And behind them a flame burneth: and the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness.
It was June and wind was in the tree-tops. All the world was rustling and birds were calling.
For the past seven months, since the winning of my fellowship, I had been over-working and making myself brain-sick with thought. I was twenty-three, and had arrived at “the broken-toy age” when a young man, having pulled this plaything of a universe to pieces, begins to doubt his own omniscience—his capacity to put it together. The more I sought help from philosophies, the more I came to see that they were all imperfect. No one had yet evolved a theory which had not at some point to be bridged by faith—that beautiful optimism which is nothing less than the hearsay of the heart. I was all for logic these days.
So, when I heard the June wind laughing in the trees, I tossed my books aside. I left my doubts all disorderly upon the shelves to grow dusty, and ran away. I would seek for the garden without walls. Having failed to find it in libraries, I would search for it through the open country. I had only two certainties to guide me—that I was young, and that the world was growing lovelier every day.
I came down to quaint little Ransby, perched high and red above the old sea-wall. Life was taken so much for granted there. No one inquired into its why or wherefore. Everything that happened was accepted with a quiet stoicism, as “sent from God.” When the waves rumbled on the shore, they said the sea was talking to itself. When a crew sailed out and never returned, they said “God took them.” When times were bad, they looked back and remembered how times were worse before. No one ever really died there, for in the small interests of a quiet community nothing was forgotten—all the characteristic differences and shades of personality were treasured in memory, and so the dead lived on. Life for them was an affair of compensations. “If there weren’t no partin’s, there’d be no meetin’s,” my grandmother used to say. And death was explained after the same simple fashion. Every pious Ransbyite believed that heaven would be another Ransby, with no more storms and an empty churchyard.
I traveled down from London by an afternoon train. Shortly after six we struck the Broads, or inland waterways, which now narrow into rivers, now widen into lakes, flowing sluggishly through fat marshes to the sea. On the left hand as we flashed by, one caught glimpses of the spread arms of windmills slowly turning, pumping meadows dry, or jutting above gray sedges the ochre-colored sails of wherries plodding like cart-horses from Ransby up to Norwich. Startled by the clamor of our passage, a lonely heron would spring up and float indignantly away into the distant quiet. Now we would come to a field of wheat faintly yellowing in the summer sunshine. Between green-gold stalks would flash the scarlet of the Suffolk poppy. Across the desecrated silence we hurled the grime and commotion of cities, leaving an ugly blur of gradually thinning smoke behind.
The evening glow was beginning. Picked out in gold, windows of thatched cottages and steeples of sleeping hamlets burnt for an instant splendid in the landscape. A child, warned of our approach, clambered on a stile, and waved; laborers, plodding homeward with scythes across their shoulders, halted to watch us go by. We burst as a disturbing element into the midst of these rustic lives; in our sullen hurry, they had hardly noticed us before we had vanished.
With the country fragrance of newly-mown hay there began to mingle the tar and salt of a seaport. We swayed across the tresseled bridge, where the Broads met the harbor. Ozone, smell of fish and sea-weed assailed our nostrils. Houses grew up about us. Blunt red chimneys, like misshapen thumbs, jabbed the blue of the horizon; above them tall masts of ships speared the sky. With rush and roar we invaded the ancient town, defiling its Dutch appearance of neatness, and affronting with our gadabout swagger its peaceful sense of home-abiding. We came to a standstill in the station; all was clatter and excitement.
The visitors’ season was just commencing. The platform was crowded with Londoners greeting one another. Drawn up on the other side of the platform, parallel with the train, was a line of cabbies, most of whom were standing up in their seats, shouting and gesticulating. They had a touch of the sea about them—a weatherbeaten look of jolliness.
As I got out, my eye was attracted to a little girl who was climbing down from a neighboring compartment. She was unlike any English child—she lacked the sturdy robustness. My attention was caught by the dainty faeriness of her appearance. She wore a foamy white muslin dress, cut very short, with spreading flounces of lace about it. It was caught up here and there with pink baby-bows of ribbon. Her delicate arms were bare from the elbow. She was small-boned and slender. Her skirt scarcely reached to her knees, so that nearly half her tiny height seemed to consist of legs. She had the slightness and moved with the grace of a child-dancer escaped from a ballet. But what completed her baby perfection was the profusion of flaxen curls, which streamed down from her shoulders to her waist. She saw me looking at her and laughed up with roguish frankness.
Having secured my luggage, I was pushing my way out of the station through the long line of visitors and porters, when I saw the child standing bewildered by herself. In the crowd she had become separated from whoever was taking care of her. I spoke to her, but she was crying too bitterly to answer. Setting down my bags, I tried to comfort her, saying that I would stay with her till she was found. Suddenly her face lit up and she darted from my side. I had a hurried vision of a lady pushing her way towards her. While she was stooping to take the little girl in her arms, I made off as quickly as I was able. Like my father, I detested a scene, and had a morbid horror of being thanked.
How good it was to smell the salt of the sea again. I passed up the harbor where the fishing-fleet lay moored against the quay-side, and sailormen, with hands deep in trouser-flaps, leant against whatever came handiest, pulling meditatively at short clay pipes. The business of the day was over. Folk were tenacious of their leisure in Ransby; they had a knack, peculiarly their own, of filling the evening with an undercurrent sense of gaiety. Though townsmen, they were villagers at heart. When work was done, they polished themselves up and sat outside their houses or came into the streets to exchange the news of the day. I turned from the harbor and passed down the snug quiet street in which stood the house with CARDOVER painted above the doorway.
As I approached, the bake-house boy was putting the last shutter into place against the window. I entered the darkened shop on tiptoe, picking my way through anchors, sacks of ships’ biscuit, and coils of rope, till I could peer through the glass-panel of the door into the keeping-room. I loved to surprise the little old lady with the gray corkscrew curls and rosy cheeks, so that for once she might appear undignified. But, as I peered through, I met her eyes.
“Why, Dante, my boy,” she cried, reaching up to put her arms round me, “how you have grown!”
I was always a boy to her; she would never let herself think that I had ceased to grow, for then I should have ceased to be a child.
We sat down to a typically Ransby meal, which they call high-tea. There were Ransby shrimps and Ransby bloaters on the table; everything was of local flavor, and most of it was home-made. “You can’t get things like them in Lun’non,” Grandmother Cardover said, falling back into her Suffolk dialect.
That night we talked of Sir Charles Evrard. Rumor proclaimed that Lord Halloway had finally ruined his chances in that direction by his latest escapade. It concerned a pretty housemaid at Woadley Hall, and the affair had actually been carried on under Sir Charles’s very nose, as one might say. The girl was the daughter of a gamekeeper on the estate and——! Well there, my Grannie might as well tell me everything!—there was going to be a baby. All that was known for certain was that Mr. Thomas, the gamekeeper—a ’ighly respectable man, my dear—had gone up to the Hall with a whip in his hand and had asked to see Master Denny. The old Squire, hearing him at the door, had gone out to give him some instructions about the pheasantry. Mr. Thomas had given him a piece of his mind. And Sir Charles, having more than he could conveniently do with, had made a present to Denny Halloway of a bit of his mind. After which Master Denny had left hurriedly for parts unknown. It was said that he had returned to Oxford, to read for Holy Orders as a sort of atonement. It was my grandmother’s opinion that the marriage-service wasn’t much in his line.
So we rambled on, and the underlying hint of it all was that I had come to Ransby in the nick of time to make hay while the sun was shining.
“Grannie, you’ll never get me worked up over that again,” I told her.
“Well but, if his Lordship don’t inherit, who’s goin’ to?” she persisted. “I tell you, Dante, he’s got to make you his heir—he can’t help it. The whole town’s talking about it. Sir Evrard’s bailiff hisself was in here to-day and I says to him, ‘Mr. Mobbs, who’s going to be master now at Woadley Hall when the dear old Squire dies?’ And he answers me respectful-like, ‘It don’t do to be previous about such matters, Mrs. Cardover; but if you and me was to speak out our minds, I daresay we should guess the same.’ ‘Is Sir Charles as wild with Lord Halloway as folks do say?’ I asks him. Like a prudent man he wouldn’t commit hisself to words; but he throws up his hands and rolls his eyes. Now what d’you think of that? If you knew Mobbs as I know him, you’d see it was a sign which way the wind is blowing.”
I was trying to think otherwise. I had banished this expectation from my mind and wasn’t anxious to court another disappointment.
“If it happens that way, it will happen that way,” said I.
But my grandmother wasn’t in favor of such indifferent fatalism. She loved to picture me in possession of Woadley. She commenced to describe to me all its farmlands and broad acres. She spoke so much as if they were already mine that at last I began to dream again. So we rambled on until at five minutes to midnight the grandfather clock cleared its throat, getting ready to strike.
“Lawks-a-daisy me,” she exclaimed, “there’s that clock crocking for twelve! How you do get your poor old Grannie on talking!”
We lit our candles and climbed the narrow stairs to bed. Outside my bedroom-door she halted. I wondered what else she had to tell me. Holding her candle high, so that its light fell down upon her laughing face, she made me a mocking courtesy, saying, “Good-night, Sir Dante Cardover.”
Next morning I was up early. As I dressed I could smell the bread being carried steaming out of the bakehouse. Looking out of my window into the red-brick courtyard I could see men’s figures, white with flour-dust, going to and fro. The morning was clear and sparkling, as though washed clean by rain. The sun was dazzling and the wind was blowing. From the harbor came the creaking of sails being hoisted, and the cheery bustle of vessels getting under way. Of all places this was home. My spirits rose. I laughed, remembering the cobwebs of theories which had tangled up my brain. Nothing seemed to matter here, save the wholesome fact of being alive.
After breakfast I stepped out into the street and wandered up toward the harbor. The townsmen knew me and greeted me as I went by. I caught them looking after me with a new curiosity in their gaze. I began to wonder whether I had made some absurd mistake in my dressing. I grew uncomfortable and had an insane desire to see what kind of a spectacle my back presented. I tried to use shop-windows as mirrors, twisting my neck to catch glimpses of myself. Then there occurred to me what my grandmother had said to me on the previous night. So itwastrue, and all the town was talking about me!
As I approached the chemist shop at the top of the road, Fenwick, the chemist, was sunning himself in the doorway.
“Why, Mr. Cardover!” he exclaimed, stepping out on to the pavement and seizing my hand with unaccustomed effusiveness. Then, lowering his voice, “Suppose you’ve heard about Lord Halloway?”
I nodded.
“It’s lucky to be you,” he added knowingly. “But, there, I always did tell your Grannie that luck would turn your way.”
I passed on through the sunshine in a wild elation. What if it were true this time? I asked myself. What if it were really true?
Ransby is built like a bent arm, jutting out into the sea, following the line of the coast. At the extreme point of the elbow, where I was now standing, is the wooden pier, on which the visitors parade. Running from the elbow to the shoulder is the sheltered south beach and the esplanade, given up to visitors and boarding-houses. These terminate in the distance in a steep headland, on which stands the little village of Pakewold. On the other side of the pier is the harbor, entering or departing out of which fishing vessels and merchantmen may be seen almost any hour of the day. From the elbow to the finger tips, running northward, is the bleak north beach, gnawed at by the sea and bullied by every wind that blows. Here it is that most of the wrecks take place. The older portion of the town, climbing northward from the harbor, overhangs it, scarred and weather-beaten. Where the town ends, seven miles of crumbling gorse-grown cliff continue the barricade.
Separating the town from the north beach, stretch the denes—a broad strip of grassy sand, on which fishing-nets are dried. Parallel with the denes is the gray sea-wall; and beyond the wall a shingle beach, low-lying and defended at intervals by breakwaters. Here the waves are continually attacking: on the calmest day there is anger in their moan. From far away one can hear the scream of pebbles dragged down as the waves recede, the long sigh which follows the weariness of defeat, and the loud thunder as the water hurls itself in a renewed attack along the coast. On the denes stands a lighthouse, warning vessels not to come too close; for, when the east wind lashes itself into a fury, the sea leaps the wall and pours across the denes to the foot of the town, like an invading host. A vessel caught in the tide-race at such a time, is flung far inland and left there stranded when the waves have gone back to their place. Facing the denes, lying several miles out in the German Ocean, are a line of sand-banks; between them and the shore is a channel, known as the Ransby Roads, which affords safe anchorage to vessels. Beyond the Roads and out of sight, lies the coast of Holland.
I turned my steps to the northward, passing through the harbor where groups of ear-ringed fisher-folk were unloading smacks, encouraging one another with hoarse, barbaric cries. I stopped now and then to listen to the musical sing-song conversation of East Anglia, so neighborly and so kindly. Here and there mounds of silver herring gleamed in the morning sunshine. The constant sound of ropes tip-tapping as the breeze stirred them, sails flapping and water washing against wooden piles, filled the air with the energy and adventure of sturdy life.
The exultation of living whipped the wildness in my veins. As I left the harbor, striking out across the denes, I caught the sound of breakers—the long, low rumble of revolt. Girls were at work, their hair tumbled, their skirts blown about, catching up nets spread out on the grass beneath their feet and mending the holes. Some of them were singing, some of them were laughing, some of them were silent, dreaming, perhaps, of sailor-lovers who were far away.
As I advanced, I left all human sounds behind. The red town, piled high on the cliff, grew dwarfed in the distance. I entered into a world of nature and loneliness. Larks sprang from under my feet and rose into the air caroling. Overhead the besom of the wind was busy, sweeping the sky. From cliffs came the shy, old-fashioned fragrance of wall-flowers nestling in crannies. Yellow furze ran like a flame through the bracken. Far out from shore waves leapt and flashed, clapping their hands in the maddening sunshine. My cheeks were damp and my lips were salt with in-blown spray. It was one of those mornings of exultation which come to us rarely and only in youth, when the joy of the flesh is roused within us, we know not why, and every nerve is set tingling with health—and the world, as seen through our eyes, clothes itself afresh to symbolize the gay abandon of our mood.
The fluttering of something white, low down by the water’s edge, caught my attention. Out of sheer idleness I became curious. It was about a quarter of a mile distant when I first had sight of it. Just behind it lay the battered hull of an old wreck, masts shorn away and leaning over on its side. A sea-gull wheeled above the prow, flew out to sea and returned again, showing that it had been disturbed and was distressed.
As I approached, I discovered the white thing to be the stooping figure of a child; by her hair I recognized her. Her skirts were kilted up about her tiny waist and she was bare-legged. I could see no one with her, so I waited till she should look up, lest I should frighten her. Then, “Hulloa, little ’un,” I shouted. “Going to let me come and play with you?”
She spread apart her small legs, like an infant Napoleon, and brushed back the curls from her eyes. Her cheeks were flushed with exertion. She looked even prettier and more faery than she had on the previous night.
“Why, you ith the man what found me!” she cried.
She made such speed as she could across the pebbles to greet me. It was hard going for her bare little feet. When she came opposite to me, she halted with a solemn childish air of dignity. “I want to fank you,” she said, “and tho doth Vi.”
She stood gazing at me shyly. When I bent down to take her hand in mine, she pursed her mouth, showing me what was expected.
I asked her what she was playing. She shook her curls, at a loss for words. “Jest thomething,” she said, and invited me to come and join.
I took her in my arms to save her the rough return journey. She showed no fear of me. Soon we were chatting on the lonely beach, firm friends, quite gaily together. She showed me the channel she had scooped out, leading into the miniature harbor. Every time the surf ran up the shore the harbor filled with water. In the basin was a piece of wood, which floated when the surf ran in, and stranded when it receded.
“What’s that?” I asked her.
“That’s our thip.”
“What’s the name of our ship?”
“I fordet—it’s the big thip in what we came over.”
“Who’s we?”
“Why, me and Vi.”
We set to work to make the harbor wider, going on our knees side by side. I thought of a fine plan—to start the ship at the beginning of the channel, that so it might ride in on the in-rush of the water. The little girl was delighted and leant over my shoulder, brushing my face with her blown about hair, and clapping her hands as she watched the success of the experiment. In the excitement of the game, we had forgotten about everyone but our two selves, when we heard a voice calling, “Dorrie, darling! Dorrie, darling! Are you all right?”
I turned round, but could see no one—only the lonely length of the shore and the black wreck blistering in the wind and sunshine.
“Yeth, I’m all right,” piped the little girl.
Then she explained to me, “That wath Vi.”
“And who are you?” I asked her.
“I’m Dorrie.”
For me the zest had gone out of the game. I kept turning my head, trying to catch a glimpse of the owner of the voice. It had sounded so lazy and pleasant that I was anxious to see what Vi looked like; but then I was not sure that my company would prove so welcome to a grownup as it had to Dorrie. To run away would have looked foolish—as though there were something of which to be ashamed; and then there was nowhere to run to in that wide open space. Yet my intrusion was so unconventional that I did not feel comfortable in staying.
A slim figure in a white sailor dress came out from the wreck. She had been bathing, for she wore neither shoes nor stockings, and her hair was hanging loose about her shoulders to dry. She started at sight of me, and seemed, for a moment, to hesitate as to whether she should retire. I rose from my knees, holding Dorrie’s hand, and stood waiting.
I could not help gazing at her; we looked straight into one another’s eyes. Hers were the color of violets, grave and loyal. They seemed to stare right into my mind, reading all that I had thought and all that I had desired. Her face was of the brilliant and transparent paleness that goes with fair complexions sometimes. In contrast her lips were scarlet, and her brows delicately but firmly penciled. Her features were softly molded and regular, her figure upright and lithe. She appeared brimful of energy, a good deal of which was probably nervous. And her hair was glorious. It was flaxen like Dorrie’s; the salt of the sea had given to it a bronzy touch in the shadows. She was neither short nor tall, but straight-limbed and superbly womanly. She possessed Dorrie’s own fragile daintiness. The likeness between them was extraordinary; I judged them at once to be sisters. As for her age, she looked little more than twenty.
She stood gazing down on me from the sullen wreck, with La Gioconda’s smile, incarnating all the purity of passion that I had ever dreamt should be mine. “Gold and ivory, with poppies for her lips,” was the thought that described her.
Dorrie cut short our silence. Letting go my hand, she stumbled up the beach, explaining the situation in her lisping way. “Deareth, thith gentleman hath been playing with me. He’th the man what found me yetherday.”
Noticing that neither of us uttered a word, she turned on me reproachfully. “I thought you wath kind,” she said. “Come thith minute, and thpeak to Vi.”
Her air of baby imperiousness made us smile. That broke the ice.
She placed her arm about Dorrie, hugging her against her side. As I came up to the wreck, she held out her hand frankly. “This is very unconventional,” she said, “but things sometimes happen this way. I was so sorry you wouldn’t stop to let me thank you yesterday. I was hoping we would meet again.”
It seemed quite natural to sit down beside this stranger. Usually in the presence of women I was tongue-tied and had to rack my brains to think what to say. When the opportunity to escape came, I always took it, and spent the next hour in kicking myself for having behaved like a frightened boy. On this occasion it was quite otherwise. Sprawled out in the shadow of the wreck, gazing up into her girlish face while she cuddled Dorrie to her, I found myself talking with a fearlessness and freedom which I was not aware of at the time.
“You were bathing?”
She shook out her hair. “Looks like it?”
“But you shouldn’t bathe here, you know. It’s dangerous. The south beach is the proper place.”
“I’m rather a good swimmer. I’m not afraid.”
“That doesn’t matter. You oughtn’t to do it. You might get drowned. I’m awfully serious. I wish you wouldn’t.”
She seemed amused at my concern for her. Yet I knew she liked it. Her eyes were saying to me, “Oh, you nice, funny boy! You’ve known me less than an hour. If I were to drown, what difference would it make to you?” She looked down at Dorrie. “If Vi were to go out there, and sink beneath a wave, and never come back again, would Dorrie mind?”
“You won’t,” said Dorrie; “don’t be thtupid.”
We talked about a good many things that morning as the wind blew, and the waves broke, and the sun climbed higher. I wanted to find out who she was, so that I might make certain of meeting her again.
“Do you live in Ransby?” I asked.
“No. We only arrived yesterday. I never was in England till a week ago. We’ve been traveling on the Continent. I wanted a place in which to be quiet. I heard someone in the hotel at which we stayed in London talking about Ransby. They said it was old-world and bracing—that was why I came.”
“I’ve never been out of England in my life,” I said; “I’d like to break loose some time.”
“Where would you go?”
When we began to talk of foreign countries, she amazed me with her knowledge. She seemed to have been in every country of Europe except Russia. Last winter, she told me, she had spent in Rome and the spring in Paris. She always spoke as if she had been unaccompanied, except for Dorrie. It struck me as strange that so young and beautiful a woman should have traveled so widely without an escort or chaperon of any kind. I was striving to place her. She spoke excellent English, and yet I was certain she was not an Englishwoman. For one thing, her manner in conversation with a man was too spontaneous and free from embarrassment. She had none of that fear of talking about herself which hampers the women of our nation; nor did she seek to flatter me and to hold my attention by an insincere interest in my own past history. She had an air of self-possession and self-poise which permitted her to make herself accessible. I longed to ask her to tell me more about herself, but I did not dare. We skimmed the surface of things, evading one another’s inquisitiveness with veiled allusions.
The child looked up. “Dorrie’s hungry,” she said plaintively. .
Pulling out my watch I discovered that it was long past twelve. Making the greatest haste, I could not get back to my grandmother’s till lunch was over.
“You needn’t go unless you want,” said Vi. “I’ve enough for the three of us. It was Dorrie and I who delayed you; so we ought to entertain you. That’s only fair.”
Dorrie wriggled her toes and clambered over me, insisting that I accept the invitation. And so I stayed.
They disappeared for ten minutes inside the wreck; when they came out they had completed their dressing. Vi had piled her hair into a gold wreath about her head. She was still hatless, but her feet were decorously stockinged and shod in a shiny pair of high-heeled slippers.
When the meal was ended, I had told myself, I ought to take my departure; but Dorrie gave me an excuse for stopping. She curled herself up in my arms, saying she was “tho thleepy.” I could not rise without waking her.
When the child no longer kept guard between us, we began to grow self-conscious. In the silences which broke up our whispered conversation, we took slow glances at one another and, when we caught one another’s eyes, looked away sharply. I thought of the miracle of what had happened, and wondered if the same thought occupied her mind. Here were she and I, who that morning had been nothing to one another; by this afternoon every other interest had become dwarfed beside her. I knew nothing of her. Most of the words which we had interchanged had been quite ordinary. Yet she had revealed to me a new horizon; she had made me aware of an unsuspected intensity of manhood, which gave to the whole of life a richer tone and more poignant value.
She took her eyes from the sea and looked down at Dorrie. “You hold her very tenderly. You are fond of children.”
“I suppose I am; but I didn’t know it until I met your little sister.”
A warm tide of color spread over her pale face and throat. She leant over me and kissed Dorrie. When the child opened her eyes she said, “Come, darling, it’s nearly time for tea. We must be going.”
I helped her to gather up her things, taking all the time I could in the hope that she would ask me to accompany her.
She offered me her hand, saying, “Perhaps we shall meet again.”
“I’m sure I hope so. Ransby is such a little place.”
“Yes, but our movements are so uncertain. I don’t know how long we may be staying.”
“At any rate we’ve had a good time to-day.”
“Yes. You have been very kind. I’m sure Dorrie will remember you. Good-by.”
I watched them grow smaller across the sands, till they entered into the shadow of the cliff. I had a mad impulse to pursue them—to follow them at a distance and find out where they lived. How did I know that they had not vanished forever out of my life? I called myself a fool for not having seized my opportunities, however precipitately, while they were mine.
The wreck looked desolate now; all the romance had departed from it. The long emptiness of the shore filled me with loneliness. As I walked homeward, I strove to memorize her every tone and gesture. Their memory might be all that I should ever have of her. I was mortally afraid that we should never meet again.
Next morning I walked along the north beach in the hope that I might catch sight of her. I was sure that she had shared my quickening of passion; it was because she had felt it and been frightened by it, that she had wakened Dorrie and hurried so abruptly away. I was sufficiently vain to assure myself that only the timidity of love could account for the sudden scurry of her flight.
With incredible short-sightedness, I had allowed them to leave me without ascertaining their surname. My only clue, whereby I might trace them, was the abbreviated forms of their Christian names. Dorrie probably stood for Dorothy or Dorothea; Vi for Vivian or Violet. Directly after breakfast I had studied the visitors’ list inThe Ransby Chronicle, hoping to come across these two Christian names in combination with the same surname. My search had been unrewarded, for only the initials of Christian names were printed and the V’s and the D’s were bewilderingly plentiful.
On approaching the wreck I became oppressed with a nervous sense of the proprieties. I was ashamed of intruding myself again. If she were there, how should I excuse my coming? That attraction to her was my only motive would be all too plain. I had at my disposal none of the social cloaks of common interests and common acquaintance, which serve as a rule to disguise the primitive fact of a man’s liking for a woman. The hypocrisy of pretending that a second meeting in the same place was accidental would be evident.
When I got there my fears proved groundless; nervousness was followed by disappointment. The shore was deserted. I called Dorrie’s name to make my presence known; no answer came. Having reconnoitered the wreck from the outside, I entered through a hole in the prow where the beams had burst asunder. Then I knew that Vi had been there that morning. The surface of the sand which had drifted in had been disturbed. It was still wet in places from her bathing and bore the imprint of her footsteps, with smaller ones running beside them which were Dorrie’s. I must have missed them by less than a hour.
Turning back to Ransby, I determined to spend the rest of the day in searching. Surely she must be conscious of my yearning—sooner or later, even against her inclination, it would draw her to me. Even now, somewhere in the pyramided streets and alleys of the red-roofed fishing-town, her steps were moving slower and her face was looking back; presently she would turn and come towards me.
All that morning I wandered up and down the narrow streets, agitated by unreasonable hopes and fears. Ransby has one main thoroughfare: from Pakewold to the harbor it is known as the London Road; from the harbor to the upper lighthouse on the cliff it is known as the High Street. Leading off from the High Street precipitously to the denes are winding lanes of many steps, which are paved with flints; they are rarely more than five feet wide and run down steeply between gardens of houses. They make Ransby an easy place in which to hide. As I zigzagged to and fro between the denes and the High Street by these narrow passages, I was tormented with the thought that she might be crossing my path, time and again, without my knowing.
At lunch my grandmother inquired whether I had been to Woadley Hall. She had noticed how preoccupied I had been since my arrival, and attributed it to over-anxiety concerning my prospects with Sir Charles.
“The best thing you can do, my dear,” she said, “is to go along out there this afternoon. I’m not at all sure that you oughtn’t to make yourself known at the Hall. At any rate, you’ve only got to meet Sir Charles and he’d know you directly. There’s not an ounce of Cardover in you; you’ve got your mother’s face.”
Falling in love is like committing crime; it tends to make you secretive. You will practise unusual deceptions and put yourself to all kinds of ridiculous inconvenience to keep the sweet and shameful fact, that a woman has attracted you, from becoming known. My grandmother had set her heart on my going to Woadley. There was no apparent reason why I shouldn’t go. It would be much easier to make the journey, than to have to concoct some silly excuse for not having gone. So, with great reluctance, I set out, having determined to get there and back with every haste, so that I might have time to resume my search for Vi before nightfall.
I had been walking upwards of an hour and was descending a curving country lane, when I heard the smart trotting of a horse behind. The banks rose steeply on either side. The road was narrow and dusty. I clambered up the bank to the right among wild flowers to let the conveyance go by. It proved to be a two-wheeled governess-car, such as ply for hire by the Ransby Esplanade. In it were sitting Dorrie and Vi. Vi had her back towards me but, as they were passing, Dorrie caught sight of me. She commenced to shout and wave, crying, “There he ith. There he ith.” They were going too fast on the downgrade to draw up quickly, and so vanished round a bend. Then I heard that they had halted.
As I came up with the conveyance, Dorrie reached out her arms impulsively and hugged me. She was all excitement. Before anything could be said, she began to scold me. “Naughty man. I wanted you to play thips with me thith morning, like you did yetherday.”
I was looking across the child’s shoulder at Vi. Her color had risen. I could swear that beneath her gentle attitude of complete control her heart was beating wildly. Her eyes told a tale. They had a startled, frightened, glad expression, and were extremely bright.
“I should have liked to play with you, little girl,” I said, “but I didn’t know where you were staying. I looked for you this morning, but couldn’t find you.”
“Dorrie seems to think that you belong to her,” said Vi, in her laughing voice. “She’s a little bit spoilt, you know. If she wants anything, she wants it badly. She can’t wait. So, when we didn’t run across you, she began to worry herself sick. If we hadn’t found you, I expect there’d have been an advertisement in to-morrow’s paper for the young man who played ships with a little girl on the north beach.”
“You won’t go away again,” coaxed Dorrie, patting my face.
“Where are you walking?” asked Vi.
“To Woadley.”
“That’s where we’re going, so if you don’t mind the squeeze, you’d better get in and ride.”
A governess-car is made to seat four, but they have to be people of reasonable size. The driver’s size was not reasonable. Good Ransby ale and a sedentary mode of life had swelled him out breadthwise, so that there was no room left on his side of the carriage except for a child; consequently I took my seat by Vi.
The driver thought he knew me, but was still a little doubtful in his mind. With honest, Suffolk downrightness, he immediately commenced to ask questions.
“You bain’t a Ransby man, be you, sir?”
“I’m a half-and-half.”
“Thought I couldn’t ’a’ been mistooken. I’ve lived in Ransby man and boy, and I never forgets a face. Which ’alf of you might be Ransby?”
“I’m Ransby all through on my parents’ side, but I’ve lived away.”
“Why, you bain’t Mr. Cardover, be you—gran’son to old Sir Charles?”
“You’ve guessed right.”
“Well, I never! And to think that you should be goin’ to Woadley! Why, I knew your Ma well, Mr. Cardover; The gay Miss Fannie Evrard, we called ’er. Meanin’ no disrespec’ to you, sir, I was groom to Miss Fannie all them years ago, before she run away with your father. She were as nice and kind a mistress as ever a man might ’ope to find. It’s proud I am to meet you this day.”
As we bowled along through the leafy country, all shadows and sunshine, he fell to telling me about my mother, and I was glad to listen to what he had to say. The story had been told often before. By his inside knowledge of the elopement, he had acquired that kind of local importance which money cannot buy. It had provided him with the one gleam of lawless romance that had kindled up the whole of his otherwise dull life. According to his account, the marriage would never have come off, unless he had connived at the courting. My mother, he said, took him into her confidence, and he was the messenger between her and my father. He would let my father know in which direction they intended to ride. When they came to the place of trysting, he would drop behind and my mother would go on alone. He pointed with his whip to some of the meeting-places with an air of pride. He was godfather, as you might say, to the elopement. After it had taken place, Sir Charles had discovered his share in it, and had dismissed him. The word had gone the round among the county gentry—he had never been able to find another situation. So he had bought himself a governess-car and pony, and had plied for hire. “And I bain’t sorry, sir,” he said. “If it were to do again, I should be on the lovers’ side. I’m only sorry I ’ad to take to drivin’ instead o’ ridin’; it makes a feller so ’eavy.”
Vi laughed at me out of the corners of her eyes. She had listened intently. I felt, without her telling me, that this little glimpse into my private history had roused her kindness. And the affair had its comic side—that this mountain of flesh sitting opposite should be my first ambassador to her, bearing my credentials of respectability.
“Ha’ ye heerd about Lord Halloway?” he inquired.
I nodded curtly. Encouraged by my former sympathetic attention, he failed to take the intended warning.
“Thar’s a young rascal for ye, for all ’e ’olds ’is ’ead so ’igh! Looks more’n likely now that you’ll be the nex’ master o’ Woadley. Doan’t it strike you that way, sir?”
When I maintained silence, he carried on a monologue with himself. “And ’e war goin’ to Woadley, he war. And I picks ’un up by h’axcident like. And I war groom to ’is ma. Wery strange!”
But there were stranger things than that, to my way of thinking: and the strangest of all was my own condition of mind. A golden, somnolent content had come over me, as though my life had broken off short, and commenced afresh on a higher plane. Every motive I had ever had for good was strengthened. The old grinding problems were either solved or seemed negligible. I saw existence in its largeness of opportunity, and I saw its opportunity in a woman’s eyes. It was as though I had been colorblind, and had been suddenly gifted with sight so penetrating that it enabled me to look into exquisite distances and there discern all the subtle and marvelous disintegrations of light.
As the car swung round corners or rattled over rough places, our bodies were thrown into closer contact as we sat together, Vi and I. Now her shoulder would lurch against mine; now she would throw out her hand to steady herself, and I would wonder at its smallness. I watched the demure sweetness of her profile, and how the sun and shadows played tricks with her face and throat. The fragrance of her hair came to me. I followed the designed daintiness of the little gold curls that clustered with such apparent carelessness against the whiteness of her forehead. I noticed the flicker of the long lashes which hid and revealed her eyes. How perishable she was, like a white hyacinth, or a summer’s morning—and how remotely divine.
And the tantalizing fascination of it all was that I must be restrained. She might escape me any day.
In a hollow of the country from between the hedges, Woadley crept into sight. First we saw the gray Norman tower of the church, smothered in ivy; then the thatched roofs of the outlying cottages; then the sun-flecked whiteness of the village-walls, with tall sunflowers and hollyhocks peeping over them.
As we passed the churchyard the driver slowed down. “Thar’s the last place your father met ’er, Mr. Cardover, before they run away. It war a summer evenin’ about this time o’ the year, and they stayed for upwards o’ an hour together in the porch. She’d told old Sir Charles that she war goin’ to put flowers on ’er mawther’s grave. Aye, but she looked beautiful; she war a fine figure o’ a lady.”
I told him I would alight there. He was closing the door, on the point of driving on, when I said to Vi, “Wouldn’t you like to get out as well? The church is worth a visit.”
She gave me her hand and I helped her down. The governess-car went forward to the village inn.
They had been scything the grass in the churchyard and the air was full of its cool fragrance. Dorrie ran off to gather daisies in a corner where it still stood rank and high.
We walked up the path together to the porch and tried the door. It was locked. We turned away into the sunlight, where dog-roses climbed over neglected graves and black-birds fluttered from headstones to bushes, from bushes to the moss-covered surrounding walls.
It was Vi who broke the pleasant silence. “I hope you didn’t mind the man talking.”
“Not at all. I expect I should have told you myself by and by.”
“Your mother must have been very beautiful. I like to think of her. All this country seems so different now I know about her; it was so impersonal before. Was—was she happy afterwards?”
I told her. I told her much more than I realized at the time. So few people had ever cared to hear me talk about her, and for all of them she was something past—dead and gone. My grandmother talked of her as a lottery-ticket; so did the Spuffler; at home we never mentioned her at all. Yet always she had been a real presence in my life. I felt jealous for her; it seemed to me that she must be glad when we, whom she had loved, remembered her with kindness.
Dorrie came back to us with her lap full of flowers. Seeing that we were talking seriously, she seated herself quietly beside us and commenced to weave the flowers into a chain.
The gate creaked. Footsteps came up the path. They paused; seemed to hesitate; came forward again. Behind us they halted. Turning my head, I saw an erect old man, white-haired, standing hat in hand, his back toward us, regarding a weather-beaten grave.
We rose, instinctively feeling our presence irreverent. My eye caught the name on the headstone of the grave:
The old gentleman put on his hat, preparing to move away. Recognizing our intention to give him privacy, he turned and bowed with stiff, old-fashioned courtesy.
I gazed on him fascinated. It was the first time I had seen my grandfather. His eyes fell full on my face.
His was one of the most remarkable faces I have ever gazed on. He was clean shaven; his skin was ashy. His features were ascetic, boldly chiseled and yet sensitively fine. They seemed to remodel themselves with startling rapidity to express the thought that was passing in his mind. The forehead was bony, high, and wrinkled. The nose was large-nostriled and aquiline. The eye-brows were shaggy; beneath them burnt sparks of fire, steady and almost cruel in their scorching penetration. From the nostrils to the corners of the mouth two heavy lines cut deep into the flesh, creating an expression of haughty contemplation and aloof sadness. The mouth was prominent, fulllipped, and almost sensual, had it not been so delicately shaped. The chin was long, pointed, and sank into the breast. It was an actor’s face, a poet’s face, a rejected prophet’s face, according to the mood which animated it. When the lines deepened into sneering melancholy and the corners of the large mouth drooped, it became almost Jewish. The strong will that was always striving to cast the outward appearance into an expression of immobile pride, was continually being thwarted by the man’s quivering, abnormal capacity to feel and to be wounded.
He stared at me in troubled amazement. Yearning, despairing tenderness fought its way into his eyes; for an instant, his whole expression relaxed and softened. He had recognized my mother in me and was remembering. He made a step towards me. Then his face went rigid again. The skin drew tight over the cheek-bones. Setting his hat firmly on his head, he turned upon his heel. At the gate he looked back once, against his will. Then he passed out resolutely and vanished down the road.
Twilight was gathering as we drove back to Ransby. Rays of the sun crept away from us westward through the meadows, like golden snakes. Vi and I were silent—the presence of the driver put a constraint upon us.
He had a good deal to say, for he had warned all the village of my arrival, and all the village, furtively from behind curtained windows, had watched Sir Charles’s journey to and from the churchyard.
It had been pleasant at the inn to hear myself addressed as “Miss Fannie’s son.” The windows of the low-ceilinged room in which we had had our tea, faced out on the tall iron gates which gave entrance to the park. Far up the driveway, hidden behind elms, we had just caught a glimpse of Woadley Hall. And all the while we were eating, the broad-hipped landlady had stood guard over us, talking about my mother and the good old days. She had mistaken Vi for my wife at first; in speaking to Dorrie she had referred to me as “your Papa.” Up to the last she had persisted in including Vi and Dorrie in her prophecies for my future. She never doubted that Vi and I were engaged. She assured us that she ’oped to see us at the ’All one day, and a ’andsome couple we would make.
At the time we had been abashed by her conversation, and had drunk our tea in flustered fashion with our eyes in our cups. We had hated this big complacent person for her clumsy, interfering kindness. But now, as the little carriage threaded its way through dusky lanes, her errors gave rise to a pleasant train of imaginings. I saw Vi as my wife—as Lady Cardover, mistress of Woadley Hall. I planned the doings of our days, from the horse-back ride in the early morning to the quiet evenings together by the cozy fire. And why could it not be possible?
Country lovers, unashamed, with arms encircling one another, drew aside to let us pass, as our lamps flashed down the road. Night birds were calling. Meadowsweet and wild thyme spread their fragrance abroad. As the wind blew inland, between great silences, it carried to our ears the moan of the sea. While twilight hovered in the open spaces Dorrie, since no one talked to her, kept up an undercurrent song:
“How far is it to Babylon?
Three score miles and ten.
Can I get there by candlelight?
Ah yes,—and back again.”
As night crept on, the piping little voice grew indistinct and murmurous, like a bee humming; the fair little head nodded and sank against the arm of the bulky driver. Vi leant forward to lift her into her lap; but I took Dorrie from her. With the child in my arms, for the first time the desire to be a father came over me. In thinking of what love might mean, I had never thought of that.
We entered Ransby at the top of the High Street and drew up outside an old black flint house. Vi got out first and rang the bell. When the door opened, I put Dorrie into her arms. I bent over and kissed the sleeping child. Vi drew back her head sharply; my lips had passed so near to hers. We faced one another on the threshold. The light from the hall, falling on her face, showed me that her lips were parted as though she had something that she was trying to get said. Then, “Good-night.” she whispered, and the door closed behind her.
I crossed the street and wandered to and fro, watching the house. All the front was in darkness; her rooms must be at the back. I was greedy for her presence; if I could only see her shadow pass before a window I would be content. With the closing of the door, she seemed to have shut me out of her life. There was so much to say, and nothing had been said.
I turned out of the High Street down a long dark score, toward the beach. Walls rose tall on either side. The salt wind, hurrying up the narrow passage, struck me in the face and caused the gas-lamps to quiver. Far down the tunnel at the end of the steps lay a belt of blackness, and beyond that the tossing lights of ships at sea.
Reaching the Beach Road, I passed over the denes. The town stretched tall across the sky, like a shadowy curtain through which peered golden eyes. The revolving light of the lighthouse on the denes pointed a long white finger inland, till its tip rested on the back of Vi’s house. I fancied I saw her figure at the window. The finger swept on in a circle out to sea, leaving the town in darkness. The upper-light on the cliff replied, pointing to the place where I was standing, making it bright as day. If she were still at the window, she would be able to see me as I had seen her. Next time her window was illumined she had vanished. I watched and waited; she did not return.
I roamed along the shore towards the harbor, purposeless with desire. The sea, like a blind old man, kept whimpering to itself, trying to drag itself up the beach, clutching at the sand with exhausted fingers.
Wearied out with wandering, I turned my steps homeward. The shop looked so dark that I was ashamed to ring the bell lest they had all retired. I tapped on the shutters, and heard a shuffling inside; my grandmother opened the door to me. She was in her dressing-gown and a turkey-red petticoat. The servant had been in bed some hours.
In the keeping-room I found a supper spread. Instead of being annoyed, she was bubbling over with excitement. She could not sit down, but stood over my chair while I ate; she was sure something wonderful had happened.
“So you saw Sir Charles, my boy, and he recognized you! Tell me everything, chapter and verse, with all the frills and furbelows.”
I had not much that I could tell, but I spread it out to satisfy her.
“And what did you think of ’im?” she asked. “Isn’t he every inch the aristocrat?”
“Yes. But why is he so dark? There are times when he looks almost Jewish.”
“Why, my dear, that’s ’cause he’s got gipsy-blood. His mother was one of the Goliaths. Didn’t your father ever tell you that? Seems to me he don’t tell you nothing. You have to come to your poor old Grannie to learn anything. Why, yes, old Sir Oliver Evrard, his father, your greatgrandfather, fell in love with a gipsy fortune-teller and married ’er. Ever since then the gipsies have been allowed to camp on Woadley Ham. They do say that it was the wild gipsy streak that made your mother do what she did. But there—that’s a long story. It’ll keep. We’d better go to bed.”