A coal, crashing suddenly from the grate to the hearth, aroused John. He looked at the clock and put down his book.
"Bedtime I think, missus," he said.
Mary began to fold her work. Now was the time when he must speak. He must really. Even if he had very little to say about most things, at least he must have some sort of an opinion about this.
John was poking the largest lumps of coal out of the fire. It was his favourite habit of economy.
Mary could bear it in silence no longer.
"Well, John," she remarked as casually as she could, "what do you think of it? How far have you got?"
"Page 121," said John and, knocking the ashes out of his pipe against the fender, he went upstairs to bed.
Next morning Mary walked up to Littledale to see the foreman's latest baby. Coming home through the fields she recovered for the first time from her husband's rebuff of the previous night.
Really John's stupidity mattered very little on a morning like this. She wanted to race with the wind, to jump, to shout, to sing.
The freshly turned ploughland gleamed purple in the sunlight. A faintly pink haze caressed the stubble.
What did anything matter?
It was good land. What nonsense that writer person talked all about handing over property to the State to be run by syndicates of working men. As though just anyone could farm who thought it would be rather nice to walk about and watch the crops grow! Why, a hundred years ago this height of the wold had been covered by gorse and short-cropped turf. The sixty-acre and its neighbouring fields were still known as the "Sheep Walk." To produce this fertile soil her grandfather and her father and John had marled and manured and watched and waited as though nothing else in the world was of any importance. Even in her own day hundreds of tons of burnt chalk must have been scattered on the hill-side to make those turnips swell so gallantly.
Mr. Rossitur, if you please, thought the land was easy to own. Mary wanted to tell him that to care for it as she cared one had to give up everything—even the chance of ever hearing anyone say something more intelligent than "Page 121!"
From the other side of the hedge rose a sharp cry, half pain, half terror.
Mary looked at the thick interlacing of hawthorn, but could see nothing. Then came voices—a man's hoarse and angry, a boy's shrill with fear.
She began to run along the uneven road.
The hedge was broken by a strip of fence across the stump of a tree. Beyond, near a "pie" of turnips, stood a half-filled cart. Near it, crouching in the road, knelt the boy, Jack Greenwood, whom Mary had prematurely wrested from the Council School. Bending over him, with a short whip in his hand, stood Waite, the beast man.
"Stop that! What are you doing, Waite?" called Mary. She climbed the fence with greater speed than elegance, slipping a little on the damp wood.
The man looked up, with surly defiance.
"I warn't doing nowt, Mrs. Robson. This lad's an idler. He needs a bit o' stick now and then to keep him up ti'd mark."
"Come here, Jack," commanded Mary.
The boy rose and limped towards her sobbing, not at all unwilling to make capital out of his misfortunes. A furrow of pink, washed clean by tears, ran down his muddy face. He held one hand across his bleeding ear.
"What has he been doing, Waite?"
"He's an idle, good-for-nowt. Back end o' ten o'clock I sent him up to get the cart forked up wi' swedes, and as he never comed and never comed, I had t' come up mysen and see what's wrong, and here he was, with nowt to say, and nowt done."
"Did you ask him why?"
"Ay. That I did and all." Waite plucked a turnip from the pie with his long handled fork and flung it into the cart.
Mary was quietly examining the boy's injuries. His shoulder was bruised and his ear inflamed, but her opportune arrival had prevented further damage.
For a little while she did not speak. Her mind was again with Mr. David Rossitur, and his plea for the independence of the labouring class, and for a wider recognition of the innate dignity of human nature. Then she spoke slowly, almost as though addressing herself alone.
"Oh. So you sent a boy up to do work you are supposed to do yourself, and expect him to manage a horse, and to fork turnips into a cart he is too small to reach and, because he couldn't do it, you came and beat him, did you? And thought that no one would see? You know we don't beat boys at Anderby. Jack has only just started to work. I wonder what sort of opinion he has of farm life."
Waite continued to throw turnips into the cart. They fell from his fork with dull little thuds, punctuating Mary's speech.
"I didn't know Jack was going to work for you," she continued. "It isn't the first time you've done this sort of thing, you know. I can't let you go on working together because you obviously don't know how to treat a boy. And even if I take Jack away, you'll be up to the same tricks with some one else, sooner or later. So I'm afraid you'll have to go. I'm sorry—but I don't know what else to do. You shall have a week's wages, but I can't allow this sort of thing here, don't you see? Jack, come along with me and I'll give you something for your ear. No, don't cry, because you're not much hurt really, you know. I'm ashamed of you, Waite, and I hope you're ashamed of yourself. I shall tell Foreman and my husband of the step I have taken. You can consider yourself dismissed."
The man continued phlegmatically to throw turnips into the cart, his body swaying loosely from the hips as he stooped and lifted. He might never have heard Mary's voice, but as she went down the road she sighed, conscious that she had made another enemy. First Coast, now Waite....
The government of a kingdom was not always easy. Mary hated to be disliked. She loved to imagine herself the idolized champion of the poor and suffering, the serene mistress of bountiful acres, where the season was always harvest and the labourers worthy of their hire. Coast and Waite were somehow out of the picture.
Then she heard the squelch of Jack's boots on the road behind her. At least, in dismissing Waite, she had fulfilled her rôle as champion of the oppressed. She saw herself for a moment as she hoped Jack saw her, calm mistress of his destiny snatching him from peril, and she smiled again at the vision.
Then she wondered how John would take it when she told him she had dismissed the beast man. But even this, she decided, did not matter, and so went down to Anderby.
THE STRANGER AT THE CROSS-ROADS
Mary drove home from Hardrascliffe along a dark, wind-swept road. She had been busy all the afternoon helping Ursula to establish herself in the nursing-home where she was to await the arrival of her child.
Ursula was not an easy person to help. She had actually made Mary feel an interloper in the nursing-home she had visited all her life, by that air of off-hand familiarity with which she took possession of the whole staff. She had aroused all sorts of uncomfortable desires which Mary had thought were hidden deep beneath a weight of busy complacency.
Mary had believed she was cured of that disease. After all anyone could nurse a baby. Very few people had the privilege of nursing a whole village. Mary's tenderness benefited nearly three hundred people. Ursula's could only benefit one ridiculous thing that was not even quite a person. And, if John was a little dull, Mary was sure that Foster would have driven her crazy in three days let alone three years. The way in which he danced attendance on Ursula was perfectly sickening. Carnations at 6d. each in her bedroom indeed!
All the same, Mary knew she was not cured.
The cart turned in to the last street of the town. The air grew colder and more unfriendly. Between blackened chimney stacks Mary could see tattered wisps of cloud driven across a smouldering sky. In a minute the storm would break. Still, she was glad she was driving into the storm, not lying between some one else's sheets in a strange room, watched over by a lynx-eyed nurse, all starch and propriety. A doctor, too, dropping in at all hours to stare at her cheerfully and declare, "We're coming along nicely, aren't we?"
Having a baby was all very well, but it seemed to afford other people an excuse for conspiring against one's dignity.
With a rattle of hail stones on the splash-board and harness, the storm swept down upon her. She bent her head and drove forward. Really for March this was outrageous!
She wondered if she had remembered all her shopping: the flannel for Mrs. Burton's little boy, the currants and matches and mincing-machine.
Ursula hadcrêpe de Chinenight dresses and the bassinet in the corner was covered with lace and pink ribbon. Dreadful extravagance! Foster would be ruined before he knew where he was.
She touched the pony with her whip. He sprang forward eager for the stable. Then he hesitated and dropped into a stumbling limp. Mary put down the whip, drew up to the side of the road, and threw the rug across her seat.
It was very dark now and Starlight was restless. She climbed carefully out of the cart, speaking aloud in a comforting voice:
"It's all right, old man, it's all right."
Her attempts at conciliation were not very effective. Starlight stood, scraping the ground with his hoof. Mary felt her way cautiously along the shaft and bent to pick up the pony's foreleg. She could not see, and her groping fingers unexpectedly encountering his knee made him start violently.
Well, there was no help for it. She would have to get a light. That was a nuisance. She went back and reached one of the cart lamps. It clattered as she drew it from its socket, and again the pony jerked forward. She only just caught the reins in time.
It was all rather complicated—like one of those puzzles, Mary decided, where one had to take the geese across the stream without leaving the ducks behind with the fox. There were newly-strewn flints on the road, one of which was obviously in Starlight's hoof; but the wind whirled against her and nearly extinguished the light, and if she put it down she could not see Starlight's foot—besides, he was irritated by pain and would not stand still.
There really seemed to be no way out of the dilemma. She stood, holding the reins, and watching the steam rising from the pony's back in the glow of candlelight. If she were Mrs. Watts, she supposed she would pray about it. Prayer always seemed a rather cowardly shifting of responsibility on to other people, but what was one to do?
"Is anything wrong? Can I help?" A voice spoke out of the darkness.
She started violently, having heard no footsteps. Below her usual appearance of composure, she had always retained a childish terror of the dark.
Starlight was startled too and looked round with a rattle of harness. Mary handed the lamp to a pair of hands that reached for it into the light, and turned to pacify the pony.
"Poor old man! Poor old Starlight! Was the pain bad then?" She turned ungratefully upon the new-comer. "Whatever made you come up so quietly like that, frightening the pony?"
"I'm sorry. I expect the storm stopped you from hearing me. I thought something was wrong. I'll go away if you like."
"No. Hold the lantern, please. There's a stone in the pony's foot I think." Mary spoke haughtily. She was ashamed of her display of nervous irritation, and shame always made her haughty.
The lantern held by the stranger cast a delta of golden light on the stony road and the pony's hoof, which Mary raised to her knee. There, safely embedded behind the iron shoe, lay an ugly-looking flint.
"Have you a knife?" asked Mary.
Her hands were trembling, because the pony's breath came short and nervously. Every minute she expected him to start forward, and her imagination depicted her prostrate figure trampled below his hoofs.
"I've got a knife, but it isn't much good. One blade's broken. I might try, though, if you'll let me. You'll get so muddy."
"I won't," lied Mary stoutly. One knee was in a puddle, and she felt very wet, but she hated being seen at a disadvantage, and thought that her dignity could only be maintained by independence. "Give me the knife, please."
He passed it to her in silence, and she fumbled with frozen fingers at the blade.
"Can't you undo it for me?" she complained querulously.
The stranger unfastened the blade and stood silently holding the lamp. Mary struggled with the flint, but her usually capable hands were incapacitated by cold. The lamplight danced and glimmered across the snow. Cold trickles of melting sleet insinuated themselves between her collar and her neck. The flint did not move.
The stranger spoke again, very meekly:
"Won't you let me try?"
Mary stiffened herself for a refusal. Then he added plaintively: "After all, it's my knife, and you're breaking the only whole blade."
It was a young voice, certainly cultured, and possibly might have been attractive, had its owner not been suffering from an obvious cold.
"All right." Her assent was ungracious. "You can come if you like."
She rose stiffly to her feet and took the lantern. The stranger knelt in her place. She could see slim shoulders below a mackintosh and the back of a bent head covered with red hair.
The shoulders worked for a moment. Then a triumphant "Got it!" announced the success of masculine superiority. Unfortunately at that moment Starlight also "Got it." His foot being at last released he sprang forward, ungratefully knocking his benefactor to the ground.
Mary seized the pony's head. The stranger rolled adroitly towards the middle of the road and there was a small confusion.
Mary cried, "Are you hurt?"
The stranger said "Damn!" calmly and without prejudice.
Starlight backed slowly towards the hedge.
Then things became more peaceable.
The stranger rose rubbing his shoulder and announcing strangely:
"There are no bones broken, but the patient must be kept quiet." It was then that Mary first suspected him of not being quite sane.
Mary, who had managed in the confusion to retain her hold of the lantern, said:
"Oh, I'm so sorry. It's such a shame. And I was being so horrid to you, because you startled me, and really I was longing for some one to come."
Together they drew Starlight cautiously away from the hedge and replaced the lamp in its socket.
"Where are you going?" asked Mary. She had time now to notice that they stood near the cross-roads where the road to Anderby dissects that between Cattlesby and Beaverthorpe.
The stranger was brushing mud and water from his trousers.
"Well," he remarked ingenuously, "do you know, I'm not at all sure?"
"But where do youwantto go?" repeated Mary. No one could possibly go wandering about just anywhere on a night like this—not if they were in their senses.
"I don't think I want to go anywhere." His voice was suddenly small and pathetic. "In fact, I'm sorry, but I think I'm going to be sick."
He was.
Compunction seized upon Mary.
"Oh, I'm so awfully sorry! Are you hurt badly?"
She thought the pony must have struck him in some vital part of his anatomy. A desperate sense of helplessness assailed her. Supposing the man died here by the roadside, and she miles away from a doctor, unable to lift him into the high cart, unwilling to leave him alone in the dark. On the other hand he might only have had too much to drink.
"I'm all right now." The stranger's voice was shaky but more cheerful. To Mary's relief he walked across the road quite firmly and stood by the cart. "I wasn't really much hurt, only sort of winded and very much surprised. I know it's bad manners. I'm sorry."
He actually laughed, but his teeth were chattering, and he held tightly to the shaft as though he were not sure of his balance.
Crises made Mary practical. "Can you get into the cart?" she asked. Without further comment he climbed up and sat down in her seat. "That's my seat. Please move to the other side. And take care, the pony always starts forward directly I get in."
She scrambled up and they drove forward in silence. It was very dark.
"Are you all right?"
"Quite, thanks. Only a little shaken, not hurt at all. I shouldn't have let go like that so soon. I always go and spoil things at the end."
"Do you? Oh, I know that feeling so well! I do it too. And it's so much worse than if you'd been stupid all the time, isn't it? Because you forget all the times you've been clever and only forget what happened at the end."
Mary couldn't think why she said that. She did not usually talk in that sort of way. She did not usually feel so excited, as though something wonderful was going to happen. And yet it was nothing to give a stranger a lift on a stormy night. She pulled herself together.
"Look here, do you really want to go this way?"
"Where are we going?"
"Towards Anderby."
"What a pretty name! Yes, let's go there."
As though it were a matter of free choice, made on the impulse of the moment because of a nice name!
Mary turned towards him with frowning brows. The drink theory recurred to her. She wished it was not quite so dark. Or he might be suffering from concussion of the brain. It did make people queer.
She stopped the cart and began to turn the pony towards Hardrascliffe. She must find the doctor.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm turning the cart. We've come the wrong way."
"This is the way we were going before. We're going to Anderby."
"Yes, but we want to go to Hardrascliffe."
She must humour him.
"We don't want to go to Hardrascliffe. You were wanting to go to Anderby. So was I, though I didn't know it. How far is it?"
"Three miles, but——"
"Please go on. Is it on my account you want to turn back? Because if it is, please don't. I'm quite all right. I suppose there's an inn or something there where I can stay the night. And I'm quite well. Only muddy. I had this cold before I fell," he added apologetically.
"But, really"—Mary was only half reassured—"where were you going? You must have been going somewhere."
"I really don't know where I was going. I suppose I was lost. But now I'm going to Anderby. Once I've made up my mind to do things I always do them. And really, in a wet March, one village is much the same as another."
"But what are youdoing?"
"Oh, didn't I explain? I'm on a walking tour."
"What on earth are you doing going for a walking tour in March with a cold in your head?"
"I didn't start with the cold. It came. It's my job."
"The cold?" Mary was completely mystified.
"No. The tour. The cold's my necessary infirmity. All great men have them. Look at Julius Caesar with his epilepsy and Pepys with his stone—I beg your pardon. That's not quite polite, is it? Look at St. Paul then, and the thorn in his flesh, and me with my colds."
"But how are walking tours your job?" Mary clung resolutely to the point to save herself from complete insanity.
"Because I'm a sort of a journalist on a holiday. I got headaches in Manchester, reporting and writing silly articles and things in the very plainest street you ever saw, so my chief, who is a very decent fellow, suggested that I should walk about in Yorkshire a bit, collecting materials about the life of the agricultural labourer, and lots of juicy statistics about capitalist farmers that will make them sit up and see the iniquity of their ways. Do you know anything about them?"
"Capitalist farmers?"
A little while ago Mary thought she knew very little. Mr. David Rossitur had enlightened her. She added smilingly, "I think I know a good deal. You see, I am one."
The stranger threw back his head with a laugh. It was that laugh which betrayed at once both his youth and his sanity. Nothing so gallant and infectious could have come from a diseased mind. His laugh seemed to shake the years from Mary and set her again in the company of youth.
"My sworn enemy!" he cried. "Don't you think you'd better set me down? I warn you, you are bringing a traitor into your camp. I am a rabid socialist of the dangerous and most disreputable type."
"You are nothing so romantic," retorted Mary. "You are quite a young boy with a bad cold who has just been sick in the middle of the road, and you are coming home with me. Evidently you are quite unfit to be wandering about the wolds by yourself. I don't care whether you're a socialist or not. If you're rabid, it just shows that you're not capable of looking after yourself."
"I'm not a boy. I'm twenty-four, and I take myself and my politics very seriously. It's the prerogative of mediocrity. And I'm out to smash your rotten social system into little bits." Then he sneezed three times. "And I warn you that I will never break bread in the house of a declared enemy of society."
"I never asked you to," Mary replied. Her pulses were beating furiously. A queer excitement caught her by the throat. She forced herself to be very matter-of-fact. "I think you will be very silly to smash anything. It's so wasteful. I think socialism and all that very silly. So does my husband."
For the life of her, Mary could not think why she had dragged John into it.
"I read a book," she continued, "about a month ago. A very silly book calledThe Salvation of Societyby David Rossitur. He thought he was so clever and modern because he prophesied that England was going to the dogs. My sister-in-law, Sarah, came to exactly the same conclusion long ago, though she hasn't been to college."
Mary spoke with heat. She felt annoyed because she could not talk more cleverly, though it was silly to be excited about a book, when the boy beside her, socialist or no socialist, was cold and wet and needing a hot drink.
"I'm glad you didn't like the book. It shows your sound judgment. I think it's rotten. Pessimism is the refuge of the unimaginative. I've outgrown all those destructive ambitions long ago, though when I wrote it——"
"When you—what?"
"When I wrote it I thought it was rather clever."
"But—what do you mean? You're not the author, are you?"
She turned towards him, but the darkness came between them, an impenetrable curtain.
"I'm afraid I am. My name's David Rossitur." His teeth were chattering with cold. "But of course I see now that co-operation, fostered from above simply with the idea of ultimate revolution, can never result in constructive reform. Now my idea is...."
In the darkness Mary could dimly discern a hand waved with passionate gesticulation. She chuckled softly. David Rossitur suddenly checked himself.
"Of course, now you know who I am, you probably won't want me in your cart." He spoke with dignity.
Mary laughed. "I'm delighted that you're David Rossitur. It's very exciting, sitting in the same cart as a real live author, and still more exciting to think that you can take him home and put him to bed with eucalyptus and hot whisky, just to show what a very ordinary person he is. Now you can't be dignified when you're inhaling Friars' Balsam."
"I've not been very dignified at all," sighed David. "And really you must put me down at the village inn. I know what these colds are. I shall be sneezing all over your house for days if once you let me in. Please tell me where I can find the inn or something."
"You're coming home with me," said Mary firmly.
The church clock was striking nine as they drove up the avenue. The light of a lantern swung fitfully towards them across the stackyard.
"That you, shepherd?" called Mary. "Is everything all right?"
A tall figure loomed out of the darkness and the swinging lantern stopped beside the cart.
"We've just landed a lovely little pair o' twins, Miss Mary. Prime little beauties. Black as a parson's cask."
It was a moment before David decided he meant "cassock."
"Good," said Mary, and turned to grope for parcels on the floor of the cart. "You see," she explained to David, her head under the seat, "it's lambing time, and I get all the black ones. Isn't it a night, shepherd? You'd better come in for a drop of whisky, I think. Now then"—she re-emerged, her hands full—"is that everything? Mr. Rossitur, will you please look and see if the mincing-machine is below your seat, and I think you're sitting on the cheese. Now, Shepherd, what about the shelter in the horse pasture? Did you get it up this afternoon?"
"Ay. Maister Robson lent a hand and all."
David climbed out of the cart and stood silently in the rain while Mary handed over the pony to a groom, who appeared from the darkness, and recounted to him in detail the tale of the flints. David felt very cold and sore and stiff. Also he was holding a mincing-machine, a Stilton cheese, four pounds of sugar, and the roll of cotton wool for Mrs. Watts. Still it was all very entertaining and the lady of the farm seemed unusually kind and companionable.
The lady of the farm summoned him, and following her and the shepherd, he stumbled across a spacious yard and up a step into another enclosure of inky darkness. A door rattled in front of him, and a flood of orange light streamed across the snow. Standing in the doorway, he saw a tall broad shouldered young woman, wrapped in a dark coat. Her cheeks were whipped to crimson by the sleet, her wide eyes shone; her lips were parted in a welcoming smile.
"Come in," said Mary.
He followed her into the brick-tiled kitchen and stood there silently dripping, his arms full of parcels. Violet from her station by the fire-place regarded him open-mouthed. Mary gave hurried instructions about sheets on the North room bed, and hot whisky and something to eat at once.
"May I put these down on the table?" asked David, ruefully regarding the mincing-machine, cheese, sugar and cotton wool. "Then I can take off my cap like a gentleman."
"It's off already," remarked Mary, taking the parcels from him. "I suppose you lost it on the road. Give me those."
She saw him plainly now as he stood with little rivulets of water running off him on to the floor. His clothes clung to a slim, drenched figure that was not so tall as Mary's. Thin wrists above nervous, delicate hands protruded from a jacket whose sleeves were too short. David was small, but his neck, wrists and ankles always seemed to be straining out of his clothes, so eager were they to get on with this tremendous task of reforming the world. His face was a pallid grey tinged with purple, because he was very cold and still felt rather sick and more than a little tired. His eyes were grey too, not very large, but amazingly alive for all their weariness, and his thin lips had a humorous twist, half gay and half pathetic, that went straight to Mary's heart.
At present he was the colour of mud all over except his hair. The only peculiarity which David could ever share with Samson was that the secret of his personality lay in his hair, for David's was wild and wiry, the colour of very old wet bricks. It started up everywhere over his head, declaring brazenly to the world its owner's intention of going everywhere and seeing everything and smashing up heaven and earth in an hour to build new ones next day.
Before Mary had completed her inspection, heavy footsteps clumped along the passage, and David saw a tall bearded man standing by the doorway. He was not very like Mary, but David decided he must be her father.
"Oh, John," said Mary, "this is Mr. David Rossitur. And he is very wet. Can I have some of your clothes for him? Mr. Rossitur, this is my husband."
An hour later David, who had completely abandoned all former notions of correct behaviour in a strange house, lay back against the pillows of an enormous bed in a candlelit room, while Mary sat beside him and rubbed his chest with Elliman's Embrocation. It was the biggest bed he had ever seen, and John's pyjamas in which he was enveloped were the biggest pyjamas he had ever seen. But the meal of hot whisky and tea and fish and cheese-cakes, which he had just eaten, was the queerest he had ever tasted, the interview between the shepherd and his mistress the strangest he had ever heard, so nothing, he felt, could really surprise him now.
He surrendered himself with resignation to the firm hand of Mary.
"You're going to have a shocking cold, Mr. Rossitur," she remarked severely. "I simply can't imagine why anyone in their senses allowed you to wander loose in the country at this time of year. Where do you live when you're not losing yourself in Yorkshire?"
David, speaking as distinctly as he could while Mary's energetic hand paraded between his collar bones, replied that he did not exactly live anywhere. He'd given up his digs in Manchester because the landlady underpaid her maid and he refused to countenance sweated labour. A fine comment on the same refusal was lost in a shudder as a cold stream of embrocation trickled gleefully down his arm-pit.
"Keep still. It isn't cold really. I warmed the bottle. You don't look as if you came from Manchester. People there are usually rather sensible.Don'twriggle so!"
"You're tickling. Although I'm very grateful for all your trouble, I cannot help observing that you are tickling. At least, the embrocation is. I've only lived a year in Manchester. I lived in Hampshire until I quarrelled with my father and cut myself off with a shilling. Then Manchester seemed as good a place as any to—atishoo! Tishoo!"
"Quite so. I understand perfectly. When you have quite finished, I'll put this flannel on your chest."
David, now completely tamed, bared his bosom for the sacrifice. Mary regarded it critically.
"I'm sure they don't feed you properly at Manchester."
"I always was thin as a child. It's nothing to do with the amount I eat. You can't have such a beautiful disposition as I've got, and not expect some counterbalancing disadvantages."
Tears gathered in David's eyes but they were only the result of a copious inhalation of embrocation. He fumbled for the pocket of John's pyjamas, where a handkerchief once had lain. "I had a handkerchief, I know. But it is a strange habit of my handkerchief common to nearly all my possessions, that it vanishes when I most need it."
He was wondering what Harcourt would think, if he could see him now—Harcourt, the president of the Union at Oxford, who wrote to him once a fortnight to implore his immediate resumption to a brilliant university career, abandoned for the purgatory of third-rate journalism. The phraseology is Harcourt's.
"Oh, I'm glad you have a beautiful disposition," remarked Mary, passing him her handkerchief. "I know you won't go off with my teaspoons then. I never trust socialists as a rule."
She corked the bottle decisively, and wiped her hands on a towel. She was enveloped in a large white apron, and her hair, as usual when it had been wet, curled in soft brown tendrils round her flushed face. She knew that she looked rather pretty, but she announced sternly:
"Now the candles and matches are here, and you're not to get up in the morning till I've been to take your temperature. I expect you'll go to sleep now because you've had so much whisky and stuff you must be a little sleepy. You don't feel sick again, do you?"
"Oh, no, thanks."
"That's all right then. Good night."
"Good night. Oh, I say, Mrs. Robson, I've never said thank you yet. I expect you'll think me awfully queer, but I do think you're a brick. I've been a perfect nuisance. I wouldn't have let you do all this only it's so nice to be made a fuss of."
Mary smiled down upon him. She seemed all rosy cheeks and white apron and candlelight.
She told him that there was a glass of water by his side in case he was thirsty in the night, and that if he felt ill John's room and hers was only along the passage.
A sudden desire had seized her to kiss this absurd, fragile boy whose mocking, wistful eyes watched her from the pillows. Only he might mistake her strictly maternal intentions, not realizing, like many young things, how very young he was.
She took up her candle and left him. In the other room John lay solidly on the shadowed bed, large and tranquil and very very different.
She did not stoop to kiss him, though that would have been perfectly proper.
Meanwhile David lay staring into the darkness. He was very tired and stiff, and his throat felt as though some one were rubbing it with hot sand paper. John's large pyjamas were wrinkled below his bruised shoulder.
Thoughts streamed through his brain like sheep through the gap in a hedge. A week had passed since he left Manchester and he had written nothing. Why did the shepherd persistently wink one eye? Was it because "in modern agriculture the increased productiveness and quantity of the labour set in motion are bought at the cost of laying waste and consuming by disease labour-power itself?" Why, that was Marx! How silly. Good old Marx. He told the truth if no one else did.
Only what was the use of trying to fight injustice if one always caught colds in one's head and was sick after a few days' tramping? Colds, sore throats—well, that was what a thousand labourers, underpaid and underfed, must be feeling ... feeling ... that dull ache all down one's side ... feeling....
Mary Robson, a large, rather comely woman, standing in the doorway with a flood of orange light behind her ... her hands, rosily transparent in front of the candle flame ... the smell of embrocation ... "consuming by disease labour-power itself." ... "Mr. Rossitur, this is my husband." ... Queens—kings ... queens with smiling faces in orange candlelight....
Because he had a cold, David snored a little in his sleep.
THE ENEMIES OF SOCIETY
"That's all very well, but when you've said everything you know the fact remains that you're not a farmer and never will be. You seem to have spent your time at a large country-house where you were as far removed from the agricultural classes as though you were in the moon, and at Oxford where as far as I can make out you pretend to know something about everything without having learnt it. And you've read a few books by Germans and cranks, none of whom have done more than look into a farm from across the hedge from the high-road. And now you come to Anderby, and pretend you know more about farming than John and me, who've done it all our lives, and our fathers before us for hundreds of years! Just hold the end of this sheet, will you?"
Mary was turning linen sheets "sides to middle" and arguing with David about the nationalization of land. David took the end of the sheet solemnly while her scissors slipped along the middle.
"It all depends what you call knowledge," he said. "You only know what your villagers are. I know what they might be. Perfect knowledge recognizes capacity as well as achievement. That's why I know more about it than you do."
Clip! Mary's scissors cut through the hem near David's fingers.
"What next?" he asked patiently. It was difficult to portray his pet theories with becoming dignity when at any moment Mary might fill his arms with yards of linen, or send him on to his knees after a strayed cotton reel.
"Next you put the two pieces together like this—no, not that end, the other, and then I sew them up the middle. You see, Mr. Rossitur, my point is that Anderby has been pretty much the same for four hundred years, and I don't see how talk is going to alter it. When it comes to that, I don't see it wants altering. That idea of small holdings you were talking about may do all right in some places, but, believe me, it's absurd on farms where you grow wheat and rear sheep."
She took a pin from the sheet and placed it between her teeth, then removed it to give greater emphasis to her statement.
"It's sostupidto unsettle something that's quite happy as it is just because of a silly theory."
"But they're not happy here, and it isn't silly."
"Of course you don't think so—just put some more coal on the fire please—I've heard all that before. You've got heaps of statistics, but you confessed yourself just now they were nearly all drawn up in the last century. Don't you see how behind the times you are? Because fifty years ago the labourers were underpaid, it doesn't mean they're not all right to-day. Just you wait till your cold's quite better, and you can have a look at my people in Anderby."
"It's not I who am behind the times, Mrs. Robson, it's you," he responded hotly. "You've just acknowledged the evils of a benevolent despotism, and now you deny that your rule is a despotism because it's benevolent. Why, what hope is there for social stability when the happiness of men is a matter of philanthropy, not of right? If you and Mr. Robson were rotters, Anderby wouldn't be fit to live in."
Mary bent over her sewing-machine, and the wheel span with amazing rapidity. David regarded her across the table. She was maddening, with her amused complacency, her indifference to all his arguments. And yet kind, and intelligent too in a way, and not without a sense of social responsibility. Clearly a convert worth making. He started again.
"You think you're a queen because you govern this village and your subjects seem to like you. The only real kings and queens are those who stand above their generation and rule circumstance."
Mary looked up and smiled indulgently.
"Do sit down," she said. "You'll get another temperature with so much talking."
"It's no argument, Mrs. Robson, either to send me after a cotton reel or to tell me I've got a cold. The one is on the table. The other is on my chest. You are shirking issues, and only robbing me of my dignity without gaining any yourself!"
"But it's a great advantage to me to rob you of your dignity. Look at you! A full blown author, who has published a book, though you do say a lot of silly things in it. And who has been to college, though you don't seem to have been taught much sense there! If I do try to bring you to my level a bit, by making you mend the fire—and, by the way, you've held that shovel in your hands for quite five minutes—surely you can't complain, you, who so hotly uphold the cause of equality."
"You are cruel," groaned David. His mock-heroic voice was rendered doubly effective by the cold in his throat, and Mary looked up to laugh. But he, suddenly sat down, his elbows on the table, and his chin resting on his hands. "Honestly though," he added seriously, "can't you see a little bit what I'm driving at, or am I unutterably stupid and boring? Or am I just rude? I don't want to be just rude, because you've been kinder to me than I could possibly have imagined."
"What you call kindness," remarked Mary, with an airy gesture of her scissors, "was merely a piece of propaganda on behalf of my fellow-capitalists. What I'm really worried about is that you will insist on going to-morrow. You're not fit to, you know. You had a temperature till last night."
"But I can't stay here. I've taken up three of your days already, and thoughImay consider you waste your time, trying to pauperize a village, and might spend it far more profitably restoring to health a friend of society like myself, I can't exactly expect you to look at it that way, can I?"
"Oh, do be serious for a minute. You know that you're not any trouble here. John regards you as a harmless lunatic who would be quite a pleasant fellow if he didn't pretend to know something of agricultural conditions. And I find you very useful in folding sheets for me—to say nothing of keeping my wits about me. You are a very strenuous conversationalist."
"All right. I will be serious." He seated himself on the table. It was always impossible for him to remain in the same attitude for two consecutive minutes. "I can't stay here because I mean to blow up this house, and this farm and, if necessary, this village. I think that you and Mr. Robson are charming as people, but iniquitous as an institution; and, if I stay here any longer, I shall like you both so much that I shan't be able to hate you. As it is, every time you are nice to me, I have to recite little pieces of Marx to myself to convince me what an abomination you really are."
Mary's eyes twinkled.
"Oh, do recite some now," she begged.
"Oh, but you're not being particularly nice to me. Look how hard you've been making me work! I'm sure I've sides-to-middled enough sheets to stock the East Riding."
"Well then, stop working, and have a cigarette—oh, I forgot, you don't smoke. Well, then, sit down and be at peace—and have some toffee."
They had made the toffee last night, after Mary discovered that David had abjured smoking on principle, and adored sweet things. She had declared it to be an essential item of the treatment for colds, and had shown him how to mix sugar and treacle and vinegar over the dining-room fire.
David passed her the tin, placed a large lump of toffee in the side of his mouth, and lay back luxuriously in John's arm-chair. Presently he began to chant:
"Nowhere does the antagonistic character of capitalist production assert itself more brutally than in the progress of English agriculture and the retrogression of the English agricultural labourer...."
There were voices in the hall, and a knock at the door. Violet entered the room. Mary saw, to her horror, a smudge down one side of Violet's nose, and her cap awry above her left ear. She announced spasmodically:
"Mr. and Mrs. Bannister, m'm!"
Sarah, in her bugled bonnet and calling cloak, sailed into the room.
"My God!" murmured David, under his breath.
Mary rose. She would have been more capable of dealing with the situation had her mouth not been full of toffee, but her composure was heroic.
"This is nice of you!" she said. "Good afternoon, Tom. Come along in, Cousin Sarah. You'll excuse the room being rather upset. I'm mending sheets. Mr. Rossitur—Mrs. Bannister, Mr. Bannister."
"Is John in?" asked Sarah, going briskly to the point.
"No, he's up the fields. He won't be long, though. I'm sorry."
"Oh, I'm sorry too. I particularly wished to see him." Sarah had bowed stiffly to David, and paid him no further attention.
"He ought to be in about five, but he's gone to Littledale to see how the new barley is doing—the sort that Burdass brought over from Siberia."
"Quite."
"But you'll wait and have tea, won't you?"
"That depends how late it is."
Then they were all silent. It was dreadful, Mary thought. Sarah, refusing to remove her cloak or bonnet, sat erect on one of the more uncompromising leather-covered chairs. Tom hovered, ill at ease, in the background. The only tranquil person was David, who stood silently polite, but, Mary guessed, secretly entertained, on the hearth-rug. Once he cast a look of whimsical inquiry at his hostess.
"Did you put your trap up?" asked Mary.
"Yes, thank you. There was no groom in the yard, so Tom had to unyoke by himself."
"Oh. I'm sorry. You see, we only have one man to do the stable and the garden, and he happens to be in the garden this afternoon."
She tried to sound indifferent; but she was wracked with anxiety. Sarah was obviously annoyed about something. John might not be home for ever so long. Then, worst of all, the Bannisters were the last people whom she wished to encounter David Rossitur. They would disapprove of him dreadfully.
"Which way did you come?" she asked.
"We came from Hardrascliffe. I have been to see Ursula."
"Oh, any news?"
Sarah cast a decorous eye at David.
"None," she remarked discreetly.
Mary smiled. David already knew all about Ursula. For a stranger whom she had only known three days, he must have heard a good many queer things, she thought.
"I think it was most inconsiderate of Ursula to go into a Hardrascliffe nursing-home. It is a very long drive there."
"Perhaps she did not realize that so many of her relations would go to call on her."
"She knew we would do our duty. She had no right to make it so uncomfortable."
She may have thought she had a right to make it impossible, thought Mary. Here for once she agreed with Ursula. She tried to change the conversation. There were two topics she especially wished to avoid—Ursula and socialism. She tried to escape from one without encountering the other. If only she had had time to warn David not to air his views in company!
"Were the roads very bad?" she asked.
Sarah ignored her efforts.
"Naturally," she continued, determined to air her grievance, "she must realize that we take an interest in the only child in that generation of Robsons."
"Of course."
"And naturally she realizes that we are glad for her to take every precaution."
Mary resigned herself to the inevitable. At least this could hurt no one but herself.
"It will be a comfort to know that Middlethorpe at least won't pass in to the hands of strangers when Foster dies," continued Sarah.
Mary flushed. It wasn't fair, she thought, for Sarah to reproach her for something that was not her fault. It wasn't fair to remind her of one of the things she was always trying to forget.
"Aren't you a little premature?" she asked. "The child isn't born yet."
Tom who stood awkwardly looking out of the window coughed. David smiled his twisted smile.
Sarah drew herself up. "It will be," she said. "Ursula's not the girl to fail us in this kind of thing."
"No, I suppose not. I hear you've been having your house painted, Tom."
Sarah frowned. The house belonged to her, and she belonged to a people that treats ownership seriously.
"We intended to paint," she replied for her husband. "It is the year for painting. In fact when last we had it done I said to Tom, in 1913 we will have it done all over."
"But aren't you going to, then?"
Mary looked from Tom to Sarah. Painting was a safe topic. It afforded no possible opening for David. If David started to tell Sarah what he thought about capitalist farmers, it would be terrible. Strangely enough, she was thinking, "It will be terrible for Mr. Rossitur. He's never met anyone like Sarah before, I'm sure." She wanted to protect him from the rigidity of her sister-in-law's defiance to progress. She played for time.
"Why aren't you painting?"
"There are some things, Mary, which I never thought I should have to put up with. And one of them is the insolence of local work people. A Billings has painted houses for Robsons round Market Burton since my grandfather's days, and never but what there was straight dealing all round."
"Oh dear, have you been having trouble?" From the corner of her eye she could see that David had cocked his head at the mention of "work people," as a terrier pricks his ears when you mention rats.
"Trouble? I don't have trouble when there is any impertinence from my dependents, Mary. I dismiss them."
"Yes, but what happened?"
"They had begun last Tuesday to scrape the paint off the front porch. We were to have three coats of that good dark green. What I cannot stand are those vulgar fawns and reds that people seem so fond of now. We have always had green on the front door since I was a child."
"Did Billings want to paint you red, then?"
She was conscious of a sudden convulsive movement from David, temporarily overcome by the idea of anyone painting Mrs. Bannister red.
"Well. I'll say nothing of that, though at the time we may have had words." Sarah was eyeing David up and down, slowly and deliberately, a habit of hers when encountering strangers in a relative's drawing-room. If she had possessed alorgnette, Mary was sure she would have used it now. "I say nothing of the colour, but when I wanted them to stay for five minutes longer in the evening to finish off round the bell—you know what a mess it makes if you leave it overnight round the bell—would they stay? They said, if you please and by your leave, that their union wouldn't let them work overtime. Their union indeed! A pretty pass we're coming to if we have to be told what's right by a union! At my own front door too!"
Unions! Heavens, David's favourite opening! Three days had taught Mary the danger signals. She rushed into the breach.
"Oh, yes, how trying! Now, Cousin Sarah, wouldn't you like"—she was about to add—"to take your cloak off," but David forestalled her.
Turning from the fire-place towards Sarah he regarded her with his most charming smile, and running one thin hand through his hair—a favourite gesture, he began, with dangerous calm:
"But, Mrs. Bannister, don't you think there is something to be said for the unions?"
"Now, young man, if you've anything to say for the unions you'd better say it. You may be very clever. I'm sure I don't know. All you young folk to-day think you know everything. I heard tell you were a socialist or something at Hardrascliffe to-day——"
"So that's why she called," thought Mary. "Ursula told her, and she wanted to see what he was like."
"And you may have written books, and met a lot of people and done a deal of talking, but when you come up against Sarah Jane Bannister you'll find yourself in a very different situation."
Well, of course, that settled it. There was no longer any hope of leading Sarah gently away to remove her bonnet. An appealing glance at David met with no response. Mary knew she might as well ask the wind to stop blowing as ask David to stop talking once Sarah had practically defied him to do his worst, her slow stare sweeping him from his red head to his shabbily shod feet.
"At least he's a gentleman," thought Mary. "Thank Heaven she can't help seeing that!"
And David spoke. For ten minutes not even Sarah was able to utter a word. Standing on the hearth-rug as though it were a public platform, his thin arms jerking with electric energy, he addressed them. At first he argued quietly enough about the disadvantages of capitalism, the need for co-operation among the lower classes, the slow growth of organized resistance. Slowly his passion rose. "You can say what you like," he cried. "You can shut yourself up in snug little houses locked up against cold and change and misery, and you can say to yourselves 'No change will come. We and our fathers have seen the world as it is. Only fools meant it to be, or think it can be any different. We, the middle class, the half-cultured, half-emancipated half-refined middle class, with our safe bank balance, and vested interests and comfortable prosperity, we are the salt of the earth. We are in power—we are happy. Fools and extremists may rage and storm outside our gates. We are safe, fortified by the solidarity of human conservatism, battening on the fruits of human folly.' But I tell you that your gates are shut, not to shield you from the change, but to blind your eyes to it, till it is too late to see. The nineteenth century has gone, and though you and your class, unfortunately for England, have survived it, you can't carry your century with you to the grave."
Sarah blinked at him with wide, indignant eyes.
"You stand for an ideal that is, thank Heaven, outworn. The new generation knocks at your door—a generation of men, independent, not patronized, enjoying their own rights, not the philanthropy of their exploiters, respecting themselves, not their so-called superiors. You can't stop them, but they may stop you. You can't shut them out, but they may shut you in." He swept his hand round with a dramatic gesture, that brought it into unpremeditated contact with one of Mary's china jugs on the mantelpiece. A tragedy was narrowly averted. "I tell you that you are locking yourselves up in a house of circumstance which has been condemned as unsafe at the tribunal of progress. You've got to move, and if you can't see that, there are those waiting who will thrust realization upon you when it's too late to find a remedy."
He paused, out of breath, looking at Sarah with pleading eyes. He really was sorry for her, as he was sorry for every one who could not see his point of view. He wanted to help her, to counteract by his eloquence opinions that were the deposit of generations. He was still young enough to believe habit to be amenable to reason.
Mary, horror-stricken, bent forward.
"Oh, Mr. Rossitur," she begged below her breath, "do stop, please."
Sarah saw the action, though she could not hear the words. She rose with dignity.
"Thank you, Mary," she said, "for this most unusual form of entertainment. If John is not coming back soon, I think I'll be getting home. Come, Tom."
Mary stood up, her hands full of linen sheets, her wide eyes troubled.
David saw that his conduct had in some way been disastrous. He came forward.
"Mrs. Bannister, I'm awfully sorry. I shouldn't have ranted at you like that. It was awfully bad manners. I had no right—only it's my chief thought night and day and it makes me forget myself. If you'd rather not stay in the same room as me after what I've said, I'll go. Mrs. Robson only took me in out of kindness because I had a cold——"
"It's quite unnecessary to apologize, young man. I assure you it makes no difference to me what you say or whether you stay or go. I'm sure my sister-in-law chooses her guests without reference to the feelings of her relations, and far be it from me to drive anyone away." She turned to Mary. "I only wanted to give John a message from Tobias Robson."
"Well, won't I do? Or won't you stay? John's sure not to be long."
"Thank you. I really do not think I shall wait. I meant to get home before it came quite dark." Seeing David's miserable face she added, "Don't flatter yourself that I'm leaving on your account, young man. Let me tell you I've read all that sort of stuff before in the papers my maids leave about over Sunday. And, mark my words, you and your like nearly always end in prison and a lot of fuss over nothing."
During the drive home Tom tried to pacify her.
"I'm sure it was rare nonsense that young fellow talked. But they don't mean half what they say, those chaps. It just comes out with a gush and there's no stopping it—like our old pump when the washer's gone."
Sarah snorted. "It's pretty clear that Anderby Wold's no place for John. When Ursula told me to-day that Mary had gone and picked up a sort of socialist tramp on the road I can't say I was surprised. Mary would do anything. I always knew she'd make a fool of herself one day. What he says to me is neither here nor there, though of all the impertinence I'm sure I never heard such. But what I say is, mark my words, if Mary takes up with folk like that, before long there'll be trouble at Anderby Wold and John will be the one to suffer!"
Meanwhile in the dining-room at Anderby David, scarlet with mortification, was standing among piles of linen.
"Oh, I can't tell you how sorry I am. Please forgive me! I can't think why I did it. It was insufferable. I——"
But Mary, who had lived for ten years with one of those ninety and nine just persons who had no need for repentance, found it sweet to forgive.
"Please don't be upset. It didn't matter. I'm sure it must do Sarah good to have a mental shaking up now and then."
David was running his hands through his hair and changing colour from grey to scarlet.
"You've been ripping to me—ripping. And I've been nothing but a nuisance. I've upset this house for three days and now I go and am rude to your guests. And I'm not going to stop at that either," he groaned. "I've got to go out now into the village and tell your labourers that they're ill-treated when they're not, and unsettle things that are quite happy as they are. And there's no knowing where it'll all end."
There wasn't. David did not know. Mary did not know. They looked at each other across the table, then David sat down and buried his face in his hands, half laughing, half miserable.
It really was funny. The whole thing was funny. Mrs. Bannister's frigid face and the nodding osprey in her bonnet, and her nervous little husband clucking like a distracted hen in the background. And David, he was funny too, swooping down out of the darkness upon Mrs. Robson, and cramming his social ideas into Sarah Bannister's inhospitable brain, or lack of brain—anyone so hopelessly enslaved to tradition must lack brain. He could see again his lean arms swaying and the tuft of hair rising with enthusiasm from his forehead.
It was always rather a trial to David that he could not help seeing how funny he had been when it was too late to alter things.
"You're not going to be sick again, are you?" asked Mary anxiously.
"No, I don't think so. I'm not feeling ill now. Only penitent. I'm not even surprised. I never am where I've done anything outrageous because I'm always doing it. I talked rather like that one night at Oxford when my father came as the 'distinguished visitor' to the Union. He's a Tory M.P. you know. And after that we had a scene." David's eyes twinkled at the recollection, though he found it sobering too, for he was as fond of his father as he could be of anyone so alien to his ideal of life. "And he said that if this was what I was learning at Oxford I should be better away from it. And he'd only pay my fees if I'd promise to stop propagating scurrilous politics. And of course I couldn't, and there we were—and here I am. I can't think why I'm talking like this about myself. You must be sick of the sight and sound of me."
"I'm not. You're very young. You can't help it."
"So you see I must leave you and to-night. I'd clear out of the village if I could, only it's the very centre of this part of the wolds and I've got to start somewhere—and even if I didn't some one else would."
"It's all right, Mr. Rossitur. You can't help it. You're made like that. After all I suppose it's far better to be carried away by your ideas than to have no ideas at all."
It was just then that John came in. He was in a hearty mood.
"Going, Rossitur? Now why ever?"
Preaching socialism was a fool's job. He'd far better give it up and take on with something else. Of course if he felt he had to do it, there was an end on't, but he wouldn't get much change out of Anderby. He'd a deal better stay there and amuse Mary, who must be dull sometimes. She was looking better already since he had come.
But David went.
Mary, drawing the curtains that night, thought of David and wondered if they had aired his sheets at theFlying Fox. His cold wasn't nearly well.
Poor boy! He cared so intensely for such silly things. Life was never kind to people who cared as much as that.
If it was land they cared for, it denied them heirs; if it was ideas, it proved them false.
Of course some people never wanted anything very much. Like John. She could never imagine John eating out his heart in longing for the unattainable. He was safe enough, securely fenced in behind his limitations. But David—David who believed in such stupid things that were bound to let him down one day, David who was such a child, who needed so much some one who could help him when the inevitable hour of disappointment came—what was one to do for him?
If John had been like David she would have watched and protected him. If John had been like David ... If David had been John....
She snapped the fastener down decisively.
There were some things that it was wiser not to think about.