The Moth, page 23
Millie, too, was about to call out something when Agnes admonished her, saying, ‘No, no, Millie. Be quiet now, and stop jumping up and down.’
Millie, like a child, had been hopping in her excitement from one foot to the other and once caught the heel of her black slipper in the hem of her long velvet dress and nearly tripped. Her face was so painfully bright and happy as to make Agnes think: I doubt she’s ever enjoyed herself like this in her life before; and the thought brought a feeling of sadness and guilt to her.
‘Isn’t it beautiful, Aggie?’
‘What, dear?’
‘Why, the party. It’s a beautiful party. Isn’t it, Dave?’ She appealed to Dave Waters, and he, coming to her side, addressed her in the same manner as Agnes had done, saying, ‘What’s that, me dear?’
‘It’s a beautiful party. I said, it’s a beautiful party.’
‘Aye, it’s quite good. You’ve enjoyed it, haven’t you?’
‘Oh, yes, Dave. Oh, yes. Could we have one every week?’
Dave Waters put his head back and laughed, saying, ‘Not unless we have a New Year every week, an’ that would be too much of a good thing. What do you say, Miss Agnes?’
‘Yes, too much of a good thing, Dave.’
‘For my part, I’m always glad when I get back to normal. But—’ He moved to the side now and stood abreast of Agnes as he said under his breath, ‘It’s good to see her so happy.’
‘It is indeed, Dave. The only thing is’ – Agnes turned her head fully towards him now – ‘I hope it doesn’t have any repercussions.’
‘Oh, don’t worry. As Peggy’s always saying, you don’t get sick on happiness.’
You don’t get sick on happiness. There was a lot of truth in that. At the moment she felt so unhappy that were it to create its equal in sickness she felt she would be at death’s door. Then once again she was chastising herself: What a silly thing to think. This time last year her idea of happiness would have been to be married or to be in this house without the presence of her father or any of her brothers, and now here she was, at least with her second wish fulfilled and she was more lonely and unhappy than she had ever been in her life before.
There were the church bells ringing. Another year! Nineteen-fourteen. What would it bring? Would it bring any change to her life? She doubted it; she would be stuck here in this backwater while the world outside went by. Great things were happening in the world; and not unmixed with unrest, from what she read in the papers. But it wouldn’t touch her or this house; she was here for life and the sooner she faced up to this the better for her health, both of body and mind. Yes, indeed.
‘A happy New Year.’
‘A happy New Year.’
‘Many of them. Many of them.’
‘Let me touch the coal.’
Robert had hammered on the front door and been admitted by Maggie. Then he was in the lobby among the little crowd shaking hands and all talking at once; and to Dave Waters he made a point of saying, ‘It’ll be a good year, you’ll see.’ And Dave had answered, ‘God willing.’
And now he was standing in the hall proper in front of Millie and her, and Millie’s eyes were like stars as she looked at him and cried in a high almost falsetto voice, ‘A happy New Year! A happy New Year, Bradley!’
‘And to you too, miss.’ He now took hold of the two outstretched hands and when his own were shaken up and down he laughed as he said, ‘It’s going to be a splendid New Year for you.’ And in answer she said, ‘Is it, Bradley? Is it?’ And he said, ‘Sure thing, miss. Sure thing.’
And now he was standing opposite his mistress, but he didn’t put his hand out towards her. He could not; if he touched her just once that would be the beginning of the end, for end there must be.
‘Happy New Year.’ She had not added, Bradley.
He counted the seconds loud in his head before he lifted his arm and took the hand extended towards him. Her fingers were thin and cold, very like those of Millie’s, and they were lost between his own and his palm. All of her being was in his hand. It passed up his arm and into his body. Weeks ago when she had forced herself into his mind, he had done his best to prevent it, but his mind was one thing, his body another.
‘The same to you. And many of them.’ It was the accepted reply that was issuing from thousands, tens of thousands of mouths at this very moment, but he had not added, miss.
She was on the point of withdrawing her fingers from his when Dave Waters came to her side. Whatever he meant to say, and from the look on his face it wouldn’t have been exactly pleasant, was interrupted by a cry from the lobby.
Maggie, having run back to shut the front door, saw entering the drive what at first she took to be a carriage and then she recognised it was a trap, merely a trap. But a trap was enough to make her run back to the hall door and yell, ‘’Tis a visitor! ’Tis somebody coming to first-foot us. Isn’t that grand now? ’Tis a visitor!’ before scrambling back to the front door again.
‘A visitor?’ Agnes looked towards Peggy, then at Dave before saying further, ‘Who can it be? Oh, perhaps it’s Stanley. He’s decided to come after all; he must have got the last train in.’
The voices had become subdued, because most of them knew that if it were guests that would mean Miss Agnes and Miss Millie wouldn’t be staying for the rest of the party; it might even mean Dave and Ruthie would have to wait on in the drawing room. But Maggie shattered their surmising for in what she took to be a whisper she said, ‘’Tis a stranger, an old man. He looks drunk.’
Dave and Peggy Waters followed Agnes through the lobby to the front door, where they all looked down through the sparse light shed by the trap lantern on to the man who was now pulling himself up the steps by the stone balustrade and who would have fallen if Dave Waters had not stepped forward and thrust his arm out, saying, ‘What is it? Who do you want? Who are you?’
He could not make out the man’s features for the upper part of his face was shadowed by his high hat and the lower part showed unkempt whiskers stiffened by frost.
‘Robert Bradley. I want Robert Bradley.’
It was Agnes who recognised who the man was, although she had never seen him in her life before. She put out her hand to him and, taking his arm, she said, ‘Are you his uncle?’
‘Yes, yes, his uncle.’ The man nodded his head slowly.
‘Come in. Come in. Help him, Dave.’
Together they assisted him up the step and through the lobby and into the hall where Robert was standing, seemingly unable to believe his eyes, but only for a moment for, springing forward, he took hold of the old man, saying, ‘What . . . what’s the matter? Is it Aunt Alice?’
‘No, no.’ The head moved slowly; then to the amazement of them all John Bradley dropped on to his knees and, putting his hands up as if in prayer, he said, ‘God has bidden me to come and ask your forgiveness. He said I must not let the year begin—’ the man now gasped and coughed, then went on, ‘begin without begging your forgiveness. I . . . I besmirched your name as . . . as did my wife . . . and daughter. On her dying lips she . . . she told me the name of the man who had brought her to shame and . . . and God chastised me and . . . ’
Before he could get any further Robert bent swiftly forward and, placing his arms under his uncle’s, he attempted to lift him upwards. But John Bradley’s body was limp, and Robert, looking towards the men who seemed to have become stupefied by the scene, cried, ‘Give me a hand!’
Almost as one they crowded round and lifted the old man up. Then Robert turned and looked at Agnes as if to say, Where will I put him? and she, reading his unspoken question, cried, ‘Bring him into the drawing room. He’s frozen. Ruthie, build up the fire. Peggy, bring a hot water bottle and a hot shelf. Quickly now.’ . . .
During the next fifteen minutes there was much bustling to and fro. They laid John Bradley on the rug before the fire with a cushion under his head and placed an oven shelf under his feet and stone bottles to his sides. But when he did not soon regain consciousness Agnes, looking at Robert who was kneeling beside his uncle, said, ‘Don’t you think we should send for a doctor?’
‘I don’t know. Likely, it’s just the cold that’s got him. I know what would bring him round, some hot whisky.’ He smiled wryly now, as he added, ‘He wouldn’t be so forgiving if he knew I’d introduced strong liquor into him.’
‘He’s not to know.’ Robert looked at Peggy now and said, ‘That’s true . . . could be medicine.’
Five minutes later they were spooning hot whisky down John Bradley’s throat and had the satisfaction within minutes of hearing him cough and splutter. When presently he opened his eyes he looked at the faces hanging over him and muttered, ‘Where . . . where?’ And to this Robert said, ‘You’re all right. You’re all right, Uncle. It’s just the cold. Just get warm and you’ll feel fine again.’
Robert realised that the incident had put a damper on the party and he looked up and around him, saying, ‘Don’t let it stop the jollification; I’ll see to him.’ Whereupon Peggy replied, ‘Oh, we’ve had enough, anyway, if we never have any more. And they can have their drinks in the kitchen; they’ll do as well there. Come along with you.’ She now waved out Ruthie, Maggie and Greg, and lastly her husband, but as she went to close the door on them Agnes called, ‘Will you go up and see how Betty’s coping?’
‘I’ll do that, but she can handle Miss Millie. And she’ll surely sleep the night, she’s never had so much excitement in her lifetime, poor dear.’ She went out smiling.
Getting to his feet, Robert looked at Agnes and nipped at his lower lip before he said, ‘I’m sorry about this.’
‘There’s nothing to be sorry for. I would think you should be glad that your name has been cleared.’
He looked down on his uncle, who now appeared as if he was sleeping, and, moving away from him he walked to where Agnes had seated herself in the wing chair to the side of the fire which was now blazing brightly and he said, ‘No, I’m not relieved, for it never really troubled me, me conscience was clear.’
‘Don’t you mind what other people think?’
‘No; and I never have. If I get on with folks and they like me, well and good, if I don’t get on with them I keep out of their way. What they think doesn’t bother me.’
‘But what if the people you like think the worse of you?’
‘In that case, as far as I can see it, if they think the worse of me their manner towards me will change, and from liking they would show dislike, and so as I said, I would keep out of their way.’
‘You seem to have an answer for everything.’
‘Huh!’ He turned his head to the side. ‘I only wish I had. God, I only wish I had.’
It was noticeable to both of them that she was not addressing him as Bradley and nor was he using miss.
And now she asked him a very strange question: ‘Have you ever been unhappy?’ she said.
He turned and looked into her face. The firelight was playing on it, it looked flushed, it may have been the heat, and it was some seconds before he said, ‘Not really; not until recently.’
‘Recently?’ She dare not ask how recently, and his mode of reply was to turn the question on her. ‘What about you?’ he said. ‘Have you ever been unhappy?’
She moved her body in the chair and put her hands on the arms, her fingers over the end pressed into the leather, but she turned her gaze from him and towards the fire and stared into it before she answered him: ‘If I were to speak the truth I would say I have never known what it is to be really happy. I’ve experienced pleasure, but that’s a different thing. I get pleasure from my playing; I get pleasure from looking at beautiful pictures; then again I get pleasure from walking in the wood. But as for happiness, there are so many grades of happiness; the little I know of it has always been threaded with pain.’
She was remembering the time when she thought she was in love with James: she had imagined she was happy even when the emotion was threaded with jealousy, and in spite of the feeling of inferiority he had the unfortunate knack of evoking from within her. But why were they talking like this? Who had begun it? . . . She had: she had wanted to know if he had ever been unhappy. If that wasn’t a provocative question, she would like to know what was, so need she ask why they were talking like this? But she should recognise she had opened the way for him to take further liberties. What liberties? A conversation, the exchange of thoughts. She had never been able to have a conversation with any member of her family, not even with her mother. As for those outside, James or his family, James had wanted a good, adoring listener. That’s all James had wanted, while his mother wanted someone to browbeat. But this man here, this man who was attracting her in a way that was frightening, terrifying, she found him compatible.
‘What!’
The words that called forth the high demanding What! had been, ‘You should be married.’ She made to rise from the chair, then sat deeper into it. Her hands now in her lap, folded tightly together, and her face scarlet, she looked at him, right into those dark brown eyes as she said, ‘I shall never marry.’
‘Never’s a long time. Why are you so sure?’
‘I know in my own mind. I am sure.’
She could not add, ‘What chance have I to marry? Whom do I see outside the walls of this place?’
As if following her thought, he said, ‘You should get out more, visit your friends. You are so young.’
‘So young? I’m twenty-six.’
‘Well’ – he smiled now – ‘we’re both of the same age, but you seem much younger than me in all ways. And’ – his smile widened – ‘much prettier.’
This was too much, too much; he was taking advantage. She pulled herself from the chair and, going to the prostrate figure lying on the rug, she said, ‘He . . . he should be put to bed.’
He was now standing at the other side of his uncle as he replied, ‘If I know anything, my aunt will be distracted. But I can’t move him like this. If it’s all right with you, maybe he can lie here till daylight? Then I’ll get him home. By the way the horse will be frozen out there, can I . . . ?’
‘Oh, that’s been seen to, Greg’s stabled him.’
‘Oh, thank you. Thank you.’
‘I’ll get someone to sit up with you.’
‘Please don’t, there’s no need. And I feel I’ve done enough disrupting. It’s a bad way to start the New Year.’
She made no reply, except to say goodnight. And he answered, ‘Goodnight.’ And he still did not add, miss.
When she had gone he went and stood with his back to the fire, his hands behind him on his buttocks, and for a while he looked down at his uncle. Then his eyes lifted and he gazed around the room. New Year’s morning, nineteen-fourteen, and he was standing in the drawing room of this house as if he owned the place. Would he like to have a house like this? No, no, because along with it went responsibility and the governing of other people’s lives and, made as he was, he was against being governed. So on principle he wouldn’t want to govern; what he wanted out of life was to be his own boss.
Over the past weeks, among other things there had been the thought in his mind that he could rent a little back shop somewhere and start making furniture. However, before he could do that he would need cash behind him, and he certainly couldn’t save much on what he was getting here. He had spent up at Christmas.
He looked down at his uncle again and he thought, Poor Carrie. She had been brave enough to come clean at the end . . . Yes, and now that he was vindicated in his uncle’s eyes, couldn’t he go back there? He supposed he could, but he wasn’t going to, oh no: the fact that the man had come out on a night like this and on such an errand showed that he was still dominated by the fear of God and so would likely go on aiming to instil it into others, and he couldn’t stand that, so there would be no going back to the workshop.
But he would have to go somewhere, and soon. Yes, he would, because tonight, after he had taken her hand he knew he had started to cross the open space between them and a few minutes gone, she had against her own judgement – oh yes, very much against her own judgement – come to meet him, even though she knew it wouldn’t work, as he knew it wouldn’t work, and so the best thing to do was to clear out.
Anyway, he wouldn’t be strong enough to stand it, something would go pop inside him one of these days and he’d grab at her, and hold her, and squeeze the loneliness out of her eyes. God! He had never seen anyone look so lonely or in such need as she.
Under other circumstances they would have been married by now and he’d have had her in bed; but then, under other circumstances, he would never have met anybody like her. They didn’t make them in her mould where he came from. Good women, aye, good lasses, aye, but not like her. She had something that he couldn’t lay his finger on, something that drew him like steel filings to a magnet.
She came down at seven o’clock the next morning fully dressed and she found him supporting his uncle’s head as he endeavoured to get him to drink a cup of tea. The old man was now lying on the couch and Robert made a sort of an apology for it straightaway, saying, ‘I got him on here in the middle of the night, he wasn’t resting easy on the floor.’
‘He should have been put to bed. How is he?’
‘He’s in a bad way, I think, starting a fever I should say. I’ll . . . I’ll have to get him home.’
