Читать книгу Rogue Herries - Hugh Walpole - Страница 7

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David looked up at the woman whom he so thoroughly detested, with fearless eyes.

‘I went out because I wanted.’

‘Yes, and the muck and all you’ve got into,’ she answered crossly. ‘But it isn’t for me to say, I’ve no authority. And the horses not returned yet from Keswick, and the hills darkening the whole place. I hate this house—from the first instant I set foot in it I’ve hated it. A nice, pretty kind of life for one who’s young enough and handsome enough for a frolic or two.’

She swung the silver chain that lay about her neck and touched the crimson velvet of her sleeves.

‘And you fast with the priest all the morning,’ she continued, her sharp eyes darting about the shadowy room. ‘What is it he must speak so long about with a child like you?’

‘He teaches me Latin,’ David answered quietly.

‘Yes, and many another lesson, I’ll swear,’ she answered.

He could see that her ears were ever straining for a sound.

‘Ugh!’ she shivered, ‘the rain’s coming down again, and all the old tapestries flapping against the wall. It wasn’t so in Doncaster, I can promise you, before your father engaged me.’

‘No,’ said David, hating her.

‘No, indeed. There was music there and dancing and the Fair at midsummer and the Plays at Yule. But here ...’

She broke off. She thought that she had caught the clap of the horses’ hoofs on the ragged stones of the little court. She sprang to the darkening window, then turned impatiently back, caught the flickering taper and held it to the leaded pane. Once again she was disappointed. There were no horses there—only the tap of some branches against the wall and the seeping drip of the rain.

‘Why did you come here?’ asked David.

She struck her hand violently on the table—‘Why? why? why?’ she answered passionately. ‘You are a child. How should you know? And yet——’ She came over to him, caught him by the shoulders and stared into his eyes. ‘You hate me, do you not? Young though you are, you know enough for that. You all hate me here and wish me gone. And most of all that priest—who has persuaded him against me.’

‘He is not a priest now,’ answered David. ‘He is only Mr. Roche now.’

‘No priest? Yes, that is fine talk. Once a priest always a priest. And where has he gone this afternoon, riding away to Keswick? Where is it that he goes for nights together?’

‘I don’t know,’ answered David.

‘I’ll tell you more,’ she continued. ‘He can be in prison any day. There are the laws against the Catholics, and he serving Mass in that upper room. Have I no ears nor eyes? So he shall be in prison if he returns and I have my way.’

She stopped again to listen. The house was intensely silent. The two little girls were with their mother in her room. There could be heard even through the rain and the wind the noise of falling water, the swollen stream tumbling down the side of the hill at the house’s back. She stood thinking, then came closer again to David. He moved as though he would shrink from her, then firmly stood his ground.

‘David, do you not think you could speak to him, to your father? When nobody else is by—he listens to you. I have noticed that when no other can speak to him he can be patient with you. Ask him if he will not ride out with me for an hour—I would tell him certain things. For weeks now I have not been alone with him, and I shall go mad ... this desire ... this longing....’

She broke off as though the words choked her, putting one hand to her throat and with the other gripping the boy’s arm. David saw that she was in great suffering, and could have been sorry for her had he not hated her so. He remembered that night at the Keswick inn when his father had come in and kissed her. He hated that she should touch him, but he did not move.

‘You must speak to him yourself,’ he answered. ‘My father, these past weeks, has had business in Keswick and in the country here.’

‘Business in Keswick!’ she answered scornfully, pushing him from her so that he almost fell. ‘Fine business! Such as he had in Doncaster. Riding into Keswick to play at cards and look at the women, stumbling about in these mucky country paths to find a girl with bright eyes....’

David cried: ‘You shall not speak against my father. When he wishes to talk with you he will tell you. Yes, it is true that we all hate you here and wish you gone. My mother cries because of you. You struck Deborah when she had done no wrong. You should return to Doncaster, where there are games and music....’

He was trembling with rage and with a desire that in some way he might persuade her to go. Oh, if only she would go away....

But already she had forgotten him. Her ears again had caught a sound, and this time she was not deceived.

The clatter of hoofs was on the stones of the court, and at the same instant Margaret Herries, the two little girls beside her, appeared, holding a light, at the stair’s head.

‘Is he come? Is he come?’ she cried eagerly, and then started down the rickety stairway, moving heavily and awkwardly, the children close behind her.

The hall, that had been only a moment before so dark and drear with the faint light and old Herries sneering from the wall, was now all alive.

Francis Herries in his deep riding-coat, Wilson following him with candles, entered, and his wife and the children ran to him. Alice Press stayed in the dusk. They could see at once that he was in a good mood. He laughed as he saw them, caught Deborah and David to him, bent forward and kissed his wife.

‘Yes, something to eat and drink. I’m parched and famished. The rain blew against us like the plague. I thought Mameluke would have fallen twice, and it was such thick darkness along Cat Bells that it was God’s miracle we were not in the lake.’ He pulled Deborah’s hair. ‘Thou knowest there’s something here for thee and for Mary too—the other pocket for David....’ Laughing and shouting with excitement, they felt in the pockets and pulled out the bundles. For Deborah there was a ‘baby’ with bright flaxen hair and a dress of green silk, for Mary a toy tea-set, cups and saucers decorated with pink roses, and for David battledore and shuttlecock.

With every moment the room grew more lively. A big log-fire was leaping in the open fire-place. Wilson and his daughter were setting the table; Benjamin had come in (Nathaniel had left them at Martinmas), a bottle of wine in either hand, his round face smiling with the pleasantry of the familiar servant who knows that to-night he has nothing to fear from his master’s temper. Only Alice Press stood back against the wall, without moving, her hand against her heart.

Francis Herries, his riding-coat flung into a chair, stood before the fire, his legs spread, warming his back.

‘Dear brother Pomfret is to visit us to-morrow,’ he said. ‘He will condescend to take the journey. Keswick was a pool of muck; you couldn’t stir for the mud. And so, Deb, you love your baby?’

Deborah was sitting on a stool at her mother’s feet, hugging her doll. She was in an ecstasy of happiness, rocking the doll in her arms, then straightening it to smooth its stiff hair, her eyes shining, looking at her brother every once and again to see that he was sharing in her pleasure.

Francis Herries, looking out at them all, hummed in a half-whisper the children’s song:

‘Lady Queen Anne who sits in her stand,

And a pair of green gloves upon her hand,

As white as a lily, as fair as a swan,

The fairest lady in a’ the land.’

To-night he was well content. The mood was upon him when everything seemed fair. It was good thus to come home to his own, to find the candles shining and his own things about him, and his children, whom he loved, longing for him. The devil of restlessness was not with him. That afternoon in Keswick he had won three fine bets at the cock-fighting. He had drunk just enough to make the world glow. Even Margaret, his wife, could seem, close to him, neither so stout nor so foolish.... Ah, if they would let him alone, his little pack of demons, he could make a fine thing of this life yet.

His eyes, roaming, found Alice Press, motionless against the wall. His voice changed.

‘Have the babies been good?’ he asked her.

She came forward into the candlelight.

‘Well enough,’ she answered, and turning sharply, left the room.

The food came in. The others had dined long ago, but they crowded about him as he ate, and Benjamin stood behind them, smiling beneficently, as though they were all his handiwork.

While he ate and drank he told them little things about his Keswick day—how they had been baiting a bull in the market-place and two dogs had been killed; how there had been a medicine man pulling out teeth, and he had pulled two wrong ones from an old woman, and she had demanded her money back, but he had not given it: the old woman’s son had fought him and knocked his tub over; how he had had a talk with old Westaway, the architect of Uncle Pomfret’s house, and what a strange old man he was and had been the world over and seen the Pope in Rome and the Czar of all the Russias, and spoke in a shrill piping voice, and trembled with anger, so they said, at the sight of a woman; how there was a little black boy for sale like the one Aunt Jannice had, and some splendid dogs, big and fierce, who would do finely for defending the house in the winter; how there had been in the market-square the day before a gathering of those strange people, the Quakers, and they had been set upon and two of them stripped naked and splashed with tar; how they told him that there was a band of robbers now in Wasdale that came down from Scafell and had murdered two shepherds in the last week; and there was a fine gathering of gentlemen for the cock-fight and he had not done so ill there....

Here he broke off; he knew what Margaret thought of his cock-fighting—another evening he might have teased her and been pleased to see the fear come into her eyes, but not to-night.... He was young as David to-night. He had David on his knee, his hand fingering his hair. His wife, Margaret, was praying: ‘Oh, Lord, let this last awhile. Let this last awhile.’

After his supper they played Blind-man’s Buff. Francis Herries’ eyes were bound with the handkerchief. The children ran, screaming and laughing; Margaret herself played and ran into his arms, and once again—after how many years—her husband had his arms about her, held her, kissed her cheek. It was David’s turn to be blinded, and, as he stood in darkness, he could hear all the sounds—the crack and tumble of the fire and the hiss of the falling ash, the rain against the window, the breathing of the people about him; and it seemed to him that all the room was lit with red light and old great-great-grandfather Herries came down from his picture-frame and ordered him to come to him. He ran forward; an instant of awful terror came to him. But all was well; it was into Benjamin’s arms that he had run, and as he felt the stout, soft body with his hands he screamed with excited relief: ‘It’s Benjamin! It’s Benjamin!’—then Benjamin was blind man.

After breakfast the whole world is filled with light. Everything moves together. Round Herries the entire universe centres itself, spreading out to endless distances that are mysteries—China, Pera, the kingdom of Samarcand—but pouring all its waters into this one deep purple pool—purple of Glaramara, purple of the shadows and eaves and door-post, purple of the feathers in the peacock fan carried by the Princess in Deb’s chapbook, purple of the darker river shadows that lie beneath the spume and froth tumbling through Grange to the lake. Through the shadows of this purple February morning, David, standing at the road-bend, Deborah beside him, saw the moving of all the people around him—Alice Press yawning at the window, his father drinking his breakfast ale; Benjamin in the little court, his hand on Mameluke; his mother hearing Mary her morning prayer; the old witch grandmother Wilson silent against the wall, her white kerchief about her chin, leaning on her stick; Wilson himself moving to the cows; then, a little more distantly, Moorcross, the home of the statesman Peel—Peel, the tallest, stoutest man David had ever seen—famous for his wrestling, with a boy of David’s own age, whom David would like to know; and beyond the Peels again, all Borrowdale, with the names that were becoming part of him, Rosthwaite and Stonethwaite, Seathwaite and Seatoller, and the hills, glittering on this lovely morning, Glaramara, Scafell, the Gavel; wolves, maybe, above Stye Head, and robbers, his father had said, in Wasdale, and fairies, gnomes, devils, witches....

Deb’s hot hand held his more tightly.

‘What are you looking for, David?’

What was he looking for? He did not know. But this was to be a day of days. His happiness last evening, the games, sleeping on the small pallet beside his father’s bed and then waking to so wonderful a day! After all the rain and wind, this stillness and shining glitter, small fleecy clouds like puddings or puppies plump against the shadowed softness of the blue, the branch of no tree stirring, so clear that the crowing of a cock far away towards Seatoller could plainly be heard, but, as always here, the sound of running waters, now one, now two, now fast as though an urgent message had come to hasten, now slow with a lazy drawling sound....

He knew that to-day he could have the small shaggy pony, Caesar, that his father had bought from Peel. It was a whole holiday. Mr. Finch would not appear. No one would care what he did nor where he went. He would like to ask the Peel boy to go with him, but he was shy, and the Peel boy spoke so odd a language and then, of course, had his work to do....

At that instant, so miraculous is life, the Peel boy passed them. The Peel boy was bigger and stronger than David, very broad of the chest and thick of the leg; his eyes were blue and his hair very fair; his cheeks were rosy, and he whistled out of tune. He was whistling now, but when he saw Deborah and David he stopped. He paused and smiled.

‘Good day,’ said David, also smiling.

‘’Day,’ said the boy, shuffling his feet. They grinned and said nothing.

‘Have you a knife, please?’ David asked.

‘Aye.’

David did not need one, but when the large rough cutlass was put in his hand he chipped off the small branch of a tree.

‘Thank you.’ He tried again. ‘’Tis a fine day.’

‘Aye.’

‘We have holiday.’

‘Aye.’

‘I shall ride Caesar to the valley end.’

‘Aye.’

Then the Peel boy bobbed his head and went on down the path. He turned back.

‘You may have t’ knife,’ he said.

‘Oh, no, I thank you,’ said David, very greatly touched. Then seeing disappointment—‘Well—if you wish——’

He took the knife, and the Peel boy, delighted, started down the path again, whistling once more out of tune.

The day was well begun.

He walked slowly back to the house, his hand tight in Deb’s. She asked: ‘David, may I come with you on Caesar?’

‘No,’ he answered, ‘I go alone.’ He felt her hand give a little quiver—‘Why, you are not afeared? I shall be back by dusk.’

She nodded her head bravely. ‘I shall wash my new baby.’ But she had something in her mind. She noticed so much more than Mary. She was exceedingly sensitive and would always be. She would always live alone, however many people were near her, and would give herself in passionate devotion to one or two, realising that it was the law of her life that she should give rather than receive.

Already, although she was only seven years of age, she knew of many little things in and around Herries that no one else had seen—the face of a woman, thin and sharp, carved on the oak chest in the dining-hall; a ruby ring that old great-great-grandfather Herries wore on his finger in the picture; the way that Alice Press had of looking scornfully at her finger-nails; the fashion that old Mrs. Wilson had of walking like a blind woman, her eyes tightly shut; the coarse crowing laugh of her granddaughter—and she knew everything about David: the straightness of his back when he was standing waiting for something, how one leg would rub against the other when he began to be eager in talking about something; his smile, when one end of his mouth seemed to curl more than another; the roughness that a wind would make of his hair when he wore no cap, the beautiful coolness of his forehead when he let her put her hand on it. She did not know that she knew these things—she had as yet no self-consciousness.

The most common sensation for her would always be fear, and the constant duty of her life would be building up sufficient courage with which to meet it. Apprehension would attack her at every turn. It was as though she had three skins less than other folk. Even as a baby she had seen shadows in the room that no one else had seen, heard footsteps that no one else had heard. Things assumed significance for her beyond all fact and reason. There had been a tree in the Doncaster garden, stout in the trunk, thinly carved in its branches. How she had hated that tree, what terrors undefined it had brought to her, how, in all the other excitements of leaving Doncaster, this had been predominant—that she need never see that tree again!

And here at Herries already there were terrors. Alice Press and old Mrs. Wilson of course—these were natural alarms—but also the pump in the yard, the two suits of armour within the house-door that seemed to her to have faces, one white and one yellow, and the steps of someone walking on the floor of the parlour-loft when they were in the dining-hall.

All around her, everyone was insensitive. It was not a time when people noticed such things. There were witches and warlocks, fairies and gnomes, but they were real and active with persons as positive as the serving-man or the night watchman. She kept—as she was always to keep—everything to herself. David alone understood something of her sensitiveness, and this not because he shared it with her, but because he loved her so deeply that she was like part of himself. Only when she was with him she knew no fear. Her confidence in him was as though he were someone divine. Where he was no fear could come, no evil live.

This morning as they neared the house he wanted to go into the yard behind to see whether Benjamin were there. She shrank back.

‘Come, Deb. Benjamin hath a new puppy Peel’s man gave to him.’

She shook her head and, breaking from him, ran in by the front door. He remembered then that he must see his mother. Every morning he was with her for half an hour, and read out of the Life of King Arthur or the Bible for her. He read very well; he liked books when there were not horses and dogs and games like football and battledore. But to-day he did not want to read. It was not a day for books, and as he moved slowly into the house, he felt impatient with his mother. He shared a little with his father the intolerance of her clumsiness, her habit of tears, her absent-mindedness, and, as with all of us when we are impatient with those who love us, he wished that she did not love him quite so much.

She was so easily hurt. She was always asking him what he was doing, where he was going, with whom he had been; and although there was no reason at all why he should not tell her everything, he inclined to be secret with her because of her curiosity. Then he had seen, so many times, his sister Mary flatter and cheat her mother because of something that she had wanted, and that made him honest to the point of discourtesy. He loved her better when he was not with her; he hated Alice Press because she made his mother unhappy, but he did not mind also making her unhappy. Now, when he went in, he would be forced to tell her about what he was going to do, how he would ride Caesar to the valley’s end, and fish in the stream below Stye Head and watch to see if a wolf should be prowling under Glaramara. And he did not want to tell her these things. It would spoil them a little, make them more ordinary and less adventurous.

He found her in her room, alone, the room darkened by the big canopied bed; it was a little chill.

He saw at once that to-day there would be no reading. His mother, dismayed and distraught, was standing in the middle of the room, her hand at her cheek, her eyes crowded with alarm.

So soon as she saw him she began: ‘No, David.... Leave me.... This is too vile....’ She was not near to tears: no, for once anger had mastered her. She had even a certain grandeur, pulled to her full height, massive, her gaze upon the door. Before he could wonder, someone had come in, and at once a spate of words broke about the place; the room crackled with fury.

He knew, without turning, that it was Alice Press; no need to question that shrill voice that rose in a kind of sweeping tide of temper to a scream.

‘And so you mean to banter me, madam—a fine figure before your own children. Was I put here to direct them or no? It is no disparagement to a woman, I suppose, that before all your household I should be told my place and then left to find it by their easy insulting courtesy. Oh, no, indeed—I am not to be averse to every slavish duty that a gentlewoman can be put to, having been dragged from Doncaster by the heels, and then flung into this muck-heap and cesspool to keep proper company with old witches, who by rights should be stripped of every cloth on their backs and then thrown to the river to let them sink or swim! Oh, no, you say, I honour you ever more and more, but I insult you as I may, and as convenience suits me. I do not remember to have ever had the pleasure of witnessing your own rules of law and order in this house or any other. You are quiet enough until the fit moment comes to abuse me properly, and then you have words enough.... I can’t express the satisfaction, truly, that it gives me to know the meaning of your feeling towards me, and if I should go naked and be on my knees before you, that would give you satisfaction, perhaps—you who have not your own children to order, nor your husband to bed with you—yet you would teach me my lesson and my proper order in this house....’

She paused for breath. David saw her now, her pale face crimson, her hands clenched, her breast heaving.

‘I will not have you,’ Margaret Herries answered, ‘abuse my privileges. It was not by my wish nor order that you were here. God knows I have surrendered in these years many of my proper rights, and God He also knows that I have suffered my own bitterness, and such it may be must come to every woman, but yet I am mistress in this house.’

‘Mistress!’ Alice Press broke in, ‘and in a fine house! Mistress when there is such a master here and a house where the mice and rats are the true familiars. Mistress you may be in your own privacy, but mistress, as the veriest hireling on this place knows, in no public fashion. Mistress! Then who is master here? Know you your master and his company? Ask your master his pleasure in Keswick and the drabs that he fumbles, so that after barely a six months’ stay in this place his name is a byword! Mistress——’

‘I will not,’ Margaret Herries broke in. ‘This is enough. I have suffered your company long enough, but now it is you or I who go—and I care not how soon!’

‘Go!’ Alice Press moved a step forward. ‘Yes, though we had been at the same charity school and I had gone the round of neighbours asking for bread, I would not go at your bidding. No, nor do aught else at your bidding. Neither I nor anyone else in this place. You for a weak trembling fool who have neither the courage nor the discipline to bid a mouse go when you would wish it. Oh, I could tell you things, madam, that would make your eyes sore. I have waited in patience, borne your insults and laughed at your silly little pieces of pride, but now at last my silence has lasted long enough....’

Silence fell on the room. Francis Herries stood in the doorway, and David moved towards his mother. He came close to her, scarcely knowing that he did so, and suddenly he felt her trembling hand on his shoulder and steadied himself that he might support it.

‘Well,’ Herries said quietly, looking about the room, ‘here is a scramble ... the whole house shares in it.’

For once Margaret Herries was not cowed. Her hand tightening on David’s shoulder, her voice trembling ever so lightly, she replied to him:

‘Mrs. Press has some complaint that I have ordered her unjustly before the servants. She has been impertinent ...’

David saw, and triumphantly, that it was the other woman who was afraid. In a voice that was strangely stilled after its earlier shrillness, looking straight at Herries, forgetting, it would seem, that there was any other in the room, she answered:

‘I have my place here, a place that you have appointed me. Your wife has forgotten ...’

Herries smiled.

‘Your place? No place unless you yourself fulfil it.’

It was possible that in that one quiet word she saw her sentence; she had known, it might be, that for months it had been coming to her. It might be that, beyond that again, she realised now her folly in provoking this scene, in forgetting a patience that it had been, this last year, no easy task to tutor her natural hot temper towards.

‘I have fulfilled it,’ she answered proudly. ‘It is you who have neglected to keep me in it.’

‘That may well be,’ he answered lightly; ‘there is so much to be done and little time to see to it all. And now I advise that you leave us.... Wherever your place may be, it is certain that it is not in this room.’

She would, it seemed, speak; then with another glance at him, her colour now very white, she passed through the door.

He looked at his wife with a strange mixture of scorn and kindliness.

‘You should know better, Meg, than to suffer her impertinence ... but at least you shall not suffer it long.’

He went out. David felt still the pressure of his mother’s hand. She did not move; then, at last, turned from him, went to the window and stood there looking out. There was nothing that he could do—only he would never speak to Alice Press again. Never! Not though his father whipped him till the blood ran. With this high resolve he left the room, and then, after a pause, the house. He hated it and everyone in it.

He found Benjamin and Benjamin found Caesar. No one prevented him; from the outside court the house within seemed dead. No sound came from it. It was strange that by merely closing a door you shut everything off—anger, fears, greed, joys. Already, at his early years, it seemed to him that one of the ways to secure happiness was to escape from people, to be by yourself in the open.

He wasn’t happy as he found his way, past Moorcross, on to the main path, but he was too young and too healthy to be unhappy for long. And there was the consciousness that he was sharing now more in real grown-up life than he had done in Doncaster. But why had his father brought Alice Press with him from Doncaster? That was what he could not understand. It was from her that all the trouble came, she who made his mother unhappy, his father angry, Deb frightened, himself in a rage. Were she gone, they would all be tranquil again. But why had his father brought her? Why had he kissed her in the inn? There was something strange here that caused his heart to beat and his cheeks to redden. Children then lived from the earliest years in contact with great grossness of word and action. David almost from babyhood had been aware of the physical traffic between men and women, had at the age of seven seen a woman give birth to a child in the streets of Doncaster, but he had as yet translated none of these physical acts to mental or spiritual significance.

Life from the very first was for him far coarser and more brutal than it would be for his great-grandchildren, but for that reason, perhaps, his consciousness of it was purer and less muddled than theirs would be. In any case he drove these things very swiftly from his mind as he drew out from the Rosthwaite hamlet into the open country.

Open country, indeed, it was. At this time it was scarcely cultivated save in a few fields round Seathwaite or Rosthwaite. It lay in purple shadows with splashes of glittering sunlight, a lost land, untenanted by man, no animal anywhere visible, dominated entirely by the mountains that hemmed it in. To David’s right ran the path up to Honister, where the mines were; this country was forbidden ground, for here all the rascals and outcasts of the neighbourhood would congregate to scrape among the mine refuse and then sell the scraps of plumbago to the Jews in Keswick, who would meet them at ‘The George’ or ‘The Half-Moon’ and then bargain with them. The stories were that titanic battles were fought above Stye Head and on Honister between rival bands of robbers, disputing their plunder, and it was true enough that many a time, walking up Honister, you would find a dead man there, by the roadside, his throat cut or a knife in his belly and often enough stripped naked.

For David, that road up to Honister was the most magical passage of all, and one day he would investigate it, robbers or no robbers, to its very heart; but to-day he was out to catch fish, and it was by the bridge under Stye Head that he would catch them—were he lucky! It was not a great day for fishing with this glittering sun and shining sky.

The farther he got from Herries the happier he became. Of late he had been cluttered about with people. All of them—his father, his mother, Deb, Mary, his cousins, Father Roche, the Press woman, old Mrs. Wilson and her son, Peel and his boy—some of them he loved and some of them he hated, but all of them hindered his perfect freedom.

He, he was wise enough even now to realise, would always be hampered by people—you couldn’t be free of people, nor did he want to be—but there would be moments and days when you would be free, absolutely, nakedly free, and, oh! how glorious they were!

It was such a moment now.

Caesar was no very magnificent steed, but he was a good enough pony, and quite able to grasp his own moments of freedom. As they came deeper under the hills the path was so rough and uncertain that David let him pick his own way. The group of mountains that closed the valley in were lovely in their wine-grape colour under a sky that had been a stainless blue, but that now, in the fashion of these parts, was suddenly the battlefield for two angry clouds, one shaped like a ragged wheel, the other like a battering ram. The wheel was a thin grey edged with silver and the ram was ebony. The empty valley—the little boy on the pony was the only moving thing in the whole landscape—seemed to wait apprehensively as the wheel and the ram approached one another. The sun appeared to retreat in alarm, but the wheel stretched out a wicked hand with swollen fingers and seized it—then the ram crashed down upon it.

The end of the valley was darkened although behind him, by Castle Crag, the sun was in full glory, and the world blazed like a sheet of dazzling metal. Within the shadow it was cold, and David, shouting to give himself company, kicked Caesar forward.

He came now to three houses, brooding like witches at the side of the rough path, quite deserted, it seemed, open, like many of the other cottages, to the sky.

Before the third cottage stood three men and a girl. David felt his heart beat at the sight of them. They were the wildest-looking men he had ever seen. They were copies the one of another, seemingly of the same height and the same age, the age maybe of his father, broad and strong, and all with dark rough beards. The girl was only a baby, younger than David, slight and dark like the men, but rosy-cheeked, and, as David passed them, she was laughing. One of the men stepped forward and stood in David’s way.

‘A fine day,’ he said.

David nodded. He was frightened, but he wouldn’t let anyone, not even Caesar, know it. He wished, though, that the sun would come out again.

‘Where’st going?’

The man had a deep, rumbling, husky tone with a rasp in it.

‘To fish at the bridge.’

‘To fish at the bridge?’ All the men laughed.

‘Pass, little master.’ The man stepped back and ironically doffed a very filthy and greasy hat. Then David, seeing the laughing eyes of the small girl fixed upon him, smiled.

She had in her hand a small switch. She ran into the path, struck Caesar’s buttocks and then, as he started forward, laughed with a shrill crying tone like a bird. He looked back and saw her standing in the middle of the path against the sun.

He cared nothing for girls—Deb wasn’t a girl, she was his sister—but it did seem to him exciting and adventurous that this small girl should be quite alone with these three wild men, and, apparently, happy with them. She was perhaps the daughter of one of them. It might be that they were some of the robbers who came down from Stye Head and murdered defenceless people and returned. Well, there was nothing about him for them to murder. He had a tin with worms in it, and a home-made fishing rod and a few pence. He was safe enough.

The country now grew ever wilder and wilder. A rough, ragged stream, swollen with the rains and the snow from the tops, rushed along over a deep bed of slabs and boulders. Fragments of rock lay everywhere about him here, so that he had to dismount and lead Caesar. Above his head the two clouds had made truce and after a meeting had separated, one now in the form of a ship that, lined with silver, sailed off into the blue, the other dispersed into a flock of little ivory clouds that stayed lazily, as though playing a game, in lines and broken groups. The sun had burst out again and flooded all the land. David had already learnt that, in this country, the sky was more changeable than in any other in the world, that if you lived here your days were bound up with the sky, so that after a while it seemed to have a more active and personal history than your own. It became almost impossible to believe that its history was not connected with yours, keeping pace with you, influencing you, determining your fate. He had never considered the sky very greatly at Doncaster, but in this world, it drove itself into your very heart. The brilliant sun now struck sparks from every stone, while every splutter of the stream against a boulder flung into the air a shower of light. The whole valley glittered, while above it the mountains, streaked like a wild beast’s skin with snow, were black.

He came to the bridge, let Caesar loose, clambered over the smooth wet stones to the deep, green pool under the waterfall, chose his worm and began to fish below the pool. There was shadow here from an overhanging tree and the curve of the bridge. He was exceedingly happy. He had the great gift of complete absorption in the task or play of the moment. He was never to know the divided moods, divided loyalties of his father. His character was not subtle, but steadfast, fearless, unfaltering. He did not realise for how long he fished. He moved below the bridge and then back again. He caught nothing. He never had a bite. The sun was too bright. He sat, his legs apart, his eyes intently fixed on the water. A shadow was flung. He looked up.

Leaning on the bridge, looking down at him very gravely was a pedlar with a coloured hat and a sharp bright face. He had rested his pack on the bridge’s wall.

‘A fine sun to-day,’ said the pedlar.

David nodded.

‘Too strong a sun for good fishing,’ said the pedlar.

David sighed. ‘That’s true.’ He scrambled up to the sward above the stones. He looked at the pack.

‘Have you something for me to buy?’ he asked, smiling. He had some money in his purse—money his father had given him—and it would be pleasant to buy something for Deborah.

The pedlar shook his head.

‘Nothing for you.’ Then he felt in a pouch at his waist. ‘Do you fancy boxes? I have a little box here ...’ He fumbled, then brought out a small silver box and gave it to David. His hand was nut-brown, with long, thin, tapering fingers. It was a beautiful little box. On one side was carved a picture of girls dancing round a maypole, on the other a picture of gentlemen hunting.

David looked at it, then shook his head. ‘’Tis a beautiful box, but I have not money enough.’

The pedlar smiled. ‘It is yours. Keep it until your marriage-day.’

‘Thank you,’ said David, dropping it into his pocket. ‘But I shall never be married.’

‘You will be married,’ said the pedlar, ‘and have fine sons.’

‘How do you know?’ asked David, looking into his tin and seeing that the worms that remained were few and poor. He would not fish any more. He found bread and meat in his pocket and offered some to the pedlar, who took more than his share and ate voraciously.

‘I know everything,’ said the pedlar. ‘I am the Devil.’

David believed him. He looked both wicked and gay as he stood there in the sunlight, and Francis Herries had always told him that the Devil was both these things.

‘I am not afraid of you,’ said David, laughing.

‘My father has always told me not to be afraid.’

‘I know your father,’ said the pedlar, licking his fingers after the bread and meat and looking as though he would like also the piece that David had in his hand. ‘Your father is an old friend.’

‘He is the finest man in the world,’ said David proudly. ‘Why will you not show me the things that you have in your pack?’

‘I am weary of showing them,’ said the pedlar, yawning and displaying a splendid row of sharp white teeth. ‘Time enough. You shall see them one fine day.’

‘If you are the Devil,’ said David, who was always interested in everything, ‘you can tell me where there is good fishing.’

‘There is good fishing everywhere,’ said the pedlar, ‘if you have patience. You have patience. It will carry you through the world—patience and courage, two stupid qualities but valuable.’

‘Do you live round here?’ David asked.

‘Here or anywhere. When you have lived for ever as I have, one place or another is the same.’

‘Do you never grow any older?’ David asked.

‘Never,’ said the pedlar. ‘A wearisome business. Good day. We shall often encounter one another. Keep the little box. I am not, in my intentions, always unamiable as people say.’

He shouldered his pack, started up the Stye Head and was quite suddenly lost in the sunlight.

David jogged back happily through the sunny afternoon. He took his time; he saw no human being. The sun falls behind the hills like a stone over this valley, leaving in the sky a long, wide strath of white and blue. When David reached Herries the shadows were straddling giants across the little stone court.

He found his father alone in the shadowed hall; he leant across the long table, on which a map was spread. ‘He’s looking grand,’ David, who relished him in his plum-coloured coat, thought, ‘and he has a temper.’ So, like a knowing puppy, he slipped quietly past the fading fire. In the room above he heard Deborah’s funny little piping voice, singing to herself or her baby. Beyond the leaded window the sky was a lovely pale green like early spring leaves and the low spread of the land was purple again as it had been in the morning. Against this gentle, pure light the room was very dark, although two candles were lit.

His father saw him.

Without looking up from the map: ‘Where have you been, David?’

David told him. It might be that there would be a whipping or it might be that there would be a game—you never could tell with his father.

‘Thou hast missed thine uncle, boy.’

David had nothing to say to that—as there was a pause he filled it.

‘I saw the Devil by the bridge.’

His father did not answer but suddenly raised himself.

‘David, come here.’ David came to him.

He put his arm round his neck. ‘David, I love no one but you—no one—no one in all the world. And I hate your uncle. Remember this day, for on it I surrender all wishes for a good union between your uncle and me. Silly, patronising fool!’ He looked furiously about him at the table which was clustered with a mess of things—tankards, a platter with bread on it, a riding-whip, a velvet glove with a jewelled clasp. ‘I’ll twist his neck for him, brother or no brother, an he comes this way again. Aye, you should have seen your uncle riding his fine horse and stepping over the muck and cobbles, he fat as an otter and red as an infant’s bum. ’Tis his lady wife sent him to spy the land out—a fine stretch she’ll be the wiser for his coming—a dark house, a dull woman and his debauched good-for-nothing brother ... I’ll warrant he’s sad that he had me here—a fine tear on his famous reputation. And now that I’m here I’ll stay. The place charms me, naked though it is. There’s some ale for you, David. Drink to your good-for-nothing rump of a father, naked-bottomed in a cesspool and pleasantly forgot by the gay world.’

But David didn’t drink. He felt in his pocket and brought out the little silver box.

‘The Devil gave me this,’ he said.

His father, his eyes angry yet good-humoured, wandered round the room then came to it.

‘A pretty thing. And how did the Devil look?’

‘He was a pedlar. He said he knew you.’

‘Yes—there is a pedlar here I have spoken with....’

His mind was away, then he caught his son to him and held him close.

‘My good brother’s son is a damned smug; and gives him no joy—I can beat him there.’

He crooked his son’s chin upwards and looked at him. David gazed back at him fearlessly.

‘Remember this day,’ his father said. ‘We shall be alone against the world, you and I.’