When Ben, asleep in his chair, awoke to find Mrs. Jobson setting down a lamp on the table, it seemed to him that it must still be some hour of the interminable night. But it was morning — ten past six, Mrs. Jobson told him, and Kate had not returned. He had an early breakfast alone and then went out into the wintry morning twilight and roamed aimlessly about the farm.
Coming in an hour later, he found David in the parlour. At the sight of his son the thought of his strange discovery on the previous day, when he had found David leaving Kate in tears, flashed into his mind again and he eyed the boy grimly. He was irritated and thwarted by David’s refusal to explain what had happened and vague suspicions troubled his mind. ‘You’ve heard,’ he said sternly, ‘that Kate has not come back?’
David nodded. ‘Yes, Dad,’ he said.
‘David,’ - the old man stood before him, fixing him with his keen blue eyes - ‘you’ve got to tell me what you and Kate quarrelled about. In the state things are in it’s only right I should know.’
David drew a long breath. ‘But if I were to tell you, Dad, it would do no good.’
The old man leaned forward and beat his hand softly and tensely on the table as he spoke. ‘It’s for me, not you, to judge whether it will do good or not. Anyhow, I must know.’
But David was as stubborn as his father. ‘You’ve got to believe me, Dad,’ he said, ‘when I say that if I were to tell you, it would not only do no good, it would do a lot of harm - harm to Kate and harm to you.’
David’s words only exasperated the old man the more. There was, he began to see, something ugly about this secret which his son was so determined to keep from him. His features sharpened; his eyes and the stretched red skin of his cheeks shone in the light from the window.
‘Now look here, David,’ he said with suppressed fierceness, ‘I’m your father and I’m going to be obeyed. Now, out with it! I want no more bother, please.’
David scowled and his face set stubbornly. ‘I’m not going to tell you,’ he said, ‘so there’s no good your going on at me.’
Ben stared at the boy, speechless, his eyes burning with the helpless ferocity of a caged beast. He could do nothing, and he knew it. Physically he was no match for the powerful young man who sat before him glowering sulkily at the table. He turned and went to the door. There he paused. ‘I’m going to ride over to Penridge to inquire there,’ he said as he went out.
XXV
It was not till late on the following afternoon that Kate returned. Ben’s ride to Penridge had been fruitless. Kate had not been to the Schoolhouse. After dinner he had driven into Elchester, and David during the day had ridden to inquire at the neighbouring farms; but nobody had seen anything of Kate.
Towards four o’clock Mrs. Jobson was in the kitchen when she heard the gig drive into the yard. Although she had no hope that Ben Humphrey would have heard anything of Kate in Elchester, she looked up as the gig came into view. Ben was alone in it, and one glance at his face was enough to prove that he had heard nothing. Mrs. Jobson saw him pull up, get down from the gig, and begin to take out the mare. When she looked up again he was leading the mare into the stable.
At that moment someone flashed past the window and she heard quick steps in the passage. The boy Peter came into the kitchen. His gay, ruddy face was so changed that he looked like another creature. He was breathless and spoke in a hurried whisper.
‘George says will you open the front door,’ he panted. ‘We’ve found her. We’ve brought her into the front garden so as not to meet the Master or Mr. David.’ His lip trembled. ‘I saw the Master go into the stable just now; he won’t come in for a minute or two yet. There’ll be time to get her in.’
‘Run on and unbolt the front door,’ said Mrs. Jobson, waddling hurriedly down the passage. The boy ran ahead and she heard him wrenching at the stiff bolts. There was the sharp snap of a turned key and, as she reached the door, Peter opened it.
In the garden, on the grass plot to the right of the path, two men were bending over something, and next moment they rose upright and began to carry the body in. One of them had laid a coloured handkerchief over the face.
‘Bring her in as quick as you can,’ said Mrs. Jobson. ‘The Master’ll be in any minute.’
‘Where shall we take her?’ asked George. ‘You couldn’t lay her on a bed yet; all her clothes are soaking.’
‘Bring her to the parlour,’ said Mrs. Jobson. ‘I’ll go and make it ready’; and she hurried on ahead and set three of the parlour chairs together so as to make an improvised bier. The two men’s footsteps shuffled down the short stone-flagged passage. Drippings from the limp burden between them wrote dark dotted lines and arabesques on the whitened stone floor. Mrs. Jobson stood waiting for them in the doorway of the parlour. Her face was white and perfectly calm. It was as if this strange return of Kate had neither surprised nor shocked her, as if she were merely facing and enduring a thing which, from the moment when Kate was missing, she had foreseen. Even since then, Kate’s face, as she had seen it in that brief glimpse when she had rushed past her on the stairs, had remained stamped on her memory. ‘Poor dear!’ she thought to herself as she stood in the doorway. ‘There was death in her face.’
She pushed the parlour door open as wide as it would go. ‘I’ve put some chairs ready,’ she said.
But just as the men were going to carry Kate through the parlour door Mrs. Jobson turned her head sharply and held up her hand.
‘Listen!’ she whispered. ‘That’s him.’
She had heard footsteps entering the house from the yard.
‘Take her in,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll stop him for a moment.’ She hurried past them down the passage and met Ben outside the kitchen door. ‘Come in here, Mr. Humphrey,’ she said. ‘I want to speak to you.’
Ben stood for a moment and stared at her with his keen blue eyes. He saw the tragedy in her face and he had seen the shuffling figures, followed by Peter, carrying something into the parlour; and, as if grasping the meaning of these signs, he pushed past the old woman and made for the parlour.
Mrs. Jobson followed him. In the parlour they had just laid Kate on the row of chairs. Half-way between the door and the bier Ben stood still and glanced at the two men. He looked hard, alert, and self-possessed as usual.
‘Where did you find her?’ he asked coldly and sternly. ‘In the river?’
George nodded. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘In the pool just beyond the first bend.’
Mrs. Jobson, standing behind Ben, signed to George, and he and the other man and Peter went out.
When they had gone it was as if they had left the room empty, for Ben still stood motionless and Mrs. Jobson behind him, as motionless as Kate herself on her bier. Then the old man stepped forward and stood gazing down at the soaked body, and Mrs. Jobson crept up and stood beside him. After a moment he stooped and, taking the coloured handkerchief that covered Kate’s face by one corner, he turned it slowly back, and he and Mrs. Jobson gazed incredulously at the changed face below them. A strand of wet black hair was streaked over one of the eyes and Mrs. Jobson stooped, as though bending over a sleeping child, and tenderly put it back. Then with a glance at Ben she turned and softly went out of the room, leaving the door ajar so as to hear when he came out.
For a long time everything was quiet. Though she listened with all her ears, not a sound came from the parlour, and becoming anxious she crept down the passage and peeped into the room. Ben Humphrey had sat down at the table. His arms were spread on the table and his head was bowed on his arms. The old woman crept back to the kitchen and it seemed to her that again an age passed without the smallest sound from the parlour. Then she heard the noise of a chair pushed violently back, as though Ben had risen to his feet with a sudden resolve, and next moment she recognized the familiar creak of the cupboard door. The cupboard was shut again and Ben’s footsteps came resolutely down the passage towards the kitchen. He passed the kitchen door and Mrs. Jobson reached it in time to see him go out i
nto the yard with his gun under his arm. It was a familiar sight, but now it terrified her. What was he going to do with a gun at such a time as this? Without a moment’s hesitation she followed him.
It was already getting dusk, and she crept along as quickly and as quietly as she could, following him out of the farm-yard gate and across the grass to the right. There he stopped and stood watching, his gun held ready. Determined to see what he was after, she crept up a little closer to him. His attention was so sharply fixed that he did not notice her. His eyes were fastened on one of the sheds, the one opposite the charred ruins of the barn. It was the shed in which David kept his horse, and Mrs. Jobson could see that the door was open. A pail clanked inside the shed and something moved in the dark doorway, and in a flash of horrified realization she knew what the old man was waiting for. She rushed at him, and at the some moment the gun went up to his shoulder. Then the silence was shattered by a violent report and she found herself struggling with Ben in the half-darkness. The gun fell to the ground as he turned upon her. Whether she had reached him before or after he had fired she did not know. All her attention had been concentrated in the one act of rushing at him and wrapping her arms round him. She clung to him with a fierce and desperate tenacity, but when he had dropped the gun he had succeeded in wrenching himself round in her grasp. For a few moments they struggled together. She instinctively felt that he was trying to fling her off and get at the fallen gun, and as she clung to him it crossed her mind that if she could heave him forward she might be able to set her foot on it. But now she became aware that it was not only she and Ben who were struggling. There was a third. And then, as if out of an uproar, she heard David’s voice: ‘It’s all right. Leave him to me, Mrs. J.’
At the same moment a body sagged heavily against her and collapsed to the ground. ‘All right! All right!’ said David’s voice again, and she stood still, her great body heaving breathlessly, while David bent over the old man. He was struggling feebly and gropingly where he lay. In the silence his sharp, rattling gasps grew gradually fainter as David knelt beside him, holding him still. Soon he had sunk into a kind of stupor and David and Mrs. Jobson carried him into the house….
It was many weeks before Ben Humphrey was up and about again. By degrees strength returned to him, and with the help of a stick he was able to hobble about the farm. But his old alertness and vigour did not return. He had become a little old man, sometimes fretful and irritable, but generally contented and easily pleased. As his mind cleared he began to remember things which had happened before his illness, and he would talk of them to Mrs. Jobson and ask her questions. But when she tried to convince him of David’s innocence it seemed that the question no longer interested him. He was devoted to David: he trusted to him completely in all matters relating to the farm and relied on him in the pathetic way in which a child relies on its father, and he had forgotten, it seemed, or at least ceased to feel that he had ever suspected him.
And so time moved on. The fields were ploughed and sown and the harvests gathered; beasts were bought and sold, born and mated; winters and springs, summers and autumns succeeded one another, and under them the old unalterable life of the farm continued, calm and unhurrying, as it had continued for the last four centuries. The small rippling of its surface made by Kate’s brief sojourn had spent itself and became as if it had never been.
The End
This electronic edition published in July 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader
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Copyright © Martin Armstrong
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