The Stepson (7 page)

‘That's the old people on their silver-wedding day,' said Ben; and Kate saw a stout woman, seated, wearing a bulging, tight-fitting bodice with a long row of buttons descending from the throat to the waist. She wore a huge cameo brooch wedged in under her chin. Her skirt consisted of row under row of flounces. By her side stood a pot-bellied man with a large watch-chain and a face, clean-shaven
except for the mutton-chop whiskers, which seemed to be a conglomeration of shining bosses like a plateful of apples.

‘He was a tough ‘un, was the old man,' said Ben. ‘Yes, it was as well to keep on the right side of him. But he was a good farmer; a very good farmer for his times. It was him I got my temper from.'

Kate raised her head and examined Ben with a smile. ‘Have you got a temper?' she said.

‘Ask Mrs. Jobson,' said Ben; ‘ask George; ask anyone about the farm.'

‘Well,' said Kate, ‘so have I.'

Their eyes met, half challenging, half humorous, and they laughed. Then they turned their attention once more to the album.

‘That's me and my first.' Ben pointed at the next portrait.

‘You, with that moustache? Well, I never.'

‘Yes, I was twenty-seven then. She died getting on for twenty years ago. When you were …?'

‘Nine.'

‘Nine. A little bit of a thing of nine. It seems strange, doesn't it?'

Kate stared at the photograph and her brows contracted. ‘And you married again … how soon after?' she asked.

Humphrey hesitated. ‘Getting on for a year,' he said sheepishly. ‘The next one's picture is over the page.'

He was going to turn the page when Kate laid her hand on it.

‘Don't show me her,' she said with quiet intensity.

Ben looked at her, surprised. ‘Why not?'

‘Because I ask you not to.' Her colour had risen suddenly and she spoke coldly and abruptly. Ben, on the point of speaking, checked himself, looking at her face for a moment searchingly.

Then coldly and abruptly she asked: ‘How long did you say it was since she died?'

‘Rachel? Three years and a bit,' said Ben. ‘Three years last August.'

She turned her head and her eyes scanned him. His eyes dropped shamefaced before that calm, searching gaze.

‘And when I go,' she said, ‘how long will you wait, I wonder?'

‘Wait? What do you mean?' Ben's lips had narrowed and he spoke shortly.

‘Wait before marrying a fourth.'

‘You shouldn't say such things,' he said. ‘You're young. You don't understand. Besides, when you go, I shall have been dead and buried for years.'

‘How do you know?' she answered. ‘No one can say where any of us will be from one week to another.'

‘Well, it's natural, at least,' said Ben quietly, ‘to suppose that I'll go first. I'm an old man, my girl,
If I lived ten years longer it would be a very good age. I've no right to expect more.'

Her eyes were still upon him and her hand on the album, and suddenly a profound compassion for the old man came over her. Her grim mood was gone; her heart melted.

‘Don't mind what I say, Ben,' she said to him, smiling. ‘I'm a little queer at times, you know.'

Ben laid his hand affectionately on hers. ‘Take up your hand,' he said, ‘and I'll show you the lad.'

‘What lad?'

‘The boy. David. You'd like to see him, wouldn't you?'

‘Yes,' said Kate. ‘Yes, show me David'; and Ben turned two pages and laid his finger on the portrait of a very small boy standing as if at attention with one hand on one of those sundials which are to be found only in photographers' studios.

‘He'd be about seven at that time,' said Ben.

A comical little dormouse of a boy he seemed to Kate, much the same as several of the smaller boys who went to Penridge school. She gazed more closely at the small face and for the first time it occurred to her that this boy was her stepson. A little thrill of tenderness stirred in her.

‘Here he is again,' said Ben, watching her anxiously. ‘He's older here. This was taken about five years ago.'

He paused. Kate with her dark, brooding brows
was studying the photograph intently. The old man waited for her to speak, but Kate continued to gaze in silence, as if lost in a dream. He laid a hand on her arm.

‘What do you think of him?' he asked.

‘He's a pretty boy,' she said in a soft, restrained, eager voice. ‘Is it like what he is now?'

Ben inspected the portrait critically. ‘Yes,' he said judicially with his head on one side. ‘Yes, it's like him all right, though he's grown into a young man now, of course.'

Kate looked up from her inspection. ‘What colour is his hair?' she asked.

‘Reddish,' said Ben. ‘A kind of red gold, you know. Like his Mother's was, only brighter.' He studied the portrait again. ‘He's a fine lad,' he said warmly. ‘The best of the bunch.' He turned with one of his alert movements to Kate. ‘Do you like him?'

‘Yes,' answered Kate, ‘I do.'

‘I knew you would.' The old man was as reassured and happy as if the two had actually met.

Christmas had come and gone and the new year was now some weeks old. The keen frosts of January, which froze the water in the horse-trough to a solid block of crystal and hung the low eaves of the barn with a glassy fringe of icicles, had yielded to a rainy February.

Kate sat by the parlour window: an open book lay in her lap. It was raining, and at intervals showers of drops were driven against the panes till every pane flowed like a sheet of rapidly melting ice. Somewhere out in the yard water dripped from a leaking gutter with a continuous wet pit-pit-patting. The clank of a pail and then the hard ring of a poker knocking against the iron bars of the grate came from the kitchen, and, from outside, the sound of horses' hoofs. Peter, the boy, his red face shining with wet and water dripping from the peak of his cap, led the two bays past the window. Their great heads nodded across the panes; the rain-soaked necks gleamed like bronze.

Kate's eyes wandered round the parlour, delaying for a moment on each detail - the brass candlesticks on the mantelshelf, the huge arch of the beam over the great open hearth, and the other beams that pressed down from the ceiling upon the low room. It was a friendly room, and it had a pleasant smell made up of many smells — scents of old timber, burning
logs, a hint of paraffin and the suggestion of some vague aromatic spice. It was a room in which it was not easy to feel lonely, for there was about it a sense of calm, pervasive life, as if the spirits of all the serene countryfolk who had once lived and moved in it still filled it with their comfortable presence.

And yet Kate did not feel happy as she sat there surveying the old place. A small, tight chord of sadness vibrated from time to time in her breast. It seemed to her unnatural to be sitting there while the endless business of the farm moved forward on its quiet, unceasing way. She herself was the only idle creature in the place. What time could it be? The clock that hung near the door said five minutes to ten. How strange that she should not have known the time. At Penridge the routine of her day was so allotted that she could always tell, by whatever she happened to be doing, what time it was. But when you sit idle, time stands still, or rather life stands still and time moves on and leaves life behind. All at The Grange, except Kate, had their appointed activities, which kept them busy, kept them alive. She alone was being left behind. During all the weeks since she had come to The Grange she had been dropping further and further out of touch with life. She had become as strange to herself as she was strange to the folk among whom she lived; for they, who were all bound together in the fellowship of work, felt that she was different
from them. How far, after all, was this new life from what she had so fondly hoped. And yet, had she not promised herself, as the greatest happiness that her new life would bring to her, that she would drudge no more but enjoy to the full the leisure which was hers to enjoy? Could it be that this long-desired leisure was in truth mere emptiness; that when you stopped working, you stopped living? But work in itself was no satisfaction: she had proved that severely enough, working for a father she had never loved. It would have been different if someone she loved had been dependent on her work. Here at The Grange no one depended on her, for, she reflected, everything had moved quietly and smoothly, as it was moving now, long before Ben had so much as thought of her. Then it came into her mind that one day perhaps she would have children. That, of course, would alter everything; and for the first time Kate began to hope ardently that she would have a child. Then her thoughts turned to David, this boy whom she had never seen. In a way, she told herself, David was her son: she was in the place of a mother to him. And she began to think how pleasant it would be when he came back to live at The Grange; and, feeling a sudden desire to picture him again more clearly, she put aside the book that lay on her lap, rose from her seat and crossed the room to the cupboard, determined to get out the album and examine his photograph again.

She had opened the cupboard door and her hand was raised to the bookshelves when she heard someone come into the room. She glanced over her shoulder. It was Emma. She glanced sharply at Kate, and Kate, as though she had been caught prying into something that was not her business, felt the blood rush to her face.

‘Was there anything you were wanting in there?' said Emma, and Kate could feel the aggressiveness that lay beneath the question.

‘I can find it myself, thank you, Emma,' she said; and Emma, still looking at her, took from the sideboard a glass dish for which she had been sent by Mrs. Jobson and went out of the room.

Kate stood irresolute. That small occurrence had upset her extremely, and she felt angry with herself for being upset and with Emma for producing such an effect upon her. Then she closed the cupboard door and went back to her seat by the window, troubled and disconsolate. She had not brought out the album.

Kate took up her book again and tried to read, but now her unhappiness had become acute. The unmistakable sense of Emma's hatred coming on the top of her mood of depression brought upon her a feeling of loneliness and injury. She sat, her hands gathered on the open book, gazing with a kind of undirected intensity into the hollow of the room before her. The door opened again and Mrs. Jobson,
serene and busy, came in. She glanced at Kate and then, murmuring an excuse in her pleasant, musical voice, went to the sideboard, knelt down, and opened the small cupboard in it. There was a sound of moving crockery and glass, and then she rose and moved towards the door, glancing at Kate again as she went. Then, just as she was about to lift the latch of the door, she paused, turned back, and began to cross the room towards Kate.

‘Can I do anything for you, ma'am?' she asked, her kindly eyes looking solicitously into Kate's.

Kate sighed. ‘Don't call me ma'am, Mrs. Jobson,' she said.

The old woman smiled affectionately. ‘Why, what can I call you, then?'

‘You can call me Kate.'

Mrs. Jobson shook her head. ‘I doubt Mr. Humphrey wouldn't like that.'

‘Wouldn't he? Well, call me Mrs. Humphrey, then. But don't say ma'am. Why should you? It's making me into what I'm not.'

‘You're not looking happy this morning,' said Mrs. Jobson.

‘Well, I'm not very happy,' confessed Kate. ‘I'm feeling … well, a little lonely.' Tears suddenly gathered in her eyes.

The old woman sat down beside Kate and put an arm round her shoulders. ‘But we can't have you being unhappy, my dear,' she said. ‘Why should you
feel lonely? There's plenty of us round about, even though we haven't much time for talking, perhaps — not, that is, till the work's done. Don't you think, perhaps, it's because you want something to do? I can never be happy myself, you know, unless I'm kept pretty busy. Perhaps you're the same.'

Kate nodded. ‘Yes,' she said. ‘That's what it is. But what can I do?'

‘Why, you can do whatever you like, my dear. You're mistress here. You've only got to say.'

‘But I don't want to do things just to occupy the time,' said Kate. ‘I don't even want to be able to choose. I want to do something that's got to be done. You see, I've always been accustomed to work, Mrs. Jobson. Why, only look at my hands.' She held out her strong, work-worn hands to Mrs. Jobson, smiling. ‘I thought, when I knew I was going to marry Mr. Humphrey,' she went on, ‘that I should enjoy doing nothing. I'd had a bit too much work at home, you see; or rather, not too much work perhaps, but too little pleasure to go with it. But if you have no work, it seems to me now as if you can't have any pleasure, either. I'm not meant for a lady, seemingly. Won't you give me something to do that's part of the work here? I don't like to interfere, you see, even though I may be the mistress; but I have eyes enough to see that you do the work of six yourself. Why shouldn't I do some of your work?'

Mrs. Jobson laughed and patted Kate's shoulder.
She was touched by this beautiful, unhappy young woman who so humbly appealed to her for help, so unlike the new mistress whose arrival she had looked forward to with some apprehension when old Ben Humphrey had told her that he was going to marry a young woman.

‘Why, yes,' she replied, ‘I've more than enough to get through in the day. The kitchen and the dairy by themselves keep me pretty busy. Of course, I have Emma to help me, but she doesn't do much unless she's watched.'

At the mention of Emma, Kate's brows drew together for a moment and the ghost flitted across her gaze. ‘Then tell me how I can best help you,' she said.

Mrs. Jobson thought for a moment. ‘Well,' she said, ‘there's the fowls, and looking after the linen, and the mending too, of course; and there's the dairy — the milk and the cream and the butter. The butter isn't easy, of course, at first. A really first-rate butter-maker's by no means common; but you can learn. I could teach you, if you wished. Though I'm not one for boasting as a rule — still, I
will
say you'll find no butter as good as mine anywhere in these parts. So you see, you've only got to choose. I'd be very thankful for your help, I don't mind saying. So just please yourself. Which is it to be?'