"Georgie didn't know about it then. He was down at Bingham, buying some horses, I believe. He seems to have got a craze for buying horses. He got in with Harry Jackson and Mayhew's sons--you know, they were horse dealers--at least their father was. You remember he died bankrupt about three years ago. There are Fred and Duncan left, and they pretend to keep on the old business. They are always up at the Ram, and Georgie is always driving about with them. I don't like it--they are a loose lot, rather common, and poor enough now.
"Well, I thought I'd wait and see Georgie. He came about half-past five. Meg had been fidgeting about him, wondering where he was, and how he was, and so on. Bless me if I'd worry and whittle about a man. The old grandma heard the cart, and before he could get down she shouted--you know her room is in the front--'Hi, George, ma lad, sharpen thy shins an' com' an' a'e a look at 'em--thee'r's two on 'em, two on 'em!' and she laughed something awful.
"''Ello Granma, what art ter shoutin' about?' he said, and at the sound of his voice Meg turned to me so pitiful, and said: "'He's been wi' them Mayhews.'
"'Tha's gotten twins, a couple at a go, ma lad!' shouted the old woman, and you know how she gives squeal before she laughs! She made the horse shy, and he swore at it something awful. Then Bill took it, and Georgie came upstairs. I saw Meg seem to shrink when she heard him kick at the stairs as he came up, and she went white. When he got to the top he came in. He fairly reeked of whisky and horses. Bah, a man is hateful when he reeks of drink! He stood by the side of the bed grinning like a fool, and saying, quite thick:
"'You've bin in a bit of a 'urry, 'aven't you Meg. An' how are ter feelin' then?'
"'Oh, I'm a' right,' said Meg.
"'Is it twins, straight?' he said; 'Wheer is 'em?'
"Meg looked over at the cradle, and he went round the bed to it, holding to the bed-rail. He had never kissed her, nor anything. When he saw the twins, asleep with their fists shut tight as wax, he gave a laugh as if he was amused, and said:
"'Two right enough--an' one on 'em red! Which is the girl, Meg, the black 'un?'
"'They're both boys,' said Meg, quite timidly.
"He turned round, and his eyes went little.
"'Blast 'em then!' he said. He stood there looking like a devil. Sybil dear, I did not know our George could look like that. I thought he could only look like a faithful dog or a wounded stag. But he looked fiendish. He stood watching the poor little twins, scowling at them, till at last the little red one began to whine a bit. Ma Stainwright came pushing her fat carcass in front of him and bent over the baby, saying:
"'Why, my pretty, what are they doin' to thee, what are they?--What are they doin' to thee?"
"Georgie scowled blacker than ever, and went out, lurching against the wash-stand and making the pots rattle till my heart jumped in my throat.
"'Well, if you don't call that scandylos--!' said old Ma
"Stainwright, and Meg began to cry. You don't know, Cyril! She sobbed fit to break her heart. I felt as if I could have killed him.
"That old gran'ma began talking to him, and he laughed at her. I do hate to hear a man laugh when he's half drunk. It makes my blood boil all of a sudden. That old grandmother backs him up in everything, she's a regular nuisance. Meg has cried to me before over the pair of them. The wicked, vulgar old thing that she is--"
I went home to Woodside early in September. Emily was staying at the Ram. It was strange that everything was so different. Nethermere even had changed. Nethermere was no longer a complete, wonderful little world that held us charmed inhabitants. It was a small, insignificant valley lost in the spaces of the earth. The tree that had drooped over the brook with such delightful, romantic grace was a ridiculous thing when I came home after a year of absence in the south. The old symbols were trite and foolish.
Emily and I went down one morning to Strelley Mill. The house was occupied by a labourer and his wife, strangers from the north. He was tall, very thin, and silent, strangely suggesting kinship with the rats of the place. She was small and very active, like some ragged domestic fowl run wild. Already Emily had visited her, so she invited us into the kitchen of the mill, and set forward the chairs for us. The large room had the barren air of a cell. There was a small table stranded towards the fireplace, and a few chairs by the walls; for the rest, desert spaces of flagged floor retreating into shadow. On the walls by the windows were five cages of canaries, and the small sharp movements of the birds made the room more strange in its desolation. When we began to talk the birds began to sing, till we were quite bewildered, for the little woman spoke Glasgow Scotch, and she had a hare lip. She rose and ran towards the cages, crying herself like some wild fowl, and flapping a duster at the warbling canaries.
"Stop it, stop it," she cried, shaking her thin weird body at them. "Silly little devils, fools, fools, fools!!" and she flapped the duster till the birds were subdued. Then she brought us delicious scones and apple jelly, urging us, almost nudging us with her thin elbows to make us eat.
"Don't you like 'em, don't you? Well, eat 'em, eat 'em then. Go on, Emily, go on, eat some more. Only don't tell Tom--don't tell Tom when 'e comes in"--she shook her head and laughed her shrilling, weird laughter.
As we were going she came out with us, and went running on in front. We could not help noting how ragged and unkempt was her short black skirt. But she hastened around us, hither and thither like an excited fowl, talking in her high-pitched, unintelligible manner. I could not believe the brooding mill was in her charge. I could not think this was the Strelley Mill of a year ago. She fluttered up the steep orchard bank in front of us. Happening to turn round and see Emily and me smiling at each other she began to laugh her strident, weird laughter, saying, with a leer:
"Emily, he's your sweetheart, your sweetheart, Emily! You never told me!" and she laughed aloud.
We blushed furiously. She came away from the edge of the sluice gully, nearer to us, crying:
"You've been here o' nights, haven't you, Emily--haven't you?" and she laughed again. Then she sat down suddenly, and pointing above our heads, shrieked:
"Ah, look there "--we looked and saw the mistletoe. "Look at her, look at her! How many kisses a night, Emily?--Ha! Ha! Kisses all the year! Kisses o' nights in a lonely place."
She went on wildly for a short time, then she dropped her voice and talked in low, pathetic tones. She pressed on us scones and jelly and oat-cakes, and we left her.
When we were out on the road by the brook Emily looked at me with shamefaced, laughing eyes. I noticed a small movement of her lips, and in an instant I found myself kissing her, laughing with some of the little woman's wildness.
CHAPTER IV - DOMESTIC LIFE AT THE RAM
George was very anxious to receive me at his home. The Ram had as yet only a six days' licence, so on Sunday afternoon I walked over to tea. It was very warm and still and sunny as I came through Greymede. A few sweethearts were sauntering under the horse-chestnut trees, or crossing the road to go into the fields that lay smoothly carpeted after the hay-harvest.
As I came round the flagged track to the kitchen door of the inn I heard the slur of a baking-tin and the bang of the oven door, and Meg saying crossly:
"No, don't you take him, Emily--naughty little thing! Let his father hold him."
One of the babies was crying.
I entered, and found Meg all flushed and untidy, wearing a large white apron, just rising from the oven. Emily, in a cream dress, was taking a red-haired, crying baby from out of the cradle. George sat in the small arm-chair, smoking and looking cross.
"I can't shake hands," said Meg, rather flurried. "I am all floury. Sit down, will you--" and she hurried out of the room. Emily looked up from the complaining baby to me and smiled a woman's rare, intimate smile, which says: "See, I am engaged thus for a moment, but I keep my heart for you all the time."
George rose and offered me the round arm-chair. It was the highest honour he could do me. He asked me what I would drink. When I refused everyth
ing, he sat down heavily on the sofa, frowning, and angrily cudgelling his wits for something to say--in vain.
The room was large and comfortably furnished with rush-chairs, a glass-knobbed dresser, a cupboard with glass doors, perched on a shelf in the corner, and the usual large sofa whose cosy loose-bed and pillows were covered with red cotton stuff. There was a peculiar reminiscence of victuals and drink in the room; beer, and a touch of spirits, and bacon. Teenie, the sullen, black-browed servant girl came in carrying the other baby, and Meg called from the scullery to ask her if the child were asleep. Meg was evidently in a bustle and a flurry, a most uncomfortable state.
"No," replied Teenie, "he's not for sleep this day."
"Mend the fire and see to the oven, and then put him his frock on," replied Meg testily. Teenie set the black-haired baby in the second cradle. Immediately he began to cry, or rather to shout his remonstrance. George went across to him and picked up a white furry rabbit, which he held before the child.
"Here, look at bun-bun! Have your nice rabbit! Hark at it squeaking"
The baby listened for a moment, then, deciding that this was only a put-off, began to cry again. George threw down the rabbit and took the baby, swearing inwardly. He dandled the child on his knee.
"What's up then?--What's up wi' thee? Have a ride then--dee-de-dee-de-dee."
But the baby knew quite well what was the father's feeling towards him, and he continued to cry.
"Hurry up, Teenie" said George as the maid rattled the coal on the fire. Emily was walking about hushing her charge, and smiling at me, so that I had a peculiar pleasure in gathering for myself the honey of endearment which she shed on the lips of the baby. George handed over his child to the maid, and said to me with patient sarcasm:
"Will you come in the garden?"
I rose and followed him across the sunny flagged yard, along the path between the bushes. He lit his pipe and sauntered along as a man on his own estate does, feeling as if he were untrammeled by laws or conventions.
"You know," he said, "she's a dam rotten manager."
I laughed, and remarked how full of plums the trees were.
"Yes" he replied heedlessly--"you know she ought to have sent the girl out with the kids this afternoon, and have got dressed directly. But no, she must sit gossiping with Emily all the time they were asleep, and then as soon as they wake up she begins to make cake--"
"I suppose she felt she'd enjoy a pleasant chat, all quiet," I answered.
"But she knew quite well you were coming, and what it would be. But a woman's no dam foresight."
"Nay, what does it matter" said I.
"Sunday's the only day we can have a bit of peace, so she might keep 'em quiet then."
"I suppose it was the only time, too, that she could have a quiet gossip," I replied.
"But you don't know," he said, "there seems to be never a minute of freedom. Teenie sleeps in now, and lives with us in the kitchen--Oswald as well--so I never know what it is to have a moment private. There doesn't seem a single spot anywhere where I can sit quiet. It's the kids all day, and the kids all night, and the servants, and then all the men in the house--I sometimes feel as if I should like to get away. I shall leave the pub as soon as I can--only Meg doesn't want to."
"But if you leave the public-house--what then?"
"I should like to get back on a farm. This is no sort of a place, really, for farming. I've always got some business on hand. There's a traveller to see, or I've got to go to the brewers, or I've somebody to look at a horse, or something. Your life's all messed up. If I had a place of my own, and farmed it in peace--"
"You'd be as miserable as you could be," I said.
"Perhaps so," he assented, in his old reflective manner. "Perhaps so! Anyhow, I needn't bother, for I feel as if I never shall go back--to the land."
"Which means at the bottom of your heart you don't intend to," I said, laughing.
"Perhaps so" he again yielded. "You see, I'm doing pretty well here--apart from the public-house: I always think that's Meg's. Come and look in the stable. I've got a shire mare and two nags: pretty good; I went down to Melton Mowbray with Tom Mayhew, to a chap they've had dealings with. Tom's all right, and he knows how to buy, but he is such a lazy, careless devil, too lazy to be bothered to sell--"
George was evidently interested. As we went round to the stables, Emily came out with the baby, which was dressed in a new silk frock. She advanced, smiling to me with dark eyes.
"See, now he is good! Doesn't he look pretty?"
She held the baby for me to look at. I glanced at it, but I was only conscious of the near warmth of her cheek, and of the scent of her hair.
"Who is he like?" I asked, looking up and finding myself full in her eyes. The question was quite irrelevant: her eyes spoke a whole clear message that made my heart throb; yet she answered.
"Who is he? Why, nobody, of course! But he will be like Father, don't you think?"
The question drew my eyes to hers again, and again we looked each other the strange intelligence that made her flush and me breathe in as I smiled.
"Ay! Blue eyes like your father's--not like yours--" Again the wild messages in her looks.
"No" she answered very softly. "And I think he'll be jolly, like Father--they have neither of them our eyes, have they?"
"No," I answered, overcome by a sudden hot flush of tenderness. "No--not vulnerable. To have such soft, vulnerable eyes as you used makes one feel nervous and irascible. But you have clothed over the sensitiveness of yours, haven't you?--like naked life, naked defenceless protoplasm they were, is it not so?"
She laughed, and at the old painful memories she dilated in the old way, and I felt the old tremor at seeing her soul flung quivering on my pity.
"And were mine like that?" asked George, who had come up.
He must have perceived the bewilderment of my look as I tried to adjust myself to him. A slight shadow, a slight chagrin appeared on his face.
"Yes," I answered, "yes--but not so bad. You never gave yourself away so much--you were most cautious: but just as defenceless."
"And am I altered?" he asked, with quiet irony, as if he knew I was not interested in him.
"Yes, more cautious. You keep in the shadow. But Emily has clothed herself, and can now walk among the crowd at her own gait."
It was with an effort I refrained from putting my lips to kiss her at that moment as she looked at me with womanly dignity and tenderness. Then I remembered, and said:
"But you are taking me to the stable, George! Come and see the horses too, Emily."
"I will. I admire them so much," she replied, and thus we both indulged him.
He talked to his horses and of them, laying his hand upon them, running over their limbs. The glossy, restless animals interested him more than anything. He broke into a little flush of enthusiasm over them. They were his new interest. They were quiet and yet responsive; he was their master and owner. This gave him real pleasure.
But the baby became displeased again. Emily looked at me for sympathy with him.
"He is a little wanderer," she said, "he likes to be always moving. Perhaps he objects to the ammonia of stables too," she added, frowning and laughing slightly; "It is not very agreeable, is it?"
"Not particularly," I agreed, and as she moved off I went with her, leaving him in the stables. When Emily and I were alone we sauntered aimlessly back to the garden. She persisted in talking to the baby, and in talking to me about the baby, till I wished the child in Jericho. This made her laugh, and she continued to tantalise me. The hollyhock flowers of the second whorl were flushing to the top of the spires. The bees, covered with pale crumbs of pollen, were swaying a moment outside the wide gates of the florets, then they swung in with excited hum, and clung madly to the furry white capitols, and worked riotously round the waxy bases. Emily held out the baby to watch, talking all the time in low, fond tones. The child stretched towards the bright flowers. The sun glistened on his smooth h
air as on bronze dust, and the wondering blue eyes of the baby followed the bees. Then he made small sounds, and suddenly waved his hands, like rumpled pink hollyhock buds.
"Look," said Emily, "look at the little bees! Ah, but you mustn't touch them, they bite. They're coming" she cried, with sudden laughing apprehension, drawing the child away. He made noises of remonstrance. She put him near to the flowers again till he knocked the spire with his hand and two indignant bees came sailing out. Emily drew back quickly crying in alarm, then laughing with excited eyes at me, as if she had just escaped a peril in my presence. Thus she teased me by flinging me all kinds of bright gages of love while she kept me aloof because of the child. She laughed with pure pleasure at this state of affairs, and delighted the more when I frowned, till at last I swallowed my resentment and laughed too, playing with the hands of the baby, and watching his blue eyes change slowly like a softly sailing sky.
Presently Meg called us in to tea. She wore a dress of fine blue stuff with cream silk embroidery, and she looked handsome, for her hair was very hastily dressed.
"What, have you had that child all this time?" she exclaimed, on seeing Emily. "Where is his father?"
"I don't know--we left him in the stable, didn't we, Cyril? But I like nursing him, Meg. I like it ever so much," replied Emily.
"Oh yes, you may be sure George would get off it if he could. He's always in the stable. As I tell him, he fair stinks of horses. He's not that fond of the children, I can tell you. Come on, my pet--why, come to its mammy."
She took the baby and kissed it passionately, and made extravagant love to it. A clean-shaven young man with thick bare arms went across the yard.
"Here, just look and tell George as tea is ready," said Meg.
"Where is he?" asked Oswald, the sturdy youth who attended to the farm business.
"You know where to find him," replied Meg, with that careless freedom which was so subtly derogatory to her husband. George came hurrying from the out-building. "What, is it tea already?" he said.
"It's a wonder you haven't been crying out for it this last hour," said Meg.