Kitabı oku: «By Violence», sayfa 2

II

Oliver Vorse was lying among the wood-anemones, and he was drunk. He would have looked like a monster had his condition been rare; but it was common, therefore Vorse was not abnormal, only a fool. He did not know where he was, in the pixy-path upon the wind-flowers, crushing so many with his sodden carcase, while the pure pixy-water trickled underneath. He had come the wrong way at the turning of the path; instead of ascending to the house, which was the way of difficulty, he had stepped downwards choosing the path of ease, as men will, even when sober. The state of his body was nothing, as nobody would see him except Sibley, his wife. The master was expected tomorrow, and then he would have to pretend to be a man.

The moon was young, a cradle of silver, and the stars were wrapped in sleep-compelling clouds; and all the light that there was seemed to come from the anemones which Vorse was defiling. The little white things were lanterns, retaining light, but not giving it forth, and a stickle of water shone like a shield. There was such a wonderful purity in Nature apart from the man. Everything seemed to bear the mark of beauty and holiness except him. It was out of the world in that fairy garden hanging between the cities and the clouds, and the vices of the world were out of place; and yet there was no barrier which they could not leap across.

A light appeared thick and heavy, putting out the eyes of the flowers. It wobbled down the natural terraces, weather-hewn from granite, and with it came a voice suggesting more violence, harsh and angry, not a voice of the clouds, but of the street-corner, where faces are thin and fierce, and the paving-stones seem cruel. Sibley was searching for her husband, not because she loved him, nor requiring his company for any reason except the selfish one that the loneliness above frightened her, and her small spirit quailed before the heaving moorland. Any sort of a brute was better than the God of the mountains. She stumbled over an obstacle, lowered the lantern, but it was a mass of granite carved cynically by centuries of rain into the semblance of a tombstone. Again she stumbled, and now it was the trunk of a tree, phosphorescent with rottenness. A third time she stumbled, and so found her master with the rottenness of the fallen tree, without the strength of the granite.

She kicked him, struck him with the greasy lantern, and swore.

"Get up, dirty swine. Get up, will ye? Mind what the master told yew? and he'm coming in the morning."

Oliver only growled and snored. This was his form of mysticism, and it was a kind of happiness. If master had dreams, why not he? Master could dream at one end of creation, he at the other. There was plenty of time. Sibley was only twenty-four, Oliver not much older. When life is young the end of it is a myth, and passion is the god.

There was another light down the pixy-path, very steady and soft. Had it been blue it might have been a thing of the bog, looking for the body it had thrown away, but it was white, and it flickered hardly at all, for the night was smothered up and the winds were slumbering. It came up the path with a kind of gliding rather terrible and there was not a sound around it. The master was approaching in the night. Having completed the last duty sooner than he had anticipated, he acted on the impulse. There was time to escape, so why wait for the morning? And there would be the glamour of passing through the dark towards clouds and mistland. The preparations of a man in earnest take no time. He must put a taper in his pocket, the last relic of the church he was leaving, as the night would be heavy upon the pathway, and he must walk there and see the wood-anemones in flower and feel the peace settling upon his eyelids. There was no time to be lost, for he was old, and still a child, with everything to learn.

Sibley saw the figure, and screamed, supposing it to be a spirit doing penance for past sins with the lighted candle; while her husband heaved and called for drink.

Searell stood upon the path. The wind-flowers were out, but their heads were hanging in shame; there was no spiritual life in them, they were already dead like the two black leaves upon the pear tree, and the destroyed of life was that heap of flesh upon them. He had come away from the world to forget its violence, and here it was upon his mystic pathway. He had come to find his God upon the flowers, and had found a drunken man instead.

He was calm, to Sibley he looked divine, as he placed the candle in the niche of a gaping boulder, and she wondered at his restraint. He was a god, for he had made her, had saved her from street life, and might still save Oliver if he could bear with him. They were not of his religion, they were only devil-worshippers, and yet he had stooped down and dragged them almost by violence from the rubbish-pit.

"Forgive 'en this once, master," she cried. "I'll see he don't fall again. Us didn't look vor ye till the morning, and Oliver went down, and this be how he comed back."

There was a flat rock above the pixy-water, and here Searell seated himself, saying, "Do not speak. Your voice is harsh."

For some moments the only sounds were the deep breathing of Vorse and the tinkling of the stream. The flame of the candle did not flicker, and Sibley remained as motionless, her hands clasped before her, looking down. Then Searell spoke:

"I walked along a street, and at a dark end of it a man and woman were fighting. They were young and fierce. As I came near, the man threw the woman down and thumped her in the back, I separated them by violence. They respected my profession, and did not greatly resent my interference. So there was good in them, but, like young beasts, they had run wild, and no man had tamed them. You know of whom I am speaking?"

"Yes, master, I reckon," she whispered.

"At that time they were living together, although unmarried. I told them I should be requiring a couple to attend to me and my home, and I promised to engage them if they would be legally wedded. But conditions were imposed. One of them has been broken tonight."

"It won't ever happen again, master."

"I have myself to think of. There must be selfishness," said Searell. "There is no escaping from it. If one condition is broken, another may be. You remember the other?"

"Yes, master – no children."

The words sounded harsh, in that fairy place, and they seemed to agree rather with the breathing of the drunken man than with the ringing of the stream.

"Perhaps I am hard, but I have my peace of mind to consider. A child's cry, a child's mischievous ways, would destroy it. There is no room in my house for children, and this is not the place for them. I have a search to make," he murmured. "The scream of infants would lead me far astray. You will remember?"

"Us ha' no other home, master."

"You will remember?"

"Yes, master."

"I will forget what has happened tonight," said Searell, bending from the rock, dipping his hand into the pixy-water. "Let this be a time of regeneration for us all. Do you respect a ceremony?"

"Yes, master, I reckon," she said again, though she could not understand him.

"We will lead a new life," he said, with a smile which was visible in the light of candle and lantern.

Sibley stepped forward as Oliver lifted himself with heavy movements, and muttered a half-conscious "Ask your pardon, master."

Searell brought up a little of the bright water, and sprinkled the woman, then the man, without any other sign, and with the words in his soft mystic voice, "I receive you into the new life."

Then he picked up the taper and went, leaving the man and woman afraid of him.

III

After a year in Pixyland, what was there? A garden, a place of almost unearthly beauty, and through it the master moved slowly, clad no longer in the clothes of religion, nor even in the garments of respectability; his coat sack-like, its pockets bulging with bulbs and tubers, and his hair was in white ringlets, and his hands were often in the warm earth, grubbing out furze-roots. The terrestrial paradise had been attained; down the steep slopes poured a cascade of colour, the pixy-path was alight all night with white, out of the pixy-water rose golden osmundas and the ghostly spiræa; and Searell's face was also ghostly, it was hungry, and the eyes were dull. It was not the face of the priest who had built up the mission, for that had been eager. It was not the face of the mystic who had walked up the path by candlelight, for that had been happy. It was not the face of the spiritualist who feels he is conquering the atmosphere, nor that of a dreamer. It was the face of one who was sad.

Searell had discovered, though he would not own it to himself, that lonely happiness is impossible. What was a discovery if no friend could be told of it? What was the loveliness of his garden when there was no one to share it with? What would Heaven itself be if he was there alone? There must be sympathy, and without it life is lost.

Intellect was losing its edge. He almost forgot what he had come there for. Instead of ascending towards more light he was falling into grosser darkness. He did not even dream; he was sluggish, and oblivion was over him; which must happen when a man cuts himself free from the hearts and brains of others. His cry was no longer the triumphant one of strength and self-confidence. It was the cry "Why hast Thou forgotten me?" as he walked heavily, and the weight of his own presence oppressed him; and then he would mutter aloud, "Come and see my garden. I must show you the flowers," though there was nobody to hear. That was all: he was a gardener; he wanted to show his flowers, shrubs, ferns, he wanted to delight some one with his bogplants, he longed to see admiration dawning upon a human face, love for the beautiful kindling in human eyes; and so he came to crave for human life, human words and beauty, human sympathy, even human sin and shame and violence rather than the innocence and purity and gentleness of God among the flowers.

"Master, where be I to plant this?" "Master, will ye pay these bills?" Such were the almost brutal questions around him.

He had asked for solitude; and now he longed for passion, earthly love.

It was winter, when the nights were wild and the evenings intolerable; and during one of them the sound of a quarrel reached his ears. Oliver and Sibley had not been satisfactory. If they had abstained from the vices, they had not learnt to love one another; and, as Searell listened then, he saw the violent streets and that boy and girl tussle in the dirt. He went down, and at the foot of the stairs heard the woman's angry voice, "Yew ha' ruined me"; and then the growl of Oliver, "Shut your noise. Master be moving over." Through the doorway Searell saw them, like beasts half-tamed, longing to break into their natural habits, but dreading the master's whip. Were they worse than they had been? Was it the effect of solitude upon them? Sibley had no small amusements such as women desire. Oliver had no love for his home life. It seemed to Searell that indifference was settling upon them all. He advanced into the kitchen, stood between them as he had done before, looked at the man, and noticed something new, a kind of eagerness, which he tried to suppress; then at the woman, and here too was a difference, a softer face and eyes half ashamed. Perhaps, then, they could love, and a word from him might kindle the spark into flame.

"I interfered between you once before. It was for your good."

"No, master," said Sibley.

"I think so," he said, startled by her independence and rudeness.

"It would ha' been better if yew had passed by and let we bide," she went on; and when Oliver growled his "Shut your noise," it was with less anger than usual.

"Us could ha' done what us had a mind to then," she said. "This be a prison."

"We are all in prison, if you can understand me. The walls are all round, and we cannot get over them."

"'Tis best vor volk to live as 'em be meant to," said Sibley.

And again Searell was amazed. How had this woman obtained the power and the courage to answer him? And to beat him, for he was beaten. He had no words to reply to that simple philosophy, and to the woman who appealed from his decision. He had played the God with them, had brought them out of chaos, and had given them his commandments; and he was no God, but a weak man; and they were not his children.

He went back to his books, there were no flowers except Christmas-roses and snowdrops, shivering things of winter, and tried to dream. Nothing came. It seemed to him there was less mysticism in his mistland than in the dirty streets of Stonehouse; and, while he mused, that world came knocking at his mind, calling in the dialect of Sibley, "'Tis best vor volk to live as 'em be meant to." His own body, his sluggishness and unhappiness, convicted him of error; but, if he was wrong, what of all religion which tells of a God of mysticism, and of his own in particular, which, at that very season of the year, rejoiced at the birth of a Child-creator by mysticism not through Love? And at his mind was hot, red-blooded passion, a crude and awful thing, love for those things which make men horrible, love for dirt and the roots, not for bud and bloom; and a contempt and hatred for cold morality and the spells muttered by candlelight; and the message of the flowers was this: "Through the agency of others, through the eyes of those who are loved and loving, not by the confinement of self, souls find the dawn."

"Mrs. Vorse," said Searell one day, the yellow aconites were out, the first colour of the year, and he was going to look at them, "you have changed."

Sibley had her back towards him, engaged in cleaning, and she was wearing, as she always did, the enveloping apron of the country, which hung from her shoulders and surrounded her body like a sack. He could not see the flush upon her face.

"Your voice is softer. You sing at your work. You are happy."

"I hain't, master," she whispered. "I feels, master, I wants to be happy, but I be frightened."

"Of the loneliness?"

"Not that, master. I can't tell ye, but I be frightened."

"You and your husband get along better. You are quieter. I have not heard you quarrel for some time."

"There's good in Oliver," she said.

"I thought so," he murmured. "But I have not been able to bring it out."

He went to see the aconites, but they were cold, and made him shiver. It was warm innocence he wanted, not the purity which numbed; and, down below, the slopes were naked, the path rustled with dead oakleaves, and the pixy-water was in flood. The violence of the world was there, and nothing could drive it out.

"Is your wife well, Oliver?" he asked. "I heard a sound in your room early this morning. It seemed to me she was ill."

Vorse was uprooting bracken, which is hard labour, and he made no pause when his master spoke.

"I ha' never knowed she better," he answered.

"She frets less. There is a womanliness about her now which is pleasant. You, also, have very much improved. You speak to her gently. You do not drink now?"

"Her made me give it up."

"Had I nothing to do with it?"

"No, master," said Oliver bluntly. "I couldn't ha' given it up vor yew. I did try, but I couldn't, I promised to give it up vor Sibley."

"When?"

"Months ago. Her told me something, and 'twur then I promised to give it up vor Sibley."

"What did she tell you?"

"Her had received a message from God."

These were strange words from the mouth of Oliver Vorse.

"Her took 'em from yew, master," he added apologetically.

Searell moved aside, gazing at the black snakelike fern-roots. Then he lifted up his eyes in torment. His creatures finding in the garden what he had missed, taking his God away from him! the dull Sibley his superior, reaping the harvest that he had sown! the dull Oliver reforming for her, and not for him! And he had nothing, he was alone, as much alone in his garden as in the mission-church, obeying the printed rubrics and hearing the call, "Who told you to do this? Go out and find Me, for I am in the solitudes."

"You are educating yourselves," he suggested, turning back. "You and Sibley are improving your minds by learning. I have done that much for you."