Against her neck Augusta’s head nodded drowsily. She yawned, stretched herself, and sidled down into her mother’s lap; in another moment she would have been asleep if a fit of coughing had not waked her.
Hannah had not listened to the lesson in Natural Science. She was fanning herself with her pocket-handkerchief, and looking with disapproval at the man of the lime-kiln, every now and then drawing in her breath and shaking her head. For he had sunk down on to the grass again, and sat in his former attitude, sprawling there, in a way that was not respectful to gentry. Stepping to his side she prodded him swiftly, and whispered,
“Can’t you get up? Don’t you know you’re wanted?”
He answered her prod with an oath, but rose the moment after.
“You’re drunk, you beast!” she whispered. But for all her scorn and reprobation, her class loyalty made her add,
“Pull yourself together, lad. Don’t you know that this is Mrs. Willoughby? Better not let her see you in this state.”
“I bain’t drunk. How can I afford to be drunk before midday? But I’ve got a headache as would split a stone. What do they want of me?”
“She told you. You’re to hold the children over the kiln, so’s they can breathe it. Here! Wipe your hands on the grass and do up your shirt a bit. What’s that on your wrists?”
“Bug sores.”
Now all together they walked towards the kiln, moving slowly under the weight of the sun. To Hannah’s religious mind it seemed as though they were advancing towards an altar of Moloch. Not that she had any doubts as to the rightness of the proceedings; she also had grown up in the knowledge that lime fumes were good for whooping-cough. But the conjunction of fire, children, and this solemn advance upon the kiln made her remember Moloch. The look of the kiln, too, was ecclesiastical in a heathen way. Squarely built of stone, solidly emerging from the turf, its walls were blackened and ruddied with stains of burning; and above the vent the fumes trembled upon the air, glassy, flickering, spiritual, as though they were rising up from the power of a mysterious altar.
They seemed to be a long time marching towards it, falling, with every slow step, deeper into its domain of heat and heavy odour. The man went in front. Following him went Sophia with a child on either side, and Hannah walked after.
“If you will stand on the steps,” said Sophia, “we will lift the children up to you. Now, Damian, you can go first. Shut your eyes, and breathe deeply.”
Returned to earth, Damian whispered to Augusta,
“I looked.”
“What is it like? Is it like hell?” she asked softly.
There was no time to hear, for now in her turn she was taken hold of, and hoisted towards the man’s grasp. She gave a sudden cry, wriggled, and made her escape.
“What is it, Augusta? You are not afraid, surely? Damian was not afraid.”
The child’s face was pale, but her look was less of fear than of some suspicion and bewilderment in which she was deeply absorbed.
“Mamma! I don’t quite like the man. He’s so queer.”
“But he’s the kilnman. His work makes him look like that.”
Her face working in an attempt to find words, the child whispered,
“It’s not him that I mind. But there’s something about him so very auspicious.”
At the second hoisting she made no resistance; and whether the man had overheard her or no, he knew his place well enough to show no consciousness of her words. Standing priest-like and impassive upon the steps, his head and shoulders dark against the background of trembling air, he stretched out his arms for the light burden, and Augusta was held above the opening of the kiln.
Her face, lit by the flickering fires below, wore the same bewildered and cogitative expression, and her eyes did not open for a single glance of curiosity for what was beneath.
“Why didn’t you look?” enquired Damian. “Were you afraid?”
“I forgot.”
“Miss Augusta kept her eyes shut as she was told,” improved the overhearing Hannah. “Miss Augusta behaved properly, and God will cure her cough because she was obedient.”
Lost in her musing dream, the child stood pale and unhearing.
The man having been given the shilling for his pains, and dismissed from their world, the little party moved away, slowly and religiously as they approached. No one spoke. Sophia was the first to rouse herself. The fumes must have made us sleepy, she thought, suddenly conscious that there was something odd, something pompous and bewitched about the way they were all behaving. And she began to walk faster, and to sweep her glance this way and that over the wide view from the terrace of the hill.
At the entrance of the lane she looked back. The man was standing where they had left him, staring after them. Hannah looked back too.
“How he stares, madam! But no wonder. He might be here year in, year out, and scarcely be visited by a soul, let alone little gentry children. He’ll think of this till suppertime, I dare say.”
Sophia nodded her assent. Even as she did so, her mind glancing casually at the lot of the lime-kiln man, she received a sudden and violent impression that, however fixedly he had stared after them, and stared still, he did not really see them, and that their coming was already wiped from his mind like a dream ... .A fancy, and she disliked fancies ... .But even before she had time to rebuke it Damian coughed, and her thoughts were tilted back again to what was actual.
What childishness to have expected that the children would be cured of their coughs immediately. She was no wiser than a poor papist, that would hope to nail up a waxen leg or a goitre before a shrine, like dead vermin nailed up on a gamekeeper’s tree. Walking ahead, listening for coughs, she began to reason herself into common sense, damping down her present fears by a reckoning of what illnesses the children had already been through, what remained for them yet to combat. It should be comforting to know how greatly the former outnumbered the latter. Damian aged nine, Augusta aged seven, might be looked upon as scarred and salted veterans in these wars of youth. It is best to get such things over early in life, every one was agreed as to that. Later on they might affect the constitution, and certainly interfered with schooling. So she might count herself lucky among mothers.
“Excuse me, madam, but the children are rather tired. I think it would be best for them to sit in the shade for a while.”
The sycamore by the gate between the two fields made a small separate world of shade in the glaring whitish landscape. In its shelter the two children stood islanded, looking out on the brightness all round as though they were looking from a fortress on some beleaguering danger. They had drawn close together, and stood in silence, their bright eyes flickering in their pale faces, their bony knees seeming years older than their thin legs. Augusta loosened her straw bonnet; as it fell back it showed her hair, plastered dark and limp on her forehead.
“Certainly, Hannah. Let us rest by all means. I expect you are tired too.”
“Oh no, madam.”
However, she retreated with alacrity to the shade of the sycamore, sat down, spread out her skirts for the children to sit on, and took out her knitting.
“Hannah, my head thumps,” said Damian.
“Never mind, dear. It will soon be better.”
From a neighbouring field a bull blared. The noise, so thick and shrill and dully furious, seemed the very voice of the midday heat. It was as though the sun thrust its voice from the heavens. The cows in the meadow went on feeding, whisking their tails against the flies that pestered them, and snatching at the herbage. The bull blared again and again, and the cows cropped on, uninterested. Sensible cows, thought Sophia. She was tearing up grasses also, and mechanically stripping off the Loves-me, Loves-me-not seed-heads. This waiting irked her, this waiting for the next cough. She disliked sitting down in the middle of a walk, she disliked any kind of dawdling. A slow and rigid thinker, to sit still and contemplate was an anguish to her. Presently she jumped to her feet, saying,
“Chil
dren, I shall walk on. You can stay here with Hannah until you have rested enough, then you can walk slowly to the end of the path. Meanwhile, I shall have reached home, and sent the carriage to bring you the rest of the way.”
I wonder how Hannah will like listening to that bull, she thought with amusement, as she climbed the stile, and set out briskly along the grass ridge. But the amusement faded from her mind, and with a few more steps she was teased by cares again. Suppose the lime-kiln treatment did not work, what was she to try next? And presently there would be that boy from the West Indies that Uncle Julius was sending. True, he would not be in the house for more than a week, but in that week a number of things might go wrong, he might tease Augusta, or corrupt Damian. For however necessary it was to be broad-minded about negroes and half-castes, the necessity to be broad-minded about bastards was not so imperative; and now she half wished that she had not undertaken to look after the brat. Well, it was another responsibility, another care — and she straightened her shoulders, and walked more erectly, feeling herself with every step deepening her hold upon the earth that she trod upon and owned, and resolutely absorbing the rays of the down-beating sun. It was an extraordinary thing that she, who had been so strong all her life, should have given birth to two such delicate children. Nor was Frederick delicate either, though he had fussed inordinately about his health. No, the delicacy was not inherited. It was struck out in the conjunction of the parents, it was the worst, the only enduring result of that deplorable mating.
She could still hear the bull blaring — a furious monotonous cry, a wail almost, ringing through the unmoved countryside. It was Dymond’s bull, she supposed, not a good beast, at any time, and ageing. Dymond must be spoken to. A place in service must be found for Topp’s eldest girl, who was doing herself no good, hanging about among the farmhands. Mamma’s tomb must be scrubbed again, and a room (the red dressing-room would do) made ready for that Caspar, Gaspar, whatever the child was called. She was a landowner, and a mother, and every day there was more to do, more to oversee the doing of. Duties came out of thought, one after another, swift as bees coming out of a hive. She was a mother, and a landowner; but fortunately, she need no longer be counted among the wives.
Now she saw her hand as it had been eighteen months ago, a hand whitened with winter and indoor living, holding the quill that moved swiftly and decisively over the paper. She could see the very look of the four pages, neatly filled with her even Italian script, and her signature, exactly filling the calculated space at the bottom of the fourth page — the four pages on which she had stated to her husband her exact reasons for wishing not to live with him again, her exact decision never to do so. She could remember everything: the look of the winter room, the fire rosy on the white marble hearth, the yellow flames of the candles she had lit, and the uncurtained window reflecting them, presenting its illusion of bright fire and sallow candle-flames alight in the dusky February garden where the evergreens bent toppling under the rainy wind. She could remember the dress she wore, the bracelet on her wrist with its staring onyx, the new scratch, raw and blatant, on the green leather of the escritoire. With a veer of wind the rain had spattered against the windows, and on that streaming surface the reflection of the fire and the candle-flames had brightened. She could remember the smell of the sealing-wax, and the exact imprint of the seal, and the look of the letter, lying sealed, stamped, and addressed, on the summit of the other letters she had written that afternoon.
Frederick Willoughby, Esquire.
Hôtel de l’Étoile,
rue Ste Anne,
Paris.
So clear, so authentic was the recollection that walking along the road between the dusty hedgerows and the parched fields she yet had a feeling of a rainy afternoon and of the safe pleasure of being within doors by a fire. It was only what she had said that she could not remember. Out of all that letter, so swimmingly written, so clear-headedly willed, that letter which was to decide the remainder of her life, she could not remember a single phrase, a single sentence.
If I had been jealous, thought Sophia, if the last angry embers of love had smouldered in me when I wrote, I should remember my letter still. And if there had been a twinge of hope left, I should have kept a copy of it. But as it was, I wrote it as one writes a business letter, a letter dismissing a servant, or refusing an application.
Now the lodge gates had swung to behind her, and the shade of the avenue dappled her progress. I go to my house, she said to herself, alone. I rule and order it alone. And no one doubts my sufficiency, no one questions my right to live as I do. I am far safer than if I were a widow. For at my age, and in my position, I should be pestered with people wanting to marry me, I should have to live as cautiously as a girl. But now I can stand up, and extend my shade, my suzerainty, unquestioned as a tree. No cloistered fool of a nun could live freer from the onslaught of love than I, and no queen have a more absolute sway.
She turned off to the stables, to order the carriage which was to fetch Hannah and the children. While the horse was being put in she stood by, making desultory conversation with the coachman, and looking round the stable-yard. Here she had run as a child, to strut over the cobbles with her legs apart in an imitation of old Daniel, to plunge her bare arm into the bins of corn and oats, to sniff saddle-soap and the bottles of liniment and horse-medicine, to dabble in the buckets and, when no one was looking, to lick the polished metal on the harness, so cold and sleek to the tongue. Again she felt the sense of escape; for here everything was clean, bare, and sensible; there was no untidiness, and no doubt. Her horses (she did not admit it but the thought was there) were everything that her children should have been: strong, smooth-skinned, well-trained, well-bred. The texture of the muzzle searching her hand for sugar, so delicately smooth, so dry and warm and supple, satisfied something in her flesh which the kisses of her children left unappeased. To them she responded with tenderness, with pity, with conscience, with a complicated anguish of anxiety, devotion and solicitude. Even in bending to kiss Damian the thought would spring up: His forehead is very hot. Has he a fever? But to this contact her own vigorous well-being could respond with an immediate and untrammelled satisfaction.
At the stroke of the stable-clock the pigeons flew off with a whirr. In a moment, even while the vibrations of the metal still hung on the midday stillness, they would fly back to the roof and sit sunning there; but she was bidden away. What next to do? Dymond’s bull, Topp’s girl, Mamma’s tomb ... .
Mamma’s tomb came into the province of the gardener. He was in the tomato house pinching off the lesser fruits. A good servant, she thought, watching how unerringly he nipped away the poor, the imperfect, the superfluous growths. A heavy smell, spiced and pungent, flowed from the vines, and from his hands. The sun beat through the glass upon the white-washed wall, the shadows of the vines with their dangling fruits were sharply patterned. The grey-green foliage was hung with swags of orange and scarlet fruit.
“A good yield, Brewster. Better than last year, I think.”
He nodded, and said in a voice that, for all his years of service in England, retained its Scottish whine,
“There’ll be too many, I’m thinking, for the house to eat them.”
He seemed to be reproaching her for living alone, for not keeping up the state which his tomatoes, his peaches, his melons and nectarines, deserved. She countered him swiftly.
“In that case, the rest can be sold.”
It might not be genteel to sell one’s superfluous fruit. Neither was it genteel to live apart from one’s husband. But the one and the other was sensible, was rational, was concordant with Sophia’s views as to the conduct of life. Brewster had intended no reproach, she could see that now, for it was without any reservation that he began to speak of a fruiterer in Weymouth who would make a good offer. It was foolish of her to have thought that he would reproach her. She lived singularly uncriticised by her household, so calmly enforcing her will upon them that they felt themselves
supported by it. Every inch of Sophia’s body, tall, well-made, well-finished, her upright carriage, her direct gaze, her slow, rather loud voice and clear enunciation, warded off criticism.
“Good. Then you will see to that this afternoon, Brewster.”
“Yes, madam.”
Mamma’s tomb had been troublesome from the first, owing to Mamma’s odd wish that a weeping willow should be planted over it. The willow dripped, cast its leaves, and stained the white marble. Moreover, in Sophia’s opinion, it looked rather silly and sentimental. It was strange how Mamma, in her two years of widowhood, had remodelled her character, on that first flood of forsaken tears sailing off into a new existence of being fashionably feeling. She had read poetry, she had read novels. She had covered pages of hot-pressed lilac paper with meditations and threnodies of her own composition, and had pressed mournful flowers between the pages. Refusing carriage exercise, she had taken to wandering about the garden in the evenings, and at her bidding an arbour had been put up, where she could sit in the dusk, catching colds and looking at the moon. When fetched indoors by Sophia, instead of knitting or embroidering, she would play the piano — not very well, since she had not touched the keys since her marriage except to play quadrilles and waltzes — but with prolonged enjoyment and great expressiveness. She became as finicking as a girl over her meals, grew thin, developed a cough, and declared on the slightest provocation her intention of dying as soon as possible of a broken heart; and after two years of this conduct she had done so, withering mysteriously, with the strongest resemblance to a snapped-off flower that could have been achieved by human suggestibility and human obstinacy.
Sophia had watched this behaviour with bewilderment, embarrassment, and disapproval. It was not new to her that people could behave like this. At her boarding-school several of the young ladies had complied with all the dictates of fashion in being romantic and sentimental, and during the short season in London in which she met and married Frederick she had worn the prevailing mode of feeling as duly as she had worn flowers in her hair. One was foolish, and the other was messy; but while they were the mode it would have been eccentric not to make a show of compliance. Mamma had approved her demeanour, Papa, philosophically, had approved her compliance; but there had never been, at any point of the Aspen triangle, the slightest yielding of heart to these whims of behaviour and feeling. Sophia might gaze at the moon as much as she thought fit; but she gazed at it through the drawing-room windows. Sophia might visit a waterfall, or a ruin; but she must change her stockings and have some hot wine when she returned. Sophia might refuse her food, pine, burst into unexpected tears, copy poetry into albums and keep pet doves, while her marriage was being arranged and her trousseau ordered; but once married it was understood that she would put away these extravagancies and settle down into the realities of life once more.
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