The Splendid Fairing

by Constance Holme

Quite suddenly Sarah began to tremble, exactly as if the other had struck her a sharp blow. She shrank instantly in her chair, losing at once her dignity and ease. The fine wine of vitality ran out of her as out of a crushed grape, leaving only an empty skin for any malignant foot to stamp into the earth. She tried to speak, but could find no voice brave enough to meet the fierce rain of Eliza's words. A mist other than that of blindness came over her eyes, and with a lost movement she put out a groping, shaking hand. Sally, in a sudden access of pity, gathered it in her own.

She slid her arm round her aunt, and drew her, tottering and trembling, to her feet.

"It's overmuch for her, that's what it is," she said kindly, but taking care to avoid her mother's angry glance. "It's knocked her over, coming that sudden, and no wonder, either. Come along, Aunt Sarah, and sit down for a few minutes in the parlour. You'll be as right as a bobbin after you've had a rest."

She led her to the door, a lithe, upright figure supporting trembling age, and Elliman's eyes followed her, so that for once he was heedless of Mary Phyllis when she spoke. Most of the company, indeed, had fallen into a waiting silence, as if they knew that the act was not yet finished, and that the cue for the curtain still remained to be said. And the instinct that held them breathless was perfectly sound, for in the square of the door Sarah halted herself and turned. Her worn hands gripped her gown on either side, and if May had been there to see her, she would again have had her impression of shrouded flame. She paused for a moment just to be sure of her breath, and then her voice went straight with her blind glance to the point where Eliza sat.

"Jim's dead, I reckon!" she said, clearly and cruelly... "ay, I doubt he's dead. Geordie'd never be coming without him if he was over sod. You'd best make up your mind, Eliza, as he's dead and gone!"

It was the voice of an oracle marking an open grave, of Cassandra, crying her knowledge in Troy streets. It held them all spellbound until she had gone out. Even Eliza was silent for once on her red plush chair....

IV

Each of the brothers Thornthwaite drew a breath of relief as soon as he got outside. They were at ease together at once as soon as they were alone. The contrast in their positions, so obvious to the world, made little or no difference to the men themselves. It would have made less still but for the ever-recurring problem of the women-folk, and even that they did their best to put away from them as soon as they were out of sight. Each could only plead what he could for the side he was bound to support, and pass on hurriedly to a less delicate theme. Alone they fell back easily into the relation which had been between them as lads, and forgot that the younger was now a man of substance and weight, while the elder had made an inordinate muddle of things. Will had always looked up to Simon and taken his word in much, and he still continued to take it when Eliza was not present to point to the fact that Simon's wonderful knowledge had not worked out in practice. To-day, as they wandered round the shippons, he listened respectfully while his brother criticised the herd, quarrelled with the quality of the food-stuffs, and snorted contempt at the new American method of tying cattle in the stall. Experience had taught him that Simon was not the first who had made a mess of his own affairs while remaining perfectly competent to hand out good advice to others. The well-arranged water-supply was Simon's idea, as well as the porcelain troughs which were so easy to keep clean, and the milking-machine which saved so much in labour. There were other innovations,--some, Eliza's pride,--which were due to Simon, if she had only known it. He was a good judge of a beast as well, and had a special faculty for doctoring stock, a gift which had certainly not been allowed to run to waste during those bewitched and disease-ridden years at Sandholes. Will was indebted to him for many valuable lives, and often said that Simon had saved him considerably more than he had ever lent him. It remained a perpetual mystery why so useful a man should have achieved so much for others and so little for himself. The answer could only lie in the curse that was glooming over Sandholes,--if there was a curse. Nature certainly plays strange tricks on those who do not exactly suit her book, but in any case the hate at the heart of things was enough to poison luck at the very source.

While Sarah sat through her long torment in the kitchen, rising up at last for that great blow which at all events felled her adversary for the time being, Simon was enjoying himself airing his knowledge in the buildings, contradicting his brother on every possible occasion, and ending by feeling as if he actually owned the place. However, the reason of his visit came up at length, as it was bound to do, and his air of expert authority vanished as the position changed. One by one, as he had already done to Mr. Dent, he laid before his brother his difficulties and disappointments, much as a housewife lays out the chickens that some weasel has slain in the night. He wore the same air of disgust at such absurd accumulation of disaster, of incredulity at this overdone effort on the part of an inartistic fate. The story was not new to Will, any more than to the agent, but he listened to it patiently, nevertheless. He knew from experience that, unless you allow a man to recapitulate his woes, you cannot get him to the point from which a new effort may be made. He may seem to be following you along the fresh path which you are marking out, but in reality he will be looking back at the missed milestones of the past. And there were so many milestones in Simon's case,--so many behind him, and so few to come. After all, it could only be a short road and a bare into which even the kindest brotherly love had power to set his feet.

So for the second time that day Simon lived his long chapter of accidents over again, his voice, by turns emphatic and indignant or monotonous and resigned, falling like slanting rain over the unheeding audience of the cattle. Will, listening and nodding and revolving the question of ways and means, had yet always a slice of attention for his immediate belongings. His eye, casual yet never careless, wandered over the warm roan and brown and creamy backs between the clean stone slabs which Simon had advocated in place of the ancient wooden stalls. The herd was indoors for the winter, but had not yet lost its summer freshness, and he had sufficient cause for pride in the straight-backed, clean-horned stuff, with its obvious gentle breeding and beautiful feminine lines. That part of his mind not given to his brother was running over a string of names, seeing in every animal a host of others whose characteristics had gone to its creation, and building upon them the stuff of the generations still to come,--turning over, in fact, that store of knowledge of past history and patient prophecy for the future which gives the study of breeding at once its dignity and its fascination. At the far end of the shippon, where the calf-pens were, he could see the soft bundles of calves, with soft eyes and twitching ears, in which always the last word in the faith of the stock-breeder was being either proved or forsworn. The daylight still dropping through skylights and windows seemed to enter through frosted glass, dimmed as it was by the warm cloud of breathing as well as the mist that lined the sky beyond. A bird flew in at intervals through the flung-back swinging panes, and perched for a bar of song on the big cross-beams supporting the pointed roof. A robin walked pertly but daintily down the central aisle, a brave little spot of colour on the concrete grey, pecking as it went at the scattered corn under the monster-noses thrust between the rails. Simon leaned against a somnolent white cow, with an arm flung lengthways down her back, his other hand fretting the ground with the worn remnant of a crooked stick. Will's dog, a bushy, silvered thing, whose every strong grey hair seemed separately alive, curled itself, with an eye on the robin, at its master's feet.