"... when the steam
Floats up from those dim fields about the homes
Of happy men that have the power to die."
_Tithonius_, TENNYSON.
A countryman with stooping gait touched his cap and bid good-day to a
young woman who walked rapidly along the crisp high road, smiling a
response as she passed.
The road led gradually upward through a country blazing with red and
orange for rolling miles, till the horizon closed in with the far-off
blue of English hills.
The old man slowly turned to watch the wayfarer, whose quick step and
the look in her eyes of being fixed on objects beyond their owner's
immediate ken, might have suggested to the observant, inward
perturbation. The lissom, swiftly moving figure was almost out of sight
before the old man slowly wheeled round and continued on his way towards
the hamlet of Craddock Dene, that lay in the valley about a mile further
on. Meanwhile the young woman was speeding towards the village of
Craddock on the summit of the gentle slope before her. A row of
broad-tiled cottages came in sight, and on the hill-side the Vicarage
among trees, and a grey stone church which had seen many changes since
its tower first looked out from the hill-top over the southern counties.
The little village seemed as if it had forgotten to change with the rest
of the country, for at least a hundred years. The spirit of the last
century lingered in its quiet cottages, in the little ale-house with
half-obliterated sign, in its air of absolute repose and leisure. There
was no evidence of contest anywhere--except perhaps in a few mouldy
advertisements of a circus and of a remarkable kind of soap, that were
half peeling off a moss-covered wall. There were not even many
indications of life in the place. The sunshine seemed to have the
village street to itself. A couple of women stood gossiping over the
gate of one of the cottages. They paused in their talk as a quick step
sounded on the road.
"There be Mrs. Temperley again!" one matron exclaimed. "Why this is the
second time this week, as she's come and sat in the churchyard along o'
the dead. Don't seem nat'ral to my thinking."
Mrs. Dodge and Mrs. Gullick continued to discuss this gloomy habit with
exhaustive minuteness, involving themselves in side issues regarding the
general conduct of life on the part of Mrs. Temperley, that promised
solid material for conversation for the next week. It appeared from the
observations of Mrs. Gullick, whose husband worked on Lord Engleton's
model farm, that about five years ago Mr. Temperley had rented the Red
House at Craddock Dene, and had brought his new wife to live there. The
Red House belonged to Professor Fortescue, who also owned the Priory,
which had stood empty, said Mrs. Gullick, since that poor Mrs. Fortescue
killed herself in the old drawing-room. Mr. Temperley went every day to
town to attend to his legal business, and returned by the evening train
to the bosom of his family. That family now consisted in his wife and
two small boys; pretty little fellows, added Mrs. Dodge, the pride of
their parents' hearts; at least, so she had heard Mr. Joseph Fleming
say, and he was intimate at the Red House. Mrs. Gullick did not exactly
approve of Mrs. Temperley. The Red House was not, it would seem, an
ever-flowing fount of sustaining port wine and spiritually nourishing
literature. The moral evolution of the village had proceeded on those
lines. The prevailing feeling was vaguely hostile; neither Mrs. Gullick
nor Mrs. Dodge exactly knew why. Mrs. Dodge said that her husband (who
was the sexton and gravedigger) had found Mrs. Temperley always ready
for a chat. He spoke well of her. But Dodge was not one of many. Mrs.
Temperley was perhaps too sensitively respectful of the feelings of her
poorer neighbours to be very popular among them. At any rate, her habits
of seclusion did not seem to village philosophy to be justifiable in the
eyes of God or man. Her apparent fondness for the society of the dead
also caused displeasure. Why she went to the churchyard could not be
imagined: one would think she had a family buried there, she who was,
"as one might say, a stranger to the place," and could not be supposed
to have any interest in the graves, which held for her nor kith nor kin!
Mrs. Temperley, however, appeared to be able to dispense with this
element of attraction in the "grassy barrows." She and a company of
youthful Cochin-China fowls remained for hours among them, on this
cheerful morning, and no observer could have determined whether it was
the graves or the fowls that riveted her attention. She had perched
herself on the stile that led from the churchyard to the fields: a
slender figure in serviceable russet and irresponsible-looking hat,
autumn-tinted too, in sympathy with the splendid season. In her ungloved
left hand, which was at once sensitive and firm, she carried a book,
keeping a forefinger between the pages to mark a passage.
Her face bore signs of suffering, and at this moment, a look of baffled
and restless longing, as if life had been for her a festival whose
sounds came from a hopeless distance. Yet there was something in the
expression of the mouth, that suggested a consistent standing aloof from
herself and her desires. The lines of the face could never have been
drawn by mere diffusive, emotional habits. Thought had left as many
traces as feeling in the firm drawing. The quality of the face was of
that indefinable kind that gives to all characteristic things their
peculiar power over the imagination. The more powerful the quality, the
less can it be rendered into terms. It is the one marvellous, remaining,
musical fact not to be defined that makes the Parthenon, or some other
masterpiece of art, translate us to a new plane of existence, and
inspire, for the time being, the pessimist with hope and the sceptic
with religion.
The Cochin-Chinas pecked about with a contented mien among the long
grass, finding odds and ends of nourishment, and here and there eking
out their livelihood with a dart at a passing fly. Their long, comic,
tufted legs, which seemed to form a sort of monumental pedestal whereon
the bird itself was elevated, stalked and scratched about with an air of
industrious serenity.
There were few mornings in the year which left unstirred the grass which
grew long over the graves, but this was one of the few. Each blade stood
up still and straight, bearing its string of dewdrops. There were one or
two village sounds that came subdued through the sunshine. The winds
that usually haunted the high spot had fallen asleep, or were lying
somewhere in ambush among the woodlands beyond.
The look of strain had faded from the face of Mrs. Temperley, leaving
only an expression of sadness. The removal of all necessity for
concealing thought allowed her story to write itself on her face. The
speculative would have felt some curiosity as to the cause of a sadness
in one seemingly so well treated by destiny. Neither poverty nor the
cares of great wealth could have weighed upon her spirit; she had
beauty, and a quality more attractive than beauty, which must have
placed many things at her command; she had evident talent--her very
attitude proclaimed it--and the power over Fortune that talent ought to
give. Possibly, the observer might reflect, the gift was of that kind
which lays the possessor peculiarly open to her outrageous slings and
arrows. Had Mrs. Temperley shown any morbid signs of self-indulgent
emotionalism the problem would have been simple enough; but this was
not the case.
The solitude was presently broken by the approach of an old man laden
with pickaxe and shovel. He remarked upon the fineness of the day, and
took up his position at a short distance from the stile, where the turf
had been cleared away in a long-shaped patch. Here, with great
deliberation he began his task. The sound of his steady strokes fell on
the stillness. Presently, the clock from the grey tower gave forth its
announcement--eleven. One by one, the slow hammer sent the waves of air
rolling away, almost visibly, through the sunshine, their sound
alternating with the thud of the pickaxe, so as to produce an effect of
intentional rhythm. One might have fancied that clock and pickaxe
iterated in turn, "Time, Death! Time, Death! Time, Death!" till the
clock had come to the end of its tale, and then the pickaxe went on
alone in the stillness--"Death! Death! Death! Death!"
A smile, not easy to be accounted for, flitted across the face of Mrs.
Temperley.
The old gravedigger paused at last in his toil, leaning on his pickaxe,
and bringing a red cotton handkerchief out of his hat to wipe his brow.
"That seems rather hard work, Dodge," remarked the onlooker, leaning her
book upright on her knee and her chin on her hand.
"Ay, that it be, mum; this clay's that stiff! Lord! folks is almost as
much trouble to them as buries as to them as bears 'em; it's all trouble
together, to my thinkin'."
She assented with a musing nod.
"And when a man's not a troublin' o' some other body, he's a troublin'
of hisself," added the philosopher.
"You are cursed with a clear-sightedness that must make life a burden to
you," said Mrs. Temperley.
"Well, mum, I do sort o' see the bearin's o' things better nor most,"
Dodge modestly admitted. The lady knew, and liked to gratify, the
gravedigger's love of long-worded discourse.
"Some people," she said, "are born contemplative, while others never
reflect at all, whatever the provocation."
"Yes'm, that's just it; folks goes on as if they was to live for ever,
without no thought o' dyin'. As you was a sayin' jus' now, mum, there's
them as contemflecs natural like, and there's them as is born without
provocation----"
"Everlastingly!" assented Mrs. Temperley with a sudden laugh. "You
evidently, Dodge, are one of those who strive to read the riddle of this
painful earth. Tell me what you think it is all about."
Gratified by this appeal to his judgment, Dodge scratched his head, and
leant both brawny arms upon his pickaxe.
"Well, mum," he said, "I s'pose it's the will o' th' Almighty as we is
brought into the world, and I don't say nothin' agin it--'tisn't my
place--but it do come over me powerful at times, wen I sees all the
vexin' as folks has to go through, as God A'mighty might 'a found
somethin' better to do with His time; not as I wants to find no fault
with His ways, which is past finding out," added the gravedigger,
falling to work again.
A silence of some minutes was broken by Mrs. Temperley's enquiry as to
how long Dodge had followed this profession.
"Nigh on twenty year, mum, come Michaelmas," replied Dodge. "I've lain
my couple o' hundred under the sod, easy; and a fine lot o' corpses they
was too, take 'em one with another." Dodge was evidently prepared to
stand up for the average corpse of the Craddock district against all
competitors.
"This is a very healthy neighbourhood, I suppose," observed Mrs.
Temperley, seemingly by way of supplying an explanation of the proud
fact.
"Lord bless you, as healthy as any place in the kingdom. There wasn't
one in ten as was ill when he died, as one may say."
"But that scarcely seems an unmixed blessing," commented the lady
musingly, "to go off suddenly in the full flush of health and spirits;
it would be so discouraging."
"Most was chills, took sudden," Dodge explained; "chills is wot chokes
up yer churchyards for yer. If we has another hard winter this year, we
shall have a job to find room in here. There's one or two in the village
already, as I has my eye on, wot----"
"Was this one a chill?" interrupted Mrs. Temperley, with a nod towards
the new grave.
"Wot, this here? Lord bless you, no, mum. This here's our schoolmarm.
Didn't you never hear tell about _her_?" This damning proof of his
companion's aloofness from village gossip seemed to paralyse the
gravedigger.
"Why everybody's been a talkin' about it. Over varty, she war, and ought
to 'a knowed better."
"But, with advancing years, it is rare that people _do_ get to know
better--about dying," Mrs. Temperley suggested, in defence of the
deceased schoolmistress.
"I means about her conduc'," Dodge explained; "scand'lous thing. Why,
she's been in Craddock school since she war a little chit o' sixteen."
"That seems to me a trifle dull, but scarcely scandalous," Mrs.
Temperley murmured.
"... And as steady and respectable a young woman as you'd wish to see
... pupil teacher she was, and she rose to be schoolmarm," Dodge went
on.
"It strikes me as a most blameless career," said his companion.
"Perhaps, as you say, considering her years, she ought to have known
better, but----"
"She sort o' belongs to the place, as one may say," Dodge proceeded,
evidently quite unaware that he had omitted to give the clue to the
situation. "She's lived here all her life."
"Then much may be forgiven her," muttered Mrs. Temperley.
"And everybody respected of her, and the parson he thought a deal o'
her, he did, and used to hold her up as a sample to the other young
women, and nobody dreamt as she'd go and bring this here scandal on the
place; nobody knows who the man was, but it _is_ said as there's someone
_not_ twenty miles from here as knows more about it nor he didn't ought
to," Dodge added with sinister meaning. This dark hint conveyed
absolutely no enlightenment to the mind of Mrs. Temperley, from sheer
lack of familiarity, on her part, with the rumours of the district.
Dodge applied himself with a spurt to his work.
"When she had her baby, she was like one out of her mind," he continued;
"she couldn't stand the disgrace and the neighbours talkin', and that.
Mrs. Walker she went and saw her, and brought her nourishin' things, and
kep' on a-telling her how she must try and make up for what she had
done, and repent and all that; but she never got up her heart again
like, and the poor soul took fever from grievin', the doctor says, and
raved on dreadful, accusin' of somebody, and sayin' he'd sent her to
hell; and then Wensday morning, ten o'clock, she died. Didn't you hear
the passing bell a-tolling, mum?"
"Yes, the wind brought it down the valley; but I did not know whom it
was tolling for."
"That's who it was," said Dodge.
"This is an awfully sad story," cried Mrs. Temperley.
Dodge ran his fingers through his hair judicially. "I don't hold with
them sort o' goings on for young women," he observed.
"Do you hold with them for young men?"
Dodge puckered up his face into an odd expression of mingled reflection
and worldly wisdom. "You can't prevent young fellers bein' young
fellers," he at length observed.
"It seems almost a pity that being young fellows should also mean being
blackguards," observed Mrs. Temperley calmly.
"Well, there's somethin' to be said for that way o' lookin' at it,"
Dodge was startled into agreeing.
"I suppose _she_ gets all the blame of the thing," the lady went on,
with quiet exasperation. Dodge seemed thrown off his bearings.
"Everybody in Craddock was a-talking about it, as was only to be
expected," said the gravedigger. "Well, well, we're all sinners. Don't
do to be too hard on folks. 'Pears sad like after keepin' 'spectable for
all them years too--sort o' waste."
Mrs. Temperley gave a little laugh, which seemed to Dodge rather
eccentric.
"Who is looking after the baby?" she asked.
"One of the neighbours, name o' Gullick, as her husband works for Lord
Engleton, which she takes in washing," Dodge comprehensively explained.
"Had its mother no relatives?"
"Well, she had an aunt down at Southampton, I've heard tell, but she
didn't take much notice of her, not _she_ didn't. Her mother only died
last year, took off sudden before her daughter could get to her."
"Your schoolmistress has known trouble," observed Mrs. Temperley. "Had
she no one, no sister, no friend, during all this time that she could
turn to for help or counsel?"
"Not as I knows of," Dodge replied.
There was a long pause, during which the stillness seemed to weigh upon
the air, as if the pressure of Fate were hanging there with ruthless
immobility.
"She ain't got no more to suffer now," Dodge remarked, nodding with an
aspect of half apology towards the grave. "They sleeps soft as sleeps
here."
"Good heavens, I hope so!" Mrs. Temperley exclaimed.
The grave had made considerable progress before she descended from the
stile and prepared to take her homeward way. On leaving, she made Dodge
come with her to the gate, and point out the red-roofed cottage covered
with monthly roses and flaming creeper, where the schoolmistress had
passed so many years, and where she now lay with her work and her days
all over, in the tiny upper room, at whose latticed window the sun used
to wake her on summer mornings, or the winter rain pattered dreary
prophecies of the tears that she would one day shed.