Latest / The Golden Arrow / Chapters 51 to 53

Transcript

Chapters 51 to 53 · The Golden Arrow

• 0:00
  Chapter fifty one to fifty three of The Golden Arrow by Mary Webb. This
• 0:05
  LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by Anne Ericson Toronto, chapter
• 0:10
  fifty one. It was early June, and Deborah was out of doors again,
• 0:15
  taking slow walks with her baby in her arms. On the green,
• 0:18
  lonely hills, the sheep grazed with their lambs, and the air was never
• 0:22
  empty of their sweet, sad calling. In the warm plain, the may
• 0:26
  hedges were already in flower, and the thorn trees that clustered by the valley
• 0:30
  streams like wide skirted children, or climbed the steep hillsides were opening their hard
• 0:35
  green buds and breaking softly into white. Looking at them, Deborah remembered how
• 0:40
  she had said to Stephen, the thorn blows late once more. The bracken
• 0:45
  pushed out soft fingers, and cuckoos cried for morchards. At the foot of
• 0:49
  the coombs. The snipe summoned his love from his airy circles, and curledews
• 0:55
  ran along the hilltops with their forlorn elfin music. The sea tea trees gold
• 1:00
  over cried missus Arden. One day, when the little family came back from
• 1:03
  sleep where the baby had been christened. She plucked a spray for Deborah and
• 1:07
  another for Lily, who had come up for the christening party. Lily had
• 1:11
  insisted on calling her boy Stephen. To Joe's great bepuzzlement, Deborah would not
• 1:17
  call her child by its father's name. She blazed into hostility at the suggestion.
• 1:22
  The very idea made her almost regard her own child as an interloper.
• 1:26
  None shall be called by my man's given name, she said. I'd been
• 1:30
  minding me nights when I called the lad home of the days that's gone,
• 1:34
  the shiny days and the ways of him as I call home never no more.
• 1:38
  And when it was only the lad that came and not my Stephen,
• 1:42
  I'd come nigh to hating the poor child, so he was called John.
• 1:47
  After tea, Deborah went with her baby along the bright ribbon of turf that
• 1:51
  led through the heather to the shepherd's signpost. She found Lily's presence irksome.
• 1:56
  Lily was so untroubled, so approved of, so cold. Debora did not
• 2:00
  know that her sense of injustice was the aged long feud between storm tossed greatness
• 2:06
  and sheltered littleness. Low on the opposite ridge, the larch wood still kept
• 2:10
  their breathless may freshness, reaching up wistfully toward the gaunt, unchanging heights on
• 2:16
  the Devil's chair. Among them, the fir trees reared their tarnished blue green,
• 2:22
  sullen, archaic sentinels of death in a world of immaculate, indomitable youth.
• 2:29
  A soft, strong wind blew from the west, quick with the year's
• 2:31
  promise, brimful of meadow and mountain scent. Large clouds continually came up from
• 2:37
  beyond the chair. Darkened, it swept over the valley, and suddenly disappeared
• 2:42
  like conjured ghosts as the warm air struck them. Debra sat down beneath the
• 2:46
  signpost, exhausted with a weariness that even the tiny shell pink fingers so determinedly
• 2:53
  fastened on her thumb could not lift. She looked down at the golden spray
• 2:58
  of labrunum on her breast, drew in its curious, sharp scent, and
• 3:01
  began to sing in a low voice. Some were sobbing in the gloom when
• 3:07
  we found it, When we found the golden arrow wand of willow in the
• 3:14
  secret goom. She looked across at the devil's chair, dark and shining as
• 3:19
  a night sapphire. It seemed to her that there was no hostility now between
• 3:23
  the two ranges, between the towering throne and the small white cross. Always
• 3:29
  before she had superstitiously regarded the chair as wholly evil, the flockmaster's signpost as
• 3:35
  wholly good. Now she saw good and evil mingled, and felt a slumbering
• 3:38
  terror in the protecting cross, a hidden beneficence in the inimical stronghold. Across
• 3:45
  the valley. Beyond, both behind light and shadow, under pain and joy,
• 3:50
  she felt a presence too intangible for materialization into words, too mighty to
• 3:55
  be expressed by any name of man's. Intuitively, she looked at the dogmas
• 4:01
  she had been taught, and in the fierce light that her experience had lit
• 4:04
  in her, she found them wanting. She had nothing definite to put in
• 4:09
  their place, only a conception as vague and volatile as light or scent,
• 4:14
  and without the anesthetic quality of those creeds that affirm God to be love and
• 4:18
  goodness. Only she was not surely religious, and she felt an almost mystical
• 4:24
  comfort and rapture in the piece of the Flockmaster's green pastures and in the presence
• 4:29
  that dwelt there for her as well as for her father. But away in
• 4:32
  the black night, among the tomblike rocks, in the glare of her burnt
• 4:36
  happiness, she had heard devil's laugh had fell to dark power brood on the
• 4:42
  crag. Instinct told her that the two visions were one. She was content
• 4:46
  with the balance of life as she found it, being dimly aware that the
• 4:51
  terror and the beauty intermingled in something that was more wonderful than beauty. The
• 4:57
  thorn blows late, she murmured the patience of one that has come through tumult
• 5:01
  and found peace. She thought how Stephen had failed her. Then, quick
• 5:06
  as light on water, came the remembrance of her dream, when Stephen appeared
• 5:11
  to her as the Flockmaster, holding in his glance infinite godlike love and pity.
• 5:16
  She looked down at her child. Life had given her this gift for
• 5:20
  which she had not asked, denying her the gift she desired. Yet bent
• 5:26
  above the sleeping face, clear and sweet as a pale tinted wild rose,
• 5:30
  she acquiesced, though sorrowfully, in the decree she had loved to give,
• 5:35
  still in large measure, and here was one of Love's little beggars. She
• 5:41
  gazed into the distance, while the slow, honeyed loveliness of evening intensified toward
• 5:46
  its climax. Above the blue ranges rose bluer mountains of cloud. Against this
• 5:51
  background, the swallows, yet more brilliantly blue, darted with the half gay,
• 5:57
  half panic struck frenzy of creatures, aware of their endless capacity for joy
• 6:01
  and of the tragic brevity of their day. With such wild despairing haste to
• 6:06
  natures like Stephen seized the gleaming moment. The devil's chair had a light behind
• 6:12
  it. From the setting sun rays came from it as if it had a
• 6:15
  heart of warmth. Suddenly, in the grave silence of all things at sundown,
• 6:20
  Deborah turned sharply, as if at a cry. Chapter fifty two,
• 6:26
  nothing had stirred. But far away from the direction of Wood's end, a
• 6:30
  man appeared, walking with a difficult taste of one eager but exhausted. Deborah
• 6:34
  put the child down and stood up. Stephen came on, dragging after him
• 6:40
  a gigantic shadow. Deborah stood waiting, numb, joyless, since for her
• 6:45
  the meaning had been struck from all meetings. The shadow of the cross barred
• 6:48
  her dress. Stephen said nothing. He looked at her with a dumb,
• 6:53
  haggard gaze that had nothing of his old self in it. New lines were
• 6:58
  in his face, lines too deep to be accounted for by physical suffering alone.
• 7:02
  He was gaunt, strangers would have considered before they spoke of him as
• 7:06
  a young man. His lip trembled. He sat down on the mound at
• 7:11
  the foot of the signpost and looked up at her, absorbed silent. You'm
• 7:16
  tired, lad, she said, with quick concern. Not now I was,
• 7:21
  but now I'm home. In the last sentence, with its wild,
• 7:26
  pathetic rapture, were reflected all his forlorn days of absence, for the intensity
• 7:31
  of present joy as the gage of past grief. His I'm home, by
• 7:36
  its triumphant security, told that he had been in hell. In his voice
• 7:41
  were the tones of the world's homesickness, the nightmares of children in the dark,
• 7:46
  the blind groping of lover for lover, the sob of humanity cast out
• 7:49
  of Eden. But Debrah did not understand. Too much pain had left her
• 7:55
  bewildered. She only felt, in a dim way the pitiful irony of his
• 7:59
  words. Since she was his home. No more. You look as if
• 8:03
  you met at been poorly lad, she said, practically, yes, I
• 8:07
  had typhoid. I was in hospital for months. That was why I didn't
• 8:11
  come. And the minute and I knew I couldn't come, I wanted to
• 8:15
  more than anything in this life or any other. I was off my head
• 8:18
  for a long time. I couldn't remember anything except her name. It was
• 8:22
  awful. I couldn't get to you, and I couldn't live without you,
• 8:26
  poor lad, you always like to do things sudden like she had not understood.
• 8:31
  He became aware of the change in her. Terror flashed into his face,
• 8:37
  Deborah, He said, standing up, Deborah, I want to kiss
• 8:39
  you. You'd leef or not? I know, she answered, it's only
• 8:43
  for my sake. Thank you kindly, all the same, Stephen leef or
• 8:48
  not. I but I've come half across the world for it. He did
• 8:52
  not mention that he had worked his way home on a tramp steamer, sick
• 8:56
  and ill and scarcely convalescent. He did not mention, and a score of
• 9:00
  things that might have aroused her trouble that happened to himself had ceased to be
• 9:03
  worth either mention or thought. In his estimation, I said, Deborah.
• 9:09
  But first she went, I know, good God, I know, was
• 9:13
  any man ever such a blind fool? But I felt then that going was
• 9:16
  the only way to keep saying. These ranges they got hold of me.
• 9:22
  He faltered by the new light in him. He saw how meaningless his reasons
• 9:24
  must appear to her. He knew that now neither the wilderness nor dark,
• 9:30
  whether devils nor the infinite void, mattered to him in the least. His
• 9:33
  love for Deborah made him impregnable to terror, gave him a grasp of truth
• 9:39
  deeper than reason. He had found the golden arrow to his own agony,
• 9:43
  and in nobling there's no ill. Will lad Deborah went on in the toneless
• 9:48
  voice that was natural to her. Now. She was anxious that he should
• 9:52
  not reproach himself, for a moment's pain for him was more than she could
• 9:56
  bear. I understand all about it, she went on, sitting down and
• 10:00
  laying a motherly hand on his hair as he flung himself at her feet.
• 10:03
  I all about it, you thought, as folk will, as you love
• 10:07
  me best in the world, And then you came to see it different.
• 10:11
  I didn't know. I didn't understand, but now I do. I love
• 10:16
  you? Oh, what's the good of words? You can see see what,
• 10:20
  Stephen, that I love you better than myself. You was used to
• 10:26
  say that, said Deborah, with terrible, unintentional cruelty. But you did
• 10:31
  not. But I do now, I do? Now? How can I
• 10:33
  show you? Can't you believe it? Deborah, my darling, never no
• 10:37
  more? Suddenly in her eyes, her emotionless lips, he learnt the agony
• 10:43
  she had endured. He covered his face with his hands. Hard sobs shook
• 10:48
  him. There there, she said, patting his shoulder. Donna take on,
• 10:52
  lad, there's no to miss. He groped for her hand, Poor
• 10:58
  child, he said. Broken. Deborah a year ago would have known from
• 11:01
  the very simplicity of his words and their selflessness, in the midst of his
• 11:05
  own misery, that he loved her now, if never before today she did
• 11:11
  not know. She was a woman of one fixed idea, that he did
• 11:15
  not want her. So he must not be allowed to sacrifice himself out of
• 11:18
  kindness. There there she comforted him. It's nout. I'm like a man
• 11:24
  that kills himself in his sleep, he muttered, tell me about it.
• 11:28
  That night, the longest night, she said, like a child, repeating
• 11:33
  a well learnt, lesson, don't he cried, flinching, But she was
• 11:39
  backed by the devil's chair in a horror of darkness, and she had forgotten
• 11:43
  him. The devil's laughed down the spinney and called me a captomen. And
• 11:48
  so I was ring or no ring, For there's an out. Can hallow
• 11:50
  a man and a woman as lives together, if they do not love each
• 11:54
  other, and if they cannot bear to be apart, and if they can
• 11:58
  do without the little weighs each of the other, She paused, Oh well,
• 12:03
  she ended with a hint of cold pride. Then the yeoman's a kept
• 12:07
  woman, and the child's base born. The child Stephen questioned, he had
• 12:13
  not noticed the white bundle fraill as the cotton grass down that wondered from hill
• 12:18
  to hill, a poor white waf blown along the steep, dark mountains,
• 12:22
  as Stephen, your child. She was suddenly anxious that he should enjoy to
• 12:28
  the full the pride of fatherhood, the joy she had wanted for him.
• 12:31
  She took the child up and parted the shawl. There, she said,
• 12:35
  the only thing I've ever done for you, Stephen. She sat with the
• 12:39
  child on her knee. He knelt and examined it, anxious not to hurt
• 12:43
  her by any seeming indifference, but thinking only of her. The sun had
• 12:48
  gone from the thickets of color in the west, as from an orchard of
• 12:52
  ripe falling fruit. The red and yellow softly passed in the subdued light.
• 12:58
  The little group was like an austere imagined holy family. It's very said Stephen,
• 13:03
  gropingly, Very small, isn't it? And a bit broad for its
• 13:09
  length. The child began to cry, frightened by the tear that fell on
• 13:13
  its face. As Stephen bent over all that too, he muttered and shook
• 13:18
  his head in a kind of helplessness. All that pain for me. He's
• 13:22
  only broad because of his wraps, said Deborah, kindly explanatory, and he
• 13:28
  speak for his age, she added, quoting her mother with detachment. The
• 13:33
  baby cried louder. He was hungry and had inherited from his father the axiom
• 13:37
  here and now I mun take him home and give him his supper, said
• 13:43
  Deborah. What does it have, asked Stephen, catching at trifles in the
• 13:48
  desperate way of those in a great crisis. He's breastfed, said Deborah.
• 13:52
  Then need you began Stephen, striving to keep her with him. I mean,
• 13:58
  can't it be fed here? No? In her proud aloof glance,
• 14:01
  he read the death sentence of his hopes. He was a stranger. He
• 14:05
  looked round him like a man lost on the ranges in a snowstorm. I'd
• 14:11
  better go, he said, It's all I can do. You hate the
• 14:13
  sight of me. I don't wonder you know. I love only you out
• 14:18
  of the earld Stephen. Well, then, he cried, with a rush
• 14:22
  of joy. Can't you believe that I do? How can I make you
• 14:26
  believe? You? Canna? You told me you did afore and you Didna.
• 14:31
  I cannot believe anything again. Deborah, live with me once more,
• 14:35
  just for one week, one day at home yonder above lost with and you'll
• 14:39
  understand, then, he cried frantically, You'll know without telling, when you
• 14:43
  see how I'll take care of you. They're in a no home there now,
• 14:48
  for I burnt the things and the cattle'll go to and again by the
• 14:52
  hearth, and there's none to stay, the wind and the rain driving in,
• 14:54
  or the threshold. I'll make a new home. I can flung his
• 15:00
  head back with his old unconquerable look, thank you kindly, Stephen. But
• 15:03
  I'm well enough as I be. It's only your good heartedness, I know.
• 15:09
  But I don't need to be beholden to anyone. But it's I that
• 15:13
  would be beholden, Deborah. I'm asking it as a favor, the greatest
• 15:16
  in the world. Afore, when you asked, I gave you all I
• 15:20
  had, such as it was, and you flung it back in my face.
• 15:24
  I've no ill feeling, Stephen, only I've no more to give.
• 15:30
  Stephen stood up on his face as he looked down at her was the lambent
• 15:33
  beauty of those who find the golden arrow and clasp it to their hurt and
• 15:37
  glory. His face was the face of her dream in the dusk, tall
• 15:43
  and deep eyed beside the little sign post. He was the incarnation of the
• 15:48
  flockmaster Warren world Battered, despairing, he stood there in a grandeur that had
• 15:54
  not been his before, the splendor of perfect manhood. All the passions of
• 15:58
  his eager nature or quell before this new burning force in him, all his
• 16:03
  old readiness of tongue, his old poses were gone. He felt nothing of
• 16:07
  his own tragic beauty. As he said gently the Jews falling, deb You
• 16:12
  two should be home. Good night. Good night, Stephen, said Deborah,
• 16:18
  not realizing the parting any more than the meeting. And may the kindly
• 16:22
  light be along with you. From the coombs rose white rays of mist,
• 16:26
  slipping along the hillsides, ascending torn by the sharp buttresses of the rocks,
• 16:32
  touching the hills to a strange, grieved beauty. From the westward side.
• 16:37
  Two of these rays came, slowly, detaching themselves with soft determination from the
• 16:41
  fiscal world of rock and tree, and sweeping high over the plateau on the
• 16:45
  wind, like spirits too delicate and too eager for the limitations of a material
• 16:51
  world, they faded in the dusk. At last, Stephen turned and went
• 16:56
  a few steps in the direction from which he had come. He looked,
• 17:00
  and she waved her hand, and then she also turned to go. As
• 17:03
  soon as he was out of sight, all power of movement left Debrah.
• 17:07
  There was no room in her mind for anything but the sense that her fingers
• 17:11
  had touched his hair and now did not touch it. Slowly, as life
• 17:15
  comes back to a paralyzed limb, she awoke to the knowledge that he had
• 17:19
  been here and was gone. What did it matter whether he loved her or
• 17:22
  not, whether she was a kept woman or not, whether he left her
• 17:26
  again some day she wanted him. Everything else was washed from her brain by
• 17:32
  this primeval, ungovernable passion for the reassurance of touch. She hastily put the
• 17:37
  child in the heather, though it was wet with dew. Even motherhood was
• 17:41
  swept away. She ran along the path, calling Stephen, Stephen, but
• 17:47
  no voice answered. Around her were only the inscrutable hills, the night sky,
• 17:52
  intolerably secret, remote vast. The child wailed, and its cry pierced
• 17:57
  the solitudes, like the etern no lament of humanity, with its limitless desires,
• 18:03
  its weak small hands. Away at high Lizo's, a little light moved
• 18:07
  in widening arcs as John searched for Deborah, coming slowly nearer in a small
• 18:14
  aura of warmth along the hill in the cold gloom. But Deborah gazed away
• 18:18
  into the vague night, for she knew that somewhere in the huge folds of
• 18:22
  the hills, a light was passing from her, a light which shone now
• 18:26
  that it had ceased to flicker with a large glory, even more beautiful than
• 18:30
  her father's. It had smitten her new found quiescence and destroyed it, wakening
• 18:36
  her to life. It could she knew, circle her in from all uproar,
• 18:40
  all grief and gloom, though she dwelt in the starless coombs of pain
• 18:44
  and death. Chapter fifty three. In the rosy kitchen at High Lizos,
• 18:49
  Deborah and her mother sat by the fire tensely silent. John had taken the
• 18:55
  octagonal lantern and was away on the hills if eased to be found by mortal
• 19:00
  and father'll find him for certain, sure, So ease your heart, deb
• 19:03
  my dear, said missus Arden, why don't you put on that gown with
• 19:07
  a poppy sprik. No, I'll take nut for granted, Deborah replied,
• 19:11
  like all who have lived with sorrow and look below the surface of life,
• 19:15
  she had a shivering sense of its irony. She sprang up the child in
• 19:19
  her arms and sank into her chair, half fainting when she saw that only
• 19:23
  Eli stood at the door. He had come to borrow the sheep, shears,
• 19:26
  having broken his own. What's a time of night borrowing? Zolace in
• 19:32
  season seemingly scolded missus Arden. You'll go round in your bones to borrow your
• 19:36
  coffin Eli. Now as you be here, you may as well look what
• 19:40
  a fine boy deb Scott. Eli advanced upon Deborah and stood grimly contemplating the
• 19:45
  baby, well queried Missus Arden, thirsty for admiration from however unpromising a quarter,
• 19:52
  but Eli was lost in frowning study of the child, which was met
• 19:56
  by a composed blue gaze, fearless, eager, willful Stephen's. Suddenly,
• 20:00
  Eli leant forward and shook his fist at the child. Where's my bible?
• 20:06
  He shouted. Debrah stiffened through the uncurtained window. She had seen very far
• 20:11
  away a small light. While it was only a point in the darkness.
• 20:15
  There was a sound outside of a man running. They all listened, and
• 20:19
  the breathless quiet the footsteps acquired a strange significance. It was as if humanity
• 20:25
  ran blindly down the steep, hastening with unquenchable longing, towards some mystery.
• 20:30
  That the knight cradled Stephen stood in the doorway. He came in. Missus
• 20:34
  Arden tiptoed through the door and went down the path. Stephen looked at Eli,
• 20:40
  get out, he said, and Eli, in an unaccountable odd silence,
• 20:45
  went Stephen shut the door, well, said Eli, stealthily and gluing
• 20:52
  himself from the window, and startling Patty nearly out of her wits. If
• 20:56
  the young fool wants to go down on the floor like a struck bullock,
• 21:00
  why cannat he go down to the Lord Almighty and not to an woman,
• 21:03
  as is not but his wife? When all's said, he slammed the gate
• 21:07
  after him. If he was my son, he said, and faded in
• 21:11
  the dim soft night, John came up the lad outstripped me, mother,
• 21:17
  he explained, I'm thinkin' it's the shippin for you and me to night while
• 21:21
  cut love's mending. They sat on the straw and anora of light from the
• 21:26
  lantern. Shanna, I kintole a bit of fire for him and light the
• 21:30
  lamp, asked Patty, there's no need, mother, Do you mind the
• 21:34
  tale of them that found the golden arrow and went with apple blow scent round
• 21:40
  him and am more to bees and worm ship, and want it now of
• 21:42
  any man? There's no need of fire or can'el for them, my dear,
• 21:48
  for they'm got their light, the kindly light, and the thorn's white
• 21:52
  over end of chapter fifty three. End of the golden arrow by Merry Webb