The Elderbrook Brothers (24 page)

There was, indeed, plenty of hard intellectual work to be done, more than could be comfortably managed by a young man who had cows to look after and hens to feed (for Minsterbourne was self-sufficient in its economy) and acres of beans and potatoes to plant and reap. He did not complain, however; for deep in his being was the knowledge, not quite conscious, that in busyness was his salvation.

THIS year, in Joe's part of the world, December looked like being as damp and dirty as November itself. No bright days such as he had known in former times, when Emily was alive; and even if there had been he could not have enjoyed them. Anger smouldered in him. It was all that was left to warm the blood flowing in his veins. Cooped up in the kitchen, with someone always near to keep an eye on him, he felt like a convict. He, Joe Elderbrook, who had always had his own way, to be treated like a man who wasn't responsible! In the last weeks of his time upstairs, with skinny ninny Nunn in command of him, he had learned that the next best thing to being out of doors was to look out of the window. But where was the use in looking out of the window on a world that was all mist and muck? This morning he turned from it in disgust and fixed his morose, despairing gaze on the shining black hob. Shifting his chair a few inches cost him a greater effort than he would ever confess to. It would never do to let his jailers know about the pain and the trembling and the racing heart, or back to bed he'd be hustled, like a naughty child.

At least and at last he had escaped from that bedroom, and his quietness since then, his sly docility, had astonished them all;
for they had expected the ructions to go on. He was not to do this and not to do that. Not till he was stronger. And instead of laughing in their silly faces (for he knew he would never be stronger, never anything but weak as pap, a loose bag of old bones), he had offered a meek acquiescence. Dr Waterhouse, as though reading his thoughts, had tried a more peremptory tone. ‘You must take things very quietly, Mr Elderbrook, and not exert yourself at all, or I won't be answerable for the consequences.' As if he could be answerable anyhow, the booby! And answerable who to?—him above? As for consequences, what could consequences matter to a man stripped of his manhood and tied all day to a chair? Best not try to walk without help, they said: chair to table was about as much as he could manage. They said that, did they? We'd see. All in good time, my hearties. But there was no longer much fire in such reflections; there was only a weary malice, the sour dregs of a helpless resentment. Joe tried to believe his present meek behaviour to be the merest policy, dictated by cunning: better so than admit that that ferocious will of his, shackled and insulted at last, had turned in upon him and was tearing at his vitals, like the wolf it was. And Joe, with a perverse pleasure in the torment, goaded the wolf on, with tricks and taunts and mockery, retailing old triumphs, recalling the pride and pomp of his vigorous manhood, now gone for ever, fallen into dust, as he too would soon fall … and damned good riddance. For the body that would no longer do his bidding he had no pity. He railed at its feebleness, treated its pains with contempt, and vowed to himself that he wanted nothing so much as to be done with it.

Till midday he sat staring dull-eyed at the kitchen hob, half hearing the rain that ran in the house-gutters and slapped down on the cobblestones, but conscious of little but his accumulating wretchedness and the passing to and fro of his daughter Nancy or the village child who helped her. Then, as the clock on the mantelshelf struck twelve, a notion occurred to him, the first definite spark generated during long days of inanimate
brooding. He stirred in his seat. His glance rested for a moment on the two sporting guns in the gun-rack above the hearth.

‘Nancy! …
Nancy!'

Nancy came hurrying. ‘Yes, Father. Are you all right?'

‘Way upstairs, on my bedroom mantelpiece, you'll find my tobacco pouch, m' dear. One pipeful won't hurt me, d' you think?'

‘No,' said Nancy warmly. ‘One pipeful won't. Doctor said as much.'

‘If it's not there it'll be on the chest of drawers. On it or in it somewhere.'

‘What a place for it! Sure it isn't in your pocket, Father?'

‘What d' you take me for?' The fingers of his left hand closed tightly on the pouch in his pocket. He turned a blank face towards her. ‘Off you go, girl! And'—his voice took on a sudden sharpness—‘don't come back till you find it, mind!'

As Nancy left the room by one door, shutting it behind her for fear of draughts, the kitchen-maid entered it by another, from the scullery. Joe was already on his feet, balanced precariously, but feeling more sure of himself with every second that passed.

The child started at sight of him standing up alone.

‘Well, Bella? That's your name, isn't it?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘A nice name for a nice girl, eh? Now you know where the coats hang, Bella? And you know which is my greasy old mackintosh, the one I tend the sheep in. I want it, my dear, and quick. Now! No questions! Do as you're told like a good girl.'

‘You wouldn't be going out, sir?' Bella faltered. ‘It's raining——'

‘It was, my child, but it isn't now. Use your pretty eyes. And fetch me that mackintosh quick. There's not a minute to lose, look.'

She hesitated, but his bright fierce smile was more than she dared resist.

By the time she returned he had dragged himself, gun in hand, as far as the back door, calculating that she would come there to look for him.

‘I dursn't let you go out, sir. They'd be ever so cross.'

The fingers of his free hand fumbled desperately in the pockets of the old mackintosh the girl carried.

‘Don't you worry, Bella. I'm master here, mind. I'm going to get us a nice rabbit for supper. See?' Having found the cartridges in its pocket he had no further use for the mackintosh. But as he stepped carefully out of the house, his eyes peering across the grass plot to where a tall beech stood ready to support him should he get so far, the girl snatched at his arm. ‘You coming too?' he said gaily, leading her along. ‘That's right, dearie. It's a long time since I courted a pretty wench.'

‘Oh, you didn't ought to, Mr Elderbrook. Please to come in, do.'

He chuckled, leaning part of his weight on the girl, glad of her help, and enlivened by her youthful simplicity. They reached the tall tree without mishap, and with Joe in such high good humour that Bella began to pluck up courage and think her anxiety needless.

‘You see?' he said, pausing for a rest. ‘I'm as game as a fighting cock.'

‘If you'll excuse me, sir, I'd best be getting back to my kitchen.'

‘Not just yet, Bella. No, no.' Her plea was transparent, her intention to give him away clearly legible in her flushed cheeks and downcast look. ‘Help me a step or two further. I can't manage without my little sweetheart. Not yet.'

He dismissed her some ten minutes later, when they were well beyond sight of the house. The moment she was gone he moved off, with slow purposeful strides, at a tangent, making for a field where he judged they would least think to look for
him. But he knew he hadn't much time. Now or never he must put his plan—and himself—to the proof. Sixty years or more ago he had shot two wood pigeons, in two successive shots, near this very spot, in that bit of a copse over there. A pretty fair performance for a child. He did not demand that he should do as well as that today; but something he must do, some living thing must die by his hand. Just to show 'em; yes, but still more to satisfy himself, by giving the lie to the whisper in his heart that said he was done for. A rabbit, a crow, he wasn't particular what, so long as it was something. If he missed, he would have lost the game. If he missed he would find something he couldn't miss.

He loaded the gun, carried it at half-cock, and waited.

His eyes were not what they had been. But a man could not wait long in this place without seeing a rabbit or two, and presently, standing in the shadow of the little grove, he raised his gun and took aim.

He fired. The rabbit lolloped away. Stumbling forward, as if to run after the beast, in an agony of rage he fired again, at random, and lost his footing, and fell headlong. Darkness rushed into his eyes. From a great distance he heard, like a small clear tune, a woman's voice calling him. Nancy's voice. Or maybe Emily's. But, whoever it was, he was dead before she found him.

WITHIN three months of his father's death Matthew was married. Quick work, but where was the point in waiting, and he already past thirty? He married a girl called Ann, only daughter of a farmer at Faircross who had made a poor thing of it and was sold up. Not a brilliant marriage, but nothing brilliant was expected of Matthew. It was at the auction that he first caught sight of Ann, and maybe it was the forlornness of her situation that made him look at her twice. There was no reserve price on her: on the contrary she seemed
singularly unwanted, for it was common talk that the young man who for a year or two had been taking her to the local dances and other sociable gatherings had switched his attention to a girl more discriminating in her choice of a father. Ann bore herself a little proudly, both at the sale and afterwards. She was very ready to resent either sympathy or neglect, though it stood to reason that one or the other must come her way. But Matthew's simple friendliness won her confidence even before she was aware of him as anything more than the man who had bidden for and bought some of her favourite bits and pieces: a circumstance for which she had been prepared to view him very coldly. She was not naturally severe however; she was gentle and warmhearted; and being so she could not help his seeing, before long, that she found these same qualities in him and was comforted by them. Very soon, with nothing said to the point, it occurred to them both, as a sudden surprising idea, that if he asked her to marry him she would very likely say yes; and within an hour of that discovery Matthew began to think that he might easily do worse.

Ann did not either beglamour him or set him on fire, as some earlier fancies had done. The glance of her brown eyes, the blunt contours of her kind square face, did not start the music of a remote unimaginable paradise sounding in his mind. Nor did he ask that of her: he rather thought he would get along better without such disturbances. So why not Ann? A man must have someone to talk to, share his home with; must have someone in the house to make the butter and cheese and see to the poultry; must have someone who, best of all, will cheat mortality by bearing him children. Two or three sons and perhaps a couple of daughters: even girls came in useful about a place. In a marriage reckoning of Matthew's such calculations would have been implicit, but his feeling for Ann was less rational and more generous than that. Both he and she were moved rather to give than to get, and Ann's only discontent in the transaction was that she who was getting so much could give, as she thought, so little. Coming to Upmarden as
Matthew's wife she resumed possession of those few salvaged treasures, and the two settled down together well enough.

A factor making for some little awkwardness in those first weeks was Nancy's presence in the house and Nancy's sullen consciousness of being no longer mistress of it. But Nancy, too, had her plans. The turn of events had given her the broadest hint that she must stir herself, now or never, unless she intended to live and die an old maid. It was no longer a matter of merely lifting a finger and beckoning her suitors back; for they, good practical fellows, had found other and less exacting loves: less exacting, and, to do Nancy justice, less troubled by considerations of family duty. She was now in possession of the freedom she had so long craved for: rather more of it, indeed, than she altogether relished. She was not, at the moment, wanted by anyone: the supply of Nancy was greatly in excess of the demand. That, however, could be put right, and she set about putting it right. Within narrow rural limits she began to lead a busy social life: there was never a local hop but she contrived to get herself taken to it. She visited a smart hairdresser's establishment at Mercester and came home looking both beautiful and strange. Her dusky cheeks acquired a warm bloom and her dark eyes a new soft brilliance. This sudden second blossoming made Matthew and Ann tell each other, with sly grins, that Nancy had found herself a lover at last. But in this they were mistaken: she was merely in process of finding one. Very soon her glance came to rest on Fred Hislop, the jobmaster's son, who did a thriving business at Mercester. He was a goodhumoured and well set-up fellow, surprisingly young-looking for his forty-two years, a widower (no harm in that), his father's sole heir, and already a man of substance. Nancy, having sampled his company, decided that he would like to marry her; and before very long she had arranged that he should be of the same opinion.

IT was appropriate that she should live in Shepherd's Market, thought Guy, as he rode up in the lift to her apartment, and appropriate that her Shepherd's Market should be one of the most sophisticated—as well as romantic—regions of the West End, a region in and of London, most decidedly, yet having for those who loved it a separate self-contained quality, as of an urban village. Appropriate because she herself had evidently been designed, by nature and art, as a shepherdess of sorts, and had in fact made quite a hit in that character in a recently revived eighteenth-century comedy: an inspired bit of casting, Guy thought it, remembering, with his finger on the bell-push, the candid blue eyes, the fair skin, the small delicate figure. He saw her as a shepherdess in the Theocritan style, her plump woolly sheep standing woodenly around her while a silver-tongued swain wooed her disdainful ears with songs of love; or, if not that, maybe a milkmaid, carrying a beribboned milking-stool and having nothing in the world to do but strike heavenly attitudes and charm the birds out of the trees with her beauty. Such fancies will visit even a stern man of business out of business hours; and today was Sunday; and Guy had an invitation to tea.