The Serpent (14 page)

Norman bent down and gripped the stone with him and together they put it on the cart.

When they had the carts loaded, Norman hitched Prince to the tail of his own cart, and then Tom and himself walked along together, leaving the horses to their own pace.

‘Your father is a fine man,' said Norman, ‘a fine conscientious man. I've known him all my life. In our young days there wasn't much schooling in it, but your father was one of a little group who was always keen on the learning. There was no Board of Education Act and High School in it then. Your father was always neat-handed, and he could make the finest goose quills for writing that ever you saw. I sometimes think he would have liked to have been a teacher. I don't know. I was never a great one at the writing myself, though I must say that when I had to sign my name in the town I was proud to be able to do it.'

Norman went on talking in this discursive way, recalling old days, as if he had quite forgotten Tom's father. On the way back to the quarry which was no great distance from Taruv (it lay at the base of the shoulder of the hill to their left as they entered the Glen just after leaving the village) Norman said, ‘Man, I remember the curious effect that Iain's joining the soldiers had on my father and mother. They looked on it as a great disgrace, of course. My mother was very upset. You would think she was never going to get over it. She would greet to herself. She went clean throughither for a while. But my father went quiet. To tell the truth there was a while I didn't care for going home over the Sabbath. But when they heard from Iain, it was wonderful how my mother came round. But my father seemed to have lost all interest in him. There was something about it, about the whole thing, the fight and the soldiers, that somehow got the better of him, whatever it was. I can remember well the awful feeling of disgrace. You would almost imagine that the blood spilt in the fighting was red murder itself. A queer feeling of guilt. I never quite got to the bottom of it. And I won't go the length of saying it hastened my father's end. But he undoubtedly grew careless
about himself, about getting wettings and that, and it was no good saying anything to him. He just paid no attention, as if he hadn't heard you, and talked about something else. Congestion of the lungs took him in the end, and he went away as quietly as he had lived over the last while.'

Presently Norman said, ‘It's queer when a thing gets the better of you. That's one thing a fellow has to watch. When you're in health you can break yourself of it, but, man, when you're ill it's not so easy then. Your father is a sick man, Tom, boy, and you should take him carefully.'

‘It's not always easy,' said Tom, flushing slightly, for they were both finding the subject difficult and embarrassing, ‘when he won't say a thing one way or the other.'

‘You can do little about that,' answered Norman. ‘You go ahead quietly, keeping your eye open. And look here, my boy, if you need money, just ask me. But I would like that always to be between ourselves. I haven't a great deal, but I have plenty, and you'll be starting in a simple way.'

Tom was deeply touched by these words. But more than the offer of money was the sense of comfort and companionship that came from their thus working together away from home. The day seemed large and long, and at the end of it he felt refreshed and pleasantly tired as if he had indeed been on a holiday.

He would have liked now to have stayed with his parents until they ‘took the books', but it was long agreed between Janet and himself that if she could not come on a set night, she would do her best to appear the following night. At first she had let it be understood that her difficulty was due to chance visitors or other social cause, but now he knew of her secret trouble with her mother and this not only made thought of her more tender but gave him a strengthening assurance of her dependence on him.

As he got up, his mother said, ‘Surely you are not going out tonight?' It was a hidden appeal not to endanger things that now were shaping well.

‘I have got to go,' was all he could say.

‘I would have thought you had a heavy enough day as it was.' She spoke as if thinking only of him, but he heard the dismay in her voice.

He hesitated, not knowing what to answer, wondering indeed for a moment if he would stay.

‘We want no-one here,' came his father's voice, ‘who does not believe in worshipping God. If he believes, let him stay. If not, he can go.'

The cold penetrating voice was a rod that pierced the room. Before these words, all other words fled from the air about Tom's mouth and he turned slowly for the door in a heavy awkwardness. Mindless he pushed on into the new darkness and was still numb as he came by the barn.

It had gone beyond anger now, beyond rage. His body was quiet, his hands a little unreal. He listened to all things, but heard nothing. He went into the barn, over to the bench, and stood there. Presently he was sitting in the darkness.

His father's logic penetrated, like a rod of grey metal. It was accurate and remorseless.

Believe in God. Had he ever believed in God? Tom saw that he had never had any interest in God, that he had always dodged Him, as a boy dodged his schoolmaster. Dodged all thought of Him, so that life be freed from that fear or terror. And in Glasgow, with Dougal – they had dodged the fear out of existence, so that ordinary life could be carried on and opened up and enjoyed.

As he sat there in the darkness Tom's thought worked in a curious way. This logic about God did not really touch his mind. His mind was in the place beyond argument where it apprehended in a stillness the forces that moved before words were born. And there he saw that what moved his father was not Tom's disbelief in God although that was the visible power his father used. What moved him was something more terrible and penetrating than that. Grey and ancient and destroying.

The clearness of his apprehension quietened him, and, crossing to the hay-stall, he stepped over the partition-oards and lay down. His head drooped towards his drawn-up knees and, curled there, with the clean hay-scent in his nostrils, he let his mind go in a tired craving for sleep. His mind roamed in a disembodied way, and if it lost consciousness it seemed to him that it did not, but was awake in many strange places, known
to him but distant, yet near as clear places seen with the eye.

His eye went up the hillside behind the croft, seeing through the darkness as in a dim light. Janet was coming along the hillside, not stumbling, but walking upright and quickly, yet not to outward appearance in a hurry, because she was coming to him secretly.

When he arose and went to the hollow, however, she was not there. It was now so dark that it was like the dead of night. She would be afraid to come along the hillside alone; it was too dark for her feet. The full moon would rise late.

He waited, and wandered over the hillside, and presently came to the corner of the field where the footpath ran down towards her back door.

Stealthily he went along this path and, rounding the henhouses, saw the light in the small kitchen window. Other houses were at hand, and he listened for a long time before approaching the window on tiptoe.

At first there was complete silence, then he caught quick feet that could only be Janet's. From a little distance, he heard her mother's voice in a harsh, querulous, summoning cry. Janet went away and after a time came back. Just inside the back door, he heard water being poured from a jug into a kettle, the clank of the lid, and in a moment the kettle being hung over the fire. Janet went away and came back again. There was plainly none in the house except these two.

He felt he was intruding and exposing Janet, but he could not leave. You did not like anyone coming in on you at the wrong moment, least of all, perhaps, the one you loved. He had better go. He retreated to the corner of the henhouse, but stayed there. Clearly Janet's mother slept in ‘the room', Janet herself in the kitchen. In every cottage there was a boxed-in kitchen bed where the mother or parents slept, but now Janet's mother was in ‘the room'. She would be safer there. Janet herself, sleeping in the kitchen bed, would be mistress of the house should anyone call.

It was the first time he had ever thought of Janet in the intimacy of her night arrangements. His mind did not think of her in any prying way, but responsibly. She went
into bed, as he went himself, and took her trouble with her. But a deep tenderness came upon him. And perhaps because his mind had been working so strangely that night, it saw her going into bed in her long nightdress, and in a moment he had called her to the door and comforted her, and her body was soft and her hair fell about his face as it had done more than once.

He knew he could not leave now, and listened until his throat went dry. But despite this new excitement that came so intimately upon him, he stood there for a long time by the stone wall of the henhouse with the patience of a Red Indian. Then he went back to the window.

When at last he was satisfied that her mother had passed beyond troubling anyone, he waited until he heard Janet move. With his finger-tips he beat four soft notes on the window-pane. He knew she heard by the very nature of the silence, so he repeated the notes, and, under his breath, his mouth to the glass, called, ‘Janet'.

The silence now so startled him that he looked swiftly around at the night. But at last there was movement, the quiet closing of a door, feet stirring in the little back porch, a slow, careful opening of the outside door. He stood before her. ‘Janet. It's me.'

She groped outward a pace and drew the door behind her, but not so that it would make a sound. She could not see him. He touched her, caught her arm.

‘Oh, Tom,' she whispered, ‘go away, go away at once!' Her manner was agitated and intense.

But he put his arms round her and drew her to him, murmuring it was all right. She struggled against his arms like one caught in a trap. Her body was soft and strong and slithered in his grip. She had an overcoat on.

But he could not let her go, could not be defeated, could not walk away with the bitter feeling that his intrusion had been worse than futile. So he tried to soothe her, fighting her strength. She brought her right elbow against his chest and her forearm, extending upward, laid a firm repelling palm on his mouth. At the same time she seemed to stand still and listen. He listened with her. There was no movement. No sound.

‘It's all right,' he murmured calmly. ‘No need to be frightened.' He brought down her arm firmly.

‘Oh, Tom, go away,' she whispered, and then she collapsed against him, her face in the hollow between his neck and shoulder.

He knew there was no desire for love-making in her now, only the need for protection, the need to let go and forget. And sweet it was to surround her with assurance, and caress her, holding her to him. Her hair had the smell of sleep, and this brought her very near to him, beyond all artifice, and he kissed her hair and breathed in her living human body. She had given way completely, like one fallen asleep, and standing there, utterly still, his senses wide awake and listening as it were a little beyond him, alert in a subtle triumph against the night and all life's circumstance, he had a man's deep tenderness for her in her trouble, held quietly in strength.

This strange suspension of her being, which had more than once irked him and touched him with a finger of panic, now did not disturb him, and he listened for her, aware as he listened that in her mother might be a cunning stealth. But he was equal to all chances of the night, and when she stirred and began to push away from him, he spoke in a soft friendly voice.

In a moment he saw that whereas she would have fled from ardency, from this smiling friendliness, this cool care of her, she could not go away.

‘Don't be frightened of anything in the world, Janet. I'll always come to you. I'll always save you.' His voice was gentle and eager.

But now that she was fully awake again, she began to be uneasy.

‘You shouldn't have come,' she breathed. ‘You must never come again.'

‘Aren't you glad I came?'

‘Yes.' But she was disturbed, and suddenly her body went rigid as if she had heard a sound. With extraordinary force she pushed down his arms, and together they listened.

‘It's nothing,' he whispered.

But she could not quite come back to him. All the same
when she said quickly, ‘I must go now,' she brought her mouth near his ear and it was the living Janet who spoke.

‘Don't go yet for a little while,' he pleaded.

‘I must go.' Her voice was nearer him than ever, and lingering. Her breath was on his cheek.

He let her arms pass through his hands. She withdrew herself slowly, looking at him, and though he could not see her face, he knew now there was a smile on it.

As she backed into the door, he started forward impulsively, meaning to ask her to stay yet a little, but as his out-thrust hand passed beyond her coat, which must have fallen open at the neck, it landed full against her soft breast and the nipple pressed against his palm through the thin soft stuff that covered it, and his half formed words died away.

She drew her coat over her breast as she got into the door, and in a long moment she seemed to lean out towards him, though she was standing upright. ‘Good-night,' she whispered, and slowly the door closed.

He turned away at once, but half-way up the path he stopped, and then came back to the henhouse wall.

He stayed there until he saw her light go out.

This meeting with Janet and the words his father had used about worshipping God had a decisive effect upon him in the days that followed. Hitherto he had always been dogged by uneasiness when he missed evening worship too often and too obviously. Now he said to himself: ‘That's finished.' It was a relief to have the situation made thus definite. His nature firmed up and grew hard and objective. Immediately the ploughing was over and there was nothing for a time to be done about the croft, he started building. Dovetailing the planks and nailing them to the cross-beams and uprights was a simple job, and soon his shop was completely enclosed except for the door and a long front window. He moved all his gear from the barn and established himself in the new building.