The weather signalized Tom’s return to England by a blizzard from the
north, which for twenty-four hours spread sheet after sheet of snow on
the ground, till one would have thought that the linen-presses of the
elements were empty. He had caught a slight cold, and the only possible
course was to sit by the fire, talk to his father, who seemed actually
pleased to see him, and think of the Acropolis. But during the second
night the soft snow-laden outlines of the hills and trees suddenly
crispened and crystallized, and a still, windless frost gripped the
white earth. A winter’s sun hung like a burnished copper plate low in
the south, and the sight of the keeper with his round cheery face,
asking if there were any orders, rendered the house impossible.
“Yes, I’ll come out in half an hour,” said Tom. “Get a few beaters, and
we’ll just walk through the woods. And send down to the vicarage to ask
Mr. Markham if he’d care for a tramp. They don’t have pheasants in
Greece, Kimberley: there’s a country for you!”
“Mr. Ted’s not at home, sir,” said Kimberley.
“I know, but his father is. He shoots very well. Send at once, will you?
I want to start.”
May had already left the house when the keeper came to bring Tom’s
message to her father, and Mr. Markham left a note for her saying where
he had gone, and that he would not be in for lunch. He was devoted to
shooting, but of late years had not been able to indulge his taste; so
some parish work which could easily be put off, as well as the chance of
a quiet hour at his Aristophanes, fell into their proper places in the
scheme of things.
It was about half-past twelve, and Tom was standing alone at the end of
a small clump of fir-trees, round which he had stolen with infinite
precautions in order to avoid startling the pigeons. He had studied the
habits of pigeons in this particular spot with much care for several
years, and the keeper always alluded to it as “Master Tom’s cover.” It
stood on a knoll of rising ground, some quarter of a mile away from the
house, and by dint of long experience and frequent failure Tom had found
that if the pigeons were artfully disturbed by beaters entering towards
the centre from opposite sides they always broke cover at two particular
points at opposite ends of the knoll, and that one gun stationed at each
of these points became a fiery sword, turning, as far as the pigeons
were concerned, every way. Tom was standing at one end of the cover,
having seen Mr. Markham to his place, and was expecting every moment to
hear the tapping of the beaters’ sticks and the swan-song of the
pigeons’ wings. He was on the edge of a little footpath which led across
the park from the village, half hidden from it by a thick bramble bush,
behind which he had placed himself so that he could see without being
seen. But at this most critical of all moments he heard with some
impatience the sound of a footstep coming crisply and quickly along the
frozen path. The path took a sudden bend almost exactly as it came
opposite to him, and simultaneously he heard the faint tapping of the
beaters’ sticks and saw a figure come round the corner.
For one moment Time stopped, and he stared blankly, wonderingly. Then
half to himself, half aloud, he said--
“Oh, all ye gods, she is a goddess!”
The next moment he recognized her, and springing out from his bramble
bush he took off his hat to May Markham, and wondered if she remembered
him.
The beaters beat, and the pigeons started from the branches, and flew
out in the pre-ordained manner, threading their way between the tops of
the thick trees, as they and their deceased relations had often done
before. Mr. Markham had one of the most delightful five minutes that
falls to the lot of sportsmen, and straight over Tom’s head as he stood
in the path the steely targets tacked and swerved. But Tom heeded not;
the swan-song of their clapping wings for once was unheard and
unfulfilled, for in his heart there was another song, no last song of
birds’ wings, but the first maddening music which a man’s heart offers
to a woman, the song of a youth to a maid, the song of the lover to the
beloved, which rises up day by day, and hour by hour, and keeps this old
earth young.
May replied that of course she remembered him, and supposed that he had
just come back from Greece, and a golden silence descended again. Tom
was standing on ground an inch or two lower than the girl, and their
faces were on a level: if anything, she appeared the taller of the two,
and as his eyes rested on hers they were inclined slightly upwards, so
that a thin rim of white showed below his honest brown iris. May was
with her back to the low southern sun, but it just caught a few outlying
hairs which strayed from beneath her hat, and turned them into spun
gold. Her lips were slightly pouted, and through the length of her mouth
ran a thin even line showing the white edge of her upper teeth. She had
been walking quickly, and her nostrils swelled and receded with each
breath, and one could just see the rise and fall of her bosom beneath
her blue tightly buttoned jacket.
She met Tom’s eager gaze with unembarrassed, unaverted looks. They had
been excellent friends when Tom had stayed with them not long ago at
Chesterford, and this seemed simply a continuation of their early
comradeship, for it was evident that he was quite a boy still. But
almost immediately something in his look, or some half-conscious
reminiscence of that moment, a fortnight ago, when she had looked at
herself in the glass in Mr. Carlingford’s drawing-room, caused her to
turn her eyes down, and for the first time she noticed that Tom was
carrying a gun. The desire for an intelligible reason why he should have
been found standing in a bramble bush on a cold winter’s morning had not
appealed to her before.
“Have you had good sport?” she asked, pointing to the gun.
Tom followed the direction of her finger, and to him also apparently it
occurred for the first time that he was out shooting.
“Yes, very fair,” said Tom. “By the way, what’s happened to the
pigeons?”
Almost as he spoke the head keeper emerged from the bracken, proud in
the consciousness of a skilfully executed duty. He touched his hat to
May, and turned to Tom.
“Wonderful lot of pigeons in this morning, sir,” he said. “Didn’t hear
you shooting, Master Tom.”
“No, I didn’t see any birds. Did any come out over me?”
“Ten or twelve at least, sir, and the same over Mr. Markham.”
“Oh, well, it can’t be helped,” said Tom, rather confusedly. “We’ll go
home to lunch now, Kimberley, and come out again after. We’re quite
close to the house.”
“Is my father out with you?” asked May.
“Yes, I suppose you had gone out when I sent down. You can’t come
through here--the brambles are so bad. Wait a moment, though.”
Tom gave his gun to the keeper, and trampled down the mixed bramble and
bracken. There was one long spray which kept asserting itself again and
again straight across the path, waving about two or three feet from the
ground. In a fit of sudden impatience Tom seized it in his hand and bent
it back among the other bushes. As a natural and inevitable consequence
his hand was covered with large prickles.
“Oh, why did you do that?” asked May; “I’m sure you’ve hurt yourself.”
Tom laughed.
“The will is destiny,” he said. “I wish to go this way, and the bramble
was in the light. That I got pricked was destiny, but another kind of
destiny. We shall meet your father if we go this way.”
To the intensest annoyance of Tom they did meet Mr. Markham in a few
moments, walking towards them. The rational thing for him would have
been to go round by the path instead of taking a short cut, and poor Tom
had pricked his fingers for nothing.
“Capital five minutes I had there, Tom,” said he. “Why, where are you
from, May?”
“I’ve just come from the Mills, on my way home to lunch,” said she.
“Oh, but you’ll lunch with us,” said Tom confidently. “We are just going
home. Look, there is the house quite close, and we are going to lunch at
one in order to shoot again for an hour or two afterwards.”
“Thanks, I’m afraid I had better go home,” said May.
“Oh, but why--why?” asked Tom, forgetting manners and everything else in
the contemplation of his visions incarnate.
May turned towards him, smiling.
“Well, I really must go off again in half an hour. It’s very kind of you
to ask me,” she added suddenly.
“That’s splendid! We shall be very soon off again too. Mr. Markham has
been walking me off my legs already, and I know he will want to do it
again the moment lunch is over.”
Mr. Carlingford was standing at the library window as the party came
down the grass slope to the house, and a smile gathered on his lips as
he watched Tom talking eagerly to May. Then, half to himself, half
aloud, he made the following enigmatical quotation: “‘As for the gods of
the heathen,’” and rang the bell to order another place at lunch.
Thus entered Tom into the garden of man’s heritage; the crowning gift of
love was added to youth and life, the golden key which unlocks the gate
of Paradise was in his hand. His whole previous life had in a moment
been flushed with an intenser colour; he was like a man born blind, who,
until his eyes were opened, knew not, could not have known, his
limitations. It was bewitching, blinding, but altogether lovely, this
new world into which he had entered. For him the period of bitter joy
and sweetest anguish had begun.
That night he went to his bedroom early, saying he was tired and sleepy
with the cold air; then ran upstairs three steps at a time, feeling an
unutterable desire to be alone with his love; another presence, he felt,
was a desecration. He blew out his candle, and lay down full length on
his bed, while the firelight danced and shivered on the walls and the
flames flapped in the grate, and spread out his arms as if to take the
truth in. How was it possible, he wondered, that a man who had ever been
in love could speak of it? Love was something white and sacred, a clear
flame burning in a casket of gold, to be hidden from the gaze of men.
No, that was not it at all; love was a glorious conquering god, and his
captives should stand in the market-place of cities and cry aloud, “See,
I can move neither hand nor foot, I am chained in golden chains, my
limbs are heavy with the chains of love. Envy me, bless me, weep for joy
that I am a captive. Bind me closer yet, crush me beneath the weight of
fetters. Lead me about in your triumphant procession; I am a captive, a
prisoner.”
He sat up, wondering at himself. It was not possible. How can the
daughters of the gods dwell with men? “Why, everything is possible to
me,” he answered himself. “I am in love, I am the king of all the earth.
Nothing is impossible.”
This modest conviction made lying still impossible. He got off his bed,
and began walking up and down the room, stopping now and then opposite
the fire, which burned brightly and frostily. In the red glow of the
coals his brown eyes looked black; his mouth was a little open, and his
breath came quickly, as if he had been running a race. His smooth boyish
face, tanned by southern suns, was flushed with excitement. Once in his
walk he stopped, stood on tip-toe, and stretched himself till he felt
every muscle in his body quiver and tingle.
Sleep was impossible, everything but violent action was impossible,
thought was impossible and inevitable. Surely it was morning by this
time. His watch reminded him that it was just a quarter to twelve; he
had been in his room only twenty minutes. Perhaps time had stopped,
perhaps he was dead, perhaps this was heaven. He would go to the
house-top and cry to the four quarters of heaven, and to the listening
earth, the story of his love, how he was out shooting pigeons, and
standing in a bramble bush, when he saw her for whom the world was made
walking towards him. He would run down through the village to the
vicarage, and stand and look at the little house in which she slept.
What was space? How could she be in a room, and that room be in a house?
for she was everywhere. Heaven and earth could not hold her; even the
thought of her filled all the world. That afternoon he had seen the tall
bare-limbed trees, the level rays of the setting sun, the rose-tinged
fields of snow, all lovely because she was lovely, all bursting with the
knowledge of her. He should have stood alone when the sun was just
setting and questioned them of her. He should have taken the level rays
of the sun into his arms, and kissed them because they were beautiful
with one infinitesimal fraction of her beauty. He should have torn the
secret of her from all Nature.
Mr. Carlingford laid a little trap for Tom next morning, which that
young gentleman fell into head-long, much to his father’s amusement. It
appeared that Mr. Markham had expressed a desire to consult a certain
book which Mr. Carlingford knew was in the house, but had been unable to
find till this morning. Would Tom, therefore, be so good as to ring the
bell, in order that a boy might be sent down with it?
“I’ll take it if you like, father,” said Tom, with much over-acted
nonchalance.
“No; why should you?”
“I--I rather want to see Mr. Markham and ask him if he can come out
shooting again to-morrow, and find out when Ted’s coming home.”
“Well, why not write a note?” said his father, smiling to himself at
this lamentably superficial excuse.
“Oh, I’ve got nothing to do,” said Tom, rising, “I may as well go. And
Gibson says the pond bears; perhaps Markham will like to skate.”
Tom rang at the vicarage bell, and was apparently unable to make it
sound, but at the second attempt produced a peal which would have
awakened the dead, and asked if the vicar was in.
“Yes, he is in his study. This way, please.”
Tom peeped in through a chink of the drawing-room door, with his heart
thumping at his ribs, and followed the servant into the study. Mr.
Markham was compiling some notes from an annotated text of the “Clouds,”
but seemed glad to see him, and grateful for the book. A brilliant idea
struck the young strategist, and he blurted it out.
“I came also to tell you that the pond bore, if you or--or--any one
wanted to skate, and I shall be awfully glad if you would shoot
to-morrow again. And oh, Mr. Markham, you know I’m very stupid at Greek,
but since I’ve been to Athens I’ve simply loved it. I’m reading
Aristophanes--at least, I’m going to, and I wonder if I might bring
difficulties and so on to you--it would help me so much, if it’s not too
much bother to you?”
“That’s capital of you,” said Mr. Markham heartily. “I do like to see
young men behave as if they had not done with classics when they leave
the University. My dear boy, of course you may. Come any morning or
every morning. I set to work pretty early, and always read classics till
eleven in the morning.”
“Thank you so much,” said Tom; “but you’ll find me fearfully stupid.”
“Nonsense, nonsense! one is only stupid about the things one doesn’t
care for. I’ll tell you what. You must come to breakfast here whenever
you want, and then we can set to work together at nine. I know your
father doesn’t breakfast till late.”
“That is awfully good of you,” said Tom, “but I shall take you at your
word, you know. And, by the way, perhaps Miss Markham would like to know
the pond bore. I might tell her, if she’s in.”
“No, May’s out,” said her father. “She is always doing something.”
“But what can she find to do here?” asked Tom, divided between his
desire to loiter and his wish to run away.
“She’s always visiting these poor folks,” said Mr. Markham. “She spends
half her day among them. Very nipping weather,” and he stirred the fire.
“I see,” said Tom; “how awfully good of her! Well, I must go. I shall
skate this afternoon. Really it would be a pity to waste such a lovely
bit of ice. Gibson says it’s quite splendid.”
“Many thanks. I dare say one or both of us will come. It’s a pity Ted’s
not here. He’s so fond of it. Good-bye. Mind you take me at my word
about the Aristophanes.”
Tom lingered and loitered through the village, ordered a bookshelf which
he did not want from the carpenter, in case of May being there, and
some bad and unnecessary tobacco from the village store, but saw her
not. But there were the prospects of the afternoon and the Aristophanes
lessons to fall back on.
So through the quiet country weeks their two young lives flowed
inevitably towards each other, like two streams which, rising on distant
ranges of hills, yet must some day meet in the valley between them.
Though their natures sprang from widely distant sources, it was
inevitable they would some time join.
But to continue the metaphor, the bed over which Tom’s stream flowed was
a bright gravelly soil, on which the water danced gaily and
light-heartedly down to the valley, pursuing a straight swift course,
whereas May had many rocks and sandy places to get over, and, what was
worse, she could not understand, and half rebelled against, the course
her stream seemed to be taking. The traditions in which she had been
brought up had become part of her nature; for her, she thought, was the
sheltered life, busy in little deeds of love, in caring for her own
corner of the world, and bringing it nearer to God, and when at first
the stream began to flow in this unconjectured direction, she was
bewildered, almost frightened. Was there anything in this world so
certain as her own duty? Could anything rightly come between her and
this other life she had planned and dedicated humbly and gratefully to
God? What call was there so clear as that still small voice which said,
“Inasmuch as ye have done it to the least, ye have done it unto me?” And
when she had come to argue about it, even to herself, the end was
already inevitable. As soon as a moral question becomes a thing to argue
about, it is already without force. No argument will convince a man that
it is better being good than bad; it is a matter, not for dispute, but
of knowledge, and the man who disputes about it is bad.
Meantime Tom had turned a large roomy attic into a studio, and worked
with all an artist’s regularity, which the world is accustomed to call
irregularity. He went constantly to London, made great friends with
Wallingthorpe, and caused that eminent sculptor many fits of divine
despair, but followed his advice about not immediately setting up a
mourning Demeter, though for other reasons than his. A mourning Demeter,
he announced frankly, should soon be set up, but not at once. He was
merely waiting, so he told Wallingthorpe, for that particular spark of
divine fire to descend, and till it descended he was willing and eager
to gain greater facility with his hand. He also cordially agreed that no
studio could exist in England except in London, but said that there were
reasons why he could not live in London just now. “Perhaps before the
summer is over,” he began, and his face flushed all over, and he asked
if anything had been heard of Manvers.
Ted was at Cambridge, and during the Lent Term Tom went up there to see
him. He arrived at the close of a lovely day in March, and though the
lawns and lower roofs of buildings were already in shade, the four tall
pinnacles of King’s Chapel burned like rosy flames against the tender
green of the evening sky.
Markham had not seen Tom since he came to England, and he looked
forward to his visit with something like passionate eagerness, for Tom
was to him the connecting link with the outer world of movement and
eagerness from which he had voluntarily banished himself, but towards
which even now he sometimes looked back with something like regret.
Though his nature was one that hugs the shore, and prefers the quiet
monotonous safety of the land-locked creeks and soft-sanded beaches to
the risks and possibilities of the open seas, he sometimes cast his eyes
to the great horizon where the ocean-going steamers passed and repassed,
with their strange cargoes and dead and living freight from those dim
mysterious countries whose very existence was becoming a fable to him.
And Tom came, with the seal of art and love upon him, but was his old
boyish self, and sat on the arm of Ted’s armchairs, and inveighed
against scholiasts, and wondered if Ted had ever heard of Pheidias.
After tea they strolled down together through the gathered dusk, and sat
on the bridge, and once more Tom dropped a match in the river, and
waited to hear it fizz. But the difference was there, and Ted wondered
if Tom would speak of it. Once he seemed on the point of it. The willow
which overhangs the river had just begun to break into tender leaf, and
the delicate foliage hung round it like a green mist. Tom paused a
moment, and grew serious.
“Look at it,” he said, “it’s like the loveliest thing on earth; it is
youth bursting into----” and he broke off suddenly.
Once again later in the evening he grew serious, and it was so odd for
Tom to be serious twice in a day, that Markham wondered.
“How I can have been such a fool when I was here I don’t know,” he said.
“Somebody told me once that I thought Cambridge narrow simply because I
wasn’t broad enough to appreciate it. Well, I think she was right. Mind,
I don’t go back on anything I said this afternoon about scholiasts. You
are narrow, old boy, so don’t misunderstand me.”
“Who was it said that?” asked Markham.
“Miss Wrexham, I think. Didn’t you meet her at home? She often tells
home truths without making them unpleasant. That is not very common.”
“Oh, do you think home truths are unpleasant?” asked Markham. “I rather
like you telling me I’m narrow.”
“My dear Ted, I never said home truths were unpleasant. I only said that
she told me home truths without making them unpleasant.”
“What’s the difference?”
“All the difference in the world. Whether they are unpleasant or not
simply depends on the personality of the person who tells you them.”
“You mean you think Miss Wrexham is not unpleasant?” asked Markham.
“Certainly, she’s not unpleasant. I think she’s quite delightful. I
suppose you don’t appreciate her.”
“Well, I hardly know her. I remember what May said of her.”
Tom sat up in his chair.
“What did she say of her?”
“She said she thought she wasn’t genuine.”
“That’s not quite true. Miss Wrexham is nearly always what you want her
to be, but she doesn’t seem to me to forfeit her genuineness. She is the
most adaptable person I ever saw. To me she praises the Parthenon, to
Manvers _La Dame qui s’amuse_. But to any one who doesn’t know her well,
that must appear like want of genuineness.”
Tom rose and walked up and down the room.
“I am getting terribly _bourgeois_ in my tastes, Manvers would tell me.
I care for nothing now but loyalty and honesty and genuineness and quiet
country life.”
Markham stared.
“My dear Tom, you really shouldn’t give me such surprises. What has
happened to the bustle and stir of the world, and statuettes bowling
cricket-balls?”
“I don’t know. It was a phase, I suppose. One can’t reach one’s proper
development except through phases. Paul was a Pharisee of the Pharisees;
Augustine was a debauchee, a sensualist with the shroud round his feet.”
“Paul, Augustine,” said Ted, with a smile; “let us continue the list.
What about you?”
Tom paused.
“I don’t know. I only know I have changed, that something very big has
happened to me. Perhaps some time you will know what it is. I’m going to
bed, Teddy.”