Chapter XVI

David sat hunched in a chair, the likeness on his knees. He had risen determinedly and put it from him twice--lodged it against one of the eyesores on the mantelpiece that were referred to as the "ornaments "--but after intervals of abstraction he had found that he was nursing it again. He had a lurking consciousness that if he put it from him half a dozen times, it would be back on his lap before five minutes had gone by.

It surpassed all his dream-pictures of her. The situation confused him; he could not realise it quite, with the photograph under his eyes. He had for a friend this young, this beautiful girl. Though he had vaguely imagined her beautiful, the definite was bewildering; his letters seemed suddenly audacious to him--there was a breath of the incredible in the thought that he had written them to her. And hers! still more wonderful the thought of hers. His correspondent was this daughter of the gods, serene, imperial, proud--the girl who wrote to him was like this!

He had for a friend this young, this beautiful girl. For a "friend"? His manhood abjured the word. Was she not his by a subtler, stronger bond than friendship? If the community between them could be called friendship, what was love? She had yielded herself to him--her spiritual self--surrendered to his keeping thoughts more sacred than her body. He craved to go to her, and trembled with the dread of effacing by his personality the impression that he had made upon her by his art. To let his looks destroy the love his soul was waking in her? No, he could not go, he must be strong. But if he dared--if only it were possible! She lived--it was no vision conjured up by loneliness--she lived. She was smiling, speaking, thinking of him not thirty miles away. He was fevered by the idea of their meeting as it might have been--as it would have been if he had had a white skin. He found her here where she was sitting; the sunlight touched her just as now--"Your friend has come to you!" The eyes in the portrait shone to him, and he saw gladness in their gaze.... The trees had darkened, and the stars were lit. How long a time had passed? In his fancy there was no calendar, but the photograph had magic powers. He was telling her he loved her. The eyes looked tenderer, the bosom swelled; the lips----Oh, madman! the thing was only paper after all. If the delusion had lasted a second longer!

Then a new idea possessed him. He might see her at least--he might see her without her knowing who he was. It must be easy to catch a glimpse of her in such a place as she had described, easier by far than it would be when she was at home. He would go to Godstone on the first fair morning and discover Daisymead, and linger in its neighbourhood till she came out.... Perhaps when he arrived it would be wet? Then he must obtain a bedroom for the night. He might even stay a week; why shouldn't he? He might stay a week and see her every day. His thoughts spun exultantly. She and her sister themselves were in lodgings--there was nothing to prevent his seeking rooms in the same house. But his name? Well, he could assume a name for the week; he would go as "Tremlett." By no earthly chance could "Mr. Tremlett," looking as he looked, suggest David Lee to her mind. He might stroll round the field when she was in it, sit near her under the trees; he might even speak to her after a day or two. By degrees she would grow used to his appearance. In the circumstances, in the solitude, she might not disdain his company. One evening he might avow himself, talk to her of his work, tell her all that was in his heart for her--on an evening when the moon was hidden and she couldn't see his face. Elisha had once said to him: "When I was in love with your mother I used to sing to her--in the dusk." The dead man's words came back to him, and he shivered. He thought: "_I am following in my father's way!_"

Awe fell upon him. He heard his father's warnings again--was walking with him on the lawn. For an instant the past had swept so near that the present seemed unreal. The scent of the trite flower-beds, the scenes of jealousy, the taunts of the languid woman toying with her rings, the sound of her sneering laugh, even the rustle of her dress, all these things were close, close upon him. He thought of his childhood, and it ached in him anew. His own child would not escape! Wouldn't it be cruel, wouldn't it be monstrous, to bring a child into the world to suffer as he had suffered himself? Human nature pleaded that his own child would know a different kind of mother; and memory answered: "We always think a woman 'so different' before we've got her." But she _was_ different! Yes, he affirmed it to the dead; his father would have owned that she was different.... She was different, but the world was the same. The recollection of his schooldays, the consciousness of all his dull, empty, years of passionate rebellion, menaced him. It would be a cowardice, it would be a crime, to snatch a joy of which his child must pay the cost.

Awe had fallen on him, and of awe was born an ardent wish to pin the thought to paper, to capture it for verse. It was a gruesome thought, that even his will was leagued against him; but while half his consciousness shrank from it appalled, the artist in him, allured by the thought's poetical promise, darted to it admiringly, tremulous with the fear that it might escape. With the verbal artificer whose servitude is complete it is always so, this instinctive, inevitable appraisement of the spirit. It is the penalty of his degrading craft. He has surrendered to a power which holds nothing sacred, not a son's remembrance, nor a father's love, nor a husband's agony--not death, nor devotion, nor despair, and the power is inexorable and remorseless. He may forget in hours and rejoice and suffer simply, like a free man, but the clash of his chains will jangle on the divinest melodies of his life, forcing him to scrutinise, and analyse, and define, when he were worthier merely to feel. He shall register the heart-beats of his passion, and whittle an aphorism with his head on the breast of his bride. His mind is for ever alert to estimate the literary value of his soul. When he fondles his child his idolatry cannot save him from seeking copy in his emotions, and when he sorrows by a grave his tears shall not blind him to the virtues of a lament that has not been written before.

The morrow was fine, but David did not go to Godstone. Just to ascertain how long it took to get there, however, he bought an "A B C," a fascinating book with the breeze of the moors, and the splash of the sea in it, and the suggestiveness of old townlets with quaint names. The toss of a Channel crossing, and the lights of the Boulevard are in it; and the luxury of ideal hotels in English gardens, and the aroma of after-dinner coffee under the trees. The reader may arrive in imagination at a thousand delightful places for sixpence.

And he did not go on the next day either, though he had half a mind to do so during the afternoon, and only stayed at home because he vacillated until it was too late to catch the train. He succumbed on the third day. An omnibus jolted him to Charing Cross with his bag behind his legs, and he bought a copy of a weekly journal with an essay by him in it, and was fortunate enough to secure a corner seat.

Exhilaration was in his veins as he saw the flag waved; he would even have forgotten his colour if a lady who had entered the compartment while he was reading his essay had not looked affronted when he displayed his face. The train loitered about the city in so exasperating a fashion that he began to think it would never get any further than London Bridge; but after about twenty minutes it dragged itself away, and puffed Surreyward with a hundred shrieks. At the shout of "Godstone" he threw the paper down, and made haste to disencumber himself of the bag. A spirit of adventure possessed him as he turned from the cloak-room and strode into the pebbled yard. He did not inquire for Daisymead at once; it was enough that he was here. He saw the receding train glide far along the line, watched the smoke trail across the distance and dissolve. The roar came to him more faintly--was not unpleasant, and was still. His eagerness melted into peace; he crossed the pebbles, and walked along the winding road. The perfume of honeysuckle was blown across his nostrils; the hedges were gemmed with the pink of bachelor's buttons, and the blue of bird's-eye; meadows sloped graciously. It was the country.

His soul gave thanks for that sweet and rare thing, silence. At first he thought it silence. Then as his hearing became attuned to the surroundings, he grew conscious that the air was indeed alive with sound--with a twittering and trilling, with the hum of bees, and the whisper of long grass running in silver wavelets before the wind. It must also be said that he was aware of the buzzing of a fly which accompanied him for nearly half a mile, and kept alighting on his neck.

He picked some wild-flowers that caught his glance, and stuck them in his coat; they were beautiful, and he wondered what they were. Presently he met a band of village children, and inquired the flowers' names. The youngest of the party perhaps was twelve: they stared and did not know. The notes of a storm-cock held him, calling in an elm; again he wondered. A woman came down the road with a basket on her arm, and he spoke to her, and asked, "What bird is that?" She was old and bent, and had lived here all her life: she stared and did not know.

"I've never took no heed o' birds," she answered. It was the country.

He trusted that information would be easier to acquire when he sought the house. A stile suggested a pipe, and, smoking, he noticed a hedge-gap, and found himself at the entrance to a wood. It must be the wood of which he had heard, the wood that _she_ had pictured to him in her letters. He always thought of her as "She"; the formality of "Miss Sorrenford" as impossible in meditation, and he could hardly think of her as "H." She had said that she came here constantly; it might be that she would come while he lingered--it might be that the bushes hid her from him now! In the sadden fancy it appeared to him that the wood was the scene where he desired most fervidly to find her--that it was here that he must first behold her in order to complete the joy. He parted the brambles, and pushed eagerly into the depths.

He pressed into the labyrinth as ardently as if he could hope to speak to her if they met. How dark it was with the sky shut out! The foliage sighed a little overhead; the tangle was so low that often he had to stoop. His feet crushed the litter of dry dead leaves; the branches of the wild-rose clung to his clothes. He attained to light. Solitude engulfed him, and the bracken was as high as his knees; in the cool, moist hush he could hear a twig drop upon the moss. He stood reflecting that it was not a place for a girl to roam in unprotected--the nearest habitation might have been miles away. Near as it was, no scream could reach it, no cry for help was likely to penetrate even to the road. His mind was now less occupied with agreeable visions of discovering her than with solicitude for her safety every day. At this moment he was startled by a stealthy tread.

A rough figure was creeping cautiously between the trees. He did not see David; but for an instant David saw nothing but him, nothing but the cruel eyes, the avid face, the upraised arm. For an instant. In the next, he saw--trusting itself to earth a few yards off--a starling; and the lad stole towards it greedily, the only thought quickened in him by its loveliness, the idea of smashing it with a stone. It was the country.

The bird's plumage gleamed like satin; the little creature was so confident, so fragile, so happy that the hellishness of the thing turned the man's heart sick. He flung his pipe, and the starling flew upward, saved, a second before the stone was hurled. The lad was both aggrieved and contemptuous: viewed as a missile, the pipe argued the man a fool. Then David, who burned to thrash him, explained himself with heat; but the other showed such dull amazement at his indignation, such utter lack of understanding, that wrath gave place to misery in the poet. It even seemed to him, as he moved away, that he had been unjust. A little later in the year cultured men and graceful women would also murder birds for fun. One bird, or another, with a gun, or a stone--? To the yokel, too, his shame was "sport." The difference in the barbarism was only a difference of class.

David had had enough of the wood. Having recovered his pipe among the ferns, he made his way out, and sauntered back along the high-road. Overtaking a large sack, slung across the shoulder of a small boy, who at close quarters revealed the peaked cap and uniform of a postman, he asked to be directed to Daisymead, and learnt that he had not far to go.

It was a low white house, with stiff white curtains hanging in the windows, and full white roses climbing on the walls. The sight of it disappointed him rather, and it seemed to him to be on the wrong side of the way, though he had never preconceived its situation consciously. A flight of steps led to a white gate and a patch of front-garden wonderfully abloom--a revel of pinks and canterbury-bells, and the velvet of sweetwilliam. He gave a knock, questioning a little how to account for his application, for he saw no card with the familiar London legend, "Furnished Apartments," over the door.

It was opened by a strapping woman, drying her hands on her apron. She was not a peasant--her eyes were alert, her face was mobile; and, though she had grey hair, she bore herself erect. Her gaze widened at him; there was even a tinge of apprehension in it.

"Good morning," he said; "I'm looking for rooms--or for one room if I can't get any more. Have you any to let?"

"Y-e-s," answered the woman, hesitatingly. "Can I see them?"

"Well, I'm not quite sure," she faltered. He understood that it was his appearance that made her doubtful. "I don't know whether--Might I ask 'oo it was that recommended you?"

He pointed airily. "The postman directed me here. I've just come down from town; my luggage is at the station."

"I'm not sure whether my husband 'd care to take in any more people this year. We've got two ladies staying with us already, and If you'll wait a minute I'll see what 'e says about it."

He waited in suspense. She returned after a consultation in the kitchen, her husband with her. Though the man came fully informed of what was wanted, David felt sure that it would be necessary to begin at the beginning again, and in this he wasn't mistaken. The couple stood contemplating him curiously, waiting for him to speak.

"Good morning," he said. "I'm looking for two rooms, or for one room if I can't get any more. Have you any to let?"

"Well, we '_ave_ got two rooms," admitted the man.

"Can I see them?"

The householder scratched his head. "Well, I don't know," he said slowly. "My wife 'ere she's not quite sure whether she could manage with anybody else this summer. Are you, Emma? There's two ladies staying 'ere now, and it makes a bit o' work for her. Don't it, Emma? You might get a room a bit lower down, very likely. What was it you were wanting?"

"Oh, anything would suit me!" exclaimed David, with an ingratiating smile, and suppressed rage. "I'm not particular at all--only I should have liked to go to a house where I could be sure of being comfortable. Yours looks so pretty, and so clean; it's the only place I've seen round here that I should care to pay much in." He had been struggling to recall their name--trying to see it mentally in one of Bee's letters--and it flashed upon him now. "Cold meat and cleanliness, Mrs. Kemp----It is 'Mrs. Kemp,' I think?" He made her a bow. "Cold meat and cleanliness are worth more than late dinners and--er----" The sentence would not round itself; he forced another smile for climax.

"You might eat off any floor in this 'ouse!" she declared, deciding he was human.

"I'm sure you might," he replied. "In London we don't often see a house like it, I can tell you!"

"You've not been in London long, I suppose?" she said. "You come from abroad, don't you?"

"No, I've lived in London all my life--my business is there. That's why I go to the country when I get a holiday."

"Ah," said Mr. Kemp reflectively, "it's a great place, London--room for all sorts in it!"

"Yes," said David. "What lovely roses you have, Mrs. Kemp, and how sweet the pinks smell! What flowers are those in the corner--the high, purple flowers against the wall?"

"Them?" she said. "Lor! I'm a poor one at flowers. What do you call 'em, John?"

"_I_ dunno," said John.

"Well, I don't wonder you think twice about taking lodgers, but I"--he laughed feebly--"I'm a very honest person; I wouldn't steal so much as a leaf."

There was a pause. They all looked at one another.

"What do you say, John?" she murmured. "We might manage to take the young man in, perhaps, eh?"

"You won't find me any trouble if you do. You'll give me a first-rate character when I leave you!" cried David with geniality that exhausted him.

"About rent," said Mr. Kemp. "What did you think of paying?"

"What do you want?"

The couple exchanged anxious glances. Mr. Kemp breathed heavily.

"Well, we have had as much as a pound for those two rooms, for a lady and three children through the summer," he said.

"Of course," added the woman, "for only one person----"

"Call it a pound!" said David, whipping out his purse. "And I suppose it's fairest to pay in advance. My name is Tremlett. I'll just look round, and then I'll go to the station, and get my bag."

And so it was accomplished. The same roof sheltered him and Her! He smiled now naturally in savouring the fact. His little sitting-room was at the back, overlooking the cabbages and a red, rose-bordered path that led to the hennery and the field. Its old-fashioned shabbiness was not without a charm, and, having yielded consent, Mrs. Kemp adopted a solicitous manner with a strong flavour of wondering compassion in it. She still seemed to him in moments to be marvelling silently that he was able to talk her language. When he came in from the station he found that she had brightened his table with a bowl of poppies and elder-blossom. Gathering the poppies had robbed them of their sprightliness, and they hung shrivelled, like pricked airballs, but the delicacy of the elder-blossom was exquisite, and he liked the tone of what she called the old "crock." Because wild-flowers pleased him less in his coat than anywhere else, he put those that he was wearing into a mug preserved on the mantelshelf. On the front of the mug he saw a view described as "Rickmansworth Church from the East," and on the base he saw the inscription "Made in Germany."

His mind began to misgive him about the sister--perhaps she would prove a dragon, in the way? He half hoped that Mrs. Kemp would let fall some particulars when she brought in his chop. She said nothing to the point, however, nor did he hear any voice about the premises to wake sensations. When his dinner was eaten he went out to the path, and threw eager-glances round the field; but the two chairs under the trees were empty, and there was nobody in sight; so he came back and smoked a pipe on the sofa.

A young girl entered with his tea; he judged her rightly to be the Kemps' daughter. She evidently came to ascertain how a mulatto looked, and she was not disinclined to hear one talk. He felt that he was enlarging his circle of acquaintances amazingly; in a day here he had spoken to more people than he addressed at home in a month. From Miss Kemp he learnt in conversation that she had just been getting tea ready for "the ladies" too. She coupled the information with a reference to "one pair of hands"; he waited for her to add the companion phrase about "her head never saving her legs," but she did not.

She was a nice girl, and not uneducated, though she did say "one pair of hands" when she meant "one person"; and when he bewailed the fact that it had begun to rain, and she brought him some novels to pass the time, he was surprised to find what novels she read. However, they entertained him very little. His soul was divided between dejection at the weather and gratitude for her kindness. He was so unused to kindness that the landlady's daughter offering to lend him books seemed to him a tender and a touching thing. The chairs had been brought indoors; the rain rattled on the laurels, and strewed the petals of the roses on the path. Through the long twilight a pair of heavy hands in a neighbouring cottage laboured a hymn--the village pianist always chooses hymns--with mournful persistence. David stood at the window, recognising despondently that "the ladies" would remain in their parlour all the evening. The field of his expectations would be void and profitless--it might even be too wet for them to-morrow.