A boy, slim and white as the silver birches round him, stood at the edge
of a pool, in act to dive. The flat stone was warm to his feet from
yesterday's sun, and through the mist of a September morning there was
promise of more heat, but now the grey curtain hung in a stillness that
was broken by his plunge. He came to the surface, shaking his black
head, and, when he had paddled round the pool, he landed, glistening
like the dewy fields beyond him. Slowly he drew on his clothes, leaving
the quiet of the wood unruffled, but his eyes were alert. If there were
any movement among the birches, with their air of trees seen mirrored in
a lake, he did not miss it. He, too, was of the woods and the water,
sharing their life and taking mood and colour from them. He sat very
still when he had dressed, with lean hands resting on his raised knees,
and eyes that marked how the water in the pool was sinking for lack of
rain and how the stream that fed it had become a trickle. In a wet
season his flat stone was three feet under water, and there was a
rushing river above and below his bathing-place, tearing headlong from
those hills which, last night, had been hidden in heavy cloud and might
be wrapped in it still for all the low mist would let him know. He saw
how the bracken was dried before its time, and the trees were ready to
let fall their leaves at the first autumn wind, and how some of them,
not to be baulked of their last grandeur, had tried to flame into gold
that their death might not be green. There were blackberries within a
yard of him but he did not move to get them for the mist was like a hand
laid on him; but when at length it stirred a little, thrust aside by a
ray of sun, he rose, whistling softly, to take the fruit, and then,
barefooted and bareheaded, he walked home across the fields.
The sun came out more boldly and Alexander broke into louder, gayer
whistling, welcoming the sunshine and warning his mother that it was
breakfast-time. From the back of the low, white house he heard her
answering note, and thus assured that the bacon was in the pan, or near
it, he took a seat on the old horse-block and waited.
Behind him was the house-front and the strip of low-walled garden, where
lad's love, and pinks, and tobacco-plant grew as they chose among the
straggling rose-bushes; before him were the fields he had crossed, the
trees bordering the stream, and, topping the mist, the broad breast of
the Blue Hill. On his left hand the rough road before the house dwindled
to a track that led upwards to the pass between the sloping shoulder of
the Blue Hill and the jagged, precipitous rocks of the Spiked Crags, and
between these and the hill behind the house a deeply cut watercourse was
grooved, hardly more than an empty trough at this moment, but in the
time of rain lashed by a flood of waters that looked from the house like
a white and solid streak. Alexander called this water the
mountain-witch's hair, for it streamed to his fancy like the locks of an
old hag, and when the sound of its roaring came to him through the
winter night he thought she was shrieking in anger, and he pulled the
bed-clothes about his ears. But he told no one of that secret name, and,
like other people, he spoke of it as the Steep Water, because of the
cascades in which it fell. Broad Beck was the name of the stream in
which he bathed, and, but for the one deep pool, it went over stony
shallows to the lake of which Alexander, sitting on the horse-block,
could see a glimmer at his right hand, like a grey pathway between the
inn roof and the trees in the little churchyard. It was a great sheet of
water edged on the hither shore by the high-road and the rough moorland
beyond, on the other by a black mountain-side. It sent its waters to the
sea, and in return the sea sent up the mists that curled, and rolled,
and broke away again among the hills, or sent down the fierce steel
fingers of the rain.
Alexander's eyes were on the Blue Hill, but his thoughts were with his
breakfast, and through the stone passage leading from the kitchen to the
porch there came encouraging sounds and savours.
"Oh, mother!" he cried hungrily; "will you never have it ready?"
He did not heed her shouted answer, for he had heard steps on the stony
track, and seen the shambling figure of a man coming towards him. Drunk,
was he? Alexander knew the signs, but men seldom stagger at
breakfast-time, and the nearest house of call in the direction whence
the stranger came was six or seven long miles away across the hills. No;
on a nearer view he was certainly not drunk. But what, then, was the
matter with the man?
"Boy"--he stood before the horse-block, and plucked at the tufts of moss
clinging to his clothes--"is this a farm?"
"No," said Alexander, wondering at the little man with the sparse,
disordered hair. "There's moss on your head, too," he said.
The stranger put up his hand an inch or two, and dropped it.
"Everywhere," he murmured. "Was it your dog I heard barking?"
"May be. He's a loud barker."
"Do you think I could have a cup of milk? I'm very cold. I lost my way
up there, among the hills."
"Were you out all night?" asked Alexander, kindling.
"All night--yes. Among the rocks. I thought I should fall off. I was
afraid."
"Did you--see things?"
"Mist. Figures in the mist. And a sheep cried, and stones fell
sometimes, and there was a noise of water. If I could get warm----"
Alexander put out a steadying hand. "Will you come in?" he said. "My
mother'll see to you."
The man suffered himself to be led out of the sunshine through a place
which seemed long and dark and cavernous, and so into a room where a
fire glowed and crackled, and an open door and window let in the light.
"Mother!" said Alexander.
A woman looked up swiftly from the frying-pan. "I didn't hear you for
the bacon frizzling," she said. "Oh! who is it, Alec? Here, put him into
the chair. Quick!"
"He's been out all night," he says.
"He looks like it." She touched his hands. "He's perished. Take off his
boots, and tell your father. I'll warm some milk. Poor soul!"
The little man, with Alexander at his feet, had sunk back against the
red cushions of the chair. The strain of his expression had relaxed, and
now he smiled.
"Bacon," he said on a note of satisfaction--"bacon."
"No, no; you'd better have some milk. It will warm you. Milk first,
bacon afterwards, perhaps."
She spoke soothingly, entirely at her ease, doing the work that came
most readily to her. He blinked and straightened himself before he took
the cup. The woman seemed tall, and splendid, and compelling.
"I'm afraid--I'm afraid I had almost fallen asleep. The warmth----"
"Drink this," she ordered.
"Thank you." He shivered. "Forgive my troubling you. If I may rest for a
little while-----"
She patted his shoulder. "Yes; you shall go to sleep. Push the chair
nearer to the fire, Alec. Jim"--she turned to her husband, who stood in
the doorway--"when I've warmed the bed we must get him there, or he'll
be ill." She looked down smilingly at the half-conscious occupant of the
chair. "He's just a bundle of cold and fright," she said.
Bidden to hang up the damp coat of the visitor, who now lay snug in bed,
Alexander obeyed with so much vigour that two small books fell from the
pockets to the floor.
"His name's Edward Webb," he announced. "And he reads poetry. Keats,
this one, and 'Paradise Lost.'" He turned the pages and stood reading.
"Are those your books, Alexander?" said his father. The voice was
irritable, and the dark face moody. Expectant, almost hopeful of a
retort, he watched his son.
"They're his."
"Then put them down."
"But I think he'd like me to dry them. Where was the man lying to get so
wet?"
"Give them here. I'll see to them. What did you say his name was?"
"Edward Webb. I think I'll just put them in the sun. They're good books,
and he's read a lot in them."
"Does it say where he comes from?"
"I wouldn't think of looking," said Alexander. "They're his property.
But I'll dry them."
"Alexander----" began his father noisily, but the boy had stepped out of
doors with a face changed from natural gravity to impishness.
Rutherford shouted at his wife. "Clara, I've had enough of it. He'd defy
me if I lay dying. As if I wasn't fit to touch the books! There's
something wrong with the lad."
"Jim, don't wake that poor man with your shouting," she said briskly.
She looked serene and competent. "Eat your breakfast. And as for
Alexander, he didn't choose you for his father, and it's for you to make
him glad he's got you"--her tone changed--"as glad as I am that you're
my man."
He flushed. "Clara, is it true that you're still glad?"
She had time to drop a light kiss on his hand before Alexander darkened
the doorway.
Edward Webb's first waking thought was that his nightshirt was a new
acquaintance. It was rougher than his own, and so long that he felt like
a babe in swaddling clothes--an apt simile, as he would have confessed
had he been able to see himself disinterestedly, for his face, worn as
it was with anxieties, had in it something of youth and indestructible
innocence. He had slept for hours without a movement, and only his head
was visible above the smoothly turned sheet, but he brought forth an arm
and examined his sleeve. It was drab-coloured, and striped with pink. It
was not his. He looked about him, and remembered.
He was in the house of the Good Samaritans. There was a boy with dark
eyes, and a woman who had appeared to him as Warmth and Strength, and,
more dimly, a man who had helped him to bed--a tall, dark man. No doubt
this was his nightshirt--a durable garment, but irritating to the skin.
He wondered what time it was. He had no idea how long he had slept, nor
at what hour he had found the valley and the white house, with its
blessed signs of habitation; but it was at the first breath of dawn that
he had left his rocky perch, and, stumbling, falling, almost crying
aloud in misery, had made his way down the mountain. Memory took him
again through the night's adventure, and farther back--to last Monday
morning, when he had bidden Theresa good-bye. It was their habit, when
he started on his journeying, to play their game of Beauty and the
Beast.
"What shall I bring back this time, Beauty?" he would ask, and she,
glowing at the name she wished were justly hers, would clasp her hands
ecstatically before she answered: "A white satin dress, please, dear
Papa, and shoes to match, with silver roses on them, and a silver rose
for my hair." Or it might be a string of diamonds, a great feathered
fan, a boar-hound to be her stately guardian.
"The real Beauty," he reminded her one day, "was content with a single
rose from a garden."
"I know," she said, and for a moment lost her brightness; but then, "I
think that's lovely in a story," she told him. "Yes." She acted it.
"'Bring me a white rose, Papa. I don't want anything else.' But she
would, you know, when it came all faded. But I'm glad the story lets her
say that."
But he had slightly changed the form of his question on this latest
morning.
"If you could have anything in the world, Theresa, what would it be?"
"Oh!" she cried joyously, as though that thing were already hers, and
through her mind there paced a fair procession of the desired. But she
knew her decision long before it was spoken. "I should have an
adventure," she said.
"I can't bring you that, I'm afraid."
"No--oh no!"
"But I might have one myself." He was pleased with the idea.
"It wouldn't be the same."
"I should tell you about it."
She agreed that would be much better than nothing, and with his endless
wish to please her he determined that he would have something to tell.
His days were passed in alternate fortnights of travelling about the
country with samples of ugly things incidental to the dressmaking art,
and of conveying the same packages from shop to shop of his native town.
He was to be seen, a small shrinking figure, sitting in a cab with a
pile of cardboard boxes opposite him, and his face turned to the
windows, looking through one and then the other for sights that accorded
better with his nature than these boxes, on which, when the cab jolted,
he laid a hand lest they should slip. The fortnights at home were more
endurable than the others, for he returned at evening to his family and
his books, and during the day he had many a fair thing to bring healing
to his pain, for always he worked with a queer gnawing at the breast.
This was not his rightful work, and he did it ill, and, because he had a
great love of beauty and fitness in all things, he suffered. But he was
driven on to his mighty, ineffectual efforts by the needs of his wife
and little daughters, and as he looked out of the musty cab he would see
comforting white clouds floating behind red roofs, the river that found
its way into the city's heart, and the tall masts of sailing-ships. But
the following fortnight was one of exile and of racket--strange towns
full of unfriendly faces, dull hotels with texts on the bedroom walls,
and the noise and dirt of trains. A book of verses in each pocket was
then his solace, and, two by two, the poets journeyed with him, gilding
the grime of cities. Sometimes, as the train carried him on, with, to
his imagination, something remorseless and inimical to him in its
energy, he would look up from his book and stare longingly at the
country which the fast wheels spurned; but on his lonely Saturday and
Sunday, when he was stranded in some town, he seldom had energy to obey
adventure's whisper, and explore farther than a quiet place where he
could read, and write his daily letter to his wife. But, Theresa having
a hunger for adventure, her father had decided that at least she should
be satisfied by proxy, and he had sought the mountains.
He had seen them once, in boyhood, on a holiday, and their wonder had
remained with him like a treasure. Why should he not add another to his
little store, another gem to shine in the dark parts of his life, and
throw some of its colour and glory on Theresa? That should be his
adventure; he would find the mountains and roam about them, and look
fearfully down their rocky sides, and shudder at the thought of falling,
and stock his memory with things to tell Theresa.
So on the afternoon of Friday he left the little station by the
seashore, and tramped inland, following the road for a while until, as
he turned a corner, he saw the blue shapes of hills, shadowy but strong,
mysterious, lifting themselves to heaven, yet compact of the solid earth
of man. He stood still, drinking in beauty like hill water, and
suffering a glorious new pain. It was more than beauty that he gazed on;
it was the most perfect expression of what man's hopes should be, and
the discovery shook him. He walked on. Above the hills the sky was
stretched in a faint blue shade that swooned into a white, and here,
within a stone's throw of him, the fingers of a chestnut-tree had dipped
themselves in dyes.
He tasted joy as he went, first across fields and then slowly up the
long flank of a hill; it was all joy until, careless or ignorant of the
menace in the clouds that were beginning to circle about the summits, he
found himself shut in by a thick wall of mist.
He stood on a level place strewn with stones, and their grey colour grew
into the grey of the mist that bound him. It was very quiet. Afar off
there was a faint sound of water, but the beating of his own heart was
louder. He held his breath, peering this way and that, but keeping his
feet steady lest the noise they made should break the stillness and
enrage that something which seemed to wait until he moved. He stood,
thinking quickly and anxiously. He must find some way out of this
danger, he must keep cool; but he almost screamed when he heard a light
scattering of stones, followed by a cry. It was only an old sheep that
went bleating away behind the veil, but he could not smile at his alarm.
He began to run to and fro, seeking some landmark, and when he found a
little trickling stream he thought it would be wise to follow it down
the mountain-side. Oncoming darkness was now added to his fears, but he
could still see the silver streak, and beside it, walking in steep,
oozing moss, he went carefully; nervous, but still hopeful, when he
found there were rocks to be descended. Using his shaking hands, he
clambered down, absorbed and unforeseeing, and it was almost dark when
he came to a ledge that ended with a shocking suddenness. He could not
go down. He looked up, and he was afraid. He could not turn his back to
that awful emptiness, and climb the steep rocks he could hardly see; his
own daring of descent amazed him. He was a little giddy; he blinked in
the darkness. He would have to stay there, shivering and afraid. He was
having his adventure and he did not like it, but across his troubled
thoughts words of Theresa came, bracing him to courage.
"I hope I'm brave," she said to him one day, inflecting her voice
inquiringly.
"I hope so, too," he answered, and felt a pang.
"I like brave people," she said. "I like them to be brave and clever."
"Not good?" he asked.
"Oh--good----" That was a lesser virtue.
He was not good, nor clever, nor brave, but he would endure, and all
night long he sat there, trying to control his dread of the mist and
what lay beyond it, stifling the screams that threatened when a stone
fell, crashing, dropping from rock to rock, and, hundreds of feet below,
breaking itself into ultimate fragments on the screes. "Not again," he
prayed. "Not again." So he might fall, but he must not, he would not,
and he sat farther back upon his ledge, gripping the wet heather.
He thought of Nancy, of Grace and Theresa in their beds: Nancy, with her
hand under her cheek, and the humorous, half-mocking smile on her lips,
even in sleep; Grace, with her nose in the pillow, and Theresa
widespread, tossing her tawny head. Heaven keep them and him! If only
the darkness had not been so thick--thick, yet unsteady, promising
cracks of light which did not come, and, as he grew more dazed, taking
unwelcome shapes of small and evil things, of things nameless, gigantic,
formless, yet hideous in suggestion, that came slyly through the folds
of mist to push him from his place. Only with a wrenching effort of will
could he drive them back, and as they went he thought he heard them
chuckling. And again they came with their wavering, softly threatening
movements; he strained his eyes for them, there was a terrible expanded
feeling in his ears, and the mist and darkness were weighted with horror
which pressed about him. His tired eyelids drooped, and he may have
slept, but if he did he found no relief from fear; sleeping and waking
he was stalked by ugly visions, and he was cold. He thought of the
people he had seen shivering in winter streets; so this was how they
felt in their rags. Perhaps, too, they had this dreadful vacancy of
body, which was not hunger, but resulted from it so that now and then he
seemed to be floating in mid-air, a man without a frame, compelled to
drive his numbed fingers into the wet earth to bring himself back to a
sense of solidity and self.
But somehow the night wore through, and with eyes that were wearied with
straining past the dark, that heavy curtain seemed at last to be growing
thin. It was still black, but the texture of it was changing. A little
breeze went by, like a herald bird promising the day. There came a fresh
smell of wind and earth. Slowly the night was mastered.
There was no glowing pageantry of dawn; the light spread and grew
stronger in grey dignity, and soon he could see the glistening mosses
and tender ferns that grew in the crevices of the rocks, and, looking
from these things of vivid green, he could draw from the grey light
about him the forms of distant hills.
Later, the valley seemed to lift itself towards him, showing the fallen
masses of the mountain and the white streaks that were streams. Then,
sharp in the clear air, he heard the barking of a dog.
He rose, stretched his cramped limbs and faced the rocks. The unpassable
danger of last night was only difficulty in the morning, and shakily and
in fear he overcame it.
So, stumbling over the riot of loose stones that strewed the top,
staggering down heather slopes imminent with pitfalls, he came at last
to the sight of Alexander on the horse-block.
That was a good adventure for Theresa.