Authors: T. F. Powys
He now went up to the cow. It had not moved from the place where he had milked it. He led it by the rope up to Alice and put her upon its back, where she held on as best she could. Through the blinding rain and driving gusts they trudged, taking another path from that by which Alice had come. At the rate of about a mile an hour, they at last reached the heath cottage about half an hour after Henry had been driven there by his vision.
Tying the cow to Molly Neville’s little garden gate, the drover carried the dripping girl, almost dead with cold, to the cottage door and knocked. Henry was asleep upon her sofa, and Molly naturally wondered what other guest the winds had sent her that night. The drover told his story. He had found the girl on the heath, and had brought her there with the help of his cow.
He now promised to call out the doctor on his way to Shelton, so that Alice received proper attention during the miscarriage that her despair had brought her to.
T
HE flight of Henry caused a comparatively slight ruffle in the home circle. Dr. George had, at that point, taken over command. The day after the funeral he carried Mrs. Turnbull off, explaining to her that Henry was staying with a farmer on the heath, who had kindly accepted his help for sowing the early spring wheat.
The Rev. John had duly seen to the selling of the furniture. He directed the auctioneer to forward the cheque to his mother.
Mrs. Turnbull hardly understood, at the time of leaving, what was happening. Some one had taken away her jam-pots—and why was she to go for this ride in a motor car? Any morning that old creaking sound might reappear, and she not there to hear the study door open, and her husband go upstairs to wash his hands.
At last, this new move upon her, she did try to understand. She was, she knew now, to go and live with her son George. She remembered how the baby George had screamed for two or three days after the monthly nurse had left. And she remembered the groans ‘the sound’ had made because the babe had kept him awake in the night. What a soft, round, chubby face George had had then, and how he used to nestle up to her breasts! She appealed to him about her jam-pots: ‘might she be allowed to carry them with her to his house—would he mind taking them?’
She asked her question timidly, as a girl of ten would who wants to be allowed to wash her doll’s clothes. Her son answered her very seriously, as though he had obtained his answer from the churchyard. He explained to her very carefully that it might harm his practice for jam-pots, empty ones, to be unladen from his car into his house, under the very eyes, perhaps, of a patient.
The jam-pots were, in consequence of this mandate, placed in two old clothes-baskets and sold at the auction, the two lots being placed together and bringing one shilling.
Mrs. Turnbull settled at the doctor’s,
performed
her duty, her profound and ever-recurring duty, of writing cheques for her board. She did this every week on Monday morning. Nearly always she was to be found in her own room, for when she stayed downstairs she was forced to watch the busy thin features of her son’s wife, who arranged and tidied up and down the front rooms, just as though each room were a cross old woman who had to be tidied and petted into a good humour.
Everything that went on in her son’s household was ruled by the totally featureless tyrant of convention. Every little detail was arranged so that the way of life of the doctor’s family should reflect, as in a glass, the manners and customs of the middle order of the people whom he attended. The maid was taught just the tone to use to the front-door bell ringer, and the right way to speak
to a farmer’s servant-girl who came to the back to have a tooth out.
It looked as if the art of torture was brought very near perfection in this quiet way of living, the soul being set upon the rack so that the body might have a balance of three figures in the bank.
No one understood the doctor’s virtue better than himself. When he stayed for ten minutes with a dying patient while the nurse went to the shop, his charity, his kindness to the poor, would not, he felt, be ever forgotten in that household. Neither was it, until he sent in his bill. Once Dr. George even went so far as to speak to a farmer about the overcrowding of one of his cottages, where two little girls slept in a closed cupboard, to come out in the morning, dazed and stupid, like white owls at noon. The doctor felt that that time his goodness had carried him a little too far, because the farmer taught him to mind his own business by giving his custom, available after an occasional drunk, to his rival.
The doctor’s plan of life was formed before his marriage, his wife and daughter were a part and parcel of it, and now his mother and her cheques must fit in too. Mrs. Turnbull tried to be good. She tried very hard to fit herself in. Being an old mother, she thought that she might help with the child. One afternoon she read a fairy story to her granddaughter, a story that she had herself loved.
‘How silly, Granny!’ was the reply to the story.
‘Dad says that that sort of writing is all
tommyrot
. Have you begun to save up for my bicycle yet?’
Mrs. Turnbull had a place by her son at meals. At other times she sat in her little room with her darning on her lap. She missed something. She could not exactly tell what it was.
Something
of her old life, something that was nearly connected with ‘the sound’ that had so strangely died away, taking with it her home. Always she sat still and looked at the strange view from her window. What were those great beech trees doing there? Where were the round, chipped laurels that she had always seen? Where was the keeper’s wood? What had
happened
to those homely noises—‘Funeral’s’ voice heard in the kitchen over a cup of tea that Edith,—kind, ever kind Edith—had given him? And the man who milked the cows by the hedge? Where were the cows gone?
What she heard now were the proper
movements
in a well-ordered house, but these sounds awoke no response in her heart. The maid could go on dusting; even in her own room while she sat there, the fact never stirred her. In her life with him the dusting was not done like that, and her gardener had never been a smart young man who understood motor cars. And why was not dear Henry there, taking up his odds and ends of books, looking out into the garden, with one book closed on his knee with
his hand upon it, while ‘the sound’ in the big chair read prayers?
She had been for so many years looking around her at the things her own form and life had created, and now the very sounds and voices of the earth were changed. What was it, she wondered, that she especially missed? Not ‘the sound’; not dear Henry’s thoughtful look into the garden, nor his quiet movements as he tended the flowers; neither was it the click of the drive gate when ‘the sound’
came in from the village. One day she knew. She found in her mind her lost child.
It was summer, and below her, in the doctor’s kitchen garden, there was something shining red amongst the leaves, and white flowers. Yes, there the strawberry was, and she, old
broken-hearted
woman, dared to make one trembling last effort to boil jam! She went out into the garden, forgetting her bonnet, and picked a basketful of the coveted fruit. She carried it into the kitchen and looked toward the range. There was no fire. The cook had let it go out, and had gone herself into the village. Leaving the basket of strawberries on the table, Mrs. Turnbull slowly made her way upstairs, and sat in her chair, holding her handkerchief to her eyes, crying like a child.
It happened once more, later in the summer, that her old desire took hold of her again, and brought upon her a rebuke from her son. She had been for a walk to the other end of the village.
On the way home she saw in the village street two stone jam-pots, thrown out by some
unthrifty
woman, ‘only,’ as Mrs. Turnbull feelingly said, ‘to get them broken.’ She bent down and took the pots out of the dust and carried them, one in each hand, all the way up the village, showing, so her son politely told her, ‘the common vulgarity of her mind to all the world.’
As she was not allowed to make jam, she spent nearly all the hours of the day in darning stockings for the family, which was the only kind of mending that her son’s wife would let her do. She had once tried to mend Lorna’s, her little
granddaughter’s
, summer coat, but she had only made the rent worse, and her daughter-in-law had been forced, in the midst of a busy day, to unpick the stitches and do the work all over again. So she could only be trusted to darn stockings, wondering all the time why there was nothing now that belonged to her in life. She could never more touch the simple realities of coming and going, now that ‘the sound’ was hidden away. A white patch, where the paper had been torn away from her vicarage drawing-room wall, was more to her than all the new primness of her son’s house.
Look as she might about her, she could find nothing, nothing that reflected her as she really was. Her needle would not take the same way as it was wont to do when it laid a woollen line across a vacant space in the heel of a stocking.
When the turn came, instead of going in and out across the first row of lines, the long foolish needle took up two or three threads at a time, making a disordered knot instead of her usual neat patch. Mrs. Turnbull would sit for hours bending her head over her work and wondering why, instead of neatness, there was confusion. She could nowhere obtain the strength wherewith to break the spell that those long years with him had cast over her. The air of her son’s house was too clean and simple and varnished for her to breathe. She missed the thicker, heavier air that she had been used to with him.
Mrs. Turnbull had given herself, as was the fashion in olden times, to her home. And her longing tears could never bring that old taste back again. Slowly the truth, bare, as it always is, came to her. Something terrible must have happened in her life when ‘the sound’ was carried away.
‘O
NE must do the right thing.’
Besides this remark the Rev. John said:
‘Fools will take their own course, and what can you do with a chap who goes off the rails?’
The right thing that came most naturally to these two brothers was to drive the black sheep out of the fold. What else could they do? How could Henry with his quiet manners be set to work in the doctor’s garden beside the gardener, who understood motor cars? How could he be allowed to clean the silver with ‘the dear girl’s’ butler?
To prevent any foolishness on the part of their mother, any sign or symptom of a desire to give money to Henry, the doctor, acting by the
everwise
advice of John, explained to her one evening at dinner, while he wondered whether she would notice that he had given her the leg of the chicken, that he was ‘glad to say that Henry had found other work, and was most happy helping to feed the pigs and doing other duties with another of the small farmers on the heath, and that by his industry and his digging his presence there was very much valued, so much so that the farmer was glad to pay him a regular wage, even more than was necessary for his moderate wants.’ Mrs. Turnbull ate the leg of chicken without noticing where the breast went.
There was a certain amount of truth in the
doctor’s story. Henry, though still living with Molly Neville, went out sometimes to help the heath farmer in the hope of earning a little money, for which there was grave necessity. Alice’s illness had been a heavy drain upon Molly’s purse. The girl was still with them in the house, for her mother, naturally remembering the bread, refused to have so wicked a child home again.
Certain weeks passed, and Mrs. Netley, one morning at breakfast in her neat villa at
Portstown
, happened to think that it might be well for her daughter Rose to visit the new tenant at their heath cottage. The new tenant had written to ask if she might put up another room against the south side of the cottage, where there was neither window nor door nor wood-shed.
Mrs. Netley decided that it would be best for Rose to go and see about it. Besides, her daughter had been working too hard of late at the ‘saving of her sisters.’ The hard labours of Rose had given her a nasty cough, not
downright
enough to be ‘just a cold,’ but more than enough to worry her mother. The doctor’s sage remark was, ‘Nothing to worry about yet.’
‘It might be well,’ Mrs. Netley thought, ‘for Rose and me to live in the country for a time.’
The farmer who lived near Mrs. Netley’s cottage on the heath let rooms. It was there that she thought Rose had better go after she had seen the new tenant at the cottage, and see
what the rooms were like. So Rose and the faithful Maiden set off on the early down-train the next day, which happened to be Sunday, and therefore a holiday at the Bank. And at 10.30 this early spring morning, Mr. Malden and his lady left the train at Tadnoll and began their walk over the heath.
Malden believed in Rose. He rejoiced in the month of June, and never forgot the game of chess. Farther back, he was dimly conscious of God, feeling that the month of June, Rose, and chess must have been made by Him. There was no doubt in his mind that any fellow who loved chess must be on the right road. That was the way big Malden understood the world.
With Rose there, he intended to enjoy every step that day. Rose seemed to turn the whole heath into a girl. His work at the Bank calmed and steadied every day his joy in life. When his work was done, he rejoiced in his freedom. Work polished the surface of his appreciation, so that the slightest thing, a bud or an opening leaf, brought him all the joy he needed. It was nothing to him whether the rich exploited his powers, so long as they allowed him some time in which to go out into the fields or to enjoy a game of chess at his club. He was, there is no doubt about it, at heart a servant, a noble,
contented
, and trustworthy servant.
But all the same he was a servant bound to the wheel, helping to hold up and keep going the
tyrant’s chariot. The tyrant, when attacked, simply points to the big Maldens as the best and most moral type in the world. Without his help and the help of his kind the tyrants would have no chance at all, for a tyrant cannot rule without good servants.
Malden enjoyed himself on the heath like a child. He followed the sly track of an adder to where he believed it lived in a crack in the ground. He watched the rush of foaming water near the mill, and threw a penny into the stream for luck. He filled his pockets with specimens of flowers to show to the manager at the Bank, a polite old gentleman whose interests in life were botany and money. He broke off some May-blossom and insisted on putting it into Rose’s hair, after which she could do no less than put up her face to be kissed.
Malden stretched his long form over one of the heath dykes and peered down into the deep clear water. Just below him was a pike, about a foot long. All at once, fearing the great shadow above, it flashed away. Malden was delighted. It was the first pike that he had seen in the heath pools. That pike would be
something
to talk about over those columned and figured books.
All around him the earth was yearning to yield up her charm and colour. He could not walk two yards without seeing something that he wished to look at nearer. There was the delicious
delight of touching the flowers. He could hardly bear to leave the bush of May underneath which he had kissed Rose.
Together they opened the cottage gate and knocked at the door. A lady, who had been reclining in a very pleasant-looking cushioned chair in the little garden at the side of the cottage, came to meet them and took them indoors, where a fair girl, who was somewhat nervous, gave them chairs. The lady made immediately a good impression upon Rose. She felt sure at once that she was one who walked on the hills. Malden was quite as pleased as Rose, but then he always expected a great many delightful surprises to happen, as they always did happen to him on Sundays.
After a few minutes a quiet bearded young man, rather pale, entered the room and shook hands with them. It was quite natural that Malden should wander away with this new companion, and find within a few yards of the gate whole garlands of pleasantly boyish
conversation
. Malden’s enjoyment of a companion was never spoiled by the question ‘What does he do?’ that an Englishman usually puts to himself when he meets any one for the first time. Though he would glance, sometimes, a little curiously at a new friend, to find out as soon as he could whether, later on in the day, among the other pleasures, there might be the chance of a game of chess.
The two men had wandered a few hundred yards along the white chalk lane when Malden all at once dropped on his knees. Henry did not mind, there was no reason why he should not pray there if he wanted to. But prayer was not at all in Malden’s thoughts. What he did was to pick up a narrow grooved pebble that had about its shape something of the look of a bishop. He was overjoyed to find that it would stand. Henry, who knew a little about chess, entered readily and eagerly into the new quest. And the two friends were at once very busy here and there in the path looking for pebble chessmen. Henry was lucky enough to find a stone that would do for a castle. He was so delighted with his find that he walked across to Malden, who was a little way ahead, to show it to him. After that they decided to concentrate their efforts upon pawns, for which piece they chose a special little round mottled pebble, and no other colour or size would do. Malden was greatly pleased with Henry, and they came back together to the cottage with their pockets full of curiously coloured and oddly shaped stones.
While they were taking their walk, Molly had with great care divided the cushions equally between two chairs, so that both she and Rose might recline in comfort. Alice, without waiting to be asked, had gone off to the farm for eggs. Molly, when they were settled, spoke quite candidly about the relationship in which the
dwellers in her house stood to one another, and she said to Rose that ‘it was quite natural that Alice should sometimes look girlishly and
thoughtfully
at Henry.’ She surprised Rose by telling her that the people who lived in the villages would be very glad to burn the cottage over their heads, and that no doubt Mrs. Netley would shortly receive letters advising her to turn such deplorable ill livers into the road.
Molly explained further to the astonished Rose, that to live quietly in the country without a motor car, or two little dogs, or a gun, was considered by the peasant of England a heinous offence for a lady or a gentleman to commit. To be popular, they should join the others in wounding birds or holding a ferret over a rabbit’s hole. She explained that in her case, there were other reasons why the people of the countryside hated her, regarding her, as they did, as a murderer and a witch. As to Alice and Henry, they had come to her for protection, ‘because, poor children, they had nowhere else to go.’
She was poor: that fact in itself was quite enough to set the little boys throwing stones at her window. She had taken in Henry, who ought to have gone off in the steerage to America. And what business had she to give shelter to Alice, who, by the approved law of God and her neighbours, should have drowned herself on the heath, becoming a scandal and a joy to every one?
Rose did not hide her surprise. How could
she have known how deeply the manners of the country become the people who wear them? Molly explained that the pretty cottage was looked at by the people who came that way and knew the story, as the abode of unlicensed
wickedness
. Henry had done his best to remedy their poverty by aiding, as Dr. George had
truthfully
told his mother, the heath farmer. But beyond the gift of a few eggs that knowing gentleman had been unwilling to go. Besides Henry, Molly said, there was Alice to think of. And the two could not help looking at each other.
Then Rose told Molly how she and her mother were coming to stay near, because they wished to study, at first hand, the kind of life the people led in the country. She knew a good deal, almost too much, about the affairs of the town. Rose said she wished to know how the cottage women were treated, and what the men did for their homes, and how the farmers and the others who held the money-bags treated the poor. Besides all this, she was anxious to see how the popular feeling would express its distaste to Miss Neville and her companions; and if the people from the two villages were to come and snarl, Rose was quite prepared to snarl too and show her little white teeth at them.
Thus the golden bond that must at last chain all rebels together, whatever their habits of life, was cast around the two women who sat together looking up out of the valley towards the hills.
Malden, in his way, in his own pet manner, had found a friend. Henry, who for all he knew or cared, might have just stepped out of
Maidenbridge
prison, could play chess. Malden had already pencilled out a chess-board upon a portion of deal plank, and each player moved with dainty deliberation, after looking for inspiration across the moors.
When it was time for Rose and Malden to go to the station, they expressed themselves most delighted with their day. Rose, eagerly, arranged for the hire of the room at the farm, while big Malden splashed in the marsh and filled both hands with Yellow-flags.