The Stepson

by Martin Armstrong

  And yet, she reflected with a sigh, it would not be easy never to share her secret with a soul, for often the intensity of her emotion became oppressive. The more she pondered it, the more it clamoured for expression. It was as if her heart was filled too full of it, and unless she eased it in speech or action she would be consumed by the pent-up energy of it. If only she could pour out her feelings to David himself. But that would always be impossible, and she tried to imagine what he would think and say if she were to throw aside every restraint and confess all to him. But such imagination was beyond her, and she fell, instead, to imagining impossible felicities, picturing his eyes kindling as they met hers and his arms opening to receive her; and then, pausing again in her work and closing her eyes, she submitted herself to the dream of those arms closing upon her and his lips seeking hers.

  But next moment she opened her eyes with a sigh and reached out her hand again to the handle of the sewing-machine. Nothing that she could do, she knew well enough, could bring that dream to fulfilment. She must wait in patience, trusting to the future. What she meant by the future she did not dare to think.

  So she went on with her work, and under the droning rhythm of the machine her thoughts thinned away, scattered, and were lost, and her mind became an empty thing whirled on the swift current of sound. She worked on till the machine-work of the shirt was finished, and then, taking needle, thread, and scissors, she began to work at the button-holes, singing to herself that song called O Waly Waly, which was one of the songs she had sung with David. She paused for a moment in the second verse and smiled to herself, remembering how, that morning in the orchard, she had avoided the last line. Now she avoided nothing, but sang on, identifying herself, as she always did when she sang, with the emotions of what she was singing. The sadness of the theme filled her with a sweet, luxurious melancholy; the very spirit of love, it seemed to her, grown articulate.

  ‘A ship there is and she sails the sea,

  She’s loaded deep as deep can be,

  But not so deep as the love I’m in;

  I know not if I sink or swim.’

  What a deep pleasure it was to make that confession to herself: whenever she did so, her life grew richer, more beautiful, fuller and fuller of that deep emotion which is the fountain-head both of joy and sorrow. Just as she was beginning the last verse the door opened, and Mrs. Jobson came in to lay the tea.

  Kate stopped singing and, looking up from her sewing, she smiled at Mrs. Jobson, but neither of them spoke; and Mrs. Jobson, as she busied herself about spreading the cloth and laying the table, fell to wondering once again what could be the meaning of the change which had recently come over this young woman whom she had grown to love as if she were her own daughter. What could have caused the bitterness and disillusionment which the discovery of old Humphrey’s deceit had brought to her, to vanish so quickly? It perplexed and mystified the old woman and filled her with a vague disquiet. She had heard Kate’s singing, and looking over at her now as she sat with her dark head bent over her sewing, she saw that the usually pale cheeks were suffused with colour. Mysterious creature, the old woman thought to herself, so calm and restrained, and yet, for the eye that could see, so full of sleeping fires and torrents. What might not happen if something were to break through that calm so that the fires blazed out and the torrents were loosed? When she had finished laying the table, Mrs. Jobson stood with her eyes on the unconscious Kate. Being old in years and experience, she felt a deep anxiety about this ignorant and defenceless girl whom she longed to take under her motherly protection. Kate raised her face and their eyes met. Mrs. Jobson shook her head and sighed half-humorously.

  ‘Ah, I’d like to know,’ she said, ‘what’s happening behind that quiet face of yours.’

  Kate flushed a little. ‘What’s happening?’ she echoed.

  ‘Yes. What you think of, sometimes.’

  ‘I think of all sorts of things,’ said Kate.

  ‘Not long ago,’ said Mrs. Jobson, ‘I was anxious about you because you were upset and unhappy; but now, my dear, I’m anxious because …’

  She paused.

  A sudden misgiving took hold of Kate. She looked questioningly at Mrs. Jobson. ‘Anxious because?’ she asked in a voice that was hardly audible.

  ‘Because you have become happy, very happy, so suddenly and unaccountably.’

  Kate did not reply. Her heart was beating violently in her breast: she was shaken by something which was half fear and half joy, for it would be both terrible and delicious to confess her love and relieve her heart of some of its burden. If this old friend understood her so well that she could almost read her thoughts, surely she would not be horrified at her secret; surely she would understand and sympathize. But next moment her heart failed her, for she remembered that her love for her stepson must seem to anyone but herself a monstrous thing.

  She sat with her head bowed, speechless, and as the silence increased she grew more and more confused and ashamed. Mrs. Jobson went over to her and knelt down beside the chair on which she was sitting. She took one of Kate’s hands in hers.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘You can trust me, can’t you?’ With the other hand she fingered the shirt on Kate’s lap; and, as if she understood Kate’s inability to speak and therefore wished to spare her, she began to examine the shirt more intently.

  ‘How well you sew,’ she said. ‘This shirt is beautifully made. How many have you finished now?’

  ‘This is the fourth,’ said Kate softly.

  ‘Are they all for Mr. Humphrey?’

  Kate shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I haven’t begun his yet. These are David’s.’

  As she spoke his name she felt the blood rush to her face, felt it spread down over her throat and neck and upwards into her hair. She turned her eyes to Mrs. Jobson’s face, feeling that dissimulation was now at an end; and she saw in the old woman’s eyes that she understood, for she was gazing at Kate with an almost terrified comprehension.

  ‘Do you think it’s wicked,’ Kate asked in a voice that was little more than a whisper, ‘that I should love him?’

  The old woman did not answer the question. ‘I keep forgetting,’ she murmured reflectively, ‘that he’s no longer a child.’

  ‘Don’t. Don’t say that,’ cried Kate. ‘It makes me feel ashamed, and me as old as I am.’

  ‘You, my poor dear?’ said Mrs. Jobson, gazing at her affectionately. ‘Why, for all you know of life, you’re not much more than a child yourself.’

  ‘You think I’m foolish and wicked,’ said Kate, turning her grey-green eyes on Mrs. Jobson. ‘Can’t you understand …?’

  ‘My dear, I can understand only too well,’ said the old woman with tears in her eyes, for it seemed to her warm, experienced heart the very sign and proof of innocence that Kate, shocked and wounded by old Humphrey’s sordid deceit, should set her heart on this honest, lovable boy, and she could have wept for the hopelessness of poor Kate’s dream.

  ‘Not wicked, my dear,’ she said; ‘whatever some folks would say, you may be sure of that. But oh, very foolish.’

  Kate sighed. ‘Yes, I know it’s foolish. I must seem an old woman to him.’

  ‘What does age matter?’ said Mrs. Jobson. ‘Why, there’s only nine years between you. No, it’s foolish because you’re setting your heart on something out of reach.’

  ‘Out of reach?’ said Kate. ‘But in another fortnight he’ll be here for good.’

  ‘Yes, here at the farm, but as far from your reach as if he was a thousand miles away. You know he is.’

  ‘You mean I couldn’t marry him,’ said Kate, with downcast eyes.

  ‘I do,’ said Mrs. Jobson. ‘But you know that as well as I do, and you know, don’t you, that it would be wrong to make him love you, even if you could?’

  For one moment it flashed upon Mrs. Jobson that Kate had fixed her thoughts on David as a revenge on old Humphrey; but only for a moment, for next instant she drove the suspicion in horror from
her mind. ‘My dear, my dear,’ she said tremulously, ‘there’s been enough of that in this house. Nothing but misery would come of it.’

  Kate fixed a firm, intense gaze on her. ‘I want nothing,’ she said; ‘nothing more than to have him here with us.’

  The old woman shook her head. ‘Don’t believe it, my child. When you tell yourself that, you are deceiving yourself.’

  ‘I could wait, and be happy and content for years with just having him here,’ said Kate with conviction.

  ‘Yes, wait, my poor child — wait for something which might be snatched from you any day. No; keep your heart to yourself, my dear. Whatever you do, do that. Nothing but misery will come of it if you don’t.’

  Kate shook her head. ‘How can I keep it when I’ve lost it already?’

  ‘You can call it back,’ said the old woman, and seeing Kate smile she added: ‘Yes, you can call it back if you set your mind to it. You’re strong and you could do it. I know, none better, for I’ve done it myself.’

  Kate looked up with quick surprise at the old woman.

  ‘I’ll tell you some day, not now,’ said Mrs. Jobson. ‘But I saved myself from misery, sheer misery of body and soul. And yet look at me now. You wouldn’t call me an unhappy woman, would you?’

  Kate smiled at her. ‘You’re the happiest creature I know,’ she said, ‘and you make every one else happy.’ Then, as Mrs. Jobson seemed to be lost in thought, she added: ‘And how did you save yourself?’

  ‘By hard work and no thinking and being friends with everybody,’ replied Mrs. Jobson. ‘Try it, my dear, before it’s too late. Promise me you’ll try.’

  Kate sat with bowed head. How could she promise deliberately to try to throw away the one precious thing that made her life worth living? For some moments she sat in silence stroking Mrs. Jobson’s hand. At last she raised her head with a sigh. ‘I’ll think,’ she said.

  ‘Do, my dear,’ said Mrs. Jobson earnestly. ‘Think very carefully. Think of the misery you may be preparing for yourself.’

  But for the rest of that day Kate was unable to think; she had become a prey to a vague apprehension, feeling that some sinister power was threatening her love. Whenever she tried to think, her brain grew blurred. Where was the use in trying to make her mind fight against her very soul’s conviction?

  Her night was restless. For hours she lay between waking and sleeping, dropping for a few minutes into vague, disturbing dreams and waking again to a sense of looming danger and tragedy, unreal, undefined, but terribly oppressive. It was not until shortly before dawn that she fell, from sheer weariness, into a sound sleep, and awoke two hours later to the cool, secure emptiness of morning.

  She was not happy, but at least she was calm now and self-possessed. It seemed incredible now, in the honest light of day, that she should have allowed herself to be so deeply troubled by those spectral unrealities of the night. ‘At night I become a different person,’ she thought, feeling vaguely that she was always mistress of her world of daylight, but no more than a shrinking and trembling victim of the mysterious, ghostly underworld of night.

  She got up and dressed, thinking to herself that during the morning, as soon as she could get a few minutes to herself, she would go and linger for a while in the barn; but next moment Ben referred to the fact that it was market-day, and she remembered that she would be in Elchester till late afternoon. Her heart sank, for she longed to be alone and quiet. She hated the thought of the hot drive into Elchester and the noise and the crowds of busy people there. That morning she avoided Mrs. Jobson. Her eyes made no response to the old woman’s anxious, affectionate glances, as if she were trying to pretend that nothing unusual had passed between them. She felt ashamed of yesterday’s confession and impatient at the thought of their talk together.

  The day was hot and sultry and the rare gusts of a weak breeze served only to make it seem more sultry still. As Ben and Kate jogged along between the powdery grey hedges, their passage left a fume of choking grey dust behind them. Far off beyond the trees and hedges the hill of Elchester began to appear. It stood there calm and still, like the hulk of a great ship left high and dry. It was hardly believable that what seemed so silent and deserted should be a hive, humming and flaring with noise and heat and dust. As the gig approached it, details began to grow out of the single mass. The distant roofs and walls showed hard and bright in the glare of midday — all but the Abbey’s. They, towering high above the others, looked sombre, inviting, and protective, like a great shadowy rock above some hidden pool. There at least, thought Kate, she would find coolness and quiet, and she determined that she would hurry over her marketing and then go and sit for awhile in the Abbey.

  The mare pounded on, and within a quarter of an hour they were engulfed in the noise and heat of the town.

  As soon as she was free of Ben and the gig, Kate hurried off into Bargate. Anyone seeing her going so zealously about her buying would have supposed that all her thoughts were concentrated on household matters. But in truth her mind was empty of thought. It was fixed on the one desire to be done with this business of shopping and to be free to take refuge from the noise and heat and her fellow-creatures. Generally she went slowly from shop to shop, pausing often to gaze into shop-windows at all sorts of things which she had no intention of buying and waiting contentedly in the crowded shops that she visited, examining the goods heaped on shelves and counters, till others were served. But to-day she was impatient and fretful, waiting to be attended to with eyes that gazed blankly before her, and hurrying straight from shop to shop without glancing at a single window.

  At last she had finished, and carrying her basket to the inn where Ben always put up the horse, she deposited it in the gig and with a sigh of relief made for the Abbey.

  It seemed, as with a soft thud the swing-door shut-to behind her, that she had fallen out of the noise and heat and glare of the town into sheer emptiness. At first she could see nothing: the darkness seemed to be absolute. The air struck cold on her burning face and body, and silence like a canopy of huge invisible wings hung about her. Suddenly she felt marvellously content. It was as if, under the assuagement of that silence and cool darkness, all her troubles and anxieties and feverish emotions had been smoothed away. Gradually, long windows like dim, richly glowing embroideries grew on her sight, and then huge ghostly shapes — blocks and towers and spires; and as she stepped forward out of the darkness of the porch those vague shapes took on form and substance, and columns and immense upward-shooting piers, canopied tombs, and the black rood-screen with the great growth of the organ towering above it, rose about her, clear and calm in the subtle alternation of black shadow, grey half-shadow, and mellow light.

  Kate tiptoed through the arch of the rood-screen and made her way to the place where she and David had sat on Easter Sunday. There she sat down. The whole building was empty; all that vast store of silence and coolness offered itself to Kate alone, who sat there silent and immovable but for the soft rise and fall of her breathing. Minute followed minute, and still she did not move; even her mind was still and empty of all thought and of all emotion that was alien to the spirit of the place. She had never been conventionally religious. Rule and observance meant little to her; she seldom went to church, and when she did so, it was not because she felt that it was demanded of her that she should go, but because her nature felt a sudden need to do so, just as she might feel the need to smell a flower and gather it. But she believed, because it had never occurred to her to disbelieve, in God and Christ and prayer, and she believed that a church was a holy place filled with powers and influences which she did not try to explain. And so, for Kate, this Abbey in which she sat was full of holiness, and in the calmness of the mood which the place had inspired in her she began to reflect clearly and calmly on her condition.

  She thought of David, who seemed now, in that place where they had sung together, in some very real way present to her; and of her father, feeling a sudden longing to visit him and talk to h
im again. And then she thought of Mrs. Jobson, with a twinge of remorse at having treated her coldly that morning. She reflected calmly on all that had passed in their conversation on the previous afternoon, and her heart warmed at the memory of the old woman’s affectionate sympathy. How many other people would have given her as much? And she had repaid her with resentment. But not deliberately; she had found the resentment in her heart when she had awoke that morning and had obeyed it without thinking. She could see clearly, now that she was calm, the dangers of allowing her heart to fix itself on David. Yes, it was a strange, reckless thing to have done. And yet, had she done it? Not, certainly, on purpose. It had just happened: it had been done for her. And quietly and calmly she went on thinking out her problem in that place where surely God must be guiding her thoughts. Then on a sudden impulse she knelt down and prayed, and for a long time she remained on her knees with her hands covering her face. Absolute silence hung over her until, high above her, she heard the striking of the Abbey clock and knew that it was time to go. She rose to her feet and tiptoed out, feeling resolute and secure. Her heart glowed within her, filling her body and soul with warm light.