AFTERMATH

Taranaki Daily News, 24 November 1933, Page 15

AFTERMATH

(By

Mrs. J. O. Arnold)

CHAPTER 1. It was possible to discover old people in Ryedale who had never seen the sea. It was one of those out-of-the-way hamlets in which life goes on from year to year with but little change. Happily for itself it was sufficiently remote and off the beaten track to be spared incursions by Yellow Perils and to escape the attention of tourists. The nearest railway station was miles away, and an hour’s journey from any town of considerable size. So that the place remained remote, unspoilt—a fair sequestered spot hidden in the heart of the Lake Country. Ryedale Grange, from the time it had been erected two centuries earlier (upon the foundations of a still older habitation), the home of the Denison family, together with Ellrigg, the grey house on the hillside, were the two principal residences. The latter had been for many years the property of John Arkle, a retired steel manufacturer blessed with a wife whose unerring sense of the fitness of things had happily prevented the addition of any modern excrescences to the original dwelling. For the rest, Scutcheon Farm, a few scattered houses and cottages, a solitary inn and half a dozen humble shops, rural of aspect and heterogeneous as to stock-in-trade, made up the hamlet. Much that was ancient and priceless—because irreplaceable—still lingered, in Ryedale. Less than a hundred years earlier it had contained links between past and present that would have delighted the soul of a modem antiquary. Some of these had disappeared, others could yet be traced in altered form. A dialect that still-retained words of curious origin and various strange pats was still to some extent in use amongst the descendants of former statesmen. In their ancient farmhouses could still, here and there, be found domestic utensils of a pattern that proclaimed their Scan-? dinavian origin. Though the fire-cat had disappeared—cakes being .kept,hot in front of the hearth upon something less primitive in form—and the piggin held porridge no more, superstition had by no means died out. There was one old woman, Black Nan by name, living on the outskirts of Ryedale whose cottage was shunned by the country people after. nightfall, and who, had she’ Jived there centuries earlier, would assuredly have been burned for a witch. It was in this remote place that' Hilary Denison uttered his first infant cry 35 years before the Great War was .let loose upon the world. It was to take part in that cataclysm that he had grown up, mind and body developing to fit him for this terrible, splendid destiny- When the appointed hour struck he had gone readily, full of burning desire, and not without a strain of that old viking spirit, inherited through remote ancestors, firing his blood. He was an only child, heir of a long line of Denisons. For three generations there had been one son only. Hitherto .they had always been soldiers—it was an understood, thing. But Hilary had broken away from the tradition and had become a barrister. . Colonel Denison was not too well pleased. Secretly he resolved .that should Hilary—still a bachelor—marry and have a son, the boy should restore the family tradition and enter Sandhurst like his forbears before him..

Hilary, however, was killed in the last year of the War. He had. served with distinction and been .severely wounded three times. But in the end 'he was posted as “missing,” the position he held having been wiped out. Even the loved body his mjther had worshipped when as a little child he lay helpless in’her arms was denied her in death. The shell that in the inscrutability of Fate had been cast for his destruction deprived her of even the poor comfort of a grave to visit. Patriotism served to console his par-ents-in part, but not entirely. For a time a spiritual darkness as of black night descended upon them, and when at length it lifted they emerged older and feebler by some: years. Yet they were nearer to each other than' they had been in the years whilst Hilary was yet with them.- It was as if his dead hands drew them closer together. But outwardly Colonel Denison appeared more reserved and difficult of approach than even before his ~sdh , s death, whilst Mrs. Denison’s hair had turned white and her face was newly, lined. It was proof of her self-control that she came out of this furnace of Borrow with no more terrible marks of her trial. For some days her mind had indeed trembled in the balance. Then by self-discipline and the calling-up of courage she grew sane once more, and the danger passed. Henceforth she healed her own hurt, by turning to help her husband. After the’ passing of a year Hilary became a sacred and glorious memory, and though their house was “left unto them desolate,” resignation softened in time the poignancy of loss.

A tempestuous April day, during which the remaining forces of winter had contested sturdily, hour by hour, the oncoming of spring, had ended in an evening fair enough to tempt Mrs. Denison out-of-doors after a long day in the house. She came into the garden by way of the drawing-room window, walking slowly, an elegant woman whose erect carriage suggested an upbringing in which modern indulgences—such as lounge chairs, soft cushions and other amenities of life—had had no share. A certain austerity observable in face and figure told of self-discipline and added to the dignity of her appearance. But her eyes were kind. The villagers knew that although “down” on, wrongdoers, Mrs. Denison was, as they expressed it, “reet-hearted.” She had been thinking of Hilary all day, because it was the second anniversary of his death. She had permitted herself to dwell upon the melancholy fact that he was dead—gone from her sight, forever silent, beyond reach. Her resignation had been disturbed, the old wound re-opened. For her, as for others, there remained the one consolation of hoped-for union in the Hereafter. If only she might reach out to Hilary once more—receive confirmation that his personality still survived . . . She had no hope. Nothing she had ever heard or read of other people’s experiences had ever in the least satisfied her. And there was no child in whom she might see again her son renewed. That was added tragedy for hex* husband and herself —a regret so deep to him that even she might not intrude upon it. She had indulged herself all day and must give way no longer. With an effort she compelled her thoughts into another channel.

“It really seems as if a complete change in the weather has come at last, Christopher,” she said to the old gardener, busy with a plant broken and damaged by the blizzard of the morning. A steady, reliable man, head-gardener Knipe, one of a family who, somewhat after the feudal manner, were bound up with Denison interests if not actually in their service. Brother Roger was tenant of ‘Scutcheon Farm, whilst other members of the sept were herdsmen, shepherds, and otherwise employed upon the estate. In old, fierce times long past. Knipes had ever been found ready for the fray under the leadership of the Denisons.

“You’ll be glad to get to work again without being delayed by the weather,” his mistress said, reading his mind. “All this wet and. cold has put things back so much, too.” “Aye. It’s bin a wettish season, there’s na doubt,” Christopher answered, with a rooted objection of the real dalesman to expressing a definite opinion. “I reflect the last time Mr. Hilary came home it were just sich a spring as this —though he come a bit. earlier i’ the year, now I think on't.” Yes, earlier in the year. Hilary’s mother knew the date. His last stay in his old home, certainly, but not his last leave. That he had spent in London, having sent a telegram to his parents that he was “unavoidably detained” in town. . The message had • come too late for her and his father to .travel up to .London: his leave, it appeared, was already all but spent. She had always bitterly begrudged that lost meeting, had hated the “unavoidable” something that had kept him from her. It was one of those violent feelings she had to fight with all her strength.' Within a fortnight of -that message Hilary had been “missing.”

Christopher’s- untimely reminder sent her thoughts back tumultuously to the very subject she : was striving to put aside. Memories had been with her so vividly all day that she was half afraid of herself—afraid lest her selfcontrpl should break down and her husband suffer through her weakness. She knew that because his temperament forbade outward expression of feeling this was a day of peculiar trial to him. “What news have, you of Barbary?” she ■ asked, No. safer . course than to switch off from self .to others. Barbary, Roger Knipe’s comely daughter, was recovering from a sprained ankle. She was slso at the-moment. the centre of Ryedale interest. Village gossip, not to say scandal, had her in. the pillory. Christopher scratched his. head meditatively, looking portentously grave. “Her sprain’s main well, thank you, ma’am,” he said after a pause, “but I’m told as her soul’s in danger along o’ Bartie Huan.—” Mrs.. Denison. looked .grave, too. “I am sorry,” she said simply- "It is a grievous pity for a • nice girl—a good girl—like Barbary to, have her name coupled like this with that of a married man.. And tke sad .thing is that so far Huan, too, has been a most decent man —a man one could respect.” Christopher nodded slowly. “I’ve done my best to show 'em where they're goin'—downhill to the pit,” he said. “But I mud try. again efter a lile bit. Barbary, she be obstinate as a mule that won’t be druv, and Huan he be as hard set in his own way o' thinking as thet yak yonder be rooted fast in t’ground.”

“There can be but one ending to it, I fear,” Mrs. Dennison said severely. “Aye. They’ll go off together afore long, and it’ll be the pit for both.” Christopher's native delicacy of feeling prevented him from saying “hell” before his deeply-respected mistress, so he temporised with pit. Dalesmen are gentle-, men bom. “It may not be too late yet to save them from themselves.” Mrs. Denison said.

“Huan ain’t bone-bad. He’s a soretried man. It’ll be on Dinah’s head, that it will. She were turned out o’ the Cow and Bluebell last week—she’d gitten enough yale in her for three’ men, let alone a woman. A hussy like that to make a dandilly maid like my niece Barbary go wrong! Dine her 1” Christopher said. The two last words were spoken below his breath. Huan’s scandalous wife might well be damned —but it must not be said aloud before Mrs. Denison.

“I will go and talk to Barbary tomorrow.” ’ ■

That ended the interview. Christopher continued to succour his bruised plants, and Mrs. Denison turned back towards the house. For the moment Barbary’s moral danger had driven from her mind even that last leave, during which Hilary had been “unavoidably detained.”

After dinner that ' evening Colonel Denison and his wife sat alone in the library, where together they carried out a kind of ritual which had begun on the first anniversary of their son’s death. The large drawing-room' was less suited for their purpose, but this book-lined room was intimately associated with Hilary. Could not his mother see him leaning in that now vacant chair, his fair head silhouetted against its dark leather, smoking his favourite pipe, whilst he talked with his father and she sat listening? It was her fault, she knew, that his visits had made her feel a little old—remote from of touch /with most things that made his world. After all. how little she had realised*of his life in London. She reproached herself for secret jealousies—of his friends, his interests, his amusements. They were, broadly speaking, a closed book to her . . . She had, not without harsh self-discipline, learn to conquer* these small, unworthy feelings, and had compelled herself to be content with as much as Hilary chose to tell her.

The services of her companion, Lucy Titherington, were tacitly dispensed with on this anniversary. Lucy, tenderhearted and sympathetic, never intruded. She had known Hilary five years, and any' emotion she might feel about him must be indulged secretly. She marvelled at the Denison restraint and undemonstrative manner of expressing grief—her own was so different. As on the previous anniversary, Hilary’s mother had brought down from their safe place of keeping a number of her son’s letters sent home from the front. They were letters to be proud of. Not from them could Hilary’s parents learn the deeds of courage that had earned distinction for him. His mother caught a glimpse of a little—his father perceived much more. Though he had chosen law as a profession, Hilary was a Denison first and last, with a fighting strain in him inherited through generations. Mrs. Denison read aloud certain passages dear to them both; visualised afresh through the medium of Hilary’s descriptions certain terrible scenes . . ~ smiled sadly once more over humorous passages which had made them both laugh when first they were read, but which now stirred emotions that betrayed themselves in eyes and voice despite Mrs. Denison’s effort to appear* calm. She had not quite calculated the power of those letters ....

Colonel Denison noted the strain. “We won't read them all, my dear. Where is that 'photograph of the boy taken when he was 18 months old or so ? I always liked that; it was taken just when he had lost the strong resemblance to his grandfather and had begun to be —himself.”

Mrs. Denison found it. A portrait of a handsome boy little more than a baby, yet with character dawning in the fearless eyes and full-lipped wide mouth. “He was a beautiful child,” Mrs. Denison said in a low voice.

“Yes, a handsome boy. And if he had lived he might have been a distinguished man. Though he chose to be a lawyer instead of a soldier, I will say he loved his profession—put his whole heart and soul into it. That came of never marrying.” “There is one sad woman the less,”

his wife said. She would have preferred to avoid this topic. “However, as he remained a bachelor, the family dies out,” her husband went on resolutely. Mrs. Denison made no reply. She knew it beside her husband, stroking his thin, brown hand gently. She accused herself that she had borne him but one son.

“It is a pity,” Colonel Denison went on in an even voice. “Such men as Hilary should leave sons—high-princi-pled, straight-living clean men like their fathers.”

An unusual speech for him, and it revealed much to his wife. “. . .at any rate, my dear, I think we may say of our one son that he was all that—”

“Yes, dear—all.” . . She had conquered her emotion, and his words helped her. “Even as a young man girls did not attract him, did they ? There was never any serious flirtation—yet he was a good-looking fellow, too—”

His wife kept silent. “I suppose he never met the right woman. He was not the sort of man to fall in Jove easily—not in the least. But woman—as men sometimes do in the if he had ever come across that right end—well, it would have been—” ' He left the sentence unfinished; it was too personal and intimate a matter for discussion. What Hilary’s love might have been he himself could estimate. Denison men were like that. No early squandering of affection, no easy attraction; but when the time came, whole-hearted devotion such as lovers of their type alone can give. “Perhaps, after all, it has been for the best,” he added after a short pause, weighing his words. “Women can be wreckers of men. I have known fine soldiers, brave men, holding the highest standards of honour, yield to the lure of a woman - . . there is always that side to remember . . . there are pitfalls . . . We don’t know from what Hilary may have been saved. I have seen strange things in my time.” Did he say this to comfort her and himself ? x His wife could not be sure. At any rate, the idea was unlike him. It showed mental searchings for. comfort that left no corner untouched. He had never been given to speculating upon the possible, but had always been a man of few words and decisive actionWas his mental power beginning to weaken ? Had he beep more deeply hurt than ever she had, guessed ? She busied herself with photographs of Hilary at all ages; Hilary as an infant, at a year and a-half, as a little boy in a sailor suit, and again astride his pony with a Knipe in attendance, then as a school boy, and so on—a complete record of Hilary’s growth from childhood to the final stage as an officer in khaki. His mother gazed at each in turn. She would have kWd each one but for her husband’s presence. “I should like a copy to be painted on ivory of that photograph at eighteen months old,” Colonel Denison said suddenly, breaking a silence. “Yes, dear—” “It won’t be like a real miniature taken from life, of course. But it will give the colouring. Let me see—he was a golden-haired little chap then, wasn’t he ? Blue eyes and, fair hair and rosy cheeks like a girl's—” , “He was very fair then. His hair darker later.” “And what about that queer streak of brown in his left eye ? You remember that, of. course ? A most unusual thing ... I believe hjs great-grand-father had precisely the same peculiarity. It-never disappeared, did it?” “No, dear. it was always there—just a tiny streak of brown on the blue, as you say, showing very much when he was little, but fading as he grew up. ■ , “'Well, we’ll have it put into the miniature, or else the colouring won’t be correct. And now, my dear, go to bed. You look tired out, and I want to—think.” ■

They kissed with a lingering touch of the lips; This was a very sacred day.

In the hall Mrs.: Denison, came upon Lucy Titherington waiting for her, “I’ve been worrying so much about you,”- she said, with a kind of fat sympathy. “Of course, I know what day it is—l haven’t been able to get it out of my mind for a moment, though I said nothing . . . The poor, dear captain!” Her large face was comically tragic in the lamplight; her billowy figure, sadly rnq to seed, looked almost gross beside the elegant slenderness of Mrs. Denison. Fair, fat and somewhat more than 40, Lucy Titherington overflowed with the milk of human kindness. Her sympathy, large as her' person, embraced humanity. A good sort, even if absurdly sentimental, she thoroughly enjoyed the emotions aroused by this day of remembrance.

(To be continued.)