The Stepson (17 page)

And for a while he had rescued it at the expense of hers: just as, when life beckoned to her for the second time, she had rescued hers at the expense of his. And, remembering that at a given moment it had been hers to choose and that she had chosen and so, by her own action, had altered her life, she reflected that, after all, man is not altogether powerless; for although the inscrutable Will might offer or withhold, it rested still with men to grasp or refrain when the offer was made. So far, at least, they could control their fates. It was by her own exertion that she had gained her freedom: if she had again submitted to her father she would to this day have been living the narrow life in the schoolhouse at Penridge and would never have come to The Grange.

At the thought of The Grange she paused in her abstracted walk along the river-bank and turned to look back at the green slope on which the farm was perched. She was surprised to see how far she had come. So busy had she been with her thoughts that time and distance had been forgotten. Where she stood, a line of five willows bordered the opposite bank of the stream — five still, upward-leaping fountains of green whose greyer reflections showered downwards into the dim underworld of water which
lay deep and unstirring at their feet. Between them the distant slope showed smooth and symmetrical as the shaven, artificial bank of a lawn, and on the top of it, behind the low wall and the fruit trees of the garden, the long red front of the house with its grey and golden roof and the two dormer windows, one of which was David's bedroom, looked small and neat as a toy. A medley of red walls and low roofs rose to the right of it, and behind it Kate could see the great thatched roof of the barn and, rising above all, the clustered elms, mound above mound of dark green, sombre, bountiful, and protective. It was the first time she had seen the farm gathered thus into a single unit, for when approached from the Elchester side, where for the last two miles the road was on a level with it, nothing of it was visible but the elms and a glimpse of roof and chimney. It seemed to her now marvellously beautiful and lovable. It had become a vital and familiar part of her life, and at this new aspect of it her heart warmed. As she walked home and began to climb the slope she thought how, since she had confessed to herself her love for David, her heart had warmed towards all things, both animate and inanimate, as though the concentrating of her love upon one thing had aroused in her a love that included everything.

She unlatched the garden gate and, as she did so, she resolved that as soon as she had a free afternoon she would go to Penridge to see her father.

Kate and Ben sat at their midday dinner. Their talk was commonplace and unconstrained, for Kate's feelings towards Ben had by this time so far composed themselves that in his presence she no longer felt actively hostile to him. But that her attitude to him had altered since she had dismissed Emma, Ben knew well enough. That restraint which he had felt in her from the first, but which he had hoped that marriage would gradually thaw, had increased of late. She behaved to him much as usual, but he knew that she had withdrawn a great part of herself into a world in which he had no share. What touchy things women were! How much did she know of the silly business with Emma? Something she certainly knew: that glance of hers which had silenced him so effectually when he had begun to expostulate about Emma's dismissal had told him that much. But, even if she knew all, why should she go on resenting it so long? Surely she didn't imagine that he loved Emma as he loved her? He had assured her of that, not explicitly, for he could not bring himself to speak to her of Emma, but no less certainly in what seemed to him a hundred sure and subtle ways which any woman would understand.

As they sat at table together now, he glanced occasionally, with a look of baffled inquiry, at the calm, beautiful face beside him, which was, he felt
vaguely but certainly, closed against him. Why was it that he was destined to be baffled and excluded by the women on whom he set his affections? His mind went back to David's mother. She, too, had always withheld something of herself from him. He had never wholly possessed her: always there had been that fear that she might vanish and leave him alone as, in the end, she had vanished, withdrawing herself and leaving him baffled by her death.

Looking now at Kate, he sighed, feeling that he was an old man, — old and dry, and that it was vain and absurd to try at this time of day to recapture that whole-hearted delight which he had found so rarely and kept for so short a time. As he gazed at her, Kate raised her calm, detached eyes to his.

‘I shall be late for tea to-day,' she said, ‘so don't wait for me.'

‘Going out somewhere?' he asked.

‘I'm going over to Penridge to see Father.'

‘Then you'll want the gig,' said Ben.

‘No,' she replied, ‘I'm walking.'

‘But you can't walk all that way,' Ben expostulated. ‘It's fourteen miles there and back.'

‘Well, and what if it is? I hope I can still walk fourteen miles.'

‘No, no! You'll have to have the gig. I'll drive you over myself.'

At the thought of having Ben's company to Penridge and back Kate's whole nature rebelled. She
felt obscurely that, if Ben went with her, the reason for her visit would be destroyed; his presence would profane all those tender, new-awakened feelings which of late, like the little leaves and flowers of early spring, had been stirring and unfolding in her heart. The reason for the impulse to visit her father was hidden from her and it did not occur to her to try to understand it: she obeyed it without question, instinctively, for she knew that it was a part of those new stirrings in her. It was her instinct, too, to go alone and on foot, like a pilgrim on her pilgrimage, for a lonely walk would give time and stimulus for that quiet reflection which she still felt to be necessary to her. Rather than be driven by Ben she would prefer not to go at all.

‘I don't want to be driven, Ben,' she replied to him. ‘Honestly, I prefer to walk.'

But still Ben was not satisfied. His lips narrowed and his brow contracted. ‘But it's not right that you should walk all that way, Kate,' he persisted. ‘What'll folks say if they see you tramping the road all that way from home, like a labourer's wife?'

‘They'll say what they like, Ben,' replied Kate. ‘It doesn't make any difference to me, so don't let us bother any more about it.'

Once again Ben had met that quiet persistence against which, he clearly perceived, it was useless to struggle.

‘Well,' he said, drawing in a long breath as he
rose from the table, ‘I don't want to worry you, my dear'; and he went out of the parlour and down the passage into the yard.

Ten minutes later Kate left the farm and set off across a field-path which took a short cut to the Elchester road. As she left the farm behind she sighed a sigh of relief. She felt that she had rescued something which was very precious to her: she was free to follow the promptings of her heart, which, a moment ago, had been threatened as a cluster of anemones is threatened by the passage of heavy feet through their thicket.

As she went on her way she saw nothing of the country through which she was passing: all her attention was turned inwards. Yet she was not thinking: it was rather as if she had become intensely aware of her inner being, as if she were bathing in a great glow of inner sunshine. Whether it was joy or pain, she could not have said, for it was something too full and too intense for either, a state of activity beyond those irreconcilables. Yet when she tried to think, her thoughts in the light of it took on colours of joy and pain, so that her state seemed to be a continual fluctuation from one to the other. It was better, then, not to think, but to remain dumb, blind and self-contained, an earthen pot filled to the brim with the burning fluid of life. Meanwhile her feet, almost of their own accord, carried her down the Elchester road and took the turning to the right
into the road that branched off to Penridge, and when she turned her eyes outwards again she was amazed to see that she was already passing the gates of Penridge Hall.

She stood for a moment and looked about her incredulously. To her, the outward semblance of that place had become so overweighted with inner significance that she felt, as she stood there once again, that she was dreaming. The natural reality, as she stared at it, evaded and baffled her. Kate was no philosopher; her mind never delved into the significance of material and spiritual, outer and inner. She would have said, if anyone had questioned her, that reality consisted of people and trees and gateposts and roads, and that love and dreams and vague emotions were unreality. She would have said so, yet in saying so she would have belied herself, for her real convictions were not articulate. She accepted the working convention called common sense because it had never occurred to her to question it; and so the tide of memory and emotion which flooded the scene before her till solid things grew blurred and wavered under its ripples, dazed and baffled her. Her reality receded into a ghost; her ghosts grew real, overwhelmingly real, before her eyes. ‘I'm foolish with love,' she thought to herself with a happy sigh as she went on her way; and her mind turned to her wedding-day, when she had driven past that spot with Ben and had for a moment
allowed herself to dream that the old man at her side had been changed into young Graham.

Young Graham! She pictured him again turning to latch the gate as they had come out of the Hall drive on their one walk together all those years ago; and then she pictured him as she had seen him half an hour before that, bending over that bed full of blue hyacinths. How clear that scene was in her memory! Again she stood there watching him, and as she watched he raised his body to stretch himself, and she saw his face. But how strange! What a funny thing memory was! For the face that looked at her now out of the past was not young Graham's, but David's. Yes, it was David who stood, in that picture of her mind, and stretched himself above the hyacinths. She tried to force her memory to call up young Graham, but it refused. She could no longer recall what he looked like. She had changed him into David, and as she pondered about young Graham she found that he had ceased to exist for her as a separate individual. David had swallowed him up. ‘Yes, memory's a funny thing,' she thought to herself. ‘It seems to take matters into its own hands.'

Half an hour later she could see over the hedge the roofs of the inn, the post office, and the little shop of Penridge, and soon the road swung to the left and the village green began to open into view.

She crossed the green, and the freakish church among its black trees and the meagre building of
the school stood before her, and it seemed to Kate that it was not nine months, but nine years, since she had driven away with Ben in her grand blue dress and hat, and the school and her father, dry and correct on the doorstep, had receded from sight and mind. At this hour the Schoolmaster would be at afternoon school, and Kate wondered if she would find the house door locked. In that case she would walk a short way down the road till school came out, which, as she saw by the church clock, would be in
twenty
minutes.

The noises of children's voices and of boots shuffled on the wooden floor, of a book or some other heavy object put down on a desk, were heard through the open windows of the hollow Schoolroom - those three long, narrow windows which were a mean modern imitation of early English lancets; and just as Kate passed them, the top of the schoolmaster's head, the thin grey hairs showing the baldness beneath, appeared for a moment above the high sill. That brief glimpse brought back to Kate the whole of her father's character. How strange to think that he was there, within a few yards of her, utterly unaware of her presence. She stood on the doorstep of his house and lifted the latch.

The door opened and she went in. Everything inside was neat and clean as she had left it. His tea stood ready on the kitchen table; the teapot had been put down to warm in the fender and the kettle sang and steamed on the hob. Someone had
been in and put everything ready. The Schoolmaster's place was set where she herself had always sat with her back to the fire. He had moved from his old place to hers, no doubt so as to be able to reach the kettle and the oven without rising from his chair. That, it seemed to Kate, was the only change. The sight of the empty room and the waiting meal roused Kate's pity. What, she wondered as she paused with her hand on the door-handle, while all those intensely familiar things reached out arms and feelers and took hold of her again, what had her father thought and felt in the time since she had left him? Had he missed her? Had he regretted their cold, inexpressive life together and wished, too late, that he had made a friend of her? Or had he adapted himself unreflectingly to the change, like some slow creature suddenly exposed to light and air when its sheltering stone has been overturned? It seemed to her now, as she thought of him, that her relation to him had changed — changed from that of a repressed and unloving daughter to a self-reproachful parent. Poor lonely creature! Surely there was a great deal that she might have done for him which she had not done. Then she noticed that after all there was a change in the room. In a corner near the window a small, rough table had been set, with a vice fitted to it, and going over to it she found on it a fret-saw and a thin square of wood with a pattern drawn on it in pencil. A little of the pattern
had already been cut out. So he had taken up fret-work to fill in the hours when he was alone. Even to simple-minded Kate, this timid endeavour to protect himself against the emptiness of time and place seemed a melancholy and pitiful makeshift. She was on the point of taking up the fretted square when a sudden hubbub in the schoolroom through the wall told her that afternoon school was over. Mechanically she went to the fire, took up the teapot and, lifting the lid, put in the three teaspoonfuls of tea from the tin on the table. Then she filled the pot from the kettle and stooped to set it down by the fire. As she rose she heard her father's feet in the entrance, and next moment the door opened.