World From Rough Stones

by Malcolm Macdonald

  Bess stood back, her eyes glistening. "Oh madam…" she began before Nora, waving a monitory finger, stopped her in mid-flow.

  "You've got no time to waste," she said.

  Bess had no idea what she meant. "Me, ma'm?"

  "Yes. You come from just below here in Gawks Holm, don't you?"

  "Yes, ma'm."

  "Well—you'd best get home and put on your first-best dress and bonnet and pinny—you want to look your grandest at the servants' ball tonight I fancy."

  Bess had obviously not understood that she was to come to the Hall as well. "But of course you are, you soft penn'orth! Who's to take off my boots and put on my shoes when we get there?" She heard John step noisily from his bath in the room across the passage. "Before you dash off," she added, "you should give that little Horsfall a helping hand to empty Mr. Stevenson's bath. Take this tray down."

  No chore could even dim Bess's sudden transport of delight. "Eay!" she said. "Thank't Lord I never knew while now. Me 'ands'd of diddered that much I'd not of managed owt! Eay! Me—at Todmorden All Servants' ball! Eay!"

  Nora smiled as the girl left. Not four months earlier, she herself would have thought the servants' ball elevation enough. But to be a guest of the squire…! She went to the door, barred it again, and walked out to the centre of the room to stand where she could see herself full length.

  Even now she could not believe it. That clothes could do so much to change one. That the rich and patrician-looking young woman in the mirror was the same as the girl who had once bargained away ten minutes of her body for four shillings and sixpence—and to the master of this house. She remembered John's words that same night out on the banks, about how there were riches now to be made by ordinary folks as would turn the kings and queens of past ages green with envy. Well here was the proof, if proof were needed.

  She moved closer to the mirror and subjected what she saw to a more critical, other-womanly scrutiny. Something was missing. Yes—the little pendant she had bought. It was a single, unfaceted but polished ruby encircled by minute pearls, all set in a silver-filigree mount. She had bought it because it came with two fastenings. One was a silver-braid band that enabled it to fit around her head as a ferronière, with the pendant high on her brow, just below where the twin partings met. The other was a silver-link chain that converted it to a simple necklace, with the pendant at the pit of her throat. She tried it both ways and found it impossible to decide between them. She would leave it to John. Not that he had any especial taste in such matters, but both places were good and it would please him to be their final arbiter.

  She pulled back the snib and opened the door—only to find herself face to face with Walter Thornton, ready changed. He might easily have been passing by, yet there was about him a suggestion of guilt, as if he had been at the keyhole. Was that why there was no key? She had no time to think further just then; it was obvious that he did not instantly recognize her.

  "I'm Mrs. Stevenson," she prepared to say, but just before she uttered the words, he blurted out "Nora!" So that the words, "I'm Mrs. Stevenson," following immediately after, sounded like the swiftest of rebukes. He coloured and his eyes fell.

  The air in the unheated passage was suddenly very cold to her naked shoulders. The temperature outside must have dropped to freezing.

  "You flatterer! Pretending not to recognize me!" she said, realizing the futility of an explanation and wanting to make light of it all.

  But he looked up with what she called his sheeps eyes and said lugubriously: "I recognized you. How can I forget! But you have never appeared so lovely. That I must confess."

  "Thank you kindly, sir," she said briskly and squeezed past him in a rustling of silk and petticoats to knock at John's door. She did not see that Thornton stood behind with his head bowed and eyes fast shut; John Stevenson's exasperated "Come in!" woke him from his reverie and stirred him to move away. Nora felt suddenly afraid to open the door and Stevenson had to repeat his call.

  He had, of course, known that she was up to something with a dressmaker in Manchester, but he had never imagined the result would be anything so exquisite as this. He dropped the neckcloth he had been failing to tie and stared at her in a bewilderment that slowly turned to adoration.

  The room was chill. She shivered and turned back toward the passage. "I need your advice on this one thing," she said. "Come into our room."

  In his stocking feet and shirt sleeves, with his neckcloth hanging loose, he padded after her, closing the door behind him.

  "Which do you think…" she began, picking up the ruby and pearl pendant. But he had his two great hands on her shoulders and moved her gently a pace or so forward to where he could talk from behind her to his own image in the looking glass.

  "Who's that?" he asked his own reflection.

  "That? That is the most beautiful lady in this kingdom. Belike in the world," he answered. "I thought so the minute I saw her."

  "D'ye know what I'm goin' to do with her?"

  He chuckled. "I can guess!"

  She lowered her eyes and blushed.

  "You can not. I'm going to kill her—that's what."

  She looked up in bewilderment at his image. Her reflection looked up at him.

  "Three months back…think now," he said directly to her, "what did I tell thee? It were clothes like this I had in me mind, but—eay! I never thought it'd…I never thought…" Slowly he lowered his head and kissed her shoulder, first one, then the other, then her neck. She shivered, not with cold this time, and turned to embrace him. But she could not lift her arms, because of the decolletage.

  She snorted her contempt for the fashion. "It's well enough for one grand evening, I dare say, but if I faced a lifetime of lacing to this degree and such exposure and"—she tried again to lift her arms—"such confinement, I'd sooner live savage."

  He helped her up and kissed her hand. "Wear what you will, you're always this lovely to me. But tonight even the purblind will see it."

  He decided she should wear the pendant at her throat. He had to kneel while she helped him with his neckcloth, which he tied with an osbaldeston knot. His evening dress harmonized perfectly with hers. The coat, worn open, was of a rich dark brown, with purple silk facings to the lapels. His waistcoat was of crimson velvet embroidered with black, crimson, and purple braid. His white shirt was frilled and ruffled and his pantaloons, of black kerseymere, were drawn high enough to show off his black silk stockings and elegant pumps with their ornamental silver buckles.

  When all was done, she took her red velvet shawl about her shoulders and gave herself, and him, one last inspection.

  "Frightened?" he asked.

  She put her hand on her stomach "Eay," she said. "I've got the north wind blowing through here."

  He shook his head reassuringly. "Just…be yourself," he said. "When you walk in through that door, think: Which of these folk is going to be of use to us?"

  "Not tonight!" she began, chidingly.

  But he was quite serious. "Especially tonight."

  And she suddenly understood what a chance it meant for him—for them; she saw, too, how much she had been influenced by Arabella's view of the world over these last weeks. So that the sudden springing upon her of this invitation had seemed no more than a chance to exercise the social graces that Arabella had been teaching her. But for John—and, she now understood, for her, too—it was something far more vital.

  The understanding brought its own regret, though. Her innocent evening of Christmas fun would have been doubly enjoyable because the year's work was so well done. But now, the simple fun was over before it had even started. And Nora, newly young and free of care, was not invited; Mrs. Stevenson, cofounder of a great enterprise, still in the making, would go in her stead.

  The thought then struck her that she never would be young. If she lived a century, she would die without ever having tasted real youth. She had gone from childhood, to poverty and unremitting toil, to destitution. And now, when her life ha
d changed so dramatically, an equally pitiless and demanding code had taken the place of the iron laws of poverty. Had there been a magic moment in between, when the one had been lifted and the other not yet imposed? Indeed there had she realized: that day they destroyed the rabbit warren, that gorgeous day. That had been her youth and all of it. For the first and only time, she envied Mrs. £400-a-year Arabella Thornton—not just this or that aspect of her…her smooth hands or her knowledge of the social graces but her whole, entire state.

  "You'll never guess," John said when they were downstairs in the drawing room, waiting for Walter and Arabella. "I had to bathe in cold. They bathe in cold water here."

  "What—with that lovely kitchen range that makes so much hot? They don't use it?"

  "Not for baths they don't."

  "I'm not bathing in cold," she said and walked directly out to the kitchen.

  As there was no meal to be taken in the house that night, both cook and scullery maid were hard at work scouring the knives and polishing the plate for tomorrow.

  "Oh, ma'm, ye do look that lovely!" Horsfall said.

  Nora smiled and shut the door behind her. "What are the arrangements for bathing tomorrow morning?" she asked.

  Mrs. Briggs looked at Horsfall, who brightened at once. "Please, m'm, Sweeney and me is excused a bath tomorn, and we are to bring you and Mr. Stevenson's at half past six."

  "Straight from the spring?"

  "Aye, m'm."

  "I tell you what, then. Save you making two journeys in the morning. Fetch ours tonight and store it in that thing." She pointed at the stove.

  Horsfall grinned, Mrs. Briggs coughed with ironic grimness. "Same as usual," she said. "Them two maids hold their watter in yon boiler all neet."

  As she came back along the passage, she heard Arabella coming downstairs. "Nora? No trouble is there?"

  "No," Nora answered lightly. "I just wanted them to be sure to tell us the moment Bess gets back."

  Her words tailed off as soon as she caught sight of Arabella, who stood in the full light of the hall lamps. It was clear now why she had taken longer to dress. "Oh Arabella," she gasped. "That's lovely! That is lovely! Don't stir from there. John! Come out and see!"

  Arabella, laughing with delight, stood as bid and waited. "And you," she said to Nora. "Come into the light. I can't see you there." Walter, coming down behind her, paused one or two steps up from where she stood. He peered over at Nora, shading his eyes to accustom them more quickly to the dark. Selfconsciously she fiddled with the lace of her tucker and bertha.

  "Eay what a picture!" John said from the drawing room door. "We have two princesses for company tonight, Thornton."

  Arabella, rewarded, completed the descent of the stairs. She went straight to John and offered a cheek for a kiss, which he, not showing his surprise, gave.

  "Merry Christmas!" she said.

  And "Merry Christmas!" they all repeated as they, too, exchanged kisses or shook hands—in which Walter, to Nora's taste, lingered rather too long and squeezed her fingers rather too fervidly. And, of course, Arabella admired Nora's dress rapturously, once she could see it properly in the light.

  She herself, being already as pale as fashion could dictate in an age that shunned cosmetics, had chosen the lighter colours that were then coming in. Her bodice was of pale blue watered silk, very pointed at the front, stiffened by three bones. She, too, wore it very decolleté, à la Grecque. Hidden between her breasts was a little phial of water to nourish the real violets she wore at her bosom.

  And violet was the theme of her dress, which was even fuller and more voluminous than Nora's. It was of a broche silk, printed with broad vertical bands of pale blue and white, edged with narrow stripes of violet. The blue bands had little violets, very naturalistic though only half their proper size, printed on them. The hem was gathered up into four stiff swags of silk at front and back, pinned by dark blue terry-velvet ribbons.

  But the real masterpiece was her hair. Sweeney, whose fingers had learned their dexterity in long childhood years down at the mills, had braided and woven its golden tresses with a perfection no machine could match and with an artistry beyond any mechanical contriving. Flat oval chaplets covered her ears; but the braids themselves were intertwined at the back with delicate silken ribbons of pale ultramarine—exactly the colour of her eyes; and among the braids of the front Sweeney had woven a string of hollow glass balls, each the size of a small walnut and opalescent green in colour. This string ran twice over her head, once vertically, as a sort of diadem, once horizontally forward, as it might be a ferronière worn rather high, just above the start of her single central parting. At the back, the loops and tresses of her naturally curly hair were gathered up with some of the silken ribbons from the sides and plaited at their ends into a delicate little knot that was held in a small net of silver.

  Walter watched her float from hall to drawing room, and later from drawing room to car with fierce but hopeless pride. How like an iceberg, he thought. And, mourning her vanished ardour, he quenched—as he had so often done this autumn now past—the upwelling of self-pity he felt within. He reminded himself that Arabella was beautiful, that she ran their home like a well-engineered machine, that she adored him and deferred to him in almost everything, that whenever he needed to express his lower nature she would lie still and let him, registering nothing more than the most silent and resigned of protests. What more could a reasonable man ask of a wife?

  In fact, as they jogged along in the car, he listened to the chatter of the two girls, missing most of it whenever the wood blocks of the brakes were pulled hard on, for the way down was steep. And he wondered whether his envy of Stevenson wasn't misplaced. Nora was a terrible one for having her way; they all said that. Stevenson had to argue everything through with her and she had much too big a hand in their finances. And look how, the day after the trial, she'd gone to the aid of the Metcalfes—after all that man had done to ruin her husband. Yes, even Stevenson, even the great Lord John, could have taken on more coals than he could haul. No doubt he got all his oats at home; but the price was high. All in all, he decided, his life with Arabella was more preferable by far.

  It was dark when he made this decision; but shortly after, as the car went past Fielden's at Waterside, where they kept three street gaslights burning, he saw Nora, buried warmly in the dark brown burnoose borrowed from Arabella, and his logic and resolve were almost undone. It brought him no joy; for the ten thousandth time he groaned inwardly at his thralldom to a bright eye, a swelling bosom, a neat ankle—and to the bodily images they unfailingly conjured of soft buttocks, yielding thighs, and a warm, moist pudendum.

  For some time he had been aware that little Bess, Nora's maid, had been jolting beside him with the movement of the car over the rougher stretches of the turnpike. And just as they passed into the gloom again, beyond the reach of Fielden's three lights, the car went down and up a wide pothole. The down brought the girl against him with a shriek of apologetic laughter; the up removed her torso to at least a few inches distance, but it somehow left her hip and thighs firmly against his. And it was now very dark. Dark enough to show the stars, twinkling in a clear, moonless sky, but very little besides.

  Looking innocently ahead—and knowing full well how fatuous it was to seek to misdirect others in this way, yet, nevertheless looking innocently ahead with all the intensity of a harbour pilot—he slipped a hand around her and squeezed what he was delighted to find was not corset but hip. How deliciously she wriggled against him. Quietly, in the dark, he had to ease his dropfront, which she took as an invitation to more daring play. He soon had to stop her or she'd have spoiled the evening before it began. How and when couldn't he get to her? Quickly during this ball? Or just feel his way to heaven now and arrange something for later that night? They could meet in the kitchen. Or in the old wash house across the yard. His heart and all his civilized parts sank at the prospect. It was going to be cold, dirty, and uncomfortable. It was going to rob
him of sleep. It would expose him to the danger of discovery. Why, oh why, could he simply say no and have done!

  But his hand went on caressing and fondling that girlish little hip, and straining past it for a touch of that restless, slender thigh.

  Damn all women!

  "…Thornton?" he heard Stevenson say.

  "Walter!" That was Arabella, sounding a little scandalized.

  His hand froze on that hip. Ridiculous, of course. They couldn't see him. "What?" he asked, hoping it did not sound as guilty to them as it did to him.

  "I said—what d'ye think are the chances tonight, of snow," John repeated.

  "Twice!" Arabella laughed.

  "Sorry," Walter laughed and eased away his hand. "I was lost among the constellations. Which is Cassiopeoia? That W-shape is it? They say it makes the initials WS and William Shakespeare was born under it, you know."