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Chapters 45 and 46 · The Golden Arrow

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Chapter forty five and forty six of The Golden Arrow by Mary Webb. This
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LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by Anne Ericson Toronto, chapter
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forty five. The sense of being reduced to nothing by an unseen force grew
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on Stephen as he went down the hill to the gayest heart, the most
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securely grounded and optimism. Fog is deadening and on a solitary mountain side at
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his nerve racking to Stephen, with his desperate need of joy, his craving
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for immortality and his agonized conviction that no such thing existed, with his desire
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for some one to worship, and his grays certainty that there was no one,
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with his lust for clarity and certainty, and his finding of gloom and
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stark negation. It was an unbearable witness to his worst fears he wanted as
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he could not get free of his desperate spiritual ill opiates of some kind to
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deaden it. Here were opiate's only reality, the mystery about him. Like
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seaweed round a derelict ship, It towered above him. When the feeble lantern
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light struck it. Like prison walls, the dry, dead heather dripped with
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it. The rich plain in the hills, the blue sky were all dissolved
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in its colorless uniformity, as this world and the hope of another had dissolved
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for him. It would be easy to finish it all here and now,
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he thought, But he was too near the precipitous side of the hill to
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think of it long, for he had the healthy young animals shrinking from pain
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and death. Nor could he face the complete annihilation that death meant for him
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now, could neither face it, nor believe in it, nor deny it.
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So he trudged on through the sigh of the heather, browbeaten, miserable,
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morose, arf an hour late, said the manager when he arrived,
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And he said it in the way that always exasperated Stephen through a yawn during
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what she played on his teeth with his fingers as on a keyboard. When
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I was a young chop, he continued, I was at work arf an
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hour aforetime, day after day. Stephen looked him over appraisingly. He was
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a small man and very sensitive about it. If people's righteous over much,
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it stunts their growth, said Stephen, slowly, and pleasurably. If you're
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late again, said the manager, with pent up hate in his tone.
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It's the sack. Stephen made up his mind on the spot to take Prior's
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cattle to America. It was a match to effuse long ready, he said
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nothing. He was too much occupied with his thoughts of freedom. He loathed
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the manager, the man, the look of spar He loathed and despised lily.
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He was beginning to hate even the work and the machinery. Had it
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not been for Deborah, he would have given notice twenty times now, his
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nerves snapped. The place had been too much for him in his crisis.
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In his characteristic way, he wanted to rush off at once, but he
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must wait for his wage days so as to leave money for Deborah. Three
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weeks more, he thought hopelessly. But the end was at least in sight.
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Well, best get your coat off and do a bet. Now you've
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been so kind as to come, said the manager. He went off blandly,
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conscious that he was licking Southern woid into shape all day. Stephen pondered
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he would get his wages, leave them all with his insurance policy and his
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savings bank book were a Deborah and go. In December twenty first, to
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Pryors starting for Liverpool that day with her without the cattle. He would send
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a note to John by Lucy Thructon, who lived next door to the priors,
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and he would send another to Deborah by a boy. She would be
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provided for. He could send her nearly all his wages, and if anything
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happened to him, she would have his insurance. He crushed down, the
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knowledge that this would make no difference to her. He would not remember that
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material needs are only a secondary thing to some natures, though in his preaching
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days he had been very fond of the text man doth not live by bread
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alone. He toiled back at night at the rhyme, whitened hillside like a
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gnat on a huge sealed tornet comb. As he came near home, the
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mist thinned on the hilltop, and the moon burned through ghastly coppery. Huge
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she hung above the Devil's chair, giving no light, fierce without warmth,
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unwholesome. In the icy fog. She was compared with the bright, beneficent
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harvest moon. What a poison gurd is to a melon. It was as
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if on the barren hill and the unfruitful miasthma had sprung an immense living fungus
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rotten and more meaten, the essence of all the brooding harm that Stephen found
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in the place. If he stayed here longer, it would be too late,
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he felt. Even in three weeks it might be too late. No,
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it should not be. He would cling fiercely to sanity now that freedom
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was so near. If he stayed, he was sure that the result would
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be the devil's gully, the asylum, or one of those horrible nerve caused
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double tragedies that are sometimes heard of in lonely places. He breasted the last
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hill, meeting the rising wind. A few lines now marked his face that
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had been smooth as the lad's. He looked older, rather thin. The
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lamp was in the window, the curtains drawn back to show the inside of
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the kitchen. At the gate stood Deborah, white with coal, but all
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afire, with joy that he was home at long last. She murmured,
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Oh, lad, dear heart, it's been a weighty while. Come you
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in, and war mute in her low voice was the essence of all homes,
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the security that laughs at death. She pulled him in and bolted the
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door shut in with love, she said, the snowberry bush at once began
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to tap urgently threateningly. Later, when the wind strengthened, it tapped the
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window. Also from the three remaining dead trees, and from the acres of
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heather came through the night a low, long drawn whimper, like the gasping
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ah ah of a woman in pain. Half a minute, said Stephen.
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When the tapping had gone on for some time, he fetched the axe from
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the wood shed and hacked determinedly at the bush, till only a stump remained
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there. That's better. He returned to the fire his nearest quieter. But
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now that the tapping was gone, a smaller, weirder sound was audible,
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the low thin of the wind and the keyhole. Stephen got up in stuffed
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paper into it. But the wind whined in the eaves, and the window
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chinks in the chimney, just as if it wants something or somebody, said
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Stephen, superstitiously. The way it is hereabouts, said Deborah, was used
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to make me glad. Night, says the cows was safe and shipping,
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and the sheep folded father and mother. I'll be by the fire now at
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Upper Liso's, and father will be mixing sheep ointment against lambing time. I
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expect I miss you, I joke on and all. You'd rather be with
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your father than anyone, wouldn't you, deb I was used to Now I
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ne'er want to be along with any but you. Stephen crowned and hastily changed
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the subject. I suppose he'll be busy with the lamb soon a knights.
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When he was used to be out in the lamb in shed, I ne'er
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slept. Why they're wanting no peace? When them your Fondon goes out in
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the storm and lets the rainy wind and the hoar crossed him, neither fire
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nor candles any good. Then Stephen began to walk up and down into the
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scullery and back again, knocking his head every time against the lintel, and
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oblivious of it. You'm restless, my dear, said Deborah, anxiously.
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Your poor hat will be all of a bruise. You work too hard.
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You're not feeling bad? Be you? No? You tell me out you
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felt, wouldn't know you, Stephen, of course, mind and body.
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There's no secret it to extess. Be there, oh, said Stephen in
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an overwrought tone. Damn that wind, damn it there there, soothed Deborah.
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What's the wind now and met cry and cry, but it cannot get
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in, nor yet do now to get us. There's no door ajar and
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our two lives to let an. We am shut in with love like I
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was used to be under thy saintee tree in June. We call it golden
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showers about our way. From the shine of it. Will am got our
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own saintye tree. Now you and me. Stephen quickened his step for the
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Lord's sake, Stop, he broke out. Deborah looked at him anxiously.
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Stephen ladd She said, you not heart well, he laughed suddenly tragically.
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Oh I am never better. He said, Well, then, Stephen,
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there's no call to stamp about when you'm trudged all day. And then your
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poor head as is the comeliest in the yearld give or tramping and let me
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stroke your hair. His head ached, his throat was parched. He flung
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himself down and rested his head in her lap. He began to pull bits
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out of the rag. Hearth rug a present from missus Arden with good luck
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in red flannel on a green background. There now rest you, said Deborah,
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more radiantly happy than ever in her light before, since she was tending
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him, and he was depending on her. Now you're my little lad,
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she said, smiling archly. For all you're me sting ways. She ran
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her fingers through his hair at one of her nut as I found one of
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God Almighty's lady comes on my gown the day I saw you first, She
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went on, For they tooken, golden luck and europe golden lad, and
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you've brought me luck and no mistake. He was silent, striving not to
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see the tragic irony of all. She said. In the old tale of
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the Arrow, she said, there's a more to old ancient women is come
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in and they say acorns for the pig fagg it's for the fire. But
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we missed summat. And in a while the lovers come in, triumphing like
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and say they've missed n out, And no more have we. He turned
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restlessly. Stroke more, he said, imperiously, and sing. Don't talk.
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She began to sing in a hushed voice, while the firelight stole up
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and down the walls, and the wind lashed itself into the yelping fury of
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starved towns. We have sought it, We have sought the golden arrow.
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Right the sally willows Sway two and two bypaths slow and narrow, arm and
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courk along the mountain way, break a frost and break a day somewhere sobbing
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through the cloom when we found it, when we found the golden arrow wander
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willow in the secret gloom. She looked down in the silence. Afterwards he
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was asleep. She took up the small woolen boots. She would be doing
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them when he awoke, and he would ask what they were. She smiled.
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I know right well what he'll say, she thought, He'll say,
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what the devil are those dolls leggings? For he always calls my stockings leggings,
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and my nightgown a shirt, him being such a manly chap and nothing
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of the woman in him. Thank goodness, She crowed shade and a maze
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of delight at this spot and at the prospect of telling him her news.
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But when Stephen awoke, he only wanted to go to bed and never notice
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the boots. It is the tragedy of the self absorbed that when the great
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moments of their lives go by in royal raiment with a sound of silver flutes,
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they are so muffled in self and the present that they neither hear nor
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see. Chapter forty six, Saint Thomas Day, like a mildew drose,
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died before it flowered. In the dark morning. Stephen looked at Deborah's sleeping
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face in the candle light, and wavered in his resolve. Snow was falling.
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The flake slot in themselves like soft berries flung against the panes. In
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the curious mark daylight which even a light fall of snow gives to a morning,
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Stephen could see the chair looming coal black on the east. It stood
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against grim white clouds, through whose impenetrable layers the sun would never rise Today.
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Snow was a new variation of the capacity of this country for wintry gloom.
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Stephen hated its aspect even more than the fog. It lay deep and
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inscrutable over gaunt hill and dimpled meadow. It took away the beauty and the
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cruelty of the land, leaving mere sterility. It had come softly in the
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dark, like a lingering death. Only in the sky a few frail colors
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bloomed the soul, emblems of vitality in a dead world. They were delicate
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and i luring, as the desire of youth for youth of a clear soul
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for God. Stephen gazed at them, finding them friendly in a world of
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animosity, and longed to follow them beyond the horizon. His resolve was stronger
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than before. In the last three weeks he had been hard pressed by despair
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and had sunk into gloom in morose bad temper. Now the day of the
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breaking of all chains had come for him. At this moment, the cattle
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boat would be in the Mersey. Life had a glow again. He did
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not know that this was only a false star, that the new world would
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be as dark and haunted as the old until he conquered or went under.
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Should he go while Deborah was asleep, he thought not. He would not
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deny her or himself the last kiss, not that he regarded the parting as
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final. In a vague way, he thought of coming to fetch her sometime
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when he had made a new home. He did not know at this time
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that a lover would sooner lie in the hedge bank than be left alone while
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the most splendid home is built. Since the first alternative is life, and
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the second death, deb he said, waking her with a kiss, sometimeless
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sorrow had brooded on her sleep. She woke to a smile, with the
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air of a frightened child. Out of her half dreaming state, she looked
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up dazedly and said, with a strange, unconscious voicing, of fate to
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which human beings are sometimes doomed, the longest night become. Stephen hurried over
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breakfast, a feverish flush on his cheeks, a horror of what he was
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doing in his heart. He was afraid that Deborah might say one of those
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heart ringing things that she did say at times, and so foil his purpose.
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After all, she wondered at the wildness of his kisses. When he
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left her at the way, he turned round so often lately he had forgotten
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to turn at all, and waved his hand. Then he disappeared in the
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wondering snowflakes, and she turned back with a lagging step. It was four
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o'clock when a small boy from Lost Woman came up the path with Stephen's note,
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and Deborah's heart seemed to stop. She ran to the door. Not
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hurted, she cried, he's not hurted, quick quick, She shook the
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boy. When am you after shaking me? He said, dodging her.
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Is who hurted the foreman, my man Southernwood hurted, No, he'd give
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me this to give you. You'm sure he's all right, didn't I say
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so? Would you like an apple? So she rewarded with the best she
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had, the messenger of horror, as one might bring out wine and delicate
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fair the black greeper himself. The boy ran off, and Deborah opened the
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letter, Dearest Deborah, I'm obliged to go away. Have asked your father
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to come for you and take you home. Forgive me, Stephen. She
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did not faint. Her only sensation was one of surprise that she was not
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dead. Hour after hour, dragged by the letter was burnt into her brain.
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Still she was not dead. She thought obliged to go away, she
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knew that was not true. Nothing could make him go unless he wanted to,
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and above all, not alone. Have asked her father to come and
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take you home. But Stephen was home. Forgive me, forgive what She
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could not be forgiving or unforgiving, angry or loving, cold or passionate.
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She could never be anything anymore, Stephen. She stood where she had opened
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a letter, and capable of any motion for a long time, and she
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continued with days pauses to say, over and over in every tone of love,
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Stephen, Stephen. Yet she had not realized anything. When five o'clock
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struck, she suddenly said his tea and ran to relight the fire. Then
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she looked at the letter, and slowly, as the massing of thunderclouds for
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a storm that will devastate the plane, or the first glissade of rock,
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for a landslip that will sweep away a mountainside, the real meaning of it
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began to come upon her. Stephen did not love her. It was perfectly
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dark, The cottage was hushed as a tomb. A mouse began to nibble
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in the wainscot, The wind moaned, and blue eddies of snow in at
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the open door. Stephen did not love her. The finality of this,
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she never questioned. Something akin to hers might be the emotions of a Teresa
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confronted with incontrovertible proof that Christ never lived, or of a mother not yet
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free from the pains of childbirth, told that her baby is dead. She
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looked round. All was pitch dark, but she saw with agonizing vividness,
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scene after scene of her life with Stephen. Again, the weird surprise came
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on her that she was not dead. She groped for matches, thinking I'd
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be in a nightmare awake afore long. She lit the candle. Neither lamp
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nor candle, she muttered. After this, Then she went upstairs and brought
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down an armful of letters and Stephen's clothes. None might see, none met,
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no, none mets at hand on him. She murmured, for the
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priest will burn his church and his sacred chalice, rather than that the holy
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things, which have grown mysterious with darting light from beyond the horizon, should
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fall into bastial hands. All hands that were not Stephen seemed bestial to Deborah.
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Now, with a sense that life being over, things must be put
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away, as when tidy's a room at night, she went on carrying out
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the chairs, the crockery, her sewing machine, everything, until her back
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ate. Though she did not know it. The snow thickened. She went
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to and fro enlarging the pile outside the door. The longest night has come,
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she said. The wind raped in the pinnacles of the chair, shrieked
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in the dry heather, threatened the dead trees toward her dress, blew down
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a picture from the wall with a crash of glass. Deborah was dragging out
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the little oak table when suddenly Nancy Corus stood in the doorway. A queer
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night to be out, she grumbled, I was at lost within along of
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a young woman. That's bad, and now I durst and go home in
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such weather. Met I bide on your kitchen tonight. At the word bide,
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Deborah had a vision out of the glinting past. She stood and smiled
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at Nancy with such exquisite sweetness that Nancy was taken aback. You'm very kindly
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welcome, she said, to bide with me. Whatever be you doing?
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Asked Nancy, what's that bonny fire? Give me a hand with a dresser,
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said Deborah. It's suddenly came to Nancy as she saw of what the
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bonfire was composed, and looked at Deborah's face that she was with a madwoman.
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She stole away while Deborah's back was turned. No, said Deborah,
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you mun help me. Nancy was obliged to come back. They went on
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carrying out the furniture in the winding snow. At intervals it was fine.
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A powder of stars came out over the devil's chair. The longest night become
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said Deborah, I no doubt, replied Nancy slavishly, And all the ghosts
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and Shropshire are coming here to choose him a king. I it's snowing bad,
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Nancy answered, anxious to keep off ghosts. Now bring the mangle.
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Debra caught her arm. Nancy shrieked, did you hear that? Devil?
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Yonder? Deborah said, and the little copy it was? Oh donno,
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cried Nancy, in a cold sweat, playing bull peep along of another by
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their voices, said Deborah. But there's no leaves now for them to hide
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in. No but dead leaves now, like little blind mice on the tree,
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little blind mice there. Didn't know you hear that? How dear,
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how dear? She sang the words as a wagoner sings them high on the
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first, with a fall on the second. Lugging stones they be, she
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added, for the devil's chair, it's only the wind, said Nancy.
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Only the wind, my dear, hearken now, cried Deborah. There's another.
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Oh whoop, that's what he said, and there go the dark rider's.
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Nancy, torn between fear and greed, managed to conceal some spoons in
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her apron. Now you come, down along on me, my dear,
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she pleaded, despairing it, getting away alone, and see what a nice
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cup of tea I'll get you. There's a child crying up at the chair,
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said Deborah, then strangling it. It's only the wind, Nancy reiterated.
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It's a love child, said Deborah. Hark at them, all the
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devils shouting, come by chance, come by chance. But yours wanna be
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a love child, said Nancy. You're married, all right, I'm proper
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now left left, moaned Deborah, with depths of unplumbed agony in her voice.
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Suddenly she began to sing, Oh my lat toun night. If I
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ever get out of this, said Nancy privately, to the hotch potch of
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malice and might, which was her conception of God, I'll give up the
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paying job. They're strangling that child herkt I'm shriking, said Deborah. I
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hear it nowt can I you hear the ghost shuffling and whispering soft like you?
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Come down, deb southernwood. Never no more, never no more,
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lookye, Nancy implored, feeling desperate. Let's be going. It's an awful
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night. I a night to lose. Sheep bond Deborah fetched out paper and
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stuffed it round the base of the bonfire. You mnna light it, cried
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nan Sea, stirred by such waste of good furniture, though not concerned at
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the waste of a soul. What terro your husband say? I be no
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wife, a kept woman? What I thought you was married? Stephen,
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Deborah exclaimed, and had his name. She was shaken with long, terrible
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tremors. Stephen Dunna loved me. This reasoning was beyond Nancy. Acorns for
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the pig, faggots for the fire, murmured Deborah. But we missed summut.
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She began to sing the Golden Arrow, some resolving through the gloom when
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we founded, When we found the golden narrow, wander Willow and the secret
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goom. Nancy, frozen with terror, listened to the ghastly music. Deborah
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stood gazing into vacancy. Shut in with loved she whispered, and then,
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hoarsely and without emotion, gone, gone, gone forevermore. The things were
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all brought out. The house was bare, cold, awful. Outside,
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towering up with a little cap of snow, was the pile of furniture.
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Deborah looked straight before her, do you love me true, Stephen Southernoord,
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She asked, do you love me so bad that you'm lost about me?
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Are you certain sure? Then I'll be the love of your life while life
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lasts, and your mate till I lie in the daisies. She turned to
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Nancy. They've chose their king. Hark attwe, she said him in the
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chair. The flock master's dead. Hark at the devil's laughing, and hark
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at that voice full of trouble and trembling. The thorn blow's late. It's
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only an owl, I separated Nancy. Well, good night to you,
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said Deborah. I'm going to light it now, what a wicked ways.
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T'll come back and want the things never no more, never were no more,
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said Deborah. Where be you going when you've lit it? Asked Nancy,
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in order to take care, to go the other way, the other
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side of silence? What softness? Why not stop the child being born and
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go free? What child? Why? Yours? That's coming? Yours?
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And southernwoods. The swift destruction that had been going on in Deborah's brain was
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arrested. For a moment. He was gone. He did not want her,
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but she could still bear his child. Summit to do for Stephen,
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she whispered. She advanced on Nancy with fury in her eyes. I'll learn
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you to try and rob me, you thief, she cried. Nancy fled,
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dropping the spoons. Twas only three, and there they are, she
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said. But Deborah had identified her with the fate that had thieved her all.
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It was well for Nancy that she fled. Deborah poured paraffin on the
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fire and struck a match. From the bitter loneliness and ivory side came shriek,
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sighs, bellowing's threats. As the wind rosen fell. The air was
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full of snow, driving whirling and went with its eddying round the chair,
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and the falling of stones, and the strange sounds as of laughter and sorrow
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that came thence it seemed as if the old tales were true, and the
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ghosts had indeed come in like a tide. The fire blazed up. Deborah
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watched it the kindly light. She said, God help all poor folk,
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be knighted. God keeps Stephen for I Ganna, I Ganna. She rocked
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on the agony of the thought that she did not know where he was,
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that she could do and be nothing more for him. No living creature stirred
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in the ways, but the two women, one running over the ridges,
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hounded by fear, the other beyond all fear, having suffered till feeling snapped.
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Stephen, turning into his berth, tired after a busy day, had
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no inkling that his rather cursory preparation for her welfare had been brushed aside by
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circumstances beyond the wilder hope ancient woods. And Lucy Thrupton snored. She had,
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in her usual ponderous manner, failed to get under way with Stephen's letter
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to John until very late, and had then turned back afraid. Will do
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as well tomorrow day, she said, and did not know that on her
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flat footed movements two lives might depend. At highly So's, John let Deborah's
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lamp as usual. As usual, Patty scolded. They went to bed,
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and as on every other night, John prayed, kneeling at the old knobby
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chair in the window for those he loved, adding, as always, with
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a swift feeling of selfishness, and all other poor folk. He gazed out
26:40
through a small clear space in the frosted window pane. May love wes a
26:44
mall and keep a mall, he concluded, now and forever after, he
26:48
was unaware that his own love, his little lamp, was the one thing
26:52
between Deborah and death. Above lust within the fire, litched the black Knight
26:56
with red forked tongues until a glare at the brooding sky. Down in the
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plain, women who were awake late shook with fear and woke someone to keep
27:04
them company. The devil's chairs burning, they whispered, maybe it's the end
27:11
of the world. Still Thereber stood and watched the fire until it began to
27:15
pale. Then such a horror of loneliness came upon her that she ran,
27:18
stumbling away from the place. She was too worn and numb to reason any
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more. She had no purpose left, either to live or die. She
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had even forgotten Stephen's child. Blindly as the bird over the seas she went,
27:33
sometimes falling, always without consciousness of direction, down the hill on the
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Wilder Hope side, through the black woods, along lonely lanes, to the
27:42
foot of the Wilder Hope Range. The kindly light, she said, with
27:47
a gasp, as she began to climb. Hours passed slowly, and with
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growing feebleness, she went on. She reached the farthest gate, where John
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had been to send her on the day when she went away with Stephen.
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She reached the second gate and saw a small and softly bright in the infinite
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blackness of the night, the light of the lamp shining through the open door
28:07
of her old room and through the uncurtained window. John, coming down at
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five to attend to the cow with the hoost, found Deborah on the doorstep,
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unconscious. End of Chapter forty six.