The Splendid Fairing · Part II · Chapter 2 3 (1/3) (1/2)

III

Now they had left the high-road and were making southeast through the winding lanes. Their shoulders were turned to the sea, though in that lost world of the mist only the native could tell where the bay was supposed to lie. It was one of the dead hours, too, when even the salt goes out of the marsh-air, and no pulse in it warns you subconsciously of the miracle coming. Between the high-mounted hedges it was still and close, and beyond them the land rose until its dank green surface stood soft against the sky. All the way Simon looked at the land with a critical eye, the eye of the lover which loves and asks at the same time. He looked at the ploughland and knew the rotation through which it had run and would have to run again; at rich grassland which seemed never to have known the steel, and fields which, at rest for a hundred years, still spoke to some long-rusted share. He loved it, but he thought of it first and foremost as good material for the good workman engaged on the only job in the world. It was always the land that he coveted when he came to Blindbeck, never the house. Eliza had made of the house a temple to the god of Blessed Self-Satisfaction, but even Eliza could not spoil the honest, workable land.

The farm kept showing itself to them as they drove, a quadrangle of long, well-kept buildings backed by trees. When the sun shone, the white faces of house and shippon looked silver through the peeping-holes of the hedge, but today they were wan and ghostly in the deadening mist. The turned beeches and chestnuts were merely rusty, instead of glowing, and seemed to droop as if with the weight of moisture on their boughs. The Scotch firs on a mound alone, stark, straight, aloof, had more than ever that air of wild freedom which they carry into the tamest country; and the pearly shadow misting their green alike in wet weather or in dry, was today the real mist, of which always they wear the other in remembrance.

The farm had its back well into the grassy hill, and the blind river which gave it its name wound its way down to it in a hidden channel and went away from it in a hidden dip in a field below. There was water laid on at Blindbeck, as Sarah knew, with a copper cylinder in a special linen-room, and a hot towel-rail and a porcelain bath. Simon’s particular envy was the electric light, that marvel of marvels on a northern farm. He never got over the wonder of putting his hand to the switch, and seeing the light flash out on the second to his call. Once he had sneaked out of the house on a winter’s night, and in the great shippon had turned the lights on full. Eliza, of course, had been nasty about it when she heard, but Will had understood him and had only laughed. Later, swinging a lantern in his own dark shippon, Simon had thought of those switches with envious longing. He did not know that they had taken the warm glamour out of the place, and slain in a blow the long tradition of its beauty. The lantern went with him like a descended star as he moved about, and out of the cattle’s breath wove for itself gold-dusted halos. There had been something precious about it all before, some sense of mystery and long-garnered peace, but tonight he could only remember Blindbeck and its modern toy. For the time being he ceased to feel the pull of the sweetest chain in the world, which runs straight back through all the ages to the Child in the Bethlehem Stall.⁠ ⁠… There was a billiard-table at Blindbeck, too, with more switches to tempt Simon, and a well-laid tennis-lawn in the neat garden by the stream. On the far side of the farm was a great highway running north and south, as well as a mainline station over the drop of the hill. It seemed as if everything was made easy for those who lived at Blindbeck, from the washing of pots and the moving of stock to the amusement and education of the bairns.

Folk who came to Blindbeck for the first time believed that at last they had found the farm of all their dreams. They called it an Earthly Paradise, a model miniature village, a moral object-lesson, a True Home. They came to it between well-cropped fields, marked by trim hedges and neat stone walls, and through uniformly painted gates secure in hinge and hasp into a tidy yard. They looked with pleasure at the shining knocker on the green house-door and the fruit tree lustily climbing the warm south wall. They looked with delight at the healthy, handsome family, the well-placed buildings and the show of pedigree stock. They looked at Will as he went shyly by, and said that his wife was undoubtedly the better horse. They looked at Eliza and said that she was the Housewife of Romance. When they went away they told others of this Paradise which was Blindbeck, and the others came in their turn and looked and said the same. But to Simon and Sarah it was plain Purgatory and nothing else, and with each gate that they loosed they unloosed a devil as well.

There was a party at Blindbeck this afternoon, as long custom might have led them to expect. It was part of Eliza’s Method to gather a party together when the poor relations were due. There was always a noisy crowd, it seemed to the Simons, when they were tired, or when they had any particular business to transact. On the day after the lads had flown there had been an unusually large crowd, with faces that looked like masks to the parents’ tired eyes.⁠ ⁠… Will was fond of young folk, and made no objection to the stream of “company” passing beneath his roof. His shy, quiet eyes watched the young tide of life surging ahead, with Eliza floundering like a porpoise in its midst. He was content only to watch, but he was not stranded, like the thirsty Simons; the waves still lapped about his feet. He could see youth and the pride of youth without the sense of desolation which embittered his brother and took his brother’s wife by the throat. Simon was always surly when he came to Blindbeck, while Sarah was like a bomb in the hand which any unconscious soul might throw. Will did not know that for them every lad that they looked at should have been Geordie, and each lass a lass of their own with Geordie’s face. He was sorry and sympathetic, but he did not know those things. It was Eliza who knew, and used the knowledge for her private ends. You could always be sure that Eliza knew where your hidden things were kept.

Today, tired as they were with the hours in town, and already reacting from their great decision, a jovial party seemed more than they could stand. Signs of it reached them as they came to the last gate, making Sarah draw in her lips and Simon scowl. The sounds seemed intensified by the stillness of the day, crossing and jarring the mood of Nature as well as that of the approaching guests. Faces were pressed to panes as they rattled up, but nobody came out to give Sarah a hand down, or to offer to help Simon with the horse. They were too common a sight to arouse any interest or even courtesy in that house.

She climbed down gropingly, and he led the horse away, leaving her standing, waiting, in the empty yard. She stood with her back turned to the kitchen window, conscious, though she could not see them, of the eyes that were raking her shabby figure through the glass. The sounds of merriment burst out afresh, and she winced a little, though she did not move. They were laughing at her, she felt sure, but there was nothing new to that. They often laughed, she knew, since she had ceased to be able to stop them with a glance. She shivered, standing there, and her bones ached with the damp, but she was in no hurry to enter the warm, crowded room. It was better to shiver in the coldest spaces of earth than to be shut into Heaven itself with Eliza and her tongue.

The green house-door with its brass knocker was close at her left hand, but she did not attempt to open it and go in. That was a privilege only accorded to the rich and proud, not to a poor relation come to beg. Nevertheless, it was one of her hidden dreams that someday she would enter by that grand front-door. In the Great Dream Geordie came home with a fortune in his hands, so that all doors, even the Door of Blindbeck, instantly stood wide. They would drive up to it in a smart cart behind a fast young horse, with Geordie, a pattern of fashion, holding the reins. His mother would be beside him, of course, in crackling silk, with a velvet mantle and a bonnet of plumes and jet. Simon, the lesser glory, would have to sit behind, but even Simon would be a sight for Blindbeck eyes. When the Dream came true, the house could be as full of pryers as it chose, with crushed noses and faces green with envy set like bottle-ends in every pane. The farm-men would come to the doors and gape, and even the dogs would stop to sniff at so much that was new. Geordie would jump down, reins in hand, and bang the brass knocker until it shook the house, while Sarah, secure in the presence of her golden lad, would sit aloft and aloof like any other silken queen. Soon they would hear Eliza’s step along the sacred, oil-clothed passage; and she, when she opened the door, would see their glory framed beyond. Sarah would throw her a graceful word, asking leave to step inside, and climb down with a rustle of silk on the arms of her husband and son. She would set her feet on the snowy steps and never as much as trouble to look for a mat. With a smile she would offer her hostess a kindly, kid-gloved hand. In the whole armour of the successful mother she would bear down upon her foe.⁠ ⁠…

It was one of those things that seem as if they might happen so easily, and never do⁠—never do. Simon returned presently, accompanied by Will, and they entered the house as usual through the old stone porch. No dog even looked aside at them as they crossed to the kitchen door. No portent of coming wonder shed a sudden sunlight on the day. The old trap was tipped on its shafts behind a sheltering wall. The old horse, himself mere waiting food for the nearest hounds, munched his way happily through his feed of Blindbeck corn.

Will talked shyly as he led the way, trying to brighten the melancholy pair.

“You must have a sup o’ tea before we get to business,” he said to his brother, “and Sarah can rest herself while we have our crack. We’re over soon wi’ tea today, but I reckon you won’t mind that. You’ll be tired likely, and it’s none so warm. I’ll be bound Simon’ll have a thirst on him anyway!” he smiled to Sarah. “He’s done a deal o’ tattling, Simon has, today!”

He could not get any response from them, however; indeed, they scarcely seemed to hear. The fear of Eliza was upon them, that was always so strong until they were actually in her presence, the same fear that had sent them scuttling like scared rabbits out of the Witham inn. Sarah was struggling with the usual jealous ache as they entered the spacious, cleanly place, with the kindly smell of new-baked bread filling the whole house. She knew as well as the mistress where the kitchen things were kept, the special glories such as the bread-maker, the fruit-bottler, and the aluminium pans. The Blindbeck motto had always been that nothing beats the best. Half her own tools at home were either broken or gone, and there was only a blind woman to make shift with the rest as well as she could. Little need, indeed, for a great array, with the little they had to cook; and little heart in either cooking or eating since Geordie had gone away.⁠ ⁠…

Will opened the door of the main kitchen, and at once the warmth and jollity sweeping out of it smote the shrinking visitors like an actual blast. The party were already at table, as he had said, and met the latecomers with a single, focused stare. It was one of their chief bitternesses, indeed, that they always seemed to arrive late. Eliza was at the back of it, they felt almost sure, but they had never been able to discover how. No matter how they hurried the old horse, asked the hour of passersby, or had Simon’s old watch put as right as it would allow, they never seemed to arrive at the right time. They could not be certain, of course, that she had watched for them from upstairs, and at the first sign of their coming had hustled the party into tea, but somehow or other they knew it in their bones. Things happened like that, they would have told you, when you were up against Mrs. Will; things that never by any chance would have happened with anybody else.

The room was cloudy to Sarah as she went in, but jealousy had long ago printed its details on her mind. She knew what the vivid wallpaper was like, the modern furniture and the slow-combustion grate. Once it had been a beautiful old houseplace with a great fire-spot and a crane, an inglenook, a bacon-loft, and a chimney down which both sun and moon could slant a way. Eliza, however, had soon seen to it that these absurdities were changed, and Sarah, though she affected contempt, approved of the changes in her heart. It was true that she always returned to Sandholes with a great relief, but she did not know that its bare austerity soothed her finer taste. She only knew that her mind expanded and her nerves eased, and, though grief went with her over every flag and board, a cool hand reached to her forehead as she went in.

Simon included in one surly glance the faces round the loaded table, the bright flowers, the china with the gilded rim, and the new window-curtains which he would never even have seen in any house but this. “Plush, by the look on ’em, and the price of a five pun note!” he thought resentfully, as he stood waiting to be given a place, and wondering which of the people present he disliked the most. There were the two Swainson lasses from the nearest farm, with their young duke of a brother, who was in a Witham bank. There was a Lancashire youth whom Will had taken as pupil, and Stephen Addison and his missis, who were both of them preaching-mad. He held forth at chapel and she at Institute meetings and the like, and folk said they kept each other awake at nights, practising which of them could do it best. There was Sam Battersby of Kitty Fold, who never knew where his own heaf ended and other people’s began, and the familiar smug cousin, long since formally pledged to Eliza’s eldest lass. There was a grandchild or two, and of course the Blindbeck brood, with the exception of a couple of married daughters and the obliterated Jim.⁠ ⁠… It was small wonder, indeed, that, after all those years, nobody missed him in that upcoming crowd.

Eliza’s hearty voice, that was never hearty at core, rose like a strong-winged, evil bird at the unwanted guests. The sight of them seemed to surprise her so much that she dropped a gold-rimmed cup.

“Surely to goodness, Simon and Sarah, yon’s never you! I’d give you up an hour back or more, I had indeed. You’ve been a terble while on t’road, surely⁠—a terble while after us? But there⁠—I always forget how fast yon grand little mare of ours gets over t’ground! You’d need to start sooner than most folk wi’ your poor old crock.”

She broke off to throw a remonstrance at Will, who was bundling two of his daughters out of their seats to make room for their uncle and aunt.