The shock of this insult made the girl drop her childish airs. She was now a world away from tears. She was a woman, proud and indignant. Her face flushed deeply; her eyes narrowed, shining with hate; and there was contempt in the curve of her set lips. She offered no answer.
Noke came nearer and repeated the question. He spoke in a lowered voice, suppressing a fury that must sooner or later find vent in violence. This quietness in him was terrifying to the girl, but she concealed her terror.
‘D’ye hear me, girl! Who’s bin wud ye, I say?’
Her nostrils dilated with excitement; her breasts were fluttering. And the sight of his daughter’s ripe charms seemed to feed the man’s rage. ‘Answer me, you sly slut!’ he roared, with dreadful suddenness. Charity was now speechless with fear; her resolve not to answer was fortified by incapacity. He came a step nearer, and stretched out twitching hands towards her. ‘Get inside and upstairs wud ye, by God! I’ll have the skin off your back!’
For a moment, after this outburst, both father and daughter stood rigid, as though a judgement was suddenly come upon them. A new voice spoke, Jenny Noke’s, unwontedly bold and caustic.
‘That’s enough o’ that tark. Thrash the girl, willee? Ay twould please ye, sure enough. And strip she first, I’ll ’low. Nay, Harry Noke, tis me that’ll bannick my darter when she do need ut. You leave her be.’
With an oath he turned on this obtrusive woman and made as if to strike her. But she faced him squarely, and he hesitated. His arm dropped slowly to his side. ‘Ay, you’d stand up for ’er, I bluv, She’ve a bly of her mother about her, that’s sartain sure.’ But he spoke with his gaze on the ground, for an obscure guilt troubled him, and the ugly satirical gleam he had seen in Jenny’s eye was the eye of his own conscience. His speech died down to a grumble of oaths, and shrugging his shoulders he strode into the house, his sons shuffling aside into two groups to make way for him.
Charity stared and gasped: gasped for relief and stared her astonishment. The world was overturned; for never before had she known her mother rebuke their lord with impunity. With her admiration of this exploit mingled a small complacency, for she vaguely felt, without in the least understanding the sensation, that she herself had somehow contributed to her father’s defeat. Me and mother can manage un, she thought. That sly smile curled back into its corner, and her heart gushed with sudden warmth for her mother.
‘I’m tarrible sorry, mother,’ she began coaxingly——
But Jenny was in no mood for soft words.
‘I’ll mind you, madam, there be a dunnamany cows want milken afore you takes bite or sup. Better goo fetch they in.’
The five sons of Noke stood watching and listening. Not one of them had uttered a word since their father’s accost of Charity. And now, still silent, they filed like wooden men across the cobbled yard, and, reaching the further side, scattered in search of more work: all but the youngest, who paused by the cowsheds, thinking to serve his sister. The cows had crowded to the yard gate, and were massed there, like looming shapes of fantasy, with their horns branching black against a banner of green sky. As the sound of his sons’ steps dissolved into the shadowy distance, Noke emerged from the house carrying a storm-lantern, and went stamping in their wake, sparing no glance for his women. He too became gradually merged in the surrounding gloom. The echo of him faded in the ear like a vanishing memory; but the passage of the lantern through that quiet cool place seemed to have brought darkness where formerly there had been only a gossamer dusk; and the women’s faces grew vague to each other and their voices unearthly. ‘Whad you standen there for?’ said Jenny Noke. ‘I’ll give you a middlin bunt prensley, if you daun’t look sharp. Get away along then, and leave y’r father be.’
CHAPTER 6
OF THE NOTHING THAT HUGH MARDEN BROUGHT HOME WITH HIM, AND WHAT BROTHER RAPHE MADE OF IT
Hugh Marden, having stabled his horse and washed the blood from his face, strolled thoughtfully, and a little furtively, across the garden of Maiden Holt, towards the spot he most favoured: a lower lawn hidden from the house by trees and commanding on its west side a sweeping view of downs and sky. His upper lip was swollen and bleeding, and at every five or six paces he stopped in his walk to dab at the wound with a handkerchief. He was in some little pain, and his head buzzed, but he was too angry and confused in mind to pay much heed to his physical condition. On any less equivocal occasion he would perhaps have allowed his mother to lave the bruised lip, and she, as she had done a hundred times in his childhood, would have scolded him (but without conviction) for running into danger yet again. But he could not face, at this moment, either her kindness or her inevitable questions. And, until he had had time to invent an explanation, his sisters were even more to be avoided. The elder, Ann, being his friend, would perhaps be hurt if he refused her his confidence; and this was emphatically a story he did not wish her to hear, despite her proved capacity for keeping a secret. As for Clare, she was a mere child to him, being but seventeen, and his junior by four years. So, anxious not to be intercepted or called back, he hurried out of sight of the house and made for the lower lawn, and in particular for the little arbour his father had had built there ten years ago. He had all but entered this place when he observed that it was already occupied. Lying back in the chair, with eyes closed and features seraphically at rest, was old Brother Raphe. A book lay on the small rustic table within reach of his hand should he elect to sit up; and a dove, which for the last few weeks had adopted him for companion whenever he was outside the house, sat perched on his shoulder. Man and bird, in such a setting, presented a spectacle almost fantastically serene to the startled eyes of this young man, who half-smiled at the irony of the contrast it suggested to him. There was a momentary bitterness in his smile, but the bitterness quickly passed, leaving only wonder and affection, tinged delicately, as always, with amusement. No one could see Brother Raphe without an impulse to smile: it was not that he was a figure of fun—though if you chose to see him so he would have led the laughter—but that when he was most happy he had the air of sharing his happiness with you as though it had been an exquisite and beatific joke, as perhaps it is; and even in moments of gravity or grief the light in him burned steadfastly. He was now nearing his eightieth year, and made no secret of enjoying the fact that at last, after years of suspicion and disfavour, all the village was his friend. The new vicar, unlike Parson Croup, found nothing to disapprove of in him, and much to be grateful for; and these two, despite a great disparity in years, and despite their being in opposite ecclesiastical camps, were often together, quarrelling amiably on points of doctrine, playing chess, capping each other’s quotations from the ancients, and discussing local politics. Until recent years he had been much seen in the village, but now he was grown feeble and never went beyond the confines of Maiden Holt.
But the young man wasted no time in contemplating the sight before him. He gave one glance, made an alarmed grimace (which hurt him confoundedly), and turned away. His steps were noiseless on the grass.
‘Well, Hugh?’
Young Marden hesitated. He was in no mood for talk, as we know, and for an instant he entertained the notion of pretending not to have heard that suave voice. But his posture, his pause, had betrayed him.
He glanced back over his shoulder. ‘Hullo, sir! You awake? Hope I didn’t wake you.’ He waved airily and was for going on his way.
‘I wasn’t asleep, my boy. Or, if I was, twas only a cat-sleep. Come, don’t run away. You’re not in a hurry, are you?’