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REST HARROW
A COMEDY OF RESOLUTION
By Maurice Hewlett
“Rest Harrow grows in any soil.... The seeds may be sown as soon as
ripe in warm, sheltered spots out of doors.... It is a British plant.”
--WEATHERS
With Illustrations By Frank Craig
THI KANNICTHI
CONTENTS
BOOK I OF THE NATURE OF A PROLOGUE, DEALING WITH A BRUISED PHILOSOPHER IN
RETIREMENT
BOOK II SANCHIA AT WANLESS HALL
BOOK III INTERLUDE OF THE RECLUSE PHILOSOPHER
BOOK IV SANCHIA IN LONDON
BOOK V OF THE NATURE OF AN EPILOGUE, DEALING WITH DESPOINA
ILLUSTRATIONS (not available in this edition)
Wrote deliberately to each of her sisters
The hum of cities, and buzz of dinner tables . . sound in his ears not
at all.
The housekeeper! This--person!
He had eloquence, he thought, as he watched her, he had won. But he was
anxious. She was such a deep one.
Ploughman in the vales would sometimes see his gaunt figure on the
sky-line.
“Well, Sanchia,” he said, “here I am.”
The great music went sobbing and chiding through her frame, like wounded
nightingales.
Senhouse came back to her bedside and put a little flower into her hand
[Illustration: Wrote deliberately to each of her sisters.]
BOOK I -- OF THE NATURE OF A PROLOGUE, DEALING WITH A BRUISED PHILOSOPHER IN RETIREMENT
I
An observant traveller, homing to England by the Ostend-Dover packet
in the April of some five years ago, relished the vagaries of a curious
couple who arrived by a later train, and proved to be both of his
acquaintance. He had happened to be early abroad, and saw them come on.
They were a lady of some personal attraction, comfortably furred,
who, descending from a first-class carriage, was met by a man from a
third-class, bare-headed, free in the neck, loosely clad in grey flannel
trousers which flapped about his thin legs in the sea-breeze, a white
sweater with a rolling collar, and a pair of sandals upon brown and
sinewy feet uncovered by socks: these two. The man's garniture was
extraordinary, but himself no less so. He had a lean and deeply bronzed
face, hatchet-shaped like a Hindoo's. You looked instinctively for rings
in his ears. His moustache was black and sinuous, outlining his
mouth rather than hiding it. His hair, densely black, was longish and
perfectly straight. His eyes were far-sighted and unblinking; he smiled
always, but furtively, as if the world at large amused him, but must
never know it. He seemed to observe everything, except the fact that
everybody observed himself.
To have once seen such a man must have provided for his recollection;
and yet our traveller, who was young and debonnaire, though not so young
as he seemed, first recognised the lady. “Mrs. Germain, by George!” This
to himself, but aloud, “Now, where's she been all this time?” The frown
which began to settle about his discerning eyes speedily dissolved in
wonder as they encountered the strange creature in the lady's company.
He stared, he gaped, then slapped his thigh. “Jack Senhouse! That's the
man. God of battles, what a start! Now, what on earth is Jack Senhouse
doing, playing courier to Mrs. Germain?”
That was precisely the employment. His man had handed the lady out of
her compartment, entered it when she left it, and was possessing
himself of her littered vestiges while these speculations were afloat.
Dressing-case, tea-basket, umbrellas, rugs, and what not, he filled his
arms with them, handed them over to expectant porters, then smilingly
showed their proprietress the carriage ridded. He led the way to the
steamer, deposited his burdens and saw to the bestowal of others,
fetched a chair, wrapped her in rugs, found her book, indicated her
whereabouts to a mariner in case of need. All this leisurely done, in
the way of a man who has privilege and duty for his warrants. Enquiring
then, with an engaging lift of the eyebrows, whether she was perfectly
comfortable, and receiving with a pleasant nod her answering nod of
thanks, he left her and returned to the train. Tracked through the
crowd, and easily by his height, bare head, and leisurely motions, he
was next seen shouldering a canvas bag on his way back to the
boat. Jack's belongings, his bag of tricks; Jack all over, the same
inexhaustible Jack! It was delightful to our traveller to find Jack
Senhouse thus verifying himself at every turn. He was for the steerage,
it appears--and of course he was!--where depressed foreigners share with
bicycles, motor cars, and newly boiled pigs the amenities of economical
travel. In this malodorous and slippery well his interested friend
saw him sit down upon his bundle, roll a cigarette, and fall into easy
conversation with an Italian voyager who, having shaved, was now putting
on a clean collar and a tartan necktie.
The traveller, Mr. William Chevenix, who had watched him so long, a
well-dressed and cheerful Englishman of some five-and-thirty summers,
with round eyes in a round and rosy face, now assuring himself that he
would be damned if he didn't have it out with the chap, descended the
companion, picked his way through the steerage, and approached the
seated philosopher. He saw that he was known, and immediately. Nothing
escaped Senhouse.
“How d'ye do, how d'ye do?” He held out his hand. Senhouse rose and
grasped it. The Italian took off his hat, and strolled away.
“I'm very well, thanks,” he said. “Have you noticed those shores
beyond the canal? Samphire there just as we have it at home. Leagues of
samphire.”
The younger man looked in the direction indicated cheerfully and
blankly. “'The samphire by the ocean's brim,'” he said lightly. “I
attach no importance to it whatever, but it's very like you to lift
one into your privacy at a moment's notice. I'm all for the formalities
myself, so I observe that I haven't seen you for years. Years! Not
since--why, it must be eighteen.”
“It's precisely eight,” said Senhouse, “and I've been abroad for four of
them.”
His friend inspected him with candid interest. “At your old games, I
take it. You've filled England with hardy perennials and now you're
starting on Europe. Great field for you. You'll want a pretty big
trowel, though. A wheelbarrow might be handy, I should have said.”
Senhouse fired. “I've been planting the Black Forest, you see. Great
games. They gave me a free hand, and ten thousand marks a year to spend.
I've done some rather showy things. Now I want to go to Tibet.”
The other's attention had wandered. “I saw you come on board,” he said.
“I watched you play the Squire of Dames to a rather pretty woman whom I
happen to know. She was a Mrs. Germain in those days.”
“She still calls herself so,” Senhouse said. He was staring straight
before him out to sea. The steamer was under way.
“Married a queer old file in Berkshire, who died worth a plum. Goodish
time ago. They called him Fowls, or Fowls of the Air. So she's still a
widow, eh?”
Senhouse nodded. “She's his widow.” Then he asked, “You know her? You
might go and amuse her. I can't, because of these bonds.” He exhibited
his sockless feet with a cheerful grin.
“Oh, I shall, you know,” he was assured. “You're not dressy enough for
Mrs. Germain. She'd never stand it.”
“She doesn't,” said Senhouse. “She dislikes a fuss, and thinks me rather
remarkable.”
“Well,” said the other, “I think she's right. You always were a
conspicuous beggar. Now look at me. Think I'll do?”
Senhouse peered at him. “I think you are exactly what she wants just
now,” he said. “Go in and approve yourself, Chevenix.”
Mr. Chevenix, the spick and span, had something on his mind, however,
which he did not know how to put. He continued to reflect upon Mrs.
Germain, but only by way of marking time. “She used to be very good fun
in my young days. And she made things spin in Berkshire, they tell me.
I know she did in London--while it lasted. What's she doing? There was a
chap called Duplessis, I remember.”
“There still is,” Senhouse said, but in such a manner as to chalk No
Thoroughfare across the field. Chevenix perceived this rather late
in the day, and ended his ruminations in a whistle. “She kept him
dangling--” he had begun. Instead of pursuing, he said abruptly, “I say,
you remember Sancie Percival, of course.”
A change came over Senhouse's aspect which a close observer might have
noticed. He was very quiet, hardly moved; but he seemed to be listening
with all his senses, listening with every pore of his skin. “Yes,”
he said, slowly. “Yes, I do; I'm not likely to forget her. She was my
dearest friend, and is so still, I hope.”
The solemnity of his intended message clouded Mr. Chevenix's candid
brow. “She's still at Wanless, you know.”
Senhouse set a watch upon himself. “No doubt she is,” he said. “She's
well?”
The other probed him. “She's never made it up with her people. I think
she feels it nowadays.”
Senhouse asked sharply, “Where's Ingram?”
“Ingram,” said Chevenix, “is just off for a trip. He's to be abroad for
a year. India.”
Senhouse shivered. “Alone?”
“Well, without her, anyhow. He always was a casual beggar, was Nevile.”
He could see now that he was making a hit. “Got old Senhouse where he
lives,” he told himself, and then continued. “Fact is, I've been out
with him as far as Brindisi. He asked me to. I had nothing to do. But
I want to see Sancie Percival again. I was awfully fond of her--of
the whole lot of them.” He reflected, as a man might deliberate upon
familiar things, and discover them to be wonders. “What a family they
were, by Jove! Five--of--the--loveliest girls a man could meet with.
Melusine, what a girl she was! Married Tubby Scales--fat chap with a
cigar. Vicky, now. How about Vicky? She was my chum, you know. She's
married, too. Chap called Sinclair--in the Guides. But Sancie beat them
all in her quiet way. A still water--what?”
Senhouse, his chin clasped in his bony hands, contemplated the sea.
His face was drawn and stern. There was a queer twitching of the
cheek-bones. “Got him, by Jove!” said Mr. Chevenix to himself, and
pushed on. “I say, I wish you'd go and see her,” he said.
Senhouse got up and leaned over the bulwarks. He was plainly disturbed.
Chevenix waited for him nervously, but got nothing.
Then he said, “The fact is, Senhouse, I think that you should go. You
were the best friend she ever had.” Senhouse turned him then a tragic
face.
“No, I wasn't,” he said. “I think I was the worst.”
Chevenix blinked. “I know what you mean. If it hadn't been for you and
your confounded theories, you imply that she--”
“I don't know--” Senhouse began. “God only knows what she might have
done. She was not of our sort, you know. I always said that she was
unhuman.”
“That's the last thing she was,” said Chevenix, neatly. Senhouse scorned
him.
“You don't know anything about it,” he said. “What are the doings of
this silly world, of our makeshift appearances, to the essentials?
Antics--filling up time! You speak as if she gave Ingram everything, and
lost it. She did, but he never knew it--so never had it. Ingram had what
he was fitted to receive. Her impulse, her impulsion were divine. She
has lost nothing--and he has gained nothing.”
“If you talk philosophy I'm done,” cried Mr. Chevenix. “Well, I say to
you, my boy, Go and see her. She's so far human that she's got a tongue,
and likes to wag it, I suppose. I don't say that there's trouble, and I
don't say there's not. But there are the makings of it. She's alone, and
may be moped. I don't know. You'd better judge for yourself.”
Senhouse, trembling from his recent fire, turned away his face. “I don't
know that I dare. If she's unhappy, I shall be in the worst place I ever
was in my life. I don't know what I shall do.”
“That's the first time you ever said that, I'll go bail,” Chevenix
interrupted him. But Senhouse did not hear him.
“I did everything I could at the time. I nearly made her quarrel with
me--I dared do that. I went up to Wanless and saw Ingram. I hated the
fellow, I disapproved of him, feared him. He was the last man in the
world I could have tackled with a view to redemption. He was almost
hopelessly bad, according to my view of things. Fed by slaves from the
cradle, hag-ridden by his vices; a purple young bully, a product of
filthy sloth, scabbed with privilege. I saw just how things were. She
pitied him, and thought it was her business to save him. She did
nobly. She gave herself for pity; and if she mistook that for love, the
splendid generosity of her is enough to take the breath away. The world
ought to have gone down on its knees to her--but it picked up its
skirts for fear she might touch them. What a country! What a race! Well,
feeling towards her as I did, and loathing him, I urged him to marry
her--to make her his property for life. Dead against my conviction, mind
you, but what else could I do? God help me, I played the renegade to
what I sincerely believed. I couldn't see her done to death by a world
of satyrs.”
“Of course you couldn't, my dear man,” cried Chevenix. “Girls of her
sort must be married, you know.”
“I don't know anything of the kind,” replied Senhouse, fiercely; “but I
loved her. You may put it that I funked. I did--and to no purpose.”
“If you were to see her now,” Chevenix put in, “you could do some good.
She'll be pretty lonely up there.” Senhouse got up.
“I'll see her,” he said. “Whatever happens.”
“Right,” said Chevenix. “That's a good man. That's what I wanted of you.
I'll tell her that you're coming. Now I'm going to do the civil to Mrs.
Germain.”
Senhouse had turned away, and was leaning over the bulwarks, lost in his
thoughts. He remained there until the passage was over.
Mr. Chevenix, having approached the lady with all forms observed, made
himself happy in her company, as, indeed, he did in all. “Now this is
very jolly, Mrs. Germain, I must say. I'm a companionable beggar, I
believe; and here I was in a ship where I didn't know a living soul
until I met you and Senhouse. Didn't even know that you knew Senhouse.
Queer fish, eh? Oh, the queerest fish in the sea! But you know all that,
of course.”
Mrs. Germain, a brunette with the power of glowing, coloured becomingly,
and veiled her fine eyes with somewhat heavy and heavily-fringed
eye-lids. “Oh, yes,” she said, “I have known him for a long time.”
“Met him abroad, I suppose--tinkering round, as he does. The everlasting
loafer, artist, tinker, poet, gardener. 'Pon my soul, he's like the
game we used to do with cherry-stones round the pudding plate. Don't you
know? Soldier, sailor, tinker, tailor, and all the rest. He's all those
things, and has two pair of bags to his name, and lives in a cart, and's
a gentleman. Not a doubt about that, mind you, Mrs. Germain.”
She smiled upon him kindly. “None at all,” she said. “I like him
extremely.”
“You would, you know,” said Chevenix, his tones rich in sympathy. “All
women do. You couldn't help it. You've got such a kind heart. All women
have. Now, I've known Senhouse himself five or six years, but I've known
about him for at least eight. I used to hear about him from morn to dewy
eve, once upon a time, from one--of--the--loveliest and most
charming girls you ever met in your life. Did you know her? A Miss
Percival--Sanchia Percival. We used to call her Sancie. Thought you
might have met her, perhaps. No? Well, this chap Senhouse would have
gone through the fire for her. He would have said his prayers to her.
Did you ever see his poems about her? My word! He published 'em after
the row, you know. He as good as identified her with--well, we won't
mention names, Mrs. Germain, but he identified her with a certain holy
lady not a hundred miles from the Kingdom of Heaven. Blasphemous old
chap--he did, though.”
Mrs. Germain, toying with her scent-bottle, was interested. “I never
heard him speak about a Miss Percival,” she said. She used a careless
tone, but her flickering eyelids betrayed her.
“You wouldn't, you know,” he told her with the same sympathetic
earnestness. “There was too much of a row. He was cut all to pieces. I
thought he'd go under; but he's not that sort. Who called somebody--some
political johnny--the Sea-green Incorruptible? Oh, ask me another! You
might call old Senhouse the Green-tea Irrepressible; for that was his
drink (to keep himself awake all night, writin' poems), and there never
was a cork that would hold him down--not even Sancie Percival. No, no,
out he must come--fizzling.”
“I see,” said Mrs. Germain, still looking at her fingers in her lap.
“I'm very much interested. You mean that he was very much--that he paid
her a great deal of attention?”
Chevenix stared roundly about him. “Attention! Oh, heavens! Why, three
of his letters to her would fill _The Times_ for a week--and he kept
it up for years! She used to get three a week--budgets! blue-books! For
simple years! Attentions!” He shook his head. “The word's no good. He
paid nobody anything at all when she was in the same county. He used
to sit listening to her thrilling the waves of air. He used to hear
her voice in the wind--and when it changed, he used to fire off his
answers!”
Mrs. Germain laughed--whether at Chevenix or his preposterous hero is
not to be known. “You are rather absurd,” she said. “Mr. Senhouse never
gave me the idea of that sort of person. Why did they never--?”
Chevenix narrowed his eyes to the merest slats. “_Marry?_” he said, in
an awed whisper. “Is that what you mean?”
Mrs. Germain showed him her soft brown orbs, which for two seasons had
been said to be the finest pair of dark eyes in London. “Yes,” she said,
“I do mean that. How clever of you to guess!”
Chevenix bowed to her. “Not at all,” he said. “I'm quite good at that
kind of thing. You have to be, if you knock about. Besides, that's the
whole point. Bless you! He would just as soon have married Diana of the
Ephesians. He said so. I heard him. He would have thought it an insult
to hint at it. Didn't I tell you that he was a poet?”
“Yes,” the lady said quickly. “You did. But I suppose poets occasionally
marry.”
“Not that sort,” Chevenix pronounced, with a shake of the head. “At
least, they don't marry the right person. They never do. Or there are
two or three persons. Look at Shelley. Look at Dante. I happen to know
all about both of 'em. Senhouse drank 'em up--and gave 'em out like
steam. He thought no end of Dante and Shelley. As a matter of fact, he
didn't believe in marriage, as a game--as a kind of institution, you
know. He thought it devilish wrong--and said so--and that's where the
trouble was. Marry Sancie! I wish to heaven he had. There'd have been
no trouble at all. They were made for each other. She loved his fun--and
was easy with him, you see. She was queerish, too--a shy young bird; but
she was quite at home with him. No, no. The trouble really began with
him putting her out of conceit with marriage. And then she didn't care
for him in that sort of way, then. And then--well, the less said the
better.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Germain, absorbed by the devolutions of the tale. “Oh!”
“'Oh's the sort of expression one used at the time,” said Chevenix.
“There wasn't much else to be said. It was a holy row.” He mused, he
brooded, and said no more. Luckily for him, he discovered Dover at hand,
and escaped. Mrs. Germain was put into a first-class carriage by
two attendant squires, provided with tea and a foot-warmer; and then
Chevenix bowed himself away and Senhouse disappeared. She had a novel
on her knees, but read little. She looked out of window, frowning and
biting her red lip. When she reached Victoria she tightened both lips,
and you saw that, so compressed, they made a thin red line straight
above a square chin. Her charm and favour both lay, you then discovered,
in expression.
Senhouse, hatless and loose-limbed, stood at the door to help her out.
She accepted his services, and was put into a cab.
“Where's he to take you?” he asked her pleasantly.
She said at once, “To Brown's Hotel.” Then, before she got in, with a
hand, unperceived by the general, just touching his arm, “Jack, I want
to speak to you, but not to-night. Will you come in the morning, please?
I am rather tired, and shall dine early and go to bed. Is my maid here?”
She looked about. “Oh, I suppose she's seeing to the luggage. You might
find her, and tell her where to come to.”
Senhouse smiled and nodded. “Certainly. All these things shall be done.
Anything else before you go off?”
She hesitated for a minute, then said, “Yes, there _is_ one more thing.
You mustn't come to Brown's like that. You must put on ordinary things.”
He raised his eyebrows, then laughed--throwing his head up. “Wonderful
lady! Wherewithal shall I be clothed? Do you really think these things
matter?”
She was firm. “I really do. I hope you will be kind enough
to--to--please me.”
He looked very kindly at her. “My dear,” he said, “of course I shall. Be
quite easy about it.” He held out his hand. “Good night, Mary.”
She took it, but didn't meet his look. “Good night,” she said, and drove
away without another signal.
Senhouse, shouldering his bundle, found the lady's maid, and gave her
her sailing orders. His manner to her was exactly that which he had
shown to the mistress, easy, simple, and good-humoured. Leaving her,
he went a leisurely way through the press, and took a tram-car from the
corner of Vauxhall Bridge Road in the direction of Battersea.
II
Senhouse, after a night of solitary musing upon certain waste places
known best to outlanders, walked up Saint James's Street at six o'clock
in the morning, talking lightly and fiercely to himself. A long life of
loneliness had given him that habit incurably. Discovering the hour by a
clock in Piccadilly, he realised that it was too early to wait upon Mrs.
Germain in Albemarle Street, so continued his way up the empty hill,
entered the Park, and flung himself upon the turf under the elms. Other
guests were harboured by that hospitable sward, shambling, downcast lice
of the town. These, having shuffled thither, dropped, huddled and slept.
His way was not theirs: to him the open space was his domain. He ranged
the streets, one saw, as if they had been the South Downs, with the long
stride and sensitive tread of a man who reckons with inequalities
of footing. The country and the town were earth alike, though now of
springing grass and now again of flagstones.
His face, after a night of fierce self-searching, looked its age, that
of a man past forty; his aspect upon affairs was no more a detached
observer's; his eyes were hard, his smile was bleak. Sodden misery,
stupor, and despair lay all about him, and would have drawn his pitying
comments if it had not been so with him that all his concern must be for
himself.
“She wants me, and I must go to her,” was the burden of his thought;
but, like a recurring line in a poem, it concluded very diverse matter.
“I played the traitor to her; I could not wait--and yet I must have
known. I said to myself, It is enough to have known and loved her; watch
her happy, and thank God. That should have been enough for any man who
had ever seen the blue beam of her eyes shed in kindliness upon him; but
I grew blind and could not see. I lost my lamp and went astray. I ran
about asking one after another to stop the bleeding of my wound. God is
good. After eight years, _she wants me, and I must go to her._
“I love her, as I have always loved; for she is always there, and I have
come back. She can never change, though her beauty grow graver, and all
knowledge of the vile usage of the world have passed before her young
eyes. Artemis no more, for she has stooped to the lot of women; but
still invincibly pure, incapable of sin, though she know it all. It
can never touch her; she goes her way. She wears a blue gown now, not a
white one. Demeter, the sad, bountiful Mother she will be--yet the same
woman, the sweet and grave, the inflexible, the eternal. And, standing
as she has always stood, _she wants me, and I must go to her._
“I remember the wonder, I remember the morning glory of her first
appearing. The spell of the woods was upon her. Bare-headed, gowned in
white, she girt up her vesture and dipped her white limbs in the pool.
I went to her, all my worship in my face; I worked with her at her task.
Together we pulled the weed, we set the lilies free. High-minded as a
goddess, she revealed herself to me. I was the postulant, dumb before
the mysteries; I adored without a thought. I was nothing, could be
nothing, to her but her lover--and now _she wants me, and I must go to
her._
“For two years I was close to her side--either I or my words never left
her. She became humble, suffered me to lead her, opened to me her mind,
shared with me her secret thoughts. I told her the truth; I hid nothing
from the first. From the first day she knew that I loved her. There was
no presumption in this--I asked nothing, expected nothing. I told her
often that I looked forward to her wedded state--and then it came, and
I was not ready for it as it came. Horrible thing, her nobility was her
punishment. She has suffered, she suffers; _she wants me, and I must go
to her._
“How am I to go, tied and bound as I am? What can I do? I have been
false to my vows. I belong in duty to another world, to another woman,
who can command me as she will. I don't know, I don't see. I know only
one thing, and see only her, calling me with her inflexibly grave eyes.
_She wants me, and I must go to her.”_
He got up and left the Park. It was ten o'clock of an April morning.
Crocuses--her flowers--were blowing sideways under a south-west wind.
Blue sky, white clouds, shining on the just and the unjust, covered her
in Yorkshire and him, her grim knight, in Mayfair. He stalked, gaunt
and haggard-eyed, down the hill, threading his way through the growing
traffic of the day, and faced his business with the lady in the case.
Mrs. Germain was serious when he entered her sitting-room. She was in
a loose morning gown of lace and pink ribbon. Pink was her colour. Her
dark eyes looked heavy. She should have been adorable, and she was--but
not to him just now. He stood before her, looked at her where she sat
with her eyes cast down at her hands in her lap. She had let them rest
upon him for the moment of his entry, but had not greeted him.
Now, as he stood watching her, she had no greeting.
“Good morning, Mary,” he said presently, and she murmured a reply. He
saw at once that she was prepared for him, and began in the middle.
“A friend of mine,” he said, “is alone and unhappy. I heard of it
yesterday from Chevenix. I must go and see her. I shan't be away long,
and shall then be at your disposition.”
Her strength lay in her silence. She sat perfectly still, looking at her
white hands. Her heavy eyelids, weighted with all the knowledge she had,
seemed beyond her power of lifting. He was driven to speak again, and,
against his will, to defend himself.
“I am in a hatefully false position. I ought to have told you long ago
all about it. It seemed impossible at the time, and so from time to
time, to open the shut book. I closed it deliberately, and from the time
of doing it until this moment I have never spoken of it even to myself.
Chevenix, who knew her well, broke it open unawares yesterday, and now
we must read in it, you and I.”
He stopped, took breath, and began again. “I don't see how you can
forgive me, or how I can, so to speak, look myself in the face again. I
have played the knave so long with you that it is perhaps the greatest
knavery I can commit to be honest at last. But I am going to do it,
Mary. I want to tell you the whole story. You have told me yours.”
Her eyes flickered at that, but she said nothing. Passive as she sat,
heavy in judgment, she was yet keenly interested. All her wits were at
work, commenting, comparing, judging, and weighing every word that he
said.
He told her a strange, incoherent story of poet's love. This mysterious,
shrouded Sanchia figured in it as the goddess of a shrine--omnipresent,
a felt influence, yet never a woman. He spoke her name with a drop of
the voice; every act of hers, as he related it, was coloured by sanction
to seem the dealing of a divine person with creeping mankind. To Mrs.
Germain it was all preposterous; if she had owned the humorous sense it
would have been tragically absurd. For what did it amount to, pray,
but this, that Jack Senhouse had been in love with a girl who had loved
somebody else, had married her choice, and was now repenting it? Jack,
then, in a pique, had trifled with her, Mary Germain, and made love to
her. Now he found that this Sanchia was to be seen he was for jumping
back. Was he to jump, or not to jump? Did it lie with her? Jack seemed
to think that it did.
If it did, what did she want? As to one thing she had long been clear.
Jack Senhouse was a good lover, but would be an impossible mate. She
had found his gypsy tent and hedgerow practice in the highest degree
romantic. With gypsy practice he had the wheedling gypsy ways. An
adventure of hers in the North, for instance--when, panic-struck, she
had fled to him by a midnight train, had sought him through the dales
and over limestone mountains through a day and night, and cried herself
to sleep, and been found by him in the dewy dawn and soothed by his
masterful cool sense--wasn't this romantic? It had drawn her to him as
she had never before been drawn to a man. She felt that here at last was
a man indeed to be trusted. For she had been there with him, and not a
living soul within miles, entirely at his discretion, and he had not so
much as kissed her fingers. No, not even that, though he had wanted
to. That she knew, as women do know such things. Romantic, indeed,
trustworthy! Why, a Bayard, a Galahad of a gypsy! After this adventure,
after he had driven her back to her duty, she had owned allegiance to
nobody else in the world. And when her husband died she had renounced
her widow-right, embraced hardship, kept herself by teaching; and when,
finally, he came to her and offered her her choice, she had chosen
Poverty for her lord as single-heartedly as ever did Francis find his
lady in a beggar's garb.
And that being done, it did not “do.” That was how she put it now; but
the process had been slow, and never defined. He had carried her off to
Baden for his work of naturalising plants. He had a great name for that,
a European name. In three weeks his work absorbed him; within that time
she knew that she was no mate for him. You can't be picturesque
for ever, she thought. She had never reckoned with his incredible
simplicity, and never for a moment connected his talk with his acts.
Perhaps this Jack was the only really logical man in the world. Now she
found that in talking of Poverty as the only happiness, he literally
and really believed it so. He would own nothing but the barest
necessities--neither pictures, nor furniture, neither clothes nor books.
Pictures, furniture? Why, he had no roof to shelter them! Clothes? Where
was he to carry them, if not on his back? Books? He had half-dozen,
which contained all the wisdom of the world. So he used to cry. Now,
this might be as it was; but when he seemed to expect her to be of the
same mind and behaviour, you will see that he must needs be mad.
Yet so it was. He had lived in a tent for twenty years, so took his tent
to Germany, and went on living in it. In that, with complete gravity, he
received the Grand Duke of Baden, and several uniformed high officials,
who wore plumed headgear and incredibly high collars, and glittering
boots of patent leather. Folded superbly in cloaks of milky blue,
they looked to Mary like gods; to Senhouse they were amusing
fellow-creatures, interested in his plants and plans. He spread maps on
the ground and followed his racing finger with racing speech. His German
was faulty, but exceedingly graphic. His words shook the tent curtains.
Within half-an-hour, such was the infection of his eloquence, he had
most of his company on their knees beside him, and the Grand Duke,
accommodated with a camp-stool, buried his hand in his beard and
followed every line without a breath. Of all in that tent, she, Mary
Germain, had been the only person to feel the indescribable squalor in
the situation--and she the only one who might have been born to it; for
her upbringing had been humble, and her rise in the world sudden and
short of durance. But she knew now that she had hardly been able to live
it out for very shame.
Directly the visitors had departed there had been a scene--she in tears
of vexation which scalded, and he concerned at her trouble, but unable
for the life of him to see what it was all about. He had been kindness
itself. He always was the kindest and gentlest creature. If she wanted
a house, hotel or what not, she should have it. In fact, he got her one,
installed her, and undertook to keep her there. She bit her lip now to
remember that she had agreed--and the ensuing difficulties. He had no
money, and would have none of his own, and he refused to live under a
roof on any terms whatsoever. Of ten thousand marks a year, which he was
to receive from his Grand Duke, half was to be hers; he would see her
when she would, and she might follow him about as she would--or not, if
she would not. He could not see that there was anything extraordinary in
these propositions. To him it was the simplest thing in the world that
two people should do as they pleased. Society? What in the name of
God had society to do with it? She remembered her tears, and his blank
dismay when he saw them. He thought that she was unhappy, and so she
was; but she was grievously angry also, that she could not make him see
what things would “do” and what things “never do.”
His work had inflamed him; he had marched from place to place,
unencumbered and without a thought or care in the world--inspired with
his scheme, in which plants stood for the words in a poem. He slept out
many nights on the Felsenberg, on the ground, wrapped in a cloak. He
disappeared for weeks at a time in impenetrable forests, sharing
the fires of charcoal-burners, mapping, planning, giving orders to a
secretary from the Botanical Department, as wild as a disciple should
be. There was nothing for her, poor lady, but to sit about in hotel
saloons--as the widow of an English gentleman, occasionally visited by
an eccentric friend. So she put it for the benefit of society; but this
had not been her idea of things when she had tumbled into Senhouse's
arms--nor had it been his.
Her ruling idea in these days of disenchantment and discomfort--and
it was her ruling idea still--was to preserve appearances. The great,
invincible, fundamental instinct of the class from which she had
sprung--to keep oneself unspotted by the world. The variation upon
the text is Senhouse's own, done in a moment of exasperation over her
untiring effort to appear what she was not and did not want to be. She
loved the man sincerely; if she had been married to him she would have
kept faithfully to his side. But she had no lines; her wedding ring was
not of his giving. Without these assurances she simply could not love
him. It came to that.
He had, when they had approached the matter of alliance, put aside
marriage, literal marriage, as out of the question. He took it airily
for granted that she agreed with him. The servitude of the woman which
it implied was to him unspeakably wicked. He could not have treated the
vilest woman in such a manner. But he had reckoned without the woman
in her case. To her, freedom to love, without sanction or obligation,
destroyed love. When he found that out, which he did after a year of
her German vexations, he offered himself and his convictions to her. He
humbled himself before her--but by that time she would not. By that time
she had recovered her widow's portion (which had been dependent upon her
remaining sole), and was entitled to some thousands a year and a good
dower-house in Berks. She declined to marry him, and acted as such.
She had been his wife in fact for a quarter of a year; she was his
friend--as he was hers--for the rest of their time abroad. He had
respected her wish, but had kept himself at her free disposal, until
now of late, when this disturbing Sanchia Percival arose out of the
nothingless and was shown to her as a goddess newly from the shades. And
so now here sat Mrs. Germain, with her eccentric friend pale and gaunt
before her, unlike himself as she had always known him, about to take
her at her word, and to behave as a friend might. What should she say?
He would come back if she chose; he had said so--and he was incapable of
lies. If he came back, and if she chose, he would marry her, and be the
imperturbable, delightful, incalculable, impossible companion she had
always known him. He would marry her--and decline to come under her
roof. He would, perhaps, pitch his tent in her paddock; he would sit at
her table in sweater and flannels, sandals on his feet, while she and
her guests were in the ordinary garb of--gentlefolks. Gentlefolks! Yes.
But the maddening and baffling thought was a conviction that he would be
the greatest gentleman there. She knew that. Lord of his mind, lord of
his acts, easy in his will, and refusing to bow to any necessity but
that, he would be the superior of them all. Could this be borne? Or
could she bear to surrender so rare a friend to a Miss Percival?
Who could Miss Percival be? It was a good name--better than Middleham,
which had been her own, as good as Germain, which had been her
husband's. Sanchia, an extraordinary name, an unusual name. It sounded
Spanish and aristocratic. The Honourable Hertha de Speyne: she had known
the daughter of a noble house so styled in her governess days, her
days of drudgery, and even now it had a glamour for her, who had since
hobnobbed with many honourables, flirted with many young lords, and
been kissed by a duchess. Miss Sanchia Percival: the Honourable Sanchia
Percival. No doubt this was a high lady. And she must be beautiful, or
Jack wouldn't speak of her as he had. He hushed his voice down, he
spoke as if she were a goddess, as if to disobey her call was out of the
question. A dull heat stirred deeply within her, and she found herself
setting her teeth together. No! Jack had brought her to this pass--and
she would not be left there.
These were the thoughts of Mrs. Germain as she sat very still, with
heavy-lidded eyes, listening to Senhouse's story. He ended it in these
words: “You charmed me, Mary, and you still charm me. You are very
sweet, and I shall never want a dearer mate than you might be, if you
would. I vow to you that you are the only woman with whom I have wished
to live, as we might live if you would. I can't make you see, I'm
conscious, what I feel about Sanchia--but it's certainly not that. My
little dear, can't you trust me?” He looked down, and saw her tears
slowly dropping; he was very much moved, knelt by her side. She turned
her face away, dangerously moved also. She struggled with her tears, her
face contorted, her bosom heaving in riot. Senhouse took her hands, but
she wrenched them away and covered her face with them. Passion grew
upon her, passion of regret, of loss, of rage, of desire--“Oh, leave me,
leave me! Oh, cruel, cruel! No man in the world could be so cruel--” and
then she sprang up, and faced him, flushed and fierce as a woman whom
love has made mad.
“I believed in you, I gave you everything I had. You have had it, and
you leave me. I made no pretences--I told you all my secrets. You said
that you loved me--and now you leave me. Go, please. I hope I shall
never see you again.”
Her great eyes loomed in her hot face like beacons. Her colour was high,
her lips vivid. She looked as beautiful as an Indian flower. She was
fighting for her own like a cat. An absent, shadowy, icily-pure Sanchia
could never contend with this quivering reality of scarlet and burning
brown; and the man stood disarmed before her, watching her every
movement and sensible of every call of her body. Her wild words provoked
him, her beauty melted him; pity for her, shame, memories of what he
had believed her, impossible visions of what she might be; he was tossed
this way and that, was whirled, engulfed, overwhelmed. There is only one
end to such strifes. With a short cry, he threw up his arms.
“God help us, I stay,” he said.
III
Hear now of the immediate end. This gentleman, a philosopher and poet,
rich in theory, having reached a middle point in his career, had found
that he had, without knowing it, encountered a Fact which had gripped
him in a vital part, squeezed the very fibres of him, sucked him
apparently dry of human juices, even of the zest to live, and presently
departed, leaving him faint by the wayside. Not until he was clean gone
did he have the least suspicion that it had been there, and (if he could
have known it) the first glimmering of reawakening pulse in him was the
considering of its nature. Brooding upon it, while he grieved over his
languor, he discovered that it had not been hard and scaly, like
your ordinary vampire, but soft-lipped, brown-eyed, warm-fleshed,
cloudy-haired; in fact, a pretty woman. Now, in all his previous
relations with that sex, while he had given much of himself, he had
never met before with a woman whose need was the measure of her allure.
If she had not wanted him so much, he would never have thought of her
twice. But this was precisely what had happened. She had acted upon him
as a vacuum upon air. Her helplessness, her ignorance, her appealing
belief in him, her clinging power, heightening her physical charm, had
sucked him in a stream; and when she was full of him, he was empty. She
had been the first to find it out. Having trailed him in her wake for
a season, against his instincts, against his conscience, she presently
coaxed him to let her go. Let her go! He asked nothing better than to
see her happy, and saw no other way of being so himself. When she had
gone, and was safely married to an old admirer, our expended friend lay,
like a gaffed salmon, faintly flapping on the bank. For a year or more
he lay, and dated his recovery of tone from the moment of finding out
the nature of his disaster. “She was hungry, and I fed her. She was
thirsty, and I gave her drink. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken
away. Blessed, by all means, be the name of the Lord.”
He proposed now to resume his former life of sojourn in tents and
desultory practice of the arts, a life which, as it was at once highly
practical and entirely dependent upon enjoyment, we may call one of
contemplative activity. For twenty years he had not lived in a house,
slept in a bed, or owned anything beyond the barest necessities. (The
only thing he had, indeed, found himself owning, had at last removed
itself.) He had been by turns poet, painter-in-water-colours, tinker,
botaniser, antinomian, and anarchist; and attributed his success in
all these busy walks to the fact that he was as strongly averse to the
possession of property as he was incapable of getting any. Here, then,
was his capital, with which to commence the world again.
With this at his back, you would have said, he had but to pack his
knapsack, stow his tent, and take to the road. But that was not so.
He had, with the purest intentions, broken all the laws of Society.
Entitled to a competence, he had had neither house nor gear, earned just
so much as would keep him in food. He knew what it was to go without
a dinner, and what to sleep under the stars. Yet he had been
extraordinarily happy. He had held up his head, and kept it, alike with
the learned--for he had learning--and with the simple, whose simplicity
he shared. He had had the knack, in fact, of getting himself accepted on
his own terms, exorbitant as they were; and of both rich and poor
alike he had demanded entire equality. “Barefoot I stand,” had been
his proposition, “of level inches with your lordship, or with you, my
hedgerow acquaintance. Take me for a man, decently furnished within, or
take me not at all. Take me never, at least, for a clothes-horse.”
In all these things, which he had proclaimed far and wide, in divers
tongues, all of them eloquent, he had violated the unwritten laws of our
country as great and small know them to be. Chiefest he broke them in
being happy. That was outrageous. But he was now, it seemed, confronted
with a Law of Nature when he found that, having broken with a way of
life, you cannot resume it, not because it isn't there (for there it
is), but rather because you are not there yourself. You are elsewhere,
and the road is hard to find. At forty-two you are not the mountaineer
of thirty-five. Worse than that, worst sign of all, you don't want to
be.
Here was a shock for the poet in him, which it was the philosopher's
task to allay. In heated debate the two contended for his reasonable
soul.
_Poet_. I am young.
_Philosopher_. You put it so. You are forty-two, and as old as you feel.
_Poet_. Away with you. I am young, I tell you. There are worlds to see.
_Philosopher_. Europe, Asia, Africa--
_Poet_. Alas! I have never been to Tibet.
_Philosopher_. My friend, if you wished to see Tibet you would be
half-way there by now. I know you so well. Believe me you have seen more
than enough. The world is so much larger than you, that five-and-twenty
acres in Sussex will yield you more wonders than you can use. Take them,
make them yours, and from them build up your Tibet. I understood that
you were a poet.
_Poet_. My heart fails me. I have loved and lost. I have seen the dawn,
and it has blinded me.
_Philosopher_. Mary is happy. You could never have made her so.
_Poet_. A sweet, good girl, but--I was not speaking of Mary.
_Philosopher_. So I supposed. Let me remind you--
_Poet_. Remind me of nothing. I remember everything. She was like the
dayspring from on high. When I think of Greece, I think not of Plato
and Sophocles, but of things more delicate and shy; of the tender
hedge-flowers of the Anthology, of Tanagra and its maidens in reedy
gowns, of all of this in a sweet clean light, as she was, and is, and
must be. Ah, and I think of her, as I saw her first in the woodland, in
her white gown, with the sun upon her hair. She was like the fluting of
a bird; she was clear melody. She girt herself high and set her foot in
the black water. She dipped her pure body in above the knees; she, the
noblest, the wholesomest the youngest of the gods. Remind me of nothing,
I beg you.
_Philosopher_. I must really remind you of this. You renounced her of
your own deliberation, and promised to dance at her wedding.
_Poet_ (with a sob). So I would, God bless her!
_Philosopher_. That is a charitable sentiment. I have done you good.
_Poet_. You are an ass.
I have summarised an argument which was really prolonged and very
acrimonious. The philosopher prevailed, and the poet, beaten at
every point, forswore what ambitions remained to him, built himself a
shepherd's hut in a valley of the Wiltshire Downs, and planned out his
memoirs in three stout volumes. He believed that he had reached that
stage in life where retrospect is all.
Volume I., _Open Country;_ Volume II., _Halfway House;_ Volume III.,
_Shepherd's Crown_--are titles which indicate the scope and spirit of
the projected work. They were characteristically chosen before a line
was written; nor, indeed, was a single other word put to paper, not
so much as an Advice to the Reader, for two years. The building of
his house with his own hands, and the disposition of the land about it
occupied him for the better part of one; the next, with its progressive
seasons of fruition, was spent in meditative ecstasy; by the beginning
of the third his cure was complete. The poet in him was now the
philosopher's humble servant, as should surely always be the case.
Resolved that the world should be sweetened yet, he attacked his book.
He began with the third volume, in which, under the heading of
_Shepherd's Crown_, he proposed to discharge himself of the conclusions
of his ripened manhood upon the world, as he now saw it from his grassy
outlook. Not yet could he trust himself with _Open Country_. That was
for Thoughts. That was to be filled with spheral music which lay under
lock and bolt deep within his nature. Before he could set that free to
throb and beat in his brain, he must be quite sure that it could not win
a way back into his heart. For she of whom it must consist, whose very
name was music, whose presence, as he said, was like the fluting of a
bird, was the renounced, impossible She; that She whom for reason clear
and good he had loved (upon his knees, with covered eyes), and suffered
go her ways. The philosopher was clear upon the point that Volume I.
must be withheld for a season, and that Volume II., if it was to deal
with the enchantment of the flitted Mary, must wait also. Mary must be
charitably handled; give her time. In Volume the third, now, we were
to have neither music on the one hand, nor the sharp fragrance of loose
hair and warm breath on the other; but green thoughts, rather, “calm
of mind, all passion spent,” as surely at forty-two it must be. Let the
wise book deal with life, not the living; with love, not of woman; with
death, but not of the body.
Early in the third year this wanderer, come to anchor, began his book,
and at his desk I propose to leave him until near the end of mine. But,
that he shall know the man again when the tale hath need of him, the
reader will be pleased to accompany me into his neighbourhood for a
moment.
Into the great ridge of chalk which is the backbone of South Wilts, and
runs east and west from Sarum to Shaftesbury, there cuts up from the
south a deep, winding, and narrow valley. The hills, between whose
breasts it runs a turfy way, fold one into the other; a man coming up
from Blandford, and minded to strike across country to Marlborough,
might well pass within two hundred yards of our recluse and never see
a sign of him. It was at the head of this glen, sheltered by hills from
north, east, and west, but open full to the south, he had built his
one-storied, deep-eaved house of larch and shingles. Here, under
the sky, he watched and laboured and slept, and saw nobody, living
principally on vegetables of his own growing, and cheese, which he
made from the milk of a flock of goats. Bread he had once a week from
a peasant's cottage at the valley's foot; gypsy folk brought him
occasionally tea and tobacco. For the most part he drank water, and was
too good a traveller to be rooted to his pipe.
The group behind him sloped sharply up to the ridge, which we call the
Race-Plain in those parts, and had nourished, when he first took up his
rest below it, little but nettles, mulleins, and scrub of elder. A few
fair trees--ash, thorn, spindle, service--struggled with the undergrowth
which should live. He was for the trees, needing their shade; cleared
the ground, terraced it with infinite pains, and utilised the water of
a mist pool which he had made on the high land by a system of canals of
remarkable neatness and ingenuity. Tree-trunks, split and hollowed out,
conveyed what water he wanted as and whither he would.
To the west of his dwelling the slope was gentler, and there woods and
brake-fern grew peacefully together and made a fine refuge from the
heats. Behind this shelter, hidden from sight of the house, he had a
broad lynch for his vegetables, and grew and protected them to be the
envy and despair of rabbits. In the woods, and below, in the valley
bottom, where wind-sown thorns made a natural park, his goats found
eatage. He reserved the terraces about the house for the flowers which
he loved and understood.
He was an expert gardener, who in his day had been famous for his skill
in naturalisation. His feats in this work have made a stir beyond our
shores. Alpine plants grow wild upon English rock-faces at his whim,
irises from the glaring crags of the Caucasus spread out their filmy
wings, when he bids them, on Devonshire tors. These wonders he chose
not to repeat--for reasons. Pence, to begin with, failed him. The work
itself was associated with the happiest and the saddest moments of his
life; he had not the heart to begin it. Moreover, in the course of his
year's work of house-building and settling in, he had kept an eye for
Nature's way in his valley, and when it came to making a flower-garden
he found that she had one there to his hand.
He said, “Nothing is lovelier in flowers than true colour. Form
is nothing to Nature; it is one of Art's tricks. Here I may have a
succession of pure washes by mere concentration of what I find. The
downs give me everything; all I have to do is to group them.
“Here is my design. For early spring, cowslips in a cloud. Scattered
broadcast, they are happy accidents which you come upon walking; but if
you mass them their scent tells, and you find they are nearer the colour
of oranges than of limes.
“For mid-April and early May I have the orchids--a blood-spatter on the
bottom; higher the flecked white, the pink, and the yellow with brown.
Then for a shelf among rocks the milk-worts, the sky-blue, the white and
the pink; with these I float out May like Fra Angelico. For June there
are Ragged Robins like filaments of rosy cloud, and Forget-me-not to
drift like wood-smoke over the chalk rubble. In July I have a pageant.
Foxglove and Eglantine make melodious my woods; Ladies' Slipper gives a
golden cope to the hillside, with purple campanula to wind about it like
a scarf. After this--August, September, October--our uplands faint
out in semitones: grey scabious, grey harebell, pale bed-straw, white
meadowsweet, like the lace of an old lady's cap. But even so, if I must
have a sunset glow of brown-pink, herb-willow gives it me. Pinch out the
leader of each slim spike, and you make a different plant of it.” Thus
the poet embroidered the philosopher's text, and kept away from his
memories, and husbanded his pence.
These things, at any rate, he did, collecting with diligence the plants
to his hand, separating them from the grasses and bents in which they
hid, massing them and marshalling to his purposes. The thing was done
with extreme art and infinite patience; the result, a rainbow stream of
colour through the working year.
He added a few foreign growths: cyclamen for the woods, because he
did not see how one could do without them who had once seen them in
Calabria; wild gladiolus, because it loved the corn, and there was land
in tillage within a mile of him; a few primulas for his conduit's
edges; wild crocus, because She whom he had loved best had loved them;
colchicums for the bottoms in Autumn, because once She, straying with
him in meadows, had picked some for her bosom and at parting given him
one. He had it still, though he never cared to look at it. She and it
belonged to his first volume, and neither crocus nor colchicum had been
added at the date of which I write. He planted them when he reopened
that book, and they are thriving now.
Here was work enough for a man somewhat mauled by the world to forget
his hard knocks withal; and he forgot them. Looking about him, the
length and breadth of his silent and lonely valley, he could see nothing
but amenity in the earth which owed man so little. It was so with him at
this time that the more he saw to love in Nature the less he could find
admirable in man, who denied her at every turn. It was men, not She, who
had given him his bruises; it was She, not men, who had taught him how
to forget them. When outraged Society cried him down for a breaker of
laws, he had replied that, so far as he knew, he had broken none of
Nature's; and had it been argued that we live otherwise than as the
beasts that perish, he would have retorted, “Whether the beasts perish
or not, it is very clear that they live to the full in this world, and
that we don't. Suppose they perish, at least they have lived. If we are
to live hereafter, as to which no one is certain, we are faced at our
temporal death with the fact that, born into this world with certain
faculties, instincts, appetites, and senses, we have let most of them
atrophy, and the rest rot, by many contributory causes, of which the
chief is over-eating. If I die, to live again, I have it behind me that
I have lived well already. I am that much to the good. And, that others
may have the same fortune, I shall devote what time remains to me to
teaching the truth, _The less you have the more you are._ This was his
intention when he sat down to pen his _Shepherd's Crown_; before he
dared look back upon _Open Country_, or to plant the sacred crocus, or
to look upon the dry colchicum flower which had been granted the grace
of a fair breast.”
[Illustration: The hum of cities and buzz of dinner tables ... sound in
his ears not at all.]
We meet him again, but not yet. We have him fast in his moorings, and
are to see him rather as a fixed point about which other wandering
lights stray in narrowing circles, to which they converge. We are to
conceive of him, if you please, as writing his Book, while the hum
of cities, and buzz of dinner-tables, noisy enough to us and full of
excitement, sound in his ears not at all. And when I have done, you will
discover, if you care, why he changed the title of his third volume from
_Shepherd's Crown_, and chose it to be called _Rest Harrow_.
The way thither is long, and many things are to happen to many people;
but little happens to him except the wheeling of the years.