CHAPTER IITHE GREEN GATES OF VISION:—I. DUSK
Hewent back into the house when the distance had snapped the last vibrating link, but he did not stay there. The office was still under the domination of the young man’s silent anger, the old man’s piteous revolt. He felt troubled for both, seeing the situation as each saw it, and was conscious of sharp impatience with the cause of the deadlock, though in his own mind he was certain that her obstinacy would not last. But the whole affair was an unnecessary worry with which he could have dispensed very thankfully, and added heavily to his sense of weary irritation.
He found both drawing-room and dining-room equally unbearable in his present mood, for both were oppressively characteristic of Helwise, curiously so, since her character seemed always a shifting thing, sliding through your fingers and resting nowhere. He had lost his mother early—before his teens—but the house, under the firm conservatism of his father and an old servant, had kept her memory and her tenets for long. Helwise, however, had banished them very completely. With a long-nursed resentment he marked the disorder of the dining-room, the drunken regiment of chairs, the holes in the lace curtains, the cheap almanacs pinned haphazard between the good prints. Helwise loved to surround herself with calendars. They gave her a sense of keeping even with Time. He could not steal a march on her by a single day, while some grocer’s tribute marked the black footsteps of his pilgrimage. Yet she rarely availed herself of their services, left them hanging foryears—horrible traps to the unwary—her own hasty references being invariably directed to the wrong month.
Lanty frowned distastefully at their almost ribald askewness, at the torn places in the paper where the crooked pins had slipped, at the untidy hearth and wild mass of correspondence on the open desk. It should have been a handsome room, by rights, for it was bright and well proportioned. The severe furniture that his father had bought had mellowed with time, and the few bits of silver on the sideboard had lost their parvenu air of recent presentation. He had chosen the carpet himself, and its soft, dark tints still pleased him, in spite of the tread worn white by the hurrying feet of his aunt. But there was no ease or homeliness in the room, and it was certainly not handsome, save as an elderlyrouéof once better days is handsome, in a last drunken effort after dignity and repose.
The drawing-room was worse. He had had no hand in the drawing-room, so Helwise had let herself loose upon it, with results that made him creep. He hated it, from the collection of smug pot dogs on the mantelpiece to the bad Marcus Stone imitations on the cold blue of the walls. He hated the cheap books lying about, the spindly furniture, the innumerable chair-backs bristling so fiercely with pins that you dared neither lay your head on them in front nor your hand on them from behind. There was only one comfortable chair in the room, and that was sacred to Helwise. Not that she ever actually claimed it as hers, but if you sat down on it by accident, she wandered helplessly over the wild-patterned carpet as if there wasn’t another seat within reach, until you became gradually aware of criminal poaching, and arose with shame. There were almanacs here, too, gaudy things evidently of a higher grade, matching, with a pleasantly thoughtful touch, the shrieking tiles of the modern grate. The wide fireplace of his youth had been a sacred altar, lighting a torch to many dreams, liftingthe smoke of many prayers; but nobody but a Post-Impressionist could have prayed to this grate, and its brazen canopy had never housed a single vision.
With a half-sigh he wandered out again and into the garden, but even here Helwise had successfully impressed herself. During one of his very rare absences she had had the fine box-borders removed, and the paths edged with glittering rockery-stones, intersected by scrubby and unwilling little ferns. Lanty never quite forgot what he had felt at sight of them. There was an old song he had been used to growl softly as he walked between the box, a tender thing called “My Lady’s Garden,” and sometimes, at dusk, after a hard day, he had vaguely thought to find her there in the cool of the evening, even as himself and Another. He had always missed her, but she had been there, he was sure of that. But when the rockery-stones appeared, she came no more; and to all his big wants and losses there was added the loss of a little dream.
That was hard to forgive Helwise, just as it was hard to forgive her the scars on his precious lawn, where her heavy niblick had taken greedy mouthfuls, and the insane bumble-puppy pole, rearing its unsightly length in the middle of the soft, green stretch. She had a summer-house, too, a Reckitt’s Blue wooden thing on wheels, with texts all over it, like a Church Army Van. All the texts were about food, strung together at random: “I washed my steps with butter.” “Is there any taste in the white of an egg?” “There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink ... For who can eat, or who else can hasten hereunto, more than I?” etc., etc. Lanty passed them with averted eyes, for they reminded him that he had had no tea and only the scrapings of his aunt’s lunch, and stopped for comfort before the one spot in the garden left untroubled, a stone seat in the terrace wall, with straggling letters running along its curve. “The whole earth is at rest, and is quiet,” said the quiet seat in the wall, a soothing rede for a tired heart, no matter how the truth might rage and stormwithout. With its balm upon his lips he dropped into the road through a little stile, and came before long, without pause or thought, to a lane winding across country vaguely south. He looked about him before turning into it. If there had been anybody in sight, he would have taken another way, but there was not a soul even far distant, and he stepped in quickly.
Once within its bounds, however, he slackened his pace to an almost hushed saunter. You did not use this lane as a muscular training-ground or a mere short cut; you crept into it on tiptoe, and caught it unawares. It was a capricious lane, racing up and down tiny hills between its high, warm, leaning hedges, spinning round sharp corners out of sight, or running innocently to alluring gateways, only to leave you stranded on arrival. It was full of surprises, full of secrets. As you walked, you heard all sorts of bewitching sounds above and around you, sounds you had known always and sounds you never heard anywhere else. You knew, for instance, the slur of the plough, the whistle of the blackbird, the whirr of the grass-cutter, the slash of the bill-hook on a far fence, the gnawing of turnips, the wind-talk of dead leaves. But there were others you never placed: elf-like twitterings that never came from any bird’s throat, weird, hoarse grunts like some guttural gnome-language that couldn’t possibly be just a sheep coughing; and if you caught the right time on the right night, you would hear a rustling along the lower fields as the Brush-Harrow Dobbie went by, with never a horse before it nor a man behind. There was also the famous Bluecaster Black-Dog Dobbie, which slunk stealthily at your side, panting and padding ever so softly in the dusk, and disappearing into the wraith of an old Tithe-Barn long since fallen away, that had once marked the boundary of the estate.
Besides these attractions, Lanty had a ghost of his own, and half his joy in the lane lay in wondering if he should find it. It was a very deep lane. You hadto look up and up before you saw the feathery tops kissing the sky, and you walked between, very warm and safe and quiet, listening with all your ears at once. And then, all of a sudden, there would be a break on the lower side, and over a couple of moss-grown bars, or an ancient gate thrust in at any and every beautiful angle, you would see the lovely land sweeping down and out beneath you, and rising slowly, slowly again to soft curves and blue vapours. They came all along the lane, these flashing little peeps of a world shut out, like cloister vignettes in some silent Abbey. Your heart went before you hungrily to each, yet was loth to leave any for the next. And which was more dear, the tender quiet or the land through its living frame, it would have been hard to say. Lancaster called the peeps his Green Gates of Vision.
He stopped at the first of all, and his Ghost was there to meet him, a long, faint, knife-edged mountain, flung like a cloud against the south-west sky. It was often missing, and at its clearest the mass of it was no more than a blown web, yet the line of it had always the quivering sharpness of steel. He had grown to believe that the sight of it brought him luck, this Ghost-Mountain of his, so christened because it never seemed but the ghost of a hill, edged with the spirit-fire of something safe escaped from clogging matter. Its absence did not depress him, but its presence, sprung suddenly upon his cloistered walk, always made his heart leap, as at an unexpected promise of goodwill. He welcomed it to-day when he was weary and out of tune, and he leaned his arms on the weathered timber with a sense of rest, drawing his gaze slowly back from the far symbol to the country close at hand.
Four or five dropping fields away, Rakestraw stood in its sheath of woods, the new hay thick in the grey Dutch barns. There were rooks’ nests in the trees overhanging the house; even at that distance he could see them. That meant luck for Rakestraw, said the wise. He had always told himself that he would liveat Rakestraw when the cease-fire sounded for the work he loved, farm it himself, lead his hay and breed his stock, and perhaps the rooks would build for him, too, as they had built for Dart Newby. He knew in his heart that he would never do it, just because it seemed so essentially the beautiful and right thing for him to do. Most of us have our dream-houses somewhere, and plot and plan their future and ours together; and whether we ever win to them or not with a signed conveyance, we have something of them always that is never set down in any legal bond.
To the left he could see the road twisting and dipping but yet steadily rising towards Gilmichel, and another road far away on higher land, with Topthorns set on its edge; then Dick Crag, like a soft, gray bear raising itself on hind legs to look abroad, and, behind it, fold on fold of neutral-tinted, blended fells. On the right the land rose again, only more sharply, until the line of the hedges broke once more into the sky, but over the hill he knew was Gilthrotin in the hollow, with its one little, steep street, its old bridge and ancient church, and its empty, eyeless manor-house topping the terrace over the river. He would come to that presently, when, by slow and delicious chapters, he had read his lane from start to finish.
Leaning there, his eyes resting on restful Rakestraw, he went back in mind to his late interview and the task he had undertaken. It was only one among many unconventional duties falling to him, he reflected, with the same wry smile. As agent for the Bluecaster estate, free to use his own discretion in almost every instance, yet often tied hand and foot by old observance, he frequently found himself in situations for the right conduct of which there could be no possible arbiter but his own judgment. Old duties were his along with the outside management, duties of house-steward and administrator, and even where his rule ended, the claims on him went on. If a casual visitor at the “Feathers” was lost out fishing, Lancaster was called to find him, as a matter of course.If the draper wished to commit suicide, Lancaster was fetched to command him to desist. If the doctor objected to the rates, or the parson struck a bad rock in Local Government, Lancaster was signalled for aid. Difficulties of all sorts came to him for settlement, from disputes over neighbours’ hens and washing and fondness for the American organ, to the moot point whether your money ought or ought not to go to your wife’s relations.
At the age of twenty-four, when scarcely through his training, he had been thrust into his father’s place by a blast of sudden death which carried off master, heir, and steward in the same month. The new lord was only just of age, and glad enough to have a Lancaster to lean on, so that before the young agent had learned to stand alone, he had the whole estate upon his shoulders. Thirteen years it was now since he took hold. Thirteen years since Jeffrey Kennet Cospatrick, tenth Baron Bluecaster, greeted his inheritance with a sigh. He was a kindly, shy young man, one of those puzzling natures that swing from an almost idiotic simple-mindedness to sudden touches of shrewdness; that take everybody at face-value three-fourths of the time, and for the rest can see through a stone wall. He had few near relations, and for the most part spent his flying visits to Bluecaster alone, but he always came when he was wanted, ready to face some traditional ordeal with a shy effort. He was generous, too—to a fault—but even in his most ultra-altruistic flights he could be made to listen to reason. Indeed, his faith in his agent was almost irritatingly sublime; there were times when the latter longed earnestly for a man who could see things steadfastly through his own eyes, Bluecaster leaned so heavily. Yet he knew himself wonderfully fortunate, and it was only when he was very wearied or worried, as he had been of late, that he felt his shoulders ache.
It was scarcely strange that he should feel old; he had had so little time to be really young. There were drawbacks to being the son of a fine man, he thoughtoccasionally. People expected you to start where your father left off, to keep up his standard of ripe experience where any other beginner would be busy learning from his own mistakes. The tenants had turned to him from the first with the personal confidence and affection that they had given his predecessor, scarcely realising that he had not yet grown to the full stature of control. He had gone through hard years, often troubling himself unnecessarily, but in the end he had won out. Before he was thirty he had come to father the whole lot of them, Bluecaster included. The trust was his dearest possession, but, serving it, he had missed his youth.
His work was the breath of his life; its varied interests kept him keen and stimulated, but they increased continually, and every year new legislation made things more difficult for those engaged with land. The county, too, had claimed him, and he had yielded, inch by inch, to the fascination making almost the sole reward of the Great Unpaid. He had not had a holiday for years; he was too absorbed, too pressed, too afraid of getting behind. Besides, no other place called him. The whole of his heart was here.
Things might have run easier if Helwise had been—well, something quite inconceivably different from what she was. Her descent upon his desolate hearth from unrewarding efforts as companion to successive old ladies, had been welcomed by him at the time, not knowing that it was her special mission in life to make it more desolate still. He had been too busy at first to notice the atmosphere with which she surrounded him, attributing his dreariness of spirit to his father’s loss and his over-heavy task; and by the time he had made himself and formed his routine, it was too late to send her away. She was happy after her own parasitical fashion, and to uproot her now would mean a gigantic effort to which neither his will nor his heart felt equal. But of late there had grown upon him a longing for a home of his own making, an atmosphere with which Helwise should never haveanything to do. He murmured old Samuel Daniel’s words as he leaned against the gate.
“To have some silly home I do desire,Loth still to warm me by another’s fire.”
“To have some silly home I do desire,Loth still to warm me by another’s fire.”
“To have some silly home I do desire,
Loth still to warm me by another’s fire.”
He had a home, certainly, and one silly enough, too, in its mismanagement and lack of all peace; but it was another silliness for which he yearned, the silliness of little, common home-interests and home-jokes, of crossed glances and talk without words, of parting kisses and meeting hands. He had a fire, of course, as well; that is to say, he paid for it; but in every other sense it was “another’s.” He thought of the drawing-room grate and renounced it violently.
Dusk was drawing down, now, though the Mountain still stayed with him, faintly limned as a dried tear. Milking was over at Rakestraw. He watched the cattle coming out from the shippons to a quiet night in the cool fields. Near at hand a sleepy twittering told him where a late-nested bird was hidden close. The clipped sheep and the sturdy lambs still called to each other, as if the tender time of mother-love was not yet over; and far down on the road he could hear children pattering home from their summer treat. There came into his head a song he had heard at a musical festival.
“What can lambkins do,All the keen night through?Nestle by their woolly mother,The careful ewe.“What can nestlings doIn the nightly dew?Sleep beneath their mother’s wingTill dawn breaks anew.“If in field or treeThere might only beSuch a warm, soft sleeping-placeFound for me!”
“What can lambkins do,All the keen night through?Nestle by their woolly mother,The careful ewe.“What can nestlings doIn the nightly dew?Sleep beneath their mother’s wingTill dawn breaks anew.“If in field or treeThere might only beSuch a warm, soft sleeping-placeFound for me!”
“What can lambkins do,All the keen night through?Nestle by their woolly mother,The careful ewe.
“What can lambkins do,
All the keen night through?
Nestle by their woolly mother,
The careful ewe.
“What can nestlings doIn the nightly dew?Sleep beneath their mother’s wingTill dawn breaks anew.
“What can nestlings do
In the nightly dew?
Sleep beneath their mother’s wing
Till dawn breaks anew.
“If in field or treeThere might only beSuch a warm, soft sleeping-placeFound for me!”
“If in field or tree
There might only be
Such a warm, soft sleeping-place
Found for me!”
Well, his hour of comfort and sanctity was nearly over. His soothed nerves gave him courage to laughat his own longings. He must get back to Helwise and other duties, think out some plan of campaign with regard to Dockeray’s recalcitrant daughter. He raised himself reluctantly, wondering, at the last moment, what encouragement his Ghost was about to send him, when he was brought round sharply by sounds of frivolous song pouring down the lane. The shuttered quiet passed. The sheep, newly snuggled under the hedge, scattered in bleating alarm; fresh twitterings broke from the late nest, and every shy-peeping fairy-thing became instantly dumb and dead.
With the song came a shuffling as of dancing, and panting requests to the singer to “bang a bit more on the brass!” and as Lancaster, standing in the rutted road, looked up to the first frolicking bend, two figures whirled into sight through the thin veil of eve. Behind, their obedient accompanist let out his fine voice a little further. With the singer was a girl.
The dancers, closely clasped in each other’s arms, executed a series of intricate steps from hedge to hedge with the unanimity and gravity of extremely superior marionettes. They wore dinner-coats and evening pumps; their heads were bare, and now and then Lancaster caught the gleam of shirt-fronts as he watched them swing down through the dusk. He did not know them, he felt certain of that, and wondered in widening circles until he remembered that the eyeless house over the hill had been sold recently, and that these must be some of its new occupants. Watters was Gilthrotin property, and therefore not in his hands, and though he had been present at the sale, he had forgotten the buyer, though he had marked the Lancashire name as one with plenty of money behind it. That accounted for the strangers. It did not account though, he thought, ruffled and jarred, for their bad taste in thrusting noisily into his lane just at fairy-time. With the dogged resentment of the conscientious objector who stands stolidly in front of a motor-car, he remained in the middle of the road until the dancers ran into him. They spun in oppositedirections, clutching at nothing, and the singer broke on a high note. Lancaster went on standing still.
The girl stepped forward, her whitely gray gown showing moth-like in the shadows. The disgruntled performers were busy picking themselves out of the hedge, breathing somewhat offhand apology.
“I hope they didn’t hurt you?” she began anxiously. “It’s the Tango. They don’t seem able to stop doing it, and of course they are only boys and very foolish. I do hope you’re not hurt!”
Lancaster assured her, smiling a little grimly, that he was perfectly whole. If anybody was hurt, it was much more likely to be the Tangoists in the hedge. These now came up, still panting.
“Licks creation! Stuns the stars! Bangs Banagher! I say, beastly sorry we barged into you like that. Took you for a turnip, honest injun we did! We’re shooting over to Bluecaster after a smoke-shop, and we thought it just as easy to tango there. And I say, look here! You’ll know what time they close, I expect. I suppose we can do it all right?”
“It’s six furlongs, and you’ve just ten minutes,” Lancaster answered severely. “You may do it, with luck. But if you beat Banagher down the hill in that costume, you’ll probably find yourself in jail in less time still.”
“Right-o, old cock! What’s a furlong, anyway? Anybody seen a furlong? As to the togs, why, it’s the country, the dear, silly old simple-life country! You can do anything you like in the country, or else what’s the good of it? Come on, you fellows, we’ve got to get that smoke!”
They flew together again in a furious embrace, and spun away out of sight, whistling like flying engines at a crossing. The girl and the singer stayed behind, still apologetic.
“You’d have gone quicker by the main road,” Lancaster said stiffly, still resentful. “But of course you probably know that already.”
She nodded.
“Yes. But the boys wanted to come by the lane. They love the lane. When they don’t tango, they bring the car and squeeze her along as fast as they can. The hedges are too high, though; you daren’t risk the turns. If they were only clipped so that you could see over, it would make a fine test for steering!”
The singer in the background began an appeasing little chant, as if he knew that Lancaster writhed.
“Perhaps some of us prefer it as it is,” he answered coldly. “Hadn’t you better be looking after your—your brothers? There’s rather a smart police-sergeant in Bluecaster.”
“They’re not my brothers. They’re just stopping with us, that’s all. Are we trespassing?” She lifted an anxious face. “I didn’t know the lane was yours. I’m ever so sorry! We’d better go on, hadn’t we, after the boys? but we’ll come back the other way.”
Lanty reddened, ashamed. The singer gave him a friendly smile over the girl’s head.
“It isn’t my lane—of course not. There’s no reason you shouldn’t motor down it if you happen to know a collapsible method of passing carts. It’s a favourite walk of mine, that’s all. And everything was just about asleep.”
She looked a little puzzled and still troubled.
“I expect youdofeel it’s your own lane, really! I’ve only been here since March—we’re at Watters in Gilthrotin—but I’ve noticed people seem to think that lots of things belong to them just because they’ve had them somewhere round all their lives—hills and footpaths and favourite views—things like that. The man in the cottage behind us was dreadfully vexed because we cut down a half-dead sycamore by the river. He said he was used to seeing it from his bedroom window—wasn’t it funny of him? That’s what you feel about the lane, though, isn’t it? I wish I’d known! Any other lane would have done for us.”
Lancaster choked his feelings with an effort.
“Please do not bother about me,” he said curtly,raising his cap. “You have every right to the lane. And I don’t think it was funny at all. Good-night.”
She responded reluctantly, feeling that she had somehow failed to put things right. She wanted to placate this cross, solitary-minded person who had already turned his thin, serious face back to the break in the hedge. Perhaps he was not really cross. He might be suffering from nerves. They ought not to have worried him, poor thing!
A young moon came up over the hill. For a moment they looked together through the green arch.
“It must be fearfully quiet, down there!” she said, nodding towards the buildings hugging the land close as if they loved it and were loved in return. “I’m not sure I shall like living in the country. Everything seems to be listening for something that never gets itself said. And why don’t they put the poor animals under cover? I should hate to spend the night out of doors, myself!”
He had been watching the moon and his wraith of a Mountain, and at her words he winced again. She was shattering his magic with both hands. She had no thought for the summer dew or the nestled lambs, the grey robe of the night or the gentle miracle of dawn. It meant nothing to her, this creeping mystery of eve.
“Thought I heard a policeman’s whistle a minute ago,” he observed casually. “I met the constable following up tramps when I came out. Perhaps your folks have run into him.”
With a sense of relief he found himself alone again at last, but the charm had temporarily vanished, the fairy-things remained away. He wished she had not looked through his Green Gate with her alien eyes; he was afraid of seeing things as she saw them. She had thought it nicer for the stock to be indoors, just as she doubtless thought it better for him to be under his own roof instead of mooning about a ridiculous lane. He loathed the thought of his own house at that moment. He disliked the girl who had brokenthe happy spell. He leaned over the gate in the gloaming, watching the quietened sheep, and trying to call the magic back.
“If in field or treeThere might only beSuch a warm, soft sleeping-placeFound for me!”
“If in field or treeThere might only beSuch a warm, soft sleeping-placeFound for me!”
“If in field or tree
There might only be
Such a warm, soft sleeping-place
Found for me!”