Free THE CINDER PATH by Yelena Kopylova Page B

debt."
    So that was it. The change in their manner, it was because he had stopped his mother from evicting the Bentons. They had he surmised, considered he must have guts of some
    sort to stand up to his mother, whose
    silence all these years had been formidable in its own
    way.
    He gave no response whatever to Arthur's
    words, there was no need to: their lives were bound together by the secret they shared.
    He walked on now towards the space between the
    brick walls that formed the entrance to the farm proper thinking as he did so that there was only Ginger who
    hadn't approached him. But then in a way Ginger
    didn't matter, his opinion would carry no weight.
    Yet he had always been sorry for the workhouse boy,
    and had shown it. There was, he decided, one thing he
    could do for him now, he could give him books to read.
    As to his attitude towards himself, well, that was of
    no account. What did matter was the attitude of the
    men, and it seemed that they had accepted him
    wholeheartedly.
    Many years later when he was to recall that morning
    and his summing up of the response of his few workers
    towards him and of how utterly wrong he had been in his evaluation of Ginger Slater, he was to tell himself he
    couldn't have known that before noon of that particular day as recognized master of the farm he was to be given
    evidence of things to come; but even then he wouldn't
    realize the
    full consequences of the power that lay in the hands of the undersized ginger-headed lad.
    He stood now between the walls and looked over the
    rough road to where the cows were grazing in the long meadow that sloped towards the burn. What should he do?
    What had his father done at this time of the day?
    He had walked his land . . . with a walkingstick in
    his hand.
    Well, that's what he would do now, he'd walk his
    land. Tomorrow he'd have the aid of a walking-stick too, but today he'd just walk. . . .
    He set off, his arms swinging in unison with his
    long thin legs and his chin was high as he turned his
    head from one side to the other and looked over the
    landscape; and as he walked he told himself that this was his farm, his land, and he was master of it.
    Yet before he had covered half the perimeter his step
    had slowed, his shoulders were slumped, his chin was in its usual position, and he was asking himself why it was he could love the hills and the countryside so much, yet
    could not, even mildly, be stirred by the knowledge that he was walking on his own ground.
    He stopped and looked away towards the
    hills and he had the childish desire to take to his
    heels and run, run to them, over them, then all the
    way to Carter Bar and into Scotland. No, not
    into Scotland. He swung round and faced the other
    way. If he was going to run he'd run
    to Newcastle and there board a boat that would take him to Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and on to Germany and
    Poland, on, on, on. . . .
    But he couldn't run, he couldn't sail away,
    for, to use the old phrase, he had burnt his
    boats. Because of the Bentons he had lost the chance
    to see the world and, what was more important at the
    moment, the chance of further education. And further
    education to him meant literature, reading,
    travelling, seeing.
    Well-he began to walk again-he could still read
    literature, couldn't he? There was nothing to stop him
    reading. Only the atmosphere of the house;
    the farm house wasn't conducive to reading, never had
    been, there was no re/l corner in it.
    The sun went in, the sky from being high above the
    hills seemed now to be settling on them; the mist
    came from nowhere suddenly. A pale grey curtain,
    it seemed to rise and fall like a mighty kite. As
    it enveloped him he
    shivered and, turning quickly as if he were being pursued, he made his way back to the farm.
    It was as he neared the gateway that he caught
    sight of Polly standing talking to Ginger. He could
    discern their mist-wreathed faces turned towards him,
    but before he reached them Ginger Slater had gone