The Serpent (24 page)

His friendly tones must have been a song in her ears, for always her questioning had been wrong. It
had been wrong this time, but now in an instant she knew why.

‘I'll blow the fire up in no time and heat some milk for you. It's good for putting you to sleep. I'll light the candle.' She did not wait for him to say anything but, still talking, went into the kitchen. Soon there was a flicker of light coming into his room, and now her voice was ordering the cat off the chair. He could distinctly hear her breath like a bellows blowing the peat embers. She came in with the candle. ‘I'll leave this here so that I'll see my way in,' she said, giving him a look. ‘You're feeling a bit better now?' she asked, almost as if he had been suffering from a pain in the stomach.

‘Yes, much better,' he answered.

Off she went again, nearly running.

The sight of her, waddling away in such eagerness, was too much for his terribly weakened condition. There was something in it of love that was too much, and suddenly the tears burst from his eyes and he was choking his mouth against sobbing.

He was certain that, hearing him – and she was bound to hear – she would come running, and to cope with her now was beyond his power. He just could not bear it if she came in. But she did not come. And when the spasm exhausted itself and he listened, there was a great quietness in the kitchen. No sooner was he composed than she entered with the milk in a bowl.

‘It's not hot,' she said, setting the candle on the small table by his bed. ‘You take it now. Take it all. It will do you good.' She set the pillows behind him with sure strength.

He could hardly hold the bowl and she helped him to balance it. After he had drunk a couple of mouthfuls she took the bowl from him and placed it on the table. ‘Take your time,' she said. ‘There's no hurry.'

He lay back against the pillows and closed his eyes, breathing heavily.

‘It's good nourishing food you need to bring your strength back. You haven't been eating nearly enough. But I'm going to see to it, and you'll
have
to eat. Now, come, drink some more.'

He gulped most of it and then pushed the bowl away. She set it on the table.

‘I'm a great bother to you,' he said, lying back.

She began straightening the bedclothes. She could have withstood anything but this tribute in his voice. She shook her head, her hands busy. Then she turned her back to him and stood quite still. He knew she was fighting her tears.

‘I'm sorry, Mother.'

‘No, no,' she said. ‘Oh no.' Her voice choked. ‘Don't say that.' She drew in a deep breath that broke. ‘I'm foolish. Don't mind me.'

‘Mother –'

‘No, no,' she cried, and started off, but stood again, then blindly came for the bowl, to carry it away. But she turned her face to him for a moment. How ghastly his own must have been could be read in the compassion of her eyes. It was a moment of pure communion in which a feeling of her own insufficiency, now that he was kind to her, must have risen like a ghost within her.

She stood, bereft of intention and movement. Then she groped for the quilt to set it straight again, her head bowed. But she could not deal with her emotion, and leaned on her hands, and then with a queer culminating cry of shame for her weakness, her breast fell on the bed and she buried her face in the quilt, weeping horribly.

‘Mother!' He leaned forward and stroked her head, the tears running hot down his throat.

‘No, no, I'm no use. I'm no use to you.'

‘Don't say that, Mother.'

‘Oh, my son,' she cried, ‘if I could give my life to make you well – how gladly I would give it!' Her head crushed down again from side to side.

But she fought down her emotion, and he felt her head press against the touch of his hand.

‘You have been good to me, Mother.'

She got up and wiped her eyes. ‘I couldn't help it,' she muttered to herself.

She went away and came back; she busied herself about the house.

‘Do you think you'll go to sleep?' she asked when there was nothing more she could pretend to do.

‘Yes. You go to your bed now.'

‘Very well. I'll leave your door open so that you can call me if you want anything.'

An hour later, he heard her coming on her bare feet to the door. He breathed evenly, and she had hardly gone away when a drowsiness began to settle down upon him.

The following afternoon he tried to get up and found he could not stand. Sitting on the bed, however, he got his clothes on and was making an effort again to get to his feet when his mother came in.

He sat down and smiled to her. ‘I thought I would like to go through,' he said and his whole body wavered.

‘Do you think you should try?' she asked through her amazement, grasping him at the same time by the arm.

‘I think,' he murmured, ‘it would do me good.'

She put her arm round him as he stumbled and all but carried him into the kitchen, where she padded the wooden armchair with her bed quilt and set him comfortably to the fire.

But his head was swimming and he felt like an empty husk. The faintness grew and in a few moments his mother was carrying him back to bed.

The humiliation of this did not worry him.

In a few days he was making the afternoon journey to the kitchen fire on his own and lengthening his stay each time. There was a haste in his mother's actions like an overflow of happiness. It was not only that she could not do enough for him – and all she did was practically suited to the occasion – but also that some overflow of well-being suffused her acts. Even the articles of furniture and the fire were in this pleasant conspiracy. Inside the four walls of the kitchen everything was friendly.

Now and again he would see his mother glance through the window. Without a word having been spoken between them on the subject of possible callers, she was keeping watch! One afternoon she said on a breath, ‘There's Big Ann coming!'

At once he got up and retreated to his own room. She followed him. ‘Lie down and put the quilt over you,' she said.

‘No, I'll do fine here,' he answered, for she had a fire in his room. At first he had harshly repudiated the notion of a fire, but now it added to the intimacy and security of his room and of the house.

He saw her dismissing him from her mind as she arranged herself for the meeting with Big Ann, and as she left him he smiled.

After a time he stole to the door to listen to their talk.

‘Yes, he's coming on fine. He's a little weak yet, but I'm hoping soon to have him up.'

‘It's a weakening thing, the pleurisy,' said Big Ann. ‘Had he much fever?'

‘He'd a good bit, but I kept him warm and gave him a hot drink when he needed it. He's weak enough now but the fever's left him and that's a blessing.'

‘He's on the mend in that case. It would be a wetting he got maybe?'

‘It was,' answered his mother brightly. ‘But now if you'll excuse me I'll just put on the kettle.'

‘You'll not make any tea for me.'

‘Indeed and I will.'

As his mother lifted the wooden lid off the bucket of well-water, Tom went back to his chair by the fire.

So it was pleurisy he had!

For the first time in months a feeling of the old natural humour spread over him.

There was a period of quiet even happiness, like a period of normal convalescence, which lasted over many days. He could still recall the figures of his visions but they had grown thin and lost their power. His mind could wander away from them as a body by its own volition could wander back from a cliff-head into green fields or small birch woods. Often indeed his mind did wander into a sunniness of braes and woods and singing birds.

This was an intimate world of his own, and all that had happened before was outside it. Even his old desires were
outside it and had lost their force, much as the horrible visions had.

He tried to read some of his agnostic books but somehow did not care for them very much. They slightly excited him and so tended to tear the delicate peace in which he lived. A paragraph or two at a time was enough, for the spirit that informed them was an earnest fighting spirit, and he was finished with fighting for the time being, and craved something more in accord with this intangible harmony and sheer wonder of being alive.

As he grew stronger he would often have long thoughts into the outside world. Memories of Glasgow came back to him frequently at this time, as if Glasgow were a distant place of refuge in the factual world much as his own home was in this present intimate life.

Then one night when he awoke and found the fire dying, he decided not to make it up and fell into a reverie. He was wandering back from his visit to Bob and Dannie, and in the cavern of the street experienced again that peculiar sadness at being separated from his old friends. His contacts with Dave and Tim, the new direction of his thoughts, the inspiration from the feeling that at last he had found the true meaning and reality of existence, made a return to the old-fashioned world of Bob and Dannie impossible. Unless he had experienced it, he would not have believed that the sense of division could have been so absolute.

In his reverie, the persons and scene changed, and now he was understanding the mood that moved Janet, the reluctance upon Janet, the meaning and reality of existence for Janet, that made it impossible for her to turn back from the new burning love to the old-fashioned friendly liking.

She could not do it. It was beyond her human strength to turn back from Donald to him.

So clearly, so utterly, did he understand this that he was moved to a profound sympathy and held as it were in his hands her beating heart.

Slowly an infinite sadness darkened his tenderness, and his love which now gleamed brightly (gleamed as never before for it was at last seen and comprehended against eternal loss) slowly faded, and the vivid gleam
of Janet's face and the beating of her heart faded, and the fingers of each hand closed and writhed against one another with the dry rustling sound of withered leaves.

A dullness came down upon him after that, an even shadow over the mind, like the shadow over the land on one of these December days when the ceiling of cloud hung low and grey. The gleam of convalescence had gone, but in its place physical strength had come and presently he was adventuring out to the byre to see the beasts and into the barn where he would stand idly until he grew cold and shivered.

Sometimes, as his eyes cast about to make sure there was no-one near, he experienced the criminal feeling of one in hiding. His fear of encountering a fellow being was such that if he heard behind him, or outside beyond the barn door, a soft sound like a footfall, his heart at once began to race and his mouth dried in the moments of listening.

The inside of his home was now like a burrow, a secure bolt-hole from the outside world. Sometimes he caught his mother's eyes on him when he happened to lift his glance from the fire into which he could stare for long blank periods. He knew that she would have liked him to be more active, not for the sake of doing real work, but for his own good. Yet she, too, in some measure was affected by him, was getting used to this secluded life, and was a jealous part of it.

They spoke little to each other, for he had no desire to know what was happening among the neighbours. But where he could help her he did, and when she found the byre cleaned or the two buckets filled with well-water or a pail of potatoes beside the iron pot, she was obviously pleased. Soon he was giving such help regularly and more than once forestalled her in some special task.

These days toward the end of December were very short,
outside duties few, and the evenings long. He tried to read again, but could not get back the old enthusiasm. It did not seem to matter to him very greatly whether the God of Abraham was this kind of god or that. Disputation for its own sake gave him no pleasure. And if the answer to the riddle of the universe was so-and-so, well, it was hardly a matter for excitement. Materialistic certainty had the air of finality which might be satisfactory but gave no thrill – unless possibly to the man who was having the fun of proving his theory. But the earnestness of such a man seemed to Tom strangely remote at times, like the noise of a December bluebottle, galvanised into action against the window-pane by a blink of sun. In the case of the bluebottle, its concern to lay its eggs was at least imperative. It could not help it.

On New Year's eve they heard footsteps passing the window. It was about nine o'clock and pitch dark. At once Tom got up and tiptoed past the knocking to his own room. His mother opened the door but could not see the visitor.

‘It's me, Andie Gordon. We were wondering how Tom was. How is he?'

‘He's getting on fine, thank you. He's lying down just now, for he's not very strong yet. Will you come in?'

‘Oh well no, we won't be bothering you in tha' case. No. We were just going our rounds, an' we thought of Tom, and as we were going our rounds we thought we would jus' call round to see how he was. But if he's lying down – tha's fine. It's all righ'. I hope you're quite well yourself, Mrs. Mathieson?'

‘Yes, thank you. I'm sorry –'

‘It's all righ'. Just to wish you both a happy New Year. Goo'-night. Goo'-night, Mrs. Mathieson.'

‘Good-night, and a happy New Year to you all. I'm sorry we have nothing in.'

‘Goo'-night,' called the departing voice.

She closed the door and as Tom joined her in the kitchen she glanced at his face. Her invitation to Andie to enter had hardly been pressing. But Tom looked relieved – and
suddenly stood still as if he had heard another footstep in the night. Then he sat down.

‘That was Andie Gordon, with a strong smell of drink off him already,' she said.

‘They'll be going the rounds of the houses,' he answered. ‘If they call back when we're in bed, don't answer the door.'

They did not call back and Tom felt that their house was shut away from all others and, behind many odd memories covering the wild jollity and singing and drunkenness of New Year's eve (most of the lads would not go to bed tonight, for even farm workers were on holiday tomorrow), this feeling of being shut off was full of relief, at moments almost pleasant.

He found it difficult to go to sleep that night, however, and though he tried to read in bed under the bright light of the round-wicked lamp, he could hardly get any meaning out of the black-lettered words that crawled over the page like insects. A deep sombre feeling gradually invaded him, and his loneliness came about him like a darkness of the pit. When at last he put out the light and turned over, he fell asleep at once.

In the early weeks of the new year, he set himself all sorts of tasks. After talking to one or two persons whom he had not had time to avoid, for he was often now in the shop though doing most of his carpentry in the barn, he developed a cool, distant, polite method of dealing with such personal encounters. He knew, by the response and look of the person who talked to him, that folk would say amongst themselves that Tom Mathieson had gone ‘queer', nodding at the same time in recognition of ‘a judgement', nodding solemnly.

So long as it kept them to themselves, he did not mind.

But with his physical strength restored, he did occasionally feel a vindictive flash of anger, at the solemn-faced approach of someone he knew quite well. He began deliberately to turn his back.

February gave way to the windy weather of March, and
the prospect of the heavy spring work on the land was making its appeal when chance brought a piece of news that shattered the personal frame-work he had so slowly been building.

At Big Ann's approach, he had gone into his own room. She was a large ungainly woman with the strength of a horse, slow in her movements, working her own croft single-handed, and finding social relief in gossip, not ill-natured gossip but personal news about folk. She was good-natured and, with discrimination, kind-hearted. Moreover she had always an excellent chance of being the first bearer of special tidings to the lonely Widow Mathieson. Tom gave her time to settle down, and was stepping quickly to the front door when her voice, slow and firm as a man's, stopped his feet dead. The door between the small entrance passage and the kitchen was not quite closed and her words were perfectly distinct:

‘Yes, the lassie Janet was coming and going to the manse as usual, for though Williamina had recovered a bit in the autumn, she had taken to bed again with a chill on the kidneys. She is a sharp one is Williamina, and lying in bed does not make one any the less sharp seemingly. Anyway, she told Peter Grant's wife that she had been a bit uneasy for some time. However, she said nothing, but she kept her eye on the lassie for the last month or two, until from one sign and another she was sure at last. She is a well-set-up bonny girl as you know, with good colouring, and when that sort of lassie goes white as a sheet it's very noticeable on her. At last Williamina asked her if there was anything the matter with her, but the lassie said no, naturally enough. Williamina asked her if she was sure. The lassie did not confess. She would be terrified of Williamina and the minister. But it would seem there can be no doubt about it: the lassie must be all of six months gone.'

‘Dear me! What a blow that will be to her mother!'

‘And not only to her mother. For the question now arises: who can be the father?'

‘Is anyone mentioned?'

‘Well, no, for it seems she was not keeping company
with anyone in particular for a long time – not since last autumn.'

‘And who was it then?'

There was a short pause. ‘Don't mistake me, Maria. If I would tell you anything it's only to prepare you. Because of things that happened, many might be willing to believe anything against your son. They might like to have a pick against him.'

‘Tom!' It was an intense whisper. As he heard his mother get to her feet, Tom stepped quietly outside. The door to the kitchen was opened and shut. Quietly Tom stepped back. The voices were now muffled but still distinct.

‘Don't you take on about it, Maria. I only thought it would be friendly to warn you, and I wouldn't do that same if I thought it was true. Trouble comes home to roost all too surely. And it may come home to roost nearer to the manse door than Williamina dreams of. I'm saying nothing.'

‘You mean –?'

‘I'm meaning nothing. I admit it may not look like it. The minister's son was home for his Christmas holidays and he'll be home again in a week or so, and you would say that that could hardly be if he was to blame in any way. And I may be all wrong. And indeed maybe I am and doing the young man a sore injustice. It looks like it. And to no-one would I ever mention it but to yourself. But one day I saw a small thing between them. It was nothing much, for the young will be young, but it stuck in my mind.'

‘Was Tom and her – keeping company?'

‘So they say. But that must be a long time back as you know. And surely if there had been anything in it, you yourself would have had some idea?'

‘As far as I know, she has never been near this house, and surely if –'

‘Surely,' said Big Ann.

Yet in the silence that followed, Tom felt the enormous doubt swell in the kitchen. His feet began carrying him down to the barn.

Janet! By God, Janet!

His mother and Big Ann and all the world was wiped out.

Janet! So it had come to Janet! By God, it had come to her! A silent savage laughter twisted his features. His groping hands lifted a lump of wood and smashed it down on the old ramshackle bench. He threw his head back and chuckled harshly. Instantly his features narrowed in a vindictive murderous expression. He cast about him for something to grip, for something to destroy, and stood very still.

So it had come to Janet.

He sat down on a pile of straw, clutched it slowly in his hands, turned over and buried his face.

A fortnight later he waylaid Tina on the Glen road. It was almost quite dark and she was hurrying home. She smothered her cry when she saw it wasn't his ghost and remained uneasy.

After greeting her, he asked, ‘How is Janet?'

‘All right,' she answered involuntarily, not looking at him.

‘Does her mother know yet?'

‘I – don't know,' she answered.

‘Do you think she knows?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Has Donald Munro come home?'

‘No.'

‘Weren't they expecting him some days ago?'

‘I think so.'

Tom looked steadily at her. Tina was pale and clearly distressed and could not meet his look. She was like one held in a vast fear.

‘Good-night,' said Tom.

She hesitated a moment as if about to cry her terrible fear to him, then turned and hurried away.

The following night Tom said to his mother, ‘I have been thinking of taking a trip down to Glasgow to see Dougal Robertson. With the year coming on, I'll have to do something with my business, or it will fall through.'

She did not speak for a moment. ‘Perhaps the change might do you good,' she said.

‘Yes, I think I would like a short change,' he answered
calmly. ‘And I could see, too, about a new model bicycle that's come on the market. Anyway, I thought I might take a few days before the spring work.'

‘Do you that, then, if you feel you would like it.'

‘Yes.' He nodded. ‘Tomorrow is Wednesday. I might as well go tomorrow and get any little business done before the weekend.'

She was looking into the fire, her hands gripped in her lap. She obviously wanted to say something but dare not. ‘What about money?' she asked.

‘I have plenty,' he answered.

‘There's the money in the kist,' she said, ‘and at the bank. I have always been wanting you to look into that.'

‘That will be all right,' he answered reasonably. ‘It's good to have it behind you.'

‘It's not only mine. It's yours when you want it. And I don't know about the bank.'

‘Is it in a bank book?'

‘No, it's just on a paper.'

‘Well, if you would like me to look at it.' He got up and followed his mother into his room.

She set the candle on a chair and, getting to her knees, removed the coloured cloth which draped the old wooden chest, unlocked and opened it. After fumbling among dark clothes that emitted a strong camphor smell, she asked him to hold the candle nearer. In a narrow boxed-in shelf, she found the money, mostly in gold, and showed it to him. She did it somehow with a mournful air, as if the gold coins were being unearthed like the dead years. Then she found ‘the paper'. It was a deposit receipt for seventy pounds.

‘It's all right,' he said. ‘It's in both your names. So it can be drawn any time on your own signature.'

This was what was usually done, for in practice it meant that the woman had no control over the money until the man died, but that then it went to her without legal trouble. The banker always advised this.

She put the deposit receipt back where it had been but seemed reluctant to close the chest. ‘I would like it to be yours, too,' she said.

‘Don't worry about that just now.'

‘But what if anything happened to me?'

‘It would come to me then. I know about it.'

She slowly closed the lid. ‘You know where the key is always,' and she put it back in the coloured cream jug on the mantelpiece. ‘I'll have to see about your clothes.' She suddenly got busy, and dropped an iron heater in the heart of the fire.

As he was leaving early in the morning for the bus she came to the door. They shookhands. ‘Take care of yourself,' she said. ‘You're –'

As he glanced at her face he knew the words which she had held back:
You're all that I have
.

He gave a smile and walked away quickly. For a few moments he wondered what was in her mind. Plainly she did not think of him as one going on holiday. What, then? Had that display of the money been an invitation to him to take what he wanted? She had asked no questions. And Big Ann's story, with heaven knew what trimmings, lay unresolved in her mind.