The Stepson (9 page)

‘The spring's coming and no mistake!' Ben's voice beside her roused her with a shock from her dreaming. ‘Just look at that hedge!' and he pointed
with his whip to where in the black and mahogany-coloured thicket of bare hawthorn a few rare leaves, little bright-green feathers, had already unfolded.

Next day Kate was scrubbing the floor of David's room. She was resolved that the preparing of his room should be done by herself alone, and had told Mrs. Jobson so.

‘But you can't scrub the floor, Mrs. Humphrey,' Mrs. Jobson had objected.

‘Why can't I?' asked Kate.

‘Because scrubbing is Emma's job. To my thinking, the mistress ought not to be seen doing the rough work. Emma's got grand enough ideas of herself as it is. Won't you let me send her up to do the dusting and scrubbing? Then you could do the rest — make the bed and that.'

But Kate had insisted. She could not put her desire into words, but she was possessed of a strange, almost fanatical eagerness to slave for David, even though he would never know that she had done so; and, seeing her so resolved, Mrs. Jobson had ceased to expostulate, asking only that she herself should carry up the pail, scrubbing-brush, floor-cloth and soap, in case anyone should see Kate doing so. Having done this, she went downstairs again and sent Emma out on a message, to keep her out of the way.

David's room was up in the roof. A narrow stair from the first floor led up to it. The only other rooms up there were the linen-room and a great rambling attic. Kate, left to herself, had stood looking
round the little room with beating heart. She had only once glanced into it before, when Ben, on the afternoon of their wedding-day, had shown her round the house. Now it was strangely affecting to her to stand alone, with the door closed, in the room of the unknown boy of whom she hoped so much. She imagined him, as she had pictured him from the photograph, a small, fresh-faced fellow, moving about the room from the bed to the window, from the window to the dressing-table, or looking into the glass to brush his hair - that brown hair which, as Ben had told her, had a gleam of red in it.

It was a small, white-walled room, its white ceiling barred with dark beams so closely that beam and ceiling made alternate and equal stripes of black and white. The dormer-window was breast-high. Kate went softly over to it, threw it open, and looked out. Far beneath her, from the foot of the escarpment on whose edge the farm stood, the green-blue country, lit by gleaming splashes of river, receded into the vagueness of remote distance. She seemed to be looking down from a great height. The little front garden, she imagined, must lie under the window, and standing on tiptoe she saw, sure enough, over the edge of the rapid slope of the stone-slabbed roof, the two green plots separated by the straight walk and the two rose-bushes, where four months ago she had found the late rose whose scent had so delighted her.

She turned from the window to examine a picture which hung on the left of the looking-glass. It was a photograph of a group of boys in shorts and striped jerseys. She studied each face carefully, but could not discover which was David. How strange to think that one among those unknown faces must be his; for Ben had told her that David used to play for Appleton, the nearest village. On the right of the looking-glass hung another picture, a colour-plate of a prize Clydesdale with the name Champion Glenalan printed below, and on the opposite wall, above his bed, there was a fox's mask mounted on an oak shield, with the date November the fifteenth of the previous year painted in awkward, unprofessional characters on the shield. David, she thought, must have done that himself.

She opened the top drawers of the chest. The left drawer was empty, but in the right were three collars, marked D. Humphrey, and a blue and white striped scarf. Kate took them in her hands and gazed at them fascinated. Then replacing them, she closed the drawer. The lower drawers were empty, except the bottom one, in which, neatly folded, she found a gay patchwork quilt which belonged, no doubt, to the bed. She closed that drawer too, and then, rolling up her sleeves to the elbows and turning up and pinning back her skirt, she knelt down, took up the scrubbing-brush and soap, and began to scrub the floor vigorously. Her heart was happy and as she
worked she sang softly to herself, her body reaching forward over her strong, well-shaped arms. When she had scrubbed all the floor within her reach, she sat back on her heels and tossed her head sideways to shake back from her eyes a loosened tress of her heavy black hair. Her face was flushed and her calm grey-green eyes were alive with happiness. Kneeling there alone, in the unconscious attitude of a young saint gazing in calm ecstasy at some divine vision, she was a creature of marvellous beauty— a beauty not frail and unearthly, but full-curved and richly human.

When the floor was finished, she rose and, leaving door and window wide open, took up the pail and went out. Mrs. Jobson came bustling down the passage to meet her with a smile of indulgent complicity and took the pail from her without a word. Though she had disapproved on principle of Kate's scrubbing, in actual fact it completed Kate's perfection in her eyes; for Mrs. Jobson considered no woman perfect who could not cheerfully and efficiently accomplish the roughest work. Now, looking at the strong, beautiful, healthy Kate with her sleeves rolled to the elbows and her face glowing, she knew that her young mistress was a woman after her own heart, worthy of all her devotion.

As for Kate, with the glow of her work still upon her she was content and at rest. She had devoted herself, and by doing so she had escaped from herself,
that self which had so much oppressed her of late. Her heart was free and she was at peace with herself and those about her. She felt an increased kindness for old Ben, and even her resentment towards Emma died down for a while.

For the rest of the day her recently assumed duties kept her busy, and next morning, when breakfast was over and her other work for the moment finished, she took the clean sheets and pillow-cases from the clothes-horse on which she had hung them to air overnight, and went up to David's room to make the bed.

‘It must be over an hour now,' she thought as she bent over the bed, tucking in the blankets, ‘since Ben started for the station. In another hour they'll be here'; and as she realized it her heart began to beat rapidly, and suddenly she felt shy, terriby shy, at the thought of her first meeting with the boy. She would be glad when it was over and they were comfortably settled. First meetings are always awkward.

She had awakened just before dawn that morning. One by one the birds were rousing themselves. First a thrush had begun to flute timidly in the high elms not far from their bedroom window, dropping note after note into the absolute silence of the twilight. Then another had joined in, and then, from farther away it seemed, came the high, keen call of a bluetit, monotonously insistent like a small, shrill,
mechanical toy. Then the starlings had begun, carrying on combined soliloquies of endless variety, now a long, querulous upward slur answered by a slur downwards, now a gentle, pure fluting that rivalled the thrushes, now a quick wooden chattering like the rattle of tiny castanets, or a subdued watery quacking like a flock of miniature ducks. At intervals the gross, metallic crow of a cock broke out in the yard below, drowning the softer and more ethereal singing of the wild birds; and then, far away, like the ghost of the first, a second cock-crow replied. Then again the bird-song possessed the silence. Other notes now were audible among the rest: the hard, lively chirping of sparrows, like the clinking of pennies, the clear shower of a robin's call, the gay, commonplace chirp of the chaffinches. It seemed that the whole world was empty of everything but the singing of birds - a vast, palely luminous hollow tremulously sensitive to sound. And as the singing increased, so the light increased, as if the light was the visible counterpart of the bird-song.

Kate had lain wide awake and listening. Ben's head was turned away from her: she could hear by his breathing that he was still asleep. She lay in an ecstasy of quiet happiness: it seemed to her that the singing of the birds was the singing of her own heart.

As soon as Ben got up he had begun to talk of David's arrival.

‘You'll have to put back the dinner half an hour, Kate,' he said, as he stood at the glass fastening his collar. ‘You see, his train doesn't get to Elchester till eleven fifty-five, so we shan't be here till one. The mare never does it under the hour.'

‘Yes,' she thought, tucking in the blankets, ‘it must be well over an hour since he started.' And having finished the bed, she opened the bottom drawer and took out the patchwork quilt.

She was surprised at the weight of it. Laying it on the bed, she unfolded it and then paused, awestruck, to examine it. When she had glanced at it in the bottom drawer yesterday she had not noticed its richness. She saw now that it was worked in a geometrical pattern of squares within squares, the colours cunningly chosen to throw up the squares and sections, of squares into a complicated relief. Every patch was silk, satin, or velvet; there was not a scrap of common cloth in the whole quilt. Kate bent over it, absorbed in its magnificence. Her eye picked out a small oblong patch of plum-coloured velvet. She stroked it with one finger, and her touch, pressing down the rich pile, left a silky sheen of a lighter shade. Then she brushed it over the opposite way and the velvet darkened to a deeper shade. Next to it was sewn a square of grass-green silk sprigged with lilac; and as she continued to explore, her eye discovered scarlets, blues, yellows, greys. ‘Why,' she thought to herself, ‘you could spend an
hour looking into it.' It was thickly padded with some soft, woolly substance and, turning over one end of it, she saw that it was backed with violet, a strong, lustrous silk. She turned the whole quilt over to enjoy the colour of it, and then stood wondering whether, after all, this expanse of soft violet, variegated with sheen and shadow as its undulations caught or excluded the light from the window, was not more lovely than the intricate splendour of the patchwork. Then, thinking that David might consider, if she left it so, that the quilt had been carelessly spread inside out, she reversed it again and spread it smoothly over the bed. After laying a clean blue and white cover on the dressing-table and putting new candles in the two candlesticks, she went out of the room, down the narrow flight of stairs, and along the passage to her own bedroom.

There she took off her blue print working dress and going to a drawer she took out a dress of silvery grey and began slowly to put it on. The dress was plain enough, except for a touch of purple at the wrists and on the breast, and it suited her dark, pallid beauty perfectly. Then she smoothed her hair, fixing it here and there with a hairpin, and opening another drawer she took out a gold watch and a long double gold chain which Ben had given her for a wedding present. With both hands she opened out the chain to its full circle and, bowing her head, put the chain over it. It hung in a great loop to her
waist, with the watch swinging on the end of it. She caught the swinging watch and tucked it into the breast of her dress. It was already, she noticed, ten minutes to one. In ten minutes they would arrive. She must go down and see that everything was ready.

But as soon as she thought of going downstairs, nervousness seized her; she would wait a few minutes till she had pulled herself together. After all, there was no need for her to do anything; everything would have been done already by the infallible Mrs. Jobson.

And so Kate lingered in the bedroom with nothing left to do there, hesitating on the brink of this new event in her life which a few minutes would bring to pass. If she were to go downstairs now to wait for them in the parlour, she would find Emma laying the table, and she felt shy of meeting Emma just at present. She felt shy even of meeting Mrs. Jobson. And suddenly she realized that she was tired, tired of the stress of anticipation and the state of almost morbid tension in which, under a calm exterior, she had been living during the last few days. She wished, in her sudden weariness, that David was not coming at all. With a thrill of something like fear she heard the rattle of wheels on the cobble-stones of the yard. Then, as she stood listening with hands lifted and half open, as if to receive some invisible gift, she heard the wheels stop. They had arrived.

But still Kate lingered in the bedroom. How boldly and gladly she had taken the plunge before, when she had turned her back on Penridge. Then there had been no hanging back. Why, then, did she hesitate so timidly now?

‘Kate! Kate!' Ben's voice was calling up to her from the foot of the stairs.

She drew in her breath sharply. Then she hurried to the door and opened it.

‘Just coming!' she called back. Then, after pausing for a minute with her hand on the doorhandle, she threw up her head and walked calmly downstairs.

From the doorway of the parlour Kate received the impression of two figures over by the fireplace, one standing, the other seated. Then, as her sight cleared, she saw that the standing figure was Ben. He raised his head sharply as she entered.

‘Come along, Kate! Come along!' he said. ‘Here he is!' and as Kate came forward the seated figure rose.

The first thought that occurred to Kate was that Ben was playing a practical joke on her, that David had not come, or at least that he was in the kitchen or the yard, and that Ben in his cheerful, larking way was trying to see if she would believe that the tall, broad-chested stranger who rose slowly and a little awkwardly from the chair as she approached was the boy she was expecting. Yes, the man who stood before her was certainly a farmer friend of Ben's, or some land-agent or travelling salesman such as she was accustomed to find from time to time in the parlour or walking about the farm with Ben; for Kate knew in her mind well enough what David would be like. She had seen those photographs of him, and though Ben had mentioned that the latest one had been taken five years ago, he had said it was still like him; and so from that latest photograph Kate had made the David of her imagination, the baby-faced lad, smaller, much smaller, than herself,
to whose coming she had looked forward with such eager, maternal longing. For in this boy, she had told herself with a secret thrill of delight, she would at last find a creature on whom she could lavish all her long-suppressed love.