Windyridge Part 6

"I have no music," I replied, "but may I 'say a piece' instead, as the village children put it?" I turned to the Cynic and made him a mock curtsey:

"Small blame is ours For this uns.e.xing of ourselves, and worse Effeminising of the male. We were Content, sir, till you starved us, heart and brain.

All we have done, or wise or otherwise Traced to the root was done for love of you.

Let us taboo all vain comparisons, And go forth as G.o.d meant us, hand in hand.

Companions, mates and comrades evermore; Two parts of one divinely ordained whole."

"Bravo!" said the squire, and the vicar murmured, "Thank you," very politely. The Cynic laughed and rose from his chair.

"I will take it lying down," he said. "Mr. Evans, may I look in the cabinet and see if there is anything Miss Holden can sing?"

I had to do it, because the cabinet contained all the Scotch songs I love so well. I was my own accompanist, _faute de mieux_, but the Cynic turned the leaves, and contributed a couple of songs himself. He talks better than he sings. The squire wanted us to try a duet, and the vicar's wife was also very pressing, but one has to draw the line somewhere. The only pieces we both knew were so sentimental that my sense of humour would have tripped me up, I know, and I should have come a cropper.

Just as coffee was brought in the squire asked me if I would sing for him, "Oh wert thou in the cauld blast." I saw he really wanted it, so I found the music, though I had to choke back the lump in my throat. I had never sung it since that memorable evening when we sat together--dad and I--on the eve of his death, and he had begged for it with his eyes. "I know, dad, dear," I said; "I must close with your favourite," and he whispered, "For the last time, la.s.sie." And so it had been.

The tears fell as I sang, and the Hall and its inmates faded from my view. The Cynic must have left my side, for when at length I ventured to look round he was across the room examining a curio. But the squire rose and thanked me in a very low voice, and his own eyes were bright with tears that did not fall.

Soon after, the vicar's carriage came, and the Cynic accepted the offer of a lift to the cross-roads. I left at the same time, but the squire insisted on accompanying me. Under cover of the darkness he remarked:

"That was my wife's song. It gave me much pleasure and some pain to hear it again; but it hurt you?"

I told him why, and he said quite simply, "Then we have another bond in common."

"Another?" I inquired, but he did not explain; instead he asked:

"How fares your ideal? Have you met him of the cloven foot in Windyridge yet?"

"I fear I brought him with me," I replied, "and I fancy I have seen his footprints in the village. All the same, I do not yet regret my decision. I am very happy here and have forgotten some of my London nightmares, and am no longer 'tossed by storm and flood.' My Inner Self and I are on the best of terms."

He sighed. "Far be it from me to discourage you; and indeed I am glad that the moors have brought you peace. To brood over wrongs we cannot put right is morbid and unhealthy; it saps our vitality and makes us unfit for the conflicts we have to wage. And yet how easy it is for us to let this consideration lead us to the bypath meadows of indifference and self-indulgence. You remember Tennyson:

"'Is it well that while we range with Science, glorying in the Time, City children soak and blacken soul and sense in city slime?'

"I have led a strenuous life, and taken some part in the battle, but now I have degenerated into a Lotus-eater, with no heart for the fray, 'Lame and old and past my time, and pa.s.sing now into the night.'"

"Nay," I said, "let me quote Clough in answer to your Tennyson:

"'Say not the struggle nought availeth, The labour and the wounds are vain.

The enemy faints not nor faileth, And as things have been they remain,

'For while the tired waves, vainly breaking, Seem here no painful inch to gain, Far back, through creeks and inlets making, Comes silent, flooding in, the main.'

"You are no Lotus-eater: no shirker. You are just resting in the garden in the evening of a well-spent day, and that is right."

"For me there is no rest," he replied. "To-morrow I go to Biarritz, and thence wherever my fancy or my doctor's instructions send me; but I shall carry with me the burdens of the village. It is selfish of me to tell you this, for I would not make you sad, but I am a lonely man, and I am going away alone, and somewhat against my will, but Trempest insists.

"I think it has done me good to unburden myself to you, and I will say only this one word more. Always, when I return, there has been some tragedy, great or small, which I think I might have hindered."

"Surely not," I murmured, "in so small a place."

He rested his arm upon my garden gate and smiled. "A week ago I witnessed a terrible encounter between two redb.r.e.a.s.t.s in the lane yonder. They are very tenacious of their rights, and one of them, I imagine, was a trespa.s.ser from the other side the hedge. They are country birds, yet very pugnacious, and the little b.r.e.a.s.t.s of these two throbbed with pa.s.sion. But when I came near them they flew away, and I hope forgot their differences. I never even raised a stick--my mere presence was sufficient. And therein is a parable. Good-night, Miss Holden, and au revoir!"

He opened the gate, raised his hat, and was gone.

CHAPTER VIII

CHRISTMAS DAY AT WINDYRIDGE

Christmas has come and gone, and so far not a flake of snow has fallen.

Rain there has been in abundance, and in the distance dense banks of fog, but no frost to speak of, and none of the atmospheric conditions I have always a.s.sociated with a northern Yuletide.

Christmas Day itself, however, proved enjoyable if not wildly exciting.

The air was "soft," as the natives say, and the sun was shining mistily when I stepped into the garden, now bare of attractions save for the Christmas roses, whose pure white petals bowed their heads in kindly greeting to the wrinkled face of Earth, their mother. The starlings were whistling as cheerily as if spring was come, and a solitary missel-thrush was diligently practising a Christmas ditty on the bare branches of the hawthorn.

"A merry Christmas, Mother Hubbard!" I called through the open window, with such unwonted vigour that the old lady, whose toilet was not completed, flung a shawl hastily around her shoulders, only to be rea.s.sured by my hearty laugh.

Over the breakfast table we drew up the day's programme. It was no difficult task. Mother Hubbard would occupy the morning in preparing the great dinner, and from these preparations I was to be rigorously excluded. To my old friend this was a holy-day, but one to be marked by a sacrificial offering of exceptional magnitude, she being the High Priestess who alone might enter into the mysteries; but I did not mind, seeing that I was to be allowed to do my part in consuming the sacrifice.

The afternoon was to be devoted to rest, and in the evening we were to go to Farmer Goodenough's, where the youngsters were already wild in antic.i.p.ation of the glories of a Christmas-tree.

So I was dismissed to "make the beds" and dust my own room, and having done this I went to church in the temple which is not made with hands.

I had intended going to Fawkshill, but the angels of G.o.d met me on the way, and turned me aside into the fields which lead to Marsland. When I reached the wood I knelt on the soft, thick carpet of fallen leaves and said my prayers amid the solitude, with the running brook for music and all Nature for priest.

What a loud voice Nature has to those who have ears to hear, yet withal how sweet and forceful. They tell us that if our faculties were less dull we should hear in every stem and twig and blade of gra.s.s the throbbing of the engines and the whir and clatter of the looms which go on day and night unceasingly. It is well for us that we are not so highly tuned, but it is also well if our spiritual perceptions are keen enough to find tongues in trees and sermons in stones, and to interpret their language. I am but a dunce as yet, but I have learned one thing since I came to this northern school--I have learned to listen, and I am beginning to understand something of what G.o.d has to teach us by the mouth of his dumb prophets. Anyhow, I went home with peace in my heart and goodwill to all men; also with a mighty hunger.

The menu was roast turkey and plum pudding, to be followed by cheese and dessert, but on this occasion there was no "following." Imagine two domesticated women, and one of them--the little one--with the appet.i.te and capacity of a pet canary, seated opposite a bird like that the squire had sent us, which had meat enough upon it to serve a Polytechnic party; and imagine the same couple, having done their duty womanfully upon the bird, confronted with a plum pudding of the dimensions Mother Hubbard's sense of proportion had judged necessary, and one of the twain compelled either to eat to repletion or to wound the feelings of the pudding's author--and then say whether in your opinion cheese and dessert were not works of supererogation!

After we had cleared the things away and drawn our rocking chairs up to the fire, the old clock ticked us off to sleep in five minutes; and then that part of me which it is not polite to mention took its revenge for having been made to work overtime on a holiday. I dreamed!

I was running away from Chelsea in the dead of night, clothed in my night-dress and holding my bedroom slippers in my hand. A great fear was upon me that I should be discovered and frustrated in my purpose; and as I strove to turn the heavy key in the lock my heart thumped against my chest and the perspiration poured down my face. At first the bolt resisted my efforts, but at length it shot back with a great noise, which awakened Madam Rusty, who opened her bedroom window as I rushed out on to the pavement and cried "Murder!" at the same time emptying the contents of the water jug upon me.

Fear gave wings to my feet and I fled, followed by a howling crowd which grew bigger every moment and gained on me rapidly. By this time I realised that I was carrying madam's best silver tea-pot under my arm, and I wanted to drop it but dared not.

Then I found myself in the lane at Windyridge, with the squire dressed as a policeman keeping back the crowd, whilst Mother Hubbard, without her bodice, as I had seen her in the morning, took my hand--and the tea-pot--and hurried me towards the cottage. It was just in sight when Madam Rusty jumped out of a doorway in her night-cap and dressing-gown and shouted 'Bo!' waving her arms about wildly, and as I hesitated which way to turn she flung herself upon me and seized my hair in both her hands. As I screamed wildly, I saw the Cynic leap the wall in his golf suit, and woke just in time to save myself considerable embarra.s.sment.

"What was it, love?" inquired Mother Hubbard, who had been aroused by my screams and was genuinely alarmed.

"I don't quite know," I replied; "but I think the turkey was quarrelsome and could not quite hit it with the plum pudding."

Mother Hubbard composed herself to sleep again; and in order to prevent a repet.i.tion of my unhappy experience I got my books and proceeded to do my accounts.

I have not been idle by any means during these months, and my balance is quite satisfactory. I have painted quite a number of miniatures, and have prepared and sold several floral designs for book covers and decorative purposes. I see plainly that I am not likely to starve if health is vouchsafed to me, and I was never more contented in my life.

I wonder, though, what it really is that makes me so. It cannot be sufficiency of work merely, for that was never lacking in the London days; and as for friends, I have, besides Mother Hubbard, only Farmer Goodenough and the squire, and he is away and likely to be for months.

I think it is the sense of "aliveness" that makes me happy. Some folk would call my life mere existence, but I feel as if I never really lived until now; and I hanker after neither theatres, nor whist-drives, nor picture-shows, nor parties.