Randalls Round (14 page)

It was Gibson, my head carter, who finally put me on to the track. We were making the arrangements for the great harvest supper that is always held at Crows’ Hall, whoever the owner, on August 15th – Lammas Night. It’s the event of the year there. There’s a big meal first, with lots of beer and cider, and afterwards there’s a “bale¬fire” on the biggest mound in Kings Bottom. We had just finished our plans when Gibson made his remark.

“Mr. Storm seems rare taken up wi’ they mounds over to Kings Bottom,” he said. “Always down among ’em he is, along o’ that wastrel Murky Glam.”

I jumped, I don’t deny it.

“Murky Glam?” I said. “I warned him off my land days ago.”

“Big mound ain’t Crows’ Hall prop’ty, not by rights it ain’t,” said Gibson. “You stops at second mound sir, if all was as it should be.”

“Then how can I have the bale fire on the big mound, you fool?” I cried. I was annoyed for we’d spent valuable minutes in discussing that very fire and Gibson had seemed to take the site for granted.

“That’ll be all right, sir,” answered Gibson placidly. Good chap, he knew what a time I’d been having, and he made allowances for me, though he did have that maddening air that country people so often have of kindly pity for the poor idiot who doesn’t know their customs. “Lammas Fire’s always been on that mound, long’s any on us can mind. That’s the place for ’im. But if you’ll allow me, sir,” (a favourite phrase of Gibson’s, that) “you’ll take care on ’en this year. See, it’s the seventh year.”

“What’s
the seventh year?” I asked, bewildered and a bit exasperated.

“It’s like this, sir. Bale-fire, he always goes up on big mound, like I was a-tellin. Only, once in seven years, summat happens, like. Old folks they say it’s the toll taken by
him’.’
He jerked his thumb up at the mound. He was desperately solemn. “Seven year ago it were Ben Puckey – nice serious chap as you’d wish to see, Ben were, and booklearned along wi’ it. Left supper early, he did, an’ never went ’ome. Nex’ day he weren’t at work. ’I’ll tell ’ee where to find ’en,’ says old gaifer Gregory. ’Look in ashes up on big mound,’ he says. An’ true, there he were… Poor Ben, a nice young chap as you’d meet. Seven year afore that it were young Mr. Jerrold from Combes – young chap up at Oxford College. Not so much loss he weren’t. Afore that it were old Gaffer Tomlyn and afore that-”

“Gibson!
Don’t be an ass!” I shouted. “Do you want me to believe that someone’s bound to die on the mound every seventh year?”

“’Tain’t what I asts you to believe,” said Gibson with dignity. “It’s truth, take it what way you like.”

I thought a minute. One has to be rather careful, even with the most sensible men, over their pet beliefs; and I’d certainly heard something about young Jerrold – yes, and about Ben Puckey too…

“Gibson, look here,” I said. “I don’t deny that there have been deaths there. I’m not a fool, and facts are facts. But don’t you think it’s just because people expected them? They think there’ll be one – and so of course there is. Look at these men you’ve mentioned. Gaffer Tomlyn was ’toteling,’ wasn’t he? Over ninety, I’ve heard. He’d got it on his mind that there must be a death there that year. Young Mr. Jerrold – well, you all know he was in with a wild set – drink and Hellfire Club and devil-worship and the rest. And poor Ben had books and legends and charms on the brain. They were all ripe for it. So when the seventh year came, they – they just-”

“Quite so, sir,” said Gibson in his politest and most chilling manner, which he always put on when he didn’t in the very least agree with me and meant to stick to his own way. “All I say is, sir – best be careful come Lammas. It’s been like that long’s I can mind.”

That was so like the Crows’ Hall men. “Been so as long as we can mind” – and therefore always must be so! The job I had to get them to take to new methods and machinery you simply wouldn’t believe… I just shrugged my shoulders.

“Oh! all right,” I said; and made a private resolution to talk to Erik.

I didn’t forget to; but it wasn’t so easy to get the chance. I hardly ever saw him, and when I did he – how can I put it? – he didn’t seem to know I was there. It was as if we lived in different worlds. Sitting at the same table, or beside the same hearth, we were like beings of two different creations, unable to understand or speak or even see each other. Like disembodied spirits in different spheres – or a man and a spirit. I expect that’s nearer the truth…

August 15th was a blazing day. I remember thinking there must be thunder about behind the fierce purplish sky, and my joy as I thought that, after this one field, all the crops would be in. The men worked like Trojans, for I’d said that three of them could go to prepare the fire if the others made up for their absence. We slaved and sweated in that field, and, as I write, I can smell the dry scent of the ripe wheat and the baked earth, and see the tiny flowers, speedwell and pimpernel, that we trod underfoot… The sea, five miles away over Wether Down, shimmered in a haze. The new rick looked silvery white against the deep intensity of the sky.

I hadn’t time to eat or speak or think that day. Apart from the ordinary work, there was the big barn to prepare for the harvest supper, the carving to do, the beer and cider to tap, the fire to prepare. I worked like a man possessed. I forgot everything but the jobs that seemed to press in on me in an endless and urgent succession. I only remember one extraneous thought – and that was that I wished Erik would help a little. Looking back now, that thought seems to me the grimmest comment possible on that night.

The supper was, I believe, a great success. I know I carved and poured and poured and carved for what seemed like hours, and the men ate and drank enormously, and finally cheered and cheered. Then we went out to Kings Bottom.

The moon was up by then – a great pearl, floating in a kind of insolent calm over the rolling fields. It was miraculously clear. Every blade of stubble, every stone, every leaf, seemed etched in the flood of light. The sky was huge and empty and only a moonlit sky is empty. Oddly enough, for me, a line of poetry slid into my mind–

“The moon doth with delight look round her when the heavens are bare.”

The country was like an incarnation of that line. And then, quite suddenly, with a rush and a roar of flame, the bale-fire sprang into life.

It was magnificent. In that remote valley under the quiet darkening sky, the huge fire leaped and towered upon the tomb of a long-dead king; and the men stood round it, grave, patient, like the soil itself. I seemed to have a sudden glimpse of some truth I’d always known and never understood – some truth about men and the earth and the kinship of things…

Then someone began a song, and there was a certain amount of skylarking, and people went through old, half-forgotten rites and charms; and the quiet moon sailed higher in the darkling sky, as if contemptuous of our antics.

I was suddenly very tired. The fire was sinking and the fun was over. I thought of bed, and decided that I needn’t wait. I rather wished Erik had been there – he’d have been interested in the charms and things – and then I thought, impatiently, God forgive me! what a hopeless chap he was to have to do with, and that if he preferred to fool round with an idiot he could – I couldn’t dry- nurse him, in addition to all my other tasks. I decided to clear out. After all, I’d done my job. They’d had their feed and their fire, and the crops were in, and Gibson’s gloomy croakings about the seventh year were disproved, and all was well. So I said goodnight, and went back to Crows’ Hall.

Yes, all was well, I thought again, going down through the reaped fields, and the rickyard with the big firm solid stacks, and the quiet farmyard where the horses moved a little, heavily, in their stalls, and the young calves rustled in their litter. Thunder might come, and rain and hail; but for me at least all was well.

I fell asleep at once. It was the heavy, dreamless sleep that you get after hours of heavy outdoor work and a good bit of anxiety that ends in peace. It must have been some hours later when I woke and saw the light on my wall.

My first thought was of lightning; then I knew it was fire, and thought of the rickyard. Then, at the window, I saw it, streaming up from the King’s Mound – a column of fire, steady as a pillar, vivid under the night sky, the quiet empty fields spreading round it.

At first I saw no one; then, quite unmistakably, even at that distance, I saw the weird figure of Murky Glam.

He moved slowly round the solitary fire, making odd fantastic gestures which were yet solemn, and to me, horribly impressive. And then, quite suddenly, I saw something in the midst of the flame.

I think I knew even then what it was. I tore out of the house like a man possessed. I don’t think anyone has ever run as I ran that night, barefoot and terrified, to the big mound that overlooks the sea lying like the rim of a silver shield beyond it. I ran blindly, in a red mist that seemed to me to be the light of the bale-fire: my ears roared, and I thought it was the flames, and ran on. I could taste the salt of my own sweat as it ran into my mouth; the breath tore roughly at my heart and throat. And even as I ran I knew I was too late…

The fire had sunk when I got there. A few little flames flickered timidly in the ashes, and licked at the hands of the man on the mound.

Murky Glam had vanished. Erik lay quite alone, his face turned up to the moon, his mouth smiling. His hands, lying on his breast, were folded about a little pile of ashes, where lay lumps of shapeless metal. Only his hands were singed badly. Above them a knife haft protruded from his bare breast. On the tomb the sacrifice had been offered; and the eternal moon looked down on the quiet and fruitful earth.

AFTERWARDS, when it was too late, people said they ought never to have married. It is always a risk, said the wiseacres, for two artists; and when one of them is a wild untamed genius like young Carstairs, well, it’s madness, pure madness, and Nan deserved all she got… And then, thinking of Nan’s face, so white against her black bobbed hair, and the tragic blue stare of her wide eyes, they would sometimes wish they hadn’t said that.

The studio wasn’t in, or even near, Chelsea. For one thing, Chelsea was dear; for another, it was obvious; for a third, it was crowded. So finally Carstairs, who knew every byway of London as a shepherd knows each nook on the moors where he spends his quiet days, found the place, in an odd little paved court near the old Law Courts.

It was a long, low room that had been used as a store, a gymnasium, a Church Room, a Socialist Club, a dance-hall and heaven only knows what as well. It had a sort of dignity from its very usefulness; its proportions were good – honest lines that gave it even a sort of beauty. Inside, its length was not as great as appeared from without, because two rooms had been cut off – one a tiny cupboard that Nan said she could use as a kitchen, and one big enough for a bedroom. The rest was the studio, and Carstairs had extra windows put in to get the right light.

It was very quiet, that long, low studio. Its big, clear windows looked out on to a little paved court surrounded by a wall of old brick. Pale tender grass sprouted up between the paving stones: and in the middle of the little yard there was a huge spreading ash tree. It was the tree that made Nan long for the place.

“It’ll be like a picnic,” she said, “living in a barn, with the tree overhead like an extra roof.”

“I don’t like the tree,” said Ralph Carstairs, with that stubborn air he sometimes had that made him look like a nice sturdy boy of about ten. “It’s too close,” he added; and Nan suddenly had an odd fancy that he looked afraid, like a small boy who won’t own that he is scared.

Not that the tree darkened the studio. Far from it; it filled the place with a green, quivering light that made you think of “sandstrewn caverns cool and deep, where the winds are all asleep.” It was romantic, mysterious. It had the same effect of magic and gnomes that you feel in deep, damp woodland dells in the height of a hot summer. But Carstairs didn’t feel it like that. He didn’t like it.

“It’s too close,” he repeated, and explained that he meant “near” not the other kind of close. It was – intrusive, he said, feeling for the right word; predominant – looming too large. And Nan, who was quite extraordinarily sweet and unselfish, in spite of her twenty- two years and her freelance journalist’s life, agreed with a sigh that it must come down if Ralph felt like that about it. Because he was going to be great and nothing must interfere with his work.

So Carstairs wrote to the landlord and the day was fixed for the execution – for somehow you felt it like that, the tree had such a personality – it was, as Ralph said, so dominant.

The men came to prepare it on the evening before they were to cut it down. It was April, and a lovely evening of misty gold, the sort of evening that makes you think of budding woods and primroses starry in deep hedges and birds building and fluting to one another. Carstairs was tired. He had been painting all day, and the spring was in his blood like a madness. He went to the windows for the felling of the tree; and then he turned back into the studio with a sigh of mingled relief and regret. For trees in April have a kind of claim, and the ash tree reared itself so magnificently against the pale clear sky, where already a faint star gleamed.

Nan was in her cupboard-kitchen cooking supper in a saucepan over a gas ring. When she came in to lay the table, Ralph was lying on the couch, asleep. He looked so infinitely tired that she decided not to disturb him, and sat down to wait till he should wake.

He was dreaming. Not dreaming happily, with the bliss of deep repose after a long spell of work, but restlessly, turning his head from side to side and muttering a little. Soon she could even hear what he said.

“One – two – three”,
he whispered. “Listen to them – heavy – heavy – striking at it… How strong it is! Will it
never
fall?
Oh, I can’t bear it!”
he suddenly cried out, starting up on the couch. “Stop, stop! Don’t strike again! I can’t bear-”

Nan went over, soothing him as if he had been a child.