Summer Will Show (3 page)

“But where’s the man?” cried Hannah. “O madam, how unfortunate if he’s not here!”

“Of course he’s here. There he is.”

She called to him, and heard with pleasure her voice carry its command over the silent hillside. The man did not raise his head. He was sitting on the grass by the kiln, with his arms crossed on his knees, and his head bowed, as though he were asleep. She advanced alone across the grassy platform, and only when her shadow fell across him did he raise his head. She noticed how dilated his pupils were, and that as he rose to his feet he staggered.

“You should not fall asleep in the sun, my man.”

He raised his head and stared at her. His face twitched, he swallowed, as though his throat were too stiff for him to speak. He has been drinking overnight, she thought. However, she must make the best of him; having got the children to the kiln she must carry out her purpose, whether this fellow were sober or no.

“I have brought my children here, to breathe the lime fumes,” she said, speaking slowly to drive the words into his head. “Is the kiln working?”

“Kiln be working, mum.”

She beckoned to Hannah to bring forward the children, who were hanging back, frightened. Hannah began to comfort them, and their faces grew paler.

“It won’t hurt, my lamb, now don’t get into a fuss. It’s nothing, it will be over in a minute, it won’t hurt you. I dare say you’ll like the smell, and you’ll be able to see inside, and all. Why, you’ll quite enjoy it.”

“Children, come here.”

She seated herself on the grass, composedly, as though in smoothing her silk skirts she would allay their fears. Impressed by her dignity they stood before her, their faces stupid with heat, but docile and calm, now that they were under her spell.

“Damian, do you remember the lesson on lime in your Natural Science?”

“Yes, Mamma.”

“Then tell Augusta what you remember of it.”

Damian turned to Augusta with a company smile.

“There are two sorts of lime, Augusta. One is slacked lime, and that is dug into the fields. The other is quicklime, and that is more interesting, I think. It is hot, burning hot. Once a man who was drunk fell into a pit of quicklime, and when he was pulled out his face, his hands, everything, was burned right away.”

Augusta’s mouth opened appreciatively.

“And another time a poor little cat fell in. And all its hair was burned off, and — ”

“No! O Damian! Mamma!”

“You foolish baby, do you suppose I would bring you here to be hurt?”

She took the child in her arms, and held her close. With Augusta’s wet eyelashes scrabbling softly against her cheek she continued,

“And, Damian, do you remember why lime is spread on the soil?”

“To kill insects, Mamma?”

“Yes, and to purify it. Lime purifies the ground, and purifies the air. That is why I had the Pond Cottages lime-washed after the fever had been there. That is why all our cow-sheds are lime-washed every six months. And that is why I have brought you and Augusta here to snuff up the fumes from this lime-kiln. The smell of the burning lime will go into your lungs, and strengthen and purify them, so that you will be cured of your coughs. Now do you understand?”

“Yes, Mamma.”

“And you, Augusta, have you understood?”

Against her neck Augusta’s head nodded drowsily. She yawned, stretched herself, and sidled down into her mother’s lap; in another moment she would have been asleep if a fit of coughing had not waked her.

Hannah had not listened to the lesson in Natural Science. She was fanning herself with her pocket-handkerchief, and looking with disapproval at the man of the lime-kiln, every now and then drawing in her breath and shaking her head. For he had sunk down on to the grass again, and sat in his former attitude, sprawling there, in a way that was not respectful to gentry. Stepping to his side she prodded him swiftly, and whispered,

“Can’t you get up? Don’t you know you’re wanted?”

He answered her prod with an oath, but rose the moment after.

“You’re drunk, you beast!” she whispered. But for all her scorn and reprobation, her class loyalty made her add,

“Pull yourself together, lad. Don’t you know that this is Mrs. Willoughby? Better not let
her
see you in this state.”

“I bain’t drunk. How can I afford to be drunk before midday? But I’ve got a headache as would split a stone. What do they want of me?”

“She told you. You’re to hold the children over the kiln, so’s they can breathe it. Here! Wipe your hands on the grass and do up your shirt a bit. What’s that on your wrists?”

“Bug sores.”

Now all together they walked towards the kiln, moving slowly under the weight of the sun. To Hannah’s religious mind it seemed as though they were advancing towards an altar of Moloch. Not that she had any doubts as to the rightness of the proceedings; she also had grown up in the knowledge that lime fumes were good for whooping-cough. But the conjunction of fire, children, and this solemn advance upon the kiln made her remember Moloch. The look of the kiln, too, was ecclesiastical in a heathen way. Squarely built of stone, solidly emerging from the turf, its walls were blackened and ruddied with stains of burning; and above the vent the fumes trembled upon the air, glassy, flickering, spiritual, as though they were rising up from the power of a mysterious altar.

They seemed to be a long time marching towards it, falling, with every slow step, deeper into its domain of heat and heavy odour. The man went in front. Following him went Sophia with a child on either side, and Hannah walked after.

“If you will stand on the steps,” said Sophia, “we will lift the children up to you. Now, Damian, you can go first. Shut your eyes, and breathe deeply.”

Returned to earth, Damian whispered to Augusta,

“I looked.”

“What is it like? Is it like hell?” she asked softly.

There was no time to hear, for now in her turn she was taken hold of, and hoisted towards the man’s grasp. She gave a sudden cry, wriggled, and made her escape.

“What is it, Augusta? You are not afraid, surely? Damian was not afraid.”

The child’s face was pale, but her look was less of fear than of some suspicion and bewilderment in which she was deeply absorbed.

“Mamma! I don’t quite like the man. He’s so queer.”

“But he’s the kilnman. His work makes him look like that.”

Her face working in an attempt to find words, the child whispered,

“It’s not him that I mind. But there’s something about him so very auspicious.”

At the second hoisting she made no resistance; and whether the man had overheard her or no, he knew his place well enough to show no consciousness of her words. Standing priest-like and impassive upon the steps, his head and shoulders dark against the background of trembling air, he stretched out his arms for the light burden, and Augusta was held above the opening of the kiln.

Her face, lit by the flickering fires below, wore the same bewildered and cogitative expression, and her eyes did not open for a single glance of curiosity for what was beneath.

“Why didn’t you look?” enquired Damian. “Were you afraid?”

“I forgot.”

“Miss Augusta kept her eyes shut as she was told,” improved the overhearing Hannah. “Miss Augusta behaved properly, and God will cure her cough because she was obedient.”

Lost in her musing dream, the child stood pale and unhearing.

The man having been given the shilling for his pains, and dismissed from their world, the little party moved away, slowly and religiously as they approached. No one spoke. Sophia was the first to rouse herself. The fumes must have made us sleepy, she thought, suddenly conscious that there was something odd, something pompous and bewitched about the way they were all behaving. And she began to walk faster, and to sweep her glance this way and that over the wide view from the terrace of the hill.

At the entrance of the lane she looked back. The man was standing where they had left him, staring after them. Hannah looked back too.

“How he stares, madam! But no wonder. He might be here year in, year out, and scarcely be visited by a soul, let alone little gentry children. He’ll think of this till suppertime, I dare say.”

Sophia nodded her assent. Even as she did so, her mind glancing casually at the lot of the lime-kiln man, she received a sudden and violent impression that, however fixedly he had stared after them, and stared still, he did not really see them, and that their coming was already wiped from his mind like a dream ... .A fancy, and she disliked fancies ... .But even before she had time to rebuke it Damian coughed, and her thoughts were tilted back again to what was actual.

What childishness to have expected that the children would be cured of their coughs immediately. She was no wiser than a poor papist, that would hope to nail up a waxen leg or a goitre before a shrine, like dead vermin nailed up on a gamekeeper’s tree. Walking ahead, listening for coughs, she began to reason herself into common sense, damping down her present fears by a reckoning of what illnesses the children had already been through, what remained for them yet to combat. It should be comforting to know how greatly the former outnumbered the latter. Damian aged nine, Augusta aged seven, might be looked upon as scarred and salted veterans in these wars of youth. It is best to get such things over early in life, every one was agreed as to that. Later on they might affect the constitution, and certainly interfered with schooling. So she might count herself lucky among mothers.

“Excuse me, madam, but the children are rather tired. I think it would be best for them to sit in the shade for a while.”

The sycamore by the gate between the two fields made a small separate world of shade in the glaring whitish landscape. In its shelter the two children stood islanded, looking out on the brightness all round as though they were looking from a fortress on some beleaguering danger. They had drawn close together, and stood in silence, their bright eyes flickering in their pale faces, their bony knees seeming years older than their thin legs. Augusta loosened her straw bonnet; as it fell back it showed her hair, plastered dark and limp on her forehead.

“Certainly, Hannah. Let us rest by all means. I expect you are tired too.”

“Oh no, madam.”

However, she retreated with alacrity to the shade of the sycamore, sat down, spread out her skirts for the children to sit on, and took out her knitting.

“Hannah, my head thumps,” said Damian.

“Never mind, dear. It will soon be better.”

From a neighbouring field a bull blared. The noise, so thick and shrill and dully furious, seemed the very voice of the midday heat. It was as though the sun thrust its voice from the heavens. The cows in the meadow went on feeding, whisking their tails against the flies that pestered them, and snatching at the herbage. The bull blared again and again, and the cows cropped on, uninterested. Sensible cows, thought Sophia. She was tearing up grasses also, and mechanically stripping off the
Loves-me, Loves-me-not
seed-heads. This waiting irked her, this waiting for the next cough. She disliked sitting down in the middle of a walk, she disliked any kind of dawdling. A slow and rigid thinker, to sit still and contemplate was an anguish to her. Presently she jumped to her feet, saying,

“Children, I shall walk on. You can stay here with Hannah until you have rested enough, then you can walk slowly to the end of the path. Meanwhile, I shall have reached home, and sent the carriage to bring you the rest of the way.”

I wonder how Hannah will like listening to that bull, she thought with amusement, as she climbed the stile, and set out briskly along the grass ridge. But the amusement faded from her mind, and with a few more steps she was teased by cares again. Suppose the lime-kiln treatment did not work, what was she to try next? And presently there would be that boy from the West Indies that Uncle Julius was sending. True, he would not be in the house for more than a week, but in that week a number of things might go wrong, he might tease Augusta, or corrupt Damian. For however necessary it was to be broad-minded about negroes and half-castes, the necessity to be broad-minded about bastards was not so imperative; and now she half wished that she had not undertaken to look after the brat. Well, it was another responsibility, another care — and she straightened her shoulders, and walked more erectly, feeling herself with every step deepening her hold upon the earth that she trod upon and owned, and resolutely absorbing the rays of the down-beating sun. It was an extraordinary thing that she, who had been so strong all her life, should have given birth to two such delicate children. Nor was Frederick delicate either, though he had fussed inordinately about his health. No, the delicacy was not inherited. It was struck out in the conjunction of the parents, it was the worst, the only enduring result of that deplorable mating.

She could still hear the bull blaring — a furious monotonous cry, a wail almost, ringing through the unmoved countryside. It was Dymond’s bull, she supposed, not a good beast, at any time, and ageing. Dymond must be spoken to. A place in service must be found for Topp’s eldest girl, who was doing herself no good, hanging about among the farmhands. Mamma’s tomb must be scrubbed again, and a room (the red dressing-room would do) made ready for that Caspar, Gaspar, whatever the child was called. She was a landowner, and a mother, and every day there was more to do, more to oversee the doing of. Duties came out of thought, one after another, swift as bees coming out of a hive. She was a mother, and a landowner; but fortunately, she need no longer be counted among the wives.

Now she saw her hand as it had been eighteen months ago, a hand whitened with winter and indoor living, holding the quill that moved swiftly and decisively over the paper. She could see the very look of the four pages, neatly filled with her even Italian script, and her signature, exactly filling the calculated space at the bottom of the fourth page — the four pages on which she had stated to her husband her exact reasons for wishing not to live with him again, her exact decision never to do so. She could remember everything: the look of the winter room, the fire rosy on the white marble hearth, the yellow flames of the candles she had lit, and the uncurtained window reflecting them, presenting its illusion of bright fire and sallow candle-flames alight in the dusky February garden where the evergreens bent toppling under the rainy wind. She could remember the dress she wore, the bracelet on her wrist with its staring onyx, the new scratch, raw and blatant, on the green leather of the escritoire. With a veer of wind the rain had spattered against the windows, and on that streaming surface the reflection of the fire and the candle-flames had brightened. She could remember the smell of the sealing-wax, and the exact imprint of the seal, and the look of the letter, lying sealed, stamped, and addressed, on the summit of the other letters she had written that afternoon.