“Take me to Patty,” I cried, “and let me weep my soul out on her kind
little heart.”
He shook his head.
“What!” I said; “you will not?”
“She must not even know,” he said. “I could not trust her anxious
love. She must rest as she is, aware of my endless scheming, but not
of its fruits. Some day, perhaps. And in the meanwhile my lady is gone
honeymooning; there is no hope of appeal to her. A breath would
redeliver you to your fate, and perhaps a worse. Come, and tell me all
you have suffered, poor mistress.”
I crept to his feet, and in broken tones gave him the history of my
misery, to the day, to the hour when he had appeared before me.
“And you have not told me,” I said, “how that was.”
“Once,” he answered, “after I had hidden and settled here, I was
spying through the telescope above--(Ay,” he interrupted himself, to
my exclamation, “they could be bold to capture the dying sorcerer, but
to meddle with his tools was beyond their courage)--when I was witness
of a characteristic little _affaire_ on the green below. There were a
stilt-walker and his wench--a couple of the wandering tribe--a
long-legged bird of passage and his little _cocotte_ of bright
plumage. I could see her glitter where I stood--could see her
spangles, and the ribbons float from her tambour as she danced. And
then suddenly my lord viscount was on the scene. He had been sporting,
and carried his gun. He had keepers with him (they were his own; not,
as might have seemed apter to his wits, Dr. Peel’s); and his dogs
‘pointed’ at the gipsy, I suppose. Anyhow, there was an altercation;
and the next I saw was the clown tipped up by his wooden heels, and
lying prone. They carried off the girl--willing or unwilling, it would
have needed a stronger telescope than the astrologer’s to discern--and
presently the poor stunned fool came to his senses and sat up. I could
see him try to gather his wits with his hand, plucking at his brow. He
was alone, who had been in company. Where were the rest--his ravished
mate, and the mob for whom she had tripped and sung? By and by I saw
him, with many starts and delays, unbuckle his stilts, and, having
shouldered them, hobble with slow, painful steps towards the village.
He disappeared, and till night I sat thinking of him, and of the
‘Contrat Social,’ which M. Rousseau wrote for the angels, and which,
therefore, you would not understand, Diana, though, for all my better
sense, I adore you. About dark I descended into the woods at the back
yonder; and there I came upon my stilt-walker seated dying against a
tree. Yes, he was dying. His fall had shattered some ribs, and driven
one into his lung, and death was already thawing the white snow on his
face into patches of blue. I carried him up to the tower, and eased
what I could of his agony, and received his last message to the world.
It is a callous world, this world of ’87; a world of serf and Satan
and Christianity crushed between. But I tell you I would rather give
that message than receive it: would rather be Gogo, the clown and
pariah, than the Viscount Salted with all his prospective acres. Well,
he died, and I took a spade, and buried him at the foot of the tree
where he had rested. Pray God it bears wholesome acorns, for why
should he wish to poison the swine his brothers? Then I inherited his
property; and a thought, an inspiration, occurred to me how I might
use it. Was I not wont to stump the country, like a halting orator? I
could stump it to higher purpose now--the purpose of your redemption.
Sure the spirit of the dead clown would uphold me, for was it not
privilege I fought? So, with no great practice necessary, I became a
stilt-walker; and presently ventured afield, starting by night,
reaping my little harvest of pence in the far villages by day, and
under cover of dark returning. Gradually I contracted my circuit,
hovering about your prison; and so, once upon a time, peering over the
wall in a wintry evening, spied your figure come and go in the light
of a high room. It might be yours! I must dare all, and cast the die.
Well, Fortune favours--the fortunate.”
He ended, to a little silence.
“Poor Gogo,” I said softly. “It is true, I do believe, that I am her
spoilt doll.”
“And I,” he said, “her Dutch tumbler.”
XVI.
I PUT AN END TO ONE FOLLY
Hanging and wiving go by Destiny, which must be my excuse for
accepting the silken cord which was weaving for my neck all this time.
I knew no more than patient Griselda about my impending fate; yet
Destiny was not to be gainsaid because I seemed content to resolve
upon Gogo for my present welfare and protection.
He, good monster, never alluded again, during all the days I was with
him, to his unhappy passion. He was slavish in his loyalty to his
word, and in his attentions to the poor creature so utterly in his
power. And if I could not but understand the significance of his sighs
and oglings and contortions, my feigned ignorance of those
hieroglyphics was undoubtedly the most merciful of all the tortures I
might have inflicted on him. Thinking of this, I find salve for
certain bruises on my conscience, which, nevertheless, were, I am
sure, quite unnecessarily self-inflicted. I acted for the best, and
with great pain to myself. He has admitted this since, though
confessing he was long in forgiving me.
I was in the tower, in all, but four days, which, nevertheless, might
have been as many weeks for their tediousness. Gogo was an
incomparable slave and henchman, only his devotion necessarily lacked
the relish of publicity. If I could have had but one other to whom to
boast it, I could have endured it longer. But to be Single-heart’s
exclusive fetish, immured in his wigwam and appropriated to his sole
company, was what never appealed to me. Nor do I believe that it does
truthfully to any other. We are omnivorous; we can’t live on
spoon-meat alone; and there is an end of it.
“Gogo,” I said once, “why are you so attached to me?”
“Why?” said he, throwing up his hands, after his fashion, with a sort
of protesting groan to the powers that be. “Because I am a creature of
surfaces and impressions; because, drawing my life from the great
external of all, it is my doom to worship externals. We talk of our
inheriting the world. Pooh! we are just an itch on the skin of this
monster, whose dark internals are as remote from us as our own hated
organs. Have we ever a thought of possessing our kingdom? Think with
what terror we contemplate a living burial. We are the dust of contact
between earth and sky; are bandied between space and matter, the dross
of one or the scum of the other. Love itself is but the measure of our
penetration. It is the propagation of superficies: it probes no
farther: and all the time is breathing in the air like a swimmer. Are
my eyes in my feet? Ask me why I hate the dark, and am attached to the
light--to the brightest gnat of an hour flying within it.”
“Thank you, sir,” said I. “And that is me, I suppose?”
“That is you,” he said--“dancing on a window-pane, and wondering what
fate keeps you from the garden beyond.”
“And you,” I said, “are the spider lurking in the window-corner,
_n’est ce pas_, and wondering what fate keeps you from devouring me.
Well, you are very complimentary; but, for my part, I would rather
have an hour’s dancing on the surface than possess all the world
that’s under.”
“Ay,” he answered, “and that’s why I covet you.”
Now, was he not an inexplicable creature, and, it must be said, a
depressing? Moreover, for all his advocacy of my cause, I could never
quite reconcile him to my view of madam.
“Remember the day of the picture,” he would say; “and how she rebuked
us all by her attitude. If I testify to your martyrdom, Diana, I must
testify to hers that preceded it.”
“She is welcome to the palm,” I cried. “And may she live long to
flaunt her conquest.”
He did not answer; and so letting his dissent pass by default, put a
bar between us that was never quite surmounted.
In the meanwhile, day followed day, and the frost held, and I was cold
and _ennuyée_; and still he delayed our flight on the score of peril.
I had come but poorly clad for the test, and I cried and shivered much
in our dismal refuge, where what fire we could afford must be kept low
from dread of the smoke betraying us. Present food we had, and some
wine that helped a little to comfort our dejection; and on the Friday
he was due, tramping fourteen miles thither and back over the hills,
to claim his fresh dole of the tree above Wellcot, where faithful
Patty--who was in his confidence as to his retreat, and the means
towards my salvation he hoped to make of it--was wont to conceal it.
Dear darling! How I longed to convey her a message; but he would not
hear of it.
“Of all ephemera,” he said, “she is the very transparent-bodied fly,
the secrets of whose own heart she cannot help but reveal.”
So I had to submit, and hold her sweet image in my arms o’ nights,
when the wind came in at the door and the stars crackled with cold.
But Gogo was right, I had to confess, when once from the deep woods
beyond Shole we heard the clanging of bloodhounds, and knew that my
enemies were vainly seeking the trail which had no existence. Then I
cowered low, and felt a new gush of affection for the resourceful
giant who was so wise in the singleness of his passion.
Often by day I would climb up the ladder to the loft where the
astrologer’s telescope yet remained, commanding, like a disused
cannon, the house and village he had fancied under its dominion, and
there spend hours spying hungrily for what tokens of life the bitter
season afforded. They were not many or inspiriting; but they served at
least to keep me in touch with that world of my fellows that seemed
eternally lost to me.
On the Friday I fell at Gogo’s feet.
“Safe or unsafe,” I cried, “take me away! I can stand this loneliness
no longer.”
His face was full of a sorrowful ecstasy.
“And it was a garden to me,” he murmured; “blind that I am!”
“I shall die,” I cried terribly, “and you will lay me with the dead
clown under the tree.”
“So would you be for ever mine,” he continued, in a sort of dream.
I shrunk from him, and seeing my look, he cast himself down on his
face before me.
“Command me as you will,” he cried; “only never, never bid me from
serving you.”
“You will go?” I sat back, eagerly canvassing him. “Why should I dream
of parting with you? Are not our fortunes pledged together, even if I
did not owe you the best of all gratitude? You are so wise and brave;
you will find a plan and a direction. Only I can stop here no
longer.--O, I can’t!--Gogo, take me away--to London--anywhere.”
He raised himself.
“Spare me this evening to forage,” he said, “so that to-morrow we can
at least start provided.”
In deep night he left me, to go to the tree. It was the first time I
had been abandoned to my sole self. So long as I could discern his
figure, striding over the fields, like some unearthly goblin, on its
high stilts, I stood by the door gazing into the starlight. Then, when
I could see him no more, I sat down just within, my back to the vast
emptiness, and hugged and cried to myself against the long panic of
waiting.
Not many minutes had I sat thus, when something--a footstep, a
shadow--seemed to fall upon my heart with a shock that stopped its
beating. Too terrified for look or utterance, I crouched low, hoping
the thing would pass, and leave me unobserved.
“I have come, madam, to invite you to a safer asylum,” said a low and
musical voice.
I gave an irresistible cry, suppressing it instinctively, even in its
emission, lest it should call back my faithful squire, from his long
toil across the fields, to a need which these gentle tones were far
from justifying. I struggled to my feet, and made myself as small as
possible against the wall.
“Who are you?” I whispered.
“An outcast like yourself,” answered the shadow; “a fellow-sufferer at
the hands of the very family to which you owe your misfortunes.”
“Who are you?” I could only whisper again.
“I am George Rowe,” it said. “Do you remember me? We have met once--an
ineffaceable impression to me. I have followed your career since;
unknown to you, have traced you by the flowers in your footsteps--yes,
even to that wicked place, and your flight from it. I have watched you
since from the woods below; have stood at this door at night and
listened to your breathing till I maddened; have sorely bided my time,
seeking to speak to you. I have tracked the honest tracker, your good
servant and saviour; and, while I applaud his devotion, must warn you
against the equivocal position in which your further acceptance of
that devotion may place you.”
I could not see his face, but only the dusk of a comely form, as it
stood now before me. Well could I recall, indeed, “the good-humoured
gentleman in the grey coat,” who had once so espoused my childish
cause, and earned thereby the hatred of his kinsmen. My confidence was
returning to me with my wits.
“You are very considerate for us,” I said deridingly. “Do you come as
madam your sister’s emissary, since you are so particular for my
character?”
“Alas!” he said, “you do well to doubt me, being so related. But I am
an outlaw from all that house’s influence and consideration.”
“An outlaw--you!” I murmured.
“Ay,” he answered; “ruined, menaced, and driven forth to nurse my
wrongs in hiding.”
“Why, where?” I asked.
“To the woods,” he answered, “like Robin Hood.”
“O, an attractive asylum, sir, for distressed ladies,” I said.
He replied, “Maid Marian thought so.”
“Perhaps she had an attachment there,” said I. “I miss the application
to myself.”
He laughed softly.
“Whether we fly from fear, or fly to love, we fly,” he said. “You may
hold your enemies too cheap, not knowing that my lord makes interest
with his sister, and for his own purposes, to subsidise your Dr. Peel.
For the sake of the secrets of the prison-house, he will not leave her
solus to the hue and cry. You have planted two dragon-heads in place
of the one you severed.”