“It’s a picture of scarlet aloes in South Africa,” came Sally’s voice, cool and patient from the shadows.
“Are you both there? Daddy, are you there?” asked Midge.
“Yes. I’m here.”
“And Miss Burton?”
“At the moment. We’re just going down to have some supper.”
“Why are you here so late? Am I very ill? Am I going to die?”
“No, of course not, you little goose. But your father’s a very busy man and has other things to look after as well as you. He comes when he can.”
They stood beside her bed, Carne large, silent, his face a mask under his thick black hair, Sarah small, smiling. They seemed to fit together very nicely, and Midge’s thoughts, a rolling confusion of pain and dreams, found it quite natural that they should both be with her.
Long after, she awoke to see Sarah Burton sitting in the window, her red hair outlined against the green, deep, silent bar of the sea at dawn.
“Is father still here?” asked Midge.
“Hush, go to sleep, child.”
“Is he here? I want him. I think I’m dying.”
“Nonsense. You’re much better. As a matter of fact, he is here, but he’s downstairs resting.”
“What time is it?”
“Nearly five.”
“In the morning? Has he been here all night?”
“Yes.”
Midge giggled happily.
“You and he seem to like to spend nights up together.”
“Well—he wanted to see if you were better before he decided to go off to Ireland.”
“Am I better?”
“Yes, I think so.”
And so she was, and next day he went off, and Midge’s convalescence proceeded slowly. Her eyes hurt a lot and she once had earache, and she often felt extremely cross and wretched. But while her father was away, he wrote her letters, and even when he returned to Yorkshire, he sent them on every day that he could not visit her.
Midge was proud of these letters. They were, she considered, far more sensible and adult than those sent by Nancy’s or Gwynneth’s parents. She wanted every one to know what a wonderful correspondence she conducted with her father, and one day when Miss Burton was making her usual visit, she handed her a letter, saying, “Please won’t you read it to me? My eyes hurt so.”
“They were well enough to finish Beau Geste last night,” said Miss Burton; but all the same she lifted the heavy expensive paper and read with suitable gravity the words she found there, written in Carne’s large, childish, laboured writing:
“DEAR MIDGE,—I went to Nutholme sale yesterday. A poor lot of stuff and moderate prices. 700 head of poultry sold poorly at about two and six apiece. The ewes made up to fifty shillings but looked light. The hogs were little things, dearly sold at 101 lb. The cattle nothing much and showed want of attention. The horses were a mixed lot—some made up to 35 guineas but £20 average and not worth that. Furniture at fire stick prices. Altogether the cheque would be a small one. The farm is not let. I fear poor Bly will have about 2,000 acres on hand.
“I may get over Saturday. Hope you are getting fit.”
Your affec. father,
“ROBERT GEORGE CARNE.”
Miss Burton handed the letter back to Midge.
“Don’t you think,” challenged the girl, “that my father writes beautiful letters?”
“Well—this is a—very friendly one.”
“Poor Daddy. I expect he’s worrying about the Nutholme sale because he’s always selling things and they make so little money.”
She sighed expansively and caught Miss Burton’s quick green eyes glancing at her under their long light lashes.
“What do you mean about always selling things?” asked Nancy.
“Well, he sells horses. But he’s very particular where they go to,” said Midge. “I’ll tell you something. One day two men drove up to our house in a motor-car. Daddy and I had just come in and were talking to Hicks—our groom—in the stable-yard, when these men arrive and come straight up to Daddy. ‘Are you Mr. Robert Carne?’ they say, and my father says, ‘Yes, I am.’ ‘Thank God,” said the man. ‘We’ve been hunting for you for days. We want to buy some of your horses.’ ‘Oh, do you?’ says Daddy. ‘Then you’ve come to the wrong place.’ ‘Indeed? Why?’ ‘Because you’re not the sort of customers I care to deal with,’ says my father. ‘And why not, pray?’ ‘Well, if I tell you I shall only vex you,’ says Daddy. ‘No. Go on. It takes a deal to vex me,’ says the man,’ and I want a good horse.’ ‘Well, then, were you at Ripon Agricultural Show in 1923 judging horses?’ ‘Well,’ says the man, surprised like anything. ‘What of it?’ ‘Well,’ says my father, ‘you gave first prize to a horse that was never heard of again, second prize to a creature that hardly was a horse, and only honourable mention to that bay gelding of Miss Grey’s that swept the country later. Now, a chap that’ll do that is either a knave or a fool, and I sell my animals to neither.’ That’s the sort of man my father is. He said, ‘Good-evening,’ and ‘Come in, Midge,’ and we both went indoors and have never seen those men from that day to this.”
Midge told the tale well because she was showing off before Miss Burton. The anecdote impressed her. She thought that it displayed her father as a quite remarkable person. She was sorry that the head mistress did not stay for further discussion. Sarah threw a light word to the girls, a glance at the temperature charts, and was gone, leaving a fragrance of lavender and a sense of cool critical detachment on the air behind her.
“Oh, Midge Carne,” cried Jennifer, “I’m sick and tired of your father. If he’s so wonderful, why is he going bankrupt?”
“He’s not. How dare you?”
“Well, my dad said . . .”
“Your father’s only a common vet. . . .”
“He’s not common . . .”
“And a liar.”
“Oh, shut up, both of you!”
“Girls, girls, what is all this?” Miss Parsons fluttered in, fussy and ineffective but endowed, after all, with statutory powers, able to impose silence upon controversy and to report contention.
Midge Carne exposed such flushed cheeks and bright eyes to her anxious investigations that she took her temperature and found that it was 100.6 degrees again. It was too bad. Girls like Midge needed watching every moment. Miss Parsons wished that the child was safely back at Maythorpe.
5
Lily Sawdon Propitiates a God
I’VE GOT rid of him, thought Lily Sawdon, riding from Fleetmire in the Kingsport bus. He’s gone. I’ll never have to deal with him again.
A shudder convulsed her body; her triumph shocked her. Was this really herself rejoicing because Rex, the beautiful silvery-brown Alsatian, Rex, the gay, the boisterous, the uncontrollable, had been led off by Lee the vet, down the muddy path to execution? He had marched off, stepping daintily, feathery tail in air, proud as a prince, unconscious of her treachery, and it was Tom’s eyes that were wet as they watched him go. Was it really true that any one could change so? Eh, I wouldn’t know myself, thought Lily.
I never knew it would be like this, thought Lily. When she came to the Nag’s Head, it had all seemed so simple. She had only to hold out, to conceal her secret, till Tom got his business well on its feet. Even if he did notice that she wasn’t too well, it wouldn’t matter. He would put it all down to her age. He had often told her that middle-aged women always felt under the weather.
I never knew pain could do this to you, thought Lily. For she had changed. It was true, she hardly knew herself. There had been hours when she had hated Tom; she wanted to hit his lean, red, friendly, handsome face; she had wanted to scream out at him her secret, telling him that she had let herself be crucified upon his simple vanity, that if she had stayed in Leeds she could have been spared this agony. It maddened her that he should be so blind, so childish, so complacent of his masculine strength and patience. He thought that he was being so very good to her.
&
nbsp; Oh, and he was, he was. Lily’s heart rebuked her. She thought of how he rolled out of bed each morning, a well-drilled soldier, the moment his alarm clock jarred the early silence. He pulled on his trousers and went downstairs to light the fire. Always he brought a cup of tea up to her. His service with the colonel had made him handy. He could fill hot-water bottles, lay trays ever so nicely, wait on her with intelligent attention. He relieved her of all the hard work of the inn. He scrubbed floors, shifted cases, lighted fires, black-leaded grates, washed glasses. He got in Chrissie Beachall every morning. He attended to the garage and the bar and all the customers; she could sit for hours in the arm-chair by the fire. No husband could possibly have been more good to her. He even bought her the dog to keep her company.
How could she blame him because he did not realise? She blamed herself. Oh, no, then, she blamed no one. She crouched over herself in the jolting bus, and stared out at the flat unfriendly landscape.
How could Tom know that even on her good days their life at the Nag’s Head put too much upon her? She knew by heart the burden of that house—two steps up from the kitchen to the tap-room, six along the passage, three across the scullery, twenty from the back door to the garage. Then upstairs to the bedroom were seven steps, a turn in the wall, and then another five. “They’ll never get my coffin down them,” thought Lily, dragging herself round the turning by the banister rail.
Oh, how could Tom know that on her bad days every demand on her drove her to voiceless fury? Then the pain uncurbed itself and seized her, and she crouched, sick and dumb in her fireside chair, clutching to herself the blistering hot rubber bottle which, while it brought no relief, was a sort of counter-irritant. Then the door-bell tinkled, and a party of hikers wanted some bars of chocolate, a thirsty cyclist wanted some ginger beer, and if Tom was not there she must pull herself together, she must hobble out to the bar, and she must serve them.
So she dreaded Tom’s absences, and he guessed it because he loved her, and bought her a dog that she should not be lonely.
A dog. And Lily had never liked dogs. She, perhaps, had never said so, because it was not her way to express displeasure. But their animal smell disturbed her queasy stomach; their bounding energy rasped her taut nerves; they upset vases, trampled on cushions, printed footmarks on carpets, lifted their legs against the scullery table, disturbed the niceties of domestic order. She couldn’t do with dogs.
Never would she forget Rex’s arrival. Tom brought him back one night from Kingsport. It had been a bad day, and Lily had not known how to endure the evening. Up and down from the kitchen to the bar she had stumbled, drawing corks, measuring whiskies, counting change. A busy night, for once, a profitable night. The smoke blinded her, the smell of ale had sickened her. In the scullery she had wept moaning and protesting, alone for a moment with her pain, counting the seconds till Tom could come and lift the burden of petty obligation from her.
Then he had come—creeping through the kitchen door with his bright eyes and roguish little-boy air, his tongue curling round his red lips as it always did in moments of excitement, pleased as punch with himself, secret, eager. “I’ve got something for you, Lil. A surprise. A surprise!”
As though anything could surprise her save the end of pain.
Then, held back for a moment and now released, Rex sprang forward, a silvery-brown bounding lithe Alsatian puppy. He nearly knocked Lily over. He sprang from the door to the sofa, from the sofa to the hearthrug, then round and round the table, swinging his great tail, leaping, slavering, wild, restless, beautiful, ebullient dog.
From that moment he claimed Lily’s attention. He would scratch at doors, demanding liberation. He would fling himself into the air, race along roads, leap over hedges, whirl himself round and round in circles, wallow in ditches. Then back he would come, dripping and panting, fawning round Lily, pleading for affection.
She did not want him. She had wanted nothing, only the freedom to retire to that dim no-man’s-land where she and her pain lived now in isolation. Nothing else could touch her. Once she had had a lover; she thought of Tom’s eager, buoyant, dominating ways. Come on, let’s take a chance, Lil. Oh, Lil, I love you. Oh, Lil, the softness of your hair and the way it curls in the back of your neck. I can’t get it out of my mind.
She had a husband, and he was very good to her. No other woman she knew had such a husband. She had her girls, sweet they had been as children. Fat roguish Addie, tumbling across the floor. Maimie holding on to her knees with both short arms, crying, Oh, lovely Mummy. I love you. Dear Mummie. And now Addie had her own babies and Maimie would soon become a mummie herself.
Lily did not want to be bothered with babies. She had only one companion, the insistent comrade of her waking hours, the uninvited bridegroom of her bed. She could invest her pain with a personality. On waking every morning she lay waiting to see what sort of mood it would be in to-day. If she felt only the slight nausea and exhaustion which were her alternatives to vivid, exacting pain, she would lie still and tranquil, humbly blessing the hour. She wanted, then and always, nothing except to be left alone.
The bus stopped near the flour mill. The inspector came to look at the tickets. Lily produced hers and held it between her gloved fingers. Tom had given her a pound to spend in Kingsport. “Buy a new hat; go to the pictures. Have a good tea. Sorry I can’t come with you.” He was kind, oh, he was kind because he was sorry for her, because they had taken Rex to the vet’s to be put to sleep.
What would he have said if he could know the truth, that she had betrayed Rex, that she had deliberately set him on to chase those sheep? Oh, God, have pity on me. Forgive me, she prayed, horrified by this change that had overtaken her. How could she have known that pain would change her into a different person?
She had done her best for a time, taking Rex on his lead down to the village, though he almost pulled her to pieces with his energy. If she let him go, he frisked and gambolled round her, flapping his huge tail through the Maythorpe shops, panting and slavering, showing his white teeth in a wide free grin until the children screamed and ran away. Neighbours said, cautious, yet knowing a fine thing when they saw one, “You’ve got a grand dog now, Mrs. Sawdon. You’ll have to take care he don’t go after sheep.” And she said, “Yes, he’s a beauty,” knowing that he was a beauty, a superb irrational dynamo of fur and bone and muscle. She took care of him and gave him liver and biscuit, but she led him out into the fields where the young lambs played, and when no one was looking she set him on to them—Go on, Rex. Catch ’em. Chase ’em. The silly sheep. The silly graceful dog, signing his own death warrant.
So Dickson went to the Nag’s Head to complain, and Heyer was sympathetic and spoke to Carne, and Rex was put on probation for a fortnight, and beaten, and followed Lily about with puzzled meekness that did not suit her at all. She could not do with him.
His habits gave the men something to talk about. Alsatians and sheep-chasing, cures for sheep-chasing, cases of inveterate sheep-chasing, were discussed with passionate enthusiasm in the bar-room.
Rarely was the conversation interrupted, though Lily entered once to hear Tom saying, “What’s this about young Brimsley wanting to court Peg Pudsey?”
“It’s time enough,” said Heyer. “He wants his mother out and the girl in, but I say he’s a fool. Mrs. Brimsley’s a rare cook. I wouldn’t change her myself for a daughter of that, soaking fool, Pudsey.”
“There’s more in marriage than good cooking,” said Tom with a wink at Lily, a loyal wink, because, during recent months, there had been little more in his, and latterly not much cooking.
But talk could not postpone the crisis. Rex one day killed a sheep. The Cold Harbour Colonists were friendly tolerant men, and all liked Lily, but this was something serious.
The dog must be put down or sold out of the district.
It was then that Lily had known just what she wanted.
“I won’t have him sold into a town. It isn’t fair.”
She w
as sitting idle beside the fire, the tea unprepared, when Tom came in to her. In spite of the bright May afternoon, she was shivering.
“What shall I do then? We can’t keep him.”
“Best have him put down, mercifully. It’s kindest. Once they get after sheep, it’s a disease. Like drink. You can’t stop.” Her pain was so bad that her voice sounded harsh and desperate.
“I’m sorry, Lil.” Tom was troubled and puzzled. “If I’d thought, I’d never have bought the dog.”
“Thought? You never think. Thought’s the last thing you’d be guilty of,” she snapped so unexpectedly that Tom grieved all the more, assured that Lil had loved the dog even more than he had guessed.
Rex uncurled himself from his basket and strode across the room, his beautiful dignified gait appropriate to the sombre moment. He dropped his pointed muzzle on to Lily’s knee. Then some spring of control broke in her, because she could not bear to behave so badly, and she rose and flung the dog aside, and snapped at Tom, “I’ve cooked nothing for tea. You’ll have to eat boiled bacon.”
But when he replied patiently, “Oh, that’s all right. Don’t you worry. I’ll fry myself a rasher and a couple of eggs. Would you like one?” she could bear it no longer. She fled upstairs to the bedroom and cried and cried and cried, because she was dying a changed and hateful creature, because she no longer had any patience left for any one, for Tom’s brave optimistic plans, for the dog’s vitality, for Chrissie Beachall’s complaints about her varicose veins; for the woes and joys of the visitors to the inn. They were nothing to her. She was withdrawn from them into a world of sharper pain and ultimate estrangement. She was no use—to herself, to them, to Tom.
But to-day, when they had taken Rex to the vet’s, it was Lily who had been brave and competent. Tom had driven them both there in the Sunbeam, but he had to get back to look after the inn, and she had decided to go on by bus to Kingsport.
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