The Scent of Water

  “Yes. Go on.”

  “She ran out so fast, a skinny old woman in a long black dress, and she gripped my wrist. Her fingers were so thin but they were strong. She spoke to me but I was too terrified to understand what she said, except that I was to go inside and see something. She pulled me up that passage, and the leaves were whispery and dim, and the hall beyond dark. Only the flowers on the coffin were bright and pretty, but she took them away with her free hand and lifted the lid of the coffin and there underneath was that skull.”

  “What did you do then?” asked Mary.

  “I tried to pull my hand away but she held on and I knew she was going to put me in the coffin. I cried out, I think, and somehow I got away and out of the house. I don’t remember how. I only know I got out.”

  “And you went home?”

  “Oh no, I went on to visit in Ash Lane.”

  “But weren’t you dithery at the cottages?”

  “Indeed I was. I couldn’t say anything. But I had to go. James had told me to go.”

  “You didn’t go to The Laurels again?”

  “Not till I came to call on you. James didn’t tell me to, not till he told me to visit you. He did Miss Lindsay himself. Parish-visited her, I mean.”

  “Jean, she didn’t want to put you in the chest. She wanted to show you her treasures. It was her way of welcoming you to Appleshaw. What she said to you at the door was, ‘Come in and see my little things.’ She had a lovely collection of tiny treasures. I’ll show them to you one day. And she wanted you to see her marvelous old chest. She thought of it as an altar, not a coffin.”

  “An altar?”

  “The hall used to be the chapel of the monks’ infirmary. Your brother will tell you this. I have her diary and I read in it only a few weeks ago that she was hoping to find a chest or table to put against the wall where the altar used to be.”

  “Poor old lady!” said Jean after a silence. “Do you think she was hurt that I ran away?”

  “If she was, it’s all over long ago.”

  “Nothing is ever over,” said Jean. “You thread things on your life and think you’ve finished with them, but you haven’t because it’s like beads on a string and they come around again. And when something bad you’ve done to a person comes around again it’s horrible, for if the person is dead there’s nothing you can do.”

  “I have thought lately that sometimes there is,” said Mary. “When it comes around again, then if it is possible, give what you failed to give before to someone else. You will have made reparation, for we are all one person.”

  “People only? Or all of us?” Jean’s hand, with a gesture calm and serene for such an agitated person, seemed to indicate the birds calling in the wood behind them, the sheep in a high field on the skyline and the cats at home.

  “Scientists say we are all of one substance,” said Mary. “The Bible says we come from the one God and await the one redemption.”

  “I’m always full of reverence when I look at my hens,” said Jean.

  It seemed to Mary that the whole world laughed with her, and in her rather alarmingly visual memory the image of the skull was subtly changed. In a lesser degree the carving had shocked her, too. The mockery of a skull’s grin always shocked her and she had wondered how Cousin Mary had tolerated it, hidden in the hall, and why she had wanted to show it to Jean, apparently with affection. But seeing it now in her mind’s eye the mockery was gone. It was merely amused, as though to those still in possession of a skull death could show only the profile of the hard bones, yet laughed to think how differently he appeared to those upon his other side.

  4

  Mary sat up late that night with the diary. She had been reading it slowly and steadily, passing with Cousin Mary through the first few years at Appleshaw, years of alternate illness and respite, so much at one with her cousin that she seemed to be learning with her how to accept the first with hope and the second with wonder and gratitude. Cousin Mary hoped her journey through periods of dark and light was like that of a Swiss train toiling up the mountainside, in and out of tunnels but always a little farther up the hill at each emergence. But she could only hope that this was so. She did not feel it. It seemed to her that she did not advance at all and that what she was learning now was only to hold on. The Red Queen in Alice Through the Looking Glass, she remembered, had had to run fast merely to stay where she was, but doubtless she had run in hope, disdaining despair; and hope, Cousin Mary discovered, when deliberately opposed to despair, was one of the tough virtues.

  And when respite came could there be anything more marvelous than the sunburst of light? What was life like, Cousin Mary wondered, for those who seem to live more or less always on an even keel? For them too there must be the swing of the pendulum, for nothing living could escape it, but the self-pity of her youth began to leave her as she considered their relative joys, only so far up because it had been only so far down, in comparison to her sunbursts. They would never reconcile her to the abyss, nor was it right that they should since the abyss was evil, but the somber backcloth increased joy to the point where wonder and thankfulness merged into a clarity of sight that transfigured every greeting of her day. She opened her window in the morning and saw a spider’s web sparkling with light and was aware of miracle. Sitting in the conservatory with her sewing she knew suddenly that the sun was out behind the vine leaves and that she was enclosed within green-gold light as in a seashell. She dropped her sewing in her lap and was motionless for an hour while the light lay on her eyelids and her gratitude knew no bounds. Standing inside the willow tree she looked up and a thrush was there, so close to her that she could learn by heart the gleaming diapason of his breast, the sleek folding of the wing feathers, the piercing bright glance going through her like lightning. They were alone in the world, he and she, and presently he was alone and she was only a pair of eyes of which she was no longer aware. He did not fly away until some sound disturbed him, for the creatures were not afraid of her while she walked in light though they feared her in darkness. Once she held up her finger to a butterfly and it alighted there, and though it soon flew away again, her finger wore the sensation of airy lightness like a jewel until nightfall. She grudged herself to sleep on the moonlit nights, for she could not bear to lose a moment of the moon’s serene companionship. These and other greetings she recorded in her diary.

  They are more than themselves and when the wonder grows in me I am more than myself. Whenever I am conscious of this more than ourselves I remember the old man in the garden at home, looking at the butterflies in the buddleia tree, and how the butterflies seemed to shine on his face, or something in him shone on the butterflies, I didn’t know which. I may have imagined the light but I didn’t imagine the more than ourselves. That’s real enough, and when I am conscious of it my wonder and gratitude clap hands together and what is caught up from me is more than either. If any words come to me then they are those of the old man’s second prayer, “Thee I adore.”

  After that entry there were several descriptions of village doings, in which in her good times she could sometimes take part. Tea parties, games of chess with the squire, Sunday school outings and cricket matches on the green. It was in the midst of these jottings that Mary found what she was looking for. They were decorating the church for the harvest festival and Cousin Mary was sent to the vestry by Mrs. Carroway to find a ball of string. She wrote:

  She told me it would be in the chest. I didn’t know what chest and I didn’t like to ask because she was getting a little irritated; the dahlias were weak-kneed and would not stand upright. I went into the vestry and looked around and at first I couldn’t see any chest, and then I saw it in the dark corner under the north window. I went over to it and stood looking down at the closed lid, dark like water and with a greenish tinge because of the yew tree outside the window. It seemed to me that the water stirred, or that wings moved. It was only the reflection of the branches of the tree lifting in the wind but the movement caught
my attention and I looked closer and saw that a bird with outspread wings was carved on the lid, like those symbols of the spirit that one sees in stained-glass windows. I lifted the lid and inside, just beneath the bird in flight, was a skull. Both were beautifully carved and were enclosed in a circle of the same size and design, so that I realized that one was not to be considered without the other. They were a unity, like a two-sided coin. The front of the chest was carved with a typically sixteenth-century design, interlaced strapwork forming a cross in the center. It was riddled with woodworm, the carvings broken in places, some of the panels cracked. Seeing it like that made me want to cry and I stood looking down at it as though it were someone I loved ill in bed. Then I suddenly remembered what I was here for and I rummaged inside it, among torn old hymnbooks, broken candlesticks and all sorts of rubbish, until I found a ball of string.

  “Couldn’t you find it, dear?” Mrs. Carroway asked when I brought it to her. I apologized and finished the pulpit for her, tying the weak-kneed dahlias to the heads of the twelve apostles, and presently Mr. Carroway came along, rosy and smiling, his hands clasped behind his back, to see how we were doing.

  “Very tasteful, Miss Lindsay,” he said. It wasn’t true, for I don’t know much about arranging flowers, and nor does he, but Mr. Carroway is always courteous.

  “That chest in the vestry,” I said, getting up and dusting my knees. “Where did it come from?”

  “Chest?” he asked.

  “The one under the north window.”

  “Ah yes,” he said vaguely.

  “Come and see,” I said, and to his dismay I took him by the arm and led him to the vestry. I had already discovered that his interest in church history includes the fabric of the churches but not their furniture. Nor does his passion for bees extend to the flowers that are the reverse side of bees. He has a two-track mind, which is more than most of us have, but the tracks are narrow. Yet I think he was stirred when I told him I was sure the chest was sixteenth-century, and he agreed with me when I said it must once have been a treasure of the monks. He put his spectacles on and had a good look at the carvings, and he seemed a little ashamed of himself that he had not had a good look before.

  “I fear I have noticed little apart from the general dilapidation,” he said, “brought to my attention by the churchwardens. They have it in mind to replace this chest by a cupboard, a more convenient receptacle for the hymnbooks and such odds and ends as accumulate from time to time in a vestry.”

  “And what are you going to do with the chest?”

  “There is a room in the tower where we occasionally deposit such derelict furnishings as we have no further use for. Brownlow, that’s the people’s warden, is averse to throwing things away. They might, he thinks, come in useful at some future date.”

  I made a mental note to visit the room in the tower as soon as possible, and I did some quick arithmetic in my head and then I said, “Mr. Carroway, may I give the cupboard to the church? I would like to do that as a thank offering because my health has improved so much since I came to live here.”

  At first he was courteously hesitant, wondering if he ought to accept my offer, but he was very pleased and when I assured him I could well afford it he agreed that I should give the cupboard. Then I asked if I might buy the chest from the church because it was just what I wanted in my hall, and at this he was horrified because of its dilapidated state, but I persisted and he said he would discuss the matter with the churchwardens.

  Well, in the end I got it. The cupboard was installed and Mr. Entwistle borrowed the squire’s gardener’s handcart and fetched the chest. Jenny wouldn’t have it in the house for a moment, because of the woodworm, so Entwistle and I took it right away to Nightingale Wood, to Mr. Abraham Baker the bodger, who is a woodcarver as well as a bodger and can do anything with wood. It was one of those early November mornings that are as beautiful as any in spring. There was gold everywhere, drifts of it on the elm tree, flakes of gold under our feet, gold dust on the hedges, liquid gold in the refracted falling light. For the sun today broke through pale and luminous clouds. It was a gentle day with no wind. Entwistle trundled the cart with the chest in it and I walked beside him. He whistled sometimes, answering the robins, and sometimes we laughed and talked together. But we could be silent when we wished, for we are good friends.

  The wood, when we reached it, was almost frightening. Trees look taller in the autumn than at other times and the beeches towered to such a height that their red-gold seemed to lift and lift and have no ending. Yet in spite of the glory above, many leaves had already fallen and lay drifted about the silver trunks and the low darkness of the hollies. The bramble leaves, tipped with fire, seemed to leap out of the golden wash like flights of birds or butterflies. The smell of the wet leaves and moss was sad and strange yet marvelous to me.

  We came to Fox Barton, the ruined farmhouse where Abraham Baker has his workshop. I love the place and hate to see it falling to pieces. The ceilings have gone long ago and soon I am afraid the plaster garlands in the parlor will fall to pieces with the damp. Abraham Baker’s grandfather, a farmer, lived here as a young man but when he married, his wife couldn’t stand the loneliness and the ghosts and he sold it. The man he sold it to, a recluse reputed by Mr. Entwistle to be very odd, lived alone in it for many years and then he couldn’t stand it either and he went to America. He had not kept it in repair and it was so dilapidated that no one else wanted to live there, and so Abraham Baker’s father quietly moved in and used it as his workshop, for he was a bodger too.

  Abraham was hard at work when we went in, a giant of a man with a grim seamed face and a long gray beard that he buttons inside his shirt when he is at work lest it get caught in the lathe. This keeps him with his chin permanently tucked down and his great broken nose much in evidence. His son Joshua was with him today, a strange lanky child with bright red hair, terribly shy. Abraham is not shy but he does not speak unless it is necessary. He did not speak while I told him about the chest and asked him if he could repair it for me and get rid of the woodworm. But when I had finished and Entwistle showed him the chest he suddenly stopped work. He came over and looked at the carving and ran his huge hands over it. Then he lifted the lid and smiled with delight at the sight of the skull. I had never seen him smile before and it was a remarkable sight, for his smile is huge as himself, an enormous mouth registering delight. “Why does it please you so much?” I asked.

  “Fine bit of carving,” he said. “And hidden-like. Folks don’t do hidden work so much these days.”

  I told him about the hidden carvings in cathedrals, marvelous work hidden from all knowledge but that of its makers and God. He nodded and told me there was a carving like that in Appleshaw church, on the right-hand side of the door leading to the tower. “I ain’t one for churchgoing,” he said, “but I go at harvest to see the veges. The wife, she always sends a vegetable marrow for the font and I always sits at the back of the church where I can see the marrow, and one year I tipped me ’ead back an’ give it quite a crack on that there carving. I ’ad a look at it later. Well, you can look at it for yourself if you’ve a mind. Cost you a pretty penny to have this repaired. Look at this ’ere.” Some of the carving on the front of the chest, riddled with worm, came away in his hands and a trickle of wood dust fell to the floor like water.

  “I don’t care what it costs,” I said recklessly. “If you have to carve fresh panels I shan’t mind. Is the lid all right?”

  “Naught wrong with he,” said Abraham. He had lifted the lid again and was holding it with one huge hand covering the bird and the other the skull, the circle surrounding each hand, and I thought suddenly of the hands of the Creator holding life and death. And then I thought of the hands of the man who had carved the lid holding the finished thing, and thinking it was good, and in my mind he was identified with Abraham.

  Something touched me and it was the nudging elbow of the lanky Joshua. He was standing by me holding something in his han
d. He glanced solemnly up through the mat of red hair that hung down over his eyes, smiled and opened his hand. Inside was a treasure that he had, a large conker carved with his initials J.B. “What you doin’ of, nudging the lady?” roared Abraham suddenly, and aimed a good-humored blow at one of Joshua’s protruding ears. The child ducked expertly under the workbench and hopped up behind it, grinning, his shyness suddenly gone, and all the way home I remembered how he had shown me his conker.

  That was weeks ago and it is nearly Christmas and this morning the chest came home. Abraham has an old pony and cart and he and Joshua brought it. They carried it in with Entwistle’s help and put it in the hall against the wall and we all stood and gazed. It was a day of frosty sunshine and the chest, now oiled and shining, seemed to gather all the light to itself. Mr. Baker had done a marvelous job and the two new panels he had carved himself were scarcely distinguishable from the original work. I did not try to distinguish them since Mr. Baker and the first craftsman were one man in my mind. I tried hard to thank him but it was difficult to find the words.

  Something touched me and again it was the elbow of the child Joshua. He had nothing to show me this time, he just wanted to smile at me. But I realized I had something to show him, and leaving the other two talking I took his hand and led him into the parlor. Lady Royston’s gift of the blue glass tea set gave me the idea of making a collection of tiny treasures and I have quite a number of them now, under a glass case on a table in the parlor window. People have found out about my collection and they bring me things for it. Doctor Partridge brings me something whenever I am ill and I am sorry now that I said he did not know much about sick people, for he knows they like presents. I showed my little things to Joshua and watched his face and I think my enjoyment of his face just about matched his enjoyment of my little things. I gave him one of them, a dwarf with a red cap. He held it in his hand for a moment or two and then shook his head and gave it back. I understood how he felt, that it belonged here with the others. To take one away was like taking a jewel out of a crown.