World From Rough Stones

by Malcolm Macdonald

  By Stafford the sky had cleared again and they sped on over Standon, through Crewe, and on to the Cheshire plains under a full harvest moon. In the darkening sky the first stars began to twinkle.

  By the time they reached Earlestown, Arabella had had her fill of railway travel. She was disappointed at how routine it seemed after that first thrill at speeding so fast; very soon even thirty miles an hour seemed a snail's pace.

  Most of their fellow passengers went on to wait for the last connection to Liverpool or Manchester, grumbling at the inability of the various companies to operate trains to a common schedule in the interests of the passengers. Only half a dozen or so—three commercial people, a lady so deeply veiled that none could see her face, and her servant, and, of course, Walter and Arabella—were staying at the nearby inn.

  All their baggage was stowed on top of an almost derelict coach, which groaned menacingly under the weight. It was drawn by a gelded bay which, though neither old nor patently ill, hung strangely to its left and nodded repeatedly in a nervous tic. Walter, who had once seen such a horse bolt, put Arabella in the coach with the lady and her servant (pretty little thing, he noticed), and himself walked warily ahead of the leaning creature, ready to seize it if it did the same. The commercial gentlemen had taken one look at the ancient vehicle—or "ekkiparge" as they jocosely called it—and set off for the inn on foot. They already had a pint or two down by the time the rest arrived.

  Walter and Arabella took dinner in their room. The maid, knowing they were newly wed, dissolved in giggles and simpering blushes, so that Arabella had to issue a sharp reprimand. Walter contrived that the claret flowed well, until her eyes were one tint brighter and her talk a shade faster and livelier than was usual. And when the maid had cleared away the remnants of the meal, he made the excuse of seeing the landlord about breakfast and arrangements for their departure, leaving a tactful moment for her to undress.

  He had hardly settled with his brandy before she appeared at the foot of the stairs, dressed for outdoors. He was already walking toward her by the time she noticed him.

  "Oh dearest," she said. "I feel so restless. We were so long in the coach—and then locked in that train—and now sitting upstairs…I wish I could run a mile."

  "Well…" he smiled archly. "If it's exercise ye want, I had something like that in mind—or its equivalent at least!"

  "Oh good!" she exclaimed with all the innocent excitement of her eighteen years. "Out in the street? Are the streets safe here?"

  "The streets!"

  "Oh no—much better: the garden! See if they have a garden. Ask the man if we may stroll in his garden."

  And that is what Walter, to his own considerable surprise, found himself doing, only moments later. He sent his brandy and bottle up to their room.

  The garden was large and well kept, with gravel paths broad enough for them to walk on side by side. In an almost windless sky, thin veils of black and silver cloud drifted across the full moon. After the dim interior, lighted only by stearin candles and fishtail burners, it seemed as bright and blue as day, with the moon itself almost painful to look at. They could see every raindrop where it hung from every twig or blade of grass. White roses shimmered with a fairy light, while red ones turned to deepest wine-dark indigo. At a bend in the path stood a large hydrangaea, like a shrub with a hundred pale blue eyes. The cool air was heavy with honeysuckle and wet fern.

  Arabella felt she must have entered paradise. To stand, her senses drowned amid such beauty, beside the man who of all men in the world was the kindest, noblest, and most dear, his hand clasping hers so lovingly and with such tender strength…

  She breathed in, and in, and in, to cool the delight that coursed so wildly through her. Many and many a time before she had imagined that she knew the transports of love—when Walter had embraced her, or when his letters had arrived, or even when, on waking, she had brightened the new day with memories of him before she thanked God that they shared the same Earth and time. But this was something so immeasurably more intense that it was almost a pain. It was so pure, and it so exceeded anything she had sensed before, that she knew it lay on the very frontiers of a love that could only be called divine. At last she understood how the love of two people could transcend time and space, speaking across centuries and generations, calling from beyond the grave, and surviving even the fall of civilizations. Theirs was such a love! It was a tiny portion of the same love that moved God (in fact, as she realized with some shock, compelled Him) to give His son for something so unworthy as mankind. It was truly awesome to have been drawn so close to an understanding of Him, there in that moonlit garden.

  "Oh Walter," she said, sighing out her long-pent-up breath. "I do love you so very much!"

  His was a different mood. When they had stepped out of the door, once his eyes had grown accustomed to the light, he had looked up at the moon and realized that it was, in fact, past the full and a day or two into its wane. It was, he suddenly remembered, the same bright moon, then waxing, that had lighted up the cutting with the same sort of brilliance when he and John Stevenson had emerged from their inspection of the accident at Summit, only the week before. "Did ye tumble wi' er, sir?" Stevenson had asked. The question, and the memory of Molly (as he still believed Nora to be called), and the "glimpse of paradise" he had had with her, haunted him these last seven days—like a tune that will not go away.

  The possession of a virgin, he warned himself, would not be…like that. He stole a glance at Arabella, who seemed lost in some inner rhapsody. It would be…gentler, more tender, more hesitant. With creatures like Molly, you could throw aside all your caution; you could do anything. With Arabella, he would have to be patient and understanding.

  Again he looked at her, so young and lovely in the moonlight, picturing the warm, smooth body that moved with such supple grace beneath the outer ramparts of her clothes. His flesh, hungering for her, hung slack upon his bones.

  And that was the moment she turned to him and, with that long, passionate sigh, declared her love.

  It stopped him in his tracks.

  Never had he felt less worthy. The profanity of his love, set beside the sacredness of hers, made him feel so foul and bestial. He shrank in loathing at the recall of things he had imagined, only moments earlier. His flesh now cringed in self-disgust; and he resolved that they should pass that night at least in the purest embrace, expressing for each other only the noblest and sublimest kind of love.

  He turned and took her in his arms. And before their kiss was three seconds old he knew how impossible such a resolve would be to fulfill. Besides, whichever course he took, he had no way of knowing now what she would think of him. Would she admire his forbearance and strength of mind? Or think him an unmanly sop? Worse—would she say she admired him but secretly believe him to be contemptible? How little he really knew her. Perhaps it would be best after all to be strong. Give her some brandy and be strong. He would have to see.

  They walked on in silence, she in the seventh heaven of contentment, he in the seventh hell of indecision, both outwardly serene. In the stable, on the other side of the garden wall, the strange bay gelding pawed the cobbles and mumbled, like a self-important alderman clearing his throat. By now they had completed their second tour of the garden.

  "Well," he said, à propos nothing, "another long day tomorrow."

  "But not such a day as this. Was it not perfect?" she lied.

  "If every day were like it, we should soon die of bliss." Jocularity, he thought, offered the best way to be noncommittal. "Yet I venture to think we may find tomorrow…acceptable. I doubt we'll die of ennui."

  She dug him in the ribs, pouted, and then hugged his arm in a sudden access of warmth.

  "Bed," he said.

  "Very well."

  "You go on up. I shan't be long."

  She looked puzzled and seemed about to question him; but then with an inclination of her head, she turned and went indoors.

  The air still seem
ed to cage something of the magic of her presence; yet, now that she was no longer there in person, he found it easier to imagine her as pliant and responsive. How odd, he thought, that flesh-and-blood Arabella was so saintly, while the ethereal wife of his daydreams was so much more a creature of the earth. He tried again to feel the disgust that had so overpowered him only minutes earlier. Nothing came! It must have been some sudden effect of her saintliness, or the way she had looked, or something like that. Besides, this wasn't a romance; it was a marriage. There were heirs to be gotten.

  He found Arabella sitting up in bed, writing in her journal. Of the brandy he saw no sign, and something restrained him from asking. Not cowardice, he told himself, just a certain prudence, a sense of what was fitting for the occasion. He would ask later. Her nightdress was, in fact, her innermost chemise, which she had shrugged back on after taking off her stays. Its only concession to adornment was a few ribbons sewn into the cuffs of the short sleeves.

  He smiled at her shyly and patted the unruffled bedclothes on his side of the bed.

  "Comfortable?" he asked.

  She smiled, nodded, closed her eyes, and breathed in sharply to show that she was contented beyond words.

  "Not knowing how you like your bed made," he said, "I told them to make it up my way—higher in the centre."

  While he spoke he retreated into the partial concealment of the bed curtain on his side, only turning to her again when he had his nightgown on.

  "We are quite isolated," he went on. "The haylofts are on the other side of that wall; there's the garden, there's the street. And the other side there is a cupboard and a staircase."

  "Oh, Walter darling! You think of everything. You arranged this before you came back down south? This particular room?"

  He beamed and nodded.

  "So," she said, raising her arms like a priestess in a Roman print, "let them all snore or gossip through the night. We shall sleep at peace!"

  He marvelled at her composure. His heart began to race as he looked down on her—the soft, blonde skin of her arms. He raised a corner of his sheet and had just lifted a foot when Arabella, to his confusion, lifted the bedclothes on her side and slipped quickly from the bed. For one stunning moment he thought she was about to commence some little game in which he must chase and capture her. But her manner soon ended any such thought. She had not even appeared to notice the erection that thrust his nightshirt at her like medieval armour, or the prow of a somewhat flexible ship.

  She knelt to pray.

  "Oh yes," he said, chastened. "Of course."

  He knelt at his side of the bed.

  "Almighty God," she began, and then stopped. "Walter, dearest," she went on in more everyday tones, "do come around this side and kneel beside me. And," she went on while he complied, "listen to this most particularly. I have been composing and perfecting it for months of nights past."

  He knelt beside her.

  "Almighty God, here before Thee kneel two wretched sinners united this day in Thy house, dedicated this day in Thy service, strengthened this day in Thy ever-watchful care. Grant, dear Lord, that this work here begun shall daily prosper and grow more lovely in Thy sight. Prevent us in danger and chide us when we stray. And grant, too, most merciful Father, that in all we undertake we act with pure and contrite hearts, seeking no greater reward than the continuance of Thine abiding love. Strengthen our endeavour to become every day more godly, righteous, and sober in our lives, more pious, upright, and simple in our faith. And finally, Lord, we most impatiently beseech Thee, crown our marriage with the greatest of all Thy blessings: children. Quicken now, O Lord, my sinful body that our union may bear fruit, abundant fruit, for of such, Thou hast said, is the Kingdom of Heaven. Amen."

  There was a short silence before she cleared her throat of no particular obstruction.

  "Amen," Walter said, and shifted his weight to one knee, preparing to rise. His now unrisen flesh hung warm and flaccid on his thigh.

  "Will you not also pray?" she asked.

  "Ah…er…the blessing of God…" he began, using the words of the clerical benediction. Then he changed to: "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, amen." He stood as Arabella said amen.

  Eager again he leaped across the bed and flung himself under the sheets with boyish energy. Desire began to rekindle a little as he watched her more deliberate entry, swinging her long blonde hair back over her shoulders in a gesture that made her breasts tremble as she straightened and settled. He shivered with delight as he watched her move. "God make it last!" he prayed. "Sharpen all my awareness!"

  "It was a very conventional prayer, dearest," he heard her say.

  "What could I add? You said all that could have been thought of. It was beautiful." Then, remembering that the bitter Pennine winter lay not so far ahead, he asked if she knelt to pray every night.

  "Of course!" she laughed, thinking he was jesting. Then realizing that he might, after all, be serious, she asked with some primness: "Do you mean that you do not?"

  "Only in summer. In winter I say them in bed."

  "Then God will never hear you." She pouted. "He has nothing but sneers for such cheats. Unless they are truly bedridden, of course."

  She made this one concession sound most magnanimous. But her tone was far too matter-of-fact; she was far too sober.

  "I asked them to send up some brandy," he said, looking around the room.

  "Oh? I told them it must be some mistake. I sent it back. They seemed to think it very funny goings on."

  He should have snuffed the candle then. He should have swept her through one long bodily catechism from touch to kiss to caress to embrace to unity. But that was never his way. He must reason her to him; he must carry her mind as well.

  "Did I not hear your grandmother tell you to drink plenty of wine tonight?" he asked.

  "The old reprobate! She is a scandal!"

  "Yes. But do you have no inkling of why she said it?"

  Arabella smiled coyly. "Perhaps she thought I might recoil at the rough touch of a manly whisker!"

  Come, he thought, this is better. "So you understand then?"

  "Of course, dearest! It is only natural that the snatched kisses and hasty tendernesses of our courtship will give way to the more leisured sort of embrace now that we are man and wife. That is to be expected." And to show what she meant she lay full back upon the pillow and held out her arms to him. "Oh, dearest! We can take such joy in each other now."

  Relief bubbled through his veins like lemonade. All along she had been teasing! It would all be easy and natural, even without the wine. He snuffed the candle and settled into the outermost reach of her embrace, intending to work his way in.

  "That's a most becoming chemise," he said, fondling the ribbon in order to let his knuckles caress the skin beneath. "It makes this shirt of mine seem quite dowdy."

  "Oh no. Yours is very manly. It is like Papa's. I do not like to see a man all prettified. The frivolities of yesterday are not becoming nowadays."

  He could not decide whether she spoke like a child repeating a lesson or more like a teacher urging a child to repeat a lesson.

  "I wonder if it has started?" she mused in a different tone.

  "What has started?" he asked, unconcerned. He was stroking her arm now from shoulder to elbow, pleased to see how catlike she was in her response.

  "Our child," she said.

  His eyes had grown accustomed to the dark, so that the moonlight flooding in made the room seem brighter than when the candle had shared the illumination. He saw that her brow had darkened in bewilderment. She was not teasing when she asked: "Walter—how shall we know when we are to be blessed with children? I mean—how shall we know the exact time when I am to come to term?"

  His bewilderment was hardly less than hers. "I suppose the doctor will tell us. It'll be never, unless we make a start!" And with that he kissed her full and warmly on her lips.

  When she began to respond, he moved a hand f
irmly on to her breast and squeezed. An inch away he saw her dark blue eyes open wide in panic, staring into his, flesh into uncomprehending flesh. Her whole body stiffened in rejection. She pulled her lips away and said to the wall, as if she could not bear to face him: "Walter!"

  His body, caught in its own momentum and reluctant to be diverted yet again, impelled him to continue his massage, hoping for the miracle.

  "Walter!" she repeated in outrage, still bouncing her words off the wall. "That is…it's private!"

  "Not to a husband my love." He tried to turn her face to his but she refused.

  "To a…to an…" she stumbled as she sought for words. "To one who is honourable. An honourable man respects…"

  "But how else," he interrupted, "are we to beget any children?"