‘Pretty bad across the downs this time of the year, I should think,’ returned Armstrong, rousing somewhat at this last remark.
‘Yes,’ said he, ‘so it is, and you have to be bred to the place, in my way of thinking, to stand it. My first wife—poor woman! she couldn’t bear it long, being a stranger to the place. And yet it’s surprising how some that are foreigners, as you might say, take to it. There’s a young lady up there now—
one of these artists—seems as if she just throve upon it.’
‘Do you live at the farm just two miles beyond Burton Hall?’ Armstrong asked with growing interest. ‘I think they told me it was called the Drylches.’
‘That’s true enough,’ the man said, ‘or Lushes, after me and my family.
Some people thinks it looks lonely all by itself up there. But we don’t bother ourselves about that, and the pasture is good enough for the flocks, anyhow.
Still, I do always say that you don’t know what winter is until you’ve been up there at Christmas time.’
‘No,’ returned Armstrong, ‘I should think that’s very likely,’ and then almost involuntarily he heard himself saying: ‘You take in guests, don’t you?’
‘Yes, we do, now and again,’ said, the man, eyeing him with some surprise,
‘artists and such-like—though I’m sure I don’t know what they see in the place. Still, I will say my good woman she makes them comfortable enough—
fine cook too.’ The latter piece of news cheered Armstrong towards the path which he was gradually taking.
‘Yes,’ continued the farmer, ‘we’ve had some queer ones in our time, not but what they were respectable in their own ways—I’ll say that for them—
only a bit touched in the understanding, as some might think. There was one used to come and walk about the fields all day, and parts of the night even, looking for traces of the old people what ’tis said lived here before the Romans.’
‘And did he find anything?’ Armstrong asked.
‘Not he,’ said the farmer, ‘some old bones, and a flint or two: but he seemed quite pleased, poor gentleman, and after all that kind of thing does no one any harm.’
‘I’m interested in that kind of thing myself,’ said Armstrong.
The farmer blushed. ‘No offence, I hope, I’m sure,’ he returned hurriedly.
‘None whatever,’ Armstrong laughed. ‘I suppose you have not a spare room now? I should like to spend Christmas up there and see winter for once in my life.’
The farmer looked a trifle incredulous. ‘Would you really now?’ he ejaculated.
Armstrong, seeing he was only half-believed, reassured him with all the circumstance in his power; explaining that he was in the midst of some very important discoveries connected with the ancient peoples, but had not liked to thrust himself on Mr Delane-Morton’s family circle for Christmas—being such an intimate time. The farmer began to look less doubtful, and finally conceded that there was an empty room, but he didn’t know what his good woman might say. Anyhow it was agreed that Armstrong should return with the farmer, when the latter had finished his business in Salisbury that afternoon, and spend at least one night at the Drylches.
Feeling now more than a little virtuous and strangely relieved, he abandoned himself to the delights of scanning the old town and the beauties of the cathedral. ‘The bare ruined choirs’ of the lime-trees in the close were quite as lovely at this time of the year as the building beside them, and yet that too was exquisite in the low light of the winter’s afternoon. The snow had ceased falling at the same moment as they arrived at Salisbury, and a pale sun having pierced the clouds, Armstrong was enabled to spend the few following hours under fairly pleasant auspices. He still, however, found himself confronted with the mental vision of Ape’s-face, which occasioned him to reassure her of his return more than once as though she were there in person.
After a time the accusing countenance appeared propitiated, and the impression on his imagination less vivid. ‘I shall soon be able to tell her if there is anything at the Drylches,’ he said to himself as the day moved slowly on to the evening. He made the return journey with the farmer, who, far from being the morose and bearish individual of Godfrey’s description, proved an honest, friendly soul, much addicted to conversation spiced with a strong sense of humour. He pleased Armstrong.
At Down End station an open trap awaited them into which Armstrong climbed, and his portmanteau being safely ensconced behind, he was once more carried over the road which he had traversed for the first time only two nights before, and even so very recently had hoped with such vigour never to traverse again. He was almost regarding his new move with pleasure and a kind of indefinable excitement—a sort of boyish joy in something done covertly—for he could not allow himself to be seen of the Delane-Morton family until at least a whole day had passed. So he turned up his coat-collar, pulled his hat well over his brows, and trusted to the twilight to obscure him the more.
The snow had not melted on the roads, scarred as they were with the furrows of cart-wheels, for a sharp frost had now set in and the clouds shewed themselves passing away in vast blue columns eastward, leaving a flare of yellow radiance in the west where the sun had rapidly declined, and promising a night of stars. They drove noiselessly through the empty streets of Burton where roofs and thatches lay shrouded in white, and only a few blindless windows glowed orange along seemingly deserted houses. The place looked extraordinarily peaceful and Christmas-like. It only needed one more note in the harmony of hour and atmosphere to make completion perfect.
The deep bells from the church sounded after them as they went, just a few great-toned notes ringing curfew; and then again the more than quietude.
They passed the Hall gates without seeing a soul, and presently, turning a sharp corner, began painfully to mount the downs. The farmer sprang down from his seat and led the horse up the steep slope, making the usual encouraging noises which drivers employ at these arduous moments, during which time Armstrong gave himself up to the extraordinary beauty of the world which lay about them. The higher they mounted the more the wonder grew. The entire impression was as of something transcendently penetrating.
The clearness of space and atmosphere was essentially bell-like, and the curving horizon bent about the surface of the downs was like the arc of some vast dome from which this resonance obtained its quality. The road here was undistinguishable from the turf, all was included and enfolded under one wide, white covering which cast up a pallid glow against the deepening blueness of night. The trees in the valley looked like uplifted canopies of snow, and the copse which shielded Burton Hall from sight wore the appearance of a gigantic baldachin carried on an infinite number of staves.
The village formed a sort of greyish confusion on the white surface, shot through with patches of gold like scattered coins. Not one breath of wind stirred, only a whispering in the telegraph-wires, whose posts, grim and black across the wastes of snow, made a curious undertone. These were the last of civilisation as they plunged deeper and further into the heart of the downs.
The old coaching-road which cut across their own from right to left was buried deep, and hardly showed at all except that it made a sort of breach along the curving outline of a descending slope. A few thorn-trees stood humped under a heavy load. Further on two great haystacks protruded forlornly out of creeping drifts. Then emptiness.
At length the twisted row of dark elms shot up along the sky-line, stark and grim, pointing grotesquely towards the farm house at the end where one light shone. The trees and their shadows upon the snow seemed but a frozen network as the cart drove through their twisted ranks. The farmer pulled up at the door, which soon opened to admit a gay glow against which the stout figure of his wife appeared in an ungainly shape. A few words of explanation having passed between them on Armstrong’s account, he was ushered into a sitting-room with friendly sympathy on the cold he must have endured, and there asked to warm himself whilst his chamber was pr
eparing.
The sitting-room was long and low, with windows back and front; at present there was no light in it except what came from a very glowing fire, sufficient to make the place look extremely homely and pleasant. A long, narrow table went down the length of the room, on which was placed a white cloth and covers for one person, to which a maid presently entering laid a second place at the opposite end. The usual self-conscious family-groups, photographed at wedding feasts and the like, were absent from the walls, which were entirely bare of everything except a thick coating of whitewash: this gave it a great sense of repose, allowing full play to the chasing firelight shadows.
He was presently taken by a flight of most uneven steps to his bedroom, which seemed endowed with the same sort of peaceful comfort and cleanliness. It was very far from being the rather ghoulish place which its outside suggested. Supper, he was told, would be served in ten minutes. In ten minutes he descended the erratic staircase, to find the sitting-room in precisely the same state as that in which he left it, saving for the presence of a steaming soup-tureen and plates upon the table, and a large black cat upon the hearth-rug. The firelight was still supreme.
Armstrong had left the door ajar when he came in, and now the sound of voices on the outer doorstep came clearly to him, mingled with more distant noise of clattering pans in the kitchen. One voice was very clear, though soft; it had a laughter-making ring in it which sounded pleasantly out of the darkness. Presently the tones grew a little sharp and hurried. ‘You silly boy!’
it said, and the door shut with a decided bang. Then there were sounds of some heavy object being thrown down on the bricks of the passage, a kind of little low chuckle, and the door was pushed slowly open. A tall girl came in, trailing a scarlet cloak of some thick, warm stuff behind her. When she saw Armstrong on the hearth-rug she stood still and looked at him for a moment with her head on one side—not in the least startled, but merely contemplating him as part of the general furniture of the room. She wore a little black seal-skin cap on her head which came low over her ears and forehead; her face was pale with a shining pallor, her mouth full and red, the cheek-bones rather high and the chin rather pointed though square of jaw: the contours were full of strange curves like the face of Leonardo’s St John, and the long eyes had the same look, half veiled, half penetrating. On either side her cheeks two thick blonde plaits, the colour of pale wheat and the thickness of half a hand’s breadth, came down to her waist. Her figure when she moved was like a quick succession of perfect poses. Her dress was the colour of the firelight, rather stained and faded.
Quite undisturbed by Armstrong’s presence she went over to the sofa before the window, extracted a pair of shoes and put them on her feet in a leisurely way, showing, that she had left her boots in the passage. Her feet were fine and high in the instep. In stooping she turned her head over her shoulder, the two plaits hanging curiously to the floor, and looked at Armstrong.
‘You won’t mind there being no lamp,’ she said. ‘I persuaded Mother Lush it was much more peaceful to have only the firelight: and it was I who took down the photographs too. You will like it better yourself soon, I am sure?’ She spoke a little questioningly, which made her voice slower and all the more charming. ‘I always call her Mother Lush,’ she continued, ‘it sounds more homely, don’t you think ? Aren’t you hungry ? See ! they have put the great tureen and that large heavy ladle in front of you tonight. I always feel like the man who tried to ladle out the sea when it is my turn.’ She sat down with a slow, gliding movement, her dress falling into folds about her that made her look like some piece of mediaeval sculpture. ‘I would rather have a wooden spoon and platter,’ she said, crumbling her bread unconcernedly,
‘and then one would forget this century altogether.’
He looked at her across the table, as she sat with her pointed chin a little forward, and the two blonde plaits falling straight on either side from under the little black cap. She reminded him of so many strange old things, that he felt it would not be difficult to forget the present century either. And yet he reminded himself that it was intensely modern of her to have said so much.
He forgot that he had made no response in ladling out the soup and observing her movements. She, too, did not seem to observe his silence, but turned to drop crumbs upon the black cat’s head, smiling. When she smiled she was like a madonna, and when she bent forward she was like a tawny panther.
When the soup had been replaced by a savoury-smelling pie, she looked at him again with her head on one side. ‘Since I came here in the summer,’ she said, ‘I have seen such a lot of curious people and learnt such a lot of curious things. You would almost think a spell had been laid upon some of them to prevent their living. I did not think such people could exist now. There are some creatures just below the downs there, almost like creatures in a book, they are so unreal. But two of them are very beautiful. I like them for that.’
She spoke quite naturally, and as if she were sure that Armstrong would be pleased to hear anything she said. ‘I came here in the summer to paint, and I saw one of them on the downs: he was like one of the old beautiful youths one hears about. I made him sit for me: he looked splendid coming out of the shadows in the great hollows. But he is very stupid when you talk to him, and tiresome too. I like the other better.’ She reflected a moment, and looked up suddenly with her long, strange eyes. ‘You are not an artist, are you?’ she asked.
‘No,’ said Armstrong, ‘I am looking for Druids.’
She laughed. ‘How nice,’ she cried, ‘I like you for that!’ and sat looking down sideways with her chin on her hand.
‘The people don’t know much about them now,’ she continued, ‘but there is still an old man, who cures the people with herbs, in a wood at the down-end. Mother Lush was carried there by her father when she was a child, and the man said charms over her until she was well.’
‘Curious,’ said Armstrong, watching her; ‘then you are interested in old things too?’
‘Oh no,’ she answered, ‘I am all for the future: but I like queer things—like that boy from below the hill there. Don’t you feel pleased when you see a dead thing come to life? Only then it is so disappointing, for as soon as it comes alive it is often quite dull.’ She paused. ‘I shall not stay here much longer.’
‘I wonder you were not bored with the place long ago,’ Armstrong returned.
‘So do I,’ she agreed, ‘but it was all so funny. Now it is no longer amusing I shall probably go . . . soon. But I wanted to see the snow here first.’ She looked at him speculatively, as if wondering whether he too were dead or alive, and then finished her meal in silence. When it seemed that everything had come to an end, she rose, pushed her chair neatly against the table and went over to the fire. There she warmed her hands for a few seconds, examining each finger in the twilight, and finally bidding Armstrong ‘goodnight’ left him to himself. He heard her go upstairs and then the sound of a window unlatched.
He sat down quietly to smoke whilst the servant cleared away the meal: and then, when there seemed likelihood of no more disturbance, he parted the curtains and looked out. It was brilliantly starlight, as though the sky had been pricked with a thousand dagger-points, and below the snow stretched up and down, only shadowed by the undulations of the slopes. There was not a sound anywhere, only an intense sensation of waiting.
Then presently he heard the sound of a little low laugh above him out of the darkness, and a low voice.
‘Oh, you very silly boy,’ it said, ‘do please go home!’
There was no response.
‘I shall get them to set the dogs loose soon,’ it continued, and the low laugh came again. ‘Now . . . please!’
A dark shadow detached itself from under one of the trees at an angle of the house and disappeared out of sight. It had the shape of Godfrey, but the stoop of Arthur.
Armstrong flattered himself he should have some news to impart to Ape’s-face after all. And then he wondered suddenly how t
he night would pass down there, at the foot of the snow-covered slope.
X
Boots
WHEN ARMSTRONG AWOKE in the morning he thought at first that the snow had mounted to an enormous drift above the level of the windows, there was such a dense white blank beyond the panes and such a strange light in the room, hardly suggestive of day at all.
On further and more wakeful attention, however, he discovered that a thick mist or drifting fog had invaded the entire place, and now hung like some vast waving blanket on every side. It gave a curiously besieged feeling to the farm, as though it were surrounded by an invading force and cut off from the rest of the world. When he descended to the sitting-room for breakfast it looked singularly forlorn and sad; even the fire could not serve to cheer it.
The girl was down before him, warming her hands at the flame. The smooth hair on the top of her head shone like tarnished silver in the pallid light. It struck him that there was something studied in the carelessness of that air of hers, which seemed so oblivious of strangers about her, and yet afforded her more opportunities of displaying herself, opportunities also of observing them without the appearance of doing so. There was a want of spontaneousness which jarred, and yet it was difficult to find fault with anything so pleasing to the eye. He was beginning to value straightforwardness, even if it should appear in a less charming shape.
It seemed as if overnight the girl had decided that perhaps he was a little alive, or at least worth the revivifying process which she had described as interesting the night before, for her manner towards him was less impersonal and more pliant, as if she were willing to listen to anything he might say; the previous evening his own point of view had not appeared to need consideration. Now she sought it: whilst he on his side stiffened a little and felt disinclined to expand.
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