CHAPTER XIITHE REAL THINGS
Brackwas thinking hard as he drove along the north marsh-road, his hat pulled low over his eyes against the evening sun. He was on his way to Ninekyrkes, to unearth a rumour and prove it true. Talk had it that one other on marsh-ground thought as he did of the Lugg, felt for it the same sinister distrust. The agent himself, at the late purgatorial meeting, had hinted that Whinnerah’s wife was far from sharing her husband’s attitude, and, since then, other tales had reached his ears. He was a constant visitor at Ladyford since his occupation of Thweng, and had gathered by degrees that there was something curiously wrong at the twin-farm. He meant to find out what it was. He had known Mrs. Whinnerah in his childhood, and even if she had been a stranger, Brack was not the man to be deterred by shyness. He remembered her as a delicate, highly-strung woman, with the fated look that many carry from cradle to grave without obvious fulfilment. She must be getting old now, and should therefore be easily handled. If she could be got to back his opinion, on whatever visionary or sentimental grounds, he might yet win his throw with the Lancasters. He had seen the young lord waver, and guessed that to his particular temperament a feeble woman’s mania would carry a strong appeal. Once arouse his pity, his fear of hurting something weaker than himself, and no amount of practical advice would keep him from trying to right however imaginary a grievance. Brack began to formulate a letter from Mrs. Whinnerah, to be dictated by himself. He was fond of framing letters. The biting word thatgoes home was to him much as a neat wrestling-chip to his boors of cousins at Pippin. He could see Bluecaster’s face grow troubled as he read, watch him pen his apologetic decision to that sneering image at Crabtree. (Brack had an imagination.) Once his lordship was started after his red herring of justice, the pride of the Lancasters would soon be kissing the earth! He bit at his cigarette so savagely that it broke in half and nearly choked him, which did not tend to soothe a jarred temper kept on edge by a fretted pride. He had had a bad time since the meeting, and though his cult of super-superiority had withheld him from the vulgarity of open retaliation, repression had increased a passing dislike to a single-eyed hate.
Born of good farm-stock, Brack had craved for so-called higher things—he had wished to be a gentleman; and the particular brand which had formed his ideal he now quite adequately represented. But the red-hot vanity that had brought him home prancing with effect had met a rude shock. The gray, old-world atmosphere had foiled his meretricious gentility as an ancient manor-wall a flaring poster. Its mellow feudalism, its pure instinct for “the real thing,” laughed at him and cast him out. The parent-stem mocked at the prize-shoot, and, deep down in him, something, hated and unacknowledged, recognised its justice. Certain colonies, indeed, in Witham and Cunswick, drawn chiefly from other and larger towns, hailed him with enthusiasm, but in this one instance he was true to the soil and would have none of them. Yet the soil would have none of him, and gave him no fellow—neither in Bluecaster, shabby and halting, but unmistakable, nor in Lancaster, at home in each man’s understanding, and certainly none in Uncle Willie Holliday, that rugged monument of fitness of place. That which was artist in Brack, the very thing that had betrayed him, now made hell for him where he had looked for a paradise of approval. The bitterness of it obscured the real motive of his late action, turning a passionate crusadeinto a petty wreaking of malice, clouding even the fear that waked him, shaking, in the night.
At Ladyford alone had he found balm. Michael Dockeray’s hospitality questioned the self-valuation of no guest under his roof. Francey was baffling but polite, and undoubtedly attractive, while the mistress, playing her own mother’s-game, laid no bar to his visits. He would call at Ladyford when he had finished at Ninekyrkes, and have supper with them. He lighted another cigarette, and felt vaguely comforted.
Ninekyrkes seemed like a house of the dead as he came to it in the early autumn evening. Wolf and Lup were at a shorthorn sale over at Cunswick—he happened to know that—so Mrs. Whinnerah would be alone. She came to the door when she saw the car, and received his self-introduction hospitably if without enthusiasm. She led the way into the unloved parlour, and Brack, breathing horsehair and mustiness, was inwardly flattered until assailed by a childish memory of the old Lord Bluecaster at Pippin, smoking on the settle with his feet on the hob. The old lord had d——d the parlour, and refused to bear company with the Family Bible. Brack had an uncomfortable feeling that the still woman opposite would have thought more of him if he had preferred the kitchen.
He talked Canada, farming, and life in general, with the peculiar ease that comes of having left homesans recommandation, to return in your own Studebaker-Flanders, and passed to the genial intimacy of interrogation which Northern folk tolerate only from their kind. Lancaster would have got his answers all right, but from Brack it smacked of the travelling bagman, and he discovered presently that he was getting nothing. He dropped it, then, and struck boldly for his point.
“I’ve come asking for sympathy!” he said, with a confidential smile. “You’ll have heard about the meeting, I guess, and how they think they’ve got the laugh on me over the Lugg, your Wolf and the rest.Well, they can go on laughing till the cows come home, but they’ll not make me take anything back. The Lugg’s got an eye-opener safe and handy for them, and when that comes along, I guess some of them will laugh on the wrong side of their mouths! But I’ve a notion—though I’m not saying why or how—that there’s somebody thinks as I do of the crawling old son of a gun, somebody that reckons with me that it should never have been built—and that’s you yourself right here, Mrs. Whinnerah! Tell me if I’m wrong. Don’t mind me!”
She didn’t mind him. He was certainly wrong, she told him, with her light, expressionless eyes fixed on his ingratiating countenance. Foiled again, he became less flippant.
“You’ll say it’s no affair of mine what you think, but when a man has a bang-up honest conviction, it’s up to him to get it proved if he can. I’m still smarting at the way they petered me out. I didn’t expect they’d catch on right away, but I did look for decent consideration. Oh, they’ll hold to it that I’ve had it—I’ve gotthatfixed! They’ll point to the meeting and say the matter was fairly discussed; but they know as well as I do that the whole arrangement was a barnstormer fake, stage-managed down to the smallest cue. The agent saw to that! It’s the old fairy-tale—Lancaster fiddled and the farmers danced, and the man shouting trouble was bucked out. I’m mighty sore about it, I say. I meant well, and I’m sore!”
He was in earnest, now. He drew his chair forward, laying his hand on the string-cover of the round table between them.
“I’ll just tell you what first set me hustling Bluecaster, and then perhaps you’ll chip in with your little lot. Over the pond I ran up against a queer sort of lie-slinger making a living out of telling folks’ futures when he wasn’t getting nabbed by the police. He was the real goods, too—I’d stake the whole Thweng outfit on it—though I’m not saying he didn’t feather-stitch the futures a trifle, just to make them look pretty!But that was when there were dollars on the game; he got none out of me. But he digged in my hotel when he had the cash, and the night before I sailed for England he fetched me up on the stairs. He said: ‘You’re clearing—pulling out for England, ain’t you?’ I told him he’d guessed it in once. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you just keep those eyes of yours skinned! There’s the gosh-dangdest trouble you ever struck coming for you out of the west. There’s some sort of mighty curiosity, wriggling like a snake, that’s getting ready to jump its contract; and water; and dead, wet, woolly things. I can’t see them—it’s so plum dark—only feel them when I reach out. There’s a crack like a gun over the sea, but you’ll not hear it when it comes, though you’ll get cold scares many a night, waiting for it! And where there was road there’ll be water, water big enough to drown a house, water and wet, woolly things——’ I told him to come off it when he started again on the wet woollies—he was giving me the jim-jams!—and I let him know pretty straight that I thought he was in for the blue devils, but he was too slick in earnest to take me up. He said he couldn’t fix it plainer, but I’d find it shine up brisk enough when the clock struck. ‘It’ll beat hell!’ he said. He told me I could see it for myself, if I’d practise a spell, that I’d the power as good as he had. I got him to show me how”—he laughed rather uncomfortably, looking away—“and I guess I know what the wet woollies are, anyway! He told me what farm I’d fixed on, after a deal of teeth-grinding and eye-rolling—it’s a bit of a twister for the psychic tongue, you’ll admit! and then he said: ‘There’s somebody else knows the last card in this deal—somebody in England.’ That’s what he told me, Mrs. Whinnerah, and I want to know! ‘There’s a woman over there powerful scared’”—he eyed her searchingly—“‘a woman scared clean out of creation——’”
The faintly-ironic lips opened at last.
“Ay? An’ did he tell you as our bull-calf had slipped shuppon an’ was lakin’ wi’ yon steam-engine o’ yourn?”
Brack’s superiority broke on a curse as he tore out to the car. The concrete facts that the bull-calf had smashed his off-lamp and horned fancy patterns on his paint did not lessen his chagrin at his mental defeat. He turned irritably on the calm old woman watching from the porch.
“It’s the old wheeze—the same old fusty old wheeze! ‘What a Lancaster says, goes!’ It’s Lancaster and Lancaster to it. Guess the whole lot of you’ll be something struck of a heap when they turn out plaster imitations at the Judgment!” He leaned on the car, looking at her with tense impatience. “You’ll not speak, but there’s folks in plenty putting words in your mouth. Now just listen right here! It wouldn’t take more than a cent’s-worth of shove to set his lordship against the Lugg for good and all. I had him wobbling, as it was.Youcan put the cinch on him, if you choose. Lancaster’s only a paid servant, when all’s said, and he’d have to knuckle under. You’ll never go to the Pride, with the fear of the sea on you, just to help the Lancaster tradition make good? I hope to God I may see them fired out of the countryside before I’m a year older, humbled and cursed and damned and broke!”
She looked at him straightly, then, answering him straightly for the first time.
“I’ve nowt to say to you, Brack Holliday, and them as says I have, lies! Who made the likes o’youjudge betwixt me an’ the Lancasters? But I’ll tell you what it is—you’re an over-throng, fidging, meddling jammy-lang-neck, as teptious as a wamp! You’re nowt but a daft rabbit scuttling to ground afore a storm. It’s notyouthat has anything to fear, and them as has can get through it without your help. There’s bigger things than you in this world, Canada Brack—ay, and a parlish lot o’ bigger folk an’ all!—and happen you’ll learn it sooner than late!”
She wiped him out of existence with her old stare over the sea, and, raging but silenced, he turned the Flanders to the gate.
By contrast, the atmosphere of Ladyford was all pure comfort and grace. Here he was an honoured guest. Here he could flow conversationally without fear of ironic silence. The string of self twanged joyfully in the breath of Mrs. Dockeray’s admiration. It was pleasant to sup to the sauce of her interest, to see Rowly’s eyes widen at his effects. Still more pleasant to stand behind Francey at the piano, asking in a light tenor, from a far-off point not specified, if they thought of him in the Dear Old Home. But it was rarest of all to sit opposite to her, watching her pale cheek bent over her knitting, while her mother, with discrimination almost too marked for comfort, called attention to his good points.
“It’s just as I’ve always said! There’s nowt like seeing the world—having a bit of a look round, if it’s only over the near wall into the next bull-coppy! Westmorland folks is that set on their own yard o’ ground, it takes a travelling-crane to hawk ’em out. Why, Brack, it doesn’t bear thinking on what-like you were as a lad, popin’ about like a yard o’ pump-water, wi’ toes turning in an’ chin poking out—a reg’lar daft-watty! And now you’ve come back real quality, talking as like his lordship as two peacocks, and in a deal better fettle an’ more than a deal better-like! It fair frets me thinking of folk—folk I could put a name to—slouching and talking broad, clumping about in great boots and smelling of the shuppons, with never a thought to spare above stock, an’ never a word to throw at a dog! You’ve capt the lot of us, my lad, showing folks what they can frame for if they’ll nobbut try!”
Brack glowed, seeing himself winsome and well-tailored, elegant, cultured, “arrived,” but before the women’s eyes rose Lup in his still, dumb dignity of the soil. Mrs. Dockeray was playing high. Armoured in commonplace virtues duly admitted, he would have stood little chance beside Brack’s glistening veneer; but mockery and contempt could not but give him place even in the most grudging imagination. Somethingof the pathos and power of Millet’s “Angelus” clung about him under her rough touch, showing him in full and beautiful accord with both earth and heaven. Unfortunately, Lup himself, coming in with Michael just as they sat down to supper, dispelled the illusion more than a little. His “bettremer” clothes were heavy and ill-cut, foiling the plate-glass impressions to which Brack added grace. His old-fashioned “bowler,” several sizes too small, gave him the anxious air of an uncertain juggler, while an astonishing red-and-yellow handkerchief of his father’s shrieked at Brack s peeping square of white silk. He followed Michael in with a forgotten catalogue, and was for making off again when Mrs. Dockeray netted him with cumbrous but sure sweep.
“You’ll stop and have a bite with us now you’re here, surely! It’s not so many more chances we’ll have of a crack with you. Wolf’ll likely be set on getting back, so we’ll let him be, but I’ll not take nay from you, Lup, so you can just set yourself down! There’s Brack here with all Canada at his finger-ends, ready to learn you anything you’ve a mind to, an’ a deal more, I reckon! I’m real glad you looked in. The master’s never a word for us home-keeping folk after sales an’ such-like. He’s that weary he gets sluming in his chair afore he’s half-through, and it’s vexing when one’s aching for a bit o’ news. Brack’s not been; leastways, he’s never mentioned it.”
“Oh say! I have, though,” Brack put in hastily, conscious that his perfunctory interest in the sale of an historic herd was bound to go against him. “Guess I was too taken up to remember. I’d other business shouting, but I just blew over for a spell—thought it was up to me to give ’em a look-in.” As for the stock, it had been very much over-rated, he considered. All the best stuff went over the pond; everybody knew that, and he happened to be able to confirm it. Lup would find it so for himself when he got across. Yes, sir,hehad been at the sale, right enough! That was the best of a car; you could whiz about all overthe place, and see a chunk of everything that was going.
“You stopped just on half an hour,” Lup put in, fixing him steadily across the table. “I saw when you come—you were having a bit of a turn-up with the Duke’s shover; and I saw you quit—at the tail of a cart to the first motor-shop. And the biggest stock wasn’t in the ring till you’d been gone more than a while. It was a rare good sale. There’s no finer beasts in the world.”
Brack felt his halo dwindling.
“Engine-trouble—fixed in five minutes!” he answered casually. “No use my stopping, anyway—prices ran too all-creation big. You feel mighty thrilled, of course, watching good stock put to the hammer, even when you’ve got to grit your teeth on your tongue to keep it mum, but I d another trail to follow. I don’t mind laying that half the farmers there went just for the fun of the circus—they weren’t out to buy. You and your father, I take it, weren’t on to anything, now that Ninekyrkes is changing hands, and you’re for out West?”
Lup flushed, and fell into dogged silence. The afternoon had been bitter as Dead Sea drink. Time and again the surface of the situation had been explained to inquiring minds, and in most cases had met with disapproval. More than one county gentleman had buttonholed him, asked his plans, and dropped him with a shrug. His father’s contemporaries had wagged censuring heads, and, as often as not, a tongue to match. Already he felt something of an outcast. Not that he really cared a whit for condemnation. It would be a poor-blooded Westmorland farmer that even looked aside at criticism; but where his pride had shaken off concern, his heart had not gone unscathed. Even on his accustomed gaze the pathos of old Wolf had smitten hard. He knew afterwards—months afterwards—that this was the last happy day the old man ever had. Mixing with the huge crowd in the beautiful park, greeting and greeted at everystep, tuned to the excitement of a big sale, he was young and keen again, forgetting the future. On this happy flickering of dead joy it was Lup’s business to lay the chill, extinguishing hand of reality. He wondered how often he had reiterated the same dull speech: “Nay, father, what we want no more wi’ stock, you’ll think on!” just as he had wondered, each time, how soon he would have to speak it again. It was like killing something that would not die, and in spite of his efforts the old man had insisted on bidding at Rosedale Queen, until Lup had sought out Lancaster and begged him to bring him to reason. Somehow Lanty had succeeded, and Wolf had dropped out, his eager desire followed by a piteous apathy. The agent stayed near, trying to cheer him, but with little result. Old Wolf’s swan-song, he thought, had been that frenzied bidding at Rosedale Queen.
Brack had the whip of the conversation again, and was making the most of it. All Mrs. Dockeray could elicit from Lup was that Rose Diamond had sold for two hundred and fifty guineas, or that Denny had picked up Rosedale Squire for seventeen, and already saw himself beating the King at the Royal—statements barely stemming the steady flow of Brack’s assurance. The mother fretted and wondered, watching the girl’s eyes as they travelled between the two, weighing them in the balance.
But Francey could not look at them as she, at the same age, would have looked. In the daughter’s case, education of a high class had sharpened the over-critical faculty of a fine intelligence until it held her emotional capacity captive. She saw them more as types than as human flesh and blood. She could neither be fascinated by the surface charm of the one, nor lose herself in the primitive strength of the other. Behind Brack’s refinement and overplayed ease she saw that he was restless, meretricious, lacking in stability. Around Lup’s steady sanity and simple faith she felt the rough shell of his ignorance. Lup saw as his fathers saw, loved as they loved, glimpsing life sharply but narrowly,not in the least with her wider if more dangerous vision. There were depths in her he would never fathom, finenesses he might respect but never grasp, shades of feeling making life vivid that he would always fail to seize. Brack could seize them, after his own fashion. She could feel him follow her mood almost as it turned its coat, where Lup would have been blundering up blind alleys, or sitting dumbly at corners, waiting her return. Her interest quickened, so that Brack flattered himself and shone. It was with real reluctance that he tore himself from his thrilling attitude of cock-o’-the-midden.
“Guess I feel leaving Ladyford like leaving home!” he said sentimentally. “I saw mighty little of hearth and home for many a long year.” (The string of the exiled orphan-nephew twanged with fine effect.) “Lup, I sure envy you, hanging out just over the way! Why didn’t you hit the trail last year, old man? I’d have had Ninekyrkes, then, instead of Thweng. You’d have found me real neighbourly, Mrs. Dockeray!”
The words were meant for Francey, with the tail of an eye on Lup, for he knew well enough the talk that was going; but if he expected to score he was disappointed.
“Folk have it you’re feared of a marsh-farm,” the other said indifferently. “Over much water about—sets you dreaming-like! It’s only a dowly sort of a night. You’d best to see to your lamps. I’ll fix yon far gate for you. It’s a trick o’ swinging.”
He rose and went out, but not before he heard Brack beg the girl for a meeting at the café in Witham, with a ride in the car to follow. As a preliminary canter, he cajoled her into letting him run her to the far gate, just to show he was to be trusted. She came, to his surprise, but when he would have taken her hand in farewell, she had already melted into shadow behind the car, and the gate, under Lup’s ruthless propulsion, was closing steadily upon him. To save his wings he cleared quickly, his fetich of gentility forcing him to shout a cheerful gratitude he was very far from feeling.Well, she would drive with him, yet; though after a fashion of which he could not dream.
The night was drear. The dark had none of the velvet comfort that goes with the soft blackness before the rising of the moon. Its touch was harsh, its suggestion sinister. The elm over the gate creaked with rheumatic movement, while the brittle autumn leaves whispered restlessly, like sleepers too tired to be still. The couple stayed beneath.
“You’ll be meeting him, likely?” Lup asked suddenly, with no hint of jealousy or vexation in his voice. He had taken his dismissal, and had no intention of presuming on old rights.
“Not I!” Francey answered, with a touch of impatience. “Why, they say he takes a different girl to the café every week! The men in the smoke-room run a sweep as to which it will be! I came down in the car for fear you got across with him. He was a bit above himself to-night, our friend Brack.”
“You were getting on with him rarely at supper.”
“Yes.” She fell thoughtful. “I can talk to him, but that’s all. It’s like playing a game with somebody of your own form for the sheer pleasure of being in sympathy with that side of them. You may not give a snap of the fingers for them otherwise, but at the moment it doesn’t count.Youdon’t feel like that, do you?”
“No,” Lup said simply. “I like folks, or I can’t abide them. I’m keen to clap eyes on them and have a crack, or else I want no dealings with them whatever. I’ll not drink with them, nor sell with them, nor pass the time o’ day unless I’m put to it. I’ve no use for them at all.”
“That’s simple, Lup, but it’s blind—blind and narrow! Folk are not all white or black; they’ve different sides, different shades. You can pick out the one you want, and leave the rest. Even Brack has his points.”
“Like enough,” he answered carelessly. “He’s welcome to them as long as he keeps out of myroad——” and she laughed a little and was silent. Brack’s “points” did not interest her overmuch, either.
They had not quarrelled, these two. Even in the first bitterness of rejection he had recognised that she was not moved by cruel or petty perversity. She had simply faded out of his reach when he was surest of her, retreating behind some barrier which would fall to neither of them. He had certainly been passionately hurt and deeply angry, but he had never been unjust. Unable to see her standpoint, he yet bowed to it; only he could not bring himself to stay and suffer.
“When do you go?” she asked suddenly. He told her, and then: “Needyou go?” she added somewhat nervously, Lancaster’s embassy in mind. “There’s your father and mother—you could keep away—needyou go?”
He answered briefly, turning his head away from her even in the darkness, and she held her tongue; but after a while she began again in stumbling, disjointed phrases like bodiless thoughts not shaped for the clothing of speech.
“It’s my fault—but why? What is it? You’d be good to me, but I want so much. I’m several people, and all asking. One of me loves you, but not all—no, not all! One of me is afraid—that’s the strongest one. There are so many closed doors. Can anybody be happy in a single room? Or are there new rooms for us to find together that I don’t know of, now, so that the closed doors wouldn’t matter? If only I knew! If only you could tell me! Suppose the one room was a prison for always? How am I to know?”
He moved uneasily, and she pulled herself up and made an attempt at coherence.
“Marriage isn’t just one thing to me; it’s all—love, companionship, understanding for always. How can I face closed doors through Eternity? You love me, but half I say has no meaning for you, half I feel passes you by even when we’re nearest. It isn’t your fault;it isn’t mine. You’re patient with me, but even love and patience are not enough. All the time we’re both of us groping, you for light and I for touch. You’re gentler than your father, but at the bottom you’re alike. You believe in the same things, you feel about them in the same way. You were vexed for my sake when he forced us into each other’s arms over the farm, but you didn’t feel that he caught up our dream in rough hands, and made it coarse and common. It was right and natural to you, perhaps even beautiful. Perhaps it was I who broke the glamour foryou—I hadn’t thought of that! But I had to do it. I should do it again. What are the real things—the things that matter?” And for the second time she said: “How am I to know?”
He had been standing looking away from her, but now he turned and took her gently in his arms, with one hand raising her face as if it had been a child’s. Perhaps it came to him that in her doubt and trouble she was indeed a child to his certainty of purpose. All her acquired wisdom could not give her the unclouded sureness that love had taught him long since.
“The real things are the old things,” he said. “They’re all I know, but I reckon you’d find them enough if you’d only believe it. I’d bide if I thought I could learn you, but I doubt you’re a long way off, and I can’t stop on as things are. I’d sooner be shot than have to stand it out—the never knowing when I’d be seeing you, the hearing and feeling you all around me, and not mine. D’you think I’d not know, passing the house, whether it had you inside of it, or turn a bend and not go sick with longing for you and fear to meet you? One of us must shift, and it can’t be you. It’s not for you to leave your folks and fend for yourself—it’s for me. I wish the old man didn’t take it so hard, but this ismyjob, and I’ve got to quit. As for you, I reckon you’ll see clear some day, when you’re older. You’re only a bit of a lass yet—I forget it, you’re that wise! I don’t rightly know what you mean about closed doors. A man and a woman each hasthoughts the other can’t hold with—they’re made different; but when they’re man and wife there’s a lot they can share together as they’d likely have never known, wanting one another. It seems to me that it’s made up that way. I can’t talk to you like Brack. I reckon I’m not sorry, neither, but I’m not that sort, anyway. I’ve my mind a deal on my work, as you don’t need telling, but it’s my heart as really learns me the things that matter. They’re few enough—ay, but they’re big enough too! Just trust in the morning and quiet in the evening, our own folk, and work, and food and sleep—seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night—the things the folks behind us knew afore we were born. The real things are the old things.”
They went back to the beckoning porch in silence.
And all night long, in his troubled sleep, Wolf was bidding at Rosedale Queen.