In after years it became a habit with my father to say grimly that Uncle Obad’s Christmas dinner was the most expensive he had ever eaten—it had cost him two thousand pounds. This was the only reference to the unfortunate past that he permitted himself. On calm reflection I think he was a little sorry for the caustic frankness of some of his remarks; he was willing to forget them. Besides, as it happened, one of my uncle’s least forgivable offenses—the mentioning of our names to the newspaper men—resulted in an extraordinary stroke of luck.
A week after our visit to Chelsea, my father received a letter. It was from a firm of lawyers and stated that a friend, who had read of our loss, was anxious to provide the money for my education; the only condition made was that he should be allowed to remain anonymous.
At first my father flatly refused to put himself under such an obligation to an unknown person. “One would think that we were paupers,” he said; “such an offer may be kindly meant, but it’s insulting.”
He was so sensitive on the subject that we none of us dared to argue the matter. We considered the affair as closed, and began to consider what walk of business I should enter. Then we discovered that my father had gone off on the quiet and interviewed the lawyers; as a consequence, a second and more pressing letter arrived, stating that the anonymous benefactor would be gravely disappointed if we did not accept. He was childless and had often wished to do something for me. My father’s misfortune was his opportunity.
Our curiosity was piqued. Who of our friends or acquaintance was childless? We ran over the names of all possible benefactors—a task not difficult, for we had few friends.
The name of my mother’s father, Sir Charles Evrard, was suggested. He fitted the description exactly; the long estrangement which had resulted from my father’s elopement supplied the motive for his desire to suppress his personality.
Out of this guess Ruthita wove for me a romantic future, opening to my astonished imagination a career more congenial than any I had dreamt in my boldest moments. Up to this time, save for whispered hints from my grandmother Cardover, no mention had been made of my mother’s family. My father’s plebeian pride had never recovered from the shock and humiliation of his early years. At first out of jealous purpose, latterly from force of habit and the delicacy which men feel after re-marriage, he had allowed me to grow up in almost entire ignorance of my maternal traditions.
Now that the subject had to be discussed he became obstinately silent to the point of sullenness. The Snow Lady came to the rescue. “Leave him to me,” she said; “I know how to manage him, my dear.”
She laid it tactfully before him that he had no right to let his personal likes or dislikes prevent me from climbing back into my mother’s rank in society. I was my grandfather’s nearest kin and, if our surmise proved correct, this might be Sir Charles’s first step towards a reconciliation—a step which might end in his making his will in my favor.
Grandmother Cardover was communicated with and instructed to report on the lie of the country. She replied that folks said that old Sir Charles was wonderfully softened. She also informed us that Lord Halloway, the next of kin to myself, had been up to some more of his devilry and was in disgrace with his uncle. This time it was to do with a Ransby bathing-machine man’s daughter. Lord Halloway was my second-cousin, the Earl of Lovegrove’s; son and heir. His Christian name was Denville; I came to know him less formally in later days as Denny Halloway.
I was packed off to my grandmother, ostensibly for a week’s holiday at Ransby—in reality to put our hazard to the test.
Ransby to-day is a little sleepy seaside town. The trade has gone away from it. Every summer thousands of holiday-makers from London invade it with foreign, feverish gaiety; when they are gone it relapses into its contented old-world quiet. In my boyhood, however, it was a place of provincial bustle and importance. The sailing vessels from the Baltic crowded its harbor, lying shoulder to shoulder against its quays, unloading their cargoes of tallow and timber and hemp. Now all that remains is the herring fishery and the manufacture of nets.
Grandmother Cardover’s house stood near the harbor; from the street we could see the bare masts of the shipping lying at rest. In the front on the ground-floor was the shop, piled high with the necessaries of sea-going travel. There were coils of rope in the doorway, and anchors and sacks of ship’s biscuits; a little further in tarpaulin and oil-skin jackets hung from the ceiling, interspersed with smoked hams; and, at the back, stood rows of cheeses and upturned barrels on which ear-ringed sailor-men would sit and chat.
Behind the counter was a door, with windows draped with red curtains. It led into what was called the keeping-room, a cozy parlor in which we took our meals, while through the window in the door we could watch the customers enter. The keeping-room had its own peculiar smell, comfortable and homelike. I scarcely know how to describe it; it was a mixture of ozone, coffee, and baking bread. Out of the keeping-room lay the kitchen, with its floor of red bricks and its burnished pots and pans hung in rows along the walls. It was my grandmother’s boast that the floor was so speckless that you could eat a meal off it. Across the courtyard at the back lay the bakehouse, with its great hollow ovens and troughs in which men with naked feet trod out the dough.
Grandmother had never been out of Ransby save to visit us at Pope Lane, and this rarely. Even then, after a fortnight she was glad to get back. She said that Ransby was better than London; you weren’t crowded and knew everyone you met. The streets of London were filled with stranger-windows and stranger-faces, whereas in Ransby every house was familiar and had its story.
She carried, strung from a belt about her waist, all the keys of her bins and cupboards. You knew when she was coming by the way they jangled. She was a widow, and perfectly happy. On Sundays she attended the Methodist Chapel in the High Street, with its grave black pulpit and high-backed pews. On week-days she marshaled her sea-captains, handsome bearded men, and entertained them at her table, In spite of younger rivals, who tried to win their patronage from her by cuts in prices, she held their custom by her honest personality. I believe many of them made her offers of marriage, for she was still comely to look at; she refused them as lovers and kept them as friends. She usually dressed in black, with a gold locket containing the hair of her husband, many years dead, hung about her neck. Her hair was arranged in two rows of corkscrew curls, which reached down to her shoulders from under a prim white cap. She had a trick of making them waggle when she wished to be emphatic. She was a good deal of a gossip, was by instinct an antiquary, and had a lively sense of wit which was kept in check by a genuine piety—in short, she was a thoroughly wholesome, capable, loving woman. The type to which she belonged is now quickly vanishing—that of the more than middle-aged person who knows how to grow old usefully and graciously: a woman of the lower-middle class not chagrined by her station, who acknowledged cheerfully that she had her superiors and, demanding respect from others, gave respect ungrudgingly where it was due. She was a shop-keeper proud of her shop-keeping.
That week at Ransby was a kind of tiptoe glory. My Grannie took me very seriously; she had under her roof a boy who would surely be a baronet, perhaps a lord, and maybe an earl. What had only been an expectation with us was for her a certainty. The floodgate of her reminiscence was opened wide; she swept me far out into the romantic past with her accounts of my mother’s ancestry. The Evrards were no upstart nobility; they had their roots in history. She could tell me how they returned from exile with King Charles, or how they sailed out with Raleigh to destroy the Armada. But I liked to hear best about my mother, how she rode into Ransby under her scarlet plumes, on her great gray horse, with her flower face; and how my father caught sight of her and loved her.
I began to understand my father in a new way, entirely sympathetic. He was a man who had tasted the best of life at the first. There was something epic about his sorrow.
These conversations usually took place in the keeping-room at night. The shutters of the shop had been put up. The gas was unlighted. The flames of the fire, dancing in the grate, split the darkness into shadows which groped across the walls. Everything was hushed and cozy. My Grannie, seated opposite to me, on the other side of the fireplace, would bend forward in her chair as she talked; when she came to exciting passages her little gray curls would bob, or to passages of sentiment she would remove her shiny spectacles to wipe her eyes. If she stopped at a loss for the next topic, all I had to say was, “And how did Sir Charles Evrard look, Grannie, when he came to you that first morning after they had run away?”
“He looked, as he has always looked, my dear, an aristocrate.”
“But how did he treat you? Wasn’t he angry?”
“Angry with a woman! Certainly not. He treated me like a courtly gentleman—with respect. He dismounts and comes into my shop as leisurely as though he had only stepped in to exchange the greetings of the day. He raises his hat to me as he enters. ‘A fine day, Mrs. Cardover,’ he says.
“‘A fine day, Sir Charles, but inclined to blow up squally,’ says I.
“Then he turns his face away and inquires, ‘If it’s not troubling you, can I see your son this morning?’
“‘He went to London early,’ says I.
“He puts his hand to his throat quickly, as if he were choking. Then he asks huskily, still not looking at me, ‘Did he go alone?’
“‘That, Sir Charles, is more than I can say.’
“‘Quite right. Quite right.’ And he speaks so quickly that he startles me.
“Then he turns round, trying to smile, and shows me a face all old and pale. ‘A very fine day for someone; but it’s true what you say, it’ll blow up squally later.’
“And with that he leaves me, raising his hat, and rides away.”
“And you knew all the time?” I ask.
“We both knew all the time,” she replies.
During the daytime we went through the flat wind-swept country on excursions to Woadley Hall. Our hope was that we might meet Sir Charles, and that he would recognize me. Unfortunately, on the afternoon of my arrival he had a hunting accident, and kept the house during all the period of my stay. My nearest approach to seeing him was one evening, when the winter dusk had gathered early; I hid in the shrubbery outside the library and saw his shadow fall across the blind. He seemed to stand near the window listening. We were not more than two yards separated. I wonder, did some instinct, subtler than the five senses, let him know of the starved yearning that was calling to him out there in the dark? How those long watches in Woadley Park stirred up memories, and made my mother live again!
When the week had expired, I returned to Pope Lane. The offer was re-debated and at last accepted. I went back to the Red House and there learnt the fickleness of popularity. My uncle’s downfall had caused me to become a far less exalted person. My influence was gone; a period of persecution threatened. The Bantam alone stood by me; even in his eyes I was a Samson shorn of his glory. The renewed, half-shy interest taken in me by the Creature was a doubtful asset. Our friendship was a coalition of two weaknesses, and resulted in nothing profitable in the way of social strength. He did his best to make things up to me. He was almost womanly in his kindness. Now that Lady Zion was gone he felt a great emptiness in life; he borrowed me that, in some measure, I might fill her place. He told Sneard that he wished to coach me that I might sit for a scholarship at Oxford. Permission was granted, so we both got off prep.
Evening after evening I would spend at his cottage, the lamp lighted and the books spread out on the table. He decided that I was not much good at natural science, and declared that I must specialize in history. He was a genius in his way, and had amazing stores of information. When he overcame his hesitating shyness, he showed himself a scholar of erudite knowledge and intrepid imagination. He had a passion for antiquity that amounted to idolatry, and a faculty which was almost uncanny for making the dead world live again. While he spoke I would forget his shabbiness, his chalk-stained hands, uncouth gestures, and revolting untidiness. He was a magician who unlocked the doors of the storied past; he owned the right-of-way through all men’s minds, from Homer to Herbert Spencer. When he spoke of soldiers, his air was bullying and defiant. But it was when he spoke of women that he spoke with his heart. Then, all unaware of what he was doing, he pulled aside the curtains and let me gaze in upon the empty rooms of his life. It was he who pointed out to me that, with rare exceptions, it is not the virtuous but only the beautiful women that the world remembers.
It was odd to think what images of loveliness went to and fro behind that soiled mask of outward personality, in the hidden temples of his brain. The Creature was a man you had to love or dislike, to know altogether or not to know at all. In that last year and a half at the Red House, when he tapped me on the shoulder and led me away by the revelation of his curious secret charm, I got both to know and to love him.
And yet there was always fear in my friendship. He was queer like his sister before him. Her death seemed to have unbalanced his reason; it was a weakness that grew upon him. He seemed to have lost his power of distinguishing between the present and the imaginary or the past. Often in the cottage he would forget that his sister was not still alive and, rising from the table, would look beyond me as if he saw her, or would go out into the passage and call to her. Nothing in the cottage had been changed since her departure. Her belongings lay untouched, just where she had left them, as though her return was hourly expected.
He fell into the way of imitating her gestures, and humming snatches of her crazy songs. He would tumble over the precipice into the abyss of insanity without warning, in the middle of being rational; and would clamber back just as suddenly, apparently without knowledge of where he had gone. Of one of her songs he was extremely fond. I had often heard Lady Zion sing it as she rode between the hedges, and had been made aware of her approach long before I caught sight of her:—
“All the chimneys in our town
Wake from death when the cold comes down;
Through the summer against the sky
Tall, and silent, and stark they lie—
But every chimney in our town
Starts to breathe when the cold comes down.”
Some safe-guarding astuteness prevented him from showing his weakness at the Red House; and I was too fond of him to tell. To the rest of the boys he was only the grubby, somewhat eccentric little “stinks” master. Nevertheless, sane or insane, it was through the Creature’s efforts that, after a year of coaching, I won a history scholarship at Lazarus for eighty pounds.
Still, eighty pounds would not carry me to Oxford. It became a worrying problem to my family exactly what my grandfather, if he were my benefactor, had meant by “undertaking the expenses of my education.” His generosity might be co-terminous with my school-days. A month after the winning of the scholarship the lawyers wrote, setting our minds at rest and congratulating me on my success in the name of their client. This letter was gratifying in more than a monetary sense—it was a sign that the anonymous friend was keeping a close watch on my doings.
Since the interview at Chelsea there had been no intercourse between my father and Uncle Obad. I had once contrived to see my uncle by stealth, but the first question he had asked me was, did I come with my father’s knowledge. When I could not give him that assurance, he had sorrowfully refused to have anything to do with me. At the time I shrank from mentioning the matter to my father; so for a year and a half my uncle and his doings had dropped completely out of my life.
But my treatment of him weighed on my conscience. My last term at school had ended. It was August, and in October I expected to go up to Oxford. With my scholarship and the money the lawyers sent me I should soon be a self-supporting person. Already I thought myself a man. I felt that on the whole my father’s quarrel with my uncle was reasonable, but I could not see why I should be made to share it. So one day as I got up from breakfast, I mentioned casually that I was going to run over to Charity Grove.
It was just such another golden morning as the one of ten years earlier, when I had driven for the first time across London behind Dollie. What a big important person the Spuffler had seemed to me then! How wonderful that he, a grown-up, should take so much trouble to be friendly to a little chap! Then my mind wandered back over all his repeated kindness—all that he had stood for in the past as a harbor of refuge from the stormy misunderstandings of childhood. He and the Creature, both failures and generally despised, were two of the best men that I had ever met. Whatever his faults, he still was splendid.
I came to the Christian Boarding House, and passed up the driveway shut in with heavy evergreens. Caroline, tousled of hair, all loose ends, girt about her middle with a sackcloth apron, was on her knees bricking the steps. She did not recognize me. The Mistress was out shopping, she said, but the Master was in the paddock. “Ah, yes,” I thought, “feeding the fowls.”
I passed through the decayed old rooms, with their heavy shabby furniture, so evidently picked up cheap at auctions; then I passed out through the French windows into the cool garden, where sunshine dappled the lawn, struggling with difficulty through the crowded branches. At the gate into the paddock I halted. There he was with a can of water in his hand, fussing, in and out his coops and hutches, so extremely busy, as though the future of the world depended on his efforts. I suppose he was still evolving that strain of perpetually laying hens, The Spreckles, which was to bring him fame and fortune.
I called to him, “Uncle Obad.”
When he had recovered from his emotion, I soon found that the old fellow had long ago emerged from all personal sense of disgrace with his usual corklike irrepressibility. He chatted with me cheerily, calling me, “Old chap,” just as though nothing painful had happened to separate us. On being ousted from Chelsea, he had immediately dropped back, with something like a sigh of relief, into his former world of momentous trifles—philanthropy and fowls. “We lived at a terrible pace, old chap. It was wearing us out. We couldn’t have stood it.”
He spoke as if the abdication of his brief period of affluence had been voluntary. I scented here one of his spuffling explanations to his neighbors for his precipitate return to the boarding-house.
On inquiry I found that all his philanthropic societies had forgiven and taken him back. After sulking a while and flirting with various paid secretaries, they had agreed for economy’s sake to let bygones be bygones. They had been unable to find any other person who would serve them as loyally without salary, and who at the same time was able to offer up such beautiful extempore prayers. The list of their contributors had afforded Rapson his happiest hunting-ground. Procuring my uncle’s services for nothing was their only way of getting anything back.
“And what about Rapson?” I asked. “Do you still believe in him?”
He shook his head dolefully. “I begin to lose faith, Dante; I begin to doubt.”
“But have you heard from him since he went away?”
“Never a word.”
He hesitated and then he said, “There’s Kitty, you know. He didn’t do the straight thing by her. No, I’m afraid Rapson wasn’t a good man.”
At mention of Kitty I pricked up my ears; I had often wondered about her. “What had Kitty to do with him?” I asked. “Were they engaged?”
“No, unfortunately.”
“In love?”
“Perhaps.”
“Married?”
“I wish they had been. After he’d left her, she was awfully cut up. I did what I could for her. You remember that hundred pounds?”
“My father—at Chelsea—the Christmas present?”
“Yes. I couldn’t keep it. I gave it to her.”
“You always have to be giving something,” I said.
We were sitting on an upturned barrow in the paddock when this conversation took place. I thought how characteristic of Uncle Obad that was—to be helping others at a time when he himself was most in need of help. But his kindness knew no seasons. Then I began, as a very young man will, to think of Kitty, and, because of her frailty, to picture her through a haze of romance.
“Where’s Kitty now?” I asked.
“She’s in a photographer’s at Oxford. She serves behind a counter. But, come, you’ve not told me yet what you think of my fowls.”
The walls of the garden had fallen. Childhood was ended and with it all those absurd, aching fears lest I should never be a man and lest time might be a stationary, unescapable present, with no trap-doors giving access to the future. The experiment of life had begun in earnest, and the adventure.
That first October night of my residence at Oxford is forever memorable. Before leaving Pope Lane I had been led aside by my father. He had taken it for granted that I was now capable of a man’s follies and had warned me against them. Somehow his assumption that I had it in my choice to become a Don Juan warmed my heart; it impressed me as a tribute to my manhood—a tacit acknowledgment that I was a free agent. Free at last!
I did not understand one-tenth part of all that he hinted at. But his presumption that I did understand seemed to me a form of compliment. To ask for an explanation was a heroism of which I was not capable. So I left home clad in the armor of ignorance to do battle with the world.
Ruthita wanted to accompany me to the station. I would not let her. She was weepy in private; I knew that in public she would be worse. I had inherited my father’s dread of sentiment and his fear lest other people should construe it as weakness.
At Paddington I met the Bantam; we were entering the same college and traveled up together. We chose our places in a “smoker” by way of emphasizing to ourselves our emancipation. We tried to appear ordinary and at ease; beneath our mask of carelessness we felt delightfully bold and bad. In our carriage were three undergraduates, finished products of indifferent haughtiness. Though no more than a year our seniors, they loaded their pipes and puffed away without fear or furtiveness. They affected to be unaware of us. They were infinitely bored in manner and addressed the porters in a tone of lackadaisical, frigid tolerance. What masterfulness! And yet one term of Oxford would give us the right to be like that!—we, who so recently had been liable to be told that children must be seen and not heard. The assurance of these youthful men imperiled our courage.
As we neared Iffley, the domes and spires of the Mecca of dreamers swam up. The sky was pearl-colored without a cloud. Strewn throughout its great emptiness was the luminous dust of stars. All the tinsel ambitions which had lately stirred me were forgotten as the home of lost causes claimed me. I grew large within myself as, in watching its advance behind the river above the tree-tops, I merged my personality in this vision of architectural romance. Leaning against the horizon, stretching up and up, out of the murk of dusk and the blood-red decay of foliage, it symbolized for me all the yearning after perfection and the passionate desire for freedom that had always lain hidden in my heart. I wanted to be like that—the thing that gray pyramided stone seen at twilight can alone express—wise, unimpassioned, lovely, immutable.
We came to a standstill in the shabby station, which of all stations is probably the best beloved.
“Thank the Lord, we’re here at last.”
In a hansom, with a sporting cabby for our driver, we rattled through the ancient lamp-lit town where the ghosts of the dead summer rustled and reddened against the walls. Past the Castle we sped, through Carfax, down the High, past Oriel and Christ Church till we drew up with a jerk at Lazarus. Whatever we had suffered in the train in the way of lowered opinion of self was now made up to us; the servility of the College porter and scouts was eloquent of respect. We were undoubtedly persons of importance. If we wanted further proof of it, this awaited us in the pile of communications from Oxford tradesmen, notified beforehand of our coming, humbly soliciting our patronage.
The Bantam’s room and mine were next door to one another in Augustine’s Quad; fires were burning in the grates to bid us welcome. The scout, who acted as guide, seized the opportunity to sell us each a second-hand tin bath, a coal-scuttle, and a kettle at very much more than their first-hand prices. We felt no resentment. His deferential manner was worth the extra.
Just as we had commenced unpacking, the bell began to toll. We slipped on our gowns and followed the throng into a vaulted, dimly-lighted hall, where we dined at long tables off ancient silver, and had beer set before us. Surely we were men!
That night the Bantam and I sat far into the small, cold hours of the morning; there was no one to worry us to go to bed. When the Bantam had left, I lay awake in a state of bewildered ecstasy. I had become aware in the last ten hours of my unchartered personality. I realized that my life was my own to command, to make or mar. As the bells above the sleeping city rang out time’s progress, all the pageant of the lads of other ages, who had come up to Oxford star-eyed, as I had come, passed before me. When the withered leaves tapped against the walls, I could fancy that it was their footfall. They had come with a chance equal to mine; at the end of a few years they had departed. Some had succeeded and some had failed. Of all that great army which now stretched bivouacked throughout eternity, only the latest recruits were in sight. The scholar-monks, the soldier-saints, the ruffian-students of early centuries, the cavaliers, the philosophers, and the statesmen, together with the roisterers of the rank and file, were all equally and completely gone.
In the silence of my narrow room, with the flickering fire dying in the hearth, there brooded over me the shadowy darkness of the ages. What religion does for some men, for me the gray poetry of this poignant city accomplished. I had become aware that from henceforth the ultimate responsibility for my actions must rest forever with myself. I was strangely unafraid of this knowledge.
They were dim dawn-days that followed, when the air was filled with star-dust—neither with suns, nor moons, nor stars, only with the excitement of their promise. My world was at twilight, blurred and mysterious; only the huge design was clearly discernible—the cracks and imperfections were concealed from me, shrouded in dusk. I lived in a land of ideals, drawing my rules of conduct from the realism of the classics—a realism which even to the Greeks and Romans was only an aspiration, never a practice. Existence had for me all the piquant fascination which comes of half-knowledge—the charming allurement, leaving room for speculation, which the glimpse of a girl’s face has at nightfall. It was an age when all things seemed possible, because all were untested.
Gradually, out of the wilderness of strange faces, some became more familiar than others; little groups of friends-began to form. The instinctive principle on which my set came together was enthusiastic rebellion against convention and eager curiosity concerning existence. One by one, without appointing any place of meeting, we would drift into some man’s room. This usually occurred about eight in the evening, after dinner in hall. The lamp would be left unlighted; the couch would be drawn near the fire; then we would commence a conversation which was half jesting and half confessional.
Under the cloak of laughing cynicism we hid a desperate purpose. We wanted to know about life. We sought in each new face to discover if it could tell us. We had nothing to guide us but the carefully prepared disclosures which had been vouchsafed us in our homes. We had risen at a bound into a man’s estate, and still retained a boy’s knowledge. We realized that life was bigger, bolder, more adventurous, more disastrous than we had reckoned. Why was it that some men failed, while others had success? What external pressures caused the difference in achievement between Napoleon, for instance, and Charles Lamb? Who was responsible for our varying personalities? Where did our own responsibility begin, and where did it end?
The problems we argued predated the Decalogue, yet to us they were eternally original and personal. We attacked them with youthful insolence. The authority of no social institution was safe from our irreverence. We accepted nothing, neither religion, nor marriage; we had to go back to the beginning and re-mint truth for ourselves. Our real object in coming together was that we might pool our scraps of actual experience, and out of these materials fashion our conjectures.
There was one topic of inexhaustible interest. It permeated all our inquiry—woman. We knew so little about her; but we knew that she held the key opening the door to all romance. What gay cavaliers we could be in discussing her, and how sheepish in the presence of one concrete specimen of her sex—especially if she were beautiful, and not a relative!
All the adventures we had ever heard of seemed now within our grasp. Woman was the great unknown to us. We knew next to nothing of the penalties—only the romance.
Little by little the boldest among us, recognizing that talk led nowhere, began to put matters to the test. The same shy restraint that had made me afraid of Fiesole when she had tempted me to kiss her, made me an onlooker now. A saving common sense prompted me to await the proof of events. I acted on instinct, not on principle. The difference between myself and some of my friends was a difference of temperament. Perhaps it was a difference between daring and cowardice. There are times when our weaknesses appear to be virtues, preserving us from shipwreck. I was capable of tempestuous thoughts; while they remained thoughts I could clothe them with idealism and glamor. But I was incapable of impassioned acts; their atmosphere would be beyond my control—the atmosphere of inevitable vulgarity which results from contemporary reality. My observation of unrestraint taught me that unrestraint was ugly. In short, I had a pagan imagination at war with a puritan conscience.
In my day, there was no right or wrong in undergraduate Oxford—no moral or immoral. Every conventional principle of conduct which we had learnt, we flung into the crucible of new experience to be melted down and, out of the ordeal, minted afresh.
We divided ourselves into two classes: those who experimented and those who watched. There was only one sin in our calendar—not to be a gentleman. To be a gentleman, in our sense of the word, was to be a sportsman and to have good manners.
In our private methods of thought we were uninterfered with by those in authority. The University’s methods of disciplining our actions were, and still are, a survival of medi?valism. If an undergraduate was seen speaking to a lady, he had to be able to prove her pedigree or run the risk of being sent down. At nine o’clock Big Tom rang; ten minutes later every college-door was shut and a fine was imposed for knocking in or out. In the streets the proctors and their bulldogs commenced to go the rounds. Until twelve a man was safe in the streets, provided he appeared to be innocently employed and wore his cap and gown. Knocking into college after twelve was a grave offense.
If a man observed these rules or was crafty, he might investigate life to his heart’s content. Public opinion was extremely lenient. Conduct was a purely personal matter as long as it did not inconvenience anybody else. If a man had the all-atoning social grace, and was careful not to get caught in an incriminating act, though everybody knew about it from his own lips afterwards, he was not censured.
My cousin, Lord Halloway, had been a Lazarus man. Oxford still treasured the memory of his amorous exploits.
He had been a good deal of a dare-devil and was regarded as something of a hero; he inspired us with awe, for, despite his recklessness, he had played the game gaily and escaped detection. The impression that this kind of thing created was that indiscretions were only indiscreet when they were bungled. Punishment seemed the penalty for discovery—not for the sin itself. Naturally it was the foolish and less flagrant sinners who got caught. For instance, there was the Bantam.
The first term the Bantam watched and listened. There were occasions when he was a little shocked. When Christmas came round, having no home to go to, he kept on his rooms in college, and spent the vacation in residence. I returned to Pope Lane, and found that the womanliness of Ruthita and the Snow Lady had a sanitary effect. The wholesome sweetness of their affection, after the hot-house discussions of a group of boyish men, came like a breath of pure air. I fell back into the old trustfulness. I recognized that society had secret restraints and delicacies, a disclosure of the motives for which was not yet allowable; at the proper season life would explain itself.
When college re-assembled I noticed a change in the Bantam. He was soulful and sentimental—he took more pains with his dressing. He was continually slipping off by himself; when he returned he volunteered no information as to the purpose of his errand. When the eternal problem of woman was discussed, he smiled in a wise and melancholy manner. If he contributed a remark, it was not a guess, but had the air of authoritative finality. One night I tackled him. “What have you been up to, Bantam? You know too much.”
He twisted his pipe in his mouth pensively. “She’s the sweetest little girl in the world.”
He would not tell me her name. He had pledged her his word not to do that. There was a reason—she was working, and she belonged to too high a rank in society to work. She wished to remain obscure, until she could re-instate herself. She was a Cinderella who would one day emerge from poverty into splendor. The Bantam said his emotions were almost too sacred to talk about. Nevertheless, he meandered on with his mystery from midnight to three o’clock. She was a lady and terribly persecuted. He had come to her rescue just at the identical moment when a good influence was most needed. All through the Christmas Vac he had acted the big brother’s part, shielding her from temptation. She was lovely—there lay the pity of it.
I pointed out that there were ten thousand ways of flirting with girls, and that this was the most dangerous. His white knighthood was affronted by that word flirting. He became indignant and said I was no gentleman.
As time went on, acquaintance after acquaintance would drop in to see me, and would hint gravely at a deep and romantic passion which the Bantam had imparted to them alone. When I informed them that I also was in his confidence, they would repeat to me the same vague story of persecuted loveliness, but always with embellishments. By and by, the embellishments varied so irreconcilably that I began to suspect that they referred to more than one girl.
Most of us were in love with love in those days; we were all quite certain that an incandescent purifying passion lay ahead of us. It might knock at our door any hour—and then our particular problem would be solved. This hope was rarely mentioned. To one another we strove to give the impression of being cynical and careless. Yet always, beneath our pose of flippancy, we were seeking the face pre-destined to be for us the most beautiful in all the world. For myself, I was feverishly eager in its quest. I would scour the green-gray uplands of the Thames, telling myself that she might lie hidden in the cheerful quiet of some thatched farm. Every new landscape became the possible setting for my individual romance. I lived each day in expectancy of her coming. Sometimes at nightfall I would pause outside a lighted shop-window, arrested by a girl’s profile, and would pretend to myself that I had found her. That was how Rossetti found Miss Siddall; perhaps that was how it would happen to myself. One thing was certain: whenever and wherever I found her, whether in the guise of shop-girl, dairy-maid, or lady, for me the golden age would commence. I stalked through life on the airy stilts of an ?sthetic optimism.
Ah, but the Bantam, he was all for doing! If he could not find the love he wanted, he would seize the next best. Yet he would never admit that he was in love. He deceived himself into believing that he acted on the most altruistic motives. If others misunderstood him, it was because they were of grosser fiber. Other men, doing the things he did, laughingly acknowledged their rakishness; he, however, considered himself a self-appointed knight-errant to ladies in distress. He became involved in endless entanglements. It was by appealing to his higher nature with some pitiful story, that his transient attractions caught him.
I never knew a man so unfortunate in his genius for discovering lonely maidens in need of his protection. He always meant to be noble and virtuous, but his temperament was not sufficiently frigid to carry him safely through such ticklish adventures. He never learnt when to leave off; his fatal and theatric conception of chivalry continually led him on to situations more powerfully tempting. It would be easy to explain him by saying that he was a sentimental ass. But so were we all. The Bantam came to his ruin because he was lonely, because he had no social means of meeting women who were his equals, and because he was too kind-hearted; but mainly because he attributed to all women indiscriminately a virtue which unfortunately they do not all possess.
He sinned accidentally and therefore carelessly—not wisely, but too well. A man like Lord Halloway sinned of set purpose and laid his plans ahead; so far as society’s opinion of him was concerned he came off comparatively scatheless. The worst that was ever said of him was that he was a gay dog. Women even seemed to like him for it. I suppose he intrigued their fancy, and made them long to reform him. From this I learnt that the gaping sins of a gay dog are more easily forgiven than the peccadilloes of a sentimental donkey.
In the Easter Vacation of our first year at Oxford, the Bantam stayed at Putney. In the same house was an actress, very beautiful and more sorely used by the world than even the first girl. In the summer-time there was a widow at Torquay. In the beginning of our second year of residence there was a bar-maid at Henley. After that they followed in rapid succession. Wherever he went he found some woman starving for his sympathy. They were all ladies and phenomena of beauty, to judge from his accounts.
When he came to make confession to me, it was a little difficult to follow which particular lady he was talking about. He never mentioned them by name, and seemed to try to give the impression that they were one composite person.
One evening I got him with his back to the wall. “Bantam, who is this Oxford girl—the first one you got to know about?”
Then he admitted that she was a shop-girl. I knew what that meant: some of the Oxford tradesmen engaged girls for the prettiness of their faces, that they might attract custom by flirting with the undergrads. Little by little I narrowed him down in his general statements till I had guessed the shop in which she worked.
“Is she a good girl?” I asked.
Instead of taking offense, he answered, “Dante, the thought of her goodness often makes me ashamed of myself.”
It was evident, though he would not admit it, that this affair at least was serious.
“Then why does she stay there?”
“She can’t help herself.”
“Why can’t she help herself?”
“She’s an orphan and has a living to earn. She’s afraid to get out of a situation.”
“But what good are you doing her?”
“Helping her to keep up her courage by letting her know that one man respects her.”
“Don’t you think she may get to expect more than that?”
“Certainly not. Why should she?”
“Just because girls do,” I said. “Do you write her letters?”
“Sometimes.”
“What do you write about?”
He wouldn’t tell me that. Next day I went down to the shop to investigate matters. Since the Bantam wouldn’t listen to sense, I intended to hint to the girl the danger of what she was doing. Of course she could never marry him; but I was morally certain that that was what she was aiming at.
The shop was a stationer’s. I had chosen an hour in the afternoon when it was likely to be empty, everyone being engaged in some form of athletics. I entered and saw a daintily gowned woman with her back turned towards me. She was all in white. Her waist was of the smallest. She had a mass of honey-colored hair. She swung about at sound of my footstep.
“Why, Kitty, of all people in the world! I didn’t expect to find you here.”
“As good as old times,” she said. “I’ve often seen you pass the window, but I thought you wouldn’t want to know me.”
“And why not?”
“Because of what happened.”
“Rapson?”
She flushed and hung her head. I wondered if she meant what I thought she meant.
I hated to see her sad; she looked so young and pretty. I began to ask her what she was doing.
“Doing! Minding shop, remembering, growing old, and earning my living. It’s just horrid to be here, Dante. I have to watch you ‘Varsity men having a good time—and once I belonged to your set. And they come in and stare at me, and pay me silly compliments—and I have to smile and pretend I like it. That’s what I’m paid for. They don’t know how I hate them. When they have their sweethearts and sisters up, they walk past me as though they never knew me.”
“But are they all like that?”
She smiled, and I knew she loved him. When she spoke her voice trembled. “There’s one of them is different.”
“Kitty, he’s the one I came to talk about.”
With instinctive foreknowledge of the purpose of my errand, her face became tragic. “His father’s in India,” I explained. “From what I hear of him he’s very proud. If the Bantam made a marriage that could in any way be regarded as imprudent, he’d cut him off. He’d be ruined. You know how it would be; the world would turn its back on him.”
“What do we care about the world?” she said. “The world’s a coward.”
It was wonderful how coldly practical I could become in dealing with another man’s heart affairs—I, who spent my time dreaming of the most extraordinarily unconventional marriages.
“The world may be a coward, Kitty, but you have to live in it. Besides, are you sure that the Bantam really cares for you? Have you told him everything?”
She stared into my eyes across the counter with frightened fascination. I knew that I was acting like a brute and I despised myself. I had hardly meant to ask her the last question—it had slipped out. While we gazed at one another there drifted through my memory all the scenes of that day at Richmond—the gaiety of it, and the hunger with which she had clutched me to her as we punted back in the dark. I understood what this little bit of love must mean to her after her experience of disillusion.
“No, I have not told him. I daren’t. I’m afraid to lose him. Oh, Dante, don’t tell him; it’s my one last chance to be good.”
“But you’ve got to tell him, Kitty. If his love’s worth anything, he’ll forgive you. He’d be sure to find out after marriage.”
“I don’t care about marriage,” she whispered desperately.
“Even then, you ought to tell him.”
A customer came into the shop. We tumbled from our height of emotion. It was another example of how reality makes all things prosaic. She had to compose herself, and go and serve him. He had come to admire her and showed a tendency to dawdle. His purchase was the excuse for his presence. I had an opportunity to watch her—how charmingly fresh she looked and how girlish. And yet she was three years older than myself—that seemed incredible. At last the customer went.
“Kitty, I feel I’ve been a horrid beast to you—it’s so often like that when one speaks the truth. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I want to see you happy. I’ll not interfere. You must do what you feel to be right about it.” And with that I left her.
The Bantam was rowing in the college crew that summer. What with training, going to bed early, and keeping up with his work, I saw little of him. The night before the races he came into my room. He looked brilliantly healthy—lean and tanned.
“Are you alone?”
“You can see I am. What’s the trouble?”
He sank into a chair and grinned at me. “It’s all up. I’ve been an awful ass.”
“How?”
“I wrote two letters; one to the widow at Torquay and the other to the actress. They were nice friendly letters, but far too personal. I put ’em in the wrong envelopes.”
“And they’ve sent them back with bitter complaints against your infidelity. Poor old Bantam!”
“They haven’t. They’re keeping them as proof. They’ve both struck out the same line of action and talk about a breach of promise suit. They’re both coming to see me to-morrow, and they’re sure to meet. There’ll be a gay old row, and I shall get kicked out of Lazarus.”
I whistled.
“You may well whistle,” he said, ridiculously puckering his mouth; “it’s a serious affair. Here have I been trying to be decent to two women, and they’re going to try to make me out a kind of letter-writing Bluebeard. I know quite well I’ve written silly things to them that could be construed in a horribly damaging manner. I only meant to be cheery, you know, but I see now that there’ve been times when I’ve crossed the boundary of mere friendship. They can both make a case against me I suspect and so can all the other girls. Once the thing leaks into the papers, they’ll all swoop down like a lot of vultures to see what they can get.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“I can run away to-night without leaving any address. That would leave the crew in the lurch; we’d get bumped every night on the river—so I can’t do that. I can stop and face it out—let my pater in for all kinds of expense in the way of damages, and get sent down. Or I can marry one of ’em, and so shut all the others’ mouths. It isn’t money they’re wanting—it’s me as a husband. Isn’t it a gay old world?”
He pushed his hands deep into his trouser-pockets and thrust out his legs. He didn’t seem adequately desperate—in fact he gave the impression of being glad this thing had happened. I was puzzling over what I ought to say to him, when it occurred to me that I hadn’t offered any expression of sympathy; I told him I was awfully sorry.
“Needn’t be. You see, there’s only one girl I greatly care about, and she’s just all the world. She had a mishap some years back with a cad—she only told me a month ago, and because of it she refused to marry me. She’s got it into her head that I’m too good for her. Well, now I can prove to her that it’s the other way about.”
The Bantam ruffled his hair. He spoke with genuine feeling; this was quite different from any of his former confessions. He moistened his lips nervously, and turned away his eyes from me. “There are some girls,” he said, “who never need to be forgiven. Whatever they’ve done and whatever they’re doing, doesn’t matter. They seem always too pure for us men.”
I leant forward and took his hand. I felt proud of him. “I’ll stand by you, old chap. How can I help?”
“By being awfully decent to these two women to-morrow. Take ’em out on the river and keep ’em quiet. Drug ’em with flattery. They’re both of them immensely good-looking. P’raps if you treat ’em well, they’ll be ashamed to make a row. Then, when Eights’ Week is over and the crew doesn’t want me any longer, I’ll slip up to London, and establish a residence, and get married.”
As he was going out of the room I called him back. “What’s the name of the girl you’re going to marry?”
“Kitty,” he whispered below his breath, as though it were a word too sacred to mention.
The widow from Torquay arrived next morning; so did the actress from Putney. I let each one suppose that the other was my near relative, and never left them for a moment together, lest they should discover their error. I gave them separately to understand that their troubles would be satisfactorily settled. I made much of the rigors of training, which compelled the Bantam to absent himself. They didn’t meet him until after they had seen him racing, by which time he had become a kind of hero to them. I saw them safely off at the station by different trains—so the crash was averted. When Eights’ Week was ended the Bantam vanished, without explanation to the college. A month later I attended his wedding.
Kitty had asked permission to invite one guest—she wouldn’t tell us his name. When we three had assembled in the little Church of Old St. Mary’s, Stoke Newington, who should come fussing up the aisle but my uncle, the Spuffler. He wore a frayed frock-coat; the end of his handkerchief was hanging out of his tail-pocket, as usual.
All through the service he gave himself such important airs that the clergyman took it for granted that the bride was his daughter.
We jumped into a couple of hansoms and drove down to Verrey’s to lunch. The Bantam said he knew he couldn’t afford it, but he was determined to have one good meal before he busted. We had a private room set apart for us. The Spuffler tasted the best champagne he had drunk since his fiasco. It made him reflective. He kept on telling us that life was a switchback—an affair of ups and downs. The Bantam cut him short by proposing a toast to all the ladies he hadn’t married. And I sat and stared at Kitty, with her cornflower eyes and sky-blue dress, and wondered where my eyes had been that I hadn’t married her myself.
We went to the Parks and took a boat on the Serpentine. It was there that the Bantam let his bomb burst: he was sailing on the Celtic, via New York, for Canada. He felt sure his father would disown him for having spoilt his Oxford opportunities, so he was going to start life afresh in a land where no one would remember.
In the autumn, when I returned to Lazarus, I had an opportunity to judge how the world treats breakers of convention. No one had a good word to say for the Bantam. Everybody was eager to disclaim him as his friend—he had married a shop-girl. Yet Halloway, who sinned cavalierly without twinge of conscience or attempt at reparation, was spoken of, even by persons who had never known him, with a kind of tolerant, admiring affection. So much for what this taught me of social morality. Playing safe, and not ethical right or wrong, was the standard of conventional righteousness.
Star-dust days were drawing to an end. The grim, inevitable facts of life were looming larger and nearer. Romance was slowly giving way before reality. It was the last year at Oxford for most of the men in my set. Conversations began to take a practical turn, as to how a living might be earned. For myself, I listened with a languid interest. These discussions did not concern my future. I expected that my grandfather would continue my allowance. I should not be forced to sell myself by doing uncongenial, remunerative kinds of work. I should have time to mature. I wanted to make a study of the Renaissance. About twenty years hence I should publish a book; then I should be famous. Meanwhile I should collect my facts, and probably enter Parliament as member for Ransby.
It was wonderful how bravely confident we were. We gazed into the future without fear or tremor. We all knew that we were sure of success. Already we were picking out the winners—the naturally great men, who would arrive at the top of the tree with the first effort. It was a belief among us that genius was nothing more than concentrated will-power. Then something happened which startled me into a novel display of energy.
Ever since leaving the Red House, the Creature had written me once a week, usually on a Sunday, with clockwork regularity. One Monday I went to the porter’s lodge for my mail and missed his letter. The following morning, glancing down the paper, my eye was attracted by a headline which read, TRAGIC DEATH OF A SCHOOLMASTER. The news-item announced the death of Mr. Murdoch, science master of the Red House. It appeared that the boys had gone down to the laboratory to attend the experimental chemistry class. On opening the door they had been driven back by a powerful smell of gas, but not before they had caught a glimpse of Mr. Murdoch fallen in a heap upon the floor. When the room was entered it was quite evident that the death was not accidental. Every burner in the room was full on, and the ventilators were stopped with rags.
Some days later I received a legal letter informing me that the Creature had left a will in my favor. His total estate amounted to three hundred pounds. I was requested to call at the lawyer’s office. I got leave of absence from my college and went to London. There I learnt that at the time that the will had been made, a little over five years ago, the value of the estate had been a thousand pounds. Of this I had already received over seven hundred, remitted to me by his lawyers from time to time according to his instructions. He had originally saved the money in order that he might provide for his sister in the event of his dying first. On her death, he had executed the present will, making me his heir.
So Sir Charles Evrard was not the author of my prosperity! The disappointment of the discovery robbed me for an instant of all sense of gratitude. I felt almost angry with the Creature for having been the innocent cause of all this building of air-castles. This was the second time that fortune had led me on to expect, only to trick me when the future seemed secure. The uncertainty of everything unnerved me. Life seemed to pucker its brows and stare down at me with a frown. All the money that had been spent on my education had taught me nothing immediately useful—and now I had a living to earn.
Luckily, just about this time, it was suggested to me that, after I had taken my Finals, I should enter for some of the history fellowships in the autumn. It was expected that I would gain an easy First; if I did that, I had a fair chance of winning a fellowship at my own college.
Now that my fool’s paradise had melted into nothingness, I felt the spur of necessity, and commenced to work strenuously. Gradually a higher motive than the mere hope of reward began to actuate my energy. I wanted to be what the Creature had hoped for me. Now that he was gone, he became very near to me. He was always haunting my memory. He had robbed himself that he might give me my chance. I felt humbled that I should have spent his money with so free a hand, while he had been living in comparative poverty. I could picture just how he looked that morning when the boys burst into the laboratory. His hands were stained with chalk. His uncombed hair fell back from his wrinkled forehead. He was wearing the same old clothes—the tweed jacket and gray flannel trousers—that I knew so well. Probably he looked both tired and dirty, and a little disreputable.
I reproached myself for the shortness of my letters to him. I saw now, in the light of after events, how I might have been a strength to him. He had given me everything; I had given him nothing. His fineness of feeling had led him to prevent my gratitude. Never by the slightest hint had he left me room to guess that I was beholden to him. And now he was beyond reach of thanks.
I recalled how I had teased him as a youngster, and had courted popularity at his expense. When I was most angry against myself, I would drift back into the class-room where the boys were baiting him, and would hear him making his peace-offering, “Penthil, Cardover? Penthil, Buzzard? Want a penthil?” And then, in spite of indignation, I had to laugh.
When Finals came on I won my First and in the autumn gained a history fellowship at Lazarus. It was worth two hundred pounds a year. It allowed me ample time to travel and was tenable for seven years, on the condition that I did not marry.
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 Woad-ley. 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 Card-over.”
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 it was true, 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 in The 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:
MARY FRANCES EVRARD
BELOVED WIFE OF SIR CHARLES EVRARD
OF WOADLEY HALL
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.”
I could not understand Vi. It would seem that she was trying to avoid me. If I met her in the street she was usually driving and, while she bowed and smiled, never halted. I took many strolls by her house, hoping to catch her going in or out. I think she must have watched me. Once only, when she thought the coast was clear, I came upon her just as she was leaving the house. She saw me and flushed gloriously; then pretended that she had not seen me and re-entered, closing the door hurriedly behind her.
After that I gave up my pursuit of her. It seemed not straightforward—too much like spying. I kept away from the places she was likely to frequent. Wandering the quays, where there were only sailors and red-capped Brittany onion-sellers, I racked my brains, trying to recall in what I had offended. I felt no resentment for Vi’s conduct. It never occurred to me that she was a coquette. I thought that she might be actuated by a woman’s caution, and gave her credit for motives of which I had no knowledge. The more she withdrew beyond my attainment, the more desirable she became to me.
My grandmother noticed my fallen countenance and concluded that Sir Charles’s indifference was the cause of it. She tried to cheer me with fragments of wise sayings which had helped her to keep her courage. She told me that there were more fish in the sea than ever came out of it. She even feigned contempt for Sir Charles, saying that I should probably be just as happy without his begrudged money. She resorted to religion for comfort, saying that if God didn’t intend me to inherit Woadley, it was because it wouldn’t be good for me. She painted for me the pleasures of the contented life:
“No riches I covet, no glory I want,
H’ambition is nothing to me;
The one thing I beg of kind ’eaven to grant
Is a mind independent and free.”
But she couldn’t stir me out of my melancholy, for she didn’t know its cause. She physicked me for financial disappointments; what I wanted was a love-antidote.
As my whole energies had formerly been bent on encountering Vi, so now they were directed towards avoiding her. For hours I would lounge in the bake-house or sit in the shop while Grandmother Cardover did her knitting, served customers, or gossiped with her neighbors. Then, against my better judgment, curiosity and longing for one more glimpse of her would drag me out into the streets, Yet, once in the streets, my chief object was to flee from her.
Now when I should have refrained from pestering her, some obstinate fate was always bringing us face to face. I was sorriest for the effect that our attitude was having on Dorrie. At first she would rush forward in a gale of high spirits to greet me, until restrained by Vi. Next time, with a child’s forgetfulness, she would lift to me her pansy-face smiling, and remembering would hang back. At last she grew afraid of my troubled looks, and would hide shyly behind Vi’s skirts when she saw me.
For five days I had not met them. A desperate suspicion that they had left town grew upon me. I became reckless in my desire for certainty. I could not bear the suspense. I was half-minded to call at the house where she had been staying, but that did not seem fair to her. I called myself a fool for not having stopped her in the street while I had the chance, when an explanation and an apology might have set everything on a proper footing.
On the sixth morning of her absence I rose early and went out before breakfast. The skies were gray and squally. A slow drizzle had been falling all night and, though it now had ceased, the pavements were wet. The wind came in gusts, whistling round corners of streets and houses, whirling scraps of paper high in the air. When I came to the harbor, I saw that the sea was choppy and studded with white horses. Against the piles of the pier waves were dashing and shattering into spray. From up channel, all along the horizon, drove long lines of leaden clouds.
I struck out across the denes between the sea-wall and the Beach Road. No one was about. I braced myself against the wind, enjoying its stinging coldness. The tormented loneliness of the scene was in accord with my mood. The old town, hanging red along the cliff, no longer seemed to watch me; it frowned out on the desolate waste of water in impersonal defiance.
My thoughts were full of that first morning when I had met her. I gave my imagination over without restraint to reconstructing its sensuous beauty. I saw the fire of the furze again, and scented the far-blown fragrance of wall-flowers, hiding in their crannies. But I saw as the center of it all the slim white girl with the mantle of golden hair, the deep inscrutable eyes of violet, and the slow sweet smile of La Gioconda playing round the edges of her mouth: gold and ivory, with poppies for her lips and sunshine for a background.
The hot blood in me was up—the gipsy blood. A stream of impassioned fancies passed before me. Ah, if I were to meet her now, I would have done with fine-spun theories of what was gentlemanly. On the lonely beach I would throw my arms about her, however she struggled, and hold her fast till she lay with her dear face looking up, crushed and submissive in my breast. After that she might leave me, but she would at least have learnt that I was a man and that I loved her.
Ahead lay the sullen wreck. I had been there only once since our first meeting. Motives of delicacy, which I now regretted, had held me back. Now I could go there. On such a morning, though she were still in Ransby, there would be no fear of surprising her.
On entering the hull through the hole in the prow, the wind ceased, though it whistled overhead. I leant against the walls of the stranded ship, recovering my breath. I. drew out my pipe, intending to take a smoke while I rested. As I turned to strike a match, an open umbrella lying in a corner on the sand, caught my attention. I went over and looked behind it; there lay a pair of woman’s shoes and stockings, and a jacket, with stones placed on it to keep it down. Beneath the jacket was a disordered pile of woman’s clothing.
My first thought was shame of what she might think of me, were she to find me. My second was of angry fear because she had been so foolhardy as to bathe from such a shore on such a morning.
Hurrying out of the wreck, I strode across the beach to where the surf rushed boiling up the pebbles. The waves ran high, white, and foam-capped, hammering against the land. Gazing out from shore, I could see nothing but leaden water, rising and falling, rising and falling. The height of the waves might hide a swimmer from one standing at the water’s level; I raced back up the beach, and climbed the wreck. I could not discover her. The horror of what this meant stunned me; I could think of nothing else. My mind was in confusion. Then I heard my voice repeating over and over that she was not dead. The sheer monotony of the reiterated assertion, produced a sudden, unnatural clearness. “If she is not drowned, she must be somewhere out there,” I said.
I commenced to sweep the sea with my eyes in ever widening circles. Two hundred yards down the shore to the left and about fifty out, I sighted something. It was white and seemed only foam at first. The crest of a wave tossed it high for a second, then shut it out; when the next wave rose it was still there.
I shouted, but my voice would not carry against the wind. The next time the white thing rose on the crest I was sure that it was the face of a woman. I saw her arm thrown out above the surface; she was swimming the overarm stroke in an effort to make headway toward the land. I knew that she could never do it, for the current along the north beach runs seawards and the tide was going out. I gazed round in panic. The shore was forlorn and deserted. Behind me to the northward stretched the gaunt, bare cliffs. To the southward, a mile distant across the denes, stood the outskirts of the sleepy town. Before ever I could bring help, she would have been carried exhausted far out to sea, or else drowned. There was no boat on the shore between myself and the harbor. There was nothing between her and death but myself. And to go to her rescue meant death.
I scarcely know what happened. I became furious with unreasonable anger. I was angry with her for her folly, and angry with the world because it took no notice and did not care. I was determined that, before it was too late, I would go to her, so that she might understand. Yet, despite my passion, I acted with calculation and cunning. All my attention was focused on that speck of white, bobbing in the waste of churned up blackness. As I ran along the beach I kept my eyes fixed on that. When I came opposite, I waved to it. It took no notice. I hurried on a hundred yards further; the current would bear her down towards me northwards. I stripped almost naked, tearing off everything that would weigh me down. I waded knee-deep into the surf, up to where the beach shelved suddenly. I waited till a roller was on the point of breaking; diving through it, I struck out.
It was difficult to see her. Only when the waves threw us high at the same moment, did I catch a glimpse of her and get my direction. The shock of the icy coldness of the water steadied my nerves and concentrated my purpose. I was governed by a single determination—to get to her. My thought went no further than that. Nothing else mattered. I had no fear of death or of what might come after—I had no time to think about it. I wanted to get her in my arms and shake her, and tell her what a little fool she was, and kiss her on the mouth.
Lying on my right side, keeping low in the water, I dug my way forward with an over-arm left-stroke. As my first wind went from me and I waited for my second, I settled down into the long plugging stroke of a mile race. The tide was with me, but the roughness of the water prevented rapid progress. I had to get far enough out to be at the point below her in the current to which she was being swept down.
I started counting from one to ten to keep myself from slackening, just as the cox of a racing-eight does when he forces his crew to swing out. I regarded my body impersonally, without sympathy, as though we were separate. When it suffered and the muscles ached, I lashed it forward with my will, silently deriding it with brutal profanities. The wind poured over the sea; the spray dashed up and nearly choked me. It was difficult to keep her in sight. When I saw her again, I smiled grimly at her courage and hit up a quicker pace. Who would have thought that her fragile body, so flower-like and dainty, had the strength and nerve to fight like that?
I was far enough out now to catch her. I halted, treading water; but the inaction gave my imagination time to get to work, and, when that happened, I felt myself weakening. I started up against the current, going parallel with the beach, to meet her. The one obsessing thought in my mind was to get to her. It was not so much a thought as an animal instinct. I was reduced to the primitive man, brutally battling his way towards his mate at a time of danger. While I acted instinctively, the flesh responded; directly I paused to think, my body began to shirk and my strength to ebb. Somewhere in that raging waste of water I must find and touch her. I did not care to hear her voice—simply to hold her.
Thirty feet away a gray riot of stampeding water rose against the horizon; in it I saw her face. With the swift trudging stroke of a polo-player I made towards her. In the foam and spray I saw what looked like golden seaweed. She was drifting past me; I caught her by the hair. Out of the mist of driven chaos we gazed in one another’s eyes. Her lips moved. “You!” she said.
My mind was laughing in triumph. My body was no longer weary—it was forgotten and strong again. In all the world there were just she and I. She had tried to escape me, but now the waves jostled us together. She had striven not to see me, but now my face focused all her gaze. She might look away into the smoking crest of the next roller, but her eyes must always come back. Of all live things we had loved or hated, now there remained just she and I. We had been stripped of all our acquirements and thrown back to the primitive basis of existence—a man and a woman fighting for life in chaos. For us all the careful conventions, built up by centuries, were suddenly destroyed. The polite decencies and safeguards of civilization were swept aside. The shame of so many natural things, which had made up the toll of our refinement, was contemptuously blotted out—the architecture of the ages was shattered in an instant. We were thrown back to where the first man and woman started. The only virtue that remained to us was the physical strength by which death might be avoided. The sole distinguishing characteristic between us was the female’s dependence on the male, and the male’s native instinct to protect her, if need be savagely with his life. Over there, a mile away, stood the red comfortable town on the cliff, where all the smug decencies were respected which we had perforce abandoned. Between us and the shore stretched fifty yards of water—a gulf between the finite and the infinite. Over there lay the moment of the present; here in eternity were she and I.
I gazed on her with stern gladness; I had got to her—she was mine. The madness for possession, which had given me strength, was satisfied. Now a fresh motive, still instinctive and primal, urged me on—I must save her. I lifted her arm and placed it across my shoulder, so that I might support her. The great thing was to keep her afloat as long as possible. There was no going back over the path that we had traversed—both tide and current were dead against us. Already the shore was stealing away—we were being carried out to sea.
I remembered, how on that first morning, when I had warned her against bathing from the north beach, she had told me she was a good swimmer. In my all-embracing ignorance of her, I had no means of estimating how much or how little that meant. For myself, barring accidents, I judged I could keep going for two hours.
Vi was weakening. With her free left hand she was still swimming pluckily, but her right hand kept slipping off my shoulder; I had to watch her sharply and lift it back. Her weight became heavier. Her lips were blue and chattering. I noticed that her fingers were spread apart; she had cramp in the palms of her hands. Her body dragged beside me; she was losing control of it. She was no longer kicking out.
To talk, save in monosyllables, was impossible, and then one had to shout. Our ears were stopped up with water; the clash of the wind against the waves was deafening. My one fear for her was that the cramp would spread. If that happened, we would go down together.
I felt her cold lips pressed against my shoulder. As I looked round, she let go of me. “I’m done,” she said.
She went under. I slipped my arm about her and turned over on my back, so that my body floated under her, and she lay across my breast. “You shan’t go,” I panted furiously.
“Let me,” she pleaded.
But I held her. “You shan’t go,” I said.
My anger roused her. I turned over again, swimming the breast-stroke. She placed her arm round my neck. Her long hair washed about me.
Sometimes her eyes were closed and I thought she had fainted. Her lips had ceased to chatter. Her face lay against my shoulder, pinched and quiet as though she were dead. My own motions were becoming mechanical. It was sheer lust of life that kept me going. I had lost sensation in my feet and hands. The shore had dwindled behind us; it seemed very small and blurred, though it was probably only half-a-mile distant. The water was less turbulent now; it rose and fell, rose and fell, with a rocking restfulness. I felt that I would soon be sleeping soundly. But in the midst of drowsing, my mind would spring up alert and I would drag her arm closer about my neck.
Above the clamor of the waves I heard a shout. At first I thought that I had given it myself. I heard it again; it was unmistakable.
Looking up out of the trough of a wave, I saw a patched sail hanging over us. My sight was misty; the sail was indistinct and yet near me. As I rose on the crest, a hand grabbed me and I felt myself lifted out on to a pile of nets.
Thar, lad, lie still. Yow’ll be ’ome direc’ly.”
The gray-bearded man at the tiller smiled to me in a friendly manner. He didn’t seem at all excited, but took all that had happened stoically, as part of the day’s work. Seeing me gaze round questioningly, he added, “The lassie’s well enough, Mr. Cardover. She’ll come round. A mouthful o’ salt water won’t ’urt ’er.”
I wondered vaguely how he knew my name. Then, as my brain cleared, I remembered him as one of the fishermen who called in at my grandmother’s shop for an occasional chat, seated on a barrel.
I raised myself on my elbow. We were rounding the pier-head, running into the harbor. I was in a little shrimping-boat. The nets hung out over the stern. The old man at the tiller was in oilskins and a younger man was shortening sail.
I felt sick, and giddy, and stiff. A tarpaulin was thrown over me. I tried to recollect how I came there. Then I saw Vi lying near me in the bows. A sailor’s coat was wrapped about her. Her hair lay piled in a golden heap over her white throat and breast. Her eyes were closed. The blueness of the veins about her temples enhanced her pallor. I made an effort to crawl towards her; but the motion of the boat and my own weakness sent me sprawling.
People from the pier-head had seen us. As we stole up the harbor, questions were shouted to the man at the tiller and answers shouted back. When we drew in at the quayside an excited crowd had gathered. To every newcomer the account was given of how Joe Tuttle, as ’e war a-beat-ing up to the ’arbor, comed across them two a-driftin’ off the nor’ beach, ’alf a mile or so from land.
Coats were torn off and folded round us. Someone was sent ahead to warn neighbor Cardover of what she must expect. Vi was tenderly lifted out and carried down the road in the arms of Joe Tuttle. I was hoisted like a sack across the shoulders of our younger rescuer. Accompanying us was a shouting, jabbering, eager crowd, anxious to tell everyone we passed what had happened. My most distinct recollection is the shame I felt of the bareness of my dangling legs.
The tramp of heavy feet invaded the shop. I heard the capable voice of Grandmother Cardover getting rid of sightseers. “Now then, my good people, there’s nothing ’ere for you. Out you go; you’re not wanted in my shop. Thank goodness, we can worry along without your ’elp.” Then I heard her in a lower voice giving directions for us to be carried upstairs.
Hot blankets, brought from the bake-house oven, were soon about me and I was tucked safe in bed. I have a faint recollection of the doctor coming and of hot spirits being forced down my throat. Then they left me alone and I fell into the deep sleep of utter weariness.
When I awoke, the room was in darkness and a fire was burning. I felt lazy and comfortable. I turned on my side and found that I was alone. I began to think back. The thought that filled my mind seemed a continuation of what I had been dreaming. I was in the trough of a wave, the sea was washing over me, Vi’s arm was heavy about my neck, and her lips were kissing my shoulder. I looked round; her eyes shone into mine, and her hair swayed loose about her like the hair of a mermaiden. I listened. There were footsteps on the stair. The door opened and my grandmother tiptoed to the bed.
I raised myself up. The torpor cleared from my brain. Before the question could frame itself, my grandmother had answered it. “She’s all right, Dante; she’s in the spare bedroom and sleeping soundly.”
She seated herself beside me and slipped her wrinkled old hand into mine beneath the bed-clothes. She sat in silence for some minutes. The light from the street-lamp shining in at the window, fell upon her. I could see her gray curls wabbling, the way they always did when she was agitated. At last she spoke. “How did it ’appen, Dante?”
I told her.
“Then you knowed ’er before?”
Little by little I gave her all the story.
“A nice young rascal you are,” she said; “and a pretty way you’ve got o’ love-making. You beat your own father, that you do. And what’s her name?”
“I don’t know.”
“He doesn’t know!” She laughed till the tears ran down her face. “And I suppose you think you’re goin’ to marry ’er?”
“I know I am.”
“Well, the sooner the better I say. Judging by her looks, you might ’ave chose worse. When it comes to wimmen, the Evrards and the Cardovers are mad.”
She went downstairs to get me some supper. I had given her Vi’s address, that she might send off a message to Vi’s landlady. Poor little Dorrie must be beside herself by now, wondering what had happened.
While I ate my supper, my grandmother kept referring to what I had told her. She was very proud and happy. Her eyes twinkled behind her spectacles. I had added an entirely original chapter to the history of our family’s romance. “I keep wishin’,” she said, “that your dear ma ‘ad been alive. It would just ‘a’ suited her.”
The morning broke bright and sunny. I insisted on getting up to breakfast. I was a trifle stiff, but apart from that none the worse for my experience. It was odd to think that Vi was sleeping in the same house—Vi, who had passed me in the streets without seeing me, Vi from whom I had hidden myself, Vi who at this time yesterday morning had seemed so utterly unattainable. The sense of her nearness filled me with wild enthusiasm. I hummed and whistled while I dressed. I wondered how long she would make me wait before we were married. She was mine already. Why should we wait? I was impatient to go to her, I could feel the close embrace of her long white arm about my neck. I was quite incurious as to who she was or where she came from. Life for me began when I met her.
As I passed her door I halted, listening. I could hear my grandmother talking inside, but in such a low voice that I could catch nothing of what was said. She was bustling about, beating up the pillows and, as I judged, making Vi tidy. Hearing her coming towards the door, I hurried down the stairs. The stairs entered into the keeping-room. When she came down, she carried an empty breakfast-tray in her hand. I noticed that she had on her Sunday best: a black satin dress, a white lace apron trimmed with black ribbon, and her finest lace cap spangled with jet.
“She’s been askin’ for you.”
I jumped up from my chair.
“But she won’t see you until you’ve breakfasted.”
While I hastened through the meal, my grandmother chattered gaily. She quite approved my choice of a wife and had drawn from Vi one fact, of which I was unaware—that she was an American. She was burning with curiosity to learn more about her and was full of the most rosy conjectures. She was quite sure that Vi was an heiress—all American women who traveled alone were.
She went up to see that all was ready; then she came to the top of the stairs and beckoned.
“I’m goin’ to leave you alone,” she whispered, taking my face between her hands. “God bless you, my boy.” Then she vanished all a-blush and a-tremble into the keeping-room.
The blood was surging in my brain. I felt weak from too much happiness. Opening the door slowly, I entered.
I scarcely dared look up at first. The room swam before me. The old-fashioned green and red flowers in the carpet ran together. I raised my eyes to the large four-poster mahogany bed—it seemed too large to hold such a little person. I could see the outline of her figure, but the heavy crimson curtains, hanging from the tester, hid her face from me.
“Vi, darling!”
She sat up, with her hands pressed against her throat. The sunlight, shining in at the window, poured down upon her, burnishing her two long plaited ropes of hair. She turned towards me; her eyes were misty, her bosom swelling. She seemed to be calling me to her, and yet pushing me back. I felt my knees breaking under me, and the sob beginning in my throat. I ran towards her and knelt down at the bedside, placing my arms about her and drawing her to me. For an instant she resisted, then her body relaxed. I looked, up at her, pouring out broken sentences. I felt that the tears were coming through excess of gladness and bowed my head.
She was bending over me, so near she stooped that her breath was in my hair. The sweet warmth of her was all about me. Her lips touched my forehead. I held her more closely, but I would not meet her eyes. I dared not till my question was answered. The silence between us stretched into an eternity. Her hands wandered over me caressingly; it seemed a child comforting a man. “Poor boy,” she whispered over and over, “God knows, neither of us meant it.”
When I lifted my face to hers, the tenderness in her expression was wiped out by a look of wild despair. She tore my hands from about her body and tumbled her head back into the pillows with her face turned from me, shaken by a storm of sobbing. Muttered exclamations rose to her lips—things and names were mentioned which I only half heard, the purport of which I could not understand. I tried to gather her to me, but she broke away from me. “Oh, you mustn’t,” she sobbed, “you mustn’t touch me.”
With her loss of self-control my strength returned. I sat beside her on the bed, stroking her hand and trying to console her—trying to tell myself that this was quite natural and that everything was well.
Gradually she exhausted herself and lay still. “You’ ought to go,” she whispered; but when I rose to steal away, her hand clutched mine and drew me back. In a slow, weary voice she began to speak to me. “I can’t do what you ask me; I’m already married. I thought you would have guessed from Dorrie.”
She paused to see what I would say or do. When I said nothing, but clasped her hand more firmly, she turned her face towards me, gazing up at me from the pillow. “I thought you would have left me after that,” she said. “It’s all my fault; I saw how things were going.”
“Dearest, you did your best.”
“Yes, I did my best and hurt you. When I told you that I was done yesterday, why didn’t you let me go? It would all have been so much easier.”
“Because I wanted you,” I said, “and still want you.” The silence was so deep that I could hear the rustle of the sheets at each intake of her breath.
“You can’t have me.”
Her voice was so small that it only just came to me. “I belong to Dorrie’s father. He’s a good man and he trusts me, though he knows I don’t love him.”
She sat up, letting go my hand. I propped the pillows under her. She signed to me to seat myself further away from her.
“She is mine. She is mine,” I kept thinking to myself. “We belong to one another whatever she says.”
“I shall be better soon,” she said; “then I can go away. You must try to forget that you ever knew me.”
“I can never forget. I shall wait for you.” Then the old treacherous argument came to me, though it was sincerely spoken. “Why need we go out of one another’s lives? Vi dearest, can’t we be friends?”
She hesitated. “I was thinking of you when I said it. For me it would be easier; I have Dorrie to live for. It would be more difficult for you—you are a man.”
“Can’t you trust me, Vi? You told me that he trusted you just now.”
Her voice was thin and tired. “Could we ever be only friends?”
“We must try—we can pretend.”
“But such trials all have one ending.”
“Ours won’t.”
Her will was broken and her desire urged it. She held out her hand. “Then let’s be friends.”
I took it in mine and kissed it. Even then, I believe, we doubted our strength.
The Ransby Chronicle had a full account of the averted bathing fatality. In a small world of town gossip it was a sensation almost as important as a local murder. Columns were filled up with what Vi’s landlady said, and Joe Tuttle, and Mrs. Cardover, and even Dorrie. They tried to interview me without success; they couldn’t interview Vi, for she was in bed. From the landlady they gleaned some facts of which I was ignorant. Vi was Mrs. Violet Carpenter, of Sheba, Massachusetts. Her husband was the owner of large New England cotton factories. She had been away from America upwards of a year, traveling in Europe. She expected to return home in a month. The history of my parentage was duly recorded, including an account of my father’s elopement. All the old scandal concerning my mother was raked up and re-garnished.
Knowing what my intentions had been toward Vi, my grandmother was terribly flustered at the discovery that Vi was a married woman. She was hurt in her pride; she wanted to blame somebody. Her sense of the proprieties was offended, and she felt that her reputation was secretly tarnished. An immoral situation was existing under her roof—at least, that was what she felt. She wanted to get rid of Vi directly, but the doctor forbade her to be moved.
“And to think I should ’ave come to this!” she kept exclaiming, “after livin’ all these years honored and respected in my little town! Mind, I don’t blame you, and I don’t blame ’er. Poor things! You couldn’t ’elp it. But I can’t get over it—there was you a-proposin’ in my spare bedroom to a married woman, and she a-lyin’ in bed! What would folks say if they was to ’ear about it? And in my ’ouse! And me so honored and respected!”
Her horror seemed to center in the fact that it should have happened in the spare bedroom of all places, where all her dead had been laid out.
She took it for granted that Vi and I would part forever, as soon as she was well enough to travel. “By all showings, it’s ’igh time she went back to ’er ’usband,” she said.
She suffered another shock when I undeceived her. “You’re playin’ with fire, Dante; that’s what you’re doin’. Take the word of an old woman who knows the world—friendship will drift into familiarity and, more’n likely, familiarity ’ll drift into something else. A Cardover’s bad enough where wimmen is concerned, but an Evrard’s the devil. It’s the gipsy blood that makes ’em mad.”
I turned a deaf ear to all her protests. Vi and I had done nothing wicked, and we weren’t going to run away from one another as though we had. A mistake had occurred which concerned only ourselves; we had nothing to be ashamed of. Then my grandmother threatened to send for Ruthita so that, at least, we might not be alone together. I was quick to see that Ruthita’s presence would be a protection, so agreed that she should be invited down to Ransby provided she was told nothing. Meanwhile no meetings between Vi and myself were allowed. My grandmother guarded the spare bedroom like a dragon.
But in a timid way, in her heart of hearts, she was proud of the complication. It intrigued her. It made us all interesting persons. She wore the indignant face of a Mother Grundy because she knew that society would expect it of her; in many little sympathetic ways she revealed her truer self. She would take her knitting up to Vi’s bedside—Mrs. Carpenter as she insisted on calling her—and would spend long hours there. When conversing with me in the keeping-room late at night, she would grow reminiscent and tell brave stories of the rewards which came at length to thwarted lovers. I learnt from her that Mr. Randall Carpenter was much older than either Vi or myself. If he were to die——!
On the second morning that Vi had been in the house I returned from a desultory walk to find my grandmother in close conference with a stranger. He was a dapper, perky little man, white-haired, bald-headed, whiskered, with darting birdlike manners and a dignified air of precision about him. He had the well-dressed appearance of a city gentleman rather than of a Ransbyite. He wore a frock-coat, top-hat, gray trousers, shiny boots, and white spats. I judged that he belonged to a profession.
Apologizing for my intrusion, I crossed the keeping-room, and was on the point of mounting the stairs when the little man rose, all smiles.
“Your grandson, Mrs. Cardover, I presume? He’s more of an Evrard than a Cardover—all except his mouth.”
He was introduced to me as Mr. Seagirt, the lawyer.
“Happy to know you, Mr. Cardover. Happy to know you, sir.” He pulled off his gloves and shook hands in a gravely formal manner. “We shall see more of one another as time goes on. I hope it most sincerely. In fact, I may say, from the way things are going, there is little doubt of it.”
We all sat down. There was a strange constrained atmosphere of excitement and embarrassment about both Mr. Seagirt and my grandmother. They balanced on the edge of their chairs, flickering their eyelids and twiddling their thumbs. Lawyer Seagirt kept up a hurried flow of procrastinating conversation, continually limiting or overemphasizing his statements.
“I have heard of what you did a day or two ago, Mr. Cardover—we have all heard of it. You have created an excellent impression—most excellent. The papers have been very flattering, but not more so than you deserve. Ransby feels quite proud of you. Though you are a Londoner, you belong to Ransby—no getting away from that. I suppose you’d tell us that you belong to Oxford. Ah, well, it’s natural—but we claim you first.”
All the time he had been talking he and my grandmother had been signaling to one another with their eyes, as though one were saying, “You tell him,” and the other, “No, you tell him.”
When they did make up their minds to take me inta their secret, they did it both together.
“Your grandfather—Sir Charles Evrard,” they began, and there they stuck.
At last it came out that my grandfather had expressed a wish to see me, and had sent Lawyer Seagirt to make the necessary inquiries about me. This action on his part could have but one meaning.
Two days later I was invited over to Woadley Hall to spend a week there. Before I went, I had an interview with Vi, in my grandmother’s presence. She promised me that she would not leave Ransby until after I returned. My fear had been that some spasm of caution might make her seize this opportunity to return to America.
I drove out to Woadley Hall late in the afternoon, planning to get there in time for dinner. I felt considerably nervous. I had been brought up in dread of Sir Charles since childhood. I did not know what kind of conduct was expected from me or what kind of reception I might expect.
As we swung in through the iron gates and passed up the long avenue of chestnuts and elms which led through the parkland to the house, my nervousness increased into childish consternation. The pride of ancestry and the comfortable signs of wealth filled me with distress. I belonged to this, and was on my way to be examined to see whether I could prove worthy. I was not ashamed of my father’s family, but I was prepared to be angry if anyone else should show shame of them.
Far away, on the edge of the green grassland, just where the woods began to cast their shadow, I could see dappled fallow-deer grazing. Colts, hearing us approaching, lifted up their heads and stared, then whisking their tails galloped off to watch us from behind their dams. Turrets and broken gables of the old Jacobean Hall rose out of the trees before us. Rooks were coming home to their nests in the tall elms, cawing. The home-farm lay over to our left; the herd was coming out from the milking, jingling their bells. A streak of orange lay across the blue of the west—the beginning of the sunset.
Immediately on my arrival, I was shown to my bedroom to dress. I began to have the sense of “belonging.” The windows looked out on a sunken garden, all ablaze with stocks, snap-dragon, sweet-william, and all manner of old-world flowers. In the scented stillness I could hear the splash of a fountain playing in the center. Beyond that were other gardens, Dutch and Italian, divided by red walls and terraces. Beyond them all, through the shadowed trees one caught glimpses of a lake, with swans and gaily-painted water-fowl sailing like toy-yachts upon its surface.
When the servant had left me, I commenced to dress leisurely. After that I sat down, waiting for the gong to sound. I wondered if this was the room where my mother had slept. How much my father’s love must have meant to her that she should have sacrificed so much prosperous certainty to share his insecure fortunes. Yet, as I looked back, it was a smiling face that I remembered, with no marks of misgiving or regret upon it.
I did not meet my grandfather until the meal was about to be served. I think he had planned our first encounter carefully, so that our conduct might be restrained by the presence of servants. His greeting was that of any host to any guest. Our conversation at dinner was on impersonal, intellectual topics—the kind that is carried on between well-bred persons who are thrown together for the moment and are compelled to be polite to one another. The only way in which he betrayed nervousness was by crumbling his bread with his left hand while he was conversing.
Finding that I was not anxious to force matters, he became more at his ease. He addressed me as Mr. Cardover, with stiff and kindly courtesy. We took our cigars out on to the terrace to watch the last of the sunset. He was talking of Oxford, and the changes which had taken place in the University since he was an undergraduate.
“I believe you are a Fellow of Lazarus, Mr. Cardover?”
“Yes.”
“I had a nephew there a few years ago, Lord Halloway, the son of my poor brother-in-law, the Earl of Lovegrove. You may know him.”
“Only by hearsay. He was before my time.”
My grandfather knocked the ash from his cigar. Then, speaking in a low voice, very deliberately, “I’m afraid you have heard nothing good about him. He has not turned out well.”
He paused: I felt that I was being tested. When I kept silent, he continued, “I have no son. He was to have followed me.”
Shortly afterwards he excused himself, saying that he was an old man and retired early to bed.
For six days we maintained our polite and measured interchange of courtesies. I was left free most of the time to entertain myself. He was a perfect host, and knew exactly how far to share my company without appearing-niggardly of his companionship or, on the other hand, intruding it on me to such an extent that we wore out our common fund of interests. For myself, I wished that I might see more of him. Never by any direct statement did he own that there was any relationship between us. Yet gradually he began to imply his intention in having me to visit him.
I would have been completely happy, had it not been that Vi was absent. I reckoned up the hours until I should return. All day my imagination was following her movements. I refused to look ahead to the certainty of approaching separation—it was enough for me that I could’ be near her in the present.
It was strange how poignant the world had become, how subtly, swiftly suggestive, since I had discovered her presence in it. All my sensations, even those outwardly unrelated to her, grouped themselves into a memory of her sweetness. It was a blind and pagan love she had aroused—one which recognized no standards, but craved only fulfilment.
There were times when I stood back appalled, as a man who comes suddenly to the edge of a precipice, when I realized where this love was leading. Then my awakened conscience would remind me of my promise—that we would be only friends.
These were the thoughts which now made me glad, now sorrowful, as I rode through the leafy lanes round Woadley at the side of my proud old grandfather. I would steal guilty glances at him, marveling that no rumor of what I was thinking had come to him by some secret process of telepathy. He looked so cold and unimpassioned, I wondered if he had ever loved a woman.
I began to love the Woadley country with the love which only comes from ownership. The white Jacobean Hall, with the chestnuts and elm-trees grouped about it and the doves fluttering above its gables, became the starting point for all the future chapters of my romance. I began to see life in its prosperous, substantial aspect. The stately dignity of my environment had its subconscious effect upon my lawless turbulence. In the morning I would wake with the rooks cawing and, going to the window, would look out on the sunken garden, the peaches ripening against the walls, the dew sparkling on the trim box-hedges, and the leaves beating the air like wings of anchored butterflies as the wind from the sea stirred them. Everywhere the discipline of history was apparent—the accumulated, ordered effort of generations of men and women dead and gone. I had been accustomed to regard myself as an isolated unit, responsible to myself alone for my actions.
The last evening on entering my bedroom, I noticed that there had been a change in the ornaments on my dressing-table. A gold-framed miniature had been placed in the middle of the table, face up, before the mirror. It was a delicate, costly piece of work done on ivory. I held it to the light to examine it, wondering how it had come there.
It must have been taken in the heyday of my mother’s girlhood, when all the county bachelors were courting her. The gray eyes looked out on me with bewitching frankness. The red lips were parted as if on the point of widening into laughter. The long white neck held the head poised at an angle half-arch, half-haughty. As I gazed on it, I saw that the similarity between our features was extraordinary. It was my grandfather’s way of expressing to me the tenderness that he could not bring himself to utter. .
After breakfast next morning, he led the way into the library. He looked graver and more unapproachable than ever. “Mr. Cardover, your visit has been a great pleasure to me. Mr. Seagirt will be here before you leave. Before he comes I wish to say that I want no thanks for what I am doing. It is more or less a business matter. All your life there have been strained relations between myself and your father, which it is impossible for any of us to overlook or forget. So far as you are concerned, you owe him your loyalty. I do not propose to bring about unhappiness between a father and a son by encouraging your friendship further. This week was a necessary exception; I could not take the step I have now decided on without knowing something about you.”
He cleared his throat and rose from his chair, as if afraid that I might lay hold of him. He walked up and down the library, with his head bowed and his right hand held palm out towards me in a gesture that asked for silence. He halted by the big French window, on the blind before which years ago I had watched his shadow fall. He stood with his back towards me, looking down the avenue. Then he turned again to me. The momentary emotion which had interrupted him had vanished. His voice was more cold and polite than ever. Only the twitching of the muscles about his eyes betrayed the storm of feeling that stirred him.
“In any case,” he said, “you would have inherited my baronetcy. Perhaps, you did not know that. I could not alienate that from you. The patent under which it is held allows it to pass, for one generation, through the female line to the next male holder. Until recently my will was made in the favor of my nephew, Lord Halloway. Circumstances have arisen which lead me to believe that such a disposal of my estate would be unwise. We Evrards have had our share of frailties, but we have always been noted as clean men. Something that I saw about you in the papers brought your name before my notice. I made up my mind then and there that, if you proved all that I hoped for, I would make you my successor. As I have said, this is a business transaction, in return for which I neither expect nor wish any display of gratitude.”
While we had been speaking I had heard the trot of a horse approaching. Just as he finished Mr. Seagirt entered.
“Mr. Seagirt,” said Sir Charles, “I have explained the situation to Mr. Cardover. Any communications he or I have to make to one another relative to the estate, we will make through you. If you have brought the will, I will sign it.”
He was fingering his pen, when I startled him by speaking. “Sir Charles, you have spoken of not encouraging my friendship. I am a grown man and of an age to choose my own friendships where I like, and this without offense to my father. I have another loyalty, to my dead mother—a loyalty which you share. If you care to trust me, I should like to be your friend.”
He took my hand in his and for one small moment let his left hand rest lightly on my shoulder. We gazed frankly into one another’s eyes without pretense or disguise. Then the shame of revealing his true feelings returned.
“We shall see. We shall see,” he muttered hastily; “I am an old man.”
A week had worked wonders with Grandmother Cardover. She had fallen a victim to Vi’s charm and, in that strange way that old folks have, had warmed her age at the fire of Vi’s youth. There was an unmistakable change in her; the somberness of her dress was lightened here and there with a dash of colored ribbons. As long as I could remember, the only ornaments she had permitted herself were of black jet, as befitted her widowed state. But now the woman’s instinct for self-decoration had come to life. Vi’s exquisite femininity had made her remember that she herself was a woman. She had rummaged through her jewelry and found a large gold-set cameo brooch, which she wore at her throat, and some rings, and a long gold chain, which she now wore about her neck, from which her watch was suspended.
Vi’s vivid physical beauty and intense joy in life had broadened the horizons of everyone in the house, and set them dreaming. Ruthita, coming down from London, had at once become infatuated. From day to day she had prolonged Vi’s visit, now with one excuse, now another. They had brought Dorrie down to stay with Vi at the shop—little Bee’s Knee as my Grannie called her, because she was so tiny and a bee’s knee was the smallest thing she could think of with which to compare her. It was many years since a child’s prattle had been heard about that quiet house. Vi’s comradeship with her little daughter finished the persuading of my grandmother that she was safe and good. All virtuous women believe in the virtue of a woman who is fond of children.
They were sitting down to lunch in the keeping-room when I entered.
“Why, if it isn’t Dante!”
The greeting I received was in welcome contrast to the cold, guarded reserve of the past seven days. A place was made for me at table between my grandmother and Ruthita. It was a gay little party that waited, watching me curiously across the dishes and plates, to hear my news. Just then I preferred the cosiness of my grandmother’s shop to the chilly dignity of Woadley Hall. Outside the sunshine slanted across the courtyard, leaving one half in shadow, the other golden white. The maid, coming in and out from the kitchen in her rustling print-dress, with her smiling country face, was a pleasanter sight than the butler at Woadley. From the shop came the smell of tar and rope and new-made bread. Everything was so frank and kindly, and unashamed of itself. Here in the keeping-room of the ship-chandler’s shop we were humanly intimate—“coxy-loxy” as my grandmother would have expressed it.
I told a sorrowful tale at first, which seemed to foreshadow a sorrowful ending. I spoke of the stiff formality of my reception, the garnished gentility which had marked my intercourse with Sir Charles, the withheld confidence—the fact that my mother’s name was scarcely mentioned. Ruthita’s hand sought mine beneath the table; I could feel the fingers tremble.
“This morning,” I said, “he called me into his study. He told me that I must leave within the hour and that our friendship could go no further.”
“The old rascal!” exclaimed Grandmother Cardover, bringing down her knife and fork on her plate with a clatter. “What was he a-doin’, gettin’ you there to Woadley? He must ‘a’ known what we all expected.”
I tilted back my chair, putting on an expression of long-suffering melancholy. “He wanted to see what I was like, I suppose. His chief reason was that he wanted to make a new will.”
Babel broke loose. Why hadn’t I told them earlier? Why had I harrowed up their feelings for nothing? What were the particulars? I was cruel to have kept them in suspense.
Grandmother Cardover was hysterical with joy. She wanted to run out into the streets and tell everybody. She began with the maid in the kitchen, and would have gone on to the men in the bake-house if I hadn’t stopped her by appealing to her curiosity, saying there was more to tell. As for Ruthita, she just put her arms about me and laid her head on my shoulder, crying for sheer gladness. Little Bee’s Knee looked on open-mouthed, shocked that grownups should behave so foolishly. Vi gazed at me with a far-away stare in her eyes, picturing the might-have-beens, and I gazed back at her across the gulf that widened between us.
Discretion was thrown to the wind. When Vi gathered Dorrie to her and began to excuse herself, she was told that she must stay and make one of the family. Then the story was told again with the new perspective.
With shame and self-reproach I look back and perceive how carelessly I accepted all Ruthita’s admiration. My new good fortune promised nothing for her; yet she could rejoice in it. In her shy girl’s world, had I known it, I figured as something between a faery-prince and a hero. Through me she looked out into a more generous world of glamour than any she had personally experienced.. Poor little Ruthita, with her mouse-like timidity! She had lived all her days in a walled-in garden, treading the dull monotonous round of self-sacrificing duties. No one ever credited her with a career of her own. No one stopped to think that she might have dreams and a will of her own. They told her what to do and let their gratitude be taken for granted. She humored my father when he was discouraged, did the housekeeping, and took shelter behind the superior social grace of the Snow Lady. We all loved her, but we made the mistake of not telling her—we supposed she knew. All the strong things that men and women do together, all love’s comedy and tragedy, were so much hearsay to her.
That afternoon and evening she sat beside me holding my hand with frank affection, making me feel that in loving Vi I was stealing something that belonged to her. More than that, I was feeling for this woman, who had been nothing to me a few weeks ago, a quality of kindness and consideration that I had always withheld from the child-friend who had tiptoed her way up to womanhood beside me.
After tea we mounted to the drawing-room, which was over the shop and faced the street. It was usually occupied only on Sundays and feast-days, or when a visiting Methodist minister had been apportioned to my grandmother for entertainment. Faded engravings of sacred subjects and simpering females elaborately framed, hung upon the walls. On the mantelshelf stood some quaint specimens of Ransby china—red-roofed cottages with grapes ripening above the porch, and a lover coming up the path while his lady watched him from the window. The chairs were upholstered in woolwork on canvas, which my grandmother had done in her youth. In one corner stood a heavy rosewood piano on which all the family portraits were arranged. In this room comfort was sacrificed to appearance—the furniture was sedate rather than genial. Nothing was haphazard or awry. The mats and antimacassars never budged an inch from their places. No smell of beer, or cheese, or baking bread vulgarized the sacred respectability of its atmosphere.
Here, as we sat together talking, the light began to fade. Heavy footsteps of sailors in their sea-boots, passing down the street from the harbor to the cottages, only emphasized the quiet. We watched the sky grow pink behind the masts of shipping, then green, then gray. Cordage and rigging were etched distinctly against the gloom of the oncoming night. At the top of the street a light sprang up, then another, then another. The lamp-lighter with his long pole and ladder passed by. Now with the heavy tread of men’s feet the tip-a-tap of girls’ footsteps began to mingle. Sometimes a snatch of laughter would reach us; then, as if afraid of the sound it made, it died abruptly away. While we talked in subdued voices, it seemed to me that all the sailor-lovers with their lassies had conspired to steal by the house that night. I fell to wondering what it felt like to slip your arm about the waist of a woman you loved, feel her warmth and trust and nearness, feel her head droop back against your shoulder, see her face flash up in the starlight and know that, while your lips were trembling against hers, she was abandoning herself soul and body to you in the summer dusk.
Dorrie had crept into her mother’s lap. Her soft breathing told that she was sleeping. One small hand, with fingers crumpled, rested against her mother’s throat. Someone had called to see Grandmother Cardover, so Vi, Ruth-ita, and I were left alone together. Sitting back in our chairs out of reach of the street-lamp, we could not see the expression on one another’s faces.
“I would give all the world to be you, Mrs. Carpenter,” Ruthita whispered.
“To be me! Why? I sometimes get very tired of it.”
“If I were you I should have Dorrie. It must be very sweet to be a mother. Why is it that she always calls you Vi and never mother?”
“She picked that up from her father. I never corrected her because—well, because somehow I like it. It makes me seem younger.”
“You don’t need to seem young,” I interrupted.
“How old do you think I am?”
“About the same age as myself and Ruthita.”
She laughed. “That couldn’t be; Dorrie is eight.”
“Then I give up guessing.”
“I’m twenty-seven. I was little more than a child, you see, when I married.”
“Mother married early,” said Ruthita, “and my papa was only twenty at the time. She says that early marriages turn out happiest.”
Vi made no answer. The silence grew awkward. We could almost hear one another’s thoughts trying to hide. Why had she explained in that tone of half-apology, “I was little more than a child; you see, when I married.” Why didn’t she say something now? Was it because an early marriage had proved for her disastrous? Then, if it had, what moral obligation separated us? Who was this husband who could dispense with her for a year, and yet had the power to stretch out his arm across the Atlantic and thrust me aside?
She leant forward. The light from the street-lamp kindled her face and smoldered in her hair. She had the wistful, rapt expression of a young girl, ignorant as yet of the bitter-sweet of love, who dreams of an ideal lover. I felt then that her soul was virgin; it had never been a man’s possession. It was almost mine.
Ruthita’s remark about the happiness of early marriages was forgotten, when Vi returned to the subject. “They may be sometimes,” she said, speaking doubtfully.
She caught my eye resting on her. Conscious that her qualification had divulged a secret, she hurried into an implied defense of her husband.
“I had a letter from Mr. Carpenter this morning. He’s lonely. He says he can’t bear to be without me any longer. He wants me to return home at once. He’s not seen Dorrie for nearly a year. He’s afraid she’ll forget him entirely. If I don’t go to him, he says he’ll come and fetch me. It’s been horrid of me to stay away so long. When we left, we only intended to be gone for three months. Somehow the time lengthened. I wanted to see so much. He’s been too easy with me. He’s been awfully kind. He always has been kind. He treats me like a spoilt child.”
She had been speaking so eagerly and hurriedly that she had not heard the creaking of the stairs. Through the darkness I could see my grandmother standing in the doorway. Vi turned to Ruthita with a pretense of gaiety, “No wonder you English don’t understand us. Don’t you think that American husbands are very patient?”
“I’m sure I do,” said Ruthita. “What makes them so different from English husbands?”
“They love their wives.”
It was impossible to tell from the bantering tone in Vi’s voice, whether she spoke the last words in cynicism or sincerity.
Grandmother Cardover took her literally. Her national pride was touched. She believed that an aspersion had been cast on the affection of all married Englishmen. She advanced into the room with suspicions aroused, bristling with morality. “If that’s what they call love in America,” she snorted, “then it’s glad I am that I was born in Ransby. ‘They shall be one flesh’—that’s what the Holy Book says about marriage. And ’ow can you be one flesh if you stay away from one another a twelvemonth at a time? Why, when my Will’am was alive, I never slept a night away from ’im, from the day we was married to the day he died.”
The darkness about her seemed to quiver with indignation. I could see her gray curls bobbing, and hear the keys hanging from her waist jangle, as she trembled. Ruthita cowered close to me, shocked and frightened. Dorrie woke and began to whimper to be taken to bed. We all waited for a natural expression of anger from Vi.
She set Dorrie on to her feet very gently, whispering to her mothering words, telling her not to cry. Drawing herself up, she faced into the darkness. When she spoke there was a sweet, low pleading in her voice.
“Mrs. Cardover, you took me too seriously. I’m sorry. You misunderstood me. I believe all that you have said—a wife ought to be her husband’s companion. There have been reasons for my long absence, which I cannot explain; if I did, you might not understand them. But I want you always to believe well of me. I have never had such kindness from any woman as you have given me.”
I heard my Grannie sniffle. Vi must have heard Her, She left Dorrie and, running across the room, put her arms about her. I heard them blaming themselves, and taking everything back, the way women do when they ask forgiveness. I lifted Dorrie into my arms, and Ruthita and I tiptoed from the room.
Presently they came down to us. Grandmother Cardover was smiling comically, as though she was rather pleased at what had happened. Vi said that she must be going. Ruthita and I volunteered to accompany her back to her lodgings. So the storm in the tea-cup ended, leaving me with new materials for conjecture and reflection.
On the way up the High Street we chatted volubly, trying to overlay what had occurred with a new impression. We talked against time and without sincerity. When we had reached the black flint house and the door had shut, Ruthita snuggled close to me with a relieved little sigh. Ever since my return from Woadley she had been waiting for this moment of privacy. With a sweet sisterly air of proprietorship she slipped her arm through mine. We turned down a score and struck out across the denes to the north beach, where we could be quiet. A wet wind from the sea pattered about our faces, giving Ruthita an excuse to cling yet more closely.
You would not have called Ruthita beautiful in those days. She lacked the fire that goes with beauty. She was too humble in her self-esteem, too self-effacing. But one who had looked closely would have discerned something more lasting than mere physical beauty—the loveliness of a pure spirit looking out from her quiet eyes. She was one of those domestic saints, unaware of their own goodness, that one sometimes finds in middle-class families; women who are never heard of, who live only through their influence on their menfolk’s lives.
Her features were small, but perfect. Her figure slight, and buoyant in its carriage. Her complexion white, but ready to suffuse with color at the least sign of appreciation. Her glory was in her hair, which was black and abundant as night. From a child I had always thought that her feet and hands were most beautiful in their fragile tininess. I never told her any of these flattering observations, which would have meant so much if put into words. Brothers don’t—and I was as good as her brother.
“Don’t you think,” said Ruthita, “that there’s something awfully queer about Mrs. Carpenter’s marriage? I’ve been with her nearly a week now, and I’ve never heard her mention her husband until to-night.”
“And Dorrie doesn’t speak of him either.”
“No, I’ve noticed that.”
Then Ruthita surprised me. “Do you know, Dante, I think to marry the wrong man must be purgatory.”
I was amused at the note of seriousness in her voice.
“Ruthie, to hear you speak one’d suppose you’d been in love. Have you ever thought that you’ll have to marry some day?”
“Of course I have.”
“What’ll he have to be like?”
She held her tongue. My jauntiness had made her shy. “Come, Ruthie,” I said, “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I hate to own that you’re grown up. I didn’t think you’d given a thought to marriage. Tell me, what’ll he have to be like?”
I halted, swinging her round so she had to look up in my face. She wore a hunted look of cornered perplexity.
“I’ve never spoken of these things even to mother,” she said. “They all treat me as though I were still a child.”
I wondered what was her trouble. The searchlight swept her. I saw the eagerness for confession on her trembling mouth.
The fire which her beauty had always lacked leapt up. I was amazed at the transformation. She looked reckless. The mask of maidenly tranquillity had slipped aside; I saw all the longing of her unnoticed womanhood focused for an instant in her eyes. The search-light traveled out to sea again. I repeated, “What must he be like?”
She reached up to me, so that her lips almost touched mine. “I think he must be like you,” she whispered.
Of all answers that was the last I had expected. I had thought myself on the brink of some great discovery—that she, too, had some secret lover. I slipped my arm about her and we strolled on through the darkness in silence. Ahead the harbor-lights, reflected across the water, drew nearer. We climbed the beach and the sea-wall, and made our way across the denes to the town.
“You’re all wrong,” I said. “Some day, when you do fall in love, you’ll get a better standard.”
We entered the lamp-lit town. For the rest of the evening we did not say much. I was thinking how easy it is for two people to live always together and yet never to understand each other. Who would have guessed that little Ruthita had this hunger to be loved?
While we were seated at breakfast next morning, someone walked across the shop and tapped on the door of the keeping-room. Before any of us could spring up, Lawyer Seagirt entered.
“Keep your seats. Keep your seats,” he said cheerily. “I’m sure you’ll excuse this early call when you hear what I’ve come about.”
With his back to the empty fireplace, he straddled the hearthrug, bowing first to my grandmother, then to Ruthita. Then he settled his gaze on me, with the beaming benevolence of a bachelor uncle. He cleared his throat.
“Ahem! Ahem! Mr. Cardover, I congratulate you. After you left yesterday, Sir Charles spoke of you with considerable feeling. He expressed sentiments concerning you which from him meant much—much more than if uttered by any other man. For many years he has honored me with his confidence, yet on no occasion do I remember him to have displayed so much emotion. Of course all this is strictly between ourselves and must go no further.”
Like three mandarins we nodded.
“It is my pleasant duty to have to inform you, Mr. Cardover, that Sir Charles has been pleased to make you an allowance. It will be paid quarterly on the first day of January, April, July, and October, and will be delivered to you through my hands.”
Again he halted. Grandmother Cardover, losing patience, forgot her manners. “God bless my soul,” she exclaimed, “how the man maunders! How much?”
“Madam,” said Lawyer Seagirt, “the amount is four hundred pounds per annum.”
The good man had never found himself so popular. He was made to sit down to table with us, despite his protests that he had breakfasted already. The money might have been coming out of his own pocket for all the fuss we made of him. Every now and then the fact of my prosperity would strike Grandmother Cardover afresh. Throwing up her hands she would exclaim, “Four ’undred pounds, and he’s got two ’undred already from his fellowship! It’s more than I’ve ever earned in any year with all my wear and tear. Just you wait till his pa ’ears about it!”
That morning I took Ruthita to Norwich. She was puzzled when I told her to get ready to come. All the way over in the train she kept trying to guess my purpose. The truth was I had contrasted her with Vi. Vi was not only exquisite in herself, but as expensively exquisite as fine clothes could make her. Ruthita, on the other hand, had the appearance of making the most genteel impression at the minimum expenditure of money. My father’s means were narrow, and she was not his daughter; therefore the Snow Lady insisted on making most of her own and Ruthita’s dresses. Rigid economies had been exercised; stuffs had been turned, and dyed, and made over again. Now that I could afford it, I was determined to see what fine feathers could do for this shy little sister.
When the gowns came home, even Ruthita was surprised at the prettiness that filmy muslins and French laces accentuated in her.
“My word, Ruthie, you’re a dainty little armful. You won’t have to wait long for that lover now,” I told her, when she came down into the keeping-room to show herself to me.
She pouted and made a face at me like a child. “I don’t want lovers,” she laughed. “I only want my big brother.”
When she had gone upstairs my grandmother turned to me. “You can go too far with her, Dannie.” She only called me Dannie when she was saying something serious or a little wounding. “You can go too far with her, Dannie. I should advise you to be careful.”
“What are you driving at?” I asked bluntly.
“Just this, that however you may pretend to one another, she isn’t your sister and you aren’t her brother. Any day you may wake something up in her that you didn’t mean to.”
“Stuff and nonsense,” I replied. “At heart she’s only a child.”
“All I can say is you’re going the right way to work to make her a woman,” my grandmother said shortly.
That afternoon I persuaded Ruthita to put on all her finery and come for a walk on the esplanade. I wanted her to lose her timidity and to discover for herself that she was as good as anybody. I felt a boyish pride in walking beside her; she was my creation—I had dressed her.
We had passed the pier and entered the long trim walk, lined with sculptured Neptunes, which runs along the seafront from Ransby to Pakewold, when a figure which had a morbid interest for me came in sight. It was that of a buxom broad-hipped woman, handsome in her own bold fashion, leading by the hand an over-dressed, half-witted child. As she drew nearer, the rouge on her face became discernible. She strolled with a swagger through the fashionable crowd, eyeing the men with sly effrontery. She was known in Ransby by the nickname of “Lady Halloway.” She was the bathing-machine man’s daughter, and had been the victim of one of my cousin’s earliest amorous adventures. It was commonly believed that he was the father of her child.
Since the news had got abroad that I had supplanted Halloway in my grandfather’s favor, she had glowered at me, with undisguised hostility, whenever we met.
As we passed, Ruthita’s parasol just touched her. It was the woman’s fault, for she had crowded us purposely. I raised my hat, muttering an apology, and was on the point of moving forward, when she wrenched the parasol from Ruthita’s hand and flung it to the ground. Ruthita stared at her too surprised to say a word. The woman herself, for the moment, was too infuriated to express herself. All the bitterness of a deserted mistress, the pent-up resentment against years of contempt and the false pride with which she had brazened out her shame among her fellow-townsmen, came to the surface and found an excuse for utterance. People nearest to us halted in their promenade and, gathering round, began to form the nucleus of an audience. An audience for her oratory was what “Lady Halloway” most desired. Her lips were drawn back from her teeth and her hands were clenched; anger re-created her into something almost magnificent and wholly brutal. When she spoke, she addressed herself to Ruthita, but her eyes were fixed on mine in vixenish defiance. The over-dressed, top-heavy oddity at her side steadied himself by clinging to her skirts, gazing from one to the other of us with a vacant, wondering expression.
I picked up Ruthita’s parasol and handed it back to her, whispering that she should go on. The woman heard me.
“Yes, go on, my fine lady,” she sneered in savage sarcasm. “Go on. You’re too good ter be zeen a-talkin’ wi’ the likes o’ me. Yer know wot I am. I’m a woman wot’s fallen. I ain’t too bad, ’owsomever, for Mr. Cardover to diddle me out o’ my property. He’s a grand man, Mr. Cardover, wi’ ’is high airs and proud ways. And where do ’e get them from, I ax. From old Cardover’s bake-’ouse around the corner ter be sure, and from ’is mawther, wot ran orf wi’ ’is father and ’ad the good luck ter get married.”
I interrupted her. “I’m very sorry for you,” I said, “but you’ve got to stop this at once. You don’t know what you’re saying, neither does anyone else. Please let us pass.”
She stepped in front of us with her plump arms held up in fighting attitude, blocking our path.
“Zorry for me. Zorry for me,” she laughed, still addressing Ruthita. “I doan’t want ’is zorrow. Your man’s a thief, my gal, and it’s the likes o’ him wot despises me—me as should be Lady Halloway if I ’ad me rights, me as should be livin’ at Woadley ’All as zoon as Sir Charles be dead and gorn. ’E says ’e’s zorry for me, wi’ the lawful heir, the child ’e ’as robbed, a-standin’ in ’is sight. The imperdence of ’im!”
She gave the idiot’s hand a vicious jerk, swinging him in front of her, so that the lawful heir began to holloa. Someone who had newly joined the crowd, inquired what was up.
“Wot’s up, you axed. This gentleman, as ’e calls ’isself, told ’is gal to barge inter me. That’s wot’s up, and I won’t stand it. ’E’s robbed my kid, wot was heir, o’ wot belongs ter ’im. And ’e’s robbed my ’usband, for ’e’s as good as my ’usband in the sight o’ almighty Gawd. ’E treats me like a dorg and tells ’is gal to barge inter me, and ’e thinks I’ll stand it.”
While she had been exploding I had tried to back away from her, but she followed. Now a policeman’s helmet showed above the heads of the spectators. Just then the bathing-machine man strolled up from the beach out of curiosity. Seeing his daughter the center of disturbance, he fought his way to the front and seized her by the wrists with a threatening gesture. “Yer fool, Lottie,” he panted, “when are yer goin’ ter be done a-disgracin’ o’ me?”
For a moment she was cowed. But as he dragged her away to the bathing-machines, she tore one hand free and shook her fist at me. “’E’s comin’ down to-morrer,” she shouted. “I’ve writ and told ’ im wot you’ve been a-doin’ at Woadley.”
Ruthita was trembling all over with disgust and excitement. I took her back to the shop. When I was alone with my grandmother I asked her what kind of a woman Lottie was.
“As nice and kind a little girl as there was in Ransby,” she answered, “until that rascal, Lord Halloway, ruined her.”
Next day I had a chance of judging for myself the worth of Lord Halloway. In the afternoon, just as I was going out, I was told that he was waiting to see me in the shop. I went to meet him prepared for trouble. I found a tall, aristocratic man of about thirty-five, filling up the doorway, looking out into the street with his legs wide apart. He was swinging his cane and whistling softly. The impression one got from his back-view was that he was extremely athletic. When he turned round I saw that he was magnificently proportioned, handsome, high com-plexioned, and graceful to the point of affectation. When he smiled and held out his hand, his manner was so winning that every prejudice was for the moment swamped. He had the instinctive art of charm.
“Awfully sorry to have to meet you like this for the first time,” he said. “We’re second-cousins, aren’t we? Strange how we’ve managed to miss one another, and being members of the same college and all.”
He had removed his hat, and was leaning against the door-jamb, with his legs crossed. I watched him narrowly while he was talking. I had expected to see a cultured degenerate—the worst type of bounder. Instead of being exhausted and nervous with a spurious energy, he was almost military in his upright carriage. He had a daredevil air of careless command, which was so much a part of his breeding that it was impossible to resent it. A man would have summed up his vices and virtues leniently by saying that he was a gay dog. A good woman might well have fallen in love with him, and excused the attraction that his wickedness had for her by saying that she was trying to convert him. The only sign of weakness I could detect was a light inconsequent laugh, strangely out of keeping with the virility of his height and breadth; it was like the vain and meaningless giggle of a silly woman.
I asked him if he would not come inside. He shook his head, saying that this was not a social visit, but that he had come to apologize. Then he faced me with an openness of countenance which impressed me as manly, but which might have been due to shamelessness.
“I want to tell you how sorry I am for the beastly row you had yesterday. Lottie’s not a bad sort, but she gets fancies and they run away with her. I’ve talked with her, and I can promise you it won’t happen again. She’s been writing me angry letters for the past week, ever since you made it up with Sir Charles. I was afraid something like this would happen, so I thought I’d just run down. I wish I’d managed to get here earlier.”
He stopped suddenly, gazing toward the keeping-room door. Ruthita came out and crossed the shop. She had on one of her new dresses and was on her way to tea with Vi.
He followed her with his eyes till she was gone. There was nothing insulting in the gallantry with which he admired her; he seemed rather surprised—that was all. For a minute he continued conversing with me in an absent-minded manner, then he wished me good-by, hoping that we might meet again in Oxford. I walked out on to the pavement and watched him down the street. Then I hurriedly fetched my hat and followed.
It might have been accidental and I may have been over-suspicious, but his path lay in the same direction as Ruthita’s; he never walked so quickly as to overtake her or so slowly as not to keep her well in sight. When she entered the old flint house, he hesitated, as though the purpose of his errand was gone; then, seeing me out of the tail of his eye, he turned leisurely to the left down a score. Next day I heard that he had departed from Ransby.
I could not rid myself for many days of the impression this incident had created. Like a Hogarth canvas, it typified for me the ugly nemesis of illicit passion in all its grotesque nakedness. There was horror in connecting such a man as Halloway with such a woman as Lottie. The horror was emphasized by the child. Yet Lottie had once been “as nice and kind a little girl as there was in Ransby,” until he destroyed her. Doubtless at the time, their sinning had seemed sweet and excusable—much the same as the love of any lover for any lass. Only the result had proved its bitterness.
This thought made me go with a tightened rein. When impulse tempted me to give way, the memory of that woman with her half-witted child, brazening out her shame before a crowd of pleasure-seekers on the sunlit esplanade, sprang into my mind and turned me back like the flame of a sword.
It was the late afternoon of a September day. We had had tea early at the black flint house, Vi, Ruthita, Dorrie, and I. After tea a walk had been proposed; but Dorrie had said she was “tho tired” and Ruthita had volunteered to stay with her.
For two months Vi and I had never allowed ourselves the chance of being alone together; yet every day we had met. To her I was “Mr. Cardover”; to me she was “Mrs. Carpenter.” Even my grandmother had ceased to suspect that any liking deeper than friendship existed between us. She loved to have young people about her, and therefore encouraged Vi and Dorrie. She thought that we were perfectly safe now that we had Ruthita. Through the last two months we four had been inseparable, rambling about, lazy and contented. Our conversations had all been general, Vi and I had never trusted ourselves to talk of things personal. If, when walking in the country, Ruthita and Dorrie had run on ahead to gather wild flowers, we had made haste to follow them, so betraying to each other the tantalizing fear we had one of another. We were vigilant in postponing the crisis of our danger, but neither of us had the strength to bring the danger to an end by leaving Ransby, lest our separation should be forever.
If our tongues were silent, there were other ways of communicating. Did I take her hand to help her over a stile, it trembled. Did I lift her wraps and lean over her in placing them about her shoulders, I could see the faint rise of her color. Her eyes spoke, mocked, laughed, dared, and pleaded, when no other eyes were watching.
Since the one occasion that has been related, Vi had not mentioned her husband. Whether he was still urging her to return, or had extended her respite, or was on his way to fetch her, I had no means of guessing. I lived in a secret delirium of exalted happiness and torturing foreboding. Each day as it ended was tragic with farewell. The hour was coming when I must return to Oxford and when she must return to America. Soon we should have nothing but memories. However well we might disguise our motives for dawdling in Ransby, it could not be long before their hollowness would be detected. Already Sir Charles had ceased to serve me as an excuse; I had not seen him since my departure from Woadley.
The very suavity of our interchanged courtesies and unsatisfying pretense of frank friendship gave edge to my yearning.
I had come at last to the breaking-point. I did not know it. I still told myself that we were both too honorable to step aside: that we had too much to lose by it; that I loved her too dearly to let her be anything to me unless she could be my wife. The casuistry of this attitude was patent.
As my hunger increased I grew more daring. No thoughts that were not of her could find room in my mind. I had lost my interest in books—they were mere reports on the thing I was enduring. Nature was only my experience made external on a lower physical plane. My imagination swept me on to depths and heights which once would have terrified. I grew accustomed to picturing myself as the hero of situations which I had formerly studied with puzzled amazement in other men’s lives.
The face of Lottie, encountered daily in the gray streets of Ransby, which had at first restrained me by reminding me of sin’s ultimate ugliness, ceased to warn me.
When Ruthita made the suggestion that we should go for our walk alone together, I had expected a prompt refusal from Vi. She rose from the disordered tea-table and walked over to the window, turning her back on us. I could see by the poise of her head that she was gazing down the gardens, across the denes to the wreck, where everything important had taken place. I could guess the memories that were in her mind.
From where I sat I could see her head, framed in the window against the slate-colored expanse of water, the curved edge of the horizon, and the orange-tinted sky.
Creeping across the panes under full sail came a fleet of fishing smacks, losing themselves one by one as they advanced into the tangled amber of her hair. I counted them, telling myself that she would speak when the foremost had re-appeared on the other side. Then it occurred to me that she was waiting for me to urge her.
“Mrs. Carpenter,” I said casually, “won’t you come? It’s going to be a jolly evening. We can go by way of St. Margaret’s Church to the Broads and watch the sunset.”
Without moving her body, she commenced to drum with her fingers on the panes.
“That would take time,” she procrastinated. “We couldn’t get back before eight. Who’d put Dorrie Darling to bed?”
“Don’t worry,” Ruthita broke in with eagerness. “I’d love to do it. Dorrie and I’ll take care of one another and play on the sands till bedtime.”
“Yeth, do go,” lisped Dorrie. “I want Ruthita all to mythelf.”
These two who had stood between us, for whose sakes we had striven to do right, were pushing wide the door that led into the freedom of temptation.
A shiver ran through her. She turned. The battle against desire in her face was ended.
“I will come,” she said slowly.
Left in the room by myself while they went upstairs to dress, I did not think; I abandoned myself to sensations. I could hear their footsteps go back and forth above my head. The running ones were Dorrie’s. The light, quick ones were Ruthita’s. The deliberate ones, postponing and anticipating forbidden pleasures—they were Vi’s. The sound of her footsteps, so stealthy and determined, combined with the long gray sight of the German Ocean, sent my mind back to Guinevere’s description of her sinning, which covered all our joint emotions:
“As if one should
Slip slowly down some path worn smooth and even,
Down to a cool sea on a summer day;
Yet still in slipping there was some small leaven
Of stretched hands catching small stones by the way
Until one surely reached the sea at last,
And felt strange new joy as the worn head lay
Back, with the hair like sea-weed; yea, all past
Sweat of the forehead, dryness of the lips
Washed utterly out by the dear waves o’ercast,
In a lone sea, far off from any ships!”
She entered. She was alone. The others were not yet ready. I could not speak to her. “Come,” she whispered hoarsely. Her voice had the distressed note of hurry.
We hastened up the High Street like fugitives. Windows of the stern red houses were eyes. They knew all about us. They had watched my mother before me; by experience they had become wise. At the top of the town we turned to the left, going inland towards the hill on which the tower of St. Margaret’s rose gray against the sky, beyond which lay the open country. We did not walk near together, but with a foot between us. Now we slackened our pace and I observed her out of the corners of my eyes. She was dressed in white, all billowy and blowy, with a wrap of white lace thrown over her shoulders, and a broad white hat from which drooped a blue ostrich feather. Whatever had been her intention, she looked bridal. The slim slope of her shoulders was unmatronly. Her long neck curved forward, giving her an attitude of listening demureness. Her mass of hair and large hat scarcely permitted me to see her face.
We came to St. Margaret’s and passed. Was it a sense of the religious restraints that it represented, that made us hurry our footsteps? We turned off into a maze of shadowy lanes. We were happier now that we were safe from observation. We could no longer fancy that we saw our own embarrassment reflected as suspicion in strangers’ eyes. We drew together. My hand brushed hers. She did not start away. I let my fingers close on it.
The golden glow of evening was in the tree-tops. The first breath of autumn had scorched their leaves to scarlet and russet. Behind their branches long scarves of cloud hung pink and green and blood-red. Far away, on either side, the yellow standing wheat rustled. Nearer, where it had been cut, the soil showed brown beneath the close-cropped stubble. Honeysuckle, climbing through the hedges, threw out its fragrance. Evening birds were calling. Distantly we could hear the swish of scythes and the cries of harvesters to their horses. Hidden from the field-workers, we stole between the hedges with the radiant peace of the sunset-on our faces. As yet we had said nothing.
She drew her hand free from mine and halted. Scrambling up the bank, she pulled down a spray of black-berries. I held the branch while she plucked them. We dawdled up the dusty lane, eating them from her hand.
“Vi,” I said softly, “we have tried to be only friends. What next?”
I was smiling. She knew that I did not hint at parting. She smiled back into my eyes; then looked away sharply. I put my arm about her and drew her to me. Without a struggle, she lifted up to me her mouth, all stained with blackberries like any school-girl’s. I kissed her; a long contented sigh escaped her. “We have fought against it,” she whispered.
“Yes, dearest, we have fought against it.”
A rabbit popped out into the road; seeing us, it doubled and scuttled back into the hedge. The smoke of a cottage drifted up in spirals. We approached it, walking sedate and separate. A young mother, seated on the threshold, was suckling her child. A man, who talked to her while he worked, was trimming a rose-bed. They glanced up at us with a friendly understanding smile, as much as to say, “We were as you are now last September.”
When a corner of the lane had hidden us, I again placed my arm about her. “Tell me, what have you to lose by it?”
“Lose by it?”
“Yes. I know so little of your life. What is he like?”
“My husband?”
She flushed as she named him. I nodded.
“He is kind.”
“You always say that.”
“I say it because it is all that there is to say. He is a good man, but——”
“And in spite of that but you married him.”
“No, I was married to him. He was over forty, and I was only eighteen at the time. He was in love with me. My father was a banker; he lent my father money to tide him over a crisis. Then they told me I must marry him. I was only a child.”
“And you never loved him? Say you never loved him!”
She raised her head from my shoulder and looked me in the face with her fearless eyes. “I never loved him. I have been a sort of daughter to him. I scarcely knew what marriage meant until—until it was all over. Then for a time I hated him; I felt myself degraded. Dorrie came. I fought against her coming. Then I grew reconciled. I tried to be true to him because he was her father. He made me respect him, because he was so patient. Dante, when I think of him, I become ashamed of what we are doing.”
Her nostrils quivered, betraying her suppressed emotion. She had spoken with effort.
“Why did you leave him? Did you intend to go back to him?”
She became painfully confused.
“Why do you put so many questions?” she cried. “Don’t you trust me?”
“Vi, I trust you so much that for you I’m going to alter all my life. I’m so glad that you too are willing to be daring.”
“Then why do you question me?”
“Because I want to be more sure that he has no moral right to you.”
“I left him,” she said, “because I could no longer refuse him. He was breaking down my resistance with his terrible kindness. If he had only been unjust and had given me some excuse for anger, I could have endured it. But day after day went by with its comfort, and its heartache, and its outward smoothness. And day after day he was looking older and more patient, and making me feel sorrier for him. He got to calling me ‘My child.’ People said how beautiful we were together. I couldn’t bear to stay and watch him humbling himself and breaking his heart about me. So I asked him to let me go traveling with Dorrie. He let me go, thinking that absence and a change of scene might teach me how to love him.”
She hid her face against me. It was burning.
“He thinks you are coming back again?”
“He thinks so in every letter he writes. I thought so too when I went away.”
“Vi, you never wear a wedding ring. Why is that if you meant to return to him?”
“I wanted to be young just for a little while. They made me a woman when I was only a child.”
“And that was why you taught Dorrie to call you Vi?” The pity of it got me by the throat. I kissed her eyes as she leant against me. “Poor girl, then let us forget it.” She struggled feebly, making a half-hearted effort to tear herself away. “But we can’t forget it,” she whispered. “We can’t, however we try. There’s Dorrie. He loves her terribly. He would give me anything, except Dorrie.”
“And we both love Dorrie,” I said; “we could never do anything that would spoil her life—that would make her ashamed of us one day. You’re trembling like a leaf, Vi. You mustn’t look afraid of me.”
Gradually she nestled closer in my embrace. It was not me that she had feared, but consequences. We became sparing in our words; words stated things too boldly.
Coming to the end of the lane, we sauntered out on to a broad white road. It wound across long flat marshes where the wind from the sea is never quiet. The marshes are intersected with dikes and ditches, dotted with windbreaks for the cattle, and bridged here and there with planks. One can see for miles. There is nothing to break the distance save square Norman towers of embowered churches in solitary hamlets and oddly barrel-shaped windmills with sails turning, for all the world like stout giants, gesticulating and pummeling the sky. Here the orchestra of nature is always practising; its strings, except when a storm is brewing, are muted. From afar comes the constant bass of the sea, striking the land in deep arpeggios. Drawing nearer is the soprano humming of the wind or the staccato cry of some startled bird. Then comes a multitude of intermittent soloists,—frogs croaking, reeds rustling, cattle lowing, the rumbling wheels of a wagon. They clamor in subdued ecstasy, now singly and now together. Through all their song runs the murmuring accompaniment of water lapping.
In gleaming curves across this green wilderness flow fresh-water lagoons and rivers which are known as the Broads. Dotted with water-lilies, barriered with bulrushes, they reflect the sky’s vast emptiness. Brimming their channels they slip over into the meadows, flashing like quicksilver through ashen sedges.
The sun had vanished. The lip of the horizon was scarlet. The dust of twilight was drifting down. In this primitive spaciousness and freedom one’s thoughts expanded.
“Vi,” I whispered, “we’re two sensible persons. Of what have we to be afraid? Only ourselves.”
“There’s the future.”
“The future doesn’t belong to us. We have the present. All our lives we’ve wanted to be happy. Don’t let’s spoil our happiness now that we have it. Just for to-night we’ll forget you’re married. We’ll be lovers together—as alone as if no one else was in the world.”
“And afterwards?”
“Afterwards I’ll wait for you. Afterwards can take care of itself.”
The misshapen shadow of sin which had followed and stood between us, holding us at arm’s length, awkward and embarrassed, was banished. If this was sin, then wrongdoing was lovely.
We began to talk of how everything had happened—how, out of the great nothingness of the unknown, we had been flung together. How easy it would have been for us to have lived out our lives in ignorance of one another and therefore free from this temptation. We justified ourselves in the belief that our meeting had been fated. It could not have been avoided. We were pawns on a chess-board, manipulated by the hand of an unseen player. We had tried to escape one another and had been forced together against our wills. The outcome of the game did not come within the ruling of our decision.
The theory brought re-assurance. It excused us. We were not responsible. Then my mind fled back to my mother. She and my father had had these same thoughts as they had wandered side by side through these same fields and hedges. Why had I been brought back to the country of their courting to pass through their ordeal?
Night was coming down, covering up landmarks. Darkness lent our actions modesty; they lost something of their sharpened meaning because we could not see ourselves acting. We lived unforgettable moments. Passing over narrow plank-bridges from meadow to meadow, we seemed to be traveling out of harsh reality into a world which was dream-created.
She carried her hat in her hand. A soft wind played in her hair and loosened it in places. Her filmy white dress was all a-flutter. Mists began to rise from the marshlands, making us vague to one another. Traveling out of the east swam the harvest moon, nearing its fullness.
“Vi,” I whispered, taking both her hands in mine, “you don’t know yourself—you’re splendid.”
She laughed up into my eyes with elfin daring and abandon.
“You’re the kind of woman for whom a man would willingly die.”
“I ought to know that,” she mocked me, “for one tried.”
“If this were five hundred years ago, do you know what I’d do to-night?”
“It isn’t five hundred years ago—that makes all the difference. But, if it were, what would you do?”
“I’d ride off with you.”
“Oh, no, you wouldn’t.”
“I should. I shouldn’t care what happened a week later. They might kill me like a robber. It wouldn’t matter—a week alone with you would have been worth it.”
“But you wouldn’t,” she insisted; “you wouldn’t ride off with me.”
“Shouldn’t I? And why?”
She freed her hands from mine and placed her arms about my neck. The laughter had gone from her face.
“Dear Dante, you wouldn’t do it, because you are you.” The burning thoughts I had had died down. We wandered on in silence.
Ahead of us a flickering light sprang up. Out of curiosity we went towards it. We found ourselves treading a rutted field-path which led back in the direction of the main road. Out of the mist grew up a clump of marsh-poplars. The light became taller and redder. We saw that it was the beginning of a camp-fire. Over the flames hung a stooping figure.
“Good-evening.”
The figure turned. It was that of a shriveled mummy of a woman—gray-haired, fantastic, bent, with face seamed and lined from exposure. A yellow shawl covered her head and shoulders. She held a burning twig in her hand, with which she was lighting her pipe.
“Good-evening, mother. Good luck to you.”
“Nowt o’ luck th’ day, lad,” she grumbled. “All the folks is in the fields at th’ ’arvest.”
We seated ourselves at the blaze. She went back into the darkness. We heard the snapping of branches. She returned out of the clump of poplars with a companion; each of them was carrying a bundle of dead wood for fuel. Her companion was a younger woman of about thirty. She nodded to us with a proud air of gipsy defiance and sat herself down on the far side of the fire, holding her face away from the light of the flames. The one glimpse I had had of her had shown me that she was handsome.
“There’s bin nowt o’ luck th’ day,” the older woman continued. “They hain’t got their wage for th’ ’arvest yet and they be too cumbered wi’ work for fortune-tellin’.”
“Do you tell fortunes?” asked Vi.
“Do I tell fortunes!” the crone repeated scornfully. “I should think I did tell fortunes. Every kind o’ folk comes ter me wot wants ter read the future. Farmers whose sheep is dyin’. Wimmem as wants childen and hasn’t got ’em. Gals as is goin’ ter have childen and oughtn’t ter have ’em. Wives whose ’usbands don’t love ’em. Lovers as want ter get married, but shouldn’t. Lovers as should get married, but don’t want ter. They all comes to their grannie. I’ve seen a lot o’ human natur’ in my day, I ’ave.”
“And what do you tell them?” asked Vi.
“I tell ’em wot’s preparin’ for or agen ’em. I read th’ stars and I warn ’em.”
“Can they escape by taking your advice?”
“That’s more’n I can say. Thar was Joe Moyer, wot was hanged at Norwich for murthering ’is sweetheart. I telt ’im.‘is fortune a year ago come St. Valentine’s Day. ‘Joe,’ says I, ‘your ’and ’ll be red before the poppies blow agen and you neck ’ll be bruk before th’ wheat is ripe. Leave off a-goin’ wi’ ’er,’ says I. And the lassie a-standin’ thar by ’is side, she laughs at her grannie. But it all come true, wot I telt ’im.”
“Could you read the stars for me?” asked Vi.
Her voice was so thin and eager that it pierced me like a knife. I quivered with fearful anticipation. All our future might depend on what this hag by the roadside might say. I did not want to hear her. She might release terror from the ghost-chamber of conscience. However much we scoffed at her words, they would influence our actions and haunt our minds. Who could say, perhaps Joe Moyer would never have murdered his sweetheart and would not have been hanged at Norwich, if she hadn’t suggested his crime.
“Vi,” I said sternly, “you don’t believe in fortune-telling. We must be going; it’s getting late.”
“Hee-hee-hee!” the gipsy tittered, “if she don’t believe in fortune-tellin’, we knows who do. Come, don’t be afeard, me dearie. Cross me ’and wi siller and I’ll read the stars for ’ee.”
Vi crossed her palm with a shilling. The gipsy flung fresh twigs on the fire, that she might study the lines in Vi’s hands more clearly. As the flames shot up, they illumined the other woman. Her features were strongly Romany, dark and fierce and shy. Somewhere I had seen them; their memory was pleasant. She regarded me fixedly, as though in a trance, across the fire. She too was trying to remember. Then, rising noiselessly, she stole like a panther into the poplars away from the circle of light. From out there in the darkness I felt that her eyes were still watching.
The old fortune-teller had flung back her shawl from her head. Her grizzled hair broke loose about her shoulders. She was peering over Vi’s hand, tracing out the lines with the stem of her foul pipe. Every now and then she paused to ask a whispered question or make a whispered statement. Now she would look up at the stars, and now would pucker her brows. Her head was near to Vi’s. The flames jumped up and showed their faces clearly: the one white and pure, and crowned with gold; the other cunning, mahogany-colored, and witch-like. The flames died down; the shadows danced in again.
I drew nearer and heard the gipsy muttering, “You was born under Venus, dearie. Love’ll be the makin’ o’ yer, an’ love’ll be the ruin o’ yer. You’ll always be longin’ an’ longin’ an’ lookin’ for the face o’ ’im as is comin’. You’re married, dearie, but it warn’t to the right ‘un, and yer’ve ‘ad childen by ‘un. Cross me ‘and wi’ siller, dearie. Cross me ‘and wi’ siller. I can’t see plain. That’s better. Now I see un. ’E’s comin’, dearie, and ’e’ll be tall and masterfu’, yer ‘ll ’ave ter sin ter get ’un. Aye, it’s all writ ’ere, but it gets mazed—the lines rin t’gether.”
She dragged Vi’s hand lower to the ground, nearer the fire. She was excited and clearly puzzled. She kept on croaking out what she had said already, “Yer ’ll ’ave ter sin ter get ‘un. It’s all writ ’ere. Aye, but it can’t be—it can’t be for sartin. It gets all mazed and tangled.”
She turned her head, blinking across the blaze to where her companion had been sitting.
“Lil, Lil,” she cried hoarsely, “come ’ere. I can’t see plain. Young eyes is better.”
Lil emerged out of the shadows, treading as softly as retribution following temptation. She bent over the hand, unraveling the lines to which the fortune-teller pointed with her pipe-stem.
Lil! Lil! Where had I heard that name before? The wind rustled the leaves of the poplars and caused the ash of the fire to scatter.
“Whenever he hears your voice, it shall speak to him of me. If he goes where you do not grow, oh, grass, then the trees shall call him back. If he goes where you do not grow, oh, trees, then the wind shall tell him. His hand shall be as ours, against the works of men. When he hears your voices, he shall turn his face from walls and come back.”
“Do you want to know the future?” she asked, peering into Vi’s face gravely.
Vi hesitated. “Is it so terrible?” she whispered.
“Not terrible as we gipsies reckon it; but sweet and dangerous and reckless, and it ends in——”
“Lilith.”
I caught her by the wrist. She shot upright and faced me.
“Don’t you know me? I’m Dante—Dante Cardover.”
Vi had sunk upon her knees and stared up at us, steadying herself with her hands. The old hag gazed angrily from behind Lilith, stretching out her long thin neck.
“I remember you, brother,” said Lilith. “You are one of us. I knew that one day you would hear us calling.”
“Wot did ’ee see in the lady’s ’and?”
The fortune-teller laid a skinny claw on Lilith’s shoulder; her voice quavered with eagerness.
“I will not tell,” said Lilith.
“Did ’ee see——?”
Lilith clapped her hand over the woman’s mouth. “You shan’t tell, grannie,” she said; “it’s not good to tell.”
Down the field-track came the creaking sound of wheels. I looked up and saw through the poplars the swinging lanterns of a caravan.
Vi touched me on the arm. She was unnerved and trembling. “Take me home, Dante.”
I turned to Lilith. “Who is that?”
“G’liath.”
“Where’ll you be camping to-morrow? At Woadley Ham?”
A cloud passed over her face. “We never camp there, now.”
The crone broke in with a spiteful titter: “But we used ter, until she wouldn’t let us.”
Lilith spoke hastily. “We’re going to Yarminster Fair. We get there to-morrow.”
“Then I’ll see you there,” I told her.
The caravan had come to a halt. I could see the tall form of G’liath moving about the horses. I did not want to meet him just then. Skirting the encampment, we hurried off across fields to the highroad.
A sleepy irritable landlady opened the door to Vi. By the time I had walked down the High Street to the shop, it was nearly midnight. Ruthita was sitting up for me; my grandmother had been in bed two hours. She eyed me curiously. “You had a long walk,” she said.
“Yes, longer than we expected.” I spoke brusquely. I was afraid she would question me.
At the top of the stairs, just as I was entering my room, she stole near to me.
“Dante, ar’n’t you going to kiss me good-night?”
I was bending perfunctorily over her lifted face, when I saw by the light of the candle in my hand that her eyes were red.
“Ruthie, you little goose, you’ve been crying. What’ve you been crying about?”
“I’ve not,” she denied indignantly, and broke from me. After she had entered her room I tiptoed down the passage and listened outside her door.
In the stillness of the house I could hear her sobbing.