The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett Part 12

Green Lanes lay midway between the market town of Galton and the large village of Newton Candover. It is a small, tumble-down hamlet remote from any highroad, the confluence of four deserted by-ways leading to other hamlets upon the wooded downland of which Green Lanes was the highest point. Hare Hall, the family mansion of the Iredales, was quite two miles away in the direction of Newton Candover and was let for a long term of years to a rich stockbroker. Philip himself lived at The Old Farm, an Elizabethan farm-house which he had filled with books. The only other "gentleman" in Green Lanes was the vicar, Mr. Dorward, with whom Philip had quarreled. The squire as lay rector drew a yearly revenue of 300, but he refused to allow the living more than 90 until the vicar gave up his ritualistic fads, to which, though he never went inside the church, he strongly objected.

Sylvia's first quarrel with Philip was over the vicar, whom she met through her puppy's wandering into his cottage while he was at tea and refusing to come out. She might never have visited him again if Philip had not objected, for he was very shy and eccentric; but after two more visits to annoy Philip, she began to like Mr. Dorward, and her friendship with him became a standing source of irritation to her husband and a pleasure to herself which she declined to give up. Her second quarrel with Philip was over his sister Gertrude, who came down for a visit soon after they got back from Como. Gertrude, having until her brother's marriage always lived at The Old Farm, could not refrain from making Sylvia very much aware of this; her conversation was one long, supercilious narrative of what she used to do at Green Lanes, with which were mingled fears for what might be done there in the future. Philip was quite ready to admit that his sister could be very irritating, but he thought Sylvia's demand for her complete exclusion from The Old Farm for at least a year was unreasonable.

"Well, if she comes, I shall go," Sylvia said, sullenly.

"My dear child, do remember that you're married and that you can't go and come as you like," Philip answered. "However, I quite see your point of view about poor Gertrude and I quite agree with you that for a time it will be wiser to keep ourselves rather strictly to ourselves."

Why could he not have said that at first, Sylvia thought. She would have been so quickly generous if he had, but the preface about her being married had spoiled his concession. He was a curious creature, this husband of hers. When they were alone he would encourage her to be as she used to be; he would laugh with her, show the keenest interest in what she was reading, search for a morning to find some book that would please her, listen with delight to her stories of Jimmy Monkley or of her father or of Blanche, and be always, in fact, the sympathetic friend, never obtruding himself, as lover or monitor, two aspects of him equally repugnant to Sylvia. Yet when there was the least likelihood not alone of a third person's presence, but even of a third person's hearing any roundabout gossip of her real self, Philip would shrivel her up with interminable corrections, and what was far worse, try to sweeten the process by what she considered fatuous demonstrations of affection. For a time there was no great tension between them, because Sylvia's adventurous spirit was occupied by her pa.s.sion for knowledge; she felt vaguely that at any time the moment might arrive when mere knowledge without experience would not be enough; at present the freedom of Philip's library was adventure enough. He was most eager to a.s.sist her progress, and almost reckless in the way he spurred her into every liberty of thought, maintaining the stupidity of all conventional beliefs--moral, religious, or political. He warned her that the expression of such opinions, or, still worse, action under the influence of them, would be for her or for any one else in the present state of society quite impossible; Sylvia used to think at the time that it was only herself as his wife whom he wished to keep in check, and resented his reasons accordingly; afterward looking back to this period she came to the conclusion that Philip was literally a theorist, and that his fierce denunciations of all conventional opinions could never in any circ.u.mstances have gone further than quarreling with the vicar and getting married in a registry-office. Once when she attacked him for his cowardice he retorted by citing his marriage with her, and immediately afterward apologized for what he characterized as "caddishness."

"If you had married me and been content to let me remain myself," Sylvia said, "you might have used that argument. But you showed you were frightened of what you'd done when you sent me to Hornton House."

"My dear child, I wanted you to go there for your own comfort, not for mine. After all, it was only like reading a book; it gave you a certain amount of academic theory that you could prove or disprove by experience."

"A devil of a lot of experience I get here," Sylvia exclaimed.

"You're still only seventeen," Philip answered. "The time will come."

"It will come," Sylvia murmured, darkly.

"You're not threatening to run away from me already?" Philip asked, with a smile.

"I might do anything," she owned. "I might poison you."

Philip laughed heartily at this; just then Mr. Dorward pa.s.sed over the village green, which gave him an opportunity to rail at his ca.s.sock.

"It's ridiculous for a man to go about dressed up like that. Of course, n.o.body attends his church. I can't think why my father gave him the living. He's a ritualist, and his manners are abominable."

"But he looks like a Roman Emperor," said Sylvia.

Philip spluttered with indignation. "Oh, he's Roman enough, my dear child; but an Emperor! Which Emperor?"

"I'm not sure which it is, but I think it's Nero."

"Yes, I see what you mean," Philip a.s.sented, after a pause. "You're amazingly observant. Yes, there is that kind of mixture of sensual strength and fineness about his face. But it's not surprising. The line between degeneracy and the 'twopence colored' type of religion is not very clearly drawn."

It was after this conversation that, in searching for a picture of Nero's head to compare with Mr. Dorward's, Sylvia came across the Satyricon of Petronius in a French translation. She read it through without skipping a word, applied it to the test of recognition, and decided that she found more satisfactorily than in any book she had yet read a distorting mirror of her life from the time she left France until she met Philip, a mirror, however, that never distorted so wildly as to preclude recognition. Having made this discovery, she announced it to him, who applauded her sense of humor and of literature, but begged her to keep it to herself; people might get a wrong idea of her; he knew what she meant and appreciated the reflection, but it was a book that, generally speaking, no woman would read, still less talk about, and least of all claim kinship with. It was of course an immortal work of art, humorous, witty, fantastic.

"And true," Sylvia added.

"And no doubt true to its period and its place, which was southern Italy in the time of Nero."

"And true to southern England in the time of Victoria," Sylvia insisted. "I don't mean that it's exactly the same," she went on, striving almost painfully to express her thoughts. "The same, though. I feel it's true. I don't know it's true. Oh, can't you understand?"

"I fancy you're trying to voice your esthetic consciousness of great art that, however time may change its accessories, remains inherently changeless. Realism in fact as opposed to what is wrongly called realism. Lots of critics, Sylvia, have tried to define what is worrying you, and lots of long words have been enlisted on their behalf. A better and more ancient word for realism was 'poetry'; but the word has been debased by the versifiers who call themselves poets just as painters call themselves artists--both are t.i.tles that only posterity can award. Great art is something that is made and that lives in itself; like that stuff, radium, which was discovered the year before last, it eternally gives out energy without consuming itself. Radium, however, does not solve the riddle of life, and until we solve that, great art will remain undefinable. Which reminds me of a mistake that so-called believers make. I've often heard Christians maintain the truth of Christianity, because it is still alive. What nonsense! The words of Christ are still alive, because Christ Himself was a great poet, and therefore expressed humanity as perhaps no one else ever expressed humanity before. But the lying romantic, the bad poet, in fact, who tickles the vain and credulous mob with miracles and theogonies, expresses nothing. It is a proof of nothing but the vitality of great art that the words of Christ can exist and can continue to affect humanity notwithstanding the mountebank behavior attributed to Him, out of which priests have manufactured a religion. It is equally surprising that Cervantes could hold his own against the romances of chivalry he tried to kill. He may have killed one mode of expression, but he did not prevent East Lynne from being written; he yet endures because Don Quixote, whom he made, has life. By the way, you never got on with Don Quixote, did you?"

Sylvia shook her head.

"I think it's a failure on your part, dear Sylvia."

"He is so stupid," she said.

"But he realized how stupid he was before he died."

She shrugged her shoulders. "I can't help my bad taste, as you call it. He annoys me."

"You think the Yanguseian carriers dealt with him in the proper way?"

"I don't remember them."

"They beat him."

"I think I could beat a person who annoyed me very much," Sylvia said. "I don't mean with sticks, of course, but with my behavior."

"Is that another warning?" Philip asked.

"Perhaps."

"Anyway, you think Petronius is good?"

She nodded her head emphatically.

"Come, you shall give a judgment on Aristophanes. I commend him to you in the same series of French translations."

"I think Lysistrata is simply splendid," Sylvia said, a week or so later. "And I like the Thesmos-something and the Eck-something."

"I thought you might," Philip laughed. "But don't quote from them when my millionaire tenant comes to tea."

"Don't be always harping upon the dangers of my conversation," she exhorted.

"Mayn't I even tease you?" Philip asked, in mock humility.

"I don't mind being teased, but it isn't teasing. It's serious."

"Your sense of humor plays you tricks sometimes," he said.

"Oh, don't talk about my sense of humor like that. My sense of humor isn't a watch that you can take out and tap and regulate and wind up and shake your head over. I hate people who talk about a sense of humor as you do. Are you so sure you have one yourself?"

"Perhaps I haven't," Philip agreed, but by the way in which he spoke Sylvia knew that he would maintain he had a sense of humor, and that the rest of humanity had none if it combined to contradict him. "I always distrust people who are too confidently the possessors of one," he added.

"You don't understand in the least what I mean," Sylvia cried out, in exasperation. "You couldn't distrust anybody else's sense of humor if you had one yourself."

"That's what I said," Philip pointed out, in an aggrieved voice.

"Don't go on; you'll make me scream," she adjured him. "I won't talk about a sense of humor, because if there is such a thing it obviously can't be talked about."

Lest Philip should pursue the argument, she left him and went for a long muddy walk by herself half-way to Galton. She had never before walked beyond the village of Medworth, but she was still in such a state of nervous exasperation that she continued down the hill beyond it without noticing how far it was taking her. The country on either side of the road ascended in uncultivated fields toward dense oak woods. In many of these fields were habitations with grandiose names, mostly built of corrugated iron. Sylvia thought at first that she was approaching the outskirts of Galton and pressed on to explore the town, the name of which was familiar from the rickety tradesmen's carts that jogged through Green Lanes. There was no sign of a town, however, and after walking about two miles through a landscape that recalled the pictures she had seen of primitive settlements in the Far West, she began to feel tired and turned round upon her tracks, wishing she had not come quite so far. Suddenly a rustic gate that was almost buried in the unclipped hazel hedge on one side of the road was flung open, and an elderly lady with a hooked nose and fierce bright eyes, dressed in what looked at a first glance like a pair of soiled lace window-curtains, asked Sylvia with some abruptness if she had met a turkey going in her direction. Sylvia shook her head, and the elderly lady (Sylvia would have called her an old lady from her wrinkled countenance, had she not been so astonishingly vivacious in her movements) called in a high harsh voice: "Emmie! There's a girl here coming from Galton way, and she hasn't seen Major Kettlewell."

In the distance a female voice answered, shrilly, "Perhaps he's crossed over to the Pluepotts'!"

Sylvia explained that she had misunderstood the first inquiry, but that n.o.body had pa.s.sed her since she turned back five minutes ago.

"We call the turkey Major Kettlewell because he looks like Major Kettlewell, but Major Kettlewell himself lives over there."

The elderly lady indicated the other side of the road with a vague gesture, and went on: "Where can that dratted bird have got to? Major! Major! Major! Chuch--chick--chilly--chilly--chuck--chuck," she called.

Sylvia hoped that the real major lived far enough away to be out of hearing.

"Never keep a turkey," the elderly lady went on, addressing Sylvia. "We didn't kill it for Christmas, because we'd grown fond of it, even though he is like that old ruffian of a major. And ever since he's gone on the wander. It's the springtime coming, I suppose."

The elderly lady's companion had by this time reached the gate, and Sylvia saw that she was considerably younger, but with the same hall-mark of old-maidishness.

"Don't worry any more about the bird, Adelaide," said the new-comer. "It's tea-time. Depend upon it, he's crossed over to the Pluepotts'. This time I really will wring his neck."

Sylvia prepared to move along, but the first lady asked her where she was going, and, when she heard Green Lanes, exclaimed: "Gemini! That's beyond Medworth, isn't it? You'd better come in and have a cup of tea with us. I'm Miss Horne, and my friend here is Miss Hobart."

Sunny Bank, as this particular tin house was named, not altogether inappropriately, although it happened to be on the less sunny side of the road, was built half-way up a steepish slope of very rough ground from which enough flints had been extracted to pave a zigzag of ascending paths, and to vary the contour of the slope with a miniature mountain range of unused material without apparently smoothing the areas of proposed cultivation.

"These paths are something dreadful, Emmie," said Miss Horne, as the three of them scrambled up through the garden. "Never mind, we'll get the roller out of the hedge when Mr. Pluepott comes in on Wednesday. Miss Hobart nearly got carried away by the roller yesterday," she explained to Sylvia.

A trellised porch outside the bungalow--such apparently was the correct name for these habitations--afforded a view of the opposite slope, which was sprinkled with bungalows surrounded like Sunny Bank by heaps of stones; there were also one or two more pretentious buildings of red brick and one or two stony gardens without a dwelling-place as yet.

"I suppose you're wondering why the name over the door isn't the same as the one on the gate? Mr. Pluepott is always going to take it out, but he never remembers to bring the paint. It's the name the man from whom we bought it gave the bungalow," said Miss Hobart, crossly. Sylvia read in gothic characters over the door Floral Nook, and agreed with the two ladies that Sunny Bank was much more suitable.

"For whatever else it may be, it certainly isn't damp," Miss Horne declared. "But, dear me, talking of names, you haven't told us yours."

Sylvia felt shy. It was actually the first time she had been called upon to announce herself since she was married. The two ladies exclaimed on hearing she was Mrs. Iredale, and Sylvia felt that there was a kind of impropriety in her being married, when Miss Horne and Miss Hobart, who were so very much older than she, were still spinsters.

The four small rooms of which the bungalow consisted were lined with varnished match-boarding; everything was tied up with brightly colored bows of silk, and most of the pictures were draped with small curtains; the bungalow was full of knickknacks and shivery furniture, but not full enough to satisfy the owners' pa.s.sion for prettiness, so that wherever there was a little s.p.a.ce on the walls silk bows had been nailed about like political favors. Sylvia thought it would have been simpler to tie a wide sash of pink silk round the house and call it The Chocolate Box. Tea, though even the spoons were tied up with silk, was a varied and satisfying meal. The conversation of the two ladies was remarkably entertaining when it touched upon their neighbors, and when twilight warned Sylvia that she must hurry away she was sorry to leave them. While she was making her farewells there was a loud tap at the door, followed immediately by the entrance of a small bullet-headed man with quick black eyes.

"I've brought back your turkey, Miss Horne."

"Oh, thank you, Mr. Pluepott. There you are, Emmie. You were right."

At this moment the bird began to flap its wings as violently as its position head downward would allow; nor, not being a horse, did it pay any attention to Mr. Pluepott's repeated shouts of "Woa! Woa back, will you!"

"I think you'd better let him flap outside, Mr. Pluepott," Miss Hobart advised.

Sylvia thought so too when she looked at the floor.

"Shall I wring its neck now or would you rather I waited till I come in on Wednesday?"

"Oh, I think we'll wait, thank you, Mr. Pluepott," Miss Horne said. "Perhaps you wouldn't mind shutting him up in the coop. He does wander so. Are you going into Galton?"

Mr. Pluepott replied, as he confined Major Kettlewell to his barracks, that, on the contrary, he was driving up to Medworth to see about some beehives for sale there, whereupon Miss Horne and Miss Hobart asked if he would mind taking Mrs. Iredale that far upon her way.

A few minutes later Sylvia, on a very splintery seat, was jolting along beside Mr. Pluepott toward Medworth.

"Rum lot of people hereabouts," he said, by way of opening the conversation, "Some of the rummest people it's ever been my luck to meet. I came here because my wife had to leave the Midlands. Chest was bad. I used to be a cobbler at Bedford. Since I've been here I've become everything--carpenter, painter, decorator, gardener, mason, bee expert, poultry-keeper, blacksmith, livery-stables, furniture-remover, house agent, common carrier, bricklayer, dairyman, horse-breaker. The only thing I don't do now is make boots. Funny thing, and you won't believe it, but last week I had to buy myself the first pair of boots I ever bought since I was a lad of fifteen. Oh, well, I like the latest better than the last, as I jokingly told my missus the other night. It made her laugh," said Mr. Pluepott, looking at Sylvia rather anxiously; she managed to laugh too, and he seemed relieved.

"I often make jokes for my missus. She's apt to get very melancholy with her chest. But, as I was saying, the folk round here they beat the band. It just shows what advertis.e.m.e.nt will do."

Sylvia asked why.

"Well, when I first came here, and I was one of the three first, I came because I read an advertis.e.m.e.nt in the paper: 'Land for the Million in lots from a quarter of an acre.' Some fellow had bought an old farm that was no use to n.o.body and had the idea of splitting it up into lots. Originally this was the Oak Farm Estate and belonged to St. Mary's College, Oxford. Now we call it Oaktown--the residents, that is--but when we applied the other day to the Galton Rural District Council, so as we could have the name properly recognized, went in we did with the major, half a dozen of us, as smart as a funeral, one of the wise men of Gotham, which is what I jokingly calls Galton nowadays, said he thought Tintown would be a better name. The major got rare and angry, but his teeth slipped just as he was giving it 'em hot and strong, which is a trick they have. He nearly swallowed 'em last November, when he was taking the chair at a Conservative meeting, in an argument with a Radical about the war. They had to lead him outside and pat his back. It's a pity the old ladies can't get on with him. They fell out over blackberrying in his copse last Michaelmas. Well, the fact is the major's a bit close, and I think he meant to sell the blackberries. He's put up a notice now 'Beware of Dangerous Explosives,' though there's nothing more dangerous than a broken air-gun in the whole house. Miss Horne was very bitter about it; oh, very bitter she was. Said she always knew the major was a guy, and he only wanted to stuff himself with gunpowder to give the boys a rare set out on the Fifth."

"How did Miss Horne and Miss Hobart come here?" Sylvia asked.

"Advertis.e.m.e.nt. They lived somewhere near London, I believe; came into a bit of money, I've heard, and thought they'd settle in the country. I give them a morning a week on Wednesdays. The man they bought it off had been a tax-collector somewhere in the West Indies. He swindled them properly, but they were sorry for him because he had a floating kidney--floating in alcohol, I should think, by the amount he drank. But they won't hear a word against him even now. He's living in Galton and they send him cabbages every week, which he gives to his rabbits when he's sober and throws at his housekeeper when he's drunk. Sunny Bank! I'm glad it's not my Bank. As I jokingly said to my missus, I should soon be stony-broke. Ah, well, there's all sorts here and that's a fact," Mr. Pluepott continued, with a pensive flick at his pony. "That man over there, for instance." He pointed with his whip through the gathering darkness to a particularly small tin cottage. "He used to play the trombone in a theater till he played his inside out; now he thinks he's going to make a fortune growing early tomatoes for Covent Garden market. You get him with a pencil in his hand of an evening and you'd think about borrowing money from him next year; but when you see him next morning trying to cover a five-by-four packing-case with a broken sash-light, you'd be more afraid of his trying to borrow from you."

With such conversation did Mr. Pluepott beguile the way to Medworth; and when he heard that Sylvia intended to walk in the dusk to Green Lanes he insisted on driving her the extra two miles.

"The hives won't fly away," he said, cheerfully, "and I like to make a good job of a thing. Well, now you've found your way to Oaktown, I hope you'll visit us again. Mrs. Pluepott will be very glad to see you drop in for a cup of tea any day, and if you've got any comical reading-matter, she'd be glad to borrow from you; for her chest does make her very melancholy, and, being accustomed to having me always about the house when I was cobbling, she doesn't seem to get used to being alone. Only the other day she said if she'd known I was going to turn into a Buffalo Bill she'd rather have stayed in Bedford. 'Land for the Millions!' she said, 'I reckon you'd call it Land for the Million, if you had to sweep the house clean of the mud you bring into it.' Well, good night to you. Very glad I was able to oblige, I'm sure."

Philip was relieved when Sylvia got back. She had never been out for so long before, and she teased him about the running away, that he had evidently imagined. She felt in a good humor after her expedition, and was glad to be back in this dignified and ancient house with its books and lamplight and not a silken bow anywhere to be seen.

"So you've been down to that abomination of tin houses? It's an absolute blot on the countryside. I don't recommend too close an acquaintanceship. I'm told it's inhabited by an appalling set of rascals. Poor Melville, who owns the land all 'round, says he can't keep a hare."

Sylvia said the people seemed rather amusing, and was not at all inclined to accept Philip's condemnation of them; he surely did not suggest that Miss Horne and Miss Hobart, for instance, were poachers?

"My dear child, people who come and live in a place like the Oak Farm Estate--Oaktown, as they have the impudence to call it--are there for no good. They've either done something discreditable in town or they hope to do something discreditable in the country. Oh yes, I've heard all about our neighbors. There's a ridiculous fellow who calls himself a major--I believe he used to be in the volunteers--and can't understand why he's not made a magistrate. I'm told he's the little tin G.o.d of Tintown. No, no, I prefer even your friendship with our vicar. Don't be cross with me, Sylvia, for laughing at your new friends, but you mustn't take them too seriously. I shall have finished the text I'm writing this month, and we'll go up to London for a bit. Shall we? I'm afraid you're getting dull down here."

The spring wore away, but the text showed no signs of being finished. Sylvia suggested that she should invite Gladys and Enid Worsley to stay with her, but Philip begged her to postpone the invitation while he was working, and thought in any case it would be better to have them down in summer. Sylvia went to Oaktown once or twice, but said nothing about it to Philip, because from a sort of charitableness she did not want him to diminish himself further in her eyes by airing his prejudices with the complacency that seemed to increase all the time they stayed in the country.

One day at the end of April Miss Horne and Miss Hobart announced they had bought a governess-car and a pony, built a stable, and intended to celebrate their first drive by calling on Sylvia at Green Lanes. Mr. Pluepott had promised, even if it should not be on a Wednesday, to superintend the first expedition and gave his opinion of the boy whom it was proposed to employ as coachman. The boy in question, whom Mr. Pluepott called Jehuselah, whether from an attempt to combine a satirical expression of his driving and his age, or too slight acquaintance with Biblical personalities, was uncertain, was known as Ernie to Miss Horne and Miss Hobart when he was quick and good, but as Ernest when he was slow and bad; his real name all the time was Herbert.

"Good heavens!" Philip e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, when he beheld the governess-car from his window. "Who on earth is this?"

"Friends of mine," said Sylvia. "Miss Horne and Miss Hobart. I told you about them."

"But they're getting out," Philip gasped, in horror. "They're coming here."

"I know," Sylvia said. "I hope there's plenty for tea. They always give me the most enormous teas." And without waiting for any more of Philip's protests she hurried down-stairs and out into the road to welcome the two ladies. They were both of them dressed in pigeon's-throat silk under more lace even than usual, and arrived in a state of enthusiasm over Ernie's driving and thankfulness for the company of Mr. Pluepott, who was also extremely pleased with the whole turn-out.

"A baby in arms couldn't have handled that pony more carefully," he declared, looking at Ernie with as much pride as if he had begotten him.

"We're so looking forward to meeting Mr. Iredale," said Miss Horne.

"We hear he's a great scholar," said Miss Hobart.

Sylvia took them into the dining-room, where she was glad to see that a gigantic tea had been prepared--a match even for the most profuse of Sunny Bank's.

Then she went up-stairs to fetch Philip, who flatly refused to come down.

"You must come," Sylvia urged. "I'll never forgive you if you don't."

"My dearest Sylvia, I really cannot entertain the eccentricities of Tintown here. You invited them. You must look after them. I'm busy."

"Are you coming?" Sylvia asked, biting her lips.