Chapter V: Act III: Scene I.--HEROIC (2)

“That night I saw a strong light pouring through the keyhole and the chinks in the wood. While I looked the door came open, and there was old Deborah, standing in her nightdress, with a candle in her hand, and the passage round her was filled with light and a fragrant odour. She made me a sign that I should not be afraid and said, ‘There is a stranger waiting for you below.’ So I got up, and wrapped a cloak round me, and went down. There was light everywhere, but I could not see whence it came. Standing in the hall I saw an old man, clad in white, with hair flowing upon his shoulders, and holding a great pitcher between his hands. He came to me, when I stopped in fear, and spoke in a low sweet voice, ‘I am bidden to return you these. They are your tears.’ But when I held out my hands to take the pitcher it dropped and I found myself standing among pearls, and it was dark, and the old man was gone. Then I awoke and discovered that I had been walking in my sleep.

“Do you not dream, dear, in your London home? Do you never see me, bending low, drawing my hair across your face? Do you not hear me calling? Cannot you feel my lips near yours in sleep? Am I never with you? Oh, my love, I am there. Look, and you shall see me. Call, and I will answer. Put out your hand, and I will touch it. What has space to do with love? There is nothing between us, but the will of God. I am yours, beloved, and you are mine until these shadows pass away.”

There the book fell, and it seemed to Conway that an invisible hand had struck it out of his. He rose, leaving the journal lying open as it had fallen, and hurried from the room. A gloom filled the passage, and the house was full of horror, resounding with the sufferings of its past inhabitants, and dripping with their tears. His hand closed upon the damp balustrade, and the rotten wood exuded moisture like a sponge. A minute later the owner, but not the master, of the Strath was speeding through the garden, his being reaching out to find an affinity, as embryonic life must grope into the darkness for its promised soul.

The deluge had ceased. Milky rivulets bubbled down the chalk road and dark clouds scudded across the hills, while Conway hastened in the direction of Kingsmore, with Winifred Hooper’s piteous voice still sounding in his ears. When he came near the grass-filled road which led to Queensmore he thought he saw her. She reached scarcely to his shoulder, the pretty pale maid, and over her white forehead the fair hair clustered and tumbled into tendrils round her ears and neck. There was a scar upon her delicate wrist, and she limped slightly as she walked from the sign-post downwards. Her voice was exceedingly plaintive, and the words caught in her throat with the sound of a sob. Her eyes were large and blue, like two corn-flowers upon white satin, and her features were small and very frail. They quivered when the wind met them.

On the far side of the hills a more serious dreamer was at that moment shaking out his umbrella in the porch of a little farm-house, while its dainty bedecked mistress implored him to wait until the rain had passed, and insisted upon retaining a precious bundle of manuscript--of which she could understand no single word--that she might study it alone. And the handsome dreamer remained yet another hour, until the watery sun broke through the clouds and tinged the mist with red, and when he departed the manuscript which he left behind was not so precious as it had been.

At Kingsmore the sun was shining through the rain. A bow was bending across the sky, one end of its span over the ruins of Queensmore, the other filling a chalk-pit with coloured vapour. Mr. Price assumed one of his shameful overcoats, a slouch hat, and long boots, and went out upon the farm to poke about in ditches and free obstructed drain-pipes. Mrs. Neill was upstairs, writing ungrammatical letters. Flora roamed aimlessly about the house, yawning for dulness, and well able to appreciate the saying of Chilo the sage, that one of the three most difficult things in life is to make a profitable use of leisure time.

Finally she wandered into the study, a room forbidden to her sex, therefore the more attractive, and stood aghast at its untidiness. Mr. Price was the most unmethodical man incarnate. Upon his writing-desk were farming-reports, parish-magazines, bundles of twine, sermons, cigarettes, horse-shoes, theological works, and samples of wool. More books were piled upon a central table, novels, bibles, philosophical works, and agricultural digests, thrown together with bags of grain, much of which was scattered over the carpet, and eggs dated in blue pencil. The fireplace was filled with rubbish, an old saddle, and a broken reaping-hook. The single armchair was piled with horse-cloths. The pictures on the walls, chiefly framed photographs of horses and landscapes, were hanging awry and begrimed with dust. An open work of Josephus was covered with cartridges, and a brace of pigeons, shot in the early morning, were staining the right reverend bishop’s latest charge. The remaining chairs were occupied with a jumble of tools, coats, and hats. Boots and guns were lying about the carpet. A bust of Shakspere supported a leather shooting-cap; and a little oak desk of ecclesiastical design held a couple of soiled collars, an incomplete copy of a book of common prayer tied together with string, a flask half filled with sherry, some candle-ends, and a half-dozen unanswered letters.

“No one would imagine uncle was well off,” Flora murmured, moving through the confusion, with her skirts gathered round her. “I wonder how much he loses every year on this stupid farm. It would be much more sensible if he put by the money for me to spend later on.”

She approached the window and pushed it open; but while shaking some rain-drops off the back of her hand footsteps became audible upon the wet gravel. She knew it was not her uncle’s tread, and looking out saw Conway, his garments splashed with chalky mud, and his face flushed by the wind.

She was at the door before he could ring. He came up, and said quickly, but solemnly, as though it were a matter of the last importance, seizing her hand and looking into her eyes, “There is a change to-day.”

The girl flushed, because she saw a crisis impending. Conway was altogether different; younger, fresher, better-looking. There was not a trace of nervousness in his manner.

“Won’t you come in?” she said. “How wet you are! Uncle is out, but will be back soon, and then we will have tea. You are right about the change. But we agricultural people wanted this rain.”

“It is the Strath,” he exclaimed. “The change is there.”

Flora looked round, with a very uncomfortable feeling. There was not a sound in the house, except the ticking of a big clock in the hall.

“Come in,” she repeated.

“I cannot quite remember what has happened,” Conway went on rapidly, his eyes fixed stupidly upon her. “I want you to come back with me. The rain has stopped. I want to show you a room in my house, a room with a blocked up window. I think you will recognise it.”

“Mr. Conway,” Flora exclaimed. “Do you know what you are talking about?”

“I have something to show you there. I have made a discovery, and I must share it with you. Is it not Cicero who says, ‘Were a man to be carried up to Heaven, he would receive little pleasure from the scene, if there were none to whom he might relate his experience?’”

“I cannot talk to you while you are in this state,” said Flora.

“Then will you come with me to Queensmore? We can cross by Deadman’s Hill. I can tell you everything there, but here I cannot remember things.”

“If you have anything to say to me I can hear it here,” Flora replied. “Mother is in the house,” she added. “But, if you are going to stay--come in.”

“You want to sit down?” said Conway. “Your ankle pains you still?”

The strong-minded girl looked at the speaker in dismay. This was sheer madness.

“I have not hurt my ankle,” she said.

“It must have been some time ago,” he muttered.

“Mr. Conway, if you will take my advice you will live no longer in the Strath,” Flora said strongly. “Remember what happened to your uncle there. They have never been able to discover who killed him. No stranger could have entered Thorlund without being observed. It is a horrible place.”

Conway shook his head, perplexed at her argument. The Strath was to him a Paradise.

“That is only because you are not there,” he answered. “Hooper is dead now, and the house is yours. The Reeds were always interlopers. I want you to take possession of the Strath at once.”

“You want me to have the Strath?” exclaimed Flora with a laugh.

“It waits for you,” he replied.

“And its master?” she said.

“There is no master. I am its servant, and yours.”

“You have made a quaint proposal, Mr. Conway,” the girl said flippantly. “If the Strath were mine I would take uncle’s advice and have it down; and if you were my servant--well, I might perhaps want to give you notice and engage another. I think you had better not stay,” she went on. “You are not yourself. I am sure you do not know what you have been saying.”

“I cannot enjoy life alone,” cried Conway.

“Is Mr. Drayton so unsociable? Give up the Strath, Mr. Conway. Take my advice--and another house, before it is too late.”

Then, as Conway still evinced no inclination either to enter the house or to move away, Flora unsympathetically shut him out.

Scene IV.--SENTIMENTAL COMEDY

Praise undeserved is satire in disguise.--_Broadhurst_.

Implicit faith had never become rooted in Dr. Berry’s mind. He had sought ordination because “out of these Convertites there is much matter to be heard and learned,” and the disposition of his mind towards retirement seemed to him a call sufficient. He believed that it was necessary to pay tribute for the delights of Nature, the flowers, the trees, and the sight of the sun. This was a debt which might be discharged by accommodating the will to that of the higher influences, and by living in tune with the unseen.

The scholar was gentle, charitable, and forgiving. He would have emptied his pockets to benefit an unworthy beggar, and have travelled far out of his way to relieve suffering, and yet in many things he remained more ignorant than a child.

During the past twenty years he had changed, both outwardly and inwardly. The greater part of his time had been spent in the imaginative world within the influence of the Strath, until the day had come when he could not clearly distinguish between shadow and substance. Gradually the tension between mind and body had relaxed while the light across the past had become correlatively stronger. He could not give up the Strath, nor was he able to understand the dangers which threatened him there.

His friendship with Maude had introduced another change into his strange existence. He had been very near the borderland when she had come to signal him back to the material world. He had however passed too far away ever to return as a rational being. He could only look back. And she could not advance to him, because she was made of stuff which would not float across the gulf which spread between them. He was deceived, and she was dazzled. He knew that he wanted to be near her, and listen to the silly prattle, which by process of filtration through his brain became wisdom. Her mind throbbed in response to his; she, he believed, was filled with the divine fire of poetry; they met, he assured himself, upon common ground.

“But that’s not real,” she exclaimed, breaking in upon his reading; and he paused to set a query against that line.

“And that jingles.”

He pencilled upon the margin the words, “More dignity required.”

“That’s heavenly!”

And happily he marked the verse “Good.”

Maude was only speaking whatever came into her head, lolling among cushions, eating chocolate, twisting her pretty hair round slender pink-tipped fingers, and thinking how handsome he looked with the sunlight upon his head.

When she informed him that her husband was coming down on Saturday, she was a little disappointed when he absently remarked, “Indeed.” She would have been astounded had she known that he did not even consider the affinity she had so plainly suggested. Husband to him was a word, such as man or woman. Had Mr. Juxon entered that room, the scholar would have greeted the financier with his invariable courtliness, and have proceeded to appropriate Maude to himself as before.

“I’m coming to Church on Sunday,” said Maude triumphantly, as though the idea appeared to her worthy of a reward for originality.

“I will, in that case, select a sermon which I am sure will interest you,” came the grave reply. “A careful inquiry into the nature of the Bacchanalian Mysteries.”

“It sounds nice,” said she dubiously.

“I will have cushions placed for you in the front seat underneath the pulpit.”

“And I’ll wear my new hat,” she rattled joyously. “How about the donkeys? Where shall I put them up?”

“There is a small stable at the rectory. I will tell the sexton to wait for you by the lich-gate.”

“The what gate?” said Lady Ignorant.

“The gate of the churchyard. We still call it by the Anglo-Saxon name.”

“Oh yes,” said Maude, reaching towards the bell. “Now we will have supper. You will stop for supper.”

Sunday morning there was a jingling of silver bells in Thorlund valley, and Maude made her entry in a pink and white hat and a radiant costume. A stout man was packed into the cart with her, he who provided for her luxuries, and received in return upon that particular day the assurance that he was crushing her dress, added to instructions that he should make himself as small as nature would permit. Mr. Juxon had pointed out the propriety of accompanying his wife to church.

The stockbroker had few natural advantages. He was neither elegant nor learned; but he was very true to his wife and sincere in his love for her. Indeed she was everything to him. He had made the mistake of giving way to her always, and at the outset had failed to show her that without his purse she could do nothing. Juxon was not a saint; he did not object to a certain amount of chicanery in the transaction of business; but in private life he was thoroughly upright. He had caught Psyche in his hand, and when she struggled he let her go, lest he should damage the beauty of her wings.

Dr. Berry came down to the porch and entered with them, retaining Maude’s hand in his affectionate manner, and grasping the arm of her husband as he walked between them to their cushioned pew. The stockbroker’s eyes were upon him, but the rector did not feel them. Both men were perfectly honest in their different ways. The scholar made no secret of his admiration for Maude. The husband was mistrustful, but when Dr. Berry left them, after an invitation to luncheon, his suspicions gave way to wonder. Either this learned man was the simplest soul incarnate or a consummate knave. The latter supposition was reduced to an absurdity by one glance at the pale face uplifted in the pulpit. Then the unpleasant thought occurred that fault, if fault there was, lay entirely with his wife. He looked at her. The sunlight was slanting across the little church, and in the midst of a dusty beam sat Maude, a vision of innocence in pink, her head tilted back, her lips apart, her ears filled with the music of Dr. Berry’s rich tones. There was no colour in the stained windows to be compared with hers; there was no cherub weeping, or flambeau-waving, over the recumbent effigies of the Hoopers more modest or free from guile.

The rector’s sermon was paganism from beginning to end. It was an account of the birth and early history of the drama. He began by remarking upon the prevalence of mankind to bow down before the works of their own hands; to worship the seen, in preference to the unseen. He pointed out that the drama in its original form was the direct result of idol-worship; and not only the drama, but all the arts--sculpture, painting, poetry, and architecture--came into existence, and were inspired, by the worship of false gods.

Being unable to form any clear notion of divinity, men endeavoured to represent the subjects of their thoughts under the human form.

The divinity would need a dwelling-place among them; therefore they built temples.

He would require their gratitude and worship; and so poetry came into being, also the music and dance which accompanied it. A hymn accompanied by music was the first state of the dramatic performance.

Such exhibitions were invariably connected with the celebration of religious duties; and the theatre in which they were performed was a temple dedicated to Bacchus. In the earliest times it was the custom for the entire population of a city to meet together in some public place, and praise the gods with songs and dances. These songs were martial, but tinged with religious feeling; and the god to whom they were usually offered was Apollo. They were accompanied by the lyre, because Apollo was not only the god of the sun, but the god of music also. Later this religion became slightly altered, and moon-worship was introduced into Greece, very possibly from Egypt. Then Bacchus, or Dionysus, was adopted as the sun-god, in place of Apollo, and Demeter his sister became the moon-goddess. It was a natural transition in a wine-producing country. The sun ripened the grapes, and Bacchus was the god of wine. Demeter was the earth which grew the vine. So the Bacchic festivals in honour of the wine-god came into being; the lesser festival, accompanied by the song and dance, and procession of the fig-wood phallus, was held to celebrate the vintage; the greater festival was held in the spring, when Bacchus was worshipped as the Deliverer, because he had brought the people safely through the winter. The former was a country festival, and from it comedy originated; the latter was held in the city, and it was the beginning of tragedy.

As the god of wine, light, and procreation, the festivals of Bacchus were accompanied by liveliness and mirth. The sun-god was supposed to be attended by certain grotesque creatures; the Sileni, represented as old men generally intoxicated, who were not very appropriately regarded as the deities presiding over running streams; and the Satyrs, half-men and half-goats, who were not divinities, but merely representatives of the original worshippers, who were goat-herds, and during the festival assumed the skins of the goats which they had sacrificed as an offering to the god of wine.

The earliest state of the drama was therefore a hymn to Bacchus, which was called the Dithyramb; who invented the hymn is not known, nor is the precise meaning of the name. It was danced in a wild fashion by a chorus around a fiery altar, and accompanied by the flute. The poet Arion introduced many striking changes into the Dithyramb, the most important of which was a tragic style of declamation. He substituted the soft lyre for the shrill flute, and decency and order in place of irregularity and licentiousness. The name of Bacchus was dropped, and the deeds of semi-divine heroes were exploited in the hymn; there were no actors; it remained a chorus, but of a mimetic nature, and led by the exarchus--the forerunner of the principal character--who was the best dancer and mimic. The others took their cue from him. Thus, in the course of lamentation, when the exarchus struck himself as a sign of grief the rest of the chorus would imitate his example.

While the feast of Bacchus was thus developing another cause contributed to the birth of the drama. This was the recitation of Homer’s poetry by wandering minstrels. These men carried a staff as the symbol of their business, and chanted the national poetry with musical accompaniment. As these recitations increased in popularity many of the living poets became themselves minstrels in order to make their own works known; every kind of poetry was recited; and the musical accompaniment was dropped. Minstrelsy became a profitable trade. On great occasions, when a large number of the rhapsodes, as they were called, came together, different parts would be assigned, which were recited alternately; making the first approach towards a theatrical dialogue. The next step was to unite the methods of the minstrels with the Bacchanalian goat-song; and it was that blending which brought the drama into life.

The man who accomplished this was Thespis, but his action was probably the result of an accident. He discovered that the Bacchanalian chorus became tired of singing in the course of the festival, and so he introduced a minstrel, or an actor, to rest them. This actor was himself. He disguised his face with pigments, and prepared a mask in order that he might be able to sustain more than one character. He addressed himself to the chorus, which stood near the thymele or altar of Bacchus, and that the singers might have no difficulty in hearing him he stood upon a table, which was the origin of the stage.

Thus tragedy became established; but after a time the lower classes grew discontented with the serious performances, and missed the buffoonery of the Satyrs, which was the principle feature of the vintage festival. They considered also that Bacchus was not sufficiently honoured by performances which dealt with heroes and other gods. To remove their discontent the Satyrical drama was introduced, that is to say plays in which the chorus was composed of Satyrs. In the meantime comedy, which at the outset was nothing more than a Bacchanalian orgy, was gaining ground. At the festival of the vintage the countryfolk went about from one village to another in carts, or on foot, making jesting and abusive speeches and singing licentious songs. Such a song was called Comus. The same word signified also a night revel. Young men would go into the streets after supper with torches, and sing to the flute and lyre. Such a party was called a Comus. Thus the Bacchic reveller was known as a Comodus or comus-singer, just as the singer of the Dithyramb was known as a Tragodus or wearer of a goat-skin.

The orgies of the vintage were still confined to the country and the lower classes. They were unspeakably coarse, and consisted largely in the abuse of public characters. For that reason comedy was subsequently introduced to the city. One political party in Athens desired to attack its opponents, and could think of no better method than the introduction of the lower order of country-folk, to repeat their performance in the town, and to speak the words which were put into their mouths. This led to the recognition and establishment of comedy, which in its then form was little more than the scurrilous abuse of some unpopular demagogue; the aim of comedy being to exhibit individuals in a ridiculous light, and worse than they were; while tragedy showed them as sublime, and better than men could be.

The preacher went on to consider the subject of representation, pointing out that the performances, which it was the duty of every citizen to attend, were of a religious character; the actors wore the festal robes used in the Bacchanalian processions; the theatre was the temple of the god; and its central point was the smoking altar. He went on to trace the connection between religion and art; and concluded his strange sermon, which interested nobody, except the only one who understood it and that was himself, with a discussion upon the scenic accessories and the dramatic incidents connected with public worship, both in pagan temples and Christian churches, from the earliest times to the present day.

Service over--neither Conway nor Drayton attended, because the Strath was no observer of the first day in the week--the rector joined the Juxons in the churchyard, and escorted them to the rectory, talking with unusual brightness. He demanded Maude’s opinion upon his sermon, and she replied that it had been too long. At that Juxon interposed with a few quiet words of praise, but the rector maintained that Maude was right. There was much extraneous matter which should have been removed. He ought to have remembered that his sermon was to be heard by a gifted critic. He feared that long association with rustics had dulled the edge of his intellect. The stockbroker listened with increasing amazement.

Whatever doubts he might still have entertained regarding Dr. Berry’s attitude towards his wife were to be set at rest that afternoon. After luncheon they sat upon the lawn, and the stockbroker politely introduced the subject of Greece, although he knew little about the country, beyond the fact that its bonds were not easily negotiable; and the conversation naturally passed to the poet’s special period and the great work of his life.

“You should read some of Dr. Berry’s poems,” remarked Maude, who was beginning to feel neglected.

From that moment she had no cause for complaint upon that score.

“Mine is not the intellect,” said the scholar. “I am little more than a translator. It has been my effort to express in our own tongue the thoughts of the ancient singers.” Again he placed his hand upon Juxon’s arm. “In my recent endeavours this lady has been an inspiration. Before she came into my life I worked in a groove, which I can now perceive was leading me towards the dangers of commonplace. I lacked tenderness; the softer qualities were altogether lacking. I was neither sufficiently broad-minded nor sympathetic. But she has shown me my faults.”

Maude became scarlet. She cast an agonised glance upon her husband, but his head was down.

“Upon the occasion of our first meeting she expressed great interest in my work,” went on the musical voice. “She was good enough to invite me to her house. I confess I hesitated. It may seem strange to you, but throughout my previous life I had refrained from female society. To my shame be it said I could not believe that the analytical faculty could be found highly developed within any beautiful woman. Fortunately for me I went to this lady’s house, and she convinced me I was wrong. I found appreciation, a tender listener, a sympathetic critic, an affectionate adviser. Such a help-meet was the one thing wanting in my life, though I had not known it.”

“Yes,” said Juxon.

Maude was digging her sun-shade into the turf. It was horrible to know she could say nothing in self-defence. She was painfully conscious how often she had told her husband she could not tolerate being read to, she absolutely never had an opinion to give, she hated reading, and thought all learning a bore. Now she was being extolled before her husband as an efficient critic upon one of the most brain-vexing periods of history.

“I went again and again to this lady’s house,” Dr. Berry continued, lifting his hat reverently and gazing into the sky. “Not content with rendering me very much valuable assistance, she showered upon me her hospitality also. The welcome I have always received from her has made a very deep impression upon my heart. Quite recently we spent a memorable evening together, I in reading my translations--for I find she has not as yet made herself thoroughly conversant with the earlier Greek--she in suggesting alterations and improvements, dealing chiefly with the necessity for introducing more natural tenderness of feeling. Afterwards we had supper, and her conversation I remember was beautiful and inspiring.”

“I am glad my wife has been of such service to you,” said Juxon.

“She has been a guiding star,” said Dr. Berry, putting out his white hand and touching Maude’s fingers tenderly. “And I trust she will ever remain so. I have become a changed man of late. My studious interests have redoubled. Formerly I was working for myself alone. Now I have her approbation to secure. Through the light of her mind I am enabled to see many truths which formerly were hidden from my eyes. I have been callous; but she has quickened me with new life. I have to thank her for my present insight into the tender mysteries of devotional love.”

“Herbert,” Maude cried with a gasp. “I think we ought to be going.”

“I hope,” said the scholar, closing his fingers affectionately round Juxon’s fat hand, “that you also have realised this happiness. I understand now that there is help for every man in this world, when he has been led to that one of his species whose being throbs in unison with his own. Our most secret ambition may be realised through the mind of a faithful friend.”

Juxon rose. He looked at his wife, and their eyes met. He was not angry with her then. He was sorry for himself. She had won the heart of a far more intellectual man than himself, and he had given her nothing beyond that which he now believed her soul despised. He had given her liberty to move about the world, a certain position, the very clothes she stood in. He compared his flabby features and half-bald head with the grave handsome face, the sensitive mouth, and silvered hair of his dreamy host, and the mystery became solved. He understood that women require something besides luxuries and freedom; and he had neither fascination nor charm of tongue to offer.

Again the silver bells jingled through Thorlund and the donkeys presently stopped their trot, to walk the long hill. Maude was indignant because she felt she had been made ridiculous. She had not a word to say, until the cart reached the grass-grown road which led to Queensmore, then she lashed her diminutive team spitefully, and exclaimed, “I suppose Dr. Berry is mad.”

“I thought him original,” answered her husband quietly, “but remarkably sane.”

“That is just the sort of exasperating remark I might have expected,” said Maude angrily. “He made a perfect idiot of me. Why didn’t you change the subject?”

“He regards you as a saint. It was not for me to disagree with him,” her husband answered. “I must own I was astonished to find you held up as an art critic,” he added with a gentle, and perfectly legitimate, touch of irony.

“It was all utterly idiotic,” said Maude. “And I will never ask him to the cottage again. I am not going home, I want to go and see Flora.”

The following morning Juxon returned to his business, which just then was engrossing all the attention which he was able to bestow; and after his solitary dinner he sat down and wrote a long letter to Maude. For a man of his temperament it was easier to write than to speak.

When Flora came over on Tuesday morning she found her friend simmering with indignation and a sense of injury.

“I have had a ridiculous letter from Herbert,” she began at once, “He talks of my duty to him and to our child. I’m sure Peggy is much happier with a nurse than she could ever be with me. Besides it makes one feel old and ugly to have a growing child hanging to one’s skirts and crumpling them. He says, as I am so fond of the country, he will take a house within easy reach of London, and go backwards and forwards. That is altogether absurd. If the weather happened to be bad he would stop at home whole days and ruin his business. And I don’t want to be planted down. I like to go about. And he says he knows I mean nothing, but I ought not to encourage Dr. Berry’s visits and this poetry reading. What rubbish, Flora! Dr. Berry’s voice is so soothing, and I like to watch his face. Do you know he said all sorts of nice things about me on Sunday--called me his guiding star, and--and angel of inspiration, and Herbert was there and had to listen! Sit down, and I’ll tell you all about it.”

Thereupon the little weathercock favoured her friend with an account of the scene in the rectory garden, adding her own airy touches of imagination to what she could remember of the scholar’s actual utterances.

“I always thought you were a wicked person, and now I am sure of it,” said Flora, when the pink lady had done bubbling. “You had much better make the best of your husband and be good. As for Dr. Berry, I should advise you to leave him severely alone. You know you are just a little bit fascinated, and he might become dangerous, and you might be stupid, and Mr. Juxon would hear of it--and then, where would Miss Maudie be then, poor thing?” she concluded flippantly.

“You are always preaching,” said her friend pettishly. “You have changed altogether, and I don’t like you now.”

“Givers of advice are often unpopular,” Miss Neill admitted. “But you are right about my preaching. I have been lecturing uncle on the condition of his study, and advising Mr. Conway to destroy that house. By the way he has been trying, in a weird sort of way, to approach.”

“What! Proposing?” cried Maude, forgetting her own tribulations.

“Something rather like it. You will please remember I am still a line moving through space, and Mr. Conway has chosen to establish himself as my curve for the time being. It is the duty of the curve to remain motionless, but he has forgotten propriety and jumped out to meet me.”

“With the result that you jumped back?”

Flora nodded.

“The idea of calling me wicked!” exclaimed Mrs. Juxon indignantly. “A married woman has certain flirting privileges, but an unmarried girl has none. You will play your game too long, and some day you will wake up and find yourself growing old and ugly, and then you may whistle as much as you like but no one will come to you. I have a heart, Flora, and yours is just a horrid cold lump of stone. You will become a nasty old crabbed spinster, sitting at a window, knitting socks for missionaries, keeping cats and canaries, and saying atrocious things about your neighbours.”

“You may threaten,” said the fair-haired girl loftily. “Remember what I said to you at home. The sympathies will not be forbidden. If you are married without love, some state of the soul will assert itself.”

“Rubbish,” said the little lady. “Go into the garden, while I write no-thank-you to Herbert, and pick me some roses.”

“You know I cannot touch roses.”

“Then do, for goodness sake, take a piece of string and play with the kitten.”

So Flora went on her way, Maude Juxon on hers; and the Strath waited for them both.

Scene V.--PAGEANT

Toss fortune back her tinsel and her plume, And drop this mask of flesh behind the scene.--_Young_.

The two dwellers in the Strath went on dreaming. Drayton had reserved a small ante-chamber leading out from the saloon for his work-room. Here the escutcheon of the mask was endlessly repeated in wood, plaster, and copper; a pinched tragic face was represented, crest-like, upon the picture frames, and along the cornice. And it was here that the tragic influence of the house was felt more strongly than elsewhere.

The day was grey. The sun had shone little of late; and a moist wind carried restlessly through the garden. The playwright sat nursing a volume which served him for a desk. He appeared in good health, although his eyes had a trick of roving, and at times he would shudder as though with cold. He believed that he had never been so well in his life, and this opinion was shared by Conway, who was lying in the saloon, listening to his friend. The journal that he loved was lying open upon a cushion before him. The draperies which divided the two rooms were fastened back, and when the enraptured voice came louder to his ears Conway put back his head and laughed in sheer happiness as he heard the noisy sophistry of the writer:

“I cannot conceive a Deity who finds pleasure in tragedy. The Creator must understand and appreciate comedy. If there be the divine frown, there must be also the divine laughter. I am assured that the Sublime would rather see a wine-skin dressed out in child’s clothes than the lion-hide and the club; and rather hear the quack of the frog-souls against the Acherusian lake than those anguished cries in the grove of the Eumenides. If that be so, let us have no more tragedy. Let us grow wings and fly to Cloudcuckootown, and take a bird’s eye view across mortality.”

“Before you attempt to fly, be sure that your wings will bear you,” called Conway, also speaking in the spirit of ancient comedy. “The nearer the sun the greater the effort; and if you fall there may be no Icarian sea to receive you.”

“Give me a theme, and I will set to work upon it,” cried the enraptured Drayton.

“Listen then,” said Conway, picking up the journal. “Take a well known theme. In old fields we gather fresh flowers, and new learning may be found in the oldest tales.” Then he went on thus to read:

“Can there be anything more bitter than solitude? This morning I was driven out by my aching tongue to speak to nature. I called to the flowers, and they were silent. I cried to the birds, and they chattered, but not to me. I whispered to the stream, and it murmured, but not to me. The eyes I saw in that water were not those you have in your memory, my fair-haired love. I spoke to the trees, to the wind, to the clouds, and despairingly to God. The trees whispered, and the wind murmured, but not for me; the clouds drifted on; and God remained more silent than any of the wonders He has made.

“The prisoner in the Fleet has consolations which I may not share. He may wrangle with his turnkey concerning fees, or argue with his fellows in misfortune. I have nothing, but memory and faith. There is a place for me in this world, and I may not fill it; a love, and I may not have it; a life, and I may not enter into it; one voice above all others, and I may not hear it. This is to be in prison indeed.

“You will wonder, Geoffrey, should this little book in time to come be brought into your hands, why I did not escape from this misery, before death, like some kindly nurse, snatched me from my play-things and put me to my bed. Let me answer you. The roads are watched, not only against your coming, but against my going. I know that silent men follow me. Were I to enter a coach, I should be dragged down. Were I to steal forth some night, I should be seized, brought back by violence, and beaten for my effort.

“Sir John fears me, because I know too much concerning his two-faced life. Yet for my freedom I would promise anything, nay, I have promised, but ’tis of no avail. He knows that the caged bird is secure, but let that bird fly, and it will be seen no more. There is also another, more bitter reason. That it is which now tears out my heart. My uncle, miser and parson of Queensmore, told me, with a grin and a screwing up of his pig-like eyes, that you were lately taken by the press. That pitiless and cunning wolf my father set the plot to be rid of you. May God alone forgive him.

“Is it true? While I write these words are you far upon the seas, shamefully degraded and abused? You could not have kept from me a whole year. You would have found a way, for love laughs at swords, and knows no fear, and has no sense of bodily pain. You have gone far from me, and I am left with a sad last hope that someone will be found to tell you I was true. My final breath shall be in prayer that you may be brought some day into Thorlund, to stand upon a cold stone marking the spot where I shall be in silence. Do not be afraid, Geoffrey, even though it be night and a wild wind beating; for your mind shall not be troubled and you shall see no ghostly sight. You will know I did myself no harm.

“Would that I might leave you something, a ribbon, a lock of hair, a ring. Why, so I will. None but old Deborah shall handle this small white body when I am wrung out of it, and she will do my bidding yet. Our vault lies beneath the chancel. You have but to shut yourself in the church during the night, raise the great stone beside the wall--’tis graven with the Hooper arms, surmounted by a cross fimbriated--and descend the stone steps. Beloved, do not be afraid. I shall be loving you still, and I may be nearer than you think. If a light breath passes, call it not night wind. Upon my body you shall find the ring you gave me, and the lock of hair which now lies upon my forehead. Yet I have forgotten. My brain is wandering. How shall you discover this poor record of my daily life?

“The trees are white with dust, and the flowers wither. No rain has fallen for long, and the people who dwell upon the hills are hard put to it for water, and much sickness is, I hear, abroad. Mr. Blair takes his customary ease, smokes his long pipe, makes fishing-lines, and turns a deaf ear to the calls of the cottage folk. His duty begins and ends with his Sunday sermons, and these he is too idle or too ignorant to write himself. What a little charity there is in this great world! I can do nothing for the poor. I may not visit them, nor send one bottle of my father’s wine. Reed, who is the master of this house, keeps a sharp eye upon the household, and nothing goes out without his knowledge. ’Tis strange that my father should trust him, and none besides, but villainy acquaints a man with vile partners.

“To-day I met with Poor John, one who has lost his wits and roams about the country making verses. I see him often, at evening trapping sparrows in the ivy, at morning whistling beneath the elms, and at noon lying beside the stream to laugh at the image of his white face. He asked me for apples, as his custom is, but I could only tell him that all last year’s apples were done. Then he gave me a whistle, which he had made, and directed me to go into the woods and blow upon it, when I would immediately set all the birds a-singing. And so he left me grinning. Poor John do they call him? Why, he is far happier than I. I could envy this gentle madman. He views his surroundings through a weird atmosphere of imagination, and regards sane suffering men and women as underlings, and passes them in the belief that he is nature’s king, never knowing what a misshapen oaf he seems to them.

“It is exceeding hot. My brain aches and my eyes burn. This is my twentieth summer. I have lived a long time. You have been given and taken away; I mourn the loss and forget to be thankful for the gift. My books tell me nothing is left for a woman when the time of her love-making is passed. The man may still have his ambitions. He may attempt to follow in the steps of Mr. Pope, Mr. Garrick, Mr. Hogarth, or Mr. Fielding. He may serve his country, or aid the Pretender, winning scars and fame, as you may be doing while I write, my Geoffrey. But Miss Hooper, sad, and white, and shivering--what may she do? Nothing but sigh, and wait, and hope; and sighing kills, waiting maddens, and as for hope--why, hope is a fading flower. Oh, Geoffrey, cannot you send some small message through all this darkness, something to tell me that you live? Cannot you make a sign? I listen in the night for the movement of your spirit, or the echo of your mind. Ought I not to feel your heart longing for me? I hear only the night throbbing, the insects murmuring, the house creaking, and beyond there is cold pitiless space half-lit by stars. The daffodils were glorious this year, Geoffrey. They filled the plantation with a light of gold, and yours was there, and I stood by it alone.”

The reader stopped, and a gentle movement came from the ante-room.

“There was a time when every living creature saw the bright side of things,” said the voice of Drayton. “Even when the human emotions were first represented upon the stage, it was believed that happiness ruled the world, until the philosophers discovered that whereas one play aroused the laughter of the audience another excited their compassion and their tears. Thereupon the drama became divided into its two great heads, known as the goat-song and the wine-song, the goat being the prize for tragedy, the wine for comedy. Comedy is the beginning of the story; tragedy is the end; there is only the difference of a letter between them. That which you have read seems to me to contain the germ of tragedy. When my modern drama, dealing with the life and death of George the Third, is completed I will give the world that story. The emotions are there,” he went on noisily. “I see light there, and it must be the phosphorescence of the dead which produces it.”

Conway joined the speaker. His face was pale, and his eyes shone with a mad light as he cried, “Let us remain here and work together. Let us discover the origin of love, and find the cause of its unhappy ending. Why does the glamour of life end when love has been satisfied?”

“Because of that satisfaction,” said the other character.

“That could never be so here.”

“There is a vast region outside,” said Drayton. “Love is here a religion; there a passion. Here desire becomes etherealised by possession, and consummation leads to higher things; there ambition, rivalries, and all the petty wedges of worldliness are driven in to love’s destruction. It ends in a tragedy there. It must end so, because of that finality. For every thing that knows an end is a tragedy.”

All the little tragic masks frowned at the spell-bound men, in copper and wood and plaster.

“There is no such thing as comedy at all.”

“Call the drama a knot,” said Drayton. “Call, the gradual unloosening of that knot comedy, the complete unfastening tragedy. The one deals with human beings, the other with actions. The light which falls upon the stage is constant, if difficult to discern. That light is not shed by religion, for religion is a superstition, and superstition is a flickering lamp which requires to be often recharged and changed. We live in the faintly glimmering region which lies outside, where there is no terror and no suffering, because we are spiritual. This state cannot be tragic, because it knows no ending.”

“Our minds demand an ending,” the other urged.

“When the body ceases to be material the mind will be unable to realise an ending,” said the man, who but a few weeks back had with difficulty made a living by writing snippets of nonsense for people of no intellect. “We are living in the half-light under these present conditions. It is the finest state we are capable of attaining while encumbered with the body.”

He leaned forward, parted the creepers, and holding them apart continued: “I perceive a woman walking in the garden. She is looking into the lilies beyond the topiary hedge. Her hair is dark, and her face tanned by exposure to the weather. Now she turns to me. There is a poetic gloom in her dark eyes.”

Before Drayton had done speaking he was alone. Conway had stepped into the garden. The creepers fell back across the window, the scribe’s fingers closed round the pencil, and he resumed his automatic labours.

It was Lone Nance who stood in the garden. She was often there, but the dreamers had not sighted her before, because she had hidden herself when she saw them coming. They had heard a singing voice during the still evenings, but had given it no heed. What was it to them if the nightingale sang old ballads, and the blackcap madrigals, so long as the songs were in tune with the influence?

He, who was called the master of the Strath, reached the yew hedge, and discovered the girl scraping moss from a long low stone. She looked up at him fearlessly with large eyes lightly blurred with tears.

“Why do you kneel beside that stone?” Conway muttered, not venturing to remove his eyes lest the vision should disappear. “And why are there tears in your eyes?”

The girl put out her hand and held up the speckled and stiffened body of a thrush, which had been smitten by some hawk and had tumbled into the garden to die in the dust.

“The birds come to the Strath to die,” she said. “I will not bury it, for there may still be life in its little brain. I will let it lie upon the stems of this long grass, where the wind shall rock it up and down, and the sun shall warm it, until the little body may forget that it is dead.”

“Why are you scraping the moss off that stone?” he urged.

“I was running on the hills when a voice stopped me and called me into the valley,” she answered.

“I did not hear it,” he said.

“At sunset there is always a voice, like music melting in the air,” she said. “You must make no sound, or you will not hear it. He hears it.” She nodded in the direction of the rectory.

“What is that stone? Why is it broken across the middle?”

“This stone cries out, and the house answers it,” went on the girl in a low voice. “Lives and hearts have been broken here. He was young and he was beautiful. As they carried him past the gates into the garden he sighed once and that was all. They buried the body here that night, and covered the grave with a great stone taken from the stable-yard. But in the morning the stone was broken. The spirit had escaped in spite of them.”

“What was his name?” Conway asked.

“I do not know. His hair was fair, and his eyes were blue. I have seen him walking with the lady of the white lilies.”

She stroked the stone. Her hand was a deep brown, bearing marks of bramble scratches, and the fingers were delicate. Her head was small. There were white seeds of grass held in its thick dark hair. She was strong and healthy, this wild girl.

“I have never been in there,” she said, pointing towards the house.

“Come with me,” said Conway. Holding the girl’s hand, he led her through the garden, across the moat, into his home, and left her at length beside the door of what had been Miss Hooper’s room. “This is your place,” he said quietly. “You will find here all that you can require.”

But there still existed a gross world of evil-thinking outside the influence, and there was materialism even within the Strath. Early in the afternoon the crone of the kitchen accosted the master, as he walked in a state of innocence, and stated her intention of quitting the place forthwith. The influence had left her absolutely untouched; she had no laughter to give, nor shudder to spend. But she could not tolerate the presence of Lone Nance; and if the girl were to remain she, the speaker, would go, and that immediately, even to the work house and her pauper’s coffin.