CHAPTER IV
THE TROUBLE SHAPING
It was milking-time when Lanty left Ladyford, with Dockeray beside him, and they met the cattle coming in to the shippons. Their slow swing across the yard added to the drowsy oppression of the day. It was as if he walked in sleep along the narrow sea-road linking the two farms. The flat land behind was in good cultivation. When it was turned by the plough, the share came out clean of rust and shining like silver. A big plantation stood away towards Wythebarrow, hiding the highway between. A wide cut was cloven betwixt the far meadows. There was no sign of the tide as yet, and out on the dry sands the Lugg still lay meaningless and bare.
Ninekyrkes was nearer the open sea than Ladyford, less sheltered, less homely, less pleasant to the eye. The rough, sturdy house stood up bravely to the winds. There were flowers round Dockeray’s, and an orchard behind it. Whinnerah’s had neither. It was built for storm and stress and fierce happenings, and bore upon its forehead the mark of an abiding-place of Fate.
Wolf came round as they appeared, and after a brief greeting Michael turned home. Lancaster saw him go with strange reluctance. The grim farm and its grim tenant fostered a sense of tragedy lying in wait, gathering itself to spring; but he roused his business-side determinedly, and kept strictly to technicalities as he started on his tour of inspection. Yet still the hand of tragedy obtruded through all. It was pitiful to hear the old man reverting to plans for the future as if the doom of dismissal had never been pronounced. He would stop at some field or fence, pointing out what he meant to do next year or later, and Lancaster listened patiently, or brought him back gently to the real state of things. His self-consciousness with regard to Michael’s daughter disappeared in face of the full situation, and his anger grew against the girl, who, for some trivial reason, could stubbornly rob a failing man of his earned desire. For Lup he had sympathy, if a good deal of impatience. He was strong enough, surely, to take what he wanted; yet perhaps it needed something finer than mere strength to capture Francey Dockeray. In any case, he should know his own business best.
They got to the house at last, and within it he felt again the marked contrast with Ladyford. Here, in the kitchen so similar in many ways, the cheerful peace was changed for hinted dread, emanating, he concluded at length, from the frail figure in the chair by the window. He had known Mrs. Whinnerah all his life, and he was not afraid of her unsmiling welcome, but to-night he felt that something hidden suffered and watched behind her chill reserve. The sense of it was so strong that it claimed his thoughts even while he carried on the usual conversational exchange.
They were a pathetic pair, he thought, looking from one bent figure to the other. Wolf was a sad enough picture, a fine man gone to wreck in a few devastating months, but the pathos of the woman went deeper. The hard life on the marsh had broken her long since, stolen her youth in the first years of marriage, crippled her with rheumatism, stamped on her thin face that look of passionless endurance which can be seen in many a farmer’s wife who has found her burden too heavy and gone on bearing it. She had been pretty, once. In the line of her cheek and the set of her head was still a beauty of refinement absent from Francey’s mother over at Ladyford, and the thin fingers of her worn hands were curiously sensitive and suggestive of a rare intuition. But that was all that was left to her. She was finished, as Wolf was finished, and the one thing that life might yet have held for them was to be taken away. Lanty wondered how Lup could look at them, night after night, sitting there hopeless, and steel his heart to the unbreathed prayer, even though sacrifice might mean daily crucifixion, with the love denied so close at hand. But Lup himself was part of the cruel situation. He did not come to it from outside, as Lancaster came, with fresh eyes full of pity.
Remembering both Wolf’s words and the Dockerays’ embarrassment, he found himself noting the old woman’s constant and fixed gaze out to sea. Her faded eyes were still clear, and the large pupils had the effect of dark pebbles seen through deep pools. Time after time he succeeded in drawing them to his own face, but, his question answered, they returned instantly to some invisible point beyond. Wolf had said she was watching for something, and it certainly seemed like it, for the glance was not the wandering one of custom, but a stare of genuine expectation, suggesting held breath and stiffened muscles. Wolf looked at her uneasily at times, and when she became conscious of his gaze she would bring her own with an effort to the guest, but always, always it went back. The sensation of mystery deepened, and Lancaster stirred restlessly under its touch. The sky had darkened and then filled with fire, and beneath the dull thunder-glow the houses on Bytham Knott looked like flakes of snow dropped on a sullen slab of granite. The thin trees stood like dumb sentinels of fear; the green of the fields smote the eye; a sudden clash of milk-pails from without set every nerve leaping, and then the stillness sank again. And the sands and the bank were stiller than the air. The only moving thing was the shining, quivering line far away to the west.
Mrs. Whinnerah made no complaint of the approaching change. She was ready to go, not with the decision of personal choice, but with the apathy of one led by destiny. Lanty asked at last where they thought of moving when the time came for breaking-up. There was a pause after the question, and he saw Wolf’s eyes travel to his wife, as if, in this moment, some urgent problem must be solved, but she gave him no assistance.
“You’ll think it queer, likely,” he began, filling his pipe with slow fingers, “but I’m hoping you’ll not say no to an old man’s wish. There’s yon cottage your father built, you’ll think on—that on the new land as they call the ‘Pride.’ It’s been empty a good bit, but it’s taken no harm. The key’s here, and I’ve had a look round now and then. Folk say it’s over lonesome; they get flate at night, hearkening to the sea, them as hasn’t been bred by it an’ learned to like it. I’d never rest without the song of it coming and going, but there’s folk can’t abide it. Well, I’ve got a fancy for that cottage, Mr. Lancaster. It’s nigh on Ninekyrkes land, and I’d be able to reach an eye over the old spot from the door. With a bit o’ practice I’ll likely learn not to mind seeing other folk at my job. It’ll not be for that long, I doubt.”
“Come, you’re good for many a year yet!” Lancaster put in, as cheerfully as he could. “I can have the cottage put in order for you if you’re really set on it, but don’t you think you’d be wiser to pitch your tent somewhere else altogether? Living within a stone’s-throw will only set you hankering after the farm. You’d be happier away. What has your wife to say to it?”