There came an early April day when Alexander walked from school and felt
that, though he was alone, a stranger went with him. Thus companioned,
he passed through the streets of the little town, out on to the wild
moorland country, and so to a pass between the hills and a pathway worn
by his own feet. The sun was very bright and warm, and he sat down by a
tarn where the wind blew the rushes. Pleasant shivers of cold mingled
with the warmth on his back, and in his throat there was an exultant
aching. He did not know himself; he was a new person, for he was
drinking deep of a heady cup. He was to go to Oxford in the autumn.
He lay on his back and watched the clouds, but he did not see their
procession; he saw his own. Success following success kept time with the
filmy white across the blue, and then a future as wide as the expanse of
sky was opened to him. In his dreams he filled and overflowed the place
offered to him by a welcoming world, but, finding himself unduly
swelling, he sat up with a start, warning himself not to be a fool. He
had a hard head, and, long ago, he had learnt many kinds of
self-control, and he did not mean to indulge his imagination more than
his appetites.
"It's nothing, anyway," he muttered. He looked at the ruffled water and
shivered with it; he looked at the new green of the hillsides, where
defiantly black rocks, starting out of it, proclaimed their perpetuity,
and his heart turned sick with dread of going away. He could not do it,
he told himself; he could not live outside his own place, yet, while he
swore, he knew that he would do it, and he ceased protesting, for he
had a horror of pretence. He would go, but would he be doing right? He
thought of his mother on winter nights, sitting in the kitchen alone,
listening for a step; he heard the wind crying round the house, and for
once allowing himself to feel with her, he knew the trouble of her heart
as she waited with none but the dog for company, and perhaps the spirit
of the dead woman who had been a witch. Ought he to go? he asked again.
"But I will go," he said aloud.
He walked homewards, and he went lingeringly, more eager to feel the
young heather under his feet than to tell his news. A few months, and he
would walk on pavements; he would not breathe this wonderful, uplifting
air. The sound of mountain water would only come to him in thoughts, and
when he woke at night he would think the Blue Hill looked down on him
until, leaping out of bed, as was his way, he would find nothing but
grey walls and grass. He would hear the chiming of many clocks and,
looking from his window, he would find the world empty for lack of the
mountains and the babbling water and the smell of the uninhabited night.
He sat down again. A turn of the path had brought him to a wider view.
The hills here stretched their arms to hold the valley, and he saw the
white walls of his home, the silver snake of water winding to the lake,
the fringing trees, birches and mountain ash, and the dark cluster of
the yews with the church roof shining in the midst of them, under the
sun. The smell of peat rose warmly from the earth and the bleating of
lambs was sweet in his accustomed ears. One had to pay dearly for
conquests and satisfied desires, he found, and he was willing to pay the
price demanded--the price of exile. "But it'll not be for all the year,"
he consoled himself; and then he wondered that he had not rejoiced at
the promised separation from his father. What had once seemed a
necessity for decent life had now fallen back among the unimportant
things. He was learning much.
"I'd live with ten like him, and hate them all, if I could live here,"
he said, and went on slowly, all his senses alert and greedy to gather
stores against the future famine.
His mother glanced up, smiled and nodded as he appeared in the kitchen
doorway. "Tea's ready," she said. It was her daily greeting.
He nodded in his turn and stood on the threshold with his hands in his
pockets, watching the waving larches. They spoke to him in a language he
could not interpret, but understood. He felt an unyouthful and
transitory desire to remain rooted as they were, a desire for peace and
life without a struggle. If he stayed here, Janet would give him work;
he would like it well enough, and things would be simpler so. He
considered the proposal with the calm interest of one who has no doubts.
He was going to Oxford almost as surely as he was going to die. He was
ambitious: he wanted what the place could give him; he wanted and
dreaded the companionship of other men, the combat of minds opposed, the
communion of kindred ones, learning, knowledge of humanity. He would get
these and the hills would remain; wherever life might lead him, he would
come back to them and they would still be here.
"There's a letter for you," said Clara.
He took it from the table. "It's from Edward Webb."
"Yes. I've had one, too."
Alexander opened his. A short note, tremulous as the man, asked leniency
for an enclosure which Alexander pocketed. "He's not been here for
months."
"No, but he says he'll be coming soon. He's been going home when he
could. His wife isn't well, and I think he's worried, poor little bit of
a man!"
"He's a big man," he said, and thought of Janet's dream.
"Well, you know," she said good-humouredly, "I think of all of you as
children. Look what he has sent."
"This will never be Theresa," said Alexander. Dark eyes looked merrily
at him from the picture, a soft mouth smiled, a nose, very slightly
tilted, provoked to pleasure.
"No, that's Grace. Here's Theresa. I can't think how he came to have a
girl like Grace: he's plain enough in the other one."
He looked long at Grace, for she had a delicate warmth of beauty
hitherto unknown to him. It made him think of southern sun, ripe fruits,
round, bare limbs, and brilliant wines.
"She's a dancer, isn't she?" He had a vague and ashamed wish to see her
feet and petticoats, and he thrust the photograph aside. Frowning, he
walked to the door. He felt himself unclean, and he bathed his eyes in
the coolness of mountain stream and wood. Then he looked at Theresa. She
came like another breath of wind. Grace was a girl to him, but Theresa
was a child, and her eager look would never have a sensuous appeal: it
was of the open air, of water and of wind. Her lips were closed as on a
sudden determination, her eyes were light and shining, she seemed to
speak the tongue of all creatures in love with the war of life; but he
thought of her at once as of a little leaf blown from a birch-tree, but
a leaf that leapt in the wind because it chose to do so, and with a firm
intention of being blown only where it wished to go.
"I like her," he said aloud.
"She isn't pretty."
"No." He felt there was something indecent in prettiness. "Let's put
Theresa on the mantelpiece."
"Grace shall go in the parlour. She is an ornament."
"I've got that scholarship," he said abruptly. "I heard at school.
There'll be a letter here to-morrow." She stood silent for an instant,
and he saw a deeper colour creep over her cheeks.
"I knew you'd get it." She kissed him. "Bless you, my son! I knew you'd
get it."
"Oh, Mother!"
"I did, or why did I buy all that flannel for your shirts? I've made
three of them already. Your father's in the garden. Go and tell him."
"You can."
"No, you do it. Alexander, it'll mean a lot to him."
"I don't believe it, unless getting rid of me's a lot."
"You're hard, Alec. In all his life he's had no success but this of
yours, and he'll be pleased. You don't know how much--how much he cares
for you."
"Oh, that----" he said, and paused in his walk to the door. "How will
you do without me? Winter coming on, and--he gets worse."
"He takes less," she said sharply.
"He'll take longer dying," was his thought, but he said, "Sometimes. But
he's more restless. He's not responsible. I believe he's possessed."
Again he thought of Janet and of the dead witch.
"Don't say such things! Possessed, indeed! He's not responsible; but
why, poor soul? Because his father was a bad old man. He can't help
himself. It's wicked the way a man's vice can come crawling after his
son. Wicked! It turns me from my prayers sometimes."
"There's a bad chance for me. You'll never have thought of that,
perhaps."
"I'm your mother as well as his wife, my lad; but you're strong, Alec.
I've given you my strength. And he's weak. But for all that he's the one
man in the world for me, so mind what you say of him! He's the one man.
You'll know some day. Why, if I saw him doing murder, I'd just wipe the
blood off his poor hands." She ended, and then, hearing the echo of her
own words, she looked at him with an approach to shyness. "You think I'm
mad."
"No, I think you're wonderful. You're--you're grand," he stammered.
She laughed, and waved him towards the door. "Tell him," she said.
Alexander crossed the yard and leaned his arms on the garden wall. His
father was on his knees before a box of seedlings. His face with the
heavy moustache drooping over the weakness of his bearded chin was
alight with eagerness, his fingers were delicate amid the tender green,
the sun struck on the thinness of his hair. Alexander felt a new pity
for him.
"I've got some news for you," he said, with timid geniality.
"Eh?" A frown appeared. "Don't worry me. I'm transplanting."
"I know. They look healthy. Tea's ready, and I've got yon scholarship."
James Rutherford stood up to his full length. He rubbed his soiled hands
together, put them in his pockets, and drew near to the wall, until his
face was close to Alexander's. "So you've got the scholarship," he said
slowly. "Well, I'll not be sorry to be rid of you, my lad, but I'm
damned proud of you." He stared at him as though he saw a stranger.
"Damned proud," he repeated.
* * * * *
It was as he went to bed that Alexander remembered the supposed genius
of Theresa. He had seen no signs of it. Only the ardour of her
personality was clear to him in the picture. Could that be a kind of
genius? He hoped not. He did not want to admit her to the clan of which
he hoped he was a member. He could not imagine himself mediocre, he must
be something in excess, and like claims from this little girl who had
charmed him all the evening, would inexplicably annoy him. He admired
women; but he liked them to be great in character rather than in
intellect, and something in him refused to believe in the rareness of
Theresa's mental qualities. But he liked her and, a few weeks later, he
pleased Edward Webb by saying so.
"Ah, I thought you would. She's vivid, isn't she? One misses her
colouring in the photograph, but she speaks, I think."
Alexander turned aside the threatened monologue. "I'm much obliged to
you for letting me see the verses."
"You had them? You did not mention them. I thought perhaps--foolish of
me, no doubt, but all one makes is dear to one--I had hoped for
criticism: you want to spare me, but I am not afraid."
Alexander was embarrassed. "I can't criticize you. What do I know about
it?"
"You could help me. I have no one else. And I trust your judgment. As a
favour----"
"Well, then, I'll ask one of you. Will you come often while I'm away,
and let me know how things are going? And just tell me how the hills are
looking, will you?"
* * * * *
Autumn found him in Oxford, miserable but acutely alive. At first his
country speech and his country clothes made him painfully conspicuous to
himself. He seemed to be moving in a strong light which drew unfriendly
eyes, but gradually his sober, native confidence returned. There were
times when he suffered; but he thought no less of himself because he
wore garments which seemed designed to conceal the lithe strength of his
frame, and could not speak the jargon of the men about him, for the
calibre of his mind was as good as that of other folks, and he knew it.
Once sure of that, he settled down to drink steadily of all life could
give him of knowledge and experience: he did it with the stubborn
persistence natural to him, and though he became absorbed he was never
happy. Here there was too much talk, and he never ceased to be heartsick
for the hills.