CHAPTER IX

PASTORALS AND PEONIES

At dinner time the father announced to us the exciting fact that Leslie

had asked if a few of his guests might picnic that afternoon in the

Strelley hayfields. The closes were so beautiful, with the brook under

all its sheltering trees, running into the pond that was set with two

green islets. Moreover, the squire’s lady had written a book filling

these meadows and the mill precincts with pot-pourri romance. The

wedding guests at Highclose were anxious to picnic in so choice a spot.

The father, who delighted in a gay throng, beamed at us from over the

table. George asked who were coming.

“Oh, not many—about half a dozen—mostly ladies down for the wedding.”

George at first swore warmly; then he began to appreciate the affair as

a joke.

Mrs. Saxton hoped they wouldn’t want her to provide them pots, for she

hadn’t two cups that matched, nor had any of her spoons the least

pretence to silver. The children were hugely excited, and wanted a

holiday from school, which Emily at once vetoed firmly, thereby causing

family dissension.

As we went round the field in the afternoon turning the hay, we were

thinking apart, and did not talk. Every now and then—and at every

corner—we stopped to look down towards the wood, to see if they were

coming.

“Here they are!” George exclaimed suddenly, having spied the movement

of white in the dark wood. We stood still and watched. Two girls,

heliotrope and white, a man with two girls, pale green and white, and a

man with a girl last.

“Can you tell who they are?” I asked.

“That’s Marie Tempest, that first girl in white, and that’s him and

Lettie at the back, I don’t know any more.”

He stood perfectly still until they had gone out of sight behind the

banks down by the brooks, then he stuck his fork in the ground, saying:

“You can easily finish—if you like. I’ll go and mow out that bottom

corner.”

He glanced at me to see what I was thinking of him. I was thinking that

he was afraid to meet her, and I was smiling to myself. Perhaps he felt

ashamed, for he went silently away to the machine, where he belted his

riding breeches tightly round his waist, and slung the scythe strap on

his hip. I heard the clanging slur of the scythe stone as he whetted

the blade. Then he strode off to mow the far bottom corner, where the

ground was marshy, and the machine might not go, to bring down the lush

green grass and the tall meadow sweet.

I went to the pond to meet the newcomers. I bowed to Louie Denys, a

tall, graceful girl of the drooping type, elaborately gowned in

heliotrope linen; I bowed to Agnes D’Arcy, an erect, intelligent girl

with magnificent auburn hair—she wore no hat and carried a sunshade; I

bowed to Hilda Seconde, a svelte, petite girl, exquisitely and

delicately pretty; I bowed to Maria and to Lettie, and I shook hands

with Leslie and with his friend, Freddy Cresswell. The latter was to be

best man, a broad shouldered, pale-faced fellow, with beautiful soft

hair like red wheat, and laughing eyes, and a whimsical, drawling

manner of speech, like a man who has suffered enough to bring him to

manhood and maturity, but who in spite of all remains a boy,

irresponsible, lovable—a trifle pathetic. As the day was very hot, both

men were in flannels, and wore flannel collars, yet it was evident that

they had dressed with scrupulous care. Instinctively I tried to pull my

trousers into shape within my belt, and I felt the inferiority cast

upon the father, big and fine as he was in his way, for his shoulders

were rounded with work, and his trousers were much distorted.

“What can we do?” said Marie; “you know we don’t want to hinder, we

want to help you. It was so good of you to let us come.”

The father laughed his fine indulgence, saying to them—they loved him

for the mellow, laughing modulation of his voice:

“Come on, then—I see there’s a bit of turning-over to do, as Cyril’s

left. Come and pick your forks.”

From among a sheaf of hayforks he chose the lightest for them, and they

began anywhere, just tipping at the swaths. He showed them

carefully—Marie and the charming little Hilda—just how to do it, but

they found the right way the hardest way, so they worked in their own

fashion, and laughed heartily with him when he made playful jokes at

them. He was a great lover of girls, and they blossomed from timidity

under his hearty influence.

“Ain’ it flippin’ ’ot?” drawled Cresswell, who had just taken his M. A.

degree in classics: “This bloomin’ stuff’s dry enough—come an’ flop on

it.”

He gathered a cushion of hay, which Louie Denys carefully appropriated,

arranging first her beautiful dress, that fitted close to her shape,

without any belt or interruption, and then laying her arms, that were

netted to the shoulder in open lace, gracefully at rest. Lettie, who

was also in a closefitting white dress which showed her shape down to

the hips, sat where Leslie had prepared for her, and Miss D’Arcy

reluctantly accepted my pile.

Cresswell twisted his clean-cut mouth in a little smile, saying:

“Lord, a giddy little pastoral—fit for old Theocritus, ain’t it, Miss

Denys?”

“Why do you talk to me about those classic people—I daren’t even say

their names. What would he say about us?”

He laughed, winking his blue eyes:

“He’d make old Daphnis there,”—pointing to Leslie—“sing a match with

me, Damoetas—contesting the merits of our various sheperdesses—begin

Daphnis, sing up for Amaryllis, I mean Nais, damn ’em, they were for

ever getting mixed up with their nymphs.”

“I say, Mr. Cresswell, your language! Consider whom you’re damning,”

said Miss Denys, leaning over and tapping his head with her silk glove.

“You say any giddy thing in a pastoral,” he replied, taking the edge of

her skirt, and lying back on it, looking up at her as she leaned over

him. “Strike up, Daphnis, something about honey or white cheese—or else

the early apples that’ll be ripe in a week’s time.”

“I’m sure the apples you showed me are ever so little and green,”

interrupted Miss Denys; “they will never be ripe in a week—ugh, sour!”

He smiled up at her in his whimsical way:

“Hear that, Tempest—‘Ugh, sour!’—not much! Oh, love us, haven’t you got

a start yet?—isn’t there aught to sing about, you blunt-faced kid?”

“I’ll hear you first—I’m no judge of honey and cheese.”

“An’ darn little apples—takes a woman to judge them; don’t it, Miss

Denys?”

“I don’t know,” she said, stroking his soft hair from his forehead with

her hand whereon rings were sparkling.

“‘My love is not white, my hair is not yellow, like honey dropping

through the sunlight—my love is brown, and sweet, and ready for the

lips of love.’ Go on, Tempest—strike up, old cowherd. Who’s that tuning

his pipe?—oh, that fellow sharpening his scythe! It’s enough to make

your backache to look at him working—go an’ stop him, somebody.”

“Yes, let us go and fetch him,” said Miss D’Arcy. “I’m sure he doesn’t

know what a happy pastoral state he’s in—let us go and fetch him.”

“They don’t like hindering at their work, Agnes—besides, where

ignorance is bliss——” said Lettie, afraid lest she might bring him. The

other hesitated, then with her eyes she invited me to go with her.

“Oh, dear,” she laughed, with a little mowe, “Freddy is such an ass,

and Louie Denys is like a wasp at treacle. I wanted to laugh, yet I

felt just a tiny bit cross. Don’t you feel great when you go mowing

like that? Father Timey sort of feeling? Shall we go and look! We’ll

say we want those foxgloves he’ll be cutting down directly—and those

bell flowers. I suppose you needn’t go on with your labours——”

He did not know we were approaching till I called him, then he started

slightly as he saw the tall, proud girl.

“Mr. Saxton—Miss D’Arcy,” I said, and he shook hands with her.

Immediately his manner became ironic, for he had seen his hand big and

coarse and inflamed with the snaith clasping the lady’s hand.

“We thought you looked so fine,” she said to him, “and men are so

embarrassing when they make love to somebody else—aren’t they? Save us

those foxgloves, will you—they are splendid—like savage soldiers drawn

up against the hedge—don’t cut them down—and those

campanulas—bell-flowers, ah, yes! They are spinning idylls up there. I

don’t care for idylls, do you? Oh, you don’t know what a classical

pastoral person you are—but there, I don’t suppose you suffer from

idyllic love——” she laughed, “—one doesn’t see the silly little god

fluttering about in our hayfields, does one? Do you find much time to

sport with Amaryllis in the shade?—I’m sure it’s a shame they banished

Phyllis from the fields——”

He laughed and went on with his work. She smiled a little, too,

thinking she had made a great impression. She put out her hand with a

dramatic gesture, and looked at me, when the scythe crunched through

the meadow-sweet.

“Crunch! isn’t it fine!” she exclaimed, “a kind of inevitable fate—I

think it’s fine!”

We wandered about picking flowers and talking until teatime. A

manservant came with the tea-basket, and the girls spread the cloth

under a great willow tree. Lettie took the little silver kettle, and

went to fill it at the small spring which trickled into a stone trough

all pretty with cranesbill and stellaria hanging over, while long

blades of grass waved in the water. George, who had finished his work,

and wanted to go home to tea, walked across to the spring where Lettie

sat playing with the water, getting little cupfuls to put into the

kettle, watching the quick skating of the water beetles, and the large

faint spots of their shadows darting on the silted mud at the bottom of

the trough.

She glanced round on hearing him coming, and smiled nervously: they

were mutually afraid of meeting each other again.

“It is about teatime,” he said.

“Yes—it will be ready in a moment—this is not to make the tea with—it’s

only to keep a little supply of hot water.”

“Oh,” he said, “I’ll go on home—I’d rather.”

“No,” she replied, “you can’t because we are all having tea together: I

had some fruits put up, because I know you don’t trifle with tea—and

your father’s coming.”

“But,” he replied pettishly, “I can’t have my tea with all those

folks—I don’t want to—look at me!”

He held out his inflamed, barbaric hands.

She winced and said:

“It won’t matter—you’ll give the realistic touch.”

He laughed ironically.

“_No_—you must come,” she insisted.

“I’ll have a drink then, if you’ll let me,” he said, yielding.

She got up quickly, blushing, offering him the tiny, pretty cup.

“I’m awfully sorry,” she said.

“Never mind,” he muttered, and turning from the proffered cup he lay

down flat, put his mouth to the water, and drank deeply. She stood and

watched the motion of his drinking, and of his heavy breathing

afterwards. He got up, wiping his mouth, not looking at her. Then he

washed his hands in the water, and stirred up the mud. He put his hand

to the bottom of the trough, bringing out a handful of silt, with the

grey shrimps twisting in it. He flung the mud on the floor where the

poor grey creatures writhed.

“It wants cleaning out,” he said.

“Yes,” she replied, shuddering. “You won’t be long,” she added, taking

up the silver kettle.

In a few moments he got up and followed her reluctantly down. He was

nervous and irritable.

The girls were seated on tufts of hay, with the men leaning in

attendance on them, and the manservant waiting on all. George was

placed between Lettie and Hilda. The former handed him his little

egg-shell of tea, which, as he was not very thirsty, he put down on the

ground beside him. Then she passed him the bread and butter, cut for

five-o’clock tea, and fruits, grapes and peaches, and strawberries, in

a beautifully carved oak tray. She watched for a moment his thick,

half-washed fingers fumbling over the fruits, then she turned her head

away. All the gay teatime, when the talk bubbled and frothed over all

the cups, she avoided him with her eyes. Yet again and again, as

someone said: “I’m sorry, Mr. Saxton—will you have some cake?”—or “See,

Mr. Saxton—try this peach, I’m sure it will be mellow right to the

stone,”—speaking very naturally, but making the distinction between him

and the other men by their indulgence towards him, Lettie was forced to

glance at him as he sat eating, answering in monosyllables, laughing

with constraint and awkwardness, and her irritation flickered between

her brows. Although she kept up the gay frivolity of the conversation,

still the discord was felt by everybody, and we did not linger as we

should have done over the cups. “George,” they said afterwards, “was a

wet blanket on the party.” Lettie was intensely annoyed with him. His

presence was unbearable to her. She wished him a thousand miles away.

He sat listening to Cresswell’s whimsical affectation of vulgarity

which flickered with fantasy, and he laughed in a strained fashion.

He was the first to rise, saying he must get the cows up for milking.

“Oh, let us go—let us go. May we come and see the cows milked?” said

Hilda, her delicate, exquisite features flushing, for she was very shy.

“No,” drawled Freddy, “the stink o’ live beef ain’t salubrious. You be

warned, and stop here.”

“I never could bear cows, except those lovely little highland cattle,

all woolly, in pictures,” said Louie Denys, smiling archly, with a

little irony.

“No,” laughed Agnes D’Arcy, “they—they’re smelly,”—and she pursed up

her mouth, and ended in a little trill of deprecatory laughter, as she

often did. Hilda looked from one to the other, blushing.

“Come, Lettie,” said Leslie good-naturedly, “I know you have a farmyard

fondness—come on,” and they followed George down.

As they passed along the pond bank a swan and her tawny, fluffy brood

sailed with them the length of the water, “tipping on their little

toes, the darlings—pitter-patter through the water, tiny little

things,” as Marie said.

We heard George below calling “Bully—Bully—Bully—Bully!”—and then, a

moment or two after, in the bottom garden: “Come out, you little

fool—are you coming out of it?” in manifestly angry tones.

“Has it run away?” laughed Hilda, delighted and we hastened out of the

lower garden to see.

There in the green shade, between the tall gooseberry bushes, the heavy

crimson peonies stood gorgeously along the path. The full red globes,

poised and leaning voluptuously, sank their crimson weight on to the

seeding grass of the path, borne down by secret rain, and by their own

splendour. The path was poured over with red rich silk of strewn

petals. The great flowers swung their crimson grandly about the walk,

like crowds of cardinals in pomp among the green bushes. We burst into

the new world of delight. As Lettie stooped, taking between both hands

the gorgeous silken fulness of one blossom that was sunk to the earth.

George came down the path, with the brown bull-calf straddling behind

him, its neck stuck out, sucking zealously at his middle finger.

The unconscious attitudes of the girls, all bent enraptured over the

peonies, touched him with sudden pain. As he came up, with the calf

stalking grudgingly behind, he said:

“There’s a fine show of pyeenocks this year, isn’t there?”

“What do you call them?” cried Hilda, turning to him her sweet,

charming face full of interest.

“Pyeenocks,” he replied.

Lettie remained crouching with a red flower between her hands, glancing

sideways unseen to look at the calf, which with its shiny nose uplifted

was mumbling in its sticky gums the seductive finger. It sucked

eagerly, but unprofitably, and it appeared to cast a troubled eye

inwards to see if it were really receiving any satisfaction,—doubting,

but not despairing. Marie, and Hilda, and Leslie laughed, while he,

after looking at Lettie as she crouched, wistfully, as he thought, over

the flower, led the little brute out of the garden, and sent it running

into the yard with a smack on the haunch.

Then he returned, rubbing his sticky finger dry against his breeches.

He stood near to Lettie, and she felt rather than saw the extraordinary

pale cleanness of the one finger among the others. She rubbed her

finger against her dress in painful sympathy.

“But aren’t the flowers lovely!” exclaimed Marie again. “I want to hug

them.”

“Oh, yes!” assented Hilda.

“They are like a romance—D’Annunzio—a romance in passionate sadness,”

said Lettie, in an ironical voice, speaking half out of conventional

necessity of saying something, half out of desire to shield herself,

and yet in a measure express herself.

“There is a tale about them,” I said.

The girls clamoured for the legend.

“Pray, do tell us,” pleaded Hilda, the irresistible.

“It was Emily told me—she says it’s a legend, but I believe it’s only a

tale. She says the peonies were brought from the Hall long since by a

fellow of this place—when it was a mill. He was brown and strong, and

the daughter of the Hall, who was pale and fragile and young, loved

him. When he went up to the Hall gardens to cut the yew hedges, she

would hover round him in her white frock, and tell him tales of old

days, in little snatches like a wren singing, till he thought she was a

fairy who had bewitched him. He would stand and watch her, and one day,

when she came near to him telling him a tale that set the tears

swimming in her eyes, he took hold of her and kissed her and kept her.

They used to tryst in the poplar spinney. She would come with her arms

full of flowers, for she always kept to her fairy part. One morning she

came early through the mists. He was out shooting. She wanted to take

him unawares, like a fairy. Her arms were full of peonies. When she was

moving beyond the trees he shot her, not knowing. She stumbled on, and

sank down in their tryst place. He found her lying there among the red

pyeenocks, white and fallen. He thought she was just lying talking to

the red flowers, so he stood waiting. Then he went up, and bent over

her, and found the flowers full of blood. It was he set the garden here

with these pyeenocks.”

The eyes of the girls were round with the pity of the tale and Hilda

turned away to hide her tears.

“It is a beautiful ending,” said Lettie, in a low tone, looking at the

floor.

“It’s all a tale,” said Leslie, soothing the girls.

George waited till Lettie looked at him. She lifted her eyes to him at

last. Then each turned aside, trembling.

Marie asked for some of the peonies.

“Give me just a few—and I can tell the others the story—it is so sad—I

feel so sorry for him, it was so cruel for him——! And Lettie says it

ends beautifully——!”

George cut the flowers with his great clasp knife, and Marie took them,

carefully, treating their romance with great tenderness. Then all went

out of the garden and he turned to the cowshed.

“Good-bye for the present,” said Lettie, afraid to stay near him.

“Good-bye,” he laughed.

“Thank you _so_ much for the flowers—and the story—it was splendid,”

said Marie, “—but so sad!”

Then they went, and we did not see them again.

Later, when all had gone to bed at the mill, George and I sat together

on opposite sides of the fire, smoking, saying little. He was casting

up the total of discrepancies, and now and again he ejaculated one of

his thoughts.

“And all day,” he said, “Blench has been ploughing his wheat in,

because it was that bitten off by the rabbits it was no manner of use,

so he’s ploughed it in: an’ they say with idylls, eating peaches in our

close.”

Then there was silence, while the clock throbbed heavily, and outside a

wild bird called, and was still; softly the ashes rustled lower in the

grate.

“She said it ended well—but what’s the good of death—what’s the good of

that?” He turned his face to the ashes in the grate, and sat brooding.

Outside, among the trees, some wild animal set up a thin, wailing cry.

“Damn that row!” said I, stirring, looking also into the grey fire.

“It’s some stoat or weasel, or something. It’s been going on like that

for nearly a week. I’ve shot in the trees ever so many times. There

were two—one’s gone.”

Continuously, through the heavy, chilling silence, came the miserable

crying from the darkness among the trees.

“You know,” he said, “she hated me this afternoon, and I hated her——”

It was midnight, full of sick thoughts.

“It is no good,” said I. “Go to bed—it will be morning in a few hours.”

PART III

CHAPTER I

A NEW START IN LIFE

Lettie was wedded, as I had said, before Leslie lost all the wistful

traces of his illness. They had been gone away to France five days

before we recovered anything like the normal tone in the house. Then,

though the routine was the same, everywhere was a sense of loss, and of

change. The long voyage in the quiet home was over; we had crossed the

bright sea of our youth, and already Lettie had landed and was

travelling to a strange destination in a foreign land. It was time for

us all to go, to leave the valley of Nethermere whose waters and whose

woods were distilled in the essence of our veins. We were the children

of the valley of Nethermere, a small nation with language and blood of

our own, and to cast ourselves each one into separate exile was painful

to us.

“I shall have to go now,” said George. “It is my nature to linger an

unconscionable time, yet I dread above all things this slow crumbling

away from my foundations by which I free myself at last. I must wrench

myself away now——”

It was the slack time between the hay and the corn harvest, and we sat

together in the grey, still morning of August pulling the stack. My

hands were sore with tugging the loose wisps from the lower part of the

stack, so I waited for the touch of rain to send us indoors. It came at

last, and we hurried into the barn. We climbed the ladder into the loft

that was strewn with farming implements and with carpenters’ tools. We

sat together on the shavings that littered the bench before the high

gable window, and looked out over the brooks and the woods and the

ponds. The tree-tops were very near to us, and we felt ourselves the

centre of the waters and the woods that spread down the rainy valley.

“In a few years,” I said, “we shall be almost strangers.”

He looked at me with fond, dark eyes and smiled incredulously.

“It is as far,” said I, “to the ‘Ram’ as it is for me to

London—farther.”

“Don’t you want me to go there?” he asked, smiling quietly.

“It’s all as one where you go, you will travel north, and I east, and

Lettie south. Lettie has departed. In seven weeks I go.—And you?”

“I must be gone before you,” he said decisively.

“Do you know——” and he smiled timidly in confession, “I feel alarmed at

the idea of being left alone on a loose end. I must not be the last to

leave——” he added almost appealingly.

“And you will go to Meg?” I asked.

He sat tearing the silken shavings into shreds, and telling me in

clumsy fragments all he could of his feelings:

“You see it’s not so much what you call love. I don’t know. You see I

built on Lettie,”—he looked up at me shamefacedly, then continued

tearing the shavings—“you must found your castles on something, and I

founded mine on Lettie. You see, I’m like plenty of folks, I have

nothing definite to shape my life to. I put brick upon brick, as they

come, and if the whole topples down in the end, it does. But you see,

you and Lettie have made me conscious, and now I’m at a dead loss. I

have looked to marriage to set me busy on my house of life, something

whole and complete, of which it will supply the design. I must marry or

be in a lost lane. There are two people I could marry—and Lettie’s

gone. I love Meg just as well, as far as love goes. I’m not sure I

don’t feel better pleased at the idea of marrying her. You know I

should always have been second to Lettie, and the best part of love is

being made much of, being first and foremost in the whole world for

somebody. And Meg’s easy and lovely. I can have her without trembling,

she’s full of soothing and comfort. I can stroke her hair and pet her,

and she looks up at me, full of trust and lovingness, and there is no

flaw, all restfulness in one another——”

Three weeks later, as I lay in the August sunshine in a deck-chair on

the lawn, I heard the sound of wheels along the gravel path. It was

George calling for me to accompany him to his marriage. He pulled up

the dog-cart near the door and came up the steps to me on the lawn. He

was dressed as if for the cattle market, in jacket and breeches and

gaiters.

“Well, are you ready?” he said standing smiling down on me. His eyes

were dark with excitement, and had that vulnerable look which was so

peculiar to the Saxtons in their emotional moments.

“You are in good time,” said I, “it is but half past nine.”

“It wouldn’t do to be late on a day like this,” he said gaily, “see how

the sun shines. Come, you don’t look as brisk as a best man should. I

thought you would have been on tenterhooks of excitement. Get up, get

up! Look here, a bird has given me luck”—he showed me a white smear on

his shoulder.

I drew myself up lazily.

“All right,” I said, “but we must drink a whisky to establish it.”

He followed me out of the fragrant sunshine into the dark house. The

rooms were very still and empty, but the cool silence responded at once

to the gaiety of our sunwarm entrance. The sweetness of the summer

morning hung invisible like glad ghosts of romance through the shadowy

room. We seemed to feel the sunlight dancing golden in our veins as we

filled again the pale liqueur.

“Joy to you—I envy you to-day.”

His teeth were white, and his eyes stirred like dark liquor as he

smiled.

“Here is my wedding present!”

I stood the four large water-colours along the wall before him. They

were drawings among the waters and the fields of the mill, grey rain

and twilight, morning with the sun pouring gold into the mist, and the

suspense of a midsummer noon upon the pond. All the glamour of our

yesterdays came over him like an intoxicant, and he quivered with the

wonderful beauty of life that was weaving him into the large magic of

the years. He realised the splendour of the pageant of days which had

him in train.

“It’s been wonderful, Cyril, all the time,” he said, with surprised

joy.

We drove away through the freshness of the wood, and among the flowing

of the sunshine along the road. The cottages of Greymede filled the

shadows with colour of roses, and the sunlight with odour of pinks and

the blue of corn flowers and larkspur. We drove briskly up the long,

sleeping hill, and bowled down the hollow past the farms where the hens

were walking with the red gold cocks in the orchard, and the ducks like

white cloudlets under the aspen trees revelled on the pond.

“I told her to be ready any time,” said George—“but she doesn’t know

it’s to-day. I didn’t want the public-house full of the business.”

The mare walked up the sharp little rise on top of which stood the “Ram

Inn.” In the quiet, as the horse slowed to a standstill, we heard the

crooning of a song in the garden. We sat still in the cart, and looked

across the flagged yard to where the tall madonna lilies rose in

clusters out of the alyssome. Beyond the border of flowers was Meg,

bending over the gooseberry bushes. She saw us and came swinging down

the path, with a bowl of gooseberries poised on her hip. She was

dressed in a plain, fresh holland frock, with a white apron. Her black,

heavy hair reflected the sunlight, and her ripe face was luxuriant with

laughter.

“Well, I never!” she exclaimed, trying not to show that she guessed his

errand. “Fancy you here at this time o’ morning!”

Her eyes, delightful black eyes like polished jet, untroubled and

frank, looked at us as a robin might, with bright questioning. Her eyes

were so different from the Saxton’s: darker, but never still and full,

never hesitating, dreading a wound, never dilating with hurt or with

timid ecstasy.

“Are you ready then?” he asked, smiling down on her.

“What?” she asked in confusion.

“To come to the registrar with me—I’ve got the licence.”

“But I’m just going to make the pudding,” she cried, in full

expostulation.

“Let them make it themselves—put your hat on.”

“But look at me! I’ve just been getting the gooseberries. Look!” she

showed us the berries, and the scratches on her arms and hands.

“What a shame!” he said, bending down to stroke her hand and her arm.

She drew back smiling, flushing with joy. I could smell the white

lilies where I sat.

“But you don’t mean it, do you?” she said, lifting to him her face that

was round and glossy like a blackheart cherry. For answer, he unfolded

the marriage licence. She read it, and turned aside her face in

confusion, saying:

“Well, I’ve got to get ready. Shall you come an’ tell Gran’ma?”

“Is there any need?” he answered reluctantly.

“Yes, you come an tell ’er,” persuaded Meg.

He got down from the trap. I preferred to stay out of doors. Presently

Meg ran out with a glass of beer for me.

“We shan’t be many minutes,” she apologised. “I’ve on’y to slip another

frock on.”

I heard George go heavily up the stairs and enter the room over the

bar-parlour, where the grandmother lay bed-ridden.

“What, is it thaïgh, ma lad? What are thaïgh doin’ ’ere this mornin’?”

she asked.

“Well A’nt, how does ta feel by now?” he said.

“Eh, sadly, lad, sadly! It’ll not be long afore they carry me

downstairs head first——”

“Nay, dunna thee say so!—I’m just off to Nottingham—I want Meg ter

come.”

“What for?” cried the old woman sharply.

“I wanted ’er to get married,” he replied.

“What! What does’t say? An’ what about th’ licence, an’ th’ ring, an

ivrything?”

“I’ve seen to that all right,” he answered.

“Well, tha ’rt a nice’st un, I must say! What’s want goin’ in this

pig-in-a-poke fashion for? This is a nice shabby trick to serve a body!

What does ta mean by it?”

“You knowed as I wor goin’ ter marry ’er directly, so I can’t see as it

matters o’ th’ day. I non wanted a’ th’ pub talkin’——”

“Tha ’rt mighty particklar, an’ all, an’ all! An’ why shouldn’t the pub

talk? Tha ’rt non marryin’ a nigger, as ta should be so frightened—I

niver thought it on thee!—An’ what’s thy ’orry, all of a sudden?”

“No hurry as I know of.”

“No ’orry——!” replied the old lady, with withering sarcasm. “Tha wor

niver in a ’orry a’ thy life! She’s non commin’ wi’ thee this day,

though.”

He laughed, also sarcastic. The old lady was angry. She poured on him

her abuse, declaring she would not have Meg in the house again, nor

leave her a penny, if she married him that day.

“Tha can please thysen,” answered George, also angry.

Meg came hurriedly into the room.

“Ta’e that ’at off—ta’e it off! Tha non goos wi’ ’im this day, not if I

know it! Does ’e think tha ’rt a cow, or a pig, to be fetched wheniver

’e thinks fit. Ta’e that ’at off, I say!”

The old woman was fierce and peremptory.

“But gran’ma!——” began Meg.

The bed creaked as the old lady tried to rise.

“Ta’e that ’at off, afore I pull it off!” she cried.

“Oh, be still Gran’ma—you’ll be hurtin’ yourself, you know you will——”

“Are you coming Meg?” said George suddenly.

“She is not!” cried the old woman.

“Are you coming Meg?” repeated George, in a passion.

Meg began to cry. I suppose she looked at him through her tears. The

next thing I heard was a cry from the old woman, and the sound of

staggering feet.

“Would ta drag ’er from me!—if tha goos, ma wench, tha enters this

’ouse no more, tha ’eers that! Tha does thysen my lady! Dunna venture

anigh me after this, my gel!”—the old woman called louder and louder.

George appeared in the doorway, holding Meg by the arm. She was crying

in a little distress. Her hat with its large silk roses, was slanting

over her eyes. She was dressed in white linen. They mounted the trap. I

gave him the reins and scrambled up behind. The old woman heard us

through the open window, and we listened to her calling as we drove

away:

“Dunna let me clap eyes on thee again, tha ungrateful ’ussy, tha

ungrateful ’ussy! Tha’ll rue it, my wench, tha’ll rue it, an’ then

dunna come ter me——”

We drove out of hearing. George sat with a shut mouth, scowling. Meg

wept awhile to herself woefully. We were swinging at a good pace under

the beeches of the churchyard which stood above the level of the road.

Meg, having settled her hat, bent her head to the wind, too much

occupied with her attire to weep. We swung round the hollow by the bog

end, and rattled a short distance up the steep hill to Watnall. Then

the mare walked slowly. Meg, at leisure to collect herself, exclaimed

plaintively:

“Oh, I’ve only got one glove!”

She looked at the odd silk glove that lay in her lap, then peered about

among her skirts.

“I must ’a left it in th’ bedroom,” she said piteously.

He laughed, and his anger suddenly vanished.

“What does it matter? You’ll do without all right.”

At the sound of his voice, she recollected, and her tears and her

weeping returned.

“Nay,” he said, “don’t fret about the old woman. She’ll come round

to-morrow—an’ if she doesn’t, it’s her lookout. She’s got Polly to

attend to her.”

“But she’ll be that miserable——!” wept Meg.

“It’s her own fault. At any rate, don’t let it make you miserable”—he

glanced to see if anyone were in sight, then he put his arm round her

waist and kissed her, saying softly, coaxingly: “She’ll be all right

to-morrow. We’ll go an’ see her then, an’ she’ll be glad enough to have

us. We’ll give in to her then, poor old Gran’ma. She can boss you

about, an’ me as well, tomorrow as much as she likes. She feels it

hard, being tied to her bed. But to-day is ours, surely—isn’t it?

To-day is ours, an’ you’re not sorry, are you?”

“But I’ve got no gloves, an’ I’m sure my hair’s a sight. I never

thought she could ’a reached up like that.”

George laughed, tickled.

“No,” he said, “she _was_ in a temper. But we can get you some gloves

directly we get to Nottingham.”

“I haven’t a farthing of money,” she said.

“I’ve plenty!” he laughed. “Oh, an’ let’s try this on.”

They were merry together as he tried on her wedding ring, and they

talked softly, he gentle and coaxing, she rather plaintive. The mare

took her own way, and Meg’s hat was disarranged once more by the

sweeping elm-boughs. The yellow corn was dipping and flowing in the

fields, like a cloth of gold pegged down at the corners under which the

wind was heaving. Sometimes we passed cottages where the scarlet lilies

rose like bonfires, and the tall larkspur like bright blue leaping

smoke. Sometimes we smelled the sunshine on the browning corn,

sometimes the fragrance of the shadow of leaves. Occasionally it was

the dizzy scent of new haystacks. Then we rocked and jolted over the

rough cobblestones of Cinderhill, and bounded forward again at the foot

of the enormous pit hill, smelling of sulphur, inflamed with slow red

fires in the daylight, and crusted with ashes. We reached the top of

the rise and saw the city before us, heaped high and dim upon the broad

range of the hill. I looked for the square tower of my old school, and

the sharp proud spire of St. Andrews. Over the city hung a dullness, a

thin dirty canopy against the blue sky.

We turned and swung down the slope between the last sullied cornfields

towards Basford, where the swollen gasometers stood like toadstools. As

we neared the mouth of the street, Meg rose excitedly, pulling George’s

arm, crying:

“Oh, look, the poor little thing!”

On the causeway stood two small boys lifting their faces and weeping to

the heedless heavens, while before them, upside down, lay a baby

strapped to a shut-up baby-chair. The gim-crack carpet-seated thing had

collapsed as the boys were dismounting the curb-stone with it. It had

fallen backwards, and they were unable to right it. There lay the

infant strapped head downwards to its silly cart, in imminent danger of

suffocation. Meg leaped out, and dragged the child from the wretched

chair. The two boys, drenched with tears, howled on. Meg crouched on

the road, the baby on her knee, its tiny feet dangling against her

skirt. She soothed the pitiful tear-wet mite. She hugged it to her, and

kissed it, and hugged it, and rocked it in an abandonment of pity. When

at last the childish trio were silent, the boys shaken only by the last

ebbing sobs, Meg calmed also from her frenzy of pity for the little

thing. She murmured to it tenderly, and wiped its wet little cheeks

with her handkerchief, soothing, kissing, fondling the bewildered mite,

smoothing the wet strands of brown hair under the scrap of cotton

bonnet, twitching the inevitable baby cape into order. It was a pretty

baby, with wisps of brown-gold silken hair and large blue eyes.

“Is it a girl?” I asked one of the boys—“How old is she?”

“I don’t know,” he answered awkwardly, “We’ve ’ad ’er about a three

week.”

“Why, isn’t she your sister?”

“No—my mother keeps ’er,”—they were very reluctant to tell us anything.

“Poor little lamb!” cried Meg, in another access of pity, clasping the

baby to her bosom with one hand, holding its winsome slippered feet in

the other. She remained thus, stung through with acute pity, crouching,

folding herself over the mite. At last she raised her head, and said,

in a voice difficult with emotion:

“But you love her—don’t you?”

“Yes—she’s—she’s all right. But we ’ave to mind ’er,” replied the boy

in great confusion.

“Surely,” said Meg, “Surely you don’t begrudge that. Poor little

thing—so little, she is—surely you don’t grumble at minding her a

bit——?”

The boys would not answer.

“Oh, poor little lamb, poor little lamb!” murmured Meg over the child,

condemning with bitterness the boys and the whole world of men.

I taught one of the lads how to fold and unfold the wretched chair. Meg

very reluctantly seated the unfortunate baby therein, gently fastening

her with the strap.

“Wheer’s ’er dummy?” asked one of the boys in muffled, self-conscious

tones. The infant began to cry thinly. Meg crouched over it. The

‘dummy’ was found in the gutter and wiped on the boy’s coat, then

plugged into the baby’s mouth. Meg released the tiny clasping hand from

over her finger, and mounted the dog cart, saying sternly to the boys:

“Mind you look after her well, poor little baby with no mother. God’s

watching to see what you do to her—so you be careful, mind.”

They stood very shamefaced. George clicked to the mare, and as we

started threw coppers to the boys. While we drove away I watched the

little group diminish down the road.

“It’s such a shame,” she said, and the tears were in her voice, “—A

sweet little thing like that——”

“Ay,” said George softly, “there’s all sorts of things in towns.”

Meg paid no attention to him, but sat woman-like thinking of the

forlorn baby, and condemning the hard world. He, full of tenderness and

protectiveness towards her, having watched her with softening eyes,

felt a little bit rebuffed that she ignored him, and sat alone in her

fierce womanhood. So he busied himself with the reins, and the two sat

each alone until Meg was roused by the bustle of the town. The mare

sidled past the electric cars nervously, and jumped when a traction

engine came upon us. Meg, rather frightened, clung to George again. She

was very glad when we had passed the cemetery with its white population

of tombstones, and drew up in a quiet street.

But when we had dismounted, and given the horse’s head to a loafer, she

became confused and bashful and timid to the last degree. He took her

on his arm; he took the whole charge of her, and laughing, bore her

away towards the steps of the office. She left herself entirely in his

hands; she was all confusion, so he took the charge of her.

When, after a short time, they came out, she began to chatter with

blushful animation. He was very quiet, and seemed to be taking his

breath.

“Wasn’t he a funny little man? Did I do it all proper?—I didn’t know

what I was doing. I’m sure they were laughing at me—do you think they

were? Oh, just look at my frock—what a sight! What would they think——!”

The baby had slightly soiled the front of her dress.

George drove up the long hill into the town. As we came down between

the shops on Mansfield Road he recovered his spirits.

“Where are we going—where are you taking us?” asked Meg.

“We may as well make a day of it while we are here,” he answered,

smiling and flicking the mare. They both felt that they were launched

forth on an adventure. He put up at the “Spread Eagle,” and we walked

towards the market-place for Meg’s gloves. When he had bought her these

and a large lace scarf to give her a more clothed appearance, he wanted

dinner.

“We’ll go,” he said, “to an hôtel.”

His eyes dilated as he said it, and she shrank away with delighted

fear. Neither of them had ever been to an hôtel. She was really afraid.

She begged him to go to an eating house, to a café. He was obdurate.

His one idea was to do the thing that he was half-afraid to do. His

passion—and it was almost intoxication—was to dare to play with life.

He was afraid of the town. He was afraid to venture into the foreign

places of life, and all was foreign save the valley of Nethermere. So

he crossed the borders flauntingly, and marched towards the heart of

the unknown. We went to the Victoria Hôtel—the most imposing he could

think of—and we had luncheon according to the menu. They were like two

children, very much afraid, yet delighting in the adventure. He dared

not, however, give the orders. He dared not address anybody, waiters or

otherwise. I did that for him, and he watched me, absorbing, learning,

wondering that things were so easy and so delightful. I murmured them

injunctions across the table and they blushed and laughed with each

other nervously. It would be hard to say whether they enjoyed that

luncheon. I think Meg did not—even though she was with him. But of

George I am doubtful. He suffered exquisitely from self consciousness

and nervous embarrassment, but he felt also the intoxication of the

adventure, he felt as a man who has lived in a small island when he

first sets foot on a vast continent. This was the first step into a new

life, and he mused delightedly upon it over his brandy. Yet he was

nervous. He could not get over the feeling that he was trespassing.

“Where shall we go this afternoon?” he asked.

Several things were proposed, but Meg pleaded warmly for Colwick.

“Let’s go on a steamer to Colwick Park. There’ll be entertainments

there this afternoon. It’ll be lovely.”

In a few moments we were on the top of the car swinging down to the

Trent Bridges. It was dinner time, and crowds of people from shops and

warehouses were hurrying in the sunshine along the pavements. Sunblinds

cast their shadows on the shop-fronts, and in the shade streamed the

people dressed brightly for summer. As our car stood in the great space

of the market place we could smell the mingled scent of fruit, oranges,

and small apricots, and pears piled in their vividly coloured sections

on the stalls. Then away we sailed through the shadows of the dark

streets, and the open pools of sunshine. The castle on its high rock

stood in the dazzling dry sunlight; the fountain stood shadowy in the

green glimmer of the lime trees that surrounded the alms-houses.

There were many people at the Trent. We stood awhile on the bridge to

watch the bright river swirling in a silent dance to the sea, while the

light pleasure-boats lay asleep along the banks. We went on board the

little paddle steamer and paid our “sixpence return.” After much

waiting we set off, with great excitement, for our mile-long voyage.

Two banjos were tumming somewhere below, and the passengers hummed and

sang to their tunes. A few boats dabbled on the water. Soon the river

meadows with their high thorn hedges lay green on our right, while the

scarp of red rock rose on our left, covered with the dark trees of

summer.

We landed at Colwick Park. It was early, and few people were there.

Dead glass fairy-lamps were slung about the trees. The grass in places

was worn threadbare. We walked through the avenues and small glades of

the park till we came to the boundary where the race-course stretched

its level green, its winding white barriers running low into the

distance. They sat in the shade for some time while I wandered about.

Then many people began to arrive. It became noisy, even rowdy. We

listened for some time to an open-air concert, given by the pierrots.

It was rather vulgar, and very tiresome. It took me back to Cowes, to

Yarmouth. There were the same foolish over-eyebrowed faces, the same

perpetual jingle from an out-of-tune piano, the restless jigging to the

songs, the same choruses, the same escapading. Meg was well pleased.

The vulgarity passed by her. She laughed, and sang the choruses half

audibly, daring, but not bold. She was immensely pleased. “Oh, it’s

Ben’s turn now. I like him, he’s got such a wicked twinkle in his eye.

Look at Joey trying to be funny!—he can’t to save his life. Doesn’t he

look soft——!” She began to giggle in George’s shoulder. He saw the

funny side of things for the time and laughed with her.

During tea, which we took on the green verandah of the degraded hall,

she was constantly breaking forth into some chorus, and he would light

up as she looked at him and sing with her, _sotto voce_. He was not

embarrassed at Colwick. There he had on his best careless, superior

air. He moved about with a certain scornfulness, and ordered lobster

for tea off-handedly. This also was a new walk of life. Here he was not

hesitating or tremulously strung; he was patronising. Both Meg and he

thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

When we got back into Nottingham she entreated him not to go to the

hotel as he had proposed, and he readily yielded. Instead they went to

the Castle. We stood on the high rock in the cool of the day, and

watched the sun sloping over the great river-flats where the menial

town spread out, and ended, while the river and the meadows continued

into the distance. In the picture galleries, there was a fine

collection of Arthur Melville’s paintings. Meg thought them very

ridiculous. I began to expound them, but she was manifestly bored, and

he was half-hearted. Outside in the grounds was a military band

playing. Meg longed to be there. The townspeople were dancing on the

grass. She longed to join them, but she could not dance. So they sat

awhile looking on.

We were to go to the theatre in the evening. The Carl Rosa Company was

giving “Carmen” at the Royal. We went into the dress circle “like giddy

dukes,” as I said to him, so that I could see his eyes dilate with

adventure again as he laughed. In the theatre, among the people in

evening dress, he became once more childish and timorous. He had always

the air of one who does something forbidden, and is charmed, yet

fearful, like a trespassing child. He had begun to trespass that day

outside his own estates of Nethermere.

“Carmen” fascinated them both. The gaudy, careless Southern life amazed

them. The bold free way in which Carmen played with life startled them

with hints of freedom. They stared on the stage fascinated. Between the

acts they held each other’s hands, and looked full into each other’s

wide bright eyes, and, laughing with excitement, talked about the

opera. The theatre surged and roared dimly like a hoarse shell. Then

the music rose like a storm, and swept and rattled at their feet. On

the stage the strange storm of life clashed in music towards tragedy

and futile death. The two were shaken with a tumult of wild feeling.

When it was all over they rose bewildered, stunned, she with tears in

her eyes, he with a strange wild beating of his heart.

They were both in a tumult of confused emotion. Their ears were full of

the roaring passion of life, and their eyes were blinded by a spray of

tears and that strange quivering laughter which burns with real pain.

They hurried along the pavement to the “Spread Eagle,” Meg clinging to

him, running, clasping her lace scarf over her white frock, like a

scared white butterfly shaken through the night. We hardly spoke as the

horse was being harnessed and the lamps lighted. In the little smoke

room he drank several whiskies, she sipping out of his glass, standing

all the time ready to go. He pushed into his pocket great pieces of

bread and cheese, to eat on the way home. He seemed now to be thinking

with much acuteness. His few orders were given sharp and terse. He

hired an extra light rug in which to wrap Meg, and then we were ready.

“Who drives?” said I.

He looked at me and smiled faintly.

“You,” he answered.

Meg, like an impatient white flame stood waiting in the light of the

lamps. He covered her, extinguished her in the dark rug.

CHAPTER II

PUFFS OF WIND IN THE SAIL

The year burst into glory to usher us forth out of the valley of

Nethermere. The cherry trees had been gorgeous with heavy out-reaching

boughs of red and gold. Immense vegetable marrows lay prostrate in the

bottom garden, their great tentacles clutching the pond bank. Against

the wall the globed crimson plums hung close together, and dropped

occasionally with a satisfied plunge into the rhubarb leaves. The crop

of oats was very heavy. The stalks of corn were like strong reeds of

bamboo; the heads of grain swept heavily over like tresses weighted

with drops of gold.

George spent his time between the Mill and the Ram. The grandmother had

received them with much grumbling but with real gladness. Meg was

re-installed, and George slept at the Ram. He was extraordinarily

bright, almost gay. The fact was that his new life interested and

pleased him keenly. He often talked to me about Meg, how quaint and

naïve she was, how she amused him and delighted him. He rejoiced in

having a place of his own, a home, and a beautiful wife who adored him.

Then the public-house was full of strangeness and interest. No hour was

ever dull. If he wanted company he could go into the smoke-room, if he

wanted quiet he could sit with Meg, and she was such a treat, so soft

and warm, and so amusing. He was always laughing at her quaint crude

notions, and at her queer little turns of speech. She talked to him

with a little language, she sat on his knee and twisted his mustache,

finding small unreal fault with his features for the delight of

dwelling upon them. He was, he said, incredibly happy. Really he could

not believe it. Meg was, ah! she was a treat. Then he would laugh,

thinking how indifferent he had been about taking her. A little shadow

might cross his eyes, but he would laugh again, and tell me one of his

wife’s funny little notions. She was quite uneducated, and such fun, he

said. I looked at him as he sounded this note. I remembered his crude

superiority of early days, which had angered Emily so deeply. There was

in him something of the prig. I did not like his amused indulgence of

his wife.

At threshing day, when I worked for the last time at the Mill, I

noticed the new tendency in him. The Saxtons had always kept up a

certain proud reserve. In former years, the family had moved into the

parlour on threshing day, and an extra woman had been hired to wait on

the men who came with the machine. This time George suggested: “Let us

have dinner with the men in the kitchen, Cyril. They are a rum gang.

It’s rather good sport mixing with them. They’ve seen a bit of life,

and I like to hear them, they’re so blunt. They’re good studies

though.”

The farmer sat at the head of the table. The seven men trooped in, very

sheepish, and took their places. They had not much to say at first.

They were a mixed set, some rather small, young, and furtive looking,

some unshapely and coarse, with unpleasant eyes, the eyelids slack.

There was one man whom we called the Parrot, because he had a hooked

nose, and put forward his head as he talked. He had been a very large

man, but he was grey, and bending at the shoulders. His face was pale

and fleshy, and his eyes seemed dull sighted.

George patronised the men, and they did not object. He chaffed them,

making a good deal of demonstration in giving them more beer. He

invited them to pass up their plates, called the woman to bring more

bread and altogether played mine host of a feast of beggars. The Parrot

ate very slowly.

“Come Dad,” said George “you’re not getting on. Not got many

grinders——?”

“What I’ve got’s in th’ road. Is’ll ’ae ter get em out. I can manage

wi’ bare gums, like a baby again.”

“Second childhood, eh? Ah well, we must all come to it,” George

laughed.

The old man lifted his head and looked at him, and said slowly:

“You’n got ter ower th’ first afore that.”

George laughed, unperturbed. Evidently he was well used to the thrusts

of the public-house.

“I suppose you soon got over yours,” he said.

The old man raised himself and his eyes flickered into life. He chewed

slowly, then said:

“I’d married, an’ paid for it; I’d broke a constable’s jaw an’ paid for

it; I’d deserted from the army, an’ paid for that: I’d had a bullet

through my cheek in India atop of it all, by I was your age.”

“Oh!” said George, with condescending interest, “you’ve seen a bit of

life then?”

They drew the old man out, and he told them in his slow, laconic

fashion, a few brutal stories. They laughed and chaffed him. George

seemed to have a thirst for tales of brutal experience, the raw gin of

life. He drank it all in with relish, enjoying the sensation. The

dinner was over. It was time to go out again to work.

“And how old are you, Dad?” George asked. The Parrot looked at him

again with his heavy, tired, ironic eyes, and answered:

“If you’ll be any better for knowing—sixty-four.”

“It’s a bit rough on you, isn’t it,” continued the young man, “going

round with the threshing machine and sleeping outdoors at that time of

life? I should ’a thought you’d ’a wanted a bit o’ comfort——”

“How do you mean, ‘rough on me’?” the Parrot replied slowly.

“Oh, I think you know what I mean,” answered George easily.

“Don’t know as I do,” said the slow old Parrot. “Well, you haven’t made

exactly a good thing out of life, have you?”

“What d’you mean by a good thing? I’ve had my life, an’ I’m satisfied

wi’ it. Is’ll die with a full belly.”

“Oh, so you have saved a bit?”

“No,” said the old man deliberately, “I’ve spent as I’ve gone on. An’

I’ve had all I wish for. But I pity the angels, when the Lord sets me

before them like a book to read. Heaven won’t be heaven just then.”

“You’re a philosopher in your way,” laughed George.

“And you,” replied the old man, “toddling about your back-yard, think

yourself mighty wise. But your wisdom ’ll go with your teeth. You’ll

learn in time to say nothing.”

The old man went out and began his work, carrying the sacks of corn

from the machine to the chamber.

“There’s a lot in the old Parrot,” said George, “as he’ll never tell.”

I laughed.

“He makes you feel, as well, as if you’d a lot to discover in life,” he

continued, looking thoughtfully over the dusty straw-stack at the

chuffing machine.

After the harvest was ended the father began to deplete his farm. Most

of the stock was transferred to the “Ram.” George was going to take

over his father’s milk business, and was going to farm enough of the

land attaching to the Inn to support nine or ten cows. Until the

spring, however, Mr. Saxton retained his own milk round, and worked at

improving the condition of the land ready for the valuation. George,

with three cows, started a little milk supply in the neighbourhood of

the Inn, prepared his land for the summer, and helped in the

public-house.

Emily was the first to depart finally from the Mill. She went to a

school in Nottingham, and shortly afterwards Mollie, her younger

sister, went to her. In October I moved to London. Lettie and Leslie

were settled in their home in Brentwood, Yorkshire. We all felt very

keenly our exile from Nethermere. But as yet the bonds were not broken;

only use could sever them. Christmas brought us all home again,

hastening to greet each other. There was a slight change in everybody.

Lettie was brighter, more imperious, and very gay; Emily was quiet,

self-restrained, and looked happier; Leslie was jollier and at the same

time more subdued and earnest; George looked very healthy and happy,

and sounded well pleased with himself; my mother with her gaiety at our

return brought tears to our eyes.

We dined one evening at Highclose with the Tempests. It was dull as

usual, and we left before ten o’clock. Lettie had changed her shoes and

put on a fine cloak of greenish blue. We walked over the frost-bound

road. The ice on Nethermere gleamed mysteriously in the moonlight, and

uttered strange half-audible whoops and yelps. The moon was very high

in the sky, small and brilliant like a vial full of the pure white

liquid of light. There was no sound in the night save the haunting

movement of the ice, and the clear tinkle of Lettie’s laughter.

On the drive leading to the wood we saw someone approaching. The wild

grass was grey on either side, the thorn trees stood with shaggy black

beards sweeping down, the pine trees were erect like dark soldiers. The

black shape of the man drew near, with a shadow running at its feet. I

recognised George, obscured as he was in his cap and his upturned

collar. Lettie was in front with her husband. As George was passing,

she said, in bright clear tones:

“A Happy New Year to you.”

He stopped, swung round, and laughed.

“I thought you wouldn’t have known me,” he said.

“What, is it you George?” cried Lettie in great surprise—“Now, what a

joke! How are you?”—she put out her white hand from her draperies. He

took it, and answered, “I am very well—and you—?” However meaningless

the words were, the tone was curiously friendly, intimate, informal.

“As you see,” she replied laughing, interested in his attitude—“but

where are you going?”

“I am going home,” he answered, in a voice that meant “have you

forgotten that I too am married?”

“Oh, of course!” cried Lettie. “You are now mine host of the Ram. You

must tell me about it. May I ask him to come home with us for an hour,

mother?—It is New Year’s Eve, you know.”

“You have asked him already,” laughed mother.

“Will Mrs. Saxton spare you for so long?” asked Lettie of George.

“Meg? Oh, she does not order my comings and goings.”

“Does she not?” laughed Lettie. “She is very unwise. Train up a husband

in the way he should go, and in after life——. I never could quote a

text from end to end. I am full of beginnings, but as for a finish——!

Leslie, my shoe-lace is untied—shall I wait till I can put my foot on

the fence?”

Leslie knelt down at her feet. She shook the hood back from her head,

and her ornaments sparkled in the moonlight. Her face with its

whiteness and its shadows was full of fascination, and in their dark

recesses her eyes thrilled George with hidden magic. She smiled at him

along her cheeks while her husband crouched before her. Then, as the

three walked along towards the wood she flung her draperies into loose

eloquence and there was a glimpse of her bosom white with the moon. She

laughed and chattered, and shook her silken stuffs, sending out a

perfume exquisite on the frosted air. When we reached the house Lettie

dropped her draperies and rustled into the drawing-room. There the lamp

was low-lit, shedding a yellow twilight from the window space. Lettie

stood between the firelight and the dusky lamp glow, tall and warm

between the lights. As she turned laughing to the two men, she let her

cloak slide over her white shoulder and fall with silk splendour of a

peacock’s gorgeous blue over the arm of the large settee. There she

stood, with her white hand upon the peacock of her cloak, where it

tumbled against her dull orange dress. She knew her own splendour, and

she drew up her throat laughing and brilliant with triumph. Then she

raised both her arms to her head and remained for a moment delicately

touching her hair into order, still fronting the two men. Then with a

final little laugh she moved slowly and turned up the lamp, dispelling

some of the witchcraft from the room. She had developed strangely in

six months. She seemed to have discovered the wonderful charm of her

womanhood. As she leaned forward with her arm outstretched to the lamp,

as she delicately adjusted the wicks with mysterious fingers, she

seemed to be moving in some alluring figure of a dance, her hair like a

nimbus clouding the light, her bosom lit with wonder. The soft

outstretching of her hand was like the whispering of strange words into

the blood, and as she fingered a book the heart watched silently for

the meaning.

“Won’t you take off my shoes, darling?” she said, sinking among the

cushions of the settee. Leslie kneeled again before her, and she bent

her head and watched him.

“My feet are a tiny bit cold,” she said plaintively, giving him her

foot, that seemed like gold in the yellow silk stocking. He took it

between his hands, stroking it:

“It is quite cold,” he said, and he held both her feet in his hands.

“Ah, you dear boy!” she cried with sudden gentleness, bending forward

and touching his cheek.

“Is it great fun being mine host of ‘Ye Ramme Inne?’” she said

playfully to George. There seemed a long distance between them now as

she sat, with the man in evening dress crouching before her putting

golden shoes on her feet.

“It is rather,” he replied, “the men in the smoke room say such rum

things. My word, you hear some tales there.”

“Tell us, do!” she pleaded.

“Oh! I couldn’t. I never could tell a tale, and even if I could—well——”

“But I do long to hear,” she said, “what the men say in the smoke room

of ‘Ye Ramme Inne.’ Is it quite untellable?”

“Quite!” he laughed.

“What a pity! See what a cruel thing it is to be a woman, Leslie: we

never know what men say in smoke rooms, while you read in your novels

everything a woman ever uttered. It is a shame! George, you are a

wretch, you should tell me. I do envy you——.”

“What do you envy me, exactly?” he asked laughing always at her

whimsical way.

“Your smoke room. The way you see life—or the way you hear it, rather.”

“But I should have thought you saw life ten times more than me,” he

replied.

“I! I only see manners—good manners and bad manners. You know ‘manners

maketh a man.’ That’s when a woman’s there. But you wait awhile, you’ll

see.”

“When shall I see?” asked George, flattered and interested.

“When you have made the fortune you talked about,” she replied.

He was uplifted by her remembering the things he had said.

“But when I have made it—when!”—he said sceptically,—“even then—well, I

shall only be, or have been, landlord of ‘Ye Ramme Inne.’” He looked at

her, waiting for her to lift up his hopes with her gay balloons.

“Oh, that doesn’t matter! Leslie might be landlord of some Ram Inn when

he’s at home, for all anybody would know—mightn’t you, hubby, dear?”

“Thanks!” replied Leslie, with good humoured sarcasm.

“You can’t tell a publican from a peer, if he’s a rich publican,” she

continued. “Money maketh the man, you know.”

“Plus manners,” added George, laughing.

“Oh they are always there—where I am. I give you ten years. At the end

of that time you must invite us to your swell place—say the Hall at

Eberwich—and we will come—‘with all our numerous array.’”

She sat among her cushions smiling upon him. She was half ironical,

half sincere. He smiled back at her, his dark eyes full of trembling

hope, and pleasure, and pride.

“How is Meg?” she asked. “Is she as charming as ever—or have you

spoiled her?”

“Oh, she is as charming as ever,” he replied. “And we are tremendously

fond of one another.”

“That is right!—I do think men are delightful,” she added, smiling.

“I am glad you think so,” he laughed.

They talked on brightly about a thousand things. She touched on Paris,

and pictures, and new music, with her quick chatter, sounding to George

wonderful in her culture and facility. And at last he said he must go.

“Not until you have eaten a biscuit and drunk good luck with me,” she

cried, catching her dress about her like a dim flame and running out of

the room. We all drank to the New Year in the cold champagne.

“To the _Vita Nuova_!” said Lettie, and we drank smiling:

“Hark!” said George, “the hooters.”

We stood still and listened. There was a faint booing noise far away

outside. It was midnight. Lettie caught up a wrap and we went to the

door. The wood, the ice, the grey dim hills lay frozen in the light of

the moon. But outside the valley, far away in Derbyshire, away towards

Nottingham, on every hand the distant hooters and buzzers of mines and

ironworks crowed small on the borders of the night, like so many

strange, low voices of cockerels bursting forth at different pitch,

with different tone, warning us of the dawn of the New Year.

CHAPTER III

THE FIRST PAGES OF SEVERAL ROMANCES

I found a good deal of difference in Leslie since his marriage. He had

lost his assertive self-confidence. He no longer pronounced

emphatically and ultimately on every subject, nor did he seek to

dominate, as he had always done, the company in which he found himself.

I was surprised to see him so courteous and attentive to George. He

moved unobtrusively about the room while Lettie was chattering, and in

his demeanour there was a new reserve, a gentleness and grace. It was

charming to see him offering the cigarettes to George, or, with

beautiful tact, asking with his eyes only whether he should refill the

glass of his guest, and afterward replacing it softly close to the

other’s hand.

To Lettie he was unfailingly attentive, courteous, and undemonstrative.

Towards the end of my holiday he had to go to London on business, and

we agreed to take the journey together. We must leave Woodside soon

after eight o’clock in the morning. Lettie and he had separate rooms. I

thought she would not have risen to take breakfast with us, but at a

quarter-past seven, just as Rebecca was bringing in the coffee, she

came downstairs. She wore a blue morning gown, and her hair was as

beautifully dressed as usual.

“Why, my darling, you shouldn’t have troubled to come down so early,”

said Leslie, as he kissed her.

“Of course, I should come down,” she replied, lifting back the heavy

curtains and looking out on the snow where the darkness was wilting

into daylight. “I should not let you go away into the cold without

having seen you take a good breakfast. I think it is thawing. The snow

on the rhododendrons looks sodden and drooping. Ah, well, we can keep

out the dismal of the morning for another hour.” She glanced at the

clock—“just an hour!” she added. He turned to her with a swift

tenderness. She smiled to him, and sat down at the coffee-maker. We

took our places at table.

“I think I shall come back to-night,” he said quietly, almost

appealingly.

She watched the flow of the coffee before she answered. Then the brass

urn swung back, and she lifted her face to hand him the cup.

“You will not do anything so foolish, Leslie,” she said calmly.

He took his cup, thanking her, and bent his face over the fragrant

steam.

“I can easily catch the 7:15 from St. Pancras,” he replied, without

looking up.

“Have I sweetened to your liking Cyril?” she asked, and then, as she

stirred her coffee she added, “It is ridiculous Leslie! You catch the

7.15 and very probably miss the connection at Nottingham. You can’t

have the motor-car there, because of the roads. Besides, it is absurd

to come toiling home in the cold slushy night when you may just as well

stay in London and be comfortable.”

“At any rate I should get the 10.30 down to Lawton Hill,” he urged.

“But there is no need,” she replied, “there is not the faintest need

for you to come home to-night. It is really absurd of you. Think of all

the discomfort! Indeed I should not want to come trailing dismally home

at midnight, I should not indeed. You would be simply wretched. Stay

and have a jolly evening with Cyril.”

He kept his head bent over his plate and did not reply. His persistence

irritated her slightly.

“That is what you can do!” she said. “Go to the pantomime. Or wait—go

to Maeterlinck’s ‘Blue Bird.’ I am sure that is on somewhere. I wonder

if Rebecca has destroyed yesterday’s paper. Do you mind touching the

bell, Cyril?” Rebecca came, and the paper was discovered. Lettie

carefully read the notices, and planned for us with zest a delightful

programme for the evening. Leslie listened to it all in silence.

When the time had come for our departure Lettie came with us into the

hall to see that we were well wrapped up. Leslie had spoken very few

words. She was conscious that he was deeply offended, but her manner

was quite calm, and she petted us both brightly.

“Good-bye dear!” she said to him, when he came mutely to kiss her. “You

know it would have been miserable for you to sit all those hours in the

train at night. You will have ever such a jolly time. I know you will.

I shall look for you to-morrow. Good-bye, then, Good-bye!”

He went down the steps and into the car without looking at her. She

waited in the doorway as we moved round. In the black-grey morning she

seemed to harbour the glittering blue sky and the sunshine of March in

her dress and her luxuriant hair. He did not look at her till we were

curving to the great, snow-cumbered rhododendrons, when, at the last

moment he stood up in a sudden panic to wave to her. Almost as he saw

her the bushes came between them and he dropped dejectedly into his

seat.

“Good-bye!” we heard her call cheerfully and tenderly like a blackbird.

“Good-bye!” I answered, and: “Good-bye Darling, Good-bye!” he cried,

suddenly starting up in a passion of forgiveness and tenderness.

The car went cautiously down the soddened white path, under the trees.

I suffered acutely the sickness of exile in Norwood. For weeks I

wandered the streets of the suburb, haunted by the spirit of some part

of Nethermere. As I went along the quiet roads where the lamps in

yellow loneliness stood among the leafless trees of the night I would

feel the feeling of the dark, wet bit of path between the wood meadow

and the brooks. The spirit of that wild little slope to the Mill would

come upon me, and there in the suburb of London I would walk wrapt in

the sense of a small wet place in the valley of Nethermere. A strange

voice within me rose and called for the hill path; again I could feel

the wood waiting for me, calling and calling, and I crying for the

wood, yet the space of many miles was between us. Since I left the

valley of home I have not much feared any other loss. The hills of

Nethermere had been my walls, and the sky of Nethermere my roof

overhead. It seemed almost as if, at home, I might lift my hand to the

ceiling of the valley, and touch my own beloved sky, whose familiar

clouds came again and again to visit me, whose stars were constant to

me, born when I was born, whose sun had been all my father to me. But

now the skies were strange over my head, and Orion walked past me

unnoticing, he who night after night had stood over the woods to spend

with me a wonderful hour. When does day now lift up the confines of my

dwelling place, when does the night throw open her vastness for me, and

send me the stars for company? There is no night in a city. How can I

lose myself in the magnificent forest of darkness when night is only a

thin scattering of the trees of shadow with barrenness of lights

between!

I could never lift my eyes save to the Crystal Palace, crouching,

cowering wretchedly among the yellow-grey clouds, pricking up its two

round towers like pillars of anxious misery. No landmark could have

been more foreign to me, more depressing, than the great dilapidated

palace which lay forever prostrate above us, fretting because of its

own degradation and ruin.

I watched the buds coming on the brown almond trees; I heard the

blackbirds, and I saw the restless starlings; in the streets were many

heaps of violets, and men held forward to me snowdrops whose white mute

lips were pushed upwards in a bunch: but these things had no meaning

for me, and little interest.

Most eagerly I waited for my letters. Emily wrote to me very

constantly:

“Don’t you find it quite exhilarating, almost intoxicating, to be so

free? I think it is quite wonderful. At home you cannot live your own

life. You have to struggle to keep even a little apart for yourself. It

is so hard to stand aloof from our mothers, and yet they are only hurt

and insulted if you tell them what is in your heart. It is such a

relief not to have to be anything to anybody, but just to please

yourself. I am sure mother and I have suffered a great deal from trying

to keep up our old relations. Yet she would not let me go. When I come

home in the evening and think that I needn’t say anything to anybody,

nor do anything for anybody, but just have the evening for myself, I am

overjoyed.

“I have begun to write a story——”

Again, a little later, she wrote:

“As I go to school by Old Brayford village in the morning the birds are

thrilling wonderfully and everything seems stirring. Very likely there

will be a set-back, and after that spring will come in truth.

“When shall you come and see me? I cannot think of a spring without

you. The railways are the only fine exciting things here—one is only a

few yards away from school. All day long I am watching the great

Midland trains go south. They are very lucky to be able to rush

southward through the sunshine.

“The crows are very interesting. They flap past all the time we’re out

in the yard. The railways and the crows make the charm of my life in

Brayford. The other day I saw no end of pairs of crows. Do you remember

what they say at home?—‘One for sorrow.’ Very often one solitary

creature sits on the telegraph wires. I almost hate him when I look at

him. I think my badge for life ought to be—one crow——.”

Again, a little later:

“I have been home for the week-end. Isn’t it nice to be made much of,

to be an important cherished person for a little time? It is quite a

new experience for me.

“The snowdrops are full out among the grass in the front garden—and

such a lot. I imagined you must come in the sunshine of the Sunday

afternoon to see them. It did not seem possible you should not. The

winter aconites are out along the hedge. I knelt and kissed them. I

have been so glad to go away, to breathe the free air of life, but I

felt as if I could not come away from the aconites. I have sent you

some—are they much withered?

“Now I am in my lodgings, I have the quite unusual feeling of being

contented to stay here a little while—not long—not above a year, I am

sure. But even to be contented for a little while is enough for me——.”

In the beginning of March I had a letter from the father:

“You’ll not see us again in the old place. We shall be gone in a

fortnight. The things are most of them gone already. George has got Bob

and Flower. I have sold three of the cows, Stafford, and Julia and

Hannah. The place looks very empty. I don’t like going past the

cowsheds, and we miss hearing the horses stamp at night. But I shall

not be sorry when we have really gone. I begin to feel as if we’d

stagnated here. I begin to feel as if I was settling and getting narrow

and dull. It will be a new lease of life to get away.

“But I’m wondering how we shall be over there. Mrs. Saxton feels very

nervous about going. But at the worst we can but come back. I feel as

if I must go somewhere, it’s stagnation and starvation for us here. I

wish George would come with me. I never thought he would have taken to

public-house keeping, but he seems to like it all right. He was down

with Meg on Sunday. Mrs. Saxton says he’s getting a public-house tone.

He is certainly much livelier, more full of talk than he was. Meg and

he seem very comfortable, I’m glad to say. He’s got a good milk-round,

and I’ve no doubt but what he’ll do well. He is very cautious at the

bottom; he’ll never lose much if he never makes much.

“Sam and David are very great friends. I’m glad I’ve got the boy. We

often talk of you. It would be very lonely if it wasn’t for the

excitement of selling things and so on. Mrs. Saxton hopes you will

stick by George. She worries a bit about him, thinking he may go wrong.

I don’t think he will ever go far. But I should be glad to know you

were keeping friends. Mrs. Saxton says she will write to you about

it——.”

George was a very poor correspondent. I soon ceased to expect a letter

from him. I received one directly after the father’s.

“My Dear Cyril,

“Forgive me for not having written you before, but you see, I cannot

sit down and write to you any time. If I cannot do it just when I am in

the mood, I cannot do it at all. And it so often happens that the mood

comes upon me when I am in the fields at work, when it is impossible to

write. Last night I sat by myself in the kitchen on purpose to write to

you, and then I could not. All day, at Greymede, when I was drilling in

the fallow at the back of the church, I had been thinking of you, and I

could have written there if I had had materials, but I had not, and at

night I could not.

“I am sorry to say that in my last letter I did not thank you for the

books. I have not read them both, but I have nearly finished Evelyn

Innes. I get a bit tired of it towards the end. I do not do much

reading now. There seems to be hardly any chance for me, either

somebody is crying for me in the smoke room, or there is some business,

or else Meg won’t let me. She doesn’t like me to read at night, she

says I ought to talk to her, so I have to.

“It is half-past seven, and I am sitting ready dressed to go and talk

to Harry Jackson about a young horse he wants to sell to me. He is in

pretty low water, and it will make a pretty good horse. But I don’t

care much whether I have it or not. The mood seized me to write to you.

Somehow at the bottom I feel miserable and heavy, yet there is no need.

I am making pretty good money, and I’ve got all I want. But when I’ve

been ploughing and getting the oats in those fields on the hillside at

the back of Greymede church, I’ve felt as if I didn’t care whether I

got on or not. It’s very funny. Last week I made over five pounds

clear, one way and another, and yet now I’m as restless, and

discontented as I can be, and I seem eager for something, but I don’t

know what it is. Sometimes I wonder where I am going. Yesterday I

watched broken white masses of cloud sailing across the sky in a fresh

strong wind. They all seemed to be going somewhere. I wondered where

the wind was blowing them. I don’t seem to have hold on anything, do I?

Can you tell me what I want at the bottom of my heart? I wish you were

here, then I think I should not feel like this. But generally I don’t,

generally I am quite jolly, and busy.

“By jove, here’s Harry Jackson come for me. I will finish this letter

when I get back.

“——I have got back, we have turned out, but I cannot finish. I cannot

tell you all about it. I’ve had a little row with Meg. Oh, I’ve had a

rotten time. But I cannot tell you about it to-night, it is late, and I

am tired, and have a headache. Some other time perhaps——

GEORGE SAXTON.”

The spring came bravely, even in south London, and the town was filled

with magic. I never knew the sumptuous purple of evening till I saw the

round arc-lamps fill with light, and roll like golden bubbles along the

purple dusk of the high road. Everywhere at night the city is filled

with the magic of lamps: over the river they pour in golden patches

their floating luminous oil on the restless darkness; the bright lamps

float in and out of the cavern of London Bridge Station like round

shining bees in and out of a black hive; in the suburbs the street

lamps glimmer with the brightness of lemons among the trees. I began to

love the town.

In the mornings I loved to move in the aimless street’s procession,

watching the faces come near to me, with the sudden glance of dark

eyes, watching the mouths of the women blossom with talk as they

passed, watching the subtle movements of the shoulders of men beneath

their coats, and the naked warmth of their necks that went glowing

along the street. I loved the city intensely for its movement of men

and women, the soft, fascinating flow of the limbs of men and women,

and the sudden flash of eyes and lips as they pass. Among all the faces

of the street my attention roved like a bee which clambers drunkenly

among blue flowers. I became intoxicated with the strange nectar which

I sipped out of the eyes of the passers-by.

I did not know how time was hastening by on still bright wings, till I

saw the scarlet hawthorn flaunting over the road, and the lime-buds lit

up like wine drops in the sun, and the pink scarves of the lime-buds

pretty as louse-wort a-blossom in the gutters, and a silver-pink tangle

of almond boughs against the blue sky. The lilacs came out, and in the

pensive stillness of the suburb, at night, came the delicious tarry

scent of lilac flowers, wakening a silent laughter of romance.

Across all this, strangely, came the bleak sounds of home. Alice wrote

to me at the end of May:

“Cyril dear, prepare yourself. Meg has got twins—yesterday. I went up

to see how she was this afternoon, not knowing anything, and there I

found a pair of bubs in the nest, and old ma Stainwright bossing the

show. I nearly fainted. Sybil dear, I hardly knew whether to laugh or

to cry when I saw those two rummy little round heads, like two larch

cones cheek by cheek on a twig. One is a darkie, with lots of black

hair, and the other is red, would you believe it, just lit up with thin

red hair like a flicker of firelight. I gasped. I believe I did shed a

few tears, though what for, I don’t know.

“The old grandma is a perfect old wretch over it. She lies chuckling

and passing audible remarks in the next room, as pleased as punch

really, but so mad because ma Stainwright wouldn’t have them taken in

to her. You should have heard her when we took them in at last. They

are both boys. She did make a fuss, poor old woman. I think she’s going

a bit funny in the head. She seemed sometimes to think they were hers,

and you should have heard her, the way she talked to them, it made me

feel quite funny. She wanted them lying against her on the pillow, so

that she could feel them with her face. I shed a few more tears, Sybil.

I think I must be going dotty also. But she came round when we took

them away, and began to chuckle to herself, and talk about the things

she’d say to George when he came—awful shocking things, Sybil, made me

blush dreadfully.

“Georgie didn’t know about it then. He was down at Bingham, buying some

horses, I believe. He seems to have got a craze for buying horses. He

got in with Harry Jackson and Mayhew’s sons—you know, they were horse

dealers—at least their father was. You remember he died bankrupt about

three years ago. There are Fred and Duncan left, and they pretend to

keep on the old business. They are always up at the Ram, and Georgie is

always driving about with them. I don’t like it—they are a loose lot,

rather common, and poor enough now.

“Well, I thought I’d wait and see Georgie. He came about half-past

five. Meg had been fidgeting about him, wondering where he was, and how

he was, and so on. Bless me if I’d worry and whittle about a man. The

old grandma heard the cart, and before he could get down she

shouted—you know her room is in the front—‘Hi, George, ma lad, sharpen

thy shins an’ com’ an’ a’e a look at ’em—thee’r’s two on ’em, two on

’em!’ and she laughed something awful.

“‘’Ello Granma, what art ter shoutin’ about?’ he said, and at the sound

of his voice Meg turned to me so pitiful, and said:

“‘He’s been wi’ them Mayhews.”

“‘Tha’s gotten twins, a couple at a go ma lad!’ shouted the old woman,

and you know how she gives squeal before she laughs! She made the horse

shy, and he swore at it something awful. Then Bill took it, and Georgie

came upstairs. I saw Meg seem to shrink when she heard him kick at the

stairs as he came up, and she went white. When he got to the top he

came in. He fairly reeked of whisky and horses. Bah, a man is hateful

when he reeks of drink! He stood by the side of the bed grinning like a

fool, and saying, quite thick:

“‘You’ve bin in a bit of a ’urry, ’aven’t you Meg. An’ how are ter

feelin’ then?’

“‘Oh, I’m a’ right,’ said Meg.

“‘Is it twins, straight?’ he said, ‘wheer is ’em?’

“Meg looked over at the cradle, and he went round the bed to it,

holding to the bed-rail. He had never kissed her, nor anything. When he

saw the twins, asleep with their fists shut tight as wax, he gave a

laugh as if he was amused, and said:

“‘Two right enough—an’ one on ’em red! Which is the girl, Meg, the

black un?’

“‘They’re both boys,’ said Meg, quite timidly.

“He turned round, and his eyes went little.

“‘Blast ’em then!’ he said. He stood there looking like a devil. Sybil

dear, I did not know our George could look like that. I thought he

could only look like a faithful dog or a wounded stag. But he looked

fiendish. He stood watching the poor little twins, scowling at them,

till at last the little red one began to whine a bit. Ma Stainwright

came pushing her fat carcass in front of him and bent over the baby,

saying:

“‘Why, my pretty, what are they doin’ to thee, what are they?—what are

they doin’ to thee?’

“Georgie scowled blacker than ever, and went out, lurching against the

wash-stand and making the pots rattle till my heart jumped in my

throat.

“‘Well, if you don’t call that scandylos——!’ said old Ma Stainwright,

and Meg began to cry. You don’t know, Cyril! She sobbed fit to break

her heart. I felt as if I could have killed him.

“That old gran’ma began talking to him, and he laughed at her. I do

hate to hear a man laugh when he’s half drunk. It makes my blood boil

all of a sudden. That old grandmother backs him up in everything, she’s

a regular nuisance. Meg has cried to me before over the pair of them.

The wicked, vulgar old thing that she is——”

I went home to Woodside early in September. Emily was staying at the

Ram. It was strange that everything was so different. Nethermere even

had changed. Nethermere was no longer a complete, wonderful little

world that held us charmed inhabitants. It was a small, insignificant

valley lost in the spaces of the earth. The tree that had drooped over

the brook with such delightful, romantic grace was a ridiculous thing

when I came home after a year of absence in the south. The old symbols

were trite and foolish.

Emily and I went down one morning to Strelley Mill. The house was

occupied by a labourer and his wife, strangers from the north. He was

tall, very thin, and silent, strangely suggesting kinship with the rats

of the place. She was small and very active, like some ragged domestic

fowl run wild. Already Emily had visited her, so she invited us into

the kitchen of the mill, and set forward the chairs for us. The large

room had the barren air of a cell. There was a small table stranded

towards the fireplace, and a few chairs by the walls; for the rest,

desert spaces of flagged floor retreating into shadow. On the walls by

the windows were five cages of canaries, and the small sharp movements

of the birds made the room more strange in its desolation. When we

began to talk the birds began to sing, till we were quite bewildered,

for the little woman spoke Glasgow Scotch, and she had a hare lip. She

rose and ran toward the cages, crying herself like some wild fowl, and

flapping a duster at the warbling canaries.

“Stop it, stop it!” she cried, shaking her thin weird body at them.

“Silly little devils, fools, fools, fools!!” and she flapped the duster

till the birds were subdued. Then she brought us delicious scones and

apple jelly, urging us, almost nudging us with her thin elbows to make

us eat.

“Don’t you like ’em, don’t you? Well eat ’em, eat ’em then. Go on

Emily, go on, eat some more. Only don’t tell Tom—don’t tell Tom when ’e

comes in,”—she shook her head and laughed her shrilling, weird

laughter.

As we were going she came out with us, and went running on in front. We

could not help noting how ragged and unkempt was her short black skirt.

But she hastened around us, hither and thither like an excited fowl,

talking in her high-pitched, unintelligible manner. I could not believe

the brooding mill was in her charge. I could not think this was the

Strelley Mill of a year ago. She fluttered up the steep orchard bank in

front of us. Happening to turn round and see Emily and me smiling at

each other she began to laugh her strident, weird laughter saying, with

a leer:

“Emily, he’s your sweetheart, your sweetheart Emily! You never told

me!” and she laughed aloud.

We blushed furiously. She came away from the edge of the sluice gully,

nearer to us, crying:

“You’ve been here o’ nights, haven’t you Emily—haven’t you?” and she

laughed again. Then she sat down suddenly, and pointing above our

heads, shrieked:

“Ah, look there”—we looked and saw the mistletoe. “Look at her, look at

her! How many kisses a night, Emily?—Ha! Ha! kisses all the year!

Kisses o’ nights in a lonely place.”

She went on wildly for a short time, then she dropped her voice and

talked in low, pathetic tones. She pressed on us scones and jelly and

oat-cakes, and we left her.

When we were out on the road by the brook Emily looked at me with

shamefaced, laughing eyes. I noticed a small movement of her lips, and

in an instant I found myself kissing her, laughing with some of the

little woman’s wildness.

CHAPTER IV

DOMESTIC LIFE AT THE RAM

George was very anxious to receive me at his home. The Ram had as yet

only a six days licence, so on Sunday afternoon I walked over to tea.

It was very warm and still and sunny as I came through Greymede. A few

sweethearts were sauntering under the horse-chestnut trees, or crossing

the road to go into the fields that lay smoothly carpeted after the

hay-harvest.

As I came round the flagged track to the kitchen door of the Inn I

heard the slur of a baking tin and the bang of the oven door, and Meg

saying crossly:

“No, don’t you take him Emily—naughty little thing! Let his father hold

him!”

One of the babies was crying.

I entered, and found Meg all flushed and untidy, wearing a large white

apron, just rising from the oven. Emily, in a cream dress, was taking a

red-haired, crying baby from out of the cradle. George sat in the small

arm-chair, smoking and looking cross.

“I can’t shake hands,” said Meg, rather flurried. “I am all floury. Sit

down, will you——” and she hurried out of the room. Emily looked up from

the complaining baby to me and smiled a woman’s rare, intimate smile,

which says: “See, I am engaged thus for a moment, but I keep my heart

for you all the time.”

George rose and offered me the round arm-chair. It was the highest

honour he could do me. He asked me what I would drink. When I refused

everything, he sat down heavily on the sofa, frowning, and angrily

cudgelling his wits for something to say—in vain.

The room was large and comfortably furnished with rush-chairs, a

glass-knobbed dresser, a cupboard with glass doors, perched on a shelf

in the corner, and the usual large sofa whose cosy loose-bed and

pillows were covered with red cotton stuff. There was a peculiar

reminiscence of victuals and drink in the room; beer, and a touch of

spirits, and bacon. Teenie, the sullen, black-browed servant girl came

in carrying the other baby, and Meg called from the scullery to ask her

if the child were asleep. Meg was evidently in a bustle and a flurry, a

most uncomfortable state.

“No,” replied Teenie, “he’s not for sleep this day.”

“Mend the fire and see to the oven, and then put him his frock on,”

replied Meg testily. Teenie set the black-haired baby in the second

cradle. Immediately he began to cry, or rather to shout his

remonstrance. George went across to him and picked up a white furry

rabbit, which he held before the child:

“Here, look at bun-bun! Have your nice rabbit! Hark at it squeaking!”

The baby listened for a moment, then, deciding that this was only a

put-off, began to cry again. George threw down the rabbit and took the

baby, swearing inwardly. He dandled the child on his knee.

“What’s up then?—What’s up wi’ thee? Have a ride

then—dee-de-dee-de-dee!”

But the baby knew quite well what was the father’s feeling towards him,

and he continued to cry.

“Hurry up, Teenie!” said George as the maid rattled the coal on the

fire. Emily was walking about hushing her charge, and smiling at me, so

that I had a peculiar pleasure in gathering for myself the honey of

endearment which she shed on the lips of the baby. George handed over

his child to the maid, and said to me with patient sarcasm:

“Will you come in the garden?”

I rose and followed him across the sunny flagged yard, along the path

between the bushes. He lit his pipe and sauntered along as a man on his

own estate does, feeling as if he were untrammeled by laws or

conventions.

“You know,” he said, “she’s a dam rotten manager.”

I laughed, and remarked how full of plums the trees were.

“Yes!” he replied heedlessly—“you know she ought to have sent the girl

out with the kids this afternoon, and have got dressed directly. But

no, she must sit gossiping with Emily all the time they were asleep,

and then as soon as they wake up she begins to make cake——”

“I suppose she felt she’d enjoy a pleasant chat, all quiet,” I

answered.

“But she knew quite well you were coming, and what it would be. But a

woman’s no dam foresight.”

“Nay, what does it matter!” said I.

“Sunday’s the only day we can have a bit of peace, so she might keep

’em quiet then.”

“I suppose it was the only time, too, that she could have a quiet

gossip,” I replied.

“But you don’t know,” he said, “there seems to be never a minute of

freedom. Teenie sleeps in now, and lives with us in the kitchen—Oswald

as well—so I never know what it is to have a moment private. There

doesn’t seem a single spot anywhere where I can sit quiet. It’s the

kids all day, and the kids all night, and the servants, and then all

the men in the house—I sometimes feel as if I should like to get away.

I shall leave the pub as soon as I can—only Meg doesn’t want to.”

“But if you leave the public-house—what then?”

“I should like to get back on a farm. This is no sort of a place,

really, for farming. I’ve always got some business on hand, there’s a

traveller to see, or I’ve got to go to the brewers, or I’ve somebody to

look at a horse, or something. Your life’s all messed up. If I had a

place of my own, and farmed it in peace——”

“You’d be as miserable as you could be,” I said.

“Perhaps so,” he assented, in his old reflective manner. “Perhaps so!

Anyhow, I needn’t bother, for I feel as if I never shall go back—to the

land.”

“Which means at the bottom of your heart you don’t intend to,” I said

laughing.

“Perhaps so!” he again yielded. “You see I’m doing pretty well

here—apart from the public-house: I always think that’s Meg’s. Come and

look in the stable. I’ve got a shire mare and two nags: pretty good. I

went down to Melton Mowbray with Tom Mayhew, to a chap they’ve had

dealings with. Tom’s all right, and he knows how to buy, but he is such

a lazy careless devil, too lazy to be bothered to sell——”

George was evidently interested. As we went round to the stables, Emily

came out with the baby, which was dressed in a new silk frock. She

advanced, smiling to me with dark eyes:

“See, now he is good! Doesn’t he look pretty?”

She held the baby for me to look at. I glanced at it, but I was only

conscious of the near warmth of her cheek, and of the scent of her

hair.

“Who is he like?” I asked, looking up and finding myself full in her

eyes. The question was quite irrelevant: her eyes spoke a whole clear

message that made my heart throb; yet she answered.

“Who is he? Why, nobody, of course! But he _will_ be like father, don’t

you think?”

The question drew my eyes to hers again, and again we looked each other

the strange intelligence that made her flush and me breathe in as I

smiled.

“Ay! Blue eyes like your father’s—not like yours——”

Again the wild messages in her looks.

“No!” she answered very softly. “And I think he’ll be jolly, like

father—they have neither of them our eyes, have they?”

“No,” I answered, overcome by a sudden hot flush of tenderness. “No—not

vulnerable. To have such soft, vulnerable eyes as you used makes one

feel nervous and irascible. But you have clothed over the sensitiveness

of yours, haven’t you?—like naked life, naked defenceless protoplasm

they were, is it not so?”

She laughed, and at the old painful memories she dilated in the old

way, and I felt the old tremor at seeing her soul flung quivering on my

pity.

“And were mine like that?” asked George, who had come up.

He must have perceived the bewilderment of my look as I tried to adjust

myself to him. A slight shadow, a slight chagrin appeared on his face.

“Yes,” I answered, “yes—but not so bad. You never gave yourself away so

much—you were most cautious: but just as defenceless.”

“And am I altered?” he asked, with quiet irony, as if he knew I was not

interested in him.

“Yes, more cautious. You keep in the shadow. But Emily has clothed

herself, and can now walk among the crowd at her own gait.”

It was with an effort I refrained from putting my lips to kiss her at

that moment as she looked at me with womanly dignity and tenderness.

Then I remembered, and said:

“But you are taking me to the stable George! Come and see the horses

too, Emily.”

“I will. I admire them so much,” she replied, and thus we both indulged

him.

He talked to his horses and of them, laying his hand upon them, running

over their limbs. The glossy, restless animals interested him more than

anything. He broke into a little flush of enthusiasm over them. They

were his new interest. They were quiet and yet responsive; he was their

master and owner. This gave him real pleasure.

But the baby became displeased again. Emily looked at me for sympathy

with him.

“He is a little wanderer,” she said, “he likes to be always moving.

Perhaps he objects to the ammonia of stables too,” she added, frowning

and laughing slightly, “it is not very agreeable, is it?”

“Not particularly,” I agreed, and as she moved off I went with her,

leaving him in the stables. When Emily and I were alone we sauntered

aimlessly back to the garden. She persisted in talking to the baby, and

in talking to me about the baby, till I wished the child in Jericho.

This made her laugh, and she continued to tantalise me. The holly-hock

flowers of the second whorl were flushing to the top of the spires. The

bees, covered with pale crumbs of pollen, were swaying a moment outside

the wide gates of the florets, then they swung in with excited hum, and

clung madly to the fury white capitols, and worked riotously round the

waxy bases. Emily held out the baby to watch, talking all the time in

low, fond tones. The child stretched towards the bright flowers. The

sun glistened on his smooth hair as on bronze dust, and the wondering

blue eyes of the baby followed the bees. Then he made small sounds, and

suddenly waved his hands, like rumpled pink holly-hock buds.

“Look!” said Emily, “look at the little bees! Ah, but you mustn’t touch

them, they bite. They’re coming!” she cried, with sudden laughing

apprehension, drawing the child away. He made noises of remonstrance.

She put him near to the flowers again till he knocked the spire with

his hand and two indignant bees came sailing out. Emily drew back

quickly crying in alarm, then laughing with excited eyes at me, as if

she had just escaped a peril in my presence. Thus she teased me by

flinging me all kinds of bright gages of love while she kept me aloof

because of the child. She laughed with pure pleasure at this state of

affairs, and delighted the more when I frowned, till at last I

swallowed my resentment and laughed too, playing with the hands of the

baby, and watching his blue eyes change slowly like a softly sailing

sky.

Presently Meg called us in to tea. She wore a dress of fine blue stuff

with cream silk embroidery, and she looked handsome, for her hair was

very hastily dressed.

“What, have you had that child all this time?” she exclaimed, on seeing

Emily. “Where is his father?”

“I don’t know—we left him in the stable, didn’t we Cyril? But I like

nursing him, Meg. I like it ever so much,” replied Emily.

“Oh, yes, you may be sure George would get off it if he could. He’s

always in the stable. As I tell him, he fair stinks of horses. He’s not

that fond of the children, I can tell you. Come on, my pet—why, come to

its mammy.”

She took the baby and kissed it passionately, and made extravagant love

to it. A clean shaven young man with thick bare arms went across the

yard.

“Here, just look and tell George as tea is ready,” said Meg.

“Where is he?” asked Oswald, the sturdy youth who attended to the farm

business.

“You know where to find him,” replied Meg, with that careless freedom

which was so subtly derogatory to her husband.

George came hurrying from the out-building. “What, is it tea already?”

he said.

“It’s a wonder you haven’t been crying out for it this last hour,” said

Meg.

“It’s a marvel you’ve got dressed so quick,” he replied.

“Oh, is it?” she answered—“well, it’s not with any of your help that

I’ve done it, that is a fact. Where’s Teenie?”

The maid, short, stiffly built, very dark and sullen looking, came

forward from the gate.

“Can you take Alfy as well, just while we have tea?” she asked. Teenie

replied that she should think she could, whereupon she was given the

ruddy-haired baby, as well as the dark one. She sat with them on a seat

at the end of the yard. We proceeded to tea.

It was a very great spread. There were hot cakes, three or four kinds

of cold cakes, tinned apricots, jellies, tinned lobster, and trifles in

the way of jam, cream, and rum.

“I don’t know what those cakes are like,” said Meg. “I made them in

such a fluster. Really, you have to do things as best you can when

you’ve got children—especially when there’s two. I never seem to have

time to do my hair up even—look at it now.”

She put up her hands to her head, and I could not help noticing how

grimy and rough were her nails.

The tea was going on pleasantly when one of the babies began to cry.

Teenie bent over it crooning gruffly. I leaned back and looked out of

the door to watch her. I thought of the girl in Tchekoff’s story, who

smothered her charge, and I hoped the grim Teenie would not be driven

to such desperation. The other child joined in this chorus. Teenie rose

from her seat and walked about the yard, gruffly trying to soothe the

twins.

“It’s a funny thing, but whenever anybody comes they’re sure to be

cross,” said Meg, beginning to simmer.

“They’re no different from ordinary,” said George, “it’s only that

you’re forced to notice it then.”

“No, it is not!” cried Meg in a sudden passion: “Is it now, Emily? Of

course, he has to say something! Weren’t they as good as gold this

morning, Emily?—and yesterday!—why they never murmured, as good as gold

they were. But he wants them to be as dumb as fishes: he’d like them

shutting up in a box as soon as they make a bit of noise.”

“I was not saying anything about it,” he replied.

“Yes, you were,” she retorted. “I don’t know what you call it then——”

The babies outside continued to cry.

“Bring Alfy to me,” called Meg, yielding to the mother feeling.

“Oh, no, damn it!” said George, “let Oswald take him.”

“Yes,” replied Meg bitterly, “let anybody take him so long as he’s out

of your sight. You never ought to have children, you didn’t——”

George murmured something about “to-day.”

“Come then!” said Meg with a whole passion of tenderness, as she took

the red-haired baby and held it to her bosom, “Why, what is it then,

what is it, my precious? Hush then pet, hush then!”

The baby did not hush. Meg rose from her chair and stood rocking the

baby in her arms, swaying from one foot to the other.

“He’s got a bit of wind,” she said.

We tried to continue the meal, but everything was awkward and

difficult.

“I wonder if he’s hungry,” said Meg, “let’s try him.”

She turned away and gave him her breast. Then he was still, so she

covered herself as much as she could, and sat down again to tea. We had

finished, so we sat and waited while she ate. This disjointing of the

meal, by reflex action, made Emily and me more accurate. We were

exquisitely attentive, and polite to a nicety. Our very speech was

clipped with precision, as we drifted to a discussion of Strauss and

Debussy. This of course put a breach between us two and our hosts, but

we could not help it; it was our only way of covering over the

awkwardness of the occasion. George sat looking glum and listening to

us. Meg was quite indifferent. She listened occasionally, but her

position as mother made her impregnable. She sat eating calmly, looking

down now and again at her baby, holding us in slight scorn, babblers

that we were. She was secure in her high maternity; she was mistress

and sole authority. George, as father, was first servant; as an

indifferent father, she humiliated him and was hostile to his wishes.

Emily and I were mere intruders, feeling ourselves such. After tea we

went upstairs to wash our hands. The grandmother had had a second

stroke of paralysis, and lay inert, almost stupified. Her large bulk

upon the bed was horrible to me, and her face, with the muscles all

slack and awry, seemed like some cruel cartoon. She spoke a few thick

words to me. George asked her if she felt all right, or should he rub

her. She turned her old eyes slowly to him.

“My leg—my leg a bit,” she said in her strange guttural.

He took off his coat, and pushing his hand under the bed-clothes, sat

rubbing the poor old woman’s limb patiently, slowly, for some time. She

watched him for a moment, then without her turning her eyes from him,

he passed out of her vision and she lay staring at nothing, in his

direction.

“There,” he said at last, “is that any better then, mother?”

“Ay, that’s a bit better,” she said slowly.

“Should I gi’e thee a drink?” he asked, lingering, wishing to minister

all he could to her before he went.

She looked at him, and he brought the cup. She swallowed a few drops

with difficulty.

“Doesn’t it make you miserable to have her always there?” I asked him,

when we were in the next room. He sat down on the large white bed and

laughed shortly.

“We’re used to it—we never notice her, poor old gran’ma.”

“But she must have made a difference to you—she must make a big

difference at the bottom, even if you don’t know it,” I said.

“She’d got such a strong character,” he said musing, “—she seemed to

understand me. She was a real friend to me before she was so bad.

Sometimes I happen to look at her—generally I never see her, you know

how I mean—but sometimes I do—and then—it seems a bit rotten——”

He smiled at me peculiarly, “—it seems to take the shine off things,”

he added, and then, smiling again with ugly irony—“She’s our skeleton

in the closet.” He indicated her large bulk.

The church bells began to ring. The grey church stood on a rise among

the fields not far away, like a handsome old stag looking over towards

the inn. The five bells began to play, and the sound came beating upon

the window.

“I hate Sunday night,” he said restlessly.

“Because you’ve nothing to do?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It seems like a gag, and you feel helpless. I

don’t want to go to church, and hark at the bells, they make you feel

uncomfortable.”

“What do you generally do?” I asked.

“Feel miserable—I’ve been down to Mayhew’s these last two Sundays, and

Meg’s been pretty mad. She says it’s the only night I could stop with

her, or go out with her. But if I stop with her, what can I do?—and if

we go out, it’s only for half an hour. I hate Sunday night—it’s a dead

end.”

When we went downstairs, the table was cleared, and Meg was bathing the

dark baby. Thus she was perfect. She handled the bonny, naked child

with beauty of gentleness. She kneeled over him nobly. Her arms and her

bosom and her throat had a nobility of roundness and softness. She

drooped her head with the grace of a Madonna, and her movements were

lovely, accurate and exquisite, like an old song perfectly sung. Her

voice, playing and soothing round the curved limbs of the baby, was

like water, soft as wine in the sun, running with delight.

We watched humbly, sharing the wonder from afar.

Emily was very envious of Meg’s felicity. She begged to be allowed to

bathe the second baby. Meg granted her bounteous permission:

“Yes, you can wash him if you like, but what about your frock?”