The green road ran out from between its hedges close in front, and seemed to be lost in a stretch of open field. It looked, like the rest of the old man’s span of life, as if it ran smoothly to the end, yet all the while the river lay between field and road. Often enough, folks coming home in the dark had gone over the sheer drop into its hidden bed. Kit tightened the reins nervously when he came to the bank, and Bob felt the tug on the bit and glanced behind. The old man was out of himself to-night, he thought, and as full of the shakes as a piece of doddering grass. First of all, he had boggled at the sea, and here he was taking steck at the river, too! He turned the horse to the left, and stopped again, at a meadow gate. Thomas was waiting at the meadow gate.
He was up at the trap side before it came to rest, and as his eyes fell upon him Kit felt suddenly very old. This son of his was so lithe and strong, so full of life at its height, so healthy and fine-coloured and clean-drawn. There was nothing about him that was betrayed or made ashamed by the pure tones and line of marsh and sky. By comparison Kit felt himself and Bob to be broken and fusty like the trap, unbeautifully finished things blurring the exquisitely ending day. Not all the clean air and space could give them back that look, which belongs only to Nature and the young. They were blots on the landscape, he felt, an offence to the eye ... like an old boot flung away in a flowering hedge ... old bottles cast on the emptiness of the
sands....
Thomas, however, was reaching up a hand, and there was nothing but hearty greeting in his face. He kept saying, “You’ve landed, dad—you’ve landed at last!” as if it was something brought about by a charm. He managed to spare Bob a jerk of the head, and then instantly turned to the older man again. Bob looked at them both with a somewhat curious stare—the brother that seemed so hearty and so glad, and the father that was out of himself to-night.
Kit said, “Ay, ay,” in a voice that was rather vague and tired, because now he was looking past Thomas at the gate. He had not noticed the gate when they first stopped, because of that withering picture of Thomas in his strength, but now he saw that it was not the gate he knew. It was either a new gate straight from the Hall works, or else it was the old one mended and put to rights. It was painted, too, which in any case would have made it strange, because it was many a long year since Kit had painted his gates. Perhaps he should have welcomed this first symbol of advance, but instead he felt coldly angry with the four-ruled thing, swinging so neatly on its stoup. He was accustomed to broken and jagged and hanging bars, made lovely in velvet greens by the brushes of wind and rain. Always, on coming home, he had seen the house through the bars, the painted colours of home through the ancient, mellow frame. Sunset he had seen through the old bars—long lines of yellow in a frosty sky, and the red ball of the sun dropping fierily over snow. He had seen pure morning and sepia afternoon, and the wild smokes of stormy dusks in spring, and the old gate had vignetted them softly, as the soft lines of the hedges framed the fields. But it was not possible to look at the house through this soulless square, cutting the scene like a knife with its hard blue lines. Now there came to him, as on the yacht, the sense of violent robbery at a journey’s end. Just here he had meant to stand and stare, to yield to the first ecstasy of sight, and this parvenu gate had come brutally between. He glared at it so fiercely that Thomas asked what was wrong, but Kit only said, “Nowt, nowt,” and allowed him to help him down. Bob looked at him from beside the horse’s head, watching with curious, half-shut eyes.
Thomas did not appear to notice that the other two scarcely spoke. He was so busy with his welcome, so full of a rather nervous pleasure and intense relief. He talked all the time he was helping the old man down, and after he had him safely on the ground. “You’ll be a bit stiff, likely, but you’re rarely lish.... Watch out for yon step, now—ay, yon’s it! You’ve brought fiddle along wi’ you?—ay, there it be. Catch hold of my arm, and we’ll get along to t’house.”
Agnes had been right in supposing that Bob would not come in. Thomas pressed him a little, but he shook his head, and turned the horse and climbed back into the trap. Once there, however, he did not drive away, but sat watching his father with that new knowledge in his face. Thomas thought he was hesitating, after all, and went back to him when he had led the old man through the gate, but Bob only bent a little over the wheel, and told him something in a lowered tone. Both remembered, as they looked at each other, another evening on the marsh....
Kit stayed where Thomas had planted him in the track, looking in front of him towards the mountains and the sea. Now he could look at the house without anything in between, and forget the shock of the gate that swung behind. The house, at least, seemed just as it had been, true to his trust and faithful to his dream. Just so it had looked a thousand days before, with the yew’s tall finger pointing to the sky. Even in his most absent moods he had never neglected the yew, but had managed to keep it smooth as a quill pen. He had liked to see its shadow fall clean against the house, the one thing black and sharp in his coloured, shifting life. Windows and roofs he saw, orchard and yard; garden and hedge and the white penthouse of the porch. The light lay over it all like the blessing of a hand, and when he came to it, it would bless him, too. Just for a moment, however, he watched it from afar, comparing it, inch by inch, with the picture in his heart. No, it had not failed him, in spite of his fear, and he was safe. The substance had not broken in his fingers and crushed the dream. A passion of thankfulness swept over him as he stood, and then, turning to look for Thomas, he saw the gate.
IV
They went arm-in-arm along the meadow path, the young and the old masters of Beautiful End. Thomas had always been a silent soul, but now he talked as if he would never stop. Every now and then he laughed as well, a satisfied, happy chuckle in his throat. Also he acted showman, which was hard to bear, and Kit said “Ay” and “Nay,” and looked the other way. He wished with all his heart that Thomas would stop pointing and hold his tongue. He did not want to be shown things; most passionately he did not. He could find what he wanted for himself, and see it as Thomas could never see it, if he tried for the rest of his life. There was no use in showing things at any time, if it came to that, because no two persons saw them just the same. Thomas was equally busy pointing out what was new, and introducing old friends, as it were, by the scruff of the neck. Thomas had been off at service from a lad, yet here he was teaching his father about the farm, although Kit had never ceased seeing it since he went away. Did he remember the three old trees in a clump, and how deep the river ran below the house? Glimpses of bay and moss ... his own fields ... things that were closer than breathing and nearer than hands and feet! He was ashamed of himself for being irritated and vexed, because, of course, Thomas was only meaning to be kind. It wasn’t every son who would do so much for a thriftless dad, and he didn’t know he was spoiling things at the start. He must just be allowed to talk himself to a stop, and then perhaps they would have a little peace. He would surely get tired of pointing, after a bit. There was nothing to do but say “Ay” and look away.
The meadow was altered, somehow, he said to himself, though just for the moment he was puzzled to say why. It had a smoother and greener look than he remembered it to have worn, though at the same time it seemed somehow rather bare. “There’s a deal less thistles than there used,” he said, when he understood, and Thomas laughed and nodded his head with pride.