The Stepson

by Martin Armstrong

  She had opened the cupboard door and her hand was raised to the bookshelves when she heard someone come into the room. She glanced over her shoulder. It was Emma. She glanced sharply at Kate, and Kate, as though she had been caught prying into something that was not her business, felt the blood rush to her face.

  ‘Was there anything you were wanting in there?’ said Emma, and Kate could feel the aggressiveness that lay beneath the question.

  ‘I can find it myself, thank you, Emma,’ she said; and Emma, still looking at her, took from the sideboard a glass dish for which she had been sent by Mrs. Jobson and went out of the room.

  Kate stood irresolute. That small occurrence had upset her extremely, and she felt angry with herself for being upset and with Emma for producing such an effect upon her. Then she closed the cupboard door and went back to her seat by the window, troubled and disconsolate. She had not brought out the album.

  Kate took up her book again and tried to read, but now her unhappiness had become acute. The unmistakable sense of Emma’s hatred coming on the top of her mood of depression brought upon her a feeling of loneliness and injury. She sat, her hands gathered on the open book, gazing with a kind of undirected intensity into the hollow of the room before her. The door opened again and Mrs. Jobson, serene and busy, came in. She glanced at Kate and then, murmuring an excuse in her pleasant, musical voice, went to the sideboard, knelt down, and opened the small cupboard in it. There was a sound of moving crockery and glass, and then she rose and moved towards the door, glancing at Kate again as she went. Then, just as she was about to lift the latch of the door, she paused, turned back, and began to cross the room towards Kate.

  ‘Can I do anything for you, ma’am?’ she asked, her kindly eyes looking solicitously into Kate’s.

  Kate sighed. ‘Don’t call me ma’am, Mrs. Jobson,’ she said.

  The old woman smiled affectionately. ‘Why, what can I call you, then?’

  ‘You can call me Kate.’

  Mrs. Jobson shook her head. ‘I doubt Mr. Humphrey wouldn’t like that.’

  ‘Wouldn’t he? Well, call me Mrs. Humphrey, then. But don’t say ma’am. Why should you? It’s making me into what I’m not.’

  ‘You’re not looking happy this morning,’ said Mrs. Jobson.

  ‘Well, I’m not very happy,’ confessed Kate. ‘I’m feeling … well, a little lonely.’ Tears suddenly gathered in her eyes.

  The old woman sat down beside Kate and put an arm round her shoulders. ‘But we can’t have you being unhappy, my dear,’ she said. ‘Why should you feel lonely? There’s plenty of us round about, even though we haven’t much time for talking, perhaps — not, that is, till the work’s done. Don’t you think, perhaps, it’s because you want something to do? I can never be happy myself, you know, unless I’m kept pretty busy. Perhaps you’re the same.’

  Kate nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s what it is. But what can I do?’

  ‘Why, you can do whatever you like, my dear. You’re mistress here. You’ve only got to say.’

  ‘But I don’t want to do things just to occupy the time,’ said Kate. ‘I don’t even want to be able to choose. I want to do something that’s got to be done. You see, I’ve always been accustomed to work, Mrs. Jobson. Why, only look at my hands.’ She held out her strong, work-worn hands to Mrs. Jobson, smiling. ‘I thought, when I knew I was going to marry Mr. Humphrey,’ she went on, ‘that I should enjoy doing nothing. I’d had a bit too much work at home, you see; or rather, not too much work perhaps, but too little pleasure to go with it. But if you have no work, it seems to me now as if you can’t have any pleasure, either. I’m not meant for a lady, seemingly. Won’t you give me something to do that’s part of the work here? I don’t like to interfere, you see, even though I may be the mistress; but I have eyes enough to see that you do the work of six yourself. Why shouldn’t I do some of your work?’

  Mrs. Jobson laughed and patted Kate’s shoulder. She was touched by this beautiful, unhappy young woman who so humbly appealed to her for help, so unlike the new mistress whose arrival she had looked forward to with some apprehension when old Ben Humphrey had told her that he was going to marry a young woman.

  ‘Why, yes,’ she replied, ‘I’ve more than enough to get through in the day. The kitchen and the dairy by themselves keep me pretty busy. Of course, I have Emma to help me, but she doesn’t do much unless she’s watched.’

  At the mention of Emma, Kate’s brows drew together for a moment and the ghost flitted across her gaze. ‘Then tell me how I can best help you,’ she said.

  Mrs. Jobson thought for a moment. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘there’s the fowls, and looking after the linen, and the mending too, of course; and there’s the dairy — the milk and the cream and the butter. The butter isn’t easy, of course, at first. A really first-rate butter-maker’s by no means common; but you can learn. I could teach you, if you wished. Though I’m not one for boasting as a rule — still, I will say you’ll find no butter as good as mine anywhere in these parts. So you see, you’ve only got to choose. I’d be very thankful for your help, I don’t mind saying. So just please yourself. Which is it to be?’

  Kate smiled. ‘I’ll be very glad to take on all you’ve mentioned. And if you find one or two other little things, I can do them too when I’ve finished the rest.’

  And next day Kate began to work. At first Ben had expostulated with her. He who worked so hard himself, and saw to it that every one else on the farm worked hard too, was curiously reluctant that Kate should do her share. He had a secret, old-man’s desire that this latest love of his should be something apart from his daily life, and that this strong young woman should live in luxury and idleness, an exquisite treasure whose sole use must be to please her husband and herself.

  ‘Why should you work, my dear?’ he asked her. ‘Haven’t you worked enough during the last ten years?’

  ‘I have,’ replied Kate. ‘I’ve worked too much. But now I’m working too little. I’ve found out lately that idleness is not happiness; not for me, anyhow. You see, I’m the kind that must have something to do. Besides, here there’s something to work for. At home it seemed as if I had nothing that was worth the labour: that was what made the work too much. I could do the same amount of work here and it wouldn’t be too much; in fact, I should be the happier for it.’

  ‘Yes, I can see that,’ said Ben. ‘There’s sense in that. I couldn’t do without work myself. Only I had a fancy that you should have a life of peace and quietness here.’

  Kate shook her head, smiling. ‘It doesn’t suit me. I’m not that sort. Perhaps when I’m an old woman …’

  ‘When you’re an old woman, my girl, I shan’t be here. I shall be safely tucked away into Appleton churchyard and you’ll be free to do what you like. And so you are now, for the matter of that. If you’re not happy without work, work you must have. All I want is for you to please yourself.’

  And so Kate worked; and again the weeks went by. March came in with two days of bland sunshine, bringing a delicious foretaste of spring, and Kate, moving about the old house and the farmyard, occupied with her share of the day-long labour, had found a new happiness in the contentment of work done and work to do. Yes, she told herself, she was content. Yet sometimes, when she sat for a moment alone in the parlour, or in the dark hours of midnight or early morning when she lay in the room upstairs under the red canopy by the side of the sleeping Ben, an almost forgotten sadness stirred in her heart, as if some hidden self, whose small voice was unheard when the daytime self was active, were weeping over a deeply buried sorrow. Then Kate, comparing her full, contented life with the old bleak life at Penridge, told herself that this small voice was the voice that cries for the moon, that complains quietly and stubbornly in every human heart because the impossible is not the possible and earthly life is not the life of paradise. And yet, though she told herself as much, Kate did not attempt to silence this voice that made itself heard in her moments of loneliness. No; she indul
ged it, listening in a kind of rapture to its regrets and lamentations and hopeless desires. But such moments of withdrawal into the depths of her being were moments secret and apart: they did not intrude upon the active part of her life.

  The days lengthened; the year moved on towards Easter; and one day when Kate was in the dairy, helping Mrs. Jobson to churn, a figure darkened the window-pane behind them.

  It was Ben. In his hand he carried a sheet of paper.

  ‘A letter from the lad,’ he said, putting his head in through the open window. ‘He’ll be coming on Thursday, he says – over Easter. Ah, you’ll like David, Kate, I’ll be bound. Won’t she, Mrs. J.?’

  Mrs. Jobson’s face expanded into a smile of indulgent ecstasy.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘Mrs. Humphrey’ll be hard to please if she doesn’t.’

  VII

  Two days later, being market-day, Mr. and Mrs. Humphrey drove in their gig into Elchester. Kate loved these visits to town. The drive there and back and the hours spent in the crowded, bustling streets refreshed and exhilarated her. To visit the shops, spending money freely on all that was needed in the house, was a thrilling adventure to her who, before her marriage, had had to pinch and squeeze and reckon every penny that was spent. It was an adventure, too, to feel, as they drove into town, that she was sitting next the smartest man of all of them, the man whom the rest nicknamed the Squire; that she herself was as smart as he, and that the gig was a vehicle worthy of the pair of them. She felt half proud, half shy, when friends and acquaintances shouted or waved to Ben and gave a quick approving glance at her too.

  And Ben was as pleased as she was. He was proud as a peacock of his beautiful young wife. Half of the men he met were, he was sure of it, mortally envious of him; and the old rogue, at the thought of it, chuckled to himself with satisfaction.

  When they dismounted from the gig, Kate went off to do her shopping and Ben strolled towards the market-place. His eye was bright and he glanced about him alertly, examining with the eye of a connoisseur every woman he passed. ‘Not a patch on her, not one of ’em!’ he said to himself with satisfac-as he crossed the market square.

  ‘Hello, Squire!’

  Ben turned on his heel at the sound of the voice behind him and found big Bob Reed, little James Robson, and one or two friends standing together chatting as usual.

  ‘Well,’ said Reed, ‘we’ve got to congratulate you once again, so I hear.’

  ‘Indeed?’ replied Ben. ‘And how’s that?’

  ‘Well, Jim Robson here was coming up Bargate just now as you and your Missus drove in, and your Missus fairly knocked him over, by all accounts.’

  ‘Yes, Squire,’ said Robson. ‘If I may say so, you’ve chosen a rare beauty this time, and no mistake. I know good looks when I see them.’

  Bob Reed laughed, swinging his great body like a spinning top. ‘And so does the Squire, seemingly. Well, I wish you joy, Squire, I’m sure.’

  ‘Well, joy it is, no doubt about that,’ said Ben, grinning. ‘You’ll never catch me being a bachelor again, I can tell you that. It’s no good. It doesn’t suit me.’

  ‘I doubt if you’ll get the chance,’ said Robson. ‘The new Mrs. Humphrey’s as fine, healthy a young woman as ever I saw. She’ll see you out, Squire. Not that I mean to say you’re going to die young, or anything of that sort. Not you. But, taking your ages, it’s only natural, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, I’m not so sure about that,’ said one of the others; ‘because, you see, whatever age the Squire dies, he’ll die young, I’ll be bound.’

  So the talk continued, with much chaff and laughter on all sides.

  Meanwhile, Kate was going from shop to shop in Bargate, working her way along the crowded pavement or across the seething roadway. Her mind was bent on her various errands and few people who noticed the dark-browed, rather matronly young woman with the calm face can have guessed at the eager stir of pleasure under the quiet exterior.

  At the fish-shop she bought some plaice and a dozen kippers. She would tell Mrs. Jobson to take eight of them for the kitchen supper as a surprise for them. Then she made her way to Sewell, the draper’s. Mrs. Jobson had told her that, until recent years, Ben had had all his shirts made at home, and that the ones he bought nowadays had nothing like the quality and durability of the home-made ones; so Kate had determined to buy some of the best flannel and make shirts for Ben. She sat at the counter with roll upon roll of flannel, which the shopman had got down for her inspection, heaped before her, testing each critically between finger and thumb. The colours, too, were a consideration: a grey one with a blue stripe took her fancy, and a white one with narrow blue and black stripes for smarter occasions. Then, catching sight of some sprigged muslins displayed on a stand in the middle of the shop, she went over to inspect them, enthralled suddenly by the idea of making herself some blouses. What an attractive shop it was, to be sure. The mingled smells of new cloths — linens, flannels, muslins, serges, each with its own unmistakable scent - came pleasantly to her nostrils. She bent eagerly over the muslins, sighing with eager perplexity, her mind torn between three or four, all equally attractive. Her mind ran quickly over her new dresses at home, and then she scanned the muslins again, making careful mental comparisons. A white one sprigged with green and blue, and another sprigged with blue and orange suddenly detached themselves, as much more important, from the rest. It seemed extraordinary now that she should not have seen at once that they were much the prettiest. Then, by a sudden inspiration, she conceived the idea of a bow of orange on one blouse and one of blue on the other, and she went over to the ribbon counter.

  When everything had been chosen, measured out, and wrapped up, she left the shop and began to make her way to Hamilton’s, the grocer’s. Hamilton’s was full of buyers. The men behind the counters, in clean white aprons, were darting to and fro, reaching packets down from shelves, cutting pounds or half-pounds out of the great tub-shaped blocks of butter, slicing rashers of bacon on the patent slicer. It was some time before Kate could find a shopman to attend to her. But she did not mind: she was content to wait, her eyes flitting from bottles of sauce and tins of various biscuits to great crusted cheeses and the hams and sides of bacon that hung from hooks overhead. When she had ordered all the usual groceries - she had a great list of them which Mrs. Jobson had given her — she remembered that Ben had said that David was fond of plum-cake. ‘Yes,’ he had said, shaking his head solemnly, ‘David’s a devil for plum-cake; always was.’ She must certainly, she decided, have a plum-cake ready for David’s arrival, and she began to order currants, sultana raisins, an ounce of allspice, almonds, and some candied peel, resolved that the cake should be as rich as a plum-cake can be. Why, she asked herself now, had she not questioned Ben about all the other things that David specially liked?

  She sighed with satisfaction and pleasant fatigue when she and Ben, side by side once more in the gig, set off on their homeward drive. How delightful it had been to immerse herself in the crowd, to go busily from shop to shop, no longer poor and humble, but with the sense still fresh in her of her independence and importance in that crowd of countryfolk.

  Their progress was slow at first. It was always a slow business to get away from Elchester on a market-day. They had to proceed at a walk through the narrow, crowded Bargate, and even in the wider street that led past the cattle-market Ben had frequently to pull the mare up to a walk because of the crowd of vehicles and driven sheep and cattle. It was not till they were a mile out of the town and had turned off the high road that they had a clear course before them and the mare could settle down into her steady trot. And as she did so, the sudden pull on the traces throwing Kate and Ben back in their seats, Kate had the impression that the narrow, noisy, jostling town had been suddenly extinguished, that life had changed in a moment from the state of town to the broad, leisurely state of country.

  The stream of roadway swam towards them and was swallowed up and flung out behind them under the spinning wheels of
the gig; the stream of hedgerow, shattering upwards at intervals into the huge tangle of an overshadowing tree, swam past them on either side; fields and woods and hedges wheeled on a great slow circumference, and lulled by all these soothing movements, Kate began to dream.

  That impression produced in her by the change from town to country seemed to her to symbolize the manner of her new life. Life at Penridge had been always the same, but it had changed its condition from that moment when, having climbed into the gig after the wedding and having waved goodbye to her father, she had turned her head a minute later to find the scene of her old life extinguished. And it seemed to her now that she was always hovering between two states, the state of the past and the state of the future. Was it that with her new manner of life she had grown more sensitive to life’s process? Her heart nowadays was so easily stirred, rising for an hour or two into a wave-crest of joy or dipping into the trough of sadness; warming now towards Ben or old Mrs. Jobson, now thrilled to a sudden dark hatred against the scowling Emma. She was aware even of these visits to Elchester as a process from mood to mood. The gig swung to the right and she saw that they were passing the point where the road forked, the right branch leading to The Grange and the villages beyond and the left to Penridge. Four miles down the Penridge road stood the entrance gates to Penridge Hall, and Kate, falling back into her meditations, remembered how, when she had driven past them after her wedding, she had been invaded by that vivid memory of young Graham. She sighed, and the feeling rose in her that life with its joys and sadness, its hopes and dreams, was a strange tangle. Then irrelevantly she remembered the great parcel of flannel and muslin under the gig seat, and the thought of the shirts and blouses she was going to make roused a little glow of happiness in her, ‘Well,’ she thought, as she realized the strange mixture of solemn and trivial in her meditations, ‘well, I’m easily pleased. A little flannel and muslin can make up for everything, seemingly,’ and she smiled at herself a little scornfully. But was it the thought only of flannel and muslin that had brought such sweet consolation? And exploring deeper, she discovered another thought, warmer and more secret - the thought that David was coming the day after to-morrow. When David had come, everything, she felt, would be right. Had everything, then, not been right hitherto? Kate blushed to herself at the secret admission, but the harder side of her nature asserted itself, urging her to probe further in defiance of false shame, and her thoughts went back over the past weeks and her gradually increasing unhappiness as she had sat idle in the parlour or roamed listlessly about the farm. That unhappiness, she knew well enough, had been the result of idleness, and it had vanished as soon as she had persuaded Mrs. Jobson to give her some work to do; but while it had lasted Kate had discovered that her new life, superior as it was to the old, had not come up to her expectations. It was her own fault. She had expected too much; she had allowed her hopes to outstrip reality. As the day of her wedding approached and she had reconciled herself to the thought of marrying an old man whom, though she liked him, she would never love, she had gradually forgotten that her marriage was, after all, no more than a compromise; that she had, with her eyes open, decided that if she wished to escape from her life of drudgery, she had better accept this chance of material comfort with a man she could like and respect. She had quite consciously resolved to forgo love. But, having so resolved, she had almost unconsciously come to believe, in her joyful anticipation of her new life, that wealth and comfort and human company would actually make up for the love which was denied her. The fact, too, that Ben was in love with her and admired her beauty had, before her marriage, charmed and exhilarated her. Now it was the one thing that depressed and repelled her. She sighed deeply, for the desire to love was urgent in her. Then she thought again of David and felt comforted; for she would be able, she hoped, to devote herself to Ben’s boy with something, at least, of a mother’s affection — a relationship which would be freer and honester and warmer than that between her and her old husband. Love such as this, she told herself — a love innocent, unimpassioned and protective — was all she desired, and she looked forward to the boy’s arrival in two days’ time with an eager and tremulous joy, and still more to his permanent return to The Grange at the end of a few months.