My mother smiled and thanked him. We turned to go. My mother hesitated in her walk; on the threshold of the room she glanced round at the bed, but she went on.
Outside, in the fresh air of the fading afternoon, I could not believe it was true. It was not true, that sad, colourless face with grey beard, wavering in the yellow candle-light. It was a lie — that wooden bedstead, that deaf woman, they were fading phrases of the untruth. That yellow blaze of little sunflowers was true, and the shadow from the sun-dial on the warm old almshouses — that was real. The heavy afternoon sunlight came round us warm and reviving; we shivered, and the untruth went out of our veins, and we were no longer chilled.
The doctor’s house stood sweetly among the beech trees, and at the iron fence in front of the little lawn a woman was talking to a beautiful Jersey cow that pushed its dark nose through the fence from the field beyond. She was a little, dark woman with vivid colouring; she rubbed the nose of the delicate animal, peeped right into the dark eyes, and talked in a lovable Scottish speech; talked as a mother talks softly to her child. When she turned round in surprise to greet us there was still the softness of a rich affection in her eyes. She gave us tea, and scones, and apple jelly, and all the time we listened with delight to her voice, which was musical as bees humming in the lime trees. Though she said nothing significant, we listened to her attentively.
Her husband was merry and kind. She glanced at him with quick glances of apprehension, and her eyes avoided him. He, in his merry, frank way, chaffed her, and praised her extravagantly, and teased her again. Then he became a trifle uneasy. I think she was afraid he had been drinking; I think she was shaken with horror when she found him tipsy, and bewildered and terrified when she saw him drunk. They had no children. I noticed he ceased to joke when she became a little constrained. He glanced at her often, and looked somewhat pitiful when she avoided his looks, and he grew uneasy, and I could see he wanted to go away.
“I had better go with you to see the vicar, then,” he said to me, and we left the room, whose windows looked south, over the meadows, the room where dainty little water-colours, and beautiful bits of embroidery, and empty flower-vases, and two dirty novels from the town library, and the closed piano, and the odd cups, and the chipped spout of the teapot causing stains on the cloth — all told one story.
We went to the joiner’s and ordered the coffin, and the doctor had a glass of whisky on it; the graveyard fees were paid, and the doctor sealed the engagement with a drop of brandy; the vicar’s port completed the doctor’s joviality, and we went home.
This time the disquiet in the little woman’s dark eyes could not dispel the doctor’s merriment. He rattled away, and she nervously twisted her wedding-ring. He insisted on driving us to the station, in spite of our alarm.
“But you will be quite safe with him,” said his wife, in her caressing Highland speech. When she shook hands at parting I noticed the hardness of the little palm; — and I have always hated an old, black alpaca dress.
It is such a long way home from the station at Eberwich. We rode part way in the bus; then we walked. It is a very Hong way for my mother, when her steps are heavy with trouble.
Rebecca was out by the rhododendrons looking for us. She hurried to us all solicitous, and asked Mother if she had had tea.
“But you’ll do with another cup,” she said, and ran back into the house.
She came into the dining-room to take my mother’s bonnet and coat. She wanted us to talk; she was distressed on my mother’s behalf; she noticed the blackness that lay under her eyes, and she fidgeted about, unwilling to ask anything, yet uneasy and anxious to know.
“Lettie has been home,” she said.
“And gone back again?” asked Mother.
“She only came to change her dress. She put the green poplin on. She wondered where you’d gone.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I said you’d just gone out a bit. She said she was glad. She was as lively as a squirrel.”
Rebecca looked wistfully at my mother. At length the latter said:
“He’s dead, Rebecca. I have seen him.”
“Now thank God for that — no more need to worry over him.”
“Well! — He died all alone, Rebecca — all alone.”
“He died as you’ve lived,” said Becky with some asperity. “But I’ve had the children, I’ve had the children — we won’t tell Lettie, Rebecca.”
“No ‘m.” Rebecca left the room.
“You and Lettie will have the money,” said mother to me. There was a sum of four thousand pounds or so. It was left to my mother; or, in default to Lettie and me.”
“Well, Mother — if it’s ours, it’s yours.”
There was silence for some minutes, then she said, “You might have had a father —”
“We’re thankful we hadn’t, Mother. You spared us that.”
“But how can you tell?” said my mother.
“I can,” I replied. “And I am thankful to you.”
“If ever you feel scorn for one who is near you rising in your throat, try and be generous, my lad.”
“Well —” said I.
“Yes,” she replied, “we’ll say no more. Sometime you must tell Lettie — you tell her.”
I did tell her, a week or so afterwards.
“Who knows?” she asked, her face hardening.
“Mother, Becky, and ourselves.”
“Nobody else?”
“No.”
“Then it’s a good thing he is out of the way if he was such a nuisance to Mother. Where is she?”
“Upstairs.”
Lettie ran to her.
Chapter 5
The Scent of Blood
The death of the man who was our father changed our lives. It was not that we suffered a great grief; the chief trouble was the unanswered crying of failure. But we were changed in our feelings and in our relations; there was a new consciousness, a new carefulness.
We had lived between the woods and the water all our lives, Lettie and I, and she had sought the bright notes in everything. She seemed to hear the water laughing, and the leaves tittering and giggling like young girls; the aspen fluttered like the draperies of a flirt, and the sound of the wood-pigeons was almost foolish in its sentimentality.
Lately, however, she had noticed again the cruel, pitiful crying of a hedgehog caught in a gin, and she had noticed the traps for the fierce little murderers, traps walled in with a small fence of fir, and baited with the guts of a killed rabbit.
On an afternoon a short time after our visit to Cossethay, Lettie sat in the window seat. The sun clung to her hair, and kissed her with passionate splashes of colour brought from the vermilion, dying creeper outside. The sun loved Lettie, and was loath to leave her. She looked out over Nethermere to Highclose, vague in the September mist. Had it not been for the scarlet light on her face, I should have thought her look was sad and serious. She nestled up to the window, and leaned her head against the wooden shaft. Gradually she drooped into sleep. Then she became wonderfully childish again — it was the girl of seventeen sleeping there, with her full pouting lips slightly apart, and the breath coming lightly. I felt the old feeling of responsibility; I must protect her, and take care of her.
There was a crunch of the gravel.