The Stepson (21 page)

She stood up, looked about her like someone newly arrived, and went out of the barn and towards the house.

As she entered by the yard door she heard his voice in the kitchen and next moment he came out and found her in the passage.

‘Hello, Kate,' he said, jovial and smiling. ‘I was wondering where you were.' He heldout his hand to her. ‘How are you?' he said.

Kate stood before him meek and timid as a girl. Her eyes had fallen before his straight glance. A sudden desolating sense of disappointment invaded her: she felt that she was sinking, sinking, through depths of lonely space. Then, like a drowning creature, she held out her hand and felt his, large and warm, close over it, and with a great effort she raised her eyes to his.

His smile had shrunk back a little, chilled by her apparent coldness. ‘Im just going to get some straw for the new horse,' he said, dropping her hand. ‘I'll be back in a minute.'

He tramped down the passage and was gone, and Kate felt as if all the strength had suddenly been drained from her body. Her one impulse was to be alone, and hurrying up the passage to the staircase she ran upstairs to her room, shut the door, and sat
down in a chair. She was trembling violently. What a fool she had been! She hadn't spoken a single word to him; not a word in reply to his greeting. Obviously he had thought that she wasn't in the least glad to see him. And that was not her only distress. She too had been chilled by his greeting. Friendly though it was, it was no more than he would have given to Mrs. Jobson and his father. It was a niggardly response to the exorbitant cravings of her hungry heart. Yet what else had she expected? Nothing. Her rational self knew it well enough. But in these tempestuous weeks the voice of reason had held little place in her thoughts. She had lived among blissful impossibilities. Too often she had allowed herself to ignore the fact that, while her feelings for him had been surging up into this intensity, his for her must have remained at the calm level of common friendliness. She raised her hands to her face and burst into tears.

It was a relief to weep and she did not attempt to check herself but wept on until her trouble had spent itself. Then, having bathed her eyes with cold water, she opened the door to go downstairs. She felt now that she had regained her self-control and that she was happier than she had been for many days. Her morbid oppression had broken down as oppressive weather is broken and cleared by a thunderstorm. As she went downstairs she heard the clink of cups and saucers in the parlour. Annie was laying the tea;
and just after Kate herself entered the parlour David came down the passage. She turned and faced him as he entered the room.

‘Well, are you glad to be home again?' she asked him.

‘You bet!' said David.

‘And we'll be glad to have you back again,' she said.

Yes, she was happy again: she had shaken herself free of the dark mood which had tormented her during those last few days.

‘And so you've brought the horse?'

His eyes shone. ‘He's a real beauty,' he said. ‘You must come and have a look at him afterwards.' Then he glanced at the clock. ‘Or why not now?' he said. ‘There's still five minutes before tea. Do come now, Kate.'

They went out together. Kate followed him with a heart glowing with rapture and humble gratitude because he was so eager to show her the horse.

Days passed, then a week; then weeks grew to a month. Winds and rains swept the country, combing the hedges and thickets and scattering leaves, green, yellow, scarlet, and brown, over the roads and fields. The boughs of the great elm-trees that sheltered The Grange streamed on the current of the breeze, shedding on every gust showers of yellow leaves which were whirled horizontally between earth and sky and then caught suddenly into an upward sweep of the strong air or driven downwards to drift into the wet undergrowth or gum themselves to wet walls and the mud of roadways and fields. It seemed as if the year was being whirled visibly away, swept on a tide of time which had suddenly grown swift and palpable. Rooks like great black leaves were swung and tossed in the whirlpool, drifting in long curves down the wind and then suddenly towering up against it. The farm roads grew soft and muddy; their ruts filled with water; and pools stood in every hollow of the rough ground about the farm buildings and sheds. But all at The Grange was serene. In the midst of the general impermanence of all about it, when everything was visibly dying and whirling away into extinction, life at The Grange was happy, warm and permanent, as though the old house and the barn and the whole orderly accumulation of bricks and mortar, stone and timber which formed
the single unit of the farm were a great anchored ship grappled strongly, calmly, and securely to its ancient moorings in that strong and universal flux of time. The old life at the farm had absorbed the new life that had come to it, taken it into its ancient being, subdued it to that one purpose of its existence which throughout four centuries had never varied. Yet the new life had changed the old, warming and refreshing and brightening it with youth and vigour and love, for it was not to Kate alone that David's return had brought increase of life, but to every one at the farm, as young wine added to the old refreshes and enriches it and prolongs its life.

As the weather grew colder and the days closed in, the human life of the farm was less and less diffused about the open fields and more and more concentrated within the house. Fires crackled on the hearths, the lamps were lighted early, and windows shone warm with lamplight as though the new enrichment of life burned visibly and sensibly in the warmth and light.

To Kate it seemed that what had happened to the farm had happened also to herself. Her life, which recently had been diffused and scattered in vague and distracting hopes and fears, her thoughts and emotions which had been directed outwards towards the absent David until her very self had lost its centre and poise, had now been gathered safely back. Her heart and her treasure had been brought home under
the same roof, and all her being was illuminated with a glow of rich contentment. Here, it seemed to her who had known so little happiness, she had found happiness at last, the fullest happiness that any-earthly creature had any right to ask. If at moments she allowed herself to imagine and hope for more, it was in that spirit in which the devout hope for Heaven, as a far-off ecstasy which might be the final reward of years of faith and patience. When so much was hers already, it was almost easy for Kate, so long accustomed to self-repression, to check any too full demonstration of her love and to silence her heart's impatient longing for fulfilment. More than ever, now, she was content to wait. How fully justified, she felt now, was her determination to persist in her love. Mrs. Jobson, when she had warned her against it, had not understood its nature. To have rejected it, to have forced herself to cast it from her mind, would have been deliberately to have rejected all that was good and beautiful in life. If it had been bad, would she not have felt wicked and ashamed when she had sat and meditated upon it that day in Elchester Abbey? But, instead, she had felt strengthened and confirmed in her love, as if God Himself had assured her of its innocence. Yes, she had chosen aright. If she had attempted to stamp out her love, the attempt would have embittered her whole life and all her feelings towards her friends at the farm. Now, the very opposite had happened. She
even felt reconciled to Ben. She had forgotten his offence, or if not quite forgotten it at least she had hidden away the memory of it in some dark corner of her mind. It was so much easier to be fr6e and pleasant with him during meals and through the long evenings when David was there to ease the sense of too close an intimacy. Besides, her love made her independent of Ben. The humiliation which his deceit had caused her was vanquished now by the proud security of her love for David. That love had come, by an ironical chance, as an exact but innocent retaliation against Ben — innocent because it deprived him of nothing which he had not already sacrificed by his deception, but a retaliation none the less because, like a fort built to oppose an enemy fort, it opposed a secret of her own against his sordid secret. But Kate was not conscious of these subtle strategies. All she felt was that she was safe now from Ben; he could injure her no more; and feeling that, she felt that it was easy to be generous to him.

So all went well at the farm. Mrs. Jobson, who had looked forward with apprehension to David's return, began to believe that her fears were unfounded, for whatever Kate might now feel for David, her feelings were evidently serene. She went about her work cheerfully and with even more than her usual energy; she was always ready to talk, and the glance of her grey-green eyes was clear and calm without a trace of that strange cast which
flickered ghost-like behind it when she was agitated.

Ben and David now took it in turns to drive into Elchester on market-days and Kate, who went in regularly every week to do the household shopping, looked forward delightedly to those days when it was David's turn to go and Ben's to stay at home. On such days, as she sat at David's side in the gig throughout the long drive to town and back, it seemed to her that the momentary dream of her wedding day had come true and that Ben had been miraculously transformed into the young man of her desires; for David was now much more a part of her life than Ben had ever been. She talked to him more than to Ben and saw more of him, for she was constantly running across him about the farm or in and out of the house, or when he rode back in the evening on his new horse after an absence of an hour or two; whereas it seemed to her that Ben had always been little seen during the day, except at meals.

David set up some jumps in one of the meadows, a single hurdle to represent a gate and two hurdles with straw between them to represent a hedge, and Kate on her way to and from the dairy would often stop to watch him cantering his horse round the meadow and putting him at the jumps. Sometimes he failed to clear the hurdle, striking the top with his hind hoofs and knocking it down. Then David would swing out of the saddle and, holding his horse by the reins,
would set the hurdle up and remount. Sometimes the beast refused and swerved aside and David, wheeling him round, would bring him up to the jump again, and man and horse, like a single lithe, supple creature, would fly the hurdle and canter on, with hoofs and delicate legs plucking loosely and easily at the ground. Sometimes David shouted something to her, and Kate, made happy by the mere sound of his voice, would wave to him and go on her way satisfied.

One day, when Kate and Ben were beginning tea in the parlour, David came in looking both pleased and sheepish.

‘I've just had the chestnut out in the gig,' he said.

Ben raised his head sharply. ‘What?' he said. ‘In the gig? And didn't you tell me he'd never been in harness? You young devil, you might have had the thing smashed to splinters, and then how do you fancy we'd get to Elchester?'

David smiled. ‘It's all right,' he said. ‘I was careful. I've had the harness on and off him during the last three days. He's coming along well.' Then he laughed. ‘All the same,' he added, ‘George and I had a time of it, I can tell you, getting him into the shafts.'

Kate felt suddenly afraid. What might not happen if David started doing such dangerous things. If anything were to happen to him … The bare thought of it sent a chill to her heart and when tea was over and David had gone out she asked Ben:

‘Wasn't it a very dangerous thing to do, to put the chestnut into the gig?'

‘Well,' said Ben judiciously, ‘I don't know about dangerous; but he might have got the gig smashed up. Still,' he sighed philosophically, ‘young chaps must have something to keep them amused, I suppose.'

‘But mightn't he get hurt?' Kate asked anxiously.

‘David?' said Ben. ‘Oh, trust him to look after himself. It's the gig I'm thinking about.'

But Kate's anxiety tormented her, and next day, when David came in to dinner before Ben, she asked him:

‘Are you going to take the chestnut out in the gig again to-day?'

David grinned. ‘You bet,' he replied. ‘Dad took it pretty well when I told him yesterday, didn't he?'

‘Let me come with you,' said Kate.

David looked at her and his face lit up. ‘What? Would you
like
to?' he said. Obviously he was pleased that Kate wanted to go. Then his face grew serious. ‘But perhaps you'd better wait a bit, till he gets more used to the gig.'

‘No; I want to come to-day,' said Kate. ‘Do let me.'

David considered. ‘Well, look here,' he said at last, ‘you mustn't mention it to Dad. He might not like it.'

At that moment Ben's footsteps came down the passage and David held up a warning finger.

‘When are you starting?' Kate whispered.

‘After dinner,' David whispered back, ‘as soon as he's out of the way,' and he and Kate exchanged a glance of complicity.

It was not until half-past three that the coast was clear and David called to Kate, telling her that his father had just gone out on the mare. ‘Be quick!' he called as Kate ran to put on her hat and coat. He was as excited as a child over a new toy, and he innocently imagined that Kate was going with him for the pure pleasure of the thing.

Kate, too, was excited as she hurried along the passage and into the yard, but her excitement was no mere expectation of a light-hearted prank. For her this drive was a desperate and dangerous adventure, and though outwardly she appeared calm, she was trembling inwardly, half with terror, half with exultation. Though she was convinced that what they were going to do was extremely dangerous, it had never occurred to her to try to dissuade David from it. To do so, she had felt instinctively, would have been to show herself unworthy of him. What he could dare, she could dare, and she was content that whatever disaster befell David should also befall her.