CHAPTER XVTHE BEGINNINGGEORGEWILLIAMS’ education had been a very elementary and spasmodic thing. In days of comparative prosperity, when he was a small boy, he had learned to read and write and add up a little, but his mother’s widowhood had sent him out to field-work at an age when the village urchins of the present day are still wrestling with the fourth “standard.”That most irksome of all tools, the pen, was lying before him on the box which served as a table, and he stared sorrowfully at it and the cheap ink-pot beside it; now and then he took himself sternly by the front hair as though to compel his brain to come to the assistance of his hand.The cottage was very quiet, and the door stood open to let in what remained of the afternoon light. Below Rhys, who had spent the whole of the preceding night out of doors, was making up for lost sleep upon his pile of sheepskins, for, since his recovery, Williams’ bedding had been restored to its rightful place. The brook gurgled outside. He shoved the paper away impatiently and sat back in his chair. All his efforts had only resulted in two words which faced him on the otherwise blank sheet. He laid his unlighted pipe down on them, for he heard Rhys’ footsteps upon the ladder below the flooring, and he did not want him to see what he had written. The two words were “Dere Mary.”The composition of this letter had hung over him for some days, for, besides his poor scholarship, he was one of those people whose powers of expression are quite inadequate totheir need of expressing. He knew this very well, and it depressed him a good deal. He had made up his mind to ask Mary Vaughan to be his wife.It is doubtful whether five people out of every ten who contemplate marrying do so from devotion pure and absolute, so in this George was no worse than many of his neighbours. He certainly was not in love with Mary, for he could hardly tell whether he would be glad or sorry if she refused him, but he was inclined to think, sorry. His main reason, which swallowed up any other, was pity—pity and the longing to protect a stricken creature. The type of theorist perfect in all points except discrimination in human nature would have smiled deprecatingly and assured him that he was a fool, that what had happened once must inevitably happen twice, and that he would be like the man in Æsop’s fable who had warmed a frozen viper on his hearth and been bitten for his pains. But he knew better. That Mary was not a light woman he could see easily—so easily indeed that he had never given the matter the consideration of a moment. He merely knew it. Also there lurked in him an odd feeling which one might almost call an economical one; they had both made a terrible muddle of their lives and gone the wrong ways to their own undoing, and if they could but convert their two mistakes into one success, it would be a distinct gain. He was a lonely man too, and the presence of a young and comely woman in his home would be very pleasant to him. He wondered whether she liked him much—he did not for an instant fancy that she loved him, for he knew that her heart was dead inside her, and he was quite unconscious that one thing that drew him to her was his complete understanding of her. It is a kindness we do when we really understand another human being—given a not ignoble one—and the doing of a kindness produces affection more surely than the receiving of one. The chief drawback to his plan was his bondage to the Pig-driver, for until that was over he could not marry; but he was putting by little sums earned with his hedging and ditching and otherjourneyman work, and on these he hoped they might start their married life when he had served his time with Bumpett. Could he make money enough to pay his debts to his taskmaster he would break with him at once, knowing that the old man in exposing his thefts would have to expose his own also. But his earnings were so small that all these were only forlorn hopes.Rhys came up through the trap-door under the sacks. As he appeared in the doorway of the partition George saw that he had a stick in his hand.“You’re not thinking to go out, surely?” he remarked.“I am,” was the short reply.“But the light’s not gone yet; you’ll be collared one of these days,” said Williams, more as a sop to his own conscience than from any interest.“If I don’t care, you needn’t.”“I don’t—not a damn,” replied Williams; “you can get clapped into prison any day you like.”Walters left the house in so reckless a humour that he scarce bestowed a precautionary glance on his surroundings when he crossed the plank, and as the old cart-road led only to the most carefully avoided place within, possibly, a hundred miles, he was the less inclined to thwart his mood. Though the dusk had barely begun to confuse distant outlines, he strolled carelessly up the hillside, his mind full of irritated contempt for George. It was hard to him that a man of his intelligence and standing should have to tolerate the society of a clown, one whose sole merit of brute strength was unillumined by any ray of good feeling or geniality. When he arrived at the bit of scrubby ground by the Pedlar’s Stone, he turned and looked down the track he had ascended towards the valley.On either side lay the slope, unbroken except by ragged bushes and briers; out of one of these which clothed a bank stuck the Pedlar’s Stone. It looked sinister enough thrusting its black form through the thorns. A little way beyond was the rock under which the Pig-driver had made so snug a larder,and two or three slabs not unlike it were scattered round. He sat down upon one of them; there were limits to his imprudence, and he did not mean to venture farther away until the light had completely gone. Night outside had of late become as familiar to him as day, the sleeping world as important as the waking one; he felt almost like a man endued with an extra sense, for that half of life which for the healthy sleepers of the earth is simply cut out, was a living reality to him. The gulf of oblivion which divides one day from another for most people was ceasing to exist, and in its place was a time with its own aspects and divisions, its own set of active living creatures whose spheres of work belonged properly to the darkness and stillness. He had a feeling of double life. Eastern ascetics whose existences are spent in lonely places, in vigils, in silence, in the fastnesses of strange hills, know this. To the Western mind, so curiously incapable of understanding anything which does not assail it through its body, and which has such a strange pride in its own limitations, such things are folly. But the double life is there, the pulsations of knowledge which can be dimly heard through that receptiveness of mind born of long silence, and though Rhys knew it as little as do most of his nation, he had a dim consciousness of change. That the quietness of night soothed him was all he understood or ever would understand; he longed for it to come as he sat looking over the fading landscape. And it was coming—coming as surely as that other influence of which he did not dream, but which even then stood behind him.A sound aroused him; he turned with dismay and saw that he was not alone. He sprang up and found himself face to face with a woman. A glance showed him that she was a stranger, and though he was dismayed at the consequences of his rashness, it was reassuring to see from her manner that she was entirely occupied with her own affairs.“I beg your pardon,” she began, “I am sorry to interrupt you, but I am in trouble. I have wandered about for I cannottell how long—hours, I think—and I have lost myself. I amsotired.” There was almost a sob in her voice as she sank upon the stone on which Rhys had been sitting. “I beg of you, sir, to show me the way back to Crishowell.”She was stooping down and holding her ankle in her hand as though it hurt her; her boots were thin and cut in places, and the mud had almost turned them from their original black to brown. She was evidently young, though her thick veil hid her features, and her clothes were absurdly unsuited to her surroundings.“Oh, my foot!” she exclaimed, “I have hurt my foot. Something ran into it as I came through those bushes.”Rhys looked down.“It is bleeding,” he said, noticing a reddish spot which was soaking through the mud. “Your boots are not strong enough for such places.”“I did not mean to come up here. I went for a walk from my uncle’s house in Crishowell. I only intended to go a little distance up the hill, but I could not find my way back, and there was no one to direct me after I had passed the village. Does nobody live about here?”“Not near here, certainly,” he replied.“And how far do you think I am from Crishowell?”“About three miles.”“Three miles!” exclaimed the girl, hardly restraining her tears. “How can I ever get home? And with this foot, too.”“Perhaps a thorn has gone into it,” he suggested. “If you will take off your boot I’ll look and see what is wrong.”She bent down and began to unfasten it. Rhys looked anxiously about them and saw with satisfaction that the dusk had increased and would soon have fallen completely. He knelt down in front of her, and she straightened herself wearily, glad for her gloved fingers to escape the mud. When he pulled off the boot she gave a little cry of pain, and he looked up at her. She had put back her veil, and for the first time he saw her face. A look of admiration came into his own. She readthe expression behind his eyes as she might have read the story in a picture, and it affected her like a draught of wine. Her fatigue was almost forgotten; she only felt that she was confronted by one of the most attractive and uncommon-looking of men, and that he admired her.“Can you see anything in my foot?” she inquired, lowering her eyes.He examined it carefully.“There’s a very long thick thorn; it has run in nearly half-an-inch. I’m likely to hurt you pulling it out, but out it must come.”“Very well,” she said.He took out his knife.“Oh, what are you going to do?” she cried in alarm.“There’s a small pair of pincers in it. It will be best to use that.”Isoline shut her eyes and drew her breath quickly; as the thorn came out she shuddered and put out her hand.“I am afraid you must think me a great coward,” she faltered. “You would not behave like that, I am sure.”“I am not so delicate as you. You ought never to trust yourself in these rough places alone.”“And now I have all these three miles to go alone in the dark, and I am so afraid. I may meet cows or animals of some kind. Look how dark it has become.”“If you will rest a little I will go with you part of the way. I can’t come as far as Crishowell, but I’ll take you till we can see a farm-house where they’ll give you a lantern and a man to carry it before you to the village.”“Oh, thank you. How very kind you are.”He laughed. “Am I?” he said. “’Tis a mighty disagreeable piece of business for me, isn’t it?”There are many ways of conveying admiration, and Rhys’ voice was expressive.Isoline was engaged with her boot, and he sat down beside her on the rock. It was almost dark.Like all who saw Rhys Walters for the first time she was considerably puzzled to know who and what he might be, and his surroundings gave no clue to his position. His clothes were good, being his own, for though Bumpett had counselled him to borrow from George, he would never condescend to wear anything belonging to him. He spoke well when he gave himself the trouble, and Isoline, who was not as discriminating as she might have been, admired his assurance.Since the young man had been in hiding he had heard little of what was going on in the neighbourhood, George being uncommunicative, and it was only occasionally that he saw the Pig-driver. His beautiful companion puzzled him as much as he puzzled her, for he knew that, had he seen her face before, he could never have forgotten it.His safety now lay in the possibility of her not describing him to any one, and he would have to secure her promise of silence, a precarious barrier indeed between him and detection. It had been the thousand chances to one against his meeting any one at that hour and place, but the one chance had turned up and confounded him. He was running perilously near the rocks.“I think I ought to be starting for home,” said Isoline’s voice at his side after some time. “I am rested, and my foot is hardly painful since you have taken the thorn out. You have been very kind to me,” she added softly.“Well, be grateful to me.”“Oh, I am indeed.”“Then stay a little longer to show it,” he said boldly, “it’s such a treat to look at a face like yours.”“Why, you cannot see me in this darkness,” replied Isoline, tossing her head, but apparently regarding his remark as perfectly natural.“But I know you are there, and when you are gone, who can tell when I shall see you again? You don’t know how terribly I’d like to.”There was real feeling in his voice.She was rather taken aback. “Who are you?” she said suddenly.“If you will tell me your name I will tell you mine.”“I am Miss Isoline Ridge way, and my uncle is Mr. Lewis, the Vicar of Crishowell.”“I don’t know him,” said Rhys. “I am a stranger.”“You have not told me who you are,” said the girl, after a silence in which he was preparing his answer.“I’m called Kent—Robert Kent,” he replied, giving the name of a boy who had been at school with him.“That sounds very romantic,” observed Isoline; “like an outlaw or a murderer in a tale.”Rhys winced in the darkness.“I must go now,” she said, rising. “You will come with me?”“That I will—as far as I can. Tell me, am I never to see you any more?”“I am sure I don’t know,” she replied, turning away.“Would you ever care to set eyes on me again?” He took her hand, and she did not draw it away from him.“Yes, I think I should.”“Then promise never to tell any one I met you here.”“Oh, I will not say anything.”“It’s a promise, then. Give me your two hands on it.”She held out the other, and he kissed them both.“Will you come back here some day soon?” he asked, almost in a whisper.“Oh, I couldn’t. And I should never find my way.”“You could if I told you how to. You could ask for the farm I am going to take you to, and then ’twould be only a little bit further; and none can see you these dark evenings.”“I must go,” she said; “don’t ask me such things.”The night was, by this time, lying on the hillsides like a black cloth, and they crossed the rough turf, Isoline tripping and knocking her unaccustomed feet against the stones. A thrillwent through Rhys as she took his arm at his suggestion; she could feel his heart beating against her hand. It was very interesting, she thought, and she hardly regretted having lost herself, though she had been frightened enough at the time.They walked along the high ground until the lighted windows of a farm were visible on a slope below them, and then began to descend; at the outer side of a wall they stopped. “I can’t come any further,” he said, “but I’ll help you over this. There’s the house, straight in front of us. Tell them you’ve missed your road, and ask them to send a man with a light.”He took her by the waist, and lifted her on to the top of the wall, then swung himself over and stood before her on the inside of the enclosure. “If you come back,” he said, “and keep straight on above this along the hillside, you’ll get to the place where I met you to-night. Do you see?”She made no answer. She would not slip down from her seat for fear of falling into his arms.“I shall wait there every evening at dusk,” said Rhys, looking up at her through the blackness.“Let me go, please let me go!”He put up his arms and lifted her down.“Good-bye,” she said.“But you will think of it,” he begged, detaining her.She shook herself free and flitted like a shadow into the night. The word “Perhaps” floated back to him through the dark.He stood for some time looking at the twinkling light of the farm; soon a large steady one emerged from it, moving forward slowly, and he guessed that Isoline’s lantern-bearer was piloting her home. The light wound along, leaving a shine behind it, against which he could see the dark outline of some moving thing, turned, wavered at the place where he knew there was a gate, and finally disappeared. He climbed to the high ground and set his face in the direction of the Pedlar’s Stone. Thoughpitch dark, it was still early, which made him anxious to get back to the shelter of its ill-omened presence, for his feeling of security had been shaken.In spite of this he went along with the tread of a man who is light of heart, his head full of the fascinating personality whose existence had been unknown to him a few hours before, but whose appearing had let loose a whole flock of new possibilities. He thought of her voice, of her little slender feet, of the brilliant face that had dawned upon him through the dusk with the turning back of her veil, of her pretty gesture of terror as she saw him draw out his knife; he went over in his mind each word she had said to him since the instant he had sprung up from the rock and found her standing behind him. Even her very name was a revelation of delicacy and ornament; Isoline—Isoline—Isoline—he said it over to himself again and again; it was to the Janes and Annes of his experience as a hothouse flower is to cottage herbs, a nightingale’s song to the homely chatter of starlings, a floating breath from the refinements which exist apart from the rough utilities of the world. He sighed impatiently as another face thrust itself between him and his new ideal. To think that he had ever supposed himself dominated by it! Mary’s eyes had once illumined him, Mary’s personality held his senses and feelings, but he laughed at himself for his blindness in having picked up a wayside pebble and imagined it a jewel.Rhys had a certain amount of imagination, and femininity in one shape or another had been a necessity to him all his life; part of the repulsion he had often felt for his mother was due to the systematic way in which she had divested herself of every shred of feminine attraction in domestic life. This had not come to her as the result of Puritanic sympathies. Before religion had taken hold upon her the romance of all womanhood, of love, of marriage, of motherhood, had been an offence. She approved of people who led happy married lives, but it was an approval of the conventionality of the relationship;that the husband should remain the lover, the wife the mistress, was an idea to be dismissed with scorn. Marriage was a duty, and woman’s personal attraction a quality to be reduced to the level of handsome domestic furniture, a credit to the home which contained it. That a married man and woman of more than a year’s standing should be in love with each other was more than an absurdity, it was almost an indecency. Since he had been able to think at all, Rhys had dimly felt this, for it is a frame of mind of whose existence in a woman no masculine human being is ever quite unconscious. When he had grown old enough to understand it, it had given him a violent push in the opposite direction, and set his adolescent brain in a flame.It was so dark when he reached the Pedlar’s Stone that he had to grope about among the bushes to find it, and he traced his way from it with difficulty to the rock on which he and Isoline had sat. He would come there the next evening and the evening after—every day until the early rising moon should make it impossible. He began to reckon up the calendar on his fingers, trying to make out how many light nights there would be in the following month; February had begun, and the days were lengthening slowly, but by the middle of March there would be no more chances of meeting. Though she had only said “Perhaps,” his hopes were rampant, for he had not been accustomed to neglect where women were concerned. He did not undervalue the risk he was running by putting himself in the power of a girl’s idle tongue, yet he never hesitated; he was like the miner who will not be deterred from lighting his pipe in the danger-laden atmosphere of the mine. He was a cautious man in ordinary things; it had taken him some time to make up his mind to join Rebecca, and, when he had done so, he had arranged an elaborate scheme for his own security instead of trusting to luck with his companions. But the life of successful hiding which he now lived was making him reckless, and where a woman was in the question he hadalways been ready to throw common-sense to the winds. He did not trouble himself to think what the end of this unexpected interest might be; in any case it would put a zest into the constrained life he led just as sheep-stealing had done. Would she forget him or refuse to return to the Pedlar’s Stone? That was the only anxiety he had, but it was a very half-hearted one, for he felt sure she would not. A future of pleasant dallying lay indefinitely before him, he hoped, with the prospect of a voyage, when the Pig-driver should assure him that all was quiet, and a new life begun in a new country.His regret for Mary had vanished utterly. As he had been to Crishowell church once or twice, he knew Mr. Lewis perfectly by sight, and the irony of things made him smile as he realized that, in his own former respectable personality of Mr. Walters of Great Masterhouse, he could never have hoped to speak to the Vicar’s lovely niece. He was a farmer, he reflected, she a lady, not knowing that no circumstances in this world could have made Isoline Ridgeway a gentlewoman. It pleased him to find that, as he had slipped from his original and obvious surroundings, she had evidently taken him for a man of her own class. His feeling of exhilaration made him wish for some one to whom he might pour out the praises of Isoline; in presence of a companion the thought of her would have loosened his tongue like wine mounting to his brain. He longed to shout, to cry her beauty aloud, to flaunt it and her condescension to him in the faces of other men, but there was no one he could speak to except a dull yokel, to whom the very name of love would convey nothing but the most ordinary instincts. It was hard; but he felt that, in spite of all his misfortunes, he was in the better case of the two. He could at least appreciate the high pleasures open to humanity, for his soul was not bounded by the petty fence of commonplace which enclosed George and shut out his view of life’s loftier things.He comforted himself with that; yet, as he sat on the rock, his mind filled with the radiance left by Isoline, the picture ofthe sheep-stealer’s unemotional face, set in the ugly framing of the cottage walls, seemed to him like the shadow of some sordid implement of labour against a moonlit landscape.One must pay for everything in this world; even high-mindedness costs its owner something.
GEORGEWILLIAMS’ education had been a very elementary and spasmodic thing. In days of comparative prosperity, when he was a small boy, he had learned to read and write and add up a little, but his mother’s widowhood had sent him out to field-work at an age when the village urchins of the present day are still wrestling with the fourth “standard.”
That most irksome of all tools, the pen, was lying before him on the box which served as a table, and he stared sorrowfully at it and the cheap ink-pot beside it; now and then he took himself sternly by the front hair as though to compel his brain to come to the assistance of his hand.
The cottage was very quiet, and the door stood open to let in what remained of the afternoon light. Below Rhys, who had spent the whole of the preceding night out of doors, was making up for lost sleep upon his pile of sheepskins, for, since his recovery, Williams’ bedding had been restored to its rightful place. The brook gurgled outside. He shoved the paper away impatiently and sat back in his chair. All his efforts had only resulted in two words which faced him on the otherwise blank sheet. He laid his unlighted pipe down on them, for he heard Rhys’ footsteps upon the ladder below the flooring, and he did not want him to see what he had written. The two words were “Dere Mary.”
The composition of this letter had hung over him for some days, for, besides his poor scholarship, he was one of those people whose powers of expression are quite inadequate totheir need of expressing. He knew this very well, and it depressed him a good deal. He had made up his mind to ask Mary Vaughan to be his wife.
It is doubtful whether five people out of every ten who contemplate marrying do so from devotion pure and absolute, so in this George was no worse than many of his neighbours. He certainly was not in love with Mary, for he could hardly tell whether he would be glad or sorry if she refused him, but he was inclined to think, sorry. His main reason, which swallowed up any other, was pity—pity and the longing to protect a stricken creature. The type of theorist perfect in all points except discrimination in human nature would have smiled deprecatingly and assured him that he was a fool, that what had happened once must inevitably happen twice, and that he would be like the man in Æsop’s fable who had warmed a frozen viper on his hearth and been bitten for his pains. But he knew better. That Mary was not a light woman he could see easily—so easily indeed that he had never given the matter the consideration of a moment. He merely knew it. Also there lurked in him an odd feeling which one might almost call an economical one; they had both made a terrible muddle of their lives and gone the wrong ways to their own undoing, and if they could but convert their two mistakes into one success, it would be a distinct gain. He was a lonely man too, and the presence of a young and comely woman in his home would be very pleasant to him. He wondered whether she liked him much—he did not for an instant fancy that she loved him, for he knew that her heart was dead inside her, and he was quite unconscious that one thing that drew him to her was his complete understanding of her. It is a kindness we do when we really understand another human being—given a not ignoble one—and the doing of a kindness produces affection more surely than the receiving of one. The chief drawback to his plan was his bondage to the Pig-driver, for until that was over he could not marry; but he was putting by little sums earned with his hedging and ditching and otherjourneyman work, and on these he hoped they might start their married life when he had served his time with Bumpett. Could he make money enough to pay his debts to his taskmaster he would break with him at once, knowing that the old man in exposing his thefts would have to expose his own also. But his earnings were so small that all these were only forlorn hopes.
Rhys came up through the trap-door under the sacks. As he appeared in the doorway of the partition George saw that he had a stick in his hand.
“You’re not thinking to go out, surely?” he remarked.
“I am,” was the short reply.
“But the light’s not gone yet; you’ll be collared one of these days,” said Williams, more as a sop to his own conscience than from any interest.
“If I don’t care, you needn’t.”
“I don’t—not a damn,” replied Williams; “you can get clapped into prison any day you like.”
Walters left the house in so reckless a humour that he scarce bestowed a precautionary glance on his surroundings when he crossed the plank, and as the old cart-road led only to the most carefully avoided place within, possibly, a hundred miles, he was the less inclined to thwart his mood. Though the dusk had barely begun to confuse distant outlines, he strolled carelessly up the hillside, his mind full of irritated contempt for George. It was hard to him that a man of his intelligence and standing should have to tolerate the society of a clown, one whose sole merit of brute strength was unillumined by any ray of good feeling or geniality. When he arrived at the bit of scrubby ground by the Pedlar’s Stone, he turned and looked down the track he had ascended towards the valley.
On either side lay the slope, unbroken except by ragged bushes and briers; out of one of these which clothed a bank stuck the Pedlar’s Stone. It looked sinister enough thrusting its black form through the thorns. A little way beyond was the rock under which the Pig-driver had made so snug a larder,and two or three slabs not unlike it were scattered round. He sat down upon one of them; there were limits to his imprudence, and he did not mean to venture farther away until the light had completely gone. Night outside had of late become as familiar to him as day, the sleeping world as important as the waking one; he felt almost like a man endued with an extra sense, for that half of life which for the healthy sleepers of the earth is simply cut out, was a living reality to him. The gulf of oblivion which divides one day from another for most people was ceasing to exist, and in its place was a time with its own aspects and divisions, its own set of active living creatures whose spheres of work belonged properly to the darkness and stillness. He had a feeling of double life. Eastern ascetics whose existences are spent in lonely places, in vigils, in silence, in the fastnesses of strange hills, know this. To the Western mind, so curiously incapable of understanding anything which does not assail it through its body, and which has such a strange pride in its own limitations, such things are folly. But the double life is there, the pulsations of knowledge which can be dimly heard through that receptiveness of mind born of long silence, and though Rhys knew it as little as do most of his nation, he had a dim consciousness of change. That the quietness of night soothed him was all he understood or ever would understand; he longed for it to come as he sat looking over the fading landscape. And it was coming—coming as surely as that other influence of which he did not dream, but which even then stood behind him.
A sound aroused him; he turned with dismay and saw that he was not alone. He sprang up and found himself face to face with a woman. A glance showed him that she was a stranger, and though he was dismayed at the consequences of his rashness, it was reassuring to see from her manner that she was entirely occupied with her own affairs.
“I beg your pardon,” she began, “I am sorry to interrupt you, but I am in trouble. I have wandered about for I cannottell how long—hours, I think—and I have lost myself. I amsotired.” There was almost a sob in her voice as she sank upon the stone on which Rhys had been sitting. “I beg of you, sir, to show me the way back to Crishowell.”
She was stooping down and holding her ankle in her hand as though it hurt her; her boots were thin and cut in places, and the mud had almost turned them from their original black to brown. She was evidently young, though her thick veil hid her features, and her clothes were absurdly unsuited to her surroundings.
“Oh, my foot!” she exclaimed, “I have hurt my foot. Something ran into it as I came through those bushes.”
Rhys looked down.
“It is bleeding,” he said, noticing a reddish spot which was soaking through the mud. “Your boots are not strong enough for such places.”
“I did not mean to come up here. I went for a walk from my uncle’s house in Crishowell. I only intended to go a little distance up the hill, but I could not find my way back, and there was no one to direct me after I had passed the village. Does nobody live about here?”
“Not near here, certainly,” he replied.
“And how far do you think I am from Crishowell?”
“About three miles.”
“Three miles!” exclaimed the girl, hardly restraining her tears. “How can I ever get home? And with this foot, too.”
“Perhaps a thorn has gone into it,” he suggested. “If you will take off your boot I’ll look and see what is wrong.”
She bent down and began to unfasten it. Rhys looked anxiously about them and saw with satisfaction that the dusk had increased and would soon have fallen completely. He knelt down in front of her, and she straightened herself wearily, glad for her gloved fingers to escape the mud. When he pulled off the boot she gave a little cry of pain, and he looked up at her. She had put back her veil, and for the first time he saw her face. A look of admiration came into his own. She readthe expression behind his eyes as she might have read the story in a picture, and it affected her like a draught of wine. Her fatigue was almost forgotten; she only felt that she was confronted by one of the most attractive and uncommon-looking of men, and that he admired her.
“Can you see anything in my foot?” she inquired, lowering her eyes.
He examined it carefully.
“There’s a very long thick thorn; it has run in nearly half-an-inch. I’m likely to hurt you pulling it out, but out it must come.”
“Very well,” she said.
He took out his knife.
“Oh, what are you going to do?” she cried in alarm.
“There’s a small pair of pincers in it. It will be best to use that.”
Isoline shut her eyes and drew her breath quickly; as the thorn came out she shuddered and put out her hand.
“I am afraid you must think me a great coward,” she faltered. “You would not behave like that, I am sure.”
“I am not so delicate as you. You ought never to trust yourself in these rough places alone.”
“And now I have all these three miles to go alone in the dark, and I am so afraid. I may meet cows or animals of some kind. Look how dark it has become.”
“If you will rest a little I will go with you part of the way. I can’t come as far as Crishowell, but I’ll take you till we can see a farm-house where they’ll give you a lantern and a man to carry it before you to the village.”
“Oh, thank you. How very kind you are.”
He laughed. “Am I?” he said. “’Tis a mighty disagreeable piece of business for me, isn’t it?”
There are many ways of conveying admiration, and Rhys’ voice was expressive.
Isoline was engaged with her boot, and he sat down beside her on the rock. It was almost dark.
Like all who saw Rhys Walters for the first time she was considerably puzzled to know who and what he might be, and his surroundings gave no clue to his position. His clothes were good, being his own, for though Bumpett had counselled him to borrow from George, he would never condescend to wear anything belonging to him. He spoke well when he gave himself the trouble, and Isoline, who was not as discriminating as she might have been, admired his assurance.
Since the young man had been in hiding he had heard little of what was going on in the neighbourhood, George being uncommunicative, and it was only occasionally that he saw the Pig-driver. His beautiful companion puzzled him as much as he puzzled her, for he knew that, had he seen her face before, he could never have forgotten it.
His safety now lay in the possibility of her not describing him to any one, and he would have to secure her promise of silence, a precarious barrier indeed between him and detection. It had been the thousand chances to one against his meeting any one at that hour and place, but the one chance had turned up and confounded him. He was running perilously near the rocks.
“I think I ought to be starting for home,” said Isoline’s voice at his side after some time. “I am rested, and my foot is hardly painful since you have taken the thorn out. You have been very kind to me,” she added softly.
“Well, be grateful to me.”
“Oh, I am indeed.”
“Then stay a little longer to show it,” he said boldly, “it’s such a treat to look at a face like yours.”
“Why, you cannot see me in this darkness,” replied Isoline, tossing her head, but apparently regarding his remark as perfectly natural.
“But I know you are there, and when you are gone, who can tell when I shall see you again? You don’t know how terribly I’d like to.”
There was real feeling in his voice.
She was rather taken aback. “Who are you?” she said suddenly.
“If you will tell me your name I will tell you mine.”
“I am Miss Isoline Ridge way, and my uncle is Mr. Lewis, the Vicar of Crishowell.”
“I don’t know him,” said Rhys. “I am a stranger.”
“You have not told me who you are,” said the girl, after a silence in which he was preparing his answer.
“I’m called Kent—Robert Kent,” he replied, giving the name of a boy who had been at school with him.
“That sounds very romantic,” observed Isoline; “like an outlaw or a murderer in a tale.”
Rhys winced in the darkness.
“I must go now,” she said, rising. “You will come with me?”
“That I will—as far as I can. Tell me, am I never to see you any more?”
“I am sure I don’t know,” she replied, turning away.
“Would you ever care to set eyes on me again?” He took her hand, and she did not draw it away from him.
“Yes, I think I should.”
“Then promise never to tell any one I met you here.”
“Oh, I will not say anything.”
“It’s a promise, then. Give me your two hands on it.”
She held out the other, and he kissed them both.
“Will you come back here some day soon?” he asked, almost in a whisper.
“Oh, I couldn’t. And I should never find my way.”
“You could if I told you how to. You could ask for the farm I am going to take you to, and then ’twould be only a little bit further; and none can see you these dark evenings.”
“I must go,” she said; “don’t ask me such things.”
The night was, by this time, lying on the hillsides like a black cloth, and they crossed the rough turf, Isoline tripping and knocking her unaccustomed feet against the stones. A thrillwent through Rhys as she took his arm at his suggestion; she could feel his heart beating against her hand. It was very interesting, she thought, and she hardly regretted having lost herself, though she had been frightened enough at the time.
They walked along the high ground until the lighted windows of a farm were visible on a slope below them, and then began to descend; at the outer side of a wall they stopped. “I can’t come any further,” he said, “but I’ll help you over this. There’s the house, straight in front of us. Tell them you’ve missed your road, and ask them to send a man with a light.”
He took her by the waist, and lifted her on to the top of the wall, then swung himself over and stood before her on the inside of the enclosure. “If you come back,” he said, “and keep straight on above this along the hillside, you’ll get to the place where I met you to-night. Do you see?”
She made no answer. She would not slip down from her seat for fear of falling into his arms.
“I shall wait there every evening at dusk,” said Rhys, looking up at her through the blackness.
“Let me go, please let me go!”
He put up his arms and lifted her down.
“Good-bye,” she said.
“But you will think of it,” he begged, detaining her.
She shook herself free and flitted like a shadow into the night. The word “Perhaps” floated back to him through the dark.
He stood for some time looking at the twinkling light of the farm; soon a large steady one emerged from it, moving forward slowly, and he guessed that Isoline’s lantern-bearer was piloting her home. The light wound along, leaving a shine behind it, against which he could see the dark outline of some moving thing, turned, wavered at the place where he knew there was a gate, and finally disappeared. He climbed to the high ground and set his face in the direction of the Pedlar’s Stone. Thoughpitch dark, it was still early, which made him anxious to get back to the shelter of its ill-omened presence, for his feeling of security had been shaken.
In spite of this he went along with the tread of a man who is light of heart, his head full of the fascinating personality whose existence had been unknown to him a few hours before, but whose appearing had let loose a whole flock of new possibilities. He thought of her voice, of her little slender feet, of the brilliant face that had dawned upon him through the dusk with the turning back of her veil, of her pretty gesture of terror as she saw him draw out his knife; he went over in his mind each word she had said to him since the instant he had sprung up from the rock and found her standing behind him. Even her very name was a revelation of delicacy and ornament; Isoline—Isoline—Isoline—he said it over to himself again and again; it was to the Janes and Annes of his experience as a hothouse flower is to cottage herbs, a nightingale’s song to the homely chatter of starlings, a floating breath from the refinements which exist apart from the rough utilities of the world. He sighed impatiently as another face thrust itself between him and his new ideal. To think that he had ever supposed himself dominated by it! Mary’s eyes had once illumined him, Mary’s personality held his senses and feelings, but he laughed at himself for his blindness in having picked up a wayside pebble and imagined it a jewel.
Rhys had a certain amount of imagination, and femininity in one shape or another had been a necessity to him all his life; part of the repulsion he had often felt for his mother was due to the systematic way in which she had divested herself of every shred of feminine attraction in domestic life. This had not come to her as the result of Puritanic sympathies. Before religion had taken hold upon her the romance of all womanhood, of love, of marriage, of motherhood, had been an offence. She approved of people who led happy married lives, but it was an approval of the conventionality of the relationship;that the husband should remain the lover, the wife the mistress, was an idea to be dismissed with scorn. Marriage was a duty, and woman’s personal attraction a quality to be reduced to the level of handsome domestic furniture, a credit to the home which contained it. That a married man and woman of more than a year’s standing should be in love with each other was more than an absurdity, it was almost an indecency. Since he had been able to think at all, Rhys had dimly felt this, for it is a frame of mind of whose existence in a woman no masculine human being is ever quite unconscious. When he had grown old enough to understand it, it had given him a violent push in the opposite direction, and set his adolescent brain in a flame.
It was so dark when he reached the Pedlar’s Stone that he had to grope about among the bushes to find it, and he traced his way from it with difficulty to the rock on which he and Isoline had sat. He would come there the next evening and the evening after—every day until the early rising moon should make it impossible. He began to reckon up the calendar on his fingers, trying to make out how many light nights there would be in the following month; February had begun, and the days were lengthening slowly, but by the middle of March there would be no more chances of meeting. Though she had only said “Perhaps,” his hopes were rampant, for he had not been accustomed to neglect where women were concerned. He did not undervalue the risk he was running by putting himself in the power of a girl’s idle tongue, yet he never hesitated; he was like the miner who will not be deterred from lighting his pipe in the danger-laden atmosphere of the mine. He was a cautious man in ordinary things; it had taken him some time to make up his mind to join Rebecca, and, when he had done so, he had arranged an elaborate scheme for his own security instead of trusting to luck with his companions. But the life of successful hiding which he now lived was making him reckless, and where a woman was in the question he hadalways been ready to throw common-sense to the winds. He did not trouble himself to think what the end of this unexpected interest might be; in any case it would put a zest into the constrained life he led just as sheep-stealing had done. Would she forget him or refuse to return to the Pedlar’s Stone? That was the only anxiety he had, but it was a very half-hearted one, for he felt sure she would not. A future of pleasant dallying lay indefinitely before him, he hoped, with the prospect of a voyage, when the Pig-driver should assure him that all was quiet, and a new life begun in a new country.
His regret for Mary had vanished utterly. As he had been to Crishowell church once or twice, he knew Mr. Lewis perfectly by sight, and the irony of things made him smile as he realized that, in his own former respectable personality of Mr. Walters of Great Masterhouse, he could never have hoped to speak to the Vicar’s lovely niece. He was a farmer, he reflected, she a lady, not knowing that no circumstances in this world could have made Isoline Ridgeway a gentlewoman. It pleased him to find that, as he had slipped from his original and obvious surroundings, she had evidently taken him for a man of her own class. His feeling of exhilaration made him wish for some one to whom he might pour out the praises of Isoline; in presence of a companion the thought of her would have loosened his tongue like wine mounting to his brain. He longed to shout, to cry her beauty aloud, to flaunt it and her condescension to him in the faces of other men, but there was no one he could speak to except a dull yokel, to whom the very name of love would convey nothing but the most ordinary instincts. It was hard; but he felt that, in spite of all his misfortunes, he was in the better case of the two. He could at least appreciate the high pleasures open to humanity, for his soul was not bounded by the petty fence of commonplace which enclosed George and shut out his view of life’s loftier things.
He comforted himself with that; yet, as he sat on the rock, his mind filled with the radiance left by Isoline, the picture ofthe sheep-stealer’s unemotional face, set in the ugly framing of the cottage walls, seemed to him like the shadow of some sordid implement of labour against a moonlit landscape.
One must pay for everything in this world; even high-mindedness costs its owner something.