A FABLE AT FAULT
Philip took possession of the two rooms which had belonged to the
dead Sergeant Dobson. They were furnished sufficiently for every
comfort by the trustees of the hospital. Some little fragments of
ornament, some small articles picked up in distant countries, a few
tattered books, remained in the rooms as legacies from their former
occupant.
At first the repose of the life and the place was inexpressibly
grateful to Philip. He had always shrunk from encountering
strangers, and displaying his blackened and scarred countenance to
them, even where such disfigurement was most regarded as a mark of
honour. In St Sepulchre's he met none but the same set day after
day, and when he had once told the tale of how it happened and
submitted to their gaze, it was over for ever, if he so minded. The
slight employment his garden gave him--there was a kitchen-garden
behind each house, as well as the flower-plot in front--and the
daily arrangement of his parlour and chamber were, at the beginning
of his time of occupation, as much bodily labour as he could manage.
There was something stately and utterly removed from all Philip's
previous existence in the forms observed at every day's dinner, when
the twelve bedesmen met in the large quaint hall, and the warden
came in his college-cap and gown to say the long Latin grace which
wound up with something very like a prayer for the soul of Sir Simon
Bray. It took some time to get a reply to ship letters in those
times when no one could exactly say where the fleet might be found.
And before Dr Pennington had received the excellent character of
Stephen Freeman, which his son gladly sent in answer to his father's
inquiries, Philip had become restless and uneasy in the midst of all
this peace and comfort.
Sitting alone over his fire in the long winter evenings, the scenes
of his past life rose before him; his childhood; his aunt Robson's
care of him; his first going to Foster's shop in Monkshaven;
Haytersbank Farm, and the spelling lessons in the bright warm
kitchen there; Kinraid's appearance; the miserable night of the
Corneys' party; the farewell he had witnessed on Monkshaven sands;
the press-gang, and all the long consequences of that act of
concealment; poor Daniel Robson's trial and execution; his own
marriage; his child's birth; and then he came to that last day at
Monkshaven: and he went over and over again the torturing details,
the looks of contempt and anger, the words of loathing indignation,
till he almost brought himself, out of his extreme sympathy with
Sylvia, to believe that he was indeed the wretch she had considered
him to be.
He forgot his own excuses for having acted as he had done; though
these excuses had at one time seemed to him to wear the garb of
reasons. After long thought and bitter memory came some wonder. What
was Sylvia doing now? Where was she? What was his child like--his
child as well as hers? And then he remembered the poor footsore wife
and the little girl she carried in her arms, that was just the age
of Bella; he wished he had noticed that child more, that a clear
vision of it might rise up when he wanted to picture Bella.
One night he had gone round this mill-wheel circle of ideas till he
was weary to the very marrow of his bones. To shake off the
monotonous impression he rose to look for a book amongst the old
tattered volumes, hoping that he might find something that would
sufficiently lay hold of him to change the current of his thoughts.
There was an old volume of _Peregrine Pickle_; a book of sermons;
half an army list of 1774, and the _Seven Champions of Christendom_.
Philip took up this last, which he had never seen before. In it he
read how Sir Guy, Earl of Warwick, went to fight the Paynim in his
own country, and was away for seven long years; and when he came
back his own wife Phillis, the countess in her castle, did not know
the poor travel-worn hermit, who came daily to seek his dole of
bread at her hands along with many beggars and much poor. But at
last, when he lay a-dying in his cave in the rock, he sent for her
by a secret sign known but to them twain. And she came with great
speed, for she knew it was her lord who had sent for her; and they
had many sweet and holy words together before he gave up the ghost,
his head lying on her bosom.
The old story known to most people from their childhood was all new
and fresh to Philip. He did not quite believe in the truth of it,
because the fictitious nature of the histories of some of the other
Champions of Christendom was too patent. But he could not help
thinking that this one might be true; and that Guy and Phillis might
have been as real flesh and blood, long, long ago, as he and Sylvia
had even been. The old room, the quiet moonlit quadrangle into which
the cross-barred casement looked, the quaint aspect of everything
that he had seen for weeks and weeks; all this predisposed Philip to
dwell upon the story he had just been reading as a faithful legend
of two lovers whose bones were long since dust. He thought that if
he could thus see Sylvia, himself unknown, unseen--could live at her
gates, so to speak, and gaze upon her and his child--some day too,
when he lay a-dying, he might send for her, and in soft words of
mutual forgiveness breathe his life away in her arms. Or perhaps--and
so he lost himself, and from thinking, passed on to dreaming.
All night long Guy and Phillis, Sylvia and his child, passed in and
out of his visions; it was impossible to make the fragments of his
dreams cohere; but the impression made upon him by them was not the
less strong for this. He felt as if he were called to Monkshaven,
wanted at Monkshaven, and to Monkshaven he resolved to go; although
when his reason overtook his feeling, he knew perfectly how unwise
it was to leave a home of peace and tranquillity and surrounding
friendliness, to go to a place where nothing but want and
wretchedness awaited him unless he made himself known; and if he
did, a deeper want, a more woeful wretchedness, would in all
probability be his portion.
In the small oblong of looking-glass hung against the wall, Philip
caught the reflection of his own face, and laughed scornfully at the
sight. The thin hair lay upon his temples in the flakes that betoken
long ill-health; his eyes were the same as ever, and they had always
been considered the best feature in his face; but they were sunk in
their orbits, and looked hollow and gloomy. As for the lower part of
his face, blackened, contracted, drawn away from his teeth, the
outline entirely changed by the breakage of his jaw-bone, he was
indeed a fool if he thought himself fit to go forth to win back that
love which Sylvia had forsworn. As a hermit and a beggar, he must
return to Monkshaven, and fall perforce into the same position which
Guy of Warwick had only assumed. But still he should see his
Phillis, and might feast his sad hopeless eyes from time to time
with the sight of his child. His small pension of sixpence a day
would keep him from absolute want of necessaries.
So that very day he went to the warden and told him he thought of
giving up his share in the bequest of Sir Simon Bray. Such a
relinquishment had never occurred before in all the warden's
experience; and he was very much inclined to be offended.
'I must say that for a man not to be satisfied as a bedesman of St
Sepulchre's argues a very wrong state of mind, and a very ungrateful
heart.'
'I'm sure, sir, it's not from any ingratitude, for I can hardly feel
thankful to you and to Sir Simon, and to madam, and the young
ladies, and all my comrades in the hospital, and I niver expect to
be either so comfortable or so peaceful again, but----'
'But? What can you have to say against the place, then? Not but what
there are always plenty of applicants for every vacancy; only I
thought I was doing a kindness to a man out of Harry's company. And
you'll not see Harry either; he's got his leave in March!'
'I'm very sorry. I should like to have seen the lieutenant again.
But I cannot rest any longer so far away from--people I once knew.'
'Ten to one they're dead, or removed, or something or other by this
time; and it'll serve you right if they are. Mind! no one can be
chosen twice to be a bedesman of St Sepulchre's.'
The warden turned away; and Philip, uneasy at staying, disheartened
at leaving, went to make his few preparations for setting out once
more on his journey northwards. He had to give notice of his change
of residence to the local distributor of pensions; and one or two
farewells had to be taken, with more than usual sadness at the
necessity; for Philip, under his name of Stephen Freeman, had
attached some of the older bedesmen a good deal to him, from his
unselfishness, his willingness to read to them, and to render them
many little services, and, perhaps, as much as anything, by his
habitual silence, which made him a convenient recipient of all their
garrulousness. So before the time for his departure came, he had the
opportunity of one more interview with the warden, of a more
friendly character than that in which he gave up his bedesmanship.
And so far it was well; and Philip turned his back upon St
Sepulchre's with his sore heart partly healed by his four months'
residence there.
He was stronger, too, in body, more capable of the day-after-day
walks that were required of him. He had saved some money from his
allowance as bedesman and from his pension, and might occasionally
have taken an outside place on a coach, had it not been that he
shrank from the first look of every stranger upon his disfigured
face. Yet the gentle, wistful eyes, and the white and faultless
teeth always did away with the first impression as soon as people
became a little acquainted with his appearance.
It was February when Philip left St Sepulchre's. It was the first
week in April when he began to recognize the familiar objects
between York and Monkshaven. And now he began to hang back, and to
question the wisdom of what he had done--just as the warden had
prophesied that he would. The last night of his two hundred mile
walk he slept at the little inn at which he had been enlisted nearly
two years before. It was by no intention of his that he rested at
that identical place. Night was drawing on; and, in making, as he
thought, a short cut, he had missed his way, and was fain to seek
shelter where he might find it. But it brought him very straight
face to face with his life at that time, and ever since. His mad,
wild hopes--half the result of intoxication, as he now knew--all
dead and gone; the career then freshly opening shut up against him
now; his youthful strength and health changed into premature
infirmity, and the home and the love that should have opened wide
its doors to console him for all, why in two years Death might have
been busy, and taken away from him his last feeble chance of the
faint happiness of seeing his beloved without being seen or known of
her. All that night and all the next day, the fear of Sylvia's
possible death overclouded his heart. It was strange that he had
hardly ever thought of this before; so strange, that now, when the
terror came, it took possession of him, and he could almost have
sworn that she must be lying dead in Monkshaven churchyard. Or was
it little Bella, that blooming, lovely babe, whom he was never to
see again? There was the tolling of mournful bells in the distant
air to his disturbed fancy, and the cry of the happy birds, the
plaintive bleating of the new-dropped lambs, were all omens of evil
import to him.
As well as he could, he found his way back to Monkshaven, over the
wild heights and moors he had crossed on that black day of misery;
why he should have chosen that path he could not tell--it was as if
he were led, and had no free will of his own.
The soft clear evening was drawing on, and his heart beat thick, and
then stopped, only to start again with fresh violence. There he was,
at the top of the long, steep lane that was in some parts a literal
staircase leading down from the hill-top into the High Street,
through the very entry up which he had passed when he shrank away
from his former and his then present life. There he stood, looking
down once more at the numerous irregular roofs, the many stacks of
chimneys below him, seeking out that which had once been his own
dwelling--who dwelt there now?
The yellower gleams grew narrower; the evening shadows broader, and
Philip crept down the lane a weary, woeful man. At every gap in the
close-packed buildings he heard the merry music of a band, the
cheerful sound of excited voices. Still he descended slowly,
scarcely wondering what it could be, for it was not associated in
his mind with the one pervading thought of Sylvia.
When he came to the angle of junction between the lane and the High
Street, he seemed plunged all at once into the very centre of the
bustle, and he drew himself up into a corner of deep shadow, from
whence he could look out upon the street.
A circus was making its grand entry into Monkshaven, with all the
pomp of colour and of noise that it could muster. Trumpeters in
parti-coloured clothes rode first, blaring out triumphant discord.
Next came a gold-and-scarlet chariot drawn by six piebald horses,
and the windings of this team through the tortuous narrow street
were pretty enough to look upon. In the chariot sate kings and
queens, heroes and heroines, or what were meant for such; all the
little boys and girls running alongside of the chariot envied them;
but they themselves were very much tired, and shivering with cold in
their heroic pomp of classic clothing. All this Philip might have
seen; did see, in fact; but heeded not one jot. Almost opposite to
him, not ten yards apart, standing on the raised step at the
well-known shop door, was Sylvia, holding a child, a merry dancing
child, up in her arms to see the show. She too, Sylvia, was laughing
for pleasure, and for sympathy with pleasure. She held the little
Bella aloft that the child might see the gaudy procession the better
and the longer, looking at it herself with red lips apart and white
teeth glancing through; then she turned to speak to some one behind
her--Coulson, as Philip saw the moment afterwards; his answer made
her laugh once again. Philip saw it all; her bonny careless looks,
her pretty matronly form, her evident ease of mind and prosperous
outward circumstances. The years that he had spent in gloomy sorrow,
amongst wild scenes, on land or by sea, his life in frequent peril
of a bloody end, had gone by with her like sunny days; all the more
sunny because he was not there. So bitterly thought the poor
disabled marine, as, weary and despairing, he stood in the cold
shadow and looked upon the home that should have been his haven, the
wife that should have welcomed him, the child that should have been
his comfort. He had banished himself from his home; his wife had
forsworn him; his child was blossoming into intelligence unwitting
of any father. Wife, and child, and home, were all doing well
without him; what madness had tempted him thither? an hour ago, like
a fanciful fool, he had thought she might be dead--dead with sad
penitence for her cruel words at her heart--with mournful wonder at
the unaccounted-for absence of her child's father preying on her
spirits, and in some measure causing the death he had apprehended.
But to look at her there where she stood, it did not seem as if she
had had an hour's painful thought in all her blooming life.
Ay! go in to the warm hearth, mother and child, now the gay
cavalcade has gone out of sight, and the chill of night has
succeeded to the sun's setting. Husband and father, steal out into
the cold dark street, and seek some poor cheap lodging where you may
rest your weary bones, and cheat your more weary heart into
forgetfulness in sleep. The pretty story of the Countess Phillis,
who mourned for her husband's absence so long, is a fable of old
times; or rather say Earl Guy never wedded his wife, knowing that
one she loved better than him was alive all the time she had
believed him to be dead.