Unknown (2 page)

“The funeral; Northwold; thank you very much,” John Crow replied in broken phrases; and his own voice was to him as the voice of one speaking in a dream. As he uttered the words his eyes glanced in a bewildered daze over the contents of the motor car. The back seats were all piled up with neat and very new travelling bags, canvas hold-alls, and bright rugs, from among which an elderly, gentle, majestic-looking woman smiled at him in an extremely reassuring manner.

“There's room up here then, Mister,” went on the driver, after a hurried turn in his seat and a glance backward at the lady amid the pile of bags. “That's to say,” he added, with an appeal to a figure at his side, whose presence had hitherto escaped John's notice, “unless you objects to being crowded, Miss.”

The pulse of time that followed this remark was one of the most singular in all John Crow's experience. It was not, in fact, like a pulse of time at all. It was like a perfectly calm and perfectly quiet sinking aside, into a region altogether outside the jeopardies and agitations of time. John and the young girl who was seated on the further side of the driver exchanged a long stare.

“You don't mind, Miss, do 'ee?” repeated the man. “ 'Tis a long walk for the gentleman; and the Canon would wish all that come to his burying to be treated proper.”

The nervous mouth of the young person he thus addressed, which had mechanically opened, showing a row of long, strong, white teeth, shut abruptly, and her eyes, which had become large and round, became little dark-lashed slits in her sallow face. “Of course not,” she murmured in a low voice, making herself extremely small and pressing close to the man's elbow.

John Crow walked round the rear of the machine and after a moment's clumsy fumbling at the handle pulled the door open, clambered up, and sat down by the girl's side. “All comfortable?” asked the driver. “Very, thank you!” came so simultaneously from both John and the young girl that it sounded incoherent. The man, however, started the car without further parley.

“Is my nephew expecting you to lunch?” came the pleasant voice of the majestic lady from amid the luggage. “I wonder if you are one of the cousins?” she went on. “There are really a terrible lot of us. And we shall all be here.” There was a pause during which the driver remarked that there wouldn't be many of the local people either who'd stay away. "They respect Canon Crow in Northwold more'n anyone would suppose, seeing how little he came out towards the end.

“He speaks as if Grandfather were a snail,” thought the young girl.

“My father liked his books better than visiting,” the lady continued. “But he used to read beautifully at people's bedsides. I've heard him do that often when I was little. Some clergymen have such poor voices.”

“I never heard'n read myself,” replied the driver thoughtfully. “Maybe 'twould have been better if I had. My dad brought me up chapel; and chapel I've stayed; though I've often thought 'twere a pity. Chapel be all for salvation but it neglects the King's Majesty. . . .”

“That's where we used to look,” broke in John Crow suddenly, addressing the girl as if he had been completely alone with her, “for the towers of Ely!” He pointed with his hand over the wide horizon; and half rising from his seat strained his eyes to catch a glimpse of what he remembered. “Oh, it's too late!” he added, and sank by her side. “These cars go quicker than pony carts. Grandfather used to drive a pony called Judy.”

“I'm beginning to think I know who you are,” resumed the elderly lady. “Aren't you my nephew John who went lo live in France?”

It was the girl who replied for him. “Yes, Aunt Elizabeth, he's Cousin John. I knew him at once. You used to come with us sometimes yourself when John took me down the little river in the old boat. Don't you remember, Aunt Elizabeth? He was with us that day we went to Oxborough Ferry, when Cousin Percy was Lhere. Cousin Percy wouldn't fish with worms! You must remember that, Aunt Elizabeth. She kept putting bits of purple loosestrife on her hook.” There was a nervous exaltation in the girl's tone that her aunt did not miss.

“I knew Mary at once too,” John Crow said, turning round to address their relative, “but you used to be very busy when I stayed at the Rectory so it's no wonder we didn't know each other. Dear Aunt Elizabeth!” And with a rather exaggerated foreign gesture he stretched out his arm, and capturing the stout lady's hand lifted it up to his lips. “I came every summer to North-wold, you know,” he said, and he remained for a minute leaning sideways and holding the hand he had taken. “And I came whe he came,” cried Mary with an abrupt and awkward intensity; an she too turned and leaned back and took possession of her aunt1 other hand. Thus with their faces so close to each other that th girl's hair brushed his cheek the two cousins, for an appreciable passage of time, clung to the elderly woman as if their mutua contact with her brought them closer.

And thus they entered the outskirts of the village of North wold. It was Miss Elizabeth Crow who made the motion to releas* her fingers.

“ Tis like old times to see ye all back,” remarked the driver as his two front-seat passengers resumed their normal position. “It makes anyone wish he were brought up to Church. Us chapel-folk are less liable to be gathered together by funerals. When the Lord divides us, He divides us. But Norfolk gentry, all such as I've seen, and I've seen a deal o'n one way and another, are mighty tender over the family. Me own mother had five of us and I've got more nephies than I knows of, yet devil a one would I want to see coming up me steps. Tis as nat'ral to me to turn and run from a blood-relation as it is to some folks to hug 'e*n to heart.”

“I am afraid human nature is much the same all the world over,” remarked Miss Elizabeth,

“So 'tis, Madam. So 'tis,” said the man, winking at John Crow. “If I were a cousin of the late Canon, not Ameriky itself would keep me from hearing Lawyer Didlington read the old gentleman's will!”

They had reached the middle of the village at this point and the visitor from France laid his hand on the driver's elbow. “You can set me down here,” he said.

“No, no,” cried Aunt Elizabeth. “I can't allow that. I'll vouch for it that Philip will be glad to welcome you to lunch. He and my niece Tilly went ahead in the first car, leaving us detached females to follow with the luggage.”

But the machine had stopped; and John, holding his bag in his hand, was already out in the road.

“There'll be quite enough of us all without me, Aunt,” he said.

“Good-bye for a time! As our friend here reminds us, we'll all meet in a few hours, when Lawyer What's-his-name opens Grandfather's will.”

But Miss Elizabeth was destined to receive a much severer shock than the escape of her eccentric nephew.

“What are you doing, Mary?” she cried in consternation at the sight of her young niece rapidly following John Crow out of the motor car.

“I'm going to stay with Cousin John,” she said. “We'll be at the service. You can tell Philip without fail we'll be at the service.”

“But, Mary—you can't do that! What will Tilly say? What will Philip do? Mary—think! We want your help with Persephone and her husband. You know how Philip and Mr. Spear always work each other up. Mary, you really can't do this!”

Mary came close up to the window of the car through which her aunt was protesting. “It's all right, dear,” she said. “Tilly will manage. You'll look after Dave Spear yourself and see that he doesn't make Philip too angry. You're always doing that sort of thing for all of us. Grandfather's servants are used to entertaining people. They won't run away, any more than we shall, before the will is read.” The bitter east wind made the girl pull her black woolen scarf tightly round her neck. There was something in the genius loci of that Anglo-Danish spot that seemed to evoke all her contrariness. “You're not Euphemia Drew, darling, so don't try to be. It was to get rid of Miss 'Phemia for a bit that I let Philip bring me. / know there's nothing for me in Grandfather's will! Be the darling you always are, Aunt, and explain to Philip. I swear I'll bring Cousin John to the service in good time.”

In the startled pause that followed the girl's appeal Elizabeth Crow's mind flashed back to those days when she was indeed “busy” as John had said. She had outlived all her generation; and yet she was not even now an old woman. This came from being the youngest by many, many years of William Crow's children. Ah! How her thoughts ran to her dead father. He would have no flesh and blood of his own to keep him company in that crowded graveyard. Mary's parents were gone. Persephprje's parents were gone. John had scarcely known his parents. And not one of them lay in that place to warm the bones of the old man! Till she herself was brought there he must lie by himself. Their mother had died in a Swiss sanitarium and had been buried out there. Yes, Cousin John was right when he said she had been “busy” in those days. As she stared now at her rebellious niece in a sort of humorous helplessness all that old imbroglio of tragic difficulties patterned itself before her mind's eye. The Crow family always had had a curious vein of gross, drastic common sense; and when her quarrels with her father reached an intolerable point she had simply cut the knot by leaving him alone and going to live with Philip. Thirty years ago she had gone to Philip, when this proud man was ' a mere boy, beginning his life at Glastonbury. She had achieved this separation with a secretive suddenness that puzzled everyone who knew her; and it flashed upon her mind now that something of this blind animal-like obstinacy had lodged itself in Mary. “Better let her go,” she thought. “I don't blame her for being attracted to this trampish fellow. The extreme opposite of Philip he is; and that's enough for Mary. I don't care if she does fall in love with him. Father did his best to shut me up and I'm not going to play that game with any other woman.”

Mary thought, “Dear old Aunt Elizabeth! She's got that queer wrinkle in her cheeks at this moment which always means she's at war with Philip. She's glad I'm going off with John—just glad.”

The driver thought, “That young fellow will play upsidaisy with that young lady, soon as they're out of sight! He'll do it, sure enough. Look at's eyes all gimletting through the lass. He'll eat her up, I shouldn't wonder.”

John Crow thought, “I'll take her to Harrod's Mill to see those big fish again. Yes, yes, I hugged her at the bottom of the boat on the 'little river' when she was eight and I was ten. Yes, I did! It was a Sunday afternoon I did that. It was drowsy that day; sunny and drowsy. I had rhubarb tart that day with a lot of cream. We went to Harrod's Mill. We left the boat at the dam. We couldn't get it over the dam. There were unripe blackberries round the dam that day.” Then all of a sudden a different figure from Mary's rose up in his mind. “I believe it was Tom at the/: bottom of the boat,” he thought, “and not Mary at all!”

Such were the thoughts of four human skulls al that moment; but only to one mood out of all these did the great maternal soul of the Earth respond and that was to a sudden exultant sense of peace and deliciousness in Mary's virginal breasts. Her conscious thoughts were all with Aunt Elizabeth and how thai brave woman would deal with Philip's anger; but as she stepped over to John's side and kissed her hand at the departing car something seemed to stir within her like a warm wave that was at once fire, air and water and it shivered up from the centre of her being to the tips of her breasts.

As soon as the car was out of sight John and Mary glanced at each other with unembarrassed satisfaction.

“I was puzzling in my mind ever since you all overtook me howT was going to get you to myself, but now that I've got you,” said John, “I don't care what we do or where we go.”

“I care very much because I want to escape from everyone but you.”

“Well, then! The first thing to think of is to find something to eat. Let's buy some bread and cheese at that Inn over there and see if they'll let us carry away a flask of port wine.”

They went into the little hostelry and had no difficulty in obtaining exactly what he had visualised. The Inn lacked a signboard and John asked the girl behind the bar what its name was. “Name?” said the girl with that East Anglian rising inflexion that seemed to mount up to the last word of the sentence as if in a kind of optimistic chant or plain-song. “Dew ye come from far, 'tis Northwold Arms. Dew ye live in these parts, 'lis just the New Inn, The beer be the same dew ye be thirsty. 'Tis Patteson's best ale and brewed in Norwich.”

It was at this point that John heard a voice in the interior parlour of this repository of Palteson Ale mentioning his grandfather's name. “They say in Rectory kitchen,” said the voice, “that old man Crow have left all his money to that bloke from Glastonbury what preaches in Prayer-meeting.” The voice became inaudible then. But presently John caught further words among which “Geard of Glastonbury” came clearly to him.

“May I leave my bag here for an hour or so?” enquired John of the barmaid. As the girl seemed unwilling to do more than murmur some further information about the quality of Norwich ale, he boldly got rid of the shabby, black object he was carrying, hoisting it across the counter with an abrupt swing of his long arm and dropping it shamelessly at the young lady's feet. “It's just possible—that I'll be staying the night here,” he threw out, with a catch in his breath from this sudden muscular exertion.

“Single or double?” responded the girl, putting her bare elbows on the counter, staring gravely at Mary, and displaying a much livelier interest in her visitors than she had done before.

The cousins glanced triumphantly at each other. Nothing could have pleased them more at that particular moment than such a question. “Single—at present,” he answered, giving the questioner the most foxy and whimsical smile she had ever received.

They were just leaving the place—the flask of wine in John's pocket and the bread and cheese in a neat parcel in Mary's hand —when several labouring men, laughing uproariously, pushed past them towards the bar. Norfolk, here too, showed its independent Danish blood. There was no obsequiousness towards “the gentry,” such as would have been apparent in Kent or Surrey. One of the newcomers boldly addressed John.