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Chapters 32 to 34 · The Golden Arrow

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Chapter thirty two to thirty four of The Golden Arrow by Merry Webb. This
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LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by Anne Ericson Toronto, chapter
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thirty two. As they neared the cottage at Sleep in the early evening,
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under a sky of ink and gold, the sound of Lily's raised voice and
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hysterical sobbing came through the window. I shall keep it, I told the
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man I would, and pay two shillings a month. It's to go back
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straight, replied Joe's voice, obstinately. I won't, screamed Lily. It's
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a lovely locket and dirt cheap. I was going to put some of your
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nasty black hair in it. Pack it up, locket's on sixteen shilling a
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week. Lily broke out, crying afresh. Deborah hurriedly knocked. There was
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a startled silence. Then Joe appeared at the door, very dour and perspiring.
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Being as you've come, he said, you met take a parcel for
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me to the post. Eli, bring that locket down when you come,
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Joe. We thought we'd come and tell you as we married, said Deborah.
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You don't say well, Stephen, I think the better on you I
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do that marriage I a grand thing. Joe cut a smile on Stephen's face,
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which had a clinched look. He stopped, wondering how much of their
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quarrel had been overheard. There was another silence. Deborah produced Eli's letter.
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Well he is a funny old bird, said Joe, opening the letter as
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he would open a poultry basket full of hens. Eli hunt Badge has pleasure
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in announcing. Is he having a sail? Stephen? As he intends to
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speak at three prompt Sunday on sin his own and especial. The Lord wishes
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you to attend the old fool's mad, said Stephen. At this moment,
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Lily came down. She wore a green blouse made low in the neck,
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and in the opening hung a locket made of a large imitation emerald. The
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brightness of the green glass set off her delicate complexion, and she was rather
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flushed from crying. Stephen looked at her with quite a spark of admiration and
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a sense of sympathy, for he two loved bright things, the glimmer on
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the surface of life. But he loved them because they concealed the black depths
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below. Lily loved them, because they were all in all to her.
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They am come to say as they're married, said Joe, addressing the alarm
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clock. It seemed Lily was taken aback put out. She had always felt
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and seemed so very righteous since Deborah's departure was Stephen now she had no such
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pleasure. It was scarcely worth while having children, she reflected, if they
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would have no advantage over Deborah's. For she looked admiringly at Stephen, disparagingly
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at Joe. If mind take after their father, they will be plain featured.
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She said to herself. Well, deab I'm sure I'm glad to hear
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it, she said. There couldn't be any blessing without the Holy Estate.
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Put there, she looked at Joe again. The sweats made streaks down your
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black face, Joe, her voice was like a knife. If you don't
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wash for your wife, you met for company. Joe departed to the wash
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house nod, apparently overweighted with the blessings of the Holy Estate. Presently he
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put his head in Come and see the pig gooot, he asked, even
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in a noncommittal manner. They sat down on the bench where Joe cleaned the
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boots at the other side of the cottage from the parlor window. Come and
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I'll show you my lace collar, said Lily. When the men had gone,
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they went upstairs and sat down on the bed. Jebrah admired the collar.
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She was feeling pitiful towards the Lily because of her tear flushed face and
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the smallness of her joys and sorrows. It seemed to her that Lily,
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whether safely married or diltily unmarried, was cut out for small failures in love.
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She wondered why i'd pack up this locket if I was you, lil,
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she advised, Oh, you was listening, Nan, Lily was bitter.
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I couldn'at hope at lil m Well, I want it, I'm fond
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on it. But you're fonder of Joe, poor Joe. You'd leave her
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please him than have bits of jewelry. Hush herket'em down there. From
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under the window came Stephen's voice. I thought, if you'd care for a
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bit of a lone Joe an surprise her. No, thank'e, kindly,
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Steve. Jewelry's a lot to women, said Stephen, out of the depth
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of his experience among the young ladies of Silverton. It shouldn'ta be more than
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their chop, and inna to deab, I swear, And yet you're getting
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good money? Well then no, Steve, it's right kind on you.
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But she mun learn to do on what I get if she canna. Now,
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what about when the little UN's come? Good, lord man, you're
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not thinking of kids already? Stephen's voice was full of surprised amusement. I
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well, I'll be blowed. I calculated it all up afore, I ask
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lil, said Joe. Of course, who else would if I didna calculate
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at what wages and insurance? And how many kids? I thought to have?
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And said Stephen, with the unevenness of laughter in his tone, what's
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the reckoning? Six? What? Well, it's a good middling number.
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How many do you want yourself? Oh? Lord none. Stephen desired to
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be exactly the opposite of Joe, and was much too amused to be serious.
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But why do you want six? Man? He continued to do my
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duty? Who too? King and country? And Lily, Lily mundo hers?
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But Joe, said Stephen, who already possessed a few qualities of a
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lover. But Joe, I should have thought you'd want to make Lily happy.
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Eh, Jillan's wet makes women happy? And is it the first thing
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you think on day and day out making deb happy? I try to,
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Oh well, as I said, you're a quick change artist, all one
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thing one minute, and all some at else the next, I applauds on
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the same The girls we've married must take us as they find us. So
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they groped like two half blind men among the great ripe orchards of life,
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picking up only such appels as they fell over, Stephen picking up most because
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he stumbled oftenest. Upstairs, the two girls gazed out of the window at
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the ebony clouds, solid crenelated cut into curious capes and peninsulas, like huge
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maps of unknown lands. They elaborately avoided looking at one another. Six,
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whispered Lily, and she fidgeted so feverishly with the locket that she broke the
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clasp. You're lucky, deb you're Steven's were a hundred of Joe, none
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thought Deborah, and a miss came over her. Also. She had a
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vague sense of something being out of joint, and that Stephen should talk to
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another man, to any one but herself in this way. Fancy him wanting
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to give me the locket, Lily said, present joy pleased vanity. Curiosity
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as to where their Deborah would be jealous elbowled away the shadow of the future.
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Deborah was not jealous. Stephen loved her, She thought, soul and
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body, they were all each others. To her. The fact that Stephen
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had asked and taken all that she had to give, spiritual and physical,
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was the absolute proof that he loved her. And if he loved her,
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he felt to her as she did to him. Anything therefore that he might
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do or be to others was charity. Could her perfect peace have been shaken
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and a doubt dwelt in her? Still, there would have been no jealousy,
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for if she had doubted his love, she would simply have resigned all
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claim on him, become nothing to him. Lily could not understand her.
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I hope Joe will let him, Deborah said. Joe was not busy doing
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his duty. To a man is never so much a saw. I saw
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a face that he's got no time to think of me, said Lily with
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acidity. If he'd done to give me bits of things, who will I'll
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only be young once. I'll only be pretty for a bit and wanting to
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enjoy myself. But the old country, as Joe's so set on, it's
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always the same. She clenched her hands. I hate it, she cried,
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them old trees and the hills, as I'll be just as blue colored
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when I be dead. There there, lil, said Deborah. Joe dunna
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really care for them things more than he does for you. It's just men's
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silly way of talking, she added, dismissing with maternal amusement the whole school
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of masculinity summed up in I could not love thee dear so much, hark,
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said Lily. I wonder where those girls are, came Stephen's voice.
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He had an uneasy intuition in the parlor where we left them that they should
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exhibit initiative was evidently not in Joe's mind. Let's go and see upstairs.
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There was a mothlike flutter downstairs, a heavy crunching of gravel in the parlor
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when Joe and Stephen entered, sat two exemplary wives deep in the perusal of
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Lily's new cookery book, chapter thirty three. As Deborah and Stephen walked home
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in an increasing tumult of wind under clouds, like froth in a tide race
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of black water. Deborah waited for him to tell her of his talk with
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Joe. She meant to confess her unintentional eavesdropping, and she thought, who
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amused Stephen would be. She wondered if Stephen would tell her that he only
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said none for the sake of differing from Joe. She thought, how sweet
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it would be to speak softly about the future, to know each other's mind
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to the depths. But Stephen said nothing. He had forgotten all about it.
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Had he remembered, he would have thought it rather an improper subject upon
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which to enter with her. In the society he had known, it was
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not considered decent to talk to a woman about any of the physical necessities of
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life, except eating. A woman who was to give herself to a man
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and bear his children was not consulted in either matter. A tacit understanding was
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the nearest approach. Aloud. Stephen walked on moodily, was thinking how dull
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the country was getting, how forlorn, For the colors were withdrawn with what
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seemed to him the terrible leisureliness of fatality. They would soon be gone as
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the willow rams were gone from the woods below, lost within, as the
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cuckoos had long been gone from hell and field, the density was gone from
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the shadows. Scent dwindled daily, the stars were like scimitars instead of silver
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flowers. As they reached the hill top, a late mountain moth wandered vaguely
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over the heather, shining whitely here, for from some accident of soil,
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it was never purple, but of a bleached pallor for acres round the chair.
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When they stood a moment by cranberry rock, which was like a lesser
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throne for some dignitary an owl cried with its long, laughing shutter from the
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ragged holly spinney down the southern slope. It's saying what ails, you,
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said, Deborah, What a vile bird it is, and what a shake
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it puts on ales, said Stephen, like the stop on the harmonium.
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Autumn's beastly. When I was going to work yesterday, I saw a regular
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gang of swallows in an ash getting ready to go. All the corn'll be
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in before long too, and the heather dead. Ay, But the turn
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of the year will come again before we know it. Not for nearly half
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a year. We might be dead before it. Oh Stephen, well we
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might. It's just luck. How do we know. If there's nobody to
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look after us, we might be like frozen bees any day, not a
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bit of us left except a carcass for the mixen. It was the uttermost
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fringe of his hidden grief. The pity of it was that he only showed
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her the fringe. He was afraid to look at the thing himself, and
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so it was like a beast behind undergrowth. He did not regard her as
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a being who might have helped him. She was the weaker, he her
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protector. A deep reciprocity of sympathy and strength between lovers had never occurred to
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him. With a mixture of cowardice. Before the problems of immense and mistaken
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manliness towards Deborah, he crushed down all his questionings, fears, horrors,
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and was silent. Oh, Stephen, said Deborah. Now, I be
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sorry you feel that, but we munhope things is better than that for us.
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I'm thinking there's good beyond it all. She had not made herself a
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philosophy. She had lived in such simplicity that it had not occurred to her
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now face for the first time by a grief that her love told her needed
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comfort. She searched in the recesses of her being and found this intuition there
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like a rosy flower. But to Stephen, used to people who said much
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and meant little, her words seemed cold, conventional, empty. He said,
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no more. The heather screeched, the rocks moaned and whined as the
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wind probed their crevices. The chair was obscured at intervals by low driving clouds.
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Don't let's go nearer to it than we can help, said Stephen.
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It's so beastly, he laughed, strainedly. They went by a smaller path
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lower down. When I'm feared of it, said Deborah. I think of
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Wilder Hope and the Flockmaster. I dreamt I saw him standing by a white
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cross by the signpost, with a lamb in his arms, and his face
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was your face mine. I only terrible, sorrowful, like Hope. The
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dream won't come true. Then who's he supposed to be? I don't know.
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Father learnt me the tale. He said. It meant as there was
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love about going to and again in spite of devil's chairs and all. And
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he said Deborah puckered her brow and thought. As she put back long blown
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ends of her hair. He said, there were plenty of little crosses in
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the world, as some folk took to be only posts. But they were
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crosses sure enough, and love hanging on him forever martyred and forever gladsome.
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That's his very words. Oh Christianity talk. I can do that myself could
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until I chucked it. No, not Chapel nor Church Christianity, just home
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brood, said Deborah. I all us seemed to believe in them things.
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When I was in chapel, I could believe in flowers in winter. But
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when Father talked of him, I knew him. It was like cowslips in
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your hand, keys of heaven. Cowslips be called a pretty name. I
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shall we go after cowslips together, deb Next June I, and now let's
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go in and light the fire and the lamp, and cook a bit of
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supper and play something lively, said Stephen. He was determined not to think,
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since thought opened the door to such horror. What if there had never
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been a grain of truth in any creed, and everything, all the beauty,
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the goodness, the effort, the achievement were purposeless as dust in the
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wind, fortuitous annilated now tomorrow or in an eon. What if he were
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no more than the moth flickering for a moment in imbecile activity on the bleak
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mountain in the cold night wind. Such thoughts, like chained bloodhounds awoke often
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unexpectedly and lifted their voices, howling for his soul. What if one broke
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loose? What if it followed with irresistible, unswerving pace till he was in
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its grip? He shuddered. He knew that then joy would be dead,
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and Joi was air and water to him. He clenched his hands. They
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should not get loose. He piled on wood and made a roaring fire,
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made toast, pulled Ebrah on to his knee, and made love to her
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in his own inimitable way, with his eager face and eyes full of vitality.
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His mouth, which could be grim, were tortured, now pleasant with
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laughter. The idea of going in among those kenneled hounds of thought, braving
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them, and either being consumed by them or taming them never occurred to him.
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If it had, the idea would not have appealed to him, for
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he had physical not moral courage. They sat on the fire glow ringed in
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an impalpable peace and joy until the glow should oh, I say, Debb,
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I made you something coming from work yesterday. He felt in an inner
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pocket and pulled out a long chain of scarlet beads, roseberries and on a
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string and all. He put it over her head. She laughed with pleasure.
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The berry color was repeated and faint her tints in her cheeks, her
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eyes shone. The long necklace hung down over her dress like a rosary.
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Now out with the hairpins, said Stephen, Oh, you're all as doin
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that. You're always looking so pretty there, my word, deb you are
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ripping. Deborah took courage from this. What did you and Joe talk about?
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She asked, his beastly pig. What else? Nothing? Eh,
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Stephen, what a fib a fib Oh? She shook her hair over her
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face. I heard, Oh a humorous thought made him forget propriety and laughter.
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Did Lily hear old Joe's program? I what a lark? Not for
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Lily? No, I dare say not, Stephen, Well, it wasn't
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only Joe that said things. Did I put my foot in it? Too?
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Well? Out with it. She was silent, he remembered suddenly,
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and was embarrassed that I had to say something. He was so solemn.
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You said it to aggravate Joe partly, But don't let's fag about it.
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It seems a funny thing to talk to you about. Who else? So
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right in her question was the sense of injury that she felt because he talked
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to Joe with a frankness he had not shown to her. She sat with
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the firelight flitting over her, wistful, with a lip look which came from
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within, and which would have singled her out of a room full of women
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for a man's love. Yet the essence of her being, the unique thing
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which caused that look, was what he least understood in her. Who else,
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she asked again, with more insisted pride conquered her girlish shyness. He
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did not answer. He was looking at her with a return of his first
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passion. Who else should you talk of your children? Too? But the
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omen as albarum, she said, and her voice shook with sorrowful indignation.
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Who else should you tell your wishes to? And your sorrows? And looking
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forward? And the way you misliked the wind nights, and that I know
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along of you covering your ears. You didn't tell me any of them.
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She stood, looking down at him with a dignity seldom found in civilization,
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almost always among savage tribes. Oh damn, cried Stephen, springing up so
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that her height diminished. Do you suppose I can talk to you when you
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look like that? Give us a kiss? Deb Eh, Dear Deborah shivered.
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Suddenly there's a thorn in your necklace, Stephen, Chapter thirty four.
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A week later, a sudden hard frost blackened the geraniums in the garden.
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Stephen detested the look of them. He found this enforced intimacy with every mood
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of nature, this impossibility of getting away from stark realities, very wearing.
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After living in a town, he did not realize that half the content of
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his past town life was owing to his unawakened state. A town, to
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him now would be little more RESTful than the wilds. Reality was after him,
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go where he would, He was its quarry because of the greatness in
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him. There are some who, like the white Heart in old Welsh tales,
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are forever hunted, while small game goes free. If he had escaped
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from the lost, vindictive cries of the storm, the starved garden, the
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neutral colors, the heavy pressure of the huge night on his heart, with
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its mute Whither he would still have had to face plaintive cries from dark houses,
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tormented faces in the street, the dumb terror of animals driven to slaughter.
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He did not know this. He put the blame for his keener vision,
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his new and welcome capacity for acting as a receiver for these messages out
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of hidden mystery, upon the gaunt horizon, the huge, knife like ridge
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on which he lived, On the opposite ridge that broadened into mountain plains,
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shadowy in the early autumn mornings, as the fleeces of cloud that swept over
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them. Lesser men dwell in impregnable castles of content, and the most lonely
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the most populous places. Greater men set forth on quests against all the agony
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a mystery of life, and win their peace, or go into a madhouse.
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But Stephen was too clear sighted for the first, too much the bondsman
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of joy for the second. Therefore he lived at present in vivid sunshine,
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like a butterfly between two night frosts, a poet between two portents. Every
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day they reaches of plain, the ridges and rock masses, the glittering spar
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and the men that tore it from its bed with such reckless expenditure of their
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little share of life, were more hateful to him. The woods that he
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went through on his way to work grew spectral. Cold mists swirled there,
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Dead leaves hung on the boughs like rows of weasels and magpies. Before a
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keeper's house, a cold presence moved among the sad perspectives of the larch and
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oak bowls, sinister, inimical to joy. The dark keeper went his rounds
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strangling life, hanging the shriveled corpse of beauty in the bleak air. Derisively.
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Stephen felt his presence, saw his snares laid for men, began to
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feel that all humanity was but a poor line of rotting leaves and blackening corpses
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before the hollow house of death. One day, as he walked in a
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gloomy reverie, a sudden noise behind him made him start. He looked back
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there, and driven, protesting panic, stricken hosts came all the leaves of
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the summer, all the tongues that made soft music night and day, all
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the silken curtains under which pigeons had crooned, over which rain had slipped.
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Laughing, they came like a driven sandstorm, sa a yard or more high,
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swirling in the eddying wind. Others in a thick mass, slowed down.
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They came round him, hitting him as terrified birds hit a window,
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patting, stroking him till he felt as if he were fingered by corpses.
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Their stiff helplessness horrified him. They passed on in a frenzy of nothingness,
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feckless with the coming of corruption, damned things. He muttered, I won't
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come this way again. Fear crept over him as he reflected that he Stephen
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Southernwood, the strong and happy, was afraid of dead leaves. He thought
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his sanity must be threatened. The hollow, scraping sound of a fresh company
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of leaves swelled behind him. He ran up hill to the end of the
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wood. He looked through the gathering dusk towards the cottage and saw the one
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window red as a poppy. She was there waiting for him. She would
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not fail him. Only he could not tell her, He laughed, unsteadily.
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Blest of a chap could tell a woman. He was enough funk dead
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leaves. Night by night, he came home a little sooner, was a
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little more flushed with haste all day long. The picture of the red curtain
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kitchen with the round table set for tea, the steaming cattle, and Deborah,
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neat and bright in her new berry colored dress making tea were to his
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mind what the sacrament is to a Christian. The evenings were happy times,
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radiant as those last autumn days when the spend thrift gold shines with a strange,
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intense luster of fleeting things. Only in his passion for her could he
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forget everything, even the predatory wine of the wind. He felt immune as
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a god while in its aura. Should Chitty fell him, he thought one
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night, when the storm shook the cottage and she lay asleep in his arms,
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he would be a beggar, a prey for every despair. He wished
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more and more as September slipped by that he had never taken the cottage.
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The whole countryside was acquiring in his eyes something portentous, apocalyptic. For the
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personality of a man reacting upon the spirit of a place produces something which is
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neither the man nor the place, but fiercer or more beautiful than either.
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This third entity born of the union, because a power and a haunting presence,
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non human, non material for the mind that helped to create at once,
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it dominates the place of its birth forever. Hence came the troops of
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medieval saints and devils. Hence came folk plays, nature poems, sonatas,
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the heights of vision, the depths of melancholy. Stephen could have made these
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ridges and valleys immutable in lyrics or elegiacs, painted them in radiant atmospheres,
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liquefied them in symphonies. But he had not the technical training for any of
24:45
these. He only had the capacity for pain. He had not the safeguard
24:49
of expression. Deb he said one day, when the first light snow powdered
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the don cold hills, couldn't we go away somewhere? I do hate this,
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Go away, oh Stephen. She had no key to his state of
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mind. He had told her nothing of his feelings. It seemed to her
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simply a freak. But the work, and it's so scarce, and winter
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coming and all. She did not want to move to disturb the warmth and
25:18
peace of their home. Doubts, fancies, wonder had come upon her.
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Lately she wanted to be anchored here in the hills of home, near her
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father. You've brought me here, Stephen, she said, pleadingly. Dunna
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root me up again, He said, no more. Every day he pulled
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his collar up, shrugged his shoulders, and set his mind to endurance of
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things so impalpable they could not express them even to himself, but none the
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less real. For that he forced himself into some of the moral courage he
25:48
lacked. His personality grew. The men felt his presence more, though he
25:52
said less. Towards the end of the month was the Harvest Thanksgiving in wood
25:56
Send Chapel, the day of Eli's extra ordinary invitation. Deborah wanted to go.
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She saw less of her father now, for ways had grown almost impossible.
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The homely associations of the harvest service and the tea never missed from childhood
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made her anxious to be there if Stephen would go. Would you misslike going,
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Stephen, she asked longingly. Any festivity, anything that meant light,
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color, human merriment, appealed to Stephen. It helped to keep the other
26:26
things at bay. All right, I'll come. I'll make you a new
26:30
berry necklace too, he promised, his spirits rising, all the fellows will
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be jealous, and Lily will be green with envy. Why jealous of your
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prettiness? He had summed up Lily in a way that would have surprised her.
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It's a goodish walk, said Deborah, wondering if she could manage it,
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for she had felt tired lately. Oh nothing to people like you and
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me, deb lazy girl. Suppose you want me to hire a trap.
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M Oh no, Stephen, I can walk right, I know. She
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was troubled none the less at finding that when she went to meet him in
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the evenings, which he had asked her to do after the dead Leaf episode,
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she flagged and could not keep up with his stride. I'll go and
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see old Nancy Cora, she reflected. She'll give me summat to take off
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the sick feeling and the tiredness. She's got stuff for most everything. She
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also thought that Nancy could give an authoritative opinion on the suspicions, fears,
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and hopes that had possessed her lately. She'll be at the tea Sunday.
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I met fix. A day to go, then, Deborah decided. End
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of chapter thirty four,