Mary Olivier: a Life Part 77

Mamma was saying something as she cried. "I suppose he'll be here, then, all his life, doing nothing."

II.

Mamma had given Papa's smoking-room to Dan. She kept on going in and out of it to see if he was there.

"When you've posted the letters you might go and see what Dan's doing."

Everybody in the village knew about Dan. The postmistress looked up from stamping the letters to say, "Your brother was here a minute ago." Mr.

Horn, the grocer, called to you from the bench at the fork of the roads, "Ef yo're lookin' for yore broother, he's joost gawn oop daale."

If Mr. Horn had looked the other way when he saw you coming you would have known that Dan was in the Buck Hotel.

The white sickle of the road; a light at the top of the sickle; the Aldersons' house.

A man was crossing from the moor-track to the road. He carried a stack of heather on his shoulder: Jem's brother, Ned. He stopped and stared. He was thicker and slower than Jem; darker haired; fuller and redder in the face; he looked at you with the same little, kind, screwed-up eyes.

"Ef yo're lookin' for yore broother, 'e's in t' oose long o' us. Wull yo coom in? T' missus med gev yo a coop o' tea."

She went in. There was dusk in the kitchen, with a grey light in the square of the window and a red light in the oblong of the grate. A small boy with a toasting-fork knelt by the hearth. You disentangled a smell of stewed tea and browning toast from thick, deep smells of peat smoke and the sweat drying on Ned's shirt. When Farmer Alderson got up you saw the round table, the coa.r.s.e blue-grey teacups and the brown glazed teapot on a brown glazed cloth.

Dan sat by the table. Dumpling, Ned's three-year-old daughter, sat on Dan's knee; you could see her scarlet cheeks and yellow hair above the grey frieze of his coat-sleeve. His mournful black-and-white face stooped to her in earnest, respectful attention. He was taking a piece of b.u.t.terscotch out of the silver paper. Dumpling opened her wet, red mouth.

Rachel, Ned's wife, watched them, her lips twisted in a fond, wise smile, as she pressed the big loaf to her breast and cut thick slices of bread-and-jam. She had made a place for you beside her.

"She sengs ersen to slape wid a li'l' song she maakes," Rachel said.

"Tha'll seng that li'l' song for Mester Dan, wuntha?"

Dumpling hid her face and sang. You had to stoop to hear the cheeping that came out of Dan's shoulder.

"Aw, dinny, dinny dy-Doomplin', Dy-Doomplin', dy-Doomplin', Dinny, dinny dy-Doomplin', Dy-Doomplin' daay."

"Ef tha'll seng for Mester Dan," Farmer Alderson said, "tha'llt seng for tha faather, wuntha, Doomplin'?"

"Naw."

"For Graffer then?"

"Naw."

Dumpling put her head on one side, b.u.t.ting under Dan's chin like a cat.

Dan's arm drew her closer. He was happy there, in the Aldersons' kitchen, holding Dumpling on his knee. There was something in his happiness that hurt you as Roddy's unhappiness had hurt. All your life you had never really known Dan, the queer, scowling boy who didn't notice you, didn't play with you as Roddy played or care for you as Mark had cared. And suddenly you knew him; better even than Roddy, better than Mark.

III.

The grey byre was warm with the bodies of the cows and their gra.s.sy, milky breath. Dan, in his clean white shirt sleeves, crouched on Ned's milking stool, his head pressed to the cow's curly red and white flank.

His fingers worked rhythmically down the teat and the milk squirted and hissed and pinged against the pail. Sometimes the cow swung round her white face and looked at Dan, sometimes she lashed him gently with her tail. Ned leaned against the stall post and watched.

"Thot's t' road, thot's t' road. Yo're the foorst straanger she a' let milk 'er. She's a narvous cow. 'Er teats is tander."

When the milking was done Dan put on his well-fitting coat and they went home over Karva to the schoolhouse lane.

Dan loved the things that Roddy hated: the crying of the peewits, the bleating of the sheep, the shouts of the village children when they saw him and came running to his coat pockets for sweets. He liked to tramp over the moors with the shepherds; he helped them with the dipping and shearing and the lambing.

"Dan, you ought to be a farmer."

"I know," he said, "that's why they stuck me in an office."

IV.

"If the killer thinks that he kills, if the killed thinks that he is killed, they do not understand; for this one does not kill, nor is that one killed."

Pa.s.sion Week, two years after Roddy's death; Roddy's death the measure you measured time by still.

Mamma looked up from her Bible; she looked over her gla.s.ses with eyes tired of their everlasting reproach.

"What have you got there, Mary?"

"The Upanishads from the Sacred Book of the East."

"Tchtt! It was that Buddhism the other day."

"Religion."

"Any religion except your own. Or else it's philosophy. You're destroying your soul, Mary. I shall write to your Uncle Victor and tell him to ask Mr. Sutcliffe not to send you any more books from that library."

"I'm seven and twenty, Mamma ducky."

"The more shame for you then," her mother said.

The clock on the Congregational Chapel struck six. They put down their books and looked at each other.

"Dan not back?" Mamma knew perfectly well he wasn't back.

"He went to Reyburn."

"T't!" Mamma's chin nodded in queer, vexed resignation. She folded her hands on her knees and waited, listening.

Sounds of wheels and of hoofs sc.r.a.ping up the hill. The Morfe bus, back from Reyburn. Catty's feet, running along the pa.s.sage. The front door opening, then shutting. Dan hadn't come with the bus.

"Perhaps," Mamma said, "Ned Anderson'll bring him."

"Perhaps.... ('There is one eternal thinker, thinking non-eternal thoughts, who, though one, fulfils the desires of many....') Mamma--why won't you let him go to Canada?"

"It was Canada that killed poor Roddy."

"It won't kill Dan. He's different."