by Saki
THE COBWEB
The farmhouse kitchen probably stood where it did as a matter of accidentor haphazard choice; yet its situation might have been planned by amaster-strategist in farmhouse architecture. Dairy and poultry-yard, andherb garden, and all the busy places of the farm seemed to lead by easyaccess into its wide flagged haven, where there was room for everythingand where muddy boots left traces that were easily swept away. And yet,for all that it stood so well in the centre of human bustle, its long,latticed window, with the wide window-seat, built into an embrasurebeyond the huge fireplace, looked out on a wild spreading view of hilland heather and wooded combe. The window nook made almost a little roomin itself, quite the pleasantest room in the farm as far as situation andcapabilities went. Young Mrs. Ladbruk, whose husband had just come intothe farm by way of inheritance, cast covetous eyes on this snug corner,and her fingers itched to make it bright and cosy with chintz curtainsand bowls of flowers, and a shelf or two of old china. The musty farmparlour, looking out on to a prim, cheerless garden imprisoned withinhigh, blank walls, was not a room that lent itself readily either tocomfort or decoration.
“When we are more settled I shall work wonders in the way of making thekitchen habitable,” said the young woman to her occasional visitors.There was an unspoken wish in those words, a wish which was unconfessedas well as unspoken. Emma Ladbruk was the mistress of the farm; jointlywith her husband she might have her say, and to a certain extent her way,in ordering its affairs. But she was not mistress of the kitchen.
On one of the shelves of an old dresser, in company with chippedsauce-boats, pewter jugs, cheese-graters, and paid bills, rested a wornand ragged Bible, on whose front page was the record, in faded ink, of abaptism dated ninety-four years ago. “Martha Crale” was the name writtenon that yellow page. The yellow, wrinkled old dame who hobbled andmuttered about the kitchen, looking like a dead autumn leaf which thewinter winds still pushed hither and thither, had once been Martha Crale;for seventy odd years she had been Martha Mountjoy. For longer thananyone could remember she had pattered to and fro between oven andwash-house and dairy, and out to chicken-run and garden, grumbling andmuttering and scolding, but working unceasingly. Emma Ladbruk, of whosecoming she took as little notice as she would of a bee wandering in at awindow on a summer’s day, used at first to watch her with a kind offrightened curiosity. She was so old and so much a part of the place, itwas difficult to think of her exactly as a living thing. Old Shep, thewhite-nozzled, stiff-limbed collie, waiting for his time to die, seemedalmost more human than the withered, dried-up old woman. He had been ariotous, roystering puppy, mad with the joy of life, when she was alreadya tottering, hobbling dame; now he was just a blind, breathing carcase,nothing more, and she still worked with frail energy, still swept andbaked and washed, fetched and carried. If there were something in thesewise old dogs that did not perish utterly with death, Emma used to thinkto herself, what generations of ghost-dogs there must be out on thosehills, that Martha had reared and fed and tended and spoken a lastgood-bye word to in that old kitchen. And what memories she must have ofhuman generations that had passed away in her time. It was difficult foranyone, let alone a stranger like Emma, to get her to talk of the daysthat had been; her shrill, quavering speech was of doors that had beenleft unfastened, pails that had got mislaid, calves whose feeding-timewas overdue, and the various little faults and lapses that chequer afarmhouse routine. Now and again, when election time came round, shewould unstore her recollections of the old names round which the fighthad waged in the days gone by. There had been a Palmerston, that hadbeen a name down Tiverton way; Tiverton was not a far journey as the crowflies, but to Martha it was almost a foreign country. Later there hadbeen Northcotes and Aclands, and many other newer names that she hadforgotten; the names changed, but it was always Libruls and Toories,Yellows and Blues. And they always quarrelled and shouted as to who wasright and who was wrong. The one they quarrelled about most was a fineold gentleman with an angry face—she had seen his picture on the walls.She had seen it on the floor too, with a rotten apple squashed over it,for the farm had changed its politics from time to time. Martha hadnever been on one side or the other; none of “they” had ever done thefarm a stroke of good. Such was her sweeping verdict, given with all apeasant’s distrust of the outside world.
When the half-frightened curiosity had somewhat faded away, Emma Ladbrukwas uncomfortably conscious of another feeling towards the old woman.She was a quaint old tradition, lingering about the place, she was partand parcel of the farm itself, she was something at once pathetic andpicturesque—but she was dreadfully in the way. Emma had come to the farmfull of plans for little reforms and improvements, in part the result oftraining in the newest ways and methods, in part the outcome of her ownideas and fancies. Reforms in the kitchen region, if those deaf old earscould have been induced to give them even a hearing, would have met withshort shrift and scornful rejection, and the kitchen region spread overthe zone of dairy and market business and half the work of the household.Emma, with the latest science of dead-poultry dressing at herfinger-tips, sat by, an unheeded watcher, while old Martha trussed thechickens for the market-stall as she had trussed them for nearlyfourscore years—all leg and no breast. And the hundred hints anenteffective cleaning and labour-lightening and the things that make forwholesomeness which the young woman was ready to impart or to put intoaction dropped away into nothingness before that wan, muttering,unheeding presence. Above all, the coveted window corner, that was to bea dainty, cheerful oasis in the gaunt old kitchen, stood now choked andlumbered with a litter of odds and ends that Emma, for all her nominalauthority, would not have dared or cared to displace; over them seemed tobe spun the protection of something that was like a human cobweb.Decidedly Martha was in the way. It would have been an unworthy meannessto have wished to see the span of that brave old life shortened by a fewpaltry months, but as the days sped by Emma was conscious that the wishwas there, disowned though it might be, lurking at the back of her mind.
She felt the meanness of the wish come over her with a qualm ofself-reproach one day when she came into the kitchen and found anunaccustomed state of things in that usually busy quarter. Old Marthawas not working. A basket of corn was on the floor by her side, and outin the yard the poultry were beginning to clamour a protest of overduefeeding-time. But Martha sat huddled in a shrunken bunch on the windowseat, looking out with her dim old eyes as though she saw somethingstranger than the autumn landscape.
“Is anything the matter, Martha?” asked the young woman.
“’Tis death, ’tis death a-coming,” answered the quavering voice; “I knew’twere coming. I knew it. ’Tweren’t for nothing that old Shep’s beenhowling all morning. An’ last night I heard the screech-owl give thedeath-cry, and there were something white as run across the yardyesterday; ’tweren’t a cat nor a stoat, ’twere something. The fowls knew’twere something; they all drew off to one side. Ay, there’s beenwarnings. I knew it were a-coming.”
The young woman’s eyes clouded with pity. The old thing sitting there sowhite and shrunken had once been a merry, noisy child, playing about inlanes and hay-lofts and farmhouse garrets; that had been eighty odd yearsago, and now she was just a frail old body cowering under the approachingchill of the death that was coming at last to take her. It was notprobable that much could be done for her, but Emma hastened away to getassistance and counsel. Her husband, she knew, was down at atree-felling some little distance off, but she might find some otherintelligent soul who knew the old woman better than she did. The farm,she soon found out, had that faculty common to farmyards of swallowing upand losing its human population. The poultry followed her in interestedfashion, and swine grunted interrogations at her from behind the bars oftheir styes, but barnyard and rickyard, orchard and stables and dairy,gave no reward to her search. Then, as she retraced her steps towardsthe kitchen, she came suddenly on her cousin, young Mr. Jim, as every onecalled him, wh
o divided his time between amateur horse-dealing,rabbit-shooting, and flirting with the farm maids.
“I’m afraid old Martha is dying,” said Emma. Jim was not the sort ofperson to whom one had to break news gently.
“Nonsense,” he said; “Martha means to live to a hundred. She told me so,and she’ll do it.”
“She may be actually dying at this moment, or it may just be thebeginning of the break-up,” persisted Emma, with a feeling of contemptfor the slowness and dulness of the young man.
A grin spread over his good-natured features.
“It don’t look like it,” he said, nodding towards the yard. Emma turnedto catch the meaning of his remark. Old Martha stood in the middle of amob of poultry scattering handfuls of grain around her. The turkey-cock,with the bronzed sheen of his feathers and the purple-red of his wattles,the gamecock, with the glowing metallic lustre of his Eastern plumage,the hens, with their ochres and buffs and umbers and their scarlet combs,and the drakes, with their bottle-green heads, made a medley of richcolour, in the centre of which the old woman looked like a withered stalkstanding amid a riotous growth of gaily-hued flowers. But she threw thegrain deftly amid the wilderness of beaks, and her quavering voicecarried as far as the two people who were watching her. She was stillharping on the theme of death coming to the farm.
“I knew ’twere a-coming. There’s been signs an’ warnings.”
“Who’s dead, then, old Mother?” called out the young man.
“’Tis young Mister Ladbruk,” she shrilled back; “they’ve just a-carriedhis body in. Run out of the way of a tree that was coming down an’ ranhisself on to an iron post. Dead when they picked un up. Aye, I knew’twere coming.”
And she turned to fling a handful of barley at a belated group ofguinea-fowl that came racing toward her.
* * * * *
The farm was a family property, and passed to the rabbit-shooting cousinas the next-of-kin. Emma Ladbruk drifted out of its history as a beethat had wandered in at an open window might flit its way out again. Ona cold grey morning she stood waiting, with her boxes already stowed inthe farm cart, till the last of the market produce should be ready, forthe train she was to catch was of less importance than the chickens andbutter and eggs that were to be offered for sale. From where she stoodshe could see an angle of the long latticed window that was to have beencosy with curtains and gay with bowls of flowers. Into her mind came thethought that for months, perhaps for years, long after she had beenutterly forgotten, a white, unheeding face would be seen peering outthrough those latticed panes, and a weak muttering voice would be heardquavering up and down those flagged passages. She made her way to anarrow barred casement that opened into the farm larder. Old Martha wasstanding at a table trussing a pair of chickens for the market stall asshe had trussed them for nearly fourscore years.