The Stepson (5 page)

When the brushing was finished, she unfastened her chemise, slipped her shoulders and arms out of it and, letting it drop to her feet, stood naked, her
firm white generous body, with its rich curves and noble mould, beautiful and desirable with the unconscious beauty of Eve on her day of creation.

Her new underclothes and the dress she was to wear for the wedding lay on the bed, and when she had washed herself she began one by one to draw them on, pausing, before she slipped on the dress, to put up her hair and to pack her discarded clothes in one of the two yellow tin boxes which were all her luggage. The dress she had chosen was blue, a blue neither light nor dark, like the blue of a wild hyacinth, and when she had put it on and fastened it she stood for a moment alarmed to find herself dressed out in such finery. ‘I shall look ridiculous,' she thought, and curved one arm to gaze incredulously at the cuff trimmed with a little white frill and narrow velvet ribbon sewed down into a scrolled pattern. The hat, a blue hat with a grey feather, lay on the bed and she reached for it and put it on before the glass, more distrustful still at this heaping up of splendour. How could she go downstairs and out of doors got up like that? She would have given anything to take it all off and go to church in the plain grey dress she wore on Sundays. But she need have had no doubts of her appearance, for she had chosen well and simply, and the dress, with the bodice closely fitting her firm, ample figure, and the blue of hat and dress showed to the greatest advantage her dark loveliness, more than ever now that her apprehensions, changing by degrees
to an innocent pride in her beauty, brought a tinge of colour to her pale cheeks.

When she was ready, she went downstairs and set out on the table a cake and glasses and a bottle of port which Ben had got for the occasion; and, after that, all had passed in a mist of suppressed nervousness, for her father had come in and changed hurriedly and they had walked across to the church together. He had been in such a hurry that there had been no time for Kate to feel foolish when she faced him in her finery, and it was only when they were outside the house and he turned to lock the door behind them that he glanced at her half timidly and then remarked with a faint tinge of warmth in his correct utterance:

‘Why, you
are
a swell, Kate!'

After the ceremony they had returned to the school-house with Ben, his best man, and an aunt and uncle of Kate's who were the only guests, and the port wine and Ben's cheery talk had been very comforting after the strain of the marriage service. Then Ben had gone for the gig, which he had left at the inn, and the visitors went out tactfully so as to leave Kate and her father alone together for the last few minutes.

To be alone together was precisely what they had least desired, and for awhile they had sat silent and embarrassed with nothing to say to one another. From time to time the Schoolmaster cleared his
throat nervously and Kate, to fill the silence, collected the empty glasses and placed them on the empty cake-plate.

‘I've left everything clean and in its proper place,' she said, for the sake of saying something. ‘The sheets and pillow-case off my bed will have to be washed and put away. That's all I've left to do.'

‘The last wedding I went to,' said the Schoolmaster, as if Kate's voice had started his mechanism, ‘was my own, with your Mother.' He cleared his throat again. ‘That was thirty years ago. Thirty years is a long time.'

‘You've never spoken to me of Mother,' Kate said. ‘I don't even know if you ever think of her.'

‘We were not very well suited, unfortunately.' He stated the fact primly, as if discreetly closing the door on an untidy room, and again, as he spoke, Kate noticed the doll-like movement of his chin between its two vertical grooves.

‘I think I take after Mother,' she said. ‘No doubt that's why you and I have never been very companionable.'

The Schoolmaster raised his pale, faintly surprised eyes to her face. He had not noticed during these fourteen years that he and his daughter had not been companionable and it amazed him to hear that she thought herself like his passionate dead wife, for he had never credited her with a single passionate thought or feeling. He smiled faintly, as if at the
quaint saying of a child, and rising to his feet he said that he would go out and see if the gig were coming. A moment later Kate had seen the gig pass the window. She rose with a sigh of relief, and as she walked out of the kitchen and down the narrow passage to the door, she felt that she was shaking a dead weight of misery from her shoulders.

Before climbing into the gig she had kissed her father, a formal and unwilling kiss which she had given him only because she had felt that perhaps the occasion demanded it; and then as the gig moved off she had waved to him once and resolutely turned her back on him and the school, never looking round until the gig had rounded the corner on to the Elchester road. Then she turned her head. The school, the church, and the green were shut from sight, gone as though they had never been, and with them had gone the long monotony of her life there. She had cut herself off from the past: it had closed behind her suddenly as a door; and, closed before her, stood the door of the future to which with a bold and determined recklessness she had committed herself. Like a swimmer who dives from a height into a deep pool, she felt herself freed and invigorated by that confident leap into the unknown. Its effect was exhilarating as a glass of wine: it seemed to her that the blood ran more swiftly and warmly in her veins. An impulse to sing stirred in the muscles of her throat.

And now too she felt happy to be with old Ben.
Her earlier feelings of aversion were quite gone. She liked him extremely, and though she did not love him she had discovered how delightful it was to be loved and admired. Her whole being was filled with a warm self-preoccupation like a rose opening in the sunlight. The thought of her new home, too, filled her with excited anticipation, and so did the thought of the dresses and hats which she had had made in Elchester with money that Ben Humphrey had given her. She had not seen them since she had tried them on at the dressmaker's, for she had ordered them to be sent direct to The Grange. For years she had worn only black or grey, but the new dresses were of various colours. ‘My life is beginning at last,' she said to herself, shivering with pleasure at the touch of the sunshine and the exhilarating movement of the gig.

Ben turned his head to look at her. Her grey-green eyes were shining and there was a tinge of rose on her cheeks. It was as if her beauty had broken into flower, as if colour and life had suddenly bloomed upon her pale quietude. With his free hand old Ben took one of hers, in its white glove, and pressed it affectionately.

‘Are you happy?' he asked, his blue eyes and shining red face bright with pleasure.

‘Very!' Kate replied. She had never before spoken to him with such unrestrained sincerity. ‘Very happy!' And she returned the squeeze of his hand.

‘You'll like the house,' said the old man. ‘I'll show you round after dinner. We'll have the whole afternoon before us. I could do with some dinner, couldn't you?'

‘I could,' said Kate, laughing. ‘I'm hungry. I suppose you remembered to order some?'

‘Perhaps I did and perhaps I didn't,' said Ben roguishly. ‘If I didn't perhaps you'll order some for us to-morrow, eh?'

Their talk died away into the rumble of the wheels and the smart clop-clop of the mare's hoofs. Now they were passing the gates of Penridge Hall and suddenly, with extraordinary vividness, the memory of young Graham, as he had been on that afternoon when she had met him among the flower-beds in the Hall garden, rushed upon her, and for one moment she felt that it was he, young, handsome, and desirable, who was driving her now to her new home; he whose face she had felt so close to hers as she gazed at the beautiful unknown flower. A wave of deep emotion which was half rapture and half the sense of a hopeless regret swept over her. Exquisite, impossible dream! Why should it come to her to-day of all days? for she had passed those gates time and time again since that evening when she had come out of them and walked home with him. Yes, she knew it now: in some hidden, unconfessed depth of her being she had gone on loving him ever since. If only there were such things as miracles. If only she
could turn her head now and find that old Ben had been miraculously changed into young Graham! A little shivering sigh fluttered her breast, and then the practical side of her nature reasserted itself, and, banishing the dream, she turned her thoughts to the present reality; and soon she had recaptured her former mood of expectant happiness.

For, after all, her present happiness was real, very real, and immersing herself in it she felt the glow of it permeating her once again. And it was Ben she had to thank for it. Her heart stirred with gratitude to the old man sitting silent at her side. She had no wish to speak, for the silence which had fallen between them was a friendly and contented one; how different from the constrained silence between her and her father half an hour ago.

Soon they had begun to climb a gradual slope, the trees thinned and fell away behind them, and they came out on to a stretch of open country of fields and hedges over which a strong breeze was blowing. Some of the fields were newly ploughed: their long stripes of rig and furrow showed a moist purplish brown, lustrous on the sunward faces. Others were pasture on which heavy grey sheep were grazing. A ewe which had escaped through a gap in the fence was grazing at the roadside. She started violently as the gig approached and began to run. Then, changing her mind, she stood and allowed the gig to pass her, watching it with her hard agate eyes. The
breeze divided the thick grey fleece into a long ragged horizontal parting like a deep split in a wooden beam, showing the clean silvery-yellow wool below the surface. Kate's feather streamed and fluttered: she raised her hand to her hat.

‘Are you cold?' Ben asked her.

‘No: quite warm, thanks,' she said. But the wind was, in fact, cold, and it was only the glow of her new happiness and the sense of well-being which it brought her that made her invulnerable. If they had driven through snow and ice she would have welcomed the biting air as a part of her unquenchable joy. It was wonderful, after years of unchanging monotony, to be standing on the very edge of an unknown future. The unknown had ceased suddenly to be an unreal and distant dream: it had come near and was enfolding her. Each moment she was advancing into a new, unpredictable world, larger and fuller and more beautiful than any she had known. As she bowed her head to the breeze her gaze fell on her lap, and once more she was amazed to see that her dress was blue instead of the old black.

Ben pointed with his whip. ‘See that clump of trees?' he said. ‘That's the farm': and Kate gazed at the distant dark mound that broke the flowing lines of undulating plough and pasture, and the image of the place as her mind had made it began to waver and fade even at that distant glimpse of the reality. She
was glad the farm lay among trees. Trees were homely and sheltering things: they promised a beauty and richness which her arid life at Penridge had never known.

The road approached the farm by devious ways. Sometimes it sheered off to the right or left, sometimes it almost turned its back on it, and more than once it dropped into a shallow valley filled with thickets of hazel and oak and the farm was lost to view. Then trees began to appear once more at the roadside and in the hedges that divided the fields, and soon they swung through an open gate into a woody cart-track and the gig-wheels and the mare's hoofs became suddenly muffled.

‘Are we there?' Kate asked, and a sudden misgiving stirred within her, for now the unknown was engulfing her and soon she would be among strange folk and strange eyes would examine her.

‘Yes,' said her husband, ‘only a few yards now.'

A brick wall, its warm red mottled with the green of moss, now bordered the right flank of the road. Over it Kate saw the sloping tops of haystacks and the high thatched roof of a barn huge as a church. The gig turned sharp to the right, then to the right again and through a gate, and now the wheels skidded and rattled on the cobblestones of the farmyard. Three large downy yellow ducks waddled out of the mare's way, opening and shutting their yellow beaks like mechanical toys. A collie with ears laid
back and smiling eyes approached the gig slowly and respectfully, wagging its tail. Kate was aware of low-roofed sheds and a taller, windowed building which was the house. At the side of the house door there was a low stone bench: two or three pails were ranged upon it upside down. The bench, the doorstep, and the window-sills near the door were spotlessly clean and smooth and washed to a warm tint with reddle-stone. Their edges were outlined in white. A large woman in an apron, her pleasant round face ensconced in her wide shoulders and bosom, was standing in the doorway. As the gig drew up she stepped out to help Kate down.

‘This is Mrs. Jobson,' said Humphrey, who was getting down on the other side, and Kate shook hands with her.

‘You'll be hungry, I expect, ma'am, after the drive,' said the old woman. ‘The dinner's ready as soon as you'd like it. But perhaps you'd like me to show you upstairs first.'

A man came out of an outhouse and he and Ben began to unrope Kate's boxes. Mrs. Jobson stood aside for Kate to enter the house, and the two women went in together.

The pleasant, homely smell of the house, the stone-flagged passage, the savour of roast meat as she passed the kitchen door, and the voice of the large kindly woman following her, reassured and cheered Kate in those first strange moments of initiation.

‘Now to the right, ma'am,' Mrs. Jobson's voice directed her. ‘And now if you'll let me go in front I'll show you the way upstairs. You'll find dinner ready in here,' she said, opening a door at the foot of the stairs as they passed it, ‘when you come down.'