Beggars on Horseback Part 16

"Must be gwain on, I b'lieve," announced Sam, when this was in progress.

"Can't us giv'ee a lift, Senath? I'm sure us wont mind sitten familiar if you don't, will us, Manuel, my dear?"

"Why, no, thank'ee, Sam," said Senath quickly, "I do rare and like a bit of a walk before goin' to the bed. Evenen to you, and thank you, Sam.

Evenen, Mr. Harvey."

He raised a face into which the blood had come with stooping over the rein.

"Evenen, Miss Lear," he muttered.

She started down the road at a good pace so as to have turned off before they came up with her, but she heard the clip-clop of the horse's hoofs as she drew alongside with the Pipers, and she turned in towards them through a gap in the hedge. She pushed a way among bracken and clinging brambles, and as she reached them the sun slipped behind the S. Just hills, and in the glamorous mingling of the afterglow with the swift dusk she stood, as the gig, the two men in it apparently borne along level with the top of the hedge by some mysterious agency, pa.s.sed by.

For a while she stood there, the dew gathering on stone and twig and leaf. She glanced up at the two dark columns reared above, her hand against the rough surface of the nearer one.

"Must give en names, too," she said, with a backward thought for her Merry Maidens. "Why shoulden I call they after Sam and his new tenant?

That one can be Sam,"--looking at the stumpier and wider of the two, "and the tall one, he can be Manuel."

There is little to tell of the love of Senath and Manuel save that it was swift, unspeakably dear, and put beyond the possibility of fulfilment by the death of the man. The slight accident of a rusty nail that ran into his foot, enhanced by the lack of cleanliness of the true peasant, and Manuel, for such a trifling cause, ceased to be. They were fated lovers; fated, having met, to love, and, so Senath told herself in the first hours of her bitterness, fated never to grasp their joy. The time had been so short, as far as mere weeks went, so infinitely long in that they had it for ever. After the funeral in the moorland churchyard, Senath went into her cottage and was seen of no one for many days. Then she reappeared, and to the scandal of the world it was seen that she had discarded her black. She went about her work silently as ever, but seemed to shun meeting her fellow-creatures less than formerly. A bare year after Manuel's death she had married Samuel Harvey.

No one wondered more than Sam himself how this had come about. If the marriage had been a matter of several months earlier, the common and obvious interpretation as to its necessity would have been current everywhere, and Sam would have had his meed of half-contemptuous pity.

As it was, no one knew better than Sam that the other Harvey's wooing had gone no further than that wonderful kiss to which middle-aged people, who have missed the thing in their youth, can bring more reverential shyness than any blushing youth or girl.

Had it been any other than Senath, folk would not have been so surprised. A woman may get along very well single all her days if she has never been awakened to another way of life, but give her a taste of it and it is likely to become a thing that she must have. Yet few made the mistake of thinking that that was how it was with Senath. A strongly spiritual nature leaves its impress on even the most clayey of those with whom it comes in contact, and all knew Senath to be not quite as they were. Yet she married the red-necked Samuel Harvey, and they went to live together at the Upper Farm. And, as to any superior delicacy, Senath showed less than most. A few kind souls there were who thought, with the instinctive tact of the sensitive Celt, that it might hurt her to hear the name "Mrs. Harvey" which would have been hers had she married Manuel. On the contrary, just as though she were some young bride, elated at her position, she asked that even old friends should call her by the new t.i.tle.

Sam was genuinely fond of Senath, and mingled with his fondness was a certain pride at having won what he had set out to win so many years ago; yet, it was so many years that he had been in a fair way to forget all about it till, one evening, he met Senath as he was driving home from market, much as when he had been with Manuel a year before. It had struck him as odd, for Senath was not apt to be upon the highway at that time, and although she was going in an opposite direction she asked for a lift back in his gig. When they came to the track that led off to her cottage, he tied up the mare and went with her to advise her as to her apple-trees, which were suffering from blight, and by the time he left, half an hour later, they were promised to each other. How it came about, Sam never quite understood; the only thing he was sure about was that it had been entirely his doing. Yet he couldn't help wondering a bit, though it all seemed to follow on so naturally at the time, that it was not until he was on his way back to the Upper Farm that he felt puzzled.

He was still wondering about it, and her, when the parson joined their hands in the bleak, cold church, and Senath stood, beneath her unbecoming daisied hat, looking as bleak and cold as the granite walls around her.

Later, Sam found this to be a misleading impression. Never was bride more responsive, in the eager pa.s.sive fashion of shut eyes and quiet, still mouth, than was Senath. Only now and again, in the first weeks of their life together, she would give a start, and a look of terror and blank amazement would leap across her face, as though she were suddenly awakened out of a trance.

Men of Sam's condition and habit of mind do not, by some merciful law of nature, make ardent lovers, and life soon settled down comfortably enough on the farm. Senath was a capable housewife, and, what with the dairy-work and cooking and superintending the washing, and such extra work as looking after any sickly lamb or calf, she had plenty to do. And yet, in the midst of so much activity, every now and then Sam was struck by a queer little feeling of aloofness in Senath--not any withdrawing physically, but a feeling as though her mind were elsewhere. He might find her sitting on the settle with her eyes closed, although she was obviously awake, and an expression of half-fearful joy on her face, as on that of a person who is listening to some lovely sound and holding his breath for fear lest the least noise on his own part should frighten it into stillness.

However, Sam was not an imaginative man, and since the house shone with cleanliness such as it had never known, the shining not of mere scouring, but of the fine gloss only attained by loving care, he did not trouble his head. Women were queer at the best of times, and besides, a few months after the marriage, reason for any additional queerness on the part of Senath became known to him. After she had told him the news, Sam, ever inarticulate, but moved to the rarely felt depths of his nature, went out into a field that was getting its autumn ploughing, and his heart sang as he guided the horses down the furrow. Even as he was doing now, and his father had done before him, so should his son do after him, and the rich earth would turn over in just this lengthening wave at the blade of the ploughshare for future generations of Harveys yet to come. Like most men with any feeling for the land in them, Sam was sure his child must be a son.

And to him, who had not hoped for such a thing in marrying Senath, to him this glory was coming. Everything seemed to him wonderful that day; the pearly pallor of the dappled sky; the rooks and screaming gulls that wheeled and dipped behind his plough; the bare swaying elms, where the rooks' nests clung like gigantic burrs. Dimly, and yet for him keenly, he was aware of all these things, as a part of a great phenomenon in which he held pride of place.

When he came in, his way led through the yard, where a new farm-cart, just come home, stood under the shed in all the bravery of its blue body and vermilion wheels. Senath had crept round in the shed to the back and was studying the tailboard, one hand against it.

"Looken to see all's well to the rear as to the front?" called Sam jovially. "That's a proper farmer's wife."

Senath started violently and dropped her hand, looking away before she did so. "It looks fine," was all she said, and went within doors, pa.s.sing him. A small portent, so slight Sam did not even know it for what it was, and yet something in her look and manner seemed to chill him to the bones of him. Then, and after, he put anything unfathomable in her ways down to her condition, and so turned what might have been a source of discomfort to the account of his joy.

The blossom was thick upon the apple-trees when Senath's boy was born.

He had a long fight of entry, and when the sky was paling and flushing with the reluctant dawn, Sam, who had spent the night alternately snoring on the settle and creeping upstairs in his stockinged-feet, heard the first wailing of his son. He heard, too, the clank of the milk-pails in the yard without, the lowing of an impatient cow, and the crowing--above all sounds the most melancholy to anyone upon a sleepless pillow--of a triumphant c.o.c.k. As he heard all these common noises about his own place, he realized how much more dear they had all become to him by reason of what was in the room above. He knew that his wife had what is inadequately called a "bad time," but although the boards over his head had creaked for hours to the anxious tread of doctor and of nurse, not a cry had come until this one that heart and ear told him was from his child. He went upstairs once more, creeping less this time, and knocked timidly at the door, then coughed to show who it was. The nurse, a thin, yellow-haired London woman doing parish-nursing for her health--a woman he hated while he feared her--opened the door a slit and looked unsympathetically at him.

"I was wanten to knaw . . ." began Sam.

"None the better for hearing you," snapped the nurse. "She must have absolute quiet."

"I dedn't go for to mane that," explained Sam naively, "but the cheild?

'Tes a boy?"

"Oh, it's a boy, and doing all right," said the nurse, and shut the door in his face.

Sam went downstairs and put his head under the yard-pump, and laved his bare red arms in its flow, as men might bathe in the waters of perpetual youth. The great rejuvenation of a new birth had come upon him. For that is what it resolves itself into--the advent of a son to a middle-aged man. Sam felt his term of life taking immortal lease.

Later in the day, the news that his son was weakly was broken to him, but made very little impression. The child could not die, because it was his. To other men, the common lot of humanity, but not so near home.

The morning was at its height, all around romance and mystery had dissolved in the broad shining, when they told Sam his wife wished to see him, but that he must be careful not to excite her as she was not yet beyond the danger-point.

When he saw her, the burning colour in her face strong against the white of her pillows, he thought they must be exaggerating, and he patted her hand cheerfully.

"You've done fine, Senath, la.s.s," he a.s.sured her. "'Tes a brave an'

handsome chap, is young Samuel."

"Not Samuel," answered Senath. Her voice, though low, was composed.

"What then?" asked Sam, remembering his wife was at a time when she must be humoured as far as speech went, anyway.

"Manuel," said Senath. Then, at his start of dissent: "Yes, Manuel."

"You'm my wife, not his," said Sam. "The cheild's my cheild, not his, and et shall be called for ets father."

"I'm Manuel's wife," said Senath, "and et's Manuel's cheild."

Sam calmed down, for he was now sure that his wife was light-headed. It was a common symptom, he had been told.

"No," said Senath, answering his thought, "I'm not that wisht, Sam. I'm in my right mind, and I'm only waiten on you to go. I'm waiten to go, Sam, I'm waiten to go."

"What do you mean, la.s.s?"

"I'm waiten till I've told 'ee why I wedded you, Sam. It was because of Manuel."

She lay still a moment and then went on:

"Of course I had et in my thoughts to die a maid and go to him as he left me. A woman allus thinks that to begin with. And then et began to come clear to me--all the future. How I'd go on getting older and more withered and wi' nawthen to show for my life. And when I saw Manuel agan, he'd say: 'Where's the woman I loved? Where's her blue eyes, and the fine breast of her?' And I'd have to say: 'Wasted, gone, dried-up, Manuel.' I wanted him. I wanted Manuel as I never thought a woman could want anything but peace, and he was taken from me. So I determined in my heart I'd go to Manuel, and go with somethen to take to en. I married you, Sam, because you had the same name, and was the same height, and when I shut my eyes, I could fancy my head was on his breast, and that et was his heart beaten at my ear. That's why I made folk call me 'Mrs.

Harvey': so I could force myself to think et was Manuel Harvey's wife I was. That's why I used to look at your name painted up, ef et was but on the tailboard of a cart. I used to hide the front of et, so that I could pictur' 'Manuel' written under my hand. Sometimes I'd pictur' et so hard and fierce that when I took my hand away, I expected to see er there, and the sight of 'Samuel' was like a blow. I got to knaw that, and to look away before I took my hand off."

Again she stopped and lay awhile as though gathering energy; then the indomitable voice went on:

"At first, when you took me in your arms, et was near to turning me mad, and I thought I couldn't go on wi' et; but I got better and better at imagining et was Manuel, though et was like to kill me every time I woke up. For et was like waking up every time I had to let the strain of my imagining go for a moment. And each time et left me feelen weaker and more kind of wisht than before. But I was glad of that, for et all brought me nearer. When you wedded me, I swear I'd got so I made et Manuel, and not you, who was holding me, and for nine months I've borne his cheild beneath my broken heart. I've made et his."

She drew the little sentient bundle nearer to her, as though to defend it from him. He stared at her, then spoke slackly, trying to urge force into his voice.

"'Tes all nawthen but in your mind, all that. It's what's real as matters."

"Don't you remember, Sam, how the wise woman to church-town had a spite against Will Jacka's Maggie, and told her her cheild was goin' to be an idiot; and how et preyed on the mind of her, and the boy has no mouth-speech in him to this day? That was only in her mind. And how, in the Book, Jacob put the peeled wands before the eyes of the sheep, and the lambs came all ring-straked and speckled? I've put the thought of this before the eye of my mind; I've thought et into bein' Manuel's cheild, even as I belong to him and him only. And 'tes to him I'm taken et."

Sam turned and stumbled from the room, down to the kitchen, and dropped upon the settle. The next moment, a sudden flash of fear sent him to his feet. He tore up the stairs, knocked into the nurse as she came out of her room, and swept her along with him.