Barbara Lynn Part 17

Great buildings, like great minds, deepen and fix their personality with the pa.s.sing years. The varied winds of life round their corners, refine their angles, and blend them into a harmonious whole. Great buildings, like great minds, endure a loneliness that is awful in its magnitude.

It is the price which must be paid by those who would rise above the fretting trivialities of existence. And this is their compensation--they uplift, they inspire others: they are an eternal a.s.surance of the wonder and sacredness of human life.

There is nothing great in the world that has not this spirit of loneliness. Mountains, piercing the clouds, stars glittering overhead, purple seas, pyramids, palaces, cathedrals--no man knows them with the familiarity that can breed contempt. They may rouse hatred and fear, fire and sword have been turned against them; but fingers have rarely been snapped in their faces, or shoulders shrugged under their shadow.

The church of Saint Mary the Virgin, at Oxford, with the sun on its spire moved Peter profoundly. It had influenced him all his college days, it was influencing him still. It was sending him back to his home with two strong guardians for his soul--Faith and Duty--to help him in the monotonous way. It was giving him over--as it were--to the mountains to be taught by them.

That which the mountains have to give, they give freely to those who seek it. David and Mahommed, simple herders of sheep, were not ashamed to learn at their knees. Buddha and John the Baptist sought them in manhood and returned to be teachers of men, and to change the current of thought through all the world.

Peter did not know what his future would be. He believed that he would learn about it among his native hills.

As the light grew, the man who was only a voice withdrew from the shadow of the window curtains, and went away. With an uncompromising sunbeam in the room to light up the supper dishes and soiled cloth, who could speak of those things, which for the most part, remain hidden in the heart?

But he thought of Peter as he climbed up the narrow winding stair to his own room. He believed that his friend would succeed, yet he regretted, nearly as deeply as Peter, that it had not been possible for him to accept the post in India. He would have been a great man, he thought; now he was likely to be simply a good man--a good man lacking distinction. Then he shrugged his shoulders with a laugh. The powers that be, no doubt, set the latter above the former in their book of human achievements.

Later in the day Peter left Oxford. As he turned his horse on the London road to look back upon the city, he looked with regret, it is true, regret because he was leaving the place where the happiest years of his life had been pa.s.sed; but he was full of hope for the future. If fritillaries hung in the Christ Church meadows, blue geraniums grew in Boar Dale; if there were no spires and pinnacles at High Fold, there was the grey gable of the old mill-house, and the revolving wooden wheel.

Though a great dome like the Radcliffe Camera did not rise out of Cringel Forest, Thundergay was more n.o.ble. He would not be lonely for there was Timothy Hadwin to sustain and inspire him.

He flicked his horse's reins and rode away. It was vain to stand and gaze. Deep in his heart was a thought to which he would not allow expression, but for some time he could not see distinctly or breathe with the ease of a man who is reviewing his past and looking forward to his future with an undivided mind.

CHAPTER X

KETEL'S PARLOUR

Barbara sat on a stool in the mouth of the cave, reading aloud Pope's translation of the Iliad to Timothy Hadwin. The old man watched the girl narrowly, and felt his mind swing back through the ages to the days of Greek and Trojan.

Had Barbara lived then she would have been called the daughter of a G.o.d.

Thetis of the Silver-foot ought to have been her mother, and some strong warrior king her father. She would have made a worthy sister to Achilles, a fit wife for Hector, tamer of horses. A wife! a wife!

Timothy wondered. Would Barbara Lynn ever become the wife of some good, honest, plain man, and chain her mind to making and mending, the bearing of children, the ordinary toils of a married woman's life. He could not imagine her as such. She was in her fitting place as a herder of sheep upon the mountains, where sun and tempest were her familiar friends.

Would she be happier if her lot brought her down from the clouds to the earth? Would not the four grey walls of a cottage choke her? He felt that in her nature was an intensity of feeling so great, that it was more likely to bring her sorrow than happiness.

The hour was noon of a summer's day. All around the heat shimmered upon rock and gra.s.s; the tarn lay white and motionless; Thundergay was wrapped in a haze; not a breath of air stirred the fern fronds.

Barbara's voice when she read had an exaltation, which it lacked in ordinary conversation. Her eyes, also, had lost their prevailing meditativeness, and shone with an inner light. She thrilled to the depths of her soul with the lives of the people about whom she read. Her ears were alert to catch the voices still echoing down the centuries.

Timothy Hadwin had told her that nothing which happened had an end. No thought ever thought, no action ever committed could cease. Just as a pebble, dropped into the sea, caused waves to spread all about it, which rolled on and on in ever widening circles till they communicated their movements to the edges of the world, so the acc.u.mulated energy of the past was still surging around, beating upon human brains, and influencing the latest born of man, though its origin had been swallowed up and forgotten in the darkness of antiquity.

Barbara believed this. Through books she reached direct contact with the past. She was a vessel into which the magic old wine could be poured, and it warmed her, filled her serene mind with pa.s.sions and sympathies, unknown to it at other times.

Often through the week Barbara went to Timothy Hadwin's cottage, or he came to Ketel's Parlour to hear her read, and to impart some of his knowledge to her hungry soul. The brief hour was a treasure s.n.a.t.c.hed from the crowded commonplaces of the day, and was valued accordingly.

Just now, Barbara was reading about the ransoming of Hector's body. Her voice thrilled, and her eyes grew luminous as she pictured the old king stealing across the plain by night with a wain filled with rich vestments, tripods, shining cauldrons, and a priceless bowl of gold to offer them in return for the dead body of his son. She could see the whole scene--the city of Troy with its battlements and towers vaguely outlined against the darkness, the dreadful plain of war, the long black boats of the Greeks, behind which sounded the ever-rolling sea. She saw Achilles' hut with its palisades, and pine bolt, that three strong men were wont to drive home at night, though Achilles could drive it home himself. And near by lay the body of Hector, face-downwards in the dust, as Achilles had left him after dragging him round the barrow of his dead friend at the dawn of day. Her eyes filled with tears for Hector, tamer of horses, Hector of the glancing helm, who strove against fate; but strove in vain, who was still beloved of Jove, and cared for in death by the G.o.d of the winged sandals, who closed his wounds, and kept his flesh from corruption.

But that which touched her most was Achilles' speech to the old king, when he came a suppliant to his hut in the night. The two urns standing by the throne of Jupiter, one full of curses, one full of blessings arrested her attention. Was it not true? Did the G.o.d not deal a mingled lot to most of his creatures, but gave them an enduring soul to bear it?

The best and most beautiful things in the world were fraught with sorrow. The sunset often made her sad; equally sad sounded the singing of birds in spring; and love, the love of father, mother, husband, child, was saddest of all. This she had learnt among her friends of the dale.

She read on to the end of the book, where the mourners sat down to the sepulchral feast:

"And peaceful slept the mighty Hector's shade."

Then she closed the volume and looked at Timothy.

"Why do we sup it so eagerly?" she asked. "It's a poisoned cup to some, a bitter one to most, and sweet only to a few, a very few."

The old man knew that she referred to life.

"There was a preacher once," he said, "who thought it a burden too heavy to be borne. He believed in re-birth, countless re-births through generations, and the idea filled him with despair. His name was Gautama, but people called him Buddha, the Enlightened One, the Enlightener. He found a way of salvation and opened it to men."

"Was it a good way?"

"Judge for thyself, Barbara. _The mind_" he said, "_approaching the eternal, has attained to the extinction of all desires?_"

She mused for a moment upon the words.

"I don't like them," she replied, "If I had no desires I shouldn't be Barbara Lynn but a lump of clay."

"Then drink the cup. Buddha turned it upside down so that it could hold nothing. He emptied it of the sweetness as well as the bitterness. But thou, hold it up to be filled and drink."

"I shall have sorrow, Timothy?"

"Yes, child."

"Pain and disappointment."

"It is the lot of those who would dig to find the riches of their own nature."

"The soil might be poor, and suffering turn up nought but dead ashes."

"Tears fertilize it, Barbara."

"Do you think that's the reason we have so much to bear? Should we be like weakly flowers, things that would wither up with the heat of the sun, or the cold winds o' winter, if suffering did not set us to deep trenching?"

All the vehemence had died out of her voice now. Speech had sunk to the meditative tones of every day life.

"Contentment leads to shallowness," said the old man. "If you had been born in a great house instead of an upland farm, I doubt if you would have striven so hard to know and understand things that lie far out of your beaten track."

"I've got a bitter envy towards those who have chances denied to me."

"To some learning may be the goal; to you it may be the means to a higher goal."

"What dost mean, Timothy?"

"You're a better scholar at self-discipline than at your books, my la.s.s."

Her face fell and she looked disappointed.