(1929)
| Character List | |
| Wolf Solent | A thirty-four year old history teacher, who starts a new life in his birthplace, Ramsgard (Sherborne), Dorset. He resembles John Cowper Powys and has been described as "Powys's mouthpiece for most of the time." Wolf is a follower of Powys's elemental philosophy: he hates science and modern inventions, such as cars and planes, and like Powys is attracted to slender, androgynous women. |
| Gerda Torp | The eighteen-year-old daughter of Blacksod gravedigger and tombstone maker, who is making Redfern's tombstone for Squire Urquart. Wolf is attracted by Gerda's beauty and her affinity with the natural world, symbolized by her ability to whistle like a blackbird. He seduces Gerda within a week of meeting her and then marries her. She is both "a kind of earth spirit" and "at the same time an ordinary country girl." It has been suggested that Gerda is based, in part, on Powys' wife Margaret Lyon. |
| Christie Malakite | Younger daughter of Malakite. She has read widely and has much more in common with Wolf than Gerda. She also "belongs to the boy-girl type" that Powys himself was deeply attracted to. Morine Krissdottir in Descents of Memory suggests that she is based upon Powys's lover Phyllis Playter, whom he met in March 1921, and eventually lived with for the rest of his life. |
| Ann Solent | Wolf's mother. She and Wolf have lived in London since Wolf was ten. She eventually follows Wolf to Dorset. Krisdottir suggests that her character is based on that of Powys sister Marian, who followed him to New York, became an expert in lace and started her own business there. |
| William Solent | Wolf's father, a former history teacher in Ramsgard, he died in the town's workhouse after some scandal. His wife left him and went to live in London when Wolf was ten. |
| Squire John Urquart | Squire of Kings Barton who hires Wolf to help him write his Rabelasian "History of Dorset", a work that concentrates "on scandal and crime. Kings Barton is based on the village of Bradford Abbas between Yeovil and Sherborne. |
| Mattie Smith | Wolf's half sister who marries Darnley Otter at the end of the novel and arranges to adopt Olwen. |
| Selena Gault | an "eccentric ugly woman who is spiritual mother to Wolf", and who had probably been his father's lover. |
| Jason Otter | A poet. Cambridge scholar Glen Cavaliero suggests that "Wolf's interior dialogue with the man on the Waterloo steps is paralleled by his actual dialogue with Jason", who "acts as a kind of malevolent chorus." The novel has "three haunting poems by Jason," and Belinda Humfrey suggests that perhaps these are among the best poems Powys wrote. Jason is apparently based on Powys's brother Theodore Powys the novelist and writer of short stories. |
| Darnley Otter | His brother. At the end of the novel he marries Mattie Smith. |
| Lord Carfax | A cousin and former lover of Wolf's mother. He found Wolf his job with Urquart, and at the end of the novel intervenes to help various people,
including restoring Gerda's ability to whistle, which she lost during her marriage to Wolf. |
| James Redfern | He was Urquart's secretary before Wolf and he drowned in Lenty Pond "in mysterious circum- stances". It appears that Urquart was in love with this "beautiful young man."The local people refer to Wolf as Redfern Two,"and wait for him to drown in Lenty Pond". |
| Roger Monk | Urquart's manservant. |
| Bob Weevil | A shop assistant, Wolf's main rival for Gerda'a affections, who cuckolds him. |
| Lobbie Torp | Gerda's young brother. |
| Malakite | A pornographic bookseller in Blacksod. At the end of the novel, dying after falling down the stairs, he tells Wolf that Christie pushed him. |
| Olwen | She is the child of an incestuous union between Malakite and his elder daughter. |
| Stalbridge | A waiter who Wolf "has identified as the incarnation of that suffering face" on the steps of Waterloo Station. He is one of those Lord Carfax helps at the end of Wolf Solent. |
| T. E. Valley | A clergyman and one of several homosexual characters in the novel. |
| Gerda Torp | |
CONTENTS
VOLUME ONE
1 The Face on the Waterloo Steps
2 "Christ! I've had a happy life!"
3 A Dorset Chronicle
4 Gerda
5 The Blackbird's Song
6 Bar Sinister
7 Yellow Bracken
8 The Three Peewits
9 The Horse-Fair
10 Christie
11 The Tea-Party
12 The Slow-Worm of Lenty
13 Home for Bastards
14 Crooked Smoke
15 Rounded with a Sleep
VOLUME TWO
16 A Game of Bowls
17 "This is Reality"
18 The School-Treat
19 Wine
20 Mr. Malakite at Weymouth
21 "Slate"
22 The Quick or the Dead?
23 Lenty Pond
24 "Forget"
25 Ripeness is All
THE FACE ON THE WATERLOO STEPS
FROM WATERLOO STATION TO THE SMALL COUNTRY
town of Ramsgard in Dorset is a journey of not more
than three or four hours, but having by good luck
found a compartment to himself, Wolf Solent was able
to indulge in such an orgy of concentrated thought, that
these three or four hours lengthened themselves out into
something beyond all human measurement.
A bluebottle fly buzzed up and down above his head,
every now and then settling on one of the coloured ad-
vertisements of seaside resorts Weymouth, Swanage, Lul-
worth, and Poole cleaning its front legs upon the masts
of painted ships or upon the sands of impossibly cerulean
waters.
Through the open window near which he sat, facing
the engine, the sweet airs of an unusually relaxed March
morning visited his nostrils, carrying fragrances of young
green shoots, of wet muddy ditches, of hazel-copses
full of damp moss, and of primroses on warm grassy
hedge-banks.
Solent was not an ill-favoured man; but on the other
hand he was not a prepossessing one. His short stubbly
hair was of a bleached tow-colour. His forehead as well
as his rather shapeless chin had a tendency to slope
backward, a peculiarity which had the effect of throwing
the weight of his character upon the curve of his hooked
nose and upon the rough, thick eyebrows that overarched
his deeply sunken grey eyes.
He was tall and lean; and as he stretched out his legs
and clasped his hands in front of him and bowed his
head over his bony wrists, it would have been difficult
to tell whether the goblinish grimaces that occasionally
wrinkled his physiognomy were fits of sardonic chuckling
or spasms of reckless desperation.
His mood, whatever its elements may have been, was
obviously connected with a crumpled letter which he
more than once drew forth from his side-pocket, rapidly
glanced over, and replaced, only to relapse into the same
pose as before.
The letter which thus affected him was written in a
meticulously small hand and ran as follows:
MY DEAR SIR:
Will you be so kind as to arrive at Ramsgard on Thursday
in time to meet my friend Mr. Darnley Otter about five o'clock
in the tea-room of the Lovelace Hotel? He will be driving over
to King's Barton that afternoon and will convey you to his
mother's house, where for the present you will have your room.
If it is convenient I would regard it as a favour if you will
come up and dine with me on the night of your arrival. I dine
at eight o'clock; and we shall be able to talk things over.
I must again express my pleasure at your so prompt acceptance
of my poor offer.
Yours faithfully,
JOHN URQUHART.
He re-invoked the extraordinary incident which had
led to his "prompt acceptance" of Mr. Urquhart's "poor
offer."
He was now thirty-five and for ten years he had labori-
ously taught History at a small institution in the city
of London, living peacefully under the despotic affection
of his mother, with whom, when he was only a child of
ten, he had left Dorsetshire, and along with Dorsetshire
all the agitating memories of his dead father.
As it happened, his new post, as literary assistant to
the Squire of King's Barton, brought him to the very
scene of these disturbing memories; for it was from a
respectable position as History Master in Ramsgard
School that his father had descended, by a series of
mysterious headlong plunges, until he lay dead in the
cemetery of that town, a byword of scandalous depravity.
It was only the fact that the Squire of King's Barton
was a relative of Lord Carfax, a cousin of Wolf's mother,
that had made it possible for him to find a retreat, suit-
able to his not very comprehensive abilities, after the
astounding denouement of his London life.
He could visualize now, as if it had occurred that very
day instead of two months ago, the outraged anger upon
his mother's face, when he communicated to her what
had happened. He had danced his "malice-dance"--that
is how he himself expressed it--in the middle of an
innocent discourse on the reign of Queen Anne. He was
telling his pupils quite quietly about Dean Swift; and
all of a sudden some mental screen or lid or dam in his
own mind completely collapsed and he found himself
pouring forth a torrent of wild, indecent invectives
upon every aspect of modern civilization.
He had, in fact, so at least he told his mother, danced
his "malice-dance" on that quiet platform to so abandoned
a tune, that no "authorities," in so far as they retained
their natural instincts at all, could possibly condone it.
And now, with that event behind him, he was escaping
from the weight of maternal disapproval into the very
region where the grand disaster of his mother's life
had occurred.
They had had some very turbulent scenes after the
receipt of Mr. Urquhart's first answer to his appeal.
But as she had no income, and only very limited savings,
the sheer weight of economic necessity drove her into
submission.
"You shall come down to me there when I've got a
cottage," he had flung out; and her agitated, handsome
face, beneath its disordered mass of wavy, grey hair,
had hardened itself under the impact of those words, as
if he had taken up her most precious tea-set and dashed
it into fragments al her feet.
One of the suppressed emotions that had burst forth
on that January afternoon had had to do with the appal-
ling misery of so many of his fellow Londoners. He
recalled the figure of a man he had seen on the steps
outside Waterloo Station. The inert despair upon the
face that this figure had turned towards him came be-
tween him now and a hillside covered with budding
beeches. The face was repeated many times among those
great curving masses of emerald-clear foliage. It was
an English face; and it was also a Chinese face, a Russian
face, an Indian face. It had the variableness of that
Protean wine of the priestess Bacbuc. It was just the
face of a man, of a mortal man against whom Providence
had grown as malignant as a mad dog. And the woe
upon the face was of such a character that Wolf knew
at once that no conceivable social readjustments or
ameliorative revolutions could ever atone for it--could
ever make up for the simple irremediable fact that it
had been as it had been!
By the time the hill of beeches had disappeared, he
caught sight of a powerful motor-lorry clanging its way
along a narrow road, leaving a cloud of dust behind it,
and the sight of this thing gave his thought a new di-
rection. There arose before him, complicated and inhuman,
like a moving tower of instruments and appliances, the
monstrous Apparition of Modern Invention.
He felt as though, with aeroplanes spying down upon every
retreat like ubiquitous vultures, with the lanes invaded
by iron-clad motors like colossal beetles, with no sea,
no lake, no river, free from throbbing, thudding engines,
the one thing most precious of all in the world was be-
ing steadily assassinated.
In the dusty, sunlit space of that small tobaccostained
carriage, he seemed to see, floating and helpless, an
image of the whole round earth! And he saw it bleeding
and victimized, like a smooth-bellied, vivisected frog.
He saw it scooped and gouged and scraped and harrowed.
He saw it hawked at out of the humming air. He saw it
netted in a quivering entanglement of vibrations, heav-
ing and shuddering under the weight of iron and stone.
Where, he asked himself, as for the twentieth time he
took out and put back Mr. Urquhart's letter where, in
such a vivisected frog's-belly of a world, would there
be a place left for a person to think any single thought
that was leisurely and easy? And, as he asked himself
this and mentally formed a visual image of what he
considered "thought," such "thought" took the form of
slowly stirring, vegetable leaves, big as elephants' feet,
hanging from succulent and cold stalks on the edges of
woodland swamps.
And then, stretching out his legs still further and
leaning back against the dusty cushions, he set himself
to measure the resources of his spirit against these ac-
cursed mechanisms. He did this quite gravely, with no
comic uneasiness at the arrogance of such a proceeding.
Why should he not pit his individual magnetic strength
against the tyrannous machinery invented by other men?
In fact, the thrill of malicious exultation that passed
through his nerves as he thought of these things had a
curious resemblance to the strange ecstasy he used to
derive from certain godlike mythological legends. He
would never have confessed to any living person the
intoxicating enlargement of personality that used to come
to him from imagining himself a sort of demiurgic force,
drawing its power from the heart of Nature herself.
And it was just that sort of enlargement he experienced
now, when he felt the mysterious depths of his soul
stirred and excited by his defiance of these modern
inventions. It was not as though he fell back on any
traditional archaic obstinacy. What he fell back upon
was a crafty, elusive cunning of his own, a cunning both
slippery and serpentine, a cunning that could flow like
air, sink like rain-water, rise like green sap, root itself
like invisible spores of moss, float like filmy pond-scum,
yield and retreat, retreat and yield, yet remain unconquered
and inviolable!
As he stared out the open window and watched each span
of telegraph-wires sink slowly down till the next tele-
graph-post pulled them upward with a jerk, he indulged
himself in a sensation which always gave him a peculiar
pleasure, the sensation of imagining himself to be a
prehistoric giant who with an effortless ease ran along
by the side of the train, leaping over hedges, ditches,
lanes, and ponds, and easily rivalled, in naturalborn
silent speed, the noisy mechanism of all those pistons
and cog-wheels!
He felt himself watching this other-self, this leaping
giant, with the positive satisfaction of a hooded snake,
thrusting out a flickering forked tongue from coils that
shimmered in the sun. And yet as the train rushed forward,
it seemed to him as if his real self were neither
giant nor snake; but rather that black-budded ashtree,
still in the rearward of its leafy companions, whose
hushed grey branches threw so contorted a shadow upon
the railway bank.
Soon the train that carried him ran rapidly past the
queer-looking tower of Basingstoke church, and his
thoughts took yet another turn. There was a tethered
cow eating grass in the churchyard; and as for the space
of a quarter of a minute he watched this cow, it gathered
to itself such an inviolable placidity that its feet seemed
planted in a green pool of quietness that was older than
life itself.
But the Basingstoke church-tower substituted itself
for the image of the cow; and it seemed to Solent as
though all the religions in the world were nothing but
so many creaking and splashing barges, whereon the souls
of men ferried themselves over those lakes of primal
silence, disturbing the swaying water-plants that grew
there and driving away the shy water-fowl!
He told himself that every church-tower in the land
overlooked a graveyard, and that in every graveyard
was a vast empty grave waiting for the "Jealous Father
of Men" who lived in the church. He knew there was
just such a church-tower at King's Barton, and another
one at Ramsgard, and yet another at Blacksod, the town
on the further side of Mr. Urquhart's village.
He sat very upright now, as the train approached An-
dover; and the idea came into his head, as he fixed his
gaze on his fellow traveller, the bluebottle fly, who
was cleaning his front legs on a picture of Swanage
pier, that from tower to tower of these West Country
churches there might be sent, one gusty November
night, a long-drawn melancholy cry, a cry heard only
by dogs and horses and geese and cattle and village-
idiots, the real death-cry of a god dead at last of
extreme old age!
"Christ is different from God," he said to himself.
"Only when God is really dead will Christ be known
for what He is. Christ will take the place of God then."
As a sort of deliberate retort to these wild fancies,
the tall spire of Salisbury Cathedral rose suddenly be-
fore him. Here the train stopped; and though even here
possibly because his absorption in his thoughts gave
him a morose and uncongenial appearance no one entered
his third-class carriage, the stream of his cogitations
began to grow less turbid, less violent, less destruc-
tive. The austerity of Salisbury Plain yielded now
to the glamour of Blackmore Vale. Dairy-farms took the
place of sheep-farms; lush pastures, of bare chalkdowns;
enclosed orchards, of open cornfields; and park-like
moss-grown oaks, of wind-swept naked thorn-bushes.
The green, heavily-grassed meadows through which the
train moved now, the slow, brown, alder-shaded streams,
the tall hedgerows, the pollarded elms all these things
made Solent realize how completely he had passed from
the sphere of his mother's energetic ambitions into the
more relaxed world, rich and soft and vaporous as the
airs that hung over those mossy ditches, that had been
the native land of the man in the Ramsgard cemetery.
His mother's grievances, posthumous and belated, but
full of an undying vigour, had never really made him
hate his father; and somehow the outburst that had
ended his scholastic career had released certain latent
instincts in him which now turned, with a fling of re-
bellious satisfaction, to the wavering image of his
sinister begetter.
Children, he knew, were often completely different
from both their progenitors, but Wolf had a shrewd
suspicion that there was very little in him that did not
revert, on one side or the other, to his two parents. He
was now thirty-five, a grim, harassed-looking, cleanshaven
man, with sunken eye-sockets; but he felt his heart beat-
ing with keen excitement, as, after an absence of a quar-
ter of a century, he returned to his native pastures.
What would he find in that house of "Darnley Otter's
mother?" Who was this Darnley Otter? What had he
to do with Mr. Urquhart? And what would Mr. Urqu-
hart reveal that evening as to the form his own services
were to take?
As the train drew up at Semley, he read the words,
"For Shaftesbury," upon the notice-board; and very soon
the high grassy battlements of the great heathen fortress
loomed against the sky-line.
Staring at those turf-covered bastions, and drawing
into his lungs lovely breathings from damp moss and
cold primroses breathings that seemed to float up and
down that valley on airy journeys of their own he
found himself gathering his mental resources together
so as to face with a concentrated spirit whatever awaited
him in these pleasant places.... "Christ is not a man;
He never was a man," he thought. "And He will be more
than a god when God is dead....Three church-towers
...three. Ramsgard...King's Barton...Blacksod...it's quaint
to think that I've absolutely no idea what I shall be feel-
ing when I touch with my hand the masonry of those
three towers...or what people I shall know! I hope I
shall find some girl who'll let me make love to her...tall
and slim and white! I'd like her to be very white...with
a tiny little mole, like Imogen's, upon her left breast...
I'd like to make love to her out-of-doors...among elder
-bushes...among elder-bushes and herb Robert...."
He pulled in his legs and clasped his hands over his
knees, leaning forward, frowning and intent. "I don't
care whether I make money. I don't care whether I get
fame. I don't care whether I leave any work behind me
when I die. All I want is certain sensations!" And with
all the power of his wits he set himself to try and ana-
lyze what these sensations were that he wanted beyond
everything.
The first thing he did was to attempt to analyze a
mental device he was in the habit of resorting to a
device that supplied him with the secret substratum of
his whole life. This was a certain trick he had of doing
what he called "sinking into his soul." This trick had
been a furtive custom with him from very early days. In
his childhood his mother had often rallied him about it
in her light-hearted way, and had applied to these
trances, or these fits of absent-mindedness, an amusing
but rather indecent nursery name. His father, on the
other hand, had encouraged him in these moods taking
them very gravely, and treating him, when under their
spell, as if he were a sort of infant magician.
It was, however, when staying in his grandmother's
house at Weymouth, that the word had come to him
which he now always used in his own mind to describe
these obsessions. It was the word "mythology"; and he
used it entirely in a private sense of his own. He could
remember very well where he first came upon the word.
It was in a curious room, called "the ante-room," which
was connected by folding-doors with his grandmother's
drawing-room, and which was filled with the sort of
ornamental debris that middle-class people were in the
habit of acquiring in the early years of Queen Victoria.
The window of his grandmother's room opened upon the
sea; and Wolf, carrying the word "mythology" into this
bow-window, allowed it to become his own secret name
for his own secret habit.
This "sinking into his soul"--this sensation which he
called "mythology"--consisted of a certain summoning-up,
to the surface of his mind, of a subconscious magnetic
power which from those very early Weymouth days, as he
watched the glitter of sun and moon upon the waters
from that bow-window, had seemed prepared to answer
such a summons.
This secret practice was always accompanied by an
arrogant mental idea--the idea, namely, that he was taking
part in some occult cosmic struggle--some struggle
between what he liked to think of as "good" and what
he liked to think of as "evil" in those remote depths.
How it came about that the mere indulgence in a sen-
sation that was as thrilling as a secret vice should
have the power of rousing so bold an arrogance, Wolf
himself was never able to explain; for his "mythology,"
as he called it, had no outlet in any sort of action. It
was limited entirely to a secret sensation in his own
mind, such as he would have been hard put to it to ex-
plain in intelligible words to any living person.
But such as it was, his profoundest personal pride
what might be called his dominant life-illusion depended
entirely upon it.
Not only had he no ambition for action; he had no am-
bition for any sort of literary or intellectual achieve-
ment. He hid, deep down in his being, a contempt that
was actually malicious in its pride for all the human
phenomena of worldly success. It was as if he had been
some changeling from a different planet, a planet where
the issues of life the great dualistic struggles between
life and death never emerged from the charmed circle
of the individual's private consciousness.
Wolf himself, if pressed to describe it, would have
used some simple earthly metaphor. He would have said
that his magnetic impulses resembled the expanding of
great vegetable leaves over a still pool--leaves nourish-
ed by hushed noons, by liquid transparent nights, by all
the movements of the elements but making some inexplic-
able difference, merely by their spontaneous expansion,
to the great hidden struggle always going on in Nature
between the good and the evil forces.
Outward things, such as that terrible face on the Water-
loo steps or that tethered cow he had seen at Basingstoke,
were to him like faintly limned images in a mirror, the
true reality of which lay all the while in his mind--in
these hushed expanding leaves--in this secret vegetation--
the roots of whose being hid themselves beneath the dark
waters of his consciousness.
What he experienced now was a vague wonder as to
whether the events that awaited him these new scenes
these unknown people would be able to do what no
outward events had yet done--break up this mirror of
half-reality and drop great stones of real reality--drop
them and lodge them--hard, brutal, material stones--
down there among those dark waters and that mental
foliage.
"Perhaps I've never known reality as other human be-
ings know it," he thought. "My life has been industri-
ous, monotonous, patient. I've carried my load like a
camel. And I've been able to do this because it hasn't
been my real life at all! My 'mythology' has been my
real life."
The bluebottle fly moved slowly and cautiously across
Weymouth Bay, apparently seeking some invisible atom
of sustenance, seeking it now off Redcliff, now off
Ringstead, now off White Nore.
A sudden nervousness came upon him and he shivered
a little. "What if this new reality, when it does come,
smashes up my whole secret life? But perhaps it won't
be like a rock or stone...perhaps it won't be like a tank
or lorry or an aeroplane..."
He clasped his bony fingers tightly together. "Some
girl who'll let me make love to her...'white as a
peeled willow-wand'...make love to her in the middle
of a hazel wood...green moss...primroses...moschatel...
whiteness...." He unclasped his fingers; and then
clasped them again, this time with the left hand a-
bove the right hand.
It was nearly twelve o'clock when the train drew up
at Longborne Port, a village which he knew was the
last stop before he reached Ramsgard.
He rose from his seat and took down his things from
the rack, causing, as he did so, so much agitation to
his only travelling-companion, the bluebottle fly, that
it escaped with an indignant humming through the window
into the unfamiliar air-fields of Dorsetshire.
A young, lanky, bareheaded porter, with a countenance
of whimsical inanity, bawled out at the top of his
voice, as he rattled his milk-cans: "Longborne Port!
Longborne Port!"
Nobody issued from the train. Nothing was put out of
the train except empty milk-cans. The young man's
voice, harsh as a corncrake's, seemed unable to disturb
the impenetrable security which hung, like yellow pollen
upon a drooping catkin, over those ancient orchards
and muddy lanes.
And there suddenly broke in upon the traveller, as he
resumed his seat, with his coat and stick and bag spread
out before him, the thought of how those particular syl-
lables "Longborne Port!" mingling with the clatter of
milk-cans, would reproduce to some long-dead human
skull, roused to sudden consciousness after centuries of
non-existence, the very essence of the familiar life upon
earth!
What dark November twilights, what drowsy August
noons, what squirtings of white milk into shining pails,
would those homely syllables summon forth!
He lay back, breathing rather quickly, as the train
moved out of that small station. For the last time he
took from his pocket Mr. Urquhart's letter. "Darnley
Otter!" he said to himself. "It's odd to think how little
that name means now, and how much it may mean tomor-
row!" Why was it that, when the future was very likely
all there already, stretched out like the great Wessex
Fosse-way in front of him, he didn't get some sort
of second-sight about it by merely reading those words
in Mr. Urquhart's neat hand? What kind of man was
Darnley Otter? Was he a plain, middle-aged man like
himself or was he a beautiful youth? The idea of beaut-
iful youths made his mind once more revert to "peeled
willow-wands," but he easily suppressed this thought in
the excitement of the moment.
Ay! There were the ruins of the great Elizabethan's
castle. And there was the wide gr.assy expanse where the
town held its Annual Agricultural Show, and where the
Ramsgard schoolboys were wont in old days to run their
Steeplechase!
How it all came back! Twenty-five years it was, since
he left it, frightened and bewildered by his parents'
separation; and how little it had changed!
He let his gaze wander over the high tops of the park
beech-trees till it lost itself in the blue sky.
Millions of miles of blue sky; and beyond that, millions
of miles of sky that could scarcely be called blue
or any other colour--pure unalloyed emptiness, stretching
outwards from where he sat--with his stick and coat
opposite him--to no conceivable boundary or end!
Didn't that almost prove that the whole affair was a
matter of thought?
Suppose he were now, at this moment, some Ramsgard
boy returning to school? Suppose he were Solent
Major instead of Wolf Solent? And suppose some genial
house-master, meeting him on the platform, were to say
to him: "Well, Solent, and what have you made of your
twenty-five years' holiday?" What would he answer to
that?
As the train began to lessen its pace by the muddy
banks of the river Lunt, he hurriedly, and as if from
fear of that imaginary master, formulated his reply.
"I've learnt, Sir, to get my happiness out of sensation.
I've learnt, Sir, when to think and when not to think.
I've learnt..."
But at this point his excitement at catching sight of
the familiar shape of the Lovelace Hotel, across the
Public Gardens, was so overwhelming, that the imaginary
catechism came to an end in mid-air.
"I shall send my things over in the bus," he thought,
standing up and grasping his bag. "And then I shall go
and see if Selena Gault is still alive!"
"CHRIST! I'VE HAD A HAPPY LIFE!"
HlS EXCITEMENT GREW RATHER THAN DIMINISHED AS HE
got out of the train.
He gave up his ticket to an elderly station-master,
whose air, at once fussily inquisitive and mildly deferential,
suggested the manner of a cathedral verger. He
watched his luggage being deposited on the Lovelace
Bus; and there came over him a vague recollection of
some incident of those early years, wherein his mother,
standing by that same shabby vehicle, or one exactly re-
sembling it, with a look of contemptuous derision on
her formidable face, said something hard and ironical
to him which lashed his self-love like a whip.
Opposite the station were the railed-in Public Gardens.
These also brought to his mind certain isolated
trivial occurrences of his childish days; and it struck
him, even in his excitement, just then as being strange
that what he remembered were things that had hurt his
feelings rather than things that had thrilled him.
In place of following the bus round the west of the
Gardens, where the road led to the Hotel, and then on
past the police-station to the Abbey, he turned to the east
and made his way across a small river-bridge. Here,
again, the look of a certain old wall against the water,
and certain patches of arrow-head leaves within the
water, stirred his memory with a sudden unexpected
agitation.
It was over this very bridge that twenty-five years ago
he had leaned with his father while William Solent
showed him the difference between loach and gudgeon,
and in a funny, rambling, querulous voice deplored
the number of castaway tins that lay in the muddy
stream.
But Wolf did not lean over the bridge this time. He
heard the Abbey clock striking one, and he hurried on
up Saint Aldhelm's Street. Newly-budded plane-trees cast
curious little shadows, like deformed butterflies, upon the
yellowish paving-stones; and over the top of an uneven
wall at his side protruded occasional branch-ends of
pear-blossom.
He came at last to a green door in the wall.
"Is it possible," he wondered uneasily, "that Selena
Gault lives here still?"
He allowed a baker's cart to rattle negligently past
him while he made two separate hesitating movements of
his hand towards the handle of the green door.
It was queer that he should have had an instinct to
look sharply both up and down the street before he
brought himself to turn that handle. It was almost as
though he felt himself to be a hunted criminal, taking
refuge with Selena Gault! But the street was quite de-
serted now, and with a quick movement he boldly opened
the gale and entered the garden.
A narrow stone path led up to the door of the house,
which resembled a doll's house, brilliantly painted with
blues and greens. Blue and white hyacinths grew in
masses on either side of the path; and their scent, caught
and suspended in that enclosed space, had a fainting,
ecstatic voluptuousness which was at variance with the
prim neatness around them. A diminutive servant, very
old but very alert, with the nervous outward-staring eyes
of a yellow-hammer, opened the door to him, and without
demur ushered him into the drawing-room.
He gave his name and waited. Almost immediately the
little servant came back and begged him to take a chair
and make himself comfortable. Miss Gault would see
him in a few minutes. Those few minutes lengthened
themselves into a quarter of an hour, and he had time to
meditate on all the possibilities of this strange encounter.
Miss Gault was the daughter of the late Headmaster of
Ramsgard; and Wolf had heard his mother for twenty-five
years utter airy sarcasms at her expense. It appeared
she had had some tender relation with his father;
had even attended William Solent's death-bed in the
workhouse and seen him buried in the cemetery.
Wolf sat on Miss Gault's sofa and set himself to wonder
what this rival of his mother's would look like when
she entered the room. The servant had not quite closed
the door; and when fifteen minutes had elapsed, it
opened silently; and Wolf, rising quickly to greet his
hostess, found himself confronted by three cats, who
walked gravely and gingerly, one after another, into the
centre of the apartment. He made some awkward gesture
of welcome to these animals, who resembled one
another in shape, size, breed, and temperament in ev-
erything except colour, being respectively white, black,
and grey; but instead of responding to his advances they
each leapt into a separate chair, coiled themselves up,
and surveyed, with half-closed languid eyes, the' door
through which they had entered. He felt as if he were in
the house of the Marquis of Carabas and that the three
cats were three Lord Chamberlains.
He sank back upon the sofa and stared morosely at
each cat in turn. He decided that he liked the black one
best and the grey one least. He decided that the white
one was its mistress's favourite.
He was occupied in this harmless manner when Selena
Gault herself came in. He rose and advanced towards
her with outstretched hand. But it was impossible for him
to eliminate from his expression the shock that her ap-
pearance gave him; and it did not lessen his surprise
when she received his gesture with a formal bow and a
stiff rejection of his hand.
She was a tall, bony woman, with a face so strikingly
ugly that it was impossible to avoid an immediate con-
sciousness of its ugliness; and it was borne in upon him,
as their conversation proceeded, that if only he had been
able to contemplate her countenance with unconcern, she
would have enjoyed one of the happiest moments of her
life.
She made a sign for him to resume his seat; but as
she herself stood erect in front of the fire, which in
spite of the warmth of the day still burned on the hearth,
he preferred to remain on his feet. Like a flash he thought
to himself, "Can my father have actually embraced this
extraordinary person?" And then he thought to himself:
"The poor woman! Why, she can't be able to meet
a single stranger anywhere without giving them a shock
like this." But he had already begun speaking quietly
and naturally to her, even while he was thinking these
things.
"I knew you would know who I was," he said gently.
"I've just been invited down here. I'm going to do some
work I can't tell you quite what it is out at King's
Barton. I'm going to drive over there this afternoon; but
I thought I would come and see you first."
While she listened to him, he noticed that she kept
pulling her white woollen shawl tighter and tighter
round her black silk dress. The effect of this was to give
her the appearance of someone caught unawares in some
sort of fancy costume some costume that rendered her
ashamed and even ridiculous.
"And so I just came straight in," he went on, beginning
to feel a very odd sensation, a sensation as if he
were addressing someone who was listening all the time
in a kind of panic to a third person's voice "straight in
through your little green door and between those hyacinths."
She still made no observation and he noticed that one
marked quality of her ugliness was the dusky sallowness
of her cheeks combined with the ghastly pallor of
her upper lip, which projected from her face very much
as certain funguses project from the brown bark of a
dead tree.
"I've decided that your favourite cat is the white one,"
he brought out after an uncomfortable pause.
She did relax at this, and, moving to the chair occupied
by the grey cat, took up the animal in her arms and
sat down, holding it on her lap.
"You're wrong, wrong, wrong!" she whispered hoarsely.
"Isn't he wrong, Matthew?"
The cat took not the least notice of this remark or of
the fingers that caressed him; but it did impinge upon
the consciousness of Miss Gault's visitor that this sin-
gular woman's hands were of a surprising beauty.
"What are the names of the others?" Solent enquired.
"The black one is Mark," replied the lady.
"And the white one Luke?" he hazarded.
She nodded; and then, quite suddenly, with an effort
as though a gust of wind had swept aside a mass
of dead leaves, uncovering the fresh verdure below, her
whole face relaxed into a smile of disarming sweetness.
"I've never had a John," she said. "And I never will."
Wolf Solent was quick enough to take advantage of
this change of mood. He moved across to her, bent
down over her chair, and scratched Matthew's head. "I
thought I'd like to go over and see where the grave is."
His words were low-pitched but without any emotional
stress. His intonation could hardly have been different
if he had said, "I think I'll go to the Abbey presently."
Selena Gault gave a deep sigh, but it seemed to Solent
like a sigh of relief rather than sadness.
"Quite right, quite proper," he heard her murmur,
with her head held low and her hands occupied in
smoothing out the shawl beneath the body of the som-
nolent cat.
"The best thing you could do," she added.
Since she said nothing more and persisted in keeping
her head lowered a position which accentuated the
enormity of her upper lip and the dark sallowness of her
face Wolf began to feel as if he were an impertinent
intruder stroking the pet animal of some proud, secretive
being whose peculiarity it was to prefer beasts to
men.
He straightened himself and squared his shoulders
with a sigh. Then he moved across to the sofa and laid
his hand on his hat and stick, which he was rather sur-
prised to notice he had brought with him into the room.
"I suppose," he said, as he turned round with these
objects in the hand, "there'll be someone out there at the
cemetery, some gardener or caretaker, who'll know where
the grave is? I shouldn't like to get out there and not be
able to find it. But I don't want to let this day pass
without trying to find it."
Selena Gault tossed the grey cat from her lap and
rose to h'er feet.
"I'll come with you," she said.
She uttered the words quite quietly, but he noticed
that she avoided looking him in the face.
She stood for a lime staring out of the window, motionless
and abstracted.
"If it would be a bother to you--" he began.
But she suddenly turned her distorted countenance full
upon him.
"Sit down, boy," she rapped out. "Do you think I'd let
you go there alone, if there were fifty gardeners?"
She stared at him for a second after this with a look
that seemed to turn his bodily presence into the frame
of a doorway through which she gazed into the remote
past.
"Sit down, sit down," she said more gently. "I'll be
ready soon."
The door had not closed behind her for many minutes
when the elderly servant entered, carrying a silver
tray, upon which was a plate of Huntley and Palmer's
oaten biscuits and a decanter of sherry. Wolf had poured
himself out as many as three glasses of this excellent
wine and had swallowed nearly all the biscuits before
Miss Gault returned. She found him stroking Mark, the
black cat.
Her appearance in hat and cloak was just as peculiar
as before, but more distinguished; and Wolf soon found
out, when presently they passed the front of the Abbey,
where several townspeople greeted her, that the power of
her personality was fully appreciated in Ramsgard.
Their way to the cemetery took them straight past the
workhouse. This building was on the further side of
the road; but Solent was unable to restrain an impulse
to turn his head towards it. The edifice was rather less
gloomy than such erections usually are, owing to the
fact that some indulgent authority had permitted its
facade to be overgrown with Virginia creeper.
He found himself reducing his pace so that he might
familiarize himself with every aspect of that heavy,
sombre building behind iron gates. As he lingered he
became suddenly aware that his companion had slipped
her gloved hand upon his arm. This natural gesture,
instead of pleasing him or rousing his sympathy, made
him feel curiously irritable. He quickened his pace;
and her hand fell away so quickly that he might easily
have supposed that light pressure to have been a pure
accident.
They walked side by side now, with such swinging
steps that it was not long before they were beyond the
houses and out into what was almost open country. It
annoyed him that she remained so silent. Did she suppose
he had come to see his father's grave in a vein of
sentimental commiseration?
"What's that?" he exclaimed, pointing to a ramshackle
group of sheds that seemed fenced off from the
road with some unnatural and sinister precaution.
Selena Gault's reply made his touchiness seem captious
and misplaced.
"Can't you see what that is, boy? It's the slaughterhouse!
You've only to take the shadiest, quietest road to find 'em
in any town!"
They were soon skirting the edge of the neat oak
palings that ran along the leafy purlieus of Ramsgard
Cemetery.
"I let them bury him at the pauper's end," she remarked
gravely. "It's nearer. It's quieter. It's hardly ever
disturbed. This is the way I generally go in." With
a sly, quick glance up and down the road, a glance that
gave an emphasis to the whites of her eyes such as made
her companion think of a crafty dray-horse edging into
a field of clover, Miss Gault stooped down and propelled
herself under a rough obstruction that blocked a gap
in the oak palings.
Solent followed her, confused, a little surly, but no
longer hostile.
She did not wait for him, but made her way with long,
rapid strides to the extreme corner of the enclosure.
Her swinging arms, her gaunt figure, her erratic gait,
set the man's mind thinking once more of various non-
human animals.
He came up to her just as she reached her goal. "William
Solent," he read, on the upright slab of sandstone; and
then, under the date of birth and death, the words, "Mors
est mihi vita."
Wolf had no difficulty in recognizing the particular
hyacinths that stood in an earthenware pot. "She must
have come here for twenty-five years!" he thought, with
a gasp of astonishment; and he gave her a hurried, furtive,
prying look from under his bushy eyebrows.
She certainly did nothing on this occasion to cause him
any discomfort.She just muttered in quite a conventional
tone, "I never like to see plantains in the grass"; and
bending down, she proceeded to pull up certain small
weeds, making a little pile of them behind the headstone.
Swaying thus above the mound and scrabbling with out-
stretched arms among the grass-blades, her figure in
the misty afternoon sunshine took on, as Wolf stood
there, a kind of portentous unreality. There was some-
thing outlandish in the whole scene, something monstrous
and bizarre that destroyed all ordinary pathos. Twenty-
five years? If she had come here regularly for all that
time, how could there be any "plantains," or any clover,
or any moss either, left upon his father's grave? He
was so conscious of the personality of this woman, so
amazed at a tenacity of feeling that seemed to pass all
limits of what was due, that his own sensibility became
hard and rigid.
But though his emotions were cold, his imagination
worked freely. The few feet of Dorsetshire clay, the
half-inch of brittle West Country elm-wood, that sepa-
rated him from the up-turned skull of his begetter,
were like so much transparent glass. He looked down into
William Solent's empty eye-sockets, and the empty eye-
sockets looked back at him. Steadily, patiently, indif-
ferently they looked back; and between the head without
a nose looking up and the head with so prominent a
nose looking down there passed a sardonic wordless
dialogue. "So be it," the son said to himself. "I won't
forget. Whether there are plantains or whether there
aren't plantains, the universe shan't fool me." "Fool
me; fool me," echoed the fleshless skull from below.
"There!" sighed Selena Gault, rising to her natural
perpendicular position. "There! There won't be any more
of them for a fortnight. Shall we go back now, boy?"
When they were once more in the road, Miss Gault
became a little more talkative.
"You're not like him, of course not in any way. He
really was uncommonly handsome. Not that that had any
weight with me. But it had with some. It had with Mr.
Urquhart!" She paused and glanced almost mischievously
at her companion. "I'm sure I don't know," she remarked,
with a funny little laugh, "what Mr. Urquhart will make
of you!"
"The idea seems to be," said Wolf gravely, while his
estimate of his new friend's perspicacity became more
respectful, "that I should help him with some historical
researches. It appears he is writing a 'History of Dorset'"
"History of fiddlestick!" snapped the lady. And then
in a more amiable tone, "But he's no idiot. He has read
a little. You'll enjoy going through his library."
Wolf felt himself experiencing a rather cowardly hope
that his companion would pass the slaughter-house this
time without comment. The hope was not fulfilled.
"I suppose you eat them?" she asked in a hoarse
whisper; and Wolf, turning towards her a startled face,
was struck by an expression of actual animal fear upon
her extraordinary physiognomy. But she did not linger;
and it was not lorig before they were once more opposite
the workhouse.
"Do you know what he said when he was dying?" she
began suddenly. "He didn't say it particularly to me. I
just happened to be there. He said it to everyone in gen-
eral. He said, 'Christ! I've enjoyed my life!' He used the
word 'Christ' just in that way, as an exclamation. There
was a young clergyman there, straight down from Cam-
bridge, an athlete of some sort; and when your father
cried out 'Christ!' like that and he was dead the next
second I heard him mutter, 'Good for you, Sir!' as if
it had been a fine hit at a cricket-match."
Wolf would have been entirely responsive now if Miss
Gault had touched his arm or even taken his arm, but
she walked forward without making any sign.
"I expect your mother has abused me pretty thoroughly
to you since you were a child," she said presently.
"Ann and I were never fond of each other. We were en-
emies even before your father came. She cut me out, of
course, at every turn; but that didn't bring her round!
She couldn't forgive me for being the headmaster's
daughter. You've no idea of the savage jealousies that
go on in a place like this. But wherever we were we
should have hated each other. Ann is flippant where I'm
serious, and I'm flippant where Ann is serious."
Wolf tried in vain to imagine on what occasions Miss
Gault would display flippancy, but he knew well enough
what that word meant in regard to his mother. He was
seized at that moment with an irresistible temptation to
reveal to this woman the picture of her character with
which he had been regaled for the last twenty-five years.
It was a picture so extraordinarily different from the
reality, that it made him wonder if all women, whether
flippant or otherwise, were personal to the point of in-
sanity in their judgments of one another. What his
mother had told him was not even a caricature of Selena
Gault. It referred to another person altogether.
"My mother has a lot of friends in town," he began,
rather lamely. Miss Gault cut him short.
"Of course she has! She's a brave, high-spirited, am-
bitious woman. Of course she has!" And then, in a low,
meditative voice that seemed to float wistfully over the
years, "She was very much in love with your father."
This last remark, coming at the moment when the
Abbey clock above their heads struck four, produced
considerable bewilderment in Wolf's mind. The idea of
his estranged parents having been "in love" with each
other made him feel curiously in the cold, and strangely
alien to both of them. In some obscure way he felt as
if Selena Gault were practising an indecent treachery,
but a treachery so subtle that he couldn't lay his finger
upon it!
"Let's go in here for a minute!" he said. "And then I
must keep my appointment with Mr. Otter."
They entered the great nave of the Abbey-church and
sat down. The high, cool, vaulted roof, with its famous
fan-tracery, seemed to offer itself to his mind as if it
were some "branch-charmed" vista of verdurous silence,
along which his spirit might drift and float at large, a
leaf among leaves!
There was a faint greenish mist in that high roof, the
effect of some cavernous contrast with the mellow
warmth of the horizontal sun pouring through the coloured
windows below; and into that world of undulating carving
and greenish dimness, Wolf now permitted his mind to
wander, till he began to feel once again that mysterious
sensation which he called his "mythology."
He felt free of his mother, and yet tender and indulgent
towards her. He felt bound up in some strange affiliation
with that skeleton in the cemetery. He felt in whimsical
and easy harmony with the queer lady seated by his side.
The only thing that troubled him at all just then was a
faint doubt as to what effect this return to the land of
his birth would have upon his furtive, private, hidden ex-
istence. Would he be crafty enough to keep that secretive
life-illusion out of the reach of danger? Would his inner
world of hushed Cimmerian ecstasies remain uninvaded
by these Otters and Urquharts?
He felt as though he were tightening his muscles for
a plunge into very treacherous waters. All manner of
unknown voices seemed calling to him out of this warm
Spring air; mocking voices, beguiling voices, insidious
voices voices that threatened unguessed-at disturbances
to that underground life of his which was like a cherished
vice. It was not as though he heard the tones of these
voices so that he could have recognized them again. It
was as though a wavering crowd of featureless human
figures on the further side of some thick opaque lattice-
work were conferring together in conspiring awareness
of his immediate appearance among them!
The atmosphere was cooler when they came out of the
church. Its taste was the taste of an air that has been
blown over leagues and leagues of green stalks full of
chilly sap. It made Solent think of water-buttercups in
windy ponds, and the splash of moor-hens over dark
gurgling weirs.
He parted from his companion by a grotesque little
statue under the lime-trees representing the debonair
ancestor of the Lovelaces whose name, though intimately
associated with Ramsgard, had slipped into something
legendary and remote. Selena Gault gave him her hand
with a stately inclination of her unlovely head.
"You'll come in and see me and my cats before long
and tell me your impressions of all those people?"
"I certainly will, Miss Gault," he answered. "You've
been very good to me."
"Tut, tut, boy! Good is not the word! When I come
to think of it, standing like that with your hat off, you
have a kind of look "
"That's under your influence, Miss Gault," he hurriedly
said; and they took their separate ways.
There was far less embarrassment for Wolf in his
encounter with Mr. Darnley Otter than he had expected.
They were the only men in that massive old-world
sitting-room, decorated with hunting-scenes and large
solemn prints of Conservative statesmen, and they found
it easy and natural to sit down opposite each other at
a round table and to enjoy an excellent tea. Wolf was
hungry. The bread-and-butter was fresh and plentiful.
The solidity of the teapot was matched by the thinness
of the cups; and the waiter, who seemed to know Mr.
Otter well, treated them both with a dignified obsequi-
ousness which had about it the mellow beauty of centuries
of feudal service.
He was a clean-shaven man, this waiter, with an arist-
ocratic stoop and a face that resembled that of Lord
Shaftesbury, the great philanthropist; and Wolf felt an
obscure longing to sit opposite him in his own snug par-
lour--wherever that was--and draw out of him the hidden
sources of that superb respectfulness--to be the object
of which, even for a brief hour's tea-drinking, was
to be reconciled not only to oneself but also in some
curious way to the whole human race!
"We haven't seen Mr. Urquhart down here lately," the
waiter was saying to Wolf's new acquaintance. "His
health keeps up, I hope, Sir?"
"Perfectly," responded Mr. Otter. "Perfectly, Stalbridge.
I hope you yourself are all right, Stalbridge?"
Wolf had never seen a physical human movement more ex-
pressive, more adjusted, more appropriate, than the ges-
ture with which the elderly servant balanced the back
of his hand against the edge of their table and leaned
forward to reply to this personal question. He noticed
this gesture all the more vividly because of a curiously
shaped white scar that crossed the back of the man's
hand. But he now hecame aware of something else about
this waiter--something that surprised and rather dis-
turbed him. The fellow's countenance did not only re-
mind him of Lord Shaftesbury. It reminded him of that
face by the Waterloo steps!
"I've nothing to complain of, Sir, thank you Sir, since
I settled that little legal trouble of mine. It's the mind,
Sir, that keeps us up; and except for the malice and
mischief that comes to all, I've no grievance against the
Almighty."
The air of courteous magnanimity with which the old
waiter exonerated Providence made Wolf feel ashamed
of every peevishness he had ever indulged. But why did
he make him think of that Waterloo-steps face?
When Mr. Stalbridge had left them, to look after some
other guests, both the men, as they finished their tea
and lit their cigarettes, began to feel more comfortable
and reassured in their attitude to each other.
Darnley Otter was in every respect more of a classified
"gentleman" than Solent. He had a trim, pointed, Van
Dyck beard of a light-chestnut colour. His fingernails
were exquisitely clean. His necktie, of a dark-blue
shade, had evidently been very carefully chosen. His
grey tweed suit, neither too faded nor too new, fitted
his slender figure to a nicety. His features were sharp-
ly-cut and very delicately moulded, his hands thin and
firm and nervous. When he smiled, his rather grave
countenance wrinkled itself into a thousand amiable
wrinkles; but he very rarely smiled, and for some reason
it was impossible for Solent to imagine him laughing.
One facial trick he had which Wolf found a little
disconcerting--since his own method was to stare so
very steadily from under his bushy eyebrows--a trick of
hanging his head and letting his eyelids droop over his
eyes as he talked. This habit was so constant with him
that it wasn't until the dialogue with the waiter occurred
that Wolf realized what his eyes were like. They were
of a tint that Wolf had never seen before in any human
face. They were like the blue markings upon the sides of
freshly caught mackerel.
But what struck Wolf most deeply was not the colour
of Mr. Otter's eyes. It was their look. He had never in
the whole course of his life seen anything so harassed,
so anxious, as the expression in those eyes, when their
owner was unable any longer to avoid giving a direct
glance. Nor was it just simply that the man was of a
worrying turn of mind. The curious thing about the anxi-
ety in Mr. Otter's eyes was that it was unnatural. There
was a sort of puzzled surprise in it, a sort of indignant
moral bewilderment, quite different from any constitu-
tional nervousness. His expression seemed to protest
against something that had been inflicted on him, some-
thing unexpected, something that struck his natural ac-
ceptance of life as both monstrous and inexplicable.
It was when he spoke to the waiter that this unhappy
expression was caught most off-guard, and Wolf explain-
ed this to himself on the theory that the waiter's
abysmal tact unconsciously relieved his interlocutor
from the strain of habitual reticence.
Their meal once over, it did not take them long to
get mounted, with all Wolf Solent's luggage, in Mr.
Urquhart's dog-cart. That afternoon's drive from Rams
gard to King's Barton was a memorable event in Wolf's
life. He had come already to feel a definite attraction
toward this scrupulously-dressed, punctilious gentleman
with the troubled mackerel-dark eyes; and as they sat
side by side in that dog-cart, jogging leisurely along
behind an ancient dapple-grey horse, he made up his
mind that if it was to be in Darnlcy Otter's company
that his free hours were to pass, they would pass very
harmoniously indeed.
The evening itself, through which they drove, following
a road parallel to and a little to the right of that
one which had ended with the cemetery, was beautiful
with an exceptional kind of beauty. It was one of those
Spring evenings which are neither golden from the direct
rays of the sinking sun, nor opalescent from their indirect
diffused reflection. A chilly wind had arisen, covering
the western sky, into which they were driving, with
a thick bank of clouds. The result of this complete ex-
tinction of the sunset was that the world became a world
in which every green thing upon its surface received a
fivefold addition to its greenness. It was as if an enor-
mous green tidal wave, composed of a substance more
translucent than water, had flowed over the whole earth;
or rather as if some diaphanous essence of all the green-
ness created by long days of rain had evaporated during
this one noon, only to fall down, with the approach of
twilight, in a cold, dark, emerald-coloured dew. The road
they thus followed, heading for that rain-heavy western
horizon, was a road that ran along the southern slope of
an arable upland--an upland that lay midway between
the pastoral Dorset valley which was terminated by the
hills and woods of High Stoy and the yet wider Somerset-
shire valley that spread away into the marshes of
Sedgemoor.
Solent learned from a few courteous but very abrupt
explanations interjected by his companions, that the
only other occupants of the house to which they were
proceeding were Darnley's elder brother, Jason, and his
mother, Mrs. Otter. He also gathered that Darnley himself,
except on Saturdays and Sundays, worked as a classical
under-master in a small grammar-school in Blacksod.
By one means and another Wolf was quick at such surmises
he obtained an impression that this work in Blacksod was
anything but congenial to his reserved companion. He
also began to divine, though certainly with no help from
his well-bred friend, that these scholastic activities
of his were almost the sole financial support of the
family at Pond Cottage.
"I do wish I could persuade you," Solent began, when
they were still some two and a half miles from their
destination, "to give me some sort of notion of what
Mr. Urquhart really expects from me. I've never made
any historical researches in my life. I've only compiled
wretched summaries from books that everyone can get.
What will he want me to do? Go searching round in
parish-registers and so on?"
The driver's gaze, directed obstinately to the grey tail
of their slow-moving horse, remained unresponsive to
the querulousness of this appeal.
"I have a notion, Solent," he remarked, "that you'll
get light on a great many things as soon as you've seen
Mr. Urquhart."
Wolf pulled down the corners of his mouth and lifted
his thick eyebrows.
"The devil!" he thought. "That's just about what my
friend Miss Gault hinted."
He raised his voice and gave it a more serious tone.
"Tell me, Otter, is Mr. Urquhart what you might call
eccentric queer, in fact?"
Darnley did turn his bearded profile at this. "That
depends," he said, "what you mean by 'queer.' I've al-
ways found him very civil. My brother can't bear the
sight of him."
Wolf made his favourite grimace again at this.
"I hope your brother will approve of me," he said.
"I confess I begin to be a bit frightened."
"Jason' is a poet," remarked Mr. Otter gravely, and his
tone had enough of a rebuke in it to rouse a flicker of
malice in his companion.
"I hope Mr. Urquhart isn't a poet too," he said.
Mr. Otter took no notice of this retort except to fall
into a deeper silence than ever; and Wolf's attention
reverted to what he could see of the famous Vale of
Blackmore. Every time the hedge grew low, as they
jogged along, every time a gate or a gap interrupted its
green undulating rampart, he caught a glimpse of that
great valley, gathering the twilight about it as a dying
god might gather to his heart the cold, wet ashes of his
last holocaust.
More and more did the feeling grow upon him that he
was entering into a new world where he must leave behind
the customs, the grooves, the habits of fifteen long
years of his life. "There's one thing," he thought to
himself, while a sudden chilliness struck his face as their
road drew nearer the course of the river, "that I'll never
give up...not even for the sake of the slenderest
'peeled willow-wand' in Dorset." As this thought crossed
his mind he actually tightened his two bony hands
tenaciously over his legs just above his knees, as if he
were fortifying himself against some unknown threat to
his treasured vice. And then in a kind of self-protective
reassembling of his memories, as if by the erection of a
great barrier of mental earthworks he could ward off any
attack upon his secret, he set himself to recall certain
notable landmarks among his experiences of the world
up to the hour of this exciting plunge into the unknown.
He recalled various agitating and shameful scenes
between his high-spirited mother and his drifting un-
scrupulous father. He summoned up, as opposed to these,
his own delicious memories of long, irresponsible holi-
days, lovely uninterrupted weeks of idleness, by the sea
at Weymouth, when he read so many thrilling books in
the sunlit bow-window at Brunswick Terrace. How
clearly he could see now the Jubilee clock on the Es-
planade, the pompous statue of George the Third, the
White Nore, the White Horse, the wave-washed outline
of Portland breakwater! How he could recall his childish
preference for the great shimmering expanse of wet
sand, out beyond the bathing-machines, over the hot,
dry sand under the sea-wall, where the donkeys stood
and Punch and Judy was played!
"I am within twenty miles of Weymouth here," he thought.
"That's where my real life began...that's the place
I love...in spite of its lack of hedges and trees!"
Then he recalled his tedious uninspired youth in London,
the hateful day-school, the hateful overcrowded college,
the interminable routine of his ten years of teaching.
"A double life! A double life!" he muttered under his
breath, staring at the grey rump of Mr. Urquhart's
nag, as it swayed before him, and moving his own body
a little forward, as he lightened his grip still more
fiercely upon his own bony thighs.
Was he going to be plunged now into another world of
commonplace tedium, full of the same flat, conven-
tional ambitions, the same sickening clevernesses? It
couldn't be so! It couldn't... it couldn't...with
this enchanted springtime stirring in all these leaves
and grasses....
What a country this was!
To his right, as they drove along, the ground sloped
upwards cornfield after cornfield of young green shoots
to the great main ridge between Dorset and Somerset,
along which only a mile or so away, his companion
told him lay the main highway, famous in West Country
history, between Ramsgard and Blacksod, and also
between so Mr. Otter assured him Salisbury and
Exeter!
To his left the Vale of Blackmore beckoned to him
out of its meadows--meadows that were full of faint
grassy odours which carried a vague taste of river-mud
in their savour because of the nearness of the banks of
the Lunt. From Shaftesbury. on the north, to the isolated
eminence of Melbury Bub, to the south, that valley
stretched away, whispering, so it seemed, some inexplicable
prophetic greeting to its returned native-born.
As he listened to the noise of the horse's hooves
steadily clicking, clicking, clicking, with every now and
then a bluish spark rising in the dusk of the road, as iron
struck against flint; as he watched the horizon in front
of him grow each moment more fluid, more wavering;
as he saw detached fragments of the earth's surface--
hill-curves, copses, far-away fields and hedges--blend
with fragments of cloud and fragments of cloudless
space, it came over him with a mounting confidence that
this wonderful country must surely deepen, intensify, enrich
his furtive inner life, rather than threaten or destroy
it.
Thus clutching his legs as if to assure himself of his
own identity, thus leaning eagerly forward by his com-
panion's side, his eyebrows contracted into a fixed frown
and his nostrils twitching, Wolf felt the familiar mystic
sensation surging up even now from its hidden retreat.
Up, up it rose, like some great moonlight-coloured fish
from fathomless watery depths, like some wide-winged
marsh-bird from dark untraverscd pools! The airs of this
new world that met its rising were full of the coolness of
mosses, full of the faint unsheathing of fern-fronds.
Whatever this mysterious emotion was, it leaped forward
now towards the new element as if conscious that it
carried with it a power as formidable, as incalculable, as
anything that it could encounter there.
A DORSET CHRONICLE
"SO THIS IS TO BE YOUR ROOM," SAID MRS. OTTER. "l
knew you'd want to see it at once; as you have to dress,
of course, for dining at the House? It's not large, but I
think it's rather comfortable. My son Jason said only
just now that he felt quite envious of it. His own room
is just opposite, looking on the back garden, as yours
does on the front. I think we might show him Jason's
room, don't you, Darnley? It's so very characteristic!
At least we try to keep it so, don't we, Darnley? Darnley
and I do it ourselves, when he's out." Her voice,
as the two men stood in the doorway staring at Solent's
pieces of shabby luggage, which they had just carried
in, sank into a confidential whisper. "He's out now,"
she added. They both moved aside as she proceeded
to make her way across the small passage.
"There!" she exclaimed, opening a door; and Wolf
peered into complete and rather stuffy darkness.
"There! Perhaps you have a match, Darnley?"
Darnley obediently struck a match and proceeded to
set alight two ornate candles that stood on a chest of
drawers. The whole look of the chamber thus revealed,
was detestable to the visitor.
Above the bed hung an enormous Arundel print of
a richly gilded picture by Benozzo Gozzoli; and above
the fireplace, where a few red coals still smouldered,
was a morbidly sanctimonious Holy Family by Filippino
Lippi.
"I'd better open the window a little, mother, hadn't
I?" said Darnley, moving across the room.
"No no, dear!" cried the lady hurriedly. "He feels
the draught so terribly when he's indoors. It's only ci-
garette-smoke and a little incense," she added, turning
to Wolf. "He finds incense refreshing. We order it from
the Stores. Darnley and I don't care for it. So a little
lasts a long time."
"He must have gone to Blacksod again," remarked the
son grimly, glancing at his watch and looking very
significantly at his mother.
"If he has, I'm sure I hope they'll be nicer to him
than they were last time," murmured the lady.
"At the Three Peewits?" retorted her son drily. "Too
nice, I daresay! I wish he'd stick to Farmer's Rest."
"We are referring to the inns in this neighbourhood
where my son meets his friends," remarked the mother;
and Wolf, contemplating the thin, peaked face, the
smooth, high forehead, the neatly brushed pale hair,
the nun-like dress of the little woman, felt ashamed of
the first rush of inconsiderate contempt that her manner
of speech had provoked in him.
"There's something funny about all this," he thought
to himself. "I'll be interested to see this confounded
incense-burner."
Left to himself to unpack his things, he looked round
with anxious concern at the room that was to be his
base of operations, his secret fox's hole, for so pro-
longed a time. There was a Leighton over the mantel-
piece, and a huge Alma-Tadema between the two windows;
and he divined at once that the spare-bedroom was used
as a depository by this household for mid-Victorian
works of art.
He leaned out of one of the windows. A sharp scent
of jonquils was wafted up from some flower-bed below;
but the night was so dark he could see nothing except
a row of what looked like poplar-trees and a clump of
thick bushes.
He quickly unpacked his clothes and put them away
in easily-opening, agreeably-papered drawers. There was
a vase of rust-tinted polyanthuses on the dressing-table;
and he thought to himself, "The poet's mother knows
how to manage things!"
He decided at first to confine himself to a dinne-rjacket;
but realizing that he had only one pair of black trousers,
and that these went best with the tail-coat, he changed
his mind and put on full evening-dress.
As he finally lied his white tie into a bow at the small
mahogany-framed looking-glass, he could not help think-
ing of the many unknown events that would occupy his
thoughts as he stood just there in future days--events
that were only now so many airy images, floating, drift-
ing, upon the sea of the unborn.
"How will Mr. Urquhart receive me?" his thoughts
ran on. "This brother of Otter's doesn't like him; but
that's nothing....I'll deal with these awful pictures
later!" And he carefully extinguished his candles and
stepped out on the landing.
The little dining-room of Pond Cottage faced the
drawing-room at the foot of the stairs; and when he
stood in the hall, hesitating over which room to enter,
he was surprised to find himself beckoned to, eagerly
and surreptitiously, by a bent old woman in a blue
apron, laying the dinner. He crossed the threshold in
answer to this appeal.
"I know'd yer," the crone whispered. "I know'd 'twas
none o' they, soon as I did hear yer feet. Looksy heres
Mister! Master Darnley'll want to go up to Squire's with
'ee. Don't 'ee let 'un go! That's what I've got to say
to 'ee. Don't 'ee let 'un go! 'Tis no walk up to House.
'Tis straight along Pond Lane and down Lenty, and
there 'a be! Just 'ee go off now, quiet-like, afore they
be comed downstairs. I'll certify to Missus that I telled
'ee the way to House. Don't 'ee stand staring at a person
toad-struck and pondering! Off with 'ee now! Be an
angel of a sweet young gent! There! Don't 'ee wait a
minute. They'll be down, afore 'ee can holler yer own
name. Out wi' 'ee, and God bless 'ee. Straight to the
end of Pond, and then down Lenty!"
It was the nature of Wolf Solent, when other things
were equal, to be easy, flexible, obliging. So without
asking any questions he silently and expeditiously
obeyed the old servant. He snatched up his hat and his
overcoat, and vanished into the darkness of the night.
"I suppose this is Pond Lane," he said to himself, as
he made his way in the direction pointed out by the old
woman. "But if it isn't, I can't help it. They're all on
the jump about that chap's coming home. She wanted
to keep Otter in the house to deal with the beggar."
Fortune favoured him more than he might have expected.
Just where Pond Lane turned into Lenty, he met
a group of children, and under their direction he had
no difficulty in finding the drive-entrance to King's
Barton Manor.
It was not a long drive and it did not lead to a big
house. Built in the reign of James the First, Barton
Manor had always remained a small and unimportant
dwelling. Its chief glory was its large and rambling
garden a garden that needed more hands to keep it in
order than the present owner was able to afford.
And, standing on the top of the weather-stained, lichen-
spotted stone steps, after he had rung the bell, Wolf
Solent had time, before anyone answered his ring, to
imbibe something of the beauty of this new surrounding.
The sky had cleared a little, and from a few open
spaces, crowded with small faint stars, a pallid lumi-
nosity revealed the outlines of several wide, velvety
lawns, intersected by box-hedges, themselves divided by
stone-flagged paths. Wolf could see at one end of these
lawns a long, high yew-hedge, looking in that uncertain
light so mysterious and ill-omened that it was easy to
imagine that on the further side of it all manner of
phantasmal figures moved, ready to vanish at cockcrow!
For one moment he had a queer sensation that that
wretched human face he had seen on the Waterloo steps
hung there there also, between the branches of a tall
obscure tree that grew at the end of that yew-hedge. But
even as he looked, the face faded; and instead of it, so
wrought-upon were his nerves at that moment, there appear-
ed to him the worried, anxious, mackerel-coloured eyes
of Darnley Otter.
He was disturbed in these fancies by the opening of
the carved Jacobean door. The man-servant who admitted
him was, to his surprise, dressed in rough working-
clothes. He was an extremely powerful man, and had a
swarthy, gipsy-like complexion and coal-black hair.
"Excuse me, Sir," he said with a melancholy smile,
as he took the visitor's coat and laid it on a great oak
chest that stood in the hall. "Excuse me, Mr. Solent, but
I've been working till a few minutes ago in the stable.
He never likes me to apologize to gentlemen who come;
but that's the way I am; and I hope you'll excuse me,
Sir."
Even at the very moment he was muttering an appropriate
reply to this somewhat unusual greeting, and allowing
his thoughts, below the surface of his words, to reflect
how oddly the servants in King's Barton behaved, Wolf
became aware of the approach of an imposing personage
coming down the long hallway towards them. This figure,
limping very much and leaning upon a stick, was in eve-
ning-dress; and as he approached he muttered,, over and
over again, in a low, soft, satiny voice: "What's this
I hear, eh? What's this I hear, eh? What's this I hear,
eh?"
The tall coachman, or gardener, or whatever he was,
did not wait for his master's arrival. With one quick
glance at Solent and a final "Excuse me, Sir!" he van-
ished through a side-door, leaving Wolf to face his
host without any official announcement.
"Mr. Solent? Very good. Mr. Wolf Solent? Very, very
good. You received my letter and you came at once?
Excellent. Very, very good."
Uttering these words in the same low voice that made
Wolf think of the unrolling of some great, rich bundle
of Chinese silk, he offered his left hand to his visitor
and kept his right slill leaning upon the handle of the
stick that supported him.
The impression Wolf got from Mr. Urquhart's face
was extremely complicated. Heavy eyelids, and pendulous,
baggy foldings below the eyes, made one aspect of it.
Greenish-blackness in the eyes themselves, and something
profoundly suspicious in their intense questioning
gaze, made another. An air of agitated restlessness,
amounting to something that might have been described
as a hunted look, made yet a third. The features of
the face, taken in their general outlines, were massive
and refined. It was in the expression that flitted across
them that Wolf detected something that puzzled and
perturbed him. One thing was certain. Both Mr. Urquhart's
head and Mr. Urquhart's stomach were unnaturally large--
far too large for his feeble legs. His hair, which was
almost as black as that of his manservant, caused Wolf
to wonder whether or not he wore a wig.
Dropping his visitor's hand, he suddenly stood stock-
still, in the attitude of one who listens. Wolf had no
idea whether he was arrested by sounds in the garden
outside or sounds in the kitchen inside. He himself
heard nothing but the ticking of the hall-clock.
Presently the squire spoke again. "They didn't come
with you then? They didn't bring you to the door then?"
He spoke with what Wolf fancied was a tone of nervous
relief.
"I found my way very easily," was all the visitor could
reply.
"What's that? You came alone? They let you come
alone?" The man gave him a quick, suspicious glance,
and limped a step or two towards the front-door. Wolf
received an impression that he wasn't believed, and that
Mr. Urquhart thought that, if the door were opened and
he called loud enough, someone would respond at once
out of the darkness.
"Didn't Darnley come any of the way with you?" This
was said with such a querulous, suspicious accent that
Wolf looked him straight in the face.
"They didn't even know I had left the house," he
remarked sternly.
Mr. Urquhart glanced at the door through which the
servant had vanished.
"I told him to lay three places," he remarked. "I made
sure they wouldn't let you come alone."
Wolf, at this, lifted one of his thick eyebrows; and a
flicker of a smile crossed his mouth.
"Would you like me to run over and fetch him?" he
said.
"What's that, eh? Fetch him? Did you say fetch him?
Of course not! Come, come. Let's go in. Monk will have
everything ready by now. Come along. This is the way."
He led his visitor down the hall and into a small oak-
panelled room. The table was laid for three; and no
sooner were they seated, than Roger Monk, re-garbed as
if by magic in a plain dark suit, and accompanied by a
young maid in cap and apron, brought in two steaming
soup-plates. The dinner that followed was an excep
tionally good one, and so also was the wine. Both host
and guest drank quite freely; so that by the time the
servants left them to their own devices, there had emerged
not only a fairly complete understanding as to the char-
acter of the work which Wolf was to undertake in that
remarkable establishment, but also a certain rapport
between their personalities.
Staring contentedly at a large monumental landscape
by Gainsborough, where what might have been called
the spiritual idea of a Country Road lost itself between
avenues of park-like trees and vistas of mysterious
terrace-walks, Wolf began to experience, as he sipped his
port wine and listened to his host's mellow discourse, a
more delicious sense of actual physical well-being than
he had known for many a long year.
He soon discovered that he was to labour at his partic-
ular share of their grandiose enterprise in a window-seat
of the big library of the house, while Mr. Urquhart
pursued independent researches in a room he called
"the study." This was excellent news to the new secretary.
Very vividly he conjured up an image of that windowseat,
ensconced behind mul lion-panes of armorial glass,
and opening upon an umbrageous vista resembling that
picture by Gainsborough!
"Our history will be an entirely new genre" Mr. Urquhart
was saying. "What I want to do is to isolate the par-
ticular portion of the earth's surface called 'Dorset';
as if it were possible to decipher there a palimpsest of
successive strata, one inscribed below anolher, of human
impression. Such impressions are forever being made and
forever being obliterated in the ebb and flow of events;
and the chronicle of them should be continuous, not
episodic." He paused in his discourse to light a cigarette;
which, when it was lit, he waved to and fro, forming
curves and squares and patterns. His hand holding
the cigarette was white and plump, like the hand of a
priest; and, as he wrote on the air, a trail of filmy
smoke followed the movements of his arm.
"Of course, a genuine continuity," he went on, "would
occupy several lifetimes in the telling of it. What's to be
done then, eh? D'ye see the problem? Eh? What's to be
done?"
Solent indicated as well as he could by discreet facial
signs that he did see the problem, but left its solution
to the profound intelligence in front of him.
Mr. Urquhart proceeded. "We must select, my friend.
We must select. All history lies in selection. We can't
put in everything. We must put in only what's got pith
and sap and salt. Things like adulteries, murders, and
fornications."
"Are we to have any method of selection?" Wolf enquir-
ed.
Mr. Urquhart chuckled. "Do you know what I've thought?"
he said. "I've thought that I'd like to get the sort of per-
spective on human occurrences that the bedposts in
brothels must come to possess and the counters
of bar-rooms and the butlers' pantries in old houses
and the muddy ditches in long-frequented lovers' lanes."
"It's in fact a sort of Rabelaisian chronicle you wish
to write?" threw in Wolf.
Mr. Urquhart smiled and leant back in his chair. He
drained his wine-cup to the dregs, and with half-shut
malignant eyes, full of a strange inward unction, he
squinnied at his interlocutor. The lines of his face, as
he sal there contemplating his imaginary History, took to
themselves the emphatic dignity of a picture by Holbein.
The parchment-like skin stretched itself tightly and
firmly round the bony structure of the cheeks, as though
it had been vellum over a mysterious folio. A veil of
almost sacerdotal cunning hovered, like a drooping gon-
falon, over the man's heavy eyelids and the loose
wrinkles that gathered beneath his eyes. What still puz-
zled Wolf more than anything else was the youthful
glossiness of his host's hair, which contrasted very oddly
not only with the extreme pallor of his flesh, but also
with the deeply indented contours of his Holbein-like
countenance! Mr. Urquhart's coiffure seemed, in fact,
an obtrusive and unnatural ornament designed to set
off quite a different type of face from the one it
actually surmounted.
"Is it or isn't it a wig?" Wolf caught himself wonder-
ing again. But each furtive glance he look at the raven-
black cranium opposite him made such a supposition less
and less credible; for by the flicker of the candles he
seemed to detect the presence of actual individual hairs,
coarsely and strongly growing, on either side of the
"parting" in the centre of that massive skull. While
he was considering this phenomenon, he became conscious
that Mr. Urquhart had left the mailer of Dorsel Chron-
icles and was speaking of religion.
"I was broughl up an Anglican and I shall die an
Anglican," he was saying. "that doesn'l in the least
mean lhal I believe in the Chrislian religion."
There was a pause at this point, while the squire re-
filled his own glass and that of his visitor.
"I like the altar," the man continued. "The altar, Mr.
Solent, is the one absolutely satisfactory object of
worship left in our degenerate days." There came into Mr.
Urquhart's face, as he uttered these words, an expres-
sion that struck Wolf as nothing less than Satanic.
"It does not matter to you then, Sir," tbrew out
Wolf cautiously, "what the altar represents?"
Mr. Urquhart smiled. "Eh?" he muttered. "Represents
did you say?" And then in a vague, dreamy, detached
manner he repeated the word "represents" several
times, as if he were mentally examining it, as a
connoisseur might examine some small object; but his
voice, as he did this, grew fainter and fainter, and
presently died away altogether.
The new secretary bowed discreetly over his plate of
almonds and raisins. He suspected that if it had not been
for the excellence of the wine, the great swaying ponti-
fical head in front of him would have been more reserved
in its unusual credo.
"Is the church in King's Barton ritualistic enough for
your taste, Sir?" he enquired.
And then straight out of the air there came into his
mind the image of Mr. John Urquhart, stark naked, with
a protuberant belly like Punch or Napoleon, kneeling
in the dead of night, while a storm of rain lashed the
windows, before the altar of a small, dark, unfrequented
edifice.
"Eh? What's that?" grumbled his entertainer. "The
church here? Oh, Tilly-Valley's all right. Tilly-Valley's
as docile as a ewe-lamb." He leaned forward with a sar-
donic leer, lowering his head between the candles as if
he possessed a pair of sacred horns. "Tilly-Valley's
afraid of me; just simply afraid." His voice sank into
a whisper. "I make him say Mass every morning. D'ye
hear? I make him say Mass whether there's anyone there
or not."
The tone in which Mr. Urquhart uttered these words
roused a definite hostility in Wolf's nerves. There came
over him a feeling as if he had been permitted, on an
airless night, to catch a glimpse of monstrous human
lineaments behind the heavy rumble of a particular clap
of thunder. There was something abominably menacing
in this great wrinkled while face, with its glossy, care-
fully parted hair, its pendulous eyelids, its baggy eye-
folds, butting at him between the candle-flames.
It presented itself to his mind as a clear issue, that
he had now really come across a person who, in that
mysterious mythopoeic world in which his own imagination
insisted on moving, was a serious antagonist an antagonist
who embodied a depth of actual evil such as was
a completely new experience in his life. This idea, as it
slowly dawned upon his wine-befogged brain, was at
once an agitating threat and an exciting challenge. He
deliberately stiffened the muscles of his body to meet this
menace. He straightened his shoulders and glanced care-
lessly round the room. He composed his countenance
into an expression of cautious reserve. He stretched out
his legs. He threw one of his arms over the back of his
chair. He clenched together the fingers of his other hand,
as it lay on his knee beneath the table. He knew well
enough that what Mr. Urquhart saw in these manifestations
was an access of casual bonhomie in his new secretary,
a bonhomie amounting to something almost like
youthful bravado. He knew that what he did not see was
a furtive gathering together of the forces of an alien
soul, a soul composed of metaphysical chemicals directly
antipodal to those out of which his own was compounded.
What Wolf felt in his own mind just then summed itself
up in vague half-articulated words uttered in that
margin of his consciousness where the rational fades
away into the irrational. "This Dorsetshire adventure is
going to be serious," he said to himself. And then he be-
came suddenly aware that though quite ignorant of all
that was occurring in the mind and nerves of his visitor,
the squire of King's Barton had grown alive to the fact
that his remarks were not meeting with the same mag-
netic response that they had met with at first. After a
minute or two of silence, Mr. Urquhart rose and limped
towards the door of the dining-room. He opened the door
for Wolf and they both went out into the hall.
"I think," he said, as they stood at the foot of the
stately Jacobean staircase, "I think I will not show you
the library tonight. You have had a tiring clay, and if
I take you upstairs there's no knowing when we shall
separate! By Jove"-~and he glanced at the hall-clock
"it's past ten already! Better say good-night before we
start talking again, eh? You've got a walk before you,
too. Better say good-night before we get too interested
in each other, eh? What? Where'd that idiot put your
things? Oh, good! Very good. Well, come again by ten
o'clock tomorrow morning and we'll settle everything.
I am very relieved to find how much we've got in common.
My History will not be betrayed by your assistance
as it was by my last helper."
Wolf walked to the place where his coat had been
laid down by the man-servant, and after he had put it
on, and picked up his hat and stick, he turned to his host,
who kept uttering meaningless monosyllables in a silky,
propitiatory whisper, as if he were ushering out a madman
or a policeman; and asked him point-blank who this
ill-advised predecessor of his was, turning as he did so
the handle of the front-door. The question seemed to
disturb Mr. Urquhart's mental equanimity, as much as
the chilly March wind that blew in with a gust when the
door was opened, disturbed his physical balance.
"Eh? What? What's that? Didn't Darnley tell you?
The boy ruined my History at the start. I had to tear up
every scrap. He dropped it and went all in a minute.
Eh? What? Didn't Darnley tell you? He left it in chaos.
He played hop-scotch with it!"
Struggling with the heavy door and the gusty wind,
Solent muttered a propitiatory reply.
"Very annoying I hope, indeed, I shall do better,
Sir! You had to get rid of him, then?"
The wind whistled past him as he spoke, so that his
host's final word was scarcely audible. In fact, the last
thing he saw of Mr. Urquhart was a feeble attempt the
man seemed to be making to cover his rotund stomach
with the flaps of his dress-suit.
When at last the great door had really closed between
them and he was striding down the stone steps, he found
his mind full of the impression which that inarticulate
final word had made upon him; and before he reached
the end of the drive and passed through the iron gates
into Lenty Lane, he had come to the startling conclusion
that his predecessor in the study of Dorset Chronicles
had died, as they say in that county, "in the het of his
job."
"Good Lord!" he thought, as he turned into Pond
Lane. "If all he feels for his assistants when they die
at their post is anger like that, he must be a queer chap
to deal with. Or did he mean something quite different?
Dead? Dead? But that wasn't the word he used. What
was the word he used?" And he continued worrying
over the wind-blown sarcasm he had caught in the door-
way, without coming to any solution of the riddle. "If
it wasn't that he meant the fellow was dead, what did
he mean?"
His mind was so full of this problem that he arrived
at the gate into the small garden of Pond Cottage before
he was aware of it. There was a faint reddish light
in the window of what he knew was his own bedroom.
"She's given me a fire!" he thought to, himself; and he
looked forward with keen anticipation-to his first night
in Dorset after twenty-five years.
Opening the door quietly, he lit a match as soon as
he was inside, and turned the key in the lock. He then
took the precaution of taking off his shoes; and lightly
and stealthily he slipped upstairs and entered his room.
He had no sooner done so than a figure rose up from
a chair by the fire and stumbled towards him. It was
a middle-aged man, in a long, white, old-fashioned night
shirt, with a woollen shawl wrapped about his shoulders.
There was no light but the firelight in the room; and the
man's countenance was a mere blur above the folded
shawl. "Was writing poetry...let my fire out...came
before expected...humbly apologize...hope you'll
sleep well..." Without further explanation the man
pushed past him and went out, leaving these broken
sentences humming in the air like the murmurs of some
thick, muffled, mechanical instrument. Once more Wolf
found himself alone with the Landseer and the Alma-
Tadema pictures.
"This is too much!" he muttered furiously. "If I can't
have my room to myself I'll go somewhere else," he
thought.' "Does this incense-burner suppose that ev-
eryone in the world must humour his whimsies?" He opened
both windows wide and lit the candles on his dressing-
table.
Apparently Jason Otter had retired quietly to his bed-
room, for the house was now as silent as the darkness
outside it. He began slowly undressing. For a while his
irritation was prolonged by the way the wind kept making
the candles flare; but gradually, in the freshness of
the cool garden-smells, his accustomed equanimity re-
turned. After all, there would be plenty of time to adjust
all these things! He must propitiate these people to the
limit at present, and feel his way. It would be silly to
show touchiness and cantankerousness at the very start.
By the time he had blown out the flickering candles
and was safe in bed, his habitual mood had quite reas-
serted itself. He went over in his mind his conversa
tion with Mr. Urquhart, and wondered how far his
imagination had led him on to exaggerate the sinister
element in the man. He wished intensely that he had
caught the drift of that final word about his predecessor.
Was he dead? Or was it only that he had been ignomini-
ously dismissed?
As he grew sleepy, all manner of trivial occurrences
and objects of this adventurous day began rising up be-
fore him, emphasizing themselves, out of all proportion
to the rest, in a strange half-feverish panorama. The
long, enchanted road revealed in that Gainsborough pic-
ture hovered before him and beckoned him to follow it.
The abrupt apologies of Roger Monk melted into the
furtive exhortations of the old woman in the blue apron.
Framed in the darkness that closed in upon him, the
coarse black hairs, that had refused to be reduced to a
wig, metamorphosed themselves into similar hairs, growing,
as he knew they could grow, upon a long-dead human
skull! The jogging grey haunches of the mare that
had brought him from Ramsgard confused themselves
with the grey paws of the cat upon Selena Gault's knees.
Very vividly, more vividly than anything else, he saw
the waiter at the Lovelace, as he leaned heavily upon
their tea-table. He remembered now both the queer whitish
scar on the back of that hand and the resemblance to
the Waterloo-steps face.
And then, all suddenly, it seemed that he could think
of nothing else but the completely unknown personality
apparently that of the clergyman of the place referred
to so contemptuously by Mr. Urquhart as "Tilly-
Valley." While the syllables "Tilly-Valley" repeated
themselves in his brain, the person concealed behind
that odd appellation ceased to be a man. He became some
queer-shaped floating object that could not be put into
words, and yet was of the utmost importance. What
was of importance was that an obstinate bend in that
floating object should be straightened out. Something was
preventing it from being straightened out, something that
emanated from a black wig and a woollen shawl, and was
extremely thick and heavy, and had a taste like port
wine!
But there was another thing, far down, far off, covered
up, as if by masses of dead leaves, a thing that was
stirring, gathering, rising, a thing that, in a minute more,
would give him illimitable reassurance and strength.
When this thing rose to the surface, the bent twig would
be straightened out and all would be well! This "all
being well" implied that that calm, placid cow which
was eating plantain-leaves under Basingstoke churchtower,
should stop eating and lie down. The cow lying
down would be a beautiful green mound covered with
plantains plantains that grew larger and larger, till
they became enormous succulent leaves as big as elephants'
ears; but the cow couldn't quite lie down. Something
thick and heavy and sticky, like port wine, impeded
its movements....
Everything in the world was material now. Thoughts
were material. Feelings were material. It was a world
of material objects, of which his mind was one. His
mind was a little bluish-coloured thing, soft, fluffy, like
blue cotton-wool; and what was rising out of the dead
leaves was blue too, but the sticky impeding thing was
brown, and the bent twig was brown....
It was as if in that slow sinking into sleep his soul
had to pass all the long, previous, evolutionary stages
of planetary life, and be conscious with the conscious-
ness of vegetable things and mineral things. This is what
made every material substance of such supernal impor-
tance to him of an importance which perhaps material
substances really did possess, if all were known.
GERDA
THE FIRST SENSATION TO WHICH WOLF AWOKE IN A
morning of rainy wind and drifting clouds, was a sensa-
tion of discomfort. As his mind began concentrating
on this discomfort, he realized it proceeded from those
two heavily-framed pictures which gave to his chamber
a sort of reading-room or club-room aspect. Harmless
enough in themselves had they awaited him in the parlour
of an hotel, they seemed no less than an outrage
upon his senses when associated with this simple and
quiet bedroom. He resolved to issue an ultimatum at
once. He 'hadn't come to Dorsetshire to be oppressed by
the ponderous labours of Royal Academicians. And he
would also make it clear that his bedroom was to be his
sanctuary. No night-shirted intruder should run in and
out at his pleasure!
He leapt from the bed and proceeded to turn to the
wall both of the mid-Victorian masterpieces. That done,
he lay down again and gave himself up to the rainy air,
full of the smell of young leaves and wet garden-mould.
Lying stretched out upon his back, he set himself with
a deliberate effort to gather up his recent impressions
and relate them as well as he could to the mood of yes-
terday's drive. With clear awareness of most of the
things that had happened to him since he left his mother
at the door of their little flat in Hammersmith, he was
oddly conscious that all his deepest instincts were still
passive, expectant, waiting. He was like a man who re-
covers from the shock of a shipwreck, and who, drying
himself in the security of some alien beach, hesitates,
in a grateful placid lethargy, to begin his hunt for
berries or fruits or fresh water.
Detail by detail he reviewed the events of the previous
day; and as the images of all these people of Miss
Gault, of Darnley, of Mr. Urquhart passed in procession
before him, he was surprised at the light in which
he saw them, so different from the way in which they
had appeared only some eight or nine hours ago. The
importance of material objects their mystical importance
had been his last impression before sleeping; but
now everything appeared in a cold, unmystical light. It
was always thus when he awoke from sleep; but the
fact that he recognized the transitoriness of the mood
did not diminish its power. He was never more cynically
clairvoyant than on these occasions. He surveyed at such
times his dearest friends through a sort of unsympathetic
magnifying-glass in which there was not one of
their frailties that did not stand out in exaggerated relief.
The port-hole, so to speak, of the malign consciousness
through which he saw them was at the same time
telescopic and microscopic. It was surrounded, too, by a
thick, circular obscurity. He was abnormally sensitive
at such times, but with a curtailed and reduced sensibility.
Each particular thing as it presented itself dominated the
whole field of vision. Nor was this sensitiveness itself an
altogether normal receptivity. It was primarily physiological.
It had few nervous chords; and no spiritual or psychic ones.
Everything that approached it approached it on the bodily
plane, as something even if it were a mental image to be
actually grasped with the five senses.
And so, as he lay there, knowing that a long while
must pass before he would have any chance of breakfast
or even of a cup of tea, he made a stronger effort than
usual to get his thoughts into focus. The wet airs blow-
ing in through the open windows helped him in this
attempt. It was as if he stole away from that little round
port-hole and shuffled off to some upper deck, where he
could feel the wide horizons. His mind kept reverting to
what he had fell during the drive with Darnley, and he
tried to analyze what sort of philosophy it was that re-
mained with him during all the normal hours when his
"mythology" his secret spiritual vice lay quiescent.
He fumbled about in his mind for some clue to his
normal attitude to life some clue-word that he could
use to describe it, if any of his new friends began ques-
tioning him; and the word he hit upon at last was the
word fetish-worship. That was it! His normal attitude to
life was just that or nearer that than anything else!
It was a worship of all the separate, mysterious, living
souls he approached: "souls" of grass, trees, stones,
animals, birds, fish; "souls" of planetary bodies and of
the bodies of men and women; the "souls," even, of all
manner of inanimate little things; the "souls" of all
those strange, chemical groupings that give a living
identity to houses, towns, places, countrysides....
"Am I inhuman in some appallingly incurable manner?"
he thought. "Is the affection I have for human
beings less important to me than the shadows of leaves
and the flowing of waters?"
He gazed intently at the window-sills of his open win-
dows, above which the tassels of the blinds swayed to
and fro in the damp gusts of wind. He thought of the
grotesque and obsessed figure of Selena Gault, as she
pulled up plantains from his father's grave. No! Whatever
this fetish-worship might be, it certainly was diffe-
rent from "love." Love was a possessive, feverish,
exacting emotion. It demanded a response. It called for
mutual activity. It entailed responsibility. The thrill-
ing delight with which he was wont to contemplate his
mother's face under certain conditions, the deep satis-
faction he derived from the sight of Miss Gault and her
cats, the pleasure with which he had surveyed the blue
eyes and pointed beard of Darnley Otter these things
had nothing in them that was either possessive or re-
sponsible. And yet he lost all thought of himself in
watching these things, just as he used to do in watching
the mossy roots of the chestnuts and sycamores in the
avenues at Hampton Court! It seemed then that what he
felt for both things and people, as he saw them under
certain lights, was a kind of exultant blending of vision
and sympathy. Their beauty held him in a magical en-
chantment; and between his soul and the "soul," as it
were, of whatever it was he happened to be regarding,
there seemed to be established a tremulous and subtle
reciprocity.
He was pleased at having thought of the word "fetish-
worship" in this connection. And it was in the pleasure
of this thought that he now leapt out of bed and, putting
on his overcoat, began hurriedly to shave himself, using
as he did so the cold water in his jug.
He had not got very far with this, however, when there
was a sound in the passage outside that reminded him
of the rattle of the milk-cans on the Longbourne Port
platform. This was followed by a gentle knock at his
door. Opening it cautiously, he was surprised to see Mrs.
Otter herself standing there, while beside her was a wide
tin balh and a can of hot water.
"I was waiting till I heard you move," she said. "Darnley
has had his breakfast and gone. He goes to Blacksod
early. Jason does not get up till late. Dimity and I will
be ready for you when you come down."
Wolf hovered at the door, his face lathered, his safety-
razor in his hand. He suddenly felt no better than a
lout in the presence of this faded old lady.
She smiled at him pleasantly. "I hope you'll be happy
with us," she said. "You'll get used to us soon. Poor
Mr. Redfern got quite used to us before he died."
"Mr. Redfern?"
"The gentleman who helped the Squire with his book.
But you must have your bath now. Do you think you
can be ready in about half-an-hour?"
Wolf bowed his lathered face and she went off. While
he was dragging the bath into his room, she turned at
the head of the stairs.
"Would you like a cup of tea at once, Mr. Solent, or
will you wait till you come down?"
"I'll wait, thank you! Thank you very much!" he
shouted; and jerking both bath and can into his for-
tress, he shut the door and prepared to wash and dress.
The whole process of his ablution and his dressing
was now a mechanical accompaniment to absent-minded
fantastic thoughts on the subject of the dead Mr. Redfern.
"This was the fellow's room, no doubt," he said to
himself. "I suppose he died here. A nice death, with those
monstrous pictures lying like lead on his consciousness!"
It was on Mr. Redfern's behalf now that Wolf scowled
at the backs of these pictures, as he sponged himself
in the tin bath. Mr. Redfern dominated that half-hour,
to the exclusion of all other thoughts. Wolf saw him
lying stone-dead on the pillows he himself had just
quitted. He saw him as a pale, emaciated youth, with
beautifully moulded features. He wondered if he had
been buried by the person Mr. Urquhart called "Tilly-
Valley." He decided he would look for his grave in the
King's Barton churchyard. His dead face took during
that half-hour the most curious forms. It became the
soap. It became the sponge. It became the spilt water
upon the floor. It became the slop-pail. It became the
untidy heap of Wolf's dress-clothes. Wolf was not re-
lieved from it, in fact, till he found himself drinking
delicious cups of tea and eating incredibly fresh eggs
under the care of his hostess in their pleasant dining-
room. The pictures here were of the kind that no philo-
sopher could quarrel with. Old-fashioned pririts, old-
fashioned pastels, old-fashioned engravings, gave the
room a spirit that seemed to emerge from centuries of
placidity and stretch out consolatory hands to every
kind of wayfarer.
"This is my room," said Mrs. Otter, looking very
pleased when Wolf explained to her what he felt about
it. "These things came from my own home in Cornwall,
The best things in the house belonged to my husband.
They're in the drawing-room; very valuable things. But
I like this room myself and I'm glad you do. Mr. Redfern
used to love to read and write at this table. I believe
if he'd done all his work here he'd never have got that
terrible illness. That library of Mr. Urquhart's was too
learned for him, poor, dear, young man! And he was so
good-looking! My son Jason used to call him by the
names of all the heathen gods, one after another! Ja-
son was extremely upset when he died so suddenly."
The visitor to King's Barton found his attention wander-
ing several times after this. Mrs. Otler began to drift
into rambling stories about her native Cornwall, and it
was only Wolf's power of automatically putting a convinc-
ing animation into his heavy countenance that prevented
her from realizing how far away his thoughts had flown.
Hostess and guest were interrupted in their rather one-
sided tete-a-tete by the sound of footsteps descending
the stairs. Mrs. Otter jumped up at once.
"It's Jason!" she cried. "We must have disturbed him.
I was talking too much. I'll go and tell Dimity she need
not clear away. I expect Jason will like to have a smoke
with you,"
She disappeared through the door into the kitchen at
the very moment when her elder son entered the room.
Wolf was astonished at the difference between the figure
he had seen the night before and the figure he rose to
shake hands with now. Dressed in neat, dark-blue serge,
Jason Otler had the quiet, self-composed air of a much
travelled man of the world. His clean-shaven face,
framed by prematurely grey hair, was massively and yet
abnormally expressive. Forehead and chin were imposing
and commanding; but this effect was diminished and
almost negated by the peculiar kind of restless misery
displayed in the lines of the mouth. The man's eyes were
large and grey; and instead of glancing aside in the way
Darnley's did, they seemed to cry out for help without
cessation or intermission.
He and Wolf sat opposite each other at Mr. Redfern's
favourite tabley and, lighting their cigarettes, looked
each other up and down in silence. Jason Otter was decid-
edly nervous. Wolf saw his hand shaking as he lit a
match.
There was, indeed, something almost indecent about
the sensitiveness of this man's lined and indented face.
It made Wolf feel as though at all costs the possessor of
such a countenance must be protected from nervous
shocks. Was it in taking care of him that Darnley's blue
eyes had acquired their curious expression? Jason's own
eyes were not tragic. They were something worse. They
were exposed; they were stripped bare; they seemed to
peer forth helplessly from the human skull behind them,
as though some protective filaments that ought to have
been there were not there!
"I saw you'd turned our pictures to the wall," he began,
fixing his pleading eyes upon Wolf's face as if asking
for permission to humble himself to the ground. "Ill
have them taken away. I'll have them put in the privy
or in the passage."
"Oh, it's all right, Mr. Otter," returned Wolf. "It's
only that I never can sleep in a room with large pictures.
It's a peculiarity of mine."
No sooner had Jason heard this expression, "a peculi-
arity of mine," than his whole visage changed. A
childish mischievousness illuminated his pallid physi-
ognomy, and he chuckled audibly, nodding his head.
"A peculiarity? That's excellent. That's what Bluebeard
used to say. 'It's a peculiarity of mine.' I think
that's one of the prettiest excuses I've ever heard."
This explosion was so surprising to Wolf that all he
could do was to open his mouth and stare at the man.
But the humour passed as quickly as it had come. The
face unwrinkled itself. The eyes became supplicatory.
The mouth tightened in solemn misery.
"I don't want anyone to be bothered about the moving
of those pictures, Mr. Otter," said Wolf; for he
seemed to see with terrible distinctness the devoted lady
of the house struggling alone with those heavy frames.
"You must allow me to do it myself. In fact," he went
on, in what he tried to make a casual, airy tone, "I'm
going to beg Mrs. Otter to let me treat that room as if
it were an unfurnished flat of my own."
The head opposite him was so grey that he felt as if
he were addressing this hint to Mrs. Otter's husband
rather than to her son.
Very gently, moving delicately, like Agag before Samuel,
Jason rose to his feet. "I think we'd better get those
pictures changed now," he whispered earnestly, in a
grave, conspiring voice.
Wolf tried to retain his airy, casual manner in the
face of this gravity.
"I'll do it like a shot," he said, rising and moving
towards the door. "Just tell me where to put them!"
The two men went up together, and under Jason's direct-
ions the Landseer and the Alma-Tadema were deposited
in a vacant room at the back of the pantry.
"Come upstairs for a minute," said Mr. Otter, when
this transaction was completed; and stepping softly and
quietly, as if there were a dead person somewhere in the
house, he led the way into his own room.
Wolf felt the same uneasy sensations in this chamber
as he had experienced the evening before. Sinking into
a luxurious armchair and accepting a cigarette, he found
himself bold enough to make a faint protest against his
host's Arundel prints, whose ceremonious piety he found
so distasteful.
"I couldn't work in this room," he murmured and felt as
he spoke that his tone was cantankerous and impolite.
But Jason Otter showed not the least annoyance or
even surprise at his guest's rudeness.
"I expect not! I expect not!" he cried cheerfully.
"There are few people who could. I myself could work
in a church or in a museum. I welcome anything that
acts as a shield. It's like having a band of retainers,
a sort of papal guard, to keep the populace at bay."
As he spoke, he looked proudly and complacently round
the room, as if conscious of the protection of the an-
tique French chair in which he had ensconced him self.
There was a Boule table at his side, and he proceeded
to dust it with a large silk handkerchief.
"I suppose you've never read any books on Hindoo
mythology?" he said suddenly.
The word "mythology" gave Wolf an uncomfortable
shock. He felt as a Catholic might feel if he heard
a Methodist refer to the Virgin Mary.
He shook his head.
"I've only read one myself," went on the poet, with
a chuckle; "so you needn't feel a fool. It was by that
man who went to Tibet. But in it he mentions Mukalog,
the god of rain."
"The god of rain?" responded Wolf, beginning to feel
reassured.
"That's what the man says," continued the other. "Of
course, we know what these travellers are; but he had a
lot of letters after his name, so I suppose he passed
some examination." Jason put his hand in front of his
mouth as he said this; and his face was wrinkled with
amusement. "He knows Latin, anyway. He brings it in
on the first page," he added.
"It sounds like a real idol...Mukalog, the god of rain..."
murmured Wolf.
Jason's countenance suddenly grew solemn and confi-
dential. "I've got it here," he whispered. "I bought it
for thirty shillings from Mr. Malakite, the bookseller.
He bought it at a sale from some fool who thought it
was nothing....It's brought me all my luck...." He low-
ered his voice still further, so that Wolf could scarcely
hear him.
"These priests look for God in the clouds, but I never
do that....I look for Him..."
"I beg your pardon?" questioned Wolf, leaning attentively
forward. "You say you look for Him...?"
There was a pause; and the expression of the man
changed from extreme gravity to hobgoblinish humour.
"In the mud!" he shouted.
Then, once more grave, he rose to his feet and fetched
from its pedestal a hideous East Indian idol, about six
inches high, and placed it in the middle of the Boule
table, just opposite Wolf.
"It's his stomach that makes him so shocking," said
Jason Otter; "but the ways of God aren't as dainty
as those of the Bishop of Salisbury. In this world Truth
flies downward, not upward!"
Hardly aware of what he was doing, so occupied was
his mind with the whole problem of his host's persona-
lity, Wolf rose, and, leaning over the table, picked up
Mukalog, the god of rain. Holding it absent-mindedly
in his fingers for a while, he finally made a foolish
schoolboy-like attempt to balance it upside-down on the
flat skull of its monstrous head.
This proceeding brought a flash of real anger into
Jason's eyes. He snatched the thing away with a nervous
clutch, and, hurrying to the back of the room, replaced
it on its jade pedestal, which Wolf noticed now, with no
great surprise, was standing near a carved brazier con-
taining some still-smouldering ashes doubtless the ashes
of that very incense which had to be "ordered from the
Stores"!
While his host returned in silence to his French chair
and in profound dejection took out his cigarette-case,
Wolf, still staring in a sort of hypnotized trance at the
"god of rain," set himself to wonder why it was that the
kind of evil which emanated from this idol should be
so much more distasteful than the kind of evil that
emanated from Mr. Urquhart.
He came to the conclusion that although it is impossible
for any living human being to obliterate all elements
of good from itself, it is possible for an artist, or
for a writer, or even for the anonymous creative energy
of the race itself, to create an image of evil that should
be entirely evil.
But why should this Hindoo idol seem so much more
sinister than any Chinese or Japanese monster? Was it
because in India the cult of spirituality, both for good
and evil, had been carried to a greater length than anywhere
else in the world?
"You'd better not listen to any tales about me that
old Urquhart tells you," said the poet suddenly, fixing
his sorrowful eyes upon the visitor.
The name of his employer made Wolf rise hurriedly
from his armchair.
"Certainly not," he said brusquely, moving to the
door. As he placed his hand on the door-handle, he felt
as though the evil spirit of Mukalog were serpentining
towards him over the poet's shoulders and over the
smooth Boule table.
"I'm not one to listen to tales from anyone, Mr. Otter,"
he said as he went out.
He crossed the landing and entered his own room.
Now that he was alone, he fell into a very grave medi-
tation, as he slowly laced up his boots. "No wonder," he
said to himself, "that poor chap Redfern committed sui-
cide! What with this man's demon and Mr. Urquhart's
devilish History, this place doesn't seem a paradisal
retreat. Well! Well! We shall see what we shall see."
He carried his coat and hat quietly downstairs and
managed to get out of the house unobserved by either
Mrs. Otter or the old servant.
The current of his mood was running more normally
and gently by the time he found himself being escorted
by his eccentric employer to the great isolated library
which was now to be the scene of his labours. His dream
of the writing-table by a mullioned window "blushing
with the blood of kings and queens" turned out to be
a literal presentiment. The view he got from his seat
at that window surpassed the Gainsborough itself. The
manor-garden melted away into herbaceous terraces and
shadowy orchards. These in their turn faded into a green
pasture-land, on the further side of which, faint in the
distance, he could make out the high ridge of ploughed
fields along the top of which ran the main road from
Biacksod to Ramsgard.
Mr. Urquhart, however, seemed in a fussy, preoccupied,
fidgetty mood that morning. He kept bringing books from
the shelves and placing them on his secretary's table;
and then, after he had opened them and read a passage
or two, muttering "That's good, isn't it? That's the kind
of thing we want, isn't it?" he would return them to the
shelves and bring back others. Wolf was not very much
helped by these manoeuvres. In fact, he was teased and
nonplussed. He was anxious to find out exactly how much
of a free hand he was going to be allowed, and he was
also anxious to find out what what definite ideas the Squire
of King's Barton already had. This erratic tumbling about of
old folios, this hunting for nothing but whimsical and scan-
dalous passages, seemed waste of time on that first morning.
"Have you any plan, any synopsis, made out, sir, such as I
could enlarge upon?"
These words greeted Mr. Urquhart when, with a satyrish leer
on his face and a thick folio pressed against his stomach,
he came limping up to the table for the fourth or fifth time.
'Eh? What's that? "Plan" did you say? "Synopsis" did you say?
By Jove! my young friend, I mustn't make such a tosspot of
' e e again the night before we set to work. Didn't I make
it clear to you that our book was going to develop along or-
ganic lines, not along logical lines? Didn't I make it clear
that what we had to aim at was something quite new, an alto-
gether new genre; and that it was to represent the pell-mell
of life? It's a sort of Diary of the Dead we're aiming at,
Solent. Your plans and your skeletons would spoil it utterly.
What I want you to do is to saturate yourself with Dorset
Chronicles, especially the more scandalous of them-the old
houses, Solent, the old houses!-and then, when you've got
the drift of it in your blood, what we'll aim at shall be a
sort of West-country Comedie humaine. Do you get my
meaning? What you've got to do now, Solent, is to help me
collect ma-terial and to take notes. I'll show you my notes
tomorrow. They'll make my meaning clearer. The last thing
we must think of is arrangement. My book must grow like
a living thing, till it frightens us by its reality."
Wolf listened patiently and dutifully to this discourse.
What he thought in his mind was: "This whole business
is evidently just an old man's hobby. I must give up any
idea of taking it seriously. I must play with it, just as
he's playing with it."
With this intention in his mind, as soon as he was
alone in his window, he spread open before him that
monument of scurrilous scandal, "The History of the
Abbotsbury Family," and gave himself up to leisurely
note-making. He transcribed in as lively a way as he
could the most outrageous of the misdeeds of this re-
markable race, as they are narrated by the sly Doctor
Tarrant. He exaggerated, where it was possible, the
Doctor's unctuous commentaries, and he added a few of
his own. He began before long to think that the Squire
was not so devoid of all sagacity in this unusual me-
thod as he had at first supposed.
Half the morning had already passed in this way when
Mr. Urquhart came limping in in a slate of impetuous
excitement.
"I must send you off at once to Blacksod," he began.
"Eh? What? You don't mind walking a few miles, eh?
Roger says he can't spare the trap. You can lunch in
the town at my expense. I've got a bill at the Three
Peewits; and you can come back at your leisure. You don't
object, eh? It's nothing for a young man like you, and
there's very good ale at the Peewits."
Wolf folded up his notes and replaced Doctor Tarrant's
History. He expressed himself as more than delighted
to walk to Blacksod, and he enquired what it was that
Mr. Urquhart wanted done.
"Well, there are two things that have come up, both
of them rather important. I've just heard from my book-
seller down there. You'll easily find him. His name's
Malakite. He's in Cerne Street. He says he's got hold of
the Evershot Letters. That's the book for us, Solent!
Privately printed and full of allusions to the Brambledown
Case! He says there's a man in London after it
already. That may be a lie. You'll have to find out.
Sometimes Malakite's let me have the use of a book and
then sold it afterwards. You'll have to find out, Solent.
Eh? What? You'll have to be a diplomatist, a Talleyrand,
and that sort of thing, eh?"
Wolf composed his countenance as intelligently as he
could and enquired what the other thing was.
Mr. Urquhart lifted his eyebrows, as if the question
had been impertinent.
"The other thing?" he murmured dreamily.
But the next moment, as Wolf leaned back against the
arm of his chair and looked straight into the man's eyes,
there was a startling change in that supercilious face.
A flicker, a shadow, a nothing, passed from one to the
other; one of those exposures of secret thoughts that
seem to bring together levels of consciousness beyond
rational thought. It was all over in a moment; and with
a quick alteration of his position, and a shuffling of his
stick, the lame man recovered his composure.
"Ah yes," he murmured, with a smiling inclination of
his head that resembled the bow of a great gentleman
confessing a lapse of memory. "Ah yes, you are perfectly
right, Solent. There was another little thing that
you might as well attend to while you're about it. It's
not of any pressing importance; but, as I say, if you
have time, and feel energetic, it might be a good thing
to jolt the memory of Mr. Torp. Eh? What's that? Torp,
the stone-cutter. Torp of Chequers Street. You'll easily
find the fellow. He's a jack-of-all-trades does undertaking
and grave-digging as well as stone-cutting."
Mr. Urquhart became silent, but the expression upon
his face was like that of some courtly prince-prelate of
old times, who desired his subordinate to obey instructions
that he was unwilling to put into vulgar speech.
"Mr. Torp?" repeated Wolf, patiently and interrogatively.
"Just a little matter of a headstone," went on the
other. "Tilly-Valley's quarrelled with our sexton here.
So I've had to use Torp as both sexton and undertaker.
He has been disgracefully dilatory." Mr. Urquhart shuffled
to the bookcase, leaning heavily on his stick. He
changed the position of one or two of the books; and as
he did so, with his back to his secretary, he finished his
sentence. "He's been as dilatory about Redfern's headstone
as he was about digging his grave."
Once more there was a silence in the library of King's
Barton Manor. But when the Squire turned round, he
seemed in the best of spirits. "It's not your job, of course,
this kind of thing. But I'm an old man and I don't think
you're touchy about trifles. Jog the memory of the good
Torp, then, will you? What? Jolt the torpid Torp.
That's the word, eh? Tell the beggar in good clear
English that I'll go to Dorchester for that stone if he
doesn't set it up within the week. You can do that for me,
Solent? But it's not important. If it's a bother, let it
go! But have a good luncheon at the Three Peewits anyway!
Make 'em give 'ee their own ale. It's good. It's excell-
ent. That individual down at Pond Collage gets drunk on
it every night, Monk tells me."
Turning again to the bookcase, Mr. Urquhart made as
though the conversation had terminated; and Wolf, after
a moment or Iwo of that awkward hesilalion which a sub-
ordinate feels when he is uncertain as to what particu-
lar gesture of parting is required, went straight out
of the room, without a word, and ran downstairs.
He had found his hat and stick, and was on the point of
letting himself out of the house, when the liltle side-
door leading to the kitchen hurriedly opened, and Roger
Monk made himself visible. He did this with the precipi-
tation of a man reckless wilh anxiety, and he plunged
at once into rapid speech.
"You'll excuse me, Mr. Solent, for troubling you, but
the truth of the matter is, Sir, that this house will be
upset by breakfasl-time tomorrow, unless you unless
you would be so kind, Sir, as to help Mrs. Martin and
myself."
"What on earth is coming now?" thought Wolf. "These
King's Barton servants seem pretty hard put to it."
"'Tisn't as though I didn't know that it's above my
province to speak," went on the agitated man. "But
speak I must; and if you're the kind of young gentleman
I think you are, you'll listen to my words."
Wolf contemplated the swarthy giant, who, dressed in
his gardener's-clothes, with bare throat and bare arms,
had the torso of a classical athlete. Beads of perspira
tion stood out on his forehead, and his great sunburnt
hands made weak fumbling gestures in the air.
"Certainly, Roger. By all means, Roger. I shall be
delighted to help you and Mrs. Martin in any way I can.
What is it I can do for you?"
The tall servant's face relaxed instantaneously, and he
smiled sweetly. His smile was like the smile of some
melancholy slave in a Greek play. His voice sank into a
confidential whisper.
"It's sausages, Sir, asking you to excuse me, it's sau-
sages. Mr. Urquhart has to have 'em these days for
breakfast, and there ain't none of 'em in the house; and
I am too set out, what with horses to clean and artichokes
to plant and pigs in the yard to feed, to go to town myself."
Wolf smiled in as grave and well-bred a manner as
he could. "I'll be very glad to bring you home some
sausages, Monk," he said amiably.
"At Weevil's," cried the other, full of relief and joy.
"At Weevil's in High Street. And be sure you get fresh
ones, Mr. Solent. Tell Bob Weevil they're for me. He
knows me and I know him. Don't mention Squire. Say
they're for Mr. Monk. He'll know! Two pounds of sausages;
and you can tell Weevil to put 'em down. Thank
'ee more than I can say, Sir, for doing this. It eases a
man's mind. I was downright distraught in thinking of
it. Squire's like that. What he puts his heart on he puts
his heart on, and none can turn him. I've been with other
gentlemen mostly in stable-work you understand but
I've never worked for one like Squire. Doesn't do to
contravene Squire when his heart is fixed, and so I thank
'ee kindly, Mr. Solent." And the man vanished with the
same precipitation with which he appeared.
Wolf set out down the drive in extremely good spirits.
Nothing suited him better than to have the day to him-
self. It seemed to extend before him, this day, and ga-
ther volume and freedom, as if it were many days rolled
into one. It didn't worry him that it was Friday. The
nature of the day, its cloudiness, its gustiness, its
greyness, suited his mood completely. It seemed to carry
his mind far, far back back beyond any definite recol-
lections. The look of the oak palings; the look of the
mud; the look of the branches, with their scarcely
budded embryo leaves swaying in the wind all these
things hit his imagination with a sudden accumulated
force. He rubbed his hands; he prodded the ground
with his stick; he strode forward with great strides.
This melancholy day, with its gustily blown elm-branch-
es, seemed to extend itself before him along a road
that was something more than an ordinary road. Frag-
mentary images, made up out of fantastic names the
name of Torp, the name of Malakite hovered in front
of him, mingled with the foam of dark-brown ale and
the peculiar, bare, smooth look of uncooked sausages.
And over and above such images floated the ambiguous
presence of his father, William Solent. He felt as if
everything that might chance to happen on this grey
phantom-like day would happen under the direct influ-
ence of this dead man. He loved his father at that
moment, not with any idealistic emotion, but with an
earthy, sensual, heathen piety which allowed for much
equivocal indulgence.
At the foot of the drive he turned into Lenty Lane,
passing at the corner a trim liltle cottage, whose garden
of rich black earth was full of daffodils. He stopped
for a moment to stare at the window of this neat lodge
thinking in his mind, "That must be where Roger Monk
lives" and without being seriously disturbed, he was a
little startled when, by reason of some impish trick of
light and shade, it seemed to him that he saw an image
of himself standing just inside one of the lower windows.
But he walked on in undiminished good spirits, and
in about a quarter of an hour found himself in the
centre of the village of King's Barton.
All the cottages he saw here had protective cornices,
carved above windows and doors, chiselled and moulded
with as much elaboration as if they were ornamenting
some noble mansion or abbey. Many of these cottage-
doors stood ajar, as Wolf passed by, and it was easy for
him to observe their quaintly furnished interiors: the
china dogs upon the mantelpieces, the grandfalher's clocks,
the highly-coloured lithographs of war and religion,
the shining pots and pans, the well-scrubbed deal
tables, the deeply indented wooden steps leading to the
rooms above. Almost all of them had large flagstones, of
the same mellow, yellowish tint, laid between the doorstep
and the path;* and in many cases this stone was as
deeply hollowed out, under the passing feet of the gen-
erations, as was the actual doorstep which rose above it.
Beyond these cottages his road led him past the low
wall of the parish-church. Here he stopped for a while
to view the graves and to enjoy the look of that solid
and yet proud edifice whose massive masonry and tall
square tower gathered up into themselves so many of
the characteristics of that countryside.
Wolf wondered vaguely in what part of the churchyard
his predecessor's body lay that hiding-place without
a headstone! He also wondered whether by some stroke
of good luck he should get a glimpse of that submissive
clergyman, satirically styled "Tilly-Valley," pottering
about the place.
But the church remained lonely and unfrequented at
that mid-morning hour. Nothing moved there but a heavy
rack of dark-grey, wind-blown clouds, sailing swiftly
above the four foliated pinnacles that rose from the corners
of the tower. Close to the church he perceived what
was evidently the parsonage; but there was no sign of
life there either.
The cottages grew more scattered now. Some of them
were really small dairy-farms, through the gates of whose
muddy yards he could see pigs and poultry, and sometimes
a young bull or an excited flock of geese.
At last he had passed the last house of the village
and was drifting leisurely along a lonely country road.
The hedges were already in full leaf; but many of the
trees, especially the oaks and ashes, were yet quite bare.
The ditches on both sides of the road contained gleaming
patches of celandines.
As Wolf walked along, an extraordinary happiness
took possession of him. He seemed to derive satisfac-
tion from the mere mechanical achievement of putting
one foot in front of the other. It seemed a delicious
privilege to him merely to feel his boots sinking in the
wet mud merely to feel the gusts of cold air blowing
upon his face.
He asked himself lazily why it was that he found
nature, especially this simple pastoral nature that made
no attempt to be grandiose or even picturesque, so much
more thrilling than any human society he had ever met.
He felt as if he enjoyed at that hour some primitive life-
feeling that was identical with what these pollarded elms
felt, against whose ribbed trunks the gusts of wind were
blowing, or with what these shiny celandine-leaves felt,
whose world was limited to tree-roots and fern-fronds
and damp, dark mud!
The town of Blacksod stands in the midst of a richly
green valley, at the point where the Dorsetshire Black-
more Vale, following the loamy banks of the river Lunt,
carries its umbrageous ferlilily into the great Somerset-
shire plain. Blacksod is . not only the centre of a large
agricultural district; it is the energetic arid bustling
emporium of many small but enterprising factories.
Cheeses are made here and also shoes. Sausages are
made here and also leather gloves. Ironmongers, saddlers,
shops dealing in every sort of farm-implement
and farm-produce, abound in the streets of Blacksod side
by side with haberdashers, grocers, fishmongers; and up
and down its narrow pavements farmers and labourers
jostle with factory-hands and burgesses.
After walking for about two miles, Wolf became conscious
that this lively agglomeration of West Country
trade was about to reveal itself. The hedges became
lower, the ditches shallower, the blackbirds and thrushes
less voluble. Neat little villas began to appear at the
roadside, with trim but rather exposed gardens, where
daffodils nodded with a splendid negligence, as if ready
in their royal largesse to do what they could for the
patient clerks and humble shop-assistants who had
weeded the earth about their proud stems.
Soon there began to be manifested certain signs of
borough traffic. Motor-cars showed themselves and even
motor-lorries. Bakers' carts and butchers' carts came
swiftly past him. He overtook maids and mothers return-
ing from shopping, with perambulators where the
infant riders were almost lost beneath the heaps of par-
cels piled up around them. He observed a couple of
tramps taking off their boots under the hedge, their long
brown peevish fingers untwisting dirty linen, their furtive
suspicious eyes watching the passers-by with the
look of sick jackals.
And then he found himself in an actual street. It was
a new street, composed of spick-and-span jerry-built
houses, each exactly like the other. But it gave Wolf a
mysterious satisfaction. The neatness, the abnormal
cleanliness of the brickwork and of the wretched sham-
Gothic ornamentation did not displease him. The little
gardens, behind low, brightly-painted, wooden palings,
were delicious to him, with their crocuses and jonquils
and budding polyanthuses.
He surveyed these little houses and gardens--doubt-
less the homes of artisans and factory-hands--with a
feeling of almost maudlin delight. He imagined himself
as living in one of these places, and he realized exactly
with what deep sensual pleasure he would enjoy the
rain and the intermittent sunshine. There would be no-
thing artistic or over-cl uttered there, to prevent every
delicate vibration of air and sky from reaching the skin
of his very soul. He loved the muslin curtains over the
parlour-windows, and the ferns and flowerpots on the
window-sills. He loved the quaint names of these little
toy houses names like Rosecot, Woodbine, Bankside,
Primrose Villa. He tried to fancy what it would be like
to sit in the bow-window of any one of these, drinking
tea and eating bread-and-honey, while the Spring after-
noon slowly darkened towards twilight.
He roused himself presently from these imaginations
to observe that some of the real business of the town
was becoming manifest. The little houses began to be in-
terspersed with wood-sheds and timber-yards, by grocers'
shops and coal-yards. He became alert now that faint
sort of "second-sight," which almost all contemplative
people possess, warning him that Mr. Torp's establishment
was not far off. He knew he was in Chequers Street.
It only remained for him to keep his eyes open. He
walked very slowly now, peering at the yards and shops
on both sides of the road; and as he walked, a curious
trance-like sensation came over him, the nature of which
was very complicated, though no doubt it had something
to do with the emptiness of his stomach. But it took
the form of making him feel as if he were retracing some
sequence of events through which long ago he had already
passed.
Ah! There it was! "Torp, Stone-Cutter." He gazed
with interest at the various monuments for the dead,
which lay about on the ground or stood erect and chal-
lenging against the wall. It produced a queer impression,
this crowd of anonymous tombstones, the owners
and possessors whereof even now cheerfully walking
about the earth.
"I must get this Torp to show me what he's done for
poor Redfern," he thought, as he passed on to the door
of the house.
He knocked at the door and was so instantaneously
admitted that it was with a certain degree of confusion
that he found himself in the very heart of the stonecutter's
household.
They had evidently just finished their midday meal.
Mrs. Torp, a lean, cadaverous woman, was clearing the
table. The stone-cutter himself, a plump, lethargic man,
with a whimsical eye, was smoking his pipe by the
fire. A handsome boy of about eleven, who had evidently
just opened the door to let himself out, fell back now
and stared at the stranger with a bold impertinence.
"What can I do for 'ee, Sir?" said Mr. Torp, not
making any attempt to rise, but smiling amiably at the
intruder.
"Get on! Get off! Don't worry the gentleman, Lob!"
murmured the woman to the spellbound boy.
And then it was that Wolf became aware of another
member of the family.
No sooner was he conscious of her presence than he
felt himself becoming as speechless with astonishment
as the boy was at his own appearance. She sat on a
stool opposite her father, leaning her shoulders against
the edge of a high-backed settle. She was a young girl
of about eighteen, and her beauty was so startling that
it seemed to destroy in a moment all ordinary human
relations. Her wide-open grey eyes were fringed with
long, dark eyelashes. Her voluptuous throat resembled
an arum lily before it has unsheathed its petals. She
wore a simple close-fitting dress, more suited to the
summer than to a chilly day in spring; but the peculiarity
of this dress lay in the way it emphasized the extraor-
dinary suppleness of her shoulders and the delicate
Artemis-like beauty of her young breasts.
"I've come from King's Barton," began Wolf, moving
towards the stone-cutler. "I believe I have the honour
to have taken the place of the gentleman for whom you
have just designed one of your monuments."
"Sit 'ee down, Misler. Sit 'ee down, Sir!" cried the man
cheerfully. "Give the gentleman a chair, Missus!" He
spoke in a tone that implied that his own obesity must
be accepted as a pleasant excucc for his retaining a
sitting-posture.
But Mrs. Torp had already left the room with a tray;
and Wolf, as he seated himself with his face to the girl,
could hear the woman muttering viciously to herself
and clattering angrily with the plates behind the kitchen-
door a door she seemed to have left open on purpose,
so that she might combine the pleasure of listening to
the conversation with the pleasure of disturbing it.
"Missus be cantiferous wi' I 'cos them 'taties be so
terrible rotted," remarked the man, in a loud, hoarse
whisper, leaning forward towards his guest and confiden-
tially tapping his knee with his pipe. "And them onions
what she been and cooked all morning, she've a-boiled
all taste out o' they. Them onions might as well be hog-
roots for all the Christian juice what be left in 'un."
Wolf, who had found it difficult to keep his eyes away
from the girl by the settle, now suddenly became aware
that she was fully conscious of his agitation and was
regarding him with grave amusement.
"I suppose you don't do any of the cooking?" he
said, rather faintly, meeting her gaze.
She changed her position into one that emphasized
her beauty with a kind of innocent wantonness, smiled
straight into his eyes, but remained silent.
"She?" put in her father. "Save us and help us!
Gerda tlo the cooking? Why, Mister, that girl ain't got
the gumption to comb her own hair. That's the Lord's
own truth, Mister, what I'm telling 'ee. She ain't got the
durncd consideration to comb her own hair; and it
be mighly silky, too, when it be combed out. But her
mother have to do it. There ain't nothing in this blessed
house what that poor woman hasn't to do; and her own
daughter sitting round, strong as a May-pole. Now
you be off to school, Lob Torp! Don't yer trouble the
gentleman."
This last remark was due to the fact that the hand-
some boy had edged himself quite close to Wolf and
was gazing at him with a mixture of admiration and
insolence.
"What be that on your chain?" he enquired. "Be that
a real girt seal, like what King John throwed into the
Wash?"
Wolf put his arm round the child's waist; but as he
did so, he looked steadily at Gerda. At that moment
Mrs. Torp re-enlered the room.
"Well, John?" she said. "Aren't yer going into the
yard? That stone for Mr. Manley's mother's been wait-
ing since Sunday. He comes to see 'un five times a
day. He'll be a crazed-man like, if 'tisn't up afore
tomorrow."
Wolf rose to his feet.
"What shall I tell Mr. Urquhart about the headstone
for Mr. Redfern?"
He utlered these words in a more decided and less
propitiatory tone than he had yet used, and all the
family stared at him with placid surprise.
"Oh, that!" cried Mr. Torp. "So you came about that,
did yer? I had thought maybe you knowed some
wealthy folk out in country what had a waiting corpse.
Do 'ee come from these parts, Mister, or 'be 'ee from
Lunnon, as this 'ere Redfern were?...Lunnon, eh?
Well, 'tis strange that two young men same as you be
should come to Blacksod; and both be Lunnoners! But
that's what I tells our Gerda here. Maids what won't
help their mothers in house, maids what do nought but
walk out wi' lads, had best be in Lunnon their own
selves! That there Metropolis must be summat wonderful
to look at, I reckon. I expect they makes their own
moniments in them parts?"
Wolf nodded, with a shrug of his shoulders, to imply
that there was little need at present for Mr. Torp to
think of extending his activities.
"Could you show me what you've done for Redfern?"
he asked abruptly.
"Well, there ain't no harm in that, is there, Missus?"
said the stone-cutter, looking appealingly at his wife.
"Best show him," said the lady briefly. "Best show
him. But let 'un understand that Mr. Manley's mother
is what comes first."
The obese stone-cutter rose with an effort and led
the way into the yard. Wolf stepped aside to permit
the girl to follow her father; and as she passed him,
she gave him a glance that resembled the sudden trembling
of a white-lilac branch, heavy with rain and sweetness.
Her languorous personality dominated the whole occasion
for him; and as he watched her swaying body moving be-
tween those oblong stones in that cold enclosure, the
thought rose within him that if his subterranean vice
couldn't find a place for loveliness like this, there
must be something really inhuman in its exactions.
With an incredible rapidity he began laying plots to
see this girl again. Did Mr. Urquhart know of her ex-
istence? Had Darnley Otter ever seen her?...He was
roused from his amorous thoughts by an abrupt gesture
of Mr. Torp.
"There 'a be!" said the carver.
" Tis Ham Hill stone,
as Squire Urquhart said for'n to be. I does better jobs
in marble; and marble's what most of 'em likes. But
that's the order; and the young gent what it's chipped
for can't help 'isself."
Wolf regarded the upright yellow slab, upon the top
of which was a vigorous "Here Lies," and at the foot of
which was an even more vigorous "John Torp, Monument-
Maker."
"You haven't got very far, Mr. Torp," he remarked
drily.
"Won't take me more'n a couple o' afternoons to finish
it up," replied the other. "And you can tell Mr. Urquhart
that as soon as Mr. Manley be satisfied Mr. Manley
of Willum's Mill, tell 'un! I'll get to work on his
young friend and make a clean joh of he."
There did not seem any excuse just then for prolonging
this interview. Wolf's mind hurried backwards and
forwards like a rat trying to find a hole into a pantry.
He thought, "Would they let her show me the way to
the Three Peewits?" and then immediately afterwards
he thought, "They'll send the boy, and Fll never get rid
of him!"
In the end he went off with an abruptness that was
almost rude. He patted Lob on the head, nodded at the
stone-cutter, plunged into the eyes of Gerda as a diver
plunges into water, and strode away down Chequers
Street.
It was not long before he was seated at a spotless
white cloth in the commercial dining-room of the fa-
mous West Country inn. In front of him rose a massive
mahogany sideboard, which served as a sort of sacred
pedestal for the ancient silver plate of three genera-
tions of sagacious landlords. In the centre of this
silver were two symbolic objects an immense uncut ham,
adorned with a white paper frill, and a large half-eaten
apple-tart.
Wolf was so late for luncheon that he and a solitary
waiter had the whole dusky, sober room entirely to
themselves. They were, however, looked down upon by the
ferocious eye of a stuffed pike and by the supercilious
eye of Queen Victoria, who, wearing the blue ribbon of
the Garter, conveyed, but only by the flicker of an eye-
lid, her ineffable disdain for all members of the human
race who were not subjects of the House of Hanover.
And as he lingered over his meal, drinking that dark,
foamy liquor that seemed the dedicated antidote to a
grey March day, he permitted his fancy to run riot with
the loveliness of Gerda Torp. How remarkable that she
had never once opened her lips! And yet in her silence
she had compelled both that room and that yard to serve
as mere frames to her personality. He tilted back in his
chair, and pressed the palms of his hands against the
edge of the table, revolving every detail of that queer
scene, and becoming so absorbed that it was only after
a perceptible interval that he began to taste the ciga-
rettes which he went on unconsciously smoking.
The girl was not the particular physical type that
appealed to him most, or that had, whenever he had
come across it, the most provocative effect upon his
senses; but the effect upon him of a beauty so overpow-
ering, so absolute in its flawlessness, was great enough
to sweep out of sight all previous predilections. And
now, as he conjured up the vision of what she was like,
it seemed that nothing more desirable could possibly
happen to him than to enjoy such beauty.
He made up his mind that by hook or by crook he would
possess her. He knew perfectly well that he could not,
properly speaking, be said to have fallen in love
with her. He was like a man who suddenly finds out that
he has suffered all his life from thirst, and simul-
taneously with this discovery stumbles upon a cool cel-
lar of the rarest wine. To have caught sight of her at
all was to be dominated by an insatiable craving for
her a craving that made him feel as if he had some
sixth sense, some sense that must be satisfied by the
possession of her, and that nothing but the possession
of her could satisfy.
Drugged and dazed with the Three Peewits' ale and
with these amorous contemplations, Wolf sat on beneath
that picture of Queen Victoria in a species of erotic
trance. His rugged face, with its high cheek-bones and
hawk-like nose, nodded over his plate with half-shut
lecherous eyes. Every now and then he ran his fingers
through his short, stiff, fair hair, till it stood up erect
upon his head.
"Well, well," he said to himself at last, "this won't
do!" And rising abruptly from his chair, he gave the
waiter, who, in his preoccupation had been to him a mere
white blur above a black coat, an extravagant lip halfa-
crown, in fact and, taking up his hat and stick, told
them to put down his meal to Mr. Urquhart's account,
and stepped out into the street.
The cold, gusty wind, when he got outside, cleared
his brain at once. He made up his mind that he would
leave the bookseller to the last; and, stopping one of the
passers-by, he enquired the way to Weevil's grocery.
Never did he forget that first lingering stroll through
the centre of Blacksod! The country people seemed to
be doing their shopping as if it were some special fete.
Parsons, squires, farmers, villagers all were receiving
obsequious and yet quizzical welcome from the sly shop
keepers and their irresponsible assistants. The image
of Gerda Torp moved with him as he drifted slowly through
this animated scene. Her sweetness flowed through his
senses and flowed out around him, heightening his in-
terest in everything he looked at, making everything
seem rich and mellow, as if it were seen through a dif-
fused golden light, like that of the pictures of Claude
Lorraine.
And all the while over the slate roofs the great grey
clouds rushed upon their arbitrary way. His spirit, drunk
with the sweetness of Gerda and the fumes of the Three
Peewits' ale, rose in exultation to follow those clouds.
Whirling along with them in this exultant freedom of his
spirit, while his human figure with its oak walkingstick
tapped the edge of the pavement, he felt a queer need,
now, to carry this maddeningly sweet burden of his to
that mound in the Ramsgard cemetery.
"He would chuckle over this," thought Wolf, as he recalled
that profane death-bed cry. "He would push me on to snatch
most scandalously at this girl, let the result be as it may!"
His mind dropped now like a leaden plummet into
all manner of erotic thoughts. Would her silence go
on...with its indrawing magnetic secrecy...even
if he were making love to her? Would that glaucous
greyness in her eyes darken, or grow more luminous, as
he caressed her? Gerda certainly couldn't be called a
"peeled willow-wand," for her limbs were rounded
and voluptuous, just as her face had something of that
lethargic sulkiness that is seen sometimes in ancient
Greek sculpture.
It was just at this point that, looking round for a
suitable person to enquire of again concerning the
sausage-shop, he felt himself jerked by the elbow; and
there, in front of him, smiling up into his face, was the
handsome, mischievous countenance of Lob Torp.
"I see'd 'ee, Mister!" burst out the boy breathlessly.
"I see'd 'ee long afore 'ee could see I! Say now, Mister,
have 'ee any cigarette-pictures on 'ee?"
Wolf surveyed the excited child thoughtfully. Surely
the gods were on his side this day!
"If I haven't, I soon will have," he brought out with
a nervous smile, searching hurriedly in his pockcls.
It appeared that he did have a couple of half-used
packages, containing the desired little bits of stiff,
shiny paper.
"There, there's two, at any rate!" he said, handing
them over.
Lob Torp scrutinized the two cards with a disappointed
eye. "They ain't Three Castles," he said sadly. "Them
others hain't as pretty as they Three Castles be." He
meditated for a moment, with his hands in his pockets.
"Say, Mister," he began eagerly, with radiant eyes.
"Tell 'ee what I'll do for 'ee. I'll sell 'ee the photo of
Sis what I be taking down to Bob Weevil's. He were
a-going to gie I summat for'n, but like enough it'll be
worth more to a gent like yourself. Conic now, mister,
gie I a sixpence and I'll gie 'ee the picture and say
nought to Bob."
The ingratiating smile with which Lob uttered these
words would have been worthy of an Algerian street-arab.
Wolf made a humorous grimace at him, under the mask of
which he hid annoyance, uneasiness, curiosity.
The boy continued: "'Tis a wonderful pretty picture,
Mister. I looked it me own self. She be ridin' astride
one of them wold tombstones in Dad's yard, just the
same as 'twere a girt 'oss."
"I don't mind looking at it," said Wolf, after a pause,
pulling the boy into the door of a shop. But Lob Torp
was evidently an adept in the ways of infatuated gentle-
men.
"Threepence for a look, Mister, and sixpence for to
keep," he said resolutely.
It was on the tip of Wolf's tongue to cry, "Hand it
over, boy. I'll keep it!" But an instinct of suspicious
dignity restrained him, and he assumed a non-committal,
negligent air. But under this air the ancient, sly cun-
ning of the predatory demon began to fumble at the
springs of his intention. "I'll get Bob Weevil to show
it to me," the Machiavellian monitor whispered. "I shall
have it in my hands then without being indebted to this
rascally little blackmailer!"
He turned to the boy and took him by the arm. "Come
on, youngster!" he said. "Never mind about the picture.
Much belter give it to your friend! I'm going to Weevil's
shop now myself, and you can show me the way. I'll
give you your sixpence for that!" He pulled the child
forward with him and made him walk by his side, his
arm thrown lightly and casually round Lobbie's neck.
Bui all this sagacious hypocrisy no more deceived the
cynical intelligence of Gerda's brother lhan did the
unction of that arm about his shoulder!
The child slipped out of his grasp like a little eel.
"Don't 'ee hold on to I, Mister. I ain't going to rin no-
where. I ain't a-gived school the go-by for to play mar-
bles. I be goin' fishing with Bob Weevil, present. He
lets I hold his net for'n."
"Oh, is there any fishing about here?" enquired Wolf
blandly, accepting his defeat. The boy skipped a pace
or two like a young rabbit."
'Tain't what you'd call fishing, Mister. Nought but
minnies and stickles, 'cept when us do go to Willum's
Mill. Woops-I! But them girt chub be hard to hook.
And Mister Manley he likes to keep them for the gentry.
'Tis when us be down to Willum's of an evening, when
farmer be feeding 'isself, that Bob and me do a bit of
real fishing."
Wolf surveyed the good-looking urchin with benevolent
irony. "Have you ever landed any of those big chub?"
he asked. And then he suddenly became conscious that
the nervous, hunted eye of a very shabby clergyman
was observing them both, with startled interest,
from the edge of the pavement.
"We're near where us wants to go now, Sir," was the
boy's irrelevant response, uttered in a surprisingly
loud voice.
When they had advanced a little further, the child
turned round to his companion and whispered furtively.
"Yon Passon were the Reverend T. E. Valley, Mister,
from King's Barton. 'Ee do talk to I sometimes about
helping he with them holy services up to church; but
Dad he says all them things be gammon. He's what you
might call blasphemious, my Dad is; and I be blasphe-
mious, too, I reckon; though Bob says that High Church
be a religion what lets a person play cricket on Sundays.
But I takes no stock o' that, being as cricket and
such-like ain't nought to I."
"Tilly-Valley! Tilly-Valley!" muttered Wolf under
his breath, recalling the contemptuous allusion of Mr.
Urquhart.
"Here we be, Mister!" cried Lobbie Torp, pausing
before a capacious old-fashioned shop, over which was
written in dignified lettering, "Robert Weevil and Son."
They entered together, and the boy was at once greeted
by a young man behind the counter, a young man with
black hair and a pasty complexion.
"Hullo, Lob! Come to see if there's fishing tonight?"
Wolf advanced in as easy and natural a manner as
he could assume. "I must propitiate my rival," he said
grimly to himself. "My name is Solent, Mr. Weevil,"
he said aloud, "and I come on behalf of Mr. Urquhart
of King's Barton."
"Yes, Sir, quite so, Sir; and what can I do for you,
Sir?" said the young man politely, bowing with a pro-
fessional smirk over the polished counter.
"The gentleman's been to see Dad," put in Lobbie, in
his high treble. "And he saw Sis, too, and Sis seed
him, too; and I rinned after him and showed him the
way!"
"And what can I do for you, Sir, or for Mr. Urquhart,
Sir?" repeated the young grocer.
"To tell you the truth, Mr. Weevil, it was Monk, the
man up there, who asked me to come to you. It appears
he's run out of sausages your especial sausages and
he begged me to take back a pound or two for him."
"I'll do them up at once for you," said the grocer
benignantly. "I've just had a new lot in."
It was not very surprising to Wolf to notice that his
young guide hurriedly followed Mr. Weevil into the
recesses of the shop. From where he stood he could see
the two of them quite clearly through an open door, the
dark head and the fair head close together, poring over
some object that certainly was not sausages!
A shameless and scandalous curiosity seized him to
share in that colloquy. The various paraphernalia of the
shop, the piled-up tins of Reading Biscuits, the great
copper canisters of Indian teas, the noble erections of
Blacksod cheeses all melted all grew vague and indistinct.
"Mounted astride of a girt tombstone," he repeated
to himself; and the thought of the cool whiteness of that
girl's skin and its contact with that chiselled marble
reduced everything else in the world to a kind of irrel-
evance, to something that fell into the category of the
tedious and the negligible.
There came at last an outburst of merriment from the
back of the shop that actually caused him to make a
few hurried steps in that direction; but he stopped short,
interdicted by his sense of personal dignity. "I really
can't join in libidinous jesting with the Blacksod populace
just at present!" he thought to himself. "But there's
plenty of time. I've no doubt William Solent would have
had no such hesitation!" And the thought came over him
how ridiculous these dignified withdrawings of his would
appear to that grinning skull in the cemetery.
But the youth and the boy came back again now gravely
enough to the front of the shop.
"There you are, sir!" said Bob Weevil, handing him
a lusty package, and puffing out his cheeks as he did so.
"I think Mr. Urquhart will find those to his taste." He
paused and gave Wolf's companion a glance of complicated
significance. "Don't tell Gerdie what I said about that
picture, Lob, will you?" he added.
There was a tone in this remark that caused Wolf's face
to stiffen and his eyebrows to rise. "And now perhaps
you can tell me," he said, "where I can find Malakite's,
the book-shop?"
The two friends exchanged a puzzled and baffled glance,
not unmixed with disapproval. Books were evidently
something for which they both entertained a hostile
suspicion. But the young grocer gave him detailed
instructions, to which Lob Torp listened with satiric
condescension. "See you both again soon!" murmured
Wolf, with dignified amiability, as he left the shop.
He walked very slowly this time along the Blacksod
pavements, and he found himself buttoning his overcoat
tightly and turning up his collar; for the wind had
veered from northwest to due north, and the air that
blew against his face now had whistled across the
sheeptracks of Salisbury Plain.
Ah! There was the second-hand-book shop, with the
single curious word, "Malakite," written above it. He
paused for a second to gaze in at the window, and was
both surprised and delighted by the number and rarity
of the works exposed there for sale. The house itself
was a solidly constructed, sturdily built Mid-Victorian
erection, with a grey slate roof; and there was a little
open passage at one side of it, leading, he could see, into
a small walled-in garden at the back.
He pushed open the door and entered the shop. At first
he found it difficult to see clearly; for it was already
nearly four o'clock, the sky heavily overcast, the
place ill-lighted, the gas-jets unlit. But after a moment
of suspense, he made out a tall, gaunt, bearded, old man,
with sunken cheeks, hollow eye-sockets, closely cropped
grizzled hair, sealed in a corner of the shop upon a
rough, faded horse-hair chair, with a little round table
in front of him, carefully gumming together the loose
leaves of a large folio which he held upon his knee. The
old man's head was bent low over his work, and he made
no sign of having heard anyone enter.
"Mr. Malakite?" said Wolf quietly, advancing towards
him between rows of books. His approach was so easy
and natural in that dim light, that his astonishment may
be imagined when the old man let the folio fall to the
ground, and stumbled to his feet with such agitated
violence that the round table collapsed also, tossing the
glue-pot upon the floor. In that twilit place it was almost
spectral to see the eyes in that old furrowed face staring
forth like black holes burnt in a wooden panel.
"I startled you, Sir," muttered Wolf gently, drawing
back a little. "It's a dark, cold afternoon. I'm afraid I
disturbed you. I am very sorry."
For one second the old bookseller seemed to totter
and sway, as if to follow his folio to the ground; but
he mastered himself, and, leaning against the arm of
his horse-hair chair, spoke in a dry, collected voice. His
words were as unexpected to his visitor as his agitation
had been.
"Who are you, young man?" he said sternly. "Who were
your parents?"
Not Dante himself, when in the Inferno he heard a
similar question from that proud tomb, could have been
more startled than Wolf was at this extraordinary enquiry.
"My name is Wolf Solent, Mr. Malakite," he answered
humbly. "My father's name was William Solent.
He was a master at Ramsgard School. My mother lives
in London. I am acting now as Secretary for Mr. Urquhart."
The, old man, hearing these words, gave vent to a curious
rattling sigh, deep down in his throat, like the sound
of the wind through a patch of dead thistle-heads. He
made a feeble gesture with one of his long, bony hands,
half apologetic, half sorrowful, and sank back again
upon his chair.
"You must forgive me, Sir," he said after a pause.
"You must forgive mo, Mr. Solent. The truth is, your
voice, coming suddenly upon me like that, reminded
me of things that ought to be reminded me of- of too
many things." The old man's voice rose at the words
"too many," but his next remark was quiet and natural.
"I knew your father quile well, sir. We were intimate
friends. His death was a great blow to me. Your father,
Mr. Solent, was a very remarkable man."
Wolf, on hearing these words, moved up to the booksel-
ler's side, and with an easy and spontaneous gesture
laid his hand upon the hand of the old man as it rested
upon the arm of his chair.
"You are the second friend of my father's that I have
met lately," said he. "The other was Miss Selena Gault."
The old man hardly seemed to listen to these words.
He kept staring at him, out of his sunken eye-sockets,
with deprecatory intensity.
Wolf, beginning to feel a little uncomfortable, bent
down and occupied himself by picking up the fallen
table, the glue-pot, and the folio. As he did this he began
to grow aware of a sensation resembling that which he
had felt in Mr. Urquhart's library the sensation of the
presence of forms of human obliquity completely new
in his experience.
He had no sooner got the folio safe back upon the
table, than the shop-door swung open behind him and
closed with a resounding noise. He glanced round; and
there, to his surprise, stood Darnley Otter. This quiet
gentleman brought in with him such an air of ease and
orderliness, that Wolf felt a wave of very agreeable re-
assurance pass through his nerves. He was, in fact, tho-
roughly relieved to see that yellow beard and gracious
reticence. The man's reserved manner and courtly smile
gave him a comfortable sense of a return to those normal
and natural conventions from which he felt as if he
had departed very far since he left the tea-room of the
Lovelace Hotel yesterday.
The two young men exchanged greetings, while the
owner of the book-shop observed them with a sort of
patient bewilderment. He then rose slowly to his feet.
"It's time for tea," he said, in a carefully measured
voice. "I generally lock the place up now and go upstairs.
I don't know " He hesitated, looking from one to the other.
"I don't know whether it would be asking too much if I ask-
ed you both to come upstairs with me?"
Wolf and Mr. Otter simultaneously expressed their
extreme desire to drink a cup of tea with him.
"I'll go and warn my daughter, then," he said eagerly.
"You know, Mr. Otter, I feel as if this young gentleman
and myself were already old friends. By the way, this
folio, Sir" and he turned to Solent "is the book I
wrote to Mr. Urquhart about. I think I shall have to
trust it with you. It's a treasure. But Mr. Urquhart is a
good customer of mine. I don't think he'll want to purchase
it though. Its price is higher than he usually cares
to give. Will you excuse me, then, gentlemen?"
So saying, he opened a door at the rear of the shop
and vanished from view. The two men looked at each
other with that particular look which normal people
exchange when an extraordinary person has suddenly
left them.
"A remarkable old chap," observed Wolf quietly.
Darnley shrugged his shoulders and looked round the
shop.
"You don't think so?" pursued Solent.
"Oh, he's all right," admitted the other.
"You don't like him, then?"
The only reply to this was an almost Gallic gesture,
implying avoidance of an unpleasant subject.
"Why, what's wrong?" said Solent, pressing him.
"Oh, well," responded the Latin-teacher, driven to
make himself more explicit. "There's a rather sinister
legend attached to Mr. Malakite, in regard to his wife."
"His wife?" echoed Wolf.
"He is said to have killed her with shame."
"Shame? Do people die of shame?"
"They have been known to do so," said the schoolmaster,
drily, "at least in classical times. You've probably heard of
Oedipus, Solent?"
"But Oedipus didn't die. That was the whole point. The
gods carried him away."
"Well, perhaps the gods will carry Mr. Malakite away."
"What do you mean?" enquired Wolf, with great interest,
lowering his voice.
"Oh, I daresay we make too much of these things.
But there was a quarrel between this man and his wife,
connected with his fondness for their daughter, this
young Christie's elder sister...and...well...there was a
child born, too."
"And the wife died?"
"The wife died. The girl was packed off to Australia.
It seems she couldn't bear the sight of her child, and
it was taken away from her. I can't tell you whether
the case got as far as the law-courts, or whether it was
hushed up. Your friend Miss Gault knows all about it."
Wolf was silent, meditating upon all this.
"Not a very pleasant background for the other daughter!"
he brought out at last.
"Oh, she's a funny little thing," said Darnley, smiling.
"She lives so completely in books, that I don't think
she takes anything that happens in the real world very
seriously. She always seems to me, when I meet her, as
if she'd just come out of a deep trance and wanted to
return to it. She and I get on splendidly. Well, you'll
see her in a minute, and can judge for yourself."
Wolf was silent again. He was thinking of the friendship
between this old man and his father. He pondered in his
mind whether or not to reveal to Darnley the unexpected
agitation which his appearance had excited. For some rea-
son he felt reluctant to do this. He felt vaguely that
his new closeness to his cynical progenitor committed
him to a certain caution. He was on the edge of all man-
ner of dark entanglements. Well! He would use what dis-
cernment he had; but at any rate he would keep the whole
problem to himself.
"I went to Torp's yard," he remarked, anxious to
change the subject. "The fellow doesn't seem to have
got very far with Red fern's headstone."
Darnley Otter lifted his heavy eyelids and fixed upon
him a sudden piercing look from his mackerel-blue eyes.
"Did Urquhart talk to you about Redfern?" he asked.
"Only to grumble at him for doing something about
the book that didn't suit his ideas. Did you know him?
Did he die suddenly?"
Mr. Otter, instead of replying, turned his back, put
his hands in his pockets, and began pacing up and down
the floor of the shop, which seemed to get darker and
darker around them.
He stopped suddenly and pulled at his trim beard.
"I cursed my wretched school-work to you yesterday,"
he said. "But when I think of the misery that hu-
man beings cause one another in this world, I am
thankful that I can teach Latin, and let it all go.
But I daresay I exaggerate; I daresay I exaggerate."
At that moment the door at the back of the shop opened,
and the old bookseller, standing in the entrance, call-
ed out to them in a calm, well-bred voice.
"Will you come, gentlemen? Will you come?"
They followed him in silence into a little unlit passage.
Preceding them with a slow, careful shuffle, he led
them up a flight of steps to a landing above, where there
were several closed doors and one open door. At this
open door he stood aside and beckoned them to enter.
The room, when they found themselves within it, was
lighted by a pleasant, green-shaded lamp. There was a
warm fire burning in the grate, in front of which was a
dainty tea-table wilh an old-fashioned urn, a silver
teapot, some cups and saucers of Dresden china, and a
large plate of thin bread-and-butter.
From beside this table a fragile-looking girl who
might have been anything between twenty and twenty-five
rose to welcome them. Darnley Otter greeted this
young person in the manner of a benevolent uncle, and
while Wolf and she were shaking hands, retained her
left hand affectionately in his own.
Solent had received, since he left King's Barton, so
many disturbing impressions, that he was glad enough
to yield himself up now, in this peaceful room, to what
was really a vague, formless anodyne of almost Quakerish
serenity. What he felt was undoubtedly due to the
personality of Christie Malakite; but as he sank down
in an armchair by her side, the impression he received
of her appearance was confined to an awareness of
smoothly parted hair, of a quaint pointed chin, and
of a figure so slight and sexless that it resembled
those meagre, androgynous forms that can be seen
sometimes in early Italian pictures.
For several minutes Wolf permitted the conversation
to pass lightly and .easily between Darnley and Christie,
while he occupied himself in enjoying his tea. He did
not, however, hesitate to cast every now and then surrep-
titious glances at the extraordinary countenance of the old
man, who, at a little distance from the table, was reposing
in a kind of abstracted coma, his bony hands clasped
around one of his thin knees, and his eyes half-closed.
Then, all in a moment, Wolf found himself describing
his 'visit to the stone-cutter's yard, and without the
least embarrassment enlarging upon the hypnotic charm
that had been cast upon him by the loveliness of Gerda.
It appeared, for some mysterious reason, that he could
talk more freely to these two people than he had ever
talked in his life.
He had come, little as he had yet seen of him, to have
a genuine regard for Darnley Otter, a regard that he
had reason to feel was quite as strongly reciprocated.
And in addition to this there seemed to be something
about the pale, indefinite profile of the girl by his side,
the patient slenderness of her neck, the cool detachment
of her whole attitude, that unloosed the flow of his
speech and threw around him an unforced consciousness
of being at one with himself and at one with the general
stream of life.
Darnley rallied him with a dry shamelessness about
his confessed infatuation for the stone-cutter's daughter;
and Christie, turning every now and then an almost
elfish smile toward his voluble talk, actually offered, as
she filled his cup for the third or fourth time, to help
him in his adventure by inviting the young woman herself,
whom she said she knew perfectly well, to have
tea with him any afternoon he liked to name!
"She is beautiful," the girl repeated. "I love to watch
her. But I warn you, Mr. Solent, you'll have many
rivals."
"She's worse than a flirt," remarked Darnley, gravely,
"She's got something in her that I have always fancied
Helen of Troy must have had--a sort of terrible passivity.
I know for a fact that she's had three lovers already.
One of them was a young Oxonian who, they tell
me, was a terrific rake. Another, so they say, was your
predecessor, young Redfern. But none of them--forgive
me, Christie dear!--seems to have, as they say down
here, 'got her into trouble.' None of them seems to have
made the least impression upon her! I doubt if she pos-
sesses what you call a heart. Certainly not a heart that
you, Solent"--he smiled one of his gentlest ironic smiles--
"are likely to break. So go ahead, my friend! We shall
watch the course of your 'furtivos amores,' as Catullus
would say, with the most cold-blooded interest. Shan't
we, Christie?"
The young girl turned upon Wolf her steady, unprov-
ocative, indulgent gaze. "Perhaps," she said quietly,
after a moment in which Wolf felt as though his mind
had encountered her mind like two bodiless shadows in
a flowing river "perhaps in this case it will be differ-
ent. Would you marry her if it were different?" These
words were added in a tone that had the sort of faint
aqueous mischief in it, such as a water-nymph might
have indulged in, contemplating the rather heavy earth-
loves of a pair of mortals.
"Oh, confound it, that's going a little too fast, even
for me!" Wolf protested. And, in the silence that fol-
lowed, it seemed to him as if these two people, this
Darnley and this Christie, had managed between them,
in some sort of subtle conspiracy, to take off the del-
icious edge of his furtive obsession.
"Damn them!" he muttered to himself. "I was a fool
to talk about it. But there it is! None of their chatter
can make the sweetness of Gerda less entrancing." But
even as he formulated this revolt with a half-humorous
irritation, he was aware that his mood had in some im-
perceptible way changed. Under cover of the friendly
badinage that was going on between Darnley and Chrislie,
he once or twice encountered the silent observation of
the old bookseller, who had now lighted his pipe and
was watching them all with a cloudy inlentness; and it
occurred to him that it was quite as much due to the
shock of what he had heard about the old man that this
change had come, as to anything that these two had said.
"But to the devil with them all!" he muttered to himself,
as he and Darnley rose to go. "I've never seen anything
as desirable as that girl's body and I'm not going to be
leased into giving it up."
Before he left the house, the old bookseller wrapped
the folio in paper and cardboard and placed it in his
hands, making, as he did so, an automatic reference to
his professional concern about its well-being. But the
expression in Mr. Malakite's hollow eyes, as this trans-
action took place, seemed to Wolf to have some quite
different significance some significance in no way con-
nected with the History of the Evershot Family.
All the way back to King's Barton, as the two men
walked side by side in friendly fragmentary speech, Wolf
kept making spasmodic attempts to adjust the folio and
the sausages so as to leave his right hand free for his
oak-stick. He rejected all offers of assistance from his
companion with a kind of obstinate pride, declaring that
he "liked" carrying parcels; but the physical difficulty
of these adjustments had the effect of diminishing his
response both to the influence of the night and to the
conversation of his friend.
It was quite dark now; and the north wind, whistling
through the blackthorn-hedges, sighing through the tops
of the trees, whimpering in the telegraph-wires, had begun
to acquire that peculiar burden of impersonal sadness,
which seems to combine the natural sorrows of the
human generations with some strange planetary grief
whose character is unrevealed.
The influence of this dirge-like wind did by degrees,
in spite of the numbness of his obstinate clutch upon his
packages, come to affect Wolf's mind. He seemed to rush
backward on the wings of this wind, to the two human
heads to the fleshless head of William Solent buried in
the earth and to the despairing head of that son of per-
dition crouching at Waterloo Station.
He mentally compared, as he shouted his replies to his
companion's remarks against the blustering gusts, the
sardonic aplomb of the skull under the clay with that
ghastly despair of the living, and he flung over the
thorn-hedge a savage comment upon the ways of God.
The trim beard of Darnley Otter might wag on...
like a brave bowsprit "stemming nightly to the pole"
...but the keel of every human vessel had a leak...
it was only a question of chance...just pure chance
...how far that leak would go...any wagging
beard...any brave chin might have to cry, at any
moment, "Hold, enough!"...
And suddenly, in the covering darkness, Wolf took
off his hat and stretched back his head, straining his
neck as far as it would go, so that without relaxing the
movement of walking, his up-turned face might become
horizontal. In this position he made a hideous grimace
into infinity a grimace directed at the Governing Power
of the Universe. What he desired to express in this
grimace was an announcement that his own secret hap-
piness had not "squared" him....
His mind rushed upwards like a rocket among those distant
stars. He imagined himself standing on some incredible
promontory on the faintest star he could see. Even from
that vantage he wanted to repeat his defiance not "squar-
ed" yet, crafty universe! not "squared" yet!
THE BLACKBIRD'S SONG
THE DESTINIES CERTAINLY DID APPEAR ANXIOUS TO
"square" him; for when that evening, after dinner with
the Otters, he repaired to the Manor House with his
packages, Mr. Urquhart turned out to be so delighted
with the book, that he commissioned him to return to the
bookseller the very next morning and make the old man
a liberal offer.
Wolf awoke, therefore, on this day of Saturn, in that
vague delicious mood wherein the sense of happiness-to
-come seems, like a great melted pearl, to cover every
immediate object and person with a liquid glamour.
He took his bath with unalloyed satisfaction between
the four bare walls, whereon certain dimly outlined
squares in the extended whiteness indicated the exile of
all art except that of the air, the sun, and the wind.
He saw nothing of either of the brothers. Jason had not
yet appeared; and though there had been some vague
reference to his accompanying Darnley in his early start,
it was now clear that the younger Otter wished his morning
walk to be free of human intercourse.
This was all agreeable enough to Wolf, who, like most
conspirators, had a furtive desire to be left to his own
devices; and he resolved, without putting his resolution
into any formal shape, that as soon as his business with
Malakite was settled, he would make his way to the stone-
cutter's yard.
From his conversation at breakfast with Mrs. Otter, he
learnt that it was possible to reach the portion of the
town where the bookseller lived without following the
whole length of Chequers Street. This suited him well,
as he wished to time his appearance at the Torp menage
so as to be certain of finding the girl at home.
He had discovered, laid carefully at the edge of his
plate, a letter from his mother, and another letter, with
a Ramsgard postmark, that he suspected to be from
Selena Gault. Both these epistles he hurriedly thrust into
his coat-pocket, afraid of any ill-omened side-tracking
of his plans for that auspicious day.
It lacked about an hour of noon, when, armed with per-
mission to bid as high as five pounds for the Evershot
chronicle, Wolf entered for the second time the estab-
lishment of Mr. John Malakite.
The old man received him without the remotest trace of
the emotion of the preceding day. He agreed so quickly to
accept Mr. Urquhart's offer, that Wolf felt a little
ashamed of his own skill as a business intermediary. But
he was glad to escape the tedium of haggling, and was
preparing to bid the bookseller farewell, when the man
asked in a blank and neutral voice, as if the proposal
were a mechanical form of politeness, "Will you come
upstairs with me, Mr. Solent, and have a glass of something?"
Knowing that there was no immediate hurry, if he were
to time his visit to the Torps so as to catch them at their
midday meal, Wolf assented to this suggestion, and, as
on the former occasion, followed the man up the dark
stairway with unquestioning docility.
He found Christie in a long blue apron, dusting the
little sitting-room. Wolf was touched by the grave awk-
wardness with which she pulled this garment over her
head and flung it down before offering him her hand.
The dress she now appeared in was of a sombre brown,
and so tightly fitting that it not only enhanced her
slenderness, but also gave her an almost hieratic look.
With her smoothly parted hair and abstracted brown
eyes she resembled some withdrawn priestess of Artemis,
interrupted in some sacred rite.
No sooner was the guest seated, than Mr. Malakite
muttered some inarticulate apology and went down to his
shop.
The girl stood for a while in silence, looking down
upon her visitor, who returned her scrutiny without
embarrassment. A delicious sense of age-long intimacy
and ease flowed over him.
"Well, Mr. Solent," she murmured, "I suppose you're
not going to leave Blacksod without seeing Gerda?"
"I thought of waiting till their dinner-time," he said,
"when I would be certain of finding her. Redfern's head-
stone can be dragged in again as an excuse."
Christie nodded gravely. "I wrote to her yesterday,"
she said, "after you went. If I'd known you were coming
in today I might have asked her to tea. But I daresay
she'll come anyway. She often does pay me visits."
While the girl uttered these words, Wolf became aware
for the first time of the extraordinary key in which her
voice was pitched. It was a key so faint and so unresonant
as to suggest some actual deficiency in her vocal cords.
As soon as he became conscious of this peculiarity, he
found his attention wandering from the meaning of her
speech and focussing itself upon her curious intonation.
But she moved to the fireplace now and bent her back
over it, striking a little lump of coal with an extremely
large silver poker.
"That girl must be sick of admiration," observed
Wolf, "wouldn't you think so? Her mother must have an
anxious time."
"I expect her mother knows how well she can take care
of herself," retorted Christie, glancing sideways at
him while she rested on the handle of the poker. A
couple of thin loose tresses of silky brown hair hung
down across her brow, her nose, her mouth, her chin,
giving the impression that she was peering out at him
through the drooping tendrils of some sort of wild
vegetation.
Her remark, as may well be imagined, was not received
with any great ardour by her guest.
"What an expression!" he cried petulantly. "Take care
of herself! Why the devil shouldn't she lake care of her-
self?" And it occurred to him to wonder how it was that
this sophisticated young lady had ever made friends
with the stone-cutler's daughter. Christie's manners were
so well-bred that it was difficult to associale her with a
family like the Torps.
The girl smiled as she replaced the silver poker by the
side of the hearth. "Gerda knows well enough that I don't
worry about her," she said. "Pardon me a minute," she
added, slipping past him into an alcove that adjoined
the room.
Wolf took advantage of her absence to move across to
a bookshelf which already had attracted his attention.
What first arrested his interest now was an edition of
Sir Thomas Browne's "Hydriotaphia, or Urn-Burial."
He took this book down from the shelf, and was
dreamily turning its pages, when the girl returned with
a glass of claret in her hand. Hurriedly replacing the
book in its place and raising the wine to his lips, he
could not resist commenting upon some other, more
abstruse volumes that her bookshelf contained.
"I see you read Leibnitz, Miss Malakite," he said.
"Don't you find those 'monads' of his hard to understand?
You've got Hegel there, too, I notice. I've always
been rather attracted to him though just why, I'd be
puzzled to tell you."
He settled himself again in his wicker-chair, wine-glass
in hand.
"You're fond of philosophy?" he added, scowling amiably
at her. His thick eyebrows contracted as he did this,
and his eyes grew narrow and small.
She seated herself near him upon the sofa and smoothed
out her brown skirt thoughtfully with her fingers. She
was evidently anxious to answer this important question
with a becoming scrupulousness.
With this new gravity upon the features of its mistress,
it seemed to Wolf as if the little sitting-room itself
awoke from somnolence and asserted its individuality. He
observed the unadulterated mid-century style of its cut-
glass chandeliers, of its antimacassars, of its rosewood
chairs, of its Geneva clock, and of the heavy gold frames
of its water-colour pictures. The room, as the morning
light fell upon these things across the grey slate roofs
and the yellow pansies in the window-box, certainly did
possess a charming character of its own, a character to
which the thick, dusky carpet and the great mahogany
curtain-rod across the window gave the final touches.
"I don't understand half of what I read," Christie began,
speaking with extreme precision. "All I know is that ev-
ery one of those old books has its own atmosphere for me."
"Atmosphere?" questioned Wolf.
"I suppose it's funny to talk in such a way," she went
on, "but all these queer non-human abstractions, like
Spinoza's 'substance' and Leibnitz's 'monads' and Hegel's
'idea,' don't stay hard and logical to me. They seem to
melt."
She stopped and looked at Wolf with a faint smile, as
if deprecating her extravagant pedantry.
"What do you mean melt?" he murmured.
"I mean as I say," she answered, with a shade of que-
rulousness, as if the physical utterance of words were
difficult to her and she expected her interlocutor to get
her meaning independently of them. "I mean they turn
into what I call 'atmosphere.'
"
"The tone of thought," he threw in, "that suits you
best, I suppose?"
She looked at him as if she had been blowing soap-bubbles
and he had thrown his stick at one of them.
"I'm afraid I'm hopeless at expressing myself," she
said. "I don't think I regard philosophy in the light of
'truth' at all."
"How do you regard it then?"
Christie Malakite sighed. "There are so many of them!"
she murmured irrelevantly.
"So many?"
"So many truths. But don't tease yourself trying to
follow my awkward ways of putting things, Mr. Solent."
"I'm following you with the greatest interest," said
Wolf.
"What I mean to say is," she went on, with a little
gasp, flinging out the words almost fiercely, "I regard
each philosophy, not as the 'truth,' but just as a par-
ticular country, in which I can go about countries with
their own peculiar light, their Gothic buildings, their
pointed roofs, their avenues of trees--But I'm afraid
I'm tiring you with all this!"
"Go on, for heaven's sake!" he pleaded. "It's just what
I want to hear."
"I mean that it's like the way you feel about things,"
she explained, "when you hear the rain outside, while
you're reading a book. You know what I mean? Oh, I
can't put it into words! When you get a sudden feeling
of life going on outside...far away from where you
sit...over wide tracts of country...as if you were
driving in a carriage and all the things you passed
were...life itself...parapets of bridges, with dead
leaves blowing over them...trees at crossroads...
park-railings...lamp-lights on ponds....I don't mean,
of course," she went on, "that philosophy is the
same as life...but Oh! Can't you see what I mean?"
She broke off with an angry gesture of impatience.
Wolf bit his lip to suppress a smile. At that moment he
could have hugged the nervous little figure before him.
"I know perfectly well what you mean," he said eagerly.
"Philosophy to you, and to me, too, isn't science at
all! It's life winnowed and heightened. It's the essence
of life caught on the wing. It's life framed...framed
in room-windows...in carriage-windows...in mirrors
...in our 'brown-studies,' when we look up from ab-
sorbing books...in waking-dreams--I do know perfectly
well what you mean!"
Christie drew up her feet beneath her on the sofa and
turned her head, so that all he could see of her face was
its delicate profile, a profile which, in that particular
position, reminded him of a portrait of the philosopher
Descartes!
He changed the conversation back to himself. "It's queer,"
he remarked, "that I can confide in you so completely
about Gerda."
"Why?" she threw out.
"Don't you see that what I'm admitting is an unscrupulous
desire to make love to your young friend?"
"Oh!" She uttered this exclamation in a faint, meditative
sigh, like a wistful little wind sinking down among feathery
reeds. "You mean that you might make her unhappy?"
He gave a deprecatory shake of the head.
"But you leave out so many things in all this," she
went on. "You leave out the character of Gerda; and you
leave out your own character, which, for all I know"
she spoke in a tone whose irony was barely perceptible
"may be so interesting that the advantage of contact with
it might even counterbalance your lack of scruple!"
Wolf withdrew his hands, which were clasped so close
to Christie's elbows as almost to touch them. He inter
locked his fingers now, round the back of his head, tilt-
ing his chair a little. "Forgive me, Miss Malakite," he
said ruefully. "I do blunder into unpardonable lapses
sometimes. I oughtn't to have said that to you...so
bluntly. It's because I seem to have...a sort of...
curiosity. At least I think it's curiosity!"
"It's all right. Don't you mind!" She spoke these words
with a tenderness that was as gentle as a caress a caress
which might have been given to a disgraced animal that
required reassuring; and as she spoke she leaned forward
and made a little movement of her hand towards him. It
was the faintest of gestures. Her fingers immediately
afterwards lay clasped on her lap. But he did not miss
the movement, and it pleased him well. Another thing he
did not miss was that under any stress of emotion a cer-
tain wavering shapelessness in her countenance disappear-
ed. Mouth, nose, cheeks, chin, all these features, cha-
otic and inchoate when left to themselves, at such moments
attained a harmony of expression which approached, if it
did not actually reach, the verge of the beautiful.
Wolf brought down his tilted chair upon the floor with
a jerk.
"I'm forgiven then?" he said, and paused for a second,
searching gravely in her brown eyes for a clue to her
secret thoughts. "It must be all those books you read,"
he went on, "that makes you take my scandalous confes-
sions so calmly." He stopped once more. "I suppose," he
flung out, "the most amazing perversities wouldn't shock
you in the least!" As soon as he had uttered these words
he remembered what Darnley had told him, and he caught
his breath in dismay. But Christie Malakite gave no sign
of being distressed. She even smiled faintly.
"I don't know," she said, "that it's my readings that
have made me what I am. In a sense I am conventional.
You're wrong there. But in another sense I am...what
you might call...outside the pale."
"Do you mean...inhuman?"
She turned this over gravely.
"I certainly don't like it when things get too human,"
she said. "That's probably why I can't bear the Bible. I
like to be able to escape into parts of Nature that are
lovely and cool, untouched and free."
Wolf nodded sympathetically; but he got up now to
take his leave, and allowed these words of hers to float
away unanswered. He allowed them, as he moved to the
door, to sink down among the old-fashioned furniture
about her, as if they were a chilly, moonlight dew
mingling with warm, dusty sun-motes. His final impression
was that the ancient objects in her room were pondering
mutely and disapprovingly upon this fragile heathen
challenge to the anthropomorphism of the Scriptures!
Once out in the street and strangely enough before his
mind reverted to Gerda at all Wolf found himself recal-
ling something he had hardly noticed at the time, but
which now assumed a curious importance. Between the
pages of the volume of the "Urn-Burial" which he had
taken down from Christie's shelf, there had lain a grey
feather. "Her marker, I suppose!" he said to himself,
as he made his way back to the High Street.
But soon enough, now, in the hard metallic sunshine
and the sharp wind, his obsession for the stone-cutter's
daughter rose up again and dominated his consciousness.
With rapid strides he made his way through the chief
thoroughfares of the town, witnessing on every side all
manner of bustling lively preparations for the Saturday
afternoon's marketing.
When he was within a few hundred yards of the Torp
yard, he glanced at his watch and realized that he was
still a good deal too early. It would be, he felt, a great
blunder to present himself at that house, and find no
Gerda! Looking around for a resting-place, he espied a
small patch of grass behind some ricketly palings, in the
centre of which was a stone water-trough. He clambered
through the palings and sat down on the ground, with his
back to this object. It was then, as he lit a cigarette, that
he remembered that he had not yet read his letters.
He opened them one by one. They were both short.
Miss Gault's ran as follows--
MY DEAR BOY:
If I were not so eccentric a person and striking, I may say, in
more senses than one, I should lake for granted that you had
forgotten all about me but since I know that both my manners
and my cats must have made some impression upon you, I am
not at all afraid of this! I am writing to ask you whether you
will care to come over to tea with me on Sunday afternoon?
I will not reveal in advance whether there will be only myself
and my cats...
Yrs. affectionately,
SELENA GAULT.
Mrs. Solent's letter was even more laconic.
MY DEAREST WOLF:
Carter has begun to fuss about the rent. What does he think we
are? And why did you run up that bill at Walpole's? That's the
one kind of luxury which ought always to be paid for in cash.
I have refused to pay till the Summer. Better let it be under
stood that you're away on a holiday! I think I shall join you at
King's Barton quite soon; in fact, as soon as you can assure me
that you've discovered a clean, small cottage, with a neat, small
garden. I think it will do me good to do a little gardening. How
lovely, my dear, it will be to see you again!
Your loving mother,
ANN HAGGARD SOLENT.
Wolf pushed out his under-lip and drew down the corners of
his mouth, as he replaced these two documents in his pocket.
Then he got up upon his feet and shivered. He looked at his
watch again. "I'll go in," he said to himself, "when it's
five minutes to one."
He pulled his greatcoat tighter around him, and, remov-
ing his cloth-cap, sat down upon it very gravely, as
if it had been a wishing-carpet.
The passers-by upon the pavement hardly turned to notice
the bareheaded man with an oak-stick across his knees.
They were Blacksod burgesses and had their own affairs to
attend to. A tuft of vividly green grass grew between some
uneven bricks in front of him; and he regarded its sturdy,
transparent blades with concentrated interest.
"Grass and clay!" he thought to himself. "From clay
to grass and then from grass to clay!" And once more
that peculiar kind of shivering ran through him, which a
coincidence of physical cold with amorous excitement is
apt to produce, especially when some fatal step of unknown
consequence is trembling in suspension.
And with extraordinary clearness he realized that part-
icular moment in the passing of time, as he sat there,
a hunched-up gaunt figure, wrapped in a faded brown
overcoat, waiting with a beating heart his entrance to
the yard of Mr. Torp.
His mind, after his fashion, conjured up in geographical
simultaneousness all the scenes around him. He saw
the long, low ridge of upland, on the east slope of which
lay the village of King's Barton, and along the top of
which ran the high-road linking together the scholastic
retreats of Ramsgard with the shops and tanneries of
Blacksod. He saw the rich, pastoral Dorsetshire valley on
his right. He saw the willows and the reeds of the Somerset
salt-marshes away there on his left. And it came into
his mind how strange it was that while he at this moment
was shivering with amorous expectation at the idea of
entering that yard of half-made tombstones, far off in the
Blackmore Vale many old ploughmen, weather-stained
as the gates they were even now leisurely setting open,
were moving their horses from one furrowed field to an-
other after their midday's rest and meal. And probably
almost all of them had relations who would come to Mr.
Torp's yard on their behalf one day.
"I'll go to Miss Gault on Sunday," he said to himself,
"and I'll look around for a place for mother."
Swinging his mind from these resolutions with an
abrupt turn, emphasized by a dagger-like thrust into the
earth with the end of his stick, he now struggled to his
feet, and without glancing again at his watch, clambered
over the palings and strode down the road.
The appearance of Torp's yard seemed to have changed
in the night. It looked smaller, less imposing. The head-
stones themselves looked second-rate; but Wolf, as he
made for the door, wondered which of them it was that
had served the girl for a hobby-horse, and this doubt once
more lent them dignity.
He knocked boldly at the door; but he had time, while
the vibrations of the sound were dying down, to notice
that there was a crack in one of the door-panels, and in
the middle of this crack a tiny globule of dirty paint.
The door was opened by Mrs. Torp. There they all
were, just beginning their meal! Gerda was evidently
disposing of no small helping of Yorkshire pudding. But
she swallowed her mouthful at one gallant gulp and regarded
her admirer with a smile of pleasure.
The first words uttered by Wolf, when Mrs. Torp had
shut the door behind him, were directed at the head of
the family, whose mouth and eyes were simultaneously
so wide open as to suggest sheer panic.
"I haven't come about business today. I only happened
to be passing and I thought I'd look in. Mr. Urquhart
was very pleased to hear how well you're getting on
with that monument. I saw him last night."
Mr. Torp turned his countenance toward his wife, a
proceeding which seemed to announce to everyone round
the table that he was too cautious even to commit himself
to a word, until reassured as to what was expected of
him.
"Just passing, and thought to look in," repeated Mrs.
Torp, avoiding her husband's appeal.
"We seed three girt woppers down to Willum's Mill.
We dursn't pull 'em out, cos Mr. Manley his own self
were casting. He were fishing proper, he were. But 'Bob
says maybe Mr. Manley won't be at the job, come Monday.
So then us'll try again."
These hurried words from young Lob eased the atmosphere
a little.
Mrs. Torp looked at the sirloin in front of her husband
and at the Yorkshire pudding in front of herself.
"Thought to look in," she repeated, resuming her
seat.
Wolf began to feel something of a fool. He also began
to feel extremely hungry. He laid his hand on the shoulder
of the boy, and was on the point of saying something
about perch and chub, to cover his embarrassment, when
he detected a quick interchange of glances between mother
and daughter, followed by the appearance of a faint flush
on the girl's cheeks.
"Since you were passing, you'd be best to sit 'ee down
and take a bit of summat," said the woman reluctantly.
"Father, cut the young gentleman a slice. Get a plate
from the dresser, Lob." Thus speaking, she thrust a chair
beneath the table, with more violence than was necessary,
and having added a very moderate portion of Yorkshire
pudding to the immense slice of beef carved by the
monument-maker, she caught up her own empty plate
and retired into the scullery.
When once his guest was seated at the table, between
the silent Gerda and himself, the obese stone-cutter relaxed
into most free pleasantry.
"Injoy theeself like the wheel at the cistern, be my text,
Mr. Redfern, I beg pardon, Mr. Solent. The Lord gives
beef, but us must go to the Devil for sauce, as my granddad
used to murmur. I warrant this meat were well fed
and well killed, as you might say. 'Tain't always so wi'
they Darset farmers."
Wolf listened in silence to these and other similar remarks
while he ate his meal. He was so close to Gerda that he could
catch the faint susurration of her deep, even breathing.
"I'm glad she doesn't speak," he thought to himself,
in that sensualized level of consciousness which is just
below the threshold of mental words; "for unless I could
talk to her alone--"
"And so thik beast went to the hammer." The thread of
Mr. Torp's carnivorous discourse had begun to pass
Wolf by, when the foregoing sentence fell like a veri-
table pole-axe upon his ear. Like a flash he recalled
Selena Gault's words outside the slaughter-house. "Damn
it!" he said to himself. "The woman's right."
"Be there any apple-tart, Mammie?" cried Lob, in a
shrill voice.
The door of the scullery was opened about three inches,
in which space the beckoning forefinger of Joan Torp
summoned her son to her side.
Very slowly the beautiful profile on Wolf's right turned
towards her father."
'Tisn't no use your coaxing of I, Missie," responded
the stone-cutter. "What yer Mummie says, yer Mummie
says. I reckon she's just got enough o' that there pasty to
comfort Lob. Us and Mr. Redfern must swetten our bellies
by talking sweet; and what's more, my pet, if I don't
get out in thik yard afore I gets to sleep, there'll be no
pleasing Squire or Mr. Manley!"
Saying this, the man rose from his chair, glanced at
Wolf with a leer like the famous uncle of Cressid, and
shuffled out of the house, closing the door behind him.
Wolf and Gerda were left alone, seated side by side in
uncomfortable silence. He moved his chair back a little
and glanced toward the scullery-door. The voice of the
woman and her son reached him in an obscure murmur.
His eye caught the devastated piece of meat at the end
of the table and it brought to his mind the terrifying
story of how the flesh of the Oxen of the Sun uttered
articulate murmurs as the companions of Odysseus
roasted it at their impious camp-fire.
"I must say something," he thought. "This silence is
beginning to grow comic."
He began to search his pockets for cigarettes. It seemed
absurd to ask leave of this young girl, and yet it was
likely enough that her shrewish mother detested tobacco.
"You don't mind if I smoke?" he said.
Gerda smilingly shook her head.
"I suppose you've often been told that you're as lovely
as the girl who was the cause of the Trojan War?"
"What a way of breaking the ice!" he thought to himself,
and felt a pang of mental humiliation. "If the wench
is going to dull my wits to this extent, I'll miss my chance
and be just where I was yesterday." Under cover of what
Darnley had called the girl's terrible passivity, which was
indeed just then like the quiescence of a great unpicked
white phlox in a sun-warmed garden, he lit his cigarette
and ransacked his brain for a line of action.
Desperately he hit upon the most obvious one. "Have
you got anything to put on within reach?" he whispered
rapidly. "I want to see something more of you. Let's step
out while we've got the chance and go for a stroll some-
where!"
The girl remained for a moment in motionless indecision,
listening intently to the murmuring voices in the
scullery. Then, with a grave nod, she rose to her feet and
stepped lightly to a curtained recess, behind which she
vanished. Returning in less than a minute she presented
herself in hat and cloak.
Wolf, trembling with a nervous excitement that made
his stomach feel sick, seized his own coat and stick and
moved boldly to the door.
"Come on!" he whispered. "Come on!"
They slipped out together and the girl closed the door
behind them with cautious celerity.
The stone-cutter's chisel could be heard in his open
shed; but his back must have been turned to them, and
they did not cast a glance in his direction. Into the street
they passed, Wolf taking care not to let the latch of the
gate cli'ck. Instinctively he led his captive to the right,
away from the town. They walked rapidly side by side,
and Wolf noted with surprise the absence of finery in the
things worn by his silent companion. The hat was of
cream-coloured felt surrounded by a blue band; the cloak
of some soft plain stuff, also cream-coloured. Wolf kept
walking a good deal faster than circumstances seemed to
demand, but he repeatedly fancied he heard the light
steps of the intrusive Lob running in pursuit of them.
Before long they reached a place where a broad road
branched to the left at the foot of a considerable hill.
Wolf had not remembered passing this turn on the prece-
ding day; but his attention must have been occupied
with the row of little villas on the other side.
Following his instinct again, he turned up this road
and slackened his pace. Still his companion remained
perfectly silent; but she appeared quite untroubled by
the rapidity of their movement, and she swung along by
his side lightly and easily, every now and then brushing
the budding hedge on her right with her bare hand.
For about half a mile they advanced up the long,
steady hill, meeting no one and seeing nothing but
snatches of sloping meadow-land as they passed various
five-barred gates.
Then there came a turn to the left, and all of a sudden,
over a well-worn wooden stile, the top bar of which was
shiny as a piece of old furniture, they found themselves
overlooking the whole town of Blacksod, and, away beyond
that, the pollard-bordered course of the sluggish Lunt,
as it crossed the invisible border-line between Dorset
and Somerset.
"What do you call this hill, Missie?" he murmured, as
he recovered his breath. It seemed impertinent to use
her Christian name quite so quickly; but no stretch of
politeness could have induced him just then to utter the
syllable Torp.
"Babylon Hill," she replied quite naturally and easily;
for she was less out of breath than he.
"Babylon? What an extraordinary name!" he cried.
"Why Babylon?"
But at that she shrugged her young shoulders and cont-
emplated the blue distances of Somersetshire. To her
mind the extraordinary thing evidently was that anyone
could be surprised that Babylon Hill was called Babylon
Hill!
From the stile over which they were leaning a little
field-path ran along the sloping greensward and lost
itself in a small hazel-copse that overshadowed one end
of a rounded table-land of turf-covered earthworks.
"Come on," he cried. "Skip over, child; and let's see
where that leads!"
She swung herself across without any assistance, and
Wolf noticed that in the open country the movements of
her body were entirely free from languor or voluptuousness.
They became the swift, unconscious movements of a very
healthy young animal.
"Has this got any name?" he remarked, as they
clambered up the turfy slope of the grassy rampart.
"Poll's Camp," she answered. And then, after a pause,
"When Poll his rain-cap has got on
They'll get their drink at Dunderton!"
She repeated this in the peculiar sing-song drawl of a
children's game.
There was something in her intonation that struck Wolf
as queerly touching. It didn't harmonize with her ladylike
attire. It suggested the simple finery of a thousand
West Country fairs.
"Poll-Poll-Poll," he repeated. And there came over
him a deep wonder about the origin of this laborious
piece of human toil. Were they Celts or Romans who
actually, with their blunt primitive spades, had changed
the face of this hill? Was this silent beautiful girl
beside him the descendant of some Ionian soldier who had
come in the train of the legionaries?
Dallying with these thoughts--which probably would never
have come into his head at all, if a certain childishness
in the girl hadn't, in a very subtle manner, lessened
the bite of his lust--Wolf was slower than she in reach-
ing the top of the ridge. When he did reach the top,
and looked down into the rounded hollow below, he was
astonished to see no sign of his companion.
"Good Lord!" he thought, "has she gone round to the
right or to the left?"
He ran down into the bottom of the little artificial
valley and stood hesitating.
How like a child, to play him a trick of this kind!
His thoughts shaped themselves quickly now. His hope
of finding her depended on how far he could sound her
basic instincts. If she were of a hare-like nature she would
double on her tracks, which in this case would mean turning
to the left or right; if she were of the feline tribe she
would pursue her course, which in this case would mean
climbing the opposing earthwork. Wolf turned to the
right and followed the narrow green hollow as it wound
round the hill.
Ah, there she was!
Gerda lay supine, her arms outstretched, her creamcoloured
hat clutched tight in one of her hands, her knees bare.
She waited till Wolf was so close that he could see
that her eyes were shut. Then, catching the vibration of
his tread upon the turf, she leapt to her feet and was off
again, running like Aialanta, and soon vanishing from
sight. Wolf pursued her; but he thought to himself, "I
won't run quite as fast as I could! She'll better enjoy
being caught if she has had a good race."
As a matter of fact, so swift-footed was the damsel that
by following this method of leisurely pursuit he soon
lost her altogether. The hollow trench ran straight into
the heart of a thick coppice which from this point out
wards had overgrown the whole of the camp. Here, in
the heavy undergrowth, composed of brambles, elderbushes,
dead bracken, stunted sycamores, and newly budded hazels,
all ordinary paths disappeared completely. All he could
have done was to have followed obstinately the bottom
of the trench; and that was so overgrown that it was
unbelievable she should have forced a way there. But if
he didn't follow the trench, where the devil should he
go? Where, under the sky, had she gone? "The earth hath
bubbles as the water hath," he quoted to himself, amused,
irritated, and completely nonplussed. Teased into doing
what he knew was the last thing calculated to bring her
back, he began calling her name; at first gently and
hesitatingly; at last loudly and indignantly. The girl,
no doubt panting like a hunted fawn somewhere quite
close to him, must have been especially delighted by
this issue to the affair; for one of the peculiarities
of Poll's Camp was the presence of an echo; and now,
over and over again, this echo taunted him. "Ger-da
Ger-da!" it flung across the valley.
He would have been more philosophical at this juncture
if he hadn't, at that brief moment of overtaking her,
caught sight of those incredibly white knees. But the im-
patience in his senses was at least mitigated by his ap-
preciation of the immemorial quality of his pursuit! He
looked round helplessly and whimsically at the thick
undergrowth and sturdy hazel-twigs; and he played with
the fancy that, like another Daphne or Syrinx, his maid
might have undergone some miraculous vegetable trans-
formation.
"Ger-da! Ger-da!" The echo returned to him again;
whereupon once more, the image of those bare knees
destroyed the spirit of philosophical patience.
But he sat down then, with his back against a young
sycamore, and lit a cigarette, wrapping his overcoat
carefully round him and resolving to make the best of a
bad job.
"If she has run away from me," he thought, "and just
gone back to Chequers Street, there's no doubt she'll
come out with me again. She certainly seemed at ease with
me." Thus spoke one voice within him. Another voice
said: "She thinks you're the father of all fools. You'll
never have the gall to ask her to go out with you again."
And then as he extinguished his third cigarette against a
piece of chalk, moving aside the tiny green buds of an
infinitesimal spray of milkwort, he became aware that
a blackbird, in the dark twilight of hazel-stems, was
uttering notes of an extraordinary purity and poignance.
He listened, fascinated. That particular intonation of
the blackbird's note, more full of the spirits of air and
of water than any sound upon earth, had always possessed
a mysterious attraction for him. It seemed to hold, in the
sphere of sound, what amber-paved pools surrounded by
hart's-tongue ferns contain in the sphere of substance.
It seemed to embrace in it all the sadness that it is pos-
sible to experience without crossing the subtle line into
the region where sadness becomes misery.
He listened, spellbound, forgetting hamadryads, Daphne's
pearl-white knees and everything.
The delicious notes hovered through the wood hovered over
the scented turf where he lay and went wavering down the
hollow valley. It was like the voice of the very spirit
of Poll's Camp, unseduced by Roman or by Saxon, pouring
forth to a sky whose peculiar tint of indescribable
greyness exactly suited the essence of its identity, the
happiness of that sorrow which knows nothing of misery.
Wolf sat entranced, just giving himself up to listen;
forgetting all else. He was utterly unmusical; and it may
have been for that very reason that the quality of cer-
tain sounds in the world melted the very core of his
soul. Certain sounds could do it; not very many. But the
blackbird's note was one of them. And then it was that
without rising from the ground he straightened his back
against the sycamore-tree and got furiously red under his
rugged cheeks. Even his tow-coloured hair, protruding
from the front of his cap, seemed conscious of his
humiliation. Waves of electricity shivered through it;
while beads of perspiration ran down his forehead into
his scowling eyebrows.
For he realized, in one rush of shame, that Gerda was
the blackbird!
He realized this before she made a sound other than that
long-sustained tremulous whistle. He realized it instant-
aneously by a kind of sudden absolute knowledge, like a
slap in the face.
And then, immediately afterwards, she came forward, quite
calmly and coolly, pushing aside the hazels and the elder-
bushes.
He found her a different being, when she stood there
in front of him, smiling down upon him and removing
bits of moss and twigs from her hair. She had lost some
thing from the outermost sheath of her habitual reserve;
and like a plant that has unloosed its perianth she dis-
played some inner petal of her personality that had, until
that moment, been quite concealed from him.
"Gerda!" he exclaimed reproachfully, too disordered
to assume any sagacious reticence; "how on earth did
you learn to whistle like that?"
She continued placidly to clear the wood-rubble out
of her fair hair; and the only reply she vouchsafed to
his question was to toss down her cream-coloured hat at
his feet.
Very deliberately, when her hair was in order, she
proceeded to lift up the hem of her skirt and pick out
the burs from that. Then she quickly turned away from
him. "Brush my back, will you?" she said.
He had to get up upon his feet at this; but he obeyed
her with all patience, carefully removing from the
cream-coloured jacket every vestige of her escapade.
"There!" he said, when he had finished; and taking
her by the shoulders, he swung her around.
In the very act of doing this he had determined to kiss
her; but something about the extraordinary loveliness of
her face, when she did confront him, deterred him.
This was a surprise to himself at the moment; but later,
analyzing it, he came to the conclusion that although
beauty, up to a certain point, is provocative of lust,
beyond a certain point it is destructive of lust; and
it is this, whether the possessor of such beauty be in
a chaste mood or not.
If only so he thought to himself later Gerda's face
had been a little less flawless in its beauty, the
beauty of her body would have remained as maddening to
his senses as it was at the beginning. But the more he
had seen of her the more beautiful her face had grown;
until it had now reached that magical level of loveli-
ness which absorbs wilh a kind of absoluteness the whole
aesthetic sense, paralyzing the erotic sensibility.
Instead of kissing her he sat down again with his back
to the sycamore; while Gerda, lying on her stomach at
his feet, her chin propped upon the palms of her hands,
began to talk to him in unconscious, easy, almost boyish
freedom.
"I wouldn't have run away," she said, "so you needn't
scold. I would have if it had been anyone else. I always
do run away. I hide first and then slip off. Father's quite
tired of seeing me come back into the yard after I've
started for a walk with someone. That's because I al-
ways like people at the beginning, when they're fright-
ened of me and don't try to touch me. But when
they slop being frightened, and get familiar, I just hate
them. Can you understand what I mean, or can't you?"'
Wolf surveyed the beautiful face in front of him and
recalled what Darnley had said about the three lovers.
"But, Gerda--" he began.
"Well?" she said, smiling. "Say it out! I know it's some-
thing bad."
"You must have had some love-affairs, being the sort
of girl you are. You can't make me believe you've always
run away."
She nodded her head vigorously.
"I have," she said. "I have, always. Though the boys I
know never will believe it. Directly they touch me I run
away. I want them to want me. It's a lovely feeling to be
wanted like that. It's like floating on a wave. But when
they try any of their games, messing a person about and
rumpling a person's clothes, I can't bear it. I won't bear
it, either!"
Wolf lifted his thick eyebrows and let them fall again,
wrinkling them so that a great puckered fold established
itself above his hooked nose. His ruddy face, under its
rough crop of coarse, bleached hair, resembled a red
sandstone cliff on the top of which a whitish-yellow
patch of withered grass bowed before the wind.
The girl clambered to her feet, and, smoothing out her
skirt beneath her, sat down on the ground by his side,
hugging her knees.
"I found out I could whistle like that," she began again,
this time in a slow, meditalive voice, "when I used to
play with Bob in the Lunt ditches, down Longmead. I
fooled him endless times doing different birds. Listen
to this. Do you know what this is?" And with her mouth
pursed up into the form of a crimson sea-anemone, she
imitated the cry of the female plover when any strange
foot, of man or beast, approaches her nest on the ground.
"Wonderful!" cried Wolf, enraptured by that longdrawn
familiar scream borne away upon the wind. "How did you
learn to do it?"
"I fooled Bob with that; but I fooled Dick he was an
Oxford gentleman with a silly owl's-hooting which old
Bob would have known at once."
"Did you let the Oxford gentleman make love to you,
Gerda?"
As soon as he had uttered the words, he felt a sense
of shame that was like a pricking sore lodged under
the cell-lobes in the front of his brain.
"There don't answer!" he whispered hurriedly. "That
was a gross remark of mine."
But the half-profile which she had turned upon him
showed no traces of anger.
"I told you, didn't I?" was all she said. "I ran away.
I hid. I hid in the hedge under Ramsbottom. Dick was
furious. He went past me several times. I heard him
damning me like a serjeant Ramsbottom's miles away.
We'd taken our lunch. He had to go home without me
and he told mother. Mother hit me with the broom when
I got back. Dick was an 'honourable'; so Mother wanted
me to marry him."
Wolf was reduced to silence. He watched the flutterings
of a greenfinch over some young elder-bush saplings.
Then he turned towards her and spoke with solemn em-
phasis.
"I wish you'd make that blackbird-noise for me now,
Gerda."
He detected from her expression that this was a crisis
between them. Her smile was suspended and hung like a
faltering wraith over every feature of her face. She
seemed to hesitate; and her hesitation brought a depth
into her eyes that darkened their colour so that they
became a deep violet.
"I've never once whistled for anybody," she said
slowly.
Wolf sent a wordless cry of appeal down into the
abysses of his consciousness. They were ready to help
him, those powers in the hidden levels of his being. They
responded to his cry and he knew that they responded.
In the repetition of his request there was a magnetic
tone of power that reassured himself.
"Come on, Gerda!" he said. "That's all the more reason.
Come on! Whistle that song!"
Turning her face away from him, so that he could see
nothing of her mouth, she began at once.
He could hardly believe his ears. It was like a miracle.
It was as if she had swiftly summoned one of those
yellow-beaked birds out of its leafy retreat. It seemed
easier that a bird should be decoyed out of a wood than
that a human throat should utter actual unmistakable
bird-notes.
"Go on! Go on!" cried Wolf, in an ecstasy of pleasure,
the moment there was any cessation of this stream of cool,
liquid, tremulous melody.
Over the turf-ramparts of Poll's Camp it swelled and
sank, that wistful, immortal strain. Away down .the grassy
slopes it floated forth upon the March wind. No conceivable
sky but one of that particular greyness could have
formed the right kind of roof for the utterance of this
sound. Wolf cared nothing that the whistler kept her
face turned aside as she whistled. He gave himself up so
completely to the voice, that the girl Gerda became no
more than a voice herself. At length it did really cease,
and silence seemed to fall down upon that place like
large grey feathers from some inaccessible height.
Both the man and the girl remained absolutely motionless
for a while.
Then Gerda leapt to her feet.
"Let's go down to Longmead and watch the water-rats
swim the Lunt!" she cried. "We can get down there from
here easily. There's a lovely little field-path I know. And
we shan't meet anyone; for Bob and Lobbie are going to
Willum's Mill."
Wolf rose stiffly. He had sat so long in petrified delight
that he was a little cramped. His mind felt drugged
and cramped too, and felicitously stupid.
"Wherever you like, Gerda dear," he said, looking at
her with hypnotized admiration.
She took him by the hand, and together they climbed
the embankment.
The wind was gentler now, and a very curious diffusion
of thin, watery, greenish light seemed to have melted
into the grey stretches of sky above their heads. The
immense Somersetshire plain, with patches of olive-green
marsh-land and patches of moss-green meadow-land, lost
itself in a pale, sad horizon, where, like a king's sep-
ulchre, rose the hill-ruin of Glastonbury. The path by
which Gerda guided him down to the valley was indeed an
ideal one for two companions who desired no interruption.
Starting from a pheasants' "drive" in the lower half of
the hazel-copse, it wound its way down the incline along
a series of grassy terraces dotted by patches of young
bracken-fronds that had only very recently sprouted up
among the great dead brown leaves.
Arrived at the foot of the hill, they struck a narrow
cattle-drove where the deep winter-ditches were still
full of water and where huge half-fallen willow-trunks
lay across old lichen-covered palings.
Advancing up this lane hand in hand with his companion,
Wolf felt his soul invaded by that peculiar kind of
melancholy which emanates, at the end of a spring day,
from all the elements of earth and water. It is a sadness
unlike all others, and has perhaps some mysterious con-
nection with the swift, sudden recognition, by myriads and
myriads of growing things, of the strange fatality that
pursues all earthly life, whether clothed in flesh or
clothed in vegetable fibre. It is a sadness accentuated by
grey skies, grey water, and grey horizons; but it does
not seem to attain its most significant meaning until the
pressure of the Spring adds to these elemental wraiths
the intense wistfulness of young new life.
It seemed to Wolf, as they plodded along side by side
through that muddy lane, that the light-green buds of
those aged willow-trunks were framed in a more appro-
priate setting under that cold forlorn sky than any
sunshine could give to them. Later seasons would warm
them and cherish them. November rains would turn them
yellow and bring them down into the mud.
But no other sky would hang above them with the cold
floating weight of sadness as this one did a weight
like a mass of grey seaweed beneath a silent sea. No
other sky would be cold enough and motionless enough to
actually listen to the rising of the green sap within them,
that infinitesimal flowing, flowing, flowing, that for
nonhuman ears must have made strange low gurglings and
susurrations all day long.
At last they came to the bank of the river Lunt.
"Hush!" whispered Gerda. "Don't make a noise! It's so
lovely when you can make a water-rat flop in and see
it swim across."
It was along the edge of a small tributary full of
marsh-marigolds that they approached the river-bank.
Gerda was so impatient to hear a water-rat splash that
she scarcely glanced at these great yellow orbs rising
from thick, moist, mud-stained stalks and burnished
leaves; but to Wolf, as he passed them by, there came
rushing headlong out of that ditch, like an invisible
company of tossing-maned air-horses, a whole wild herd
of ancient memories! Indescribable! Indescribable! They
had to do with wild rain-drenched escapes beneath banks
of sombre clouds, of escapes along old backwaters and
by forsaken sea-estuaries, of escapes along wet, deserted
moor-paths and by sighing pond-reeds; along melancholy
quarry-pools and by quagmires of livid moss. Indescrib-
able! Indescribable! But memories of this kind were
and he had long known it! the very essence of his life.
They were more important to him than any outward event.
They were more sacred to him than any living person.
They were his friends, his gods, his secret religion.
Like a mad botanist, like a crazed butterfly-collector,
he hunted these filmy growths, these wild wanderers,
and stored them up in his mind. For what purpose did
he store them up? For no purpose! And yet these things
were connected in some mysterious way with that myth-
opoeic fatality which drove him on and on and on.
"There's one! There's one! There's one! Oh, throw
something to make it go faster. Throw something! Quick!
Quick! Quick! No I don't mean to hit it. I don't mean
to hurt it. To make it swim faster! There! I can't throw
straight. Oh, do look at its head breathing and puffing!
Oh, what ripples it makes!"
Conjured in this way to join in this sport, Wolf did
pick up an enormous piece of wet mud and hurled it in
the trail of the swimming rat.
The muddy ripples from this missile came rushing up
behind that pointed little head, came splashing against
those pointed little ears. Gerda clasped her hands.
"Swim! Swim! Swim!" she called out; and then in her
excitement she pouted her mouth into a reed-mouth and
uttered a long, strange, low, liquid cry that was like no
sound Wolf had ever heard in his life.
"It's gone! It's done it!" she sighed at last, when the
rat, emerging from the water without so much as one
shake of its sleek sides, slid off along its mud-channel to
its bed in the reed-roots. "It's gone! And you did make it
swim! I liked to see it. Let's go rat-swimming often. It's
wonderful!"
She began walking along the river-bank in the direction
leading away from Blacksod, gazing intently and raptu-
rously at the sluggish brown stream.
Wolf followed her, but he surreptitiously glanced at
his watch, and discovered, as he suspected, that it
was already late in the afternoon.
"You can't tell when twilight begins," he thought to
himself, "when the sky is all twilight."
"Hush!" The sound reached him rather by implication
than by ear. But the girl had crouched down under an
overhanging alder and was staring at the water, her
long cream-coloured arms supporting half the weight of
her body.
He sat down himself and waited patiently. It satisfied
his nature with an ineffable satisfaction to watch that
steady flow of the brown water, gurgling round the
willow-roots and the muddy concavities of the bank. He
felt glad that the Lunt, where he was now watching it,
had left the town behind and was now to meet with
nothing else really contaminating until it mingled with
the Bristol Channel. He had already begun to feel a
peculiar personal friendliness toward this patient muddy
stream; and it gave him pleasure to think that its trou-
bles were really over, when itself might so easily be
fearing another Blacksod somewhere between these green
meadows and the salt sea to which it ran! Looking quite
as intently at these brown waters as Gerda herself was
doing, it occurred to him how different a thing the per-
sonality of a river is from the personality of a sea. The
water of the sea, though broken up into tides and waves,
really remains the same identical mass of waters; whereas
the water of a river is at every succeeding moment a com-
pletely different body. No particles of it are ever the
same, unless they get waylaid in some side-stream or ditch
or weir.
Wolf tried to visualize the whole course of the Lunt,
so as to win for it some sort of coherent personality.
By thinking of all its waters togetlier, from start to
finish, this unity could be achieved; for between the
actual water before him now, into which he could thrust
his hand, and the water of that tiny streamlet among the
mid-Dorset hills from which it sprung, there was no
spacial gap. The one flowed continuously into the other.
They were as completely united as the head and tail of
a snake! The more he stared at the Lunt the more he liked
the Lunt. He liked its infinite variety; the extraordinary
number of its curves and hollows and shelving ledges
and pools and currents; the extraordinary variety of
organic patterns in the roots and twigs and branches and
land-plants and water-plants which diversified its course.
While he was thinking all this he had turned his atten-
tion away from Gerda; but now, glancing up the river,
he was struck by a gleam of living whiteness amid the
greenery. The huntress of water-rats had slipped off her
shoes and stockings and was dabbling her bare feet in the
chilly brown water. Her face was bent down. She was not
being provocative this time. He felt sure of that. Or, if
so, the provocation was directed to something older and
less rational than the senses of man. She was giving way
to some immemorial girlish desire to expose warm, naked
limbs to the cold embraces of the elements.
He rose to his feet, and, moving slowly up to her side,
sat down by her. He was struck by the fact that she made
no movement to pull her skirts down over her knees. But
once again he was made aware, he could not quite tell
how, that there was no provocation in this. She had indeed,
as Darnley had said, something of the "terrible passivity"
of the famous daughter of Leda. Certainly Wolf had never
seen, in picture, in marble, or in life, anything as flaw-
less as the loveliness thus revealed to him. It was ama-
zing to him that she did not shiver with the cold. The
whole scene, as the hour of twilight grew near, had that
kind of unblurred enamelled distinctness such as one
sees in the work of certain old English painters. The
leaf-buds of the alder under which she sat were of that
shade of green that seems to have something almost unna-
tural in its metallic opacity; and the line of southern
sky against which the opposite bank was outlined was of
that livid steel-grey which seems to hold within it a
suppressed whiteness, like the whiteness of a sword that
lies in shadow.
"You're sure you're not cold?" Wolf asked.
"Of course I'm cold, silly! I'm doing this to feel
cold!"
"What a sensualist you are!"
"Better say nothing if you can't say anything nicer
than that."
"Gerda."
"Well?"
"Have you enjoyed yourself today?"
"What do you mean?"
"Have you been happy today?"
She did not answer.
All about those white ankles and those white knees the
greenness of the earth gathered the greyness of the sky
descended. It was as if such vague non-human powers,
made up of green shadows and grey shadows, drew the
girl back and away back and away from all his human
words, back and away from all his personal desires.
Commonplace and irrelevant seemed both his sentiment
and his cunning in the face of these two great silent
Presences that of the earth and that of the sky which
were closing in upon her and upon himself.
But it was getting too cold. He must make her put on
her things and come home.
"That's enough now," he said. "On with your stockings,
like a good girl. I don't know when your people expect
you back; but anyhow I mustn't keep Mrs. Otter waiting."
He took her by the wrist and pulled her up the bank.
Then he began vigorously rubbing her ice-cold ankles
with his hands.
"You do take care of me nicely," she said, when fin-
ally he pulled her frock over her knees and smoothed
out the wrinkles from her cream-coloured coat. "Bob
never used to stop for a minute. He was always doing
up his tackle or washing his fish or something. And if
I did ask him to stop he thought I wanted him to mess
me about you know? when it was only, like now, that
I just couldn't get my boots on! They get so stiff and
funny when you take them off. I never understand why."
But Wolf's mind was in no mood to deal with the ab-
stract problem of damp leather. He was wondering in
his heart whether Gerda's mania for water-rats had
anything to do with the close resemblance between Mr.
Weevil and these harmless rodents.
"What we've got to think about now," he said, "is the
shortest way to Blacksod."
"Oh, don't worry! We can be at my house in three-quarters
of an hour and then you can take the short-cut to Bar-
ton."
Wolf was very much struck by the competent geographical
skill with which she now proceeded to guide him, over
hedge and over ditch, until they reached a navigable
lane.
"We'll be home in half an hour now," she said, and the
two walked rapidly side by side- between the cold, fresh
shoots of the hawthorn-hedges and the. dark sheen of the
celandine-leaves.
"I think I'd be all right now, married to you," said
Gerda, suddenly.
She made the remark in as unemotional and matter-offact
a tone as if she had said, "I think I'd be all right now
if I used low-heeled boots."
In that chilly twilight, with the white mist rising around
them, everything seemed so phantasmal, that this sur-
prising observation gave him no kind of shock. But he
did remember how startled he had felt when Christie
Malakite introduced the same idea.
"I wonder how I should feel married to you!" murmured
Wolf in response, deliberately putting a nuance of irre-
sponsible lightness into his tone.
"I think we'd get on splendidly," she retorted, with
an emphasis that was more boyish than girlish. They
walked for a while in silence after this, and Wolf became
vividly aware how completely a definite responsible
project of such a kind tended to break the delicious spell
of care-free intimacy. It broke it for him, anyway. But it
must have been just the reverse with her. The beauty of
the situation with her evidently had to find its justification
in some continuity of events beyond the mere pleasure
of the passing moment.
But it was impossible to prevent his thoughts hovering
round this bold idea, now it had been flung into the air.
Christie Malakite had been the first to toss the fatal lit-
tle puffball upon the wind. She had done it with the utmost
gravity, the gravity of some remote being altogether out-
side the stream of events. He remembered the peculiar
steady look of her brown eyes as she uttered the words.
But that this airy nothing of speculation should have re-
ceived a new impetus from Gerda herself was another mat-
ter. He began to wonder what kind of relations existed
between these two young girls.
Splashing up the water from a puddle on his right with
the end of his stick, he hazarded a direct question
on this point.
"I had tea yesterday with Christie Malakite," he said,
"and she told me she was a friend of yours. I liked her
so very much."
"Oh, I shan't ever be jealous of Christie!" was his
companion's reply to this. "I don't care if you have tea
with Christie every day of your life. She's for no man, as
the game says."
"What game, Gerda?"
"Oh, don't you know? That old game! Kids play it together.
We called it 'Boys and Girls'; but likely enough where you
come from they call it something else! But it's the same
old game, I reckon."
"Why do you say Christie Malakile's 'for no man,' Gerda?"
"Don't ask so many questions, Mr. Wolf Solent. That's your
fault asking questions! That's what'll make me cross when
we're married, more than anything else."
"But it's such a queer expression 'She's for no man.'
Does it mean she's got lovers who aren't human? Does
it mean she's got demon lovers?"
He spoke in a mocking, exaggerated manner, and his
lone was irritating to his companion.
"Men think too much of themselves," she replied lacon-
ically. "I like Christie very much and she likes me
very much."
This silenced Wolf; and they walked together in less
harmony than at any previous moment in that afternoon.
They hit the town by a narrow alley between the townhall
and Chequers Street. Wolf looked at his watch and com-
pared it with the town-hall clock. It was a quarter
past six. There was still plenty of time for him to
reach Pond Cottage before eight, when the Otters dined.
They drifted slowly down Chequers Street, Gerda making
all manner of quaint, humorous remarks about the
people and things they passed; and yet, through it all,
Wolf was perfectly aware that she had not forgiven him
the hard, frivolous tone he had adopted about her friend.
That she was able to chatter and delay as she was now
doing had something magnanimously pathetic and even
boyish about it. Most girls, as he well knew, would have
punished him for the little discordance between them by
hurrying home in silence and shutting him out without
the comfort of any further appointments. To act in any
other way would have seemed to such minds to be lack-
ing in proper pride. But Gerda appeared to have no
pride at all in this sense. Or was it that her pride was
really something that actually did resemble that high,
passive nonchalance which permitted the old classical
women to speak of themselves quite calmly, as if they
were external to themselves; as if they saw their life as
an irresponsible fate upon which they could, as it were,
lie back without incurring any human blame?
They said good-bye at the gate of Torp's yard; and
when Wolf enquired how soon he could see her again,
"Oh, any day you like, except tomorrow and Monday,"
she replied. "I've enjoyed myself very much," she added,
as she held out her hand. "I'm glad you made me go."
Wolf was on the point of asking her what her engagements
were on Sunday and Monday; but he thought better of it
in time, and taking off his cap and waving his stick he
turned and strode away.
It was very nearly dark when the last little villa on the
King's Barton road was left behind.
He walked slowly forward under a starless sky, revolving
his adventure. He recognized clearly enough that his
first infatuation had changed its quality not a little.
Gerda was now not only a maddeningly desirable girl.
She was a girl with a definite personality of her own.
That bird-like whistling! Never had he known such a
thing was possible! It accounted as nothing else could do
for her queer, unembarrassed silences. In fact, it was the
expression of her silences and not only of hers! It was,
as he recalled its full effect upon him, the expression of
just those mysterious silences in Nature which all his
life long he had, so to speak, waited upon and worshipped.
That strange whistling was the voice of those green pas-
tures and those blackthorn-hedges, not as they were
when human beings were conscious of them, but as
they were in that indescribable hour just before dawn,
when they awoke in the darkness to hear the faint, faint
stirrings upon the air of the departing of the nonhuman
powers of the night!
He was so absorbed in his thoughts that it was with
quite a startled leap of the heart that he became conscious
of hurried, uneven steps behind him. What kind of steps
were they? They didn't sound like the steps of a grown-up
person either man or woman they were so light in the dark
road. And yet somehow they didn't resemble the footsteps
of a child. Wolf became aware of an odd feeling of unea-
siness. With all his habitual mysticism he was a man lit-
tle subject to what are called psychic impressions. Yet
on this occasion he could not help a somewhat discomfort-
able beating of his heart. The last thing he desired was
to be overtaken by something unearthly on that pleasant
Dorset road! Had the extraordinary phenomenon of the
girl's whistling unsettled his nerves more than he real-
ized?
His first simple and cowardly instinct was to quicken
his own steps. In fact, it was with a quite definite effort
that he prevented himself from setting off at a run! What
was it? Who was it? He listened intently as he walked;
and this listening in itself induced him to diminish his
speed rather than to increase it.
At last the mysterious maker of this uncertain wavering
series of footsteps arrived close at his heels.
Wolf swung round, grasping his stick tightly. Nothing on
earth could have prevented a certain strained unnatural-
ness in his voice as he challenged this pursuer.
"Hullo! "he cried.
There was no answer, and the figure came steadily along
till it was parallel with him.
Then he did, in a rush of relief, recognize this night-
walker's identity.
Even in the darkness he recognized that shabby, derelict
personality he had seen in the street with Lob Torp the
day before. It was the Vicar of King's Barton!
He was surprised afterwards at this sudden recognition;
though it was not the only occasion in his life when he
had used a kind of sixth sense.
But whatever may have been its cause, Wolf's clairvoyance
on this occasion was not shared by his overtaker.
"It...is...very...dark...tonight," said the clergyman,
in a voice so husky and hoarse that it resembled the
voice attributed to the discomposed visage of the King
of Chaos by the poet Milton.
Wolf's own voice was quite natural now.
"So dark that I took you for some kind of ghost," he
said grimly.
"Hee! Hee! Hee!" The Vicar laughed with the laugh
of a man who makes a mechanical, appreciative noise.
This hollow sound would doubtless have passed harmlessly
enough in the daylight. In the darkness it was ghastly.
"You came up very quickly," remarked Wolf. "You
must be a good walker, Mr. Valley."
"Who...are...you...if...you...don't ...mind...my...
asking?"
"Not at all, Mr. Valley. I am the new secretary at the
Squire's."
The man stopped dead-still in the road; and, in natural
politeness, Wolf stopped too. "You are...the...other...
one...Then...I...must...see you later...I buried him.
...I said prayers for him every day...He...was...very
kind to me. I must see you...later...." Having uttered
these words, the Vicar seemed to gather up out of the
dark some new kind of strength; for he moved forward
by Wolf's side with a firmer step.
For nearly half a mile they walked side by side in
silence.
Then the quavering voice out of the obscurity began
again.
"Valley...is my name....You've got it quite right.
T. E. Valley....I...drink more than's good for me...
I'm a little drunk tonight...but you'll excuse me.
In the dark it isn't noticeable. But you're quite
right. T. E. Valley is quite right. I was in the
Eleven at Ramsgard....I play still....I play with
the boys...."
Once more there was no sound but that of the two
men's feet in the road and the thud thud thud of
Wolf's stick.
Then the voice recommenced. "The poor people here
are very kind to me...very kind to T. E. Valley. But
for the rest..."
He again stopped dead-still in the road and Wolf
stopped with him.
"For the rest...except...Darnley...they are all...
You won't tell them, will you? They are all devils!
Devils! Devils!" His voice rose in a kind of help-
less fury. Then, after a moment's pause: "But they
can't hurt T. E. Valley. None of 'em can...drunk or
sober...and that's because I'm God's Priest in this
place....God's Priest, Sir! However you like to take it!"
This final outburst seemed to restore the shadowy little
man to his senses; for until Wolf brought him to the gate
of the Vicarage and bade him farewell there, his words
became steadily more coherent his intonation more
normal and more sober.
The door of Pond Cottage was opened for Wolf by
Dimity Stone.
"I've kept dinner back till it's as good as ruined,"
grumbled the old woman.
"Where are--" Wolf began.
"In there...waiting!" she answered, as she moved
off.
He opened the drawing-room door.
"I am so very sorry, Mrs. Otter," he said humbly.
They all rose from their seats; but it was Jason who
spoke first.
"Everything's only waiting," he chuckled grimly. "That
sofa is a better place for waiting than a headmaster's
study!"
"My son doesn't mean that you've kept us a minute,"
said Mrs. Otter. "Dimity's only just ready. But we'll sit
down at the table while you wash your hands; so that
you can feel quite happy."
"Don't be long, Solent!" cried Darnley, as Wolf turned
to go upstairs. "Mother won't let us touch a morsel till
you come."
As he entered his bedroom he heard Mrs. Otter's
voice. "Dimity! Dimity! We're quite ready!" And then,
just as he was closing the door, he caught something
about "these secretaries" from Jason.
BAR SINISTER
BREAKFAST IN POND COTTAGE ON THAT SUNDAY MORNING
proved to be the pleasantest meal that Wolf had yet enjoyed
under the Otter roof.
Mrs. Otter, dressed in stiff puce-coloured silk, and happy
to have both her sons at the table, spoke at some length to
their guest about the morning service in the church to which
she and Darnley were presently to go. She explained to
him how much she liked the quiet, reverent manner in
which Mr. Valley conducted the worship of the parish.
"He makes me sad at other times," she said. "He's an
unhappy little man; and everyone knows how he drinks.
He ought to have a wife to look after him, or at least a
housekeeper. He's got no one in the house. How he gets
enough to eat I can't imagine."
"Mother thinks no household can get on for a day
without a woman in it," said Darnley.
Jason Otter's pallid face reddened a little. "Of course,
we know he wants to be the only man that any of the
village-boys admire. It's human nature that's what it is.
These country clergymen are all the same."
"There are the bells!" cried Mrs. Otter, thankful for
the opportunity of staving off discord between the
brothers. They all four listened in silence, while the faint
notes from the Henry the Seventh tower penetrated the
walls of Pond Cottage.
"That means it's ten o'clock," said Darnley. "They
ring again at half-past, don't they, Mother?"
Wolf felt an extraordinary sense of peacefulness in the
air that morning. The sound of the bells accentuated it;
and he wondered vaguely to himself whether he wouldn't
offer to go to church with the mother and the son.
"By the way," he remarked, "may I ask you people a
question, while I think of it?"
They all three awoke from their individual meditations
and gave him their undivided attention. Mrs. Otter
did this with serene complacency, evidently assuming
that the nature of his remark would prove harmless and
agreeable. Jason did it with nervous concern, touched
with a flicker of what looked like personal fear. Darnley
did it with an expression of weary politeness, as much as
to say, "Oh, God! Oh, God! Am I not going to have even
Sunday free from other people's problems?"
"It's a simple enough thing," Wolf said quickly,
realizing that he had made more stir than he intended.
"I only wanted to know why this house of yours is
called Pond Cottage, when there's no trace of a pond."
There was an instantaneous sign of startled agitation
all the way round the table.
"The pond is there all right," said Darnley, quietly.
"It's over that hedge, just outside our gate, the other
side of the lane. It's rather an uncomfortable topic with
us, Solent; because at least three times James Redfern
thought of drowning himself in it. He may have thought
of it more times than that. Jason found him there three
times. We don't like the pond for that reason. That's
all!"
Jason Otter got up from his chair. "I'll go and put on
my boots," he remarked to Wolf, "and we'll go and
visit the pond. You ought to see it. And there are other
things I can show you, too, while mother and Darnley
are in church. You've got your boots on, I think? Well!
I won't keep you very long."
He left the room as he spoke and Mrs. Otter looked
appealingly at her younger son.
"Don't worry, Mother dear," said Darnley, gravely,
laying his hand upon her knees.
He turned to Wolf. "You must help us in keeping my
brother in good spirits, Solent," he said. "But I know
I can trust you."
When Wolf and Jason did finally cross the lane together
and enter the opposite field which they achieved
by climbing up a steep bank and pushing their way
through a gap in the hedge the sense of peacefulness in
the whole air of the place had intensified to a degree that
was so enchanting to Wolf that nothing seemed able to
disturb his contentment.
The field he found himself in was a very large one, and
only a broken, wavering line of willows and poplars at
the further end of it gave any indication of the presence
of water. The atmosphere was deliciously hushed and misty;
no wind was stirring; and the placid morning sun fell u-
pon the grass and the trees with a sort of largeness of
indifference, as if it were too happy, in some secretive
way of its own, to care whether its warmth gave pleasure
or the reverse to the lives that thrived under its influ-
ence. It seemed to possess the secret of complete detach-
ment, this sunshine; but it seemed also to possess the
secret of projecting the clue to such detachment into the
heart of every living existence that its vaporous warmth
approached.
Wolf was suddenly aware of a rising to the surface of
his mind of that trance-like "mythology" of his. All the
little outward things that met his gaze seemed to form so
many material moulds into which this magnetic current
set itself to run.
He surveyed a patch of sun-dried cattle-dung upon
which the abstracted Jason had inadvertently planted his
foot and across which was slowly moving with exquisite
precaution a brilliantly green beetle. He surveyed a
group of small crimson-topped daisies over which a
sturdy, flowerless thistle threw a faint and patient
shadow. He surveyed the disordered flight of a flock of
starlings, heading away from the pond towards the village.
But of all these things what arrested him most was
the least obvious, the least noticeable. It was, in fact,
no more than a certain ridge of rough unevenness in the
ground at his feel; a nameless unevenness, which assumed,
as the misty sunlight wavered over it, the predominant
place in this accidental pattern of impressions.
Jason said nothing at all as they walked together slowly
across the field. The man had ostentatiously avoided any
approach to Sunday clothes that morning; and, without
hat or stick, in a very shabby overcoat, he presented
rather a lamentable figure, as he led the way forward
towards Lenty Pond.
They reached the willows and poplars at last; and
Wolf stared in astonishment at what he saw. He found
himself standing on the brink of an expanse of water
that was nearly as large as a small lake. The opposite
side of it was entirely covered with a bed of thick reeds,
among which he could see the little red-and-black shapes
of several moor-hens moving; but from where he stood,
under these willows, right away to the pond's centre, the
water was deep and dark, and even on that placid Sunday
a little menacing.
"He could have done it easily if he'd wanted to,
couldn't he?" said Jason, gazing at the water. "The truth
is he didn't want to! Darnley's a sentimental fool. Red-
fern didn't want to drown himself. Not a bit of it. What
did he come here for, then? He came to rouse pity, to
make people's minds go crazy with pity."
"The man must have been thinking of saying just this
to me all the way across the field," thought Wolf. But
Jason jerked out now a much more disturbing sentence.
"The boy did upset one person's mind. He made one
person's mind feel like a weed in this water! And you'd
be surprised to hear who that person was."
But Wolf just then felt it very hard to give him his
complete attention. For although the mystical ecstasy he
had just experienced had faded, everything about the day
had become momentous in his hidden secretive life; and
he felt detached, remote, disembodied, for all his Sunday
clothes. He could hear the cawing of a couple of rooks
high up in the sky; and even when they ceased cawing,
the creaking of their wings seemed like the indolence
of the very day itself. "A weed in the water," he echoed
mechanically; while his mind, voyaging over those
hushed West Country pastures, followed the creaking
wings.
"Who was it, Mr. Otter, who was so upset by Redfern?"
The appeal in Jason's miserable eyes grew still more
disturbing. The man's soul seemed to come waveringly
forward, like a grey vapour, out of its eye-sockets,
till it formed itself into a shadowy double of the
person who stood by Wolf's side.
"Can't you guess?" murmured Jason Otter. "It was I
...I...I...You're surprised. Well, anyone would
be. You wouldn't have thought of that, though you are
Mr. Urquhart's secretary and have come from a college!
But you needn't look like that; for it's true! Darnley
sentimentalizes about his death, which was unfortunate,
of course, but perfectly natural--he died of pneumonia,
as any of us might--but what drove me to distraction
was this playing upon a person's pity. He always did it--
from the very first day. Darnley yielded to it at once,
though he never liked the boy. I resisted it. I am of iron
in these things. I know too much. But by degrees, can't
you understand, though I didn't yield to it, it began to
bother my mind. Pity's the most cruel trap ever invented.
You can see that, I suppose? Take it that there were only
one unhappy person left, why, it might spoil all the delight
in the world! That is why I'd like to kill pity--why I'd like to
make people see what madness it is."
Wolf drew away from him a step or two, till he stood
at the very edge of the pond, and then he remarked
abruptly, "Your mother told me that Redfern was one of
the most good-looking young men she has ever seen."
Having flung out these words, he began flicking the
dark, brimming water with the end of his stick, watching
the ripples which he caused spreading far out towards the
centre. Exactly why he made that remark just then he
would have found it hard to explain. The wraith-like
phantom-soul that had emerged from Jason's eye-sockets
drew back instantaneously, like a puppet pulled by a
string; and over the two apertures into which it withdrew
there formed a glacial film of guarded suspicion.
"I have seen better-looking ones," said Jason Otter
drily. "He used to help that fool Valley in his High
Church services. I don't know whether the Virgin Mary
ever appeared to him; but I know he used to take her
flowers, because he used to steal them out of our garden!
My mother let him steal because it was--Hullo! What's up
now? Who's this?"
Wolf swung round and observed to his surprise the
tall figure of Roger Monk advancing towards them across
the field.
"It's something for you. It's something about you,"
said Jason, hurriedly. "I think I'll walk round the pond."
"Why do that?" protested Wolf. "There'll be no secret
about it, even if it is for me."
"He'll like to find you alone best. These servants of
these landowners always do," replied the other. "Besides,
Mr. Urquhart hates me. He knows I know what he is.
He's not a common kind of fool. He likes having good
meals and good wine, but he's ready to risk all that
for I don't know what!"
"I tell you I have no secrets with Urquhart," rejoined
Wolf. "There's absolutely no need for you to leave us."
"This gardener looked at me very suspiciously yester-
day," whispered Jason. "I saw him through the hedge,
in his garden. He was planting something, but he kept
looking at the hedge. He must have known I was there.
He must have been wondering whether he dared shoot
at me with a shotgun. So good-bye! I'm going to walk
round the pond very slowly."
Wolf moved toward Mr. Monk, leaving his companion
to shuffle off as he pleased. The gigantic servant looked
like a respectable prize-fighter in his Sunday clothes.
When the two men met he took from his pocket a telegram
and handed it to Wolf, touching his hat politely as he
did so.
"This came early," he said. "But there was no one
else to send; and I had to tend to things before I could
bring it myself. If there's any answer, 'twill have to go
by way of Blacksod, for our office shuts at noon."
Wolf opened the telegram. It was from his mother, and
ran as follows:
"ARRIVE RAMSCARD SEVEN O'CLOCK SUNDAY NIGHT TRADESMEN
HAVE NO SENSE COULD SLEEP AT LOVELACE."
"There's no answer, Monk," he said gravely; and then,
after prodding the ground thoughtfully with his stick,
and looking at the figure of Jason Otter, which was now
stationary behind a poplar-tree, "This is from my
mother," he added. "She is coming down from town
tonight."
"Very nice for you, Sir, I'm sure," murmured the man."
'Tain't every gentleman has got a mother."
"But the difficulty is, Monk," Wolf went on, "that
my mother wants to stay down here. You don't happen
to know of any cottage or any rooms in a cottage that
we could get for a time, do you?"
Roger Monk looked at him thoughtfully. "Not that I
knows of, Sir," he began, his gipsy-like eyes wandering
from Wolf's face to the landscape in front of him, a
portion of which landscape included the figure of Mr.
Otter, hiding behind the poplar-tree.
"That is to say, Sir, unless by any chance...but
that ain't likely, Sir...."
"What do you mean, Monk?" enquired the other,
eagerly."
'Twere only that I myself live lonesome-like in me
own place...and seeing you're helping Squire with
his writings...and Lenty Cottage be neat set up, I
were just thinking--"
Wolf swung his stick. "The very thing!" he cried ex-
citedly. In a flash his imagination became abnormally
active. He visualized this gardener's house in all its
details. He saw himself, as well as his mother, snugly
ensconced there for years and years...perhaps for the
rest of their lives!
"But we should be a nuisance to you, Monk, even if
the Squire were amenable, shouldn't we?"
The man shook his head.
"Well, I'll come straight home with you now, Monk,
if I may," said Wolf impatiently. "Were you going home
now?"
"I was."
"Well, I'll just run and tell Mr. Otter; and then I'll
come with you."
He left the man standing where they had been talking,
and hurried round the edge of the pond. There was some-
thing peculiarly appealing to him in the idea of this
cottage. How pleasant it would be, he thought, when he
and his mother were living together there some five years
hence, if he happened to say to her, as he came in to tea
from his Sunday walk, with a bunch of primroses in his
hand, "I came past Lenty Pond today, Mother, where I
first heard about the chance of our settling here!"
He found Jason sitting on the roots of the poplar,
leaning his back against the tree-trunk and holding the
tails of his overcoat stretched tightly over his knees,
so that he should be entirely concealed from view.
"That man hasn't gone," was his greeting to Wolf.
"He's standing there still."
"I know he is, Otter. He's brought a telegram for me.
My mother's coming down tonight. Monk says he doesn't
see any reason why she and I shouldn't take rooms in his
cottage."
Jason looked up at him from where he sat upon the
poplar-root, and the whimsical manner in which he
hugged his coal-tails was accentuated by a smile of
hobgoblinish merriment.
"You mean to live in it?" he remarked. "You and your
mother? I don't believe old Urquhart would consider
such a thing for a moment! These squires like to show
off their servants' quarters. They like to take their
guests round and say: 'That's where my head-gardener
lives. He works at his garden when he's finished with
mine! Those are "Boule de neige" roses!' But when it
comes to honest people lodging in places like that--
goodness! Urquhart wouldn't consider it. But you can
try. But my advice to you is to be very careful in this
matter. You never know what troubles you'll have when
you deal with people like this Monk. But you can try.
There! you'd better go off with him. He's peeping and
spying at this moment. He's thinking I'm holding you
back because of the money you pay us."
Wolf shook his head and made a movement to be gone,
but the other bent forward a little and whispered up at
him: "I'll walk slowly round the pond; then if he looks
back he won't think you ought to wait for me."
With this complicated and obscure sentence floating
on the surface of his mind, Wolf left his companion to
his own devices and rejoined Roger Monk.
Not more than twenty minutes' walking brought them
to the gardener's cottage. To Wolf's great satisfaction
the place proved to be quite out of sight of the manor-
house on the Ramsgard side of the orchards and the kitch-
en-gardens. It stood, indeed, in Lenty Lane, a little
east of the drive-gates, and turned out to be a solid
little cottage, pleasantly coated with white paint, and
approached from the lane by a neat gravel-path, on either
side of which was a row of carefully whitewashed small
round stones. Wolf for some reason didn't like the look
of those white stones. Once more he regarded Lenty
Cottage. The idea of its excessive neatness and tidiness,
combined with the idea of its being so long empty except
for this one man, troubled his nerves in some odd way.
What did it suggest to him? Ah, he had it! It suggested
the peculiar lonely trimness...so extraordinarily for-
bidding...of a gaoler's house outside a prison-gate,
or a keeper's house outside a lunatic-asylum.
"Well, let's see the inside," he said, turning to his
companion. "Mr. Urquhart might as well have put me
up here at first."
The other gave him one of his equivocal glances."
'Twere the matter of meals, I expect, Sir," he said
cautiously. "But if the lady comes, things will be
different,no doubt."
"Then you'd be pleased to have us here?"
This time the gardener's look was direct and eager.
"I'd be glad enough to have a gent like yourself
sleeping under this here roof," he cried.
They entered the house together and the matter was
soon arranged between them. When things were settled,
Wolf observed the man rubbing one of his hands up and
down the back of a chair. "I'd give a hundred pounds
to get a place in them Shires again!" he burst out
suddenly.
Wolf looked at him in astonishment. "You don't like
it here, Monk," he murmured.
"Like it?" The man's voice sank to a whisper."
'Tis easier to enter a gentleman's service than to leave
it, Sir, when that gentleman be the sort of Nebuchadnezzar
my master be!"
"You aren't a Dorset man, then?" enquired Wolf.
"I were born here," replied the other, "but I left
home when I were a kiddie, and worked in they Shires."
This remark made clear to Wolf a great deal about
Roger Monk. The upper layers of the man's mind were
sophisticated by travel. The deeper ones retained their
indigenous imprint.
"Well, I must go back to Pond Cottage now," Wolf
said calmly. "Mrs. Otter and Mr. Darnley ought to be
back from church -by this time, and I must talk to them.
We'll arrange about terms, Monk, after I've seen Mr.
Urquhart. Do you suppose I should find him at home
now, if I looked in on my way to the cottage?"
A frown of concentrated concern clouded the countenance
of the man in front of him.
"It certainly would be best," he remarked, "if it could
be done. What he'll say to it, I don't know, I'm sure."
With these words ringing in his ears, Wolf, some
fifteen minutes later, found himself admitted to Mr.
Urquhart's presence. He discovered his employer in his
study, reading with fascinated interest the book which
his new secretary had brought him.
"These Evershotts will be the making of our history,"
he chuckled, in high glee. "You did well with old Malakite.
Five pounds for this? I tell you, it's worth twenty!
You're a capital ambassador, Mr. Solent!...Eh?
What's that? Your mother coming here?...Monk's
front-rooms?"
He straightened out his legs and smoothed back his
glossy hair from each side of that carefully brushed
parting. With his great white face drooping a little on
one side, with the flabby folds under his eyelids pulsing
as if they possessed an independent life of their own, he
made an unpleasant impression on Wolf's mind.
Mr. Urquhart's study was a small, dingy room, the walls
of which were entirely covered by eighteenth-century
prints. The Squire sat in a low, leather chair, with the
Evershott chronicle on his knees; and as Wolf settled
himself opposite him in a similar chair, he began to
feel that, after all, he was probably exaggerating the
peculiarities of King's Barton Manor.
"It's my nervous imagination, I expect," he said to
himself. "Urquhart's no doubt like hundreds of other
eccentric men of- leisure. And as for the gardener's
chatter I suppose servants are always glad to grumble
to a stranger."
"Didn't my predecessor live in Monk's house?" he
found himself saying.
The squire lifted his hand from the book he held and
half raised it to his well-shaven chin. "Redfern? A little
while, perhaps. I really forget. Not long, anyway. That
drunken individual at Pond Cottage persuaded him to
go to them. It was with them he died. They told you that,
I suppose?"
Mr. Urquhart's voice was so placid and casual as he
made these remarks that Wolf was seized with a sort of
shame for letting his imagination run riot so among all
these new acquaintances. "It's the difference from London!
That's what explains it," he thought to himself.
Mr. Urquhart now stopped scratching his chin with his
delicate finger-tips, and, bowing his head a little, fumbled
once more with the pages of the book upon his knee.
Wolf sank back into his deep armchair and stared at the
man's tweed trousers and shiny patent-leather shoes.
He drew a long breath that was something between a
sigh of weariness and a sigh of relief. His recent inter-
views with Jason and Monk had given him the feeling
of being on the edge of a psychic maelstrom of morbid
conflicts. The comfort of this remote room and the ease
of this leather chair made him at once weary of agitations
and glad that he still could feel like a spectator rather
than a combatant.
After all, why should he worry himself? As the philoso-
phical Duke of Albany murmured in King Lear: "The
event! Well...The event!"
"How will your mother appreciate sharing her
kitchen with my man?" said Mr. Urquhart suddenly.
The remark irritated Wolf. What did this easy gentleman
know about the shifts of poverty? He was himself so
bent upon the arrangement that these little matters
seemed quite unimportant.
"Oh, she won't mind that!" he responded carelessly.
"What put all this into Roger's great, stupid, silly
head?" the squire went on, in his silkiest voice. "Is he
tired of my company? Does he want to leave my service
and enter your mother's? What's up with the man? It
isn't the money. I know that much. Roger cares less for
money than any man I've ever dealt with. What can he
be up to now?"
Wolf remained silent, letting him run on. But in his
mind he set himself once more to wonder how far he
really had exaggerated the sinister element in his employ-
er's character.
But Mr. Urquhart leaned forward now and regarded
him intently. "You won't play me a trick, will you, like
the other one? But you're not tricky, Mr. Solent, I can
see that! On my soul, I think you're an honest young
man. Your face shows it. It has its faults as a face;
but it isn't tricky....Well...well...well!...When does your
mother arrive? I shall be interested to have the honor
of meeting her again. My cousin Carfax was at one time
you know, I suppose? excessively in love with her....Not
tonight, eh? Well, perhaps that's as well. Mrs. Martin shall
go over there and make everything straight."
Wolf rose to his feet at this point, anxious to take
his leave before the man had time to read him any pass-
ages from the Evershott Diary. Once outside the house,
he took stock of the situation. He had settled matters
with the occupier and with the owner of his new abode.
The final arrangement he had to make was with Mrs.
Otter. Therefore, off he hurried to Pond Cottage, where
he found his hostess just returned from church.
But here he met with nothing but sympathy whether,
in her secret heart she was glad to get rid of him, Wolf
could not say. She may have all the while regretted the
loss to her eldest son of that chamber whose walls Wolf
had so arbitrarily denuded. Well! They could put those
pictures back on those walls now! And he mentally resolved
to pay as few visits as possible to the bedroom of Mr.
Jason Otter. He had no wish to behold the countenance
of that "god of rain" again!
He left Pond Cottage soon after lunch, explaining that
he would return that night, but would have supper in
Ramsgard with his mother. The afternoon proved to be as
misty and warm as the earlier hours of the day; and as
he retraced the track of Thursday's drive with Darnley,
he did not permit the various agitations into which he
had been plunged to destroy his delight in that relaxed
and caressing weather. He found that travelling on foot
in full daylight revealed to him many tokens of the
Spring that he had missed on his evening drive.
Once or twice he descended into the ditches on either
side of the road, where the limp whitish-pink stalks of
half-hidden primroses drooped above their crinkled
leaves, and, with hands and knees embedded in the warm-
scented earth, pressed his face against those fragile ap-
paritions.
The sweet, faint odour of these pale flowers made him
think of Gerda Torp, and he began worrying his mind
a good deal as to the effect of his mother's arrival upon
the progress of his adventure.
Long before he reached the outskirts of Ramsgard he
was reminded of his approach to the famous West Country
School by the various groups of straw-hatted boys
tall, reserved, disdainful who seemed exploring, like
young Norman invaders, these humble pasture-lands of
the West Saxons.
One or two of the boys, as they passed him by, made hes-
itating half-gestures of respectful recognition. One of
them actually lifted his straw-hat. Wolf became a little
embarrassed by these encounters. He wondered what kind
of a master these polite neophytes--for it must have
been the newcomers at the place who blundered in this
way--mistook him for! Did he look like a teacher of
French? Or did they take him for one of that high,
remote, aristocratic company not masters at all, but
Governors of the ancient School?
When he got closer to the town, he had no difficulty in
espying both cemetery and workhouse across an expanse
of market-gardens and small enclosed fields. The look
of these objects, combined, as they were, with outlying
sheds and untidy isolated hovels, gave him a sensation
that he was always thrilled to receive--the peculiar sen-
sation that is evoked by any transitional ground lying
between town and country.
He had never approached any town, however insignifi-
cant, across such a margin, without experiencing a
queer and quite special sense of romance. Was it that
there was aroused in him some subtle memory of all the
intangible sensations that his ancestors had felt, each
one of them in his day, as, with so much of the unknown
before them, they approached or left, in their West
Country wandering, any of these historic places? Did,
in fact, some floating "emanation" of human regrets and
human hopes hover inevitably about such marginal
tracts redolent of so many welcomes and so many
farewells?
When he arrived at last in the centre of the town and
came to the gate of the Abbey, it was a few minutes to
four o'clock. There was a languid afternoon service
ebbing to its end in the eastern portion of the dusky
nave; and, without entering the building, but lingering
in the Norman entrance, Wolf contemplated once more
that famous fan-tracery roof.
Those lovely organic lines and curves, up there in the
greenish dimness, challenged something in his soul that
was hardly ever stirred by any work of art; something
that was repelled and rendered actually hostile by the
kind of thing he had seen in that bedroom of Jason Otter.
This high fan-tracery roof, into whose creation so much
calm, quiet mysticism must have been thrown, seemed to
appeal with an almost personal sympathy to Wolf's deep-
est mind. Uplifted there, in the immense stillness of
that enclosed space, above the dust and stir of all pass-
ing transactions, it seemed to fling forth, like some great
ancient fountain in a walled garden, eternal arches of
enchanted water that sustained, comforted, and healed.
The amplitude of the beauty around him had indeed just
then a curious and interesting psychic effect. In place
of giving him the sensation that his soul had melted into
these high-arched shadows, it gave him the feeling that
the core of his being was a little, hard, opaque round
crystal!
Soothed, beyond all expectation, by this experience,
and fortified with a resolute strength by thinking of his
soul after this fashion, Wolf had nearly reached Selena
Gault's door, when he remembered that he ought to make
sure of a room for his mother at the Lovelace Hotel before
he did anything else.
Hurrying round by the station, therefore, where he veri-
fied the time of the London train, he entered the office-
hall of the famous hostelry. No backwater of rural
leisure could have been more pulseless and placid than
that mellow interior, with its stuffed fox-heads and
mid-Victorian mahogany chairs. But it was with a shock
of dismay that he learned from the dignified lady in
charge of the hotel-books that owing to the approach of
the annual Spring Fair every room in the place was
already occupied. Wolf cursed the Fair and those horse-
loving magnates. But there was nothing for him but to
return to Miss Gault's; for the smaller Ramsgard Inn
was at the further end of the town, and it was now five
o'clock.
He crossed the public gardens. He struck St. Aldhelm's
Street just above the bridge and moved westward under
the long wall. He pushed open the green door and entered
the garden of hyacinths. The mechanical act of opening
that little gate, for no other reason than that it was a
gate from a street into a private enclosure, brought sud-
denly into his mind his similar entrance into the Torp
yard; and the vein of amorousness in him, like a velvet-
padded panther in a blind night, slipped wickedly past
all the magic of yesterday's walk and caused his heart
to beat at the imaginary image for he had never actually
seen that provocative picture of the young girl astride
the tombstone!
No sooner had the mute servant admitted him into
Selena's drawing-room and closed the door behind him,
than he realized that his hostess was not alone. Not only
were all the cats there, but playing wildly with the cats,
like a young Bassarid with young tigers, was a curlyheaded,
passionate little girl, of olive complexion, who, even before
Miss Gault had finished uttering the syllables of her name,
seized him by both hands and held up an excited, magnetic
mouth to be kissed. Off she went again, however, to her
play with the cats, which seemed to arouse her to the limit
of her nervous endurance, for her cheeks were feverishly
vivid and her dark eyes gleamed like two great gems in the
handle of a dagger--a dagger that someone keeps furtively
moving backwards and forwards between a red flame and a
window open to the night.
As she pulled the cats to and fro and tumbled over
them and among them, on sofa and hearth-rug, she kept
up an incessant, excitable chatter; a chatter that struck
Wolf's mind as resembling, in some odd manner, a substance
rather than a sound, for it seemed to supply a part of
the warm, dusky atmosphere in which she played, and in-
deed seemed to require no vocal response from the
other persons in the room. It was like the swirl of a
swollen brook in a picture of Nicolas Poussin, in the
foreground of which a young brown goatherd plays for
ever with his goals.
"0lwen Smith!" broke in Miss Gault, when she and
Wolf had seated themselves, after their first exchange of
greetings, and he had hurriedly given her a description
of Mr. Urquhart and Mr. Urquhart's library. "Olwen
Smith!"
The little girl got up from the floor in a moment, and
came and stood by her friend's knee.
"You mustn't be noisy when a gentleman's here; and,
besides, you've got on your Sunday frock. Tell Mr. Solent
your name and where you live. Mr. Solent doesn't like
noisy little girls, or little girls that talk all the
time and interrupt people."
"I live at Number Eighty-Five North Street Ramsgard,"
repeated the child hurriedly. "I was eleven last Thursday.
Grandfather keeps the school hat-shop. Mother went
away when I was born. Miss Gault is my greatest friend.
Aunt Mattie is my mother now. I like the white cat best!"
The child uttered these sentences as if they had been
a lesson which she had learned by heart. She stood obe-
diently by Selena Gault's side; but her dark eyes fixed
themselves upon Wolf with an expression that he never
afterwards forgot, so wild, so mocking, so rebellious,
and yet so appealing did it seem.
"Olwen loves my cats; but not nearly so much as my
cats love her" said Selena Gault tenderly.
The little girl cuddled up to the black-gowned figure
and laid her head against the old maid's sleeve. Her wild
spirit seemed to have ebbed away from every portion
of her body except her eyes. These refused to remove
themselves from those of the visitor; and, as his own
mood changed this way and that, these dusky mirrors
changed with it, reflecting thoughts that no child's
conscious brain could possibly have understood.
"But you know you love your Aunt Mattie as if she
were your mother," said Selena Gault. "She's been so
good to you that you'd be a very ungrateful little girl
if you didn't love her."
"I heard grandfather tell Aunt Mattie the other night
that she was no more his child than I was her child,"
responded Olwen Smith, mechanically stroking Miss
Gault's hand like an affectionate little automaton, while
her feverish mocking eyes seemed to say to Wolf, "There,
watch the effect of that!"
"Mattie's mother died about twenty-five years ago,
child," expostulated Miss Gault, "Her name was Lorna.
She and your grandfather used to have dreadful quarrels
before she died. That's why Mr. Smith, when he gets
angry, says things like that. Of course Mattie is his
daughter; and it's very wrong of him to say such things."
"Aunt Mattie's funny" murmured the little girl.
"Hush, child!"
"But she is, rather! Just a tiny little bit funny, isn't
she, Miss Gault?"
Selena smiled at Wolf that peculiar hypnotized smile
with which older people, who have given their souls into
children's keeping, transform their pets' worst faults
into qualities that are irresistibly engaging.
"Aunt Mattie's got a nose like yours," said Olwen
Smith.
"Like mine?" murmured Selena Gault, reproachfully.
"You mustn't be rude, Olwen dear. That's one thing I
can't have in my house."
The brown head was buried closer in the black silk
gown, but the child's voice sounded clear enough.
"Not like yours, Miss Gault like his! Exactly like
his!"
Selena Gault had occasion at that moment to turn clean
away from both her visitors; for the mute servant entered
the room carrying the tea-tray. The arrangement of this
tray was evidently a matter of meticulous ritual in this
house, and Wolf surveyed it with silent satisfaction,
especially as the turbulent little girl ran off to play
with the cats and left Miss Gault free not only to fill
his cup, but also to attend unreservedly to his remarks.
The tea-tray was placed upon a round table at Miss
Gault's side. A black kitchen-kettle--Miss Gault declared
that no other kind boiled good water--was placed upon
the hearth. The servant herself did not retire, as most
servants are wont to do at such a juncture, but remained
to assist at the ceremony of "pouring out," a ceremony
which was so deftly accomplished that Wolf soon found
all his difficulties and annoyances melting away in the
fragrance of the most perfect cup of tea he had ever
tasted.
The general effect of Miss Gault's drawing-room, in the
pleasant mingling of twilight and firelight, began to
take on for his imagination the particular atmosphere
that he was wont, in his own mind, to think of as "the
Penn House atmosphere." This implied that there was
something about this room which made him recall that
old bow-window in Brunswick Terrace, Weymouth, where
in his childhood he used to indulge in those queer,
secretive pleasures. There was not a single piece of
furniture in this room of Miss Gault's which did not
project some essence of the past, tender and mellow as
the smell of potpourri.
He broke the silence now by a reference to his conversa-
tion with Darnley in the Blacksod book-shop. "Otter said--"
he began.
"Hush!" cried Selena Gaull; and then in a completely
different tone, addressing the silent child, who was
listening intently: "0lwen dear, you can go on playing!
You can make as much noise as you like now! We've
finished our conversation."
"I don't want to play any more, Miss Gault. I hate all
your cats except this one! I want to hear Mr. Solent tell
you what Otter said!"
"I'll have to send you home, Olwen, if you don't behave
better. It's rude to interfere with grown-up people's
conversation."
"I wasn't interfering; I was listening. I'd never have
known about Aunt Mattie not being grandfather's real
daughter if I hadn't listened...."
"Be quiet, child!" cried Selena Gault. But the passionate
little girl's shrill voice rose to a defiant shriek, as she
jumped up from the sofa, flung the cat upon the floor,
shook back her tangled curls, and screamed aloud. "And
I'd never have known about Aunt Mattie not being
my real mother if I hadn't listened!"...
If Miss Gault had not managed the child with perfect
tact before, she rose to the occasion now.
"It's all right, Olwen dear," she said in the calmest
and most matter-of-fact voice. "I daresay it's because
grown-up people talk such a lot of nonsense that they
get so cross when children listen. There! Look! You've
frightened your own favourite!"
It was when matters were at this point of psychic
equilibrium that Wolf decided that no more moments
must elapse before he informed his hostess of his mother's
arrival. The nervous electricity with which the air of the
room was already vibrating, encouraged rather than
deterred him.
"Miss Gault!" he began suddenly when the tall black
figure had subsided into some kind of peace in her green
chair. "I've just had some rather serious news which I'd
better tell you at once."
Like a weary caryatid, sick of the burden of life, but
unyielding in her resolution to bear it without reproach
and without complaint, Selena Gault leaned forward toward
him.
"You needn't tell me, boy; I can guess it. Ann Haggard's
coming down here."
He nodded in assent to her words, but a look of irritation
crossed his face.
"My mother and I have the same name," he protested.
"When's she coming? Oh, what a mistake you'll make
if you let her come! What a mistake you'll make!"
"I've not had much choice," remarked Wolf drily.
"She's due now in a few minutes."
"What?" gasped the lady, her deformed lip twitching
like some curious aquarium-specimen that has been
prodded by a visitor's stick.
"She's due at seven o'clock."
"In Ramsgard again after twenty-seven years! What
a thing! What a thing to happen!" gasped Selena Gault.
"I don't know where the deuce I'm going to put her!
That's where I want your advice. The Lovelace is all
filled up with people come in for the Spring Show."
Miss Gault's face was like an ancient amphitheatre
full of dusky gladiators. She took firm hold of the
arms of her chair to steady herself.
But at that moment a diversion offered itself which
distracted the attention of both of them. Olwen Smith,
who had been listening with fascinated intensity to what
they were saying, now burst in upon them.
"O Mr. Solent!" she cried. "Do let your mother have
our front-room for the night. Aunt Mattie takes lodgers,
though grandfather does sell the School hats! I know
Aunt Mattie would love to have your mother. Wouldn't
she, Miss Gault? Do tell him she must come to us. Do
tell him, Miss Gault! He'll let her come if you'll only
say so!" And with that the child sidled up against their
hostess's knees with such beguiling cajolery that Wolf
was surprised at the coldness with which the woman
received her appeal.
She made a very faint movement with her two hands,
just as if the child had not been at her side at all--a
movement as if she were pressing down a load of invisible
earth over the roots of an invisible plant.
"Hush, child!" she said irritably. "You mustn't interrupt
us like that. I've told you so often you mustn't.
I'm sure your Aunt Mattie wouldn't wish to have a guest
for only one night. No one likes an arrangement of that
sort."
But the child, who had been watching her face with in-
tense scrutiny till this moment, now flung herself down
upon the floor and burst into furious crying. "I want her
to come to us!" she wailed. "I--want--her--to--come!
It's always like this when anything nice happens. You're
unkind, Miss Gault! You're very unkind!"
And then quite suddenly her tears stopped, her sobs
ceased; and, very solemnly, sitting upon the floor, hugging
her knees, looking up at the figure above her with
a tragic, lamentable face, "You are prejudiced against
me!" she said.
The word "prejudiced" sounded so unexpected and so queer
out of her mouth that it charmed away the old maid's ag-
itation. "It's all right, my dear," she murmured, stooping
down and lifting her up, and covering her hot forehead
with kisses. "It's all right, Olwen. Mr. Solent shall
bring his mother to your house."
She fell into a deep reverie, staring into vacancy. Past
the child's curly head, which she held pressed against
her, she stared, past the puzzled and rather sulky profile
of Wolf, past the thick green curtains bordered with red-
and-gold braid, out into the gathering night, out into many
nights lost and gone.
Wolf now rather impatiently looked at his watch and
compared it with the clock upon the mantelpiece.
"It's half-past six," he said brusquely, interrupting
Miss Gault's thoughts.
The lady nodded gravely, and rising to her feet with
the child's hand still in hers, "I'll tell Emma to take
Olwen home," she said, "and then she can tell Mattie
Smith to expect you. Say good-bye to Mr. Solent, little
one."
Olwen held out her hand with one of the most complicated
looks he had ever seen on a child's face. It was repentant,
and yet it was triumphant. It was mocking and mischievous,
and yet it was, in a queer way, appealing and wistful.
"Well, I'll see you again," said Wolf, stooping down and
kissing the child's feverishly hot little fingers, "unless
they send you off to bed before we get to the house."
Olwen was obviously immensely relieved that he had
refrained from hugging her or kissing her face.
Very sedate and dignified was the curtsey she now gave
him, turning round to manoeuvre it as Miss Gault opened
the door; and he was left with that honourable glow of
satisfaction with which clumsy people are sometimes re-
warded who have been self-controlled enough to respect
the nervous individuality of a child.
When Miss Gault returned and had closed the door,
she stood for a space regarding her visitor with the sort
of grave, concentrated look, not unmixed with misgiving,
that a commander in an involved campaign might give
to a trusty but over-impetuous subordinate whose lim-
itations of mind prohibit complete confidence.
"It will be awkward for her to go straight to these
Smiths, you know. But she'd have to meet them, I sup-
pose, sooner or later; and it may be all right. It's like
taking the bull by the horns, anyway; which is what
Ann always did."
Wolf was silent. He was watching the hands of the
clock.
"Why did you let her come down here?" the old maid
broke out. "Are you her shadow? Are you tied to her
apron-strings? Can't you see what it means to me, and
to others who remember him, to have to see her, to have
to speak to her? Haven't you felt yourself that this is his
country, his corner of the world, his possession? Haven't
you felt that? And yet you let his enemy, his vindictive
enemy, invade his very burying-ground!"....
Wolf's only retort to this impassioned speech was to
snatch at the lady's hand and give it a hurried kiss. "You
mustn't take it too seriously," were his parting words.
When he reached the station, he was met by the news
that the train was to be about an hour late.
"This will worry our little Olwen!" he thought in
dismay. "They'll send her to bed for a certainty. They'll
think we're not coming at all. They'll think we've changed
our minds. And where shall we get supper when we are
there? Damn these teasing problems! I wish Mother had
waited till tomorrow."
The station was not a very pleasant place to spend an
hour in; so Wolf mounted the hill which rose behind the
parallel tracks of the railroad and the river. Here there
was a sort of terrace-road, perched high above the town
and itself overshadowed by the grassy eminence known
as "The Slopes," beyond the summit of which lay the
wide-stretching deer-park of the lord of the manor.
Feeling sure that, if the train came sooner than it was
expected, he would hear it in time, as soon as he reached
the terrace-road below "The Slopes" he began pacing to
and fro along its level security, gazing down on the lights
of the town as they twinkled intermittently through the
darkened valley beneath him. The sky was overcast; so
that these scattered points of light resembled the phan-
tasmal reproduction of a sidereal firmament that had
already ceased to exist. Mists that in the darkness were
only waftures of chillier air rose up from the muddy
banks of the Lunt and brought to his nostrils on this
Spring night odours that suggested the Autumn. As he
paced that terrace, inhaling these damp airs, his mind
seemed to detach itself from the realistic actualities he
was experiencing. It seemed to float off and away on a
dark stream of something that was neither air nor water.
What he desired at that moment, as he had never
desired it before, was a support in which he could lose
himself completely lose himself without obligation or
effort! He, the mortal creation of Chance, craved for
some immortal creation of Chance, such as he could
worship, wilfully, capriciously, blindly. But he stretched
out his arms into that darkness in vain. His voice might
have been the voice of a belated rook on its way to
Babylon Hill, or the scraping of one alder-branch against
another above the waters of the Lunt, or the faint in-
finitesimal slide of tiny grains of gravel, as some minute
earthworm in the midst of the empty little path at the
top of "The Slopes" came forth to inhale the Spring
night! A bubble of airy vibration, his appeal was lost
as absolutely as any single drop of water that rolled at
that moment down the green back of a frog emerging
from the cold surfa.ce of Lenty Pond.
He kept visualizing the mud-scented darkness in which
he seemed to be floating as a vast banked-up aqueduct
composed of granite slabs covered with slippery black
moss. Out of the spiritual tide that carried him along,
there whirled up, in spurts of phosphorescent illumination,
various distorted physical aspects of the people he
had met these last few days. But these aspects were all
ill-assorted, incongruous, maladjusted....All these
morbid evocations culminated finally in the thought of
his mother; for what dispersed them and shook them
indeed into nothingness now, with an abrupt materialistic
shock, was the clear, sharp sound of the clattering gates
of the level-crossing.
Wolf slid with a jerk into the normal world as he heard
this sound, like a man falling plumb-down from a skylight
upon a creaking floor.
He grasped his stick firmly by its handle, digging it
into the ground at every step, and hurried with long
strides down the little descent.
Nothing in the world seemed important to him now
but to see his mother's face and hear her high-pitched
familiar voice....
Standing on the platform, before the train drew in,
he found that his heart was beating with excitement.
"I'm simply at an impasse'' he thought to himself,
"about what I feel for Mother. I don't really want
her down here...interfering with Gerda...interfering
with everything....It's odd...it's funny...it's
just like the spouting up of a great white whale...
spouting up, when no one's thinking of whales...when
everyone's thinking of the course of the ship!"
When the train actually came in, and he held her at
arm's length with both his hands, clutching her wrists
almost fiercely, looking her up and down almost irritably,
he recognized in a flash that existence without her,
however adventurous it might be, would always be half-real
...just as those famous Ramsgard "Slopes" up there
had seemed half-real a few minutes ago!
It was she alone who could give the bitter-sweet tang
of reality to his phantasmal life and make the ground
under his feet firm.
Her coming, now, as of old, had done, at this moment,
just this very thing!
As he looked upon her now that gallant, ruddy, handsome
face, those proud lips, those strong, white teeth, that
wavy mass of splendid, grey hair he felt that, though
he might love other persons for other reasons, it was she
alone who made the world he lived in solid and resistant
to the touch. He felt that without her the whole thing
might split and tear as if it had been made of thin
paper!
"Oh, it was awful, my dabchick!" the lady cried,
kissing him on both cheeks in an exaggerated foreign
manner. "They were all down on us. I never knew what
wretches tradesmen could be! They'll be nicely fooled
when they find the house shut up. But they deserved it.
They behaved abominably...." She caught herself up with
a gasp, and turned, full of despotic abruptness, to-
wards the patient Ramsgard porter. "Those are all mine!
Three big ones and three little ones! You can come back
for the other people's when you've taken mine out! Is
that bus there? It always -used to be."
Wolf took from her a basket she carried, which appeared
full of the oddest assortment of objects; and they both
followed the loaded little truck, pushed by the docile
porter to the front of the station.
"There it is," cried Mrs. Solent, "the old Ramsgard
bus! Put them in...carefully now! Carefully now!"
The porter retired; recompensed by a shilling, which
Wolf hurriedly produced from his pocket while his
mother was opening her purse. When he had helped her
into the interior of the stuffy little vehicle, he
gave his order to the man on the box.
"Number Eighty-Five North Street!"
"Where are you taking me?" Mrs. Solent asked, as
the bus rumbled off.
"To a room in the town for one night, Mother. The
Lovelace was full. But I've got a lovely cottage for us
at King's Barton, near Mr. Urquhart's drive-gate."
"Where is this room? I remember every house in
North Street."
"It's at Mr. Smith's, the hatter's."
Mrs. Solent's dark-brown eyes glowed like the eyes of
some excited wood-animal.
"That man! Not that house, of all houses. You don't
mean "
She broke off and stared at him intently, while an
indescribable smile began to touch the corners
of her mouth.
Then she leaned forward and rubbed her gloved hands
together, while her cheeks glowed with mischief.
"Has the good man by any chance got a daughter
called Mattie?"
"Aunt Mattie?" murmured Wolf, feeling as if he were
struggling to catch two ropes, which, at the same time,
dangled before him. "That is what the child called her."
"The child?" It was his mother's turn to look puzzled
now.
"Little Olwen Smith."
Mrs. Solent's smile died away.
"It can't be the same," she said. "Unless Lorna's child's
got married."
"It's the same, all right, Mother. It's your man, all
right. He was the hatter, wasn't he?"
She nodded.
"Well! Il's the same, Mother."
Her inscrutable smile began to return and she leaned
back with a sigh.
"To go straight to Albert's house But it'll be fun.
It'll be sport! I'm not going to take it seriously....
Aunt Mattie?...little Olwen?...goodness! But
they must have come down in the world, if he lets out
rooms to visitors...or did he invite me? Am I destined
to be Albert Smith's guest the first night I set foot in
this place?"
"Did you and Father know him well?" enquired Wolf,
as the bus swung round the corner by the ancient conduit.
"Your father knew Lorna well Albert's minx of a
wife. Lorna was even sillier about him than that idiot
Selena."
"What happened, Mother?"
"Never mind now, Wolf! I'm in a mood to be amused
by everything. Don't look so sulky! I tell you I'm going
to amuse myself here. You don't seem to realize that I
lived in this town for ten years."
"Listen, Mother," said Wolf hurriedly, "I know what
you mean when you talk of 'amusing' yourself. Now look
here, Mother, I won't have you getting into any rows
down here! I've got my job here; and you've got to be
nice to everybody. Do you understand?" In his excite-
ment he laid his heavy hand upon her knee. "You've got
to be nice to everybody--to everybody!"
The flickering oil-lamp which lit the inside of the bus
shone down upon those shining wood-animal eyes. They
glowed with excitement. They positively gleamed as the
jolting of the vehicle jogged both mother and son up and
down on their seats.
"Your father taught me to be unconventional," she said.
"And I'm not going to be all sugar-and-spice in my old
haunts."
The rambling old conveyance was drawing up now
outside Number Eighty-Five.
"Mother, you must be good, and let bygones be bygones."
She turned upon him then, while the bus-man ran up
the steps of the house to ring the bell.
"Your father never gave up his amusement for me, and
I'm not going to give up my amusement for you! I'm
going to be just myself with all our old acquaintances.
I'm going to begin with Albert! There! Don't be silly!
Get out and help me out. We can't go anywhere else
now....Who's that at the door? Is that Lorna's child?...."
Just half-an-hour later Wolf and his mother were seated
at a massive mahogany table in the hatter's diningroom,
sharing the Smiths' Sunday supper. Olwen was not in
bed. With feverish cheeks and enormous dark eyes she
stood at the elbow of her grandfather, listening to
every word of the talk and scanning every detail of Mrs.
Solent's appearance.
"I would never have believed it possible," the grey-
haired lady was saying with radiant glances at them all,
"that you should have changed so much, Albert, and
that Lorna should have come to life in Maltie. You're
not so pretty as your mother, my dear. Of course, we
must allow that! But goodness! You've got her figure
and her look. How does it feel to be so like someone
else? It must be queer almost as if you inherited their
feelings, their troubles, everything! But I am glad to see
you, Mattie. It gives me even me a rather queer feeling.
No, you're not as pretty as your mother; but Albert
mustn't be hurt if I say I think you're much nicer! You
needn't scowl at me, Wolf. Mattie doesn't mind, do you?
And Albert knows me too well to be surprised at anything
I say."
"Times change, Mrs. Solent times change!" murmured
the master of the house, in a low voice. "I was all
shaky when little Olwen said you were coming. It seemed
like the dead coming to life. But I feel all right now,
as I set eyes upon you." And he helped himself to a
lingering sip of the glass of mild whiskey-and-water that
stood in front of him.
He was a sad, lean, commonplace little man, with a
deprecatory bend of the head and a mingling of rustic
cunning and weary obsequiousness in his watery, spec-
tacled eyes. He looked as if he had been spending the day
in long Low Church services. The smell of hassocks and
stuffy vestries hung about his clothes, and the furtive
unction of an official who had collected many threepenny
bits in an embroidered bag weighed upon his stooping
shoulders.
While Mrs. Solent ate her cold mutton and hot capersauce
with hungry relish and rallied the nervous churchwarden,
Wolf took the opportunity of studying in quiet self-efface-
ment the expressive countenance of Mr. Smith's daughter.
Mattie turned out to be a girl with a fine figure, but an
unappealing face. She looked about twenty-five. She was
not pretty in any sense at all, in spite of what Mrs. Solent
had said. Her thick, prominent nose was out of all propor-
tion to the rest of her face. Her chin, her forehead, her
eyes, were all rendered insignificant by the size of this
dominant and uncomely feature.
But though Aunt Mattie's eyes were small and of a
colour that varied between grey and green, they possessed
a certain formidable power. A person gazing into them
for the second or third time found himself looking hastily
away, as if he had been caught trespassing in a very
rigidly preserved estate.
Wolf was surprised how completely at ease the girl show-
ed herself. He had expected her to be extremely discon-
certed by this intrusion. But not at all. She replied
calmly and with quite the appropriate nuance of humour
to his mother's rather exaggerated badinage; and with
himself she seemed perfectly natural and unaffected. All
this was astonishing to him; though why it should have
been so, he would have been ashamed to explain. Perhaps
he had expected the Smith family to display social ten-
dencies at variance with those of the upper middle-class
to which he himself belonged. If so, he was certainly
guilty of unjustifiable snobbishness. For though the hat-
ter of Ramsgard School did not behave like a nobleman,
he behaved with quite as much dignity and ease as most
of the professional gentlemen with whom Wolf was acquaint-
ed! This unpremeditated supper-party in that dingy high-
ceilinged dining-room, with its great cut-glass chande-
lier hanging over their heads and its gold-framed
picture of some ancestral Mr. Smith gazing down upon
them, was neither awkward nor embarrassed. Mrs. Solent's
evident recklessness found no rocks or reefs in the be-
haviour of the others upon which its mischief could
lash itself into foam!
Before the evening was over and it was time for him to
start for his night-walk back to King's Barton, Wolf had
begged more than once for a definite promise from Mattie
Smith that she would bring Olwen over to see them when
they were established in their new abode at Lenty Cottage.
The girl was complaisant and gracious over this invitation,
to which the child responded breathlessly; but Wolf knew
enough of the ways of women to know that there were
subtle withdrawings and qualifications under that heavy,
benevolent mask, into which it would have been unwise
to probe.
"Which day does the Spring Fair begin, Father?" Mattie
said suddenly to the old gentleman.
"The Fair, my dear?" responded the hatter. "Tomorrow,
I believe; and it lasts till the end of the week; but some-
one told me after church--no! it was before church--
that Thursday is the horse-show."
"Oh, that completes it all!" cried Mrs. Solent. "That's
the one last touch. Don't I remember the Fair! I'd like
to go tomorrow, the moment the gates are open! I'd like
to go every day."
"We'll go on Thursday, Mother," said Wolf. "Everyone
will be there then and you'll be able to see how many of
'em remember you."
"The horse-show is the great day," said Mattie Smith
acquiescingly.
"I haven't changed very much, then, Albert?" murmured
Mrs. Solent in response to a furtive appraising glance
from the discreet churchwarden.
Mr. Smith looked a little embarrassed at having been
caught observing her.
"No, you haven't changed! You haven't changed!"
sighed the weary little man; and the tone in which he
uttered these plaintive words seemed drawn from a vast
warehouse of accumulated school-hats shelves upon
shelves of hats the burden of which seemed weighing
him down in a Dead Sea of diurnal desolation.
"Your mother is your real mother, isn't she?" interrupted
Olwen in a shrill voice, gazing at Wolf from the protect-
ion of Mattie's knees.
Providence came to his rescue with an answer that was
really quite an inspiration.
"Mothers are as mothers do," he responded.
But he caught, all the same, a reddening of Mattie's
cheeks and a hurried turning away of the churchwarden's
eyes. Mr. Albert Smith kept pouring out whiskey for
himself and for Wolf; but though Mrs. Solent drank only
a little coffee, she was the one who held the evening
together by her high spirits. Wolf watched Mattie whis-
pering to the child about going to bed; but as he knew
well enough that Olwen wouldn't go to bed till the party
broke up, he began to look from one to another, waiting
till a lapse in the conversation should give him a chance
to bid them good-night and start on his walk home.
But Mrs. Solent's excitement was unsubduable; and
there seemed something about this unusual supper-party
that made him reluctant to bring it to an end. The dark
old furniture, the dark old wall-paper, the dark old
great-grandfather in his heavy frame, projected some kind
of hypnotism upon the sliding moments, that made it as
hard for him to move as if he were under a spell.
No sound came from the street outside. No sound came
from the rest of the house. Like a group of enchanted
people they continued to sit there, facing one another
across the table, listening to Mrs. Solent's rich, voluble
voice.
Wolf had long begun, in his insatiable manner, to drink
up every peculiarity of the room in which they sat of
the furniture upon which the heavily-globed gas-jets
of the candelabra shed so mellow a glow. As he grew
tired of smoking cigarettes, he became aware of a faint
scent of apples. Where this scent originated he could
not detect. It seemed to proceed equally from every por-
tion of the apartment. And as he gave himself up to it, it
brought to his mind a kind of distilled essence of all the
fruit and the flowers that had ever been spread out upon
that massive brown table; spread out upon former editions
of "The Western Gazette"; editions old enough to con-
tain news of the death of Queen Adelaide or of Queen
Charlotte!
"I must go now," he thought. "I must go now." And
he began to suspect that what really held him back from
making a start upon his walk was not any attraction in
the Smith menage, but simply the great invisible struggle
that had already begun between that dead man in the
cemetery and this woman who was so extraordinarily
alive!
She had come prepared to avenge herself in her own
magnificent way not basely, but still with formidable
success. She had not come to Ramsgard to efface herself.
And now, being here, being encamped, as Miss Gault
said, on the very edge of his burying-ground, she could
not refrain, just out of pure, suppressed high spirits,
from stirring up the mud of the ambiguous past. Well!
The event must work itself out. In no sense was he re-
sponsible....
He did manage to rise at last and to kiss his mother
good-night. He would have kissed Olwen, too, but she
impatiently drew away. His final appeal to Mattie to
come over and see them, "any day but Thursday, when
we'll all be at the horse-show," was received with more
warmth and cordiality than this girl had yet displayed.
What were the thoughts, day after day, year after year,
that beat about in the secretive brain behind that heavily
featured face? What was this queer attraction which he
felt for her, so different from the interest excited in
him by her father and by the little girl?
Wolf couldn't help pondering on these things as he
made his way out of the silent town, accompanied by
hardly any mortal sound except the creak of his own
heavy boots and the thud of his own heavy stick.
It was not until he was clear of the last houses of
Ramsgard, clear of both workhouse and cemetery, that the
Smith house, the Smith daughter, the Smith granddaughter,
faded from his brain.
Then, as the grass-scented mists grew cooler against
his face, rolling up towards the arable lands from the
hushed Blackmore meadows, the old serpent of lecherous
desire lifted once more its head in that spacious night.
Once more his mind reverted to Gerda Torp not to
Gerda as she was when she sent her bird-call so far over
Poll's Camp, but to Gerda as she was to his wicked
imagination when he listened to the lewd whisperings
of Lobbie Torp and Bob Weevil, to the Gerda he had
never seen and perhaps would never see the Gerda who
used a tombstone for a hobby-horse in that littered
monument-yard in Chequers Street!
YELLOW BRACKEN
WOLF TOOK GOOD CARE NOT TO REVEAL TO HIS MOTHER
his own secret reservations as to the desirability of Lenty
Cottage. But that first impression of something uncannily
neat and trim about it still obstinately persisted in his
own mind after the stir of their arrival was over.
There was no word spoken about their keeping a servant;
but Mrs. Martin, the Squire's housekeeper, promised
that their maid, Bessie, should come in two or three
times a week to clean up. But how far his mother who,
as Wolf knew, disliked cooking would be able to deal
with their meals, remained to be seen.
On the morning of Wednesday, after their first two
nights in their new abode, it struck Wolf that it would
be amusing, before entering on his labours with Mr.
Urquhart, to pay a visit to King's Barton Vicarage.
He found the clergyman working in his garden, and
followed him into his forlorn house, the whitewashed
exterior of which was stained with faint yellows, greens,
and browns by the varied moods of the weather. He
followed him up an uncarpeted staircase and across an
uncarpeted landing.
The rooms downstairs, the doors of which stood wide
open, were evidently used as religious classrooms; for
the only furniture they contained was a miserable col-
lection of wooden forms and battered cane-bottom chairs.
Of the rooms at the top of the staircase, the doors of
which stood open too, one appeared to be the vicar's
bedroom the bed was unmade and the floor was littered
with tattered magazines and another the priest's sit-
ting-room or study.
The whole house looked as though its owner had long
since relinquished every kind of effort to get that
personal happiness out of life which is the inheritance
of the meanest. Its shabby desolation seemed to project,
in opposition to every human instinct, a forlorn empti-
ness that was worse than squalor. Its effect upon Wolf's
senses was ghastly. No one could conceive a return to such
a house as a return "home"! What it meant was simply
that this wretched little priest had no home. The basic
human necessity for some degree of cheerfulness in one's
lair was outraged and violated.
The room into which Wolf was now led had at least the
redemption of a small fire of red coals. But except for
this, it was not a place where a stranger would wish to
prolong his stay. It was littered from end to end with
cheap novels. Chairs, tables, and even the floor, were
piled up with these vulgarly-bound volumes. The vaporous
March light filtering in through dingy muslin curtains
threw a watery pallor upon these abortions of human
mediocrity.
"You seem to be fond of reading," remarked Wolf to his
host, as he sat down on the only chair that was not in
use.
"Mostly stories," responded T. E. Valley, turning his
head round with a whimsical grimace, as he fumbled
at the lock of a small cupboard hanging against the wall.
"Mostly stories," he repeated. Having cleared a chair
and the fragment of a table, he sat down opposite his
guest with a bottle of brandy between them and two
glasses.
"You are not unhappy, then," remarked Wolf, trying
to overcome his discomfort. "Books and brandy...and
a fire for chilly days....You might be much worse
off than you are, Vicar...much worse off."
T. E. Valley smiled wanly. "Much worse off," he repeat-
ed, refilling his glass. "But you know those stories
are hardly literature, Solent hardly theology, Solent.
It is curious," he went on, meditatively, resting his
chin upon his clenched hands and supporting his elbows
on the table. "It is curious that with Urquhart and Jason
Otter always working against me, and with most of the
parish despising me, I am not more often in despair.
Especially as I have so poor a conceit of myself. I know
myself through and through, Solent; and I am the weakest,
feeblest character alive! And yet, as you say, I really
am not, not at bottom, I mean, an unhappy person. It is
curious. I can't understand it."
He was silent for a space; while Wolf found himself
giving way to a strange, almost sensual spasm of neryous
sympathy. There was something about the man's abject
humility that excited him in a way he could not have
explained.
"It doesn't matter what T. E. Valley does," he began a-
gain, his voice rising to a shrill squeal, like the voice
of a prophet among mice. "It doesn't matter whether I
drink or whether I stay sober! The blessed Sacrament
remains the same, whatever happens to T. E. Valley!"
Wolf looked at him and exulted in the man's exultation,
"He's got hold of it," he thought, "whatever he likes
to call it. He's got hold of it. This awful house might
be a prison, an asylum, a slave-galley. The fellow's
a saint! He's got hold of it!"
But it was his practical reason rather than his nervous
sympathy that dictated his next words. "You don't worry
yourself about conduct, then, or about duty?"
The little man's disordered El Greco eyes grew bright
within their hollow sockets. "Not a bit!" he cried. "Not
a bit!"
"And morality?" enquired Wolf.
There was a pause at this; and the light in those animated-
eyes went out suddenly, just as if Wolf had put an extin-
guisher over them.
"You mean the matter of unholy love," murmured T. E. Valley.
"If you call it so," said Wolf.
"That is another question," the man admitted, and he
gave vent to a sigh of infinite sadness. "Why it should be
so, it's hard to tell; but every kind of love, even the most
insane and depraved even incest, for instance is connected
with religion and touches religion. When I get drunk it's
a matter of chemistry. When I get angry it's a matter of
nerves. But when I love in the wrong way--"
The priest of King's Barton rose to his feet. With a
shaky hand he deliberately poured back into the decanter
his unfinished drink. Then, with awkward shuffling steps,
steps that made Wolf aware for the first time that instead
of boots he wore large, ragged, leather slippers, he
came round the table to his guest's side.
"I'm nothing," he mumbled almost incoherently. "I'm
nothing. But don't you know," he said, seizing Wolf's
hand in his dirty, feverish fingers, "don't you know that
love sinks down into the roots of the whole world? Don't
you know that there are...levels...in life...that
...that...defy Nature?"
Wolf's brain became suddenly clearer than it had been
all day since he first got out of bed that morning. It
seemed to him that between this confessed "morality" of
Tilly-Valley and what he had already divined as the un-
confessed "immorality" of Mr. Urquhart, there was a
ghastly reciprocity. He suddenly felt a reaction in favour
of the most simple earth-born heathenism. He deliberately
finished his glass of brandy, and stood up.
"I don't think any of us knows very much about love,"
he mumbled. And then he went on rather lamely: "I think
there are a great many different kinds of love, just
as there are a great many different kinds of malice." He
stopped again, his mind struggling with the difficulty of
expression. "I don't think," he blurted out, "that most
of the kinds of love we run across sink down to the bottom
of the universe!"
Having said this, he uttered a short, uncomfortable
schoolboy-chuckle. "Well, well," he added gently, 'Tm
not so certain about any of this as to be rude to anyone
over it! Well, good-bye, Valley," and he held out his
hand. "By the by, my mother will expect a call from
you soon. You will come, won't you? Drop in at lea-time.
I'm generally in then; only don't -let it be tomorrow,
because we're going to the Show. Shall we see you there?"
And he shook the priest's hand with affectionate cordiality,
searching his mind with his eyes....
It was just lunch-time when he returned to Lenty Cot-
tage. His mother had been weeding in the garden all the
morning; and she brought into the small front-room,
where they had their light meal, a breath of earth-mould
that was very acceptable after his recent conversation.
"You look very well pleased with yourself, Wolf," she
said, as they sat down opposite each other. "What have
you been doing to make you feel so complacent?"
"Acting as oil and wine, Mother," he answered, "between
the squire and the vicar."
She threw back her head and laughed wickedly.
"You're a nice one to settle quarrels! But I suppose
you settled this one by shouting them both down, and
that's what's given your dear face as grandmamma used
to say that 'beyond yourself look! There's a letter for
you under that book; but you shan't have it till I've
finished this good meal and drunk my coffee."
Wolf looked at the book in question, which was a
large edition of Young's "Night Thoughts" bound like a
school-prize.
"It's a child's hand," said his mother, watching his
face with gleaming brown eyes. "Is it from that little
Smith girl, do you think? Or have those people you
stayed with, those funny Otter people, got any children?"
Wolf shook his head. Could it be from Olwen Smith?
It appeared unlikely; but the child did seem to have
taken a fancy to him. It was possible. But then, in one
of those sudden clairvoyances that emanate so strangely
from unopened letters, he felt certain that it wasn't from
a child at all. It was from Gerda!
"You're mad to read it Wolf, I can see that. But I
won't have my good lunch spoilt. I think it would be nice
if we had our coffee at once, don't you? Do go and bring
it in! It's on the kitchen-stove."
He obeyed with alacrity, as he always did in these
caprices of his mother's, and they sipped their coffee in
suspended excitement, their eyes shining across the table
like the eyes of two animals.
"Oh, it'll be so amusing, going to the Horse Show,"
she cried. "I wonder how many of them I shall recognize?
Albert used to be ever so embarrassed when I made a fuss
over him in public. And I did, you know, I often did;
just to show I didn't care a fig about Lorna's silliness!"
Obscurely irritated by the flippancy of this allusion to
his father's misconduct, and definitely impatient at the
enforced delay about the letter, Wolf suddenly burst out:
"I've been to tea with Selena Gault, Mother. She wrote
and invited me." He did not say that he had been the
first to take ihe initiative in this affair. He felt it to
be revenge enough without that. But Mrs. Solent was
a match for him.
"Oh, I'm so glad, Wolf, that you went to cheer up that
old monster. That was sweet of you! Think of it! My
son silting down to tea with all the Ramsgard old ladies!
I'm sure she invited every one of the masters' wives and
mothers to meet you. 'The son of my old friend, William
Solent.' I can hear her say it! Wejl do tell me, Wolf!
For this is really getting interesting. What did you think
of the great Gault? Of course, you know how it is with
me. I never can endure deformity! I feel sorry and so
forth; but I just can't see it about. It was over the Gault
that your father and I had our final quarrel. No, you
must listen to me! He was as insensitive about things
like that as in everything else. He had absolutely no
fastidiousness. The Gault had never before met any man
who could even look at her. I mean you know! look at
her as men do look at us. And it just went to her poor,
dear head. She fell madly in love if you can call it
love, in a monster like that and the extraordinary thing
about it was that it didn't horrify your father. I don't
want to be catty; but really you know! with a deformity
like that You'd have thought he'd have run to the
end of the world. But not at all! What are you doing,
Wolf? Take your hands from your head!"
But Wolf, with his long, bony middle fingers pressed
against his ears, contented himself with making a shame-
less grimace at the woman who had given him birth.
Quick as lightning Mrs. Solent ran to the side-table,
and snatching up the letter that was beneath the book,
made as though she would throw it in the fire.
This manoeuvre was entirely successful. Her son rushed
upon her; and the half-playful, half-serious struggle that
ensued between them ended in his wresting the letter out
of her clenched fingers.
He then pushed her down by main force into an armchair
and hurriedly handed her a cigarette and a lighted
match.
"Now please be good, Mother darling!" he pleaded.
"I'll tell you everything when I've read it."
He sat down in the opposite chair and tore open the
letter. His mother puffed great rings of smoke into the
air between them and surveyed him with glittering eyes
with eyes that had in their brown depths an almost
maudlin passion of affection.
Miss Selena Gault was forgotten.
The letter was written in pencil and in a handwriting
as straggling and unformed as that of a little girl of
ten. "Olwen would have composed a much more grown-up
production," he thought, as he read the following words:
MY DEAR MR. SOLENT:
I am going out water-rat hunting with a basket for
marigolds and to see if there are any moor-hens down
there. I'm going to start directly after dinner with
Lob and go down stream just like we did before. Miss
Malakite wants us to have tea with her about five. So
do come there if you can't come to the Lunt.
This is from your little friend, Gerda.
"It is from a child," he said as casually as he could,
stepping up to his mother's side and waving the letter in
front of her. He felt a tremendous reluctance to let her
read it; and yet, being the woman she was, he dared not
put it straight into his pocket. Nothing of this was hidden
from Mrs. Solent; but she had had her little victory in
the matter of Miss Gault, and she was in a mood to be
indulgent now.
"All right, Wolf, put it into your pocket. I don't want
to see it. I expect you'll find much nicer barmaids in
Blacksod than you ever did in Hammersmith. I won't
interfere with your light-o'-loves. I never have, have
I?"
"No, you never have, Mother darling," he responded, with
a rush of affection born of immense relief. And slipping
Gerda's note into his coat-pocket, he leaned forward and
took her handsome, ruddy face between the palms of his
hands.
"But I'm off, now, my treasure; and don't expect me
back till late tonight!" He hesitated for a moment, and
then added: "You'd better not stay awake; though I
know you will; but I shall be coming home with the
Otters, and I'll let myself in quietly."
He kissed her quickly and placed both his hands for
a moment upon the rough mass of her grey hair. She
smiled back at him gaily enough, but he wondered if
that little sound he seemed conscious of in the cavity
of her strong throat was an evidence of some other e-
motion. If it was, she swallowed it as completely and
effectively as if it had been a little silver minnow
swallowed by a watchful pike.
"I shall just go to bed, then, and read in bed," she
cried jestingly, when he let her go. "I'm in the middle
of a thrilling story about a young man who has every
vice there is! I'm sure he's got some vices that even
Selena Gault's never heard of. I'll go on with that; and
if I want a little variety, Til read the book Cousin Carfax
gave me about Chinese Rugs; and if that doesn't satisfy
me, I'll read Casanova's Memoirs. No, I won't! I'll
read Canon Pusey's Sermons or something of that sort
...something that just rambles on and isn't modern
or clever! So run off, and don't worry about me. By the
way, I had my first caller this morning, when you were
over at the Manor."
"Who was that, Mother?" enquired Wolf, flicking his
stick against his boot and thinking of the tombstone in
Mr. Torp's yard.
"Mrs. Otter!" she cried gaily. "And I believe we'll get
on splendidly. She told me how fond you and her son
Jason were of each other."
"Jason?" muttered Wolf. "Well, take care of yourself,
darling! Don't work too hard in the garden. Remember
tomorrow!" And he opened the door hastily and let himself
out. "Jason?" he muttered once more, as he strode down
Lenty Lane.
His walk to Blacksod that early afternoon was one long
orgy of amorous evocations. He skirted the town in such
an absorbed trance thai he found himself in the river-
meadow before he realized that he'd left the streets
behind. Nothing could have been more congruous with
his mood that afternoon than this slow following of the
waters of the Lunt! Past poplars and willows, past muddy
ditches and wooden dams, past deserted cow-sheds
and old decrepit barges half-drowned in water, past tall
hedges of white-flowering blackthorn, past low thick
hedges of scarcely budded hawthorn, past stupid large-
bodied cattle with shiny red hides and enormous horns,
past tender, melancholy cattle with liquid eyes and silky
brown-and-white flanks, he made his way through those
pleasant pastures.
So beautiful was the relaxed Spring atmosphere, that
by degrees the excitement of his sensuality ebbed a little;
and the magic of Nature became of equal importance with
the thrill of amorous pursuit.
Though the sky was overcast, it was overcast with such
a heavenly "congregation of vapours" that Wolf would
not have had it otherwise. There were filmy clouds float-
ing there that seemed to be drifting like the scattered
feathers of enormous albatrosses in a pearl-white sea;
and behind these feathery travellers was the milky ocean
on which they floated. But even that was not all; for the
very ocean seemed broken here and there into hollow
spaces, ethereal gulfs in the fleecy whiteness; and through
these gulfs was visible a pale yellowish mist, as if the
universal air were reflecting millions of primrose-buds!
Nor was even this vaporous luminosity the final revelation
af those veiled heavens. Like the entrance to some
great highway of the ether, whose air-spun pavement was
not the colour of dust, but the colour of turquoise, there,
at one single point above the horizon, the vast blue sky
showed through. Transcending both the filmy whiteness
and the vaporous yellowness, hovering there above the
marshes of Sedgcmoor, this celestial Toll-Pike of the
Infinite seemed to Wolf, as he walked towards it, like
some entrance into an unknown dimension, into which
it was not impossible to pass! Though in reality it was
the background of all the clouds that surrounded it, it
seemed in some mysterious way nearer than they were.
It seemed like a harbour into which the very waters of the
Lunt might flow. That incredible patch of blue seemed
something into which he could plunge his hands and
draw them forth again, filled like overflowing cups with
the very ichor of happiness. Ah! That was the word. It
was pure happiness, that blue patch! It was the very
thing he had tried so clumsily to explain to that poor
Tilly Valley, that both he and Mr. Urquhart so woefully
lacked! And this was the thing, he thought, as he walked
slowly on through the green, damp grass, after which his
whole life was one obstinate quest. Ay! Where did it
grow, this happiness? Where did it bubble up free and
unspoiled? Not, at any rate, in such "love" half sex,
half reaction from sex that these two disordered people
were pursuing!
Not in asceticism, nor in vice! Where then? He began to
stride forward with all his mind and all his soul fixed
on that blue patch over Sedgemoor. Not in any human
struggle of that kind! Rather in some large, free, un-
restricted recognition of something actually in Nature,
something that came and went, something that the mind
could evoke, something that required nothing save earth
and sky for its fulfilment!
Between himself and that blue patch there stretched
now the great trunk of a bending willow, covered, as if
by a liquid green mist, with its countless newly-budded
twigs. The trunk seemed attracted down to the waters of
the Lunt; and the waters of the Lunt seemed to rise a
little, as they flowed on, in reciprocal attraction. And
through the green buds of this bending trunk the patch
of blue looked closer than ever. It was not any opening
highway, not any ethereal road, as he had imagined at
first. It was actually a pool of unfathomable blue water;
a pool in space! As he looked at it now, those green
willow-buds became living moss around its blue edge;
and a great yellowish fragment of sky that leaned to-
wards it became a tawny-skinned centaur, who, bending
down his human head from his animal body, quenched
his thirst in its purity. A yellow man-beast drinking
draughts of blue water!
Wolf stopped dead-still and gazed at what he saw, as
ever more nearly and more nearly what he saw became
what he imagined. This was what he wanted! This was
what he sought! The brown earth was that tawny-skinned
centaur; and the reason why the world was all so green
about him was because all living souls the souls of
grass-blades and tree-roots and river-reeds shared, after
their kind, in the drinking up of that blue immensity by
the great mouth of clay!
He moved on now again and slowly passed the bent tree.
His thoughts relaxed and grew limp after his moment
of ecstasy; but such as they were, like languid-winged
herons, they flapped heavily over the dykes and
ditches of his life.
He felt obstinately glad that through all those detest-
able London years the weight of which, like chains
that are thrown away, he had never realized till they
were over he had just ploughed through his work at
that college, his head bent, his shoulders hunched, his
spirit concentrated, stoical, unyielding! What had it
been in him that had kept him, for twelve heavy years,
stubbornly at work on all that unbelievable drudgery?
What had it been in him that had saved him from love-
affairs, from marriage that had made it horrible for
him to satisfy his sexual instincts with casual light-o'-
loves from tap-rooms and music-halls? What had it
been? He looked at a great alder-root that curved snake-
like over the brown mud beneath the bank; and in the
tenacious flexibility of that smooth phallic serpent of
vegetation he seemed to detect an image of his own se-
cretive life, craftily forcing its way forward, through a
thousand obstacles, towards the liberation which it
craved.
And what was this liberation?
Happiness! But not any kind of happiness; not just
the happiness of making love to Gerda Torp.
He looked closely at the manner in which the alderroot
dipped so adroitly and yet so naturally into the river.
Yes! It was a kind of ecstasy he aimed at; the kind that
loses itself, that merges itself; the kind that demands
nothing in return!
How could this ecstasy be called love? It was more than
love. It was the coming to the surface of something
unutterable.
And then, like an automatic wheel that revolved in his
brain, a wheel from one of whose spokes hung a bodiless
human head, his thoughts brought him back to that Living
Despair on the Waterloo steps. And he recalled what
Jason Otter had said about pity: how if you had pity
and there was one miserable consciousness left in the
universe, you had no right to be happy. Oh, that was a
wicked thought! You had, on the contrary, a desperately
punctilious reason to be happy.
That face upon the Waterloo steps gave you your happi-
ness. It was the only gift it could give. Between your
happiness and that face there was an umbilical cord. All
suffering was a martyr's suffering, all happiness was a
martyr's happiness, when once you got a glimpse of that
cord! It was the existence in the world of those two gross
vulgar parodies of life, ennui and pleasure, that confused
the issues, that blighted the distinctions.
For about half a mile he walked steadily forward,
letting the violence of this last thought be smoothed
away by the feel of the damp soil under his feet, and the
cool touch, imperceptible in detail, through hid leather
boots of all the anonymous weeds and grasses that
were beginning to feel the release of Spring.
Ah, there they were!
He came upon them quite suddenly, as he clambered
over a wooden paling between the end of a thick-set
hedge and the river-bank, the wooden boards of which,
worm-eaten and grey with lichen, jutted out over the
water.
They were seated side by side on a fallen elm-tree,
arranging the contents of a great wicker-basket that
lay on the ground between them.
"Hullo!" cried Lob, jumping to his feet.
Wolf took the boy in his arms and began a sort of
genial horse-play with him, tumbling him over in the
grass and holding him down by force as he kicked and
struggled. But Lob soon wearied of this, and, lying
quietly under the man's hands, turned his mud-flicked,
grass-stained face towards his sister.
"You see I be right, Sis! So hand over thik ninepence.
He be come, same as I said 'a would. So hand over what
I've won!"
Wolf became aware that a fit of sudden shyness had
fallen upon both himself and Gerda. He continued to
kneel above the prostrate Lob, pinioning the child's arms
and putting off the moment when he must rise and face
her. Gerda, too, seemed to prolong with unnecessary
punctiliousness her fumbling with the ragged recesses
of her faded little purse, as she emptied pennies and bits
of silver into her lap.
"Ninepence! It was ninepence!" the boy kept shouting,
as he sought in vain to lift up his eager grass-stained
face high enough to see what the girl was doing: "It was
sixpence if he went to Malakite's! It was ninepence if he
came here!"
Wolf, bending over his prisoner, found himself watching
the progress of a minute ladybird who with infinite pre-
caution was climbing the bent stalk of a small grassblade
close to the boy's head. But he was so conscious of Gerda's
presence that a slow, sweet, shivering sensation ran
through his nerves, as if in the midst of a great heat
his body had been plunged into the cool air of a cavern.
"There, Lob!" said Gerda suddenly, holding out sixpence
and three pennies.
Wolf let the child go and stood up.
Their eyes met through the boy's violent scramble and
snatching clutch. They met through his cry of "Finding's
keepings, losing's seekings! Bet me enough to make a
shilling! I be a prime grand better, I be!"
And, as their eyes met, the shyness that they had felt
before changed into a thrilling solemnity. For one quick
moment they held each other's gaze; and it was as if they
had been overtaken simultaneously by an awe-struck
recognition of some great unknown Immortal, who had
suddenly appeared between them, with a hand upon each.
Then the girl turned to her brother.
"I bet you, Lob," she said, "you won't find a blackbird's
nest round here with eggs in it!"
"How much?" the boy responded, standing in front
of her with his hands behind his head, in the pose of a
young, indolent conqueror.'
"How much! how much!" mocked Wolf, with heavy
humour, seating himself on the tree-trunk by Gerda's
side. "What a young miser we are!" As he took his place
by her side, the floating barge upon which it seemed to
him they were embarked rocked with a motion that gave
him a sense of sweet dizziness.
Lob looked at his sister gravely, weighing the matter
in his mind.
"You won't hunt rats with him when I'm not there?"
he bargained.
She shook her head.
"
'Tis early for them nesties; but I do know for three
o'n already; up along Babylon Hill. They be all hipsyhor
hedges, looks-like, in this here field; and blackbirds
be fonder o' holly-trees and bramble-bushes. But they
hain't so sly, the bloody old yellow-beaks, as them
thrushes be. I think I'll do it, Sis."
"I think I may take her bond," muttered Wolf under
his breath.
"I haven't heard one of them since we came," said
Gerda cunningly. "They like the hills better than down
here on the flat. I wouldn't have betted so much if I
wasn't sure I'd win."
"I ain't betted nothink," said Lob quickly, "so you
can't win anyways. It's either us both loses, or it's
me what wins."
Gerda nodded assent to this unchivalrous issue.
"Well, I may as well have a look round," decided the
boy; "only mind no tricks! If you rat-hunt with him
when I ain't there, 'twill be threepence whatsoever."
She indicated assent to this also.
Lob began to swagger slowly away.
"I knows why you wants me to shogg off," he called
back; and he added an outrageous expression in shrewd
Dorset dialect which had the effect of bringing an angry
flush to Gerda's cheeks.
"Be off, you rogue," cried Wolf, "or you'll get more
than you've bargained for!"
But there came flying through the air, from the child's
impudent hand, a well-aimed puffball, which burst as it
touched Gerda's knee, covering her dress with a thin,
powdery brown dust.
Neither she nor Wolf moved a muscle in response to
this attack; and Lobbie wandered slowly off till he was
lost to sight. Then the girl got up and began shaking
her skirt. The cream-coloured cloak hung loose and open,
and Wolf saw that she was dressed in an old, tight-
fitting, olive-green frock.
When she had finished brushing the puffball-powder from
her clothes, she took off her hat and laid it carefully,
absent-mindedly, upon the tree-trunk by his side.
He instantaneously threw his arms round her and held
her tightly against him, while in the silence between
them he felt his heart beating like an invisible under-
ground water-pump.
But she unloosed his hands with deft, cool fingers.
"Not now," she said. "Let's talk now."
In some mysterious way he was grateful to her for
this. The last thing he wanted was to spoil the strange,
lovely solemnity that had fallen upon them like the
falling of slow, thin, noiseless rain.
He rose and took her hand, and they began moving
away from the log.
"Wait! I'll leave a signal for that little rascal," he
said, putting his stick and his cloth-cap by the side of
the cream-coloured hat. But he did not give up her hand;
and together they walked carelessly and aimlessly across
that wide field, taking a course at right angles to the
course taken by her brother. Wolf had hitherto, in his
attitude to the girls he had approached, been dominated
by an impersonal lust; but what he now felt stealing
over him like a sweet, insidious essence, was the actual,
inmost identity of this young human animal. And the
strange thing was that this conscious presence, this deep-
breathing Gerda, moving silently beside him under her
cloak, under her olive-green frock, under everything she
wore, was not just a girl, not just a white, flexible body,
with lovely breasts, slender hips, and a gallant swinging
stride, but a living conscious soul, different in its en-
tire being from his own identity.
What he felt at that moment was that, hovering in
some way around this tangible form, was another form,
impalpable and delicate, thrilling him with a kind of
mystical awe. It changed everything around him, this
new mysterious being at his side, whose physical love-
liness was only its outward sheath! It added something
to every tiniest detail of that enchanted walk which they
took together now over one green field after another.
The little earth-thrown mole-hills were different. The
reddish leaves of the newly-sprung sorrel were different.
The droppings of the cattle, the clumps of dark-green
meadow-rushes, all were different! And something in
the cold, low-hung clouds themselves seemed to conspire,
like a great stretched-out grey wing, to separate Gerda
and himself from the peering intrusion of the outer
world.
And if the greyness above and the greenness beneath
enhanced his consciousness of the virginal beauty of the
girl, her own nature at that hour seemed to gather into
itself all that most resembled it in that Spring twilight.
Gate after gate leading from one darkening field into
another they opened and passed through, walking uncon-
sciously westward, towards the vast yellowish bank
of clouds that had swallowed up that sky-road into space.
It was so far only the beginning of twilight, but the un-
dried rains that hung still in motionless water-drops upon
millions of grass-blades seemed to welcome the coming
on of night seemed to render the whole surface of the
earth less opaque.
Over this cold surface they moved hand in hand, between
the unfallen mist of rain in the sky and the diffused
mist of rain in the grass, until the man began to feel
that they two were left alone alive, of all the people
of the earth that they two, careless of past and future,
protected from the very ghosts of the dead by these tu-
telary vapours, were moving forward, themselves like
ghosts, to some vague imponderable sanctuary where
none could disturb or trouble them!
They had advanced for more than a mile in this enchanted
mood, and were leaning against a wooden gate which they
had just shut behind them, when Wolf pointed to an open
shed, about a stone's throw away, the floor of which he
could make out, from where they stood, to be strewn with
a carpet of yellow bracken.
"Shall we try that as a shelter?" he asked. The words
were simple enough. But Gerda detected in them the old,
equivocal challenge of the male pursuer; and as he
pulled at her wrist, trying to lead her towards the shed,
she stiffened her body, snatched her hand away, and
drew back against the protective bars of the gate. Very
quickly then, so as to smooth away any hurt to his pride,
she began to speak; and since silence rather than words
had hitherto been the link between them, the mere utter-
ance of any speech from her at all was a shock strong
enough to quell his impetuousness.
"Did you like me directly you saw me, that day in our
house?"
He looked at her attentively, as, with her fair head
bare and her arms spread out along the top bar of the
gate, she asked this nai've question.
It suddenly came over him that she had not really the
remotest conception as to how rare her beauty was. She
regarded herself, of course, as a "pretty" girl, but she
had no notion that she moved through Blacksod like one
of those women of antiquity about whose loveliness the
noblest legends of the world were made! A certain vein
of predatory roguery in him led him to play up to this
simplicity.
"I liked you best when you were whistling to me," he
said. But in his senses he thought: "I should be a madman
not to snatch at her!" And in his soul he thought: "I shall
marry her. As sure as tomorrow follows today, I shall
marry her!"
"I liked you best when you were hunting for me at
Poll's Camp," said Gerda. "But I can't understand--"
"What can't you understand, Gerda?"
"I can't understand why I don't want you to touch me
just now. But oh! if you only knew what things they say
in the town about girls and men!"
She looked him straight in the face with an ambiguous
tilt of her soft, rounded chin. Something had come be-
tween them something that troubled him seriously,
though not with the sense of any unscalable barrier.
"What things do they say in the town?" he asked.
At this she clapped her hands to her cheeks, and a look
of troubled bewilderment crossed her fixed gaze.
He began to wonder if the girl, for all her coquetries,
was not abnormally innocent. Perhaps the extreme lewdness
of lads like Bob Weevil had, in some of those furtive
conclaves between young people that are always so complete
a mystery to older persons, given her some kind of
startled shock.
Slowly her hands fell to her sides, and the troubled
look faded; but she still faced him with a faint, tremulous
frown, while the delicate curves about her eyes
took on that expression of monumental beseeching, such
as one sees sometimes in antique marbles.
His craving to take her in his arms was checked by a
wave of overpowering tenderness.
As she stood there, with her back to the gate, her per-
sonality struck home to him with such a sharp, sudden
pang of reality, that it made certain tiny little blossoms
of the blackthorn-hedge become strangely important, as
if they had been an apparition of wonderful white swans.
"Well, never mind what they say in the town! You and I
are by ourselves now. It's only you and I that count
today. And I won't tease you, Gerda, you darling no,
not with one least thing you don't like!"
He was silent, and they remained motionless, staring
at each other like two stone pillars bearing the solemn
weight of the unknown future. Then he possessed himself
of one of her hands, and it was a new shock to him to feel
how ice-cold her fingers had grown.
"Don't act as if we're strangers, Gerda!" he pleaded.
"I do understand you much more than you think I do.
And I'll take care of you for ever! It isn't as if time
mattered one bit. I feel as if I'd known you all my life.
I feel as if everything here" and he glanced round at
those strangely important white blossoms "were an old
story already. It's funny, Gerda, isn't it, how natural and
yet how weird it is, that we should have met at all? Only
a week ago I was in London, with no remotest idea that
you were in the world or this gate, or this blackthorn-
hedge, or that shed over there!"
Her cold fingers did respond a little to his pressure
now, and her eyes fell and searched the ground at her
feet. Without a sigh, without a breath, she pondered,
floating upon some inner sea of feeling, of which no
one, not even herself, would ever know the depths.
"You are glad we've met, Gerda, dear?" he asked.
She raised her eyes. They had the tension of a sudden,
difficult resolution in them.
"Do men ever leave girls alone after they've married
them?"
The words were so unexpected that he could only press
her cold fingers and glance away from those troubled
eyes. What his own gaze encountered was a single tar
nished celandine, whose bent stalk lay almost flat on
a wisp of rain-sodden grass.
"When we're married," he responded gravely, after a
pause, during which he felt as if with his own hands he
were launching a rigged ship into a misty sea, "I'll leave
you alone just as much as you want!"
"A girl I know said once that my whistling was only
whistling for a lover. You don't think that, do you?"
"Good God! I should think not! Your whistling's a won-
derful thing. It's your genius. It's your way of express-
ing what we all want to express."
"What do we all want to express?"
He chuckled right out at this, and, forgetting all vows
and pledges, flung his arms round her shoulders and
hugged her tightly to his heart. "Oh, Gerda, Gerda!" he
cried breathlessly, as he let her go, "you'll be soon
making me so damnably fond of you, that I'll be complete-
ly at your mercy!"
"But what do we all want to express?" she repeated.
He felt such a rush of happiness at the change in her
voice that he could only answer at random.
"God! my dear, / don't know! Recognition, I suppose.
No! not exactly that! Gratitude, perhaps. But that's not
quite it. You've asked a hard question, sweetheart, and
I'm damned if I can give you the answer." He drew her
towards him as he spoke, and this time she seemed to
yield herself as she had never" done before. But the
warmth of her body, as he pressed it to him, dissolved
his tender consideration so quickly that once more she
drew back.
Hurriedly anxious to rush in between her thoughts and
herself, he began saying the first thing that came into
his head.
"I think what we all want to express is...something
...addressed...to...to the gods...some kind
of...acknowledgement--"
He stopped abruptly; for she had once more fixed
upon him that wild, bewildered look.
"You're not angry with me, Gerda, darling?" he
blurted out.
She did not take any notice of these words of his, but
the look he dreaded began to fade away under the genuine
concern of his tone.
She now pulled her cream-coloured cloak tightly across
her olive-green frock; and instead of relinquishing
the garment when she'd done this, she kept her arms
crossed against her breast, holding the gathered folds
of the woollen stuff. Then her lips moved, and, looking
away from him, sideways, over the wide field, she said
very quietly:
"If you feel it's no good, and you couldn't think of
marrying a girl like me, you'd better let me go home
now."
He never forgot the solemn fatality she put into those
words; and he answered in the only way he could. He
took her head gently between his hands and kissed her
upon the forehead. This action, in its grave tenderness
and its freedom from any fever of the blood, did seem to
reassure her.
But the attraction of her sweetness soon excited his
senses again and he began caressing her in spite of
himself. She did not resist him any more; but the reac-
tion from the former tenseness of her nerves broke
down her self-control, and he soon became aware of the
salt taste of tears upon his lips. She did not cry aloud.
She cried silently; but the sobs that shook her showed,
in the very power they had over her, the richness and
vitality of her youthful blood.
The fact that he had launched his boat and hoisted his
sail the fact that he had already resolved to marry her,
comer what might was something that in itself dispelled
his scruples.
"It's cold here," he murmured, when at last she had
lifted up her tear-stained face and they had exchanged
some long kisses; "it's cold here, Gerda, darling. Let's
just see what that shed over there's like! We needn't stay
a minute there if it's not a nice sort of place."
A species of deep, lethargic numbness to everything
except the immediate suggestions of his voice and touch
seemed to have taken possession of her.
His arm round her, her cream-coloured cloak hanging
loose, her cheeks pale, she let herself be led across the
intervening tract of grass to the open door of the little
shed.
Before they reached it, however, she turned her face
round and glanced shyly at him. "You know I'm quite
stupid and ignorant," she said. "I know nothing about
anything."
Wolf did not pause to enquire whether this hurried
confession referred to what might be named "the ritual
of love" or just simply to her lack of book-learning. His
senses were by this time in such a whirl of excitement
that the girl's clear-toned voice sounded like the vague
humming of a sea-shell in his ears.
"Gerda?" he murmured huskily, with a faint, a very
faint interrogation in his tone.
Emotions, feelings, desires, some exalted, some brutal,
whirled up from the bottom of his nature, like stormdriven
eels roused and stirred from the ooze of a muddy river!
Together they stood at the entrance to that little shed
and surveyed the interior in a silence that was like the
hovering of some great falcon of fate, suspended between
past and future. The place was an empty cow-barn, its
roof thatched with river-reeds and its floor thickly strewn
with a clean, dry bed of last Autumn's yellow bracken.
The queer thing was that as he drew her across that
threshold his conscious soul seemed to slip out of his
body and to watch them both from the high upper air as
if it were itself that falcon of fate. But when, with their
feet upon that bracken-floor, they faced each other, there
suddenly floated into Wolf's mind, like the fluttering of a
whirling leaf upon disturbed water, an old Dorset ditty
that he had read somewhere, with a refrain about
Shaftesbury-town.
"I know nothing about anything," repeated the girl
in a low voice; but as he held her tightly against his
beating heart, it was not her words but the words of that
old song which hummed through his brain.
There'll be yellow bracken beneath your head;
There'll be yellow bracken about your feet.
For the lass Long Thomas lays in's bed
Will have no blanket, will have no sheet.
My mother has sheets of linen white,
My father has blankets of purple dye.
But to my true-love have I come tonight
And in yellow bracken I'll surely lie:
In the yellow bracken he laid her down,
While the wind blew shrill and the river ran;
And never again she saw Shaftesbury-town,
Whom Long Thomas had taken for his leman!
The smell of the bracken rose up from that bed and
took the words of this old song and turned them into
the wild beating of the very pulse of love.
To the end of his days he associated that moment with
these dried-up aromatic leaves and with that remembered
rhyme. The sweetness of his paramour, her courage, her
confiding trust, her "fatal passivity," were blended with
the fragrance of those withered ferns and with that old
ballad.
Meanwhile the chilly March airs floated in and out of
the bare shed where they were lying; and the shades of
twilight grew deeper and deeper. Those twilight shades,
as they settled down about their heads, became like veri-
table sentinels of love wraith-like, reverential, patient.
They seemed to be holding back the day, so that it should
not peer into their faces. They seemed to be holding back
the darkness, so that it should not separate them, the
one from the other!
And as they lay happy and oblivious at last just as
if they were really lying on the deck of some full-sailed
ship which a great dark-green wave was uplifting, Wolf
found himself unaccountably recalling certain casual
little things that he had seen that day seen without
knowing that he had seen them! He recalled the under
side of the bark of a torn-off willow-branch that he had
caught sight of in his walk by the Lunt. He recalled the
peculiar whitish-yellowness hidden in the curves of an
opening fern-frond which he had passed somewhere on
the road from King's Barton. He recalled the sturdy
beauty, full of a rich, harsh, acrid power, of a single
chestnut-bud, which he had unconsciously noted in the
outskirts of Blacksod. He recalled certain tiny snailshells
clinging to the stalk of some new-grown dock-leaf
whose appearance had struck his mind somewhere in
those meadows....
When, after the slow ebbing of what really was a very
brief passage of time, but what seemed to Wolf something
more than time and different from time, they stood toge-
ther again outside the hut, there came over him a vague
feeling, as if he had actually invaded and possessed
something of the virginal aloofness of the now darkened
fields.
With his hand over Gerda's shoulder he drank up a great
mystery from those cool, wide spaces. His fingers clutch-
ed the soft collar of the girl's cloak. He was conscious
of her breathing so steady, so gently, and yet so living
like the breath of a warm, soft animal in the velvet
darkness. He was conscious of her personality as
something quivering and quick, and yet as something
solitary, unapproachable.
Suddenly she broke the silence.
"Do you want me to whistle for you?" she asked, in
a low, docile voice.
The words reached his ears from an enormous distance.
They came travelling to him over rivers, over mountains,
over forests; and as they took shape in his consciousness,
something quite different from what he had felt for her
swelled up in his throat. He took her head between his
hands and kissed her as he had never in his life kissed
any woman.
"Lob will hear it," he said with a rough, happy laugh.
"But let him hear it! What does it matter now?"
But she moved a few paces away and he watched her
whitish shadowily-blurred face as if it had been the
And he knew, without seeing that it was so, that her
expression as she whistled was like the expression of a
child asleep, or of a child happily, peacefully dead.
And, though it was into the night that she now poured
those liquid notes, the tone of their drawn-out music was
a tone full of the peculiar feeling of one hour alone of
all the hours of night and day. It was the tone of the hour
just before dawn, the tone of that life which is not sound,
but only withheld breath, the breath of cold buds not
yet green, of earth-bound bulbs not yet loosed from their
sheaths, the tone of the flight of swallows across chilly
seas as yet far off from the warm pebbled beaches towards
which they are steering their way.
Gerda's whistling died away now into a silence that
seemed to come surging back with a palpable increase of
visible darkness in its train.
But the girl remained standing just where she was,
quite motionless, about ten paces away from him.
He also remained motionless, where he was, without
sign or word.
And just as two straight poplar-trees that in some con
tinuous storm had been bent down so that their branches
have mingled, when the storm is over rise up erect and
are once more completely separate and completely themselves,
so this man and this girl, whose relation to each other
could never be quite the same again, remained distinct,
removed, aloof, each standing like a silent bivouac-watcher,
guarding the smouldering camp-fire of their own hidden
thoughts.
Thus, and not otherwise, had stood, in the green dews
of some umbrageous Thessalian valley at the very dawn
of time, Orion and Merope, joined and yet so mysteriously
divided by this sweet fatality! So in the same green
dews had stood Deucalion and Pyrrha, while the earth
waited for its new offspring. They also, those primeval
lovers, had pondered thus, content and happy, bewildered
and sad, while over their heads the darkness descended
upon Mount Pelion, or the white moonlight flooded with
silver the precipices of Ossa!
As he thought of these things, he made up his mind
that he would refrain from any sentimental attempt to
bridge the impassable gulf between what Gerda was feeling
then and what he was feeling....No casual words
of easy tenderness should spoil the classical simplicity of
their rare encounter! For classical it had been, in its
arbitrariness, in its abruptness, in its heroic defiance of
so many obstacles; as he had always prayed that any
great love-affair of his might be.
Their words to each other, when at length they did
break the spell and wander back hand in hand to where
they had separated from Lob, were simple and natural
reduced, in fact, to the plain level of prosaic, practical
anxieties.
"It's the devil!" grumbled Wolf; "but there it is,
sweetheart, and we've got to face it. It's not only my
mother, but your mother we shall have to deal with. I
know only too well that I've never been to Oxford. I
know I have no 'honourable' in front of my name and
I know that what Mr. Urquhart gives me will be barely
enough for three people to live upon. There it is, my
sweet, and we've got to face it."
"I don't think your mother will want to live with us,"
said the girl quietly.
Wolf winced at this. Somehow or other he had grown so
used to thinking of his mother and himself as one per-
son, that it gave him a very queer feeling as if
Gerda had inserted a tiny needle of ice into his heart
to think of the two of them under separate roofs.
A moment later, however, and the feeling passed, crush-
ed under the logic of his reason. It was, of course,
inevitable so he said to himself that Gerda, young
girl though she was, should want a hearth of her own.
"No," he answered, emphatically enough. "We must
live by ourselves."
"Father won't give us anything," said Gerda.
"That's all right," he chuckled, laughing surlily but
not maliciously. "I've no desire to be supported out of
tomb-making! No, no, sweetheart; what we've got to find
is some tiny shanty of our own, almost as small as our
cow-shed, where neither your mother nor my mother can
interfere with us."
"Do you think Mrs. Solent will be very angry?" she
enquired.
This time her words produced a more serious shock.
He felt as if one of his arms or legs had been amputated
and was stuck up as a ninepin for Gerda to throw things
at, not knowing what she did.
"I'll deal with her, anyway," he replied.
"We'll have to have our banns read out in church,"
said Gerda.
"We shall!" he conceded, bringing out the syllables
like pistol-shots; "but all that part of it will be awful."
Gerda snatched her fingers from him and clapped her
hands together. "Don't let's be married!" she cried
gaily. "It'll be far more fun not to be; and if I have a
child it'll be a bastard, like the kings in history!"
But Wolf had already formed a very definite image in
his mind of the enchanted hovel where he would live
with this unparalleled being, free from all care.
"We can't manage it without being married, Gerda;
and as for bastards
"
"Hush!" she cried. "We're talking nonsense. Gipoo
Cooper told me I should never have a child."
Wolf was silenced by this; and then, after a pause, "I
don't believe Urquhart would make any fuss," he said
meditatively. "It wouldn't interfere with my work."
"What you don't realize," she protested in a low
voice, "is how completely different my family is from
yours. Why, Father never says a word like he'd been
educated or been to School."
But Wolf refused to let this pass.
"Perhaps you don't realize, Missy," he flung out, in a
clear, emphatic voice, "that my father died in Ramsgard
Workhouse!"
Her commentary upon this information was to snatch
his hand and raise it to her lips."
Tisn't where a gentleman dies," she responded, "that
makes the difference. Tis where he's born."
"Oh, damn all this!" he cried abruptly. "I don't care
if your father talks his head off with Dorset talk; and
all Blacksod knows that my father threw himself to the
dogs. I'm going to live for the rest of my life in Dor-
setshire, and I'm going to live alone with my sweet
Gerda!"
He hugged her to his heart as he spoke.
"I'm very thankful that you like my whistling," she
said, rather breathlessly, when he let her go. "I don't
know what I should have done if you hadn't."
"Like it!" he cried. "Oh, Gerda, my Gerda, I can't tell
you what it's like. I've never heard anything to touch it
and never shall; and that's the long and short of it!"
Thus discoursing, the lovers arrived at the prostrate
elm-trunk where they had left their belongings. It looked
so familiar and yet so different now, as they stumbled
upon it in the darkness, that Wolf received the kind of
shock that people get when, after some world-changing
adventure, they encounter the reproachful sameness of
some well-known aspect of hearth and home. And there
was Lob! The boy was crouched in a posture like that
of a reproachful goblin. He was engaged in cutting with
his pocket-knife in spite of the darkness deep, jagged
incisions in the handle of Wolf's stick! Much time was
to pass before those unevennesses in the handle of that
oak cudgel ceased to compel its owner to recall with
bitter-sweet vividness the events of that incredible March
Wednesday!
"I know'd you'd go rat-hunting," was his sulky greeting.
Evidently to Lob's mind no other occupation than this
could account for their protracted absence from his
side. "I know'd you'd do it. Girls is never to be trust-
ed, girls isn't. 'Tis in their constitution to betray."
"Good Lord, Lob!" cried Wolf. "Where did you get
that sentence? Have you been composing that speech
ever since we left?"
"Look here, Sis," declared the boy, standing in front
of her with the air of a robber-chief. "You've got to fork
out! You've got to give threepence to I, or never no more
will I take your word!"
But the girl's tone was now the self-composed, elder
sister's tone.
"I hope you only took one egg, Lob; like I always tell
you to."
"I won," he repeated obstinately. "I won; so you
pays."
"Show me the egg," said Gerda. "Where is it? I hope
it wasn't the only one. Have you blown it without making
that silly big hole you always make? Show it to me,
Lob!"
"I can't show it to 'ee, for I ain't got it," grumbled the
boy. "I got a nest, all right; and I got a egg all right.
There were four on 'em all wonderful specks in thik
nest; and I minded what you always says to I, and I
only took one."
"Where is it, then? Show it to us, Lob!"
Lob moved nearer to Wolf. "You won't let she cheat I
of thik threepence," he pleaded querulously.
"Where is that egg, Lob?" repeated the young girl.
"He's up to something; you mark my words!" she added.
"They girls be never to be trusted, be they?" grumbled
the boy, sidling up still closer to Wolf.
"You know perfectly well you can always trust me,
Lob!" protested Gerda indignantly. "It's you who we
can't trust now; isn't it, Mr. Solent?"
The man looked from one to the other. It amused him
to listen to such contending voices from these two blurred
spots of whiteness in the dark; while he himself, full of
an unutterably sweet indolence, acted as their languid
umpire. He was delighted, too, as well as amazed, by the
intense gravity with which Gerda took this trifling dis-
agreement. How quaint girls were! If he had caught Lob
stealing his very walch in the darkness and transferring
it to his own pocket, he felt, just then, that he would
hardly have noticed the incident!
"Haven't I won over she, Mr. Solent?" whined the
child. "I found thik nestie fields and fields away from
where us be now. 'Twere in monstrous girt hedge, thik
nestie, and I scratched myself cruel getting my hand in."
"Why haven't you got the egg, then?" insisted the girl,
in a hard, accusing voice."
'Cos I broke the bloody thing!" wailed the boy desper-
ately. "I were crossing one of they darned fields and
I treadit in a girt rabbit-gin and came near to breaking
me neck, let alone thik bloody egg."
"Lob, I'm right-down ashamed of you!" cried Gerda,
in a voice quivering with moral indignation.
"What be up to now, then?" responded the boy. "What
be all this hullabaloo about, when a person tells straight
out what a person gone and done? If it be so turble hard
to 'ee to lose threepence, why did 'ee go rat-hunting with
him here and leave anyone all lonesome-like? For all
you care, a chap might have been tossed, this here dark
night, by some o' they girt bullicks!"
His voice grew plaintive; but Gerda was unmoved.
"You never found any nest at all, Lob, and you know
you didn't."
Lobbie's voice sounded now as if he very soon might
burst into tears.
"I shan't have no shilling! I shan't have no shilling
without I gets the threepence you betted wi' I!"
Wolf began fumbling in his pocket; but the girl
stopped him with a quick movement.
"Lob," she said sternly, "you've never lied to me before,
in all the rat-hunts, and nuttings, and blackberryings,
and mushroomings we've ever had together. What's
come over you, Lob? Oh, I am ashamed of you! Tisn't
as if I were Mother or Dad. 'Tisn't as if we hadn't always
done everything together. You're not nice company,
any more, Lob, for people to go about with! I shall always
have to say to anyone in the future, 'Take care,
now, you can never depend upon what Lob Torp says!'"
Wolf, seating himself in the darkness upon the fallen
tree-trunk, listened in amazement to this dialogue. The
moods of women, except for those of his mother, were a
phenomenon the ebbings and Sowings of which had hardly
presented themselves to his deeper consciousness.
He obtained now, in listening to Gerda's righteous anger,
an inkling of the supernatural power which these beings
have of bringing to bear upon the male conscience exactly
that one accusation, of all others, which will pierce
it to its heart's core!
He had no conception of how Gerda had found out that
the boy was lying, and he felt at that moment a faint
and perhaps scandalous wave of sympathy pass through
him for Lobbie Torp.
Lob himself felt this at once with a child's clairvoyance.
"She's cross about the threepence," he whispered, leaning
against the man's knee, "but you'll pay it, won't you,
Mr. Solent?"
Wolf had grown weary by this time of the whole discussion.
He took advantage of the darkness to transfer from his
own pocket to that of this fellow wrong-doer at least
twice as much as he was demanding.
"Come on," he said, when the clandestine transaction
was accomplished, "let's get back to the Blacksod road
before we're completely benighted!"
He rose and moved on between them, Lob in penitent and
rather shamefaced silence carrying the great wickerbasket,
at the bottom of which reposed a few fading marigolds
and some handfuls of watercress.
The excitement of climbing over the railings at the very
edge of the river-bank, and the pride she took in being
able to show her power of guiding her lover through
the darkened fields, quickly restored Gerda's good-humour.
"We'll drop Lob at the beginning of Chequers Street,"
Wolf said, when they at last felt the hard road from
Nevilton to Blacksod under their feet. "Do you think,"
he went on, "that Miss Malakite will expect us still, so
long after tea-time?"
"I was going to stay to supper with her," said Gerda;
"so I don't think it'll matter. She'll give us tea, though,
late as we are! She won't have noticed the time at all,
very likely. She never does, when her father's away and
she's reading."
With the sister and brother leaning against him natu-
rally and familiarly, each on one of his arms, Wolf
with his oak-stick held firmly in the hand adjoining the
now somewhat dragging and tired bird's-nester, strode
along towards the lights of the town, in a deep, diffused
warmth of unalloyed happiness. The days of his life
seemed to stretch out before him in a lovely Spring-
scented perspective.
The few misgivings that remained to him about his
marriage fell away in that hedge-scented darkness a
darkness that seemed to separate the earth from the sky
with the formless presence of some tremendous but
friendly deity, under whose protection he bore those two
along. And as he felt Gerda press his arm softly and
lightly against her young body, the sensation came over
him that he had only to walk on and on...on and on
...just like this...in order to bring that secret
"mythology" of his into relation with the whole world.
"Whom Long Thomas has taken for his leman," he re-
peated in his heart; and it seemed to him as if the lights
of the town, which now began to welcome them, were the
lights of a certain imaginary city which from his early
childhood had appeared and disappeared on the margin
of his mind. It was wont to appear in strange places, this
city of his fancy...at the bottom of teacups...or
the window-panes of privies...in the soapy water of
baths...in the dirty marks on wall-papers...in
the bleak coals of dead Summer-grates...between the
rusty railings of deserted burying-grounds...above
the miserable patterns of faded carpets...among the
nameless litter of pavement-gutters....But whenever
he had seen it, it was always associated with the first
lighting up of lamps, and with the existence, but not
necessarily the presence, of someone...some girl...
some boy...some unknown...whose place in his life would
resemble that first lighting of lamps...that sense of
arriving out of the cold darkness of empty fields and
lost ways into the rich, warm, glowing security of
that mysterious town....
"Whom Long Thomas has taken for his leman," he repeat-
ed once more. And he thought to himself, "It's all
in that word...in that word; and in coming along a
dark road to where lamps are lit!"
THE THREE PEEWITS
THEY GOT RID OF LOBBIE AT THE CORNER OF CHEQUERS
Street, and moved on, side by side, past the lighted shop-
windows. It was a further revelation to him of the ways of
girls, to notice that Gerda repeatedly stopped him, with a
childish clutch at his coat-sleeve, before some trifle
in those lighted windows that attracted her attention.
Her eyes were dreamy with a soft languorous happiness;
while her little cries of pleasure at what she saw
made ripples in the surface of her mental trance like the
rising of a darting shoal of minnows to the top of deep
water.
As for his own mood, the lights of the town, its traffic
and its crowds, threw him upon a rich, dark, incredible
intimacy with her, whose sweetness reduced everything
to a vague reassuring stage-play. Everything became a
play whose living puppets seemed so touchingly lovable
that he could have wept to behold them, and to know that
she was beholding them with him!
When they reached the door of the Malakite book-shop,
however, he became conscious of so deep an unwillingness
to face the look of Christie's steady brown eyes that
he impetuously begged off.
"I can't do it tonight," he said; "so don't 'ee press
me, my precious!"
Their farewell was grave and tender; but he left her
without looking back.
It was then that hunger came upon him; and making
his way to the Three Peewits, he ordered a substantial
supper, beneath the not altogether sympathetic gaze of
Queen Victoria.
He remained for nearly two hours lingering over this
meal, while at the back of his mind the ditty about
Shaftesbury-town and Yellow Bracken mingled with the
fragrance of the old hostelry's old wine. When at last
he rose from the table, it occurred to him that Darnley
Otter had mentioned on the previous day that both the
brothers might be here this night. Led by a mysterious
desire, just then not quite understood by himself for
masculine society, he entered the little inner parlour of
the Three Peewits. Here he found himself in a thick cloud
of tobacco-smoke and a still thicker murmur of men's
voices. The change from his erotic musings into so
social and crude an atmosphere was more bewildering
to his mind than he had expected. He gazed round him,
befogged and blinking.
But Darnley Otter rose at once to greet him, leading
him to an aperture in the wall, where drinks were served.
Standing there by Darnley's side, he made polite, hurried
bows to the different members of the company, as his
friend mentioned their names, and while his glass was
filled and refilled with brandy, he found his eyes turn-
ing inevitably to the place where Jason sat sat as if
he had been doing nothing else since he came into that
room but wait for Wolfs arrival. The man was watching
him intently now, and without a trace of that whimsical
humour with which he had departed from him to walk
round the edge of Lenty Pond.
Wolf began at once summoning up from the recesses of
his own nature all the psychic power he could bring
to bear, to cope with this new situation. As he chatted
at that little counter with Darnlcy, in the midst of a
rambling, incoherent flow of talk from all parts of the
room, he deliberately drank glass after glass of brandy,
amused at the nervousness with which Darnley observed
this proceeding, and growing more and more determined
to fathom the mystery of that self-lacerated being on
the other side of the room.
It seemed to him now that Jason's head, as he saw it
across that smoke-filled space, resembled that of some
lost spirit in Dante's Inferno, swirling up out of the
pit and crying, "Help! Help! Help!" It was curious to
himself how ready he felt just then to respond to that
cry. "I must have drunk up this new strength from pos-
sessing Gerda," he thought to himself.
Darnley's trim beard continued to wag with gentlemanly
urbanity, as he laughed and jested with various people
in different parts of the room, but Wolf could see
that he was growing more and more nervous about his
brother. Nor was this nervousness without justification.
Jason had turned his face to his neighbour, who was a
grim farmer from Nevilton, and was uttering words that
evidently seemed to startle the man, if not to shock him;
for his face grew grimmer than ever, and he kept shifting
his chair a little further away.
Things were at this pass when the door opened with
a violent swing, and there came in together Mr. Torp,
Mr. T. E. Valley, and a tall handsome browbeating ind-
ividual, who was presently introduced to Wolf as Mr.
Manley of Willum's Mill.
The vicar of King's Barton seemed to have been drinking
already; for he staggered straight up to the counter,
pulling the plump stone-cutter unceremoniously after
him by the lapel of his coat. The heavy-jowled Mr. Man-
ley moved across the room and seated himself by the
side of the farmer from Nevilton, whom he addressed
loudly and familiarly as Josh Beard. Wolf noticed that
Mr. Beard, in a very sour and malicious manner, began
at once repeating to this newcomer whatever it had been
that Jason Otter had just said to him; while Mr. Manley
of Willum's Mill proceeded with equal promptness to
cast looks of jocose and jeering brutality at the un-
fortunate poet.
"My friend Mr. Torp was in the bar-room; so I brought
him in," said T. E. Valley, shaking hands with Wolf as
if he had not seen him for years.
"' Tis no impertinence, I hope, for I to come in," said
the stone-cutter, humbly; and it struck Wolf's mind as
a kind of mad dream--not a nightmare, but just one of
those dreams where men and houses and animals and trees
are all involved and interchanged--that this grotesque
figure of a man should be the father of Gerda!
"Mr. Torp and I are old friends," said Wolf, with cor-
dial emphasis, "and I can't tell you how glad I am to
see you again, Vicar! Will you let me order you some-
thing? The brandy here seems to me uncommonly good."
In answer to Wolf's appeal, the barmaid, whose person-
ality, as she appeared and disappeared at that square
orifice, grew more and more dreamlike, brought three
large glasses of the drink he demanded, two of which he
promptly handed to Valley and Torp, while the third
he appropriated for himself.
" Tis wondrous," remarked Mr. Torp, receiving his glass
with unsteady hand;" 'tis wondrous for a man what works
with chisel and hammer all day, to sit and see what
folks be like who never do a stroke. I hain't one o'
they myself who do blame the gentry. What I do say be
this, and I don't care who hears it. I do say that a man
be a man while he lives; and a gent be a gent while he
lives. Burn me if that ain't the truth."
"But when we're dead, Mr. Torp," called out the voice
of Jason from the further end of the room, "what are we
when we're dead?"
"Evenin', Mr. Otter, evenin' to 'ee, Sir! Dead, say 'ee?
I be the man to answer that conundrum. Us be as our
tombstones be! Them as has 'Torp' writ on 'um in clean,
good marble, be with the Lord. They others be with
wold Horny."
Several mellow guffaws greeted this speech, for Gerda's
parent was evidently a privileged jester among them; but
to the dismay of his brother, who was now talking in a
quiet whisper to Wolf, the hollow voice of Jason floated
once more across the room.
"Ask that drunk priest over there why he took young
Redfern from a good job and turned him into a pious
zany."
There was a vibration in his tone that at once quieted
the general clatter of tongues, and everyone looked at
Mr. Valley.
"I don't...quite...understand your...question...Mr, Otter,"
stammered the little man.
The bull-like voice of Mr. Manley of Willum's Mill
broke in then.
"His reverence may be hard of hearing. Shall I do the
asking of him?" And the great bully-boy hesitated not
to roar out in thundering tones: "Mister Otter here be
asking of 'ee, and this whole company be- waiting to know
from 'ee, what god-darned trick you played on young
Redfern afore he died."
"I must beg you, Mr. Manley," said Darnley Otter,
whose face, as Wolf watched it, had become stiff as a
mask, "I must beg you not to make a scene tonight."
"I am still quite...quite...at a loss...a loss to under-
stand," began the agitated clergyman, moving forward
a step or two towards his aggressor.
But Mr. Torp interrupted him. "Ask thee bloody ques-
tions of thee wone bloody millpond and don't lift up
thee's roaring voice among thee's betters!"
There was a considerable hum of applause among the
company at this; for Mr. Manley of Willum's Mill was
universally disliked.
But the farmer took no heed of this manifestation of
public opinion.
"Do 'ee hear what Jack Torp be saying?" he jeered,
stretching out his long legs and emptying his glass of
gin-and-bitters. "He's sick as Satan wi' I; and I'll
tell 'ee the cause for't."
There was a general stir in the room and a craning for-
ward of necks. The seasoned cronies of the Three Peewits
had long ago discovered that the most delectable of all
social delights was a quarrel that just stopped short
of physical violence.
"The cause for't be," went on the master of Willum's
Mill, "that I ordered me mother's grave proper-like from
Weymouth, 'stead of ferretting round his dog-gone yard,
where there hain't naught but litter and rubbish and pau-
pers' monuments."
Having thrown out this challenge, the farmer drew in his
legs, placed his great hands upon his knees, and leaned
forward. There was a dead silence in that ale-embrowned
atmosphere, as if the "private bar" itself, the very
walls of which must have been yellow with old leisurely
disputes, were aware of something exceptional in that
spurt of human venom.
Mr. Torp gave a quick sideways glance to see how the
"gentry" were behaving. But Wolf was discreetly occupied
in ordering more drinks he had already had to tell
the barmaid to "put down" what he ordered, for his
pockets were empty and Darnley was merely pulling at
his beard and keeping his eye on the Vicar.
"Thee's mother's stone!" snorted the monument-maker,
with resonant contempt." 'Twere ready and beauteous,
gents all, 'twere ready and beauteous, thik stone! All
what passed down street did stop for to see 'un, and did
say to theyselves, Thik fine stone be loo good for a
farmer's old woman! Thik fine stone be a titled lady's
stone!'"
The farmer's gin-dazed wits could only reply to this
by a repeated, 'Twere a pauper's throw-away; 'twere a
workhouse six-foot and nothing!"
Mr. Torp's voice rose higher still. "This Manley here
were afeared to leave his mother in ground for a day
without a stone on her. He were afeared the poor woman
would come out on's grave to tell tales on him, the old
goat-sucker! So while thik fine stone were lying in yard
getting weathered-like, as is good for they foreign mar-
bles, this girt vool of a nag's head what must 'a do but
drive hay-wagon to Chesil, and bring whoam a silly
block o' Portland, same as they fish-folk do cover their
bones wi', what have never seed a bit o' marble!"
Under the impact of this eloquent indictment, which
excited immense hilarity throughout all the company, Mr.
Manley rose unsteadily to his feet and moved towards his
enemy. But Mr. Torp, ensconced between Darnley Otter
and T. E. Valley, awaited his approach unmoved.
To the surprise of all, the big bully skirted this little
group, and, joining Wolf at the liquor-stained counter,
bellowed harmlessly for more gin.
It was at this point in the proceedings that more serious
trouble began; for Jason Otter, pointing with a shaky
forefinger at the Reverend Valley, screamed out in a
paroxysm of fury:
"It's you who talk about me to Urquhart and Monk....
I've found it out now....It's you who do it!"
The Peewit cronies must have felt that this unexpected
clash between two of their "gentry" rose from more
subtle depths than those to which they were accustomed;
for they were stricken into a silence, at this juncture,
which was by no means a comfortable one.
"Mr. Otter here," broke in the owner of Willum's Mill,
"Mr. Otter here have been telling pretty little tales of
the high doings what go on up at King's Barton. Mr.
Otter says Squire Urquhart have sold his soul to that
black son-of-a-gun who works in's garden, and that 'tis
bookseller Malakite here in Blacksod whose books do
larn 'em their deviltries!"
"I think...there...is...some great...mistake...in your...in your
mind, Mr. Manley."
The words were uttered by T. E. Valley in such shaky
tones that Wolf was relieved when he saw Darnley take
the parson reassuringly by the arm.
"Mistake?" roared the farmer. "I bain't one for to say
what I ain't got chapter nor text for saying! My friend,
Josh Beard here, of Nevilton, County of Somerset, be as
good a breeder of short-horns as any in Darset; and 'a do
say 'a have heerd such things tonight such as no man's
lips should utter; and heerd them, too, from one as we
all do know." And he turned round and leered at Jason
Otter with the leer of a tipsy hangman.
"Hold thee's tongue in thee's bullick's-head!" cried the
indignant monument-maker. "A gent's a gent, I tell 'ee;
and when a quiet gent, like what's with us tonight, be
moderate wambly in's head, owing to liquor, 'tisn't for
a girt bull-frog like thee to lift up voice."
"Bull-frog be--" grumbled the big farmer, hiding his
inability to contend in repartee with Mr. Torp under
an increased grossness of speech. "What do a son-of-a-
bitch like thee know of the ways of the gentry?"
"Malakite?" muttered the breeder of short-horns.
"Bain't Malakite the old beggar what got into trouble
with the police some ten years since?"
"So 'twere," agreed the grateful tenant of Willum's
Mill, "so 'twere, brother Beard. 'A did, as thee dost say,
get into the devil's own trouble. 'Twere along of his gals;
so some folks said. 'A was one of they hoary wold sinners
what Bible do tell of."
"'Twere even so, neighbour; 'twere even so," echoed
Mr. Beard. "And I have heerd that old Bert Smith up at
Ramsgard could tell a fine story about thik little job."
Wolf's mind was too flustered with brandy just then to
receive more than a vague shock of confused ambiguity
from this startling hint; but the next remark of the man
from Nevillon cleared his brains with the violence of a
bucket of ice-cold water.
"Bert Smith may sell his grand school-hats all he will;
but they do tell out our way though I know nought of
that, seeing I were living at Stamford Orcus in them
days that thik same poor wisp o' bedstraw dursn't call
his own gal by his own name, whether 'a be in shop or in
church."
"That's God's own truth you've a-heerd, Josh Beard,"
echoed the triumphant Mr. Manley." Tisn't safe for
that poor man to call his own daughter daughter, in the
light o' what folks, as knows, do report. If I didn't
respect any real gentleman" and to Wolf's consternation
the gin-bemused stare of the farmer was turned upon him-
self "and if I weren't churchwarden and hadn't voted
Conservative for nigh thirty years, I would show this
here stone-chipper the kind of gallimaufry these educated
gents will cook for theyselves, afore they're done!"
Wolf's wits, moving now, in spite of the fumes of smoke
and alcohol, with restored clarity, achieved a momentous
orientation of many obscure matters. He recalled certain
complicated hints and hesitations of Selena Gault. He
recalled the reckless and embittered gaiety of his mother.
With a shaky hand he finished his last glass and laid it
down on the counter. Then he looked across the room
at the two farmers.
"I don't know whose feelings you are so careful of,
Mr. Manley," he said. "But since I happen to be myself
one of these unfortunate 'educated' people, and since Mr.
Solent, my father, came to grief in this neighbourhood,
I should be very glad indeed to hear anything else you
may be anxious to tell us."
His voice, heard now by the whole company for the first
time, had a disquieting tone; and everyone was silent.
But Jason Otter rose to his feet, and, in the midst of
that silence and under the startled attention of all eyes
in the room, walked with short quick steps across the
floor till he came close up to Farmer Manley, who was
leaning his back against the little counter and who had
his hands in his pockets; and there he stopped, facing
him. No one but Wolf could see the expression on his
countenance; and there were all kinds of different ver-
sions afterwards as to what actually happened. But what
Wolf himself knew was that the excited man was no long-
er under the restraint of his natural timidity.
His own intelligence was so clairvoyantly aroused at
that moment, that he could recall later every flicker of
the conflicting impulses that shot through him. The one
that dominated the rest was a categorical certainty that
some immediate drastic action was necessary. What he
did was to take Jason by the shoulders and fling him
backwards into an old beer-stained chair that stood un-
occupied against the neighbouring wall. In the violence
of this action an earthenware jug of water and Wolf
had time to notice the mellow varnish of its surface
fell with a crash upon the floor. There was a hush now
throughout the room, and most of the company leaned
excitedly forward. Jason himself, huddled limply in a
great wooden chair, turned his devastated white face
and lamentable eyes full upon his aggressor.
"I...I...I didn't mean..." he gasped.
"It's all right, Solent," whispered Darnley, accepting
a chair by Jason's side, which its owner willingly vacated.
"You couldn't have done anything else."
"I don't know about that, Otter," Wolf whispered back.
"I expect we're all a little fuddled. Sit down, won't you,
and when he's rested we'll clear out, eh? I've had enough
of this."
All the patrons of the private bar were gathered now
in little groups about the room; and before long, with
sly inquisitive glances and many secretive nudges and
nods, the bulk of the company drifted out, leaving the
room nearly empty.
"I can't...understand....I didn't see....Was he going
to bite you?"
The words were from T. E. Valley; and Wolf was so as-
tonished at the expression he used, that he answered
with a good deal of irritation:
"Do you bite people, Mr. Valley?"
The priest's feelings were evidently outraged by this.
"What do you mean?" he protested querulously.
"I mean," began Wolf. "Oh, I don't know! But to a
stranger down here there does seem a good deal that's
funny about you all! You must forgive me, Mr. Valley;
but, on my soul, you brought it on yourself. Bite? It's
rather an odd idea, isn't it? You did say bite, didn't
you?"
They were interrupted by Mr. Manley of Willum's Mill,
who, with Mr. Joshua Beard in tow, was steering for
the door.
"Did you hurt the gentleman, Sir?" said Mr. Manley to
Wolf, in the grave, cautious voice of a drunkard anxious
to prove his sobriety.
"You drove the gentleman into fold, seems so!" echoed
Mr. Beard.
In thus approaching Wolf it was inevitable that the
two worthies should jostle the portly frame of Mr. Torp,
who, leaning against the back of a chair, with an empty
pewter beer-mug trailing by its handle from one of his
plump fingers, had fallen into an interlude of peaceful
coma.
"Who the bloody hell be 'ee barging into?" murmured
Mr. Torp, aroused thus suddenly to normal consciousness.
"Paupers' moniments!" jeered the farmer. "Nought but
paupers' moniments in's yard; and 'a can still talk
grand and mighty!"
The stone-cutter struggled to gather his wandering wits
together. In his confusion the only friendly shape he
could visualize was the form of Mr. Valley, and he
promptly made all the use he could of that.
"The Reverend here," he said, "can bear witness to I,
in the face of all thee's bloody millponds and haywagons.
The Reverend here do know what they words, 'Torp,
Moniment-Maker, Blacksod,' do signify. The Rever-
end here did see, for his own self, thik girt stone what
I did put up over first young man." He now removed his
bewildered little pig's-eyes from Mr. Valley and fixed
them upon Wolf. "And here be second young man who can
bear witness to I; and, darn it, thee'd best do as I do
say, Mr. Redfern Number Two, for thee's been clipping
and cuddling our Gerda, 'sknow, and I be only to tell
Missus on 'ee, and fat be in fire."
Had not the whole scene become to him by this time
incredibly phantasmal, such an unexpected introduction
of Gerda's name, on this night of all nights, might have
struck a villainous blow at his life-illusion. As it was,
however, he could only wonder at the perspicacity of
drunken fathers, and pull himself together for an ade-
quate retort.
"My name is Solent, my good sir, as you ought to
know," he said. And then he turned to the two farmers,
who were nudging each other and leering at him like a
couple of schoolboy bullies. "Mr. Torp and I are the
best of friends," he remarked sternly.
"Friend of Torp," chuckled Mr. Manley.
"Torp's friend," echoed Mr. Beard.
"Thee'd best keep thee's daughter in house, Jack!"
continued Mr. Manley. "Lest t'other one rumple her,
same as first one did," concluded Mr. Beard.
Wolf, beyond his conscious intention, clenched the fing-
ers of his right hand savagely; but his wits were clear
now, and he mastered the impulse. "Whatever happens, I
mustn't make an ass of myself tonight," he thought.
"You'd better go out into the air, gentlemen," he said
quietly, "and cool your heads, or you'll get into trou-
ble. Come, Mr. Torp. You and I must have a last glass to
gether; and you, too, Vicar." And he led them away
towards the little counter.
The farmers moved slowly toward the door.
"Redfern Number Two, 'a called un," Wolf heard Mr.
Beard saying. "Now what be the meaning o' that, me
boy?" He couldn't hear the big farmer's answer; but
whatever it was, it ended in a sort of bawdy rhyme,
of which all he could catch was the chanted refrain,
"Jimmie Redfern, he were there!" And with that the
door swung behind them.
He had just time to obtain three more drinks from the
barmaid before she pulled down the little wooden slide
and indicated in no equivocal manner that eleven o'clock
had struck.
Simultaneously with this a serving-boy entered and began
to turn down the lights. "We ought to be starting for
home," said Darnley Otter, from where he sat by his
brother, whose great melancholy eyes were fixed upon
vacancy. "And it's none too soon, either!"
"I'll be getting home-along me own self, now this here
lad be meddling with they lights'," remarked Mr. Torp,
emptying his glass. "Good-night to 'ee all," he added,
taking down his coat and hat from a peg; "and if I've
exceeded in speech to any gent here" and he glanced
anxiously at Wolf and Mr. Valley "it be contrary to me
nature and contrary to me profession."
"I...suppose...you won't mind..." murmured the
voice of T. E. Valley, who had remained at the counter,
sipping the drink, to which Wolf had treated him, as
if it were the first he had tasted that night, "if I
come with you? I don't want to get on anybody's nerves"
and he looked at Jason Otter, who without being asleep
seemed to have drifted off into another world "but I
don't like that walk alone at night."
"Of course you must come with us, Valley," said Darnley.
"Though what you can find so frightening in that
quiet lane I can't imagine." Saying this he pulled his
brother up upon his feet and helped him into his overcoat.
Half-an-hour later they were all four making their
way past the last houses of Blacksod. Darnley and Jason
were walking in front; Wolf and T. E. Valley about six
paces to the rear. They were all silent, as if the contrast
between the noisy scene they had just left and the hushed
quietness of the way were a rebuke to their souls.
In one of the smaller houses, where for some reason
neither curtain nor blind had been drawn, Wolf could
see two candles burning on a small table at which some-
one was still reading.
He touched Mr. Valley's arm, and both the men stood
for a time looking at that unconscious reader. It was an
elderly woman who read there by those two candles, her
chin propped upon one arm and the other arm lying ex-
tended across the table. The woman's face had nothing
remarkable about it. The book she read was obviously,
from its shape and appearance, a cheap story; but as
Wolf stared in upon her, sitting there in that common-
place room at midnight, an indescribable sense of the
drama of human life passed through him. For leagues
and leagues in every direction the great pastoral fields
lay quiet in their muffled dew-drenched aloofness. But
there, by those two pointed flames, one isolated conscious-
ness kept up the old familiar interest, in love, in birth,
in death, all the turbulent chances of mortal events. That
simple, pallid, spectacled head became for him at that
moment a little island of warm human awareness in the
midst of the vast non-human night.
He thought to himself how, in some future time, when
these formidable scientific inventions would have chang-
ed the face of the earth, some wayward philosopher like
himself would still perhaps watch through a window a
human head reading by candlelight, and find such a
sight touching beyond words. Mentally he resolved once
more, while to Mr. Valley's surprise he still lingered,
staring in at that candle-lit window, that while he lived
he would never allow the beauty of things of this sort
to be overpowered for him by anything that science
could do.
He submitted at last to his companion's uneasiness and
walked on. But in his heart he thought: "That old woman
in there might be reading a story about my own life!
She might be reading about Shaftesbury-town and yellow
bracken and Gerda's whistling! She might be reading
about Christie and the Malakite book-shop. She might be
reading about Mattie "
His thoughts veered suddenly.
"Mattie? Mattie Smith?" And a wavering suspicion that
had been gathering weight for some while in his mind
suddenly took to itself an irrefutable shape. "Lorna and
my father....The little girl said we were alike....
That's what it is!"
He did not formulate the word "sister" in any portion
of his consciousness where ideas express themselves in
words, but across some shadowy mental landscape within
him floated and drifted that heavy-faced girl with a
new and richly-charged identity! All the vague fragments
of association that had gathered here and there in his
life around the word "sister," hastened now to
attach themselves to the personality of Mattie Smith
and to give it their peculiar glamour.
"How unreal my life seems to be growing," he thought.
"London seemed fantastic to me when I lived there, like
a tissue of filmy threads; but...good Lord!...compared with
this! It would be curious if that old woman reading that
book were really reading my history and has now perhaps
come to my death. Well, as long as old women like that
read books by candlelight there'll be some romance left!"
His mind withdrew into itself with a jerk at this
point, trying to push away a certain image of things that
rose discomfortably upon him the image of a countryside
covered from sea to sea by illuminated stations for
airships, overspread from sea to sea by thousands of
humming aeroplanes!
What would ever become of Tilly-Valley's religion in
that world, with head-lights flashing along cemented
highways, and all existence dominated by electricity?
What would become of old women reading by candlelight?
What would become of his own life-illusion, his secret
"mythology," in such a world?
Stubbornly he pushed this vision away. "I'll live in my
own world to the end," he said to himself. "Nothing shall
make me yield."
And while a gasping susurration at his side indicated
that he was, in his excitement, walking too fast for Mr.
Valley, he discovered that that grey feather of Christie's
which served her as a marker in the "Urn Burial" had
risen up again in his mind.
And as he walked along, adapting his steps to his
companion's shambling progress, he indulged in the
fancy that his soul was like a vast cloudy serpent of
writhing vapour that had the power of over-reaching
every kind of human invention. "All inventions," he
thought, "come from man's brains. And man's soul can
escape from them and even while using them treat them
with contempt treat them as if they were not! It can
slip through them like a snake, float over them like a
mist, burrow under them like a mole!"
He swung his stick excitedly in the darkness, while
he gave his arm to Mr. Valley to help him along. He
felt as though he were entering upon some desperate,
invisible struggle to safeguard everything that was sacred
to him against modern inventions. "It's queer," he
thought to himself, "what the sight of that grey feather
in the book, and that old woman with the candle, have
done to my mind. I've made love to the limit; I've
brawled in a tavern to the limit; and here I am, with a
tipsy priest on my arm, thinking of nothing but defending
I don't know what against motor-cars and aeroplanes!"
He continued vaguely to puzzle himself, as they
lurched forward in the darkness, as to what it was in his
nature that made his seduction of Gerda, his encounter
with Jason, his discovery of Mattie, thus fall away from
his consciousness in comparison with that feather and
that candle; and he came finally to the conclusion, beTHE
fore they reached King's Barton, that there must be
something queer and inhuman in him. "But there it is,"
he finally concluded. "If I'm like that...I am like
that! We must see what comes of it!"
THE HORSE-FAIR
THE FIRST PERSON OF THEIR ACQUAINTANCE THEY EN-
countered, when Wolf and Mrs. Solent mingled with the lively
crowd that filled Ramsgard's famous Castle Field that afternoon,
was none other than Mr. Albert Smith. Wolf was amazed at
the cordiality of his mother's greeting; and so quite evi-
dently was the worthy hatter himself.
Mrs. Solent was fashionably dressed; but what struck her
son more than her clothes at that moment was the incre-
dible power of her haughty profile, as she flung out her light
badinage, like so many shining javelins, at the nervous trade-
sman.
The thought rushed across his brain, as he watched
her: "She's never had her chance in life! She was made
for large transactions and stirring events!" Letting his
gaze wander over the groups about them, Wolf caught
sight of Mr. Urquhart's figure in the distance; and he
decided that, since sooner or later he would have to greet
the man, the best thing he could do was to get it over
as soon as possible, so as to be prepared to face his
Blacksod friends free of responsibility.
Leaving his companions to themselves, therefore, with
a nod at his mother, he plunged into the heart of that
motley scene. The day obviously was the culmination of
the Wessex Fair. The large expanse of meadow-land lying
between the castle-ruins and the railway was encircled
by booths, stalls, roundabouts, fortune-tellers' tents,
toy circuses all the entertainments, in fact, which
the annual horde of migratory peddlers of amusement
offered, according to age-old tradition, to their rustic
clients.
But the centre portion of this spacious fair-ground was
carefully roped off; and it was here that the riding and
driving competitions took place that gave so special
an interest to this particular afternoon.
One segment of this roped-off circle had been converted
into a sort of privileged paddock, corresponding to a
race-course grand-stand, where the aristocracy of the
neighbourhood, whose carriages were drawn up under the
railway-bank, could watch the proceedings in undisturbed
security.
The opportunity Wolf had seized of approaching Mr.
Urquhart was given him by the fact that the Squire of
King's Barton was standing alone, close to the rope, at
some little distance from the privileged spot where most
of his compeers were gathered.
He was watching with absorbed interest a stately par-
ade of prize-stallions, who, adorned with ribbons and
other marks of distinction, ambled ponderously by, one
after another, as if they were parading in some gigantic
super-equine festival that ought to have had super-human
spectators! The creatures looked so powerful and so
contemptuous beside the stablemen who led them, that
Wolf, as he approached this procession, saw for a moment
the whole human race in an inferior and ignominious
light saw them as some breed of diabolically clever
monkeys, who, by a debased trick of cunning, had been
able to reduce to servitude, though not to servility,
animals far nobler and more godlike than themselves.
"It makes you feel like a Yahoo, Sir," said Wolf, as
he shook hands with Mr. Urquhart. "I mean it makes me
feel like a Yahoo. Good Lord! Look at that beast! Don't
you get the sensation that those hooves are really making
the earth tremble?"
But Mr. Urquhart, though he had grasped his secretary's
hand warmly and had seemed pleased to see him, took no
more notice of this remark than if it had been some neg-
ligible banality uttered by a complete stranger. Wolf,
standing by his side, said no more till the procession
had passed. His attention began to wander from the great
stallions to a mental consideration that made him strai-
ghten his own shoulders.
He had suddenly become aware of the felicitous appro-
priateness of Mr. Urquhart's clothes; and although
his own overcoat was a good one and his cloth-hat new,
he felt somehow badly dressed in the man's company, a
feeling that caused him considerable annoyance.
"Damn this accursed snobbishness!" he said to himself,
as he contemplated the vast grey flanks of the winner
of the third prize. "Why can't I detach myself absolutely
from these things and see them as a visitor from Saturn
or Uranus would see them?"
Mr. Urquhart turned to him when the last stallion
had passed by. "Do 'ee know who my man brought with
him over here?" he said, smiling.
Wolf could only lift his thick eyebrows interrogatively.
He continued to feel uncomfortable under his employer's
quizzical gaze. "He looks me up and down," he thought
to himself, "as if I were a horse that had disappointed
him by not winning even a third prize."
"You mean Monk?" he said. "I can't guess whom he
brought with him. I thought he was driving you."
"He put her on the box by his side," went on the
squire. "It was that old servant of our good Otters. I
was compelled to look at the flowers in her bonnet and
the tassels on her cape all the way here."
"You don't mean Dimity Stone?" murmured Wolf; and he
contemplated in a rapid inward vision that sly, mis-
ogynistic eye fixed sardonically on the old woman's
wizened back, and the chivalrous grand air with which
the coachman must have conversed with her, as he held
the reins.
"I couldn't let her walk," went on the squire. "And
the Otters had left her behind. I suppose they hadn't
room. They came in a wretched conveyance. I suppose
they got it from the hotel." He swung about and surveyed
the crowd with indulgent arrogance. "I can just see the
good Darnley from here," he said. "There! can't you?
I wonder where that terrible person who's always drunk
has hidden himself! I saw him, too, a moment ago. And,
by gad, there's Tilly-Valley! Let's go and stir him up.
He won't expect me to speak to him. You watch his face,
my boy, when I nudge his elbow. Eh? What? Come on."
And greatly to Wolf's annoyance he found himself com-
pelled to support his limping employer on his arm,
while the two of them pushed their way towards the
clergyman.
"Tally ho! Run to earth!" was the squire's greeting,
as, with Wolf at his elbow, he came up unobserved to
where the little priest was standing. "Afternoon, Valley!
Should have thought this sort of thing wasn't in your
line; eh? what? Too many horsey rascals about? Too
many rowdy young men, eh?"
If Wolf was astonished at Mr. Urquhart's familiar tone,
he was still more astonished at the expression on the
face of the nervous clergyman.
Stammeringly Mr. Valley found his tongue.
"Fine horses...more of them than usual...did you see
that grey one?...the Otters are here...they drove
over...I walked...so did others...many others...it
would be nice if there were seats here...don't you
think so?...seats?"
Wolf could hardly bear to listen to these broken ut-
terances of the poor Vicar. There was something about
his pinched face, his shapeless nose, his thin neck, his
frightened eyes, that produced a profoundly pitiful feel-
ing. This sensation was accentuated by the way a certain
vein in the man's throat stood out. Not only did it stand
out, it pulsed and vibrated. All the panic that Mr. Urqu-
hart's presence provoked seemed concentrated in that
pulsing vein.
"Seats, did you say?" chuckled the squire. "You don't
need a seat at your age." And leaning heavily on his
companion's arm, he tapped the priest with the end of
his stick with an air of playful familiarity.
It came over Wolf then, with a rush of sheer rage,
that he must get his employer away from this man at all
costs. Never had he liked Mr. Urquhart less. There was
something in his wrinkled white face, at that moment,
which suggested an out-rush of incredible evil of evil
emerging, like some abominable vapour, from a level
of consciousness not often revealed.
Wolf was tolerant enough of the various forms of normal
and abnormal sensuality; but what at that instant he
got a glimpse of, beneath this man's gentlemanly mask,
was something different from viciousness. It was as if
some abysmal ooze from the slime of that which underlies
all evil had been projected to the surface.
"Come along, Sir. We must get back to the rope," Wolf
found himself saying in a stern, dry voice. "They're
starting the driving-match and I can't let you miss that!"
Mr. Urquhart's hilarity seemed to sink fathom-deep at
the sound of his secretary's voice. He permitted himself
to be pulled away. But Wolf noticed a perceptible increase
in his lameness as he drew him along; and glancing side-
ways at his face, he was startled by the look of almost
imbecile vacuity that had replaced what had been there
before.
The crowd had thickened perceptibly now; and Wolf real-
ized that he was seeing the most characteristic gathering
for that portion of the countryside that he was ever likely
to see. Here were smart, self-satisfied young tradesmen
from Ramsgard with their wives and their girls. Here were
weather-stained carters from Blackmore; cider-makers and
cattle-dealers from Sedgemoor; stalwart melancholy-looking
shepherds from the high Quantocks; a sprinkling of well-to-
do farmers from the far-off valley of the Frome; sly, whim-
sical dairymen from the rich pastures of the Stour; and,
moving among them all, slow-voiced and slow-footed, but
with an infinite zest for enjoyment, the local rustic labour-
ers that tilled the heavy fields watered by the Lunt.
The two men pushed their way back to the taut vibrating
rope, beyond which the driving-contest was now proceeding;
and as they rested there, Wolf's mind felt liberated from
all its agitations, and he drank in the scene before him
with unruffled delight. The peculiar smells that came to
his nostrils leather, and straw, and horsedung, and to-
bacco-smoke, and cider-sour human breath, and paint, and
tar, and half-devoured apples were all caught up and
overpowered by one grand dominant odour, the unique
smell of the trodden grass of a fairfield. Let the sun shine
as it would from the cold blue heaven! Let the chariots
of white clouds race as they pleased under that airy
tent! It was from the solid ground under human feet,
under equine hooves, that this Dorsetshire world gave
forth its autochthonous essence, its bitter-sweet, rank,
harsh, terrestrial sweat, comforting beyond conscious
knowledge to the heart of man and beast.
Nothing could have been more symbolic of the inmost
nature of that countryside than the humorous gravity
with which these lean yeomen and plump farmers drove
their brightly painted gigs and high dog-carts round that
hoof-trodden paddock! The obvious reciprocity between
the men who drove and the animals driven, the magnetic
currents of sympathy between the persons looking on and
the persons showing off, the way the whole scene was
characterized by something casual, non-official, nonchalant
all this produced an effect that only England, and
perhaps only that portion of England, could have brought
into being. Behind Wolf and his companion surged a
pushing, jostling, heterogeneous crowd, giving vent to a
low, monotonous murmur; and behind them again could
be heard the raucous cries and clangings and whistlings
from the noisy whirligigs.
Wolf could make out, here and there among the people
round him, the well-known straw-hats manufactured by
Mr. Albert Smith of the boys of Ramsgard School.
"They must be having a half today," he thought; and
his mind ran upon the various queer, unathletic, unpo-
pular boys among the rest, who must be feeling, just
then, so indescribably thankful for this blessed inter-
lude in their hateful life! The thought of the unknown,
undiscovered bullies that probably existed in Ramsgard
School at that very moment made him feel sick at the
pit of his stomach. "I put my curse on them," he thought.
"If I have a vestige of occult power I put my curse upon
them!"
A short, stocky man, with powerful wrists, driving a
lively but not particularly handsome horse, passed them
at that moment inside the paddock. Wolf was wondering
why the voices round him were discreetly lowered as this
person trotted by, when he noted that the man exchanged
a familiar nod with Mr. Urquhart.
"Not a bad turnout for a Lovelace," muttered this latter,
when the equipage had passed; "but they never can quite
do it!"
Once again Wolf felt a prick of shame at the curious
interest which this occurrence excited in him. What was
Lord Lovelace to him? He glanced furtively at the squire
of King's Barton. The man's baggy eye-wrinkles had, just
then, a look that was almost saurian. From one corner
of his twitching mouth a trickle of saliva descended,
towards which a small fly persistently darted....
Wolf turned away his eyes. The magic of the scene had
completely vanished. The smell of the trodden earth was
stale in his nostrils. A loathing of the whole spectacle
of life took 'possession of him. And under his breath he
repeated that strange classical lament, a tag in his memory
from his school-days, a mere catchword now; but it
gave him a certain relief to pronounce the queer-sounding
syllables.
"Ailinon! Ailinon!" he muttered to himself, as he
leaned his stomach against that vibrant rope. "Ailinon!
Ailinon!" And the very utterance of this tragic cry from
the old Greek dramas soothed his mind as if it had been
a talisman. But the disgust he felt at the pressure of
things at that moment extended itself to this whole fair-
ground, extended itself even to the prospect of seeing
Gerda again. "How can I face her in the midst of all
this?" he thought; and he recalled the outline of his
mother's profile, so contemptuously lifted towards Albert
Smith. "What will she think of the Torp family?" he
said to himself, in miserable discomfort.
Struggling against this wretched mood, he straightened
his back and clutched the rope with both his hands.
Savagely he tried to summon up out of the depths of
his spirit some current of defiant magnetism. But the
presence of Mr. Urquhart, taciturn and pensive though
the squire had become, seemed to cut off all help from
these furtive resources.
So he sought to steady himself by pure reason.
"After all," he argued, "those gulfs of watery blue
up there are such an unthinkable background to all
this, that they...that they...a trickle of saliva more
or less...a woman's profile more or less..." And
then, as he watched those painted gigs come swinging
once more round the enclosure, and heard the exclama-
tions of malicious delight, as a chestnut-coloured mare
showed a vicious tendency to back her driver against
the rope, a sense of terrified loneliness came upon him.
What could Gerda, or his mother, or anyone else man
or woman really feel toward him so that this loneliness
should be eased? Emptiness leered at him, emptiness
yawned at him, out of that watery blue; and what pointed
spikes of misunderstanding he had to throw himself upon
before this bustling day was over!
He ran his fingers along the swaying rope, sticky from
the innumerable human hands that had clutched it. His
mind seemed to hover above the form of Gerda and above
the form of his mother, as if it had been a floating mist
gathered about two sundered headlands. That familiar
grey head, with those mocking brown eyes, and this other,
this new strange head, with its sea-grey gaze and its
wild, pursed-up, whistling mouth what would happen
when he brought them together?
It would mean he would have to leave his mother.
That's what it would mean. Where was Gerda now, in
this confused medley? She must be somewhere about;
and perhaps Christie, too!
"You won't care if I go off to look for my mother,
Sir?" he found himself saying. And the words quite
startled him, as if he had spoken in his sleep; for
he had made up his mind that he would never speak of
his private affairs to this egoistic gentleman.
"Eh? What's that? Tired of the old man, ha? Want to
gad after the petticoats? Well! Take me to the enclo-
sure, out of this crowd, and I'll let you go. I suppose
it's hopeless to find Monk in this hurly? He was to have
come back for me. But Lord! he's got his own little
affairs, as well as another. There! That's better. You
needn't go at a snail's pace for me. There! That's all
right. I'll find Lovelace in the enclosure, I daresay.
He'll wait to see the cart-horses."
Wolf steered the squire as well as he could through
the jostling mob of people, and left him at the entrance
to the privileged circle.
"You and I know more about some of these good folks
than they know themselves," remarked Mr. Urquhart,
grimly. "Our History'll make 'em sit up a bit; eh?
what? Well, off with 'ee, me boy; and if you want to find
your mother, I'd look for her in the refreshment-tent, if
I were you. Never know'd but one woman who could see a
horse-show out to the end and she was a tart of Lord
Tintinhull's. 'Sack' they used to call her; and 'sacked'
she was, at the finish, poor bitch! Well, good luck to
'ee. We'll do some solid work tomorrow, please God!"
Wolf mumbled some inadequate reply to this and strode
away. What struck him just then was the contrast be-
tween the silky tone of his employer's voice and the
toll-pike jocularity of his language. "Neither tone nor
words are the real man," he thought. "What seething
malice, what fermenting misanthropy, that mask of his
does cover!"
Crossing the fair-field to the northward, leaving the
paddock to his left and the whirligigs to his right, Wolf
speedily found his way to the entrance of the great re-
freshment-tent.
The place was packed with people, some taking their
stimulant at little deal-board tables, others eating and
drinking as they stood, others again crowding about the
massive serving-counter at the end of the tent, where
great silvery receptacles, kept hot by oil-flames, were
disgorging into earthenware cups a quality of tea that
seemed to meet the taste alike of the Lovelaces and of
the Torps, so varied were the human types now eagerly
swallowing it!
Wolf speedily became aware that Mr. Urquhart's jibe
about few petticoats being able to endure a horse-show
to the end was not without justification. About three-
quarters of the persons filling this huge canvas-space
were women.
The first familiar form he encountered as he pushed
his way in was that of Selena Gault. This lady was seated
alone at a small table placed against the canvas-wall,
where she was drinking her tea and eating her bread-and-
butter in sublime indifference to the crowd that surged
about her. Wolf hurried to her, snatched an unoccupied
chair, and sat down at her side.
He fell, for some reason, a sense of profound physical
exhaustion; and underneath the pleasant badinage with
which he returned his friend's greetings he found himself
positively clinging to this lonely woman.
The lady's costume, to which she had given a vague
sporting-touch suitable to the occasion, enhanced her
grotesque hideousness. But from her deformed visage
her eyes gleamed such irresistible affection that his
ebbing courage began steadily to revive.
Their complete isolation in the midst of the crowd
for the people jostling past their table gave them little
heed soon led Wolf to plunge shamelessly into what was
nearest his heart. Selena Gault's ghastly upper-lip qui-
vered perceptibly as he told her of his affair with Gerda
and his resolve to get married without delay.
"Why, she's here!" she cried. "The child's here! She
came in with her father a quarter of an hour ago. She
certainly is one of the loveliest girls I've ever set
eyes upon. I hadn't seen her since she's grown up. I was
amazed at her beauty. Well! You have made hay while
the sun shone. No! it's no use! You can't possibly see her
from where you are. Now turn round and look at me; and
let's talk about all this, quietly and sensibly. It's
as serious as it could be; and I don't know what's to be
done about it."
"There's nothing to be done, I'm afraid, Miss Gault,"
said Wolf gravely, forcing himself to accept the situa-
tion; "nothing except to make some money by hook or by
crook! Do you think if I put the case to Urquhart, he'd
give me a little more? We're getting on first-rate with
the History."
Never were human eyelids lifted more whimsically than
were those of Wolf's interlocutor at this mild sugges-
tion.
"Oh, my dear boy!" she chuckled. "You don't know
how funny you are. To ask that man for money to get
married on."
"No good, eh?" he murmured. "No, I suppose not.
But you don't think he'll show me the door, do you?"
Miss Gault shook her head. "If he does, we'll put all
our wits together and get you something in Ramsgard.
There are jobs she added, thoughtfully puckering her
brows.
But Wolf, having twice twisted his head back into its
normal position from a hopeless attempt to see further
than a few yards in front of him, felt an irresistible
impulse to reveal to this woman certain rather sinister
deductions that he found he had been involuntarily making
from recent glimpses and hints. Composed originally of
the veriest wisps and wefts of fluctuating suspicion, they
seemed now to have solidified themselves in unabashed
tangibility. What they now amounted to was that Mattie
was not Mr. Smith's daughter at all but William Solent's;
and that Olwen, the girl's little protegee, was actually
the incestuous child of old Malakite, the bookseller, and
of some vanished sister of Christie's. It was the startling
nature of these conclusions that tempted him to fire
them off point-blank at the lady by his side, whose morbid
receptivity made her a dedicated target for such a
shock.
"Is it true that I have a sister in this town?" he
enquired boldly, looking straight into Miss Gault's
eyes.
The appalling upper-lip vibrated like the end of a
tapir's proboscis, and the grey eyes blinked as if he had
shot off a pistol.
"What?" she cried, letting her hands fall heavily upon
her knees, like the hands of a flabbergasted sorceress,
palms downward and fingers outspread. 'What's that
you're saying, boy?"
"I am saying that I've come to a shrewd certainty,"
said Wolf firmly, "that Mattie Smith and I have the same
father."
Miss Gault astonished him by putting her elbows on to
the table and covering her face with her extended fing-
ers; through which her eyes now regarded him. She was not
weeping he could see that. Was she laughing at him?
There was something so queer in this gesture, that he felt
an uneasy discomfort. It was as if she had suddenly
turned into a different person, as different from the Miss
Gault he knew, as the new Mattie they were talking about
was different from the one he had met in that Victorian
dining-room.
He wished she would remove those fingers and stop
staring at him so discomforlably. When at last she did
so, it was to reveal a countenance whose expression he
was at a loss to read. Her face certainly wasn't blubbered
with crying; but it was flushed and disturbed. The impression
he really got from it was of something...almost indecent!
He glanced furtively round, and, hurriedly extending
his arm, touched one of her wrists.
"You must have known I'd find out sooner or later,"
he said. "It doesn't matter, my knowing, does it? He
couldn't mind. He'd be glad, I should think." And he
gave an awkward little chuckle, as he released her hand
and began fumbling for a cigarette.
He had only just succeeded in finding the small packet
for which he was searching, when he caught Miss Gault's
eyes lit up in excited recognition.
He swung round. Ah! there they were making their
way straight towards them the portly figure of Mr.
Torp, with Gerda leaning lightly on his arm!
He did not hesitate a moment, but leaping up from his
chair with an incoherent apology to his companion, he
advanced to meet them, his heart beating fast, but his
brain in full command of the situation.
Gerda flushed crimson when she saw him, disengaged
her arm from her father's, and, coming to meet him
with charming impetuosity, held out her hand.
She was dressed in plain navy-blue serge, and wore a
dark, soft hat low down over her fair hair. This unas-
suming attire heighlened her beauty; and the embar-
rassed, yet illuminated look with which she greeted
her lover, brought back to his mind so vividly the
events of yesterday, that for a moment he was struck
with a kind of dizziness that reduced everyone in that
crowded tent to a floating and eddying mist.
He caught at her hand without a word and held it
tightly for a moment, hurting her a little.
He soon dropped it, however, and said very hurriedly
and quietly: "Gerda...forgive me...but I want to
introduce you to my friend, Miss Gault."
Gerda's eyes must have already encountered those of
that lady, for he saw her face stiffen to a conventional
and rather strained smile. But at this moment Mr. Torp
intervened, coming up very close to Wolf and touching
the latter's hand with his plump finger before he could
lift it to greet him.
"So you and darter have fixed it up, have 'ee?" he
whispered, in a confidential, almost funereal tone. "Don't
'ee be fretted about I nor the missus, Mister. Us be glad
in advance, I tell 'ee; and so it be." He caught hold of
Wolf's sleeve and put his face close to his face, while
Wolf, with a sidelong glance, became aware that Miss
Gault had approached them and had been met half-way
by Gerda.
"'Tis they wimming's whimsies what us have got to
mind, hasn't?" whispered Mr. Torp. "What they do
reckon'll happen to we, 'tis what will happen to we,
looks so! Don't 'ee take on, Mister, about us being poor
folks like. Darter's different from we and alms has been,
since her were a babe. She's had grand courtiers ere now,
though I shouldn't say it. But Gerdie be a good girl,
though turble lazy about house. Her mother once did
think it 'ud be young Bob Weevil what 'ud get her; but
I knewed a thing or two beyond that, I did! I knewed
she were one for the gentry, as you might say. 'Twere
barn in her, I reckon! I be a climbing man, me wone
self. It's like enough she gets it from I!" And before he
withdrew his rubicund face to a discreet distance, the
stone-cutter gave him a shrewd wink.
It was then that Miss Gault took the opportunity of
bringing Gerda up to them. She had evidently said something
very gracious to the girl; for Gerda's quaint society-
manner had left her, and she looked pleased, though a
little bewildered.
"We've made friends already," said Miss Gault to
Wolf, "and I've told her I knew her well by sight. How
do you do, Mr. Torp! I was telling Mr. Solent that I
knew your daughter already, though I've never spoken to
her; but she's not a young lady one can forget!"
What Mr. Torp's reply to this was Wolf did not
hear. Aware that the situation had arranged itself, he
found as he kept looking at Gerda's face, as she listened
to Miss Gault and her father, that he was beginning
to grow nervously hostile to all these explanations. Why
couldn't he and Gerda go sraight off now, out of this
hurly-burly, out anywhere...so as to be at peace and
alone?
"Well, good-bye," Gerda was saying. "Perhaps we'll
see you again later; but Father and I haven't half gone
the round yet, have we, Father?"
"Gone the round! I should think us hadn't!" said Mr.
Torp. "Bain't what used to be, this here fair! I do mind
when 'twere so thick wi' gipoos and such-Iike, that a
person could scarce move. But Gerdie and I will see
summat, don't 'ee fear! They whirligigs...why there
ain't a blessed season since her was a mommet that we
ain't rid in they things; is there, my chuck?"
"No, there isn't, Father. Good-bye, Miss Gault!" she
added, with a straight, confiding, grateful glance at her
friend's friend. "I'll be at home all tomorrow afternoon,
Wolf," she murmured, as she smoothed out her gloves
and buttoned her jacket.
Mr. Torp caught the word. "So she shall be!" he cried
emphatically. "I be a turble stern man, for ordering
they to do what they've set their hearts on doing!
Well, good-bye to 'ee, Sir! Good-bye to 'ee, Marm! If
all and sundry here were to fling at they coceenuls,
there'd be few left, I reckon!"
Watching that quaintly assorted couple moving away
out of the tent, Wolf felt a glow of almost conceited
satisfaction in the discovery that whatever vein of
snobbishness it was in him that had made so much of Mr.
Urquhart's clothes and Lord Lovelace's appearance, it
fell away completely where Gerda was concerned. "I'm
glad the old man is as he is!" he thought, as his eyes
followed them into the open air.
"Let's sit down again, shall we?" he said to Miss
Gault.
His spirits were a little dashed, however, when he re-
garded the lady opposite him, as they resumed their
seats; for her face seemed to have grown stiff and some-
what remote.
"This is very serious," she said gravely. And then,
with an almost plaintive tone, "Why is it that men are
so ridiculous?"
"But I thought you liked her, Miss Gault! You were
so especially sweet to her."
She sighed and gave him a glance that seemed to say
irritably, "And to cap everything you are an incredible
fool!"
"You did like her, didn't you?"
"So childish that they think of nothing...nothing
...when their desire is aroused."
"Why is it so serious, Miss Gault?" he said. And then
he added rather maliciously, "My mother would see in a
second how refined she is!"
Miss Gault lifted her eyebrows. "I'm not only thinking
of your mother," she said. "There's no reason, that I
know of, why I should fuss about her. I'm thinking of
you and the girl herself, and and of all your friends.
Listen, boy" and she bent on him one of the most tender
and reproachful looks he had ever seen "all this is
pure madness selfish, greedy madness! You can't make
a girl like that happy no! not for half a year! Good
heavens, child, you're as blind as a You're as selfish
as one of my cats! It's the girl I'm thinking of, I tell
you. You'll make her miserable, you and your mother!
She's sweet to look at; but Wolf, Wolf! she and you
will talk completely different languages! You can't do
these things not in our country, anyhow. I've seen it
again and again these things bring misery just misery.
And how are you going to support her, I'd like to
know?"
"She has indeed a different language," cried Wolf,
irrelevantly; and his mind reverted to the blackbird of
Poll's Camp. And then, as he saw her face droop wearily
and her fingers tap the table: "Why did you take it all
so nicely just now. Why did you talk of getting me work
in Ramsgard?"
She made no reply to this. But after a moment she
burst out: "Your father would laugh at you...he
would!...He'd just laugh at you!"
"Well, we'd better not talk of it any more," said Wolf
sulkily.
He cast about in the depths of his consciousness, however,
with the vindictiveness of defeat, for some line of
attack that would disturb and agitate her.
"Miss Gault," he began, while with her gaze fixed upon
vacancy she stared through him and past him into the in-
terior of the great tent, "do you mind if I ask you a
direct question? I know that Mattie Smith is my father's
child; but what I want to ask you now is whose child
is Olwen?"
A faint brownish flush ran like a stream of muddy
water beneath the surface of the skin of her face. She
bent her head over the table; and like a great ruffled
bird, in a cage, that has been shaken from the top, she
began picking up and lifting to her mouth every crumb
of bread in sight. Then, with a shaky hand, she poured
some spilt drops of cold tea from her saucer into her
cup.
"What I want to know," repeated Wolf, "is why my
sister Mattie has this child Olwen to look after. Is she
a foundling? Is she adopted? Where did she spring
from?"
But the daughter of the late headmaster of Ramsgard
School remained obstinately silent. She folded her hands
mechanically over the heavy teacup and sat straight in
her chair, staring into her lap like an image of Atropos.
"Don't you want to tell me, Miss Gault? Is it something
you can't tell me?"
Still the lady remained silent, her fingers tightly
clenched over the cup.
"I knew there was something queer from the start,"
he went on. "What's the matter with you all? Who is
this child?"
Then very slowly Miss Gault rose to her feet.
"Come out into the air," she said brusquely. "I can't
talk to you here."
They made their way together out of the tent; but they
had hardly gone a stone's throw into the cold March sun-
shine, when they encountered, without a possibility of
retreat or evasion, Mrs. Solent and Mr. Smith advancing
resolutely and blamelessly towards the place they were
quitting.
The hatter of Ramsgard School looked pinched and with-
ered in the hard, glaring light. Wolf received a sudden,
inexplicable inkling that the man was wretchedly
miserable. The look he got from him as they approached
seemed grey with weariness. Mrs. Solent was, however,
talking gaily. Her brown eyes were shining with mischief.
Her cheeks were flushed. And now, at the very
moment of salutation, he could see that proud face toss
its chin and that sturdy, well-dressed figure gather itself
together for battle. Once more it came over him with
a queer kind of remorse, as if he were responsible for
it: "She's had no life at all; and she's made for great,
stirring events!"
But it was many days before he forgot the manner in
which those two ancient rivals faced each other. It had,
this encounter between them, the queer effect upon him
of making him recall, as he had once or twice already
in Dorsetshire, that passage in "Hamlet" where the ghost
cries out from beneath the earth. A piece of horse-dung
at his feet, as he instinctively looked away while the
two came together, grew large and white and round.
"He can't have a shred of flesh left on him down there,"
he thought to himself, with a kind of sullen anger a-
gainst both the women. But what puzzled him now was
that Miss Gault did not rise to the occasion as he
had supposed she would have done. To his own personal
taste she looked more formidable in her black satin
gown than his mother did in her finery; but it was clear
to him, as he watched them shaking hands, that his
mother's spirit was poised and adjusted to the nicest
point of the encounter, whereas Miss Gault's inmost being
just then seemed disorganized, disjointed, helpless,
unwieldy.
That they shook hands at all, he could see, was owing
to his mother. Miss Gaull's hands hung down at her sides,
like the hands of a large, stuffed doll that has been set
up with difficulty in an erect position. And they remained
like this until Mrs. Solent's arm had been extended
for quite a perceptible passage of time. When Selena did
raise her wrist and take her enemy's fingers, it was to
retain them all the while the two were speaking. But Mrs.
Solent told Wolf afterwards that there was no warmth or
life in that cold pressure....
"Well, Selena, so it's really you! And I couldn't have
believed there'd be so little change. You are at your old
tricks again, I see, running off with my son!"
"I hope you are well, Ann," said Miss Gault. "You
look as handsome as ever."
"I'd look handsomer still, if my son wasn't so unambi-
tious and lazy," replied the other, giving Wolf a
glance of glowing possessiveness.
"Men can be too ambitious, Ann," said Miss Gault
slowly, speaking as if she were in some kind of trance.
"We passed a really pretty girl a minute or two ago,"
cried Mrs. Solent suddenly; "and Albert here says he
knows who she is. You ought to go over to the round
abouts, Wolf, and try and find her! She was with a
labouring-man of some sort, a stocky plump little man;
but she was pretty as a picture!"
"Do you mean that Dorset labourers sell their daughters,
Mother? Or do you mean that all beauty can be had for
the asking? All right; I'll hunt for her through all
the tents!"
He felt himself speaking in such a strained, queer
voice that he was not surprised to observe Miss Gault
glancing nervously at Mrs. Solent to see if she had de-
tected it. But Mrs. Solent was too excited just then to
notice so slight a thing as a change of tone. As he spoke
with his mother in this way about Gerda, something
seemed to rise up in his throat that was like a serpent
of fury. He rebelled against the look of his mother's
face, the proud outline of her scornful profile. "I am
glad...I am glad..." he said to himself, "that Gerda
isn't a lady, and that her father is a stone-cutter!"
And it came over him that it was an imbecility that
any human soul should have the power over another soul
that his mother had over him. As he looked at her now.
he was aware of an angry revolt at the massive resistance
which her personality offered.
It did not make it easier for him at this moment that
he recognized clearly enough that the very strength
in his mother which had been such security to him in
his childhood was the thing now with which he had to
struggle to gain his liberty that protective, maternal
strength, the most formidable of all psychic forces!
She was like a witch his mother on the wrong side
in the fairy-story of life. She was on the side of fate
against chance, and of destiny against random fortune.
"I don't care how she feels when I tell her about Gerda,"
he said to himself; and in a flash, looking all the while
at his mother's dress, he thought of the yielded love-
liness of Gerda's body, and he decided that he would
shake off this resistance without the least remorse.
"Shake it off! Pass over it; disregard it!" he said to
himself.
"I shall come and see you, Selena, whether you like
it or not," his mother was now saying. "After twenty-five
years people as old as we are ought to be sensible,
oughtn't we, Mr. Smith?" she added.
But Mr. Smith had managed to remove himself a pace
or two from their company, under cover of a sudden
interest in a torn and flapping "Western Gazette," which
he proceeded to push into a trampled mole-hill with the
end of his stick.
Mrs. Solent glanced at her son shrewdly and scrutini-
zingly. "You look as if you were enjoying yourself, I
must say! What's come over you? Are you wishing your-
self back in London? Well, come on, Albert Smith!
I'm longing for a cup of tea. These people have had
theirs."
She was already carrying off her companion, after a
nod to Miss Gault, which was received without a sign of
response, when Wolf stopped her. "Where shall we meet,
Mother, when you're ready to go?"
"Oh, anywhere, child! We can't lose ourselves here."
"Say over there, then? By the roundabouts, in about
an hour?"
"All right; very good! Mr. Smith shall escort me there
when we've had our tea. It's strange, Albert, isn't it,
thai in this place of my whole married life, you're the
only friend I've got left?"
Wolf was aware of an expression in her brown eyes,
a droop of her straight shoulders, that made him realize
that there were strange emotions stirring under the sur-
face of that airy manner.
"The roundabouts, then!" he repeated.
"All right in an hour or so!" she flung back. "And
why don't you and Selena have a turn at the swings?"
she added, as she went off.
Her disappearance seemed to make no difference to
Selena Gault. In absolute immobility the poor lady re-
mained standing there, staring at the grass. It was as
if she'd put her foot upon an adder that struck her with
sudden paralysis, so that at a touch she would topple over
and fall.
Wolf came close to her. "Don't worry about my mother,
Miss Gault, darling," he whispered earnestly.
"She's not as flippant as she sounds...really she's
not! She's like that with everyone. She's like that with
me."
Miss Gault looked at him as if his words meant nothing.
Her vacant stare seemed to be fixed on something
at a remote distance.
"I know; I quite understand," she murmured; and her
hands, coming, as it were, slowly to life, began to
pick at the little cloth buttons of the braided jacket
she wore over her satin gown. The stiffness of these old-
fashioned garments seemed to hold her up. Without their
support it looked as if she would have fallen down just
where she was--close to the newspaper buried through the
nervousness of Mr. Smith!
She seemed to Wolf, as he stood helplessly before her,
like a classic image of outrage in grotesque modern
clothes. "She's like an elderly Io," he thought, "driven
mad by the gadfly of the goddess."
"Dear Miss Gault! Don't you worry about it any more!
I swear to you she isn't as malicious as she seems. You
must remember that all this isn't as easy for her as she
makes out. She's hard; but she can be really magnanimous
...you'll see! She doesn't realize people's feelings, that's
what it is. She was the same about Gerda. Fancy her no-
ticing her like that!" In his desire to soothe his companion
he seized one of the black-gloved hands. As he did so
he looked round nervously; for he began to be aware that
various persons among the groups who passed them stop-
ped to stare at her perturbed figure.
But his touch brought a flood of colour to the woman's
swarthy cheeks. She clasped his hand tightly with both
her own, holding it for a moment before she let it fall.
"I can't help it, boy," she said in a low tone. "Seeing
her brings it all back." She paused for a moment. "No
one else ever treated me as a woman," she added, her
mouth twitching.
Wolf wrinkled his bushy eyebrows.
"You must let me be as fond of you as he was," he
muttered. "You must look after me as you looked after
him."
She nodded and smiled a little at that, rearranged the
great black hat upon her head, and, after a moment's
hesitation, placed her hand on his arm. "Come," she
said, "let's go to the roundabouts."
They moved slowly together across the field. It oc-
curred to him now that he could distract her mind and
at the same time satisfy his own curiosity by renewing
their interrupted conversation.
"I don't want to tease you with questions," he began
presently. "But you promised you'd tell me you know?
about Mattie and Olwen."
"It's not easy, boy," said Miss Gault with a sigh.
"I know it isn't. That's why I want you to tell me and
not anyone else."
She walked by his side in silence for a while, evidently
collecting her thoughts. "It's the sort of thing one finds
so difficult to tell," she said, looking guardedly round
them.
"Well! Let me tell you!" he retorted, "and you correct
me, if I'm wrong."
Miss Gault nodded gravely.
"Mattie's my father's child," he muttered in a low,
clear voice, "and Olwen is--"
Miss Gault had managed to turn her face so far away
from him that he couldn't see her expression.
"Who told you all this, boy? Who told you?" she inter-
rupted, in such a peevish tone that two solemn-faced
members of the Sixth Form of the School, with blue
ribbons round their straw-hats and sticks in their hands,
glanced furtively at her as they passed.
"Olwen's father was old Malakite," Wolf went on;
"and Olwen's mother was Christie Malakite's sister."
Miss Gault still kept her face removed from his steady
gaze.
"Aren't I right?" he repeated. "But you needn't tell
me. I know I am right." He paused, and they continued
to cross the field.
"What's become of the mother?" he continued. "Is she
still alive?"
Miss Gault did turn at this.
"Australia," she whispered.
"Alive or dead?"
She almost shouted her reply to this, as if with a
spasm of savage relief.
"Dead!" she cried.
Wolf held his peace for a moment or two, while his
brain worked at top speed.
"What Christie must have gone through!" he murmured
audibly, but in a tone as if talking to himself rather than
to her. "What she must have gone through!"
Miss Gault's comment upon this was drowned by the
brazen noise issuing from the engine of one of the
roundabouts which they were now approaching.
"What did you say?" he shouted in her ear.
"I said that Christie Malakite has no heart!" cried
Miss Gault; and her voice was almost as harsh as the
raucous whistle that saluted them.
He stopped at this, and they both stood motionless,
looking at each other covertly, while a magnetic cur-
rent of inexplicable antagonism flickered between them.
"It wasn't her he loved!" Miss Gault shouted suddenly
so suddenly that Wolf moved backwards, as if she had
lifted her hand to hit him.
"Who didn't love whom?" he vociferated in response;
while two small boys of the Ramsgard Preparatory
School nudged each other and peered at them inquisi-
tively.
"What are you staring for? Urchins!" cried Miss Gault.
"All the same they're nice boys," she muttered. "Look!
I've hurt their feelings now; and they really are very
polite. Here, children, come here!"
The two little boys, their heads covered with enormous
and very new examples of the art of Mr. Albert Smith,
pretended not to hear her appeal. They remained in
fixed contemplation of a counter of glaring cakes
and sweets.
"Come here, you two!" repeated the lady.
They did, at that, sheepishly turn round and begin
moving towards her, with an air as if it were a complete
accident that their feet carried them in that particular
direction rather than in any other.
"I won't hurt you," she said, as softly as she could
in the midst of the terrific noise that whirled round
them. "What are your names, my dears?"
"Stepney Major," murmured one of the little boys.
"Trelawney Minor," gasped the other.
"Well, Stepney Major and Trelawney Minor, here's half-
a-crown for you. Only, when you next meet queer-looking
people at the Fair, don't stare at them as if they were
part of the Show."
When the two little boys had decamped, radiantly rever-
ential, Miss Gault turned to Wolf.
"Didn't they take off their hats prettily? They do bring
'em up well. Little gentlemen they are!"
She seemed glad of the interruption. But Wolf began
speaking again.
"What's that, boy?" she rejoined. "Terrible, this
noise! Isn't it?"
"Miss Gault!"
"You needn't shout, Wolf. I can hear you. There...
like that...that's better!" And she shifted her position.
"Who didn't love whom? We were talking of the Malakites."
"My dear boy"--and, as she spoke, a smile of the most
complicated humour came into her strange countenance,
transforming it into something almost beautiful--"my
dear boy, I wasn't talking of the Malakites! I was
talking of your father and Lorna Smith."
"Mattie's mother, eh? But why did you say oh, damn
that noise! that Christie had no heart?"
Miss Gault stared at him.
"Haven't you seen her? Didn't you see what she was?
Reading the books of that old wretch, keeping house for
that old wretch? How can she look the man in the face,
I should like to know? They tell me Olwen can't bear
the sight of her; and I don't wonder."
"But Miss Gault, my dear Miss Gault, what has Christie
done? I should think she was the one most to be pitied."
Wolf bent his shaggy eyebrows almost fiercely upon
his companion; and after a moment's encounter with his
gaze Miss Gault glanced away and contemplated the
sweet-stall.
"What has Christie Malakite done to you?" asked Wolf
sternly.
"Oh, if you must have it, boy, you shall have it! Listen.
I went over there when all that trouble happened. I had
some sort of official position; and things like this,
unspeakable things like this, were what I had to deal
with. The Society sent me, in fact."
Wolf lifted his eyebrows very high at this. He began to
detect an aspect of Miss Selena Gault's character that
hitherto had been concealed from him.
"What society?" he asked.
"The Society for the Care of Delinquent Girls. And I
found Miss Christie, let me tell you, both obstinate and
impertinent. She actually defended that abominable old
wretch! She wanted to keep Olwen in their house. Fortu-
nately the child can't bear the sight of her...or of
that old monster either. It's instinct, I expect."
"It doesn't happen to be anything you or Mattie may
have let fall?" shouted Wolf in her ear.
"Why, you're defending them now!" Miss Gault retorted,
her face dark with anger. "If you knew all, boy, you
wouldn't dare!"
Wolf felt extreme discomfort and distaste.
"What else is there for me to know, Miss Gault?" he
demanded aloud and in a quieter voice; for there had
come a pause in the whistling of the engine.
"That old man was one of the most evil influences in
your father's life."
"Does Mattie know that?" he enquired.
"Oh, Mattie!" she cried contemptuously. "Mattie knows
just as much as we've considered it wise to tell her."
"Who are we?" said Wolf drily.
"Mr. Smith and myself. Don't you see, boy, we had
to make ourselves responsible to the police for Olwen's
bringing up? It's been an unholy business, the whole
affair! It gives me a kind of nausea to talk about it."
Wolf found that his protective instincts were thoroughly
aroused by this time; and Miss Gault's figure assumed
an unattractive shape.
"It's this accursed sex-suppression," he said to himself;
and he suddenly thought with immense relief of his mother,
and of her scandalously light touch in the presence of
every conceivable human obliquity. "I must be cautious,"
he said to himself. "I mustn't show my hand. But who
would have thought she was like this!" He
looked Miss Gault straight in the face.
"Does Mr. Urquhart know the history of my sister and
the history of 0lwen?" he asked abruptly, leaning so
heavily on his stick that it sank deep into the turf.
A flicker of relief crossed the woman's agitated features.
"Mr. Urquhart? Oh, you may be sure he has his version,
just as all the neighbourhood has! It's been the great
scandal of the country."
The use of this particular word made Wolf explode.
"Greater than the doings of Mattie's father?" he
rapped out.
He regretted his maliciousness as soon as the words
were uttered. That scene in the cemetery came back to
his mind.
"I didn't mean that, dear Miss Gault!" he cried, pulling
his stick violently out of the sod. But she had turned
her face away from him, and for a little while they stood
silently there, side by side, while the crowd jostled them
and the engine renewed its whistling. At last she did
turn round, and her face was sad and gentle.
"We won't quarrel, will we, Wolf?" she murmured,
bending close to his ear so that he shouldn't lose her
words. It was the first time she had dropped that rather
annoying "boy"; and the use of his name did much to
restore his good-temper.
"It's all right," he whispered back. "Let's go on now,
eh?"
The merry-go-round in front of which they had passed
was isolated from the rest. They proceeded to push their
way through the crowds towards the next one, which was
some three hundred yards further on.
Suddenly they saw before them the anxious little figure
of Mrs. Otter, leaning on Darnley's arm; while Jason,
his melancholy gaze surveying the scene as if he were
a Gaulish captive in a Roman triumph, was standing apart,
like one who had no earthly link with his relations or
with anyone else.
Wolf felt singularly disinclined to cope with these
people at that moment. He had received of late so many
contradictory impressions, that his brain felt like an
overcrowded stage. But he gathered his wits together as
well as he could, and for a while they all five stood
talking rather wearily, exchanging commonplaces as if
they had been at a garden-party rather than a fair.
By degrees Wolf managed to edge away from the two
ladies, who were listening to Darnley's criticism of the
horse-show, and began to exchange more piquant remarks
with the dilapidated poet.
"Did you see our clergyman?" said Jason.
"Mr. Valley?"
The man nodded.
"Certainly I did. I talked to him when I first got
here."
"Making a fool of himself as usual--"
"Come, Mr. Otter--"
"Well, I daresay it's no affair of ours. It's best to
mind one's own business. That's what God's so good at
...minding His own business! Seen Urquhart anywhere?"
"I was with him just now. Monk drove him over."
Jason Otter's face expressed panic.
"Is that man here?" he whispered.
Wolf had already remarked how oddly Jason's fits of
mortal terror assorted with the monumental dignity of
his grim and massive countenance.
"Why not? I understand he gave a lift to your old
Mrs. Stone. You ought to be grateful to him."
"Urquhart pays him to spy on me, and one day he'll
beat me like a black dog!"
"Incredible, Mr. Otter!" It became more and more
difficult for Wolf to take seriously the man's morbid
timorousness. It was impossible to make sport of him;
but he could not prevent a faint vein of raillery from
entering into his reply. "He looks a powerfully built
fellow."
"I tell you this, Solent, I tell you this" and Jason
clutched Wolf's arm and glanced round to make sure
that the others were out of hearing "one day I shall be
picked up unconscious in a ditch, beaten half-dead by
that man!"
But Wolf's mind had wandered.
"By the way, Mr. Otter, if you ever want to sell that
Hindoo idol of yours, I'll buy it from you!"
The poet stared at him blankly.
"I'll give five times whatever it cost you!"
"It cost me a pound," said Jason grimly.
"Very well; I'll buy it for five pounds. Is that
agreed?"
Jason pondered a little.
"Why do you want that thing? To bury it?"
"Perhaps that's it! How discerning you are!" And
Wolf smiled genially at him.
"Very well, I'll sell it to you." He paused for a mo-
ment. "And if you could let me have that five pounds
tomorrow, I should be very much obliged."
"Good Lord!" thought Wolf to himself. "I've done it
now! Probably they keep the poor wretch without a
penny, to stop him from drinking."
"I'm not sure that I can manage it tomorrow," he said
affably, "but you shall have it, Mr. Otter; and I'm sure
I'm very grateful to you."
"Shall you bury it?" whispered Jason again, in a
voice as sly and furtive as a wicked schoolboy.
"I don't want you to have it any longer, anyhow," said
Wolf laughing.
Jason put his hand to his mouth and chuckled.
"By the way," Wolf went on, "I've never yet read a
line of your poetry, Mr. Otter."
The words were no sooner out of his mouth than
he stared at the man in bewildered amazement. It was
as if a mask had fallen from his face, revealing a to-
tally different human countenance.
"Will you really read something? Will you really?"
The tone in which he said this was so childlike in its
eagerness that Wolf felt a sudden unexpected tenderness
for the queer man, quite different from his previous
amused indulgence. "How they must have outraged his
life-illusion among them all!" he thought.
"But your mother adores your poetry; and your brother
likes it too, doesn't he?"
Jason gave him one deep, slow, penetrating look that
was like the opening of a sluice-gate.
"My mother...my brother..." And the man shrugged his
shoulders as if Wolf had referred to the activities
of water-flies in relation to human affairs.
"They don't understand it, you mean? They don't get
its significance, for all their devotion? Well, I think I
realize what you suffer from. But I don't suppose I shall
understand it either."
"I've written lately...very lately...last night, in
fact a poem to him."
"To whom?"
"To him...to Mukalog."
Wolf wrinkled his eyebrows and stared intently at
him for a moment. "You'll be altogether happier when
you've sold that thing to me, Mr. Otter," he said.
"You'd like to bury him in your garden," Jason muttered.
And then quite unexpectedly he smiled so disarmingly
that Wolf once again experienced that wave of affec-
tion.
"I expect lots of people wish I were dead," he added,
with a queer chuckle.
"I don't wish you were dead," said Wolf, looking into
his eyes. "But I wish you would let me throw away that
demon!"
A gleam of nervous irritation flashed from Jason's
eyes, and his upper lip trembled.
"He's myself!" he murmured. "He's what I am!" Then
after a pause he jerked his thumb towards his brother.
"Darnley's a funny one," he whispered, nudging Wolfs
arm. "Listen to him talking to the ladies! He ought to
have been a member of Parliament. He loves to behave
like a grand gentleman."
"He is a grand gentleman!" said Wolf drily.
"And as for that great bully of yours, Squire Urquhart,"
Jason went on, raising his voice, "he'll die without
any demon to help him. He's on that road now!"
These last words were uttered with such concentrated
vindictiveness that Wolf opened his eyes wide.
"Did you see how he looked," went on Jason, "when
those stallions passed him? He had to hang on to the
rope to keep himself from falling....I can tell you
what crossed his mind then!"
"What?" enquired Wolf.
"To throw himself under their hooves! To be trodden
into the ground by fifty stallions!"
"Are ye talking of stallions, gentlemen?" said a well-
known voice; and Roger Monk, accompanied by the waiter
of the Lovelace Hotel, stood before them, touching
his hat politely.
Darnley and Miss Gault moved forward now, and Mrs.
Otter began asking Monk about Dimity Stone and thanking
him for picking up the old woman.
"Come on," whispered Jason in Wolfs ear. "Let's
clear out of this! You see what he is...a great lubberly
catchpole, not fit for anything except horse-racing!
He's got rid of Dimity and joined up with that waiter
with the idea of annoying someone. He wouldn't dare to
insult anyone alone; but with that sly dog of a waiter
--you know what waiters are--" He paused and glanced
back furtively at his mother and at the two serving-men.
"I'd like," he added, "to see Valley well fooled by
those rascals. He'd have to go home alone then; and a
good thing, too!"
"You've got your knife into us all, Mr. Otter," said
Wolf slowly. "And I think it'? a mistake. It's a waste of
energy to hate people at the rate you do."
But Jason's attention was still so absorbed in watching
Monk and the waiter, that he listened to him only with
half an ear; and, indeed, shortly afterwards he shuffled
off with barely a word of farewell.
Shrugging his shoulders, under this rebuff, Wolf strode
away in pursuit of Darnley and Miss Gault.
When he reached these two, he held out his hand and
raised his hat.
"I think I'll leave you now in Mr. Otter's care," he
said to Miss Gault. "It's about time I began to look for
my mother."
Selena appeared a little disconcerted at his abrupt depart-
ure, but Darnley gave him his usual gentle and indulgent
smile.
"You always seem to bring me luck, Solent," he said.
"But au revoir! We may meet on the road; for I expect
my mother will be tired of this soon."
Wolf shogged off by himself; and as soon as the crowd
concealed him from the sight of his friends, he began
waving his stick in the air. This was an old trick of his,
and he invariably gave way to it when, after any prolonged
period of human intercourse, he found himself alone and
in the open.
He made his way rapidly to the extreme western corner
of the great fair-field, where there were certain small
swings patronized rather by children than by grown-up
people.
As he threaded his way through all those excitable
West Country folk he did his best to reduce to some sort
of order the various jolts and jars he had received. So
many confused impressions besieged his consciousness
that he wished devoutly he were going to return to King's
Barton on foot instead of driving.
His thoughts became complicated just at this moment
by the teasing necessity of finding some place among
those tents where he could make water. Drifting about
with this in view, he found himself recalling all manner
of former occasions when he had been driven to this kind
of search. It took him so long to find what he wanted, that
when he had found it and had re-emerged into the sunshine,
he experienced an extraordinary heightening of his
spirits.
The acrid, ammoniacal smell of that casual retreat
brought back to his mind the public lavatory on the
esplanade at Weymouth, into which, from the sunwarmed
sands, he used to descend by a flight of spittle-stained
steps. This memory, combined with an access of pervading
physical comfort, drew his mind like a magnet toward his
secretive mystical vice. Once more, as he gave himself
up to this psychic abandonment, he felt as if he were
engaged in some mysterious world-conflict, where the
good and the evil ranged themselves on opposite
sides.
He rubbed his hands together in the old reckless way,
as he walked along; and it seemed to him as if all these
new impressions of his took their place in this mysterious
struggle. That ravaged face of the Waterloo steps mingled
its hurt with what Jason, Valley, Christie, were all
suffering; while the sinister magnetism that emanated
from Mr. Urquhart fused its influence with that of Jason's
idol, and the cruelty of Miss Gault to Christie, and
of his mother to Miss Gault!
When this orgy of mystic emotion passed away, as it
presently did, leaving him as limp and relaxed as if
he had been walking for hours instead of minutes, he
became aware that there were two irritating perplexities
still fretting his mind, like stranded jelly-fish left high
and dry on a bank of pebbles.
He found himself steering his consciousness with extreme
care, as he walked along, so as to avoid contact with
these two problems. But, as generally happens, he
had not gone far before he was plunged into both of
them, mingled confusedly together.
All about him was the smell of trodden grass, of horse-
dung, of tar, of paint, of cider, of roasted chestnuts,
of boys' new clothes, of rustic sweat, of girls' cheap
perfumes, of fried sausages, of brassy machinery, of stale
tobacco; and these accumulated odours seemed to resolve
themselves into one single odour that became a wavering
curtain, behind which these two dangerous thoughts were
moving moving and stirring the curtain into bulging
folds as concealed figures might do on a theatre-stage,
between the acts of a play.
The first of these thoughts was about his ill-assorted
parents. He felt as if there were going on in his spirit
an unappeasable rivalry between these two. He felt as if
it were that grinning skull in the cemetery, with his
"Christ! I've had a happy life!" that had made him
snatch at Gerda so recklessly, with the express purpose
of separating him from his mother! It was just what
that man would have done had he been alive. How he
would have rejoiced in an irresponsible chance-driven
offspring!
And then, before he had finished untying this knot of
his parents' hostility, he was plunged into the second
dangerous thought. This was more troubling to his peace
than the other. It was about that grey feather which he
had found in that book of Christie's! Why did it rouse
such peculiar interest in him, to think of Christie and of
Christie's fondness for the works of Sir Thomas Browne?
What was Christie to him with her books and her queer
tastes? What stability could there be in his love for
Gerda when this troubling curiosity stirred within him
at the idea of Gerda's friend?
As he thought of all this, his eyes caught sight of the
golden face of a little dandelion in the midst of the
trodden grass. He touched the edge of its petals rather
wearily with the end of his stick, thinking to himself,
"If I leave it there it'll probably be trodden by these
people into the mud in a few minutes; and if I pick it
up it'll be dead before I get home!"
He decided to give the dandelion a chance to survive.
"After all, it may survive," he thought; "and if it doesn't
Ailinon! Ailinon! What does it matter?"
Moving on again at random, burdened with perplexities,
he suddenly found himself in the midst of a circle
of children who were gazing in envious rapture at a gaily
decorated swing that was whirling up and down in full,
crowded activity. It was a boat-swing, and the boats
were painted azure and scarlet and olive-green....
And there, among the children in the swing, was Ol-
wen, and there, by the side of it, watching Olwen swing-
ing, was Mattie Smith herself! To come bolt-up upon
her like this, in the midst of so many agitating thoughts,
was a shock. He experienced that sort of mental desper-
ation that one feels when one forces oneself awake from
a dream that grows unendurable. And in his knowledge
that she was his sister he saw her now as a totally dif-
ferent Mattie. But what a sad face she had! She was so
nervous about Olwen that he could regard her for several
long seconds unobserved. What heavy ill-cornplexioned
cheeks! What a disproportioned nose! What a clouded
apathetic brow, and what patient eyes! "She's had a
pretty hard life," he thought. "I wonder if she knows
or doesn't know?"
Olwen was the first to catch sight of him; and her excited
waving made Mattie hurriedly glance round.
She recognized him at once, too, and a flood of colour
came into her pale cheeks. Wolf felt a curious embar-
rassment as they shook hands; and it was almost a relief
to him to be forced to take his eyes off her in order to
respond to Olwen, who was now waving to him frantically
from her flying seat.
The child could not of course stop the machinery of the
swing; and when she saw that he had answered her signal,
she contented herself with just sweeping him into that
rapturous topsy-turvy world of people, grass, horses,
trees, ruins, and hills which rose and'fell around
her as she rushed through the air!
The cries of the children, the clang of the machinery,
the voices of the showmen, covered Wolf and Mattie with
a protective screen of undisturbed privacy. In the light
of subsequent events they both looked back upon this
moment with peculiar and romantic tenderness.
Directly she gave him her hand even while he still
held it he had begun to talk to her of their relationship.
"I've known it since I was fifteen," she said; "and
I'm twenty-five this month. That was what made it so
awkward when you and your mother came to our house.
She knows it, of course; and she let me see that she knew
it. But I saw she had kept it from you. Has she told you
about it since? What I cannot make out is whether Father
knows. He knows about Olwen, of course. In fact, he and
Miss Gault were the ones who took Olwen away from Mr.
Malakite."
She paused, and gave Wolf a quick, furtive look; but
what she saw in his face appeared to reassure her, for
she smiled faintly.
"It's all so hard to talk about," she said in a low
voice. "I'd never have thought I could talk to you about
it. But it seems easy, now I'm actually doing it! I was
young then, you see...only fifteen; and Father and
Miss Gault thought I knew nothing. But I'd heard the
servants talking; and I read about it in the 'Western
Gazette.' Why do you think it was I wasn't more shocked
...Wolf?"
The hesitancy with which she brought out his name en-
chanted him. He snatched at her hand and made a movement
as if he would kiss her; but she glanced hurriedly at
the swing and drew back.
"I'm pretty hard to shock, too, Mattie dear," he said.
"I expect we inherit that!" he added lightly.
"It was when they brought me to see Olwen at the
'Home,'" the girl continued, "that I made Father have
her at our house, for Nanny...she was my nurse then
...and me to take care of! I knew she was at the
'Home,'...oh, Wolf, she was such a sweet little thing!
...for I heard them talking about her. And I made
Father take me to see her, and we were friends in a
second."
"So it was you that persuaded Mr. Smith to take her
into his house?" said Wolf. "And you were only a child
yourself."
Mattie gave a quaint little chuckle. "I was a pretty
obstinate child, I'm afraid," she said. "Besides, Olwen
and I both cried terribly and hugged each other. I was
mad about children," she added gravely; "just mad about
them, when I was young."
"Was your father hard to persuade?" enquired Wolf.
The girl gave him one of her lowering sulkily-humorous
glances.
"I made a fuss, you see," she said solemnly. "I cried
and cried, till he agreed. It was Miss Gault who opposed
it most. Oh, Wolf, it's terrible how Miss Gault has made
the child hate Christie. Christie has seen her several
times. I managed that for her! But Miss Gault must have
said something. I don't know what. But the last time
Olwen would hardly speak to her."
Wolf frowned. "Of course, it's possible, I suppose,
that it's some kind of instinct in the little girl
"he began ponderingly.
"No! No!" cried Mattie. "It's Miss Gault. I know it's
Miss Gault!"
"Christie told me she might be here this afternoon,"
said Wolf, looking about him from group to group of the
noisy young people around them.
"Did she?" said Mattie, with a nervous start. "Did
she really, Wolf?" And she, too, threw an anxious glance
round the field. "I wouldn't like her feelings to be hurt,"
she added. "They would be, I know, if she tried to speak
to Olwen."
Wolf's mind reverted violently to the solitary grey
feather in the "Urn Burial." At that moment he felt
as though not anyone...not Gerda herself...could
stop him from following that fragile figure if he
caught sight of it in this crowd!
But Mattie was now waving her hand to Olwen, whose
airy boat had begun to slacken its speed.
They moved together towards the swing; and Wolf
rushed forward to help the child to the ground. As
he lifted her out, he felt his forehead brushed by
the floating ends of her loosened hair.
She put her thin arms round him and hugged him tight
as soon as he set her down.
"Oh, I love swinging so! I love swinging so!" she
gasped.
"Would you like to have another one?" he said
gravely, looking down at that glowing little face.
Her eyes shone with infinite gratitude. "Aunt Mattie's
spent every penny Grandfather gave her," she whispered.
"Would you really give me one more? There! You pay
it to that man over there; the one with the funny eyes!"
Wolf handed over the coin and lifted the child back
into the painted boat. He waited at her side till the
machinery started again and then returned to Mattie.
"Didn't you have the least guess about you and me?"
the girl said; and it gave him a thrill of pleasure to
see what animation had come into her stolid countenance.
"Not exactly a guess," he answered. "But I did have
some kind of an odd feeling; as though I understood you
and followed your thoughts, even when you were silent.
Heavens! Mattie, dear; and you were silent almost all
the time!"
"Your mother wasn't very nice to me."
"Well, one can hardly blame her for that, can one?
People do feel rather odd in these situations."
"But I was nice to you, wasn't I?" the girl went on.
"And yet I couldn't bear to think that Father wasn't
my real father," she added faintly.
Mattie's face had such a touching expression at that
moment an expression at once so thrilled and so puz-
zled that with a quick and sudden movement he flung
his arm round her neck and gave her a brusque kiss,
full on the mouth.
"Mr. Solent! Wolf!" she protested feebly. "You
mustn't! What will she think?"
"Oh, she'll think you've found a young man," he re-
plied, laughing; "and so you have, my dear," he added
affectionately.
But though he laughed at her embarrassment, and though
she laughed faintly with him, it was clear enough to
his mind, as he glanced at the face of the child in
the swing, that their kiss had not been received very
happily up there.
Two burning eyes flashed down at him like two quivering
poniards, and two fierce little hands clutched the
sides of the olive-green boat as if they had been the
sides of a war-chariot.
"That child of yours is jealous," he whispered hurriedly
in his companion's ear. "But don't you worry," he added.
"It won't last, when she knows me better."
He moved up to the swing and remained watching the
little girl as she whirled past him like a small angry-
eyed comet.
By degrees his steady matter-of-fact attention disarmed
that jealous heart; and when the swing stopped, and he
had gravely kissed her and handed her back to Mattie,
all was once more well.
"We must go now and find your grandfather," said
Mattie to Olwen.
"I'll come with you," said Wolf. "I left my mother
with Mr. Smith; so we'll kill two birds with one
stone!"
They moved off together; but suddenly, crossing a gap
among the people, Wolf caught sight of Bob Weevil
and Lobbie Torp.
"You go on, you two do you mind? We'll meet later.
There's someone I must run after."
Both of his companions looked a little hurt at this
brusque departure; but with a repeated "We'll meet
later! Good-bye!" he swung off in clumsy haste, push-
ing his way so impetuously through the crowd, that he
aroused both anger and derision.
For a time he was afraid that he had lost his quarry
completely, so dense had the medley become around the
booths; but at last, with a sigh of relief, he came upon
them. They were both watching with unashamed delight a
young short-skirted gipsy who was dancing wildly to a
tambourine. As she danced, she beat her knees and threw
bold, provocative glances at her audience.
Wolf approached the two boys unobserved and was
conscious of a passing spasm of shameless sympathy
when he caught the expression of entranced lechery in
the concentrated eyes of the young grocer. Lobbie Torp's
interest was evidently distracted by the audacious leaps
and bounds of the gipsy-wench and by her jangling music;
but Mr. Weevil could contemplate nothing but her legs.
These moving objects seemed to be on the point of caus-
ing him to howl aloud some obscene "Evoe!" For his mouth
was wide open and great beads of perspiration stood out
upon his forehead.
The girl stopped breathless at last, but without a mo-
ment's delay began to collect money, holding out her
musical instrument with long, bare arms, arid indulging
in liberal and challenging smiles.
It tickled Wolf's fancy at this juncture to note the
beaten-dog expression in Mr. Weevil's countenance as
he pulled Lobbie away with him and tried to shuffle off
unobserved. In their hurried and rather ignominious re-
treat they ran straight into Wolf's arms.
"Lordie! Hullo!" stammered Lob. "It's Mr. Redfern
I mean, Mr. Solent, ain't it?" said Bob Weevil.
Wolf gravely shook hands with them both.
"It's not easy to keep one's money in one's pocket
on a day like this," he remarked casually.
Mr. Weevil gave him a furtive water-rat glance; and
Wolf would not have been surprised had the young man
taken incontinently to his heels.
"Bob knows all about they gipoos when they do zither
like moskitties," observed Lob slyly.
"Shut up, you kid!" retorted the other, "or I'll tell
Mr. Solent how I caught you kissing a tree."
"I never kissed no tree," muttered Lob sulkily.
"What?" cried his friend indignantly.
"If I did, 'twere along o' they loveyers us seed in
Willum's Lane ditch. 'Twere enough to make a person
kiss his wone self, what us did see; and 'twere ye
what showed 'em to I."
"I hope you have both enjoyed yourselves this afternoon,"
began Wolf again. "Christie can't have come,"
he thought to himself; and he wondered if he should
ask Mr. Weevil point-blank about her.
But Mr. Weevil was bent upon his silly, obstinate
bullying of Lobbie. He kept trying to inveigle Wolf
in this unamiable game.
"Lob thinks we're all as simple as his Mummy in Che-
quers Street!" continued the youth, with an unpleasant
leer.
"Don't 'ee listen to him!" cried Lob. "Everyone knows
what his Mummy were, afore old man Weevil paid Lawyer
Pipe to write 'Whereas' in his girt book!"
"Listen, you two " expostulated Wolf. "I want to
ask you both a question."
"He'll answer 'ee, same as my dad answered Mr. Manley
when 'a cussed about his mother's gravestone. 'Bless
us!' said my dad, 'and do 'ee take I for King Pharaoh?'"
"What was it you wanted to ask us, Sir?" enquired the
elder youth, pompously interrupting Lobbie.
"Oh, quite a simple thing, Mr. Weevil. I was only
wondering if Miss Malakite was out here today."
"Certainly she's here, Sir. Certainly she is."
"Us came along o' she, on our bicycles," threw in
Lobbie.
"Where is she now, then?" Wolf insisted.
"She went castle-way, I think, Mr. Solent," said Bob
Weevil.
"She said to we," interjected Lobbie, "that her reckoned
she'd have a quiet stroll-like, long o' they ruings."
Wolf looked from one to the other. "So, in plain
words, you deserted Miss Malakite?" he said sternly.
"Lob knows what I said when she was gone," mumbled
Mr. Weevil.
"When she were gone," echoed the boy. "I should say
so!"
"What did you say?" asked Wolf.
"He said her walked like a lame hare," threw in
Lobbie.
"I didn't, you little liar! Don't believe him, Mr.
Solent! I said she walked lonesome-like with her
head hanging down."
"That weren't all you said, Bob Weevil! Don't you
remember what you said when us were looking at thik
man-monkey? No! 'twere when us seed they girt cannibals
all covered with blue stripes. That's when 'twere!
Dursn't thee mind how thee said 'twas because Miss
Malakite hadn't got no young man that she went loppiting
off to they ruings 'stead of buying fairings like the rest
of they?"
Wolf suddenly found himself losing his temper. "I
think you both behaved abominably," he cried, "leaving
a young lady, like that, to go off by herself! Well, I'm
going after her; and I'll tell her what I think of you
two when I've found her!"
He strode off in the direction indicated by the boys'
words. It was towards the southern extremity of the fair-
field that he now made his way, where a dilapidated
hedge and a forlorn little lane separated the castle-field
from the castle-ruins. He hadn't gotten far, however,
when, glancing at a row of motionless human backs, trans-
fixed into attitudes of petrified wonder by the gesticu-
lations of a couple of clowns, he became aware that two
of those backs were obscurely familiar to him. He approached
them sideways, and his first glance at their concentrated
profiles revealed the fact that they were Mrs. Torp and
old Dimity Stone.
It gave him a queer shock to think that this tatterde-
malion shrew in rusty black was actually Gerda's mother.
For the least fragment of a second he was aware of a
shiver of animal panic, like a man who hears the ice
he is crossing bend and groan under him; but he forced
himself to walk straight up to them and salute them by
name.
"I'm glad to see you, Mrs. Torp," he said cheerfully.
"How do you do, Dimity? You and I haven't met for
several long days."
"Hark at him, Mrs. Stone," gasped Gerda's mother.
"Hark at him, how 'ee do coax a body! He do look and
speak just as I was telling 'ee, don't 'ee, now? If I
hadn't told 'ee, honest to God, how the gentleman
spoke, ye'd have never known it, would 'ee, Mrs. Stone?"
The withered face of Mrs. Torp remained turned toward
her companion as she uttered this ambiguous welcome.
She seemed unable to give Wolf so much as one single
glance from her little vixen eyes, over which two
artificial pansies, hanging from the battered bonnet
on her head, jiggled disconcertingly.
But old Dimity retained Wolf's fingers quite a long
while in her bony hand; and with absorbed and searching
interest, as if she had been a fortune-teller, she peered
into his countenance.
"The gentleman be far from what thee or any others
have reckoned," repeated the crone slowly. "I've always
known you were a deep one, Mr. Solent," she added.
"I'm glad you think better of me than Mrs. Torp does,
Dimity," threw in Wolf, and he glanced anxiously over
their heads toward the boundary of the field, his mind
full of the deserted Christie.
"I think of 'ee as one what speaks fair enough," grumbled
Gerda's mother, "but 'tis deeds I waits for. As I
said to Torp this very mornin'...'Thy fair-spoken
young gent,' I said, 'be only another Redfern; and all
the country do know how daft he were!' Squire Urquhart
must have 'em daft! Daft must they be for he, as I said
to Torp. And that's because it's only the daft 'uns what'll
serve for his cantrips the girt bog-wuzzel 'ee is!"
Wolf detected a very sagacious expression in old
Dimity's eye as she dropped his fingers at this.
"This gent hain't no more a Redfern, Jane Torp, than
a pond-pike be a gudgeon. What I've a-said to 'ee in
neighbour-fashion I'd say now to 'ee on Bible-oath."
There was a dead silence for a moment between the
three of them, broken only by the gibberish of the two
clowns, which sounded like the chatter of a pair of
impudent parakeets amid the slow, rich Dorsetshire
speech about them.
Without pausing to think of the effect of his words on
Gerda's mother, Wolf could not restrain himself from
uttering at this juncture the question which so occu-
pied his mind. "By the way, Mrs. Torp, have you, by
any chance, seen Miss Malakite here this afternoon?
I wanted to find her."
Mrs. Torp nudged her companion with the handle of
her umbrella.
"So ye're after her, too, are ye, Mister? What do 'ee
make o' that, Dimity Stone? Hee! Hee! Hee! The gentle-
man from London must have a sweetheart for Wednesday
and a sweetheart for Thursday. But you have a care,
Mr. Solent! Our Gerda hain't one for sharing her fairings;
and she'll let 'ee know it! Won't she, Dimity Stone?"
Wolf felt unable to decide whether this outburst, under
the pressure of which the thin cheeks of Mrs. Torp tight-
ened over their bones till they were as white as the skin
of a toad-stool, was just ordinary Blacksod humour or
was malignity. He contented himself with taking off his
hat, wishing them a pleasant evening, and hurrying
away.
As he moved towards the southern boundary of the field,
he found his mind beset with a burden of tumultuous
misgiving. Mrs. Torp's malicious "Hee! Hee! Hee!" con-
tinued to croak like a devil's frog in the pit of his
stomach; and he remembered with hardly less discomfort
the queer look that the old Dimity had given him. He
must find Christie! That was the one essential necess-
ity. Every step he took towards that ragged little hedge
increased his nervous agitation.
"Why did chance throw them both in my way at this
same moment?" he thought, as he walked automatically
forward. And then a still more furtive and dangerous
whisper entered his mind. 'Why didn't I meet Christie
first?"
The ghastly treachery of this final speculation, coming
to him on the very morrow of the "yellow bracken,"
only made him shake his head, as if freeing himself from
a thicket of brambles, and stride forward with more
reckless resolution than ever.
Long afterwards he could recall every slightest sensation
that he had as he crossed that empty portion of the
fair-field. One of these sensations was a vivid awareness
of the sardonic grimacing of that man in the churchyard.
The perversity of his father seemed physically to
weigh upon him. He had the feeling that he was himself
reproducing some precise piece of paternal misdoing.
He felt shamelessly like him! He felt as though his arms
were swinging as his arms used to...his legs striding
the very stride of his legs!
He had now left the last tent far behind, and was
approaching the low thickset hedge that separated the
castle-field from the castle-lane.
As he came up to the hedge, he nearly stumbled over
a half-skinned, half-eaten rabbit, one of whose glazed
wide-open eyes fixed itself upon him from the ground
with a protesting appeal.
Mechanically he stooped down, and, lifting the thing
up by its ears, placed it among the young dock-leaves
and the new shoots of hedge-parsley.
Then he leaned both his arms over the top of the bram-
bles, and, raising himself on tiptoe, peered into the
lane beyond.
Ah! He had not then come to no purpose!
A little way down the lane, under a closed and carefully
wired gate leading to the castle-ruins, crouched the
unmistakable figure of Christie Malakite.
The girl was on her knees, her legs crooked under
her and her hands clasped on her lap. By her side,
fallen to the ground, were her hat and some sort of paper
parcel. She lifted her head and saw him there; but
remained motionless, just staring at him without a sign.
Wolf tightened his long overcoat round his knees and
forced his way straight through the thick brambles. A
couple of minutes later he was kneeling by her side on
the grass, hugging her tear-stained face against his ribs
and stroking her hair with his hands. "I've had a hunt
for you...a hunt for you!" he panted. "What did you come
to this damned place for? Well! I've got you now, any-
way. I don't know what I should have done if I hadn't
found you. But I've hunted you down...like a hare, my
dear...just like a hare!"
"I'm...a...little...fool!" she gasped faintly. "I'll
be all right in a minute. I ought...to have...known
better than...to have come here! The boys were kind
...but, of course, they wanted...to enjoy themselves.
I was a burden on them...and then I felt...I felt I
couldn't...bear it!"
She pressed her face against his coat, struggling to
hold back her tears.
Moving his hands to her shoulders, and bending down,
he touched the top of her head with his lips. Her hair,
neatly divided by a carefully brushed parting, was so
silky and fine that he felt as if his kiss had penetrated
to the very centre of her skull. But she did not draw
away from him. She only buried her forehead deeper in
the folds of his heavy coat.
There was a tuft of loosely-growing stitchwort in the
hedge by the gate-post; and this frail plant, as he sur-
veyed it across her crouching form, mingled with his
wild thoughts. Had anything like this ever happened to
a man before...that on the day after such an ecstasy
he should feel as he felt now? "I must be a monster!"
he said to himself. "Am I going to begin snatching at
the soul and body of every girl I meet down here?"
With the cluster of stitchwort still illuminating his
thought, as a flower-scroll illuminates a monkish script,
he now struggled desperately to justify himself.
"This feeling," he protested, "is a different thing al-
together. It's pity...that's what it is! And, of course,
Gerda being so beautiful, pity doesn't..."
Christie lifted up her head now, and sat back, hugging
her knees and staring at him. He, too, changed his
position, so that his shoulders leant against the lower
bars of the gate. "It's queer how natural it seems to
be...to be with you like this," he said slowly.
She gave a little nod. "I used to tell myself stories
. . ." she began, searching his face intently as if what
she wanted to say lay hidden in its lines. "I feel so
different now," she went on, "that it would be easy to
tell you...." Once more her voice sank into silence.
"It's better to be alone," he echoed, "unless you can
think aloud. I've been walking about this fair-field all
the afternoon and talking to everyone; but I couldn't
think aloud until this moment."
They were both silent, staring helplessly at each other.
"I wish you were a boy, Christie!" he brought out abrupt-
ly.
Something in the peevish gravity of this must have
tickled her fancy, for she smiled at him with a free,
unrestrained, schoolgirlish smile.
"I used to wish that myself," she murmured gently;
and then she sighed, her smile fading as quickly as it
had come.
He knitted his heavy eyebrows and scowled at her in
deep thought.
Two persistent sounds forced their identities into his
drugged consciousness. The first was the brazen clamour
of the whirligig engines. The second was the whistling
of a blackbird. This latter sound had already assumed
that peculiar mellowness which meant that the sunrays
were falling horizontally upon that spot, and that
the long March afternoon was drawing to its close.
It was impossible that this bird's voice could fail to
bring to his mind the events of yesterday's twilight and
that up-turned face at which he had gazed so exultantly
in the gathering river-mists. To drown the blackbird's
notes, he began hurriedly telling her one thing after
another of his afternoon's adventures. When he came to
his conversation with Miss Gault, they both instinctively
shifted their position; and he found himself helping her
to adjust the loosened belt of her old-fashioned cloak
with a gesture that was almost paternal.
"One thing I cannot understand," he said.
"Well?" she murmured.
"I cannot understand how Olwen should feel towards
you as they tell me she does."
The girl's forehead wrinkled itself into a strained,
pinched intensity; but all she said was, "I could
never take care of any child as well as Mattie Smith."
"I don't believe you," he retorted bluntly.
He avoided her eyes now; and, as he looked away into
the great elm-tree that grew near the gate, he caught
sight of a large nest up there.
"Is that a rook's nest?" he asked, pointing it out to
her with upraised arm.
Christie turned and peered upwards.
"A missel-thrush's, I think," she said, after a second's
hesitation. "Rooks' nests are all sticks...and they're
higher up, too."
With lifted heads they both stared into the elm-tree,
and, beyond the tree, into the cold March sky.
"Why not take us as we are," he said slowly, apparently
addressing the missel-thrush's nest, "as two hunted,
harassed consciousnesses, meeting by pure chance in
endless blue space and finding out that they have the
same kind of mind?"
Their heads sank down after this, and Wolf automatically
fumbled for his cigarettes and then consciously let
them go.
"I've never felt as much at ease with anyone as with
you, Christie...except perhaps my mother. No, not
even except her."
"I think we are alike," she said quietly. And then,
with the same schoolgirlish simple amusement that had
struck him before, "We're too alike, I think, to do much
harm to anyone!"
Her face grew suddenly grave, and she stretched out
her thin arm and touched Wolf lightly on the knee. "You
must be prepared for one thing," she said. "You must be
prepared to find that I haven't a trace of what people
call the 'moral sense.'"
"I'll risk that danger!" he retorted lightly. "Besides,
if you've got no conscience, I'm worse off still. I've got
a diseased conscience!"
She didn't even smile at this sally. With a quick
wrinkling of her brow, as if under a twinge of physical
discomfort, she scrambled to her feet.
"I must get my bicycle," she said, with a little shiver.
"Father will be waiting for his supper."
Wolf rose too; and they stood rather awkwardly side
by side, while the blackbird flew off with an angry
scream.
"Where is your bicycle?" he asked lamely; and as
he saw her and felt her, standing there by his side, so
pitfully devoid of all physical magnetism, he could not
resist a chilly recognition that something of the mys-
terious appeal that had drawn him to her had slipped
away and got lost.
He felt in that second that it had been a piece of pure
madness to have wished that all this had happened before
yesterday's "yellow bracken."
She glanced up at him with a quick, searching look.
Then she tightened her cloak resolutely round her. "It's
in the Lovelace stables," she said. "I can easily find it.
You needn't come."
"Of course I'll come! I'll go with you and put you
on it; and then I'll come back for my mother."
"It's pity I feel," he said to himself. "I've got Gerda
for good and all. It's just pity I feel."
They followed the lane westward, skirting the edge of
the fair-field. When they reached the foot of "The
Slopes," they saw the whole of Ramsgard outspread be-
fore them. The sunset-mist, rising up from the River
Lunt, threw over the little town the sort of glamour that
cities wear in old fantastic prints, Vaguely, under the
anaesthesia of this diffused glory in the chilly air, he
marvelled at the mad chance that had plunged him into
these two girls' lives with this disturbing simultan-
eousness. He began furtively trying to annihilate
with his imagination first one life and then the other
from his obstinate preoccupation. But the effort proved
hopelessly futile! To conceive of the future without
Gerda's loveliness was impossible. But equally was it
impossible to cover up this strange new feeling. Only
"pity,"...but a pity that had a quivering sweetness
in it!
"You're all right now?" he enquired abruptly, as they
crossed the railway-track.
"Absolutely," she answered firmly, evidently recognizing
that this allusion to her original trouble was a sign
of a certain withdrawal in her companion. "And please,
please, believe me when I tell you that I hardly ever
...no, practically never...give way like that."
"What do you think did it?" he blurted out clumsily.
"Those silly boys deserting you?"
She made no reply at all to this; and he experienced
a wave of embarrassment that brought a hot prickling
sensation into his cheeks.
"You've been very kind to me," she said unexpectedly,
in a clear emphatic voice. And then she added very
slowly, pronouncing the words as if each of them were
a heavy bar of silver and she were an exhausted stevedore
emptying the hold of a ship, "Kinder...to me...than
anyone's...ever been...in the whole of my life."
These words of hers, healing his momentary discomfort,
gave him such happiness, that, as they entered the
Lovelace stables and she moved in front of him across
the cobblestones, he furtively rubbed his hands together,
just as he would have done if he had been alone.
"What a good thing you came over here this afternoon,"
he said, as he wheeled her bicycle out of the yard.
"I don't know about that!" she answered promptly,
with a flicker of her peculiar elfish humour; and it
turned out to be the tone of these words beyond all
others, that remained with him when she was gone. They
had the tone of some sort of half-human personality
...some changeling out of the purer elements...upon
whose nature whatever impressions fell would always
fall with a certain mitigation, with a certain lenient
tenuity, like the fall of water upon water, or of air upon
air!
CHRISTIE
THE CHEAP WOODEN CLOCK ON THE MANTELPIECE OF
HIS small parlour made itself audible to the ears of Wolf
across the little passageway as he stood above his ki-
tchenstove. Eight times the clock struck; and the old
vivid consciousness of what time was and was not caught
his mind and held it. It was not a consciousness of the
passing of time as it affected his own life that arrested
him. Of that kind of individual awareness he had scarcely
any trace. To himself he always seemed neither young
nor old. Indeed, of--bodily self-consciousness that
weather-eye, kept open to the addition of years and
months upon his personal head--he had nothing at all.
What he lived in was not any compact, continuous sense
of personal identity, but rather a series of disembodied
sensations, some physical, some mental, in which his
identity was absolutely merged and lost. He was vividly
aware of these momentary sensations in relation to other
feelings of the same kind, some long past and some an-
ticipated in his imagination; but he was accustomed to
regard all these not from out of the skin, so to speak,
of a living organism, but from a detachment so remote and
far away as to seem almost outside both the flowing of
time and the compactness of personality.
Eight o'clock in the morning of the first day of June
was what that timepiece said to him now; and his mind
paused upon the recognition of the vast company of
clocks and watches all the world over, ticking, ticking,
ticking--sending up, in tiny metallic beats, vibrations
of human computation into the depths of unthinkable
space.
He pushed open the iron cover of the stove and jabbed
with his poker at the fire inside. Then he took up a
wooden spoon and stirred the contents of an enamelled
pot of porridge that stood there, moving it aside from
the heat. A thrill of satisfaction ran through him when
he had done this, and he rubbed his hands together and
made a "face," drawing back his under-lip in the manner
of a gargoyle, and constricting the muscles of his
chin.
In less than half-an-hour, he thought, he would be
enjoying his breakfast at that kitchen-table with Gerda,
lovely and sulky as a young animal after her abrupt
awakening.
He ran up the short flight of creaking stairs, car-
peted with new linoleum; and with the merest pretence
of a tap at the door entered their bedroom. The
girl was lying on her back fast asleep, her fair hair
spread out, loose and bright in the sunshine, across the
indented pillow of her recent bedfellow. Her arms were
outstretched above the coverlet, and one of her hands
was hanging down over the side of the bed. His entrance
did not arouse her, and he stood for a while at her
side, meditating on the mysterious simplicity of her
especial kind of loveliness.
Then he bent down, kissed her into consciousness,
laughed at her scolding, and with one resolute swing of
his arms lifted her bodily from the bed, set her on her
feet on the floor, and hugged her to his heart, struggling
and indignant. The warmth of her body under the childish
white night-gown she wore, buttoned close up to her
chin, gave him a rough, earthy, animal ecstasy. He had
already discovered that it was more delicious to hold
her like this, he himself fully awake and dressed, and
she as she was, than under any other circumstances. A
pleasant element of the unhabitual and the predatory
sweetened for him that particular embrace. "Don't!" she
cried, struggling to push him away. "Don't, Wolf! Let
me go, I tell you!" But he went on kissing her and
caressing her as if it had been the first time he had ever
taken her in his arms.
At last, lifting her clean off her feet, with both arms
under her body, he put her back upon the bed and drew
the bedclothes over her.
"There!" he cried. "How does that feel?"
But the girl turned round with her face to the wall
and refused to speak.
"Eight o'clock, young lady," he cried brusquely.
"Breakfast will be ready in a quarter of an hour."
For answer she only pulled the bedclothes more tightly
round her neck.
"If you haven't time to wash or do your hair, you must
come down as you are. Where's your dressing-gown?"
And he looked vaguely round the room. "Hurry up,
now!" he added. "Remember all that's going to happen
today,"
There was a movement under the twisted sheet.
"You're a wretch!" she gasped, in a muffled voice.
"Never mind what I am. Keep your scoldings till you
get downstairs. I've got an exciting piece of news for
you."
This brought her round with a jerk.
"What are you hiding up in your mind now? Tell
me quick! Tell me, Wolf!"
But he only laughed at her, waved his hand, and
went out.
Running downstairs again, he returned to the kitchen,
moved the steaming kettle to the side of the stove, turned
the spoon in the oatmeal, and then, crossing the little
passage where his own grey overcoat and Gerda's cream-
coloured cloak, hanging side by side on their adjoining
pegs, regarded him with equivocal intentness, he opened
the front-door and went out into the road.
In one warm inrushing wave the fragrance of the
whole West Country seemed to flow through him as he
came forth. Sap-sweet emanations from the leafy recesses
of all the Dorset woods on that side of High Sloy seemed
to mingle at that moment with the rank, grassy breath
of all the meadow-lands of Somerset.
The iron railings in front of that row of meagre, non-
descript houses opened upon the airy confluence of two
vast provinces of leafiness and sunshine--to the right
Melbury Bub, with its orchards and dairies; to the left
Glastonbury, with its pastures and fens while the umbra-
geous "auras" of these two regions, blending together
in the air above the roofs of Blacksod, merged into yet
a third essence, an essence sweeter than either--the very
soul of the whole wide land lying between the English
Channel and the Bristol Channel.
Number Thirty-Seven Preston Lane was the last house
in a row of small workmen's cottages at the extreme
western limit of the town of Blacksod. What met Wolf's
actual eyes as he clicked the little gate in the iron
railings and emerged upon the road, was only a small
portion of the secret causes of his happiness that June
morning. He had long craved to establish himself in
just such a nondescript row of unpretentious dwellings
on the outskirts of a town. He had always had a
feeling that the magic of simple delights came with
purer impact upon the mind when unalloyed by the
"artistic" or the "picturesque." Large houses and large
gardens, pretty houses and pretty gardens, seemed to
intrude themselves, with all their responsibilities of
possession, between his senses and the free, clear flow
of unconfined, unpersonalized beauty. His feeling about
the matter had something in common with the instinct
that has created the monk's cell--only the cell that
Wolf preferred was a lath-and-plaster workman's villa, a
place possessed of no single aesthetic quality, except
perhaps that of being easily kept very neat and clean.
The fact of living here with Gerda under conditions
identical with those of the Blacksod carpenters, brick-
layers, and shop-assistants, threw into beautiful relief
every incident of his life's routine. Preparing food,
preparing fires, the very floor-scrubbing wherein he
shared, took on for him, just because of this absence
of the deliberately "artistic," a rarefied poetical
glamour.
He moved out now into the middle of the road and
surveyed the landscape. As he did so, two very distinct
and contradictory odours assailed his nostrils. There
were no houses across the way, nothing but a foul-smell-
ing ditch, the recipient of sewage from an adjoining
pig-yard; and beyond that, an enormously high hedge,
on the top of which, where no child could reach, grew
clumps of honeysuckle and sprays of wild roses. The
smell of these flowers contended oddly enough with the
smell of pigs' dung; and the two odours, thus subtly
mingled, had become for him a constant accompaniment
to the thoughts that passed through his mind as he
went in and out of his tiny front-garden.
The pigsty was on his right as he stood facing the
ditch; but on his left there grew in the meadow just
beyond the hedge a large ash-tree a tree from among
whose grey upcurving branches a thrush was wont to
sing, always increasing the vehemence of its ecstasy
till the moment when the road grew quite dark. The bird
began singing now, and its thrush-notes made Wolf
think of those wild blackbird-notes of Gerda, as they
flooded the meadows on the day when she lost her vir-
ginity.
Thinking of Gerda as he stared up into the ash-tree,
he began to meditate on the extraordinary good luck
he had had ever since he had come to the West Country.
"I must be born under a lucky star," he thought; and
his mind set itself to review the most recent examples
of this good fortune.
He recalled the satisfactory manner in which his iron-
willed mother had suddenly receded from all her oppo-
sition to his union with Gerda. He recalled the equally
satisfactory generosity of Mr. Urquhart, who had come
forward with an offer to let her go on living at Lenty
Cottage free of rent as long as Wolf himself remained
his secretary.
He recalled the extraordinary kindness displayed
toward him by Darnley Otter, who had not only lent him
the fifty pounds necessary to buy furniture, but had also
introduced him to the authorities of the Blacksod Grammar
School, where he was now earning a pound a week by giv-
ing lessons every morning in English and History.
"Luck! luck! luck!" he said in his heart, rubbing his
hands together. Through his thin indoor shoes the mag-
netism of the earth seemed at that moment pouring into
every nerve of his body. Happiness, such as he had
rarely experienced, flooded his being; and the fantastic
idea came into his head that if he were to die now he
would in some subtle way cheat death.
"I must remember this moment," he said to himself.
"Whatever happens to me henceforth, I must remember
this moment, and be grateful to the gods!"
Just as he opened the iron gate and glanced at the
two or three newly-budded plants that were coming out
in his little patch of garden, the owner of the pigsty,
a ruffianly curmudgeon who earned his living in more
than one disreputable way, took it into his head to pour
out a great bucket of swill into the pig-trough, an action
that caused so ear-piercing a volley of bestial shrieks,
that Wolf stopped aghast, his heart almost ceasing to
beat, and, turning his head, threw an agitated glance
toward that sinister little erection of tarred boardings.
His first idea was that one of the animals was being
slaughtered; but the sound of voracious gobbling which
now reached his ears reassured him.
"He's only feeding them," he said to himself, and en-
tered the house. In the kitchen he found Gerda already
beginning her bowl of porridge.
"What's the news, Wolf?" she enquired, with the indis-
tinct voice of a greedy child, turning, as she did
so, her cream-clogged spoon upside-down in her mouth,
so as to lick it clean. "What's this you were going to
tell me?"
"Guess, sweetheart!" he said contentedly, emptying
what was left of the cream-jug over his own oatmeal.
"Nothing, in fact, could be better. Urquhart announced
last night that he has decided to go slow with our His-
tory. You know what a hurry he's been in? But he now
says he's decided to make a complete job of it, even
if it takes five years to finish."
The infantile sulkiness in Gerda's face only deepened
at his words, and with an impatient gesture she stretched
out her arms and tossed back her head. Then she tight-
ened the green ribbon with which she had fastened her
locks, and fixed upon him a cloudy, satiric frown. She
appeared so enchanting in her crossness, that Wolf forgot
everything as he watched these movements, and for a
moment he just looked at her in silence.
"You don't think much of my news, then?" he said
presently. "But you don't realize how awkward it would
have been if this confounded book had come to an end
this Autumn. Where would we have got another hundred
pounds from, eh, sweetheart? Tell me that!"
"A hundred pounds!" the girl muttered sarcastically.
"Yes, a hundred pounds," he retorted. "Two-thirds
of our income."
He rose and moved to the stove, to get the kettle to
refill their teapot.
"But that's not all; so you needn't look sour. There's
something much more amusing than that." She waited
impatiently now, and he went on. "Urquhart doesn't
want me over there this afternoon and Mother's coming
to tea."
The girl's sulkiness changed in a moment to something
like pitiful dismay.
"Oh, Wolf!" she exclaimed. "This is the first time."
"She's been twice to lunch," he said.
But Gerda's eyes remained troubled and very wide
open, and the corners of her under-lip drooped.
"Darnley was here, too both times!" she gasped.
"We've never had her alone, and I've got no clothes
for an afternoon."
"No clothes?"
"You know what I mean, perfectly well," she went on
peevishly. "People like your mother don't have the
same things on in the morning as they do in the af-
ternoon."
Wolf watched her with narrowing eyelids. He recalled
that first walk with her up the slope of Babylon Hill,
and his pursuit of her among the earthworks of Poll's
Camp. Why did all girls introduce into life an element
of the conventional into that life of which they them-
selves were the most mysterious expression? He became
suddenly aware of the existence, in the beautiful head
opposite him, of a whole region of interests and values
that had nothing to do with love-making and nothing to
do with romance. Was love itself, then, and all its
mysteries, only a kind of magic gate leading into a
land full of alien growths and unfamiliar soils?
"Gerda, my sweet Gerda!" he cried reproachfully.
"How absurd! What does it matter? It's only my mother.
She must take us as she finds us."
The girl pouted and smiled scornfully.
"That's all you know!" she retorted. "Your mother's
a woman, isn't she?"
Wolf stared at her. Was there then some queer inner
world, parallel to the one that was important to him,
wherein women encountered one another, and without
whose ritual life was completely unreal to them? "God!"
he thought to himself. "If this is so, the sooner I get
the secret of this 'other reality,' the better for both
Gerda and me!"
"Well, I only beg one thing of you, sweetheart," he
went on aloud, "and that is that you don't try and make
those funny scones again that you made for Christie.
I'll get some halfpenny buns or tea-cakes at Pimpernel's."
"Halfpenny buns!" she repeated contemptuously.
He began to raise his voice. "They're the very nicest
things! How silly you are! But I don't care what you
get, as long as there's plenty of thin bread-and-butter."
"I can't cut it! I never could cut it!" she cried help-
lessly, her enormous grey eyes beginning to fill with
tears.
It was then that Wolf began to realize that it was
necessary to be as indulgent to the "realities" of this
alien array of feelings as if they had been those of a
being of a different planet. He got up from his seat
and walked round their square kitchen-table, a table
that according to his own caprice had been left bare of
any covering. Standing over the girl, he bent her head
back with both his hands and kissed her many times.
It seemed to him, as he did this, that he had done this
very same thing in another room, and even in another
country. He remained motionless behind her for a mo-
ment when he had released her, and lifted his head.
Where had all this occurred before? A queer feeling
came over him as if she and he were acting a part in
some fantastic dream-world, and that he had only to
make one enormous effort, to find he had destroyed for
both of them the whole shadow-scenery of their life.
But Gerda, knowing nothing of what was passing in his
mind, turned round in her chair and pushed him away
with all the strength of her young arm.
"Don't be so annoying, Wolf!" she cried. "There! I'm
hungry, I tell you. Haven't you got any eggs for us?"
He moved away obediently to the stove, made his
arrangements for boiling three eggs two for himself
and one for her and remained there on guard, his
watch in his hand.
The audible ticking of his watch, as he concentrated
his mind upon it, answered the louder ticking of the
clock in the parlour across the passage. "Time again!"
he sighed. And then he thought, "But I've got the power
to deal with far more serious jolts to my happiness than
this finding out that a girl's 'reality' is not my 'rea-
lity'!"
In a minute or two, when he had set a china egg-cup
in front of each of them and had placed a brown egg
within hers and a white one in his own, and had resumed
his seat, he found that his quick adjustment of the wheels
and cogs of his mind had proved successful. "It doesn't
matter in the least," he thought, "whether we understand
each other or not. My existence is necessary to her, just
as hers is to me. Neither of us can really spoil anything
as long as that's the case."
Whatever secret ways Gerda had of adjusting the machin-
ery of her mind, seemed to have been as successful as
his own; for when she had satisfied her hunger and fill-
ed her teacup with strong, sweet tea, she lifted her head
quite cheerfully.
"I'll go to Pimpernel's myself," she said. "I saw something
there yesterday that I'm sure your mother would like. And
I'll make toast. That'll be just as nice as bread-and-butter."
Wolf declared himself completely satisfied at this prospect.
"You go up now, sweetheart," he said, "and finish dressing,
and make the bed. I'll wash up. I'll just have time for
that. There, do go quick! I don't want anyone to knock at
the door and find you like that. We've got to keep up the
prestige of Preston Lane!"
He spoke jestingly, but there was an element of concern
at the back of his mind. He had had some uncomfortable
moments now and again, when tradesmen's boys had come
to the door at an early hour. He hated to think of their
menage being a laughing-stock to all the Lob Torps and
Bob Weevils of the town.
It was a complete puzzle to him the way in which
Gerda made such a fuss about the conventions where his
mother was concerned, while to the Bob Weevils of the
place she let down every barrier as completely as if
she'd drifted into Blacksod from the primeval woods of
Arcady.
As he watched her now, rushing upstairs like a young
Maenad, he remembered how the fancy had come into
his mind, thai afternoon at Poll's Camp, that the West-
Saxon Torp blood in her had been crossed at some very
early stage with an altogether different strain.
Hurriedly gathering the dishes together on the edge
of the sink, he proceeded to do what would certainly
not have passed unobserved by a more practical mistress
of the house. He proceeded to hold cups, saucers,
plates, bowls, knives, forks, and pots and pans under a
tap of perfectly cold water, rubbing them and scraping
them with his bare fingers, and then drying them vio-
lently--greasy as most of them were--with the kitchen-
towel. As he did this, he caught a glimpse out of the
window of a stunted little laburnum-tree, which grew
in their back-yard; and he noticed, as he had often
noticed before, how one of its boughs was leafless
and seemed to be stretching out, in a sorrowful, fumb-
ling sort of way, towards their neighbour's fence, a-
bove which grew a sturdy lilac-bush, covered now with
glossy heartshaped leaves.
On this occasion, however, for some unaccountable rea-
son, the sight of this forlorn branch brought vividly to
his mind the figure of Christie Malakile, as he had seen
her that day, crouched in the castle-lane. And with that
image there came to him--as if a door had unexpectedly
opened in the remotest wall of his mind's fortress a
deep, sickening craving, it was hard to tell for what--
a craving that pierced him like the actual thrust of a
spear. The bareness and tension of that extended branch
had won his sympathy before; but today, as he rubbed
the porridge-pot furiously with the greasy towel and
emptied the hot kettle-water into it, the sight of the
thing seemed to disturb the complacency of his whole
being.
A minute or two later, when he saw it again from the
window of their small privy, which abutted upon the
same back-yard, he got a sense of being hemmed in,
burdened, besieged, while some vague, indistinct appeal,
hard to define, was calling upon him for aid.
He moved out to the foot of the staircase, and, with
his hand upon the bannister, stood motionless, lost in
strange thoughts. These glimpses of certain fixed ob-
jects, seen daily, yet always differently, through bed-
room-windows, scullery-windows, privy-windows, had, from
his childhood, possessed a curious interest for him. It
was as if he got from them a sort of runic handwriting,
the "little language" of Chance itself, commenting upon
what was, and is, and was to come. As he stood there,
he could hear Gerda moving about upstairs, and he hes-
itated as to whether to run up and speak to her, or to go
out, as he generally did, without further farewell.
He decided finally upon the latter course; something
at the bottom of his mind, just then, making anything
else seem strained and unnatural. Snatching up his oakstick,
therefore, he let himself out of the house with
deliberate quietness, and walked with rapid steps down
the road.
His way to the Grammar School led him past the confect-
ioner's shop; and at the sight of the name "Pimpernel"
over the door, he decided to run in for a moment and
see for himself if the particular tea-cakes that he
had in mind were available that day.
Not finding what he wanted, he was on the point of
going out again, when he heard a familiar voice proceeding
from the interior part of the shop. It was too late to
retreat. He was already recognized; and in another
second he found himself face to face with Mrs. Torp.
Gerda's mother had been engaged in persuading old
Ruth Pimpernel to sell her a loaf of yesterday's bread
at half-price.
Shaking hands vigorously with this uncongenial apparition,
whose shrewish aspect was not modified by the
dirty black bonnet she wore balanced on the top of her
head, Wolf found himself propitiating the woman to
the extreme limit of a somewhat unctuous geniality.
He had often noticed that when his blood had been quick-
ened by rapid walking, he had a tendency to exaggerate
his natural bonhomie to a degree that was almost fat-
uous.
"You haven't come to see us for such a long while, Mrs.
Torp," he cried. "Gerda and I can't get on without seeing
something of you. It's too ridiculous"--so he blundered
on, in complete disregard of the sly expression in
Mrs. Torp's eyes, like the expression of a tethered dog
leering at a hutch of tame hares--"it's too ridiculous to
have you in the same place and to see so little of you!"
It was impossible even for the perspicacity of Joan
Torp to put down this blustering friendliness to its true
account to the pleasant glow, namely, diffused through
Wolfs veins by his rapid walk; and so, with a nearer ap-
proach to a benevolent grimace than he had ever seen
on her grim features, she assured him with unhesitating
emphasis that she would, "as sure as us be standing here,
Mr. Solent," drop in for tea that very afternoon at Preston
Lane.
The appearance of the shop-girl with the stale loaf
destined for the monument-maker's table--Mr. Torp
abominated stale bread--prevented the woman from de-
tecting the cloud that descended on Wolf's brow on
receipt of this prompt acceptance of his hospitality.
It was, indeed, only when he was hurrying out of the
confectioner's shop that he had the wit to turn round
and fling back a suggestion that if Mrs. Torp went over
there, now at once, her daughter would be very pleased
to see her.
"I'll leave it to Gerda," he thought to himself. "She'll
manage it somehow."
His mind, however, remained all that morning, as
he sat at his desk in the Grammar School fourth-form
room, asking questions about Edward Longshanks, teas-
ingly preoccupied with this encounter.
"She may not go there at all," he thought. "It isn't
her way to go there in the morning. They're so funny,
those two, about their houses. Well, we must chance it
and hope for the best!"
And then, as he enlarged to his class upon that form-
idable black sarcophagus in Westminster Abbey, with
its grim inscription, the under-flow of his mind kept
fretting against all the little incidents that had led to
this annoying issue.
"If I hadn't stayed so long at that confounded privy
window, I should have got out of Pimpernel's before
she came in. And if I'd stopped to say good-bye to
Gerda, she'd have gone before I got there at all. Damn!
It's like the rope, the water, the fire, the dog, and the
old woman getting home from market."
When his class was let out and he himself escaped into
the street at half-past twelve, it occurred to him that
it was curious how faint an impact upon his consciousness
this business of teaching history made. He was clever
enough to do the whole job with the surface of his mind.
"What the devil do those boys think of me?" he wondered
grimly. "I forget their existence as soon as I'm out
of sight of them."
He met Darnley Otter, at that moment, issuing forth
from his Latin lesson with a pile of papers in his hand.
Darnley greeted him with more than his usual cordiality;
and as Wolf looked into his friend's strangelycoloured
eyes, he felt that peculiar sensation of relief which
men are wont to feel when they encounter each other
after the confusion of sex-conflicts.
Darnley laid his free hand on his friend's arm, and
they moved down the street together; but for a while
Wolf heard nothing of what he was saying, so occupied
was he with a sudden question, gaping like a crack in a
hot stubble-field in the very floor of his mind, that had
just then obtruded itself. Was he really "in love," in
the proper sense of that word, with his sweet bedfellow?
"But very likely I could never be 'in love' in that sense
with anyone," he said to himself as they walked along.
And then he became aware that Darnley had been speaking
to him for some while.
"I don't see why I shouldn't take you," he was saying
now. "I would, like a shot, if she hadn't been so funny
the other day when I talked about you. But I expect
there's nothing in that! Perhaps you hurt her feelings in
some way. She's a queer little oddity. I found that out
long ago. One has to be awfully careful."
These words, and other words before them, now began
to penetrate Wolf's consciousness, as they might
have done with a person recovering from an anaesthetic.
"Sorry," he muttered apologetically, standing stock-
still on the pavement. "I wasn't listening."
Darnley stroked his pointed beard and looked him up
and down.
"You're boy-drunk, poor devil," he murmured sympath-
etically. "It does take time to wear off. You're re-
peating to yourself what you'd like to have retorted to
Rintoul Minor when he made you feel a fool. I'm often
like that myself."
"No, I'm not," protested the other. "But what were
you saying?"
"Nothing very startling," said Darnley quietly, pulling
him forward by the arm. "It's only I thought I'd take
you with me to Christie's to lunch. Gerda won't mind,
once in a way, will she?"
Wolf drew his heavy eyebrows down so low that his start-
led gaze gleamed out at his companion like lanternlight
from a thatched shed. "I...don't...suppose so," he mut-
tered hesitatingly.
The truth was that Darnley's suggestion had set some-
thing vibrating violently deep down within him, like
the thuds of a buried drum played by an earth-gnome.
So this was what things had been tending to since he
had caught sight of that laburnum-branch?
Darnley smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
"Don't say any more," he cried. "I see you don't want
to come. Well! Off with you, then...back to your Sax-
on beauty. Christie's expecting me, anyway."
But Wolf held him with an appeal in his eye.
"It's only that Gerda and I have got special things
to do today," he said. "Under ordinary conditions I'd
have loved to come."
Darnley looked at him gravely. "No bad news, I hope?"
he said.
Wolf was silent. All manner of queer fancies passed,
like the shadows of rooks over a pond, across the surface
of his brain. One thing particularly he found himself
dwelling upon. "Didn't seem friendly to me, eh?" And
he recalled the only two occasions on which he had seen
Christie alone since his marriage.
On both those occasions she had avoided all allusion
to the day of the horse-show. But she had been self-
possessed and natural, had laughed at his jests, had
talked freely with him about Mattie, had not even drawn
back from a passing reference to Olwen. And though her
allusions to Gerda were faint and slight, they were
friendly and sympathetic. But Wolf remembered well
how he had experienced a profound astonishment at
the abysses of pride and reserve into which this frail
being had the power of retreating.
"Gerda has been a bit surprised," he said at last, ob-
serving that Darnley was growing impatient to be off,
"that a friend like Christie hasn't been in to see us
more often."
His companion freed his sleeve from the nervous clutch
with which Wolf quite unconsciously had seized it.
"That's silly of Gerda," he said curtly. "She ought to
understand Christie better than that. Christie never goes
out to see people. People have to come and see her. Look
here, Solent" and as he spoke, a gleam of boyish eager-
ness came into his face "why don't you run back home
now, have a bit of lunch, and then both you and Gerda
come round to Christie's? I'll tell her you're coming.
She'll keep some hot chocolate for you. She makes splen-
did hot chocolate."
Wolf hesitated. "We've got my mother coming to tea," he
said. "And perhaps someone else too," he added, think-
ing of Mrs. Torp.
"That's all right. There'll be plenty of time for that.
It's not half-past two, anyway. Do go off now, there's
a good chap; and be sure you bring Gerda."
Wolf remained silent, uncertain, ill at ease, tapping
the ground with his stick.
"All right," he said at last. "I'll do as you say. We
shan't be long over our lunch, that's certain. But make
it plain to Christie that we're only coming for a very
short time. Tell her we've got to get back to tea. That'll
reassure her," he added sardonically, "if we get on
her nerves."
"Don't be an ass, Solent," was his friend's farewell-
remark as they turned to go their different ways.
It took Wolf as a rule exactly twenty minutes to walk
from the Grammar School gate to his own door; but this
time he lengthened the way by debouching into Monmouth
Street, where there were no shops and scarcely any
traffic.
The hot June sun was shining down almost perpendicularly
on the warm, uneven cobblestones of this quiet alley,
stones that left room for the occasional out-cropping
of thin moss-soft blades of grass. Wolf walked along
slowly, under the high brick wall which enclosed the
pleasant garden of a certain Lawyer Gault, a remote
relative of Selena's. He came to a spot where the
branches of a tall lime-tree just inside the lawyer's
garden threw a dreamy pattern of motionless shadows upon
the stones at his feet. There he stood still, while those
dark patterns upon the sunlit ground made that portion
of the earth seem porous and insubstantial. And then
again that drum-like beating in the depths of his heart
brought up the vision of Christie Malakite, huddled and
crouched, as he had seen her on the day of the Fair.
Making no attempt this time to restrain his thoughts,
he discovered, as he gave himself up to his mental dis-
loyalty, a curious emotional phenomenon. He discovered
that the peculiar glamour which had always hovered for
him like a diaphanous cloud round the impersonal idea
of girlhood, had concentrated itself upon the image of
Christie. He plunged into a very strange aspect of his
feelings, as he stood on those cobblestones and stared
at those dark shadows. The thought of Gerda's warmth
gave him a voluptuous thrill, direct, earthy, full of
honest and natural desire. But he recognized now that
there hovered over the personality of this other girl
something more subtle than this nothing less, in fact,
than that evasive aura of mysterious girlishness the
platonic idea, so to speak, of the mystery of all young
girls, which was to him the most magical thing in the
whole world. What had drawn him from the beginning to
Gerda had been her wonderful beauty, and after that
her original personality, her childish character. He
could see Gerda's face now, at this moment, before him
he could catch the tones of her voice. He could feel
how lovely she was, as he held her and caressed her.
Christie's face, on the contrary, was all vague in
his memory; her voice was vague; the touch of her
hand was vague. It was hard to believe that he had
ever had his arms about her. And yet it was Christie
who had drawn into herself all those floating inti-
mations of the mystery of a girl's soul, gathered
here and there, like cowslips in green valleys, which
were above everything so precious to him.
The chatter of a couple of starlings that sank to the
ground behind the wall, quarrelling and scolding,
brought him at last to himself. He pulled down his
strawhat over his eyes and moved qff homewards.
When he opened the door of Number Thirty-Seven, he
found Gerda covered from head to foot in a print apron,
her head bound up in a green scarf, brushing the floor
of their parlour.
"You can't come in now," she said, "unless you want
to sit in the bedroom. I'll be doing the kitchen pre-
sently. It's no good your going in there."
"Good Lord, child!" he expostulated, coughing and
sneezing with exaggerated emphasis, as he propped up
his stick in its accustomed corner. "The place will be
covered with dust! Why can't you let things alone? My
mother would never have noticed whether the room was
brushed or not. It'll take hours for all this to settle!"
She rested on her great broom and surveyed him through
her cloud of sun-illumined dust-motes. Under her gaze
Wolf felt his actual body stiffen into a pose of clumsy
awkwardness. He experienced a sense of humiliating
self-consciousness. He felt like a fool, and a trea-
cherous fool. The gaze she fixed upon him was the kind
of gaze the Olympian dawn-goddess might have fixed upon
her human lover at the moment when he first betrayed
the tricky and shifty mortality of his race. He never
altogether forgot that experience. It made a hole in
his armour which never, to the end of his life, quite
closed up. Henceforth, in all his thoughts of himself,
he had to allow for a weak and shaky spot in the very
groundwork of his character a weakness that nothing
short of the clairvoyance of a woman could ever
have laid bare!
"All right," he murmured stupidly. "I'll go wherever
you want me to go, my dear." And when he found that
she still watched him with a sort of pondering detach-
ment, he made a hopeless effort to read her thoughts.
Her look seemed to express resentment, superiority,
irony; and yet there was tenderness in it too, and a sort
of pitiful indulgence. It was one of those looks in which
everything that is most obscure in the relation between
two people rises to the surface and can find no expres-
sion in human words. All he knew was that this look of
hers let him off and did not let him off; though what
she could know of the vague, secret thoughts that had
been his that day, he could not conceive!
"I'll go anywhere you like, Gerda," he repeated lame-
ly; and in order to break this spell, he took up a
cloth duster she had laid on the back of a chair, and
made a motion to dust the chimneypiece.
She relaxed her reverie at this, and resumed her work
without taking further notice of him. This enabled him
to turn round again, and, with the duster still in his
hand, watch furtively every one of her gestures. The
apron she'd twisted so tightly about her body, the bit
of green muslin she had tied so quaintly around her
head, threw the whiteness of her skin and the softness
of her flesh into extraordinary relief. She went on
vigorously wielding the broom with her rounded arms, the
movements which she made displaying the loveliness of
her shoulders and the suppleness of her flanks, till Wolf
began to forget everything except the voluptuous fasci-
nation of looking at her.
This had not gone on very long before he became
aware that she knew perfectly well exactly in what mood
he was watching her. Every now and then she would
straighten her body to rest her muscles, and then, as she
lifted her hands to readjust the green muslin at the
back of her head, the contours of her young breasts
under the tight-fitting apron assumed the nobility of
Pheidian sculpture. Whenever she did this she glanced
at him under dreamy, abstracted eyelids, and she seemed
to know well that what of all things he wanted most at
that moment was just to make rough, reckless, self-o-
bliterating love to her. And she seemed to know, too,
that if she let him do that, just then, some indescrib-
able advantage she had won over him would be altogether
lost. Across an unfathomable gulf she shot these glances
at him, the thick dust-gendered sun-motes flashing and
gyrating between them like the spilled golden sands of
some great overturned hour-glass.
Under the pressure of his conflicting feelings, Wolf's
heart contracted within him; and the pride of his threa-
tened life-illusion gathered about it, like broken bubbles
of quicksilver gathering against the sides of a globe of
crystal.
At last, throwing down the duster, he sprang towards her,
driven by the blind, unconscious cunning of a predatory
animal and by sheer, exasperated desire. But the girl
slipped away from him, laughing like a hunted oread,
and, lifting her great broom between them, escaped
round the edge of the parlour-table, from which she
had removed the cloth. Red in the face now, and breath-
ing hard and fast, he pursued her obstinately; and
they both ran, panting and hot, round and round that
polished expanse of wood, that mocked him like a shining
shield. In her flight she dropped the broom, and he
in his clumsy pursuit stumbled and almost fell over it.
Then he gave up; because, in a single flash of the dark-
lantern of his self-esteem, he saw this whole incident
between them just as Bob Weevil would have seen it, had
he been pressing his inquisitive face against their win-
dow-pane. But as they stood there, stock-still, panting
like two animals and staring at each other across the
polished wood, it came into his head that if there had
been nothing more subtle than that table between them,
this game of theirs would have been full of a rich de-
light for both of them, Bob Weevil or no Bob Weevil!
Heavily he drew his breath, watching the tiny drops
of perspiration on her forehead, and her panting bosom.
"She's a complete stranger to me!" he said to himself,
with a puzzled sigh.
"You'll never catch me like that, Wolf," gasped Gerda,
with a melodious chuckle; "so you'd better give up and
admit you're beaten."
But he thought to himself: "She thinks she's acting
the naughty child. She thinks she's ruffled my dignity.
She thinks I'm a pompous ass, who can't play naturally
with a girl in that sort of way." He moved from the table,
and, throwing himself into -a wicker-chair, lit a cigar-
ette. "But I could, I could," he thought, "if only oh,
damn all this business of loving girls! It's getting
out of my control; it's getting too much for me!"
Through their open window came the clear, ringing notes
of the thrush in the ash-tree, along with that curious
scent of honeysuckle mixed with pigs' dung which was
their familiar atmosphere. She, too, heard the thrush,
and, balancing the broom against a chair, walked to the
window and leaned against -the side of it, her profile
toward him.
"What would I feel," he said to himself, "if she started
whistling her blackbird-song now?"
But Gerda displayed no desire for whistling. Her face
looked pale and a little sad; and leaning there, with
her forehead resting upon one of her bare arms as it lay
along the woodwork of the window, she seemed to be
lost in concentrated thought.
Wolf felt a sudden longing to go across to her and
comfort her comfort her about those errant feelings of
his own that it was impossible to believe she had inter-
cepted in their secret passage through his brain! He
couldn't, surely, at that moment, announce to her Darn-
ley's plan?
What he actually did was neither to go up to her nor
to tell her about the projected visit. He rose to his
feet, and said abruptly: "Well! What about lunch, my
dear?" At this remark she lifted up her head from her
arm with a jerk, dropped her hand to her side, and,
giving him one quick look of unspeakable reproach,
went out without a word into the kitchen.
"Damn!" he thought to himself. "She can't be a witch!
She can't have the power to read a person's thoughts!
Besides, what did I think? Nothing beyond what everyone
thinks sometimes; wild, crazy, outrageous nonsense!
It must be her mother. That old trot must have come
round, after all."
He resumed his seat in the wicker-chair; but he felt
too miserable even to light a cigarette.
His obscure distress swathed every one of the thrush's
notes with a thick soot-coloured wrapping, so that they
flapped at him like so many black flags. On the gusts
of hedge-scent and ditch-scent his discomfort rose and
fell, rocking him up and down in swart desolation.
"I wish I'd gone straight up to her at the window just
now," he said to himself. "I can't bear to have her
looking like that. Christ saw a man under a fig-tree,
or whatever it was; and I suppose a girl can see a man
under a lime-tree and read his thoughts like a map!"
He threw off his gloom as well as he could, and walked
slowly into the kitchen. There he found her absent-
mindedly laying the table for a meal of bread and cheese.
He mechanically started helping her, getting out the
knives and forks from the dresser-drawer and uncorking
a bottle of beer.
When the meal was ready she untied her apron, removed
the muslin from her head, washed her hands at the sink,
and then, instead of taking her place opposite him,
stood wavering and helpless in the middle of the room.
"I think I'll go out for a breath of air," she announced.
"I must have swallowed too much dust. I'm not hungry."
Wolf had already taken his seat; and, as she spoke, in-
stead of moving away from him, as her remark suggested,
she made a queer little helpless movement towards him.
This time he did know what to do. He jumped up and
sprang towards her, and hugged her tightly to his
heart, overcoming her weak resistance, pressing her
cheek, now quickly wet with tears, against his own. They
remained thus for some seconds, with their arms round
each other, but without a word, leaving the parlourclock
and the incorrigible thrush to deal as they pleased
with the passing of time.
At length he withdrew his clasp, and, making her sit
down at the table, filled her glass with foaming ale.
The mellowness of the drink, combined with the obvious
sincerity of his embrace, seemed to drive away the
unhappy mood that obsessed her. She turned to the meal
before them and began eating with relish. As they ate
they talked quietly of what they would prepare for his
mother's tea. Wolf found it wise at present to say no-
thing of Mrs. Torp.
When they were satisfied, however, and after he had
handed her a cigarette for it always amused him to
see the childishly incompetent way Gerda smoked he
plunged boldly into the matter of their visit to the
bookseller's shop. With one part of his heart he wished
this project at the devil; but he said to himself it
would be absurd to disappoint Darnley.
"If you're willing not to wash up and not to dress
till we get back, we could easily go for just an hour.
We really owe Christie a visit; and Darnley's being
there makes an excuse."
"Why ought we to go to Christie's? She ought to come
and see us!"
"Gerda, you know how it is! You know what she's
like. Besides, we've only asked her that once, when Bob
and Lobbie were here. Let's go now; there's a dear girl!
We'll have plenty of time to get cleaned up before tea."
Gerda seemed to struggle with herself for a moment;
and then she yielded with the most charming grace.
"All right," she said, getting up; "only we must run
in to Pimpernel's on the way."
Wolf's spirits rose high as they left the house. He
chuckled sardonically in his heart at his own elation.
"The truth must be," he said to himself, "that I'm simply
infatuated with both of them that I want to snatch at
Christie and yet not lose my hold on my sweet Gerda."
The sight of the shop-girl in Pimpernel's, however,
brought down his happiness a great many pegs. He had
completely forgotten Mrs. Torp.
But he said nothing till they were well out of the shop,
and well on their way down High Street. Then he began:
"Oh, I met your mother this morning, Gerda. We talked
a bit, and I can't remember how it came about, but she
went off finally with the idea that I'd asked her to
tea this afternoon. And I'm* afraid I didn't mention
to her that my mother's coming; so we'd better be pre-
pared for her turning up."
The effect of this information was startling. Gerda
drew her arm away from him and stopped dead-still
where they were, which was in front of a butcher's shop;
and they let the afternoon marketers jostle past them
unheeded.
"You...have asked...Mother...to tea!" she gasped; and
he was staggered at the dismay upon her face.
"Well?" he said, pulling her into the butcher's porch
to avoid the crowd. "It won't be so very awful, will
it? My mother can be adaptable and decent enough at a
pinch."
Gerda looked at him with such flashing eyes that he
drew back as if she had hit him.
"Are you mad, Wolf?" she whispered hoarsely. "I can't
understand you today! What's the matter with you?
You rush off without a word this morning. You come
back looking as if you'd met a ghost. You drag me out
here to see your friend, who wants me no more than a
cat! And now this, on the top of everything! It's too
much! I tell you it's too much! I'm going home." And
suiting her action to her words, she broke away from
him and began rapidly retracing her steps.
Wolf ran after her and caught her by the arm.
"Gerda! Gerda darling!" he cried, regardless of the
people who were passing them. "I can't bear this. Let
me come back with you. I don't care a damn about
seeing Christie!"
"I won't have you come with me, Wolf. I won't! I
won't! Do you want me to make a scene in the street?
Go to Christie's, I tell you! That's where you belong.
I've known you wanted to go to her ever since she came
that day with the boys. Go! Go! Go! I won't have you
with me!" And she started off almost at a run, her face
white and her eyes dazed and staring.
Wolf remained motionless and stood watching her while
long minutes passed over his head. It seemed impossible
that that should be his Gerda, going off in a rage! But
even as he stood hesitating, her figure disappeared
among the people.
He turned wearily round then and resumed his walk
down the street in absent-minded gloom. He hardly knew
what he was doing; but he had a vague idea of wandering
about the streets for a time, and then returning to
Preston Lane. His feet carried him, however, steadily on
till he found himself opposite the bookseller's shop.
"In for a penny, in for a pound," he said to himself.
And then the thoughts which he believed at that moment
were what dominated his action formed themselves in his
brain into some such words as these: "I've absolutely no
heart for seeing Christie now, or Darnley either! But I
suppose it would be an absurd piling up of misunderstand-
ings if I disappointed them."
Grasping the handle of his stick tightly in his hand,
and seeing Gerda's stricken face and wild, tearless stare
in the very midst of the doorway, he entered the shop.
He found the old man amidst a pile of books, murmuring
with bent head over a volume bound in vellum, which he
was showing to a customer, evidently a stranger
to the place. Mr. Malakite did not hear him enter, and
Wolf found himself looking with a queer interest at that
bowed back and grizzled head. What did it feel like, as
the days went on, to know that one possessed, only five
miles away, a child like Olwen, the daughter of a daugh-
ter? Did the old man ever see Olwen? Did he know anything
of the child's thoughts? Did he want to know anything?
A chance movement made by the customer brought Wolf
now into the bookseller's vision. A startled look passed
for a second over the old man's face, but he betrayed
no other sign of embarrassment.
"Good-afternoon, Mr. Solent," he said quietly. "Have
you come to see me or to see Miss Malakite?" And then,
without wailing for an answer: "You'll find her in the
room upstairs. Mr. Otter has just gone."
Wolf passed through the shop, and, hurriedly running
up the little staircase, knocked at Christie's door.
The effect upon him of this unexpected news of Darnley's
departure was something beyond what he could possibly
have foreseen. The stricken face of Gerda vanished com-
pletely, and Gerda herself became what his mother was,
or what Miss Gault was, or what his father's grave was
one of the fixed landmarks in his life's landscape, but
no longer the centre of his life. That hidden drum, which
was neither exactly in his heart nor exactly in the pit of
his stomach, beat so loudly as he waited at Christie's
door, that it seemed as if that oblong shape of discol-
oured wood, the very markings of which were voluble,
were ready to open now upon something completely new
to his experience. That word of the old man, "Mr. Otter
has gone," kept repealing itself in his mind as he waited.
"Mr. Otter has gone. Mr. Otter has gone." The phrase
became a floating cloud of tremulous expectation.
When Christie did open the door, and they had taken
each other's hand, Wolf felt as if he had been doing
nothing all his life but wait for this moment. He had
the feeling that the man and girl who now proceeded
to utter broken and fragmentary commonplaces to each
other were acting as automatic figures behind whose
gestures two long-separated spirits were rushing to-
gether.
Several seconds passed before Christie had the power
to make a move to find a chair for herself or to give a
sign for him to be seated; but when he did sink down
at last, still talking of anything that came into his head,
a sense of such relief swept into his soul that it was as
if some spear-head, that had been in his flesh without
his knowing it, for days and weeks, had suddenly been
pulled out.
And then, without the least disturbance of the atmo-
sphere of that small room, he suddenly found that
those two nodding masks had vanished into thin air,
and that there was no barrier of any sort left between
the real Wolf and the real Christie. Naturally and ea-
sily he found himself taking for granted this strange
new discovery of what was between them. He thought
within himself: "She knows everything. I'll leave everything
to her." And he suddenly discovered that he was talking
freely and openly about all the people of his life, and
about Gerda, too. He discovered that to talk to Christie
was like talking to himself or thinking aloud. And he
recalled how he had been struck, the very first time they
met, by this ease and naturalness with which the lightest
thought flowed back and forth between them.
And all the while, even as he was whimsically telling
her about the unlucky tea-party arranged for that after-
noon, the contour of her half-averted face bending over
a piece of needlework she had blindly taken up, and the
way her instep looked with the thin leather strap of her
shoe across it, gave him a sensation completely different
from anything he had ever known before. What he really
felt was that this was the first feminine creature with
whom he had ever been left alone. In comparison with
this diffused and thrilling feeling, permeating everything
around them, his amorousness for Gerda seemed like play-
ful lust, directed toward some beautiful statue. The slen-
der little figure before him, with those thin hands and
those touchingly thin legs, drew into her personality,
at that moment, every secret of girlhood that had ever
troubled him. Coming to him like the fragrance of wood-
mosses to a city-dweller, the consciousness that this
dreamlike figure was really alive and tangible seemed to
melt his bones within him. Those mystic syllables, "a
girl," "a young girl," had always remained at the back
of his mind like a precious well-watered flower-bed,
but a bed empty of any living growth. Nothing, he now
knew, in his life with Gerda had stirred the earth of
that mystic bed. But here, in the centre of that bed,
was a living, breathing plant, making everything around
it enchanted and transparent by the diffused loveliness
of its presence. This passive entity in front of him,
with her honey-pale oval face, her long eyelashes, her
thin legs, her faintly outlined childish figure, was
the only true, real, actual living girl in all the earth.
The minutes slipped by, and Wolf found himself, to
his surprise, even talking to her about Olwen. So far
from this extraordinary topic agitating her, she seemed
to find a deep relief in speaking of it.
"Were you old enough to realize what was going on
between them?" Wolf asked her at last.
Christie nodded her head and smiled a little. "The odd
thing is," she said gently, "that there never seemed
to me anything strangely unnatural in it. I don't think
Mother ever was the right person for Father. I think
from her earliest childhood there was a peculiar link
between him and my sister."
"But it killed your mother, didn't it?" murmured Wolf.
Christie was silent for a moment, a queer, pondering
frown on her face.
"I don't think so," she said in a low voice. "Everyone
said so; but I don't believe it. I think it had begun
long before that. It wasn't she who did it."
These last words were hardly audible.
Wolf pressed her.
"Who did it, then?"
Christie looked at him gravely.
"Do you believe in spirits?" she asked.
He laughed a little.
"Oh, no more than in anything else!" he said.
"My mother was Welsh," she went on. "She used to tell us
the wildest stories about her ancestors. Once she actual-
ly told us she was descended from Merlin. Merlin's mother
was a nun. Did you know that, Wolf?"
"No wonder you're a bit inhuman," he said. And
then, after a pause: "Did you and your sister write to
each other after they sent her away? Was she unhappy
about 0lwen?"
Christie's brown eyes became for a minute fixed upon vac-
ancy, as if she were scrutinizing some far-away mental
image. When she turned them upon him, however, they had
an angry and yet humorous gleam.
"I sent her money to come back," she said. "I would
have had her here in spite of them. Her last letter--
I'll show it to you one day--was full of excitement. If
I'd been as old as I am now, they should never have
sent her away."
"Did Selena Gault do it?" asked Wolf.
The girl nodded. "She and Mr. Smith. They had the
law on their side." She paused and drew a long breath.
"Law or no law," she cried, passionately, with flushed
cheeks, "if I'd been older I'd have stopped them! I was
too young," she added.
Wolf got up from his seat and stood regarding her.
Every aspect of her figure, every flicker upon her face,
gave him the feeling that he was regarding a young
aspen-tree, porous to wind-blown alternations of light
and shadow.
"It's wonderful to be able to talk freely to anyone as
I can with you...now we're alone."
"I sent Darnley away," was all she said.
These words of hers hung suspended in the air between
them. They were so sweet to Wolf that he felt unwilling
to make the least response. He just allowed them to ev-
aporate, syllable by syllable, into the midsummer warmth
of that pleasant room. Christie's eyelids drooped over
the piece of sewing she held in her hands, and he not-
iced that she was turning this strip of muslin over and
over between her fingers, smoothing it out upon her lap,
first one side and then the other. The poignancy of her
shyness increased his awareness of the suspense between
them; and to loosen the spell he turned his head a lit-
tle and glanced at the mantelpiece, on which was a china
bowl, full of bluebells, late, long-stalked primroses,
and pink campions and meadow-orchids. His own mind kept
beating itself against the unknown--against that fatal
next moment which drew to itself the dust-motes of the
air, the scent of the wild-flowers, the warm wind blow-
ing in through the open window.
"Will she let me make love to her? Will she let me?"
was the burden of his thought; and as he stared at that
bunch of flowers, especially at one solitary bluebell that
hung down over the brim of the white bowl and had gather-
ed a tinge of faint rose-carmine upon its hyacinthine
bloom, he felt as though the "to be or not to be" of that
tense moment depended upon chance as inscrutable, as fluc-
tuating, as the light, falling this way, falling that way--
light and shadow wavering togethe--upon that purple-blue
at the bowl's edge.
Never had he been more aware of the miracle of flower-
petals, of the absolute wonder of this filmy vegetable
fabric, so much older, just as it is so much more lovely,
in the history of our planet than the flesh of beasts
or the feathers of birds or the scales of fishes!
The girl's words, "I sent Darnley away," seemed to melt
into that wild-flower bunch she had picked and placed
there; and the pallor of the primroses, the perilous,
arrowy faintness of their smell, became his desire for
her; and the rough earth-mould freedom of the campion-
stalks, with their wood-sturdy pink buds, became the
lucky solitude she had made for him!
"Will she let me make love to her?" The longing to risk
the first movement toward his purpose struggled now in
his mind with that mysterious restraint, so tenuous and
yet so strong, of the girl's obscure embarrassment.
"Did you pick those flowers yesterday?" he broke out
suddenly; and he was secretly surprised at the loudness
of his own voice.
"The day before," she murmured; and then, without clos-
ing her mouth, which, with the droop of her underlip,
took on an almost vacant look, she frowned a little,
as she fixed her steady gaze full upon him.
His own eyes plunged once more into the green-shadowed
depths of that midsummer nosegay. Its pale primroses
seemed to sway, in the wind, over their crumpled leaves,
as they would have done where she had actually picked
them among the wood-rubble and the fungus-growths of
their birthplace. The moist bluebellstalks, so full of
liquid greenness beneath their heavy blooms, seemed to
carry his mind straight into the hazeldarkened spaces
where she had found them. These also belonged to the
embarrassment of that figure beside him. These also,
with the cool greenery of the sturdy campions, were the
very secret of that "next moment," which floated now,
with the mocking sun-motes, untouched and virginal in
the air about them.
Wolf knew well enough the peculiar limitations of
his own nature. He knew well enough that any great
surge of what is called "passion" was as impossible to
him as was any real remorse about making love. What
he felt was an excitement that trembled on the margin
on the fluctuating fine edge between amorous desire
for the slim frame of this mysterious girl and the
thrilling attraction of unexplored regions in her soul.
His feeling was like a brimming stream between reedy
banks, where a wooden moss-covered dam prevents any
spring-flood, but where the water, making its way round
the edge of the obstacle, bends the long, submerged
grasses before it, as it sweeps forward.
Two images troubled him just a little Gerda's white,
tense face as it had looked when she left him on the
street, and, with this, a vague uncomfortable memory of
the figure on the Waterloo steps. But, in his intensely
heightened consciousness of this "suspended" moment,
he deliberately steered the skiff of his thought away from
both those reefs.
Suddenly he found himself risen from his seat and
standing against the mantelpiece! He lifted the flowers
to his face; and then, putting down the bowl, he inserted
his fingers in it, pressing them down between the stalks
into the water. He noticed that the water felt warm to
his touch, like the water of a sun-warmed pool; and the
fantastic idea came into his head that by making this
gesture he was in some occult way invading the very
soul of the girl who had arranged them there. Christie
may or may not have read his thoughts. At any rate, he
now became aware that she was standing beside him,
and with deft, swift touches was correcting the rough
confusion he had made in her nosegay.
"The bluebell-scent is the one that dominates," he
murmured. "You smell them, and see if I'm not right!"
As she leaned forward, he allowed his hand to slide
caressingly down her side, drawing her slender body,
with a scarcely perceptible pressure, against his own.
His heart was beating fast now, and a delicious preda-
tory thrill was shivering through his nerves. Christie
made not the least attempt to extricate herself from his
caresses. She permitted him to bend her slim body this
way and that way in his wanton excitement. But when he
kissed her, she bent her neck so far round that it was
her cheek and not her lips he kissed; and soon after
that she slipped away from him and sank down exhausted
in her former seat.
The look she gave him now, as they stared at each other,
confused and out of breath, was completely inscrutable
to him.
"You're not annoyed with me, Christie?" he panted.
There was a flicker of anger in her eyes at this.
"Of course not," she answered, "What do you take me
for? I'm not as mean as that. I'm not a puritanical fool."
"Well, then...well, then?" he muttered, approaching
her chair and standing over her.
"I'm not one least bit annoyed with you," she repeated.
The faint flush that had now appeared in her cheeks, and
the complicated wistfulness of her expression, disarmed
and enchanted him. He stooped down to her and stroked
with the tips of his fingers the white blue-veined
skin under her lace wristbands; but as he looked at her
now, there was a certain virginal detachment about her
thin ankles and about those lace-ruffled hands which
irritated and provoked him by its inhuman remoteness.
"You puzzle me completely," he remarked, returning
rather awkwardly to his former seat and surveying her
with a humorous frown.
She lifted up her head from her work. "Well? Why
not? We haven't known each other very long." Her
words released his pent-up irritation.
"You make me feel funny, Christie," he said. "As if
we'd lost each other in a wood."
She held her head very high at this and her eyes grew
defiant.
"I know I'm no good at these things, Wolf. I never have
been. Girls are supposed to carry off moments like this.
I don't know how they do it. I seem to be completely
lacking in that sort of tact."
His irritation increased as he found it impossible to
follow her thought.
"Tact?" he re-echoed sarcastically. "Good Lord! Tact
is the last thing I want from you."
She spoke gravely now, but with evident vexation.
"What's the use of talking like this, Wolf? It's growing
only too clear that we don't understand each other."
His only retort to this was once more to murmur the
word "tact" with a grim iteration.
Her brown eyes looked really angry now.
"Why are men so stupid?" she cried. "When I said that,
I meant pretending something that wasn't my real self.
It's because I've been absolutely natural with you that
you've got angry with me."
They were both silent after this, and Wolf stared at
the half-open window, through which the summer wind
was blowing into the room in little, eddying gusts.
Christie took up her sewing; and the stir of her thin
fingers and the waving of the light curtains were the
only movements in that flower-scented air.
By slow degrees, as he surreptitiously watched her,
the harmony of his mind began to come back; and with
this harmony there came in upon him from all that
green West Country landscape stretching away toward
the Severn on one side and toward the Channel on the
other, a sort of dumb, inarticulate reproach. What were
they doing, he and this girl, who were, as he well divined,
so exquisitely adapted to understand each other, letting
themselves be divided by such straws, such puffballs
of difference?
From fading cuckoo-flowers by the banks of the Lunt,
from brittle mother-of-pearl shells, wet and glittering,
on the Weymouth sands, from the orange-speckled bellies
of great newts in Lenty Pond, there came to him, between
those waving curtains, a speechless protest. Brief was
his life...brief was Christie Malakite's life....Times
like this at best would be rare. He could see himself
returning to his tea-party and letting it all go! He
could see Christie pouring out tea for her father and
letting it all go! Perhaps such was his pride and such
was hers this June afternoon, which might have been,
but for this trivial discord, as perfect as a green bough,
would stand out in his memory peeled and jagged, its
sap all running out, its leaves drooping.
"Forgive me, Christie," he said gravely. "Please forgive
me and don't think any more about it."
The girl looked up from her work, her hands folded
in her lap.
"You don't mean," she said slowly, "because of that?"
Her nod of the head in the direction of the mantelpiece,
where he had first caressed her, made clear to him
what her words implied.
He got up from his chair and stood in front of her,
looking down at her lifted face.
"No," he said. "I didn't mean because of 'that.' I
meant because we misunderstood each other; which
was all my fault."
Christie began to smile. "I'm not prudish or unfeeling
in things like that," she said. "But I've a queer nature,
Wolf. I love the romance of being in love, and I like
you, Wolf, better than anyone I've ever met; and I like
you to make love to me. It's only...it's only that with
the life I've had and the mother I had I seem to have
none of an ordinary girl's feelings in these things."
Wolf began pacing up and down the room.
"I'm queer myself, Christie," he said after a pause,
stopping once more in front of her. "So there we are! It
appears that we're a fair pair! And if you want to know
what I feel at this moment, I'll tell you. I feel delici-
ously happy. You are a witch, Christie, and I don't wonder
your mother maintained she was descended from Merlin.
I feel I could tell you every secret thought I have in
the world. And so, by God, I will! It's an incredible
chance that I should have found you."
He threw his cigarette into the fire and walked to the
window.
"What a view you've got here!" he said. "That's the
corner of Babylon Hill, isn't it?"
The window was already open at the top; but he pulled it
down as far as it would go, and leaned out of it, looking
across the entanglement of slate roofs to the green in-
cline beyond.
"The wind's northeast, isn't it?" he remarked.
She got up and came over to him and stood beside him, and
presently he felt her fingers slip into his own.
"North-northeast," she said; and these words, when he
thought of them afterwards, brought back every flicker of
his feelings, as he stood stiffly there clutching her hand.
"Where does that lane go?" he asked. "Do you see what I
mean? That narrow little one below those Scotch firs."
"Over there?" the girl questioned. "To the left of Poll's
Camp, do you mean?"
"Yes...there...just there...where that clump of bushes
is!"
"That's Gwent Lane," she answered. "And it leads to
a whole maze of lanes further on. I'm fond of going
to the Gwent Lanes. You hardly ever meet anyone there.
It's as if they had been designed to keep traffic away
and strangers away. Sometimes on Summer days when Father
doesn't want me, I take my lunch and a book and stay
in the Gwent Lanes all day. I often never meet a
soul."
She was silent for a second or two; and he realized
that a crowded mass of personal memories was flowing
through her mind.
"Some lovely afternoons I've had," she went on, "sitting
with my back to a gate and looking at the hedge-parsley.
When the corn's-yellow and the poppies are out, I always
sit inside the field, with my parasol over my book. I
can smell the peculiar bitter smell now of the elder-
leaves behind me."
She drew her fingers away from him and made of her two
hands a support for her chin upon the woodwork of the
open window. Wolf thought this chin of hers was the
smallest he had ever seen. He, too, remained silent,
thinking of similar memories of his own, secret and sol-
itary and personal; and he was astonished to note how
natural it seemed to both of them, this deliberate in-
dulgence in egoistic recollections.
"North-northeast, did you say?" His voice sounded
irrelevant even to his own ears. In some queer way he
felt as if he had been sharing these furtive physical
memories with the girl at his side. He even felt as if
their having shared them had been a kind of love-making
more subtle and delicate than any erotic dalliance.
He felt as if he could share with this elfin creature
a thousand feelings that no other person could possibly
understand share with her all those profoundly physical
sensations and yet mystical, too that made up the
real undercurrent of his whole life.
"She would understand my 'mythology,'" he said to
himself. "No one but she would; no one!" And then he
thought: "I believe my life is going to open out now, as
if I really had some invisible tutelary Power directing
me!"
They turned away simultaneously from the window, and
once more sat down.
"Do you ever feel," he said, "as if one part of your
soul belonged to a world altogether different from this
world as if it were completely disillusioned about all
the things that people make such a fuss over and yet
were involved in something thai was very important?"
She looked straight into his face. "I wouldn't put it
like that," she said. "But I've always known what it was
to accept an enormous emptiness round me, echoing and
echoing, and I sitting there in the middle, like a paper-
doll reflected in hundreds of mirrors."
Wolf screwed up his eyes and bit his under-lip.
"You haven't been as happy in your mind as I've
been in my mind," he said with a kind of wistfulness;
"but I often feel as if I were unfairly privileged...
as if some invisible god were unjustly favouring me ...
quite beyond my deserts."
"I don't think you're as favoured as you fancy you are,"
said Christie, with the ghost of a smile. But Wolf went
on:
"Do you know, Chris, I think I'm especially favoured in
my scepticism. I'm sceptical about the reality of every-
thing; even about the reality of Nature. Sometimes I
think that there are several 'Natures'...several 'Uni-
verses,' in fact...one inside the other...like Chinese
boxes...."
"I know what you mean," said the young girl hurriedly;
and her eyes, as she looked at him, grew luminous
with that indescribable excitement of mental sympathy
that can bring tears from something deeper than passion.
Wolf, as he received this intimation, said to himself:
"I can think aloud with her. Perhaps one day I'll tell
her about my 'mythology'!" And there came over him,
like a warm enveloping under-tide in which great crimson
seaweeds were swaying, an unutterable sense of happiness.
"Oh, I hope Gerda is all right!" he thought. And then,
with a concentrated effort of his will, as if he were ad-
dressing a host of servile genii: "I command that Gerda
shall be all right!"
It occurred to him at that moment, with a humorous
force, that his father wouldn't have been a man to
allow such scruples as these to impinge upon his mind
at such a juncture.
"Had you any idea," he said suddenly, "that Mattie
wasn't Albert Smith's child?"
"I soon saw the likeness to you, anyway," Christie replied
evasively, "the first day Father brought you to see
me."
"I like Mattie so much," he went on; "but her resemblance
to me can't be said to improve her looks. Has anyone ever
made love to her, do you think?"
Christie laughed. "Well, you must be nice to her, anyway,
Wolf dear, to make up in case they haven't."
"I should be afraid of Miss Gault's sending her off to
Australia!" he said with a chuckle, and then felt curiously
relieved to find that the grossness of this rather
clumsy jest did not shock his companion. "Nothing
shocks her," he said to himself; and his mind took a
long flight to his years in London, where, except for
his mother, there was no one to whom he could have
talked as he had done this afternoon.
"Well, I must be off," he said, rather wearily, when
these thoughts had finished their circle and had sunk
down in the manner of birds on a bough. "I've got an
uncomfortable home-coming before me, what with one
thing and another."
"Don't make too much of it," she said, opening the
door for him and holding both handles of it with her
hands, so as to avoid any definite farewell. "Gerda will
be so thankful to have got through it, that when your
two mothers leave she'll be radiant again."
"I hope she won't be too radiant before they leave,"
retorted Wolf grimly. "I don't want many repetitions of
this particular tea-party."
She kept the door open till he was half-way downstairs,
and they nodded rather dolorously at each other across
the banisters. He heard the door shut as he entered
the shop below, and a pang passed through him.
As he walked rapidly home, he found himself engaged
in an imaginary dialogue with his father.
The skeleton under those obstinate plantains kept
grinning mockingly in reply to every argument. "Life is
short," said the skeleton, "and the love of girls is the
only escape from its miseries."
"It's not so short as all that," retorted the son, "and
in every Paradise there is a snake!"
THE TEA-PARTY
HE FOUND ON HIS ARRIVAL THAT HIS MOTHER HAD al-
ready appeared. To his great surprise he discovered her
standing by their kitchen-stove, with Gerda's apron over
her dress, helping to make the toast. He was still more
surprised at the way Gerda received him. She was flushed
and happy laughing and jesting as if they had parted
the very best of friends.
"How's Christie?" she asked casually. "What do you
think, Mrs. Solent, of his going off to see Miss Malakite
when I've got company? I'm sure that's not what you'd
approve of."
"I don't approve of his saying nothing about that
pretty frock you've got on! What do you think of it,
Wolf? Do you know, when I got here, she was upstairs,
crying her lovely eyes out? And all because she thought
she hadn't a proper dress to welcome her grand mother-
in-law in! We soon settled that little job, didn't we, my
dear?" And Wolf beheld, to his amazement, his mother
putting one of her strong arms caressingly about Gerda's
waist, and Gerda responding to this with a lingering,
provocative glance, such as he himself was wont
to receive when the girl was in her most docile
mood.
"I heard her crying up there in her room," went on
the elder woman, "and I ran straight up, and there she
was, pretty as a picture in her white shift, and all the
bed covered with frocks! She says she's had this one
since she was sixteen; but it suits her perfectly, doesn't
it, Wolf?"
Wolf surveyed the girl gravely. She wore a long,
straight muslin dress, with short sleeves, creamy-white
and covered with pale little roses. Never had she looked
so enchanting.
"You're certainly a good lady's-maid, Mother," he
said solemnly.
"She's told me you're expecting another mother this
afternoon," continued Mrs. Solent, releasing Gerda and
proceeding to arrange the slices of toast upon a plate.
"Now then, where's that loaf? I'll cut the bread-andbutter."
It became Wolf's destiny to stand for the next quarter
of an hour, figuratively speaking, "upon one leg," while
he watched what seemed to resemble the most piquant
of flirtations going on between these two.
The tea-tray was "laid" at last, in the most approved
manner, on that very parlour-table round which he had
pursued the girl in such troubled agitation so short a
time before; and Mrs. Solent, Gerda's apron removed,
showed herself in the most fashionable of all her garden-
party gowns. Gerda seemed unable to keep her eyes off
her, and kept touching with the tips of her fingers first
one elegant frill and then another, hovering about her
like a slim white butterfly round a purple orchid.
"There's Mother!" she cried at length. "Fetch the
kettle, Wolf!"
The countenance of Mrs. Torp was as a book in which one
could "read strange matters," as she contemplated the
scene before her. Wolf, with the teapot in one hand and
the kettle in the other, vociferated a boisterous wel-
come, drowning the politer words of his mother.
Gerda, having removed Mrs. Torp's tasselled cloak, sat
her plumb-down at the table, straightening with a fam-
iliarly affectionate jerk the ribboned bonnet which
adorned her head.
"Don't 'ee fidget wi' me old hat, Gerdie," murmured
the visitor. "'Tis a very good hat, though maybe 'tain't
as aleet as some folks can afford. So thee be Mr. Solent's
mummy, be 'ee? Well, and 'a favour'n about the cheeks,
'sknow! A body could reason there was some blood twixt
ye; though in these which-way times 'tis hard to speak
for sure."
"Well, we must do our best not to quarrel, Mrs. Torp,
as they say all mothers do," threw out Mrs. Solent
briskly, watching with some anxiety the unusual amount
of sugar that Gerda was placing at the bottom of all the
teacups.
"How much milk, Mrs. Solent?" enquired the girl lightly.
"I don't expect our Blacksod milk is as good as yours
at King's Barton."
This society-tone was so obviously put on to impress
the young lady's mother, that Mrs. Solent hadn't the
heart to explain, till the time for her second cup, that
she couldn't bear sugar. She swallowed the sweet mixture
in hurried gulps; and Wolf chuckled to see her trying
to take away the taste by rapid mouthfuls of bread-and
-butter.
"How be thee's schoolmasterin' getting along, Mr. Solent?
My old man that be our Gerdie's Dad, ma'am do always
say them Grammar boys be above theyselves, what with
one thing and t'other. He cotchit two on 'em, the last
buryin' 'ee had, stealing of they bones. Not that they
were proper human-like bones...if 'ee understand...for
'ee do always bury them religious-deep. They were boss-
es' bones, seems so, from what 'ee do calculate. But
they were more impident, them Grammar boys, when 'ee
were arter they, than if they'd been the bones of King
Balaam."
"What's Lobbie been doing lately, Mother?" enquired
Gerda, feeling vaguely conscious that the subject of
bones, whether human or otherwise, was inappropriate
at that moment.
"Lob, do 'ee say? Thee may well ask what Lob be doing,
the young pert-mouthed limb! He be bringing his Dad's
hoar hairs down to bedlam, and mine wi 'em, that's
what the owl's pellet be doing!"
Gerda hurriedly enquired in a ringing voice whether
Mrs. Solent wanted any cake. "Pimpernel hadn't any
fresh kinds except this. I expect you are so used to
London confectionery, Mrs. Solent
"
But the visitor seemed more interested in her fellow
parent's conversation than in anything else just then.
"Sons are troublesome beings, Mrs. Torp," she said,
"but it's nice to have them."
"What has Lobbie been doing?" enquired Wolf, heedless
of Gerda's frowns.
"He's been going over with that imp of Satan, Bob
Weevil, to Parson Valley's. His Dad told 'en he'd lift
the skin from's backside if he did it; but he was see'd,
only last night, out there again."
"It sounds very innocent, Mrs. Torp, visiting a clergyman,"
remarked the lady.
"Innocent!" cried Gerda's mother indignantly. "Innocent
thee own self, though I do say it! 'Tis pagan deviltries,
worse nor Paul on Corinthians. I tell 'ee, they do play
blasphemous play-actings out there, same as Lot's wife
were salted for."
"Miracle-plays, is it?" asked Wolf.
"How do I know what they call 'en? 'Tis small matter
for the name. Wold Dimity, up to Otters', told I that
one girt gummuk of a lad dressed 'isself up as Virgin
Mary. If that hain't a blasphemous cantrip, I'd like to
know what be!"
"I expect Mrs. Solent knows better than any of us,
Mother, what's going on out at King's Barton," put in
Gerda diplomatically.
"I did hear something about a miracle-play," said the
visitor lightly; "but if the subject's a teasing one,
for heaven's sake let's drop it! I think it was Mr.
Urquhart who mentioned it to me; and if I remember
right he took rather the same view of it as Mrs. Torp."
"Squire Urquhart ain't got so much standing his own
self wi' decent folk for him to be top-lofty," remarked
the other. "They do tell down our way 'twas that man's
wicked tempers and sech-like, what drove poor young
Redfern into's grave; but maybe, as darter says, you
know more'n we, ma'am, about King's Barton ways. I be
glad for my part that I lives in a God-fearing daily-
bread town like Blacksod."
"By the way, Wolf," said Mrs. Solent, speaking in
her most high-pitched voice, "I met your friend Jason
the other day in Lenty Lane, and we had quite a walk
together. We went as far as the ridge-road to Ramsgard
...you know?...by one of those little fieldpaths."
"Mr. Jason, ma'am?" commented Mrs. Torp. "I do know
he. I'd a-seen he, many a fine evenin', a-traipsin'
home from Three Peewits."
"I hope you enjoyed your walk," said Gerda, gravely
and politely, frowning at her mother.
"How did you and Jason get on?" asked Wolf. "I
somehow can't imagine you two together."
"Well," said Mrs. Solent, "I can't quite tell whether
my company pleased him or not. He talked most of the
time about my neighbour, Roger Monk. He seems to have
got into his head that the poor man spies upon him. I
tried at first to disabuse him of that idea; but he got
so agitated that I just let him go on. In the end he
became quite charming. He recited to me a poem about
a woodpecker, which I thought very pretty. He has such
a nice voice when he recites, and the evening was so
lovely after the rain that I really enjoyed it all
very much."
"No doubt Mr. Otter were sober as a jack-daw when 'a
walked with 'ee, ma'am. I'm not saying he isn't a nice-
spoken gentleman, for he is. It's not so much the drink
they talk of, along of he, down where I do live, it's--"
"Oh, Mother, please!" interrupted Gerda. "Do look,
Mother, how nicely Mrs. Solent tied my sash!"
The girl got up from her chair and turned herself
round. This gesture was evidently adored by Mrs. Solent,
for she stretched out her arms and caught her by the
waist and pulled her down upon her knee.
"I shall spoil your lovely dress," Gerda cried nervously.
"You're light as a feather, you sweet thing! You're
soft as swan's-down."
"She weren't that light, ma'am, when she made herself
stiff as pikestaff, on the day us bundled she down
church-aisle for christening," said Mrs. Torp. "But she
were light enough, God-sakes, when she did play carry-me-
over wi' the lads!"
All this while, Wolf was pondering in his soul how
it was that Nature had placed in the minds of all mothers,
refined or unrefined, so large a measure of the heart
of a procuress.
"And she were light enough--" Mrs. Torp was be-
ginning again, when Gerda, jumping up in haste, ran
round the table and clapped her hand over her moulh.
"Hush, Mummy, I won't have it!" she cried.
At that moment there was a loud knocking at the front-
door, and Wolf went across the passage and opened it.
Bob Weevil and Lobbie hurried into the room together,
their caps in their hands. The young grocer looked a
little embarrassed at the scene before him, and made a
stiff bow to Mrs. Solent.
"Afternoon, marm," he muttered.
But Lobbie was quite unperturbed.
"Dad's corned home afore his time," he cried, "and 'a
be mumbling about his supper."
"Shake hands with Mrs. Solent, Lob," said Gerda
severely.
But the boy had turned to his own parent.
"Mr. Valley said I was to ask you proper and right
for promission," he said eagerly, "promission for--"
"For what, ye staring toad?"
"Promission," the boy went on, "for thik girt play
next Thursday. The day arter tomorrow 'tis; and all the
gentry be coming. And I be John the Baptist, what lived
upon honey and the honeycomb!"
"Ye'll live upon cabbage and the cabbage-stalk, ye
impident sprout! I've a-heerd too much of your Mr.
Valley and his goings-on."
"Mother...Mother!" protested the unabashed Lob.
But Mrs. Solent interrupted them.
"Don't you worry, Mrs. Torp. I'm going to that en-
tertainment myself, and I'll see that this young man
comes to no harm. I understand just what you feel. These
clerical junketings are sometimes incredibly silly. But
you can trust me. We'll keep each other in sight, won't
we, Lobbie?" And she put her hand on the boy's shoul-
der.
"Well, of course, if you answer for him, ma'am, I
reckon I must be satisfied," grumbled the monument-
maker's wife.
"Oh, I'll look after him. Won't I, Lobbie? And if Mr.
Valley keeps us all up till midnight, you shall sleep at
Lenty Cottage."
Lob looked a little nervous at this prospect, but he
expressed his thanks politely, and the incident appeared
closed.
Meanwhile Wolf overheard the following conversation
going on between Mr. Weevil and Gerda.
"Why, if that isn't the very frock you wore, Gerdie,
when we went to Weymouth, that grand excursion-day,
years ago!"
"Yes, it is, Bob. Fancy your remembering! Mrs. Solent
made me put it on."
"And to think of that! And to think how we climbed
down those slippery steps at the ferry, and how fright-
ened you were of the green seaweed getting on you, and
how we saw sea-anemones in the pools by Sandsfoot
Castle, and you couldn't abide the gun-firing out Port-
land-way. Think of that, Gerdie, the very same dress!"
"Do you think I'm too old to wear it now, Bob?"
"Ask me another, Gerdie! But it do make anyone feel
sort of queer to see you like this. You know? It's all
the things it brings up, what a person's clean forgotten."
"You got no more memory than a pig, Bob Weevil."
"Depends who and what and when," was the grocer's
retort.
"Well, don't you worry any more about it, Mrs. Torp,"
repeated the lady in purple. "I promise to keep Mr.
Valley in order. Or if I can't, I'll get someone who can.
Lob shan't make a fool of himself, or disgrace either
John the Baptist or you. I quite look forward to it. We'll
have a fine bit of sport together, Lobbie, you and I,
flirting across the footlights!"
"How did you get over today, Mrs. Solent?" enquired
Gerda, cutting short Mr. Weevil's memories with a fur-
tive little movement of her hand a movement that came
as rather a surprise to Wolf, as he noted it in passing.
"Oh, Roger Monk drove me," exclaimed Wolf's
mother. "And that reminds me...what's the time, my
son?...Good Lord! I've kept the man waiting al-
ready! I must go at once. I'm to meet him at the Three
Peewits."
"I'll walk down with you, Mother," said Wolf, glad
enough to get a chance of escape. "Good-bye, Mrs. Torp.
I know you'll excuse me. Don't hurry off, Bob. Why
don't you keep him for supper, Gerda? And Lobbie, too,
if Mrs. Torp will let him stay?"
Mother and son walked leisurely down the clattering
High Street.
"She's certainly beautiful, your Gerda!" exclaimed the
lady, after prolonged silence.
"She is," admitted Wolf.
"But oh, dear! What an awful woman! Does she worry
you much, my dabchick?"
"Worry me, Mother? Not one little bit! I very rarely
see her, you know."
There was another long pause between them.
"What's going to happen when the History's done,
Wolf?"
"It may never be done, Mother! He's got really in-
terested in it at last, thank the Lord!"
"Wolf, dear "
"Well, Mother?"
"I wouldn't let Gerda have a child for quite a long
while yet."
"No, Mother."
"I didn't know that she and this Weevil boy were such
old friends."
Wolf swung his stick. Something about the inflexible
determination of his mother's profile, especially of her
clear-cut chin, at that moment, roused an obscure feel-
ing of rebellion in him.
"Why the devil not?" he cried. "Bob's a mere kid.
Gerda treats him exactly as she treats her brother."
His voice had become high-pitched. That curious, fur-
tive little movement of the hand, full of old familiarities,
returned to him most teasingly.
"Don't talk too loud," murmured his mother. "We're
not in Lenty Lane."
"Why did you say that?" he asked.
"Oh, I don't know," she said lightly. "Don't take it
too seriously. I only know from old experience that
men never can be made to realize how susceptible women
are except where they themselves are concerned."
"Even when they love a person?" he enquired.
"What is love?" said Mrs. Solent.
He was silent; and the conversation between them
took a less personal tone, till he saw her safely mounted
in Mr. Urquhart's dog-cart, beside the tall man-servant.
Instead of going straight home, he walked medita-
tively and slowly past the Malakite book-shop, and then
at a more rapid pace followed the road that led up
Babylon Hill. He did not turn, till, in the slanting rays
of the sinking sun, he reached that corner of the ascent
which he had noted from Christie's window.
Could he distinguish her house among the rest? He
was not sure. The rays of the great June sun were almost
horizontal, as it sank down towards Glastonbury; and
it was all he could do, even with his eyes shaded by his
hand, to identify the portion of the town where the book-
shop was. As to seeing Christie's window, it was impos-
sible.
Annoyed by this refusal of Nature to humour his
mood, he advanced obstinately still further up the road,
and finally reached the stile into the field-path that led
to the turfy ramparts of Poll's Camp.
There he sat down among the tall, uncut grasses of the
wayside, and allowed the double stream of memories
those connected with Poll's Camp and those connected
with that invisible window below him to contend for
the mastery in his thoughts. The extraordinary thing was
that all that poetry of his first encounter with Gerda
seemed like something that had happened to some exter-
nal portion of his nature, whereas this strange new un-
derstanding with Christie sank so deep into his being that
it invaded regions of which he himself had hardly been
aware.
He soon found out, as he sat there, with his back
against that stile and the pungent smell of herb-Robert
in his nostrils, how far this new feeling had gone.
His life had become so agitated since his arrival at
Ramsgard, that now, at this moment, he felt he had more
on his mind than he could disentangle. The spirit of the
evening fell upon him with a burden that was mys-
teriously sad--sad with a multitude of gathering omens
and indistinct threats. With all the evening noises around
him noises, some of them faint as the sighing of in-
visible reeds he became once more conscious that be-
tween the iron-ribbed gaiety of his mother and the fixed
grin of that paternal skull in the churchyard there was
an ambiguous struggle going on, the issues of which re-
mained dubious as life itself.
He found himself crying out to that irresponsible
skull under the plantains; but the skull answered him
with nothing but cynical mockery. He found himself
turning restlessly towards his mother; but he felt that
just at the point where he needed her sympathy most
the very basic rock of her nature flung him contemp-
tuously back.
On and on he sat, with that sinking sun growing red-
der and redder before him, and the evening murmurs
gathering in his ears; and as he sat, an immense soli-
tude descended upon him, and he began to realize, as
he had never realized before, how profoundly alone
upon this planet each individual soul really is.
And with this feeling there came over him a deep, dis-
turbing craving for Christie--a craving so intense that
the vision of all the length of all the days of his life
without her seemed more than he could bear. "Only one
life," he thought to himself. "Only one life, between two
eternities of non-existence...and I am proposing de-
liberately to sacrifice in it the one thing that I really
want!" He hugged his knees with tightly clasped fingers,
and stared at the red orb before him, sinking now over
Christie's very roof.
For the first time in his mortal days this great diurnal
spectacle seemed to his mind half-fantastic; as if this
were not the real sun, the sun he had known all his life,
that was descending; nor the earth he had known all his
life that was thus hiding it from his eyes. "If I do give
up Christie for Gerda," he thought, "it will simply mean
that the one unique experience destined for me out of all
others by the eternal gods, has been deliberately thrown
away."
He bowed his head over his knees and watched the
climbing of a tiny beetle up a bending stalk of grass.
"To the universe," he thought, "it matters no more
whether I leave Gerda for Christie than whether that
beetle reaches the top of that stalk! Gerda?...
Christie?...What are they? Two skeletons covered
with flesh; one richly and flexibly covered...one
sparsely and meagrely covered! Two of them...that
is all...just two of them!" And then, bowing his head
still lower, so that the beetle and its grass-stalk al-
most filled up his whole vision, he began to imagine
what it would be like if he did make some wild, desperate
move. What would happen, for instance, if he were to
carry Christie to London and get some job to support
them both there, hidden from all the world? Gerda
would return to her parents' house. Old Malakite would
get on somehow or other. His mother would...Well!
What would his mother do? She had scarcely any-
thing in the bank. Mr. Urquhart could hardly be ex-
pected to support her. No, it was unthinkable, impos-
sible! The existence of his mother, her complete de-
pendence on him, tied his hands fast and tight!
And then, with an overpowering surrender, there came
upon him all his old childish clinging to that woman
whose heart the licentiousness of his father had been un-
able to quell. He knew his own nature to be tough
enough, but compared with his mother he was like an
oak-sapling growing in the cleft of a rock. The woman
was adamant, where he was merely obstinate. Rock-
smooth she was, where he was merely gnarled and
knotted and earth-rooted.
"Damn!" he muttered to himself, as he watched the
beetle turn back resignedly within an inch of the stalk's
point, and begin a patient descent. "Damn! It's just pure
weakness and habit!"
But, oh, dear! How could he desert Gerda...how
could he do it...after three lovely happy months;
and without cause or reason save his own fickle mad-
ness?
Why had he married her at all? That was the whole
blunder! He had married her because he had seduced
her. But girls were always being seduced! That was no
reason. No! He couldn't get out of it. He had married
her because he had mistaken a mixture of lust and ro-
mance for love; and if he hadn't found Christie, he
might, to the end of his days, never have discovered his
mistake! Affection would have superseded lust; tender-
ness would have superseded romance. All would have
been well. It was Christie's appearance that had changed
everything; and there it was! Christie and he were bound
together now, come good, come ill. But as things were,
so they must remain! If his soul was Christie's, his life
must go on being his mother's and Gerda's. There was
no other issue.
Abruptly he lifted up his head. The sun was so low
now that he could look straight into its great red circle
suspended above the roofs of the town. It resembled, as
he looked at it, a vast fiery tunnel, the mouth of some
colossal piece of artillery, directed full against him.
With screwed-up eyelids he returned the stare of this
blood-red cannon-mouth; and as he fronted it, it
seemed to him that a dusky figure took shape within
it, a figure resembling Jason Oiler's abominable idol.
There was something so atrocious in the idea of this
dusky demon being there at all being, so to say, the
great orb's final expression as it went down that he
leaped to his feel in indignant protest. His movement
brought the blood from his head, and the phantasm van-
ished. Slowly and inevitably, with a visible sliding de-
scent, the red globe sank out of sight; and Wolf picked
up his hat and stick. "It must be long after eight," he
thought. "I must get home to Gerda."
THE SLOW-WORM OF LENTY
THE NEXT TWO MONTHS BROUGHT NO OUTWARD CHANGE
in the existence of Wolf and the various people of his
life; but when August arrived, all manner of strange
developments, long prepared for under the surface, be-
gan to manifest themselves.
The trend of these developments began for the first
time to grow clear to Wolf himself on the occasion of a
small garden-party given by Mrs. Otter in her little
front-garden. He had exhausted a great deal of energy in
an attempt to entangle his mother in a more or less har-
monious conversation with Selena Gault; and it was
with a queer feeling of triumph that he left these old an-
tagonists drinking tea side by side, in their low chairs,
on Mrs. Otter's lawn, to cross the grass so that he might
speak to Jason.
He came upon him in the back-garden, in converse
with old Dimity Stone, who fled precipitately into her
kitchen at his approach.
Wolf was as careful not to disturb the poet's equilib-
rium as if he had been a leopard cajoling a nervous
eland. He shuffled by his side into a narrow passage
between two cucumber-frames, where they both sat down.
A solitary wood-pigeon kept repeating its diapason of
languid rapture from somewhere high up in the neigh-
bouring trees. In the gravel-path, quite close to where
they sat, a thrush, unruffled by their presence, cracked a
snail upon a broken piece of brick; and as Wolf made
one desultory remark after another, to set his companion
at ease, he found himself complacently squeezing with
the tips of his fingers certain sticky little bubbles of tar
that the heat of the afternoon sun drew forth from the
warm wooden planks of the frame.
"I composed a poem last night," said Jason Otter.
"And since you're the only person who takes the least
interest in what I do, I'll repeat it to you, if no one comes
round the corner."
"I'd love to hear it," said Wolf.
"It begins like this." And in a voice almost as modu-
lated as the wood-pigeon's own, the drooping head by
Wolf's side swayed slowly to the rhythm of the following
stanza:
The Slow- Worm of Lenty curses God;
He lifts his head from the heavy sod;
He lifts his head where the Lenty willow
Weeps green tears o'er the rain-elf's pillow;
For the rain-elf's lover is fled and gone,
And none curseth God but the Slow- Worm alone.
"It's about the pond," said Jason gravely. "I go
there sometimes in the evening. When it's misty you can
easily imagine an elf or a nymph floating on its sur-
face."
"Is that all?" enquired Wolf.
"Not quite," replied the other; "but you probably
won't like the way it ends. It'll seem funny to you; too
remote from your way of thinking; and it is rather
funny; but Lenty Pond is a funny place."
"Do go on," said Wolf.
And once more in his delicately modulated voice the
poet began intoning:
For the newts and the tadpoles at their play
Laugh at the rain-elf's tear -wet pillow;
Laugh that her lover has fled away.
Little care they for elf or willow.
They flash their tails to a mocking cry
"Slow- Worm of Lenty, prophesy!"
"That's not the end, is it?" said Wolf.
The man's head turned slightly towards him; and the
one grey eye which was visible from where Wolf sat,
passed through some extraordinary change, as if a
glassy film separating the outward world from an in-
ward abyss of desolation had suddenly melted away.
"Do you want to hear the end?" said Jason Otter.
Wolf nodded, and the voice went on:
But never again can God look down
As He did of old upon country and town!
In His huge heart, hidden all Space beyond,
There bides the curse of Lenty Pond;
The curse of the Slow- Worm, by Lenty willow,
Who pitied the elf on her tear-wet pillow,
Her pillow woven of pond-weeds green
Where the willow's twigs made a leafy screen;
And the purple loosestrife and watercress
Whisper above her sorrowfulness.
Once more the voice paused and Wolf listened to those
two persistent summer sounds, the tapping of the thrush's
beak and the indescribable contentment of the wood-
pigeon.
"Is there any more?" he asked. "I like this style of
writing better than what you used to read to me a month
ago."
"A person can't do more than he can," remarked Ja-
son Otter, while the flickering ghost of a smile came and
went at the corners of his mouth. It seemed that even this
indication of normal feeling was distasteful to him; for
he hurriedly raised his hand in order to conceal it.
This movement of his arm made Wolf aware of the
scent of incense.
"The chap's clothes must be saturated with the stuff,"
he thought. "Oh, damn!" he thought again. "I must get
that idol away from him."
"By the way, Otter," he began, "while I think of it,
don't forget what you promised on the fair-ground!"
Jason turned his head away.
"She'll be out again presently," he remarked.
Whether this referred to the thrush that had just then
flown away, or to Dimity Stone, Wolf could not tell.
"I can give you two pounds of that five pounds straight
off," he said, "if you'll let me come in with you now and
put the thing in my pocket."
"And the other three?" cried the man, rising to his
feet between the cucumber-frames and rubbing the back
of his trousers with his hand.
"The other three next week," said Wolf, thinking to
himself, "I don't care what happens, as long as I dispose
of Mukalog."
"Come on then, quick, before anyone sees!"
They hurried into the house together; and no sooner
were they in the poet's room than Wolf boldly snatched
at the little demon on the jade pedestal, and shoved it
unceremoniously into his side-pocket. Jason made a
queer, stiff, formal movement of his hand towards this
pocket; but when Wolf had thrown his arm roughly off,
an expression of something like relief rippled down over
his agitated countenance. His lips seemed to be mutter-
ing; and Wolf fancied that they were explaining to the
object in the stranger's pocket that its devotee had only
yielded to sheer force.
Hurriedly Wolf put down two golden sovereigns on
the table. He refrained from placing them upon the
empty jade pedestal. He placed them side by side, close
to an edition of the works of Vaughan the Silurist.
"And now," he cried, "let's hear the end of that Slow-
Worm poem!"
"Not here, not here," murmured the other, glancing, so
Wolf imagined, with lamentable anxiety at the empty
pedestal, as if at any moment seven other devils, worse
than Mukalog, might take possession of it.
No sooner were they safe back at the cucumber-frame
than Wolf resumed his request for the end of the Slow-
Worm. Leaning back with his hands clasped meekly in
front of him, like a child reciting a hymn, the astonish-
ing man obeyed him with docility.
And the Lenty Slow-Worm curses God
For the sake of the rain-elf's pitifulness.
He lifts his head from the watercress,
He lifts his head from the quaker-grass,
From the hoof-marks where the cattle pass,
He lifts his head from the heavy sod,
And under the loosestrife he curses God!
And the newts and the tadpoles who where she lay
Mocked her from bellies white, orange, and grey,
Cry now to willow and water and weed,
"Lenty Pond has a prophet indeed!"
For the rain-elf weeps no more to her pillow
Woven of twigs of the weeping-willow;
But her lover, come back to the laughing rain-elf,
Cries, "The Slow-Worm of Lenty is God Himself!"
"Bravo!" cried Wolf. "Thank the Lord you managed
to comfort that poor girl!"
"She wasn't a girl," said Jason, colouring a little.
"Eh? What's that?" ejaculated the other. "How could
she have a lover then?"
The poet was protected, however, from having to an-
swer this objection by a sudden, happily-timed inter-
ruption.
Mr. Urquhart, escorting Selena Gault, came shuffling
amiably towards them.
"Our two young friends in the kitchen-garden, ha?"
was the Squire's greeting. "I've just been telling Miss
Gault, haven't I, lady, how well you and I, Solent, get
on together as fellow authors. I never got on so well
with our poor dear Redfern, did I, Mr. Otter?"
Wolf was aghast at the complicated significance of the
look that his employer fixed upon the agitated Jason.
"Your boots have got something nasty on them," the
poet hurriedly rapped out to Miss Gault; and before the
lady could stop him, he was down on his knees on the
gravel, wiping one of her shoes with a handful of grass.
"It's only manure," he said presently, rising with a
flushed face.
"Thank you, Mr. Otter, thank you very much," said
Selena Gault. "I must have trodden on something."
"I hope you found my mother in her best mood," said
Wolf.
Miss Gault frowned a little and then smiled on him
graciously.
"Thank you for helping us to renew our old acquaint-
ance, boy," she said. "But it's really Mr. Urquhart who
ought to be thanked by everybody for bringing you down
to us at all."
398 WOLF SOLENT
"Thank Redfern, not me," said the Squire, in his silki-
est tone. "It's quite an art, isn't it, Otter, this business
of leaving the world conveniently?"
But Jason was occupied in picking up the bits of
empty snail-shell left by the thrush.
"What do they do where there aren't any stones to
break 'em on?" commented the Squire as he watched
him.
Miss Gault swept them both with her formidable gaze.
"Throw those things away, Mr. Otter, please. When
the life's gone that's the end."
"Not always," murmured the Squire. "Not always, ha?
What?"
Miss Gault lifted her eyebrows, and her distorted
upper-lip twitched. "For the dead, it's the end," she re-
peated sternly; "but it's better to be dead in death than
dead in life."
"I think I'd better go and see if my mother wants
me," murmured Jason uneasily.
"I'll come with you, Otter," said Mr. Urquhart, making
a deprecating little gesture with his hand, as if brushing
away Miss Gault's indiscretion.
Then he turned to Wolf. "Be in good time tomorrow,
Solent. I've got a book for you that's more racy than
anything we've found yet. Malakite sent it over. The old
rogue knows exactly what suits us."
Wolf felt it hard to believe the word "Malakite" was
something that he had heard many times before quite
calmly and casually. It teased his mind now that it
should even be uttered by this man, whose pendulous
THE SLOW -WORM OF LENTY 399
cheek-folds seemed to him, as he looked at them, to re-
semble the crumpled rattles of a rattlesnake.
Conversing sympathetically with Miss Gault, now, on
the harmless topic of Emma and the three cats, he led
the lady back into the front-garden.
Here he was presently much amused by observing Miss
Gault, with the graciousness of a ducal personage, offer
to drive Mrs. Solent as far as Lenty Cottage an offer
that was promptly accepted. When both women were
gone, and Wolf himself had bidden his hostess good-
night, he was surprised to hear Jason offering to walk a
little way with him towards Blacksod.
Wolf instinctively kept his hand in his side-pocket as
they walked, with an obstinate determination that nothing
should induce him to return Mukalog to his idolater.
But the poet's thoughts seemed running in a quite dif-
ferent direction.
"It's very difficult not to curse anyone," Jason began,
hesitating, and reddening a little, "when a person ex-
pects you to do it. But I've got the power of joining in,
so as not to annoy; while really I'm thinking just the
opposite!"
To himself Wolf explained this ambiguous remark by
assuming that Mr. Urquhart had been secretly propitiat-
ing "the drunken individual at Pond Cottage" by dis-
paraging to him his new secretary.
But the poet began again. "I don't like the way some
people egg on that young fool Weevil to boast so grandly
of what lecherous things he's done. When people en-
courage an idiot like that, it's bad for everybody. It puts
400 WOLF SOLENT
it into his head to play tricks he'd never dare to think
out for himself."
"Ho! Ho!" thought Wolf. "What's up now? Now
we're beginning to learn something really curious!"
And the poet continued, in an excited voice: "You
married people think you know everything. But no man
ever knows what these girls are after; and I doubt if
they know it themselves! It's like a gadfly, that first
tickles them and then stings them."
"What's like a gadfly?" enquired Wolf.
"The lust of your excellent young men, such as this
worthy Bob Weevil."
"Ah!" thought Wolf in his heart. "Now it's coming!"
"I never myself talk of lechery to anyone," went on
the poet; "but this Squire of yours enjoys his little jest,
whether it's with a young man or a boy. I expect he's a
bit afraid of you, Solent."
"I should have supposed," said Wolf, "that Mr. Ur-
quhart was too snobbish to treat a Blacksod tradesman
like an equal, whatever his age was!"
"There is only one class," said the poet, with an air of
benign authority, "where these matters are concerned."
"So you think Mr. Urquhart has been at work en-
couraging our friend Weevil in some pretty little bit of
mischief, eh?" said Wolf.
A look of sheer pain came into Mr. Otter's face.
"What put that into your head?" he cried. "I've not been
talking about anyone you know, or anyone I know. I've
been talking about the general mass of people. A person
is allowed to talk about them."
"You're afraid that Roger Monk might be hiding
behind that wall?"
The poet turned toward him his sorrowful grey eyes.
"I don't like to be upbraided," he said gravely.
"I'm not upbraiding you," protested Wolf. "Look!
There are none but very harmless people in there!"
The wall by which they were now walking was indeed
the wall of the churchyard; and the idea of Death, like
a flying, sharded beetle, struck them simultaneously in
the face.
"I think I'll cancel our bargain, Solent," said Jason
suddenly, "and give you back that money, and take back
my piece of jade!"
It was a transformed countenance that the poet turned
now to his companion. Abysmal desolation had de-
scended upon him, and he almost whimpered as he im-
plored Wolf to return his idol.
"It's no use, man. I tell you it's no use. If you went
straight down on your knees to me I wouldn't give it
up!"
Jason Otter pushed his hat back from his forehead
and stood for a moment with his eyes tight shut. Wolf,
who had no idea what thoughts were passing through
that heavy head, clutched tightly the handle of his
stick, thinking within himself: "He's capable of any-
thing. He's like a drug-addict, and I've got his drug in
my pocket!"
For a perceptible passage of time, though it may have
been no more than a few seconds, they remained thus
facing each other, while a group of King's Barton chil-
dren, running with noisy shouts down the road, stopped
and stared at them open-mouthed.
Then Wolf was aware that the man's lips, out of, the
middle of that eyeless mask of misery, were muttering
something something that sounded like an incantation.
"I'd better sheer off!" he thought; and as he tight-
ened his fingers round the handle of his stick, he over-
heard one of the children who were looking on say to
another in a whisper: "It be only thik poor Mr. Otter,
took wi' one o' they fits, look-see! T'other gent be a-
going to hit he, present, long-side the ear-hole!"
"Well, good-night, Otter!" he called out to him. "If
you don't mind I'll shog on! I've got to walk fast now,
or Gerda will be worrying."
The figure in front of him made a blind step forward
like a somnambulist; and in a rapid mental vision as
definite as if it were a reality, Wolf saw him fallen
prone in the white dust, crying aloud for the return of
the image.
"Well, good-night!" he repeated brusquely; and turn-
ing on his heel, he strode off at a pace which it was not
easy to keep from becoming a run.
For some distance he had an uncomfortable sensation
in the back of his spine; but nothing happened. With his
left hand fiercely clutching the thing in his pocket, and
his right hand swinging his stick, he achieved an inglori-
ous but effective retreat.
It was not, however, till he was nearly a mile from
King's Barton that he dared to reduce his speed and
take his mental bearings. Even then his disturbed fancy
mistook the faint thudding of some tethered animal's
hooves on the floor of a shed for the patter of Jason's
steps in pursuit.
It must have been half-past six before he began to re-
cover himself and to look about him. There was hardly
a breath of wind stirring. There had fallen upon that
portion of the West Country one of those luminous late-
summer evenings, such as must have soothed the nerves
of Romans and Cymri, of Saxons and Northmen, after
wild pell-mells of advances and retreats, of alarums and
excursions, now as completely forgotten as the death-
struggles of mediaeval hernshaws in the talons of
goshawks.
The fields of wheat and barley, pearl-like and opales-
cent in the swimming haze, sloped upwards to the high
treeless ridge along which ran the main road from Rams-
gard to Blacksod. On his left, lying dim and misty, yet
in some strange way lustrous with an inner light of their
own, as if all the earth had become one vast phosphores-
cent glow-worm, rolled away from benealh that narrow
lane the dew-soaked pastures of the Blackmore Vale,
rising again in the distance to the uplands of High
Stoy.
Wolf was tempted to rest for a while, so as to gather
into some kind of focus the confused impressions of that
crowded afternoon; but he found, when he paused for
a moment, leaning over a gale, that the dew-wet herbage
brought to his mind nothing but one persistent image,
an image calm and peaceful enough, but full of a most
perilous relaxation of heart and will and spirit the
image, in fact, of a young man lying dead in a bedroom
at Pond Cottage, a young man with a shrouded face, and
long, thin legs. Who was it who had told him that young
Redfern was tall and thin?
He moved on, with a wave of his stick, as if to dispel
this phantom; and it was not long before the first houses
of Blacksod began to appear, some of them with win-
dows already displaying lamplight, which mingled queerly
enough with the strange luminosity such as still eman-
ated from earth and sky. Wolf noted how different such
spots of artificial light appeared, when they thus re-
mained mere specks of yellow colour surrounded by
pale greyness, from what they would be in a brief while,
when they broke up the complete darkness.
And as he began to encounter the evening stir of the
town's precincts, and the heavy breath of the Blackmore
pastures ceased to drug his senses, he found that what
he had gone through that day was now slowly sifting
itself out in the various layers of his consciousness.
"Either Urquhart is up to something," he thought, "or
Jason has just invented the whole thing to satisfy his
own strange mind! God help us! What a crazy set they
all are! I'm thankful I'm out of it down here. Blacksod
doesn't lend itself to such whimsies."
Thus did the outer surface of his mind report on the
situation, making use of the artificially acquired genial
optimism of many a forgotten mental tour de force.
But another a deeper layer in his mind made quite
a different report.
"There's something up, over there, that's hostile to
me and to my life. They seem to have nothing else to
do, these King's Barton people, but plot with one an-
other against someone. Good Lord! No wonder they
finished off Redfern among them all! I can see I'm go-
ing to have to defend myself. And easily could I do it,
too, if it weren't for mother. Damn! It's mother being
up there that's the rub; so dependent on Urquhart. If it
weren't for her, I'd laugh at the whole lot of them. I've
got my job at the school, thanks to Darnley. What a man
Darnley is, compared with these madmen! They've wor-
ried him a lot though. Anyone can see that."
This second layer of his consciousness seemed so
crowded with thoughts and surmises that he found him-
self standing stock-still outside a little greengrocer's
shop, the better to get things clear.
A small ornament, perched in the lighted window,
among the oranges and lettuces, made him recall the
idol in his pocket; and from Mukalog his mind rushed
back to Jason.
"I can't understand him," he said to himself. "Valley,
I know, is a good man. Urquhart is a demon. But Jason
baffles me. The Slow-Worm of Lenty! That's about what
he is. I had a feeling just now, when he stood with his
eyes shut and his mouth gibbering, that he belonged to
some primeval order of things, existing before good and
evil appeared at all. But it's clear that Urquhart's ca-
joled him somehow. And yet I don't know! I'm tempted
to think he'd be a match even for him very much in the
way some cold wet rain from the aboriginal chaos would
discomfort the Devil!"
He turned from the shop-window and moved on. Soon
he came to where two crossroads branched off from the
one he followed, the road to the right leading up Baby-
lon Hill, the road to the left leading to that portion of
the town where Christie's house was. Should he turn
to the left and return home that way? Or should he go
straight on, past his father-in-law's yard?
The hesitation into which he now fell left an empty
space in his mind; and at once there rose to fill it, from
the invisible depths of his being, quite a new report upon
the events of that day. Was there something more than
those old sea-beach afternoons, those Lovers' Lane
naughtinesses, between Gerda and Bob Weevil? He could
not help remembering the exciting photograph of the
girl astride of the tombstone which he had seen the two
lads enjoying so much, that day he bought the sausages
for Roger Monk.
The more rational layers of Wolf's consciousness now
began a derisive criticism of this new mood. Had he the
instincts of the lord of a seraglio? Did he demand that
both Gerda and Christie should be faithful to him...
while he himself was...as he was? No, it was dif-
ferent from that! After his fashion he was being faithful
to Gerda. It was the nature of this particular case. It
was, in fact, Mr. Weevil! To be cuckolded by Bob, the
scamp of Blacksod, was not any way a very soothing
destiny; but to be cuckolded by Bob as a sort of school-
boy-lark, a lark set in motion by the sardonic Mr. Ur-
quhart, was a fantastic outrage.
Still he hesitated at these crossroads, teased beyond
his wont by the difficulty of deciding which way to go.
He was so pulled at in both directions, that as he wavered
he seemed actually to see before him the objects he
would meet under either choice, and to feel the sensations
he would experience under either.
In the end a motive simpler than love or jealousy de-
cided the point. He took the shorter way, the way by Mr.
Torp's yard, because of a secret craving for food in the
recesses of his stomach. But though this was his real
motive, what he thought was his motive was jealousy
over Bob Weevil. And the idea of this, that he should
have such a feeling at all, in connection with the romance
of passing close to Christie's room, at once puzzled and
shamed him.
He walked on with rapid strides now; and as he passed
the familiar Torp yard, which lay in a hushed and rather
ghastly pool of twilight, he thought how little he had
foreseen, that March day when he turned into this en-
closure, what occurrences would be the result of it!
Bound by intimate habit to the one he had married in
love, for good and all, with the one he had not married
his situation just then was sufficiently complicated,
without all this bewildering turmoil of personalities in
King's Barton!
It was with an accumulated measure of sheer animal
relief that he found himself entering his own house at
last. This was increased by a delicious abandonment to
unhindered amorousness when he discovered that Gerda
was waiting for him at the kitchen-stove in her night-
dress and dressing-gown. The girl had certain very
quaint and pretty ways of expressing her desire to be
made love to; and she had seldom been more excitable
or more whimsically provocative than she was that
night.
Though hunger had brought him so quickly home, it
was more than an hour after his return that they sat
down to their supper; and during the lingered-out and
shameless caresses which he enjoyed before he would
let her approach the stove, Wolf was compelled to come
to the conclusion that erotic delight has in itself the
power of becoming a kind of absolute. He felt as if it
became a sort of ultimate essence into which the merely
relative emotions of the two preoccupied ones sank
indeed were so utterly lost that a new identity dominated
the field of their united consciousness, the admirable
identity of amorousness in itself, the actual spiritual
form, or "psychic being," of the god Eros!
What Wolf found to his no small content was that
when this spiritual emanation of sweet delight had van-
ished away he was entirely free from any feeling of hav-
ing commilted sacrilege against his love for Christie.
Whether this would have been the case had Christie
been different from what she was, he found it difficult
to decide; though in the intervals of pleasant discourse
with Gerda, as they sat over their supper, he pondered
deeply upon that nice point.
Another side-issue that had a curious interest for him
was the question whether the accident of his having re-
membered that wicked tombstone-picture on his way
home had had anything to do with the completeness of
his pleasure! He had noted before in himself the pe-
culiar role played by queer out-of-the-way imaginations
in all these things! And finally--but this thought did not
come to him till their meal was ove--he caught him-
self at least once that night in a grim wondering as to
how far the sweet desirability of his companion had been
enhanced for him by those sinister rumours of a rival
in the field, even though that rival was this water-rat-
featured seller of sausages!
Gerda was the first to go to sleep that night as they
lay side by side, with the familiar odours of summer
grass and pigsty drainage floating in upon them. Wolf
had arrived, not without many mental adjustments, dur-
ing the last two months, at a more or less satisfactory
compromise between what he felt for this girl, thus ly-
ing with his arm stretched out beneath her, and what
he felt for the other one. Christie's inflexible pride and
the faint, hardly-stirred pulse of her subnormal senses,
made it much easier for him. An instinctive unwilling-
ness, too, in his own nature, to introduce any strain of
harsh idealism, led him to get all the contentment he
could out of his life with his lovely bedfellow. As he
listened to her evenly-drawn breathing, and felt, through
all his nerves, the delicious relaxation of her love-
exhausted limbs, he was conscious now more than ever
that it was completely unthinkable that he should be
guilty of making her unhappy by any drastic change.
In a sense what he had said to Selena Gault was true.
He was happy. But he knew in his heart perfectly well
that he was only happy because the deepest emotion he
was capable of was satisfied by his nearness to Christie.
Profoundly self-conscious as he was, Wolf was never
oblivious of his lack of what people have agreed to call
by the name of "passion." Luckily enough Christie, too,
seemed, as far as he was able to tell, devoid of this
exigency; so that by their resemblance in this peculiar-
ity the strange intensity of their love was not disturbed
by his easy dalliance with Gerda.
What Wolf at this moment felt, as he listened to the
girl's soft breathing and held her in his arms, was a
delicious, diffused tenderness--a tenderness which, like
the earth itself, with the cool night-airs blowing over
it, was touched by rumours and intimations belonging
to another region. His sensual nature tranquillized, sat-
isfied, appeased, permitted his spirit to wander off freely
towards that other girlish form, more elusive, less tan-
gible, hardly realizable to any concrete imagination,
which now lay--sleeping or waking, he knew not which--
in the room that looked out upon Poll's Camp! There,
above the books of that incestuous old man's shop, that
other one was lying alone. Was she satisfied in this am-
biguous love of his? He preferred not to let himself
dwell upon that aspect of the matter just then; and
holding Gerda fast, and inhaling the mingled night-
airs, he let his mind sink into the plenary absolution of
a deep, dreamless sleep.
HOME FOR BASTARDS
THE NEXT DAY PROVED TO BE, AS FAR AS THE WEATHER
was concerned, even more pleasant than its predecessor.
Event followed event in harmonious and easy sequence.
Gerda's morning crossness was tempered by an enchant-
ing aftermath of petulant willingness to be caressed.
His boys at the Grammar School, whom he had labori-
ously anchored in the reign of the first Tudor, were too
occupied with thoughts of examinations and the ap-
proaching summer holidays to be as troublesome as
usual. His afternoon at King's Barton was devoted to
a concentrated perusal of the history of the unfortunate
Lady Wyke of Abbotsbury; and Mr. Urquhart, crouch-
ing at his elbow like a great silky Angora tom-cat, was
too absorbed in their researches to indulge in more than
a very few of his sidelong malignities.
So well-pleased with their progress was the Squire,
that while he and his secretary drank their tea at the
library-window he asked Wolf if it would be any help
to his mother if Roger Monk were to drive her to Rams-
gard and back before dinner.
"Roger declares he wants to go over there," he said.
"What he's up to I don't know. He never tells me any-
thing. But if your mother or you care for the drive,
you can tell him to call for you."
Wolf knew that Mrs. Solent had in her mind the
notion of paying a formal call upon Miss Gault as a
sign of their reconciliation; so he hurriedly accepted
this offer and went off at once.
"I think I'll go too," he announced to the big dark-
browed servant; "so, if it won't weigh down your gig,
you might put in the back-seat for me."
He found his mother lingering over her tea in the
parlour of the trim cottage. He caught a glimpse of her
unobserved as he approached the window, and it was
rather a shock to him to observe a look in her face
which he had never seen before. She was sitting motion-
less, with her outstretched hands pressed against the
edge of the table and her gaze fixed upon emptiness.
Her brown eyes, from the angle at which he caught her,
had a defeated, weary, helpless expression, and even the
contours of her formidable chin were relaxed, crumpled,
desolate.
He had a queer feeling of shame for having caught
her thus, as though in the indecent exposure of some
secret deformity; and he hurriedly and noisily entered
the little house.
At his appearance her whole manner changed. She
seemed delighted to have the chance of driving to Rams-
gard with him, and they chatted gaily till she went up-
stairs to get ready,
Roger Monk did not keep them waiting; and while he
was at the garden-gate, holding the horse till the lady
came down, Wolf had a word or two with him.
"Mr. Urquhart didn't seem to know what you were
up to in Ramsgard," he remarked, indiscreetly enough,
but with no ulterior motive.
"He knew right and fine, Mr. Solent! Don't you make
no mistake. There isn't much that goes on up at House
or out of House either, for that matter that he doesn't
know!"
"That must be rather uncomfortable sometimes, eh?
What?"
This rather ungentlemanly imitation of the Squire's
favourite phrase tickled the swarthy giant's fancy, and
he smiled broadly. But a minute later his face grew
grave and worried.
" 'Tis a good place with Squire," he whispered, bend-
ing down towards Wolf. "But I tell 'ee straight, Mr.
Solent, Sir, if I knew for sure he wouldn't play some
dog's trick on me I'd do a bunk tomorrow!"
Wolf stared at him blankly.
"I would," he repeated. And then, with the scowl of
a righteous executioner, "I'll tap the top of his black
head for him one of these days if God Almighty doesn't
do it first!"
In spite of this somewhat ominous beginning, their
drive into Ramsgard was a great success. Roger Monk
quickly recovered his good-humour under Mrs. Solent's
blandishments; and by the time they reached the school-
gate they were all three in the best of spirits.
Here they separated, the servant driving Mrs. Solent
towards Miss Gault's house, while Wolf turned up the
street with the intention of paying a visit to the Smiths.
The door was opened for him by Mattie herself; and
the brother and sister embraced affectionately, as soon
as they were alone in the cool, dark, musty hall.
"Dad is out," she whispered, "and we've only one
servant now."
"One servant?" he echoed, as she led him, with her
finger on her lip, into the empty dining: room.
"Olwen's upstairs playing," she said in a low voice.
It was clear to him that she was anxious that the
child should not hear his voice; so he shut the door very
quietly and they sat down together on two red leather
chairs.
"What's the trouble, Mattie dear?" he murmured,
holding her hand tightly.
"It's Dad," she said. "He's been queer the last few
days."
It was difficult for Wolf to repress a smile; for the
idea of Mr. Albert Smith, the great Hatter of Ramsgard
School, the sedate Churchwarden of the Abbey, being
in any kind of way "queer" struck him as grotesque.
"What's up with him? Business bad?"
Matlie sighed, and, releasing her hand from his clasp,
folded her fingers lightly together.
"It's worse than bad," she said slowly. "Do you know,
Wolf, I believe Dad's ruined."
"Good Lord, child!" he cried. "He can't be! I can't
believe it. Mr. Smith? Why, he's been at this job
here for as long as I can remember. He must have
made a lot! He may have got some mania, my dear,
about money. You ought to make him sell out and re-
tire!"
"I tell you, Wolf," she said emphatically, and with
a certain irritation, "it's true! Can't you believe I know
what I'm talking about? He's been investing in some
silly way. He's never been as sensible as people think;
and now he's hit, knocked over. I believe he's already
taken the first step, whatever that is, to being bank-
rupt."
"Bankrupt?" repeated Wolf helplessly.
"So that's the state of our affairs!" she cried in a
lighter tone. "And now tell me about yourself and your
pretty Gerda."
As she spoke she rose to her feet and flung her hands
behind her head, straightening her frame to its full
height.
"She's got a fine figure," thought Wolf. "What a
shame that her nose is so large!"
Mattie's countenance did indeed seem, as he looked at
her staring steadily down at him out of her deep-set
grey eyes, even less presentable than when he had seen
her a few weeks ago.
"She's been having a bad time, poor girl!" he thought.
"How damnable that the gods didn't mould her face
just a little more carefully!"
He looked at her as she fixed her eyes on the floor,
frowning; and then he glanced away at the mahogany
sideboard, where Mr. Smith's heavy pieces of polished
silver met his gaze, with the peculiar detached phlegm
of old, worn possessions that have seen so many family-
troubles that they have grown professionally callous,
after the manner of undertakers and sextons.
Something about that silver on the sideboard, com-
bined with his sister's news, threw a grey shadow over
his own life. His mind sank down into a desolate accept-
ance of long years of stark endurance, the sort of en-
durance that wind-blown trees have to acquire when
their branches become at last permanently bent, from
bowing sideways, away from the north or the east.
"Well, now you know the worst!" his sister murmured
at last.
"It might he worse still," he said lamely.
Her eyes unexpectedly flashed and she gave vent to a
queer little laugh.
"I don't care! I don't care! I don't care!" she cried.
"In fact, if it weren't for Olwen, I believe I'd be almost
glad!"
Wolf screwed up his eyes and regarded her closely.
He suddenly became aware that this daughter of his fa-
ther had something in her nature that he understood well
enough.
"Listen, Mattie," he said quietly. "I have an idea that
things are going to work out all right work out better
for you, in fact, than they've been doing for a long
time."
She looked straight into his face and smiled, while one
of her eyebrows rose humorously and twitched a little.
"You and I are a funny pair, Wolf," she said. "I
believe we actually like to be driven and hunted."
They exchanged a long, confused look. Then he pro-
truded his under-lip and drew down the corners of his
mouth.
"If so, we know where we get it," he said. And then,
in a sudden after-thought: "Look here, we must slip
off one day together and visit his grave. I don't see
why Madame Selena should have a monopoly of that
spot!"
She made a somewhat brusque and ungracious move-
ment.
"I don't like graves," she said. "But come on, Wolf,
we mustn't stay down here any more. Let's go up and
see Olwen. She'll never forgive me even now for keep-
ing you."
He opened the door for her and they went up softly
together. As he followed hefr form up the dim stair-
case, the thought came shamelessly into his head that
had she been as lovely in face as she was flexible in
figure she would have had a sensual attraction for him.
"But I understand her well," he said to himself. "And
I'll do what I can to make her life happier."
Mattie paused, when she reached the first landing, till
he was at her side. Then she called out: "Olwen! Olwen!
Here's a visitor for you!"
"Olwen! Olwen!" echoed Wolf.
There was a scream and a scramble, and a door was
flung wide. The little girl ran out with her hair flying
and rushed into her friend's arms.
When at last he disentangled himself from her cling-
ing hands, he held her at a distance from him, pushing
her into the stream of light that had come with her
through the open door. Holding her in this way he
searched her face with a stern scrutiny. "After all," he
thought, "she's more nearly related to Christie than I
am to Mattie. We might all be in Mr. Urquhart's book!"
But the child pulled him into her room, and, disre-
garding Mattie completely, began hurriedly displaying
before him every one of her treasures.
The summer night was already chilly, and over the
half-opened window the muslin curtains swelled and re-
ceded, receded and swelled, as if they were sails on an
invisible sea. Crouching upon a low straight-backed
nursery-chair--the very chair, in fact, upon which her
mother had sat to suckle her in her infancy--Mattie sat
with her hands clasped round her knees, watching the
shadows of their three forms, thrown by the candlelight,
waver and hover against the old-fashioned wall-paper.
Wolf began to detach himself, as the three of them sat
there, from the pressure of the actual situation, from
the awareness even of his own personality. He seemed to
slip away, out of his human skin, out of that old Rams-
gard house, out of the very confines of life itself. He had
the sensation that he was outside life--that he was out-
side death too; that he was floating in some airy region,
where forms and shapes and sounds had been left be-
hind--had changed into something else.
Attenuated by the influence of these bodiless fancies,
the palpable shapes of Mattie and Olwen seemed to thin
themselves out into something more filmy than the stuff
of dreams. Mechanically he responded to Olwen's in-
tense preoccupations, mechanically he smiled at his sis-
ter across the little girl's flushed face. But he felt that
his senses were no longer available, no longer to be
trusted. He had slid away somehow into some level of
existence where human vision and human contact meant
nothing at all. It was as if these two girls had become
as unreal as his own intangible thoughts--those thoughts
like tiny twilight insects--which passed without leaving
a trace!
"No! Didn't you hear me telling you? That's not
Gipsy...that's Antoinette!" scolded the little girl, as
she snatched a miniature pillow from under one waxen
head to insert it violently beneath another.
"Dolls dolls dolls!" thought Wolf. "If we can slip
out of reality, why can't they slip into it?" He began
automatically swinging both Gipsy and Antoinette from
one hand to the other, a proceeding which delighted their
little mistress.
"What," he thought, as he contemplated Mattie's heavy,
clouded, patient features, her corrugated brow, her thick
nose, "what am I aiming at, meddling with these peo-
ple's lives? I do it with the same voracity with which I
eat honey or trample over grass. I'm driven to it as if
I were an omophagous demon! Is this the sort of thing
my father did--that scoundrel with his 'happy life'?"
He was interrupted in his thoughts by the sound of
a bell downstairs, followed by the opening of a door and
by unsteady steps in the hall.
Mattie jumped to her feet and stood listening, intent
and anxious.
"I believe that's Father!" she cried. "But why did he
ring? He never rings. Excuse me, Wolf, I must run
down."
She opened the door, but remained still listening, as
also did Olwen, with wide-open startled eyes, a thin
arm thrown round Wolf's neck.
There was a muttering and a shuffling downstairs, fol-
lowed by the clang of a heavy stick falling on a tiled
floor. Then a chair creaked ominously and there was a
sort of groan. Then all was silent.
Mattie, with her hand on the door, turned round to
them; and in spite of the flickering of the candles he
could see that her face had gone white.
"It's Father!" she whispered. "He's ill. I must go
down."
Still hesitating, however, and evidently struck by
some sort of panic, she continued to waver in the door-
way. Wolf remembered afterwards every smallest in-
cident of that occasion. Olwen's little arm had a pulse
in it that beat against his cheek like a tiny clock as she
held him tighter and tighter. He replaced Gipsy and
Antoinette on a chair by his side, half-consciously
smoothing down their ruffled dresses. Both dolls' eyes,
one pair blue and one black, stared up at him. Antoi-
nette's arm stuck out awkwardly, absurdly. He pushed
it down by her side with one of his fingers and it creaked
as he did so.
"Stay where you are, both of you! I must go!" cried
Mattie; and she ran hastily down the stairs.
Then there was a sudden scream that echoed sharply
through the whole silent house. "Wolf! Wolf!" came
her voice.
"Stay here, sweetheart!" he cried, freeing himself and
rushing to the door. "Stay where you are!" But the lit-
tle girl followed him like a shadow and was there by his
side when he reached the hall. They had left the door of
the dining-room open, and by the light thus flung into the
passage he saw Mattie on her knees before one of the hall-
chairs, on which sprawled the stiff, collapsed form of Mr.
Smith. His eyes were open and conscious under his black
felt hat, which, tilted sideways, gave him a grotesque,
drunken appearance. Mattie was chafing his hands with
her own and murmuring wild endearments.
Wolf hurriedly closed the front-door, which had been
left ajar, and then, with Olwen still clinging to him,
proceeded to strike a match, so as to light the hall-
lamp.
"What are you doing, Wolf? Go away, Olwen. He'll
be better in a minute. Father! Darling Father, what's
the matter? What is it, Father? You're safe at home.
You're all right now. Father dearest, what is it?" Mattie
kept crying out in this way all manner of contradictory
commands and appeals, as she went on rubbing Mr.
Smith's impassive hands.
Wolf removed the man's hat and hung it carefully on
a peg. He remembered afterwards the look of this hat,
hanging side by side with his own, calm and a little
supercilious, as hats in that position always are.
"Mattie," he said, "do you want me to go and find a
doctor?"
But at the word "doctor" the man in the chair found
his voice.
"No no no! No doctor. I won't have one. I won't!
Off! Off! Off!"
"What is it, Father dear?" cried Mattie, rising to her
feet and pressing her hand against his forehead. "No,
you don't want a doctor. I'm here your Mattie. You're
better now, Father, aren't you?"
Mr. Smith stared at her with a heavy confused stare.
"All thieves," he muttered.
Wolf tried to catch his sister's eye for permission to
disobey the sick man, but the girl seemed to have for-
gotten his existence. It was clear to him that Mr. Smith
had had some kind of stroke. His face wore now an un-
natural reddish tint, and his head kept drooping side-
ways, as if the muscles of his neck no longer responded
to his will.
Suddenly he astonished them by calling out "Lorna!
Lorna!" in a loud voice.
"Oh, he's dying!" sobbed Mattie. "That's Mother he
wants. It's your Mattie. It's your dear Mattie," she re-
peated, bending over him. But Mr. Smith had begun
mumbling now, incoherently, but not inarticulately.
"Home...home for bastards...." Wolf was sure
those were the words he used; and he was relieved that
Mattie, fallen on her knees again now, was sobbing so
violently as to make it unlikely that she could catch what
he said.
"Hats...hats for bastards...." Mr Smith went
on. "No, no, Lorna! It was to Longburton he took you.
But never mind....Albert Smith, home for bastards.
Albert Smith, Ramsgard, Dorset, Draper and Hat-Dealer.
To the school, I tell 'ee! No no no! She'll never,
never, never confess....Longburton barn...hay
and straw...hay and straw in your hair, my dear...
and long past eleven....What? You pricked your fin-
ger? A very pretty hat! Hats for bastards....Home.
My home. Albert Smith of Ramsgard come home."
His head had sunk so low now as to be almost resting
on Mattie's shoulder, as she sobbed against his knees.
Suddenly he lifted it with a spasmodic jerk.
"I'll pay for the child! I've got the money. I'll pay
for them all and say nothing. Albert Smith, Draper and
Hatter....To the school, I tell 'ee!...Pay...
pay all...pay...."
This was really the end now. His body fell forward
over the stooping girl, and Wolf was hard put to it to
pull her away from between the prone forehead and the
stiff, protruding knees. For the moment he feared she
would collapse; but he saw the quick, protective glance
she cast at Olwen, who stood motionless, staring at the
dead man like a fairy in a pantomime at the chief clown,
and he knew then that she was mistress of herself. She
helped him, without shrinking and without any more
tears, to carry the body of Mr. Smith up the staircase
and into his bedroom....
It was about two hours after this that Wolf entered
the room again with Mattie. Here, lying on his own high
pillow, the head of the dead man had already assumed
an expression of exhausted indifference. Close by his
side, on a little table by the bed, as Wolf cast a final
glance at him, was a picture of a young woman in the
chaste costume of the mid-Victorian epoch. "Madam
Lorna, I suppose," he thought; and he would have
looked more closely at his father's sweetheart, but the
presence of Mattie restrained him.
"I'll come over tomorrow evening, my dear," he said,
"after my work with the Squire. Don't commit yourself
to any arrangements or any plans till we've seen how the
land lies. You won't, will you, Mattie?" he repeated em-
phatically. "I'll be really angry if you make any move
that we haven't discussed together."
They were out on the landing by this time, and the
little girl heard them speaking and called out to them
from her room.
"Go to sleep, Olwen!" cried Mattie.
"I want him to see Gipsy and Antoinette! I want him
to see them!" the child repeated.
"Only for a minute, Wolf, please!" whispered his
sister. "She's so terribly excited I shall never get her to
sleep."
They opened the door and went in. There was a tray,
with milk and biscuits upon it, on the chest of drawers
by Olwen's bed and near the tray a small night-light
burning. By this faint flicker Wolf could see the little
girl's dark eyes shining with awe-struck intensity, though
she was immobile as an image.
"Come nearer! Come quite near! They're as awake
as I am."
He went up to the bed; and there, lying on opposite
sides of Olwen's pillow, were the two dolls, with black
ribbons twisted tightly round them and their hair brushed
smooth and straight.
"They are going to grandfather's funeral tomorrow,"
she whispered. "Don't they look sorry and good?"
A minute or two later he bade his sister farewell at the
front-door.
"You're sure you don't want me to stay the night with
you?" he asked.
Mattie shook her head.
"I shall sleep with Olwen," she replied quietly. "We
shall be all right."
"Well, remember you've had no supper. You'll never
get through the night if you don't eat something."
"What about you, Wolf? How stupid I am!"
"Oh, I'll get a drink at the Lovelace on my way," he
said. "But remember no plans of any kind till I've
seen you again!"
He was indeed only just in time to get into the Love-
lace bar before the Abbey clock struck ten. He enquired
about the King's Barton coachman and found that Mrs.
Solent had left a message at the hotel-office earlier in the
evening, saying that they could not wait for him, but
that they had heard of Mr. Smith's death and would Mr.
Solent come and see her tomorrow.
"I wonder," he thought, "how the devil she heard?
They must have actually come to the door and been told
by the maid about it when we were all upstairs. Well,
it'll give her some kind of a shock, I daresay but not
very much!"
He left the Lovelace after drinking a pint of Dor-
chester ale. The night was cool and fragrant. The sky
was covered now by a grey film of feathery clouds,
through which neither moon nor stars were visible ex-
cept as a faint diffused luminosity, which lifted the
weight of darkness from the earth, but turned the world
into a place of phantoms and shadows.
Wolf decided to follow the shorter and easier way
home. This was the highroad to Blacksod that ran along
the top of the ridge dividing Dorset from Somerset; and
as he strode between the phantasmal wheat-fields of that
exposed upland, his thoughts took many a queer turn.
So Mattie and Olwen were left penniless! That was evi-
dently going to be the upshot of the hatter's death. And
the question was, what was to become of them? If it had
426 WOLF SOLENT
not been for the child's insane hostility to Christie, the
natural course would have been for Olwen to return to
her father's dwelling. The chances were that the local
authorities, unless Miss Gault took upon herself to med-
dle again, would not interfere. Then his mind reverted
to his mother.
Would his mother take them in? Roger Monk's house
was certainly big enough, and it seemed unlikely that
the Squire would object if no one else did. But good
Lord! he couldn't visualize his mother living with an-
other woman, or indeed putting up with the waywardness
and excitability of Olwen. Who would educate her? It
was impossible to contemplate Olwen at school!
The problem seemed well-nigh insoluble, as he pon-
dered on it. Then, all in a moment, he thought of Se-
lena Gault. There, no doubt, was the obvious solution!
Selena was passionately fond of the little girl, and Se-
lena had a servant. He stared at a fantastic thorn-tree,
whose largest branch, bare of leaves and apparently quite
dead, stretched out a semi-human hand across the tangled
foliage of the roadside. As was his wont when con-
fronted by a mental dilemma, he stood stock-still and
regarded this silent monitor.
Nature was always prolific of signs and omens to
his mind; and it had become a custom with him to keep
a region of his intelligence alert and passive for a thou-
sand whispers, hints, obscure intimations that came to
him in this way. Why was it that a deep, obstinate re-
sistance somewhere in his consciousness opposed itself
to such a solution? He tried to analyze what he felt.
Selena was a good woman, a passionately protective
woman; but there it was! That interference in the case of
the Malakites had lodged a deep distaste in his mind.
She might love Olwen; but she probably hated Mattie as
much as she did Christie.
Damn! Why had Mr. Smith fooled away his money
and shuffled himself off in this awkward manner? "Home
for bastards" what gross outbursting of the literal
truth that was! Well, it was his business now to take the
hatter's place and find just such a home! That incorri-
gibly complacent and grinning skull in the cemetery had
certainly managed to bequeath burdens to its legitimate
offspring which were not easy to fulfill!
Wolf stuck out his under-lip at the oracular thorn-
tree and strode on. What he asked now, of that grey
luminosity above him and of those diaphanous wraith-
like corn-shocks, was why there should be, between his
deepest desire and his complicated activity, such an un-
bridged gulf?
He had only one life. That was a basic and relentless
fact. An eternity of "something or other" lay behind
him, and an equally obscure eternity of "something or
other" lay in front of him. Meanwhile, here he was,
with only one single, simple, and world-deep craving
the craving to spend his days and his nights with that
other mysterious and mortal consciousness, entitled .Chris-
tie Malakite! And yet, for reasons comparatively super-
ficial, reasons comparatively external to his secret life-
current, he was steadily, day by day, month by month,
building up barriers between himself and Christie, strug-
gling to build them up, moving men and women like
bricks and mortar to build them up!
A villainously evil thought assailed him as he walked
along. Were all his better actions only so many Pharisaic
sops thrown one by one into the mouth of a Cerberus of
selfishness, monstrous and insane? Was his "mythology"
itself only a projection of such selfishness? He carried
this sardonic thought like a demon-fox pressed against
the pit of his stomach, for nearly a mile; and it was just
as if the hard, opaque crystal-circle of his inmost iden-
tity were, under that fox's black saliva, turning into
something shapeless and nauseating, something that re-
sembled a mass of floating frog-spawn.
"Come, you demon," he said to himself at last, "my
soul is going to remain intact, or it's going to dissolve
into air!"
He had reached the summit of Babylon Hill now; and
precisely where he had first crossed that stile with Gerda,
he stood at this moment, rending his nature in a des-
perate inward struggle.
When, in the middle of the night, lying in his bed by
Gerda's side, he recalled this evil experience, he found
the explanation of it in a sort of dissolution-hypnosis, or
corruption-sympathy, linking him with the actual dead
body of Albert Smith!
What he experienced was strange enough. He found
himself very soon clutching with his fingers one of the
posts of that stile, while with his other hand he dug his
stick savagely into the sun-baked earth. And it seemed to
him that every revolting or secretive instinct he had ever
had took on a material shape and became as an actual
portion of his physical body.
He became, in fact, a living human head, emerging
from a monstrous agglomeration of all repulsiveness.
And this gross mass was not only foul and excremental;
it was in some mysterious way comic. He, the head of this
unspeakable body, was the joke of the abyss; the smug
charlatan-prig at which the devils shrieked with laughter.
The queer thing was that his brain moved at this mo-
ment with incredible rapidity. His brain debated, for
example, as it had never done before, the insoluble prob-
lem of free-will, the problem of the very existence of the
mystery called "will." And then, all in a moment, with
a crouching-wild-animal movement of his consciousness,
he flung a savage defiance to all these doubts. He laid
hold of his will as if it had been a lightning-conductor,
and, shaking it clear of his body, thrust it forth into
space, into a space that was below and yet above, within
and yet beyond Poll's Camp and Babylon Hill. And then,
in a second, in less than a second, so it seemed, as he
recalled it afterwards, there came flowing in upon him,
out of those secret depths of which he was always more
or less conscious, a greater flood of liberating peace than
he had ever known before!
He had the sensation, as he came down the slope, of
having left behind, on the top of Babylon Hill, some
actual physical body a body that had been troubling
him, like a great repulsive protuberance, both by its
appearance and by its weight. He felt lighter, freer, lib-
erated from the malice of matter. Above all he felt once
more that his inmost identity was a hard, round, opaque
crystal, which had the power of forcing itself through
any substance, organic, inorganic, magnetic, or psychic,
that might obstruct its way.
There were a few lights twinkling still among the
Blacksod roofs. But he had no notion wJiether Christie's
was among them; and at this moment it seemed unimpor-
tant. A new fragrance filled the air as he descended;
which he defined to himself as the actual smell of Somer-
setshire, as distinct from the smell of Dorsetshire the
far-off fragrance, in fact, full of the exhalations of brack-
ish mosses, amber-coloured peat-tussocks, and arrow-
pointed water-plants, of the salt-marshes of Sedgemoor.
Once in the town, he took without any hesitation
though he did not forget that long vigil of the night in
June the particular way that led past the Torp monu-
ment-yard. As he approached Preston Lane through the
deserted streets, he found himself thinking shamelessly
and contentedly of the pleasure of making love to Gerda
before he went to sleep.
His mind, after the experience he had gone through,
seemed to float lightly and carelessly over every aspect
of his existence. The personality of Christie remained
the same through everything. It was as if to everything
he did, even to making love to Gerda, Christie set her
proud and careless seal. This indeed so he said to
himself was the solution of that dilemma on which he
had been impaled. Christie did remain the great aim and
purpose of his life; but these innumerable other people
were part of the body of that life itself. They were what
he was, his ways, his habits, his customs, his manias, his
impulses, his instincts; and with all that he was he had
now been drawn to Christie as if by a magnet strong
enough to move a great slave-galleon of manias and su-
perstitions, en masse across the deep!
Airy and light as it now was, his soul seemed to have
been liberated in some secret way from all that clogged
and burdened it. The slave-galleon of his manias rocked
and tossed on a smooth tide; but his soul, like a careless
albatross, rode on the masthead. There was a strange
humming and singing from the galleon itself, as if the
immense peace of that summer night had turned it into a
trireme of deliverance, carrying liberated pilgrims to
the harbour where they would be. Something unutter-
able, some clue, some signal, had touched the dark bulk-
heads of this night-voyager; so that hereafter all might
be different. What was this clue? All he knew about it
now was that it meant the acceptance of something mon-
strously comic in his inmost being, something comic and
stupid, together with something as grotesquely non-
human as the sensations of an ichthyosaurus! But once
having accepted all this, everything was magically well.
"Christie! Christie!" he cried in his heart, longing to
tell her about it.
He stopped when he was opposite the familiar pigsty,
and lifted his head, breathing deeply. At that moment
Fate seemed so kind to him that its kindness was almost
too great. His love for Christie seemed to touch with a
kind of transparency everything that he looked at. Rap-
idly he crossed the road, entered his house, and ran up-
stairs.
He found the room dark; but when he had lit a
candle he saw that the girl was lying wide-awake, her
head propped high on the two pillows. He was in such an
exalted mood that he was hardly surprised at her first
words.
"Oh, Wolf, Wolf," she said, "I'm almost sorry you've
come so soon. I've been looking through that window for
hours and hours. What's happened to me I don't know;
but I've not felt like this since that evening when you
first loved me in the river-fields."
He stooped and kissed her without attempting an
answer; and when he held her presently in his arms, and
the room was again dark, it was as if they each found an
opportunity in their embraces wherein to express an ac-
cumulated tide of feelings that spread out wide and far
spread out beyond all that he could feel for her, and
beyond so it seemed to him, as he tasted tears on her
cheek all that she could feel for him.
And now, as their dalliance sank into quiescence, one
of Wolf's final thoughts before he slept was of the vast
tracts of unknown country that every human conscious-
ness includes in its scope. Here, to the superficial eye,
were two skulls, lying side by side; but, in reality, here
were two far-extending continents, each with its own sky,
its own land and water, its own strange-blowing winds.
And it was only because his own soul had been, so to
speak, washed clean of its body that day, that he was
able to feel as he felt at this moment. But even so what
those thoughts of hers had been, that he had interrupted
by his return, he knew no better now, than when first he
had entered her room and had blown out her candle.
CROOKED SMOKE
IT WAS WITH A FAIRLY UNTROUBLED MIND THAT WOLF
set off the following afternoon for King's Barton. And
it was with a peculiar sense of recovery that he found
himself seated side by side with Mr. Urquhart at the lit-
tered table in the great library-window.
Incredibly fragrant were the garden-scents that flowed
in upon him, past the Squire's pendulous eye-folds,
Napoleonic paunch, and withered pantaloon-legs. The
old rogue had discovered a completely new stratum of
obscene Dorset legends. He had got on the track now of
accounting for certain local cases of misbehaviour, on
the grounds of libidinous customs reverting to very
remote times. He was, in fact, at this moment gathering
all the material he could find about the famous "Cerne
Giant," whose phallic shamelessness seemed by no means
confined to its harmless representation upon a chalk-
hill.
As he looked down, past Mr. Urquhart's profile, upon
the lawn below, and contemplated the rich mingling
of asters, lobelias, and salpiglossis in Roger Monk's fa-
vourite flower-bed, it seemed to Wolf that certain pre-
maturely fallen leaves which he caught sight of down
there upon the grass had struck his consciousness long
ago with a tremendous significance. Those sultry glowing
purples...those dead leaves...what was that sig-
nificance? "This day is going to be a queer day for me,"
he thought. For he had become aware that some screen,
some casement, at the back of his mind, behind which
his most secret impressions lived and moved in their
twilight, had swung open a little....
He kept staring down out of that library-window past
his employer's profile. That purple glow from the flower-
bed...those dead leaves...why was there no dew
down there? It was autumn dew he was thinking about
that August day...silvery mist upon purple flowers.
..."The most important things in my life," he said to
himself, "are what come back to me from' forgotten
walks, when I've been alone....Dark grass with pur-
plish flowers...dead leaves with dew on them....
I wonder," he thought, "how much room those undertak-
ers left between old Smith's face and his coffin-lid?"
And then he thought, "I wonder if old Smith ever no-
ticed the look of dew upon dead leaves?" and he shifted
his position a little, as a cold shiver went through him.
But Mr. Urquhart now broke silence. Some telepathic
wave must have passed from his secretary's wandering
mind into his own.
"What's this news I hear," he said, "about Albert
Smith? The old chap's kicked the bucket, eh? Lovelace
was over here this morning, and he tells me the fellow
died last night and left nothing but debts. A bad lookout
for those two girls, what? Lovelace even hints at sui-
cide."
The Squire paused, and a very curious expression came
into his face.
"They talked of suicide when Redfern died," he went
on. "I'd like to know what you think, Solent, about this
business of shuffling off without a word to anyone? D'ye
think it's easy for 'em? D'ye think they do it with their
brains cool and clear? D'ye think they have some pretty
awful moments or not, ha? Come, tell me, tell me! I hate
not to know these things. Do they go through the devil
of a time before they bring themselves to it, eh? Or do
they sneak off like constipated beagles, to eat the long
ditch-grass and ha' done with it?"
Wolf tried in vain to catch his employer's equivocal
eye as he listened to all this. Never in his acquaintance
with Mr. Urquhart had he felt so baffled by the drift of
the man's mind. Something in himself, rising up from
very hidden depths, gave him a hurried danger-signal;
but what possible danger there could be to him from
the man's words he was unable to see.
"Do they mind it or don't they?" repeated the Squire.
"People pity 'em; but what does anyone know? Per-
haps the only completely happy moments of a man's
life are when he's decided on it. Things must look dif-
ferent then different and much nicer, eh, Solent? But
different, anyway; very different. Don't 'ee think so,
Solent? Quite different....Little things, I mean.
Things like the handles of doors, and bits of soap in
soap-dishes, and sponges on washing-stands! Wouldn't
you want to squeeze out your sponge, Solent, and pick
up the matches off the floor, when you'd decided on it?"
Wolf was spared the necessity of any retort to this
by the appefarance of Roger Monk. The man came in
without knocking and walked straight up to their table.
Wolf peered at him with quizzical screwed-up eyes.
He couldn't help recalling that explosion of homicidal
hatred which he had listened to outside Lenty Cottage.
But the gardener's countenance was impassive now as a
human-faced rock.
"Eh? What's that, Monk? Speak up. Mr. Solent will
not mind."
"Weevil and young Torp, Sir, round at the back. Sir;
asking for leave to fish in Lenty Pond, Sir."
Monk uttered the words in a low, discreet, colourless
voice.
Mr. Urquhart at once assumed a blustering great man's
tone of genial condescension, as if he were addressing
himself to the youths in question.
"Sporting young men, ha? Gay young truants, ha?
Well, we mustn't be too strict. Do 'em good, I daresay,
on a fine afternoon. Probably catch nothing but a perch
or two! Certainly, Roger. I've no objection, Roger."
But the man still remained where he was.
"They did say, Sir, that you said something the other
night to them, Sir, about "
But Mr. Urquhart interrupted him.
"I've no time now. I'm busy with Mr. Solent. Tell
'em to clear off and fish all they like. There's nothing
more, Roger, thank you. Tell 'em to fish the pond from
end to end, but not to trample down the rushes. Tell 'em
to be careful of the rushes, Roger. That's all, Roger."
His last words were uttered in such a final and dis-
missing tone, that the man, having given him one quick
interrogative look, swung round on his heels and left
the room.
The Squire turned to Wolf.
"A little sport for the populace, eh, Solent? Do 'em
good, what? Doesn't pay to be too strict these days.
Seignorial rights and that sort o' thing grown a bit old-
fashioned, ha?"
The conversation lapsed after this, and they returned
to their investigations concerning the Cerne Giant.
It was Mr. Urquhart's part to select, from the mass
of their material, the particular aspects of Dorset history
which lent themselves to their work. It was Wolf's busi-
ness to purge and winnow and heighten these to the gen-
eral level of the style which they had adopted.
"Every bibliophile in England'll have this book on
his shelves one day, Solent," remarked the Squire, after
about half-an-hour's work.
Wolf did not reply. For some reason he lacked the
faintest flicker of an author's pride in what they were
doing.
They worked on for nearly a whole hour after this.
Then Mr. Urquhart suddenly uttered these strange words.
"It would be wonderful to see one's sponge and one's
hair-brush as they'd look just then."
Wolf hurriedly gathered his wits together.
"You mean after you'd decided upon it?" he said.
Mr. Urquhart nodded.
"You'd see 'em in a sort of fairy-story light, I fancy,"
he went on, "much as infants see 'em, when they're so
damned well -pleased with themselves that they chirp
like grass-hoppers. It would be nice to see things like
that, Solent, don't you think so? Stripped clear of the
mischief of custom? It...would...be...very
...nice...to see...anything...like that!"
His voice assumed a languid and dreamy tone, full of
an infinite weariness.
Wolf found it difficult to make any intelligent com-
ment. His own mind was worrying about many teasing
details just then, such as what he was to say to his mother
with regard to Mattie and Olwen, and whether he should
go to Ramsgard between tea and dinner or wait till later
in the evehing.
Mr. Urquhart suddenly rose to his feet.
"Let's stroll round to Lenty Pond, Solent, and tell
those lads they can bathe if they want to. It's bathing
they really like," he added emphatically, "much more
than fishing. Good for the rabble, too, don't you think so,
Solent, to learn to swim?"
Wolf could only patiently acquiesce. He did, however,
snatch a brief glance at his watch.
"It's nearly four, Sir," he said. "You won't mind if
I leave you, after we've been over there, and run round
to my mother's?"
The man waved his hand with a negligent, indifferent
gesture. It was a mere nothing, this gesture; but in some
queer way it rather chilled Wolf's blood. "It must have
been," he thought to himself, "exactly in that way that
the high-priest waved his hand when he uttered the mem-
orable expression, 'What is that to us? See thou to
that!'"
They went out together, and Wolf was almost irri-
tated by the unnecessary speed with which Mr. Urqu-
hart walked.
They did not, for all this hurry, reach Lenty Pond
uninterrupted. Just as they were entering the field above,
the Otters' house, they came unexpectedly upon Jason.
The poet had as far as Wolf could make out been
sitting in the ditch, both for coolness and for seclusion;
but he emerged ' from his retreat in comparative self-
possession, and accepted Mr. Urquhart's rather curt
invitation to join them with quiet acquiescence.
They all proceeded therefore across the field, Wolf
forgetting his personal anxieties in his interest in the
way his two companions treated each other.
"Your peaches are very fine this year," said Jason to
the Squire. "And it was a very good idea of yours to
put netting over them. Thieves are afraid of touching
netting. It's like the Latin words at the beginning of a
psalm. It makes fruit seem more than fruit something
sacred, I mean."
"You must make my gardener pick you some of the
sacred fruit when you next explore my garden," said
Mr. Urquhart.
"You've put your garden-seats in such a very well-
chosen place," went on the poet, in an eager, propitiatory
manner. "None of these country fools understand why
your garden-seats are between the yew-hedges and the
privet-hedges. They've no more idea of how garden-seats
should be arranged I mean, with regard to shadows
than a Sturminster goose has of the taste of Tangerine
oranges."
"I hope," said Mr. Urquhart drily, "that you will not
fail to take advantage of all the shadows in my garden
when you happen to be there."
Wolf glanced at the Squire's face as he spoke, and
was startled by its look of agitated annoyance. But Jason
went on rapidly, his cheeks growing more and more
flushed, and a queer dark glow showing itself in his
eyes.
"There are idiots who can't enjoy that shrubbery of
yours, Mr. Urquhart, just because the bushes aren't
trimmed. Untrimmed shrubberies are by far the best.
Children and fairies are safe there. Silly old women
can't walk about in them and God can't get into them."
"I hope you'll never hurt yourself, Otter, when you
happen to be walking about in my shrubberies."
The tone in which his employer uttered these words
did not altogether surprise Wolf. In his earlier conclu-
sions about these two men he had taken for granted that
Jason was helpless in Mr. Urquhart's hands. He had
already begun to waver a little in this view.
They now arrived at the edge of Lenty Pond, and
Wolf was amused by the sight of two naked figures,
splashing, gesticulating, and clinging to the branches of
a submerged willow. It was clear that Mr. Urquhart's
"populace" had not waited for any formal permission to
substitute bathing for fishing.
"Hullo, lads! You've done very wisely, I see," said
the lord of the manor, approaching the edge of the wa-
ter and leaning on his cane.
"Take care of the leeches, you two!" cried Jason with
benevolent unction.
If Wolf had been previously struck by the unre-
strained manner in which the poet had rallied the great
man, he was still more arrested by the change that now
came over Mr. Otter's expressive face. It had been ston-
ily self-centred when he came out of the ditch. It had
been twitching with mischief as he talked. It now be-
came suddenly suffused with a kind of abandoned senti-
mentality. Every trace of nervousness passed out of it
and every shadow of misery. It seemed to be illuminated
by some soft inner light, not a radiant light, but a pal-
lid, phosphorescent nebulosity, such as might have ac-
companied the religious ecstasy of a worshipper of will-
o'-the-wisps.
Lobbie Torp, his thin white figure streaked with green
pond-weed, staggered out of the water and sat down by
the side of Jason on the bank, beating the flies away from
his legs with a muddy willow-branch.
Wolf noticed that the poet's expression assumed a look
of almost beatific contentment as he proceeded to enter
upon a whispered conversation with the small boy, who
himself, as far as Wolf could see, was too occupied in
casting awe-struck glances at the Squire to give the least
attention to what was being said to him.
"It's not too warm, gentlemen," called out Bob Weevil,
with a forced shiver, pulling himself up, rather fool-
ishly and self-consciously, by the tree-trunk in front of
him.
"Why don't you take a swim., Weevil?" enquired Mr.
Urquhart blandly.
"He dursn't, Sir. He's afeard of they girt water-snakes,"
cried Lobbie Torp.
Bob Weevil's reply to this taunt was to drop his hold
upon the tree, swing himself round, and strike out boldly
for the centre of the pond.
"Well done, Weevil! Well done!" cried out the Squire
in high delight, watching the flexible muscles and slim
back of the swimmer, as the muddy ripples eddied round
him.
"Float now, Weevil!" he went on. "Let's see you float!"
The youthful dealer in sausages turned upon his back
and beat the surface of the pond with arms and heels,
causing a solitary moor-hen, that hitherto had remained
in terrified concealment, to rise and flap away through
the thick reeds.
There passed rapidly through Wolf's mind, while all
this went on, a hurried mental estimate of his own feel-
ings. He felt and he frankly confessed it to himself
in some queer way definitely uncomfortable and embar-
rassed. The air of excited well-being around him jarred
upon his nerves as if there were actually present, hover-
ing with the gnats and midges above that pond, some
species of electricity to which he was completely insensi-
tive. He felt awkward, ill at ease, and even something of
a fool.
What puzzled him, too, profoundly and annoyingly,
was the fact that the psychic "aura" of the situation
seemed entirely natural and harmless. The presence of
those two lads seemed to have drawn out of both his
equivocal companions every ounce of black bile or com-
plicated evil.
The Squire had the air of an innocent, energetic school-
master, superintending some species of athletic sports.
Jason had the look of an enraptured saint, liberated from
earthly persecution and awakening to the pure ecstasies
of Paradise.
He himself began vaguely wondering, as Bob Weevil
reversed his position and with vigorous strokes ap-
preached the willow-tree, whether the numerous intima-
tions of peril he had been receiving lately had any reality
in them.
He had been, he knew well, taking for granted for
many months, that between himself and Mr. Urquhart
there existed some sort of subterranean struggle that
ultimately would articulate itself in some volcanic ex-
plosion. But at this moment, half-hypnotized by the
heavy sunshine, by the disturbed waters of Lenty Pond,
by the classic nakedness of the two youths, he found
himself beginning to wonder if the whole idea of this
psychic struggle were not a fancy of his brain.
The sense that this might be the case had an extremely
disconcerting effect upon him, and seemed to menace
with doubt and confusion one of the dominant motive-
powers of his identity.
He knew very well why it had this effect. His whole
philosophy had been for years and years a deliberately
subjective thing. It was one of the fatalities of his tem-
perament that he completely distrusted what is called
"objective truth." He had come more and more to re-
gard "reality" as a mere name given to the most last-
ing and most vivid among all the various impressions of
life which each individual experiences. It might seem
an insubstantial view of so solid a thing as what is called
"truth"; but such was the way he felt, and he thought
he would never cease to feel like that. At any rate, one
of his own most permanent impressions had always
been of the nature of an extreme dualism, a dualism
descending to the profoundest gulfs of being, a dualism
in which every living thing was compelled to take part.
The essence of this invisible struggle he was content to
leave vague and obscure. He was not rigid in his defini-
tions. But it was profoundly necessary to his life-illusion
to feel the impact of this mysterious struggle and to
feel that he was taking part in it. What had come over
him now as he watched the shining body of Mr. Weevil,
surmounted by his impudent water-rat face, as the self-
conscious youth once more began his gymnastics with
the willow-tree, was a sort of moral atrophy. Sitting
on the bank, hugging his knees, at a little distance from
Jason and Lobbie, he had time to watch the Squire, and
he was struck by the purged and almost hieratic look
which the man now wore, as he stood leaning upon his
cane, encouraging the silly manoeuvres of the sausage-
seller. "He looks like a mediaeval bishop watching a
tournament," Wolf said to himself. And the placid sun-
burnt sympathy he felt for the man's amiable passivity
seemed seeping in upon him like a warm salt-tide a
tide that was outside any "dualism" a tide that was
threatening the banked-up discriminations of his whole
life.
Then all in a moment he asked himself a very search-
ing question.
"What would I feel at this moment," he said to him-
self, "if Weevil were a girl and Lobbie a little girl?
Should I in that case be quite untroubled by this Gior-
gione-like fete-champetre? No!" so he answered his
own question "I should feel just as uncomfortable
even then at my complicity. It isn't a question of the
sex...it's a question of something else...it's a
question of " A noisy splash made by Lob as he
darted into the water, and a still louder splash made by
Mr. Weevil as he plunged to meet him, interrupted
Wolf's train of ideas.
He glanced at his watch. It was a quarter to five. He
scrambled to his feet and picked up his stick. "I must
rush off," he cried. "You'll excuse me, Sir? We'll meet
again soon, Otter. Good-bye, Weevil! Good-bye, Lobbie!
Don't stay in too long or you'll catch a chill, and I
shall get into trouble with the family."
Mr. Urquhart and Jason seemed as indifferent to his
departure as if he had been an inquisitive Guernsey cow
who had approached them and then gone off with a
flick of her tail. As he walked across the field he had
an uneasy sense that he was retreating from some occult
arena where he had suffered an irreversible defeat. The
stirring of the waters of Lerity was evidently perilous
to him!
He found his mother sitting over the tea-table in Roger
Monk's trim house, sewing artificial poppies round her
hat.
During their tea together he related all he chose to
relate of the hatter's death. His mother, however, with
her accustomed airy directness, like the swoop of a
kestrel, pounced at once on the main issue.
"That's what I wanted to discuss with you," she said.
"What's going to happen to those Smith girls?"
She gave him one of her sharp, quick looks, full of
worldly sagacity and yet full of a kind of humorous reck-
lessness.
"No one has the least idea," he responded. "I wish I
could do something for them. But I don't see how I can."
His mother looked mischievously and affectionately
at him.
Suddenly, coming round the tahle, she kissed him with
a series of little bird-like pecks. "There's no one like
my Lambkin," she said lightly, "for being too good to
live!"
Having thus given him the feeling--how well he knew
it--that the very deepest stretch of his spirit only ap-
peared as a pretty little pet-dog trick to her cynical
maternal eroticism, she went back again, round the ta-
ble, to her seat.
She drank more tea after that and ate more bread-
and-butter, and Wolf received the impression that his
obvious concern over Mattie and Olwen had for some
reason given her a deep sense of satisfaction.
It was certainly a relief to him that this was so; and
yet, as he met her warm, ironical, half-mischievous
glance, a glance full of a sort of gloating tenderness that
laughed at both itself and its object, he felt obscurely
uneasy.
"I hope," he said at last, "that I shan't inflict my
philanthropies on Gerda. Fortunately she's got a very
sweet nature."
A somewhat grim look passed over Mrs. Solent's face.
Her adamantine chin was pushed forward; and her
under-lip, like the under-lip of a carnivore, protruded
itself in an extremely formidable manner.
"I don't see your pretty Gerda putting herself out for
anybody," she said.
Wolf began instantaneously to grow angry--far more
angry than he could himself account for.
"She's as anxious about them as I am," he retorted
hotly.
"She knows you too well, Wolf, to dare to thwart
you," remarked Mrs. Solent.
"It's her generous nature!" he cried, with a trembling
lip. "It's pure-and-simple magnanimity, such as not an-
other girl in the world would show!"
His mother's massive face, under her weight of silver
hair, darkened to a dull red.
"I'm afraid you spoil us all, Lambkin," she said, with
a wicked, airy little laugh. "But your Gerda knows
how to play her cards."
She had never spoken to him in this tone before. The
magnetic current of his anger had touched an evil chord
in her own nature, and her laugh was sardonic.
"Play her cards!" he cried in high indignation. "She's
utterly incapable of such a thing! I wish you'd learn
the same sweet generosity, Mother! It's you who 'play
your cards,' as you call it."
Mrs. Solent rose to her feet, her face pale now and
hard-set as flint.
"You'd have done better to have gone back to Blacksod
this afternoon, Wolf," she said, "if that's how you feel
about me!"
"Mother, you are absolutely unfair!" he cried. "And
you've always been unfair about Gerda. You hate her
for some unknown absurd reason. Pure snobbishness
most likely! And you'd like to hurt her, to make her
suffer, to spoil her life. That's why oh, I see it now!
you're so glad I'm fussed up about Mattie. You think
that will spoil everything for Gerda; and you are glad
that it should!"
She came again round the table now, but with a very
different purpose from her previous gesture; and yet,
as Wolf knew well, it was the same savage eroticism that
dominated both these movements.
"I care nothing, not one crow's-feather, for your pretty,
brainless Gerda!" she cried, standing quite close to him,
her left hand on the handle of the silver cake-basket
which formed the centre of the tea-table, and her right
hand opening and shutting as if it were galvanized.
"I've been good to her, to please you; and I've been made
a fool of for my trouble. Don't you think I don't know
how little I count any more in your life, Wolf? Noth-
ing...nothing...nothing! You just come and see
me. You flatter me and cajole me. But you never stay!
Do you realize you haven't stayed one night under the
same roof with me, since you married? Oh, it's all right!
I don't complain. I'm growing an old woman; and old
women aren't such pleasant companions as brainless
little girls! Oh, it's all right! But it's a funny experience,
this being shelved and superannuated while your feel-
ings are just as young as anyone's!"
Her voice, as she let herself be overwhelmed by a
blind rush of accumulated self-pity, began to break and
choke; and then, all in a moment, it rose to a terrible,
ringing intensity, like the sound of a great sea-bell in a
violent storm....
"It's all right! I can stand it!" she cried. "I had
plenty of practice with your father, and now I'm going
to have the same thing with you....Oh, it's a cruel
thing to be a woman!"
She pushed back her grey hair from her forehead
with one hand, while the other twitched frantically at
her waist-band. Never had her handsome features looked
more noble; never had her whole personality projected
such magnificent, such primeval passion.
Wolf, as he watched her, felt weak, despicable, falter-
ing. He felt like a finical attendant watching the splen-
did fury of some Sophoclean heroine. He became aware
that her anger leaped up from some incalculable crevasse
in the rock-crust of the universe, such as he himself had
never approached. The nature of her feeling, its direct-
ness, its primordial simplicity, reduced his own emotion
to something ridiculous. She towered above him there
with that grand convulsed face and those expanded
breasts; while her fine hands, clutching at her belt,
seemed to display a wild desire to strip herself naked
before him, to overwhelm him with the wrath of her
naked maternal body, bare to the outrage of his im-
piety.
In the storm of her abandonment, the light irony that
was her personal armour against life seemed to drop
from her, piece by glittering piece, and fall tinkling
upon the floor. Something impersonal rose up in its place,
an image of all the stricken maternal nerves that had vi-
brated and endured through long centuries; so that it
became no longer just a struggle between Wolf Solent
and Ann Solent--it became a struggle between the
body of Maternity itself and the bone of its bone!
She broke now into desperate sobs and flung herself
face-down upon the sofa. But the demon that tore at her
vitals was not yet content. Turning half-round towards
Wolf, and lifting herself up by her arms, she raised a
long, pitiful howl like a trapped leopard in the jungle.
"Women...women...women!" she cried aloud;
and then, to Wolfs consternation, propping herself upon
one of her arms, she held out the other with her first-
finger extended, menacing, prophetic, straight towards
him.
"It's he who's doing all this to me! You needn't think
that you could do it alone! It's both of you. It's both!
But, oh, you great, heavy, stupid, clumsy lumps of self-
ishness.... Something, some day, will make you...
I don't know what....Something, one day...will
make you....Something will do it...one day...
and I shall be glad....Don't expect anything else.
I shall be glad!"
She drew in her arm and buried her face in the sofa,
her body heaving with long, dry, husky sobs.
Wolf surveyed her form as she lay there, one strong
leg exposed as high as the knee, and one disarranged
tress of wavy grey hair hanging across her cheek. And
it came over him with a wave of remorseful shame that
this formidable being, so grotesquely reduced, was the
actual human animal out of whose entrails he had been
dragged into light and air.
His remorse, however, was not a pure or simple emo-
tion. It was complicated by a kind of sulky indignation
and by a bitter sense of injustice. The physical shame-
lessness, too, of her abandonment shocked something in
him, some vein of fastidious reverence. But his mother's
cynicism had always shocked this element in his nature;
and what he felt now he had felt a thousand times before
--felt in the earliest dawn of consciousness. What he
would have liked to do at that moment was just to slip
out of the room and out of the house. Her paroxysm
roused something in him which, had she known it, she
would have recognized as more dangerous than any
responsive anger. But this feeling did not destroy his
pity; so that, as he now sombrely contemplated those
grey hairs, and that exposed knee, he felt a more poig-
nant consciousness of what she was, than he had ever
felt at the times when he admired her most and loved
her most.
He let himself sink down in his chair and covered his
mouth with his hand as if to hide a yawn. But he was
not yawning. This was an old automatic gesture of his:
perhaps originally induced by his consciousness that his
mouth was his weakest and most sensitive feature and
the one by which the sufferings of his mind were most
quickly betrayed.
Then he suddenly became aware that the sobs had
ceased; and a second later he received a most queer
impression, the impression, namely, that one warm, glow-
ing, ironical brown eye was fixed upon him and was
steadily regarding him--regarding him through the dis-
ordered tress of ruffled hair that lay across it.
He drew his hand from his mouth, rose to his feet
quickly, and, bending down above his mother, pulled her
up from a recumbent into a sitting posture.
"Mother, don't!" he cried. "You're laughing at me;
you're pretending! And I might have done I don't know
what, because you scared -me so. You've just been teas-
ing your poor son, and frightening him out of his wits;
and now you're laughing at me!"
He fell on his knees in front of her and she let her
touzled forehead sink down till it rested against his;
and there they remained for a while, their two skulls in
a happy trance of relaxed contact, full of unspoken rec-
iprocities, like the skulls of two animals out at pasture,
or the branches of two trees exhausted by a storm.
Wolf was conscious of abandoning himself to a vast
undisturbed peace--a peace without thought, aim, or
desire--a peace that flowed over him from the dim reser-
voirs of prenatal life, lulling him, soothing him, hypno-
tizing him--obliterating everything from his conscious-
ness except a faint delicious feeling that everything had
been obliterated.
It was his mother herself who broke the spell. She
raised her hands to his head and held it back by his
stubbly straw-coloured hair, pressing, as she did so,
her own glowing tear-stained cheeks against his chin,
and finally kissing him with a hot, intense, tyrannous
kiss.
He rose to his feet after that and so did she; and,
moved by a simultaneous impulse, they both sat down
again at the deserted tea-table, emptied the teapot into
their cups, and began spreading for themselves large
mouthfuls of bread-and-butter with overflowing spoon-
fuls of red-currant jam.
Wolf felt as if this were in some way a kind of sacra-
mental feast; and he even received a queer sensation, as
though their mutual enjoyment of the sweet morsels they
swallowed so greedily were an obscure reversion to those
forgotten diurnal nourishments which he must have
shared with her long before his flesh was separated from
hers.
Half-an-hour later he was walking leisurely towards
Ramsgard along that now so familiar road. He recalled
his first acquaintance with this road, that day he drove
over by the side of Darnley Otter; and as he began to
approach the town, he found himself glancing across
the fields to his right, toward the lane that led to the
cemetery, and then across the fields to the left, toward
the broader highway which he had followed on the pre-
ceding night, his head full of Mr. Smith's death.
Roads and lanes! Lanes and roads! What a part these
tracks for the feet of men and beasts, dusty in Summer,
muddy in Winter, had played in his mental conscious-
ness! The thrill that this idea of roadways gave him was
a proof to him that his mind was returning to its inde-
pendent orbit, after its plunge into that maternal hyp-
nosis. His spirit felt indeed deliciously free just then,
and expanded its wings to its heart's content, like a
great flapping rook. Every object of the way took on
an especial glamour; and never had he enjoyed so
deeply one peculiar trick of his mind. This was a cer-
tain queer, sensuous sympathy he could feel sometimes
for completely unknown people's lives, as he passed by
their dwellings. He enjoyed it now with especial satis-
faction, thinking of the people in each cottage he came
to, and gathering their experiences together as one might
gather a bunch of ragwort or hemp-agrimony out of the
dusty hedges.
Well enough did he know how many of these experi-
ences were bitter and grotesque; but what he enjoyed
now, along with all these unknown people, was their mo-
ments of simple, sensuous well-being.
Such a moment he himself felt presently, as he leaned
over a gate to rest, just before the road he traversed
entered the outskirts of Ramsgard. Through the warm,
misty evening, full of what seemed to him a veritable
diffused essence of gold-dust, there came some quick wan-
dering breaths of cooler air; and these breaths of air,
brushing against his face and passing swiftly upon their
way, carried a peculiar fragrance with them, a fragrance
that made him think of a certain little garden of old-
fashioned pinks that he used to pass, on his way to the
place where he gave his lectures, down a narrow West
London alley. If in Mr. Urquhart's library he had been
stirred by Roger Monk's flower-beds, he was more stirred
now by this far-off impression. The pinks were meagre
enough in themselves. But the thought of them in their
sun-baked little garden, so close to the hot pavement,
touched some chord of seminal memory that gave him
just then a transporting thrill.
Where did it come from, this emotion? Was it an
inherited feeling, reverting to days when some remote
ancestor of his, in cloister or market-place, used to in-
hale day by day that particular sweetness? Or was it
something larger and more general than this? Certainly
what he felt just now, as these cool-wafted airs came over
the yellow stubble, was not confined to the pinks in that
hot little garden behind iron railings. It was much more
as if he were enabled to enter, by a lucky psychic sen-
sitiveness, into some continuous stream of human aware-
ness awareness of a beauty in the world that travelled
lightly from place to place, stopping here and stopping
there, like a bird of passage, but never valued at its
true worth until it had vanished away.
"There must be," he thought, "some deep race-memory
in which these things are stored up, to be drawn upon
by those who seek for them through the world--a mem-
ory that has the power of obliterating infinite debris,
while it retains all these frail essences, these emanations
from plants and trees, roadsides and gardens, as if such
things actually possessed immortal souls!" He turned
from the gate and pursued his road, swinging his stick
from side to side like a madman, and repeating aloud,
as he strode along, the words "immortal souls."
Certain human expressions, meaning one thing to the
philosopher and quite another thing to the populace,
were always fascinating to Wolf. His mind began to
dwell now upon the actual syllables of this phrase, "im-
mortal souls," until by a familiar transformation those
formidable sounds took on a shadowy personality of
their own--took on the shape, in fact, of Christie Mala-
kite and in that shape went wavering away over the
fields like a thin spiral cloud! "These quaint words, used
by the men of old time," he said to himself, "to describe
what we all feel, have more in them than people have
any idea of. I must tell Christie that!" And then it
occurred to him how impossible it would be to explain
to any living intelligence the faltering thoughts that had
ended by his invocation of the "soul" of a tiny London
garden and his embodying it in the wraith of the daugh-
ter of Mr. Malakite!
It still kept hovering in front of his mind, however
this phrase, "immortal souls" even after it had
slipped like a boat from its moorings. There seemed a
noble and defiant challenge in it to all that petered out,
to all that flagged, that wilted, that scattered, that became
nothing, in the melancholy drift of the world!
With the cool airs of that summer evening wafted about
him, he felt, as he passed now under the vast shadow
of the Abbey church, that there were immense resources
of renewal, of restoration, spread abroad over the face
of the earth, such as had hardly been drawn upon at all
by the sons and daughters of men. "Why is it," he
thought, "that this particular expression, 'immortal
souls,' should act upon my mind in this way?" And as
he moved slowly along now between the sculptured en-
trance to the School-House and the little low-roofed
shop where the straw-hatted boys of the School bought
their confectionery, it occurred to him as curiously sig-
nificant that the syllable "God," so talismanic to most
people, had never, from his childhood, possessed the
faintest magic for him! "It must be," he thought, as,
passing under a carved archway, he came bolt upon the
old monastic conduit, "that anything suggestive of meta-
physical unity is distasteful to me. It must be that my
world is essentially a manifold world, and my religion,
if I have any, essentially polytheistic! And yet, in mat-
ters of good and evil" and he recalled his sensations at
Lenty Pond "I'm what they'd call a dualist, I suppose.
Ay: It's funny. Directly one comes to putting feelings
into words, one is compelled to accept hopeless contra-
dictions in the very depths of one's being!"
He moved right in, under the carved roof of the old
conduit, between the Late Gothic pillars, and laid his
hand on the edge of the water-trough. The traffic of the
high-street passed him by, and groups of tall straw-
hatted schoolboys brushed past him, cold, remote,
haughty, discreet, like young Romans in some Ionian
market-place.
A barrel-organ was being played where the pavement
widened, under the out-jutting gables of a mediaeval hos-
telry; and Wolf couldn't help noticing how the ab-
stracted, impassive expression of the old man who played
it contrasted with a couple of ragged little children,
glowing-cheeked and intent, who danced to its jigging
tune.
"Polytheism...dualism," he repeated, trying to re-
tain the philosophical distinctions which he felt crum-
bling to bits and drifting away. But as he fumbled with
his fingers at that conduit-trough and turned automati-
cally a leaden faucet so that water gushed out over his
hand, his mind* seemed to reject every single one of those
traditional human catchwords.
"I just told him it was all bloody rot!" The words
fell upon his ears from the lips of a pale-faced, quiet
lad, who, with an arm round the neck of another, swung
past Wolf's retreat; and they served to give his thoughts
an edge.
"All bloody rot!" he mumbled, turning off the water
and throwing a nervous glance round him, lest his pro-
ceedings should have attracted attention. "But there's
more in all this, all the same, than any of these words
implies. That's the whole thing. Not less, but more!
More; though more of what, I don't suppose I shall ever
discover! But more of something."
And as he left the conduit and made his way up the
street, he had the feeling that his real self was engaged
in an exciting maze of transactions, completely different
from those which just now occupied his senses and his
will.
He found the Smith menage, when Mattie's little maid,
smiling and radiant at the presence of so much drama,
admitted him after a long wait upon the doorstep, bur-
dened J)y the presence of two portly and extremely lo-
quacious undertakers. Contrary to custom, but due to
the nature of his illness and the heat of the weather, it
had become advisable to place the Hatter of Ramsgard
in his elm-wood coffin without further delay.
Mattie had brought Olwen down into the dining-room,
so as to remove her from the sound of the hammering;
but the child was nervous and preoccupied, and it was
with but a languid interest that she busied herself with
the black ribbons of Gipsy and Antoinette, laid side by
side on the great mahogany table, with the cushion from
Mr. Smith's chair under their waxen heads. Even Wolf's
arrival did not really distract her; and he would have
given much to know what the thoughts actually were
that gave to her little oval face that sombre pallor and
frowning intensity.
Mattie herself seemed strangely lethargic as she drew
up one of the straight-backed leather-covered chairs and
sat down by his side; and Wolf found it difficult, as
they both stared at the unsympathetic silver on the side-
board, to broach the subject of her future, with which
his mind was so full.
"Knock...knock...knock," went the hammer
in the room above, accompanied by the low-toned rumble
of conversation from the two intruders.
"Death is a queer thing," thought Wolf, while the
weary indifference of Mr. Smith's white face dominated
the slow passing of the minutes. "Would anyone know
by that sound," he thought, "that those were coffin-
nails? There'll be another sound when they put him
into the hole," so his mind ran on; "there'll be that pe-
culiar sound of loose, dry mould flung on the top of a
wooden lid. All the world over, those same two sounds.
Well, not quite all the world over. But how many times
had Mr. Smith heard that hammering and that rattle of
earth-mould? Did he sit in this very place when they
were nailing Lorna in? I must break this uncomfortable
silence," he thought. "There! That must have been the
last! But what the devil are they doing now? This si-
lence is worse than the hammering. Are they having a
drink?"
There was a sharp ring at the doorbell; and the
three strained faces in that dusky dining-room glanced
anxiously at one another, while the patter of the maid's
feet on the tiled floor responded to this new sound.
A minute later and they all rose hurriedly, while to
their complete surprise Mrs. Otter and Darnley were
ushered into the room. The little lady seemed perturbed
and embarrassed at the presence of Wolf, but Darnley
gave him a quick reassuring nod.
"I heard by chance," began Mrs. Otter rapidly. "We
were so sorry for you. I wanted to come. My son was
very good. He got me a carriage. I hope you don't mind
my coming."
"I am sure it's very nice of you, Mrs. Otter," mur-
mured Mattie. "Sit down, won't you? Sit down, please,
Mr. Otter. Thank you, Wolf. No, that's been broken for
years." Wolf made a fumbling attempt to replace the
piece of carved mahogany that had come off in his
hand. This mechanical preoccupation enabled him to
notice in silence the manner in which Darnley and Mat-
tie had begun to stare at each other.
"What I had in my mind, in coming to you, my poor
child," he heard Mrs. Otter say, "was to ask a great and
really rather a difficult favour. What I came to say
was this...oh, I don't know whether I ought to
worry you now about it!...but my son...I mean
Jason...told me I might do just as I liked....My
house is my own, you know!" This last rather unex-
pected phrase was uttered with such a winning and whim-
sical smile that Wolf looked hastily at Mattie, very anx-
ious that she should say nothing to hurt this visitor's
feelings. He was surprised to observe that Mattie had
only in the vaguest manner caught the drift of this
speech.
"Yes, Mrs. Otter, you've always been most kind to
me," was all she said in reply.
"My son left everything completely in my hands.
Didn't he, Darnley?" Mrs. Otter went on. There was a
perplexed frown on her face now; and she made a fee-
ble little movement of one of her hands towards Darn-
ley, as if appealing to him for help.
"Didn't he, Darnley?" she repeated.
But Darnley also seemed to have lost the drift of her
remarks.
"You were quite right, Mother," he replied at ran-
dom. "You're awfully wise when things are getting seri-
ous....She's wonderful in a crisis." He addressed this
last remark to no one in particular, and it did little to
help forward the general air of cloudiness into which the
conversation had fallen.
"She really is...wonderful in a crisis," he re-
peated absent-mindedly; and Wolf, as he looked at the
lethargic silver on the sideboard, seemed to hear the
voice of the cake-basket addressing the biscuit-bowl,
"She's wonderful in a crisis," in the tone of an ancient
play-goer commenting on an oft-repeated play.
"Mattie doesn't know what ever we shall do." The
words came from Olwen, who now stood close to Wolf's
chair; and the words served to bring matters to a head.
"That's just what I'm talking about," said Mrs. Otter,
in such an eager tone that everyone turned towards her
with full attention.
"What I came to ask you was this," she said firmly,
addressing herself to Mattie. "Our Dimity is getting
feeble and old, and I'm not as strong as I was. My son
Jason, I mean is very particular. You know what he
is, my dear? What a poet he is. Mr. Solent thinks he's
a great poet, don't you, Mr. Solent?...Well, what I
came to say is this. It would be such a pleasure to us all,
my dear" here she laid her grey-gloved hand lightly
on Mattie's wrist "if you'd come and live with us and
help me you know? help me with everything. Now
don't shake your head like that! I know what you mean.
Of course, this little one must come, too, and of course
we've got to think of her lessons." The little lady drew
a long breath, but hurried on before Mattie could utter
a word. "It's her lessons I was thinking about. I'm very
fond of teaching children, children that I like, I mean;
and I've got all the fairy-stories. I've got the one they
wouldn't let me even see the pictures of, when I was
little."
Wolf had already screwed his head round so as to
snatch a glimpse of Olwen's face, and he was surprised
at the grave glow of unrestrained delight that was now
slowly beginning to spread over it. But Mattie still shook
her head.
"I couldn't," she murmured in a faint voice. "Though
it's very, very kind of you, Mrs. Otter. But I could never
think of such a thing. Olwen and I have been talking
about it and we've made up our minds that I must go
to work. Olwen says she'll be good when I leave her and
not fret or be lonely."
At this moment there was a sound of heavy footsteps
descending the stairs, accompanied by a few muffled
remarks of a facetious kind. Mrs. Otter glanced at Wolf,
who gave her a slight inclination of the head. She turned
to Mattie hurriedly.
"Well, my dear," she said. "I don't want to rush you
against your will into anything. Though I did set my
heart upon it and I've thought about it from every pos-
sible side."
Mattie's answer to this was to stretch forth her hand
and press tightly the gloved fingers of the little old
lady. But the look which she gave her showed no sign
of yielding. It was very tender; but it was firm and
resolute.
There was another pause then among them all; and
once more Wolf was aware of a most vivid sense of Mr.
Smith's white, set face, exhausted, detached, comment-
ing with a kind of desolating equanimity upon the events
that were taking place. Those ponderous silver pieces
seemed to Wolf now, as he frowned upon them, to be
gathering themselves together in that darkening room, to
be shaping themselves with shadowy persistence into
funereal ornaments heaped up beside the dead hatter.
One of the windows behind Wolf's head was open, and
with the noises of the street there entered and circled
round him a deliciously cool air, an air like that which
he had been conscious of on his approach to Ramsgard,
as he leaned over that gate. Once more the scent of
pinks came quivering through his brain and he felt a
shameless thrill of pleasure. This time, instead of the
wraith of Christie Malakite, it was the body of the hat-
ter that associated itself with that remembered scent
not any repulsive odour of mortality emerging from those
nailed-up boards, but rather some spiritual essence from
the presence of Death itself. And as he breathed this air,
the voices of his companions became a vague humming
in his ears, and all manner of queer detached memories
floated in upon him. He felt himself to be walking alone
along some high white road bordered by waving grasses
and patches of yellow rock-rose. There was a town far
below him, at the bottom of a green valley a mass of
huddled grey roofs among meadows and streams round
which the twilight was darkening. Along with all this he
was conscious of the taste of a peculiar kind of baker's
bread, such as used to be sold at a shop in Dorchester,
where, as a child, they would take him for tea during
summer jaunts from Weymouth. The presence of Death
seemed to re-create these things and to touch them
with a peculiar intensity.
He was roused from his trance by the clear, shrill
voice of Olwen arguing desperately with Mattie.
"I want to do what she says! Why can't we do what
she says? I'll be bad if you don't let us! I won't go to
sleep. I'll be far worse than Gipsy or Antoinette. I'll tear
my hair out! I'll bite my hand!"
"Hush, Olwen!" he heard Mattie reply. "Mrs. Otter
will be only too pleased I can't accept her offer if you
talk like that."
The little girl gazed at her for a moment with a quaint,
solemn scrutiny. Then she laughed, a merry reassured
laugh, and, rushing to where Darnley was sitting, slid
coaxingly upon his knee.
"You'll tell her what she must do when everyone's
gone," she murmured softly; and then, with her eyes
fixed upon his face, she stroked his beard with her small,
nervous hand.
Mrs. Otter and Wolf smiled at each other; and there
came into Wolfs mind those scenes in Homer where
girlish suppliants, mortal as well as immortal, lay their
hands upon the chins of those they are cajoling!
"Would you tear my hair out as well as your own,"
enquired Darnley, "if she goes on refusing to let you
live with us?" Wolf thought he had never seen Darnley 's
eyes look so deeply luminous as they did while he ut-
tered those words.
Mattie still shook her head; but although there were
tears on her cheek, the whole expression of her face
was relaxed and at peace. Indeed, as Wolf kept surrepti-
tiously glancing at her, he got the impression that the
girl longed to rush away and burst into a flood of cry-
ing, but not into unhappy crying. The kindred blood in
his veins made him clairvoyant; and he felt convinced
that if the Otters refused to accept her rejection of
their scheme, she would eventually be persuaded.
"Well, my dear child," he heard Mrs. Otter saying,
"you must not answer us in a hurry like this. You see
what friends Darnley and your little one have already
become; and if only "
She stopped suddenly; for there came a second ring
at the street-door, followed by the same impetuous rush
of the little maid across the hall. This time Wolf looked
with dismay into his sister's face when he heard a well-
known voice asking in a loud, firm tone for Miss Smith.
They all got up when Miss Gault was shown into the
room. Olwen hastily snatched her dolls from the table
and carried them off to Mr. Smith's big leather chair by
the fireplace; and Mrs. Otter, after a hurried bow to
the new visitor, followed the child to that retreat and
entered into a whispered conversation with her.
The presence of Wolf did not seem to be any surprise
to the formidable lady. She nodded at him familiarly,
as she embraced Mattie; but her greeting to Darnley
was stiff and formal. Darnley himself seemed quite un-
perturbed by this coldness. His strangely-coloured blue
eyes remained fixed upon Mattie; and he stood with his
back propped against a bookcase, toying with his watch-
chain.
In the darkening twilight of the room for no one
had thought of asking for a lamp the man's slim figure,
as Wolf glanced sideways at him, had the appearance of
some old Van Dyck portrait come to life in a Victorian
house. Behind his back the great heavily-bound editions
of those "Sundays at Home" and "Leisure Hours," whose
illustrations must have solaced many a long evening in
the far-off childhood of Albert Smith, gathered the sum-
mer darkness about them with that peculiar mystical
solemnity which old books, like old trees and old hedges,
display at the coming on of night. And Wolf, as he lis-
tened with amusement to the discourse of Selena Gault,
became aware that, with one of her chance-flung felici-
ties, Nature was arranging a singularly appropriate stage
for what at any rate was an exciting encounter between
Darnley Otter and Mattie Smith.
"Darnley must have often met Mattie before," thought
Wolf. "But very likely never in her own house and prob-
ably never when they could really take in each other's
personality. Besides...what do I know about them?
All this may have begun years ago...before I came
upon the scene at all. If so, what secretive demons they
both have been!"
He turned once more to his sister. Oh, he couldn't be
mistaken! Why, the girl's heavy countenance, even in that
gloom, had a look that he could only describe to him-
self as transfigured. "There's certainly something up,
there," he thought. "Well! She'll be a little fool if she
doesn't take the old lady's offer. I'd like to know, though,
what Jason did say when this scheme was suggested!"
And then, seated a little back from Mattie and Miss
Gault, and accepting a cigarette from Darnley, who now
took a chair by his side, Wolf began to be conscious of
the drift of the amazing discourse which the visitor was
directing, like a cannonade of lumbering artillery, across
the table into the ears of his sister. Selena's attire was
in good taste enough--indeed, it was superlatively lady-
like; but it was the "rich, not gaudy" attire of a person
quite oblivious of contemporary fashion, and in some
queer way it lent itself so well to the quality of that
room, that it seemed to bring the furniture itself to life
in support of everything she said.
The gathering darkness assisted at this strange play.
It was as if all the ponderous objects in that room in-
cluding the silver, the chairs, the dark-green curtains,
the grotesque portrait of Mr. Smith's father, the leather
backs of the Sundays at Home and the Leisure Hours,
the leather back of a draught-board, with the words
"History of the World" printed on it, the bronze
horses on either side of the mantelpiece, the enormous
empty coal-scuttle combined together to give weight to
the opinions of this aggressive woman, whose own child-
hood, like that of the silent person upstairs, they had
ramparted with their massive solemnities!
And Wolf was astounded at the impertinence of what
Miss Gault did say. It was an impertinence covered up
with bronze and brocade. But it was an indecent im-
pertinence. It resembled the absurd drapery covering
the symbolic figure of Mercy, or Truth, or Righteousness,
which dominated the great dining-room clock that stood
in the middle of the marble chimneypiece. "I confess I
first thought," Miss Gault was now saying, "of having
Olwen to live with Emma and me...but I couldn't
have her teasing the cats...or pining for you...
so this Home is better. I have made a lot of enquiries
about this Home. I made them last year, for another
purpose; and it's lucky I did, because people don't
hear of these things when they really want them. The
beautiful thing about it is that they accept mother and
child...and of course Olwen is like your child now.
Another great advantage about this plan is that Taunton
is so near us all...only a couple of hours by train."
She made a little nod in Wolfs direction. "Wolf would
be able to run over and see you on Sundays," she added.
Her voice sank; but the darkened room was full of the
echoes of it--the whispering of Mrs. Otter, who was evi-
dently telling Olwen a story, being the only force that
resisted it. And the dark-green curtains were delighted.
"See you on Sundays...see you on Sundays," they
repeated, while the draught-board "History of the
World" echoed the word "Sundays," making it seem like
the very voice of that charitable institution which ac-
cepted both mother and child.
"And the little sum required by the authorities," Miss
Gault continued, "I shall be delighted to provide. I do,
of course, recognize that it was against my advice that
you adopted Olwen. But the child's naturally fond of
you now; and I think it would be wrong to separate her
from you, as would have to be done if you got employ-
ment here...for the child couldn't be left alone all
day...and no doubt everything here will be sold.
Don't answer me just yet," the lady went on. "I want you,
Wolf, too, to hear all I've got to say...for, of course
...well! there's no need for me to enter into that
...but what I thought I would ask you now, Mattie
dear, is to tell me what particular things in this house
you're especially fond of; and then...well! I hope
I should be able to be present at the auction...so
that whenever you do have a house of your own they'll
be...well! they'll be, so to speak, still in the family."
She turned more boldly towards Wolf at this point, as
if to ensure his recognition of her old-fashioned tact.
But Wolf's impulse at that moment resembled the im-
pulse of King Claudius in the play. He felt a desire to
cry out in thundering tones, "Lights! lights! lights!" So
that it was still left to the draught-board and the bronze
clock to appreciate such delicacy and to have the last
word.
It was not Wolf, but Darnley, however, who broke the
spell thrown upon them by Miss Gault. He walked rap-
idly over to his mother, whispered something in her ear,
took her hand, and brought her to Mattie's side.
"You'll be a dear girl and do what we want you to
do?" said the old lady clearly and firmly, taking no no-
tice of Miss Gault.
Wolf thought he caught an appealing glance in his
direction, though it was so dark now that his sister's face
was a mere blur of whiteness. But he rose hurriedly and
came up to where they were all grouped. There was just
a half-second's pause, which enabled him to catch an
impress of the whole queer scene before he spoke, to
catch the bewildered anger on Miss Gault's face, to ob-
serve that Olwen had possessed herself of Darnley's
hand, to remark how Mrs. Otter was so nervous that the
chair upon which she had laid her fingers tapped on the
floor; and then he himself spoke out with all the weight
he could muster.
"I'm sorry, Miss Gault, and I know Mattie's most
grateful for your suggestion; but it had all been settled
before you came in. They're going to stay for the pres-
ent with our good friends here. They're going to do what
I did when I first came to King's Barton. There'll be
time enough later for other arrangements; but for the
moment Mattie's going to accept Mrs. Otter's invitation,
and Olwen too. As to the furniture here, we needn't de-
cide about that in any hurry. It may be that Mattie would
be happier to get completely rid of it. I know I should,
in her case. But it's sweet of you to suggest buying back
some of it. I'm sure Mattie appreciates that very much.
But the chief point just now is what she and Olwen are
going to do; and that has been quite decided hasn't
it, Mattie? They're going to that hospitable Pond Cot-
tage, where I went for my first night in Dorset!"
Wolf's voice became more and more decisive as he
brought his declaration to a close; but with an instinct
for preventing any further protests from Mattie, he hur-
riedly rushed out into the hall and began calling for
the little maid.
"Constantia!" he shouted. "Constantia! Please bring
us the lamp!"
What occurred after his departure from that dark-
ened dining-room he never knew. His words seemed to
have had the effect of the letting off of a gun in a sound-
less wood. For from where he waited at the kitchen-door
there came to him an incoherent murmur of many con-
fused voices. When at last he returned with the lamp in
his hand and placed it in the centre of the table, Olwen
was crying in the leather armchair, where Mattie and
Mrs. Otter were bending over her; while Miss Gault,
standing erect in the centre of the room, was asking
Darnley in a strained, husky voice whether it was true
that they had recently discovered in the Abbey-church
the actual bones of King Ethelwolf, the brother of Al-
fred.
"Good-bye, then. Good-bye, all of you! I mustn't be
in the way any longer." With this, Miss Gault bowed to
Darnley, nodded in the direction of the weeping child,
and walked straight into the hall.
From Wolf she kept her eyes averted as she passed;
but the expression of her face shocked him, and he fol-
lowed her to the street-door. As he bent forward to turn
the handle before she set her own hand upon it, he
caught sight of that deformed lip of hers; and the look
of it appalled him. To see such a thing as that was
bad enough; but it became worse when the extraor-
dinary visage, that now was face to face with him, con-
torted itself, there in the doorway before him, into a
puckered mask of outrage. He felt a little ashamed of
himself for the brutality of his observation at that mo-
ment; but he couldn't help noticing that Miss Gault made
a much more childish contortion of her face when she
collapsed than his adamantine mother had done that
same afternoon! His mother had "lifted up her voice,"
as the Scripture says, "and wept"; but Wolf remembered
well how, even when she was howling like a lioness with
a spear in her side, her fine clear-cut features had re-
tained their dignity. Big tears had fallen, but they had
fallen like rain upon a tragic torso. Very different was
it with Miss Gault at this moment! Three times she made
an attempt to speak to him, and three times her face
grew convulsed.
"Wait a minute!" he blurted out at last, and ran back
into the dining-room. There he shouted a loud good-bye
to them all. "See you tomorrow, Mattie dear!" he cried.
"I leave you in good hands, Olwen. Good-night, Mrs.
Otter!"
"I'll come back and have dinner with you, if I may,"
he said, as he caught up Miss Gault on the street-
pavement. "Listen! What's that striking now?" He laid
his hand on her arm and held her motionless. "Seven
o'clock, ay? Well, you don't dine till eight; so do let's
have a bit of a walk before going to your house."
"Let's go to the grave, boy," she whispered hoarsely.
"We can talk there. My Emma won't mind, even if we
are late. But how will you get back to Blacksod?" she
added with concern.
"Oh, I'll take the ten-o'clock train," he said. "That'll
mean that I shan't have any more walking and shan't
keep Gerda up. It runs still at that time, doesn't it? Or
have they changed it?"
But Miss Cault had already given to practical con-
cerns all the energy she could spare just then.
"How lovely this place is at night!" she said, as they
passed under the Abbey-wall. "I wonder if Mr. Otter is
right and it is really the coffin of King AEthelwolf that
they've found."
They reached the main entrance to the building, and
to their surprise they found it open.
"Let's go in for a minute," said Wolf. His companion
assented in silence and they entered together.
"I would have liked to have that child to live with
me," murmured Miss Gault; "but it would have been
cruel to the cats...she's grown so rough to them
lately...and she's not always polite to Emma."
Wolf made no reply to this remark; and as they
moved slowly up the central aisle, which was feebly
illuminated from somewhere between the choir-stalls, he
allowed his mind to wander away from Miss Gault and
her thwarted philanthropies. The few lights that were
burning hardly reached and then only with a dim, dif-
fused lustre, like the interior of a sand-blurred mother-
of-pearl shell the high fan-tracery of the roof. Wolf
felt strongly upon him once again that feeling of mystic
exultation which had been hovering over him all day;
and when the presence of the light behind the choir was
explained by a sudden burst of organ-notes, he felt such
a thrill of happiness that it brought with it a reaction of
sheer shame.
"Accident!" he muttered to himself. "Pure accident!"
he repeated, as they crossed in front of the altar and
made their way to the lady-chapel behind it. And he
even felt, as he fumbled about in the dim light, looking
for some sign of the Saxon king's coffin, a sense of hav-
ing feloniously stolen his ecstasy from some treasure-
house of the human race! "Why should I," he thought,
"be singled out by pure chance for this? That Waterloo-
steps face no King AEthelwolf for him, no fan-tracery,
no scent of pinks Is my gratitude to the gods, then,
a base and scurvy feeling?"
Even as this thought crossed his mind he stumbled
against some sort of glass framework upon the southern
floor of that lady-chapel.
"Here we are, Miss Gault!" he whispered excitedly.
"Only, I suppose we shall get into trouble if that or-
ganist hears us. Look here, though, for God's sake! This
is the king's coffin!"
He went down on his knees and pulled aside in the
dim light a piece of carpet that had been carefully spread
over the glass frame. The unwieldy form of his com-
panion was promptly now at his side, kneeling too.
"Dare I strike a match, d'ye think?" he whispered.
"No, no, boy! You mustn't do that. Wolf, you mustn't,
you really mustn't!" murmured the daughter of the
Headmaster of Ramsgard School.
But he disregarded her protest, and, fumbling in his
pocket, produced a match-box and struck a wax vesta.
The little yellow flame illuminated the glass-covered
aperture in the floor and threw into such weird relief
the lineaments of Miss Gault as to almost divest them
of their humanity. Only a dim consciousness of this as-
tounding countenance, so near his own, reached Wolf's
mind just then. He was too excited. But afterwards, when
he recalled the whole incident, it came back distinctly
upon him as one of those glimpses into something
abominable, ghastly, in Nature's pranks, such as a per-
son were wise to make note of, with the rest, as he went
through the world! Here, in the mere possibility of such
a vision--for, to say the truth, Miss Gault's face by
that match-flare was rendered nothing less than bestial--
was an experience to be set against those chance-heard
organ-notes that had mounted up so triumphantly among
the torn battle-flags.
Holding the match aloft with his hand, he bent down
until his face actually touched the glass. Nothing. Cer-
tain interesting chromatic effects...certain flickers
and blotches of colour that was no colour, of sparkles
that were opaque, of outlines that were no outlines...
and then the match burnt his hand and went out. Hur-
riedly he lit another and held it up, his burnt hand
smarting. Down went his face till his hooked nose was
pressed against the glass. Sparkles, black, wavering
spots, fluctuating blotches of reddish-yellow, little orbs
of blackness, rimmed with lunar rings; and then again
darkness! Nothing! Angrily he scrambled to his feet, and
with childish petulance thrust his smarting fingers into
his mouth.
"The bones are there!" he whispered huskily. "The
bones are there! AEthelwolf himself! But it's no use. We
must come again by daylight. It's one of those things
that are so damnably annoying. Quick!...while the
organ's still playing! I know what these people are...
so touchy about their treasures. Let's get out of here!"
He hurried his companion down the great silent nave
and out of the open doorway. He felt much more vexed
and perturbed than the occasion warranted. The mean-
ingless sparkles from that tricky coffin-lid danced like
imps across the back of his eye-sockets.
"I suppose it's too late to go over there now?" he
said, turning to her with his hat in one hand and his
stick in the other, and a wavering helplessness emanat-
ing from his whole figure.
"Not at all, boy not at all!" pronounced Miss Gault.
"Emma must keep supper waiting for us for once. You'll
have time for a bite anyway before you catch that train.
Come along! You don't know how fast I can walk."
Wolf put on his hat and strode by her side in silence.
The air began to smell of rain by the time they reached
the slaughter-house. There was a figure with a lantern
moving about in the yard of the shed; and Miss Gault
dragged heavily on his arm as they went past, strug-
gling with the rising wind.
"You'll get no meat with me, boy," she whispered.
"No meat no meat. It's the only way to help them. But
I'd go and be hanged to help 'em...hanged by the
neck" the wind caught her voice and rendered it
scarcely audible "by the neck, boy!"
Wolf pondered to himself upon the contradictory na-
ture of this woman. She would go to the death to put an
end to slaughter-houses; and yet she would pack off
Mattie and Olwen to God knows what kind of an insti-
tution for paupers!
He felt a secret desire to punish her for this incon-
sistency, and he suddenly said: "It's really amazingly
good of the Otters to take in our friends. To find such
a generous heart in a nervous old lady like that makes
you think better of the whole human race!"
A portion of the impulse that led him to this speech as
they passed the slaughter-house was doubtless a throb
of his own conscience over this matter of eating meat.
The sight of that man with a lantern, like some ghoul-
ish wanderer in a place of execution, impressed itself by
no means pleasantly on his mind; and it was the electric
vibration of this discomfort that gave his voice, as he
uttered these words, a certain quivering pitch of un-
necessary emphasis.
The malice in his tone communicated itself like a mag-
netic current to his companion, and she took her hand
from his arm.
"The child has wheedled herself round Darnley. That's
all it is. The mother is willing enough, because she sees
what a good unpaid servant Mattie will make. I won't
talk about it any more, and I didn't mean to refer to it;
but I think you're simply mad to let her accept such a
humiliating position. But there it is! The girl can't have
much pride, or nothing you said or they said could have
made her accept such charity!"
His remark having brought about this outburst, he was
able to exclaim in his heart, "You rude, ill-bred old
woman! You rude, ill-bred old woman!" and, having
done this, he felt quite friendly toward her again and
quite appeased.
He pretended to be sulking, however, for the whole
time they remained in the cemetery; though in reality
he was thinking to himself, "What a spirited thing it was,
after all, to stick by my father like that, when he was a
complete social outcast!"
They walked home in even deeper silence and at a
rapid pace. It was twenty-five minutes to ten when they
reached Aldhelm Street, only to find Emma in such an
agitated temper that Selena had to go herself into the
kitchen and bring out to him in the sitting-room a plate
of curried eggs and a decanter of sherry.
He sat on her sofa and swallowed this hot dish with
hungry relish, eating it in unceremonious fashion with a
spoon, and tossing off so many glasses of wine that
Selena glanced at him rather nervously as she herself
nibbled a biscuit.
"Emma does cook well!" he said at last, as he rose
to go. "It's all right, Miss Gault, dear. You needn't look
so anxious. I've got a head of iron." And immediately, as
if to prove he had such a head, he felt it to be incum-
bent upon him to say something affectionate and tender.
"I believe," he burst out, "I must have just the same sort
of feeling for you that he had!"
These were his parting words; but it was not until
he was sitting in a third-class smoking-carriage of the
South-Western train that he began to wonder why it was
that Miss Gault's face had such a wry smile upon it as
he shook hands with her at her door.
He was alone in the carriage, and, windy though it was,
he kept the window open and sat facing the engine. The
rush of air sobered him, and he observed with interest
the scattered lights of King's Barton as the train jolted
along its high embankment between that village and the
Evershott meadows. He wondered humorously to himself
what Jason would say that evening when he learnt of the
new invasion of his privacy.
His mood saddened before the train stopped at Black-
sod.
"If I knew I were only going to live five more years,"
he thought, "I would give away four of them if I were
allowed to spend the other one, day and night, with
Christie!" And then, as the cold wind made him shiver
a little and turn up his coat-collar, "I wonder," he
thought, "whether I'm just weak and cowardly in not
leaving them all and carrying Christie off to London,
let happen what may?"
The train was now following an umbrageous em-
bankment parallel with the river Lunt. The muddy smell
of that sluggish water, which the Ramsgard boys irrever-
ently named "the Bog-stream," assailed his nostrils,
bringing with it a feeling of obscure misery. A chilli-
ness in his bones, a weariness in his brain, gave now to
all the events of the day a sombre colour, like the col-
our of river-mud.
As the locomotive slowly lessened its speed, he tried
in vain to recall those moments of happiness...the
vision of the bed of pinks...the sweet emanation from
the very body of death. But in place of these things all
he could think of was obdurate roots in clinging clay,
sparkles and blotches that bore no human meaning, ham-
mering of nails into coffins, men with lanterns in
slaughter-house yards, and the pallid loins of Bob Weevil
streaked with the green slime of Lenty Pond,
ROUNDED WITH A SLEEP
AUGUST WAS DRAWING TO ITS END, AND, WITH AUGUST,
the holidays of the Blacksod Grammar School. The young
aristocrats of Ramsgard had several weeks more before
their new term began, but the humbler pupils whom it
was Wolf's destiny to teach were now on the eve of their
return to work.
Anxious to make the utmost of these precious morn-
ings of leisure, now so soon to be snatched from him,
Wolf had lately got into the habit of persuading Gerda
to start out with him, for some sort of rural expedition,
directly the breakfast-things had been washed up.
They had explored the country in this way in almost
every direction; but he found that the easiest thing to
do was to have some sort of picnic-lunch in the direction
of King's Barton, so that when they separated he could
reach his afternoon's work at the manor without arriving
too tired or too late.
Three days before the Grammar School was to reopen
he had cajoled Gerda into accompanying him to Poll's
Camp. They had brought their provisions in a basket and
had made their meal in unusual contentment under the
shelter of a group of small sycamores that grew on the
western slope of the camp, overlooking the great Somer-
setshire plain.
Gerda was now fast asleep. Stretched out upon her
back, she lay as motionless as the shadows about her,
one arm curved beneath her fair head and the other
ROUNDED WITH A SLEEP 481
flung upon a bed of moss. Wolf sat with his arms hug-
ging his knees, and his back against a sycamore-trunk.
The weather had been good for the wheat that Sum-
mer, and not too scorching to the grass; so that what he
looked at now, as he let his eyes wander over that great
level expanse towards Glastonbury, was a vast chess-
board of small green fields, surrounded by pollarded
elms of a yet darker colour, and interspersed by squares
of yellow stubble.
The earthworks of Poll's Camp were not as deeply dug
or as loflily raised as many Roman-British ramparts in
that portion of the West Country. They were less of a
landmark than Cadbury Camp, for instance, away to the
northwest. They were less imposing than Maiden Castle,
away to the south. But such as they were, Wolf knew
that the mysterious movements of King Arthur...rex
quondam rex-que futurus...had more than once
crossed and recrossed, in local legend, this promontory
of grassy ridges.
The day was warm; but the fact that the sky was
covered with a filmy veil of grey clouds gave to the vast
plain before him the appearance of a landscape whose
dominant characteristic consisted in a patient efface-
ment of all emphatic or outstanding qualities. The green
of the meadows was a shy, watery green. The verdure of
the elm-trees was a sombre, blackish monotony. The yel-
low of the stubble-land was a whitish yellow, pallid and
lustreless.
He glanced at the sleeping figure of his companion,
and it seemed to him that the milk-white delicacy of
Gerda's face, as she lay there, had never been touched
by a more tender bloom than it wore today, under this
vaporous, windless sky.
Her breathing was so light as to be almost imper-
ceptible, her lips were just parted in a confiding aban-
donment to a happy sleep; while the rounded whiteness
of the bare arm she had flung out upon the moss had
that youthful charm of unconscious trust in the kindness
of man and nature, which, whenever he noted it, always
struck him as one of the most touching of a young girl's
qualities.
And it was borne in upon him how terrible the respon-
sibility was when a man had once undertaken to "make,"
as the phrase runs, one of these fragile beings "happy."
It came upon him, as he watched Gerda asleep, that a
girl is much more committed to what is called "hap-
piness" than a man is.
Or is it, he thought, that a man can create happiness by
sheer obstinate force out of the machinery of his own
mind, while a girl is dependent upon all manner of
subtle external forces emanating from nature and re-
turning to nature?
Certainly at this moment Gerda seemed to have most
deliciously abandoned herself to the power of the grass,
the grey sky, the warm, windless air.
A sad, helpless craving possessed him as he turned
from the girl and once more surveyed that undemon-
strative, unobtrusive distance. He felt as though he
longed to fly across it in some impossible non-human
shape fly across it not with any actual living compan-
ion, but with some shadowy essence, light as that
dandelion-seed, which at this moment he saw rising high
above him and floating away westward with some shad-
owy essence that at the same time was and was not
Christie Malakite some essence that was what Christie
was to her own inmost self, the bodiless, formless iden-
tity in that slim frame, that in confronting infinite space
could only utter the mysterious words, "I am I," and
utter nothing else.
If only he could do this now, by some occult manip-
ulation of the laws of nature! Gerda's sleep was deep
and sound. To her at this moment Time was nothing.
How mad it was that he couldn't plunge with Christie,
with the inmost soul of Christie, into some region out-
side these things, where a moment was like a whole year
of mortal life!
The vast expanse he looked at, had about it, under
this grey sky, something wistful and withdrawn. It re-
sembled those patient, melancholy fields, neither happy
nor unhappy, where Dante met the souls of the great
intellects in Limbo. With his eyes fixed upon its patient-
coloured horizons, it did not seem so crazy a notion that
he and Christie might meet and escape, lost, merged,
diffused into all this!
And then he turned his gaze upon the beautiful girl
lying there outstretched beside him, happy in her time-
less dream-world, trusting him, trusting nature, half-
smiling in her sleep.
Looking at her lying there, he thought what an ap-
palling risk these lovers of "happiness" take, when they
burn their ships and trust their lives to the caprice of
men.
As he contemplated the loveliness of her figure, it
struck him as infinitely pathetic that even beauty such as
hers should be so dependent on the sexual humours of
this man or that man for its adequate appreciation.
Beauty like that, he thought, as he looked at her, ought
to endow its possessor with super-human happiness, as in
the old legends, when the immortal gods made love to
the daughters of men. There was a cruel irony in the
fact that he of al men had been singled out to possess
this beauty he whose heart of hearts had been given to
a different being!
And as he pondered on all ihis it struck him as strange
that such rare loveliness should not protect her, like
silver armour, against the shocks and outrages of life.
Beauty as unusual as this was a high gift, like a poet's
genius, and ought to have the power of protecting a
girl's heart from the cruel inconstancies of love.
"I suppose it is true," he thought, "that when they
have been a man's bedfellow, even for a few months,
some peculiar link establishes itself which it is as diffi-
cult to break as if one tore a grafted sapling from the
branch of a tree. I suppose," so his thoughts drifted
on, "that my love is really more important, in this blind
primordial way, to Gerda just because we have now
slept together for three months than it could ever be
to Christie, though she lives inside my very soul! I sup-
pose it's the old fatalily of flesh to flesh, of blind matter,
proving itself, after all, the strongest thing on earth."
And then, before he had the least notion that his
thoughts would drift in such a direction, he found him-
self engaged in a passionate dispute with his father. It
was as if the dispute were actually going on down at the
bottom of that grave; and though he still found himself
calling William Solent "Old Truepenny," he felt as if
he had become a lean worm down there, in the darkness
of that hollow skull, arguing with it, arguing with what
remained still conscious and critical, although lost "in
the pit."
"This world is not made of bread and honey," cried
Wolf, the worm, to the skull of his father, "nor of the
sweet flesh of girls. This world is made of clouds and of
the shadows of clouds. It is made of mental landscapes,
porous as air, where men and women are as trees walk-
ing, and as reeds shaken by the wind."
But the skull answered him in haste and spoke roughly
to him. "What you have found out today, worm of my
folly, I had outgrown when I was in the Sixth at Rams-
gard and was seduced by Western Minor in the Head-
master's garden. To turn the world again into mist and
vapour is easy and weak. To keep it alive, to keep it
real, to hold if at arm's length, is the way of gods and
demons."
And Wolf, hearing this, lifted up his worm's-voice
within that mocker and cried out upon its lewd clay-cold
cunning.
"There is no reality but what the mind fashions out
of itself. There is nothing but a mirror opposite a mir-
ror, and a round crystal opposite a round crystal, and a
sky in water opposite water in a sky."
"Ho! Ho! You worm of my folly," laughed the hollow
skull. "I am alive still, though I am dead; and you are
dead, though you're alive. For life is beyond your mir-
rors and your waters. It's at the bottom of your pond; it's
in the body of your sun; it's in the dust of your star-
spaces; it's in the eyes of weasels and the noses of rats
and the pricks of nettles and the tongues of vipers and the
spawn of frogs and the slime of snails. Life's in me still,
you worm of my folly, and girls' flesh is sweet for
ever and ever; and honey is sticky and tears are salt
and yellow-hammers' eggs have mischievous crooked
scrawls!"
Wolf saw himself rising erect upon his tail as he heard
these words.
"You lie to yourself, Truepenny! You lie with the old,
hot, shuffling, fever-smitten lie. It's the foam-bubbles of
your life-mania that you think so real. They're no more
real than the dreams of the plantains that grow over
your grave!"
A movement of Gerda, though she still remained
asleep, broke up the current of his fancies, and he pulled
out his watch.
Damn! It was time for him to start now, if he was
to reach Mr. Urquhart's house at the accustomed hour.
"I won't have tea with him" he thought. "I'll have
tea at the Otters'. Then I'll find out if Mattie and Olwen
are still all right there."
He rose to his feet. From the hushed indrawn beauty
of the hour he gathered up new strength for the burden
of human fate he seemed destined to carry.
Fragment by fragment he collected what was over
from their lunch and put it back in Gerda's basket, prod-
ding into the soft earth of a mole-hill, with the end of
his stick, the bits of paper in which those things had
been tied up.
Then, stretching out his arms and seizing with each
hand a branch of a young sycamore, he swung these two
pliant limbs backwards and forwards, while his gaze
concentrated itself upon the girl at his feet.
But as he did this the transparency ebbed away from
the vision of his days, and a fantastic doubt assailed him.
Was Gerda's sleep so deep and happy because of some
occult affinity between her nerves and this historic hill?
As if to give substance to his fancy, the girl rolled
over languidly at that moment and lay prone, burying
both her outstretched hands in the soft moss. A deep,
shuddering sigh passed through her; and her body vis-
ibly quivered under her thin dress.
Was there some strange non-human eroticism, he won-
dered, in this contact between the heathen soil and that
sleeping figure? He smiled to himself and then frowned
uneasily. He began to feel obscurely piqued by the girl's
remoteness and inaccessibility. He felt as if he were ac-
tually looking on at some legendary encounter between
the body of Gerda and the crafty super-human desire of
some earth-god. He began to feel an insidious jealousy
of Poll's Camp, an obstinate hostility to its mossy curves
and grassy hollows.
"Very well!" he thought, in his fantastic irritation, as
if he actually beheld his companion in the very arms
of the hill-god. "If she draws away from me, I can draw
away from her!" And his eyes, wandering to the roofs
of the town, settled on that quarter where he knew the
roof of the book-shop to be. He tightened his hold upon
the two saplings; and inhaling deeply that hushed, warm
air, he mentally swept off the roof of Christie's house,
and lifting the wraith-image of her high into the clouds--
he never visualized Christie's actual appearance in any
of these cerebral excursions--he whirled her away with
him towards that lonely cone-shaped hill, rising out of
the plain, that he knew to be Glastonbury.
It was a queer dalliance of the mind that he indulged
in just then; for he felt that this airy wraith, that was
Christie Malakite, was in some way the child of that
mystical plain down there, that "chess-board of King
Arthur"; whereas the girl at his feet was in league with
whatever more remote and more heathen powers had
dominated this embattled hill. King Arthur's strangely
involved personality, with the great Merlin at his side,
was associated with both. But Christie's "Arthur" be-
longed to Glastonbury; Gerda's, to a far earlier time.
Wolf's mind now began analyzing in a more rational
manner this difference between the hill he stood upon
and the landscape stretched out before him. "It must be,"
he thought, "that this mass of earth is a far older por-
tion of the planet's surface than the plain beneath it.
Even if its magnetism is purely chemical and free from
anything that reverts to the old religions, it may very
well exercise a definite effect upon human nerves! The
plain must, within measurable years, have been covered
by the sea. Where those elm-trees now grow there must
have been shells and sand and swaying seaweeds and
great sea-sponges and voyaging shoals of fish. And this
recent emerging from the ocean cannot but have given
a certain chastened quality, like the quality of old me-
diaeval pictures, to these 'chess-board fields.' "
He stared, frowning intently, at the curves and hol-
lows of Poll's Camp.
"How many men," he wondered, "since the black
cormorants and foolish guillemots screamed around these
escarpments, have stood still, as I am doing now, and
wrestled with the secret of this promontory?" Did any
of the serfs of Arthur, or of Merlin the magician, lean
here upon their spades and let their souls sink down and
down, into motions of primal matter older than any
gods? Did any of the Roman legionaries, stark and
stoical, making of this hill "a sacred place" for some
strange new cult of Mithras, forget both Mithras and
Apollo under this terrestrial magnetism this power that
already was spreading abroad its influence long before
Saturn was born of Uranus?
"Poll's Camp is heathen through and through," he
thought; "and even if the old gods never existed, there's
a power here that in some queer way...perhaps just
chemically...is at once bewildering and hostile to
me. But the valley...this unobtrusive, chastened val-
ley...like some immense sad-coloured flower floating
upon hidden water...oh, it is the thing I love best
of all!"
He released the two pliable sycamore-branches and let
his hands sink down; while the thick, cool leaves of the
young trees, so resilient and sturdy on their smooth
purplish stalks, flapped against his forehead.
"The spirit of this hill escapes me," he thought. "I
have an inkling that it is even now watching me with
definite malignity. But I can't understand the nature of
what it threatens. There are powers here...powers
...though, by God! they may be only chemical. But
what is chemical?..."
He turned his eyes almost petulantly to the south-
western limits of the valley, to where Leo's Hill and
Nevilton Hill broke the level expanse.
"Those hills are not like this one," he thought; "and
as for Glastonbury, it's like the pollen-bearing pistil of
the whole lotus-vale! But this place...on my soul, it
has something about it that makes me think of Mr. Ur-
quhart. It's watching me. And I believe at this moment it
is making love to Gerda!"
He sighed and picked up his hat and oak-stick.
"I must wake Gerda and be off," he said to himself.
A GAME OF BOWLS
WOLF WAS COMPELLED THAT PARTICULAR AFTERNOON
to walk a good deal faster than his wont, to reach the
manor-house of King's Barton in time for his daily
labour. But his work itself was, when he did settle down
to it, a great deal pleasanter than usual, owing to the
absence of Mr. Urquhart from the scene.
He found it extremely agreeable to sit at leisure in
that escutcheoned window, one of whose smaller panes
opened to the outside air upon such easy and such
smoothly-worked hinges as made it a pleasure to open
it or shut it.
The purple asters and blue lobelia-borders in the
flower-beds below, had gathered to themselves a much
more autumnal atmosphere than when he last observed
them. There were more fallen leaves; and upon them,
as well as upon the dark velvety grass, he fancied that
he could discern the moisture of last night's dew, giving
them that peculiar look for which he had been craving.
The actual work he was engaged on lent itself to the
breathless peacefulness of that grey afternoon. He had
to take the gnomic commentaries and floating fragments
of wicked gossip gathered together by his employer, and
translate them into a style that had at least some beauty
of its own. This style had been his own contribution to
the book; and though it had been evoked under external
pressure, and in a sense had been a tour de force, it was
in its essence the expression of Wolf's own soul--the
only purely aesthetic expression that Destiny had ever
permitted to his deeper nature.
The further he advanced with his book the more in-
terested he became in this aspect of it. He spent hours
revising the earlier chapters, written before this style of
his had established itself; and he came to value these
elaborated pages as things that were precious in them-
selves precious independently of whether they were ever
printed.
The Cerne Giant was now the subject of his efforts;
and his first two renderings seemed to him hopelessly
below the level of the rest of his writing.
"She had sat on the knees of the Cerne Giant in her youth,
and Sir Walter, robbed of the delectation of prolonged seduction,
turned, it seems, in infinite weariness, to the more ambiguous
tastes that procured him his famous infamy."
He put his pen through this and wrote in its place:
"Those long, hot summer afternoons spent by her in gather-
ing devilVbit and hawkweed in perilous proximity to that trou-
bling symbol, had seduced her mind long before Sir Walter
seduced her body. It was natural enough, therefore, for this cor-
rupt rogue to come soon to prefer--"
Here he laid down his pen and contemplated once more the
Squire's notes, which ran as follows:
"Cerne Giant--real virginity unknown in Dorset--'cold maids'
a contradiction--Sir Walter's disgust--His erudition--His pla-
tonic tastes--How he was misunderstood by a lewd parson--"
"Good Lord!" said Wolf to himself, "I must be careful
what I'm doing just here. The old demon has changed
his tune. This isn't garrulous history. This is special
pleading."
He took up his pen, erased the words "natural enough,
therefore, for this corrupt rogue," and wrote in their
place, "natural enough, therefore, for this baffled idolater
of innocence to become a misogynist and to turn "
He stopped abruptly, pushed back his manuscript, and
stared out of the window. He would have found it hard to
explain this pause in his work, but a vague conscious-
ness of the personality of young Redfern took possession
of his mind.
"I've never seen a line of that fellow's writing," he
thought. "I wonder what he would have made of this
precious Sir Walter?"
The blue lobelias, the dark-green grass-blades leaning
sideways against the edge of the brown mould, as if some
light faun's-hoof had trodden them down, came to his
consciousness then with such a clear revelation of some-
thing in nature purer than anything in man's mind, that
he felt a sense of nausea with regard to these lewd
preciosities. What was he doing, to be employed at such
a job?
If the book were ever published, none of his own
stylistic inventions, such as they were, could offset the
general drift of it. And what effect would that drift have?
To which side of the gulf between beauty and the op-
posite of beauty would it draw readers?
Like a drop of ice-cold rain, frozen, accursed, timeless,
this abominable doubt fell upon his heart and sank into
its depths. The whole subterranean stream of Wolf's life-
illusion had been obsessed, as long as he could remem-
ber, by the notion of himself as some kind of a protag-
onist in a cosmic struggle. He hated the traditional
terminology for this primordial dualism; and it was out
of his hatred of this, and out of his furtive pride, that
he always opposed, in his dialogues with himself, his
own secret "mythology" to some equally secret "evil"
in the world around him. But because the pressure of
circumstances had made him so dependent on Mr. Urqu-
hart's money, it happened that until this actual moment
he had evaded bringing his conscience to bear upon the
man's book, though he had brought it to bear freely
enough upon the man himself.
But now cold, frozen, eternal, malignant this abom-
inable doubt fell upon him like an accursed rain...
drip*drop, drip-drop, drip-drop...each drop sinking
out of sight into the dim, unreasoning levels of his being,
where it began poisoning the waters.
"How can I struggle with this man when I am ex-
hausting all my ingenuity in trying to make his book
an immortal work?" Wolf placed the sheets of his manu-
script carefully in order and put a heavy paper-weight
on the top of them. Then he set himself to curse the
obscurity of his universe as he had never done before.
"Good--evil? Evil--good?" he thought. "Why should
these old dilemmas rise up now and spoil my life, just
as it is rounding itself off into a solid integrity?"
He surveyed the great shelves of Mr. Urquhart's library
much in the same mood as he had recently surveyed the
circumvallation-lines of Poll's Camp. "Come out of your
grave, you wretched Redfern!" he cried under his breath.
"And let's hear what you made of it! Was it the drip-drop
of this infernal indecision that sent you scampering off
to Lenty Pond of an autumn evening? Did you feel a
knot in your head, tightening, tightening, tightening?"
The thought came to him then, "Suppose I gave up
this whole job?" And the image of his mother seeking
refuge with Lord Carfax, of Gerda back again in Torp's
yard, of himself wandering over the world, far removed
from Christie, rose sickening, ghastly, before him.
He lifted the paper-weight from the pile of manuscript.
It had its own interest, this paper-weight a slab of
alabaster with a silver eagle upon it. He tilted it up and
balanced it sideways, till the eagle looked to him like a
fly on a piece of soap.
"Soap?" he thought; and the word put him in mind
of what Mr. Urquhart had said about the transfiguration
of little things by the decision to commit suicide.
At that moment there was a sharp knock at the door,
and Wolf started violently, leaving the paper-weight
upside-down upon his manuscript.
"Come in!" he cried, in a loud, irritable tone.
The tall figure of Roger Monk entered and walked
gravely up to him. It had always been a speculation to
Wolf how this great ostler-gardener managed to move
so discreetly across these polished floors. The man moved
up to him now as if he had been a supernatural mes-
senger walking upon air.
"I came just to tell you, Mr. Solent, Sir," said Roger
Monk,"that there's a bowling-match goin' on at Farm-
er's Rest. It entered my mind, since Squire's out to
Lovelace's tonight, 'twould be a sight you might be sorry
to miss, Mr. Solent, Sir."
"Where's Farmer's Rest?" enquired Wolf.
"Why, that's the village pub, Sir! Haven't you ever
been into it, Sir? But I expect it's out of your way. It's
out of all decent folks' way, I reckon. Tis down Lenty
Lane, Pond Lane, and Dead Badger Lane. 'Tis no great
way; and I'm thinking of going round there myself. So
if it's no offense, Mr. Solent, Sir, I thought as maybe ye'd
like to have my company."
He stopped, and in the manner of the discreet servant
of a wilful master stared impassively at the wall till his
gentleman made his decision.
"I'd like to come with you very much, Roger," Wolf
replied. "But what about tea? I was thinking of dropping
in at Pond Cottage."
"Don't do that, Sir. Come, as I'm telling 'ee, to Farm-
er's Rest and I'll see to it myself that Miss Bess'll give
you as good a cup o' tea, and a better, too, than ye'd
ever get from that old Dimity's kitchen. Not but what
things be much more decent-like down there, since Miss
Smith be living with 'em."
"How does Dimity put up with Miss Smith, Roger?"
enquired Wolf slily.
"Past all expectancy, Mr. Solent," replied the other.
"But she's a real lady, that young woman, whoever her
Dad were."
"Why, wasn't Mr. Smith her father, then?"
Roger Monk winked slily.
"There be as says he weren't, Sir. But if you don't
mind, Mr. Solent, we'd best be getting along, down-
village."
He moved towards the door as he spoke, and Wolf got
up and followed him.
Lenty Lane and Pond Lane were familiar enough,
though under that grey windless sky they assumed the
kind of expression that Wolf always imagined such
places to assume when some disturbing human event
was impending; but Dead Badger Lane led him to com-
pletely new ground. It was narrower than either of the
others and very much overgrown with grass. This grass
grew long and rank on both sides of deep cart-tracks,
and amid its greenness there were patches of scabious
and knapweed.
"Who's playing in this bowling-match?" Wolf asked,
wondering vaguely what there was about these patches of
country weeds that made him think of a certain dusty
road beyond the railway-station at Weymouth. "Beyond
the backwater it was, too," he said to himself.
"Mr. Malakite from Blacksod, Sir, be playing against
our Mr. Valley....And I be playing myself, Sir," the
man added, after a pause, in a deprecatory tone.
Wolf prodded the cart-track with his stick, and, un-
seen by his companion, pulled down the corners of his
mouth and worked the muscles of his under-jaw.
"Whom are you playing against?" enquired Wolf in a
politely negligent tone.
The man gave him a quick glance.
"Hope 'tis no offense to name the party, Sir, but I be
playing against your Missus's Dad."
"Against Mr. Torp?" cried Wolf, feeling that the situa-
tion in front of him was growing thicker with discomfort
every moment.
"None other, Sir. The old gentleman be the best hand
at bowls, when 'ee be sober, if I may say so, that they
have anywhere down these ways. I learned the game my-
self" these last words were spoken with extraordinary
impressiveness "in the Shires."
Farmer's Rest turned out to be a small, whitewashed,
thatched cottage, not very well kept up, and displaying
no sign, as far as Wolf could see, of its professional use.
The place was open and they stepped inside.
They were confronted by a narrow passageway leading
into a garden at the back; and there, framed by an open
door, he could see the bowling-green, with groups of
grave men moving solemnly across it in their shirt-
sleeves.
The public bar was on his right, the private parlour
on his left; and into this latter room he was ushered by
the tall gardener.
"One minute, Sir, and I'll fetch Miss Bess. I expect
some of the other gentlemen will be glad to have a cup
of tea. Her name is Round, Sir, if you don't mind. Miss
Elizabeth Round."
Wolf sat down and waited. Sure enough, in about five
minutes a pretty young woman, plump and rosy-cheeked,
but in some odd way vacant-looking, brought in a tea-
tray and placed it on the table.
Wolf was completely nonplussed by the personality of
Miss Round. Superficially she looked clean, fresh, ami-
able, and a little stupid; but all her movements possessed
a queer, automatic quality that made him slightly un-
comfortable. He couldn't define it at once; but after
watching her carefully for a short space, he came to the
conclusion that she was like a pretty doll, or a human
mannikin, wound up to perform a given task, but lacking
all interior consciousness of what she was doing.
"Mr. Malakite sends his compliments, Sir," she said,
"and he hopes to have the honour of a cup of tea with
you in a minute. He's just finishing his game."
"Don't hurry him. I'll be all right," murmured Wolf.
"Is your father the landlord here?" This he added rather
lamely, as she proceeded with rapid movements of her
plump hands to arrange the tea-things on the table.
Miss Bess nodded. "He's not Dad," she replied calmly.
"He's uncle. Dad's been gone for years."
Whether she meant that Mr. Round, for reasons of his
own, had bolted, or whether she meant that he was dead,
Wolf could not tell. His interest in Miss Bess was faint;
in her father, dead or alive, fainter still. His heart was
beating at that moment for quite another cause. His
glance, fixed upon the door into the passage, kept vis-
ualizing the bookseller's grizzled head. His ears strained
themselves to catch the sound of the old man's voice.
But for several seconds all he could hear was the
knocking of the bowls against one another on the grass
outside.
Then he became aware of quite a different sound, a
sound that apparently proceeded from above the ceiling
of the private parlour. He glanced at Miss Bess, and, to
his surprise, she promptly raised a plump finger and
pressed it against her lips.
"It's uncle," she whispered. "He's heard a strange
voice and it's set him off."
Wolf and Miss Bess both concentrated their attention
upon this new sound. It was a thick human voice, re-
peating over and over again the same two syllables.
"Jesus...Jesus...Jesus...Jesus."
"Is he ill? Is he suffering? Don't let me keep you if
you ought to go up to him."
Miss Bess removed her fingers from her mouth and
smiled a little.
"Oh, it's all right now," she declared calmly. "It's
your voice that started him. He knows every noise for
yards and yards round this house. Dogs, cats, pigs,
poultry, pigeons, horses, cattle. There isn't a sound he
doesn't know. He'll know who's won this match o' bowls
afore I tells him a thing."
The voice above the ceiling continued its refrain.
"Jesus...Jesus...Jesus...Jesus."
"That's how he goes on sometimes for hours. But us
who" knows him takes no stock in that. Now, if I'd heard
him starting off on God, same as he does sometimes,
you'd have seen me running upstairs like greased light-
ning! It's all as how he gets started. Whichever way he
starts he keeps it up till he's tired. Funny, isn't it? But
no one knows what human nature can come to, till ye've
seen it and heard it."
"Does he say 'God' over and over again in this same
way?"
Miss Bess nodded. "It's then I've got to run! It's al-
ways the same. I used to let him do it; but one day they
found him in a ditch, eating frog-spawn. The ditch were
over Lenty-way. I expect you've often seen it. It's where
them mare's-tails grows. He had to be pulled out. That
were one of his 'God' days."
Once more Wolf strained his ears; and, mingled with
the clicking of the bowls outside, came that repeated
"Jesus...Jesus . , . Jesus...Jesus" from above
the ceiling.
"He'll go to sleep, present; and by supper-time he'll be
gay as a lark. It's our Mr. Valley taught him what to
do. 'When you feel God coming,' Mr. Valley said to him,
'don't get flustered or anything. Just say "Jesus" and
you'll go to sleep like a new-born babe!' "
"What's the matter with him?" enquired Wolf. The
girl fetched a blue tea-cosy from the recesses of a cup-
board and pulled it down carefully over the teapot.
Then she raised her eyes and looked straight at her
guest; and for the flicker of a second her brisk, automatic
personality displayed the troubled awareness of a con-
scious soul.
"Worried," she said simply. And then, in the old auto-
matic way: "Excuse me, Sir. There's someone in the bar."
And with all the fresh, stupid innocence of her first
entrance upon the scene, she hurried across the passage.
Wolf surveyed the admirable preparations for tea that
lay spread before him. There were two teacups, two
knives, two plates, and two chairs.
"Jesus...Jesus...Jesus...Jesus."
"What on earth shall I talk about with the old man?"
he thought. "I wish he'd hurry up. This tea will have
stood much too long."
He had not long to wait. There were shuffling steps in
the passage, and the bookseller came in. Wolf rose and
shook him by the hand.
"Just in time, Mr. Malakite," he said. "I was afraid our
tea would get too strong."
The two men sat down opposite each other, and Wolf,
removing the blue cosy, filled both their cups and handed
the bookseller the bread-and-butter.
"I hope you're ahead in your game," he said em-
phatically. "It must be an absorbing game, bowls. It must
be one of the most absorbing of all."
Mr. Malakite put down his cup and moved a long,
slender forefinger round its rim.
"Your father and I had many a game on this green,"
he said, without raising his eyes.
And Wolf looked at Mr. Malakite with as many con-
fused feelings as he had ever experienced in the presence
of one human head. He thought to himself, "Was the
man ever ashamed of that white beard when he saw him-
self in the looking-glass, as he went up to wash his hands
between dusting his books and sneaking into his girl's
room?"
"You and my father, Mr. Malakite," he said in a low
tone, "must have seen quite a lot of each other in those
old days."
"One more cup, if you please, Sir. A lot of each other?
Well no. He was a gentleman, you see; and I've never
been anything but a tradesman. But still...in a man-
ner of speaking, we were friends, I suppose."
He lifted his eyes now, and Wolf was surprised by the
devouring intensity of their gaze. It was a fixed, mono-
maniacal intensity, and it seemed addressed to no par-
ticular object. It was impossible to imagine it softening
into tenderness, or abandoned to humour, or melting in
grief. It did not seem adapted to looking into human eyes.
It seemed directed towards some aspect of universal
matter that absorbed and fascinated it. It seemed, so to
speak, to eat the air. Mr. Malakite himself appeared
apprehensive of the effect of his gaze upon his inter-
locutor; for he lowered his eyelids directly his words
were out of his mouth, and once more began following
the rim of his teacup with the tip of his finger.
"I know that look," thought Wolf. "I've seen it on the
streets in London and I've seen it on the esplanade at
Weymouth. It's like the passion of a miser. It's horrible,
but it's not contemptible."
"Had you many friends in common?" enquired Wolf;
and as he spoke, he leant across the table, and, without
waiting this time for any request, filled up the old man's
cup to the very brim and placed the milk- jug at his side.
"I can't stand that finger-game of his!" he said to
himself. "He'll have to stop doing that if he's going to
drink his tea."
But not at all! Mr. Malakite bent his furrowed head,
but keeping his gaze discreetly lowered, once more com-
menced circling the vessel's rim with the extreme tip of
his long finger.
"Friends in common?" the old man repeated. "You
mean, I suppose, Mr. Solent, to ask whether your father
and I had any peculiarities in common? That's a natural
question, and if I knew you better I think I could interest
you a good deal in answering it. But we don't know
each other well enough, Sir...not nearly well enough.
Besides" and once more Wolf got the benefit of that
fixed, monomaniacal gaze "I don't approve of expos-
ing a father to his son. It's an impiety, an impiety!"
Wolf finished his tea in silence after this, and handed
Mr. Malakite a cigarette. When they were both smoking,
and Wolf, at any rate, was enjoying that faint rarifica-
tion of human thought, like the distilling of an essence,
which tea-drinking can induce, he asked Mr. Malakite
with grave directness what was the matter with the land-
lord of Farmer's Rest.
The bookseller's forehead knit in an unpleasant scowl.
"Been hearing him, I suppose? Nobody bothers about
him, Mr. Solent. Miss Elizabeth is the boss here, and she
don't like people who talk too much about family-
matters. Why should she? Round's her uncle, not yours
or mine."
The brutality of this remark destroyed in a moment
all the fragrant clarity of Wolf's after-tea sensations.
He received the sort of shock from it that always made
him seem to himself a priggish fool, devoid of the degree
of humorous toughness which this world requires. At
the same time it stirred up all his ill-balanced impulses
with regard to persecuted people--impulses that led him
to a morbid exaggeration of this particular aspect of
life.
He began to indulge in the wildest imaginings about
the "worried" Mr. Round; and he obstinately returned
to the subject.
"Has this fellow up there," he said uneasily, jerking
his thumb towards the ceiling, "lived in King's Barton
long?"
But Mr. Malakite rose from his chair.
"Come out and see the game, Sir, won't you? There are
people everywhere about us whose existence is no affair
of ours. To fuss over them like this clergyman here does
is only to share their disease."
"What disease are you talking about, Mr. Malakite?"
asked Wolf, as he followed him into the garden.
The sight of the group of men gathered there so dis-
turbed his attention that he could not be quite sure
whether he caught correctly the malignant mumbling
that issued from his companion's lips. "The disease of
Life!" was what it sounded like.
A little later, as he watched the bookseller calculating
with exquisite nicety the "bias" of his particular bowl, he
was conscious of a desire not to encounter again for
some while the expression of those deep-sunken eyes.
"What does that look of his make me think of?" he
wondered, as he nodded to the other players and their
absorbed spectators. And it seemed to him that he recalled
a sombre light-ship that he had seen once in Portland
harbour, which every now and then emitted a long, thin
stream of ghastly, livid illumination from the midst of
waters desolate and disturbed.
There had apparently been time, while Wolf was having
his tea, for Roger Monk to defeat Mr. Torp; for that
champion, still in his shirt-sleeves, and extremely hot,
was arguing in a plaintive voice with Mr. Valley as to
what he might have done and didn't do.
Wolf shook hands with Mr. Valley and commiserated
his father-in-law on his defeat. "It's a wonder I didn't
lose a lot of money over you," he said facetiously. "I
backed you to the limit to beat our friend Roger, for the
honour of the family; and now you've let us all down.
and the West Country too! Mr. Monk, so he tells me,
comes from the Shires."
"Shires be damned, Mr. Solent!" said the monument-
maker. " 'T weren't no shires! 'Twere me wone bloody
cussedness. If I'd 'a known then what I do know now,
'twould be he and me" he nodded in the direction of
Mr. Malakite "and not he and him, for this here final."
"How is it that you got knocked out so soon, Valley?"
enquired Wolf.
But the little clergyman made a sign with his hand,
and advanced a step or two, intent with all his mind and
soul on Roger Monk's massive wrist and the bowl which
he was poising.
Wolf had to content himself, therefore, with drawing
back his father-in-law to a bench under the hedge, where
the game could be watched and Mr. Torp's lamentations
listened to in comparative ease and comfort.
"What's wrong with this Mr. Round?" He hadn't in-
tended to say anything like this when he searched about
in his mind for a suitable topic; but the words rose to
his lips as if from some inquisitive demon pricking up
its ears in the pit of his stomach.
"Can't forgive 'isself, I reckon, for they things he said
about young Redfern. 'Twere summat o' that, so folks
do tell I, what stole the heart out o' that young gentle-
man and made 'un turn to the wall. Leastways there were
some folks as told 'un 'twere what he did say, down here,
at Farmer's Rest bar, that turned that young man's poor
heart to stone. 'Twould have jostled me wone innards, I
tell 'ee, if any well-thought-of landlord spoke such words
of I."
"What did he say about Redfern?" enquired Wolf,
suppressing the absurd image that rose in his mind of
a Mr. Torp lacerated by moral disquietude.
His father-in-law, however, at that moment saw fit to
display a revived interest in the game of bowls.
"Look-see!" he cried, tapping Wolf on the knee, and
leaning forward. "By jiggers, if that girt flunkey from
up at House aren't making Mr. Malakite look like
nothing!"
Wolf had indeed for some while been admiring the
steady play of the big gardener. The old man opposed
to him seemed on the contrary to be growing less and
less careful of his aim.
"Something's fretting that wold gent, looks so," went
on Mr. Torp. "Miss Bess been showing her laces to he,
in parlour, like enough! Tis a wonderful disposing of
Providence, Mr. Solent, when old men can flutter young
ladies and make their hands fidget. 'Tis not been allowed
to I, such privileges and portions. And yet I be a man, I
reckon, what knows the road royal as well as another!"
But Wolf's mind was still hovering about Mr. Round
and his remarkable "worries."
"What did this man actually say about Redfern?" he
repeated.
Mr. Torp turned his head slowly towards him. "It may
be a good world," he remarked sententiously, "and it
may be a bad world, but it's the world; and us has got
to handle 'un with eyes in our heads for landslides. My
job mayn't be the job you'd choose. It mayn't be the job
I'd choose, if others offered. But it's my job. And anyone,
Mr. Solent, with a job like mine can't afford to stir up
trouble among they dead. I were the man who made the
headstone for'n. I ask 9 ee, should I go spreading trouble
about thik quiet lad? They said, when his funeral-day
came, that he'd got no relation to mourn for'n. Who,
then, I ask 'ee, Mr. Solent, is to hold their tongue, i' the
peace of God, about the poor young man, if it bain't me
wone self, who chipped the stone what covers him?"
"Is it true, when his conscience troubles him, that Mr.
Round wanders about that field where Lenty Pond is?"
"Never ye mind where 'a wanders, Mr. Solent! Neb-
uchadnezzar were more than he; for kings be more
than publicans; and he went on all fours in's day."
His father-in-law's poetic prevarications had begun to
irritate Wolf.
"I wish you'd tell your wife, Mr. Torp," he burst out,
"not to let Lobbie bathe in that damned pond!"
The monument-maker gave a start and opened his
eyes wide. Wolf's intonation evidently surprised him.
He smiled as he answered.
"She not let him bathe? She don't let him do nothing
not even breathe, I fancy! 'Twould be somebody very
different from our Gerda's Mummy, Mr. Solent, what
would make Lob Torp bide at whoam. But what ails 'ee,
Sir, to speak with such disturbance of a good Darset duck-
pond, such as I do mind sliding on, winter come winter,
since I were slim as a lath? What's Lenty Pond done
to thee, Sir? 'Tis no girt place for perch or pike; and
to my belief no wild-geese ever settled on it; but 'tis a
good pond. 'Tis a pond that would drown the likes of
you and me, maybe. But they boys! Why, they'd bathe
in Satan's spittle and come out sweet. Lenty Pond's
nothing to Lob Torp, Sir! You can rest peaceful on that."
As Wolf listened to all this, with one eye on the final
defeat of Mr. Malakite, and the other on the doll-like
briskness of Bess Round, who was now bringing out into
the garden more chairs and more tables, he began to be
aware of a very odd fancy, which he found it impossible
to take seriously, and yet impossible to get rid of.
The fancy had to do with Lenty Pond; and the more
he thought of it, the more ridiculously it pressed upon
him. It was as if every single person in these three Dorset
towns were hiding from him something they knew about
Lenty Pond, something that was absurdly simple, that
fitted together with mathematical precision, but to which
he was himself completely blind.
He got up from the bench and went across the grass,
with the intention of congratulating Roger Monk on his
victory. On his way, however, and before his approach
was detected by the gardener, round whose tall figure
all the villagers who had been watching the match were
now gathered, he caught sight of Miss Bess ushering
into the garden the two Otter brothers.
Towards these two men he directed his steps, leaving
Mr. Torp to join the loquacious group in the centre of
the bowling-green. As he shook hands with the brothers,
he detected Mr. Malakite secretively shuffling off by the
elbow of Miss Bess, who, with a tray of empty bottles,
was returning into the house.
That disconcerting feeling, as though the whole of his
life at the present moment were unreal, weighed upon him
still. It hung upon him like a wavering dizziness, as full
of meaningless blotches and sparkles as the glass coffin-
lid of King AEthelwolf in the Abbey.
Even as he was describing to the two Otters the por-
tion of the bowling-match that he had seen, his eyes re-
mained fixed on a particularly smooth and delicately
polished bowl, of a dark-chestnut colour, that lay on the
grass close to Darnley's feet.
It seemed to him as if he were reading his fate on the
polished surface of this object, a fate laborious, compli-
cated, burdened, but at the same time rolled and tossed
about at random by many alien hands! Was there any
portion of his identity, compact, self-contained, weighted
with inward intention, like the "bias" of this bowl?
As he went on talking to the two brothers, he became
aware that a small flower-seed had balanced itself, in its
aimless flight, on the bowl at Darnley's feet, and he
began to feel as if this flower-seed were tickling the skin
of his mind, and that he couldn't brush it away. Some-
thing was fretting him; something was teasing him.
What was it?
Then quite suddenly he knew what it was. It was the
memory of old Malakite's obsessed expression that ex-
pression of concentrated erotic insanity, directed toward
universal matter, as he had caught it from under the
man's wrinkled forehead across the blue tea-cosy. This,
then, was why he was answering Jason's remarks in so
perfunctory a manner! Then he gave a quick sigh of
irrepressible relief; for he became aware that the doll-
like young lady was back again at their side, suggesting
that they should all sit down before a ricketty garden-
table upon which she had placed a fresh tray of mugs.
This they proceeded to do; and while she was supply-
ing them with foaming pints of Dorchester ale, he heard
her say to Darnley: "Mr. Malakite's just traipsed off.
He made his little joke, like he always does, the funny
old man; but anyone could see he weren't best pleased!
Tis hard for him, I expect, to be beat like this by a
fellow who, as you might say, is a foreigner in these parts.
He's been playing on this green, that old gentleman, as
long as I can mind anything, and there be few enough
who've got the best of him!"
She moved away to persuade the winner of the match
and his rustic admirers to gather about another wooden
table, leaving the "gentry" to their own devices.
Then it was that Wolf's mind completely recovered
from its sense of unreality and from its hallucinations
about Lenty Pond. From where he lay in a creaky straw-
plaited chair between Darnley and Jason, he could take
in at his leisure the whole characteristic West Country
scene. There was a relaxed jocularity about the men's
voices, as they rose in that shadowy garden, between the
tall privet-hedge and the sloping thatched roof, that
seemed to contain within it all the rich apple- juices that
were ripening in the orchards around them, all the cool
sap of the mangelwurzel plants in the neighbouring
fields, the good white heart of billions of ears of plump
wheat-sheaves, awaiting their threshing-day in all the
granaries between Parret and Stour!
The sky, as he watched it above that privet-hedge, was
still of the same filmy greyness as when he had sat, some
five or six hours ago, under the sycamore at Poll's Camp;
but the gathered volume of masculine personalities, as
it surrounded him now for Miss Bess was the only
woman on the scene, and her femininity seemed to have
no more weight in it than petticoats on a clothes-line
seemed fast building up about him a sort of battlemented
watch-tower, from the isolation and protection of which
his days began to fall into a measured, reasonable order,
such as he had not known for many a long week.
That chestnut-coloured polished bowl was still within
his vision on the smooth turf; but at this moment, in
place of giving him a sense of random helplessness, it
gave him a sense of reassured control. In this pleasant
retreat, With the fumes of the Dorchester ale mounting
into his head, he began to feel his hand firm and un-
bewildered once more upon his life's rudder.
These worthy men, with their work behind them,
seemed to have eluded by some secret pressure of their
united force the splash and beat of nature's chaotic waves.
They seemed to have dragged their "hollow ship" out
of the tide that summer afternoon up, up, up some
hidden shelving beach, where all agitations were over.
Everything disturbing and confusing sank away out of
sight for Wolf just then. Indeed, his whole life gathered
itself together with lovely inevitableness, as if it were
a well-composed story that he himself, long ago and
time out of mind, had actually composed.
And by degrees while he lazily drank his ale and chatted
with Darnley for Jason had for some unknown reason
become suddenly silent the old fighting-spirit of his in-
born life-illusion rose strong and upwelling within him.
And there came to him the vision of one particular
rock-pool near Weymouth, to which he had once found
his way. He saw the rose-tinged seaweeds sway back-
wards and forwards...he heard the crying of the
gulls....
Oh, that it were possible to gather together a great
handful of such memories and pour them forth out of his
cupped hands into the brain above that face on the Water-
loo steps! But but what if there should arrive a day,
when, by the turning of the terrible engines, he himself
should look like that face, while some other Wolf, drink-
ing ale on a bowling-green, indulged in benevolent emo-
tions in a creaky wicker-chair?
"Are you sure you couldn't come back to dinner with
us, Solent?" said Darnley at last, in a pause in the
midst of their rambling conversation.
"Impossible!" he said, looking at his watch. "It's seven
o'clock now. As it is, I shall be late for Gerda's supper."
And then he suddenly remembered that Gerda's last
words to him had been: "Don't hurry back, Wolf, I like
waiting for you. I like sitting at the window and doing
nothing. That's what I like best of all!"
"Those girls of yours will be very annoyed if you don't
come," said Jason.
"Why, they don't expect me, do they? Your mother
doesn't expect me, does she?"
"All women," said Jason, with a chuckle, his spirits
reviving when he saw Wolf's discomfort and indecision,
"expect all men!"
"Well, I must come another time," said Wolf. "I can't
leave Gerda like that without telling her. But I hope
'my girls,' as you call them, are all right? I hope you
don't find 01 wen too much of a handful?"
"Darnley is the one to give advice. Do you think he'd
better go home, Darnley; or do you think he'd better
come to dinner with us?"
"He must suit himself," said Darnley smiling. "I
wouldn't care about leaving Gerda alone if I were in his
shoes. But then, I've never had a Gerda...and am
never likely to have!"
Mr. Valley at this point drifted up to their table.
"I've got to be getting back now," he said. "Are any
of you people coming, or are you going to stay longer?"
The three men all rose. "We were just talking of
getting off," said Darnley. "I suppose we all go the same
way? At the start, anyhow?"
He beckoned to Bess Round to come to their table,
and, drawing a small leather purse out of his pocket,
paid for all the drinks they had had except Mr. Valley's.
Him Roger Monk had already treated and treated well.
Wolf went across the grass and said good-bye to Mr.
Torp and to Roger Monk, congratulating the latter
warmly on his victory.
"I've never known the old man to play so badly," said
Monk, with a deprecatory shrug of his shoulders. "That
cup of tea he had with you in the parlour, Sir, must have
gone to his head."
"Give me little darter me love, Mr. Solent," said the
monument-maker. "And you may kiss she, too, if ye be so
minded, from her old Dad. Not that they turns aught
but cold maids' cheeks to their Dad's kisses. But that be
all the better for thee, Sir; and ye are more like to mind
me message than if 't had been any o' the young gents
here assembled."
Roger Monk's victory at bowls had been celebrated by
such copious libations that the gardener had no hesita-
tion now about indulging in a piece of ribaldry from
which in more sober mood he would certainly have re-
frained.
"Young and old is the same to that gender eh, Mr.
Solent, Sir? That's what we servants know, maybe, better
than you gentlemen. There's not a poor one among that
gender, nor a rich one among 'em eh, Mr. Torp?
that hasn't wished themselves in the bed of somebody that
isn't their law-established."
Wolf went off down Dead Badger Lane side by side
with Jason, while Darnley walked in front of them with
Mr. Valley.
That remark of Roger Monk teased Wolf's mind. The
man had worded it in a coarser, drier, cruder manner
than such a thing would have been worded by a man of
the West Country. The use of the word "gender," for
instance, "That's a touch of Sheffield or Birmingham,"
thought Wolf. And perhaps just because of its coarse
wording, the thing hit Wolf with a most unpleasant em-
phasis. What would he feel if there were any serious
cause for his being jealous? What he did feel at that
moment was an actual sense of physical nausea caused
by Roger's words. It wasn't only Gerda. That use of the
word "gender" seemed to have stripped the world of a
certain decency that belonged to its inherent skin quite
as much as to its external conventions.
He experienced at that moment a wave of positive
hatred for Roger Monk. "He looked as if he might put
his hand on my shoulder or even slap me on the back.
There's something horrible about a male servant...
especially a big male servant...when he drops his
professional discretion....I could find it in me to pity
even Mr. Urquhart if this chap does ever turn on him!"
His thoughts were jerked back into focus and into the
cart-ruts of Dead Badger Lane by a remark from Jason
Otter.
"Look at those two, in front there! Your friend Darn-
ley has no more idea of what Valley's after, than that
stick otjours has! I suppose you think that Darnley's
very clever and very gentlemanly. That's what most
people think. It's all his politeness. Look at their two
heads now, bobbing up and down under their hats! I
think cows and sheep are better than human beings.
Nicer, I mean. Cleaner, too. Cleaner and nicer. What's
wrong with human beings is their minds. Their minds are
filthy. The minds of worms are much nicer. Have you
ever thought about what really goes on in people's heads?
I suppose not. I never thought you really knew very
much. You're good at writing histories of a lot of bawdy
idiots; and you're good at keeping old Urquhart in a
good temper. But I've been thinking about you all this
afternoon, Solent, and though you'll probably abuse me
for telling you the truth, I think you're a crazy fool."
By this time it began to dawn upon Wolf that Jason
had no more power of drinking Dorchester ale with im-
punity than had his bete noire Roger Monk. He tried to
distract the poet's attention from personalities by remark-
ing on the insubstantiality and ghostliness of the elm-trees
in the hedges. But Jason refused to show any interest in
the beauty of that August night.
"Your friend Darnley," he now began again, "believes
in politeness. He thinks he can smooth everything down
by that. He doesn't know what he's got against him."
"What has he got against him?" enquired Wolf, won-
dering at the back of his mind what effect upon this
"politeness" the presence of Mattie in Pond Cottage had
been having of late.
The reply of Jason was so violent and so abrupt that
it had an uncanny effect upon the placidity of those
vaporous elm-trees.
"He's got God against him!" cried the poet. "What he
tries to smooth down are the porcupine-quills of God!"
"We'd better walk a little faster," said Wolf. "They'll
be turning soon, and I've got to go the other way."
"You're always on the walk, Solent. Walking here,
walking there! You'll walk into a pit one day, with that
stick of yours."
But Wolf lifted his voice.
"Darnley!" he shouted. "Valley! Wait a minute, you
two!"
He could see the figures in front of him turn and
stand still.
"Your friends over there will say good-night to you,
Solent. Were you afraid they wouldn't? They'll say good-
night. All the world over people say good-night. They
think it does something, I suppose. I don't know what it
does!"
Wolf could not repress a heavy sigh. For some reason
or other the peculiar nature of this man's pessimism
began to affect him as if he had been forced, till his
hands were weary, to push away great stalks of deadly
nightshade.
Jason caught this sigh upon the air, and it seemed to
change his mood.
"I expect, Solent, you poor old devil, that that young
lady of yours doesn't cook a good meal for you very
often."
"Oh, yes, she does, Otter!" replied Wolf, as jocosely
as he could. "There's hardly a day we don't have meat.
But to tell you the truth, I've been thinking of giving up
eating that sort of thing ever since Miss Gault talked to
me the other night."
"Do you attend to anything that an ugly old woman
like that says to you? She only wants to stir things up,
because she's never slept with a man."
The unkindness of those blunt words roused sheer
anger in Wolf.
"Sleeping with people isn't everything in this world,
Otter! It isn't even especially wonderful. I should have
thought that being a poet you'd know that, and wouldn't
go putting such importance on these material accidents!"
His anger, as he recognized clearly enough, was due
to the fact that his own erotic feelings were so divided
just then. But the tone of his voice was so vibrant with
irritation, that its electric current conveyed itself to
Jason in a second.
They were now quite close upon the others, however;
and there was no time for anything but a swift, bitter,
malicious blow, aimed where the opponent was most vul-
nerable.
"You'll walk into a material accident that'll stir your
quills, master," the poet growled, "though you do think
yourself a sort of superior being going about among
ordinary people. You'll walk into the wood where they
pick up horns...clever though you may be!"
The altercation subsided as swiftly as it had risen.
"I didn't want to lose sight of you," said Wolf, "be-
cause our ways divide in a minute. I wish you'd won that
match, Valley, instead of Monk. I can't tell why, but
there was something about Monk that annoyed me this
afternoon. Perhaps servants are always annoying when
they're neither one thing nor the other."
"I hope you didn't bring me into your quarrel," said
Jason Otter.
"I'm not as good as any of them," replied Mr. Valley.
"Even Torp is better than I am. I never allow enough
room for the swing of the bias."
The four men walked on together and soon reached
the spot where Dead Badger Lane joined Pond Lane.
"Well, good-night," said Wolf. "You and I will be
seeing each other on Monday, eh, Darnley? Won't you
come back to lunch with me then? I'll tell Gerda if you
will; and we'll celebrate the beginning of term with some
sort of feast."
"Don't get anything out of the way for me, Wolf," the
other replied. "You know what I'm like the most irri-
tating kind of guest. But I'd love to come. It'll make
Monday less of a burden to look forward to." He
stopped short and then suddenly added. "If it wouldn't
be a bother to Gerda, I wish you'd really make it a bit
of an occasion and ask little Christie? I've had an idea
for the last few weeks...in fact since Olwen came to
us...that she wanted cheering up. But don't say any-
thing if it would be too much for Gerda."
"But, Darnley...you and I know...everyone
knows...that Christie never goes out anywhere."
"Ask her, my dear man, that's all! I daresay she won't
come, but ask her!" He paused for a second. "Everyone
likes to be asked," he added gravely.
"Hee! Hee! Hee!"
Wolf swung round. It was Jason chuckling like a gob-
lin in the darkness.
But Mr. Valley threw in his word before the electric
current of irritation that still connected the two men's
minds had time to explode.
"Let's see," said Mr. Valley. "It's Friday today, isn't
it? Don't forget, all of you, that next Wednesday is our
School-Treat. It begins at two and goes on till seven.
The Squire always comes after tea to watch the sports;
so I shall expect you with him, Solent. But tell Gerda I
want her to come too. Lobbie will be there, and our
friend Weevil's sure to come."
A muffled chuckle became audible.
"What's the matter with you, Jason?" expostulated
Darnley. "We all enjoy Valley's school-treats. Are you
going to have the Kingsbury band over here again?" he
added, turning to the clergyman. "What a time we had
last year! They wouldn't stop, Solent, until it was pitch-
dark. When we did get 'em off, they played the Kings-
bury jig out there in Lenty Lane, till Roger Monk hit
the drummer into the ditch."
"It was honest of him to do that," said Jason. "We all
know why these lecherous young men want the Kings-
bury jig. It would be a good thing if your friend Solent
used his stick for these young dogs, instead of boasting
how many miles he can walk."
"Well, I'm going to walk now, anyway," broke in
Wolf, making a violent effort to keep his temper. "Good-
night, Valley! Good-night Darnley!..."
He found it impossible to think of anything, either
good or bad, except imaginary retorts to Jason, as he
made his way westward through that hushed night. The
mere fact that Jason had the power to annoy him so
much increased his aggravation; and his inability to lay
his finger on the exact nature of this power added the
last sharp prod to his irritated spirit.
"I wonder if I am the conceited fool he thinks me?
Well! I don't care if I am. I have my 'mythology,' any-
way. He's got the terrible instincts of a child in these
things," his thoughts ran on. "He's so appallingly di-
rect."
He meditated for about a quarter of an hour upon
Jason's personality; while the man's taunt about his
fondness for walking and his fondness for his stick took
the heart out of every stride he made.
"What really rouses me," he thought presently, "is
his desire to annoy. People can get angry with anyone
and say outrageous things. But this is different. He
wants to make me feel a fool. He wants to take the life
out of my life."
Then Wolf set himself to wonder as to why it was
that his mysterious psychic struggle with the Squire left
him so free from personal hostility; while in the case
of Jason he actually felt a longing to be wrestling with
him in that very ditch into which he had said it was
"honest" of Monk to hit the Kingsbury drummer!
"It's because he knows by some childish instinct just
where my life-illusion is weakest. It's because he sees
this weak spot, like a raw scratch in the hide of a bear
tied to a pole, and it somehow gets on his nerves, so that
he wants to poke at it."
With this hypothesis in his mind he advanced yet an-
other quarter of a mile between the high hedges, where
great bunches of old-man's-beard made large whitish
blurs against the darkness. The trunks of the elms looked
now, as he passed them by, as if they were composed of a
vaporous stuff that was absolutely liquid. But he hated
to see this particular effect, because it made him think
of his recent attempts to distract Jason from poking at
the spot in his life's conceit where the skin was so
tender,
"That is what it is," he thought. Jason has deliberately
stripped himself of every consolatory self-protective
skin. He must see life continually as we others only see
it when our life-illusions are broken through. The point
is, is life what Jason sees, or is it what we see?"
Trailing his oak-stick now, instead of prodding the
ground with it, Wolf lurched forward in that fluid grey-
coloured darkness, as if he'd been some forlorn Homeric
ghost whose body had been left unburied.
"It can't be as he sees it," he thought, "except to him
...except to him!"
He now stood stock-still, his stick just held, but no
more than just held, from falling to the ground.
"I refuse to believe," he said to himself, "and I never
will believe, until the day Nature kills me, that there's
such a thing as 'reality,' apart from the mind that looks
at it! Jason's stripping himself bare is his way...
that's all...what he sees when he's like that is no
less of an illusion than what I see when I'm plastered
with armour. The 'thing in itself is as fluid and mal-
leable as these trees...I'm a sharded beetle and he's
one of those naked little green things that live in the
centre of cuckoo-spit!"
This comparison cheered Wolf's mind a good deal;
and his fingers tightened once more upon the handle of
his stick. "These trees, this old-man's-beard, these dark
ditch-plants...they all see what they've the nature to
see....No living thing has ever seen reality as it is
in itself. By God! there's probably nothing to see, when
you come to that!"
He heard at that moment a slight, dry rustling in the
grass by the side of the road. Inquisitive to know what
it was, he went over, and, stooping down, fumbled with
his hand among the entangled weeds. A scent of camo-
mile hit his nostrils; but then with an exclamation of
distress he drew his hand away.
"Damn!" he exclaimed. "Thorns!" And he thought
vaguely, "How odd that there should be a bramble-bush
so low down!"
Once more he heard the rustling; and once more,
though with more caution, he stretched out his hand.
This time he knew what it was; and repressing an in-
stinct to hook the hedgehog with the handle of his stick
and drag it out into the road, he straightened his own
back and walked on.
" Another version of reality!" he said to himself. "And
a bit more armoured even than mine!" And then he re-
membered what Jason had said with regard to the prickly
quills of God. "I must tell him about this hedgehog," he
thought. "It's just the sort of thing that'll please him,
especially as it's made my finger bleed."
The notion of communicating this occurrence with
self-depreciatory humour to the "Slow-Worm of Lenty"
completed his restoration to good spirits. By the little
device of seeing himself in a humorous and yet not in a
ridiculous light, he crossed the moat that separated him
from his accustomed stronghold, and pulled up the draw-
bridge after him.
"I'll tell him about the hedgehog on Wednesday," he
thought, "when I meet him at the school-treat." And
thinking of Jason's goblinish laughter when he should
be telling him the tale, Wolf entirely forgot the
sensations he had recently received from that same
sound.
With a mind once more adjusted and fortified to deal
with existence, he advanced rapidly towards the out-
skirts of Blacksod. He knew every mark, every sign of
the way as he came along. In a darkness far deeper than
this darkness he would have known them, those grotesque
and insignificant little things that arrest a person's at-
tention for so many unknown reasons, as he follows a
familiar road.
But all at once Wolf thought vividly, sharply, disturb-
ingly of Mr. Malakite.
"I hope I'm not going to overtake him!" he said to
himself; and then, before this hope was fully registered
in his conscious brain, there in the dimness, standing as
if she were waiting for him, was Christie herself!
"I knew your step. I Jtnew the tap of your stick," she
said hurriedly. "I haven't been here very long. Father
came back and told me he'd had tea with you and then
went off to get supper in the town; for he knew I hadn't
anything for him in the house."
She spoke hurriedly, but quite calmly; and all the
while she was speaking, she held one of Wolf's hands
tightly with one of her own, and kept rubbing his
knuckles with her other hand, as if she were rubbing out
some stain left by Time itself, some imprint which the
days that had passed since they had last seen each other
had left there.
"Do you realize," he said, "that two seconds before
I saw you I thought suddenly of your father? That shows
something, doesn't it?"
"I've been thinking of him, and of you too, Wolf, all
the afternoon. When he told me you were watching that
game of bowls, I said to myself in a flash, Til go out and
meet Wolf coming back!' and you see I did meet you."
She spoke with a wavering happiness that seemed to
be lifting the syllables of her voice up and down on the
darkness as the undulations of a full-brimmed tide might
lift a drifting boat.
"Let's find a place to sit down for a minute," said
Wolf. "I can't realize I've got you, when we're just stand-
ing up like this."
He tightened his clasp upon her hand and led her to
the hedge. A mass of vague, dark umbrageousness con-
fronted them.
"Stop!" he whispered, "while I see if there's a ditch."
He advanced slowly, feeling with his stick among the
hemlocks and dock-leaves.
"There's no water, anyway," he said, stepping down
among the obscure rank-scented growths. "Wait a sec-
ond," he cried, "I believe we can get up over this."
He felt about with his free hand. He could just detect
the faint outlines of the branches of some small tree or
shrub. It turned out--well did he know that acrid mind-
cleansing pungency in his nostrils!--to be an elder-bush;
and he pulled himself up by its brittle stalks till he at-
tained the summit of the hedge.
"Come on! Catch hold!" he cried triumphantly, se-
curing a firm position for himself and stretching out the
handle of his stick towards her.
It took her a second or two of struggling amid the
mass of weeds and of fumbling with upraised arm, be-
fore she reached the extended support. But when once she
felt it between her fingers she clung tight with both
hands, and he soon pulled her up beside him.
They found themselves, by a lucky chance, in a wheat-
field that had been cut but not yet carried; and after a
step or two across the stubble, they sank down with a
mutual cry of satisfaction against the side of a shock of
corn.
The weight of the immense vaporous summer darkness
covered them there like a waveless ocean. They floated
there upon a cool, yielding darkness that had neither sub-
stance nor shape, a darkness full of a faint fragrance
that was the sweetness neither of clover nor of poppies
nor of corn nor of grass, but was rather the breath of the
great terrestrial orb itself, a dark, interior, outflowing
sweetness between vast-rocking waves of air, where
firmament bent down to firmament, and space rose up to
meet space.
He kept fast hold of her hand; and her fingers seemed
still cold and stiff and impassive, just as they had done
when he first took them in the road. She did not bend
her head towards him as they sat side by side, nor
did he make the least movement to put his arm round
her.
Wolf had sunk a little lower in the corn-shock than
she, so that their heads were exactly level; and to any
inquisitive owl or nightjar hovering across that stubble-
field they must have appeared like two well-constructed
scarecrows, good enough to frighten the silly daylight
rooks, but quite negligible and harmless to all more
sagacious nocturnal eyes.
"When I'm with you like this," said Wolf, "I feel as
if I'd stripped my mind clean off my spirit; pulled it
off as I might pull off my vest when I go to bed! I feel
as if I could actually see my mind now, like that terrible
flayed skin in the 'Last Judgement,' lying there on the
ground. I can see the rents in it and the stains on it and
all the insane zigzag creases!"
"I knew I should meet you tonight," said Christie,
"just as I really knew, though I wouldn't admit I knew,
that you'd come to me that day of the fair. I felt it would
be like this the moment my father left the shop. Do you
think it's being the daughter of my mother that gives me
these feelings, or do you think every girl who's in love
has them sometimes?"
The question fell like a ripple of the very sweetness
of the night over Wolf's soul, but he went on thinking
aloud without replying.
"The odd thing is that when I'm away from you I can
hardly call up your face. Mother's face and Gerda's face
I know -like two books; but it's as if I carried your
identity so close to me that I couldn't see a single ex-
pression of it."
"I feel unreal," said Christie. "That's how I feel un-
real. I've told myself stories about a lover since I was
little. But after Olwen was born oh, and before that,
too my life was so crushed and inert that I seemed to
look at everything from some, point outside of myself
as if my mind had been a cold, hard, inert mirror, re-
flecting what was there, but not feeling anything. But
now I've known you it's been all different. My mind has
got in touch again. I was a mere husk or shell all those
miserable years without a heart at all. But now the
husk has come to life, and my heart with it. But some-
times I think my heart's still partly dead."
"I'm perfectly satisfied with how your heart is," Wolf
threw in. "Alive or dead, I've got it now, and I'm never
going to let it go! What's so strange is that I don't
idealize you one bit; and I don't think you idealize me
either. I think it's wonderful how we accept each other
just as we are."
"Whether it's being my mother's daughter or not,"
said Christie, "it's a great comfort to me to have the feel-
ings I have about what you're doing or where you are.
...I think if anything happened to you I should know."
"I wonder what it really is in us," said Wolf, "that
makes us so happy as we are? All other lovers in our
position I know very well would be desperate to make
love, to live together, to have a child; but here we are,
in this field, perfectly content just to be side by side.
You don't want anything more than this, Christie, do
you?"
"I don't know, Wolf, that I'll always feel as I do now.
How can I know? But certainly tonight I don't want
anything else."
She stopped; and then, after a little pause, her voice
began again in the darkness.
"But you don't think, Wolf" her tone had in it now
a certain half-humorous dismay "that what we feel for
each other could ever be called 'Platonic,' do you? I
don't know...perhaps it's because the word's been so
misused...but I've always had such an aversion to
that idea. The mere possibility of its being applied to
the mysterious feeling between us, just because we don't
want what people usually do who are in love, reduces
everything for me in some way...do you know what
I mean?"
"Ay, Christie! Christie!" he cried. "How my father
would chuckle if he heard those words of yours! You
know how he would regard us and the way we behave?
As nothing less than stark, staring mad! I'm damned if
I know what 'Platonic' does mean...but I'm rather
inclined...to think...to think...that our way
of dealing...with things...with our feeling for
each other...is much more mediaeval than Platonic."
"Mediaeval, Wolf?" protested Christie.
"Don't be cross with me. I know I'm absurd. I suppose
I'm more of a slave to philosophical phrases than any-
one in the whole of England! I love the sound of them.
They have something...a sort of magic...I don't know
what...that makes life rich and exciting to me."
"Oh, I know what you mean, Wolf!" cried Christie.
"That's why I've loved reading those books in our shop
...especially Leibnitz and Hegel. I've never been able
to follow their real meaning, I suppose; but all the same
it's been a great satisfaction to me to read them."
"I don't think it's pedantry or priggishness in either
of us," Wolf continued. "I think we're thrilled by the
weight of history that lies behind each one of these
phrases. It isn't just the word itself, or just its immediate
meaning. It's a long, trailing margin of human sensa-
tions, life by life, century by century, that gives us this
peculiar thrill. Don't you think so, Christie?"
"What I was going to say," the girl murmured, "was
that since I've known you I haven't cared so much for
these philosophical books."
"Nonsense!" he muttered. But once more there floated
over him an undulating tide of happiness that made the
mere tone of her voice seem to him like those fluctuating
wine-dark shadows on the deep sea, that suggest the pres-
ence of cool-swaying fields of submerged seaweeds lying
beneath the water.
"I know they're absurd...these phrases..." he
went on. "Words like 'pluralism' and 'dualism' and
'monism.' But what they make me think of is just a par-
ticular class of vague, delicious, physical sensations!
And it's the idea of there having been feelings like these,
in far-off, long-buried human nerves, that pleases us
both so much. It makes life seem so thick and rich and
complicated, if you know what I mean?"
They were both silent, and presently she struggled
stiffly to her feet.
"And now, Wolf dear," she said, "I'm sure it's time
we went on! I don't like being the one to say it...or
being the one to interrupt our thoughts...but Father
will be back, and Gerda will be expecting you."
He rose to his feet, too, and they stood awkwardly
there, side by side in that windless darkness. Wolf had
the feeling for one second as if the world had completely
passed them by...gone on its way and forgotten
them...so that not a soul knew they existed except
themselves. As the shadow of a solitary bird on lonely
sands answers the form of the bird's flying, so did
he feel at that moment that his spirit answered her
spirit.
But the moment passed quickly. A vague, troubling
remembrance of that "yellow bracken" down by the Lunt
rose up suddenly without cause. "Gerda must be think-
ing of me," he said to himself. And as this thought came
into his head he couldn't resist a savage, secret jibing at
his own treachery. "I wonder," he tho'ugjht, "what Jason
would say if he knew everything!"
The girl's figure, close to him as it was, seemed like
a pillar of mist. "It's love-making," he thought, "just
the relief of love-making, that saves a person's touchy
mind from these morbid thoughts. But Christie doesn't
depend on that, any more than I do. What would Jason
say if he saw us now?" And then there came upon him
a curious sense of shame that his mind had the power
of wandering so far. "Is her mind wandering too?" he
thought. "What is going on in her mind?"
He spoke to her then...to that blur that was her
face in the darkness.
"As long as we see each other like this, it'll go on
being all right, won't it, Christie?"
Her voice replied to his voice with a sound that might
have been a whisper out of his own heart or might have
been a cry from the other side of the world.
"But it's hard now. It's hard when it ends," she mur-
mured.
"We might never have met at all," he said resolutely.
"We've had all we wanted tonight. It's been as if all the
noises of the world had blent into one, and then quite
died away. Listen, Christie, there's not a stir or move-
ment. It's silence like this that you and I have always
wanted...all our lives."
"But it's hard when it ends," she repeated.
"We mustn't think of that," he said. "Our thoughts
will always be able to find this silence. We shall always
be able to reach each other with our thoughts, wherever
we are. Don't you feel like that, Christie?"
"I try to," she said.
"You do. No one else except you could answer a per-
son's thoughts before they've been spoken! You must
know, Christie, how I go muttering on and on to you,
in my heart, day and night, telling you every single feel-
ing I have?"
"I tell you things too, Wolf. I talk to you, too, some-
times...but still, but still..."
Her voice broke in a light sigh that floated away
into the stubble, fainter than the falling of a feather.
"I know," he repeated obstinately. "But don't let's be
ungrateful to the gods, Christie. Think, how easy for us
never to have met at all! Think, how I might have gone
on with my life in London, you with your life in Black-
sod! But now it's all different. And there really is a
sense...don't you see, Christie?...in which by
just knowing each other and being as we are we've got
outside Time and outside Space! We've got into a region
where all this--"
"Stop, Wolf, stop!" the girl cried. "I can't bear it now.
I tell you I can't "
He moved towards her, seeking to touch her; but she
drew away from him.
"'Forgive me!" she said, in a low, quiet voice. "It isn't
that I don't understand you. I feel all those things. It's
only that...at the end...when I've got to leave you...that
all this seems...I mean doesn't seem..."
The gentleness of her tone softened the reproach, if
reproach there was; and Wolf was conscious of nothing
but an obscure rebellion within him against this mys-
terious pride in them both which made it so hard for him
to risk the relief of the least caress. It was his turn to
sigh now a heavier sigh than hers and in a second she
caught his change of mood.
"I love you so much, Wolf," she said. "I wouldn't hurt
you for anything. It's what I feel for you that makes it
so hard when you've got to go and I've got to go. And I
know what you mean...I do know what you mean
...about...about our thoughts!"
As she spoke she moved towards him a little in the
darkness. It was an almost imperceptible movement;
but it was enough to send a perilous stab of tenderness
through his nerves.
"Christie, oh, Christie..." he murmured, involun-
tarily starting towards her.
But she had already gathered her cloak about her and
held it tightly with one hand under her chin.
"It's all right, Wolf! It's all right!" she said quickly,
turning as if with a swift impulse for flight towards the
hedge.
"It would be mad now, I suppose," he thought, as he
followed her through the entangled branches.
Half-an-hour later, and he was walking with a rapid,
preoccupied step along the lighted pavement of the
Blacksod High Street. His head was so full of Christie,
as he strode along, that the people he passed were as
much phantoms to him as had been the elm-trees on the
road from King's Barton.
Christie had agreed to come on Monday. That was
what he was thinking about now; and it was an imagi-
nary dialogue with Gerda, dealing with this project, that
he was now occupied in rehearsing, sentence by sentence,
as he hurried along.
"If she refuses, she refuses!" he thought. "I
shan't press her. I'll just have to tell them the thing's
off."
He had just reached the point, close to the market-
place, where Preston Lane debouched from the High
Street, when he encountered, without any warning of his
approach, for the pavement was crowded, the lean
Panurge-like figure of Bob Weevil, hurrying along in a
new straw-hat and new flannel trousers.
"Hullo!" said the young grocer, with a shrinking,
startled movement; and then he gave a furtive glance
around him, as if to ensure public protection from a
possible outburst of physical violence.
"Oh, it's you, is it, Bob?" said Wolf. "Where are you
going so fast?"
Mr. Weevil stopped and gazed at him with screwed-up
eyelids, as he shook him by the hand.
"Home," he announced, in a loud, unpleasant voice.
"Home to Dad. 'Little Bobbie's Best at Home,' " he went
on. "Where've you been? Pursuing the Necessary over
at Barton?"
The forced grin that animated the lad's features as
he indulged in these 'pleasantries was so obviously em-
barrassed and uneasy, that Wolf became instantaneously
suspicious. Every word of Jason's innuendoes returned
to his mind. There also returned to him that still more
sinister hint whispered by the poet on the day of the
snatching away of Mukalog.
"Where have you been?" he asked abruptly.
He did his best to give his voice a casual tone; but
the effect of his question upon Mr. Weevil showed that
this effort was unsuccessful.
"You're not a detective, are you?" jeered the young
man, in a boisterously insolent manner. " 'Little Bobbie's
Best at Home,' " he repeated. "Do you know that song?
I'll give you the rest of it some day."
"Well, good-night to you!" rapped out Wolf,
brusquely and almost rudely. "I've had a long day.
Good-night to you; and don't stay in the water so long
the next time you bathe in Lenty Pond!"
He moved off at that, grimly entertained, in spite of
his agitation, by the manner in which the young man's
eyes and mouth opened at the tone of this remark.
"He's been with Gerda," he thought, as he hurried on.
"THIS IS REALITY"
AS SOON AS HE REACHED PRESTON LANE, WOLF LOOKED
at his watch under the first of the three lamp-posts which
were all the illumination that Blacksod had bestowed on
that humble district. It was a quarter past nine. He must
have been more than an hour in the cornfield; for he had
left the bowling-green at seven.
"He's been with Gerda." This single thought had
brought him from the centre of the town to where he now
stood, without consciousness of anything in the world
except one solitary fish's eye glazed and staring that
he had caught a glimpse of on a gas-lit counter.
He was too staggered even to experience surprise at
his unexpected feelings. No alert self-watchful demon in
him cried out, "What is this?" or "What does this
mean?" He just suffered; and his suffering was such a
completely new thing to him that he had no mental ap-
paratus ready with which to deal with it. He was like
a man who all his life had stalked leopards, suddenly
confronted by a charging rhinoceros! All the blood that
was in him seemed to have rushed with blind, irrational
violence to a portion of his nervous system which he had
supposed atrophied and callous. Vividly he recalled
Jason's warning to him in the road by the churchyard.
"Those people must have pushed him to this," he thought.
"Not very nice," he thought, "to think of the water-rat
boasting up there with them and telling tales about her!"
He stood stock-still beneath the lamp-post. He felt as
though a mob of Urquharts and Jasons had burst into
the inmost sanctuary of his feelings--of his inarticulate
physical feelings--and were jeering at them. He felt as
though he had been stripped naked--as though he had
become a laughing-stock to the human race. These were
just the things--these physical feelings--that in his
pride he had hidden from everyone. And now they were
held up to derision, and he himself with them! He walked
slowly across the road and then stopped and looked
about him.
Everything was quiet. Most of the windows of those
neat little houses displayed shaded gas-jets between the
muslin curtains. From where he stood, the dark outline
of the pig-dealer's shed was a small huddled blackness
against the tall ash-tree further on. Over the top of the
shadowy hedge came a faint smell of cattle-trampled
grass, a poor antidote to the manure-drain whose stench
soon swallowed it up. His own house was still two or
three doors off. He could see a thin stream of light
emerging from its upper window. Gerda was in her bed-
room, then in her bedroom at a quarter past nine! Had
Bob Weevil cajoled her up there, directly they'd finished
their supper? "Where did I once read," he thought,
"that whatever liberties they allow, they usually fight
shy of their man's bed? Good Lord! but what are beds?
Beds are nothing. Beds are birth, death, and the morning
and evening. But they're nothing when it comes to this!
This can take the heart out of any bed."
He recrossed the road to where the lamp-post was.
The particular house just there had no light in the front-
windows. Instead of this there was a small notice which
he could plainly read. "Furnished Room to let. Inquire
within. Mrs. Herbert." "I suppose I've seen Mrs. Her-
bert," he thought, "a hundred times without knowing
her. And I shall never know her. I shall die without
knowing her."
He tapped Mrs. Herbert's railings with his stick. "It's
not that I grudge Gerda any pleasure," he thought.
"It's that I don't like spectators at my pleasure. She'll
be just the same whatever Bob Weevil did. But he'll al-
ways be there...hiding behind her thoughts like a rat
behind a screen...and watching me when I touch her.
He'll be in her thoughts when I'm holding her. He'll be
always there. I shall be eating with him, sleeping with
him. There'll always be a slit in her thoughts through
which his eye will be on me."
He remembered how his mother had once come home
in high spirits to their London flat, after a conversation
with her cousin, Lord Carfax, and told him how this
nobleman had explained to her his philosophy of free-
love, and how barbarous it was to grow jealous and pos-
sessive when you were enamoured. "Jealous?" he
thought. "Well! He's more sociable than I am, the good
Carfax. I like to be alone in my house...not to be
peeped at by a third person from the back of my girl's
head!"
He felt an extreme reluctance to move a step from
where he was at the railings of the unknown Mrs. Her-
bert. "I've talked a lot about reality," he said to himself.
"But now I know a little better what mine is . . ."
"This is reality," he thought. "This is the kind of thing
that men returning home at a quarter past nine, in
Colorado, in Singapore, in Moscow, in Cape-Town, in
New Zealand, see in the darkness!...This is reality,"
he thought.
He looked down at the tiny gutter at his feet between
the asphalted pavement and the road. The lamplight
shone upon this gutter, and he observed a torn piece of
newspaper lying in it a headline of the "Western
Gazette" and just tilted against the edge of this head-
line he saw an empty greenish-coloured tin. He could
even read the words upon that torn bit of paper printed
in large, heavy type. "France distr...land." "France
distrusts England," he repeated to himself; and then
"Lyle's 'Golden Syrup." He could read that, without
reading it! Much sweetness had he, in his time, watched
Gerda imbibing from such a greenish-coloured recep-
tacle!
"Does Mattie make 'em give Olwen her 'golden syrup'
out at Pond Cottage? This is reality," he thought.
Down under his feet, under this asphalt, under this
Somerset clay, down to the centre of the globe, went the
mystery of solid matter. Up, up above him, beyond all
this thick swine-scented darkness, went space, air, empti-
ness the mystery of un-solid matter. "France distr...
land" "Lyle's Golden Syrup." Poke them with the end
of an oak-stick...."You'll walk into a pit with your
precious stick, master!" was that what Jason had said?
Pluralism, pantheism, monism!...Phrases...phrases made
by men who come home at a quarter past nine. But
these sounds too...these large, easy, purring sounds...
part of reality!
Did Bob Weevil pull up her clothes? They like to have
'em unhooked better than that...untied...slipping
down....They never lose that sense...They belie
'em when they say they lose that sense. What sense? The
beauty of their beauty...the sense of being beauti-
fully loved..."This is reality," he thought. "They be-
lie 'em when they say...Up or down, Bob Weevil?
That's the question. Up is infinite. Down is infinite.
Pantheism, dualism, pluralism! An ounce of civet, good
Master Jason!"
He moved on and stood by the little iron gate of his
own house. He did not look up, because there suddenly
came to him the nervous idea that she was kneeling on
the floor in her short "slip," peeping out at him; and he
didn't feel in a mood to be peeped at!
What he did was to stare at the latch of the gate, won-
dering if he could lift it without making any sound. She
had so often heard that "click" and come running to
welcome him. He felt that to make that particular noise
now would be as if he entered her presence with his face
blackened all over like a clown....
But now there arose a different question. His mind be-
gan tying itself in a knot like a twisting snake. His own
voice was in his ears assuring Christie that, all day and
all night, he did nothing but live with her in his thoughts,
telling her everything! Could he now tell her every-
thing?...She who at this very minute was no doubt
standing at her window? Why couldn't he tell her every-
thing? Why couldn't he tell her that it wasn't that he
grudged Gerda pleasure...that it was only that he
grudged Bob Weevil the sort of pleasure he had got from
that tombstone-picture! Why couldn't he explain all this
to Christie; why couldn't he explain to her that it was
not the thing itself, but only the way...the way in
which Bob Weevil did...whatever it was he did?
He knew perfectly well that Christie understood his
attachment to Gerda. He knew perfectly well that she
would understand his resentment at the intrusion of Bob
Weevil. What he could never, never make her under-
stand would be this cold, sickening nausea he felt toward
the simple, actual facts of what must have gone on. How
could Gerda allow it? How could she?
But perhaps she did struggle a little if only out of
pride when Bob Weevil began fumbling. But soon there
could haVe been no sound at all except their breathing,
except their hard breathing...Gerda would suffer, if
she knew about Christie, the most secret of feminine suf-
ferings...deeper than "France distr...land"...But a man
coming home at a quarter past nine suffered too, the
most secret of male sufferings..."An ounce of civet,
good Master Jason!" He bent his head low down over the
little iron railings, trying to think to think and get
it all clear.
He leaned against the little gate, while some unper-
turbed portion of his consciousness set itself to wonder
whether it were a marigold or a petunia that emitted a
faint whitish lustre in the darkness. There were plants of
both of them there; but he couldn't remember their posi-
tion whether the marigolds were there or there! Then
a thought came into his head that made him straighten
his back, click the latch, open it, and walk boldly to the
door.
If Gerda and Mr. Weevil were really fond of each
other if the girl had grown weary of him and his heavy
lumpish mind why couldn't they separate...he his way...
she her way?
To his surprise in spite of the lighted candle upstairs
Gerda was seated quietly, contentedly, calmly, at a
table in their parlour. She was hemming an apron; and
before she smilingly rose to greet him, he saw her quickly
but carefully fix her needle in her bobbin of white thread.
She threw her arms round his neck and kissed him, not
passionately or perfunctorily, but affectionately and
gaily.
"I had tea late and waited supper. It's all ready in the
kitchen," she said, releasing him. And then she stretched
herself, with both arms outspread; and her careless air
of indolent well-being was accentuated by the childish
smile that covered a shameless yawn. Wolf returned to
the passage to hang up his hat and place his stick in its
accustomed corner. He could not help thinking of Jason
as he did this.
When he returned she was folding up her sewing and
putting it away in a drawer. She looked at him smilingly
over her shoulder. "I've had a visitor for tea, Wolf.
Guess who it was."
"It wouldn't be much of a game for me to guess that,
Gerda," he said with all the lightness he could assume.
"Careful! Careful, now!" his fighting-spirit whispered
to his excited nerves. "If you make the least false move
she'll have you at a disadvantage."
"Why not?" The girl approached him, as she spoke,
giving him a long, scrutinizing glance. "What's the mat-
ter, Wolf? Is anything wrong?" She laid both her hands
on his coat, clutching its unbuttoned flaps and tighten-
ing them round him with a gesture that was at once im-
perative and cajoling.
"I met Bob Weevil just now," he murmured, trying to
give the words a natural tone, and smoothing out every
sign of treachery from his face.
But with incredible rapidity, even while she was lift-
ing up her chin and opening her lips, the self-protective
demon in him cursed him for a blundering fool. "Why
did you blurt that out?" said the demon.
"And he told you he'd been here?" Her words were as
calm as if she'd said, "And he told you he'd been play-
ing bowls?' She released her hold upon his coat and
with easy naturalness ran out into the passage and thence
into the kitchen.
Wolf heard her collecting the supper-things. He heard
the sound of running water and the sound of metal
against earthenware. He looked round the room. Ah!
there was something he hadn't noticed before, a draught-
board open, with the black and white disks jumbled in
casual confusion over its checkered surface.
So they had been playing draughts!
He walked thoughtfully up to this object and began
piling up the round wooden counters, one on the top of
another, balancing his shaky tower with his fingers as it
began to sway. Then he removed his hand, and his tower
fell with a crash, and many of the pieces rolled on the
floor.
The house was so still that the sudden noise brought
Gerda running into the room to find him standing by
the draught-table.
"What's the matter with you?" she cried peevishly.
"Aren't you going to help me get supper? Aren't you
even going to wash your hands?"
"So you and Bob were playing draughts? I never knew
you even knew the game, Gerda," he said.
"Come and wash your hands," she replied in a calm,
scolding tone. "I've got tomato-soup. It'll be ready in a
minute. I'll tell you every bit of the gossip about Bob
when we've sat down! Of course I know draughts. Bob
taught me years ago, when I was little. Today I won
every single game. I was 'huffing' him all the time. But
do come, Wolf. I'm hungry. Never mind picking up those
things!"
He followed her into the kitchen and stood there, awk-
wardly and sulkily, till the meal was ready.
"I'm going to have beer tonight, Gerda," he said. "I
don't know if you are."
"I certainly am!" she said in her most cheerful tone,
seating herself at the table and breaking a piece of bread
with one hand, while she dipped her spoon into the
soup with the other.
He went to the cupboard and came back with three
bottles.
"Wolf...dear!" she cried, with her mouth full. "Who's
the third bottle for? Have you got somebody coming in?"
"It's for me," he remarked laconically. "I'm tired to-
night. I've had a long day."
"But, Wolf isn't it rather extravagant drinking so
much at one meal?"
He didn't reply to this, but busied himself with open-
ing two of the bottles and with filling her glass and his
own.
"It's good...this soup...isn't it, Wolf?" she remarked pre-
sently, passing the tip of her pink tongue over one
corner of her perfectly curved lip and lifting her
spoon once more to her mouth.
He poured half his glassful of beer, froth and all, down
his throat without a word! Then he began swallowing
the soup in rapid gulps.
"Good soup...very good soup," he muttered.
She gave him a quick, penetrating look over her own
raised glass, just sipped at the white foam, and then re-
placed the tumbler on the table. The next spoonful she
lifted slowly, meditatively, absent-mindedly, a little
puckered frown hovering about her forehead.
Wolf set himself obstinately and resolutely to finish
the meal. Eating pieces of crumbled bread, hurriedly, in-
tently, as if the process were something important in it-
self, leading to some desirable consummation, he kept
drinking the beer in long draughts. The moment the first
bottle was finished he opened the other, and with the
same concentrated, absorbed determination disposed of
that also.
"Good soup...very good soup," he repeated, as if
the words were a sop thrown over his shoulder to some
insatiable Cerberus of the river of Time.
"I am the weakest, most gullible fool," he thought, as
he watched Gerda spreading a large slice of bread and
then yery deliberately taking little bites out of it, "ever
born into the world. I oughtn't to be called Wolf Solent
at all! I ought to be called Mr. Thin Soup or Mr. Weak
Beer."
"Aren't you going to give me a cigarette?" asked
Gerda.
He got up to obey, and it seemed to him as if the
physical effort it required to hand her what she de-
manded and to hold towards her a lighted match, were
the heaviest material task he had ever stretched his
muscles to perform.
He lighted one for himself, however, and resumed his
seat.
In complete silence now, save for the ticking of the
clock on the mantelpiece, the greyish-blue spirals of
smoke rose from each end of the table and floated hesi-
tatingly, fluctuatingly, towards one another, high up
above the two human heads.
"It's the weakness of your nature, Beer-Soup," he
said to himself. "The weakness and the gullibility." Then
he recalled the sudden bold resolve with which he had
clicked the latch of their gate; and he compared that
flash of inspiration with his wretched feelings now. Didn't
he know himself at all? What he felt now was a com-
plete disintegration of desire and will. He felt as if his
consciousness were a tiny fitful flame, no, not a flame
even, a scarcely visible vapour, hovering over a chaos of
conflicting wishes, purposes, desires, hopes, regrets, that
were so disorganized as to utterly cancel one another.
They felt remote from him, too, these feelings that ought
to have been his--remote and infinitely contemptible!
The only desire this weak, floating awareness retained
was a desire to escape from them altogether. For dis-
organized though they were, a dull nausea, sickening
and paralyzing, ascended from them, troubling that
feeble, free consciousness of his, as a putrefying body
might trouble some frail animula vagula only half-
escaped from it.
He struggled to use his brain, his free brain. "What
is the matter with you, you lump of asininity? Speak up,
express yourself, Mr. Wolf Beer-Soup!"
Then he suddenly recalled what he had felt as he
drank that Dorchester ale in the bowling-green of Farm-
er's Rest. Me had felt completely master of his destiny
then. All these disorganized emotions, all these nervous
electric currents, were gathered up then and focussed.
Was he perhaps...innately incapable of dealing with
women, whether in the way of lust, or in the way of
tenderness? Was he only a man when confronted with
men? Thrown with women, did his whole nature turn
lumpish, sapless, porous? He began suddenly to have
that appalling sensation which had come to him on
Babylon Hill, as if his head...the thing that said
"I am I"...were twisting and turning, like an uprisen
hooded serpent...above a body of unspeakable de-
composition....
Like a drowning man he stretched out his thoughts
for help in every direction. To his mother he stretched
them out. To his father he stretched them out. Feebly
and automatically he carried his thoughts like a basket
of dying fish to the threshold of Christie's room.
"Christie! I must tell you...I must, I must tell you!"
But it seemed to him then as if even Christie's mind
were shut to his helplessness. He seemed to hear her cry,
"Stop, Wolf, stop! I can't bear to hear it!"
"This can't go on," he thought. "I must end this some-
how; or I shall go mad."
He rose to his feet and began pacing up and down the
kitchen.
Gerda watched him in silence for a moment or two;
and then, extinguishing the remains of her cigarette
against the edge of her empty soup-plate, she said to him,
quite naturally and quietly:
"Wolf darling, just run upstairs, will you, and see if
I left my candle burning? I want to wash up before we
go to bed."
He stared at her in bewilderment, blinking his eyes.
Then he lifted his hand to his mouth and held it there
held it to hide that trick he had, when he was at the
limit of his endurance, of working the muscles of his
lower jaw.
Gerda calmly rose from her seat and began gathering
together the things on the table. "Do run up and put out
that candle, Wolf," she repeated. "We don't want a fire
in our house."
He obeyed her in silence now, and ascended the creak-
ing steps, dragging his feet. He felt as if some completely
different person some docile, harmless, lumpish idiot
had taken the place of the Wolf he knew.
When he entered the room he found that the candle
she had left there was low down in its candlestick, burn-
ing and guttering sideways, and dropping grease over
the cover of the chest of drawers. He bent down mechani-
cally to blow it out, receiving as he did so the full force
of the carbonic-acid gas in his face. With no conscious
purpose in his mind, he approached the bed, and, in the
darkness, passed his hand hesitatingly over both the pil-
lows, as if feeling for something.
Then he stood straight up against the edge of the bed,
his knees touching the sheeted mattress, his arms hang-
ing limp at his sides.
Quite externally and objectively, as if it had been
this idiotic other person and not himself at all who
formulated the thought, he wondered whether it was after
she had let Bob Weevil make love to her up here, or
before, that the game of draughts had been brought out.
A hideous commentary upon this problem seemed to
arise then from the mass of his own disorganized nerves.
"Why don't you ask Christie what she thinks? Christie is
a girl. Christie will be able to tell you whether it was
before the draughts or after the draughts!"
He left the bed and went to the open window, hearing,
as he did so, the sound of Gerda's clattering with the
supper-things as she calmly washed up below.
The window was open at the top, so that to get the
coolness of the air he was forced to lean his elbows upon
the woodwork and rest his chin upon the back of his
folded hands.
He remembered to the end of his life what he felt at
that moment, while the bone of his lower jaw met the
bones of his knuckles pressed so hard against them. He
felt absolutely alone--alone in an emptiness that was
different from empty space. He did not pity himself. He
did not hate himself. He just endured himself and waited
waited till whatever it was that enclosed him made
some sign.
By slow degrees it dawned on him that he had been
for the last two or three minutes seeing something with-
out being conscious of what he saw. Now it began to
grow slowly plain to him, lineament by lineament, fea-
ture by feature, what it was he had been seeing in the
darkness of that room, in the darkness of this obscure
night.
It was the face of the man on the Waterloo steps! And
out of his abominable misery Wolf cried a wordless cry
to this face; and the nature of this cry was such that it
seemed to break--so desperate it was--some psychic ten-
sion in his brain. And it seemed to him that what he was
appealing to now was something beyond his mother, be-
yond his father, beyond Christie hersel--something that
was the upgathered, incarnated look, turned toward life's
engines, of every sentient thing, since the beginning of
time, that those engines had crushed.
The smell of the pigsty across the way must have been
the reason why the look he appealed to was only par-
tially human. It was an animal look...it was a bird
look...it was the look of the fish's eye that he had
seen on a counter as he came along the street that very
night; it was the look of a wounded snake's eye that he
had had time to mark long ago, out on some country
road near London, before he ended its suffering.
It was, in fact, the Life-Eye, looking out on what hurts
it, that he now knew he had caught glimpses of, all the
days of his existence, in a thousand shapes and forms.
From air, earth, water, had he intercepted the ap-
peal of that little round living hole...that hole that
went through the wall...straight into something else.
Into what else? No one knew or would ever know. But
into something else. It was upon this he was crying out
now...upon that eye...upon that little round hole...upon
that chink, that cranny, that slit, out of which life pro-
tested against its infamous enemy!
"Jesus...Jesus...Jesus...Jesus!"
Was that the heart of Wolf Solent howling a wordless
howl in a dark bedroom, or was it the voice of Mr.
Round of Farmer's Rest seeking escape from his "wor-
ries"?
A sigh of unutterable relief shivered through Wolf's
nerves as they relaxed and yielded. He drew back from
the window and began with an almost cat-like movement
licking his hurt knuckles.
His whole being seemed dissolving into some lovely
liquid-floating substance, lighter than human flesh, and
he became capable of thinking now with every portion
of his identity, easily, freely, spontaneously.
"I've learnt one thing tonight," he thought, as he
crossed the room and felt about in the darkness for the
handle of the door. "I've learnt that one can't always get
help by sinking into one's own soul. It's sometimes neces-
sary to escape from oneself altogether."
He ran down the little staircase with happy agility.
He burst into the kitchen, where he found Gerda placidly
and abstractedly polishing her knives and forks.
"How long you " she began; but the words were stop-
ped upon her mouth by an imprint of impetuous, al-
most boisterous kisses.
As he held her in his arms, Wolfs thoughts were of
the most intense and rapid kind. Why was it that his love
for Christie hadn't protected him from all this agitation?
Why had he been paralyzed by Gerda's calm? How was
it that, in the unbelievable relief he experienced now, he
really felt as if it didn't very much matter what the water-
rat had done or hadn't done?
Releasing Gerda now, he seemed to bewilder her a
good deal more by his high spirits than he had done by
his moroseness.
"Don't let's go to bed just yet," he said. "Let's go for
a tiny stroll down the road."
"Why, Wolf, how funny you are tonight! A moment
ago you were telling me that you were quite exhausted."
She yielded good-humouredly, however, to his caprice,
and they went out together into the narrow road.
Wolf had the strangest feeling as he clicked the latch
of the gate to let her through. It was as if he were break-
ing some law of nature refuting some inflexible scien-
tific category of cause and effect.
He kept his arm tight about her, and led her up the
road, in the direction away from the town, till they came
to the place where the immense ash-tree lifted its
branches into the dark air high above their heads.
There was a small gap in the hedge at this point, and
Wolf pulled her through it, into the meadow on the other
side. "For the second time tonight!" whispered his
demon. But for some reason the mockery glanced off
from Wolf's present mood of slippery buoyancy, with-
out causing him the slightest discomfort. "Very well,
then," he mentally retorted, "for the second time it
shall be!"
They found themselves now under the very trunk of
the vast tree whose branches they had so often watched
from their upper room. One branch bent so low down
and stretched out so far that they instinctively put their
arms about it and dallied with its cool foliage. Wolf even
amused himself by gathering up those great multiform
leaf-growths, so different from the foliations of all other
trees, and twisting them, without breaking their flexible
stalks, about the girl's bare neck.
Gerda remained passive and yielding under this dalli-
ance. It seemed to him that her mind was a little aloof;
but he could see, without seeing it, the faint, docile
smile, like that of a sweet-natured child drawn into a
game it was ready to play without understanding, with
which she submitted to his humour.
All at once there came a sudden coolness upon his face
and a quick rustling above their heads. The wind was ris-
ing. Oh, this was what he had been craving for, ever
since his return to Preston Lane! It had been--he knew it
now--something in the heaviness of this windless air
that had caused half his trouble. Had this cool wind been
blowing when he crossed the threshold, everything would
have been different. It was the wind he wanted, the wind,
the wind; to blow away all odious eidolons of Bob Weevil's
presence out of his "sober house"!
He permitted the leafy ash-twigs that he had been
bending to swing back to their natural position; and
snatching at Gerda's arm above the wrist, he drew the
girl, like a captive, right up to the trunk of the great
overshadowing tree. She remained still passive, gentle,
unresisting, by his side, her head drooping a little, her
whole being--so it seemed--lost in a calm untroubled
quiescence. Holding her thus, but turning away from her,
he rubbed the palm of his free hand up and down over
the hard slightly-indented surface of the ash-trunk, whose
bark, thin and tightly fitted, raised no barrier between
his human touch and the tree's own firm, hard wood-
flesh.
"Human brains! Human knots of confusion!" he
thought. "Why can't we steal the calm vegetable clair-
voyance of these great rooted lives?"
"I simply can't understand myself," he thought. "Why,
after being so happy with Christie, should the idea of
Bob Weevil, poor, lecherous little rat, have worried me
so? And why didn't I make a scene with Gerda--raise
denials, anger, tears, reproaches? Why, instead of that,
did I just muddy up my own wits?"
Still retaining his clasp of Gerda's wrist, he leaned
forward and pressed his bare forehead against the trunk
of the ash-tree.
"What's this, Wolf Solent?...What's this, you lump-
ish, mock-Platonic, well-cuckolded ass? Ash-tree!
Ash-tree!" Why had he been allowed by the justice of
things to deny himself a single embrace with Christie,
only to come home at a quarter past nine and find a
lit candle in Gerda's bedroom? Platonic cuckold!
That was just what he was....Not even Platonic...for
Christie despised that word....Mock-Platonic cuck-
old! Oh, it was all coming back! The knot in his mind
was tying itself up again--tigh--tight--tight! He con-
tinued to lean against the tree in the position of an ani-
mal that is butting with its skull against some immov-
able obstacle.
And then the Waterloo-steps' eye, the fish's eye, the
snake's eye, the slaughtered pig's eye, the eye of a caged
lark he had seen once as a child in St. Mary's Street,
Weymouth, all seemed to melt strangely together--all
seemed to peer out at him from the heart of the tree-
trunk against which he was butting with his skull.
And, he thought to himself, "There are ways that I
haven't tried at all!" And he thought to himself: "End-
less little things are beautiful and wonderful beyond
words. And I can love Christie and forgive her for hat-
ing 'Platonic'; and I can love Gerda and forgive her for
letting Bob Weevil pull up her clothes. And if Christie
and Gerda knew what I know, they'd forgive me for
loving both of them! Christie would forgive me for not
telling her. Gerda would forgive me for not telling her.
There are things a person can't tell. But there's a way
of floating like a mist out of my pride and conceit.
There's a way of accepting myself as Mr. Promise-
Breaking-Beer-Soup, and yet not minding it at all...
just becoming a cloud of mist that enjoys this cool
wind...a cloud of mist that pities everything and en-
joys everything!"
He swung away, back from the tree, at this, and let
Gerda go.
"You've hurt me, Wolf!" the girl cried peevishly. "Why
did you do that? I haven't done anything to you. I
wouldn't have come out with you if I thought you were
going to act so funny. Come! Let's go in. What do you
think I am, to stand so much silliness? You're drunk
that's what's the matter with you; you're just drunk and
acting silly!"
He was so delighted to receive nothing but this very
natural piece of scolding, that he only answered by hug-
ging her tightly to his heart. "Little Gerda! Little
Gerda!" he kept repeating. And he thought to himself:
"I've exaggerated the whole thing. She can't have let
Weevil play with her and be like she is now!"
And then an idea came into his mind.
"Don't be cross, sweetheart," he said. "If I was drunk,
I swear I'm all right now. But listen! Do let me lift you
up into this tree, just for a minute! I'd so adore to hear
your voice out of the leaves above my head and not see
hardly a glimpse of you! Do get up into it, Gerda, and
let me hear your voice from up there. You needn't climb
far. I can't climb trees at all. I get dizzy. Or I'd climb it
with you."
The girl was still apparently enough of a child to be
stirred by this unexpected appeal.
"But I'm so heavy, Wolf; and this branch is so high
up."
"Oh, no, it's not it's not! There shove yourself up
on the palms of your hands. Jump and lift yourself
you know? Like boys do on walls!"
He bent down and encircled her body with his arms,
just above her knees, and lifted her up.
Gerda pressed her hands upon the bough as he had
suggested, and after a few struggles was lying prone
along it, holding it so closely with her arms and legs
that he could hardly distinguish the one living thing from
the other.
"Well done, sweetheart!" he cried. "That's right. Now
work your way towards the trunk. Careful now! Strad-
dle your legs you'll scratch your knees like that
straddle your legs and hold with your hands!"
Again she obeyed him with good-humoured docility.
And as he watched her shadowy figure riding the sway-
ing branch, he could not help recalling the wicked
tombstone-picture; and the thought the very last thought
he expected to cross his mind that night flitted into his
senses, that it would be a desirable moment when he blew
out the candle in their room blew out that candle for
the second time!
"That's it, Gerda, that's it! Now get hold of the branch
above, and pull yourself on to it!"
He came nearer the tree-trunk and gazed up into the
darkness.
In a second or two he lost sight of her altogether,
for Gerda was an adept at climbing trees. All he could
detect was a vague rustling; and even that was very soon
swallowed up by the murmur of the whole dark mass of
foliage, stirred into movement now by the rising wind.
He waited. He leaned his back against the trunk. He
listened to the long-drawn swish--swish--swish of the
invisible, rustling leaves.
Then his heart gave a leap within his body and he
caught his breath with an indrawn, quivering gasp.
A blackbird was whistling above his head! Faint and
low at first, each liquid flute-note went sailing away upon
the wind as if it had been a separate pearl-clear bubble
of some immortal dew. Then, growing louder and
clearer, the notes began following rapidly one upon an-
other; but each one of them still remained distinct from
the rest--a trembling water-transparent globe of thrill-
ing sound, purged, inviolable--a drop of translunar
melody, floating, floating, far above the world, carrying
his very soul with it.
Then the notes changed, varied, overlapped, grew
charged with some secret intention, some burden of im-
measurable happiness, of sadness sweeter than happi-
ness.
Rising still, freer, stronger, fuller, they began to
gather to themselves the resonant volume of some in-
incredible challenge, a challenge from the throat of life
itself to all that obstructed it. Tossed forth upon the
darkness, wild and sweet and free, this whistled bird-
song, answering the voice of the rising wind, took to
itself something that was at once so jocund and so wist-
ful, that it seemed to him as though all the defiant ac-
ceptance of fate that he had ever found in green grass,
in cool-rooted plants, in the valiant bodies of beasts and
birds and fishes..."mountains and all hills...fruitful trees
and all cedars"...had been distilled, by some miracle, in
this one human mouth.
The whistling sank into silence at the very moment
when its power over Wolf's soul was at the flood. But
without one single second of delay, when the last note
had died, Gerda came scrambling down, laughing, rus-
tling the leaves, and giving vent to petulant little outcries
as her clothes impeded her descent. Wolf, when she
finally fell, all panting and tremulous with wild gaiety,
into his arms, felt that it was difficult to believe that this
was the same Gerda whom he had watched, that very
noon, asleep on the summit of Poll's Camp.
As they returned hand in hand to their house-door, a
queer, abashed sense came over him that all the events
of this turbulent day had been a sort of feverish de-
lirium. What was his mind that it should go through such
agitation and remain unaltered remain the same "I am
I" of Wolf Solent?
But once again his self-knowledge received a shock.
For no sooner were they inside their small domicile, no
sooner had he glanced at the linoleum on the staircase,
the wooden clock in the parlour, the familiar kitchen-
table, than all these little objects hit his consciousness
with a delicious thrilling sense of happy security, as if
he had come back to them from some great voyage over
desolate and forlorn seas, as if he had come back to them
with his clothes drenched with salt-water and his hands
wounded by tarred ropes! His mind may have remained
unaltered by all this, but it had at any rate been washed
very clean!
Upon every tiniest and least-important object he
looked, that night, with a purged simplicity, a spon-
taneous satisfaction. The pine-wood boarding at the edge
of the linoleum stair-carpet, the pegs where their coats
hung, the handles of the dresser-drawers, the rows of
balanced plates, the cups suspended from the little hooks,
the metal knobs at the end of their bed, Gerda's comb and
brush, the candlestick still covered with grease, and two
exposed soap-dishes on the washing-stand, one contain-
ing a small piece of Pears' soap and one containing a
square lump of common yellow soap all these things
thrilled him, fascinated him, threw him into an ecstasy
of well-being.
What was it that Mr. Urquhart had said, that day,
about these little inanimates? Suicide he was .talking
about. But this was different....
It was a very quiescent Gerda, lethargic and languor-
ous, who lay down by his side that Friday night. It was
a very indulgent Christie, grave and tender, who listened
now in her room above the shop to his story about ash-
trees and draught-boards who listened to every thought
he had, as she lay there with closed eyes!
No system at all! Only to dissolve into thin, fluctuating
vapour; only to flow like a serpentine mist into the grave
of his father, into the mocking heart of his mother, into
the ash-tree, into the wind, into the sands on Weymouth
Beach, into the voice of the landlord of Farmer's Rest.
No system at all!
Jesus...Jesus...Jesus...Jesus....
THE SCHOOL-TREAT
Richest Passages
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34
35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42
43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50
51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58
59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66
67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74
75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82
83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90
91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98
99 100 101 102 103 104 105
106 107 108 109 110 111 112
113 114 115 116 117 118 119
120 121 122 123 124 125 126
127 128 129 130 131 132 133
134 135 136 137 138 139 140
141 142 143 144 145 146 147
148 149 150