III
It did not reach her at first. She heard it, indeed, coming back to the present with the sound, but that Was all. The thing behind it had to travel after her over twenty years. The cry of the heron was natural enough, with a famous heronry so near, and it was only because of the exceptional stillness of the night that it drew her attention now. Her mind went mechanically to the high wood behind the Hall, to the long-necked, slender-legged birds going home to the tall trees that on this unstirred evening would be stiff as a witch’s broom. She even had time to remember the old legend of their battle with the rooks, before the thing that had been running for twenty years entered her consciousness with a rush.
She stiffened then. From being softly still she became a rigid thing, stiller than sleep, stiller than death, because it was passionate willpower that held her still. It was already a moment or two since the sound had passed, but it still rang in the ear which had seemed to refuse to take it in. It had flashed through her brain like a bright sword flung in a high arc through a night without a star, but the truth that was behind it she held rigidly from her even as it tried to step within. She knew that it was too low for a bird’s call, too sharp and clear in that muffle of mist, but she shut the knowledge out. She would not let herself either breathe or think until she had heard the sound again.
The shock was as great the second time, but it had a different effect. She began to tremble from head to foot; even her lips parted and shook; her hands relaxed and began to pluck at her gown. Her breath came in quick gasps that were almost sobs as her eyes strained towards the darkness that held the door. Her brain kept telegraphing her body that it must be still, but it was too strong for it, and paid no heed. Her heart alone, beating in hard, ponderous strokes, seemed as if by itself it must shut out any further sound; and when the call came the third time, breaking the silence so that it could not close again, her own power of restraint went by the board as well. Her hands lifted themselves and gripped each other across her breast, and her voice, shaken and full of tears, forced itself into her throat. “Jim!” she heard herself saying, “Jim!”—with no knowledge that she had meant to speak, and in that one word admitted the final defeat of all her life.
Then the knocking began, the terrible brazen knocking which soulless iron makes on the unresponsive door of an empty house. It was as if whoever knocked frightened himself by the knocking, and tried to beat away his fear with still louder blows. But to the woman who tried to pretend that the house was really empty it was more terrible still. It seemed to take on the sound of a summons to the soul itself to issue forth. The noise of it flooded the place, echoed its way upstairs and into far rooms, so that strange voices answered it sharply from wood and stone. The heavy, storm-tried walls were suddenly no more than paper, so that the knocking became folly when a push would have forced them in. It seemed to Sarah that they must hear it from end to end of the marsh, across at the “Ship,” and out to the hidden edge of sea. She wondered why Simon did not come running, and the dog break into hoarse barks, for even in the far shippon they must surely hear. But there was only that great knocking in all the world, cheerful, impatient, or resigned by turn. It paused at moments, but only as the passing-bell pauses, Sarah thought, waiting to speak its single word afresh.
The noise had swept away in a moment both the false serenity of hate and the almost falser calm of that dwelling memory of love. From the respite, indeed, the live passion seemed to have sunk, as it were, on its haunches for a fiercer leap. She could not think clearly or control her limbs under the sudden impact of its spring. It seemed to fling itself on her as she had seen the tides in the winter crash against the wall. She, too, went under as if the water had beaten her down, and the noise at the door became the blows of the waves and the roar of the dragged beach.
She had that impulse to laughter which comes with long-expected woe, as if the gods were guilty of bathos when they stooped at last to strike. Scorn is the first sensation of those who seem to have watched the springs of action long before the hour. Sudden sorrows, quick blows have a majesty of their own, as if the gifts of the gods made for honour in good or ill. But long-deferred trouble, like suspended joy, has a meaner quality in fulfilment, and a subtle humiliation in its ache. That when the gods come they come quickly is true for both libations from the emptied cup. Royal sorrows, like royal joys, fall swift as thunderbolts from heaven.
She had always known in her heart that there was no fighting Blindbeck luck, that even the dregs of it were more potent than the best of the Sandholes brand. It could hardly fail to reach even across the sea, so that one of the failures would be less of a failure than the other in the end. The trouble of being the underdog too long is that even the dog himself begins at last to think it his rightful place. For all her dreaming and lying on Geordie’s behalf, she would have found it hard to believe in his ultimate success. Not for nothing had Eliza carefully tended her Method all this while, and watered it weekly with the Simons’ tears.
At first she told herself that she would put out the light, and let the knocker knock until he was tired. Perhaps he would open the door and step inside, but the darkness would surely thrust him out again. He might even go to the foot of the stairs and call, until the silence itself put a hand upon his throat. But already the strain was more than she could bear, and each blow as it came was a blow on her own heart. She tried to move, but was afraid of the sound of her own feet, and it was only under the cover of fresh knocking that she made the effort at last. Now she was facing the door which she could not see, though she knew its panels like the palm of her hand. Behind it, she felt the knocking ring on her brain, but now she had come within range of a more persistent power than that. Plainly, through the wooden barrier that was raised between them, she felt the presence of the man who stood without.
There is always an effort, a faint dread, about the opening of a door, as if the one who entered were admitted to more than a room. From each personality that enters even for a moment into one’s life something is always involuntarily received. The opening is only a symbol of the more subtle admission of the two, which leaves an intruder behind when the actual bodily presence has passed away. And of all openings there is none that includes such realisation and such risk as that which lets in the night and a stranger’s face.
And then suddenly the knocking ceased, as if the knocker was now as aware of her presence as she of his. They were like enemies, crouched on either side of a barricade; or like lovers, so near and yet so far, in the last, long second before the bars are down. Each waited for a breath, a touch, a turn of the hand that would bring the flash of the final blow or the thrill of the first kiss.
Their consciousness of each other was so strong that she knew at once when he lifted his arm again, just as he knew when she stirred in fear of the fresh attack. The latch gave its loose, metallic clink as she raised it and let it drop, and then the door began to open with the almost human grudging of old doors. The stranger put out a hand to help it on its way, and with a harsh shriek that sounded like protest it dragged across the flags.
At once the bulk of his big form was in the open square, substantial even in the dissolving light. There was a last pause as the shock of the actual meeting smote upon their minds, and then his voice, cheerful and loud as the knocking, flooded the house.
“Everybody dead here?” he demanded gaily, bending forward to peer at the figure set like a statue just inside. The tone of his voice, deep and kindly, had yet a touch of nervousness at its back. The strain of the waiting had told upon him as well as on her. “Say, you are real, ain’t you?” he enquired sharply, and then laughed. “Mercy! I sure thought everybody must be dead!”
Sarah had another shock at the sound of his voice, topped by the accent from over the pond as the deep note of flood is topped by the thinner note of the surf. She had listened instinctively for the Jim-an’-Geordie voice, but this was the voice of neither Geordie nor Jim. It was as strange to her who knew nothing of other peoples’ speech as if it had been a voice from another star. She shrank away from him, saying—“I thought it was Jim.” And then, almost violently, “You’re never Jim!”
The man laughed a second time, but more naturally, as if reassured the moment he heard her speak. “I sure am!” he answered her joyfully. “Why shouldn’t I be? Leastways, I’m all of Jim Thornthet that’s managed to swim across!” The smile stayed on his lips as he stared, but died when she did not respond. “May I come in a spell?” he enquired anxiously. “I’ve only struck England today, and I’ve a bag of news.”
But again she blocked the entrance as she had blocked it for May. It was the way into herself as well as into the house that these people sought, and she yielded to neither of them by an inch. “You can get out, if you’re Jim,” she said caustically, “and as smart as you like! Blindbeck’s your spot. We want nowt wi’ you here.”
The sharp words did not depress him, however. They were too reminiscent of old time.
“That’s a real mean Howdy!” he answered her humorously, advancing a foot. “ ’Tisn’t like Westmorland folk to keep folk tugging at the latch. … Shucks for Blindbeck!” he added laughingly, as she began the word again. “Sandholes is my little old home—always was, and always will be.” He advanced further, a merry, teasing note in his big voice. “You can’t keep me out, old woman! You never could. I’m coming right in, old woman! … I’m sure coming. … I’m right in!”
It was true, too. He was in the passage now, making his way by a force of desire stronger than May’s entreating love. Something else helped him as well, perhaps—some old extorted freedom of house and board. He put out his hand to Sarah as he turned to the light, but she shrank away from him against the wall.
“I won’t have you in t’house!” she cried angrily to his dim form. “Be off with you now, and look sharp about it!”
But again he seemed to be pleasantly cheered by her wrath, as if with a happy echo from the past.
“I’ll shin off right quick when I’ve had a word,” he coaxed. “Come on in, old woman, and look at me where there’s a bit more sun!” The flickering light seemed to beckon him on, for he began to move towards its dim dwelling. “I’ve news of Geordie for you,” he called back to her, as she did not stir. “You’ll sure be wanting to hear that!”
She heard him pass into the kitchen, his firm, confident tread raising a ring from every flag, and wondered, as with the knocking, why it did not carry all over the marsh. But still she stayed behind, fighting with herself and with the longing to hear his news. It could be of nothing but failure, she reminded herself, and her heart answered that that would be better than nothing at all. She heard him walking about the kitchen, as if he walked from this memory to that, peering into old cupboards and laying a hand upon old chairs. Presently, however, there came a silence as if he had seen enough, and, in a sudden panic lest he should be gone, she hurried after him into the room.
At once, as she went in, she traced the shape of him on the hearth, though she could not see his huge shadow that climbed the ceiling and swamped the wall. Clearly, too, she could feel his dominant personality all about, too heady a wine for the frail, cob webbed bottle of the place. Paused on the hearth, he was still looking around him with a wistful, humorous smile. He was thinking, as all think who return, how strong and yet how slender was the chain, how futile and yet how tenacious were the humble things which had held him through the years! He was thinking, too, how amazingly tiny everything had grown—the house, the kitchen, and the old woman within the door. Even the stretch of sand, which he could vaguely see, seemed narrow to him who had known much greater wastes.
He turned his smiling eyes suddenly to Sarah’s face.
“How’s the old man, by the way? Still keeping uppermost of the weeds?”
“He’s nobbut middlin’, that’s all,” she forced herself to reply.
“Is he anywhere about?”
“Like enough … but you needn’t wait.”
“I’d like a chin with him, all the same!” He hugged himself as he stood on the hearth, and his huge shadow hugged itself on the wall. The same mischievous sound crept back into his voice. “I’m mighty glad to see you again, old woman, I am that! Perhaps you’ll feel like slinging me a smile or two after a bit.”
“Eliza’ll smile, I’ll warrant, if you’ve nobbut a pound or two in your poke.”
“I have that—sure!” He slapped his coat as he spoke, laughing a great laugh which shook her as cruelly as his knock. “It’s up to me to keep my pockets stitched, nowadays,” he finished, in a contented tone.
“I’m main glad to hear it,” she said sardonically, and he nodded gaily.
“That’s real nice of you, old woman! You can keep right on. You’d a terrible down on me in the old days, hadn’t you now?”
“I’ve no use for you, Jim Thornthwaite, and never had. You know that as well as me.”
“That’s so!” He laughed again. “But I was always mighty fond of you.” He made a movement as if to cross to her side, but she backed instantly, as if she guessed. “Of course, you’d a deal rather it had been Geordie,” he said. “I know that. But he was never much of a sparkle in the family tarara, and that’s honest. I left him serving in a store—poor lad Geordie—and hankering like honey after the old spot!”
“And you left him behind,” Sarah flung at him—“you wi’ brass?”
“He wouldn’t take a red cent. I looked him up as soon as I struck it rich, but he was always set on hoeing his own row. He’d have taken it from his own folks, but he wouldn’t from me. Guess it was Blindbeck hate in him coming out at last! But if ever he’d had the dollars, he’d have been home before you could hear him shout.”
“He’s best where he is,” Sarah said coldly, repenting her charge. Eliza’s son should not see that she grudged or cared. “Them as makes beds can likely lie on the straw.”
“Well, Blindbeck luck still holds, anyway!” Jim smiled. “See here!” He put his hand in the greatcoat that seemed to hide from her that he was a creature of flesh and blood, and instantly she heard the rustle of notes. He opened the big pocketbook under the light, running his hand over the clean slips with joyous pride. “Don’t that talk?” he said cheerfully. “Doesn’t it sure talk?” and in spite of her resolve she shrank from the crisp, unaccustomed sound.
“Good enough, eh?” he demanded warmly—“and there’s plenty more behind! That’s only to pass the time o’ day with, so to speak. Guess it’ll do for a fairing for my old mother, that’s about all.” He snapped the elastic again and flung the book on the table, so that it slid across within Sarah’s reach. Lifting his eyes he met her gaze fixed blindly upon his face, and his brow contracted as he puzzled over that hard, unrecognising stare.
“Can’t we sit down for a spell?” he asked her coaxingly, turning back to the hearth. “I feel real unwanted, standing on my hind legs.”
“Eliza’ll be waiting on you,” Sarah said, through a stiff throat.
“She’s waited twenty years.” He laid a hand on a chair, and pulled it nearer to the warmth. It protested violently when it felt his weight, but he settled himself snugly, and did not care. The fire, as if heartened at sight of him on the hearth, changed its cold yellow for a crimson glow.
“It’s good to be home,” he said happily—“good as a Sunday-school, treat—sure!” He pulled his pipe from his pocket, and began to fill it meditatively, with quiet hands. … “Now, if it had been Geordie that had struck it rich, it would have been a real hum for you, wouldn’t it, old woman? Guess I feel real mean, for your sake, that it’s only me. Guess I could almost wish it was Geordie out and out!”
He leaned forward with the firelight on his face, looking at her with the same smile that was like a hand that he reached out.
“He was always making a song,” he said, “about what he’d do when he struck it rich. ‘I’ll be off home that slick you’ll hear the bump,’ he used to say, ‘and I’ll be planning all the way how I’ll burn the cash!’ I’d like to buy the farm for the old dad;—guess Squire’d part all right if I could pass him enough. As for the old woman, there’s just no end to what I’d do—glad rags and brooches, and help all round the house. It’d be just Heaven and Witham Gala, playing Providence to the old woman! … That’s what I want my brass for, when I strike it rich!’ ”
“A fool’s dream!” Sarah said.
“A fine fool’s dream.”
“Them as dreams over much likely never does nowt else.”
He leaned forward still further, the smile more urgent on his lips. “There was only one thing used to fret him,” he went on, “and he spent a powerful lot of time thinking about it, and wearing himself thin. ‘S’pose she don’t know me when I sail in?’ he used to say. ‘S’pose I’m that changed I might as well be any other mother’s son as well as hers? There’s a mighty pile o’ years between us—big, terrible years! I’d sure break my heart if she didn’t know me right off, even if I’d grown a face like a pump-handle and a voice like a prize macaw! But I guess I needn’t trouble,’ he used to say, ‘because mothers always know. I’ve got that slick by heart—they always know.’ ” He waited a moment, and then pressed on, with a note that was like alarm. “Say, he was right, wa’n’t he?”—he asked anxiously—“dead right? It’s a sure cinch that mothers always know?”
The force of his demand seemed almost to shake the obstinate figure so cynically aloof. It was as if he were prompting her to something that she knew as well as he, but would not admit for some reason of her own. Even after he had stopped speaking the demand seemed to persist, and she answered at last with a cold smile on her hard face.
“Nay, my lad,” she said sneeringly, “you needn’t put yourself about! Eliza’ll be fain to see you, wherever you got your brass. She’ll know you well enough, never fret, wi’ yon pack o’ cards in your hand!”
His smile died as if she had struck him—the whole laughing pleasure of him died. “I worked for it honest,” he said in reply, but his voice sounded dull and tired. Even in the dusk she might have seen the spirit go out of him, the lines in his face deepen, his head sink, his shoulders droop. The merry boy that had come into the house was gone, leaving the stern man of middle age. Sarah could not see what she had done to him, but she could feel the change. Scenes with Jim in the old days had always ended much as this. Many a time he had come to her full of affection and fun, and in a few moments she had slain them both. He had looked up at her with hurt eyes that still laughed because they couldn’t do anything else, and had held to his old cry—“I’m your lad really, Aunt Sarah—same as Geordie is!”
He sat for a few minutes staring at the floor, his pipe with its filled bowl hanging idly from his hand. He seemed to be adjusting himself to new ideas, painfully making room for them by throwing overboard the old. Then he rose to his feet with a half-sigh, half-yawn—and laughed. Sarah heard him, and started—it was so like the old-time Jim! But though she might have winced in the old days, it did not trouble her now. If she had had no tenderness for the scapegrace lad she was not likely to pity the grown, successful man. … Without looking at her again he went across to the window and stared out. The pane swung open wide on its bent rod, and not a breath of wind troubled its buckled frame. Across the vanished sands the light still glowed from the “Ship,” red on the dark that seemed like a mere dissolution of everything into mist.
“Old Fleming still at the ‘Ship’?” he enquired, keeping his back turned. “And May?” His voice warmed again on the little name. “May’s married this many a year, I guess!”
“Nay, not she!” Sarah said. “She’s not wed, nor like to be.” Unconsciously she relaxed a little. “She was always terble sweet on Geordie, was May.”
The man looking out smiled at the light as if it had been a face. He spoke low, as if speaking to himself.
“I’d sure forgot!”
“I reckon she’s waiting for him yet, but I doubt she’ll wait till the Judgment, and after that!”
“She was always a sticker, was May. …” He swung round, cheerful again, though lacking the ecstasy with which he had come in. “Sweet on Geordie, was she? Well, I guess a live dog’s better than a dead lion! I’ll hop across for a chin.”
“You’ll loss yourself, crossing t’sand.”
“I’ve crossed it every night in my dreams!” He came back to her, with his face tender again, the thin flame of the candle showing his pleasant eyes and kindly lips. “Say, though!” he added anxiously. “I can come back?”
“Best bide at t’ ‘Ship.’ ”
“But I’d a deal rather sleep here!”
“Well, you wain’t, and that’s flat!”
“There’s Geordie’s bed, ain’t there?” he urged her, in pleading tones. “I’ll lay you’ve kept it fixed for him all along!”
“Ay—for Geordie!” said Geordie’s mother, setting her mouth.
“Couldn’t you kinder think I was Geordie once in a while?”
“Nay.”
“Not for a mite of a minute?” His voice shook.
“Nay, not I!”
He lifted his shoulders, and let them droop again. “I’m sure coming back, though!” he finished, in his persistent way. … “Stop a shake, though! What about the tide?”
His eyes turned from old custom to the table over the hearth, and, crossing over to it, he struck a light. The silver box in his hand flashed a tiny scintilla on the dusky air. He looked up at the table, but he did not see it, the match dwindling above his brooding face.
“You might ha’ been just a mite glad to see me!” he exclaimed wistfully, stamping it out upon the flags. “Why, you’d never ha’ known me from Adam if I hadn’t given you the call! It’ll give me the knock right out if May don’t know me neither when I sail in. They say sweethearts don’t forget, no more than mothers, but perhaps it’s all a doggoned lie!”
“She was Geordie’s lass—not yours!” Sarah told him, with jealous haste.
“Sure!” he said with a smile, and struck a second match.
Now he looked at the table in earnest, but only for a space. “Saturday,” she heard him murmuring, in an absent voice. “Martinmas, ain’t it? … Tide at ten. …”
She made a movement forward and put out her hands.
“Nay, but yon’s never—” she began; and stopped.
“Eh, old woman?”
“Nay, it’s nowt.”
“It’s Saturday, ain’t it?”
“I reckon it is.”
“Saturday’s my day for luck,” she heard him saying, as the match died down. “I’ve got a cinch on Saturdays, that’s sure!” The gaiety in his tone was only a mockery of what it had been before. “Tide at ten, eh?—and it’s six, now.” He drew his watch from his pocket and gave it a glance. “Well, so long! I’ll be right back!”
To both the moments seemed endless in which he moved across the floor. His look dwelt upon her in a last effort to reach her heart, and then lingered about the room on the dim fellowships of his youth. But even Geordie himself could hardly have touched her in that hour. The strongest motive that had ruled her life had her finally by the throat.
Yet she called to him even as he went, afraid, womanlike, of the sound of the shut door. “Jim!” she flung after him. “Jim, lad! … Jim!”
“Say! Did you call?” He was back again on wings.
“Nay … it was nowt.” She indicated the pocketbook within reach of her hand. “You’d best take yon truck along wi’ you an’ all.”
Even in his disappointment he was still able to smile. “It don’t need a safe between it and a Thornthet, I guess!” was all he said. In that moment, indeed, the money was nothing and less than nothing to them both. Sarah was honest to the core, and never remembered once that dead men tell no tales and that the sea does not betray. … The thing that had conquered her soul was at least also above that.
“Ten, wa’n’t it?” he asked, drifting reluctantly out again. His voice came from further away, like the gull’s voice from the sky. “So long! Cheero! I’ll be back again with the tide. …”