Yet, in spite of misgivings, no very dark foreboding companioned me that
evening. With infinite labour I concocted two letters:--
"DEAR MR CRIMBLE,--I regret my words this afternoon. Bitterly.
Indeed I do. But still truth is important, isn't it? _One we know_
hasn't been too kind to either of us. I still say that. And if it
seems inconsiderate, please remember Shakespeare's lines about the
beetle (which I came across in a Birthday Book the other day)--a
creature I detest. Besides, we can return good for evil--I can't
help this sounding like hypocrisy--even though it is an extremely
tiring exchange. I _feel_ small enough just now, but would do
anything in the world that would help in the way we both want. I
hope that you will believe this and that you will forgive my
miserable tongue. Believe me, ever yours sincerely,--M. M."
My second letter was addressed to Fanny's school, "c/o Miss
Stebbings":--
"DEAR FANNY,--He came again to-day and looks like a corpse. I can
do no more. You must know how utterly miserable you are making him;
that I can't, and won't, go on being so doublefaced. I don't call
_that_ being the good Samaritan. Throw the stone one way or the
other, however many birds it may kill. That's the bravest thing to
do. A horrid boy I knew as a child once aimed at a jay and
killed--a wren. Well, there's only one wren that I know of--your M.
"PS.--I hope this doesn't sound an angry letter. I thought only the
other day how difficult it must be being as fascinating as you are.
And, of course, we are _what_ we are, aren't we, and cannot, I
suppose, help acting like that? You can't think how he looked, and
talked. Besides, I am sure you will enjoy your holiday much more
when you have made up your mind. Oh, Fanny, I can't say what's in
mine. Every day there's something else to dread. And all that I do
seems only to make things worse. _Do_ write: and, though, of
course, it isn't my affair, do have a '_sagacious_' holiday, too."
Mrs Bowater almost squinted at my two small envelopes when she licked
the stamps for me. "We can only hope," was her one remark, "that when
the secrets of all hearts are opened, they'll excuse some of the letters
we reach ourselves to write." But I did not ask her to explain.
Lyme Regis was but a few days distant when, not for the first time since
our meeting at Mrs Bowater's gatepost, I set off to meet Mr Anon--this
time to share with him my wonderful news. When showers drifted across
the sun-shafted sky we took refuge under the shelter of the
garden-house. As soon as the hot beams set the raindrops smouldering, so
that every bush was hung with coloured lights, we returned to my smoking
stone. And we watched a rainbow arch and fade in the windy blue.
He was gloomy at first; grudged me, I think, every moment that was to be
mine at Lyme Regis. So I tempted him into talking about the books he had
read; and about his childhood--far from as happy as mine. It hurt me to
hear him speak of his mother. Then I asked him small questions about
that wonderful country he had told me of, which, whether it had any real
existence or not, filled me with delight as he painted it in his
imagination. He was doing his best to keep his word to me, and I to keep
our talk from becoming personal.
If I would trust myself to him, friend to friend--he suddenly broke out
in a thick, low voice, when I least expected it--the whole world was
open to us; and he knew the way.
"What way?" said I. "And how about poor Mrs Bowater? How strange you
are. Where do you live? May I know?"
There was an old farm-house, he told me, on the other side of the park,
and near it a few cottages--at the far end of Loose Lane. He lodged in
one of these. Against my wiser inclinations he persuaded me to set off
thither at once and see the farm for myself.
On the further side of Wanderslore, sprouting their pallid green
frondlets like beads at the very tips of their black, were more yews
than beeches. We loitered on, along the neglected bridle-path. Cuckoos
were now in the woods, and we talked and talked, as if their voices
alone were not seductive enough to enchant us onwards. Sometimes I
spelled out incantations in the water; and sometimes I looked out
happily across the wet, wayside flowers; and sometimes a robin
flittered out to observe the intruders. How was it that human company so
often made me uneasy and self-conscious, and nature's always brought
peace?
"Now, you said," I began again, "that they have a God, and that they are
so simple He hasn't a name. What did you mean by that? There can't be
one God for the common-sized, and one for--for me; now, can there? My
mother never taught me that; and I have thought for myself." Indeed I
had.
"'God'!" he cried; "why, what is all this?"
All this at that moment was a clearing in the woods, softly shimmering
with a misty, transparent green, in whose sunbeams a thousand flies
darted and zigzagged like motes of light, and the year's first
butterflies fluttered and languished.
"But if I speak," I said, "listen, now, my voice is just swallowed up.
Out of just a something it faints into a nothing--dies. No, no;" (I
suppose I was arguing only to draw him out), "all this cares no more for
me than--than a looking-glass. Yet it is mine. Can you see Jesus Christ
in these woods? Do you believe we are sinners and that He came to save
us? I do. But I can see Him only as a little boy, you know, smiling,
crystal, intangible: and yet I do not _like_ children much."
He paused and stared at me fixedly. "_My_ size?" he coughed.
"Oh, size," I exclaimed, "how you harp on that!"--as if _I_ never had.
"Did you not say yourself that the smaller the body is, the happier the
ghost in it? Bodies, indeed!"
He plunged on, hands in pockets, frowning, clumsy. And up there in the
north-west a huge cloud poured its reflected lights on his strange face.
Inwardly--with all my wits in a pleasant scatter--I laughed; and
outwardly (all but) danced. Solemnly taking me at my word, and as if he
were reading out of one of his dry old books, he began to tell me his
views about religion, and about what we are, qualities, consciousness,
ideas, and that kind of thing. As if you could be anything at any moment
but just that moment's whole self. At least, so it seemed then: I was
happy. But since in his earnestness his voice became almost as false to
itself as was Mr Crimble's when he had conversed with me about Hell, my
eyes stole my ears from him, and only a few scattered sentences reached
my mind.
Nevertheless I enjoyed hearing him talk, and encouraged him with bits of
questions and exclamations. Did he believe, perhaps, in the pagan
Gods?--Mars and all that? Was there, even at this very moment, cramped
up among the moss and the roots, a crazy, brutal Pan in the woods? And
those delicious Nymphs and Naiads! What would he do if one beckoned to
him?--or Pan's pipes began wheedling?
"Nymphs!" he grunted, "aren't you----"
"Oh," I cried, coming to a pause beside a holly-tree so marvellously
sparkling with waterdrops on every curved spine of it that it took my
breath away: "let's talk no more thoughts. They are only mice gnawing. I
can hear _them_ at night."
"You cannot sleep?" he inquired, with so grave a concern that I laughed
outright.
"Sleep! with that Mr Crimble on my nerves?" I gave a little nod in my
mind to my holly, and we went on.
"Crimble?" he repeated. His eyes, greenish at that moment, shot an angry
glance at me from under their lids. "Who is he?"
"A friend, a friend," I replied, "and, poor man, as they say, in love.
Calm yourself, Mr Jealousy; not with me. I am three sizes too small.
With Miss Bowater. But there," I went on, in dismay that mere vanity
should have let this cat out of its bag, "that's not my secret. We
mustn't talk of that either. What I really want to tell you is that we
haven't much time. I am going away. Let's talk of Me. Oh, Mr Anon, shall
I ever be born again, and belong to my own world?"
It seemed a kind of mournful serenity came over his face. "You say you
are going away"; he whispered, pointing with his finger, "and yet you
expect me to talk about _that_."
We were come to the brink of a clear rain-puddle, perhaps three or four
feet wide, in the moss-greened, stony path, and "_that_" was the image
of myself which lay on its surface against the far blue of the sky--the
under-scarlet of my cape, my face, fair hair, eyes. I trembled a little.
His own reflection troubled me more than he did himself.
"Come," I said, laying a hand on his sleeve, "the time's so short, and
indeed I _must_ see your house, you know: you have seen mine. Ah, but
you should see Lyndsey and Chizzel Hill, and the stream in my father's
garden. I often hear _that_ at night, Mr Anon. I would like to have died
a child, however long I must live."
But now the cloud had completely swallowed up the sun; a cold gust of
wind swept hooting down on us, and I clung to his arm. We pushed on,
emerged at last from the rusty gates, its eagles green and scaling, and
came to the farm. But not in time. A cloud of hail had swirled down;
beating on our heads and shoulders. It all but swept me up into the air.
Catching hands, we breasted and edged on up the rough, miry lane towards
a thatched barn, open on one side and roofing a red and blue wagon.
Under this we scrambled, and tingling all over with the buffetings of
the wind and the pelting of hailstones, I sat laughing and secure,
watching, over my sodden skirts and shoes, the sweeping, pattering
drifts paling the green.
Around us in the short straw and dust stalked the farmer's fowls,
cackling, with red-eyed glances askew at our intrusion. Ducks were
quacking. Doves flew in with whir of wing. I thought I should boil over
with delight. And presently a sheep-dog, ears down and tail between its
legs, slid round the beam of the barn door. Half in, half out, it stood
bristling, eyes fixed, head thrust out. My companion drew himself up and
with a large stone in his hand, edged, stooping and stealthily--and very
much, I must confess, like the picture of a Fuegian I have seen in a
book--between the gaudy wheels of the wagon, and faced the low-growling
beast. I watched him, enthralled. For a moment or two he and the
sheep-dog confronted each other without stirring. Then with one sharp
bark, the animal flung back its head, and with whitened eye, turned and
disappeared.
"Oh, _bravissimo_!" said I, mocking up at Mr Anon from under my hood.
"He was cowed, poor thing. _I_ would have made friends with him."
We sate on in the sweet, dusty scent of the stormy air. The hail turned
to rain. The wind rose higher. I began to be uneasy. So heavily streamed
the water out of the clouds that walking back by the way we had come
would be utterly impossible for me. What's to be done now?--I thought to
myself. Yet the liquid song of the rain, the gurgling sighs and
trumpetings of the wind entranced me; and I turned softly to glance at
my stranger. He sat, chin on large-boned hands, his lank hair plastered
on his hollow temples by the rain, his eyes glassy in profile.
"I am glad of this," he muttered dreamily, as if in response to my
scrutiny. "We are here."
A scatter of green leaf-sheaths from a hawthorn over against the barn
was borne in by the wind.
"I am glad too," I answered, "because when you are at peace, so I can
be; for that marvellous land you tell me of is very far away. Why,
who----?" But he broke in so earnestly that I was compelled to listen,
confiding in me some queer wisdom he had dug up out of his books--of how
I might approach nearer and nearer to the brink between life and
reality, and see all things as they are, in truth, in their very selves.
All things visible are only a veil, he said. A veil that withdraws
itself when the mind is empty of all thoughts and desires, and the heart
at one with itself. That is divine happiness, he said. And he told me,
too, out of his far-fetched learning, a secret about myself.
It was cold in the barn now. The fowls huddled close. Rain and wind ever
and again drowned the low, alluring, far-away voice wandering on as if
out of a trance. Dreams, maybe; yet I have learned since that one half
of his tale is true; that at need even an afflicted spirit, winged for
an instant with serenity, may leave the body and, perhaps, if lost in
the enchantments beyond, never turn back. But I swore to keep his words
secret between us. I had no will to say otherwise, and assured him of my
trust in him.
"My very dear," he said, softly touching my hand, but I could make no
answer.
He scrambled to his feet and peered down on me. "It is not my peace. All
the days you are away...." He gulped forlornly and turned away his head.
"But that is what I mean. Just nothing, all this"--he made a gesture
with his hands as if giving himself up a captive to authority--"nothing
but a sop to a dog."
Then stooping, he drew my cape around me, banked the loose hay at my
feet and shoulders, smiled into my face, and bidding me wait in patience
a while, but not sleep, was gone.
The warmth and odour stole over my senses. I was neither hungry nor
thirsty, but drugged with fatigue. With a fixed smile on my face (a
smile betokening, as I believe now, little but feminine vanity and
satisfaction after feeding on that strange heart), my thoughts went
wandering. The sounds of skies and earth drowsed my senses, and I nodded
off into a nap. The grinding of wheels awoke me. From a welter of dreams
I gazed out through the opening of the barn at a little battered cart
and a shaggy pony. And behold, on the chopped straw and hay beside me,
lay stretched out, nose on paw, our enemy, the sheep-dog. He thumped a
friendly tail at me, while he growled at my deliverer.
Thoughtful Mr Anon. He had not only fetched the pony-cart, but had
brought me a bottle of hot milk and a few raisins. They warmed and
revived me. A little light-witted after my sleep in the hay, I clambered
up with his help into the cart and tucked myself in as snugly as I could
with my draggled petticoats and muddy shoes. So with myself screened
well out of sight of prying eyes, we drove off.
All this long while I had not given a thought to Mrs Bowater. We stood
before her at last in her oil-cloth passage, like Adam and Eve in the
Garden. Her oldest bonnet on her head, she was just about to set off to
the police station. And instead of showing her gratitude that her
anxieties on my account were over, Mrs Bowater cast us the blackest of
looks. Leaving Mr Anon to make our peace with her, I ran off to change
my clothes. As I emerged from my bedroom, he entered at the door, in an
old trailing pilot coat many sizes too large for him, and I found to my
astonishment that he and my landlady had become the best of friends. I
marvelled. This little achievement of Mr Anon's made me _like_ him--all
of a burst--ten times as much, I believe, as he would have been
contented that I should _love_ him.
Indeed the "high tea" Mrs Bowater presided over that afternoon, sitting
above her cups and saucers just like a clergyman, is one of the gayest
memories of my life. And yet--she had left the room for a moment to
fetch something from the kitchen, and as, in a self-conscious hush, Mr
Anon and I sat alone together, I caught a glimpse of her on her return
pausing in the doorway, her capped head almost touching the lintel--and
looking in on us with a quizzical, benign, foolish expression on her
face, like that of a grown-up peeping into a child's dolls' house. So
swirling a gust of hatred and disillusionment swept over me at sight of
her, that for some little while I dared not raise my eyes and look at Mr
Anon. All affection and gratitude fled away. Miss M. was once more an
Ishmael!