Will Smith

[Gypsy & Will Fan]

Thanks Jackie!

[Gypsy & Will Fan]

Chapter five.

Will came into a company quite unprepared for his arrival. When his figure showed in the doorway, one after another of those at the table broke into words of surprise. Dani and Nick and Dr. Green were on their feet; Charles lay back grunting and still from shock. Cousin Joey polished his steel spectacles, while Agatha plucked at his sleeve mumbling, “What is it? What’s to do? The meal isn’t over.”

Will screwed up his eyes until they grew used to the light. Summer Bay House was almost on his way home, and he had not thought to intrude on a party.

First to greet him was Hayley. She ran across and put her arms around his neck. “Why, Will dear! Fancy now!” was all she could find to say.

“Hayley!” He gave her a hug. And then he saw Dani.

“Stamp me,” said Charles. “So you’re back at last, boy. You’re late for dinner, but we’ve some apple tart left.”

“Did they lame us, Will?” said Dr. Green. “A pox on the whole war. It was ill-starred. Thank God it’s over.”

Nick, after a short hesitation, came quickly round the table and grasped the other man’s hand. “It’s good to see you back, Will! We’ve missed you.”

“It’s good to be back,” said Will. “To see you all, and…”

The colour of the eyes under the same heavy lids was the only mark of cousinship. Nick was compact, slim and neat, with the fresh complexion and clear features of handsome youth. He looked what he was, carefree, easygoing, self-confident, a young man who has never known what it was to be in danger or short of money, or to pit his strength against another man’s except in games or horseplay. Someone at school had christened them “the fair Smith and the dark Smith.” They had always been good friends, which was surprising, since their fathers had not.

“This is a solemn occasion,” said Cousin Joey, his bony hands grasping the back of his chair. “A family reunion in more than name. I trust you’re not seriously wounded, Will. That scar is a considerable disfigurement.”

“Oh, that,” said Will. “That would be of no moment if I didn’t limp like Jago’s donkey.”

He went round the table greeting the others. Mrs. Sutherland welcomed him coldly, extending a hand from a distance.

“Do tell us,” lisped Polly Green: “do tell us thome of your experwiences, Captain Smith, how we lost the war, what these Amewicans are like, and”

“Very like us, ma’am. That’s why we lost it.” He had reached Dani.

“Well, Will,” she said softly.

His eyes feasted on her face. “This is most opportune. I couldn’t have wished it different.”

“I could,” she said. “Oh, Will, I could.”

“And what are you going to do now, my lad?” asked Charles. “It’s high time you settled down. Property don’t look after itself, and you can’t trust hirelings. Your father could have done with you this last year and more.”

“I almost called to see you tonight,” Will said to Dani, “but left it for tomorrow. Self-restraint is rewarded.”

“I must explain. I wrote to you, but_”

“Why,” said Agatha; “Lord damn me if it isn’t Will! Come here, boy! I thought you was gone to make one of the blest above.”

Reluctantly Will walked down the table to greet his great-Aunt. Dani stayed where she was, holding the back of her chair so that her knuckles were whiter even than her face.

Will kissed Agatha’s whiskery cheek. Into her ear he said: I’m glad to see, Aunt, that you’re still one of the blest below.”

She chuckled with delight, showing her pale brownish-pink gums. “Not so blest, maybe. But I wouldn’t want to be changing just yet.”

The conversation became general, everyone questioning Will as to when he had landed, what he had done and seen while away.

“Dani,” said Mrs. Sutherland, “fetch me my wrap from upstairs, will you? I am a little chilly.”

“Yes, Mother.” She turned and walked away, tall and virginal, groped with her hand for the oak banister.

“That fellow Barry is a rogue,” said Charles, wiping his hands down the sides of his breeches. “If I was you I would throw him out and get a reliable man.”

Will was watching Dani going up the stairs. “He was my father’s friend.”

Charles shrugged in some annoyance. “You won’t find the house in a good state of repair.”

“It wasn’t when I left.”

“Eat this, Will,” said Hayley, bringing a piled plate to him. “And sit here.”

Will thanked her and took the seat offered him between Agatha and Mr. Sutherland. He would have preferred to be beside Dani, but that would have to wait. He was surprised to find Dani here. She and her mother and father had never once been to Summer Bay in the twelve months he had known her. Two or three times he glanced up as he ate to see if she was returning.

Hayley was helping Pippa to carry out some of the used dishes; Nick stood plucking at his lip by the front door; the others were back in their chairs. A silence had fallen on the company.

“It is no easy countryside to which you return,” said Mr. Sutherland, pulling at his beard. “Discontent is rife. Taxes are high, wages have fallen. The country is exhausted from its many wars; and now the Labour are in. I can think of no worse a prospect.”

“Had Labour been in before,” said Dr. Green, refusing to be tactful, “none of this need to have happened.”

Will looked across at Nick. “I’ve interrupted a party. Is it in celebration of the peace or in honour of the next war?”

Thus he forced the explanation they had hesitated to give.

“No,” said Nick. “I – err – The position is_”

“We are celebrating something far different,” said Charles, motioning for his glass to be filled again. “Nick is to be married. That is what we’re celebrating.”

“To be married,” said Will, slicing his food. “Well, well; and who_”

“To Dani,” said Mrs. Sutherland.

There was silence.

Will put down his knife. “To_”

“To my daughter.”

“Can I get you something to drink?” Hayley whispered to Dani who had just reached the bottom of the stairs.

“No, no… Please no.”

“Oh,” said Will. “To… Dani.”

“We are very happy,” said Mrs. Sutherland, “that our two ancient families are to be united. Very happy and very proud. I am sure, Will, that you will join with us in wishing Nick and Dani all happiness in their union.”

Walking very carefully, Will came over to Mrs. Sutherland.

“Your wrap, Mama.”

“Thank you, my dear.”

Will went on with his meal.

“I don’t know what your opinion is,” said Charles heartily after a pause, “but for myself I am attached to this port. It was run over from Cherbourg in the autumn of ’79. When I tasted a sample I said to myself, it is too good to be repeated; I’ll buy the lot. Nor has it been repeated; Nor has it.” He put down his hands to ease this great paunch against the table.

“I suppose you will be settling down now, Will, eh?” said Agatha, a wrinkled hand on his sleeve. “How about a little wife for you, eh? That’s what we’ve to find next!”

Martin looked across at Dr. Green.

“You attended my father?”

Dr. Green nodded.

“Did he suffer much?”

“At the end. But the time was short.”

“It was strange that he should fail so quickly.”

“Nothing could be done. It was a dropsically condition that was beyond the power of man to calm.”

“I rode over,” said Cousin Joey, “to see him twice. But I regret that he was not – hm – in the mood to make the most of such spiritual comfort as I could offer. It was to me a personal sorrow that I could be of so little help to one of my own blood.”

“You must have some of this apple tart, Will,” said Hayley in an undertone behind him, glancing at the veins in his neck. “I made it myself this afternoon.”

“I mustn’t stop. I called here only for a few minutes and to rest my horse, which is lame.”

“Oh, but there’s no need to go tonight. I have told Pippa to prepare a room. Your horse may stumble in the dark and throw you.”

Will looked up at Hayley and smiled. In this company no private word would pass between them.

Now Nick, and to a lesser degree his father, joined in the argument. But Nick was constrained, his father half-hearted and Will determined.

Charles said: “Well, have it as you wish, boy. I would not fancy arriving at Summer Bay tonight. It will be cold and wet and perhaps no welcome. Pour some more sprit into you to keep out the chill.”

Will did as he was urged, drinking three glasses in succession. With the fourth he got to his feet.

“To Dani,” he said slowly, “and to Nick … May they find happiness together.”

The toast was drunk more quietly than the other. Dani was still standing behind her mother’s chair; Francis had at last moved from the door to put his hand beneath her arm.

In the silence that followed, Mrs. Green said: “How nithe it must be to be home again. I never go away, even a little way, without feeling that gwatifled to be back. What are the Amewican colonies like, Captain Smith? They thay as how ever the thun does no wise and thet in the thame way in foreign parts.”

Polly Green’s inanity seemed to relive the tension, and talk broke you again while Will finished his meal. There was more than one there conscious relief that had taken the news so quietly.

Will, however, was not staying, and presently took his leave.

“You’ll come over in a day or tow, will you not?” said Nick, a rush of affection in his voice. “We’ve heard nothing so far, nothing but the barest details of your experiences or how you were wounded or of your journey home. Dani will be returning home tomorrow. We plan to be married in a month. If you want my help at the Beach House send a message over; you know I shall be pleased to come. Why, it’s like old times seeing you back again! We feared for your life, did we not, Dani?”

“Yes,” said Dani.

Will picked up his hat. They were standing together at the door, waiting for Michael to bring round Will’s mare. He had refused the loan of a fresh horse for the last three miles.

Nick opened the door. The wind blew in a few spots of rain. He went out tactfully to see if Michael had come.

Will said: “I hope my mistimed resurrection hasn’t cast a cloud over your evening.”

The light from the indoors threw a shaft across her face, showed up the grey eyes. The shadows had spread to her face and she looked ill.

“I’m so happy that you’re back, Will. I had feared, we had all feared – what can you think of me?”

“Two years is a long time, isn’t it. Too long perhaps.”

“Dani,” said Mrs. Sutherland. “Take care the night air does not catch you.”

“No, Mama.”

“Good-bye.” He took her hand.

Nick came back. “He’s here now. Did you buy the mare? She’s a handsome creature but very ill tempered.”

“Ill usage makes the sweetest of us vicious,” said Will. “Has the rain stopped?”

“Not quite. You know your way?”

Will showed his teeth. “Every stone. Has it changed?”

“Nothing to mislead you. Do not cross the Mellingey by the bridge; the middle plank is rotten.”

“So it was when I left.”

“Do not forget,” said Nick. “We expect you back here soon. Hayley will want to see more of you. If she can spare the time we will ride over tomorrow.”

But only the wind and the rain answered him and the clatter of hooves as the mare sidestepped resentfully down the drive.

[Skykat]

Oh poor Will! Great chapter Penny, I love the theme and setting. Great work.xx

[Danifan]

I really like this story as i loved Will and Dani.

[Gypsy & Will Fan]

Chapter six.

Darkness had fallen by now, though a patch of fading light glimmered in the west. The wind blew more strongly, and the soft rain beat in flurries about his head.

His was not an easy face to read, and you couldn’t have told that in the last half hour he had suffered the worst knock of his life. Except that he no longer whistled into the wind or talked to his irritable mare, there was nothing to show.

At an early age he had caught from his father a view things which took very little for granted, but in his dealings with Dani Sutherland he had fallen into the sort of trap such an outlook might have helped him to avoid. They had been in love since she was sixteen and he barely twenty. When his own high-spirited misadventures caught up with him he had thought his father’s solution of a commission in the Army a good idea while the trouble blew over. He had gone away eager for fresh experience and sure of the one circumstance of his return would really matter.

No doubt was in his own mind and he had looked for none in hers.

After he had been riding for a time the lights of Grambler Mine showed up ahead. This was the mine round which the varying fortunes of the main Smith family centred. On its vagaries depended not merely the prosperity of Charles Smith and his family but the subsistence level of some three hundred miners and their families scattered in huts and cottages about the rural community. To them the mine was a benevolent Moloch to whom they fed their children at an early age and from whom they took their daily bread.

He saw swinging lights approaching and drew into the side of the track to let a mule train pass, with panniers of copper ore slung on either side of the animals’ back. One of the men in charge was peered up at him suspiciously, then shouted a greeting. It was Jack Holden.

The main buildings of the mine were all about him now, most of them huddled together and indeterminate, but here and there the sturdy scaffolding of headgear and the big stone built engine houses stood out. Yellow lights showed in the arched upper windows of the engine houses, warm and mysterious against the low night sky. He passed close beside one of them and heard the rattle and clang of the great draught bob pumping water from the lowest places of the earth.

There were miners in groups and a number of lanterns. Several men peered at the figure on the horse, but although several said good night he thought that none of those recognised him.

Then a bell rang in one of the engine houses, a not un-mellow note; it was time for changing “cores”; that was why there was so many men about. They were assembling to go down. Other men now would be on their way up, climbing ant-like a hundred fathoms of rickety ladders, sweat covered and stained with rusty markings of the mineral rock or the black fumes of blasting powder. It would take them half an hour or more to come to the surface carrying their tools, and all the way they would be splashed and drenched with water from the leaky pumps. On reaching grass many would have a three or four mile walk through the wind and rain.

He moved on. Now and then the feeling within him was so strong that he could have been physically sick.

The Mellingey was forded, and horse and rider began wearily to climb the narrow track towards the last clump of fir trees. Will took a deep breath of the air, which was heavy with rain and he impregnated with the smell of the sea. He fancied he could hear the waves breaking. At the top of the rise the mare, all her ill nature gone, stumbled again and almost fell, so Will awkwardly got down and began to walk. At first he could hardly put his foot down to the ground, but he welcomed this pain in his ankle, which occupied thoughts that would have been elsewhere.

In the coppice it was pitch black and he had to feel his way along a path which had become part overgrown. At the another side the ruined buildings of Wheal Maiden greeted him – a mine which had been played out for forty years; as a boy he had fought and scrambled about the derelict windlass and the house whim, had explored the shallow adit that ran through the hill and came out near the stream.

Now he felt he was really home; in a moment he would be on his own land. This afternoon he had been filled with pleasure at the prospect, but now nothing seemed to matter. He could only be glad that his journey was done and that he might lie down and rest.

In the cup of the valley the air was still. The trickle and bubble of Mellingey stream had been lost, but now it came to his ears again like the mutterings of a thin old woman. An owl hooted and swung silently before his face in the dark. Water dripped from the rim of his hat. There ahead in the soft and sighing darkness was the solid line of The Beach House.

It struck him as smaller than he remembered, lower and more squat; it straggled like a row of workmen’s cottages. . there was no light to be seen. At the lilac tree, now grown so big as to overshadow the windows behind it, he tethered the mare and rapped with his ridding whip on the front door.

There had been heavy rain here; water was trickling from the roof in several places and forming polls on the sandy overgrown path. He thrust open the door; it went creaking back, pushing a heap of refuse before it, and he peered into the low, irregularly beamed hall.

Only the darkness greeted him, and intense darkness which made the night seem grey.

“Barry!” he called. “Barry!”

The mare outside whinnied and stamped; something scuttled beside the wainscot. Then he saw eyes. They were lambent, green-gold, stared at him from the back of the hall.

He limped into the house, feeling leaves and dirt under foot. He fingered his way round the panels to the right until he came to the door leading into the parlour. He lifted the latch and went in.

At once there was a scuffling and rustling and the sound of animals disturbed. His foot slid on something slimy on the floor, and in putting put his hand he knocked over a candlestick. He retrieved it, set the candle back in its socket, groped for his flint and steel. After two or three attempts the spark caught and he lit the candle.

This was the largest room in the house. It was half panelled with dark mahogany, and in the far corner was a great broad fireplace half the width of the room, recessed and built round with low settles. This was the room that the family had always lived in, large enough and airy enough for the rowdiest company on the hottest days, yet warm corners and cosy furniture to cheat the draughts of the winter. But all that was changed. The fireplace was empty and hens roosted on the settles. The floor was filthy with old straw and droppings. From the bracket of a candle scone a cockerel viewed him with a liverish eye. On one of the window seats were two dead chickens.

Opening out of the hall on the left was Ken’s bedroom, and he next tried this. Signs of life: clothing which had never belonged to his father, filthy old petticoats, a battered three cornered hat, a jar with out a stopper from which he sniffed gin. But the box bed was closed and the three captive thrushes in the cage before the shuttered window could tell him nothing of the couple he looked for.

At the farther end of the room was another door leading into that part of the house which had never been finished, but he did not go in. The place to look was in the bedroom upstairs at the back of the house where Barry and Irene always slept.

He turned back to the door, and there stopped and listened. A peculiar sound had come to his ears. The fowls had settled down, and silence, like a parted curtain, was falling back upon the house. He thought he heard a creak on the shallow stairs, but when he peered out with a candle held high he could see nothing.

This was not the sound he was listening for, nor the movement of rats, nor the faint hissing of the stream outside, nor the crackle of charred paper under his boot.

He looked up at the ceiling, but the beams and floorboards were sound. Something rubbed itself against his leg. It was the cat whose bright eyes he had seen earlier; his father’s kitten, Tabitha Bertha, but grown into a big grey anima and leprously patched with mange. She seemed to recognize him, and he put down his hand gratefully to her enquiring whiskers.

Then the sound came again, and this time he caught its direction. He strode over to the box bed and slid back the doors. A powerful smell of sweat and gin; he thrust in the candle. Dead drunk and pocked in each other’s arms were Barry and Irene Hyde. The woman was in a long flannel nightgown, her mouth was open and her varicose legs a sprawl. Barry had not succeeded in getting properly undressed, but snored by her side in his breeches and leggings.

Will stared at them for some moments.

Then he withdrew and put the candlestick on the great low chest near the bed. He walked out of the room and made his way round to the stables at the east end of the house. Here he found a wooden pail and took it to the pump. This he filled, carried it round the house, through the hall and into the bedroom. He tipped the water into the bed.

He went out again. A few stars were showing in the west but the wind was refreshing. In the stables, he noted, there were only two half-starved horses. Ramouth; yes, one was still Ramouth. The horse had been twelve years old and half blind from cataract when he left.

He carried the second bucket round, through the hall, across the bedroom and tipped it into the bed.

The mare whinnied at his second passing. She preferred even his company to the darkness and familiarly of the garden.

When he bought the third bucket Barry was groaning and muttering and his bald head was in the opening of the door. Will allowed him this bucket to himself.

By the time he returned with the fourth the man had climbed out of the bed and was trying to shake the streaming water from his clothing. Irene was only just stirring, so Will devoted the water to her. Barry began to curse and groped for his jack knife. Will hit him on the side of the head and knocked him down. Then he went for another supply.

At fifth appearance there was more intelligence in the eyes of the servant, though he was still on the ground. At sight of him Barry began to curse and sweat and threaten. But after a moment a look of puzzlement crept across his face.

“… Dear life… Is it you, Mister Will?”

“From the grave,” said Will. “And there’s a horse to be seen to. Up, before I kill you.” By the collar of his shirt he lifted the man to his feet and thrust him forwards towards the door.

[Danifan]

Great chapter i really like this story (mainly because it has Will and Dani in it ).

[Skykat]

wow what a reaction! Some superb description Penny. Another fab chapter.

[Gypsy & Will Fan]

Thanks Danifan and Sky!