The Forbidden Path

by Jean Chapman

  ‘And what about driving a steam-engine through a crowd?’ Sam’s answer brought a louder and firmer cry of agreement.

  ‘What would you do if your sons were being beaten up by a crowd of… .’ Belle’s shout was cut short as her father bounded forward.

  ‘Be silent, girl!’ he ordered, and she winced involuntarily as he gripped her arm.

  ‘Leave her alone.’ Cato grabbed her father’s shoulder and pulled him away. ‘Keep your hands off her!’

  ‘My hands’ll never hurt my own daughter.’ Sam’s voice shook with rage, and he raised his stick at Cato’s head. ‘You keep your hands off her, or else… .’

  Belle made a move to come between them, but Cato moved quicker. ‘You can put your stick down,’ he said, but his hand was on the stick and he twisted it from her father’s grasp with one deft movement, then presented it back to him, adding, ‘I’m much too afraid to risk my own skin.’ She supposed she was the only one who made any sense of his remark and his action. Her accusation of being a coward was obviously not going to be easily forgotten. There was some uncertain laughter as Cato again made nonsense of his own words by walking straight towards the Langton brothers, who stood in front of the steam-engine, each having armed himself again with sticks or fencing staves. Cato looked up at his father and made a spinning motion of his hand, indicating that the engine should be turned round and taken back to its stand.

  For one final moment it seemed there was to be a further confrontation as not only did the cousins stand their ground, but Mordichi Evans and his sons fell in behind their employer’s son. Cato, although unaware he had reserves at his elbow, strode forward as if eager to deal further with his opponents. At the last second the Langtons stepped aside before his advance, and Cato strode through. Now totally in charge of the situation, he waved the crowd back to give room for the engine to manoeuvre.

  Belle watched, waiting for him to give some acknowledgement of her support, some sign that a bond still existed between them, but he never glanced in her direction again. He seemed as obdurate as the relentless Progress of the Abbotts’ engine had been. She could hardly believe this was the same man she had held so close, kissed, laughed with and made promises to less than an hour before. There was a pride in this man – which she had injured seriously. She had a lot to learn about Cato Abbott, and she knew it was she who must make the next advance in their relationship.

  But her mind was not allowed to dwell on this kind of speculation, as her father, white with anger, turned again to her and her mother.

  ‘Get her home!’ he ordered. ‘I’ll come later with the boys.’

  Her cousins had come crowding around, full of blustering intentions of settling the score some other time,

  ‘I’ve a better idea,’ Sam said briefly. ‘I’ll put them out of business. I’ll see they get precious little work for their infernal machines in this area.’

  ‘Sam… .’ The plea for reason in his wife’s tone only enraged him more. He rounded on her like a vicious dog. ‘I’ll do as I say - and she’ll go back with her aunt,’ he said. ‘She’s always wanted a daughter. She can have mine.’

  Belle saw the expression of dismay on her mother’s face, and the look of sneering amusement on Ben’s. ‘Mother’ll be glad to have her,’ Ben said, his voice barely disguising the pleasure he would take in humiliating her, as he added, ‘Mother has a terrible time keeping up with mending our trousers and socks.’

  For the first time in her life, Belle did not fly at him, but had sense enough to realise that hasty retaliation would not achieve anything. She lowered her eyes so no one should see the rebellion that blazed there.

  8

  The shivering that overcame Belle in the pony-trap on her way home was easy to sustain. Her mother and Aunt Lucy were both equally shocked by the fight - and more so by Belle’s near accident. News of the trouble had reached the town shops with great speed and brought the sisters hurrying back to the market; Lucy was quite sure her sons would be involved.

  Neither of them were surprised when Belle agreed to be put straight to bed. The shivers became fully fledged shudders as she thought of her father, of his outrage at seeing her on the engine with Cato, John and Joe Abbott. ‘It’s shock,’ Aunt Lucy said. ‘Make her sip a little brandy.’

  It was late when Belle heard her father come home with his nephews. She could hear the buzz of conversation, sometimes heated, then she could single out Ben’s voice raised as if trying to give an opinion, only to be quickly put in order by his father. Then it sounded as if the three sons were ordered up to bed. A moment later there was a soft tap on her door and Ben’s voice whispered: ‘Coming to mend my trousers, are you, Belle?’

  ‘Not unless you take me on a stretcher, I’m not,’ she silently mouthed, anger stilling her shaking limbs. Later she heard her father’s footsteps outside her door. He paused. She closed her eyes but he passed on. Her mother came with more brandy, honey and hot water. ‘How do you feel now?’ she asked.

  ‘I can’t stop shaking,’ she answered, teeth chattering busily - but the nightmare she woke the house with later in the night was real enough. She was roused by her father shaking her, and at first his blue-shadowed jowl, his hair awry, his crumpled flannel night-shirt, seemed all part of her nightmare. In the dream he had played the part of driver of a steam-roller that trundled back and forward, knocking down a house, a special, beautiful place, newly completed. She screamed at him to stop. She still screamed, as he tried to calm and to cradle her. It was her mother’s voice that finally penetrated the turmoil of her mind, and her mother’s arms she found around her as she came to full wakefulness.

  The event seemed to confirm belief in her semi-invalid state, and she was left to rest and recuperate on the Saturday, but by Sunday teatime there was a decision to be made. Her uncle Horace wanted to travel back to his farm the following morning as planned, and her aunt Lucy was very willing to take her niece back for a prolonged stay. ‘A girl in the house’ll be a pleasant change for me over the long winter.’ Her mother felt Belle’s head and diagnosed no temperature, and Belle gleaned from her manner that she thought it might be quite a good idea with her daughter to be ‘out of harm’s way’ for a bit. The two sisters left her room discussing the length of the train journey, ending with her aunt saying, ‘Well, I shall have four strong men with me, even if she was taken worse and had to be carried… .’

  Belle lay seething and rebellious as she heard someone else coming to her door. She was about to take up more aggressive opposition, when she saw it was her father who stood in the doorway. She sank back on her pillows and turned her head away. He came to the bed and stood for a time silently looking down at her.

  ‘Are you trying to hurt me as much as you can?’ he asked. ‘Always on the side of others, never mine… .’

  She turned to look at him, her eyes wide with surprise. It had never occurred to her that he might want her on his side. No, she thought, what he really means is give up what I want, for what he wants for me. She turned her head away again.

  ‘Belle, are you still feeling ill?’ he asked. ‘I know you had a fright, and I’m sorry for that, but… .’

  She turned sharply back to him. ‘Dadda,’ for the first time in many years she used the diminutive, ‘please don’t send me back with Aunt Lucy. I couldn’t bear it, not Ben anyway… please let me stay at home with you and Mother.’

  He was very still, very solemn, looking down at her as if calculating her sincerity. Her panic at the thought of being incarceratd with her cousins, possibly for the whole of the coming winter, was genuine. She stretched up her arms to him, and her spontaneous appeal betrayed him into an unconscious act of affection. He sat down quickly on the edge of the bed and held her, as he had tried to do the night before, but now she clung to him willingly.

  She would have kissed his cheek, but he imposed a formality even on their embrace by keeping himself very upright and his face beyond her reach. This loss of unselfconscious joy in each other
had been part of her growing up. As soon as their games together had become boisterous her mother had reminded them that ‘she was a young lady now’. The going away to the city school at thirteen had imposed the final reserve and shown them both that the heights and depths of emotion, of joy or unhappiness, were the only registers they were capable of meeting on; the moderate, middle scale was really in neither of their natures.

  ‘Will you promise to be a good girl, keep right away from all those at Glebe Farm?’

  Her hands slid from his waist to the bedcover, her eyes lowered, shuttered against self-betrayal. He was not an unkind man, but in recent years, particularly since her brother had been killed, he had become more and more unapproachable, more locked up inside himself. He repeated his question.

  ‘I will, Dadda,’ she answered, soft as a promise should be, and knowing a lie was the only answer she could give.

  ‘Very well.’ His answer was curt, as if she had given a negative answer, and he stood up abruptly. ‘Your mother can take you up to your aunt’s later, when you feel yourself again.’

  She had hoped for more than a mere remission, and would not dare to get up until after the Langtons had left on Monday morning. She began, however, to compose a note to leave for Cato, turning phrases over in her mind. She would take the note to the well, as they had planned, but she frowned and bit her lip wondering if Cato would even look there — after the way they parted.

  She was still pondering this problem when she heard a stealthy noise on the landing. The next moment her door opened and Ben, Alf and Duggie slid quietly in, shutting the door, crowding the room. ‘Get out of my bedroom!’ She shot upright in bed, adding furiously, ‘Or I’ll scream.’

  ‘Just wanted to tell you, that you may be able to fool your dear dadda, but we’ll be waiting for you up in Derbyshire with lots of little tasks to fill your lonely hours.’ Ben’s tone changed to one of threat. ‘And to warn your friends the Abbotts that they’d better watch their step!’ The two younger brothers guffawed, but he silenced them with an impatient sweep of his hand.

  ‘Fortunately you won’t be here to make that necessary!’ Belle retorted

  ‘No. We won’t need to be.’ Ben’s voice was glib, full of self-satisfaction. ‘Be seeing you, cousin dear.’

  They left the room, and although she wondered what they could have been up to, she did not have to see them again. Only her aunt and uncle came to bid her goodbye.

  ‘We’ll say goodbye, just for now then,’ Aunt Lucy said, fussing.

  ‘Our farm’s no place for a young lass in the winter months,’ her uncle Horace said bluntly. ‘You stay put until spring.’ She was surprised by the remark. Bluff he might be, but he was neither blind nor stupid. She smiled her thanks. If she did ever have to go to Derbyshire he might be a useful buffer between herself and his sons.

  Once her father had left to drive them all to the city railway station, Belle listened hard for the moment her mother might be out of the kitchen, and she could creep down for a sheet of writing-paper. But her mother seemed to be taking her time about going out, then to her annoyance, Belle heard her coming up the stairs.

  ‘I have to go to the village, the cupboard’s nearly bare after feeding those boys, and I need more soap before I can do the washing… .’

  ‘They didn’t use all that,’ Belle retorted, and Mabel had to raise her eyebrows, in agreement. ‘They do want a few pence worth of manners and good habits, that’s for sure! How my Aunt Lucy copes I’ll never know.

  ‘I’ll not be long,’ Mabel told her, ‘and I want to go this morning because Ambrose says we’re finally going to have a good thunderstorm. The drought has ended up north and the newspapers say they have had terrific storms in Scotland, landslides, great boulders in the streets, houses struck by lightning, all kinds of damage.’

  ‘It’s so close in here,’ Belle said, ‘I’ll probably get up for a little while.’

  You feel better, then?’ Mabel regarded her daughter with raised eyebrows. ‘Well, make no mistake now, your father intends you to go up to Derbyshire if you put one glance in the direction of Glebe Farm, so think on, and no nonsense. I’ve certainly no wish to be spending more time in the company of those great lads just yet awhile! Once a year is plenty.’

  She left, and now Belle could not contain herself to stay to compose letters, she must up, dress and be off to Levi’s cottage. There might, after all, be a letter waiting for her. She took a pencil, a sheet of paper from the farm pad, rolled it into her pocket and was away. She saw Ambrose finishing the cleaning-out in the dairy. He touched his cap to her: ‘You’m all right now, miss?’ he asked. ‘Yes, thank you,’ she answered. ‘Rare old set to, that were, and no mistake. Reckon them cousins of yourn like a fight!’

  ‘They cause trouble,’ she answered briefly and walked on.

  The air was stifling, energy sapping, but today the sky had ominous dark tones on the far horizon. There might indeed be a storm, but not, she thought, until late on in the afternoon, for as yet not the slightest breath of wind told of any immediate change.

  If only Cato could know she was so near his land, she thought, and that both her parents were safely out of the way. She neared Levi’s cottage with growing excitement. She thought it unlikely Levi would be anywhere near. He would be busy with the horses somewhere, even though the ploughing was having to wait until rain finally came to soften the rock-hard ground. She moved towards the well-head, a thrill of anticipation tickling under her rib-cage, then went slowly round (as if pacing a spell, willing a letter to be there) to where the broken tree pointed the place designated below the thatch. She stooped to peer between the well’s roof. There was a natural hiding place, a fissure in the straw. Cautiously she slipped her fingers into it, anticipating the edge of notepaper or envelope - but there was nothing.

  She sighed, and resigned herself to composing some kind of apology for that rashly spoken word. Did it hurt a man so much to be called a coward? Then she recalled the white feathers zealous women had given to the men they thought should have joined the forces at the beginning of the war. Quite a few of the older girls at her school had embarked on their own campaign of indictment. She had not understood their rejoicing when the youth, or man, so endowed with the badge of cowardice finally threw caution, or principles, to the wind and volunteered. She had felt then what fools the men were to be influenced by a group of beribboned schoolgirls - and now she realised how insolently disrespectful and hurtful the general damning had been. Sitting down on the bench near Levi’s front door, she leaned carefully over so that her mouth was near the bench and spat several times until she had a sizeable bubble. Then, dipping her indelible pencil into it, she began slowly. Apologies did not come easily to Belle.

  Dear Cato,

  This is to say that I am sorry for being a nuisance at the fair, and for saying what I did say. I was worried what might happen to your brother from the hands of my cousins.

  I hope you find it in your heart to forgive me, and remember our walk, the wedding, and afterwards. When can we meet? And where?

  With love from, Belle

  She rolled the note and tied it round and round with the ribbon, ending in a neat bow. Then she took it and pushed it just out of sight in the well’s thatch.

  There was a sudden flurry of wind, and the sky seemed darker now. She knew she should hurry, but the puzzle of where she and Cato could possibly meet in safety distracted her from the coming storm - and from the wisdom of going back to her role of semi-invalid before either of her parents should arrive home.

  Belle wandered disconsolately towards the path. Surely when their lands joined it should not be so difficult to meet! In the distance she heard the first deep rumble of thunder, a long, warning premise. Then like a short sharp answer came two gunshots nearby, and in the trees away to her left, on the Abbott land, she heard the slapping fall of a bird. Without further thought she climbed a gate, walked along the path and passed the place where the burnt remains of hedge and
blackened stumps of trees told the extent of the fire. She stopped, hearing the crack of twigs as someone went to retrieve what they had shot. The sounds were becoming louder; the man was coming her way.

  Her heart jumped as she saw it was Cato, holding a brace of pheasants but carrying no gun. Was he with his brother, or his father, she wondered. He had not seen her. She called and he hesitated, surprised, seeming to come only reluctantly, standing stiff-backed, stiff-necked and silent.

  ‘That was clever,’ she greeted him light-heartedly, the merest tremor in her voice betraying the certain anxiety she felt at this first meeting after the turmoil of the market place.

  ‘What was?’ he asked.

  ‘Shooting those without a gun.’

  ‘Hmm! Someone is shooting game here as shouldn’t be,’ he said, laying the birds down. ‘I hope it’s no one from your place.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be!’ she said defensively.

  ‘No, perhaps not. Birds would hardly be in your father’s line.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He likes more dangerous play, prefers to put people’s lives at risk, not just things for the pot.’ There was an intractability about Cato that she had not expected, she wanted to renew the mood of their moments in the old priory grounds, or in the ringing-chamber, but the conversation was all going wrong.

  ‘That’s silly talk,’ she said. ‘He… cares for his own, that’s all.’

  ‘He has a mighty strange way of showing it. Risking you being maimed for life.. ’

  ‘He didn’t make me jump!’

  ‘Didn’t he?’ Cato sounded hard and angry. ‘I would say that was just what he did do. Keeping us apart seems important enough for him to lay your life, or his own, on the line. I didn’t realise we were playing in that kind of league. Keep off or be killed!’

  ‘He cares too much about me, that’s all,’ she asserted, and was surprised to know that she spoke the truth. The weakness in her father, which she had always before been able to exploit, now seemed to be raising an impregnable barrier between herself and this man. A man she knew with every deep instinct, by every match of chemistry that nature, instinct or love demanded, was hers.