“Oh, wait till Christmas — till I am twenty-one.”
“Nearly three months! Why on earth —”
“It will make no difference. I shall be able to choose thee of my own free choice then.”
“But three months!”
“I shall consider thee engaged — it doesn’t matter about other people.”
“I thought we should be married in three months.”
“Ah — married in haste — But what will your mother say?”
“Say! Oh, she’ll say it’s the first wise thing I’ve done. You’ll make a fine wife, Lettie, able to entertain, and all that.”
“You will flutter brilliantly.”
“We will.”
“No — you’ll be the moth — I’ll paint your wings — gaudy feather-dust. Then when you lose your coloured dust, when you fly too near the light, or when you play dodge with a butterfly-net — away goes my part — you can’t fly — I— alas, poor me! What becomes of the feather-dust when the moth brushes his wings against a butterfly-net?”
“What are you making so many words about? You don’t know now, do you?”
“No — that I don’t.”
“Then just be comfortable. Let me look at myself in your eyes.”
“Narcissus, Narcissus! — Do you see yourself well? Does the image flatter you? — Or is it a troubled stream, distorting your fair lineaments?”
“I can’t see anything — only feel you looking — you are laughing at me. — What have you behind there — what joke?”
“I— I’m thinking you’re just like Narcissus — a sweet, beautiful youth.”
“Be serious — do.”
“It would be dangerous. You’d die of it, and I— I should —”
“What!”
“Be just like I am now — serious.”
He looked proudly, thinking she referred to the earnestness of her love.
In the wood the wind rumbled and roared hoarsely overhead, but not a breath stirred among the saddened bracken. An occasional raindrop was shaken out of the trees; I slipped on the wet paths. Black bars striped the grey tree-trunks, where water had trickled down; the bracken was overthrown, its yellow ranks broken. I slid down the steep path to the gate, out of the wood.
Armies of cloud marched in rank across the sky, heavily laden, almost brushing the gorse on the common. The wind was cold and disheartening. The ground sobbed at every step. The brook was full, swirling along, hurrying, talking to itself, in absorbed intent tones. The clouds darkened; I felt the rain. Careless of the mud, I ran, and burst into the farm kitchen.
The children were painting, and they immediately claimed my help.
“Emily — and George — are in the front room,” said the mother quietly, for it was Sunday afternoon. I satisfied the little ones; I said a few words to the mother, and sat down to take off my clogs.
In the parlour, the father, big and comfortable, was sleeping in an arm-chair. Emily was writing at the table — she hurriedly hid her papers when I entered. George was sitting by the fire, reading. He looked up as I entered, and I loved him when he looked up at me, and as he lingered on his quiet “Hullo!” His eyes were beautifully eloquent — as eloquent as a kiss.
We talked in subdued murmurs, because the father was asleep, opulently asleep, his tanned face as still as a brown pear against the wall. The clock itself went slowly, with languid throbs. We gathered round the fire, and talked quietly, about nothing — blissful merely in the sound of our voices, a murmured, soothing sound — a grateful, dispassionate love trio.
At last George rose, put down his book — looked at his father — and went out.
In the barn there was a sound of the pulper crunching the turnips. The crisp strips of turnip sprinkled quietly down on to a heap of gold which grew beneath the pulper. The smell of pulped turnips, keen and sweet, brings back to me the feeling of many winter nights, when frozen hoof-prints crunch in the yard, and Orion is in the south; when a friendship was at its mystical best.
“Pulping on Sunday!” I exclaimed.
“Father didn’t do it yesterday; it’s his work; and I didn’t notice it. You know — Father often forgets — he doesn’t like to have to work in the afternoon — now.”
The cattle stirred in their stalls; the chains rattled round the posts; a cow coughed noisily. When George had finished pulping, and it was quiet enough for talk, just as he was spreading the first layers of chop and turnip and meal — in ran Emily — with her hair in silken, twining confusion, her eyes glowing — to bid us go in to tea before the milking was begun. It was the custom to milk before tea on Sunday — but George abandoned it without demur — his father willed it so, and his father was master, not to be questioned on farm matters, however one disagreed.
The last day in October had been dreary enough; the night could not come too early. We had tea by lamplight, merrily, with the father radiating comfort as, the lamp shone yellow light. Sunday tea was imperfect without a visitor; with me, they always declared, it was perfect. I loved to hear them say so. I smiled, rejoicing quietly into my teacup when the father said:
“It seems proper to have Cyril here at Sunday tea, it seems natural.”
He was most loath to break the delightful bond of the lamp-lit tea-table; he looked up with a half-appealing glance when George at last pushed back his chair and said he supposed he’d better make a start.
“Ay,” said the father in a mild, conciliatory tone, “I’ll be out in a minute.”
The lamp hung against the barn wall, softly illuminating the lower part of the building, where bits of hay and white dust lay in the hollows between the bricks, where the curled chips of turnip scattered orange gleams over the earthen floor; the lofty roof, with its swallows’ nests under the tiles, was deep in shadow, and the corners were full of darkness, hiding, half hiding, the hay, the chopper, the bins. The light shone along the passages before the stalls, glistening on the moist noses of the cattle, and on the whitewash of the walls.
George was very cheerful; but I wanted to tell him my message. When he had finished the feeding, and had at last sat down to milk, I said:
“I told you Leslie Tempest was at our house when I came away.”
He sat with the bucket between his knees, his hands at the cow’s udder, about to begin to milk. He looked up a question at me.
“They are practically engaged now,” I said.
He did not turn his eyes away, but he ceased to look at me. As one who is listening for a far-off noise, he sat with his eyes fixed. Then he bent his head, and leaned it against the side of the cow, as if he would begin to milk. But he did not. The cow looked round and stirred uneasily. He began to draw the milk, and then to milk mechanically. I watched the movement of his hands, listening to the rhythmic clang of the jets of milk on the bucket, as a relief. After a while the movement of his hands became slower, thoughtful — then stopped.
“She has really said yes?”
I nodded.
“And what does your mother say?”
“She is pleased.”
He began to milk again. The cow stirred uneasily, shifting her legs. He looked at her angrily, and went on milking. Then, quite upset, she shifted again, and swung her tail in his face.
“Stand still!” he shouted, striking her on the haunch. She seemed to cower like a beaten ‘woman.