"He that has had a little tiny wit,—With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,—Must make content with his fortunes fit,For the rain it raineth every day."
"He that has had a little tiny wit,—With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,—Must make content with his fortunes fit,For the rain it raineth every day."
"He that has had a little tiny wit,—
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,—
Must make content with his fortunes fit,
For the rain it raineth every day."
The 29th was little less depressing, from Samuel Taylor Coleridge:—
"He prayeth best who loveth bestAll creatures great and small."
"He prayeth best who loveth bestAll creatures great and small."
"He prayeth best who loveth best
All creatures great and small."
This would never do. I bent double over the volume, turned back hastily three or four leaves, and scrawled in my name under August 25th on a leaf that bore the quotation:—
"Fie on't; ah, fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,That grows to seed; things rank and gross in naturePossess it merely. That it should come to this!"
"Fie on't; ah, fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,That grows to seed; things rank and gross in naturePossess it merely. That it should come to this!"
"Fie on't; ah, fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!"
and beneath the quotation, the signature of Josephine Mildred Spratte.
"Thank you,thankyou, she will be overjoyed," blushed thefair-haired lady. A sudden hunger for solitude seized upon me. I rose hastily, conscious for the first time of a headache, caused, no doubt, by the expensive and fumey perfumes in the air. Threading my way between the trains and flounces and trouser-legs around me, at last my adieux were over. I was in the porch—in the carriage. The breezes of heaven were on my cheek. My blessed parlourmaid was once more installed beside me. Yet even now the Pollacke faces were still flocking in my mind. The outside world was very sluggishly welling in. Looking up so long had stiffened my neck. I fixed my eyes on the crested back buttons of Lady Pollacke's stiff-looking coachman, and committed myself to my thoughts.
It was to a Miss M., with one of her own handkerchiefs laid over her brows, and sprinkled with vinegar and lavender water, that Mrs Bowater brought in supper that evening. We had one of our broken talks together, none the less. But she persisted in desultory accounts of Fanny's ailments in her infancy; and I had to drag in Brunswick House by myself. At which she poked the fire and was mum. It was unamiable of her. I longed to share my little difficulties and triumphs. Surely she was showing rather too much of that discrimination which Lady Pollacke had recommended.
She snorted at Mr Pellew, she snorted at my friendly parlourmaid and even at Mrs Monnerie. Even when I repeated for her ear alone my nursery passage fromThe Observing Eye, her only comment was that to judge fromsomefine folk she knew of, there was no doubt at all that God watched closely over the pleasures of the meanest of His creatures, but as for their doing His will, she hadn't much noticed it.
To my sigh of regret that Fanny had not been at home to accompany me, she retorted with yet another onslaught on the fire, and the apophthegm, that the world would be a far better place if people kept themselvestothemselves.
"But Mrs Bowater," I argued fretfully, "if I did that, I should just—distil, as you might say, quite away. Besides, Fanny would have been far, far the—the gracefullest person there. Mrs Monnerie would have taken a fancy toher, now, if you like."
Mrs Bowater drew in her lips and rubbed her nose. "God forbid," she said.
But it was her indifference to the impression that I myself had made on Mrs Monnerie that nettled me the most. "Why, then, whoisLord B.?" I inquired impatiently at last, pushing back the bandage that had fallen over my eyes.
"From what I've heard of Lord B.," said Mrs Bowater shortly, "he was a gentleman of whom the less heard of's the better."
"But surely," I protested, "that isn't Mrs Monnerie's fault any more than Fanny's being so lovely—I mean, than I being a midget was my father's fault? Anyhow," I hurried on, "Mrs Monnerie says I look pale, and must go to the sea."
Mrs Bowater was still kneeling by the fire, just as Fanny used to kneel. And, like Fanny, when one most expected an answer, she remained silent; though, unlike Fanny, it seemed to be not because she was dreaming of something else. How shall I express it?—there fell a kind of loneliness between us. The severe face made no sign.
"Would you—would you miss me?" some silly self within piped out pathetically.
"Why, for the matter of that," was her sardonic reply, "there's not very much of you to miss."
I rose from my bed, flung down the bandage, and ran down my little staircase. "Oh, Mrs Bowater," I said, burying my face in her camphory skirts, "be kind to me; be kind to me! I've nobody but you."
The magnanimous creature stroked my vinegar-sodden hair with the tips of her horny fingers. "Why there, miss. I meant no harm. Isn't all the gentry and nobility just gaping to snatch you up? You won't want your old Mrs Bowater very long. What's more, you mustn't get carried away by yourself. You never know where that journey ends. If sea it is, sea it must be. Though, Lord preserve us, the word's no favourite of mine."
"But suppose, suppose, Mrs Bowater," I cried, starting up and smiling enrapturedly into her face, "suppose we could go together!"
"That," said she, with a look of astonishing benignity, "would be just what I was being led to suppose was the heighth of the impossible."
At which, of course, we at once began discussing ways and means. But, delicious though this prospect seemed, I determinedthat nothing should persuade me to go unless all hope of Fanny's coming home proved vain. Naturally, from Fanny memory darted to Wanderslore. I laughed up at my landlady, holding her finger, and suggested demurely that we should go off together on the morrow to see if my stranger were true to his word.
"We have kept him a very long time, and if, as you seem to think, Mrs Monnerie isn't such a wonderful lady, you may decide that after allheis a gentleman."
She enjoyed my little joke, was pleased that I had been won over, but refused to accept my reasoning, though the topic itself was after her heart.
"The point is, miss, not whether your last conquest is a wonderful lady, or a grand lady, or even a perfect lady for the matter of that, but, well, alady. It's that's the kind in my experience that comes nearest to being as uncommon a sort as any sort of a good woman."
This was a wholly unexpected vista for me, and I peered down its smooth, green, aristocratic sward with some little awe.
"As for the young fellow who made himself so free in his manners," she went on placidly, so that I had to scamper back to pick her up again, "I have no doubt seeing will be believing."
"But what is the story of Wanderslore?" I pressed her none too honestly.
The story—and this time Mrs Bowater poured it out quite freely—was precisely what I had been told already, but with the addition that the young woman who had hanged herself in one of its attics had done so for jealousy.
"Jealousy! But of whom?" I inquired.
"Her husband's, not her own: driven wild by his."
"You really mean," I persisted, "that she couldn't endure to live any longer because her husband loved her so much that he couldn't bear anybody else to love her too?"
"In some such measure," replied Mrs Bowater, "though I don't say he didn't help the other way round. But she was a wild, scattering creature. It was just her way. The less she cared, the more they flocked. She couldn'tcollectherself, and say, 'Here I am; who are you?' so to speak. Ah, miss, it's a sickly and dangerous thing to be too much admired."
"But you said 'scattering': was she mad a little?"
"No. Peculiar, perhaps, with her sidelong, startled look. A lovelier I've never seen."
"You've seen her!"
"Thirty years ago, perhaps. Aliveanddead."
"Oh, Mrs Bowater, poor thing, poor thing."
"That you may well say, for lovely in the latter finding she was not."
My eyes were fixed on the fire, but the picture conjured up was dark even amidst the red-hot coals. "And he? did he die too? At least his jealousy was broken away."
"And I'm not so sure of that," said Mrs Bowater. "It's like the men to go on wanting, even when it comes to scrabbling at a grave. And there's a trashy sort of creature, though well-set-up enough from the outside, that a spark will put in a blaze. I've no doubt he was that kind."
I thought of my own sparks, but questioned on: "Then there's nothing else but—but her ghost there now?"
"Lor,ghosts, miss, it's an hour, I see, when bed's the proper place for you and me. I look to be scared by that kind of gentry when they come true."
"You don't believe, then, inDestroyers, Mrs Bowater?"
"Miss, it's those queer books you are reading," was the evasive reply. "'Destroyers'! Why, wasn't it cruel enough to drive that poor feather-brained creature into a noose!"
Candle and I and drowsing cinders kept company until St Peter's bell had told only the sleepless that midnight was over the world. It seemed to my young mind that there was not a day, scarcely an hour, I lived, but that Life was unfolding itself in ever new and ravishing disguises. I had not begun to be in the least tired or afraid of it. Smallest of bubbles I might be, tossing on the great waters, but I reflected the universe. What need of courage when no danger was apparent? Surely one need not mind being different if that difference added to one's share in the wonderful Banquet. Even Wanderslore's story was only of what happened when the tangle was so harshly knotted that no mortal fingers could unravel it. And though my own private existence now had Mrs Monnerie—and all thatshemight do and mean and be—to cope with, as well as my stranger who was yet another queer story and as yet mine alone, these complications were enticing. One must just keep control ofthem; that was all. At which I thought a little unsteadily of Fanny's "pin," and remembered that that pin was helping to keep her and Mr Crimble from being torn apart.
He had seemed so peering a guest at Brunswick House. Mrs Monnerie hadn't so much as glanced at him when he had commented on Mrs Browning's poems. There seemed to be a shadow over whatever he did. It was as though there could be a sadness in the very coursing of one's blood. How thankful I felt that mine hadn't been a really flattering reply to Mrs Monnerie's question. She was extremely arrogant, even for a younger daughter of a lord. On the other hand, though, of course, the sheer novelty of me had had something to do with it, she had certainly singled me out afterwards to know what Ithought, and in thoughts there is no particular size, only effusiveness—no,piercingness. I smiled to myself at the word, pitied my godmother for living so sequestered a life, and wondered how and why it was that my father and mother had so obstinately shut me away from the world. If only Fanny was coming home—what a difference she would find in her fretful Midge! And with that, I discovered that my feet were cold and that my headache had ached itself away.
There had been no need to reserve the small hours for these ruminations. The next few days were wet and windy; every glance at the streaming panes cast my mind into a sort of vacancy. The wind trumpeted smoke into the room; I could fix my mind on nothing. Then the weather faired. There came "a red sky at night," and Spica flashing secrets to me across the darkness; and that supper-time I referred as casually as possible to Mr Anon.
"I suppose onemustkeep one's promises, Mrs Bowater, even to a stranger. Would half-past six be too early to keep mine, do you think? Would it look too—forward? Of course he may have forgotten all about me by this time."
Mrs Bowater eyed me like an owl as I bent my cheeks over my bowl of bread and milk, and proceeded to preach me yet another little sermon on the ways of the world. Nevertheless, the next morning saw us setting out together in the crisp, sparkling air to my tryst, with the tacit understanding that she accompanied me rather in the cause of propriety than romance.
Owing, I fancy, to a bunion, she was so leisurely a walker that it was I who must set my pace to hers. But the day promised to be warm, and we could take our ease. As we wandered on among the early flowers and bright, green grass, and under the beeches, a mildness lightened into her face. Over her long features lay a vacant yet happy smile, of which she seemed to be unaware. This set me off thinking in the old, old fashion; comparing my lot with that of ordinary human beings. How fortunate I was. If only she could have seen the lowlier plants as I could—scarcely looking down on any, and of the same stature as some among the taller of them, so that the air around me was dyed and illumined with their clear colours, and burthened with their breath.
The least and humblest of them—not merely crisp-edged lichen,speckle-seed whitlow-grass and hyssop in the wall—are so close to earth, the wonder, indeed, is that common-sized people ever see them at all. They must, at any rate, I thought, commit themselves to their stomachs, or go down on their knees to see themproperly. So, on we went, Mrs Bowater and I, she pursuing her private musings, and I mine.
I smiled to myself at remembrance of Dr Phelps and his blushes. After all, if humanity should "dwindle into a delicate littleness," it would make a good deal more difference than he had supposed. What a destruction would ensue, among all the lesser creatures of the earth, the squirrels, moles, voles, hedgehogs, and the birds, not to mention the bees and hornets.Theywould be the enemies then—the traps and poisons and the nets! No more billowy cornfields a good yard high, no more fine nine-foot hedges flinging their blossoms into the air. And all the long-legged, "doubled," bloated garden flowers, gone clean out of favour. It would be a little world, would it be a happier? The dwarfed Mrs Bowaters, Dr Phelpses, Miss Bullaces, Lady Pollackes.
But there was little chance of such an eventuality—at least in my lifetime. It was far likelier that the Miss M.'s of the world would continue to be a by-play. Yet, as I glanced up at my companion, and called to mind other such "Lapland Giants" of mine, I can truthfully avouch that I did not much envy their extra inches. So much more thin-skinned surface to be kept warm and unscratched. The cumbersome bones, the curious distance from foot and fingertip to brain, too; and those quarts and quarts of blood. I shuddered. It was little short of a miracle that they escaped continual injury; and what an extended body in which to die.
On the other hand, what real loss was mine—with so much to my advantage? These great spreading beech-trees were no less shady and companionable to me than to them. Nor, thought I, could moon or sun or star or ocean or mountain be any the less silvery, hot, lustrous, and remote, forlorn in beauty, or vast in strangeness, one way or the other, than they are to ordinary people. Could there be any doubt at all, too, that men had always coveted to make much finer and more delicate things than their clumsiness allowed?
What fantastic creatures they were!—with their vast mansions,pyramids, palaces, scores of sizes too large either for carcass or mind. Their Satan a monster on whose wrist the vulture of the Andes could perch like an aphis on my thumb; yet their Death but skeleton-high, and their Saviour of such a stature that wellnigh without stooping He could have laid His fingers on my head.
Time's sands had been trickling fast while I thought these small thoughts that bright spring daybreak. So, though we had loitered on our way, it seemed we had reached our destination on the wings of the morning. Alas, Mrs Bowater's smile can have been only skin-deep; for, when, lifting my eyes from the ground I stopped all of a sudden, spread out my hands, and cried in triumph, "There! Mrs Bowater"; she hardly shared my rapture.
She disapproved of the vast, blank "barn of a place," with its blackshot windows and cold chimneys. The waste and ruination of the garden displeased her so much that I grew a little ashamed of my barbarism.
"It's all going to wrack and ruin," she exclaimed, snorting at my stone summer-house no less emphatically than she had snorted at Mrs Monnerie. "Not a walkable walk, nor the trace of a border; and was there ever such a miggle-maggle of weeds! A fine house in its prime, miss, but now, money melting away like butter in the sun."
"But," said I, standing before her in the lovely light amid the dwelling dewdrops, "really and truly, Mrs Bowater, it is only going back to its own again. What you call a miggle-maggle is what these things were made to be. They are growing up now by themselves; and if you could look as close as I can, you'd see they breathe only what each can spare. They are just racing along to live as wildly as they possibly can. It's the tameness," I expostulated, flinging back my hood, "that would be shocking tome."
Mrs Bowater looked down at me, listening to this high-piped recitative with an unusual inquisitiveness.
"Well, that's as it may be," she retorted, "but whatI'masking is, Where's the young fellow? He don't seem to be as punctual as they were when I was a girl."
My own eyes had long been busy, but as yet in vain.
"I did not come particularly to see him," was my airy reply. "Besides, we said no time—anyfine day. Shall we sit down?"
With a secretive smile Mrs Bowater spread a square of waterproof sheeting over a flat stone that had fallen out of the coping of the house, unfolded a newspaper over the grass, and we began our breakfast. Neither of us betrayed much appetite for it; she, I fancy, having already fortified herself out of her brown teapot before leaving the house, and I because of the odour of india-rubber and newspaper—an odour presently intensified by the moisture and the sun. Paying no heed to my fastidious nibblings, she munched on reflectively, while I grew more and more ill at ease, first because the "young fellow" was almost visibly sinking in my old friend's esteem, and next because her cloth-booted foot lay within a few inches of the stone beneath which was hidden Fanny's letter.
"It'll do you good, the sea," she remarked presently, after sweeping yet one more comprehensive glance around her, "and we can only hope Mrs Monnerie will be as good as her word. A spot like this—trespassing or not—is good for neither man nor beast. And when you are young the more human company you get, with proper supervising, the better."
"Wereyouhappy as a girl, Mrs Bowater?" I inquired after a pause.
Our voices went up and up into the still, mild air. "Happy enough—for my own good," she said, neatly screwing up her remaining biscuits in their paper bag. "In my days children were brought up. Taught to make themselves useful. I would as soon have lifted a hand against my mother as answer her back."
"You mean she—she whipped you?"
"If need be," my landlady replied complacently, folding her thread-gloved hands on her lap and contemplating the shiny toecaps of her boots. "She had large hands, my mother; and plenty of temper kept well under control. What's more, if life isn't a continual punishment for the stoopidities and wickedness of others, not to mention ourselves, then it must be even a darker story than was ever told me."
"And was, Mrs Bowater, Mr Bowater your—your first——" I looked steadily at a flower at my foot in case she might be affected at so intimate a question, and not wish me to see her face.
"If Mr Bowater was not the first," was her easy response, "he may well live to boast of being the last. Which is neither here nor there, for we may be sure he's enjoying attentive nursing.Broken bones are soon mended. It's when things are disjointed from the root that the wrench comes."
The storm-felled bole lay there beside us, as if for picture to her parable. I began to think rather more earnestly than I had intended to that morning. In my present state of conscience, it was never an easy matter to decide whether Mrs Bowater's comments on life referred openly to things in general or covertly to me in particular. How fortunate that the scent of Fanny's notepaper was not potent enough to escape from its tomb. And whether or not, speech seemed less dangerous than silence.
"It seems to me, Mrs Bowater," I began rather hastily, "at least to judge from my own father and mother, that a mandependsvery much on a woman. Men don't seem to grow up in the same way, though I suppose they are practical enough as men."
"If it were one female," was the reply, "there'd be less to be found fault with. That poor young creature over there took her life for no better reason, even though the reason was turned inside out as you may say."
I met the frightful, louring stare of the house. "What was her name?" I whispered—but into nothing, for, bolt upright as she was, Mrs Bowater had shut her eyes, as if in preparation for a nap.
A thread-like tangle of song netted the air. We were, indeed, trespassers. I darted my glance this way and that, in and out of the pale green whispering shadows in this wild haunt. Then, realizing by some faint stir in my mind that the stiff, still, shut-away figure beside me was only feigning to be asleep, I opened the rain-warped covers of mySense and Sensibility, and began plotting how to be rid of her for a while, so that my solitude might summon my stranger, and I might recover Fanny's letter.
Then once more I knew. Raising my eyes, I looked straight across at him, scowling there beneath his stunted thorn in a drift of flowers like fool's parsley. He was making signs, too, with his hands. I watched him pensively, in secret amusement. Then swifter than Daphne into her laurel, instantaneouslyhevanished, andIbecame aware that its black eyes were staringout from the long face of the motionless figure beside me, as might an owl's into an aviary.
"Did you hear a bird, Mrs Bowater?" I inquired innocently.
"When I was a girl," said the mouth, "sparrowhawks were a common sight, but I never heard one sing."
"But isn't a sparrowhawk quite a large bird?"
"We must judge," said Mrs Bowater, "not by the size, but the kind. Elseways, miss, your old friend might have been found sleeping, as they say, at her box." She pretended to yawn, gathered her legs under her, and rose up and up. "I'll be taking a little walk round. And you shall tell your young acquaintance that I mean him no harm, but that I mean you the reverse; and if show himself he won't, well, here I sit till the Day of Judgment."
An angry speech curled the tip of my tongue. But the simple-faced flowers were slowly making obeisance to Mrs Bowater's black, dragging skirts, and when she was nearly out of sight I sallied out to confront my stranger.
His face was black with rage and contempt. "Thatcontaminating scarecrow; who's she?" was his greeting. "The days I have waited!"
The resentment that had simmered up in me on his behalf now boiled over against him. I looked at him in silence.
"That contaminating scarecrow, as you are pleased to call her, is the best friend I have in the world. I need no other."
"And I," he said harshly, "have no friend inthisworld, and need you."
"Then," said I, "you have lost your opportunity. Do you suppose I am a child—to be insulted and domineered over only because I am alone? Possibly," and my lips so trembled that I could hardly frame the words, "it isyourface I shall see when I think of those windows."
I was speaking wiselier than I knew. He turned sharply, and by a play of light it seemed that at one of them there stood looking down on us out of the distance a shape that so had watched for ever, leering darkly out of the void. And there awoke in me the sense of this stranger's extremity of solitude, of his unhappy disguise, of his animal-like patience.
"Why," I said, "Mrs Bowater! You might far rather bethankingher for—for——"
"Curses on her," he choked, turning away. "There was everything to tell you."
"What everything?"
"Call her back now," he muttered furiously.
"That," I said smoothly, "is easily done. But, forgive me, I don't know your name."
His eyes wandered over the turf beneath me, mounted slowly up, my foot to my head, and looked into mine. In their intense regard I seemed to be but a bubble floating away into the air. I shivered, and turned my back on him, without waiting for an answer. He followed me as quietly as a sheep.
Mrs Bowater had already come sauntering back to our breakfast table, and with gaze impassively fixed on the horizon, pretended not to be aware of our approach.
I smiled back at my companion as we drew near. "This, Mrs Bowater," said I, "is Mr Anon. Would you please present him to Miss Thomasina of Bedlam?"
For a moment or two they stood facing one another, just as I have seen two insects stand—motionless, regardful, exchanging each other's presences. Then, after one lightning snap at him from her eye, she rose to my bait like a fish. "A pleasant morning, sir," she remarked affably, though in her Bible voice. "My young lady and I were enjoying the spring air."
Back to memory comes the darkness of a theatre, and Mrs Monnerie breathing and sighing beside me, and there on the limelit green of the stage lolls ass-headed Bottom the Weaver cracking jokes with the Fairies.
My Oberon addressed Mrs Bowater as urbanely as St George must have addressed the Dragon—or any other customary monster.
He seemed to pass muster, none the less, for she rose, patted her sheet, pushed forward her bonnet on to her rounded temples, and bade him a composed good-morning. She would be awaiting me, she announced, in an hour's time under my beech tree.
"I think, perhaps,two, Mrs Bowater," I said firmly.
She gave me a look—all our long slow evening firelit talks together seemed to be swimming in its smile; and withdrew.
The air eddied into quiet again. The stretched-out blue of the sky was as bland and solitary as if a seraph sat dreaming on its Eastern outskirts. Mr Anon and I seated ourselves three or four feet apart, and I watched the sidelong face, sodelicately carved against the green; yet sunken in so sullen a stare.
Standing up on his feet against the background of Mrs Bowater's ink-black flounces, with his rather humped shoulders and straight hair, he had looked an eccentric, and, even to my view, a stunted figure. Now the whole scene around us seemed to be sorting itself into a different proportion before my eyes. He it was who was become the unit of space, the yard-stick of the universe. The flowers, their roots glintily netted with spider-webs, nodded serenely over his long hands. A peacock butterfly with folded colours sipped of the sunshine on a tuft nearly at evens with his cheek. The very birds sang to his size, and every rift between the woodlands awaited the cuckoo. Only his clothes were grotesque, but less so than in my parlour Mr Crimble's skirts, or even Lady Pollacke's treacherous bonnet.
I folded my white silk gloves into a ball. A wren began tweeting in a bush near by. "I am going away soon," I said, "to the sea."
The wren glided away out of sight amongst its thorns. I knew by his sudden stillness that this had been unwelcome news. "That will be very pleasant for me, won't it?" I said.
"The sea?" he returned coldly, with averted head. "Well,Iam bound still further."
The reply fretted me. I wanted bare facts just then. "Why are you so angry? What is your name? And where do you live?" It was my turn to ask questions, and I popped them out as if from aLittle by Little.
And then, with his queer, croaking, yet captivating voice, he broke into a long, low monologue. He gave me his name—and "Mr Anon" describes him no worse. He waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the house he lived in. But instead of apologizing for his ill-temper, he accused me of deceiving and humiliating him; of being, so I gathered, a toy of my landlady's, of betraying and soiling myself.
Why all this wild stuff only seemed to flatter me, I cannot say. I listened and laughed, pressing flat with both hands the sorry covers of my book, and laughed also low in my heart.
"Oh, contempt!" he cried. "I am used to that."
The words curdled on his tongue as he expressed his loathing of poor Mrs Bowater and her kind—mere Humanity—that ate and drank in musty houses stuck up out of the happy earthlike warts on the skin, that battened on meat, stalked its puddled streets and vile, stifling towns, spread its rank odours on the air, increased and multiplied. Monstrous in shape, automatic, blinded by habit, abandoned by instinct, monkey-like, degraded!
What an unjust tirade! He barked it all out at me as if the blame were mine; as ifIhad nibbled the Apple. I turned my face away, smiling, but listening. Did I realize, he asked me, what a divine fortune it was to be so little, and in this to be All. On and on he raved: I breathed air "a dewdrop could chill"; I was as near lovely naught made visible as the passing of a flower; the mere mattering of a dream. And when I died my body would be but a perishing flake of manna, and my bones....
"Yes, a wren's picking," I rudely interrupted. "And what of my soul, please? Why, you talk like—like a poet. Besides, you tell me nothing new. I was thinking all that and more on my way here with my landlady. What hassizeto do with it? Why, when I thought of my mother after she was dead, and peered down in the place of my imagination into her grave, I saw her spirit—young, younger than I, and bodiless, and infinitely more beautiful even than she had been in my dreams, floating up out of it, free, sweet, and happy, like a flame—though shadowy. Besides, I don't see how you can helppityingmen and women. They seem to fly to one another for company; and half their comfort is in their numbers."
Never in all my life had I put my thoughts into words like this; and he—a stranger.
There fell a silence between us. The natural quietude of the garden was softly settling down and down like infinitesimal grains of sand in a pool of water. It had forgotten that humans were harbouring in its solitude. And still he maintained that his words were not untrue, that he knew mankind better than I, that to fall into their ways and follow their opinions and strivings was to deafen my ears, and seal up my eyes, and lose my very self. "The Self everywhere," he said.
And he told me, whether in time or space I know not, of a country whose people were of my stature and slenderness. This was a land, he said, walled in by enormous, ice-capped mountains couching the furnace of the rising sun, and yet set at the ocean's edge. Its sand-dunes ring like dulcimers in the heat. Its valleysof swift rivers were of a green so pale and vivid and so flower-encrusted that an English—even a Kentish—spring is but a coarse and rustic prettiness by comparison. Vine and orange and trees of outlandish names gave their fruits there; yet there also willows swept the winds, and palms spiked the blue with their fans, and the cactus flourished with the tamarisk. Geese, of dark green and snow, were on its inland waters, and a bird clocked the hours of the night, and the conformation of its stars would be strange to my eyes. And such was the lowliness and simplicity of this people's habitations that the most powerful sea-glass, turned upon and searching their secret haunts from a ship becalmed on the ocean, would spy out nothing—nothing there, only world wilderness of snow-dazzling mountain-top and green valley, ravine, and condor, and what might just be Nature's small ingenuities—mounds and traceries. Yet within all was quiet loveliness, feet light as goldfinches', silks fine as gossamer, voices as of a watery beading of silence. And their life being all happiness they have no name for their God. And it seems—according to Mr Anon's account of it—that such was the ancient history of the world, that Man was so once, but had swollen to his present shape, of which he had lost the true spring and mastery, and had sunk deeper and deeper into a kind of oblivion of the mind, suffocating his past, and now all but insane with pride in his own monstrosities.
All this my new friend (and yet not soverynew, it seemed)—all this he poured out to me in the garden, though I can only faintly recall his actual words, as if, like Moses, I had smitten the rock. And I listened weariedly, with little hope of understanding him, and with the suspicion that it was nothing but a Tom o' Bedlam's dream he was recounting. Yet, as if in disproof of my own incredulity, there sat I; and over the trees yonder stood Mrs Bowater's ugly little brick house; and beyond that, the stony, tapering spire of St Peter's, the High Street. And I looked at him without any affection in my thoughts, and wished fretfully to be gone. What use to be lulled with fantastic pictures of Paradise when I might have died of fear and hatred on Mrs Stocks's doorstep; when everything I said was "touching, touching"?
"Well," I mockingly interposed at last, "the farthing dip's guttering. And what if it's all true, and thereissuch a place,what then? How am I going to get there, pray? Would you like to mummy me and shut me up in a box andcarryme there, as they used to in Basman? Years and years ago my father told me of the pygmy men and horses—the same size as yours, I suppose—who lived in caves on the banks of the Nile. But I doubt if I believed in them much, even then. I am not so ignorant as all that."
The life died out of his face, just as, because of a cloud carried up into the sky, the sunlight at that moment fled from Wanderslore. He coughed, leaning on his hands, and looked in a scared, empty, hunted fashion to right and left. "Only that you might stay," he scarcely whispered. " ... I love you."
Instinctively I drew away, lips dry, and heart numbly, heavily beating. An influence more secret than the shadow of a cloud had suddenly chilled and darkened the garden and robbed it of its beauty. I shrank into myself, cold and awkward, and did not dare even to glance at my companion.
"A fine thing," was all I found to reply, "for a toy, as you call me. I don't know what you mean."
Miserable enough that memory is when I think of what came after, for now my only dread was that he might really be out of his wits, and might make my beloved, solitary garden for ever hateful to me. I drew close my cape, and lifted my book.
"There is a private letter of mine hidden under that stone," I said coldly. "Will you please be so good as to fetch it out for me? And you are never, never to say that again."
The poor thing looked so desperately ill and forsaken with his humped shoulders—and that fine, fantastic story still ringing in my ears!—that a kind of sadness came over me, and I hid my face in my hands.
"The letter is not there," said his voice.
I drew my fingers from my face, and glared at him from between them; then scrambled to my feet. Out swam the sun again, drenching all around us with its light and heat.
"Next time I come," I shrilled at him, "the letterwillbe there. The thief will have put it back again! Oh, how unhappy you have made me!"
I stumbled off, feeling smaller and smaller as I went, more and more ridiculous and insignificant, as indeed I must have appeared; for distance can hardly lend enchantment to any view ofme. Not one single look did I cast behind; but now that my feelings began to quiet down, I began also to think. And a pretty muddle of mind it was. What had enraged and embittered me so? If only I had remained calm. Was it that my pride, my vanity, had in some vague fashion been a punishment of him for Fanny's unkindness to me?
"But he stole, hestolemy letter," I said aloud, stamping my foot on a budding violet; and—there was Mrs Bowater. Evidently she had been watching my approach, and now smiled benignly.
"Why, you are quite out of breath, miss; and your cheeks!... I hope you haven't been having words. A better-spoken young fellow than I had fancied; and I'm sure I ask his pardon for the 'gentleman.'"
"Ach," I swept up at my beech-tree, now cautiously unsheathing its first green buds in the lower branches, "I think he must be light in his head."
"And that often comes," replied Mrs Bowater, with undisguisedbonhomie, "from being heavy at the heart. Why, miss, he may be a young nobleman in disguise. There's unlikelier things even than that, to judge from that trash of Fanny's. While, as for fish in the sea—it's sometimes wise to be contented with what we can catch."
Who had been talking to me about fish in the sea—quite lately? I thought contemptuously of Pollie and the Dream Book. "I am sorry," I replied, nose in air, "but I cannot follow the allusion."
The charge of vulgarity was the very last, I think, which Mrs Bowater would have lifted a finger to refute. My cheeksflamed hotter to know that she was quietly smiling up there. We walked on in silence.
That night I could not sleep. I was afraid. Life was blackening my mind like the mould of a graveyard. I could think of nothing but one face, one voice—that scorn and longing, thought and fantasy. What if he did love me a little? I might at least have been kind to him. Had I so many friends that I could afford to be harsh and ungrateful? How dreadfully ill he had looked when I scoffed at him. And now what mightnothave happened to him? I seemed lost to myself. No wonder Fanny.... My body grew cold at a thought; the palms of my hands began to ache.
Half-stifled, I leapt out of bed, and without the least notion of what I was doing, hastily dressed myself, and fled out into the night. I must find him, talk to him, plead with him, before it was too late. And in the trickling starlight, pressed against my own gatepost—there he was.
"Oh," I whispered at him in a fever of relief and shame and apprehensiveness, "what are you doing here? You must go away at once, at once. I forgive you. Yes, yes; I forgive you. But—at once. Keep the letter for me till I come again." His hand was wet with the dew. "Oh, and never say it again. Please, please, if you care for me the least bit in the world, never, never say what you did again." I poured out the heedless words in the sweet-scented quiet of midnight. "Now—now go"; I entreated. "And indeed, indeed I am your friend."
The dark eyes shone quietly close to mine. He sighed. He lifted my fingers, and put them to my breast again. He whispered unintelligible words between us, and was gone. No more stars for me that night. I slept sound until long after dawn....
Softly as thistledown the days floated into eternity; yet they were days of expectation and action. April was her fickle self; not so Mrs Monnerie. Her letter to Mrs Bowater must have been a marvel of tact. Apartments had been engaged for us at a little watering-place in Dorsetshire, called Lyme Regis. Mrs Bowater and I were to spend at least a fortnight there alone together, and after our return Mrs Monnerie herself was to pay me a visit, and see with her own eyes if her prescription had been successful. After that, perhaps, if I were so inclined,and my landlady agreed with Mr Pellew that it would be good for me, I might spend a week or two with her in London. What a twist of the kaleidoscope. I had sown never a pinch of seed, yet here was everything laughing and blossoming around me, like the wilderness in Isaiah.
Indeed my own looking-glass told me how wan and languishing a Miss M. was pining for change of scene and air. She rejoiced that Fanny was enjoying herself, rejoiced that she was going to enjoy herself too. I searched Mrs Bowater's library for views of the sea, but without much reward. So I read over Mr Bowater's Captain Maury—on the winds and monsoons and tide-rips and hurricanes, freshened up myRobinson Crusoe, and dreamed of the Angels with the Vials. In the midst of my packing (and I spread it out for sheer amusement's sake), Mr Crimble called again. He looked nervous, gloomy, and hollow-eyed.
I was fast becoming a mistress in affairs of the sensibilities. Yet, when, kneeling over my open trunk, I heard him in the porch, I mimicked Fanny's "Dash!" and wished to goodness he had postponed his visit until only echo could have answered his knock. It fretted me to be bothered with him. And now? What would I not give to be able to say I had done my best and utmost to help him when he wanted it? Here is a riddle I can find no answer to, however long I live: How is it that our eyes cannot foresee, our very hearts cannot forefeel, the future? And how should we act if that future were plain before us? Yet, even then, what could I have said to him to comfort him? Really and truly I had no candle with which to see into that dark mind.
In actual fact my task was difficult and delicate enough. In spite of her vow not to write again, yet another letter had meanwhile come from Fanny. If Mr Crimble's had afforded "a ray of hope," this had shut it clean away. It was full of temporizings, wheedlings, evasions—and brimming over with Fanny.
It suggested, too, that Mrs Bowater must have misread the name of her holiday place. The half-legible printing of the postmark on the envelope—fortunately I had intercepted the postman—did not even begin with an M. And no address was given within. I was to tell Mr Crimble that Fanny wasover-tired and depressed by the term's work, that she simply couldn't set her "weary mind" to anything, and as for decisions:—
"He seems to think only of himself. You couldn't believe, Midgetina, what nonsense the man talks. He can'tseethat all poor Fanny's future is at stake, body and soul. Tell him if hewantsher to smile, he must sit in patience on a pedestal, and smile too. One simply can't trust the poor creature with cold, sober facts. His mother, now—why, I could read it in your own polite little description of her at your Grand Reception—she smiles and smiles. So did the Cheshire Cat."'But oh, dear Fanny, time and your own true self, God helping, would win her over.' So writes H. C. That's candid enough, if you look into it; but it isn't sense. Once hostile, old ladies arenotwon over. They don't care much for mind in the young. Anyhow, one look at me was enough for her—and it was followed by a sharp little peer at poor Harold! She guessed. So you see, my dear, even for youthful things, like you and me, time gathers roses a jolly sight faster than we can, and it would have to be thefait accompli, before a word is breathed to her. That is, if I could take a deep breath and say, Yes."But I can't. I ask you: Can youseeFanny Bowater a Right Reverendissima? No, nor can I. And not even gaiters or an apron here and now would settle the question off-hand. Why I confide all this in you (why, for that matter, it has all been confided inme), I know not. You want nothing, and if you did, you wouldn't want it long. Now, would you? Perhaps that is the secret. But Fanny wants a good deal. She cannot even guess how much. So, while Miss Stebbings and Beechwood Hill for ever and ever would be hell before purgatory, H. C. and St Peter's would be merely the same thing, with the firesout. And I am quite sure that, given a chance, heaven is our home."Oh, Midgetina, I listen to all this; mumbling my heart like a dog a bone. What the devil has it got to do withme, I ask myself? Who set the infernal trap? If only I could stop thinking and mocking and find some one—not 'to love me' (between ourselves, there are far too many ofthemalready), but capable of making me love him. They say a woman can't be driven. I disagree. Shecanbe driven—mad. And apart from that, though twenty men only succeed in giving me hydrophobia, one could persuade me to drink, if only his name was Mr Right, as mother succinctly puts it."But first and last, I am having a real, if not a particularly sagacious, holiday, and can take care of myself. And next and last, play,Ibeseechyou, the tiny good Samaritan between me and poor, plodding, blinded H. C.—even if he does eventually have to go on to Jericho."And I shall ever remain, your most affec.—F."
"He seems to think only of himself. You couldn't believe, Midgetina, what nonsense the man talks. He can'tseethat all poor Fanny's future is at stake, body and soul. Tell him if hewantsher to smile, he must sit in patience on a pedestal, and smile too. One simply can't trust the poor creature with cold, sober facts. His mother, now—why, I could read it in your own polite little description of her at your Grand Reception—she smiles and smiles. So did the Cheshire Cat.
"'But oh, dear Fanny, time and your own true self, God helping, would win her over.' So writes H. C. That's candid enough, if you look into it; but it isn't sense. Once hostile, old ladies arenotwon over. They don't care much for mind in the young. Anyhow, one look at me was enough for her—and it was followed by a sharp little peer at poor Harold! She guessed. So you see, my dear, even for youthful things, like you and me, time gathers roses a jolly sight faster than we can, and it would have to be thefait accompli, before a word is breathed to her. That is, if I could take a deep breath and say, Yes.
"But I can't. I ask you: Can youseeFanny Bowater a Right Reverendissima? No, nor can I. And not even gaiters or an apron here and now would settle the question off-hand. Why I confide all this in you (why, for that matter, it has all been confided inme), I know not. You want nothing, and if you did, you wouldn't want it long. Now, would you? Perhaps that is the secret. But Fanny wants a good deal. She cannot even guess how much. So, while Miss Stebbings and Beechwood Hill for ever and ever would be hell before purgatory, H. C. and St Peter's would be merely the same thing, with the firesout. And I am quite sure that, given a chance, heaven is our home.
"Oh, Midgetina, I listen to all this; mumbling my heart like a dog a bone. What the devil has it got to do withme, I ask myself? Who set the infernal trap? If only I could stop thinking and mocking and find some one—not 'to love me' (between ourselves, there are far too many ofthemalready), but capable of making me love him. They say a woman can't be driven. I disagree. Shecanbe driven—mad. And apart from that, though twenty men only succeed in giving me hydrophobia, one could persuade me to drink, if only his name was Mr Right, as mother succinctly puts it.
"But first and last, I am having a real, if not a particularly sagacious, holiday, and can take care of myself. And next and last, play,Ibeseechyou, the tiny good Samaritan between me and poor, plodding, blinded H. C.—even if he does eventually have to go on to Jericho.
"And I shall ever remain, your most affec.—F."
How all this baffled me. I tried, but dismally failed, to pour a trickle of wine and oil into Mr Crimble's wounded heart, for his sake and for mine, not for Fanny's, for I knew in myself that his "Jericho" was already within view.
"I don't understand her; I don't understand her," he kept repeating, crushing his soft hat in his small, square hands. "I cannot reach her; I am not in touch with her."
Out of the fount of my womanly wisdom I reminded him how young she was, how clever, and how much flattered.
"You know, then, there are—others?" he gulped, darkly meeting me.
"That, surely, is what makes her so precious," I falsely insinuated.
He gazed at me, his eyes like an immense, empty shop-window. "That thought puts—— I can't," and he twisted his head on his shoulders as if shadows were around him; "I can't bear to think of her and—with—others. It unbalances me. But how can you understand?... A sealed book. Last night I sat at my window. It was raining. I know not the hour: and Spring!" He clutched at his knees, stooping forward. "I repudiated myself, thrust myself out. Oh, believe me, we are not alone. And there and then I resolved to lay the whole matter before"—his glance groped towards the door—"before, in fact, hermother. She is a woman of sagacity, of proper feeling in her station, though how she came to be the mother of—— But that's neither here nor there. We mustn't probe. Probably she thinks—but what use to consider it? One word to her—and Fanny would be lost to me for ever." For a moment it seemed his eyes closed on me. "How can I bring myself to speak of it?" a remote voice murmured from beneath them.
I looked at the figure seated there in its long black coat; and far away in my mind whistled an ecstatic bird—"The sea! the sea! You are going away—out, out of all this."
So, too, was Mr Crimble, if only I had known it. It was myweak and cowardly acquiescence in Fanny's deceits that was speeding him on his dreadful journey. None the less, a wretched heartless impatience fretted me at being thus helplessly hemmed in by my fellow creatures. How clumsily they groped on. Why couldn't they be happy in just living free from the clouds and trammels of each other and of themselves? The selfish helplessness of it all. It was, indeed, as though the strange fires which Fanny had burnt me in—which any sudden thought of her could still fan into a flickering blaze—had utterly died down. Whether or not, I was hardened; a poor little earthenware pot fresh from the furnace. And with what elixir was it brimmed.
I rose from my chair, walked away from my visitor, and peered through my muslin curtains at the green and shine and blue. A nursemaid was lagging along with a sleeping infant—its mild face to the sky—in a perambulator. A faint drift of dandelions showed in the stretching meadow. Kent's blue hems lay calm; my thoughts drew far away.
"Mr Crimble," I cried in a low voice: "is sheworthall our care for her?"
"'Our'—'our'?" he expostulated.
"Mine, then. When I gave her, just to be friends, because—because I loved her, a little ivory box, nothing of any value, of course, but which I have loved and treasured since childhood, she left it without a thought. It's in my wardrobe drawer—shall I show it to you? Isayit was nothing in itself; but what I mean is that she just makes use of me, and with far less generosity than—than other people do. Her eyes, her voice, when she moves her hand, turns her head, looks back—oh, I know! But," and I turned on him in the light, "does it mean anything? Let us just help her all we can, and—keep away."
It was a treachery past all forgiveness: I see that now. If only I had said, "Love on, love on: ask nothing." But I did not say it. A contempt of all this slow folly was in my brain that afternoon. Why couldn't the black cowering creature take himself off? What concern of mine was his sick, sheepish look? What particle of a fig did he care for Me? Had he lifted a little finger when I myself bitterly needed it? I seemed to be struggling in a net of hatred.
He raised himself in his chair, his spectacles still fixed on me; as if some foul insect had erected its blunt head at him.
"Thenyouare against her too," he uttered, under his breath. "I might have known it, I might have known it. I am a lost man."
It was pitiful. "Lost fiddlesticks!" I snapped back at him, with bared teeth. "I wouldn't—I've never harmed a fly. Who, I should like to know, came tomyhelp when...?" But I choked down the words. Silence fell between us. The idiot clock chimed five. He turned his face away to conceal the aversion that had suddenly overwhelmed him at sight of me.
"I see," he said, in a hollow, low voice, with his old wooden, artificial dignity. "There's nothing more to say. I can only thank you, and be gone. I had not realized. You misjudge her. You haven't the—— How could it be expected? But there! thinking's impossible."
How often had I seen my poor father in his last heavy days draw his hand across his eyes like that? Already my fickle mind was struggling to find words with which to retract, to explain away that venomous outbreak. But I let him go. The stooping, hatted figure hastened past my window; and I was never to see him again.
Yet, in spite of misgivings, no very dark foreboding companioned me that evening. With infinite labour I concocted two letters:—
"Dear Mr Crimble,—I regret my words this afternoon. Bitterly. Indeed I do. But still truth is important, isn't it?One we knowhasn't been too kind to either of us. I still say that. And if it seems inconsiderate, please remember Shakespeare's lines about the beetle (which I came across in a Birthday Book the other day)—a creature I detest. Besides, we can return good for evil—I can't help this sounding like hypocrisy—even though it is an extremely tiring exchange. Ifeelsmall enough just now, but would do anything in the world that would help in the way we both want. I hope that you will believe this and that you will forgive my miserable tongue. Believe me, ever yours sincerely,—M. M."
"Dear Mr Crimble,—I regret my words this afternoon. Bitterly. Indeed I do. But still truth is important, isn't it?One we knowhasn't been too kind to either of us. I still say that. And if it seems inconsiderate, please remember Shakespeare's lines about the beetle (which I came across in a Birthday Book the other day)—a creature I detest. Besides, we can return good for evil—I can't help this sounding like hypocrisy—even though it is an extremely tiring exchange. Ifeelsmall enough just now, but would do anything in the world that would help in the way we both want. I hope that you will believe this and that you will forgive my miserable tongue. Believe me, ever yours sincerely,—M. M."
My second letter was addressed to Fanny's school, "℅ Miss Stebbings":—
"Dear Fanny,—He came again to-day and looks like a corpse. I can do no more. You must know how utterly miserable you are making him; that I can't, and won't, go on being so doublefaced. I don't callthatbeing the good Samaritan. Throw the stone one way or the other, however many birds it may kill. That's the bravest thing to do. A horrid boy I knew as a child once aimed at a jay and killed—a wren. Well, there's only one wren that I know of—your M."PS.—I hope this doesn't sound an angry letter. I thought only the other day how difficult it must be being as fascinating as you are. And, of course, we arewhatwe are, aren't we, and cannot, I suppose, help acting like that? You can't think how he looked, and talked. Besides, I am sure you will enjoy your holiday much more when you have made up your mind. Oh, Fanny, I can't say what's in mine. Every day there's something else to dread. And all that I do seems only to make things worse.Dowrite: and, though, of course, it isn't my affair, do have a 'sagacious' holiday, too."
"Dear Fanny,—He came again to-day and looks like a corpse. I can do no more. You must know how utterly miserable you are making him; that I can't, and won't, go on being so doublefaced. I don't callthatbeing the good Samaritan. Throw the stone one way or the other, however many birds it may kill. That's the bravest thing to do. A horrid boy I knew as a child once aimed at a jay and killed—a wren. Well, there's only one wren that I know of—your M.
"PS.—I hope this doesn't sound an angry letter. I thought only the other day how difficult it must be being as fascinating as you are. And, of course, we arewhatwe are, aren't we, and cannot, I suppose, help acting like that? You can't think how he looked, and talked. Besides, I am sure you will enjoy your holiday much more when you have made up your mind. Oh, Fanny, I can't say what's in mine. Every day there's something else to dread. And all that I do seems only to make things worse.Dowrite: and, though, of course, it isn't my affair, do have a 'sagacious' holiday, too."
Mrs Bowater almost squinted at my two small envelopes when she licked the stamps for me. "We can only hope," was her one remark, "that when the secrets of all hearts are opened, they'll excuse some of the letters we reach ourselves to write." But I did not ask her to explain.
Lyme Regis was but a few days distant when, not for the first time since our meeting at Mrs Bowater's gatepost, I set off to meet Mr Anon—this time to share with him my wonderful news. When showers drifted across the sun-shafted sky we took refuge under the shelter of the garden-house. As soon as the hot beams set the raindrops smouldering, so that every bush was hung with coloured lights, we returned to my smoking stone. And we watched a rainbow arch and fade in the windy blue.
He was gloomy at first; grudged me, I think, every moment that was to be mine at Lyme Regis. So I tempted him into talking about the books he had read; and about his childhood—far from as happy as mine. It hurt me to hear him speak of his mother. Then I asked him small questions about that wonderful country he had told me of, which, whether it had any real existence or not, filled me with delight as he painted it in his imagination. He was doing his best to keep his word to me, and I to keep our talk from becoming personal.
If I would trust myself to him, friend to friend—he suddenly broke out in a thick, low voice, when I least expected it—the whole world was open to us; and he knew the way.
"What way?" said I. "And how about poor Mrs Bowater? How strange you are. Where do you live? May I know?"
There was an old farm-house, he told me, on the other side of the park, and near it a few cottages—at the far end of Loose Lane. He lodged in one of these. Against my wiser inclinations he persuaded me to set off thither at once and see the farm for myself.
On the further side of Wanderslore, sprouting their pallid green frondlets like beads at the very tips of their black, were more yews than beeches. We loitered on, along the neglected bridle-path. Cuckoos were now in the woods, and we talked and talked, as if their voices alone were not seductive enough to enchant us onwards. Sometimes I spelled out incantations in the water; and sometimes I looked out happily across the wet,wayside flowers; and sometimes a robin flittered out to observe the intruders. How was it that human company so often made me uneasy and self-conscious, and nature's always brought peace?
"Now, you said," I began again, "that they have a God, and that they are so simple He hasn't a name. What did you mean by that? There can't be one God for the common-sized, and one for—for me; now, can there? My mother never taught me that; and I have thought for myself." Indeed I had.
"'God'!" he cried; "why, what is all this?"
All this at that moment was a clearing in the woods, softly shimmering with a misty, transparent green, in whose sunbeams a thousand flies darted and zigzagged like motes of light, and the year's first butterflies fluttered and languished.
"But if I speak," I said, "listen, now, my voice is just swallowed up. Out of just a something it faints into a nothing—dies. No, no;" (I suppose I was arguing only to draw him out), "all this cares no more for me than—than a looking-glass. Yet it is mine. Can you see Jesus Christ in these woods? Do you believe we are sinners and that He came to save us? I do. But I can see Him only as a little boy, you know, smiling, crystal, intangible: and yet I do notlikechildren much."
He paused and stared at me fixedly. "Mysize?" he coughed.
"Oh, size," I exclaimed, "how you harp on that!"—as ifInever had. "Did you not say yourself that the smaller the body is, the happier the ghost in it? Bodies, indeed!"
He plunged on, hands in pockets, frowning, clumsy. And up there in the north-west a huge cloud poured its reflected lights on his strange face. Inwardly—with all my wits in a pleasant scatter—I laughed; and outwardly (all but) danced. Solemnly taking me at my word, and as if he were reading out of one of his dry old books, he began to tell me his views about religion, and about what we are, qualities, consciousness, ideas, and that kind of thing. As if you could be anything at any moment but just that moment's whole self. At least, so it seemed then: I was happy. But since in his earnestness his voice became almost as false to itself as was Mr Crimble's when he had conversed with me about Hell, my eyes stole my ears from him, and only a few scattered sentences reached my mind.
Nevertheless I enjoyed hearing him talk, and encouraged him with bits of questions and exclamations. Did he believe,perhaps, in the pagan Gods?—Mars and all that? Was there, even at this very moment, cramped up among the moss and the roots, a crazy, brutal Pan in the woods? And those delicious Nymphs and Naiads! What would he do if one beckoned to him?—or Pan's pipes began wheedling?
"Nymphs!" he grunted, "aren't you——"
"Oh," I cried, coming to a pause beside a holly-tree so marvellously sparkling with waterdrops on every curved spine of it that it took my breath away: "let's talk no more thoughts. They are only mice gnawing. I can hearthemat night."
"You cannot sleep?" he inquired, with so grave a concern that I laughed outright.
"Sleep! with that Mr Crimble on my nerves?" I gave a little nod in my mind to my holly, and we went on.
"Crimble?" he repeated. His eyes, greenish at that moment, shot an angry glance at me from under their lids. "Who is he?"
"A friend, a friend," I replied, "and, poor man, as they say, in love. Calm yourself, Mr Jealousy; not with me. I am three sizes too small. With Miss Bowater. But there," I went on, in dismay that mere vanity should have let this cat out of its bag, "that's not my secret. We mustn't talk of that either. What I really want to tell you is that we haven't much time. I am going away. Let's talk of Me. Oh, Mr Anon, shall I ever be born again, and belong to my own world?"
It seemed a kind of mournful serenity came over his face. "You say you are going away"; he whispered, pointing with his finger, "and yet you expect me to talk aboutthat."
We were come to the brink of a clear rain-puddle, perhaps three or four feet wide, in the moss-greened, stony path, and "that" was the image of myself which lay on its surface against the far blue of the sky—the under-scarlet of my cape, my face, fair hair, eyes. I trembled a little. His own reflection troubled me more than he did himself.
"Come," I said, laying a hand on his sleeve, "the time's so short, and indeed Imustsee your house, you know: you have seen mine. Ah, but you should see Lyndsey and Chizzel Hill, and the stream in my father's garden. I often hearthatat night, Mr Anon. I would like to have died a child, however long I must live."
But now the cloud had completely swallowed up the sun;a cold gust of wind swept hooting down on us, and I clung to his arm. We pushed on, emerged at last from the rusty gates, its eagles green and scaling, and came to the farm. But not in time. A cloud of hail had swirled down; beating on our heads and shoulders. It all but swept me up into the air. Catching hands, we breasted and edged on up the rough, miry lane towards a thatched barn, open on one side and roofing a red and blue wagon. Under this we scrambled, and tingling all over with the buffetings of the wind and the pelting of hailstones, I sat laughing and secure, watching, over my sodden skirts and shoes, the sweeping, pattering drifts paling the green.
Around us in the short straw and dust stalked the farmer's fowls, cackling, with red-eyed glances askew at our intrusion. Ducks were quacking. Doves flew in with whir of wing. I thought I should boil over with delight. And presently a sheep-dog, ears down and tail between its legs, slid round the beam of the barn door. Half in, half out, it stood bristling, eyes fixed, head thrust out. My companion drew himself up and with a large stone in his hand, edged, stooping and stealthily—and very much, I must confess, like the picture of a Fuegian I have seen in a book—between the gaudy wheels of the wagon, and faced the low-growling beast. I watched him, enthralled. For a moment or two he and the sheep-dog confronted each other without stirring. Then with one sharp bark, the animal flung back its head, and with whitened eye, turned and disappeared.
"Oh,bravissimo!" said I, mocking up at Mr Anon from under my hood. "He was cowed, poor thing.Iwould have made friends with him."
We sate on in the sweet, dusty scent of the stormy air. The hail turned to rain. The wind rose higher. I began to be uneasy. So heavily streamed the water out of the clouds that walking back by the way we had come would be utterly impossible for me. What's to be done now?—I thought to myself. Yet the liquid song of the rain, the gurgling sighs and trumpetings of the wind entranced me; and I turned softly to glance at my stranger. He sat, chin on large-boned hands, his lank hair plastered on his hollow temples by the rain, his eyes glassy in profile.
"I am glad of this," he muttered dreamily, as if in response to my scrutiny. "We are here."
A scatter of green leaf-sheaths from a hawthorn over against the barn was borne in by the wind.
"I am glad too," I answered, "because when you are at peace, so I can be; for that marvellous land you tell me of is very far away. Why, who——?" But he broke in so earnestly that I was compelled to listen, confiding in me some queer wisdom he had dug up out of his books—of how I might approach nearer and nearer to the brink between life and reality, and see all things as they are, in truth, in their very selves. All things visible are only a veil, he said. A veil that withdraws itself when the mind is empty of all thoughts and desires, and the heart at one with itself. That is divine happiness, he said. And he told me, too, out of his far-fetched learning, a secret about myself.
It was cold in the barn now. The fowls huddled close. Rain and wind ever and again drowned the low, alluring, far-away voice wandering on as if out of a trance. Dreams, maybe; yet I have learned since that one half of his tale is true; that at need even an afflicted spirit, winged for an instant with serenity, may leave the body and, perhaps, if lost in the enchantments beyond, never turn back. But I swore to keep his words secret between us. I had no will to say otherwise, and assured him of my trust in him.
"My very dear," he said, softly touching my hand, but I could make no answer.
He scrambled to his feet and peered down on me. "It is not my peace. All the days you are away...." He gulped forlornly and turned away his head. "But that is what I mean. Just nothing, all this"—he made a gesture with his hands as if giving himself up a captive to authority—"nothing but a sop to a dog."
Then stooping, he drew my cape around me, banked the loose hay at my feet and shoulders, smiled into my face, and bidding me wait in patience a while, but not sleep, was gone.
The warmth and odour stole over my senses. I was neither hungry nor thirsty, but drugged with fatigue. With a fixed smile on my face (a smile betokening, as I believe now, little but feminine vanity and satisfaction after feeding on that strange heart),my thoughts went wandering. The sounds of skies and earth drowsed my senses, and I nodded off into a nap. The grinding of wheels awoke me. From a welter of dreams I gazed out through the opening of the barn at a little battered cart and a shaggy pony. And behold, on the chopped straw and hay beside me, lay stretched out, nose on paw, our enemy, the sheep-dog. He thumped a friendly tail at me, while he growled at my deliverer.
Thoughtful Mr Anon. He had not only fetched the pony-cart, but had brought me a bottle of hot milk and a few raisins. They warmed and revived me. A little light-witted after my sleep in the hay, I clambered up with his help into the cart and tucked myself in as snugly as I could with my draggled petticoats and muddy shoes. So with myself screened well out of sight of prying eyes, we drove off.
All this long while I had not given a thought to Mrs Bowater. We stood before her at last in her oil-cloth passage, like Adam and Eve in the Garden. Her oldest bonnet on her head, she was just about to set off to the police station. And instead of showing her gratitude that her anxieties on my account were over, Mrs Bowater cast us the blackest of looks. Leaving Mr Anon to make our peace with her, I ran off to change my clothes. As I emerged from my bedroom, he entered at the door, in an old trailing pilot coat many sizes too large for him, and I found to my astonishment that he and my landlady had become the best of friends. I marvelled. This little achievement of Mr Anon's made melikehim—all of a burst—ten times as much, I believe, as he would have been contented that I shouldlovehim.
Indeed the "high tea" Mrs Bowater presided over that afternoon, sitting above her cups and saucers just like a clergyman, is one of the gayest memories of my life. And yet—she had left the room for a moment to fetch something from the kitchen, and as, in a self-conscious hush, Mr Anon and I sat alone together, I caught a glimpse of her on her return pausing in the doorway, her capped head almost touching the lintel—and looking in on us with a quizzical, benign, foolish expression on her face, like that of a grown-up peeping into a child's dolls' house. So swirling a gust of hatred and disillusionment swept over me at sight of her, that for some little while I dared not raise my eyes and look at Mr Anon. All affection and gratitude fled away. Miss M. was once more an Ishmael!