pony. The sun was beginning to drop behind the Brecon hills, and long
shadows were lying on the eastward side of every hedge and tree. He
could see Wern Farm, with its thin curl of smoke, a little way above
him; but he turned his head with a sigh, for the place he had loved as a
boy had become to him like a plague-spot disfiguring the country-side.
Instinctively he held back his beast, whose mind grew the more set upon
her stable as she approached it; he had no desire to meet his stepmother
a moment sooner than he need. The knowledge that she was there, awaiting
him under that mounting smoke, poisoned the comfort suggested by its
blue wreath.
Unlike most men as near the soil as himself, Stephen took a certain
pleasure in the face of the land; his life had made him mentally
solitary, and to all mentally solitary people the eye has a deal to say.
There was something sensitive in him which the woman in the farm yonder
had made it necessary he should protect, and he had done so by raising a
wall of dumb, cynical resistance round himself; nowadays he could sit
behind it, so to speak, and enjoy the sound of her futile blows upon the
stone. But, though the blows were futile, he hated her none the less;
the recollection of a day, six years past and more, when he had come
home to find Zillah flown, had settled that. He had returned from his
fruitless search with every intention of turning his stepmother out of
the house; but, with a man’s weakness, he had allowed her to stay in the
end.
He thought of it bitterly now; hidden away in a locked box under his bed
lay the ring he had bought at Abergavenny for Zillah. She could not have
loved him, he said to himself, when she had run off like that, without a
sign; at least, she might have left a message for him with some one at
the farm. He had never been able to find out what passed between the two
women.
His eye fell upon a patch of grass by a little runnel where the juicy
stems of a tuft of cuckoo-flowers rose from the rich moisture, and he
remembered that the morrow was the first of May, and sighed again. It
would be seven years, come October, since she had gone.
As the young man led his little mare through the farm-gate he was met by
a rather uncommon sight. At the barn-door on the further side of the
yard stood Peggy, the old woman who worked two days a week in the house.
Her hands were tightly clasping a ladder set up against the wall, on a
high rung of which stood Tom Prothero, the farm labourer. Below it was
Tom’s son, a small boy, with a finger in his mouth and a bunch of
greenery in his free hand.
“Put you a good big bit by that there nayal,” cried Peggy, in her
cracked voice; “the little lump ere ’ave got plenty more in ’is ’and for
the beast-ouse! No use to stint ’em. Wrythans be cheap ere about.”
“Cheap enough for her, even,” rejoined Tom, as well as he could for the
bit of twine in his mouth. He nodded backward in the direction of the
dwelling-house.
“’And me a bit more, Tommy--there’s a good boy,” said the old woman, in
the conciliatory accents which people reserve for children with whom
they have nothing to do.
“What’s goin’ on?” asked Stephen. He had come so noiselessly over the
mud that the party, lost in its occupation, had not heard him.
The man on the ladder turned round; there was a sheepish grin on his
face as he addressed his employer.
“It’s the wythan, to be sure,” said he. “’Tis May Eve, an’ Peggy
wouldn’t leave me no peace till I got the ladder up. Praper nonsense, I
do call it myself.”
A smile that was half a sneer touched Stephen’s lips. He took his pipe
from his pocket and began filling it as he walked to the stable with the
pony. He had got beyond the superstition still rife in his corner of the
world.
“The master don’t care for no witches--not ’e,” observed Tom
sceptically.
“They be all the more like to come for that, if we don’t keep ’em out
wi’ the wythan,” replied Peggy. “They be worse nor Christians.”
“Well, anyhow, they can’t be no worse nor some that’s ’ere already,”
said Tom, as he clambered down. “If the wythan would get rid o’ _her_,
I’d think better of it.”
The old woman made no reply, but her expression spoke for her.
Together they went to the stable door, the man carrying the ladder, and
the little boy following. As Tom set it up, Stephen came out with his
saddle on his arm.
“Just another bit for the beast-’ouse, master,” said Peggy; “ye wouldn’t
like to lose the ould mare.”
He nodded at them and passed on.
Supper was late on the following evening. The little square window-panes
looked black and solid as Stephen sat by the kitchen fire with his pipe.
His thick eyelashes rested on his cheek as he looked into the coals with
half-closed eyes; within the dwelling-house walls he never spoke, if he
could help it. His stepmother had pushed the furniture noisily against
the wall, set the candles on the shelf, and gone to bed. The house was
very still.
He opened his eyes again, as he heard a footstep outside followed by
others. Several people were evidently coming to the house. As a rule,
the yard was quiet at this hour, and he sat up, listening, drawing back
his lips from the pipe between his teeth. The outer door shook under a
set of determined knuckles.
When he opened it, he found half a dozen human beings crowding close to
the threshold. Rain was falling, and the chestnut-boughs swished about
in the rising wind. Peggy’s cracked tones mixed with their soft noise.
She took hold of his arm, and her knotted fingers gripped like claws.
“I saw ’er go in,” she cried--“comin’ round the pigstye wall I were! I
did see ’er wi’ my own eyes, sure enough!”
“Saw who?” asked Stephen.
“Didn’t I tell ’ee, Tom Prothero?” cried Peggy more loudly. “Didn’t I
say they be all the more likely to come to them as don’t care for ’em?
Toucherous folk they be, master!”
Here a man joined in with explanations.
“Hold your noise,” said Stephen, “an’ let Tom speak. What’s wrong, Tom
Prothero?”
“They do say they’ve seen the witch go in,” said the man who had been on
the ladder. His voice shook a little, and the scepticism of yesterday
had died out of it.
Stephen uttered a rough exclamation.
“Clapperin’ fools that ye be!” said he, preparing to re-enter the house.
But the old woman seized him again.
“Come ’ee, master--do ’ee come now,” she entreated. “Tell ’ee I darn’t
go nigh the place, an’ there’s a plate o’ good hens’ food i’ the barn,
the missis told me to bring in.”
She was almost crying.
Stephen took his hand from the door-knob.
“Drat the lot of you--witch an’ all!” he cried.
“I’ll get the lantern from the beast-’ouse,” said Tom, growing bolder.
The young man carried the light across the yard, heading the small
procession. As he entered the barn, one or two shrank back, and only
Tom, who was inclined to take his colour from his master, ventured
across the threshold.
The place was high, and one half of it was piled to the rafters with
last year’s hay; the other half was empty, but for some farm implements
stacked by the door. The lantern sent a regiment of shadows wandering
among the black beams overhead; as Stephen held it up, it revealed a
heap of straw and an old horse-rug lying at the farther angle of the
walls. Sure enough, there was a figure crouching upon it. As it raised
itself the shuffle of retreating feet came from outside.
A slim, small woman stood up in the shine of the lantern. The
traditional ragged shawl proper to witches was wrapped round her, hiding
all her face, save the outlines of a cheek and a white, pointed chin.
The young man strode forward and took her by the shoulder, dragging it
away. It fell round her.
“Here! give me the light, man!” he cried, stretching out his disengaged
hand towards Tom.
“Stephen,” said a trembling voice.
Tom Prothero had been too short a time at the farm to remember Zillah.
He stood in amaze. He had believed witches to be women of considerably
over five-and-twenty, and the last people men would care to treat as
Stephen was treating the woman before him. He put down the lantern and
scratched his head.
The action recalled his presence to his master.
“Be off!” said the latter ungratefully, to the only one of his servants
who had stood by him.
“Well, I’m danged!” exclaimed Prothero, when he found himself outside.
Peggy came timorously towards him. She had just had courage enough to
stay by the gate, and now drew nearer.
“Where be the master?” she inquired in a whisper.
“If ye’ve any mind to see a man huggin’ an’ kissin’ a witch, ye’ve only
to go into the barn yander,” said Tom, in a sardonic voice, as he
departed to his own dwelling across the fields.
* * * * *
“Come in, my dear,” said Stephen at last, holding the girl’s cold hand
in both of his own.
“Not to her.”
“No, no. Peggy ’ll give ye her bed, I know; an’ to-morrow----”
“To-morrow I’ll be gone.”
“Ah, that’s likely,” replied Stephen sarcastically.
* * * * *
In the early light Jane Lewis and her stepson faced each other, the
table at which they had breakfasted between them. There had been high
words.
“Well, that’s how it is,” said the young man. “I’ve told ye, and there’s
no more to be said. We’ll be called in church as soon as I can get down
the hill to see to ’t.”
“Do ’ee think I’ll stop here along o’ her?” screamed Mrs. Lewis. “Do ’ee
think a decent woman ’ud set down at the table wi’ a slut that’s come
sneakin’ back, half-naked, to a respectable house? The Lord knows what
she’ve been at all this time--_I_ know Zillah! Only that she’s my own
flesh and blood, I’d take the stick to her, I would, sooner ’n such an
idle slut ’ud cross the bracken-heap at the door!”
“She’s worked enough,” said Stephen, his eyes hardening. “Who drove her
out to work wi’ strangers till sickness stopped her and want brought her
back to me?”
“Ah-h! She come here fast enough when she could get no more,” said Jane,
with a smile that deepened the pinched lines round her mouth.
“And she’ll stay, too!” cried he. “She thought to ask me for a help on
to the Works at Merthyr; but she’ll never get there--not while I live,
leastways.”
Jane made a spring towards the door; she was still an active woman, but
her stepson was too quick for her.
“Where be you going?” he demanded, as he put his back to it. He knew
very well that she was going to Peggy’s cottage. He determined that the
same thing should not happen twice.
“Let me go!” she shrieked, throwing herself against him.
He leaned forward and took her by the wrists, bending his brown, shaven
face towards her.
“There’s only one way ye’ll go,” he said, “an’ that’s down the hill. I
kept ye these years out of respect for him whose wife ye were--but
that’s done. Ye’ve said ye’ll not sit down wi’ Zillah, an’ ye never
shall. Never one moment--never once.”
* * * * *
It was evening when Jane Lewis left the farm. The long shadows lay as
they had lain two days before, when Stephen had read Maytime in the
cuckoo-flowers. She had refused escort, and carried her small bundle
herself; to-morrow Tom Prothero would bring her box down the hill. As
she turned a corner of the lane she looked back. Tom’s little boy was
sitting on the yard-gate, swinging a branch over his head.
For the wythan had been taken down from the barn-door. It had done its
work.
Inside the farm Zillah sat by the fire, slim and dark.
“I’m going down to parson’s house i’ the morning,” said Stephen
suddenly, after a long pause.
And though the words belonged to some silent train of thought, the girl
by the hearth understood them.
OTHER PEOPLE’S GODS
Wilfred Sands rode through the hot February afternoon towards the little
city of Central India to which his fortunes had led him. The long, low
ridge of its cantonment stretched before him a few miles away, and,
unseen on the lower ground behind it, lay the native town on the
outskirts of which his own bungalow stood. He rode along in the happy
condition of one whose sympathies are in tune with his surroundings, for
he loved India, and his work brought him frequently into contact with
the things that interested him most.
It was five years since he had first landed, and three since he had come
to Sivapura to manage the local branch of the Bank of Bombay. His post
was a small one, for Sivapura was the capital of an inconsiderable
native state; but Wilfred was young in his profession, and well content
with destiny; for he had a little money of his own, good health, a
couple of decent ponies, and a feeling for the East which made him
indifferent to banishment.
His scheme of life, outside his business, was one of contemplation
varied by violent exercise. He was an energetic if moderate polo player
and a very much more than moderate cricketer; and these qualities
brought him into touch with the soldier part of the community, which had
its dwelling in the cantonment on the hill. But, in spite of these
things, in a country in which members of the dominant race depend so
much upon one another, he was a man of few friends and no intimacies.
Soldier and civilian alike spoke well of him, but no one, except where
games were concerned, saw much of him. He was fond of shooting, but he
did his shooting alone; cards wearied him; and for women’s society he
had little taste. There were some inclined to pity a man who stood so
much apart from his fellows; but Sir Thomas Marney, the white-headed
Indian general in command of the district, who knew him better than did
any one else, was amused at what he considered a waste of good feeling,
for he suspected Sands of being perfectly contented.
Wilfred’s father had been in business in Bombay, and Sir Thomas was one
of the friends of his youth; but it was not only that fact that stirred
the soldier’s interest in the young man. There was a sympathy of temper
which ran deeper than association. Sir Thomas Marney also loved India,
with a ripe affection that had survived many disillusionments and many
blows, and, as the years of his service drew to an end, he looked
forward to his freedom with none of the eagerness of the traditional
exile. The “white cliffs” that are supposed to inspire the returned
wanderer were, to him, only the illustration of an idea to which he had
been faithful all his life, and of which he needed no reminder beyond
the one lying permanently at his heart. Though his undeviating wish had
ever been to serve his country, he preferred to serve her at a distance.
When men who have held good positions in remote places return to end
their days in England, it is much the fashion to pity them for the loss
of consequence which is their lot. To the slow imagination of the
average stay-at-home Briton, the East, with its ceaseless undertone of
tragedy and heroism, its large issues and sudden fatalities, is merely a
place of perquisites, precedence, and numerous carriages and servants,
and his pity for those who must exchange such value for the obscurity of
a straitened provincial establishment is unfeigned. Discomfort is what
he can readily understand--what may be brought home to his own cherished
body any day; but he has no sympathy for that loss of spiritual
elbow-room from which many of the objects of his half-contemptuous pity
are suffering, because he has no experience of it.
He does not know how difficult one whose personal energies have been
chiefly concerned with desperate matters--with rebellion, pestilence, or
the responsibility for many lives--may find it to adjust them to the
questions that convulse his new surroundings; he does not realise that
eyes which have frequently seen death at closer quarters than he has
seen a street-row may wander as they confront those of Jones, who is
passionately describing antique furniture, or the iniquities of
paperhangers. There are some men who find rest, after the strenuous past
years, in the trivialities that flock round modern English life, and
there are some who find suffocation. General Marney knew that he was
condemned to be of the latter.
But, apart from all effects of experience, he hated to think of leaving
a country to whose outward face he was truly attached. He had always
been a sportsman and had lived much in the open; and the shrines and
gods of the common people, the groves and temples round their villages,
were filled with interest for him. Without laying claim to any great
learning, he understood the rustic dwellers in the Central Indian
plains, their cupidity, their poverty, their superstition, and their
strange inverted simplicity, as well as a European may understand them.
It was because he saw in Sands a reflection of his own mind that he was
attracted towards him.
Wilfred was riding home from a solitary day’s shooting to dine with his
friend, and he looked forward to his evening, for the General had told
him that they would be alone. His sturdy country-bred pony was ascending
the easy slope at a slow, tireless canter, leaving a puff of dust
hanging above his tracks, and as he reached the flat stretch that
crowned the rise he pulled into a walk. He had plenty of time before
him, for the sun was still above the horizon. The plain on his right
hand was a sea of burnt grass and _karunda_ bushes; and, as the hot
weather was not yet come, the pervading scent of _karunda_ flowers mixed
with the odour of cow-dung and goats that was the breath of the roadside
village of Devigaon.
For him, there was a charm about this particular spot, though it would
have been hard for a stranger to see its justification. There was
nothing alluring about the filthy huts and yapping pariah dogs, and the
hamlet was not even graced by the usual _peepul_ tree, whose encircling
mud platform is the haunt of the village elders and the resting-place of
that piece of walking scoundrelism, the travelling _sadhu_.
Beyond Devigaon the ground was a mass of scrub and half-buried stones,
almost unrideable, and avoided even by the tracks which ran to the
nearest village; but in the centre of this unpropitious place was the
point of attraction for Sands. He had discovered it while threading his
way among the boulders and dodging between bushes in search of a short
cut to the tank lying farther in from the road. From the highway,
nothing could be seen of the object round which his thoughts were
circling as he rode along but a fragment of roof, cutting the skyline
above the scrub.
On a patch of ground beyond the boulders stood one of those squalid
isolated shrines, mostly commemorative of deceased persons, which are
found in the neighbourhood of the poorer villages. A rude square of
thatching, supported by four poles and backed by the inevitable piece of
corrugated tin, sheltered the mound of stones which formed the shrine,
creating, by the shadow of its enclosure, a gloom through which it was
difficult to see clearly. The few broken cocoanut-shells lying round it,
and the faint traces left by the red _chendur_, showed it to have been
untended for some time. In the most prominent place under the roof was
an upright stone slab, roughly carved with the figure of a man on
horseback, and bearing on either of its top corners a circle and a
half-circle, which stood, respectively, for the sun and moon. The whole
device had about as much relation to nature as has the drawing made by a
child on a slate. What fascinated Sands was a little stone serpent
placed alone beside the sculptured horseman.
It was about six inches high, and formed with real skill from a solid
block. The coil of its tail made a flat base on the ground, and from it
rose the delicate balance of the poised body supporting the cobra’s
outspread hood. It had looked so strangely real to him on the day, some
weeks ago, when he first stopped by the shrine and peeped in, for the
sun was bright outside and a chink of light was lying on the little grey
object that reared itself up in the shadow. He had ventured inside, bent
double under the roof, and examined it curiously.
Wandering alone in the late afternoon for the partridges which would
call to one another from the stony tract and the bits of cultivation
about Devigaon, he had more than once since that occasion laid his gun
upon a boulder and turned aside to look at the cobra. He had never met a
native about the spot of whom he might ask the shrine’s history; and,
had he done so, it is likely that, for one reason or another, he would
have heard nothing to enlighten him. He never passed on the road without
thinking of the little inanimate creature which sat, with the grotesque
horseman for company, over there among the baked stones and the
_karunda_ bushes. Sometimes he almost wished he could carry it away and
set it in some corner of his bungalow, a reminder of the mysterious
world encompassing the European influences of his life.
He sat with Sir Thomas, a few hours later, at the shaded dinner-table;
the Madrassi butler had left his post behind the General’s chair, and
the cigarette-box was open between the two men. The talk had dropped for
a moment.
“I wish _I_ were twenty-nine,” said the soldier.
He sighed rather enviously as he looked at his old friend’s son.
Until he had taken up his command at Sivapura, eighteen months ago, his
recollection of Wilfred had been that of an urchin in a pinafore.
“At twenty-nine there was such a lot before me,” he went on--“the best
years of my life. And now, in a few more, it will be all done, and my
time up, and nothing to look for in front.”
He met his guest’s glance, respectful, with a touch of embarrassment,
and smiled.
“I suppose I appear very old?” he said.
“Indeed, sir, you don’t seem so to me,” answered Wilfred.
Though sympathy alone might have dictated his reply, he spoke truth.
Marney’s hair was white and his skin weather-beaten, but there was
little else about him to suggest age. He had lived healthily, and his
spare figure was now rewarding him for his trouble; also, certain lines
which, in middle life, the meaner emotions begin to draw in many human
faces, were absent.
“And I don’t seem so to myself,” continued he; “that is the tragedy. I
can’t feel that in two and a half years I shall be old enough to go home
and serve other people’s gods--I like my own so much better.”
There was a long pause as they sat smoking.
“Come, we’ll go into the verandah,” said Marney.
The General’s bungalow stood high at the outer edge of the cantonment,
and from where he sat with his guest the ground sloped away to the open
country. As Wilfred lay back in his long chair his eyes were turned
through the hot starlit darkness towards Devigaon. Sir Thomas’s allusion
to gods made him think of the little serpent in the jungle-patch, and he
wondered whether his companion had ever seen the tumbledown shrine--he
who had wandered so much among such places and was so unusually familiar
with village life and customs.
After a moment he began upon the subject. He had some powers of
description, and, as he sat bolt upright, throwing out his hand towards
the blue-black space of sky at the end of the verandah, as though he
could see through it to Devigaon, the General listened in silence.
“And why don’t you take the serpent?” he said, when Sands had finished.
The other looked at him in astonishment.
“Take it?” he said, as though he had misunderstood.
“Yes, take it,” repeated the General. “I should, if I had the fancy for
it that you have. No one would care.”
“You surprise me,” said Wilfred blankly.
“If you had seen as much as I have of the people--the low-caste village
people of this part of India--you would not be surprised. Outside the
bounds of a certain circle of superstition, these things mean so little
to them. Hanuman and Bhiru don’t enter into their lives as Englishmen
imagine they do. Heaven knows, an Englishman’s religion often doesn’t go
for much in his feelings; but it is supposed to, for all that. But here,
with the low-caste man, it isn’t even supposed to. He propitiates what
he is told to propitiate, and that’s all. It is the lowest man who tills
the soil, and religion is mainly a matter of caste. Very probably the
Devigaon villagers don’t remember that the shrine exists.”
“No one ever seems to go there, certainly. The red marks on the stones
are almost worn out, and the thatch of the roof is falling to bits. I
shoot round there very often, and I have never seen a native near the
place.”
“Some other spot has developed importance,” said Sir Thomas; “some
_banyan_ root, or even a _babul_ tree. Some tomb, Hindu or
Mohammedan--it matters little which to these ignorant folk--has burst
into sudden sanctity, and nobody thinks any more of your place. A
recrudescence may come some day, when we are all dead, or it may not.
Probably not.”
“I could take it easily enough,” said Wilfred slowly. “The snake is not
too big to go into a coat pocket. But I don’t exactly feel as if I
should do it.”
“If you want to be strictly honest, you can leave a rupee in its place,”
said Marney, smiling again; “that would be a miracle the whole village
would appreciate. But it’s ten to one you would find it where you left
it in a year’s time, for probably not a soul goes there but yourself.”
“You spoke of not liking other people’s gods just now,” said Sands
reflectively. “Perhaps I like them too much.”
They sat on under the white verandah arches. Now and then an isolated
tom-tom beat from a native hut, and a pariah dog barked, or the sentry
on the path outside passed in his round. When eleven struck on the gong
of the native cavalry lines, the young man rose, remembering that there
was a field-day on the morrow, and that his host would be astir early.
While he mounted his pony at the porch steps, and the syce disappeared
like a moth into the darkness, Sir Thomas stood at the top watching him.
“Perhaps next time I see you, you’ll tell me that the snake is in your
bungalow,” said he.
Sands glanced up at him and laughed. One of the things that Marney
remembered all the rest of his life was his upturned face in the light
of the lantern that swung from the rafters of the porch.
“No, no,” he said. “I’m afraid of meddling with other people’s gods.
Good night, sir!”
The two men did not meet at all during the next couple of weeks, for a
press of business at the bank kept Wilfred unusually busy, and he had
barely time for a canter round the racecourse when evening set him free.
Often, while he sat at his desk, listening to the click of the native
clerks’ typewriters, his thoughts went back to Marney’s words. Once he
had shot round Devigaon, and again looked into the shrine. One of those
sudden squalls of wind that herald the hot weather had further damaged
the roof, making it sag down from the pole at one corner. The grass was
turning browner, and the fiery flood of light seemed like a molten sea
which had left the bare bones of the shrine high and dry.
The idea of possessing the stone snake grew in his mind. He had a few
brass images of gods and godlings that he had bought from time to time
in the bazaar; but, though he valued them mildly, not one could inspire
him with the interest he felt in the cobra. They had either been hawked
at his door or haggled for amid the incongruous mercantile surroundings
of shops. As likely as not, they had been made in Birmingham for the
Indian market. But the snake was a true member and symbol of the
stealthy jungle hierarchy; of the company of Hanuman and the Bhirus
lurking among the _banyan_ roots in the dark byways of the country.
That Sir Thomas Marney knew what he was talking about was indisputable,
and his own insignificant wanderings among the surrounding hamlets had
shown him something of the villagers’ apathy towards all that had no
bearing on gain. He turned the matter over and over. He had only
realised how much he would like to have the cobra since his talk with
Sir Thomas.
One stifling evening he turned his pony into the Devigaon road, his mind
made up at last. He had timed himself to arrive by dusk at the place
where he would leave it and take to the stony scrub. Night falls so
swiftly in India that a man going across country does well to be within
sight of a beaten track as the sun disappears. If he left the road with
sunset, he would just have time to pick his way to the shrine, take his
spoil, and return, leading his horse through the maze of thorns and
boulders, before darkness should swoop down. Though, as he had told
Marney, he had never met a soul near the spot, he was apprehensive of
being seen.
At the side of the highway the goatherds were driving their flocks
through the reddish-golden dust, and the crickets had struck up their
vibrant chorus from the wayside _babul_ trees. Little spots of fire had
burst out all over the country; from fields and hillocks, from waste and
tillage, from everywhere where unseen men were cooking their solitary
evening messes, or gathering in groups, squatted on their heels, to pass
round the common pipe. These scattered eyes of the Indian dusk did not
mark him as he left the road. There was enough light to enable him to
get forward briskly, and it still held as he dismounted by a thicket of
_karunda_, and made the pony’s rein fast to a projecting branch. Not
fifty yards beyond him the broken roof cut into the twilight.
He went up the stony slope, his riding-boots slipping on the grass that
was like tinder beneath his feet, and paused in front of the shrine.
There was not a stir nor a sound; not a breath of air moved so much as a
dried blade. He could not even hear the cropping of the pony’s teeth on
the other side of the stunted shrubs.
He went in under the thatch, bending his head; his eyes were still full
of the twilight, and he could barely see the upright slab with the
horseman; but he knew exactly where the snake stood, and put out his
hand to the grey shape.
A shock of vivid pain ran up his arm like a tongue of fire; it was as
though a bow had been drawn to the uttermost and an arrow shot into his
wrist. He sprang backward, and his fingers brushed the image,
overturning it upon the ground. As he stood, dazed and dumb, the horror
of a ghastly thought struck his brain, even as the blow had struck his
flesh; and there passed behind the carved horseman a slim shadow that
flowed along the earth like a thread of sluggish water in a dry place.
He rushed out, holding his wrist. The pulsing blood was singing one loud
word in his brain--“death! death! death!” Death, not at that vague
trysting-place ahead, where we all expect to meet him, not with the
touch of human-kind to stay him up till the veil should fall between
humanity and his senses, but here--now--alone! The presence ran beside
him, even as he ran, and the passionate desire to reach his pony, the
last warm, living creature he could cling to till the pursuer’s grip
should fall on him, drove him on.
The darkness was gaining on him too, and every stock and stone growing
more alike to his stricken eyes. He went stumbling forward, unable to
concentrate his wits on his direction; already his arm was numb, and his
feet became heavier at every step.
He did not know how long he struggled on, dizzy and half blind, with
these strange sensations creeping on him, missing his way, and crossing
his own tracks, only to cross them again. He had lost all count of time.
The darkness gathering round him was darker than that of evening.
At last, through his bewilderment and above his own choking breaths, he
heard the pony snort among the scrub close to him, and staggered towards
the sound. Then he fell down, face foremost, almost at the startled
beast’s feet.
* * * * *
Sir Thomas Marney had finished his dinner and was writing letters, when
he was told that two of ‘E’Sands-sahib’s’ servants were outside,
anxious to speak to him. There was an undercurrent in his butler’s
manner, as he made the request, that struck him, and, telling the man to
bring them to the verandah, he went out. Wilfred’s butler and a _syce_
were salaaming on the path. The former, as spokesman, said that he had
come, well knowing the General-sahib to be his master’s friend. No one
knew where the sahib was. The Arab pony had returned alone to his
stable; he had been galloping, and the bridle was broken. They did not
know what to do, and they had waited, hoping that the sahib would
return. Perhaps he had got off and let the pony go; perhaps he might
return on foot. Who knew?
Marney turned to the _syce_.
“Was the pony hurt?” he asked; “had he been down?”
The pony was well. There was nothing wrong--only a scratch on his
shoulder. The _syce_ had picked the end of a _karunda_ thorn out of it.
It struck the General that the _syce_ was more observant than most of
his kind.
“And did no one know where Sands-sahib had gone?” he asked.
He had ridden out later than usual, the man said. He had met a goatherd,
too, as they came along, who told him that he had passed his sahib on
the road to Devigaon.
Marney was silent. He knew now where to look for Wilfred. He could not
guess what had happened, but if any accident had befallen the young man
in that unfrequented place, he might lie till morning, for all the
chance there was of being seen. He might, at this very moment, be there,
stunned or helpless, with a broken limb. His mind was made up at once.
He dismissed the two men. The butler was to go home to Wilfred’s
bungalow, and the _syce_ was to get out his master’s dun country-bred
pony and wait, with a lantern, till he should join him at the beginning
of the Devigaon road. Marney ordered his horse, and sent word to his
mounted orderly to be ready to come with him.
The three men left the cantonment and went at a steady canter along the
road, one behind the other, the General leading and the _syce_ last. As
they came parallel with the tract that he knew so well from Wilfred’s
description, Marney stopped, and, leaving the _syce_ on the road with
the horses, dismounted, and bade his orderly follow him in among the
bushes with the light.
When they had almost reached the heart of the scrub, he stepped suddenly
back, and the orderly set it down. There lay Sands on his face, dead and
cold.
They examined him all over in search of some hurt, but they could find
nothing, till the General, taking up the heavy hand, gave a loud
exclamation. The ray of the lantern fell upon two little livid marks
inside the dead man’s wrist.
“It is Nag,” said the orderly, “the cobra. Here among the rocks he has
many brothers.”
When the galloping hoof-beats of the orderly’s horse were dying out on
the road, Marney, who had sent him to the hospital at Sivapura for a
_dhooly_, stood by Sands’s body. In the lonely stillness he took the
lantern, and made his way in the direction which he knew led to the
shrine. He came upon it sooner than he expected.
The snake lay on its side by the horseman, but it was not at these that
the General looked. What he was searching for he found. There, on the
earth beside the fallen image, lay a rupee.
* * * * *
Early on the second morning after he had ridden into Sivapura beside
Wilfred’s body he came out of the gates of the European cemetery to
mount his horse. He did not speak to any one among the little crowd of
Englishmen who had stood, just now, round the grave. He was too sane a
man to imagine himself to have had any share in the tragedy of Sands’s
death, or to torment himself with the futile idea; but his heart was
heavy. The chaplain passed him in his _tonga_; he was going back to
breakfast; his church service was in his hand, and the bag containing
his surplice at his feet. They saluted each other gravely. As Marney
turned up towards the ridge on which his own house stood, his lips
moved.
“Other people’s gods,” he murmured. “He said he was afraid of meddling
with other people’s gods.”
THE LIGHTS OF JERUSALEM
The railway line between Worcester and Hereford runs along the foot of
the Malvern Hills; then, as their bold chain drops behind it, the train
makes its way between successions of small fields, heavily hedged; of
orchards and hop-gardens, the former much in the majority; a green,
cramped, fertile land full of suggestive corners, snug and a trifle sly.
It has an intimate, unheroic charm and a wealth of detail for
appreciative eyes.
Joshua Gunn appreciated it, though he would have been at a loss to give
reasons for his feeling, being a man of few words. His circumstances
were not conducive to talk, for he was fireman on the engine of a Great
Western train, a local train which ran between the two country towns.
He, the engine driver and the guard saw more of that immediate stretch
of country than any three men alive; but while Joshua looked out on it
with pleasure, it scarcely existed for the other two, for the guard was
a politician and read the Western Mail in his van, and the driver was
indifferent to everything but his engine.
Gunn was a quiet, dark young fellow of eight and twenty, with a
reputation in the livelier part of his little world of being dull, for
hardly any one knew what his interests were nor what he thought about.
He did his work well and interfered with nobody, and he lived in company
with a signalman, the only person with whom he was intimate, on the
outskirts of Hereford town.
When the train had almost done its journey from Worcester it reached a
spot at which the permanent way ran along an embankment, and here
Joshua’s loyal interest in the surroundings of his appointed course
would culminate. No matter what were his duties on the engine, he would
contrive to be free when the embankment came in sight and the green
elevation swung itself into line as they rounded the curve preceding it.
The young man would lean out, with the wind of their rush blowing on his
dark face, and gaze down upon the picture that had captured his fancy.
Just at this spot, close under the embankment, one of the fields had
merged itself with surprising abruptness into a small thickly planted
orchard, and not twenty paces in from the beginning of the trees was a
tiny black-and-white timbered cottage of two storeys, standing apart
with the compact detachment of a doll’s house. The apple trees pressed
up to within a few feet of its walls, their gnarled stems crowding thick
about it, like an escort round a state prisoner, and in the dusk of
their myriad leaves and branches its whitewash, crossed with black
timbers, seemed to be glimmering through a green twilight. The windows
were small, and looked even smaller and more secretive from the height
at which Joshua saw them; and at either side of the worn stone threshold
there stood, in summer, one of those tall orange lilies called by the
neighbouring folk ‘the Lights of Jerusalem.’ To Joshua they were like
two stiff golden angels guarding the door of this diminutive paradise of
his imagination. He admired flowers and he knew many of their names,
for the signalman with whom he lived had a plot of garden at the foot of
his box which the fireman often envied him.
Through every change of season Joshua Gunn had observed the little
dwelling: under the leafless boughs of winter, in the ethereal greenery
of spring, in the full-blown opulence of summer, in the time when the
reddened apples burned round it like fiery globes; but the time when it
pleased him most was at June’s end, when the Lights of Jerusalem were
kindled by its threshold.
For a long time it chanced that he saw no signs of life about the place
except the smoke stealing upward and a clothes-line stretched between
the apple-trees; but one day as he leaned over the engine’s side, a girl
was in the garden. She wore a large apron over her dress and her fresh
face was turned up as she shaded her eyes to look at the passing train.
Her light hair shone in the sun. It happened that he saw her three times
in one week, twice in the garden strip under the windows and once at the
back of the house beside the row of beehives, and on the last occasion
some impulse made him take off his cap and hold it above his head as
the train ran by. The girl hesitated, and then made a timid sign of
greeting with her hand; Joshua was near enough to see her face and the
shy smile upon it.
That little ceremony had gone on for eight months. Sometimes the girl
would be in the garden, sometimes at the door, sometimes she was not to
be seen; but in any case the fireman would lean out and hold up his cap,
for he could not know whether she might not be watching him go by from
behind the diamond panes.
One day when Joshua’s engine had reached Hereford it was sent back on
the up-line in the interval between its two journeys to take a few
trucks with a gang of workmen to the embankment. Some rails were to be
unloaded, for there were repairs to be done at the spot above the
orchard; and as the brakes were put on and the train slowed down, the
young fireman promised himself an idle half-hour in which he might see
the timbered cottage at closer quarters. When the unloading was over the
engine and trucks were to go on a siding a little further forward while
the rails were being stacked, and there steam would be shut off until
it was time for the men to return.
The driver was a fat, good-natured individual, averse to exercise, and
Joshua knew that during his wait he would sit on the foot-plate and
smoke, and that it would be a simple matter for himself to get leave to
stroll back to the green banks. He would be able to get quite close to
the orchard, perhaps to within speaking distance of his unknown
acquaintance. His mind was full of the idea, and he considered over and
over again how he should accost her, and what he should say, supposing
that he had the courage to address her at all. Perhaps she might not
come out of the house; perhaps she was absent. He had not seen her as he
passed in the morning. He imagined a dozen obstacles to the meeting for
which he hoped.
He had easily got the permission he wanted, but when he saw the smoke
rise from the apple-boughs he had half a mind to turn back. His heart
beat a little as he neared the place, for he was a shy man; and as he
looked at the coal-dust on his hands, he wished very heartily that
stoking was a cleaner occupation. He reflected with dismay that the girl
whose friendly greeting had been the point of interest in his daily
journeys for so long, had never been near enough to him to know what an
unattractive fellow he was, and this estimate of himself disheartened
him a good deal, because he did not guess how far it was from being a
just one.
When he reached the embankment he stopped, his anticipations scattered
to the winds. The one chance on which he had not counted had risen up to
undo him.
The garden was full of people and the uniform hue of their garments gave
him a sharp thrust of horror. They were black from head to toe, and they
surrounded a dark object resting on rough trestles placed just outside
the doorstep. It was evidently waiting for something, the sombre
assembly that had descended like a swarm of devastating insects on this
secret pleasure-ground of his own, to blot out its beauty with their
presence. The only spots of colour were the bright Lights of Jerusalem,
set like living torches beside the unpretentious pageant of death.
The young man stood on the bank looking blankly down, his hands dropped
at his sides. He dared not go near to intrude upon the handful of
mourners, though from over the hedge below the line he could have asked
the question which tormented him. Details spring with an irony all their
own to the minds of those in suspense, and he reflected that he need not
have been concerned by his blackened coat and coal-stained hands.
Everything was black now. The clang made by the rails, as the workmen
piled them in a heap near him, sent a harsh note booming into the air.
Then his trouble lifted from him, for the cottage door opened, and the
well-known figure came out between the Lights of Jerusalem. She turned
the key, putting it in her pocket, and her companions raised the coffin
and carried it out of the garden.
As she followed them she looked up at the line, and, perhaps from habit,
Joshua’s hand went up to his cap; and, though he dropped it half way,
afraid, instinctively, to force his recognition upon her at such a
moment, he saw her smile.
When the humble procession had passed out of sight he went back to the
engine in a kind of dream. But it was a dream with a definite purpose.
In three days it would be Sunday, a free day for him, because the local
train did not run. He would start from Hereford and walk along the line
to the cottage, a bare seven miles, and he would at last see and speak
with this girl face to face. He could not know the exact nature of the
catastrophe which had happened to her, but he understood that, in its
grip, she had still held to their unspoken friendship, and that the
tacit bond had emerged from it, a thing which present calamity had not
been able to break. He scarcely knew what he meant to do when he should
meet her, but he felt as if a gate had opened. And through the gate he
would go.
On Sunday morning Joshua rose to find Hereford enveloped in the mist of
coming heat, and at half-past eight he dropped on to the permanent way
beyond the signal-box on the Worcester line to begin his seven-mile walk
alongside the sleepers. He had shaved with particular care, and had
scrubbed himself till not a trace remained of the coal dust of the
week. He wore his dark grey Sunday suit, and even the ill-made clothes
could not take much attraction from his grave brown face or make his
slight figure quite uninteresting, for the touch of reserve and
refinement which kept him a little aloof from the rougher part of his
kind showed through inferior tailoring and looked out of his observant
eyes.
The metals stretched on into the quivering greyness of the hot day as he
tramped along and the sun climbed higher. On either side spread the
green landscape of western England, rich and chequered. The ox-eye
daisies were out at the sides of the line, and the red sorrel and the
clover; and above the round heads of these last, misty clouds of tiny
butterflies hung like an innocent miasma. It was almost eleven o’clock
when Joshua reached his goal, and, descending the embankment, slipped
through a weak place in the hedge and approached the cottage door.
The smoke still rose from the chimney, but there was neither sound nor
stir within, and, having knocked unsuccessfully, the young man went
into the orchard. The row of beehives was in its place, and as he stood
looking at them and debating what he should do, the sound of a bell came
to him through the hot air. He listened, smiling at his own stupidity.
Of course--she was at church!
He hastened through the garden, following the sound, and came out on a
narrow country road. In front of him a stout woman was pressing forward,
book in hand, with conscience-stricken haste, and in the wake of this
unconscious guide he soon found himself at the lych-gate of a small
square-towered church. The woman bustled through the churchyard and was
lost in the deep shadow of the porch. The echo of her creaking boots
filled it as she entered.
He followed her to the inner door, stepping like a thief, and peered in.
The prayers had long begun, and his eye searched the kneeling
congregation for the figure he wanted and stopped at a row of cross
seats facing the aisle on the hither side of the chancel arch. The girl
was there; he could see her attentive profile above her book, and her
bright hair. He knew her at once, and her unrelieved black clothes
confirmed the recognition. He drew back stealthily and went out into the
churchyard, for there was no vacant seat near the door.
It was rather a badly kept place, and the canopies of the yew trees
shadowed groups of tombstones, ancient and grotesque, which stuck at
many different angles from the coarse grass. As he turned to examine the
church he noticed that a slab of stone jutted out from the wall, running
along it like a bench. He sat down on it to wait as patiently as he
could till the end of the service.
From inside the building came the drone of collective voices saying the
Lord’s Prayer, and soon after, he heard the sound of the congregation
rising. Suspense began to weigh on him. He got up and wandered about,
reading epitaphs with a half-mind that scarcely took in their
significance. Then the organ began and the words of the hymn carried him
back to the house in the orchard.
“Jerusalem the Golden” sang the voices; and at these words the two tall
orange lilies by the doorstep rose before Joshua, who stood still,
staring at the inner vision.
He awoke from his abstraction to see a black figure emerge quickly from
the porch. She was coming towards him, her eyes blind with tears. No
doubt something in the service had upset her and she had fled, unable to
control herself. Joshua was standing in the shade of a tree, but with
the light of the blazing noon on her wet eyes she seemed not to see him.
He walked quickly forward and stood in her path.
“It’s me,” he said simply.
She stopped, drawing a long, quivering breath.
“I’m here,” said Joshua. “It’s me. I saw you from the engine.”
Then he took her hand and led her to the stone bench. She went with him,
unresisting.
He had not supposed that she was so pretty, for though her eyes were
swollen and her face blurred and marked by weeping, these things could
not obliterate her good looks. But Joshua scarcely gave that a thought,
nor did he realise for a moment how extraordinary his behaviour might
seem to her, considering that he was a stranger. The only thought in his
mind was that she was in trouble, and that, for some perfectly
unexplained but imperative reason, she would cling to him. Her sobs
slackened as he sat silent, with his cap pushed back from his brow and
his hand closed round hers, as if it were the most natural thing in the
world; behind their backs, on the inner side of the church wall, the
sermon had begun and the parson’s solitary tones were in monotonous
possession.
She looked up at the young fireman with the confiding simplicity of a
child.
“It were the hymn,” she said at last--“’twas about Jerusalem, and I
thought--I remembered--the Lights o’ Jerusalem by the doorstep. I’ve
seen them there all my life, but there’ll be no more o’ they for me,
soon.”
“You be going away then?” asked Joshua.
She nodded.
“Father’s dead,” she continued. “He’d never left his bed for four years.
I minded him. He couldn’t see nothing but from the window where his bed
were. But the interest he’d take! He’d call me in from the garden, and
ask how it was all looking--and how the birds was building, and about
the currants and the flowers and the apples. He could tell you the shape
of every tree, though he hadn’t seen them for so long. And he liked the
trains too. He could just see you where he was lying, an’ no more, when
the train went by the white post on the bank. It made him feel a kind of
cheery-like to know you were coming. ‘Twenty past eleven, Winnie,’ he’d
say to me. ‘It’s time for the engine.’”
She had stopped crying and was smiling as she recalled these things.
“Then he knew me?” said the young man reflectively. “Strange that I
never thought of any one else being behind the windows. I only thought
about you and them Lights of Jerusalem when we came round the bend.”
“He never missed looking out--not till that last day. He wouldn’t have
missed you for anything.”
Inside the church the parson’s voice had stopped, and a general stamping
and rustling proclaimed the end of the sermon.
“I must go. They’ll be coming out, and I don’t want to meet them,” said
the girl, rising quickly.
“I’m coming with you,” said Joshua.
They walked back hurriedly to the cottage, for the dispersed
congregation was almost treading on their heels, and she told him, with
a primness that was in odd contrast with their unconventional attitude,
that she did not want the neighbours to see her with a stranger so soon
after the funeral. The road was empty, and they went along side by side,
talking as though they had known each other for years. He learned that
she was to leave her home at the end of the week and take service with
the wife of a small innkeeper in Hereford. It grieved him to see how
much she dreaded the change. When they came within sight of the line he
looked at the green embankment with resentful eyes. Henceforth it would
be a different place to him. It would bring him four disappointments
daily.
“You must be going, or they’ll see you,” said she, as they stopped by
the orchard.
They stood for a minute without speaking.
“I’ll look for you going by to-morrow,” said the girl; “there’ll be
only a few days more now.”
“But I’ll be near you in Hereford,” said he.
Her face brightened.
“My dear,” said Joshua suddenly, “mind you this, I mayn’t be the sort o’
feller that’s likely to please a girl, but I’m a man that’ll wait--and
I’m to be made driver next year. You can’t tell what it’ll be like at
the inn. Maybe you’ll be happy, maybe not. But in any case, I’m waiting.
An’ the first day you say ‘come,’ I’ll come for you. It’s funny, but it
seems somehow as if you belonged to me. Could you like me, do you
think?”
“Oh, I do,” she answered, simply. “But you must be going. I hear them
talking on the road.”
They clasped hands and he left her. But at the end of the garden he came
back.
“Oh, Winnie!” cried the man who would wait, “you won’t let it be long?”
“No,” she said shyly.
“Promise,” said Joshua.
“I promise.”
Then he turned away, stepped through the hedge, and ran up the side of
the embankment, At the top he stood, holding up his cap. She was
smiling at him between the Lights of Jerusalem.
When his slim figure had vanished down the line she went into the house
and, sitting down, hid her face in her hands.
But not to cry.
THE WINDMILL
There was only one break in the straight line of canal-bank stretching
from nowhere to the spot on which Camilla sat, and that was the
windmill.
It was a flour-mill, which fact, though she knew Holland well, and had
been there often, she was not instructed enough to understand; but any
one comprehending such things would have known it by the wide wooden
gallery encircling its girth about twenty feet from the ground. It was
an ancient mill, mellowed into rich brown by the weather-stains of a
couple of centuries; and on windy days, when the sails were working, the
timbers creaked and strained as the arms shot past the little windows
which looked out of its surface like sunken eyes. That it was inhabited
could easily be seen, for a girl’s bright form stood at a door opening
on the gallery; and at the side farthest from the water, where a flight
of wooden steps ran up to the entrance, a patch of dahlias grew scarlet
and crimson and yellow round its foot. To-day there was no grinding
going on and the sails were still.
Camilla was sitting on the bank under a pollard willow, and, as she
looked at the great fantastic structure which stood against the wideness
of the sky, the buds and leaves of the tall plants were like silhouettes
on the light. The horizon was low down, far away--a grey, even line. She
was not in a very happy humour, for she had been tormenting Oliver, and
he, like a sensible man, had made no sign, but had suddenly developed a
college friend in Amsterdam and left her to finish the process upon
other people. But, unfortunately, there was no one else she cared to
torment, so she had gone off to seek entertainment alone. Oliver and
Camilla were great friends, and both were staying, among other guests,
at a country-house near The Hague.
As she sat under her willow, she told herself that she was very unkind
to Oliver; and--what was far, far worse--that he did not care.
Looking along the canal in the opposite direction to the mill, the water
took a turn at right angles, and a barge was coming round the corner. As
it swung about, the sail came rattling down; Camilla could hear the
noise it made as it fell and showed a man’s figure standing on the deck.
The boat’s nose drifted against the bank, in obedience to an unseen
hand, and the man sprang out and caught a rope thrown to him, making it
fast to a tree-stump on shore. The barge floated a few yards, and the
line tightened.
The man came towards her, whistling softly--a tall fellow, young and
lean, in his blue jersey, with eyes lighter than the tan on his face; he
was so intensely absorbed in the windmill that he did not notice her
sitting in her carpet of rush under the willow. He passed and stood
looking up between the mill and the water. The girl was leaning over the
rail; in her white cap and gold earrings, she was a touch of radiant
youth poised on the crazy gallery that rested on its timbers, high above
his head.
“He is down below,” called the girl. “He sits at the top of the steps
and looks into the garden. I have fastened the trap-door, so he cannot
come up. He is counting the dahlias; to-morrow they will be cut and
taken to market--he says he will get a guilder for them.”
“Come down, Gonda,” said the man.
She shook her head.
“Only for a little! I cannot see you up there.”
“What does that matter?” she answered, tossing up her chin. “You can
hear every word I say.”
“That is not enough,” said he.
“But how am I to come down, blockhead? Do not I tell you that he is
sitting in the doorway?”
“Then I shall come up to you.”
She laughed scornfully.
“And how are you going to do that, my friend?”
“Are there no ropes in the mill?”
“Plenty! plenty! But I have them all safe in here,” she said, pointing
to the door behind her.
“Send one down to me, Gonda!”
For answer she went into the mill and came out with her arms full of
rope; she looked down over the rail on his lifted face.
“Darling!” he cried.
“Shall I send it down to you, Joris?”
“Darling!” he exclaimed again.
She threw the whole coil into the air, laughing, her arms spread wide.
“There! does that please you?” she cried.
He made an exclamation of rage, and the blood rose in his face.
“You told me to send it down and I have obeyed,” she said. “Are you
coming up, Joris?”
Each alternate timber supporting the gallery protruded beyond it and
turned upwards, curving in a rude attempt at ornament. With a glance at
one of these curves, the man took up the coil, which lay like a serpent
at his feet; there was not a stone to be seen on the green bank, so he
knotted one end till there was sufficient weight in it to please him,
and stood below the gallery, measuring its height with his eye.
“What are you going to do?” cried the girl.
“You will soon see,” said he.
He gathered the rope in his left hand, and, with the other, flung up the
weighted end towards the protruding timbers; it fell a foot or so short.
Gonda’s laugh floated out overhead. A second and a third time the rope
shot upward, only to drop again with a thud on the turf.
“There is nothing like patience,” she remarked.
As the words left her lips, the thing rose over the beam, and fell,
swinging, across it. Joris eased it until the knot hung within his
reach; catching it, he undid his handiwork and substituted a slip-knot,
through which he passed the other end; then he drew up the rope tight.
The line hung secure from timber to earth. Without so much as a glance
at the gallery, he seized it, and went up hand over hand. The smile had
died out of the girl’s face as he stood on the end of the beam and
vaulted over the railing. Camilla could see her framed by the doorway,
and hesitating whether or no she should disappear into the mill.
Before her mind was made up, he had seized her round the waist and was
kissing her wildly.
“You are a little fiend,” he said; “but I love you!--I love you!--I love
you!”
“Let me go,” said Gonda. “If you shout like that, he will hear you!”
“How can he, when he is deaf?”
“He can hear when he is not wanted to; besides, he is wicked enough for
anything. Look at this!”
She rolled back her sleeve; there were blue marks on her arm.
Joris ground his teeth.
“What a father to have!” he exclaimed.
“He is my stepfather.”
“He is a devil,” said the man.
“All men are,” replied Gonda. “If I were to marry you, you would turn
into one, too.”
Camilla did not catch his reply, for there was a movement in the garden
patch. Had she been the girl in the gallery she could hardly have been
more horrified at seeing the figure of a man emerge from among the
dahlias and come round the mill. He wore wide blue trousers, and the
eyes below his cap were round and small and unutterably fierce. They
lit upon her as she sat under the tree, and, in answer to her gesture of
civility, he gave an ungracious nod and passed on. In another moment he
would see the dangling rope.
She jumped up.
“Have you any flowers for sale?” she asked, almost running towards him.
The miller came to a standstill and put his hand round his ear.
“Flowers!” shrieked Camilla. “I want some!”
And she pointed to the dahlias.
“Then you can’t have them,” said he.
“But I will buy them. Surely that is better than the trouble of taking
them to market?”
“Oh-h? To buy! That is sense. Where do you come from?”
Of all things in the world, Camilla most hated explanations; she merely
pointed into space.
“I live a long way off,” she said.
“Then how do you know my dahlias are for sale?”
“Every one knows that,” replied she, readily. “They are the best to be
had for miles round.”
“They bring the best price, too.”
“That is only fair,” said she, judicially.
He grunted.
“What will you give for a dozen?”
“I must see them first,” said Camilla.
He opened a little wicket and they went in among the flowers; he had no
manners, and pushed through in front of her. As his back was turned, she
looked over her shoulder to see if there was any sign of the lovers. She
was obliged to speak very loud and she hoped they had heard the voices.
They were in the gallery, looking round the curve of the mill. She laid
her finger on her lips and made a sign to them that she was going into
the garden with the miller. The girl smiled with understanding,
recognising an ally; the man was slower witted, but his hand went
civilly to his cap.
Camilla stood with her cross-grained companion among the crimson suns
and golden moons of the dahlias; there were white stars, too. They were
so beautiful that she felt almost sympathetically towards the old
ruffian who had raised such things.
He glowered at her over his pipe.
“Have you any double ones?” she asked, with a view to prolonging the
business.
“Over there,” said he, pointing with a knotty thumb; “and they cost
double the money.”
“Why is that?”
“They have double as many petals. Does one get anything for nothing in
this world?”
“Certainly not here,” said Camilla.
“Nor anywhere else--except, perhaps, where you come from.”
“Well, let us go and look at them,” she said, lifting her skirt and
stepping into the long grass.
“Are you going to buy?” said the miller, standing stolidly in the path
and taking his pipe out of his mouth. “I suppose you think that time and
shoe-leather cost nothing, too?”
“It’s a pity to waste either,” said Camilla, becoming exasperated. “I
will content myself with the cheaper ones.”
The miller took out his knife, muttering.
“I will give you half a guilder for a dozen--six yellow and six white.”
The offer was princely, but he put on a face of the most malignant
disgust as he cut the flowers. Fortunately for the lovers he spent a
great deal of time in trying to select the worst ones. She handed him a
guilder, and, as he went into the mill for change, she ran round it to
see if she might safely loose her hold on him. The sail was up in
Joris’s barge and Gonda stood alone, watching it from the gallery; only
the rope dangled.
“I will get over the railing and pull it up!” cried the girl, looking
down.
“I have done my best for you,” said Camilla.
“Ah! you understand, no doubt! You are young too.”
“I am married,” replied Camilla, with great dignity, as she returned to
the garden for her change.
As she took her way up the canal a few minutes later, the barge was
coming along like a great brown-winged bird; at the mill there was not a
sign of life.
* * * * *
“That interests me very much,” said Oliver, about a week later; “the
more so as I know them all perfectly. I know the mill and the miller
and the girl and the girl’s young man; and the situation.”
“But I never told you.”
“Sometimes I know things you don’t tell me.”
“Not often, though,” said Camilla.
They were strolling by the canal a mile or so from the place where she
had sat among the rushes, and they could see the sails of the windmill
turning in the distance; for there was a stiff breeze.
“One day I came to this part of the world by myself,” said he, “and I
saw Joris sitting on a bridge in a village. I asked him for a light;
then we sat and smoked together. We became very friendly, and he finally
confided his love-affair, and said that, if the wind held, he was going
to sail down to the mill after dark. He also did me the honour of asking
my advice. He complained that, though they had been engaged for more
than a year, Gonda would not marry him because she said all men were
devils. Her stepfather beats her, I believe.”
“I can well imagine it,” said Camilla. “I know him.”
“I told him he had better take her away, there and then, that very
night. He said she would refuse to come. I explained to him that that
did not matter, and I offered to go with him myself. He was delighted.”
“And did you really go?”
“Go? Of course I went, and tackled the miller with great determination.
He was asleep in the mill; but she was expecting her lover and had
managed to slip out upon the bank to meet him. When Joris and I seized
her, she screamed, and her stepfather came out with a lantern. I had to
knock it out of his hand and hold him till Joris got her away; I had
some trouble, too, for he was as strong as a bull. When they were once
in the boat, and I heard the sail go up, I shook him off and jumped on
board. They put me ashore a few miles off and I have never seen them
since; but when he thanked me, he said that I was young too, and, no
doubt, I understood these things.”
“That is what the girl said to me. What did you say?”
“I said I was a philosopher, and saw things from the outside.”
Camilla laughed.
“Strictly speaking, you behaved like a villain; but you were quite right
to do so,” she said.
“But will they be happy?” said Oliver, after a pause. “I have often
wondered since.”
“If I could only see the girl again,” said Camilla, “I would give her
the most unfailing recipe for keeping a man’s devoted affection. I am a
philosopher, too, you see. To be eternally adored, a woman should do two
things: one is, to put her heel on the man’s neck; and the other is, to
keep it there. All the same, from what I have seen of Gonda, I fancy she
knows it.”
THE BUCKINGHAM GALLERY
Alfred Fairfax walked towards Knightsbridge from Kensington Gardens,
just outside the Park railings. It was a hot day, and an old man inside
them was sitting on a bench holding his hat in one hand, whilst he
resignedly mopped the top of his bald head with a rather loud bandanna
handkerchief. Fairfax was somewhat overcome, too, but less by the heat
than by the state of his feelings; for he had come to a decision and was
going to put it into practice that very afternoon, if possible.
He had made up his mind to go back to her; and he had just despatched a
letter to her, containing the information, from his club. He had sent it
by hand, and, in a short time, he would follow it himself.
He would see her; he would tell her all the aimlessness and unrest of
the past year; he would ask her to forgive him, and to take him back,
for he had never been really happy since they parted--never. But he had
not said quite so much in the letter as he meant to say when they met.
Then he would expand.
He recalled, with something as nearly amounting to shame as was possible
for him, the look on her face during that last interview twelve months
ago, when she had accused him of having ceased to care for her. He
remembered how he had neglected her during those weeks previous to their
parting; how she had offered him his freedom through her tears. He also
remembered how he had refused it, shrinking from the sight of her
quivering lips and the pain in her eyes; and then, how he had gone home
to reconsider his words. He had assured himself that, after all, a wife
would be a serious inconvenience in many ways, and that he would write
and tell her how, on thinking it over, he had found it wiser to accept
her proposal and break the engagement “by mutual consent.”
And so, after a week, during which his unexplained silence had made her
suffer as she had not known it was possible to suffer, the letter was
written, signed, and posted. And he had never seen her from that day to
this.
He wondered whether she had changed; how beautiful she was, and how
delightful she had always been to him! He had heard vaguely from various
people that she had felt her loss bitterly, though she had said little
about it. The thought of this rather pleased him, and he smiled to
himself as he went along, reflecting that she would certainly be ready
to forget the past, and that all would go smoothly. After all, he had
missed her, and the freedom he had gained had not been so exciting; for
his life, since regaining it, had been just what it had always been,
only without the affection which had never failed him, even when he
valued it least. Yes, he had been a fool to leave her, and he would tell
her so, like a man, he said to himself. And then it would all come
right.
It was only four by the clock at Hyde Park Corner, and he wondered where
he should put in the hour that divided him from five; then, remembering
that there was a portrait of her, by Aldford, in the Buckingham
Gallery, he resolved to go and sit there until the proper time, and see
what the picture was like. It would be cooler there, too.
A little later he was standing in the large marble hall of the Gallery.
There were two or three rooms full of people and he wandered through the
nearest one, staring restlessly at the yards of sea-pieces, landscapes,
portraits, domestic subjects and nudities. There were pictures of boats
becalmed, pictures of boats in storms, pictures of young ladies sitting
still, entitled “Memories,” pictures of young ladies walking about,
entitled “Will he come?” and pictures of small children playing
practical jokes on phenomenally human-looking collie-dogs. He went back
to the turnstile, bought a catalogue, and sat down to look in it for the
thing he wished to see. There it was: “No. 238. Portrait of Miss Langard
by Alexander Aldford.”
As he entered the West Room his heart jumped, for the portrait hung
right opposite to the door, and it almost seemed as though she were
coming to meet him. She stood straight up, looking out of the canvas
with her dark eyes. There was in them the same look of acute suffering
before which he had shrunk on the day they parted, only it was quieter
and more settled.
It struck him to the heart; he could not turn from the beautiful,
unhappy face which gazed at him with its calm, steady sorrow. It was a
marvellous picture. The very dress she wore was one he had known and
admired, and her hair was done in the same way--piled high at the back
of her head like a crown, with a soft fluff of curls over the forehead.
Her hands hung straight down at her sides. Any other woman in that
attitude would have looked awkward, but it was so characteristic of her
that it brought her back almost more vividly than anything else.
Fairfax turned round and tried to grow interested in other things; but
it was of no use, and he sat down on a leather sofa directly in front of
the picture. He looked at his watch, as there was no clock in the
Gallery, and found that it had stopped; first he thought of asking some
stranger for the time, but the idea reminded him of street-boys and he
dismissed it in consequence. He went again to the man at the turnstile,
and was informed by that functionary that he was not wearing his watch
that afternoon. There was nothing for it but to wait quietly for twenty
minutes or so and then to go slowly up to Hill Street. He returned to
his seat.
There were only a few people about; no one disturbed him until two
plain-looking old ladies came in, and, with the customary politeness of
picture-seers, planted themselves exactly between him and the haunting
face on the wall.
They did not appear to notice him.
“There she is,” said one of the two; she wore a black mantle, and had a
singularly dismal voice.
“Dear me! dear me!” exclaimed her companion, putting on her spectacles.
“I should not have recognised her; you know, it is more than four years
since I saw her. She is most lovely; but it is a terribly sad face, I
think. Is she like that in real life?”
“When I was her governess,” replied the other, “she was the brightest
and happiest creature in the world; but she was not so pretty. Indeed, I
remember Sir Harry saying to me one day, ‘She will never be what her
mother was, Miss Millar--her mother was beautiful.’”
Fairfax sat listening intently. The lady with the spectacles moved away
and left Miss Millar still gazing at her former pupil.
“She is so changed now,” said the old governess to herself, just above
her breath.
Fairfax heard, and his heart smote him again.
And so this was what he had done.
Well, it should not be his fault if it were not put right; he would go
off to her at once, and, should she be out, he would wait until she came
in. He jumped up, and in another minute was bowling briskly along in a
hansom towards Hill Street, feeling both pleased and excited. And he
felt very virtuous, too.
The door of No. 61 was opened by a servant whom he had never seen
before, and who, informing him that Miss Langard was at home, ushered
him into the empty drawing-room, leaving the door ajar.
Fairfax stood looking round on the familiar things, feeling as if the
past year had slipped out of his life and he were waiting there for
her, as he had so often done in the old days, and on the old terms.
Everything was exactly as he had last seen it--the same tall glasses of
larkspurs (she had always liked larkspurs), the same piano, open and
littered with music-books, the same portrait of General Langard in
uniform beside a Corinthian pillar, frowning over the mantelpiece, with
a very ill-broken charger being held behind him. He went to the window
and leaned his hot forehead against the pane for some minutes. His heart
was beating. Would she _never_ come? He looked about for something to
do--something to keep him quiet during this tiresome delay. The _Morning
Post_ was lying at his feet; he picked it up, and, having seen the
principal news in the _Times_ at his club, turned to the society
information and ran his eye over the little column.
Suddenly the paper dropped from his grasp and the room seemed to be
growing dim before him. Then he snatched it up again. Yes, there it was,
as plain as printer’s ink could make it: “A marriage has been arranged
between Captain Thomas Stratton Stanley-Mayne, 3rd Cumberland Rifles,
and Leila Constance, daughter of Major-General Sir Harry Langard,
K.C.B., of 61, Hill Street, Berkeley Square.”
Great heavens! Was it possible? Could it be true? And when had such a
thing been settled? How had he heard no breath of it--he, who flattered
himself that no occurrence in the polite world could escape his notice?
She had preferred this poor soldier to him--to _himself_--with all his
expectations and his prospective earldom? He quite forgot he had given
her no chance of choosing between them; and that the result might have
been the same, even had he done so, was an idea which did not occur to
him for a moment.
He felt a vivid sense of injury. It was ridiculous, incredible!
He had been at school with Stanley-Mayne, and remembered him perfectly
(as, indeed, he had some reason to do)--a large, wiry, quiet boy, with
whom it was unsafe to meddle.
And now she was going to marry this fellow, and he would be left out in
the cold. It was too monstrous!
But the worst of it was this: Here he was, stuck in this house, and
quite unable to get out again. He began to walk up and down.
All at once a door shut in the passage below, and there were steps on
the staircase. Then came a quick rustle of silk skirts and a voice,
whose every tone he knew by heart, called: “Tom! Tom! you have left your
leather cigarette-case. I’ll throw it down to you over the banisters.”
He heard a soft flop, as the thing alighted on the slippery floor of the
hall; then the door creaked, and she came in.
He looked up, to see a slender white figure carrying a bunch of dewy
roses. There were roses stuck in her belt, too, and some of the pink
petals were dropping on the floor. Stanley-Mayne had brought them, no
doubt.
She _was_ changed, as Miss Millar had said, though not exactly in the
way he had expected.
* * * * *
Fairfax never entirely lost his presence of mind; he had too much
instinct of self-preservation for that.
“I’ve come--come to congratulate you,” he stammered.
“Thanks so much,” said Miss Langard pleasantly. “Won’t you sit down?”
Mechanically he drew forward a chair, and, as he did so, the door opened
again to admit Stanley-Mayne. Their eyes met, and a smile flickered
round the soldier’s humorous mouth that made Fairfax feel ill.
THE CLAIMS OF FRIENDSHIP
The sun seemed once more to shine on Mrs. Howard-Cox. There was balm in
Gilead. She sat in her boudoir looking out upon the red-hot pokers of
the herbaceous border, and feeling that there was something almost
prophetically royal in their scarlet and yellow complexions. Sceptres,
Gold-Sticks-in-waiting, royal liveries--these things were mixing with
her vision. She had been a good deal shaken by the stormy interview she
had just had with her daughter Sylvia, but even that vexation had been
thrust aside by the contents of the postbag. She clung to the letter she
had just received as though it were a lifebelt and she, herself, were on
the deck of a settling ship.
Mrs. Howard-Cox was one of those people who wear their town clothes in
the country, and her tight black voile, with its insertions of blue,
seemed to have as much harmony with the autumn trees outside as her
elaborate toupée had with her serviceable-looking skin. Her figure had
suffered from lack of exercise, though her stay-maker had done her best
to correct its tendencies.
Indeed, she had something to complain of; for Sylvia, who was a beauty,
and who had made a powerful impression on the heart of Lord Balcartney
at a garden party, was persisting in her intention of marrying a young
gentleman in a marching regiment, called Smith.
Reggie Smith was a quiet-spoken, hardworking youth, with a cheerful
spirit and four hundred a year besides his pay; but he was the third son
of a moderately successful manufacturer; and Mrs. Howard-Cox (who was
the grand-daughter of an exceedingly rich auctioneer) could not abide
manufacturers. She had married a banker, and, from the giddy pinnacles
of a bank, could scarcely be expected to see into the world of barter
below. Nor could she really approve of any one named Smith, although
till Lord Balcartney appeared she had been willing to tolerate the
engagement. Some weeks ago she had forbidden Reggie the house.
She had spoken very seriously to Sylvia, and had assured her vehemently
that her father would never give his consent to the marriage; but Sylvia
had not been greatly impressed, knowing full well that Mr. Howard-Cox’s
opinion was a mere figure of speech, and that the good little man had
never, within her recollection, been allowed to indulge in such a
luxury. He had done his share in growing rich, and had earned a leisure
which he now employed in gardening.
The letter in Mrs. Howard-Cox’s hand was from Captain Carlton, a
penniless and well-connected youth who had stayed in her house at
various times, and whose name she felt to be a credit when she saw it in
the local paper among the list of her guests when she gave a dance. (She
was a great person for lists and functions.) Leo Carlton’s brotherly
friendship with Sylvia had never given her a moment’s anxiety, and now
his letter had given her a thrill of delight.
“DEAR MRS. HOWARD-COX [he wrote],--
“I fear that you may be a good deal astonished by this letter. I am
in a dilemma, and I feel there is nobody who can help me out so
well as you. You know, I expect, that I have been given charge of
King Kekeloganu while he is in England, and have been told, in high
quarters, to make his visit as pleasant as possible. He is quite
marvellously enlightened for an African, and much interested in
manufactures, and in about ten days we shall be on our way to
inspect some Yorkshire mills. But, owing to a series of tiresome
mistakes, we shall be at a loose end for one night. I cannot think
where to take him, and the idea came to me that you might be
willing to put us up. He has heard so much of the country life of
the English upper classes, and I feel that there is no one who
could show it to him so perfectly as yourself. You will answer me
quite frankly, I am sure, or I could not dare to make such a
suggestion.
“Though, of course, Kekeloganu is a _most important_ monarch in his
own country, he will not expect you to inconvenience your household
by accentuating his royal position, and he is anxious to escape the
trammels of etiquette as much as possible. At the same time, any
little consideration you choose to show him will, I know, be taken
as a compliment. The native gentleman who is with him is laid up
with influenza, and he has--very wisely--engaged an Englishman as
his body-servant while he is in England, so his suite, which will
only consist of myself and this man, will be no trouble. I should
add that his habits are delightfully civilised, and quite different
from those of his countrymen.
“My dear lady, what do you think? If you can help me--or, I had
almost said, your country--my gratitude will be eternal....”
Mrs. Howard-Cox scarcely read the civil expressions with which this
letter closed, her mind being taken up by the price and measurements of
red carpets.
That afternoon a telegram was sent to Captain Carlton:
“_You may count on me. Write describing table arrangements. Coralie
Howard Cox._”