She might have gathered warning from Minnie's panting summons, but had been busy over her accounts and had noticed nothing amiss.
“He wants you, Miss Percival! Don't go!” She had scarcely heard. She said, “Who wants me? Mr. Ingram? I'll come;” and though the maid stammered, “I wouldn't, oh, I wouldn't,” had gone.
The face he showed her from his bureau, where he sat huddled over a litter of papers, prepared her instantly for crisis; snarling, white and wicked, yet it had tragedy in it—as if he knew that he had himself to reckon with beyond all.
For some time he seemed not to see her, though he looked at her. He sat glooming, like a man dumb in high fever, working his lower jaw, screwing and unscrewing his hands. Afterwards she believed that he had been groping for the cruellest thing he could say, and was goaded into what he did say by the sense that he could find nothing.
“So that was your work? Your choice way! To set one of my own servants to club me.”
She looked at him blankly; but her face glowed with sudden fire. “I haven't the least notion what you mean. Who has clubbed you?”
His eyes flickered. “Glyde. Your friend. You seek your champions all about, it seems. You make things snug for yourself. It's master or man with you—it's all one.”
He spluttered his venom broadcast. She held up her head. “Are you insulting me?” He wheeled round full in his chair.
“Is it possible to insult you?”
At that she lowered her panoply of fire, and grew still. “I see that you are. I can't allow that.”
He foamed. “Bullies in your hire. Now I see what Bill Chevenix was after. And Glyde-faugh! who else?”
She watched him steadily without fear or disgust. His words held no meaning for her. “I think you must be mad,” she said. “It will be better if I go.”
He scoffed at her. “Better! You are right.” He rose in his place. “You'll go to-day.”
Sanchia regarded him deeply, almost curiously, as if he had been a plant, interesting for its rarity.
“Naturally,” she said, and left him in his staring fit.
The ordered little realm of Wanless went on its diurnal course. Luncheon was served at two by a trembling parlour-maid; the coffee was set in the hall, the cigar-box, the spirit-flame. Frodsham came for orders, Mr. Menzies reported Glyde absent without leave. These things were done by rote: yet the whole house knew the facts. Sanchia, dining in the middle of the day, plied her knife and fork with composure. It was her way to face facts once for all, tussle with them, gain or lose, and be done with them. She had been angry with Glyde, but now could think of him as “poor Struan,” Punchinello in a rustic comedy. Of Ingram, deliberately, she thought nothing. It had been necessary to survey her feelings of eight years ago, to make a sour face of disgust over them, before she could shake them out of her head. Now they were gone, and he with them: the world, with May beginning, was too sweet a place for such vermin to fester in. She had swept and ridded herself, rinsed her mouth with pure water, and now could sit to her dinner and review her plans.
But the storm burst over Wanless, at half-past four. Minnie came into her room, breathless, Mrs. Benson stertorous in her traces.
Minnie wailed, “Oh, Miss, oh, Miss Sanchia, oh, dear Miss Percival, what's going to become of us? Struan's beaten the Master, and the Sergeant's here!”
“Apes and tigers”—Mrs. Benson tolled like a bell. “Apes and tigers. What says the Book?”
Sanchia let them run, so the distorted tale was pieced together. At a quarter to twelve—it must have been that, because Emma heard the stableclock chime the half-hour—Struan was seen in his blacks. He came out of the wood-house, an ashplant in his hand. “Apes and tigers, apes and tigers,” from Mrs. Benson—his face was dreadful to see. Who said so? Who saw him? Not Minnie, for sure. It was Bella the laundrymaid—she saw him from the window, and had a turn. The window was open. “Why, Struan,” she said—but he told her to shut mouth and eyes. “The less you see, and know,” he said, “the better for you.” Poor Struan, with his tragedy airs! Bella told that to Minnie, and that she would never forget it to her dying day. It turned the beer in her stomach, she said—and now she was lying down. As he went out of the yard, a cloud came over the sun, and Bella felt the chill. She had the goose-flesh all up her back. That, they say, betokens a person walking over your grave. Somewhere in England we all have our grave-ground lying green under turf. It awaits the spade and the hour. In the morning it is green and groweth up—this was Mrs. Benson's piece, but Minnie had the rest of the stage.
The saddle-horse came flinging into the yard at one o'clock—no later. That's certain, because Frodsham was at his after-dinner pipe—or should have been: instead of which he came running in after him. Just about that time, or maybe a little before, Mr. Menzies had been asking for Struan? Where was he? Did anyone ever see such a wastrel? No man's account, he called him. Mrs. Benson tolled her apes and tigers all.
It was Minnie had seen the Master when the bell pealed. She had gone with her heart in her mouth—and oh, his collar and tie! His red ear! She had never seen anything like his face, and never must again on this side of the tomb. Wicked, oh, wicked! He showed his teeth. His face was as white as a clout. His voice was like a nutmeg-grater. “Miss Percival—here—at once.” It was all he said. She did her bidding, for servants must—but her heart bled for Miss Percival, and she felt like fainting at any minute when she waited at luncheon. He drank brandy—jerked his head towards the sideboard when he wanted more. Never said a word. And how he ate, wrenching at his food! Fit to choke him. How she had lived through the luncheon she didn't know at all. But that Struan, that quiet in an ordinary way, should have dared—with a stick in his violent hand! And the Sergeant ready for his warrant—stiff in the hall.
“A villain has got his deserts,” boomed Mrs. Benson. “My dear, you're going, it seems, and I with you. This is no place for a young lady—no, nor ever was, God be good! I know my place, to all parties; but I know that better—and now it's come upon us like a thief in the night. Well, well, well—my pretty young lady! Old women must put up with what they get, we all know—but not murderers in gentlemen's seats: no, nor beastly doings in and out of doors. I shall go, my dear, when you go—ah, me! When the wicked man ... but he's got his deserts. What! a widower—with duty and pleasure before him, combined for once, and no thanks to him!—to dally with a French doll—movable eyes and separate teeth and all—when he might have gone on his knees to a splendid young lady! And I'd have kept him there to say his prayers, which he's never done before, not since his mother died, poor old gentlewoman, worn out by the gnashings of a tiresome, God-Almighty, wicked old man, and a slip of sin who nothing was too good for. Not in this world, no! But it will be made up to him in the next, by the unquenchable worm—as he'll find out when he tries his 'down, dog' tricks; his 'drop that, will you?' None of that down there in the fire. What says the Book? My dear, my dear,” and she took the girl in her arms with a fine look about her of Niobe amid arrows, “I've a bosom for your head and a roof to shelter us both, and we'll see what we shall see. There's castles and towers for the great oneyers and their minions; but mine is in the Fulham Road, my dear; my own property out of a building society that does business for the widow and the orphan—makes it their special line, as I understand, and have treated me squarely throughout—that I will say. Yes, yes, and I'll tend you fairly, will Sarah Benson, widowed mother of a graceless son, who can feel for her poor dead mistress, mother of a worse. My lamb, you shall want for nothing.”
Fast in a good pair of arms, Sanchia snuggled and smiled. She patted Mrs. Benson's cheek, and put up her lips to her. Minnie, like a thawing icepack, ran rivers of water.
“Youaregood to me,” she said; “youaresweet to me. I don't mind anything when I can be sure of such friends. But you mustn't leave, you know. Really, you ought not. I shan't forget you, be sure of that, whether you stay or go.”
Mrs. Benson crooned over her, “Oh, you're not one that forgets, my precious, with your golden heart. And there's more than me will find it out.” She wiped her spectacles, breathing on the glasses, and Sanchia shook out her plumage, escaped from the nest. Ingram, without knocking, came into the room.
His rage was now cold and keen. He took in conspiracy with one glance at the three.
He spoke to Minnie. “I have been ringing for twenty minutes. The brandy in my room, and some soda-water. At once.” Scared Minnie fled. Then he turned half to Sanchia, but didn't look at her.
“I understood you were leaving this afternoon. You had better order a fly. There's the telephone.” He held out an envelope. “I think that you will find this correct.”
Sanchia was at her bureau. “Put it on the table, please,” she said, without turning; and while Ingram hovered, Mrs. Benson heaving like the sea, gathered into a combing wave and, breaking, swallowed him up.
“Money-ah! You come with money to a lady of the land! Offer me money, Mr. Ingram, if you dare. Your bread I've eaten, having baked it, and your father's bread, and not choked yet, though each mouthful might be my last. By every word out of the mouth of God, says the Book; and what shall He say of you? I've watched for this, I've seen it coming. You keep long accounts, but there's One keeps longer—and in His head, as we read. To breaking mother's heart so much, to scandal of matrimony so much—and to perjury and dirty devices, wicked dalliance, so much. When she came here—this fine young lady, so fresh and sweet—I wailed. I shook my fist at you, Mr. Ingram; 'I know what this means,' I said, 'a false tongue and a young heart.' And I waited, I tell you—for I could do nothing else. She could have come to me at any hour of any day and welcome; and I'd have told her, 'He's bad—he's rotten at the heart. He'll tire of you—neglect you—trick you—and cast you out.' But she was too proud for that; she bore it all, and not a word. And she did your work as never before, not in your time, nor your father's time; and made friends of the poor, and kept her place—sweetly and smoothly it was done. And you on your travels with foreign women—”
Ingram now emerged from the flood. “Are you mad?” he said. A dreadful calm came over Mrs. Benson, succeeding the tempest.
“'I am not mad, most noble Festus,'” she said; “but I am mother of a graceless son, and will not be cook to another. I leave your service from this hour. Your dinner is a-making, and Emma is a steady worker.” She turned to Sanchia. “The best vegetable-hand I ever had under me, Miss Percival, and I've had a score.” One further cut at Ingram she allowed herself. “I would not take a penny piece of your money now, not to save my darling from the lions.”
“You won't get it, you know,” said Ingram. “But you've had lots of 'em.” She braved that truth.
“And earned them, Mr. Ingram, as you know, better than I do.”
Ingram, ignoring her, observed quietly to Sanchia, “The sooner the better, I think.”
That was the manner of his farewell.
It was not the way she would have chosen to leave; but she reasoned with herself, as she packed her belongings, that it was probably the best way. It gave no time and little inclination for sentiment. Now, it was almost certain that had a term been ahead of her, whose end could be felt nearing, there would have been good-byes, last interviews, and last interviews but one, which are apt to be more poignant than those of the last moment of all. Even as it was there were threatenings of emotion. Wanless was stirred deeply. Mr. Menzies brought in a nosegay, and grasped her hand. “You will be sorely missed here, Miss Percival, sorely missed. Less said's the sooner mended, but you're a true young lady, greatly to be deplored.”
“Good-bye, Mr. Menzies,” she had said, “and thank you a thousand times for—”
“They are from my own plot of ground,” said the grizzled gardener, and looked away. She had his tulips in her hand, and now buried her face in them.
“Then I love them all the better,” she told him; and put in a word for Struan. “Be kind to him when you see him again—please do.”
Mr. Menzies became far-sighted. He had very blue eyes. “Ahem!” he said, in his Scotch fashion. “He'll not be here again, I doubt. He'll be away, the headstrong young man.” But he warmed to it. “Ay,” he said, “ay, Miss Percival. For your sake I'll listen to what he has to tell me.” She felt that she must be content with that. Each servant in degree must be dealt with, and Minnie comforted in her place. She was all for going that night; but had a mother and four sisters in Doncaster—all at home. Would Miss Sanchia forgive her, and accept of this Prayer-book? Miss Sanchia would; kissed her, and did.
In the carriage drive she told Mrs. Benson of her immediate intention. “I must say good-bye to Struan. We will stop at his cottage on the way. There's plenty of time.”
Mrs. Benson was strongly against it, but rather showed her mind than declared it. Mischief enough had been done through that youth—and in him, she doubted. Better let him alone. Are you to countenance violent hands? Raised against them in authority? Then where's authority? Where are Principalities and Powers? Much as she contemned Ingram, she was on his side against Struan any day. On the other hand, Sanchia was, in a manner, her guest, and could not be spoken to plainly about it. She could only shake her head.
“He's better alone, Miss Percival, alone with his devil. While the fit's on him, let 'em fight it out. And what can he be—to the likes of you?”
“He's always been a friend of mine,” she said. “He's been very foolish, very wicked; he had no business whatever to do as he did—to put me in the wrong. I'm angry with him, and he will see that I am. But—” Mrs. Benson knew the force of that “but.” It had brought the young lady to Wanless.
Yet Mrs. Benson might have triumphed if she would. Sanchia, at the cottage door, was met by the anxious tenant of it with whom Struan lodged. “He's not here, Miss,” she was told, and then, “oh, Miss, they've took him away. The Sergeant's come for him and took him. And we hear—” There had been no stopping her, but by Sanchia's way.
She walked into the cottage and put up her veil. She showed a pale, sad face. “How dreadful! I must write a note. Will you let me write here, and leave it with you—to give him when he comes?”
She wrote in pencil, “My dear Struan, I am very sorry. You made me angry, but I'm sorry now. I came to say Good-bye, as I am going away. Mrs. Benson is with me. See Mr. Menzies when you can. He has promised to help you, and, of course, I will too, if I can.—Yours always, S. J. P.” With the fold of the envelope to her tongue she paused, reflective. Then she took the note out again, read it over, and ran her pencil through the last two letters of her signature. And taking two Parma violets from the knot at her breast—a recent gift from Wanless—she put them within the paper. Thus she did deliberately—as the Fates would have her. Addressing “Mr. S. Clyde, by Mrs. Broughton,” she gave her letter in charge. “Be sure to give it him when he comes back,” she said. Then she and her protector were driven to the station.
There was a full bench, a crowded court when the accused was brought in. The hush that preceded him and the buzz when he stood up made Ingram set his teeth. The reporters, with racing pen, cleared the ground. Thus the world might read of “The Squire of Wanless, every inch a soldier,” in one journal, and of “Nevile Ingram, Esquire, of Wanless Hall,” in another. There are no politics in police reports, but broadcloth is respectable. The prisoner was described as “Struan Glyde, 23, a sickly-looking young man, who exhibited symptoms of nervousness.” It was allowed that he spoke “firmly but respectfully to the Bench,” but, on the other hand, “to the complainant he showed considerable animosity, and more than once had to be reproved by the Chairman.” The proceedings were short. “At the close there was a demonstration, which was immediately checked by the police.”
Glyde, in fact, was revealed as a narrow-faced young man, slim and olive-complexioned, having light, intent eyes, and very long eyelashes. Nervous he undoubtedly was; he twitched, he blinked, he swallowed. He looked effeminate to one judge. Another said of him to his neighbour, “As hardy as a hawk.” A newspaper called him “puny,” a rival “as tough as whip-cord.” It depended upon your reading of him—whether by externals or not. He had a quiet, fierce way with him, a glare, the look of a bird of prey. He was very self-possessed. All the papers observed it.
Ingram, playing his privilege to the last ounce, told his tale to his brother-magistrates, shortly, but with considerable effect. He had had occasion to dismiss a servant, and the prisoner had taken upon himself to resent it. Yes—in answer to a question—a female servant. Prisoner had attacked him in his own carriage-drive, had pulled him out of the saddle before he knew what he was about, and had beaten him while on the ground. He had no witnesses. There had been none. His voice, as he chopped out his phrases, was dry, his tone impartial. He took no sides, stated the facts. He spoke to the Chairman—even when he replied to the question which made him, for a moment, take breath; and he never once looked at the accused.
The Bench consulted together. Old Mr. Bazalguet, the Chairman, leaned far back in his chair and gazed at the ceiling, while two younger justices whispered to each other across his portly person, peering sideways at Ingram, who showed them his smooth head and folded arms. Colonel Vero, the fourth of the tribunal, was drawing angels on his blotting paper. Then they settled themselves, one of them with a shrug, and Sergeant Weeks told of the arrest. Accused had declined to make a statement, but had spoken certain words to his landlady, one Mrs. Broughton, to the effect that what was to come was “nothing” to what had been done. He had left in her charge papers, which the Sergeant had afterwards examined, and now had in his care. This had led to a brief interlude.
Mr. Bazalguet had caught the words. “Papers? What papers?” he asked. “Newspapers?”
“No, sir,” said Sergeant Weeks. “They were writings. Poetry and the like—and foreign tongues.” The bench sat up, and now Glyde had the hawk-look in his light eyes. Ingram stifled a yawn, and impressed the Bench.
Mr. Bazalguet, inclining his head to either side, enquired only with his eyebrows. Did we want these papers? Should we, perhaps, for form's sake examine them? Mr. Max Fortnaby was of opinion that we should. As they were handed up, the prisoner, who had been wetting his lips, said plainly, “There's nothing in them about this business,” and was reproved by Sergeant Weeks.
A formidable pile of MS. was passed up by the Clerk, whose deprecating glances were not lost upon the Chairman. But Mr. Max Fortnaby cut open the budget in the midst, and peered in.
“janua vel domina penitus crudelior ipsa”—he read. It was a footnote. He lifted his eyebrows—then his eyes upon the accused.
“Propertius? You know Latin?”
“I know some, sir.”
He returned to the MS., then again to Glyde.
“You are a bit of a poet, I see.”
“Yes, sir. I hope so.”
“If it leads you to battery, my young friend—” was his private comment. To Mr. Bazalguet he whispered, “The fellow's got scholarship. We might give these back, I think.” Mr. Bazalguet was only too happy, and Glyde saw his offspring returned. Sergeant Weeks, safe in Mr. Fortnaby's good opinion, scrupulously wrapped and tied them. Mr. Fortnaby said, “Let them go back to his landlady,” and caught the prisoner's eye.
It was now time to ask him whether he had anything to say. Glyde, perfectly master of himself, said that he pleaded Guilty, but would like to put a few questions. The Chairman, biting the tips of his fingers, nodded; and Mr. Fortnaby watched him.
Facing Ingram, who looked always to the Chairman, Glyde asked—“Did you dismiss your servant, as you put it, before I met you, or afterwards?” All eyes flew from Glyde to Ingram.
“Actually, afterwards,” it was explained. “But the thing was understood before.”
“By whom?”
“By me,” said Ingram, “and—” He stopped there. A very interesting struggle, momentary, and done in silence, took place. Glyde was daring Ingram to bring in Sanchia's name, and Ingram could not do it.
“And—?” said Glyde. “And by whom?”
Ingram paused, biting his lips. He was pale. He took a long breath, and then said, “And by you, I have no doubt.”
“Thank you,” Glyde said. Then he began again. “Did you ask me to fight with you?”
“I believe I did.”
“And I refused?”
“Yes,” said Ingram, “you did.”
“Did I say that I didn't fight with dogs?” Ingram smiled at the Chairman.
“You did not.”
“I say so now,” said Glyde, and stirred the Court. Mr. Bazalguet interfered.
“You mustn't talk like that, Glyde. We can't have it, you know.” Colonel Vero added, “Certainly not,” and stretched his long legs out.
Glyde recovered himself, and begged pardon. He was told that he might go on, in reason, but declined. “Thank you, sir. I think I'll leave it so. I own to what I did.”
He was told that he could be dealt with summarily, or sent for trial. “I'll take it from you, gentlemen,” he said, and settled himself reposefully. The Bench drew together, with the Clerk intervening.
Mr. Bazalguet, double-chinned and comfortable squire, was disturbed by this case. What troubled him was that Ingram had not been straightforward. What was this dismissal of a servant? He knew, and therefore he asked the question. Fortnaby knew also, but didn't intend to say. Everybody, indeed, knew. Romance appeals to us all in diverse ways; and it was actually romance which settled Clyde's romantic affair.
Fortnaby, Maximilian Fortnaby, had been a schoolmaster, had succeeded to an estate at forty, and retired. He, with his keen face and trim whiskers, leaning his head on his hand, thus spoke in undertones, and carried the day. “The case is clear. The young man's taught himself tongues, and has poetry. He's been taught other things, too, and has got some of them wrongly. One thing he ought to learn is that to relieve your feelings is not the way to help the oppressed. He's set himself up for a champion, and tongues have got to work. I should give him three months.” Mr. Bazalguet looked at the Clerk, who said it was a bad case. Mr. Ingram was a magistrate and—the maximum was two years. The third magistrate saw his way to impressing himself,—“Make it six months,” he said. The Chairman agreed with him, until Colonel Vero said, “I should give him a year.” That shocked him. “It'll take a long time for it to blow over, you know,” he whispered to Fortnaby, who smiled and shrugged. “I don't suppose six will hurt him. He'll be able to write after a bit.” “Ingram will go abroad, you know,” said Mr. Bazalguet. “Did you happen to know the—party?” Fortnaby looked up quickly. “I? Oh, dear no. But I gather that the less we say the better. It was not an ordinary servant.” Mr. Weir, the third magistrate, said, “A lady, I hear;” but his colleagues ignored him. Then they all sat up, and the Clerk sank into the well.
“Clyde,” said Mr. Bazalguet, “you will have to go to prison for three months, with hard labour. I hope this will be a warning to you. I do indeed.”
The prisoner was removed amid murmurs. There was some cheering outside the court—at which Ingram grimly smiled. But he was very pale, and did not leave the Sessions house until late in the afternoon. Old Mr. Bazalguet was very cool with him after court. He grunted when they met in the hall. “You go abroad?” he asked him. Ingram said, it was probable.
A notable difference between the sexes is this: that a man will thrive for years—that is, his better part—upon love denied, and woman upon love fulfilled. So Senhouse, in his hopeless plight, starved and did well; dreams nourished him in what passes in England for solitude. From the grey of the mornings to the violet-lidded dusk his silence was rarely broken; and yet the music in his heart was continuous; his routine marched to a rhythm. The real presence of Sanchia was always with him, to intensify, accentuate, and make reasonable the perceptions of his quickened senses. Sense blended with sense—as when the sharp fragrance of the thyme which his feet crushed gave him the vision of her immortal beauty, or when, in the rustle of the wind-swept grasses, he had a consciousness of her thrilled heart beating near by. All nature, in fact, was vocal of Sanchia by day; and at night, presently, she stole white-footed down the slant rays of the moon and fed his soul upon exhalations of her own. Idle as he might have appeared to one who did not know the man—for beyond the routine of his handiwork he did nothing visible—he was really intensely busy. Out of the stores reaped and garnered in those meditative years was to come the substance of his after-life.
But no man in England may live three years in a grass valley unreported; his fame will spread abroad, scattered as birds sow seeds. Discreetly as he lived and little as he fared, he was at first a thing of doubt and suspicion, and won respect by slow degrees. Was he a coiner, stirring alloys over his night fires? Was he Antichrist, blaspheming the Trinity at daybreak? He was talked of by gaitered farmers at sheep-fairs, by teamsters at cross-roads, by maidens and their sweethearts on Sundays. The shepherds, it was thought, might have told more than they did. It was understood that they had caught him at his secrets times and again. But the shepherds had little to say of him but that he was a mellow man, knowing sheep and weather, and not imparting all that he knew. Similarly the gypsies, who alone travel the Race-plain in these days, and mostly by night, were believed to know him well; but they, too, kept their lore within the limits of their own shifty realm.
Rarely, indeed, he was seen. Sunday lovers, strolling hand in hand up the valley, came to a point where they went tiptoe and peered about for him. He might be described motionless, folded in his white robe, midway between ridge and hollow; or a gleam of him flashed between the trees of the brake would perhaps be all that they would get for an hour of watching. The hill brows would, on such days, be lined with patient onlookers; all eyes would be up the narrow valley to its head under Hirlebury, where, below the little wood, his grey hut could be seen, deep-eaved, mysterious, blankly holding its secrets behind empty windows. None ever ventured to explore at close quarters; and if the tenant had appeared, a thousand to one they would all have looked the other way. The Wiltshire peasant is a gentleman from the heart outwards. So, too, carters, ploughmen, reapers in the vales would sometimes see his gaunt figure monstrous on the sky-line, cowled and with uplifted arms, adoring (it was supposed) the sun, or leaning on his staff, motionless and rapt, meditating death and mutability. He lost nothing by such change apparitions; on the contrary, he gained the name of a wise man who had powers of divination and healing. In the cottage whither he went once a week for bread, a child had been sick of a burning fever. His hands, averred the mother, had cured it. Groping and making passes over its stomach, rubbing in oils, relief had come, then quiet sleep and a cool forehead. After this an old man, crippled with rheumatics, had hobbled up to the very edge of his dominion, and had waited shaking there upon his staff until he could get speech with the white stranger. He, too, had had the reward of his relief. If he was not made sound again, he was relieved and heartened. He had said that, if he was spared, he was hopeful to stretch to his height again, which had been six feet all but an inch. The stranger, said he, had put him in the way of new life, and whatever he might mean—whether that he were a Salvationist or a quack doctor—he would say no more. After that, a young woman went to him to get him to name the father of her child, and returned, and was modest for a month, and a good mother when the time came. And true it was that her chap came forward and saw the vicar about it, and that they were asked in church. Out of such things as these his fame grew.
The hunt struck upon him now and again, when the hounds in full cry streamed down his steep escarpments and threatened panic to his browsing goats. At such times he would rise up, white-robed and calm, as stay with a quiet gesture the scattering beasts. The whips would cap him, and the Master with his field find themselves in company of an equal. For his ease of manner never left him, nor that persuasive smile which made you think that the sun was come out. He had none of the airs of mystagogue, but talked to men, as he did to beasts, in the speech which was habitual to them. The lagging fox understood him when, grinning his fear and fatigue, he drew himself painfully through the furze. So did the hounds, athirst for his blood. Buck-skinned gentlemen, no less, found him affable and full of information—about anything and everything in the world except the line of the hunted fox. “Oh, come,” he said once, “don't ask me to give him away. You're fifty to one, to start with; and the fact is I passed him my word that I wouldn't. I'll tell you what though. You shall offer me a cigarette. I haven't smoked for six days.” Which was done.
His powers with children, his charm for them, his influence and fascination, which in course of time made him famous beyond these shores, arose out of a chance encounter not far from his hut. Three boys, breaking school in the nesting season, came suddenly upon him, and paled, and stood rooted. “Come on,” he said, “I'll show you a thing or two that you've never seen before.” He led them to places of marvel, which his speech made to glimmer with the hues of romance: the fresh grubbed earth where a badger had been routing, the quiet glade where, that morning, a polecat had washed her face. He brought them up to a vixen and her cubs, and got them all playing together. He let them hold leverets in their arms, milk his goats, as the kids milk them for their need; and showed them so much of the ways of birds that they forgot, while they were under the spell of him, to take any of their eggs. Crowning wonder of all—when a peewit, waiting on the down, dipped and circled about his head for a while and finally perched on his shoulder while he stood looking down upon her eggs in the bents! Such deeds as these fly broadcast over the villages, and on Saturdays he would be attended by a score of urchins, boys and girls. To a gamekeeper who came out after his lad, sapling ash in hand, he had that to say which convinced the man of his authority.
“'A says to me, 'There's a covey of ten in thicky holler,' where you could see neither land nor bird. 'I allow 'tis ten,' he says, 'but we won't be particular to a chick.' There was nine, if you credit me, that rose out of a kind of a dimple in the down, that you couldn't see, and no man could see. 'Lord love you,' I said, 'Mr. John, how ever did you see 'em?' He looks at me, and he says, very quiet, 'I never saw the birds, nor knew they was there. I saw the air. There's waves in this air,' he says, 'wrinkled waves; and they birds stirred 'em, like stones flung into a pond. Tom,' he says, to my Tom, 'if you look as close as I do,' he says, 'you'll see what I see.' And young Tom looks up at him, as a dog might, kind of faithful, and he says, 'I 'low I will, sir, please, sir.' I says to him, 'Can a man be taught the like o' that?' 'No,' says he, 'but a boy can.' 'What more could thicky boy learn?' I says, and he says, 'To understand his betters, and get great words, and do without a sight of things—for the more you do without,' he says, 'the more you have to deal with.' 'Such things as what, now, would he do without?' I wants to know. He looks at me. 'Food,' he says, kind of sharp; 'food when he's hungry, and clothing, and a bed; and money, and the respect of them that don't know anything, and other men's learning, and things he don't make for himself.' Heard any man ever the like o' that? But just you bide till I've done. 'Can a boy learn to do without drink?' I wants to know—for beer's been my downfall. 'He can,' says thicky man. 'And love?' I says; and 'No,' says he straight, 'he cannot. But he can learn the way of it; and that 'ull teach him to do wi'out lust.' 'Tis a wise thought, the like of that, I allow.”
The gamekeeper paused for the murmurs of his auditory to circle about the tap-room, swell and subside, and then brought out his conclusion. There was book-learning to be faced. “How about scholarship? 'I'd give him none,' says the man. 'Swallerin' comes by nature, and through more than the mouth. I'd open him his eyes and ears, his fingers and toes, and the very hairs on the backs of his hands; and they'll all swaller in time, like the parts of the beastes do.' Now, that's a learned man, I allow. My boy must go to the Council School it does appear; but thicky man will give him more teaching in a week than school-master in a year—and there he goes o' Saturdays—and wants no driving, moreover.” He returned to his beer, thoughtful-eyed.
The gamekeeper's son was twelve years old, and was the nucleus round which grew the Senhusian school of a later day, where neither reading nor writing could be had until the pupil was fifteen years old. But this is anticipatory, for the school was a matter of long gestation and tentative birth.
One September midnight, as he stirred a late supper over a small wood-fire, he was hailed by a cry from above. “Ho, you! I ask shelter,” he was adjured. The quarter moon showed him a slim figure dark against the sky.
“Come down, and you shall have it,” he answered, and continued to skim his broth.
The descent was painfully made, and it was long before the traveller stood blinking by his fire—a gaunt and hollow-eyed lad. Senhouse took him in at a glance, stained, out-at-elbows with the world, nursing a grudge, footsore and heartsore. He had a gypsy look, and yet had not a gypsy serenity. That is a race that is never angry at random; and never bitter at large. A gypsy will want a man's life; but if the man is not before him, will be content to wait until he is. But this wanderer seemed to have a quarrel with time and place, that they held not his enemy by the gullet.
“You travel late, my friend,” said Senhouse briskly.
“I travel by night,” said the stranger, “lest I should be seen by men or the sun.”
Senhouse laughed. “In girum imus noctu, non ut consumimur igni.' They used to say that of the devils once upon a time. Devilish bad Latin; but it reads backwards as well as forwards, like the devil himself.”
“My devil rides on my back,” said the stranger, “and carries with him the fire that roasts me.”
He was at once bitter and sententious. Senhouse put down his hurts to bruises of the self-esteem.
“I hope that you dropped him up above,” he said cheerfully, “or that you will let me exorcise him. I've tried my hand with most kinds of devil. Are you a Roman?”
“Half,” he was told, and, guessing which half, asked no more questions.
“You are pretty well done, I can see,” he said. “You want more food. You want warm water, and a bed, and a dressing for your feet. You've been on the road too long.”
The stranger was huddled by the fire, probing his wounded feet. “I'm cut to pieces,” he said. “I've been over stubbles and flint. This is a cruel country.”
“It's the sweetest in the world,” Senhouse told him, “when you know your way about it. When you have the hang of it you need not touch the roads. You smell out the hedgerows, and every borstal leads you out on to the grass. But I'll own that there are thistles. I wear sandals myself. Now,” he continued, ladling out of his pot with a wooden spoon, “here's your porridge, and there are bread and salt; and here water, and here goat's milk. Afterwards you shall have a pipe of tobacco, and some tea. Best begin while all's hot—and while you eat I'll look to your wounds. Finally, you shall be washed and clothed.”
He went away, returning presently with water and a napkin. Kneeling, he bathed his guest's feet, wiped them, anointed, then wrapped them up in the napkin. The disconsolate one, mean-time, was supping like a wolf. He gulped at his porridge with quick snaps, tore his bread with his teeth. Senhouse gave him time, quietly eating his own supper, watching the red gleam die down in the poor wretch's eyes. Being himself a spare feeder, he was soon done, and at further business of hospitality. He set a great pipkin of water to heat, brought out a clean robe of white wool, a jelab like his own, and made some tea.
The stranger, then, being filled, cleansed and in warm raiment, stretched himself before the fire, and broke silence. He was still surly, but the grudge was not audible in his voice. “I took your fire for a gypsy camp, and was glad enough of it. I've come by the hills from Winterslow since dusk. You were right, though: I was done. I couldn't have dragged another furlong.”
Senhouse nodded. “I thought not. Been long on the road?”
“Two months.”
“From the North, I think? From Yorkshire?”
The stranger grunted his replies. His host judged that he had reasons for his reticence. There was a pause.
“You sup late,” was then observed.
Senhouse replied, “I generally do. I take two meals a day—the first at noon, the second at midnight; but I believe that I could do without one of them. I never was much of an eater—and I need very little sleep. Somehow, although I am out at sunrise most mornings, I rarely sleep till two or thereabouts. Four hours are enough for me—and in the summer much less. Sometimes, when the fit is on me, I roam all night long, and come back and do my routine—and then sleep where I am, or may be. Precisians would grow mad at such a life—and yet I'm awfully healthy.”
The stranger watched him. “You live here, then—and so?”
“I have lived here,” said Senhouse, “for three years or more; but I've lived so for over twenty. I've wandered for most of that time, and know England from end to end; but now I seem to have got into a backwater, and I find that I travel farther, and see more, than I did when I was hardly for a week together in the same place. But that's reason-able enough, if you think of it. If you can do with-out time, space goes with it. If it don't matterwhenyou are, it don't matterwhere.”
The stranger lent this reasoning his gloomy meditation, which turned it inwards to himself and his rueful history. “I don't follow you, I believe,” he said, “for very good reason. I hope you will never learn as I have that it does matter where you are.” He stopped, then added, as if the admission was wrung out of him, “I've been in prison.”
“So have I,” said Senhouse, “and in Siberia at that. I was there for more than a year, though not all that time within walls. They let me loose when they found that I could be trusted, and I learned botany, and caught a marsh fever which nearly finished me. They wouldn't have me in after that, being quite content that I should rot in the open. I was succoured by a woman, one of those noble creatures who are made to give themselves. She gave me what blood she had left. God bless her: she blessed me.”
“It was a woman,” said the stranger, “that sent me to prison.”
Senhouse, after looking him over, calmly replied, “I don't believe you. You mean, I think, that there was a woman, and you went to prison. You confuse her and your feelings about her. It is natural, but not very fine-mannered. No woman would have put the thing as you have put it to me.”
The stranger shifted two or three times under his host's quiet regard: presently he said, “This is the tale in a nutshell. She was beautiful and kind to me; she was in a hateful place, and I loved her—and she knew it. There was a man with claims—rights he had none—preposterous claims, made infamous by his acts. The position was impossible, intolerable. She knew it, but did nothing. Women are like that—endlessly enduring; but men are not. I dragged him off a horse and thrashed him. He had me to gaol, and she went her ways, leaving a note for me, hoping I should do well. Do well! Much she cares what I do. Much care I.” He ended with a sob which was like the cough of a wolf at night, and then turned his face away.
“Why should she care,” asked Senhouse, “what becomes of you? By your act you dropped yourself out of her sphere. If she was to be degraded, as you call it, by whom was she degraded? But you talk there a language which I don't understand. You say that she was beautiful, and I suppose you know what you mean by the word. How then is a beautiful person to be degraded by anything the likes of you, or your fellow-dog, do to her? The thing's absurd. You can't claw her soul or blacken the edges of that. You can't sell that into prostitution or worse. That is her own, and it's that which makes her beautiful,—in spite of the precious pair of you, bickering and mauling each other to possess her. Possess her, poor fool! Can you possess moonlight? If you have degraded anything, you have degraded yourself. She remains where she is, entirely out of your reach.”
The young man now turned his trapped and wretched face to the speaker. “You little know—” he began, then for weakness stopped. “I can't quarrel with you; wait till I've had a night's rest.”
“You shall have it, and welcome,” said Senhouse. “But you'll never quarrel with me. I believe I've got beyond that way of enforcing arguments which I fear may be unsound. I doubt if I have quarrelled with anybody for twenty years.”
“There are some things which no man can stand,” said the other, “and that was one. Your talk of the soul is very fine; but do you say that you don't love a woman's body as well as her soul?”
Senhouse was silent for a while; then he said, “No,—I can't say that. You have me there. I ought to, but I can't. And I think I owe you an apology for my heat, for the fact is that I've been in much of your position myself. There was a man once upon a time that I felt like thrashing—for much of your reason. But I didn't do it—for what seemed to me unanswerable reason. I did precisely the opposite—I did everything I could to ensure a miserable marriage for the being I loved best in all the world. I loathed the man, I loathed the bondage; but that's what I did. Now mark what follows. I didn't—I couldn't—degrade her; but I saw myself dragging like a worm in the mud while she soared out of my reach. And there I've been—of the slime slimy ever since. Where she is now I don't know, but I think in heaven. Heaven lay in her eyes—and whenever I look at the sky at night I see her there.”
“You are talking above my head,” said the stranger, “or above your own. Either I am a fool, or you a madman. You love a woman, and give her to another man? You love her, and secure her in slavery? You love her, and don't want her?”
“It is I that am the fool, not you,” said Senhouse. “I do want her. I want nothing else in earth or heaven. And yet I know that I have her for ever. Our souls have touched each other. She is mine and I am hers. And yet I want her.”
“Won't you get her? Don't you believe that you will?”
“God knows! God knows!”
“She was beautiful?”
“The dawn,” said Senhouse, “was not more purely lovely than she. The dawn was in her face—the awfulness of it as well as its breathless beauty.”
“My mistress,” said the young man, “had the gait of a goddess in the corn. One thought of Demeter in the wheat. She was like ivory under the moon. She laughed rarely, but her voice was low and thrilled.”
“Her breath,” Senhouse continued, “was like the scent of bean-flowers. She sweetened the earth. It is true that she laughed seldom, but when she did the sun shone from behind a cloud. When she was silent you could hear her heart beat. She was deliberate, measured in all that she did—yet her spirit was as swift as the south-west wind. She did nothing that was not lovely, and never faltered in what she purposed. When first I came to know her and see the workings of her noble mind, I was so happy in the mere thought of her that I sang all day as I worked or walked. It never entered me for one minute that I could desire anything but the knowledge of her.”
“I wanted my mistress altogether,” the other broke in, “from the first moment to the last—fool, and wicked fool, as you may think me. I could see her bosom stir her gown—I could see the lines of her as she walked. She was kind to me, I tell you, and there were times when—alone with her—in her melting mood—in the wildness of my passion—but no! something held me: I never dared touch her.... And then he—the other—came back; he, with his 'claims' and 'rights'; and the thought of him, and what he could do—and did do—made me blind. You tell me that I sinned against her—”
“I don't,” said Senhouse. “I tell you that you sinned against love. You don't know what love is.”
“You say so. Maybe you know nothing about it. If you have reduced yourself to be contented with the soul of a woman, I have not. What have I to do with the soul?”
“Evidently nothing,” said Senhouse. “How, pray, do you undertake to apprehend body's beauty unless you discern the soul in it—on which it shapes its beauty?”
“I know,” the other replied, “that she has a lovely body, and gracious, free-moving ways; and I could have inferred her soul from them. I'll engage that you did the same thing. How are you to judge of the soul but by the hints which the body affords you?”
Senhouse made no answer, but remained musing. When he spoke it was as if he was resuming a tale half-told....
“She was in white—white as a cloud—and in a wood. Her hair reflected gold of the sun. She pinned her skirts about her waist, and put her bare foot into a pool of black water. She sank in it to the knee. She did not falter: her eyes were steady upon what she did.”
The stranger took him up where he stopped, and continued the tale. “She could never falter in her purpose. She bared herself to the thighs. She went into the pool thigh-deep. Whiter than the lilies which she went to save, she raked the weed from them—you helping her.”
“She did,” said Senhouse, his eyes searching the fire. “And when, afterwards, she did what her heart bade her, she never faltered either, though she steeped her pure soul in foulness compared to which the black water was sweet. But do you suppose that any evil handling would stain her? You fool! You are incapable of seeing a good woman. In the same breath with which I spurned myself for having a moment's fear for her, I thanked God for having let me witness her action.”
The rebuke was accepted, not because it was felt to be justified; but rather, it passed unheeded. The stranger had questions to ply.
“Knowing her, loving her—loveworthy as she was—how could you leave her?”
“I beg your pardon,” said Senhouse, “I have never left her.” But in the next breath he had to qualify his paradox.
He spoke vehemently. “I had of her all that I dared have. That has never left me. I had all that she could give me—she that was self-sufficing, not to be imparted. She did not love me, as you could understand love: I don't think she could love anybody. But I only could read her thoughts and grasp her troubles for her. She was at ease with me, let me write to her, was glad to see me when I came, but perfectly able to do without me. She was, of course, not human; she inhabited elsewhere. Her 'soul was like a star and dwelt apart.' She remembered things as they had been, yet not as affecting her to pleasure or pain; she remembered them as a tale that is told, as things witnessed. So she remembered me—and so she still does. If I was there, with her, she was glad; if I was not there, she wasn't sorry. I was nothing to her but a momentary solace—and I knew it and taught myself to be contented. I believe that she was the spirit of immortal youth fleeting over the world. I called her Hymnia. What Beatrice was to Dante, the visible incarnation of his dream of holiness, such was she to me. I picture her and Beatrice together in heaven.