I
During ten years my story remained at that, with a fictitious appearance
of completion. Then I received a letter which, without further preamble,
I here transcribe:—
* * * * *
“... I laugh to myself when I think of you receiving this letter, surely
the most formidable letter ever penned by mortal man to mortal man, a
letter one hundred and fifty pages long; who ever heard of such a thing?
You will stare dismayed at the bundle, and, having forgotten the sight
of my writing, will turn to the end for the signature; which finding,
you will continue to stare bewildered at the name of Malory until light
breaks upon you as faint and feeble as a winter dawn. Let me help you by
reminding you of Sampiero first, and of Pennistans’ farm later. You see,
I am not vain, and am perfectly prepared to believe that the little set
of your fellow-men among whom I figured had entirely faded from your
mind.
“Are they gradually reviving as I write? and do you, as they one by one
sit up in the coffins to which you had prematurely relegated them, greet
them with a smile? Oh, I don’t blame you, my dear fellow, for having put
us away, myself included, in those premature graves. I should have done
as much myself. I will go further: I should have buried the lot that day
I left you at Sampiero; yes, I am sure I should not have displayed your
energy in seeking out the birds in their very nest.
“I had better warn you at the start that you will find it hard to
believe the things I am going to tell you. You know already of two
crises in the lives of my Hispano-Kentish yeomen, two crises which I
think have puzzled you sufficiently—though in the first case I suspect
that you were more clear-sighted than I—but in this third crisis with
which I deal you will probably refuse to believe altogether. I do not
pretend to explain it myself. I only know that it happened, and
therefore that it is true. Were it not true, I would not dare to foist
its relation on any living man, however credulous. Human ingenuity could
not, however, have planned this sequel, nor human courage have invented
a solution at once so subtle and so naïf, and so in the absurd
incredulity of my tale I place my reliance that it will carry
conviction.
“Ours has been a queer friendship, but one which has held great value
for me; I think many people would be better for such a friendship in
their lives. Of course, to make it ideal, I should never have seen you;
picked your name and address out of a telephone directory, and written;
I am sure you would have answered. Then I should have had no reserve
towards you, not that I have much now, but you see I never can be
certain that I am not going to meet you in a train or in the street,
when my ideally unknown correspondent and I could pass by without
recognition, but when you and I would have to stop, and shake hands, and
a host of intimate, remembered phrases would come crowding up to people
our silence. I dislike such embarrassments. I find that solitude, like
leprosy, grows upon one with age, for I observe myself physically
wincing from the idea that I might possibly meet you as I have said, in
a train or in the street.
“You will be surprised, after this, to hear that I no longer live alone.
But I shall not give you the pleasure of anticipating the end of what I
have set out to tell you; I am going to roll my story off my pen for my
own delectation far more than for yours, and to see whether in the
telling I cannot chance upon the explanation of various points which are
still obscure.
“I was never a man who thought life simple; I had not a five-hundred
word vocabulary wherewith I explained the primitive emotions of birth,
hunger, adolescence, love, and death; no, life was always difficult and
involved to me, but now in the evening of my own existence, serene and
ordered as that evening turns out to be, it appears as a labyrinth
beyond conception, with not one, but a thousand centres into which we
successively stray. Difficult, difficult and heavy to shift are the
blocks of which our mansion is built. Nor am I now speaking of
social-political creeds which are to govern the world; I am speaking
only of poor, elementary human beings, for, not having mastered the
individual, I don’t attempt to discuss the system under which he lives.
Big and little things alike go to our building; and if it was the war
which first put the grace of humility into me, it is the sequel to a
tale of plain people which has kept it there.
“Oh, the humility of me! I cross my arms over my eyes and bow myself
down to the ground like a Mussulman at prayer. There’s nothing like life
for teaching humility to a man, nothing like life for shouting ‘Fool!
fool! fool!’ at him till he puts his hands over his ears. It buzzes
round our heads like a mosquito inside mosquito-curtains. Humility isn’t
the gift of youth—thank God—for it takes a deal of buffeting to drive it
into us. The war should have taught us a lesson in humility; a wider
lesson, I mean, than the accident of defeat or victory, efficiency or
non-efficiency. Let us ignore those superficial aspects of the war. What
we are concerned with, is the underlying forces, the courage, the
endurance, the loyalty, the development of a great heart by little mean
men; all this, abstract but undeniable, unrivalled, the broadest river
of human excellence that ever flowed. What then? Mistaken, by God!
wrongheaded! an immense sacrifice on the altar of Truth which was all
the time the altar of Untruth. Doesn’t it make you weep? All the gold of
the human heart poured out, like the gold of the common coffers, in a
mistaken cause. It’s barbaric; it’s more than barbaric, it’s
pre-historic; it’s going back to the Stone Age. We can’t say these
things now; not yet; not from lack of courage, but from a sense of tact:
we’re living in the wrong century. It’s an outrage on tact to say to
your century what will be self-evident to the next; therefore we
continue to hate our enemy and love our country; mistaken ideals both.
“There, my dear fellow, I profoundly apologise; if I oughtn’t to say
these things to my century I oughtn’t to say them to you either, not
that you are narrow enough to condemn me, but because I shall bore you.
I promised you, too, that my letter was to deal with our little corner
of Kent, and on that understanding I have induced you to read thus far.
I reflect, moreover, that I have no right to speak thus and thus to a
man who has lost much of his activity in his country’s service. Mrs.
Pennistan has drawn me a touching picture of you, though she hasn’t much
descriptive talent, has she? A motherly soul, pathetically out of place
among that untamed brood. Like the majority of people, she lives a life
of externals, with sentimentality as a mild substitute for the more
heroic things, and it has been her misfortune for her lot to fall among
people who, in the critical moments of their lives, allow themselves to
be guided by internal powers of which Mrs. Pennistan knows nothing. I
said, nothing. Yet is such true placidity possible? When you see a
person, a body, marvellous casket and mask of secrets, what do you
think? I think, there stands a figure labelled with a name, but he, or
she, has lived a certain number of years; that is to say, has suffered,
rejoiced, loved, been afraid, known pain; owns secrets, some dirty, some
natural, some shameful, some merely pathetic; and the older the figure,
the greater my wonderment and my admiration. Mrs. Pennistan, dull,
commonplace woman, once gave herself to Amos; was then that not an
immortal moment? But if she remembers at all, she remembers without
imagination; she can’t touch her recollection into life.
“And she dwells among hot, smouldering natures to whom the life of the
spirit is real. She doesn’t understand them, and when her daughter, who
is apparently living in externals likewise, breaks out into the
unexpected, she is perplexed, dismayed, aggrieved. She doesn’t travel on
parallel lines with the workings of such a mind as her daughter’s and
consequently has to catch up with a sudden leap forward which disturbs
her comfortable amble. She had to take such a leap when her daughter
eloped, and another similar leap when her daughter tried to shoot her
son-in-law. Humorous, isn’t it? and rather sad. I feel less for Amos,
whose instinct is more in tune with Ruth’s, and is able to follow
quickly by instinct if not by reason.
“At present Mrs. Pennistan’s mind must be in chaos, but it is happy
chaos, and so she accepts it without disproportionate bewilderment.
Besides, she has come by now to a fortunate state of resignation, in
which she is determined to be surprised at nothing. I have questioned
her on the subject. She is so profoundly unanalytical that I had some
difficulty in getting her to understand at all what I was driving at,
let alone getting her to answer my questions; still, what she told me
was, in substance, this:—
“‘Ruth was my own girl, and a quiet girl at that, but Rawdon isn’t my
boy, and we all knew that Rawdon was queer (this is the adjective she
invariably applies, I find, to anything a little bit beyond her), so we
got into the way of not being surprised when Rawdon did queer things.
Though, I must say, this beats all. After ten years!... And he no coward
either, I’ll say that for him. He was always a reckless boy, and if
you’d seen the things he did you’d wonder, like I do, that he ever lived
to grow up.’
“That, of course, is where her lack of imagination leaves her so much at
fault. She has seen Rawdon climb into the tops of spindly trees after
jackdaws’ nests, and has trembled lest he should fall and break his
head, and has marvelled at his daring; but she cannot imagine, because
she cannot with her physical eyes behold the torments he endured of late
because his moral imaginative cowardice was so much greater than his
physical courage. She cannot understand that the force of his
imagination was such as to drive him away from all that he most desired.
She cannot understand this, and I will admit that for us, who are
phlegmatic English folk, it is difficult to understand also. We must
dismiss our own standards first, and approach the situation with an
unbiased eye. We must, in fact, pull prejudice down from his throne and
set up imagination in his place. We must forget our training and our
national conventions, if we wish to understand something alien to
ourselves, something alien, but not thereby impossible or, believe me,
uninteresting.
“I look back over what I have already written, and am bound to confess
that I have set down hitherto the incoherent thoughts that came into my
head, simply because I have been afraid of tackling my settled duty. To
deal with ten years—for it is now ten years since the period of our
correspondence ceased with the ceasing of the war—is a very alarming
task for any man to undertake. I could, of course, acquaint you in a
dozen lines with the salient happenings of those years. But it amuses me
to cast them into the form of a narrative, and you will forgive me if I
should slip into elaborating scenes in which I played no part.
“At the end of the war, I must tell you, I came back to England with no
very fixed ideas as to my future. I had been a wanderer, and, I say it
with shame, a dilettante all my life, and I felt that my restlessness
had not yet spent itself. I had hated, oh, how I had hated, the
discipline of the army! I had no joy in war; my theories—I can’t call
them principles, for they were things too fluid for so imposing a
name—my theories were in complete disaccord with war, and moreover my
freedom, for the love of which I had sacrificed a possible home and
children, was now taken from me, and, in its place, fetters both
physical and moral were clamped upon me. As my feet had to move left!
right! left! right! so my poor rebellious tongue had to move left!
right! also. And yet, there were fine moments in that war; one learnt
lessons, and one watched great splendid fountains leaping upwards out of
that sea of humanity.... Then the end came when I was free, and could
make a bonfire of my uniform. I wondered what I should do next, and as I
wondered I became aware of two things pulling at me; one thing pulled me
towards the Weald of Kent, and the other pulled me towards the Channel,
where all the world would lie open to my wandering. I decided that the
two were, in order, compatible.
“What a free man I was! I enjoyed paying the full fare for my ticket,
and no longer travelling by warrant. You and I both know that journey to
Penshurst, but you don’t know the freedom that was mine in those fields;
I shouted, I ran, I jumped the brooks, I was like a lamb in May,
forgetful of my middle-age. And then I was suddenly lonely, wanting, for
the first time in my life, a companion to share my light-heartedness. I
wished that you were with me, for I couldn’t think of anybody else. Home
from the war; free indeed, but no welcome anywhere. Not even a dog. And
as for a woman!...
“Westmacott had come home, and I knew that he had found his children
grown, and his wife, perhaps, temporarily happy to see him. At least he
could turn to watch her beauty as she slept.... I cursed my instinct for
following people into their private lives, a damnable trick, and nothing
more than a trick, but one which made me lower my eyes in shame when
next I met them. Peeping through keyholes. I had done it all my life.
Well, if anybody peeped through my keyhole, there wouldn’t be much to
see.
“How queerly things work out sometimes, for no sooner had I emerged from
the fields on to the cross-roads, where the finger-post says
‘Edenbridge, Leigh, Cowden,’ still wrapped in my loneliness as in a
cloak, I came upon Mrs. Pennistan walking slowly up and down, waiting, I
presumed, for Amos. At the sight of me she stopped and stared, till we
simultaneously cried one another’s names. I was filled with real warm
gladness on seeing her there unchanged, unchangeable, and I went forward
with my hands outstretched to clasp her fat, soft hands—do you remember
her hands? they spoke of innumerable kneadings of dough, and she had no
knuckles, only dimples where the knuckles should have been. And then,
before I knew what had happened, that good woman’s arms were round my
neck and her soft, jolly face was against mine, and she kissed me and I
kissed her, and I swear there were tears in her eyes, which, for that
matter, she didn’t trouble to conceal.
“Presently Amos came along. I had intended returning to London that
night, but they would hear nothing of it, and I found myself supping as
of old in their happy kitchen, and going upstairs later to that bare
little room which had once been mine and had since been yours. It is a
real satisfaction to me that you should be as familiar with these
surroundings as I am myself, for you have, as you read, the same picture
as I have as I write, and this harmony we could never achieve were I
telling you of places and faces you had never seen.
“We talked, naturally, of you, for after the manner of old friends we
travelled from one to the other of persons we had known. The sons, who
were there solemnly munching, lent a certain constraint to the evening.
And I missed so poignantly, so unexpectedly, the figure of the old woman
by the fire. I had not realised until then what a prominent figure it
had been, although so tiny and so silent, bent over the eternal
chestnuts, the great-great grandmother of the little Westmacotts. Will
you smile if I tell you that I took the diary up to bed with me, and
read myself again into the underworld of Spain?
“Was it you, by the way, that drew a charcoal portrait of me over the
wash-stand in my room?
* * * * *
“I got up and dressed the next morning still uncertain as to whether I
should or should not go over to Westmacotts’. I do not exactly know why
I was uncertain, but perhaps my loneliness on the previous day had more
to do with it than my self-offered pretext, that my acquaintance with
Ruth had better be left where it was at our last meeting. Remember, I
had not seen her since she stood distraught but resolute in the cowshed
with the Hunter’s moon as a halo behind her head. What could one say to
people in greeting when one’s last words had been full of dark mystery
and of things which don’t come very often to the surface of life? In a
word, I was afraid. Afraid of embarrassment, afraid of the comfort of
her home, afraid of her. Afraid of my own self as a companion through
lonely years afterwards. I dressed very slowly because I wanted to put
off the inevitable moment of making up my mind. And after all it was
Mrs. Pennistan who made it up for me, for such was her surprise when I
mentioned catching a train which would certainly leave me no time for
the visit, that I said I would go.
“I realised then that I was glad. When I was a boy and couldn’t make up
my mind whether I wanted to do a thing or not, I used to toss a coin,
not necessarily abiding by the coin’s decision, but my own predominant
feeling of relief or disappointment. I found the system invaluable. In
this case Mrs. Pennistan had spun herself as a coin for me.
“Westmacott, I knew, would be out. Would Ruth be out, too? and my
problem thus resolved by, as it were, another spin of the coin? She was
not out; she was in her kitchen rolling a white paste with a
rolling-pin, the sleeves of her blue linen dress turned back, and as she
rolled she sang to the baby which lay in a low cradle in the corner. The
baby lay on its back waving a piece of red coral which it occasionally
chewed. I stood for quite a long time in the doorway watching them, and
then Ruth looked up and saw me.
“I suppose I had remembered her blush as the most vivid thing about her,
for I had waited there fully expecting her to look up and colour as she
always did when surprised in any way, but instead of this she stood
there gazing at me with the colour faded entirely from her face. She
stood holding the rolling-pin, as white as the flour upon her hands and
arms. The strong light of the window was upon her. Red geraniums were in
the window. The strident voice of a canary broke our stillness.
“‘Ruth,’ I said, ‘aren’t you glad to see me?’
“I went forward into the kitchen, standing close to her by the table,
and light was all around us, light, and the song of the bird. Everything
was light, white, and dazzling; a flood of light, and bright colours.
Revelation, like an archangel, was in that room.
“She asked,—
“‘Where have you come from?’
“‘From your father’s house.’
“‘You’re living there?’
“‘Only for to-day.’
“‘And then you’re going...?’
“‘Away.’
“‘Away?’
“‘Yes.’
“‘For good?’
“‘To travel....’
“I saw her face, and her beauty began to swim in front of my eyes, and a
roaring began in my ears like a man who is breathing chloroform.
Swimming, swimming, all the room and the light, and I heard my own voice
as I had never heard it before,—
“‘Ruth! Ruth! you must come with me.’
“‘Come with you?’
“‘Yes, now, at once. Before your husband comes back. Get your things. I
give you five minutes.’
“She cried,—
“‘Oh, but the baby?’
“‘I’ll look after it while you go upstairs.’
“‘No, no,’ she said, ‘not now; afterwards?’
“I understood.
“‘Take it with you.’
“‘But, my dear, I’ve three children!’
“The divinity was vanishing from the room, the sunlight grew flat and
cold. We stared at one another. I heard Westmacott’s voice out in the
yard. I said desperately,—
“‘Let me tell him!’
“‘Oh, no!’ she cried shrinking, ‘no, no, no.’
“‘You’re afraid,’ I taunted her.
“‘What if I am? Please go.’
“‘Alone?’
“‘Please, please go.’
II
“You want to know if I went? I did, and in the yard I met Westmacott,
who discussed with me the prospects of the season. He was particularly
affable, and I did my utmost not to appear absent-minded. I suppose that
I succeeded, for his affability increased, culminating in an invitation
to join him in a glass of ale within the house. I was dismayed, and
protested that I had no time, also—quite untruthfully—that since the war
I had given up drink of all kinds. He urged me.
“‘You’ll not refuse to taste my wife’s cider?’
“I thought that I cried out,—
“‘Man alive, I come straight from imploring your wife to come away with
me,’ but as his expression remained the same, and neither glazed into
horror nor blazed into fury, I suppose that the words, though they
screamed in my head, never materialised on my lips.
“I was helpless. He led me back, odious and hospitable, into the kitchen
where Ruth still stood rhythmically rolling the dough. The sun had gone
behind a cloud, and the room, which had been so dazzling with its
colours and its clarity, was dim, even to the red of the geraniums, even
to the glow under the skin of Ruth. Dead, I thought, dead, dead.
“Westmacott stood outside, stamping the clay from his boots, and calling
to his wife for cider. I winced from his heartiness, and from the tragic
absurdity of my position. If only tragedy could be our lot, we should at
least enjoy the consolation of the heroic, but in the comic tragedy to
which Providence so delights in exposing us, there is no consolation. I
was thankful that Westmacott did not know what a fool he was
successfully making of me.
“Ruth took down from the dresser an earthenware jug, and went through
into the little back hall of the place. I watched her through the door
which she had left open. She filled the jug at a great wooden barrel;
the golden cider streamed out from the tap, and she held the jug with a
precision and a steadiness of hand that made me marvel. Returning, she
set it with two glasses on the table.
“‘This is my own brewing,’ she said to me.
“I thought that the cider must surely spill from my glass as I raised it
from the table, or that it must bubble and choke in my throat as I drank
with her eyes upon me. I felt trapped and prisoned, but in Westmacott’s
face there was nothing sinister, no trace of suspicion. He was not
playing a game with me. Perversely enough, I should have preferred an
outburst of fury on his part, to have felt his fist in my face, and to
roll with him, body grappling with body, on the floor. But this could
not be, and I must sit, drinking cider, between those two, a husband and
wife whom the flash of a revolver had so nearly separated not many weeks
beforehand, a revolver fired in anger and hatred, and in a desire for
freedom; I must sit there, near a woman between whom and myself
unforgettable words had been suddenly illuminatingly spoken. I laughed;
Westmacott had just made some remark to which my laugh came as an
inappropriate answer; he looked a little surprised, and I was hunting
about for some phrase to cover my lapse, when Ruth said,—
“‘Here are the boys.’
“They came in whistling, but fell silent as they saw me, and took their
caps off awkwardly. They were good-looking little boys—but I forget:
you’ve seen them. Westmacott glanced at them with obvious pride. Ruth
moved with her former steadiness to the cupboard to cut them each a
chunk of bread liberally spread with jam; she pushed their chairs close
up to the table, and ran her fingers through their rough mops of hair.
They began to eat solidly. Westmacott winked at me.
“‘There’s a mother for you,’ he said.
“I could make no reply to his hideous jocularity; if I had spoken, I
should have screamed.
“I felt that I should never escape, that the situation would last for
ever. I was, naturally enough, not very clear in my mind just then, but
already I seemed to see my recent scene with Ruth as a sunlit peak
bursting out of the dreariness and blindness of days, as brief as the
tick of a clock, but as vibrant as a trumpet-call, while the present
scene was long, interminable, flat as a level plain. Yes, that was my
impression: the peak and the plain. I longed to get away, that I might
dwell at my leisure upon that moment full of wonder. I bitterly resented
my bondage. I wanted to go away by myself to some solitary corner where
I might sit and brood for hours over the one moment in which, after
years of mere vegetation, I could tell myself that I had truly lived. I
felt that every minute by which my stay in that kitchen was prolonged,
was making of the place a thing of nightmare, instead of the enchanted
chamber it actually was, and this also I resented. Why could not I have
come, lived my brief spell, and gone with an untarnished treasure
imprisoned for ever within my heart? Why should perfection be marred by
the clumsiness of a farmer’s hospitality?
“Nor was this all. Creeping over me came again the humiliating sensation
which I had more than once experienced in the presence of Ruth and
Westmacott, the sensation that they were alien to me, bound together by
some tie more mysterious than mere cousinship, a tie which, I believed,
held them joined in spite of the hatred that existed between them. I
won’t go into this now. It is a mystery which lies at the very root of
their strange relationship. I do not suppose that Ruth was conscious of
it—she was, after all, an essentially unanalytical and primitive
creature—but it drove her now to a manifestation as typical of her in
particular as it was of all women in general.
“She set herself deliberately to increase my misery and discomfort by
every trick within her power. She must have been aware of what I was
enduring, and you would have thought, however indifferent to me in the
emotional sense, that she would have tried, in ordinary human pity and
charity, to help me to escape as soon as possible from my wretched
position, and to make that position less wretched while it still lasted.
You would have thought this. Any man would have thought it. But
apparently women are different.
“She took, then, my misery and played with it, setting herself to
intensify it by every ruse at her disposal. She contrived, with
diabolical subtlety, to separate us into two groups, one consisting of
herself, her husband, and her children, the other consisting of me,
isolated and alone. To this day I do not know whether she wanted to
punish me for my former temerity, or whether she was simply obeying some
obscure feminine instinct. In any case, she succeeded. I had never felt
myself such an intruder. Even the resemblance between husband and wife,
the curious, intangible resemblance of race and family in their dark
looks, rose up and jeered at me. ‘We understand one another,’ something
seemed to say, ‘and we are laughing together at your expense.’
“I realised then that the calm with which she had received me, and had
drawn my cider, the matter-of-fact way in which she had told me it was
of her own brewing, were all part of her scheme, as was her present
conversation, standing by the table, and her occasional demonstrations
of affection towards her boys. You will remember perhaps that I once
told you of a walk she and I had taken to Penshurst. Well, I dimly felt
that her behaviour on that occasion and upon this were first-cousins. I
don’t know why I felt this; I only record it for you without comment.
“So she stood there talking, a hard devil behind all her commonplace
words. I hated her; I wished myself dead. My one consolation, that
Westmacott did not know what a fool he was making of me, was gone, since
Ruth was making of me a much bigger fool, and was doing it in all
consciousness. How I hated her! and at the same time, through her
hatefulness, she seemed to me more than ever desirable. Westmacott knew
nothing of what had gone before, but, sensitive as he was underneath his
brutality, with the unmistakable sensitiveness of the Latin, he was, I
think, aware of some atmospheric presence in the room. At any rate, he
realised the devilish attraction of his wife, and in his spontaneous
foreign way he put out his hand to touch hers. An English farmer! I
nearly laughed again. When he did this, she sat down on the arm of his
chair, and, putting her arms round his neck, laid her cheek against his
hair, with her eyes on me all the while. Then, as though she had
released some lever by her action, he turned within her arms, and kissed
her savagely.
“The next thing I knew was that I was walking at an extraordinary pace
across the fields, gasping in the air, and that strong shudders like the
shudders of a fever were running down my frame. I am not really very
clear as to how I spent the rest of that day, or of the days that
followed. Do you know that familiar nightmare in which you roll a tiny
ball no bigger than a cartridge-shot between your finger and thumb, till
it grows and grows into an immense ball that overwhelms you? So through
a nightmare haze I rolled the memory of that horrible little scene into
a tight ball, till I could see neither beyond nor above it, but all my
horizon was obscured by the distended pellet in my brain. And during all
this time I moved about the world like a man in full possession of his
senses, making my dispositions for a long absence abroad, talking to my
banker out of the depths of a leather arm-chair, buying my tickets from
Thomas Cook, directing the packing of my luggage, and, so far as I know,
neither my banker nor Cook’s clerk nor the club servant realised that
anything was amiss with me.
“I had only one desire: to get away, to think. I was as impatient for
solitude as the thirsty man is for water. I resented every one in my
surroundings and my delay in London much as I had resented Westmacott
and my delay in the kitchen. Until I could get away, I banished all
thought from my mind; only, as I tell you, the scene in the kitchen
remained whirling and whirling beyond my control.
“Finally I escaped from England, and as I lay sleepless, buffeted all
night in the train, one thought persisted like music in my brain,
‘To-morrow I shall be alone, I shall be rid of nightmare, I shall be
able to dwell luxuriously upon the magical moment, and all that it
means, all that it entails. Yes! I shall be alone with it, for weeks,
months, years if I like. I shall no longer be forced to grant undue
proportion to the nightmare; until now it has made black night of my
days, but to-morrow it will recede like a fog before the sun, and I
shall dwell in the crystal light of the mountain-tops.’
“My destination was—I wonder if you have guessed it already?—Sampiero. I
knew that there I was certain of peace, hospitality, familiar rooms.
Besides, it was there that I had spoken to you for so many hours of the
opening chapters of this story, and I had a fancy that if I took my
dreamings up to the clump of pines, the shadows of those earlier
chapters might come, re-evoked to brush like soft birds against my
cheek. I had planned to go up to the clump of pines on my first evening
after dinner. My dear fellow, do not be offended when I tell you that as
I arrived by that absurd mountain railway at Sampiero, I was seized by a
sudden panic that some desire for rest and peace might have brought you,
like myself, to the same old haunt. I suppose that I was in an excitable
state of mind already, for by the time I reached our old lodging-house I
was in a fever and a passion of certainty that I should find you there
before me. Signora Tagliagambe was at the door to welcome me, but I
rushed at her with inquiries as to whether I was or was not her only
guest. She stared at me with obvious concern for my reason. There were
no other guests. I had my former room, also the sitting room to myself.
I should be completely undisturbed.
“I recovered myself then, realising that I had been a fool, as I dare
say you are thinking me at this moment. A delicious peace came stealing
over me, the peace of things suspended. I was half tempted to give
myself the luxury of putting off my first visit to the stone-pines until
the following day. But the evening fell in such perfection that I
wandered out, much as you and I have often wandered out to sit there in
silence, sucking at our pipes; in the days, I mean, before I asked you
that memorable question about the Weald of Kent.
“So there I was, at length, at peace, and I stretched myself out on the
ground beneath the pines, pulling idly at a tuft of wild thyme, and
rubbing it between my hands till the whole evening was filled with its
curious aromatic scent, that came at me in gusts like a tropical evening
comes at one in gusts of warmth. I had not yet begun to think, for,
knowing that the moment when thought first consciously began to well up
in my spirit would take its place in the perspective of my life not far
short of that other moment on whose sacredness I scarcely dared to
dwell, I put it off, even now, when it had become inevitable, torturing
myself with the Epicureanism of my refinement. I was thirsty, thirsty,
thirsty, and though the water stood there, sparkling and clear, I still
refused myself the comfort of stretching out my hand.
“And then it came. Slowly and from afar, almost like pain running
obscurely and exquisitely down my limbs, reflection returned to me like
light out of darkness. I lay there absolutely motionless, while in my
head music began to play, and I was transported to palaces where the
fountains rose in jets of living water. Light crept all round me, and
music, music ... a great chorus, now, singing in unison; swelling and
bursting music, swelling and bursting light, louder and louder, brighter
and more dazzling; a deafening crash of music, a blinding vision of
light.
“I stood at last on the sunlit peak.
“All around me, but infinitely below, stretched the valleys and plains
of darkness where I had dragged out my interminable days. I looked down
upon them from my height, knowing that I should never return. I knew
that I now stood aloft, at liberty to examine the truth which had come
to me, turning it over and over in my hands like a jewel, playing with
it, luxuriating in its possession. It was to be mine, to take at will
from the casket of my mind, or to return there when other, prosaic
matters claimed my attention. But, whether I left it or whether I took
it out, I should bear it with me to the ends of the earth, and death
alone could wrench me from its contemplation.
“What a lunatic you must think me after this rhapsody! What! you will
say, does the man really mean that he wouldn’t exchange the recollection
of a moment for the living, material presence of the woman concerned?
Well, it is very natural that you should think me a lunatic, but have
patience; take into consideration my life, which has been lived, as you
know, alone; always in unusual places, with no one near my heart.
Living, material presences come to have comparatively little
significance after twenty or thirty years of solitude. Try it, and you
will see. One drifts into a more visionary world, peopled by shadowy and
ideal forms; memories assume incredible proportions and acquire an
unbelievable value; one browses off them like a camel off his hump. Do
you begin to understand now that this great, shining, resplendent moment
should rush in to fill a mind so dependent on the life unreal? One must
have something, you see, and if one can’t have human love one must fall
back upon imagination. Hence the romantic souls of spinsters....
“And hence, I might say, a great many other things which practical men
barely acknowledge. I find myself straying off down paths of thought
which may lead me into swamps of digression. Hence religion, hence
poetry, hence art, hence love itself—the spiritual side of love. All
these things, unpractical, inconvenient, unimportant things, all sprung
from a craving in man’s nature! A craving for what? Hasn’t he been given
strength, health, bodily well-being, hunger and thirst, fellow-men to
fight, and fists to fight them with? What more does the creature want?
He wants a thing called Beauty, but what it is he can’t tell you, and
what he wants to do with it when he’s got it he can’t tell you; but he
wants it. Something that he calls his soul wants it. A desire to
worship.... Beauty, a purely arbitrary thing. All men strive after it,
some men so little that they are themselves unconscious of the desire,
other men so passionately that they give up their whole lives to its
pursuit; and all the graded differences come in between.
“Here am I, then, a man of irregular and spasmodic occupation, an
unsatisfactory, useless member of society, I’ll admit, useless, but
quite harmless; an educated man, what you would call an intellectual,
not endowed with a brain of the good, sound type, but with a rambling,
untidy sort of brain that is a curse to himself and a blessing to
nobody. Here am I, without one responsibility in the world, with nothing
to do unless I go out and forage for it, living alone with books,
dabbling in this and that, and necessarily thrown for a certain number
of hours each day on my own resources. You cannot wonder that my life of
the imagination—as I will call it—becomes of supreme importance to me as
my only companion. It had been a singularly blank life, so blank that
when I went out for walks alone I used to fall back on repeating verse
aloud, so you see it was a life of books, and man wants more than that.
He wants something that shall be at once ideal and personal. There is
only one thing which fulfils those two conditions: Woman. But, you will
say, if there’s no woman in a man’s life he has only himself to blame.
You’re right; I don’t know why I never set out to find myself a woman,
perhaps because I was too hard to please, perhaps because I knew myself
to be too fickle and restless. You used to laugh at me when I said this.
Of course, I don’t pretend that there haven’t been incidents in my life;
but they never lasted, never satisfied me for long; they weren’t even
good to think about afterwards. Anyway, there I was: free, but lonely.
“And now I had got this new, precious, incredible thing to think over. I
am afraid to tell you how long I stayed at Sampiero, doing nothing,
lapped in my thoughts as in a bath of warm water. My conversation with
Ruth had been brief, and I knew every word of it by heart; my hour
started from when I had come up to her house and had stolen
surreptitiously to the doorway to take her unawares, and had stood there
with a smile on my lips, waiting for her to look up. I saw again the
light and the flowers and the baby in the cradle. I felt again the
swimming in my head as I looked, for the first time, it seemed, into the
beauty of her face. I heard again my own voice saying, ‘Ruth! Ruth! you
must come with me.’
“But I told you all that before; why do I repeat it? Because I lived
through it all an infinitude of times myself. I thought I couldn’t
exhaust the richness of my treasure. Nor could I, but after a while I
found that my perfect contentment was being gradually replaced by a
hunger for something more; I was human; the imagination wasn’t enough.
“I began to want Ruth, Ruth herself, warm and living, and when I made
this discovery I took a step I had long since prepared in my mind,
foreseeing the day when dissatisfaction would overcome me: I left
Sampiero and joined a party that was going into Central Africa after
ivory.
III
“The change in my existence was two-fold; I was now busy instead of
idle, and in my thoughts I was unhappy instead of happy. At moments,
indeed, I was so acutely unhappy that I welcomed desperately the
preparations of our expedition, which gave me plenty to do. I looked
back to my months at Sampiero as one of the best periods of my life. One
of my new companions asked me what I had been doing since the end of the
war. I replied,—
“‘I’ve been on a honeymoon with a thought,’ and he stared at me as
though I were mad, and never quite trusted me for the rest of the
expedition.
“I was busy before we started, and that took my mind off my own affairs,
but on the ship I was again unoccupied; I used to lean my arms on the
rail and stare down into the churning water, and feel my heart being
eaten out as though by scores of rats with pointed teeth. I longed, I
longed madly, for Ruth. In those days I used to think of her as a
person, not as an abstraction; I wondered whether she was unhappy or
fairly contented; I tried to draw up in my own mind a scheme of her
relations with Westmacott. But I couldn’t; I couldn’t face that just
then, I put it off. I knew that sooner or later I must think the whole
thing out, but when one has a score or more years in front of one, one
can afford to delay.
“Apart from this, I enjoyed my African experience; the men I was with
were all good, dull fellows; I didn’t make friends with any of them,
beyond the comradeship of every day. What I enjoyed were the days of
hunting, and the nights of waiting under such stars as I’d never seen;
well, I suppose it is all lying there now as I write, just as I used to
think of the untroubled Weald lying there spread under an English sky.
It’s funny to think of places you’ve been to, existing just the same
when you aren’t there. Yes, I liked Africa, and I tried to live in the
present, but when the expedition was over, and I found myself landed
alone at Naples, I realised with a shock that I had only succeeded in
putting ten months of my life away behind me, and that an unknown
quantity of years stretched out in front.
“I was sitting outside my hotel after luncheon, smoking, and looking
over that most obvious and panoramic of bays. I hated Naples, I hated
Italy; I thought it a blatant, superficial country, with no mystery,
therefore no charm. I had almost made up my mind to take ship for
Gibraltar, when a voice beside me said,—
“‘You look pretty blue.’
“I turned round and saw a long, leggy creature stretched out on a
deck-chair beside me; he was squinting up at me from under a straw hat.
“‘I feel it,’ I replied; ‘about as blue as that sea.’
“‘What are you going to do?’ he went on.
“I told him that I had just been thinking of going to Gibraltar.
“‘And what’ll you do when you get there?’
“‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ I answered.
“‘On a holiday?’ he inquired.
“‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t work; I lead an aimless sort of life.’
“‘Great mistake,’ said he.
“I agreed.
“‘How did it come about?’ he asked.
“Somehow I found myself telling him.
“‘When I was young—that is to say, after I had left Oxford—I thought I’d
like to see the world, so I started; I travelled, stopping sometimes for
six months or two if I liked the place. Then when I got tired of that, I
took to specialising in different subjects, giving a year, two years,
three, to each. So I drifted on till the war, and here I am.’
“‘I see,’ he said. ‘And now you’re bored.’
“‘Yes,’ I said, adding, ‘and worse.’
“He made no comment on that; I don’t know whether he heard. He said
presently, in the same tone as he would have used to remark on current
politics,—
“‘I’m going to Ephesus to-morrow, you’d better come with me. My name’s
MacPherson.’
“‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’ll come. My name’s Malory. What are you going
to do at Ephesus?’
“He replied, ‘Excavate.’
* * * * *
“That will tell you what MacPherson was like; an eccentric, laconic sort
of fellow; he never argued, he just made proposals, and, whether they
were accepted or declined, nodded briefly in acquiescence without
further discussion. For a long time I thought that I should never get
any further with him, then gradually I began to find him out: a grim,
sardonic soul, with only one passion in life, if I can give the name of
passion to a determination so cold and unshakable; I mean his passion
for excavation. I have seen him labouring for hours under the sun, dusty
and indistinguishable from the ruins among which he worked, apparently
tireless and thirstless; I have seen him labour like a man under the
domination of a great inspiration, of a force such as drives fanatics to
cut their own heads and cover their own backs with wales from the rod,
but I have never heard an expression of delight or enthusiasm, or even
of satisfaction, escape his lips at the result of his labours.
Scientists and archæologists came to him with respect, invited his
opinion, paid him compliments evidently sincere; he listened in total
indifference, neither disclaiming nor acknowledging, only waiting for
them to have done that he might get back to his work.
“Such was the man with whom I now lived, and you may imagine that I was
often puzzled to know what had prompted his original invitation to me. I
could, of course, have asked him, but I didn’t. He took my presence
absolutely as a matter of course, made use of me,—at times I had to work
like a navvy,—never gave me his confidence, never expected mine. It was
a queer association. We lived in a native house not far from the site of
the temple on the hill above the ramshackle Turkish village of
Ayasalouk, and one servant, an Albanian, did our housework for us,
washed our clothes, and prepared our meals. We shared a sitting-room,
but our bedrooms were separate; it was a four-roomed house.
Occasionally, about once a month, MacPherson would go down into Smyrna
and return next day with provisions, cigarettes, and a stock of tools
and clothes, and sometimes an English paper.
“He let me off on Sundays, ungraciously, grudgingly, if silence can be
grudging. I insisted upon it. At Pennistans’ I had had a half-holiday on
Sunday, and at Ephesus I would have it too. But here my hours of freedom
were spent in loneliness. Lonely I would tramp off to the banks of the
Cayster, and, standing among tall bulrushes and brilliant iris, would
fish dreamily for mullet, till the kingfishers swept back, reassured, to
the stream and joined me in my fishing.
_Jam varias pelagi volucres, et quæ Asia circum
Dulcibus in stagnis rimantur prata Caystri._
You will admit, I think, that the quotation is singularly apposite. Or,
as with Ruth I had climbed the hills above the Weald, I would climb
alone the heights of Mount Coressus, where the golden angelica surged
about me, or the heights of Prion, which showed me, across the plain of
Ephesus, the flatter plain of deep blue sea, broken by the summits of
Samos—the very sea, the very Samos, where Polycrates flung forth his
ring in defiance of the gods.
“A certain number of travellers came to Ephesus, whom MacPherson
regarded with a patient disdain, but whom I welcomed as messengers of
the outside world. I wanted to question them, but they were always so
eager to question me, making me into a sort of guide, and inveigling me
into doing them the honours of the place. This used to annoy MacPherson,
though he never said anything; I think he felt it as a sort of
desecration. I could see him watching me with disapproval, standing
there among the columns in his dust-coloured shirt and trousers and
sombrero hat, leaning his hands on the handle of his pick-axe, a hard,
muscular man, thin and wiry as an Australian bush-settler. The tourists
questioned me about him and about our life, but I noticed they rarely
approached him, or, if they did so once, they did not do so twice. After
talking to me, they would move away, decide—thankfully—among themselves
that I could not be offered a tip, and finally would stroll off in the
direction of our little house. Here I had dug a little garden in
imitation of the Kentish cottages I knew so well; just a few narrow beds
in front of the house, where I had collected the many wild flowers that
grew on the neighbouring hills. MacPherson took an odd, unexpected
interest in my garden. He brought me contributions, rare orchids and
cyclamen which my eyes had missed, brought them to me gravely, carrying
them cupped in his hands with as much tenderness as a child carries a
nest full of eggs. He stood by me silently watching when I put them in
with my trowel in the cool of the evening. Of course we got terribly
burnt up in the summer, but in the spring my garden was always merry,
and, if it added to my homesickness, it also helped to palliate it.
“MacPherson had evidently never thought of making the place less dreary
than it naturally was; I have no great idea of comfort myself, but I
can’t live without flowers, and so my instinct, which began in a garden,
produced itself into other improvements; I bought a mongrel puppy off a
shepherd, and its jolly little bark of welcome used to cheer our
home-coming in the evening; then I made MacPherson bring back some
chickens from Smyrna, a suggestion which seemed to horrify him, but to
which he made no objection; finally I grew some flowers in pots and
stood them in the windows. Oh, I won’t disguise my real purpose from
you: I was trying to make that rickety Turkish house as like a Kentish
cottage as possible. I even paved a garden path—MacPherson examined
every stone with the minutest care before I was allowed to lay it
down—and finished it off with a swing-gate. Then it struck me that a
swing-gate in mid-hill-side looked merely absurd, so I contrived a
square of wooden fencing all round our little property. Lastly, I hung a
horse-shoe, which was a mule-shoe really, over the door.
“I tell you, the more the resemblance grew, the more and the less
homesick I got. It was at once a pain and a consolation. There were
times when I almost regretted my enterprise, and wanted to tear up the
path, destroy the garden, strangle the puppy, and throw away the
flowers, letting the whole place return to the bleakness from which I
had rescued it. I wanted to do this, because my efforts had been too
successful, and as a consequence I expected to see Ruth appear in that
doorway, white sewing in her hands, and a smile of welcome to me—to
me!—in her eyes. I have often come home pleasantly tired from my day’s
work, fully though sub-consciously confident that I should see her as I
have described....
“That garden of mine had many narrow escapes. But I kept it, and I went
on with my pretence, perfecting it here and there: I got a kennel for
the puppy, and I got some doves that hung in a wicker-cage beside the
door. At last the counterfeit struck MacPherson.
“‘Why,’ he said, stopping one evening, ‘it looks quite English.’
“‘Do you think so?’ I replied.
“‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but I tell you what, those flowers are wrong. An
English cottage garden doesn’t have orchids; it has mignonette. How can
we get some mignonette?’
“‘I might write home for some,’ I said slowly.
“It was true: I might write home for some. To whom? Mrs. Pennistan would
send it me. Then it would have a sentimental value which it would lack
coming from a seedsman. But I knew quite well that it was not to Mrs.
Pennistan that I intended to write.
“After dinner I brought out a little folding table and set it by the
door. MacPherson was there already, playing Patience as was his
invariable habit.
“‘Going to write letters?’ he asked, seeing my inkpot.
“‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I’m going to write for the mignonette.’
“I headed my letter, ‘Ephesus,’ an address which always gave me
satisfaction; not that I often had an opportunity of writing it.
“‘MY DEAR RUTH,—I am writing to you from a hill-side in Turkey to
ask you if you will send me some seeds of mignonette for my garden;
it is very easy to grow, and I think would do well in this soil. You
would laugh if you could see my house, it is not like anything you
have ever seen before. Please send me the mignonette soon, and a
line with it to tell me if you are well.’
“I addressed it, ‘Mrs. Rawdon Westmacott, Vale Farm, Weald, Kent,
England,’ and there it lay on my table grinning and mocking at me,
knowing that it would presently cross the threshold I was dying to
cross, and be taken in the hands I was dying to hold again.
“‘Done?’ said MacPherson. ‘Where have you ordered the seeds from?
Carter’s?’
“‘No,’ I said, ‘I’ve asked a friend for them,’ and some odd impulse made
me show him the address on the envelope.
“He read it, nodded, and said nothing. I was disappointed, though really
I don’t know what I should have answered had he questioned me.
“After that my days were filled with one constant thought. I calculated
the nearest date, and then coaxed myself into the belief that there
would be a delay after that date had come and gone; a long delay;
perhaps a month. So many things might happen, Ruth might not be able to
get the seed, she might put off writing, she might simply send the seed
with no covering letter at all. This last thought was unendurable. It
grew, too, in my mind: people of Ruth’s upbringing and education didn’t
like writing letters, they didn’t like perpetuating their opinions so
irrevocably as ink on paper perpetuated them, and anyway they always had
a conviction that the letter once written, would not arrive, especially
at an unheard-of-place like Ephesus. It was difficult enough to imagine
the safe transit of a letter from one English county to another, but
that a letter posted in the Weald of Kent should arrive in due course at
a place out of the Bible was unthinkable.... I became daily more
persuaded that she would not write, and daily my gloom deepened.
MacPherson noticed it.
“‘Feel ill?’ he asked.
“‘No, thanks,’ I said, annoyed.
“‘You’re not starting cholera?’ he suggested suspiciously.
“‘No, I tell you; I’m perfectly well.’
“‘Glad of that,’ he said, but I told myself peevishly that his gladness
was based entirely on considerations of his own convenience.
“Ten days passed; a fortnight; three weeks; I was in despair. Then one
morning, as I came out of our door with a basket in my hand to pick up a
couple of eggs for breakfast, I saw a large magenta patch down below, on
the hilly pathway which led from our house to the village. This, I knew,
must be the old negro woman who brought our rare letters. I watched her;
the morning was slightly misty, for it was very early, not long after
sunrise, and I saw her black face emerge from the plum-coloured mashlak
she wore. I started off to meet her. She came toiling up the hill,
panting and blowing, for she was enormously fat, but an indestructibly
good-humoured grin parted her lips over her gleaming teeth, and suddenly
I fancied a grotesque resemblance to Mrs. Pennistan, and I laughed aloud
as though a good omen had come to speed me.
“I came up to her. Her black skin was glistening with moisture, and her
vast body rocked and swayed about inside her gaudy magenta wrapper; I
suspected it of being her only covering. Still, I almost loved her as
with a chatter of Turkish she produced a great black arm and hand out of
the folds of her mashlak—a fat black hand so ludicrously like Mrs.
Pennistan’s fat white one, holding a little packet which she tendered to
me.
“I summoned my Turkish to thank her; this called forth a deluge of
conversation on her part, with much shining of teeth and clattering of
bangles, but I shook my head regretfully, and she, heaving her huge
shoulders and displaying her palms in equivalent regret, turned herself
round and started on the easier downward road to Ayasalouk. Could Ruth
but have seen this voluminous magenta emissary! for the packet I held
was indeed from Ruth and bore the Weald postmark.
“I sat down by the roadside to open it. The seeds were there, and a
letter, written in a round, Board-school hand, accompanied them. I was
suddenly unable to read; it was the first word, remember, that had come
to me from her since that memorable day. I was more than moved; I was
shaken, like a tree in the wind.
“I read:—
“‘Vale Farm, Weald,
“‘15 IV. 22.
“‘DEAR MR. MALORY—Yours to hand, and enclosed please find mignonette
seeds as requested. I hope they will do well in your garden. Our
garden was baked hard in the drowt last summer, but hope we will
have more favourable weather this year. My husband and the boys are
well, and send their respects. Well, must stop now as have no more
news. Hoping this finds you well, I am,
“‘Yours obediently,
“‘R. WESTMACOTT,’”
“That was her letter—I have it here to copy, old and worn and torn—and
in its stiff conventionality, its pathetically absurd phraseology, it
seemed to tear my heart into little fluttering ribbons. Anything less
like her I couldn’t conceive, yet she was indescribably revived to me; I
saw her bending, square-elbowed, over that bit of paper, hesitating when
she came to the word ‘drought,’ deciding wrong, tipping up the
octagonal, penny bottle of ink which hadn’t much ink left in it; I saw
her getting the seeds, making up the parcel, copying ‘Ephesus’
conscientiously from my letter. You may think me sentimental; it was the
only tangible thing I had of hers.
“MacPherson met me at the top of the path.
“‘Letters?’ he said.
“‘Not for you, but I’ve got the mignonette seed.’
“He looked puzzled.
“‘The what?’ Heavens! the man has forgotten! ‘Oh, yes, I remember,’ he
said; ‘let’s go and put it in.’
“I had got ready a prepared seed-bed, where I think I had broken up
every lump of earth, however insignificant, with my own fingers, and
here I sowed Ruth’s packet of seed. I sowed it with the solemnity of a
priest sacrificing at the altar. MacPherson looked on as was his wont,
unaware of anything special in the occasion, and rather impatient to get
to breakfast.
“In a few weeks’ time the plants began to show; I watered them, and
cherished them, thinned them out, put wire round them, treated them as
never was hardy annual treated before. Soon the fragrant thing was all
round our doorstep. I felt like a prisoner tending the plant between the
flag-stones of his prison, or like Isabella with her pot of Basil. I
laughed at myself, but still I continued my cult, and the nightly
watering of the flowers throughout the hot summer became to me a species
of ritual.
“You used to call me a pagan; that’s as it may be, but anyway I
dedicated my whole garden to Ruth, growing my flowers in her honour,
enlarging my plot, planting the hill-side outside the fence with broom
and wild things, till the whole place was rich and blooming. This labour
gave me the greatest satisfaction. My dreadful hungry craving for her
living presence was momentarily lulled and I returned to that happier
frame of mind when, as I described to you, I was content to live in the
imagination. I could set her up now as a kind of idealised vision of all
that was beautiful, all that was desirable. She was the deity of my
garden, almost the deity of the great temple where I laboured. I should
think MacPherson would have half killed me had I hinted this to him.
“I was happy again, and in the next spring I got Ruth to send me out
some more seeds from her own garden. With them came another stilted
little note, but this time there was a postscript: was I ever coming
back to England? That disturbed me terribly; I knew it contained no
double meaning, for I knew perfectly well that Ruth would never leave
her children to come away with me, but at the same time it stirred up my
sleeping desire to see England again. I analysed this, and found that I
didn’t in the least want to see England; I only wanted to see Ruth. This
frightened and distressed me; I had been so calm, so comparatively
happy, and here a few idle words had thrown me into a state of emotional
confusion. The ruins seemed odious to me that day, my garden seemed a
mockery, and in the evening I said to MacPherson,—
“‘I am afraid I must go away.’
“He said, ‘Oh?’ less in a tone of dismay than of polite inquiry, and, as
usual, of acceptance.
“‘I am getting restless here,’ I said, ‘but if I go and stretch my limbs
a bit I shall be better; I will come back.’
“‘All right,’ he answered, as though there were no more to be said on
the matter.
“‘That is, if you want me,’ I added, provoked.
“‘Naturally I shall be glad to see you whenever you choose to come
back,’ he said, without a trace of emotion or cordiality in his tone.
IV
“Before I left I made arrangements with the Albanian to look after my
garden during my absence; much as I hated leaving it to other hands I
felt that I must get away or I should begin to scream upon the hills of
Ephesus. I went down to Smyrna without much idea of what I should do
after that, but when I got there I found a ship bound for Baku, so,
thinking I might as well go there as anywhere else, I got on board and
we sailed that night. I don’t want to give you a tedious account of my
journey; I will only tell you that it did me all the good in the world,
and that I walked up to Ephesus one evening in the late autumn with my
toothbrush in my pocket and real home-coming excitement in my heart.
There was the little house; there was my garden, showing quite a fair
amount of colour for the time of year; there was MacPherson sitting
outside, gravely playing his interminable Patience. The puppy—puppy no
longer, but a dog of almost inconceivable ugliness—rushed out barking,
and seized the ankle of my trousers in its joy. MacPherson looked up.
“‘Hallo,’ he said. ‘Evening.’
“‘Evening,’ I replied, and sat down.
“‘I believe this Patience is coming out,’ he said presently.
“‘Is it?’ I answered, vastly amused.
“‘Yes,’ said MacPherson, ‘if I could only get the three I should do it.
Ah!’ and he made a little pounce, and shifted some cards. ‘Done it,’ he
announced in a tone of mild triumph, adding regretfully, ‘now it won’t
come out again for at least a week.’
“‘That’s a pity,’ I said.
“‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘I reckon it comes out about once in every hundred
times. Garden’s all right, isn’t it?’
“‘Splendid,’ I said; ‘I was just looking at it. How’s your digging?’
“‘That’s all right, too. Glad you’re back.’
“I was surprised at this and gratified, but my gratification was damped
when his obvious train of thought had occurred to me.
“‘Ready to work to-morrow?’ he asked, confirming my suspicion.
“‘Rather.’
“‘That’s all right,’ he said again.
“He did not ask me where I had been, and I thought I would not volunteer
it, but after a day or two I did.
“‘I went to the Caucasus,’ I said.
“He answered, ‘Oh.’ I was not offended, only greatly amused; he was a
perpetual joy to me, that man.
“I took up my life again very much where I had left it, and now again a
change came about in my thoughts; they were constantly occupied with
Ruth and with that examination I had so long put off, of her relations
with her husband. As the story which I shall presently tell you will
make them quite clear to you—if anything so involved can ever be made
quite clear—I shall not bore you now with my own conjectures. It is
quite bad enough that I should bore you with my own life, but you will
agree that I couldn’t say to you, ‘Now ten years passed,’ without giving
you the slightest idea of my movements during those ten years. Those ten
years, you see, are my little Odyssey; I look back on them now, and I
see them in that light, but while they lasted I naturally didn’t look on
them as a poetic spell out of my life; no, I looked on them as a sample
of what my life would be till it came to the simplest of all ends:
death. I supposed that I should stay at Ephesus with MacPherson till he
got tired of excavating, which I knew would never happen, or till I got
tired of excavating, which I thought was much more likely, or till the
authorities turned us out. After that I didn’t know what I should do,
but I thought, so far as I ever thought about it at all, that something
would turn up in much the same way as the boat at Smyrna had turned up
to take me to Baku. What did occasionally exercise my mind was the
question whether I should ever see England again? If I couldn’t have
Ruth I didn’t want to go to England; it would be a torment to know her
so near; but on the other hand I foresaw that as an old man of seventy I
should not want to be still knocking about the world or excavating at
Ephesus. The ravens would have to provide. Why make plans? Fate only
steps in and upsets them. How angry I used to make you by talking about
Fate, do you remember?
“Meanwhile my Odyssey continued, and I found that every year my
restlessness returned to me, so that sooner or later the moment always
came when I said to MacPherson,—
“‘I am afraid I shall have to go away to-morrow,’ and he replied
invariably,—
“‘Oh? All right.’
“I went to all manner of places, but never to England, and always in the
autumn I returned to Ephesus to find MacPherson there unchanged, always
glad to see me because of my help in his work, and in all those years he
never once asked me where I had been to. I forget now myself where I
went, except that I never once went anywhere near England, much as I
wanted to go, because I knew the temptation would be too strong for me.
This journey of mine became thus an annual institution. There was
another annual institution of which MacPherson knew only the outer and
less important part; this was the arrival of seeds from England, with
Ruth’s little letter attached; I came to know all her phrases, which
revolved with the years in a cycle: she hoped the seeds would do well
with me; her garden had been dried up, or washed out, as the case might
be, the previous summer—there is never a perfect summer for a gardener,
just as there is never a perfect day for a fisherman; her children were
well and sent their respects, varied by love; her husband was well too;
she must stop as she had no more news, or, as the post was going.
Occasionally she ended up, ‘In great haste,’ though what the haste could
be in that leisurely life I failed to imagine.
“I came to look for this letter in my year as the devout man looks for a
feast-day; it was, so to speak, my Easter. My little packet grew, that
much-travelled little packet, which went with me on all my pilgrimages.
I wondered whether she cherished my letters, over in England, as I
cherished hers at Ephesus? In the meantime she was there, in the house I
knew, living through these years in a calm monotony which was a
consolation to me, because I could so well imagine it; I could call up a
picture of her, in fact, at practically any moment of the day, for what
variation could there be to her quotidian round of cooking, housework,
washing, sewing? This was, I say, a pleasant reflection to me, though I
was enraged to think that her care and labour should be expended upon
another man and another man’s children. A placid existence, broken only
by the calving of cows, the farrowing of swine, the gathering in of
crops.... And I at Ephesus!
“MacPherson never spared me my share of the work, and a hard taskmaster
he was, as hard to himself as to me. In the summer we breakfasted soon
after the dawn had begun to creep into the sky, then with pick and
mattock we trudged to the ruins, there to toil until the heat of the sun
glaring upon the quantities of white marble which lay about drove us
indoors until evening. MacPherson was always very grudging and resentful
with regard to this enforced siesta. In fact he would not admit it as a
siesta, but affected to consider it merely as a variation of work, and
would remain below in our little sitting-room, turning over for the
thousandth time his scraps and fragments of glass, pottery, and other
rubbish, while I lay on my bed upstairs damning the mosquitoes and
trying to go to sleep. No sooner had I dozed off than I would be aroused
by MacPherson’s remorseless voice calling up to know if I was ready.
Evening in the ruins I did not mind so much; a little breeze often
sprang up from the sea, and I had the prospect of an hour’s gardening
immediately in front of me. On the whole I was happy in those hours of
toil. Living in my thoughts, and sparing just the bare requisite of
consciousness to the needs of my tools, I became almost as taciturn as
my companion. Yet I never came to look on Ephesus as a home; I was only
a bird of passage—a passage lasting ten years, it is true, but still
only a passage. I didn’t see how it was going to end, but my old friend
Fate stepped in at last and settled that for me.
“It was July, and my annual restlessness had been creeping over me for
some time; besides, it was getting unpleasantly hot at Ephesus, and I
panted for the cold air of the mountains. So I said to MacPherson at
breakfast,—
“‘I think the time for my yearly flitting has come round again; in fact,
I think I’ll be off to-day.’
“I waited for the, ‘Oh? All right,’ but it didn’t come. Instead of that,
he said after a little pause,—
“‘I wonder if you would put off going until to-morrow?’
“It was the first time I had ever heard him raise an objection to any
suggestion of mine, and I was faintly surprised, but I said,—
“‘Of course I will. One day’s just as good as another. Got a special job
for me?’
“‘No,’ he said, ‘it isn’t that.’
“I did not question him; I had long since followed his lead, and we
never questioned one another.
“Still, I wondered to myself, as one cannot help wondering when anything
unusual, however slight, occurs to break a regularity such as ours. A
stone thrown in a rough sea falls unperceived, but thrown into a pond of
mirror-like surface it creates a real disturbance. So all the morning I
observed MacPherson as closely as I dared; I saw him go to get his
things, and I detected a slight weariness in his walk; still he said
nothing. It was glaringly hot at the ruins. I thought of suggesting that
we should go home earlier than usual, and, turning round to look for
MacPherson, I saw him at a little distance, sitting on a boulder, with
his head in his hands. This was so unusual that I immediately crossed
over to him.
“‘I say, aren’t you feeling well?’
“He raised to me a livid face.
“‘I shall be all right presently.... A touch of the sun.’
“‘You must come indoors at once,’ I said firmly. ‘You must be mad to sit
here in this heat. Can you walk?’
“He rose with infinite weariness, but without a word of complaint, and
attempted to lift his pick.
“‘I’ll take that,’ I said, taking it from him, and he gave it up without
a word. ‘Is there anything else to bring?’
“He shook his head, and began to stumble off in the direction of the
house. Long before we had reached home, I knew what was the matter with
my companion. The sun was not responsible. He was in the grip of
cholera.
“The Albanian, who was splashing cold water from a bucket over the tiled
floor of our little sitting-room when we arrived, stared at us in
astonishment. MacPherson, his face faded to the colour of wood-ashes,
had his arm round my neck for support, and already the terrible cramps
of the disease were beginning to twist his body as he dragged one leaden
foot after the other. I called to Marco, and between us we half carried
him upstairs and laid him on his bed, where he lay, silent, but drawing
his breath in with the long gasps of pain, and with his arm flung across
his eyes so that we should not observe his face.
“I drew Marco out on to the landing. I bade him saddle the mule and ride
straight to the station, where he must take the train for Smyrna and
return without delay with the English doctor. I did not think, in my
private mind, that the doctor could arrive in time, or that he could do
more than I could, who had some experience of cholera, but still I was
bound to send for him. Marco nodded violently all the time I was
speaking. I knew I could trust him; he was an honest man. I went back to
MacPherson.
“I had never been into his bedroom before. The Venetian blinds were
lowered outside the windows, and the floor and walls were barred with
the resulting stripes of shade and sun. A plaid rug lay neatly folded
across the foot of the bed. On the dressing-table were two wooden
hair-brushes and a comb, on the wash-stand were sponges, but no
possessions of a more personal nature could I discover anywhere. The
man, it seemed, had no personal life at all.
“He was lying where I had left him, still breathing heavily; his skin
was icy cold, so I covered him over with the quilt from my own room,
knowing that it was no use attempting to get him into bed, and feeling,
in a sympathetic way, that he would prefer to be left alone. I went to
get what remedies I could from our medicine-chest downstairs, and as I
was doing this my eye fell on his little cupboard where behind glass
doors he kept his precious shards, all labelled and docketed in his
inhumanly neat handwriting, and I wondered whether, in a week or so, I
should see him sitting down there, fingering his treasures with hands
that, always thin, would surely be shrunken then to the claws of a
skeleton.
“It’s bad enough to see any man in extreme agonies of pain, but when the
man is an uncommunicative, efficient, self-reliant creature like
MacPherson it becomes ten times worse. I felt that a devil had
deliberately set himself to tear the seals from that sternly repressed
personality. MacPherson, who had always assumed a mask to disguise any
human feelings he may have had, was here forced, driven, tortured into
the revelation of ordinary mortal weakness. I believe that, even through
the suffering which robs most men of all vestiges of their self-respect,
he felt himself to be bitterly humiliated. I believe that he would
almost have preferred to fight his disease alone in the wilderness. Yet
I could not leave him. He was crying constantly for water, which I
provided, and besides this there were many services to render, details
of which I will spare you. I sat by the window with my back turned to
him whenever he did not need me, glad to spare him what observation I
could, and glad also, I confess, to spare myself the sight of that blue,
shrivelled face, tormented eyes, and of the long form that knotted and
bent itself in contortions like the man-snake of a circus.... His
courage was marvellous. He resolutely stifled the cries which rose to
his throat, hiding his face and holding his indrawn breath until the
spasm had passed.
“I knew that this stage of the disease would probably continue for two
or three hours, when the man would collapse, and when the pain might or
might not be relieved. The sun was high in the heavens when I noticed
the first signs of exhaustion. MacPherson sank rapidly, and the deadly
cold for which I was watching overcame him; I covered him with
blankets—this he feebly resisted—and banked him round with hot water
bottles, of which we always kept a supply in case of emergency. It was
now midday, and I had continually to wipe the sweat from my face, but I
could not succeed in bringing much warmth to poor MacPherson. He lay
quiet and silent now, save when the fearful sickness returned, as it did
at short intervals. I sat beside him, ready with the water for which he
was continually asking.
“He was, as I have said, always thin, but by this time his face was
cavernous; I could have hidden my knuckles in the depression over his
temples, and my fist in the hollow under his cheek-bones. His scant,
reddish hair, always carefully smoothed, lay about his forehead in
tragic wisps. His pale blue eyes showed as two smears of colour in their
great sockets. His interminable legs and arms stirred at unexpected
distances under the pile of blankets. He was very weak. I feared that he
would not pull through.
“When the merciless sun was beginning to disappear round the corner of
the house, MacPherson, who had been lying for the last hour or so in a
state of coma, spoke to me in a low voice. I was staring in a melancholy
way from my chair by his side, across the bed, between a chink of the
Venetian blind; I don’t know what I was thinking of, probably my mind
was a blank. I started when I heard him whisper my name, and bent
towards him. He whispered,—
“‘I don’t think I’m going to recover.’
“Neither did I, and seeing that he had made the remark as a statement of
fact, in his usual tone, though low-pitched, I waited for what he should
say next. He said,—
“‘I am sorry to be a bore.’
“This was a hard remark to answer, but I murmured something. He went on,
still in that hoarse whisper,—
“‘I must talk to you first.’
“I saw that he was perfectly lucid in his mind, and thinking that he
wanted to give me some necessary instructions I encouraged him to go on,
but he only shook his head, and I saw that he had fallen back into the
characteristic apathy. I sat on, expecting the arrival of Marco and the
doctor at any moment.
“Towards night, MacPherson roused himself again. He was so much weaker
that I could barely make out the words he breathed.
“‘It is time you went to water your garden.’
“I shook my head. A distressed look came over his face, and to comfort
him I said,—
“‘Marco has promised to do it for me.’
“He was content with that, and lay quiet with his long, long arms and
thin hands outside the coverlet. I thought that he wanted to speak
again, but had not the energy to begin, so, to help him, I suggested,—
“‘Was there anything you wanted to say to me?’
“He nodded, more with his eyelids than with his head, then, bracing
himself with pain for the effort, he whispered,—
“‘You won’t stay on here?’
“I answered, ‘No,’ feeling that to adopt a reassuring, hearty attitude
would be an insult to the man.
“After a long pause he said,—
“‘I want to be buried up here. By the ruins. I don’t care about
consecrated ground.’
“An appalling attack of sickness interrupted him, after which he lay in
such complete exhaustion that I thought he would never speak again. But
after about half an hour, he resumed,—
“‘Give me your word of honour. They will try to prevent you.’
“I swore it—poor devil.
“‘Bury me deep,’ he said with a grim, twisted smile, ‘or some one will
excavate me.’
“He seemed a little stronger, but I knew the recovery could only be
fictitious. Then he went on,—
“‘Will you do something else for me?’
“‘Of course I will,’ I answered, ‘anything you ask.’
“‘My wife ...’ he murmured.
“‘Your _wife_?’ I said.
“‘She’s in London,’ he whispered, and he gave me the address, dragging
it up out of the depths of his memory.
“In London! Even in that dim room, with the dying man there beneath my
hand, I felt my heart bound with a physical sensation.
“‘Just tell her,’ he added; ‘she won’t mind. She won’t make you a
scene.’
“He was silent then, but drank a great draught of water.
“‘Is there any one else?’ I asked.
“His head moved very feebly in the negative on the pillow.
“‘And what am I to do with your things?’ I asked lastly.
“‘Look through them,’ he breathed; ‘nothing private. Give the fragments
to the British Museum. I’ve made a will about money.’
“‘And your personal things? Would you like me to give them to your
wife?’
“‘Oh, no,’ he said wearily, ‘’tisn’t worth while.’ Then after a long
pause in which he seemed to be meditating, he said, with evidently
unconscious pathos, ‘I don’t know.... Better throw them away.’
V
“MacPherson died that night about an hour before the doctor came; Marco
and the doctor had missed each other, and had missed the trains, but the
doctor reassured me that I had done all that was possible, and that had
he arrived by midday he could not have saved MacPherson’s life.
“‘I suppose you will want to bring him down to the English cemetery at
Smyrna?’ he said, with an offer of help tripping on the heels of his
remark. He looked horrified when I told him of MacPherson’s wish and of
my intention of carrying it out.
“‘But no priest, I am afraid, will consent to read the burial service
over him under those conditions,’ he said primly.
“‘Then I will read it myself,’ I replied in a firm voice.
“‘You must please yourself about that,’ said the doctor, giving it up.
His attitude towards me, which had started by being sympathetic, was now
changing subtly to a slight impatience. He took out his watch. ‘I am
afraid I ought to be going,’ he remarked, ‘if I am to catch the last
train down to Smyrna, and there seems to be nothing more I can do for
you here. There will have to be a certificate of death, of course; I
will send you that. And if you like I will stop in the village on the
way, and send some one up to you; you understand me—a layer-out.’
“I said that I should be much obliged to him, and, accompanying him as
far as the front door, I watched him go with Marco and a lantern, the
little parallelogram of yellow light criss-crossed with black lines,
swaying to and fro in the night.
“I could not go to bed, and as I was anxious to leave Ephesus as soon as
possible, I thought I would employ my time in going through poor
MacPherson’s few possessions. As he said, there was nothing private. I
sat downstairs in the sitting-room we had shared, with his tin box open
on the table before me, shiny black, and the inside of the lid painted
sky-blue. It was pitifully empty. His will was in a long envelope, a
will making provision for his wife, and bequeathing the remainder of his
income to an archæological society; there was also a codicil directing
that his Ephesian fragments were to go, as he had told me, to the
British Museum. The box also contained a diary, recording, not his life,
but his discoveries; and a few letters from men of science. For the
rest, there were his books, his clothes, his wrist-watch, his plaid rug,
and a little loose cash in Turkish coins. And that was all. There was
absolutely nothing else. Not a photograph, not a seal, not even a bunch
of keys. Nothing private! I should think not, indeed.
“I sat there staring at the bleak little collection when Marco came in
to say that he had returned with the layer-out. I went into the passage,
and there I found our old negro post-woman, grinning as usual in her
magenta wrapper; it seemed that she combined several village functions
in her own person. I felt an instinctive horror at the thought of those
black hands pawing poor MacPherson, but the thing was unavoidable, so I
took her upstairs to where he lay in a repose that appeared to me
enviable after the brief but terrible suffering he had undergone, and
left her there, bending over him, the softer parts of her huge body
quivering as usual under her mashlak. I went downstairs again, and stood
outside to breathe the clean, cool air; the sky hung over me swarming
with stars; I tried not to think of the old negress exercising her
revolting profession on MacPherson’s body.
“Next day two men in baggy trousers and red sashes came up to the house
carrying the hastily-made coffin. Then we set out, Marco, myself, and
the two men with the coffin and MacPherson inside it. Providentially
there were no tourists that day at Ephesus. Marco and I had been hard at
work all the morning digging the grave, and as I drove my pick I
reflected that this was, humanly speaking, the last time I should ever
break up the flinty ground of Ephesus. After ten years! With regard to
myself and my future, I dared not think; my present preoccupation was to
have finished with MacPherson and his widow.
“Well, I buried him up there, and may I be hanged if I don’t think the
man was better and more happily buried in the place he had loved, than
stuck down in a corner of some unfriendly cemetery he had never seen.
For myself—such is the egoism of our nature—I was thinking all the while
that I would leave behind me a written request to be buried within sight
of Westmacott’s farm in Kent. And after I had buried him, and had got
rid of Marco and the two men over a bottle of _raki_ in the kitchen, I
took all the flowers from my garden and put them on his grave, and I dug
up some roots of orchid and cyclamen and planted them at his head and at
his feet; but I don’t suppose they ever survived the move, and probably
to this day the tourists who wander far enough afield to stumble over
the mound, say, ‘Why, some one has buried his dog out here.’
* * * * *
“A week later I was in London, on a blazing August day which seemed
strangely misty to me, accustomed as I was to the direct, unmitigated
rays of the sun on the Ephesian hills. I still hadn’t thought about my
future, and I was resolved not to do so until, my interview with Mrs.
MacPherson over, I could look upon the whole of the last ten years as an
episode of the past. I had tried to forget that I was in the same
country as Ruth; but this had been difficult, for the train from Dover
had carried me through the heart of Ruth’s own county, a cruel,
unforeseen prank of fortune; I had pulled down the blinds of my railway
carriage, greatly to the annoyance of my fellow-travellers, but these
good people, who might have been involved with Fate in a conspiracy
against me, had their unwitting revenge and defeated my object utterly
by saying, as we flashed through a station, ‘That was Hildenborough; now
we have to go through a long tunnel.’
“Hildenborough! After ten years, during which I had consistently kept at
least fifteen hundred miles between us, I was at last within two miles
of her home. I nearly sprang out of the train at the thought. But I
resolutely put it away, so resolutely that I found myself pushing with
my hands and with all my force against the side of the railway carriage.
“It was too late, when I reached London, to do anything that day. I
slept at my old club, where everybody started at the sight of me as of a
ghost, and the following morning I went to the address MacPherson had
given me. It was in a block of flats, a long way up. I was left stranded
upon the tiny landing by the lift-boy, who, with his lift, fell rapidly
down through the floor as though pulled from below by a giant’s hand. I
rang the bell. It tinkled loudly; I heard voices within, and presently a
woman came to open the door, with an expression of displeased inquiry on
her face; a middle-aged woman, wearing a dingy yellow dressing-gown
which she kept gathering together in her hand as though afraid that it
would fall open.
“‘Can I see Mrs. MacPherson?’ I asked.
“She stared at me.
“‘There’s no Mrs. MacPherson here.’
“I heard a man’s voice from inside the flat,—
“‘What is it, Belle?’
“She called back over her shoulder,—
“‘Here’s a party asking to see Mrs. MacPherson.’
“‘Who is it?’ asked the voice.
“‘Who are you, anyway?’ said Belle to me.
“‘I have been sent here by Mr. MacPherson, Mr. Angus MacPherson, with a
message for his wife,’ I said, ‘but as I have evidently made a mistake I
had better apologise and go away.’
“She looked suddenly thoughtful—or was it apprehensive?
“‘No, don’t go away,’ she said. ‘You haven’t made a mistake. Come in.’
“I went in, and she closed the door behind me. I followed her into the
sitting-room where, amid surroundings at once pretentious and tawdry, a
man, also in a dressing-gown, lay stretched on the sofa smoking
cigarettes. He was handsome in a vulgar way, with black wavy hair and a
curved, sensuous mouth.
“‘Now,’ said Belle, ‘let’s hear your news of Mr. Angus MacPherson?’
“‘First of all,’ I answered, ‘may I know who I am talking to?’
“Belle and the man exchanged glances.
“‘Oh, well,’ she said then, I am Mrs. MacPherson all right enough. If
you have really got a message for me, let’s hear it.’
“There was anxiety in her tone, and she edged nearer to the handsome
man, and surreptitiously took possession of his hand.
“I did not think that the news of MacPherson’s death was likely to cause
much grief to his widow. I therefore said without preamble,—
“I have come to tell you that he died a week ago of cholera. I was with
him at the time, and I have brought you the certificate of his death,
also his will. He left no other papers.’
“‘Angus dead?’ said Angus’s widow. ‘You don’t say! Poor old Angus!’
“She was relieved by my words; I know she was relieved. She began
reading the will with avidity. If I could find nothing else to admire
about her, I could at least admire her candour.
“‘He’s left me five hundred a year,’ she said abruptly, ‘and the rest to
some archi—what is it? society. Five hundred a year, and he had a
thousand!’
“‘Oh, come, Belle,’ said the handsome man, ‘that’s better than nothing.’
“She let her eyes dwell on his face with real affection, real
kindliness.
“‘Let’s have a look at that will,’ he murmured lazily.
“She passed it across to him, sat down on a stool, clasped her knees,
and became meditative.
“‘Poor old Angus!’ she repeated. ‘Fancy that! Well, he was rare fun in
his day, wasn’t he, Dick?’
“‘No end of a dog,’ replied Dick without removing his eyes from the
will.
“‘Perhaps, if there are no questions you want to ask me, I had better be
going now,’ I began. I was bewildered, for MacPherson, in spite of his
eccentricities, had undoubtedly been a scholar and a man of refinement.
“Dick stirred from his spoilt torpor.
“‘I suppose it is quite certain,’ he said, ‘that there is no mistake? I
mean, it’s quite certain he’s dead?’
“‘Quite,’ I answered rather grimly, as certain visions rose before my
eyes. ‘I buried him myself;’ and the flat with its dirty lace, its cheap
pretension, melted away into the quiet beauty of Ephesus.
* * * * *
“I walked away from the building with an inexpressible loneliness at
heart, faced with my own immediate and remoter future, a problem I had
hitherto refused to consider, but which now rushed at me like the
oncoming wave rushes at the failing swimmer and overwhelms him. I had
finished with Ephesus and MacPherson, and with MacPherson’s wife, and to
say that I felt depressed would give you no idea of my feelings: an
immense desolation took possession of me, an immense desolation, and
more: an immense, soul-destroying disgust and weariness at the cruelty
of things, a lassitude such as I had never conceived, so that I envied
MacPherson lying for ever at peace, away from strife and difficulties
and things that would not go right, among beautiful and untroubled
hills, with wild flowers blooming round his grave. Yes, I envied him, I
that am a sane man and have always prized rich life at its full value.
“And as I walked I met two men I had known, who spoke to me by my name
and stopped me.
“‘Why, it’s Malory,’ said one of them. ‘I haven’t seen you lately.
Somebody told me you had gone to Scotland?’
“‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I went to Scotland.’
“He asked me, ‘What part of Scotland?’
“‘To Aberdeen,’ I cried, ‘to Aberdeen!’ and laughed, and left them.
“I had been prepared to pass unrecognised after ten years, but for this
friendliness, which had not ‘seen me lately,’ I was unprepared. I turned
into a park, longing instinctively for the country as the only
palliative for my loneliness and melancholy. In all London that day I
think there was no lonelier soul than I. I would have sought you out,
but in such crisis of world-sorrow as was mine, I could desire only one
presence—a presence I might not have. She could have annihilated my
sorrow by a word, could have made me forget the dirt, and the irony; all
that hurt me so profoundly—though I don’t think myself a sentimentalist.
For I was hurt as a raw sentimentalist is hurt, and this pain blended
with my own trouble into a sea of despair. I wanted to find a haven of
refuge, some beautiful gulf where the wind never blows, but where
harmonious hills rise serenely from the water, and all is cultivated and
easy and fertile.
“I sat for a long time under the trees, gazing immovably at the ground
between my feet, and then I got up mechanically, without any plan in my
head, and wandered as mechanically home towards my club. My club burst
incongruously enough on my dreams of a beautiful gulf; that, again, was
part of the irony on this most cruel of days. But I had nowhere else to
go to.
“I began to write to MacPherson’s solicitors to inform them of their
client’s death; the new life was so empty that I clung for as long as I
was able to the old. As I wrote, the hall-boy came and stood at my
elbow.
“‘Please, sir, there’s a young woman asking to see you.’
“A young woman? Could it be Belle? so equipped for the day’s battle as
to pass for young?
“‘What’s her name? what does she want?’
“‘She won’t say, sir; she wants to see you.’
“I went out. Ruth was standing by the hall-door, plainly dressed in a
dark coat and skirt, and a sailor hat, and holding a couple of faded red
roses in her hand.
“I looked at her incredulously, and all the world stood still.
“She began, shyly and hurriedly,—
“‘Oh, I don’t want to bother you if you are busy....’
“That made me laugh.
“‘I am not busy,’ I told her.
“‘Oh, then perhaps I could speak to you for a few minutes? somewhere
just quietly, and alone?’
“I glanced round. The porter was standing there with a face carved in
stone.
“‘You can’t come in here,’ I said. ‘Where can I take you? Will you come
to an hotel?’
“‘Oh, no!’ she said, shrinking, and I noticed her little gray cotton
gloves.
“‘At any rate, let us get away from here. Then we can think where to
go.’
“We went down the steps, across Piccadilly, and passed into the Green
Park. There I stopped, but she would not sit on the chair I suggested.
She stood before me, her eyes downcast, and her gloved fingers twisting
the stems of her roses. I bethought myself to ask her,—
“‘How on earth did you find me, to-day of all days?’
“‘I came to ask,’ she answered, still in that shy, hurried tone,
‘whether they knew when you would be coming to London.’
“‘And they told you I was there?’
“‘Yes.’
“‘You came up from the Weald on purpose to ask that?’
“‘Yes.’
“‘But why?’
“She was silent.
“‘Why, Ruth?’
“‘Because I wanted to see you.’
“‘To see me?’
“‘To tell you something,’
“‘What is it?’
“‘I can’t tell you here,’ she murmured.
“‘Come to an hotel,’ I said again, ‘we can get a private sitting-room;
we can talk.’
“‘Oh, no, not that. I suppose ... I suppose you wouldn’t ... I am sure
you are busy.’
“‘No, no, on my honour, Ruth, I have absolutely nothing to do either
to-day, or to-morrow, or the next day, or any day after that.’
“‘Sure?’ she said eagerly, raising her eyes for one moment to mine and
then lowering them again.
“‘Quite sure.’
“‘Then,’ with sudden boldness, ‘will you come down to the Weald with me?
now? at once?’
“‘To the Weald? Of course I will, I’ll do anything you like. We’ll go
straight to Charing Cross, shall we?’
“‘Oh, yes, please, you are very good. And please, don’t ask me any
questions till we get there.’
“My ten years’ training with MacPherson proved invaluable to me now, and
I can say with pride that neither by direct nor indirect means did I
seek to extract any information from Ruth. Indeed, I was content to
observe her as she sat by me in the cab, no longer the girl I
remembered, but a woman of ripe beauty, and yet in her confused manner
there was a remnant of girlishness, in her lowered eyes, and her
tremulous lips. I saw that she sat there full of suppressed emotion,
buoyed up by some intense determination which carried her over her
shyness and confusion as a barque carries its passenger over high waves.
I was too bewildered, too numb with joy, to wonder much at the cause of
her journey.
“At Charing Cross she produced the return half of her third-class ticket
from her little purse, refusing to let me pay the excess fare which
would allow us to travel first. I think she was afraid of being shut
alone with me into a first-class carriage, knowing that in the humbler
compartment she could reckon on the security of company. So we sat on
the hard wooden benches, opposite one another, rocking and swaying with
the train, and trying to shrink away in our respective corners from the
contact of the fruit-pickers who crowded us unpleasantly: Ruth sat
staring out over the fields of Kent, her hands in their neat gray cotton
gloves lying on her lap, and the tired roses drooping listlessly between
her fingers; she looked a little pale, a little thin, but that subtle
warmth of her personality was there as of old, whether it lay, as I
never could decide, in the glow under her skin or in the tender curves
of her features. She looked up to catch me gazing at her, and we both
turned to the landscape to hide our confusion.
“Ah! I could look out over that flying landscape now, with no need to
pull down the window-blinds, and Penshurst station, when we reached it,
was no longer a pang, but a rejoicing. The train stopped, I struggled
with the door, we jumped out, the train curved away again on its
journey, and we stood side by side alone on the platform.
“It was then about five o’clock of a perfect August day. Little white
clouds stretched in a broken bank along the sky. Dorothy Perkins bloomed
in masses on the palings of the wayside station. The railway seemed
foreign to the country, the English country which lay there immovable,
regardless of trains that hurried restless mankind to and fro, between
London and the sea.
“‘Let us go,’ I said to Ruth.
“We set out walking across the fields, infinitely green and tender to my
eyes, accustomed to the brown stoniness of Ephesus. We walked in
silence, but I, for one, walked happy in the present, and feeling the
aridity of my being soaked and permeated with repose and beauty. Ruth
took off her jacket, which I carried for her, walking cool and slender
in a white muslin shirt. In this soft garment she looked eighteen, as I
remembered her.
“We took the short cut to Westmacotts’. There it was, the lath and
plaster house, the farm buildings, the double oast-house at the corner
of the big black barn, simmering, hazy and mellow, in the summer
evening. A farm-hand, carrying a great truss of hay on a pitchfork
across his shoulder, touched his cap to Ruth as he passed. There was no
sign of Westmacott.
“‘Where ...’ I began, but changed my question. ‘Where are the children?’
“‘I left them over with mother before I came away this morning,’ she
answered.
“We went into the house, into the kitchen, the same kitchen, unchanged.
“She took refuge in practical matters.
“‘Will you wait there while I take off my things and get the tea?’
“I sat down like a man in a dream while she disappeared upstairs. I was
quite incapable of reflection, but dimly I recognised the difference
between this clean, happy room of bright colours and shining brasses,
and the tawdry, musty flat I had penetrated that morning, and the
contrast spread itself like ointment over a wound.
“Ruth returned; she had taken off her hat and had covered her London
clothes by a big blue linen apron with patch pockets. Her sleeves were
rolled up to the elbow; I saw the smooth brown arm with the delicate
wrist and shapely hand.
“‘You’ll want your tea,’ she said briskly.
“I had had nothing to eat since breakfast.
“You told me once in a letter that you had been to tea with Ruth, so you
know the kind of meal she provides: bread, honey, scones, big cups, and
tea in an enormous teapot. She laid two places only, moving about,
severely practical, but still quivering with that suppressed excitement,
still tense with that unfaltering determination.
“‘It’s ready,’ she said at length, summoning me.
“I couldn’t eat, for the emotion of that meal alone with her was too
strong for me. I sat absently stirring the sugar in my cup. She tried to
coax me to eat, but her solicitude exasperated my overstrained nerves,
and I got up abruptly.
“‘It’s no good,’ I said, ‘I must know. What is it, Ruth? What had you to
tell me?’
“The moment had rushed at her unawares; she looked at me with frightened
eyes; her determination, put to the test, hesitated.
“I went over to her and stood before her.
“‘What is it, Ruth?’ I said again. ‘You haven’t brought me down here for
nothing. Hadn’t you better tell me before your husband comes in?’
“‘He won’t come in,’ she said, hanging her head so that I could only see
the wealth of her hair and her little figure in the big blue apron.
“‘How do you know?’ I asked.
“‘He isn’t here.’
“‘Where is he, then?’
“She raised her head and looked me full in the face, no longer
frightened, but steady, resolute.
“‘He has left me,’ she said.
“‘Left you? What do you mean? For good?’
“‘Yes. He’s left me, the farm, and the children; he’s never coming
back.’
“‘But why? Good Heavens, why?’
“‘He was afraid,’ she said in a low voice.
“‘Afraid?’
“‘Yes. Of me. Oh,’ she broke off, ‘sit down and I will tell you all
about it.’
VI
“And then she unfolded to me the extraordinary story which, as I warned
you at the very beginning of my letter, you will probably not believe.
Nevertheless I offer it to you as a fact, so tangible a fact that it has
driven a man—no chicken-hearted man—to abandon his home and source of
wealth, his wife, and his children, and to fly, without stopping to pack
up his closest possessions, to America. I will not attempt to give you
the story in Ruth’s own words, because they came confusedly, transposing
the order of events, dealing only with effects, ignoring the examination
of causes. I will tell it you as I see it myself, after piecing together
all my scraps of narrative and evidence. I only hope that, in dragging
you away with me to Ephesus, and in giving you the events of my own
life, you have not forgotten those who, in the Weald of Kent, are, after
all, far more essential characters than I myself. Please try now to
forget the MacPhersons, and project yourself, like a kind, accommodating
audience, to the homestead, outwardly so peaceable, inwardly the stormy
centre of so many complicated passions.
“And, again like a kind, accommodating audience, put ready at your elbow
a little heap of your credulity, that you may draw on it from time to
time, like a man taking a pinch of snuff.
“I do not know how far I should go back, perhaps even to the day when
Ruth, in a wild state of reckless misery, ran away with Rawdon
Westmacott. At once, you see, I am up against the question of their
relationship, and you will understand that, situated as I now am with
regard to Ruth, it isn’t a question I like to dwell upon. There is a
certain fellowship, however, between us, Ruth, Rawdon, and I, and when I
consider that fellowship, my resentment—I will go further than that, and
call it my loathing, my disgust—bends down like a springing stick and
lies flat to the ground. By fellowship I mean, in myself, the restless
spirit which drove me onward until, blinded by the habit of constant
movement, I couldn’t see the riches that lay close to my hand. In Ruth
and Rawdon, I mean the passionate spirit that was the heritage of their
common blood, and that drew them together even when she, by an accident
of dislike, would have stood apart. We talk very glibly of love and
indifference, but, believe me, it is largely, if it doesn’t come by
sudden revelation, a question of accident, of suggestion. It simply
didn’t occur to me that I might be in love with Ruth; I didn’t examine
the question. So I never knew.... And she, on her part, was there,
young, southern, trembling on the brink of mysteries, pursued by Rawdon,
whose character and mentality she disliked, from whom she, afraid,
wanted to fly, and in whose arms she nevertheless felt convinced that
she must end. From this I might have saved her. I see her now, a hunted
creature, turning her despairing eyes on me, for a brief space seeking a
refuge with Leslie Dymock, but finally trapped, captured,
yielding—yielding herself to a storm of passion that something
uncontrollable in her own nature rose up to meet.
“Seeing her in this light, I am overcome, not only with my stupidity and
blindness, but with my guilt. Yet she was not altogether unhappy. It is
true that Rawdon ill-treated and was unfaithful to her almost from the
first, but it is also true that in their moments of reconciliation,
which were as frequent as their estrangements, that is to say, very
frequent indeed—in these moments of reconciliation she found consolation
in the renewal of their curiously satisfying communion. I don’t pretend
to understand this. Ruth loved me—she has told me so, and I know,
without argument, that she is speaking the truth—yet she found pleasure
in the love of another man, and even a certain grim pleasure in his
ill-treatment of her. Or should I reverse my order, finding more marvel
in her humility under his caresses than under his blows?
“What am I to believe? that she is cursed with a dual nature, the one
coarse and unbridled, the other delicate, conventional, practical,
motherly, refined? Have I hit the nail on the head? And is it, can it
be, the result of the separate, antagonistic strains in her blood, the
southern and the northern legacy? Did she love Westmacott with the one,
and me with the other? I am afraid to pry deeper into this mystery, for
who can tell what taint of his blood may not appear suddenly to stain
the clear waters of his life?
“This, then, is Ruth, but in Westmacott the southern strain seems to be
dominant; the clear English waters are tainted through and through. He
is a creature of pure instinct, and when his instinct is aroused no
logic, no reason will hold him, any more than a silk ribbon will hold a
bucking horse. Ruth has told me of her life with him after he had gained
possession of her, all his humility gone, changed into a domineering
brutality; sometimes he would sit sulkily for hours, smoking and playing
cards, and then would catch her to him and half strangle her with his
kisses. She seems to have lived with him, the spirit crushed from her,
meek and submissive to his will. I remembered the days when he used to
lounge about Pennistans’, leaning against the doorpost staring at her,
and when she in disdain and contempt would clatter her milk-pans while
singing at the top of her voice. Westmacott, I thought grimly, had had
his own revenge.
“Once, as you know, she rebelled, but I do not think you know what drove
her to it. Westmacott had brought another woman home to the farm, and
had ordered his wife to draw cider for them both. When she refused, he
struck her so that she staggered and fell in a corner of the room. She
then collected her children and walked straight over to her father’s
house. How she tried to shoot Westmacott you know, for you were there.—I
can’t think about that story.
“But to come down to the day I went to the farm and asked her to come
away with me. Westmacott suspected nothing at the time. About a week
later he came home slightly drunk, and began to bully one of the
children. Ruth cried out,—
“‘Hands off my children, Rawdon!’
“‘You can’t stop me,’ he jeered.
“She said,—
“‘I can. I nearly stopped you for ever once, and what’s to prevent my
doing it again?’
“He looked at her blankly, and his jaw dropped.
“For a week after that he was civil to her; their rôles were reversed,
and she held the upper hand. Then he started shouting at her, but, brave
in her previous success, she defied him,—
“‘Stop swearing at me, Rawdon, or I’ll go away and leave you.’
“He roared with laughter.
“‘Go away? Where to?’
“She says that she was wild, and did not care for the rashness of her
words,—
“‘I shall go to Mr. Malory.’
“‘He wouldn’t have you!’ said Rawdon.
“‘He would!’ she cried. ‘He came here—you never knew—and tried to get me
to go with him. And I’d have gone, but for the children. So there!’
“After this there was a pause; Rawdon was taken aback, Ruth was appalled
by her indiscretion. Then Rawdon burst out into oaths, ‘which fouled the
kitchen,’ said Ruth, ‘as though the lamp had been flaring.’ At this
time, I suppose, I was at Sampiero.
“Of course, these and similar scenes could not go on perpetually. Their
married life, although long in years, had been interrupted by over four
years of war and absence, but now they found that they must settle down
to life on a workable basis. They were married, therefore they must live
together and make the best of it. Ruth tells me that they talked it out
seriously together. A strange conversation! She undertook not to resent
his infidelities if he, on his side, would undertake not to ill-treat
her at home. So they sealed this compact, and in the course of time sank
down, as the houses of the neighbourhood sank down into the clay, into a
situation of no greater discontent than many of their prototypes.
“There was apparently no reason why this should not go on for ever. It
did, indeed, let me tell you at once, go on for nearly ten years. They
were quite tolerably happy; their children grew; their farm prospered;
they were able to keep a servant. And then she saw a change coming over
her husband.
“This is the thing which I do not expect you to believe.
“It began with his suggestion that Ruth should occupy the larger bedroom
with the younger children, while he himself moved up to an attic at the
top of the house, next to the boys’ attic. She was astonished at this
suggestion, and naturally asked him for his reasons. He could give none,
except that it would be ‘more convenient.’ He shuffled uneasily as he
said it. For the sake of peace, she agreed.
“But, suspicious now, she watched him closely, and he, realising that
she was watching him, tried to writhe away from her vigilance. He would
invent excuses to absent himself all day from the farm—a distant market,
a local show—and would return late at night, creeping unheard up to his
attic, there to slip off his clothes in the dark, or with the moonlight
streaming in through his little latticed, dormer window. So for days he
would contrive to meet his wife only at breakfast. His excuses were
always convincing, and in them she could find no flaw. She might not
have noticed his strange behaviour, but for the incident of the
re-arranged bedrooms, and perhaps some feminine instinct which had
stirred in her. She dared not question him, fearing a scene, but
gradually she came to the not unnatural conclusion that he was keeping a
second establishment where he spent most of his time.
“This left her indifferent; she had long since made her life independent
of his, and the possible gossip of neighbours did not touch her as it
would have touched a woman of commoner fibre. She had quite made up her
mind that Rawdon spent all his nights away from home, returning shortly
before she awoke in the morning. She did not resent this, especially as
he had shown himself much gentler towards her of late. She was even
vaguely sorry for him, that he should take so much trouble to conceal
his movements. It must be very wet, walking through the long dewy grass
of the fields so early in the morning.
“She was surprised to notice that his boots were never soaked through,
as she logically expected to find them.
“One night she lay awake, thinking over all these things, when an
impulse came to her, to go and look in his room. She got up quietly,
slipping on her shoes and dressing gown, and stole out on to the
landing. The house was dark and silent. She crept upstairs, and turned
the handle of his door, confident that she would find the room empty. By
the light of the moon, which poured down unimpeded by any curtain
through the little oblong window in the sloping roof, she saw her
husband’s dark, beautiful head on the white pillow. He was sleeping
profoundly. His clothes lay scattered about the floor, as he had thrown
them off.
“So surprised was she—a surprise amounting, not to relief, but almost to
dismay—that she stood gazing at him, holding the door open with her
hand. Sensitive people and children will often wake under the influence
of a prolonged gaze. Westmacott, who was a sensitive man beneath his
brutality, and who further was living just then, I imagine, in a state
of considerable nerve tension, woke abruptly with an involuntary cry as
from a nightmare. He sat up in bed, flinging back the clothes—sat up,
Ruth says, with staring eyes and the signs of terror stamped on all his
features.
“‘You! you!’ he said wildly, ‘what do you want with me? in God’s name
what do you want?’
“She thought him still half-asleep, and replied in a soothing voice,—
“‘It’s all right, Rawdon; I don’t want anything; I couldn’t sleep,
that’s all; I’m going away now.’
“But he continued to stare at her as though she had been an apparition,
muttering incomprehensibly, and passing his hand with a wild gesture
over his hair.
“‘What’s the matter, Rawdon?’ she said, genuinely puzzled.
“At that he cried out,—
“‘Oh, go away, leave me alone, for God’s sake leave me alone!’ and he
began to sob hysterically, hiding his face in his sheets.
“Afraid that he would wake the children, she backed hastily out,
shutting the door, and flying downstairs to her own room.
“He did not come to breakfast, but at midday he appeared, white and
hollow-eyed, and climbed to his room, where he spent an hour screwing a
bolt on to the inside of his door. When he came down again, he tried to
slip furtively out of the house, but she stopped him in the passage.
“‘Look here, Rawdon,’ she said, taking him by the shoulders, ‘what’s the
matter with you?’
“He shrank miserably under her touch.
“‘There’s nothing the matter,’ he mumbled.
“Then he spoke in a tone she had never heard since the days before their
marriage, a cringing, whining tone.
“‘Let me be, Ruth, my pretty little Ruth; I’m up to no wrong, I promise
you. Be kind to your poor Rawdon, darling,’ and he tried to kiss her.
“But instantly with his servility she regained her disdain of him. She
pushed him roughly from her.
“‘Get out then; don’t bother me.’
“He went, swiftly, thankfully.
“The furtiveness which she had already noticed clung to him; he slunk
about like a Jew, watching her covertly, answering her, when she spoke,
in his low, propitiatory voice. She had lost all fear of him now. She
ordered him about in a peremptory way, and he obeyed her, sulkily,
surlily, when she was not looking, but with obsequious alacrity when her
eyes were on him. His chief desire seemed to be to get out of her sight,
out of her company. He moved noiselessly about the house, seeking to
conceal his presence; ‘pussy-footed,’ was the word she used. Their
relations were entirely reversed. With the acquiescent philosophy of the
poor, she had almost ceased to wonder at the new state of affairs thus
mysteriously come about. She dated it from the day he had first taken to
the attic, realising also that a great leap forward had been made from
the hour of her midnight visit to his bedroom. He was an altered being.
From time to time he tried to defy her, to reassert himself, but she
held firm, and he slid back again to his cowed manner. She became aware
that he was afraid of her, though the knowledge neither surprised nor
startled her over-much. She merely accepted it into her scheme of life.
She was also perfectly prepared that one day he should break out, beat
her, and reassume his authority as master of the house and of her
person.
“This, then, was the position at Westmacotts’ while I toiled at Ephesus
and received with such wide-spaced regularity little packets of seed
from Ruth. The situation developed rapidly at a date corresponding to
the time when MacPherson fell ill with cholera. It was then three months
since Westmacott, by going to the attic, had made the first concession
to his creeping cowardice. He was looking ill, Ruth told me; his eyes
were bright, and she thought he slept badly at night. Her questioning
him on this subject precipitated the crisis.
“‘Rawdon, you’re looking feverish.’
“‘Oh, no,’ he said nervously. They were at breakfast.
“‘Ay, dad,’ said the eldest boy, ‘I heard you tossing about last night.’
“Ruth turned on him with that bullying instinct that she could not
control, and asked roughly,—
“‘What do you mean by keeping the children awake?’
“He cowered away, and she went on, her voice rising,—
“‘I won’t have it, do you hear? If you can’t sleep quietly here, you can
go and sleep elsewhere—in the stable, for all I care.’
“He didn’t answer, he only watched her, huddled in his chair—yes,
huddled, that tall, lithe figure—watched her with a sidelong glance of
his almond eyes.
“She went on storming at him; she says she felt like a person speaking
the words dictated to her by somebody else, and indeed you know Ruth
well enough to know that this description doesn’t tally with your
impression of her.
“He was fingering a tea-spoon all the while, now looking down at it, now
stealing that oblique glance at his wife, but never saying a word. She
cried to him,—
“‘Let that spoon alone, can’t you?’ and as she spoke she stretched out
her hand to take it from him. He bent swiftly forward and snapped at her
hand like a hungry wolf.
“The children screamed, and Ruth sprang to her feet. Rawdon was already
on his feet, over in the corner, holding a chair, reversed, in front of
him.
“‘Don’t you come near me,’ he gibbered, ‘don’t you dare to come near me.
You said you nearly stopped me once’—oh little seed sown ten years
ago!—‘but by Hell you shan’t do it again. I’ll kill you first, ay, and
all your children with you, cursed brats! how am I to know they’re
mine?’ and a stream of foul language followed.
“Ruth had recovered herself, she stood on the other side of the room,
with all her frightened children clinging round her.
“‘I think you must be mad, Rawdon,’ she said, as coldly as she could.
“‘And if I am,’ he cried, ‘who’s driven me to it? Isn’t it you? making
my life a hell, spying on me, chasing me even to my bed at night, ready
to pounce on me the moment you get a chance? Oh, you hate me, I know;
it’s that other man you want, you’ve had your fill of me. Oh, you false,
lying vixen, you’re just waiting till you can get me—catch me asleep,
likely; what was you doing in my room that night? The woman who can
shoot at a man once can shoot at him twice. Mad, you say I am? No, I’m
not mad, but ’tis not your fault that I wasn’t mad long ago.’
“The eldest boy darted across the room at his father, but Rawdon warded
him off with the chair.
“‘Keep the brat off me!’ he cried to Ruth. ‘I won’t be answerable, I’ll
do him a mischief.’
“He cried suddenly,—
“‘This is what I’ll do if you try to lay hands on me, you and all your
brood.’
“He was near the window, he took the pots of geranium one by one off the
sill, crying, ‘This! and this! and this!’ and flung them with all
possible violence on the tiled floor, where the brittle terra-cotta
smashed into fragments, and the plants rolled with a scattering of earth
under the furniture.
“‘I’ll do that with your heads,’ he said savagely.
“His eye fell on the cage of mice, left standing exposed on the
window-sill. At the sight of these his rage redoubled.
“‘_He_ gave you these,’ he shouted, and hurled the cage from him into
the farthest corner of the room.
“He was left quivering in the midst of his devastation, quivering,
panting, like some slim, wild animal at bay.
“The storm that had swept across him was too much for his nerves; the
expression on his face changed; he sank down in the corner, letting the
chair fall, and hiding his face in his hands.
“‘There, it’s over,’ he wailed, ‘don’t be afraid, Ruth, I won’t touch
you. Only let me go away now; it’s this life has done for me. I can’t
live with you. You can keep the children, you can keep the farm; I’m
going away, right away, where you’ll never hear of me again. Only let me
go.’
“It seemed to be his dominating idea.
“She moved across to him, but he leaped up and to one side before she
could touch him.
“‘Keep away!’ he cried warningly.
“He reached the door; paused there one brief, intense moment.
“‘You’ll hear from me from London,’ he uttered.
“He seemed to her exactly like a swift animal, scared and untamed,
checked for one instant in its flight.
“‘I’ll never trouble you more.’
“Then he was gone; had he bounded away? had he flown? she could not have
said, she could only remain pressed against the wall, the children
crying, and her hands clasped over her heart.
* * * * *
“There, what do you think of that for the story of a Kentish farm-house?
What a train of dynamite, isn’t it, laid in the arena of Cadiz? What a
heritage to transmit even to the third generation! You don’t believe it?
I thought you wouldn’t. But it is true.
“Ruth told me the whole of this amazing story in a low voice, playing
all the while with her two faded roses. She showed me a lawyer’s letter
which she had received next day, formalising the agreement about the
farm, stipulating that she should pay rent; all couched in cold,
business-like terms. ‘Our client, Rawdon Westmacott, Esq.,’ that savage,
half-crazed, screaming creature that had smashed the flower-pots only a
week before....
“‘I see you’ve replaced the geraniums,’ I said rather irrelevantly.
“‘Yes.’
“‘What about the mice?’
“‘They all died.’
“So that chapter was closed?
“‘At any rate, Ruth, you need not worry now about your children.’
“She looked puzzled.
“‘Never mind, I was only joking.’
“Then we were quite silent, faced with the future. I said slowly.
“‘And you brought me down here to tell me all this?’
“‘Yes. I am sorry if you are annoyed.’
“‘I am not annoyed, but it is late and I must go back to London
to-night.’
“She came a little closer to me, and my pulses began to race.
“‘Why?’
“‘Well, my dear, I can’t stop here, can I?’
“She whispered,—
“‘Why not?’
“‘Because you’re here alone, even the children are away.’
“‘Does that matter?’ she said.
“A ray from the setting sun slanted in at the window, firing the red
geraniums, and the canary incontinently began to sing.
“‘You came here once,’ said Ruth, ‘and you asked me to go away and live
with you. Do you remember?’
“‘My dear,’ I said, ‘I have lived on that remembrance for the last ten
years.’
“I waited for her to speak again, but she remained silent, yet her
meaning was clearer to me than the spoken word. We stood silent in the
presence of her invitation and of my acquiescence. We stood in the warm,
quiet kitchen, where all things glowed as in the splendour of a mellow
sunset: the crimson flowers, the sinking fire, the rounded copper of
utensils, the tiled floor rosy as a pippin. In the distance I heard the
lowing of cattle, rich and melodious as the tones within the room. I saw
and heard these English things, but, as a man who, looking into a
mirror, beholds his own expected image in an unexpected setting, I had a
sudden vision of ourselves, standing side by side on the deck of a ship
that, to the music of many oars, glided majestically towards the land.
We were in a broad gulf, fairer and more fruitful than the Gulf of
Smyrna. The water lay serenely around us, heaving slightly, but unbroken
by the passage of our vessel, and the voices of the rowers on the lower
deck rose up in a cadenced volume of song as we came slowly into port.
“Ever yours,
“CHRISTOPHER MALORY.”
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Retained anachronistic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as
printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
4. Superscripts are denoted by a caret before a single superscript
character or a series of superscripted characters enclosed in
curly braces, e.g. M^r.
End of Project Gutenberg's Heritage, by V. (Victoria Mary) Sackville-West