Beautiful end

by Constance Holme

He was sitting as usual on his bed, holding between his hands the thing that wasn’t there, when down in the kitchen he suddenly heard its voice. He hardly knew it at first—it was so raucous and strange, a voice that wept and screamed, and tried to keep silence but was forced to speak, and was like to destroy itself with its own rage; yet in all its wrath and pain it was still the voice he loved. He tried to get up to go to its help, but even the beginning of the miracle held him chained. He could only sit still and tremble ... and wonder and wait....

The children were all together downstairs, and one of them had the fiddle under his chin, while the red-haired baby, in its trailing skirt, mopped and mowed in the forgotten game. Some of the magic had come back, in spite of the fiddle’s terrible voice. They laughed and clapped as they had done in the street, and the baby’s face was exalted and set. Even the fiddler had a shadow of Kit’s dignity and poise. There was an air of innocent joy strange in the dingy room, a faint recalling of beauty once perceived. Marget, coming in on the little scene, found herself outside it and shut off. There was no part for her in the play they had learned from the daft old man, who knew no better than to go fiddling in the street. All her fierce jealousy was aroused by this faithfulness to his little moment’s power. It seemed to her, watching, that he stood between the children and herself, teaching them something she couldn’t learn, and taking them where she could not go. For every mother there is a Piper drawing her child away, as even Marget was coming to understand. Perhaps she had seen his reflection in the red-haired baby’s face, and suddenly saw it again now. In any case, she brought the show to an end, clouting both player and dancer over the head, and making away with the fiddle up the stair. Through this enveloping cloud Kit heard the door burst open at his back, and saw a shining thing flung quivering on the bed. He did not move until she had banged out once more, and then after a long while he turned and put out a hand ... found shape and touch just as they had been, and a sweet answer from every string....

There flashed back on him at once all his vision and his peace. The tree stood up again in the midst of wonderland, and on either side of it the world was wide. His link with its golden solitude was renewed, so that it was his to wander in when he would. And after a while, when the first relief was past, his mind went off down the road that led to the sea.

Always, until they took the fiddle from him, he had been able to see the marsh when he chose, the broad, flat stretches and the clean, soft lines. There, where his mind went, was no muddle of mortar and folks. There was no street with the houses crouching cheek by jowl, muttering secrets into each other’s ears; houses, where strange faces looked in, where dust blew in from the road, where nobody was securely still and safely alone. Here, nobody died or was born, or suffered and rebelled, but the whole street knew and put it into words; but out there none of these things kept one ever on guard. Nobody heeded one’s secrets but the sea, and that never told until it gave up its dead. And the sea never heeded, however folk behaved. One could run there, while here one could only walk, could shout and sing without troubling the police; while the strains of a fiddle crying out its soul were as free as a gull crying behind a boat.

There was always sun for him when he thought of the marsh, the early-evening sun on road and field. It lay in a great, golden sheet, unbroken as always on a western marsh, stretching out to the far line of the sea. No matter how it rained in the street, in his mind that walked on the marsh there was always sun. The shadows were barely out, and never conquered the gold. And through it along the white road he came to his home.

But often he lingered so long on the road that his mind never reached its goal. The journey alone was an adventure in itself, full of things that could not be missed. There were always growing things to see in the dykes, marsh-buttercups on some pool, purple vetches on some hedge. Somewhere a farm would stand up between its orchard and fields, and meet him always with a new surprise. Houses never outstared you on the marsh, for all its long distances and unbroken sweep. They grew upon you by degrees, coming, yet keeping themselves in reserve, like faces peeping welcome round a porch. Even his own home on the sand’s edge, alone on its shooting tongue of land, stood back in a shelter of fence and tree. In spite of its outstanding position, it was yet serenely aloof. It had the withdrawn unconsciousness of well-bred folk, an unawareness of alien eyes. You might stare at it all day long and it would not blink. At Marget’s you were always conscious of the street outside.

Sometimes he did reach the farm and go in, and on those days he was a long time coming back. Often he never passed the meadow gate, but once through that he did not turn until he had reached the house itself. The gate was troublesome to open because of its broken bars, and even in his mind he found it hard to move. Even in his mind he was tired by the time he got to the gate, and so he often stayed on the near side. He could see the house from there plainly enough, and it was always ready when he wished to go in. Things waited for him until he came that way again. The light stayed level and golden on the evening land. The face of the house was steadfast in its peace. No need to hurry and force himself if he was tired. It would always be ready for him when he came.

On the days when he did go in he went with a rush, as if he had jumped the distance that lay between. He went with the whole of his energy and desire unwasted by the sweetness of the way. There he was, through the meadow and the wicket-gate and the house door, and the miracle was accomplished that brought him home. All the shadows and dim places of the house rested his eyes, and hinted of folks who had never gone away. The scent of his own place was rich with his memories of the past, tangible things that asked for his hand upon their heads. The house was full of that special surprise which belongs to the things we know by heart; the colour and shape of them ... the feel of suddenly-opened doors ... the gleam of a brass handle, the shallowness of a step, the forgotten pattern of some ancient stuff. A sense of coolness in a certain room, or of sun, or of firelight on a hearth; atmospheres as full of meaning as if lavender had been stirred. It was strange how you saw things wrong when you were living in a house. You had to leave and go back to it to know.

Of course there were people in the house, but they never spoke to him or he to them. He saw them sitting and talking or going about their work, but he never heard them speak. They never looked at him, either, as he went about. If they had lifted their eyes to look at him he might have been afraid. But as long as they did not look he could watch them in peace, the folk who had all been part of his own life. His parents were there, his brothers and sisters, his wife and his three sons. The same person at all ages was there, just as he himself was there at every age, so that the house was full and rich and warm. He never thought of it as it was when he left, a chilly case for a wailing violin. As soon as he had gone he filled it again with all who had a right within its walls, and wandered among them, quietly content. He could not touch them or hear their voices or meet their eyes, but he did not want to do any of these things. He could leave the house as it was with only a little ache, but he could not have left pleading looks and hands.

Even on the days when he went into the house he did not always go upstairs, because it meant going too near the dividing-line of which he was afraid. More often, he sauntered through the rooms below, into the sudden whiteness of the dairy or the still little parlour shut like a Sabbath book. Through every window as he passed, a picture flashed that was old to him and yet strange. He saw each of them now as if mounted and set in a frame. Things changed about the house to match his memories as they came, but they never passed beyond a certain point, and every one of them was mellow and sweet with time. Looking back, he saw nothing that struck him as being new. It was all much too beautiful for that.