Once more night was reigning, but the frost had gone. It was cold, but
with the chilliness of late spring, not winter, and the gusty wind blew
heavy clouds across the sky. A rainy mist hid the mountains, and added
darkness to the already dreary night.
And even as the night was indistinct and gloomy, the Spirits were
indistinct and gloomy too. The soughing, sighing wind as it passed
among the branches was miserable, but then it is this same dreary wind,
they say, that purifies and clears the air.
“The old home, as they call it, is to be broken up,” said Plucritus.
“The farm was a very bad speculation. It has never paid.”
“Who is to blame?” asked Genius.
“Why, the farmer. He is one of those delightfully amusing and
interesting men so rarely met, who can legislate better for other
people than for themselves. He gives other people advice gratis, they
take it and prosper. He gives himself advice, and follows it, then
fails.”
“Yet,” said Genius, slowly, “I respect and like the farmer. He is a man
of well balanced and proportioned judgment.”
“Oh, yes. That makes him the more interesting. He’s a bad speculator,
that’s all. Personally, I am not particularly fond of him, you know.”
Genius laughed.
“That should be a mark in his favour,” he said.
Plucritus laughed in turn.
“Well, no. I am not fond of him, but I’m going to cultivate his
acquaintance more. When I am interested in a man I always cultivate his
acquaintance. Humanity is so very interesting.”
“Thousands of years have not altered it then for you?”
Plucritus shook his head.
“Oh, no. We tire of our playthings but do not lose our interest in the
game. Besides, where you are I must of necessity be.”
“But you mistake. I am not with the farmer, I am simply bound to have
an interest in one of his children.”
“And I have an interest in the same child, and therefore through that
child an interest in the farmer. Not that I can do much, but still I
can watch the game, and help when needed.”
“You do not mean to work him any harm?”
“Oh, no. I am powerless to work real harm, you know, being but an
inferior power. Let him but pray to God Almighty and he’s pretty safe.”
“Yet to-night I am gloomy and ill at ease.”
Hereat Plucritus burst out laughing.
“You’re a fool,” he said. “Why don’t you go away and leave them?
Tawdry, poor and plebeian—what are you dreaming about? Go away now and
you are doing the greatest kindness; stay, and you will only create
misery and death. You can go to hundreds who will repay and appreciate
your presence—whilst where you are you will never be understood. The
sight of that child’s puny face and figure sickens me. You are going
the right way to make yourself the laughing-stock of all.
“These people are going from here to the town, to live a very humdrum,
miserable, ground-down sort of life. There will be nothing elevating,
nothing intellectual—nothing in the least refined about it. There will
be a great deal of nonsense talked about refinement, the sort of thing
you abhor, but no true refinement in itself.”
“All the more reason then why I should stay to make up the deficit.”
But a shadow crossed the face of Genius.
“Will you _stay_, or will you _go?_” Plucritus had reached
across the wooden seat, and as he whispered the words his hot breath
blew upon the cheek of Genius like some unwholesome fever-blight in a
pestilential marshland.
“I will stay.”
“Fool, fool that you are, and rightly mated with a fool. Stay then and
become a kind of circus-clown, a kind of Punchinello with a hump—not
meeting with applause like him though, but with jeers and scorn, the
only thing you’re fit for.”
And away he went, and the blood-red rays from the blood-red ring
flashed round about him like a blood-red sulphur cloud.
“Why is he so eager for my departure?” asked Genius, turning to
Virginius, who stood there silently as ever.
“He has his own reasons doubtless, but they are hard to fathom.”
Virginius came and sat down beside Genius. “But you will stay. Duty
demands that you should stay—and I can say, or beg, or ask no more.”
“Yes, I will stay.”
“Shall you care for the change, do you think?”
“To me, as you know, it is immaterial.” Then Virginius smiled. “I
apologise sincerely for my apparent disinterestedness, but like your
human soldier I am bound to take the country as I find it. All my
energies are bent on reconnoitring and organising; there is nothing
left for ‘buts’ and ‘ifs.’”
“It seems to me, Virginius, if you would but stoop to make yourself
agreeable, and put on some little affability, you might be a ready
match for Plucritus and the rest of them.”
But before this the cold and stern expression had returned.
“The trickery of bribery is beyond me,” he observed.
“Beneath you, you mean,” said Genius, somewhat sorrowfully. “I can
understand it.”
Virginius now rose, and began pacing back and forwards upon the
rock-crowned hill-top. The wind still cried in misery, and big drops of
rain fell upon the earth.
For some time silence prevailed, till at last Virginius broke it.
“Genius, I am going to make a request; I am going to ask you to look at
me.”
“That is easily done. I have fulfilled it.”
“No. I am going to ask you to look at me. When I am most silent, look
at me most.”
“That is precisely where the difficulty comes. Plucritus is so
essentially interesting and fascinating that he attracts attention
entirely to himself.”
“You will see less of his fascination in the future. You have thwarted
him and he dislikes you. You see you are not working as an immaterial
power.”
“What a topsy-turvy rendering,” said Genius, and he laughed. “No, I am
working in the concrete—with a child. The child has a mind so pliant
that it bends to my slightest whim most unconsciously.”
“That child also, besides having a mind, has what, in this world, they
honour with the name of soul.”
“Oh, yes, but that’s the unknown quantity over which one half the
world stumbles blindly and the other half develops itself into a
superstitious bigot.”
“You make sweeping statements.”
“Contempt for the world has taught me it.”
“I should advise you to restrain that contempt. But let us return. In
the same way that you exercise a strong power over the mind, so do I
exercise a strong power over what is called the soul.”
“Yours is the harder work,” said Genius, and he laughed.
“Yes, the task is always difficult and delicate. But this child is not
particularly addicted to any particular sin. That is in a measure owing
to you. You have a knack of absorbing vices to a certain degree within
yourself—in the same way that you absorb passions, thoughts, and even
actions.”
“Well, let us proceed. What does this lead to?”
“Simply this. I wish to warn you. Plucritus dislikes you because you
have thwarted him; he dislikes the child because its natural tendency
is more toward good than evil; and he dislikes me because I am his
natural and his greatest enemy.”
“Well, a triple alliance should certainly overcome him.”
“There is no alliance,” replied Virginius, earnestly. “I am
unable to make alliances except those which spring from unstinting
self-denial and self-sacrifice. Our alliance now would be simply one of
self-defence, and that to me is impossible.”
“Then,” cried Genius, seriously, “I suppose it means we have each to
fight the devil separately.”
“That is what it means. I wish to impress this on you as it is the last
time we shall meet for many years and be able to converse as friends.”
“Then you are able to foretell the future.”
“No. I simply watched Plucritus when he spoke, and by long experience I
have learnt somewhat of his tactics.”