The Stepson (22 page)

In the yard there was much stamping and clattering of horse-shoes on the rough cobble-stones. George had pulled out the gig from the cart-shed and David was holding the chestnut's head, talking to him and patting him while he tried to back him into
position in front of the gig so that George could lower the shafts over him. Kate stood watching, cold and apprehensive, feeling a little pang of alarm each time the horse pivoted round just when David had got him into the right position. She wished that this waiting were over and that they were started on their adventure. And happily she had not long to wait, for after one or two more attempts the chestnut was between the shafts and George was busy with straps and buckles. Then he took David's place at the horse's head and David turned to Kate.

‘I'll get up first,' he said, ‘and then you jump up directly after me.'

The horse fidgeted nervously as David and Kate got in and next moment they had begun to move slowly out of the yard with George leading the horse. They turned the corner on to the soft cart-track.

‘Right!' David called to George. ‘Let him go.'

They moved on slowly and in silence. The chestnut advanced at a strange, slow, stately trot which jogged them uncomfortably backwards and forwards like two absurd mechanical figures. The horse, accustomed to have a rider on his back, missed the familiar control. He was uneasy and apprehensive and moved like a horse without a driver, uncertain what to do next. From time to time David talked to him - a flow of soothing, encouraging language which at another time might have amused Kate.
Soon, with a discreet click of the tongue, David had urged him to a faster pace. The jogging became less violent: the horse was reassured, it seemed, and Kate, too, had a feeling that things had become safer.

‘He's coming along well, isn't he?' said David, glancing with a satisfied smile at Kate.

A hundred yards farther on a bird fluttered in the hedge, and the horse, with the sudden violent thud on the road of all four hoofs at once, swerved dangerously, and it seemed to Kate that he had suddenly sprawled out to half his height. Next moment David had pulled him round and they pounded along at a canter, shaken furiously up and down so that Kate had to cling on with both hands. Her heart was in her mouth. She thought that they were on the brink of a disaster. But soon the horse dropped back into a trot, and it seemed that David attached no importance to the occurrence.

‘Bound to be a bit nervous at first,' he remarked quietly, and he pulled up to a walk as they rounded the corner on to the public road. Then with another click of the tongue and a touch of the rein he again urged the chestnut into a quiet trot, and they continued down the Elchester road for a quarter of a mile and then, to Kate's relief, turned into a by-road.

‘Just as well to keep out of the way of motor-cars and things for a day or two,' David explained. ‘Not that I think he'd mind them much; he passes them like a lamb when he's ridden. But you don't want to
give him too much to think about all at once, till he gets a bit accustomed to harness.'

The by-road wound between hedges which were already more than half bare of leaves The sun came out, lighting up the red leaves on the brambles and the rust-brown of the bracken that edged the road. Here and there the hedge was bright with scarlet hips on the wild-rose tangles and the dark red of the haws, and in the wet, leaf-strewn grass a few scabious flowers still held up their dark blue heads. In the quiet of the by-road the horse was put through his lessons. David pulled him up, and he stood glancing in front of him and from side to side with pricked ears and quick, alert movements of the head. His ears moved forward and back, sometimes together, sometimes independently, as though he were taking in his surroundings by means of sounds inaudible to his drivers. Then he fidgeted and began to move, and David pulled him up, talking to him and ordering him to stand. Then with a word he started him off again.

‘He'll be perfect in a week,' he said with satisfaction.

They turned another corner. Up on the right stood a farm, from which a road curled downwards and joined the by-road a hundred yards ahead of them; and coming down the road from the farm Kate, to her horror, saw a car.

‘Do you see the car coming, David?' she said, trying
to make the remark sound casual and matter-of-fact.

David glanced to the right. ‘So there is!' he said. ‘Don't worry. He'll be quite all right.'

In spite of herself Kate's heart began to palpitate. As they approached the spot where the farm-road came out, the driver of the car saw them and stopped to let them pass before turning out into the road. The chestnut pricked his ears at the sound of the engine, and as they drew near to it his nostrils filled and he edged away to the left, ogling the car and prancing so that David and Kate were jolted up and down as they had been when they started from The Grange. But David held him in with soothing talk and a firm hand, and all was going well when, just as they had passed the car, the driver accelerated and the engine gave a sudden blustering roar.

The horse plunged, swerved, and then set off at a canter. At first it seemed that it was little more than a repetition of his shy at the bird in the hedge, but suddenly Kate became aware that the horse had become a wild animal. The canter became a gallop. His neck, back and hindquarters swelled with bright, swiftly-working muscles. The gig swung and swayed as if it were the tail of some mammoth beast. David leaned back, hauling at the reins, but still they were whirled on. There was a sharp corner ahead and they cut it so sharply that the gig lurched over on to one wheel, and next moment they had
struck a large stone in the grass and were flung violently against each other. ‘Hold on!' shouted David, and Kate clung with one hand to the rail at her left side and with the other to the back of the seat. And all the while, despite her fears, Kate was thinking quietly to herself: ‘Here it is! This is why I came with him. We're in the middle of it now: it can't last much longer.' Then with a gasp of horror she saw that straight ahead of them the road dipped steeply downwards to a narrow bridge. David, slackening his hold of the reins for a moment, took a turn of each one round each of his wrists. With his legs straight and his feet pressed against the footboard, he stood up, and leaning back he hauled with the full weight of his body at the reins.

Within a few yards he had brought the gig to a standstill. Then he turned the horse into the roadside till he stood facing the high fence. The beast's sides were pulsing as though his whole body were a huge pair of bellows; his nostrils filled and emptied with a rapid, tremulous flickering; his neck was black with sweat and his sides, along the shafts, were white with lather. David took a deep breath and glanced at Kate. His face was scarlet and beads of sweat covered his forehead, but otherwise he seemed entirely undisturbed. Kate, too, felt miraculously serene. ‘It's over,' she thought to herself, and it seemed as if all her fears had been extinguished in a flash.

‘Are you all right?' David asked, turning a somewhat ashamed face to her.

‘Well,' she replied, smiling at him, ‘I'm shaken up a little.'

David laughed. ‘I should just think you were,' he said. ‘I thought we were over when we hit that stone. And then there was that, in front.' He pointed to the steep dip in the road. ‘I wasn't extra keen on us taking that. Hold the reins, will you?' And suddenly he handed the reins to Kate and got out of the gig.

The horse stood quiet with a hanging head. David talked to him and petted him, looking him over with a critical eye and running a hand down his legs. ‘We gave the old gig a rattling up,' he said, turning a broad grin on Kate.

The sun was already low, and after they had given the horse a short rest David got back into the gig and they began to drive home. Kate was happy and at peace. She had no apprehensions for the drive back, and, in fact, the horse went quietly enough. The light was failing rapidly. A great flaring sunset broke out in the west, as if it had sucked into one concentrated blaze all the diffused light of the day. It seemed that the gig was the sole moving thing in the world. Darkness lowered behind it and fire flamed before, and in that silent and immovable storm of fire and darkness Kate felt that she and David were sitting perched between the two on a
little trembling hill, alone, utterly alone, in an unpeopled world, blissfully at one in the communion of their secret adventure.

‘Mind, not a word of this to Dad!' said David, as they turned through the gate into the farm-yard.

It was two days later that Kate awoke at last from her long dream. Breakfast was over and they had just risen from the table. Kate was collecting the plates and cups and was putting them on the tray ready for Annie to carry out and wash, while Ben and David finished a talk which they had begun during breakfast about work to be done on the farm.

‘Well,' said Ben, as David went towards the door, ‘I'd better ride over to Green Lane to-day or tomorrow and see Bob Reed about those sheep.'

David paused with his hand on the door-handle. ‘As a matter of fact,' he said, ‘I'll be riding that way myself this afternoon. I can have a word with him, if you like.'

Ben grinned and looked sharply at his son. ‘You are, are you, lad?' he said. ‘Then you settle it, by all means. It'll save me the trouble.'

David went out, and as the parlour door closed behind him Ben winked at Kate. ‘Combining business with pleasure, I reckon,' he said with a hard, little parrot-like laugh.

‘What? Riding his new horse, you mean?' said Kate.

Ben grinned. ‘There's something more in it than the horse, I fancy,' he said slyly. ‘The young rascal's got a girl down there. What else is he riding down to Green Lane for two or three times a week?'

Kate, standing there with her hands on the edges of a pile of plates which she had just set on the tray, was struck to the marrow by a sudden deadly chill. It was as if the warm, vital flame which had burned in her for all these weeks had been suddenly quenched with icy water; as if a half of her had been struck dead at a single blow.

‘Has he told you so?' she asked in a voice that sounded to come from far away.

‘Not he,' Ben chuckled as he went towards the door. ‘He wouldn't tell. He's one of the quiet kind, like his mother.'

He went out and Kate stood there, as she had stood at Ben's first remark, as if turned to stone. Her face was very pale; her lips were grey. Then, as if the frost were breaking, sensation, numbed by the blow, crept slowly back; not the old glow of serene and radiant happiness, but a slow, bitter flood of pain that poisoned all her being. Then came a longing to slink away and hide herself, to hide away from daylight and human society, to lie down and rest. She went towards the door, groping for the door-handle like a blind woman. She had thought of taking refuge in her room, but she remembered that, at this hour, Annie might be making the bed. Her thoughts flew to the barn. If only she could escape from the house without meeting Mrs. Jobson; if only she could cross the farmyard without meeting Ben or David, and the rough ground between
the yard and the barn, she would be safe for awhile.

She opened the parlour door softly and looked out into the passage. No one was stirring. The clank of a pail in the scullery told her that the kitchen was likely to be empty, and without waiting any longer she hurried down the passage and out into the yard.

The sharp, early-morning air, damp with rain, laid cold hands upon her, leaving a grey dust of moisture on her black dress. No one was about. The place seemed to be deserted. In a few seconds she had reached the great double doors of the barn, had pushed one of them ajar, slipped inside and then pushed it shut again.

Inside the barn it was still night. Only here and there a vague light, shed from the holes in the roof and walls, hung grey veils among the utter darkness. Kate made her way gropingly to the far end of the huge cavern and dropped down upon the straw there. For awhile she lay without thought or motion, resigning herself to mere suffering. By degrees an intense hatred of Ben took possession of her. If hatred could kill, Ben would have fallen dead where, at that moment, he stood talking to George the hind in the stackyard. All her old disgust of him when she had discovered the hateful secret about him and Emma returned to her redoubled. His hard, vicious laugh, when he had hinted that David too had his secret, still sounded in her ears and filled her with
loathing. That laugh and his remark were, for Kate, an affirmation of his own vileness and a satisfied boast that David was like him. In her hatred and despair she was blind to reason. It never occurred to her that Ben's hint might have a perfectly innocent interpretation, nor that it might not, after all, be true. All that she felt, as she lay there in the dark, was that another unutterable secret had been laid bare, another hidden cancer which had all this while been spreading and corrupting the beauty and innocence of life. But that it should be through David that this ruin should be brought upon her, David who had become for her the very source and symbol of love, faith, and happiness, the very meaning of life for her, was a thing to wreck body and soul. If David was corrupt, like his father, then all men were corrupt. If vileness and deceit could assume those looks of honesty, beauty, and innocence which she had seen and irresistibly loved in David, then her faith in life was destroyed for ever.

Poor Kate! In her passion of jealousy and despair she did not see that David had never deceived her, that even if this guessed-at love of his existed there was no obligation on him to tell her of it, for he was ignorant of her love for him and felt nothing more than friendliness for her. Her emotions were too acute and too turbid for such discriminations. She had not even begun, in spite of all she believed about David, to blame him. The depth of her despair left
no room for anger against him. All her anger, all her hatred, were fixed upon Ben. She felt vaguely and confusedly that it was Ben, and Ben only, who was to blame. Ben had, in his own case, lured her into trusting and believing in him and then destroyed her trust; and now, when she had set her trust and all her hopes of happiness upon David, Ben had destroyed these also. He had become in her eyes a callous and sinister demon who took pleasure in wrecking her faith. Once more she heard that horrible, lecherous laugh of his, and once more hatred boiled up in her heart; and feeling herself stultified and powerless in the face of his cruelty, she began to weep, lying curled up in the straw and crying quietly like a lonely child.