She did not answer. Her tears were postponed. She had expected a scolding, perhaps a clout or two, but not a catechism. She was unprepared for searching questions.
‘Where you bin?’ asked Noke again. ‘Where?’
‘I bin to Glatten Wood.’ Surely, said her eyes, Glatting Wood is harmless enough. ‘For a walk, that’s all.’
‘For a walk, hey?’ he sneered. ‘A walk on your back? I reckon. Who’s bin wud ye then?’
The shock of this insult made the girl drop her childish airs. She was now a world away from tears. She was a woman, proud and indignant. Her face flushed deeply; her eyes narrowed, shining with hate; and there was contempt in the curve of her set lips. She offered no answer.
Noke came nearer and repeated the question. He spoke in a lowered voice, suppressing a fury that must sooner or later find vent in violence. This quietness in him was terrifying to the girl, but she concealed her terror.
‘D’ye hear me, girl! Who’s bin wud ye, I say?’
Her nostrils dilated with excitement; her breasts were fluttering. And the sight of his daughter’s ripe charms seemed to feed the man’s rage. ‘Answer me, you sly slut!’ he roared, with dreadful suddenness. Charity was now speechless with fear; her resolve not to answer was fortified by incapacity. He came a step nearer, and stretched out twitching hands towards her. ‘Get inside and upstairs wud ye, by God! I’ll have the skin off your back!’
For a moment, after this outburst, both father and daughter stood rigid, as though a judgement was suddenly come upon them. A new voice spoke, Jenny Noke’s, unwontedly bold and caustic.
‘That’s enough o’ that tark. Thrash the girl, willee? Ay twould please ye, sure enough. And strip she first, I’ll ’low. Nay, Harry Noke, tis me that’ll bannick my darter when she do need ut. You leave her be.’
With an oath he turned on this obtrusive woman and made as if to strike her. But she faced him squarely, and he hesitated. His arm dropped slowly to his side. ‘Ay, you’d stand up for ’er, I bluv, She’ve a bly of her mother about her, that’s sartain sure.’ But he spoke with his gaze on the ground, for an obscure guilt troubled him, and the ugly satirical gleam he had seen in Jenny’s eye was the eye of his own conscience. His speech died down to a grumble of oaths, and shrugging his shoulders he strode into the house, his sons shuffling aside into two groups to make way for him.
Charity stared and gasped: gasped for relief and stared her astonishment. The world was overturned; for never before had she known her mother rebuke their lord with impunity. With her admiration of this exploit mingled a small complacency, for she vaguely felt, without in the least understanding the sensation, that she herself had somehow contributed to her father’s defeat. Me and mother can manage un, she thought. That sly smile curled back into its corner, and her heart gushed with sudden warmth for her mother.
‘I’m tarrible sorry, mother,’ she began coaxingly——
But Jenny was in no mood for soft words.
‘I’ll mind you, madam, there be a dunnamany cows want milken afore you takes bite or sup. Better goo fetch they in.’
The five sons of Noke stood watching and listening. Not one of them had uttered a word since their father’s accost of Charity. And now, still silent, they filed like wooden men across the cobbled yard, and, reaching the further side, scattered in search of more work: all but the youngest, who paused by the cowsheds, thinking to serve his sister. The cows had crowded to the yard gate, and were massed there, like looming shapes of fantasy, with their horns branching black against a banner of green sky. As the sound of his sons’ steps dissolved into the shadowy distance, Noke emerged from the house carrying a storm-lantern, and went stamping in their wake, sparing no glance for his women. He too became gradually merged in the surrounding gloom. The echo of him faded in the ear like a vanishing memory; but the passage of the lantern through that quiet cool place seemed to have brought darkness where formerly there had been only a gossamer dusk; and the women’s faces grew vague to each other and their voices unearthly. ‘Whad you standen there for?’ said Jenny Noke. ‘I’ll give you a middlin bunt prensley, if you daun’t look sharp. Get away along then, and leave y’r father be.’