BY VIOLENCE
By
JOHN TREVENA
Author of "Bracken", "Sleeping Waters", etc.
With an Introduction by
EDWARD O'BRIEN
BOSTON
THE FOUR SEES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
1918
INTRODUCTION
For eight years or more, since I first became acquainted with the novels
and tales of John Trevena it has been my firm conviction that only
Thomas Hardy and George Moore among contemporary novelists rival his art
at its best. Like Meredith, he has written for twenty years in
obscurity, and like Meredith also he has been content with a small
discriminating audience. I suppose that in 1950 our grandchildren will
be electing college courses on his literary method, but meanwhile it
would be more gratifying if there were even a slight public response to
the quality of his individual talent.
Trevena's novels are the expression of a passionate feeling for Nature,
regarded as the sum of human personality and experience, in all its
moods,--benign and malign, as man is benign and malign, and faithful to
life in the stone as well as the flower. What a gallery of memorable
characters they are, Mary and Peter Tavy, Brightly, Cuthbert Orton,
Jasper Ramrige, Anthonie and Petronel, William and Yellow Leaf, Captain
Drake and dark Pendoggat, Ann Code, Cyril Rossingall, and a hundred
others, passionate and gentle, with wind and water and earth and sky for
a chorus, and the shifting pageantry of Nature as a stage.
His fourteen volumes reveal a gift for characterization equalled by none
of the contemporary English realists, and a Shakespearian humor
elsewhere gone from our day. In _Furze the Cruel_, _Bracken_, _Wintering
Hay_, and _Sleeping Waters_, to name no others, John Trevena has written
novels of Dartmoor that will take their rightful place in the great
English line, when the honest carpentering of Phillpotts that now
overshadows them is totally forgotten.
The feeling has spread among Trevena's few critical American admirers
who have written about him, that he is fundamentally morbid and
one-sided. On the contrary, I know of few novelists who are more
recklessly and irresistibly gay, in whom sheer fun bubbles over so
spontaneously and wholeheartedly. To ignore life's harshness is simply
to ignore life. Trevena's many-sidedness will be apparent only when
there is a definitive edition of his work. His habit of confining a
novel to a single mood or passion of nature, together with the fact that
Americans have only had an opportunity to read those novels by him which
deal with nature's most cruel moods, have done the reputation of Trevena
a grave injustice.
_By Violence_ and _Matrimony_ are Trevena's most beautiful short tales,
and I hardly know which is the finer revelation of poetic grace and
gentle vision. Their message is conveyed so quietly that they may be
read for their sensuous beauty only, and yet convey a rare pleasure. If
their feeling is veiled and somewhat aloof from the common ways of men,
there is none the less a fine human sympathy concealed in them, and a
golden radiance indissolubly woven into their pages.
If Nature's power is inevitable in these stories, it is also kind, and I
like to think that from _By Violence_ as a text a new reading of earth
may be deciphered. Trevena has written the books of furze and heather
and granite and bracken, which outlast time on the hills of Dartmoor.
But this tale hints at a fifth force which survives all the others. Some
day, when the wind is strong, John Trevena will write the book of "The
Rain-drop," which is the gentlest of all elements, and yet outlasts the
stone.
Edward J. O'Brien
_South Yarmouth, Mass._
_February 26, 1918_
BY VIOLENCE
"Dear Sir,--
"The wooden enemies are out.
"Yours obediently,
"Oliver Vorse."
Simon Searell read this short message as he tramped the streets of
Stonehouse, which were full of fog, from the sea on one side and the
river on the other. Vorse was an uneducated man; the mysticism of
flowers was nothing to him, the time of spring was merely a change of
season, and the most spiritual of blooms were only "wooden enemies."
Searell frowned a little, not at the lack of education, which was rather
a peace to be desired, but at the harshness of the words, and went on,
wondering if the wood-anemones were to be his friends, or little cups of
poison.
He climbed streets of poor houses, their unhappy windows curtained with
mist, and came out near a small church made of iron, a cheap and gaudy
thing, almost as squalid on the outside as the houses. The backslider
looked at it with a shudder. It was his no longer; he had given it up;
he was forgetting those toy-like altars, the cheap brass candlesticks,
the artificial flowers, and all the images. They were wooden and stone
enemies to him now. He was going deeper to find the throbbing heart of
religion, putting aside dolls and tapers and the sham of sentimentality.
Solitude and mysticism were to be his stars through the night, and he
trusted, with their aid, to reach the dawn. He turned from the church,
stopped at a house, and that was squalid too, knocked, then wiped his
boots, as if certain of being admitted.
"Father Damon?" he asked shortly. Searell's voice was sweet; he had
helped people "home," as they called it, with his tongue, not with his
soul, just as a sweet-toned organ calls for tears with the beauty of its
sounds, though the instrument itself is dead.
"Yes, your reverence," the housekeeper answered, as shortly; and Searell
walked up the foggy stairs murmuring to himself, "The wind-flowers are
out, and I am free."
Father Damon stood in a little square room hideously papered. He was
small, dark, heavy-featured, peasant-like; and Searell saw at a glance
that his successor was as dull in many ways as Oliver Vorse. All that he
knew had been forced upon him almost violently; he had not gone forth
gathering for himself, he dared not, his mind had been tilled by careful
teachers, kept under restraint, all his side-growths pruned away, in
order that orthodoxy might develop in one large unlovely head. When the
order went forth to kneel, he knelt, and when it was time to lift his
eyes to Heaven, he lifted them. It was a life of prison, and he could
never smell the woodland through the fog of incense.
"He knows nothing," muttered Searell. "He thinks it is daylight where he
stands."
"I come to give you information about the mission," he said aloud, and
then began; but the telling took some time. How troublesome, how paltry,
the details; and Father Damon was so dull. Everything had to be
repeated, explained so carefully; and was it worth the words? The
successor was very earnest, but not enthusiastic, that had been crushed
out of him; and Searell grew impatient at the wooden figure, with its
simple face and child-like questions. He spoke faster, almost angrily,
desiring to get away and smell the earth; and his eyes wandered about
the room, which was so unlovely, not bare, but filled with those things
that make for the nakedness of life. There was wanting something to
galvanise that sluggish Damon into passion, to destroy the machinery,
turn him into a strong animal with dilating nostrils. One little touch
would have done it. A portrait of a pretty woman upon the mantelshelf
would have gone far; but there was nothing except pictures of mythical
saints.
"You are retiring. You seem strong and well," said Damon, when he had
obtained all the information that was required.
Searell was in a hurry to be gone, as the sleeper struggles to awake
from a bad dream; but that voice and its stagnant repose aroused him.
"I am old, I am sixty," he said. "I am beginning again, trying to find
what the Church has not shown me."
"What is that?"
"Light."
Damon stared with the eyes of horror, and put out his peasant-like hands
as if to force away some weight that pressed against him; but he said
nothing.
"I will not depart in the odour of hypocrisy. Listen," said Searell. "I
am far from saying that the Church does not lead towards a kind of
light; but it has not led me. And this do I say, that in the world at
large all religion is a failure; and I am going to find mine in the
solitudes."
"The truth is in the Church. It is your fault if you have missed it,"
said Damon, in a hollow voice, hoping that the other, for the sake of
his soul, was mad.
"It is there for some, the minority. You will never realize how small
that minority is. We cannot hasten the dawn with juggling. True religion
is a thing of innocence, not a matter of spells and charms; and it is in
the innocence of Nature that I will search for it. I believe it exists
there, underneath the outward cruelty, and I shall find it among the
flowers. The flower alone does not struggle with violence, it sheds no
blood; the weed smothers, and the bindweed chokes; but without some
fault upon the surface, perfection might be obtained, which cannot be.
Look into the flower, and you will find a condition which is not
approached by man or other animals. There is a purity which brings tears
into your eyes. Eliminate violence, and you have innocence; obtain
innocence, and you see the light. At the beginning of things we are told
that the world was destroyed by water because the earth was filled with
violence. At the beginning of the new era we learn that the Kingdom of
Heaven suffereth violence. Will you say the Church does not rule by
violence, by threats, suppressions, rubrics, and by vows?"
"I cannot understand you," said Damon.
"Will you understand when I say that the God of life is to be found
among the flowers?"
The other shook his head and looked frightened. Free speech was not
allowed, and, if it had been, he would not have known how to use it. He
walked between rubrics, turning neither to the right hand nor to the
left; and the living lily was a thing for funeral wreaths. For the
altars, artificial flowers were good enough, as they did not require
renewing, and they looked real to the congregation, and how they were
regarded elsewhere did not concern him; and whether they had been made
by sweated labour did not concern him, because he was not allowed to
think, and he himself was artificial, neither man nor animal, but a
side-growth of supernaturalism.
"Let me go on now I have begun," said Searell. "I am leaving here, and
my words will not live after me. I am a man who has tested life, who has
been through every experience, and I have discovered that what morality
calls bad is often good, and that which we call virtue sometimes springs
from vice. The purest water runs upon mud, only you must not rake it up.
In my youth I served as a soldier, and upon leaving the army I sought
the Church, partly to find a rest, chiefly, perhaps, because my mind was
mystical. But nothing was revealed, and nothing could be, for the mystic
must be free; and the priest is a soul in prison, and the book of his
captivity is always before him. Here he must join his hands; there he
must lift his eyes to Heaven, prostrate himself, kiss the altar, until
the time comes when he feels alone, cut off from the Creator of his
dreams by these mechanics, horribly alone among images; and he seems to
hear a voice asking sorrowfully, 'What is this rule you are following?
Who told you to do this? Go out upon the hills and into the woods, for I
am there.' But he cannot move, for the time has come to join his hands
again, and the revelation passes unseen, because he has to keep his eyes
shut. It is written so, and he must obey."
"I cannot answer you," muttered Damon; and it was true, for these words
took him outside the well-worn groove and dropped him useless.
"If I found the man who could, I would follow him," came the answer, and
the white-headed priest passed a hand across his eyes, as if trying to
brush the fog away. "I have been longing to escape for years. The iron
of the little mission-church has eaten into my soul. I ought to have
resigned? Why so, when I performed all my duties? Without means I could
not have faced the world, for the mystic is not a practical man, and
these hands," he said, frowning, "they are hands to be despised, for
they have done nothing. No, do not answer me, you cannot, you are bound.
I am free. A year ago I was left money--"
"A curse."
"If you will, a curse to buy a pathway to my Heaven. There was a place I
pined for, up on the heights of Dartmoor, a valley among mountains. I
have bought it. They call it Pixyland."
"Paganism," cried the peasant-priest hoarsely, and crossed himself.
"Purity," said Searell, in his sweet voice. "Pure air, pure hills, pure
loneliness. It is a place of rocks, of heather and large-rooted ferns,
and it is very steep, terrace rising upon terrace to the heights. At the
bottom of the valley are trees; here also is a wild path and a wild
stream broken upon the rocks, and becoming whole again at the foot of a
glen. For centuries the place has been haunted in men's imagination, and
they have avoided it because it is a garden of--angels. I am going now
to make it bloom, I am going to grasp that solitude and weave with it a
mantle of light. I am going to walk on my pixy-path and watch the
shadows creeping up and down my pixy-glen; and the growth will come, the
growth of knowledge, and of consciousness; and there I may meet my
Gardener, driven out of the world by violence, out of the Church by
violence, revealing Himself, not tortured, cross-laden, and frowning,
and not awful, but as the smiling Guardian of the flowers."
There was hardly a sound in the cold room, stiff with the antique
pictures of quaint saints, dark with that dull peasant born to be ruled;
and yet Searell was going out with a haunted face, passing like a
phantom from the house of poverty, and the wet board with Mass notices,
and the waste of ground heaped up with rubbish. There was a pear-tree
leaning from the waste, a tree which the builders had forgotten, and
from the tree hung a broken branch, and at the end of that branch,
beneath the buds of spring, were two black leaves neglected by the
winter, side by side, struggling with one another; for there was wind
down the street which made them struggle; but neither dropped, and they
fought on silently while the wind lasted.
"Violence even in dead things," Searell murmured; and, reaching up his
hand, he quieted those two restless leaves for ever.
II
Oliver Vorse was lying among the wood-anemones, and he was drunk. He
would have looked like a monster had his condition been rare; but it was
common, therefore Vorse was not abnormal, only a fool. He did not know
where he was, in the pixy-path upon the wind-flowers, crushing so many
with his sodden carcase, while the pure pixy-water trickled underneath.
He had come the wrong way at the turning of the path; instead of
ascending to the house, which was the way of difficulty, he had stepped
downwards choosing the path of ease, as men will, even when sober. The
state of his body was nothing, as nobody would see him except Sibley,
his wife. The master was expected tomorrow, and then he would have to
pretend to be a man.
The moon was young, a cradle of silver, and the stars were wrapped in
sleep-compelling clouds; and all the light that there was seemed to come
from the anemones which Vorse was defiling. The little white things were
lanterns, retaining light, but not giving it forth, and a stickle of
water shone like a shield. There was such a wonderful purity in Nature
apart from the man. Everything seemed to bear the mark of beauty and
holiness except him. It was out of the world in that fairy garden
hanging between the cities and the clouds, and the vices of the world
were out of place; and yet there was no barrier which they could not
leap across.
A light appeared thick and heavy, putting out the eyes of the flowers.
It wobbled down the natural terraces, weather-hewn from granite, and
with it came a voice suggesting more violence, harsh and angry, not a
voice of the clouds, but of the street-corner, where faces are thin and
fierce, and the paving-stones seem cruel. Sibley was searching for her
husband, not because she loved him, nor requiring his company for any
reason except the selfish one that the loneliness above frightened her,
and her small spirit quailed before the heaving moorland. Any sort of a
brute was better than the God of the mountains. She stumbled over an
obstacle, lowered the lantern, but it was a mass of granite carved
cynically by centuries of rain into the semblance of a tombstone. Again
she stumbled, and now it was the trunk of a tree, phosphorescent with
rottenness. A third time she stumbled, and so found her master with the
rottenness of the fallen tree, without the strength of the granite.
She kicked him, struck him with the greasy lantern, and swore.
"Get up, dirty swine. Get up, will ye? Mind what the master told yew?
and he'm coming in the morning."
Oliver only growled and snored. This was his form of mysticism, and it
was a kind of happiness. If master had dreams, why not he? Master could
dream at one end of creation, he at the other. There was plenty of time.
Sibley was only twenty-four, Oliver not much older. When life is young
the end of it is a myth, and passion is the god.
There was another light down the pixy-path, very steady and soft. Had it
been blue it might have been a thing of the bog, looking for the body it
had thrown away, but it was white, and it flickered hardly at all, for
the night was smothered up and the winds were slumbering. It came up the
path with a kind of gliding rather terrible and there was not a sound
around it. The master was approaching in the night. Having completed the
last duty sooner than he had anticipated, he acted on the impulse. There
was time to escape, so why wait for the morning? And there would be the
glamour of passing through the dark towards clouds and mistland. The
preparations of a man in earnest take no time. He must put a taper in
his pocket, the last relic of the church he was leaving, as the night
would be heavy upon the pathway, and he must walk there and see the
wood-anemones in flower and feel the peace settling upon his eyelids.
There was no time to be lost, for he was old, and still a child, with
everything to learn.
Sibley saw the figure, and screamed, supposing it to be a spirit doing
penance for past sins with the lighted candle; while her husband heaved
and called for drink.
Searell stood upon the path. The wind-flowers were out, but their heads
were hanging in shame; there was no spiritual life in them, they were
already dead like the two black leaves upon the pear tree, and the
destroyed of life was that heap of flesh upon them. He had come away
from the world to forget its violence, and here it was upon his mystic
pathway. He had come to find his God upon the flowers, and had found a
drunken man instead.
He was calm, to Sibley he looked divine, as he placed the candle in the
niche of a gaping boulder, and she wondered at his restraint. He was a
god, for he had made her, had saved her from street life, and might
still save Oliver if he could bear with him. They were not of his
religion, they were only devil-worshippers, and yet he had stooped down
and dragged them almost by violence from the rubbish-pit.
"Forgive 'en this once, master," she cried. "I'll see he don't fall
again. Us didn't look vor ye till the morning, and Oliver went down, and
this be how he comed back."
There was a flat rock above the pixy-water, and here Searell seated
himself, saying, "Do not speak. Your voice is harsh."
For some moments the only sounds were the deep breathing of Vorse and
the tinkling of the stream. The flame of the candle did not flicker, and
Sibley remained as motionless, her hands clasped before her, looking
down. Then Searell spoke:
"I walked along a street, and at a dark end of it a man and woman were
fighting. They were young and fierce. As I came near, the man threw the
woman down and thumped her in the back, I separated them by violence.
They respected my profession, and did not greatly resent my
interference. So there was good in them, but, like young beasts, they
had run wild, and no man had tamed them. You know of whom I am
speaking?"
"Yes, master, I reckon," she whispered.
"At that time they were living together, although unmarried. I told them
I should be requiring a couple to attend to me and my home, and I
promised to engage them if they would be legally wedded. But conditions
were imposed. One of them has been broken tonight."
"It won't ever happen again, master."
"I have myself to think of. There must be selfishness," said Searell.
"There is no escaping from it. If one condition is broken, another may
be. You remember the other?"
"Yes, master--no children."
The words sounded harsh, in that fairy place, and they seemed to agree
rather with the breathing of the drunken man than with the ringing of
the stream.
"Perhaps I am hard, but I have my peace of mind to consider. A child's
cry, a child's mischievous ways, would destroy it. There is no room in
my house for children, and this is not the place for them. I have a
search to make," he murmured. "The scream of infants would lead me far
astray. You will remember?"
"Us ha' no other home, master."
"You will remember?"
"Yes, master."
"I will forget what has happened tonight," said Searell, bending from
the rock, dipping his hand into the pixy-water. "Let this be a time of
regeneration for us all. Do you respect a ceremony?"
"Yes, master, I reckon," she said again, though she could not understand
him.
"We will lead a new life," he said, with a smile which was visible in
the light of candle and lantern.
Sibley stepped forward as Oliver lifted himself with heavy movements,
and muttered a half-conscious "Ask your pardon, master."
Searell brought up a little of the bright water, and sprinkled the
woman, then the man, without any other sign, and with the words in his
soft mystic voice, "I receive you into the new life."
Then he picked up the taper and went, leaving the man and woman afraid
of him.
III
After a year in Pixyland, what was there? A garden, a place of almost
unearthly beauty, and through it the master moved slowly, clad no longer
in the clothes of religion, nor even in the garments of respectability;
his coat sack-like, its pockets bulging with bulbs and tubers, and his
hair was in white ringlets, and his hands were often in the warm earth,
grubbing out furze-roots. The terrestrial paradise had been attained;
down the steep slopes poured a cascade of colour, the pixy-path was
alight all night with white, out of the pixy-water rose golden osmundas
and the ghostly spiræa; and Searell's face was also ghostly, it was
hungry, and the eyes were dull. It was not the face of the priest who
had built up the mission, for that had been eager. It was not the face
of the mystic who had walked up the path by candlelight, for that had
been happy. It was not the face of the spiritualist who feels he is
conquering the atmosphere, nor that of a dreamer. It was the face of one
who was sad.
Searell had discovered, though he would not own it to himself, that
lonely happiness is impossible. What was a discovery if no friend could
be told of it? What was the loveliness of his garden when there was no
one to share it with? What would Heaven itself be if he was there alone?
There must be sympathy, and without it life is lost.
Intellect was losing its edge. He almost forgot what he had come there
for. Instead of ascending towards more light he was falling into grosser
darkness. He did not even dream; he was sluggish, and oblivion was over
him; which must happen when a man cuts himself free from the hearts and
brains of others. His cry was no longer the triumphant one of strength
and self-confidence. It was the cry "Why hast Thou forgotten me?" as he
walked heavily, and the weight of his own presence oppressed him; and
then he would mutter aloud, "Come and see my garden. I must show you the
flowers," though there was nobody to hear. That was all: he was a
gardener; he wanted to show his flowers, shrubs, ferns, he wanted to
delight some one with his bogplants, he longed to see admiration dawning
upon a human face, love for the beautiful kindling in human eyes; and so
he came to crave for human life, human words and beauty, human sympathy,
even human sin and shame and violence rather than the innocence and
purity and gentleness of God among the flowers.
"Master, where be I to plant this?" "Master, will ye pay these bills?"
Such were the almost brutal questions around him.
He had asked for solitude; and now he longed for passion, earthly love.
It was winter, when the nights were wild and the evenings intolerable;
and during one of them the sound of a quarrel reached his ears. Oliver
and Sibley had not been satisfactory. If they had abstained from the
vices, they had not learnt to love one another; and, as Searell listened
then, he saw the violent streets and that boy and girl tussle in the
dirt. He went down, and at the foot of the stairs heard the woman's
angry voice, "Yew ha' ruined me"; and then the growl of Oliver, "Shut
your noise. Master be moving over." Through the doorway Searell saw
them, like beasts half-tamed, longing to break into their natural
habits, but dreading the master's whip. Were they worse than they had
been? Was it the effect of solitude upon them? Sibley had no small
amusements such as women desire. Oliver had no love for his home life.
It seemed to Searell that indifference was settling upon them all. He
advanced into the kitchen, stood between them as he had done before,
looked at the man, and noticed something new, a kind of eagerness, which
he tried to suppress; then at the woman, and here too was a difference,
a softer face and eyes half ashamed. Perhaps, then, they could love, and
a word from him might kindle the spark into flame.
"I interfered between you once before. It was for your good."
"No, master," said Sibley.
"I think so," he said, startled by her independence and rudeness.
"It would ha' been better if yew had passed by and let we bide," she
went on; and when Oliver growled his "Shut your noise," it was with less
anger than usual.
"Us could ha' done what us had a mind to then," she said. "This be a
prison."
"We are all in prison, if you can understand me. The walls are all
round, and we cannot get over them."
"'Tis best vor volk to live as 'em be meant to," said Sibley.
And again Searell was amazed. How had this woman obtained the power and
the courage to answer him? And to beat him, for he was beaten. He had no
words to reply to that simple philosophy, and to the woman who appealed
from his decision. He had played the God with them, had brought them out
of chaos, and had given them his commandments; and he was no God, but a
weak man; and they were not his children.
He went back to his books, there were no flowers except Christmas-roses
and snowdrops, shivering things of winter, and tried to dream. Nothing
came. It seemed to him there was less mysticism in his mistland than in
the dirty streets of Stonehouse; and, while he mused, that world came
knocking at his mind, calling in the dialect of Sibley, "'Tis best vor
volk to live as 'em be meant to." His own body, his sluggishness and
unhappiness, convicted him of error; but, if he was wrong, what of all
religion which tells of a God of mysticism, and of his own in
particular, which, at that very season of the year, rejoiced at the
birth of a Child-creator by mysticism not through Love? And at his mind
was hot, red-blooded passion, a crude and awful thing, love for those
things which make men horrible, love for dirt and the roots, not for bud
and bloom; and a contempt and hatred for cold morality and the spells
muttered by candlelight; and the message of the flowers was this:
"Through the agency of others, through the eyes of those who are loved
and loving, not by the confinement of self, souls find the dawn."
"Mrs. Vorse," said Searell one day, the yellow aconites were out, the
first colour of the year, and he was going to look at them, "you have
changed."
Sibley had her back towards him, engaged in cleaning, and she was
wearing, as she always did, the enveloping apron of the country, which
hung from her shoulders and surrounded her body like a sack. He could
not see the flush upon her face.
"Your voice is softer. You sing at your work. You are happy."
"I hain't, master," she whispered. "I feels, master, I wants to be
happy, but I be frightened."
"Of the loneliness?"
"Not that, master. I can't tell ye, but I be frightened."
"You and your husband get along better. You are quieter. I have not
heard you quarrel for some time."
"There's good in Oliver," she said.
"I thought so," he murmured. "But I have not been able to bring it out."
He went to see the aconites, but they were cold, and made him shiver. It
was warm innocence he wanted, not the purity which numbed; and, down
below, the slopes were naked, the path rustled with dead oakleaves, and
the pixy-water was in flood. The violence of the world was there, and
nothing could drive it out.
"Is your wife well, Oliver?" he asked. "I heard a sound in your room
early this morning. It seemed to me she was ill."
Vorse was uprooting bracken, which is hard labour, and he made no pause
when his master spoke.
"I ha' never knowed she better," he answered.
"She frets less. There is a womanliness about her now which is pleasant.
You, also, have very much improved. You speak to her gently. You do not
drink now?"
"Her made me give it up."
"Had I nothing to do with it?"
"No, master," said Oliver bluntly. "I couldn't ha' given it up vor yew.
I did try, but I couldn't, I promised to give it up vor Sibley."
"When?"
"Months ago. Her told me something, and 'twur then I promised to give it
up vor Sibley."
"What did she tell you?"
"Her had received a message from God."
These were strange words from the mouth of Oliver Vorse.
"Her took 'em from yew, master," he added apologetically.
Searell moved aside, gazing at the black snakelike fern-roots. Then he
lifted up his eyes in torment. His creatures finding in the garden what
he had missed, taking his God away from him! the dull Sibley his
superior, reaping the harvest that he had sown! the dull Oliver
reforming for her, and not for him! And he had nothing, he was alone, as
much alone in his garden as in the mission-church, obeying the printed
rubrics and hearing the call, "Who told you to do this? Go out and find
Me, for I am in the solitudes."
"You are educating yourselves," he suggested, turning back. "You and
Sibley are improving your minds by learning. I have done that much for
you."
Oliver said nothing, his head was down, and his hands grubbed at the
great roots. There was no answer to make.
It was evening, the time of restlessness, and Searell came downstairs;
his study was above, and he came down only to change his rooms, to get
into another atmosphere, that he might find rest for his mind. The
kitchen door was open. Oliver was seated in a low chair, and Sibley was
upon his knees, her arms around his neck, her head upon his shoulder.
Both were motionless as if asleep.
Searell went away. This time he could not interfere, and the noise of
the wind became to him the cry of the wild world. "Men must be violent,"
it cried. "Men were made for passion," it cried; "and with the strength
of the body, rather than by the gropings of the mind, they shall clear
the mists from their eyes, and by means of the act of creation find
Creator."
IV
A perfect evening is often the prelude to a stormy night. It was such an
evening in spring again, when the wind-flowers were out, and an old man
riding off the moor paused beside Searell's boundary-wall to prophesy a
tempest. This was a white old man with queer blue eyes, and he too was a
mystic under the spell of solitude; but, unlike Searell, he had his
ties, without which no man can be happy. By day he roamed, and at
evening, by the fireside, told the children small and great his own
weird tales of Dartmoor. There were no restless evenings for him.
Searell shook his head almost angrily. He lived upon the face of the
moor, wrapped himself in its secrets, yet he could not foretell its
weather. The passing cloud had no message, the river with its changing
cry told him nothing. He went into the house.
"Where is your wife?" he said to Oliver.
"Her bain't well, master." The man was nervous, and his eyes were large.
"Who is that woman in the kitchen?"
"I had to get she up to do the cooking."
"You have neglected your work today."
"I be cruel sorry, master."
"What is the matter with your wife? Yesterday I heard her singing."
"Nothing serious, master"; but the man was listening all the time, as if
dreading to hear a call, a cry of pain, or the voice of life coming
along the moor.
The old man was right. So soon as night began, the Dartmoor tempest
broke; there was no rain, nor thunder, but a dry and mighty wind which
made the rocks shake; and through the storm came a weird light defying
the wind to blow it out, that light which does not enter the lowlands,
but lives upon mountains; and Searell stood at his high writing desk,
and sought out legends of the wind.
If there were sounds in the house he could not hear them. Deep in
mysticism, he read on of the winged clouds which brought the tempests,
and of their symbols, the rock-shattering worm, the stone of wisdom
which tears open the secrets of life, the rosy flower which restores the
dead, the house-breaking hand of glory; and the eagle symbol of
lightning, and the rushing raven returning to Odin. And he read of the
voices in the wind, while boulders were grinding along the river-bed; of
Hulda in the forest singing for baby-souls; of the Elf maidens alluring
youths astray; of Thoth staggering into oblivion with brave men's
spirits; of Hermes with his winged talaria, playing the lyre and
shutting fast all the myriad eyes of the stars. And something more he
read about the storm-wind. It was not always taking away, it was giving;
it was a bringer of new life, coming in spring as a young god with
golden hair, breaking the spell of winter, bringing a magic pipe to make
folk dance.
"At one time it lulls into a mystic sleep, at another it restores to new
life," said Searell, speaking loudly and strongly, partly to reassure
himself, because the tumult was frightening. "What is this wind bringing
to me, more of the mystic sleep, or the new life?"
He paced up and down the room, which shook as if with earthquake; and
hidden from him by a partition of lath and plaster was the staring
horror of a dream, one small lamp, turned down, giving the half-light
which suggests terror more than darkness, and on the bed a woman
moaning, and against the wall a weak man groaning. Let them rave and
scream, no sound of theirs could have pierced that lath and plaster, for
the god of violence was fighting on their side.
"There be only one way."
That was how Oliver had been muttering the last hour.
"No, no," she sobbed.
"What can us do? Master be hard, he bides by his word. He ha' been good
to we in all else, but this be our ruin."
"No, no." She could not hear him, but she knew what he was saying.
"Back on them streets again. No home to cover we, no food. Us ha' lived
easy too long to stand it. 'Twould end in the river. Better to lose the
one than our two selves."
"No, no," her lips made the words, but not the sounds.
"'Tis only a matter o' two minutes," he cried fiercely. "Then us be free
again." He left the wall, crossed to the bed, bent down, cried into her
ear, "It be awful outside. The watter be roaring down under. Us mun
live, woman."
Sibley lifted herself with a face of death, and screamed as if it had
been the last effort of her life, screamed again and again; but what was
that in the wind? Not even a whisper; while Searell read on of the Sons
of Kalew, and the miracle of their harps which changed winter into
summer and death into life.
Oliver Vorse was staggering downstairs weeping; and outside the wind
caught him, dragged him hither and thither like a straw, stuffing his
mouth with vapour, and flung him against bellowing walls and into
shrieking bushes; and still he protected what he held by instinct, and
when he fell upon the steep descent he let his body be bruised and his
face torn by that same instinct which makes the timid beast a savage
thing.
It took no time.... He was back in the ghastly lamplight, staring at a
ghastly face which was the reflection of his own; and the master was
still in his musing, and knew nothing.
"Let me die, I'd sooner," Sibley muttered simply; but Oliver could not
hear. He was leaning against the wall again; then he went on his knees,
and then he turned his back upon the bed. That face, the black hair, a
blood-stain visible, they frightened him. He passed into a kind of
agony; he was so cold and his body was dry, and there was a lightness in
his limbs.
"The watter wur roaring--roaring. There warn't no wind, not there. It
wur sheltered down under, and them little white flowers scarce shook."
He turned his head and saw those staring eyes.
"Bain't what yew thinks," he howled. "There wur moss, plenty on't. I
made a bed beside the rocks. It bain't cold, not very; but the watter be
rising--rising--rising."
So was the tempest. It would be nearing its end, and would drop as
suddenly as it had arisen; and Searell was smiling as he read of the
beasts of the forest weeping as they listened to the song-wind of
Gunadhya.
"I can't go out. Might see it crawling up-along, trying to come back,
little white thing in the dark."
Oliver could see Sibley was speaking, making with her agonized mouth the
shape of words, "Go out." He could not, dared not, had not even the
courage to open the door and look down the dimly lighted horror of the
stairs. They were in the last stage of weakness, the one morally, the
other physically; and the almighty strength of the wind gave them
nothing except the security of its tumult.
"It'll be over," he shuddered. "The watter wur coming up all white. I
couldn't bide there--there wur drops o' summat on my face, and 'twur so
helpless, and it looked up. Blue, warn't 'em blue, woman?'"
Sibley could not have heard, but, with all those instincts quivering,
she recognized the word upon his lips and tried to nod.
"Innocent. Hadn't done nought. Would ha' kep we good, made we man and
wife. I'll go down. I'd go down if I dared--the little chin wur agin my
cheek. I'll never face the dark. I'd see it move, and the little
drowning bubbles on the watter. Be it over now?"
He glared at Sibley as if she could answer; and she stared back, asking,
pleading, imploring him to play the man and face the night again; but he
grovelled against the wall and shuddered, damp with an awful sweat, and
the weird light upon the mountain-tops went out, because other clouds
were coming up, having travelled far since evening, and the darkness
became real as the roarings of the dry wind decreased. It was getting on
towards midnight, and those mighty winds were tired.
"Go!" came a sudden scream; and Searell heard the echo of it and
started. The cry seemed to have its origin in the storm. He closed his
book, listened, heard nothing more except the coherent bellowing, and
then he answered, "I will." Certainly the word had sounded, and as
certainly he was alone. The Vorses would have been asleep for hours.
"I will walk along the path. It is sheltered down there," he murmured.
"This may be the night appointed, the time of revelation, the time of
young life. This is the mad music of the spring, the shattering of the
chains of winter. The growth follows. It is the birth-night."
He wrapped a coat around him and went. During those few minutes the wind
had much decreased; in another hour it would be calm and clear; and then
the awful stillness of the sunrise and the perpetual wonder of the
daylight.
There was again a kind of light, for the raven-clouds had gone by and
the swan-clouds were crossing; and the wind was now the magic piper who
drives away care, and with his merry music sets Nature capering. Searell
was on the pixy-path and the wind-flowers were jigging; it was ghostly,
but a dance, not a solemn marching as in autumn, when the leaves fall
processionally downwards. It was recessional spring, when the leaves
awoke, as it were, from their moon-loved sleep, preserved in unfading
youth and beauty by that sleep, and leapt back at the piper's music to
the branches, kissing their ancient oaks with the fervour of young love.
Every flower had a moist eye and a sweet heart; and the pixy-water rang
for festival.
One turn Searell made, seeing nothing, because his eyes struggled with
the mist; another, and he stopped. There was a wonder, a miracle, a
revelation among his wind-flowers, upon the edge of the rising water, a
sleeping silent wonder which made him thrill.
"It has no bodily existence. When I come back it will be gone."
It was still there, and now the water was almost level with the bed of
moss, and some of the flowers were struggling to keep their pale heads
above; and it was silent, this child of the morning, lying upon its back
in the moss, numbed, perhaps, though the night was not cold, and there
was a beauty upon the small face, not the beauty which makes for
violence, but that which gives peace, the beauty of innocence; and there
was also upon it that perfect weakness, and the submission of weakness
which is one of the strongest things created. And it seemed to be
growing there like the wind-flowers, as fragile, but as hardy, and among
them; for white anemones had been blown across each eye and across the
mouth, and they gleamed from each ear, and the chin was another edged
with pink, and all of them seemed to be jealous of the child.
"And it comes into the world by violence," Searell murmured.
Even then he hardly knew what had happened. He could not think, for his
mind was full of the wonder, and commonplace ideas would not enter. He
picked up the child reverently; there was no motion, no sound, no
opening of bue eyes; had there been a shrill scream, the spell might
have been broken--the contact was dreadful to him. He was tending a
sacred mystery, elevating a sacrament newly consecrated, something which
a few hours ago had been leaping like a spark in the place of his
dreams, and had been flung as lightning upon his path to strike his
heart open. Here was the answer of the flowers. To men the Creator was
as a child, for the child is the only thing all-powerful and the only
thing all-pure.
About the house Searell seemed to hear the sound of groaning like the
moan of the dying wind, and there were movements once or twice as of a
wounded body.
A dusty prie-dieu stood in the comer of the study. This he placed near
the fire, a cushion upon it, and then the child; and lighted a candle
upon each side. He stood with his arms folded, the Omega of life
worshipping the Alpha of it, until all things seemed to be new and
strange, as upon a resurrection morning, and he awoke from the sleep of
death and felt the spring. The winter was over and past, the time of the
opening of flowers had come, and the voice of creation stirred upon the
garden; and the change had been wrought by violence.
It was necessary to speak and find sympathy. He hated the solitude
because no one shared it with him; he had grown to hate the wonderful
garden because there was no one to wonder at it with him; he hated
himself because no one cared for him. "Oliver!" he called, breaking the
horrible quietness, forgetful of the time. "Sibley!"
Movements followed, again like wounded bodies, and Searell remembered
that the woman was ill and he had done nothing for her. He went to the
door; it opened, and Vorse was cowering against the wall, his hand upon
his eyes. Searell hardly noticed the horrid smoking of the lamplight,
the eyes upon that bed, the guilty, frightened man. Still full of
himself, he cried:
"Come and see what I have found."
"I couldn't do it, master," moaned Oliver. "I took it down, but the eyes
opened. 'Don't ye hurt me,' it said. I be just come. Bain't time vor me
to go.'"
Still Searell would not understand.
"Come," he said impatiently. "She was upon my path, among my flowers."
Then life stirred again upon the bed, and Sibley drew herself up with
ravenous eyes and muttered:
"Alive--alive!"
Soon the room was like a chapel. The smoky lamp had been extinguished,
the prie-dieu stood beside the bed, the candles cast a warm, soft light;
and outside upon the moor was peace. Even the merry piper had become
weary and had put all things to sleep till daybreak; while Oliver Vorse
upon his knees confessed the sin which had been forced upon him.
"Us dared not keep she. Sibley dared, but not me. If a child wur born,
us must go, yew said. I couldn't face it, but her would ha' faced it. Us
be ready to go now," he said boldly. "I ha' these hands. I'll fight. I
ha' the maiden to fight vor."
"Her lives. Her moves on my bosom," cried Sibley. "Look at 'em, master.
Did ye ever see the like?"
"What made you kinder, Sibley, more attentive to me, soft and tender?"
"'Twur the child coming, master."
"What made you sober, Oliver, fond of your wife? What was it stopped the
quarelling?"
"I minded the little child, master."
There was something tender in their illiterate speech.
"You cast her away. The sin is mine, so is the atonement. And she is
mine."
"She'm mine, master," murmured Sibley.
"I found her among my flowers, the reward of my searching. She is the
answer," he said. "Let her be to you the daughter of love, and to me the
daughter of violence. Oliver," he cried, turning, "bring up water from
the pixy-stream. As the sun rises I will baptise--my child."
"Yew'm fond o' she, master?"
"She is mine," he said, with the old impatience.
"And we, master?"
"I am old and you are young," said Searell. "But we are all beginning
life, we know nothing. We will try to find another and a better
pathway."
He went back to his rooms to rest, but not to sleep, for there was
something burning inside him like a coal from the altar; and a new light
crept upon the moor, giving it form, changing it from black to purple.
It was the dawn.
* * * * *
BUSINESS IS BUSINESS
Tavy river rises on Cranmere, flows down Tavy Cleave, divides the parish
of Mary Tavy from that of Peter Tavy, passes Tavy Mount, and leaves
Dartmoor at Tavystock, or Tavistock as it is now spelt. Each Dartmoor
river confers its name, or a portion of it, upon certain features of its
own district. The Okements meet at Okehampton, and one of them has Oke
Tor, which has been corrupted into Ock and even Hock. Even the tiny Lyd
has its Lydford. Each river also has its particular characteristic. The
East Okement is the river of ferns, the Teign the river of woods, the
Taw the river of noise, the Dart the river of silence, and the Tavy is
the river of rocks. Tavy Cleave from the top of Ger Tor, presents a
grand and solemn spectacle of rock masses piled one upon the other; it
is a valley of rocks, relieved only by the foaming little river.
Mary Tavy is a straggling village of unredeemed ugliness, wild and bare.
It lies exposed on the side of the moor and is swept by every wind, for
not a bush or even a bramble will be found upon the rounded hills
adjoining. Once the place was a mining centre of some importance. The
black moor has been torn into pits and covered with mounds by the
tin-streamers in early days, and more recently by the copper-miners. All
around Mary Tavy appear the dismal ruins of these mines, or wheals as
they are called. Peter Tavy, across the river, is not so dreary, but is
equally exposed. This region during the winter is one of the most
inhospitable spots to be found in England.