Chapter VIII
THE STRANGER AT THE CROSS-ROADS
Mary drove home from Hardrascliffe along a dark, wind-swept road. She had been busy all the afternoon helping Ursula to establish herself in the nursing-home where she was to await the arrival of her child.
Ursula was not an easy person to help. She had actually made Mary feel an interloper in the nursing-home she had visited all her life, by that air of off-hand familiarity with which she took possession of the whole staff. She had aroused all sorts of uncomfortable desires which Mary had thought were hidden deep beneath a weight of busy complacency.
Mary had believed she was cured of that disease. After all anyone could nurse a baby. Very few people had the privilege of nursing a whole village. Mary's tenderness benefited nearly three hundred people. Ursula's could only benefit one ridiculous thing that was not even quite a person. And, if John was a little dull, Mary was sure that Foster would have driven her crazy in three days let alone three years. The way in which he danced attendance on Ursula was perfectly sickening. Carnations at 6d. each in her bedroom indeed!
All the same, Mary knew she was not cured.
The cart turned in to the last street of the town. The air grew colder and more unfriendly. Between blackened chimney stacks Mary could see tattered wisps of cloud driven across a smouldering sky. In a minute the storm would break. Still, she was glad she was driving into the storm, not lying between some one else's sheets in a strange room, watched over by a lynx-eyed nurse, all starch and propriety. A doctor, too, dropping in at all hours to stare at her cheerfully and declare, "We're coming along nicely, aren't we?"
Having a baby was all very well, but it seemed to afford other people an excuse for conspiring against one's dignity.
With a rattle of hail stones on the splash-board and harness, the storm swept down upon her. She bent her head and drove forward. Really for March this was outrageous!
She wondered if she had remembered all her shopping: the flannel for Mrs. Burton's little boy, the currants and matches and mincing-machine.
Ursula had crêpe de Chine night dresses and the bassinet in the corner was covered with lace and pink ribbon. Dreadful extravagance! Foster would be ruined before he knew where he was.
She touched the pony with her whip. He sprang forward eager for the stable. Then he hesitated and dropped into a stumbling limp. Mary put down the whip, drew up to the side of the road, and threw the rug across her seat.
It was very dark now and Starlight was restless. She climbed carefully out of the cart, speaking aloud in a comforting voice:
"It's all right, old man, it's all right."
Her attempts at conciliation were not very effective. Starlight stood, scraping the ground with his hoof. Mary felt her way cautiously along the shaft and bent to pick up the pony's foreleg. She could not see, and her groping fingers unexpectedly encountering his knee made him start violently.
Well, there was no help for it. She would have to get a light. That was a nuisance. She went back and reached one of the cart lamps. It clattered as she drew it from its socket, and again the pony jerked forward. She only just caught the reins in time.
It was all rather complicated—like one of those puzzles, Mary decided, where one had to take the geese across the stream without leaving the ducks behind with the fox. There were newly-strewn flints on the road, one of which was obviously in Starlight's hoof; but the wind whirled against her and nearly extinguished the light, and if she put it down she could not see Starlight's foot—besides, he was irritated by pain and would not stand still.
There really seemed to be no way out of the dilemma. She stood, holding the reins, and watching the steam rising from the pony's back in the glow of candlelight. If she were Mrs. Watts, she supposed she would pray about it. Prayer always seemed a rather cowardly shifting of responsibility on to other people, but what was one to do?
"Is anything wrong? Can I help?" A voice spoke out of the darkness.
She started violently, having heard no footsteps. Below her usual appearance of composure, she had always retained a childish terror of the dark.
Starlight was startled too and looked round with a rattle of harness. Mary handed the lamp to a pair of hands that reached for it into the light, and turned to pacify the pony.
"Poor old man! Poor old Starlight! Was the pain bad then?" She turned ungratefully upon the new-comer. "Whatever made you come up so quietly like that, frightening the pony?"
"I'm sorry. I expect the storm stopped you from hearing me. I thought something was wrong. I'll go away if you like."
"No. Hold the lantern, please. There's a stone in the pony's foot I think." Mary spoke haughtily. She was ashamed of her display of nervous irritation, and shame always made her haughty.
The lantern held by the stranger cast a delta of golden light on the stony road and the pony's hoof, which Mary raised to her knee. There, safely embedded behind the iron shoe, lay an ugly-looking flint.
"Have you a knife?" asked Mary.
Her hands were trembling, because the pony's breath came short and nervously. Every minute she expected him to start forward, and her imagination depicted her prostrate figure trampled below his hoofs.
"I've got a knife, but it isn't much good. One blade's broken. I might try, though, if you'll let me. You'll get so muddy."
"I won't," lied Mary stoutly. One knee was in a puddle, and she felt very wet, but she hated being seen at a disadvantage, and thought that her dignity could only be maintained by independence. "Give me the knife, please."
He passed it to her in silence, and she fumbled with frozen fingers at the blade.
"Can't you undo it for me?" she complained querulously.
The stranger unfastened the blade and stood silently holding the lamp. Mary struggled with the flint, but her usually capable hands were incapacitated by cold. The lamplight danced and glimmered across the snow. Cold trickles of melting sleet insinuated themselves between her collar and her neck. The flint did not move.
The stranger spoke again, very meekly:
"Won't you let me try?"
Mary stiffened herself for a refusal. Then he added plaintively: "After all, it's my knife, and you're breaking the only whole blade."
It was a young voice, certainly cultured, and possibly might have been attractive, had its owner not been suffering from an obvious cold.
"All right." Her assent was ungracious. "You can come if you like."
She rose stiffly to her feet and took the lantern. The stranger knelt in her place. She could see slim shoulders below a mackintosh and the back of a bent head covered with red hair.
The shoulders worked for a moment. Then a triumphant "Got it!" announced the success of masculine superiority. Unfortunately at that moment Starlight also "Got it." His foot being at last released he sprang forward, ungratefully knocking his benefactor to the ground.
Mary seized the pony's head. The stranger rolled adroitly towards the middle of the road and there was a small confusion.
Mary cried, "Are you hurt?"
The stranger said "Damn!" calmly and without prejudice.
Starlight backed slowly towards the hedge.
Then things became more peaceable.
The stranger rose rubbing his shoulder and announcing strangely:
"There are no bones broken, but the patient must be kept quiet." It was then that Mary first suspected him of not being quite sane.
Mary, who had managed in the confusion to retain her hold of the lantern, said:
"Oh, I'm so sorry. It's such a shame. And I was being so horrid to you, because you startled me, and really I was longing for some one to come."
Together they drew Starlight cautiously away from the hedge and replaced the lamp in its socket.
"Where are you going?" asked Mary. She had time now to notice that they stood near the cross-roads where the road to Anderby dissects that between Cattlesby and Beaverthorpe.
The stranger was brushing mud and water from his trousers.
"Well," he remarked ingenuously, "do you know, I'm not at all sure?"
"But where do you want to go?" repeated Mary. No one could possibly go wandering about just anywhere on a night like this—not if they were in their senses.
"I don't think I want to go anywhere." His voice was suddenly small and pathetic. "In fact, I'm sorry, but I think I'm going to be sick."
He was.
Compunction seized upon Mary.
"Oh, I'm so awfully sorry! Are you hurt badly?"
She thought the pony must have struck him in some vital part of his anatomy. A desperate sense of helplessness assailed her. Supposing the man died here by the roadside, and she miles away from a doctor, unable to lift him into the high cart, unwilling to leave him alone in the dark. On the other hand he might only have had too much to drink.
"I'm all right now." The stranger's voice was shaky but more cheerful. To Mary's relief he walked across the road quite firmly and stood by the cart. "I wasn't really much hurt, only sort of winded and very much surprised. I know it's bad manners. I'm sorry."
He actually laughed, but his teeth were chattering, and he held tightly to the shaft as though he were not sure of his balance.
Crises made Mary practical. "Can you get into the cart?" she asked. Without further comment he climbed up and sat down in her seat. "That's my seat. Please move to the other side. And take care, the pony always starts forward directly I get in."
She scrambled up and they drove forward in silence. It was very dark.
"Are you all right?"
"Quite, thanks. Only a little shaken, not hurt at all. I shouldn't have let go like that so soon. I always go and spoil things at the end."
"Do you? Oh, I know that feeling so well! I do it too. And it's so much worse than if you'd been stupid all the time, isn't it? Because you forget all the times you've been clever and only forget what happened at the end."
Mary couldn't think why she said that. She did not usually talk in that sort of way. She did not usually feel so excited, as though something wonderful was going to happen. And yet it was nothing to give a stranger a lift on a stormy night. She pulled herself together.
"Look here, do you really want to go this way?"
"Where are we going?"
"Towards Anderby."
"What a pretty name! Yes, let's go there."
As though it were a matter of free choice, made on the impulse of the moment because of a nice name!
Mary turned towards him with frowning brows. The drink theory recurred to her. She wished it was not quite so dark. Or he might be suffering from concussion of the brain. It did make people queer.
She stopped the cart and began to turn the pony towards Hardrascliffe. She must find the doctor.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm turning the cart. We've come the wrong way."
"This is the way we were going before. We're going to Anderby."
"Yes, but we want to go to Hardrascliffe."
She must humour him.
"We don't want to go to Hardrascliffe. You were wanting to go to Anderby. So was I, though I didn't know it. How far is it?"
"Three miles, but——"
"Please go on. Is it on my account you want to turn back? Because if it is, please don't. I'm quite all right. I suppose there's an inn or something there where I can stay the night. And I'm quite well. Only muddy. I had this cold before I fell," he added apologetically.
"But, really"—Mary was only half reassured—"where were you going? You must have been going somewhere."
"I really don't know where I was going. I suppose I was lost. But now I'm going to Anderby. Once I've made up my mind to do things I always do them. And really, in a wet March, one village is much the same as another."
"But what are you doing?"
"Oh, didn't I explain? I'm on a walking tour."
"What on earth are you doing going for a walking tour in March with a cold in your head?"
"I didn't start with the cold. It came. It's my job."
"The cold?" Mary was completely mystified.
"No. The tour. The cold's my necessary infirmity. All great men have them. Look at Julius Caesar with his epilepsy and Pepys with his stone—I beg your pardon. That's not quite polite, is it? Look at St. Paul then, and the thorn in his flesh, and me with my colds."
"But how are walking tours your job?" Mary clung resolutely to the point to save herself from complete insanity.
"Because I'm a sort of a journalist on a holiday. I got headaches in Manchester, reporting and writing silly articles and things in the very plainest street you ever saw, so my chief, who is a very decent fellow, suggested that I should walk about in Yorkshire a bit, collecting materials about the life of the agricultural labourer, and lots of juicy statistics about capitalist farmers that will make them sit up and see the iniquity of their ways. Do you know anything about them?"
"Capitalist farmers?"
A little while ago Mary thought she knew very little. Mr. David Rossitur had enlightened her. She added smilingly, "I think I know a good deal. You see, I am one."
The stranger threw back his head with a laugh. It was that laugh which betrayed at once both his youth and his sanity. Nothing so gallant and infectious could have come from a diseased mind. His laugh seemed to shake the years from Mary and set her again in the company of youth.
"My sworn enemy!" he cried. "Don't you think you'd better set me down? I warn you, you are bringing a traitor into your camp. I am a rabid socialist of the dangerous and most disreputable type."
"You are nothing so romantic," retorted Mary. "You are quite a young boy with a bad cold who has just been sick in the middle of the road, and you are coming home with me. Evidently you are quite unfit to be wandering about the wolds by yourself. I don't care whether you're a socialist or not. If you're rabid, it just shows that you're not capable of looking after yourself."
"I'm not a boy. I'm twenty-four, and I take myself and my politics very seriously. It's the prerogative of mediocrity. And I'm out to smash your rotten social system into little bits." Then he sneezed three times. "And I warn you that I will never break bread in the house of a declared enemy of society."
"I never asked you to," Mary replied. Her pulses were beating furiously. A queer excitement caught her by the throat. She forced herself to be very matter-of-fact. "I think you will be very silly to smash anything. It's so wasteful. I think socialism and all that very silly. So does my husband."
For the life of her, Mary could not think why she had dragged John into it.
"I read a book," she continued, "about a month ago. A very silly book called The Salvation of Society by David Rossitur. He thought he was so clever and modern because he prophesied that England was going to the dogs. My sister-in-law, Sarah, came to exactly the same conclusion long ago, though she hasn't been to college."
Mary spoke with heat. She felt annoyed because she could not talk more cleverly, though it was silly to be excited about a book, when the boy beside her, socialist or no socialist, was cold and wet and needing a hot drink.
"I'm glad you didn't like the book. It shows your sound judgment. I think it's rotten. Pessimism is the refuge of the unimaginative. I've outgrown all those destructive ambitions long ago, though when I wrote it——"
"When you—what?"
"When I wrote it I thought it was rather clever."
"But—what do you mean? You're not the author, are you?"
She turned towards him, but the darkness came between them, an impenetrable curtain.
"I'm afraid I am. My name's David Rossitur." His teeth were chattering with cold. "But of course I see now that co-operation, fostered from above simply with the idea of ultimate revolution, can never result in constructive reform. Now my idea is...."
In the darkness Mary could dimly discern a hand waved with passionate gesticulation. She chuckled softly. David Rossitur suddenly checked himself.
"Of course, now you know who I am, you probably won't want me in your cart." He spoke with dignity.
Mary laughed. "I'm delighted that you're David Rossitur. It's very exciting, sitting in the same cart as a real live author, and still more exciting to think that you can take him home and put him to bed with eucalyptus and hot whisky, just to show what a very ordinary person he is. Now you can't be dignified when you're inhaling Friars' Balsam."
"I've not been very dignified at all," sighed David. "And really you must put me down at the village inn. I know what these colds are. I shall be sneezing all over your house for days if once you let me in. Please tell me where I can find the inn or something."
"You're coming home with me," said Mary firmly.
The church clock was striking nine as they drove up the avenue. The light of a lantern swung fitfully towards them across the stackyard.
"That you, shepherd?" called Mary. "Is everything all right?"
A tall figure loomed out of the darkness and the swinging lantern stopped beside the cart.
"We've just landed a lovely little pair o' twins, Miss Mary. Prime little beauties. Black as a parson's cask."
It was a moment before David decided he meant "cassock."
"Good," said Mary, and turned to grope for parcels on the floor of the cart. "You see," she explained to David, her head under the seat, "it's lambing time, and I get all the black ones. Isn't it a night, shepherd? You'd better come in for a drop of whisky, I think. Now then"—she re-emerged, her hands full—"is that everything? Mr. Rossitur, will you please look and see if the mincing-machine is below your seat, and I think you're sitting on the cheese. Now, Shepherd, what about the shelter in the horse pasture? Did you get it up this afternoon?"
"Ay. Maister Robson lent a hand and all."
David climbed out of the cart and stood silently in the rain while Mary handed over the pony to a groom, who appeared from the darkness, and recounted to him in detail the tale of the flints. David felt very cold and sore and stiff. Also he was holding a mincing-machine, a Stilton cheese, four pounds of sugar, and the roll of cotton wool for Mrs. Watts. Still it was all very entertaining and the lady of the farm seemed unusually kind and companionable.
The lady of the farm summoned him, and following her and the shepherd, he stumbled across a spacious yard and up a step into another enclosure of inky darkness. A door rattled in front of him, and a flood of orange light streamed across the snow. Standing in the doorway, he saw a tall broad shouldered young woman, wrapped in a dark coat. Her cheeks were whipped to crimson by the sleet, her wide eyes shone; her lips were parted in a welcoming smile.
"Come in," said Mary.
He followed her into the brick-tiled kitchen and stood there silently dripping, his arms full of parcels. Violet from her station by the fire-place regarded him open-mouthed. Mary gave hurried instructions about sheets on the North room bed, and hot whisky and something to eat at once.
"May I put these down on the table?" asked David, ruefully regarding the mincing-machine, cheese, sugar and cotton wool. "Then I can take off my cap like a gentleman."
"It's off already," remarked Mary, taking the parcels from him. "I suppose you lost it on the road. Give me those."
She saw him plainly now as he stood with little rivulets of water running off him on to the floor. His clothes clung to a slim, drenched figure that was not so tall as Mary's. Thin wrists above nervous, delicate hands protruded from a jacket whose sleeves were too short. David was small, but his neck, wrists and ankles always seemed to be straining out of his clothes, so eager were they to get on with this tremendous task of reforming the world. His face was a pallid grey tinged with purple, because he was very cold and still felt rather sick and more than a little tired. His eyes were grey too, not very large, but amazingly alive for all their weariness, and his thin lips had a humorous twist, half gay and half pathetic, that went straight to Mary's heart.
At present he was the colour of mud all over except his hair. The only peculiarity which David could ever share with Samson was that the secret of his personality lay in his hair, for David's was wild and wiry, the colour of very old wet bricks. It started up everywhere over his head, declaring brazenly to the world its owner's intention of going everywhere and seeing everything and smashing up heaven and earth in an hour to build new ones next day.
Before Mary had completed her inspection, heavy footsteps clumped along the passage, and David saw a tall bearded man standing by the doorway. He was not very like Mary, but David decided he must be her father.
"Oh, John," said Mary, "this is Mr. David Rossitur. And he is very wet. Can I have some of your clothes for him? Mr. Rossitur, this is my husband."
An hour later David, who had completely abandoned all former notions of correct behaviour in a strange house, lay back against the pillows of an enormous bed in a candlelit room, while Mary sat beside him and rubbed his chest with Elliman's Embrocation. It was the biggest bed he had ever seen, and John's pyjamas in which he was enveloped were the biggest pyjamas he had ever seen. But the meal of hot whisky and tea and fish and cheese-cakes, which he had just eaten, was the queerest he had ever tasted, the interview between the shepherd and his mistress the strangest he had ever heard, so nothing, he felt, could really surprise him now.
He surrendered himself with resignation to the firm hand of Mary.
"You're going to have a shocking cold, Mr. Rossitur," she remarked severely. "I simply can't imagine why anyone in their senses allowed you to wander loose in the country at this time of year. Where do you live when you're not losing yourself in Yorkshire?"
David, speaking as distinctly as he could while Mary's energetic hand paraded between his collar bones, replied that he did not exactly live anywhere. He'd given up his digs in Manchester because the landlady underpaid her maid and he refused to countenance sweated labour. A fine comment on the same refusal was lost in a shudder as a cold stream of embrocation trickled gleefully down his arm-pit.
"Keep still. It isn't cold really. I warmed the bottle. You don't look as if you came from Manchester. People there are usually rather sensible. Don't wriggle so!"
"You're tickling. Although I'm very grateful for all your trouble, I cannot help observing that you are tickling. At least, the embrocation is. I've only lived a year in Manchester. I lived in Hampshire until I quarrelled with my father and cut myself off with a shilling. Then Manchester seemed as good a place as any to—atishoo! Tishoo!"
"Quite so. I understand perfectly. When you have quite finished, I'll put this flannel on your chest."
David, now completely tamed, bared his bosom for the sacrifice. Mary regarded it critically.
"I'm sure they don't feed you properly at Manchester."
"I always was thin as a child. It's nothing to do with the amount I eat. You can't have such a beautiful disposition as I've got, and not expect some counterbalancing disadvantages."
Tears gathered in David's eyes but they were only the result of a copious inhalation of embrocation. He fumbled for the pocket of John's pyjamas, where a handkerchief once had lain. "I had a handkerchief, I know. But it is a strange habit of my handkerchief common to nearly all my possessions, that it vanishes when I most need it."
He was wondering what Harcourt would think, if he could see him now—Harcourt, the president of the Union at Oxford, who wrote to him once a fortnight to implore his immediate resumption to a brilliant university career, abandoned for the purgatory of third-rate journalism. The phraseology is Harcourt's.
"Oh, I'm glad you have a beautiful disposition," remarked Mary, passing him her handkerchief. "I know you won't go off with my teaspoons then. I never trust socialists as a rule."
She corked the bottle decisively, and wiped her hands on a towel. She was enveloped in a large white apron, and her hair, as usual when it had been wet, curled in soft brown tendrils round her flushed face. She knew that she looked rather pretty, but she announced sternly:
"Now the candles and matches are here, and you're not to get up in the morning till I've been to take your temperature. I expect you'll go to sleep now because you've had so much whisky and stuff you must be a little sleepy. You don't feel sick again, do you?"
"Oh, no, thanks."
"That's all right then. Good night."
"Good night. Oh, I say, Mrs. Robson, I've never said thank you yet. I expect you'll think me awfully queer, but I do think you're a brick. I've been a perfect nuisance. I wouldn't have let you do all this only it's so nice to be made a fuss of."
Mary smiled down upon him. She seemed all rosy cheeks and white apron and candlelight.
She told him that there was a glass of water by his side in case he was thirsty in the night, and that if he felt ill John's room and hers was only along the passage.
A sudden desire had seized her to kiss this absurd, fragile boy whose mocking, wistful eyes watched her from the pillows. Only he might mistake her strictly maternal intentions, not realizing, like many young things, how very young he was.
She took up her candle and left him. In the other room John lay solidly on the shadowed bed, large and tranquil and very very different.
She did not stoop to kiss him, though that would have been perfectly proper.
Meanwhile David lay staring into the darkness. He was very tired and stiff, and his throat felt as though some one were rubbing it with hot sand paper. John's large pyjamas were wrinkled below his bruised shoulder.
Thoughts streamed through his brain like sheep through the gap in a hedge. A week had passed since he left Manchester and he had written nothing. Why did the shepherd persistently wink one eye? Was it because "in modern agriculture the increased productiveness and quantity of the labour set in motion are bought at the cost of laying waste and consuming by disease labour-power itself?" Why, that was Marx! How silly. Good old Marx. He told the truth if no one else did.
Only what was the use of trying to fight injustice if one always caught colds in one's head and was sick after a few days' tramping? Colds, sore throats—well, that was what a thousand labourers, underpaid and underfed, must be feeling ... feeling ... that dull ache all down one's side ... feeling....
Mary Robson, a large, rather comely woman, standing in the doorway with a flood of orange light behind her ... her hands, rosily transparent in front of the candle flame ... the smell of embrocation ... "consuming by disease labour-power itself." ... "Mr. Rossitur, this is my husband." ... Queens—kings ... queens with smiling faces in orange candlelight....
Because he had a cold, David snored a little in his sleep.