CHAPTER IV
Once more night was reigning, but the frost had gone. It was cold, but with the chilliness of late spring, not winter, and the gusty wind blew heavy clouds across the sky. A rainy mist hid the mountains, and added darkness to the already dreary night.
And even as the night was indistinct and gloomy, the Spirits were indistinct and gloomy too. The soughing, sighing wind as it passed among the branches was miserable, but then it is this same dreary wind, they say, that purifies and clears the air.
“The old home, as they call it, is to be broken up,” said Plucritus. “The farm was a very bad speculation. It has never paid.”
“Who is to blame?” asked Genius.
“Why, the farmer. He is one of those delightfully amusing and interesting men so rarely met, who can legislate better for other people than for themselves. He gives other people advice gratis, they take it and prosper. He gives himself advice, and follows it, then fails.”
“Yet,” said Genius, slowly, “I respect and like the farmer. He is a man of well balanced and proportioned judgment.”
“Oh, yes. That makes him the more interesting. He’s a bad speculator, that’s all. Personally, I am not particularly fond of him, you know.”
Genius laughed.
“That should be a mark in his favour,” he said.
Plucritus laughed in turn.
“Well, no. I am not fond of him, but I’m going to cultivate his acquaintance more. When I am interested in a man I always cultivate his acquaintance. Humanity is so very interesting.”
“Thousands of years have not altered it then for you?”
Plucritus shook his head.
“Oh, no. We tire of our playthings but do not lose our interest in the game. Besides, where you are I must of necessity be.”
“But you mistake. I am not with the farmer, I am simply bound to have an interest in one of his children.”
“And I have an interest in the same child, and therefore through that child an interest in the farmer. Not that I can do much, but still I can watch the game, and help when needed.”
“You do not mean to work him any harm?”
“Oh, no. I am powerless to work real harm, you know, being but an inferior power. Let him but pray to God Almighty and he’s pretty safe.”
“Yet to-night I am gloomy and ill at ease.”
Hereat Plucritus burst out laughing.
“You’re a fool,” he said. “Why don’t you go away and leave them? Tawdry, poor and plebeian—what are you dreaming about? Go away now and you are doing the greatest kindness; stay, and you will only create misery and death. You can go to hundreds who will repay and appreciate your presence—whilst where you are you will never be understood. The sight of that child’s puny face and figure sickens me. You are going the right way to make yourself the laughing-stock of all.
“These people are going from here to the town, to live a very humdrum, miserable, ground-down sort of life. There will be nothing elevating, nothing intellectual—nothing in the least refined about it. There will be a great deal of nonsense talked about refinement, the sort of thing you abhor, but no true refinement in itself.”
“All the more reason then why I should stay to make up the deficit.” But a shadow crossed the face of Genius.
“Will youstay, or will yougo?” Plucritus had reached across the wooden seat, and as he whispered the words his hot breath blew upon the cheek of Genius like some unwholesome fever-blight in a pestilential marshland.
“I will stay.”
“Fool, fool that you are, and rightly mated with a fool. Stay then and become a kind of circus-clown, a kind of Punchinello with a hump—not meeting with applause like him though, but with jeers and scorn, the only thing you’re fit for.”
And away he went, and the blood-red rays from the blood-red ring flashed round about him like a blood-red sulphur cloud.
“Why is he so eager for my departure?” asked Genius, turning to Virginius, who stood there silently as ever.
“He has his own reasons doubtless, but they are hard to fathom.”
Virginius came and sat down beside Genius. “But you will stay. Duty demands that you should stay—and I can say, or beg, or ask no more.”
“Yes, I will stay.”
“Shall you care for the change, do you think?”
“To me, as you know, it is immaterial.” Then Virginius smiled. “I apologise sincerely for my apparent disinterestedness, but like your human soldier I am bound to take the country as I find it. All my energies are bent on reconnoitring and organising; there is nothing left for ‘buts’ and ‘ifs.’”
“It seems to me, Virginius, if you would but stoop to make yourself agreeable, and put on some little affability, you might be a ready match for Plucritus and the rest of them.”
But before this the cold and stern expression had returned.
“The trickery of bribery is beyond me,” he observed.
“Beneath you, you mean,” said Genius, somewhat sorrowfully. “I can understand it.”
Virginius now rose, and began pacing back and forwards upon the rock-crowned hill-top. The wind still cried in misery, and big drops of rain fell upon the earth.
For some time silence prevailed, till at last Virginius broke it.
“Genius, I am going to make a request; I am going to ask you to look at me.”
“That is easily done. I have fulfilled it.”
“No. I am going to ask you to look at me. When I am most silent, look at me most.”
“That is precisely where the difficulty comes. Plucritus is so essentially interesting and fascinating that he attracts attention entirely to himself.”
“You will see less of his fascination in the future. You have thwarted him and he dislikes you. You see you are not working as an immaterial power.”
“What a topsy-turvy rendering,” said Genius, and he laughed. “No, I am working in the concrete—with a child. The child has a mind so pliant that it bends to my slightest whim most unconsciously.”
“That child also, besides having a mind, has what, in this world, they honour with the name of soul.”
“Oh, yes, but that’s the unknown quantity over which one half the world stumbles blindly and the other half develops itself into a superstitious bigot.”
“You make sweeping statements.”
“Contempt for the world has taught me it.”
“I should advise you to restrain that contempt. But let us return. In the same way that you exercise a strong power over the mind, so do I exercise a strong power over what is called the soul.”
“Yours is the harder work,” said Genius, and he laughed.
“Yes, the task is always difficult and delicate. But this child is not particularly addicted to any particular sin. That is in a measure owing to you. You have a knack of absorbing vices to a certain degree within yourself—in the same way that you absorb passions, thoughts, and even actions.”
“Well, let us proceed. What does this lead to?”
“Simply this. I wish to warn you. Plucritus dislikes you because you have thwarted him; he dislikes the child because its natural tendency is more toward good than evil; and he dislikes me because I am his natural and his greatest enemy.”
“Well, a triple alliance should certainly overcome him.”
“There is no alliance,” replied Virginius, earnestly. “I am unable to make alliances except those which spring from unstinting self-denial and self-sacrifice. Our alliance now would be simply one of self-defence, and that to me is impossible.”
“Then,” cried Genius, seriously, “I suppose it means we have each to fight the devil separately.”
“That is what it means. I wish to impress this on you as it is the last time we shall meet for many years and be able to converse as friends.”
“Then you are able to foretell the future.”
“No. I simply watched Plucritus when he spoke, and by long experience I have learnt somewhat of his tactics.”