready grass asking for the scythe. Now he was close to the whitewashed porch, with its stone seatsand its arch of rose, and the little beds at its feet that were full of snowdrops in the spring. Then he was inside the porch, in the stream of gold that went swimming through the door, and felt himself shabby and poor in the purity of the light. He was like a threadbare tramp, he thought to himself, being carried up to Heaven in a chariot of fire.... The kitchen seemed dim and narrow to him after the open marsh, or else his eyes were weakened by weariness and sun. Nothing came out or spoke to him as he stood, waiting for the first tremendous swelling of joy. In the old days the peace of the house had been so free that it had never hidden itself until he was inside. It had come out to meet him before he reached the porch, like a child that runs to a father coming home. To-night the kitchen was empty and very quiet, but it was an aloof stillness, self-absorbed ... detached. The voice of the grandfather’s clock in the silence spoke as if speaking only to itself. He, too, now that he was under the roof, felt curiously detached. Only half of him, he felt, was in the house; the other—the dreaming half—was left outside. But still he hoped and stood, waiting for the uprising of his heart, and Thomas, respectfully sympathetic, waited too. Perhaps it was because of Thomas that the magic would not work. Suddenly he began tofeel self-conscious under his son’s eyes, and the fear that was fear of a fear came drifting back. Shrinking, he took a hasty plunge through the kitchen door, and caught his foot on a flag as he went in.
Thomas, following, found him just inside, puzzling and staring worriedly at the floor. “Summat catched my foot,” he was saying repeatedly with a pained surprise. He bent down to the flag as if wishing to test it with his hand as well as his feet. “I never mind catching my foot afore,” he said. It was just as if he couldn’t believe he had done the thing, as if his boots had been bound to know the flag—the same old boots—all patched—that he had been wearing when he left. But he and the boots had forgotten because they were old, and the flag had forgotten the memory of his tread. It did not do to fret about these things, because perhaps they always happened to folks who went away. Marget, at least, would have told him so, he knew. Nevertheless, the trivial little mischance weighed upon his mind. It was like some base betrayal on the part of ancient friends.
“You’re a bit shaky, likely,” Thomas said, dumping the bundle on the nearest chair. He blinked his eyes a moment because of the sun, and then he began to look about for his wife.He couldn’t persuade himself at first that she wasn’t there, because this was the great moment of which she had talked. He had almost expected to meet her in the field, or at least to discover her waving from the porch. Failing that, they would find her when they got inside, ready with welcome for a tired old man. Here they were, however, at the journey’s end, only to find her vanished off the earth. Not only was she not in the kitchen as he had thought, but he had a terrible feeling that she wasn’t even in the house. There was no stir in the air of the kitchen as though somebody had just run out. The silence of it was settled and whole, and seemed to flow away into unstirred deeps beyond. Just for a moment he felt his old loneliness crush back, thinking her shut away from him where he could not go. Then he roused himself and went to the stair and called, and Kit stopped staring at the flag and shuffled into the room. There he stood and waited, as he had learned to wait, with his careless-careful fingers clasping fiddle and bow. The kitchen still seemed dim and rather strange, and nothing spoke to him out of it that he knew. The sun sent pointers of light across the room, picking out tables and chairs he had never seen.
Thomas shouted and said she wouldn’t be far; and shouted again and said she wouldn’tbe long. This sudden check at the very start seemed to have thrown all their pleasant planning out of gear. The great occasion couldn’t begin until Agnes was in place, and as far as he could discover she was gone for good. He thought, as he waited and fretted, that things were going amiss ... right from the earliest moment they were going amiss....
He said over and over again that she wouldn’t be far, just as Kit had repeated his speech about the flag. They were like helpless, stranded actors dropping cues that there was nobody left in the theatre to pick up. Then Thomas bellowed again in the midst of a last excuse, and they heard a door fling open above them and afterwards slam. There was a running and flutter and clatter on the stair, and Agnes came flying past him into the room.
She went straight across to the guest and took his hand, her face warm with welcoming smiles, and her voice full of self-reproach. “Eh, now, to think I missed you after all!” she said; “an’ me that set on being on the spot! I never thought you’d catch me unbeknownst. I was nobbut giving a look to things upstairs.... Ay, well, you’re welcome, I’m sure ... you are that. We’re right glad, Thomas and me, to have you come....”
She still had hold of the hand which he leftlimply in her clasp, and he looked at her smiling face and said “Thank you,” and smiled too. The kindliness of her welcome warmed his heart, though it was not the welcome he wanted from the house. It was like the welcome from the cottages in the row, which was pleasant and comforting but had nothing to do with home. Agnes was mistress of the place, but she was a stranger, too, and no stranger could give you the real feeling of home. She had never been in the house when he went in his dream, and now that she spoke in the dream it was bound to seem strange. But she was pleasant to look at, and homely, and very kind, and she would grow to be part of the real things after a while. So when she continued to smile he smiled again, and Thomas smiled joyfully over by the stair. Perhaps there was just a touch of self-satisfaction in the smile, because he was thinking of Marget’s welcome home. Anyhow, they had done the old man better than that, even if Agnes had been off the spot! He forgot, as he watched, that he had been afraid, that things had seemed to be going utterly wrong. He only remembered that they were perfect now—the house, the weather, and the kindly wife. Certainly, it would be queer if his father wasn’t content ... but then he was positive he would be content....
Agnes was sure of it, at least, sure as triumphantangels gathering tired souls into heaven. Now she was laughing and repeating her first speech—it was curious how they repeated themselves to-night. Then she flew to the hearth and set the kettle back to boil, afterwards swinging round to put the visitor into his chair.
“Set you down, Father, and I’ll make the tea. You’ll be wanting your tea, I reckon, after yon drive. Now, then, Thomas, shove it nearer the fire, and don’t stand poping like a pig at a punch! There you be, Father ... champion ... now you’ll do. Shall I put fiddle down for you, by the way?”
He looked at her as she stood in front of him, holding out her hand, and a look of anxious terror crossed his face. It was true that she looked like the lasses who had loved the fiddle in the past, but that was before he had learned to be afraid. Still, this was home, and to refuse was to be false to the dream from the very first, because home was a place where every man’s foolishness was safe. “You’ll mind what you’re at?” he pleaded, searching her with his eyes, and she nodded her head wisely, and for the first time did not smile. Taking it gently, she set it on a table near, and there was no tremor of nervousness from the strings. She nodded again as she turned away, as though the fiddle was a secret that they shared....
“I’m feared to let it out o’ my sight,” Kit explained in an apologetic tone. “Marget was that set on shoving it in the fire.”
“Ay, well, it’ll be safe enough here,” Agnes said. “It’ll be safe as the Bible and precious as bright gold.” She went to a brass-handled drawer and whipped out a snowy square of a cloth which she laid across the strings. “Thomas mun make you a box for it,” she went on; “a nice warm box as’ll keep it out o’ the damp.”
Thomas said he would start on it first thing, in a tone that meant he was glad of something to say. Of course he was quite sure now, as Agnes was sure, but as yet he could not copy her conversational ease. “A grand warm box’ll be just the ticket,” he said. “It’ll be better and snugger a deal when it’s gitten a box.”
Kit said they were right kind, and settled himself in his chair, staring in front of him at the shining hearth. He did not like to say that he would not have the box, and that he hated to see the fiddle covered up. The white cloth looked for all the world like a little shroud, and the box would be only a coffin in his eyes. He did not mean to have the box whatever they said, but it wouldn’t be manners to tell them so right off. There seemed no letting him and his fiddle alone, though all that folks could do for him was to let him alone. It was just the wayThomas had bothered him in the field, showing him things he didn’t want to see. Well, he would slip away from them later on, but now he must mind his manners and let be.
He roused himself with a little attempt at cheer. “Ay, well, I’ve landed at last!” he said, with a smile. “I never thought I’d see the old spot again.”
Thomas and Agnes gave him a double beam. “It’s a sight for sore eyes to see you here, I’m sure!”
“Marget wasn’t best pleased at me coming away,” the old man said. “She’s had a deal to say about it, these last few week.”
“And wi’ the rough side of her tongue for it, I’ll swear!” Thomas laughed. “I heard tell she was taking on and terble wild. Ay, well, you’ll have none o’ that wi’ Agnes, don’t you fret.”
Agnes threw him a laughing glance, and said it was early days to talk like that. Happen, if he waited, she would show him different, later on. Thomas, however, wasn’t to be put off. “There isn’t a smarter lass in the country-side,” he said, “and she’s a rare hand at managing a house.” The showman in him was aching to be out, and he was driven as well by an urgent need that he didn’t know how to explain. It was as if he was bent upon manufacturing abarrier of good things, an insurmountable barrier of comforts and kind words.... He had a sense of delicacy about beginning to praise the house, but it couldn’t be taken amiss if he praised his wife. “She’ll do you that well you’ll think you’re the king,” he said, “and she’s as bonny as they make ’em, as you can see for yourself.”
“Marget’s not much in the way o’ looks,” Kit said. “She’s the cankert sort, is Marget, wi’ a nippit nose.”
Thomas laughed and said it was just as well she couldn’t hear, but the bitter disparagement gave him a slight shock. It had never been like his father to say bitter things. He had had a good word for every erring soul, a tolerant explanation for every doubtful deed. Marget must have been dreadful indeed to have altered him like that. The thought of his own share in the matter troubled Thomas’s heart. “Bob’s catched a Tartar,” he added, after a while. “He darsent call his soul his own, poor lad!”
“Ay, she keeps folk stirring, Marget does,” Kit said, but after his little outburst he sat quiet. It was strange how Marget was present with him even here, so that he could not so much as open his mouth but she came jumping out. He tried to put her away from him as he watched Agnes moving about the hearth, allcolour and curves and deft handling and neat ways. Agnes was flushed with the excitement of the occasion, and her eyes shone when she smiled. He could not remember that he had ever seen Marget smile except for the purpose of a sneer. She had never even smiled at the red-haired baby or Bob, and certainly not at the daft old man who was only a burden in the house. He liked a smiling face, but it embarrassed him as well, because he had forgotten what to do with people who smiled. That was why he shifted his eyes when Agnes looked his way, though he watched her again as soon as she left him alone. He liked her air of hurry without fuss, which filled the room with a vigour that did not fret. Marget would have spilt the kettle over the fender and one of the brats, and in the midst of the hissing and howling would have blamed himself. Somehow he could not picture Agnes ever spilling a drop. She brought the grand new tea-pot to be filled on the hearth, and the room was reflected in its polished side. Her blue gown, crossing and crossing the bars of gold, made him think of a coloured bird that kept flashing through the sun. From his window at Marget’s he had often watched the swifts darting and dipping in the evening light. The tiny whir of their wings across the pane had come to him in aseries of little shocks. The long, pointed wings were like little slender swords, crossing and darting and never getting home. Now, if he looked from the farm-window, he would see the birds of the marsh, the long legs of the heron and the stately swing of the gull. The redshank and the curlew he would see lonely on the sands ... yet here he was busy thinking of Marget’s and the swifts.
It seemed as if the farther he went away from Marget’s the closer it followed up. Just at first he had seemed to leave it right behind, and yet in the heart of the dream it was waiting on the step. The one door of the viaduct that he had seen still wide had not succeeded in closing, after all. That meant that, when he went to bed, he would not be safe, because Marget might come and peer at him as he slept. The thing that might have swamped her and shut her out had not so much as begun to come to pass. He could not conjure her out of the house, because magic had failed him as he stepped inside. If there was anything there that belonged to himself, it had done nothing for him yet but make him sad. Yet he couldn’t help feeling that the joy was only slightly out of reach; as if he looked at it through a window, but could not come inside. His heart was heavy, as heavy as wet grass. Nothing, he told himself,was going right. Even the chair he sat in wasn’t right.
“I doubt I mun be getting old bones,” he said at last. “Chair don’t seem to fit me same as it used.”
Thomas had been busy with a contented little whistled tune, but he broke it off in the middle when his father spoke. “’Tisn’t the old chair, dad,” he said, a little abashed. “Yon went wi’ the rest o’ the furniture at the sale.”
Kit stared at him a moment with a puzzled frown, and then, as if still at a loss, he dropped his gaze to the chair. Thomas saw that he was thinking hard as he ran his hands repeatedly over the arms. While he was at Marget’s he had remembered many sales, but apparently he had never remembered his own. In those crowds of his he had seen many a chair sold, but his own had never come to the hammer under his eyes. How could it do anything of the sort when it had stayed safely in the dream, waiting in the house until he should come back? Yet it had vanished, after all, when the dream had come about, and there was only this false pretender in its place. When he stopped rubbing the arms he peered at the legs, and twisted round to stare at the leather back. It was a shop-chair, that was plain, varnished and hard-stuffed, unyielding as old bread. It almostseemed to reject him as he sat, refusing the purpose for which it had been made. It was handsome enough to look at, of its kind, making a great show with leather and brass nails, but as yet it was only an effigy of a chair. No ghost as yet had clung to its hard seat, those stubborn ghosts which hammers couldn’t eject. No shadowy arms would steal and clasp him round as he sighed himself asleep on a twilit afternoon. It was a mindless chair, a chair without a soul, the price of which was the sacrifice of death. Generations must use it before it grew a soul; lover sitting on lover’s knee, children clambering about its legs. Dreams of the winter dusk would have to shut it round; the sick, the dying, console themselves in its arms. There was a long education before the new arm-chair, and he himself was the sacrifice it asked....
“House is furnished every bit new,” Thomas said. “But I got chair as near the old one as I could.”
“Oh, ay, it’s a grand chair, thank ye—real smart.”
“Nay, I doubt it isn’t much, but it’s the best we’ve got.”
“Marget wouldn’t ha’ let me set in the best chair.”
“You shall set where you like, Father, inthishouse!” Agnes flashed. “It’s queer if you can’t do as suits you best, I’m sure!”
Kit said she was right kind, and let his arms lie slackly along the arms of the new chair. The bright leather was cool and slippery to his sensitive old hands. The old chair had been covered with carpet that was rough to the touch—dark green and threadbare in many spots, with a pattern of ringed daisies centred by a faded rose.... It was all very well to say that he might choose; he was pinned to this new horror, nevertheless. Not here, any more than at Marget’s, could he sit exactly where he wished....
“Likely you’ve noticed we’ve a new kitchen range? Landlord said it was t’best as could be got.”
“Ay, I see it first thing,” Kit said, and looked away.
“Walls is new-washed, of course, and paint’s new, too. Yon old winder-sash gone——”
“Ay.”
“—new sink in back kitchen ... cupboards ... carpet on t’stairs——”
Agnes made a noise with the pot, and said the tea was mashed and they’d best set to. It was just like Thomas to spoil her pet surprise, but luckily it passed the old man by. He rose to his feet obediently when she spoke,and was set at the table, still in the hated chair. Agnes was telling him he wanted his tea, and he tried to agree with her, knowing that he lied. The light from the west still lay across the room, and blinded and hurt his unaccustomed eyes. He could not see the table as Agnes hoped he might—as she herself saw it with an artist’s pride. For her, every detail stood out on the whiteness of the cloth, coloured and glorified by the clear sun. The light was cool as water on china and polished plate, and rich on yellow butter and the pink surface of the ham. There were creamy scones and a gingerbread cake ... lavender in a vase ... deep crimson jam and eggs with warm brown shells. A white geranium stood on a sill, showing the sky behind it far and blue....
Thomas carved the ham and went on talking about the house. “There’s a deal that’s new above-stairs as well; beds and quilts and suchlike, and a deal besides. You could eat off the floors as easy as yon dish. Missis keeps the place like a new pin.”
“Marget’s nobbut a dirty slut,” Kit said. “Last week I come a terble bang over a pail.”
“Eh, now, but yon was wicked, if you like!” Agnes’s eyes dwelt pityingly upon him as she passed the tea. “She might ha’ finished you,” Thomas added, handing ham.
Kit said he doubted she wouldn’t have troubled if she had, and sat back, staring vacantly at his plate. His face looked worn and white now that the expression of almost venomous hate had died away. Thomas, busily carving, heard the hate in his voice, and again was conscious of a little shock. Kit himself was as puzzled by his vehemence as his son was jarred. Never before had he even thought of Marget in the terms he had used to-day. His tongue, like the rest of his body, had been in jail, and was only now beginning to be loosed. Yet his look was not the look of a man who was brooding on the past. That savage face belonged to a man in an unknown place ... betrayed....
And then he was back in the past, away from Beautiful End, back in the cottage where Marget’s pails lay hoping for his feet. This one had lurked in secret on the stair, and he had come on it hoping, and hurtled into space. Afterwards he and the fiddle sat on the bottom step, shaking and crying together in their pain. Nobody came near them however long they cried, though once the face of a neighbour showed scared beyond the door. Presently he had climbed the stair and gone back again to his room—to dream of his home where pails were kept in place. It was strange that now he was home he should wander away, to shake andpant and cry on the bottom step. It was strange he should long for that room now he was here, wanting that wretchedness beyond this grace....
Marget was in the mind of the others, too, it seemed. “Bob said she was fit to scratch when they come away,” Thomas was busy relating to his wife. “He made sure there’d be a row in the street, but she thought better o’ that. All the same, there was a grand to-do aforehand, so he said!”
“Jealous—that’s what it is!” Agnes answered with a toss of the head. She gave vent to a short laugh as well, and the laugh was a mixture of satisfaction and contempt. Kind as she was, and generous to a fault, she couldn’t help gloating over Marget to-day. She and Thomas were doing a beautiful thing, but little, sordid thoughts kept creeping in. Somewhere at the back of their minds they were gloating over Marget all the time. Of course she was bound to be jealous of their better luck—the unlovable woman with the wretched house. It must have irked her to see Kit driving off, knowing how glad he was to get away. She was bound to envy the bride with her pleasant home, her brand-new furniture and four-pronged forks. Those who sit in the sun are so sure of the envy of those in the shade. In any case, Margetcould have nothing to offer that could possibly compare. Agnes’s nature was nearly all pure gold, but the bit of alloy that was in it sounded in that laugh. Besides, how could she feel anything but secure, glowing in secret over that room upstairs?
The security in the laugh tempted Thomas into further speech. There could be no harm now in telling her the other things that Bob had said. “Ay, but hark ye,” he added, “what d’ye think o’ this? Bob had it the old man mightn’t settle, after all. ‘I’ll be at Low Moss End for an hour or two,’ he said, ‘and if he doesn’t feel like stopping, I’ll take him back.’”
“Not settle, did you say?” Agnes stared at him open-mouthed.
“Ay.”
“Take him back?”
“Yon’s what he said.”
“Well, did you ever hear the likes o’ that!” This time the laugh was on a harder note.... “What’s wrong, Father?” she added, kindly again, seeing the old man gazing at his cup.
“I doubt you’ve given me the wrong mug, my lass. Mine was a sort o’ blue chiney, wi’ a pink rose.”
“Yon went at sale an’ all,” Thomas explained, “but I got as near a match as they had in t’shop.”
Kit said the mug was grand and would do right well, but a little colour came in his face, and he felt ashamed as he had done in the field. They must be thinking he was going daft, losing his senses because of his great age. He kept waiting and waiting for the things that were in his dream, and didn’t seem able to grasp the things that were under his nose. He winced when Thomas talked of “getting a match,” because you couldn’t match the furniture of a dream. Even if the mug had managed to look the same, he would have known when he touched it that it wasn’t his. Still, the thing to remember was that Thomas had done his best. “Tea’ll sup right enough out of it, I’ll be bound,” he said. “Yon as Marget give me was every bit cracked....”
“Old folks should have the best of what’s going,” Agnes said. She knew the best was on the table to-night, but he did not seem to be making much of a meal. Perhaps excitement had taken his appetite away, or more probably he was over-tired with the slow drive. Now and then he looked again at the alien “mug,” but she never saw him lift it to his lips. Old folks always wanted a little tempting to their food, but she had been so certain he would be suited to-night. A vague sense of disappointment touched her mind, in spite of the fact that itwas still busy with Bob’s words. “I never hear such a thing as that about Bob!” she said again. “Surely to goodness Father’s had enough o’ his spot!”
“Ay, well, if he’s set on waiting, I reckon nobody’ll say him nay. He’ll nobbut be throwing away his time an’ that’ll be all.”
“It’s Marget’s nastiness—that’s what it is!” Agnes frowned. “She knows he’s glad to be shot of her, and she’s by way of having a slap.”
“That’s about it,” Thomas agreed, with a nod. He was glad now that he had spoken out, because Agnes had laid the bogey right away. First she had laughed, and then she had gone to the root of the matter and shown him the cause. The shadow lying on that first good hour had only been thrown by jealousy, after all. Bob had seen all the changes and novelties at the farm, and of course Agnes would know about them, too. It was Marget who gave the slap, as Agnes said; Bob was only the arm through which it struck. Jealousy—that was it; nothing but jealous lies. Under all the roofs of the kingdom none would be happier than Kit....
And Kit had fallen back again in his chair, staring vacantly in front of him with lifeless eyes. He was staring straight through the window that held the rolled-back sea, but allthat he really saw was a cottage-kitchen wall. As far as he knew, he was back at Marget’s again, at the inhospitable board which he had loathed. Thomas saw that his plate of food was barely touched, and that the cup of tea had never been touched at all. His hands, lying at rest along the cloth, pointed knife and fork towards the roof.... His son reached a gentle finger towards his arm, and at once he shrank away as at a blow. Knife and fork went clattering down as he clutched at his knee for the fiddle that wasn’t there. Finding nothing, he glanced furtively from his companions to the floor, and then terror seized him, and he looked wildly around the room. Quite suddenly he became still again when he saw the fiddle under the shroud. He frowned a little, and made as if to rise; and then remembrance came into his eyes, and he sank back. Thomas, waiting for that moment, drew a breath of relief....
His voice, slow and easy, broke the last of the spell.... “You’re getting on terble badly wi’ your tea. I doubt you’re not taking kindly to the ham.”
Kit said the ham was grand, as he had said of the cup, and the smug, terrible chair that was waiting for him to die. He had always been partial to ham, he said, and Marget had never given him as much as a slice. But, all the same,he made no attempt to empty his plate, and his knife and fork were under the table and he let them lie. “It don’t taste quite the same as it used,” he pleaded at last. “I reckon there’s no pigs gangs down just like your own....”
He felt ashamed of himself again when he saw the disappointment in Agnes’s face, but she did not try to force him into eating the ham against his will. She did not even say that folks were hard to suit, as Marget most certainly would have said. “Have a bit o’ butter wi’ your bread,” she coaxed instead, pushing the shining pat within his reach, and he felt comforted for a moment, and forgot that he had seen Marget sitting in her place. He made a determined effort to receive an impression of light and space, of comfort and kindliness and the atmosphere of home. He said to himself peace where there was no peace, and not for one moment did he succeed. Agnes was busy talking about Marget again, and he pushed the butter away and drifted back.... Nothing had happened to rescue him from prison, after all, and he was in danger of losing his home of vision as well....
“We’ll have a trap, one o’ these days,” Agnes was saying, “and ride round by Bob’s. Marget’ll be madder than ever when she sees Father getting that perked up and fat!”
“He shall play fiddle all down t’road,” Thomas grinned, “an’ 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 himas 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 ratherregretfully, 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!” andhanded 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 overthe 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 thestairs.... 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 veryleast—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 brightenedwith 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, hisheart 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 haveknown 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 hisfine 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 themiddle 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 everythingelse, 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 eachtime 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 nomore 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 allwas 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 murmuredin 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!”
“At Marget’s I see this spot as plain as plain, and my missis stirring through the rooms. I see the bits o’ sticks we bought when we was wed, and the hearth where we set together of a night. But now I’m back I can’t see any o’ they things no more.”
“Times change, dad,” pleaded his son, “but we’ll make you comfortable, I’m sure.”
“You can’t bring back the dead to the lone living. You can’t put back the laylock by the door.”
“Nay, I wish I could!” Thomas’s face fell.
“At Marget’s I had ’em both.”
“It’s your old home, think on,” Agnes said wistfully, but he shook his head.
“’Tisn’t home when the music’s all ganged.”
A silence fell on the three of them after that, the silence of helplessness ceasing from futile speech. There are things that cannot happen to our desire because we have stopped the way for them ourselves. The gains of life are all of them had through loss, and for every coin that we take at least we must put a counter down. The old and the young folks had both shut a door at their backs, and when they tried to get through to each other the doors were barred. Kit knew that, since the music had failed, there was no place for him here. The music could only live where the dream lived, and he had left it behind. He had always risked the counters of life for fairy gold, and now all that remained to him was his invisible treasure of the heart. Comfort, position, peace in his last days—all must go into the fire to serve the fine flame of his dream. He was only a vague old man who had made a muddle of life, but firmly and fightingly he was sure of that. There was nothing here for him but the shell of lovely things grown strange. That which he had made for himself he might have, but nothing else. “For what we take we must pay, and the price is cruel hard.”
And Thomas and Agnes, with their unaccepted oblation of satisfaction and thanks? They, too, had taken, and would have to pay....
“You’ll settle after a bit,” Thomas argued, but his voice was flat.
“I’ll never settle, not I.”
“It’s early days to say that.”
For the first time Kit looked him firmly in the face.
“I’m going back to Marget,” he declared aloud.
Agnes uttered a sharp cry, and Thomas flushed. “Nay, Father, you’re not,” he answered, setting his mouth.
“Ay, but I am that. I shouldn’t ha’ come. Folks as gang once should bide away.”
“What, she’s as bad to you as an old witch!” Agnes broke out. “She’s been bad to you all along. She doesn’t do right by you at all.”
“I care nowt for that if I have the rest.” The stress and anguish had gone out of his face, as well as the look that sought and couldn’t find. He looked older and frailer, but he looked certain and secure. The little strength that he had was going fast, but he would never have to try it like this again. He took a firm step towards the door, but Thomas put himself in between.
“Nay, then, you’ll gang none!” he said through his shut teeth. The dark flush rose in his face to the roots of his hair. His voice was suddenly brutal, fierce and coarse. “What-likefools d’ye think we’ll look?” he cried; “and after all the trouble we’ve took an’ all?”
“I’ve got to gang,” Kit told him, looking him in the eyes.
“Well, you waint, an’ that’s flat!”
“Let me gang,” the old man begged.
“Couldn’t you bide just the one night?” Agnes coaxed. She came across to him and laid a hand on his arm. “You’ll feel a deal better in t’morn, I’m sure, and it’s real comfortable upstairs.”
“I’m feared to gang upstairs....” He shrank away from her, letting her hand drop. His eyes hated her—hostile, terrible eyes. He returned to the door. “Now, lad, get by.”
“Nay.”
He let himself go then, and became all fear and rage, a wild old creature fighting and raving to be free. “I’ll not bide—I waint!” he cried, his voice rising and cracking as it rose. “I can’t bide. I mun seek they things as is gone an’ lost!” He clubbed the fiddle and came at his son with it raised in the air. “Mun I crack fiddle over thy danged head?”
“Let him be, the poor old man!” Agnes cried, weeping aloud, but Thomas’s attitude had already changed. The futile act of defiance had shown him plainly the nature of his father’s need. He must be out of himself to risk hisprecious fiddle like that! He felt ashamed of himself, too, for bringing that evil into his kindly face. He moved away from the door, his expression softened, almost shocked. “Don’t take on,” he said gently. “You shall gang if you want.”
“I can gang to Marget?” Kit demanded, hard of faith.
“Ay, if you’re that set.”
“We’d best be off, then, or we’ll be missing Bob.” He was still shaking a little in every limb, but now it was with excitement and relief. Close to the door, “Where’s t’bundle?” he asked, wheeling round in a sudden scare. Marget would give it him, he knew, if he left the bundle behind. When he had left Marget’s he had seemed half-dazed, hypnotised, as it were, into going against his will. Now he was all bustle and business, thinking for himself, straining every nerve to get away....
“Here’s t’bundle.” Thomas took the red handkerchief from his wife.
“You’ve gone and hid my hat!” Again his voice rose.
“Nay, it’s here.”
The sun was leaving the kitchen at long last, but it was still smoothly golden on the sands. In garden and orchard the shadows were growing long, and the yew had a passing brotheron the ground. Out at sea there was a new life stirring, a new tide coming out of the deep, but where Agnes stood in the kitchen a vapoury shadow grew, pointing and reaching and deepening towards the stair.... Suddenly she ran to the old man and caught him round the neck.