'Aweel'—an air of profound reflection—'I'm thinking I can even it ony day wi' ridin' on a coo's back when she'll rin like yon.'

The sunlight of habitual benevolence began to break through the cloud of wrath upon the good minister's face. 'If I let you off, laddie, what will you do for me in return?'

An answering gleam of generosity broke upon the sage face of the child. 'I'll fair teach ye how to dae't ye'sel'.'

The lad grew apace. The neighbours said that he showed 'a caring' for his mother, but no one held toward him a helping hand. They were so sure that no good could come of him or of her. The mother had taken to drink, and one day it was found that the lad was gone. Just as he had often slipped from the grasp of one or other of the angry townsmen, dodged, darted, and disappeared for the moment, so now it seemed that he had slipped from the grasp of the town, run quickly and disappeared. No one knew why he had gone, or whither, or to what end.

Betty Lamb remained in the town, a fine figure of a woman, but bowed in the shoulders, dirty, and clad in rags. At last, when her strong defiance of poverty and need would no longer serve her, she was seen to go about from door to door in the early dawn, raking among the ashes for such articles as she chose to put in an old sack and carry upon her back. The townsfolk honestly thought that all had been done that could be done to make a decent woman of her, and now in her old age she must needs go down to the gutter.

One day a man came to the town with circus pictures and a bucket of paste. He pasted his pictures upon all the blank spaces of walls which he could find. Great was the joy of the children who stood and stared, their little hearts made glad by novelty and colour. Great was the surprise of the older folk, who said, 'It is a new thing in the world when so great a show as this comes out of the accustomed track of shows to erect its tent in our small town!' Yet so it was; from some whim of the manager, or of some one who had the ear of the manager, the thing was decreed.

Upon these circus pictures there figured, in a series of many wonderful harlequin attitudes, a certain Signor Lambetti. Very foreign was the curl of his hair and the waxen ends of his moustache; very magnificent was his physique; he wore the finest of silken tights and crimson small clothes, and medals were depicted hanging upon his breast.

When at length the circus came for that one night's entertainment and the huge tent was set up upon the common not far from the old red ruin, all the town flocked to see the brilliant spectacle. The minister was there, and what was more, his wife and daughters too; they were far grander than he was, and wore silken furbelows and fringed shawls. The minister paid for the best seats for them to sit in. All the shopkeepers were there; every man, woman and child in all the town who could find as much as sixpence to pay for standing room was there. But the strangest circumstance was that before the show began a man went out from the brightly-lit doorway and called in a loud voice to the beggars and little ragged boys and girls who had come to survey the tent on the outside, and he brought them all in and gave them a good part of the tent to sit in, although they had not sixpence to pay, nor even a penny.

Ah! in those days it was a very grand sight. There were elephants who performed tricks, and camels who walked about with men and bundles on their backs just as they do in eastern deserts, and there were wonderful ladies who dressed and behaved like fairies, and who rode standing tip-toe on the backs of horses and jumped through swinging rings. But the crowd had not read the circus bills and the newspapers from all the neighbouring cities for nothing. They were a canny Scotch crowd; they were not to be taken in by mere glitter, no, not the smallest barefoot boy nor the most wretched beggar, for they knew very well that the real crisis of the evening was to be the appearance of Signor Lambetti, and the word 'wonderful' was not to be spoken until his feats began to be performed.

At length he came outside the curtain upon which all eyes had long been fixed. The curl of his hair and the waxed ends of his moustache proved him to be beyond doubt from foreign parts. He was indeed a most grand and handsome gentleman. His dress was, if anything, more superb than it had been in the pictures; all his well-formed muscles showed through the silken gauze that he wore. His velvet trappings were trimmed with gold lace and his medals shone like gold.

He walked upon a tight rope away up in the peaked roof of the tent; he held a wand in his hand by which to balance himself and in the other hand a cup of tea which he drank in the very middle of his walk; tossing it off, bowing to the crowd below, and bringing the cup and saucer to the other end in safety.

The crowd gave deep sighs, partly of satisfaction for being permitted to see so wonderful a sight, partly out of relief for the safety of the performer. 'Ay me,' they said to one another, 'did ye ever see the licht o' that?' It meant more from them than the loudest clamour of applause, yet they applauded also.

Then Signor Lambetti, looking quite as fresh and jaunty as at first, ascended a small platform, standing out upon it in the full light of all the lamps. He made a little speech to the effect that he was now going to perform a feat which was so difficult and dangerous that hitherto he had kept it solely for the benefit of crowned heads, before whom on many occasions he had had the privilege of appearing. He said, in an airy way, that the reason he did the town the honour of beholding this most wonderful of all his feats was merely that he had taken a liking to the place.

'Ay, but he's grond,' said the little barefoot boys to one another as they huddled against the front of the stand allotted to them. 'Ay me, but he's grond'; and all the rest of the townsfolk said the same to themselves or each other, but they expressed it in all the different ways of that dignified caution common to the Scotch.

There was a series of swings, one trapeze fixed higher than another, like a line of gigantic steps, to the very pinnacle of the tent. 'The Signor' announced that he was going to swing himself up upon these hanging bars until he reached the topmost, and from that he would leap through the air down, down into the lighted abyss below, and catch a rope that was stretched at the foot of the Grand Stand.

Merely to hear him tell what he was going to do made the crowd draw breath with thrills of joyful horror.

Up and up he went, swinging himself with lissome grace, raising each trapeze with the force of his swing until he could reach the one above it.

He looked smaller as he travelled higher in his wonderful flying progress. The little boys had not breath left now even to say, 'Ay me, but he's grond.' There was silence among all the crowd.

To every one in all that crowd—to all except one—the spectacle was that of a strange man performing a strange feat; one poor woman present saw a different sight, one alone in all that crowd knew that the acrobat was not a stranger.

In a corner of the beggars' gallery sat Betty Lamb. Dirty and clothed in rags as she was, she held up her head at this hour with the old queenly defiance of her youthful days. Her eyes, bleared and sunken, had descried her son; her mother's heart, mad though all pronounced her to be, had vibrated to the first sound of her son's voice. She knew him as certainly as if she had seen him standing before her again, the little lad of past years, or the infant cradled in the ambry of the ruined chancel.

The monarchs of whom Lambetti had been glibly speaking were not more noble in rank or more surrounded with glory in the thought of Betty Lamb than was this hero of the circus, and he her son! What constitutes glory? Is it not made up of the glare of lamps and the wearing of shining clothes, the shout of a thousand voices in applause, the glance of a thousand eyes in admiration, and the renown that spreads into the newspapers? In the mind of Betty Lamb there was no room for gradations; she knew glory, she knew shame; she herself had sunk to shame; but now that was past, her son had attained to glory, and her soul went out, as it were, from the circumstances of her own degradation and accepted his glory as her own.

They said (the townsfolk said) that Betty Lamb had not lacked opportunity. Ah well, God knows better than we what to each soul may be its opportunity.

Betty Lamb watched her son in his perilous upward flight, and, for the first time in her life, prayed that Heaven would forgive her misdeeds. By some inborn instinct she assumed that it was this prayer she must pray in order to obtain that desire of her eyes, his safety. When he reached the highest swing, when he made his leap from that awful height and caught the lower rope, there had come a change in Betty Lamb's soul. It had seemed hours, nay, years to her, the space of time in which he was swinging himself up and leaping down. Perhaps, half-witted as she had been, this was in reality her life, not the other that for sixty years she had been visibly living. She saw that his eye was fixed upon her; she knew that the kisses were thrown to her. She rose and walked erect, in her heart a new sense of responsibility and of the value of life.

Next day in Betty Lamb's cellar-room a shadow darkened the doorway, and her son stood before her. He did not kiss her—that had not been their way, even when he was an infant and she had sung her songs to him in the lonely ruin—but he bowed to her with all the foreign graces that he had learned, just as if she were one of the queens before whom he had performed. She feasted her eyes upon him.

He looked round upon the cellar. 'You must not live here any longer,' said he.

For the first time in her life humility reigned in her heart and she resigned her gypsy freedom. 'I'm thinking,' she replied modestly, 'that it's nae fit for the mither of sich as ye are noo.'

With the minister Lambetti left money that would defray the expenses of a decent habitation for his mother, and, to the wonder of all, from that day forth the mother lived in it decently. She was even charitable with her little store; she was even known to raise the fallen.

When she was dead Lambetti was dead too. He had lived his life fast, and, if gold be of worth, it seemed as if he had lived it to some purpose. Lambetti left money to the town, money for two purposes which in due time the long-headed townsmen carried into effect. An asylum was built upon the moor; it is called 'Betty Lamb's Home for the Young and the Aged.' The old Abbey also was walled in; lawns and flower beds were spread about the broken stones, and where the walls might totter they were supported. The honour of this change too is ascribed to the famous son of Betty Lamb, who had no name but his mother's.



XI

THE SOUL OF A MAN

CHAPTER I

A man was standing on one of the highroads in the south of Gloucestershire. He was a man of science; his tools and specimens were in his hand, and he was leaning against the wayside paling, enjoying a well-earned rest. A long flock of birds fluttered over the autumn fields; beneath them a slow ploughman trudged with his horses, breaking the yellow stubble. The sky hung low, full of sunshine yet full of haze—an atmosphere of blue flame, and the earth was bright with the warm autumn colours of woods and hedgerow.

Just as the birds were flying past, a young woman came by upon the road, treading with quick powerful step upon the fallen leaves. She was a poor woman; her beauty, which would have been almost perfect in a simpler gown, was marred by garments cut in cheap conformity to fashionable dress. It could not be hidden, however, and her large symmetrical figure, swinging as she walked, attracted the attention of the man; as he stood there, leaning against the paling, he felt by no means disinclined to while away his hour of rest by a few soft words with the comely stranger. If he had put his thoughts into words, he would have held it as good luck that she had come to amuse his leisure, thinking very little about luck as it concerned her. His dog lying at his feet stirred to look at the woman, and the man, following the same instinct of nature, accosted her.

'Can you tell me, my girl, what time it is?'

She stopped short and looked at him. 'That I can't, sir,' she said in clear hearty tones, and turned to continue her walk.

'But tell me what time you think it is, my good girl; I am not good at reading the sun.'

She turned again, and looked at him with a longer pause, but, if there was suspicion or disapproval in her thoughts, she expressed nothing in her face.

'Yer a gent; I'd 'a thought ye'd 'a had a watch.'

'But mine is at the watchmaker's getting mended,' he said with a smile. He was neither young nor handsome, but he was clever, and that goes further than either in dealing with a woman.

She still stood staring at him in rude independence.

'The shadows is longer 'an they was a while by; mebbe it's three.'

He sighed and shifted his position wearily against the paling, as though faint with fatigue.

'You can't tell me of any place near where I can get something to eat? I have been working hard since daybreak, and now I am out of my reckoning, and tired and hungry.' He glanced down at his tools and earth-stained clothes.

He won his wish; the woman, who would not have tarried a moment for selfish pleasure, remained out of generous pity.

'I've the piece mother put up, mebbe it's big enou' for we two.'

'But I could not think of taking your luncheon,' he exclaimed, with a gallantry that was meant to be impressive, but was quite lost on his practical companion. She proceeded to open her parcel and examine the contents to see whether or not there was enough for two. He also examined it critically with his eyes, in some alarm at her prompt response to his appeal, but the thick slices of bread and meat, if not dainty, were clean, and of excellent quality.

She took the largest and thickest bit and thrust it into his hand, very much as a mother would feed her child with the portion she considered its fair share.

''Ere, ye may 'ev that, fur I shan't want it.'

'You are very kind,' he said, with a touch of sarcasm too fine for her.

It appeared that, having taken out the food, she thought well to make her own meal, for she went a few steps farther on, and, sitting down on the grass with her back to the paling, began to eat. A large tuft of weeds grew midway between him and her. Truly we can foresee consequences but a very little way in our dealings with a fellow-creature, and this man, as he stood munching his bread, uncertain how to proceed in winning favour from the bold beauty, was hardly pleased with the result of his encounter. His dog went and laid its head upon her knee, and she fed it with crumbs; its master, after watching them a minute, stepped out on the road with the intention of sitting down between them and the weeds. As he did so he caught sight, as he thought, of a man seated in the very place he intended to occupy. So strong was the impression that he started and stared; but again, as before, there was no one to be seen. The sunshine was bright upon all things; the palings were so far apart that he could see everything in the fields behind; there was no one far or near but the ploughman at half a field's distance, and they two, and the dog.

The woman turned coolly round and looked through the paling, as if she supposed he had seen something behind her. 'Was't a haer?' she asked, eyeing him with interest; 'ye ain't feared o' the like o' that?'

'No, it was not a hare; I did not see a hare.'

'What was't ye seed then?' she asked, looking at him with bold determination.

'What did I see?' he repeated vaguely, 'I saw nothing.'

'Thought ye looked as if ye'd seed something',' she remarked incredulously, and then went on eating and feeding the dog, as indifferent to his presence as she was to the presence of the weeds.

'Are you going far to-night?' he asked at length, thinking he would make more progress toward friendship before he sat down.

'To th' town.'

'Indeed, as far as that! Which town, may I ask?' he said, with mechanical politeness, for his mind was running on what he had seen.

'Yer a fool and noae mistake,' she replied with emphasis. 'There's but one town wi'in a walk.'

'On the contrary, I am considered a man of great learning,' he replied, with more eager self-assertion than he could hitherto have believed possible under the circumstances.

'Is't larning ye've got?' she asked, with much greater interest than she had before evinced.

'Yes; I am a man who spends his life seeking for knowledge.'

'Are ye wiser ner parson?'

'Very much wiser,' replied the man of science, with honest conviction.

She looked much more impressed than he had hoped; and thinking that he had made himself sufficiently interesting, he began to speak about her own affairs, supposing they would please her better.

'You are not a married woman?' he said, looking at her ringless hand.

'Married or no,' she replied, 'it's nowt to you.'

'I beg your pardon; everything which concerns such a beautiful woman must be of interest to me.'

At that she laughed outright in hard derision, and went on eating her bread and meat.

'But won't you tell me if you are married or not?' he pleaded, pursuing a subject which he thought must interest her. He was surprised to see the sudden expression of womanly sorrow that came over her face, giving her eyes new depth and light. She answered him sadly, looking past him into the sunny distance—

'No, nor like to be.'

'I must disagree with you there. If you are not married yet, I am sure you will be very soon. I never saw a more likely lassie than yourself.'

Manlike, he was quite unconscious of the consummate impertinence of the form this compliment had taken; but afterwards he realised it when his idle words recurred to his mind.

She turned her eyes full upon him, and said with energy: 'Ye know nowt at all about it;' and then added more meditatively, 'neither do parson.'

She had been so absorbed in her thoughts for a few minutes that she had ceased to stroke the dog, and, resenting this, it raised its silky head from her lap and laid it upon her breast. Thus reminded, she smiled down into the eyes of the dog and caressed it, pressing its head closer against her bosom. The man stood a few paces away, watching these two beautiful creatures as they sat in the hazy autumn sunlight, with their background of weeds and moss-grown paling. He felt baffled and perplexed, for he knew that he stood apart, excluded from their companionship by something he could not define. So intolerable did this feeling become that he resolved to break through it, and made a hasty movement to sit down beside them; but, as he stepped forward, he was suddenly aware that there was another man in the place he would have taken, embracing and protecting the girl. He swore a loud oath, and flung himself backwards to stand by the hedge on the opposite side of the road, that he might the better review the situation. It was all as it had been before—that quiet autumn landscape—only the woman appeared much interested in his sudden movements.

'What was't ye seed; was't a snaike?' she inquired loudly, at the same time moving her skirts to look for that dangerous reptile.

'No,' he shouted, putting his whole energy into the word.

'What was't ye seed, cutting them capers as if ye was shot, an' saying o' words neyther fit fur heaven above nor earth beneath?'

So loudly did she ask, and so resolutely did she wait for an answer, that he was forced into speech. 'I don't know,' he said, with another oath, milder than the first.

'Well, sure enow,' she said, still speaking loudly, ''ere's somethin' awful queer, ye says yer a man that's got larning more ner parson, an' ye sees somethin', an' can't tell what ye's seed. That's twice this short while; are ye often took bad the like o' that?'

The bold derision of this speech fell without effect upon its object, because he perceived a gleam of mischievous intelligence in her eyes which she had intended to conceal, but she was no adept in the art of concealment. The conviction that the woman knew perfectly what he had seen and did not in reality despise him for his conduct, took the sting from her jeers but did not make his position pleasanter. The repeated shock to his nerves had produced a chilly feeling of depression and almost fear, which he could not immediately shake off, and he stood back against the opposite hedge, with his half-eaten bread in his hand, conscious that he looked and felt more like a whipped schoolboy than, as he had fondly imagined when he first stopped the woman, the hero of a rural love scene. That was nothing; he was, as he had described himself, a man who devoted his life to the search for knowledge, and personal consciousness was almost lost in the intense curiosity which the circumstances had aroused in him. With the trained mind of one accustomed to investigation, he instantly perceived that his only clue to the explanation of the phenomenon lay in the personality of the woman. His one eager desire was to probe her thought through and through, but how was he to approach the interior portals of a mind guarded by a will as free and strong as his own? He would fain have bound down her will with strong cords and analysed the secrets of her mind with ruthless vivisection. But how? His tact, trained by all the subtleties of a life cast in cultured social relations, was unequal to the occasion, and, fearing to lose ground by a false step, he remained silent.

The woman finished eating and shook herself free of the crumbs. He supposed, almost with a sense of desperation, that she was about to leave him before he could begin his inquiry, but instead of moving she motioned him to come near, and he went, and stood on the road in front of her.

'Ye says yer a man o' larning, an' I b'lieves ye, she began.

He was about to reply that he was only a seeker after truth, but he was checked by the knowledge that she would accept no answer she could not understand. He fell back on the truth as it was to her, and said simply, 'Yes.'

'I wants to ask ye two questions; will ye answer like an honest man?'

She had laid aside all her loud rudeness, and was speaking with intense earnestness—an earnestness that won his entire respect.

'I will indeed answer you honestly, if I can answer.'

'Then tell me this—What's the soael o' a man?'

He stood with lips sealed, partly by surprise at the question, and partly by self-acknowledged ignorance of the answer.

'The soael o' a man,' she repeated more distinctly, 'ye knows what I mean surely?'

Yes, he knew what she meant, but he knew also that his own most honest convictions hovered between a materialist philosophy and faith in the spiritual unseen. If at that moment he could have decided between the two he would gladly have done so, for the sake of the eager woman sitting at his feet, but he knew that he did not know which was the truth.

She, still labouring under the impression that she had not made her meaning plain, endeavoured to explain. 'Ye knows when a man dies, there's two parts to him; one they buries, and one goes—' she pointed upward with her thumb, not irreverently, but as merely wishing to indicate a fact without the expense of words.

'Yes, I understand what you mean,' he said slowly, 'and under that theory, the soul——'

'Under what?' she said sharply.

'I mean that if you say the soul is divided from the body at death——'

'But it is—ain't it?' she interrupted.

'Yes, it is,' he said, feeling that it was better to perjure himself than to shake her faith.

'Go on,' she said, 'for parson says the soael is the thing inside that thinks; but when a man's luny, ye knows—off his head like—has he no soael then? I've looked i' the Catechis', an' i' Bible, an' i' Prayer-book, an' fur the life o' me, I doaen't know.'

'I don't wonder at that,' he said, with mechanical compassion, casting about in his mind for some possible motive for her extraordinary vehemence.

He felt as certain, standing there, that this was a true woman, true to all the highest attributes of her nature, as if he had been able to weigh all the acts of her life and find none of them wanting. In the midst of his perplexity he found time to ask himself whence he had this knowledge. Did he read it in the lines of her face, or was it some unseen influence of her mind upon his own? He had only time to question, not to answer, for she looked up in his face with the trust and expectation of a child, awaiting his words.

He spoke. 'You say when a man dies he is divided into two parts—the body that rots and the part "that lives elsewhere."' He was speaking very slowly and distinctly. 'If that part of a man which lives goes to Heaven, where everything is quite different from this, he could have no use for most of his thoughts—what we call opinions, for they are formed on what he sees, and hears, and feels here. Look here!'—he held out his arm and moved it up and down from the elbow—'there are nerves and muscles; behind them is something we call life—we don't know what it is. And behind your thoughts and feeling there is the same life—we don't know what it is. The part of you that you say goes to Heaven must be that life. If you ask me what I think, I think the greater part of what you call mind is part of your body. If your body can live a spirit life, so can it; but it would need as much changing first.'

It was most extraordinary to him to see the avidity with which she drank in his words, and also the intelligence with which she seemed to master them, for she cried—

'What's i' the soael then? When ye will to do a thing agen all costs, is that i' the soael?'

'Certainly the spirit must be the self, and the will, as far as we know, is that self—more that self than anything else is.' He spoke in the pleased tone of a schoolmaster who finds that the mind beneath his touch is being moulded into the right shape; and besides he supposed he could question her next.

'I knowed that,' she said, with an intensity of conviction that confounded her listener, 'I knowed the soael was will.'

'It must be intelligence, and will, and probably memory,' he said, beguiled into the idea that she was interested in the nicety of his theory, 'but not in any sense that activity of mind which shows itself in the opinions most men conceive so important.'

But of this she took no heed. 'When a man's off his head or par'lysed, wi' no more life in him than babe unborn—yet when he's living and not dead—where's his soael then? Parson he says the soael's sleeping inside him afore going to glory, like a grub afore it turns into a fly; but I asked him how he knowed, and he just said he knowed, an' I mun b'lieve, and that's no way to answer an honest woman.'

'He did not really know.'

'Well, tell what you knows,' she said.

'Indeed, I do not know anything about it.'

'Ye doaen't know!'

'I do not know.'

The animation of hope slowly faded from her face, giving place to a look of bitter disappointment. It was as if a little child, suddenly denied some darling wish, should have strength to restrain its tears and mutely acquiesce in the inevitable.

'Then there's nowt to say,' she said, rising, sullen in the first moment of pain.

'But you'll tell me why you have asked?' he begged; 'I am very sorry indeed that I cannot answer.'

'Noae, I'll not tell ye, fur it's no concern o' yours; but thank ye kindly, sir, all the same. Yer an honest man. Good-day.'

With that she walked resolutely away, nor would she accept his offer of payment for the food she had given. He stood and watched her, feeling checkmated, until he saw her exchange greetings with the ploughman, who reached the end of his furrow as she passed the side of the field. Seeing this, he took up his specimens and walked slowly in the same direction, waiting for the ploughman's next return. As he stood at the hedge he noticed that the labourer, who appeared to be a middle-aged man of average intelligence, surveyed him with more than ordinary interest.

'Good-day,' he said.

'Good-day, sir.' There was a clank of the chains, a shout and groan to the horses, and they stopped beside the hedge.

'Can you tell me the name of the young woman who passed down the road just now?'

'Jen Wilkes, sir; "Jen o' the glen" they calls 'er, for she lives in the holler down there, a bit by on the town road, out of West Chilton.'

'She has not lived here long, surely; she seems a north country woman by her speech.'

'Very like, sir; it's a while by sin' she came with 'er mother to live i' Chilton.'

It was evident that the ploughman had much more to say, and that he wished to say it, but his words did not come easily.

'Can you tell me anything more about her?' The man rubbed his coarse beard down upon his collar, and clanked his chains, and made guttural sounds to his horses, which possibly explained to them the meaning he did not verbally express. Then he looked up and made a facial contortion, which clearly meant that there was more to be said concerning Jen if any one could be found brave enough to say it.

'I feel assured she is everything that is good and respectable.'

At this the ploughman could contain himself no longer, but heaving up one shoulder and looking round to see that there was no one to hear, he blurted out—''Ave you seen 'er shadder, sir?'

'Her what?'

''Er shadder. I seen you so long with 'er on the road I thought maybe you'd tried to 'ave a kiss. Gentlemen mostly thinks a sight of Jen's looks; an' it ain't no harm as I knows on to kiss a tidy girl, if y'ain't married, or th' missus don't object.'

'And if I did, what has that to do with it? What do you mean by her shadow?'

'Oh, I dunno; I h'ain't seen nothing myself; but they says, whenever any has tried to be friendly with 'er, they's seed something not just o' the right sort. They calls it 'er shadder—but I dunno, I h'ain't seen nothing myself.'

When we are suddenly annoyed, by whatever cause, we are apt to vent our annoyance upon the person nearest to us; and at this unlooked-for corroboration of his unpleasant vision, the gentleman said rudely, 'You're not such a fool as to believe such confounded trash as that, are you?'

'No sir, I'm no fool,' said the ploughman sulkily, starting his horses to go up the furrow. In vain the other called out an attempted apology, and tried to delay him; the accustomed shout and clank of the chains was all he got in answer. The birds that had settled upon the field rose again at the return of the horses, and curveted in a long fluttering line above their heads. The man on the road turned reluctantly away, and, too perplexed almost for thought, walked off to catch his home-bound train.



CHAPTER II

The man of science, Skelton by name, passed some seven days in business and pleasure at home among men of his own class, and then, impelled by an intolerable curiosity, he went to seek the home of the woman with whom he had so strange a meeting. Concerning the mad delusion from which he had suffered in her presence, his mind would give him no rest. Some further effort he must make to understand the cause of an experience which he could not reason from his memory. The effort might be futile; he could form no plan of action; yet he found himself again upon the highroad which led from the nearest station to the village of West Chilton.

The autumn leaf that had bedecked the trees was lying upon the ground, its brightness soiled and tarnished. The cloud rack hung above, a vault of gloom in which the upper winds coursed sadly.

'This is the field,' said Skelton within himself. 'The ploughman has finished his work, but the crows are still flapping about it. I wonder if they are the same crows! That is the clump of weeds by which she sat; it was as red as flame then, but now it is colourless as the cinders of a fire that is gone out.'

His words were like straws, showing the current of his thoughts.

Just then in the west the cloud masses in the horizon, being moved by the winds, rent asunder, exposing the land to the yellow blaze of the setting sun. The distant hills stood out against the glow in richer blue, and far and near the fields took brighter hues—warm brown of earth ready to yield the next harvest, yellow of stubble lands at rest, bright green of slopes that fed the moving cows. There were luminous shadows, too, that gathered instantly in the copses, as if they were the forms of dryads who could sport unseen in the murk daylight, but must fly under each shrub for refuge in the sudden sunshine. Close at his feet lay the patch of cabbages—purple cabbages they were, throwing back from each glossy leaf and stalk infinite gradations of crimson light. Parts of the leaves were not glossy but were covered with opaque bloom of tender blue, and here and there a leaf had been broken, disclosing scarlet veins. They were very beautiful—Skelton stood looking down into their depth of colour.

It had been difficult for him to conjecture a possible cause for the phantom he had thought he saw a week before, but one theory which had floated in his mind had been that from these cabbages, which had lain a trifle too long in sun and moisture; gases might have arisen which had disturbed his senses. It was true that his theory did not account for other instances of the same optical delusion to which the talk of the ploughman had seemed to point, but Skelton could not bring himself to attach much importance to his words. He meditated on them now as he stood.

'I dare not go to the young woman and ask her to show me her "shadder." If she knew I was here she would only try to defeat my purpose. I can only interview her neighbours; and this first rustic whom I questioned shut himself up like an oyster; if all the rest act in this way, what can I do? And if I can hear all the vulgar superstition there is to be heard, will there be in the whole of it the indication of a single fact?'

So he mused by the road-side while the sun hung in the dream temple of fire made by the chasm of cloud. Then the earth moved onward into the night, and he walked on upon his curious errand.

The darkness of evening had already fallen, and he was still about a mile from the village when he discerned a woman coming towards him on the road. It was the very woman about whom his mind was occupied. There was a house at one side; the gate leading to it was close to him, and, not wishing to be recognised at the moment, he turned in through it to wait in the darkness of some garden shrubs till she had passed.

But she did not pass. She came up, walking more and more slowly, till she stood on the road outside the gate. She looked up and down the road with a hesitating air, and then, clasping her hands behind her, leaned back against a heavy gate-post and composed herself to wait. There was light enough to see her, for there was a moon behind the clouds, and also what was left of the daylight in the west was glimmering full upon her. The house was close to the road—apparently an old farmstead—turning blank dark walls and roofs to them, so that it was evidently uninhabited or else inhabited only at the other side. The young woman looked up at it, apparently not without distrust, but even to her keen scrutiny there was no sign of life. For the rest, the road lay through a glen, the village was out of sight, and the hills around them were like the hills in Hades—silent, shadowy and cold.

It seemed an unearthly thing that she should have come there to stand and lean against the gate, as if to shut him into his self-sought trap; and there was no impatience about this woman—she stood quite still in that dark, desolate place, as though she was perfectly contented to wait and wait—for what? how long?—these were the questions he asked himself. Was this dark house the abode of evil spirits with which she was in league? and if so, what result would accrue to him? There are circumstances which suggest fantastic speculations to the most learned man.

At length he heard a footfall. He could not tell where at first, but, as it approached, he saw a countryman in a carter's blouse coming across the opposite field. He got through the hedge and came toward the gate. Then the girl spoke in her strong voice and north-country accent, but Skelton would hardly have known the voice again, it was so soft and sad.

'I've been waiting on ye, Johnnie; some women thinks shame to be first at the trysting, but that's not me when I loves ye true.'

At this Skelton by an impulse of honour thought to pass out of ear-shot, and then another motive held him listening. He thought of the ghostly thing he had seen by this girl, of the wild tale the ploughman had told. The passion of investigation, which had grown lusty by long exercise, rose within him triumphing over his personal inclinations. Too much was at stake to miss a chance like this. Honour in this situation seemed like a flimsy sentiment. He waited for the answer of the girl's lover with breathless interest.

The man was evidently a fine young fellow, tall and strong, and when he spoke it was not without a touch of manly indignation in his tone.

'If you love me true, Jen, I can't think what the meaning of your doings is. It's two years since you came to live in the glen, and you can't say as you've not understood my meaning plain since the first I saw you; it's to take you to church and take care of you as a woman ought to be took care of by a man. And you know I could do it, Jen, for my wages is good; but you've shied an' shied whenever you've seen me, and baulked an' baulked when you couldn't shy, so as no skittish mare is half so bad.'

'Because, Johnnie, I wouldn't ha' yer heart broke the way mine is. I loved ye too true for that.'

'But what's to hinder that we may be like other folks is? There's troubles comes to all, but we can bear them like the rest. What's to hinder? I thought there was some one else, an' that you didn't like. God knows, Jen, if that 'ad been the way, I'd never 'ev troubled you again; but last night when we heard your mother was took bad, an' mother an' me stepped round to see what we could do, an' you let on as you did 'ave a caring for me, I says,—"Let's be cried in the church," so as your mother could die happy, if die she must. But when you says, "no," and as you'd meet me here an' tell me why, I was content to wait an' come here; an' now what I want to know is—why? what's to hinder, Jen?'

'Ye knows as well as me the tales about me, Johnnie.'

'Tales!' said the young man passionately; 'what tales? All along I've knocked down any man as 'ud say a word against you.'

'Ay, but the women, Johnnie; ye couldn't knock them down; that's why a woman's tale's allus the worst.'

'An' what can they say? the worst is that if any man comes nigh you for a kiss or the like o' that—and no offence, Jen, but you're an uncommon tidy girl to kiss—he sees another man betwixt himself an' you. Fools they be to believe such trash! If you'd give me the leave—which I'm not the fellow to take without you say the word—I'd soon show as no shadder 'ud come betwixt.'

He came a step nearer, reproachful in his frank respect, as if he would claim the liberty he asked; but she drew back, holding up her hand to ward him off.

'I believe you half believe the nonsense yourself, Jen.'

'Heaven knows, Johnnie, I've reason to b'lieve it weel, none knows better ner me. It's that I've comed to tell ye to-night; an' there's nowt fur it but we mun part. An' if I trouble yer peace staying here i' the glen, I'll go away out o' yer sight. It wasn't a wish o' mine to bring ye trouble. None knows better ner me how hard trouble's to bear.'

Her voice trembled as if with some physical pain; he only answered by a sound of incredulous surprise.

'I'll tell ye the whole on't, Johnnie. Ye sees, we lived i' Yarm—mother and me. Mother, she sewed books fur a book-binding man; an' we'd a little coming in as father'd saved. Well, mother, she was feared lest I'd fall into rough ways like, an' she kep' me in a good bit, an' there was a man as helped i' the book-binding——' she stopped, and then said half under her breath—

'His name was Dan'el, Dan'el McGair, it was.'

'Go on, Jen.'

'He was a leaen man and white to look at. He was very pious, and knowed lots o' things. Least, I don't know if he was pious, fur he didn't go to church, but he'd his own thoughts o' things, an' he was steady, an' kep' himself to himself. He niver telled me his thoughts o' things—he said it 'ud unsettle me like—but he taught me reading; an' mother, she liked his coming constant to see us. As fur as I knows, he was a good man; but I tell ye, Johnnie, that man had a will—whatsoever thing Dan'el McGair wanted, that thing he mun have, if he died i' the getting. He was about forty, an' I was nigh on twenty; it was after he'd taught me reading, an' whenever I'd go out here or there, or do this or that he didn't like, he'd turn as white as snow, an' tremble like a tree-stem i' the wind, an' dare me to do anything as he didn't like. Ye sees he allus had that power over mother to make her think like him, but I wouldn't give in to him. If I'd gived in—well, I doaent know what 'ud 'a comed. God knows what did come were bad enow.' She stopped speaking and toed the damp ground—crushing her boot into the frosty mud and drawing it backwards and forwards as she stood against the gate.

'Go on, Jen.'

'Ye sees, what he willed to get, that he mun have, an' at the end he willed to have me—mind, body, an' soael. He'd 'a had me, only I made a stand fur my life. Mother, she was all on his side, only she didn't want fur me to do what I wouldn't; but she cried like, an' talked o' his goodness—an' Dan'el, he wouldn't ask out an' out, or I could 'a told him my mind an' 'a done wi' it; but he went on giving us, an' paying things, an' mother she took it all, till I was fairly mad wi' the shame an' anger on't. I doaent say as I acted as I ought; I knowed I'd a power over him to drive him wild like wi' a smile or a soft word, an' power's awful dangerous fur a young thing—it's like as if God gave the wind a will o' its own, an' didn't howd it in His own hand. Then I was feared o' Dan'el's power over mother, an' give in times when I ought to 'a held my own. An' I liked to have him fur a sarvint to me, an' I led him on like. So it went on—he niver doubted I'd marry wi' him, an' I held out fur my life. Then at th' end, some words we had made things worse. 'Twas i' spring—i' March I think—he walked out miles an' miles on the bad roads to bring me the first flowers. I was book-binding then, out late at night, an' I comed home to find he'd left them fur me—snowdrops they was, an' moss wi' a glint o' green light on't, like sun shining through th' trees; an' there was a grey pigeon's feather he'd picked up somewheres, all clean and unroughed, like a bit o' the sky at th' dawn; an' there was a twig wi' a wee pink toaedstood on't, all pink an' red. The sight o' them fairly made me mad. 'Twas bad enow to buy me wi' munny an' the things munny can buy, but it seemed he'd take the very thoughts o' God A'mighty and use them to get his will. I were mad; but if he'd comed to our house I couldn't 'a spoke fur mother's being there; so I just took them bits o' Spring i' my hand, an' went out i' the dark to his house, an' went into his room, an' threw 'em on the floor, an' stamped 'em wi' my foot, an' I told him how he'd sneaked round to bind me to him, an' as how I'd die first. I was mad, an' talked till I couldn't speak fur my voice give out, an' that wasn't soon. He just sat still hearing me, but he was white, an' shook like a man wi' the palsy. They said he'd had fits once an' that made him nervous, but I didn't think o' him like that. He was strong, fur he could make most all men do as he wanted. He was spoiling my life wi' his strength, an' I didn't think o' him as weakly. When I'd raged at him an' couldn't say more, I went out an' was going home i' the dark, howding by the wall, as weak as a baby; an' just afore I got home, I seed him stand just in front' o' me. I thought he'd runned after me—mebbe he did—but I've thought since, mebbe not, that his body mayn't 'a been there at all; but anyway I seed him stand just afore me, wi' his eyes large and like fire, an' him all white and trembling. He said, "I tell ye, Jen, I will have ye mine, an' as long as I live no other man shall," an' wi' that I went past him into the house.'

'Go on, Jen,' said the carter.

'All I knows is that the word he spoke was a true word. Next day they comed and telled us he was found all par'lysed in his chair, an' he couldn't move nor speak. From that time the doctors 'ud sometimes come from a long way off; they said as there was somethin' strange about his sickness. I doaent know what they said, I niver seed him again. There's part o' him lies i' the bed, an' the parish feeds him, an' the doctors they talk about him. I niver seed him again sin' that night, but I knows what he said was true, an' there's many a man as 'as seed him anear me sin' that day. I tell ye, Johnnie, there's trouble to face i' this world worse ner death,—not worse ner our own death, fur that's most times a good thing, but worse ner the death o' them we love most true—an' worse ner parting i' this world, Johnnie, an' worse a'most than sin itself; but, thank God, not quite worse ner sin. But I never knowed, lad, how bad my own trouble was—though it's a'most drove me hard at times, not recking much what I said or did—I niver knowed, my lad, how bad it was till I knowed it was yer trouble too.'

The young carter stood quite silent. His blue blouse glimmered white in the darkness and flapped a little in the wind, but he stood still as a rock, with his strong arms crossed upon his breast, and the silence seemed filled with the expression of thoughts for which words would have been useless. It was evident that her strong emotion had brought to his mind a conviction of the truth of her words which could not have been conveyed by the words alone. So they stood there, he and she, in all the rugged power of physical strength, confronted with their life's problem. At last, after they had been silent a long time, and it seemed that he had said many things, and that she had answered him, he appeared suddenly to sum up his thoughts to their conclusion, and stretched out both his strong arms to take her and all her griefs into his heart. It seemed in the darkness as though he did clasp her and did not, for she gave a low terrible cry and fled from him—a cry such as a spirit might give who, having ascended to Heaven's gate with toil and prayer, falls backward into Hell; and she ran from him—it seemed that with only her human strength she could not have fled so fast. He followed her, dashing with all his strength into the darkness. They went towards the village, and in the mud their footfalls were almost silent.

The listener came out of his hiding and went back on the road by which he had come.



CHAPTER III

Next morning Skelton travelled northward to Yarm. After some difficulty he succeeded in discovering the paralytic whom he sought. The medical interest which had at first been aroused by the case appeared to have died away; and it was only after some time spent in interviewing officials that he at last found the man, Daniel McGair. A parish apothecary had him in charge. The apothecary was a coarse good-natured fellow, one of that class of ignorant men upon whose brains the dregs of a refined agnosticism have settled down in the form of arrogant assumption. He had enough knowledge of the external matters of science to know, upon receiving Skelton's card, that he was receiving a visitor of distinction. 'Yes, sir,' he said, leading the way out of the dispensary, 'I'll exhibit the case. I don't know that there's much that's remarkable about it. Of course, to us who take an interest in science, all these things are interesting in their way.'

It was quite clear he did not know in what way the most special interest accrued to this case.

'No sir, he ain't in the Union; he saved, and bought his cottage before his stroke, so that's where he is. He ain't got no kith or kin, as far as we know.'

It was bright noonday when they walked through the narrow streets of mean houses, passing among the numerous children which swarm in such localities. The sun was shining, the children were shouting, the women were gossiping at their doors, when the apothecary stopped at a low one-roomed cottage, the home of Daniel McGair. He opened the door with a key and went in, as though the house were empty.

It was a plain bare room; there was no curtain on the window and the sun shone in. There was a smouldering fire in the grate, a bookshelf on one side, still holding its dusty and unused volumes; there was an arm-chair—was that the chair in which he had sat to see his love-gifts trampled down, in which he had received that mysterious stroke from the unseen enemy? There was also a table in the room, and a chest, and, in the corner, a pallet-bed, upon which lay the withered body of a man. That was all, except some prints that hung upon the wall, dusty and lifeless-looking. Such changes do years of disuse make in dwellings which, when inhabited, have been replete with human interest. Even yet there was abundant indication that the room had once been the abode of one who put much of his own personality into his surroundings. The chair and the chest were carved with a rude device—the Devil grappling with the Son of God. The prints were crude allegorical representations of Life and Death. The books were full of the violent polemic of the Reformation. A flowerpot stood on the window-sill; perhaps ten years ago it had had a flower in it, but now it held the apothecary's empty phials. Everything proclaimed the room tenantless.

Skelton walked to the bed and looked down upon it with profound curiosity. Only the head lay above the coverlet; withered and shrunken it was, yet the brow was high, and it was plain that the features had been fine and strong, betokening the once keen and sensitive nerve—there was nothing sensitive now; all thought and feeling had for ever fled. The half-shut lids disclosed the vacant eyes; the hair lay clammy and matted on the wrinkled brow; there was nothing of life left but the breath.

'It's my opinion, sir, that he'll live out his natural time. It's a theory of mine that we are all born with a certain length of life in us, and, barring accident, that time we'll live. Well, of course this man had the accident of his stroke, which by rights ought to have done for him, but by some fluke he weathered it, and now he'll live out his time. If one could find out his ancestors and see how long they each lived, with a little calculation I could tell you how long he'd lie there.' With that the apothecary poked his patient in the cheek, and jerked him by the arm, to show Skelton how completely consciousness was gone. He would have treated a corpse with more respect: the lowest of us has some reverence for death.

Just then the door, which had been left ajar, was pushed open, and a slight, sweet-faced woman came in from the street. She was evidently a district Bible-reader, but, although perceiving that she had entered a house where she was not needed, she advanced as far as the bed and looked down upon it with a passion of tenderness and pity depicted on her face.

'Bless you, mum, he ain't suff'ring,' said the apothecary.

'I was thinking of his soul, not of his body,' she said. 'I was wondering if he had been prepared to meet his Creator.'

'Where do you suppose his soul is?' asked Skelton curiously. He asked the question in all reverence; she was not a lady apparently, only a working woman, but there was about her the strong majesty of a noble life.

'He is not dead yet,' she replied with evident astonishment.

'Lor, mum,' said the apothecary, 'his brain ain't in working order just at present, and as for his spirit apart from his body, that's an unknown quantity we scientific men don't deal in.'

She looked at them both with a look of indescribable compassion, and went away. Skelton would fain have followed the woman out into the sunny street, but he remained to pay that courtesy which was due to the brusque good nature of his companion.

After examining the room and finding nothing more of interest, he went and talked over the physical circumstances of the case with the parish doctor. He did not gain much information about the patient's diseased body, and naturally none whatever concerning the whereabouts of his soul. The peculiar interest of the case he did not mention to any one. Afterwards he went back to the neighbourhood by himself, and endeavoured, as quietly as possible, to find out what traces the man's past life had left upon the minds of his neighbours. Ten years bring more change to any community than we are apt to suppose; and among the poor, where rude necessity rules rather than choice, there is more change than among the rich. There were a few who had seen McGair moving up and down the streets, and knew him to have been a book-binder by trade. One or two remembered the widow Wilkes and her daughter, and could affirm that they had been friends of McGair and had moved away after his illness. Whither they had gone no one knew.

When there was nothing more to be seen or heard at Yarm, Skelton went home. Again he threw himself into all the daily interests of his life in order that he might think the more dispassionately of the circumstances of this strange case. In truth it was not now entirely out of curiosity that he was tempted to think of it; his sympathy had been stirred by the courage and sorrow of the woman whom he had so idly accosted on that bright autumn day only a few weeks before. She had appealed to him because he had knowledge. Was all his knowledge, then, powerless to help her? He believed that the shadowy appearance which dogged her footsteps could only be some projection of mind, whether or not its cause was the strong will of the paralytic transcending the ordinary limits of time and space, he could not tell. Certainly no discussion as to its nature and origin could in any way aid its victim, and he could only fall back upon the comfort material kindness and sympathy could give. At last he went down once more to West Chilton, this time for the express purpose of seeing Jen.

He found the cottage in the glen road near the village, and his knock was answered by Jen herself. She recognised him instantly, but was too pre-occupied to take much interest in the fact of his coming. He learned that her mother had just died, and that the neighbours were in the house, keeping vigil during the few sad days preceding the burial. It was evident that there was little real sympathy between them and the bereaved daughter, so he easily persuaded her to come out and walk a bit up the road with him. She did so, evidently supposing that he had some business with her, but too deeply buried in her sorrow to inquire what it was.

They came to the house by the roadside where he had last seen her and she had been unconscious of his presence. The place seemed to rouse her from the dulness of grief, and she suddenly raised her head, like a beautiful animal scenting some cause of excitement, and stood still, looking round with brightened eyes, taking long deep breaths in the pure frosty air. No doubt she had passed the same road many times since the tryst, but the mind which has lately stood face to face with death perceives more clearly the true relations of all things to itself; and, in this spot, among all life's shiftings of the things that seem and are not, she had stood and wrestled with the reality of her ghostly bondage.

All about them the hills were covered with the year's first snow. How bright the light was upon their heights! how soft the shadows that gathered in their slopes! The fields were white also, and the hedgerows. Above them the sky was veiled with snow clouds, soft and grey, except that at the verge of east and west there were faint metallic lines, such as one sees upon clouds across snowfields, like the pale reflections of a distant fire. Jen had come to a full stop now. She raised her hands to her face and sobbed out like a little child.

Skelton stood by her, feeling his own feebleness. 'I know you are in great trouble,' he said.

Her sobs did not last long; she soon mastered them, not by any art of concealment but by rude force. Then standing shame-faced, with half-averted head, she wiped her eyes with her apron.

'Yes, sir, I'm in great trouble, greater ner ye can know, fur death's neither here nor there—it's living that's hard. Parson, he speaks out about preparing to die, but to my mind it takes a sight more preparing to know how to go on living.'

'I know that you have greater trouble than your mother's death. I know that you love a young man who loves you, and also what it is that you think keeps you apart from him.'

'And how do you know that, sir?' she asked, still with averted face.

Then he confessed, humbly enough, just how he did know it, and all that he knew, and told her about his visit to Yarm. When he spoke of Yarm and his visit to Daniel McGair she turned and looked full at him, drinking in every word with hungry curiosity.

'Yes, sir, we left the place, an' I haven't heard o' him this nine year, but I knowed he wasn't dead.'

'How did you know that, Jen?'

'Because, sir, when God A'mighty sees fit that he should die, I'll be free o' him, that's all.'

'And aren't you going to marry?'

'Noae, sir. Johnnie an' me has talked it over, an' he says as how he'll wait till such time as I'm free. An' I didn't say "no" to him, fur when one knows what it is to love true, sir, one knows well it's noae use to say as this thing's best or t'other, but just it's like being taken up like a leaf by the wind an' moved whether one will or no. There's just this diff'rence betwixt true love an' the common kind—the common kind o' love moves ye i' the wrong way, an' true love i' the right; fur it's a true word the blessed St. John said when he said that love is God.'

'Did St. John say that?' said Skelton.

'Yes, sir, I read it to mother just afore she died. An' Johnnie's gone across the sea, sir, wi' his mother; he got a right good chance to better hisself, an' I made him go. His ship sailed the day after Christmas; an' I said, "Johnnie, I'll bide here, an' God 'ull take care o' me as well as ye could yerself;" an' I said, "Johnnie, I'll pray every day, night an' morning, that if ye can forget me, ye will; for if ye can forget, then yer love's not o' the right sort, as I could take, or God 'ud want ye to give; and if ye can't forget, then there's nowt to say but as I'll bide here." An' I said, sir, as he munna think as loving him made me sad, fur I was a big sight happier to love him, if he forgets or if he comes again.'

'Will you live here; Jen, where the neighbours distrust you?'

'It 'ud just be the same any other place, sir, an' here I can work i' the fields, spring and harvest, an' earn my own bread. I know the fields, sir, an' the hills—they's like friends to me now, an' I knows the dumb things about, an' they all knows me. It's a sight o' help one can get, sir, when one's down wi' the sorrow o' all the world lying on the heart, to have a kind look an' a word wi' the dogs an' cows when they comes down the hills fur the milking. An' the children they mostly lets come to me now, though they kep 'em from me at first.

Then he told her that he had come a long way on purpose to see if he could help her; that he felt ashamed of having listened to her story, and that it would give him happiness in some way or other to make her life more easy. He explained that he had a great deal of money and many friends, and could easily give her anything that these could procure. In saying this he did not disguise from himself for a moment that his motive was mixed, and that he desired to gain some hold over her, such as benevolence could give, that he might further examine the problem of her extraordinary misfortune. Even as he spoke he marvelled at the strength of his respect for her, which could so outweigh his own interest as to make it impossible that he should interfere in her affairs otherwise than with all deference, as if she were a lady.

When he had made it quite clear to her that he was able and willing to give her anything she should ask, she thought of his words a while, and then answered—

'I thank ye, sir, but there's nowt ye can do o' that sort, fur if there was I'd take it from Johnnie an' none other. But there's one thing I'll ask, sir, an' wi' all yer kind offers ye can't but agree to it, fur it's not much. Ye've found out this tale o' my life; there's none else as knows it, save mother lying dead, an' Johnnie I telled fur love's sake, an' him as lies palsied i' Yarm—God A'mighty only knows, sir, what Dan'el McGair could tell on't—but this I ask, sir,—that ye'll keep all ye knows an' say nowt. I did Dan'el a great wrong, for I smiled on him whiles for the sake o' power; not but what he did me a worse wrong, so far worse that whiles I think no woman has so sore a life as me; but I did do him wrong, sir, and fur that reason I'll not ha' his name blazed abroad, hanging on to a tale as 'ud buzz i' the ears o' all. To tell it 'ud not make my life worse but better, fur now them as sees this thing says dark things, an' speaks o' the devil an' worse. The times ha' been when I cursed God an' prayed to die, but, thank Heaven, when I learned what love was, I learned as God A'mighty can love us in spite o' our wrong-doing, an' the pain it brings. Th' use o' such sore pain as mine, sir, isna fur us to say, or to think great things to bear it patient; but the use o' life, sir, to my thinking, is to keep all His creatures from pain if we can, an' to take God's love like the sunshine, an' be thankful. So I'll ask ye to keep what ye knows o' this tale an' not speak on't, an' go no more to Yarm; an' if ye'll give me yer hand on that, sir, I'll thank ye kindly.'

So he gave her his hand on it, and went away.



XII

A FREAK OF CUPID

CHAPTER I

The earth was white, the firmament was white, the plumage of the wind was white. The wind flew between curling drift and falling cloud, brushing all comers with its feathers of light dry snow. At the sides of the road the posts and bars of log-fences stood above the drifts; on the side of the hill the naked maple trees formed a soft brush of grey; just in sight, and no more, the white tin roof and grey walls of a huge church and a small village were visible; all else was unbroken snow. The surface of an ice-covered lake, the sloping fields, the long straight road between the fences, were as pure, in their far-reaching whiteness, as the upper levels of some cloud in shadeless air.

A young Englishman was travelling alone through this region. He had set out from the village and was about to cross the lake. A shaggy pony, a small sleigh, a couple of buffalo-robes and a portmanteau formed his whole equipment. The snow was light and dry; the pony trotted, although the road was soft; the young man, wrapped in his fur-lined coat, had little to do in driving.

In England no one would set out in such a storm; but this traveller had learned that in Canada the snowy vast is regarded as a plaything, or a good medium of transit, or at the worst, an encumbrance to be plodded through as one plods through storms of rain. He had found that he was not expected to remain at an inn merely because it snowed, and, being a man of spirit, he had on this day, as on others, done what was expected of him.

To-day, in the snow and wind, there was a slight difference from the storms of other days. The innkeeper, who had given him his horse an hour before by the walls of the great tin-roofed church, had looked at the sky and the snow, and asked if he knew the road well; but this had been accepted as an ignorant distrust of the foreign gentleman. Having learned his lesson, that through falling snow he must travel, into the heart of this greater snowstorm he travelled, valiant, if somewhat doubtful.

When he descended upon the ice of the lake he was no longer accompanied by the grey length of the log-fences. This road across the lake had been well tracked after former snowfalls, and so the untrodden snow rose high on either side; branches of fir and cedar, stuck at short intervals in these snow walls, marked out the way. The pony ceased to trot. The driver was only astonished that this cessation of speed had not come sooner.

Standing up in his sleigh and looking round he could see two or three other sleighs travelling across nearer the village. The village he could no longer see, scarcely even the hill, nor was there any communication over the deep untrodden snow between his road and that other on which there were travellers.

Another hour passed, and now, as he went on slowly up the length of the lake, all sound and sight of other sleighs were lost. The cloud was not dark; the snow fell in such small flakes that it did not seem that even an infinite number of them could bury the world; the wind drifting them together, though strong, was not boisterous; the March evening did not soon darken: and yet there was something in the determined action of cloud and wind and snow, making the certainty that night would come with no abatement, which caused even the inexperienced Englishman to perceive that he was passing into the midst of a heavy storm.

As is frequently the case with travellers, he had certain directions concerning the road which appeared to be adequate until he was actually confronted with that small portion of the earth's surface to which it was necessary to apply them. He was to take the first road which crossed his, running from side to side of the lake; but the first cross track appeared to him so narrow and so deeply drifted that he did not believe it to be the public road he sought. 'Some farm, hidden in the level maple bush just seen through the falling snow, sends an occasional cart to the village by this by-path,' so he reassured himself; and the pony, who had spied the track first and paused to have time to consider it, at the word of command obediently plodded its continuous route. A quarter of a mile farther on the traveller saw something on the road in front; as the sound of his pony's jangling bells approached, a horse lifted its head and shook its own bells. The horse, the sleigh which it ought to have been drawing, were standing still, full in the centre of the road. The first thought, that it was cheering to come upon the trace of another wayfarer, was checked by the gloomy idea that some impassable drift must bar the way.

The other sleigh was a rough wooden platform on runners. Upon it a man, wrapped in a ragged buffalo-skin, lay prostrate. The Englishman jumped to the ground and waded till he could lay his hand upon the recumbent figure.

At the touch the man jumped fiercely, and shook himself from sleep. Warm, luxurious sleep, only that, seemed to have enthralled him. His cheeks were red, his aquiline nose, red also, suggested some amount of strong drink; but his black eyes were bright, showing that the senses were wholly alive. He looked defiant, inquiring. He was a French-Canadian, apparently a habitant, but he understood the English questions addressed to him. The curious thing was that he seemed to have no reason for stopping. When he had with difficulty made way for the gentleman to pass him on the road, he followed slowly, as it seemed reluctantly. A mile farther on the Englishman, now far in front, suspected that the other had again stopped, and wondered much. The man's face had impressed him; the high cheek bones, the aquiline nose, the clearness of the eye and complexion—these had not expressed dull folly.

Now the Englishman came to another cross road, wider but more deeply drifted than the track he was on. He turned into it and ploughed the drifts. When he reached the shore, where the land undulated, the drifts were still deeper. There were no trees here; he could see no house; there was hardly any evidence, except the evergreen branches stuck in the sides, that the road had ever been trodden. The March dusk had now fallen, yet not darkly. The full moon was beyond the clouds, and whatever wave of light came from declining day or rising night was held in by, and reflected softly from, the storm of pearl. After some debate he turned back to the lake and his former road. It must lead somewhere; he pressed steadily on toward the western end of the lake.

The western shore was level; he hardly knew when he was upon the land. The glimmering night blinded the traveller; no ray of candle light was in sight. He began to think that he was destined to see his horse slowly buried, and himself to fight, as long as might be, a losing battle with the fiends of the air.

At last the plodding pony stopped again resolutely. Long lines of Lombardy poplars here met the road. They were but as the ghosts of trees; their stately shape, their regular succession, inspired him with some sentiment of romance which he did not stay to define. He dimly discerned shrubs as if planted in a pleasure-ground. Wading and fumbling he found a paling and a gate. The pony turned off the high road with renewed courage in its motion; the Englishman, letting loose the rein, found himself drawn slowly up a long avenue of the ghostly poplar trees. The road was straight, the land was flat, the poplars were upright. The simplicity affected him with the notion that he was coming to an enchanted palace. The pony approached the door of a large house, dim to the sight; its huge pointed tin roof, its stone sides, mantled as they were with snowflakes and fringed with icicles at eaves and lintels, hardly gave a dark outline in the glimmering storm. The rays of light which twinkled through chinks of shutters might be analogous to the stars produced by a stunned brain; it seemed to the Englishman that if he went up and tried to knock on the door the ghostly house, the ghostly poplar avenue, would vanish. The thought was born of the long monotony of a danger which had called for no activity of brain or muscle on his part. The pony knew better; it stopped before the door.

The traveller stood in a small porch raised a step or two from the ground. The door was opened by a middle-aged Frenchwoman clad in a peasant's gown of bluish-grey. Behind her, holding a lamp a little above her head, stood a young girl, large, womanly in form, with dimpled softness of face, and dressed in a rich but quaint garment of amber colour. With raised and statuesque wrist she held the lamp aloft to keep the light from dazzling her eyes. She was looking through the doorway with the quiet interest of responsibility, nothing of which was expressed in the servant's furrowed countenance.

'Is the master of the house at home?'

'There is no master.'

The girl spoke with a mellow voice and with a manner of soft dignity; yet, having regarded the stranger, there leaped into her face, as it seemed to him, behind the outward calm of the dark eyes and dimpling curves, a certain excited interest and delight. The current of thought thus revealed contrasted with the calm which she instinctively turned to him, as the words which an actor speaks aside contrast with those which are not soliloquy.

With more hesitation, more obvious modesty, he said—

'May I speak to the mistress of the house?'

'I am the mistress.'

He could but look upon her more intently. She could not have been more than eighteen years of age. Her hair had the soft and loose manner of lying upon her head that is often seen in hair which has, till lately, been allowed to hang loose to the winds. Her dress, folded over the full bosom and sweeping to the ground in ample curves, was, little as he could have described a modern fashion, even to his eyes evidently fantastic—such as a child might don at play. Above all, as evidence of her youth, there was that inward quiver of delight at his appearance and presence, veiled perfectly, but seen behind the veil, as one may detect glee rising in the heart of a child even though it be upon its formal behaviour.

'Can you tell me if there is any house within reach where I can stop for the night?' He gave a succinct account of his journey, the lost road, the increasing storm. 'My horse is dead tired, but it might go a mile or so farther.'

The serving-woman, evincing some little curiosity, received from the girl an interpretation in low and rapid French. The woman expressed by her gestures some pity for man and beast. The girl replied with gentle brevity—

'We know that the roads are snowed up. The next house is three miles farther on.'

He hesitated, but his necessity was obvious.

'I am afraid I must beg for a night's shelter.'

He had been wondering a good deal what she would say, how she would accede, and then he perceived that her dignity knew no circumlocution. 'I will send the man for your horse.' She said it with hardly a moment's pause.

The woman gave him a small broom, an implement to the use of which he had grown accustomed, and disappeared upon the errand. The girl stood still in her statuesque pose of light-bearer. The young man busied himself in brushing the snow from cap and coat and boots. As he brushed himself he felt elation in the knowledge, not ordinarily uppermost, that he was a good-looking fellow and a gentleman.



CHAPTER II

'My name is Courthope.' The visitor, denuded of coat and cap, presented his card, upon which was written, 'Mr. George Courthope.'

He began telling his hostess whence he came and what was his business. A quarry which a dead relative had bequeathed to him had had sufficient attraction to bring him across the sea and across this railless region. His few words of self-introduction were mingled with and followed by regrets for his intrusion, expressions of excessive gratitude. All the time his mind was questioning amazedly.

By the time the speeches which he deemed necessary were finished, he had followed the girl into a spacious room, furnished in the large gay style of the fifties, brilliantly lit, as if for a festival, and warmed by a log fire of generous dimensions. Having led him in, listening silently the while, and put her additional lamp upon the table, she now spoke, with no empressement, almost with a manner of insouciance.

'You are perfectly welcome; my father would never have wished his house to be inhospitable.'

With her words his own apologies seemed to lose their significance; he felt a little foolish, and she, with some slight evidence of childish awkwardness, seemed to seek a pretext for short escape.

'I will tell my sister.' These words came with more abruptness, as if the interior excitement was working itself to the surface.

The room was a long one. She went out by a door at the farther end, and, as with intense curiosity he watched her quickly receding form, he noticed that when she thought herself out of his sight she entered the other room with a skip. At that same end of the room hung a full-length portrait of a gentleman. It was natural that Courthope should walk towards it, trying to become acquainted with some link in the train of circumstances which had raised this enchanted palace in the wilderness; he had not followed to hear, but he overheard.

'Eliz, it's a real young man!'

'No! you are only making up, and' (here a touch of querulousness) 'I've often told you that I don't like make-ups that one wants too much to be true. I'll only have the Austens and Sir Charles and Evelina and——'

'Eliz! He's not a make-up; the fairies have sent him to our party. Isn't it just fairilly entrancing? He has a curly moustache and a nice nose. He's English, like father. He says "cawn't," and "shawn't," and "heah," and "theyah,"—genuine, no affectation. Oh' (here came a little gurgle of joy), 'and to-night, too! It's the first perfectly joyful thing that has ever come to us.'

Courthope moved quietly back and stood before the blazing logs, looking down into them with a smile of pure pleasure upon his lips.

It was not long before the door, which she had left ajar, was re-opened, and a light-wheeled chair was pushed into the room. It contained a slight, elfin-like girl, white-faced, flaxen-haired, sharp-featured, and arrayed in gorgeous crimson. The elder sister pushed from behind. The little procession wore an air of triumphant satisfaction, still tempered by the proprieties.

'This is my sister,' said the mistress of the house.

'I am very glad to see you, Mr. Courthope.' The tones of Eliz were sharp and thin. She was evidently acting a part, as with the air of a very grand lady she held out her hand.

He was somewhat dazzled. He felt it not inappropriate to ask if he had entered fairyland. Eliz would have answered him with fantastic affirmative, but the elder sister, like a sensible child who knew better how to arrange the game, interposed.

'I'll explain it to you. Eliz and I are giving a party to-night. There hasn't been any company in the house since father died four years ago, and we know he wouldn't like us to be dull, so when our stepmother went out, and sent word that she couldn't come back to-night, we decided to have a grand party. There are only to be play-people, you know; all the people in Miss Austen's books are coming, and the nice ones out of Sir Charles Grandison.'

She paused to see if he understood.

'Are the Mysteries of Udolpho invited?' he asked.

'No, the others we just chose here and there, because we liked them—Evelina, although she was rather silly and we told her that we couldn't have Lord Ormond, and Miss Matty and Brother Peter out of Cranford, and Moses Wakefield, because we liked him best of the family, and the Portuguese nun who wrote the letters. We thought we would have liked to invite the young man in Maud to meet her, but we decided we should have to draw the line somewhere and leave out the poetry-people.'

The girl, leaning her forearms slightly on the back of her sister's chair, gave the explanation in soft, business-like tones, and there was only the faintest lurking of a smile about the corners of her lips to indicate that she kept in view both reality and fantasy.

'I think that I shall have to ask for an introduction to the Portuguese nun,' said Courthope; 'the others, I am happy to say, I have met before.'

A smile of approval leapt straight out of her dark eyes into his, as if she would have said: 'Good boy! you have read quite the right sort of books!'

Eliz was not endowed with the same well-balanced sense of proportion; for the time the imaginary was the real.

'The only question that remains to be decided,' she cried, 'is what you would prefer to be. We will let you choose—Bingley, or Darcy, or——'

'It would be fair to tell him,' said the other, her smile broadening now, 'that it's only the elderly people and notables who have been invited to dinner, the young folks are coming in after; so if you are hungry——' Her soft voice paused, as if suspended in mid-air, allowing him to draw the inference.

'It depends entirely on who you are, who I would like to be.' He did not realise that there was undue gallantry in his speech; he felt exactly like another child playing, loyally determined to be her mate, whatever the character that might entail. 'I will even be the idiotic Edward if you are Eleanor Dashwood.'

Her chin was raised just half-an-inch higher; the smile that had been peeping from eyes and dimples seemed to retire for the moment.

'Oh, we,' she said, 'are the hostesses. My sister is Eliz King and I am Madge King, and I think you had better be a real person too; just a Mr. Courthope, come in by accident.'

'Well, then, he can help us in the receiving and chatting to them.' Eliz was quite reconciled.

He felt glad to realise that his mistake had been merely playful. 'In that case, may I have dinner without growing grey?' He asked it of Madge, and her smile came back, so readily did she forget what she had hardly consciously perceived.

When the sharp-voiced little Eliz had been wheeled into the dining-room to superintend some preparations there before the meal was ready, Courthope could again break through the spell that the imaginary reception imposed. He came from his dressing-room to find Madge at the housewifely act of replenishing the fire. Filled with curiosity, unwilling to ask questions, he remarked that he feared she must often feel lonely, that he supposed Mrs. King did not often make visits unaccompanied by her daughters.

'She does not, worse luck!' Madge on her knees replied with childish audacity.

'I hope when she returns she may not be offended by my intrusion.'

'Don't hope it,'—she smiled—'such hope would be vain.'

He could not help laughing.

'Is it dutiful then of you'—he paused—'or of me?'

'Which do you prefer—to sleep in the barn, or that I should be undutiful and disobey my stepmother?'

In a minute she gave her chin that lift in the air that he had seen before.

'You need not feel uncomfortable about Mrs. King; the house is really mine, not hers, and father always had his house full of company. I am doing my duty to him in taking you in, and in making a feast to please Eliz when the stepmother happens to be away and I can do it peaceably. And when she happens to be here I do my duty to him by keeping the peace with her.'

'Is she unkind to you?' he asked, with the ready, overflowing pity that young men are apt to give to pretty women who complain.

But she would have him know that she had not complained.

There was no bitterness in her tone—her philosophy of life was all sweetness. 'No! Bless her! God made her, I suppose, just as He made us; so, according to the way she is made, she packs away all the linen and silver, she keeps this room shut up for fear it will get worn out, and we never see any visitors. But to-day she went away to St. Philippe to see a dying man—I think she was going to convert him or something; but he took a long time to die; and now we may be snowed up for days, and we are going to have a perfectly glorious time.' She added hospitably, 'You need not feel under the slightest obligation, for it gives us pleasure to have you, and I know that father would have taken you in.'

Courthope rose up and followed her glance, almost an adoring glance, to the portrait he had before observed. He went and stood again face to face with it.

A goodly man was painted there, dressed in a judge's robe. Courthope read the lineaments by the help of the living interpretation of the daughter's likeness. Benevolence in the mouth, a love of good cheer and good friends in the rounded cheeks, a lurking sense of the poetry of life in the quiet eyes, and in the brow reason and a keen sense of right proportion dominant. He would have given something to have exchanged a quiet word with the man in the portrait, whose hospitality, living after him, he was now receiving.

Madge had been arranging the logs to her satisfaction, she would not accept Courthope's aid, and now she told him who were going to dine with them. She had great zest for the play.

'Mr. and Mrs. Bennett, of course, and we thought we might have Mr. Knightley, because he is a squire and not so very young, even though he is not yet married. Miss Bates, of course, and the Westons. Mrs. Dashwood has declined, of which we are rather glad, but we are having Mrs. Jennings.' So she went on with her list. 'We could not help asking Sir Charles with Lord and Lady G——, because he is so important; but Grandmamma Shirley is "mortifying" at present. She wrote that she could not stand "so rich a regale." Sir Hargrave Pollexfen will come afterwards with Harriet, and I am thankful to say that Lady Clementina is not in England at present, so could not be invited.' She stopped, looking up at him freshly to make a comment. 'Don't you detest Lady Clementina?'

When they went into the dining-room, the choice spirits deemed worthy to be at the board were each introduced by name to the Lady Eliz, who explained that because of her infirmities she had been unable to have the honour of receiving them in the drawing-room. She made appropriate remarks, inquiring after the relatives of each, offering congratulations or condolences as the case demanded. It was cleverly done. Courthope stood aside, immensely entertained, and when at last he too began to offer spirited remarks to the imaginary guests, he went up in favour so immensely that Eliz cried, 'Let Mr. Courthope take the end of the table. Let Mr. Courthope be father. It's much nicer to have a master of the house.' She began at once introducing him to the invisible guests as her father, and Madge, if she did not like the fancy, did not cross her will. There was in Madge's manner a large good-humoured tolerance.