The Stepson

by Martin Armstrong

  It was a round, boyish face, and despite his firm handshake Kate could see that he was shy, as shy as herself, for he was blushing.

  ‘Well,’ said Ben, who was watching the pair of them with an eager shine in his glassy blue eyes, ‘what about him, Kate? Is he anything like what you thought he’d be?’

  Kate glanced again at David. ‘Well,’ she said, smiling, ‘about twice the size.’

  David laughed.

  ‘You see,’ Kate explained to him, ‘the latest photograph I’ve seen of you is that one taken … was it four years ago?’

  ‘Five! Five years ago!’ said Ben. ‘And five years at his time of life makes a big difference.’

  The dinner was already on the table and they took their seats, Ben sitting in his usual place at the head of the table and Kate and David on either side of him. As David settled into his chair Kate noticed again that slight awkwardness of movement, the attractive awkwardness of a young colt that has not yet grown accustomed to its great body and limbs. They sat in silence while Ben sharpened the carving-knife, drawing it in long, shrill strokes across the steel. Kate was glad even of that brief interval in which to collect herself; for the sudden readjustment which had been forced upon her mind by this confrontation of the David of her dream with the so different David of actual fact had produced in her a strange sense of unreality. But already she was beginning to feel that he was not so formidable as in her bewilderment she had at first supposed. She raised her eyes. He was sitting with his arms spread upon the table and one hand laid upon the other, watching his father carve the beef, so that Kate was free to study his face more closely. It was a charming face, round and small and of that ruddy colour which comes of perfect health and an outdoor life. The cheeks were freckled under the eyes and on either side of the nose, and the corners of the mouth and the ends of the long auburn eyebrows were curled slightly upwards, giving him, as he abstractedly watched his father, a look half surprised, half contemplative. The lowered eyelids more than half covered his eyes, so that Kate could not see their colour. Yes, after all, he was still no more than a great child.

  ‘Not hungry at all, I suppose? Eh?’ said old Ben as he carved the joint with quick efficient movements.

  Immediately the young man awoke and a delightful animation broke out over his face. ‘Well,’ he said, glancing across at Kate and smiling half-sheepishly, ‘I dare say I might be able to manage a bit. I’ve been travelling, you see,’ he continued, speaking now to Kate, ‘since eight o’clock this morning.”

  Ben handed a well-filled plate to Kate, who added potatoes and yellow spring cabbage from the dishes in front of her and then handed it over to David.

  ‘You start!’ she said. ‘Don’t wait for us.’

  David took up his knife and fork and concentrated his attention on the food before him.

  At that moment Mrs. Jobson came in. A plate was in her hand, and on it the large plum-cake which had been made for David’s arrival. She set it down in front of him and stood watching. David’s eyes left his plate and fastened themselves upon the cake. Then he turned, abruptly like his father, and glanced at Mrs. Jobson.

  ‘Is it a plum-cake?’ he asked.

  ‘It is!’ said Mrs. Jobson.

  He reached out a large hand and clapped her on the shoulder, as though he were patting a horse. ‘You’re an angel, Mrs. J.,’ he said, grinning; and seeing him so gay and affectionate with the old woman, Kate felt a little stab of jealousy.

  ‘Not me,’ Mrs. Jobson answered him. ‘I’ve got nothing whatever to do with it. It’s Mrs. Humphrey you’ve got to thank.’

  David looked across to Kate with shining eyes. ‘Why,’ she thought to herself again, ‘he’s still only a child, after all.’

  ‘How did you know?’ he asked her.

  ‘What’s this? What’s this?’ said old Ben, looking up suddenly from his carving.

  ‘This cake,’ explained David. ‘It’s a plum-cake.’

  Old Ben smiled broadly. ‘The devil it is!’ he said. He turned to Kate. ‘And you made it?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I did.’

  ‘But who told you that plum-cake was David’s special cake?’ He had quite forgotten that he himself had told her.

  ‘Perhaps nobody told me,’ answered Kate. ‘Perhaps I just knew.’

  ‘Mrs. J. told you,’ said David.

  ‘Never!’ Mrs. Jobson asserted. ‘The first I knew of it was when Mrs. Humphrey told me she was going to make one.’

  ‘If you want to know,’ said Kate, ‘it was a little bird told me.’

  Ben laughed his sharp laugh. ‘That little bird gets a lot blamed on him, poor little devil.’

  He had finished the carving for Kate and himself; Mrs. Jobson went out of the room, and soon they were all three eating. Their first constraint had almost gone and the talk grew easier and freer.

  Ben and his son began to talk of sheep. When David returned to The Grange they were to go in for sheep on a larger scale than hitherto, and it had been with this object that David had been living on a sheep-farm since the previous autumn, and was to continue there until he had completed a year. In the intervals of their talk, David, glancing across the table, would discover the level black brows and the grey-green eyes of his stepmother steadily fixed upon him. It was an honest, open gaze, so frank that it did not embarrass him. He liked her already. There was something staid and matronly about her beauty that made her seem in his youthful eyes a woman not too young to be his father’s wife or his own stepmother. And so from time to time he met her gaze with a friendly eye that mutely invited her into the conversation.

  But Kate did not talk much. She was happier listening to the two men talking together; for, as she listened to them and watched them, the reality was gradually becoming more real to her, and gradually and almost unconsciously her heart was growing reconciled to resigning the young boy of her dreams.

  And in the course of the next few days, as she and David settled down into a comfortable familiarity, she began to feel that a cordial, elder-sisterly relationship with this sweet-tempered young man would bring to her life at The Grange all that she had hitherto missed there. David’s presence seemed to transform the place, not only for her, but for everybody. And yet that presence was an unobtrusive one. He went about his affairs quietly, a little self-absorbed, it seemed, but never listless. When Kate met him about the house or out-of-doors she received the impression that he was always quietly bent upon something quite definite. In the house, when alone, he often sang to himself. His voice was sweet and true, and when he sang it was no half-conscious droning, like the singing of most people who sing when they are occupied with other things; for David always sang the words with the tunes, singing the song through to the end and then beginning another.

  And that quietness of his was a cheerful quietness. If he went on his own way and did not often seek out occasions for talk, he always spoke without hesitation when speech was necessary and responded readily when spoken to, with a good-humour that warmed the hearts of all those who spoke to him. That, Kate decided, must be what charmed them all – his unfailing good-humour. And yet it was not only his good-humour, for Ben, too, was good-humoured. But Ben was hard as well. There was something hard in that smartness and alertness of his; and in his passion for her, Kate felt, there was more than a trace of the cold, the hard, the brutal, beneath his cheerful kind-heartedness. But David had brought to the house the freshness and warmth of youth. It was as if spring were pouring its sweet, life-giving breath through every room and passage.

  X

  Each morning of that Easter-time Kate awoke to perfect happiness. The secret voice of which formerly she had been aware in her moments of solitude was now heard no more. The sorrowful ghost had been laid. It seemed to her, as she lay contemplating the window and the ceiling of the long, low bedroom during the peaceful half-hour between waking and rising, that she had fallen into harmony with the life of the earth in its springtime mood, calmly and contentedl
y accepting the visiting of suns and showers and the gradual process of budding and unfolding. Life was changed for her: all her being had been warmed into something fuller and richer. She thought with pleasure of the day’s work before her, of the comings and goings about the house and farm, the chance meetings, as each of them went about his particular business, with Ben, Mrs. Jobson, George the hind, and Peter the boy; but especially with David, for it was David, she felt, who had brought this rarer harmony among them, and had brought to her the one indefinable element that life had hitherto lacked.

  Kate had no idea what it was that David did that kept him always occupied during those few days he was at The Grange; but then she did not know exactly what Ben did either. Except for her own particular work and the work of the house and dairy, the running of the farm was still something of a mystery to her, a vague activity among carts and ploughs; cows, horses and sheep; hay, straw, oats and turnips. But that David was always occupied was certain from the talks between himself and Ben, and from her chance meetings with him here and there about the farm. More than once she met him riding out of the yard on a horse, and stopped to watch him admiringly as he trotted away with that assured, easy movement of his body, as though he and the horse were one creature. A few hours later she heard the sound of hoofs in the yard. He was back again, and looking from the parlour window she saw him swing out of the saddle. A few minutes later he would cross the yard, carrying the saddle and bridle, and soon afterwards would enter the parlour.

  ‘Are you fond of riding?’ Kate asked him once, seeing the healthy glow on his face.

  ‘Oh, it’s all right for getting about,’ he said. ‘Quicker than walking!’ and it seemed wonderful to her that he should consider riding an ordinary and practical affair and not an accomplishment to be proud of. What a thrilling and perilous adventure it would have seemed to her, and how proud of herself she would be if she were a good horsewoman.

  Ben came briskly into the parlour, rubbing his hands. ‘Hello!’ he said. ‘Been down to Green Lane?’

  David smiled. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I just rode over for an hour or two.’

  ‘I saw Bob Reed last Wednesday at Elchester,’ said Ben; ‘but it’s a tidy time since I was over at Green Lane. How are they getting on? All well, eh?’ He turned away, as he so often did, without waiting for a reply, and stepped over to the mantelpiece to get his pipe.

  Kate always felt half amused and half annoyed when Ben did that. Why did he ask questions if he didn’t want a reply? It was part and parcel of that underlying hardness of his. But David did not seem to notice it. He had not, apparently, thought of replying to Ben’s question. He turned on his heel now and went out, and next moment Kate heard him singing in the kitchen.

  ‘Where did you get all those songs from that you sing?’ she asked him when he returned.

  ‘Why, I learnt most of them when I was in the Appleton choir,’ he said. ‘The organist there was very good at training the choir, and he used to get us to go to the schoolroom too on Saturday evenings and sing songs. There’s a song-book in the cupboard there, or there ought to be.’

  ‘Can you read music?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, I can manage pretty well.’ He went over to the cupboard.

  ‘We might try singing them together one day,’ she suggested, ‘you doing the bass and me the treble.’

  And they began that same evening, sitting at the table in the parlour with the song-book in front of them.

  Ben sat in his easy chair by the fire, smoking. ‘Fine!’ he shouted when they finished a song. ‘Fine! Let’s have another. Why, we can have a concert whenever we feel like it now.’

  They sang The Crystal Spring, Down by the Riverside, Annie Laurie, Drink to Me Only, and Cherry Ripe; and then they began to try songs which they did not know, Bedlam and O Waly Waly, breaking down and laughing and beginning again, while David followed the bars with one finger.

  When they had finished, they remembered that next day was Easter Sunday.

  ‘Have you heard the choir in Elchester Abbey?’ David asked Kate.

  ‘Never!’ she said. ‘I’ve never so much as been inside the Abbey.’

  ‘We might go to-morrow,’ said David; ‘that is if Dad’ll let us take the gig.’

  Old Ben stirred in his chair. ‘Please yourselves,’ he said; ‘only don’t ask me to go with you. Church doesn’t suit me.’

  And so next morning Kate and David drove out from the farm in their Sunday best, Kate wearing the blue dress and the blue hat with the grey feather which she had worn for her wedding.

  Ben stood on the doorstep watching them go. ‘Good-bye!’ he shouted, grinning. ‘Mind you come back!’

  It amused him to pretend that Kate might run away with that fine young son of his; but he would not have cared, even if the thought had occurred to him, to pretend that David might have run away with Kate. ‘A fine handsome pair and no mistake!’ he thought to himself as the gig turned the corner and he went back into the house again: but the meaning of the thought and of the pleasure that it caused him was that the pair belonged to him.

  Meanwhile the gig was skimming, silent except for the quiet clink of the harness, the heavy padding of the mare’s hoofs, and the occasional grinding of a pebble under the wheels, over the soft, grassy cart-track, and in a few minutes it swerved out on to the metalled road and the silence was lost in the crisp ring and rattle of hoofs and wheels.

  ‘You drive a good deal faster than your father,’ said Kate. ‘I never knew the mare could go at such a pace.’

  David smiled with the amiable tolerance of the young for the old.

  ‘Dad lets her get into lazy ways,’ he said. ‘She can go all right if she’s kept up to the mark.’ He gave her a little flick with the whip and, answering to it, the mare stepped out, and the hedges streamed past more swiftly and the sweet spring air beat softly against their faces. The briskness of their going and the vague, pleasantly exciting sense of danger which it awoke in Kate braced her to an exquisite exhilaration.

  ‘We shall be there well under the hour at this pace,’ she said.

  ‘Three-quarters,’ answered David. ‘I never take more.’ He nodded his head, smiling. ‘She knows well enough who’s driving her,’ he said. ‘They’re artful things, horses.’

  A great tide of sunshine invading the country from the south-east swept towards them from the fields on their flank, and suddenly they were immersed in the flood of it — a flood of soft, translucent fire, permeating the air, the earth, and everything upon the earth with yellow warmth, rousing to more vivid life the grass at the roadside, the budding hedges, the primroses and violets that flowered in the ditches, the sheep and lambs grazing in the emerald pastures, and those two young people speeding towards Elchester in the gaily dancing gig.

  Suddenly the sunlight was screened; an intricate network of sun and shadow rippled over them; they were running between thickets of hazel and oak. And as she gazed into the thicket, it seemed to Kate that the ground under the bushes was streaked and patched with a light covering of snow, till, looking more intently, she saw that it was white wood-anemones that covered the thicket-floors, drifting more thickly about the trunks and between the branching roots of the larger oaks. Here and there the white warmed to pale yellow where the anemones gave place to primroses.

  ‘Aren’t they lovely!’ said Kate.

  ‘Lovely!’ David agreed. ‘But I like the cowslips better still. There’s something richer about a field of cowslips, and the smell of them, too — like warm honey!’

  ‘I’ve seen very few cowslips hereabouts,’ said Kate, ‘and there were none at Penridge.’

  ‘That’s only natural,’ David replied. ‘This is a primrose country, and in a primrose country you don’t get many cowslips. Now at Johnson’s, where I am at present, all the fields and hedges and roadsides are full of cowslips, but the primroses are few and far between.’

  David’s ‘That’s only natural!’ had chilled Kate a little; it was as if she had
displayed a piece of unpardonable ignorance and David was patiently correcting her. For a moment she was back in her school-days, and then the thought of her father came to her.

  ‘That’s a strange thing,’ she replied, in the same colourless voice in which she had generally spoken to the Schoolmaster.

  ‘It’s a matter of the soil, you see,’ said David, and he flicked the mare with the end of the whip and they shot out into the full sunshine again.

  ‘I wish you could see that cowslip country,’ he went on, and at once Kate’s chill was gone. She was grateful that he should wish her to share his pleasure, and as he described the sheep-farm and the country round it she glanced at him sideways, charmed by his youthful loquacity as if by the singing of a bird. The hill of Elchester, like a great heap of blocks, grey, black, and smouldering red, swung into sight through a screen of bare ash-trees, and soon the sound of the Abbey bells came to them, soft and ethereal, filtered by distance of all hint of metal. A quarter of an hour later they had left the gig at the inn and were making their way on foot down Bargate.

  How different was the Elchester of Sunday from the Elchester of market-days. It seemed to Kate, who had never been there except on market-days, that she was visiting it now in a dream. Everything was alien and unreal. Bargate, with all its shops closed, and empty except for two or three couples sedate in their Sunday black, looked like a deep, narrow channel run dry. The place would have seemed dead if it had not been for the noise of the Abbey peal, which leaped and tossed and sparkled like a bright spray in the airy sunlight that enwrapped Elchester hill.

  Then, as they turned into the market-place, the full power of the peal burst upon them. The empty square was brimful with the noise - fuller, it seemed, than it was full of people on market-days. All the tones and half-tones of the octave clanged and crashed in rapid succession, colliding and shocking apart or combining and twining together harmoniously in a tumbling medley of sound. And under it and over it and within it, pervasive and continuous as the air itself, a deep round brazen hum bound the whole turmoil together.