“That’s so. You found me—trespassing.”
“We all do that—at times. As a matter of fact I was coming down to see you.”
He was conscious of making inward comments upon the face of the man below, though, had these comments been translated into words, they would have been Erse or double-Dutch to the farmer. The sunlight was shining obliquely across his face. One cheek was in the light, the other in shadow. The teeth seemed to show as a hard white streak below the slit-like eyes. Sinister was the adjective that Luce used to himself.
“It was about my daily supply of milk and eggs. But won’t you come up, Mr. Ballard?”
“I’ve got a suggestion to make, Mr.——”
“Luce is my name.”
“Between neighbours, Mr. Luce.”
What was at the back of that hard, drink-raddled face? Luce had put on gloves of velvet.
“Come up, Mr. Ballard. You might like a drink?”
“That’s an idea, sir.”
Luce watched Ballard limp away round the base of the tower. He realized that he himself was putting on his coat. Why put on a coat? As a symbol of concealment? And he had that note in his trouser pocket. Had Ballard discovered that two quite innocent people had been swapping milk-jugs, and was the fellow playing Agag? If so, what an absurd predicament! Luce felt hot and a little angry. And then, suddenly, he remembered that confounded milk-jug. Supposing Ballard saw it and recognized it? Idiot! Obviously, he was not built for this sort of backstairs business, and feeling ridiculously guilty and resenting the shabbiness of it, he grabbed the jug, and put it away in his cupboard.
Footsteps upon stone, the faint creaking of a hinge, his own voice sounding breezy and swelling, a social service voice.
“Come in, Mr. Ballard.”
Ballard came in with that limping movement and a smirk that seemed to slide obliquely across his face. He pulled off his hat and showed the tenuous hair of a big, flat head that was going bald.
“Funny old place, this.”
“It suits me,” said Luce; “what can I give you? A little whisky? Sit down, Mr. Ballard.”
“Yes, just a spot of whisky, thanks.”
Ballard sat down and put his dirty hat on the table. It was not the sort of hat that a fastidious person would welcome in such a situation, but Luce had nothing to say on the matter. His concern was to find out what the fellow wanted. In opening the cupboard to collect the whisky bottle and two glasses, he exposed that jug to view, but his large body was interposed between it and his visitor.
“Afraid I haven’t any soda-water in stock.”
“Never mind the soda, Mr. Luce.”
Luce pushed the cupboard door to with an elbow, and set glasses and bottle on the table.
“Just back from town—on business.”
He proceeded to pour whisky into a glass, and since Ballard failed to produce any conventional suggestion as to the size of the drink, it was limited by Luce’s discretion. Let the fellow have a large one. He passed Ballard the glass, and reached for the water-jug which happened to live on the mantelpiece.
Ballard added an equal quantity of water to the whisky.
“Here’s to you, sir.—Well, as a matter of fact, I’m here on business.”
“O,” said Luce with a sudden stare, helping himself to whisky.
And what was Ballard’s business? Luce took himself and his glass to the window and balanced himself on the sill. Could there be any possible communion between the owner of that foul hat and the woman with the frightened eyes? He found himself listening to Ballard’s voice, a voice that had made itself glib and genial. And why, when he was not drinking, did Ballard cover the mouth of his glass with a flat right hand, as though someone might take a surreptitious pull at his liquor? But, from Luce’s point of view Ballard’s business was more curious and grotesque than the way he sat sheltering his whisky. Ballard was explaining that he had been obliged to sack one of his men, and the fellow was refusing to relinquish his cottage. Meanwhile, he was engaging another hand, but had no accommodation for him. The man was married, but without children, and would Luce consider letting the labourer occupy the annexe of the tower? It would be a temporary arrangement, but why should it not prove mutually helpful? The man’s wife was a decent body, and Luce might find her useful.
So, that was it! Luce felt both relieved and amused. He smiled at his visitor.
“I’m afraid that’s not feasible, Mr. Ballard.”
“You want the whole place?”
“I’m afraid I do.”
He found himself watching the other man’s eyes. They were eyes that retained an angry look even when he smiled.
“But you can’t need the whole damned place, Mr. Luce?”
“Solitude, Mr. Ballard. That’s why I came here. You see——”
“You won’t help a neighbour.”
“I don’t think you quite understand.”
Ballard put his glass on the table, reached for his hat, and stood up. His face had lost any assumption of friendliness, and to Luce it was the face of a man who was not quite sane, and whose temper was so little under control that it broke loose under the smallest provocation. The skin over his cheekbones looked tight and flushed. He clapped that foul hat on his head. His slits of eyes shot sharp, satirical glances round the room as though searching for some object that would shape with his conclusions.
“Well, that’s that, Mr. Luce! I take it you’ve got your own reasons for wanting to be private.”
Luce, perched on the window-sill, watched Ballard as he might have watched some unpleasant animal.
“Quite so. You can hardly expect me to explain——”
Ballard whipped an insolent smirk at him.
“Cut it out, Mr. Luce. I’m not a bloody fool. I’m not butting in on a petticoat show.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Cut it out, man, cut it out.”
He jerked himself round, limped to the door, and then faced about. His mouth looked crooked as he laughed.
“But if a man won’t meet me—I don’t meet him. You’ll have to go to the village shop for the lady’s milk and eggs.”
Luce sat quite still.
“I think you had better get out, Mr. Ballard.”
“I’m going, sir, don’t you worry.”
Luce stared at the closing door. So, the fellow had assumed that his solitude must be sacred to sex, and that he had a woman tucked away here.
Damned, smutty, malapert brute!
3
She heard him shouting at the dog.
“Come here, you bloody little beast!”
She was at the window in time to see a brown shape scurrying for the farm buildings, with half a brick bouncing behind it. Her pallor seemed to deepen. She pushed the casement open and dared to flout him.
“Tod!”
He turned on her. He was just beyond the garden wall.
“Hallo! What’s the matter with you?”
“I won’t have my dog——”
“O, won’t you? Bloody, useless brute. Seven and a tanner for that! You shut your silly mouth.”
She shut the window. Her impulse was to follow the dog, and to comfort him. Oh, if she could only run away. Why should she have to suffer this brutal bullying, this perpetual humiliation? But she had no money of her own, and even when she needed new shoes he would hand her out a pound note, and she had to produce a bill to him and account for the change. What was it that made a man cruel? She could understand worry and overwork and poverty making him bitter, but that he should find pleasure in being cruel was to her—incomprehensible.
Yes, she would go and reassure poor Peter. Probably she would find him crouching in some dark corner, for this was not the first time that she had had to rescue the dog; in fact she knew that he would remain in hiding until he heard her calling him. Her husband had disappeared, and she was letting herself out by the garden door when she heard his sudden voice behind her.
“Wait a minute, wil
l you.”
He had come in by the back door, and she stood with face averted.
“Yes, Tod.”
“If that fellow who’s taken the old tower should come down for milk or eggs, slam the door in his face, see.”
She was conscious of holding her breath. Was this part of his cruelty? Had he been watching them, and was he just playing with her?
“Yes, Tod. But—what—is he like?”
“Big, a lot of hair, blue eyes. Talks like a gent from Oxford. I’ve just had a few words with him.”
“Have you?”
“I thought he might let me a couple of rooms for the new chap. Not he. Talked about—privacy. Damned fool. I wasn’t going to let the fellow do the high and mighty with me.”
“No, Tod.”
“Privacy! I pulled his bluff. He has a woman up there, that’s why he’s so—exclusive. I told him so.”
“Did you, Tod?”
“You should have seen his face.—Well, you slam the door on him if he comes down here.”
“But he won’t, Tod, will he, now?”
“I should say not. That’s all. Where are you going?”
“After the eggs.”
“Do you go after eggs without a basket? Don’t lie to me. Do you understand. It’s that damned dog, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“All right. You are as big a fool as the dog. I’m taking the gun out.”
She fled, carrying her secret shame with her, and the core of that shame was her fear of him. Cowardice! Why should she be such a contemptible coward, and shake at the knees when he shouted at her? The humiliation of it! He despised her, and she was beginning to despise herself. She had not dared to answer him back, even to confess that she knew Mr. Luce by sight. She had stood there quaking, expecting him to accuse her of having tried to fool him. And he had been to the tower; he had made a scene. And what did her new friend think? Well, that was all over. She need not expect him to come down again to the sandpit.
Living there with a woman? She did not believe it. But how pleasant for a man like the tenant of the tower to have the vulgar gibe thrown in his face. Her husband seemed to leave smeary marks upon everything that he touched.
She found herself in the rick-yard, calling softly to the dog.
“Peter, Peter, it’s all right.”
With a little inward pang she realized that she had nothing but the dog.
4
It was a source of wonder to John Luce that man had the stars and the trees to look at, and that modern man looked at neither, and was like a blind beggar squatting against a wall, asking alms of Fate. He could remember an occasion when he had taken a city lad out for a day’s ramble, and had discovered that trees were no more than bunches of green wool to this urban mind. They had all looked alike to the lad, and when Luce had tried to teach him to distinguish them, he had found—to his astonishment—that his companion could not appreciate the differences. But to Luce trees were intimate, individual creatures, prone to moods like man. You had to stand against the trunk of a tree and look up into the great heart of it to feel and know that tree. It might speak to you with different voices on different days.
It was so on this day in May. He had been watching a big beech in the Brandon woods, for the swelling buds of it had puzzled him. He had always thought of beech buds as pale and pointed spurs, and on the side towards the south the buds of this particular tree were more like green-gold beads. On this evening, going down into the woods after the ugliness of Ballard, he found that two warm days had solved this sylvan problem for him. Those swelling buds had opened to display a multitude of pollened flowers, and as he stood looking at them he was moved to exclaim—“How silly of me! Why didn’t I think of that before?”
A little breeze came and stirred the young leaves, and the great tree seemed to laugh.
“Yes, how foolish of you, my friend. But last year’s hot summer persuaded me to all this fruitfulness. Look for the woman in me—too. Can you find her? And if you come to me later I will show you all my little boxes with their three seeds inside. Besides, there are other marvels, other moods.”
Inevitably so. Was it the association of ideas? This beech tree, that other beech tree by the gate of Ballard’s farm, Ballard’s wife. What an unlovely fate for a sensitive creature to be linked to a thing like Ballard! Well, the problem of his daily milk supply had been solved for him. Was he sorry? Sorry?
He was leaning against the trunk of the tree, and all about stretched a great greenness, solitude. He had desired this solitude, and now that it was his, he had a most strange feeling as of some other presence permeating it. A pale face, dark eyes, the sound of weeping. But how sentimental and foolish of him!
Was he thinking too much of a particular woman? But, he had not been thinking about her.—Was that true? Had not some other self crept almost imperceptibly into this green world, as though to share it with him? Out of the rib of circumstance had the Unknown God created Eve?
What nonsense!
He broke off two or three flowering sprays of beech foliage, and with a last upward look at the tree, turned homewards. The woods were steeped in silence and in evening sunlight. And there, just where the path broke out into a patch of heathland, he met her.
5
She had her dog with her, and when Luce had looked at her face, he gave his attention to the dog. She did not want to be looked at too closely.
“Hallo, old fellow.”
The dog was as shy as his mistress. Experience had not persuaded him to feel friendly towards anything strange in trousers. He stood bristling, looking up with bright brown eyes into Luce’s face. He growled.
“Peter!”
But Luce had a way with dogs. An animal can be as sensitive as a human, and Luce stood quite still, smiling at Peter. The dog’s eyes remained fixed on his face, and when Luce spoke to him again, there was a little movement of the stumpy tail.
“Well, have you had a good look at me, Peter? Now try—a smell.”
He put a hand down, and deliberately the dog sniffed it, looked up into Luce’s face with eyes that had lost their mistrust. Luce fondled the dog. His large hands were very gentle.
She was watching them. She had understood his quickness in turning to the dog, and was grateful to him for it. She was trying to say something to him.
“I’m so sorry, so—ashamed.”
He was bending down, with the dog’s head between his hands. He might not have heard her, but she was wise as to his silence.
“No more growls, my lad. Please don’t apologize to me, Mrs. Ballard. I don’t take—things—to heart.”
He straightened up and looked at her.
“I’m afraid you——”
He saw her lips quiver. It was her turn to hide her face from him, and to bend down and caress the dog.
“Please don’t think. One shouldn’t—talk about some things. But, you—will—understand?”
“Of course. I understand, my dear.”
He was smiling at her. She raised her head for a moment, looked at him with a kind of blind strangeness, and turned to go.
“Thank you.”
And with the dog at her side he saw her take the path towards the pinewoods. She did not pause or look back, but seemed to hurry like one who was not sure of her strength. Luce’s blue eyes stared. What on earth had made him call her “My dear”?
VII
Thunder in the air.
Luce had carried a deck chair up to the leads to watch the coming of the storm. Half the sky was still blue, but cutting across it was the black cloud canopy like a vast and movable ceiling being slid across the welkin. Little grey shreds of vapour trailed above. There was a great stillness, a feeling of suspense. The trees, with their green hoods drawn, seemed to stand breathless and expectant.
Over yonder the sun still shone on a landscape that was as vivid as a piece of paradise, green fields, green woods bathed in a golden glow. On the other horizon, blackness, rumblings, a kin
d of twilight. Thunder in May. He could remember being taken as a boy to see Irving play in Arthur, and that strange scene of the Queen’s Maying, Guinevra and her women among the green and flowering thorns, and the sudden darkness and the imminence of sad and tragic things. Thunder, lightning, treacheries, wounds and death, rain upon the May blossom, white petals falling.
Luce saw distant lightning stab the grey horizon. He sat and watched the storm approach as though it marched to meet the oncoming night. He could see a grey veil dropped over distant hills. That meant rain. The stillness held, and then a sudden wayward wind came rushing through the woods; tree tops swayed; the tall firs tossed their arms in strange gestures. Again, there was a stillness, a feeling of suspense. And suddenly the sky was rent nearer and nearer to him, and in the gloom, the momentary glare lit up the blue-green woods. The welkin rolled like a drum. Again, came a gusty wind, and a sudden moaning of the trees. It died away, and the first few drops of rain fell, large and separate and strange. Luce saw their wet marks upon the leads of the tower.
It was time for him to take cover, and yet he was loth to go. A flash seemed to end in the woods less than a furlong away; the sky crackled overhead. He saw the rain coming like a curtain, and picking up the chair, he made for the ladder, pulling the trap-door to after him. It was very dark in the tower, but as he descended a window was lit by a pale glare. The building trembled with the crash that followed.
In the lower room he had left the window open. Putting down the chair he went to close it against the deluge. So heavy was the rain that the whole world looked grey, and twilight seemed to have fallen. This was one of those storms whose dark wings would join themselves to the pinions of the night. He sat down at the window to watch Nature in her epic mood, conscious of sharing its strange restlessness, and sense of exaltation.
He sat there for an hour. The storm passed, but the rain continued, and its moist murmur mingled with the dripping of the trees. He had opened the window to listen. There was no sound save the rush of the rain. Twilight was here, an increasing dimness.
The Woman at The Door Page 7