The Young Desire It (26 page)

This suggestion startled him for the first time from his reserve.

‘Why?' he said, almost angrily, as though she had roused him from deep sleep too soon.

‘I thought you'd like to do it for me, son.'

Something in the way she said that let him see her mind with a sudden flash of clarity. It surprised him, and set him on guard, to realize that she was not happy; and so acute now was his perception that for a moment he understood why. In that instant of understanding he knew also that he must harden himself against her, more determinedly than he had against Penworth's franker disapproval.

‘Of course I'd like to do it for you,' he said quietly.

She put one hand on his shoulder, smiling still with her fine lips.

‘We understand each other, dear. You know how I love you. I want you to be happy—that's all. It's for you to find out how, Charles.'

In those moments of unhappy conflict they were more intimately revealed each to the other than, until now, they had ever been. They regarded each other objectively, he with growing mistrust, of her and of himself, and she with a growing sense of possessiveness. For him the revelation was distressing, and as they stood looking at each other he shuddered to be free of the distress. With an effort he spoke.

‘Why do we—What have I done wrong?'

She ceased to smile, and looked away. He had time to observe a swift expression of sorrow darken in her face.

‘It's not that you've done anything wrong, son,' she said. ‘But you're young, you know, and inexperienced.'

He submitted restlessly to that.

‘I'm older,' she said, ‘and I know what life is like. The disappointments, the misunderstandings…We must never misunderstand each other, Charles.'

‘Oh, Mother,' he cried, with impatience setting an edge to his tone of compassion. It caused her to turn again, but he spoke first, quickly.

‘Mr. Penworth—I told him about…I told him. He was just the same as you are. Why? I don't understand.'

‘You see,' she said sadly, shaking her head, smiling. ‘We're older, Charles. We know. Perhaps you would take more notice of him than you would of a—a woman; because he's a man, dear. It's not that we want you to be unhappy…'

‘What is it, then? What is it? You don't tell me; you simply hint at things and seem to want to make me feel ashamed.'

‘It's not that, son,' she repeated wearily.

‘I wish I hadn't told you,' he said with sudden passion. ‘Either of you. It's—it's my own business.' He ended uneasily; her grave gaze turned to him; gravely accusing, she held him a moment with her eyes.

‘You mustn't say things like that, my son. It's not fair. It's not quite kind.'

He went impatiently away from her to the windows, noticing even in his excitement that the rain was holding off, and feeling at the same time that if this argument did not end he would cry, or laugh.

‘Well,' he said at last, making his voice and eyes steady when he had turned to face her. ‘What do you want me to do? Do you really want me to go over with the things?'

‘If you want to go, son, I'd like you to, yes.'

Now he did want to go, most certainly. Already, like himself in these last minutes, Margaret might be changed.

‘I'm sorry I said anything unfair, Mother. I didn't mean to.'

‘I know, my dear. Oh, believe me, I know how one feels…Now put a coat on, like a good man, and get off before it rains.'

She came and put her arms round him, kissing his half-unwilling lips firmly, with a slight, uncontrollable pressure of self-assertion.

‘Let's forget all about this. We must be good friends, darling.'

‘All right,' he said, with some relief, in the satisfaction of having escaped the commitment of promises. ‘When shall I go?'

‘The basket's ready now, dear.'

When he left the house, however, his conscience was not easy, and for some time he could not restrain his mind from going over that brief scene of conflict between them. As they had been in May, since that evening by the fire, so they were now. There was something in it all which evaded his understanding, something which he wanted to call his mother's unreasonableness, and put aside, but which made an obscure demand on his sympathy. He felt an anger against her, as he had against Penworth, for he could not see why his absorption in Margaret should provoke them like a sword turned to them.

Never before had he found himself in conflict with those he loved, and his conscience was uneasy, in spite of defiance, and he was sent back hastily to seek a cause in himself, rather than in them. The thought that he might have erred in the conduct of relationships once dear to him made him unhappy now, and in unhappiness his mind turned to Margaret, in whom he imagined some secret power of comfort. After their parting in the noon of that day he had gone homeward swearing he would be there the next morning, in such a hot visualization of their next meeting that he could not believe she herself would not come; but when he woke the bright day and the dreams of night taught him to fear disappointment and mistrust his certainty of her; and in the end he had not gone.

Now, as he walked out by the roundabout cart road that led like a lane between two lines of slim trees towards the hills, he wondered whether after all she had gone there on Sunday morning, and, after that brief but discomforting scene with his mother, was amazed at his own certainty in not himself going. But, when he recalled the sincerity of her words, spoken not to speed but to reveal a conclusion made already, he could not believe she had. She had known what she meant to do, but he had not, and he was still jealous of the power her assurance had over them both. But it was that assurance which he went to seek now, after the doubt forced on him by conflict. What would she have been doing? Surely she could not have spent the week ‘thinking'? But, he remembered, in any case the rain would have kept her indoors.

Walking on more quickly, in a renewed hunger for the sight of her, he had her image before him.

From the top of sloping ground, where the cart road faded into the grass as though it had never meant to lead him anywhere, he looked down across a flat field not fully cleared of trees, to where the new farm lay under the grey sky, with the lavender-pale line of the hills behind it. The bare branches of a patch of orchard made a faint cloud against the still trees beyond; in the green-black of orange trees there was a scatter of bright fruit, and a paler mandarin, standing apart, was heavy with it. Farther off he could see the line of the brook's course. He knew those fruit trees well, and the ground about them, for when the place was empty he had often wandered there, even trying to see in through the dusty windows into the strange loneliness tormented, as he imagined, by memories of people who had lived there. There were the bare figs, their thick silvery branches now dark with rain, low and appearing more iron-hard than they were; between them and the naked orchard trees was the orderly green of a garden. He thought he could see the first flowers in the orchard, and knew that within ten days, perhaps, it would be clouded pink and white with flower, flesh upon the bones, before the leaves broke from the bud. Pink and white petals would fall in frail loveliness, like snow, upon the dark red earth beneath the branches, when the sky was blue and the gales came whipping out of the west.

To-day there was no wind, and the sky hung low in unbroken grey above the shoulders of the hills. He went down the sloping field and climbed through the fence at its farther end. Here the road from the new farm ran southwest to meet another that led to the village three miles away. He had only to go along it the distance of one more field, open the gate and pass through, and his journey would be ended.

As he walked on the hard crown of the road it began to rain, not heavily now but in a fine falling mist. The basket was making his shoulder ache; but he forgot that, in marvelling at his sudden calm, as he approached the house. It seemed to him that he must have grown older in this one week; once he would have felt in a trembling hurry to face and pass beyond this perilous second meeting and the equally perilous first meeting with a woman he did not know. Now, instead, he felt at ease and contented. He thought, ‘All this is our own land now'. The assurance which ownership gives made his step unhesitant; and he felt, also, that after all he could have come and gone as he pleased, secure in the new realization of his individual being.

After the habit of country people arriving at farmhouses in the morning, he went round to the back door, where the kitchen was. A woman's voice was talking cheerfully away within, and a dull, hearty thumping sound drummed an uneven accompaniment. Charles rattled the wire door, and put down his basket.

‘Meg,' said the woman inside, ‘there's a body there noo. See who it is, lamb.'

Charles steadied himself against the door's opening, holding the fly-proof screen back with his foot. Margaret's face when she saw him seemed to wake from sleep. He trembled to see it change so, flushing and widening to life again.

She whispered quickly, ‘I don't know you'. He thought he must have expected that. There should be no suspicion of her. Her troubled regard increased his assurance; he looked past her and asked, ‘Is Mrs. McLeod here? I'm Mrs. Fox's son; I've brought some things for her.'

The same voice said, ‘Och, then! Ay, bring um in, Meg. Come in, young man.'

In the low dimness and length of the kitchen he saw first the fire in the stove, and then that big woman, resting her rolling-pin on the pastry board as though it were a baton. Her broad, high face charmed him at once, for the eyes slanted and bore out her clear smile. It was a humorous and kindly face, mobile from much talking and an inexhaustible ability to express surprise; the lines round the sly keenness of the eyes showed how often laughter closed them. She was almost laughing now, her big breasts shaking softly under the closeness of her grey bodice.

‘Well, noo! Look at how y've found me! Never mind, laddie. What can I do for y'r mither?'

‘She sent you some butter,' Charles said, his voice sounding slow after the quick tumble and rise of her syllables. ‘And some eggs and apples, I think.'

‘Och! Meg noo, what d'ye think! Isna that kind?' Surprise once more took her face by storm; she looked almost ashamed, as though she were unduly blessed. Charles put the heavy basket on the table, and went to stand with his back to the stove while she unpacked it, with an accompanying babble of exclamatory talk. He thought he had never known anyone so consciously happy, and so quick to show it. It was not his presents, it was life itself that pleased her. Hers was not the empty talk and laughter of women who spoke without thought; it was the vivid cheerfulness of a heart that had outfaced the hardships of the land itself and was still able to laugh and find life good. No man would have remained serene after half a lifetime spent in suffering the rigours and torments of that country where the wheat belt lay; few women, too, came through such a life without the bitter brown claw-marks of the land scarring their faces and deforming their minds. Her Scottish nature, into which no Highland ice and fire had burned, still shone clearly like the bright colour of her face and the sharp laughter in her eyes; her hair, where the characterful, keen ridges of the cheek-bones met it below her temples, was as thick and heavy as smoke.

He looked from her to the girl, who stood with her back to the long table in the middle, leaning her hands hard on its edge and staring out with expressionless tensity through the open doorway.

‘That's Margaret,' the Scotswoman said. ‘That's our lamb, noo; eh, and I wish she were our ain too.' She had seen his glance.

‘Might you have met her a'ready in the fields, then? Ay—when I was a bit of a young thing like Meg…'

She laughed, and he thought the girl's lips were trembling against a smile; but she kept her eyes away from him, and he could not be sure.

‘“When a body meets a body comin' through the rye”, f'r guidness sake. Oh, Robbie Burns was a pet of a fella noo. We ustna sing just those verra words—not the words you sing in this country. Ours were a deal more ruid, y'ken.'

She looked him in the eyes and laughed again, holding an apple in each hand; till he felt his face grow hot, and must laugh, too, without understanding her.

‘No' y'are to have a cup of tea when my scones are cooked, and y' shall have scones t'it. That was rare kindness of your mither, young man. I wonder…'

She gazed at him; her eyes twinkled like stars beneath their flat brows. The girl continued to look out blindly through the doorway.

‘I wonder what I could do for her. Eh, but there's nothing I could do. Did she happen to know our cow wasna milking well noo? And apples! So I shall make old Jock yonder an apple pie to his tea, for he dearly loves such things.'

The quick accent delighted Charles, as he listened to the way it gave life to the casual words of speech. She was busying herself about the room, going from the stove to the table.

‘Look at yon,' she exclaimed. ‘She doesna say a word a' day, like my old Jock. Ay, not a word out o' them.' She nodded towards Margaret, who seemed not to have heard her, and did not turn her head.

‘Perhaps,' said Charles, ‘she has nothing to say.' This spirit of cheerful raillery infected him, and made him bold to speak in open secrecy. ‘Some people don't even think, do they?'

She gave him a shrewd glance, and the red light from the stove reflected in her eyes like mockery as she bent down by it.

‘Y'are a wise young man noo, aren't you,' she said. ‘Meg and Jock—they're aye like that; they hardly think a thought, I swear, a' day. What they should do without me, I wouldna like to say just.'

Later, when they were by the table, he sitting on the edge opposite them in a strained attitude that helped him to be calm, he dared to suggest that the girl might come out with him one day when the weather changed, so that he could show her over all the country about.