ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN.
The woman is not born who can quite forget the man who has once asked
her to become his wife, even though at the moment she may have rejected
the offer without a thought of hesitation. Life with her, as with all
of us, is so much a matter of experiment, and so rarely turns out to be
what one anticipated, that even when she is married, and surrounded
with children, husband, and friends, she cannot but at times bethink
herself of that proposal, and wonder what would have happened if she
had accepted it. Would her own life have been fuller, happier, less
occupied with trivial and sordid cares? Would he have become as great
and famous if she had married him, and hampered him with early ties?
Might not she--supposing things to have gone the other way--have saved
him from utter ruin, and have given him courage and hope? After all,
there is nothing more important in the world than human happiness; and
as the simple 'Yes' or 'No' of maidenhood may decide the happiness of
not one but two lives, that is why it is a matter of universal interest
in song and story; and that is why quite elderly people, removed by
half a century from such frivolities themselves, but nevertheless
possessed of memory and a little imagination, and still conscious that
life has been throughout a puzzle and a game of chance, and that even
in their case it might have turned out very differently, find
themselves awaiting with a strange curiosity and anxiety the decision
of some child of seventeen, knowing no more of the world than a baby
dormouse.
On the other hand, the woman who does not marry is still less likely to
forget such an offer. Here, plainly enough, was a turning-point in her
life; what has happened since she owes to her decision then. And as an
unmarried life is naturally and necessarily an unfulfilled life, where
no great duty or purpose steps in to stop the gap, it is but little
wonder if in moments of disquietude or unrest the mind should travel
away in strange speculations, and if the memory of a particular person
should be kept very green indeed. Nan Beresford, at the age of twenty,
would have been greatly shocked if you had told her that during the
past three years she had been almost continually thinking about the
young sailor whom she had rejected at Bellagio. Had she not been most
explicit--even eagerly explicit? Had she not experienced an
extraordinary sense of relief when he was well away from the place, and
when she could prove to herself in close self-examination that she was
in no way to blame for what had occurred? She was a little sorry for
him, it is true; but she could not believe that it was a very serious
matter. He would soon forget that idle dream in the brisk realities of
his profession, and he would show that he was not like those other
young men who came fluttering round her sisters with their simmering
sentimentalities and vain flirtations. Above all, she had been
explicit. That episode was over and closed. It was attached to
Bellagio; leaving Bellagio, they would leave it also behind. And she
was glad to get away from Bellagio.
Yes; Nan would have been greatly shocked if you had told her that
during these three years she had been frequently thinking of Frank
King--except, of course, in the way any one may think of an officer in
Her Majesty's Navy, whose name sometimes appears in the Admiralty
appointments in the newspapers. Her mind was set on far other and
higher things. It was the churches and pictures of Italy that began
it--the frescoes in the cloisters, the patient sculpture, telling of
the devotion of lives, even the patient needlework on the altars. She
seemed to breathe the atmosphere of an Age of Faith. And when, after a
long period of delightful reverie abroad, and mystical enjoyment of
music and architecture and painting, all combining to place their
noblest gifts at the service of religion, she returned to her familiar
home in Brighton, some vague desire still remained her heart that she
might be able to make something beautiful of her life, something less
selfish and worldly than the lives of most she saw around her. And it
so happened that among her friends those who seemed to her most earnest
in their faith and most ready to help the poor and the suffering--those
who had the highest ideals of existence and strove faithfully to reach
these--were mainly among the High Church folk. Insensibly she drew
nearer and nearer to them. She took no interest at all in any of the
controversies then raging about the position of the Ritualists in the
Church of England; it was persons, not principles, that claimed her
regard; and when she saw that So-and-so and So-and-so in her own small
circle of friends were living, or striving to live, pure and noble and
self-sacrificing lives, she threw in her lot with them, and she was
warmly welcomed. For Nan was popular in a way. All that acerbity of
her younger years had now ripened into a sort of sweet and tolerant
good-humour. Tom Beresford called her a Papist, and angrily told her
to give up 'that incense-dodge;' but he was very fond of her all the
same, and honoured her alone with his confidence, and would have no one
say any ill of her. Nay, for her sake he consented to be civil to the
Rev. Mr. Jacomb.
Of Charles Jacomb it needs only be said at present that he had recently
been transferred to an extremely High Church at Brighton from an
equally High Church in a large, populous, and poor parish in the
south-east of London, where the semi-Catholic services had succeeded in
attracting a considerable number of people, who otherwise would
probably have gone to no church at all. It was his description of his
work in this neighbourhood that had won for him the respect and warm
esteem of Nan Beresford. The work was hard. The services were almost
continuous; there was a great deal of visitation to be got through; in
these labours he naturally ran against cases of distress that no human
being could withstand; and he had 60 pounds a year. Moreover, there
were no delicate compensations such as attend the labours of curates in
some more favoured places. There was not--Mr. Jacomb emphatically
remarked--there was not a gentleman in the parish. When he went to
Brighton he had considerably less work, and a great deal more of
dinners and society, and pleasant attentions. And Mr. Jacomb, while he
was a devoted, earnest, and hard-working priest, was also an
Englishman, and liked his dinner, and that was how he became acquainted
with the Beresfords, and gradually grew to be an intimate friend of the
family. His attentions to Nan were marked, and she knew it. She knew,
although he had said nothing to her about it, that he wished her to be
his wife; and though she would rather have been enabled to devote her
life to some good end in some other way, was not this the only way open
to her? By herself, she was so helpless to do anything. So many of
her friends seemed to cultivate religion as a higher species of
emotion--a sort of luxurious satisfaction that ended with themselves.
Nan wanted to do something. If Mr. Jacomb had still been in the
south-east of London, working on his 60 pounds a year, Nan would have
had no doubt as to what she ought to do.
But Nan had very serious doubt; more than that, she sometimes broke
down, and delivered herself over to the devil. At such times a strange
yearning would take possession of her; the atmosphere of exalted
religious emotion in which she lived would begin to feel stifling; at
all costs, she would have to get out of this hot-house, and gain a
breath of brisk sea air. And then she would steal away like a guilty
thing on one of her long land cruises along the coast; and she would
patiently talk to the old shepherds on the downs, and wait for their
laconic answers; and she would make observations to the coastguardsmen
about the weather; and always her eyes, which were very clear and
long-sighted, were on the outlook for Singing Sal. Then if by some
rare and happy chance she did run across that free-and-easy vagrant,
they always had a long chat together--Sal very respectful, the young
lady very matter-of-fact; and generally the talk came round to be about
sailors. Nan Beresford had got to know the rig of every vessel that
sailed the sea. Further than that, she herself was unaware that every
morning as she opened the newspaper she inadvertently turned first of
all to the 'Naval and Military Intelligence,' until
she had acquired an extraordinary knowledge of the goings and comings
and foreign stations of Her Majesty's ships. And if she sometimes
reflected that most officers were transferred to home stations for a
time, or took their leave in the ordinary way, and also that she had
never heard of Captain King--for she saw he had been made Commander on
account of some special service--being in England, was it not natural
that she might have a secret consciousness that she was perhaps
responsible for his long banishment?
But these solitary prowls along the coast, and these conferences with
Singing Sal, were wrong; and she knew they were wrong; and she went
back to the calmer atmosphere of those beautiful services in which the
commonplace, vulgar world outside was forgotten. She grew, indeed, to
have a mysterious feeling that to her the Rev. Charles Jacomb
personified religion, and that Singing Sal, in like manner, was a sort
of high priestess of Nature; and that they were in deadly antagonism.
They were Ormuzd and Ahriman. She was a strangely fanciful young
woman, and she dwelt much on this thing, until, half fearing certain
untoward doubts and promptings of her heart, she began to think that if
now and at once Mr. Jacomb would only ask her to be his wife, she would
avoid all perils and confusions by directly accepting him, and so
decide her future for ever.
But that morning that brought her Madge's letter saying that Captain
Frank King was in Brighton, Nan was singularly disturbed. She was
staying with the Rev. Mr. Clark and his wife--an old couple who liked
to have their house brightened occasionally by the presence of some one
of younger years. They were good people--very, very good; and a little
tedious. Nan, however, was allowed considerable liberty, and was
sometimes away the whole day from breakfast-time till dinner.
Madge had written her letter in a hurry; but did not post it, in her
inconsequential fashion, until the afternoon of the next day, so that
Nan got it on the morning of the following day. She read and re-read
it; and then, somehow, she wanted to think about it in the open--under
the wide skies, near the wide sea. She wanted to go out--and think.
And she was a little bit terrified to find that her heart was beating
fast.
She made some excuse or other after breakfast, and departed. It was a
clear, beautiful December morning, the sun shining brilliantly on the
evergreens and on the red houses of the bright, clean, picturesque,
English-looking old town. She went down to the station, and waited for
the first train going to Newhaven. When it came in, she took her
place, and away the train went, at no breakneck speed, down the wide
valley of the Ouse, which, even on this cold December morning, looked
pleasant and cheerful enough. For here and there the river caught a
steely-blue light from the sky overhead; and the sunshine shone along
the round chalk hills; and there were little patches of villages far
away among the dusk of the leafless trees, where the church spire
rising into the blue seemed to attract the wheeling of pigeons. To Nan
it was all a familiar scene; she frequently spent the day in this
fashion.
Nan was now three years older than when we last saw her at Bellagio.
Perhaps she had not grown much prettier--and she never had great
pretensions that way; but along with the angularity, so to speak, of
her ways of thinking, she had also lost the boniness of her figure.
She was now more fully formed, though her figure was still slender and
graceful; and she had acquired a grave and sweet expression, that spoke
of a very kindly, humorous, tolerant nature within. Children came to
her readily; and she let them pull her hair. She was incapable of a
harsh judgment. The world seemed beautiful to her; and she enjoyed
living--especially when she was on the high downs overlooking the sea.
This getting out into the open was on this occasion a great relief to
her. She argued with herself. What did it matter to her whether Frank
King were in Brighton, or even that he had been at the house in
Brunswick Terrace, dining, and playing billiards? He had probably
forgotten that ever he had been at Bellagio. She was glad the weather
was fine. No doubt her sisters would soon be setting out for their
morning stroll down the pier.
Nan had taken her ticket for Newhaven Wharf, with a vague intention of
walking from thence by the short cut to Seaford, and from Seaford to
Alfriston, and so back to Lewes. However, when the train stopped she
thought she would have a look at the harbour, and very pretty and
bright and busy it appeared on this clear morning; the brass and copper
of the steamers all polished up, flags flying, the sun brilliant on the
green water of the estuary and on the blue water of the ponds beyond
that were ruffled with the wind. Then, just below her, came in the
ferry-boat. She thought she would cross (though that was not the way
to Seaford). When she got to the other side, the slopes leading up to
the fort seemed temptingly high; she knew that from the summit of the
downs this morning one would have a splendid view. And so, perhaps
from mere habit, she took the old familiar road--past the coastguard
station, past the pools of ruffled water, up the valley by the
farmstead, and so on to the high and solitary downs overlooking the
wide moving, shining sea.
Brighton ought to be fair and beautiful on such a morning as this;
perhaps by-and-by she might come to have a glimpse of the pale yellow
terraces of the distant town. No doubt by this time Edith and Madge
were on the pier--Madge with her red skirt and black sealskin coat.
Madge always dressed smartly--perhaps even a trifle boldly. The band
would be playing now. In the sheltered places it would be almost warm;
there you could sit down and talk and watch the ships go by. She
supposed that in course of time they would go back for luncheon. That
was always a merry meal at home. They generally had visitors whom they
had met casually--on the pier, or in the King's Road.
So Nan was thinking and dreaming as she walked idly along, when her
attention was suddenly arrested by a sound as of music. She looked
round; there was no human being in sight; and the telegraph wires,
which sometimes deceived the ear, were far too far away. Then as she
went on again, she discovered whence the sound proceeded--from a little
wooden hut facing the sea, which had probably been erected there as a
shelter for the coastguardsmen. As she drew nearer, she recognised the
staccato twanging of a guitar; so she made sure this was Singing Sal.
She drew nearer still--her footsteps unheard on the smooth turf--and
then she discovered that Sal was singing away to herself, not for
amusement, as was her wont, but for practice. There were continual
repetitions. Nan got quite close to the hut, and listened.
Singing Sal was doing her very best. She was singing with very great
effect; and she had a hard, clear voice that could make itself heard,
if it was not of very fine quality. But what struck Nan was the clever
fashion in which this woman was imitating the Newcastle burr. It was a
pitman's song, with a refrain something like this--
_Ho thy way_,[1] my bonnie bairn,
_Ho thy way_, upon my airm,
_Ho thy way_, thou still may learn
To say Dada sae bonnie.
It was very clear that Sal was proud of her performance; and she had a
good right to be, for she had caught the guttural accent to perfection.
For the rest it was an instructive song to be sung as a lullaby to a
child; for this was what Nan more or less made out amid the various
experiments and repetitions:--
Oh, Johnnie is a clever lad;
Last neet he fuddled all he had;
This morn he wasna very bad;
He looked the best of ony!
When Johnnie's drunk he'll tak a knife,
And threaten sair to hae my life:
Wha wadna be a pitman's wife,
To hae a lad like Johnnie!
Yonder's Johnnie coming noo;
He looks the best of a' the crew!
They've all gone to the barley moo,
To hae a glass wi' Johnny.
So let's go get the bacon fried,
And let us mak a clean fireside,
And when he comes he will thee ride
Upon his knee sae cannie.
_Ho thy way_, my bonnie bairn,
_Ho thy way_, upon my airm,
_Ho thy way_, thou still may learn
To say Dada sae bonnie!
But this was likely to go on for ever; so Nan quietly stepped round to
the door of the hut, where she found Singing Sal sitting on the little
cross bench, entirely occupied with her guitar and the new song. When
she looked up, on finding the door darkened, she did not scream; her
nerves were not excitable.
'Oh, dear me, is it you, Miss?' she said. 'No wonder I did not hear
ye; for I was making enough noise myself. I hope you are very well,
Miss; it is many a day since I have seen you on the downs.'
'I have been living in Lewes for some time,' said Nan. 'I have been
listening to the song you were singing. That is not the kind of song
that sailors like, is it?'
So they had begun about sailors again; and the good genius Ormuzd was
clean forgotten.
[1] A corruption, I am told, of 'haud thy way'--'hold on thy way.' The
song is a common one in the North of England.