Chapter I (2)

“Well, then, whatever’s to do?” Bob peered at him curiously, struck by the mixture of longing and dogged resistance in his tone. “If it’s nobbut a matter of a pound or two, you can fetch up easy enough on yon. There’s a deal o’ folk’d lend you a hand, seeing how you’re placed. It’s more than time, too, you were starting on your own. It doesn’t do to stop in service over long. You get kind o’ fixed and feared o’ striking out.”

“I’ll strike right enough, never you fret—I will that. But it’ll be in my own time....”

“You can’t always suit things just to the tick.... Eh, I wish the chance had come my road, that’s all!” Bob sighed and frowned, depressed by the thought of what he had missed, and the folly which refused what he would so gladly have seized. “But it’s no use my thinking on’t, so that’s flat. Even if I could borrow the brass, I’d never catch up with it, I doubt, and there’s Marget to be suited in t’matter, as I said afore. Nay, I’m a broken reed, that’s what it is, and I mun just let be. It’s for you to say what you’ll do for the old man.”

“I can’t do owt—yet,” Thomas repeated. “I mun ha’ time....” and pushed his chair further into the concealing gloom. He felt trapped in a cunning snare, all the more cunning and cruel because it was simply his own plan of life twisted and tangled out of shape. He had never dreamed that his future hung by a hair, but then he had never imagined that John might die, or that Agnes might so incredibly change her mind. He felt not only trapped but mocked, and the mockery hardened him in his resolve. Difficult as he was to turn, he might yet have been driven to yield, if the whole business had not worn so ironic a leer. The rough hand of fate was thrust in among his careful plans. His faithfulness and self-denial, his patience and hard work, were all to be shuffled and risked in a hurried moment like this.

If only things had been right between him and his lass, how triumphantly simple the whole problem would have been! It was true that he would have liked another year to look round, but he would have let that go without hesitation for the chance of the farm. The place was in a bad state, of course, but that should mean an easier rental, and all the more credit to him when he pulled it round. He knew the little farm by stick and stone, and loved it well enough, too. He was content enough in his hired spot, but the marsh blood that was in him cried always to be settled within sight and sound of the sea. Even to-night, though his heart was pulling him back, and the marsh was a dripping waste with a trap at the farther end, he had drawn great breaths as the mountains dropped behind. To have had the old home with Agnes—why, it was better by far than he had planned! And in the event, as it had proved, how far it had fallen short!

He would have been glad, too, to keep the old man, just as the Agnes he had counted as his would also have been glad. Both had been bred to the sense of duty powerful in their class, and the fact that Kit had muddled his own chance would have made no difference to that duty in their eyes. He would have been welcome to their home as long as he lived, and indeed, there would have been no hardship about it, after all, for he was both lovable and kind, as well as the sort that made little trouble about the house. Thomas, in fact, would have been proud as well as glad to give him what he asked. He would have liked to have seen him daily in his chair, playing his fiddle in a patch of shade or pottering about the garden in the sun. The old man had always been rarely fond of flowers, and no matter what happened or did not happen on the farm, the garden, at least, was always bright and sweet. Flowers seemed to grow for him, indeed, under the mere caressing glance of his eye.... But at present Agnes was turned the other way, and he would not travel a road that was not hers as well. As long as he could he would stay within reach, doggedly waiting and waiting for the recoil, and if anything else called for his help, he must shut his ears and let it go to the wall. A few miles over the hill would have made little difference, perhaps, but he could not have endured those miles, and he did not mean to try. Without Agnes, he would let the farm go without even raising his hand. Without Agnes, he would let his father go, too.

There being little else he could do for the old man, Bob was roused to fight for him to the last. It was his brother’s duty, he pointed out, a duty that would have been a pleasure to other folks, not so far. Nobody could have had a better father, as they knew right well, and he was entitled to the little they could do. It wasn’t as if Thomas hadn’t the brass—what, he had more than once told them about it himself! If that was true—and it was like enough, after all these years—there could be nothing and less than nothing in the way. Supposing it did mean a year before he’d planned, why, surely to goodness there was no hitch in that? He’d never for shame let his father be turned out, like a come-day-go-day tenant that never meant to stop? He could have both bed and bite under his roof, Bob said, but it wouldn’t be much to crack on, after Beautiful End. There was only one right road, as anybody could see, and that was to put in at once for the offered farm.

Kit never spoke or stirred while Bob argued and Thomas denied, the deep, slow voices rising a little towards the end, but never once growing bitter or unkind. Abuse and bickering had always been strangers under that roof, and even Thomas’s sullen rage did not vent itself in speech. He spoke seldom, indeed, as seldom as he could, and then only dour refusals to consider the matter at all, retreating further and further out of the path of the moon. But throughout the whole scene Kit never said another word, and his sons did not think it strange. He was of the sort that makes its appeal and then stands aside, leaving others to argue and settle its fate. He had pleaded his case with a childlike certainty that somebody would step in, and the matter was fought to an end without his help. Even when Thomas had said nay for the last time—the hundredth, miserable, degrading time, so it seemed—his father had not spoken again. Perhaps even then he hoped and had faith, that faith in chance which dreamers carry to their graves; or perhaps he guessed the hold of the tie to which Thomas would give no name.

“Ay, well, happen you’ll sleep on’t,” Bob had said, rising at last, and speaking even to the end as if his father were not there. “There’s nowt else I can think on as’ll likely change your mind, and I doubt I’d ha’ been wiser not to say so much. But it’s hard to stand by when you can’t do nowt to help, and see as others as can all right but happen won’t. There’s a home for the old man at our house whenever he likes to come, and right welcome he’ll be under any roof of mine. As for Marget, she’ll likely kick a bit at first, but I’ll get her round to it after a deal o’ talk. She’ll come to it all right, same as other folks have done, and it’s queer if I can’t give my father a share of my own spot.”

“I’ll lend a hand wi’ the keep,” Thomas muttered, out of the dark, and Bob nodded in answer, turning to the door. He knew well enough what his offer of a home was worth, among weakly, ill-tempered children and under a nagging shrew. He knew as well as Thomas or Kit that it would only be a dismal waiting-place for death. It was bad enough to have to quit, to break ties and begin a feeble life again, to lose the sound of the tide awash at the sea-wall, but the worst to come was not the loss of the farm. It was Marget that was the dreadful thing to face, as they were all aware. It was the thought of Marget with the old man in her hands that almost defeated Thomas at the last. If only the poor old chap could have gone to somebody else!... “Now ye’ll mind ye can come to us, Father!” Bob repeated on the step, and Kit had simply thanked him and said no more. In the porch, Thomas, dismal as the night, managed to drag out a few ungracious words. “As soon as I’ve gitten things straight, Father ... just hold on....” And Kit had said thank you quite simply for that, too.

Once outside he was seized by a passionate impulse to return. Grasping at one thing still out of reach, he was more than probably risking the loss of all. Supposing Agnes should never be won back, no matter what he offered or threw away? It was on the cards, as he was forced to admit. Even without her he would still have the farm, and his payment of satisfaction in his father’s face. But, rough and unthinking as he was, he guessed that partial fulfilment was more to be dreaded than complete loss, that a heart’s desire is better rejected if it cannot be had whole. And indeed, this strife with himself was only a waste of energy, after all. He knew, as things stood, he would never come away.

The brothers found nothing more to say as they followed the muddy track to the meadow gate. Bob had tried his eloquence, such as it was, to a hopeless end, and his own position was doubtful, to say the least. At any moment Thomas might have turned, and with just cause. He was the youngest after all, and the only one that had stood on his own feet. John had not had enough courage even to live, and Bob, beaten and slack, was scarcely the one to preach burdens on to another’s back. He was tired, too, after a wearing day and a scream-riddled night; busy, moreover, with the problem of facing Marget with the news.

At the back of his mind was a vague idea that Thomas’s wooing was somehow going amiss. He had thought of it while he argued in the house, but Thomas had never thought fit to mention the lass, and it wasn’t his brother’s place to bring her in. The courting, he knew, had been a long one, like his own. He could have told Thomas a thing or two, he felt sure, only telling these things was never any use. In spite of his good sense and superior luck, Thomas must dree his weird like the rest.

They had parted where the roads parted on the marsh, and after them through the lifting curtain of the rain had looked the pale wraith that wanted to be the moon. And again, over their heads from the lone farm, now slipped away into the unbordered dark, there trembled the long flight of the violin.

Alone on the marsh, Thomas had once again nearly repented and turned back. It was not that the fiddle seemed to call him back. It had, on the contrary, the effect of shutting him out. It seemed to mark the final detachment of father from son, to emphasise the division of two who by rights should have held together, but were nevertheless going to drift apart. It was Kit’s swan-song to his own place, and as such it kept its ecstasy for himself and its poignancy for the listener on the waste. Thomas had an idea that he was hurrying back to the farm, plodding again through the meadow along the rutted track. He heard the little click of the garden gate, saw himself pushing gently at the door, met the sweet flood of music rushing out, and warmed to the old man’s welcome and relief. But always his feet were taking him away, and the pull of the farm and its trouble lessened with every mile. Now his thoughts reached forward rather than behind, fixed on a dweller in another house. In his mind he saw her home between gentle curves of the land, the night brooding over its walls that seemed as much grown out of the earth as the hedgerows in the fields. He saw the syringa over the porch lifting its star-faces to the moon. He saw faint candle-light in a room upstairs, and herself a moving shadow across the blind....

He was late at his own place, and found himself locked out, but even as he tried the door he heard stumbling on the stairs, and knew that his step had warned the folk across the yard. While he waited he said to himself that if there was any bother he would give in his notice right away. It only wanted some little thing like that to fix his mind. He tried to work himself into a fiercer mood, ready to lash out at the first suggestion of rebuke. It would be grand to be his own master after so long, instead of a hired man at beck and call. With a word he could alter the position when he liked. But when the bolts were unshot the farmer said nothing except that it was a dirty night, and Thomas took off his boots in silence and followed him upstairs. In the morning the porridge was badly burnt, and again he tried to drive himself to a break, but once again something put him off and he kept still. That evening, however, he met Agnes in the lane between the farm and her home, and the thing rose in him with a rush and he spoke out.

“You can take it or leave it, as suits you,” he said, “but there it be to your hand. The farm’s ready and waiting on you, and so’s the man. I’ve had enough o’ your putting off and keeping me hanging round. You’ve got to fix it up now or let me gang.”

“You must give me time,” she answered, using his own words of the night before. “I’m not ready—I don’t know my mind. As for keeping you hanging round, you’ve been free to go this many a long day, as you know right well. I’m not that anxious to get wed, not I. But if it’s me you’re wanting, as you seem to think, well, there’s nothing for it but to give me time.”

“You’ve had time and plenty, I’m sure!” he retorted with rough scorn. “Time to look round at all the lads and begin again. Time to look round at the married folk an’ all, and see who’s suited and who baint. But there’s got to be an end of your daft shilly-shally now. Seems to me you think it’s nobbut a game.”

“Nay, then, that’s just what I don’t!” she flashed back in wrath. “It’s because I take it so serious-like that I don’t mean to be pushed. There’s times it seems to me that serious I don’t know how folk ever come to it at all. ’Tisn’t as if it was just a bit of a bargain over a cow or a two-three sheep. It’s you and me beginning our lives right over again from the start, and maybe both on us finding we’re different folk from what we thought. I’m suited well enough as I am, and I’d be a fool not to stop and think. I’ll not wed till I’m that set on the lad I’ll find myself fair running to kirk, and I’m a long way off yet from being as nicked in the head as yon! I don’t say but what I think a deal of you, because I do. I’m not breaking my heart over you, that’s all. If you want to gang, you can gang, ay, and right off the reel, but I won’t stir finger or foot until I choose!”

“Ay, but there’s the old man, I tell ye!” Thomas had blurted out. “I’m in a cleft stick, seemingly, atween you and him. They’ll turn him out of his spot if I waint promise to take hold.”

“Eh, now, if that isn’t terble hard!” She fell silent, thinking after her passionate speech, studying his lowering, fretted face, and seeing all in a moment how they stood. “But there’s never two minds about it, surely?” she added, in a troubled voice. “You’ll have to see to your father one way or t’other, you and Bob. And you’ll never to goodness miss the chance o’ the farm?”

He turned his eyes on her with their dogged, miserable look.

“Ay, but I will, if I can’t have you an’ all.”

“You’ve had your answer to that till I’m fair tired.” She turned away from him, staring vexedly at the hedge.

“Ay, well, then, that’s all there is to it, I reckon. Father and farm’ll have to see to themselves.”

“You can have a housekeeper to do for you,” Agnes said.

“An’ a bonny makeshift an’ all, for a man as wants a wife!”

“Other folks do with them all right.”

“Well, I want nowt wi’ ’em, so that’s flat.”

“But you’ll have to do summat o’ the sort,” she protested angrily, troubled and also afraid. Her own particular cleft stick was becoming plainer with every minute that passed. “You’ll have to have somebody about the place, and it’s fair wicked to talk o’ missing the farm. What, you’ve been wanting a spot of your own for long enough, I’m sure, and now you can do what’s right by your dad at the same time.”

“You wouldn’t ha’ minded him about the house? If things was fixed, I’m meaning ... if we were wed....”

“Mind an old body settin’ on the hearth?” She turned to face him again with wonder in her eyes. “Nay, but you know me better than that by a deal! I’d ha’ been glad enough to see to him, that I would. I’ve always been rarely fond o’ Fiddlin’ Kit.”

“Ay, well, then,” Thomas insisted, “what’s in the road?”

“I’ve tell’t you what’s in the road. I can’t frame to make up my mind.”

“Seems to me it’s an easy enough job,” he answered her gloomily, staring at his feet, and she laughed in spite of her anger and dismay.

“Happen it is for some folk, but not me.... Hark ye! Show a bit o’ sense, do now,” she coaxed. “You go off to your farm, and likely I’ll throw my shoe after you, even yet. I reckon you’ll ha’ forgot all about me, by then.”

“’Tisn’t me as’ll do the forgetting!” he turned on her fiercely, breaking out at last. “It’s your sort, not mine, as doesn’t keep a friend in mind. It’s your sort as goes back on your word, and plays fast and loose and suchlike tricks. You’d be glad to be shot of me, I’ll be bound, and afore long there’d be somebody easier in my shoes, but I don’t mean to give you a chance o’ forgetting, don’t you fret! Am I like to put miles between us when I’m lile or nowt to you in the same lane? Nay, I’ll bide ... I’ll bide.... I’m used to your ways, and though I don’t think much on ’em, I reckon I can see it through. But it isn’t only me as is waiting on you now. You’re making me act bad to the old dad, and that’s what’s putting me about.”

“It’s no business of mine, I tell you!” she flung back, full of resentment at this shifting of loads. “It’s nowt to do wi’ me, anyway round.” They stood glaring at each other with frowning faces and hard eyes, blaming each other for the subtle net by which they were equally entrapped. “I’ve no call to wed just to give your father a home,” she went on. “I’m sorry for him, as I said, and I’d lend a hand if I could, but I don’t see as it’s fair to blame me because I can’t. You’ve not overmuch pride, I doubt, or you’d never put it like yon. It’s nobbut a poor sort o’ lad as’d take me at the price!”

He threw her a final look of helpless rage, and swung away from her, facing towards the farm. “Then he mun gang to Marget,” he flung over his shoulder, “Marget and Bob!” and at the terrible name of Marget she cried aloud. Thomas continued steadily on his way.

“Eh, Thomas, you don’t mean that!” she called after his retreating back. “She’ll be bad to him, will Marget—she’ll finish him right off. Bide a bit, can’t you?... Save us, man, can’t you bide? I never somehow thought of the old man going there.”

“Where else should he gang?” he demanded sullenly, stopping but still turned away. “Bob’s his own flesh and blood as well as me, and a long sight the oldest on us an’ all. There’s t’ Union, likely, might do for the old dad, but I doubt they won’t take him while there’s others to fill the job.”

“Nay, and why should it, I’d like to know!” she exclaimed. “You should think shame o’ yourself for suchlike selfish talk.” There was something desperate in her glance at the hedge on either side, as if the fences were hung with the net that would not let her through. From them she looked once more at Thomas, turning slowly on his heel, and slowly beginning at last to see his way.... “I’d wed him myself and work for him sooner than that!”

“I reckon there’s nowt agen you wedding me instead.”

“Nay, then, I can’t.... I’ve tell’t you.... I just can’t.”

“Then he’ll be at Marget’s afore you can say knife.”

They had changed places at last, as was clear to both; in the course of a few moments they had changed. At last he had found a way of blocking her escape, of putting a log in the path of her everlasting no. It was he who had the better hold now, and he did not mean to be stopped from winning the fall. He knew well enough that however hard she might be with a young man foolishly in love, she had the softest heart in the world for the weak and old. Perhaps he had no pride, as she said, but he meant to use his father’s cause to the full for the furthering of his own. He stood staring fixedly at her downcast head, and the old kindliness came back into his voice now that he saw his advantage clear. He put the whole case over to her again, but always with Marget looming largely at the end, and had the same satisfaction in the last effect. Agnes knew Bob’s wife as well as anybody else, and needed no enlightening as to her ways. His hopes rose and his face cleared as he saw the position he had cursed proving the door to his desire, and as his heart eased he became more eloquent, more tender, more difficult to resist. At the finish he gave her a rough picture of the lonely farm, and the fiddle singing into the night....

She yielded at last with wet eyes and a dismal shake of her drooped head.

“Nay, then, we mun just put a stop to it, that’s all. We can’t let him gang to Marget, poor old chap! If you waint stir without me, I mun wed you and take the risk, but I doubt we’ll make a mess o’ things, you an’ me. It’s nobbut a middlin’ sort of a bargain when folks don’t both jump on the tick.” She looked up at him suddenly with a laugh that was more than half a wail. “Eh, Thomas, but baint there some other lass’d do as well?”

And then, when he had what he wanted, he put it from him and turned away. As soon as the battle was over, he saw at once the futility of his success. He could think, now that he was no longer vexed and opposed, and thinking, could find nothing else to do but draw back. His father could have only a few years in front of him, after all, but this was for all his own life and hers. He had his pride, in spite of her taunt, and this was apparently where it stopped. It was a poor bargain, as she had said, appealing angrily to his common sense; a gift, if you could call it a gift, that wouldn’t be even his own. And it wasn’t much of a man who bullied a woman into saying yes, who needed so mighty a lever to get at her heart. He stood back once again as she wept, and heard his voice sending her away, heard himself seal his father into the mercy of Bob’s wife....

So Kit had gone to Marget’s, trustful to the end, even with his sold-up house behind him and a shrewish face before. Thomas attended the sale and bought in a few trifles at the old man’s wish, and when all was over he borrowed a trap and drove him away. Kit was cheerful and talkative throughout the drive, and they never so much as mentioned Marget’s name. Thomas had an insane idea that they would find his mother at the farther end, and kept seeing her waiting for them at the door. He never forgot the journey’s real end, the shut house full of eyes at every pane, the cold wait in the empty street, the colder opening to let them in. Marget had met them with silence at first, and then with a gathering flood of angry speech. Kit’s attempt at grateful thanks had been swallowed up in it as the channels out on the sands were swallowed by the winter wave. Thomas waited until Marget’s breath gave out, and then went away, feeling as though he had thrown a live thing to a cat. After that time he had gone as seldom as his sense of duty would allow. He never failed, however, to pay his share, and he managed to get news of the old man from Bob. Not that Bob ever had a very great deal to say, because he kept out of the house as much as he could. The old man was “ailing a bit,” or “right enough,” as the case might be, but that was all. Now it was nearly two years since Kit had gone to the unhappy place—the place where a pair of lovers had prisoned him in.

* * * * *

Agnes, returning, found him at the mirror again, so intent that he started when she spoke.

“Land’s sake! Why, you’re not off yet!... What’s come to you to be gaping in yon glass?” She stared at him wonderingly, and he turned a somewhat sheepish face. “You nobbut look at it once a week, as a rule, and that’s when you’re donning yourself for kirk.”

“I was nobbut taking a squint at the room,” he answered in a puzzled tone. “Glass makes it look different, I don’t know why.”

“Ay, I’ll be bound it’s different!” she exclaimed with pride. “I’d a sight on’t once, not long afore the sale, and a lost-looking, dismal spot it was, to be sure! Seems like as if it couldn’t possibly be the same. What wi’ new furniture and range and wall-papers an’ suchlike, it’s for all the world like some other place.”

“Ay, but I wasn’t meaning it like that. Seems as if it was the _old_ room I can see in t’glass. It was the old kitchen glass, you’ll think on, as I bought at the sale. Father didn’t want it going to off-comers and suchlike, so I bought it to please the poor old chap. He’d a sort of idea as glasses knew a deal—said there was glasses remembered things they’d seen. Likely this here has got the old kitchen on its mind. Likely it’s looked that often at the old, it can’t frame yet to take a peep at the new.”

“Likely you’re blinded wi’ the sun!” She flung him a look of laughing scorn and went to the window again.... “What in the name o’ goodness can ha’ come to yon trap! D’you think owt’s gone amiss on the road?”

“More like they’ve been late in setting off, as I said afore. I’ll be bound Marget’s found summat to keep ’em back, if it’s only to put the poor old man about. Or likely they’ve been bothered wi’ folk stopping ’em on t’road. They’ll all be agog on the marsh to think as he’s coming home.”

“Folks say they’re glad the Sills isn’t quitting the marsh,” Agnes said. “They thought nowt o’ the man as come here after your dad. He seems to have been only a terble middlin’ sort—over fond o’ the drink and happen a bit daft. The place isn’t over lucky, Thomas, I doubt!”

“Folks make their own luck,” Thomas said doggedly, squaring his jaw, “and anyway round it’s brought me all the luck I want. There’s you here, as I never thought’d come, and brass enough to put the farm on its legs. And now there’s the old man coming home to-night. I reckon I’m suited as well as most. There’s nobbut one thing grubs me,” he went on, with a moody look, “and that’s that the old chap ever had to gang.”

“Eh, let it bide, can’t you?” Agnes cried aloud. She stole a glance at his face and her own drooped again. “Surely to goodness you’ve never been going over yon? Things is right enough now—as right as rain.”

“Ay, but they’re spoilt a bit for us, all the same.” His voice had dropped back into the bitter tone. “I still feel sort o’ shamed about the job, and I reckon you’re none so bright about it yourself. And yet, if it come back over again, I’d do same as afore.”

“I don’t see as we could ha’ done different,” Agnes said, and sighed. “I did say as I’d come if you couldn’t fix nowt else, but I doubt we wouldn’t ha’ made much out in the end.”

“It’d ha’ been hell for both on us afore so long.” He began to walk restlessly up and down behind her back, the old angry resentment blurring and troubling his face. “What beats me about it all is what come over you just then. You’d been right enough afore, and you’re suited well enough now. What, for the land’s sake made you act so strange?”

“Nay, I don’t know, I’m sure. I’m fair puzzled about it myself.” She laughed, but there were regretful tears behind the laugh. “Seems to me women don’t always know exactly what they’re at. Folks don’t always see their road clear in front o’ their feet. There’s a time for everything, I reckon, that’s what it is, and it hadn’t come just then for you and me.”

“Anyway, it’s come now, thanks be!” he said in a sudden burst, and he stopped his angry pacing and came to her side. “But all the same,” he persisted, “I’d ha’ liked it perfect all through. There’s things as hurt to look back on more than a deal. There’s times I’ve heard her rating the poor old chap, I’ve felt that bad I could ha’ shot myself right out. ’Twas summat like as if he’d been clapped in jail; as if you an’ me had gone and put him in quod.”

She put her hands on his shoulders, her eyes filling with tears.

“Nay, now—don’t—don’t! You make me feel that bad.”

“And him so kind,” he went on, as if unable to stop. “Ay, it makes you feel bad enough to swear.”

“It’s over ... it’s by wi’ ... we’ll make it up to him, you’ll see!” He put his arms about her, and her hands went up around his neck. “You’ll not be keeping a grudge agen me all our lives?”

“Nay, it’s myself I’m sore with, not you. I should ha’ done my duty by the old chap, and trusted you’d come to me in the end. But I wasn’t for taking the risk. I was over feared. And now I doubt I’ll always feel sort o’ shamed.”

“Things’ll sort themselves out, don’t you fret. They’ll right themselves sure as a bobbin, after a bit.”

“Likely they will.”

“It’ll make a sight o’ difference, once he’s back. You’ll never think twice o’ yon weary time no more.”

“Likely I waint.”

“And you’ll not throw it up at me when you’re mad?” she begged. “You’ll not forget just how it come about?”

“I tell you I blame myself,” he repeated, “and nobody else. Happen I wanted you that bad I’d to pay a bigger price than most. Or happen we were both on us driven, and couldn’t help ourselves at all. But like enough it’ll all come right, as you say, and it’s nobbut fools as frets themselves, looking back.”

“We’ve come out a deal better than we deserve!” She smiled and drew away from him, looking happy again. “We took a deal o’ risk, you an’ me, but we’ve bit on our feet, I reckon, after all....” She drifted back to the table, as to an altar on which their sacrifice of thanksgiving was set. “What can ha’ come to the trap, Thomas? Father’ll be wearied out afore they land.... I mind you said he liked a bit o’ ham to his tea. You said Marget wasn’t for giving him ham if she could help.”

“She’d ha’ given him nowt,” Thomas growled, “if it wasn’t she was feared o’ finishing him off. Brass she was getting for him was over good to lose. He never eat what I give her, I’ll be bound.... Ay, he’d always a fancy-like for ham, and when he’d finished he’d gang outside for his smoke. There’s a new pipe I bought him, somewheres. Marget took t’other off him, Bob said.... Ay, an’ there’s some of his pet bacca in a tin.”

“Have you finished yon seat you were making for him under t’hedge?”

“Ay, it’s finished right enough. A gradely seat it is an’ all—a sight better than t’other as used to be by t’door. If you’ll stop fidging over yon table you might take a look for yourself.”

She laughed and went out with him into the porch. Their figures divided the sun as they stood, so that they looked like swimmers deep in the streaming gold. Their heads leaned together as they nodded approval at the seat, a wooden bench in the arms of a well-laid fence. It was a grand seat, Agnes said, and a grand evening for anybody wanting to sit out. They pictured the old man sitting there, warming himself in the last of the sun. They were excited and full of plans again, like children preparing for a treat. She had her hand on his arm, peering across him round the porch, when the trap suddenly lumbered into sight. It might have been dumped out of space on the straight-ruled road, a languid object jolting over the flat. Thomas, meditating proudly upon the seat, turned about to a hasty prod.

“There it be, Thomas—there it be! Trap, I mean, man—look ye—can’t ye see? Be off now as smart as you can. They’ll be here afore you’ve made shift to start.”

She tried to push him out of the porch, deaf to his protest that the trap had a fairish piece to cover yet. “A bonny time it’ll take an’ all,” he added, “wi’ yon bag o’ bones atween the shafts. Seems like it meant liggin’ down for a bit of a nap.”

“Best be soon than late,” she urged. “Nay, now, be off, do!”—and he allowed himself to be shoved on to the path, grinning at her eager face. “I’ll have kettle singing by you’re back,” she went on, “and then there’ll be nowt to keep us from setting to, right off. Bob’ll have a bite o’ summat, likely, afore he makes off. Eh, but I’m right fain to see the old man’s face when he passes t’door.”

“He’ll find summat better than Marget to look at, and that’s sure!” he teased her, lingering, and she stamped her foot at him and cried:

“Get on, you gert soft!”

And he answered, “I _is_ getting on!” and stood like a stock.

The farm, full of the evening sun, and with smiling figures at its door, made a gay enough welcome for the exile that was drawing towards it over the marsh. Thomas received a final wave of mingled speeding and threat, and then the blue gown vanished through the porch. “We mun do what we can,” he heard her call from within, “but if we don’t suit him better than Marget, I’ll shut up house!”

Then he was gone at last, his broad figure dwindling as he went, until the high hedges hid him and the wild roses closed above his head. Away on the road, coming to meet him, the trundling speck grew and grew in size. As he dwindled and disappeared, so it enlarged and sharpened into sight. There was something fateful, indeed, about its slow yet determined approach. One knew, without dreaming of asking, that its errand was for the farm. In spite of its slow and clumsy advance it reminded Agnes of a sailing-boat she had seen, coming on high water across the glancing bay. It had seemed to come straight from the village under the hill to the farm that stood alone on the edge of the sand. Wind and tide were both at its back, driving it on a flowing path that seemed to have no possible end except in the house itself. She had watched it from that upstairs room upon which she had been at work so long, and had seen it heaving towards her, purposeful and direct. As it drew nearer the shore without slackening its speed, she began to feel almost afraid. The tilted bowsprit seemed ruled to the last inch on the window of the room. It was like a racer, nearing the post, leaping ahead along the last stretch. It was like a child, hurrying to be home, heedless of any obstacle in the way. She could not see the man in charge for the sail, so that the boat seemed like a thing by itself, a toy launched by the impetus of some mighty hand. She felt certain it meant to try to sail to her in the room, and would dash itself on the sea-wall just below. There was even a moment when she leaned from the window to scream, because it looked as though nothing could stop it now it was so near. And then, just as it seemed that the bow was over the hedge, it had swung on its heel and forgotten and gone away.... Like swinging a reel on a thread, she thought to herself; as easy as turning the handle of a door. Now it was leaning over, beating into the wind, and she could see a figure in the sheets. Quickly, though more slowly than it had come, it went away, fretting and fuming where it had been smoothly intent, and fighting where it had almost seemed to fly. She watched it beating back and forth for a time, hoping it might return, but always it threshed away into the wind, and dwindled and lost meaning and never looked back. And it had never come since, however high the tide, in that spirit of leaping joy directed at the farm.

Of course there was nothing like it about the trap, heavy and crawling and jolting along the road. But it, too, seemed headed towards her as she stood, as if it saw what was coming and couldn’t by any chance be stopped. And if Bob wouldn’t come in to share the evening meal, the trap, like the boat, would never reach the farm. It, too, the moment it had arrived, would turn its back on the place, and go away....

A sense of loneliness came upon her in the sunny room, and the house that had been so full of expectation and content grew still and listened for old voices and called again upon its hidden ghosts. She wished now that she had gone with Thomas to the gate, to share in the home-coming from the first. Indeed, she started to run down the path and through the gate, and found herself out in the meadow before she scolded herself and returned with a laugh. This was Thomas’s father, not hers, who was coming to-day. Her own had been dead for ever so many years. She was only the son’s wife, and her place was to welcome him at the door. She remembered the kettle, too, as she hurried back, and was glad she had had the sense to turn in time. She couldn’t help wishing, however, that she might have been there. She would have known, in that first moment, whether her conscience might be at ease....

Back in the kitchen, she filled the kettle and set it on the fire, struggling with the temptation to take another peep at the room upstairs. She argued with herself that she wanted to make sure nothing had been missed, knowing all the while that she had been perfectly sure for hours. It could not be long now before she ushered the old man in, and surely she could manage to wait till then? The room would be all the fresher if she could bring herself to wait, would look to her something of what it looked to him.... Thomas’s reparation was through outward things, she thought—shelter and physical ease and a decent burying at the last; but hers was through things more subtle, touches that eased the heart.... More than comfort and look went to that carpet on the stairs.

She wondered, looking round, which of the changes would strike him first. Which of the new things would catch his eye—the range, the padded chair, the spoons, or the new pots? There was a shelf with reading of some sort, mostly about farming, she believed; and a gate-leg table, left her by an aunt, on which he could lay his fiddle if he chose. In the parlour, of course, there were treasures without price, wedding-presents and suchlike and sudden fancies at sales; but Sunday, she thought, would be time enough for those. They would have to be careful not to worrit the old man. The kitchen alone would be enough for to-night—that and the other surprises up above.

She had been puzzled to find in herself this sudden passion for a house. She had been willing and busy enough at home, but she had always been glad to get finished and go out. Now, when she went out, she had almost to tear herself away; her household gods might play her false while she was gone. All the inanimate things that made her work—furniture and pots and pans and the rest—they seemed strangely alive to her now, and capable of mischief if she left them too long alone. Even in church she thought of fire and moths, of dry-rot and damp and water-spouts gone wrong. When once the hay was in she felt sure she would never go out at all, but would spend her days watching for the first thread of smoke. There was that fire at Crookfield, only last year, when the dogs had awakened the folk in the pouring dark. They had pulled the furniture out into the yard, and set the pillows and beds along the wall. You did not want to do that every year with your best beds, and there was a wardrobe or so that never got out at all. Then, on the marsh, there was a further terror to fear—floods that swam into your rooms and left them damp for years. She could see she would fret herself thin before she was through! Of course the possessive fury would die down after a while, but she did not want it to die too soon. The new passion fretted her, but it braced her as well; made her feel strong and capable and rich and proud....

And just as she had not known of this feeling for a house, so she had not known that a man could count for so much. She puzzled sometimes, staring at Thomas, and thinking how strange it was that eyes should so alter their point of view. Why, there were things she loved about him now for which she had laughed at him before! He was still only the Thomas whom she had flouted so long, and from whom she had parted without a pang; yet now, when he turned his back, she had a sense of fear, as if he had left her straying in some lonely place.... But even now she did not know why she had ever rebelled, could find no clue, however vexed for the missed years. It could only be that it wasn’t the right time, as she had said. And, after all, Thomas was not the man she had known. She would never see that Thomas of hers again. The strange thing was that she sometimes wanted that Thomas back—angry and sullen, or awkward and afraid.

Sometimes she held her breath, remembering how narrowly her fortune had been reaped. Thomas had never asked her again after that dogged appeal for his father in the lane. He stayed at hand, it was true, he spoke when they met, and they danced together as before, but he had never again asked her to be his wife. And perhaps his drawing-back had worked the miracle at last, for it was certainly about that time that she had begun to change. Perhaps it was just the natural impulse to want the thing out of reach, or maybe she had a vision of life, of the part that burdens may bear in it and be sweet. Just possibly it was Marget who was the real factor in the change, setting the levers pity and jealousy to work.

Agnes had known Bob’s wife from a child, and needed no telling how Kit would fare at her hands. They had been at school together first, though Marget was much the elder of the two, and afterwards they had been rivals or friends as things had happened to run. But Marget had married early and grown old soon, or rather had reached the vinegary age and there remained. Agnes had tried to keep up the acquaintance for a while, but it was not long before her visits ceased. Marget had grown into a shrew as mushrooms grow between showers, and of a subtle variety before which Agnes shrank. She had known shrews before, and found them human enough, with hearts that were more or less kindly under their fretted nerves. They were not like Marget, venomous all through. She remembered something in Marget, as a child, that had given her even then a kind of power, something inhuman, implacable and cold, that edged her words and barbed the look in her eyes. It had won her a sort of distinction as a girl, so that others had wanted her as well as Bob, but time had soon shown it as merely the passion of a cold woman for riding others down. Agnes, warm-hearted, tolerant and gay, was frankly afraid of Marget by the end. Marget liked to talk of Thomas and hint and jeer, and if the other gave battle in his defence she was terrible indeed. In spite of her idleness and slovenly ways, she still contrived to be terrible and a power. Her methods made Agnes shiver in her chair—thin and insidious and trickling at the first, and then, at the point of contact, bursting forth. She was like an iceberg, chilling you from afar, and crushing and riving and blinding you when you struck. You felt her icy paralysis as you sank; you heard her shrill-voiced grindings as you drowned. Agnes fled from the combat and did not return, and the reports of her one-time rival worsened with the years. Yet it was up to this arctic terror she had delivered Kit.

But at the end of everything she had married Thomas just for himself, and not for his father or anybody else at all. The finish had come about at Appleton Hall, one of those old homes that, changing from manor-house to farm, have yet contrived to keep their dignity intact. Both she and Thomas were helping as usual at the boon-clip, which fell that year on the hottest day in June. It was always a long day and often hot, but this was the longest and finest she had ever known. Afterwards she divided her life into—life, and then “the clip.” If it was true that she had had to wait for the right time, the right time came royally enough on a day so splendid that it seemed bound to affect some destiny before it passed.

She went up to the farm early, before the heat, and was in time to see the sheep coming down from the fells. There was still a haze over the tops, and through it the complaining voices drove and dropped, reaching her long before she saw the flock. When they came out of the haze at last, with their heavy fleeces trailing to the ground, they had the effect of a drifting, woolly cloud. Slim, ghostly dogs darted in and out of the cloud, and behind them the slender silhouette of a horseman shaped itself through the mist. He had a lamb slung before him when he rode into the yard, a tiny, black-faced thing with dangling hoofs.

Other girls joined her as she went in through the arch, all of them splashes of cool colour in their fresh print gowns. The arch stood twenty feet high in the monster courtyard wall, and topping the wall was a crown of grass and fern. Fern and the dark velvet of old moss were so much a part of the wall that it might have been fashioned of them from the start. At present the yard was in deep shadow, and the house a mere breath of a house, a huddle of formless grey. The covered stone passage was lost and dark that ran along its side. The tall arched windows showed nothing but pools of gloom behind their diamond panes. In spite of voices through its rooms and clatter on its flags, the place seemed barely alive, an embryo slowly evolving with the day. But when the sun, in the wake of the woolly cloud, had climbed the fell and was full above the yard, the house would alter and gain body and stand up firm. Its thick walls would grow solid to the eye, and the lines of them spring out sharp and straight. Its roots would go down deep, and its chimneys would be massed like towers. Colour would come into the grey, and the weight of centuries lie heavy on its roof. Its vagueness would take on meaning and the unchanging speech of form, together with the aloof dignity of those whose times are other than man’s.

For some time she was at work indoors, helping to prepare the food for the day, passing in and out of the dim rooms, each of which seemed to have its own quality of shade, and through low doorways with sudden steps, and up and down curving, whitened stairs. In the high, flagged room that had once been the hall, tables were set on trestles for the afternoon feast. The great beam of the old chimney still showed above the hearth, and high in one of the blue-washed walls was a niche where the fiddler would sit to play. Often and often Agnes had seen old Kit perched aloft in the narrow place that had the look of some ancient shrine.