The Stepson by Martin Armstrong Page B

of the barn’s wooden sides partitioned the darkness as if with luminous and impalpable walls, and here and there small, keen sunshafts shot from holes in the roof, where the birds had burrowed through the thatch, and stretched ropes of shining gold from roof to floor, lighting into vague visibility an intricate structure of grey beams and timbers high overhead. Ben had told her that this barn was reputed to be four hundred years old, and it seemed to Kate, as she stood enclosed in its soft twilight and hushed quietude, that its antiquity was an actual presence, lulling the mind and soothing the heart into a blessed tranquillity. Here, it seemed to her, she would always find peace and consolation whenever she felt the need of them.
    Another of her earliest and pleasantest discoveries came one day when she ventured to unbolt the door which gave upon the front of the house. This door stood open in the height of summer to let a draught through the house, but at other times it was not used and was always kept bolted. Kate, feeling guilty and inquisitive, drew the stiff bolts, glancing timidly over her shoulder as she did so, and when at last she had got the door to open she went out and closed it behind her. A square plot of grass lay before her, fenced by a low stone wall and divided into two equal halves by a flagged walk which ran straight from thedoorstep to a green gate. One or two aged and contorted fruit-trees rose out of the grass, and in a small round bed on each side of the walk stood a rose-bush. On one of them a belated pink rose was still blooming. Kate stood entranced, gazing down at it: then stooping over it she smelt it. A delicious fragrance surprised her sense; it seemed to her for a moment that summer was already come. She could hardly tear herself away from the bush, stooping and inhaling its sweetness again and again; but at last she continued her way to the gate, opened it, and went out. The field on the edge of which she stood dropped in a single steep slope to the flat meadows on either side of the wandering Eavon, from whose grassy banks rose here and there a posturing willow. From there the land ran on, field after field of plough and pasture, into the blue horizon, and throughout its length were strewn shining rags and strips of the winding river, diminishing in the distance to mere flecks in the vague foreshortening of green and brown. For awhile Kate stood and gazed into the distance: then, recalling herself from the wide expanse to the spot on which she stood, she returned into the little front-garden. The old house-front, a patchwork of sober stone and mildly twinkling glass, regarded her benevolently, and Kate noticed that a great twisted pear-tree sprawled its flattened boughs over all the right half of the house-front, running horizontally along the base of each window and springing up verticallyon either side of it. A leafless rose over-arched the door and climbed to the upper window, and about the window on the left of the door a Pyrus opened its arms. Before many months it would be bright with the scarlet rosettes of its first bloom. Kate paused again, glancing once more about her as if to print upon her mind all she had seen; then, turning on her heel, she went back into the house.
    The upper part of a large cupboard in the sitting-room was fitted with shelves and the shelves were filled with books, and Kate, looking through them, had found novels by Scott, Dickens and Thackeray, some bound volumes of
The Leisure Hour
, and a huge illustrated Bible. One evening, after some rummaging with a candle, Ben brought out of it an old-fashioned photograph-album in a thick, panelled leather cover. When supper was over and the scowling Emma had cleared the table, they sat at the table looking through the album. The first photographs dated back fifty or sixty years. In Kate’s eyes they were extraordinarily ridiculous.
    â€˜That’s the old people on their silver-wedding day,’ said Ben;