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Chapters 47 and 48 · The Golden Arrow

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Chapter forty seven and forty eight of The Golden Arrow by Mary Webb. This
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LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Writ by Anne Ericson Toronto, chapter
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forty seven. It was Christmas Eve. Joe and Lily were coming to Tea
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tomorrow. Missus Arden had ordained that Deborah must be took out of herself.
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She had lain in a state of semi comas since the black night on which
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she came home. Sometimes she called for Stephen with low, terrible iteration.
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Only John's presence seemed to make an atmosphere of partial peace around her. He
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sat by her hour by hour, silent, breathing out love. In his
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eyes lay the anguish of a great lover, confronted with pain that he cannot
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cure. Missus Arden was wildly concealedly jealous. She had not hitherto loved Deborah
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nearly so much as Joe. The fraying of feminine on feminine and daily life
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often has this effect on mothers and daughters. But if a cataclysm comes,
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as it had in Deborah's life, reality comes to the top. Missus Arden
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loved Debora now with complete self abnegation and with jealous devotion that such love brings
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she slave from morning till night, And whenever she saw or thought she saw
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that John's silent presence was more valued than all her labors, she cried with
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her loud hiccupingk sobs away at the end of the garden by the rhubarb.
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Then she would return and give the patient John a bit of her mind at
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all times and places, except in Deborah's room, to John, or to
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Joe, to Rover if they were absent, to the clock or the bird
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cups. If Rover refused to wake up, she raged at the absent Stephen.
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The household furniture became his shipping boy, the clothes in the tub,
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the hens round the door suffered vicariously for him, you nasty blackguard. She
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apostrophies Rover one day, shaking the dolly at him so ferociously that he ran
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whimpering from the kitchen and never stopped till he reached the end of the liso's
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pastures, while the sheep bunched and regarded their awful deity in this new guise
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with prim satire. When Eli looked in on the morning of Christmas Eve to
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ask John's help with some news, she turned a wrathful face on him.
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Dunna come prying here, she said, it's all your fault. What is
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you know? Right? Well? And if I had him here, I'd
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tear him inchmeal, so I would ooh, glad enough you'll be for you
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smell out trouble like a blow fly, smells a carcass, and you'd leave
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for see tears than beer. Well, cough it up, woman, Let's
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hear the worst in the hand of the Lord. There is a cup in
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your ears. There'll be a singing if you're donna stop your texas, said
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Patty. I cannot hear myself speak. John came down to stop the tumult
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and his stocking feet. Well, a happy Christmas, John, said Eli.
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Leastaways a righteous and repentant on and some wadding for your ears. Who's
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dead? Cow with a hoost? There is none dead by the mercy of
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him whose name is Love. But my poor girl's in sore trouble. Eh.
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She am laying only just outside the shadowy gate and its quiet feet and
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soft voices and a hand in the dark for us in this house cottage,
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said Eli. Mechanically, what ails the wench? She's a lusty, strapping
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young woman, enough, Eli, said John. Though sixty five summers and
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winters have gone o'er you, they've not learnt you as their zills beyond the
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eels of the poor flesh that turn the heart to water, I and make
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life a bit of a trampled berry. When love's cut, we drop down
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from God to hear a man of your age talking of love's disgusting, said
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Eli, No wonder, you're poor in this life, and I'll be poorer
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in the next, for you'm knout by flimsy words and no eye to business,
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neither in cows nor religion. What's took the girl as your soul beside
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yourself? Stevens left her? Didn't I say so? Didn't I say he
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was a gallus young scoundrel. He took my bible and miscalled me. He's
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got no fear o God in him, nor the devil, nor yet me.
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Well, good riddance so long as he left her. The cottage and
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furniture money's now timbred. Snout. When the heart's dying, Eli, and
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she's burnt the furniture, burnt, the furniture, the new chairs and the
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table has had a good market value. What a wicked woman. John looked
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at him with pitiful scorn, chairs and tables and all such, She said,
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Waving his hand is for use in the meetings and partings of man,
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and the hills is for man to climb, and the stars to light him
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upwards. But narra one of'em is aught to do with man hisself.
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For the end of man's life is love, to give it and take it.
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And if he'd Donna, he might as well be dead. Well burn
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my ricks if you've been a mad John, gobbling love of love like a
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crazy turkey. God is love, Eli, John turned on his heel.
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Well you met as well. Come and love my sheep a bit, said
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Eli, For they've got foot wrought, and it takes two to dress'em.
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When Deborah's better, I'll come, not a four. No, Well,
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I'm surprised at your selfish to the bone. Their market value is going
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down every day, dear sakes, John was as near to exasperation as he
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ever was. You talk as if the world was not but pounds, shillings
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and pence. So it is, and as sharp as gets em, I
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leaf or lose em. Well that you surely will leaf or no, said
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Eli, as he stumped out. Meanwhile, Patty had seized the opportunity to
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steal up to Deborah's room and ensconce herself with much creaking in John's chair by
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the bed, with the Bible he had been reading on her lap, and
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a pathetic imitation of his contemplative attitude. But stillness was unnatural her, and
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to read the Bible on working days was, as she put it, against
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the grain. So she began to amuse herself by fortune telling with the Bible,
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by letting it fall open and putting her finger on a text with her
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eyes shut. The sudden little slap and wrestle at regular intervals awoke Deborah from
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her uneasy doze and wearied her exhausted nerves. Missus Arden had no idea of
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the fact. When John came back, she said, now dinner come disturbing
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her. I'm sitting with her. There's a bit of a smell in the
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kitchen, as if summit in the oven met be catched, said John,
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las me she let the Bible fall. It's the mince pies. John sat
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down calmly and went on reading from where he left off. The feverish flesh
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on Deborah's face slowly subsided in an hour, she was asleep again. Figg
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fidg fidge in her room from morning to night, said missus Arden to Lily
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next day. She'll never get right if you'd donna give me a chance to
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nurse her. Neither Machine or Lily knew that to some natures, all the
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conventional precautions are so much poison, and only the strong, invisible tendants of
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the spiritual, the unpractical, unscientific, is of any use at all.
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For there are times when it is not the deft hand, the skilled brain,
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the accumulated knowledge of centuries that can bring a human being back from the
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dark, but only the unskilled hand of a lover, the timeless gaze,
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the care that knows nothing of precaution or precedent. The room sank deeper into
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quiet. Deborah slipped from her waking numbness into complete oblivion. The darkness thickened.
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John sat pondering for the Hundlert's time as to what could have made Stephen
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go. He looked daily for the postmaster from sleep, who was also the
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grocer, and who received the letters from an auxiliary, who in turn received
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them from an old man with a broad gold band round his hat. And
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a faithful v R on the back of his cart. But when the postmaster
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came looking as he toiled up the snow valley like a fly and a sugar
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scoopful of fine white sugar, he only brought a Christmas card from Lucy Thropton.
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Suddenly the gray piece of the room was rent by shrill children's voices singing
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outside in the cold air. It was the Shakeshaft children. They were an
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embodiment of the urgent life of the world, which will seek joy no matter
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who lies dying. John crept to the window. Do you little ones now
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lead kindly? Light? I east away is averse and a bit. Well
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you sing that, then, my DearS, for nights be dark. The
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three little voices sang with unruffled blithness, the frantic appeal, out of a
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gloom of which they had never dreamt. Deborah awoke into the pathos of it
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and wished that her father's light and the faint remembrance of the hymn had not
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brought her home. She would never have the courage now to walk out of
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her father's ken into lost withbden Pool. That night she could have done it.
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She felt that the lamp on the stairs had been treacherous to her,
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taking advantage of her exhaustion to undermine her resolve. Now the future rose before
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her like the black rocks of lost within. She remembered how the cranberry flowers
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had looked like tears when she was listening to the rock Crusher on that day
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in August. She had no tears. Now Stephen made no more demands on
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her, with a wild self reproach of generous natures. She thought that she
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had been cold and selfish. It was agony to remember any moments but those
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few in what she felt that she really had given him all she could.
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Any thoughts spent on others seemed to her now a crime. It had been
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dreadful to her not to know how he was faring down at the mine.
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The present complete silence left her mind a blank. The children galloped through the
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hymn and finished off with a rush, and lost a while a merry Christmas.
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Something in the hymn's merciful way of treating laws as merely finite, recovery
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as infinite brought the long frozen tears to Deborah. It was not that she
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definitely expected anything. She did not, for even if Stephen came back.
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Now that she was sure he did not love her, living together would be
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worse than nothing. Yet the optimism of the hymn was sweet after the iron
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horror of that black night above lost within father, she said, suddenly,
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can I have the map of the world? A map, my dear I
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the old school, And as Joe and me learnt on, John went down
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to look for it and found Patty giving the children mince pies, not as
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you earned them, she remarked, for a more miserable, vexatious stitty than
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that their yearning thing. I never listened at on Christmas Eve. You was
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used to sing pretty things like I saw three ships. Sing it now loud
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and not stand crating like turkey poles in the rain. Not the ships,
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said John. Missus Arden was inarticulate with rage. Well, she said,
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at last, to think, as I've worked and scratched and saved and bore
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you two chillen, and now you up and say in my own kitchen,
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as I munna hear talk of my favorite Carol, Stephen's gone in a ship.
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Stephen Stephen. I'm fair sick of the name. I can understand right
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well now them old fellows as stone. That's Stephen in the Bible, by
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the way you'd din about him. He met me someone has died respectable and
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left money. And Stephen joined himself among the buffaloes, and all along o
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him. I cannot hear a bit of heart and song from chillen as I
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give their first wash to all three there, Sir John, tomorrow we'll have
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a two three. Carol's mother is dab awake. I why didn't you tell
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me? There's sir Broth, been ready this hour. I'm more forgetful man.
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I never see forget to eat, forget to sleep. If it had
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depended on you, you'd have forgotten to be born. She disappeared upstairs,
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making the most of her practical qualities. Since John had all the others,
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John fetched in the holly and began to arrange it round the pictures as a
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little surprise for her. Then he sat down to lap up his Christmas presents
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in various bits of ornamental paper saved during the year, fastening them with some
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copper wire that he had by him, and writing on them after long pleasant
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cogitation. Chapter forty eight. Faint tinklings, quick and small as a robin's
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chink chink came up the dark slopes above Sleep on Christmas evening. The handbell
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ringers were coming Christmasing, as they did every year when the weather allowed them.
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Joe and Lily had just arrived, and they were all having to eat.
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Deborah a part in an armchair by the fire withdrawn in heavy unconsciousness.
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She had got up at John's entreaty. It had taken her hours to dress,
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so hard was it to fix her attention on anything, And once downstairs
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she sank again into stupor. Joe, not having seen her since her illness,
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tiptoed across the kitchen with the air of a hopscotch player and a great
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scratching of hobnails on tiles. When noom quiet, Joey, make more noise
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than when noom noisy, said missus Arden. Well, deb said Joe,
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in the ventrilchis whisper that he kept for invalids on the amens and chapel.
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How be you? I be all right, Deborah spoke slowly. I quite
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all right. Our Deb's a good pluck done, said John, with tears
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in his eyes. Lily kissed Deborah. Well, deb she said, in
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the rather patronizing tone that she used to the sick or unfortunate. I hope
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he'll soon be well. I soon be well, said Deborah, without raising
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her eyes. Joe sat regarding her with awe would it come over her to
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make her a stranger to him? She was only our deb our, good
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sister and pleasant spoken, but nothing out of the common. He was puzzled
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by her remoteness, her dignity, for the clammis of grief, though it
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does not create, brings out hidden greatness. Deborah, in her silence,
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her unalterable grief, her tragedy, which to many would have been no tragedy,
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had the bearing and presence of a queen of some vast unknown land.
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Damn his eyes, said Joe, suddenly with passion, banging his closed hand
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on the table till the cups rattled, and quite forgetting his invalid manner.
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Missus Arden opened her mouth for a reproof, but realizing who he meant,
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she remarked instead, I says the same well, mother, said John.
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I wish if you must swear, Joe complained, Lilly, you'd swear genteel.
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Damn hoo, Joe asked Deborah, coming half way out of her reverie.
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Joe was to use his own expression put about. He stared helplessly at
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Deborah. Damn hoo, she repeated in level tones. At this moment,
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a shinko was heard outside. It's the sleep handbells, cried lily, What
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a treat handbells and such festivities had never come to Bitterly, Joe welcomed the
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diversion. Aye, there they come, he said, Cadwalader and all damn
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hoo, said Deborah. Best say some at Joe, murmured John anxiously.
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Cadwelladder, deb said, Joe, damn Cadwelladder and his missus and his kid.
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He repeated, with great relief. At having found a lamb for the
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sacrifice, Deborah went back into her stillness. The gate clickton. John went
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to the door. Well, neighbors, he said, you're kindly welcome.
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What am you going to give us? The postmaster, as head of the
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band and bass bell, said he thought of ox and ass, which every
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one knew to mean good Christian men rejoice. Though why the ringers always named
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it after a line in the second verse? No one asked, And a
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very suitable one said, missus Arden, For if we anna got an ox
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ween two cows, and are Joe's, and asked if ever there was one.
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When the merriment subsided, they grouped themselves in a semicircle. Job Cadwelladder,
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having been urgently entreated to come in at the right moment and not half
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a note too late, as he always did, The Postmaster cleared his throat
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and said, in the tone of one inciting a mob to evil, that
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chime obediently under the large stars on their black velvet. The chime of eight
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bells rippled out with one dotted note occasion by job. You did it again,
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said the postmaster, in a grieved voice. I did me best,
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said job. But when I'm expectin him to waggle, he'd done it.
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And as soon as I've given up expectin' he does it. Sudden like you
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are not master of your bill, said Shakeshaft solemnly. Poweller ain't master of
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his missus, nor himself, so it ain't likely he be master of anythink
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as determined as a bell, said the blacksmith, who had taken a good
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deal of refreshment. If you'm Christmas burt when you'm only done, the Parsons
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and the squires and two more. What'll you be when weem throw, asked
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the postmaster. The blacksmith subsided. Now the chime again, and into the
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hymn. Right off the antique tune, sweetly and emphatically, uttered by the
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bells, slipped out o'er the great plateau purl, tinted in the light of
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stars and the rising moon. The sense of the words was in the air.
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They were so well known by all, and they brought the strange joy
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with which some old Christian hymns touched the human heart, a joy alien to
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those here and to most human beings who are pagan at the core. Even
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John's Christianity was earthy, fuller flavored than any formulated Greek can be, but
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perhaps not fuller flavored, or as natural or as rich as the Gospel story,
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if we knew it in its entirety. This was John's favorite carol because
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it brought in the animal world ox and us before him bow I, he
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murmured, the dumb things. No, missus Arden tapped her foot to the
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tune and found no trial of faith in the words, For every birth to
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her was wondrous, and she was only a little less thrilled by the coming
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of this marvel two thousand years ago than by the coming of a neighbor's child
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to night, Lily rocked idly in the old rock and chair. If her
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rather vague and muddled ideas could have been unraveled, they would have resolved themselves
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into a kind of pity for a woman who had the pains of maturity without
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the ameliorations of whitefood. Joe sat contentedly drinking in the picture of childhood and
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cattle and mangers, for these were things he knew, friendly and homely.
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But there was not in him, or in any of those present, the
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sense of sinfulness implied in the terroll. For that sense is an artificial product
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of civilization, and though it may be both beautiful and necessary in some environments,
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it is not so among simple people living normal lives. What a dot
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uncle one chap you are, Job, said the postmaster. What ails you
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hopping on the note like that? I done my best, said Job.
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I fixed my eye on the clapper. Threebells aform my note, and I
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puts my tongue out, and I thought I should catch in him, but
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I did not belike I will sometime when bit bats sleep the ends aftward and
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women sleep alone, piped a small man who rang the trouble bell. He
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was dapper as a robin and wore a perpetual smile, as if he had
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thought of a splendid joke in babyhood and had never yet told it. He
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was the wit of the party. There was much mirth and covering of large
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mouths with large hands at his remarks, will, said the tanner bell,
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who was parish clerk. Such speakings not convenient, nor yet sleeping alone bait,
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said the blacksmith, who had an enormous voice, which gave to his
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remarks all broad in humor a kind of shamelessness. No, no, said
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the postmaster, finding his flock rather unruly manners. A four ladies man will
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play as Joseph was a walking Afterwards, John asked for a lead kindly light
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with a sorrowful glance at the silent figure by the fire. Oh laws me,
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said Patty, that gloomy thing again. Watch a man which we want
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with encircling gloom and angel's faces when we'm just going to sit down to Christmas.
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Beef and pickle and beer, said the blacksmith outside, in tones that
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would have been persuasive if they had not been stentorian ringing first, said the
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leader. Firmly. They played, and Debra sat with the map on her
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knee. She had drawn a line from Liverpool to New York across the Atlantic,
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but no pencil line, nor anything else. Letters, cables, photos
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can soften the tragedy of distance. She had suffered so much that she was
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numb, as people are after intense physical pain. She looked warm, but
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this added to her beauty, for the spirit shone more clearly. The younger
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man among the ringers, looking into the mellow firelight of the room, and
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seeing her there aloof from the rest, beautiful and silent, thought Stephen,
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a great fool. They also, seeing Lily's sunflower of the head going to
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and fro in the rocking chair, thought Joe, a lucky man, which
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thought Lily divined, and smiled intoxicatingly at them all. Well, thank you,
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kindly, said John at the end, And now come all in a
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navedrop and some pies. They came in, shuffling broadly, smiling. The
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blacksmith was in high feather. Well Joe, he shouted, what's one and
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one make poo? What a soft riddle, said Joe, read roared the
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blacksmith with depths of meaning, and the less discreet laughed. Very mild for
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the season, said the postmaster, to cover this remark. A mild dropping
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time. I thought it was a black frost, said Deborah in a low
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desolate voice, A long black frost. Everyone in the room grew still.
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A kind of fear gripped them. Missus Arden wiped her eyes. Joe stared
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at his boots. Lily looked impatiently at Deborah, angry with her for dimming
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the revelry. Berringer stood with mugs and pies suspended. John put down the
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rug he was carrying and went over to her in the black frost's he said,
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there's green and reds down under, and summer in the making. He
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sat down by her and stroked her arm gently. I hear tell, said
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Cadwalladder, who was not noted for tact and who had been following a train
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of thought. As they're all sixes and sevens at the mine. Since he's
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gone, the manager cannot get the man in hands no more. In a
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babby. He'd got away with him, they say, though he was young,
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and they durstn't go again him. What are you treading on my foot
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for so heavy, mister shakeshaft. Deborah turned to Job with the first faint
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look of interest that she had worn since the twenty first. All sixes and
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sevens be they, she said, with pride. Ay. Missus said,
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Job taken aback. Cannot get on without him, she asked, eagerly,
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No danger, Missus, Aye, she said, with such a fire of
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love in her eyes that the men watched her open mouths. Aye, they'll
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miss him. They'll not find his like, not at all the row.
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Can they find the like of mice Stephen. It was the first time she
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had said his name. She was immediately overcome with such terrible weeping that Missus
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Arden was alarmed and helped her upstairs. The blacksmith, tears rolling down his
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cheeks, advanced him boxing style upon poor Job. I'll ge a black eye
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for tar mention of her, he shouted, in a bass voice which was
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whether spoilt by its unsteadiness. I did not Job reteated. I only said
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listen at him, only said now now. Jim the postmaster interposed, shoeing
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his ringers out as he would shoe fowls. Good night, all, said
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John. Dunna take on Job for tears. Is a bomb. The ringers
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disappeared. Scattering faint, silvery tinklings that fell in the night, like drops
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of water through them could be heard the blacksmith's infuriated bellowings end of Chapter forty eight.