Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  CHAPTER IV. WEAVING THREADS

  THROUGHOUT the week early hours were kept of a night at the farm, and it was only on Sunday that John Pentreath’s prayers made a longer evening. The time for supper varied: it would be at eight or after in the summer when the days were at full stretch, and as early as six in the winter. Just now in March they supped about seven, and John Pentreath, the last to return, would generally have drunk his fill by ten, and reeled upstairs.

  As the lambing progressed, the old man struck a streak of rare good humour, and there was no wonder at that, for nigh on half the ewes had dropped a double, and with the exception of one weakling, which now lay beside the kitchen fire in a box of hay, with long slack legs extended, they were all sturdy little beggars and doing well. This warm still weather, too, was ideal for the hazards of their first days of life. His supper was pleasant to John Pentreath, and his drink extra welcome, and Dennis’s late revolt from authority seemed to have gone clean out of his mind. To-night he had told the boy he was a good worker, and had offered him a glass of whisky.

  “Time you began to take your liquor, lad,” he said. “No Pentreath I ever heard of didn’t thrive on it.”

  “I’d sooner not, Grandfather,” he said. “But I’ll have another glass of milk.”

  “God! beeant the boy weaned yet?” asked John.

  “Pass me my bottle back again.”

  Mrs. Pentreath had eaten her supper, a mouthful or two and no more, without word of speech. Now she picked up her knitting again from her lap.

  “Dennis is in the right there,” she said. “There’s enough drunk here without his meddling with it.”

  She looked up at him under those black brows, and Dennis thought he knew just what was coming.

  “He can learn something, though, about meddling with other things that aren’t his concern,” she said. “There’s no such ill-luck as what comes to those who put their fingers in other pies.”

  John Pentreath laughed.

  “What’s the boy been meddling in then?” he asked. “He’s got a couple of rows of teeth in his head, hasn’t he? Not been trying on your mouth jewellery, Mollie? And doesn’t his hair curl natural, or has he been pinehin’ his mother’s curling tongs and a bit of rouge to give him a colour?”

  Nancy tittered.

  “Lor’! Get along with you, Mr. Pentreath,” she said. “You’re in rare good spirits to-night. Curling tongs, indeed! I never used such a thing: just a screw of paper.”

  Mrs. Pentreath pushed her chair back nearer the open door of the range, and bending down stroked the Iamb for a couple of minutes along back and stomach this way and that with gentle pressure, and then put the feeding bottle, which it had refused before, between its lips. But now the little beggar sucked greedily at it, and wanted more when it was empty.

  “Dennis knows what I mean,” she said, “and if he’s got a spunk of sense in his head he’ll hold his tongue and not be nosy and meddlesome again. There! I’ve run my hand over the lamb, and ‘twill do well now, for it needed but a touch. Take it back to the field, Nell: it’ll be keen for the teat now.”

  Nell looked inquiringly at John Pentreath for his assent. The lamb had got on its legs with little treble bleatings and tail-twitchings.

  “What’s the girl staring at me for?” said John. “If your aunt says that’s the way of it, what more do you want? Eh, Mollie, it’s a magic touch you’ve got. I reckon God Almighty couldn’t have done it quicker.”

  “And I reckon God Almighty ‘ud have let it die before morning instead,” remarked Mrs. Pentreath. “Off to the meadow with it, Nell, and see it finds its dam. The moon’s up: you won’t need a lantern.” While Nell was gone Dennis and Nancy cleared the table and washed up. Mrs. Pentreath turned many furtive observant glances at her as she went to and fro, humming some gay tune of the London streets twenty years ago. She had on a shabby bodice and her old cotton skirt with a dirty hem, but she also had on a pair of smart buttoned walking shoes, and below the skirt were a pair of open work stockings, such as she only wore on a Sunday. Her hands, too, were unusually clean, with nails shining and polished, and there was a touch of rouge on her face. What could be the purpose of these embellishments? Surely not just to read her crazy book for an hour, and then go to bed?

  Nancy finished her washing-up, glanced at the clock, and sat down in the rocking chair with her book. But her eyes kept wandering to the clock, and presently she gave a great yawn and got up.

  “Pardon for such a gape,” she said politely, “but I’m a rare sleepy-head to-night. I reckon I’ll be off to bed, and pray don’t come clumping down the passage in your great boots, Dennis, waking me up just as I’m dropping off. Why, my eyes are that heavy I can scarce keep them open, try as I will. Good night all and pleasant dreams.”

  Clip-clop she went to the door in her smart shoes, and they heard her cross the flagged hall and so upstairs. Then from the chair by the fire where Mrs. Pentreath sat came the very echo of Nancy’s singing voice and clipped speech.

  “I can scarce keep them open,” it said, “try as I will. Good night all and pleasant dreams.”

  Dennis looked round, thinking his mother must have come back. Then he realised that it was Mrs. Pentreath who spoke, and gave a great guffaw of laughter.

  “Eh, Grannie, you hit her off fine,” he said. “I’d ‘a sworn ’twas Mother speaking.”

  “‘Iss sure, and I did, too,” said John, getting up and tapping the tall barometer that hung by the window.

  “Steady and fair,” he said, “though I trust you, Mollie, more nor all the instruments that were ever made. I was wrong when I thought I smelled the rain in the air this afternoon.”

  Mrs. Pentreath went to the door into the farmyard, and looked out, sniffing the warm dusk.

  “Never a drop of rain did you smell, John,” she said, as she closed it again. “More like ’twas a drop of Highland dew in your nostril.”

  Silence descended again, broken only by Nell’s entrance with the news that the lamb had found its mother and was at the teat. Dennis was more alert now that she had come back: an occasional glance or a word or two passed between them as the girl sat darning a pair of his socks. John Pentreath refilled his pipe and glass; his pipe dropped from his mouth as his head nodded, and he refreshed himself with a swig at his glass. But Mollie sat bright-eyed and wide-awake, busy at her knitting, and looking into the door of the range, where the embers were beginning to burn low. She smiled to herself sometimes, or she sat frowning, as if puzzling something out. Then when the clock whirred for the hour of nine she got up.

  “I’ll be off to bed, too,” she said, “for I’m as sleepy as Nancy to-night. Don’t be setting alight to yourself, John.”

  She lit a small oil-lamp and carrying it upstairs with her, went along the passage past her own room, and paused opposite Nancy’s. She tapped softly at the door and then louder, but there came no response, and (just in case Nancy was asleep there) she turned the handle noiselessly and entered. There was one cause for her smiling to herself this evening, for, as she had suspected, the room was empty. On a chair lay Nancy’s shabby skirt and bodice, and a candle on the dressing-table was still soft from recent burning. Then looking into the wardrobe she saw that Nancy’s Sunday frock and the hat with the cherries on it were missing. The window was shut, the blind down, and the room smelled of her favourite musk.

  Mrs. Pentreath did not linger here, for her lamp was burning smokily, and perhaps Nancy on her return might catch the whiff of it, and suspect that her room had been entered in her absence. Like most suspicious people, she thought others as wary as herself, and Nancy must not know that she had been here. She tiptoed back along the passage to her own room, quenched her lamp, and set the door an inch ajar so that she could hear any sound of movement in the house. Then, as if drawing out of a box in the dark the thoughts that had been occupying her, she began fitting them together, hardly yet knowing herself what lurked there.

  The two first fitted flush an
d square. Nancy had feigned a powerful sleepiness, and on the plea of seeking her bed had gone out on a quest of her own, which called for the top of all her finery and for rouge and polished nails. Mrs. Pentreath had no doubt as to what kind of errand this might be: had she gone out for a casual airing or for a chat with some woman in the village, she would surely have said so, instead of feigning this eager drowsiness, and, above all, she would not have dreamed of bedizening herself for such a purpose. Of course she was gone to see a man. Well, there it was, and after all, Nancy was a handsome, good-natured sort of slut with a taking sort of way. Mrs. Pentreath had not a particle of moral objection to her having her pleasure, and something might come of it for herself, if she thought it all out.

  Her mind diverted itself to a side-track. Nancy had managed her exit very cleverly, for she had certainly not gone out by the kitchen door, nor yet by the door into the garden, for Mrs. Pentreath, passing it on her way upstairs, had seen that it was locked and bolted from the inside. She must therefore have gone out by the door in the studio of the flat that was let to lodgers, for there was no other exit. To make sure of this she lit her oil-lamp again and went along the passage to the supplementary staircase that led down to the studio. As she had expected, the door into the garden was unlocked, and she left it like that, for she wanted to put no hindrance in the way of Nancy’s excursions. Back she went to her room and resumed her watching.

  There was a stir from below, and the shutting of the door from the kitchen that led into the hall: there was whispered talk, and the tread of feet on the stairs. That would be Nell and Dennis going up to bed: the boy had remembered to take his boots off, according to his mother’s request (there was a pretty piece of cunning for you!), and only a creaking board and a quiet word or two betrayed their going along the passage past Nancy’s room. Then came the sound of the discreet shutting of their doors, and now John alone was in the kitchen. She drew out another piece of her thoughts which must fit in here. John might be coming up soon, and there was something that must be done before that. She tiptoed from her room, and withdrawing the key from the inside of Nancy’s door, she locked it on the outside. By and by she would replace it, but not just yet. Should Nancy return now, and find her door locked against her, there would be a to-do, but that was not likely. A woman didn’t get herself up in her Sunday togs to return as soon as that. John would surely come up long before she was back. Ten o’clock, when supper was at seven, was enough to make him ripe for his bed. For a week or two now she had been marking him, and keen thoughts about Nancy had often been in his head: he looked at her as a man looks when desire lights his eyes. On that Sunday night when he was so far gone, he had fair hugged her on his tipsy journey upstairs, and had shuffled to her room to get a good-night kiss. Perhaps he would be after another kiss to-night, and it would upset everything if he tapped, and getting no reply, tried the handle of her door and found her room empty. He must reckon that Nancy was asleep within.

  Mollie had not long to wait, for presently the kitchen door opened and shut, and his slippered feet shuffled on the stairs and the banisters creaked to his weight. Cautious and careful of step he was to-night; there was no blundering at that awkward comer on the stairs, and she would scarce have known he had passed her door but for the shifting of that thin line of light from his candle, through the chink where she had set it ajar. When he had gone by, she opened it a little wider, and saw that he had passed his room as well as her own, and had paused opposite Nancy’s. He tapped at it, and tried the handle, but found it locked. He called to her in a thick whisper once or twice, and then, muttering to himself, returned to his own room and banged the door. Nancy was with her man by now, thought Mollie, and she herself was the only clean one among the three of them, for one was gone a-whoring down to St. Columb’s, John was lusting after his son’s widow, while her own desire was for her husband, just as the law of man and of John’s Sunday-book ordained. And she would get him yet, when she’d thought things out a bit more.

  There was a door between her room and his, never bolted nor locked on her side, but it was years now since he had come through it to her. To-night she had no hunger for him, for her thoughts were busy thinking out how she would entrap him into the ardent approach which made fruitfulness. A deal of thinking out it: would require to attain this godly end, but a clue was in her hand now, and she would follow it, ever so patient...Then through the door she heard her husband snoring, and once more she went back, on tiptoe, to Nancy’s room, unlocked it and left the key on the inside. The woman had been gone a full hour and a half, for Mollie could hear the kitchen clock whirring again for eleven o’clock, and she could come now when she pleased, and find her room just as she had left it.

  When Mrs. Pentreath came down next morning there was an uncommon air of brightness and comfort in the kitchen. The housework of dusting and cleaning was over, the oven was hot, the kettle was boiling, and a rasher of bacon frying, and there was Nancy arranging a bunch of dewy flowers for the table: as she bestowed them in their mugs she was humming that favourite old music-hall song of hers which she had heard twenty years ago. Young and buxom and gay she looked, as if the world were treating her handsomely.

  “And good morning to you, Mrs. Pentreath,” she said with voluble cordiality. “I was down bright and early after my long night. I’ve given Dennis his breakfast, and he’s gone to work this half-hour ago. There’s a rasher just ready for you, if you’d fancy it, for scarce a bite of supper did you take last night, and these spring days, they say, always make a call on a body’s strength.”

  Mrs. Pentreath expanded to these genialities. She had followed the clue a little further now, and winding was the path it traced for her.

  “Well, I could relish a bit of bacon,” she said. “And thank you kindly, Nancy: you’re a good girl to me.”

  “Girl, indeed!” cried Nancy, feeling like one, “and me turned forty. You’re making fun of me, Mrs. Pentreath.”

  “Not I, indeed! And John’s of the same mind as me. Why, ’twas only last night, after you’d gone up to bed, that he was saying that you’d not aged a day since you came here twenty years ago, before ever that big Dennis came forth from you. John thinks a deal of you, Nancy, and I was wanting to have a word with you about that when we were alone together, if you’d excuse me.”

  “Why, I’m sure there’s no call for you to excuse yourself, Mrs. Pentreath,” she said...Had the poor old woman only just discovered that?

  “Well, I’ll make so bold then. When John’s got a drop or two inside of him, his eye keeps playing on you like a beam of fire, and it’s right you should be warned. Why, last night, would you believe it, when he went to bed, I heard him go to your door and knock and call you.”

  “Well now, I thought I heard someone at my door last night,” said Nancy.

  “The silly liar,” thought Mrs. Pentreath. “She’d knocked on another man’s door before that, and was inside it.” Then aloud: “Did you, indeed? Sure, you behaved very properly in not answering him, for presently I heard him go mumbling and muttering back to his room. ’Twould be wise of you, Nancy, always to lock your door when you go to bed, for you don’t want him making a rumpus there, I know.”

  “Lor’! I should think not!” said Nancy. “I’d make a pretty to-do if he did.”

  “To be sure you would, for you’re a proper-minded woman, and ’tis a shocking thought indeed that he’d come tapping at your door o’ nights to see if you’d let him in. So just be a bit cool and stand-off with him to show you’re not wanting any of his visitings. And you’d be wise, as I say, to keep your door locked, for it’s between his drink and his sleep that he’s so set on you. Ah, dear me, I wish I’d kept my youth half as well as you, but my times past to kindle a man’s eye, so it’s no use for me to think o’ such things.”

  Nancy’s vanity was of that simple and childish sort that never looks for ulterior motives in those who gratify it: only wanting to be fed, it heeds not what hand it is that proffers agre
eable morsels. To be sure Mrs. Pentreath was so flattering that there was no understanding it, but Nancy was not concerned to look for a cause when the effect was so much to her mind. Little as she intended to give her father-in-law any return for his admiration of her beyond silence and a locked door, if he came to try his chance again, it was vastly pleasant to her to know on so sound an authority that he was set on her. And it was a comfort to know that Mrs. Pentreath was taking so friendly a view: she might have flared up with jealousy, as if it were Nancy’s fault, but instead the poor old thing was quite “touch-in’” in her lament that her days of lighting up a man’s eyes were over. Above all, she congratulated herself on the clever way she had managed her affairs last night. Not a soul in the house had any suspicion that her drowsiness was feigned and that she had not gone to bed so particularly early; not a soul imagined that she had tiptoed back to her room long after they had all been asleep. But certainly fortune had favoured her as well, and now, when Mrs. Pentreath went out to the kitchen garden to pick the outside cabbage leaves for her hens, she broke into one of her habitual internal soliloquies, turning her thoughts into words, and finding them thus easier to deal with, much as a child shapes his mouth to the print he reads in order to grasp its meaning.

  “The old man must have been fair boozed,” she communed with herself, “not to have found my door was unlocked, for if he’d tried the handle, lor’, what a kettle of fish there’d have been when he found my room empty. That was an escape, to be sure! Next time I must lock my door from outside, and put the key somewhere handy for when I get back. Then he may knock and call till Mrs. Pentreath comes and finds him there and gives rum what for, poor old lady, and she just wanting him as never was, for I can see it in her face that there’s that hungry look, that’s been in mine, I daresay, before now...Well, what a thing it is to keep your looks while you get your experience.”