Chapter XVIII: I Begin Another Folly

I opened my eyes to a sense of utter restfulness and peace. A feeling of green isolation, of a quiet and guarded security, such as not all Gogo’s watchfulness could accomplish for me in the tower, came instantly to comfort the first startled shock of my waking. Little demure clouds drifted over the skylight; I heard a faint twitter of birds on the hillside; there were woodland berries and flaming leaves in my room; pictures, too; and a dozen pretty attentions to reassure me. Sure he must have made very certain of his capture before he decorated the cage so handsomely. And for how long, pray, had he held his hand and aloof, biding his opportunity? He must have kept his secret well, at least, for I had never known a hint of his presence.

I smiled, and closed my eyes again. It was a most endearing thought, the thought of that brotherly haunting, while I had been bemoaning my abandonment by all the world. There was still that in me, then, to attract admiration, to ensure my affinity with the strong and shapely. I was sick to death of malformations, mental and bodily. What had become of him? I had not reached the end of my resentment, but I did not wish him to think it insurmountable; and I was certainly curious to learn how far my romantic memory of him was justified.

And, in the meantime, where was I? in what remote eyrie of the green forest? For all I could see, I might be imprisoned in a well.

I rose, and, after making my toilette, had paused undecided, wondering what was to come next, when I heard his voice, very mock-humble, at the trap--

“Little sister, will you come down to breakfast?”

The blood thrilled in my temples, but I hardened my heart, and answered “Yes,” as frigid as a nun.

He flung up the hatch at once, and for the first time I saw the ladder going down into candlelight, whence a smell of warm dust and tallow rose to my nostrils. He descended before me, and I followed, into the leanest of little cellars, with a rough board on trestles in it and a stool or two. The rafters were hung with cobwebs; there were a couple of dismal dips in horn sconces on the walls; a closed door showed dimly at the farther end, and that was all.

I turned in amazement upon my companion, to find him regarding me with a curious expression. But it sobered at once before my gaze. It was not, indeed, now I came to con him, quite the expression of my memory. The sweet humour of it had fallen, I could have thought, upon more mocking times. There was a look in his face as if he had got to love himself the better, the worse he had been depreciated by others; as if injustice had somewhat crooked the old lines of chivalry. But for the rest, he was as bronzed and comely as ever, as lithe and muscular; and the common woodman’s dress (coarse grogram jacket and leggings to the hips), which, whether for convenience or disguise, he had adopted, showed off his fine figure to perfection.

“Where is it, the breakfast?” I asked.

“Cooking, by Portlock,” said he. “I’m waiting to pull it through.”

He stood stooping, indeed, and holding a string in his hand, by what looked like a black gap at the foot of the wall beyond the table.

“To pull it through!” I cried out. “Are we to eat it here?”

He turned his head, as he leaned, to scan me.

“We can take it up under the skylight, if you like,” said he.

“My room!”

A violent retort was on my lips; but something in his face warned me, and it died unuttered. For all his affected humility, there was a masterfulness here I had not guessed. I realised on the instant that I did not know, had never known him. It was not altogether a disagreeable awakening.

I sat down, silent, on one of the stools; and he addressed me again quietly from his place--

“Little sister, you have committed yourself to my care--very properly, I think, and very properly trustful of an elder brother. Do you know my age? I am thirty-four--just double your seventeen; and at least worldly-wise enough to direct you.”

“That is all very well,” I said, half stifled; “but why have you brought me here?”

“Have I not told you?” he answered. “To save you from a wolf, who would have set his teeth in my little white lamb.”

“No, you have not told me,” I cried; “and I am no more lamb of yours than his; and anyhow, I had my shepherd already.”

“A poor shepherd,” he said. “Witness his watchfulness!”

I bit my lip, and said no more. For a moment I hated myself and him--his specious reasonings, which had led me to abandon my honest, good comrade and saviour. While I sat dumb, a low whistle sounded through the wall; and instantly he turned to me.

“You do not like your dining-parlour?” he said. “But, believe me, it has a thousand conveniences of privacy, of which here is not the least.”

And, with the word, drawing on the string he held in his hand, he brought a tray into light. It was packed with comestibles--bread, and honey, and collops of venison that smelt royally; but, when he transferred these to the table, I had no stomach for them, and pushed away the plate he offered me.

“What! You won’t eat?” he said.

“I can’t breakfast in a sewer.”

“Very well.”

He fell to himself, without further delay, and with plenty of appetite. I watched him out of the corners of my eyes, half maddened already by the abstinence I had imposed on myself. He was dressed like a forester, I have said; and now I observed that he affected the manners of a forester, consciously, it would seem, effacing in himself the more gentle observances. It may have been an effort to him; but, anyhow, he tore his bread and gnawed his bones with the air of one bred to the soil--with a set of perfect white teeth, too, it must be conceded. And, while he despatched, throwing his litter on the board, he continued talking to me fitfully.

“Yes,” he said, “it is very convenient for such as we, who desire not only to save our labour, but our lives certainly, and our self-respect if possible. You don’t ask me where we are?”

I shook my head in indifference.

“Well,” he said, “you must know some time, when you might be more curious; and short explanations suit me best. We are immured, child, in a wall; and so long as we don’t betray ourselves, nothing can betray us--not even into an acknowledgment of what one of us may owe to the other.”

“I am grateful to you,” I said coldly, and said no more. The truth is, I was hardly listening to him, so intense had grown my desire that he would coax me at last into eating something.

He laughed, and, pushing his plate away, settled his fists on his hips, and began, like a satisfied man, to troll a soft little song. I could stand it no longer.

“Give me a little piece,” I said, “and I will show you how collops should be eaten.”

“You mean,” he answered at once, “that you will show me how to behave. But I have done with all that hypocrisy.”

He rose with the words, having finished, and, to my anger and astonishment, cleared the board, piecemeal and deliberately, and, piling all on the tray, gave the signal for its withdrawal. It disappeared instantly. Then he returned to his stool, and, pulling out pipe and tobacco, began to smoke placidly. Fury overcame me.

“Have you not forgotten to ask my permission?” I cried.

“Punctilio in a sewer!” he answered, puffing; “that is hardly to be expected.”

I rose at once.

“I wish to be by myself,” I said.

He took his pipe from his lips.

“You know the way. If you object to mine, there is the ladder in your room--and the skylight--and all the forest to choose from”--and he began to smoke again.

I left him, without another word, and, ascending to my closet, dropped the trap with a slam. It was an outrage beyond endurance. I threw myself upon my bed, and wept tears of rage. What a fool I had been, what a fool, to commit my destinies to a savage! I had thought romance had come to find me, walking on two feet in the starlight, and all the time it had been leaving me, stumping sorrowfully away on its poor wooden legs. My soul gushed out in fresh mourning for the dear monster I had wronged.

More than once I rose, in the full determination to fly and rejoin him. As often, the hopelessness of my position cast me down again. I had no idea where I was; I dared not face the prospect of wandering, lost and alone, in those savage solitudes. The wretch had played his part well--and for what? Why for me.

The thought, at last, quieted my grief--brought me to a little reason. After all, I had been cold with him, something less than grateful. What had brought him to repudiate the customs of his caste? I fell into a fit of speculation. Perhaps it was in scorn of an order that had basely disinherited him. His words had seemed to imply so. Perhaps he had meant no more than to read me a lesson in feeling.

I sighed. I was wilful and imperious, I knew, I said to myself. I had been spoilt a little, perhaps, by admiration, and my better qualities obscured. It was a wonder he could have seen anything to covet in me. Was it my part to convince him of his mistake?

I sighed again, and then rose and walked about. Every detail of the tiny chamber was witness to the loving expectations he had formed of me. What was I to do? How climb down and keep my place in my own eyes?

He meant to leave me to resolve the question for myself, it appeared. All day I waited and hungered, and not a sound of his footstep approaching did I hear. At length, when it was dark, quite desperate I took my candle, and, softly opening the trap, listened a moment, and descended. The cellar was empty; only the board and stools, and nothing else. I went swiftly scanning it, holding the light overhead. I tried the door at the end; it was fast locked. Unless he had gone out that way, there was no accounting for his disappearance.

All at once I heard the thin mutter of voices--his and another’s, I was sure. Seeking to localise them, I came upon the low hole in the wall through which he had dragged the breakfast tray. I stooped, and hearing, I thought, the whisper clearer, sunk to my knees and looked through. Here was a passage, I found to my surprise, wide enough for a man to creep by; and, beyond, it seemed, a faintly lighted room. As I bent, I heard the chairs of the talkers drag, as if the two were rising, and, fearful of discovery, fled on tiptoe to my room once more, and, noiselessly closing the trap, stood panting and rigid by it. To what dark mystery was I being made the innocent and unconscious accessory? I felt suddenly bewildered and terrified. The light in my hand swayed and leaped, evoking gusty phantoms on the wall. A wind seemed to boom in my brain. I was really light-headed with hunger, I think. Presently, from sheer giddiness, I threw myself on my bed once more, and fell into a sort of waking stupor.

In the midst, after how long I know not, a voice reached me. He was summoning me, if I needed it, to supper. If I needed it! What cruelty! He would not give my pride a chance. Half in fear, half fury, I turned my face to the wall, and did not answer.

He wasted no time on me. I heard him withdraw in a moment, whistling. I had hoped he would think me escaped; would venture in, perhaps, panic-struck, to encounter the full torrent of my indignation. But he showed no concern whatever. He felt secure of his wretched little trapped bird, I supposed. And he was justified--was justified. Then I cried as I had never cried before. He might have had some patience, some consideration. At last, quite famished and exhausted, I fell asleep.

I awoke, in full day, to find him standing over and regarding me. I felt weak, and too utterly subdued to resent his presence as it deserved. There was no pity in his eyes even then. I closed my own, feeling my throat swell.

“I thought you might be hungry,” he said. “Are you?”

At that, for all my efforts, the tears came.

“Don’t you know?” I said. “But I suppose you think to starve me into submission.”

“Submission to what?” said he. “You were offered food, and refused it. But I have brought you some bread.”

He held out to me a dry crust. I turned from it in anger.

“O, very well!” said he, and was returning it to his pocket.

Then physical need conquered me. I could not face the thought of another day’s starvation. I sat up, and held out my hands.

“If you will be so cruel,” I said. “Let me have it, please.”

He gave it to me at once, stood by with a sort of sombre smile on his face, while I appeased my ravenous first hunger.

“That’s right,” he said. “Are you better? There was room for improvement.”

I did not answer.

“Well, are you quite good now?” said he.

My throat began to swell again.

“You treat me like a child!” I cried.

“Yes,” he said, “because it’s only little girls who quarrel with their bread and butter.”

“Haven’t you punished me enough already?” I said.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “But, if more’s wanted, I hope it will be with less smart to myself.”

I laughed through my tears.

“O, I mean nothing sentimental,” said he; “but only that, _my_ room being next to yours, and the common ladder to both conducting through _your_ room, I’ve been forced by your wilfulness to sleep all night below in a chair. But we’ll remedy that somehow with a screen, and so settle any question of precedence in going to bed.”

I stared at him, half fearfully.

“Why have you brought me here?” I whispered.

“What! again?” he said, shaking a finger at me.

“It seems, for no reason but to humble and abuse me. I was happy with poor Gogo.”

“Damn Gogo!” he said, in such a sudden heat that it brought a cry from me. Then, all in an instant, to my amazement and distress, he had fallen on his knees beside the bed.

“What is Gogo to you, or you to him?” he cried, in a low, intense voice. “Has he ruined himself for you as I have done? Has he risked death, destruction, madness? pined for you in dreams, and plotted to gain you waking, as I have ever since you, a child, took my reason by storm, and bound it to you by golden chains?”

His fervour and passion quite overwhelmed me. I could only cower, trembling, before him.

“What do you mean?” I whispered. “How have you ruined yourself--for my sake?”

He caught at my hands. He was breathing fast and thick.

“O, child, you don’t know!” he cried--“the peril that has dogged you--the love that has foreseen and provided--not for a moment the truth of how my heart bled to hurt you. Now--now! O, will you not come to me and hear?”

“No,” I whispered, in a hurry of emotion. “For pity’s sake leave me! I will come to you presently: I will, indeed.”

He rose to his feet at once, commanding himself. He was all changed--softened and transfigured. I felt swimming on the edge of a whirlpool--fighting giddily against some helpless, rapturous plunge to which I was being urged. I longed only for breathing time--some little space to be alone in.

He went and stood by the trap: “I will wait for you,” he said hoarsely; and so descended, closed it behind him, and was gone.

When, in an hour, I rejoined him, he was pacing the cellar like a caged wolf. He uttered a glad exclamation upon seeing me, and took my hand and led me to a stool. He was himself again, but with a new strange wistfulness in his gaiety.

“You will not mind the ‘sewer’ now?” said he. “And presently you will ask me everything, and I will tell you.”

He drew in our breakfast, by the same method as before; and I could at last enjoy my collops with a free conscience and appetite. Then, our meal over, he drew his stool beside me, and, without offering to smoke, started upon his relation.