Читать книгу Little Hearts - Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall - Страница 3

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In a certain well-known year after the saving of the world, there was a young man, of a fair face, newly fled to France; and there was a young man, of a fair fame, made Treasurer of Ireland and Paymaster of His Majesty’s Forces. There was yet a third young man, not conspicuously fair of face and unknown to any fame, fair or otherwise, who thought very little about the other two. And that was Michael Sampson.

Mr. Sampson sat writing at his open window, and the subject ready to his hand was Poverty, daughter of Wisdom and Wayfarer with Saints. “Many have chosen Death,” wrote Mr. Sampson, “thinking to find therein cessation of their Pains at the Least, and at the Most, the Crown of their Desires. But only the few have chosen Poverty, shielded her as a Child, worshipped her as a Bride, and in Loneliness clung to her as to a faithful Wife. The last is the greatest Test. For the Child may be shielded for a Phantasy, the Bride worshipped before Men in the vainglory of the Flesh. But he who clings to her in Secret clings to that Comrade who alone followed God in the World, and in her Sisterhood becomes as the Brother of God. Yea, it is to be doubted if at any time he will know greater Happiness, since it is hard to conceive how Poverty may endure in Heaven. We, who have followed far in the pursuit of that divine Denial, that immortal Loss”—Mr. Sampson hesitated, and then, for he was honest, added, “by Virtue of Necessity” in the margin—“we who have adventured hand-in-hand with her who went once hand-in-hand with God...”

Mr. Sampson laid down his pen and shivered, for he wrote perforce in his shirt-sleeves. Then he rose and called to Malachi Bright, who was brushing his coat in the garden, and the volume of his voice, coming from so slight and pale a man, reached the height of a phenomenon of nature.

“Don’t shake it.”

Malachi lifted his benevolent shock of silver hair and showed his little red eyes. “I’m only a-shaking the dust out of it.”

“Then cease,” thundered Mr. Sampson; “can’t you see it’s the dust holds it together, you fool?”

Malachi retired sourly with the coat, and Mr. Sampson, wrapping the tail of the window-curtain about his shoulders, applied himself once more to his writing. But the mirror of his reflection was clouded by the dust in an old coat, and his worship disturbed as the worship of any ritualist might be by a passing inability to buy candles. “We who have drunk that sacramental Wine,” he continued, “who having nothing, content with nothing, do remain possessed of All...”

He paused again, looked with temporary discontent at his philosophy, and wrote again in the margin. “Mem. Make inquiry if the Tails, properly cut off, would supply a Tippet for Malachi.” Then he slipped his book into his pocket and went out into the garden.

Moss surged through the cracks of the little paved court where the well was, as though the stones had been laid on velvet. Moss clung to the rotten roofs in great rolls of golden-green. Every wall was blotched with lichen, every window blinded with ivy. There was no living thing to be seen but one white pigeon that fluttered about the empty cote like a memory. From the greenish hollows of the stables came a monotonous hissing noise, which made one listen by instinct for the cheerful tramp of hoofs in golden straw. But no horse had been there for many a long day. It was only old Malachi, who gingerly curried his master’s coat.

Mr. Sampson was fond of cucumbers; he was fond of violets. Therefore, under the warm wall where old espalier’d pears from France spread a thin grey leafage, there were two cold-frames, curiously covered in with leaded glass from the attic windows. The cover of the violet bed was raised. Mr. Sampson, meditating if violets flowering at that season could most properly be termed late or early, sat himself on the edge of the frame and pulled out his book.

The day was sunless, yet generous of silver light. It was a light that flooded all hollows, soaked all shadows, ran everywhere like water, and like water was sweet and chill. The dark thatched house lay drenched in it, looking as immaterial as a shell at the bottom of some luminous sea of air. It seemed that in any wind the house must have loosed its moorings slowly and drifted to a happier anchorage among the trees that rolled all around it, softly as clouds or their shadows. Somewhere at the top of the air-pool a bird sang; all about was stillness and the scent of violets, rich enough to make Mr. Sampson imagine himself warm.

“We who would follow and hold fast to Poverty,” he meditated, continuing his philosophy, “are greatly hindered by God, who hath set such liberal Possessions in His World that no man may wholly escape a Share of them. If it were not that Remembrance may weight the wing of a bird and Sorrow lie so heavy on a Violet’s leaf”—he leaned for a moment over the bed—“how Hardly should we enter into the Kingdom of the Poor.”

Malachi came slowly out of the stables with the coat, a mouldy brush of equine aspect under his arm. Mr. Sampson rose and introduced one arm into the garment with the air of a man who knew not what to expect of fresh departures in the lining. He stood so, listening. There was a far-off sound in the woods as if a gust of wind had suddenly been born; but all the trees were still. Malachi, to hurry him, said, “Ponies.”

Mr. Sampson still stood listening at his leisure, not loath to remind Malachi in some such negative way who was master. The sound rolled nearer, could be told for the quick drumming of small hoofs. Malachi again said, “Ponies. They’re galloping down the beech-ride. They’ll pass close under the wall,” and jerked at the coat.

“Then you’re wrong,” said Mr. Sampson, with some complacence; “there’s a heavier beast there. And I heard the ring of a shod hoof on a stone.”

“Tinker’s. Turned out to grass,” said Malachi, with contempt.

Mr. Sampson still stood listening. The whole world seemed to be at its leisure and he a part of it. The drumming of the little hoofs grew closer. Malachi fidgeted, any sound or smell of horses being to him as nettles on the flesh. Mr. Sampson wondered if it were worth his while to go and look over the wall at the stampede of a few ponies, and decided it wasn’t.

The ponies swerved and shot thundering down the length of the wall. That quick dull beat of hoofs on grass is one of the wildest sounds in the world, and something not born of philosophy stung in Mr. Sampson’s veins. He had not moved. He was still standing with one arm in the sleeve of his only coat, when——

Just outside the wall there was an oath, flung suddenly as a stone in a puddle—an oath, a snort, a scramble, a break in the verse of the galloping. Then the hoofs swept on, and in an instant the trees had taken them again, hidden them, muffled them to an echo, to a dream, to silence. And over the wall shot the body of a man, as though he had been fired from a siege-gun. He fell very neatly into the nearer cold-frame, and lay there motionless—a huddle of soiled claret cloth and a wisp of draggled lace, one long leg in a muddy riding-boot trailing across the edge. And the scent of crushed violets wrapped him like a garment as he lay.