The Woman at The Door

by Warwick Deeping

  And the sky had been very black over Beech Farm. He was in one of his dumb and deadly moods. Inevitably, she had noticed his bruised face, and had begun to ask him about it. It had been foolish of her, a natural impulse that should have been suppressed. He had snarled at her.—“Mind your own business, damn you.” Incidentally, she had gathered that he had sacked the carter Lovel, and was himself looking after the horses. And this particular mood, bleak and black like some dreadful day in December, was more to be dreaded than his chattering rages.

  Had she written her own tragedy? Might not things have been different if she had been a woman of coarser fibre and had scolded back at him? But she was not made to stand up to cruelty. The unreasoning crass brutishness of it seemed to paralyse her. She shook at the knees. She was so ready to take the failure to heart. She was the victim of her own too sensitive-self. That she could have made life good and wonderful for some other man was neither here nor there. She stood looking at the drenched and derelict garden, and even at this moment she was the creature of her conscience. She hesitated where most women would not have thought twice about such an adventure, or would have faced it with a shrug of passionate cynicism. Should she or should she not slip out with that jug of milk?

  The jug stood ready on a shelf in the dairy. She had covered it with a paper cap. And suddenly the sensitive balance of her self swung over towards—“I will.” She went quickly into the passage, took down an old black mackintosh from a peg, slipped into it and buttoned it to her chin. She did not bother about a hat, and her umbrella was too shameful. With the jug in her left hand she went out by the back door, and past a pleading dog whom she left gazing dolefully after her at the end of his kennel chain.

  But if her sensitiveness was like swansdown on the surface of life she was not alone in feeling ridiculously responsible for the fulfilling of a contract, however trivial it might be. Her crossing of the paddock from the orchard hedge to the field gate under the beech tree might have been a traversing of no man’s land. Would she be seen, shot at? And yet, she did not hurry; something in her refused to hurry. Why should she always be apologizing to her fate? With the milk-jug pressed against her bosom she walked towards the gate as though going upon an errand that no other creature could question, yet during those seconds she was listening for the expected voice. She heard nothing but the sound of the rain upon the beech leaves. She reached the gate, pulled the catch back, and was out in the wet green shelter of the lane.

  At the tower Luce was buttoning up a very wet mackintosh. He too was pulled by the same sensitive thread. A little, inward voice had admonished him: “Supposing she should take the trouble to deliver your milk for you, are you going to be so churlish as to leave it untouched?” You did not snub a child or a woman of her sort in that way. So, pulling the door to after him, and with the empty jug in his hand, he went down through the wet woods to the sandpit.

  It so happened that she reached the place half a minute or so before he did. She had placed the jug on the ground, and was standing looking at it, and wishing that she had a flat stone to add to the paper cap. There was no wind, but she was wondering whether the rain would soak through the paper cover. She was looking about for something with which to cover the jug when Luce came to the edge of the pit.

  Undiscovered for the moment he stood looking down at her. Her very dark hair gleamed wet. Her pale face had a kind of intent, childish innocence. She was looking for something, and in wondering what it was he forgot to ask himself whether he ought not to leave her unconscious of his coming. And then, she seemed to feel some other presence. There was a startled lifting of her head, an upward glance, a sudden stiffening of the thread of her black figure.

  Almost, her eyes had a blind, blurred look. And then the breath seemed to escape from her with a little sighing sound.

  “O—Mr. Luce.”

  She smiled, but her pale lips were poignant. What other figure had she feared to see poised up there amid the gorse bushes? He did not say that it seemed to be his fate to surprise her. She was like a frightened thing who asked to be allowed to smother her tremblings.

  “Really, you should not have troubled in this rain.”

  He spoke to her like a large, middle-aged person reassuring a shy child, and coming round and down into the sandpit he tried to make the occasion appear pleasantly impersonal. He even attempted a touch of playfulness.

  “As a matter of fact I was coming all the way with this jug and then I thought I had better look in here—on the chance.”

  She was still as white as the milk.

  “But hadn’t I promised?”

  “Promises aren’t like the laws of the Medes and Persians when it rains like this.”

  He saw her bend suddenly, take the jug and remove the paper cover. Was he a sentimentalist, or were his feelings about her quick and real? She belonged to another man, and possibly there was nothing about the savagery of sex that she did not know. Probably a man like Ballard threw love on the bed and ravished it. And yet——. He was holding his milk-jug and letting her fill it. He looked at her wet black hair and white neck, and was moved by a quality that seemed peculiarly hers. She was gentle. She was like this flowing milk. She might have been a young girl, virginal, sensitively shy, a thing unsoiled. She had a forehead that was shaped to be serene and sweet, lips that were clean and tender.

  The rain came down upon them both. And suddenly her wet head was raised. She drew back a little, looked at him and smiled.

  “Will that be enough?”

  “Plenty. I don’t indulge in milk puddings.”

  “Have you anyone to make milk puddings for you?”

  “No. And if I had—I should not order them. Some of us—you know—are a little odd.”

  She seemed to question that word. Her eyelashes gave a little flicker.

  “You like—being alone?”

  “I’m afraid I do.”

  “Just—with yourself. Yes,—I understand.”

  She raised her face to the rain, and looked lost for a moment within herself. Her drenched hair was like a wreath, and Luce stood contemplating her. If they were alone together in the wet woods, that was but the mere chance of the day and of the weather. Two milk-jugs had met and exchanged their contents, that was all. He was going back to that brick tower, and she—to the farm.

  He was aware of her face coming out of its dream. He would have said that she had been asleep, and that with her waking consciousness some inward pain had returned. Her wet face looked different, like Eve’s face outside the gate of Eden.—But what a sentimentalist he was! He was aware of her clasping that empty jug against her bosom. She seemed to shirk a direct glance.

  “I’m afraid—we are getting so wet.”

  His feeling was that she wanted him to go. Well, that was easy. But why did she look so rigid, like some animal whose fear——? He put up a hand, and then remembered that he had come out without a hat.

  “You get back home. And if it rains like this to-morrow—please——.”

  That last quick glance of hers puzzled him. It seemed to snatch itself away. He stood and watched her walk out of the sandpit, holding the jug between her breasts.

  3

  About six o’clock it ceased to rain, but there was no clearing of the sky. The cloudy canopy seemed to press even closer to the earth. The effect was the effect of twilight, one of those green-grey dusks after heavy rain, suffused with a damp melancholy and a silence that is sinister.

  It was so dark in the kitchen that she had lit a candle. She was getting supper ready. The dog lay on a mat behind the door watching her as she moved over the brick floor, a floor that was always damp, and in winter seemed to chill you to the knees. She had a tin to open, something she had bought at the village shop, and perhaps because her thoughts were elsewhere, she bungled the business and cut her finger on the jagged edge.

  A little petulance was born in her over this misadventure. She held her bleeding finger under the tap. It gushed for a few seco
nds, and then, with foolish gurglings, became mute and dry. So, the water in the storage tank had fallen below the level of the service pipe, which meant that no one had been active at the wheel pump on this wet day. Life in a solitary farmhouse could be full of such small vexations. She tied up her finger with a piece of old linen from a drawer, and so unskilfully that it looked like a small rag doll. He—might be in any minute, and there was the table to be laid, and perhaps, if she had the time she would go out into the well-house, and give the wheel a hundred turns. Though it was no affair of hers to work at the pump, she was just strong enough to swing the wheel, and when a man was tired and short-tempered emergencies had to be met.

  The dog followed her into the sitting-room, and sat on the sofa while she was laying the table. She had nearly completed her task when she heard the back door open. He—was there. She heard the familiar sound of mucky boots being scraped on the old shovel that had been fixed edge upwards beside the door.

  “Rachel.”

  His voice sent a shiver through her.

  “Yes, Tod.”

  “Got any hot water?”

  “No. But—I can——.”

  “Hell,—what a house!”

  She heard him kicking off his boots. He had been greasing the reaper and his hands were foul and slimy. She saw the dog slip down from the sofa and make for the dark corner behind the cupboard. He too was wise as to a man’s moods, and with a surreptitious swiftness she took Peter by the collar and led him to the foot of the stairs. They were old-fashioned stairs shut off by a door, and she opened the door, spoke softly to the dog, and giving him a gentle push, closed the door on him.

  She heard her husband’s voice in the scullery.

  “Damn it—no water.”

  “I’m sorry, Tod, the boy must have forgotten.”

  “God! The useless little swine! As if I hadn’t enough to do.”

  These rages of his! She seemed to spend her life in trying to appease them, though life was sufficiently hard for both of them without the eternal horror of his almost insane anger.

  “I’ll get you some, Tod.”

  She rushed out with a basin to a water-butt in the yard, and returning, placed it in the sink for him.

  “I’m sorry, Tod.”

  But why should she be sorry? Why should the self-abasement always be hers? She was aware of his foul and greasy hands.

  “I’ll get you some soda.”

  He reached for a cake of yellow soap and plunged it and his hands into the basin.

  “You’d better have some soda.”

  “O, shut up. What, cut your finger?”

  “Yes, on a tin.”

  “You would!”

  VI

  Had Luce kept a diary—which he did not do—he might have recorded in it during the next week certain happenings and his comments upon them. Being the unsocial person that he was he could set out to ignore much of the machinery of civilization, but he could not elude the persistencies of the Post Office. Very few people wrote him letters, yet a man cannot live in a civilized country without possessing an address. Luce had left his address with his London bankers, his lawyers, and with the head porter of his club, and then dismissed the matter from his mind.

  A perspiring and aggrieved postman knocked at the door of the tower. He had a solitary letter to deliver, and it had caused him to curse eccentric gentlemen who withdrew into the wilderness. Luce, going to the green door, was met by the man’s hot and sulky face.

  “Mr. Luce?”

  “Yes.”

  The man thrust the letter at him, and Luce, being a human person, did appreciate the fact that he had caused the Post Office some trouble. Also, May had developed a transitory heat wave, and flies had become active. Half a dozen of them had followed the postman to Luce’s door.

  “Afraid I’ve brought you out of your way. What about a glass of beer?”

  The man’s grievance was instantly appeased.

  “That’s all right, sir.”

  Luce served him with a bottle of beer.

  “In the future you need not bother to deliver a lone letter like this. Keep them till you have collected a dozen.”

  The man smiled at him. The gentleman might be odd, but he was a gentleman.

  “We can’t do that, sir. You’ll have your letters all right.”

  “I don’t want ’em,” said Luce. “I would be much obliged if you would lose them for me, but we English have a sense of duty!”

  This solitary letter was not to be disposed of like some silly circular. It was from that wretched fellow Lowndes. It insisted upon Luce meeting him at their solicitor’s office to settle some legal snag in a mutual trusteeship. Confound Lowndes! But knowing Lowndes as he did he resigned himself to the necessity of satisfying this meticulous person. Had the postman a telegraph form on him? He had. Luce wrote his message. “Meet you at Hunt’s to-morrow 11 a.m.,” gave the postman a shilling, and delivered him refreshed to the heat and the flies.

  But this letter was to be a fine thread in the web of circumstance. Going down to collect his milk ration, with the pinewoods pungent in the heat, he found no milk-jug in the sandpit. Had she forgotten? Or had something prevented her from coming? And, after all, what right had he to be curious as to the cause of the omission, or to feel just a little peeved about it? Surely, he was not going to allow himself to be involved in sentiment? This milk business was becoming a little bit silly.

  Let him not imagine that somebody else’s wife had the face of a Cassandra. Tinned milk and celibacy would suffice at his age, nor had he any desire to blunder into the domestic china-shop. Women could be so temperamental. Next morning he put on his one passable lounge suit, and caught the 9.25 train from West Brandon station. He settled the business with his fellow trustee. He lunched at his club. He met Hugh Pusey at the club, and in a lax moment told him about the tower. Afterwards, he accused himself of being too facile a fool. “That’s your idiotic way. You blurt things out and don’t foresee the possible eventualities.”

  For, Pusey, who was a vivacious sort of ass, had shown a sudden enthusiasm for the fancifulness of the idea. He would look Luce up at his hermitage. Carlotta Reubens should drive him down in her car. In his Bloomsbury days Luce had known Lottie Reubens and had misliked her. If Hugh was her latest experiment in sex, that was no reason why Lottie should be inflicted upon him, even for tea.

  Walking back from West Brandon in a shimmer of heat, and coming to the deep cleft in the Brandon woods where pines, beeches and rhododendrons shut out the sunlight, he was reminded of that little piece of ritual, the exchanging of milk-jugs. Was it just curiosity that persuaded him to diverge and visit the sandpit, or was it his fate to be afraid of hurting other people’s feelings? Without analysing the impulse, he surrendered to it, and coming to the fringe of gorse bushes, looked down into the hollow. The white jug was there, and going down to collect it, he found a folded piece of paper tucked between the jug and the sand. The message had been written in pencil.

  “Please forgive me. I did not forget you yesterday. I just could not come.”

  He stood reflecting, the jug in one hand, the slip of paper in the other. Was it wise of her to leave notes about?

  Also, there was a little, intimate breathlessness in this short message that both troubled and touched him. But, surely, he ought not to allow himself to be affected? And what was it that had prevented her from coming yesterday? Had that primitive—her husband—had anything to do with it?

  Slipping the piece of paper into his pocket, he made his way back through the brambles and gorse to the mouth of the pit. Yes, this absurd question of this daily milk was becoming rather too serious. Most certainly it was unwise of her to leave notes under a jug. And what was he to do about it? Tell her? But would not that be a rather clumsy snub like hinting that she was trying to inveigle him into an affair? And she was not that sort of woman. Something in him was quite sure that she was not that sort of woman.

  On his way home the solution
occurred to him. Of course, that was the thing to do. He would go down to the farm and see her husband. He would make of it a simple and conventional occasion, and suppress all the previous interplay. He would say to her husband, “I should be much obliged if you would supply me with milk and eggs. Yes, as between neighbours. I could come down and collect my supply, or perhaps one of your labourer’s children would bring it up to me?” Yes, such rational behaviour was sound psychology. No doubt she would understand, and being a sensitive creature, be grateful to him.

  2

  Coming to the tower Luce saw it sunning itself among the trees. What a peaceful spot was this after Piccadilly and the Mansion House, so separate and serene! He would begin work to-morrow, the work which he had dreamed of doing. With a feeling of satisfaction he unlocked the green door, carried his milk-jug into the living-room, set it down on the table, threw up the lower sash of the window, and took off his coat.

  He remembered that little note of hers in his pocket, and feeling for it, was about to crumple the thing up and throw it into the grate, when a sound outside the tower attracted his attention. He stood listening, the slip of paper in his hand. Footsteps? Was some inquisitive person exploring his garden? He was in the act of moving towards the window when a voice broke the silence.

  “Hallo, anybody there?”

  Luce’s right hand dipped into a trouser pocket. He approached the window, leaned out, and saw—her husband. For the moment he just stared down at the upturned face. Confound it, had the fellow seen him in the sandpit and followed him up through the woods?

  “Good evening. Yes,—I’m in.”

  “Well, that’s lucky. My name’s Ballard.”

  Luce, poised in his shirt sleeves above this human problem, realized that the fellow’s face was friendly. But what the devil did he want?

  “I think we have met before, Mr. Ballard.”