The boy stepped into the chill dark of the winter morning and closed thedoor quietly behind him. Quietly because the wife of Farmer Vass was aptto be unreasonable if she were wakened betimes. It lacked an hour tilldawn and there was neither earth nor... Read more

The boy stepped into the chill dark of the winter morning and closed thedoor quietly behind him. Quietly because the wife of Farmer Vass was aptto be unreasonable if she were wakened betimes. It lacked an hour tilldawn and there was neither earth nor sky, hedge nor horizon. Only theall-enveloping dark, immediate, almost tangible--the blackness that hemsus in with ourselves and annihilates philosophy. And it was bitterlycold. The boy clutched at his coat collar as the thin sterile air struckat his bare throat. His hobnailed boots echoed irrelevantly--a drearysound--as he made his stumbling way over the cobbles of the yard andfumbled for the lantern that hung at the stable door. His sleep-soddenbrain which had brought him thus far mechanically was waking to its dailypassion of revolt.God! what a life! What a bloody dam-fool life! A day that began withfumbling in the dark and ended fumbling in another dark, and in between along procession of monotonous jobs, impersonal and void of interest. Alife of fastening buckles, he thought venomously, as his rapidlystiffening fingers refused their office. Buckle-fastening! When life wasso short and there was so much of the world. Even those high new-bornpearly dawns of summer that lifted his heart with their wonder were buturgent invitations to set out and see. He wanted passionately wanted--alife where things happened; where the unexpected swung at you with aterrifying beauty and events were not, since every hour brought itsevent. The phlegm, the appalling foreverness of the fields and hillsroused in him a desperate consciousness of his own evanescence, and arebellion that any part of his short and so precious time should be givento their thankless service. And what was there beyond his work to make itworth while? To sit in winter at the farmhouse kitchen fire while Johnny,the other hired man, scraped on his fiddle and Mary the 'girl' flirtedineptly with a surfaceman from the railway or a shepherd from the hill?Or to go once in three weeks or a month to a dance at the nearestschoolhouse--an affair of polkas and boots? Or on summer evenings andSundays to join the gathering at the bridge-head and exchange gossip andsmutty stories, to make one of the self-elected tribunal which sat in slyjudgment on the manners and morals of the countryside, utterly contentwith themselves and their lot? Even when he capped their stories andearned their appreciative laughter and their admiring 'Ay, boy, you'rethe one!' he had waves of angry disgust, not at the subject of histriumph, but at the spiritual poverty of his audience.The only events at Tarn were the New Year and an occasional calving. Andlast autumn the little Jersey had got bogged in the low grazing; anaffair which had caused one day at least to be vivid with the meeting ofemergency which is life, and which, like lightning at night, had left thesucceeding moments darker. Beyond the occasional kissing of a girl at adance the only thrill of positive pleasure that he knew was provided bythe threepenny 'shockers' which he bought with his scanty pocket-moneywhen in Ferry on carting-business and absorbed in bed at night to theaccompaniment of Johnny's snores. It was usually a battle between theswift sleep that falls on the open-air worker and his thirst for colourand movement. That his need for at least vicarious adventure was greatwas witnessed to by the repeated trouble with Mrs Vass over theunwarrantable burning of candles. Johnny, not being cast in martyr'smould, had no hesitation in absolving himself at the price of hiscompanion's secret, with the result that candles were rationedthenceforth. If it had not been for the kindheartedness of theflirtatious Mary--to whom a male thing in trouble, even if it were only along-legged sulky-mouthed boy, was quite unthinkable--his one escape froma too drab reality might have been seriously hindered. But Mary'sgenerous supply of candle-ends--and Mary had royal ideas as to whatconstituted ends--saved the situation.At this moment she came to the kitchen door and called into the darkness'Kif! Are you there, Kif?' her voice subdued in deference to theunawakened household. The boy, who had seen the light appear fifteenminutes before in the blank house and had been hoping for the summons,came clumping to the open door that emitted a friendly stuffiness to thefrozen yard and followed her into the kitchen, where the fire hadgraduated from the first stage of merely spectacular flame to a glowingheat, and a steaming bowl of tea stood on the table. Less