by Howard Fast
“Why?—I do not know just why, John Preswick. But tell me, where will you go?”
(By God, she was mocking at him!)
“It does not matter. Anywhere.”
After a moment’s hesitation she said: “John Preswick, if I were to ask you, would you climb the Steer’s Head with me—only once again?”
Following her eyes, he saw that the sun was beginning the diagonal descent which would take it, in a long slant, behind the hill. In a little while the color upon the face of the hill would dull and vanish; and after that it would form itself into a blurred silhouette throwing a great shadow almost to the house.
And as reading his thoughts, she said: “Do you see?—that is why they called this place the Steer’s Horn, because when the sun is low enough, the shadow will almost touch it, as it were.”
She rose, and he rose with her; and they went through the break in the hedge, walking in the direction of the hill. Slowly they walked, side by side, her hair blown forward over her shoulders by the wind. The wind carried the scent of the garden after them.
As he went, he looked at her frequently, noticing how thick and heavy her hair was, still about her shoulders. It was her one touch of girlishness, that she would not put up her hair. She loved it, and, in a way, he loved it too. His own was half gray and very thin. Now he ran a hand through it.
They walked on. Presently they were opposite the stone wall. Beyond it was the pasture, and beyond that, the hedge. They would follow the wall around the field to the hedge, and then they would walk with the hedge until it curved out to encircle the hill. When they came to the hill, they stopped and looked back.
“But we must hurry,” she said, “if we would reach the top before the sun sets.”
They found the path, and they began the ascent.
He walked behind her, as they went up, and he saw the way her frock held itself against her, the way her hair laughed forward. He could not keep his eyes from her as he walked. Through the underbrush they passed, coming out at last at the slope. Leaving the path here, they waded forward through the waist-high grass, ascending the last hillock, and coming abruptly to the top, where they paused, the oak towering over them.
“Look, John Preswick,” she said to him.
There it was, losing the last rays of a fading sun, a thin strip of blue that might, and then again might not, have been the sea, so faint was the line of demarcation that separated it from the horizon.
Turning, he saw the sun: a fire-balloon, wavering at the earth’s brink before it made the final plunge. The night breezes were rustling about, sighing, sighing.
She sank to the grass and motioned for him to do the same. Side by side they could, by a slight movement of their heads, command anything beneath them. There was the house, shaped like an overbalanced H, green tracery blotting out the red of its walls, four chimneys poking up impertinent heads; and there was the garden, all a-shadow; and there were the apple trees, and the pears, and the peaches; and there was the little old graveyard; and there was the narrow strip of woods; and there were the fields; and there was the pasture; and there the long hedge; and there the road, snake-like, losing itself. And all that was not in shadow was burnished by the last light of the sun.
“See,” she said, “how the sky over the water reflects the sun.
“Can you leave this—easily, John Preswick?” she added.
“Not easily,” he muttered.
“And yet you must,” she insisted soothingly, nodding her head, looking, strangely enough, like an elf.
“John Preswick—” she said contemplatively, having her eyes not upon him, but away off to the sea—“John Preswick, has it never struck you as curious that out of all the world, you should have come to this one place?”
“But I came. Why should it strike me as curious? I wanted to come.”
“And that your face should be the face in the picture?”
He did not answer her. Now he too was looking to the sea.
“But it is curious, John Preswick, that all this should be so, and that your name should be John Preswick. Yet to you and me it is natural—because we know.”
“What do we know, Inez?”
“Many things, John Preswick. But since tomorrow you go, I shall not speak of them.”
“Yet you knew that tomorrow I would go. Is that why you were not surprised?”
“All the Preswicks have gone, for the Preswicks cannot take themselves women, but must spew forth their blood upon the earth. It is not enough that you have given your arm, John Preswick.”
“And yet I love you,” he defended fiercely.
“So the story goes. That is always the story, love and some death, and because of that, John Preswick, you will swear to yourself that you love me. You will kill for me, if need be. You would die for me. But when the time comes to go, you will go; and then you will not think of me, nor will I ask you to, for I am Inez.”
“But who are you?” he cried suddenly, desperately. Turning to her, he looked into her face. How changed it was, how alive, how saddened, how knowing! And as he looked at her, she smiled a soft smile that crept from her lips and ran over her face until it reached her eyes. With a strange intensity, they glowed.
“John Preswick,” she said, “I think perhaps you do love me, for when a man returns and always returns, it does not matter how many times he goes. And you have always returned.
“Yes,” she added, “it is almost a hundred and fifty years now, and yet you have returned. So it does not matter if you go, John Preswick.”
“I do not understand. You could do better at a time like this than to talk nonsense.”
“It is nonsense to you, is it not, John Preswick? You thought it was the garden, and then you thought it was the Steer’s Head, and now you imagine it to be that strip of water out there, calling, calling. And so others have thought. But it is not, John Preswick—it is not.”
“Why then,” he said slowly, “did I come to this place? And why then must I go?”
“Listen to me, and I will tell you why you came. Because it was the plot, John Preswick, and the story said that here you must come. In life it would have been different; but life goes on about the two of us, while we live in our story. We do not know. We think that we are living, as all those others out there are living. But we are not. We are a dream; and now, perhaps, the dream is over, for the curse has been taken off our house, and a boy has been born to it.”
And as he looked at her in puzzled bewilderment, she said: “Do not wonder how I know all these things, John Preswick. I am not a witch, as your eyes seem to indicate. There are records in the house, many records, and old diaries, and papers, and letters, and perhaps I have read them all through. Do I speak in paradoxes, John Preswick?”
But he no longer listened to her words. She talked on, and the sound of her voice rose and fell in his ears, soft, subdued, and vastly restful. He turned his head to the sea, but he could no longer distinguish it now, so far had the twilight advanced. Yet he was not to blame, for her words were quite meaningless now. She was saying:
“—That daughter of an innkeeper, that common slut whose bed you came back to, John Preswick—what had she that was not mine? Could she have been any more beautiful? Surely, I was as beautiful as any, John Preswick, and surely I loved you, and surely at one time you loved me, and surely I suffered in the seven years I waited, and surely I gave up much in giving my faith for love of you. All of that is true, John Preswick, yet in the end you went back to her, back to her straw-colored hair. Were her breasts any warmer than mine, John Preswick? Yet I could have forgiven you for that. And years later, I could have forgiven you again, though I died with the bearing of your child. That was the strangest of loves, for you were my brother. I doubt whether in all the world there was another such love, John Preswick. I loved you because you were tall, and broad, and blond, and because you feared no thing on earth. I loved you because it was the nature of my race to love and envy such things, regardless of whet
her they are good or bad. And I saw love of me in your eyes, John Preswick, and when I died after giving you a child, I was happy—so happy. And yet you went again to a fat farmer’s slut, a blond-haired wench with breasts like ripe melons, and you lay in bed with her, and ate of her cooking, and forgot—you forgot, John Preswick, you who had killed for me as a beast kills, you who loved me as few other men have loved, you forgot, and you went to the gallows with regret that never again would you taste the comforts of your fat wife’s body.”
But there was no bitterness to her voice—only a certain wistfulness.
John Preswick, who had heard nothing, said: “Inez, I am tired, I am weary—so very weary.”
She smiled. She pressed him back until his head was in her lap. She passed her fingers through his thin, graying hair, and with a light, scarcely felt pressure, caressed his face. It was so lean, and sunken, and tired.
“I love you, John Preswick,” she whispered.
But his eyes were closed, and he did not seem to hear that.
“And tomorrow you will go?” she inquired softly.
“But you must not mind all this I have said,” she whispered to him. “You must not mind it, John Preswick, because it is nonsense. It is a story; and, after all, what have stories to do with life? Stories are for romanticists—and for children.”
Raising her eyes, she looked to the east. It was quite dark, the blue of sea and horizon lost in shadow. “The sun has set, John Preswick.”
His head was heavy in her lap; his eyes were closed; if he heard her, he gave no sign of it. Upon his chin she laid two fingers, and then, slowly, she drew them up over his cheek, over his brow, until they rested in his hair. In his hair there was still a trace of the red-brown.
“A story,” she mused. “Just a tale, and this is the end—or it may be that this is only the beginning. Who knows!”
Her voice was very, very quiet when she said to him: “No, John Preswick, to-morrow you will not go, nor after that.”
Perhaps he slept—he was so still.
The sun had set, and how it was dark….
But a single gleam of light lingered over the trees, slid down and threw long flickering shadows from the stones of the old graveyard, where, perhaps, many, many ghosts were laughing.
THE END
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1934 by Howard Melvin Fast
Cover Design by Jason Gabbert
This edition published in 2011 by Open Road Integrated Media
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