World From Rough Stones

by Malcolm Macdonald

  "Oh look!" Arabella cried. "That grove up there. I used to ride that way last autumn. It's so pretty. Do let's picnic there."

  She was pointing to the abandoned graveyard between Top o' th'Wood and Gorsey Hill, overlooking Littleborough and the railway line almost from Rochdale up to Summit. It was where Nora's father lay buried. Nora looked in heedless alarm at Walter—and he at her before their mutual embarrassment forced them both to drop their eyes. Nora was glad of her veil. Neither looked at Arabella. Neither looked at John.

  But he was watching both of them. And when he saw their confusion he smiled and turned to Arabella. "A capital idea!" he said. "Unless Mrs. Stevenson has a better…"

  "No, no, dear," Nora said hastily.

  "Let's go there then," John said. "The road is fairly level and firm." He did not add that he had put a party of men on to it in the last two days, filling its potholes and shaving its bumps—to the delighted surprise of the two farmers served by the lane.

  It led along the hillside, climbing slightly, until, just below the "grove," it turned sharp right and wound uphill, skirting the eastern edge of the graveyard. The footpath that Nora, and then Walter, had taken a year ago circled the southern wall of the enclosure. At the point where path and lane met, Walter and Tabitha helped Arabella down. "Not far to walk," Walter encouraged her while she, leaning heavily on him, hobbled slowly at his side. "Does it…are you all right?" he asked anxiously.

  "He's very heavy," she said stoically. "And he's certainly letting me know he's there, today."

  Meanwhile, John and Nora had entered the field by the gate, lower down. The car was backed down the lane and led in by the same route after Arabella had descended.

  By chance, Nora, now leading Millwood, joined Walter and Arabella at the very point where she had been resting last year when Walter came by. She looked stonily ahead. He glanced nervously at her and redoubled his attentions to Arabella.

  "Here's a place," John called, having gone a little way in front. "We should be nicely out of the sun here for most of the day."

  He stood by a gap in the dilapidated old wall. The trees cast a deep shadow over the ground immediately inside the graveyard; the break in the wall gave them a commanding view of the whole countryside. "You see?" Arabella cried in her delight. "It must have been a sixth sense urged me to choose this grove!"

  "What about the farmer?" Walter asked, looking at the grass, now quickly reviving from the hay cut. With luck, it might make a second cut this year.

  "He's a friend. No problem there," John said, remembering the farmer's surprise at the extravagance of making good the whole lane just so that a pair of ladies could have a smooth car ride. A friend indeed.

  Bess and Tabitha spread rugs and cushions for the party and then set about unpacking the hampers. Jackson, the driver from the livery, unhitched his horse and turned it loose. Then he unsaddled Hermes and Millwood, took off their bridles, and turned them loose, too. All three galloped around the field several times in delight at their freedom.

  There was a distant whistle of a train from the valley below. "Ten-thirty from Manchester," Walter said.

  It was out of sight, hidden in the hollows south of Littleborough.

  John took out his watch. "Due eleven-twenty-six. She'll make it." He put the watch away again. "She should go on to Summit; there's that load of rail due this morning."

  "Yes," Walter said, sitting beside Arabella. "It does one good to hear those words. Taking metals to Summit. That's progress! What?"

  "No railroad talk!" Arabella said firmly.

  "Hear her! Hear her!" Nora agreed. But a moment later she burst into laughter.

  "What now?" John asked, pained.

  "Your face!" she said. "The expression on it. 'No railroad talk'! One might as well tell a pail of water to go and dry itself!"

  When their laughter died, Arabella gave a sudden start.

  "What, dear?" Walter asked, thinking she was hurt.

  "There's someone in there!" she said, turning round as best she could and peering deep into the shade of the grove.

  They all turned to see. And indeed there was someone. There was a distinct crackle of twigs and litter crunching underfoot. "Hey! Fellow!" Walter called.

  Then Nora laughed. "A goat!" she said. "You don't think Lady Henshaw's come to join us do you?" They all laughed, but Arabella wrinkled her nose in disgust, too. "Oh do drive it away Walter dear. Please! I cannot bear their smell."

  Dutifully, carefully, Walter rose and walked into the deeper shade behind

  them. Nora stood up, too. "I'll make sure it doesn't jump out into the field," she said. "Or the lane." And she called to Walter to drive it into the field at the hilltop.

  John, left standing beside the rug on which Arabella reclined, smiled at her. "An excellent choice, Mrs. Thornton!" He looked again at the view.

  "Yes," she said. "I often thought, when riding past it, what a pretty place it was."

  "Well!" John clapped his hands and rubbed them together. "Since activity's the order of the day. I think—with your permission, ma'am—I shall gather a few sticks to make a little cooking fire."

  At the far side of the wood, Walter shouted across to Nora, asking her if the goat had got out into the lane.

  "No," she said, walking into the cemetery and toward him over a tumbledown remnant of the wall. "He's up the hilltop already."

  "I didn't see," he said. "Got stuck in those briars. Look!" He showed her a tear on his jacket.

  "Dear, dear," she said. "Let's go back. There used to be a path…yes, here it is." She walked ahead of him down the slope.

  "Well!" he said meaningfully.

  "Aye!" She did not pretend to be ignorant of his meaning. "Well, well, well!"

  The path led past the very gravestone they had used. Nicholas Everett…why should that name have stuck in her mind? She stopped and turned to look at it—knowing that the honest thing would be to walk on by as if it had lost all meaning. She had not been alone with Walter Thornton since that day. It made a difference. Out there, out in the world, she could watch him as a third person and feel a kind of laughing or contemptuous pity for him—or share John's admiration of him as a professional. But alone with him, she felt the laughter die, the contempt drain away, while the pity swelled into compassionate forbearance. She could not pass that place in silence.

  She stopped and turned to look down at the flat, worn stone, half smothered in turf and moss. "There it is," she said simply.

  All she heard was the shiver of his breathing. She could not look at him. Why could he not make light of it? Get it all over between them. She'd have to lead him. "Aye! Where thee and me frigged—maister!"

  She turned to him, smiling, wanting to see him smile back. But he stood there with his head bowed, his eyes clenched tight, his lips pressed hard upon his teeth, baring them in a grin of agony. "Don't," he pleaded.

  Now she was aghast at what she had unleashed. She forced a laugh. "I'd forgotten," she said. "Until the car stopped by the path there, it had gone right out of my mind."

  "It was not…crude," he insisted, ignoring what she was saying. "Not like you tried to make it sound. It was not."

  At least he seemed calmer. "Yes," she said, lightly. "From that day to this. Quite forgotten it."

  "I haven't," he said dully. "I've remembered it every day."

  "Oh dear," she sighed.

  "Every day this year."

  "We'd better return or they'll start wondering," she said. "Where we are, I mean." She started to walk again.

  "Nora!" he called.

  She turned and faced him.

  "Tell me," he said.

  She waited but he added nothing. "Tell you what?" she asked at length.

  "What it was like. Tell me you enjoyed…Tell me it was good!"

  She turned away. "We must get back."

  He walked swiftly to join her and took her arm from behind. "You made it wonderful, Nora. I shouldn't say this but she makes it so…unlovely. S
he drove me to it."

  "Who? And drove you to what?" Nora asked. "No—don't tell me. I don't want to know. My advice to you, Mr. Thornton, is to take a mistress. And, by the way, please feel free to address me as Mrs. Stevenson."

  "You have no idea of the agonies of this past year!" he went on, heedless. "The doubt I have endured. How…unclean…how…vile."

  "Or gambling," Nora was relentless. "Or the bottle. You've many lives to try out yet before you come grovelling to me—or to anyone—for pity."

  At last he gave sign of hearing what she was saying to him. "Pity!" he sneered. "You have none. I can see that!"

  "Bravo!" She turned and clapped him briefly, ironically, with her silent, gloved hands. "Full circle! What did you say of pity? Out there on the road? What did you call it? 'Socially pernicious.' Wasn't that the phrase?"

  He had no reply to make to that. They walked, careful among the brambles, in silence.

  "I gave you a sovereign that day," he said suddenly. His tone was conversational again.

  She was glad he had mastered himself once more. "I remember," she said. "I told you it made me feel cheap. And you said I had ideas above my station." She looked round and caught him smiling. Her sense of relief increased. "D'you know what it's worth now?" she asked, almost gaily.

  "I beg your pardon!" He was shocked, thinking she meant something else by the word "it."

  She blushed and laughed in confusion. "The sovereign, Mr. Thornton! Good God—you couldn't buy…the other. Not for the Bank of England you couldn't. The sovereign—I gave it to Mr. Stevenson. And if it's not trebled in value, I've no knowledge of keeping books."

  "Ah!" Thornton said, very cool and conversational now that they were drawing close to the clearing where Arabella lay. "I wish I could pick such winners!"

  Arabella heard him. "Have you driven it off?" she called.

  "Yes," Nora told her. "It's run off into the field at the top of the hill."

  "Nasty, smelly things," Arabella said.

  "The next-best thing to venison," Nora imitated Lady Henshaw. It was so perfect that everyone laughed.

  "Who's picking winners?" John asked, returning with an armful of faggotwood. He wet a finger to feel for the breeze and went to light his fire a little to the left of the gap.

  "Mrs. Stevenson is," Walter answered. He sat down beside Arabella and squeezed her arm reassuringly. "She says that the sovereign she brought to you a year ago is now trebled in value."

  "That's a rash estimate!" John said. "Less noise!" he called at Bess and Tabitha, who were whooping and guffawing with laughter as they prepared the lunch. "They're a sight too pert," he said, lowering his voice once more. "That pair."

  "I was reminding Mrs. Stevenson," Walter went on, "that it was a year ago our paths first crossed. Hereabouts, in fact—on this very path."

  Nora was trying to make a daisy chain. She was glad of the preoccupation it gave her but she wished Thornton would not skate on thin ice with such relish; he was not a good actor.

  "A year to this day," John said.

  Nora interrupted: "If you saw those Cousin Bettys of Lady Henshaw's, you'd not mind Bess and Tabitha being pert. I bless their liveliness every time I return from Henshaw Park to Rough Stones."

  "Do imitate Lady Henshaw again, dear Nora," Arabella pressed her. "It's so uncannily like her you'd swear she was beside us."

  Nora smiled, thought, and then laughed. They all began to smile in anticipation. "Last time I was there," she said, "the great big one, the one they call Gertie, came in. She's got one eye looks up and the other looks down." She had to let their laughter die before she could go on.

  Fifty yards to their left Bess, hearing them hoot, looked at Tabitha and said softly: "Less noise!" making them both giggle until they were helpless.

  "Come here Gertie!" Nora imitated.

  Again they laughed.

  "Come here, gel. Don't shuffle—this is a drawing room. Now! What have you been? Eh? Tell us! Go on! Speak up! Tell us! What have you been?" Nora cleared her throat to signal the change. "I bin a reet wicked gel, m'm." Back to her ladyship. "Wicked! Yes—wicked! Why? Go on! Tell Mrs. Stevenson! Why!" Change again. "I poisoned everyone, m'm." Her chin shot up as she became Lady Henshaw again. "Yes! Indeed! Poisoned us all, didn't ye! Go on. Don't stop! Tell us how! Confession's good for the soul. Tell all." She hung her head, becoming Gertie for the final line. "I made't tea wi' watter as were twice, boiled, m'm," she muttered.

  They laughed then until they had to hold their sides to dull the aching. "Oh. She's mad!" Arabella said, catching her breath and dabbing the tears from the corners of her eye.

  "She gets the girls at two pounds a year to the trustees—and that's only for appearance sake," Nora said admiringly. "She's not altogether mad."

  "Did you ever think, as you walked up this way with only a pound in your pocket, did you ever think even in your wildest imaginings that you'd come on such friendly terms with people like Lady Henshaw and Squire Redmayne and John Fielden?"

  "No," Nora said fondly. "Of course not."

  Arabella sighed. "You must be very glad it's all behind you now."

  Nora gazed out over the valley and the rolling hills and the plain beyond. Manchester was a gray smudge in the far distance. "I can't say I was unhappy in those days," she said. "I don't mean I enjoyed poverty. That would be silly. But…and it would be dishonest. But in myself, I have to say: I was not unhappy." Touched by these words the others listened in silence. "Unhappiness is in the person. Not the purse." She looked up and smiled around, almost apologizing for this sudden lapse into aphorism.

  Arabella, despite her earlier denigration of Nora, looked at her now with frank admiration. "That is real firmness of character!" she said. "You shame me. I could never accept poverty with such calm."

  Nora did not want Arabella to undervalue herself so much. "You shouldn't say such things," she said. "You never know what you can do until you face the necessity. I think you've got great strength. You shouldn't talk yourself down." She laughed. "And here's me lecturing you!"

  Arabella smiled, and, turning to John, said, as if it were of no consequence whatever: "What do you think of investment in railways, Mr. Stevenson?"

  "Really my dear!" Walter began to laugh an apology.

  But John cut him short. "No, no," he said. "I'd be happy to advise. Do you mean if the money were mine to invest or what do I think you should do?"

  Arabella looked puzzled. "Is there any difference?"

  "A great deal. The risk that may bring spice to one life may tear another to shreds with anxiety."

  "Ah!" She grasped the point. "You would take the risk, I see. And Nora?"

  "Yes." Nora did not hesitate. "We both would. Circumstance has already borne the two of us as low as folk may possibly get. And"—she turned to Walter—"despite what Lady Henshaw or Mr. Thornton may believe, I'll swear it was circumstance…fortune…not vice that took us there."

  Thornton nodded. "I concede the point."

  "It took us—or me, anyway—lower than I can possibly get again, though we may be poor. Bankruptcy is a part of our lives."

  John cleared his throat in protest at that. "The threat of it, dear. The threat, only."

  "Yes, the threat of it I mean. We cannot exclude it. It is the shadow side of this present sunshine."

  Now John nodded his approval. "So the question is, Mrs. Thornton, could you face ruin in such a spirit?"

  "The threat of it," Nora corrected with a great display of self-righteousness.

  He laughed but said nothing, awaiting Arabella's answer.

  "I've already said I couldn't," she told him. "And been roundly reprimanded for it."

  Nora made a prim face.

  "There's your choice, then," John said. "You can advise yourselves."

  A boy on a horse, riding fast, went along the lane at the foot of the field. John stood up quickly, put his fingers to his tongue, and whistled a long piercing blast that halted the play of their own three horses
and of the servants. It also stopped the rider. He rose in his saddle and looked over the hedge at them; John waved energetically. The boy turned around and made for the side lane.

  "Sorry about that," John said.

  Nora looked deeply suspicious. "What might this be?" she asked.

  "The mails, probably," he said with a laugh she did not share. Walter and Arabella looked from one to the other with bewilderment.

  "I thought," Nora said wearily, "we might have had this one day without the mails. What did you promise?"