CHAPTER XVTHE BEGINNING OF THE END
Itwas a very dreamlike day on which Lup left Ninekyrkes, turning his back upon the marsh and all that had filled his life hitherto. He made no round of good-byes, no flurry of preparation, but when the time came, he went, just as he would go at the end of his day on a further journey yet. He would “bide still and die light,” as taught the unhurrying philosophy of Wiggie’s song.
Not even for Francey had he a farewell; yet she had her moment with him, all unknown. Lifting her blind in the first showing of dawn, she saw him standing on the sea-wall, looking over the bay. He was still in his rough clothes, and the dull shade of the worn stuff was one with the colourless growth of the breaking day. He stood perfectly still, his hands dropped at his sides, his head a little bent, more like a symbol than a breathing human. On either side of him a shadowy wraith of a sheepdog lay crouched with pricked ears, as if watching for an invisible flock to come shouldering out of the dim space beneath. They had scarcely left him a moment during the last few days, clinging like burrs, and all the last night they had whimpered and wept, until in desperation he rose and called them out. Francey knelt at the window with her black hair looped on either side of her pale face, and saw the day come up to the feet of her parting love.
He was going, and by a finger she could have held him, but something kept her back that did not seem part of her at all. If she had but known it, the tragedy that was coming was in her hands to force or to withhold; but she did not know. The question was stillpurely personal, still hung on the one point, whether or not her real happiness lay in the primitive figure on the bank. There were tears in her eyes as she thought of the coming dawns when she might look to find him there and all in vain, but she was prepared to shed them. He would leave desolation behind him, but it would pass. She knew that she was able to let him go, and while she realised that she would not keep him.
Yet she longed for a last look, however far, and from her post under the lifted sash she tried to will that he should turn and send his climbing glance over the house to her window, as he had done so many times before, but her fixed gaze did not reach him. Brack would have answered it, she knew—Brack, sensitive, impressionable, ultra-self-conscious; but Lup looked straight before him with his tranquil eyes, and all the hysterical telepathy in the world might have shrieked in his ear and found him deaf. And just for that, just because he did not look, nor heed, nor answer, Francey felt wounded and full of longing; for it is always the man that turns his back that pulls at a woman’s heart.
There was a clink of milk-pails on the stone floor beneath, followed by steps on the stairs; and then the door opened, and her mother stood at her shoulder.
“You’ll get your death at yon window! For the land’s sake don’t be staring at nowt, like poor Martha at Ninekyrkes! She fair gives me the creeps. It’s about time to be stirring. I’ve been down a bit, and t’ master’s out an’ about. Yon’s Lup, I reckon. What’s he at? Feeling a bit down in the mouth, likely, but he’ll get over it. Westmorland folk be gey ill to shift, but they do rarely when they get going. Lup’ll be a sight better for a change. Canada’ll happen make a man of him—same as Brack!”
Francey said nothing, watching the pale day grow round the figure on the wall. The mother kept her light tone, but her unslept eyes were red.
“It isn’t as if he hadn’t a bit of brass. Wolf’s not the sort to send him off with his thumb in his mouth,for all his jye looks! He’s doing well by the lad, and Lup’ll be fit to do his best back again. What, I shouldn’t wonder if he’s home in a two-three year, as like Brack as one pea to another! It’s a sad pity Brack didn’t hold on till Ninekyrkes was empty. It would have been pleasant-like, having him next door.”
“Brack at Ninekyrkes!” Francey fired contemptuously. “Why, mother, he knows nothing of farming! You should hear the tales going about him. You should see his fences and his thistles! Mr. Lancaster will be having a word with him, if he doesn’t mend. He knows less about crops than I do, and I can handle a rake with him, any day!”
“Why, there’s nowt to that! Brack’s got a snack o’ yon culture you reckon so much on. He can handle that puffin’ billy o’ his, anyhow, an’ carry a smart coat an’ finger the banjo. Yon was a rare good tune he give us, t’other night at Sunflatts, with his face blacked an’ all! Lup’ll never shape for owt o’thatsort, I doubt.”
On the bank Lup turned sharply without lingering or hesitation, and dropped down into the road, the dogs springing on the instant, as if part of him. Looking straight before him, he made off towards Ninekyrkes, and they saw his fine, dark profile as he stooped to hasp a gate. Then he was gone, and the waste was empty as before. And in that moment Mrs. Dockeray forgot her daughter and forwent her methods, pressing her working face to the cold glass. Francey heard her say: “Good lad, Lup! God bless you; good lad!” and when she stood up beside her, she saw the quick tears running down the kind cheek.
“He’ll come back!” she found herself saying, vaguely wondering how the post of comforter had come to be reversed, and the elder woman nodded, passing her hand over her eyes, her subtle diplomacy broken at last to plain words.
“Ay, he’ll come back, I reckon, but he’ll happen come too late! Folk change—there’s no getting past it; we’ve got to face it out! I’ve always thought adeal of Lup. He’s the real thing, all through. Eh! an’ there’s poor Martha losing her lad! It doesn’t bide thinking on. I doubt it’ll just about finish her; there’s lile or nowt to her as it is. It’s her happiness as’ll drive off atween the shafts o’ the cart. Ay, my lass, and it’s your happiness as’ll take the road along wi’ him an’ all! What’s the use o’ schoolin’ an’ such-like if it sets you snirpin’ at the right stuff? I’ve had a good man myself, mannerly and decent, but I’ve had to be the gray mare, as I reckon you know, Michael’s that soft an’ easy led. He leans on me, does Michael, and I’d not have it different, nay, nor him neither; but there’s something better than that for a woman, and you’d have had it from Lup. He’d have been master; he’s strong enough for both an’ more, and you’d have been glad of it, every year. I’m not blaming you. It’s me that’s to blame, being over fond an’ wanting the best for you could be got. You were such a bonny barn an’ that smart, I’d have scraped the roads to get you learned an’ done by like a lady! Ay—fond—I was that! But what was to tell your happiness lay just over yon fence, an’ me blinding your eyes to it? I’ve done you a terrible big wrong. I can see that now, right enough. You’ll sorrow for it all your life, if you send him off. You’ve just to say the word, and he’ll bide. Say it, my lass! You’ll be rare an’ glad when it’s done.”
The door opened wider very gently, and Michael looked in.
“That you, missis? You’re wanted. Francey badly, this morning?”
Mrs. Dockeray wiped her eyes hastily and bustled towards him.
“Nay, nowt o’ t’ sort! You get along downstairs, an’ the lass’ll follow. You might have given a body a shout, instead of bursting in as if t’ house was afire!”
At the door she turned.
“You’ve just to say the word!” she urged.
But Francey did not say it.
Denny had begged the honour of driving him to the station, and turned up with the ramper about nine, a small “Jack” at one lamp-bracket, and the “Stars and Stripes” at the other. Lup stayed stolidly on the step until he removed them. The dogs sniffed and whined at the bags as they were lifted into the trap. In the dull light everything took on a deadened effect, utterly dismal and forlorn, from the melancholy house on the edge of the dreary flat to the two worn figures with their set faces and shut hands. At the gate the cowman waited for a last word. Through the window the “girl” peered at the little scene. The dogs leaped at Lup, whimpering and beseeching, refusing to be stilled.
Denny’s efforts to lighten the atmosphere did not go far. His flags had not drawn even a smile; his new tale about Brack died on his lips. In the silent trouble before him even his frothing joy in life sank and drowned.
Lup took a step towards the cart as though meaning to leave without farewell, and then stopped. As if driven by whips, he strode back to his mother and kissed her; to his father he gave his hand. None of the three spoke. Their eyes did not meet. The tradition of silence, of fatalistic stoicism, gripped them all alike in that last moment.
At the gate he dropped a word and a shake to the man as he wished him luck, and out in the road turned—once—to look behind, set against the skyline in the high-wheeled trap. But only the “girl” at the casement waved; the couple in the porch made no sign. Only their weak, old eyes, strong in inward vision, followed him tirelessly on the long miles.
Passing Ladyford, master, mistress and hands were out to speed him. A horseshoe took the place of the discarded “Jack.” Mrs. Dockeray was weeping again—into a large muffler meant for his wearing on board. Something of value passed in Michael’s grip, but there was no word either of or from Francey, and this time he did not turn on the road. He did not dare. Itmight be that he would see her, after all, come too late.
He slid a hand over the back of the seat, and a tongue came up and licked it. Behind the tongue was a brown dog-body hidden between the bags. The miles flew by in the misty morning. The drifting hails of friendly tongues came faintly to his dulled brain. Even Denny seemed very far off. Only the ache in his heart was real, and the warm tongue reaching comfort to his hand.
In Sunflatts they met Lancaster, and drew up for a last word, and long after they had disappeared the agent stood staring up the street. The changes were beginning. Lup was gone. What came next?
He was to take the express at Oxenholme, and as they pulled into the station, Brack’s car snorted up behind, setting the ramper on end, and scaring the brown dog between the bags. They had already met him, miles away, taking an opposite direction altogether, yet here he was at their heels. He seemed uneasy, too, fixing them when they were not looking, and walking away when they turned. If he had been meeting anybody, he would have said so, surely, and he took no ticket himself, only loitered on the platform, tugging at his moustache and staring. However, when the train thundered in, and Denny was busy holding to the ramper with one hand and the howling brown dog with the other, he seemed to make up his mind.
“Just pulling out, I reckon?” he observed at the carriage-door, his casual tone rather more casual than usual. “Well, I hope you’ll find my luck meeting you on the other side. Tell them I sent you along, with my love, as one of the best! And—and—we’ll see to your folk for you, those of us left behind.”
Lup nodded something that could scarcely, even with the best intentions, have been termed gratitude. The other lighted a cigarette nervously. The luggage was in, the guard looking round for the last time. Suddenly Brack jumped to the footboard.
“When do you sail?”
“Thirtieth March.”
“Liverpool till then?”
“Ay. Take time! We’re moving.”
“What address?”
“Nay, what it’s no—get out, man! We’re off!”
“The address?”
“Five, Derby Road.”
Angry hands tore Brack from the express, and more or less hurled him off the station and into his car, but for once he was too distracted to resent interference with his personal dignity. He did not hear Denny’s polite inquiry after the pigs. He even drove away with his hat on the middle of his head, and a dead cigarette hanging limply from his mouth.
The sale was over. The Whinnerahs had seen their possessions catalogued and scattered, saving only a remnant for the furnishing of the little Pride. Wolf had gone the round of the house, handling each piece for the last time as if it had been a pet beast, but his wife had made no sign, refusing to quiver at the blow of the hammer. When the end came, it was she, lately so shrinking and afraid, who led the man out into the waste.
The closing door echoed its drear Amen through the deserted building. The empty house followed them with its desolate, hollow eyes—the bent man clinging to the frail woman in her old-fashioned mantle and neat bonnet, the dispirited dogs slinking at their heels. He would have turned again for a last wander through the shippons had she not held him with her thin fingers. To the left, as they walked, the heaving gray of the sea reached out into the still gray of the sky. The Lugg itself looked gray, and ruggedly old. Below it the tide was running strongly, lipping far up the Let and filling the estuaries. It seemed a forty years’ travel in the wilderness, this sad progress out of life, but at last, a few hundred yards beyond where the road ceased and became a track, their new home waited their slow approach.
Mrs. Dockeray and Francey were there to welcome them, and had brought a cheerful homeliness into the isolated cottage, setting a kettle singing in the kitchen, and a bowl of Ladyford snowdrops on the wooden table. The old couple’s chairs were in their usual places at the hearth. Wolf’s patchwork cushion was ready to his shoulders, and the last week’sGazetteput to his hand. On the wall, Mrs. Whinnerah’s proud “Peter” hung in all his glory of burnished copper, and a set of cherished willow-pattern stood to attention in the little pot-rail. A thick cloth hearthrug promised comfort to the dogs. On the miniature oak-floored landing the Ninekyrkes “grandfather,” an ancient Whinnerah name on his brass face, swung a deep, almost human note down the shallow stairs.
The mantelpiece held a tobacco-jar and a tin or two, and, cheek by jowl with a Sheffield candlestick, was a photograph of Lup, looking very black and white and square and fierce and awkward and dull. In the waiting moments before they caught the slow footsteps, Francey looked long at this travesty of the original, and knew that, just as the cold negative had ignored his living, breathing humanity, so her own cold, critical sense had robbed him of sympathy and glamour. They should have no eyes to see, she thought bitterly, who have not also wide, tolerant hearts to feel, brewing their own transmuting elixir of love. Yet she had thought to taste it, once, had stooped her head to it to drink, before Wolf, at that fatal supper, had coarsened it on her lips.
She heard her mother in the passage, sweeping in the outcasts on a breeze of cheer that made even the dogs lift depressed ears, but she herself stayed rather nervously on the hearth, stirring the brisk fire into a mighty “low,” and filling the pot as soon as the wayfarers were snug in their seats. Over the cups a little consolation crept up and took hold, and now and then there was actually weak laughter in the lonely little house. The afternoon died, and presently, when Wolf began to nod in his chair, when the dogs had finishedexploring and settled on the rug with great, sleepy sighs of satisfaction, the comforters took their leave.
There were other visitors, though, even then; Michael, looking in for a short chat, and Denny, flying over with a few pounds of apples and a present of twist; even their late cowman, “just to see if they were settling-like”; but when the last figure had passed the window and melted into the dusk, the vast loneliness came down upon the Pride, swallowing it as before.
The soothing sounds within—Wolf’s quiet breathing, the soft snoring of the dogs, the crackle of the fire, the patient speech of the clock—seemed to intensify the mighty silence without. There was no voice from shippon or dairy to give a sense of warm nearness and surrounding companionship. Facing the still-glimmering window, the wakeful woman gathered no feeling of protection from the well-built walls; seemed, rather, to be out unsheltered in the green emptiness, with the chill night settling heavily down. She could still mark the Lugg, dark against the paler sky, but the tide beyond it had been gone more than an hour; she knew it, though she could not see it. She folded her hands and laid her head against the woollen antimacassar, looking back over the years. The time for looking forward was past. Gradually, the pain of exile drew away. Here, in the very shadow of her great dread, it ceased to hold her, leaving her lapped in peace. There came to her, too, the consciousness of power, of victory almost, in the mere fact of having lived, which gives to old age, however humble, its own peculiar dignity. “Mylife!”—says every soul—“that sum of happenings which is mine and mine alone, that wonderful and dreadful pilgrimage that I have made with Time. Whatever the record, I have lived, finished the course, bound myself to Eternity by the tendrils of experience and growth.”
Her eyes closed slowly as the Lugg faded from view. The fire sank a little; the dogs turned and sighed; the shadows crept in. On the flickering hearth the old man and the old woman slept, dreamless.