WHAT MEN LIVE BY
Ishmael Ruan, like the rest of his world that day, had been planning
ahead in his mind. His first conceptions were blown away from him with
his breath at sight of Vassie glowing on the dingy railway platform; she
was far the more self-possessed of the two, which was mortifying to a
young man who, all the way down in the train, had been telling himself
with what tact and kindliness he was going to behave. John-James had
seemed so unaltered that his grip of the hand, as casual as though
Ishmael were any acquaintance just back from a day's excursion, had been
a relief. Remained his mother, for Tom, contrary to what John-James and
Vassie had expected, did not look in at Penzance Station to greet
Ishmael on his transit, and as to the Parson, he was letting Ishmael
alone to find his feet with his family, holding himself as a person to
be come to if occasion or affection prompted it later.
The drive was a silent one, as even Vassie felt shy, though she hid it
under an affectation of calmness. Ishmael had plenty of time to readjust
himself and think of his mother, the determining factor, now Archelaus
was away, in his happiness--or so he thought, ignorant in his
masculinity of the force and will sheathed in Vassie's velvet sleekness.
His mother ... he had no sentiment at the name; but then neither would
he have had if the relation between them had been a happy one. He would
then have felt love, but he would always have been of too deadly a
clarity for sentiment. He was sorry for his mother with a degree of
sympathy rare in one so young, for he had as little of the hardness of
youth as might be, and what he had was not of judgment, but feeling. He
was at the moment nothing but sorry for his mother, but though that pity
would not change to condemnation it might turn to dislike. He too, as
Annie was doing in the parlour as she awaited the sound of the wheels
that were bearing him nearer her, tried to clutch at memories. He could
find a few of fierce kindnesses, but not one of an embrace unqualified
by some queer feeling other than simple love, which he had always felt
in her. She did not, of course, care twopence for him, he decided. Well,
he would not be a hypocrite--he would not bother or embarrass her with
the expression of a tenderness neither of them felt; he would be gentle,
he would kiss her if she seemed to expect it, but he would talk brightly
and naturally of trivial things, he would make the occasion seem as
little weighted with portent as possible. There should be nothing of the
return of the master, nothing of the odious briskness of the new broom
about him at his entry. Time enough after to talk over things.... He
could spend the next day with John-James on the farm discussing
improvements, alterations. They were very behind the times down here; he
had seen farming in Somerset and Devon in his holidays that would make
them open their eyes down here. That would all break it to his mother
gently. She was getting old too--she must be quite fifty--and old people
did not like to have reforms thrust upon them. No, there should be
nothing eager, aggressive about him. He remembered stormy, excitable
scenes of his childhood and resolved they should see what the
self-control of a gentleman was like. Thus Ishmael, with intentions not
by any means, not even most largely, selfish. Yet, of all moods, the
worst to meet his mother's.
The growing interest of the drive as they neared the north-west and the
familiar landmarks of his childhood came into sight, flooded with the
June sunshine--the ruined mine-shafts staring up so starkly, the glory
of white cattle in the golden light, the first glimpse of the pale roofs
of Cloom itself, prismatic as a wood-pigeon's plumage, all these things
struck at his heart with a keener shock than did anything personal, and
made thought of his mother sink away from him. Behind the cluster of
grey buildings he saw the parti-coloured fields stretching away--green
pasture, brown arable, pale emerald of the young corn--all his. He saw
in folds of the land little copses of ash whose trunks showed pale as
ghost-trees; he saw, gleaming here and there through the gorse-bushes,
the stream that ran along the bottom of the slope below the cart-track
that led to Cloom. He saw the bleak, grey homesteads, cottages and small
farms, set here and there, as he turned in his seat to look around him.
And his heart leapt to the knowledge that all these things were his....
Annie's croaking cry, her thin arms, her quick straining of him, he all
unprepared even for the mere physical yielding that alone saves such an
embrace from awkwardness, found him lost. Annie felt it and stiffened,
and the moment had gone never to come back. In after years, when Annie
had magnified it to herself and him, accusing him of throwing her love
back in her face when she had offered it, he was wont to reproach
himself bitterly. But Annie was so volatile in emotion, except where
Archelaus was concerned, that her new flow would, in all likelihood, not
have held its course for more than a few weeks at the best. Ishmael knew
this, but Annie, by dint of telling herself the contrary, never did. The
awkwardness of the actual moment was saved by Phoebe, who had hung in
the background waiting for what she thought might be the most telling
moment to glide forward, but who, her natural pleasure at sight of her
old playmate suddenly overbearing more studied considerations, could
contain herself in silence and the shadows no longer.
"Ishmael!" she cried, running forward. "Ishmael!"
She held out her two hands and Vassie thought swiftly: "It's no good, my
dear; he's for your betters--he and I ..." and with a worldliness that
went far towards bearing out her claims to ladyhood she broke in with:
"You remember little Phoebe, Ishmael--from the mill...."
"Why, of course. You haven't grown much, though you've got your hair
done up," said Ishmael, thankful for any diversion from Annie's
reproachful arms, which had slid from his neck to hang by her side.
"I'm quite grown-up, though," said Phoebe, dimpling.
"She mean's she's too old for you to kiss, lad," said simple John-James
with directness, grinning as he took the mare's bridle to lead her to
the stable. Ishmael had not yet the social cleverness to kiss Phoebe
at once and without embarrassment or to laugh the suggestion away, but
she, who had no social sense at all and never attained any, met the
moment perfectly, with a little curtsey and a sidelong look of
merriment. "Ah, I remember when Ishmael refused to kiss me, and I cried
myself to sleep over it," she said; "'tisn't likely I'm going to let him
kiss me now."
"No--did I ...?" asked he; and Vassie gave a shrill laugh.
"To be sure he did and would again," she declared; "he's not thinking of
such things. Mamma, is tea ready in the parlour?"
"I fear I forgot about it, Vassie, my dear, but Katie shall get it to
wance. Come in here, Ishmael. We do sit here now; simminly we're
quality, according to she."
Ishmael followed his mother into the ugly room, which offended his eyes,
used as they were to the Parson's taste. An album lay on the floor, and
he stooped to pick it up, but his mother, quick for all her years and
rheumatism, was before him and had thrust it out of his reach.
Tea was a stiff meal; everyone was on company manners. John-James, in
from stabling the mare, sat at the edge of a chair; Vassie was too
genteel, Phoebe too arch, Annie grim. Ishmael's heart sank with a
terrible weight upon it as he thought that these were the people with
whom his lot was cast--that he must see them, talk to them, day in, day
out, all the round of the seasons.... Vassie's beauty seemed dimmed to
him; Phoebe became an annoyance like a musical-box that will not leave
off tinkling out the same tune. He bent his head lower as he sat, aware,
with a misery of shame, that tears were burning perilously near his
eye-lids. Life was sordid, and his position, over which he had not been
guiltless of sometimes dreaming as romantic, held nothing but
mortification and hatefulness.
The meal dragged on; the daylight without grew glamorous. Conversation
flickered and died, and at last Ishmael, pushing his chair back with a
noise that sounded horrible to himself, announced his intention of going
to the Vicarage. Annie muttered something about people who could not be
content to stay at home even on their first evening....
But he was not allowed to escape alone; Phoebe discovered that it was
time she was going back to the mill, and there was no evading an offer
to accompany her.
Somehow, away from the others, and out in the open, Phoebe seemed to
shed the commonness that had blighted her at that dreadful tea. She
still coquetted, but it was with a fresh and dewy coquetry as of some
innocent woodland creature that displays its charms as naturally as it
breathes. Ishmael found himself pleased instead of irritated when he
received her weight as he helped her over the stone steps at each
stile--for the only girl he had seen much of in late years had been
wont to stretch out a strong hand to guide him.
As they went over the marsh where they had so often played as children
they vied with each other in pointing out memorable spots, and the
gaiety of the old days mingled with the beauty of the present evening to
brighten his spirits. The marsh was all pied with white--pearly white of
blowing cotton-grass; thick, deader white of water-cress in full flower;
faint blurred white of thousands of the heath-bedstraw's tiny blossoms.
Phoebe in her white gown sprang onto swaying tussocks and picked
plumes of cotton-grass to trim herself a garden hat, and Ishmael
steadied her passage.
"Oh, Ishmael, I'm so glad you've come back!" she told him, lifting a
glowing face, haloed by the rose-lined hat that had slipped to her
shoulders and was only held in place by a pink velvet ribbon which was
not softer than the throat it barred.
"It's often dull here," she ran on. "There's not many people I care
about going with since I came back from boarding school, and even for
those I do go with Vassie spoils it by saying I'm demeaning myself.
She's such a fine lady."
"And aren't you?" asked Ishmael, laughing; "that was my first thought
when I saw you, anyway."
"Was it?" She dimpled with pleasure, but added shrewdly: "I'm not one,
though. I like getting away from it all and working in the dairy and
looking after the tiny calves. I like that best of all, that and my baby
chickens. But Vassie's only happy when she's dressed up and paying
visits."
"I like your way best," he assured her, thinking what a jolly little
thing she was after all. But Phoebe's mind could not keep its
attention on any one theme for more than a minute, and her eyes and
thoughts were wandering. Suddenly she gave a little cry.
"Oh, look at those beauties! I must have them!" And she pointed to
where, on a vividly green patch of marsh, a whole grove of cotton-grass
stood up in the glow of the setting sun. The golden light poured through
the silky tufts, making of each a flake of fire, all raining at the same
slight slope from hair-fine stems. Against the turf they looked for all
the world like Chinese lanterns swung for some miniature revel of the
fairies--they seemed literally to diffuse light upon the air. Ishmael
stood staring, stung to excitement by that suddenly-glimpsed beauty; but
Phoebe darted forward, and the next moment had withdrawn a foot whose
stout country shoe and white stocking were dripping greenly.
"Here, let me!" cried Ishmael; but she waved him back.
"No, you're too heavy; you'd go through at once. Hold my hand while I
lean over;" and she swung outwards from his grasp, her other hand
stretching vainly.
"Best leave that lot," advised Ishmael; "there's some much easier to get
at just along there."
She turned her head, body still swung forward, and followed the line of
his pointing finger to where a cluster of grass as fine, but
untransmuted, stood in shadow.
"Oh, but that hasn't the sun on it!" she exclaimed naïvely. The next
moment she had seen the absurdity of her own speech, and, pivoting to
the path beside him, joined in his laughter.
"Well, it seemed sense to me when I said it," she protested.
"So it would have been if you could have picked the sun too."
"But I suppose it was only the sun that made me want them at all.
Aren't I a goose? Vassie would say I shall never get sense."
"I like that sort of nonsense; it's rather jolly, somehow. I say,
Phoebe, I shall think of you as the girl who wanted to pick the sun.
Doesn't it sound ripping?"
"Oh, my feet are so wet!" cried Phoebe. "I must hurry home. Mother
will fuss so over me, you can't think."
"Shall I just get you that sunny grass before we go?"
Phoebe hesitated, and then some instinct, finer than her comprehension
of it, prompted her to a refusal, and the cotton-grass was left to swing
its gossamer globes of light till the sun should have dipped below the
rim of the moor.
When Ishmael had delivered Phoebe up to the tender agitations of the
fussy, weakly mother, and himself got away from the too-enthusiastic
welcome of the father, he struck towards the cliffs and the Vicarage
with a younger heart than had been his all the evening. Quite naturally
life had slipped through from a film of darkness on to a brighter plane,
and he greeted Boase with none of the gruffness that would have weighed
on him earlier. This also had the result of breaking the reticence which
would otherwise have kept him from telling anything of his real
feelings. Now that his family and the life before him no longer seemed
rayless, he could speak of the blight that had, for him, settled even
over the future as he sat in that fearsome parlour.
Boase listened, glad that the boy seemed to be growing more articulate;
it would make his help, when it was needed, easier to give. He kept
Ishmael for supper, feeling that consideration for Annie was not the
most important thing just then, and after it he walked with the boy as
far as the stile that gave on to the cliff path. Ishmael was far from
having given way to one of his old unbalanced fits of chattering, but it
had been a pleasure to him to talk freely to the person with whom he was
most intimate. It was long--unnaturally long for expansive youth--since
he had talked so freely, for Killigrew had left St. Renny a year before
him to study painting in Paris. It was the time when the great Barbizon
school was in its prime, when Diaz and Rousseau and Harpignies and the
rest of that goodly company were heading the return to Nature which the
epoch needed, just as later it was to need, with equal sincerity, a
return to the primitive in art. Killigrew was absorbed by the fervour of
his new creed and wrote but rarely, and his letters were all but
incomprehensible to Ishmael. Not in his moments of freest intercourse
with Phoebe that evening had it been possible to exchange anything
beyond the chatter and playfulness of children, but there was that in
Ishmael to-night which, he being young, had to find outlet. For youth is
the period of giving, as gathering age is of withholding.
Coming home after so long, coming home, moreover, with a meaning
portentous beyond the ordinary attached to the act, had excited Ishmael
unknown to himself. Physically he felt very tired, which he told himself
was absurd, but mentally he was of a joyous alertness. Leaning upon the
stile, he drew a deep breath of the salt air and raised his eyes to the
night sky curving, so high was he placed, for an immense arc about his
tiny form. To the north the Plough trailed its length, but south, high
over the dark blot which to the keen sight of love meant Cloom, Spica,
brilliant crown of Virgo, pulsed whitely, while the glittering
sisterhood of Aquila and Lyra, Corona and Libra swept towards the east,
ushering up the sky the slim young moon, as bright as they but more
serene, like a young mother amidst a flock of heedless girls. How often
had Ishmael counted these same clear callous eyes from sleeping St.
Renny, but never with the answering gleam in his breast that he felt now
he saw them over his own land.
"So life is going to be good, after all," remarked the Parson abruptly.
"Rather. It seems jolly good to-night, anyway. All my life I've been
looking forward to this, just this, coming back here and making
something of it all ... and the funny thing is now it's come I'm not
disappointed."
"Why should you be?"
"I dunno. Only one expects to be when one's been expecting to be happy.
That sounds Irish, but you know what I mean."
"Yes, I know, but then I'm older than you. Why should you have found
that out?"
"Some things--things like that--one doesn't find out by what happens.
One sort of knows them to start with. It's funny too, because what I'm
so cock-a-hoop about to-night is that life's so full of things just
ahead, things that are going to happen. I say, look at that moon; I sort
of feel as though I could jump over her if only I tried hard enough!"
"That's what youth lives on," said Boase--"not on what happens, but on
what may happen. Every morning when you wake don't you feel--'To-day
_It_ may happen,' though you haven't the vaguest idea what It may be?"
"Why, yes, I think that's true," said Ishmael slowly.
"Yes, it's true. It's what youth and hope and courage lives by."
"And old people--what do they live by?"
"Ah, that everyone has to find out for himself. It depends largely on
what his middle-age has drawn on, and that's nearly always something
more material than what fed his youth. There's only one thing
certain--that we all have something, some secret bread of our own soul,
by which we live, that nourishes and sustains us. It may be a different
thing for each man alive."
"We must each work out our own damnation," said Ishmael, and then could
have kicked himself for his own smartness that he heard go jarring
through the night. He waited in a blush of panic for some reproof, such
as "That was hardly worthy, was it?" But the Parson, ever nothing if not
unexpected, did not administer it, though Ishmael could have sworn he
felt his smile through the darkness.
"Damnation, salvation, it's much the same thing," said Boase,
cheerfully, "though naturally youth likes to use the former word. But
the great thing is never to despise the means by which another man
attains it. Patience, tolerance, tolerance, patience...."
"Oh, I don't know," protested Ishmael. "I don't think much would get
done in the world at that rate, would it?"
"Perhaps not. And you have so much to do in it.... When d'you start?"
"To-morrow morning with dawn, so I must be getting off. If you're awake
round about then, Da Boase, think of me beginning to remake the world
over at Cloom."
And Ishmael set off through the night, his feet lagging with a blissful
fatigue and his mind falling on an equally blissful numbness. As he went
the Parson's phrase went with him, stirring his imagination, and when he
climbed into the big bed beneath the drooping Christ it worked more
articulately within him. "Secret bread ..." he thought; "that's what he
called it.... I wonder if Phoebe's is sun--she wanted to pick the sun.
And his is religion, of course, and mine--I know what mine is. It'll
always be the same. I shan't change even if I grow old."
He began to feel very drowsy and drifted into a vague wonder at the
thought of growing old. "I wonder what it feels like. I suppose one
takes no more interest in anything; it can't matter what one's secret
bread is. But mine, of course, mine is Cloom...." And on that he fell
asleep.