The trumpet in the dust

by Constance Holme

“It’s a pale blue crêpe de Chine, Mrs. Clapham,” Mrs. Wrench had said, “and Marigold writes that she’s quite delighted with it. Tibbie was always so dainty in everything she did, and Marigold wanted a frock from her for the sake of old times. It’s the sort of frock that would have suited Tibbie herself, from the description. I remember she always looked pretty in pale blue.”

Mrs. Clapham had remembered it, too, throwing a glance at the photograph of the young widow, framed on a shelf near. The sober colours of life were Tibbie’s wear now; not the delicate shades of youth making ready to be a bride. Yet the face looking out of the picture was neither bitter nor sad; thinner, perhaps, and deepened in shadow and meaning, but laughing and valiant as of old. Tibbie’s husband had gone down in the War, together with many another lad whom Mrs. Clapham had first seen as a much bewrapped bundle in his mother’s arms; but Tibbie’s spirit had not gone down with him. By that time she had made for herself a nice little dress-making business in Whalley, where she had lived since her marriage, and when Stephen was dead she continued to carry it on. Mrs. Clapham, of course, had wanted her to come home, but Tibbie and her two children were very comfortable in their little house, and there were the clients to think of, as well as other reasons. She, on her side, had wanted her mother to join her in Whalley, but Mrs. Clapham, too, had had her reasons for staying where fortune had happened to place her. She thought of those reasons now as she finished her breakfast—and chuckled; and took her last drink of tea and chuckled and chuckled and chuckled and chuckled....

It was strange how full her mind was this morning of Tibbie and Tibbie’s doings; not that the girl and her children were ever far from the old woman’s thoughts. Probably it was Miss Marigold’s wedding that was making her think of her own lass, and of the way life fuses and separates and alters and breaks. With what mixed smiles and tears must Tibbie have fashioned that gown for the Vicar’s daughter, feeling a hundred years older in experience, although born on the same day! She knew something of Tibbie’s feelings as she sewed at the blue gown, because Mrs. Wrench had told her that she had written a letter.

“Such a nice letter it was, Mrs. Clapham! Marigold was so pleased. But Tibbie always had such nice ways ... you brought her up so well. She said she hoped Marigold would have better luck than hers, though she couldn’t have a better happiness while it had lasted.... As a matter of fact, she ran the crêpe de Chine rather late, though she didn’t say why. Marigold was really getting rather anxious about it, but in the end it turned up all right.”

“Nay, Tibbie’d never fail nobody,” Mrs. Clapham had said, though rather absently, wishing herself alone so that she might sit and chuckle over the happiness that was coming.

“Nor you, either!” (Thank goodness she was getting to her feet at last!) “I’ve never known you send me back word yet, and I don’t think you ever will.” (Incredible as it seemed, she was out at the door and in the road.) “Very well, then, good night; and I’ll expect you as usual next week!”

Yes, it must be Miss Marigold’s wedding that was making her think of the absent Tibbie, thinking so vividly that instead of absent she was very much present. In the little room where the sun kept pushing its way she seemed almost there in the flesh, catching and reflecting the light with her shimmering scissors and silks. The children, too, seemed unaccountably near, so that she felt as if at any moment she might hear their gentle if chattering voices and their sober if pattering feet. Their post-card photographs were on the shelf with that of their mother, seven-year-old Libby and five-year-old Stevie—stiff, grave, patient little people, who looked as if they couldn’t possibly belong to laughing Tibbie. Those who noticed the difference said that they looked as though they had been born protesting against the sorrows of a great war, but those who had known their father and their father’s mother said something else. It was from Stephen Catterall that they inherited their pale, haunted faces and their mournful dark eyes. When Stephen was killed, they said in Whalley that he had always looked as though the hand of death was never far from his tragic face, but those who had known him as a child knew it was never a little thing like death that had made Stephen afraid....

Mrs. Clapham had once been to Whalley to pay her daughter a visit, and once Tibbie and the children had come to Mrs. Clapham, but on neither side had the visit been repeated. One had her charing to think of, and the other her sewing, and both had their other supremely important reasons.... But the result of the separation was that Mrs. Clapham knew very little about Tibbie’s children, except what she was able to learn from Tibbie’s letters. She was fond of them as far as she did know them, and of course proud, but she was always a little puzzled about them, a little uneasy. They were so very unlike what Tibbie had been, or Tibbie’s uncles and aunts; so very unlike what Mrs. Clapham had been herself. But there was no reason to worry about them or their mother, as she knew, seeing that they were comfortably off, and had plenty of neighbours and friends. If it had not been for that she could never have felt this satisfaction in the change which, other individuals being willing, she was shortly proposing to take. She would have been afraid that, as soon as the home was broken up, Tibbie and Co. might possibly want to come back. But there was no chance of such a thing as long as certain circumstances existed; Tibbie would never come. She fretted for her mother sometimes, just as her mother fretted for her, but as long as a certain person remained alive, Tibbie would never come.

In all the history of mankind there could never have been anybody more free than Mrs. Clapham to take what her heart desired, and just at the moment when it was most accessible to her reach. All the ties and burdens of life seemed to fall away from her as she sat waiting there, looking for the news that was certain to come, with the happy expectancy of a trustful child. It was only when things were meant that they fell out so perfectly at the right time, flowing naturally to their end as the day flows into night. It was only then that they were accomplished without hitch or jar (unless you chose to consider Martha Jane a sort of jar). Everybody’s hand seemed to stretch out to give you your wish when it came at the right time, and this seemed in every respect the perfectly right time. It had come, too, when she was old and weary enough really to appreciate it, and yet not too old and weary to care. She could say to herself that she had fought an honourable battle with life, and was now at liberty to seek her ease. She could say to herself with pride and as often as she liked that she had won her almshouse on Hermitage Hill.

Even by the fields the almshouses were at least a mile away from her little cottage, but in Mrs. Clapham’s mind they showed as clearly as in a picture hung on the wall. Grey, gabled, flower-gardened, they topped the steep hill that ran up out of the village on the great north road, challenging by their perfection the notice of the passer-by. From them you looked down over grassy slopes to the roofs of the village, the long shape of the Hall against its wooded hill, and further across still to the mystery of the sea. Unscamped and well-built in every inch, they were growing more aristocratic and mellow with every year that passed. The change to them from the uneven-floored, crooked-walled cottage in which Mrs. Clapham had lived so long would be, when it came, like the change to a king’s palace. To have a roof of her own, with nothing to pay for it, nothing to fear, would make her feel little less of a property-owner than his lordship himself. Moving up to that high place from the huddled and crouching street would be like soaring on strong wings into the open spaces of the sky.