The trumpet in the dust

by Constance Holme

Upon that desolate Poor Stephen, sunk in his misery and mental murk, Tibbie’s choice had had the effect of a silver clarion in the dark. The conferring of her love was like the conferring of a kingly robe and crown. The change in him was so startling that it was almost as if one saw the gold and the jewels shimmer about him as he moved. Tibbie was a strength-giver, just as Emma was a strength-stealer, but she did a great deal more for Stephen than that. She drew out of him by degrees the courage that was in himself, as well as the graces and charm which make a man loved wherever he goes. The long-latent strength, crushed and shrivelled in youth, had gathered itself at last into that splendid battle-deed; but when the time came for her to lose him, as she had known it would have to come, it was the fact that he had been loved by his fellows that Tibbie had valued most.

Taken altogether, it was a strange tale of the breeding of pluck, especially such pluck as had set Stephen’s name in newspapers without end, on Rolls of Honour and brasses, memorial crosses and shrines; even on the rough little wooden cross which the Germans had raised to him themselves. Only on rare occasions had Tibbie tried to tell her mother what Stephen had suffered in the past, and then it was always by request. It had been hard enough, even, for Stephen to tell his wife, and it was harder still for Tibbie to pass it on. Then, too, it seemed like sending him back to the house of bondage again, to keep even a hint of it in their thoughts. And it was all such a story of patches when it was told, a dreary and mean muddle like streaks on a sordid pane. They were such queer, quiet, sinister things that Emma had chosen to do—things that were yet as demoralising in their effect as any of Jemmy’s wild water-jug-throwing moods. What the other children had suffered only in imagination had really happened to Poor Stephen, for his mother had actually spied upon him while he slept. Night after night he had started awake to find her in the room, a motionless dark figure set at the foot of his bed. She had said nothing; she had done nothing; she had just stood in the shadow and smiled; and he, gasping with fear in the bed, had yet managed to keep silence, too. Quite early he had known her for his enemy, both by night and day, but in the shadow at the foot of the bed she was something worse. The whole sinister powers of darkness seemed to be concentrated in her form, coming to brood above him while he was sound in his first sleep....

This horrible travesty of motherly tenderness had frightened Tibbie Clapham as nothing else had frightened her in life, turning her, even in its recital, into a bitter, white-faced woman whom her mother hardly knew. Evil is never so sinister as when it touches the beautiful natural things and makes them strange. The story of those nights had impressed Tibbie with such cruel force that there was a time when she was almost afraid to approach her own children as they lay and slept....

The nights had been hardest to bear, so Stephen had said, but Emma had watched him everywhere else as well. Indeed, after a while, he had grown to feel that even distance could make no difference; that, no matter where he went, he would never be free of her eyes. The whole circumstances of his life, with their lack of comfort and food, contributed to the obsession, doing their share in keeping his nerves unnourished and his bodily strength low. Then, too, there was the miserable meanness which hid whatever he needed and watched his face while he sought it; that murmured alike whether he was at home or abroad; that crept upon him or made sudden noises; that hinted at evil in connection with every name that he knew, sliding back, in the final event, to hint at it also with his own....

But it was always the watching that he minded most, and that would have finished him in the end, sending him, but for Tibbie and marriage, either to suicide or drink. Even when he had left the place and was happily settled somewhere else, Emma’s eyes had seemed to go with him. Not until long after he was married, Tibbie had said, had he ceased to feel that he was being watched.

“But he never felt it in France,” she said to her mother, after Stephen was dead. “He told me—he even wrote about it—that he never felt it there. It was as if there was some big angel between them, making her keep away. Oh, mother, it was harder than words can say to let him go, but I used to feel so glad for him when he was in France!...”

CHAPTER II

The rocking had begun again, the slow, rhythmic rocking that seemed to draw the past out like a charm, in spite of the continuous protest of the angry chair. It altered in character, however, after a while, the swing of the rocker dwindling at times until it almost stopped, and then beginning again with a gentle push. It was as soothing as the sleepy surge of a summer sea, urged by some impulse into a gentle swell, only to smooth itself out into stillness and slumber again. Even the angry chair seemed to be getting drowsy as well, and was silent at times for as much as a minute. At the end of the minute it would break out again into a raucous yelp, like the spasmodic effort of a tired dog. Gradually, however, both rocker and rocked came to a trance-like quiet. In the gold of the morning sun and of her own special private glory, Mrs. Clapham sat and slept.

She slept for about an hour, and was unaware that more than one person had been near her while she dreamed, peeping in at her through the window, or laying a gentle hand on the loose latch. Members of the Chorus appeared from time to time, only to back away again with a portentous finger on their lips. Mrs. James, indeed, at a second attempt, had actually penetrated into the sacred place, with infinite care setting at Mrs. Clapham’s elbow a covered plate of soup. The young school teachers had looked in for a word on their way home, and had gone on again with hushed steps, taking with them that vision of tired thankfulness and infinite peace. Mrs. Clapham, of course, knew nothing of all this, but it soothed her even in sleep. The atmosphere of kindly interest, combined with the sun, lay softly about her like a silken shawl.

It was the rush of the children that awoke her at last, the feet of the home-coming children on the hill. Twice a day they streamed past Mrs. Clapham’s cottage, and always the sound of their coming was like the sound of a river in spate. One said to oneself, “What is it? What is it?” and then knew it to be the feet of the new generation on the road. The patter and clatter of those feet wove themselves into the last of Mrs. Clapham’s dream. She heard the clink of clogged soles, the lighter slither of leather, the whistles and cries of the boys, the running chatter of little girls. And, long after the stream had passed on, it seemed to her that she heard other feet on the hill—the thin little dragging feet of little Libby and Baby Steve....