Читать книгу The Golden Arrow - Mary Webb - Страница 10

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Before Eli and Lily had gone many steps from the Ardens’, he turned stealthily to see if any one was watching them. Seeing that no one was, he stopped.

‘Take them poppies and that good corn out of your hat,’ he said.

‘Oh, well,’ said Lily, with an attempt at lightness, ‘they’m dead, anyway.’

She took them out.

‘Stamp on ’m,’ said Eli.

‘But—how soft!’ Lily objected.

Eli seized her arm, twisting it slightly, and she trod on the flowers.

‘Never no more,’ said he. ‘Your hat’s good enough for such as you with no trimmin’. It did for your mother. And you’m not as good-lookin’. Such a figure of fun as you look—I marvel as Joe ’d think on you, with straws and old dead flowers hanging round you, and your hair all wispy, and a smudge on your nose—’

Lily began to cry.

‘And that ondecent bodice!’ he went on. ‘You’m no better than you should be, showing yourself half naked.’

Lily began to run, stopping her ears. This was worse than any of their homecomings, for her father had never before had a barn struck, and she had never been quite so daring in her attire. Eli’s crafty face, with its downward seams from the mouth and nose and the two long, yellow teeth over the lower lip, was dark red with passion. His plain living, his long prayers, his loud confessions of sin, his harsh treatment of himself and his unquestioning meekness to the God he believed in (a vengeful, taloned replica of himself)—all these things had to be paid for by some one. Lily and the creatures at Bitterley Fields paid—Lily with some justice, for she was quite selfish and very irritating, the creatures with none. A few times in the year, when things had gone wrong, the lust of torture came upon Eli, and the contemplation of a deferred and somewhat problematical torment of the wicked (i.e. the not-Eli) in hell-fire could not slake it. At these times he exhibited the subtlety of a woman in finding weak points wherein to stick pins—a subtlety inherited by Lily. The ironic remarks of everyday life—the commonplaces of rudeness—gave place to a caustic finesse which burnt like red-hot needles. He was at these times almost an artist, since he was exercising his chief gift; the secondary one of moneymaking was far below in intensity.

So they went, Lily running, sobbing, swaying, Eli following with long strides and uplifted voice.

‘When we get whome,’ he said with relish, ‘there’s them six quarts o’ sour milk. Waste not, want not! It mun be done summat with. Afore you go to bed to-night, you mun set it for milk cheese. You mun scald the things, stretch the muslin, lade the milk, press it. Afore that fetch the sticks, coals and water, and boil it to scald with.’

‘There’s no muslin,’ said Lily in the midst of sobs, relief in her voice. She was tired out with excitement, and she knew that the work would take hours to do.

‘Your good old father’s thought of that,’ said Eli. ‘A father knoweth his own child. There’s muslin on your back; when we get in you’ll rip it and make the cheeses in that.’

‘I won’t. So there!’ said Lily, for the blouse was her new, radiant, much-laboured-on treasure.

‘Woe unto the disobedient children!’ Eli intoned. ‘I am even as the other Eli. Yea! For I have not corrected you, and the Lord is angry with His servant for these things. You’ll take it off now!’ He tore at a sleeve.

Lily shrieked, striving to elude him.

‘Folk ’ll see me! Folk ’ll see me!’ she screamed. ‘I’ll be disgraced.’

‘You dunna mind having only a bit of muslin atwixt you and disgrace, so you met as well be without.’

Lily’s blouse was in ribbons. Her not very clean calico chemise, fastened with a large safety-pin, and her thin, bare arms were revealed. Part of her hair had fallen loose. They stood beneath a witan-tree on Bitterley Hill; for Lily’s running had brought them nearly home. This little ash was the only one that had weathered the northern storms; it was stunted and berryless from excess of cold—like Lily’s mind.

‘Say you repent!’ said Eli, his eyes glittering with a frenzy of half-satisfied passion. Lily leant against the frail tree in utter abandonment.

‘I repent,’ she said with weak bitterness.

‘No. That wunna do. Kneel down and say a prayer.’

Lily did so, repeating a sort of gabbled litany. If any angel or devil peered from the cavernous air upon the pigmy scene surprise must have been his prevailing emotion—surprise at the infinite ingenuity of man, the ephemeral, in finding new methods of torture for his fellows.

‘And now,’ said Eli, ‘you’ve said a deal about repenting, now come on whome and let’s see what you’ll do.’

Bitterley Farm was a large, whitewashed huddle of buildings, with patches of damp on the walls. There were no curtains and the upper windows were broken. There was no garden except a potato patch and a few gooseberry bushes. A spring soaked out close to the door and the cattle had trodden it into a slough. The only beauty about the farm was a huge willow, now fleecy with white seed. Its long, slim leaf-shadows wandered up and down the ugly walls untiringly, like the hands of a hypnotist, tracing occult signs unknown to the human intellect—but guessed at by intuition. Even when its golden leaves lay like discarded raiment at its feet and the sky was obliterated with flying clouds it wove thin patterns in the sparse sunshine. It crooned for six months and cried aloud for six, saying always one thing. Perhaps the cuckoo on its top bough knew what it said, and even the hens scratching among its roots. Lily had a vague sense that it meant something, wrote some message on the bleak walls. But Eli knew nothing of it. On moonlit nights it sent a shadow to finger his harsh old face in the cheerless room: but the dream that might have come, tarried, and when he muttered in his sleep it was of vengeance, punishment and such grey negations—never of the beauty that is God. To-night the calves clustered round the door, eager for their evening meal. Inside, Lily nearly fell over the two pails of milk—she was so blinded by tears.

‘Bide where you be till I come back,’ said Eli. Lily sat down on the floor between the pails, weary and sullen. Eli went out to the barn and fetched the sheep-shears.

‘Now, take that bonnet off!’ he ordered, returning. Lily did so without comment, half dozing. Eli seized the long golden coils, all in a mass on Lily’s shoulders, and before she knew what was happening they lay on the floor by her hat.

‘There!’ said Eli. ‘That’s a temptation gone. Now do the cheeses.’ He turned on his heel, rather uneasy at the blaze of hatred in her leaden face. He went into the parlour and read the Bible as usual on Sunday nights. He was shaking like a drunkard, and sweating. He read three chapters instead of one, to lull his uneasiness; then he knelt and explained all about it to his God—from his own point of view. Then he fell asleep with his head on the Bible, and was awakened by the sound of his rook-rifle to see Lily—perfectly white, like a corpse—re-loading.

‘So you’ll shoot me, ’oot, Lilian?’ he said calmly.

She made no reply, intent on her work. He sat and watched quizzically. He was not afraid of death. Neither did it occur to him to question it. It was ordained. His God had said it. So be it. He had often shot a dog for not implicitly obeying him. Well, now his master was killing him. He faced Lily calmly. For the first time in his life he felt proud of her. To think of her doing such a thing—that chit of a girl! So they gazed at each other, a kind of madness on both of them. One of the dogs howled and Eli reached for it with his foot under the table and kicked it. The room was very still, like a broken machine. Above the mantelpiece hung, rather crookedly, a painted text—‘Fear God.’ The horsehair chairs stood inhospitably against the wall. A thick file of accounts hung on a skewer beside a shelf containing The Auctioneer, Old Moore and the Imprecatory Psalms. On the floor, not yet swept up, were the snippings of Lily’s green blouse. She was ready. She straightened herself and lifted the rifle to her shoulder. They gazed at each other stonily.