THE SOUL OF A WOMAN
Thus Peter entered upon his estate, since there was evidently no man
would say him nay. He, the wayfarer, who for two years had slept by the
hedge-side or in barns, found himself possessed of a castle.
It might be conjectured whether he would find the change cramping,
stifling. He did not. The windows, which he mended, he set wide open
to the sun and wind. Big fires of sticks and fir-cones aired and freed
the place from the odour of damp and decay that hung about it. He took
the precaution of buying a couple of blankets and a mattress. Also, as
he was once more to become a civilized being, at all events in his own
eyes, he bought three suits of the garments called pyjamas.
They pleased Peter enormously. Blue, pink, and green, he placed them
on the table and looked at them. They told him as plainly as their
flannel tongues could speak that he had returned to his birthright.
He had purchased them in the market town already mentioned, which lay
some eight miles distant from the cottage, and the purchase had been
made with an air of swagger. Piping had proved a not unremunerative
occupation. There was now, however, another source of income. Certainly
the income would not be large at present, but it well sufficed. Peter
would therefore pipe no longer for pay, but merely for pleasure.
He had also laid in a store of fair foolscap paper and a large bottle
of ink. The joy of creation had taken possession of him. His brain was
again fertile. It was partly on this account that he had been ready to
take up a fixed abode, since fate had flung one in his path. He owed
it to the children of his brain to give them every chance, though his
first child had been brought forth amidst difficulties and hardships.
The news that a stranger, wearing a peacock feather in his hat, had
taken up his abode in the cottage of ill-omen spread like wild-fire
through the village. Women glanced at him with frightened eyes, men
regarded him with suspicion. The owner of the provision shop, indeed,
held a kind of neutral ground. Until it should be proved that Peter's
shillings were accursed, he might as well have the advantage of them.
The children looked at Peter with awe, mingled with curiosity. There
was a kind of fearful joy in watching one who was a friend of that
terrible personage the Devil. At night, truly, he was to be avoided,
but in daylight, with his bronzed face and brilliant peacock feather,
he looked not unprepossessing.
Moreover, he could pipe. Wee Rob, the miller's lame son, had first
heard him, and had called to the other children. There had been a
reconnoitring party down the lane. On tiptoe feet, breath suspended,
eyes round with awe, they had gone. Through the bushes they had seen
him at the cottage door, the pipe at his lips. And the music had been
full of they knew not what of magic, joy and gladness. With parted lips
and eyes full of childish wonder they had listened. Fear had vanished
to the four winds of heaven, blown far far away by the sweet notes of
the pipe.
And then Peter had stopped and moved. There had been the scuttling of
little feet and the tapping of a crutch. But the tapping of the crutch
had been reluctant in its retreat, for the magic of the piping lingered
with Wee Rob.
By day, then, Peter wrote in his cottage, piped his tunes, or walked
the moorland above the village. By night he slept and dreamt of the
book he was writing, though often through his dreams he fancied he
heard the sound of that pitiful sobbing.
In his waking moments he told himself it was fancy pure and simple,
yet it troubled him. What if there were indeed an imprisoned soul
somewhere seeking aid, one for whom no man had said an individual
prayer? Peter had no very definite creed. There lingered with him
certain faint memories of lessons taught him by his mother, of which
the little prayer he had prayed the first night in the cottage was one.
Beyond that all was indefinite, vague. Somewhere external to this world
were unseen Powers, some great Force, a Strength to whom men appealed
under the name of God. The supernatural, however, had, or appeared to
have, no very distinct individual relation towards himself. He had
certainly prayed when he was in the prison. Human aid being powerless
to "put things right" (he formulated his ideas no more than that), he
had appealed to this External Power. He had found a certain comfort
in it. He acknowledged its might, its capacity to do so. Having
prayed, he felt sure of the answer. His attitude towards the Powers
was friendly. There is no other word which will as well describe his
attitude of mind. Surely, then, he had a right to expect a friendly
reply. And then the reply had come. For a time Peter had been stunned.
It had been so entirely unexpected. He felt almost as a man would feel
who had received a blow from one from whom he had a right to expect a
handshake. A curious bitterness was his first predominant sensation.
This did not last, however. Peter was too innately sweet-natured to
harbour bitterness long, even against those vague external Powers of
which he knew so little. A nonchalant philosophy took its place. They
had failed him, therefore he must turn elsewhere for aid; he must turn
to the visible means around him, the things of nature, the sunshine,
the trees, the flowers, the birds. In short, the recuperative power of
his own healthy nature sustained him, since the Powers to whom he had
turned seemed to have failed. And yet he did not deny their existence.
Only it would appear that their attitude towards him individually was
not what he had imagined it to be. Now, however, vaguely, indefinitely,
he began to wonder whether their aid could not be invoked again, not
for himself, but for another, the soul of the woman whose fancied
sobbing troubled his dreams. He told himself, as already stated, that
the sobbing was pure fancy, the outcome of the pitiful story he had
heard, his own imagination, and certain faint memories of his mother's
teaching regarding souls in purgatory. Solitude no doubt coloured these
memories, rendered him possibly slightly morbid regarding them. Yet the
fancy was strong upon him that he, in that place where the soul of the
woman had left her body, might in some way aid. Yet how? There was the
crux of the question.
And then Peter bethought him of a friend of his, one whose creed,
though he himself had inquired little regarding it, he knew to be
clear-cut, defined. Perhaps, Peter told himself, his own prayers
were too vague, too nebulous. For himself he was content, or at
least sufficiently passive now, to let things remain as they were.
For himself, his prayer had failed; he would not be cowardly enough
to whine, or recriminate. It was just possible that even the failure
belonged to some Great Plan of which he did not see the outcome. He
perceived in the same nebulous way that if this were the case rebellion
would be not only cowardly, but futile. Yet while remaining passive for
himself, something within him stirred him to action for another. He had
heard his friend speak of masses for souls in purgatory. It conveyed
nothing very definite to Peter's mind, yet he felt that if there were
some method of aiding this soul his friend would know of it.
Accordingly Peter wrote a letter. He gave no address; he merely wrote
stating the facts of the case, and asking aid. After that he waited.
Now again he was perfectly aware that the whole thing might have
been pure fancy, but one day Peter became conscious of a change of
atmosphere in the cottage. A repose, a peace, hitherto foreign seemed
to have descended upon it. When precisely the change occurred Peter
did not know, he merely suddenly became conscious that the change was
there.
Of course it might have been pure fancy, but Peter did not think it
was.