Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  CHAPTER V. DENNIS GOES RUNNING

  FOR a week more the warm bright weather of March continued. Now and again there would be a drift of rain for an hour, but no more than to refresh the grass, and make a softness in the ploughed land where the wheat was germinating, and then the clouds melted away, lightened of their moisture, and the sun gleamed again on the wet pasture, and the new foliage of the spring. On other days it would blow strong from the south-west, and then the shadows of clouds bowled darkling across the fields, one succeeding another in swift-moving patches, and out they went across the bay, and the sea lay striped with purplish darknesses as they passed, and kindled again into depths of translucent green. A morning of wind raised caps of foam on the shining shield, but before nightfall the wind dropped, and the clouds built themselves into snowy towers, the tops of which shone rosy bright long after the sun had slid below the horizon. Then till dawn the sea twinkled with the lights of the fishing fleet sliding seawards on the ebb, and morning brought the heavy-laden boats to the pier of St. Columb’s, and they discharged their shining booty into the handcarts that carried it to the rail-head. By now the lambing was over: the pasture was dotted with young lusty beasts with tails twitching as they tugged at their dams’ teats, and there was scarcely a half-dozen of barren ewes in the flock.

  To-night supper was late, for neither Dennis nor his grandfather got home till close on eight, and John sat down at the table without going to clean himself in rare good spirits.

  “There’s not been such a lambing season since I was a lad,” he said, “praise His Holy Name. Aw, dear, if the women down to St. Columb’s behaved them like the ewes are doing this spring it ‘ud soon be as big as Lunnon town. Scarce a barren one, and I never knew them throw so many doubles. Hullo, Nancy! You’re looking as frisky as a lamb yourself, and there’s something smelling damned good. Be brisk with supper.”

  For the last half-hour Nancy had been restless, wondering what kept the men out so long, and making suggestions that Mrs. Pentreath and she and Nell should begin their meal without waiting for them. Even her book could not keep her mind busy, for she was for ever jumping up to look now out of the door, and now from the window to see if they were coming: such a good mutton hash she had made them, so she grieved, and now it was spoiling. Mrs. Pentreath could have laughed at that lamentation, for sitting furtively observant she saw that Nancy never once took the earthenware pot off the fire to prevent the meat from over-cooking, as any woman would have done who was thinking of her stew: all she wanted was to get supper over. The lamp was burning ill to-night, and she could not see whether she had her smart stockings on, but she’d have made a bet she had.

  “Well, I’m sure I thought you’d never come in,” said Nancy in answer to her father-in-law, “and as for being brisk with the supper, it’s been waiting this nigh an hour for you. What’s been keeping you?”

  John Pentreath poured himself out a rinse of spirits. “Bit of midwifery,” he said. “There’s not been much call for that in this house for a many years, nor won’t be again, I daresay.”

  Nancy tossed her head in the most approved manner.

  “You speak very coarse, Mr. Pentreath,” she said. “I began to be afeared that you and Dennis had fallen out, and I knew who’d have had a broken head then.”

  She glanced at the clock, as she brought the stew from the oven.

  “Set the potatoes, Nell,” she said, “and be quick. I never saw such a slow-coach. Well, there we are, and you can fall to. No such sauce as appetite, they say.”

  It was not so late after all, thought Nancy, as she calculated the time before her tryst down at St. Columb’s, She had begun ladling out the stew, when John rapped on the table and stood up to say grace. This was usually a Sabbatarian observance.

  “Well, if Sunday hasn’t come round quick again,” she said, “and me thinking it was only Friday. But I’m not one to object, for I’m sure we’ve got plenty to be thankful for. Pass up your plate, Dennis.”

  Mr. Pentreath had got through his first glass at a gulp, and set it down on the table.

  “That’s done me good,” he said, “and the sight of those lambs did me good, too. I’ll take another go of your stew, Nancy.”

  “Why, but Mrs. Pentreath hasn’t had her first go yet,” she said. “I declare I forgot about you, Mrs. Pentreath. Pardon, I’m sure. Now, aren’t we all happy and pleasant to-night instead of those accidents!”

  Nancy glanced round.

  “Nay, we won’t have any accidents to-night,” said John. “That we do, we’ll do on purpose, and enjoy ourselves, and thank the Lord for all His benefits.”

  Mrs. Pentreath had taken no more than a mouthful of Nancy’s savoury mess, and now she pushed back her chair and had done with her supper. The plan that had occupied her mind so much these last days was pretty well matured now, but there were some bits of things to be learned yet before she could proceed with it. She made no doubt, when she saw how impatient Nancy was about supper, that the woman would soon be gone from the kitchen with a sleepy fit or what-not, and presently would be out of the house, hot-foot to her man. But what of the key to Nancy’s door, which she herself would need? Nancy always locked it of nights now, since their conversation, but to-night she would have locked it from the outside. It was unlikely that she would take the heavy thing with her; ’twas more probable that she would hide the key somewhere handy, and that cache must be found first. Then there was John to reckon with. A godly mood he was in to-night: he was thinking of nothing but his lambs, and how gracious the Lord was to him for causing his ewes to throw so many doubles, and send him such a spell of seasonable weather for their infant days. To listen at him you’d have thought the Lord had naught to do but to attend to His servant John Pentreath. He was paying no heed to Nancy at all: not a look did he give her as she helped him to a second go of stew, and changed his plate for him. Moreover, he wasn’t drinking according to his wont, and he must be chockful of his whisky before that propitious night came, when Nancy would have gone off to her man, and then she would have a bit of a talk to him, telling him that Nancy was fair mad with desire for him... But this evening all was awry: there was no certainty as to the whereabouts of Nancy’s key, and the lambs had turned John into one of themselves. She must give up all thought of her design to-night.

  Supper was over now, and pulling her old shawl round her she went to the door of the kitchen and looked out.

  “A bit of rain coming up,” she said, “‘twill fall heavy and steady before an hour’s out, and be passed before day. A bit of a blow, too, I shouldn’t wonder, but nought to harm.”

  She could have laughed aloud at the effect of her words on Nancy, and she could read plain as print what was in the woman’s mind. She was all bustle and hurry again to get the table cleared and be gone, in order to get down to St. Columb’s before the rain began and made mischief with her smart clothes. In five minutes the cloth was off and folded away, Nell and Dennis took the plates and dishes to the scullery for washing-up, and Nancy picked up her book.

  “Well, with supper so late and all,” she said, “I reckon I’ll go up to bed now. Good night all.”

  She tripped upstairs and changed her dress in a rare hurry, for Mrs. Pentreath was never wrong about the weather, and there! there came a puff of wind and a gust of rain pattered on to the panes. It would never do to take the hat with the cherries on it out into a wet night, and instead she tied a red woollen scarf round her head, glancing into the glass to see how it suited her. Her umbrella, bad luck to it, for all its pretty handle with the blue glass knob on the top, was little use in the rain, for half its seams were agape, and Nancy only used it, tightly furled, for ornamental purpose. As for her dress, she could keep that dry with her mackintosh. There was nothing ornamental about that, but she would strip it off in a jiffy when she got to Mr. Giles’s house. Then she came cautiously forth, locked her door on the outside, and considered where to put the key, for it was an awkward, heavy thing to carry. But the
top of the broad door-lintel was just the place for it, and having deposited it there she went down the narrow stairs to the studio and let herself out. It had been an ingenious thought to use this means of exit and entrance, but before long she might have to think of some other way, for Mrs. Pentreath had received an inquiry only to-day as to whether she had this lodging to let in May for a month or perhaps the whole summer. The gentleman wrote from London, Mr. Willis was his name, and he had heard from a previous tenant how comfortable he had been made there. A sad pity it was that she and Harry had not met before he took that house in Kenrith Lane, for then he could have come to lodge at the farm. That would have been a cosy, comfortable plan, the way things had turned out!

  As she came opposite his house she saw that the garden-door into the studio was not shut, but ajar, and a long thin pencil of light came from it. That was a signal: by ill-chance there might be some friend of Harry’s in the studio at the hour appointed. If so, the door would be shut, and she was to wait in the summerhouse in the garden till all was clear. But to-night the door was ajar and she pushed it open and entered.

  Mrs. Pentreath sat knitting by the open door of the range for a quarter of an hour after Nancy had gone. Then she lit her candle and went upstairs and along the passage till she came to Nancy’s door. Locked, of course, and peeping through the keyhole she saw that there was no key there, as anyone could have guessed. She reached up to the lintel, and there it was. What would happen, she wondered, if for the sheer devilry of it, she just took it away? Nancy would find herself in a fine pickle when she returned after her pleasuring and could not get into her own room. A rare bit of fun it would be to get her caught like that, to hear the slut explaining that she had gone for a saunter this wet night in her Sunday clothes after she’d said she was off to bed, and had locked her room and then lost the key! But Nancy with her locked room was to give her more than a rare bit of fun, and she replaced the key, and went quickly back to her own room, for there was the kitchen door opening again, and young Dennis and Nell coming up together. It wouldn’t be a surprise if they made a match of it soon, for the bright ferment of the spring, as anyone could see, was bubbling in them both. Dennis clumped along the passage in his heavy boots, the inconsiderate boy, not thinking that his mother might be just falling asleep. “But you may dance a jig outside her door,” thought Mollie, «and there’ll be no complaint from her in the morning!”

  Click, click went the latches of their two doors, and then once more the kitchen door opened, and up came John, steady and sober. There was no stumbling nor creaking of the banisters, and he went straight to his room without making any excursion to Nancy’s door. “’Twould turn the Lord against him, he’ll he thinking,” grinned Mollie to herself, “and with all his lambing ewes that would never do.”

  The lure and enchantment of the spring was potent indeed. Dennis and Nell had gone to their rooms as Mrs. Pentreath had conjectured, and there each stood for a moment listening for some sound from the other. But something else had taken hold of Dennis to-night, and presently he went across to the window, and threw it wide and looked into the darkness. The rain was falling now, steady and soft, hissing on the shrubs in the garden and tapping on the magnolia leaves. The air was still, but then there came a stir from the open fields beyond, and the trees in the garden bowed as the wind threshed through them and drove the rain before it. It smelt of the sea and of the wet trees and of the fruitful earth, and as if it had been a fire pouring in instead of a wet wind, it set him burning to be out in it. The gust passed, and again the rain fell straight and thick through the warm starless night.

  Dennis leant out farther. “Nell!” he called, not raising his voice, for her window was but a few feet from his, and maybe she was looking out, too.

  “Yes,” she answered from close by.

  “I’m going out for a running, Nell,” he said. “Will you come ‘long?”

  He heard her laugh softly.

  “Not I,” she said. “’Tis the wet windy night, for wind’s coming, Aunt Mollie said. ’Tis the night when you want to do your running alone.”

  “Maybe I do,” he said, for the urge of spring was pulling strong at him from the darkness, and he knew he didn’t want Nell with him to-night. But for a moment yet they leaned out, their heads sundered only by a few dripping magnolia leaves and one great fragrant leather-petalled blossom, two clean flames of youth in that house which reeked of dying wicks and furtive smoulderings.

  “You’d better wait a bit yet,” she said, “others’ll be awake still.”

  “No, I’ll don my beach-shoes, and none’ll hear, and I’ll nip down the stairs to the lodging and out at the studio door. Sure you won’t come too?”

  “I’m off, then. Mind to put our string on ye for morning.”

  “Sure,” she said.

  “More like I’ll be rousing you,” she said.

  Dennis drew in his head and made ready. He pulled off his boots, and stripped, putting on a pair of canvas trousers that were waiting for Nell’s washing on Monday, a jersey and his rope-soled shoes, and felt his way down the staircase and into the studio. The glass door into the garden was unlocked, and that was a surprising thing, for Mollie usually fastened all doors at nightfall, but he left it like that and put the key in his pocket, so that none could lock it while he was gone; then out into the warm throbbing darkness of the spring night. It mattered not where he went so long as he was alone under the spell of it, and he crossed the garden below the trees that now stood motionless again, whispering with the rain, and out into the open fields beyond. Somewhere behind the low pall of the clouds there must be a moon, for there was light enough to see the outlines of trees against the sky and to keep his feet from stumbling. The rain was but a drizzle now and the air was thick with the scent of herbs and grasses unperceived by day; some were sweet, some acrid, and all were stirred up, like savourings, in the smell of the wet earth. And now the heady intoxication of the spring began to bubble in his brain, and he laughed and drew a long breath into his lungs, or stretched his arms upwards and outwards, filled with the wine of his own youth. Then from walking he broke into a run and leapt as he ran, unconscious of himself as any loose-limbed colt in the meadow. Field after field he traversed: in one there was a flock of sheep, a huddle of dim grey blots on the grass, and Dennis ran in among these, scattering them to right and left, save a valorous ram, who stamped at him and stood his ground. He vaulted the gates if he happed on them; if not, he scrambled up and over the shale-built walls, till, near ahead, he saw the black lump of Kenrith copse. He swung out to the right, giving it a wide berth, for there were endless dark legends concerning it: that there were to be heard coming at night from the heart of it weird cries and chantings, and that lights could be seen moving about between the stems of the wind-slanted firs. Old wives’ tales, he thought to himself again, but it was an ill-omened place for prudent folk, and he had no desire to hear sounds where all should be still, and see lights where all should be dark, for he was not come out into the night to seek out sorceries, but to be flooded within and without by the rain and wholesome wind and the white magic of the spring. Not one atom of this formed a conscious thought in his mind, but body and mind alike were harnessed to the primeval instinct that drove them.

  The rain had begun to fall thick again, and still the uncomprehended rapture grew, and he must shout as he ran. His skin dripped with the sweat of his swift going, and he paused to strip off the encumbering jersey which clung close to him, and gasped to feel the cool wet pricking on his back and chest and shoulders. The wind had risen now and was blowing steady and fresh from the sea, and it brought with it the sound of the thump of the surf on the beaches below, and he could taste the saltness through the sweet water of the driving rain, that seemed to soak into him and renew his very bones and inward parts. He had left the fields, and there lay in front of him a long stretch of downland: half an hour’s running brought him to the head of a wide valley that sloped seawards. A stream ran dow
n a pebbly bed in the centre of it, and passed into the shelter of a wood that stretched from one side to the other of the combe. Here the wind sounded loud in the tree-tops, but below, the thick growing trunks broke the force of it, and now the instinct that had driven him forth took entire possession of him. He threw himself face-downward, bare-chested, on a bed of sprouting bracken, and lay there panting, while the arteries throbbed in his throat and temples. He £lung wide his arms and legs, as if to wrestle with the earth his mother, or hold her in strong embrace, and with his spread fingers he dug into the soft soil, and with his teeth he bit the sappy fern stems. Then, as the ecstasy subsided into content and quietness, he lay there with eyes shut. God! what a good running it had been, what a spell, what a magic of springtime and night!

  He gave a long sigh, and sat up, brushing the earth off his chest, and squeezing the water from his hair. Close by the stream broadened into a good-sized pool, and he stripped off his trousers, which were thick with mud, and washed them and wrung them out. Then he stepped into the pool himself, and lay there full length, head under, and tingled with the shock and glow of the cool water on his hot body. That was good: that gave a finish to it all, and he stroked the water off him with his hands, and struggling back into his clinging trousers set off on his homeward journey.

  The veiled moon had set by now, and when he neared the farm again it was so dark that he had to feel his way through the trees into the garden, and move cautiously across it to the door of the studio, with shuffling feet to avoid stepping on to some bed of wallflowers. He could smell them in the darkness, but that tamer scent was less to his mind than that of the acrid bracken shoots, and the wild thyme of the downland. Then as he groped for the door handle in the black wall of the studio, he saw a light moving along up the path from St. Columb’s. For one disconcerting second he bethought him of the rumoured lights in the Kenrith copse, but then came the click of the garden gate, and an audible footstep on the gravel path, and misgiving gave place to curiosity: who could it be coming to the farm where all but himself had been in bed this long while? He slipped behind a shrub of bay and waited, watching the gleam through the sheltering leaves and unable in the gross darkness to see anything of the bearer of it. Next moment it came flashing in his eyes, and he heard a little cry of startled surprise in a voice that he recognised.