Читать книгу Wood and Stone - John Cowper Powys - Страница 12

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Mr. Quincunx was digging in his garden. The wind, a little stronger than on the previous days and still blowing from the east, buffeted his attenuated figure and ruffled his pointed beard, tinged with premature grey. He dug up all manner of weeds, some large, some small, and shaking them carefully free of the adhesive earth, flung them into a wheel-barrow by his side.

It was approaching noon, and in spite of the chilly gusts of wind, the sun beat down hotly upon the exposed front of Dead Man’s Cottage. Every now and then Mr. Quincunx would leave his work; and retiring into his kitchen, proceed with elaborate nicety to stir a small pot of broth which simmered over the fire. He was a queer mixture of epicurean preciseness and ascetic indifference in these matters, but, on the whole, the epicurean tendency predominated, owing to a subtle poetic passion in the eccentric man, for the symbolic charm of all these little necessities of life. The lighting of his fire in the morning, the crackling of the burning sticks, and their fragrant smell, gave Mr. Quincunx probably as much pleasure as anything else in the world.

Every bowl of that fresh milk and brown bread, which, prepared with meticulous care, formed his staple diet, was enjoyed by him with more ceremonious concentration than most gourmands devote to their daintiest meat and wine.

The broiling of his chicken on Sunday was a function of solemn ritual. Mr. Quincunx bent over the bird, basting it with butter, in the absorbed manner of a priest preparing the sacrament.

The digging up of onions or lettuces in his garden, and the stripping them of their outer leaves, was a ceremony to be performed in no light or casual haste, but with a prepared and concentrated spirit.

No profane hand ever touched the little canister of tea from which Mr. Quincunx, at the same precise hour every day, replenished his tea-pot.

In all these material things his scrupulous and punctilious nicety never suffered the smallest diminution. His mind might be agitated to a point bordering upon despair, but he still, with mechanical foresight, sawed the fagots in his wood-shed and drew the water from his well.

As he pulled up weed after weed, on this particular morning, his mind was in a state of extreme nervous agitation. Mr. Romer had called him up the night before to the House, and had announced that his present income—the sum regarded by the recluse as absolutely secure—was now entirely to cease, and in the place of it he was destined to receive, in return for horrible clerical work performed in Yeoborough, a considerably smaller sum, as Mr. Romer’s paid dependent.

The idea of working in an office was more distasteful to Mr. Quincunx than it is possible to indicate to any person not actually acquainted with him. His exquisitely characteristic hand, admirably adapted to the meticulous diary he had kept for years, was entirely unsuited to competing with type-writing machines and machine-like type-writers. The walk to Yeoborough too,—a matter of some four or five miles—loomed upon him as a hideous purgatory. Walking tired him much more than working in his garden; and he had a nervous dread of those casual encounters and salutations on the way, which the habitual use of the same road to one’s work necessarily must imply.

His mind anticipated with hideous minuteness every detail of his future dreary life. He decided that even at the cost of the sacrifice of the last of his little luxuries he would make a point of going one way at least by train. That walk, twice a day, through the depressing suburbs of Yeoborough was more than he could bear to contemplate. It was characteristic of him that he never for a moment considered the possibility of an appeal to law. Law and lawyers were for Mr. Quincunx, with his instincts of an amiable anarchist, simply the engines through which the rich and powerful worked their will upon the weak and helpless.

It was equally characteristic of him that it never entered his head to throw up his cottage, pack his scanty possessions and seek his fortune in another place. It was not only Lacrima that held him from such a resolution. It was as impossible for him to think of striking out in a new soil as it would have been for an aged frog to leave the pond of its nativity and sally forth across the fields in search of new waters. It was this inability to “strike out” and grapple with the world on equal terms, that had led, in the beginning, to his curious relation to the Romers. He clung to Susan Romer for no other reason than that she supplied a link between his past and his present.

His lips trembled with anger and his hand shook, as he recalled the interview of the preceding night. The wife had annoyed him almost more than the husband. His brutality had been gross and frank. The lascivious joy of a strong nature, in deliberately outraging a weaker one, had gleamed forth from his jeering eyes.

But there had been an unction, an hypocritical sentimentality, about Mrs. Romer’s tone, that had made him hate her the more bitterly of the two. The fact that she also—stupid lump of fawning obesity as she was!—was a victim of this imperial tyrant, did not in the least assuage him. The helot who is under the lash hates the helot who crouches by the master’s chair, more deeply than he hates the master. It is because of this unhappy law of nature that there are so few successful revolts among our social Pariahs. The well-constituted ruler of men divides his serfs into those who hold the whip and those who are whipped. Yes, he hated her the most. But how he hated them both!

The heart of your true Pariah is a strange and dark place, concealing depths of rancorous animosity, which those who over-ride and discount such feelings rarely calculate upon. It is a mistake to assume that this curious rôle—the rôle of being a Pariah upon our planet—is one confined to the submerged, the outcast, the criminal.

There are Pariahs in every village. It might be said that there are Pariahs in every family. The Pariah is one who is born with an innate inability to deal vigorously and effectively with his fellow animals. One sees these unfortunates every day—on the street, in the office, at the domestic hearth. One knows them by the queer look in their eyes; the look of animals who have been crushed rather than tamed.

It is not only that they are weaker than the rest and less effectual. They are different. It is in their difference that the tragedy of their fate lies. Commonplace weaklings, who are not born Pariahs, have in their hearts the same standards, the same ambitions, the same prejudices, as those who rule the world. Such weaklings venerate, admire, and even love the strong unscrupulous hands, the crafty unscrupulous brains, who push them to and fro like pawns.

But the Pariah does not venerate the Power that oppresses him. He despises it and hates it. Long-accumulated loathing rankles in his heart. He is crushed but not won. He is penned, like a shorn sheep; but his thoughts “wander through Eternity.”

And it is this difference, separating him from the rest, that excites such fury in those who oppress him. The healthy-minded prosperous man is irritated beyond endurance by this stranger within the gate—this incorrigible, ineffectual critic, cumbering his road. The mob, too, always ready, like spiteful, cawing rooks, to fall upon a wounded comrade, howl remorselessly for his destruction. The Pariah is seldom able to retain the sweetness of his natural affections.

Buffeted by the unconscious brutality of those about him, he retorts with conscious and unfathomable hatred. His soul festers and gangrenes within him, and the loneliness of his place among his fellows leads him to turn upon them all—like a rat in a gin. The pure-minded capable man, perceiving the rancorous misanthropy of this sick spirit, longs to trample him into the mud, to obliterate him, to forget him. But the man whose strength and cunning is associated with lascivious perversity, wishes to have him by his side, to humiliate, to degrade, to outrage. A taste to be surrounded by Pariahs is an interesting peculiarity of a certain successful class. Such companionship is to them a perpetual and pleasing reminder of their own power.

Mr. Quincunx was a true Pariah in his miserable combination of inability to strike back at the people who injured him, and inability to forget their injuries. He propitiated their tastes, bent to their will, conciliated their pride, agreed with their opinions, and hated them with demoniacal hatred.

As he pulled up his weeds in the hot sun, this particular morning, Maurice Quincunx fantastically consoled himself by imagining all manner of disasters to his enemies. Every time he touched with his hands the soft-crumbling earth, he uttered a kind of half-conscious prayer that, in precisely such a way, the foundations of Nevilton House should crumble and yield. Under his hat—for he was hypochondriacally apprehensive about sunstrokes—flapped and waved in the wind a large cabbage leaf, placed carefully at the back of his head to protect his neck as he bent down. The shadow of this cabbage leaf, as it was thrown across the dusty path, assumed singular and sinister shapes, giving the impression sometimes that the head of Mr. Quincunx was gnome-like or goblin-like in its proportions.

Perhaps the most unfortunate characteristic of Pariahs is that though they cling instinctively to one another they are irritated and provoked by each other’s peculiarities.

This unhappy tendency was now to receive sad confirmation in our weed-puller’s case, for he was suddenly interrupted by the appearance at his gate of Lacrima Traffio.

He rose to meet her, and without inviting her to pass the entrance, for he was extremely nervous of village gossip, and one never knew what a casual passer-by might think, he leant over the low wall and talked with her from that security.

She seemed in a very depressed and pitiable mood and the large dark eyes that fixed themselves upon her friend’s face were full of an inarticulate appeal.

“I cannot endure it much longer,” she said. “It gets worse and worse every day.”

Maurice Quincunx knew perfectly well what she meant, but the curious irritation to which I have just referred drove him to rejoin:

“What gets worse?”

“Their unkindness,” answered the girl with a quick reproachful look, “their perpetual unkindness.”

“But they feed you well, don’t they?” said the hermit, removing his hat and rearranging the cabbage-leaf so as to adapt it to the new angle of the sun. “And they don’t beat you. You haven’t to scrub floors or mend clothes. People, like you and I, must be thankful for being allowed to eat and sleep at all on this badly-arranged earth.”

“I keep thinking of Italy,” murmured Lacrima. “I think it is your English ways that trouble me. I don’t believe—I can’t believe—they always mean to be unkind. But English people are so heartless!”

“You seemed to like that Andersen fellow well enough,” grumbled Mr. Quincunx.

“How can you be so silly, Maurice?” cried the girl, slipping through the gate in spite of its owner’s furtive glances down the road. “How can you be so silly?”

She moved past him, up the path, and seated herself upon the edge of the wheel-barrow.

“You can go on with your weeding,” she said, “I can talk to you while you work.”

“Of course,” murmured Mr. Quincunx, making no effort to resume his labour, “you naturally find a handsome fellow like that, a more pleasant companion than me. I don’t blame you. I understand it very well.”

Lacrima impatiently took up a handful of groundsel and spurge from the dusty heap by her side and flung them into the path.

“You make me quite angry with you, Maurice,” she cried. “How can you say such things after all that has happened between us?”

“That’s the way,” jeered the man bitterly, plucking at his beard. “That’s the way! Go on abusing me because you are not living at your full pleasure, like a stall-fed upper-class lady!”

“I shan’t stay with you another moment,” cried Lacrima, with tears in her eyes, “if you are so unkind.”

As soon as he had reduced her to this point, Mr. Quincunx instantaneously became gentle and tender. This is one of the profoundest laws of a Pariah’s being. He resents it when his companion in helplessness shows a spirit beyond his own, but directly such a one has been driven into reciprocal wretchedness, his own equanimity is automatically regained.

After only the briefest glance at the gate, he put his arms round the girl and kissed her affectionately. She returned his embrace with interest, disarranging as she did so the cabbage-leaf in his hat, and causing it to flutter down upon the path. They leant together for a while in silence, against the edge of the wheel-barrow, their hands joined.

Thus associated they would have appeared, to the dreaded passer-by, in the light of a pair of extremely sentimental lovers, whose passion had passed into the stage of delicious melancholia. The wind whirled the dust in little eddies around them and the sun beat down upon their heads.

“You must be kind to me when I come to tell you how unhappy I am,” said the Italian. “You are the only real friend I have in the world.”

It is sad to have to relate that these tender words brought a certain thrill of alarm into the heart of Mr. Quincunx. He felt a sudden apprehension lest she might indicate that it was his duty to run away with her, and face the world in remote regions.

No one but a born Pariah could have endured the confiding clasp of that little hand and the memory of so ardent a kiss without being roused to an impetuosity of passion ready to dare anything to make her its own.

Instead of pursuing any further the question of his friend’s troubles, Mr. Quincunx brought the conversation round to his own.

“The worst that could happen to me has happened,” he said, and he told her of his interview with the Romers the day before. The girl flushed with anger.

“But this is abominable!” she cried, “simply abominable! You’d better go at once and talk it over with Mrs. Seldom. Surely, surely, something can be done! It is clear they have robbed you of your money. It is a disgraceful thing! Santa Maria—what a country this is!”

“It is no use,” sighed the man helplessly. “Mrs. Seldom can’t help me. She is poor enough herself. And she will know as well as I do that in the matter of law I am entirely in their hands. My aunt had absolute confidence in Mr. Romer and no confidence in me. No doubt she arranged it with them that they were to dole me out the money like a charity. Mr. Romer did once talk about my lending it to him, and his paying interest on it, and so forth; but he managed all my aunt’s affairs, and I don’t know what arrangement he made with her. My aunt never liked me really. I think if she were alive now she would probably support them in what they are doing. She would certainly say,—she always used to say—that it would do me good to do a little honest work.” He pronounced the words “honest work” with concentrated bitterness.

“Probably,” he went on, “Mrs. Seldom would say the same. I know I should be extremely unwilling to try and make her see how horrible to me the idea of work of this kind is. She would never understand. She would think it was only that I wanted to remain a “gentleman” and not to lose caste. She would probably tell me that a great many gentlemen have worked in offices before now. I daresay they have, and I hope they enjoyed it! I know what these gentlemen-workers are, and how easy things are made for them. They won’t be made easy for me. I can tell you that, Lacrima!”

The girl drew a deep sigh, and walked slowly a few paces down the path, meditating, with her hands behind her. Presently she turned.

“Perhaps after all,” she said, “it won’t be as bad as you fancy. I know the head-clerk in Mr. Romer’s Yeoborough office and he is quite a nice man—altogether different from that Lickwit.”

Mr. Quincunx stroked his beard with a trembling hand. “Of course I knew you’d say that, Lacrima. You are just like the rest. You women all think, at the bottom of your hearts, that men are no good if they can’t make money. I believe you have an idea that I ought to do what people call ‘get on a bit in the world.’ If you think that, it only shows how little you understand me. I have no intention of ‘getting on.’ I won’t ‘get on’! I would sooner walk into Auber Lake and end the whole business!”

The suddenness and injustice of this attack really did rouse the Italian to anger. “Good-bye,” she said with a dark flash in her eyes. “I see it’s no use talking to you when you are in this mood. You have never, never spoken to me in that tone before. Good-bye! I can open the gate for myself, thank you.”

She walked away from him and passed out into the lane. He stood watching her with a queer haggard look on his face, his sorrowful grey eyes staring in front of him, as if in the presence of an apparition. Then, very slowly, he resumed his work, leaving however the fallen cabbage-leaf unnoticed on the ground.

The weeds in the wheel-barrow, the straight banked-up lines of potatoes and lettuces, wore, as he returned to them, that curious air of forlorn desertion which is one of nature’s bitterest commentaries upon the folly of such scenes.

A sickening sense of emptiness took possession of him, and in a moment or two became unendurable. He flung a handful of weeds to the ground and ran impetuously to the gate and out into the lane. It was too late. A group of farm-labourers laughing and shouting, and driving before them a herd of black pigs, blocked up the road. He could not bring himself to pass them, thus hatless and in his shirt-sleeves. Besides, they must have seen the girl, and they would know he was pursuing her.

He returned slowly up the path to his house, and—to avoid being seen by the men—entered his kitchen, and sat gloomily down upon a chair. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked with contemptuous unconcern. The room had that smell of mortuary dust which rooms in small houses often acquire in the summer. He sat down once more on a chair, his hands upon his knees, and stared vacantly in front of him. A thrush outside the window was cracking a snail upon a stone. When the shouts of the men died away, this was the only sound that came to him, except the continual “tick—tick—tick—tick” of the clock, which seemed to be occupied in driving nails into the heavy coffin-lid of every mortal joy that time had ever brought forth.

That same night in Nevilton House was a night of wretched hours for Lacrima, but of hours of a wretchedness more active than that which made the hermit of Dead Man’s Cottage pull the clothes over his head and turn his face to the wall, long ere the twilight had vanished from his garden.

On leaving her friend thus abruptly, her heart full of angry revolt, Lacrima had seen the crowd of men and animals approaching, and to escape them had scrambled into a field on the border of the road. Following a little path which led across it, and crossing two more meadows, she flung herself down under the shadow of some great elms, in a sort of grassy hollow beneath an overgrown hedge, and gave full vent to her grief. The hollow in which she hid herself was a secluded and lonely spot, and no sound reached her but the monotonous summer-murmur of the flies and the rustle of the wind-troubled branches. Lying thus, prone on her face, her broad-brimmed hat with its poppy-trimmings thrown down at her side, and her limbs trembling with the violence of her sobs, Lacrima seemed to insert into that alien landscape an element of passionate feeling quite foreign to its sluggish fertility. Not alien to the spot, however, was another human form, that at the same hour had been led to wander among those lush meadows.

The field behind the high bank and thick-set hedge which overshadowed the unhappy girl, was a large and spacious one, “put up,” as country people say, “for hay,” but as yet untouched by the mowers’ machines. Here, in the heat of the noon, walked the acquisitive Mr. John Goring, calculating the value of this crop of grass, and deciding upon the appropriate date of its cutting.

What curious irony is it, in the blind march of events, which so frequently draws to the place of our exclusive sorrow the one particular spectator that we would most avoid? One talks lightly of coincidence and of chance; but who that has walked through life observingly has not been driven to pause with sad questioning before accidents and occurrences that seem as though some conscious malignity in things had arranged them? Are there, perhaps, actual telepathic vibrations at work about us, drawing the hunter to his prey—the prey to the hunter? Is the innocent object of persecution, hiding from its persecutors, compelled by a fatal psychic law—the law of its own terror—to call subconsciously upon the very power it is fleeing from; to betray, against its will, the path of its own retreat? Lacrima in any case, as she lay thus prostrate, her poppy-trimmed hat beside her, and her brown curls flecked with spots of sun and shadow, brought into that English landscape a strangely remote touch,—a touch of tragic and passionate colour. A sweet bruised exile, she seemed, from another region, flung down, among all this umbrageous rankness, to droop like a transplanted flower. Certainly the sinister magic, whatever it was, that had drawn Mr. Goring in that fatal direction, was a magic compounded of the attraction of contrary elements.

If Mr. Romer represented the occult power of the sandstone hill, his brother-in-law was the very epitome and culmination of the valley’s inert clay. The man breathed clay, looked clay, smelt clay, understood clay, exploited clay, and in a literal sense was clay.

If there is any truth in the scientific formula about the “survival” of those most “adapted” to their “environment,” Mr. Goring was sure of a prolonged and triumphant sojourn on this mortal globe. For his “environment” was certainly one of clay—and to clay he certainly was most prosperously “adapted.”

It was not long before the tragic sobs of the unhappy Lacrima, borne across the field on the east-wind, arrested the farmer’s attention. He stood still, and listened, snuffing the air, like a great jungle-boar. Then with rapid but furtive steps he crossed over to where the sound proceeded, and slipping down cautiously through a gap in the hedge, made his way towards the secluded hollow, breathing heavily like an animal on a trail.

Her fit of crying having subsided, Lacrima turned round on her back, and remained motionless, gazing up at the blue sky. Extended thus on the ruffled grass, her little fingers nervously plucking at its roots and her breast still heaving, the young girl offered a pitiful enough picture to any casual intruder. Slight and fragile though she was, the softness and charm of her figure witnessed to her Latin origin. With her dusky curls and olive complexion, she might, but for her English dress, have been taken for a strayed gipsy, recovering from some passionate quarrel with her Romany lover.

“What’s the matter, Miss Lacrima?” was the farmer’s greeting as his gross form obtruded itself against the sky-line.

The girl started violently, and scrambled rapidly to her feet. Mr. Goring stepped awkwardly down the grassy slope and held out his hand.

“Good morning,” he said without removing his hat. “I should have thought ’twas time for you to be up at the House. ’Tis past a quarter of one.”

“I was just resting,” stammered the girl. “I hope I have not hurt your grass.” She looked apprehensively down at the pathetic imprint on the ground.

“No, no! Missie,” said the man. “That’s nothing. ’Tis hard to cut, in a place like this. May-be they’ll let it alone. Besides, this field ain’t for hay. The cows will be in here tomorrow.”

Lacrima looked at the watch on her wrist.

“Yes, you are right,” she said. “I am late. I must be running back. Your brother does not like our being out when he comes in to lunch.” She picked up her hat and made as if she would pass him. But he barred her way.

“Not so quick, lassie, not so quick,” he said. “Those that come into farmers’ fields must not be too proud to pass the time of day with the farmer.”

As he spoke he permitted his little voracious pig’s eyes to devour her with an amorous leer. All manner of curious thoughts passed through his head. It was only yesterday that his brother-in-law had been talking to him of this girl. Certainly it would be extremely satisfactory to be the complete master of that supple, shrinking figure, and of that frightened little bosom, that rose and fell now, like the heart of a panting hare.

After all, she was only a sort of superior servant, and with servants of every kind the manner of the rapacious Mr. Goring was alternately brutal and endearing. Encouraged by the isolation of the spot and the shrinking alarm of the girl, he advanced still nearer and laid a heavy hand upon her shoulder.

“Come, little wench,” he said, “I will answer for it if you’re late, up at the House. Sit down a bit with me, and let’s make ourselves nice and comfortable.”

Lacrima trembled with terror. She was afraid to push him away, and try to scramble out of the hollow, lest in doing so she should put herself still further at his mercy. She wondered if anyone in the road would hear if she screamed aloud. Her quick Latin brain resorted mechanically to a diplomatic subterfuge. “What kind of field have you got over that hedge?” she asked, with a quiver in her voice.

“A very nice field for hay, my dear,” replied the farmer, removing his hand from her shoulder and thinking in his heart that these foreign girls were wonderfully easy to manage.

“I’ll show it to you if you like. There’s a pretty little place for people like you and me to have a chat in, up along over there.” He pointed through the hedge to a small copse of larches that grew green and thick at the corner of the hay-field.

She let him give her his hand and pull her out of the hollow. Quite passively, too, she followed him, as he sought the easiest spot through which he might help her to surmount the difficulties of the intervening hedge.

When he had at last decided upon the place, “Go first, please, Mr. Goring,” she murmured, “and then you can pull me up.”

He turned his back upon her and began laboriously ascending the bank, dragging himself forward by the aid of roots and ferns. It had been easy enough to slide down this declivity. It was much less easy to climb up. At length, however, stung by nettles and pricked by thorns, and with earth in his mouth, he swung himself round at the top, ready to help her to follow him.

A vigorous oath escaped his lips. She was already a third of the way across the field, running madly and desperately, towards the gate into the lane.

Mr. Goring shook his fist after her retreating figure. “All right, Missie,” he muttered aloud, “all right! If you had been kind to the poor farmer, he might have let you off. But now”—and he dug his stick viciously into the earth—“There’ll be no dilly-dallying or nonsense about this business. I’ll tell Romer I’m ready for this marriage-affair as soon as he likes. I’ll teach you—my pretty darling!”

That night the massive Leonian masonry of Nevilton House seemed especially heavy and antipathetic to the child of the Apennines, as it rose, somnolent and oppressive about her, in the hot midsummer air.

In their spacious rooms, looking out upon the east court with its dove-cotes and herbacious borders, the two girls were awake and together.

The wind had fallen, and the silence about the place was as oppressive to Lacrima’s mind as the shadow of some colossal raven’s wing.

The door which separated their chambers was ajar, and Gladys, her yellow hair loose upon her shoulders, had flung herself negligently down in a deep wicker-chair at the side of her companion’s bed.

The luckless Pariah, her brown curls tied back from her pale forehead by a dark ribbon, was lying supine upon her pillows with a look of troubled terror in her wide-open eyes. One long thin arm lay upon the coverlet, the fingers tightened upon an open book.

At the beginning of her “visit” to Nevilton House she had clung desperately to these precious night-hours, when the great establishment was asleep; and she had even been so audacious as to draw the bolt of the door which separated her from her cousin. But that wilful young tyrant had pretended to her mother that she often “got frightened” in the night, so orders had gone out that the offending bolt should be removed.

After this, Gladys had her associate quite at her mercy, and the occasions were rare when the pleasure of being allowed to read herself to sleep was permitted to the younger girl.

It was curiously irritating to the yellow-haired despot to observe the pleasure which Lacrima derived from these solitary readings. Gladys got into the habit of chattering on, far into the night, so as to make sure that, when she did retire, her cousin would be too weary to do anything but fall asleep.

As the two girls lay thus side by side, the one in her chair, and the other in her bed, under the weight of the night’s sombre expectancy, the contrast between them was emphasized to a fine dramatic point. The large-winged bat that fluttered every now and then across the window might have caught, if for a brief moment it could have been endowed with human vision, a strange sense of the tragic power of one human being over another, when the restriction of a common roof compels their propinquity.

One sometimes seeks to delude oneself in the fond belief that our European domestic hearths are places of peace and freedom, compared with the dark haunts of savagery in remoter lands. It is not true! The long-evolved system that, with us, groups together, under one common authority, beings as widely sundered as the poles, is a system that, for all its external charm, conceals, more often than anyone could suppose, subtle and gloomy secrets, as dark and heathen as any in those less favoured spots.

The nervous organization of many frail human animals is such that the mere fact of being compelled, out of custom and usage and economic helplessness, to live in close relation with others, is itself a tragic purgatory.

It is often airily assumed that the obstinate and terrible struggles of life are encountered abroad—far from home—in desolate contention with the elements or with enemies. It is not so! The most obstinate and desperate struggles of all—struggles for the preservation of one’s most sacred identity, of one’s inmost liberty of action and feeling—take place, and have their advances and retreats, their treacheries and their betrayals, under the hypocritical calm of the domestic roof. Those who passionately resent any agitation, any free thought, any legislative interference, which might cause these fortresses of seclusion to enlarge their boundaries, forget, in their poetic idealization of the Gods of the Hearth, that tragedies are often enacted under that fair consecration which would dim the sinister repute of Argos or of Thebes. The Platonic speculations which, all through human history, have erected their fanciful protests against these perils, may often be unscientific and ill-considered. But there is a smouldering passion of heroic revolt behind such dreams, which it is not always wise to overlook.

As these two girls, the fair-haired and the dark-haired, let the solemn burden of the night thus press unheeded upon them, they would have needed no fantastic imagination, in an invisible observer, to be aware of the tense vibration between them of some formidable spiritual encounter.

High up above the mass of Leonian stone which we have named Nevilton House, the Milky Way trailed its mystery of far-off brightness across the incredible gulfs. What to it was the fact that one human heart should tremble like a captured bird in the remorseless power of another?

It was not to this indifferent sky, stretched equally over all, that hands could be lifted. And yet the scene between the girls must have appeared, to such an invisible watcher, as linked to a dramatic contest above and beyond their immediate human personalities.

In this quiet room the “Two Mythologies” were grappling; each drawing its strength from forces of an origin as baffling to reason as the very immensity of those spaces above, so indifferent to both!

The hatred that Gladys bore to Lacrima’s enjoyment of her midnight readings was a characteristic indication of the relations between the girls. It is always infuriating to a well-constituted nature to observe these little pathetic devices of pleasure in a person who has no firm grip upon life. It excites the same healthy annoyance as when one sees some absurd animal that ought, properly speaking, not to be alive at all, deriving ridiculous satisfaction from some fantastic movement incredible to sound senses.

The Pariah had, as a matter of fact, defeated her healthy-minded cousin by using one of those sly tricks which Pariahs alone indulge in; and had craftily acquired the habit of slipping away earlier to her room, and snatching little oases of solitary happiness before the imperious young woman came upstairs. It was in revenge for these evasions that Gladys was even now announcing to her companion a new and calculated outrage upon her slave’s peace of mind.

Every Pariah has some especial and peculiar dread,—some nervous mania. Lacrima had several innate terrors. The strongest of all was a shuddering dread of the supernatural. Next to this, what she most feared was the idea of deep cold water. Lakes, rivers, and chilly inland streams, always rather alarmed than inspired her. The thought of mill-ponds, as they eddied and gurgled in the darkness, often came to her as a supreme fear, and the image of indrawn dark waters, sucked down beneath weirs and dams, was a thing she could not contemplate without trembling. It was no doubt the Genoese blood in her, crying aloud for the warm blue waves of the Mediterranean and shrinking from the chill of our English ditches, that accounted for this peculiarity. The poor child had done her best to conceal her feeling, but Gladys, alert as all healthy minded people are, to seize upon the silly terrors of the ill-constituted, had not let it pass unobserved, and was now serenely prepared to make good use of it, as a heaven-sent opportunity for revenge.

It must be noted, that in the centre of the north garden of Nevilton House, surrounded by cypress-bordered lawns and encircled by a low hedge of carefully clipped rosemary, was a deep round pond.

This pond, built entirely of Leonian stone, lent itself to the playing of a splendid fountain—a fountain which projected from an ornamental island, covered with overhanging ferns.

The fountain only played on state occasions, and the coolness and depth of the water, combined with the fact that the pond had a stone bottom, gave the place admirable possibilities for bathing. Gladys herself, full of animal courage and buoyant energy, had made a custom during the recent hot weather of rising from her bed early in the morning, before the servants were up, and enjoying a matutinal plunge.

She was a practised swimmer and had been lately learning to dive; and the sensation of slipping out of the silent house, garbed in a bathing-dress, with sandals on her feet, and an opera-cloak over her shoulders, was thrilling to every nerve of her healthy young body. Impervious animal as she was, she would hardly have been human if those dew-drenched lawns and exquisite morning odours had not at least crossed the margin of her consciousness. She had hitherto been satisfied with a proud sense of superiority over her timid companion, and Lacrima so far, had been undisturbed by these excursions, except in the welcoming of her cousin on her return, dripping and laughing, and full of whimsical stories of how she had peeped down over the terrace-wall, and seen the milk-men, in the field below, driving in their cattle.

Looking about, however, in her deliberate feline way, for some method of pleasant revenge, she had suddenly hit upon this bathing adventure as a heaven-inspired opportunity. The thought of it when it first came to her as she languidly sunned herself, like a great cat, on the hot parapet of the pond, had made her positively laugh for joy. She would compel her cousin to accompany her on these occasions!

Lacrima was not only terrified of water, but was abnormally reluctant and shy with regard to any risk of being observed in strange or unusual garments.

Gladys had stretched herself out on the Leonian margin of the pond with a thrilling sense of delight at the prospect thus offered. She would be able to gratify, at one and the same time, her profound need to excel in the presence of an inferior, and her insatiable craving to outrage that inferior’s reserve.

The sun-warmed slabs of Leonian stone, upon which she had so often basked in voluptuous contentment seemed dumbly to encourage and stimulate her in this heathen design. How entirely they were the accomplices of all that was dominant in her destiny—these yellow blocks of stone that had so enriched her house! They answered to her own blond beauty, to her own sluggish remorselessness. She loved their tawny colour, their sandy texture, their enduring strength. She loved to see them around and about her, built into walls, courts, terraces and roofs. They gave support and weight to all her pretensions.

Thus it had been with an almost mystical thrill of exultation that she had felt the warmth of the Leonian slabs caress her limbs, as this new and exciting scheme passed through her mind.

And now, luxuriously seated in her low chair by her friend’s side she was beginning to taste the reward of her inspiration.

“Yes,” she said, crossing her hands negligently over her knees, “it is so dull bathing alone. I really think you’ll have to do it with me, dear! You’ll like it all right when once you begin. It is only the effort of starting. The water isn’t so very cold, and where the sun warms the parapet it is lovely.”

“I can’t, Gladys,” pleaded the other, from her bed, “I can’t—I can’t!”

“Nonsense, child. Don’t be so silly! I tell you, you’ll enjoy it. Besides, there’s nothing like bathing to keep one healthy. Mother was only saying last night to father how much she wished you would begin it.”

Lacrima’s fingers let her book slip through them. It slid down unnoticed upon the floor and lay open there.

She sat up and faced her cousin.

“Gladys,” she said, with grave intensity, “if you make your mother insist on my doing this, you are more wicked than I ever dreamed you would be.”

Gladys regarded her with indolent interest.

“It’s only at first the water feels cold,” she said. “You get used to it, after the first dip. I always race round the lawn afterwards, to get warm. What’s the matter now, baby?”

These final words were due to the fact that the Pariah had suddenly put up her hands to her face and was shaking with sobs. Gladys rose and bent over her. “Silly child,” she said, “must I kiss its tears away? Must I pet it and cosset it?”

She pulled impatiently at the resisting fingers, and loosening them, after a struggle, did actually go so far as to touch the girl’s cheek with her lips. Then sinking back into her chair she resumed her interrupted discourse.

The taste of salt tears had not, it seemed, softened her into any weak compliance. Really strong and healthy natures learn the art, by degrees, of proving adamant, to the insidious cunning of these persuasions.

“Girls of our class,” she announced sententiously, “must set the lower orders in England an example of hardiness. Father says it is dreadful how effeminate the labouring people are becoming. They are afraid of work, afraid of fresh air, afraid of cold water, afraid of discipline. They only think of getting more to eat and drink.”

The Pariah turned her face to the wall and lay motionless, contemplating the cracks and crevices in the oak panelling.

Under the same indifferent stars the other Pariah of Nevilton was also staring hopelessly at the wall. What secrets these impassive surfaces, near the pillows of sleepers, could reveal, if they could only speak!

“Father says that what we all want is more physical training,” Gladys went on. “This next winter you and I must do some practising in the Yeoborough Gymnasium. It is our superior physical training, father says, which enables us to hold the mob in check. Just look at these workmen and peasants, how clumsily they slouch about!”

Lacrima turned round at this. “Your father and his friends are shamefully hard on their workmen. I wish they would strike again!”

Gladys smiled complacently. The scene was really beginning to surpass even what she had hoped.

“Why are you such a baby, Lacrima?” she said. “Stop a moment. I will show you the things you shall wear.”

She glided off into her own room, and presently returned with a child’s bathing dress.

“Look, dear! Isn’t it lucky? I’ve had these in my wardrobe ever since we were at Eastbourne, years and years ago. They will not be a bit too small for you. Or if they are—it doesn’t matter. No one will see us. And I’ll lend you my mackintosh to go out in.”

Lacrima’s head sank back upon her pillows and she stared at her cousin with a look of helpless terror.

“You needn’t look so horrified, you silly little thing. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Besides, people oughtn’t to give way to their feelings. They ought to be brave and show spirit. It’s lucky for you you did come to us. There’s no knowing what a cowardly little thing you’d have grown into, if you hadn’t. Mother is quite right. It will do you ever so much good to bathe with me. You can’t be drowned, you know. The water isn’t out of your depth anywhere. Father says every girl in England ought to learn to swim, so as to be able to rescue people. He says that this is the great new idea of the Empire—that we should all join in making the race braver and stronger. You are English now, you know—not Italian any more. I am going to take fencing lessons soon. Father says you never can tell what may happen, and we ought all to be prepared.”

Lacrima did not speak. A vision of a fierce aggressive crowd of hard, hostile, healthy young persons, drilling, riding, shooting, fencing, and dragging such renegades as herself remorselessly along with them, blocked every vista of her mind.

“I hate the Empire!” she cried at last. Gladys had subsided once more into her chair—the little bathing-suit, symbol of our natural supremacy, clasped fondly in her lap.

“I know,” she said, “where you get your socialistic nonsense from. Yes, I do! You needn’t shake your head. You get it from Maurice Quincunx.”

“I don’t get it from anybody,” protested the Pariah; and then, in a weak murmur, “it grows up naturally, in my heart.”

“What is that you’re saying?” cried Gladys. “Sometimes I think you are really not right in your mind. You mutter so. You mutter, and talk to yourself. It irritates me more than I can say. It would irritate a saint.”

“I am sorry if I annoy you, cousin.”

“Annoy me? It would take more than a little coward like you to annoy me! But I am not going to argue about it. Father says arguing is only fit for feeble people. He says we Romers never argue. We think, and then we do. I’m going to bed. So there’s your book! I hope you’ll enjoy it Miss Socialism!”

She picked up the volume from the floor and flung it into her cousin’s lap. The gesture of contempt with which she did this would admirably have suited some Roman Drusilla tossing aside the culture of slaves.

An hour later the door between the two rooms was hesitatingly opened, and a white figure stole to the head of Gladys’ couch. “You’re not asleep, dear, are you? Oh Gladys, darling! Please, please, please, don’t make me bathe with you! You don’t know how I dread it.”

But the daughter of the Romers vouchsafed no reply to this appeal, beyond a drowsy “Nonsense—nonsense—let’s only pray tomorrow will be fine.”

The night-owls, that swept, on heavy, flapping wings, over the village, from the tower of St. Catharine’s Church to the pinnacles of the manor, brought no miraculous intervention from the resting-place of the Holy-Rood. What was St. Catharine doing that she had thus deserted the sanctuary of her name? Perhaps the Alexandrian saint found the magic of the heathen hill too strong for her; or perhaps because of its rank heresy, she had blotted her former shrine altogether from her tender memory.