Aaron’s Rod

There was a large, brilliant evening star in the early twilight, and underfoot the earth was half frozen. It was Christmas Eve. Also the War was over, and there was a sense of relief that was almost a new menace. A man felt the violence of the nightmare released now into the general air. Also there had been another wrangle among the men on the pit-bank that evening.

Aaron Sisson was the last man on the little black railway-line climbing the hill home from work. He was late because he had attended a meeting of the men on the bank. He was secretary to the Miners Union for his colliery, and had heard a good deal of silly wrangling that left him nettled.

He strode over a stile, crossed two fields, strode another stile, and was in the long road of colliers' dwellings. Just across was his own house: he had built it himself. He went through the little gate, up past the side of the house to the back. There he hung a moment, glancing down the dark, wintry garden.

“My father—my father's come!” cried a child's excited voice, and two little girls in white pinafores ran out in front of his legs.

“Father, shall you set the Christmas Tree?” they cried. “We've got one!”

“Afore I have my dinner?” he answered amiably.

“Set it now. Set it now.—We got it through Fred Alton.”

“Where is it?”

The little girls were dragging a rough, dark object out of a corner of the passage into the light of the kitchen door.

But Jim vouchsafed nothing further, only stood like a Red Indian gripping his pipe.

The beam of the bicycle-lamp moved and fell upon the hands and faces of the young people, and penetrated the recesses of the secret trees. Several little tongues of flame clipped sensitive and ruddy on the naked air, sending a faint glow over the needle foliage. They gave a strange, perpendicular aspiration in the night. Julia waved slowly in her tree dance. Jim stood apart, with his legs straddled, a motionless figure.

The party round the tree became absorbed and excited as more ruddy tongues of flame pricked upward from the dark tree. Pale candles became evident, the air was luminous. The illumination was becoming complete, harmonious.

Josephine suddenly looked round.

“Why-y-y!” came her long note of alarm.

A man in a bowler hat and a black overcoat stood on the edge of the twilight.

“What is it?” cried Julia.

“Homo sapiens!” said Robert, the lieutenant. “Hand the light, Cyril.” He played the beam of light full on the intruder; a man in a bowler hat, with a black overcoat buttoned to his throat, a pale, dazed, blinking face. The hat was tilted at a slightly jaunty angle over the left eye, the man was well-featured. He did not speak.

“Did you want anything?” asked Robert, from behind the light.

Aaron Sisson blinked, trying to see who addressed him. To him, they were all illusory. He did not answer.

“Anything you wanted?” repeated Robert, military, rather peremptory.

But there was a curious cold distance to him, which she could not get across. An inward indifference to her—perhaps to everything. Yet his laugh was so handsome.

“Will you tell me why you left your wife and children?—Didn't you love them?”

Aaron looked at the odd, round, dark muzzle of the girl. She had had her hair bobbed, and it hung in odd dark folds, very black, over her ears.

“Why I left her?” he said. “For no particular reason. They're all right without me.”

Josephine watched his face. She saw a pallor of suffering under its freshness, and a strange tension in his eyes.

“But you couldn't leave your little girls for no reason at all—”

“Yes, I did. For no reason—except I wanted to have some free room round me—to loose myself—”

“You mean you wanted love?” flashed Josephine, thinking he said lose.

“No, I wanted fresh air. I don't know what I wanted. Why should I know?”

“But we must know: especially when other people will be hurt,” said she.

“Ah, well! A breath of fresh air, by myself. I felt forced to feel—I feel if I go back home now, I shall be FORCED—forced to love—or care—or something.”

“Perhaps you wanted more than your wife could give you,” she said.

“Perhaps less. She's made up her mind she loves me, and she's not going to let me off.”

“Did you never love her?” said Josephine.

“Oh, yes. I shall never love anybody else. But I'm damned if I want to be a lover any more. To her or to anybody. That's the top and bottom of it. I don't want to CARE, when care isn't in me. And I'm not going to be forced to it.”

The fat, aproned French waiter was hovering near. Josephine let him remove the plates and the empty bottle.

The Lillys had a labourer's cottage in Hampshire—pleasant enough. They were poor. Lilly was a little, dark, thin, quick fellow, his wife was strong and fair. They had known Robert and Julia for some years, but Josephine and Jim were new acquaintances,—fairly new.

One day in early spring Lilly had a telegram, “Coming to see you arrive 4:30—Bricknell.” He was surprised, but he and his wife got the spare room ready. And at four o'clock Lilly went off to the station. He was a few minutes late, and saw Jim's tall, rather elegant figure stalking down the station path. Jim had been an officer in the regular army, and still spent hours with his tailor. But instead of being a soldier he was a sort of socialist, and a red-hot revolutionary of a very ineffectual sort.

“Good lad!” he exclaimed, as Lilly came up. “Thought you wouldn't mind.”

“Not at all. Let me carry your bag.” Jim had a bag and a knapsack.

“I had an inspiration this morning,” said Jim. “I suddenly saw that if there was a man in England who could save me, it was you.”

“Save you from what?” asked Lilly, rather abashed.

He heard the clock strike nine, then half-past, from the village behind. The children would be asleep. His wife was sitting sewing some little frock. He went lingering down the garden path, stooping to lift the fallen carnations, to see how they were. There were many flowers, but small. He broke one off, then threw it away. The golden rod was out. Even in the little lawn there were asters, as of old.

His wife started to listen, hearing his step. He was filled with a violent conflict of tenderness, like a sickness. He hesitated, tapping at the door, and entered. His wife started to her feet, at bay.

“What have you come for!” was her involuntary ejaculation.

But he, with the familiar odd jerk of his head towards the garden, asked with a faint smile:

“Who planted the garden?”

And he felt himself dropping into the twang of the vernacular, which he had discarded.

Lottie only stood and stared at him, objectively. She did not think to answer. He took his hat off, and put it on the dresser. Again the familiar act maddened her.

“What have you come for?” she cried again, with a voice full of hate. Or perhaps it was fear and doubt and even hope as well. He heard only hate.

This time he turned to look at her. The old dagger was drawn in her.

“I wonder,” he said, “myself.”