Seven For A Secret E-Book

Mary Webb

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

”Seven For A Secret” is the story of a young girl who turns into a compassionate, passionate, loving woman, who is visible through the eyes of a shepherd poet who loves her. Gillian is nineteen when the romance opens, and she is a romantic star who wants to flirt with men to fall in love with her. Gillian, in many ways, still behaves like a child, and she is selfish, narcissistic, and stupid with others in her life. A kind and simple shepherd named Robert, working with her father, often becomes the goal of her coquetry.

Leseprobe

Contents

CHAPTER ONE: Gillian Lovekin

CHAPTER TWO: Robert Rideout

CHAPTER THREE: Aunt Fanteague Arrives

CHAPTER FOUR: Gillian Asks for a Kiss

CHAPTER FIVE: Robert writes two Letters

CHAPTER SIX: Tea at the Junction

CHAPTER SEVEN: Gillian comes to Silverton

CHAPTER EIGHT: Gillian meets Mr. Gentle

CHAPTER NINE: The Harper’s Forge

CHAPTER TEN: The Burning Heart

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Isaiah asks a Question

CHAPTER TWELVE: At the Sign of the Maiden

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Robert says ‘No’

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: ‘Daggly Weather’

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Isaiah hears a Belownder

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Ralph Elmer comes to Dinner

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Tea for four at the ‘Mermaid’s Rest’

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: The Gifts of Ralph Elmer to Gillian Lovekin

CHAPTER NINETEEN: Bloom in the Orchard

CHAPTER TWENTY: Robert pleaches the Thorn Hedge

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: Briar Roses

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: Weeping Cross

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: Isaiah says ‘Ha!’

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: A Hank of Faery Wool

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: The Bride comes Home

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: A B C at the Sign of the Maiden

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: ‘In a Dream she cradled Me’

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: Fringal forgets to Laugh

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: Snow in the Little Gyland

CHAPTER THIRTY: Robert Awaits the Dawn

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: ‘Now what be Troubling Thee?’

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: ‘Seven for a Secret that’s never been told’

CHAPTER ONE: Gillian Lovekin

On a certain cold winter evening, in the country that lies between the dimpled lands of England and the gaunt purple steeps of Wales–half in Faery and half out of it–the old farm-house that stood in the midst of the folds and billows of Dysgwlfas-on-the-Wild-Moors glowed with a deep gem-like lustre in its vast setting of grey and violet. Moorland country is never colourless. It still keeps, when every heather-bell is withered, in its large mysterious expanses, a bloom of purple like the spirit of the heather. Against this background, which lay on every side, mile on sombre mile, the homestead, with its barns and stacks, held and refracted every ray of the declining sunlight, and made a comfortable and pleasant picture beneath the fleecy, low, cinereous sky, which boded snow. The farm-house was built of fine old mellow sandstone, of that weatherworn and muted red which takes an indescribable beauty beneath the level rays of dawn and sunset, as though it irradiated the light that touched it. It was evening only in the sense in which that word is used in this border country, which is any time after noon. It was not yet tea-time, though preparations for tea were going on within. Among the corn-ricks, which burned under the sun into a memory of the unreaped August tints of orange and tawny and yellow, redpolls were feasting and seeking their customary shelter for the night, and one or two late-lingering mountain linnets kept up their sad little lament of “twite-twite-twite’ in the bare blackthorn hedge. Blackbirds began to think of fluffing their feathers, settling cosily, and drawing up their eyelids. They “craiked’ and scolded in their anxiety to attain each his secret Nirvana. From the stubble fields, that lay like a small pale coin on the outspread moor, a flock of starlings came past with a rip of the air like the tearing of strong silk.

The rickyard lay on the north side of the foldyard; on the south was the house; to the east it was bounded by the shippen, the cowhouses and stables. To the west lay the orchard, and beyond it the cottage, which in these lonely places is always built when the farm is built. The whole thing formed a companionable little township of some five hundred souls–allowing the turkeys to have souls, and including the ewes when they lay near the house at lambing time. As to whether the redpolls, the linnets and the starlings should be included, Gillian of Dysgwlfas was often doubtful. They sang; they flew; and nobody could sing or fly without a soul: but they were so quick and light and inconsequent, their songs were so thin and eerie, that Gillian thought their souls were not quite real-faery souls, weightless as an eggshell when the egg has been sucked out. On the roof of the farm the black fantail pigeons, which belonged to Robert Rideout of the cottage, sidled up and down uneasily. All day, troubled by the clangour within the house, they had stepped at intervals, very gingerly, to the edge of the thatch, and set each a ruby eye peering downwards. They had observed that the leaded windows stood open, every one, all day; that the two carved arm-chairs with the red cushions, and the big sheepskin hearthrug of the parlour, had been brought out on to the square lawn where the dovecote was, and beaten. They had seen Simon, their hated enemy, slinking round the borders where the brown stems of the perennials had been crisped by early frosts, miserable as he always was on cleaning days, finally sulking in the window of the cornloft and refusing to enter the house at all. All this, they knew, meant some intrusion of the outer world, the world that lay beyond their furthest gaze, into this quiet place, drenched in old silence. It must be that Farmer Lovekin’s sister was coming–that Mrs. Fanteague who caused cleanings of the dovecote, whom they hated. They marked their disapproval by flashing up all together with a steely clatter of wings, and surveying the lessening landscape from the heights of the air.

Most of the windows were shut now, and a warm, delicious scent of cooking afflicted Simon’s appetite so that he rose, stretched, yawned, washed cursorily, shelved his dignity and descended to the kitchen, where he twined himself about the quick feet of Mrs. Makepeace, urgent between the larder and the great open fire, with its oven on one side and gurgling boiler on the other.

By the kitchen table stood Gillian Lovekin. Her full name was Juliana, but the old-fashioned way of treating the name had continued in the Lovekin family. She was stoning raisins. Every sixth raisin she put into her mouth, rapturously and defiantly, remembering that she and not Mrs. Makepeace was mistress of the farm. When her mother died Gillian had been only sixteen. Her first thought, she remembered with compunction, had been that now she would be mistress. She was eighteen on this evening of preparation, and just “out of her black.’ She was neither tall nor short, neither stout nor very slender; she was not dark nor fair, not pretty nor ugly. She had ugly things about her, such as the scar which seamed one side of her forehead, and gave that profile an intent, relentless look. Her nose was much too high in the bridge–the kind of nose that comes of Welsh ancestry and is common in the west. It gave her, in her softest moods, a domineering air. But her mouth was sensitive and sweet, and could be yielding sometimes, and her eyes had so much delight in all they looked upon, and saw so much incipient splendour in common things, that they charmed you and led you in a spell, and would not let you think her plain or dull.

She liked to do her daily tasks with an air; so she used the old Staffordshire bowl (which had been sent from that county as a wedding present for her grandmother) to dip her fingers in when they were sticky. The brown raisins were heaped up on a yellow plate, and she made a gracious picture with her two plaits of brown hair, her dark eyebrows bent above eyes of lavender-grey, and her richly tinted face with its country tan and its flush of brownish rose. The firelight caressed her, and Simon, when he could spare time from the bits of fat that fell off Mrs. Makepeace’s mincing board, blinked at her greenly and lovingly.

Mrs. Makepeace was making chitterling puffs and apple cobs.

“Well!’ she said, mincing so swiftly that she seemed to mince her own fingers every time, “we’ve claned this day, if ever!’

Gillian sighed. She disliked these bouts of fierce manual industry almost as much as Simon did.

“I’m sure my A’nt Fanteague did ought to be pleased,’ she said, making her aunt’s name into three syllables.

“Mrs. Fanteague,’ observed Mrs. Makepeace, “is a lady as is never pl’ased. Take your dear ‘eart out, serve on toast with gravy of your bone and sinew. Would she say “Thank you”? She’d sniff and she’d peer, and she’d say with that loud lungeous voice of ‘ers: “What you want, my good ‘oman, is a larger ‘eart.” ’

Gillian’s laugh rang out, and Simon, who loved her voice, came purring across the kitchen and leapt into her lap.

“Saving your presence, Miss Gillian, child,’ added Mrs. Makepeace, “and excuse me making game of your A’ntie.’

“Time and agen,’ said Gillian, pushing away the plate of raisins, “I think I’d lief get in the cyart by A’nt Fanteague when she goes back to Sil’erton, and go along of her, beyond the Gwlfas and the mountains, beyond the sea–’

“Wheer then?’ queried Mrs. Makepeace practically.

“To the moon-O! maybe.’

“By Leddy! What’d your feyther do?’

“Feyther’s forgetful. He wouldna miss me sore.’

“And Robert? My Bob?’

She looked swiftly at Gillian, her brown eyes keen and motherly.

“Oh, Robert?’ mused Gillian, her hands going up and down amid Simon’s dark fur.

She brooded.

“Robert Rideout?’ she murmured. Then she swung her plaits backwards with a defiant toss, and cried: “He wouldna miss me neither!’

She flung Simon down and got up.

“It’s closing in,’ she said. “I mun see to my coney wires.’

“It’s to be hoped, my dear, as you’ll spare me a coney out of your catch to make a patty. Your A’nt Fanteague pearly loves a coney patty.’

“Not without feyther pays for it,’ said Gillian. “If I give away my conies as fast as I catch ‘em, where’s my lessons in the music?’

She opened the old nail-studded door that gave on the foldyard, and was gone.

“Gallus!’ observed Mrs. Makepeace. “Ah, she’s gallus, and for ever ‘ankering after the world’s deceit, but she’s got an ‘eart, if you can only get your fingers round it, Robert, my lad. But I doubt you binna for’ard enow.’

She shook her head over the absent Robert so that the strings of her sunbonnet swung out on either side of her round, red, cheerful face.

“If I didna know as John Rideout got you long afore I took pity on poor Makepeace (and a man of iron John Rideout was, and it’s strange as I should come to a man of straw), I’d be nigh thinking you was Makepeace’s, time and agen. Dreamy–dreamy!’

She rolled and slapped and minced as if her son and her second husband were on the rolling board and she was putting them into shape. But John Rideout, the man of iron, remained in her mind as a being beyond her shaping. After his death she had seen all other men as so many children, to be cared for and scolded, and because Jonathan Makepeace was the most helpless man she had ever met, she married him. She had seen him first on a market day at the Keep. Tall, narrow, with his long hair and beard blowing in the wind, his mild blue eye met hers with the sadness of one who laments: “When I speak unto them of peace, they make them ready for battle.’ For the tragedy of Jonathan Makepeace was that, since he had first held a rattle, inanimate matter had been his foe. He was a living illustration of the theory that matter cuts across the path of life. In its crossing of Jonathan’s path it was never Jonathan that came off as victor. Jugs flung themselves from his hands; buckets and cisterns decanted their contents over him; tablecloths caught on any metal portion of his clothing, dragging with them the things on the table. If he gathered fruit, a heavy fire of apples poured upon his head. If he fished, he fell into the water. Many bits of his coat, and one piece of finger, had been given to that Moloch, the turnip-cutter. When he forked the garden, he forked his own feet. When he chopped wood, pieces fled up into his face like furious birds. If he made a bonfire, flames drew themselves out to an immense length in order to singe his beard. This idiosyncrasy of inanimate nature (or of Jonathan) was well known on the moors, and was enjoyed to the full, from Mallard’s Keep, which lay to the north, to the steep dusky market town of Weeping Cross, which lay south. It was enjoyed with the quiet, uncommenting, lasting enjoyment of the countryside. On the day Abigail met him, it was being enjoyed at the Keep, where the weekly market was, and where people shopped on ordinary occasions, reserving Christmas or wedding or funeral shopping for the more distant Weeping Cross. Jonathan had been shopping. Under one arm he had a bag of chicken-food; under the other, bran. Both bags, aware of Jonathan, had gently burst, and a crowd followed him with silent and ecstatic mirth while he wandered, dignified and pathetic, towards the inn, with the streams of grain and bran making his passing like a paperchase. She had heard of Jonathan (who had not?) and this vision of him was the final proof that he needed mothering. She told him briskly what was happening, and his “Deary, deary me!’ and his smile seemed to her very lovable. She wrapped up his parcels and listened sympathetically to his explanations. There was “summat come over’ things, he said. “Seemed like they was bewitched.’ She did not laugh. She had a kind of ancient wisdom about her that fitted in with her firm, rosy face, her robin-like figure. She knew that the heavens were not the same heavens for all. The rain did not fall equally on the evil and the good. Here was Jonathan, as good as gold, yet every cloud in heaven seemed to collect above him. As he ruefully said, “Others met be dry as tinder, but I’m soused.’ Realizing that war with the inanimate is woman’s special province, because she has been trained by centuries of housework–of catching cups as they sidle from their hooks and jugs as they edge from the table–Mrs. Rideout decided to spend the rest of her life fighting for Jonathan. She had done so for twelve years, to her own delight, the admiration of the country round, and Jonathan’s content.

Robert was ten years old when she married Makepeace. His heavily-lashed eyes, which had a dark glance as well as a tender one, and of which it was difficult to see the colour because of their blazing vitality, his forbidding mouth with its rare sweet smile, were so like his father’s that she would ponder on him for hours at a time. To John Rideout she was faithful, though she married Makepeace. And as Christmas after Christmas went by, and still Jonathan was alive and well, she triumphed. She loved him with a maternal love, and when Robert grew to manhood, Jonathan took his place. Abigail would look at his tall, thin figure with pride, remembering all that she had saved him from during the past year.

Now, while Abigail worked in the farm kitchen, Jonathan was very unhappily putting a tallow dip in his horn lantern, in order to harness the mare and go to the station across the moor to fetch Mrs. Fanteague. The tallow candle refused to stand up, bending towards him like the long greyish neck of a cygnet, pouring tallow on to Mrs. Makepeace’s check tablecloth. Jonathan thought of the things that the harness would do, of the gates that would slam in his face, and the number of times he would drop the whip; he thought of the miles of darkly sighing moor which he must cross in order to bring back Mrs. Fanteague and her sharp-cornered box (always by the mercy of heaven and in defiance of material things), and he sighed. Abigail would have a sup of tea ready for him when he got home. “If he got home,’ he amended. With a fatalism which shrouded his character like a cloak, he regarded the worst as the only thing likely to happen, and whether he stubbed his foot or fell from the top of the hay-bay, he only said “Lard’s will be done.’

As he opened the stable door, a goblin of wind puffed his light out. The door slammed and pinched his fingers. He had no matches. Time pressed, for no one ever kept Mrs. Fanteague waiting. He lifted up his voice.

“Robert Rideout! Robert Rideout!’ he called.

His thin cry wandered through the foldyard to the rickyard, and brought sleepy eyelids half-way down. The echoes strayed disconsolately into the vagueness of the surrounding moor, which, at sunset, had darkened like a frown.

Robert did not appear.

“Off on lonesome!’ commented Jonathan. “What a lad! Oh, what a useless, kim-kam lad! Never a hand’s turn. Allus glooming and glowering on the yeath!’

“What ails you, stepfeyther?’ asked a deep and quiet voice. “What for be you blaating by your lonesome outside the dark door?’

Jonathan sighed with relief, settling himself like a sleepy bird in the strong, secure presence of Robert Rideout. He stood with his white hair blowing, wringing his hands like a frail prophet of disaster, and told Robert of the long day’s mishaps.

“Ah! It’s allus like that when mother’s off at farm,’ said Robert, fetching out the mare, who nestled her nose softly into his rough coat. Horses never worked so well for anyone as for Robert. When he milked the cows, they gave more milk. No ewe, it was said, would drop her lambs untimely if he were shepherd. The very hens, obliged by hereditary instinct to “steal their nesses,’ would come forth with their bee-like swarms of chicks when Robert went by, revealing their sin and their glory to his eye alone.

“Ready!’ said Robert. He gave Jonathan the reins and whip, tucked a sack round his knees, saw to the lamps, and opened the gate.

“Leave a light in stable, lad, agen we come–if we come.’

This was his customary phrase. If he only went to call the ducks from the pond, he bade his wife as fond a farewell as if he were going on a voyage. It was most probable that he would fall head foremost among the ducks and that the weeds would coil themselves about him and drag him down. It was curious that no one ever thought of stopping Jonathan doing these responsible tasks. For instance, he went to “lug’ Mrs. Fanteague back because he always did so. Things happened; but, so far, the worst had not occurred. There is a vein of optimistic fatalism in the country which always hopes that the worst never will happen. Besides, there was Mrs. Fanteague. Coming home, she would be in command. Even now, when she had not so much as alighted on the windswept wooden platform of the branch line station at the Keep, her presence, advancing solidly beyond the horizon, comforted him inexpressibly. There was also Winny, the mare. She would look after him. She understood him very well. When he jerked the off rein, she swerved to the near, and vice versa. She knew every stone, every bit of uneven road, every stray scent that crossed it, fine as a thread of cobweb, all the walking gradients and the slippery bits. She knew the place where the road ran beside the railway line for half a mile, just as you came to the Keep–where, if Robert had been driving, she would have been “nervy’ and relied on him, on his voice and his firm hand on the rein–where, if anyone else had been driving, she would have run away. When she had Jonathan in the trap, she did not run away; she allowed herself no starts or tremors. If he had left things entirely to her, nothing would ever have happened. The animal world, as if to make up for the unkindness of the inanimate, was kind to him, and as the stocks and stones rose up and confounded him, the living creatures comforted him, motherly and consoling.

“I’d come and send you a bit, stepfeyther, only I mun see to sheep.’

“Good-bye, lad, and God bless you,’ said Jonathan. “I’ll be right enow when the mar’ gets going.’

But as they swung out on to the moor, he turned and glanced at the comfortable lit windows of the farm and shook his head sadly and murmured: “Lard save me to lug Mrs. Fanteague back.’

CHAPTER TWO: Robert Rideout

A sharp young moon sidled up over the dark eastern shoulder of the moor, entangled herself in the black manes of the pines which swayed a little in the rising night wind, slipped through them like a fish through a torn net, and swam free in a large grey sky which was beginning to tingle, between the woolly clouds, with a phosphorescence of faint starlight. In the last meadow that sloped up, rough and tussocky, to the splendid curve of moorland, Robert found the sheep, uneasy beneath a dubious heaven. They lay with their dim raddled bodies outlined by crisp, frosty, faintly luminous grass. The presage of lambing-time was already in their eyes.

“Coom then!’ said Robert. “Coom then!’

They rose with a faery crackling of herbage, and prepared to go whither he should lead them. But as he turned towards home, a voice, sharp and silvery as the young moon, cutting the deep boding silence like a sickle, cried from the other side of the bare hazel hedge:

“Bide for me, ‘oot, Bob?’

He turned, unsurprised and unhurried.

“What ails you, Gillian, child, nutting in November? Dunna you know the owd rhyme?’

“Say it!’

“Nut in November,

Gather doom.

There’s none will remember

Your tomb.’

“You made it,’ she cried.

He laughed shyly.

“What for do you go to think that-a-way?’

“I dunna think. I know. You made it, somewheer in that black tously head of yourn. I do believe you’ve got a cupboard there, like Mrs. Makepeace keeps the jam in, and you keep the tales and songs and what-nots with little tickets on ‘em, and fetch ’em when you want ’em.’

She jumped down from the hedge-bank, and two dead rabbits in her hand swung across her apron and dabbled it with blood.

“I’se reckon,’ said Robert, surveying her with amused eyes, “as you’m a little storm in teacup, and no mistake. What’s come o’er you to ketch the conies? You’re like nought but a little brown coney yourself.’

She threw the conies on the grass, flung back her plaits, set her hands on her slim hips, and said: “I’ve got to catch ’em. I’m bound to get money for lessons in the music. You know that.’

“What for’s it taken you to want the music?’

“I mun sing, and play a golden harp like the big man played at the Eisteddfod.’

“What then?’

“Then I’ll buy a piece of crimson scarlet stuff and make me a dress, and put the harp in the cyart along of A’nt Fanteague, and go into the world and play to folks and make ’em cry.’

“What for cry?’

“Cos folk dunna like to cry at a randy. Even at the Revivals they only cry when the preachers shout mortal loud and the texts come pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, and knock ’em silly. If you can make ’em cry when they’d liefer not, you know as you’ve got power over ’em.’

“You’m a queer chyild.’

“Where did you get that song you learnt me yesterday?’

“Foot of the rainbow.’

“Did you make it?’

“Did I make the moon?’

“If you wunna tell, you wunna. You’re pig-headed, Bob Rideout.’

“I’m as I was made.’

“I’m sorry for you: but I’ll sing the song.

“I took my little harp in hand,

I wandered up and down the land,

Up and down a many years.

But howsoever far I’d roam,

I couldna find the smiles or tears

Of whome.

And every quiet evenfall

I’d hear a call,

Like creatures crying in their pain,

“Come whome again!” ’

“Not so bad,’ said Robert. “Only you dunna make it coaxing enough at the end.’

“I dunna want to. I want to startle folk. I want to sing till the bells fall down. I want to draw the tears out of their eyes and the money out of their pockets.’

“Money?’

“Ah! Bags of it. I canna be a great lady without money.’

“What ails you, to want to be a lady?’

“I want a sparkling band round my head, and sparkling slippers on my feet, and a gown that goes “hush! hush!” like growing grass, and them saying, “There’s Gillian Lovekin!” in a whisper.’

“Much good may it do ye!’

“And young fellows coming, and me having rare raps with ‘em, and this one saying: “Marry me, Gillian Lovekin!” and that one saying: “I love you sore, Miss Juliana!” and me saying: “Be off with ye!” ’

“So you wouldna marry ’em?’

“No danger! I want to hear the folk clapping me and joining in the chorus like at the Eisteddfod–and my heart going pit-a-pat, and my face all red, knowing they’d cry when I made ‘em, and laugh when I made ‘em, and they’d remember Gillian Lovekin to their death day.’

“Lord save us! You’re going to learn ’em summat seemingly, Jill. You’re summat cruel when you’re set on a thing. Curst, I call it.’

“And when I went to sleep, nights, and couldna bear to forget I was me for ten hours–and when I went to sleep for good and all–then I wouldna take it to heart so much, seeing as they’d remember me for ever and ever.’

She drew up her slim body, which had the peculiar wandlike beauty given by a narrow back, sloping shoulders and slender hips. The scar on her forehead shone silver and relentless in the moonlight. The sheep stirred about her like uneasy souls, and the rabbits lying at her feet might have been a sacrifice to some woodland goddess.

Robert looked at her, straight and attentively, for the first time in his life. Since his coming to the Gwlfas twelve years ago, he had taken her for granted. Now he saw her. His dark and dreamy eyes, so well warded by their lashes, his brooding forehead and his mouth, that was large and beautiful, the lips being laid together with a poise that partly concealed their firmness, all seemed to absorb her.

In just the same way he drank in the beauty of the countryside, the strange, lovely shapes of trees and rocks.

While she stood there and thought of her future as she had planned it, she slipped into his being like a raindrop into the heart of a deep flower. Neither of them knew what was happening, any more than the sheep knew whence came the unease that always troubled them before snow.

Robert was as simple, as unselfconscious as a child, without a child’s egotism. He saw the landscape, not Robert Rideout in the landscape. He saw the sheep, not Robert Rideout as the kindly shepherd in the midst of the sheep. Mountains did not make him think of himself climbing. He did not, as nine hundred and ninety-nine people out of every thousand do, instinctively look at himself when he came to a pond. There was nothing of Narcissus in his soul. He seldom wanted to imitate birds, but rather to listen more intently. So now he saw Gillian with the inward eye, heard her with inward hearing, drank her into his soul, but never thought of himself in relation to her. He saw her slender waist without his arm about it, her mouth unkissed. His eyes lingered on shoulder and breast almost as men’s eyes dwell on a Madonna, and to him the full-length portrait of Gillian was exactly as she herself saw it–alone, self-wrapped, self-complete.

Perhaps he was dreamy. Perhaps he developed late. His father had been just the same, only without Robert’s poetry. He had not married Abigail till he was forty-five, though he had met her in his thirtieth year. Abigail had begun by laughing at him. But through those fifteen years she heard the deepening passion in his voice, until his least word could set her in a flutter.

Gillian was not sufficiently interested in Robert even to laugh at him. She had seen, in her childish fashion, the vision desired by all humanity–the vision of a secure small nest of immortality built in the crumbling walls of time. She wanted to go on being herself even when she was dissolved in nothingness. She wanted to make men and women hear her, love her, rue her. In the dove-grey, cooing silence of the farm, any mental absorption gained double force. So, while Simon purred, and Isaiah Lovekin made up his accounts, and Robert chopped wood outside, and Jonathan went through the vicissitudes of his day, Gillian built up this dream, in which she was always in the foreground, bathed in light, and masses of vague faces filled the background. When Mrs. Fanteague came from Silverton bringing news of the world and a great feeling of gentility, her dream became so vivid that it kept her awake at night.

Robert, with a long sigh, relinquished her as a bee leaves a flower. And like a flower, self-poised but fragile, she seemed to shudder a little in her recovery.

He turned to lead the sheep home, and they followed him with crisply pattering feet.

Gillian picked up the rabbits with one of her supple falcon swoops. Disturbed by Robert’s unusual manner, she found relief in singing, and as she wandered after the sheep in the moonlight, watching her shadow with impersonal curiosity, she chanted to a tune of her own in a high treble that re-echoed against the bluff of moor:

“I saw seven magpies in a tree,

One for you and six for me.

One for sorrow,

Two for joy,

Three for a girl,

Four for a boy,

Five for silver,

Six for gold–’

And down in the hollow by the low-voiced brook, Robert, in his rich, quiet voice, finished the song:

“And seven for a secret

That’s never been told!’

CHAPTER THREE: Aunt Fanteague Arrives

When you came towards Dysgwlfas Farm from the sheep fields, it looked larger than it was, because the house was long and narrow, and the loft, with the granary and the room where the roots were kept, had been built in one with the farm. Beneath the granary was the high, square archway, called the Drifthouse, that led into the foldyard. In front of the house was the garden, where the dovecote stood, and a stony path, lichened at the sides, led up to the house from the double wicket with its arch of privet.

The pattering feet of Robert’s flock passed this gate and went on to the foldyard. Gillian, following in the leisurely and dreamy manner she had acquired lately, pushed open the wicket and went across the crisp grass to the parlour window. Looking in, she saw by the light of the well-trimmed lamp and the leaping flames that her father had come home. He was a person who could not come home without everybody knowing it. He had, as his sister–Mrs. Fanteague–said, a presence. The house re-echoed with his voice, his step. When he sat in his arm-chair by the fire it became a throne, and the parlour became an audience chamber. If anyone came in, he said “Ha!’ and they felt found out. In his buying and selling of sheep, this “Ha!’ did more for him than any amount of money. He said it so loudly, so knowingly and so judicially that every flaw in the goods offered leapt into fearful prominence, and the seller, however case-hardened, could see nothing else, could feel nothing else but a desire to go away with his detected enormity, and hide. Very often Mr. Lovekin had not seen half of the things his interjection implied, but that did not matter. The legend of his acumen was about him like the protecting leaves of winter broccoli. Nothing but the best was ever offered to him, and he procured the best at reasonable prices. Hence he was becoming rich, although he had inherited a derelict farm and a debt. His father had possessed neither a presence nor a voice nor a “Ha!’ He had not stood six foot six with shoulders to match, nor weighed eighteen stone, nor had a patriarchal beard that flowed to his waist. He had been a much more industrious man than his son; known more about sheep; deserved success. He had failed lamentably. His son, riding about the country on his cob, penetrating the remote, precipitous hillsides where fat sheep were to be had for little money, had become a personality and a power. His lightest word was received with respect; a seat near the fire was kept for him on winter afternoons in the inn parlours; auctioneers had been known to wait to begin a sale until his large figure was seen looming in the assembly.

Whatever may be the ideas of civilization, in wild places physical perfection still dominates, as in the days of Saul. It may be that, as the fight with natural forces is more imminent in the country, it is more obvious that the biggest man is likely to last longest, and staying-power is greatly admired by country people. It may also be the instinct for hero-worship, the desire to have something big set up as a sign, something large enough for legends to accumulate round.

How much Isaiah Lovekin guessed of his own incipient godhead did not appear. He never commented upon it. He never spoke much. Perhaps if he had done so the spell would have been broken. He simply profited by it, accepted it, grew fat on it. Sometimes there might seem to be a roguish twinkle in that dark eye of his, but it was difficult to find out what it meant. Usually his monumental reserve was unbroken even by a twinkle, and, like some stately promontory, he accepted all that the sea of life brought to his feet. Nobody ever questioned his position, nor doubted his ability to live up to it. Only in his daughter’s eyes sometimes there was a fleeting look of something half-way between mockery and motherhood. It had been there even when she looked up at him from her cradle, when she had been nothing but a bundle and a grey glance, lying so low at the feet of an immense, overwhelming being. Everybody had seen the look, compounded of pity and laughter. Isaiah had turned to his wife, as if for protection. Mrs. Fanteague had said: “That’s no Christian child! She’s a changeling. She’ll never live.’ Mrs. Makepeace was sure it was only a tooth coming. Certainly Gillian had managed to live, changeling or not. It was Mrs. Lovekin who died, finding it too difficult to be the wife of a Deity.

Gillian, having watched her father sitting before the fire splendid, happy and idle, until her high nose–flattened against the window-pane–was very cold, suddenly hooted like an owl and drew back.

No! He did not jump. If only she could have made him jump! She kicked off her clogs, went into the kitchen, and startled the sleeping Simon instead. Mrs. Makepeace had gone, and the kitchen–shining, tidy, smelling of wet soap–was inhabited only by Simon and by the gentle, hesitating “tick-tack’ of the clock.

“Quiet!’ said Gillian. “Oh, dear sakes, I can hear the leaves a-falling on my grave! I’ll even be glad to see A’nt Fanteague, Simon, for she do make a stir, O!’

She washed her face and hands at the pump, and tidied her hair at a little glass on the wall. Then she went into the parlour, singing in her high and delicious voice:

“Five for silver,

Six for gold,

Seven for a secret–’

“Ha!’ said Isaiah, and she became silent, wondering in a kind of hypnotized way what she had done.

“So you’ve raught back, father?’

“Ah.’

“Bin far?’

“Over the border.’

“Whiteladies or Weeping Cross?’

“Weeping Cross.’

“Bought anything?’

“A tuthree.’

“Seen anybody?’

“Who should I see?’

“I mean, anybody fresh?’

“How you do raven after some new thing, Gillian!’

“But wasna there anybody but the old ancient people as you always see?’

“There was a dealer from beyond the mountains.’

She clapped her hands.

“I wish I’d been there! Was he young?’

“Middling young.’

“What was his name?’

“Elmer.’

“Could he ride without a saddle?’

“I didna inquire.’

“Oh, I wish I’d been there!’

Isaiah smoked in silence.

“If I’d been there d’you know what I’d ha’ done?’

“Not even the Almighty knows that.’

“I’d ha’ come walking up to him in my new frock that is to be, slate-coloured blue like the slatey drake, and my hair done up, and beads in it–’

“Beads?’

“Glass ones, shiny like diamonds.’

“Oh!’

“And I’d ha’ bowed like parson’s wife at the Keep. “Pleased to know you, but no liberties allowed.” And I’d ha’ dared him to ride full gallop without a saddle.’

“Oh, you would, would ye?’

“And if he was thrown and killed, I’d say: “One fool the less!” But if he did it proper, I’d jump up in front and I’d say: “Kind sir! Take me out in the world and learn me to sing, and I’ll be yours for ever, beads and slatey frock and all!” And if he beat me, I’d say nought: but if he couldna ride, I’d laugh.’

“Just as well I didna take you.’

“Take me next time, father! Do!’

“Decked like a popinjay, and being gallus with the fellers? No! Here you stop, my girl.’

“Father!’

“Eh?’

“When I’ve learnt to sing proper, I can go out into the world, canna I?’

“No.’

“Why?’

“You mun bide, and see to the house.’

“But Mrs. Makepeace could do that. And if you’ll let me go, I’ll come back when you’re aged and old, with the palsy and the tic doloreux, hobbling on two sticks and tears in your eyes and nobody to love ye! I’ll come in a carriage, with silver shoes and a purse of money, and maybe a husband and maybe not, and I’ll walk in with a sighing of silk and pour out money on the table, and bring you oranges and candied peel and sparkly wine and a fur coat and summat for the tic doloreux!’

“Thank you kindly.’

“So you’ll take me next time?’

“No.’

“Well, then, I’ll ask A’nt Fanteague to take me. So now!’

“Best make the toast, and see if fire’s alight in the guest-chamber, and look to the oven, for I smell burning.’

Gillian collapsed, departing almost in tears to the kitchen that was so quiet, and the guest-chamber that was quieter still. She drew up the sullen fire in the grate, which was damp from disuse, and in its fugitive light she surveyed the large white bed with its Marcella quilt, the chill dressing-table, the clean, cold curtains, the polished oilcloth icily gleaming. There were no sounds except the crackling of the fire, and the wind soughing a little in the chimney. For the first time in her life Gillian was glad her aunt was coming. Aunt Fanteague lived in the great world, at Silverton itself. There would be plenty of pianos and singing masters there, and young men who could ride without saddle or bridle and accomplish feats of daring and danger at her command. Having drawn the fire up to a roaring blaze, she ran downstairs to make the toast. Turning a hot red cheek to her father, she said:

“I wish she’d come!’

“You do? Ha!’

“I’m feared it’s happened at long last.’

“What?’

“Why–Jonathan.’

“Oh, Jonathan’ll turn up all right, peart as a robin. Accidents he may have, but that’s all. And your A’ntie’s along of him, you mind.’

“Yes, A’ntie’s along of him. Maybe she’ll bring me a present.’

“Maybe you’ve burnt the toast.’

“Hark! The wicket’s clicked.’

Gillian was out of the room and the house in a twinkling. She submerged her aunt in kisses, while Jonathan trundled off to the yard humming, “Safe home, safe home in port.’

“What you want, Juliana,’ said Aunt Fanteague, “is control.’

She entered.

“Well, Isaiah!’ she said.

She always said this on entering her brother’s house. It expressed, among other things, her exasperated disappointment that the place was no better kept than it had been last time she came.

“Ha!’ said her brother. But instead of feeling found out, Mrs. Fanteague behaved as if she had found him out.

“I see the big white stone by the wicket has not been put in place yet, Isaiah,’ she said. “Twelve months ago come Christmas Jonathan knocked it out bringing me home–and I thank my Redeemer it was no worse! Twelve months, Isaiah! Fifty-two weeks! Three hundred and sixty-five days! How many hours, Juliana?’

“Oh, A’ntie!’

“Where’s your book-learning, child?’

Mrs. Fanteague sat down in the large chair opposite Isaiah–the chair that had been so well brushed and polished–and Gillian standing between them was like the young sickle-moon between two of the vast immemorial yew trees on the moor.

“You’re late, sister!’ said Isaiah.

“And well may you say it! And well may I be late! What Jonathan wants is two guardian angels for ever beside him, and he on a leash, with nothing else to do but walk along quiet under the shadow of their wings. It was into the hedge this side, and into the hedge that! Never a stone but we were on to it–and into the hedge agen! Then my box fell off, and how it kept on so long only the Redeemer knows–for Jonathan tied it. When we got well on to the moor, what must the man do but drive into the quaking slough, and there we were!’

Isaiah smiled into his beard. After all, they had arrived. People always did–in the long run–when Jonathan drove them.

“Is it froze over?’

“It is not, Isaiah. Look at my boots! Out I had to get. He trod on my umberella. Then I dropped my reticule and he trod on that. The mare wouldn’t stir. So I said the Nunc Dimittis’ (Aunt Fanteague was High Church) “and took the butt-end of the whip to her, so after a bit we got to the road agen, and I didn’t mind the other things near so much. But, seeing as you won’t leave this God-’elp place, what you want is to let young Rideout drive. Now, there’s a man! Nothing said, but the thing gets done. If you’d send Rideout, your sister’s bonnet wouldn’t be torn to pieces with hedges and the whip–for when Jonathan thinks he’s slashing the mare, it’s your sister he’s slashing, Isaiah, every time!’

Isaiah looked at the fire. A twinkle seemed to tenant his eyes for a moment. Perhaps he was thinking that if he sent Rideout there would be nothing to discourage Mrs. Fanteague from coming very often.

“And how’s poor Emily?’ he said.

“Poor Emily’s as usual, Isaiah.’

Emily was, for the time, dismissed. Mrs. Fanteague was untying her bonnet-strings. She was large, though not so large as Isaiah. When her bonnet, which seemed to have been built with bricks and mortar, not merely sewn, was off and lay in her lap, the likeness to Isaiah became more obvious. She had the same fine head, massive but low brow, and solid features. Her hair was built up just as her bonnet was, and looked like sculptured hair. In it she wore massive combs and five large yellow tortoise-shell pins. Her dress had the look of being held together only by the ferocious tenacity of its buttons, which were made of jet. Not that she was fat, but she was large of bone and well developed, and her dresses were always tight-fitting, after the style of a riding-habit. Pinning her collar together was a big square brooch of wedgwood china depicting a cross, a young woman and a dove. The symbolism of this had never been explained to Gillian, though she had often inquired. It remained, like Isaiah, mysterious, capable of many constructions. Cuffs, knitted by Emily and trimmed with beads, finished her sleeves, and a well-gathered skirt came down to within an inch of the ground. She gave the impression, as she sat there, of being invulnerable, morally and physically.

“Would you like to wash you and change your boots, A’ntie? There’s a good fire in the guest-chamber.’

“There is, is there? Well, you’re tempting Providence, for coal’s coal and it gets no cheaper. But I don’t say it isn’t pleasant.’

“And I filled the boiler, so there’s hot water to wash you.’

“Juliana, you’re improving!’

Praise from her was infrequent. If she had known the reason of the improvement, perhaps she would have withheld it.

“Dunna forget the cooling tea and a man that’s sharpset for his’n,’ said Isaiah.

They departed in a whirl of black skirts, coloured skirts, reticules, bags and bonnets.

Isaiah smiled at the fire. He knew very well why Gillian bestowed such affectionate care on her aunt.

But as Aunt Fanteague did not know, and as she had, like many rocky natures, a great, though concealed, craving for affection, she was touched. She was glad she had brought Gillian a present.

“When I unpack,’ she said, as she instinctively moved the dressing-table to look for dust underneath, running her finger over the polished surfaces, “there might be something for a good girl.’

Gillian flushed, partly with pleasure, but mostly with annoyance at being treated in so babyish a way. Was she not Miss Juliana Lovekin, of Dysgwlfas? But it was not politic to show her annoyance. As the most practical way of getting nearer to the desired fairing, she began to uncord the box, which had been carried up the backstairs by Robert. It was the same yellow tin box in which Mrs. Fanteague’s bridal raiment had been packed when she had left the farm on that long-ago summer day with the man of her choice.

This phrase was literally true, for Mr. Fanteague had had no choice in the matter. The box still looked wonderfully new, considering that Jonathan had fetched it once or twice every year across the moor. It had lost much less of its early freshness than Mrs. Fanteague had. Gillian’s firm, pointed fingers undid the knots, and at last the lid, painted blue inside, was lifted to reveal tissue-paper, the black silk Sunday dress, best bonnet, gloves, and braided cape which Aunt Emily’s nervous fingers had folded. Underneath lay a small packet.

“I must tell you, my dear, it isn’t new,’ said Aunt Fanteague. “But it’s jewellery. And I know the vanity of your heart, Juliana.’

“Jewellery! Oh, A’ntie!’

“You can undo it, if you’ve a mind.’

Gillian most certainly had a mind. She undid it. And there lay a small cornelian heart with a golden clasp through which a ribbon was to be slipped. It was wonderful–a fairy gift. It had colour, which she loved, and romance, and it was her first ornament.

“A’ntie! When you’re ancient and old, when there’s none to comfort ye, I’ll mind this locket! And howsoever far away I am, I’ll come to ye! I will that! And I’ll try to keep my nails clean, too, because you say they werrit ye. See! Dunna it look nice agen my frock? Have you got ever a piece of ribbon I could tie it on with?’

Aunt Fanteague found a bit of black velvet, took up the candle, and said it was time to go down.