Chapter XV: I Become an Inmate of “rupert’s Folly”

I awoke, flushed and happy as a dormouse from its winter bed of leaves. The world was good again, with all its potentialities of love and freedom; the sun was somewhere seeking me; there was no ache, but the sweet ache of memory, in my whole heart and body. Locality, I have said before, has never influenced my temper. I make the only reservation now of liberty to change it at my will.

I remained some time, with my hands beneath my head, taking stock motionlessly of my new surroundings. They were odd enough. I lay near the wall, it seemed, of a sort of circular ground chamber or cellar, roofed in at an inexplicable height above me. Twice, at intervals between, projecting corbels appeared to show the one-time existence of upper floors, which, having either rotted away or been removed, had left the chamber of a height quite disproportionate with its ground dimensions. In lieu of stairs, a make-shift ladder went up into the roof at a crazy angle, and disappeared through a trap; but it started from the ground so close to a rude fireplace in the wall, that its butt was scorched, and more than one of the lower rungs snapped in its socket.

Over the floor itself were scattered tokens of some late or present occupation--a common table, a rush chair or two, battered saucepans, a greasy gridiron, and, hanging on the walls, a frowzy account of clothes. A line, stretched across a segment of the room, had once held suspended a litter of foul-washed clouts; but the string had broken, and its filthy load been kicked aside or trodden into the floor, half brick half muck, which paved the apartment.

There were no windows, but, at irregular intervals, narrow loops such as one sees in old castles; and the single ground opening was a doorway, which let in just such a smear of daylight as served to emphasise the uncleanness.

Recognising in all this the reverse of familiar, I let my wondering eyes travel round to the parts more contiguous to my bed, and so gave a little pleased start and smile. There, like guardian posts to my slumber, were the long stilts leaned against the wall, their straps hanging loose; and pendent from a nail close by was the very clown’s dress of my memory. I could have drawn it to me and kissed it; but, contenting myself with conceding to it a sigh of affection, I sank back and closed my eyes. Lying thus deliciously, half-submerged in a very nest of dry fern, and with a heavy cloak for blanket over me, I would delay luxuriously the moment of revelation; but it was very evident, I thought, that Gogo had brought me to some wrecked and deserted mill.

Suddenly, unable to rest longer, I peeped. He was going softly about the hearth, preparing something at a little fire, whose every thicker waft of smoke he would jealously dissipate with his hands. He still feared observation, then! Watching him silently, my heart welled up with a gush of love for the dear, patient, faithful monster. “Gogo!” I said softly.

He started, looked across, and came to me at once, stumping over the floor in a rapture of response. He took a stool, and, sitting on it by me, gazed eagerly into my face, his own--animal, sinful, and divine--looking from a very burning bush of stubble.

Smiling, in a drowsy warmth, I put out a hand, and let him imprison it in his own. Ah, foolish little bird, so to commit thyself to the snare of the fowler! I thought he would have killed it, and tore it back fluttering and wounded.

“O, how could you?” I cried. “I was so happy; and you have hurt me!”

He leaned in a hoarse agony to me; his breath groaned in his chest.

“O, come to me!” he implored, “while I make one mouthful of you!”

Then, all in an instant, he was sobbing, and tearing at his short hair, and crying incoherently--

“What have I done?--to wound my dear! Ride me, flog me, use me, but trust me no more. Bitter, bitter are the gods, who make a man stiff-kneed for their sport! Not love or penance for me, never, never. Never to kneel--to lie prone only for a show! O, child! it seems a little thing not to kneel, but--ah, to see others pray and love, yourself forbidden--what pity, what pity! I am the Olympian fool; I am the ass and clown. Behold my livery!”

He pointed to the dress on the wall, and hung his head and arms in a very grief of despondency. But by now my hurt and little fright were gone, and my heart touched again to softness.

“Gogo,” I said, “give it me down, please.” And he looked up wondering, and stirred and obeyed.

“This, and this, and this,” I said, “in pledge of our one-day contract before Jove, or Jehovah, when the maimed shall be made whole.”

My tears dropped on it, as I kissed it three times and gave it back to him. He received it wonderingly first, then sadly, and held it drooping over his knees.

“Whole!” he muttered. “Ay, I don’t question I shall find my legs in Avalon; but can even Jove restore the rifled flower its honey?”

Suddenly he cast himself down beside me, groaning like a bull.

“O, little maid, little maid! I am a beggar, I am a beggar; but I want no reversion of a used estate. Though my own goes lame, I am proud. Give me new-minted money, that no man has worn in his pocket, or none at all.”

For a moment the great human urgency of the creature made me falter. I owed him so much! could the devotion of my life more than repay him? But, alas! it needed but a little reflection to see the fond ridiculous picture the caricature it was. Had I the right even to risk a new generation of Gogos? I saw myself in imagination walking abroad, the proud convoyer of an uncountable number of little shock-headed Dutch tumblers. Perhaps if our Sovereign King had received that Carpenters’ Petition, and brought wooden legs into fashion, I might have been tempted; but it was still the vogue to walk on one’s own feet.

I sat up, my lips twitching perilously near laughter.

“Dear Gogo,” I said, “I am so thankful to you, and so sorry; and I would not have said or done what I did, if I had known it would disturb you so. Won’t you let me get up?”

He scrambled to his feet--ah, fie upon the unmeant cruelty of the word!--and stood knotting his great hands, while his breast heaved stormily.

“Well, I think I was mad,” he roared suddenly. “Strike me! Stamp on me! Bind me to a pillar, and let the eternal remorse batten on my vitals! Whatever the spark at my tail, it started me up like a rocket: and behold me at the end, a blackened and empty case!”

He entreated me with his hands--

“Ah, the pagan sight of you! Ah, your wild hair, growing from the fern or melting into it! Ah, your face, the very flowering of a hamadryad! It wrought a frenzy in my brain. Forgive me, forgive me! And I will serve you seven times seven years, for the promise only to be godfather to your last--your Benjamin!”

He sank down on the stool, and, burying his face in his hands, was silent.

I thought a practical rescue of the situation best, and rising from my bed, went to bestir myself over the fire, which was burning redly. Moreover, a delectable odour had already reached my nostrils from the little caldron he had hung there, and whose contents were beginning to inspire me with a very lively curiosity.

I turned to the poor sufferer.

“Gogo, please, it is very sad; but if I am to go on being a hamadryad I must be fed. Gogo, what is in the pot?”

He lifted his head, with a sigh.

“Snipe,” he said, most tragically.

“Ah! What else?”

“A hare, a partridge, teal.”

“O!”

“Onions, potatoes, carrots.”

“O--o!”

“Larks, chestnuts”--

“Be quiet, lest I cry. You are the best of creatures, and I am the hungriest.”

“Eat what you will. It is my _pot au feu_--nothing finished before the next is added.”

“I can wait no longer. You are the hermit of hermits. Who is your commissariat-general?”

“Who but the child your little friend.”

“My”--

“Miss Grant.”

“Patty!”

He had arisen, and come across to me.

“She lays it in a hollow tree, twice a week, and twice a week I go down by night and fetch it.”

I stood gaping, staring at him.

“Gogo! Where are we?”

“In ‘Rupert’s Folly.’”

“In--!”

I gave a little cry. He seized me by the wrist, and dragged me towards the opened door.

“O, Gogo!” I choked, struggling and resisting, “we shall be seen.”

“What does it matter if we are,” he said fiercely, “since you loathe me?”

I wept and fondled him, in an agony of fear.

“I don’t loathe you. You are my one stay and comfort. Gogo! Will you give me back to that terror?”

He fell squatting at my feet--it was his substitute for kneeling--and clasped his arms about my skirt.

“Beast!” he groaned; “I neither meant nor could help it. To play upon your fears!--To taste love by deputy!--O, forgive me, forgive me!”

“Yes,” I said quietly, “for the second time and always, because of what you have done. But I fear for myself now, and shall go on fearing. Let me go--O, Gogo, let me escape into the woods, and break my heart on frost and hunger rather than wrong.”

Still clutching at me, with a look of horror, as if he felt the shadow of his last hope eluding him, he scrambled erect again.

“Hunger!” he said. “Think of the snipe and teal! Listen to me, Diana. Before God, I will not offend again. Base, black coward that I am! Before God, Diana!”

I gazed at him intently.

“Why have you brought me here, Gogo?”

“Because,” he answered, “there was no nearer and surer refuge.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Ah, child! But you have not heard the story.”

“Well,” I murmured, reassured, though still shy of him, “if you will keep your promise and be good, you shall tell it me by and by.”

He gave a great sigh, and, gently disengaging myself, I stole to the door, while he followed me with his agitated eyes, and peered out. It was Shole, indeed, and the familiar village green that I saw beneath me, looking down the long wintry slope. Quiet and deserted in the chill mists of dawn, no view apparently less tragic, less harmful, could have greeted me. I returned to my companion, who received me with a pathetic relief. He was quite pale and trembling.

“If my arms had the reach of my heart!” he said. “Well, you have come back; and so--for breakfast.”

“Patty’s pot,” said I merrily. “The dear shall put new heart into me, as her wont was.”

He had bread, and some bottles of wine, a little of which I drank mixed with water. It was the loveliest, most intoxicating meal; and, when it was over, full of a new grace I bid Gogo to my side.

“Now,” said I, “tell me your story.”

“Well, first,” he said with a grunt, “for your safety here. It was the astrologer’s, and now is ours. He was carried away in a thunderstorm, on a red cloud.”

“What do you mean, Gogo, please?”

“I repeat the common superstition. Anyhow, he is gone, and the place is haunted and avoided since. Not a clown but myself will come within a mile of it; and as for me, I have lived here for a month undisturbed already.”

“You? But I know where the poor wretch was taken, and where he died.”

“In the asylum, eh? It is what I supposed; and the red earl comes to his own. Tell me about it.”

“By and by. I want to know first what brought you here.”

“The wish to lose myself and be lost, where I could devise a plan for your rescue.”

“You knew where I had been taken, then?”

“No perspicacity of mine. It was the common report. You had lost your head over love unrequited, and it had become necessary to confine you for a while.”

“O, indeed! Go on.”

“I hear your little white teeth clicking. Rest content. You are avenged: he has married her.”

I jumped to my feet.

“He! de Crespigny?”

“Yes.”

I burst into a shriek of laughter.

“They were reconciled, then? O, the dear particular lady! Does he wipe his boots on her? Did he take his love-potion very strong on the wedding night?”

“Very strong, no doubt,” said Gogo. And then suddenly he clasped my skirt, and buried his face in it.

“He would; it was his way,” he muttered. “O, girl, spare me and my unhappiness--my broken dreams! Did you not know? I had always a struggle to keep him from it. And now he will go down, down.”

“Yes,” I said, “while she clings to his legs, as fools drown together.”

“Would you not have had her try to save him?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“Ah! You are vindictive.”

“Don’t you hear me laughing?”

“Yes; like the devil.”

“Is it? I should be mad indeed if I could applaud her. Do you bear in mind what she has done to me? She is of the sort who make cruelty their pander--a frowsy, garterless Jezebel. O, how I hate prudery! For five years I longed to open the windows on it, and let the air in, and whatever wholesome little devils beside. I declare I loathe myself to be of her sex. Touch me, Gogo. Am I the same, or different? O, to be sure! I wish her joy of her bargain--and him.”

“She will pay. But for Noel, weak child of genius--leave me the sorrow of my broken hopes, Diana.”

“And nothing else? Why did he not meet me?”

“He had not the courage at the last moment.”

“And so, having cut the ground from under me, he stepped back, and instigated madam to her little _coup de theâtre_, I suppose, and helped her to push me over the precipice. And you--you sympathised with and abetted him?”

“Ay,” he said sorrowfully: “witness my long exile here, gnawing my fingers in the hungry moonlight.”

I sank upon the ground in a passion of tears, and he mingled his grief with mine.

“Child, I had loved him; and I had but to learn how he had abandoned you, to leave him. I cursed him--cursed de Crespigny. Will Jove forgive me? What matter, if I have saved you?”

I lifted my drowned eyes and agonised arms.

“Take me to Patty,” I cried, “and let me weep my soul out on her kind little heart.”

He shook his head.

“What!” I said; “you will not?”

“She must not even know,” he said. “I could not trust her anxious love. She must rest as she is, aware of my endless scheming, but not of its fruits. Some day, perhaps. And in the meanwhile my lady is gone honeymooning; there is no hope of appeal to her. A breath would redeliver you to your fate, and perhaps a worse. Come, and tell me all you have suffered, poor mistress.”

I crept to his feet, and in broken tones gave him the history of my misery, to the day, to the hour when he had appeared before me.

“And you have not told me,” I said, “how that was.”

“Once,” he answered, “after I had hidden and settled here, I was spying through the telescope above--(Ay,” he interrupted himself, to my exclamation, “they could be bold to capture the dying sorcerer, but to meddle with his tools was beyond their courage)--when I was witness of a characteristic little _affaire_ on the green below. There were a stilt-walker and his wench--a couple of the wandering tribe--a long-legged bird of passage and his little _cocotte_ of bright plumage. I could see her glitter where I stood--could see her spangles, and the ribbons float from her tambour as she danced. And then suddenly my lord viscount was on the scene. He had been sporting, and carried his gun. He had keepers with him (they were his own; not, as might have seemed apter to his wits, Dr. Peel’s); and his dogs ‘pointed’ at the gipsy, I suppose. Anyhow, there was an altercation; and the next I saw was the clown tipped up by his wooden heels, and lying prone. They carried off the girl--willing or unwilling, it would have needed a stronger telescope than the astrologer’s to discern--and presently the poor stunned fool came to his senses and sat up. I could see him try to gather his wits with his hand, plucking at his brow. He was alone, who had been in company. Where were the rest--his ravished mate, and the mob for whom she had tripped and sung? By and by I saw him, with many starts and delays, unbuckle his stilts, and, having shouldered them, hobble with slow, painful steps towards the village. He disappeared, and till night I sat thinking of him, and of the ‘Contrat Social,’ which M. Rousseau wrote for the angels, and which, therefore, you would not understand, Diana, though, for all my better sense, I adore you. About dark I descended into the woods at the back yonder; and there I came upon my stilt-walker seated dying against a tree. Yes, he was dying. His fall had shattered some ribs, and driven one into his lung, and death was already thawing the white snow on his face into patches of blue. I carried him up to the tower, and eased what I could of his agony, and received his last message to the world. It is a callous world, this world of ’87; a world of serf and Satan and Christianity crushed between. But I tell you I would rather give that message than receive it: would rather be Gogo, the clown and pariah, than the Viscount Salted with all his prospective acres. Well, he died, and I took a spade, and buried him at the foot of the tree where he had rested. Pray God it bears wholesome acorns, for why should he wish to poison the swine his brothers? Then I inherited his property; and a thought, an inspiration, occurred to me how I might use it. Was I not wont to stump the country, like a halting orator? I could stump it to higher purpose now--the purpose of your redemption. Sure the spirit of the dead clown would uphold me, for was it not privilege I fought? So, with no great practice necessary, I became a stilt-walker; and presently ventured afield, starting by night, reaping my little harvest of pence in the far villages by day, and under cover of dark returning. Gradually I contracted my circuit, hovering about your prison; and so, once upon a time, peering over the wall in a wintry evening, spied your figure come and go in the light of a high room. It might be yours! I must dare all, and cast the die. Well, Fortune favours--the fortunate.”

He ended, to a little silence.

“Poor Gogo,” I said softly. “It is true, I do believe, that I am her spoilt doll.”

“And I,” he said, “her Dutch tumbler.”