The Splendid Fairing · Part I · Chapter 1 6 (1/2)

VI

Simon had been right in thinking that the tale of the car would be all over the town by the time he arrived. He came across it, indeed, almost the moment that he got in. The driver of the car had told a farmer or two in the innyard, and the farmer or two had chuckled with glee and gone out to spread it among the rest. Of course, they took good care that it lost nothing in the telling, and, moreover, the driver had given it a good shove-off at the start. He told them that Simon had shaken his fist and wept aloud, and that Sarah had fainted away and couldn’t be brought round. A later account had it that the chase had lasted fast and furious for miles, ending with an accident in Witham streets. Simon encountered the tale in many lengths and shapes, and it was hard to say whether the flippant or sympathetic folk annoyed him most. He always started out by refusing to discuss the matter at all, and then wouldn’t stop talking about it once he had begun.

“Ay, well, ye see, I thought it was a hearse,” he always growled, when forced to admit that part of the tale, at least, was true. “Mebbe I was half asleep, or thinking o’ summat else; or likely I’m just daft, like other folk not so far.” Here he usually threw a glance at the enquiring friend, who gave a loud guffaw and shifted from foot to foot. “Ay, a hearse⁠—yon’s what I thought it was, wi’ nid-noddin’ plumes, and happen a corp in a coffin fleein’ along inside. You’ve no call to make such a stir about it as I can see,” he wound up helplessly, with a threatening scowl. “Boggles isn’t out o’ date yet by a parlish long while, and there’s many a body still wick as can mind seeing Jamie Lowther’s headless Coach and Four!”

He forgot to feel annoyed, however, when he found that his story had made him in some sort the hero of the day. He could see folks talking about him and pointing him out as he went along, and men came up smiling and wanting a chat who as a rule had no more for him than a casual nod. Often, indeed, he had only a dreary time, bemoaning his fate with one or two cronies almost as luckless as himself; listening, perhaps, on the edge of an interested group, or wandering into some bar for a sup of ale and a pipe. But today he was as busy as an old wife putting the story to rights, and when he had stopped being angry for having behaved like a fool, he began to feel rather proud of himself for having done something rather fine. He ended, indeed, by laughing as heartily as the rest, and allowed several points to pass which had nothing whatever to do with the truth. He felt more important than he had done for years, and forgot for a while the press of his troubles and the fear about Sarah’s eyes. Will told himself that he hadn’t seen him so cheerful for long, and wondered whether things were really as bad at the farm as his brother had made out.

They made a curious couple as they went about, because in face and figure they were so alike, and yet the stamp of their different circumstances was so plain. They had the same thin face and dreamy eyes, lean figure and fine bones, but whereas one carried his age well and his head high, the other had long since bowed himself to the weight of the years. Will wore a light overcoat of a modern make, brown boots and a fashionable soft hat; but Simon’s ancient suit was of some rough, hard stuff that had never paid any attention to his frame. Will had a white collar and neat tie; but Simon had a faded neckcloth with colourless spots, and he wore dubbined boots that had clogged soles, and a wideawake that had once been black but now was green. Eliza often observed in her kindly way that Simon looked old enough to be Will’s father, but indeed it was in the periods to which they seemed to belong that the difference was most marked. Will had been pushed ahead by prosperity and a striving brood; while Simon had gone steadily down the hill where the years redouble the moment you start to run.

They had encountered the agent early on, and fixed an appointment for twelve o’clock; and afterwards they spent the morning together until noon struck from the Town Hall. Will had grown rather tired of hearing the hearse story by then, and felt slightly relieved when the time came for them to part. “Nay, I’ll not come in,” he demurred, as Simon urged him at the door of the “Rising Sun.” “You’ll manage a deal better by yourself. You needn’t fear, though, but what I’ll see you through. We’ll settle summat or other at Blindbeck this afternoon.”

But at the very moment he turned away he changed his mind again and turned back. “I can’t rightly make out about yon car,” he asked, almost as if against his will. “What, in the name o’ fortune, made you behave like yon?”

Simon muttered gloomily that he didn’t know, and shuffled his feet uncomfortably on the step. Now that the shadow of the coming interview was upon him, he was not so perfectly sure as he had been that the story was a joke. He remembered his terror when the car was at his back, his frantic certainty that there were strange things in the air. He took it amiss, too, both as a personal insult and from superstition, that the Town Hall chimes should be playing “There is no luck about the house” just as he stepped inside.

“It was nobbut a hired car, wasn’t it,” Will went on⁠—“wi’ two chaps in it, they said, as come from Liverpool way?”

“That’s what they’ve tellt me since,” Simon agreed, “though I never see it plain.⁠ ⁠… Seems as if it might be a warning or summat,” he added, with a shamefaced air.

“Warning o’ what?” Will threw at him with a startled glance. “Nay, now! Whatever for?”

“Death, happen,” Simon said feebly⁠—“nay, it’s never that! I’m wrong in my head, I doubt,” he added, trying to laugh; “but there’s queerish things, all the same. There’s some see coffins at the foot o’ their beds, and you’ll think on when last Squire’s missis died sudden-like yon hard winter, she had it she could smell t’wreaths in t’house every day for a month before.”

“Ay, well, you’d best put it out of your head as sharp as you can,” Will soothed him, moving away. “You’re bothering overmuch about the farm, that’s what it is. A nip o’ frost in the air’ll likely set you right. Weather’s enough to make anybody dowly, it’s that soft.”

“Ay, it’s soft,” Simon agreed, lifting his eyes to look at the sky, and wondering suddenly how long it had taken the gull to get itself out to sea. His brother nodded and went away, and he drifted unwillingly into the inn. The chimes had finished their ill-omened song, but the echo of it still seemed to linger on the air. They told him inside that Mr. Dent was engaged, so he went into the bar to wait, seating himself where he could see the stairs. The landlord tried to coax him to talk, but he was too melancholy to respond, and could only sit waiting for the door to open and summon him overhead. He was able to think, now that he was away from the crowd and the chaff about the hearse, but no amount of thinking could find him a way out. He had already given the agent a hint of his business, and would only have to confirm it when he got upstairs, but it seemed to him at the moment as if the final words would never be said. After a while, indeed, he began to think that he would sneak away quietly and let the appointment go. He would say no more about the notice to Mr. Dent, and things might take their way for another year. It was just possible, with the promised help from Will, that they might manage to scrape along for another year.⁠ ⁠…

He left it there at last and got to his feet, but even as he did so he remembered Sarah’s eyes. He wondered what the doctor had said and wished he knew, because, of course, there would be no question of staying if the report were bad. He was still standing, hesitating, and wondering what he should do, when the door of the Stewards’ Room opened above, and a man came out.

It was, as somehow might have been expected, the stranger of the car, otherwise Simon’s now celebrated “hearse.” Simon, however, had not looked at him then, and he barely glanced at him now. It was a blind day, as Sarah had said, and all through the Thornthwaites seemed determined to be as blind as the day. The agent followed him out, looking cheerful and amused. “I wish you luck all round!” Simon heard him say, as he shook the stranger’s hand, and thought morosely that it was easy and cheap to wish folks luck. “This should be the finest day of your life,” he added more gravely, looking over the rail, and the man going down looked up and said “That’s so!” in a fervent tone. The old farmer waiting in the bar felt a spasm of envy and bitterness at the quietly triumphant words. “The finest day of your life,”⁠—that was for the man going down. “The heaviest day of your life,”⁠—that was for the man going up. With a touch of dreary humour he thought to himself that it was really he who was going down, if it came to that.⁠ ⁠…

With a feeling of something like shame he kept himself out of sight until the stranger had disappeared, and then experienced a slight shock when Dent called to him in the same cheery tone. Almost without knowing it he had looked for the voice to change, and its geniality jarred on his dismal mood. Somehow it seemed to put him about at the start, and when Dent laid a hand on his shoulder, saying⁠—“Well, Simon!” with a smile, it was all he could do not to give him a surly snarl by way of reply. They went into the old-fashioned room, which smelt of horsehair and wool mats, and Simon seated himself miserably on the extreme edge of a chair. Dent went to the window and lifted a finger to somebody in the street, and then seated himself at the table, and said “Well, Simon!” and smiled again. He was a strongly built man, with a pleasant face, which seemed rather more pleasant than need be to his visitor’s jaundiced eye.

He looked away from it, however, staring at the floor, and after the first conventional remarks began his tale of woe, that slow trickle of disaster which always gathered itself into terrible spate. “You’ll know what I’m here for, sir,” he concluded, at the end of his first breath, twisting his hat like a tea-tray in his restless hands. “Things has got that bad wi’ us I doubt we can’t go on, and so we’ve made up our minds we’d best clear out next year.”

Dent nodded kindly in answer, but with a rather abstracted air. He had listened patiently enough to the slow tale, but Simon had a feeling that his tragic recital was not receiving the sympathy it deserved. He began a fresh relation of the ills which had befallen him at the farm, intending a grand climax to be capped by Sarah’s eyes; but there were so many dead troubles to dig out of their graves as he went along, that the last and most vital dropped from the reckoning, after all.

“Ay, well, you’ve likely heard all this before,” he finished lamely in the middle of a speech, conscious that he had missed his point, though without being able to say how. “We’ve had a bad year this year an’ all, and I can’t see as it’s any use holding on. Me and my missis fixed it up as we come in, so if you’ll take my notice, sir, we’ll go next spring.”

“Your wife’s in town, is she?” Dent asked. For some reason he looked again at the window from which he had waved. “How does she take the thought of leaving the farm?”

“Well, sir, we’ll both feel it, after all these years, but I don’t know as it’s any use calling out. I put it to her as we’d better quit, and she agreed to it right off.”

“I wish you’d brought her along,” the agent said, still speaking in a detached tone. There were some notes on the table within reach of his hand, and he glanced thoughtfully at them as he spoke.

Simon stiffened a little, and looked surprised. “I’m speaking for both on us, sir, as I said before.”

“Of course, Simon,” Dent said, rousing himself. “I know that. But I’d have liked a word with her, all the same.” His glance went back to the notes, and he smiled as if at his own thoughts.⁠ ⁠… “And so you’ve really made up your minds that you’d better go?”

“Haven’t I been saying so, sir, all along?” Simon was really injured now, and his wounded dignity showed in his tone. Mr. Dent was taking the whole thing far too easily, he thought. First of all, he did not seem to be listening as much as he might, and then, when the notice was offered, he actually smiled! Tenants of forty years’ standing do not look to have their departure speeded with smiles. Simon thought it heartless, to say the least, and only to be excused because Mr. Dent did not know what they had to face. They had not been very satisfactory tenants, of course⁠—even Simon admitted that⁠—and it was more than likely that the agent was rather relieved. At least he was saved the unpleasant task of turning them out, a duty which, as Simon knew, had seemed imminent more than once. But they were respectable folk of good stock, and they were not entirely to blame because they were failures, too. Gravity was their due, anyhow, if not sympathy, but Mr. Dent, on this solemn occasion, seemed to be failing them in both.

“Of course you know you’re late with your notice?” he observed presently, looking up. “You ought to have made up your minds a couple of months ago.”

“Ay, we’re late, I know, but we weren’t thinking of owt o’ the sort then. I’m sorry if we’ve put you about, but you’ll not have that much trouble in getting rid of the farm. It’s nobbut a small spot, you’ll think on. It’ll let right off the reel.”

“It’s been going back a long while, though,” Dent said thoughtfully, and then felt penitent as the old man flushed. Just for the moment he had forgotten that Simon was in the room.

“Of course I know you’ve had pretty rough luck,” he went on hastily, trying to cover it up. “Sandholes holds the record for every sort of mischance. It sounds like one of the old fairytales,” he added, laughing⁠—“curses and all that!⁠ ⁠… But I can’t help thinking it would have been better for everybody if there had been a change earlier on.”

“Ay, well, you’ve gitten your change now, and no mistake about it!” Simon retorted angrily, deeply hurt. There was something wrong with the scene, though he could not tell what it was. He only knew that he had not expected it to go in the very least like this.

“It should have been made long since if it was to do you any good.⁠ ⁠…” Dent did not seem to notice that there was anything amiss. He sat, tapping the table, deep in thought, while Simon seethed.⁠ ⁠… “Sure you couldn’t put on for another year?”

This change of front upset his visitor so completely that he dropped his hat. He sat glaring at Mr. Dent with a dropped mouth.

“Nay, then, I just couldn’t!” he snapped at last, wondering whether he was on his head or his heels. “Losh save us!” he added angrily, “haven’t I tellt you I meant to gang ever since I come in? It’ll take me all my time to hang on till spring, as it is.”

“You’ve run it as close as that?” Dent enquired, and Simon gave a grunt.

“Ay, and I’m not the first as has done it, neither!”

“Couldn’t your Blindbeck brother see to give you a hand? He’s done well for himself, I should say, and his children are getting on.”

“He’s given us a hand more than once already, has Will, but there’s no sense in throwing good money after bad. We’ll have to quit next year, if we don’t this. Farm’s going back, as you say, and I’m over old to pull it round. I can’t keep going forever, nay, nor my missis, neither.”

He remembered Sarah’s eyes as he spoke, and how they were enough to clinch the matter in themselves, but he was too offended even to mention them by now. There was no telling today how Mr. Dent would take the tragic news. He had smiled and looked cheerful over the notice to quit, but Simon felt he would not be able to bear it if he smiled at Sarah’s eyes. Indeed, it was all he could do to keep a hold on himself, as it was⁠—first of all hearing that he ought to have gone long since, and then being told to stop when he’d settled to clear out!