The Elderbrook Brothers (45 page)

For seven whole days, marking them off one by one in his pocket diary, he refrained from visiting Kate. On the morning of the eighth day she sent the gardener round with a note for him, asking him to tea.

He went. She received him as usual, kindly, and with the lack of ceremony which he rejoiced in because it was the sign of their long friendship. And being with her he was happy, his nerves at rest, the tumult of his seven days' agony a distant rumour. It was a deep and blessed and a precarious peace, lasting just so long as he should have her in his sight, and no longer. A few minutes after their parting the starved heart would cry out for her, the mind renew its longing. This he knew well enough, but the knowledge was powerless to impair the moment's bloom. He was with her. It was enough.

Tea was laid for two only. ‘Your mother's out?'

‘Yes, she's visiting one of her cronies. That's why it had to be today. You had my note?'

‘Of course. I shouldn't be here otherwise.'

With the words gone past recall, he wished them unsaid. They seemed to say more than he had intended.

‘Wouldn't you? You don't usually wait to be invited.'

If a question was implied he evaded it, with a laugh. ‘I don't, do I.'

During tea, in which neither was interested, she kept him amused with small talk of her doings and his. It did not matter to him what she said, so long as it was she who said it. He looked and listened and was at peace, not because she was beautiful, not because her talk had a quality that gave new life to the most ordinary remark, but because above all she was Kate and he loved her. What is love? 'Tis not hereafter. Hereafter there would be a penalty to pay: till then he was in bliss.

She forgot to offer him a second cup.

‘I specially wanted you to come today, Felix. There's something I must tell you.'

‘Yes?'

‘It's about Johnny.' She had suddenly paled. She was silent.

Felix trembled. Shame and compassion tore at his heart. ‘I know,' he said gently.

‘What do you know?'

Her voice was very low. She seemed afraid to look at him.

‘He's been killed, hasn't he?' said Felix. ‘In the hunting field.'

She raised startled eyes to his. ‘Felix! What
do
you mean?'

‘I saw it in a dream,' he said, ‘seven nights ago.'

‘But——' Suddenly, and rather loudly, she laughed. ‘My poor Felix, don't worry. He's not dead. I had a letter from him this morning.' To give him time to recover his balance she added quickly: ‘It was in answer to mine. He's not very pleased with me, poor lamb.'

‘Why?' The question was automatic. The answer could not concern him.

‘I've asked him to release me from my engagement.'

‘I see,' said Felix gravely. ‘And he?'

‘He wants to know why.'

Felix smiled. His brain was in a whirl. ‘A natural curiosity. One sees his point.'

Kate fixed her gaze on the fire glowing in the grate. ‘Felix, will you give me your advice?' She glanced at him and smiled strangely. ‘Or must I wait till they make you vicar?'

‘What is it, Kate?'

‘You don't believe in breaking promises, do you? Nor do I. But is it right, do you think, for a girl to marry someone she doesn't really love? Just to fulfil her engagement? Just to please her mother?'

‘My dear Kate!' He could say no more for a moment, but presently went on: ‘You know the answer to that as well as I do. Yes, and better. You know what's right for yourself
better than I can. So I think there must be another question in your mind. What is it?'

‘You can't imagine, can you?'

In his confusion he thought he detected a new note in her voice. Was it possible that she was angry? Was it possible that she was still unsure of her decision?

‘You
were
fond of him, I suppose?' he said tentatively.

‘I'm still fond of him. That's not the same.'

‘Not quite,' said Felix.

‘Not nearly,' said Kate.

‘I don't want to pry, Kate. But has anything happened to make you change your mind about him?'

‘Yes. I've come to my senses.'

‘I see,' said Felix again. He waited for elucidation.

She stood up suddenly. Her eyes blazed at him. ‘If you weren't such a fool and a prig,' she said furiously, ‘you, …'

She was in tears and stumbling towards the door. He caught her just in time, and held her struggling in his arms.

‘Leave me alone,' she said. ‘You know the way out.'

He held her tighter. A shattering light dawned upon him. The stars sang together and the little hills clapped their hands.

‘Darling Kate! You wouldn't marry
me
, I suppose?'

‘No.'

‘I thought not,' he said, cupping her face in his hands.

‘I haven't been given the chance,' said Kate, feebly fending him off.

‘And anyhow,' said Felix exultantly, ‘you wouldn't marry a fool and a prig, would you?'

She faced him with a rueful reluctant grin. ‘I hate you, Felix.'

They kissed. The battle was over.

‘I don't hate
you
, said Felix. ‘At least, not very much. I rather think I've been in love with you always, from the first moment I saw you.'

It was not true. It was not even nearly true. But he wanted to believe it, and so did.

No sooner was Hilda married than Matthew put into effect a project he had long meditated. There was no logical reason why he should have waited till her going; there was indeed no reason at all unless it was his reluctance to remind her, even indirectly, of something he wanted her to forget.

Hilda's going was an immense relief to him. The thought of her as another man's wife made her a different person in his imagination. It was a distasteful yet welcome thought, putting an end both to his responsibility for her and to his itch for possession. She was gone. He was rid of her. He was a free man again. Yet even now the worm of fear was not dead in him. The shared knowledge of that night's fantastic work still bound him to Hilda in a bitter bondage. How much or how little she knew he did not ask; never once had they spoken of it together; but she knew enough, too much; and though he knew he could depend on her loyalty he was not so sure of her judgment. Sometimes in the small hours he would wake in a cold sweat, wondering what unguarded confidences might be wheedled out of her in the intimacy of a contented marriage, such as hers promised to be. Only time could appease him. Only time could blunt the memory and draw the sting of his terror. He prayed that the weeks and months and years might come and go, uneventfully, piling themselves up into a great mountain of oblivion, which no eye, no probing curious eye, should ever pierce. He had the fancy, too, that his own remembering would somehow betray him, would fill the surrounding air with the poison of his thought and provoke the very interest he most feared. And the beech by Hilda's window was a perpetual reminder.

At his bidding Harry Newth and Pug Barnfield came over from Sawston End to see about it. They were not only tree-fellers by trade but would negotiate a sale for you with the timber merchants if the job were worth it. Harry was a taciturn fellow, speaking only to the point. He was the elder
of the two, a tall beetle-browed man with half-an-inch of prickly grey stubble covering the greater part of his wind-dried face. But Pug, born forty years ago in Upmarden itself, had plenty to say, especially to Mr Matthew, whom he had known familiarly from boyhood days. Simple and cheerful, with a face as round and red as the rising sun in a child's picture-book, he carried with him an air of perpetual wonder and surprise, and his mouth was full of marvels.

‘He's a good wholesome tree, Mr Matthew. Not shaken, look.' He patted the trunk affectionately, as though it had been the flank of a horse. ‘There's a bit of nice timber there.'

‘Pretty nigh four tons,' said Harry. ‘Us'll have to put a set in him.'

‘That's right, Harry,' said Pug. ‘We've brought all the gear, look. Where'll you have him tumble, Mr Matthew? He leans towards the house, don't he? My meaning ‘twould be a rare smash if he went that way.' Pug threw back his head, puckering his face in silent laughter. ‘Fine mess he'd make of that window.'

‘That wouldn't do at all, Pug,' said Matthew, smiling.

‘Na-a-a-ay,' drawled Pug emphatically, ‘there'd be no profit in that.'

‘Us'll have to put a set in him,' said Harry, patient and unamused. ‘I told you.'

Putting a set in the tree meant hacking a section out of the far side of the trunk, some eighteen inches from the ground, to correct the bias, so that when the sawing from the other side began to make headway the tree must tend to fall away from the house and the sawyers. Harry Newth, with no more words, got to work with the axe; and Pug, fondling the large two-handed saw, went on with the conversation.

‘You're an old hand at this game, Pug.'

‘Ye-e-es,' said Pug. ‘One way and another I bin tree-throwing since a boy, look. I seen a man killed once,' he went on with relish. ‘In the woods it was. It wasn't the falling tree that hit him, look. Na-a-a-ay! The tree we was
throwing was a crooked ‘un, see? And what did he do but strike another tree, lying quiet on the ground! And up he jumped, the other tree did, up he jumped like as if he was alive, and fetched him a clout o' the skull. Twas the last of poor Jim, that it was.'

Matthew could not give his whole attention to the anecdote. The sound of the great axe cleaving the air and cutting into the firm flesh of the tree distracted him. It was a noble tree, with a history, and but for that one night a rich and happy history. It had seen two generations of men grow into manhood; it had survived a thousand hazards and gathered into its green mysterious life the magic of uncounted seasons; he hated destroying it.

‘I'll take a turn with him, Harry,' said Pug.

‘She bites well this morning,' remarked Harry, surrendering the axe.

Soon it was time to get busy with the saw. Pug and Harry each took an end, and presently Matthew himself lent a hand, to each in turn. The rhythm of the sawing helped to dull his fancy. The whole experience began to assume the quality of a dream. At intervals the tree shuddered and shifted a little. It shuddered and creaked, as if after long years of silent life it were finding, in death, a voice at last. To witness a tree-felling was no novelty to Matthew, but he could not drag himself away. He owed it to this friend of his childhood to stay with him till the end.

The end, though momently expected, came with dramatic suddenness. At a shout from Pug the three men jumped away towards the house, and the tree went crashing down, the sawn butt pitching violently towards them.

Pug, with a large red handkerchief, wiped the sweat from his beaming face.

‘That's finished he off, Mr Matthew.'

‘Yes,' said Matthew.

He sighed. He felt dazed, like a man waking suddenly from a dream. He felt almost that he had taken part in a murder.

‘Come inside,' he said, ‘and have a drop of cider.'

IT was almost the first thing Guy noticed, the absence of the beech. Weary of hinting and arguing with a husband whose trick of charming away disagreement and saying nothing to the point gave him an unfair advantage, Nora had at last taken the matter into her own hands, started a secret correspondence with her sister-in-law Ann, and arranged a family visit without even consulting him. It was an audacious step and she trembled as she took it, but she was resolved to be a mystery no longer, and to tolerate none. Precariously gay she confronted Guy with an ultimatum. She was going, she said, on a visit to Upmarden, and she was taking Joey with her. Guy could come or not, as he pleased. Guy laughed. To have done anything else would have made him look ridiculous, a medicine he had no taste for. But he realized, with creditable quickness, that he couldn't laugh himself out of the fix she had put him in. If he gave way she would have won a plain victory and established an awkward precedent. But if he pompously refused his consent or churlishly denied her his company, what then? She would set off without either, he saw it in her eye, and he would be left to his lonely sulks and become a laughing-stock in the family. Moreover, though her impudence nettled him, he could not help admiring it. There was something stimulating, provocative, in finding that his doting little wife had so much devil in her. So, just in time, he had the presence of mind to laugh; and then, with an air of high good humour, he took possession of her plan, modified it, made it his own. They would run down in the car, he said, just he and she. Not Joey: on this point he was firm. Joey was too young for such escapades. Joey would be an unnecessary complication. And Mrs Macfarlane would like nothing better than to have Joey all to herself for a day or two.

So he had ordained, and so it was. And almost the first change he noticed at Upmarden, after all these years, was the absence of the old beech at the back.

‘You've cut him down, Matthew! What was the idea?'

‘He was too near,' said Matthew. ‘He cast a shadow.'

‘What! On the blind side of the house!'

‘Come, old boy, not quite! There's one bedroom.' He pointed. ‘Faith's, if you remember.'

‘Yes, but who sleeps there? Only the servant.'

‘It darkened the whole place somehow,' said Matthew. ‘It got on my nerves.'

Guy, having returned to his old home in triumph, however belatedly, was inclined to be fretful over even the smallest change.

‘Place isn't quite the same, you know, without it.'

‘No, it isn't,' said Matthew cheerfully. ‘That's just the idea.'

Guy could see that this elder brother of his had become very set in his ideas, which was only to be expected in a man stuck away here in the country, surrounded by cattle and clodhoppers, and with nothing of interest happening from one year's end to another. Hardening of the mental arteries, he reflected sagaciously. But he liked old Matthew; good old sort; wasn't his fault that he was a bit dull.