CHAPTER XIII.
Three days after Lanty’s interview with Hemans, Mabella paid a visit to Vashti.
Sally, grown in stature if not in grace, promptly carried off Dorothy, and the two cousins sat down opposite each other in the dainty room which served as a sitting-room and drawing-room in the Dole parsonage.
There was a great contrast between the two women; despite the beauty and hauteur of Vashti’s face there was a shadow of ineffable sadness upon it. Life was none too sweet upon her lips.
The seed sown in barren Mullein meadow had brought forth a harvest of bitter herbs—wormwood and rue, smartweed and nettles.
Shadowing her eyes was the vague, ever-present unrest of those who do battle with spectres of the mind; there is no expression more pitiful, because it speaks of unending warfare. But upon her brow there shone the majesty of an unconquered will; she had not been bent beneath the knee of man’s authority, nor ground into the mire by poverty’siron heel, nor bowed beneath the burden of physical pain.
She was in some strange way suggestive of the absolute entity of the individual.
Human ties and relationships seemed, when considered in connection with her, no more than the fragments of the wild vine, which, having striven to bind down the branches of the oak, has been torn from its roots by the merciless vigour of the branch to which it clung, and left to wither without sustenance.
Now and then against the background of The Times there stands forth one figure sublimely alone, superimposed upon the fabric of his generation in splendid isolation—a triumphant, individualizedego.
It is almost impossible to study and comprehend these individuals in their relations to others, the sweep of impulse and energy, the imperious flood of passion, the tumultuous tide of his which animates their being and stimulates their actions is so different from the sluggish, well-regulated stream whose current controls their contemporaries.
Theymustbe regarded as individuals; adown the vista of the world’s perspective we see them, splendid, but eternally alone in the centre of the stage, brilliant and brief, like the passing of a meteor coming from chaos, going—alas! almost inevitably—to tragedy; leaving a luminous trail to which trembling shades creep forth to light feeble lampsof imitation, by which to trace the footsteps of the Great Unknown.
But we never understand these people, who, great in their good or evil, baffle us always—defying the scalpel which would fain anatomize them—now and then, as by revelation, we catch a glimpse of their purpose, a hint of their significance, but when we would fix the impression it eludes us as the living sunshine mocks at the palette of the painter, and spends itself royally upon the roof-trees of peasants, when we would wish to fix it for ever in unfading pigments and hang it upon the walls of kings’ palaces.
In her degree Vashti Lansing was one of these baffling ones.
Compared with her cousin Mabella, she was like a beautiful impressionistic picture beside a carefully designed mosaic.
The one compound of daring and imagination, gorgeous in colour, replete with possibilities if barren of achievement, offending against every canon, yet suggesting a higher cult than the criticism which condemns it; the other typical of the most severe and elaborated convention, executed in narrow limits, yet charming by its delicacy and stability, an exponent of the most formal design, yet winning admiration for the conscientiousness with which its somewhat meagre possibilities have been materialized.
Yet Mabella Lansing’s face was eloquent.
It was composite of all the pure elements ofwomanhood—the womanhood which loves and bears and suffers but does not soar. In her eyes was the soft fire of conjugal and maternal love. With the tender, near-sighted gaze of the home-maker, her eyes were bent upon the simple joys and petty pains of every-day life.
Upon her countenance there shone a tender joyousness, veiled but not extinguished by a certain piteous apprehension; indeed, there was much of appeal in Mabella’s face, and bravery too—the bravery of the good soldier who faces death because of others’ quarrels and faults.
But above all it was the face of the Mother.
Surely no one would dispute the fact that motherhood is the crowning glory of woman, the great holy miracle of mankind; but while it is impious to deny this, it is unreasonable and absurd to say that for all women it is the highest good.
There are different degrees of holiness; even the angels differ one from the other in glory; why, then, should the same crown be thought to fit all women?
The golden diadem may be more precious, but shall we deny royalty to the crown of wild olive or to the laurel wreath?
The mother is the pole-star of the race, but there are other stars which light up the dark places; why should their lonely radiance be scoffed at?
Women such as Mabella Lansing are the few chosen out of the many called.
There was in her that intuitive and exquisite motherliness which all the ethics on earth cannot produce. A simple and not brilliant country girl, she yet had a sense of responsibility in regard to her child which elucidated to her all the problems of heredity.
It is probable that she was a trifle too much impressed with her importance as a mother, that she had rather too much contempt for childless women, but that is an attitude which is universal enough to demand forgiveness—it seems to come with the mother’s milk—yet it is an unlovely thing, and whilst bowing the head in honest admiration of every mother, rich or poor, honest or shamed, one would wish to whisper sometimes to them that there are other vocations not lacking in potentialities for good.
“What a lovely house you have, Vashti!” said Mabella, irrepressible admiration in her voice, a hint of housewifely envy in her eyes.
“Yes, it is very comfortable,” said Vashti, with a perfectly unaffected air of having lived in such rooms all her days.
“Comfortable!” echoed Mabella; then remembering her one treasure which outweighed all these things, she added, a little priggishly: “it’s a good thing there are no babies here to pull things about.”
Vashti smiled in quiet amusement.
“What’s the news in the village?” she asked. “You know a minister’s wife never hears anything.”
Mabella brightened. Good little Mabella had a healthful interest in the social polity of the world in which she lived, and Vashti’s disdain of the village gossip had sometimes been a trial to her. Vashti usually treated “news” with an indifference which was discouragingly repressive, but to-day she seemed distinctly amiable, and Mabella proceeded to improve the opportunity.
“Well,” she said, “the village is just simply all stirred up about Temperance’s quarrel with Mrs. Ranger. I always knew Temperance couldn’t abide Mrs. Ranger, but I never thought she’d give way and say things, but they do say that the way Temperance talked was just something awful. I wasn’t there; it was at the sewing circle, and for the life of me I can’t find out what started it, but, anyhow, Temperance gave Mrs. Ranger a regular setting out. I asked Temperance about it, but the old dear was as cross as two sticks and wouldn’t tell me a thing. So I suppose it was something about Nathan. Young Ab Ranger has got three cross-bar gates making at Nathan’s shop, and they’ve been done these three days, and he has never gone for them; he’s fixing up the place at a great rate. I suppose you know about him and Minty Smilie? Mrs. Smilie’s going about saying Ab isn’t good enough for Minty; and they say Mrs. Ranger is just workedup about it. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if matters came to a head one of these days, and Ab and Minty just went over to Brixton and came back married—” suddenly Mabella arrested her speech and a more earnest expression sweetened her mouth. “Vashti,” she resumed, “there is something I wanted to ask you. Ann Serrup sent me word that she was coming to church next Sunday, and I want you to speak to Sidney and get him to preach one of his lovely helpful sermons for her. I’m sure he will if you ask him. Something to brace her up and comfort her, and, Vashti—I’m awfully sorry for her.” Mabella paused, rather breathlessly and a little red; “one never knew exactly where one was” with Vashti, as Temperance was fond of saying.
For a fleeting instant during Mabella’s little recital Vashti’s eyes had contracted in almost feline fashion, but she replied very suavely:
“I’ll tell Sidney, but, well—you know I never interfere in the slightest with his sermons.”
“Oh, no,” said Mabella with really excessive promptitude; “Oh, no, you wouldn’t dare to do that.”
“Of course not,” said Vashti with so much of acquiescence in her voice that it was almost mocking.
“I know how men think of these things,” continued Mabella with the calm front of one thoroughly acquainted with the world and its ways. “But Sidney is different; he is so good, so gentle, and he seems to know just how one feels”—a reminiscent tonecame to Mabella’s voice, she recalled various hours when she had needed comfort sorely and had found it in the gracious promises Sidney held out to his listeners. “It is a great comfort to me,” she went on; “lately it has seemed to me as if he just held up the thoughts of my own heart and showed me where I was strong and where lay my weakness.” Mabella arrested herself with an uncomfortable knowledge that Vashti was smiling, but when Vashti spoke a silky gentleness made her voice suave.
“I will tell Sidney what you say, and no doubt he will preach with a special thought of you and Ann Serrup.”
“Well, I’m glad I spoke of it,” said Mabella; “I wasn’t sure how you’d take it.”
Vashti continued to smile serenely, as one who recognizes and understands cause for uncertainty. Her gaze was attracted to the window.
“Look!” she said suddenly.
Passing in plain view of the window was a most extraordinary figure. A creature with a face blacker than any Ethiopian, surmounted by a shock of fair hair—this individual was further adorned by the skirt of a bright blue dress, which, being made for a grown-up woman, dragged a foot or so on the ground behind; about the neck was a pink silk tie, showing signs of contact with the black, which was evidently not “fast”; above her head she held a parasol bordered with white cotton lace—thuscaparisoned Sally paced it forth for the amusement of little Dorothy, who tottered upon her legs by reason of the violence of her laughter. Surrounding the pair, and joining apparently in the amusement, were the two dachshund puppies (Sidney’s latest importation to Dole), the collie, who followed with the sneaking expression of one who enjoys arisquéjoke (and yet he could not forbear biting surreptitiously at the dragging flounces as they passed), and little Jim Shinar, who followed in a trance-like state of wide-eyed fascination. He lived nearer to the parsonage than any other child, and between the evil fascination which Sally exerted over him and the dread of finding himself within the gates of a man “who spoke out loud in church,” Jim’s life was oppressed with continual resistance to temptation, but he had frequent falls from grace, for Sally could do more things with her mouth and eyes than eat and see, indeed her capabilities in the line of facial expression were never exhausted, and there was a weirdness about her grimaces which fascinated older children than poor round-faced little Jim.
Sally peacocked it up and down before her admiring satellites, until suddenly there rang through the parsonage a vigorous expression uttered in a rich brogue, and at the same instant a large, red-faced woman rushed out of the kitchen door and appeared round the corner of the house.
Sally arrested her parade, paused, showed aninclination to flee, paused again, then with a gibe for which she dived back into her Blueberry Ally vocabulary, fled from the irate “work-lady,” who had unwittingly furnished forth the fine feathers in which Sally was strutting. Mary promptly gave chase, and that too with an agility which her bulk belied. The area of the hunting ground was not very great being bounded by the prim palings of the little garden, but no landscape gardener ever made more of his space than did Sally. She doubled and turned and twisted, and eluded Mary’s grasp by a hand-breadth, as she darted under her outstretched arms, but Sally was very unwise, for she used her breath in taunts and gibes, whilst Mary pursued the dishonoured flounces of her Sunday gown in a silence which was the more ominous because of her wonted volubility.
Sally was getting slightly winded, and was wishing she could get the gate open and give Mary a straightaway lead, but she had her doubts of the gate, sometimes it opened and sometimes it didn’t. Sally knew if it was obstinate that her fate was sealed; she was casting about for another means of escape when her adherents began to take a share in the proceedings. First, little Jim Shinar, standing rooted to the spot, saw the chase descending upon him; Sally dodged him, but Mary was too close behind and too eager for her prey to change her route quickly, so she charged into him and wentover like a shot. Jim gave a howl, and Mary gathered herself up, and, breaking silence for the first time, ordered him home in a way not fit for ears polite, and then resumed the chase; but the dachshunds, seeing their playmate little Jim in the thick of it, concluded that there might be some fun in it for them also, and promptly precipitated themselves upon Mary in a way which impeded her progress so much that Sally was able to make the gate and get it half open before Mary shook herself free, but when she did she came like a whirlwind towards the gate, cheered on by the collie, whose excitement had at last slipped the collar and vented itself in sharp barks. Sally whisked through the gate, but Mary was at her heels. Sally felt the breath of the open, and knew if she escaped Mary’s first sprint that she was safe. So with a derisive taunt she sprang forward, jubilant, but alas, in the excitement of the crisis Sally let go her hold of the long skirt, which immediately fell about her heels, and in an instant the chase was ended, for Mary, panting, blown, and enraged beyond expression, was on Sally in a second, and fell with her as the long skirt laid her low—the dachshunds arrived a little later, and the collie, seduced by their evil example, threw decorum to the winds, and seizing an end of the bright flounce where it fluttered under the angry clutch of Mary, he tugged at it with might and main, and this was the scene which greeted Sidney,as, returning from his walk, he approached his own gate.
He had met a herald of the war in the person of little Jim Shinar, who was fleeing home as fast as his sturdy legs would carry him, crying at the same time from pure bewilderment.
A word and a small coin healed all little Jim’s hurts, and Sidney proceeded, wondering what had frightened the child, whom he was used to seeing about the kitchen or in Sally’s wake when she went errands.
Now, as was recorded afterwards in Dole, Sidney conducted himself under these trying circumstances with a seeming forgetfulness of his ministerial dignity which was altogether inexplicable, for, instead of immediately putting the offenders to open shame, he laughed, and even slapped his leg (so rumour said, though this was doubted), and called to the dachshunds, who were amusing themselves demolishing Mary’s coiffure, in a way which savoured more of encouragement than rebuke.
It is hard to live up to “what is expected of us,” and for once the Dole preacher was disappointing—but nevertheless, his presence brought the peace which he should have commanded. For Sally’s unregenerate soul owned one reverence, one love—for her master she would have cut off her right hand. To have him see her thus! There was a violent upheaval in the struggling mass, then Sallywas free of it and speeding towards the house at a rate which suggested that her former efforts had not been her best. Mary gathered herself up, and seeing Sidney, by this time outwardly grave, standing looking at her, she too made for the house, and Sidney was left still very stupefied, gazing upon the two dachshunds, which, suddenly finding themselves deprived of amusement, fell upon each other with a good will which proved them fresh in the field.
Sidney entered the house where Mabella and Vashti waited laughing.
Sidney was very pleased to see his wife’s face irradiate with girlish laughter. She had been so grave and quiet of late that his loving heart had ached over it. Was she not happy, this beautiful wife of his?
She had a far keener appreciation of the real humour of the situation than had Mabella, and when her husband entered her eyes danced a welcome. He was enthralled by the sight, and was more than glad to give Mary the price of two dresses to mend her flounces and her temper. Nor did he rebuke Sally too severely for the unauthorized loan she had levied upon Mary’s wardrobe. He knew Sally had been sufficiently punished by his appearance. Mabella had rescued Dorothy at the first alarm, and the child had looked upon the whole proceeding as an amiable effort on Mary’s part to amuse her.
Shortly after Sidney’s arrival Mabella departed, having enjoyed her visit greatly, and Lanty andshe spent an hour that evening listening to Dorothy, as, with lisping baby tongue and inadequate vocabulary, she endeavoured to describe how Sally had blackened her face with blacklead to amuse her.
That night Sidney sat alone in his study; his shuttered window was open, and, between the slats, the moths and tiny flying creatures of the night came flitting in. Soon his student lamp was nimbused by a circle of fluttering wings. Now and then an unusually loud hum distracted his attention from the loose-paged manuscripts before him, and he laid them down to rescue some moth, which, allured too near the light, had come within dangerous proximity to the flame.
These poor, half-scorched creatures he sent fluttering forth into the night again, yet, in spite of this, several lay dead upon the green baize below the student lamp; others walked busily about in the circle of light cast by the lamp-shade upon the table, and presently he put aside all pretence of work and watched them with curious kindly eyes.
His heart, that great tender heart which was for ever bleeding for others, whilst its own grievous wound was all unhealed, went out even to these aimless creatures of a day.
Surely some leaven of the divine Eternal Pity wrought in the clay of this man’s humanity, making it quick with a higher life than that breathed by his nostrils.
“Not a moth with vain desireIs shrivelled in a fruitless fire,Or but subserves another’s gain,”
“Not a moth with vain desireIs shrivelled in a fruitless fire,Or but subserves another’s gain,”
“Not a moth with vain desireIs shrivelled in a fruitless fire,Or but subserves another’s gain,”
“Not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another’s gain,”
he said to himself, and then before his watching eyes there seemed to be mimicked forth all the brave-hearted struggle of humanity towards the light, which, alas! too often scorched and blasted those nearest to it. Well, was it better, he wondered, to have endured and known the full radiance for an instant, even if the moment after the wings were folded for ever, or was it wiser to be content upon the dimmer plane as those little creatures were who ran about the table-top instead of striving upward to the light? But happily, as he looked at these latter ones, his attention was diverted from the more painful problem, as his eyes, always delicately sensitive to the beauty of little things, dwelt with delight upon the exquisite, fragile little creatures.
How marvellously their delicate wings were poised and proportioned! Some had the texture of velvet and some the sheen of satin; and nature, out of sheer extravagance, had touched them with gold and powdered them with silver. And did ever lord or lady bear a plume so daintily poised as those little creatures bore their delicateantennæ? And presently a white creature fluttered in from the bosom of the darkness, a large albino moth with a body covered with white fur and two fern-likeantennæ; white as a snow-flake it rested upon the green baize.
Just then Vashti entered, coming up to his table in her stately fashion.
“How foolish you are to sit with your window open,” she said. “Don’t you know that the light attracts all those insects?”
Sidney had risen when his wife entered the room. He was almost courtly in his politeness to her. But it was so natural for him to be courteous that all little formalities were graceful as he observed them.
As he rose he knocked down a book. He stooped to pick it up; as he straightened himself he saw Vashti’s hand upraised to strike the white moth.
“Oh, Vashti! don’t! don’t!” he cried, irrepressible pain in his voice; but the blow had fallen.
The moth fluttered about dazedly, trying to escape the shadow of the upraised hand; there was a powdery white mark on the green baize table-top where the first blow had fallen upon it, maiming it without killing it outright.
Sidney’s face grew pale as death.
“Oh, Vashti! Vashti!” he cried again. “Do not kill it, there is so much room in the world.”
He gathered the half-crushed creature, which would never fly again, into a tender hollowed palm, and, opening the shutter, put it forth to die in the darkness from whence it had been drawn by the glimmer of his lamp.
Alas! alas! how many wounded and maimed havebeen cast forth to die in the darkness from out which their aspirations had drawn them to receive their death wounds. Sidney came back to his table, a sick pain at his heart.
Presently Vashti put her arms about his head, and drawing it back upon her breast, placed her cool finger-tips upon his eyes.
He accepted the mute apology with swift responsive tenderness. And as she held him thus the woman’s weakness, latent even in her, forced itself to the surface for a moment.
“You suffer for every little thing,” she said. “I can only feel when my very soul is torn.”
He felt two tears fall upon his face; he drew her towards him; she sank beside his chair upon her knees, and he pressed her head against his breast, and she submitted to the caress and rested upon him in a sort of weary content, as one who pauses upon a hard journey; he put down his face till it leaned upon her hair, and thus, so near together that heart beat against heart, so far apart that the cry of the one soul died and was lost ere it reached the other, they remained for long, whilst before them the silver lamp and its white flame grew dimmer and dimmer, as its light was obscured by the shimmering veil of tiny creatures who danced about it.
Oh, piteous allegory! Can it indeed be that by our very efforts to find Truth we hide its radiance from others?